Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [5]
‘It’s OK,’ she heard him call; then another bout of coughing.
The lab was as she’d left it. A high-rise block of cages, a terminal connected to the analyser, a bench, fume cupboard, glassware, tall fridge-freezer – which stood open. The man was standing in front of it, looking down at the stock of his gun, puzzled. He coughed, flapping his free hand in front of his mouth.
‘Air’s lousy with psychoactive volatiles,’ he said.
Janis almost pushed him aside. The test-tubes racked in the fridges were neatly lined up, labels turned to the front as if posed for a photograph. Which they might very well have been. No way had she left them like that. Each – she was certain – was a few millilitres short.
‘Oh, shit!’
Everything gets everywhere…
‘What’s the problem? The concentrations aren’t dangerous, are they?’
‘Let’s have a look. Where did you get this? No, they shouldn’t be, it’s just – well, it may have completely fucked up my experiments. The controls won’t be worth a damn now.’
She suddenly realized she was cheek-to-cheek with him, peering at a tiny screen as if they were colleagues. She moved away and opened a window, turned on the fume cupboard. Displacement activity. Useless.
‘Who are you, anyway?’
‘Oh. Sorry.’ He flipped the gun into his left hand and pulled himself straight, held out his right.
‘Name’s Moh Kohn. I’m a security mercenary.’
‘You’re a bit late on the scene.’
He frowned as they shook hands.
‘Slight misunderstanding there. I was on a different patch last night. I’m just dropping by. Who’s responsible for guarding this block?’
Janis shrugged into her lab coat and sat on a bench.
‘Office Security Systems, last time I noticed.’
‘Kelly girls,’ Kohn sneered. He pulled up a chair and slumped in it, looked up at her disarmingly.
‘Mind if I smoke?’
‘I don’t.’ She didn’t. She didn’t give a damn any more. ‘And thanks, I don’t.’
He fingered out a packet of Benson & Hedges Moscow Gold and lit up.
‘That stuff’s almost as bad for you as tobacco,’ Janis couldn’t forbear to point out.
‘Sure. Life expectancy in my line’s fifty-five and falling, so who gives a shit?’
‘Your line? Oh, defence. So why do that?’
‘It’s a living.’ Kohn shrugged.
He laid a card on the lab bench beside her. ‘That’s us. Research establishments, universities, worthy causes a speciality.’
Janis examined the hologrammed business card suspiciously.
‘You’re commies?’
Kohn inhaled deeply, held his breath for seconds before replying.
‘Sharp of you to notice. Some of us are, but the main reason we picked the name was so we’d sound really heavy but, you know, right-on. Later – when we could afford market research – we found out most people thought Felix Dzerzhinsky was in the Bolshoi, not the Bolsheviks.’
Janis spread her hands.
‘Doesn’t mean anything to me,’ she said. ‘It was just the “Workers’ Defence” bit. I’m not into…all that. In my experience politics is guys with guns ripping me off at roadblocks.’
‘Aha,’ Kohn said. He looked like the THC was getting to him. ‘A liberal. Maybe even a libertarian. Remember school?’
‘What?’
He gave her a disconcertingly objective look.
‘Maybe the first couple years of primary school, for you.’ He raised his right hand. ‘“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United Republic, and to the States for which it stands, three nations, individual—”’
‘Jesus Christ! Will you shut up!’
Janis actually found herself looking over her shoulder. It had been years—
‘I thought this was an F S Zee,’ Kohn said mildly.
‘High treason is taking it a bit far!’
‘OK. So I won’t ask you if you’ve ever, ever consciously and publicly repudiated