CONTAGION
Chris Roberson

Though the railway platform was packed to capacity with holiday
travelers, Jaidev Hark carried a buffer of solitude with him. Wherever he went, no one came within arm's reach, people instinctively clearing a path when catching the slightest glimpse of his gloved hands, or of the hierogram picked out in golden thread on the black fabric of his mask. Only another Vector would be brazen enough to come nearer than a dozen hand spans away, and even then certain protocols were to be observed. Such was the price of security.
Harks westbound train was late, as always. The terms of his bond with the Emuls Corpus called for the cryptogen he'd contracted in their research facilities to arrive at their main offices on the western coast in no more than a fortnight. Hark always budgeted travel delays into his delivery estimates, and with more than thirteen days to go before he could reasonably be considered tardy, he was in no danger of missing his deadline. Still and all, he felt the prickling heat of anxiety running down his back, but tried unsuccessfully to chalk it up to
a low-grade fever. His temperature was always somewhat elevated after he'd been infected with a message, even if his Vaxine's thresholds had been turned down all the way; it wouldn't do for the virus he was carrying in his blood to get cooked to death by his own body's antiviral/antibiotic protection wetware.
In the distance, out beyond the grand arch of the railway station, in the still-dark, still-quiet morning, the sound of an approaching train could be heard, its whistle blowing mournful and low. The station was the eastern terminus of the cross-continental line, and at this hour, it could only be Hark's train, completing the final leg of its run before starting back in the opposite direction.
Hark reflexively checked the timepiece set into the gold face of his signet pendant, the signifier of his bond agent which he wore pinned to his lapel, and subtracted the few moments he'd waited on the platform from the time remaining until his scheduled delivery. Then he lifted his valise, his only article of luggage, and stood in the quiet eye of the storm which the crowd of holiday travelers had become, impatiently waiting to board.
In another few days, the employment zones in the major population centers would be deserted, the staffs all on leave for the days of Festivus, whether journeying to visit family, or vacationing, or on some pilgrimage. Even those few who didn't travel would crowd the entertainment zones, with the restaurants and wrestling arenas packed to overflowing. Hark wished, as he always did in holiday seasons, that he could hide himself away when the crowds were abroad, safe in his home chambers, his Vaxine thresholds turned to maximum, with some gentle entertainment to while away the hours. But his services were always in demand, and doubly so when others were at their leisure. And though he was never touched or molested by the jostling crowds which swarmed at every turn, there was no escaping the offending sounds of massed humanity, their shouts and calls, nor the all-pervasive smell, even through the fabric of the mask which covered his mouth and nose. Even though the travelers on the platform around him were Middle Caste, all inoculated with over-the-counter Vaxines set to high thresholds and at least reasonably up-to-date with their security updates and virus definitions, Hark still felt exposed, at risk.
But then, he was at risk, after all. Why else would his services come at so dear a price?
In the accustomed anonymity of the crowd, making his slow way to the boarding area as the train disgorged its eastbound passengers, Hark was surprised to hear his name, called out over the rising din.
"Jaidev," shouted the familiar, somewhat muffled voice. "Jaidev Hark!"
Hark's eyes scanned the jostling crowd through the smoked glass of his goggles, and only after a confusing few moments picked a familiar face out of the anonymous horde. Masked like him, amongst all the barefaced travelers, came Marika Mehadi. Another Vector who shared Hark's own bond agent, Mehadi walked with a lightness in her step that suggested she was returning from a job, rather than setting out on a new assignment.
"Marika," Hark answered with genuine affection, as Mehadi stepped within the empty space surrounding him. "How does the day find you?"
"Passably well," Mehadi answered, the corners of a faint smile visible behind the Vector hierogram embroidered onto her scarlet mask.
"At the end of your weary travels, for the moment, one hopes?"
"One does hope," Mehadi said with a shake of her head, "but sadly, one hopes in vain. Just before I went west on this last job, I received word that another bond waited for me on my return, so I'll be leaving again for the west in another two days. I'd harbored plans to rest awhile over Festivus, but . . ." Mehadi's voice trailed off, and she raised her red-gloved hands and shrugged, as though the remainder of her statement need not even be spoken.
"These are busy times, I've noticed," Hark said.
"And busier still to come." Mehadi's voice lowered, and her gazebshifted behind her goggles, warily. "This new bond which awaits me had originally been promised to Finnian, but from what I hear he disappeared a month past, and has not been heard from since."
"What's become of him?"
Mehadi leaned in as close as protocol and propriety would allow, and answered in a lowered voice, "No one knows for certain, but there are rumors."
"There are always rumors," Hark said dismissively, glancing at the timepiece on his pendant, and at the travelers crowding onto the train.
"Yes, but these rumors persist, and have the ring of truth. Finnian is not the first in our little fraternity to go missing in recent months, after all. And some even say that a body meeting his description was found in a western railway yard, but that it had been completely . . ." She paused, leaning fractionally closer, and with voice lowered to a harsh whisper, said, "Exsanguinated." Hark drew back slightly, involuntarily raising a gloved hand to brush against the skin of his neck, the slender band of pale flesh peeking out above the collar of his black woolen suit. Aside from his ears and the breadth of his forehead, it was the only part of his body not shielded, not protected, still open to contagion, to infection. Hark had heard the rumors, of course, stories about Vectors who had gone missing or, worse, turned up dead, drained of all blood, white-skinned and with strange wounds on their necks. He tried to pay little attention, and give even less credence, with varying results.
"Nonsense," Hark said firmly. "Finnian was no doubt just among those Vectors who have cut out on their bonds, taking the cryptogens in their bloodstreams and selling the secrets off to the highest bidder. That, or they fell afoul of some secondary or tertiary manifestation of the retrovirus they transmitted, their endocrine systems failing, or their brains cooked right out of their skulls."
Mehadi's eyebrows narrowed above her goggles' rims.
"So you truthfully harbor no fears on this count?"
Hark hefted his valise, and smiled behind his mask.
"Hardly. The only impact of this slow attrition is that I'm able to charge something more for my services, with the decrease in competition. A few more good-paying bonds, and I'll almost have enough put aside to retire."
The warning whistle on the train blew, calling all aboard. Mehadi took the opportunity to make her graceful exit.
"A safe journey," she said, giving the gloved salute of the Vector class.
"And to you." Hark returned the gesture, and watched as she disappeared into the crowd, the people parting before her like waves breaking on the prow of a boat. Tightening his grip on his valise, Hark turned and made his way to the train.
On the second day of the journey, Hark spent the afternoon hours on the viewing deck at the rear of the train, taking one whole section of the open-air seating to himself, watching the ruined landscape slip by, muddy brown and sickly green under the metal-gray sky. An airship had drifted overhead in the late afternoon, carrying the sigil of one of the northern High Caste families—a pleasure barge, light and low enough not to trip the thresholds of the death-dealing orbital weapons platforms that twinkled through the thick brown clouds at night, lingering remnants of an era when computer processes patrolled sovereign airspace, their tolerances set tragically too low, their responses far too easy to trigger. With the computer systems now silent and cold, these sentinels still patrolled  the skies unchecked, denying mankind the higher reaches.
Strange music had wafted down from the airship's gondola, and in the gallery windows Hark had been able to catch glimpses of stranger divertissements. Though most of his custom came from members of the High Caste, and he'd moved in their circles for the majority of his professional career, they still seemed unsettling and alien to him. Mutable in form, mercurial in mood, lives extended beyond their natural span, and with the financial resources to roam the wide world at will—even the motives of his High Caste employers were beyond Hark's grasp.
What secret, he sometimes wondered, could possibly be worth the expense of his own services? He never knew what data had been bred into the viruses he routinely contracted—secrecy being, after all, the watchword of the Vector class—but what information could be so dear? Why would one member of the High Caste pay Hark more than an Under Caste's lifetime wages to carry a retrovirus for a few days, to the far side of the continent where a liter of blood would be drawn, and the retrovirus cultured until it produced the helixed string which encoded in quaternary nucleic digits some hidden information, a secret spelled in sugary letters of G, A, U, and C worth more than some men's lives.
Behind Hark came a muffled noise, but when he looked behind to see what it might be, he saw only the last few travelers who, like him, still lingered on the viewing deck. His whole journey had seemed out of step since his brief conference with Mehadi on the platform. His sense of unease was only heightened by the strange figure he'd glimpsed repeatedly, if only in passing. A shadow which seemed to haunt his steps, but at which he could not get a solid look.
Several times now, when moving up and down the train, from his own berth to the meal car—where he purchased comestibles to eat in pristine seclusion behind the sealed curtain of his berth—or to the commissaire—where he procured hygienic supplies with which to clean and disinfect his eating utensils, or to sterilize his mask and gloves—or to the ablution chamber—where he took care of necessary business, careful to avoid all contact between his bare skin and any surface—he'd caught sight of an oddly featured figure at the edge of his vision, always just out of sight. There was something unusual about this person, he knew, but precisely what it was only registered on a subconscious level, and before his conscious mind had an opportunity to perceive for itself what had set his hackles raising, the figure had always slipped away into the crowd, or behind a curtain or bulkhead. The first time Hark had tried to dismiss it as nothing but some mental phantom, brought on by boredom, and weariness, and the unsettling--and doubtless unfounded—rumors which Mehadi had brought to mind; but on subsequent occasions, it became harder and harder to dismiss the glimpses out of hand. There was something about one of the passengers which disturbed Hark, but he was left not knowing precisely what, or who, it was.
There was another Vector on the train. He and Hark had exchanged brief nods of greeting in the passageways, but hadn't spoken. Hark knew him vaguely, but couldn't recall his name; he used a different bond agent than Hark, and had been certified by another Vector service. In Hark's eyes, he was just competition for future employment, and so he kept his distance. The other passengers kept their distance from both of them, and so as they moved through the cars of the train they were like two swirling eddies in a stream, drifting momentarily near each other before being carried apart by the currents.
The other travelers knew that it was unwise ever to draw too near a Vector on the job—one never knew what they might have contracted, what strange sickness they might be transporting—but even in their off-hours Vectors were rarely engaged in social interaction. The perceived risks were just too great, and few were those who would brave even a few moments in close conversation with a Vector, on or off the job. The other passengers treated Hark and his fellow Vector with a respectful silence, always leaving a few feet of leeway in the corridors, or a few empty chairs around them on every side.
Hark, for his part, cherished the solitude, however brief or limited in scope. The other passengers, all of them Middle Caste, reminded him uncomfortably of his own father. If it hadn't been for his decision to become a Vector he'd have turned out just like them, just like his father, slaving away his whole life from one Corpus or another—Biophage, or Emuls, or L'Igase, to name only a few—just to afford his Vaxine subscription and regular security updates. Such
was not for Hark. With the money he was owed by Emuls Corpus for his current bond, he'd be that much nearer to early retirement in the northern Alps, to live out the rest of his long days in relaxation.
It was just vapor, though Hark wouldn't admit it, even to himself. This idea of retirement was a fancy, a treasured dream that could never become reality. It was nice to think that he could retire to some cool seclusion in the mountains, his Vaxine thresholds turned to maximum, his body burning off any virus or pathogen that came his way, a warm-bodied beauty on his arm, on his bare arm, cheek to cheek and palm to palm, touching without any barrier between them. . . . But it would never happen. No Vector ever reached retirement. They were always lured back for one more job, one last plum assignment, the Corpus money too good ever to pass up, and that last assignment they never came back from, their fever racing, heartbeat failing, eyes rolling back in their heads as some unexpected side effect of the microorganism in their veins cooked the life out of them.
Hark was the last passenger to leave the viewing deck, driven indoors by the first splatters of an evening rainstorm, only in the gloaming making his way back to his berth.
Halfway to his chamber, Hark found himself in a darkened passageway, a shadowy figure blocking his path, bent low over an indistinct shape massed on the deck plates. The illumination was dimmed for the night, but when the figure looked up at Hark, he could see by the low glow from the globes overhead that the man's face was covered in strange scars or markings, giving him an inhuman, bestial appearance. There was something in the figure's outstretched hand, glinting metallic bright in the dim light.
A flash of lightning struck outside the window, painting the passageway in stark, gray-scale relief. A peal of thunder immediately followed, and with the bones of his rib cage vibrating from the deep rumbling, Hark saw that the indistinct shape on the deck plates was his fellow Vector, bent in an unnatural posture, his head almost entirely to one side with eyes wide and sightless, his neck bared.
There, on the pale band of white flesh above the collar, were two ragged slashes.
Hark froze, wishing that he had his fléchette pistol, the little steel darts tipped with a paralysis agent that could freeze a grown man in place in the span of three heartbeats. He always carried it on his travels, sensible protection well worth the high cost, but had never before found a need for it. Unfortunate, then, that on this first occasion, it was safely stowed inside his valise, in a tasteful leather holster, back in his berth.
There was a momentary tableau, the man with the scarred face looking up from his victim, a wicked two-pronged weapon in his hand, and Hark standing stock-still in the passageway, not sure how to respond. In the next moment the scarred-face man lunged to his feet, and the tableau was broken. Hark, heart pounding in his chest, turned and ran for all he was worth.
He didn't chance a look back, but slammed through the curtain out onto the deserted viewing deck. The rain was pelting now, Hark's jacket and pants immediately sodden and clinging, the drops stinging the bare skin of his forehead, the bare skin of his neck.
Hark reached the rear railing of the viewing deck, and glanced back over his shoulder, holding his breath. End of the line. The scarred-face man appeared at the curtain, the double-pronged weapon in a two-handed grasp.
Hark looked to the left and right. He had nowhere else to run, and the scarred-face man was getting closer with every sure step.
Taking a deep breath, Hark turned and grabbed the slick railing, his grip unsteady through sopping gloves, and vaulted awkwardly up and over, tumbling out into the dark, wet night.
The unkempt room was nestled deep inside an Under Caste hostel, in the shadow of the local offices of the Emuls Corpus, in some anonymous township halfway to the middle of nowhere. The lighting was inadequate, the ceiling leaked, the corridors were festooned with trash, and odd noises and odder smells drifted through the vents from the other rooms.
Still, Hark couldn't complain.
He'd been lucky to stumble out of the wet wilderness into anything resembling civilization, and as far as the hostel was concerned, he could scarcely afford a room anywhere nicer. He'd left his purse along with the rest of his wardrobe and possessions back on the train, safely stowed in his berth. He'd been forced to trade away his gold signet pendant in exchange for the room and board, and considered even that high price a bargain, under the circumstances.
The hostel was built into the remains of an ancient office block, the furniture constructed from discarded computers, media systems, flat-screen LCDs, and other electronics, all made useless by the spread of electromagnetic-pulse weaponry and runaway self-replicating computer codes in an earlier century.
It was two days since Hark had been forced to flee the train, more than a day since he emerged battered and bruised from the wilderness, unsure whether he was safe or still the object of pursuit. He'd been immediately relieved to see the emblem of the Emuls Corpus cultured into the side of the one modern structure in town, and immediately dismayed to discover that the offices were closed for the duration of the Festivus holidays. He'd found the hostel a stone's throw away, and steeling himself against his natural aversion to the Under Caste, he'd procured a room.
His plan was to wait out the remaining holidays, until the Corpus offices opened, and then call on their security personnel to escort him the rest of the way to their main offices on the western coast. He would have to defray the expense from his regular fee, costing him a percentage of his retainer, but better to arrive intact and able to receive payment than to be found dead in a gulley somewhere along the way, drained of blood and life alike.
The exsanguinator, Hark could only guess, must have been some sort of data thief, siphoning off secrets from the still-living bodies of Vectors and selling them at auction. Hark couldn't know for sure, but had to suspect that he had been pursued from the train, and that the data thief might be prowling the streets of this anonymous township even now, in search of Hark and the secrets he carried.
Though gratified to have reached sanctuary relatively unscathed, in his more bitter moments Hark reflected that it was only the threat of imminent and painful demise that forced him to go down amongst the Under Caste. Everyone of the Middle Caste in the township appeared to have left for the holidays, as Hark had caught no glimpse of any in the streets; not that it made much difference at the moment, as Hark was unwilling to leave the confines of the hostel unless absolutely necessary.
The threshold of "absolutely necessary," though, began to seem a movable goal the longer he stayed in the hostel. Hark had always been uncomfortable around the Under Caste, who could afford only pirated or secondhand Vaxines, or none at all. The corridors of the hostel he'd passed through had been filled with the smell of bleaches and disinfectants and smoky fires, as the inhabitants tried to sterilize their food, their clothing, their very environment, without success. The virulent strains of pathogens against which even the most rudimentary Vaxine was proof could destroy an unprotected body in a matter of days. All around him in the hostel Hark saw nothing but disease, decay, and death.
Destroyed faces, crawling with sores and pustules. Amputees. Children and adults missing parts of their skulls, or with their limbs fused into permanent hooks, or with their organs on the outsides of their skin. So many of them disfigured and deformed, either as the result of disease, or defect of birth, or side effect of biomedical experimentation, one of the few types of legitimate employment available to the Under Caste. The hostel was a squalid place, a kind of living graveyard, smelling of disinfectant, sickness, and decay.
When he had gone to the hostel's ablution chamber the first morning, he hesitated even to breath through his mask, holding his breath, his eyes squinted tight, as though pathogens might enter his body through the mere act of sight. By the nightfall of the first day, he was starving. He'd not eaten since the midday meal on the train, days before, and though his pendant had afforded him a place at the common table downstairs in the hostel, Hark could not bring himself to enter the dining chamber, much less sit at table and eat with these wretches.
By the last night of Festivus, Hark had no choice but to venture out into the streets, to find something, anything, to eat. If he didn't, he was sure he'd be too weak to climb from his cot the following morning.
Hark hadn't made it a dozen steps into the cool night air when he was confronted by two disfigured men just outside the curtain of the hostel. One of them was the scarred-face man from the train, while the other, a stranger to Hark, had a long, suppurating sore across his forehead, his eyes sunken in dark, greenish circles. They each had one of the double-pronged weapons in hand, glinting in the low light. They advanced on him slowly, one on each side.
"What do you want?" Hark demanded, with a bravado he scarcely felt.
"What you're carrying could save billions," the scarred-face man said, his voice sharp.
"I can't pay you that much," Hark said, trying to sound calm, "but I'm sure I can arrange some sort of annuity from the Emuls Corpus, or a generous stipend from my bond agent."
"Not billions in currency," shouted the man with the suppurating sore. "Billions of lives!"
"We don't want to hurt you," the scarred-face man said, "but we will if you force our hand. All we want is a few drops of blood." He gestured with the double-pronged weapon, which Hark realized in a moment of clarity was tipped with twin syringes. "All we want is the Panacea, and we'll let you go."
Hark stopped short.
"Is that what this is about?" Hark was exasperated, even faced with the weapon, and threw his gloved hands in the air. "Are you deluded, insane, or ignorant? Which is it? I must know." He paused, and shook his head ruefully. "Panacea is a myth. It's like the water-fueled engine, or the Angel of Festivus. It doesn't exist. There's never been any such thing as a heal-all treatment, and there never will be."
The two disfigured men narrowed their eyes, and raised their syringe-tipped weapons higher.
"So we must do this the difficult way?" the scarred-face man asked.
"He's nothing but a tool of the Corpus, Barra" the other said. "Let's drain him and be done with it."
The two men circled around Hark, drawing ever closer.
Hark wished again that he had his fléchette pistol, wished he could feel the weight and security of it in his hand. With two well-placed darts he could be done with his attackers and safely on his
ilikii	way. But his pistol was lost to him, abandoned with his valise, too far away to be of any use.
That being the case, the rude club he'd made of the iron bar snapped from the hostel's barred windows would have to do.
The man with the suppurating sore was just within arm's length	when Hark drew the iron bar from the folds of his jacket, and Hark sent it swinging into the man's forehead before he'd had a chance to react. As the man slumped to the dusty ground, the light gone out behind his eyes, Hark turned and sprinted down the darkened street. The scarred-face man paused but an instant to check on his fallen companion, and by the time he went to give pursuit, Hark was safely out of sight.
Hark passed the night huddled beneath a pile of refuse, sheltered in the lee of a ruined shopping complex. The night air was biting, even through the heavy wool of his suit, through the thick reinforced fabric of his gloves, so that when he shivered, he could attribute it easily to the cold, and not to fear. What had a professionally bonded Vector to fear from common data thieves, having already given them the slip? Much less thieves trying to locate the mythical cure-all. Panacea was a fable, a legend, and couldn't possibly exist.
Could it?
The following morning, Hark stood at the entrance to the Emuls Corpus offices, which loomed above the squalid township like an angel alighting momentarily on the roof of an abattoir. The Corpus offices, like all modern structures, were not built from manufactured materials, but grown. The walls and beams were made up of a hard, calciferous substance, the remains of continuous skeletal material secreted by tribes of aerobic coelenterate polyps as their home, cousins to those who once had produced coral reefs beneath the oceans. The polyps were engineered to produce the substance in patterns of colors and shades, guided by elevation and position in the earth's magnetic field, so that when the structure was complete, and the final remaining coelenterate gasped its last, the resulting structure was painted in dazzling hues, shapes and lines.
In this backwater town, the looming, iridescent towers of the Corpus offices were an interloper amongst the squat, ancient buildings of pitted concrete, rusted steel, and broken glass, one sign of civilization in the moldering remains of ancient culture. It rose hundreds of feet above the street level, slender spires and nautilus shells and helixed minarets, a High Caste's airship drifting in the light breeze from the mooring post on the highest tower.
Hark entered through the vestibule valve, and was greeted by an armed Middle Caste receptionist. Hark explained that he'd been hired to carry a cryptogen across the continent, but that he'd been waylaid. The security guard listened with a polite and professional mien, asked Hark to repeat his full name twice, and then sent a runner into the interior offices to fetch someone of authority.
In just a few moments the runner returned and, after a whispered exchange with the security guard, motioned for Hark to follow. At no point did the runner or guard draw within arm's reach of Hark, and if either of them noticed the pungent aroma his clothing had absorbed from the refuse which hid him in the night, neither gave any indication of it.
Hark was led to a reception chamber, a wide, ovoid-shaped room where a High Caste officer of the Corpus sat on a dais constructed of interwoven coral vertebrae, a ring of guards positioned around him, each armed with a metal-tipped staff taller than they were. The High Caste officer, no doubt a younger son of the Corpus's ruling family, wore flowing, iridescent robes, his bare hands folded neatly in his lap, his long limbs—elongated and no doubt enhanced by high-priced augmentation—arranged artfully on the dais. His features were obscured behind an ornate alabaster mask, the height of High Caste fashion, with only his eyes visible, the telltale red hue of the irises a sure indicator of enhanced-vision traits. He looked languid in the oddly sculpted chair, but when he moved it was with a lightning speed that betrayed great reserves of mobility. Hark could not help but shrink slightly under the High Caste's gaze, feeling in his stomach the same fluttering unease he always did when received by a member of the ruling class.
A functionary entered the chamber from the opposite side, a Middle Caste bureaucrat who came and stood between Hark and the Corpus officer on the dais. Some midlevel manager, pudgy and balding, a self-satisfied smirk plied across his face. Hark was reminded instantly of his own father, who like this one before him had been bought and paid for by a Corpus, forever at the beck of the High Caste shareholder who held his leash.
"Your name is Jaidev Hark, a Vector on a bond with the Cprpus of Emuls," the functionary said. He was stating facts, not asking a question.
Hark nodded.
"Then you are welcome, Jaidev Hark." The functionary regarded Hark with the kind of detached, dispassionate deference that most used when dealing with Vectors, the same expression Hark had seen on his own father's face when he'd once unwisely paid his family a visit. "But why do you appear at this branch of our Corpus, and not at the western offices, where you are expected?"
Hark drew a breath, feeling tension bleed from his shoulders. Safe within these walls, he began to relax, incrementally, for the first time in days.
"I find myself," Hark began, "unable to complete the terms of my bond without assistance, as much as it pains me to say. En route from the research offices of the Emuls Corpus on the eastern coast, I found myself waylaid by data thieves on the cross-continental rail. I fled the train, seeking refuge in this township, but the thieves had pursued me even here, and accosted me again this evening past."
The functionary nodded, his expression bland.
"And have you any notion why a Vector in the service of the Emuls Corpus might have come to the attention of these thieves?" the functionary asked absently. "Is there any suggestion that the sanctity of our data might have at some juncture been compromised?"
"None that I can perceive," Hark answered, shaking his head. "These seemed nothing more than deluded madmen of the Under Caste, killing wantonly, searching for the mythical Panacea."
The functionary, who had seemed about to interrupt Hark only a moment before, paused, a startled expression passing momentarily across his features like a cloud's shadow drifting across bare ground. He turned and glanced anxiously back at the Corpus officer.
The High Caste's manner, which had remained languid and still through the brief interview, immediately changed. He made a motion at the functionary, rose, and walked from the chamber, his retinue of guards remaining behind.
"Begin," the functionary said, looking to the nearest guard.
Without another word from the functionary, the guards turned to face Hark as one, the long staves in their hands raised and ready, murder in their narrowed eyes.
Hark's pulse thundered in his ears. He backed slowly away as the guards advanced. He was just a few steps away from the entrance to the chamber, but there was no chance he could turn and run before one of the staves knocked him off his feet. He would need a moment's grace to make an escape, and the guards seemed unlikely to grant him one.
The guards were almost close enough for the nearest to reach out and touch Hark with their staves, when Hark had a sudden inspiration. Without waiting another instant, he peeled the glove from his right hand and, reaching up, removed his face mask. Barefaced in public for the first time in half a lifetime, he held his gloveless hand out before him, palm forward.
"My Vaxine is disabled!" he shouted at the guards. "I am on the job!"
The functionary, at the far side of the room, blanched visibly and backed away, and the guards each reflexively took a step back.
Hark, not wasting the opportunity, turned and bolted for the exit, being sure to let his bare hand linger on the valve's leading edge before running through. Breezing past the security guard at the front vestibule, he burst through the outer valve into the open street, running for dear life.
There was no place in the township for Hark to hide, no convenient rubbish pile or ruined building sufficient to shield him from the eyes of the Emuls Corpus's security forces. Door to door, home to home, ruin to ruin they searched for the fleeing Vector, and Hark was driven farther and farther out, until he found himself miles out in the wet wilderness again, buried beneath a mound of moldering leaves and twigs, forced to subsist on roots and rainwater and what bugs he could catch in his two hands, until he felt the searchers had given up their pursuit and it was safe again to go abroad. Relatively safe, since they would never stop looking for him altogether, he knew; but if he kept to backstreets and sideways, he could escape their notice, for a time.
With one word, Hark was no longer a valued bond servant of the Corpus, and had become a dangerous element too threatening to let live. He'd seen that in the eyes of the High Caste officer, in the expression of the Middle Caste functionary. Hark had spoken one word, and immediately everything had changed.
One word.
Panacea.
Hark lurked in the shadows on the railway platform, the western terminus of the cross-continent line. In the warm, tropical night he sweated through the light fabric of his short-sleeved shirt, the hairs on his arm standing out in the humid, limpid breeze. He scratched the few weeks' growth of beard on his chin, and licked his lips in anticipation.
He had found Barra easily enough, the scarred-face man who had pursued him weeks before in the anonymous township. Hark had agreed to give Barra and his people what they wanted. As it happened, Hark hadn't been carrying the Panacea after all; or, at least, not all of it. He still bore the double-slit scars on his neck from their crude phlebotomic mechanism, but he didn't mind. He'd given them a few liters of blood, and gotten in return everything he'd demanded.
Hark was off the grid now. Not beholden to any Corpus, by oath or bond. With the help of the scarred-face man and his compatriots, Hark had disappeared into the Under Caste. The scars on his neck only helped to complete his look.
Hark had been working for the wrong side for years, without knowing. He was on the other side now, helping track down his fellow Vectors. Trying to find the pieces of Panacea. Trying to find the cure for aging, the cure to disease, an end to death. Panacea—an inexpensive treatment that would mean an end to sickness and infirmity in the human body. That it would also mean the end of the biomedical trade, and of the domination of the High Caste and the Corpus culture, was the reason that it had been kept a closely guarded secret for so long. It was only by accident that Barra, while submitting to biomedical experimentation in a Corpus research facility, had stumbled upon proof of the treatment's existence. Barra's search for the secret had become a hidden revolution, a clandestine crusade, of which Hark was now a part.
From the shadows on the railway platform, Hark saw Marika Mehadi climbing on board the eastbound train. He fingered the double-syringe-tipped device in his pocket. When he pulled his ticket out of his pants pocket, the texture of the paper was still strange and unfamiliar against his bare skin. Waiting for the rest of the Middle Caste travelers to board, Hark made his way to the lower-fare freight cars where Under Caste travelers rode in close quarters. Under cover of night, in a few days' time, he'd make his way into the Middle Caste compartments.
If Hark could convince Mehadi to willingly part with a few liters of blood for the greater good, that was fine with him; if she resisted, of course, well . . . he'd gotten to be a fairly good hand at that, too.