by Zen, Raeden
He quickened his pace over the soft, thick Jurinarian carpeting, through the hallway, and into the great room. It featured polished granite walls on one side, overhung with mirrors, and Granville panels on the other. The neural signals and images spread by the Granville syntech made Hans feel as if he walked through a sunny vineyard, swirling with the redolence of greenery and grapes. It reminded him of Arty’s farm in Vivo Territory.
Now he entered a narrow, dim corridor, turned left, then right, then pushed through heavy curtains, making his way down a spiraled limestone staircase to the cellar. To the uninformed, the room looked like it stored fish oils and wine. Hans moved closer to the bottles. He put his supply pack on the ground and closed his eyes. Using the ZPF, he pushed his consciousness outward, through the wall and into the secret room. His little brother dwelled there. He’d activated his recaller, but Hans calibrated it and could penetrate the sophisticated signals that deceived Marstone and skilled telepaths alike.
He entered Connor’s mind …
The boy sat upon the edge of his bed, holding a Granville sphere. It was of the artistic variety, rather than industrial or decorative. The size of a walnut, it glistened like a gemstone. Connor held it in his open palm. Photogenic synisms within it transmitted signals into the visual cortex in his brain, letting him see his mother in holographic form. Hans had paid a Marshlandic holographer in Piscator City the equivalent of a trimester’s pay to have the sphere made. He gave it to Connor after Murray taught him how to access the ZPF about a year ago. Connor activated it often, though he would never admit so.
In the hologram, Solstice wore a white gown and a hooded sapphire cape lined with garnet gems. She was a descendant of the Rupel family, whose lineage, like the Selendias and Masimovians, stretched back to Livelle Laboratory, centuries ago. Her features were soft, her hair was long and curled around her ears and down her arms, her nose was round, and her lips curved into a smile. She looked like a goddess in white and blue with blue eyes.
Hans felt a shift in Connor’s consciousness. He wondered if his brother learned to sense a transhuman presence in his mind, but that wasn’t it. The hologram … changed. Their mother gagged. A diamond sword, swung by a Janzer, speared her back, poking through her chest. Blood streamed down the sides of the sword and from her mouth, down her chin and neck, over her chest, spilling over the white dress, dripping in front of her. She looked at her bloody hands and cried out. “Save yourself, Connor!” The more Connor reached for her, the farther away she seemed. “Save yourself!” she insisted. Then the sword was pulled from her body. Swiftly and violently, the Janzer swung it across Solstice’s shoulders. Her blood pulsed from the severed artery. Her head thudded to the ground near Connor’s feet. He looked down at her face, then at her flailing body as it collapsed. This wasn’t part of the artwork, and Connor was only a baby when Solstice had saved him. But Hans had seen this imagery before, in Connor’s nightmares and sometimes even in his own.
Tears streamed down Connor’s cheeks. He screamed. Hans felt his brother’s terror as if it were his own. His eyes burned, and his heart thundered in his chest. Connor threw the sphere at the green bioluminescent wall where a fine stream cascaded, cooling the normally hot stone. Slick with water, the sphere bounced off and rolled between his legs, beneath the bed, along the carpet. Connor breathed hard. I hate this place, and I hate the Janzers, he thought, and I hate the peak season, and I hate Lady Isabelle, and I hate the chancellor’s precepts—
Hans cut his connection to his brother. He wiped the corners of his eyes with his thumb and forefinger and twisted three of the wine bottles, pushed his foot down on a stone, and sent a coded message into the ZPF. The combination activated the entrance, and it slid open, sounding like a rock grinder. Hans entered, slowly. His little brother had the pride of a Selendia. Hans would not puncture it now, with so much at stake. He noticed the artistic sphere on the ground. He picked it up.
“Looks like you dropped something.” Hans held out the sphere.
Connor nodded mournfully, took it, and slipped it into the side pocket on his fisherman’s bodysuit, worn at his joints from heavy use. “Where’s Murray?” he asked. Their developer always traveled with them to the Block on mornings during the peak season.
“Murray isn’t coming with us today,” Hans said.
“Is Zorian coming?” Connor’s face looked sweaty, and his bodysuit’s collar looked wet.
Hans felt perspiration forming on his own chest and back, for although Arturo built a coolant waterfall into Connor’s secret room, it didn’t benefit from the work of the commonwealth’s professional terraforming engineers. “No, Zorian’s not coming.” Hans dropped to one knee.
Connor frowned. “Where are they?”
Hans reached his hand out. Connor grabbed it and held it. “Little brother, I promised you I would protect you from the commonwealth’s agents—”
“Have I done something wrong?” Connor dropped his brother’s hand, and said quickly, before Hans could answer, “I swear, I’ve traveled only in Piscator!”
Hans smiled. As a child and early in his adolescence, Connor was never permitted to leave their foster father’s unit, lest he be noticed by Janzers, Piscatorians out for the bounty on the unregistered, or Marstone. Like so many of the unregistered raised beyond Hydra Hollow or Blackeye Cavern, Connor was forced to wait until he could at least pass for an adult transhuman prior to moving about Beimeni. That day had arrived about a year ago, and Murray inserted a mesh and a neurochip in Connor’s brain with the aid of a black-market medical bot, imparting the basic telepathic abilities necessary for travel and to operate as a fisherman on the Block. Since then, Connor had been living on the Piscatorian transports when he wasn’t working. Hans didn’t doubt his brother might’ve ventured out beyond Piscator. He understood Connor’s desire to explore, to be free, was only natural. In a sense, it was what they all fought for.
“You’ve done nothing wrong,” Hans assured him. He stood. “All will be clear soon.” He handed Connor a canteen. “Drink this, all of it, don’t leave one drop inside.”
“What is it?” Connor wanted to know. He waved the canteen’s lip near his nose, sniffing, then took a sip and gagged. “Gross. It tastes like a jellyfish dipped in submarine oil!”
“Breathe in through your mouth, then down it. Trust me, it’s not so bad afterward.”
“What’ll it do to me?” Connor sounded more intrigued than scared.
“You’ll feel tingly, then hot, then cold, then a little numb. Then you’ll become strong.”
Connor eyed the canteen, then his brother. “Strong as you and Zorian and Father and Moth—”
“Yes, yes. Just like all of us … and Mother.”
The crinkles in Connor’s brow disappeared. He tilted the canteen back and drank deeply. Hans watched him, making sure he left none of the liquid untouched. Connor licked his lips. “Hmm, an aftertaste like cinnamon, Father’s favorite.”
“Mine too.” Hans took the canteen and ruffled his brother’s scraggy hair. He walked out of the secret room into the cellar. He picked up his supply pack and hung it over his right shoulder. “Come, we must be swift,” he said, and when Connor hesitated, “don’t be afraid.”
When they neared the apartment unit’s entrance, Connor grabbed Hans’s arm. “Suffering is questioning,” he said. “Questioning is destructive. Destruction is never inevitable.” The Second Precept, designed to encourage economic output. “If we don’t go to the Block today, brother, won’t we be sent to the Lower Level?”
Hans couldn’t hide everything from Connor. His brother understood they weren’t going to the Block, and if they missed a shift during the peak, they’d risk censure. Murray had taught the Selendia boys that to live unregistered was to live as the registered, which meant participating in the citizenry’s ways and avoiding Warnings—official communiqués from the Office of the Chancellor that often led to demotions, or in the worst cases, exile to the Lower Level—at any cost to soul or
self. “We’re never going to the Lower Level.”
“Where are we going?”
Hans tapped the doorway in a coded pattern, and the stone disappeared. Granville light burst over them. “We’re leaving the South,” he said, “that’s all you need know.”
Connor started. Hans watched his expression as excitement and fear battled within him. It didn’t take a telepath to know which would win. Connor was a Selendia and a Rupel, born with the family’s adventurous genes, which had made his nearly fifteen years of confinement almost unbearable. He turned away from the light toward the bioluminescent waterfalls in the back of the unit that kept it cool. “Can’t I at least say goodbye to Arty?”
“You’ll see him again,” Hans said. “Not today, but you will.”
Connor nodded, sad but resolute. He grabbed his cape and wrapped it over his shoulders, then slung his supply pack over his side. Hans wanted to tell him everything, that their foster father was on his way to Blackeye Cavern, that their biological father liberated millions of Beimenians from the commonwealth’s system, that Murray was fine-tuning the plan to raid Farino Prison, that they’d been fighting a guerilla war with the Masimovian Administration for decades—and that success or failure in that war now lay upon his shoulders.
Instead, Hans put his hand on Connor’s back and led him out. He couldn’t tell his brother about the BP, or what had happened to Father, or any of the things they’d kept from him all these years. Not just yet. He would explain more once they reached Natura. Until then, Connor was still vulnerable to interrogation, should they be captured. And besides, they had only a few hours before the fever would set in. It would be difficult, but Connor would make it in his new safe house, Hans felt sure.
Connor smiled up at him, and Hans ruffled his hair. They took the elevator up to the main floor and approached the intracity transport stop. One slowed to a standstill in front of them, and they entered and latched in, bound for Piscator Shore. Very soon now, Connor would find out who he really was. So would Hans.
ZPF Impulse Wave: Johann Selendia
Piscator Shore
Piscator, Underground South
2,500 meters deep
The Selendias rushed along Shore Station’s cobblestones, through the crowd of Piscatorians, men and women of the South with porcelain skin, animated tattoos, and serious expressions. Most all were on their way to the Shore, an underground beach ahead of a man-made lagoon, lined with smoke shops, craft stores, eateries, pubs, and entertainment centers. The fishermen’s Block, an arced cement slab near the submarine docks, lay farther underground, below the lagoon; the docks were built into the earth and connected the commonwealth to the Gulf of Yeuron. A hologram displayed the action there beneath one of the station’s alloy arches; it depicted fishermen already hauling in the morning’s catch, filleting and preparing the meat for the markets throughout the commonwealth. Beneath other arches, holograms formed into depictions of the Shore, Piscator Reef, the Gulf of Yeuron, the Homeria Sea, and various species of sharks and fish, along with market prices as determined by the traders in Navita Territory, “the place of markets.”
Hans extended his consciousness, searching for Janzers. Though they were transhuman, their unique DNA gave off a different signature in the ZPF. He counted no more than four divisions. He could deal with twenty-four Janzers among hundreds of thousands of Piscatorians. Many of them were posted near the promenade that led to the Shore, or near the station’s borders, which were covered with Granville panels. The Granville syntech made it seem as if the station sat below the sea, near a hard coral reef, with algae and sea grass, jellyfish, crustaceans, sea turtles, snakes, stars, limestone skeletons, and remnants from elk horn and brain coral. Closer to Hans and Connor, polychromatic holographic advertisements scattered around the compressed diamond support pillars, while on several billboards, bioluminescent synisms formed the bust of Chancellor Masimovian above the Second Precept. SUFFERING IS QUESTIONING. QUESTIONING IS DESTRUCTIVE. DESTRUCTION IS NEVER INEVITABLE.
Destruction is inevitable, Hans thought, the destruction of Masimovian’s system. But first, I must see Connor to the Naturan safe house. He didn’t tell his allies there that he’d induce the fever in Connor. He’d deal with that when he arrived. He led his brother to the interterritory tracks where the throng thinned, for no Piscatorian would dare leave the territory during the peak season. Few Janzers patrolled those tracks.
Stay close to me now, Connor, Hans sent. Connor could receive but not send telepathic messages. He’d not yet learned how to avoid Marstone’s reach in that manner—a recaller only did so much to elude the commonwealth’s surveillance. Hans pushed his consciousness out into the ZPF. He influenced the visual cortexes of the crowd and the Janzers such that they could no longer see him or Connor. Neither the Piscatorians nor the Janzers can see us, he sent to his brother. Avoid them.
They’d practiced this contingency. Father would take no chances with Connor, not after what had happened to Solstice. It was one of the reasons Hans became so skilled at creating illusions. When executing this particular feat with the ZPF, the last thing Hans would need was for his brother to crash into an unsuspecting Piscatorian, drawing attention to their departure.
To Hans’s relief, Connor moved in stride with him, and they soon arrived at an interterritory track where four unoccupied transports lay in wait. Hans glanced back. The Piscatorians moved swiftly, focused on achieving the day’s production and sales targets. He’d miss many of them, especially Icarian, the Block operator. He touched his finger to the side of one of the transports, determined to see his brother to safety in Natura and rescue his father from captivity.
WELCOME FARKAI appeared on the readout. The solid barrier disappeared for Hans’s entry. It sealed. Connor did the same, and WELCOME ALLESANDRO appeared. Inside, Hans stood near a screen that showed the tunnels, the interterritory portion labeled in blue, the intraterritory portion labeled in red. He placed his pack in front of a seat across from Connor, who’d set his pack on the adjacent seat.
Connor pulled the overhead latch down over his shoulders. “What now?”
“Tell Marstone we’re going to Calabria Station in Yeuron City,” Hans said.
Connor nodded. He inserted his forged commonwealth card and entered his forged commonwealth security number on a digital display. Murray had explained to Connor the transport’s system of checks and balances—the fingerprint, the key cards, the security numbers and test of telepathy—all meant to prevent the unregistered, undeveloped, or underdeveloped from traveling. Murray also taught the boy that all legitimate interterritory travel led to the Phanes Beltway, which looped around Beimeni City.
Hans latched into his seat.
What’s your destination?
Marstone regulated and moderated telepathic mind-to-mind and machine-to-mind communications in the ZPF, anywhere in the solar system. Its voice sounded brash and unassailable.
Calabria Station, Yeuron City, Hans sent.
He waited for Connor to indicate the same destination, then flicked a switch on his scrambler, which transmitted counterfeit signals to the transport and the Department of Transportation in Beimeni City.
Connor fidgeted in his seat.
“Relax,” Hans said.
Marstone didn’t inquire about the purpose of the trip, its standard protocol altered by the scrambler, and the overhead lighting dimmed. An outdoor scene engulfed them, and the transport’s walls instead looked like windows, revealing rolling dunes, waves over an ocean, the smell of sea salt in the air—a perfect Granville illusion.
Hans unlatched and held the seats for balance. At the main digital display, he attached a wire to a card and to the scrambler. He inserted the card into an access dock on the transport’s control panel. On a digital display, boxes numbered 1 to 100, and lettered with the word GO replaced the maps. Hans sent his algorithm.
UNIVERSAL ACCESS GRANTED
“Johann, where’re we going?” Connor said.
Han
s didn’t answer. He pushed more numbers, hit the GO button, then more numbers, GO, and one more time—until the transport shifted to a service tunnel, which would avoid the Phanes Beltway. Hans eased into his seat. The transport increased to its top speed, nearly fifteen hundred kilometers per hour—the highest speed a transhuman could handle without wearing a synsuit—but purred in the maglev tunnel.
Hans closed his eyes and imagined Farino Prison and what it would take for him and Murray to succeed in the operation: a combination of stealth, skilled telepathy, and luck.
Spas of Tranquility
Natura, Underground West
The transport slowed into Gzhela Station. The ocean disappeared, and the transport walls turned white.
“How do you feel?” Hans said.
“A little dizzy,” Connor admitted. “That transport moved a lot faster than the intraterritory ones.”
Hans suspected this wasn’t the only reason for his brother’s vertigo. He didn’t want to scare Connor. It seemed the fever might hit him sooner than Hans anticipated. Assuring himself he’d made the right decision, he dug into his pack and threw cashmere slippers, a sleeveless tunic, and a fur cape at Connor, who looked a bit pale.
The cape slipped out of Connor’s grasp as if it were a fish. “It’s so soft.” He picked it up.
“Wear it, the tunic, and the slippers,” Hans said.
He pulled more luxury garb out of his pack, and he and Connor redressed. He combed his hair and told Connor to do the same. Then he sprayed himself and his brother with oceanic cologne to remove their fishy, sweaty stench and lifted a thin bottle filled with a clear fluid from his pocket. He sprayed his and Connor’s packs, and they turned from a worn-looking tan to a rich red-brown. Hans also sprayed the packs with cologne, then stored their fishermen bodysuits and capes.