Rift (39 page)

The caves were a labyrinth, but just as Dooley had said, they were a subterfuge. A neatly chiseled boulder rolled aside before Gregor’s voiced command, and Reeve saw through the opening to a vast, tiled atrium flooded with light.

The Somaform guards, engineered large, tugged on his ropes, and the group proceeded into the great room. Behind them, Reeve could hear Dooley’s whispered mutterings, talking to himself if no one else would listen.

The chamber rose three stories, with exposed hallways at the second and third levels, revealing long rows of doors to what Reeve figured might be Somaform quarters. Hanging from ceiling cables were huge placards displaying images of especially grotesque human mutations. Beneath this mobile of oddities were the oddities themselves, Dooley’s transformed humanity, theme and variation. A shriek of laughter momentarily halted Gregor as a small boy chased a ball to the man’s feet. The youngster looked up, and with hands protruding directly from his shoulders, dipped sideways and grabbed the ball, rushing merrily away. From the upper floors, people leaned on the railing, gazing out on the
atrium or gesturing and talking. It all seemed normal enough, except for the diverse morphology.

Gregor paid none of them any attention and, hat tassels swaying, strode up a broad, curving staircase to the second level, where tall double doors opened at their approach.

Only Gregor and Reeve entered. Gregor bowed before the woman who commanded the center of the room. Behind her was a simple desk, almost hidden from view by the breadth of her hips. This could only be Brecca. She no longer wore the white robe, but a huge purple jumper hanging to the floor and a glittering yellow shirt underneath. With the many necklaces bristling around her throat and earrings that cascaded to her shoulders, she made a jingling noise when she moved. Bright red lips and blue eye shadow defined her features under a mound of gray hair. All in all, the impression was stupefying.

Gregor intoned, “Behold Brecca, Ministrator, Vizier, and Final Sign-Off.”

As tall as Reeve, Brecca looked at him with mean and beady eyes. “Bow,” she said, in a voice as smooth and mellow as Reeve had ever heard. “It’s expected.”

He did so.

“Good.” She spread her arms apart, rattling her bracelets, saying with a world-weary boredom, “Welcome, my son, to the Labs.” Then, dropping her voice a mean octave, she said: “Now, on your life, tell me if you are from the sky wheel. You probably can’t imagine what we do to liars around here.” She raised her penciled eyebrows. “Or maybe you can.”

“I’m Reeve Calder, son of Cyrus Calder, of the Station Clave.”

She smiled. “You can drop the clave shit around here, son.”

Gregor delicately cleared his throat.

“Clean up my language, that it, Greggy?” She sighed hugely. “You’d think a woman in my position
could do any damn thing she wanted, wouldn’t you?” She shook her head. “Greggy—I mean the Successor here—is responsible for making sure that we keep the proper forms. And I thank him for that.” She smiled a pert and awful smile in Gregor’s direction. “If it weren’t for him, I’d be a disgraceful mess.”

Changing tone with alarming speed, she snarled, “OK, Reeve Calder, talk.”

Gregor faced him. His squarish face had a few lines, marking him for middle age. His irises, Reeve noticed for the first time, were so light as to appear colorless. As they locked gazes, Reeve had the odd sensation of looking through the eyes to some point beyond. “Bear in mind,” Gregor said, “that we have debriefed several jinn sailors, and we will be disappointed at discrepancies in your stories.”

Reeve talked. He was getting used to telling his tale by now, how Station had blown apart, the crash of his shuttle, his journey to rejoin his fellow Stationers. He embellished the strength of the jinn, playing that feeble card for all it was worth. He toyed with the idea of revealing Bonhert’s plan, thinking that the Somaformers might be persuaded to help him, then discarded the notion. Why should they believe yet another desperate prisoner, eager for release? Of Loon, he said nothing.

When he had finished, Brecca shrugged. “Well, Gregor,” she said. “What do you think?”

“Like any claver, he must do penance. It is the way of the Pool.”

“Why do I bother asking?” she said, rolling her eyes at the ceiling. Then her eyes narrowed. “Maybe Reeve Calder could rise rather rapidly through the hierarchy. He’s got some science, probably make a fine gengineer. We could always use more
real
scientists, don’t you agree, Gregor?”

Gregor’s chin moved as he struggled to speak. Finally he said, “As you say, Ministrator.”

“As I
say
. And as you connive, isn’t that right?” Then she straightened and cheerfully plunged on. “How would you like a peek at our Labs, Reeve Calder?” She waved off Gregor’s objections. “Before I give you to Gregor, that is.” She smiled sweetly at the smaller man and, sweeping across to Reeve, took him by the elbow and led him to an inner door. “Leave us, Gregor. I’m sure you have more important work than to show a mere inturn around.” With that, she led Reeve away.

Brecca escorted him into a long corridor flanked by doors. The walls and floors shone with cleanliness and sterility, reminding him of home. For the first time since his crash landing, he was in a place with regularity, neatness, and warm, artificial light. The memory produced an ache in his throat. For a moment he imagined his father emerging from one of the doors, clipboard in hand, nodding at Reeve. But this wasn’t home, only a mirror-image world, picking up a few mutations along the way.

The Somaform leader turned to him, arms akimbo. “Tell me about protein folding.”

“That has to do with genetics, doesn’t it? I don’t know much about—your specialty.”

“All righty,” she said with elaborate patience. “You don’t know much. Tell me something you
do
know about it. Surely the space station held on to some science?”

Reeve swallowed. “Of course. Functional genomics was a course I took. Determining interactions among genes for polygenic traits.” He searched his brain for something more to say, but he had truthfully slept through most of that course. “Modifying our genome to … do what you’ve done here … is beyond Station science. We never pursued it. It was illegal, for one thing. I can tell you about simple stuff—morphogenetic protein, homeobox complexes, DNA—”

“Good boy,” she interrupted. “Yeah, you gotta be a
Stationer. This way.” Brecca was holding open the first door. He followed her, ropes trailing on the floor.

They stood in a large room where a portion of the ceiling was raised, enclosing a screen. A flickering display artfully contrived to look like a skylight showed out onto a sunlit forest canopy. Beneath it was a desk and a great chair, created for one of Brecca’s bulk.

“My office.” She sank into her chair and waved Reeve into another, smaller one. Closing her eyes, she let out a long, slow breath. With one hand she slipped off her earrings, slinging them onto the desk. Next came the necklaces, in a clatter. “You have no idea how tiresome all this is. If anyone ever offers you the job of God, turn it down. Pay’s lousy.” Her voice carried effortlessly, even when she muttered, with the tones of one who might have been a singer. Raising her face, she basked in the apparent sunshine from the skylight. She had attractive features for a woman who must have been over sixty years old.

She gazed upward at the treetops. “I can imagine what you must think of all this. The Holy Gengineer stuff.”

Reeve let that pass for now. There was plenty he thought about it, foremost how not to be gengineered—a term he could readily deduce, given the circumstances.

“You’re really from the space station, huh?”

He nodded.

Shaking her head in wry amusement, she opened a drawer and took out a small square packet, and held it out to him. “Cigarette?”

He stared at the object as the top sprang open to reveal several small white tubes.

She put the end of one in her mouth and slapped the pockets of her jumper, finally finding a packet of matches. She smoked the tube. Reeve watched in fascination as she sucked in and blew out smoke.

A fan kicked in, whisking the smoke away. “One of
the few vices Gregor allows me.” She held up her hand. “I know, I know, bad for the lungs. You have to understand, my lungs have been done three—or is it four?—times. So the lung argument doesn’t get far with me. I don’t smoke in front of the Somas. Might burn a hole in my goddamn white robes.” She blew smoke viciously out of the side of her mouth, looking like a great purple dragon.

Reeve allowed himself to smile at this.

Brecca grinned. Then she let out a great peal of laughter that gushed up from her ample chest. “Absurd, isn’t it? Here sits the mighty representative of Deity in the world, sneaking a cigarette and resting her weary ass.” The laughter trickled away, and she smoked her cigarette with profound contentment.

After a time she said, “We’ve got to leave your ropes on, Reeve. For appearances.”

He nodded as graciously as he could. “Tell me about this place … Brecca. Can I call you Brecca?”

She stubbed the cigarette out in a small round tray. “Oh, please do.” She had a way of speaking that was drenched in irony, at times taking on a singsong condescending tone as though she were speaking to children. It softened around Reeve, ratcheted up around Gregor.

“And you don’t need to play coy. You think I’m a monster, right? Human experimentation, all gone awry. I may even be mad, you’re thinking. She could erupt in an instant, like the Red Queen in
Alice in Wonderland
!” She regarded him with a deadpan stare. “And you’ll be thinking of the
ethical
question, of course.” She reached for another cigarette, rolling it between her fingers in sensual appreciation. “Ethics. Yes, a nice tidy topic for graduate seminars.” Lighting the cigarette, she spoke between her teeth: “How long you figure you’re gonna last on the surface once your breather wears out? Don’t strain your brain. Thirty
years. That’s how long the clavers have got. A short, brutish life. And getting shorter all the time.”

“I can see why you’d want to try,” Reeve decided to say.

“But how come we’ve got so many … 
odd people
? Is that your question?”

“OK, yes.”

She smiled a sarcastic, stagy grin. “They
want it
, that’s why. Hell, they vie for creative looks. We’ve got to work overtime just to think up some of these body plans! See, if you haven’t figured it out yet, this is a religion. It has its own internal logic, completely opaque to an outsider. Why do Catholics kneel and take a little piece of bread in their mouths? It’s a long story, right?” She drew on the cigarette, blowing a puff of smoke in the direction of her ceiling fan.

Reeve was still stuck a few sentences back. “They
want
these deformities?” The thought shook him more than his assumption that they were coerced.

“Righto, they want ’em. Seen those pictures in the great hall? They’re proud of their
offerings
, as they call them. They want to resurrect humanity on the planet—humans
are
doomed down here, if you didn’t notice—so they figure the worse they look, the more daring my experiment must have been. See, subtlety doesn’t work with the great unwashed masses. They want clarity. A statement, if you will.” She dropped the sarcasm for a moment, saying softly, “And meanwhile, I am trying my best to find an adaptation. Some of the … more pleasant Somaformers actually have a chance of living a few years longer.” Her eyes flicked up at him, with a bitter edge to them. “You’re not so naive to think that one geneticist working with five hundred-year-old equipment is going to make rapid progress, are you?”

“No. So you’re alone, then?”

“Yup. The last one. The last scientist. Shit, sounds like a bad story title.”

“I thought you had assistants.”

“Yeah, I got ’em. Worthless, half-educated techies. And Gregor is the best of them, so you see how far we’ve slipped. Can you imagine how hard it’s been to do research, and keep up on the atmospheric and biome transformations on the surface, and repair the Lab defenses and systems, all the while carrying out a decent education program?”

Reeve could imagine. It had been exactly the same on Station. He nodded.

“Add to that, we’ve got processions and rituals and the goddamned pretense that all this has to do with Deity and our original sin of terraforming.” She glared at him momentarily. “
You
try being a sixty-three-year-old glamour girl doing a show a day.”

She sighed. “Look. I’m an old woman, doing what I can in the corner of the world I got stuck in. I’m a colossal failure. But when I’m gone Gregor takes my place, the spineless panderer. And, of course, he never grasped the science, not solidly. For him it’s about power and prestige. Saving humanity, that’s just window dressing. So when I’m gone, window dressing is all that’s left.” Her voice became eerily quiet. “If you think it’s monstrous
now
, just wait.”

“Why did you teach them enough to do such harm?” He regretted saying it the instant it came out. He rather liked this Brecca, but he knew he shouldn’t presume on her forbearance.

Brecca gazed at the unlit cigarette in her hand, slowly working it back and forth between her thumb and forefinger. “I’m not sure how it all happened. It just … evolved—you see? It happened so slowly, I didn’t even notice.”

He kept his silence a long while.

Finally she said: “My parents taught me science, and when they were gone, I taught others, and the scientists tolerated the religious stuff because it provided experimental subjects. Then, suddenly, the scientists
were … gone. They had died out. The science was small, the religion was big.” She put the cigarette back in the box, and sat limply holding the container. “I tried running away once. Gregor came after me. We never talk about it, but he has me watched all the time.” She smiled a stony smile at Reeve. “You wonder why I let it all hang out around Gregor? Because he already knows what I am: a complete sham, both as priestess and scientist. Yeah, Greggy knows me all right. We’re close, in our own sick way. Like a juvenile animal will cling to its parent even if the adult turns on it. That’s how important it is to be known.”