BZRK Reloaded Page 12

  None of the clothing fit very well, but the laundry kept things very clean and very well pressed. Even the knee socks were ironed. Minako knew, because it was her job to work in the laundry.

  A strange laundry it was in a belowdecks space between Benjaminia and Charlestown, with workers from both towns, all happy, happy to be doing laundry, sorting, loading into the big industrial washing machines, using the padded steam-iron machines to press trousers, all of it so very, very happy.

  Except when a young man named Xander had evidently climbed inside one of the big industrial dryers. It must have happened at night when the laundry was quiet. He had set the cycle, pushed the Start button, and used a wad of tape to pull the door shut behind himself, triggering the dryer to start.

  Minako had not found him, but she had been in the area when the first scream announced the grisly results. Proctors had come running and pulled the bloody, burned body from the dryer. Minako had seen it slip from their grip and hit the floor.

  Suicide by dryer. So. Not everyone was happy, happy, happy you.

  Ever since she had reached puberty and the obsessive compulsive disorder had worsened, Minako had suspected she was crazy. But it was impossible that these people could be genuinely happy, deprived of their families, taken from their homes, kept in an awful steel ball and made to do drudge work all day. Xander was the proof, wasn’t he?

  Either they were mad or Minako was, and for the first time in Minako’s life she had begun to suspect that here, at least, she was the least crazy person around.

  She changed clothing, acutely aware, as she often was, of a sense of being watched, even when she changed clothes. Even when she used the toilet or showered. There were no secrets aboard the Doll Ship. No need for secrets when everyone was so happy they sometimes locked themselves in a dryer.

  She joined the rush of people down to the commons, the flat space at the bottom of the dome; there was no alternative, and she hoped, somehow, that these Great Souls would be rational. In any event she would get to see the men responsible for this place, the gods of this monstrous sphere. Maybe they would see that they had made a terrible mistake taking her and that she—she somehow being different than all these other people—should be returned to her home.

  The word home made her throat tighten.

  The Twins for their part could now see the ship through the plexiglass canopy. It couldn’t be mistaken for any other ship, there were few such LNG carriers: four huge spheres that looked like they’d been dropped into an oversize canoe. Two of the spheres actually carried liquified natural gas. This was the brilliant coup that allowed this Doll Ship—the second vessel to carry that title—to travel the world unsuspected and unmolested.

  This Doll Ship could travel from one LNG port to the next, take on LNG in Bontang, Indonesia, and carry it to Punta Guayanilla, Puerto Rico, or to Kochi, India. And no one ever asked why they were here or there. No one from customs ever asked to look inside the tanks. Why would they? The various sensors all showed the expected readings.

  What, you want to stick your head into a vat of supercooled, highly volatile gas?

  No, you don’t.

  You really don’t, Mr Customs Inspector.

  “We’re going to crash,” Benjamin muttered. “Charles and Benjamin Armstrong dead trying to reach their dolls.”

  “Why don’t you shut up?” Charles snapped. The helicopter was pitching and vibrating as the rotor hit pockets of vacuum where the blades chewed at nothing.

  The helicopter landing pad was aft, behind the superstructure where the crew lived. The crew were not all wired, in fact most were not. It wasn’t necessary. They didn’t need to believe, not yet, they needed only to be paid. Well paid and threatened.

  Charles considered calling it off: they couldn’t very well be killed in a fiery crash when they were so close to making major strides in their work. Ah, that would be painful irony, wouldn’t it? To have control, or something very like control, over the heads of the world’s most powerful nations, and then to die because a landing skid caught and pitched them into the sea?

  Then those skids hit the deck with a frightening impact. “Ah!” Charles cried out.

  But now the whine of the rotors died, and crewmen in bright yellow slickers rushed out to attach cables even as the clouds dumped the rain.

  Two crewmen appeared with umbrellas. They opened the helicopter door. There was a gust of cold, wet air, and suddenly the noise of the turbines and the thwap-thwap of the rotors were replaced by the rush of the wind and the thrum of the ship’s engines.

  With Min’s help, they climbed awkwardly down the steps, dragging the almost useless third leg, swinging side to side in their awkward way.

  A crewman blanched and looked away.

  “Get that man out of our sight!” Benjamin yelled.

  The crewman looked relieved when the captain tapped him on the shoulder and jerked his head to indicate that the indiscreet lad should find somewhere else to be.

  An umbrella shielded the twins’ heads, but cold rain drove against their legs.

  “Thank you for having us, Captain Gepfner,” Charles said cordially.

  “We are honored.” The captain was a gray-bearded man with haunted eyes and the red nose of an alcoholic. He managed a bow of sorts. His first officer was indifferent, a gray-eyed American named Osman who stared past the Twins.

  The Twins sank gratefully into the golf cart. Captain Gepfner personally fastened the clear plastic tarp that kept the rain at bay. Ling was with them. The AmericaStrong security man, Altoona, was not—seasickness had driven him to the railing to throw up.

  Charles wondered whether the ship would be able to make contact with their assistant back on shore. It was vital to keep in touch with New York and their many other offices and facilities around the world. Jindal was a tool of limited use, and Burnofsky …Well, how could you ever totally trust a degenerate genius?

  But though it was important to stay in touch, it was not as important as simply being able to touch. That was what Charles craved most. Benjamin was different: he enjoyed the sense of power. But for Charles the vital importance of the Doll Ship was that it allowed him to touch another human being. To be touched in return.

  Hand on hand. Finger on skin. He was suddenly almost nauseous with desire for human touch.

  He had rarely touched another human being. And only on the Doll Ship could he touch without seeing that look of terror and revulsion in her eyes.

  Her eyes. In his innermost thoughts it was always a her, a woman, who would recoil in horror. Many had.

  Benjamin became enraged when that happened, when they looked that way at him, when they swallowed hard and drew back. Sometimes they fainted.

  Sometimes they cried.

  Screamed.

  Vomited.

  The Morgenstein twins, what beauties they had been, those two, and yet they really hadn’t known how to behave. The vomiting, that had been the worst of it.

  That’s what had pushed Benjamin over the edge. It had been Benjamin’s idea to have those two pitying, puking little rich girls kidnapped and taken to the first Doll Ship.

  Twins. They should have been nicer. They should have had at least some sympathy.

  Well, they hadn’t been twins like him and Benjamin, had they? No, they were the sort of twins people thought were cute. Leering boys fantasized about them. Rich young men in expensive clothing courted them.

  But Benjamin had taught the Morgenstein twins a lesson. Charles had tried to stop him, but there was no denying the justice in Benjamin’s plan.

  Was there?

  So pretty? So cute? Having fun being a pretty, rich twin, are you, Sylvie and Sophie? Well, welcome to our world, girls. It’s amazing what a motivated surgeon can do.

  “You’re thinking of them, aren’t you?” Benjamin asked suddenly.

  It would be silly to deny it. Charles said nothing.

  “Remember how they cried when they woke up?” Benjamin asked.

&nb
sp; Charles remembered. “None of that will be necessary now, Benjamin,” Charles said. “That was all left behind when the first Doll Ship went down. There will be women here who want us. Who will be honored—”

  “That McLure girl,” Benjamin interrupted. “She heard our cries. It would be only justice if we heard hers.”

  “None of that,” Charles repeated sharply. “These are our people aboard this ship. We must treat them well. You know that. They are one with us.”

  The golf cart was driven by one of the ship’s crew. It wasn’t a long ride, but out here on a cold, pitching deck there was no chance that the Twins could manage the walk without falling.

  They passed along the starboard side of the ship heading aft. They traveled to the second sphere. From the outside it was nothing but a giant white-painted beach ball, but Charles and Benjamin knew what was inside.

  A set of metal steps ascended from the deck up to the catwalk that went along the tops of the domes. Pipes ran alongside, connecting the tanks for loading and unloading, for drawing away the boiled-off LNG that powered the ship’s engines.

  A motorized chair lift ascended alongside the stairs. It was a specialized piece of equipment, a sort of cagelike metal bench that climbed—a bit like the first rise of a roller coaster, with an audible whir and clank.

  It stayed level as they rose and afforded them a view of the wide, white-topped sea. Unfortunately the tarp cover wasn’t very effective at keeping out the rain, and they were fairly drenched by the time they reached the top.

  Up there, at the top, two ship’s officers waited, wearing slickers, inured to the cold and wet, rolling easily with the swell.

  Mr Armstrong, and Mr Armstrong,” the second mate, Dragoslav said. He offered both his hands to shake, and each took one, awkwardly.

  Human touch.

  The top of the dome was a cunningly concealed hatch raised by motors from within. A gust of warm air, smelling of human bodies and the singed smell of metal, rose as the lid came off.

  Through the hatch then appeared a sort of elevator, though it was open and really little more than a bare-bones balcony. The Twins hobbled aboard it. Ling guided them but then stepped back: their grand arrival must be by themselves alone. It swayed a little under their feet, and when the ship hit a trough, Benjamin yelped out a curse.

  The platform began to descend, running down the central pillar, down into Benjaminia.

  They would appear to those below to be descending from the painted sky.

  Charles could not see his brother’s face, but he sensed he was at last relaxing. The chafed skin that connected their faces was drawn tight by Benjamin’s growing grin.

  The whole of it came into view as they slowly, majestically, descended from the sky. The platforms that ran around the inside of the sphere were bedecked with hand-made and thus authentic banners welcoming the Great Ones.

  welcome to benjaminia!

  you are home!

  thanks you, charles and benjamin!

  The English on that last one was a bit off, maybe, but it was a very international assortment of people. You could hear it in the odd inflections as voices rose up from below them, singing. Singing the official song of Benjaminia.

  It was a perkier, more upbeat version of the old Beatles song, “Julia.”

  All of what I say is magical. But I say it for I love you . . . Ben-ja-min.

  There were people on each level waving Nexus Humanus flags and yelling their lungs out. It brought a tear to Charles’s eye. Men, women, young women, all looking at the Twins with acceptance. And more than acceptance: wonder, joy. Like teenagers gazing at rock stars.

  Now Charles’s own smile broke out. “Hah,” he said. Then again, a chuckle. “Hah.”

  He was looking at other people, face-to-face, albeit from a distance. Seeing them and being seen in return. Not cowed employees, not the hired AmericaStrong thugs whose tolerance and impassivity was bought with dollars and pounds and euros. Not the disdain of the twitchers, or the seething, barely concealed contempt of Burnofsky.

  Here was true acceptance. Here was adoration.

  Here was love.

  They descended, and at last the platform was nearing the commons floor, where the bulk of Benjaminia’s happy residents waited, arms upraised, waving.

  Charles searched each face, winked at some he recognized, raised a hand slightly to old friends. Or at least people who thought of themselves as old friends, though none of the villagers on this second Doll Ship had been here longer than two years, and in that time the Twins had been able to visit on only three occasions.

  Then… a new face. A girl. Tall, but obviously young. Pretty. A beauty, even, maybe, though the freckles across her nose made him think of . . .

  And then her eyes widened.

  Her mouth formed an O, and the girl with Sadie McLure’s freckles screamed.

  TWELVE

  “We’re going,” Nijinsky announced as soon as Plath walked in and tossed him his ChapStick. “Pack up.”

  “What do you mean we’re—” Plath demanded.

  “We’re out of here, Washington cell was wiped out yesterday. Killed. Lear just told me, or maybe he just found out, in any case … There’s a single survivor.” His face was the color of cigarette ashes. “Grab whatever gear you have. You two are on a plane. I’m going to drive down with Wilkes and Anya.”

  Keats walked into the room, and Plath handed him a Snickers bar she’d picked up at the drugstore. He took it, made a dubious face, and stuck it in his jacket pocket. “What about Vincent?” he asked Nijinsky. “You’re not leaving him . . .” A terrible thought occurred to him. “Tell me Caligula is not coming for Vincent.”

  Nijinsky wiped his mouth with his hand, a nervous gesture. He was a wreck; that was plain to see. “No. Lear has left that decision up to me.”

  “Up to you?” Plath asked, not meaning to sound incredulous.

  “Up to me, that’s right, up to me,” Nijinsky snapped. “I’m taking Vincent with us. We’re going to grow some new-generation biots and try a deep wire on Vincent. If that works . . .”

  “If it works he lives …and if it doesn’t?”

  “Do me a favor,” Nijinsky interrupted. “Don’t lecture me. And don’t give me your outrage, I have no time for your outrage. Pack. Now. This place could be hit next.”

  Keats said, “If this deep-wire thing works on Vincent, it could work on Al …on Kerouac. My brother.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Nijinsky said. “Let’s just get out of here alive.”

  “He means don’t start hoping,” Wilkes said sourly. “We’re BZRK. We don’t do hope. You know who had hope?”

  Nijinsky gritted his teeth. Wilkes came right up to him, her face up next to his neck. “Ophelia. She had hope.”

  “I didn’t order that, goddamnit, Wilkes!”

  “Nah, but you would, right? Because you’ll do whatever it takes to impress Lear. Right?”

  But Plath had a different take. She wondered why Lear would have let Nijinksy decide Vincent’s fate, but not Ophelia’s. Was Nijinsky lying?

  Pia Valquist finished her report, logged it, and saved it into the system. It would be automatically encrypted. It would also be forgotten. The story was horrific. Ghastly. It would have been unbelievable but for the missing arm and the terrible scars.

  What the Armstrongs had done to that girl . . .

  Sophie Morgenstein confirmed that the Doll Ship had indeed sunk in the South Atlantic, and that her sister had died. She herself had almost bled to death.

  Valquist used a mapping app to lay out what she had gathered from Morgenstein’s account of her fellow passengers. Thus far Valquist had correlated five coastline kidnappings or disappearances. Sincheng, Taiwan. Funakoshi Bay, Japan. Pismo Beach, California. Ensenada, Mexico. Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

  But of course in reality there were probably far more. Sophie Morgenstein estimated the captive population of the Doll Ship as over a hundred, not counting crew, guards
, and the despicable medical personnel who used drugs and even lobotomization to create a docile population.

  Her recitation had left Pia shaken. She was not unaware of human cruelty and depravity, but this was monstrous. Even now her hands trembled with suppressed fury.

  Pia entered the data into the map and calculated the cruise times between her five known points. Yes, a ship moving at, say, fourteen knots, could do it quite handily.

  Then she noticed something. The number of unexplained coastal disappearances did not appear to decline following the sinking of the Doll Ship.

  Valquist frowned and then rubbed the frown away with her fingertips. She took the short walk to the coffee room, made a cup of Nespresso, and came back to her data.

  Two women missing from Freeport, Texas. A girl missing near Cameron Parrish, Louisiana. Panama City, Florida. Punta Guayanilla, Puerto Rico, a teenager. Pampa Melchorita, Peru. Alaska. Vladivostok. Northern Japan, quite recently.

  Okinawa just a little over a week ago, a Japanese American girl.

  Fighting down a growing excitement, Valquist began plotting the places out on Google Earth. Yes, sailing times worked if you assumed a slightly greater speed of fifteen knots.

  She paused, looking at the satellite imagery of Point Lookout. Something just north of there: a series of white dots.

  She zoomed in closer. Tanks of some kind.

  She checked the location of the tanks: Dominion Cove, it was called. A liquified natural gas port.

  She immediately Googled all the more recent kidnapping reports that fit the profile. She had eleven in all. Of those, six were within close range of a liquified natural gas facility.

  A chill went up her spine.

  That was not coincidence.

  There was a second Doll Ship.

  She rechecked her data, took a deep breath, and burst into the office of her supervisor, Georg Gronholm.

  “I need Naval Intelligence.”