by R A Fisher
The only person around who knew Menns was a fellow named Carlaas Storik, a former engineer, now current acting head of Research and Redevelopment, the branch of NRI most involved with the Tidal Works. Storik was in Fom, cleaning up after the messy disappearance of N’talisan and one of his assistants, and the accidental death of another. Syrina had at least until his return to snoop around without resorting to crime or violence, both of which Ormo seemed to be even more wary of than she was.
Since neither she nor Ormo knew what Menns looked like, Syrina winged it. It was a bad idea for her to try to look like someone specific anyway. There was always someone around to notice one of the infinite little details lacking with something like that. It was why she gave Rina such a vast array of different styles and hairdos. Subtle differences were less likely to stand out through the big intentional ones. Syrina had always been modest enough to admit she wasn’t good enough to pull it off otherwise.
NRI’s security was far stricter than just the hounds outside and a karakh cruising their walls, and twenty people must have asked for Menns’ transfer papers the first day. Syrina couldn’t help but be amused at the thought of how much trouble the real Menns would have if he ever showed up.
Things were ideal for Syrina as long as Storik was away in Fom. They’d put all research on hold. There wasn’t any work to speak of until Storik got back, which meant there weren’t many opportunities for anyone to find out Menns didn’t know what he was doing. It put her in a good position to wander around and ask a lot of questions, and it didn’t bother anyone if some days Menns didn’t show up at all. She had a good idea of the gist of things by the end of the first week, and she was still able to squeeze in some time at Witt.
Storik’s theory, and therefore the theory that the NRI research was based around, was that the Tidal Works stored and converted the tidal energy directly. Not the movement of the water, as almost everyone assumed, which was only used by the newer knot of machinery to channel power to the city, but the very forces of the Eye that tugged at the sea itself. No one knew how it worked, nor why the Ancestors required so much power in the first place.
By the end of the second week, most of the people at NRI knew Menns had been on N’talisan’s team. They all had a slew of questions about what had happened to the archaeologist and what he’d found before he vanished. Syrina regurgitated all the theories and rumors she’d heard the previous week, tweaking them a little to make them sound like Menns’ own.
She spent the next two months showing up at the NRI complex every other day to spew rumors back at those she’d heard them from, all to pick up one half-baked theory about the Tidal Works that no one had any solid facts on.
It might have been the closest thing to a real job she’d ever had.
15
Choices
Faax took her time filing Stefaan’s findings in one of the minimum-security storage vaults on the upper floor. If anyone had asked her what was taking so long, she would’ve told them she was brushing up on some of the previous projects undertaken by Witt, which was true. No one else came in.
Over her weeks at Witt, she’d been able to finagle her way down to the position of mere errand girl, running files up and down stairs and transcribing dictated data. The other doctors thought she was insulted by such a demotion, and Faax acted indignant enough about it, but Syrina couldn’t be happier. She never thought she’d have so much time to pursue her own goals. This was the ninth time she’d lingered here under the cracked plaster ceiling, among filing cabinets that smelled of old paper and polished pine, and no one had bothered her before, either. Not many people even knew she was working today. Just Stefaan and a couple others, and none had any reason to come up to Records. After all, they kept sending Faax so they wouldn’t need to go.
She was lucky to have the place to herself this time. If they caught Faax reading the hand-written note she’d stumbled across, there’d be questions.
In Reference to Report #AA-55.k:
We might as well stop forwarding our findings. Correspondence between Witt and all NRI subsidiaries will be terminated within the week, and there’s no reason to think we’ll start working with them again in the foreseeable future. Just letting you know so you can cut down on your paperwork now instead of next week. Storik is going to make it official in a day or two.
She’d come across the note lying loose and forgotten at the bottom of a cabinet filled with old Trade Commission filing forms. Beneath the message was the report number again, next to a black square with a circle in it—a timestamp for the secure archives. There were no names, but it was dated right around the time N’talisan disappeared. It didn’t matter who wrote it or where they’d sent it. What mattered was that Syrina’s two disparate investigations might be somehow related. That was either going to make things easier or a lot more complicated.
Doctor Stefaan’s research consisted of examining women from pre-selected stock and determining the chances that their offspring would be resistant to illness, as well as looking for less defined but superior traits. Faax kept her growing suspicions about the nature of those other traits to herself.
That afternoon, she came up with a way to test her suspicions, and from what she’d seen of how things worked at Witt, to maybe worm her way into the maximum-security archives where she could look for the NRI connection while she was at it.
Test your own blood.
It was so obvious that she was annoyed it took a voice in her head to point it out to her.
A few hours later, Stefaan directed her to extract another sample and bring it to the lab for testing. Once she was alone, Faax pricked her finger, and with a subtle glance around to make sure no one was watching, added a single drop of her blood into the vial.
She hovered a while, peering at samples and shuffling through dusty data folders until it felt like a reasonable amount of time to make some sort of discovery. Then she rushed out to find Stefaan, who was in one of the board rooms, in the middle of a meeting with a group of other doctors.
“What is it?” Stefaan tuned to face Faax, with a scowl that further scarred his already-ugly face.
“I think I found something you should see.”
“Can it wait.” He turned back to the other doctors, making it clear it wasn’t a question.
“You’re going to want to see this. Now.” Faax added a slight rise in her tone to help convince Stefaan of the urgency.
He sighed. “This better be important.” He followed her back to the lab, with a mumbled apology to the others.
She led the way, aware that if the voice’s hunch was wrong, Stefaan would be furious at her incompetence and she’d be fired on the spot. She’d also be reported to the Board that had supposedly employed her and exposed as a fraud.
He peered at the sample through an intricate series of copper tubes and crystal lenses that the researchers called a mirrorscope.
He raised his eyebrows. “Did you already add the thyronine?” There was an edge of excitement to his voice.
“No.” Faax wondered which of the hundreds of jars and vials contained thyronine. “I thought you should see it first.”
Stefaan hurried over to a cabinet and selected a vial four-fifths empty, stained a raging magenta by the remaining fluid within it. He added a few drops to the sample with a thin glass dropper and peered at it again through the series of tubes. Faax thought she could see the blood glitter now in the bright naphtha lights of the lab as if the magenta liquid had somehow flecked it with silver.
“Water and sand!” he said.
And for the fiftieth time, Faax wondered where that expression had come from, since Stefaan was as much an Eheene native as she was, and she’d never heard anyone say that until she met him.
“Take this to Saadasi.” Stefaan jotted down some notes onto a blank page, folded it, and handed it to her, along with the tube containing the sample and the rest of the paperwork already done for the mother. “Congratulations.”
“This is y
our research.”
“Nonsense.” Stefaan’s voice was kinder than she’d ever heard it. “It’s your discovery. Again, congratulations.”
Faax didn’t bother concealing her smile as she turned to go.
Doctor Saadasi was in his office, notes strewn about. He munched on an apple, eyes closed, ignoring the pile of documents for the duration of his meal. A half-chicken reduced to bones and a few knobby lumps of gristle lay pushed aside at the edge of his desk on a greasy wooden plate. The smell of it still filled the room.
The new doctor—Sailish or something—blundered through the door. She was short and plump enough that she probably blundered everywhere she went.
“Are you lost?” He tried to keep his tone even.
“Doctor Stefaan said you’d want to see this right away,” she wheezed.
She waved a lab report around in front of her as she staggered to his desk. She clutched a test tube half-filled with blood in her other hand.
He snatched the report from her and scanned it, his eyes growing wide. “Is this accurate?”
She thought it was a stupid question, but she didn’t say so. “Both Stefaan and I think it is.”
Saadasi nodded, rang the little silver bell that summoned his secretary, and blurted at him when he arrived a moment later. “See this report? Sequester the mother. And find her family history. Don’t let on what you’re about.”
The secretary nodded, glanced through the papers in Saadasi’s hand, and scurried away. If Faax felt bad at the phrase sequester the mother, she didn’t let it show.
“And you,” Saadasi said. “You found this?”
Faax nodded.
“Come with me.”
Saadasi’s eyes burned holes into the back of Faax’s head as he followed her down the stairs that led to the main archive facility, nestled in a separate building neighboring their main office, in the northern-most tendrils of Eheene. The stairs themselves were stone, but the walls and low ceiling were crumbling brick, and yellow light seeped from dingy naphtha lamps that dangled at every turn, fed by old brass pipes that ran along the center of the ceiling. The metallic stink of unrefined oil dribbled through cracks between the ancient blocks of mottled red clay.
Until she’d brought him one of the purest samples he’d seen in the past thirty years of looking, he’d thought Faax something of a dullard, not even capable of being the intern he’d demoted her to. She’d seemed incapable of keeping straight the simplest tasks, and the one report of hers he’d bothered reading made no sense at all. Spotting Ora in blood wasn’t easy though, especially before adding thyronine. Everyone had their talents, he supposed.
They reached a cramped, arching oval chamber. A fat square door crouched in the opposite wall, flanked by two bored-looking security guards wearing blue and yellow Witt livery. They nodded at Saadasi and stepped aside a respectful distance before motioning for Faax to do the same. Saadasi produced a long, complicated key, and there was a clack of a bolt sliding back. He led Faax into the vault, where she paused to lean against the door frame, catching her breath and letting her eyes adjust to the thin, dusty light. It was cold. The walls and the center of the room were lined with high wooden filing cabinets and shelves packed with books. Everything was labeled with letters and numbers. To the immediate right of the door, one filing cabinet was tagged with dates.
“This is,” Saadasi said, “the small collection of significant discoveries made since Witt’s predecessor was formed three thousand years ago to assist the Syndicate in reclaiming biological knowledge lost since the Age.” He took the file that Faax had been clutching, to a cabinet marked AV-BG, pulled out an empty drawer, and slipped it inside.
“This is all there is?” she asked.
“All worth keeping down here.”
There were a couple things Syrina was counting on, but the biggest was that the guards wouldn’t find the pin she’d slipped in the lock while Faax leaned against the door, gaping into the room. She couldn’t always count on her luck, but this time, she could.
A few days later, during the Eye Night celebrations that coursed through most of Eheene, Faax appeared by herself at the bottom of the stairs that led to secure storage.
“Faax, is it?” one of the men said, cordially enough. “Working on Eye Night? Well, it’s shit to be us. Seems like every damn holiday, one of you poor bastards shows up down here. Guess this time it’s the new girl.”
“It’s always the new girl.” She sighed as she fiddled with the lock, suppressing a smile.
Over two months at Witt and still everyone called her the new girl.
“Heh, yeah.” The guard raised an eyebrow when Faax continued to jiggle the lock and tried to look over her shoulder to see if she had the key in right.
But just then, the bolt slid open with a schlick and Faax stepped away from him and into the room.
“Ah, well,” she closed the door behind her, “the sooner I’m done, the sooner I can get out of here.”
At least they were organized. Even in the fluttering yellow light of the lamp dangling from Faax’s hand, AA-55.k was easy to find. Before she read it, though, she was curious about something else. Another hunch.
She went to the cabinet by the door, with different labels than the others. A list of dates was pinned on its side, with handwritten notations. She slid a drawer open and had a look at random. The file contained records of contributions received by the Witt Group Department of Research and Redevelopment. What a mouthful. She scanned down the fine print of the list, looking for names she recognized. Most were organizations, and most she’d heard of before in one context or another, but a couple stood out. For one, she learned that someone named Abethan Laak had been managing a couple of the Witt donation accounts up until a few years ago. Not very compelling by itself, but the fact that Laak worked at the same address as Ehrina Ka’id was an interesting bit of trivia. A lot of the other organizations listed were fronts belonging to Ormo. She bit her lip but told herself it might not mean anything.
AA-55.k was thick—several hundred pages, at least. Syrina needed to get through it fast. Her presence was already enough to raise questions in the minds of the soldiers outside, however cordial they were to her face. Even if they weren’t the suspicious sort, all it would take was one of them feeling chatty when he got off work, and word of Faax coming down here would reach more ears than would be helpful. Syrina had been dropping hints of Faax’s imminent departure for a week now. She hoped the doctor wouldn’t need to make another appearance at Witt after today.
Syrina relaxed her mind and scanned each page without reading it, absorbing the information so she could go over it later. The gist was interesting enough, even without the details. Tin—and lots of it—had been changing hands both ways between Witt and another redevelopment group, headed by none other than Carlaas Storik at NRI. Sure enough, the relationship between the two organizations had been dissolved just over a week after N’talisan’s disappearance.
There was more. There was a growing body of evidence that pointed to a missing link between the blood research at Witt and the Tidal Works and other Artifacts. A respected group of researchers, Saadasi and Storik among them, thought there was a connection between certain Artifacts and the blood of a select few people, bred over hundreds of generations to achieve some sort of lost state of being.
The file didn’t say as much. Even most of the major players probably didn’t know as much, the way the Syndicate kept their pawns in the dark, but Syrina was sure she knew what lay at the end of those breeding programs.
Me, the voice in her head said. They’re talking about me.
“You and me both,” Syrina muttered.
And even that wasn’t all of it.
Five hours later, she burst into Ormo’s audience hall, not caring about protocol or that he was in the middle of a trade meeting with a dozen of the most powerful low merchants in Skalkaad, each a monarch in their own right.
There was only one thing Syrina cared about�
� killing her Ma’is.
16
Jail
Our predictions, combined with rediscovered records, hint that a Preas Prohm might be successfully awakened with an intense emotional or physiological reaction if there is a high enough concentration of Ora in the blood of the subject. However, due to the unpredictable nature of Ora and our lack of understanding of the Preas Prohm, which remains only theoretical, more study is advised. The failure rate to awaken any Preas Prohm to date remains at one hundred percent through emotional and physical attempts.
Even so, experiments have conclusively shown that high enough concentrations of Ora do replicate once in the bloodstream [see data 1.14]. Furthermore, it is drawn to itself when it exists within an outside non-human organism (hereafter referred to as the simulacrum) via transfusion. This attraction manifests itself in a range of ways as wide as the subjects sampled. All, however, include signs of an intense chemical bond between the subject and the simulacrum, similar to the state known in the vernacular as “love.”
Though there is no room for a philosophical treaty in this report, it must be added that further research is also needed to understand why such loyalty cannot be induced between the subject and a human simulacrum, on which any blood transfusion seems to have no effect, thereby limiting useful application.
It should also be emphasized that this reaction occurs in both the subject and the simulacrum. Although sparse records suggest that the Ancients may have exerted control over their servants through a similar bond, it is not evident how the masters were able to keep from “loving” their slaves in return, if indeed they were able to do so.
