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 8 — Inexplicable Joy

The next morning Helix and Chango went out again after breakfast, but they didn’t go to Hyper’s or Pele’s or Hannah’s. They just walked around the neighborhood, pausing from time to time as Chango pointed out one of the many landmarks of her childhood.

“That’s where we used to play dodge ball,” she said, pointing to a long-disused parking lot overgrown with weeds. “Ada had a wicked throw. I used to just run like hell, but she’d always nail me, right between the shoulders.”

As they neared the vat yards, the pungent smell of growth medium intensified. Helix stopped at the fence, peering at the domed vat houses. Her fingers curled around the chain link, and she had a sudden urge to climb it.

“Come on,” said Chango up ahead. “Let’s go, it stinks around here.”

Helix looked at her, standing in the middle of the road. “Can we go in?”

“What? No! Why would we even want to?”

Helix shrugged. “To see what it looks like.”

Chango shook her head in exasperation and walked back to her. “You’re not still thinking of working there, are you?”

She opened her mouth to say yes. But she realized that Chango would only tell her once again all the reasons why she shouldn’t, so she settled for a noncommittal shrug.

It was another overcast day, the clouds overhead knotting together to scowl at the city. As they stood there, a first few drops of rain began to fall.

“Shit,” said Chango, wiping a drop from her face. “Let’s get out of here.” she pulled the hood of her jacked over her head and scurried for the cover of an awning over a party store.

Helix lifted a hand to the quickening rain. It felt good on her skin, velvet-soft and warm, with a green growingness to it like nothing she’d ever felt before. She tilted her face up to greet it, drops spattering on her cheeks and nose.

“Are you crazy?” Chango shouted from under the awning. “This rain has growth medium in it. It’s bad for you!”

How could that be? How could something that felt so good be bad for her? Besides, the growth medium was in the vats where they made the biopolymer, not in the rain falling ever harder, grown now to a full downpour.

“Helix, get under here!” Chango called, but she didn’t pay her any mind. The water felt wonderful. Everywhere it touched her skin it soothed the itching that was as much a part of her daily life as breathing. She threw off Hector’s raincoat, lifting her four arms to the weeping sky, letting the fabric of her body suit soak up the rain and hold it close to her skin. And she whirled, whirled and twirled, her feet splashing in puddles like an echo to her own laughter.

oOo

Chango stood under the awning of the G&P Party Store, watching Helix dance in the rain. Her total disregard for her own safety, her inexplicable and obvious joy, filled Chango with awe and horror. She realized that she really didn’t know Helix much at all. She had no reference point for this odd behavior. Maybe she just liked the rain. Maybe she didn’t understand that this rain contained chemicals that would irritate her skin. Maybe, when she woke up with rashes all over her body tomorrow morning, she’d learn her lesson. There wasn’t enough grow med in the rain to actually give her vatsickness, unless she stayed out here for hours, which, Chango realized, was possible.

Taking a deep breath and tugging the hood of her jacket further over her head, she plunged out into the rain to haul her friend, bodily if need be, out of the downpour.

Helix didn’t see her coming. She grunted with surprise as Chango wrapped her arms around her waist and pulled. “What are you doing?” she said mildly, looking down at her.

“What am I doing? What am I doing? What are you doing?” Chango sputtered. “This stuff is going to give you such a rash. You have no idea.” As she spoke, she hauled persistently at Helix’s waist, drawing her at last, with much staggering and splashing, to the shelter of the awning.

“Oh,” Chango said with dismay, looking at her. Helix was drenched head to toe in rainwater. “Let’s get inside. Maybe they have a towel or something we can use to dry you off.”

“I don’t want to dry off,” Helix said, but Chango ignored her, and taking her damp lower right hand in hers, dragged her inside the party store.

The woman behind the counter — a Mandy somebody she knew only vaguely — looked up in startlement at the two of them. “So its raining,” she said, “It’s been threatening to all day.”

Chango nodded. “Do you have a towel or a rag or something we can use to dry her off?” she asked, tilting her head towards Helix, who had detached herself from her grasp and was wandering up one of the aisles.

Mandy somebody nodded, ducked under the counter for a moment and then tossed her a ragged towel.

When Chango caught up with her, Helix was staring at a rack of replacement valves for air tanks. “What are these?” she asked as Chango unceremoniously began toweling her off.

“They’re pressure valves, for the divers’ tanks,” she said, rubbing the towel vigorously over Helix’s arms and legs. “We’re going to have to get you out of this body suit as soon as we get home, and you should take a shower.” Chango pulled at her shoulder. “Bend down, so I can get your head.”

The shop door jingled as it opened. Chango, struggling to dry the squirming Helix, couldn’t turn around to see who came in, but judging from the footsteps, there were more than one of them.

“Oh look, the sports are giving themselves a bath in the party store,” said a high pitched voice, Coral’s.

Chango gave up trying to dry Helix off and turned to see her standing at the head of the aisle with Monkey, Oli and Katrice. All four of them wore voluminous grey rain ponchos which drained puddles at their booted feet.

“It’s a nice day for a shower,” Chango said, grinning back at their smirking faces. “But then, you guys prefer to soak in it, don’t you?”

Coral’s smirk wavered. “We know how to protect ourselves. What about your friend there?” she nodded at Helix who was running her fingers through her damp hair, and smearing them over her face. “She trying to get more of it? Doesn’t she think she looks weird enough yet?”

Helix stopped rubbing her face and stared at Coral, her arms at her sides. “What did you come here for? Was it one of these?” She plucked a pressure valve from the rack and started walking towards the vatdivers. “Or one of these?” She took a box of cereal from the opposite shelf and waved it at them. “Or did you just come in here to bother us?”

Coral stared at her in amazement, and Monkey and Oli whispered to one another. “What’s the matter with her?” Katrina muttered.

“Nothing that you can’t fix,” yelled Helix.. “Get out of here!” She threw the valve and the box of cereal at them. The valve landed behind Monkey with a clatter. The box hit Coral on the shoulder, bounced and broke open on the floor, spraying pellets of hearty grain goodness everywhere.

“Hey! If you’re going to fight, take it outside,” shouted Mandy from behind the counter. “Don’t destroy my store!”

Coral looked like she was trying to decide how to hit Helix without getting tangled in her arms. Chango rushed forward and interposed herself between them. “We’re leaving,” she said, grasping Helix’s lower left elbow, pushing her along as she sidled past the vatdivers. Helix broke from her grasp, and turned once more to face them. “Go outside,” said Chango, pushing her back. “Go play in the rain some more. It’ll hardly be worse than the beating they’ll give you if you keep this up.”

Helix hesitated, staring blankly at her as the rage faded from her eyes. She nodded and went outside.

“Sorry,” Chango told Mandy as she picked the shattered cereal box up off the floor and took it to the counter to pay for it. As she stood there she was aware of the vatdivers muttering amongst themselves and staring, but they troubled her no further.

oOo

“That was really some stunt you pulled yesterday,” Chango said as they sat in the garden behind Mavi’s house. “I don’t know what got into you. First the thing with the rain, and then that fight with Coral. You know after what you told me about hiding out at your father’s place all those years, I was really worried about what would happen when you had to deal with the vatdivers. Now I’m beginning to think they better watch out for you.”

Helix shrugged and scratched her arm in remembrance of the rain’s touch. She looked around the garden. The weather had cleared, and it was a bright, warm day, still a little humid as the sun burned off the lingering damp. If there was any growth medium in the rain, it hadn’t done these plants any harm. Green, luxuriant growth surrounded them, making the air heavy with the scent of life and death. “What are those?” she pointed at the tall, bushy, silver-leaved plants growing in a clump in one corner.

“That’s mugwort, and it’s pretty out of control, but Mavi likes it. She says it brings visions.”

Helix leaned back on her upper hands. The ground beneath her palms was warm and springy. It was a nice feeling, being enclosed like this in a sea of green, cushioned in the quiet by the gentle humming of insects. About a foot from her knee lay a dead sparrow; feet curled delicately against the grey belly. A thin bodied bee hovered nearby, and flies took turns crawling into her body to lay their eggs. Chango was saying something about marking, or marks, but Helix wasn’t listening. She was thinking about what would be found in this garden in November, the bones...

“-And so I was thinking, you’d be an ace scanning once you got the hang of it, and in the meantime, you could be the stall.” Chango paused to see Helix looking at her blankly. “You know, distract them.”

“Distract who?”

“The mark. Are you all right? You feeling okay?”

“Yeah. It’s nice back here. No one can see us.”

“You’re right,” said Chango, leaning closer to her, and taking her lower right hand. She cradled it in her own small hand, splaying her fingertips across Helix’s broad digits. Chango’s hand looked very small indeed there, next to her own, and it was warm and light, like a little brown bird. “Do you know that you’re very beautiful?” she asked Helix.

Helix stared at her. Her face felt warm, and her hands tingled. A small smile crept across her lips of its own volition. “Beautiful...” she whispered, looking away.

"That's right," Chango said, gently turning Helix's chin so she was facing her again. Chango searched her face, her two color eyes bright with intent. "Your eyes, your face, your hair," she glanced down and then up again, and she smiled, "your body; it all goes together, and let me tell you," she said, locking her gaze to Helix's, her face dead serious except for her shining eyes, "it is one majestic fucking harmony."

Helix blinked, and then Chango was leaning over, her face coming closer and closer to hers. Alarmed, Helix tried to back away, but there wasn’t much of anyplace for her to go. There was something crashingly immanent in the air around them but for the life of her she couldn’t figure out what it was, or what Chango was trying to do, and then she felt her lips on hers, another mouth, speaking to her mouth in a moist, sweet language mouths know. She lifted her arms around Chango to hold her, to steady her, to feel with curious fingers the fabric of Chango’s t-shirt sliding against her skin underneath.

They lay down on the ground together, there in the garden, and somehow they just lost track of whose body was whose. Chango’s tongue got into Helix’s mouth, a large, slippery serpent, flickering about, and Helix’s lower hands found some way under that t-shirt and she stroked her; smooth warm skin covered with fine, fine hairs, all but invisible to her fingertips. When Chango reached her hand up to cup one of Helix’s breasts, she jumped at the unexpected jolt which overrode all fear at being touched, being seen, being known — an electric bolt which ran lengthwise through her body, and threw her mind into some other place, where for once she was not at odds with herself, but was just what she wanted to be, and did just what she wanted to do.