Deception Well (The Nanotech Succession Book 2)

by Linda Nagata

  “He caught me for a while. He had a presence that was hard to deny. It was paradoxical: a more profound sense of self I could not imagine in any man. Yet still he denied any value in independent existence, driven always by his ‘mitochondrial analog,’ this insistence that we should surrender ourselves to some symbiotic communal state.”

  “He only wanted us to live,” Lot said. He glanced up at Yulyssa, then down again at the bedsheet, smoothing another wrinkle with his restless hand. Her doubt played against his sensory tears, but in a peculiar negative reaction he’d never experienced before. Instead of enhancing his own uncertainties, he felt them begin to crumble. It could be okay, to be part of something bigger. He knew it could. He’d felt the edge of it, every minute he’d been with Jupiter. “In the Well we’ll become more than we are, safe from the Chenzeme … and from whatever is causing the Hallowed Vasties to fail.”

  “So Jupiter said. But myths have always been used to veil the finality of death.”

  Lot traced the curve of her cheek against the sheet, appreciating her doubt, but oddly unmoved by it. “The Communion is no myth.”

  “I don’t know. Jupiter’s ‘surrender’ seemed too much like suicide to me. I pulled away from him. And then he was gone.”

  Lot smiled. “You think you left him? He could have held on to you. He let you go.”

  That angered her. “Why would he? He had no one. He left here alone.”

  “He left you at the Well.” And finally, Lot saw that as a privilege.

  “And why again? So I would survive? So I would live to be here with you? Talk to you about him? Make you angry enough that you’ll follow him just to spite me?”

  “You’re the one who’s angry,” he pointed out.

  “No one plans that well, Lot.”

  But Lot wasn’t so sure. His fingers skated across the shimmering cloth, raising waves in their wake. “So you’re free then. Are you going to leave on Null Boundary?”

  That set her back. He caught a flash of overt fear from her, quickly suppressed. “Are you?” she asked softly.

  On the white sheet he traced with his index finger a slow, inward-turning spiral, a descending orbit that ended in the Well. “I don’t want to leave. I know that now. It’s begun, and I’m not scared anymore.”

  CHAPTER

  19

  LOT SPENT MOST OF THE AFTERNOON IN THE REFUGEE QUARTER. Down in the cool bowels of Gent’s church, the dancing reflections in the holographic walls mixed up his image in a manic imitation of sexuality, a Well-redoubled blending of self and self. Before his image shredded, Lot caught a glimpse of his face and was startled at his gaunt appearance. His cheeks seemed sharp and thin and bloodless, while his eyes were red, brooding from deep within their orbits.

  Then Alta was with him, as if she had coalesced out of the shadows. She crouched beside him, her hands on his shoulders as she watched their distorted reflections writhe within a wall. “I understand you better now,” she said.

  “You’ve talked to Gent?”

  “He didn’t send me here.” She leaned forward, and her lips brushed his sensory tears. “Your skin’s so hot!” He turned his head and she kissed his mouth with a fierce determination. Apparently she had taken his admonitions to heart. He shut his eyes, as a pleasing sense of completeness closed around him. Her kisses continued, and it wasn’t long before his exploring hands found her breasts beneath the restrictive architecture of her dress. She helped him get it off. She helped him with his shirt. Her fingers stroked his chest a minute; then she lay back, pulling him down with her. Her breasts swayed. He caught one nipple gently in his teeth, drawing from her a sharp gasp.

  Her fingers stroked his sparse beard, his ears, his lips. They pushed into his mouth, dry foreign objects trespassing on his body. Next he could feel her touches at his hips as she tugged at his pants. He eased them off and then her fingers were wandering through his pubic hair, the soft inside of her arm brushing against the silken smooth skin of his erection. Her hand slipped down to caress his balls. He leaned forward, his hair falling upon her in twisting, gleaming, golden threads. Her skin puckered at its touch. Slipping his hand behind her head, he lowered himself against her. He felt the wiry brush of her pubic hair against his belly, the delicious, smooth kiss of her labia across the head of his member.

  Their reflections had become an abstract mingling of his body and hers, repeated hundreds of times in the shifting holographic glow. Lot couldn’t remember anymore why he’d been angry with her. She’d made him forget that. He could feel her smug satisfaction beneath the surface deference she wanted him to see … and something else. An influence that ran through all the refugees, and some of the real people too—he’d sensed it before, though he hadn’t understood it: a subtle division of loyalties … a division that didn’t exist in the ados of Silk.

  He withdrew a little, suddenly wary, feeling a tenuous sense of danger.

  “Lot?” Alta looked at him with questioning eyes.

  Jupiter had been here before him. He’d left his mark on her. Lot felt the hair on the back of his neck rise in an ancient defensive response: territorialism across the millennia, across a span of ten years.

  “Lot, what is it?” Alta’s eyes widened as the threat of his defensive charismata brushed against her.

  “I can feel him inside you.”

  To his surprise, that made her smile. Pleasure blossomed across her aura. “We all belong to him.”

  “No. I want you for my own.”

  She felt his jealousy. Oh yes. Her body became a hard shield around this trace of Jupiter. “Stop it, Lot,” she warned softly, astounding him with her resistance. But then Jupiter would have armed her against sedition.

  “We all belong to him,” Alta repeated. “Even you.” She touched the sticky droplets of his sensory tears. “Lot? It’s okay. He loves you still. He needs you.”

  Her soft chiding had its planned affect. He lowered his head, feeling a rush of shame. He sought her neck, her breasts: a show of desire to hide his jealousy. If he didn’t look at it, maybe it would go away?

  Her fingers slid through his long hair. His sensory tears rubbed against the treacly brew of her sympathy. “I love you too,” she whispered. “We all love you.”

  “I know.”

  “And all things are shared in the Communion.”

  “Sooth.”

  She ran her hands over his buttocks, encouraging his penetration. “Now, Lot.”

  Her passion rode the exhalation of those words like a perfume, an aerosol intoxicant that brushed his sensory tears and sent his heart rate leaping. His metabolic processes accelerated too. Time burned faster, and his perceptions shifted in compensation. The shifting walls coalesced into a dull white haze, while Alta’s body lay washed in silver. Lot felt himself sucked downward, sinking, past the barrier of her skin, past her muscles and the deafening swirl of her blood, until—for a moment—he seemed entirely inside her, their bodies crushed together by some irresistible gravity.

  He heard himself cry out, but not in pain.

  IT SEEMED THAT SOME BIT OF TIME had been lost. Maybe only a second, maybe several. He found himself slack against her, a mean buzz in his head, his slick skin cooling in the shifting light while Alta’s chest labored for breath beneath his weight. Ord squatted beside them, one gold tentacle pressed against Lot’s neck, muttering some half-mechanical drivel: “No good, no good. Not allowed.”

  Lot slapped the tentacle away. “Leave us alone.” He took his weight again, and kissed the cooling salt sweat of Alta’s neck.

  Then he rolled to the side, sprawling utterly slack against the soft floor. He watched her breasts slowly rise and fall, imagining what it might be like to be an oxygen molecule drawn forcefully into her lungs, exposed to gas-exchange over the alveoli, helpless freight rammed through the arteries, O2 exchanged for CO2 in the capillaries, depleted blood moving back to the lungs, subsystem of human life. Every molecule of air in Silk must have been breathed millions of times. Fr
om Alta’s lungs, to his own, to the kids playing in the street outside, and from there around the city until everyone had shared the same breath.

  And what then? How many times could one breath be made to go round and round?

  LATER, GENT TOOK ONE LOOK AT HIM and asked—with an approving air—if he was fasting. Lot didn’t know what that meant, so Gent explained, and Lot agreed that it was so. He hadn’t eaten anything for over a day, but his metabolism wasn’t slowed by the deprivation. If anything, his metabolic rate had picked up. His body was a furnace, swiftly burning off his mass, reducing his volume of flesh so that his innate pharmacopoeia of brain chemicals gradually became concentrated into a smaller and smaller volume. By evening he felt only lightly attached to his body, and everything around him carried a tint of silver.

  As the day’s light failed he walked outside with Alta, her hand cool against his own blazing palm. A celebration had been ongoing in the refugee quarter since the Silken curfew had been lifted in late morning. The burster had failed; the Well had been spared. The continuation of their journey down the elevator seemed inevitable now, for what choice would the Silkens have but to let them go—no, even to go with them? For no sane people would choose to starve.

  Gent and David met them, and they sprawled together on a flow of lawn that ran between two of the pyramids, listening to a small orchestra dominated by the quickening rhythm of flutes and drums while the talk ran soft and eager around them: How long would it be? How long, before the Silkens let them go?

  The city had swung into full darkness when Urban finally showed up, at the head of a pack of silver-tinged ados that must have numbered close to two hundred. Urban’s grin faded when he crouched next to Lot and got a good look at him by the colored light of festival lamps drifting among the branches of the trees. “You don’t look too good, fury.”

  Ord’s tentacles emerged from beneath Lot’s hair. “Nutritional deprivation leads to imbalanced body chemistry,” it said, its little voice loaded with a full measure of worry.

  “Which focuses the mind,” Gent added.

  “He looks like some crazy virtual prophet. Fury, the real people are already nervous. They aren’t going to buy this shit.”

  Lot shrugged. Urban would always worry. It was his particular blindness that he couldn’t feel the silver flow of the deeper world around him. “Trust me,” Lot said. “The council’s been exposed, the ring has failed, and there’s only one way out of Silk.”

  “Yeah? Would that be the same way your old man got out? I heard that was a pretty scene.”

  Alta started to rise, her hands fixed in a combative stance. Lot laid a restraining hand on her arm. “It’s okay.”

  “No it’s not,” Urban said. “You seem to be confused, so let me clarify. This election’s about choice, not annihilation.”

  “I know that.” Lot spoke calmly. It wasn’t the time for conflict. He gave Urban a reassuring smile, letting the charismata of his confidence loose upon the air. But Urban seemed oblivious and the gesture fell flat, leaving Lot disconcerted and deeply troubled. What was Urban, anyway? “You’ll have what you want,” Lot promised, in an attempt to cover his unease. He got to his feet, his clothes slightly damp from contact with the grass. “Time to go down to Splendid Peace, you think?”

  The people around him had seemed before to be paying no particular attention to him, but now, suddenly, a wave of quiet ran out from his position. Faces turned his way. “Yeah,” Urban said. “I think it’s time.”

  SPLENDID PEACE PARK RAN IN A BELT around the foot of the conical city. It was only a few steps from the quarter to the park itself, but the main gathering tonight would be at the soccer fields below Old Guard Heights. They followed the park promenade past intervening neighborhoods, a mixed procession gathering behind them, refugees and ados falling into step, laughing, talking, buzzing like tiny, unconscious flies, swarming together out of instinct… .

  Crowds thronged the greenway. The real people among them moved out of the way as Lot advanced, their eyes warily tracking the mob at his back. But his presence acted like an attractor on the ados, pulling them out, drawing them to him. He did not have to speak, or even raise his eyes. They came, their faces tinged in silver, lured by the energy of the mob.

  Urban’s mood lightened as he watched them gather. Soon he was grinning as if he had the election in hand, and Lot didn’t doubt that it was so.

  A white gazebo had been erected on the soccer fields. There were nine fields and the barriers between them had been removed. Already, the area was crammed nearly to capacity, mostly by ados, but with a heavy cut of real people too, under the drifting festival lights. Lot’s arrival set off a pressure wave through the crowd, as the people behind him pushed onto the field. The air felt dizzying, almost overwhelming in its seethe of emotion.

  At a distance, Lot saw three figures emerge from a glimmering fog in the gazebo. He blinked, briefly telescoping his gaze. The figure in the middle was Kona. The other two he recognized as longtime members of the counsel. David eased up on one side of him. “Clemantine’s coming.”

  Lot glanced around, sighting the big-boned security officer making polite but determined way through the press. Urban muttered profanities under his breath, but Lot stayed easy as Clemantine gently elbowed aside the last ados standing in her way. She grinned at him. “Hey Lot, stepping up in the world, I see.” Her words were friendly, but her animosity floated over him like a darkening fog. She squinted as she took a closer look at his face. “All prepared for the part?”

  “You want something?” Urban asked with full ado surliness.

  “Sure.” Her grin widened. “Master Lot Apolinario, the council invites you to a brief question-and-answer session on the lawn.” Her palm swept in a smooth arc, indicating the gazebo. “It seems the day’s events have muddied some election issues, and the council would prefer to clarify points of debate before the vote is taken.”

  “Forget it,” Urban said. “The issue is voting rights, and the choices are clear enough.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Lot said. “I’ll talk to them.”

  “I said no, fury. They’ll string you up.”

  “I want to talk to them. Urban, don’t worry. It’ll be all right.”

  HE CLIMBED THE GAZEBO STEPS ALONE, feeling as if he were ascending temple stairs. Kona watched him. He sat with the two councilors in a semicircle, facing an empty chair. Meeting his gaze, Lot felt a brush of trepidation. Kona was in image, and Lot could get no real sense of his mood.

  Did it matter?

  Lot knew how Kona felt.

  He gave the vacant chair a slight kick, determined that it was real, and sat down in it. Camera bees hummed softly all around.

  “There seems to be some confusion about the election issues—” Kona began, but Lot interrupted him.

  “It’s voting rights,” he said, echoing Urban’s lead.

  “It’s more than that. We’re concerned that any change in eligibility might dilute our electorate’s capacity for judgment—”

  “Because ados don’t think?” Lot felt a dark mood dropping in around him, a contagious anger that swept both to and from the watching crowd. “How old are you anyway?”

  A faint smile crimped Kona’s face. “Three hundred sixty-three this month. I’ve lived your life several times over.”

  Not a day of it, Lot thought. But aloud he only said, “That’s a long time … at least in human terms.” He let his gaze rove across the surrounding sea of silvered faces, feeling himself gliding in to meet their expectation. “Still, it’s hardly any time in the life of a species, of a world. Do you think three hundred sixty-three years has given you enough perspective?”

  “Perspective on what?” Kona asked, impatience in his voice, but anticipation too, as if he was getting exactly what he wanted out of Lot.

  “Well, on the future, real one. Do you have enough experience now that you can see into the future?”

  Kona rolled his eyes. “Each day has always been
a surprise to me.”

  “Sure. The future is inherently unknowable. No one can predict even the next moment. So what difference does it make if we are twenty years old or seventy-five or a thousand? None of us is really fit to gauge our next best move. Maybe, instead of lowering the voting age, we should raise it.”

  That drew an approving chuckle from the attentive ados. Lot watched them closely, willing them to belief. “Experience is an illusion. We’re faced with the unknown, and our judgment is equal.”

  Kona laughed … rousing Lot’s ire. But Lot knew he was able to do that only because he was a projected image, his human self locked safely away from the dangers of contact.

  “It’s not as simple as that,” Kona said. “Experience doesn’t mean only knowing what to do, but what not to do. Especially in the young, enthusiasm has been known to overcome good sense—”

  “Good sense?” Lot could hardly believe Kona would choose such vulnerable ground. “Has the council shown good sense? By hiding this city’s resource problems? By adopting the tactics of the Chenzeme and attacking a living world? A world fully capable of defending itself?”

  Kona didn’t try to answer. He held his silence, as if waiting… .

  Lot let instinct guide him. He stood slowly. Cameras tracked him. Millions of eyes were watching him tonight. Never before so many. A fine silver current seemed to flow through him and out, into the heat of the mob, before returning to him in a circular path. “What good sense did the council show when they condemned my father’s people to die in the packed corridor of the industrial core? Where in that action can goodness be found? Or sense? For all their experience of centuries, the council acted out of reflexive fear, and thousands of people died.” He turned back to Kona’s image, and asked, in a soft voice picked up by the camera bees and flung around the city: “If not goodness and sense, what is it that makes you qualified to determine our collective future?”