"Run ... ?"
"I guess Quell didn't tell you I'm a representative in the parliament?"
Jara frowned. Quell had told them nothing.
The crowds wandering the streets of Manila were alien in more than one sense. To begin with, they were simply larger than connectible crowds, a fact Jara attributed to the lack of multi technology. If you couldn't hop onto a red tile and materialize wherever you wanted to go in milliseconds, obviously you would spend more time traveling from place to place. Skin colors were a shade paler here than in most connectible cities Jara had seen, though by no means monochromatic. And on average, the Islanders appeared to be a centimeter or two taller than connectibles, though they were not the race of Brobdingnagian giants Jara had feared. Even here, Quell was a colossus.
Most disconcerting was the Islanders' odd notion of personal space. In the course of half a dozen city blocks, Jara was jostled, poked, prodded, and elbowed more than she had been in London the entire past year. People hugged one another and clasped hands to say hello. They slapped each other on the back and walked arm-in-arm. Jara felt an instinctive burst of disapproval. Just because you can touch the flesh of everyone you meet doesn't mean you have to fetishize it.
Suddenly Jara was clobbered by the absurdity of their predicament. She had spent several hours studying up on the history and the culture of the Islands, but now that preparation seemed laughably insufficient. She couldn't even remember what kind of monetary system these people used. Didn't it occur to you that this mission Quell's hiring you for could be dangerous? Horvil had asked her. And he had been correct. Without Bali Chandler, she could starve out here, or get beaten bloody, or wind up in a jail cell for violating some unknown taboo. And parliament representative or not, who knew how trustworthy this man Chandler really was?
Jara shuddered and quickened her step to keep up.
The four of them were headed towards a line of skyscrapers that divided the city like the pickets of a fence. Between the buildings sat an immense public square that might have made excellent parading grounds for an army. Chandler led them into the square underneath an archway inscribed with the stern directive to HONOR THE SPIRIT OF THE BAND OF TWELVE. Jara remembered the Band of Twelve from her readings: the Founding Fathers of the Islander movement, the ones who had cajoled, bartered, and negotiated (some say swindled) the land to build a new nation. As they walked past each of the skyscrapers in the square, Jara noticed a statue in front of each building bearing the likeness of one of the Band, frozen in an appropriately grandiose posture.
Jara scratched her head. "There's only seven buildings," she said. "Shouldn't there be twelve?"
"Oh, there will be," said Chandler breezily. "As soon as the government gets the money to build them."
"When will that be?"
"Hopefully before the Earth gets swallowed up in a fiery supernova, but I wouldn't count on it." The Islander stopped and pointed to the empty spaces at the far edge of the square, which were cordoned off and piled high with debris from long-dormant construction. "At least we've got our priorities straight. You'll notice that the five missing buildings belong to the tax evaders." His tone was jocular, but Jara could sense an undercurrent of disgust.
Chandler led them into the entrance of the westmost tower, a building constructed entirely in green-tinted permasteel and adorned with the effigy of a man named Micah Brayling. Inside, the building followed the ancient Western model of wide marble hallways and uncomfortably high ceilings.
The four of them made their way through corridor after corridor filled with Islanders wearing variations on Chandler's drab green uniform. A few had shock batons clasped at their sides, but most did notinspiring Jara to realize that she had not seen a single Council officer since crossing the unconnectible curtain. She felt surprisingly liberated.
Finally they arrived in a cozy conference room that looked more like a lounge than a place of hard-nosed business and diplomacy. In addition to a small conference table and its attendant chairs, the room had a wet bar stocked with various expensive liqueurs, a smattering of viewscreens, and a mammoth painting of some ancient battle fought with muskets and bayonets. "Just sit tight for a few minutes," said Chandler, giving Robby a farewell handshake before departing out the door.
Benyamin and Robby plopped down on two of the chairs while Jara examined the wet bar and tried to decide if pouring herself a drink would be appropriate. She was surprised to discover how emotionally draining this day had already been. She had left connectible civilization behind, embarked on a dangerous mission, and watched a team of Council officers spirit away the one man who could tell her what that mission was. A little rum was warranted.
"So we've learned two new pieces of information today," said Benyamin, combing his inky black hair with his fingers. "We learned that this mission of Quell's is being bankrolled by Magan Kai Lee, and we learned that he's being pursued by Len Borda."
Jara abandoned any thought of a drink and took the chair next to Robby instead. "This doesn't make any sense," she said. "Why would Quell team up with the Defense and Wellness Council? He loathes them. Didn't they kill his father?"
"He's not teaming up with the Council, per se," replied Ben. "He's teaming up with Magan Kai Lee, the man who's taken up arms against the Council."
"But Quell took up arms against him. And what's all this mystery surrounding Quell's son? When do we find out what's going on with him?"
"Looks like right about now," said Robby, as the door opposite began to open. A figure strode into the room and folded his arms across his chest. Jara let out a gasp.
It was Marcus Surina.
Jara rubbed her eyes incredulously and took a closer look at the young man who had walked into the room. Don't be a fool, Jara told herself. Marcus Surina died almost fifty years ago. Even if he managed to escape the shuttle explosion and jump in a time machine that instant, Marcus was in his fifties that day. This one can't be more than twenty-five.
So it was not Marcus Surina, then, but unmistakably a man with the same genetic heritage. He had the same insouciant handsomeness, the same piercing blue eyes, the same imposing ship's rudder of a nose as the great scientist. Moreover, he bore that indefinable sense of presence that all the Surinas bore going back to Sheldon: a surety about the world, a magnetic force that pulled friends and strangers alike into his orbit.
Bali Chandler had slipped in behind the young man unnoticed. "You shoulda seen him when he tried to grow the mustache," he said, amused at Jara's befuddlement. "Margaret had a fit."
Suddenly the tumblers fell into place. Quell's son ... a descendant of the Surinas ... which meant ... Jara didn't even realize she had stood up, but now she found herself flopping back down into her chair in shock. Robby Robby had his mouth open far wider than was appropriate, while Benyamin simply looked confused.
There's one mystery solved, thought Jara. Now we know what kind of relationship Quell had with Margaret Surina.
Josiah turned to greet the fiefcorpers with a diplomatic poise that seemed to come naturally to him, a poise that definitely sprang from the maternal side of the tree. "Towards Perfection," he said, offering a deep bow to the fiefcorpers. "As I'm sure you've guessed, I'm Josiah. Representative to the fourth ward of the Free Republic of the Pacific Islands." He turned to Chandler. "I believe you're right, Chandler. Now that I've cut my hair, I won't be able to hide the Surina in me for much longer."
Jara detected a message in the fact that the Islander had greeted his guests in the connectible fashion rather than in the custom of his own people. "I would say that we've heard a lot about you, but ..."
"But if you had," said Josiah, gently interrupting, "then half of the Surina family's investors would have jumped ship. Who wants to put money into an enterprise that's destined to be dismantled and parceled out to the Islanders?" Jara could hear both sarcasm and disillusionment interwoven in the young Islander's voice. He walked around the table and took a seat at the head of the table, while Bali Chandl
er took the chair to his right. "At least, that's the story I had always been told. But enough of that. Tell me what happened to my father."
He had that most rare combination of genetic traits: Margaret's charismatic intellectualism mixed with Quell's scythelike directness and immediacy. It was enough to inspire an instant feeling of trust in Jara. She related again the story of Quell's hiring them for this mysterious errand, of his perplexing hints about Josiah, of his capture by the Defense and Wellness Council.
"There was no violence?" asked Josiah. "He didn't try to take a shock baton to anyone this time, did he?"
"No," said Robby. "Quell just waltzed out the door with them."
"Of course," said Chandler, nodding. "Gorda doesn't want to risk anything happening to your father. Might need him for a bargaining chip."
From the corner of her eye, Jara could see Benyamin tamping down an outburst of frustration, but she decided to express her frustration first. "Gentlemen," she said firmly, "thank you very much for your hos pitality. Sincerely. But it's time someone started telling us what's going on. Quell brought us down here to help him with something. Something important, I assume. He told me there was a series of things that have to happen, or not happen."
"Looks like one of those things that wasn't supposed to happen, happened," muttered Chandler.
"Which was?"
"Len Borda wasn't supposed to find out who Josiah's mother was, obviously. It's bad enough that Magan found out. If Borda sent a team of white-robes to pick Quell up, then ..." He threw one hand up in the air and twirled it around as if prepping for a big finale. "Then he probably knows too." He let the hand plummet back to the tabletop.
"We're not trying to be rude," snapped Ben, his patience finally shattering. "But Margaret's gone. She's with the Null Current. Who cares if Borda finds out now?"
Josiah and Chandler traded questioning looks. Jara knew that Con- fidentialWhispers were impossible without functioning neural OCHREs, but she could have sworn that the two Islanders were conducting a mental conversation anyway.
"My father trusted them," said Josiah finally. "He wanted them here. Brief them, Chandler."
The older man frowned. "Even ... ?"
"In forty-eight hours, everyone's going to know anyway. So yes, tell them. Tell them everything."
17
Not every building in connectible territory was collapsible, so Jara had ridden in plenty of elevators before. But connectible elevators were usually equipped with SeeNaRee to make the ride less tedious, or at the least, interactive viewscreens. The elevator here in the Micah Brayling building, however, was a cramped, slow-moving box whose single viewscreen did nothing but dumbly repeat the same advertisement for waterfront real estate at twenty-second intervals. Chandler paid it no mind, but after three repetitions Jara was ready to claw the screen out with her bare hands.
As the box continued its sluggish climb, Benyamin and Robby tried to make small talk about sports with the Islander representative. (The Islanders had their own soccer league, but Union Baseball was almost completely unknown here.) Jara was too preoccupied with the young Surina they had left back in the lounge below to pay their conversation any mind.
Another Surina in the world, she thought. An heir to Sheldon, Prengal, Marcus, and now Margaret. How could you keep such a thing secret?
Concealing a secret of that magnitude was no simple undertaking, especially for a family whose every movement was scrutinized by drudges with high-tech tools at their disposal. Josiah's offhanded comment about his haircut led Jara to believe that the resemblance had only recently become an issue. As for Margaret, concealing her pregnancy presented little problem, assuming she followed the regular connectible practice of leaving the fetus to gestate in a hive. But to nurture and parent a child to adulthood in secret? To keep any mention of that child off the Data Sea altogether? That would require an enormous amount of trust in those around you, not to mention prodigious sums of money and inhuman diligence. Unless ...
Unless you sent the child away to the Islands at birth.
Yes, suppose you entrusted the child to the care of his father's family in Manila while you remained in Andra Pradesh. Suppose you kept your distance from that child, both physically and emotionally, and relegated the parenting chores to the father. Suppose that father already had an excuse to shuttle back and forth to the Islands on a regular basis. Yes, Jara supposed in those extreme circumstances it could be done.
Still, the question remained: why?
Jara knew it was pointless to draw conclusions without having all the facts in hand. But she couldn't help wondering how much this explained Quell's orneriness and his peculiar relationship with Margaret, the way he seemed to be both her closest confidant and just another palace functionary. The fiefcorp master resolved to ask the Islander about it the next time she saw him ... provided she did see him again.
Don't be ridiculous, thought Jara. Remember what Chandler said. Quell will be fine.
"Here we are," said Bali Chandler.
The elevator shuddered to a halt at the building's sixty-fifth (and uppermost) floor. The Islander led Jara, Benyamin, and Robby through a nondescript hallway, up a restricted staircase, and onto the building's roof.
Evening was already gathering around Manila, and up here atop the Micah Brayling building the dusktime parade of lights was breathtaking. Unlike connectible cities, where the mass transit vehicles stayed mostly on the ground, here in Manila the transportation network extended up nearly as far as the skyline. Jara was astounded to see tube trains skating from rooftop to rooftop, something she had not noticed during the day. She supposed if TubeCo could figure out how to extend tracks to the depths of the ocean floor, suspending them twenty or thirty stories wasn't such a difficult feat.
Chandler led the three of them to an outcropping on the edge of the roof. He reached into the pocket of his coat and withdrew what looked like a pair of ancient spectacles. The Islander put them to his eyes momentarily and gazed off into the distance, then handed them to Jara. "Here, take a look. Follow the beacon between the third and fourth towers and all the way to the horizon."
Jara put the lenses to her face gingerly, careful not to let her fingers touch the glass. Of course, she thought. Not spectacles-a telescope. In connectible lands, where you could activate a thousand telescopic and remote camera programs with a thought, such devices were only a curiosity. But here in the Islands ... Jara tried to call up one of those programs now and discovered that it had been banned by Dogmatic Opposition. So she squinted through the glass where Chandler directed her and found herself looking offshore to the east.
At a cluster of Defense and Wellness Council hoverbirds hovering in the mist.
"Now follow the arc around to your left, there's five more beacons there," said Chandler. Jara did, swiveling the view around tube trains, puzzle piece buildings, and industrial cargo ships to find the digital beacons. She saw five more clumps of ghostly white hovercraft, floating inertly over the water perhaps a kilometer from shore.
"Borda's?" asked Jara.
"Those are Len Borda's," replied Chandler. "And those"-he turned in place and pointed about thirty degrees clockwise-"are Magan Kai Lee's."
Jara handed the glasses to Benyamin, who gazed at the horizon with visibly mounting anger before passing them to Robby. The channeler stared, drew in a breath, and whistled.
"You're going to have to explain this to me," fumed Benyamin. "We're not in fucking colonial times here. Why does the Defense and Wellness Council care what happens in the Islands? Sure, sometimes you people launch attacks against the connectibles, and I understand deterrence. But why would either Borda or Lee want to invade? No offense-but the Council pretty much has you boxed in here as it is."
Bali Chandler was leaning back on the railing on his elbows, enjoying the early evening breeze blowing through his frizzy hair. "You'd be surprised," he said. "Did you know that Borda's been trying to block the import of permasteel into the Islands for about a
decade now?"
The young apprentice shook his head, not quite seeing the point.
"Requires tungsten to make it, and there's no tungsten out here in the Pacific Islands. So Borda thought he could stifle us by setting up blockades to keep the permasteel out. Can't build stuff like this without it." Chandler rapped his knuckles on the cold metal of the railing. "You'd think it'd be impossible to get huge tankers of permasteel through a Council blockade, right? And yet"-the Islander representative swept his hand towards the six other towers ringing City Center, all reflecting that unique permasteel glow-"it hasn't even slowed us down."
Jara studied the outcropping on which they stood and noticed that the entire thing was composed of a single sheet of metal, only centimeters thick. She shook her head. They lived at the zenith of an information age, yet so much of geopolitics still revolved around the movements of ponderous cargo ships and rusty tankers.
"So where do you get your permasteel from?" asked Robby.
"Ah," said Chandler with a toothy grin. "Ain't telling. State secret."
Robby seemed to appreciate the Islanders' resourcefulness, but Benyamin was not placated. "Smuggling permasteel is one thing," he said. "Standing up against Council armies is another."
"Is it?" The Islander representative turned and leaned on the railing with a prideful gaze out onto the city. "As I said before-you'd be surprised. Borda hasn't been nearly as successful boxing us in as you think. They've got to write an entirely different kind of black code to deal with us, because the normal stuff won't work. And it's hard to write black code to disable the enemy's OCHREs when you're not even sure what OCHREs the enemy's got. But ..." Chandler stretched his arms up over his head, cracked his neck idly, then turned to face the fiefcorpers again. "In the end, you're right, Benyamin. We couldn't stand up to a full assault by the Council. That's no state secret. All we can do is make it prohibitively expensive for them to try. So the only thing Len Borda's done up to this point is harass us. Check our growth. Try to stop our permasteel shipments."
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