The Paul Di Filippo Megapack Page 7

  Then came parabolic mirrored troughs that followed the sun and pumped heat into special sinks, lakes of molten salts, which in turn ran different turbines after sunset.

  Finally, serried ranks of photovoltaic panels generated electricity directly. These structures, in principle the simplest and least likely to fail, were the ones experiencing difficulties from some kind of dust accretion.

  Vibbing GPS coordinates for the troublespot, A.B. brought the trundlebug up to the infected photovoltaics. Paradoxically, the steady omnipresent whine of the car’s motors registered on his attention only when he had powered them down.

  Outside the vehicle’s polarized plastic shell, the sinking sun glared like the malign orb of a Cyclops bent on mankind’s destruction.

  When the bug-wide door slid up, dragon’s breath assailed the Power Jocks. Their plugsuits strained to shield them from the hostile environment.

  Surprisingly, a subdued and pensive Tigerishka volunteered for camp duty. As dusk descended, she attended to erecting their intelligent shelters and getting a meal ready: chicken croquettes with roasted edamame.

  A.B. and Thales sluffed through the sand for a dozen yards to the nearest infected solarcell platform. The keek held his pocket lab in gloved hand.

  A little maintenance kybe, scuffed and scorched, perched on the high trellis, valiantly but fruitlessly chipping with its multitool at a hard siliceous shell irregularly encrusting the photovoltaic surface.

  Thales caught a few flakes of the unknown substance as they fell, and inserted them into the analysis chamber of the pocket lab.

  “We should have a complete readout of the composition of this stuff by morning.”

  “No sooner?”

  “Well, actually, by midnight. But I don’t intend to stay up. I’ve done nothing except sit on my ass for two days, yet I’m still exhausted. It’s this oppressive place—”

  “Okay,” A.B. replied. The first stars had begun to prinkle the sky. “Let’s call it a day.”

  They ate in the bug, in a silent atmosphere of forced companionability, then retired to their separate shelters.

  A.B. hoped with mild lust for another nocturnal visit from a prowling Tigerishka, but was not greatly disappointed when she never showed to interrupt his intermittent drowsing. Truly, the desert sands of Paris sapped all his usual joie de vivre.

  Finally falling fast asleep, he dreamed of the ghostly waters of the vanished Seine, impossibly flowing deep beneath his tent. Somehow, Zulqamain Safranski was diverting them to flood A.B.’s apartment….

  4.

  The Red Queen’s Triathalon

  In the morning, after breakfast, A.B. approached Gershon Thales, who stood apart near the trundlebug. Already the sun thundered down its oppressive cargo of photons, so necessary for the survival of the Reboot Cities, yet, conversely, just one more burden for the overstressed Greenhouse ecosphere. Feeling irritable and impatient, anxious to be back home, A.B. dispensed with pleasantries.

  “I’ve tried vibbing your pocket lab for the results, but you’ve got it offline, behind that pirate software you’re running. Open up, now.”

  The keek stared at A.B. with mournful stolidity. “One minute, I need something from my pod.”

  Thales ducked into his tent. A.B. turned to Tigerishka. “What do you make—”

  Blinding light shattered A.B.’s vision for a millisecond in a painful nova, before his MEMS contacts could react protectively by going opaque. Tigerishka vented a stifled yelp of surprise and shock, showing she had gotten the same actinic eyekick.

  A.B. immediately thought of vib malfunction, some misdirected feed from a solar observatory, say. But then, as his lenses de-opaqued, he realized the stimulus had to have been external.

  When he could see again, he confronted Gershon Thales holding a pain gun whose wide bell muzzle covered both of the keek’s fellow Power Jocks. At the feet of the keek rested an exploded spaser grenade.

  A.B. tried to vib, but got nowhere.

  “Yes,” Thales said, “we’re in a dead zone now. I fried all the optical circuits of the vib nodes with the grenade.”

  A large enough burst of surface plasmons could do that? Who knew? “But why?”

  With his free hand, keeping the pain gun unwavering, Thales reached into a plugsuit pocket and took out his lab. “These results. They’re only the divine sign we’ve been waiting for. Reboot civilization is on the way out now. I couldn’t let anyone in the PAC find out. The longer they stay in the dark, the more irreversible the changes will be.”

  “You’re claiming this creeping crud is that dangerous?”

  “Did you ever hear of ADRECS?”

  A.B. instinctively tried to vib for the info and hit the blank frustrating walls of the newly created dead zone. Trapped in the twentieth century! Recreationist passions only went so far. Where was the panopticon when you needed it!?!

  “Aerially Delivered Re-forestation and Erosion Control System,” continued Thales. “A package of geoengineering schemes meant to stablize the spread of deserts. Abandoned decades ago. But apparently, one scheme’s come alive again on its own. Mutant instruction drift is my best guess. Or Darwin’s invisible hand.”

  “What’s come alive then?”

  “Nanosand. Meant to catalyze the formation of macroscale walls that would block the flow of normal sands.”

  “And that’s the stuff afflicting the solarcells?”

  “Absolutely. Has an affinity for bonding with the surface of the cells and can’t be removed with destroying them. Self-replicating. Best estimates are that the nanosand will take out thirty percent of production in just a month, if left unchecked. Might start to affect the turbines too.”

  Tigerishka asked, in an intellectually curious tone of voice that A.B. found disconcerting, “But what good does going offline do? When PAC can’t vib us, they’ll just send another crew.”

  “I’ll wait here and put them out of commission too. I only have to hang in for a month.”

  “What about food?” said Tigerishka. “We don’t have enough provisions for a month, even for one person.”

  “I’ll raid the fish farms on the coast. Desalinate my drinking water. It’s just a short round trip by bug.”

  A.B. could hardly contain his disgust. “You’re fucking crazy, Thales. Dropping the power supply by thirty percent won’t kill the cities.”

  “Oh, but we keeks think it will. You see, Reboot civilization is a wobbly three-legged stool, hammered together in a mad rush. We’re not in the Red Queen’s Race, but the Red Queen’s Triathalon. Power, food and social networks. Take out any one leg, and it all goes down. And we’re sawing at the other two legs as well. Look at that guy who vandalized your apartment. Behavior like that is on the rise. The urbmons are driving people crazy. Humans weren’t meant to live in hives.”

  Tigerishka stepped forward, and Thales swung the gun more towards her unprotected face. A blast of high-intensity microwaves would leave her screaming, writhing and puking on the sands.

  “I want in,” she said, and A.B.’s heart sank through his boots. “The only way other species will ever get to share this planet is when most of mankind is gone.”

  Regarding the furry speculatively and clinically, Thales said, “I could use your help. But you’ll have to prove yourself. First, tie up Bandjalang.”

  Tigerishka grinned vilely at A.B. “Sorry, apeboy.”

  Using biopoly cords from the bug, she soon had A.B. trussed with circulation-deadening bonds, and stashed in his homeopod.

  What were they doing out there!?! A.B. squirmed futilely. He banged around so much, he began to fear he was damaging the life-preserving tent, and he stopped. Wiped out after hours of struggle, he fell into a stupor made more ennervating by the suddenly less-than-ideal heat inside the homeopod, whose compromised systems strained to deal with the desert conditions. He began to hallucinate about the subterranean Seine again, and realized he was very, very thirsty. His kamelbak was dry when he sipped at its straw. />
  At some point, Tigerishka appeared and gave him some water. Or did she? Maybe it was all just another dream.

  Outside the smart tent, night came down. A.B. heard wolves howling, just like they did on archived documentaries. Wolves? No wolves existed. But someone was howling.

  Tigerishka having sex. Sex with Thales. Bastard. Bad guy not only won the battle, but got the girl as well….

  A.B. awoke to the pins and needles of returning circulation: discomfort of a magnitude unfelt by anyone before or after the Lilliputians tethered Gulliver.

  Tigerishka was bending over him, freeing him.

  “Sorry again, apeboy, that took longer than I thought. He even kept his hand on the gun right up until he climaxed.”

  Something warm was dripping on A.B.’s face. Was his rescuer crying? Her voice belied any such emotion. A.B. raised a hand that felt like a block of wood to his own face, and clumsily smeared the liquid around, until some entered his mouth.

  He imagined that this forbidden taste was equally as satisfying to Tigerishka as mouse fluids.

  Heading north, the trundlebug seemed much more spacious with just two passengers. The corpse of Gershon Thales had been left behind, for eventual recovery by experts. Dessication and cooking would make it a fine mummy.

  Once out of the dead zone, A.B. vibbed everything back to Jeetu Kissoon, and got a shared commendation that made Tigerishka purr. Then he turned his attention to his personal queue of messages.

  The ASBO Squad had bagged Safranski. But they apologized for some delay in his sentencing hearing. Their caseload was enormous these days.

  Way down at the bottom of his queue was an agricultural newsfeed. An unprecedented kind of black rot fungus had made inroads into the kale crop on the farms supplying Reboot City Twelve.

  Calories would be tight in New Perthpatna, but only for a while.

  Or so they hoped.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This story is indebted to Gaia Vince and her article in New Scientist, “Surviving in a Warmer World.”

  LITTLE WORKER

  Little Worker came awake instantly. Lying curled on the red-and-black-figured carpet before Mister Michael’s bedroom door, she stretched her limbs beneath her plain beige sleeveless shift, then stood on bare feet. Mister Michael, she could sense, was still asleep. Mister Michael deserved to sleep, for Mister Michael worked hard. Little Worker worked hard too, but she never slept late in the mornings, for there was too much to be done. (If Mister Michael stayed put in his office today, Little Worker would nap at his feet.) But in the mornings, Little Worker always awoke before Mister Michael. She always would. It was her way.

  Little Worker appeared unwontedly reluctant to leave her nightly station. Something, this morning, did not smell right. She sniffed the air intently, nostrils twitching. The troublesome odor was nothing she could identify. It was new. This was not necessarily bad, but might be. The new smell emanated from behind Mister Michael’s door. It was not a dangerous smell, so Little Worker could not bring herself to knock or otherwise disturb Mister Michael. He would be up and about soon enough, for Mister Michael had a busy schedule. Perhaps then the source of the new smell would be revealed. Perhaps not. In either case, Mister Michael would instruct her about anything she needed to know.

  Little Worker tucked strands of her moderate-length, stiff brown hair behind her ears. She brushed the wrinkles out of her shift. They disappeared swiftly from the dull utilitarian fabric. She curried the short fur on her face and licked beneath her arms. Her morning grooming completed, she set out for the kitchen.

  First Little Worker had to go down a long hall. The long hall had a veined marble floor, down the center of which ran the red and black carpet with its oriental design. The long hall had large mullioned windows in its stone walls. Some of these windows had panes of stained glass. Through the eastern windows came bright winter sunlight. When it passed through the colored panes, it made lozenges of various hues on the carpet. Little Worker admired these dapples, for they reminded her of dabs of jelly on toast. Little Worker liked jelly on toast. She would have some this morning. She usually had some every morning, except when she took an egg to add glossiness to her coat. Little Worker, with the aid of the food-center, could cook whatever she wanted for herself. This was one of her privileges. Mister Michael himself had said, when first she came to live here, “Little Worker, you may order the food-center to prepare whatever you want for yourself.” This had made her proud. In the Training School, she had had to eat whatever the trainers set out for her. But Mister Michael trusted her.

  The next door down the long hall from Mister Michael’s belonged to the bedroom of Mister Michael’s wife. Little Worker lifted her nose as she came abreast of the door, intent on passing without stopping. However, noises from beyond the door made her stop. The noises were thrashings and moanings and grunts. Little Worker suspected what the noises were, but curiosity impelled her to look anyway.

  The handle of the door was shaped like a thick curled gold leaf. Above the handle was a security keypad. Below was an old-fashioned keyhole. Little Worker put one big hazel eye to the hole.

  It was as Little Worker had suspected. Mister Michael’s naked wife was draped bellydown over a green plush hassock, being covered by her latest andromorph, a scion of the Bull line. Little Worker could smell mixed male and female sweat and a sexual musk.

  The sight disturbed Little Worker. Mister Michael’s wife was not the kind of wife he deserved. Little Worker ceased her spying and continued on toward the kitchen.

  At the end of the long hall was a curving flight of wide marble stairs. Here the runner ended. The marble was cold beneath Little Worker’s feet. She went down the stairs quickly.

  On the ground floor, Little Worker first crossed a broad reception hall along the walls of which were ranged busts on plinths, potted plants, and gold-framed paintings. She passed through a huge salon used for formal affairs, then through Mister Michael’s study, with its big walnut desk and shelves of books and wall-sized plasma screen. Several more chambers intervened before the kitchen, but finally Little Worker reached that chrome and tile room.

  Most mornings, as now, the large kitchen was empty. On the mornings of those days when there were to be state dinners, the kitchen was bustling early with hired chefs, who prepared the more complex dishes the food-center could not handle. Little Worker disliked such interruptions of her normal schedule. However, this was not such a morning. The kitchen was empty.

  Little Worker advanced to the food-center.

  “Food-center, prepare me toast with jelly,” she said.

  “There is no more bread,” replied the food-center.

  No more bread. Little Worker was disconcerted. She had had her heart set on toast and jelly. What could have happened to the supply of bread? Yesterday there had been plenty.

  “What has happened to the bread?” asked Little Worker.

  “Last night Mister Michael’s wife fed it all to the Bull andromorph. He ate three loaves. There were only three loaves. Thus there are no more.”

  Mister Michael’s wife had fed all of Little Worker’s toast to her Bull. It was the fault of Mister Michael’s wife that there was no toast this morning for Little Worker.

  “The bakery delivery occurs at ten o’clock this morning,” offered the food-center helpfully.

  “I will be gone with Mister Michael by then. I will not be home at ten o’clock. I must eat something different.” Little Worker paused to reflect. “I will have hot cereal with a spoon of jelly on it.”

  “There is no jelly. The Bull ate that also. With peanut butter.”

  Little Worker tensed her fingers reflexively. Her morning, disturbed already by the new odor coming from Mister Michael’s bedroom, was not getting better. The change in routine upset her. It felt like a morning when chefs came. But no chefs were here.

  “I will have an egg then,” said Little Worker.

  “There are eggs,” said the food-center.


  “There is no jelly for an egg?” hopefully asked Little Worker one last time.

  “There is no jelly even for an egg.”

  “Then I will have an egg alone.”

  Little Worker sat at a table with metal legs and white tile top. When her egg came she ate it, licking the plate to get all the yolk. It would serve to make her fur glossy. But it did not taste as good as jelly.

  When she was done, Little Worker ordered the food-center to prepare and serve breakfast for Mister Michael and his wife in the south dining room. Then she walked through halls and storage rooms until she arrived at the south dining room.

  Mister Michael was already there, seated at one end of a long polished table, reading a newspaper and sipping coffee.

  “Good morning, Mister Michael,” said Little Worker.

  “Morning,” said Mister Michael somewhat gruffly.

  Little Worker quivered inside. Mister Michael did not seem himself this morning. He worked too hard, thought Little Worker. He had too much on his mind. The state demanded too much of him. He should be better to himself.

  Little Worker coiled up at Mister Michael’s feet beside the table, where she could watch everything that happened.

  Breakfast was served. Mister Michael’s wife did not arrive on time. Mister Michael began to eat anyway. Only when the fine Canadian ham and scrambled eggs and poached fish were cold did she come through the door.

  Mister Michael’s wife was dressed for shopping. She wore an ivory jacket short in front but with long tails that hung to her knees in back, over a pale blue silk blouse and tulip-hemmed ivory skirt. She wore blue metallic stockings and creamy high heels. She smelled heavily of expensive perfume, which failed to conceal entirely from Little Worker’s keen nose the aromas of her recent mating.

  Sitting gingerly, as if sore, Mister Michael’s wife picked idly at the food set before her. Neither she nor Mister Michael spoke for some time. Finally, though, setting down his paper, which rustled loudly to Little Worker’s ears, Mister Michael said, “There are some important people coming up today from Washington. They’ll want to meet you.”