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Brigadier Nguyen’s captive American nanocommandos now resided, if that was the word, in a state-of-the-art underground complex. Months of experimentation had dug out all their secrets.
Of course, they had experienced very little pain as they lay helpless, usually unconscious, strapped to the tables. Many of the laboratory staff were Edens, loyal to Australia and the Free Communities, but also unlikely to stand for anything that smacked of torture or inhumanity. Thus, Nguyen decided, it was time to make a change, to move to the next phase.
First he reorganized the research facility. Edens ended up working with other Edens on projects that, while important and vital, did not impinge on their sympathy for their subjects. They toiled at reverse engineering, reengineering, and reprogramming the American nanites in accordance with Nguyen’s instructions. Injected into humanely treated test subjects, the tiny robots healed tissue, carried oxygen, and protected cells from the damaging effects of the cold and vacuum of space. They boosted or slowed metabolism, they augmented muscle strength and reaction speed, all as they had been designed to do, but subtly altered.
The most important goal for Nguyen’s Eden scientists was to limit the nanites’ lifespan. To allow them to reproduce, but only so many times, allowing the user perhaps three months of full efficiency and another three months before their pseudo-life faded, halted, and they were excreted from the body. Once achieved, this goal would ensure both his control over the technology, and would eliminate the chance of rogue nano-replications finding their way out into the environment and running free in the ecosystem.
Before they were even a reality, they called these safer nanites Fully Controllable Nanobots, or FCNs, and the Edens were dedicated to improving them to the benefit of Australia, the Free Communities and the world.
Nguyen’s smaller staff of normals and Psychos – each implanted with a deadman charge next to his or her heart – worked on somewhat different projects. Where the FCNs were modified to avoid entering the brain, and to do nothing if they did, the American commando nanos became the basis for many interesting experiments. Had these become known to the Edens they would have been appalled and horrified to see what was done beneath their feet, in the deeply buried underground levels of the laboratory.
Some days Nguyen would observe through the thick glass as a dangerous new nano was tested on the Americans. He especially liked to watch Huff as he screamed and struggled against his restraints, experimental machines running wild through his body for just long enough. Then the electromagnetic field would be fed power and the variant combat nanites inactivated, dialyzed out, and FCNs reintroduced to help the man heal. Spooky enjoyed hearing Huff cry out for mercy from this hell, but sometimes he allowed the escape of unconsciousness.
Other days he locked everyone out of the private observation room except for Ann, and they would enjoy his screams together while indulging themselves. If only Deliah could see me now, he thought, she would be lost to me. To keep two mistresses, one Eden and one Psycho, is to walk the knife’s edge without being cut. What greater pleasure can there be than to do what is prohibited, and not be found out...and to do it again.
His pleasures never interfered with his efficiency...or so he told himself. Every day he meditated and performed an extensive set of martial-arts exercises. Twice a week he trained with one of several masters of the combative sciences, ensuring he kept his body hard and fit. And whenever he could, he wined, dined, and bedded Deliah Pelapolos.
She had been resistant at first, of course. Sleeping with the boss would be an assault on her integrity – and his, in her view. Still, his charms and persuasions had led to talks, dates, and eventually assignation. Most women can be seduced by power, he thought, by flattery, gifts, and the right kind of rationalization, no matter how nice a girl they like to think themselves. They say, “we really love each other, so the rules don’t apply.” Eventually they become so intoxicated they cannot resist.
He even took her out to see the Orion site, where the skeleton of Ekara’s spaceship was beginning to take shape. Nguyen was a VIP, so given the full treatment, and Deliah basked in his reflected power and status. She no doubt believed she would one day be more than merely his girlfriend, and he did not disabuse her of that notion...but he knew it would never be. If she ever grew tiresome, he had many ways of making her disappear. An unfortunate accident: yes, some particularly nasty nano, you see. No, her body was contaminated, it has been destroyed, but her government life insurance is quite generous and all of her relatives will be well-compensated, including you, sir...
All in all, Spooky Nguyen was as happy as a patient man with unsatisfied ambitions could be.
His only disruption, if one could call it that, came in the form of one old man called Maka. An Aborigine who accompanied the tribal warrior Kalti in his spear-fighting school, he always sat on the sidelines of the dirt practice yard with a look of intense concentration as the master trained his students. Every time Spooky came to train, he saw the gnarled fellow with his equally twisted stick.
As Spooky diligently added the native martial arts of Australia to his extensive repertoire, sweating and striking with his blunted spear, the wizened shaman would laugh at the strangest times. Clapping his hands, striking his heavy twined stick on the ground, he called out in his native Warlpiri, incomprehensible to the Vietnamese.
Despite his resolve and concentration, Nguyen found himself distracted, and would often be struck down by his huge, fit opponent, or by one of the other students. He presumed it was part of the training, to learn to be less distracted, but it seemed particularly difficult to block out Maka’s cries.
This latest session began as it always did, with a ritual warm-up much like Japanese kata, or form. Nguyen and several other advanced students followed the spearmaster Kalti in the heavy, stomping movements. When they were finished, instead of continuing with the training, Spooky walked over, intending to sit down next to Maka just out of arm’s reach.
As he did so, the old man reached out with his staff and struck at Nguyen’s foot. Instinctively the small Asian lifted his leg and was thereby unprepared for the stick’s hooking pull on his supporting knee, which brought him to the ground. Slapping the dirt and rolling, he came up facing the laughing elder.
Clever old man. I underestimated him. That will not happen again. He glanced toward Kalti, who also laughed uproariously.
Aborigines had a different sense of face and decorum than he, which was one of the reasons he attended this training, so he did not allow himself to be offended. I am here to learn, and I have just learned a valuable lesson. Or relearned it. Perhaps I am getting soft, with my power and my mistresses.
Spooky bowed to Maka, never taking his eyes away, and then with superb balance and awareness, stepped back to sit down next to the old man. This time there was no movement of staff, no test or demonstration. The two sat there in apparent peace and harmony, watching the rest of the session. Maka laughed and called out as usual, but Nguyen put himself into a hyperaware meditative trance, always ready for the slightest hint of attack.
It never came.
But his intense observation allowed him to realize what he had so foolishly overlooked before. The old man’s shouts and laughter reinforced or disrupted the training in subtle ways. They refocused the energy of the combatants, much as a kiai did for the karateka, much like he himself had used on Huff to disrupt his attack in the hangar. Like a wizard, the shaman stood back and conferred victory on whom he wished through a kind of psychological magic.
Yes, he thought, I have much to learn here, and the first lesson is humility. The second is that the guiding hand is the real master. And the third is that partnership brings victory. I have been going it alone too much, relying on myself. Using people when I should be, at least in some cases, truly cooperating. He turned to Maka then, looking the man directly in his wrinkled prune-face where his eyes shone like opals. “Thank you for the lesson, Master Maka.”
Maka merely laughed, and spoke one word. “Dadirri,” he said, then went back to watching Kalti as he swung, spun and swept his spear.
Yes, there is much here to discover. I have buried myself in work, and in pleasure.
As a westerner would say: I need to get out more.
—-
Cassandra Johnstone shrugged off her thick overparka, leaving just her down vest on, standard wear for those at the Free Communities’ Cormack Antarctic research station. The interior temperature was usually around 60 Fahrenheit, chilly for those not acclimatized. She picked up her tablet from the desk of her temporary office and read the email from Elise again.
It was couched in careful qualifications, but it still made her uneasy. Human subjects for Reaper Plague trials. This is where we start sliding down the slippery slope, she thought. So necessary, so important, the least of all evils, it could save millions. What’s one or three or a dozen prisoners’ lives compared to that? She almost slammed the thing on the desk, but remembered how everything here had to be flown thousands of miles, so she slid it into her jacket instead.
She wandered slowly through the building, greeting people now and again but mostly thinking. Her portion of the sprawling complex was a kind of genteel prison, housing low-risk detainees who still had information to give. They called it simply The House. She’d refused to consider using the place as an Antarctic Guantanamo, to hold people outside the law. That wasn’t her purpose. Everyone there was free to leave – to their own countries of origin. None of them wanted to go back. This was their path to Free Community citizenship and expiation of their crimes.
In fact most of her people here were defectors like the former commando Marquez, happy enough to have every drop of intelligence wrung out of them and to try to prove their value to Cassandra and thereby the Free Communities.
She didn’t say it too loud, but one of the important functions of The House was to recruit her own intelligence agents, spies who could adopt new identities, return to their native lands, and provide her with the information she needed.
Some well-meaning people thought the Eden Plague and its virtue effect had done away with the need for spies. But as long as there were nations with wildly differing goals and views of their destinies, as long as the Earth remained disunited, the Free Communities would need to know what was going on within the other regimes.
Maybe someday the human race will be united, Cassandra thought. You’d think that the threat of alien invasion would do it. Maybe we’ve made some progress in that direction, but it’s not happened yet. Until it does, Cass, you have a job.
She stopped in at the cantina for hot chocolate, tipping a dollop of brandy from a flask into the cup as she read the screen again. The sound of sweeping next to her didn’t get her attention, but the man in insulated coveralls who sat down across from her did. He held his broom handle against his cheek and smiled at her. “Hola, senorita. Que pasa?”
“Hey, Marquez. How are you settling in?”
“This is a vacation. Mostly I’m bored. Getting in a lot of gym time.” He banged the broom gently on the floor. “This sweeping is such a workout.” He gestured at her cup. “Got any more of that boom juice?”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “You don’t have alcohol privileges yet. You know how much it costs to fly it out here?”
He shrugged philosophically. “Fair enough. So what you reading?”
Cassandra stared at Marquez for a long moment. “Are you hitting on me, convict?”
“Ouch. Low blow. I was a prisoner of war.”
“I have a copy of your FBI dossier, Julio.”
“Oh.” He looked crestfallen. “Okay, but that’s all in the past. And it was under the Unies. They gave lots of people pardons for what they did the last ten years. I’m an Eden now and I’m reformed. But hey...” He spread his hands. “Even spy ladies need boyfriends.”
The comment struck Cassandra so comically that she burst out laughing, drawing some glances. “You got cojones, Marquez, I give you that. Tell you what. Be a good soldier and prove your rehabilitation, in one year you can ask me out. Ah ah – I didn’t say I’d accept, just that you could ask.” She dropped the smile. “Until then, nose to the grindstone.”
Marquez nodded. “Okay, it’s a deal.” He stood up to go back to work.
“Wait a minute, sit back down.” Cassandra stared at the email from Elise again. “Let me ask you about something. You’ve been here long enough to get a feeling for the rest of your Housemates?”
“Sure, I guess.”
“I have something here. If I tell you, you can’t say anything. Period. Consider it your first test of rehab. You want to hear it?”
He rubbed his scruffy chin. “Okay. I can keep my mouth shut.”
She tapped the corner of the tablet on the table. “This is a request for experimental human subjects, for the Reaper Plague cure effort. I can’t for the life of me think that anyone here would want to volunteer, and the FC doesn’t do capital punishment, so there’s nobody on death row that might see this as an option.”
“They want to test the Reaper Plague on us? The one that’s killing everybody?”
“Yes. They want volunteers in exchange for a pardon for all past actions.”
“And you want me to do it?” he shrugged. “Okay.”
Cassandra’s jaw dropped. “Okay? Just like that? Are you nuts? Why would you risk your life?” She found that she had involuntarily reached across and taken hold of Marquez’s forearm in sympathy. She abruptly let it go.
His mouth quirked upward slightly as he pointedly watched her hand retreat. “I guess you like me a little bit after all. Those long conversations strapped to the table were interesting, huh?”
She shook her head and chuckled. “Stay on topic, Julio. I just wanted to know if you thought any of the Housemates would volunteer.”
“I dunno, but like I said, I will.”
“You’re trying to impress me.”
“Worked, didn’t it?”
Cassandra crossed her arms, for once nonplussed. “Okay. I pride myself on my judgment of people, but that was a surprise. I guess I need to ask the Housemates myself instead of assume I know what they will do.”
Marquez stood up and shrugged. “I guess so.” He paused, searching her eyes. “You a smart lady, Senorita Cassandra, but you don’t know everything.” He pulled out a silver crucifix from under his coveralls and kissed it, then went back to sweeping.
Three people volunteered. After a surreally impromptu going-away party – Cassandra donated all her liquor – they caught the next plane back to South Africa and the Carletonville laboratory where Marquez had been captured.
As Cassandra stood watching the ski-equipped C-130 Hercules take off, she mused on the unpredictability of human beings – for cruelty, for self-sacrifice. Who’d have thought he would be the one to touch my frozen heart. Just a little. I said the same thing about Zeke, and I’ve always had a weakness for military men.
Godspeed, Julio. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t go watch you die. Ten years later and Zeke is too fresh. But I’ll pray you make it through alive.
