Organo-Topia (6 page)

“What do you suppose she meant by that?”

Maris looked over at Ilsa, the double-seater humming beneath them, the cityscape flashing past. He brooded over the question like the clouds that brooded over the city. “Odd, isn't it? Carbon combines with every other element on the periodic table, a chemical whore. Organicity is life.”

“And she was implying—”

“Corn, coke, trake, and jack.”

“What'd you just say?”

“The only recognizable items left after the nanochines chewed through Eduard Sarfas were his corn, coke, trake, and jack. All his neuratronics. And his dental work, but that's superfluous.”

Ilsa looked bewildered. “I don't understand.”

“Inorganic items, all.”

“You're not implying that the agent is propagated across the neuranet, are you?”

Maris shook his head at her. “No, I don't see how that's possible.” But the idea bothered him on a level below articulation, a boil growing turgid under the skin of consciousness, its insidious pus swelling beneath the tissues of his mind.

“What are you after? I worked for them, remember?”

“Where are the neuratronics installed? At what age?”

“There's a crèche complex about five miles from here. Ten thousand Ihumes being reared in cohorts of five hundred each, a small city in a single building.”

“Who do we see about neuratronics installation?”

“Destination: Plavinas Development Crèche, Crestonia.”

The magnacar swerved and took off that direction, mindless except of its destination.

He sometimes wished he could be as unthinking as that. The curse of conscience colored his view of life, a fuscous cloud of murky motive, a menu of moral morass. The choice was never between good and evil, but of less versus more destructive. “Do no harm” wasn't among anyone's choices anymore. Do the least harm to the fewest number of people was the best the dictum ever got. You did harm simply by living. You did harm simply by dying.

The crèche looked like all the buildings around it except for its windows. On the inside of nearly every window was some personal item of remarkably bright color, like the handpainting his parents insisted on keeping on the fridge. It was terrible, but they prized it terribly, and he'd wondered why. they'd saved it all, every stick figure drawing and papier-mâché mask, watercolor wasteland and chalk conglomeration, as if accumulating evidence of their child's genius, none of it evincing the slimmest glimmer of extraordinary talent, all of it evincing his mediocrity. He supposed if he'd asked, they'd have said they kept it to show him its value, to teach him to value his work. He hadn't, knowing it crap, ashamed it stayed there, a burning reminder how talentless he was.

The crèche kids were subjected to similar, he supposed, their pedestrian work hung in their windows, kept there at the admonition of podparents. The building took up the whole block and soared twenty stories. A face or two peered from window and roof-edge. His mind sliced and divided, giving over parts of each floor to classrooms, gymnasiums, cafeterias. About one floor per year, he estimated. Ten thousand children, five hundred per floor. The oldest ones living at the top, he guessed, younger ones on lower floors needing more care.

Couples everywhere wanting children, and here they were, reared in crèche.

“Ever been in a place like this?”

He shook his head.

“I have, reared in one on the outskirts of Telsai.”

“How was it?”

“Mostly bad, but sometimes all right. I hated the regimentation. My teachers were fair, and my podmothers were bitches. They had to be, I suppose.”

Maris handed her today's mastoid jack. “Department of Child Support Services, Bureau of Gestational Integrity, Adolescent Angst Division.”

Ilsa snorted. “Where do you get these names? Some jerk in Undercover just makes them up, right?” She jacked in and updated her handheld with the new ident.

He smiled and slipped his dongle home. “Right,” he said, gesturing toward the entrance, wishing that were the case.

She took the lead. The framed portico lent the building its only point of grandeur, the rest so shapelessly flat that it looked like an institution.

The spidery limbs of a nanotector waved across them and beeped them clear.

The atrium inside echoed with the emptiness of abandoned dreams. It'd make a good motto, Maris thought. “Abandon dreams, all ye who dwell here.” Dark parquet walls fought with light tile floors. Glasma display cases housed mementos of institutional pride, sport trophies and honorarium plaques competing with rusty reliquaries and crusty plates. Overstuffed chairs looked resentfully upon a jealous couch, both suffering from dust-covered neglect.

“May I help you?” asked a high-pitched voice. She had to be young, the face behind the glasma innocent and pure, the eyes way too bright with undimmed enthusiasm.

“Graduating soon?” Ilsa asked, grinning. “You're nearly there, young lady. Ilsa Berzin, Liaison, Adolescent Angst Division, here to see the medical director.” She showed the bright-eyed girl her handheld.

“Maris Petras, same.” He flashed his too.

A muted beep behind the glasma indicated their idents had been verified. “Do you have an appointment?”

“Surprise inspection,” Ilsa said.

“I'll see if she's available. Please, have a seat.”

They stepped away from the window but neither headed for a chair.

“Last here a year ago, according to our files,” Ilsa muttered.

“Latency Labile Division was here three months ago, and Toddler Terror just last week.”

She stared at him in wide-eyed wonder. “And Infant Irritability yesterday, right?”

“Never heard of 'em.”

“Ms. Berzin, Mr. Petras? Doctor Eugeni will see you now. The elevator is to your right. Tenth floor and to your left, please.”

He and Ilsa stepped that way as a woman in business formal was scanned at the entry by the nanotector. She gave them a glance as she stepped to the glasma, handheld out already. “Infant Irritability Division to see the director of development, please.”

The lift doors rumbled aside, the interior looking dingy, battered by rambunctious loads of children. Maris didn't see any buttons.

“Next stop, tenth floor,” the elevator said in a tired robo-voice.

Remote operation, of course, the Detective thought.

The tenth-floor foyer looked little different from the atrium on the ground floor. Dark tile walls muted the little light filtering in through grimy glasma, defying the attempts of the light parquet floors to reflect it. Long corridors stretched to either side of the foyer. Glasma display cases might have housed mementos of institutional pride but stood staring at passersby with guilt-inducing emptiness. Opposite the foyer stood a recessed reception area, where utilitarian chairs filled with sniffling brats gazed at each other in placid, indifferent rows, every seat occupied.

The gazes swiveled to Ilsa and Maris as they stepped off the elevator.

Then, as a group, swiveled away. Assess, catalog, ignore.

We must look like bureaucrats, he thought. If we'd looked like a couple, they'd have mobbed us. Among the children were scraped elbows, swollen jaws, lacerated knees, tear-stained faces. At the reception desk sat an older child, of similar age as the receptionist downstairs.

“Here to see Nurse Vasiļjev?” Behind the boy were plaques proclaiming the expertise of those in the office, sheepskin under glasma.

“Doctor Eugeni, I was told,” Ilsa said, showing her handheld. “Ilsa Berzin, Liaison, Adolescent Angst Division.”

“Maris Petras, same.” He flashed his too, beginning to enjoy the role of sidekick.

“My apologies. Doctor Eugeni has been called away, but perhaps Nurse Vasiļjev can help you. Please, have a seat. She'll be with you as soon as possible.”

Except there were no seats.

“Miss, are we gonna be wiped out by nanochines, too?”

Maris looked down at a girl with a blood-soaked tissue stuffed in one nostril. She'd approached Ilsa and was looking up at her with plaintive, pitiable eyes.

“No, child, why do you think that?”

“That's what happened at that incubation place, wasn't it?”

“Well, yes, it did happen there, but that doesn't mean it'll happen here. Did that frighten you?”

The girl nodded vigorously. “I'm Mandy.”

“Ilsa. Nice to meet you.”

“Maris,” he said, dropping to a squat. “Where'd you get the pretty nose?”

She giggled, her hand going to the tissue. “Fighting with Tommy. He called me a name.”

“Mustn't have been 'sweetie' or 'honeybun.' ”

“Ewwww! I'd beat the living jerk out of him for that!”

“Mandy, watch your language,” said a woman's voice from behind Maris.

He stood and turned.

“I'm Nurse Zanna Vasiļjev. Doctor Eugeni has been called away. Come in, please. I'll see Mandy while we talk.” She glanced at the roomful of children awaiting her attention. “If you don't mind.”

She led them through the side door into an examination room and bade the girl to sit on the exam couch. “Your office was here just a few days ago, something to do with the outbreak at Incubation.”

She and Maris exchanged a glance. “You spoke with our colleagues?” Ilsa asked.

“Oh, no. Doctor Eugeni insists on handling all liaison inquiries himself, when available. What can I help you with?”

“Just a few questions, Ms. Vasiļjev. What's the usual age neuratronics are installed?”

“Ten!” the girl piped up, squealing with delight. “I'm getting mine next week!”

“What does the process look like here?” Maris asked.

The nurse began swabbing the area around the wound. “It's contracted out to Balozi Neurobiotics. They bring in a mobile surgery center, lower it to the roof. It's staffed twenty-four-seven, each child taking about two hours. The process takes about three weeks for all five hundred children. Upsets their routine terribly. And in some children…” She glanced at the girl, then at Ilsa and Maris.

The neuratronics go awry, Maris finished in his head. He wondered how many that was.

“Age ten?” Ilsa said. “Before their reproductive status has been determined?”

The nurse's gaze narrowed. “A few girls have reached menarche by then, but most haven't. And very few boys have manifested signs of adolescence. But you're asking about fertility testing, aren't you?”

Ilsa nodded.

“Not something we conduct until the thirteenth year,” Nurse Vasiļjev said.

Maris felt something tugging at his jacket pocket. The spidery nanotector that Doctor Briedis had given him was crawling up his jacket.

“What's that, Mister?”

He put his finger in front of it, and the device wrapped the finger with its filaments, barely reaching around. He held it out for her to see. “A nanotector, Mandy, designed to spot an invasion of nanochines from a hundred yards.”

“Looks glavy.”

Maris raised an eyebrow and glanced at the two women.

“A new word spreading among the kids,” the nurse said. “Means she likes it. Run along, Mandy, you'll be all right if you stay out of fights.”

“Yes, Nurse Vasiļjev.” The girl turned to Ilsa and Maris. “Nice to meet you,” and she sped out of the room.

“Balozi Neurobiotics will be here next week to begin neuratronic installation?” Maris asked.

The nurse nodded. “They're here now setting up the mobile surgery center on the roof. Doctor Eugeni is helping to coordinate it.”

* * *

The boy stepped off the elevator just as Maris and Ilsa approached.

He looked like any other boy going to the nurse's office after a mishap. Both knees were skinned, his eyes were red from crying, and he was sniffling.

The nanotector wrapped around Maris's finger screeched, an ear-piercing tweet so loud everyone winced and ducked. Its spindly body glowed red.

“Stop right there!” Maris said.

The boy froze, his eyes wide. “What'd I do?”

Nurse Vasiļjev took charge. “Edgar, lower yourself to the floor, now, please!”

The boy did so, looking as if he were about to burst into tears again.

“Ms. Berzin, Mr. Petras, take the other children inside the office. And silence that thing, please.”

Maris touched the back and the screech ceased. He and Ilsa began herding the children from the foyer.

Overhead strobes began to flash, and an alarm began to ping. The boy backed against the elevator doors. Fear fractured his face.

“Chine infection, Plavinas Development Crèche, tenth floor foyer,” the nurse was yelling. “Male, eleven years old, Edgar Sirmais.” She paused a moment. “No, I don't know how he was infected!”

He remembered seeing children peering down at them from the roof, saw the skinned knees, knew where the boy had been. “You were just on the roof, weren't you, Edgar?”

“He was on the roof!” the nurse screamed.

The building neuranet inaccessible to him, Maris couldn't tell who she was talking to. Emergency services, he guessed.

Ilsa looked at him from where she stood half inside the door, the children herded into the office behind her, the nurse and infected boy across the foyer from them, near the elevator. She gestured him over and said quietly, “Won't look good on our resumes if we hang around, will it?”

“You're right. Undercover won't like it if we stay. Gotta be a back way out of here.”

She turned to speak with one of the children behind her. “Staff elevator to the rear of the building.”

Maris turned to glance at the scene again, ready to slip out the back way.

At the elevator doors, eleven-year-old Edgar sobbed in terror. “Get 'em off me! Get 'em off me!” Nanochines too small, there was no evidence he was infected.

“My feet!” he screeched, and he fell flat on his face. Hands clawing at the floor, he tried to pull himself away from his own legs. Puddles of proto pooled where his feet had been. He kicked, droplets spattering from mid-shin stumps. His gaze went to the red-brown stubs. His scream curdled even the thin, pitiless blood in Maris's veins.

“Help me!” Edgar's gaze found Maris, and he extended both hands, terror tearing apart his face. The liquefaction reached his knees. The nano-extinguishing system kicked on overhead, nozzles swiveling toward the boy, coating him with a layer of white, inorganic foam.