“You won’t have to. I’ll call up a schema of the building’s systems. Then all we have to do is figure out where she has to go to get down there, and intercept her.”

Benny hissed through his teeth. “It’s not going to be that easy, and you know it. You’re just trying to snow me. Maybe I can’t get out of town without your money, but you need me too. Besides, Martin’s your real problem. As long as he’s around, you’ll never squeak out of this.”

“You’re right, of course. I had planned on a scandal for him, but that’ll take too long. We need to act now.”

“Well, we’ve already had one instance of a gunman breaking in and shooting someone, why not make it a spree?”

“Are you actually suggesting that you just break into his apartment and kill him?”

“Why not? Provided I have my plane ticket first, of course.”

Graham stared at him for a very long time. “That might actually work,” he said. oOo

It took Graham several hours to work up a schema of the building’s systems. Now it hung in the air over his desk, a glittering thing of lines and data points. “You’ll take the maintenance stairway down to Hector’s floor, and get into the ventilation duct here” he said to Benny, pointing at an enlarged section of the diagram detailing the ventilation system around Hector’s apartment. “Once you’re inside, go straight past six side vents, and take the seventh one in. When it branches, go left. It’ll take you right to Hector’s bathroom.”

Benny eyed the schema skeptically. “How am I going to get out of there? Security’s probably looking for me already.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got your escape route all mapped out. After you’ve killed him, call me, and I’ll tell you where to go.”

Benny laughed. “Sure you will. Why don’t you just tell me now?”

“Look, you’ve got your plane ticket. If you have a way out of here too, why not just use it right away?

That’s what I’d do, if I were you. The escape route is my insurance that you do what you say you’ll do.”

“Yeah? How do I know you’re not going to screw me again?”

“Oh please. I’m taking a huge risk keeping you around now. Believe me, the sooner you’re safely out of the country, the better off I’ll be.”

Benny thought about it a moment and nodded. “I guess that’s true, because if I get caught, you can believe I’ll be telling them everything.”

“Fine. We understand each other very well then.”

oOo

Slatermeyer struggled to keep up with Chango and Helix as they wound their way through the innards of the GeneSys Building. With Helix’s arms, and Chango’s dexterity, he didn’t stand a chance.

“Slatermeyer, are you with us?” Chango called from a utility ladder up above. They were in the conduit now, ropy masses of cable rose up through the shaft beside him. “I have to rest,” he called up. “Can’t we stop for a second?”

He heard her say something to Helix, and then, “Okay, for a few minutes. You climb up to us.”

They sat in a small utility closet on stacks of spare cable. “Where are we?” he asked, wiping his forehead.

“Oh, you’re almost through,” said Chango. “It’s only five floors up to Hector’s from here.”

“How can you tell?”

Chango nodded at the junction box on the wall above her head. In black marker it was labeled WW22.

“West wing floor twenty-two,” Chango translated. “Hector’s on the twenty-fifth.”

“We’re not stopping there,” said Helix, resting three arms on her knees and pointing up with the fourth.

“We’re going all the way to the top.”

“Well, we’ll have to show him to Hector’s apartment. He can’t find it on his own,” said Chango. Helix agreed reluctantly, rubbing a fang over her lower lip in chagrin. Slatermeyer fished the ball of blue poly from his divesuit pouch and rolled it between his gloved fingers.

“You were saying something about that stuff earlier,” said Helix. “What does it do again?”

Because it would prolong their rest break, Slatermeyer did his best to explain the properties of the blue poly as he understood them. “The camera was still working, so the stuff must be transmitting the electrical signals, or converting them into something analogous. If I’m right, there would no longer be any need for an interface between the brains and the electrical systems that they run. It’s a huge breakthrough in efficiency and speed of processing.”

Helix nodded her head at the ball in is hands. “Can I see it?”

He handed it to her. She turned it around in her hand, sniffed it, licked it, and then looked at him. “Can I use some of this?”

Slatermeyer frowned. “What are you going to do, eat it?”

With a pained expression, Helix shook her head. “If this stuff does what you say it does... Then I think we need to use it.”

“What do you mean, ‘use it’?”

“I mean try it out. We’ve got plenty of electrical cable around here. Let’s seed some of it with this stuff.”

“You better be careful, some of these cables are carrying a lot of juice,” said Chango.

“What are you talking about?” Slatermeyer stood up. “This stuff hasn’t been tested yet. I’m just making educated guesses here. There’s no way to be sure exactly what it does without testing it first.”

Helix shrugged, and stood up herself. She opened the door to the junction box above Chango, and looked back at Slatermeyer over her shoulder. “Here’s the first test.”

He tried to grab her arm, to stop her, but she had other arms to shove him away as she slammed the blue poly into the junction box. The wires inside were spliced together, their raw ends twisted around each other and held fast with plastic caps. It wouldn’t take the blue poly long to get past those. Soon it would be leaching into the wires themselves, and it would spread.

Clenching his jaw, Slatermeyer tried to push past her, to pull the blue poly off the wires before it was too late, but she slammed the door to the box shut and repelled him again. He stumbled back against a pile of cabling.

“Excuse me,” said Chango, standing up. “I think I’ll sit over here.”

“Don’t bother,” said Helix. “It’s time to go.”

“But-“ Slatermeyer pulled absently at his hair. “You can’t just-At least let me take some for experiments.”

Helix snorted. “Don’t you have some in the lab?”

“Oh, well, yes...”

“Then use that. Let’s go.”

oOo

Hector paced the carpeting, doggedly pressing redial on his transceiver. No one was answering. Helix and Chango must have left already, presumably Slatermeyer as well. Any one of them might have picked up the transceiver, but now only Lilith and her brood were down there, and he knew what he could expect from them.

He gave up the transceiver in frustration and went to the kitchen cupboard for the bottle. He was pouring scotch into a water glass when he heard a noise from the bathroom. He moved into the hallway in time to see Slatermeyer in a divesuit, stepping out of the john.

“I see you made it,” he said, and returned to the kitchen for another glass.

“Do you have anything I can wear?” asked Slatermeyer, peeling the divesuit from his body where he stood. “I can’t stay in this thing one moment longer. How can they stand it? All your sweat is trapped inside with you. It’s like being marinated.”

Hector set the glass on the counter. “I’ll get you something,” he said and went to fetch a robe.

“So where are Helix and Chango? Are they going through with that business about the brain?” asked Hector, handing Slatermeyer a generous glass of whiskey.

“Tsss,” Slatermeyer hissed, leaning back on the couch. “More than that. They took the blue poly I’d collected. They’ve already introduced it to the building’s electrical system.” He raised his glass up.

“Cheers.” And drank deeply. “Aaugh, that feels good. You don’t know what it’s been like. I know I’ve been exposed to the growth medium. How could I not be? It was in the air in that place. Hey, I should take a shower, right away.” Slatermeyer jumped up, nearly spilling his whiskey, and headed for the bathroom.