Sergei Lukyanenko - The Genome

Alex gazed into the sky.

Its appearance was strange. Irregular. Unprecedented.

The kind that happens over worlds still unspoiled by civilization. The kind of sky that might happen over Earth, humanity’s home planet, a world trashed and flushed clean three times over.

But over Quicksilver Pit, the industrial center of the sector, a planet of three shipyards with all the necessary infrastructure, this kind of sky simply should not be.

Alex gazed up.

Clear, iridescent blue. Scattered threads of clouds. Pink glow of the setting sun. A glider gamboling as playfully as a puppy in a snowdrift. Never before, not through the hospital window, not on the planetary news programs, had he seen such a sky over Quicksilver Pit.

There was something odd about the whole city today. The setting sun splashed a warm pink over the walls of the buildings. The last remnants of dirty snow clung to the support columns of the old monorail, spaced out along the highway. Once in a very long while, a car would rush by, as if afraid to tear the silence, slipping away so fast it seemed in a hurry to escape this suddenly unfamiliar, pink world.

Or maybe this was the way the world should look to a person just emerging from five months’ confinement to a hospital ward.

“No one meeting you?”

Alex turned to the guard. Whiling away his time, bored in his plexiglass booth, the guard cut a strapping figure. Ruddy cheeks, shoulders three feet wide, a stun gun on his belt, and a bulletproof vest over his uniform—as though someone planned to storm the hospital.

“I don’t have anybody.”

“You from far away?”

“Uh-huh.” Alex reached for his cigarettes. Drew the smoke of the strong local tobacco deep into his lungs.

“Need a taxi? You’re dressed kind of light for this weather, friend…”

The guard was evidently eager to help.

“No, thanks. I’ll take the rail.”

“Comes once an hour,” warned the guard. “It’s free public transport, for the naturals…”

To be honest, he looked like a natural himself. Not that you could tell anything by looks.

“That’s why I’m taking the rail, ’cos it’s free.”

The guard gave Alex a once-over, then glanced at the hospital buildings behind him.

“No, no, I am a spesh,” explained Alex. “I’m just broke, that’s all. Work insurance plan. I couldn’t have paid for the treatment myself. They could have brought me here in a basket… well, maybe they did . I don’t remember.”

He slashed a hand across his own waist, indicating the invisible line that, five months ago, had divided his body and his life in two. He felt an overwhelming need to share, to talk to someone who hadn’t seen his medical charts, someone who would listen, appreciate, click his tongue…

“Rotten luck,” sighed the guard. “Well, now you’re all right? Main parts back to normal?”

Alex stepped on the cigarette butt and nodded in response to the guard’s conspiratorial smirk.

“Like new… Well, thanks.”

“For what?” replied the guard in surprise.

But Alex was already on his way to the road. He walked fast, not looking back. They had really done a splendid job of patching him up. He couldn’t have wished for better treatment… especially in his situation. But now, since having signed the last insurance document half an hour ago, affirming that he had no complaints against the medical personnel and proclaiming his condition “identical to pre-trauma state,” nothing connected him to the hospital anymore. Absolutely nothing.

Or to this planet, for that matter. But leaving Quicksilver Pit would be much harder.

On the side of the highway, he waited for a speeding car to pass, a luxurious, sporty, bright-red Cayman . Crossed over to the monorail support column, and walked up the spiral staircase—the elevator, of course, was out of order.

“Well, we’re on our own again, just you and me. Right, Demon?” he said into the air. Then glanced sideways at his shoulder.

Alex’s clothes really were all wrong for the weather, even this unexpected thaw which had burst upon the city on the eve of Independence Day. His jeans and shoes, bought for pennies donated by a local charity fund, were more or less all right. But the leather vest over a sleeveless jersey looked weird.

At least his Demon seemed to be having a good time.

It lived on his left shoulder: a color tattoo some four inches tall, a small demon with a pitchfork in its hands, who stared into space with a gloomy and disapproving air. Its long tail was wrapped around its waist, probably to keep the Demon’s legs from getting tangled up in it. The Demon’s short gray fur looked like a set of fuzzy clinging overalls.

For a while Alex stared suspiciously at the Demon’s little face. It wore an inquisitive, calm expression. Self-assured.

“We’re gonna make it, bro,” said Alex. He leaned over the guardrail of the train stop, looked down below, spat onto the shiny steel rail.

There was nobody else around. Maybe the free municipal transport was unpopular, or maybe it was just that kind of day. A day of a blue sky, a pink sunset, the end of a holiday. Yesterday the whole hospital had celebrated… Even Alex, formally still a patient, was given some alcohol, mixed with glucose and vitamins.

Here at the height of some thirty-two feet, gusty wind reigned supreme. Alex even considered going back down and taking shelter behind the column while he waited for the train. But, after all, it was more interesting up here. There was a panoramic view of the city, its even rows of skyscrapers, its grid of straight roads already showing bright flashes of ads. It was a very geometrical city. On the other side, beyond the empty, long-derelict fields, he could make out the dim outlines of the spaceport. The port was too close to the city, Alex thought… Well, maybe that was what had saved his life. His surgeon had let it slip that the life-support IC unit, to which Alex had been connected, spent its back-up battery power and clicked off just as he was put onto the operating table.

Who could have ever guessed he would actually need his comprehensive insurance policy one day? Someone in the office of the Third Freight-and-Passenger station would gnash his teeth signing off on the medical bills. Well, they didn’t really have a choice.

“We’ll make it,” he promised his Demon again. Spat once more onto the rail. Felt a slight tremor. The monorail car was drawing near.

It moved at a very leisurely pace. Alex estimated its speed at thirty point two miles per hour. It was completely covered with spirited graffiti, as though the car was trying to compensate for its lack of speed by the intricate brightness of its decoration. It was almost dusk, and some of the signs and drawings gave off a dim phosphorescence; others sparkled, flowed, changed colors.

“Don’t you dare not stop…” murmured Alex anxiously, but the monorail car was already slowing down. With a hissing sound, it opened its wide door, decorated with a fairly talented caricature of Quicksilver Pit’s president, Mr. San Li. Alex smiled at the thought of how much better this would have looked in the hospital than the obligatory copies of the president’s portrait in every ward. He entered the monorail car.

The inside didn’t look any better than the outside. Hard plastic seats, a derelict TV screen on the dead-bolted partition separating the passengers from the driver.