CHAPTER 5: It Isn’t Necessarily a Disaster

Cáo Ying
Day 1

Professor Cáo Ying swore and peeled off her protective suit, rolling it into a ball around a rock and dropping it into the Katakot city sewer’s central flow channel. She supposed it would eventually turn up in the processing plants down in Adhisa District, but hopefully not before its DNA evidence was corrupted by the various waste chemicals flowing downstream from Sarnat University. Burning the suit would be safer, but she didn’t dare risk carrying it through the streets in search of a suitable garbage fire.

Her lips tightened as she swooshed the suit’s helmet back and forth in the muck a few times before consigning it to the same fate. I’d better set aside a few more of the University’s biohazard suits, just in case. She regularly blamed careless undergraduates for her damaged or missing lab equipment. After twenty-one years, nobody in the university’s budget office bothered querying her repair-and-replacement requests.

The metal rungs of the sewer’s ladder were pitted and slimy. She shoved the sewer grate aside and clambered out into the poorly lit street, searching for any sign of the district police. Nothing — they were probably all still in her illegal lab, processing the evidence.

Swearing under her breath, she dragged the grate back into place and plucked a leaf off the nearest bush to clean her hands. One skinny old man squatting nearby lifted his bushy grey eyebrows and flicked his clay pipe toward her in silent inquiry.

“Bioscience Department water testing,” she snapped in response, glowering. He grunted, his eyes drifting away in search of something more interesting. Nobody else was paying her any attention.

She adjusted her glasses, scraped the soles of her shoes on the side of the kerb, and strode away, weaving through the crowd and slipping down dark side streets until she was certain she wasn’t being followed. At last she turned toward the university, hurrying through the quads so that nobody she knew could pull her into a conversation.

Her co-conspirator Suhail Mir sat on the dusty bench in front of their designated meeting place, an out-of-the-way coffee stall that served such wretched brew that even graduate students avoided it … meaning it was unlikely either of them would run into anyone they knew there. Placo-oil lanterns cast an unsteady illumination over the benches and tables, their light attracting clouds of buzzing insects.

“You were supposed to have bribed the constabulary!” she accused as she stopped in front of him.

“I did,” he protested, standing. The rust-colored highlights in his hair glinted in the lanternlight; they were natural, though Cáo wouldn’t put it past the vain young student to have enhanced them with henna. “I don’t know what happened … I think it was some sort of military raid. The ’mark I saw was wearing armor, not a uniform.”

Cáo blew out a frustrated puff of air and dropped onto the bench opposite his.

“Well, I ran into the mayor, who had absolutely no business in a Chatri basement unless somebody reported us. Dammit!” She ran her thin hands through her hair. “You have no idea how bad this is!”

“So, the yakṣa lives another day. We’ll still be able to —” Mir stopped as he glanced at her empty hands. “Wait. Where’s the cryosafe?”

She glared.

“I was interrupted halfway through the procedure!”

“You didn’t bring it out with you?”

“I couldn’t stop to pack up. I barely had time to slip out through the sewers before the constabulary showed up.”

“Shit,” Mir swore. “They’ll trace it back to the University biotech archive.”

“Maybe. I’d already removed the archive labels, and all the text on the safe itself is in hanzi. It will take them time to translate it. Besides,” she added, “at worst they’ll know somebody stole it from the archive; they have no way of proving it was us.”

“How far … how far along did you get?”

“Not far,” she lied. In fact, there was a statistically significant chance that the varana she’d designated as a vector for the ancient nanoweapon had been successfully infected by the time the lab was raided, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to tell her young co-conspirator that.

She planted herself on a corner of the bench and the coffee-stall owner stood to get her order. She shook her head, and the proprietor dropped back down onto his stool, content to listen to the radio.

It isn’t necessarily a disaster, she thought, staring blankly at the street. The alim — an old, pre-Stillness nanoweapon from the wars — might not even be viable anymore; they’d been planning to run evaluative tests after the initial exposure just to find out. And even if it were, she had precious little information about how rapidly it could replicate … the vector could end up dying before it infected anything else. Or the weapon might never infect enough organisms to pose a threat. Or Katakot’s stringent biocontamination detection processes might detect it early enough to stop the spread.

So many unknown variables …. too many for her comfort.

“You promised that the experiment would be safe!” Mir pressed.

“And it would have been safe, if I hadn’t had to abandon it because of a raid that shouldn’t have happened in the first place.”

“And if the weapon’s released?”

“Then we leave the city until it’s run its course, and we get what we wanted the hard way.” She tightened her lips, disgruntled by the thought. She was a scientist, not a mass murderer.

“The Separatists won’t want to take credit for the yakṣa’s death if it’s accompanied by the death of the entire human population of Katakot, as well.” He scowled. “That’s not the political message we’re trying to send.”

“Don’t panic yet. Even if the vector was infected before it escaped, everything I’ve read suggests that it takes weeks to reach the tipping point. I have penty of time to stop it.” Or to plan my escape, she added, silently.

“I hope you’re right. The Lord Shivr —” Mir stopped when she cast him a sharp look. “He’ll be disappointed by the setback.”

“I think he has bigger concerns right now,” she said.

“You don’t think I can rescue him.”

She waved a dismissive hand.

“Even if you do manage to pluck him out of the Rukh’s hands, then what? He’ll be a wanted man. Do you think Nathapala is going to grant him right of rule?”

“I don’t care what the yakṣa does.” Mir gave her a challenging look. “Are you having second thoughts, Professor? Should I be worried?”

She gave him a cold look over the top of her glasses.

“You know I don’t have the slightest interests in your speciest politics and conspiracy theories; I just want to be allowed to conduct my research without interference. As long as you Separatists facilitate that, you have no reason to be concerned.”

Mir made a face but settled back down on the bench.

“Then what’s our next step?” he asked.

She picked up his clay cup of coffee and took an absent swallow. The dark, overly sweetened sludge in the cup had little to recommend it, but she needed the caffeine and calories.

“Did the soldier get a good look at you?” she asked.

“I don’t think so. I was already through the window by the time he reached the room.”

“Good.” She thoughtfully sucked coffee grounds off her front teeth. “You go back and find out what they do with our equipment — especially the cryosafe. If we’re lucky, they’ll leave everything in situ until they find an expert to identify it, but I expect the fools will simply impound it, in which case I want to know exactly where it’s taken.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if you volunteered to identify the equipment for them?”

“The mayor’s an idiot, but he’s not blind. I can’t risk the possibility he’d recognize me.” It wasn’t likely, given the full-body biohazard suit she’d been wearing, but she had better things to do than stand around watching the constables tear apart their makeshift lab.

“Should we tell Prelate Nayar?”

“Yes. Tonight.” She frowned. The prelate wouldn’t be happy, but he hadn’t been happy since Taim Scandha had been arrested. And neither was she. With the Scandhas and Shivrant both out of play, she wasn’t sure it was possible to rescue the Separatist movement, and she was strongly averse to being brought down with a group of failed subversives. “I’ll meet you back here in … three hours?”

The young student pulled out a watch. “Yes, if you rent us a pair of utahi. If we’re walking all the way to the Order, we’ll need to leave sooner.”

“I’ll get the utahi.” She stood and walked off, leaving him to pay for the terrible coffee.

---

The university classes had let out by the time she returned. Cáo nodded briskly to the staff locking up the buildings for the evening as she walked through the quads. The biosciences building had already been shut up, but she unlocked the door with her personal key and picked up the biolume lamp by the door, walking down the hall to her office. It was equipped with electrical lights, but Cáo kept them off as she let herself in. Setting the softly glowing lamp on her desk, she unlocked the door behind her desk marked “Department of Developmental Biology and Genetics: Hazardous Materials Storage: Keep Out” and, finally, flicked on the lights.

Disturbed by the sudden glare, two-headed snakes coiled tighter or slithered into the corners of their terrariums, and lizards with too many legs and tails darted back and forth, seeking cover. Her reinscribed Tokay gecko threw itself at the glass walls of its enclosure, clawing and snapping.

“Hello, Darling,” she murmured, crossing the windowless storage room that she’d transformed into a private lab. She’d never expected the gecko to survive the experiment, but its transformation had been superb. Darling had grown twice as large as a normal Tokay, nearly 60 centimeters. Sharp claws tipped its feet, and its head had grown heavier and broader to accommodate the razor-edged rows of teeth that now lined its wide, smiling mouth and throat. Its once-soft skin had hardened into protective scales, and its semi-prehensile tail was covered in spines. “You’re looking well.”

Darling snapped again. Cáo straightened, satisfied. The gecko had proved she could safely and successfully apply proscribed bioweapons outside of yakṣa-supervised laboratories and had laid the groundwork for her second, more ambitious reinscription project.

Speaking of which … she glanced over her shoulder at the unsconscious jailer who laid bound and gagged in a corner of her lab, where she’d dumped him that morning. He’d come to campus expecting the second half of his payment; she’d given him a tranq dart instead. He was still unconscious, she observed, but also still breathing, which was something of a surprise.

Darling threw itself at the glass, trying to get to her, and she turned her attention back to it with a satisfied smile. With any luck, she’d be able to smuggle the gecko into the next annual meeting of her academic association, where a group of like-minded scientists convened after hours to share data and research papers on topics that their institutions forbade them to research. They’d be admiring and envious, she was certain. And as far as her second reinscription project, well, that would undoubtedly prove useful, too, if the subject survived … but he’d be a little more difficult to show off to her peers.

Her satisfaction faded. That was, assuming this evening’s little incident didn’t completely derail her plans. If the varana had been successfully infected and got loose into the sewers … well, that’s what happens when important research is forced underground, she thought, darkly. Proscription didn’t stop the pursuit of knowledge; it simply rendered it less well-regulated.

She hoped the nanoweapon hadn’t been successfully released. The depopulation of Katakot would create a serious setback to her academic career.

She fed her collection of living anomalies as she considered her options, then picked up a lab notebook and jotted down a quick list.

• Was alim deployed? Viable?
• Check & purge archival records!
• Evacuation plan?
• More biohaz suits
• Warn M?

And tomorrow? The Lord Shivrant was scheduled for execution, unless Mir managed to rescue him. She hesitated, then added another line.

• Prepare plaster for S. death mask

She wiped the pen’s nib and set it aside. Most of her plans would be contingent on confirming what had happened to the cryosafe, and whether Shivrant was executed tomorrow, so she didn’t think there was much point in trying to plan beyond that.

A soft groan made her turn. The jailer from the Diamond Keep was staring at her, glassy-eyed, from the corner where she’d dumped him that morning. Cáo cocked her head, then dipped the pen one last time to add another item to her to-do list.

• Tell Dr H tranq lasts abt 12 hours

Dr. Huq would be pleased to hear it; he’d been developing his new animal tranquilizer for months. She’d tell him she’d used it on a saur, of course; a starihant, maybe. Something more or less human-sized, so that his data wouldn’t be too adversely affected.

The jailer’s eyes were clearing now, though. He tried to say something through his gag. Quick reassumption of normal faculties, Cáo noted. Dr. Huq did phenomenal work.

“Hello,” she said, as the jailer looked up and saw her. “First, I want to thank you for assisting me in my experiment. Second, I want to congratulate you for surviving the tranquilizer. I admit, I had expected you to die of cardiac arrest, but you pulled through. That will work out so much better for my research.”

He gazed at her, frightened and confused, but she didn’t bother to elaborate as she reached into her pocket for the keys to the anatomization hall. He’d figure it out soon enough.