Achilles Desjardins, on the other hand, was vital. Whether he was also a sexual predator was irrelevant; he might well be instrumental in the saving of billions. Lubin couldn’t think of many depravities that could not be overlooked in the pursuit of that higher goal. It was what the Greater Good was all about.
He almost felt envious.
Remedial Ed
Taka Ouellette was, in fact, within a research facility of some sort. She was not, however, playing the role of experimenter. Perhaps the man at her side had arrogated that role unto himself.
His appearance was unremarkable. Brown hair, uncombed, cut with a haphazard asymmetry as consistent with some faux-feral style as with outright incompetence. Thin squarish face. Not enough lines on the forehead, too many around the eyes. Large eyes, brown and wet, almost childlike. Nose slightly off-kilter. Baggy green sweatshirt, a TwenCen throwback with no animations.
She couldn’t see below his waist. She was strapped to a medical gurney, flat on her back. If this disheveled r-selector was playing the researcher, it seemed that he’d reserved for her the role of experimental subject.
“Achilles Desjardins,” he said. “Pleased to meet you, Alice.”
The helicopter had dropped onto a rooftop pad somewhere north of the Great Lakes, well after midnight. She’d debarked and stepped unsuspectingly into a neuroinduction field that dropped her faster than a cervical dislocate. Faceless men in body condoms had brought her, conscious but paralyzed, into this quarantine cell. They had stripped her naked, catheterized her, and departed without speaking. Perhaps they’d been told she was some kind of fugitive or health risk. Perhaps they’d been in on the joke. She’d had no way of knowing, and no way to ask.
That had been a day ago, at least. Probably more. She had spent the time since isolated and immobilized, growing parched and ravenous by infinitesimal degrees.
The field was off now, though. Her motor nerves were back online. The only things holding her down were the nylon straps cinched painfully around wrists and ankles, waist and throat.
“There’s been a mistake,” she said quickly. “I’m not Alice, I’m Taka. Lenie and Ken’s friend.”
She wriggled against the restraints. Achilles smiled faintly.
“You’re really not a very good biologist, Alice,” he remarked, not unkindly. “I’m sorry, but it’s true. You’ve had all kinds of clues, but you never quite put them together the right way.” He sat on some unseen chair or stool next to the gurney. “If I hadn’t stepped in you’d still be spreading Seppuku far and wide, killing your patients even faster than usual. No real scientist would make such basic mistakes.”
“But I’m not—”
He put a finger to his lips, shushing her. He propped his elbows against the hard neoprene surface of the stretcher next to her head, rested chin in hands and looked down at her.
“Of course,” he continued softly, “no real scientist would kill her own family, either.”
So it wasn’t a mistake. He knew exactly who she was.
She knew him, too. At least, she knew his type. He was soft. He was pathetic. Every day she faced down people who’d break his neck without breaking stride. On his own, without the props, he was nothing.
Except right.
She closed her eyes. Keep control. He’s trying to scare you. Don’t let him. Deny him the satisfaction.
It’s a power game like all the others. If you aren’t intimidated, you take some back.
She opened her eyes and looked calmly into his. “So what’s the plan?”
“The plan.” Achilles pursed his lips. “The plan is rehabilitation. I’m going to give you another chance. Think of it as a kind of remedial education.” He stood. Something in his hand reflected the overhead lights, something small and shiny like a nail clipper. “We’re talking a kind of carrot and stick scenario. I have this hobby that a lot of people would describe as, well, unpleasant. You’ll find out how unpleasant, depending on how quick a study you turn out to be.”
Taka swallowed. She didn’t speak until she thought she could keep her voice leveclass="underline" “What’s the carrot, then?”
Not quite.
“That was the carrot. My carrot, anyway. Your carrot is, you pass your orals and I let you go. Alive and everything.” Achilles frowned, as if lost in thought. “Here’s an easy one to start with. How does Seppuku reproduce? Sexually or asexually?”
Taka stared at him. “You’re kidding.”
He watched her a moment. Then, almost sadly, he shook his head.
“You went to the seminars, I see. They told you all our secrets. We prey on fear. Once we see you’re not afraid, we’ll pick on someone else. Maybe even let you go.”
“You said—” she stopped, tried to control the tremor in her voice. “You said you’d let me go...”
He hadn’t laid a hand on her and already she was begging.
“If you do well,” Achilles reminded her gently. “But yes. I’ll let you go. In fact, as a gesture of good faith, I’ll let part of you go right now.”
He reached out. The shiny thing in his hand pressed against her breast like a tiny icicle. Something snicked.
Pain bloomed across her chest, razor-sharp, like the cracks in glass before it shatters. Taka screamed, writhing in useless millimeter increments against the straps.
The bloody gobbet of a nipple dropped against her cheek.
Darkness swirled around the edges of vision. At some impossible distant remove, way south of the pain at the center of the universe, a monster fingered its way between her labia.
“Two more where that came from,” he remarked.
Decirculate
Clarke had learned a fair bit at Ouellette’s side. She was no doctor, but she still had the rudimentary medical training she’d received as a rifter and the MI did most of the diagnostic and prescriptive work anyway. Miri’s exorcism had cost them a few thousand patient records, half a year’s downloaded updates, and all the vehicle’s uplink capabilities—but whatever remained still knew enough to scan a body and prescribe basic treatments. Clarke wasn’t up to dealing with much more sophistication than that anyway; even lobotomized, Miri was hardly the rate-limiting step.
People trickled through town, seeking Ouellette’s ministrations but settling for Clarke’s. She did what the machinery told her, played doctor as best she could. At night she’d sneak offshore and bypass Phocoena entirely, sleeping breathless and exposed on the bright, shallow bottom. Each morning she came ashore, stripped her diveskin down to the tunic and pulled Ouellette’s borrowed clothing overtop. The strange dead fibers rubbed loosely against her limbs as she moved, an ill-fitting travesty full of folds and stitches. Removing the ’skin always felt a little like being flayed alive; this, this substitute might as well have been shed from the flanks of some great poorly-proportioned lizard. It wasn’t too bad, though. It was getting easier.
It was pretty much the only thing that was getting easier.
The worst part wasn’t her own medical ignorance, or the endless, rising count of those she couldn’t save. It wasn’t even the outbursts of violence that people sometimes directed at her when faced with their own death sentence, or with that of a loved one. She was almost grateful for the shouts and the fists, thrown too rarely to constitute any kind of real cost. She’d experienced far worse in her time, and Miri’s weapons blister was always there when things got out of hand.