Рич Ларсон - Tomorrow Factory - Collected Fiction

“We’ll need cracking equipment,” I said. “It’ll cost.”

“There’s someone with a cracker down Tiber Street,” Anton said, grinning and adjusting the top hat he never sets at the same angle twice. “We can rent.”

Anton is a real piece of eight. He always wears a gilled coat, the kind you see in old European net plays, and when he grins like that people sink into his gravity well to become pucker–faced meteoroids. He has a kind of charisma, and a fire lit under his brainpan that drives him along at unholy speeds when he gets his hands on something exciting, something like the crate.

When the elevator opened, Anton guided the crate inside and I squeezed in behind, boned fish in the corner. We’d found the thing in floodland, sending up a lazy beep beep from Old Vancouver’s watery grave. Extracting it took most of the week—long nights in wetsuits and choking on boat fumes—but the salvage claim had gone through, and it was all ours now. I was moderately curious, but this one was Anton’s holy grail. Anton thought it was going to be something big.

“It could be nothing,” I said again, doing devil’s advocate as was usual.

“Possible, possible,” Anton said. “But why put nothing in a mobile bomb shelter?”

The elevator breezed open and we floated the crate over to Anton’s workshop. Walls recognized him and put on the lights. This was where the business, Anton and Hume Scavenging, went on. Four years of quality and exceptional service.

“We’ll stow it under the counter,” Anton said. “And throw those sheets over it.”

“Nobody’s coming to look for it, Anton,” I said. “It’s all ours now.” We slung it under the counter, no sheets, and it sat there looking real fucking innocuous.

We rented the cracker on Tiber Street, beside the yellow–taped hole they were still planning to fill with cement. It belonged to a woman with two cigarettes in her mouth. Anton thanked her for the discount with pale arms around his neck.

“I didn’t know you knew her,” I said, adjusting the recyclable rucksack we had filled with equipment.

“Biblically,” Anton said, spitting out the taste of her smoke. He laughed at his own little joke and I smiled by accident. Anton. For at least the past decade, except for the incident with Dolly from the supshop, Anton had always told me who he was shacking up with.

“She’s not too troll,” I said, thinking of the seams of her tights and the pristine edge of her collarbone. He grunted his ‘you know, no big issue’ assent. I still don’t know how Anton does it. Friends tell me he’s handsome but I’ve never seen it. His face is just Anton’s face, asymmetrical and, I think, a bit smug.

“We’re going to crack open some bottles, too,” Anton announced, waving his skyper. The order form for a lunch and liquor was still blinking on his screen. “To a week of hard work, yeah?”

“Yeah, verily,” I said.

We clinked imaginary beer.

Cracking equipment is hard to assemble while drinking, but we did it. By the time Anton positioned the pincers all around the crate, making sure everything was lined up, the excitement was coming off him like radiation.

“Looks ready,” I said. “Let’s shatter the bastard.”

“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction,” Anton said grandly, and he turned the handle.

The crate split apart with a sound like bones breaking. We’d both been getting into the spirit, so when we saw what was inside, it was a bit of an anticlimax. It looked like an incubator, the kind they use to heat up eggs for clone–grown dinosaur collectors.

“Might be a Rex,” I consoled him. “Those sell tidy.” But of course I was kind of glad it was nothing earth–shattering. Anton’s gut feelings were right too often, and gut feelings shouldn’t be.

“Nobody cares about eggs this much,” Anton said, reaching for the control. The incubator gave him a green light, so he flipped it open and we saw that it wasn’t holding an egg at all.

Describing the contents is hard. It was shapeless, furrowed red meat and quicksilver splashes. It undulated and shivered in slow motion. It smelled bitter.

“What the fuck?” I asked.

“Looks like… nano.” Anton put out a hand like he was going to touch it.

“Don’t touch it,” I said.

A ripple went through the thing, like responding to the sound. It was flowing together into sort of a starfish shape, all pumping muscle and the silvery stuff weaving into it.

“Nano–bio,” Anton finished. “How fucking peculiar.”

“This is one wyrd gene–job,” I said, watching the thing coil against itself.

It bucked, sudden, like hips at climax, and in a blink it was on Anton’s arm. He gave a muffled whoa of surprise, stumbled back and around in a circle. I made a grab for the thing, but it had already slithered up his sleeve and out of reach.

“Godshit!” Anton gasped. He hit the floor on his knees and I pushed him the rest of the way down, ripping off his red thermal. After that came off, I didn’t know what to do. The thing from the incubator was straddling his spine, stretching little fluttery stubs out over his shoulder blades. It took me off my guard, the wyrdness of the whole affair, and how it was sort of beautiful.

“Oh, man, man, man,” Anton said. “Help me remove this little monster.” He didn’t sound panicky, which is another excellent thing about Anton. He stays arctic cold under aggressive circumstances. He was even laughing a little, and a laugh of my own was halfway up my throat when the little stubs sharpened, right before my eyes, and plunged as tiny spines into Anton’s bare back.

He whimpered, and I knew this was bad, because he had never made that noise in my memory. Small beads of blood were welling up, all along his spine, and then somehow sluicing away. My first thought was that Godshit, this thing was vampirous. It was sucking him dry in the unsexy way. I tried to pry it off, but it was like grabbing gelatin, slipping and sliding off my fingers.

Then Anton held up a hand, like suggesting that I stop, and he got up off the floor.

“What the fuck is it doing?” I asked, stepping back. Anton looked slightly woozy, but he was alive. The thing from the incubator seemed to calm down, flattening itself along his back like a fleshy hug. I reached for my skyper where it had toppled from my pocket.

“Hume, I think it plugged in,” Anton said.

“I’m getting the emerg–serv,” I said. “We still have credit with them, right?”

“Leave the skyping,” Anton told me. He grimaced and propped himself up against the counter. Little twitches were running through him, miniature seizures.

“That thing just grafted onto your fucking back, Anton,” I said back. “Make me a damn compelling, you know, argument, or I’m getting them.”

“Hume, Hume,” Anton said, in his calming way. “I’m about to. Whoa.” Another twitch twanged through him. “You remember those spinal gears? For paralyzed people?”

“The things that looked like spiders,” I said. “Yeah, verily.”

“Like spiders, right,” Anton continued. “They lay new roads for the nerve endings. Bypass the damage. We’re looking at some remarkable nano–bio prototype for the same thing.” He was twisting and flexing.

“You’re not paralyzed, Anton,” I said.

“No,” he said. “I’m well beyond not–paralyzed. Hit me.”

“Hit you.”

“Hit me,” Anton repeated.

I’ve never slammed one to Anton; I’ve wanted to now and again. The adrenals and the fact he was requesting it and the wyrdness of the whole thing made me amenable, so I took a bit of a stance.

“Only if you’ll come to emerg–serv,” I said. “Get that fucking thing off you.”