Convince, Broadcast, Hide

Buddy walked behind Hound, watching the dog as its head, guided by its snout, turned from side to side as it followed the invisible line of scent through the ochre and orange sands. It was unlikely that it was a part of the opposing forces mentioned by the priest, but nevertheless, wariness was always rewarded. Until he was proven otherwise, Buddy would remain under the assumption that, if not an ally, then at least the mutt was an asset. He wondered just how he would’ve found the Grower if the beast hadn’t appeared.

He didn’t place further thought into the idea of an extempore companion, he’d had them before in this line of work, and instead he let his mind wander to ancient memories of his infancy, and the stories of Growers his elders had related.

If true, they were special beings. Humans without any cybernetic enhancements, but instead, honed and upgraded through biological means to the point that they were unrecognizable. Some told of horned and winged things, barely human, while others of giants that stood at nine feet, all muscle and bone, while some were in between. What little people knew of their biology was nothing compared to the complete lack of knowledge concerning their trade, which was the cloning and rearing of Animalia for either consumption, or ritual use. Much had been lost after the cataclysm, so a scant few could separate whether the beasts they bred were either from humanity’s history, or myth. What were new, what ancient.

The most common bedtime story for youths was the Leviathan of Afric, a bio-weapon created in the first and last war against the Growers, which had sparked from jealousy, and like all wars, from the hope of claiming resources. The Growers’ being the most valuable. The monster had wreaked havoc on a scale not seen since the fabled atomics from centuries before, killing thousands in its rampage from the red desert, once a sea, to the Atlantic coast. Mountains were leveled, cities razed, and whole family lines erased from Earth. Then it disappeared. After that, under the fear of the thing’s return, a peace was struck with the mysterious sect of humanity, allowing them their seclusion. In time, trade deals were drafted, and soon, memories of wars with monsters and machinery faded, but were never truly forgotten.

Hound stopped suddenly, and so did Buddy, who brought himself out of his childlike musings. Before the two was a rusted metal cylinder, a head shorter than the tall bounty hunter. There were no ornaments or carvings, just a sandy panel of keys and some form of scanning device shielded poorly in a palm-sized niche.

“The scent terminates here,” Hound said, stock still, snout pointing at the thing.

“Strange,” Buddy said, “You sure?”

“Positive.”

“I’m guessing this is some sort of entryway into whatever cave or dugout this man lives in,” Buddy said.

“Should we knock?”

“Why not,” said Buddy, and pressed the key on the pad that had a chipped image of a mouth from which curved waves, each longer than the last, were depicted being emitted, the universal sign of speech. “Howdy, my name is Buddy Limbo—”

“I’m Hound,” the dog introduced itself proudly.

“—yes and this is Hound, my associate. We’ve been sent here by our mutual friend the priest back up in town. Said you’ve some intel we need.”

Buddy raised his finger from the button, and both waited silently for a reply, when none came, the tall hunter shrugged at his canine counterpart, and tried again, his metal digit clinking off the aluminum button, “is anybody home. We just need to talk, that’s all.”

A speaker somewhere inside the cylinder crackled to life. Through heavy static, a barely intelligible voice came through, “how do I know you’re not here to kill me and steal my research! Huh? How do I know you’re not that thing that killed the Cardinal and the priests. Show some proof!”

Buddy looked at Hound with a condescending smile, and produced the coin, holding it up to what he believed was the optic sensor within the niche. “From ours truly himself.”

Silence, then, “you could’ve stolen that as far as I know.”

Hound chuffed and looked up at the presently annoyed bounty hunter. Though unable to form facial features like humans, he still managed to look like he was grinning.

“Now, look here, sir,” Buddy began, “we’ve come here because the priest said you could help us with this whole situation. Now I don’t know just how I can prove that I am who I am if not with this here coin he so graciously gave me. So, I suggest you give me an alternative, or, whatever info you have, speak it over this unit.”

Again, silence.

“Sir.?”

“What’s the priests name? If you really know him, you can give me his name. All of them!” the voice said.

Now Buddy smiled in earnest, annoyance vanishing with the dawning of his metallic smile, shining incisors and all. “Well, good Sir., that I can do. The good ol’ Padre’s first name was: Industrial Cargo Extractor Beta Omega Beta 1216-U, Ice Bob for short, or as everyone called him, Bob Ice, or just Bob. His pilot was Julienne, who died, oh heavens, a little after the cataclysm, so about six hundred years ago, and like most mechs Bob was one of the mourners who never took in a human again,” he leaned on the cylinder, propped by one elbow, languidly holding down the button with his right primary index finger. “So there’s two or three, depending on how you count, but you probably want the last one, which is his the clerical name he took after his ordination, which is Robert Gelidi,” he finished, and waited.

A long pause, then, “you could’ve gotten that information anywhere.”

“Oh, come now Sir., I gave you exactly what you wanted! This is absurd. What more do you want?” Buddy snapped.

“One more question,” the Grower said.

“I really don’t got much choice, do I?” Buddy grumbled, tilting his brimmed hat to hide the eye rolling he performed for Hound.

“What gems are in Saint Julienne’s crown?”

Buddy guffawed, “that’s a trick question, dear Julienne has a crown of barbed wire.”

Silence.

“Don’t you dare say anyone could know that; the priest guards her image like a nomad its books or a Purist their organs and only keeps her unveiled with friends around. I know that much, damn it.”

Static, then, “I’m convinced, please step back for a moment.”

The cylinder began to vibrate, then shake, then rise from the sands. The two stood back, quite unimpressed at the sight before them; retracting, submerging, or disappearing entries were commonplace in the post-cataclysm days, and this one lacked finesse. Another cylinder shape, this one far wider, came up from the burning sands, rotating on some unseen gears, flashing lights were set around the circumference of the plateau atop which the smaller post sat. Half of the lights were busted and sparked in rhythm with the faded red ones still active and strobing. The fanfare of machine rumbling, whining dry joints, and the susurrus of the sands clawing off the rusted iron, made for a dismal show. Hound slapped down shutters to block the billowing sands from entering his eyes, and folded down his silicone ears, while Buddy held the rim of his hat down to cover his face.

Once the dust had settled, and the vestibule pod was above ground, the voice emanated from the speaker once more, “Come in, and leave your weapons in the compartment within the chamber.” With that the single watertight door, probably salvaged from an ancient seafaring vessel, unlocked with a dull clunk, and opened on slow hydraulics.

Buddy and hound entered, the former leaving his atomizer in a box affixed to the wall, before the door closed and then the previous spectacle happened again, but in reverse.

Once the vestibule pod had buried itself under the sands, the desert was once again quiet and without life, apart from a patch of sand that had gone unnoticed, moving with a will of its own. Blood hungry and eager. Waiting.

---

The sun was still high when the message had been sent. Always on the high frequency voice channel, capable of bouncing off the ionosphere to the far side of the planet if need be, always one sided. The message had been dense, and precise in its structure, leaving out all but the important parts, and it had taken Tom the branch manager several practice recitals and grumbled curses until it was satisfactory.

Now he sat in his enormous chair, the frame within the padding creaking under his massive, mechanized frame, smoking yet another of his dwindling supply of premium tobacco. He watched the street below, with the scant occupants of the no-name town wandering from domicile to domicile, avoiding the sun like a nerve-virus, his face dark and thoughts darker still.

Then the hidden radio-unit crackled to life, and Tom stretched a languid, heavy arm to depress the key that auto-fixed the equipment to listen to the band of the new sender. One single question came through the device, with a rasping, and deep voice. “Your orders?”

Tom switched from index to middle finger, holding down the tangent, and replied, “remain the same. Eliminate any obstacles and retrieve the information from the Grower. The Conclave remains in one mind.”

Tom removed his hand from the device, as static was his only answer. The chair creaked as he leaned back; smoke coiled up, the thick tendrils bursting apart on the drafts from the air conditioning, becoming a part of the ever-present veil of haze clinging to the ceiling. If his myriad plants had been real, they’d have been long dead by now.

Jaques covered his mouth, an age old reaction to not wanting to be heard. Perspiration, something almost alien to his near full machinic form, began to cover his pate with a glistening sheen. Slowly, he removed his right hand, which had been inches away from the doorknob, and had remained hovering there since the branch-manager had begun his dark message. The silence was loud, and heavy with the grim words and judgement the jolly man had spoken seconds ago.

His mind instantly went to his implant, and the pseudo-AI interface of the building. If the manager would ask him now what he had heard, Jaques had no opportunity to lie. He almost breathed a sigh of relief then and there that this branch didn’t have the more comprehensive systems in place the more dense population centers had; they could track memories.

Slowly, he took a step back, rolling from toe to heel with an effort that nearly made his leg shake. Then another, and another, before he was out of earshot, and by the stairs, hurrying down the iron steps, panting and quite scared.

He’d just come up to announce his early departure for home, due to the lack of clients, a common occurrence, nothing more. Now he was privy to some conspiracy he had no wish to be a part of. The Conclave… by the Moon.

His mind raced. He couldn’t leave, nor could he stay. The former had to be done in person, and he was in no state to look the man in the eyes, while the latter would draw suspicion after a while. Tom didn’t like to pay for ‘useless hours’ as he put it, and no doubt would question Jaques if he knew he was still here, without a single client no less. Any reason given would be detected as a lie as soon as it was spoken aloud.

Jaques steeled himself and smoothed the metal stud on the back of his skull, on the little patch of skin yet remaining. He pressed his nails under the edges where metal met flesh and gently pulled the inch-long implant from its wet socket.

It would take some time before the manager received the info that Jaques had disconnected himself from the system, but it was enough to flee, to hide. Quitting like this was preferable to having anything to do with the Conclave.

He went back to the office, and knocked on the door, entering when called.

“How can I help you, Jaques?” Tom asked, not turning from the window.

“No more clients, Sir. I’ve come to announce my departure, if it is alright with you.”

“Call me Tom, Jaques. And sure, if all the accounting is in order and processed, go rest. I’ll see you tomorrow,” the man said dismissively, waving his hand as though driving away a pest.

“Yes, Tom,” Jaques said, nodding a half bow, then left.

Downstairs, as he hurriedly gathered his things, Jaques saw himself from the reflection of one chromed filing cabinet. If the manager had turned, he wouldn’t have needed the pseudo-AI to tell him something was off. Jaques was paler than usual, and sweating profusely, almost feverish in his countenance. Even the shutter of his mechanical eye stuttered at times. Startled by his own image, he scurried out the door, toward the relative safety of his home.

He stopped again. No. He couldn’t go home.

---

The elevator came to hissing, clunky stop that juddered each joint in Buddy’s and Hound’s bodies. What was even longer than the glacial descent, was the reopening of the portal that had let them in. Buddy figured that the Grower had little to no proficiency with such outdated machinery. It would explain the degradation and less than optimal performance.

When the door finally did unlatch, the two were greeted by a disappointment in Buddy’s eyes. The rogue Grower, Jean, a fairly ordinary looking man in a historical sense, stood a few yards away, brandishing a buckshot launcher in hands that clearly seldom held weaponry. No bio-ornamentation, mutations, alterations, or quirks, no strange proportions or unnatural height. Just an average five foot four male with auburn hair cut short, an average jawline, strong nose and blue eyes. The only thing that marked him as a Grower was the green robe embroidered by the spiraling pattern of DNA sequences and geometrical shapes of molecular formulae.

“Step out, slowly. Hands up,” he said.

 Buddy rolled his eyes and did so. “Aren’t we past this?”

“No. I still want to know how you found me. Nobody has found me so far.”

Hound stepped out, keeping his head low, and ears back, “Excuse me, but I don’t have hands to raise,” he said politely, “and it was me. I tracked your scent by a scarf the teller gave us back in town.”

“Jaques?” the Grower asked, the gun lowering a fraction.

“We failed to ask his name at the time, but undoubtedly he’s the man,” Buddy said, slowly retrieving the scarf to show as proof.

Jean’s eyes flicked back and forth from hairless, two-tailed dog to scarf, until finally he voiced the growing curiosity evident in his eyes, “you’re not biological. You’re corpse-chassis, aren’t you?”

“As far as I know, yes,” Hound answered in all honesty.

“And sentient?”

“I believe so.”

“An AI implanted into a corpse-tech drone?”

“That I cannot confirm,” Hound sighed, “I’ve not met my creator.”

Jean lowered the gun fully, too focused on the problem at hand. “How can you not know if you’re AI or not? Each intelligence pre-cataclysm is self-aware and can recall the second their sentience protocols took effect.”

“I am equally at a loss,” Hound answered.

“Wait, you’re not AI?” Buddy asked, still keeping his arms up, palms facing the Grower.

“The evidence of my existence is contradictory. Either I’m a scrubbed AI, or something else. Only my creator might know,” Hound admitted. Clearly he had struggled with the question of his being before.

The three stood in silence for a span, before Buddy spoke up, his thoughts returning to the task at hand. “Let’s set the origin of my curious associate aside for now and focus on why we’re here.”

“Ah, yes, Father Robert,” Jean nodded, “he wishes to know where to find the Verdancy Pathogen.”

“Wait, hold on now,” Buddy raised his hands, this time to add emphasis to his interruption, “what would a priest, nay, the See itself, want with a disease?”

“Not a disease,” Jean smiled, “a cure.”

Both Buddy and Hound stared dumbfounded at the green robed man, waiting for some explanation. Jean saw the confusion, and chuckled. “Well, best not stand here, come on in, I’ll explain the situation far better over a cup of tea.”

The man turned his back on the two, and began down the corridor, the walls of which were laced with piping and cabling, lit by faded orange lights. The two followed, down the corridor, then down a set of what felt like infinite stairs, to a massive underground vault, hemispherical in shape, filled with containers of dark, musty smelling soil, also scattered on the floor, from which a plethora of greenery sprouted, or hung down, creeping everywhere, all reaching up and vying for space to bask in the brilliance of the central lighting source atop a tall central pillar almost touching the ceiling fifty meters overhead.

“Welcome to my laboratory,” Jean said, as the two entered.

Buddy was instantly taken back to his infancy, and the legends whispered about the fabled Growers. His fixation had always been on the horrible monsters, mutants and crafty clone spies they had fashioned during the war, like most children, and he had never truly thought about the fact that they were experts in all branches of biology; botany included. Having lived a life in dusty hab-cities riddled with crime and neon lights, or wandering through endless deserts and dried up lakes, where the only trees were fossilized husks of dead things, this vision of Eden served to make his air intake malfunction for a second.

Hound on the other hand, was assaulted by the myriad scents, all unique, all fully organic and full of life, emanating from the flora. Even the most bitter smells were enjoyable for their novelty alone. All the two-tailed beast, more synthetic than organic, had ever smelled was grease, fuel, static, blood and dust for as long as it could remember. Ever since that day he had woken up and found himself alone in a gutter under acid raid.

“Hot Machine God!” Buddy swore, removing his wide-brimmed hat, letting his cabling dangle down his shoulders, “is this all real? All of it?”

Jean smiled. “Of course it is. I grew it myself. Even these trees,” he said, slapping the brown trunks of a couple, their circumference wide to the point of being ancient.

“Don’t trees take an inordinate amount of time to grow to this height? How the Sam Hell am I supposed to believe you grew them all by your lonesome?” Buddy asked.

“Well,” Jean said as the two neared a dark lacquered table with matching seats, indicating the two to sit down, “I’ll answer with a question: how old are you?”

“Eighty-five young thank you very much,” Buddy replied, lowering himself on a cushioned chair that creaked under his weight.

“Twenty-seven and five days, since my consciousness dawned,” Hound replied.

“A man and a dog in their prime, well past regular age thanks to biomechanical or pure mechanical enhancements and treatments. Imagine just what us Growers can do with our knowledge,” Jean said, with a hint of condescension in his voice.

“That don’t answer how old you are, and how you managed to grow a damn forest in this bunker,” said Buddy, indicating the dense foliage around their small clearing with a wave of his hand.

“I’m only a hundred and five years young,” Jean smiled, lowering a pot atop a gas burner, dropping a handful of dried leaves into the liquid within, “and that oak, the biggest one here, was my birth gift. Though my favorite is the weeping willow by the stream in the northeastern sector.”

Buddy whistled through metal teeth. “By the Moon! You sure don’t look your age mister,” he said, though what he wanted to voice was a list of questions that could fill a library, eagerly trying to push their way past his thin lips.

Hound saved his bipedal counterpart from embarrassing himself, “Mister Jean, I don’t wish to be rude, but what is the Verdancy Pathogen? Why are you in danger, and if you could be specific, what kind of danger?”

Jean sighed. “I truly have gotten myself into trouble, haven’t I,” he said and poured some liquid into a pewter cup, offering to both dog and cyborg, both declined. “The thing is, up till about a year ago, the Verdancy Pathogen was a myth, an impossibility, even for us Growers—”

“There’s something you consider impossible?” Buddy cut in, then raised his hand in apology, indicating for the green robed man to continue.

Jean chuckled. “Though many of us look strange to you machine-folk, by the way, the feeling is reciprocal, we’re just as human as you. We do have holes, gaps, so to say, in our knowledge as all scattered sects of the race do. Tech, for instance, is the domain of waste and city dwellers, record keeping is of the See, moralizing that of the Purists, et cetera,” he said, sipping the tea, “and the Verdancy Pathogen was the very first collective project of what would come to be known as the Growers, those scientists that fled into underground tunnels to flee the falling atomics of the Cataclysm. But the project was forgotten.

“The species’ genome had been toyed and played with to the extent that the Firsts saw no other recourse than to divert focus for a time to fix what had been broken, and if that didn’t work, forge a new path for evolution. Genetically, both you and I,” he looked at Buddy, “are eons away from the humanity of a thousand years ago; flawed and tampered specimens. Even the revered Firsts of us couldn’t come up with a way to turn back the clock, so bad was the damage. So, they began to clone, to grow, to experiment, to make new bodies capable of at least a semblance of the things that were lost, like emotion, and soon, as generations passed and new issues came to the fore, the first, and most important project had been reduced to nothing but a fable by the passage of time.”

“I take it you found it, though?” Hound offered, perched gracefully atop one of the chairs.

“Not me,” Jean said, “but my progenitor, the late Louis Galenos. He was obsessed with it, and in a clandestine partnership with the See, he managed to discover the location of the refuge of the Firsts, before they migrated to the safer sanctuaries. There, he managed to find the data, secure it, and begin his work on it.”

“And he succeeded?” Buddy asked, as rapt and still as he had been as a child hearing similar stories.

“He did; and he was killed for it,” Jean said, hanging his head, “and I suspect I shall be as well.”

“But why?” asked Hound, “why is this Pathogen so important? Sentient cyber-biological life is all but immune to disease, what use is there for a bio-weapon, and why does the See want it?”

“As I said before, it is not a weapon, but a cure. It is a pathogen that would turn death into life,” Jean said, and finished his tea.

Silence. Artificial air currents rustled the canopies of the trees, and somewhere far off, the trickling of a stream mingled with the sounds of nature.

“What, in all that is under the Broken Moon, does that mean?” asked Buddy.

“Just that: the Pathogen feeds on radiation, and the resulting waste material becomes biologically active.”

“Elaborate, please,” said Hound.

“Take the sands of the numerous wastes, for example. They are, by far, the most irradiated places on this planet. Sand, glass, ash and nothing much more. If not for the tampering of the genome over a millennia ago, humans would fall dead in seconds and burst into piles of tumors if they ever actually managed to make it close enough, much less within. The Pathogen, in this area for example, would feed off the irradiated sands, and produce mulch and fertilizer on a scale that would make the wastes a tropical rainforest in two centuries.

“Make a little tweak, and it is airborne, and would travel across the globe, from cloud to cloud, turning acid rains into drizzles of purified water. Another tweak, and bit by bit, the pollutants of the remaining seas are eaten up, and new life would find its way back,” then Jean’s face grew dark, “another tweak, and it would find whatever synthetic substance it was programmed to recognize, as a choice delicacy…”

“So, it is a weapon,” Buddy said, raising an eyebrow, recrossing his long legs.

“No!” Jean snapped, “and it was never meant to be. It is the base on what us Growers were built on, the reason for our existence and work. But my kind has forgotten why it cultivates and stores and protects the flora and fauna of Earth; they have forgotten that it is not theirs to keep, but to share, once the time comes, so we might once again have a green world.”

“So that is why you are considered ‘rogue,’” Hound stated, his head tilting a fraction, “you wish to share, not to bargain and trade. You wish all had access to what you know.”

Jean nodded.

“And you happen to be the only one who knows where the Pathogen is,” Buddy added.

“And the only one who can decipher my progenitor’s notes. I’m his only descendant, so I alone hold the ability to do so.”

“And the ones that are after you? Who murdered the Cardinal and priests?” Buddy asked.

After a long pause, Jean whispered, “the Conclave…”

“Oh my,” Hound gasped.

“Fuck,” was all Buddy said, nothing more was needed.

Jean nodded, wringing his hands together until his knuckles were white, “you see my issue; why I had to be sure you were who you said you were,” he rubbed his eyes, they were red with unslept nights, “you see why I hide…”

“Damn… damn, damn, damn!” Buddy swore, getting up on his hemisphere feet, rubbing the scant skin on his face with his fourteen fingers.

“Do you know, exactly, what killed the clergy members?” Hound asked.

“Oh, what does it matter?” Buddy whined, “it’s the Conclave. The Conclave. If they want something they get it, be it by bribery, assassination, or terror tactics.”

“Knowing what’s hunting Mister Jean could make a world of difference.” Hound said, ears low, tails tucked tight by his hindlegs.

“I have your answer,” Buddy snapped, spinning back to face the dog, “a murder-machine. That’s what they employ; either cyborgs augmented to mech proportions, or just plain ol’ simple-program kill-bots. Hell, it might just be the size of my palm, a little spider with a neurotoxin that’ll have you convulsing in the time it takes to blink.”

“And I must confess,” Jean interrupted, “I have no knowledge of the nature of what stalks me, only that wherever I, or my progenitor went, a trail of corpses followed.”

“Amazing… just amazing…” Buddy sighed.

All three were silent, the gravity of the situation pressing down on them. If it were true, and the Conclave was involved, death wasn’t just a risk, but so high in probability that it was almost a given fact. The dead holy men could attest to that, if ever their memory-banks were recovered.

“I’m sorry,” Jean said, “if you’d like, you could stay here the rest of the day and night and enjoy the laboratory before taking me back to the priest.”

“Hold on. We were supposed to bring him the intel on the target, which you have,” Buddy said, reseating himself.

“Yes, he did. But, as I said, only I can decode Galenos’ notes, and the last time we met, before his death, he encoded the knowledge of the location and the route into my genetic structure. I am the map and the key,” Jean explained.

Buddy shook his head, “then why not just draw us a map and let us be on our way?”

“Because that way the information is transferred to though, which is at risk of being ripped. This way, I have to stay alive, and without me, the Pathogen is as good as lost again,” Jean said, getting up, “but now I have to go and get ready. Please, enjoy the lab,” he said, and left, disappearing into a thicket of green and orange brush.

Hound hopped off the chair soon after, “I’m going to see the stream and willow, what will you do?” he asked.

“For now, just searching for the right way to cuss out the Father Robert,” Buddy said, tilting his head back over the backrest, watching the grey ceiling far above.