Organo-Topia Read online

  “How do you know it was murder?” Professor Vitol was finally able to ask.

  “Puddles of proto on the roof she fell from.”

  He looked sharply at the Detective. “Nanochines.”

  * * *

  Karlen Araj waited in the foyer of Gizela Muceniek's home. On his corn pulsed the levels of lutropin in Gizela's system.

  He was there for a collection.

  Her increase in lutropin had lasted twenty-four hours. The moment it peaked, triggering ovulation, then it was Karlen's turn.

  Lives like a princess, he thought, looking around. Newly assigned to Gizela Muceniek, he took in the crushed-crystal ceilings vaulting above his head like cathedral naves, chandeliers so profuse their light seeped from the walls themselves, carpets thick enough to silence any step, artwork from across the galaxy going back several centuries, mouldings so elaborate he couldn't count the layers of Mirnavian beetle-wood.

  Outside the house was a contingent of officers from the Reproductive Enforcement Division. Gizela had been known to resist in the past, Karlen had been informed. New from the crèche, just graduated from finishing school, Omale Karlen Araj was on his fourth collection. Ten years of indenture remaining at my current rate of pay, he thought, feeling fortunate he might end his servitude to his creators so soon.

  “Muceniek profile,” he said on his trake. Karlen reviewed his information about her, the lutropin graph glowing to one side of his corn.

  Thirty-eight years old, former Justice Gizela Muceniek had donated fifty-five ovum since mandatory collection began. She had been disbarred four years ago after a spate of rulings in favor of Brehume reproductive rights. Justice Gizela Muceniek was married to an Imale thought to lead a guerilla cell. Increasingly across the last five years, she'd become a poster child for the movement, a right-wing militant group whose targets had included Ohume incubation centers, Ihume fertility clinics, and Reproductive Enforcement personnel. For all their stunts, the group had gained little legitimacy with the public. Her highly publicized fight to keep her ovum to herself had cemented her elevation to reproductive rights icon. This profoundly selfish resistance had earned her castigation from most of the political spectrum.

  The lutropin graph peaked and began to flash red. On his coke, a chime sounded and a contralto robo-voice said, “Collection time.” On his corn appeared a schematic of the palatial house, Gizela's location highlighted.

  Karlen rose and threaded his way through anterooms and libraries, corridors and waiting rooms. He saw no one, awed that two people occupied such a vast amount of space. Being a professional media maven had proved more lucrative than her previous occupation.

  Unless she derives her wealth from her ovum donations, he thought.

  He found her in her bedroom, satin sheets bunched up at her hips, her legs splayed.

  “I know what you're here for, so get in there and get it over with!” Her voice was a whip and he flinched.

  Karlen began to disrobe.

  The glowing tip of a blasma pistol appeared at his temple. “Just the crotch, jerker,” snarled the husband. Valdi Muceniek stood six-five and topped three hundred pounds. He wore no clothes, his arched, half-tumescent penis glistening. He could have flattened Karlen with the swat of a finger.

  Karlen climbed atop her, and the thought of the husband's slick snake behind him brought him instantly to orgasm. Instead of ejaculation, Karlen's nano-modified anatomy sent a tentacle up through her cervix and into her uterus. The tentacle slipped up the fallopian tube toward the follicle, where the just-released ovum hovered. Cilia at the tentacle tip gathered the ovum and sealed it off from possible fertilization. His orgasm over, Karlen's penis reeled in the tentacle, which then retracted into his pubic recess.

  “My turn,” Valdi said. He tore Karlen's trousers to his knees and thrust himself deep.

  Karlen gasped.

  Gizela squirmed out from under him. “One rape for another, you dirty lump of laboratory scum,” the woman hissed in his ear.

  The pounding continued interminably, the big man smashing the air from Karlen's lungs with each thrust. Face down, he had no means to resist.

  The heat rushing into him might have been ejaculate or blood. The husband got off him and hurled him bodily toward the door. Wood disintegrated into a shower of splinters. Karlen tried to roll to his feet, but his insides spiked with pain, and all he could do was groan, a fetal curl on carpet.

  Chaos erupted, soldiers surrounding him. Through his haze of pain, he heard someone calling for medical care. Gentle hands helped him onto a gurney. Karlen drifted in and out of consciousness. The husband was led past him, glasma circlets at his wrists.

  “Her too,” someone said.

  “Get your hands off—” and Gizela screeched in pain.

  “Donation intact?”

  “Scanning now, Captain.” A device appeared above Karlen, hummed briefly. “Looks like it, Ma'am.”

  “Lab first, then ER.”

  They hustled him out to the waiting magnambulance. Each time it banked, fresh pain ripped through Karlen's colon. The gurney sheets squished with every turn, blood puddling around his buttocks.

  At the fertility lab, they stretched him out to extract the ovum, which they transferred to zero-kelvin cryo, but not before Karlen died of blood loss.

  * * *

  “Another murder?” Maris groaned, shaking his head. “Lieutenant—!”

  “Plug it, Peterson,” Lieutenant Anita Balodis told him. “This one's open and shut.” She marveled that a phrase so old retained its use four centuries after it originated. Triple masters' degrees in linguistics, criminology, and forensics hadn't landed her anything better than Homicide Lieutenant, the salary barely able to cover her student loans. “The suspects are in booking now. Get your ass down there.”

  “Who's the victim?”

  As if he can't see the case on his corn, Anita thought, staring at the stupid Detective. Outside, the buzz of a busy squadroom invaded her office through the open door. “Get on it, damn it, and close the jerking door!”

  He got, his usual patter of subvocal obscenities incurring a scornful glance from her. The door slammed with impertinence, tempting her to slap him with insubordination.

  All the veteran detectives hated her. Most of them Imales, they swore she'd slept her way to command, but unbeknownst to them, she'd rather jerk a porcupine than mount a man. She wasn't averse to flashing her cleavage when it suited her, but never in the squadroom, never at the precinct. She kept her preferences to herself, her bodice bound with a tight sports-bra at all times, her blouse always buttoned to the neck.

  Lieutenant Anita Balodis thrived on hostility.

  Without it, there wouldn't be murders, and she wouldn't have a job.

  An Ifem, the product of insemination, grown to viability in a lab and reared in a crèche, Anita didn't have a family, her cohort sibs the closest proximal simile. Some Ifems were born naturally, but not Anita. Fewer and fewer were, the risks of in-utero gestation greater than those in a Petrie dish.

  The Lieutenant summoned her holoboard. The projection captured the current, active homicide cases, and it didn't take a rocketry doctorate to see that most of them were reproductive or nanochine related. Fifteen pairs of detectives each with thirty active cases, four hundred fifty murders total, and more rolling in every day. Her best Detective, that asshole Peterson, carried forty just by himself, taking three new cases in the last twenty-four hours.

  “Incoming neuracom,” her coke informed her.

  She saw it was the Commissioner, old Aivars Eglitis himself. That meddling misfit! she thought, what's he want now? “Got the word already, Sir?” she said on her trake. “That was fast.”

  His image appeared on her corn. Grizzled chops, chin flaps, sunken cheeks, florid nostrils—all the hallmarks of an alcoholic. “Gizela Muceniek still has friends over at Justice, Lieutenant. Where the hell's Greshot?”

  She saw Captain Greshot had been conference in, but his connection
remained silent. Probably jerking your press secretary, she wanted to tell him. Greshot jerked everyone, Ihumes and Ohumes alike, of any sex. “Can't say, Sir, sorry. Not sure why he isn't responding to the neuracom.”

  “Who you got on Muceniek?”

  Shit, Anita thought, wants to juggle my assignments. Then he'll blame me for any bungling. Bad enough when the Captain does it. “Peterson, Sir, best I have—”

  “That jerking rogue? I need someone who'll plug the blather, not a blowhard like him!”

  “You want quick and clean, Sir, then it's Peterson.”

  “Change it, damn it!”

  “Yes, Sir,” she said. Jerk you, she thought.

  “And get this one to the DA yesterday!” The neuracom died.

  Greshot came on immediately afterward. “What's the Commissioner want, Lieutenant?” Only his avatar appeared on her corn.

  Probably doing something he doesn't want me to see. “You'd know if you hadn't been tongueing hole,” she told him, pissed he hadn't been available to run resistance.

  “Hey, leave my sex life out of work.”

  “Then quit having sex at work. Commissioner wants Peterson off the Muceniek case. You can tell him to jerk off.”

  “Did you tell him that?”

  “That's your job. I'm doing mine, and Peterson stays.” Anita killed the neuracom and turned to her holoboard.

  Reassigning Peterson would throw the whole juggling act into the trash heap, much as she'd like to do exactly that. Lieutenant Anita Balodis gritted her teeth and growled, wishing she had some better way to deprive him of the glory.

  That jerking media hound will suck up all the attention.

  Chapter 4

  “Jerk me blind!” Detective Maris Peterson almost went out the back door at the sight.

  A platoon of reporters awaited him in front of the precinct. They buzzed around him like flies on poop when he emerged, crapped onto the steps after his unproductive interrogation of the Muceniek pair in booking.

  “No comment,” he said repeatedly, descending the steps and hailing a magnacar on his trake.

  One persistent pup reporter stuck a mike in his face. “It's said she's got friends at Justice. What's your response, Detective?”

  An Omale, Maris saw, just doing his job. On a reporter's salary, he'd be indentured the rest of his life. “Find another line of work, kid.”

  A magnacar pulled out of the clotted street, stopped in front of him, and popped open its door. A two-seater, he saw. Probably charge me double, he thought.

  “And the husband's rumored to be a guerilla-cell leader. Care to confirm?” The shoulder-mount holocam peered at Peterson like a praying mantis.

  Maris got in, and the pup followed. “Coroner,” he told the magnacar. “What species are you, a bulldog?” he asked the kid.

  “Filip Dukur, Telsai Daily News,” the Omale said, sticking out his hand.

  Maris grabbed his ear and looked behind it. “Still wet,” he said, shaking his head. “Listen, Dukur, I got nothin' cause the case is two hours old, all right? Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “Can I tag along to the Coroner's?”

  “Like havin' a goddamn puppy lap dog.”

  “Thank you!” and he threw his arms around Maris, who endured it as a cat might a bath.

  What the hell? he thought. “You gotta lay low, though.”

  “You got it, Detective!” the boy said.

  He'd wag his tail if he had one, Maris thought.

  The magnacar whined to a stop and its door popped open.

  “Thanks for the lift,” the kid said, and he sped down the street, holocam swinging wildly on his shoulder.

  What the hell? Maris thought, shaking his head. Just wanted a free ride, I guess.

  He strode up the steps to the doors of the building, elaborate and daunting on its façade like most municipal buildings. Inside was a foyer packed with people, multiple agencies sharing inadequate space.

  The spidery arms of a nanotector scanned him as he entered. I could be a walking nanochine and the damned thing would let me through, Maris thought, seeing its brand. He made his way to the basement and endured another useless Sabile Nanobio detector scan.

  The receptionist, an Ofem at the job fifteen years, grinned at him from behind reinforced glasma. “Detective Peterson, nice to see you, sorry it's here.”

  “Afternoon, Jana, surprised to see you. I thought you were almost done with your indenture.”

  “Paid it off last week, Detective.” She thrust her arms in the air. “I'm a free woman!” She'd earned her way out of indenture by working two jobs full time across fifteen years.

  He laughed and nodded. “Glad to hear it, girl. What'll you be doing?”

  “I'm thinking of staying on. Urzula's a good boss.”

  “A bit cold and hairless in the warm and fuzzy department, but does a great job.”

  “You here to see her, probably. The Muceniek corpse, right?”

  “Yeah. In the locker already?”

  She let him through, nodding. “High priority, that one. Horrible what they did to him, only five months into his indenture!”

  He nodded. The crime scene vids from the first responders' corns had been gruesome, the Omale bleeding everywhere. “Grats on the grad, Jana.” He waved and went downstairs.

  They let him into the meat locker with nary a glance, his face almost as familiar as their boss's. “Urzula, what you got for your pal?”

  “I told you to jerk off earlier today, Peterson. Why can't you stay jerked off?” Her hazmat apron was covered with blood, and she stood over the corpse, a wedge under the waist pushing the buttocks into the air.

  “Bad penny, honey bear. Besides, they want results on Muceniek yesterday. That the Omale?” He knew it was; he could tell by the damage.

  “You won't jerking believe this, Maris,” she said, gesturing him over. “Take a look.”

  He stepped over and peered at what had once been a young Omale's anus. A three-inch bore hole sank nearly a foot into the abdominal cavity. “Either Valdi Muceniek has a record-book penis, or something else is going on here.”

  “Ambu crew saved me a sample of the fluids,” Urzula said. “Eighty-two percent oxygen, thirteen percent hydrogen, four percent nitrogen—”

  “And no carbon,” the Detective finished for her. “Proto, right?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So Muceniek didn't jerk him to death. Nanochines did.” He looked at the perfect bore, as if machine-drilled. “Why didn't his bowels blow out through the hole?”

  “Epithelial tissue lining the orifice. I've never seen anything like it. As though the nanochines grew him a new asshole.”

  “But why this?” He gestured at the symmetry. “And where'd they come from?”

  “Your bailiwick, Detective,” the Coroner said. “But look at this.” A holograph appeared over the corpse, six gonadotropins laid out across time. Urzula pointed with her finger. “Here's his orgasm,” she said, a slim slice glowing. “Look at the oxytocin, glucocorticoids, estrogen, and T3 and T4 levels.”

  He saw they were all elevated. “What's that mean?”

  “It's the hormonal profile of a fully fertile male in active ejaculatory response.”

  Maris looked at her. “In an Omale? They're infertile.”

  “More than infertile. Instead of ejaculate, they have a hypermotile tendril—”

  “Yeah, I know,” he interrupted. Hearing about it made him squeamish. He looked in the hole where the Omale's anus had been. “Break it down for me, mama bear.”

  “And do your job for you?”

  “All right, all right. You're saying the fully fertile hormonal profile triggered the nanochine attack.”

  Urzula blinked at him blankly.

  And there was only one place the nanochines could have come from.

  * * *

  “Idiot, I said five cc's, not fifty!” Juris Raihman swung his meaty left elbow up into the Omale's face. The elbow caught the nose full-on, a
nd blood sprayed the equipment with a fine mist as the man crumpled to the floor.

  “Get it right next time!” Raihman considered kicking the new indenture in the crotch for good measure. Wouldn't do any good, he thought, doesn't have testicles.

  He turned to look at the other samples the Omale had been titrating. He hated breaking in new indentures. What are they teaching them these days? he wondered, this one a specialized model with twenty teats on his chest, each designed to extrude a different chemical.

  Juris saw that the rack of samples was half-done, but there was no way to tell which ones had been titrated, and which hadn't. He'd have to start over. What really infuriated him was that he wouldn't have known if he hadn't seen the Omale squeeze in too much.

  “Throw them out and clean up, Milkins, and then go home. I'll have a new batch for you tomorrow. And I'll trade you in if you screw them up again.” He wondered what perverse bureaucrat had given the Omale such a ridiculous name.

  “Please don't send me back again,” Milkins pleaded, rolling to his knees. “They'll recycle me.”

  “Those jerkers gave me a trade-in?” Now, he was furious, and he unloaded.

  The Omale didn't even try to evade but just closed his eyes as the boot slammed into his crotch like a comet into a planet.

  Raihman almost had to do surgery to get his foot out, Milkins curled in a ball on the floor around it, gasping.

  Juris headed toward the door, the other Ohumes stepping out of his way.

  “Doctor Raihman, your visitor's waiting,” his secretary said on his coke, the visitor's avatar appearing on his corn.

  Forgot all about him, Juris thought, making his way down the corridor. The red speckles on his white smock looked fashionably messy.

  The Detective waiting in his office looked as if he'd hung at the dry cleaner's too long. The narrow shoulders slumped forward, the sagging cheeks could have been tightened with an ear tuck, and the clothes looked slept in.