Lethe

by Tricia Sullivan

Genres: Science Fiction; Genetic Engineering; Hard Science Fiction

Synopsis

It is the year 2166. Eighty years have passed since the Gene Wars devastated the Earth, decimating the human population and giving rise to myriad new life-forms. Now, among the dolphins of Australia, Jenae Kim stumbles on the information that could mean a new beginning for human civilization: information that the government is determined to keep secret - even if they have to kill her . . .

Release date: October 31, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 381

Sample

2052 Underkohling discovered by robot probe on fringes of solar system. Evidence suggesting theoretical possibility of gates exposed. Alien origin of Underkohling hypothesized.

2059 First expedition to Underkohling; no evidence of aliens found, but Gate 1 discovered. Probe sent through reports no alien contact; no near star systems.

2070 An international emergency conference on biodiversity sponsored by Gen9 finds that worldwide economic, social and political well-being depend on environmental rehabilitation on a grand scale. Third World political leaders protest restrictions on development implicit in Gen9’s agenda.

2073 Underkohling’s Gate 2 also leads to remote area. Most popular Underkohling theory now posits body is an energy field, not material in the usual way. Attempts to terraform the Moon fail at great expense.

2075 Various media declare a population crisis. International law imposes restrictions on reproduction, ruling that population control and environmental restoration supersede human rights with respect to reproduction. Helix begins Third World sterilization/selection programme, called Arx, to bring population into proportion with economic base.

Gen9 unveils a battery of virii which will increase speciation and variety in plants, fungi and arthropods through alteration of genomes. These species will be introduced to areas designated to be cleared of humans.

These actions are met with immediate Third World resistance in the form of chemical weapons, terrorism and other forms of sabotage against the planet itself.

2076 Third gate discovered on Underkohling. Research team disappears and does not return.

2077 First illegal seizure of children from nations which refuse to comply with regulations, esp. migrant workers and others without documented identities. Ingenix begins to develop its ‘alternative’ humans in a secret programme.

2080–2083 Resistance by indigents rises to a peak. Nuclear bombs set off in Africa and Central America.

2083 All three previously competing genetics corporations unleash kill virii. Billions of humans infected; most later die. A few escape exposure and hide, mostly in the North. Some survive the virii and emerge able to withstand the chemicals, radiation and dormant kill virii now widespread; these will later become known as the One Eyes.

2084 Helix headquarters in Russia bombed; no survivors. Many unidentified virii loosed.

Gen9 surrenders voluntarily to an international task force and cooperates in shutdown of facilities. Gen9 leaders tried and sentenced to death.

Ingenix leaders flee a raid on their headquarters using an interplanetary. Later shot down near Underkohling. Task force takes over Ingenix and discovers large mammal and human genetics programme in progress. Prisoners discovered divested of their bodies and placed in symbiosis with computer system (Heads). Thousands of children found infected with variations on a virus which induces water-breathing ability. Some of these children, called altermoders, go on to found the League.

2084–2089 Altermoders discover they can communicate with cetaceans, who have survived the last twenty years relatively unscathed. Collective intelligence among dolphins first explored by altermoders. The Heads re-establish world communications system using computer interface. Altermoders, dolphins and Heads join forces informally through a literal ‘think tank’ and develop mirror-field technology to preserve pure humans from ill-effects of environment. Glitches in Moon terraforming resolved by same parties. Because of their ability to transform matter, the group are dubbed alchemists; the League of New Alchemists sets up official headquarters in Australia at the site of Ingenix, where the Heads’ physical presences reside.

2089–2166 Period of recovery from Gene Wars. Reservations established, League strengthened, One Eyes emerge as dominant work force. Significant economic recovery. In 2140 Gate 4 is noted but not explored because it’s deemed too unstable.

2166 Morpheus transmission picked up from Gate 4. Daire Morales disappears while exploring.

While Daire Morales was disappearing haunches over nose, mind over matter, ghosts before breakfast into the sleek void that opened beneath him, he found himself thinking none of the usual thoughts to which people in such situations are prone. Life did not flash before his eyes; he experienced no old regrets nor yearnings of any kind; and no, he did not cry out for salvation. In truth he felt almost happy, if this is possible while one’s arms, legs, ears and gonads are being disassociated from their familiar locations as mapped on the brain before birth and scrambled into new and astonishing combinations in the senses. For the world, at long last, had proven itself to be large.

Daire’s ancestors had been sky people, some of them still sun worshippers into the satellite ages. They had come from the airless heights of the Andes and the burning plains of Mexico; their ancient gods were fiery and winged and they lived open to the heavens. Despite being raised indoors in a rez (or maybe because of it), Daire had inherited their craving for space. Only a moment ago, crawling across the black featureless surface of Underkohling, he had extinguished his handlight to look at the stars overhead; and he saw not only the sky above, but also its luminous reflection in the dark mirror of the ground. The stars, tiny blurred streaks, glowed from the surface in front of his face. He stared into the depths of this mirrored universe; it gave the impression of infinity, as though ground and sky were one.

Did he ask for it? Did he want it? Impossible to say, but …

He’d been crouching there, mesmerized, for some minutes when his headset cascaded to life.

‘Daire?’ Colin’s voice broke his reverie. ‘I’m getting a pulse from your location. Forget the readings – get the fuck out of there.’

Daire swallowed, unable to speak. Transfixed, he didn’t try to move as the dark surface suddenly began to stir around him, its shining skin rippling, stretching and then folding in on itself like a great mouth taking a soundless gulp. The ground beneath his feet deliquesced to the consistency of mercury and gently at first he flowed into it; then its pull turned nasty. He lost his grip on the handlight, the stars above shivered crazily and vanished, and darkness tongued him, rolling him over several times as all the while he slipped in its frictionless, womblike folds. For long, vertiginous moments he reached out with fingers extended to grab anything he could; but the substance of the darkness would admit him no hold.

Now, even as the limbs of his body arched out reflexively in swimming motions, his mind detached itself from the event. His body had become as alien as a frog’s, kicking and writhing in a dark stream, but Daire dismissed its helplessness blithely. A new sense had flooded his mind, a sense of not being somewhere and of never having been anywhere – a memory of nothingness. All premises were erased, the slate swept clean. He had no sense of himself; the mind was mute. And he gave over to the void without even a sigh.

The summons came too early in the morning, and to conserve power the lifts weren’t running yet, and Jenae was feeling squeamish about reporting to the Hall of Pickled Brains in person. She didn’t like the feel of them looking at her. It wasn’t so bad when they were just voices in the computer, but to actually be in their presence, to shift your weight from foot to foot wondering what camera they were using to watch you … and then that weird smell. No matter how many layers of glass and steel they were sequestered behind, there was always that faint odour in the hall, like formaldehyde – something rotten being cosmeticized.

And then to have to remember not to call them Pickled Brains to their … faces? Heads, they insisted on being titled, instead. Which was too bad. Pickled Brains just seemed to roll off the tongue.

Still soft with sleep, Jenae wandered into the common room of the alchemist quarters and gazed enviously at the reclining forms of her colleagues scattered on couches. The air was stale. She longed for coffee but couldn’t risk it in case the Pickled Brains wanted her to go into altermode. Passing the mirror on her way out, she tried to scowl at herself, but even that didn’t turn out right. Jenae had one of those round, symmetrical, concave faces that are always serene and dignified. The most unattractive expression she could muster left her looking like a mischievous child – hardly an image commensurate with her mood.

She took the stairs down fifteen flights to the point where the League of New Alchemists tower plunged underground. The spire had been constructed to look impressive in an age when people went about aboveground and on the sea; but the business end of the place was below sea level, in the bowels of the old Ingenix headquarters that had been taken over by the League when Ingenix Corporation was dissolved during the Gene Wars scandals. Whenever she walked down the long, curving corridor towards the Hall of Pickled Brains, Jenae envisioned the old labs: the gleaming cylinders of galvanized steel, the petrie dishes, the optic robots, all focused on the creation of the genome-altering virii, one of which had given rise to her altermode talent. The leadership of Ingenix had spent most of their time and energy creating kill virii; what would they say if they could see her, Jenae, an unlikely by-product of the war for speciation control, walking down this corridor as if she owned the place – which, in a sense, she did?

It was a nice idea, but it didn’t lift her mood. How, she thought, does inheriting the dungeon justify the tortures?

The Hall of Pickled Brains was always kept dim. Jenae didn’t know whether this was a medical necessity for the Heads, or whether it was done out of discretion for their extreme ugliness. But it would be hard to say whether the darkness really helped. As she walked past the long files of machinery housed in tall cabinets, she could feel her skin reacting to the subliminal hum, and the grinning towers of plexiglass that housed the actual brains, though shadowed, still gave forth a chilling gleam. In the centre of the hall, in a shimmer of amber light, a single chair had been set facing the bank of monitors that lined one wall. As Jenae moved into the light to take the seat, she could dimly make out the outline of a Pickled Brain floating in clear solution in a tank opposite. For an instant she saw it clearly; the nimbus of grafted nerves and lymphatic vessels extending from the cortex to the unseen organ centres gave the grotesque impression of hair. Then she stepped into the light and saw nothing beyond its warm circle. She sat.

‘Good day.’ A dead voice, female, vaguely European. A shade too loud for life.

‘G’day,’ Jenae muttered. She looked at her hands, embarrassed at her own thoughts. The Pickled Brains couldn’t help their appearance.

‘My apologies for rousing you so early. We received an interesting communication in the night, and we must act on it now. When you’ve learned its contents, you’ll understand the urgency. May I play you the recording?’

Jenae inclined her head. ‘Shoot.’

The voice gave a little self-deprecating laugh. ‘The others are reminding me,’ it said, ‘that you don’t know the context of the message. Let me summarize. A physicist from Oxford contacted us some months ago from a small research vessel in orbit around Underkohling. As you know, experimentation has not yet revealed the exact nature of this celestial body. All work there is, therefore, high-risk. The Oxford scientist, Colin Peake, was examining what he thought was Underkohling’s fourth gate when, in conjunction with variable bursts of EM fluctuations—’

‘Hang on,’ Jenae interrupted. ‘What fourth gate? I only know about two.’

There was a touch of humour in the response this time. ‘As you should know, Underkohling has three documented gates. The first to be found led into distant space, too far from any star—’

‘To be explored, I know, but—’

‘Then the economic crash at the end of the Gene Wars brought space research to a screeching halt. When we Heads first began to discover our powers, our first priority was to get the new systems up and running and the mirror fields in place. The pure human population had to be stabilized and isolated. It was some time before anybody found the resources to make more expeditions, which found the third gate. The third gate appears to release only in one direction, since we have not had a team or probe ever return.’

‘I see. No wonder it wasn’t publicized. Not much use then, is it?’ Jenae enjoyed baiting the Pickled Brains. They took themselves far too seriously. ‘So what’s this fourth gate?’

‘Initially it was only a hypothetical gate, revealing itself at unpredictable intervals, but always in the same location. As I had begun to tell you, when Dr Peake first contacted us four months ago he complained that his system had been invaded by a software virus that left a trail behind it. His software had begun to display unexplained patterns that he interpreted as a code. This occurred in conjunction with those intervals in which the EM readings indicated the possible presence of a gate. He asked if we could decode the patterns that appeared, but our dolphin team found no cypher and no evidence that the patterns were codified at all. They seem to be an artifact of the EM flux. We were intrigued, however, so we sent him an assistant who was asked to find out what was wrong with the software – where this virus was coming from. We also wanted a second opinion on the situation. Peake is somewhat eccentric. He is not prepared to dive headfirst through a gate that may only open one way, like the third – and who would be? At the same time, he’s not about to relinquish the project to us, even though we are better qualified to pursue it. Pure humans have certain prejudices against the League – and maybe it’s natural enough.’

‘So you sent someone to be the guinea pig. Who?’

‘Guinea pig is hardly the appropriate term. We sent a League software expert named Daire Morales, who is qualified to take readings that dolphins can use, in the web, to find a way to stabilize this gate. This was several months ago. Recently Morales arrived at Underkohling and made the transfer to the Oxford vessel. Then we received this transmission, last night. I’ll show it to you in its entirety.’

A central monitor sparked open. The view revealed a dark interior, most of which was occupied by a tall, awkward-looking white man with thinning brown hair and spectacles who sat sprawled in a chair under an angled sliver of white light. His face was sharply outlined, his eyes invisible behind the reflection off his glasses.

‘I’m going to ramble at you for a while,’ he announced. His local accent was noticeable, almost affected, Jenae thought. ‘I don’t feel sufficiently coherent to make a written report. Please bear with me.’

His left hand was in constant motion, juggling a pair of Chinese meditation balls with preternaturally long fingers.

‘Your agent, Daire Morales, arrived about sixty hours ago. Interesting guy. He calibrated my program for remote EM readings to interface with your equipment, and we took a broad sample of readings which I’ll send to you presently. There was no evidence of anything unusual at that time. The indicators were very flat. He felt the readings we were getting were not much use because they can’t be interpreted relative to anything, which is true. He also wanted more intimate data. But I’d tried sending down a probe, and the EM currents interfered with its navigation and ultimately repelled it from the site.

‘Well, that didn’t bother your man. He insisted on going down there himself and getting a feel for the place, he said. Those were his words. “I need to get a feel for it,” he said. I didn’t think he meant it quite literally – oh well, wrong on that one.’

An ironic smile cut a swath of shadow across the lower half of his face.

‘I put a monitoring device on him before he suited up, derivative of what you use for altermode so far as I understand it, and I kept as much data displayed as the system would allow. Every factor concerning the energy around him in a five-metre radius was in front of me the whole time.’

He paused, scratching his head.

‘I guess these things will happen when you treat the universe as your playground. I tried to warn him, but it was too late. He was standing in the middle of the gate when it opened. It was really quite incredible to behold: he was simply pulled in. Took about two or three seconds. And that was it. The hopper’s still there, nearby, perfectly intact. I can get it back using remote control but I’m leaving it there for now, just in case … It’s been ten hours, by the way, and no sign of him.

‘Now …’ He let out a laugh. It was a bit manic, Jenae thought. ‘Let’s talk about the good stuff. First of all, the data I got as he fell through is priceless. I hope you and your dolphins can work with it, because to me it’s just exquisitely irrational, and I’d love to know what it means. Secondly, after he’d made his sacrifice and the gate closed again – after about twenty seconds, by the way – there was material residue left on the surface. At first I felt a bit squeamish about examining it, but I succeeded in programming the hopper Morales abandoned to pick up a sample and I was able to do a quick remote analysis. I’ve got the results here, which I’ll also send you.

‘It’s a fine dust, organic matter encased in ice crystals. It’s not animal, though, as I feared – it’s not our friend Daire, thankfully. It’s mostly vegetable with some trace minerals and silicon, microorganisms … it resembles nothing so much as alluvial soil. Silt, if you will.’

He stood and began wandering about the room. The monitor’s eye tracked him steadily.

‘I hope this will please you,’ he said. ‘One hates to be always the bearer of bad tidings.’

He stopped, glancing sidelong at the monitor.

‘I’ve been busy on the Morpheus angle, as well. It seems quite logical that Morpheus did go through this gate, and in my opinion someone should have been smart enough to report it at the time. As you know, I consider myself something of an expert on Underkohling, but even I didn’t know the full story about Morpheus. I did a little digging in the archives for Underkohling, and I found a record of a patrol ship returning fire on Morpheus. The runaway disintegrated on impact, according to the patrol, which is ridiculous. There was no debris recorded, and the impact coordinates correspond to this area that is now emitting signals. It’s hard to believe nobody would suspect a gate at that time, knowing that even then there were two stable gates that had been explored prior to the Gene Wars.’

He sat down again, his face grave. The pitch of his voice dropped.

‘It should have been followed up on. It was carrying evidence of war crimes, for God’s sake. This is exactly the kind of interdepartmental project the university is going to be looking for, and I’m champing at the bit to get it worked out. I’m sure it would be beneficial to your interests as well, if we could locate the ship. I haven’t spoken to anyone at Oxford about it … yet. If the League can find a way to stabilize the gate, I’ll gladly share the credit. If not … well, we’ll worry about that if it arises. I’m sending you everything I have, and I’m going to sit tight. Contact me as soon as you have something I can use.’

The screen went dark.

‘What was that bit about morph—?’

‘Morpheus,’ corrected the Head. ‘It was an Ingenix ship that escaped the raids during the dissolution near the end of the Gene Wars. Executive-class interplanetary vessel. State of the art, at the time. They were trying to get to the Jupiter mining station, apparently, and went off course. You heard the rest.’

‘War crimes …’ Jenae breathed, impressed. ‘They were the Ingenix directors? The guys who started the whole fucking—I mean, the whole Gene Wars disaster?’

‘So it would seem,’ the voice replied crisply. ‘That is not your concern at present.’

‘You want me to stabilize the gate.’ Jenae could feel the blood waking up in her gills in anticipation. ‘Is that it?’

‘Indeed. But we’re not asking you to work miracles – not yet. If you can even discover the mechanism of the gate – its timing, how to predict its opening and closing – we’ll be pleased. Stabilizing it may prove more difficult. You haven’t seen the data yet.’

Jenae wasn’t listening to caution. Her reluctance had dissolved: here was a project with real meat.

‘Let’s start,’ she urged.

‘Very well,’ said the Pickled Brain. ‘We chose you for your talent, but more than mere ability will be required. This project will prove strenuous, for you and the dolphins. Zafara?’

Out of the corner of her eye Jenae saw a slender black man approach from among the shadows. He walked around the ellipse of the altermode tank and stood to face her. He had a hypodermic in his hand.

‘I’m Zafara,’ he said. ‘Would you like an injection?’

Jenae lifted an eyebrow. It was a common rumour that the Heads were addicted to endorphins, but it was not common for them to offer their private stock to alchemists, however favoured. She felt honoured and a little dismayed. ‘It’s OK, I don’t need it. Have we met?’

‘I’ve seen you around,’ he said. ‘You’re younger than I am – we probably work on different kinds of projects.’ He stroked his barely visible gillslits unconsciously, and for the first time Jenae realized he must also be an alchemist. She was surprised: he didn’t have the ‘feel’ she was used to picking up off her own kind. Her nostrils twitched. In the air that had stirred since he moved forward she could smell that faint, sickening odour again.

‘I’m here to monitor you,’ he added. ‘Don’t take it the wrong way: I understand you’re very talented or you wouldn’t be here. But you’ve never done anything this big before, and it is possible to burn out. I’m here for your safety.’ He handed her a skin patch with its electrode. ‘For today we’ll just be exploring the data. Go in, establish the web and signal me when you’re ready. Then I’m going to interface you with the Heads, and they’ll control the data flow. We’ll start you off with the parameters of the project, which the Heads have already established. The data should be coming into the web smoothly, very digestible stuff. Just take it, and let the dolphins start to play with it. We don’t need any great inspiration right off the bat, so don’t push them. Don’t push yourself, either. I’m here to make sure you stay slow and steady. Concentrate on weaving a strong web and let the dolphins do the rest. This is not a project that you can participate in mentally, so don’t even try. The volume of data is too great.’

‘Dig,’ Jenae said. ‘I’m ready.’ She hadn’t had such a long lecture since her training days with the League. She was conscious of the importance of the project to warrant so much attention from the Pickled Brains, but that consciousness didn’t inhibit her. The level of her talent in altermode had brought her, if not conceit, at least a certain nonchalance.

She went to the tank, removed her robe and lowered herself into the water. It was warm and sweet – the seadoor, as always, was closed, but Jenae derived some odd sense of comfort from the fact that the great mass of the ocean was only inches away from her, on the other side of the steel. She laid the skin patch, with its delicate, tiny circuitry, over her forehead. Then she sank to the bottom and went into altermode.

‘Are you sure about her?’ asked the voice of the Head.

Zafara slid the needle delicately into a vein behind his ear. His eyes rolled back. His mouth blossomed into a smile.

‘She’s a lovely girl, my friends. You want to know if you can trust her, don’t you? Not to hurt you, ever. For you have been so hurt, I know,’ Zafara reflected. He sighed, looking into the depths of the pool where the woman was changing into her second self. ‘I think she is the one. I really do.’

And he smiled and smiled.

There was always a moment (how long in measurable time she couldn’t say) where Jenae was – for all practical purposes – nowhere. One would think, if she were nowhere, there would be nothing to remain in her memory afterwards; without reference points, her consciousness would skip over the time, like sleep, and she would simply forget it. But this wasn’t so. She was always aware of being nowhere, and afterwards she always wondered about it. There in the tank, that moment was approaching.

She had stopped breathing.

Her gills woke up and shook themselves in the current. Altermode spread over her like a chill: the outer, opalescent layer of epidermis flared slightly in the water, picking up oxygen to supplement her gills’ intake. Her body responded quite automatically, her pupils rolling back as the microprocessor she had placed on her forehead began to churn out code, interfacing her with the Heads’ virtuality built within the huge mass of information kept in silicon. But she, Jenae, could not switch so blithely from her normal, human consciousness to the acute, non-verbal Now of altermode without crossing that little chink of nothingness between modes. It was a leap of faith that had to be made.

She jumped.

On the other side, dolphins are waiting. She can hear them in this state: her mind processes the impressions into words and images, but words are hazy at best. As they make the web of minds around and within her, their means of thinking is singular: closest to mathematics of all the human disciplines, but it is dolphin maths, and therefore capricious and paradoxical. Jenae has been trained to make her consciousness hang back from the dolphins’ thinking, so as not to pollute the web with human logic.

Her pod of seven is outside in Shark Bay. They are descendants of those first, whimsical dolphins to strike up a friendship with local fishermen here at Monkey Mia, Australia, back in the twentieth century. Luckily for altermoders, some of these highly human-sensitive dolphins happened to be around when Ingenix, located in the present League tower, decided to start experimenting with human regression to aquatic form. These ancestors of present dolphin members of the League saved many altermode humans from death in the sea; they taught the disoriented altermoders how to tap into the web and so communicate with dolphins. And they provided the League with its greatest asset: willing dolphin pods with their extravagant talent for layering mind on mind and so tackling the most complex theoretical problems to confront humans of the present age. Jenae trusts them implicitly. She may be called an alchemist, but it is the dolphins who perform the magical transformations of data.

Now the web is ready. Jenae leans into the system and pulls out the first strands of data retrieved by Colin Peake and paths them to the dolphins. It has begun.

Her sister’s face was a broken mirror.

‘Wind power,’ Yi Ling said. She crouched on the floor of her empty room in Perth rez as though poised for takeoff. Her fingers, taut and graceful, stretched away from her throat, tangled in the loops of the blue strangle ribbon. Like birds’ wings they stroked the pale air. Her neck flexed against the pressure even as the drug-charged blood rushed into her face. She gave an odd, lopsided twitch and closed her eyes. She didn’t breathe for a long time.

‘Yi Ling,’ Jenae whispered. ‘Please don’t do this. You know it scares me.’

Yi Ling opened one eye, which jumped as it gazed at Jenae. Her face was flushed, but still she did not breathe. She rocked back and forth on the floor. Jenae could see strands of blue creeping up her neck.

‘Stop it,’ Jenae said again, and reached forward to remove the band. But Yi Ling lurched away in a violent movement and crashed into the corner, kicking out at Jenae. Still she didn’t breathe. Jenae fell on top of her, wrestled her arms down and pulled the blue band off. It had made a pink indentation in Yi Ling’s neck. Her sister refused to exhale.

Jenae clenched her teeth and punched her twin in the stomach. Yi Ling gasped, coughed and inhaled, her eyes fixed coldly on her sister until Jenae had to look away. Shaken, Jenae stepped back. Yi Ling pulled her slender legs up against her chest and made herself small in the corner. She didn’t even seem to be high.

‘Shit!’ Jenae spat. She looked at the strangle ribbon in disgust, wondering how she had let Yi Ling come to this. ‘Why do you do that? To be like me? You don’t want to be like me. You wouldn’t believe what it’s like.’

The eyes of her twin stared, implacable.

Jenae gave a hollow laugh. ‘You should be thankful you can’t kill yourself that way. Your automatic nervous system would kick in for you – mine wouldn’t. You don’t want to be like me.’

‘Kill something already dead.’ Yi Ling’s voice was a soft scraping. She wasn’t looking at Jenae any more.

She wants altermode, Jenae thought. Can it really be that bad here, that she would rather work with the League? That she would torture herself because she doesn’t have altermode, even after most of our family died from the viruses?

She gl