by Linda Nagata
It occurred to Lot to wonder how many of the nebula’s butterfly gnomes died inside the crushing geometry of the swan burster every hour. Did they know the danger? Did they ever try to nibble at the neutral mass on the outside of the ring? Or were their erosive activities limited to more familiar nebular material?
As he left Ado Town, the swan burster turned face-on to become a perfect circle. As its luminous surface increased, its light brightened: a silvery glow that fell across streets full with the usual evening crowds. Lot slid silently through them, individual faces registering as little more than heat signatures in his mind, objects to be avoided. No one called his name, though he could hear whispering in his wake.
He crossed the bridges of Vibrant Harmony, passed through Serenity Gardens, and finally reached the partitioned edifice known collectively as Old Guard Heights. The foundation of the Heights was a massive complex built against a U-shaped cove that cut into the slope of the city, forming a twenty-one-story windowed cliff that surrounded the tournament soccer fields at Splendid Peace Park. Above twenty-one stories, the Heights became five segmented “towers” that lay back against the slope like broken fingers, each phalange an estate separated from the next by walls and narrow gardens.
It was the best address in the city.
Lot dropped two levels, then followed a narrow, luminescent street under a canopy of flowering jacaranda. Blossoms were strewn on the ground, glowing like purple glass against the lighted paving. He reached the third address, then followed a narrow brick path to the door, past a stand of fruiting banana trees on one side and a sweep of waist-high ornamental grasses on the other.
At the door the house majordomo greeted him in a sprightly male voice. “Hello, hello. Such a surprise to see you, Master Lot Apolinario. And our most humble apologies are offered, for your gracious visit cannot be immediately entertained—”
“Is he home?” Lot demanded, cutting off the DI’s social niceties.
The door pulled open, and he got his answer visually. Kona Lukamosch stood against a rectangle of yellow light, staring out at Lot with a faintly amused expression, his fine black braids loose down his back, and a glass of amber beer in his hand. Surprise predominated in his aura, but beneath it Lot could sense an emotional turbulence that included solid doses of wariness, annoyance, and a kind of low-level, cautionary fear.
He looked Lot up and down, and then he stepped back from the door and beckoned with his glass for Lot to enter. Ord took that moment to scuttle out of the stand of feathery grasses, slipping through the door ahead of Lot. Kona eyed the robot sardonically. “Do you think you’ll need it?” he asked, cocking one eyebrow.
Lot felt a cold emotional cloak pull down around him. Ord existed at this man’s insistence. “I don’t need it.”
“Not at the moment, anyway.”
It felt odd walking into the apartment. He hadn’t been here since that day, when Urban had fed him crepes, and the lies had first begun. The living room was as vast as he remembered, with its island cluster of sofas, its white carpet, its view out over the soccer fields and the adjacent slope. The projection walls were tuned to an image of silvery mechanical parts moving against each other in silent, slow-motion copulation, several thousand variations on it around the room’s two open walls. Lot walked slowly past them, examining the details of shape; trying to discern function. Kona watched him curiously, as if expecting some reaction. “Does it mean anything to you?” he asked.
Lot turned curiously. “Should it?”
“It’s a neural structure of the Chenzeme.”
Startled, Lot stepped closer to the projection, striving to see some meaning in the patterns. “Where did you get it?”
“It’s an old project that’s been stumbling along for a number of years … but you didn’t come here to talk about the Chenzeme.”
Lot caught the sudden, cool shift in Kona’s mood. He turned his head slightly, relishing the silent touch of Kona’s anger against his sensory tears, liking the way it resonated with his own resentment.
Kona sipped at his beer. “I hear you’ve joined the political campaign,” he said. “I thought I might attend Urban’s rally tonight. Give you a chance to mesmerize me—”
Lot chuckled darkly.
“—after all, I’m a voting citizen.”
“Privileged.”
“An earned privilege.”
Lot looked across the room at him. “I was down in cold storage today.”
That drew a satisfactory grunt of surprise. Kona set his glass down on a white, cast-stone table. His focus seemed to shift inward, and Lot could almost sense the raging stream of data flow spilling into the atrial organ in his head as he sought information on Lot’s claim. The artificial organ existed as filaments within Kona’s brain. Through it, Kona could communicate with the city plexus or even entertain the electronic ghosts of other people. In Silk, only real people could have atriums; ados had to get by with phones, or face-to-face chatter. Not that it mattered to Lot. No one on Nesseleth had ever owned an atrium; Jupiter had mocked them as exotic curiosities … only in his more cynical moments did Lot wonder if that judgment had been made after Jupiter discovered that his complex physiology could not support one.
But these doubts he kept to himself, while he watched Kona with a careful eye.
It was a sudden flowering of indignation and alarm on Kona’s face that led him to guess supporting evidence for the raid on cold storage had been found, possibly from security cameras in the tunnels, but more likely, Yulyssa had floated her story.
The walls seemed to vibrate with detailed, silver motion. He told Kona, “The cold-storage cells are empty. You would know the reason for that.”
To his surprise, Kona only shrugged. “The data’s there. It’s all that counts.”
“Jupiter never was there.”
A cool half-smile appeared on Kona’s face. “And is that what’s brought you here tonight? The fate of one man outweighs the disappearance of thousands.”
That made Lot flinch. It startled him, like an unexpected shadow falling across his face. But he refused to be distracted. “You know he descended in the elevator car. I saw it! He reached the planet, didn’t he? And he’s still alive. The wardens have seen him.”
“No.”
Lot hesitated. Kona had to be lying, but he couldn’t sense any deception. “Why did you empty cold storage, then? You must have thought he was coming for them.”
“Coming for the dead?” Kona sounded incredulous. “Do you think he cared that much? He hasn’t come back for you, has he? And I think you’d be easier to grab than a corpse.”
Lot’s fist closed in frustration. “You know what happened to him!”
“I don’t care what happened to him.”
“But you emptied cold storage.”
“I emptied cold storage, yes. I’ve also emptied every other form of storage in this city with the one exception of the biointegument existing on the city’s surface. You enjoy walking through our city, Lot. Next time, look closely around you. You’ll be looking at the better part of our remaining organic resources.”
Lot shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
Kona snorted. “Of course you don’t understand. What need did your kind ever have for reasoning? A simple mind serves your purpose best. That’s the charm of dull intelligences. They can be assigned a task, and relied upon to finish, because they don’t have the intellectual capacity to question their own natures.”
“The city—”
“It’s starving to death! Can you understand that? No recycling system was ever perfect. Nitrogen and oxygen are volatile gases. We can’t lock them up at every stage. There are losses, and losses and losses. And no source of replacement, once all the stored tissue has been consumed.
“And it’s all been consumed. Every resource tank. Every mass in cold storage. We’re dying. Can you understand that?”
Lot took one cool step back, swaying slightly, feeling as if a chemical under
standing had just been poured upon his head, an anointing acid that flowed down through his brain and over his face, stripping the film off his eyes, boosting the laden structure of his mind, so that for a flashing moment he could see the Universe as it was and as it would be.
“That’s why then,” he whispered. “That’s why he left me here.” Time was a tapestry, and the pattern of the weave had been coded long ago. The realization came to him with the force of a calling, a clear conception of his own purpose that he’d never felt before. His wondering gaze turned to Kona. “You’ve seen it already, haven’t you? You know you’ll have no choice but to follow him down the elevator.”
But Kona denied that truth. “There are always choices.”
The mural’s silvery machine parts vibrated in unsettling rhythm against Lot’s consciousness. He found himself pacing a slow half-circle. “What choices?” he asked. “To die? To become code? Data stored in the hatch of a cold-storage cell?”
Kona shook his head and picked up his drink again, his broad shoulders touched by a glaze of sweat. “To die here or to die on the planet—the cult mentality is enamored with death. It’s almost as if the Chenzeme still work through you.” He cocked an expectant eyebrow. Lot could feel his anticipation, as if he were waiting for confirmation of this slander.
Suddenly, Lot felt frightened for no discernible reason. “It’s just that you don’t understand the Communion,” he blurted. “It isn’t death.”
“Tell that to the Old Silkens.” Kona stepped up to the window. Beyond the city’s sloped horizon, the swan burster had begun to squeeze down into a svelte oval. “For the moment I’d rather search for other options. The world is made of more than ones and zeros.”
Lot frowned at the defunct alien weapon, a pretty moon above a pretty world. Deadly moon, deadly world. A functional ring could produce coherent bursts of gamma radiation of a magnitude that would boil off a planet’s atmosphere and oceans, while sterilizing the rock beneath.
Lot felt his certainty begin to slip. He groped for a defense. “Deception Well—”
“Is a loathsome sewer.”
“Jupiter—”
“Died of his own foolhardiness. Will you do the same?”
Lot glanced again at the slowly tumbling ring. Long, long before any human eyes had looked on the Universe, some unknown force had infected the ring, pithing its logic systems while leaving the physical structure untouched. He couldn’t look at Kona without considering the analogy. “I won’t die here,” he warned softly. “I won’t starve here while an entire world lies below us. We could live there. Jupiter did.”
“You’re an amazing instrument,” Kona said, though his gaze lingered on the swan burster. “I can feel the pull of you, like an organic magnet. You caught Urban that first day, didn’t you—?”
“No!” The force of his own denial startled him. “It’s different with him.”
Kona’s expression hardened. “I couldn’t feel you then. But you’re getting stronger. That cult-leader package you inherited from Jupiter is kicking in.”
“It’s not like that.”
Kona gave him an indulgent smile. “If you say that, you’re lying to yourself. You can’t help what you are, Lot. Any more than Jupiter could help it. It’s amazing that such a complex genetic structure could survive sexual reproduction. But obviously, the package has its own protections. You were designed by a genius … or perhaps a madman. What else could you call someone who admired the Chenzeme enough to duplicate the neural patterns of their killing machines within the structure of a human mind? Within your mind, Lot. That’s the nature of the neural organ that once so puzzled Dr. Alloin. Did you never guess?”
Lot took two quick steps back. Crazy. Kona had to be crazy to say such things.
Kona chuckled, amused at this reaction. “It’s shocking, I know. But then, all kinds of obscenities have come out of the Hallowed Vasties.”
“Jupiter came from the Committee.”
“No. He wasn’t made there.”
Yulyssa had implied the same thing. They were trying to rattle him! But it didn’t matter. Lot knew why he was here. “What happened to Jupiter?” he demanded. “You know.”
Kona’s smile broadened. “And still, you persist.” He seemed oddly satisfied, as if his expectations had been fully realized.
Why? Lot didn’t care anymore. Trying to understand the twisted needs of the very real was like trying to understand the motivations of the murderous Chenzeme. The task was beyond him, and he knew it. He faced Kona squarely. “The Well lies below, and we can reach it. No one needs to die.”
“That’s right, Lot.” By the condescension in Kona’s voice, he might have overheard Lot’s intellectual surrender. “No one else needs to die. The seven thousand one hundred ninety-six murdered by Jupiter were quite enough. And no one else will die, despite Jupiter. Despite you.”
When Lot heard these words, he knew he’d been defeated. Kona would never tell him anything. He should leave now.
But an idea had begun to take shape in his mind. He remembered Yulyssa through a haze of heat and wine: I don’t like the way you’re making me feel. And Urban: You have a gift, fury. Learn to use it, and you could be as good as your old man.
Use it.
At the insistence of the monkey house docs he’d always tried to suppress the moods that brought out the charismata. But what would happen if he played along instead?
Use it. Jupiter had bent people to his will all the time, strong-willed people like Captain Antigua, and Captain Aceret.
Kona was vulnerable too. Hadn’t he said so?
Lot looked inside himself. It wasn’t hard to find a bud of anger. He sank into it; let it flare up and surround him. His eyes narrowed in concentration. His stance shifted, shoulders turned perpendicular to his hips as he stepped forward, all the muscles of his body pulling taut—
Suddenly, his sensory tears could taste the cloud of his own mood and it was grim: a spine-penetrating anger mixed with the cold threat of abandonment, of bitter loneliness while he demanded yet again, “What happened to him?”
Kona’s jaw dropped in open shock. The glass fell from his hand, an amber arc of beer streaming from it as it bounced on the white carpet. Lot almost lost the moment then, through sheer surprise. But he held on to it with an effort. He could do this! He stepped forward, ready to press his advantage, when Ord dropped on his shoulders, its tentacles tangling in his hair, its little voice whispering frantically, “Good Lot. I love you, Lot,” a murmur that didn’t quite cover the sound of escaping gas.
Lot closed his nose and mouth and eyes, but it didn’t matter. The custom trank slid into his system through his sensory tears, and his focus shattered. A cool current of air moved through the room, sweeping away the eroded bits of his will, and Kona laughed at him. “You’re not quite your old man, are you?” Then he looked past Lot and said, in a stern tone, “It’s about time you arrived.”
Lot turned unsteadily, to see Clemantine in her security uniform coming through the open apartment door, closely followed by two other officers. “Hi ya, Lot,” she called cheerfully, as she crossed the room to meet him. She had her trank gun holstered at her waist. “The report is, you’ve been having a real bad day.”
“Hi, Clemantine.” His tongue felt thick, and his voice came out husky. He struggled to focus on her face, but his gaze kept drifting down to the stylized C/S on her uniform breast.
“You like that?” she asked, stepping up beside him, a motherly grin of amusement on her face.
He felt himself flush. “It’s the trank!” The effect had peaked, but the biochemical work of clearing it from his brain had left him dizzy.
“I know, son.”
She started to reach for him, but he didn’t want her to touch him. He took a stumbling step back. Ord, half-hidden under his hair, placed a moist tentacle against his throat.
He felt an awful calm invade him. The temperature of everything in the room, including himself, seemed to plumme
t. Motion became cool deliberation. Anxiety froze out. He could think clearly and see clearly and function at a level that felt very, very cool. He smiled. Looking past Clemantine, he surveyed the two other officers. Jiro, and—he failed to hide his burst of surprise—David. David from the tunnels. The same officer who’d carried him out of the corridors that day. David was an ado, only a few years older than Urban, and Lot knew they sometimes ran together. David was all right. Jiro, though… .
Lot had met him in the monkey house. Technically, Jiro was an ado too, but he was only a couple of years away from being real, so it wasn’t the same.
Jiro had his hand on his trank gun. He grinned at Lot, as if this was the funniest sight he’d seen all year, while David looked nervous. The gold wire of security headsets gleamed in their hair. Clemantine didn’t need any supplementary communications device; real people always used atriums.
“You’ll go with them quietly, I know,” Kona said. “You’ve always been good that way. Admirably well mannered and conscionable—despite your background.”
“Sure,” Clemantine said, and this time she got a motherly arm around Lot’s shoulders. He caught the clean scent of her sweat and her easy confidence. “It just gets a little rough sometimes, doesn’t it, son?”
Lot glanced at David, and caught a minute nod. “Sure,” he said. “As you say.” David was looking away now, but a nervous half-smile had appeared on his face. Suddenly, Lot felt an urge to be helpful. “Yeah, Clemantine, you know, I think it’s time to go.”