Dead Water Zone - Kenneth Oppel [37]
Where was Sam? What had they done to him? Everything was collapsing around him now. It was like one of his brother’s huge war games—if you looked away or didn’t keep up well enough, everything changed on you, the whole game board, all the rules. Decks had said David would have died months ago. And here he was with two very relaxed Cityweb men and a room full of lab equipment that could only be Sam’s. Nothing made any sense. He was surprised to feel an aching disappointment through his panic: this was not what he had expected. He had wanted to find Sam here, alone, to talk.
David Sturm took three rapid steps toward Paul and then stood absolutely still.
“Yes, he’s pure,” he told the two Cityweb men, “wonderfully pure. But the other one has water in her.” He flicked a skeletal hand in Monica’s direction. “You’re not a drinker, are you? No, the hum’s too faint. Your parents must have been Waterdrinkers, then, leaving their traces? That’s right, isn’t it?” Sturm paused, his head angled pensively. “I recognize you.”
Monica’s body was rigid. “My mother’s here, isn’t she?”
“So many came here,” said Sturm, almost absentmindedly.
“She came here to drink your water, eight months ago.”
“Then she’s dead,” said Sturm simply.
Monica stared ahead, without words, but Paul could feel her grief washing over him like the heat from the furnace.
“She would have been very eager to drink it,” Sturm went on. “Happy to take the chance. All of them were. It was an exciting time.”
“What is it?” she asked darkly. “The water. Tell me.”
And it was only then that Paul heard her voice crack with rage. “You tell me what it is, you stinking freak!”
“It’s a mistake.”
Sam’s voice crept invisibly out of the shadows, and Paul’s body filled with joy. He involuntarily took a few steps in the direction of his brother’s voice.
“Stay where you are!” Sked snapped behind him.
Sam’s voice hung tantalizingly in the air. “Can’t you come out where I can see you?” Paul asked.
“Not now,” said Sam, his voice coming from a different location.
“Are you okay?”
“The source is here, Paul. I found it.”
There was something disturbing about his voice, Paul thought, a cold detachment he’d never heard before.
“What do you mean, it’s a mistake?” asked Monica insistently.
“A terrible, wonderful mistake,” Sam replied from the darkness. “Twenty years ago, the City launched a pollution cleanup program, much like the one they’re working on now. They designed a microorganism, a primitive version of the garbage gobbler I was testing at the university. But this earlier one was a secret. They wanted to test it on-site. They sent divers down and dropped a canister right here, underneath Rat Castle.
“When the pollution didn’t break down around the harbor, the City abandoned the project. But something happened to the garbage gobblers. I got hold of the bioengineering templates at the university. I think they must have reacted with some radioactive trace elements in the water. It caused a chain of mutations. It keeps regenerating itself down there, right below our feet. That’s what made the water turn. That’s what’s changed us.”
“Garbage, then,” said Monica. “Pollution in our veins!”
Paul looked at her, alarmed by the self-loathing in her voice.
“A gift,” rasped David Sturm angrily.
“We have uses for it,” said the Cityweb man with the white sneakers. “Your brother’s developing a refined strain of the water. We’re very interested in its applications.”
A row of machines emitted a series of sharp beeps, and