“It’s alright. You ran the tests, you saw the results first-hand. And I didn’t make it any easier, implying that you doctored the results. For the record, I never really believed that. I pretended to, because it was easier than accepting the alternative.”

Vonda nodded. “So how did he die?”

Josa brought Chango a draft, waving her off when Chango tried to pay her. She glanced between the two of them, and disappeared into the back.

“He tried to kill me. I pushed him off the top of the GeneSys tower.

“What were you doing up on top of the GeneSys building?”

Chango took a deep drink of beer. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time.”

oOo

As soon as she got a transceiver, Helix called Hyper. “Can you find Vonda for me? I need to talk to her.”

Hyper nodded, and put her on hold. She was on hold for quite a while, and then Vonda’s face materialized with Josa’s bar in the background. “I want to talk to you about the vatdivers,” said Helix.

“Chango told me. You and your kind, the Lilim. You’ve taken over GeneSys.” She frowned, and her voice became brittle with anger, “So I guess that leaves us vatdivers out in the cold, doesn’t it? I hope you’ll at least honor our severance packages and workers comp. We may be out of our jobs tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean that ten years from now we won’t get sick. It’s bad enough we’re losing our jobs. You can’t just abandon us. We’ve given our lives to that fucking corporation you just took over.”

Helix shook her head. “I didn’t say I was laying the vatdivers off. Nothing abut the vatdivers has been decided yet. That’s why I called you. To talk.”

“To talk.” Vonda shook her head slowly. “You’re not canning us?”

“No.”

Vonda managed half a smile. “When Chango told me what went down, I figured that with the riot and all you’d waste no time getting rid of us.”

“No. As far as I’m concerned, you’re the union rep. We’ll negotiate a contract.”

Vonda laughed with incredulity. “A contract. For what? If the Lilim are doing the diving -”

“There aren’t enough of us yet,” Helix interrupted. “I’m only the second queen, and pregnant with my first clutch. It’ll be at least another year before the third queen is born, unless my mother beats me to it. Anyway, it’ll be years, probably five or more, before the Lilim are populous enough to take over production.”

“So in the meantime it’s business as usual,” said Vonda, switching back to bitterness again. “We dive and die, and when you don’t need us anymore, you cast us aside.”

“Business as usual?” said Helix, suddenly angry. “A union contract? Negotiated benefits and workers comp packages? I guess you want me to wave my arms and make vatsickness go away, but I can’t do that. All I can do is urge Hector to make vatsickness research a personal priority, and see to it that the company deals fairly with you from now on.”

Vonda nodded, chastened. “I’m sorry, I -” she shrugged. “I expected a raw deal from you. But here you’re talking unions, contracts.” She shook her head. “I wish Ada were here.” Vonda looked back at her suddenly. “Just tell me one thing. What happens when there are more of you?”

“Even after the Lilim fill the vats, technicians will be needed to test samples, monitor ph levels, and calculate seed mixtures. Anddeal with the other company departments. We do not like to leave our nests once we have them,” said Helix, leaning back and folding her arms. “We will need human representatives to attend meetings and act as liaisons to other departments.”

Vonda laughed. “And you want the vatdivers to do that for you? The same people who tried to kill you yesterday? What makes you think they’ll accept working for you at all? “

“You do.” Helix said, leaning forward. “You saved my life in that riot. And when I took my suit off in the vat, I endangered yours. I pushed you as hard as I could. I could have broken your seals. I could have killed you. And I wouldn’t have meant to, but at the time, I wouldn’t have cared either.” She nodded slightly. “I put you at risk from something I myself am immune to. I can understand why so many of the vatdivers wanted to kill me. But you didn’t. You had more reason than the rest of them, and you didn’t let me die.”

“You made an alliance between the divers and the Lilim possible by standing up for the real goals of the labor movement Ada started. You’ll convince the divers that such an alliance is in their best interests, and the contract you negotiate for them will prove it. As for the rest of it, we will all have time to get used to one another.”

“So what you’re saying, basically, is that you’ve taken over my company.”

It was, without a doubt, the strangest conference call Anna had ever had. She recognized Helix and Lilith from the dream fragments in the elevator. They both seemed to be floating in vats of liquid — that would be the growth medium Hector told her was so important to them. He was there in the office, sitting beside her so his image could be picked up by the transceiver.

“Yes,” said Lilith. “GeneSys was our enemy, now we are GeneSys.”

“And that business with the blackout, the voices, that was you.”

“It can happen again, if you try to interfere with us,” said Lilith. Anna bit back her anger and let the threat ride, for the moment.

“You have to understand,” said Helix. “We’re a new species. We have to survive.”

“But youhave to understand,” said Anna, leaning forward. “GeneSys is a corporation. If it doesn’t carry on the business of being a corporation, it won’t survive, and neither will you.”

“That’s where you come in,” said Helix.

“What do you mean by that?”

“We need somebody to run the company for us.”

“I see. And my people?”

“There aren’t enough of us to take on all the responsibilities involved.”

“The Lilim do not care for numbers,” said Lilith.

“That too. We just want vats for our daughters.”

Anna raised her eyebrows. “Vats for your daughters? How many will you need?”

“Her first clutch will stay with her,” said Lilith. “But there will be a queen. She will need her own nest.”

“And how soon will that be?”

“A year or so.”

“The Lilim don’t really reproduce all that rapidly,” said Hector.

Well that was something, at least. “In a year. If things go smoothly, if you don’t interfere with the operations of the company, I don’t see any problem.” She turned to Hector. “About this blue poly. You say it’s... in the wiring?”

“It is the wiring,” said Hector.

“I don’t understand.”

“The blue poly eats the electrical components, and in the process incorporates their functions. Electricity is still being transmitted, only now it’s moving through a biological medium, like nerves,” he explained.

“Nerves.” Anna looked around her office. The lights were on, the temperature comfortable, and her multi-processor hummed contentedly to itself, the same as always, but maybe not. “What’s the difference, then?”

“The difference is that the phage translator is no longer needed to connect the multi-processor brains to the electrical network.”

“But what about the voltage? The phage translator was necessary to dampen the electrical signal to the brains to a level acceptable to a biological organism, am I right?”

“Yes, but the blue poly seems to absorb the excess and use it towards new growth. Of course, once it’s everywhere, we won’t need to generate so much power.”

Anna thought about it. If phage translators became obsolete, Minds Unlimited stock would take a hard hit. They’d be ripe for a buyout. “How soon before it spreads beyond GeneSys?”

“Not long at all, it’s probably happening now.“

She shivered with dread and excitement. GeneSys was on the cutting edge of a revolution in energy systems. With advance knowledge like this, she could make a killing. Minds Unlimited was only the beginning.