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 6 — A Day In the Life

Helix woke up in the middle of the night, her head and her ribs and the wound on her side all hurting at once. She lay there for a while, listening to the quiet, looking at the darkness, until her thoughts got round to the previous day, the restaurant, and the men in the alley. When she started to think about the playground, she got up, and walked carefully to the bathroom.

To the right of the toilet, beneath a window cracked and peeling with water damage, sat a porcelain bathtub. She looked with longing at the old, claw-footed affair. Wincing, she pulled off her t-shirt and turned on the water. She looked in the medicine cabinet, but there was no kosher salt. You can't have everything, she thought, gazing at the steaming tub, and she eased herself into the warm, delicious water.

oOo

Chango awakened blearily on the couch in Mavi’s living room. Her head throbbed and her face was mashed into the textured upholstery. When she sat up she carried an imprint of Fleur de Lis on her cheek. Rubbing it she made her way to the bathroom on unsteady legs and flung open the door. Something splashed in the bathtub and let out a sharp cry of dismay.

"Gah!" shouted Chango, startled by the movement, and found herself staring at Helix, naked in the bathtub, and staring back at her with bewildered, sleep filled eyes. "Sorry, I didn't know you were in here," she said, turning to the sink and running the tap. She splashed water on her face, and then turned back to Helix. “Were you sleeping?”

Helix sank beneath the edge of the tub. “Yes. Sometimes when I can’t sleep, it helps.”

“Oh,” said Chango, still looking at her.

“I’ll be out in a minute, if you could just-”

“Oh, sure, sorry.” Chango dried off her face and backed out the door. She went into the kitchen, where Mavi was leaning over the sink, pouring water into the coffee pot. "Guess who I just surprised in the bathroom?"

Mavi looked at her jadedly, "Helix?"

"Well, yeah."

Mavi nodded and set the coffee pot on the counter. “I thought so. It wasn’t me and as far as I know, you’re not in the habit of surprising yourself. Why didn't you knock first?"

Chango sighed and shrugged. "I wasn't thinking. I didn't expect- Mavi, she was in the bathtub."

"So? She can take a bath if she wants to, Chango, what's the problem?"

Chango leaned closer and lowered her voice. "She was sleeping in there, Mavi, in the water."

oOo

Helix stepped carefully out of the tub and toweled off. Her ribs were still sore, her neck stiff, but her knife wound was almost healed, and the lump on her head was way down. She stepped into her freshly laundered, custom made four-sleeved body suit. The cellweave fabric warmed slightly at the touch of her damp skin, helping her dry off. She wished it wouldn’t. Her skin was always too dry, no matter what moisturizers or oils she used. The only thing that ever really seemed to help was soaking in a tub of salt water.

She slipped on her tunic and went out into the hallway and stood there, torn between the security of her room, and her curiosity about the house and its neighborhood. She’d been gone from Hector’s for three days now, and so far she’d spent most of it in one room. Someone was making coffee in the kitchen. She followed the smell down the hall.

Chango and Mavi stood close together by the sink, their conversation breaking off abruptly as Mavi saw her. "Oh, Helix, it's good to see you up and about."

"Thanks," she said, remaining in the doorway, at a loss for what to do next. Chango and Mavi stood looking at her expectantly. Her cheeks burned, and she realized she was blushing.

"C'mon in," said Chango, suddenly darting across the room to her and guiding her to the table. "Have a seat. You want coffee? Mavi just put some on."

Helix nodded slowly, "Yeah. Yes, thank you."

Hanging from a peg near the door was Hector’s raincoat. Just the sight of it made her feel better, more secure. Chango and Mavi had both seen her, seen her arms, seen everything, Night Hag too, but still she felt naked, being anyplace but Hector’s apartment without that coat on.

She glanced at her companions. Mavi was stirring sugar into her coffee, Chango was pouring a bowl of raisin bran. “Oh, there’s my coat,” she said, feigning surprise.

“A little the worse for wear, I’m afraid,” said Mavi.

“That’s okay. I’m a little cold, that’s all.” It was true, she usually was cold. She used to keep Hector’s apartment so warm he could hardly stand it.

Chango and Mavi exchanged glances as she got up and slipped into the raincoat and buttoned it over her lower arms. “That’s better,” she smiled and seated herself at the table again.

Mavi poured her a cup of coffee and handed her the steaming mug.

“Want some cereal?” asked Chango.

“Sure, thanks.”

Chango poured her a bowl and added milk.

“So what are you up to today, Chango?” asked Mavi getting up to retrieve a basket from next to the stove.

“Oh, I have a few errands to run. Helix, maybe you’d like to come along, see the neighborhood, get to know a few people.”

“I don’t know.”

“You said you left your father because you wanted to find something for yourself. You’re not going to find it hiding out here, are you?”

She was right. She’d left Hector to find out about the rest of the world, and now she was just turning this place into another Hector’s apartment; walls to hide behind.

Mavi sat down, pulled a length of knobby yarn out of her basket and wound it around her fingers. “Fresh air would be good for you, but no adventures.” She pointed a long hook at Chango. “Stay in the neighborhood, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am.” said Chango.

“What are you doing?” asked Helix as Mavi worked the yarn with her hook.

“Crocheting. My mother taught me, but you just can’t find yarn anymore.”

“What’s that, then?” Helix pointed at the blue-green-red-yellow length of ropy stuff in her hands.

“Oh, they save it up at vat 9. Every month or so Benny brings me a bag of it. The bodies aren’t good for much of anything-”

“Except bouncing balls,” said Chango

“-but I tie the tendrils together and make stuff with them. Pele sells them for me at the Eastern Market. I used to do a lot of afghans, but lately I’m doing hats.” She had begun working the yarn into a round. “The hats sell better.”

Helix’s eyebrows rose of their own volition. “They’re — they’re that stuff you fish out -”

“Agules,” said Chango, “Mavi’s a recycler.”

“Since you’re making the rounds Chango, you want to drop some of these off for me?”

“Sure, but it wouldn’t kill you to let sunlight strike your face either, you know, instead of just sitting around in here all the time, smoking and knitting.”

“Crocheting. Besides, I’ve got things to do. Xenia sprained her ankle and needs a sassafras poultice, and Harvey is still trying to come off Blast. He needs more goldenseal tincture. Oh, and stop by Hyper’s while you’re out, see if he needs more valerian.”

“Sure,” said Chango, getting up and taking her bowl to the sink. “Helix, will you join me?”

Helix gnawed at her lower lip with one fang. “I don’t know. Actually, I should start looking for a job somewhere. Do you know anyplace around that’s hiring?”

Chango and Mavi laughed. “Not hardly,” said Chango, her smile narrowing to a smirk. “Besides, come with me and you won’t need a job.”

oOo

Helix followed Chango across the street to her motor car, a yellow behemoth covered with patches of red polybond. It was a warm, cloudy, humid day; the air dense and full of a strange, yeasty smell. It felt soft and damp against her skin, soothing. “Wow, it’s nice out,” she said.

Chango looked at her incredulously. “Nice out? You must be joking. Days like this GeneSys should issue everyone in Vattown a divesuit. Smell that? It’s growth medium, and it’s probably morphing us as we stand.” She opened the door for Helix. “You have to get in on this side, the door on the passenger’s side doesn’t work.”

Helix slid into the spacious seat, cracked and shiny with spots of bioadhesive.

They pulled out and rumbled down the street, and Helix leaned back and watched the sky pass above them.

After innumerable turns down narrow streets pitted with erosion and lined with vacant lots and houses in varying stages of disrepair, Chango pulled over in front of a vast field of brick and metal rubble. “All that’s left of the Russell Industrial Center,” she said and got out of the car. Helix watched as she ducked under the half-hearted barricade and picked among the dust and stones. She returned with a fragment of concrete. The brief but intense heat of the disintegration process had melted a crescent wrench into its surface like an instant chrome fossil.

“What’s that?” asked Helix.

Chango looked at her and then heaved it into the back seat. “It’s art,” she said, and got back into the car.

oOo

“Hey Hyper!” called Chango opening the screen door. “Why don’t you lock your door, fool?”

At one of several metal worktables, a scrawny young black man was busily removing solder from a circuit board. He glanced up at them, "Because then I’d have to get up to let you in. I'll be done here in just a sec."

Helix looked up in wonderment at the ceiling, nearly tripping over a stack of holocubes. There were things hanging up there that she’d never consider hanging from a ceiling; whole computer systems, a fish tank filled with murky water.

The front of the house was furnished with stained cushions, a threadbare beanbag and a bucket seat from a levcar. Chango flopped down in the levcar seat. Helix just stood there, staring as Hyper's hands flew with soldering iron and vacuum tube. He was right, he was done in just a sec.

"Hi," he said as he suddenly stepped around the table, and then, "Hi!" as he noticed Helix.

"Hi," she said.

"Hyper, this his Helix. Helix, Hyper, a very old, dear friend of mine."

"Hey, Helix," he said, dodging forward to shake her hand. Helix took his hand in her upper right one. “Thanks for lending me your transceiver.”

“Hey, no problem. Glad to see you’re doing all right, have a seat.” He pointed her to the beanbag. “Can I take your coat?” he added.

She looked up at him, “No, that’s okay. Thanks.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” said Chango, “it’s fucking eighty degrees out today. Aren’t you hot?”

She wasn’t hot, not really, but the lining of the coat was sticking to her arms and the back of her neck. And she did feel sort of stupid wearing it, when everyone else was in t-shirts and shorts.

She looked carefully at Hyper. Chango had said he was a sport, but she could find nothing out of the ordinary about him except for his bizarre taste in home furnishings. “What’s different about you?” she asked.

“My metabolism. It runs high. I have to eat a lot of small meals and I don’t sleep too much.”

She was disappointed. She’d been hoping for nictating membranes or retractable ear flaps, at least a tail. It must have shown.

“I know, it’s boring, but it’s the only mutation I’ve got,” he said.

She nodded in silence, and as casually as she could manage, slipped the raincoat from her shoulders. It felt good to stretch her arms and feel the air against her skin.

She watched Hyper for his reaction; saw his eyes travel down her body and up again to her face. He was smiling. “Now that’s a significant mutation. Do you have complete use of them?”

“Yeah,” she said, sliding into the chair, “but my bottom hands are better at fine work, and they don’t really lift up to the sides too well, top ones go three-sixty degrees, though.” Helix crisscrossed her hands about her knees and rocked self-consciously.

“That is so cool looking.”

“Thanks,”

“You know,” said Hyper, “She needs to meet Orielle.”

“Not Orielle,” said Chango.

“Who’s Orielle?” said Helix.

“Oh, just somebody who would make you fade right into the woodwork,” said Hyper.

“She’s a drug dealer,” said Chango.

“And a drug inventor, don’t forget about that,” said Hyper.

“Yeah, but she still makes her bread and butter by selling blast in this community. It keeps the vatdivers down, keeps them from doing anything about the company. They just do as they’re told, and collect their pay and use it to get blasted, that’s all.”

“It’s not just the blast, Chango,” said Hyper, “besides, you used to do blast, before...”

“Yeah, but I don’t any more, do I? And you know why, too.”

“You always say Ada didn’t dive blasted. Don’t you believe that?”

Chango glared at him, and finally stood up, to walk past them and stare at something hanging from the ceiling. “Fuck you, Hyper,” she growled softly.

Hyper shrugged and looked at Helix. “She’s a bundle of contradictions, she is. Can I get you something? Water, Cool-Aid, Chromium 50?"

“Water, please.”

Chango, still standing, still staring at the ceiling, shook her head. “You’re going to regret it.”

“You want anything, Chango?” asked Hyper, heading towards the back of the house.

“Only your immortal soul,” she said, and sat back down in the lev seat.

Hyper returned in an instant with a cup of doubtful looking water and handed it to Helix. She sniffed it. It smelled like solder. Casually she set it down on the floor.

Hyper tapped his foot, rooted around in his shirt pocket, came up with a half-empty pack of Reefer Madness, pulled one out, lit it and offered Helix the pack.

"No thanks."

"I'll take one," said Chango.

"So you're new in town huh?" said Hyper, switching on his holotransceiver and flipping through channels.

"Well, new to Vattown."

"That's what I mean. I heard — I heard you were adopted, by some corporate dink, excuse me, professional man."

"He's a research scientist."

“Oh yeah? What kind of stuff does he do?"

Helix shrugged, "I don't know."

"You don't know? Well, what kinds of projects is he working on? I mean generally, don't spill any trade secrets or anything, for gods sakes."

She shook her head, "I don't know."

Hyper stared at her. "Industrial ecology, biomathematics, gene splicing..."

Helix shrugged again.

"You've been living with the man for, what, ten years, and you don't know. Okay." Hyper drew on his cigarette and pulled the transceiver’s imaging lens down over one eye. He glanced at the hologram reflected through the lens, his eyes flickering as he called up new files. He glanced from Helix to the holo several times in rapid succession. “Do think I could- I don’t mean to be bold, or embarrass you or anything,” he glanced at Chango and then back to her, “would you mind, could I look at your back?”

“My back?”

“Yeah, it looks like you only have one collarbone. I was trying to mount a set of manipulating arms onto the existing armature of this robot I’m working on. I thought I’d have to hang it up, but if I can see how it’s been done, with you-”

“Hyper builds robots,” said Chango, answering Helix’s glance with a reassuring nod.

She felt like she was outside herself as she stood, turned her back to him and lifted her tunic with her upper arms. Beyond the numbness of her fear she felt a burning curiosity. What would he be able to see?

She heard him looking, and then felt his hands on her back. She flinched, and then relaxed as they ran, warm and soft, along her muscles and bones. Of course she couldn’t see the hologram he was working on, but she sensed he was tracing her.

When he was through he slipped the transceiver over her head, so she could look through the imaging lens and see what he’d drawn — an anatomical rendering of her back, arms and shoulders. “What are you going to do with that?” she asked, backsliding into a paranoid fantasy of her image plastered on every building in Vattown, labeled with the words ‘Look at this freak.’

Hyper led her to the work area, to a thing with the lower body of a small tractor, and two waldo arms bolted to a steel drum with a hole cut in the middle. A gas combustion engine painted to resemble a face rested on a pivot on top of the drum.

“See, if I mount ball sockets here and here-” His fingers traced the metal struts the same way they had touched her own flesh. “-I can support the second set of arms without adding a whole new framework for them.”

“What does it do?”

“Well, it’s not finished yet. Eventually I want to put a pivot piston in here, and that’ll make the head nod up and down as it rumbles and spews smoke. And then it rolls around on the tractor treads, and the arms are operated by radio control and can pick stuff up. I want the extra arms so they can hold this-” He hefted a dented saxophone. “I’m calling it Close Enough for Jazz.”

Chango wandered in from the front room. “Do you still need a counterweight for the pivot piston? I may have just the thing.”

“Oh yeah? That’s cool because I haven’t found anything... symbolically correct yet.”

“It’s out in my car, why don’t you come out and see.”

oOo

“Did you get into that data card yet?” asked Chango as she and Hyper walked to her car.

“What? Uh, no. No, It’s not giving up easily, and I’ve been busy with Robo-Mime. Is she asking about it?”

“She did at first, but I think she’s forgotten about it.”

“Well, she’s obviously never read any of it. Unless all that ignorance was an act. She any more forthcoming about her father to you?”

Chango shrugged, “I think his name is Hector. I didn’t really ask about him.”

“Hector? Hector Martin?”

“That’s it,” said Chango.

Hyper choked, "Her father is the Dr. Hector Martin? Christ!"

"You know him?" asked Chango.

"Know him? I know of him. He's the inventor of the multis.”

“Multi’s.” Chango shook her head. So Helix’s adopted father was the man behind the multi-processor brains that run nearly every major networked system in the world. Maglev, stock market, polymer plants. Shit, even the temperature and ventilation systems in most big buildings. “Geez,” Chango cast her gaze to the tower of the GeneSys building, hazy in the distance. “Talk about friends in high places.”

oOo

Hyper gave Chango a crate of DataKleen memory enzyme in exchange for the chrome fossil from the Russell Industrial Center. They drove to a faded cement block house surrounded with sunflowers. “Pele’s house,” Chango said.

The woman who came out the front door to greet them had skin like a painted pony, irregular patches of black on a white background. The color scheme carried over into the cloud of thick hair surrounding her head. She was dressed in a yellow housecoat. “Hey Chango, I hope you came to fix my truck.”

“Actually it was more to make a trade, but what’s the problem?”

“It’s burning oil.”

“Ow. They’ll take you off the road for that.”

“You don’t think I know it? I’ve got a lot of goods to get to the market this week.”

“Alright, I’ll take a look.”

Helix sat on the porch with Pele, drinking iced tea and watching Chango crawl around under Pele’s blue pickup truck.

“I still like to watch her fix stuff,” said Pele, glancing sidelong at Helix. “What about you?”

“Me? What?”

“Do you like watching her? She’s a nice girl you know, but fickle.”

Helix looked at Pele in confusion, she was going to ask her what fickle was, but she got distracted by Pele’s appearance. “You go to the Eastern Market, to sell stuff.”

“All the time.”

“You see a lot of people.”

“If I’m lucky.”

“How do you deal with... with-”

Pele smiled. “With this?” She waved her hand at her skin, her hair. “I don’t ever really think about it, unless someone reminds me. I get that sometimes, from people who don’t know me. They always ask me the same thing, ‘Are you white or black?’ They really don’t mean anything by it, they’re just surprised, and they say the first thing that comes into their heads. I don’t take it to heart, you know? In the end, they have to deal with who I am, not what I look like.”

oOo

Chango traded Pele the DataKleen for a cube of holotoys and collected a carton of reefers for fixing the truck. “See?” she said to Helix in the car, “this is how it works. You get by.”

“Where are we going now?”

“We’ll go to Hannah’s. I’m hungry.”

“Who’s Hannah?”

"Hannah's Eclectic Homestyle Restaurant. It’s been around for ages. Used to be a Polish place but back around 19 or 20 it got bought by Hannah and her husband Ricky. Hannah just started cooking whatever came to mind with whatever was at hand. Menu changed constantly. Her daughter Rita runs it now. Food's still pretty good, but Hannah, man... Well they say Rita's daughter Gabrielle has the touch, and she's almost sixteen. She'll be out of school soon." Chango shrugged. "One can hope."

The Eclectic Homestyle Restaurant was housed in a brown brick building with a peaked cornice and blue tiles set in at the corners of the doorway. Chango led the way under a red awning and flung open the door. Helix followed her into a large, bright room filled with tables and chairs, humid with the smells of food and loud with the chatter of voices and the rattle of silverware. "Hey Chango!" cried a voice over the din. In the far corner of the dining room a bald young man waved vigorously at them.

"Magnusson," Chango murmured as they wound their way between the tables, "one of my very best buddies." As they got to the table Chango reached across it and snagged a sausage off of his plate.

"Hey!" he protested but Chango only chortled gleefully and ate it, waving her burned fingertips. "Magoo," she said, ushering Helix into the seat across from him, and sitting beside her, "meet Helix. Helix, this is -"

"Magnusson," he interjected, leaning forward and extending a broad, flat hand. Her fingers brushed the back of it as they shook. His skin was smooth. He had a round head and a round, pudgy body. He was not only bald, she noticed. He didn't have any eyebrows or facial hair either. That’s why his skin felt so smooth. He didn't have any hair at all.

"Nice to meet you," said Helix, suddenly realizing with a twinge that she was staring at him. His eyes were pale, pale grey, colorless, but not red. He looked like a grown up baby.

"Magoo cooks here. He's gonna get us free lunches, right Magoo?"

He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, sure, long as you don't mind taking my bus shift tonight."

"Bus shift? You're still doing dishes nights? I thought Rita said she'd put you on prep."

Magnusson shrugged, "Sure, she said it. But now I'm doing lunch rush 'cause Octavio got sick, and meanwhile, they still need busers at night. So, I'm busing."

"That sucks. She promised you."

He snorted, "C'mon, nobody believes promises, not from an employer, right?"

Chango nodded acknowledgment. "It still sucks," she added.

"Yeah, well, it can only be so bad you know. I ain't divin'," he softly nodded his head towards a group of five seated in a booth on the other wall. Tank harnesses hung off of their lean, divesuited bodies. Hard men and women, mostly older than them but there were a few with eyes it seemed already darkened at the sight of death, though it stood for them, probably thirty, even forty years away. They were an animated group, smoking and laughing and living it up, partying at the end of their shift. But death hung around them like a cloud of smog that ground its darkness right into their pores so that they seemed steeped in something. Something that would slowly curl around the double helix of their DNA and twist it, twist them, into something else. Helix found herself searching their faces, trying to find beneath the angled planes of skin the shape they would become.“Why do they do it?” she asked, “if it’s so dangerous?”

“For the money.” said Magnusson.

“Most of them only plan to dive for five years, take their pay and get someplace where the living is cheap,” said Chango. “Only sometimes they find that five years isn’t enough, sometimes they find that nothing is enough.”

One of the vatdivers — a tall, dark-haired man — glanced over at them and detached himself from the group. “Oh no, it’s Benjamin,” grumbled Magnusson under his breath.

He approached their booth with quick strides of his long, lean legs. His vatleather jacket, still new, crinkled stiffly as he leaned over the table. "How's it going over here?" he asked. He had hard, bright blue eyes.

"Hi Benny," said Chango, "What's new with you?"

“Not much, just snagging goobers.” He slid into the booth opposite Chango and Helix.

Grumbling, Magnusson slid his plate over and made room. Benny reached a hand towards his sausages, but he brandished a fork at him. “Back off, man,” he snarled.

Laughing, Benny rested his chin in his hands and looked at Helix. “So, you’re the new girl, huh? Nice to meet you.”

Helix nodded and leaned closer to Chango, “Hi,” she said, her voice cracking. She felt her face grow warm.

“I heard you ran into a spot of trouble,” said Benny, “how are your ribs?"

"Much better, thanks."

"She heals fast," said Chango.

“So how do you like Vattown?”

“It’s nice,” Helix said, “it smells good.”

They all stared at her.

“I’ve heard this place get called a lot of things,” said Magnusson, “but good smelling, never.”

“Yeah, top on most peoples grudge list about Vattown is the reek of the growth medium.” said Benny. “You really like it?”

Helix shrugged, “Yeah, it smells... warm.”

“Mmm,” Benny grunted, then turned to the others, “You hear about the new hiring requirements?” he asked.

“What, you have to be seven feet tall and blond now? I’d think they’d be happy to get anybody they can, these days,” said Chango.

“That’s just it, they are. They’ve just loosened up the genetic requirements, so first generation mutations are okay.”

“What?” said Magnusson.

“You heard it, they’re hiring sports now. Of course they’ll be classified temporaries, so the company can get around giving them benefits, including health insurance.”

“Fucking company,” said Chango, “this is why we need a union, Benny, to keep them from getting away with crap like this.”

“I’ve never argued with that, Chango.”

“No, you just won’t do anything about it.”

“Aw give it a rest already, would you? If you’re so keen on the movement, become a vatdiver and form one. You can, now.”

“I’m not going to throw my life away for a bunch of people who won’t even help themselves.”

“My feeling exactly,” said Benny.

“Where would you go, to apply?” asked Helix.

“Are you serious?” asked Benny.

“No,” said Chango. “She’s not. You’re not serious.”

“I was just wondering. He said they were hiring, and I need a job so... What is it like, diving?” she asked Benny.

“Well, you put on an anodized rubber suit that makes you sweat, a face mask, breathing equipment and a twelve pound air tank and then you go and swim around in a bunch of poisonous, murky water. It’s a real giggle.”

“I was just asking.”

“Well you don’t need to know,” said Chango, “because you’re not going to do it.”

Helix stared at Chango, sudden anger lighting her eyes. “I can decide that myself,” she said. They went on staring at each other for a moment more, Helix having difficulty keeping her eyes from jumping back and forth between blue and green, and then they both looked away.

“She’s right, you shouldn’t dive,” said Benny, his eyes wandering about the outlines of her raincoat. “Someone like you would be a prime candidate for vatsickness.” Helix studied the place mat in front of her. It had a scalloped border of disinfectant enzyme, pale pink paste that left a little streak of bioelectric neutralizer on the surface of the table every time you moved it. Enough fidgeters, and you’d probably never have to wipe the table down.

“I’ve got some holotoys for Hugo.” said Chango. “How’s he doing, anyway?”

Benny shrugged, “About the same. You know how it is with vatsickness. He got up and walked around a little bit yesterday. This morning he only kept water down. He’s strong. It’s going to take a long time.”

“They should just throw him in the vat and let him finish,” said Helix.

They all stared at her again. Benny blinked and cleared his throat. “You’re probably right,” he said.

Chango was glaring at her. “I’m sorry,” said Helix. “I don’t know why I said that.”

“No. I understand. We caught it early, he has a mild dose. That doesn’t make it less fatal, it just means it takes longer to kill him. When my time comes, I’m just going to keep diving. If it has to happen, at least it can be quick like with-”

“Don’t you even say that Ada was lucky,” said Chango.

Benny tilted his head to one side. “In a way, she was, Chango.”

“Here,” Chango handed him the holocube. “These are for Hugo. You can pay me later. We have to go.”

“Chango-”

“See you later.”

“Who’s Ada?” asked Helix when they got in the car.

“My sister,” said Chango, turning the ignition key with exceptional force. She pulled out of the parking space with a burst of acceleration. Helix was waiting for her to calm down before making any further inquiries, but then they drove past the vat yards.

Rows of round metal buildings with glass domes slid by like the silvered flanks of some huge beast basking in the brightening afternoon. The air was filled with the living smell of growth medium. Chango didn’t want her to work there, Benny had good reasons why she shouldn’t, but Helix looked at those domes and breathed the air, and she knew it wouldn’t matter what anybody said.

The knowledge nestled inside her and made her feel light and... happy. The sun was coming out, as if the day welcomed her joy.