STEEL HELIX

Ann Tonsor Zeddies

I

The Island of Dr. Rameau

My Love is of a birth as rare,
As ‘tis for object strange and high:
It was begotten of Despair
Upon Impossibility.

Andrew Marvell

“The Definition of Love”

Then I look about me at my fellow men. And I go in fear. I see faces keen and bright, others dull or dangerous, others unsteady, insincere; none that have the calm authority of a reasonable soul. I feel as though the animal was surging up through them; that presently the degradation of the Islanders will be played over again on a larger scale.

H. G. Wells

The Island of Dr. Moreau

1

Rameau knew that something was wrong. He was watching the colors dance. Streaks of many hues drifted past his face—deep red, magenta, and bubbles of frothy pink, as if someone had been washing their hands of the whole mess with a bar of ruby soap.

The bubbles slow-danced, coalescing into faceted clusters, surfing in slow motion to their silent extinction against a ventilation grid. A film of deepening red layers grew against that grid and the wall around it, clotted purple-black in the center, surrounded by a corona of red. As if the walls could bruise.

The colored circle drew his gaze like a mandala. It was the one focal point in a spinning world. For he was spinning slowly with the colors. The brightest ribbon of all trailed past his face as he spun, and the bubbles burst against his face with a soft wet kiss, and a smell—

Blood. It’s blood in free fall.

His face intersected with the ribbon of droplets, and he choked. His body twisted in a spasm of agony, retching the choking moisture out of his lungs. He gasped.

Why is there no air?

Because the Dome is holed!

His transient bubble of calm burst. He was fully conscious again, just in time to die.

The trajectory of the blood ribbons showed where the holes were. The blood, the other tumbling bodies like Rameau, and what was left of the air, all aimed inexorably toward the pinpricks and gashes in the Dome’s crystal skin. The fluids and the air would escape out into space. Solid objects would remain behind, dancing their foolish dance in an empty bubble.

Dance—I was watching the dance when—I was up on the light bar—

He thrashed against the current, trying to change direction. When he turned his head, his entire body turned in a slow pirouette, and the stream of red bubbles crossed his face again. Something red and wet bumped against his side, and he tried to brush it away, but couldn’t move his arm.

My arm!

The limb came into sharp focus. He could view it clinically, as if he were diagnosing someone else.

That’s my arm. Crushing injury. The bones are smashed. Severe blood loss—

His chest heaved in involuntary, gasping spasms that he recognized as the precursors to asphyxiation.

Air—where? Emergency suits—

He knew where the suits were. He hadn’t been that far from the locker—perched on the bar that supported the colored lights, the perfect vantage point to see the dance, to watch over the dancers. And then—how far had he drifted?

Catch hold of something—

But all was in motion. Smashed and jagged objects waltzed past him. He might be crushed before he suffocated. Gathering speed, a clump of debris flashed toward him, and for a moment he glimpsed arms outspread—an offer, or a plea for help? Then he saw the face, frozen in pop-eyed, eternal surprise.

He lashed out with both feet, connected with a soggy thump. The body tumbled away, and Rameau cartwheeled on a new vector, toward the wall. He scraped along its curve, staring for a cold moment into the void that lay just beyond the transparent skin. Then he crashed into a projecting bracket and threw his good arm over it before he could bounce off. He clung, and gasped, and the spinning in his head slowly stilled.

He shifted his grasp from the bracket to the beam it supported, and kicked himself along the beam, sliding like a bead on a wire. He reached the utility locker and slapped it open. His movements were wide and spastic now. He could no longer coordinate his fingers. His field of vision narrowed to a graying tunnel through which he could barely see the glimmer of helmet stripes.

One-handed, he jammed the helmet onto his head and bit down on the mouthpiece. Oxygen blasted into him like cool fire. His sight returned.

Too bright! Too bright!

The pain came back with it, blazing up in his arm like a blowtorch in his veins.

The suit was full-zip; he could yank it open one-handed. He thrust a leg in to hold it in place. He couldn’t get his injured arm into the armhole. Crying aloud with pain, he used his good arm to stuff the mangled mass into place, and hit the differential pressure node on the shoulder. As he struggled into the rest of the suit and zipped it shut, the left sleeve pressurized itself around the injury. It shut off the bleeding like a tourniquet. A good feature—he remembered approving it himself. He let the mouthpiece retract as the suit sealed and filled with air. Automatically, it began to administer medications to ease pain and shock.

He knew what he had to do next. Not get to the clinic and treat himself. Not assess the casualties. The one thing that mattered was to find Dakini.

She was dancing. She was dancing when they—

He found another suit and stuck his good arm through the belt so he wouldn’t lose his grip on it. He switched his suit mike to external and launched himself away, calling her name.

Bodies and debris swept past him, still dangerous even now that he was suited up. He aimed himself spinward, going with them but a little faster, passing through the silent herd, looking for the one, singular shape. The dead spared him guilt. Not one showed any twitch of life. They had passed beyond the bounds of Rameau’s duty. Someone else would have to serve them now.

But Dakini—if she’s—what can I—with one hand—

He pushed that thought away. He could get her into the suit. He could drag her to safety, somewhere.

Then he saw a glint of gold among the pale, the dark, the buff, the ashy drab, the endless sequence of debris. Her long gold limbs spinning slowly, alone, on the far side of the swarm, still glinting in the last splintered light from the spots. Just as he’d seen her first, alone and dancing. He shot toward her through the slow avalanche of corpses.

O Kannon, O Compassionate One—

He was stammering prayers and adjurations he’d abandoned long ago. He tranced out for a moment—not surprising with the suit dripping meds into every vein—then came back into focus, and found himself vainly trying to wrap the suit around Dakini’s drifting body. He should have known better. There was no way to fit her impossibly long and slender arms and legs into a suit made for a human. No help there.

He yanked the helmet loose—too sharp a movement; it sent him drifting away from her. He snatched her back only just in time, letting the helmet go. It bobbed away.

Sobbing under his breath, he wrapped his legs around hers to hold her, pulled the helmet back.

He tried to force the mouthpiece between her lips, but her mouth hung slack. The blast of air fanned the blood in streaks across her golden cheeks, but there was no answering gasp. Her head nodded in the current, like a flower too heavy for its stalk.

She was dancing. She was only dancing. And they—

He tried to breathe into her mouth, the old low-tech way he’d learned long before he came to Varuna, to this station that had the best equipment anywhere, the best guards, the most infallible shields, this paradise where the rich and mighty came, because here no one could—

No one could die.

Her throat was crushed. Her chest was crushed. His offered breath could not pass the blood crusted on her lips. He had known. He had known too much about this body not to know.

He had been hidden among the lights, and hadn’t seen the first disturbance as the invaders swept though the house, through the patrons in their box seats. He had only seen them when they fell through the Dome itself and smashed the dancers aside like kites in a downdraft. He had known in the first moment, as he saw her flung aside. He had launched himself toward her, as the patrons fled the other way.

But they got there first. The Rukh.

And as the massive, heavy fists descended on him, too, as their bludgeons crushed and tore, he’d known. Just one of those blows would have been enough to shatter her grace forever. They’d killed him, but it would take a while to die. For her, one brutal moment had been enough.

He let the helmet go, and drifted. It didn’t matter now.

All that mattered was not letting go of her. Until. But it was hard to be sure his grasp was gentle enough, through the thick gloves of the suit. The micro-g transforms were so fragile, so easily damaged. It was the first thing a genedoc had to learn about them. He had learned. He’d given the transforms the very best of care. Until now.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

The last of the air, on its way to the stars, carried them to the inner shell, and Rameau let himself float there, fending off the wall with his back, so Dakini’s head was cushioned from any impact. He turned his face to the wall, looking down into the great darkness. He could see the edge of Garuda, the planet they orbited, rising below the station, and the bright reddish spark of Meru, sunward. Dakini had seen this every day, had known every day that she could never go there, never leave the bright bubble that imprisoned her.

And I didn’t help her. I helped them keep her here. I thought Varuna was safe.

And now? O, Kannon, does her soul fly free?

There was no answer from the Compassionate One. The Reform Mahayana that Rameau’s parents had practiced claimed that transforms had no souls. Created by humans, they had no place on the wheel of life. When they died, they simply stopped, and would not be reborn. If Rameau had still believed that any being heard his words, his one prayer would have been to stop with her. He didn’t want to be reborn.

A thousand lives of suffering couldn’t make up for what I’ve done. And this one will be over soon.

He tried to focus on her face, but darkness spread into his field of vision. Then a flutter of white caught his attention, and he looked up.

A child floated above him, just out of reach. He thought it was a girl, though he couldn’t be sure. She wore only a thin white coverall, and she was very pale. Wisps of hair stirred in the last of the breeze. There couldn’t possibly be enough air left for her to breathe. He thought vaguely of the helmet. If she could get to it, she might still be all right. He tried to reach out to her, to say “Don’t be frightened,” but he could only make a faint choking sound.

She didn’t look frightened, though he was. She moved a hand to her face, with a puzzled expression. Dakini’s arms floated free of Rameau’s grasp, as he tried to reach the child, and the movement appeared to catch the child’s eye. As if curious, she stretched out to touch Dakini’s hand. There was a sound like a sigh, though the Dome was nearly vacuum by now.

Suddenly Rameau realized that she had a massive dark bruise on the cheek she had touched. How had he missed that? It spread over her whole face as he watched. Her fingers, touching Dakini’s, turned purple, then black. She slumped inward, and shrank, and her body shriveled and cracked like a puffball, releasing a faint brown mist. For a moment he could see pale bones in a cloud of dark fluid. Then even those turned to powder and drifted away.

This can’t be real.

Involuntarily, he clutched Dakini closer. She seemed to crumple in his arms. He looked down. Her face was covered with a dark, sticky substance. He tried to brush it away with his gloved hand. His hand went through her face. There was no face, just a gelid mass that melted away when he touched it. Then there was no body. Just a dark liquid that soaked his suit and ebbed away.

And she was gone.

Staring around him, too shocked to make a sound, he saw the other corpses disintegrating. In a slow wave, spreading outward as if he were ground zero, the bodies twisted in on themselves, and shrank, and a brown mist hovered for an instant before dispersing into the empty Dome. All around him, the dead were dying a second death.

As the bodies dissipated, he saw the massive figures who had been hovering behind them, in their dun-colored p-suits. He had nowhere to run. He could only watch as they closed in on him.

He expected them to kill him. He took a deep breath for his final moment. But the moment went on. And on. He had to breathe again. Huge hands grasped him, and towed him across the Dome, and then out of it, into a narrow space where he bumped against the walls. Yet his life had not ended. He felt restraints close around him, painfully tight, and then the crushing pressure of hard acceleration. He blacked out.

He regained consciousness knowing there was weight, because someone had dumped him onto a hard, cold surface. The shock brought a moment of agonized clarity. The suit was gone. He was naked and cold, and he couldn’t feel his arm at all. A deep voice spoke. The only word he understood was his own name.

“Huh. E go terminate,” said another voice, close to his ear, and then laughed cheerfully.

“Cohort, unspecified, is conscious,” said another. This voice had the inhumanly calm intonation of an AI monitor. Relief shot through Rameau; he must be in a hospital. He felt no pain. He had air. He was conscious. They must be treating him, whoever they were. He’d be all right.

Don’t panic, he thought.

Then he opened his eyes.

The surface he lay on wasn’t a bed. It was a moving belt like a conveyor. He scanned the rest of the room, and gasped. He wasn’t in a normal hospital room; instead, the belt carried him around the perimeter of a cylindrical space. If this was a hospital, it was in orbit.

Before he could move or speak, something soft but tight wrapped around his legs, and a plastic shield closed down over his chest. A mask descended to cover his nose and mouth. He tried to raise his arms, to get hold of it and tear it loose, but only one of his hands seemed to move. He still couldn’t feel the other arm.

Don’t panic.

I am panicking.

Where’s my arm?

He could feel his shoulder. The joint was pulled painfully taut.

Like they’re trying to rip my arm off!

Straining against the mask that immobilized his head, he caught a glimpse of something metallic in motion. It flashed downward.

Rameau yelled, and his whole body convulsed in shock. It hadn’t hurt. But he knew what had happened. The severing blow resounded through his whole body. Someone had just chopped off his arm.

He could hear himself sobbing, and feel the positive pressure as the mask forced more oxygen into him. In the back of his mind, a frantic voice kept repeating words that might keep him sane.

Automated medicine. It’s automated. He heaved in more air and held it, then exhaled slowly and forced himself to pause before he gasped again.

Stop crying. You’ve watched this happen to other people. They’re not torturing you. They’re treating you. They used anesthesia.

But—Kali Mat! They cut off my arm! Amputation? We don’t do amputation any more! Why couldn’t they regenerate me? Jesus Mohammad, it must have been completely mangled.

He had never realized how terrifying automated medicine was—to the patient.

But he was calming down—or maybe they were giving him something to make him calm down. Whichever it was, it didn’t last long as the belt dropped him with a jolt into a vertical position, and he looked down.

Directly below him lay a tank of pinkish-yellow fluid capped with the confinement membrane that would prevent fluids from escaping in micro-g. The fluid seethed with movement, and the darting motion of white things shaped like rice grains. Convection currents bumped larger objects to the surface, then pushed them under again. For a moment, Rameau thought it was a soup pot and they were going to cook him.

The reality, when he figured it out, wasn’t an improvement. The rice grains were maggots. The larger objects were severed limbs—arms, legs, hands, feet—trailing red and white cords of vein and tendon.

Kannon. Amitabha. Help me!

The mask snaked a soft plastic tube like a finger down his throat, and he could no longer cry out in protest. Then the belt released him.

The shock of having his arm chopped off was nothing compared to splashdown through the membrane. Every muscle in his body strained in a vain effort to hurl himself back out of the pot. But new restraints held him tight and kept him under. He could feel the nibbling action of a thousand tiny mouths against his skin. They’re going to eat me. But it didn’t hurt. Except his arm. A ring of fire gnawed at the socket where the arm had been. It seemed to bore into his bones. A waxy white, dead hand bumped against his face, maggots sizzling around it.

His brain hit overload. He could feel himself going mad. Fear and loathing filled his whole mind.

And then he was pulled free of the membrane, knowing that time had elapsed, though he didn’t remember passing out. Maggots tumbled back into the tank as he ascended. He was dumped on his back onto a moving surface that angled gradually upward until he was in a sitting position. The mask and tube were pulled from his face, leaving his throat raw as if its inner surface had been torn away.

The restraints snapped free, and then the belt pushed him off. He sprawled on a floor. He was naked. He was trembling. And his two hands were clenched in front of him.

“Treatment complete,” said the cool artificial voice.

Immediately after that, another voice said, “Get up. The Commander will speak with you.”

He looked up. The man who had spoken towered over him—would have towered, even if Rameau had been able to stand. Everything about him was larger than normal. His arms and legs were longer and more muscular than those of any ordinary man. His features were so clean and regular that his face looked like a mask. His hair was the color of bleached aspen leaves and was precisely cropped. His eyes were the color of river ice on a cold day. His lips moved with crisp precision when he spoke, and the teeth that showed when they parted were perfect. The face was faintly tanned, but in the shadow of his chin, his neck was white, and Rameau could see a blue vein beating, like water flowing under ice.

The man wore a simple grey coverall, decorated at the shoulders by a jumble of colored symbols Rameau could not decipher. Only one sign stood out clearly. It was the same stylized face-symbol that had marked the p-suits of the men who had dragged him off Varuna: an oval, holding two eyes and an m-shaped or wing-shaped line that could have been meant for brows and nose. You could read it as letters, too—OMO. And the big, enclosing oval stood for another O.

Omo Originale.

Original Man.

Despair filled Rameau like icy water. He still did not know where he was, but he knew who was there with him.

“Oh, Kannon,” he choked. His stomach twisted.

“Not responsive,” the pale man said. He flicked his wrist, and a needle appeared in his hand. He slapped Rameau with it. A burning sensation surged through Rameau, and quelled his nausea. He was able to speak.

“What was that?” he sobbed. “What did you do to me?”

A startled look passed over the pale man’s impassive face, as if a lab animal had spoken.

“Regeneration tank,” the pale man said. “The damaged arm was removed. Bioforms in the tank reprocess dead flesh. Cloned limb attaches. Treatment is complete. This is standard treatment.”

He held out a coverall. “Dress. Hurry.”

Rameau’s new left arm was still clumsy as he tried to pull the garment on, and his ribs still hurt. The pale man lost patience and tugged the fabric over Rameau’s arms and legs, then did up the zips on the sides. The coverall had been made for someone much bigger, but at least he wasn’t naked anymore.

“What are you going to do with me?” he said. His voice was pathetic—weak and shaky. It was a mistake to sound so much like a victim.

“The Commander will speak with you,” the pale man said again. Rameau saw him straighten just a bit more as he spoke. The Commander must be a person of importance.

He expected to be taken to another place to meet the Commander. But the pale man spoke briefly to his own hand, then pointed and clicked with a mailed finger, and a marked square on the wall in front of them suddenly turned into a three-dimensional space, like a window, showing the torso of a man in uniform.

At first, the face in the display looked to Rameau like a mirrored reflection of the pale man who stood beside him. Then he saw that the coverall was a different color—white instead of gray—and the face was older, defined by lines that expressed a separate personality. It was a personality Rameau had seen before: Kuno Gunnarsson, the human who had created Original Man. The one they called the Founder.

“Gunnarsson,” he whispered. It must be shock, he thought. Kuno Gunnarsson was dead.

“Error,” the man in the window said. “I am not the Founder. I have the honor to continue his lineage. I am Gunnarsson Prime, Commander, Original Man Jumpship Langstaff. This is both rank and persig. You will address me as Prime, or Commander. You will now state your own rank and persig.”

“I don’t understand,” Rameau said. That statement covered a lot of ground.

“Your name,” the Commander said.

“I am Piers Rameau,” he said. “I have no rank. I’m a civilian. I’m a doctor. I was giving emergency care to victims of the assault on Varuna. They were all civilians. They were defenseless and unarmed. They had no military affiliation. The Solterran Concords demand that you set me free. Put me back. I want you to put me back where I came from.”

“That will not be possible,” the Commander said remotely. “We are accelerating to jump node.” His eyes focused somewhere else, as if he were scanning a heads-up display that remained invisible to Rameau.

“This is kidnapping! I demand you return me to human space!”

As Rameau spoke, he felt a tremor pass through the surface he stood on. For a minute he thought his legs were trembling, but then it came again, more strongly. The structure in which he stood vibrated like a bell, grinding his very bones together. He recognized the signs of sonic bombardment. Wherever he was, the battle continued.

The Commander issued a brief series of orders to unseen personnel. Then his attention returned to Rameau.

“The Founder left instructions regarding the baseline human Piers Rameau,” he said. “He ordered that we salvage you. We located you on Varuna and fulfilled this command. The Founder left a personal message for Piers Rameau. The message will be communicated, but not at this time. We are in crisis mode. Your assistance is required. You have medical training. You will affiliate directly to me, and your designation will be Rameau, G-Prime MedSpec. Repeat the designation.”

“No,” Rameau said. “No! You can’t do this. I’m a civilian!”

Gunnarsson’s eyes flicked to the pale man beside Rameau.

“Motivate him,” Gunnarsson said.

The pale man grasped Rameau’s arm, as if to lead him away, but with a slightly different grip. Rameau bent double, gasping.

“Rameau, G-Prime MedSpec!” he cried. At the time, he didn’t feel that he was surrendering. It was merely an incantation that he had to recite as fast as possible to stop the unbearable pain.

“Motivation complete,” Gunnarsson said. The pale man let Rameau go.

“Your duties begin immediately. Further indoctrination is postponed until normal operations recommence. You treated transforms on Varuna. You will now treat transform casualties on Langstaff. The cohort will escort you and will provide you with any necessary information. Dismissed.”