The Red Queen (36 page)

I did not understand. ‘What is this implant? What is it for?’

‘It is a nano device surgically implanted in the left wrist, required by Habitat protocol when a specimen is to be resurrected. It enables accurate tracking and allows a specimen to be swiftly returned to cryosleep. It also monitors health and speech when a specimen moves away from the Hub.’

So the others had been wrong about there being devices set about Habitat, enabling God to hear the Speci. The devices had been implanted in the
Speci
and it must be that there was something that interfered with them in the three areas the others had thought of as God’s deaf spots. ‘Do I have one of these implants? And Dragon?’

‘All Speci have the device implanted before resurrection, but your implant ceased to operate almost at once.’

My body had probably dealt with it, recognising it as something alien to my body, which needed to be healed. ‘What about Dragon?’

‘She has an implant but it was deactivated by the Hub array when she was redesignated a technician. In your case, it was unnecessary.’

I looked down at Ana and Swallow. Like Dameon, their breathing was undetectable and they looked as if they were dead. But I had to believe that God and the androne spoke the truth, and that all of them were alive and would soon be restored. There was nothing I could do for any of them in the meantime, save keep a chilly vigil if I stayed, and I had promised Dragon I would return directly. Also, God had already said I would be kept informed of their state no matter where I was in Midland.

Even so, it was very hard to leave them, near naked and vulnerable in that bare silent chamber.

As we re-entered the elevating chamber, I remembered I had wanted to ask about Miryum’s whereabouts, and I did so, describing her as the last specimen the andrones had rescued before I and my technicians had been found in the desert. It was the best I could manage in identifying the coercer, but I truly doubted there would be many people wandering in that desert.

‘The last Speci found before you were found was an anomaly and is in the Galon Institute storage in Sector C at the lowest level of Midland, User Seeker,’ said the androne. ‘Sector C is a maximum security storage and can be accessed only by a green line elevator which requires Prime User status authorisation.’

I was still trying to work out the meaning of its words when God spoke, the smooth feminine voice coming this time from the smooth, inhuman lips of the androne. ‘User Hannah created an exception coda that will permit you to access restricted sectors, User Seeker. This can be downloaded to Unit B, should you wish to activate it.’

Wondering if Unit B was the androne’s name, I gave silent thanks to Hannah, and said aloud that I did wish it, if it would let me visit Miryum. ‘How long would it take me to get to that storage from this place?’

‘Estimated time, twenty-five minutes, User Seeker,’ the androne said in its own flat placid voice.

‘Take me there now, then,’ I said.

We ascended to the original dark foyer with its ring of pillars, then the androne led me out of the Galon Institute and along the road to the left instead of back across the bridge road. Passing though the dead and silent city, I felt again how tired I was and regretted that I had not waited to look for Miryum until after I had eaten and rested. But we had not walked far before the androne entered another building inside which were a number of elevating chambers. We entered one and descended. It had not taken long but I was beginning to feel light-headed and nauseated with hunger and thirst and lack of sleep, and I was about to tell the androne I had changed my mind when the elevating chamber gave a light jerk and seemed to stop for a moment before continuing.

I pictured how far under the earth I must be, something I had been trying very hard not to imagine, and strove to distract myself by remembering the subterranean forest that existed, incredibly, at the bottom level in Oldhaven, but it did little to dispel my growing nausea. The elevator continued to descend and it seemed to me that it was slowing as well as becoming steadily colder. I thought I was imagining it, but when the elevating chamber finally stopped, and the doors opened, a wave of icy air flowed in. By the time I stepped out I was shivering uncontrollably and cursing myself for my impatience. If only I had got some proper clothes and eaten and rested before coming here. I was far too weak and unprepared to try farseeking or coercing Miryum. Yet having come so far, I could not resist at least seeing her. I would not try to reach her or to enter her deepest mind yet.

This time I was not in a bland hallway or a foyer, but in a chamber so vast that I had no sense of its shape. The immense empty darkness broke against the sharp white wedge of the light cast by the androne’s headlight, which illuminated only the dark, mottled floor and, strangely, a thin mist that hung like a wraithlike blanket just above it. As the androne moved forward, its headlight wavered and shifted, catching the mist that slowly swirled about it, thickening it, but it found nothing else to light, not a wall nor a single piece of furniture. As far as I could tell, we had entered a vast, dark, freezing, empty chamber.

Where were the cryopods?

I wrapped my arms around myself and realised I was breathing out puffs of mist. I turned back to look at the wall behind the elevating chamber so that I could get some sense of the space I was in, only to find there was no wall. I asked the androne to look up and it obeyed, its headlight revealing that the elevating chamber was enclosed in a freestanding shaft that went up and up into misty darkness. I could not see the roof, yet we were under the ground so there
must
be a roof. I had not been able to see the roof inside the Galon Institute either, and I wondered if all of the levels of Midland were so deep. It would explain why it had taken so long to travel through them, yet it was impossible to form a clear picture of the place.

Abruptly I dismissed the puzzle as irrelevant.

‘Miryum is here?’ I asked the androne over my shoulder. Immediately, eerily, my words set off a repeating echo that took a long time to fade into a whisper. ‘I mean, the last Speci to be brought in before me and my technicians.’

‘She is here, User Seeker,’ the androne said, its voice setting up a new cycle of echoes.

Its light offered a path through the misty dark and I supposed that the cryopods must be deeper in the chamber, but I hesitated to set off along it. It was so cold now that my teeth were chattering, and I wanted very badly to get back into the elevator and demand to be taken up to the surface of the world where, perhaps, a new day was unfolding, but I clenched my teeth together and struck out purposefully along the path of light cast by the androne’s headlight wondering how far I would have to go before I came to the cryopods.

At every step I expected to see the androne’s light fall on something, but there was nothing and nothing and nothing. Finally I realised the light was growing faint and I turned to ask the androne tersely where the cryopods were, only to find it was still standing by the door to the elevating chamber, watching me.

Watching me?

I stifled a jab of unease and called out, ‘Where are the cryopods? I can’t see them.’

‘Cryopods in Sector C are in sealed cold-cells recessed beneath the floor for maximum security,’ the androne responded. It had spoken loudly, and the echoes its voice set up were so loud that it took me a moment to grasp what the androne had said. Then I looked down and my hair stood on end, for I saw that the pale mottled patch under my feet
was a human face.

For a moment I felt a mindless desire to run, before common sense reasserted itself, for these were not dead people as I had momentarily thought, but sleepers, just as Dameon and the others slept. Only for some reason, they had been put to sleep under the floor in this strange way.

I walked slowly back towards the androne, looking down at form after form, all human and motionless, but without clear features. Either the floor was opaque or, they were covered in ice, for there was no way to see what they looked like. Indeed, I could have been looking at Miryum without recognising her. I made my way back towards the androne, growing colder and colder as I passed each cloudy form.

‘How . . . how many people are here?’ I asked through chattering teeth when I finally reached the androne. I was trembling from head to toe now, and this time, the chill was not entirely due to the cold.

‘There are three thousand seven hundred and twenty Speci on this level,’ the androne said, and again the echoes of our exchange filled the air with a mad whispering.

I waited until the echoes had died away before asking very softly, ‘And Miryum is here, under the floor? She is alive?’

‘All of the Speci here are alive, but all are Class B anomalies.’

‘Miryum is here because she is a Class B anomaly?’ I asked.

‘Speci Miryum was salvaged unconscious and close to death from exposure, dehydration and starvation. These issues were addressed but tests revealed the specimen had contracted a virulent strain of the Endrax virus, released in a weaponised form during the Class B Cataclysm. Although no human hosts remain – the virus having a one hundred per cent mortality rate – it was passed through several animals during its development phase. It is probable that one of these experimental animals escaped and bred.’

‘
How
could it have lived to breed if it was sick?’ I interrupted.

‘Experimental animal hosts carried the virus in a passive form,’ the androne said. ‘It did not harm them and was not contagious to others of their kind, but when the virus is passed on to a viable host, such as a human, it activates. Specimen Miryum had several bite wounds on her left shoulder and arm and there is a ninety-seven per cent probability that the animal that bit her carried the virus. An antidote could be synthesised and genetically manipulated to treat the virus, however that would require the base formula and that cannot be obtained without a viable link to a government terminal.’

I tried to think but I was so cold that it seemed to me my mind was freezing. I managed to ask. ‘Miryum is contagious?’

‘The Endrax virus has three distinct and discrete phases,’ the androne said. ‘The carrier is infectious only in phase three. Specimen Miryum was acquired while in phase one.’

‘So if she is woken . . .’

‘The virus will reactivate, and in time she will enter the second phase known as hiatus. She is not infectious during this stage,’ the androne said.

The virus must be some form of plague like the one Ariel had found on Norseland and which he had used to infect Domick. I was again appalled by the thought of a people who could conceive of using sickness as a weapon. Truly the Beforetimers had been infected by a plague of madness.

‘God, is the sickness curable?’ I asked, rubbing my numb hands to try to warm them.

God answered, once again the voice coming from all sides, the echoes whispering and hissing about me like a building storm, ‘It would be possible to create a drug to cure this strain of the virus, and a vaccine to ensure no one else would catch it, but these responses would require access to the government medical resources site to enable sourcing of the genetic code of the virus. But there is no link to a government terminal and so there is no way to access the medical resources site. That is why the Speci you call Miryum was placed in Maximum Security Sector C. This is the protocol for infectious specimens that have the potential to be cured.’

I had thought Miryum had taint sickness, which was incurable, but the Endrax virus, however horrible,
was
curable. I had to take this as good news, even if, at the moment, a cure appeared to be impossible to acquire. It was also good news that Miryum could be woken and questioned without harming anyone around her, at least to begin with; we need only put her back to sleep before the end of the second phase. The thought of lying asleep for aeons might horrify the coercer, as Straaka had said, but surely she would see it differently when she learned there was hope of a cure for her sickness. Dell was striving to increase her knowledge of Ines, and if she managed it, perhaps a computermachine in Oldhaven could be made capable of reaching out to a govamen terminal and getting the information God needed. Also, Ahmedri would tell Jak about Miryum when he returned to the desert lands and I had no doubt that the teknoguilder would set out to find a cure for Miryum as determinedly as he had found a way to transform the shining, damp-loving, taint-devouring insects in the Land into creatures that could thrive in a hot dry climates.

But in the meantime, I had to talk to Miryum, and I needed to understand what that would mean for her and for me. ‘Tell me exactly what would happen if Miryum was wakened now,’ I said. ‘What would the virus do?’

‘Incubation period of the Endrax virus is seven days,’ said the androne. ‘Speci Miryum was put into cryosleep on approximately the fifth day of incubation. At that time, deepsleep arrested all organic processes, inhibiting the virus. Once Speci Miryum is resurrected, virus incubation will resume. The incubation period would end in three days, when the virus would become active but not contagious. It will remain in hiatus for seven days, during which Speci Miryum will be in good health but languid and mentally confused. The virus will then shift to the contagious stage, during which time she will appear to be in good health with high energy. Any contact during this time between Speci Miryum and an unprotected human will lead to infection. Expiration of Speci Miryum will occur between one to three months from first infection. Only at the end of the third phase will the health and vigour of the specimen decline sharply. At this time, the virus is no longer infectious.’

‘Was Miryum . . .’ I struggled for the term the computermachine used for badly tainted ground, feeling unaccountably sleepy. ‘Is she also contaminated?’

‘The Speci was also exposed to low-grade radioactive contamination which would result in some weakening of the specimen’s bones in later life, and to a higher risk of cancer. But the specimen will expire of the Endrax virus long before the results of contamination would begin to affect her health.’