Chango swallowed and nodded her head, turning the car towards the Eastern Market. oOo

Benny was in the middle of a crushing mob of vatdivers, surging towards the line of police up the street.

“Fan out!” he screamed, “Fan out onto the side streets! We can still catch her!” He spotted Val only three feet away, “Val!” he shouted, trying in vain to press through the mob towards him. “Val! Go down Denton!” But he didn’t hear him, and then the crowd surged again, and Benny lost sight of him. He worked his way out of the riot and down an alley behind Compau Street. Vonda and Helix could have gone down any of the side streets around the vat yard. He really needed a team of ten or twenty to follow all their possible escape routes, but this was strictly a solo gig, now. He ran down Faber to Lumpkin and past a row of warehouses. At the far corner he saw a red and yellow chevy crossing Lumpkin, going down Holbrook. Chango’s car. He was too far away to see who was in it, but it was the only lead he had. He raced down Evaline now, heading for Conant. Hopefully she’d turn down Conant. As he passed a crumbling and vacant parking lot he bent down to scoop a rock up off the ground. Still running, he scraped it hard across his forehead over his right eye, and clenching it in his fist, struck himself on the cheek, hard enough, he hoped, to raise a bruise. But his cosmetic alterations were in vain. By the time he got to Conant he could just see the Chevy in the distance, heading south and east, towards the Market and Orielle’s.

He sat on the curb and leaned back on his hands, staring up at the sun blazing away in a cloudless sky. In the distance he could still hear the police sirens and angry screaming. This was the riot he’d tried to prevent back when Ada was organizing the vatdivers. Now it had happened. She was long dead, and it happened anyway.

If he had known, way back when Graham first contacted him, that it would all end up the same, no matter what, would he have turned him down? Probably not, and for the same reason that he was still here, all these years later. He should have left Vattown long ago, but the thought of leaving all his friends behind stopped him. Hugo, Val, Coral... it was because of them that he’d done what he did. And because of them he’d stayed here, huddling around the memories of what he now realized was the best time of his life; that summer before they started diving, when they had all seemed immortal and infallible, touched by the sun like gods.

But now Hugo was dead too, and Benny wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. When this was over he’d shake the dust of Vattown from his shoes, and take himself someplace that was not ripe with memories of corpses.

He sat up, took a long look up and down the empty street, and fished his holotransceiver from his pocket.

oOo

Hector clenched and unclenched his fists as he entered Graham’s office and took a seat before the vast grey cellite desk. Graham kept his desk empty of clutter, and the translucent smokey grey surface reflected the downtown skyline from the windows behind it. Outside the sun was shining, but in Graham’s desk, it was always a cloudy day. Hector’s eyes wandered to the multi-processor perched on one corner of the desk, a bobbing brain encased in clear cellite. He jumped as a side door opened and Graham entered the room.

He didn’t waste any time on niceties this time around. No offers of drinks or inquiries into his health. He just glared at Hector, and then stood looking out the window with his back to him. “They’re striking down there,” he pointed in the general direction of Vattown and turned to face Hector again, “and do you have any idea why?”

Hector shook his head, “Not really, no. Better wages?”

Graham bared his teeth and laughed savagely, “You really are a piece of work, Martin. How could I let myself be so thoroughly bamboozled by you? I bought your whole mild-mannered absent-minded genius shtick, retail. I was so busy feeling contempt for you that I never began to imagine how subversive you really are.”

Hector felt unexpected pride at being described as subversive. He’d never thought of himself that way, but considering the tetras and how far he’d gone to protect them, he supposed it was true. This knowledge gave him courage. “What’s this about, Graham?” he said.

“You know goddamn well what this is about! That little creature of yours has stirred up a hornet’s nest in production! Seems she went vatdiving without a suit, and somebody used my clearance code to make sure she didn’t get fired for it. But of course, you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

Fear gripped Hector’s intestines and squeezed. Graham could only be referring to Helix. When she left, Hector had hoped she’d get as far away from GeneSys as possible, but apparently that wasn’t the case. She’d gone only as far as Vattown and then taken the first opportunity available to gain access to the vats

— as a diver. “Actually no, I don’t know anything about it,” he said.

“Oh come on, she’s going by the name Helix Martin, and you’re telling me you don’t know anything?

Lilith kicked you out of the vat room because of her, didn’t she?”

Hector sighed. “Yes, she did.”

“Why? And don’t tell me you don’t know.”

“I - I found Helix outside the vat room. As near as I can tell the other tetras ganged up on her and drove her out. It has to do with their social structure. There can only be one queen to a hive.”

“So you helped her. Helped her get that job down in Vattown, but I have it on good authority that she’s only been working there for a few weeks. You had to do something with her in the meantime. Slatermeyer insists that he doesn’t know what happened to the egg. Yes, I know about the egg. You couldn’t have taken her to the lab. You had her living with you didn’t you? In your apartment. That’s sick Martin, really sick.”

Hector glared at him. “We weren’t lovers, Mr. Graham, if that’s what you’re implying. I couldn’t send her back to the vat room, they would have killed her.”

“But you could have housed her in the lab, only you didn’t because you knew it would attract attention and you couldn’t afford that.” Graham stepped around his desk and leaned towards Hector. “You see, Martin, I’ve been to see the queen.”

“What? You went there?”

“Yes. Your assistant Colin Slatermeyer took me. Pity about him.”

“What did you do to him?”

Graham shook his head. “Nothing. They took him away and I didn’t see him again after that.”

“Shit, Colin. Why did you make him take you there?”

“I wanted to see for myself, and I’m glad I did. Lilith calls herself the enemy of GeneSys. The tetras have no intention of cooperating with the goals of the project. Even before they drove you out of the vat room, you had to know that. Why did you continue? Why did you harbor that little queen? Why didn’t you tell me what was going on?”

Hector glared at him and gripped the arms of his chair. “I didn’t tell you because you would have canceled the project. Do you have any idea what an accomplishment the tetras are? Higher intelligence functions, language ability, even social organization. And they’re self propagating. It’s a new species, one with features that I haven’t even discovered yet.

“I know what you think of me. That my peak is behind me, with the brains, but you’re wrong. This is it. This is what my life and my career have been for.”

“You’re mad. Take a look outside your tower, Doctor.” Graham gestured towards the window. “We don’t need more people. We don’t have work for the ones already out there. Those creatures of yours can talk and think and fondle each other till the day is night, but it doesn’t give them rights. It doesn’t make them anything but what they are; inconvenient.

“You made them too much like people, Martin. In order to make a place for themselves, they’ll have to displace human beings, and no one’s going to step aside voluntarily. Ever heard of the twentieth century?