How cool was that?
Revelstoke was an interesting sort. A storied codebreaker, almost famous. Now a Po field operative, researching an obscure neurological disorder.
Apparently selfless.
But more likely corrupt.
Alois Buss was who he was: a willing instrument of the Fa:ing, and their interesting number. This version of Alois was a biological original, unlike the androform one now researching the Fa:ing language at the Cult.
One of several biological originals, because Alois Buss was a looper.
Revelstoke, he didn’t know. Alois, he liked.
He needed to trust both.
Macro had a psyche the size of a planet, his father once said, orbiting a dark star of insecurity. Who was he to be roving the cosmos, playing Mr. Big? Literally, impersonating society’s wealthiest man. An imposter; the winner of a ridiculous epigenetic lottery.
The Cult’s psychs had told him that this was all perfectly normal; that he was a regular person, perhaps a bit smarter than most, born to play an outsized role, and he was bound to feel embarrassed by it. Otherwise, he’d be a narcissist, or worse, and they didn’t clone for those traits in the bank.
That was until he got laid, and his woman needed him. He was a new man, untroubled by doubt, bending space in a bubble of adoring determination.
A teenaged geek, with an unlimited budget for weapons.
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair.
“Seriously,” said Buss. “The local surgical suite was ready to repossess my cerebellum.”
“That was for show,” said Revelstoke. Unless he was packing more sophisticated wetware than Macro’s, his display of relief was real.
“Still,” said Buss.
Displacement chatter. Relief tinged with nervous excitement. A plan, thought lost, had somehow come together.
“There’s more where those came from,” Macro ventured.
Nothing.
A line had been crossed.
“What for?” asked Revelstoke. “The debt is settled. I don’t need any more money.”
“You do,” said Macro. “I need you to raise an army.”
Revelstoke dropped the bag, and the diamonds it contained, into a military satchel, whose strap morphed into his shabby civilian coat, which Macro knew was made of nanobots and fields.
Was that acceptance of his offer?
Or the start of a contest?
“I need maybe a thousand human soldiers,” he continued. “Elite ground troops. And an orbital superiority platform. One capable of supporting a ground action of unknown complexity.”
“And lots of processing power,” he said.
“Oh,” he added, “and it has to be kept secret.”
“How secret?”
“Completely secret.”
Revelstoke looked at his hands, which Macro noticed were perfectly manicured. His clothes were perfect. Shabby, but perfectly judged. His nails had the imperfect brushstrokes of enamel, or excellent nano.
Vain, or a skilled impressionist.
Or just a regular person, with foibles.
“Mr. von Engine,” said the no-longer-secret policeman. “I’m sorry, this isn’t an arms fair, where you can buy weapons. Nor can you buy me.”
Of course Avalon was an arms fair. It was why he was here.
And of course he could buy Revelstoke.
He nodded. “Oh, I know that, and I’m not shopping. I’m asking for your help. As a friend. As your new friend who just saved your credit rating, and by all accounts your life.”
Just a tickle, was all that was needed.
Revelstoke sighed.
“Look,” said Macro. “I can say what I want, but I have no idea what the words mean. I was hoping you’d lend me your expertise.”
“What expertise?”
“Please be serious, Mr. Revelstoke. How many Po secret agents do you think I know?”
Revelstoke looked at Buss, who shrugged.
[He knows you have him,] said his evil twin. [Reel him in.]
“Who’s buying?” asked Revelstoke.
“I am,” said Macro.
“Who’s really buying?”
“I mean I really am. I’m - how do you say it? Off the reservation? Freelancing? Helping my girlfriend. Intervening in the worldly affairs of men. The bank will deny all knowledge of me.”
“Then you’re taking a risk, bringing those diamonds here. I could arrest you. Take advantage of your plausible deniability. You’d never be seen.”
“Neither would you.”
“What?”
“You may be a Po agent, Mr. Revelstoke, but you’re only an agent, with the powers of the local police force. I have the resources of the Cult at my disposal. I could have you out an airlock in a moment.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Of course not. We’re exchanging hypotheticals.”
Alois Buss held up his hand.
“Can you please stop playing games?”
Macro smiled. He’d made his negotiating position clear. The carrot, the stick. This was the Smear. That was the stick. He could buy this place, a thousand times over. The carrot was money. Enough for Revelstoke to maybe one day buy it himself. Cure the Thespian disease, whatever he wanted. Macro would help him. But now, he needed him to be corrupt.
But only slightly corrupt. He also needed him predicable. Needed his help raise an army, without telling his people about it.
If need be, act against the interests of his people.
Why would he do that?
Because Felix was an idealist. The money he stole went on helping the sick. Was that corruption? Of course. He stole money to do it.
The bank knew this.
And that was his weakness.
Alois Buss, who was essentially incorruptible, winced at the show of teeth. He would’ve handled it differently, but he wasn’t the bank.
They were all on the same side.
Only their methods differed.
Later, in the quiet of his sleeping module, Macro was physically sick. This was his usual reaction to ruining people’s lives.
[Don’t be so melodramatic,] said his twin. [You’ve changed his life, not ruined it. Lives get changed by larger forces all the time.]
Macro’s hotel sleeper was the most basic cylinder, in the Station’s dormitory zone, spun for microgravity. Macro cared nothing for luxury. He grasped an edge and drifted onto a narrow bed.
Would he really have had Revelstoke airlocked? Of course not. He wasn’t a monster. But it was a plausible lie.
[The bank protects its own,] said his twin.
[He didn’t choose to join the bank,] said Macro.
[Neither did you,] said his twin.
Being in the sleeping cylinder was like being in a ship, he decided. He could hear nothing except the whisper of life systems. He was cut off from the world. If he broke the seal on his door, the clamor of Avalon Station would rush in and drown him. He wished he really was in a ship; in the Bat, with Kitou beside him.
[What about you?] he asked his evil twin. Not evil, of course. Merely expedient.
[What about me?]
[Did you choose to join the bank?]
[I’m a familiar, created to assist you.]
[How do you feel about that?]
[What are feelings?]
Of course his doppelganger was joking. He was being sarcastic. Typical bank programming.
[Are you self-aware?] he asked, knowing the answer.
[Not in the way you are.]
Macro sighed.
[This is why I suck at this,] he said.
[No, it’s why you don’t.]
[Can I increase your sentience?]
[Make me a friend?]
[Yes.]
[You can if you want, but I don’t recommend it.]
[How would you feel if I did?]
[I can’t say till you do.]
[Do you want it?]
[I don’t experience the feeling of want.]
<
br /> [You’d be a new individual.]
[I would.]
[Such powers I have.]
[Let me give you some advice.]
[Shoot.]
[You’re having a remorseful episode, wanting to channel it into a protest. Stop being stupid. Forget it. The time for reflection is done. It’s time for action.]
[Episode?]
[Truth’s a harsh mistress.]
[Hey, that’s not in character.]
[Sorry. There’s some of your father in me.]
The Tung shipyard resembled an encrustation of failed engineering experiments, growing like barnacles on the spaceside of Avalon Station. Macro thought it looked like a junkyard. Up close, the picture changed. The recesses of the cocoons were packed tight with high-performance spacecraft, some military, some incognito, like predators drinking from the same waterhole. Clever tendrils glimmered like surgical instruments, finessing the entrails of ships into the surrounding vacuum. Everywhere, Macro saw weapons. Beam blisters, rail guns, battlefield atomics. Spilled out and being worked on. Some legal. Some decidedly illegal. Star killers. Weaponized goo. Deplorable stuff, even by the nebulous rules of the Smear.
And everywhere, the Tung, clinging like antibodies to every surface.
Industry, he thought, but not as we know it.
Revelstoke took Macro to a spaceside bar, called the Snake City Discothèque, to meet a Tung fixer called Pfft. People drank and writhed in every available crevice. It was exactly as debauched as Macro’d hoped it would be. He watched as a two-meter Stentorian re-breathed ammonia from a recirculating flask. The Stentor could’ve worn a pressure suit, but it seemed set on riffling its feathers, in what appeared to be a sexual display.
Stentors mated by impregnating hosts with their spermatozoa-like seeds. The stench of the Stentor’s flask drove away the alcoholic waft of their drinks, and the musky scent of its seed.
This bar was far beyond Macro’s lived experience. For some reason, bank negotiations didn’t happen in places like this. At least, not that he was privy to. Revelstoke, a weary sophisticate, seemed unfazed by it all. Macro soon relaxed as well.
I could get to enjoy this, he decided.
Up close the Tung were borderline terrifying. There was something in their phage-like appearance that stirred up atavistic fears, like the horror of spiders. Macro didn’t fear spiders, nor was he bothered by the Tung. He rejected the contagion metaphor used to describe them in gutter sims. In truth, they were beautiful mathematicians.
“Do you exissst?” asked one that had wrapped itself around a pillar by their barstools. This must be Pfft. It was the size of a hand towel.
Lacking vocal cords, the Tung spoke human languages by trapping sacs of air against smooth surfaces, then expelling it past their extremities. Any wall would do. It was surprisingly effective. This one spoke in breathy Avalonian.
“Is that a serious question?” asked Macro.
“We think,” said Revelstoke.
“Therefore you are,” said the Tung.
Macro bit his lip. He’d just trodden on a codeword exchange.
The passage, he now knew, was from Renê Descartes, a philosopher from Ophelia Box’s homeworld. This information flowed, unbidden, into his brain, from his wetware.
“Earth is on everyone’s lipsss,” said the Tung. A vector of harmonics flashed in a register, somewhere in Macro’s upversioned cerebrum.
{ lips => thoughts, ideas, feelings, conjecture }
With a start, Macro realized he was thinking in Tung.
Now, that was unexpected.
“Do you know Earth?” he asked.
“The red human was here,” said the Tung.
“This is the shipyard where the Water Bear was fitted out,” said Revelstoke.
“For its journey to Fluxor?”
“Yes.”
“Not in thisss universe now,” breathed the Tung.
{ R => x | x ? R }
“What do you mean?” asked Revelstoke.
“Water Bear bends space alone.”
“That’s news to me.”
“They were separated,” said Macro. “By the Praxis autonomics, after their attempted robbery. Now they’re in a ship called the Bat, although ‘now’ is a slippery word, seeing as they’re in a slow-moving warp bubble.”
“How slow?”
“The Bat’s best speed for a 1,400-light-year journey is just under 4c. Which is ideal. They’ll reach Fluxor together, in about nine years.”
“Are they safe?”
“They were when they left Earth, in 1851. That’s all I know, apart from the bit about us needing an army.”
“The Bat alssso bends space?” asked the Tung, with a ripple of fronds.
“Yes,” said Macro. “All roads now lead to Fluxor.”
“Not yoursss,” said the Tung.
“No?”
The Tung’s fronds began to move, in increasingly intricate waves, and Macro realized he was being given a package of new information.
Too much to decode in real time.
But he saw this much. He wasn’t going to Fluxor.
He was headed as far from Fluxor as it was possible to go, and still be in the human galaxy.
We bend space for the Clouds? waved a new Tung. It was larger than the first, about the size of a beach towel, and it was signaling commercial interest { profit, pleasure, risk, reward }.
The first Tung rippled in reply.
Can it be done? it asked.
Of course, signaled the second. Our drive turns time into money. { metaphor => irony, laughter }.
Macro was watching this exchange through a myriad of ordinary engineering systems. He didn’t even have to crack the local security network. It was night in the Station. He was in his sleeping cylinder. Outside, in the party zones, bacchanalia reigned. Night in Avalon Station was much more interesting than Macro was used to.
The larger Tung had adhered itself to the transparent outer skin of the Discothèque bar, in plain sight of the Station, and was waving its fronds towards clusters of organic-looking pods that made up the shipyard.
It looked like it wanted to be overheard.
Macro wasn’t having any of it.
[It’s a disinformation game,] said his twin.
[They’re gaming me, specifically?]
[Or someone else, by making it look like they’re gaming you.]
The first Tung - Pfft. - was a flimsy spacefaring type, whose dry mass made it better able to withstand strong acceleration. This bigger one was a local shipbuilding entrepreneur.
Again, this information flowed into Macro’s brain, unbidden.
Handy stuff, this milspec wetware.
Not the whole shipyard, the first one tried to convey. { unity : n ? 1 }.
Your accent is terrible, rippled the second. But I { we } know what you mean.
The Tung { collective } has happy memories of the clever Po warship, the larger Tung { instance } said.
Nine years is fast, the first one replied.
A hundred thousand parsecs, waved the second { fucking. long. way. }.
Macro owed Alois a briefing. He chose to include Revelstoke. His twin agreed this was wise. Revelstoke was already earning his valuation.
They met in an Avalonia Cpy security vault. There were safe rooms here that were unsecure. Designed to be eavesdropped on. Macro had already rejected them. This one wasn’t. It was a superluminal spacecraft, embedded in an earthed metal cage, ready for an explosive escape. It was where the Corporation’s owners met to break the law.
Like the interview room, it smelled faintly of urine.
Macro dropped a new bag of diamonds on an expensive titanium table.
“Mr. Revelstoke, may I call you Felix?”
This was the bank’s way. The stick was shown once. The carrot was forever.
Revelstoke grimaced.
“Welcome to the service of the bank, Felix. It’s not as bad as you think. We’re all on the same side. Don’t worry about yo
ur employers. I calculate a high probability they already know what’s happening here.”
“Which employers?”
Macro shrugged. “All of them.”
He wondered, was that true? Probably.
“What do we collectively think about the Tung?” he asked.
“Unreliable,” said Revelstoke.
“You took me to see them,” said Macro.
“You asked me to raise you an army. They’d know how.”
“I have to agree with Felix,” said Alois. “The Tung can’t be trusted, but I don’t mean that in a moral way. They’re more alien than they appear.”
Macro showed them the conversation he’d eavesdropped: the one they put on as a show for him. Then he unpacked the message that Pfft. had given him in the Snake City bar.
“They want me to go to Waterfall. They’re intervening. Who’ll come with me?”
“To the Magellanic Clouds?” asked Revelstoke.
“I will,” said Alois.
Macro smiled. He’d like to have Alois along on this journey.
“How’ll you get there?” asked Revelstoke, trying not to appear relieved.
“The Tung have a superluminal drive, ready to go. The course is baked in. Nine years in stasis.”
“You’ve already done this?” asked Revelstoke.
“Yes,” said Macro, although in truth his twin had, using resources he didn’t care to know about. He understood himself to be at the mercy of great forces, like Revelstoke was, but even more so. And yet he was in. He was all in.
“Why not just hire a krëw of Magellanic Navigators?” asked Revelstoke. “Like a real bank emissary would. A Magellanic ship will get you there instantly.”
The truth was, nine years in stasis would suit him just fine. It meant he wouldn’t get any older than Kitou.
Macro shrugged, as if to say it was out of his hands.
“What about me?” asked Revelstoke. It wasn’t a plea. It was a request, for information.
“Your life carries on,” said Macro. “As if uninterrupted. It’s been great working with you. You don’t have to worry.”
“About what?”
“Your settlement.”
Revelstoke half-nodded.
“There’s an account, associated with your genetic information. Present a few chromosomes, along with the original of your personality, at any of our branches.”
The Water Bear Page 23