Organo-Topia Read online

  Slouch is haute couture these days, isn't it? he thought. “Pardon,” Juris said, stepping to the small closet opposite his door, next to the sanistation. He shed the smock and donned a clean one, hurling the dirty one at the incinerbin. It vaporized in a flash.

  He sanitized his hands and turned. “How can I help you, Detective?”

  The man shook his hand, and the close-set eyes raked his face.

  “Uh, guess I better wash that too, eh?”

  “Fracas in the boardroom?”

  “Laboratory,” Juris said without thinking. He excused himself to use the facilities. The Ohume was leaving the laboratory on a gurney, he saw on his corn. When he returned from washing his face, he found the Dick perusing the plaques on his wall.

  “Can't find good techs these days,” he said. “Saw you on the neuro, workin' the Muceniek murder. High profile stuff. Detective Peterson, right?”

  “Undercover never appealed to me. I'm actually working three cases, Doctor Raihman, all with one common thread—nanochines.”

  “Didn't hear that in the news. What do you have?”

  “The first murder was a nine-story diving diva who left traces of proto where she jumped from. Second one was bilateral consumption from the feet up, left a puddle of proto. Muceniek was the third one. The Omale bled to death from anal injuries but it wasn't blood he left behind.”

  “Proto again.” Juris didn't need it spelled out. “The first one, you said she jumped?”

  “Yeah, well, that or she fell. I'm betting a fall.”

  “Seems clear. What do you need from me?”

  Peterson searched his face.

  I didn't do it, Juris wanted to tell him.

  “The chines didn't complete the first or last job. On the first, no evidence on the ground, only on the roof. On the third, a neat, nine-inch deep, three-inch round bore hole where Valdi Muceniek sodomized him.”

  “Selective disintegration,” Juris said, his anus puckering.

  “Selective what?” The narrow gaze grew narrower.

  He'll be cross-eyed soon, Juris thought. “Nanochines can be programmed to expire along multiple parameters: distance, time, volume, molecular count.”

  “Hormonal profile?”

  His turn to narrow his gaze. “As a trigger? I suppose that's possible. An Omale retrieving an ovum from Justice Muceniek, right?”

  “You're familiar with the model?”

  “A motile tentacle embedded in the penis tip. Instead of ejaculate, the tentacle is extruded into the uterus to collect the ovum.”

  “His hormonal profile mimicked a fertile Bremale at the moment he was being sodomized.”

  Juris stared at the Detective. “Nanochine receptors can be designed to detect nearly any substance, and then programmed to activate at specific thresholds for each substance. You're saying Valdi Muceniek infected him? That his ejaculate was laden with nanochines?” The Doctor whistled softly.

  Peterson nodded. “But why three inches around? Why nine inches deep?”

  Doctor Juris Raihman frowned. “Why indeed?”

  Chapter 5

  I got nothin', Maris thought as he left the building, Raihman's office and laboratory in a multistory business park, a hive of activity where nothing got done.

  Three murders tied by nanochines, no rhyme or reason in between.

  The scabbed sky was lacerated with cloud, sunlight bleeding onto the wounded wind. Whiffs of solvents wafted from a sterile street. Bins of refuse crowded ledges up the building sides. A lone, overworked garbage drone methodically hefted bin after bin into its maw, bleating a bleak complaint to a deaf landscape, other vehicles humming past insouciant. An indifferent industrial park churned out its product relentlessly.

  It'll continue churning when humans are long gone, he thought. We'll all be Ohumes by then, living in Organo-Topia.

  At ninety percent of the populace, Ohumes had nearly taken over.

  “Why indeed?” Doctor Raihman had said.

  Peterson put his head down, tucked his shoulders close, girded himself, and charged forward, unwilling to let a dearth of substance stymie him. He summoned a magnacar, hoping he didn't have to walk far.

  We're reasoning creatures in an unreasoning universe, he told himself. We want sense, order, logic to describe what's happening around us. We reject chaos, randomness, senselessness as somehow unnatural, repulsive, disgusting. And when anarchy rears its head and pandemonium ensues, we accuse something else of causing our discomfiture. We won't accept that it's our skewed view of reality.

  An egg-shaped magnacar pulled to a stop in front of him. A perfect shape in an imperfect world, the ovoid vehicle without corner or edge caught on nothing, sliding smoothly across rough surfaces on a cushion of magnetic repulsion. Its upper surface smooth, sans a single seam, it slipped through the air at any angle, resistant to nothing, attracting no attention, passing any and all detractors with its unreasoning lack of defiance, slipping past with anonymity.

  The hatch opened, the top half springing back on its levered hinge.

  Maris stepped in, sat and said, “Precinct.”

  The hatched closed and the magnacar whisked him away with a whine.

  His coke alerted him to an incoming neuracom. “Lieutenant Anita Balodis,” said the serotonic voice, her avatar appearing on his corn.

  What's the bitch want now? he wondered. “Peterson here.” Who else would it be?

  “Nanochine alarms at the Plavinas Brehume Incubation Facility. Get your lazy anus over there!”

  “Do I look equipped to battle a jerking nano?”

  Her face hardened. “Cross your tees, bunglebutt! That's where they took the Muceniek ovum.”

  “And the Ozolin sperm,” Maris said. “On my way, Lieutenant.” The neura-channel closed. “Plavinas Incubation,” Peterson told the magnacar.

  The innocent elfin features of the Ohume sperm collector Liene Ozolin intruded. An eidolon of beauty, geno-modded to preserve her collections, femo-oriented, Ozlin had led a tortured life. Doomed from conception. They'd altered her anatomical design, but they hadn't altered her preferences.

  And how can they create preservative vesicles in mouth and vagina, Maris wondered, but they can't engineer a functioning reproductive organ?

  Maris pulled up the police file on the facility. Plavinas Incubation was one of two such Ihume production plants on Tartus IX, the planet having only a few hundred thousand Brehumes. Ovum and sperm deliveries to the facility occurred daily under heavy guard, armed Ohumes bred for bulk and speed riding along, bristling with weapon. One or two breeding humans per month were conceived, a number too paltry for propagation. The remainder whelped at the facility turned out to be infertile.

  Some Brehumes opted to reproduce naturally, with no better result. The collection waiver process was so onerous and payments for egg and seed so generous that most Brehumes opted to sell. Horror holos of pregnancy gone awry were regular evening immersie fare, the neuranet rife with lurid confesso-dumps and tabloi-vids.

  The magnacar took him to a shuttle transfer station. Peterson couldn't remember the last time he'd left the gritty city. The Plavinas Brehume Incubation Facility perched on a ridge a hundred miles out, at seven thousand feet. Nose-bleed territory.

  He popped out of the magnacar onto a station crowded with news personnel and bureaucrats. It was easy to spot the difference. Reporters and holographers pushed their faces and devices at people in top coats and blanked-out faceshields. Peterson was the only person without a microphone, holocam, or faceshield.

  Pup-reporter Filip Dukur with the Telsai Daily News stuck a microphone in his face. “Nanochine outbreak at Plavinas Incubation. Part of your murder investigation, Detective?”

  “Find another line of work, kid.”

  The young Omale spun his head toward his camera so fast that he dried himself behind the ears. “And there you have it, the…Hey, you didn't tell me anything!”

  The magnatube pulled in, the screech of brakes drowning out the pla
tform noise.

  Peterson popped on to the shuttle amidst the crush.

  They were all headed to Plavinas, apparently.

  He recognized Girdenis from Gonadis, Tylenis from Testicular, Amantas from Amorous, Vizgirda from Virginitis, and Tarvydas from Tardive Dyskinesia. Half the Coalition bureaucracy was allocated to reproductive issues, three-quarters of its budget.

  They were packed in the vehicle like canned fish. The bureaucrats were accustomed to it, their cube ranches similar. The magnatube took off. A person had to adopt a magnatude to ride a magnatube.

  “Hey, Tarvydas, what're you doin' on this gravy train? Takin' a junket just for the jerk of it?”

  “Five-HT-two receptor density, ya jerkin' twerker. Don't you know anything about reproduction?”

  High-density serotonin 5-HT2 receptors increased the likelihood of random auditory activity, a phenomenon associated with low libinality. Archaic neuroleptics in low doses reduced receptivity and enhanced the libido. No longer used for psychosis, these drugs now played an important role in reproduction. And they still caused tardive dyskinesia. Hence the presence of Tarvydas. “Doesn't take a neuropsychiatrist to know that,” Maris muttered.

  “And there you have it! Detective Peterson cracks the case!”

  He could have strangled the mongrel. “That's what I like about you, kid, delivering conclusions before any news of substance.” Maris forced his way to the door, badge over his head to clear the way, and was first off the shuttle the moment it stopped.

  Plavinas Incubation was a fortress. Brooding towers stood sentinel over a low, squat, beetle-eyed building with a coiled coif of razor wire. Forty-foot fences spat infrequent sparks, also capped with coiled razor. He counted three layers of fencing, the ground in between riddled with mine-seeded mole hills. Ohumes puffy with armor and bulky with arms patrolled an inner perimeter.

  Emergency vehicles had spread out in front of the entrance, engines rumbling and audible from outside the fences, lights flashing brighter than a blockbuster immersie release. He saw hazmat-suited personnel among the vehicles, the green fabric glaring and garish. Not very fashionable, Maris thought, heading for the gate.

  They swabbed him, scanned him, scoured him, surged him. They'd have stripped-searched and rectal-probed him, if his badge hadn't stopped them. Three gates in succession, and he wondered why they'd done no good.

  Just inside the third gate, a young Ofem separated herself from a knot of office staff in business formal. “I'm Ilsa Janson, your facility escort today. You go nowhere without me.” She scalded him with her gaze, startled him with her beauty.

  He wondered how long that would last. “Nowhere?” His bladder felt full.

  “Nowhere. Hang your badge on your lapel and come with me, Detective.” She led him into the building, hazmat-clad crew passing them on their way out. Maintenance crew fiddled with sensors above every door. “The outbreak started at our fertility reception desk shortly after the delivery of the Muceniek ovum at fourteen twenty-five.”

  Military time, he thought, militant operation. “How do you know it started there?”

  They entered a foyer, furnished in standard office-bland. “Nanotectors there went off first.”

  Her face a perpetual scowl, he couldn't tell if it'd intensified. “But not those, back there.” He gestured over his shoulder.

  Her gaze was blank as she led him through a sterile corridor and into a containment area. “This is the fertility reception desk.”

  Two rows of chairs lined one side. A potted plastic plant perched quaintly in a corner. A glasma cage at the far end looked sullied from the inside with a red-brown syrup. Puce, he thought, the color of puce. They'd have to scrape the inside for remains.

  “Ad out for a new receptionist?”

  “Considering a change of careers?”

  He liked her quick wit. “Why here? Why not those back there?”

  The stone scowl didn't change. “This way.” She led him out a side door into a small anteroom with four doors, one of them colored blue. On one wall, long brown robes with hoods hung from hooks. “You'll need one of these, Detective.”

  Thermal, they said.

  “Zero-kelvin cryo?”

  “Three layers in, yes, but even observation gets chilly.”

  He donned one over his trench coat. “I'm not interested in freezing my balls off.”

  In the corridor beyond the blue door, chill thrust up his legs like spikes. Multiple frosted glasma panes to one side contained cryo nodes on dense racks, the sign saying “ovum.” To the other side was similar, the nodes larger, this sign saying “semen.” Each and every node was ragged at the end, as though shattered. The floor scintillated with bright, sharp shards.

  “All of them, destroyed,” she said, her voice wooden. Tears froze on her cheeks. She led him through to the other side, out a second blue door.

  He doffed the robe, stamping his feet to get some feeling back in them. “How many ova?”

  “Half a million.”

  A slug to the gut. His heart hammered and vision clouded. His knees begged to buckle. Disbelief and anger waged a desperate battle.

  “This way,” she said, wiping her face and leading him from the anteroom.

  Girders gridded high ceilings. Tubing tangled with conduit in twisted, multi-color confusion down to pods hanging on racks. Pod after pod stretched into the distance, rack behind rack behind rack.

  He looked at one pod, an oval about two feet long and one foot around.

  An egg. Smeared inside was a red-brown goop, at the bottom a puddle of puce.

  He looked at all the pods on the rack. He looked at all the racks.

  His mind numb, he turned to the Ofem to ask a question.

  Ofem Ilsa Janson stared at the pods, eviscerated of their viability, tears coursing silently down her cheeks.

  Detective Maris Peterson didn't ask how many fetuses had been destroyed. He couldn't.

  * * *

  Atrocity, the headlines declared. Incomprehensible, the anchors propounded. Unconscionable, the talking heads opined. The tragedy at Plavinas Incubation saturated the neuranet.

  “How?” seemed to be the only question they had.

  “Why?” was the only question Maris considered.

  He plodded toward home, the western sky scored with the last light of day, pink clouds raveled through with blue. Wind ripped holes through his trench coat, laden with the threat of rain. The streets were cold comfort to his hot thoughts. He dealt in murder all the time, but had never known the urge to kill. He knew now why people did.

  I'll have to clear my mind, Maris thought, feet gobbling pavement. Cold calculation had wiped out half-a-million ova and a quarter-million embryos. Cold calculation could catch the killer. It was said revenge was a dish best served cold. So was investigation.

  Maris couldn't push the tragedy aside. The fertility regression crafted by Brehume Professor Bernhard Vitol plunged to a spot of grease on the statistical pavement. Breeding rates on Tartus IX had taken the fatal plummet.

  They'll probably bring in Coalition hacks and dismiss local gumshoes like me.

  Darkness swallowed him before he got home. He'd used the facilities at the facility and was glad he had. Metaphor and reality had plunged him deep into despair, and only his feet kept him moving forward, powered by a strained bladder.

  Home was just another hole in his life. Divorced twice for the hours he kept, it was a cold hole. But it was a hole to hide in. He couldn't afford much more on a dick's pay than a one-bedroom three-fourths up the side of a high-rise. They left him alone on the lift, despair an insolent insulant.

  He didn't remember the badge on his lapel until after he got off. Pocketing it, he approached his door.

  Ajar.

  What the jerk? he wondered.

  “Sorry, I couldn't wait in the corridor.” Ofem Ilsa Janson, his facility guide, offered him a tentative smile from just inside the door, gesturing as if to invite him into his own home.

&nbs
p; “You've got testicles.” How'd she get in?

  “Technically, I do.” Engineered to go either way, Ohume embryos were then infused in a hormone soup, testosterone to make them male, estrogen female, as needed. “I hope you don't mind.”

  “Mind? Some stranger breaks into my apartment, and I shouldn't mind? I ought to call the police.”

  “Except you are the police.”

  “Technically, I am. Why are you here?”

  “I have no place to go. I've been fired.” A place as remote as Plavinas Incubation had company housing, charging their indentures double market for half the space.

  “How'd you find out where I live?” It was not public information.

  “Leave a girl a few secrets, eh?”

  “Why shouldn't I leave you on the curb, handcuffed to a streetlamp?”

  The two stared at each other, Imale resident and Ofem interloper.

  Her head fell forward, and she began to weep.

  What a jerking nightmare! he thought, feels like a part in a noir dick flick. If he offered her his couch, she'd end up in his bed. If he offered her his bed, he'd end up on the couch. Either she'd jerk him silly, or he'd have to himself.

  His thoughts a litany of obscenity, he pulled her to his shoulder and kicked the door closed.

  Chapter 6

  Professor Bernhard Vitol ripped open the door. “It's you again. What'd I do this time?”

  “Need more info, Prof,” Maris said. The smell of stale sweat cascaded off the Professor, the tsunami of sour air olfactible to the naked nose. “Get a patty with me? Do you good.”

  The eyes shifted left, then right.

  Peterson held up his hand. “Don't slam it on me. Three hots and a cot or a hot one with me on a bench. Which is it?”

  The eyes dropped to the rumpled trousers, the ringed armpits. “Five minutes?”

  “Three, and I'll be comin' in with a warrant at four.”

  A deep sigh and the shoulders slumped. “All right, Detective,” the Professor said, and the door closed.

  At two minutes, Maris scratched his head. He wouldn't…?