by Anne Harris

In a near-future Detroit, the living polymer industry has the city in its grip. While vat-divers struggle to organize, the GeneSys Corporation works on making human workers obsolete. An escaped mutant, a con-artist and a techno-geek team up to unravel corporate blackmail, deceit and murder. One thing is certain: the city and the world will never be the same once the latest R&D development is unleashed.

Chapter 11 — The Habit of Air

Helix trudged down the street to Gate 29, carrying her divesuit, air tanks, and a battered tin lunch box. It was just like being at the orphanage, this feeling of dread she had as she approached the vat houses. She never knew what she was going to find when she got to her locker.

She’d started taking her equipment home with her after her third day, when she’d found the lock cut and her suit stiff with thickening solution. She missed half a shift scrubbing it clean. She had wanted this. She had gone against every one — had ignored Chango’s insistent pleas - to dive. Only Hyper somewhat supported her decision, letting her stay at his house after Chango left and started living out of her car again.

But as the odor of the vats hit her, infusing her nostrils with its pungent aroma, her doubts evaporated. It was worth it, worth all of it, to swim inside that smell.

Someone had scrawled the words “mutant sport bitch” across her locker with black caulking adhesive. How articulate, she thought, ignoring the expectant glances and snickering all around her. She opened her locker and got undressed, pumping her lower arms to get the blood circulating through them before wrapping them tight around her ribs and zipping the divesuit up over them.

She joined the rest of her dive mates on the platform. No one spoke to her. They just lowered themselves into the growth medium and started making their rounds, clearing the grow med of agules. During shifts they did their best to ignore her, though they were forced to acknowledge her at certain times, like when decanting. Then the whole team had to coordinate their efforts to lift the sheets of biopolymer out of the vat and maneuver them onto the drying racks. And of course whenever she made a mistake, her dive mates were only too happy to point it out.

Helix plucked a small agule from the fluid and placed it in her collection bag. “Hey sport,” Vonda’s voice squawked over the suit’s speaker. “You missed a whole network. You can’t just pull them out, you’ve got to check to see if they’re connected to others. Didn’t we cover that in your training?”

They had, but her upper hands were not as good at fine work as her lower ones, and the tendrils tended to snap in her fingers before she could trace them. Helix glanced around the vat. Vonda was above and to the left of her, apparently at a better vantage point to see the agules in question. Helix swam up and over, located the agule cluster and dove back down to it. She tried to collect them gently, but they still kept breaking, and she knew Vonda was up there watching her though she didn’t say anything further.

When she opened her locker at the end of the shift, a pile of agules fell out at her feet. “Missed a spot,” said Vonda, and laughed.

Helix turned to her. “How did you get inside my locker?” she demanded.

“I watched you work the combination. I’ve been watching you a lot.” She nodded at the pile of agules. “Those are all the goobers you missed today. It’s bad enough you have to be diving, but at least you could be good at it.”

Helix turned from her and picked up an agule, feeling her face redden. Vonda was right, she wasn’t very good. And she’d been so certain she would be. She never even considered any other possibility.

She examined the agule, which was dry of growth medium and perfectly safe to handle. Long tendrils trailed away from its round, lumpy center. There was something oddly appealing about it, she thought, squishing it between her fingers.

When she got home Chango was there, standing behind Hyper as he downloaded her pirated cash card codes. She glanced up as Helix came in, a look of forlorn longing flashing briefly in her eyes before she hardened them and turned to Hyper. “You can pay me later,” she said. “Meet me at Josa’s.” She glanced once more at Helix, and then she was out the door and gone.

Hyper shook his head as the screen door banged shut in Chango’s wake. “She’s so afraid for you. She thinks you’re going to get vatsickness, and she doesn’t want to go through what she went through with her sister so she’s shutting you out, trying to protect herself from getting hurt again.”

Helix nodded. It was a reasonable explanation, but she still missed Chango. She needed Chango, to help her figure out how to handle the vatdivers, to take away the loneliness that followed her around like a shadow.

She dumped her gear in a corner by the stairs to the loft. Hyper wrinkled his nose as she came near. “Are you going to take a shower?” he asked hopefully. She shook her head. She’d given up bathing about a week ago, so she could keep the smell of the vats with her all the time. It had it’s advantages and disadvantages. Her dive mates tended to keep their distance now, conducting their persecution from afar. She didn’t have to worry about them doing anything up close and personal, like beating her up on the way home from work. On the other hand, it had put a halt to any romance that might have developed between herself and Hyper.

She realized she didn’t really care, that the smell of growth medium was more important to her than human contact. She must be losing her mind, she thought.

Hyper was still downloading cash card codes. His transceiver headset lay on the table beside him amid the scattered parts of a circuit board he’d been disassembling that morning. “Can I borrow this?” she asked, lifting up the headset.

Hyper nodded, leaning ever so slightly away from her. “Go ahead. You’re going to call your friend, what’s her name, Night Hag?”

“Yeah,” said Helix.

“Good,” he said. “Maybe she can get you to take a shower. Does she have an olofax?”

Helix ignored him, taking the headset with her up to the loft. Today Night Hag was a red-head in a green satin ball gown. “Wow,” said Helix. “Going someplace special?”

“No, just having fun.”

“Well good for you,” Helix leaned back on Hyper's bed, making no effort to hide her arms, which Night Hag had yet to comment on.

“How’s the new job?”

“Awful, wonderful. I don’t know, Night Hag, I think I”m going crazy.”

“You’re not crazy. What’s going on?”

“The other vatdivers are giving me a really hard time. My girlfriend broke up with me. I’m not a very good vatdiver but I love it. Or I should say, I love being near the vats, the smell of the growth medium... Everyone says it stinks, but I love the way it smells. It makes me feel more alive. Isn’t that weird?”

“I don’t think that’s weird at all.”

“Then you must be pretty weird yourself.”

Night Hag laughed, and nodded her head. “Most people would say so.”

“Well, it was your idea I become a vatdiver.”

“I thought you said you liked it.”

“I do. Well, like I said, I like being near the grow med. Swimming around with these,” she waved her lower arms at Night Hag, “trapped inside a divesuit all day I could do without. I’m saving up for a custom suit, but it’ll be awhile, and in the meantime-”

“You wear a suit?” Night Hag interrupted.

“Of course,” Helix sat up in surprise. “What did you think? That I swam around in there naked? Growth medium is really dangerous. That’s why I can’t figure out why it appeals to me so much. Maybe the vatdivers are right. Maybe I’m suicidal. But I don’t feel suicidal. I feel like I’m fighting for my life. I wish I didn’t have to wear the suit. I could use all of my arms. But I need the suit to protect me from the grow med.”

“Maybe you don’t need to be protected.”

“What? Night Hag, since I’ve let you see me, have you noticed anything different about me?” She waved her lower arms again for emphasis. “This is not a construct. I’m a sport. If anything, I’m even more susceptible to vatsickness than a normal human being.”

Night Hag shrugged. “A sport is what?”

“Someone with a mutation.”

“But a mutation is a change in the genetic code. That can be anything. How do you know that besides your physical attributes you are not also mutated to have an immunity to the growth medium?”

Helix shook her head in disbelief. “You know what? You’re crazier than I am. Look, I’ve got to go, I just borrowed this transceiver from a friend. He wants it back.”

“Wait, where can I reach you?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll call you tomorrow. Bye.” said Helix and hung up. She lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. An immunity to the growth medium. Night Hag obviously didn’t know what she was talking about. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if it were true? Then she could swim in the vats without the cumbersome suit, touched and embraced by the beautiful green waters. The thought of it rolled around and around in her mind, lulling her to sleep.

oOo

At work the next day the dream was still with her, making the reality of her situation even more difficult to bear. She floated in the vat, the murky fluid surrounding her, but not touching her. The harsh rasping of her breath was loud in her ears. She propelled herself with a gentle twitch of her flippers, drifting towards a small blot a few feet off.

The coagulant hung suspended in the growth medium; a bundle of replicating cells, pink and blue and fibrous, and already sprouting. They were like weeds. Just one, if allowed to grow, could ruin an entire vat.

Somebody - probably her — had missed this one on the previous sweep. It was nearly the size of her palm, fringed with tendrils that reached outwards, and in at least one case, formed new coagulants.

Helix grasped it in one hand, holding it firmly while she gathered tendrils with her other free hand, trying to be careful and not break any. It would be so much easier if she could use all of her arms. She could hold the body still with her uppers, while her lower hands nimbly drew in the tendrils, which sometimes narrowed to a millimeter or less in width.

As it was she simply drew gently on all of them at once, hoping not to feel the sudden jolt of a break, which she did. She examined the coagulant in her hand, turning over the pulpy thing until she found one long tendril, broken off at the end. She stuffed the agule into her bag and examined the area carefully, searching for the dark spot of another coagulant in the milky green of the growth medium.

There, to her right and a few feet away. She’d been wrong. The agule she’d found had not sent out tendrils and formed more agules, it was the sprout of an even larger one, as big as her head and bristling with outgrowths. Helix’s lower arms writhed in frustration as she swam towards it. She unfastened the seals of her divesuit and drew the zipper down to free them.

Growth medium rushed in to touch her everywhere with warm, soothing wetness. She began drawing in tendrils, her lower hands grasping their fleshy strands, tracing them, plucking the agules that bulged at their ends and placing them in her bag. She had the whole complex of agules cleaned up in a fraction of the time it would have taken her with two hands.

Helix moved on, relishing the feel of the growth medium on her skin. This was more like it, more like she’d imagined vatdiving would be. She removed her face mask and thrust it heedlessly into her bag with the agules. She dived deeper, searching for more cells with eyes surprisingly unclouded, only returning to the surface of the vat for air after gathering ten more.

“Hey, what are you doing?” she heard someone shout when her head broke the surface. Helix ignored the voice, took a breath, and dived to the bottom of the vat, growth medium swirling about her, hiding her from sight. In the depths she heard the muted clamor of an alarm, and looking up, saw the vague forms of divers approaching. There was nowhere for her to go. She relaxed and let the loosened dive suit slip away, its clinging touch replaced by the soft caress of the growth medium. She plucked a nearby agule, its texture pulpy and slick as she rolled it between her fingers. She ate it. Its juicy crunch and salty flavor were more satisfying than any food she’d ever tasted.

She watched her dive mates come for her, shadowy forms gradually emerging from the surrounding haze. She had every intention of going peaceably, allowing Vonda, Coral, Benny and Val to take her by her arms, and draw her up, towards the surface, but the closer they got the bigger the whole white dry cold world became, and she did not want to leave the emerald green waters she had found. And they were emerald green, and ever clearer as her eyes lost the habit of air. She could see agules dotting the waters like stars, thousands of them, some no bigger than a pinprick, others over twenty feet away. And all over her skin, a feeling like smell only different, the currents speaking to her about where they had been, and how many agules there were there.

She could be such a good vatdiver now. She could clean this vat faster than any of them, and they were pulling her out, and she’d never get to do it again. The waters lightened as they rose, and above the surface loomed like a rippling sheet of glass.

She pushed out at the divers holding her arms, twisting to free herself of their grasp. She managed to get her lower left arm free, and she used it to pry Vonda off her opposite shoulder. Benny, who still had firm hold of her upper left arm, recaptured the lower limb and pulled them both back against her shoulder. She put her upper right hand on his head and tried to push him off, but Vonda had rallied and was twisting her lower right elbow the wrong way.

As they broke the surface, the air suddenly erupting with shouts and sirens, she thrashed in their clutches, futilely attempting to remain in the vat. It wasn’t until they had dragged her out and pinned her to the diving platform that she remembered to breathe.

She would have jumped up and dived back in, but several strong arms prevented it. “What’s wrong with her?” someone shouted — Coral.

“She’s flipped. Where’s April?” said Vonda.

“Right here.”

Faces loomed above her, but her eyes were still clouded with growth medium. “Let me go!” she screamed, straining against the hands that pinned her.

“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.

“What is it? Is she dying?”

Mavi looked at her gravely, “She may be dying, but not of vatsickness.”

“What?”

“I’ve never seen anything like this in an onset before.”

“But her exposure...”

“The indications are all wrong. Patients always run a low grade fever by the time they start displaying other symptoms. Her temperature is dropping, rapidly. And those convulsions, I’ve never seen anyone do that before, not with vatsickness. It’s more like a straightforward, severe toxic reaction.”

“To the growth medium?”

Mavi shrugged and looked at her with flat, bleak eyes, “What else? I gave her a clonazepam epidermal, that seems to be keeping the convulsions down a bit, but her system’s in shock. I don’t know what else to do.”

From the couch, Helix let out one of those moans again. Chango shivered. “God, what is that noise she makes?”

“I don’t know.”

“Get it off me,” Helix groaned.

“What?” Chango knelt by her side. “What did you say?”

“The biocide, get it off me,” she croaked hoarsely, “It’s killing me.”

Chango stared at Mavi, who stared back at her. “But the biocide is supposed to help kill the growth medium, Helix.”

Helix closed her eyes in exhaustion. “That’s the problem.” she whispered. “Please, it hurts. If you don’t help me, I’ll die.”

Chango and Mavi looked at each other again, hesitating. “It’s not vatsickness...” said Mavi, “it could be a reaction to the biocide, but—”

“You know I’m not human,” said Helix, staring at Mavi with half lidded eyes, “or at least you should.”

“Let’s get her to the shower,” said Chango.

oOo

Water white with biocide ran down the drain of the tub. Helix rested her head in Chango’s lap, half conscious, comforted by Chango’s fingers on her scalp, scrubbing away the crusted powder. “I can see why you wanted this stuff off,” she said, “it’s nasty.”

Helix didn’t answer her. She was dreaming that she was swimming in a great green vat of growth medium, moving with the currents, and feasting on agules. Mavi had been right. She would die, but not from vatsickness, she would die because she had found what she’d never known she wanted, what she’d always wanted, and as soon as she did, it had been taken away from her. She couldn’t go back, to her pathetic existence as a sport. She wasn’t that, now she knew she wasn’t that. She’d been born to swim in the vats, harvest agules, and eat them. But she couldn’t do that either. After today, they’d fire her for sure.

Helix felt the last of the biocide rinse away, but still her skin burned, still the tremors washed over her. “Fill the tub,” she said to Chango, “and get some salt from the kitchen and put it in.”

Chango did as she asked, and then sat on the edge of the tub, holding one of her hands. “Is it better?”

She nodded. It was better, better than being coated with poison, but it was a far cry from the velvet caress of the growth medium. She longed for it in her cells. She wondered if she would ever feel it again.

“It wasn’t an accident, was it?” said Chango. “You did it on purpose.”

“Yeah. I had to find out what it felt like.”

“So what did you find out?”

“It’s what I’m meant to do, and if I can’t, I’ll die.”