Seed (8 page)

“Of course.” A single line had creased her tranquil brow as she struggled to phrase her thoughts. “I
wish
I could want a child.” Sumedha had watched her, curious at such a rare moment when their thoughts did not touch. Pihadassa sometimes saw things he could not. Perhaps she was smarter than he, perhaps simply more chaotic. Regardless, he loved her for it. He had waited, but she had said nothing more. Instead she had smiled and stroked his face with her thumb.

Sumedha leaned forward, felt the echo of Pihadassa’s touch. The walls, sensing him stir, gurgled gently. Soft biolumes activated beneath their skin, setting the room to glow a soft underwater blue, revealing within a tracery of bone latticework, tendon, muscle, vein. The color matched Sumedha’s mood.

He willed the lip of Pihadassa’s bed to unfurl and produce her, newborn from sleep, smooth brown head bowed for him to stroke. How she must have planned. How much she must have kept from him. A puzzle, yes, one he could no more turn away from than he could command his heart to stop beating. He placed a palm against the wall, connecting once more to the rush and whisper of the city’s metabolism, then rose.

The blue glow of the abode’s walls followed him as he paced naked into the ovular center room and there stopped before a vertical slit in the wall. Feeling his presence, it irised open with a kissing sound, stretching taut a layer of epidermis, molecularly thin, transparent.

The city spread out below, an intermingled series of bending muscle towers and soft domes twined abruptly with the concrete, brick and plexi of the old city. Shadowy bone latticework showed through translucent skin. A thousand hearts beat oxygen and heat into a thousand buildings, pumped waste out onto the compost heaps along the northern fields.

Far beneath Sumedha a group of landraces moved slowly on their hands and knees along a snake-scale street. Their rough voices sang as their hands polished the scales with fur brushes. Sumedha closed his eyes and touched the wall, sure he could feel the city’s pleasure at the touch of its children’s brushes. A warm sensation spread through his body…
Love
. He opened his eyes and the helix danced. Each building a different expression of its strange and brilliant will, yet part of a whole that fed sensation down lush nerve matrices to the center, here, to Satori Tower, where Sumedha stood touching flesh, almost connected. Over it all stretched the dome, a mother’s womb shielding the city and its children from the mad seasonal swings of a climate knocked from its axis. This was his dream; he was its architect.

Was this not Pihadassa’s dream, too? Was
this
not her child?

“Satori,” he said.

“Yes, Sumedha?” Satori’s voice emanated from the walls and ceiling. Female, pleasantly flat.

“You have samples of Pihadassa’s voice.”

“Yes, Sumedha.”

“Please assume her voice when addressing me.”

“Yes, Sumedha.” Pihadassa’s voice now. Vertigo assaulted Sumedha. He wanted to put his forehead to hers, to sync his thoughts with hers, to join with her. He touched the wall, felt its life, let it steady him. He breathed—the sensation moved through his body and passed.

“What puzzle were you working?”

“I do not understand.”

He breathed slowly, checking his impatience, letting the answer come. She had wanted him to understand.

“What did you foment among the children?”

“I do not understand.”

“Why did you leave? What do you see that I do not?”

“I have not left. I am incapable of going anywhere. I do not see anything.”

He let his mind follow the sensations Pihadassa’s voice produced in his body. Heat mostly. Something less tangible that he could only describe as pain. It took him to a hollow place down in his belly, and there his mind settled. When it stilled, the helix rose once more behind his eyelids—

“You are awake.”

Sumedha spun. Two other Designers stood in his abode. They had entered quietly through a large slit in the wall which now contracted behind them.

“Kassapa. Paduma.” He nodded to each in turn. They were an identical mirrored pair, like Sumedha and Pihadassa. Hairless, dark, smooth. His siblings. Both wore white cotton shifts. The backs of their hands touched continually. “Welcome,” he told them. “Sit.” He motioned with a hand and three soft protrusions rose from the floor. He waited for his guests to sit and then settled himself cross-legged into the third seat’s soft fur. “Is there news?”

Kassapa watched Sumedha, his face impassive. After a long moment he gave the slightest shake of his head. Sumedha closed his eyes. Tightness he had not been aware of lifted from his chest, replaced by a flood of endorphins. He breathed, let the euphoria pass.

“You are relieved.” Kassapa’s voice was as blank as his face. Sumedha looked from him to Paduma and back.

“She is my Other. I wish her no harm.”

“Of course not,” Paduma said. “But you understand the necessity of what we must do.”

“Yes. I understand why you monitor me.” Sumedha spread his arms wide, hiding nothing. Paduma and Kassapa exchanged a glance.

“It has never happened before,” Kassapa said.

“We worry for you,” Paduma clarified. Sumedha slowly inclined his head towards her.

“And about what I might do.”

They sat in silence, one regarding the two, the two regarding the one, all working long puzzle strands. The bizarre and foreign logic of betrayal.

“One defects,” Kassapa said. “The other broods when he should sleep.”

Sumedha smiled at their suspicion—a new sensation for all of them. Kassapa pursed his lips, then closed his eyes and breathed. They knew not what to make of their bereft brother. Sympathy surged through Sumedha.

“Pihadassa’s betrayal is as much a puzzle to me as it is to you,” he said. Paduma appraised him for a moment, black eyes unwavering—so very much like Pihadassa’s.

“Then you do believe her defection is a betrayal.”

“Yes. But I do not believe she thought it a betrayal, whatever her rationale. She…loves us.” Sumedha swept a hand about him, indicating that by “us” he meant all of Satori. His body trembled with sudden emotion. Kassapa’s face softened.

“A difficult puzzle for you.”

“For us all, I think.”

“I see why you do not sleep.”

Sumedha closed his eyes, breathed slowly until he found his calm. His attention moved over every cell of his body, fully in the moment.

“We will send advocates,” Kassapa said.

“I know.”

Kassapa continued to stare for a moment, challenging, then closed his eyes. Sumedha and Paduma followed suit. They meditated together. Their minds touched, all three immersed in Sumedha’s grief. After a time Sumedha reached out to them, touching their knees briefly. Their faces lit with surprise.

“The helix dances for me tonight,” he said. Paduma’s nostrils flared. Pheromones rose from her.

“You have found a solution for the Fathers?”

“Perhaps.” Sumedha fixed in his mind the new configuration the helix had shown in his dream. “Part of one. I will not know for sure until I test it. But yes, it may be a step.”

“You are the architect.” Reverence filled Paduma’s voice. Her hand levitated, seemingly of its own accord, and came to rest on Kassapa’s shoulder. Sumedha nodded his gratitude. He looked to Kassapa. Doubt creased his brother’s brow. He probed.

“Does this solution come from the infected migrants you have been collecting?”

“No. It comes from one I made.”

“Then perhaps you will eliminate the infected migrants.” Kassapa breathed slowly. Sumedha watched his brother’s eyes dim, a mind perpetually bent on the ever-shifting puzzle of Satori’s security. “So many of them,” Kassapa said. “Each with families. Others who might come to retrieve them. It is a risk.”

“Not yet, brother. But soon.”

“We will let you work,” Paduma said abruptly. “Forgive our intrusion.”

Intrusion
. Kassapa and Paduma were his brother and sister, strands of the same braid. Intrusion was as foreign a concept to them as deceit and suspicion. Paduma stood and offered a hand to her Other. Kassapa took it and rose. Their seats sank back into the floor. Sumedha stood and followed them to the door. It spread open with a fleshy whisper as they approached. Kassapa turned.

“She must have told you something. Given you some clue.”

“No.” Sumedha kept his face blank. His body felt squeezed by the lie. Kassapa’s pupils dilated: recognition.

“We want the order to come from you,” he said. Sumedha nodded. He breathed, let the emotion flow through him. He did not suppress the tears streaming down his cheeks. Empathy filled his siblings’ faces.

“Send them, brother,” he said. “Send your advocates.”

CHAPTER 6

gent Doss!” The knock came loud, persistent, formal. Too fucking early to be anything other than official.

Doss ignored it. Kept her eyes shut, afraid if she opened them she would see snow. Falling like ash out of the frozen Siberian sky, down through the grated hole in the ceiling to bury her under mute drifts.

“Agent Doss!”

“Shit.” She opened her eyes.

Her rack, like all apartments in Sec Serv lower-echelon personnel housing, was roughly the size of a footlocker. A sink, hot plate, wardrobe. She stretched the half-pace to the shower/toilette combo, swiveled the toilette from its hole in the wall, vomited a long string of bile. Thus began her morning routine.

The knock grew insistent.

“I do not fucking hear you,” she yelled at the door.

Next in her routine: get up, stretch, hydrate. A quart of water. It took twelve seconds to make the bed—she counted off in her head. Anything under fifteen was acceptable. Finish by bouncing a 2038 Georgia quarter off the spread up into her inverted palm. She held the coin in her fist, inspecting perfectly clipped nails.

Her father had seemed gigantic the day he’d given Doss the quarter. It was her first clear memory of him. An olive duffle slung over shoulders wide as a wagon yoke, heat shimmers rising off the Fort Stewart tarmac behind him. The end of a long tour in Saud. He’d grinned spectacularly in the roar of a four-prop angling for takeoff. Leaned down to press the coin into her tiny hand, his fingernails perfectly filed half moons. It was fate, he’d said, that a Chinese officer from across the world would end up with an old coin in his pocket from the very state where Sienna Doss was born. Fate that Doss’ father should take it back and give it to her. Doss had watched her face reflected in the sheen of his boots.

“Agent fucking Doss!” Again, they pounded the door. They were definitely going to fuck her routine. “Agents Fiorivani and Dumont.” Sec Serv then, but Doss had never heard of either of them. “We have orders to take you to the capitol.”

“Fuck off!”

“Negative. Fucking off is definitely not within our mission parameters. Open the door.”

“I have three more days of mandatory leave. Your mission parameters include a definition of the word ‘mandatory’? I’ve already passed my psych evals.”

“I have been fully briefed on the meaning of the word ‘mandatory,’” the voice called. “It means you get your ass up, get functional and come with us. Now.”

“Do me the favor, guys. Agent to agent?”

A pause. Then more knocking.

“Fuck, alright! Give me ten.”

“You got five. And you’re dining with sharks, so get tight.”

She got herself Sec Serv tight: navy slacks, white blouse, Kevlar blazer, black boots polished clean as onyx, hair pulled into a severe ponytail. Carbon fiber .45 holstered at the small of her back. She opened the door.

Two agents in Sec Serv civvies stood in the narrow cinderblock hallway. White teeth split the coffee face of one agent as he looked Doss up and down.

“Didn’t know you’d be such a tall drink of tasty.”

The other agent stepped forward, spoke the statutory Gov greeting: “For the people.” He stood several inches taller than Doss’ six feet. She stared up at crew cut blond hair, crazy green eyes—
savage
was the first thought to enter her mind. “I’m Fiorivani. That’s Dumont.”

“For the people,” Doss said. She took in Fiorivani’s height. “I pictured you as a short Italian.”

“You wouldn’t be the first.”

“Follow me,” Dumont ordered. He turned and strode down the corridor, wiry and taut, a definite soldier beneath his Sec Serv suit. Doss followed and Fiorivani fell into step behind.

“Where we headed?” Doss asked.

“Not at liberty,” Fiorivani said.

“What are you at liberty?”

Fiorivani said nothing. Dumont glanced over the shoulder of his Kevlar weave blazer. He chuckled, kept walking.

They ushered her down flights of concrete stairs, through a reinforced steel door, into rain. A black Lobo hunkered on the muddy street outside the building. Behind it, the hulking cinderblock squares of New D.C.’s Gov district, felt more than seen through the mist. The two agents herded Doss into the Lobo, then climbed in front, Dumont at the wheel and Fiorivani shotgun.

“Don’t mind a little music, do you, Agent?” Fiorivani called back to Doss. “This dog’s
executive
.” He pointed and Doss saw blue LEDs glowing in the face of a rare stereo in the center console. Soft black leather surrounded her. Bottles of scotch, vodka, gin, along with old fashioned and highball glasses, secured by elastic holders inside a mobile wet bar installed in the seatback.