Peter Watts - Maelstrom

"Are you sure? No—no ergots, or psychoactives?"

Cleared for travel. Please proceed to check-in.

"Are you equipped for NMR?"

This booth is designed to scan for communicable parasites and diseases. You may visit a commercial medbooth if you wish to be tested for other disorders.

"Where's the nearest commercial medbooth, then?"

Please don't leave me.

"I— what ?"

Stay, Lenie. We can work it out.

Besides. There's someone you should meet.

The screen went dark. The bead in her ear emitted a tiny belch of static.

"It's me," said a sudden voice. "Sou-Hon. From the bus station."

She grabbed her visor and fled into the tame green jungle of Concourse D. Startled pedestrian eyes, barely noticed, met her own. She slid the visor onto her face, not slowing.

"You don't understand." The voice was a small pleading thing in her ear. "I'm on your side. I'm—"

Glass doors, leading outside. Clarke pushed through. Sudden icy wind reduced global warming to a weak abstraction. The concourse arced around from behind her like a horseshoe-shaped canyon.

"I'm here to help— "

Clarke tapped her watch twice in succession. "Command mode," the device replied.

"Off" she told it.

" Amitav's de —"

"Off," the watch acknowledged, and fell instantly asleep.

She was alone.

The sidewalk was empty. Light spilled from the warren of habitrail tubes that shielded McCall's patrons from winter. The whine of distant turbines drifted down from the rooftops.

Two taps. "On."

A soft fuzz of static from the earpiece, although her watch was well within its operational two-meter radius.

"Are you there?" she said.

"Yes."

"What about Amitav?"

"Just before it—I mean—" The voice caught on itself. "They just burned everything. Everyone. He must have been…"

A passing gust of wind snapped at her face. The mermaid took a bitterly cold breath.

"I'm sorry," the stranger whispered in her head.

Clarke turned and went back inside.

It was an impoverished display, sparse informatics against a dark background: lats and longs, a tiny GPS overlay centered on Calgary International Airport , a no-visual icon blinking the obvious at two-second intervals.

"How do you know?" breathed a disembodied voice in Perreault's ear.

"I saw it. The start of it, anyway." Hard-edged airport ambience echoed in the background. "I'm sorry."

"It was his own fault," Clarke said after a moment. "He made too much noise. He was just—asking for it…"

"I don't think that was it," Perreault said. "They slagged eight whole kilometers."

" What? "

"Some kind of biohazard, I think. Amitav just got—caught in the sweep…"

"No." Words so soft they were almost static. "Can't be."

"I'm sorry."

No visual. No visual.

"Who are you?" Clarke asked at last.

"I ride botflies," Perreault said. "Mop-ups, mainly. I saw you when you came out of the ocean. I saw how you affected the people on the Strip, I saw you when you had one of those—visions—"

"Aren't you the faithful little stalker," Clarke said.

"That wasn't me," she continued after a while. "Back on the Strip. That was Amitav."

"He ran with it. You were the insp—"

" It wasn't me ."

"Okay. Fine."

No visual.

"Why are you following me?" Clarke said.

"Someone's—linked us up. And at the bus station, earlier."

"Who?"

"I don't know. Probably one of your friends."

Something between a cough and a laugh. "I don't think so."

Perreault took a breath. "You're—getting known, you know. People are noticing. Some of them must be protecting you."

"From what , exactly?"

"I don't know. Maybe from the people who started the quake."

"What do you know about that?" Clarke's voice almost pounced down the link.

"Millions died," Perreault said. "You know why. That makes you dangerous to all the wrong people."

"Is that what you think."

"It's one of the rumors. I don't know."

"Don't know much, do you?"

"I—"

"You don't know who I am. You don't know what I want or what I've d— you don't know who they are or what they want. You just sit there and let them use you."

"What do you want?"

"None of your fucking business."

Perreault shook her head. "I'm just trying to help, you know."

"Lady, I don't know if you even exist . For all I know that kid in South Bend is playing some kind of sick joke."

" Something 's happening because of you. Something real. You can check the threads yourself if you don't believe me. You're some kind of catalyst. Whether you know it or not."

"And here you are, jumping in with no questions asked."

"I've got questions."

"No answers, then. I could be planting bombs. I could be spit-roasting babies. You don't know, but here you are with your tongue hanging out anyway."

" Listen ," Perreault snapped, "whatever you're doing, it—"

— Can't be any worse than the way things are already…

She stopped, astonished at the thought, grateful that she'd kept it back. She felt an absurd certainly that seven hundred kilometers away, Lenie Clarke was smiling.

She tried again. "Look, I may not know what's going on but I know something is, and it revolves around you. And I bet that not everyone who knows that is on your side. Maybe you think I'm a head case. Fine. But even I wouldn't risk going through airport security with the kind of profile your implants put out. I'd get out now , and I'd forget about flying anywhere for the foreseeable future. There are other ways to get around."

She waited. Tactical constellations glimmered about her.

"Okay," Clarke said at last. "Thanks for the tip. Here's one for you. Stop trying to help me. Help whoever's trying to stamp me out, if you can find them."

"For God's sake, why ?"

"For your own sake, Suzie. For everyone you ever cared about. Amitav was—he didn't deserve what happened to him."

"No, of course he didn't."

"Eight kilometers, you said?"

"Yes. Burned to bedrock."

"I think that was just the beginning," Clarke said. "Off."

Around Sou-Hon Perreault, the stars went out.

Interested? Reply.

It was an odd sort of caption to find on a biochemical graphic: a lopsided crucifix of Carbons and Oxygens and Hydrogens—oh wait, there was a Sulfur over there, and a Nitrogen on one side of the crossbeam, right about where they'd nail Jesus' wrist into place (of course, the way this thing was built, the savior's left arm would have to be about twice as long as his right). Methionine, the matchmaker said. An amino acid.

Only flipped. A mirror image.

Interested? Fucking right .

The file had been sitting in his morning ßehemoth-related data sweep, ticking quietly. He hadn't even had time to check it out until several hours into his shift. Supercol was burning a path through Glasgow, and some new carbon-eating bug—mutant or construct, nobody knew—had eaten a big chunk of the Bicentennial Causeway right out from under a few thousand rapitrans passengers. It had been a busy morning. But finally he'd had a few moments to come down off the accelerants and breathe.

He'd opened the file, and it had jumped out as if spring-loaded.

The matchmaker was unusually forthcoming in explaining why this file qualified for his attention. Usually, matchmakers delivered their treasures through logical chains way too twisted for humans to follow; like magic, needed information from all over the world would simply appear in your queue, unsummoned. But this file—this had come with explicit search terms attached, terms that even a human being could understand. Quarantine. Firestorm. Beebe Station. Channer Vent.