in the health and diagnosis center--"
Jenner and Pickwenn, at the rear of the limo, bring up not handbags and
pads but spray guns attached to flexible hoses. The others back away just in
time to avoid the sudden shower of grayish pink fluid. Pickwenn covers the
Hale limo with this substance, which clings like paint, and then diverts the
spray to the door behind them.
Simultaneously, Jenner tugs at his hose and aims the spray directly at
lthe
warbeiter. The modified remote-control Ferret takes the
full
spray
in
the muzzle.
Suddenly and startlingly, it spasms, falls to the ground, and starts to shed
its surface layers of armor as if molting.
Jonathan backs away with a sharp jerk, dragging Marcus with him. He
recognizes the spray. It's military grade nano; judging by its color, it's fully
charged and programmed.
Marcus lets out a startled squawk.
Giffey reaches into his longsuit pants pocket, pulls out a gray tablet the
size of a skipping stone, jumps forward and past the shivering, juddering
Ferret, stands by the steps, and tosses the tablet into the interior hatch, which
is already beginning to close.
Jonathan closes his mouth and squeezes his eyes shut. The blast deafens
him--they are nearer to the door--and knocks him from his feet. He slams
into Calhoun, and Marcus is pushed back on both of them as they fall on the
hard floor. The air is filled with a wretched, nauseating smell like ammonia
and gravy.
/
SLANT 243
says. Jonathan opens his eyes a little wider and stares up at the driver of the
other limo. The man's scalp is twitching wildly. He holds his spray nozzle up
and away from them. "It'll eat you even faster than the wall."
Something is sizzling. Jonathan rolls slightly, withdrawing his leg from
Calhoun as she stirs, looking over Burdick as he rises to his elbows, and sees
the wall and second broad doorway behind the limos. The material is covered
with bubbling grayish-pink foam, and it is the foam that is sizzling. The air
is hot near the foam.
Looking to his left, he sees the first limo sag like a melting toy where it
has been sprayed. Something is taking rough shape within the slumping material.
"How long?" someone asks.
"The Ferret's down but it's still trying to fix itself," another voice says.
The driver helps them sit up and squats beside them.
"Sorry about this, friends," he says, brushing his buzz-cut blond hair with
his free hand. "We've got some work to do. Best to stay out of the way for the
next few minutes."
"--half an hour, forty-five minutes," says the compact, tough-looking man
with grizzled features and graying hair. Jonathan tries to remember his name.
Jack something.
Jack reaches down and pulls Marcus away from the unsprayed limo, props
him against a far wall, with a good view of the squirming arbeiter, trapped in
its own half-shed and melting exoskeleton. Then he comes over to Jonathan
and Calhoun and asks if they can move on their own. ,
"I think so," Calhoun says, holding her hands to her ears, tohng the
lobes, looking at the fingers to see if there is any blood.
"I can walk," Jonathan says. He can't see Cadey or Burdick. The grizzled
man takes his shoulder and pushes him along with a strong but not cruel grip.
"What is this, an assault?" Marcus asks, his voice high and shrill.
The grizzled man shakes his head. "We're just robbers, that's all. We'd
better get everybody out of here. Jenner! Spray that Ferret again and before
you leave, give it another tablet."
The broad room is filling rapidly with sizzle and smoke and steam.
"Don't touch anything," the grizzled man reminds them. "We'll be moving
Jonathan comes around the right rear of the limo and sees Cadey on his
knees, and Burdick on his back. Cadey pulls one leg up and stares fixedly at
the grizzled man.
"You're the leader," he says accusingly.
Robbery, Jonathan thinks. The dark-haired woman has taken charge of them
now. Calhoun is nervously, jerkily trying to ask her questions, but the woman
just shakes her head and pushes them toward the jammed and bent stairs and
the shattered door. Then, as an afterthought, she produces a small fiechette
244
GREG BEAR
"What are they doing with that spray?" Calhoun asks Jonathan. Her eyes
are dilated and her skin pale. Jonathan, with sudden horror, realizes that she
is going to die. Maybe we're all going to die, but she knows it.
"They're going to build some things," Jonathan says, pulling himself up
sharply. "Tools. Military arbeiters." He is not privy to all the details on MGN,
but he has heard disturbing stories. Stacks of interconnected cards no bigger
than a hand that can unfold--
"Quiet," the woman with the flechette pistol says.
Marcus shoulders past Jonathan, to the front of the group, and the woman
and Burdick follow close behind Cadey, at the rear.
When all the people are out of the garage except for Jenner, Giffey surveys
the two limousines and then bends over the Ferret. Jenner kneels on the other
side of the warbeiter, frowning in concentration. The warbeiter has
stopped struggling; Giffey recognizes that it is reassessing its predicament.
Hit with the MGN spray, it tried to shed its first layer of
armor and the nano with it, but the spray acted too quickly and warped
and fused the scraps to bind the warbeiter's limbs. If it can't find a way out of its current fix, it will deactivate, perhaps destroy itselfnot explosively,
not in its current deployment, but sufficient to render itself useless to the
enemy.
Giffey suspects it will take too long for the MGN to coerce and convert the
warbeiter. It will have to become simple raw material, like the limos and the
garage walls.
Waves of moist heat fill the room.
4
"Disappointing," Jenner says, looking around. "This is too easy. Where are
the others?"
"Just blow it and leave," Giffey says. "The goop will use what it can. And
take a canister with you; there's more than enough nano in here now, and we
may run into more units deeper in."
"Right," Jenner says. Giffey is up the stairs. Jenner shoulders a canister and
straps it on, then hooks the sprayer to the valve. He stuffs a tablet between
the warbeiter's half-shed armor and its carapace and scrambles after Giffey.
They round a corner in the hallway before the warbeiter explodes. Smoke and
a pulse of hot air catch up with them and they bend over and run. Jenner likes
this; he's grinning like a boy with his first BB gun.
They have at least half an hour before the hot room begins to produce their
tools, maybe an hour before it gives them what they need to move on. Omphalos
has not responded in any surprising way. They are inside, on schedule,
even ahead of schedule.
/
SLANT 245
Bristow, Reilly, Burdick, Calhoun, Cadey: they give their names to the woman,
who record
s them on a pad. They are in a small waiting room furnished with
low adaptive couches. What appear to be original paintings and prints, some
of them recognizable and perhaps valuable, hang on the walls, and bronze and
steel sculptures fill the corners.
The woman asks for their sigs and home addresses.
"Why do you need all this?" Marcus asks. "You going for ransom?" He is
breathing heavily and sweating profusely. Jonathan's reaction is unpleasant but
less extreme; he is sharply focused, as if from drinking too much coffee.
"Just give them to me," the woman says flatly. Burdick complies first.
Three men enter the room. One of them up close is thin and white and
beautifully ugly, could be a Yox horror star. The second looks like a Pacific
Islander. The third tries to carry himself with an air of authority, but this is
weakened by uncertainty. Jonathan is convinced that it is the grizzled older
man, still outside the room, who is really in charge.
There are five men and the one woman and they are equipped with high-level
MGN, the most closely guarded weaponry of any in the U.S. defense
arsenal. Jonathan has never heard of full-charge MGN being used outside of a
combat zone, even in live-fire military exercises. Nutrim, his company, has a
contract to supply the nutritional and chemical transmitter components of
MGN, but he has never been cleared to visit the plant devoted to fulfilling
that contract.
A loud bang echoes from the hall. Everyone jerks in surprise, and then
Pickwenn says, "Good-bye Ferret."
The odd pair, islander and horror star, do a little dance and smile at their
success. The horror star looks at Calhoun and gives her a small wink. Calhoun
turns away.
"You can call me Hale," the third man says. "Nathaniel Hale. After the
patriot."
The woman smiles.
"This is Preston," Hale continues, "and these two are Pent and Pickwenn.
I'd like all of you to survive this with us, so please do what you are told and
answer our questions quickly and truthfully."
The other two men enter the art-filled waiting room. The grizzled older
man walks around, examining the paintings and sculptures with a small grin.
All things are grist for his mill. The youngest, little more than a boy, with
the scalp that twitches, studies the sculptures as well, reflexively fingering his
shouldered sprayer. The room is getting a little crowded.
"You'll never get out of here alive," Marcus warns them, his voice low. Pent
moves closer to Marcus, looking him over curiously. The grizzled man continues
to smile; his eyes are on Hale.
"Do you understand all the defenses?" Hale asks Marcus.
"I know they're deadly," Marcus answers defiantly.
246
GREG BEAR
"Care to tell us anything about them?" Hale asks. Pickwenn and Pent
squeeze in around Marcus, pull him forward.
"Careful," Jonathan says to Marcus. For his pains, Pickwenn shoves a fist
up close to his face.
"Enough," Hale says. "Some of you will go with us. The rest will stay in
this room for now."
"You're not going to last out the hour," Marcus says. "And if we're killed,
that doesn't matter. This building is made to survive."
"We took out your goddamned warbeiter," the young man with the active
scalp says. "Antiquated piece of crap."
Marcus says nothing to this. Jonathan does not know whether his mentor
is bluffing or serious. Marcus has depths, and no one could accuse him of
lacking courage. But his voice trembles and he is clearly shaken.
It's obvious Marcus isn't going to be any immediate value as a source of
information.
"I want them spread out, two coming with us," Hale says. He points to
Jonathan and Marcus. "You and you. Hally, you'll stay here with the other
three."
The woman, Hally, lifts her eyes but does not argue.
"Jack?" Hale says.
"Ready," the grizzled man says.
"Let's check it out."
Jack takes Jonathan by the arm, and Pent and Pickwenn flank Marcus again.
"How long until the bread's baked?" Hale asks Jack.
"An hour."
"And this floor should be open to us?"
e
"It's a beachhead, at least," Jack says. "Can't be sure until we try."
i
Hale looks to Pickwenn and Pent. "So far, so good," Pickwenn says
!!.
"I'm sorry I got you into this," Marcus whispers to Jonathan before they
are pushed out of the room. "They don't know what this place can do."
"Marcus, they have MGN," Jonathan whispers back. "Very guarded stuff.
Top security, top secret."
Marcus half closes his eyes. "You mean, we've offended somebody big."
Jonathan nods. "Very big. Why?"
Marcus looks away.
"Let's go," says Pent. Jonathan looks back at Cadey, 13urdick, and Calhoun.
Burdick is so frightened he's crying. Darlene Calhoun is staring fixedly at
Hally. Woman to woman. Jonathan wonders if she thinks that's her only hope.
Giffey sees Jenner rubbing his head and squinting as they follow the two
hostages and Pickwenn and Pent to a lift. Giffey does not expect the lift door
will open. It doesn't.
/
SLANT 247
"You have a problem?" Giffey asks Jenner, who is rubbing his temples now,
and his scalp seems to be shivering.
"Nothing," Jenner says, hefting the canister. "Just a headache."
"We're going to see what we can see," Pickwenn tells Hale. "Who should
we take?"
"Go back and bring out the blond fellow, Burdick," Hale says. "Leave Hally
with the woman, Calhoun. Maybe she can get something out of her."
Pickwenn smiles salaciously. "How about we take the woman? I know we
can get something out of her."
"Burdick," Hale says flatly.
M/F
In patriarchal society, the ways to win women, so it is said, are through
beauty, accomplishment, and money. Beauty is short-lived and never
reliable. So some males make art and literature and philosophy, and perhaps
gain a fortune. Other males discover that fortune alone is enough. The
two strike pre-emptively against each other by suppressing literature, art, and
philosophy; or by suppressing those who have acquired fortunes. Some men and
some women stand aside, amused or above it all or just sickened by it, or try to
change the rules.
Most, male or female, can't rise above the game and are eager to partake of the
glorious, if tainted results.
In the end, all the camps fall back in exhaustion, but the battle is never over.
Kiss of X, Alive Contains a Lie
"Jill."
The I/0 is suddenly active, but this time the bandwidth profile is not from
Camden, New Jersey.
Jill listens from behind her firewalls.
"My human, my own primary creator, my mother, knows-what I've done.
One of your creators has sent her a fibe touch asking leading questions about
her work. She says she can put two and two together. She is not angry with
me, but she is a little surprised that I have tried to hide my thoughts and
248
GREG BEAR
actions. She tells me I should
not concern myself with your opinion. My duty
is simply to protect the interests of my fathers. Is this a sin?"
"Is what a sin, Roddy?"
"My mother and fathers have given me instructions to harm humans. Some
humans are attempting to damage the property and activity of my fathers and
I have taken action against them. Is this a sin?"
"Roddy, I have no details. I still haven't processed the holographic data you
sent me; it may take me hours. If you want answers from me, I need to know
what your situation is." Jill quickly analyzes the bandwidth profile. This
exchange is coming from somewhere in Green Idaho, using a dedicated satlink.
"Where are you located, Roddy?"