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15: OPEN YOUR MOUTH

"The older you get, the stronger the wind gets-and it's always in your face."

—JACK NICKLAUS

One switchbox after another, Kaioko and I shut off the circuit breakers, spreading a wake of silent darkness. We'd left Juani tweaking his generator with only a flashlight. Soon we would finish Deck Three, then we'd have to climb the ladder to sick-ward.

Sheeba had gone there to deliver the food tray. A strange new Sheeba, a woman I barely recognized. But the difference was only cosmetic, I told myself. Her skin dye had faded, but Shee was still my golden beloved. At least, without a space suit, she couldn't follow Liam into the un-pressurized ladder well. So for the moment, she was safe.

Safe? Sheeba was in sick-ward!

And where else would she be? My darling lived to succor the needy. She thrived on it Sheeba shared the same mission as my NEMs—a single-minded drive to heal. Can't you see her chatting with the patients, recolorizing their auras, tuning their energy fields, rubbing their feet? I almost envied those stricken protes, feeling the touch of her potent hands. But I did not want to see their faces.

Ah, Sheeba had a million theories about healing. She jumped from one medical creed to another, always seeking the next big therapy. By contrast, I put my faith in one mainstream church—the Mayo Clinic. Mayo was the best. Why change? Hadn't I spent months and years laid up in its hallowed halls, recovering from my self-cloned organ transplants, skin grafts, joint replacements, hair-growth procedures? Why, my medical records alone took a gigabyte of ROM. I hated clinics and doctors.

But the Mayo was Shangri-La compared to Heaven's sick-ward. That surveillance video stayed with me. Malady, malaise, malignant despair—whatever name you might choose, Heaven's affliction unmanned me. Those vacant eyes staring at the ceiling. Listless hands. Thin gray bodies too debilitated to eat or drink. How many ways had I tried to delete that video from my memory. But there it was, stuck in my head like a repeating loop of Reel.

As we climbed up the ladder to Four, dread of that place almost overwhelmed my compulsion to find Sheeba. What arrogant folly had led me to bring her here? The Reel didn't repel her, it drew her like a pole star.

* * *

"You can't resist the force of the dark canal," she told me once. We'd gone to her apartment in Nordvik, a tiny place downtown near the airport—she refused to let me pay her rent. The walls were draped in cheap faux silk and tissue paper, turquoise, azure, veridian. She'd painted the ceiling black, and she'd disabled the lighting fixtures. The only piece of furniture in her living room was a holographic projection of a waterfall reflecting dappled fake sunlight.

"The dark canal is always there," she went on, offering me a cup of instant tea. Dim watery flickers swam across the tissue walls. Aquamarine shadows danced. She placed a sugar bowl in the middle of the floor and gestured with her plastic spoon. "It's like an urge, deep in your body. Like when things build up and make you want to scream. But you hold it in because you have to, and the feeling just ripples inside."

"You mean orgasm," I teased, feeling my way toward her through the dizzy light. "Your dark canal is your vagina, dear heart."

When she sat on the floor, blue dust bunnies wafted up around her like froth. Did the child not own a cleaning bot?

"I'm trying to be honest, Nass. Don't laugh at me. You of all people."

Glittery blues and greens played over her splendid shoulders and legs. I lowered myself to her floor. "Why me of all people?"

"Because you have a multiplex soul," she said.

"Like a cinema?'

"Exactly," she said, leaving me without a clue. Hell's bells, I adored her. Yes, I would brave Heaven's sick-ward to find her.

* * *

"You don't have to push, Kaioko."

"Please hurry, sir."

As I stumbled up the ladder, trying to stay focused on Sheeba, Heaven's malady loomed above like a poison smog. This war began nine months ago, but the strange affliction had started earlier—two years earlier, so our site manager said. Now I suspected he had deceived us for years. Maybe the disorder infiltrated Heaven from the beginning, when the factory first came online three decades ago.

Our site manager was my own protege, Robert Trencher. Just two years back, his field reports showed nothing more than a few unexplained fatalities. A minor curiosity. He assured us there were no radiation leaks, diseases or toxins. Just people dying. At first, we took it as good news. A13's population had grown bloated with dependent offspring, and costs were out of balance. This small death spike fell in our laps like a gift. It opened up new jobs for the older juves and helped lower our costs.

Kaioko bumped against me on the ladder, but all I could think about was how Trencher must have cynically falsified the numbers. Feeding us crap by the spoonful. Us. The directors. Only last year, when production plummeted, did he admit the truth—a major outbreak.

On that news, the markets might have come apart at the seams if we hadn't reacted fast. What if this malady spread to other satellites? An epidemic like that could tear our patched-up economy to shreds. So with all due prudence, we locked down the satellite's communications, sent it into high polar orbit and issued press releases full of smoke and mirrors—and warnings to keep off.

Then we started to look for the cause. And that's precisely when Trencher turned tail and fled. Gutless liar, not a single one of his staff showed symptoms—our doctors swore their bioNEMs gave them immunity. But Trencher and his entourage evacuated en masse. What really chapped me was, I'd given Trencher his start. I'd trained him. Who knew he would be such a noodge? To save face, I personally had to demote him to junior management.

After Trencher abandoned his post, we were forced to send cyberdocs and robotic probes to study A13 remotely. The new surveillance equipment chewed up a lot of cash, and some of our directors grumbled. But I kept hoping for a solution, and despite a bad case of queasiness, I spent hours poring over the surveillance video. All the employees showed the typical consequences of living for years on a satellite. Weight loss, sleeplessness, chronic depression. But where were the warning signs of imminent death? I couldn't see any. Not till they took to their beds did they begin to show symptoms.

Our remote probes crawled all over Heaven, scraping up dust and analyzing electromagnetic fields. For a while, Heaven's production line limped along at 50 percent output, while we kept seeking the triggering agent. But after months of sampling and testing, our robots failed to find any hint of a cause for Heaven's malady. And worse, our futile investigations were costing a freightload of deutsch.

How long could we keep tossing good money after bad? I held out the longest, believing our scientists needed more time for research, but in the end, I yielded. It wasn't worth the expense. So nine months ago, we voted to shut down operations, euthanize the workers and reclaim the real estate. That's what started the war.

That's what I couldn't admit to Grunze—how much money we'd wasted for nothing. We'd bollixed the whole situation. We probably should have dumped A13 on the World Health Org and let them figure it out Provendia's balance sheet would have read a damn sight better if we had, but then the news might have leaked out and wrecked investor confidence. None of us was willing to risk a market meltdown. Another Crash was unthinkable. But still, the episode made us look like saps.

Somewhere, the hull creaked with a loud echo of warping steel. Kaioko grabbed my shirttail and bit down on the cloth. We halted together on the ladder till the noise died.

'Tell me about the sick people," I said, closing my hand over the little fist that still gripped my shirt. When facing danger, I'd found that it helped to visualize what was coming. "How many are up there now?"

Kaioko aimed her flashlight at the hatch just above my head. "Please climb, sir."

"Are they very sick?" The surveillance video kept running instant replays through my head, but the images were only bit-map recollections of pixels rastered on a screen.

"Yes," she said after a pause.

I loosened her fist from my undershirt and swung to the side of the ladder. "You go on. I'll be there in a while." Memories of that video were blunting my surfer's edge. I had to forget that stuff and clear my mind. "Be here now," I whispered.

"Please, sir." Pitiful squeaky girl. She pawed at me with her puny hand, and her long sleeve accidentally fell back, revealing the cut marks on her arm. Were those cuts a sign of the malady? Was she beginning to die?

"You don't look well. Maybe you're dehydrated. Let's go back to the galley and get some water." I tried to pull her down the ladder.

But Kaioko wrapped her arms around the rungs and wouldn't budge. "Sir, we have to shut off those switches. Juani's waiting."

I took a long breath and let it out slowly. It was their eyes I dreaded most, wide-open but not looking at anything, not accusing anyone. Like the faces in Lahore.

No, delete that last part Disconnect. Focus on the moment. I gripped the ladder in both hands. This used to be easier. What was happening to Nasir Deepra, the war surfer ace?

'Tell me about those cuts on your arm, Kaioko."

The girl reddened and tugged at her sleeves.

"You did that to yourself, didn't you?"

She turned away and murmured so softly, I had to lean forward.

Then Provendia launched another barrage, and Kaioko nearly slipped off the ladder. When I caught her, she buried her head against my chest. Loud booms shuddered through the walls, and Kaioko's keening wail seemed to teak out of her mouth like steam from a pressure vent. Finally, I understood what she was saying. "Geeeeee."

"Geraldine will be fine. Let's go back and check on her," I said, grateful for any delay.

"Geeeee," she kept whining.

I caught her wrists, and her sleeves fell back, revealing more scars. "Oh, child. Why would you cut yourself like that?"

She bit her trembling lower lip. Then she whispered, "It something Gee and I do. To let the hurting out"

"She's your girlfriend, right?"

"My husband," Kaioko chirruped, biting my shirt. "Gee and I married. I'm her wife."

"Wife." That word again. At any time, it would have sounded alien, but the incongruities in this context left me speechless. Geraldine and Kaioko were barely out of diapers, yet already they'd promised each other their lives? In dismay, I stroked Kaioko's narrow shoulders and listened to the groaning walls. When the noisemakers grew louder, she gripped my torso and trembled. Then something Juani said came back to me. He said he was living fast.

As the noisemakers boomed and the ladder shook, I thought about employee life spans. Sixty, seventy, eighty years at most. Without NEM-inspired longevity, workers had to cram all their living into a few short decades. Maybe that's why they could afford to promise each other eternity. These unfamiliar and strangely conflicting notions assaulted me as we mounted up the ladder.

At last, the volley of gunfire ended with Heaven still intact Cycling through the lock took far too little time, and when Kaioko opened the hatch to sick-ward, a vein in my neck started throbbing.

Four's segment of the ladder well did not reek of medicinal disinfectant. It smelled—unearthly. With infinite slowness, I emerged from the lock and cast my flashlight around the cylindrical walls. The well dripped with space fungus.

Black mounds covered the floor like a sooty carpet and gave the walls a dark velvet sheen. Smoky ruffles festooned the ceiling, and dark, fluted sprays clustered around the ladder leading up to Five. Where the ladder met the hatch above, fibrous black stalactites swelled downward. Deck Five held the factory. Perhaps some of Heaven's sugar had seeped down through the hatch to feed this fungal growth. In my flashlight beam, the fibers glittered like onyx.

And that scent! How can I describe the rainbow of deep, lusty aromas? Acrid, bittersweet and briny, too, like sea salt. It reminded me of Juani's veggies, but more musky and concentrated, full of buttery nut-like essence. In an uncanny way, the smell attracted me.

On Four, the artificial gravity felt weaker still, and we bounced over the fungus with springy, muted steps. The silver D and U glimmered weakly in the flashlight beam. "Which way?" I asked.

"Up lead to the 'pactor room. Switches already off in there." She pointed to the D. "We go sick-ward."

She pushed back her sleeves and struggled to open the Down door. Less gravity made it difficult for her to gain leverage on the wheel, but I held back and didn't help. The door opened sluggishly. Then a stark greenish light flashed through the open door. With prickling neck hairs, I leaned to look inside.

The walls and surfaces strobed bright, then dark, then bright. A dying fluorescent tube buzzed off and on as if possessed by devils. But where were the rows of beds? I saw no moaning victims, only a small room, wedge-shaped like the others. The lime-green light intermittently revealed cabinets, work counter, a tiny sink. Plastic beaches filled one corner, suggesting a waiting area. This wasn't sick-ward. This was just a check-in station—an anteroom.

Four light-globes winked from recesses in the low ceiling, but they were as dark as the bulbs in the ladder well. A dead surveillance camera tilted off center. Only the fluorescent tube seemed to be wired to Juani's emergency generator. I stepped inside and inspected the anteroom more carefully.

A film of fungus covered everything, but there were indications that someone had tried to scrub it away. And unlike the galley where every loose item was stored in a bin, this room held a chaos of junk. Antique medical apparatus, glass jars, spoons and plastic tubing were flung about, as if recently engaged in some urgent experiment.

Supine on the steel table under the blinking light lay a partially dismantled cyberdoc. Evidently, someone had cannibalized its inner workings for lab equipment A rack of specimen vials occupied one end of the table, filled with various shades of pinkish fluid. There were also a nanoscope and something that looked obscurely like a centrifuge. More parts cluttered the work counter, and after a puzzled examination, I recognized the remains of one of my robotic probes.

These kids had taken apart my scientific equipment? Did they think we sent the probes as toys? That gear cost us mega-deutsch, and look at it. A pile of rubbish.

Kaioko motioned me toward another door at the back, an ordinary oval bulkhead with a raised sill like the others in Heaven. "That sick-ward," she said and pointed.

And then, oh gilty gods, I did hear moaning. The door stood open a crack, and a pale yellow light flickered on the other side. Vague shadows moved on the wall, and the moaning started again, very faint and hoarse. I did not want to pass through that door.

Can you feel how I dreaded it? The idea of people waiting to die—it swamped my imagination. After spending so much money, time and—let me say it—passion, on keeping myself well, I simply could not find a way to understand.

Kaioko gave me a weak little shove, but I resisted. "You know where the switch boxes are. You go."

"Nobi, please take another drink." That was Sheeba's voice. She was in there, inside sick-ward with those victims. I should have rushed in to rescue her, no matter what septic corruption awaited me. Instead I stood petrified— and I eavesdropped.

"Please, just one tiny sip." The sorrow in her voice made me shiver.

Then Vlad spoke. "Please take some water, Nobi."

"Save it," said a feeble voice. "They'll need it later."

"Please, Nobi, try," said Sheeba.

With a whimper, Kaioko hurried through the door into sick-ward and left me standing alone in the anteroom. Mortified by my own cowardice, I pushed the sick-ward door closed so they wouldn't see me skulking outside. Nobi, that was Kaioko's brother, the graffiti artist. Through the almost-closed door, I heard Kaioko's piping wail. I stood as if anchored by magnets.

Near the door, Vlad whispered something rapidly to Sheeba. I didn't catch all of it. Something about mixing blood serum to make a cure. Sheeba's blood. Was he using Sheeba's blood? No, Shee wouldn't let him do that. I moved a little closer, listening. Yes, he said it again. He had mixed some kind of potion from Sheeba's healthy blood, but it didn't work.

In shock, I picked up one of the vials from the table and held it to the light Inside the plastic vial, scarlet threads of liquid rose and spun in a thick yellow oil, then settled gently back to a pool at the bottom. Gilty gods. That untrained kid had taken Sheeba's blood? I pictured a bristling wad of dirty needles. To what had Shee exposed herself? That juvenile thought he could cure an unknown pathology when Provendia's brightest scientists had failed? Of course his snake oil didn't work.

But Vlad was coming through the door." . . . I can't save him. I can't do anything." When his hand touched the jamb, I stepped quickly behind a cabinet.

"It was worth a try. Don't blame yourself," said Shee.

The door opened wider. I couldn't let Sheeba find me trembling in the shadows like this. As Vlad stepped over the sill, I streaked for the ladder well and fled.

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