Read Singularity's Ring Online
Authors: Paul Melko
Singularity's Ring (32 page)
We have seen the collection stations, even played with them by tossing sticks into the parabolic collector and watching them ignite. Only Strom has considered them as weapons.
The colonel lets us think it through. He nods when Meda looks at him again.
“We don’t know why. We sorely want to find out. Everything we’ve tried has failed.”
“Why not force?”
“If it comes to that, we will. But I’m not eager to do it. He has Community tech, like I said, stuff our people don’t have. The Gene Wars were nasty, and we don’t want to go back there again. We thought it had all been destroyed, but he’s dug up a cache. So that’s why militarily. Then there’s politics.”
“The singletons.”
“Yes, you have it right. We pods sorta were all that was left standing after the Exodus, but the singletons aren’t gone, though it’d be a simpler thing if they were.”
“Colonel,” Mother Redd says with a voice we know well from childhood.
“I’m just hypothesizing, not wishing, Madame Redd,” he says. “The enclaves have lobbied long and hard against their second-class citizenship. So we gave them the Congo Desert. And a fair amount of autonomy. We can’t go in there with guns blasting like they can’t deal with their problems.”
“Why are you here, Colonel?”
He wants us to infiltrate the singletons.
He wants us to stop Malcolm Leto.
Meda shudders and clamps down hard on her memories.
“I just need your help,” he says. “We don’t know how
this Leto thinks. We need some information to help us get close to him.”
this Leto thinks. We need some information to help us get close to him.”
“You have everything we know,” we say. “We were debriefed thoroughly after the event.”
“I know. I know,” he says. “But if we don’t come up with something soon, the only option will be military. And no one wants that. Leto could have nano or virus weapons, and we don’t know where he is.”
We could go,
Strom sends.
Strom sends.
We have an interface jack,
Manuel sends.
Manuel sends.
It can gain us access,
Quant sends.
Quant sends.
We’re a pod,
Moira replies, her thoughts etched with concern for her sister.
We’ll stick out like a pink bear.
Moira replies, her thoughts etched with concern for her sister.
We’ll stick out like a pink bear.
It’s okay,
Meda sends, a thought directed at Moira. To the rest, she adds,
He has to be stopped and if we can help …
Meda sends, a thought directed at Moira. To the rest, she adds,
He has to be stopped and if we can help …
The consensus is strong, as if we have been waiting to make this decision our whole lives.
“We’re willing to go,” Meda says.
“I’m not asking—”
“It’s all right, Colonel. We’ll go. It’s necessary.”
Mother Redd shakes her head. “Children, you don’t have to.”
“We do have to.”
The colonel nods, his face heavy with emotion. “We appreciate what you’re doing. You won’t be alone. You’ll be part of a team.”
“We’re a pod, and it’ll be obvious,” we say.
“Yes and no. They’ve recruited a number of our ecologists and geneticists. You’d be placed in the next immigrant group to go over.”
“But not as a quintet.”
“Well, that would give you away.”
“We’ve had practice acting as a trio and a duo. We’ve also had practice acting alone.”
The colonel nods. “We know.”
It’s necessary.
“We’ll do it.”
We take a suborbital from the Institute to Rabat, one of the only pod domains on the African continent. Nearly all of Africa is uninhabited, and that which is populated is by singletons. In Rabat, we stop acting like a quintet.
Surprising how easy it is,
Strom sends.
Strom sends.
It is a conversation among the boys, and the girls can still hear it, though we do not react or respond.
“Zeus Rhinefaust?” the woman asks. She is a singleton.
“Yes?” Strom says. “I am Zeus.”
“And who is your friend?”
We think she is referring to Meda, Moira, and Quant, but she is looking at Manuel.
Together the two of them say, “I am Zeus Rhinefaust.”
The singleton looks flustered. Then she rips up the form she has been filling out—paper, not electronic.
“You’re a cluster. I have to use a different form.” Her manner has cooled. We and one more pod of three are the only two in line at the CDS, the Congo Dedesertification Sodality. It is a small building not far from the airport. It is one of only two entry points into the Sodality, and inappropriately small.
“How many people come through here to the CDS?” Strom asks.
The woman looks at him, then pushes a pamphlet forward. Manuel takes it and reads it for all of us. One hundred twenty-four thousand members, six years into a twenty-five-year plan to recover the Congo River and its ecosystems. All things that Colonel Krypicz had told us. The pamphlet has nothing on the flow through Rabat.
“So you don’t know?” Strom asks.
“I’ll need your medical reports.”
Strom hands over the two stamped papers. The woman
staples several things together then hands over two booklets. “These are your visas.”
staples several things together then hands over two booklets. “These are your visas.”
“There’s just one of us,” Strom says.
“I see two.”
Strom takes the visas. The visas are labeled Zeus Rhinefaust I and Zeus Rhinefaust II
Manuel sends,
I’m Zeus II
.
I’m Zeus II
.
Meda goes through the same process for her, Moira, and Quant. They are Aphrodite Innanocia, Aphrodite I, II, and III.
“These visas are good for sixty days. If you wish to stay longer, you must be sponsored by a full member of the Sodality. You may not stay longer than sixty days or you will be expelled from the enclave with loss of all property. You may not bring or extract biological material from the enclave. You may not send or receive electronic communication from outside the enclave. You may not violate the CDS Constitution, a superset of OG laws and prohibitions. Failure to comply will result in expulsion and loss of property. The shuttle to Atrakan will leave the shuttle port in three hours. These are your tickets.”
She doesn’t expect us to stay longer than sixty days, does she?
Manuel sends.
Manuel sends.
She is a bureaucrat. She sees things in triplicate.
Just like a pod.
Not at all.
“Thank you,” Meda says, but the singleton is already absorbed in her paperwork. The triplet behind us steps forward. We give Duchess Monahan a bland smile. She is a biologist, also recruited by Colonel Krypicz, who will be our contact in the Congo.
The aircar to Atrakan is filled with young singletons who stare at us as if we are aliens. Their raucous talk ceases as we climb into the aircar.
Spoiled their party, didn’t we,
Manuel says.
Manuel says.
We stifle our chemical thoughts, let our minds trickle to a stop. What pheromones we can choke off, we do. We know that the smell of it is what singletons complain of the most. We think these things alone and gather them later, when we can in groups of two, three, or five. The day is hazy in our recollection, but still we remember Quant’s thought:
They are alone, so alone. Each of them.
For her it is worse. She drifts in and out of consciousness. No, not consciousness. She is always conscious. But her awareness fades away.
The other thing we remember is the boy, just a teenager, looking over at Manuel from the chair in front and whispering, “Freak.”
Manuel shakes his shoe off his foot and waves at the boy with his prehensile foot.
Moira touches his wrist and sends,
Don’t antagonize the natives.
Don’t antagonize the natives.
We use a public terminal to find a youth hostel near the airport; the goal is for us to find temporary work while we search for any signs of Leto. The terminal is local only; we can find no way to access the OG networks. Colonel Krypicz has told us that the CDS is cut off from the rest of the world.
Wearing our sleeves long in the cooling night and our collars up, we check in with a long-haired boy who doesn’t notice we’re a pod. The hostel is a common room with several cot-filled adjacent rooms. We find one that we can share and when we shut the door it is as if we can think again. As if we have been holding our breath underwater and now we break through the surface and swallow air.
That feels good,
Quant sends.
Quant sends.
We consense, determining a course for the next day. The colonel has given us a contact, a singleton, who might
be able to help us find work. But Strom is reluctant. Other agents have entered the CDS and died. The possibility that Malcolm Leto or other forces have compromised the colonel’s agents is real.
be able to help us find work. But Strom is reluctant. Other agents have entered the CDS and died. The possibility that Malcolm Leto or other forces have compromised the colonel’s agents is real.
We traveled from the Amazon to the Rockies by ourselves. We can do this,
Moira says.
Moira says.
Plus thirty-six thousand kilometers from GEO,
Quant adds.
Quant adds.
The Amazon was a different river,
Manuel sends.
Manuel sends.
But we were still outside the pod community and on our own.
We should continue on our own.
We should find a job as far in-country as possible.
If Leto is anywhere, it’s there.
Agreed.
The consensus is quick. In the morning we will find work in one of the sodalities or guilds working upriver. We clear the floor, cover it with the mattresses and blankets from the cots. We are tired from the flight. Soon we fall asleep.
At dawn, loud music from the main room wakes us.
They want us out of here early,
Manuel mutters.
Manuel mutters.
For a bit of singleton scrip, we buy the meager breakfast: toast, jam, and coffee. The other guests eye us, but none appear hostile. There are two girls and two boys, teenagers, sitting in the main room with us. They are dressed in dungarees and armless jackets, with various material hooked to their vests. The circles under their eyes speak of late nights imbibing and smoking.
Hostel, not hostile,
Quant sends.
Quant sends.
It’s too early for hostility,
Manuel replies.
Manuel replies.
Singletons abuse their bodies,
Strom sends. Tattoos mark their necks, crude moving symbols, fashionable fifty years before. They spell out kanji characters one after another.
Strom sends. Tattoos mark their necks, crude moving symbols, fashionable fifty years before. They spell out kanji characters one after another.
There’s no one in a singleton to veto,
Manuel sends.
Manuel sends.
“The consensus of one is always false,” Moira whispers. It is a tenet of pod philosophy.
Though they have dark eyes, their hands are rough and callused.
Ask them about work.
“I’m looking to find a sodality to work for,” Meda says to one of the girls.
The other girl laughs, a grunt.
“The girls can work for sure,” one of the boys says. He has dark hair that droops over his eyes.
“Not that kind of work,” Meda says, though she is hiding her first reaction. “Work with the CDS.”
“If you got the money to bribe for work, you don’t need to work,” the girl who laughed says. She is thick all over with muscle such that we think she must use drugs to gain the size.
“Who do we have to bribe?”
“The unions. The foremen. The police. Anyone and everyone. Still may not do any good.”
“Where do we go? Upriver?”
“They don’t hire up there,” the girl replies. “They hire down here and ship the crews up. They hire at the meat market.”
“Helps if you can operate the machinery,” the other boy says. His shirt is pierced in a dozen spots with stainless steel rings that jingle when he eats. “Or drive a boat. Or lift heavy stuff.”
We can fly a starship.
“We can do a lot of stuff. We have biology training too.”
The first girl looks at us, one after the other. There is no smell to let us know what she is thinking. No pheromones that we can detect. We think how lonely singletons must be.
“I’ve never seen a cluster before. Is that what you are? Not five people?”
“We’re two pods,” Meda lies. Moira doesn’t even flinch anymore when she does. “The boys are one, the girls another.”
It’s expedient,
Moira explains.
Moira explains.
“Weird,” the first boy says. “Very weird.” He looks at Strom. “You have two dicks.”
“And you have six boobs!” the second boy jokes.
Ignoring the comment, Meda asks, “Where do we go to look for work?”
The first girl looks at her watch, passes a nasty look at the boys, and says, “I’ll show you where to go. Come on.”
Her name is Violet. Her companions, trailing after us, are Ramone, Isis, and Ferd. They lead us through the edge of the downtown, through areas we had not seen in the dwindling light the night before. Abandoned, pre-Exodus factories, and others that are still alive, billowing smoke into the air. Steel plants, refineries, concrete factories. Raw materials sit in piles. Finished products file past on the robotransports, always east.
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