Peter Watts - Behemoth

"Busted," Lubin said.

The world was bleaching in Clarke's eyecaps by the time they reached the MI. Ouellette sat on the road with her back against the van, legs bent, arms crossed loosely over knees. She stared listlessly at the pavement between her feet. She looked up at the sound of their approach. The botfly hung overhead like a bodyguard. It showed no visible reaction to their arrival.

Bleached light wasn't enough to account for the pallor of Ouellette's face. She looked absolutely bloodless. There were wet streaks on her face.

She looked at Clarke and shook her head. "What are you?" she said. Her voice was as empty as a cave.

Clarke's throat went dry.

"You're not just some refugee. You're not just some rifter who's been hiding for five years. You—you started this, somehow. You started it all…"

Clarke tried to swallow, looked to Lubin. But Lubin's eyes didn't waver from the botfly.

She spread her hands. "Tak, I—"

"The monsters in the machines, they're all—you," Ouellette seemed stunned at the sheer magnitude of Clarke's betrayal. "The M&Ms and the fanatics and the death cults, they're all following you …"

They're not , Clarke wanted to shout. I'd stop them all in a second if I could, I don't know how any of it got started —

But that would be a lie, of course. Maybe she hadn't formally founded the movements that had sprung up in her wake, but that didn't make them any less faithful to the thing she'd been. They were the very essence of the rage and hatred that had driven her, the utter indifference to any loss but her own.

They hadn't done it for her, of course. The seething millions had their own reasons for anger, vendettas far more righteous than the false pretenses on which Lenie Clarke had waged war. But she had shown them the way. She had proven it was possible. And with every drop of her blood that she spilled, every precious inoculation of ßehemoth into the world, she had given them their weapons.

Now there was nothing she could bring herself to say. She could only shake her head, and force herself to meet the eyes of this accuser and one-time friend.

"And now they've really outdone themselves," Ouellette continued in her broken, empty voice. "Now, they've—"

She took a breath.

"Oh God," she finished. "I fucked up so bad."

Like a marionette she pulled herself to her feet. Still the botfly didn't move.

"It wasn't a counteragent," Ouellette said.

This time, Lubin spared a glance. "What do you mean?"

"I guess we're not dying fast enough. The witch was beating us but we were slowing it down at least, we lost four people for every one we saved but at least we were saving some . But the M&M's don't get into paradise until we're all dead, so they came up with something better…"

"And they are?" Lubin asked, turning back to the teleop.

"Don't look at me," the machine said quietly. "I'm one of the good guys."

Clarke recognized the voice in an instant.

So did Lubin. "Desjardins."

"Ken. Old buddy." The botfly bobbed a few centimeters in salute. "Glad you remember me."

You're alive , Clarke thought. After Rio, after Sudbury going dark, after five years. You're alive. You're alive after all.

My friend….

Ouellette watched the proceedings with numb amazement on her face. "You know —"

"He—helped us out," Clarke told her. "A long time ago."

"We thought you were dead," Lubin said.

"Likewise. It's been pretty much seven seconds to sockeye ever since Rio, and the only times I had a chance to ping you you'd gone dark. I figured you'd been done in by some disgruntled faction who never made the cut. Still. Here you are."

My friend , Clarke thought again. He'd been that when even Ken Lubin had been trying to kill her. He'd risked his life for her before they'd even met. By that measure, although their paths had only crossed briefly, he was the best friend she'd ever had.

She had grieved at word of his death; by rights, now, she should be overjoyed. But one word looped endlessly through her mind, subverting joy with apprehension.

Spartacus .

"So," she said carefully. "You're still a lawbreaker?"

"Fighting Entropy for the Greater Good," the botfly recited.

"And that includes burning thousands of hectares down to the bedrock?" Lubin queried.

The botfly descended to Lubin-eye level and stared lens to lens. "If killing ten saves a thousand it's a deal, Ken, and nobody knows that better than you.. Maybe you didn't hear what our lovely friend just told you, but there's a war on. The bad guys keep lobbing Seppuku into my court and I've been doing my damndest to keep it from getting a foothold. I've got barely any staff and the infrastructure's falling apart around my ears but I was managing, Ken, I really was. And then, as I understand it, you two walked into poor Taka's life and now at least three vectors have snuck past the barricades."

Lubin turned to Ouellette. "Is this true?"

She nodded. "I checked it myself, when he told me what to look for. It was subtle, but it was…right there. Chaperone proteins and alternative splicing, RNA interference. A bunch of second and third-order effects I never saw. They were all tangled up in the polyploid genes, and I just didn't look hard enough. It gets inside you. It kills ßehemoth sure enough, but then it just keeps going and it—I didn't see it. I was so sure I knew what it was, and I just—fucked up." She stared at the ground, away from accusing eyes. "I fucked up again ," she whispered.

Lubin said nothing for a few seconds. Then, to the 'fly: "You understand that there are reasons for caution here."

"You don't trust me." Desjardins sounded almost amused. "I'm not the one with the compulsive murder fetish, Ken. And I'm not the only one who shook off the Trip. Are you really in a position to throw stones?"

Ouellette looked up, startled from her bout of self-loathing.

"And whatever misgivings you have," the 'lawbreaker continued, "Give me credit for a little self-interest. I don't want Seppuku in my back yard any more than you do. I'm just as vulnerable as the rest of you."

"How vulnerable is that?" Lubin wondered. "Taka?"

"I don't know," Ouellette whispered. "I don't know anything…"

"Guess."

She closed her eyes. "It's a whole different bug than ßehemoth , but it's designed—I think it's designed for the same niche. So being tweaked against ßehemoth won't save you, but it might buy you some time."

"How much?"

"I can't even guess. But everyone else , you know—I'd guess, most anyone who hasn't got the retrofits…symptoms after three or four days, death within fourteen."

"Dead slow," Lubin remarked. "Any decent necrotising strep would kill you in three hours."

"Yes. Before you had a chance to spread it." Ouellette's voice was hollow. "They're smarter than that."

"Mmm. Mortality rate?"

The doctor shook her head. "It's designed , Ken. There's no natural immunity."

The muscles tightened around Lubin's mouth.

"It actually gets worse," Desjardins added. "I'm not the only watchdog on this beat. There are still a few others in N'Am, and a lot more overseas. And I've got to tell you, my limited-containment strategy is not all that popular. There are people who'd just as soon nuke the whole bloody seaboard just to be on the safe side."

"Why don't they nuke whoever's launching Seppuku?" Lubin wondered.

"Try getting a fix on half a dozen submerged platforms moving around the deep Atlantic at sixty knots. Truth be told, some thought it was you guys."

"It's not."

"Doesn't matter. People are itching to go nuclear on this. I've only been able to hold them off because I could keep Seppuku from spreading without resorting to fissiles. But now, r's and K's, you've handed the nuclear lobby everything they need. If I were you I'd start digging fallout shelters. Deep ones."