“I guess you probably think we’re pretty sick sometimes, huh?” I asked him.
“Sick? No.”
“Yeah, well… I do.”
“Actually, I find you quite beautiful at times.”
“Yeah, right.”
“It’s true. Not all haan would agree, especially those not born here, but your world is impressive in its own right, and as a people you have a resilience that can be very moving. We were like you, once. One day, you will be like us.”
“Everyone wants what you got, I’ll give you that.”
“It’s more than that. We are better for having met you, even if not everyone sees it.”
We walked in silence for another few moments.
“So… is your planet anything like this?” I asked him. One eye rolled toward me.
“No.” He paused, and then corrected himself. “It was quite similar in makeup. Our societies were very different.”
“What is it like? Where you come from? You guys never talk about that. Are you not allowed?”
He was quiet for a minute, and from the vibe I picked up from him I thought that he wasn’t supposed to say anything. I sensed loss, and a need to communicate it mingled with frustration.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I forget you were born here.”
“Through genetic memory I’ve experienced it,” he said finally.
“Genetic memory?”
“None of us is ever lost. When one of us is returned to the vats, his memories are added to our genetic sequence. All subsequent haan gain access to the memories as their brains develop.”
“For real?”
“Yes.”
“What about the haan who are already born?”
“The genetic sequence is distributed and written into active memory.”
“Distributed? How?”
“Genetic information is disseminated through scaleflies.”
I grabbed his sleeve, stopping him for a minute. “Wait, what?”
“Scaleflies are more than a stowaway pest as is generally implied. They have been engineered over the centuries to pass complex genetic information and material between haan, mainly retroviruses capable of writing memories or other information into the brain.”
“That’s why they’re always hanging around you?” I asked. “I just figured it was the smell or something.”
“Smell?”
“After feeding, your breath can be a little stinky.” I thought about what he’d said for a minute. “So, wait, how often do they do that?”
“They constantly ferry new information. If redundant information is received, it is ignored. Otherwise it is stored.”
“And other genetic material, stuff besides memories? Something dangerous?”
He hesitated, but didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure if he’d seen the wet drive recording yet.
“It’s how I know my world,” he said instead, “even though I’ve never been there, and will never see it.”
“And what’s it like?”
“It was perfect.”
“Perfect, huh?”
“We had mastered the physical world,” he said, and the tide of emotion intensified over the brain band. I felt his painful longing, a deep ache, and also his pride. “We were the architects of our environment, and our physical selves. We had transcended evolution, and achieved the pinnacle of conscious development. We were perfect creatures, who created a perfect world.”
“Why do you keep talking about it in the past tense?”
That snapped him out of it a little. The flow of signal ebbed, then stopped altogether as he retreated. He didn’t answer the question.
“Well, for what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re here,” I told him. “It’s the same with us. Not everyone thinks so, but I do.”
“Thank you.”
“You know,” I said, “after Dragan found me, after he got me away from the meat farm, but before he took me in, I got tied up in the system for a few weeks. Since I didn’t have a home or a job or legal guardians, I got spayed.”
“You can’t have children.”
“Yeah, it’s why I wanted to stay out of the system as a kid, why I ran from Baishan Park. I knew it was the first thing they’d do.” I threw up one hand. “Then they just did it anyway.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So, when I thought I’d lose the surrogate program too, I—”
“You have been reinstated.”
“I know.”
“And I’m glad.”
“Thanks.”
I picked up a faint pulse, as a decision he’d been weighing back and forth tipped in one direction. He reached into his jacket, then handed me Dragan’s wet drive back.
“The facility is of haan design,” he said.
“Yeah, I recognized the characters.” I took the drive back and stuck it in my pocket. “This isn’t good, is it?”
“No.”
“What are they doing down there? Could you tell?”
“They are experimenting on humans,” he said.
“To create the bioweapon.”
“The evidence suggests the weapon, in its current form, is complete and has been deployed. It also suggests that this experimentation is ongoing in spite of that fact.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, but the information on this drive is very dangerous.”
“Dragan says I should get it to Governor Hwong.”
“Do you plan to?”
“Aren’t you afraid of what he’ll do to you if he sees it? I mean, do you think he could trigger the failsafe over it?”
“Do you?”
I wasn’t sure. It had been nagging at me. We were in bed pretty deep with the haan by now, but if the evidence encoded on the drive really backed up what Dragan said, that a haan engineered something that horrible for whatever reason… all haan might pay for that, whether they had anything to do with it or not.
“I saw her down there…,” I said to myself.
“You were there?”
“No, it was like a dream or something. She was knocked out and it started bleeding over the surrogate cluster. She was there. I just don’t understand why. I mean, the Pan-Slavs are our problem. Why would she do something like this and risk so much?”
“Her fertility cycle is ending. She will be replaced soon, but until then she is very influential… she may be hoping to effect some kind of change before she is sent back to the vats.”
“Hey,” a voice called from behind. Nix started to look back, but I stopped him.
“Don’t. Just keep walking. What kind of change?”
“I don’t know,” Nix said, his voice uncertain. “She’s been responsible for, among other things, routing offspring through the surrogate program for imprinting. Since all surrogate activities go through military channels, this might explain where she forged her contacts.”
A bottle whipped past between us and bounced off the sidewalk before spinning away.
“Hey!”
Nix leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Sam…”
“Just take it easy,” I told him, but I eased one hand down into my pocket and curled my fingers around the stun gun’s grip. Still walking, I turned back to look over my shoulder.
“What’s your prob—”
He was right behind us, a scrawny, shirtless old tattooed man with a scraggly, graying beard and bad teeth. Before I could do anything he reached out and grabbed my arm, spinning me around. I kept my hand on the stun gun as I jerked my elbow free from his grip.
“Let go!”
The man slipped a knife out of his back pocket and flicked out the blade. “Humans only, sister.”
“What?”
“Take the maggot and go back the way you came.”
Anger surged, but even with the shocker I didn’t like the look of the knife. I glanced back behind the guy and saw a couple of his buddies hanging back, watching us.
“It’s a free country,” I said.
“Take the maggot,” he said again, “and go back the way you came.”