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 13 — True Nature

Helix lifted an arm to scratch at her forehead, then took her hand away. That spot was starting to get raw. Her arms were already pocked with raw patches from her scratching. She even had one on her cheek. Chango insisted that the itching was an after affect from the biocide, but she knew better. She knew it was an itch to get back into a vat of growth medium, and go back to being what she was, and she knew it would not go away until she did.

She sat with Chango on Mavi’s couch. “When I go back to work, I’m not wearing the suit anymore,” she said.

“What? Are you crazy? You’re not going back there. What you did was grounds for dismissal. The only reason you haven’t been fired is that they thought you’d be dead by now.”

Helix stared at her in sudden silent rage. Stared until Chango’s face swirled and dissolved from the tears in her eyes. She turned her back to her, reached out her hands to claw at the air and screamed. Her voice echoed back at her from the walls, from the world. “I have to go back,” she shouted, turning around again to see Chango staring, her eyes two mismatched dinner plates. “Either that or...”

“Or what?” Chango muttered, her hands fretting with the hem of her t-shirt.

Helix nodded, gazing at her. “It’s not like I’m really alive now, anyway. Not anymore.”

There was silence in the room. From down the hall Helix heard Mavi’s voice, muffled, speaking to Hugo in the pink room. Chango wrapped her thin arms around Helix and held her — held her and rocked her while their salt tears formed a poor approximation of growth medium between them.

After a while Helix pulled back, and wiped her face. “Jesus Christ, Chango, what am I?”

“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “But we can go see Hyper. Maybe- maybe he knows something.”

Helix wrinkled her brow but got up from the couch. They were about to leave when Mavi came in from the hallway. Her face was ashen. “Chango, go fetch Benny. It’s starting. He said he wanted to be here when the changes came.”

Chango looked from her to Helix. “Go get him,” nodded Helix. “I can wait.”

By afternoon Hugo’s remains were carried out by the coroner in a body bag. Helix stood in the living room with Chango, Mavi, and Benny, and watched the hearse pull away.

“At least his suffering is over,” said Benny, his hands stuck in his pockets, his back bowed and his chest curving inward, as if he’d been punched in the stomach.

“Do you want some valerian?” asked Mavi, giving him a worried look.

“No, no thanks. I’d better get down to the mortuary. Hugo had a little money left, about enough to cover his funeral. I might as well get it over with.”

“Are you sure? There’s time, you know. You could stand to relax.”

He shook his head, “I don’t want to relax. He’s dead, Mavi. How can I relax? Maybe once he’s buried, maybe then it will seem alright, but it doesn’t now, that’s for sure.” He glanced at Helix. He didn’t say anything, but she knew what he was thinking. It should have been her that went out of here today in a body bag, but she was fine. Hugo had slight exposure, and it killed him, she swam naked in growth medium, and lived.

“Come on Helix,” said Chango, “let’s go see Hyper.”

oOo

When they got to Hyper’s house, he was on his way out the door, a plaid cellweave wind breaker under his arm. “The vatdivers are standing on the tables down at Josa’s,” he said as they came up the steps to meet him.

“Standing on the tables,” said Chango, “they haven’t done that since-”

“Not since the strike, I know.”

“Why? What’s it about?”

Hyper glanced over her shoulder to Helix. “Word came in today, you still have a job.”

They snuck in through the back door of Josa’s. Coming up the hallway past the bathrooms, they could already hear the voices shouting.

“She’s not even from here!”

“They never should have hired her in the first place!”

“People, people! Quiet down,” it was April. Peeking around the corner, Helix could see her, standing on a table near the center of the room, “We’re here to discuss a plan of action, not belabor the obvious. Now GeneSys has stepped way out of line on this one, we all agree. The question is, what are we going to do about it?”

“Strike!” somebody shouted, and they all took it up, chanting, screaming and pounding the tables, “Strike! Strike! Strike!”

Helix felt Chango and Hyper tugging at her shoulders, but she didn’t move. She looked at the faces of the vatdivers, angry and hateful and afraid, and their voices were a roaring in her ears like the oceans of this world. Everyone said that life started in the ocean, but not hers. The seas of her birth were considerably smaller, and green, not blue.

The chanting died down, and Vonda took a table. “The time to seize our power has come!” she shouted, “We all know GeneSys is hard pressed to meet their quotas, we’ve been working the hours to prove it. Striking now, we can demand a lot more than just her dismissal. We need stricter safety standards. Diver approved standards. And a three percent pay raise across the board!”

The wall at Helix’s cheek trembled as the vatdivers voiced their approval.

“Let’s get out of here, now,” Chango hissed in her ear, and Helix allowed herself to be dragged backwards, out the back door.

They went to Hyper’s house and sat on the floor. Hyper took out a bong, filled it, and handed it to Chango who offered it to Helix. Helix shook her head, and stared at the curtains. “They think they can stop me,” she said, “they’ll have to kill me first.”

The screen door rattled as Benny opened it and came inside. “Hey, that’s just the kind of talk I was hoping to hear.” He slid down on the floor next to Helix. “You have to stand up to them. You can’t let them get away with this. You have just as much right to be in there as anyone else,” he said.

“Says who?” said Chango, “She should have gotten fired.”

Benny looked at her, “But she didn’t, and if a non-sport had done the same thing and not gotten fired, do you think they’d be striking over it?” He shook his hands and tilted his face towards the ceiling. “I can’t believe it. All these years, our gains gradually being nibbled away from us crumb by crumb. And what is it that finally galvanizes this community to action? Bigotry. I can’t believe it. I wash my hands.”

“What am I going to do?” said Helix.

“I think you should go down there tomorrow and face them down. They’re a bunch of cowards, they’re afraid of you,” said Benny.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” said Chango. “They may be afraid of her, but that doesn’t mean they’ll back down, not now that they’re united by a common cause. She’s likely to get beaten up, or worse.”

“I just want to dive again. I have to,” said Helix.

“Then you know what you have to do,” said Benny. “They expect you to back down.”