Organo-Topia Read online

  They took him into a room with a single lamp. They used words instead of fists. They badgered him about the case. Fists would have been more merciful. He kept most of the information to himself, denying them the big picture.

  Balodis knew and hadn't told them, he realized.

  The tragedy at Plavinas Incubation had stirred the Coalition from its slumber. Targus IX was a minor planet, an important link along the Scutum-Crux trading routes, but mediocre in manufacturing, natural resources, and labor.

  Up and down the galactic arm sat worlds with far more political heft. And near the end of the galactic bar was Riga. The big fish. The gorilla in the galaxy. The Coalition of the Waltic Constellations extended from the end of the galactic bar a quarter of the way out along the Scutum-Crux arm, its capital perched astride one of the richest seams of energy and heavy metals in the galaxy.

  You didn't want the Capital getting in your business. The Coalition's attention was more desirable elsewhere. Local governments protested its heavy-handed interference on a constant basis, but in an obsequious way. Too loud, and your government got replaced. Same with law enforcement. A crime as atrocious as the annihilation of quarter-million fetuses at Plavinas Incubation had invoked Coalition takeover.

  “It's ours now, Peterson,” Colonel Teodor Astrauckas told him. Head of the Coalition Investigation Department, Crestonia Region, he poked his face into the light, the last of the interrogators. “Got it?”

  “Bungle away, Colonel.”

  “That means you stay away from everyone involved. Plavinas Incubation, Sabile Nanobio, Doctor Raihman, Iveta Rozītis, Gizela and Valdi Muceniek, all of them. You know what happens if you go near any of them?”

  He stifled a yawn. “I get an ice-cream cone.”

  “Patarei Prison, Detective, an orange allsuit, a mattress thick as a board, a cell the size of a closet. You won't get a trial, you won't get a lawyer, you won't get a sentence. You just go. And you don't come back.”

  “I won't get to see you again. I'm so disappointed.”

  “You really are an obnoxious jerk. Even your boss says so. Our case. Stay away. Got it?”

  Peterson shrugged. “Your case. Your mistake.”

  He walked out of the precinct feeling curiously light. The constraints of reporting to a supervisor, of keeping semi-regular hours, of being chained to a string of cases—gone.

  During a bathroom break, he'd neuramailed Ilsa. She waited in the back of a dark restaurant two blocks away, a favorite with Undercover, where patrons never removed their shades. “But I can't go with you,” she said. “My indenture.”

  Lieutenant Balodis had told him to take her. Maris suspected they'd take care of the indenture.

  A waiter approached. “The bouillabaisse is divine,” he said quite loudly, leaning toward Maris, finger to the menu. “You're being surveilled,” the waiter added quietly. “At the cue, head for the deep freeze.”

  Maris reached for Ilsa's hand, her eyes wide with fright.

  A dark-suited and -shaded Ifem approached the waiter. “Pardon, where's the head?”

  Only dicks and jugs called it that. “Restroom for patrons only, ma'am.”

  “Jerk your patrons only!” the Ifem dick snarled. She whipped out a truncheon with one hand, seized his throat with the other. “The head, dammit!”

  “What're you doin'?” A patron across the aisle stood and lunged at the Ifem dick.

  Chaos erupted.

  Maris led Ilsa toward the back, found the deep freeze just past the walk-in. The heavy door swung aside. At the back stood cases of synthe-steak, crates to the ceiling. The stack slid silently to one side.

  Peterson plunged through the opening, Ilsa right behind him. The short passageway spilled them into underground storage. Near a roll-up door hummed a magnacar, a two-seater, hatch open, the glasma tinted dark.

  They leaped in, the hatch closed, the door rolled up, and the magnacar shot out.

  He looked back. The roll-up door was rolling down.

  “What the jerk was that all about?”

  He slid his blasma pistol from its holster. “Later.” A satchel at their feet. Guises.

  The magnacar sped through a garbage-clotted alley, the refuse leaping aside to avoid getting plowed. A jacker too plowed to dodge got bounced, the magnacar bleating a warning and attempting to swerve. The magnacar shuddered on impact, and Peterson glanced back in time to see the jack-addict crumple.

  “We have to stop,” Ilsa said, “He might be hurt.”

  “Didn't feel a thing,” he said.

  The magnacar plunged from the alley into traffic and headed for the outskirts, toward the shuttleport.

  “Look in the bag on the floor while I watch for pursuit.” He kept an eye out the rearview.

  “What is all this?”

  “There'll be two mastoid jacks. Put one in, hand me the other.” No sign of pursuit, the magnacar taking a zig-zag route.

  “There's wigs, creams, bandages. Maris, what's going on?”

  He took his eyes off the rearview to look at her. “We're goin' down.”

  Chapter 8

  Fireflies filled the sky, scores of helopods flittering over Crestonia. Windows watched their every motion, the stares prickling the skin across his back, a constant twitch. In every direction lay mountains of city, constellations of light, masses of humanity.

  The city peeled past them, the paper-mache sun staining a gray pastiche of cloud. Phalluses of glasma and steel raped the sky, bending with each magnacar turn, names synonymous with soaring stock tickers, obscene profit margins, unscrupulous exploitation. Within a particularly dense stand of these pillories cowered a small white dome, the capitol capitulating to corrosive capitalism. Although capital continually slipped its dirty fingers into the hot pies of government, legislatures continued to cook up an ever-more byzantine bureaucracy, where plausible deniability and diffusion of responsibility turned influence peddling into an elaborate game of shells, until no one knew where the ball really was.

  The magnacar dumped them at the curb of the Crestonia Holtin Hotel. Fountains leaped to escape a forecourt, mist as diaphanous as fading thought, ephemeral as evanescent principle, transient as evaporating truth.

  Maris glanced at Ilsa. “Not very inviting,” she said, gazing at the hotel. She looked the model of a Brehume, her get-up giving her the glam of high society. He looked rumpled and always would, but rumple on a man was haute couture.

  Ilsa and Maris Liepin checked in, the Holtin reputed to be the finest establishment in the capital. Stray thread sprang from worn carpet, peeling paint sprang from warped wall, suspicious glance sprang from surly patron. Lichen runnels dripped from eaves, grime streaks dripped from window corners, bored stares dripped from jaded bellhops. The elevator shuddered on the way up, Ilsa shuddered at the shabby décor, Maris shuddered at the undercover budget.

  Little wonder we catch so few criminals, he thought, if this is the best our money can buy.

  “It looks odd, our arriving without luggage,” she said the moment they were alone in their room.

  “We're here for a day. Tonight we shop, and tomorrow we find our contact.”

  “What are we doing here, Mare?”

  He heard a silent plea in her voice. A few days of intimacy with her had already honed his sensitivity. “Two objectives—infiltrate the Brehume donation system and find a black-market nanochine vendor.” But that wasn't what she'd asked. He pulled her close. “Listen, Ilsa, you don't have to do this. They sent me here because I'm a pest, thought I'd be happier if I brought you along. I'm glad you're here, but if you don't want to be Brefem bait, all right by me.”

  “And what about my indenture?” Her gaze scanned his face, an impish grin in her eyes.

  “Right now, you're working for the force. You've been recruited. They'll make the payments. In your guise, you're a Brehume. If you want, you can look up any Ohume, see what's owed on the indenture.”

  A brow went up. “And buy it out with my fake money? En
slave my Ofem self to my Brefem guise?”

  “It's all about choice, isn't it?”

  “Indeed it is,” she said, her emphasis striking him as odd. “Something Ohumes don't have much of.”

  Brehumes ruled, no question about it. Most positions of power, most of the wealth, and all of the glory went to breeding humans. Less than one percent of the population, Brehumes earned ninety-five percent of the income. Ihumes at ten percent of the populace earned the next three percent, infertile humans accorded the middle rung. A small subset of Ihumes was naturally born but increasingly rare, most laboratory-grown and crèche-reared.

  On the bottom rung, Ohumes at ninety percent of the populace earned two percent of the income. Organic humans were nothing of the sort, their moniker a euphemism, everything about them artificial. Inseminated in a Petrie dish, grown to viability in a simu-womb, reared in crèche in cohort of hundreds, Ohumes were then cast upon society with little more than a basic education and some basic skills, left to flounder, sink or swim.

  Their indentures were a fixed amount, the equivalent of ten years employment at the median wage. Since Ohumes earned far less, working menial jobs no self-respecting Ihume would touch, an indenture might last twice as long and change hands multiple times before it was “matured.” Other than a fortunate few who earned their way quickly out of indenture or found a patron to pay it off, nearly all Ohumes spent their first twenty years enslaved.

  “How many years left on your indenture?” he asked.

  “Thinking of buying it out?”

  “Will you be my love slave?”

  She giggled and thrust her hips into his.

  * * *

  “What's this place?”

  Rapid, rhythmic thunder emptied his lungs, a dinosaur stomping on his chest. Constellations swirled around him, a scintillating ball hurling beams to the perimeter. Scirocco waves of hot breath and hot body washed across him, colognes and cognacs mixed with perfumes and panamas. Under the blizzard of beams whirled a gyrating gaggle of patrons, each with a glow at their mastoid.

  “Time to have some fun,” Ilsa had said ten minutes earlier, clutching his hand and dragging him into the club.

  Maris picked a panama off a passing tray. The mixture of cream, cognac, and crème de cacao was garnished with nutmeg. Mastoid jacks with your choice of stim had replaced snorts, puffs, veiners, dermas, and colos, but alcohol had remained the beverage of social lubrication. Ethyl jacks might be had as well, but raising the glass to the lips retained an allure to the prehistoric brain that a jack couldn't replace. Esters off the panama swirled deliriously through his nostrils to his cortex, the drink going down in one smooth gulp.

  “Hey, slow down,” she said, snatching one for herself and downing it.

  Giggling, they toasted each other with the next one.

  Clear trays floated jacks above their heads, neurodelights available to all. The club's private neuranet trolled for special-order jacks concocted to the customer's metabolism. His corn flashed him a menu of neuros: endorphine, iodothyronine, thyroxine, ephedrine, oxytocin, estrogen, androgen, adreno- and glucocorticoids.

  Eschewing the mind alteration for clear heads, they gyrated to a quaking beat in a baking heat. The crowd looked to be a fifty-fifty mix of Ihume and Ohume, Brehume rarely patronizing such places.

  Ilsa drew many a glance, her figure sultry and sexy.

  A figure stumbled into Maris. “Watch where you're going, you jerkin' poofer!”

  He ducked the first slash, only a glint in the fast-moving hand, and blocked the second. His gumshoe just missed the gonads and the attacker rolled away. Peterson grabbed Ilsa's hand and towed her toward the back exit, disoriented by the pulsating pummel of body and sound. The last thing he wanted was a bar scrap on a rap sheet, his cover blown.

  Ilsa stumbled shy of the door and the attacker was on them, slashing for Maris.

  He caught the overhead slash, the lazo-knife inches from his face. A knee thrust for his groin. He twisted right and lurched left, took the knee on his thigh and yanked the arms down. Off-balance, the attacker fell. Maris wrenched the arms up and slammed his knee to the neck, and he fell on the man, his other knee landing on the solar plexus. The hands lost their grip on the lazo-knife, which clattered on the floor. He sank a cross to the jaw and the man went limp.

  Covered in sweat, Peterson picked up the weapon, climbed to his feet, helped Ilsa to hers, and plunged from the hot nightclub into the cold alley beyond.

  The thunderous beat chased them toward the street, lights flickering off the far wall.

  “Fun, huh?” he said at the curb, gasping and half-bent, hands on his knees, leaning against a shuttered kiosk. “Hate to see what you do for danger.”

  A two-seater magnacar whined toward them, hatch open.

  Open? he thought, that's odd.

  Head and shoulders popped out, and Maris hurled himself behind the kiosk, tackling Ilsa. Slugs spattered its sides at a rat-ta-tat, and a projectile hissed inches from his head, careening away, the magnacar whine fading.

  He looked up, the vehicle's lights already gone. Driven manually, off the neuranet, it would be difficult to trace.

  “You all right?”

  Her face drawn, her eyes wide, she nodded vigorously.

  She thinks she's okay now, but she won't in a moment, he thought, getting to his feet and helping her up. Three, two, one.

  Ilsa burst into tears and buried her face into his shoulder.

  He summoned a magnacar and helped her into it, her face a wreck, their evening a disaster.

  Chapter 9

  “It's not a problem, Mr.…?”

  “Liepin. Maris Liepin.”

  Henriete Steponas, CEO of Infantide Interstellar, looked quizzically at the man across from her, bewildered at his request. “What can I help you with?”

  He sat across from her, a short, slovenly-dressed man in a wrinkled shirt, rumpled blazer, ill-fitting slacks, scuffed and worn shoes. He'd insisted on speaking with her, her secretary had told her, politely declining to disclose the reason for his visit.

  At fifty-five, Henriete was at the pinnacle of her career, chief of the second largest fertility service in the Coalition with a thirty percent market share. Trillions of couples wanted a baby. Infantide Interstellar made it happen. Over fifty billion birthed, the company byline declared.

  For the select few who could afford the implantation fee, of course.

  The office around her declared its ostentation. The rich textures of Xilous wood swirled across the desktop. Shelves of glowing syrostone held stills of happy couples and grinning politicians. Carpets of thick Nidra wool intertwined its intricate patterns across the floor. Thick chairs upholstered in Houxan satin gave comfort to supplicants. Plaques on the wall near the door declared their praise for the company's work.

  “Well, Ms. Steponas, it's my wife.”

  I've never heard that before, she thought. “Forgive me, Mr. Liepin. It would be better if we were to speak in her presence.”

  “No, no, you don't understand. She asked me to come, insisted on it. Not feeling well, that's all.”

  “Profile located, Ms. Steponas,” murmured her secretary on her coke.

  The information spilled down her corn. Maris Liepin, Ihume, forty-five years old, reared in a family, in restaurant supply sales, no known medical conditions, married five years to Ilsa Liepin, Ihume, thirty years old, pod-grown and crèche-reared, no known medical. Other than their age difference, they were like the millions of couples who came through Infantide offices every year, seeking fulfillment.

  “I'm sorry to hear she isn't well. Not related to her condition, I hope?”

  “No, no, just a bit of a fright at the club last night. I'm wondering if you could describe your process, here.”

  “Let me get one of our fertility facilitators—”

  He held up his hand. “They're very helpful, I assure you, but…”

  A flag popped up on her corn. Their record on file with the compan
y. Why didn't that come up with their profiles? Henriete wondered, the record indicating that the Liepins had begun seeing a fertility counselor at an outlying office six months ago.

  “Where do you get your embryos?”

  An odd question, she thought. “From qualified, registered suppliers, from whom we insist on the highest quality stock.”

  “Plavinas Incubation among them?”

  “They were our main supplier,” she said. “Horrible, what happened, an absolute travesty. Alternate sources are being sought as we speak. Any delays in obtaining a viable embryo for you and your wife will be brief, I assure you.”

  “What internal controls do you have for monitoring their quality?”

  She blinked at him, wondering whether to be offended. “Mr. Liepin, I assure you—”

  “How do you know they haven't been tampered with?”

  “In what way, Mr. Liepin?” What does he want, she wondered, our internal procedures manual?

  “The twenty-third chromosome. How do you know it hasn't been tampered with?”

  “What is the purpose of your question, Mr. Liepin? Why are you really here?”

  “How do you know?”

  “Let me put your concerns about genetic integrity to rest, Mr. Liepin. Our embryos are the product of clean fertilization performed at our supplier's main facility under the direction of a highly-qualified and certified medical staff.”

  “So you don't know, do you?”

  “Our product complies with all regulatory guidelines, which were provided to you and Mrs. Liepin upon enrollment. If you're not completely satisfied with our product, I'd be happy to refund your money, Mr. Liepin.”

  He stared at her, blinking blithely.

  “Please stop at the front desk to give a retinal for the refund, Mr. Liepin. I'm not sure how you continue to find fault with a faultless product, but no matter. A pleasure to meet you.” She stood, stepped around the desk to shake his hand, and escorted him from her office.

  What the jerk was that about? Henriete wondered, raising her chief of quality control on her trake. “We're upping random testing to five percent.”