Black Rain

by Matthew B. J. Delaney

  “God always seems to have Jack in the palm of his hand. The rest of us are on our own. Jack’s always walked a higher path.”

  “It’s not a higher path, but it’s how we choose to walk it. We all have our own gifts, or circumstances that we’re brought into this world under. Look at Synthates. Destined to be slaves from the moment of their creation. So what does that say about how the naturals perceive God? If God is the creator of life, and naturals are the creator of Synthates, we’ve certainly chosen to model our behavior in a selfish way. Our one creation we force into slavery. If your God complex is one in which you seek only to gain and never to give, you’ll always look at the success of others with resentment.”

  “You think I resent my brother?”

  “Of course I do,” Dolce said. “You always have. Even when we were little. And that’s blinded you to how fortunate you really are. You’re born into wealth and privilege. You’ve been born a natural. That alone is winning the genetic lottery. I love you, Phillip. Your father loves you. Think about that, and not how much better you think someone else has it, and you’ll go a long way to finding your happiness.”

  Phillip studied her, then sighed. “It’s too early for philosophy. Jack said he’ll meet us upstairs.”

  The roof of the Genico building offered an exclusive perspective, seen by the privileged few. To the west rose the peak of Nucleotech Pharmaceuticals, with its diamond-shaped point. The asset-rich genetic pharmaceutical company had developed the first combat line of Synthates. To the north appeared the distinctive black glass towers of DNA Design, the corporation that controlled the market on the Synthate Social class, the girls and boys that filled the pleasure parlors. Including Genico, this trio of skyscrapers made for a beautiful display of capital. The advances they symbolized were what people would remember a thousand years from now.

  The day had turned overcast, with a feel of rain in the air. Dark clouds blotted out the surrounding towers until it seemed Dolce and Phillip were alone in the sky. Sir Edmund Hillary on the peak of Everest, nothing visible for miles except the endless white of cloud cover. Then somewhere in the white, the elevator pinged, and there was Jack.

  “I’m glad you’re both here,” Jack said. He seemed unusually eager today. Like some freckled kid in the 1950s getting his first paper route. “It’s important that we have each other. Especially now that we’re going to have to deal with change. Big change. But more like evolution than revolution.”

  Phillip knew what was coming.

  Jack looked steadfastly at him. “He gave us the company.”

  “Us?” Phillip asked, surprised

  “Well . . . me . . . at least on paper.” Jack paused. “My idea is we’ll run it together.”

  So that old bastard Lieberman had been right, Phillip thought. Everyone seemed to know except for Phillip. We’ll run it together! There was always only one king. Phillip looked over the edge of the railing, down the sheer side of the high-tech mountain obscured by fog. He imagined a village below, with little monks in crimson robes. Nepal, or was that Tibet? Phillip wasn’t sure, but what the hell was the difference? He was on top of the mountain. What did it matter to him what people did on the bottom?

  “Well, looks like, again, you’ve outdone me,” Phillip said coolly.

  “You’re my brother. It’s not a competition.” Jack’s expression was concerned.

  “Limited resources. Everything’s a zero-sum game.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know, those pictures in your office. I was just looking at them. You always made Pop proud,” Phillip said. “Now the legend continues.”

  Making a mock bow, he turned and walked toward the elevator.

  “We’ll run the company together!” Jack called out behind him. “Genico needs both of us.”

  Phillip stepped into the elevator and turned to face Dolce and Jack.

  “I could see how someone like you might think that was possible,” Phillip said to his brother. Then the doors closed and he disappeared.

  CHAPTER 14

  Jack didn’t move for several minutes. He’d expected his brother to be taken by surprise and thought he’d be upset. But although Phillip had been angry, he hadn’t seemed surprised. Someone must have already broken the news to him. Jack wondered who.

  Dolce tugged at his arm. “Come on. This way.”

  They walked along the edge of the roof. A helisquall skimmed through the evening air before heading north. She kissed him roughly on the mouth. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine.” Jack smiled and took her hand. “Everything is fine. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I’m just . . . I don’t know. Your brother brought up your car accident today.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “I thought I lost you,” she said. “And that changed things in me.”

  “Changed how?”

  “The fear of losing you again. Sometimes I wish I could go back to before the accident. When things were simpler. I wouldn’t have this . . . fear . . . all the time.”

  “Dolce, I was sixteen years old. A kid. Driving stupid. You don’t have to worry, I’m . . .”

  “I’m pregnant,” she blurted out.

  Jack stared dumbly as he took in the sense of her words.

  She watched him gravely with perfect awareness of his thought process. Dolce knew him better than anyone else ever could. But he doubted she could know how afraid he felt in this moment. A fear that rose to border on panic. The new unknown stretched before him and it was going to be a wonderful, amazing adventure, but the road had just taken a sharp bend, and he had no idea what was ahead.

  From her pocket, she pulled a small, cross-shaped locket and held it out to him. The locket was tarnished silver, suspended from a length of leather braid. Jack took the cross from her. “What’s this?”

  “Inside that locket is your son’s complete genetic code. Eyes. Hair. Anything you want to know,” she said. “Or if you’re in an old-fashioned mood, it can be a surprise.”

  He slipped the locket over his head and around his neck. The leather was coarse against his skin. He was having a son. The thought overwhelmed him.

  “Will you always love me?” Dolce asked, unusually serious.

  Surprised by her tone, Jack looked at her. “Of course.”

  “I mean, what if you found out things about me? Things you might not like?”

  “There’s nothing I don’t know.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think two people can ever really know each other. Some people live their whole lives never even knowing themselves.”

  “What are we talking about?”

  Dolce looked at him intently. Then she began to cry. She threw her arms around him. He hugged her back. “What is it?”

  “I wish we could go back to when we were kids. Remember what that was like?”

  “Of course I do.” He rubbed her gently.

  “I don’t know. Everything is different. There’s so much happening, I can’t take it all in sometimes.”

  “Everything will be fine. I promise.”

  Movement caught his eye, and Jack saw his father’s falcon cut through the cloud cover, soaring on a burst of air before disappearing behind distant metal peaks.

  CHAPTER 15

  Danny Flynn of the NYPD Grid Crime Unit turned away from his eyeScreen as Arden came up behind him. Flynn was fortyish with long, salt-and-pepper hair and a scruffy goatee. He and Arden had been partners years ago, back in their Midtown North patrol days. They’d walked a foot post together, when the first Synthates were beginning to move into the neighborhood. Now Flynn was a detective specializing primarily in grid fraud and DNA hacking.

  “I need a big favor,” Arden said. He pulled the hacker from his pocket. “I need you to take a look at this and tell me what’s on it.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “From a mainframe at Genico Laboratories.”

  Flynn leaned back in his c
hair and looked confused. “They let you scan one of their eyeScreens?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Ah . . . okay, forget I asked.” Flynn rolled his eyes. “Give it to me.”

  “You’re a good man,” Arden said as he slapped the hack into Flynn’s palm.

  Flynn touched the hack to his own eyeScreen and began checking over the contents. “What am I looking for exactly?”

  “Anything unusual. The guy who owned the eyeScreen where that came from was working on a cure.”

  “Cure for what?”

  “Black Rain.”

  “Oh.” Flynn looked uncomfortable. He knew all about Arden’s daughter. “Let’s get some answers then,” Flynn said, now fully focused. Folders 3Deed over his desk, opened, then moved to the side as Flynn expertly navigated file after file.

  “Hmm . . . coming out with a new cure for obesity,” Flynn said.

  “What’s that? Stay away from the peanut butter cups?”

  Flynn patted his own rounded belly and said, “It’s a hereditary disorder. You wouldn’t blame an alcoholic. It’s a disease.”

  “Actually I have a solution to that too. Stop fucking drinking.”

  “When did you become Mr. Empathy?” Flynn said, then paused. “Hmm.”

  Two folders hovered over his desk.

  “What is it?”

  Flynn opened the folders and flipped through them. “You said this guy was looking for a cure for Black Rain?”

  “That’s what the Genico people said.”

  “Well . . . according to this, he already found it.”

  Arden looked up sharply. “I’m sorry?”

  Flynn pointed to some lines of text. “Right here. Says they have a cure for Black Rain already. They discovered it months ago.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Phillip sat at a decent table at Harry’s with Todd Miller, Michael Gorfinkle, Pierce Sullivan, and someone from the bonds department. In a private back room, Lieberman was having a steak with members of the board. At Phillip’s table, the topic was the baldness Samp, set to IPO next week. Sullivan claimed that ever since that movie had come out with that sexy bald actor, baldness was marketable again. The IPO was going to be flat and nobody died from male pattern, and that was why Genico had downgraded the IPO.

  Gorfinkle spread Coronas around the table. Phillip pushed his lime down into his bottle and stared, transfixed as the green wedge sank slowly through the amber-colored liquid, a mist of bubbles rising up around the edge of the rind. The lime hit the bottom of the bottle and came to a rest on its side, like the hull of some miniature ship hitting the ocean floor.

  Someone snapped his fingers.

  “You with us, Sax?” Sullivan asked.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “The boss is looking for you,” he said, nodding toward the back room.

  “Who?”

  “Who do you think? Lieberman. He’s been waving his arm for ten minutes, trying to get your attention.”

  Phillip turned and saw Lieberman wave again. He waved back, drained his beer in three long gulps, and slammed the empty bottle back down on the table. He stood, slowly buttoning his sport jacket. “Gentlemen.”

  The rest of the table stared at him jealously as Phillip walked across Harry’s and stepped into the legendary back room. This sanctum was where the genetic trading industry was really run, and the walls were hung with 2Dees proving it. Among the seminal moments recorded were the merger of JP Morgan Genetic and Deoxy Group, the day after the heart disease IPO.

  “Have a seat,” Lieberman said, motioning to an empty spot at the table. Rasputin and another Synthate guarded the door. Phillip sat and Lieberman motioned to a short, heavyset man with thick jowls that made him look like a man-bull terrier mix. “This is Johann Woerner, chairman of our board. I believe you’ve met before.”

  Lieberman turned to a much slighter second man. His face was scrunched together, as if a black hole had formed somewhere in its very center and was slowly pulling his features together. “This is Alexander Nicholson, senior advisor to the board, and founder of Synthate Design.”

  Phillip shook Nicholson’s cold hand.

  “I’ve heard of your work,” Phillip said. “Modification and training of Synthates. The bioprint system. Industry standard.”

  Nicholson slowly let go of the handshake. “You may not yet know, but we’ve been manipulating the Synthate aging process to extend their expiration date.”

  “You mean when they die,” Woerner said before he took a large gulp of whiskey.

  “That’s another way of putting it.”

  “Might as well say it like it is. These aren’t cartons of milk. We built these things to be human, and humans don’t expire. They die.”

  “They are not natural,” Nicholson said quickly. “They’re biological mechanisms, nothing more. The International Religious Council already ruled, as did the Supreme Court, that Synthates are not human. They do not have souls. And therefore they do not die like we do. They simply expire.”

  “As you can see,” Lieberman said to Phillip, “there are some disagreements about the future of the industry. But there’s one thing that we’re all in agreement about. Your father is leaving the company and he has chosen your stepbrother to take control.”

  “That’s very bad news for us, very bad for shareholders,” Nicholson said.

  “He would certainly change the focus of the company,” Woerner added.

  “Jack has discussed it with me already,” Phillip said. “He wants us to run the company together.”

  Lieberman shook his head. “That’s just what he says now. What sort of guarantees do we have? Genico’s future is far too complex to be based on the intentions of one man. Our mutual benefit depends on what happens in the next few days. We’re overseeing a business, not a forum for social change.”

  “You’re right, of course. My brother’s vision isn’t mine. Nor is it yours.”

  “He will destroy this company,” Nicholson said.

  “Oh, I don’t know, maybe we could use a little more compassion,” Woerner replied.

  Nicholson shot Woerner a harsh look. “You have as much invested in this as we do. We are an industry that feeds on the greed and laziness of the naturals. Do we really want to go back to taking out our garbage? Cleaning up our streets? Compassion will bankrupt this company.”

  Lieberman turned toward Phillip. “What my associates are saying is that we’re entering into a most delicate time during this change of leadership. I’m hoping you follow me.”

  Unsure, but determined to keep his options open, Phillip nodded.

  “We wouldn’t want any mistakes to be made. The least error in judgment has enormous potential for lasting harm. And we believe your brother might make such errors.”

  “Stepbrother,” Phillip corrected.

  “Family can be very important,” Lieberman tested gently.

  “So is business,” Phillip said firmly.

  CHAPTER 17

  Jack’s father lived in a triplex in The Paris Hotel at the southeast corner of Central Park, near the edge of the dome. It was one of the few apartments left in the city, the rest long since divided into smaller honeycombs or pods during the population boom. The view swept across the abandoned section of the park and then veered south across the darkened Synthate Zone, reaching as far as the Genico tower at Manhattan’s lower edge.

  The touch stubs were stored on an eyeScreen table in the living room and Jack pressed his fingers against the glass to retrieve them. He wandered into the kitchen, poured himself water from the exhalation condenser, and stared meditatively at the Central Park dome.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  A woman was outside.

  She was tall and slender, the kind drawn on the cover of dime detective novels from the 1940s; the young woman with pouty lips and wide eyes tucking the nickel-plated revolver into the band of her garter belt beneath a bold graphic reading, “Danger Lurks Behind Every Corner.” She was beautiful
in a way that reminded Jack of old Hollywood starlets from the black-and-white film days.

  He opened the door.

  “Hey . . .” she said slowly, her lips spread over white teeth. “You busy?”

  “No. No, I’m not.”

  “Can I come in?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry.” He experienced a flicker of hesitation, the bombing and the murder of Dr. Reynolds having made him cautious. He paused. “Who are you?”

  “A friend of your brother’s,” she said. Then seeing Jack hesitate, she added, “It’s okay.”

  Jack opened the door wider, allowing her to step past him. She pulled an object from her bag and held it out to him. The object rang and politely she stepped back, lowering her eyes and staring at the floor as Jack took the call. The device was an old cellular phone, no eyeScreen, but of course Jack recognized the voice.

  “Hey, little bro,” Phillip said. “I’m sorry how I acted on the roof earlier. Just been tired, I guess.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  “Wanted to make it up to you. Her name is Night Comfort. She’s a friend of mine, now a friend of yours.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Yes, you do,” Phillip replied. “Nobody needs to know, mum’s the word.”

  Night Comfort had her eyes still lowered. If she heard what the man was saying, she gave no indication. On her shoulder, her bioprint was of a single leafless tree.

  Jack stepped a few feet away from her and cupped his hand over the receiver. “Did you send a prostitute to Dad’s house? Are you kidding me?”

  “Come on, watch the language. A prostitute is some skank natural hooked on Euphoria walking the strip on Times Square at three a.m. offering twenty-buck head. Night Comfort’s a pleasure parlor girl. You don’t want her, send her out, your choice . . .”

  Jack began to argue, but his brother had already clicked off. He slid the phone shut and held it out to the woman.

  “Are you finished, sir?” Night Comfort slipped the cell back into her bag. She looked at him. “So where do you want to go?”