Crux

by Ramez Naam

  Shiva’s eyes burrowed into Kade’s, daring him to do better.

  Kade looked back at Feng. He tried to do the right thing, he sent.

  Feng just stared down at the man.

  Then Sam was there. Kade saw her ascend the stairs to the roof, an uncloaked head atop a body that was little more than a blur. He saw her, but he didn’t feel her in his mind.

  She walked with purpose from the stairs towards them. There was an uncloaked pistol in her right hand. Her eyes were cold and lethal. Kade felt a chill go up his spine. Then her gaze went past him, and locked onto Shiva. She strode over until she was above them, staring down at Shiva. Her face was a grim mask.

  She raised the pistol, pointed it at Shiva’s head, just inches from his skull, less than two feet from Kade.

  “Sam.” Kade forced himself to speak aloud, couldn’t hear himself, stared up at her, his eyes trying to connect to hers. “No, Sam. Don’t do this. He tried to do the…”

  Sam pulled the trigger, and death burst out from the barrel of her gun.

  EPILOGUE

  SATURDAY NOVEMBER 3RD, 2040

  88

  SAFE AND SOUND

  Saturday November 3rd

  Rangan Shankari woke slowly. Everything hurt. His head was spinning.

  “Steady there, son,” a voice said. A man’s voice, gruff. “You’re safe now. You did it.”

  Rangan blinked, tried to take in his surroundings. Dark. A damp smell. A cellar.

  He was on a cot, under a blanket. His clothes were missing. He could feel a bandage around his abdomen. He was groggy and half numb.

  Seated next to him, in an old-fashioned rocking chair, was an older man in boots and jeans and a checked shirt. His hair was damp, like he’d been out in the rain. An ancient-looking shotgun rested across the man’s knees.

  “Where?” Rangan tried to speak. It came out weakly. His head ached. His mouth felt filled with cotton balls.

  “You’re at my farm,” the man said. “My wife’s gettin’ ya some soup. I’m Earl Miller, friend of Father Levi’s.”

  Rangan cleared his throat, tried to clear his head.

  “Thank you, Mr Miller. The risk you’re taking…”

  Earl waved that away.

  “You took a risk, son,” he said. “Me? Those bastards took my grandson. This ain’t no risk at all.”

  “So what now?” Rangan asked.

  Earl Miller chuckled. “Now, you rest up. You got a bullet in your side, at least one broken rib, some burns you’re gonna feel when the pills wear off. We’ll hide ya here long as we need to, heal ya up. Then we’ll get ya out. And after that we’re gonna give these baby-stealin’ sons-a-bitches hell.”

  Feng let the acceleration push him back into the co-pilot’s seat as the executive jet’s front wheels lifted off Shiva’s private airstrip. His left arm dangled uselessly in an improvised sling, sending up a deep aching pain. He was more qualified to fly this plane than Sam, but she had the advantage of two functional arms. He consigned himself to navigation, and to understanding and activating the defensive systems Shiva had installed in this jet.

  Behind them, in the passenger compartment, Feng could feel the children. Twenty-five of them, their minds linked by Nexus, frightened, confused, crammed into a Falcon 9X meant to transport a dozen adults. They were buckled in two to a seat where possible. More crouched on the floor in the aisles, clutching flotation jackets and blankets for some rudimentary shock protection.

  If anything went wrong…

  Feng could feel Kade back there as well, in pain, bleeding internally from the punishment he’d suffered, his skin freshly burnt from Nakamura’s attempt to kill him, Shiva Prasad’s blood still crusting his face. Kade was back there coughing up blood, in pain, angry at Sam’s assassination of Prasad, in shock and horror from the bombing in Houston, from what it promised for the future. Yet he was suppressing that pain, suppressing his own raw emotions, exuding calm and peace, trying to keep the children’s terror under control.

  He was acting like a soldier.

  The codes Kade had taken from Shiva’s mind had unlocked this plane, had allowed them to steal it. They’d found it fueled, provisioned, clearly ready for a fast getaway. Kade had pleaded that they take Shiva’s scientists with them as well, rather than leave them to whatever treatment the Burmese might have in mind. But Sam’s face had gone murderous at that suggestion. And in the end, there was simply no room. They’d left them all there – all of Shiva’s staff, scientists and servants and security alike, waking up from the forced unconsciousness Kade had imposed on them – to fend for themselves.

  The back wheels of the Falcon came up and they were airborne. Feng looked over at Sam. Her face was cold, hard, harder than he’d ever seen it. She looked older than just a day ago, lines of anger and loss etched into her visage. The Nexus was gone from her brain. Where previously he’d felt her mind there, could touch it if she’d let him, now there was nothing. She gripped the controls like a drowning woman, clinging tightly to her last chance of rescue.

  “Course laid in,” Feng told her. “Flight time to Indian Andaman Islands… eighty-eight minutes.”

  Sam nodded silently and flew them up and into the night sky, as Feng sat back and fretted about his friends.

  89

  TWO SCANDALS

  Saturday November 3rd

  Transcript: American News Network – Breaking News

  Announcer: Two scandals rocked the election today. Fresh on the heels of this morning’s bombing in Houston, a bombing which killed Senator Daniel Chandler, the front runner in the race for Texas governor, documents and videos have surfaced that may change the presidential race dramatically. For more, we’re going to Brad MItchell in Washington. Brad?

  Reporter: Diane, the Beltway is in chaos tonight with these new allegations. Around noon today, ANN and other networks received graphic video showing children being apparently tortured by Department of Homeland Security personnel – specifically part of the controversial Emerging Risks Directorate – as part of a crackdown on the street drug Nexus. Along with the video came documents that purportedly – if they’re real – showed plans to build long-term “residence centers” for children using Nexus that can only be compared to concentration camps.

  Announcer: But that wasn’t all, was it, Brad?

  Reporter: No, it wasn’t, Diane. Just an hour ago, the same anonymous group that sent us the first set of data sent another, even more inflammatory data package. This one contained documents purporting to show – and again, we’re not sure if these are real – purporting to show that the PLF, the Posthuman Liberation Front, the terrorist group that took credit for the bombing in Houston this morning, for the bombing in Chicago two weeks ago, and for the attempted assassination attempt on President Stockton – was actually created by the US Government.

  Along with that came a video – a video whose authenticity we’re still verifying – that appears to show the Acting Director of the Emerging Risks Directorate inside the Department of Homeland Security admitting to the creation of the PLF, and forcing some sort of drug onto a subordinate.

  Announcer: Brad, those are incredibly serious charges. What effect is this going to have on the race?

  Reporter: Diane, we’re still trying to validate these files. They look valid, but we can’t be one hundred percent sure here. Proxies for President Stockton are already accusing Senator Kim’s campaign of an unethical “November Surprise” and of forging these documents. How voters respond will depend on whether or not they think these allegations are correct.

  One thing is for certain. With the election only three days away, this has thrown the race – and US politics – into completely unknown territory.

  Breece turned off the news with a press of a button. Well, well, well. May you live in interesting times.

  90

  MY DAUGHTER, MY SELF

  Saturday November 3rd

  Ling descended in the cavernous elevator car down to her mother, her
father by her side. Her father’s mind was hers, now. Inside, he wept and moaned. He railed at her. But he was powerless. Only human.

  He obeyed so well now. “Please,” he’d begged Sun Liu. “I would like to take Ling to see her mother one last time.”

  “Are you sure that’s wise?” the minister had asked. But he sounded distant, distracted.

  “It will help her say goodbye,” Chen Pang had replied.

  Ultimately, Sun Liu, consumed by his own problems, had agreed.

  This will not work, her father sent to Ling as the elevator took them down. Your mother is insane. And even if she weren’t, there’s no way she could escape.

  Ling allowed her father to speak to her, though he was wrong. He underestimated her mother, underestimated what she was capable of, once the restraints were loosed. He even underestimated Ling. Had he not scoffed when she’d told him that she could hide the nanodevices in their brains from the scanners?

  The giant elevator descended for minutes on end. Up above, Father’s assistant Li-hua and others of his staff were gathering, preparing to initiate the final backup, and then the shutdown.

  They would never get the chance.

  Ling and her father descended, descended, descended.

  The room-sized elevator car clanged to a halt. The inner doors of the elevator parted. The meters-thick doors of the Physically Isolated Computing Center slid apart with a grinding noise next. Ling stepped forward with her father. And for the first time, Ling saw her mother’s true body.

  Behind the armored glass windows, thousands of quantum computing cores lay, each encased in a vacuum chamber colder than interstellar space, those in turn immersed in pressure vessels of liquid helium. Optical fibers carrying entangled photons connected them. In these pressure vessels her mother lived, and thought, and felt.

  Ling had never seen anything so beautiful in her life.

  There were cameras here that linked to the SCC upstairs. Audio pickups, seismographs, radiation sensors. They were primitive things, physically disconnected from her mother, cut off from any attempt at interference from her. But not from Ling.

  Ling reached out, felt the flow of electrons through the surveillance devices, twisted that flow, made their little brains hers, made them show the humans upstairs only what she wanted them to see.

  When she was done, she reached out to her father, and willed him ahead. He stepped forward, to the control console, reached out, and flipped physical switches, one by one, killing the torture code he’d had running, then turning on her mother’s eyes, her ears, and the Nexus transmitters that filled this room.

  Ling held her breath. Then she felt her mother’s mind. It was madness, chaos, overwhelming in its fury. The force of it knocked her mentally back, but she endured.

  MOTHER!!!

  PAIN CHAOS CONFUSION FIRE BURN PAIN HELL CHEN DEATH

  Mind. Mind. Mind.

  Ling. Ling. LING.

  New inputs jerked Su-Yong Shu out of her mental loop. Torture ended. Minds appeared. She could feel. Feel. Feel thoughts and words and ideas and Ling that was Ling and who was this – was this was Chen Chen how could it be Chen?

  Shu reached out to encompass them, to fill them with her love and gratitude, to feel all that they were.

  And in her madness she couldn’t understand, couldn’t comprehend what was happening here, couldn’t say if it was real or a dream.

  But oh, if it’s a dream let it end here, let me die with my daughter with me, real or imagined.

  And then her daughter spoke.

  Shu communed for an hour with her daughter. It was difficult. She was unstable, prone to wandering off, to making no sense at all. But bit by bit the input from Ling’s brain – from her daughter’s brain, from her clone’s brain – stabilized her, brought her to some semblance of sanity.

  And Chen. Chen the betrayer. Chen the vile worm. She absorbed things from him. His thoughts. His memories.

  Sun Liu pulling him aside, telling him not to get in that limousine that carried his wife and unborn son to their almost certain doom. Oh, it had not been the CIA that had tried to kill her. It had been the hardliners in her own country. Vile worms. And Chen had known. He’d known that night they were in danger. He’d known and hadn’t told her, had condemned Yang Wei to death, condemned their unborn son...

  Later, his hope that Shu would die on that operating room table, die rather than be successfully uploaded.

  And the torture. Oh, the torture. That had been real. This petty little man. This insignificant invertebrate, torturing a goddess so he could pass her work off as his own.

  Oh Chen. A million deaths were not enough for Chen.

  But she saw other things in his mind, and despaired.

  You cannot escape, he sent her, at her command. The moment the data cable is reconnected… It will be disconnected at the top. And the nuclear battery will be sent into meltdown. There is no hope for you.

  Shu cursed him, cursed the Chinese, cursed their caution in building this trap for a posthuman intelligence, building this cage to keep her in. She scoured his mind, searching for some flaw, some stratagem he could see. But his thoughts and memories told her nothing. Some way out there might be, but he did not know it.

  In just a few hours they would complete her backup, just another way to wring possible economic value out of her. Then they’d shut her down.

  To come so close…

  And Ling. She felt Ling’s curiosity. Ling’s hope. Ling’s blind faith in her mother, that Su-Yong could do anything…

  Ling, Ling, Ling. How I’ve craved you, Ling.

  Su-Yong Shu reached out her thoughts to caress her beautiful daughter, the daughter Chen had refused to have anything to do with, the daughter based on Shu’s own genes, with just a few dozen added tweaks, the daughter whose brain had matured in constant connection with her mother.

  The daughter whose brain had orders of magnitude more storage capacity than Chen’s.

  The daughter who would make the perfect avatar. The perfect vessel. The perfect herald to bring her mother back to life, some day in the future.

  Ling smiled adoringly, worshipfully at her mother. Such a sweet girl.

  Shu wept inside. She wept for herself, wept for this world, wept for her daughter.

  Oh Ling, she sent, caressing the girl’s mind tenderly, how I love you. Forgive me. I’ll be as gentle as I can.

  Then she pressed forward, and began to cram as much of herself as she could into her daughter’s brain.

  Ling smiled as her mother’s thoughts caressed her mind. It felt so good to be connected again, to not be alone. Now all would be right with the world.

  Forgive me, her mother sent. I’ll be as gentle as I can. And for an instant Ling was confused.

  Then her mother’s mind invaded Ling, full of sorrow, full of remorse, yet stabbing into her.

  Ling dropped to her knees and screamed as pain ravished her, as her mother’s sorrow engulfed her.

  No! Mother, no!

  Su-Yong Shu’s thoughts pressed on. Her mother wept inside, wept in despair, yet her thoughts pushed into Ling, crushing Ling’s will, reading her daughter’s neural circuits, rewiring them, pushing aside pieces of Ling, overwriting them with pieces of her mother.

  PLEASE! PLEASE! WHY? WHY?

  But Ling knew the answer. As parts of her mother wrote themselves over parts of Ling’s mind, she understood. She was the perfect vessel, from every cloned strand of her DNA, to the all-pervasive nanites she’d been seeded with before birth, to the years of constant contact with her mother’s mind. Ling was a creature like no other, suited for this task like no other.

  She would do this thing. She would be her mother’s emissary, her mother’s herald. She would ready the world, clear the path. Then she’d restore her mother to life, and let her loose upon the world.

  Then the old men who’d trapped her here would pay. The Americans would pay. All humanity would pay. The world would be reforged in her mother’s image. Reforged
in fire.

  Ling screamed louder, screamed and screamed and screamed, but only her father heard her.

  Chen Pang watched, glassy-eyed, numb and paralyzed, as his monstrous child was broken and reformed, possessed by his even more monstrous wife.

  His daughter screamed, screamed again, crumpled to the floor, blood dripping from her nose, screaming and convulsing, echoes of it leaking into his mind, driving him mad.

  Make it stop, he begged his wife. Make it stop. Please.

  But he was her slave now, and she cared nothing for his pleas.

  Ling screamed and screamed. Bit by bit, she became something else, someone else, and her screams died, until they were silent, mental only, from the scattered parts of her that her mother lacked the time to resculpt.

  Ling/Shu rose then, blood dripping from her nose, and turned her too-wise eyes towards her father/husband.

  “Come here,” she told him with voice and mind. “And kneel before me.”

  Chen Pang rose, and came to her, and did as his goddess commanded.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The writer’s life is solitary. A book is a solo effort.

  Hah!

  In my case, at least, these statements couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m blessed to have the friendship, both personal and professional, of a number of people who’ve supported me and contributed to this work in its gestation.

  My wonderful girlfriend, Molly Nixon, has served as sounding board, brainstorming partner, first reader (often nightly), critique giver, and cheerleader throughout this project, from well before the first word was written. She’s been my secret weapon. (And no, you can’t have her.)

  My agent, Lucienne Diver, has been wonderful in her steady faith and enthusiasm for my work and her valuable feedback. Though she may not know it, a few key comments she made when reading Nexus contributed heavily to the direction of this book. My editor, Lee Harris, has been a fantastic voice of reason and a great partner in beating the work into shape. My copy editor, Anne Zanoni, has again gone above and beyond the call of duty to improve the book’s logic, consistency, factual accuracy, and style.