Against Gravity (19 page)

“All right, we’ve been pussyfooting around this for too long.” Draeger put down his drink and leant against the arm of a couch, his arms folded. “I’ve recently
become aware of a plan on the part of certain of your fellow Labrats to arrange a flight to the
Archimedes
orbital research platform. I can’t allow any such thing unless it’s
under my direct authority. Otherwise I’d feel within my rights to take serious and drastic action to prevent what amounts to piracy.”

“I’m afraid,” said Kendrick carefully, “that I’ve only just become aware of this myself.”

Draeger glanced at him sharply. “You were in Ward Seventeen in the Maze, were you not?”

“What about it?”

Draeger glared at him, as if he was trying to work out whether or not he was being made a fool of.

“Look,” Kendrick continued, once the silence had stretched out a little too long, “I don’t have the ear of any of these people. Some of them keep in touch but I
don’t always go out of my way to reciprocate. Is that why you sent Smeby to Edinburgh? To spy on me?”

“All right. I’m sorry, Mr Gallmon. We seem to be at cross purposes. Perhaps I’ve made some assumptions that I shouldn’t have. However, my offer still stands. I’m
seeking information on certain people – Labrats – who are intending to infiltrate the
Archimedes
.”

Kendrick laughed in astonishment. “You want me to
spy
on them?”

“That’s not the precise word I would use. However, you are – or were – an investigative journalist, one with an excellent reputation.”

“Who else have you made this offer to?” Kendrick fired back. “How many other Labrats have you tried to persuade to spy on each other? Or am I really the first?”

Draeger stared at him evenly. “Perhaps you don’t appreciate what I’m offering you. Your augmentations are killing you slowly, and I’m offering you the opportunity to
live.”

Kendrick tried to think of an answer to that. On the long flight to Cambodia he had found himself with too much time to think about the events of the past several days. What was it, he had
wondered, that had driven Hardenbrooke first to extend the same promise as Draeger – of a way for Kendrick to live without fear of his augmentations – and then to attempt to kill or
kidnap him?

And, of course, he had overheard Hardenbrooke refer directly to Smeby. Now that he was here and being offered a miracle cure for the second time, it didn’t take a great leap of imagination
to see the connection.

“I wondered why you invited me out here, why you sent Smeby after me. At first it didn’t make sense why you’d show such an interest in me. But you did, and there had to be a
reason for that. I was put in touch with an American medic called Hardenbrooke, by a man named Mikhail Vasilevich. Hardenbrooke gave me a series of treatments that seemed to halt the rogue growth
of my augmentations in its tracks. He too talked about permanent cures.”

Draeger listened impassively.

“The
next
thing that happens, an old friend turns up out of the blue and tells me that I can’t trust Hardenbrooke, that he’s dangerous; that he’s pumped me full of
something else along with the stuff that’s supposedly curing me, and which allows him or whoever he’s working for to gather information about me.”

Draeger nodded appreciatively. “It’s an entertaining fantasy, but still only a fantasy.”

“I don’t know that it is. What’s the real benefit to you of bringing me here and offering me a cure? An act of sheer charity?” Kendrick shook his head. “Of course
it isn’t. You’ve already told me what you want in return. Otherwise why offer the cure just to me? Why not to all the other Labrats too? No, this way you get me to jump through some
hoops for you.”

Draeger didn’t speak but his expression was getting angry. “Thing is,” Kendrick continued, “I could never be sure before where Hardenbrooke got the stuff he was using on
me. But now I know: he got it from you.”

“This is nonsense—”

“No, it’s the truth, isn’t it?” Kendrick snapped. “The one thing I do know is that Hardenbrooke is scared of you. The treatments he gave me came from
your
research. Everything makes sense if he and Vasilevich were both working for you. But they double-crossed you, didn’t they? They supplied the same information that they obtained to Los
Muertos.”

It fitted perfectly. Draeger knew that Hardenbrooke had cheated him, so he’d taken matters directly in hand by inviting Kendrick to Cambodia. Kendrick met Draeger’s eye and knew he
was right.

A silence ensued. Kendrick saw Draeger glance past him and realized they were no longer alone. The breath caught in his throat as he turned to see that Smeby had silently re-entered the room.
Nobody
could sneak up on a Labrat like that without them hearing. Unless, of course, he reminded himself, they too were augmented.

Smeby caught his gaze for a moment and Kendrick turned away, suddenly less sure of himself.

“All right,” said Draeger. “I can see you’re not interested in anything I have to say. However, I would nevertheless like to send a message.”

“Who to?” Kendrick laughed. “I’m not your messenger boy.”

“If you don’t want me to help you, then perhaps you’d care to tell your friends from Ward Seventeen that if they want to get to the
Archimedes
they’re going to
need my help. Or else they’re going to die, for all their efforts. Tell them that.”

“Why don’t you tell them yourself?”

“I
am
telling them – through you.”

“To be frank with you, Mr Draeger, I don’t see why I should do any such thing. Even if I knew where to find them.”

Draeger’s smile was thin, humourless. “Maybe you’ll change your mind in time. Mr Smeby, would you escort our guest to his homeward flight?”

Kendrick watched as Draeger turned and headed back behind his desk, ignoring him now.

Don’t let him win this one by losing your temper.

Draeger clearly didn’t believe that Kendrick had no special inside knowledge of anyone’s plans concerning the
Archimedes
. Now it was up to Kendrick to find a way to capitalize
on that mistake – and if Draeger wasn’t prepared to illuminate things any further, then Kendrick would have to figure out what was going on by himself.

“What is it that keeps you here, Smeby?”

They were back outside now, descending the steep stone steps to where the little electric car still waited. Kendrick had suffered a brief terror that Draeger had no intention of letting him go,
that he was caught in a trap. But nothing threatening had happened.

Then again, he realized, if Draeger kept him here Kendrick would never be able to deliver his message.

“He offered to make you better,” Smeby replied. “Perhaps you should have taken that offer up.”

“On principle, I don’t accept anything where I don’t know what I’ll find myself paying in return.”

They got into the car and Smeby sat behind the controls. “Either what you did back there was very brave or very stupid, or maybe both,” Smeby said. “I haven’t yet quite
decided which.”

“You’re augmented,” said Kendrick. It was a statement, not a question.

“But I’m not a Labrat, no.”

“Why, Smeby? You must have known the risks.”

“I used to be a mercenary. Some advantages are worth the risks.”

“So has it been? Worth it, I mean?”

Smeby pursed his lips, and waggled a free hand in the air between them.
So-so
. Then he returned his attention to steering the car.

A few minutes later Smeby spoke again. “Here’s something else. What if I suggested to you that President Wilber was right in what he did?”

“Then I’d suggest back to you that you were crazy, or deluded, or both,” Kendrick replied. “Is that really what you think?”

“Let’s just say that I think America’s downfall was for reasons other than those that you may think brought it down. I’d suggest that weakness brought it down, and I
respected Wilber for his strength and commitment. He believed in values like honour and duty, and things like that don’t go away.”

Kendrick peered ahead, spotting the tower where he’d landed earlier. The VTOL still stood there, waiting high above the trees.

Smeby continued: “The next time we meet, Mr Gallmon, it might not be on such friendly terms. You should remember that.” As the car jerked to a halt Kendrick noticed Candice waiting
for them at the base of the tower.

“I’d have to say that sounds a lot like a threat,” Kendrick replied.

“Money is power, Mr Gallmon. It wouldn’t require much effort to get you taken in by the appropriate authorities.” Smeby studied him now with cold, hard eyes.
“You’re already living under a false identity. The fact that your augmentations have turned against you means that you should have registered for voluntary medical quarantine. If
someone knows enough about you, that puts you potentially in a very bad place.”

Kendrick said nothing, knowing it was true. He suddenly felt cold despite the intense heat. It would be a simple matter for Draeger or Smeby to turn him in.

He began to wonder exactly what he was going home to.

17 July 2088
Experimental Ward Seventeen, The Maze

Someone was screaming, a high banshee ululation that went on for ever.

Kendrick remembered an operating theatre, men and women in antiseptic blue smocks. Then a metal coffin, its smooth walls surrounding him, his heart beating wildly as he was plunged into
darkness, his arms and legs shackled together while a thick, viscous liquid filled his nose and lungs. He remembered wires and tubes sprouting from his flesh. He remembered desperately trying to
beg for mercy even as they closed the lid on him, leaving him to wonder if they would ever let him out again.

The liquid had an antiseptic taste that turned his lips and tongue numb before he lost consciousness.

Now Kendrick woke and found himself back in the same narrow cot, in the same Ward that had been his home for these past several weeks. He was still in the Maze, somewhere in its deep
subterranean levels that riddled the earth with echoing steel and concrete chambers and corridors, filled with the tortured cries and screams of other human beings.

His eyes opened to see bare and unpainted walls, the ceiling crowded with rust-coloured iron conduits. He felt a scratchy numbness in his chest as if his heart had become filled with dried
flowers. He tried to part his lips, but they were so dry that they stuck together.

Kendrick lifted up his head and found he had been tied down with restraints. Nonetheless, he caught sight of the fresh, livid scars that criss-crossed his chest, and he moaned with terror.

Down here in the wards all the guards wore contam suits. He could see one standing near the entrance to the Ward with a rifle half lifted to his shoulder, his mouth a round gaping
“O” of astonishment, visible through his plastic visor.

At first, Kendrick thought that the guard was staring at him. Though his arms were tied down just below the elbows, he managed to raise his hands high enough so that he could see them by craning
his head around the right way. He saw strange patterns in his flesh, unfamiliar ridges like maps of the surfaces of alien moons.

Kendrick turned his head the other way and saw another prisoner strapped to the adjoining cot. The man’s mouth gaped, his face red and sweat-slick from the effort of screaming.

A name floated to the top of Kendrick’s thoughts: Torrance – that was the other man’s name. Like Kendrick, Torrance wore a one-piece disposable uniform. Both their heads were
kept shaved. They even shared similar scars where the surgeons had cut into their bodies.

Something was pushing its way out of Torrance’s flesh, something shiny, black and metallic-looking, sliding out through his skin like thorny spines, appearing through his neck or sliding
out between his ribs. As if caught in a dream, Kendrick perceived, as though from a great distance, that the spines were rough-surfaced, formed of tight fibrous bundles apparently glued or bound
together. They glistened wetly, slick with their host’s blood.

Torrance began to shake inside his restraints, his body seized by a fit. His screaming choked off suddenly, a wet and bubbling noise emerging from his lungs instead. With surprising vigour,
Torrance jerked and rattled in his cot until it began to slip away from the wall. Kendrick continued to watch with horrified fascination as the spines weaved around in the air, the husk of
Torrance’s body splitting and tearing as if something had become trapped inside it and was trying desperately to escape.

Then a strange, high-pitched laugh sounded. It was the kid, still only in his teens. Robert something? Kendrick turned his attention to him. Robert, in turn, studied Torrance’s dying
agonies with a horrible fascination. Sudden anger swelled in Kendrick’s chest. He knew that the boy was insane, not responsible for his actions, but nonetheless he ached to hurt Robert for
seeming to take such delight in Torrance’s agony.

Then Kendrick relaxed, because it was, after all, just a dream. He let his head drop back onto the cot’s rubber surface and closed his eyes.

As soon as he shut his eyes, bright white light exploded deep within his mind . . . and for a moment he
was
Torrance, screaming piteously because his body was being torn apart . . . and
then he was Erik Whitsett, sleeping his endless sleep on the other side of the Ward, near where the guard still stood in uncertain shock while doctors and technicians, dressed in similar bulky
contam suits, rushed past him into the Ward.

Whitsett was dreaming of his family, who were waving to him from a great distance . . . Something else, then: Kendrick had the sensation of being watched, as if some powerful, godlike mind had
suddenly entered the expanded realm of his consciousness. Memories and emotions that weren’t his own assailed him.

He forced his eyes open again and heard a spasmodic banging sound. He twisted his head to one side to see a huddle of men in contam suits standing near – but not too near – the cot
where Torrance now lay dead.

He followed their gaze, to the far end of the Ward.