Genetic Bomb by D. Bruce Berry & Andrew Offutt - Chapter 01

1975 Genre: Vintage Paperback / Science Fiction

THE JEWEL OF LIFE—AND DEATH!

An epidemic of insanity rages in the well-ordered, sexually liberated world of the future. Beautiful girls are going mad-writhing in pain and ecstasy as they live through hallucinations of a world-consuming conflagration and a final, orgasmic farewell to life.

One thing only links these girls. Each possesses a strange, luminous gem imported from another world. It is a weapon in a struggle for mastery over the forces motivating the Galactic Empire. And one man, Wesley Harmon, pits himself against the unknown adversary, crossing the Universe to learn the secret of the GENETIC BOMB!

Chapter 01

Shrieking madness lurched across the airless waste, crying out to the stars that burned coldly, disdainfully: "No!

Damn it no! I'm a MAN! It can't happen!"

The woman ran from her home, screaming with laughter, trailing a tangle of wild hair. Waving the dripping knife in her smeared fist, she screamed in pride that she had saved her children, saved them from the cataclysm—

—emerged from the smashed window, all laughing as they hurled bright jewels into the writhing, humid air.

The policer saw them, drew his enforcer ... and hurled it through that portion of the window that remained unbroken.

He plunged in even as it crashed and tinkled and more precious stones and jewels for milady's roasting melting arms sparkled in the air as he emerged laughing to join the vandals—

—Burning winds surrounded them and his hands felt hot on this last night of terror. She gave him her lips, urged them on him, and when his mouth and body took command of hers she trembled more than the quaking land. Then they were sinking down, pressed tightly together:

Hurry! Hurry! On this final night of blazing madness we have only one last ch—

"No! You can't DO IT!"

Sweating shrieking horror stumbled over cold desolation.

"I can get out of this. I know I can make it … millions, millions, do you hear me, millions! But not THIS —not the end!"

Hurry, hurry! We have so little time and the doomstar is rising! Look, it's like a ball of blood on the— The ground heaved beneath her. Stones pressed into her back in welcome pain/pleasure. Her lover whispered endearments into her ear with more urgency than ever before—

—came rushing down the street to plow into the great structure of steel and cement and plastic, spilling its dwellers out heaving windows as it buckled, flames gouting—

No, she screamed, shrieking to hear herself above the thundering, sundering world. And he was pressing in, in, wiping out the horror of final damnation. The end the end the end end end ... They writhed, sweating, so great and good, spreading warmth into her in a mounting flame.

Hotter than the burning sky and the tottering, flaming world and its boiling seas. Thrust! No more tomorrows!

The world is burning, BURNING, BU-R-N-I-N-G—

Shrieking madness staggered across knife-sharp rocks.

"I'm a man! I'm a MAN!" Insane laughter bubbled from the shattered, boiling brain. Nightmare-propelled, it raced across the cold, dead stone without knowledge of the thing that was crawling inexorably up from the depths of its psyche.

"Looming above the horizon like some bloated obscenity, that rising star of death and madness. Clouds racing across the sky like terror on wings before the final storm of all eternity. The oceans rising to meet it, the flames of a tormented world erupting into the red burning air. Love, love, LOVE! Take me, while the ground thunders beneath our feet and heralds the final darkness without end end end end "He tears the cloak from me, springs the catches of my jerkin, and I am bared to the hot winds. The passion in me leaps forth to him as, frantically, I strive to drown the sounds of horror with his mouth. This is all we have left! I want it so much, this last taste of the nectar of life! He presses against me, his hard body with the superb muscles, succor against the horror. I want it all, him, all all this wonder that I can hold within me.

"It will be the last, the last!

"Savagely, he grips me, crushes me tight to him. Hot ashes of burning cities sting our bodies as we sink to the crumbling, ripping pavement. A man rushes past with a dripping ax. A girl follows him, screaming and wailing, begging . . . for his ax in her brain, not his body in hers.

Another scream, and I turn my bead to see another writhing as I am, in this last and supreme human rite:

"The creation of life, a mocking taunt to the cataclysmic destruction of all life.

"Sweating groaning writhing death horror redness black end "I urge him on with cries of desperation: Hurry! Hurry!

We have so little time left! The ground quakes beneath us, as fearful as we.

"He is mine! We are man and woman, we refuse death, we defy it and the redness in the sky. Wonderfully hard and deep, with a power I never dreamed he possessed.

A heat grows in me, hotter than the burning world around us, hotter than the sky raining ashes and sparks. Panting, sweating, I tell him with desperate urgency all the things I have never told him, all the things I have whispered a hundred, a thousand times before.

"We are HUMAN! Our brains, our sensuality are a mighty power that mocks the agony of the land with a force that only the universe can know. We must live, live on—I scream for the magic moment and the world screams around us. My voice is lost in hurricanes of windblown fire: Now, now, NOW, hurry, while we can still know it, while we can still FEEL! A thundering, hot river, and we have come together in a magnificent farewell to the stars. The beautiful stars, a skyful of pearls that has vanished, blotted out by the flaming sky that we used to watch, smiling, on cool and quiet nights when there was no urgency, only—

"I scream in ecstasy and pain. Pain! PAIN! The world is afire! The world burns! Death and horror, death and transfiguration!

"The world is burning, the world is burning, B-U-R-N-I-N-G!

The little gun made a thumpswish noise, jetting a sedative into the girl's arm. Her contorted face stared, mouth writhing, and relaxed. She sagged. She was wet, glistening with perspiration.

The doctor rose shakily to his feet, wiping the sweat from his own forehead. He sucked in a great breath, held it for a moment, and let it out slowly. Then he turned to look at the other man.

"Well, you've heard it. It was very real to her. Now you have an idea what we're up against." Seating himself behind his desk, he opened the reelwood box, took out a 'Puleo Gold and lit it as if it were his first. But the careful, deep-sucking way he inhaled told the other man that it was not. The doctor held the smoke for a long time before releasing it as carefully and slowly as he had his breath, a minute before. He looked up again.

"You have a small idea, I should have said, of what we're up against, Harmon."

Wesley Harmon nodded, taking a Java from his pack. He ignited the tip and joined the physician in a relaxing smoke. He smoked carelessly, like a man who need not worry about the price of the best emjay available. He stared thoughtfully at the unconscious girl, her babbling ended by the injection.

"I've never beard anything like that from her before.

Never." He shook his head. "It sounded almost like a—a recording. Just not Nancee."

The doctor shrugged. His face was beginning to sag back into its normal bound-dog lines. "People's voices often change, in a state of shock." He nodded at the girl.

"But they don't always behave like that, believe me. You might call this a classic reaction, if we can apply that phrase to something so new."

"You see it as a disease, Doctor Cawdil? You expect more of this ... delusion?"

"Well, they describe the same thing," Cawdil said, frowning. His eyebrows were heavy and thick, ambushing pale eyes. "Some aspect of the same thing, anyhow: world destruction. And the erotic effect, nearly every time. It seems to be what they want to be doing as they ... go out. Perhaps if the end of the world ever arrives, that's what we'll all be doing. One last ecstat."

Harmon looked sidewise at him. "Couldn't it be suppressed desires?"

"You don't seem to be the sort of man who would leave his girls repressed," the doctor said, lifting an eyebrow, and Wes returned his smile. "Besides, it isn't easy for anyone to have repressions in this world of ours, Harmon. The Freewill laws give us every right. We—either sex—can indulge in any libidinous fantasy to our heart's content."

He nodded at the girl. "So can she. And the real thing is constantly available to us. Certainly you know that."

Leaving his cigaret, he rose and bent over the girl to unfasten her necklace. He flourished it, swinging the pendant so that it glittered and seemed to leave a fiery wake in the air.

"I would have taken this off her first thing, but you wanted to see the whole effect."

"What makes you so certain that's what's causing it?"

Harmon reached for the necklace.

Doctor Cawdil drew the piece of jewelry back, out of the other man's reach. "Better not touch it." He smiled, or rather his mouth did. "Please don't think I'm giving credence to ... sorcery. It just happens, Harmon, that every woman afflicted with these symptoms has had one of these in her possession."

He swung the gem again, as though it were a psychic pendant, staring at it. "A Star Pearl." He sighed, then looked up from the precious bauble.

"Your last girl had one, but you didn't get there in time to see it. It's in the Guild vaults with the others—quite a few of them. They're still running laboratory tests on the things. A private lab, of course. The government is as usual sitting back picking its collective nose. They've appointed a Study Commission, and they've added the Star Pearl to the list of illegal imports."

Harmon nodded. "But they won't do anything else unless there's an interplanetary complaint, yeah. What are the chances of that?"

Doctor Cawdil returned to his desk, retrieved the 'Puleo Gold butt, and sucked one last time. Then he dropped it through the center of the ashtray into the little well below.

He shook his head.

"Minimal. Practically nil. Evidently the things are showing up only here on Earth, not on the other two planets. And so far, distribution per population percentage doesn't 'warrant any great alarm,' as the official handout put it. Too, the fact that the pearls aren't killing anyone puts them in the category of an irritating narcotic, total effect and means unknown." He sighed. "We haven't proved even that, empirically."

"Cause-effect."

"Yes, but we haven't proved that. Is there a ... a 'Star Pearl Syndrome'?" Again he swung the necklace gently, manipulating the sparkling stone. "It—looks almost alive, doesn't it?"

Wes puffed his cigaret for the last time, squinting through the pallid smoke at the gem. He shrugged. "Any stone does, with the light on it."

"You'll change your mind in a minute," Cawdil said, dropping the necklace into his pocket with a tight chuckle. He repacked his little medicase and snapped it shut before turning to the nurse, ignored and immobile across the room, staring at the girl who had seen doomsday.

"If she shows any signs of arousing, give her another two cc's of Psychotran. A psychiatrist will be here in the morning, to prepare her for recon." He narrowed his eyes.

"You all right, Rick?"

The nurse nodded. "I'm all right. Just wondering what she saw—and worrying a little. Do you have to carry that thing around in your pocket?'

"Not for long, you can be sure of that! Good night, Rick."

"Good night, Doctor," the nurse said, and nodded at Wes.

Doctor Cawdil led the way out into the darkened hall.

He was drawing the necklace from his pocket as the door slurped shut behind them.

"Look now, Harmon, in the dark."

Wes looked. The jewel was glowing, with a faint light that seemed to pulse, like a heartbeat. A finger sheathed in ice drew a line up his spine.

As ...

as he ...

almost grasped the ...

the meaning of the gem? But he quickly readjusted his psychological pattern and laughed nervously. "First time I've ever seen a phosphorescent trick like that. No wonder they're popular.

Neat trick."

"Isn't it, though." The physician thrust the necklace back into his pocket. "The ladies love it, even if it does drive them fobby." He shook his head, then shrugged.

"Maybe it's the pulsations that do it, but we can't prove it.

Self-hypnosis, maybe." He waved a hand at the wall, and light glowed in the hallway.

"I'd like to know more about these things," Wes said.

"Ha! So would the rest of us! But we don't even know where they come from. Well—let's go down and tell Bigcred our story."

Doctor Cawdil turned and walked down the hall. Following, Wes reached up a hand to—tucked the covers around the sleeping j-girl and picked a piece of lint from his nurse's uniform and brushed the cloth smooth, admiring the girl's bosom and crept cautiously through the shadows of the shrubbery toward the mansion, thumbing off the safety of his needler

—shift the weight of the old-fashioned pistol in the holster under his jac. He followed the doctor, frowning, watching his bustling physician's stride, his white klamys flapping about his legs. Wesley Harmon's reputation depended on his ability to guarantee employment and safety for the girls he represented. Ordinarily, that was no problem. Gifts the girls received from their clients were usually quite harmless, nearly always personally decorative, and often expensive. But this was a different matter, a different gift, and a problem, a different sort of problem for a man whose emphatically good living derived from emphatically attractive young women.

Nancee was one of his finest practitioners, undisputed mistress of the more refined sensual arts. It was one hell of a shock for her to have experienced. He knew that; she was the second of his girls to go through it. The situation was becoming more than alarming. He was concerned, and he knew humping well he was justifiably concerned.

Was someone plotting to destroy his business, or to drive him out of his mind?

Doctor Cawdil led the way down the wide descalator to the first floor and walked beside Wes across the richly furnished foyer. The paneled door looked too fine for reelwood. Wes checked; it was. He noted with more than casual interest that it was genuine oak and not a plastic substitute. Oak door and Star Pearls to j-girls! A client worth having—if the man just had a little sense.

The door swung in when the doctor rapped discreetly.

More ostentation: a human butler glanced at them with monumental disinterest, then opened the door wider for their entry. She stepped back out of the way, though, when Wes showed no sign of angling.

Across the carpeted floor two men sat at an ornate desk-wood again, the real thing. Bigcred indeed! They were bent, serious-faced, over a disarray of papers and visispools.

The mustached man looked up and ran a hand through his hair; thick locks streaked with gray flopped loosely through his fingers, just as if they were the real item. His hand left it to shift to the more serious business of toying with the tip of his mustache, curling it. He rose.

"Come in, citizens."

They did, Wes watching the butler's departure through another door with appreciation. Her black coverall looked as though it had been sprayed on in the dark; the spray had barely misted her in a few places.

Taking a seat in a leather-upholstered chair, Wes reached for another cigaret. The fact that one of the men was puffing on a troque, but that there was neither smoke nor smell in the room told Harmon of a fine filtration/conditioning system in operation. They would not recognize his illegal cigarets for what they were: real tobacco. He crossed his legs, gazing at the two men, tapping the cigaret on his nail. When he spoke, it was both quietly and coolly.

"She will survive, Fallman. Now I must seriously object—"

The other man interrupted him with a nod and a quick jerk of his hand. "I know, Harmon. My Jawyer has been bawling shit out of me for it." He indicated his companion with a nod. "Blayr," he said, and Blayr nodded in silent greeting as Fallman leaned back in his chair. He spoke directly to Wes.

"I'm terribly upset about this myself, believe me.

Nancee is a topnotch jay. She's always given me the greatest satisfaction. I'm more than fond of her. That's why I gave her the present, for godsake; I felt she deserved the finest money could buy. The most expensive gem was a Star Pearl."

"You know it's illegal to import those things," Doctor Cawdil said, sitting in a chair identical to Harmon's, a couple of feet away. The room was flagrantly spacious.

So were the chairs.

"Of course, of course," Fallman said impatiently. "But it is not illegal to own one. I must admit I don't know how it reached Earth. I don't bother with such matters.

When I want something, I simply say so." He waved a hand. "Whatever it is, I can afford it."

"Good," Wes said, talking through expelled smoke.

"Because that girl is going to receive the finest reconditioning your money can buy. I suppose you've made arrangements for a settlement." It was only partly a question.

Fallman shoved a paper across the desk. "Yes."

When Wes made no move, Blayr said, "This authorizes you to bill my client for any expenses incurred in the girl's recovery and rehabilitation. Of course, that also includes compensation for your losses and the expenses you suffer from loss of her services."

"That," Wes said, "will be considerable. A girl of Nancee's specialized talents is an absolute necessity to a well-run procurement service. She was solidly booked for the next two months."

Fallman looked down. Without hurrying, Wes rose and picked up the document. It was already plastisealed, he noted, with Fallman's signature and stamped number and credfac. Confident, he thought, but as his eyes ran down the page he saw why: the agreement was just as the attorney had said. He could actually profit, if he wished. Good! He would, and he'd surprise Nancee with the windfall.

He folded the document and slipped it into a pocket. Plucking at the little ornament on the left lapel of his jac, he drew it up on its slender wire to his mouth. "Reminder: sign and seal agreement with Fallman and return him a fac." He released the microphone, which was reeled back to his lapel.

"Now, about the Star Pearls," he said, sitting down. "This is the second of my girls to receive one, and to have been ... mentally affected. Jewelry's a magnet for any woman, and certainly I can't prevent mine from accepting jewels as gifts. That would be a violation of Freewill, for starts. But ... we've got to take some steps to locate the source of these things."

Fallman raised an eyebrow. "We?"

"Well," Wes smiled, "I'm sure this little agreement is intended solely as compensation. Not as a persuader to me not to mention that my girl was given an illegally imported item, surely. Since I'm sure you've learned enough from this experience not to order another one, I'll say I don't intend to file a report. And Nancee won't, either, I'll vouch for that." He leaned back in the big chair. "On the other hand, it puts me in a fine position to ask a man who can—as you said—afford anything, to help us track down these things. It might be expensive. They've cost me cred already. And, if we need more than a vutting good selfish reason: they're a menace to Earth."

"Are you intimating blackmail, Harmon?"

Wes glanced at the attorney, only that. "I didn't hear you."

"Relax," Fallman muttered in Blayr's direction. He pulled at his mustache ... "What can we do to locate the source, Harmon? With all due respect to your profession, the embodiment of Freewill, you are after all not a member of GunTek or anything similar."

Wes examined the tip of his cigaret and managed, without effort, a smug smile.

"You're thinking of the ancient practitioners of my profession, Fallman. We're a solidly organized guild, and we're perfectly capable of making things extremely unpleasant for ... for instance," he said, looking up into the man's eyes, "those who don't conform to the laws and our rules of operation. Frankly, we're prepared to ...

eliminate those responsible for distribution of these damned outer space rocks." He smiled again, switching his gaze to Blayr. "It's a simple matter of being practical."

"I'm aware of both the legal powers and the ... ah … potency of your guild, Harmon," the attorney said without the shade of a smile. "But—wouldn't it be better to leave it to the police?"

Wes shook his head in unequivocal disagreement. "You know better than that. The police are tied to and by Freewill. The girls accepted the gems of their own free wills, and that absolves the distributor of any legal responsibility—"

"—including my client—"

"—including your client, so that he's responsible only for aiding and abetting smugglers." Wes paused to be certain that one sank home. "All they could be tried for is violation of import laws. A little thought will show you most of the legal tangles involved." He recrossed his legs.

"But I didn't get that urgent call to come here for a legal seminar, which I'm sure neither of us needs." He returned his attention to the rich man. "Where'd you get your Star Pearl, Fallman?"

Fallman glanced at the doctor. "Do you have it?"

"Yes. And I'm keeping it. Long enough to turn it over to the Guild Directorate, that is. Not all your cred could buy it back."

Fallman snorted. "I wouldn't take it back at gunpoint! All right. The entire transaction took place anonymously, and through a man acting as agent for me. I simply dropped the word into the jewelry market that I was willing to buy one." He tapped the communicator on his desk. "I received a call very quickly. View-blanked and voice-rigged; professionals! We reached an agreement. The Pearl was delivered to my agent, who handed over the cred—in cash. I then had the stone mounted, and by a very reputable firm." He shrugged. "It's standard practice, all of it. There's no other way of getting them."

Wesley sighed. "Yeah. Understandable, considering the legal blocks. No sense checking back with your agent or trying to I.D. the call. Everything will be covered up."

He stood. "A guild rep will arrive in the morning to have Nancee transferred to a private hospital with full medical facilities." He moved to the desk and bent forward to grasp Fallman's hand. The other man rose quickly.

"Don't let this fob you overmuch," Wes said. He had the agreement in his pocket; the man was a wealthy client. "You won't be blacklisted for this, and I'll see that no one knows about the Pearl. The funds I'm going to steal out of our agreement will make Nancee happy."

Fallman started to frown, then smiled. He squeezed Harmon's hand. "I understand. You're an indecorously direct man, Harmon, and I'm delighted. Thank you—very much. And believe me, I'm terribly upset about Nancee, and that you were inconvenienced."

Wes gazed at him a moment, then turned to the doctor.

"Are you going back to town?"

"Not right away, thanks. I think I'll stay an hour or so to be sure the girl is all right."

"Right. Good night." Wes paused at the door. "I'm really in love with this door, Fallman," he said, grinning, and he stepped through and closed it behind him.

In the front hallway, he paused to survey his features in the huge holomirror. With one finger he scratched the tip of his nose—

waiting impatiently outside the mansion in the deep shadows cast by the shrubbery, gun ready in a hand that was sweaty in its glove

—narrowing his eyes at his reflection. Harmon got rid of his cigaret in the sucker on the little hall table—not wood—and turned to examine the front door. He glanced up at the light, cocked his head, and shrugged. Why bother to turn it off? With a tight, grim smile he reached for the latch. His big hand swung the door open with ease, and he stepped quickly outside, every one of his senses as alert as any of the few wild animals left on Earth.

The man outside began shooting at once.

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