Limit of Vision

by Linda Nagata

  “No,” Simkin said. “We didn’t want to expose any of you to unknown risks, so we made sure that nothing we dropped could harm any LOV protected by a mammalian immune system.”

  They waited on his answer, the only sound the scrabbling of the rat. Virgil touched his flaking LOVs. “I don’t think your testing was adequate.” He said it calmly, softly. So it startled him when Summer reacted in alarm. Her eyes widened. She sat up a little straighter, while the telltales of astonishment bloomed across her face. It was like reading one of those downtown neon church signs, flashing in postmidnight darkness: Repent, for the end is near.

  She knew. He could not doubt it now. Somehow she had guessed about his LOVs. Despite their dead white color, she knew what was hiding inside him. Virgil thought back over the last minute. He must have made a mistake, done something to give himself away. But what? But what?

  He breathed deeply, willing away the panic that wanted to flood his brain …

  But that was it, wasn’t it? That was what she had seen. He did not have the bearing of a broken man.

  Simkin asked, “How did you destroy your LOVs?”

  It was a wholly unexpected question. Virgil stared at him in mute surprise. Then his gaze cut to Summer, and he caught an almost imperceptible nod. So Simkin did not know. But Summer did … and she hadn’t told him. Not yet. Why not? “I didn’t destroy them,” Virgil said. It was so easy to speak the truth. “That’s something I would never do.”

  ELA had been let out of her cell twice to use the bathroom and once to shower. The female guards who escorted her to the toilet refused to answer any questions and would not respond at all to Ela’s repeated demands for a lawyer. Maybe she didn’t have a right to a lawyer. The IBC was not constrained to operate under American law when it was not in America, after all.

  She had been dozing, but she came immediately awake when her cell door swung open for a fourth time on its silent hinges. She had no way to know the time, but some inner sense told her it was close to 2 A.M. Summer Goforth looked in on her. Ela recognized her from news accounts. She sat up, rubbing at her forehead, feeling the tiny pockmark scars where her LOVs had been. “Where’s Virgil?”

  “Asleep,” Summer said. “His cell is watched more closely than yours. Come out here, away from the cameras.”

  Ela’s eyes widened. She glanced over her shoulder, then she stepped out of the cell. Summer closed the door.

  The brig was dimly lit and wrapped up in silence. No one was in sight: not guards, or prisoners. No windows looked into the other cells. Ela surveyed the blank doors, wondering which one hid Oanh and Ninh and all the other Roi Nuoc.

  Summer said, “The IBC is corrupt. I don’t believe Daniel Simkin is interested any longer in destroying the LOVs. I believe that he and his allies—whoever they might be—have moved on to exploiting them.”

  Ela answered experimentally. “Our LOVs are dead.”

  No smile softened Summer’s stern gaze as she spoke in a fast, low voice. “You decoupled the asterids from their shells, didn’t you? You thought they could live in your brain tissue and we would never know the difference—but that’s how I originally designed them to live. It wasn’t hard to guess. So far, I’m the only one who knows, but that can’t last. Look at me. You can tell I’m not lying … can’t you?”

  Ela nodded, seeing a hard-edged honesty in Summer’s face. “Why are you talking to me?”

  “Because Daniel has no intention of destroying the symbiotic LOVs. Maybe he never did. I would do it myself if I could, but it’s too late. His people have had weeks with all those children who were evacuated before you. So much knowledge must have escaped by now that it will never be possible to put the genie back in the bottle.”

  “I don’t understand. The other Roi Nuoc, their LOVs were removed—”

  “Do you know that?”

  “It’s what they told us.”

  “It’s what they told me, but I don’t believe it anymore.”

  A creeping dread came over Ela. “You think they’re dead.”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t.”

  “We trusted your humanity,” Ela whispered.

  “There is too much money involved. I think—I’m just guessing—what’s been found inside the brain tissue of those kids is going to make a lot of people very, very rich and long-lived.”

  “Medical applications?”

  “Try an on-ramp to nanotech.”

  “Oh God.”

  “I think they’re being farmed,” Summer concluded.

  Ela leaned against the wall, forcing herself to be calm, to think. “We have to get out of here.”

  “That would be nice,” Summer agreed. “But how? We’re at sea. There’s a typhoon outside and cameras in every cell. I might be able to get one or two of you to the deck, but—”

  “No. We all go together, or not at all.”

  Summer shook her head. “Then I don’t think it’s possible to escape.”

  Ela froze, hearing a resonance in these words. She nodded slowly. “Of course you’re right. We can’t escape. We have to arrange for them to let us go.”

  “Uh-huh. And how will you do that?”

  “I don’t know yet! Let me think. Let me—” The answer came while she was still protesting. “They would have to take us out if the ship was sinking, don’t you think?”

  “It’s not sinking.”

  “Then I’ll sink it.”

  “Will you?”

  Ela smiled. It was easy to see that Summer had begun to suspect her sanity. “I did an article once on the disappearance of a merchant ship. It was sunk by pirates. Speculation said the owners hired them to do it, so they could collect the insurance.”

  “You want to hire pirates? How would you pay them?”

  “That won’t be a problem.” Ela’s account had grown to over $250 million the last time she’d checked.

  “But how will you broker a deal? You need an ally on the outside.”

  “I have an ally. May I use your farsights?”

  Summer hesitated, but only for a moment. She had already committed herself, just by talking to Ela. There was no going back now. Her focus shifted to the screen of her farsights. She ran through a quick sequence of finger taps, then she slipped them off and handed them to Ela. “They’ll work for you now.”

  It took a few minutes to contact Mother Tiger because Ela did not know the codes, and had to use a search engine to establish a link. But moments later the tiger goddess’s great luminous eyes were gazing from the screen. Her growl trembled with restrained fury. “Where have my Roi Nuoc gone?”

  SUMMER returned to the conference room after the scheme was set in motion. No one was there. Even the rat had been removed.

  She sat in one of the bolted-down chairs, clutching at the table every time the ship plunged in heavy seas. The storm was growing worse. It seemed almost enough to sink the ship without help from outside agents.

  She had little doubt that Ela’s ROSA would find a willing mercenary. The master of an old Soviet vessel, perhaps, or a decommissioned American frigate. The route between Hong Kong and Singapore had been notorious for centuries, its endless islands and inlets and desperate governments offering haven to enterprising pirates. But even if an agreement was made, could any ship find them in such weather? Could the children safely transfer?

  Did it matter?

  For these children, the alternative was too grim to contemplate.

  Near dawn she heard a muffled explosion. The deck shivered, and a fire alarm kicked in. A second explosion followed, this one louder, closer. Summer rose and went to the door. The corridor outside was empty, but she could hear running footsteps on the deck overhead. She sent a link to Daniel Simkin, but he did not pick up. She sent a link with an emergency tag. Still he did not answer. Then, somewhere overhead, she heard a door slam shut, followed by the steel shot of a closing lock. Terror lanced through her. “Daniel?”

  She remembered seeing stairs on her tour of the ship.
She ran for them.

  The engines had stopped. The ship rolled freely in the waves, tossing her from wall to wall as she made her way forward. She found the stairs and hauled herself up. She tried the door. It would not open. It was locked, from the outside. She pounded on it, but no one came. Was this the only way out?

  Think!

  Maybe this was some kind of emergency procedure. Seal the doors, contain the damage. So there had to be another way out. Right?

  No. It didn’t make sense. The brig was on this deck, but no one had come to evacuate the kids …

  Because they were useless now, weren’t they? With their LOVs gone. Or so Daniel would believe. It would be more convenient to let them drown, and Summer with them. Already the deck was beginning to tilt, the stern descending. “Daniel!” she screamed, clutching at the railing to keep her balance.

  No. Don’t panic. Think!

  He was letting them drown because he thought they had no value. But he was mistaken in that. The Roi Nuoc had lost only their LOV shells. They still had their LOV asterids twining through their brains. Daniel could still find some use for them. Summer composed a brief text message explaining this fact, then she sent it to Simkin with an emergency tag.

  ELA had been dozing when the first torpedo hit. She huddled on the floor, counting down the time until the second impact. Two million dollars for two carefully placed torpedoes.

  A deep boom told her the bargain was fulfilled. The walls shivered. And then she was on her feet, ready to evacuate.

  But minutes passed, and no one came.

  The floor began to tilt.

  Ela pressed her ear against the door. She could hear a distant, arrhythmic drumming … like fists against padded walls? Cries of terror teased at her mind, so faint they might have been imagination.

  Then the cell door burst open, spilling her into the brig. She landed on hands and knees. Looking up, she expected to see one of the guards, but it was Summer Goforth. Her expression was wild, frightened and furious as she slammed the cell door back into its stays. “There are life jackets in the closet at the end of the hall!” she shouted gesturing toward the brig’s open door. “Get them out. Bring them here.” Then she stepped over to the next cell, and hammered in a code.

  Ela scrambled to her feet. “Where are the guards?”

  “Simkin forgot to tell them to take us out.” She slammed the cell door open.

  “So we’re on our own?”

  Summer punched in another code. “For now.”

  “There’s something you’re not telling me,” Ela said, reading the telltales on her face.

  “Just get the life jackets.”

  Roi Nuoc were emerging from their cells, looking around with wary eyes. “Tell me,” Ela insisted.

  Summer threw her a hard glance. “We’re locked in down here, on the lower deck. Daniel means for us to go down with the ship.” Another door slammed open.

  “You said he wanted our LOVs!”

  “So far as he knows, you don’t have any!” Another door. “I’ve sent him a note clarifying that.”

  “So we live or die depending on if he reads it?”

  Another door. “Get the life jackets! Now. Get them on these kids while there’s still time.”

  Ela grimaced. She wanted to stay and argue more, but Summer was right. They had to be ready to go … if they were to go at all. She crooked a finger at Phan and Oanh, and together they ducked out into the hall, sliding down the slanting deck to the closet, where they gathered as many life jackets as they could carry. “We’re going over the side,” Ela told them. “Be ready.”

  Phan returned first up the passage. Oanh followed. Ela took the rest of the jackets and scrambled behind them up the sloping floor. By the time she returned to the brig, all the cells were open and half the kids already had their life jackets on. Summer was nowhere to be seen. “Where’s Summer?” Ela shouted. “The foreign woman.”

  Ninh answered as he buckled a life jacket on. “She went with Virgil to see about the door. Take life jackets for them—and put one on yourself!”

  A victorious yelp greeted Ela as she started up the passage. “They’ve opened the door!” Virgil yelled, his voice booming back down to the brig. Ela could see the foot of the stairs, but she could not see him. “Everybody out, now.”

  “Everybody out!” Ela echoed, waving the kids past her. She stayed at the brig, making sure no one slid back down the passage. They were fourteen in number, fifteen counting Summer. No one panicked. They moved quickly, calmly up the corridor, like brave young soldiers from Marxist posters. Doubt was not allowed to intrude.

  Oanh was last out of the brig. Ela followed her up the passage, catching her elbow as they neared the top. “Don’t wait too long,” she said. “We must go over the side as soon as possible. Make sure everyone knows.”

  They reached the stairs. Ela looked up, to see the door standing open. The ship was listing so badly she and Oanh had to use the handrail to haul themselves up. Virgil waited at the top, a helping hand extended. “Summer said you planned this, that we’re to go over the side of the ship.”

  Ela looped a life jacket over his head and helped him buckle it on. “Yes. We’ll be picked up in the water. Mother Tiger has it all arranged.”

  He caught her wrist. “Mother Tiger?” Raw fear looked out of his eyes. “You’ve talked with Mother Tiger?”

  An old panic stirred, and she tried to wrench her hand away. “Why are you holding me like that? Let go. What’s wrong with you?”

  He released her wrist. He touched her face. “Ela, listen to me. We can’t depend on Mother Tiger anymore. Ky believed Mother Tiger caused Lien to die.”

  “No. That’s crazy. You can’t believe that, Virgil. Don’t talk that way. Mother Tiger is our tool, our ally. It exists for us. Ky made it that way.”

  “It’s changed.”

  “Everything has changed! But it doesn’t matter. It’s too late. Stop talking nonsense, because this is our only way out. Virgil, we have no other choice.”

  chapter

  41

  VIRGIL HESITATED AT the weather door, wrapped up in a sense of doom. Their lives depended now on a ROSA he could no longer trust … unless the very fact of dependence meant safety? Mother Tiger existed to serve the Roi Nuoc. Surely they would be all right so long as they played that role? It’s what Ky had believed.

  Ela glanced back at him, her eyes warning against any more crazy talk. Then she slipped out past the weather door. Virgil followed. The wind hit, slamming them both back against a wall. Two crew members were there, their shoulders hunched against the sheets of rain stomping across the deck. One of them clipped a lifeline to Virgil’s jacket, then shoved him toward the boats where the Roi Nuoc were being seated among a skeleton crew.

  Dawn had not yet arrived. Clutching the line, Virgil glanced around at a dark gray sea raging beneath a sky of the same color. The bronze light of a setting half-moon leaked past a veil of clouds. Visibility was hardly a quarter mile even when the ship rose to the top of a swell. He could not see the vessel that would pick them up. He turned to look for Ela.

  She held on to the line, a few steps behind him. Her wet hair whipped around her face, her dark eyes were stern. Her yellow life jacket looked so bright in the gloom it seemed to have an illumination of its own. He watched her hands busily unclipping her lifeline. She nodded at him to do the same.

  Instead he leaned close, shouting to be heard over the wind. “Where is the other ship?”

  “Gone! We couldn’t trust mercenaries to pick us up.”

  “Then how—”

  There was a cry from the boats, barely audible over the screaming gale. Virgil turned to see a peppering of yellow life jackets going over the side, pulled down by the white water of a clutching wave. He held the image in his mind and counted quickly. Nine. No, ten figures escaping into the black sea.

  Ela’s hands scrabbled at his vest, fighting to unclip his tether. “Come on, come on!” she screamed. “Before
they try to stop us. I have talked to Mother Tiger, Virgil. There is nothing wrong.”

  Water sloshed across the rolling deck. The crew fell back from the boats in terror. Two smaller, slighter figures extracted themselves from the knot of panicked seamen and ran for the rail, pitching themselves over, headfirst into the storm.

  Virgil felt his lifeline snap free. He stumbled backward, Ela’s weight propelling him toward the water. His mind was filled with horror. The kids were already gone, over the side with only their life jackets to keep them from drowning. But there was no ship to pick them up.

  “Ela, we can’t do this! This is crazy.”

  “Yes!” She tugged on him, pushed on him. “Yes, we were all driven insane by our LOVs. They drove us to suicide. Now Virgil, over the side!”

  Another wave washed the deck. Virgil fought against the retreating flood of white water as it curled around his legs, tugging on him. Then he looked up. Across the draining deck he saw Simkin returning to the rail to reclaim a half-flooded boat. Their eyes met, and in that glimpse Virgil knew that all the suspicions Summer had whispered to him as they crouched at the top of the stairs were true. Simkin had become a different kind of enemy, a hidden player in an invisible war. They would find no refuge with him in the boats.

  The wave pulled away. He looked for Summer, but he could not see her. Then Ela tugged on his hand one more time. He turned. He put one foot on the railing, and as the side of the ship began to rise from the water he launched himself together with Ela over the side.

  THE lash of rain had not prepared him for the shocking splash of the sea. Cold enfolded him as Ela’s hand vanished from his grip. He thrashed, trying to find her again, but everything had disappeared—the sky, the freighter, the bright yellow wink of her life jacket—erased by the liquid gray solvent of the sea.

  Virgil did not go under, but it felt like he did as the wind drove salt water down his throat. Spume howled past his face as he crested a swell. He glimpsed the setting moon low in the sky, and then he spun half-around and went sliding down into a trough between waves, submerging at the bottom, only to be bumped up by something smooth and hard.