The Mutant Prime (2 page)

Death should make some sound, she thought. Even in the vacuum of space—a musical note to herald the end.

Instead a shrill klaxon split the air. The clank of safety doors slamming closed added a grim percussive counterpoint to the siren’s wail. Kelly tucked her dark hair under the collar of her orange pressure suit, sealed the helmet, and moved toward the main corridor.

Too late, she thought. I’m probably too late.

She walked as quickly as the cumbersome suit would allow. Sweat matted the hair to her forehead, her neck.

Thank God the shuttle trolley was connected to the south port. No safety doors to cut through. And no corpses. Yet.

The dome had been deserted because of the early hour: Kelly had drawn night shift, and for once, she was grateful. She was halfway to the airlock when she saw someone, unsuited, clinging to a steel fiber handhold. It was Heyran Landon, the mutant commander of the shuttle, her immediate superior. Where was his pressure suit? Had he heard the alarm and bolted from his quarters without thinking?

No time for questions. Kelly cast about the hallway for the suit depot. Every corridor had one; emergency preparation was a fact of life on Moonstation. Ah, there it was, red light blinking on the left, halfway down the wall. She pried it open, pulled out an orange acrylic oxygen mask with its robe, and managed to wrap it around the suffocating man. He nodded weakly, golden eyes half-shut through the mask. Mutants were rare enough in the service without adding Landon to the casualty list.

Part of the dome imploded with a muffled roar. The air around them became a pale blue gale rushing out into the vacuum. Life-giving atmosphere roared past, pulling papers, screens, furniture in its wake. Kelly dodged a pink wallseat torn loose from its moorings and grabbed at the handholds attached to the walls. At least they didn’t give.

Hastily she hooked Landon to her belt, slid her arm around his back, and towed him, handhold by handhold, toward the airlock. But even in the lowered gravity she was fighting the pull of escaping atmosphere, losing ground.

Would they make it? It wouldn’t be hard for her to hold them there, webbed to one of the walls. But the oxygen supply was finite. Landon’s would run out in six hours. Rescue was possible … all of the domes couldn’t have blown. But she and Landon were expected to be part of the rescue force.

She clung desperately to the scalloped handhold, a dull throbbing building in her arm above the elbow. Dammit, why hadn’t she worked out more? Three months on Moonstation duty had weakened her, despite rotation and time off.

Just as she decided to web them in and wait for help, Kelly felt a gentle push, as though someone had come up behind her and was leaning against her shoulders. She twisted around to look. The corridor was empty. The push became stronger, more insistent.

Telekinesis.

The hair on the back of her neck prickled.

Half-conscious, Landon was using his mutant powers to propel them down the hallway.

The airlock loomed before her, the round black doorway rimmed by double rows of blue acrylic seals around the seams. Before she had time to reach for the manual controls, the doors opened, she and Landon swept through into the trolley, and the doors sealed tight behind them. Kelly collapsed onto the nearest webseat. Landon sprawled next to her, seemingly unconscious. But they were safe.

Strapping Landon in, Kelly checked the trolley pressure readings. They were normal. She scanned the dome interior and subsidiary corridors for life readings. Found none. Other domes had blown as well.

I can’t think about that now. I won’t.

She scanned the pressure readings in the building.

Unstable.

Let’s get out of here.

She pulled the trolley away from the airlock and placed it in a low orbit. The radio began to squawk: transmissions from the dormitories below ground. She switched on the shuttle transmitter, wide band so that the French and Russian shuttle stations would catch it.

“Moonstation Control, this is Trolley Four, Captain McLeod reporting. Dome C has imploded. Repeat. Dome C is gone. Related living quarters are at risk of violent decompression. Pressure suits are suggested for all inhabitants. Please supply your coordinates. I will request rescue assistance from the Dubrovnik and Brittany orbiters.”

“We read you, McLeod. Stand by for transmission.”

Kelly saw movement out of the corner of her eye. Landon sat up carefully and pulled free from the oxygen mask. His thin face was pale.

“Are you all right, sir?”

“I thought I dreamed it.” He gazed around the trolley, taking in the screen, webseats, blinking radio. His eyes met hers. “I’m fine, McLeod. You saved us both.”

She handed him an orbit-ready pressure suit. “I think
you
saved us, sir. I’d be willing to bet a promotion that you gave us a telekinetic boost right through the airlock.”

“So I didn’t dream that, either.” He stood up slowly, as though every bone in his body ached. Just as slowly, he donned the gray fiber suit.

“I’d never have been able to get us both aboard,” she said. “That was some push.”

“Nonregulation. But it worked.” A slow smile lit up his features for a moment and faded. He turned toward the trolley controls. “Let’s get busy. Somebody’s got a hell of a problem on their hands. I wouldn’t want to sort out the blame for this mess.”

“Yessir. Me neither.” The trolley’s blinking green LED screen registered reports from the surface of casualties from chain-reaction decompression. Don’t think about that now. Kelly took a deep breath and switched on the radio.

“Lydda, when will you stop hiding? What are you afraid of?”

Narlydda leaned back against the blue enameled wall of the satorifoam pool—a luxury her artwork had earned her—and gave him a scornful look. Skerry had been her lover now for three years, but sometimes he presumed too much.

“Afraid? Do I seem afraid?” She lifted one long, greenish-tinged leg half coated in iridescent foam out of the bath and watched sparkling dream images float upward from the froth toward the skylight: a lavender horse with mane of fire, a fuchsia daisy with a yellow woman’s face at its center. “Yep. Oh, don’t laugh. I know you, lady. The bravado. The mask of aloofness, not to mention your elaborate disguises. And the frightened mutant peering out from behind them all, unwilling to take credit for her work. Especially now that you’ve gotten that fat commission from the Emory Foundation.”

She blew sparkling foam at him. “Credit? Dear man, I take plenty of credit for my work. And Eurodollars. Diamonds. Selenium crystals. Real estate.”

“Okay, so you’ve made a fortune. And welcome to it—you’re damned good. The darling of old and new money.” It was true. Everybody from the Nouveau Brahmins to the Seventh Column chip runners wanted a Narlydda original.

“Don’t forget my simultaneous retrospective at the Getty/ Whitney and the Hermitage.” She grinned triumphantly. “Before the age of forty-five, I might add!”

“Stop preening, Lydda. I’ve told you before what I think of your work. All I’m saying is you’re hiding your mutancy behind the name. The elusive Narlydda, who never attends openings. Is never photographed, holographed, videoed, or seen. You were tough even for me to track down. And I’m good.”

“Very good.” She gave him a sly look, an invitation. But he ignored it.

“Don’t you think you’ve carried this too far? Face it—you’re scared to admit that the world-famous Narlydda, artist of sky and space, is a mutant. So you cheat all of us from sharing in the legitimacy, the renown.”

“Cheat you? That’s not how I see it.” She stood, stepped out of the foam, and stalked toward the wall-mounted sonic dryers. She was a tall, lanky woman, naked in the filtered sunlight, with an odd green cast to her skin and hair, save for a silvery white thatch at her forehead.

The dryers hummed, removing all traces of the dream foam. Nearby, a basket of ripe peaches sat on a low glass table. Narlydda selected one and floated it into her grasp, took a bite, swallowed. “Is this the face, the body, the skin, that the public wants to see behind the marvelous Narlydda’s work?” She finished the peach, tossed the pit into the compactor. “Not bloody likely. You know better, Skerry. The critics would kill me. They’d relegate my
oeuvre
to a mere curiosity. Mutant kitsch.”

“Bull. It’d shake everybody up. A good idea, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t.” She said it archly, but there was fire behind her words.

“What’s the use of art if it can’t stand a little controversy? Especially in this effete, technohybrid paradise? We can’t always count on the Japanese-American Consortium for scandal.”

He was using one of her own arguments against her.

Narlydda sank down onto the cushioned deck. “I can’t believe you’re that naive. The art critics will only approve so much controversy. Otherwise, they might lose control of the market. And as for collectors … well, they do what the critics tell them.”

“Don’t you have any faith in your work?” His look was steely.

“Of course I do. I’m damned good. But what are you suggesting, Skerry? That I shoot the golden goose? Thumb my nose at the art establishment? Make fools of them? I’m plenty independent, but I’m not stupid.” She slouched against a soft yellow pillow. “Fifteen years ago, when I got started, Eleanor Jacobsen had just been killed. Then old ‘Mutant Uber Alles’ Jeffers was unmasked as a lunatic fanatic.” She gave a mock salute. “And thank God for that.”

“Thank me.”

His voice was flat. She paused, uncertain. Surely he was joking.

“Well, I thought it was a bad season for mutants,” she retorted. “And a good time to lay low.”

“You weren’t alone. I remember.” He paused, lost in some private memory. Then he shook it off, returned to the offensive. “But times change.”

“Oh, sure. I grant you that things are better than before. But even now, we still make normals nervous. Admit it, Skerry. You know it’s true.”

He nodded grudgingly. She smiled, a point won.

“Besides,” she added, “I like my privacy. I don’t want to be bothered by all those critics and journalists. And I’m too old to go back to being a poverty-stricken artist.”

“So much for artistic integrity.”

“Stuff it, Skerry!” She stood up. “I’ve got plenty of artistic integrity. Narlydda is a free agent. Nobody tells me what to do or how to do it. As for cheating the mutant community, I donate plenty to our genetic research and storehouses. You can’t accuse me of being stingy or uncaring. Even if I don’t attend clan meetings. And since when are you so concerned about the mutant community, lone wolf?”

Skerry climbed out of the pool and stretched out on the biplast deck. His thick, graying hair was caught in a ponytail at his neck. Hallucinatory images of red concentric circles and blade waves danced around his muscled body as the foam evaporated.

“I’ve always been involved,” he said calmly. “Behind the scenes. That’s my style.”

“Well, what’s so different from what I’m doing?”

“At least I don’t hide behind the mask of a normal.”

Above the bubbling silvery foam, the image of a small woman formed. She was pink, naked, standing on a seashell, hands modestly clasped over her privates. Her dark hair was pulled back into a chaste bun. A banner ran from her left shoulder across her breast, to her waist. Blinking yellow neon letters spelled out the name
ANNE VERLAND
. The woman’s eyes flashed from gray to gold as her skin flickered back and forth between pink and green.

Narlydda laughed and clapped her hands. “Very good. I think maybe you should be the artist. And I see you’ve been boning up on your art history. Botticelli would be amused.”

“I’m glad somebody would be.”

“Don’t sulk,” she said. “It’s boring. What difference does it make if I’ve got a computerized alter ego? I paid a year’s income for that simulacrum, and Anne Verland has been worth every credit. Half the art critics from Metro L.A. to Gdansk think Anne Verland
is
Narlydda anyway. And that software’s so clever, sometimes even I believe it.”

She stretched like a cat in the sun, took a long step, and leaped into the air, tumbling above Skerry’s head up toward the arched skylights in a series of complicated, graceful arabesques. Still airborne, she performed an extended backward somersault and came to rest in midair, floating on her back above the sparkling pool. Tiny seahorses, winking orange and green, floated up to meet her.

“Terrific,” Skerry said sourly. “I know somebody at Ringling Brothers/Sony who could use another telekinetic trapeze artist. And then you won’t have to hide behind a pink-faced computer program. Or skin dye.”

“No thanks. I prefer to work with a net.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. But this Emory Foundation commission is big—really big. You may not be able to hide anymore.”

“Then I’ll run instead.”

“I’m not kidding, Narlydda!” Skerry’s eyes flashed golden fire. “Dammit, you know how I feel about you. I wouldn’t be here otherwise. But it’s time to decide where your loyalties lie and who you are.” He reached for his clothing.

Gods, she thought, he could be tiresome. She took a deep breath. “You’re probably right. May I decide over tea?” Even as she said it, she regretted the words. She’d merely intended to nettle, but she’d overshot and now Skerry looked furious.