Chango threaded her way along the service hall, wondering where she was. Somewhere deep in the innards, she thought, and she imagined the weight of the building pressing in on her. Here and there, service lights illuminated a knot of pipe work or a bundle of electrical cables. The rest was just shadows and the vague, humming sounds of hidden machinery.
She noticed that the electrical lines were converging like tributaries into a bundled cable that ran along the wall. She followed it, and saw it grow as more lines joined it. It was as thick as her leg by the time she reached what could only be the main conduit for the whole building; a massive rope of cables surrounded by a catwalk and bristling with bundles of electrical lines like the one she’d followed. Gaping, Chango walked out onto the catwalk, and looked down, and up. Like the spine of some mighty giant, the cable ran for as far as she could see in either direction, fed by a million lines connected to millions more multi-processor brains of all sizes in offices, light switches, and thermostats all over the building. She reached her hand over the edge of the catwalk, and she could have sworn she felt them thinking. oOo
Helix lolled against the side of the vat, her limbs buoyed by the waters. Three sisters, Jacinth, Nicar, and Coleanus, swam up to her and wrapped their arms around her, cuddling close. “GeneSys is our enemy. It is what put you in here, not Graham. Even though he thinks it was his idea, he did it for GeneSys,” their touch said. It was from Lilith. For the past hour or so, these three had been swimming back and forth between Helix and Lilith, bearing messages in their skin.
Helix didn’t have to say anything, but she felt... frustration, rage at Graham and Benny, hopelessness at ever finding her own vat. And something else. A familiarity with what she was doing; not how she was talking, but with whom.
Her sisters swam away, and for a little while there was only the vague speaking of the waters lapping against her skin. A touch she had not recognized as speech before, because all it really did was tell her who she was, and where.
“You can’t stay here. You have to have your own life, your own nest,” came Lilith’s answer. Night Hag, thought Helix, you were Night Hag, weren’t you? And she didn’t have to wait for her mother’s returning touch to know. Lilith had contacted her through the holoweb, had encouraged her to leave Hector and become a vat diver. She had, in fact, started it all, so that Helix might find her own vat. And it suddenly occurred to her that perhaps she had tried to keep Helix in her job, after the divesuit incident.
Jacinth curled her arms around Helix and nuzzled her neck. “Yes. It was ridiculous. Why should you have to wear one of those foolish suits?”
But how had she done it?
“The brains are our cousins, and they like us better than the people who think they control them. When I touch them, they do what I ask.”
Gently Helix dislodged her sisters from her body and dove down to the bottom of the vat. An agule floated by and she absently plucked it and bit into its pulpy softness. She would like to stay here forever, but this wasn’t her nest. It was Lilith’s. They had reached some temporary accord, but she could not fool herself into thinking it was a permanent arrangement. She was a queen. She needed her own nest. Through the green waters Helix saw several of her sisters swimming nonchalantly about four meters away. They were making sure she did not attempt to get into Lilith’s vat again. To reassure them Helix coasted along the wall, circling back before she was halfway to the diving platform that separated the two vats.
Of course it was the touch. Through her touch Lilith communicated more information to the brains more efficiently than any human being with a keypad ever could. She spoke their language. When she resurfaced, Helix was greeted by Orixeme, who apparently came not with a message but out of sheer curiosity. She gripped Helix and ran her nose and mouth across her skin, snuffling intently. As Helix relaxed, she loosened her grip and ran one hand across her belly. Her touch sent a bolt of recognition through Helix’s body. “Eggs,” Orixeme whispered needlessly, and swam away. Helix looked up, and saw someone in a divesuit and face mask come out of one of the offices and stand at the edge of the balcony. As she stared, he raised a hand and waved at her. None of the other Lilim seemed to pay him much mind. It couldn’t be Nathan Graham or Benny. “Dr. Martin is asking to speak with you,” he said through his suit’s radio.
Reluctantly, Helix drew herself out of the waters and padded around the balcony, flanked by a bevy of concerned Lilim who formed themselves into a barricade when she rounded the curve towards Lilith’s vat. “It’s okay,” she said, putting a hand on Magdar’s shoulder to drive her message home. “I’m going into the office.”
They trailed her curiously as she approached the suited figure. “I’m Colin Slatermeyer,” he said, “One of Dr. Martin’s assistants.”
Helix wrinkled her brow. “How did you get in here? The door doesn’t open.”
“I was here already.”
The Lilim stayed behind as she entered the office. Inside the air was horribly dry. Already she yearned to return to the waters, and Helix wondered what she would do when she had to leave here and face the waterless world again.
Hector’s face floated above the transceiver. “Helix,” he said as she came into camera range. “Are you all right? Is Lilith-Did you-”
“She’s fine, we’re both fine. But I can’t stay here. This is her nest, I need one of my own.”
“Graham probably thinks you’re both dead. It’s better if we let him.” Hector’s brow wrinkled in worry.
“Chango was here though. She’s on her way down to you, now. She can get you and Slatermeyer out.”
Helix bit back her impatience. “Out. Out but then what? Hector I need-I can’t go back to living as a human. Lilith and I have been talking. She says GeneSys is our enemy. She says we have to defeat it if we’re to continue as a species.” Helix’s stomach cramped with urgency. “You invented the brains. Lilith calls them cousins. She says they’ll help us.”
Hector shook his head. “You can’t just overthrow a whole company, Helix. Lilith doesn’t understand, but you’ve lived among humans. GeneSys is made up of thousands of people. You can’t just take it over.”
“I don’t see any other way.”
“Let me talk to Anna. She’s the CEO. I’ll just lay my cards on the table. She’s a pretty decent person. Maybe I can convince her to keep the project going, for its own sake.”
“No. We aren’t your project anymore, Hector. It’s time for us to be in the world. Tell me more about the brains. They’re all over the building, right?”
“Y-yeah. They’re in the processors the employees use for spreadsheets and analysis, and there are smaller ones in the lighting and environmental systems, and in the security cameras. Everything’s hooked up to a big brain in the attic that keeps tabs on all the systems. But-”
His objection was cut off by Slatermeyer, who had left, and now returned with someone else. A small and extremely grimy figure in a divesuit and face mask.
“Chango?” said Helix.
The figure reached up and took off the face mask. “I made it.” said Chango. “Christ, what a haul. Is there anyplace around here I can take a bath?” She ran a gloved finger over her suit and came up with a glob of slime and dust. “No telling what this stuff is.” Pointing at the door, she said, “Those women out there
— they look like you.”
Helix reached towards Chango to take her face in her hands and kiss her, but she stopped herself. The growth medium still drying on her naked skin would be more dangerous to Chango than anything she’d encountered on her way down here. She dropped her hands to her sides. “I’m glad to see you.”
“Yeah, same here. It was touch and go for awhile there, but then I found the main electrical conduit for the building. Near as I can tell, the thing runs straight up to the top of the tower.”