After the Red Rain

by Lyga, Barry

  Deedra couldn’t read any further. She was hiding behind a phalanx of old shipping crates that had been discarded on a side street. Rainwater dripped down on her. She wanted to scream her pain, but even at the heart of her rage and distress, she knew she couldn’t afford to make any noise. She permitted herself a whimper, then another one. She clenched her fists and beat them against the ground until the sides of her hands went numb. Her best friend was gone. Just like that.

  Deedra sniffed back her tears. How many stories exactly like this one had she seen in the past? Too many.

  How many of them had she believed, word for word?

  All of them.

  Never again.

  It was garbage. It was all garbage. And just as she had thought nothing of it for all those years, so, too, would everyone in Ludo Territory think nothing of Lissa Stanhope and her family’s execution for nothing more than the crime of being inconvenient. Lissa and her family weren’t terrorists. They wouldn’t attack DeeCees. The Stanhopes were the most rule-following-est people she’d ever met.

  And now they were all dead. Except for Lissa’s mother, who was on the run, if that DeeCee could be believed.

  She drew in a jittery breath that did her no good. Blew it out and tried again. This one was deep and true.

  Focus. Think. Now what do I do?

  A drop of water landed smack on the rim of the SmartSpex and rolled across her field of vision. Despite herself, she laughed. The answer was literally right in front of her face. The SmartSpex. She had to go to Dr. Dimbali. He knew everything. He could help her figure out how to get out of the Territory.

  She buzzed his apartment for five minutes, receiving no reply. Frustrated, she huddled against the building for as much shelter from the rain as she could steal from the overhangs. She couldn’t loiter forever. Even though the rain was letting up, it was too dangerous for her to be outside for long. She’d seen clusters of DeeCees along her route to Dr. Dimbali’s and couldn’t figure out why. Even the drones seemed thicker overhead. She was nowhere near Lissa’s anymore—why were they out in force here?

  She had to get inside. Where she could be hidden. Her poncho shielded her from the drones but not from the human eye.

  That’s when she remembered: During their days and nights planning Rose’s prison break, Dr. Dimbali had shown her a hidden way into his building, the old passage from the alleyway. Safe and secure in her drone-resistant poncho, she rambled around the building until she rediscovered the right pile of junk and crawled through.

  Dim light ahead reminded her of the bends and turns of the passage. Hands outstretched to touch the walls for guidance, she made her way through a series of switchbacks and turns until the corridor emptied into Dr. Dimbali’s workshop.

  Dr. Dimbali was not in; the workshop was empty. Deedra’s nose wrinkled at a new, unfamiliar smell—something heavy, thick, and unprocessed. It wasn’t necessarily an unpleasant scent, but its pervasive presence and unfamiliarity made her uncomfortable.

  “Dr. Dimbali?” she called. There were alcoves and shadows down here; maybe she’d just not seen him.

  No answer. She tried again. Still nothing.

  The smell grew as she crept deeper into the workshop. Her foot collided with something—it was a heavy container of some sort, with a plant growing out of it. Bigger than the ones she’d seen before.

  She stepped around it and followed the smell’s growing intensity to one side of the workshop, where—she recalled now—she had once found Dr. Dimbali drilling into the concrete wall.

  Well, he’d found a bigger drill.

  A gaping hole large enough for a child to stand in pocked the wall. The source of the smell lay within, and despite her best instincts, Deedra poked her head in and was assaulted instantly with a wave of the odor. She choked past it and extended her hand into the hole, touching something slightly moist and crumbling.

  Withdrawing her hand, she realized: It was dirt. Moist and dark dirt. She sniffed it, inhaling a heady rush of what she now realized was the earthy scent of raw soil. So new and unfamiliar to her.

  What was he digging for?

  A sound—something halfway between a gurgle and a bubble pop—stiffened her spine and spun her around. There, in an alcove opposite the SmartBoard, was a new piece of equipment she’d never seen before, flanked by more of the heavy pots that grew large plants. The piece of equipment was a large tank of some sort, riveted together from sheets of steel. Hoses ran out of it to a table nearby. On the table…

  Deedra had trouble swallowing for a moment. Without intending to, she found herself running to the table—her legs acting independent of her mind, carrying her to—

  To—

  To his side.

  To Rose’s side.

  CHAPTER 47

  It was Rose, and at the same time, it wasn’t Rose.

  He lay flat on his back on the table, perfectly and wholly still, the three hoses connected to him at painful-looking interfaces along his torso. He was as naked as the first time she’d ever seen him. He looked smaller and more delicate than he’d been before, his limbs loose and gangly. The parts where he’d been shredded by the DeeCee weapon had grown back, impossibly pink.

  She looked around—the tank, the hoses. Gurgles and drips. More potted plants, taller and healthier than she’d seen here before. There were small holes drilled into the walls all around her, and she couldn’t figure out what any of it meant, but it didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

  She leaned close to his face. His face. That face that she’d last seen when he’d been blasted to oblivion by a DeeCee explosive shell was here, now.

  He was breathing. She was sure of it. So slightly that it dipped below the perception of sound, but she could tell.

  “You’re alive,” she whispered. “How? How could you be alive?”

  And, she realized, how could Dr. Dimbali not have contacted her?

  Later. Figure it out later.

  She wanted to touch him. To kiss him. To shake him awake. But the hoses attached to him and the burbling tank at their other ends gave her pause. She didn’t know what any of this equipment was for, and she didn’t want to mess it up and possibly hurt Rose.

  Retreating from the alcove, she paced the length of the basement, this time looking for anything that might possibly help her figure out what was going on. She settled on the SmartBoard, which had been wiped clear of dust at some point.

  “Let’s go, SmartBoard.” It was worth a try.

  The SmartBoard stared dully at her, dead. She removed the SmartSpex and tucked them away, trying to remember back to the times Dr. Dimbali had used the board. How had he activated it?

  Then she remembered—the goggs used murms, but the SmartBoard used gestures. She waved her hands in front of it.

  Nothing.

  Snapped her fingers.

  Still nothing.

  She reached out and tapped it.

  The SmartBoard flickered to life. There were various images, most of them small icons representing molecules and formulae. She didn’t think she would understand much of that. But one icon looked like a miniature tab and had the tag “Lab Notes” attached to it. She tapped it twice, and it expanded to fill the screen.

  It was a vid. Of Dr. Dimbali, staring into the camera, slumped in a rolling chair almost exactly where Deedra stood now. He was winded, and his eyes were wild. “Well,” he muttered, as if to himself, “that didn’t go off quite as planned.”

  She checked the date of the recording. It was the day before the lockdown, the day before Rose’s arrest.

  “I shall have to proceed on my own,” Dr. Dimbali said, rising from his chair and straightening his tie. “I shall…” He drifted off, then blinked as if just realizing the camera was on. He gestured to it distractedly, and the screen went black.

  She found another icon and tapped it. This one was more recent. From the day she’d been held at SecFac, she realized.

  Dr. Dimbali looked more haggard than usual without his
SmartSpex. He was standing near the SmartBoard, apparently, scrutinizing a potted plant, examining its leaves, speaking, but not looking at the camera.

  He was talking to the plant, she realized. He’d forgotten that the board recorded him whenever he was in the basement. He was on camera and didn’t even know it.

  “If the reports on the wikinets are true,” he said slowly, turning the leaves of the plant to examine their undersides “and that is a substantial hypothetical, as you know… then Rose has been killed by our glorious Magistrate and the DCS.” He sighed and gestured helplessly around himself. “All this… worthless. All the work I did on you and on your brethren. Nothing. All my efforts have been wasted. My own preliminary biotechnology is too primitive to be efficacious. Only with Rose’s…”

  Dr. Dimbali drifted off. The camera lingered for long moments as he was lost in thought. Then, without another word, he stood and walked away. The camera followed him as long as it could, but eventually he disappeared.

  Deedra frowned and swiped at the vid. It jumped forward—Dr. Dimbali reappeared and she tried to stop the vid by tapping, then tried to rewind with another swipe. Her control was too imprecise and she settled for picking up in the middle of a sentence. Dr. Dimbali held a small potted plant in his arms and danced in and out of frame as the camera tried to track him.

  “—allowed my request!” Dr. Dimbali babbled excitedly. “Against all logical assumptions, he agreed! It was a risk worth taking after all. And even though I loathe the necessity of conducting business with him, I cannot quibble with the results.

  “I, Suresh Dimbali, swallowed my pride and humbled myself before Max Ludo,” Dr. Dimbali crowed. “And just in the nick of time, as well. His dunderheaded scientists were trying to figure out what Rose was, but, of course, I already knew. Rose’s unique physiology was—is—too important to leave mouldering in Max Ludo’s basement. He was appropriately impressed when I ‘instantly’ discerned things about the specimen that his own people had not noticed. The pig offered me a job. I told him I would share whatever I learned if he would give me what I needed.” He held the plant high above his head and beamed at it. “And he believed me. Ha! Now, how to begin, considering the necessity of a viable growth medium…”

  Dr. Dimbali’s ramble took on a scientific bent that left Deedra’s head spinning. She swiped at the vid again. Jumped forward at least a day—Dr. Dimbali’s beard stubble had grown a bit, and he wore a different shirt.

  “—a sunlamp!” he shouted, pacing back and forth before the camera. He had a series of plants lined up on a table nearby and lectured them like his students. “I had almost forgotten about it. The technology is still available, but without proper facilities for growing plants, no one really bothers with it. I try to give it—him—it a few hours a day. To simulate the rhythm of natural daylight. The photonic response is nearly identical to—”

  More jargon. She swiped farther ahead.

  “—Rose’s body,” he said. It was the same day. Or he hadn’t bothered with a new shirt. The rank of plants lined up was the same, except for one that Dr. Dimbali nestled in the crook of his arm, cooing to it. “I will thus have access to the crucial human and plant DNA working in concert. And then, well…”

  He stepped aside and she could see the table on which Rose lay even now, only it was closer to the camera. On it lay a spindly, skeletal figure, contorted into an almost-fetal ball.

  Dr. Dimbali held his potted plant over the body on the table. “You see? You see your brother? When he—when it has the proper nutrients, it grows very quickly. I had to mine them from the deep, deep soil. Refine them painstakingly. Our poor planet is not quite dead yet, but it is very, very close. There’s little left to support a creature as extraordinary as Rose, to say nothing of the fifty billion of us parasites crawling on its skin.”

  Just then, the thing on the table—it was Rose, she knew, but she couldn’t think of it that way, not yet—reached up and grabbed Dr. Dimbali’s wrist. Dr. Dimbali startled and slapped it away. The thing screamed in a high, trembling voice. Deedra’s entire body shook, and she stabbed at the SmartBoard, swiping, wiping, and it blurred again, jumping forward some indeterminate length of time.

  The camera zoomed in on the alcove. The table was there now, where it still stood. Dr. Dimbali sauntered into frame.

  “Better here, yes?” he asked, clasping his hands behind his back and leaning over. “The alcove. Safer that way, I think.” He sauntered closer to the camera. He plucked up one of the plants and held it out at arm’s length. “Beyond the nutrients, though, was the breakthrough! The blood! Human blood! I spent so much time on his plant side that I neglected the other, but once I began incorporating transfusions into the regimen—”

  From back in the alcove, Rose made a high, keening sound that interrupted Dr. Dimbali, who paused until it stopped.

  “As growth has continued,” he confided, “there have been more and more instances of… awakenings. Compounded by fear-compelled outbursts and vocalizations. I’ve resorted to a special cocktail of depressants and narcotics. The DeeCees killed his human part, but the plant structures still survived, clinging to life. On a cellular level—”

  Her hand on the SmartBoard shook, and she accidentally swiped ahead.

  Dr. Dimbali’s face loomed large in profile. He was whispering, standing right next to the SmartBoard, blotting out the rest of the basement.

  “—possible to imagine subconscious awareness. Still no actual verbal communication, so I believe my suppositions are correct as to psychological construction. When he finally awakens, he’ll be a blank slate. And I will write what I choose on it. I believe the popular locution was once brainwashing. I prefer to think of it as simply making him, well, pliant, let’s say.”

  Deedra almost gagged. How could she have trusted Dr. Dimbali? She didn’t precisely understand everything he was doing down here, but she knew this: It was nothing good. He was treating Rose as an experiment. As a thing.

  She swiped through another interminable bout of science talk, arriving finally at an image of an exhausted-looking Dr. Dimbali, sprawled in uncharacteristic repose in his chair, staring up at the ceiling.

  “I plan to save the world,” he said quietly. “No one else will do it. No one else can do it. So I will. I must. Regardless of the trauma endured in the undertaking.”

  He swiveled in the chair and glared at the potted plants. “But more important than that, I want to be paid for it. And even more important, I plan to make damn sure that the people I save know exactly whom they have to thank for it.”

  If she’d wondered at Dr. Dimbali’s motives before, now she had no doubts at all: The sick light dancing in the man’s eyes as he spoke convinced her—he was out for himself and no one else.

  “Someone can pay. Someone can always pay. When I show the Magistrates the first fresh… orange grown in ten generations, they will find a way to pay.”

  Dr. Dimbali’s gaze wandered, and he leaned back in the chair again. She knew he wasn’t looking at the ceiling. Not really. He was seeing the past and his own future at once, as real to him as the smell of the air. She flailed at the SmartBoard, and the vid froze.

  She’d seen enough anyway.

  She returned to the alcove. To Rose. This was Rose. Somehow. She didn’t quite understand it, but she didn’t really care. Dr. Dimbali had spouted a lot of nonsense, but none of that mattered to her. Rose was here, in front of her now, and she would figure out how to help him back to himself. She reached out to touch him, just to stroke the pad of a finger along his cheek, his reborn cheek, and something grabbed her from behind, wrapping around her midsection so fast and with such force that her breath exploded out of her in an uncontrollable ugh as she was lifted bodily from the floor and yanked unceremoniously away from Rose and the table, her hand still splayed to touch him.

  Scarcely had the sensation of being jerked off her feet registered than she collided with the wall behind her, smashing into it with such jarring force that
she momentarily lost consciousness. When she blinked her eyes open again, the room tilted and spun for an instant before righting itself. Her legs pumped, her feet kicking without purchase, suspended above the ground.

  A heavy something pinned her against the wall. She thrashed, but it was no good—she couldn’t get down. When she tried to pry it away from her body, she realized how familiar it was.

  It was a vine. One of Rose’s tendrils.

  “Rose!” she shouted, trying to wake him. She tugged at the tendril around her waist. “Rose!”

  Just then, two more vines snaked out and up from the potted plants around her, enfolding her wrists, pulling them back until she was spread-eagled against the wall, helpless.

  “Rose!” she shouted again, bucking her torso, trying to loosen the vines. “Rose, stop it! It’s me! Deedra! Wake up!”

  “He can’t hear you,” Dr. Dimbali said, stepping into the alcove. He wore a battered old hat and seemed unconcerned by her presence. “Truthfully, I’m not sure he’ll ever hear anything again.”

  Deedra struggled against the vines. She couldn’t be defenseless, not with Dr. Dimbali here. But the vines held her tight.

  And just then, she realized—the vines had come from the plants. The potted plants all around her. Not from Rose. Not from the boy who lay on the table, perfectly still, barely breathing.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  He adjusted something on the tank. A hose slackened.

  “I’ve been learning to control it,” Dr. Dimbali said with a casual shrug. “But without a sentient consciousness such as Rose’s controlling them, the vines can be a bit… aggressive.”

  “What are you talking about? Control what?”

  Dr. Dimbali doffed his hat and showed her its inside, which was lined with electrodes and wires. “Witness,” he said, and donned the hat again. His eyes crunched together in focused concentration, but nothing happened.

  “Hmm.” He peered over at her, nose pointed down, as though gazing at her over a pair of glasses. But his SmartSpex were still in her pocket. “See? I tried to loosen them a bit. They don’t always obey precisely. I can manipulate some of the seeds and sprouts I’ve grown by splicing his genes with genetically modified vegetables, but my control is crude and imperfect.” He raised an eyebrow. “As you can tell.”