Organo-Topia (5 page)

Fireflies filled the sky, scores of helopods flittering over Crestonia. Windows watched their every motion, the stares prickling the skin across his back, a constant twitch. In every direction lay mountains of city, constellations of light, masses of humanity.

The city peeled past them, the paper-mache sun staining a gray pastiche of cloud. Phalluses of glasma and steel raped the sky, bending with each magnacar turn, names synonymous with soaring stock tickers, obscene profit margins, unscrupulous exploitation. Within a particularly dense stand of these pillories cowered a small white dome, the capitol capitulating to corrosive capitalism. Although capital continually slipped its dirty fingers into the hot pies of government, legislatures continued to cook up an ever-more byzantine bureaucracy, where plausible deniability and diffusion of responsibility turned influence peddling into an elaborate game of shells, until no one knew where the ball really was.

The magnacar dumped them at the curb of the Crestonia Holtin Hotel. Fountains leaped to escape a forecourt, mist
as
diaphanous as fading thought, ephemeral as evanescent principle, transient as evaporating truth.

Maris glanced at Ilsa. “Not very inviting,” she said, gazing at the hotel. She looked the model of a Brehume, her get-up giving her the glam of high society. He looked rumpled and always would, but rumple on a man was haute couture.

Ilsa and Maris Liepin checked in, the Holtin reputed to be the finest establishment in the capital. Stray thread sprang from worn carpet, peeling paint sprang from warped wall, suspicious glance sprang from surly patron. Lichen runnels dripped from eaves, grime streaks dripped from window corners, bored stares dripped from jaded bellhops. The elevator shuddered on the way up, Ilsa shuddered at the shabby décor, Maris shuddered at the undercover budget.

Little wonder we catch so few criminals, he thought, if this is the best our money can buy.

“It looks odd, our arriving without luggage,” she said the moment they were alone in their room.

“We're here for a day. Tonight we shop, and tomorrow we find our contact.”

“What are we doing here, Mare?”

He heard a silent plea in her voice. A few days of intimacy with her had already honed his sensitivity. “Two objectives—infiltrate the Brehume donation system and find a black-market nanochine vendor.” But that wasn't what she'd asked. He pulled her close. “Listen, Ilsa, you don't have to do this. They sent me here because I'm a pest, thought I'd be happier if I brought you along. I'm glad you're here, but if you don't want to be Brefem bait, all right by me.”

“And what about my indenture?” Her gaze scanned his face, an impish grin in her eyes.

“Right now, you're working for the force. You've been recruited. They'll make the payments. In your guise, you're a Brehume. If you want, you can look up any Ohume, see what's owed on the indenture.”

A brow went up. “And buy it out with my fake money? Enslave my Ofem self to my Brefem guise?”

“It's all about choice, isn't it?”

“Indeed it is,” she said, her emphasis striking him as odd. “Something Ohumes don't have much of.”

Brehumes ruled, no question about it. Most positions of power, most of the wealth, and all of the glory went to breeding humans. Less than one percent of the population, Brehumes earned ninety-five percent of the income. Ihumes at ten percent of the populace earned the next three percent, infertile humans accorded the middle rung. A small subset of Ihumes was naturally born but increasingly rare, most laboratory-grown and crèche-reared.

On the bottom rung, Ohumes at ninety percent of the populace earned two percent of the income. Organic humans were nothing of the sort, their moniker a euphemism, everything about them artificial. Inseminated in a Petrie dish, grown to viability in a simu-womb, reared in crèche in cohort of hundreds, Ohumes were then cast upon society with little more than a basic education and some basic skills, left to flounder, sink or swim.

Their indentures were a fixed amount, the equivalent of ten years employment at the median wage. Since Ohumes earned far less, working menial jobs no self-respecting Ihume would touch, an indenture might last twice as long and change hands multiple times before it was “matured.” Other than a fortunate few who earned their way quickly out of indenture or found a patron to pay it off, nearly all Ohumes spent their first twenty years enslaved.

“How many years left on your indenture?” he asked.

“Thinking of buying it out?”

“Will you be my love slave?”

She giggled and thrust her hips into his.

* * *

“What's this place?”

Rapid, rhythmic thunder emptied his lungs, a dinosaur stomping on his chest. Constellations swirled around him, a scintillating ball hurling beams to the perimeter. Scirocco waves of hot breath and hot body washed across him, colognes and cognacs mixed with perfumes and panamas. Under the blizzard of beams whirled a gyrating gaggle of patrons, each with a glow at their mastoid.

“Time to have some fun,” Ilsa had said ten minutes earlier, clutching his hand and dragging him into the club.

Maris picked a panama off a passing tray. The mixture of cream, cognac, and crème de cacao was garnished with nutmeg. Mastoid jacks with your choice of stim had replaced snorts, puffs, veiners, dermas, and colos, but alcohol had remained the beverage of social lubrication. Ethyl jacks might be had as well, but raising the glass to the lips retained an allure to the prehistoric brain that a jack couldn't replace. Esters off the panama swirled deliriously through his nostrils to his cortex, the drink going down in one smooth gulp.

“Hey, slow down,” she said, snatching one for herself and downing it.

Giggling, they toasted each other with the next one.

Clear trays floated jacks above their heads, neurodelights available to all. The club's private neuranet trolled for special-order jacks concocted to the customer's metabolism. His corn flashed him a menu of neuros: endorphine, iodothyronine, thyroxine, ephedrine, oxytocin, estrogen, androgen, adreno- and glucocorticoids.

Eschewing the mind alteration for clear heads, they gyrated to a quaking beat in a baking heat. The crowd looked to be a fifty-fifty mix of Ihume and Ohume, Brehume rarely patronizing such places.

Ilsa drew many a glance, her figure sultry and sexy.

A figure stumbled into Maris. “Watch where you're going, you jerkin' poofer!”

He ducked the first slash, only a glint in the fast-moving hand, and blocked the second. His gumshoe just missed the gonads and the attacker rolled away. Peterson grabbed Ilsa's hand and towed her toward the back exit, disoriented by the pulsating pummel of body and sound. The last thing he wanted was a bar scrap on a rap sheet, his cover blown.

Ilsa stumbled shy of the door and the attacker was on them, slashing for Maris.

He caught the overhead slash, the lazo-knife inches from his face. A knee thrust for his groin. He twisted right and lurched left, took the knee on his thigh and yanked the arms down. Off-balance, the attacker fell. Maris wrenched the arms up and slammed his knee to the neck, and he fell on the man, his other knee landing on the solar plexus. The hands lost their grip on the lazo-knife, which clattered on the floor. He sank a cross to the jaw and the man went limp.

Covered in sweat, Peterson picked up the weapon, climbed to his feet, helped Ilsa to hers, and plunged from the hot nightclub into the cold alley beyond.

The thunderous beat chased them toward the street, lights flickering off the far wall.

“Fun, huh?” he said at the curb, gasping and half-bent, hands on his knees, leaning against a shuttered kiosk. “Hate to see what you do for danger.”

A two-seater magnacar whined toward them, hatch open.

Open? he thought, that's odd.

Head and shoulders popped out, and Maris hurled himself behind the kiosk, tackling Ilsa. Slugs spattered its sides at a rat-ta-tat, and a projectile hissed inches from his head, careening away, the magnacar whine fading.

He looked up, the vehicle's lights already gone. Driven manually, off the neuranet, it would be difficult to trace.

“You all right?”

Her face drawn, her eyes wide, she nodded vigorously.

She thinks she's okay now, but she won't in a moment, he thought, getting to his feet and helping her up. Three, two, one.

Ilsa burst into tears and buried her face into his shoulder.

He summoned a magnacar and helped her into it, her face a wreck, their evening a disaster.

“It's not a problem, Mr.…?”

“Liepin. Maris Liepin.”

Henriete Steponas, CEO of Infantide Interstellar, looked quizzically at the man across from her, bewildered at his request. “What can I help you with?”

He sat across from her, a short, slovenly-dressed man in a wrinkled shirt, rumpled blazer, ill-fitting slacks, scuffed and worn shoes. He'd insisted on speaking with her, her secretary had told her, politely declining to disclose the reason for his visit.

At fifty-five, Henriete was at the pinnacle of her career, chief of the second largest fertility service in the Coalition with a thirty percent market share. Trillions of couples wanted a baby. Infantide Interstellar made it happen. Over fifty billion birthed, the company byline declared.

For the select few who could afford the implantation fee, of course.

The office around her declared its ostentation. The rich textures of Xilous wood swirled across the desktop. Shelves of glowing syrostone held stills of happy couples and grinning politicians. Carpets of thick Nidra wool intertwined its intricate patterns across the floor. Thick chairs upholstered in Houxan satin gave comfort to supplicants. Plaques on the wall near the door declared their praise for the company's work.

“Well, Ms. Steponas, it's my wife.”

I've never heard that before, she thought. “Forgive me, Mr. Liepin. It would be better if we were to speak in her presence.”

“No, no, you don't understand. She asked me to come, insisted on it. Not feeling well, that's all.”

“Profile located, Ms. Steponas,” murmured her secretary on her coke.

The information spilled down her corn. Maris Liepin, Ihume, forty-five years old, reared in a family, in restaurant supply sales, no known medical conditions, married five years to Ilsa Liepin, Ihume, thirty years old, pod-grown and crèche-reared, no known medical. Other than their age difference, they were like the millions of couples who came through Infantide offices every year, seeking fulfillment.

“I'm sorry to hear she isn't well. Not related to her condition, I hope?”

“No, no, just a bit of a fright at the club last night. I'm wondering if you could describe your process, here.”

“Let me get one of our fertility facilitators—”

He held up his hand. “They're very helpful, I assure you, but…”

A flag popped up on her corn. Their record on file with the company. Why didn't that come up with their profiles? Henriete wondered, the record indicating that the Liepins had begun seeing a fertility counselor at an outlying office six months ago.

“Where do you get your embryos?”

An odd question, she thought. “From qualified, registered suppliers, from whom we insist on the highest quality stock.”

“Plavinas Incubation among them?”

“They were our main supplier,” she said. “Horrible, what happened, an absolute travesty. Alternate sources are being sought as we speak. Any delays in obtaining a viable embryo for you and your wife will be brief, I assure you.”

“What internal controls do you have for monitoring their quality?”

She blinked at him, wondering whether to be offended. “Mr. Liepin, I assure you—”

“How do you know they haven't been tampered with?”

“In what way, Mr. Liepin?” What does he want, she wondered, our internal procedures manual?

“The twenty-third chromosome. How do you know it hasn't been tampered with?”

“What is the purpose of your question, Mr. Liepin? Why are you really here?”

“How do you know?”

“Let me put your concerns about genetic integrity to rest, Mr. Liepin. Our embryos are the product of clean fertilization performed at our supplier's main facility under the direction of a highly-qualified and certified medical staff.”

“So you don't know, do you?”

“Our product complies with all regulatory guidelines, which were provided to you and Mrs. Liepin upon enrollment. If you're not completely satisfied with our product, I'd be happy to refund your money, Mr. Liepin.”

He stared at her, blinking blithely.

“Please stop at the front desk to give a retinal for the refund, Mr. Liepin. I'm not sure how you continue to find fault with a faultless product, but no matter. A pleasure to meet you.” She stood, stepped around the desk to shake his hand, and escorted him from her office.

What the jerk was that about? Henriete wondered, raising her chief of quality control on her trake. “We're upping random testing to five percent.”

* * *

Maris looked out over Matsalu bay. A nasty breeze snatched wisps of water off the whitecaps, flinging stolen, stinging droplets at them. The sea below battered the quay, the rumble reverberating through the stone to his legs. A gray sky squatted above them, bulging buttocks of cloud ready to blast them with diarrhetic rain.

Ilsa tucked herself under his arm, as if to shelter there from the incontinent weather.

He turned to her. “You ready for this?”

“Ready as I'll ever be, as long as no one tries to kill us.”

The hollow gaze she'd had the day before looked less prominent now. The dual attempt on their lives had shaken him too, and he'd gotten Lieutenant Balodis to upload new idents for them both. It'd been a mistake, he'd realized belatedly, to use the same ident yesterday at Infantide Interstellar.

She looked smart in her business jacket and formal pumps. He didn't look dumb in his perpetual slouch.

She held up her mastoid dongle. “Who am I today?”

The phenomenological fuzz struck him as both ludicrous and pathetic. He bit his lip on a laugh and a cry. “We're inspectors from the Department of Carbon Controls, Division of Organophosphate Levels, Nanoproliferation Agency.”

She did laugh and looked about to cry. “No one's going to believe such an agency exists.”

“It was the best I could do.” He decided not to tell her he used to work for them. “We've detected increased carbon monoxide densities in this hemisphere, and we're inspecting all likely sources. Sabile Nanobio Research has an egregious record of violations. Surprise inspection.”

“You sure they're not the ones who tried to kill us the other night?”

He was about to respond when he realized she was being facetious.

The multi-story production facility twisted up to its peak in a quadruple helix, four spirals squirming toward the sky, stretches of seamless impersonal glasma in between, a bent architect's sublimated dream. A modest sign of its moniker squatted above the door. The backside of the ground floor issued a constant stream of magnatruck and -car, a split taking the shipping vehicles to an underground depot, the rest of the compound sprawled underneath the eastern edge of Matsalu Bay. Its distance from the quay suggested Sabile Nanobio might have once employed ocean-going vessels, an anachronism in today's suborbital, orbital, and interstellar shipping.

“Let's go,” she said.

Turning from the quay, he realized he'd been dallying. He jacked in his mastoid dongle.

She led the way into the forecourt.

A receptohume sat inside a booth behind thick glasma.

“Ilsa Krumins, Lead Inspector, Nanoproliferation,” she told the man, throwing a vague gesture at Peterson, her badge in hand. “Assistant Inspector, Maris Ozolin. This is a surprise inspection.” She held up her handheld, a holo blazing with red headline text. “You will speak of our arrival to no one. You'll be fined five thousand lats if you do. We've detected increased carbon monoxide densities in the area, and we're inspecting all likely sources.”

His eyes went wide. “Yes, Ma'am.”

Holding up his badge, Maris tunneled into the company neuranet under regulatory authority, a map appearing on Maris's corn.

The man behind the sterile glasma looked at them both. “What do I put down as the purpose of your visit, Ms. Krumins?”

“Routine quarterly facility review.”

“Yes, Ma'am.” He waved them through. Glasma panels parted.

Activity on the company neuranet looked no different as they entered the facility. He'd almost expected a spike as the alert about an inspection went out.

“Nanochine detection section, fifth floor,” the map told him. Lifts ringed the foyer. They got on one, three other individuals coming up from lower levels.

“Ah, new faces,” said a woman. “I'm Klara Zenonas, Marketing. Pleased to meet you.” She stuck out her hand.

“Ilsa Krumins, Quality Control.”

“Maris Ozolin, same. Fifth floor, please?” He couldn't quite reach the controls.

Klara pressed the button, saying, “Doesn't surprise me we're tightening QC. That Plavinas outbreak has us all sweating. Glad that wasn't our contract.”

“You heard about Sarfas over at Telsai?” Ilsa asked.

Klara nodded, her rust blazer and ochre skirt bright enough to douse any fire. “Poor guy. Slammed marketing into damage-control. I thought I'd avoided getting a real job.”

“Your outfit looks like a lot of work,” Maris said.

“Something you're renowned for, right, Ozolin?” Ilsa elbowed him.

“Rumple has its redemptions.”

The doors parted, and the elevator announced, “Fifth floor.”

The landing contained a small reception area with two doors off it, one of them a clean-room door, its bulging flange squelching open as they stepped to the reception window.

A technician stepped to the lift, nodding nonchalantly, adjusting his lab-coat.

“Here to see Doctor Taska Ipolita, please,” Ilsa told the man behind the glasma.

“Do you have an appointment?”

She flashed her holo. “Don't need one. This is an inspection. You will speak of our arrival to no one. You'll be fined five thousand lats if you do.”

The man's expression didn't change. “Doctor Ipolita won't be available for another twenty minutes. Please have a seat.”

What the hell are they doing they don't want us to see? Maris wondered. He coordinated the positioning system with the fifth floor cams and located Doctor Ipolita.

She was drilling a man in formalls, her open labcoat flapping above her bare behind. Secucam holos of similar activity were rife, lurid neuranet fare for the vicariously inclined.

“Which way?” Ilsa asked.

Maris pointed at the other door, the one without the flange. “Through there, first door on the right.” Wouldn't want to get dirty in a clean room, he thought.

Ilsa went through it and turned to the immediate right, Maris on her heels. She barged through the office door. “Doctor Ipolita, bad time, I see.” She shielded her eyes. “Nanoproliferation Agency, surprise inspection. We'll wait in the lobby.” She backed up and closed the door.

Perfect, Maris thought, watching the Doctor on cam scrambling to dress. Better to have a little leverage.

Ipolita stepped into the foyer moments later, the picture of propriety, not a thread out of place. “Inspector Krumins, Inspector Ozolin, please, come in.” In her office, she gestured them to sit across from her, a fine flush tinting her cheeks. As she sat, she gave them a glimpse of the fruits she'd had hanging on display moments ago.

“We're here about Sarfas at Telsai.”

“Your agency was here three days ago, hours after it happened,” Doctor Ipolita said. “What else can I tell you?”

“How it might have been done.” Ilsa stared at the woman across from her.

She's good, Maris thought.

“We're still investigating, of course,” she said. “You're asking me to speculate.”

Inspector Krumins gave the Doctor a brief mirthless smile.

“Provided it's taken as just that, and not as gospel.” Ipolita raised an eyebrow.

Ilsa gave a small nod.

“Very well, Inspector. We suspect that the nanochines infected him without setting off nanotectors anywhere in the facility by masking their surfaces with organophosphates. They gave themselves a skin. How, we're not sure yet. The infiltration of Plavinas Incubation was probably similar, but I'm not familiar with the details of that outrage.” She shook her head. “Couples everywhere begging for a child for years, and a quarter-million embryos wiped out in moments.”

It didn't surprise Maris that people copulated at every opportunity, desperation infectious, species survival paramount. “The Plavinas infiltration had an obvious vector,” he said. “Nanochines were delivered in an ovum deposited just that day. What was the likely vector that infected Sarfas?”

Doctor Ipolita shrugged. “Any organic material or biologic organism might have brought it in. The nanochines might have come in on a sandwich delivery, in a piece of fruit, on the back of a flea, or in the wax of his ears. Wasn't he eaten from the soles up?”

Maris nodded. News organizations had somehow pilfered the information or had compromised a source, active investigations kept under strict confidentiality protocols. It wasn't me who blared, Peterson thought.

“Might have been in the jam between his toes. All speculation, Inspector. Next thing you'll be asking is why they don't proliferate through inorganic vectors.”

Ilsa frowned. “Don't act stupid, Doctor. We both know inorganic means inanimate.”

Ipolita glanced between them. “As indicated by our research, yes.” She smiled.