Chapter Twenty-Nine

 

 

Mildred cocked her pistol and her head at the same time. "What?"

 

The lean, scaled figure before her capered impatiently, shifting from one foot to the other. "My brains, you were supposed to bring me my brains."

 

"I don't have your brains," Mildred said, not able to repress a smile despite the situation. "Don't you have any of your own?"

 

The figure blinked its huge eyes at her owlishly. "If I did, I wouldn't be waiting for you to bring them to me, now, would I?"

 

Nerves on edge, Mildred laughed shortly. "Logical answer. What kind of brains do you need?"

 

One of the bony shoulders heaved in a half shrug. "Yours will do. Yes, as a matter of fact, a woman's brain is preferable. It will balance out my own."

 

"What will you do with it if I give it to you?"

 

"Pop it out, of course, cook it over the fire in its own blood and juices. Then eat it."

 

Mildred, staring at the gaunt, scaled, sexless creature, felt clammy sweat bead her forehead. "Why?"

 

"Like I said," it replied, "to balance me out. I'm leaning too far in the direction of a single gender."

 

Mildred cast her eyes up and down its body. "Not as far as I can see."

 

It blinked at her again, and said, "Watch."

 

An awful groan came from its lipless mouth. Parts of the scaled body stirred and shifted, muscles crawling and sliding beneath the scaled flesh. The figure reeled backward, and Mildred, watching it, felt the marrow of her bones turn to water.

 

The muscles on the creature's arms and thighs thickened, and a fleshy pseudopod at the groin suddenly sprouted, like the bud of a flower. A testicle sac swelled beneath it. Mildred nearly cried out in horror, though the scientist in her was fascinated. She stared, spellbound.

 

The thing was a physiological gender bender, a hermaphrodite that could switch sexes at will. She knew that human hermaphrodites occurred naturally, if infrequently, though they were usually nonfunctional as both males and females. The genetic differences between men and women were very slight, only a matter of certain genes being switched on or off. In this creature's case, it could apparently switch them on and off, back and forth, at will. She had never heard of a mutie with this kind of ability, and she guessed that this thing was a product of genetic engineering. It wasn't clear in her mind why anyone would wish to deliberately produce hermaphrodites.

 

Clearing her throat, but not lowering her ZKR, she said, "Very impressive. Do you have a name?"

 

The creature's eyes narrowed a bit. When it spoke, its voice had dropped an octave. "Let me think. I was called Uni, since I was part of that program. That's not my real name, though. I can't remember what it was. Is."

 

"What program were you a part of, Uni?"

 

"The Unisex program, of course. You really aren't very bright, are you? Maybe I shouldn't eat your brain, after all."

 

Mildred smiled a slightly wan smile. "That's a start in the right direction. What was the purpose of the Unisex program?"

 

The reply was immediate, as if recited by rote. "To be fruitful and multiply."

 

"How many of you are there?"

 

"Just me now. Listen, I think I'll go back to my median nonstate. It takes a lot of effort to maintain one gender without the proper nutritional values."

 

"Please do," Mildred said, shuddering.

 

Tendons and muscles writhed, Uni's frame quivered, the shoulders narrowed and the primary male characteristics were absorbed back into its pale flesh. Mildred watched, no longer quite as fascinated, but no less sickened. Though genetic engineering wasn't her field, she possessed more than a layman's knowledge and could theorize about the process that had produced Uni. A developing embryo had been tampered with to artificially induce a bizarre form of consciously controlled hermaphroditism.

 

She could only guess at the purpose behind the experimentation. Since she had seen no females in the Anthill, it was probable that the Unisex program was designed to provide the complex with a stable population of organ donors. Uni and a few others like it could mate, give birth, switch genders, mate and give birth again. Only a few of the hermaphrodites would be needed to guarantee a controlled supply of offspring. However, she was pretty sure the program was a failure, that the Unis had been sterile in both genders. As it was, Uni's very existence was impressive. The Anthill geneticists had apparently invented a new biochemical coding system to substitute for DNA.

 

As interesting as Uni and its history was, Mildred couldn't afford to spend any more time with it. She had to find her way back to the upper levels and reestablish contact with Ryan. She needed to keep moving, not surrender to the desire for rest, or her injured muscles would lock.

 

Backing away down the corridor, Mildred said, "I have to be on my way, Uni. Nice meeting you."

 

"You have to go so soon?" Uni's eyes glimmered with disappointment. "I haven't talked to anyone in a long time. Feels like years. Maybe it has been years."

 

It shuffled toward her, and Mildred said pleasantly. "Stay back now."

 

Uni followed her as she walked backward. She didn't want to shoot the lonely monstrosity, but she couldn't devote her attention to what lay ahead of her if this thing dogged her heels. Though she pitied it, Uni was obviouslyin its own wordsunbalanced.

 

"You can't go that way," Uni piped. "Door is sealed. There's only one way topside."

 

Hesitating, Mildred scanned Uni's face, looking for indications of deceit. It was a futile exercise. "Can you lead me out of this damn place?"

 

Uni ducked its malformed head in assent. "You betcha. Follow me."

 

Mildred stepped forward, then paused and hefted her pistol. "Do you know what this is?"

 

"Sure."

 

"Tell me."

 

"A gun, right?" Uni sounded puzzled. "A revolver?"

 

"That's right, and I'm an expert with it. If you fuck with me, I'll blast your unbalanced metabolism into its component enzymes and amino acids."

 

Uni regarded her solemnly with huge eyes, then cackled gleefully. Opening the door, it beckoned with long fingers. "Come on, come on."

 

Grim-faced, Mildred followed Uni through the door into a room that was the exact opposite of the rooms she had seen above. It was filthy. Rusting pipes crisscrossed at all angles along the ceiling and walls. There was a cracked and dirt-filmed porcelain toilet affixed to a wall. The floor tiles were layered with ancient grease and layers of grime, in the shape of treaded boot soles. A long row of dilapidated metal lockers lined one wall. A few of the doors gaped open, revealing rotting military uniforms hanging from hooks. The place had been abandoned a long, long time ago.

 

A frayed copy of Time magazine lay open on the floor. She paused long enough to toe it closed. Before the coated stock cover broke into several pieces, she read a date of May 29,1996. For some strange reason, the dirty and crumbling periodical seemed like a precious link to her past. Mildred stepped over it, fighting the impulse to burst into tears of grief.

 

Uni capered in front of her, its white body shining in the dim light. "This way, this way."

 

Mildred followed the creature through what had been a lounge or common room. There were couches, candy and soft-drink vending machines and a television set. The screen was perforated by what looked like bullet holes.

 

"Do you live here?" she asked.

 

"Sure," Uni replied. "For a long time."

 

"Alone?"

 

"Sure, all alone." Uni sounded troubled. "When the program was terminated, a man in a white coat showed me the way down here. He wanted the program to go on, said it had been stopped pre-premawhat's the word?"

 

"Prematurely?"

 

"Yes. He used to visit me here, examine me, bring me pills to eat. Then he went away one day and never came back."

 

"How long ago was that?"

 

Uni came to a stop, eyes half closing. It twirled a lock of blue-black hair around an index finger. A nervous habit, Mildred thought sadly. Like any other human.

 

"Don't know. Long time. He said I needed something for my brain. Said I needed a new one or something. Said he would get it. He left to get it and never came back. I waited a long time, and he never came back."

 

Mildred didn't reply, but she had a broad idea of what Uni was talking about and why the program was terminated. Because of Uni's inbred gender-bending metabolism, it probably had an exceptionally unstable mixture of hormones, not just testosterone and estrogen, but the ones affecting intelligence, as well, like vasopressin and acetylcholine. Uni's production of RNA and natural brain chemicals was inefficient, and the scientist had meant to rectify that. Uni had assumed it was to receive a new brain instead of a form of biochemical therapy.

 

"How do you live down here?" she asked. "Where do you get food and water?"

 

Tittering, Uni started walking again. "Plenty of food in little sealed packages. Lots of water in the drains."

 

They entered another room, this one very long and dimly lit, illuminated inadequately by overhead neon fixtures. It was a workshop, filled with heavy tables, tools, chain vices, band saws and cumbersome drill presses. Mildred's eyes roved over the objects on one of the tables, and she came to halt.

 

"Wait," she called. "I need a minute."

 

Uni stopped, staring at her from about ten feet away.

 

"Stay there," she instructed.

 

"Why?"

 

"Because I have something to take care of, and I don't need distractions."

 

Uni considered her words for a moment, then said reproachfully, "Won't hurt you."

 

"Is that a promise?"

 

Very seriously, very gravely, Uni made the sign of the cross over its bony chest, then kissed the little finger of its right hand. "Pinky swear."

 

Mildred was startled into laughing, but at the same time she wasn't about to place her trust in the creature, no matter how pathetic and harmless it seemed.

 

Removing the headset from her coat pocket, she took a pair of needle-nosed pliers from the table and set to splicing the broken wires together. It was an in-close job, with bad lighting, rust-stiff tools and a strained back to contend with.

 

It required several minutes, several experimental attempts and perseverance. Fortunately Uni kept its promise and didn't move, allowing her to concentrate.

 

Finally she heard the hiss of static in the earpiece. Though the circuit was engaged and open, Ryan didn't respond to her hails. She moistened dry, dust-coated lips and fought both the worry about him and the agony of her bruised back muscles. She turned to Uni. "Lead on."

 

They left the workroom and entered a similar, slightly smaller one. Uni led the way toward propped open elevator doors. There was no car. The shaft rose above it. Paralleling the cables and running up one wall into the darkness was a metal ladder. Far above was a faint luminosity.

 

Uni stepped onto the ladder and began to climb. Mildred snugged the ZKR into its holster and followed. They went up in silence for more than a hundred feet until they came to an opening, the elevator doors jammed to one side by a length of pipe. The air was colder and throbbed to the rhythm of engines and generators. The walls and floors were sheathed with alloy. Beyond the shaft were three entrances to corridors. One stretched straight ahead, and the other two branched to the left and right.

 

Uni moved down the central corridor. It was neon lit and took several sharp turns and twists, like a maze. Even though Uni claimed familiarity with the layout, it sometimes hesitated at the various forks and bends.

 

After several minutes the corridor terminated in a large circular hatchway, rimmed by several concentric collars of dark metal. Uni tittered and waved a hand in front of it, and the hatchway irised open. The sound of mechanisms grew louder, and the air was chillier. Beyond the hatch was a short cylindrical tunnel that led them to an identical hatchway. Uni opened this one in the same way, by waving a hand over a concealed photoelectric eye lens. The throb of generators deepened, until the air vibrated. Feeling like she was breasting invisible waves, Mildred stepped through the hatch and found herself perched like a bird on a wire over what looked like a factory.

 

They stood on a narrow gallery. Above and below were other galleries, and from them sprang a webwork of catwalks that spanned the vast area, all interconnected vertically by a system of caged-in lifts. The lifts and walkways were constructed to give access to all levels of the enormous central circulating station and moisture condenser that filled the place.

 

Giant fan blades roared, and greenish liquid coolant bubbled and flowed through a confusing network of transparent tubes. Huge square conduits rose like skyscrapers almost out of sight between a pattern of cooling coils. Water beaded and dripped incessantly from the metal surface of the condenser. It was very cold, very damp and dank.

 

Though the room was unoccupied, Mildred could see the subtle marks of use. Control consoles and banks of dials and switches surrounded the base of the gargantuan machine, and the chairs in front of them had deep hollows in the faded seat cushions.

 

Despite its size, Mildred could tell that the massive machine had been assembled in a rather piecemeal fashion. It wasn't symmetrical, and it was obvious that many of its working parts had been cannibalized from other machines. Evidently, when the decision to live in a near-freezing environment had been made, the original air-conditioning system was modified and reengineered. Though she couldn't see it from her vantage point, it was clear that the station was connected to a nuclear generator. There was no other way such a massive machine could be powered.

 

Leaning over a guardrail, Mildred peered down at the floor. It was made of concrete and covered by several inches of standing, stagnant water. It drained sluggishly toward huge open grates scattered like giant poker chips over the floor. Resting on an elevated platform above the water was a row of six half-ovoid generators, filling the huge room with a penetrating subsonic song of pure power. Mildred could feel the sympathetic vibrations in the metal railing under her fingertips.

 

It could take hours to find a central switching console that controlled the generators. Besides, she was sure the station had back-up power sources and redundancies designed into it. To kill the Anthill, she would have to take out the generators. But what she wanted was to orchestrate a thaw, not deprive the entire complex of power. She checked over her complement of grenades and wondered if they were powerful enough to do the job.

 

Turning to Uni, she asked in a shout, "Is there another way out of here?"

 

Nodding, Uni pointed to one of the nearby lifts. "That one goes up."

 

"How far? "she yelled. "I don't know," it yelled back. "Just up." Studying the generators again, she eyed the thickness of their cast-iron casings and gauged that all four grenades might just knock out two of them. However, arranged in a semicircle around the last generator was a collection of clattering pumps, the armatures dipping up and down with a blurring speed. She recognized the rattling machines as air pumps, sucking oxygen from the outside and feeding it into the massive condenser. Her eyes followed the conduit and ductwork, and she recognized particulate filtration systems, coolant distribution and return networks built into them.

 

Before she took any action, she had to make one final attempt to contact Ryan. She pressed the transmit stud on the receiver and said, "Ryan, come in. Ryan, respond. Goddammit, why won't you respond?" This time she received an answer.