Peter Watts - Maelstrom

"I bet you don't even know what they took away, do you? I bet you weren't even interested. Sure, you read their cheery little leaflets about serving the greater good and you learned enough to pass the tests, but it was all just hoops you had to jump through to get into the next tax bracket, right? Jesus, Killjoy. I mean, don't get me wrong—you're a flaming genius with sims and nonparametric stats, but when it comes to the real world you wouldn't know a come-on if someone got down on their knees and unzipped your fly for you. I mean, really.

"Anyhow, what they stole, we gave back. And I'm going to tell you exactly what we did, on the premise, you know, ignorance breeds fear and all that.

"You know about the Minsky receptors in your frontal lobes, and how all those nasty little guilt transmitters bind to them, and how you perceive that as conscience . They made Guilt Trip by tweaking a bunch of behavior-modification genes snipped from parasites; the guiltier you feel, the more Trip gets pumped into your brain. It binds to the transmitters, which changes their shape and basically clogs your motor pathways so you can't move.

"That's also why you're so fond of cats, by the way. Baseline Toxoplasma turns rodents into cat-lovers as a way of jumping between hosts. I bet a hundred Quebucks you weren't in such pathetic servitude to Mandelbrot until you got your shots, am I right?

"Anyway, Spartacus is basically a guilt analog. It's got the same active sites, so it binds to the Trip, but the overall conformation is slightly different so it doesn't actually do anything except clog up the Minsky receptors. Also it takes longer to break down than regular guilt, so it reaches higher concentrations in the brain. Eventually it overwhelms the active sites through sheer numbers.

"That's the real beauty of it, Killjoy; both your natural transmitters and the Trip itself are still being produced normally, so a test that keys on either of 'em comes up clean. Even a test looking for the complexed form will pass muster, since the baseline complex is still floating around—it just can't find any free receptor sites to latch onto.

"So you're safe. Honestly. The bloodhounds won't be a problem. I wouldn't put you at risk, Achilles, believe me. You mean too—you're too much of a friend for me to fuck around like that.

"Anyway, there you go. I've stuck my neck out for you, and what happens now is pretty much up to you. If you turn me in, though, know this: you're making that decision. However you rationalize it, you won't be able to blame some stupid longchain molecule. It'll be you all the way, your own free will.

"So use it, and think about all the things you've done and why, and ask yourself if you're really so morally rudderless that you couldn't have made all those tough decisions without enslaving yourself to a bunch of despots. I think you could have, Achilles. You never needed their ball and chain to be a decent human being. I really believe that. I'm gambling everything on it.

"Anyway. You know where I am. You know what your options are. Join me or stab me. Your choice.

"Love, Alice."

She'd last been confirmed at Yankton. Sault Sainte Marie crouched at the eastern corner of Lake Superior. A straight line between those points cut through Lake Michigan.

Ken Lubin knew exactly where to set up shop.

The Great Lakes weren't quite so great these days, not since the water shortages of the twenty-first century had reduced their volume by twenty-five percent. (Lubin supposed it was a small price to pay to avoid the water wars breaking out everywhere else on the planet.) Still. Lenie Clarke was a rifter; the lakes were still deep, and dark, and long. Directly en route, too. Any amphibian trying to elude capture would be crazy not to take a dip.

Of course, any amphibian with more than a room-temperature IQ would also know that her enemies would be waiting for her.

He stood four hundred meters above Lake Michigan's southern reaches. An unbroken rim of industrial lakefront stretched around the horizon from Whiting to Evanston. Barely visible between land and water: the dark, broad bands of old mud that passed for shoreline wherever deep-water access wasn't a priority.

"Check the forecast lately?" It was Burton, the Afrikaaner, still pissed that Lubin had usurped his command in the name of global salvation. Holo light from the tabletop played along the line of his jaw.

Lubin shook his head. The other man glanced through the wraparound pane of the lifter's observation deck. Darkness was advancing overhead, as though someone were unrolling a great black rug across the sky. "Forecast's up to eight, now. It'll hit us in under an hour. If she can still breathe water, it's going to come in handy even on shore."

Lubin grunted and ran a magged scan along the Chicago waterfront. Nothing of note there, of course. Ant-like civilians scuttling along under a morbid sky. She could be down there right now. Any second one of those bugs could just jump off the breakwater right in front of me, and it'd all be over. Or more likely I wouldn't even see it. All the troops, all the botflies, all the heavy equipment could just keep circling around here until the storm hits, and she's safe and cold under a hundred and fifty meters of muddy water.

"You're sure she's going to try it," Burton said.

Lubin tapped a panel on the table; the map zoomed back in scale, played false-color storm-front imagery across its airspace.

"Even though she knows we're in her way," Burton continued.

But they weren't in her way, of course. They were still hanging in mid-air, waiting for a fix. There were just too many approaches, too much megapolitan jungle full of pipes and wires and RF signals where a single unique signature could stay endlessly anonymous. There were some places one could safely exclude, of course. Clarke would never be foolish enough to cross the mudflats—a klick wide in some places—that the lakes had abandoned when the water fell. She'd stay in industrialized areas, indoors or under cover, her signal swamped and her passage unnoticed.

At least they knew she was in Chicago somewhere; a patrolling botfly had picked up a characteristic rifter EMission just that morning, then lost it around a corner. Another had picked up the scent through the front window of a Holiday Inn; cold, of course, by the time reinforcements arrived, but a playback on the lobby cameras hadn't left much doubt. Lenie Clarke was in Chicago; Lubin had pulled back standbys from Cleveland to Detroit, brought them all into tight focus around the sightings.

"You seem awfully certain, considering that whole mercury thing," Burton remarked. "Have you run this past anyone upstairs?"

"I want the dolphins set down right about there," Lubin said, pinpointing a spot on the tabletop. "Take care of it, will you?"

"Certainly." Burton moved back to his panel. Lubin spared a moment to watch his back.

Patience, Burton. You'll get your chance soon enough.

If I fuck up…

If he fucked up again , actually.

He still couldn't believe it. All those blood tests he'd ordered, all those path scans, and he'd never thought to test for heavy metals. He'd been eating raw oceanic wildlife for weeks, and it had never even occurred to him.

Idiot , he repeated to himself for the thousandth time.

The GA's medics had caught it when they were cleansing him of ßehemoth. They'd assured him that he couldn't be held responsible. That was the thing about heavy metals; they affected the brain. The mercury itself had dulled his faculties, they said. All things considered, he'd actually been performing better than expected.