grin.
'C'mon, Smiley, git back ter work,' sneered the asskicker, administering a light tap with his truncheon.
The indentee pulled the wire out of the mud. There was a sucking sound, and it came free. His mouth grinned, but hatred glowed in his prominent eyes. His eyelids were drawn back, too. And his tight skin had a grey-greenish pallor that didn't look healthy.
'Skeeters got ya?' Visser asked.
Shiba realized he was clawing at his hands. Some of the bites were leaking a milky pus.
'Yes.'
Visser rubbed his belly. 'Me, too, chief. Ain't a place for a natural man, this ain't.'
Shiba was inclined to agree, but didn't want to question the decision of the GenTech committee that had established the research compound, and sent them all here.
'The work can only be carried out under these conditions, you know that.'
Visser slapped a bug off his shoulder. 'I suppose so. Tell me, chief, don't you ever wonder just 'zactly what the gol-dang work is?'
Smiley was unwrapping the wire like a bale of silk, and the other indentees were languidly stretching it out.
'That's Dr Blaikley's department. Captain. I am not qualified to follow it We're doing medical research. Important biomedical research.'
'That, as my ole Daddy used to say, can cover a whole multitude of sins.'
Shiba's hands felt as if they were on fire. He also had pains at the base of his spine and the joints of his jaw. They couldn't be mosquito bites.
'You don't look too chipper, chief.'
Shiba left Visser with the fence crew, and walked away. He wanted to get his hands under some cold water.
Suddenly, it was as if a hot poker had been shoved into his belly. He doubled up, and leaned against a wall. His mouth filled with warm water. There was a drainage sluice in the ground. He vomited neatly into it, feeling the hot pain surge up through his pipes. There was blood in his chyme.
Shiba straightened his tie and stood up. He patted his hair into place, and walked towards 'A' block. His head was pounding now.
Reuben was outside, getting some feed sacks from the concrete bins. He said something, but Shiba didn't hear him properly.
The flaring pain at the corners of his mouth was making him grind his teeth That was most unhealthy, Shiba knew.
He remembered the pain of his Blood Banner initiation. This was worse.
He pushed into 'A' block. This was Blaikley's kingdom. There was a washroom just past reception.
The duty guard—a Good Ole Boy (Good Ole Girl?) called Serafina—forced him to take a plastic tagbadge, and logged him in. His hands couldn't work the catch, and she had to pin it on for him. It was as if acid were eating into his skin. Finally, he was officially able to enter the facility.
Serafina smirked. She obviously thought he needed desperately to urinate.
He blundered into the washroom, and ran a cold tap, filling a basin. As he stood at the washstand, waiting for the bowl to fill, looking at the floor, a scorpion scuttled out from the waterpipes. It was a freak, with two tails. He crushed it under his shoe. The work blocks were supposed to be kept clean of that sort of vermin. It was most unhygienic, irregular. He would upbraid Blaikley severely.
The pain was rising up his spine now, as if the vertebrae were being displaced.
He plunged his hands into the water, and scrubbed viciously. Flakes of skin came away.
He looked up at the mirror, feeling some relief from the pain. His face shocked him. He could see the bones of his skull shifting, dislocating. A trickle of blood crept from one nostril. His jaw shifted from side to side. This was agony.
He realized he was screaming. The sink overflowed, and water cascaded around him. He looked at his hand, and saw the new skin that had risen where he had scratched the old away. It was rougher, greener…
There were people around him, dragging him away from the stand. Someone twisted the taps.
Dr Blaikley had hold of him. He felt her soft body pressed close to him. She was holding his arms at his side while someone else squirted an air bubble out of a hypodermic syringe.
She wasn't joking lewdly now. She was treating him as dispassionately as she did her animal subjects.
But why was she loosening his belt?
He tried to protest, but he couldn't get the words out through his clenched jaws. He could taste his own blood.
Two assistants had him now, and Dr Blaikley was tugging his pants down. He thrashed his legs, and she pulled his jockey shorts to his knees.
Merciful heavens, was the crazy woman trying to rape him?
'Just a little prick,' she said, 'with a needle.'
The assistants turned him round, and bent him over a sink. His spinal column was a fiery mass of pain.
He felt the needle sink into his buttock, and heard Dr Blaikley say, 'Got him.'
The pain vanished instantly, but so did all other feeling. Still fully conscious, he was unable to move a muscle. He sagged, and someone mercifully pulled his underwear and pants up.
'Shame,' said Dr Blaikley. 'Still, it's not the size of your pencil, it's how you write your name.'
They took him out of the washroom, and there was a gurney waiting for him.
He lay flat, looking up at the white ceiling. A fan was turning up there.
'It's happening fast,' someone said. 'His metabolism must differ from the others.'
'He's not a proper subject,' Dr Blaikley snapped. 'He's GenTech brass. The fecal matter just collided with the ventilation system.'
He was being trundled down a corridor.
'Hiroshi,' said Dr Blaikley, looming into his field of vision and talking straight at his face. 'You've had a turn. We've seen these symptoms before. There's nothing to worry about. We can help you.'
Her hair was hanging into his face. He could smell her lemon shampoo.
'You're going to be just fine.'
Then she turned away to someone else and said, under her breath but loud enough for him to hear, 'God, I hope the Nip swallows that shit.'
He was being wheeled deeper into 'A' block.
'Get Visser, and tell him what's happened,' Blaikley said. Fans and overhead lights passed. His head rolled from side to side. He fought to get control of his neck muscles, but couldn't
His head flopped. He realized he was hearing things again. The same sounds that had been getting into his dreams recently. They were like the keening cries of swamp birds. Primordial noises.
There was an animal smell. He had never toured this part of the compound. It was not his field.
Like one of his snails, he snatched a breath that would have to last a long time. His chest wasn't rising properly, as if the dope they'd shot into him had paralyzed his lungs.
'He'll come out of it soon.'
'Then freaking hurry up, Misty. I like having two hands and big teats.'
The gurney stopped, and he was transferred to a cot. It was just a mattress over an iron frame. Things were stuck into his arm, and he heard the steady beeping of a vital signs monitor.
Dr Blaikley peered into his eyes, pulling the lids back. Her sweet breath was on his face. Her heavy breasts brushed his chest.
'Hurry up, Misty,' she said to someone.
His hand was working now. He raised it, and caught Blaikley's skirt, just above her thigh. He felt the warm meat of her hip.
She flinched, and Shiba thought he could see something strange in her expression. It was most un-Mary Louise Blaikley-like. It could have been pity.
She took his hand between thumb and forefinger and put it on his chest, touching it as little as possible as if it were a dead rat. Or a diseased one.
