“Jesus Christ, somebody get a sedative. Everybody stay suited, she’s drenched with the stuff.”

Helix felt the slick tingle of an epidermal on the inside of her lower left elbow. In a deepening haze, she felt herself carried off the diving platform and into the decontamination showers. They scrubbed her everywhere with stinging disinfectant soap, and then subjected her to the evaporator until her every pore was desiccated and barren as a desert. It was April who took her out, and dusted her from head to toe with acrid biocide powder. Cold, naked, and itching everywhere from her colleague’s ministrations, Helix began to weep.

“Don’t cry,” April told her harshly, “your tears will help the stuff spread. Saline solution’s not too far from growth medium as it is. Not that it’s gonna make any difference. The way you were wallowing around out there, you’ve probably swallowed some, and Val says you had your eyes open, so if you wanted to get out of my hair, you took one quick way of doing it.”

“I jus’ wanted to use my arms,” Helix slurred vaguely.

“You just wanted to-So you forfeit your life, so you can use all of your arms, once. I don’t even care about you, but you jeopardized the lives of your dive mates as well. Thank God nobody’s seals or masks came loose during that tussle you threw, because if they had, it would be negligent homicide, instead of simple suicide, and you wouldn’t have a chance to find out what the sickness is going to do to you, because I’d kill you first.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t meant to fight. I just didn’t want to leave the water.”

April shook her head slowly. “I don’t know about you. You don’t seem to be simple minded, but you don’t show any sense, either.”

April abandoned her lecture for the moment, and held out a sterile gown made out of paper. “You know how much it costs us to stock these things? Can’t use biopolymers though, they have an ah, affinity.”

“When can I go home?” mumbled Helix. Never, she thought, answering herself, never.

“Well there’s not much point in sending you to a hospital. There’s no cure for vatsickness, and with the exposure you got you’ll probably only last a few days. Besides, the company won’t pay for it. Remember those waivers you signed? You’ll be just as well off with the painkillers Mavi buys from Orielle as with any of that doctor shit. I’m just keeping you here until someone comes for you. There’s something wrong with you. In your head. You’re a danger to yourself and others. I can’t just turn you loose.”

Besides, thought Helix, if you did, I’d probably try to find a way to get back into the vats, and you know it.

April escorted her to a small cubicle off the decontamination chamber which held a bench, a folding chair, and a table with two ancient and plastic coated magazines on it. “Now are you gonna be a good girl and wait here quietly, or do I have to give you another epidermal?”

“No dermal,” said Helix, and she sat down on the chair, folding her hands across her knees obediently.

“Can I have my clothes?”

“Not until your friends come to get you.”

oOo

She itched. She itched and she’d never realized how much she’d always itched. And now she would itch for the rest of whatever life she had left. The only thing that she had ever found that stopped the itching had been taken away from her as soon as she found it. “I might as well die,” she thought, raising her arms at the white walls surrounding her, regarding her own biocide dusted limbs, caked and dry like they were already mummified, “because this is not being alive.”

The door opened and Chango rushed through, followed by Mavi. Chango’s face was red and streaked with tears. “Helix, we heard what happened! Oh my god, why?” she rushed forward to hug her, and then stopped short. “Why did you do it?”

Helix shook her head. “It’s not catching, you know that.”

Chango looked at her suddenly. “No, it’s your skin... It’s started already, hasn’t it?”

A shiver went down Helix’s spine and she once again regarded her skin. “No, this is just biocide powder. They dusted me with it to soak out and kill the growth medium. It’s driving me crazy. It stings. But nothing’s happened yet.”

Mavi closed the door and walked slowly towards her. She was pale, almost as pale as the powder caked on Helix’s skin. She glared at Helix with eyes like two black pits of fire. “Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?”

“What-what?”

“She doesn’t,” Mavi said to Chango, “she has no idea.”

“Mavi-” Chango said, “please. It doesn’t matter now. It’s too late.” She turned back to Helix and wrapped her arms around her, clinging to her. She started crying again. Helix ran her palms across her back, soothing her. Chango’s tears soaked through her paper gown and into her skin, soothing the itching there.

“Oh for goddess’ sake, stop. Chango, you’re going to get her wet, quit it.” Mavi forcibly separated them.

“You know,” she said, turning on Helix again, “You I don’t care about, not anymore. But you endangered the lives of everyone in that vat. They had to come after you. You fought them. They aren’t there by choice. They’re there because they have to make a living. And you could have killed any one of them with this suicidal tourist trip you’re on.”

Helix gritted her teeth, “Can we go now? I want to rinse this shit off.”

“You want to-Did you hear that? She wants to take a shower!”

“Mavi,” said Chango from the doorway, “let’s just go.”

“We’re going, we’re going.”

Helix rode in the back seat of the convertible, while Chango drove and Mavi glared at her over the front seat. A sudden wave of uncontrollable shivering overcame her. She thought at first it was because of the wind, but the shaking only got worse, until her muscles were spasming in rapid, jerky motions, and she couldn’t stop it, and she couldn’t get a decent breath because her lungs weren’t working right and the wind kept snatching her breath away, but it wasn’t the wind. She could have gotten her breath back if she could have followed it, but something was holding her back by the throat, choking her.

“Holy fuck, she’s going into convulsions,” she heard someone, Mavi, say, “Haul ass.”

Big patches of fog hazed their way across her field of vision, blocking out sight, replacing it with blooms of pattern, moving, changing, a funny grey color that held within it not the hues, but the mathematical understanding of every other color, rendered in shifting moire. And in between those patches, in spaces getting smaller now, she saw Mavi’s face, looking at her as if from far away. She was floating in a sea of green.

oOo

Chango stepped on the gas and tore off down Riopelle, the car jouncing across potholes, sending up sprays of loose asphalt in its wake. She glanced behind her to see Mavi forcing her vathide wallet between Helix’s teeth. She was shaking violently, her hair stiff and streaked white, her face crusted with white flakes of biocide. Quickly Chango looked back at the road. The sunshine and the buildings and the strangled tufts of grass beside the road looked unreal, like they were nothing more than a painted screen, a holographic overlay, masking the horror of life. But the horror of life was seeping through. Over the rush of wind in her ears she heard a hoarse, hacking kind of moan from the back seat, and Mavi swearing as she rummaged through her bag for epidermals. How could there still be sunshine, while this was happening? Eyes wide, she stared down the road, and drove.

A great bubble of grief seemed to rise up into her heart, and break. Clenching her teeth, she laid on the horn, and took the left at Caniff without stopping.

She pulled sloppily up to the curb in front of Mavi’s house and jumped out of the car. “Help me carry her,” said Mavi, “she’s big.”

With difficulty they maneuvered Helix, still quaking, up the front steps and in the door. “Put her on the couch,” said Mavi, “Hugo’s in the pink room.” They deposited her on the faded green couch. Mavi knelt over her and peeled back one of her eyelids, shook her head and stood up.