by Sarah Lahey
Sex! It’s sex. Sex makes people crazy; it makes them do stupid, irrational things. It makes them impulsive and foolish. But a lack of sex—well, that makes people crazier. It makes them frustrated and angry and unpleasant to be around. A difficult situation when you’re on a boat, where there’s no escape, when the one you want is down the hall, or in the galley, or on deck.
She can’t leave it like this. It a good start, but it’s one step forward and two steps back. She’ll pursue him, she’ll find him, and they’ll talk more, more about sex and . . . things. What things? She’s not sure. She’ll ask him if he has a plan; that’s a good place to start. She always has a plan, but with two people you need a similar plan. Does he have a plan? She needs to find out.
She opens the door to his room and slips inside. He’s on the bed and looks up as she enters. Reassuringly, she smiles at him. They can sort this out, they just need to talk and everything will be okay, but— but he’s distracted, what is he doing?
“Oh shit.” He’s wanking. “Oh fuck, sorry, I, I didn’t mean . . .”
Her presence does nothing to break his momentum. He continues tugging on his dick while his bionic eyes bore holes into her brain. She steps back; she should probably leave. She changes her mind. She should stay, stay and help. No, no, she should definitely go, leave him to it. “I’ll, I’ll just go.” She backs out the door.
That was awkward. No, that was terrible. I’ve made everything worse. A plan—of course, he doesn’t have a plan. Sex isn’t a plan.
Tig’s door opens, and he steps into the hallway, naked, with a large erection. She looks up, focuses on his face, not his dick. His face looks confused. “You want me?” he asks.
A complicated question; she has no idea what she wants. But she nods and says, “Yes,” because it’s the truth, she does want him. Then she adds, “I want to talk about the future, our future. I want to know how you feel and what you think and if you have a plan. You see, I always have a plan and I need to know . . .”
“Can’t do two things at once.” He kisses her quickly and strides down the corridor, still naked, still with a giant erection. She has no idea where he’s going. He exhausts her.
***
Later, Quinn pulls Planck aside. “Is it okay to have sex when you’re pregnant, right? It can’t hurt the baby or anything.”
“Yes, perfectly safe. Second person today to ask me that.”
Thirty-Eight
A black ship, like a killer whale with corporate sponsorship.
AT BREAKFAST, A SHINY, titanium Quantum Machine slides across the table to Quinn. Staring at the machine, not looking up, she says, “You’ve had this, all this time? And you’re only giving it to me now?”
“Let’s say it’s a recent addition to the cargo,” Planck says. “It’ll do the job, yes?”
“Yes.” It’s an excellent machine. QMs are scarce and expensive. There are several versions. This one uses Quaisparticles, combined on a 2D surface; it has thousands of qubits with advanced processing power. It’s capable of launching the G12, and it will get Quinn into the SpinnerNet. She’s nervous; her hands shake. She’s waited months for this moment.
She prepares a sample from the cactus, examines the sequence reaction to make sure it’s not damaged. It looks fine. The DNA strands are read as they transit through nanopores. This identifies the position of the individual nucleotides with longer DNA fragments. Quinn records the read-out of electrical signals occurring at the nucleotides and waits for the information to load onto the QM.
Retrieving the G12 from the SpinnerNet is risky. She can’t linger; she needs to get in and out before she’s detected, before the trolls, terrorists, Trojans, worms, ferals, and hackers realize she’s dropped in for a visit. It’s a dark, infected, evil place, great for hiding things, but not if you’re caught. Then, the consequences are unpleasant: identity theft, your Coin hacked, and your privacy gone. It takes years to untangle the mess. But she has a quick machine, nimble fingers, and a few distraction tools in her skill set.
She launches three open diversion searches, waits two seconds, then dispatches a Sprout Router. It goes straight to the G12 and plucks it out, and she closes the SpinnerNet immediately, undetected.
The G12 comes to life and the climate model launches, syncing to the Earth’s biosphere in real time. Live initiation begins immediately. The system generates a holo of the planet; Quinn configures it to a sphere of two meters and spins it with her finger until she finds Kerguelen. She initiates a weather search and processes the data. While this completes, she runs a separate time trace, going back forty-eight hours before the catastrophe, checking for tampering or changed settings. The first set of data from the G12 shows nothing, no trace of the Sky River. The discrepancy is in the second set of figures. For forty-eight hours, at regular intervals, someone set a quantum ghost. They used an interferometer to exploit the two-path option and created a fictional set of data for the Island. I didn’t even notice. Self-absorbed, too busy whining. Idiot. “I’m an idiot.”
The ghost is still running. She isolates it from the system; the G12 autocorrects and updates the historical information. She replays the storm and watches the Sky River approach the Island, unleashing a whopping 2,500 millimeters of rain in six hours. Sky Rivers don’t leave the Antarctic Circle. Something sent it off course. Why was it so far north? Someone, and she is prepared to call him Mori, is hiding something. She figures he never meant to kill all those people, mass murder is not his thing, so there is more to the mystery. But what was it that he didn’t want her to see?
She spins the holo globe, pauses at Antarctica. Yes, they were headed there. She resets the system and runs a data search over the South Pole. The G12 will pick up environmental anomalies.
The data shows a fissure, a rupture in the Earth’s crust under Antarctica. It caused a massive ice shift. The morning of the catastrophe, 1,000 billion tons of snow and ice slipped and sent out an infinitesimal ripple of energy over the planet—small, but enough to swing the magnetic South Pole east by eight degrees and throw the Sky River off course. Cause and effect, every action on the planet has a reaction. She wonders: Was the fissure a natural phenomenon? Or was it caused by human activity?
The cactus DNA is sequenced and the information is ready to be decoded. There are two files. Quinn opens the first, labeled Shun Mantra. They’re a startup, sponsored by eMpower, with one hundred board members. She scrolls through their profiles; they’re all young, in their mid to late twenties, and they’re all Transhuman and sequenced. Aaroon is there. So is Myra.
The second file contains maps, pages and pages of maps and geological data. The initial details show Queen Maud Land, Enderby Land, and the Weddell Sea. It’s Antarctica, with survey and geological details of the South Pole. But there are other maps, less familiar, and Quinn scans the images and exotic place names—Nicobar, Selk, Mystis. This landscape is not Earth. The colored clouds are called Bacab, Hobal, Tishtrya, and Kalseru, all mythical gods of rain. The mountains are named Moria, Mithrim, and Doom, and the small hills are called Gandalf, Bilbo, and Arwen. It’s not Middle Earth, it’s Titan. The maps are of Titan. The names are of places on Titan, chosen from deities of wisdom and mythological figures, as well as Tolkien imagery and characters. Perhaps they have travel plans? The trip of a lifetime? Good, go, find your fortune on Titan and leave us alone.
A splash outside the window diverts her attention. A sleek black ship rises from the water. A submarine—military, with an eMpower corporate logo. It is slick and black—a cross between a bat and a fighter jet.
Planck pokes zirs head in the hatch. “Shut it down. Hide the AI, then head for the lower level, below the horticulture zone. Tig’s down there, tell him to come up here.”
She blinks. What lower level?
“Base of the stairs, on the right, a hatch, leads to the lower level. Hurry.”
Figures clad in military climate suits begin boarding Nanshe. The suits have the eMpower emblems on them.
Quinn collap
ses the system and hides Mori in her cabin. This time, she gives him strict instructions to switch off. If he’s found, he’s not, under any circumstances, to reactivate until she, and only she, tells him to reengage with the real world.
Behind the base of the stairs, to the right, she finds a hatch with another set of stairs leading to the lower level. This wasn’t on the tour. At the bottom, a door opens, and she steps through it, into a dimly lit chamber. She scans the room; it’s High-Tech, with a wall of weapons—rows of guns, lasers, and knives. There’s a min-submarine at the far end, and . . . the two coup ringleaders, Maim Quate and Kip Jove. They’re consulting a holo map with Tig.
“A one-man government, it’ll be easier for him to execute . . .” Maim spies her standing in the doorway. “Oh, it’s you. Come in, we won’t bite.”
“Hello.” Quinn steps into the room, “I’m glad you’re safe.”
“Yes, and you, I’m happy to see you here, safe as well. You know, I know your mother, I mean knew, I knew your mother. We were . . . we were very close, if you know what I mean.” Really? How close? Oh for fuck’s sake, she’s just Lise’s type.
Tig strolls over. “You want me?”
“Yes, I mean no.” Not right now. But I do want you. “There’s a black ship, like a killer whale with corporate sponsorship. Planck wants you.”
Tig sprints from the room.
Kip strides over to the weapons rack, grabs two lasers, and throws one to Maim. She catches it. “Our luck might be running out. Ever skipper a sub?” she asks.
“Yes, but this one’s out of order,” Kip says. “No power.”
They glance Quinn’s way, and she shakes her head, “You have an escape plan?”
“This was it,” says Kip.
They have no escape plan. It’ll take the military ten minutes to discover the opposition leaders stowed in the hull, and it looks like eMpower sponsors New Fed, so they’re all in big trouble, but . . .
“If this boat is sponsored by eMpower, then . . . Stay here, I have a plan.”
She races up the stairs and peeks through the galley windows; Tig and Planck are on deck with lasers pointed at them. She counts six soldiers aboard Nanshe, and another six watching from the black boat.
Someone sticks a laser in her back. “On deck, now.”
She joins Tig and Planck on deck. “Did Niels send you?” she asks, but the guard ignores her. “Well, he’ll be pleased you found me. If we give him a call . . .”
At the far end of the deck, a familiar face boards Nanshe—a very beautiful and familiar face. It’s Geller. Her pale alien visage has vanished, replaced by a flushed complexion, rosy cheeks, and peachy lips. She also wears a climate suit with military epaulettes, but a darker grey; now, she has rank. The color catches the charcoal specks in her eyes.
“Move, ’e shoots,” she says with indifference. “Mr. Eco, well, ’e’s a valuable ally. Let’s see how keen he’s ta save you?”
Not a hint of recognition. Oh, she’s good.
They send Niels a holo request. He answers immediately.
“It’s me,” Quinn says. “I launched the climate model. I know what happened. Let these people go, and get me out of here.”
It works. The soldiers lower their weapons, Planck and Tig are shuffled inside, and the soldiers retreat back to the sponsored killer whale.
“Tree minutes,” Geller says dryly. “Go, get your tings.” She tilts her head toward the galley.
Planck folds and rolls garments into a luggagebot. “Added a shift dress, evening or daywear, and a couple of extra tops, expandable shorts. Now, look after our baby.” Ze helps Quinn into a pale blue climate suit, then gives her a hug. Tig enters holding two sets of knives and a laser. He lifts the cuff of her climate suit and straps a holster to her leg. “Four blades, two small, two large. No contact, too risky.” He unzips her climate suit and fastens the other set of blades to her upper arm. “What’d you find out from the G12?”
“Someone set a ghost.”
“Why?”
“Distraction. A fissure in Antarctica set off an ice shift, caused the Sky River.”
“eMpower, the cactus?”
“Shun Mantra, they’re a startup sponsored by eMpower. A hundred board members, all sequenced. And maps, geographical maps of Antarctica and Titan.”
“Okay. We deliver the cargo. It’ll take . . .” Tig looks to Planck for confirmation.
“Five days,” Planck says.
“Five days. I’ll come get you after that.” He hands her a laser. “Kill your enemies; don’t fucking stun them, kill them. Do it properly.”
“Kill them.”
“Fear is not your friend.”
“No?”
“No. Fight and flight primes you for action, but it also fucks your brain; you forget to think, and you freeze.”
“I do?”
“Yeah. If you’re scared, remember to think.”
“Remember to think.”
“And don’t fucking die. That’ll really piss me off.”
“Don’t die.”
He rummages through his collection of bracelets and unclips a mauve sphere.
“For the baby girl,” Planck whispers.
“Wait, what?”
“Mauve for the baby girl—”
“I didn’t know the sex.”
“Oh, the meerkat told us. I thought you knew.”
I do now.
Tig clips the bracelet to her wrist and stares into her eyes. He holds her gaze for two or three seconds, then longer and longer, for four or five seconds they’re staring into each others eyes. He’s a magnet and I’m iron; we’re ferromagnetic.
Like iron, he draws her in, and she can’t escape. Iron is life sustaining, everyone wants it. Element number 26 on the periodic table is brittle and hard. It lives inside us, in our blood, and it makes up the universe, the sun and the stars, so we need it to survive.
She wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him, and he returns her kisses. They stumble backwards into the food prep. Things fall, her bag spills, he continues to kiss her, covering her face, her mouth, her neck, until she can’t breathe.
***
On deck, Geller waits to escort her onto the eMpower-sponsored killer whale.
“How’d you find us?” Quinn asks, professional curiosity.
“Your invisibility cloak’s intermittent. We sent in an underwater sonic drone. Not gran’ over long distances, te strength changes in reverse proporshun ta te distance covered, but super when te target is close. Your Tech’s crap. There’s a glitch in your stealth signal.”
Quinn admires her military epaulets. “Promotion. Congratulations. And your skin looks great, no more blue light.”
“First Lieutenant. Outstandin’ bravery. Was just a matter av time. Like your ’air, suits you. An’ you got lucky.”
“Had no idea it would be you. So lucky, thank the lordt.”
“Idjit, I mean te cute island guy inside, I saw you kiss. ’Ot. Very ’ot.”
Thirty-Nine
You’re not dying. I won’t Let you.
THE EMPOWER-SPONSORED SUB DOCKS at the eastern side of the Harbor. As Quinn disembarks, she notes how unsettlingly still and quiet Unus is. There’s not even the illusion of normalcy. The city is under military control.
She and Geller are collected by an army vehicle and transported to Accord, the largest of the eight Climate Cities, where almost a million of the privileged inhabit deliciously cool residential spires. Quinn’s guess: They all voted New Fed. Hard to part with all that cool comfort once you have it. Dirac Devine, the leader of the New Fed, also calls Accord home, when he’s not organizing coups and conceiving civil war.
Transport around Unus is almost stagnant, and the AVs are still out of action, congregated in bundles along side streets and alcoves. Several vehicles have been torched. Some lie on their sides. The sky is filled with bird drones that flit back and forth. Residents walking the streets are strip-searched, their bags and luggagebots rifled
through by the military. Gatherings are quickly dispersed; no meetings are allowed, no events, not even funerals. The sudden screech of an auto sends the military into alert and the few residents who are out drop to the ground.
The purging of thousands of academics—police, media, teachers, prosecutors, and judges—has continued. Dirac Devine wants a new constitution, one giving him executive power. At his last public announcement, he held up effigies of Kip Jove and Maim Quate and called for the immediate death penalty for all insurgents.
After the RE Wars, Hexad established a mandate to stop a militarized government ruling, so Dirac is in trouble. He has outstayed his welcome in Unus. His actions go beyond defending the city, and they’ve been reported as an assault on democracy. He’s running out of friends and quickly creating new enemies of stronger, more socially conscious governments in Duo and Tres, Unus’s neighboring megacities. The situation in Unus matters a great deal to the rest of the world, since it was the first of the megacities to vote in the global election and New Fed refused to relinquish power after losing outright. Dirac will be forced to concede, one way or another; violence is a last resort, but if Maim and Kip state their claim at Hexad, the armed forces will rally behind them.
Geller volunteered to be Quinn’s military escort. She said Unus was not safe and Quinn couldn’t travel alone, and her manner indicated that the decision was final, a fait accompli, without negotiation or discussion. Quinn knows she’s totally fucked if Geller’s not on her side. The basis of their friendship, in Quinn’s judgment, is instinct; their pheromones get on, Geller always looks her in the eye, and she has eyes that linger, eyes that stare—eyes that know what Quinn is thinking.
Accord is built on a high plateau and encircles the site of a thousand-year-old mosque. Geller leaves Quinn at the entrance gates. The mosque pays homage to past Byzantine and Persian empires, and long-ago powerful Muslim civilizations that controlled the eastern continents. These were sophisticated cultures that lasted for centuries.
Accord doesn’t have a moat like Harmonia, but it does have the same layers of imperceptible security hiding behind the stone barricades. The centerpiece is the Palace of Tigers—an ancient structure cut from pink limestone that the afternoon light renders burnt and faded. Around the outskirts of the city, floral-capped spires rise two kilometers in the sky; Pollution Purging Pinnacles, affectionately dubbed PurePins, suck carbon and nitrous oxides from the atmosphere. The spectacular structural towers resemble woven tendrils. They are made from glass and polished ginger metals and capped with rooftop gardens.