</question>
We had protected their server for them on several occasions. And now, we helped them by copying immunization program patches from our base server and trading them to them in secret.
In other words, our little illicit trade was saving lives.
All with programs filched from the admedistration.
<list:item>.
<i: We save lives.>
<i: We get smokes.>
</list>
“The deal is made.”
“And we’re out of time.” I gathered my long hair into a ponytail. “We’ll be heading back to our ‘temple’ now, before Niger finds us here.”
The Kel Tamasheq gave a hearty laugh. “If you hate your gods so, why not come live with us, woman of the medicine people? We treat our women with much respect. Especially now when there is war, women are very precious to us.”
“Thanks for the proposal, but I’ll pass.”
“For what reason?”
“For the very reason that I’m here in the first place—because I’m a coward.”
For three or four seconds, the Kel Tamasheq warrior looked at me in silence. To show that he understood and was sorry on my behalf.
I could talk the talk, but I was thoroughly unable to leave my admedistration, to escape the society into which I’d been born. No matter how much I wanted to leave. And why was this? In a word, fear. No matter how much I hated it, I couldn’t bear to see it all go away.
It was this fear that:
<list:item>
<i: Left Miach to die alone.>
<i: Left Cian and me to remain.>
</list>
I think I just wasn’t strong enough to follow Miach to the other side.
I wasn’t brave enough.
That was all the Kel Tamasheq warrior needed to hear in order to understand. His wrinkled, dark face, burnt darker by ultraviolet radiation, broke into a broad smile—a father’s smile. He stuck out his hand for a shake.
“Then we will meet at our next exchange, woman of the medicine people. If you should change your mind and wish to join us, you are always welcome.”
“At the next exchange, then, warrior of the people who speak Tamasheq.”
It was enough for me to know I had a place where I could escape.
The kindness the Tamasheq warrior had shown me was of a completely different variety from the forced charity I had grown up with. It was the sort of kindness that grew only in the harshest environments, among a people who had fought hard for their freedom against a long line of imperialists and dictators.
Both I and the warrior turned away then and walked back toward our own people.
“A little faster, ma reine!” Étienne called from the passenger seat window of the transport. I waved at him to quiet him down and went around to the other side, hopped in the driver’s seat, and gripped the wheel.
04
<declaration>
<i: My job is to start wars.>
<i: At least everyone seems to think so.>
</declaration>
It wasn’t always like this. Things had been different, albeit some time before I entered the agency.
The Helix Inspection Agency was part of WHO, the World Health Organization.
In the beginning we were like the International Atomic Energy Agency, but for genetics rather than nukes. It was our job to visit any admedistration facility doing research on genetic engineering to make sure nothing was being produced that could potentially be a threat to humankind. We were supposed to monitor the technology, that was all. That was around when the “helix” got attached to our name.
However it happened, the scope of our operations expanded wildly over the years until we were basically a flag-waving troop of diplomats-cum-peacekeepers charged with the protection of life everywhere—not to put too fine a point on it. As Miach used to say, no one who waves a big flag is up to any good. So we would wander into other admedistrations and even some old-style governments to check whether they were ensuring their populace a lifestyle that was sufficiently “healthy and human”—a recipe for conflict if there ever was one. We were like a hand grenade loaded with the seeds of mass mayhem, one our elders had gleefully passed on to us for reasons I couldn’t begin to fathom.
This was the place I had chosen to be my escape from the world.
As nations gradually downsized their functions, leaving only a smattering of military and police forces, stewardship of the planet’s economy fell to the massive number of admedistrations that rose in their place. Unlike the now-obsolete national governments, admedistrations were smaller units, operating on shared principles of medicine, thoughtfulness, and charity—which meant if they saw a neighbor suffering, they couldn’t just stand back and leave them to their own devices. Even though Niger was ostensibly still an old-style nation, the reason for their altercation with the Tuareg was none other than a misguided attempt to force the Kel Tamasheq to link to the Nigerian medical server—“To ensure the nomads a more healthy lifestyle,” they said.
The Kel Tamasheq’s response, of course, was “Fuck off.”
The sociologists expressed the guiding principle behind the Helix Inspection Agency and ostensibly, the Nigerian government, like this:
<dictionary>
<item>Lifeism</item>
<definition>
A politically enacted policy or tendency to view the preservation of health to be an admedistration’s highest responsibility. Based on the welfare societies of the twenty-first century. In practical terms, this means the inclusion of every adult in a homeostatic health-monitoring network, the establishment of a high-volume medical consumer system with affordable medicine and medical procedures, and the provision of proper nutrition and lifestyle advice designed to mitigate predicted lifestyle-related illnesses. These activities are seen as the basic minimum conditions for human dignity.
</definition>
</dictionary>
We Helix agents were the elite soldiers of lifeism. That was how many people saw us, at any rate. And it was true enough that, when we did mobilize after receiving requests from several admedistrations, what I would write in my subsequent reports would oftentimes lead the parties involved directly to war.
With our current Sahara situation, the agency hadn’t even decided which side we were on. As I said before, the Tuareg had installed WatchMe, and they were using that fact to argue that they were not the anti-lifeists the Nigerians said they were.
As the self-appointed judges of all life, the Helix Inspection Agency never wanted for critics with axes to grind—sometimes quite literally.
<list:item>
<i: shooting>
<i: stabbing>
<i: strangling>
<i: poisoning>
<i: bombing>
</list>
These were just some of the varied ways in which no fewer than twelve Helix agents had died in the line of duty. This was the job I had found for myself, traipsing to every war zone in the world, inviting hatred at every turn—a senior inspector at the tender age of twenty-eight. Due to the dangers inherent in the job, I had trained in how to use most modern weapons and more than a few primitive ones as well.
Which was why it made sense for Étienne—whose machismo was undercut by an utter lack of combat experience—to call to me for help from the gunner seat of our armored transport.