by Jean Rabe
“And you looked. A lot?”
A shrug. “In the past three months, a scattering of healthy animals have disappeared, most of them from new litters. I saw a couple of crates—the kind you put live animals in—being loaded on a Moon Corporation helivan in the staff lot. I almost hitched a ride. But I have a daughter. I looked into it—the Moon Corporation is a bio-firm about fifty klicks south of Whoop Whoop.” He finished with her wrist, dismissed the drone, and helped her sit. “A good long way from here if you’re on foot. The research center’s located in the low part of the Blue Mountains, around the ruins of Windsor.”
A long way. A Milton quote flashed in her head: “Long is the way and hard that out of hell leads up to light.” Prophetic? Ninn flexed her wrist and moved her fingers. Sore, but it worked. Really sore. God, she could use something for the pain and to take the edge off. She slid from the table, seeing deep scratches on the surface that had been made by some large animal.
“I asked around, looked maybe once too often. I’m into causes, you understand. Animal rights. Human rights.”
Ninn frowned. “Righteous rights.”
“No one had answers…where the animals had disappeared to. I thought perhaps more were being marked for this Renaixement Therapy, and that they’d stopped recording that. The other vets had been asking questions, too. We were all talking a little. Maybe talking too much. Now all the Renaixement citings in our system are gone. All of them. Not a mention left.” He took off his gloves and stuffed them in a biohazard disposal unit. “The biologist on the project ended up dead. And he was the one we posed our questions to.”
“The Slayer’s first victim,” Barega supplied. “The biologist died by the monster.”
“Then one of our staff vets…moved…though no one seems to know where. Supposedly moved. Canberra, somebody said. I stopped asking questions. I have a four-year-old daughter. This posting pays well. I think I make a difference here.”
“I get you,” Ninn said. “But what else?” There was something in his face. He was holding something back.
“Wave me at him, Keebs. I’ll make him talk,” Mordred said.
“I came in after midnight a month back, to check on a sick lion. She was resistant to the antibiotic nanites. I wanted to look in personally.”
Hypocrite, Ninn thought, eschew tech for you, jump in bed with the Double-Rs, but use it on the animals. He’d probably used some healing nanites on her, delivered through the drone.
“I checked on her, no change. There were lights on in here, so I thought I’d see if someone had an emergency, maybe help out if they needed it. In this room, through the monitor, I saw a bear on this table.” He drummed his fingers on its surface. “Records said the bear had fallen into a moat, injured too severely to save it. But it wasn’t a regular necropsy they were doing, and the vets weren’t the zoo’s regular staff. I’d never seen them before. Two of them, cutting slabs of tissue, had organ transport boxes and were stuffing them full. I came back the next morning, and there was no record of any necropsy, just a note that the bear’s body had been disposed of. We give the carcasses to a fertilizer company. The video feed of what I’d saw had been wiped, and a maglock had been installed inside the room.” He pointed to the door, which he had locked when they came in. “There are no video feeds in this room any more. That’s against protocol. And it used to be against regulations…back when the city owned the zoo.”
“You think it’s related to Renaixement? The bear?”
He shrugged. “One of the people working on the bear…I saw her mug in one of the files that mentioned Renaixement Therapy, saw her with Henry, too. I don’t suppose she really was a vet.”
“Henry?”
“The lead biologist who got—”
“—geeked by the Slayer. Snip. Snip.” Ninn blew out a deep breath. “So what the bloody blue blazes is so…I dunno, secretive, dangerous…that people are dying over this? Being killed? Cadi? Ella Gance? There’s companies out there working to extend lives, make people more beautiful. I don’t think they’re using a monstrous serial killer to take out their clients.”
“It’s dangerous to dig into this,” Dr. Kappa ran his fingers through his sandy blond hair. The startling green eyes looked troubled. “I think about Henry. Then I think about my kid.”
“Dangerous or not, we have to know,” Barega said. “The galah led us here.” He’d come off the bench and stood behind Dr. Kappa.
“I told you I stopped asking questions. I have a daughter.”
“I don’t have anyone left,” Ninn said. “I have nothing and no one to lose.”
“They’re still searching for you.” Dr. Kappa glanced at the chrono now. “Even though the zoo is closed, if you go out there while they’re looking—”
“You will hide us until it is dark, all right?” Barega’s eyes were wide, and Ninn saw the hint of bulging veins in his neck. Was the koradji doing magic, or merely asking politely?
“I can try, but I don’t want trouble.”
“But it bothered you enough to poke,” Ninn said quietly. “Bothered you enough to risk a little trouble.”
“Easier to get you out at night, I’d think. Won’t have to wait long for that.” The vet wiped off the table, made sure the room looked undisturbed. “Easier to hide in the shadows.”
“The shadows are my friend,” Ninn muttered.
“In the Shadows, 2001, James Caan.”
Twenty-Eight
Moon Over New South Wales
They didn’t have to wait long at all, however. Sydney’s mana cloud intervened and both ruined and improved the day.
The wind came first, strong enough to rattle the siding on the clinic building. Power flickered, everything went dark, and then the lights came back on.
“The Weatherman said it should be fine all day,” Mordred said. A pause: “2005, Nicolas Cage.”
“Generator,” Dr. Kappa said. “Feeds the clinic and main offices, and the security grid.” Ninn hadn’t asked. “Some people head for the trams when the big ones come. The regulars ride it out in the nocturnal exhibits, reptile house, all the places with walls and roofs.”
“A good time for us to flee for a tram,” Ninn said.
“We’re going back to my office first.”
From there he called his mother. “I might be late. Pick Ann up from Kiddie Care. If something happens…if I don’t come home—take care of her for me.” He ended the call and rummaged in his desk drawer.
“Do you have any slips?” Ninn kept her voice low. “Pain slips? Slips…something.” Her fingers itched. She’d been way too long without. “I need something…”
“Sorry, everything’s monitored. As it is, I’ll have to come up with a reason why I used stim patches, trauma patches, nanites from the drone. Emergency surgery on something, a boomer.”
Large male kangaroo, she mentally translated.
He retrieved a Walther Secura, an old gun that European security favored ages back. Ninn cocked her head in question.
“Bought it when I first noticed the odd things going on around here.” He jammed the magazine in, put an extra one in his pocket, then went to the middle desk and looked through its bottom drawer. “We can’t stay here. Jake’ll be back any minute. He hates these bad storms.” Dr. Kappa pulled out a slightly larger gun, a Taurus Multi-6; Ninn had owned one in the States. It was a reliable revolver.
He handed the Secura and spare mag to Barega, who took it without argument. “Just in case,” Dr. Kappa told him. “My brolly’s on the hook. One of you can use it. I’ll borrow Jake’s. I’ll try to help you get out, or close to it. Try, understand. I’ve my own skin to think about.”
“And your daughter. I get it.” Ninn grabbed the umbrella and passed it to Barega, who put the Secura in his pocket so he could hold it. “For all the good this will do against that,” he said, gesturing out the door to the sheets of rain pounding down.
No sign of pink lightning. Nothing wrong with a good summer drenching, Ninn
thought…if no funky colored lightning bolts accompanied it.
The trio cut through the thicket beyond the canteen, avoiding an AISE recovery crew there for the bodies of the dwarf and the ork and the coffee drinkers—no doubt all those deaths would be blamed on her, too. They hurried down one twisting path after the next, avoiding the larger exhibits where Dr. Kappa said video feeds were more numerous. Down and around they jogged, everything looking like smeared watercolors because of the rain, puddles up to the tops of their shoes because the ground and the drainage system couldn’t absorb it fast enough.
“I think you can make it from here,” Dr. Kappa said. They were on Taronga Road, near the cassowary enclosure, backs against a thick boab tree. “Straight through—”
“I know where we are. I think you should come with us.” Ninn had been thinking about the vet on the scamper down the hillside. “I think you’ll be safer.”
He laughed and nervously stared through the curtain of water. Small clumps of zoo workers stood under an overhang by the cassowaries, a few more under the canopy of another thick boab. “I took bullets out of him.” He pointed to the koradji.
“Barega.”
“I fixed your wrist—”
“Ninn,” she said. “Nininiru Tossinn. But you probably know my name from the alerts.”
“Yeah, they mentioned it.”
“AISE killed people drinking coffee in the canteen, Doc. Those folks saw me, and saw the AISE goons coming after me. They died because of that. No witnesses. If you’re on any video feeds with us, they’ll kill you, too. Your vet buddy who moved. We both know he didn’t leave Sydney. He went belly up with Henry. These are bad people, Doc, snipping off any loose ends to protect whatever it is they’re doing. No witnesses, get it? And my aim is to the cut the numbers of these very bad people so I can keep on breathing. If you’re not coming with, you should leave here right now, get your daughter, leave the city, and never come back.”
With nothing left to say, she darted forward, Barega following, her audial receptors faintly picking up the slap-slap-slap of the old man’s shoes. He was keeping up, but she wasn’t running full out.
She’d thought the vet might come along, but was glad he didn’t. She didn’t need to be looking out for one more soul; it was hard enough to keep Barega and her alive. Anyone else was potential collateral—like Talon. She doubted Dr. Kappa would ever see his four-year-old daughter again.
They cut through the brush by the petting zoo, slipped across Marine Parade, where an AISE quartet armed with assault rifles stood, drenched and huddled over a shared handheld monitor. Maybe they were still trying to track her, and maybe that monitor would lead them to the clinic where the vet removed the nanites. Kappa would have been safer with them, or at the very least he should have beat feet out of the zoo and found safety fifty klicks away.
The path here was slick with mud where earth had washed away from the patches of foliage, and it clung to her feet. They hugged the building by the Macquarie Island exhibit; looking through the window, she saw it was packed with visitors avoiding the storm. Two more AISE officers were outside on the opposite corner—these with Ares Sigma-3 submachine guns.
What were the odds she and Barega would live to see the end of the day?
There were more AISE officers and zoo security at the lower turnstyle, but Barega managed a way around them. At the edge of a service path, he created another one of his air barriers, canting it so that he and Ninn could climb it—up and over a fence that had a bevy of sensors. No doubt someone would see them leaving when they reviewed the feeds.
Minutes later, they were on Bradley’s Head Road, that wrapped around the zoo and led to a parking lot usually full of tour buses. No video feeds that she could see, or that Mordred could detect—except for the big, obvious one at the lot entrance. The lot was mostly empty now.
“That’s big.” Barega tipped the umbrella toward the far end of the lot, the widest point, where a streamlined helicopter parked, rotors slowly turning.
“I need to get closer to that.” Ninn crept around the edge of the duracrete lot, using the few remaining vehicles and the overhang of trees for concealment. Benzo followed her. She didn’t see any video feeds, but there might be some in the vehicles that AISE would access.
“Aerospace Emblem,” she said, pulling up the information through her coprocessor. “It’s a shuttle helicopter, can pack in quite a few passengers. See the logo?”
The copter was sleek and black, looking malevolent in the downpour. On its side was a blue-white pockmarked circle with a stylized CORP in the center.
“I’d say that’s the logo for the Moon Corporation, dontcha think?” She let out a low whistle. “Bet that’s expensive as the Blue Mountains. Rode in something similar once, AISE officers taking advanced training in Queensland. Smart materials, ducted props to cut the noise. Listen, you can’t even hear those blades turning, can’t hear the engine, and it’s on. The one I rode in was from Aztechnology. But the small print on the lead door says—” She enlarged the image with her cybereye and recorded it. “Prometheus. The upshot, that’s my ticket to the Moon Corporation. Vet said the place is fifty klicks south of Whoop Whoop.”
“I don’t know where Whoop Whoop is.”
“Just a phrase, Barega. Pure Aussie. It means in the middle of nowhere.” She studied his face. He looked so very old, shadowed by the big umbrella and the overhanging tree limbs. “So your brother…Ella…was into Renaixement somehow. This entertainer I talked to, Hurdy Gertie…she said Ella gave a lot of nuyen to Renaixement. I figure somehow it held back time for her.”
“Turned back time,” Barega corrected. He pulled deeper into the brush, and Ninn followed, still keeping her eyes on the ’copter.
“Good dog,” Benzo said.
One man inside that she could see—the pilot. There might be more, the windows darkened against prying eyes. Another man standing outside talking on a comm, seemingly oblivious to the rain. The man outside was in deep blue coveralls with the same circular logo on the breast.
“There are things in this world—magic maybe, technology, medicine—that can stave off the years, or let you hold onto your youth longer,” Barega continued. “I know about this world, Ninn. I’ve been to this city, other cities before. I lived with my brother in a flat in Canberra forty years ago, even took some courses at the uni. I tried civilization on and off, and found the blues to my liking…and some of the food. But I prefer the Outback and my solitude. My brother wanted nothing to do with the quiet places.”
He paused, eyes seemingly locked on a caterpillar clinging to the underside of a leaf. But Ninn thought he was looking at something far away and long ago.
She glanced at the helicopter; no one had moved.
“Adoni aged, Ninn, like any man should, and he tried things…medical things…to hold off the years. And surgery, a procedure to make his face more feminine. He did not want surgery to change his sex, however. Adoni said he was not transsexual or dualsexual or asexual, that he considered all such labels useless and judgmental and unnecessary. He said he was simply a female impersonator. A very good one.” He closed his eyes. “Very, very good, Ninn. When I visted him in Sydney to hear him sing, only nine years ago, he was younger, and I hardly recognized him. The years had turned back and back and back, and he would not discuss it. Ninn, it was not cosmetic. Not merely cosmetic.”
“Renaixement, I get that. Whatever it all entails. Your brother was part of that.”
“And when I saw his body in the morgue…he looked younger still.”
“Time is not a subtle thief of youth,” Ninn said, paraphrasing Milton. “I’m going on the ’copter, see if I can stow away. Stay here, old…friend.” She scurried around to the far side of the helicopter.
The man outside continued talking on his comm, but looked up suddenly. Ninn worried he might have spotted her and Benzo. He said something to the pilot, and then started toward a brace of elf-high flowering acacias at the edge of the lot. They
gyrated madly, despite the lack of wind, as if someone was snared inside. Ninn was curious, too, but rather than investigate used the distraction to slip onto the copter. Benzo leaped in on her heels. Heartbeats later Barega followed, and they found cover at the back behind empty crates marked “live animals.”
“I did that,” he whispered. “Moved the bushes.”
Ninn glared. If someone removed the crates to fill them, she and Barega would be caught and geeked. Bad enough she felt responsible for Talon’s demise. “Let’s hope, old man, that the Moon Goons are not taking animals today. Because if—”
He knitted with his fingers, a pattern she called up through her coprocessor. It matched his gestures when he’d created the silent bubble. Good timing, as a half-dozen men in deep blue coveralls came on board. Ninn had watched them approach through the tinted windows. Each had a holdout pistol in a holster at their waist, and a serious threat hanging on their shoulder—looked like a Colt Cobra by their shapes.
Minutes later the helicopter lifted off; Ninn hoped the pilot was good, given the heavy rain.
Ninn pulled Mordred out of her pocket and placed his clear barrel just past the edge of the crate. “You be my eyes here; let me know if anyone’s coming back this way.”
“Right as rain,” the gun said.
“And Mordred,” she subvocalized, not wholly trusting Barega’s spell to stop the sound. “What do you know about Windsor, in the Blue Mountains? Got anything in your programming?”
She’d never heard of the place, though she’d been to the mountains and visited a koala sanctuary. That’s where the vet had said the Moon Corporation was…if he was correct. She wondered if Dr. Kappa was still sucking in oxygen.
“North of Sydney, settled in the late 1700s,” Mordred said, his voice monotone like a recorder playing a school lesson. “Third oldest British community on the continent. Windsor was a breadbasket in those early days. A rumor crossed the governor’s desk in 1813 that the French were going to sail up the Hawkesbury River and cut off the Windsor granary, playing foul with Sydney. The invasion never happened, the community grew to about eighteen hundred, and then the first big storm came and took them all, leveled most of the buildings. Not a survivor, and no one moved in and rebuilt—maybe because the river often floods…all the rain, ya ken? Or maybe out of fear, maybe out of respect for the dead.”
