The Bohr Maker

by Linda Nagata

  But the rock swept past. It hurtled beneath him. Or he tumbled past it. At jet speeds he spun over the plain of ice and rock and back into open space, wobbling in a mad, helpless rotation. He caught a glimpse of Phousita and Arif. They were far beyond him now, at least half a klick, small white entangled figures. A shadow swept over them. They disappeared. Then reappeared moments later, black silhouettes against a blue ocean. They were going to hit the surface. He knew it. They were going to hit. He spun away.

  He felt the presence of the House at his back like a thousand gravities. When he completed his rotation he was facing a wall of blue. He could see the spongy surface texture of the lower House. It couldn’t be more than twenty meters away. It seemed to fill the Universe. He’d seldom come exploring here. There were no trees. Nothing to hold on to. Just a curving plain of blue that seemed to fill the Universe. Home. Only fifteen meters away. Then ten. Then unbelievably, five. He stretched his body out, reaching for it, knowing the impact would kill him and not caring, wanting only to go home.

  His long fingers brushed the surface, meeting no more resistance than he might have met from atmosphere. He cartwheeled into an insubstantial blue sea. Blue light blazed on every side. Then suddenly, darkness. The sea rapidly thickened. His spin slowed, then ceased altogether as the gelatinous matrix enfolded him with all the protective warmth of a mother’s womb.

  Chapter

  24

  Kirstin’s ghost arrived in the atrium of the commander of the Galapagos. Beryl was a hard-line cop with a buzz cut and a system-wide reputation for molecular intolerance. She and Kirstin went back a long way, and they welcomed each other with a hearty hug. When the clinch eased, the commander leaned back and treated Kirstin to a wide grin. “Fried his glass ass,” she announced.

  “Nikko Jiang-Tibayan?” Kirstin asked eagerly. “You got him?”

  Beryl nodded. “It was close. He was only a few klicks off the station when we got a video ID. We had to fire a sweetie right through the arc of rotation. Real cute. Nailed him in his nuclear ass.”

  Kirstin felt a thrill of triumph. Nikko had almost sneaked past her again, but not quite. “Nature. I wish I could have seen it happen. Bet the BOD’s screaming about the rads, though.”

  The commander frowned. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But except for a little grousing from traffic control, Summer House hasn’t said a word. You’d think we were exterminators they’d hired to do a job.”

  Kirstin felt a brush of concern then. It wasn’t like the board of directors to lose an opportunity to file a complaint against the police. “You sure you hit them?”

  “Sure. They’re dust.”

  She kissed the commander on the cheek. “Dock the ship, then. I’ve got a corpse warming up and a warrant to arrest Fox. I’ll meet you in the city.”

  As soon as Kirstin emerged from the mausoleum, she summoned the contingent of officers stationed at the House. The Galapagos was still in the process of docking, but she could begin her investigation with the staff on hand.

  “The first thing we do is find Fox,” she told the reluctant police captain, the same man she’d visited weeks ago on her first inspection of the House. His tour of duty was nearly over now. He’d already submitted his resignation and accepted full House citizenship. Obviously, he didn’t like the situation one bit.

  “They’re hiding him,” the captain said. “The House won’t say where he is.”

  Kirstin’s eyes narrowed in irritation. “We have a warrant,” she informed him. The data Gates had already been instructed to filter his ghost.

  The police captain nodded nervously. “That’s fine. We’ll need to take it to the corporate offices and get someone to open the House security system to us.”

  Her frown deepened. “We’ve got Hunter Makers. We can find him on our own.”

  The police captain averted his gaze. “Could be,” he said. “But the hunt will be easier if we go through channels.”

  She glared at him in open indignation. “You’re saying our Hunter Makers won’t work here?”

  He glanced at her, then quickly looked away. “No, no, I’m not saying that at all. If that were the case, I would have reported it, wouldn’t I?”

  “Damn right.” If he hadn’t reported it, she’d have him up on charges.

  “It’s the organic nature of Summer House,” he explained. “We can’t just flush our Hunters through the air system. There’s a lot of polymorphic tissue to inspect. It could take hours.”

  She was not convinced. But for the moment, she agreed to go along. “All right,” she said. “To the corporate offices then.”

  The corridors seemed oddly empty. When they did encounter people, it was mostly children, playing tag and hide-and-seek and other games. The few adults they saw were openly hostile, scowling at the contingent of police officers.

  They found the corporate offices nearly deserted. A few kids were playing in the outer rooms. They scattered when the cops showed up. The desk consoles had all been shut down and wouldn’t reactivate when Kirstin punched in an experimental command. She glared questioningly at the local police captain, but he only shrugged, his face creasing in worry. “I’ve never seen it like this before,” he said. “They’re usually fully staffed here, round the clock.”

  He led them on. The doors to the various offices stood open, but one after another, they found each room empty, the consoles unresponsive. Finally, they came to the president’s office: Fox’s old haunt. This door was closed, but it slid aside at the request of the police captain.

  A red-haired figure sat behind the desk, idly swiveling from side to side in the office chair. For a moment Kirstin thought she’d found Fox. Her eyes widened. She started forward. Then the chair’s occupant looked up.

  He was a teenage kid. His gaze met hers. Amusement glittered in his eyes. His face was a study in insolent self-assurance, as if he’d discovered the big bad wolf had rotten teeth. When she saw that expression, she felt a sharp pang of worry.

  “We’re looking for Fox,” the police captain said.

  The kid’s gaze remained fixed on Kirstin. “Fox is gone.” He had the effrontery to actually grin.

  Kirstin carefully pulled a wrap over her outrage. “Gone where?” she asked between gritted teeth.

  “Well, nobody knows. He’s just gone. All his personal files, too, if you want to know.” The kid leaned back in his chair; kicked his feet up on the desk. “Sound like a suicide to you?”

  Kirstin glared for a long, cold moment. “Where’s the corporate staff?” she asked. “Who is acting president?”

  “Well, the staff stepped out for a few minutes, you see. But I’m still here. I’m the new president.” He laughed again, then popped a stick of gum into his mouth.

  Two hours of searching turned up no sign of Fox, or any other member of the corporation’s Board of Directors. Sometime during that interval, the police captain also disappeared. After Kirstin discovered his absence, she ordered the rest of the local officers aboard the Galapagos, which had finally completed docking procedures at the central tether. House personnel had not assisted in the process. The staff was ostensibly on holiday and officially the dock was closed, while all corporate citizens observed a day of grieving over the supposed suicide of Fox, their corporate father. There didn’t seem to be any formal ceremonies.

  The police manhunt continued. When a few members of Fox’s staff turned up, Kirstin summoned them to the Galapagos for questioning. But nobody would admit to knowing where the missing corporate members had gone, or who had overseen Nikko’s resurrection. They gave her no useful information at all, and when she threatened them, they showed no fear.

  So she released the Hunter Makers into the city—three waves of them over a ninety-minute period. Six hours later none of them had obeyed their programmed limit and returned, leaving her with the inescapable conclusion that something out there was eating them. It seemed impossible. She should have had the best arsenal in existence. Yet her finest molecula
r devices failed to return.

  The hunt took on a critical feel. Summer House was not like other cities. She couldn’t just run the dogs through the corridors. The corridors represented only a small part of the body of Summer House. Manufacturing facilities and secure labs were set away from the inhabited levels and could only be accessed through the transit system. The multitudinous levels of the forest had to be accessed on foot. But what concerned her most was the uninhabited and unimproved zone between the outer oceans and the inner city. The area consisted of little more than mass: an undifferentiated gelatinous medium through which the lanes of the transit system passed. Fox could hide a world in that vast, interstitial space. But without the Hunter Makers, she had no way to inspect it.

  Her frustration grew with the passing hours. Instinct told her a whirl of activity was proceeding just beyond her perceptions, yet she couldn’t access it. The situation was slipping out of her control.

  Chapter

  25

  Phousita felt herself cradled in a warm, thick darkness. She was alone. Arif had been torn from her arms when she’d died. She must have died. And been reborn, or at least conceived in the womb of a new mother. Her memories trailed after her, a continuous stream linking her to a life now past. She surveyed that fact with wonder. The darkness shifted around her. A voice spoke in her mind. No. It was no voice. It was the memory of a voice, someone questioning her: who are you? A voice as warm and reassuring as the darkness.

  “Phousita,” she whispered. But she couldn’t speak. Her own voice went out through her atrium. In that moment, when she spoke her name, she understood that she had not been reborn. She was still the same unworthy creature she’d always been. “But where am I?” The words were a subvocalized whisper, but the darkness understood.

  She’d entered the body of Summer House: the knowledge came to her not as a voice, but as a memory, newly retrieved.

  Summer House.

  She must learn more. She began to compose a spell of tiny servants to explore this place, then stopped. She still wore the suit, the helmet, the blinding gloves. “May I remove these garments?” she asked.

  It would be safe. The House would evacuate a transit bubble around her.

  The gentle pressure of the darkness receded. She could feel soft walls forming under her hands, like smooth, boneless flesh. She felt herself sink until her booted feet touched a curved floor. Then a thin, blue phosphorescence developed around her, gradually brightening, illuminating the interior of a spherical chamber barely large enough to hold her.

  She worked at the clasp of her helmet until it snapped open, then she lifted the burdensome thing from her head. A puff of warm, moist air greeted her. She breathed it in deeply. Ah, so much better than the nasty cold stuff in the suit.

  She punched experimentally at the control panel of her suit until the garment finally released its form-fitting grip. It sagged into a thin, over-sized unit. She peeled it off and stepped out, leaving it in a heap on the floor. Her hands glinted in shiny, moist patches. She clapped them gently together, and her eager servants leapt away in a minute cloud of mist. From the House she sensed a sudden disquiet, but she chose to ignore it. “Where is Arif?” she asked.

  Arif: the House had established communications with him. He’d entered the House with suit damage and was being transported to the infirmary for treatment of his injuries. The House expected a full recovery.

  Phousita swallowed hard against a sudden knot of tension. “And where is—” It took a discernable effort even to say the hated name. “Where is Nikko?”

  She’d glimpsed him just before the ocean swallowed her up. His trajectory had changed. He’d been hit by a piece of debris that sent him careening in a wild spin over the edge of the world.

  The House needed clarification. Did Phousita refer to the corporate citizen Nikko Jiang-Tibayan?

  “Yes.” An unsettling mixture of delight and dread ran through her veins as she anticipated the House response.

  The House was unaware of the present location of Nikko Jiang-Tibayan.

  She sagged down against the floor of the transit bubble, her naked body pressed against the discarded suit. So Nikko had never returned to the House. He’d plunged past the edge of the world. He’d missed this sanctuary and fallen into the void.

  She felt a pious joy, a righteous triumph at that terrible accident. But why? How could she despise him so?

  Abruptly, she sensed an approaching presence. She sat up, as the illumination began to fade from a tall section of the sphere. The curved wall thinned, then it drew apart like contracting flesh, revealing the interior of another blue-lit sphere and an old man with wild, gray-streaked hair that took the color of old blood in the cold light.

  “Fox,” she whispered.

  He looked at her askance, perhaps embarrassed by her nudity. The lines in his face were deeper than she remembered. No. These were Sandor’s memories. He seemed gaunt, his shoulders bowed. He reeked of grief.

  “You made it,” he said, as if he could hardly believe it himself. “We were watching for you. We saw it all. We tried to warn you, but Nikko wouldn’t answer.”

  “His atrium was dead,” Phousita said.

  Fox stared at her, aghast. Fox had engineered the destruction of Nikko’s atrium. Phousita wanted to say something to comfort him, but an alien sense of contempt held her back. Leander Bohr did not like Fox anymore than he liked Nikko.

  Fox swallowed hard. He seemed to gather himself. “I don’t suppose . . . in all the chaos . . . you managed to—” His lips trembled. His forehead shone with sweat. “Sandor?” he croaked.

  Phousita turned half away from him, repulsed at the thought of giving Sandor to this man. Until she realized he’d asked for Sandor, not the Maker. He was the first person she’d encountered who hadn’t shown an active interest in that talent. She blinked, and quickly looked back at him. “Can you make him live again?”

  “If the code is good, maybe. Maybe. But time’s growing short. The biogenesis function’s been initiated. We have to bring Sandor back now, before it’s too late.”

  Phousita nodded slowly, uncertain of his intent.

  “It’s a dangerous time,” Fox explained softly. “The cops have guessed Nikko came out of the biogenesis function. They’ve got a warrant to inspect the code, and of course to interrogate me—though I’m not going to be around to talk to them. We have to keep them doubting long enough to make good our escape.”

  “Your escape?” Phousita asked. She had thought Summer House might be a kind of sanctuary.

  Fox nodded shakily. “We’ve taken a vote on it,” he said. “And we won’t give up what we’ve gained. The biogenesis function is our only insurance, and we aren’t going to let the cops take that away from us. Here. Here’s the electronic address where you can send Sandor’s code.”

  She recorded the address in her atrium. There was an awkward silence. “You’ll send it soon?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  He seemed ready to go, but he hesitated. “Your friend Arif was injured by shrapnel. He’s in the infirmary. He’ll be all right. The cops won’t recognize him. It’s best, though, if you stay here. The cops think you’re dead. They didn’t see you jump ship. They won’t be looking for you, so you’ll be all right too if you stay out of sight.”

  Again, he seemed ready to go. But again, something held him back. “We can’t find Nikko,” he said.

  She felt herself stiffen. “I know.”

  “I can bring him back, of course. His code’s still in the biogenesis function. But it won’t be the same. His memories will be antique. He’d changed a lot, you know. He’d learned a lot from you.”

  She shuddered. Nikko had tried to murder her. That’s what she’d believed when he’d flung her and Arif from the ship. But moments later the ship had exploded. So really, he’d saved her life. And he was Sandor’s brother. She loved him too. She knew it. She didn’t hate him. The contempt was Leander’s, not hers. She bowed her head, as a stor
m of conflicting emotions welled up inside her.

  She could not go on like this.

  She hadn’t visited the valley since the terrible storm. When she finally returned, she was surprised to see how much the forest had recovered from the assault of winds. The trees were sending out new leaves of soft green and dull gold. The air was still. And the sun, where it filtered through the canopy, nourished with its heat.

  She coalesced out of mist, to stand on a smooth spill of rock just outside the mouth of a small cave. She was nude. The sunlight touched her brown skin with tender hands. Her hair hung loose and long, brushing the small of her back. She felt strong, but dirty too.

  Sandor seemed to sense that. He’d been sitting just inside the mouth of the cave, cross-legged, his skin a little darker than she remembered. He jumped to his feet when he saw her. “Phousita!” He started to reach for her, but stopped, put-off perhaps, by the expression in her eyes. “You’ve been hurt,” he said. “You’ve been changed.” He backed off a step. His voice shook. “What’s been done to you?”

  Her chin dropped slightly. She was caught off balance. She’d expected anger from him. Didn’t she deserve it? She’d abandoned him for days. But there was no anger in his eyes, only horror, as he look past her face and into her soul to recognize the evil sorcerer: the true spirit of Leander Bohr now. Not simply his servant anymore, but himself.

  His hesitation hurt her more than his anger ever could.

  “I’m possessed,” she whispered. “The evil sorcerer lives inside me. I’m not myself anymore.” She raised her hand tentatively. “Do you remember me? Do you remember who I was?”