by Linda Nagata
“Where are they? And why don’t they respond?”
“It’s a long story.” He raised his hands, intending to unbuckle the camera pack. But the dogs mistrusted his intentions, and growled a warning. He froze. “I want to take off the pack,” he said. “I want to give you what I know.”
She scowled at him in dark suspicion. “You say the residents of Summer House are alive?”
“Yes. Though they’re probably all in cold sleep by now.”
“Why?”
“It’s an emergency response,” he said. “I don’t know what initiated it, but when the perceived threat is past, the House will regenerate. That’s the genesis function. You’ve heard of it, haven’t you?”
She skewered him with her cool gaze. “Could the House be reacting to the presence of Bohr’s Maker?”
Nikko held himself very still. So she knew Phousita had lived. “It’s possible,” he lied. “It’s possible the House is defending itself against the depredations of Bohr’s Maker. Yes, that could be it. If the Maker threatened to contaminate the House neural system, that could stimulate an emergency response.”
She looked openly doubtful. But what could she do? He’d just implied the House might save itself. As Chief of Police she was morally obliged to investigate that possibility.
Quickly, he reached for the fastenings on his pack and started loosening them again, despite the dogs’ growls of warning. “Listen, Kirstin. I know there’s no way I’m getting out of here alive. But still, maybe we can bargain.” He shrugged the pack off one shoulder. The dogs tensed. One stepped forward.
He ignored them, and held the pack out to her. “I have information in here that you’ll want. For your future security, you’ll need to know how I escaped with Bohr’s Maker. And I, being an historian . . . I want everything on the record. Everything. Down to the address of Leander Bohr.”
Her eyes widened just a little, and he knew that he had her. She asked softly: “What do you know about Bohr’s ghost?”
“I know the bastard ratted on me. He warned you about me, didn’t he? That’s why you’re here.”
Desire burned in her eyes. But he saw doubt there too. “How could you have Leander’s address?”
Nikko chuckled. “Even the best of us make mistakes. He gave his address to Phousita, and she gave it to me.” He hefted the camera pack. “Disconnect the land line, Kirstin. Plug it into my camera pack. The data can be transferred in only a few minutes, and you’ll have Leander for your very own.” His kisheer rippled as he passed the camera pack to her hand. It hurt to give it up. The pack contained the entire history of the Bohr Maker’s liberation. But more than dry fact, the records he’d accumulated were solid proof that the Commonwealth could be successfully undermined. He held in his hand the soul of a revolution . . . and he was about to trade it for a few minutes’ time.
Would a few minutes be enough?
“We have to attack them,” Sandor said.
“No!” Bukey held up her hand. “No assault Makers. That cop is Kirstin Adair, Chief of Police. If she senses she’s being attacked, she’ll order the Galapagos to fire its missiles immediately.”
“We strike fast and hard!” Sandor said. “Never give her a chance to—”
“The Galapagos is monitoring her every move via that land line,” Bukey interrupted. “If the commander senses anything amiss, you can bet she’s under orders to fire.”
Phousita closed her eyes. Nikko’s camera pack continued to transmit as he removed it and handed it to the cop. She watched him speak: The data can be transferred in only a few minutes. . . .
“Why is he helping her?” Sandor asked, a high note of confusion in his voice.
“He hates Bohr,” Fox said. “He wants revenge.”
Phousita shook her head. “It’s more than that. He’s trying to . . .” She groped for the right word as her eyes blinked open. “To blind the cop? No. He’s trying to blind the Galapagos.”
“Love and Nature,” Fox said. “That’s it. If he can get her to unplug the land line, he’ll have a few minutes to—”
“To do what?” Bukey demanded. “To get past two police dogs and a rabid cop, using only his bare hands? Even Nikko knows better than to try that. He’s buying us time, that’s all.”
“Can’t we help him?” Phousita asked. She held up her glistening hands. “I have a spell that will mesmerize the cop and the dogs. But I can’t get it there.”
Fox’s eyes went wide. “Yes you can!” he shouted. “The code can be routed to the industrial Makers poised on the elevator shaft. Transmit it to one of the supervisory Makers there. I’ll authorize. The molecular equipment can synthesize as well as disassemble. Here’s the address. Quick. Time’s running out. Do it now!”
Nikko could almost taste Kirstin’s suspicion, like a sour aerosol contaminating the thinning air. Still, she accepted the camera pack. The palms of her hands were slick with sweat. She wanted the data it contained. No doubt about that. But there was only one way to get the data out. She looked at the dog carrying the land line. “I’m going to do it,” she said. She was not speaking to Nikko. “I’ll be out of touch for a few minutes, but just sit tight. I’ve got protection. It’ll be all right.”
Nikko watched as she keyed a release and popped the line out of the dog’s pack. She found the proper site on the camera pack, plugged in the line, punched in a command on the pack’s control panel, then sat back on her heels, a cold smile on her face. The camera lens hovered on its tentacle like an uncertain cobra, watching her.
She opened her mouth as if to say something, but then she stopped. A glassy look came over her face. At the same time, one of the dogs sagged heavily to the floor. The other one followed a moment later. They lay together, their eyes closed while they panted, huge wet tongues leaving shiny streamers of saliva on the floor.
Nikko gazed at them, astonished, while cold fear washed through his belly. Was this the moment of final disassembly, then? Would everything not a registered part of Summer House be taken apart?
His chin jerked up as if he’d been slapped. A sudden urge overcame him, an almost irresistible desire to step aboard the elevator. His body flinched as he struggled against the suspect impulse. He glanced at the elevator, then at Kirstin. She was staring at the floor, her mouth open, her eyes unfocused.
His breathing grew ragged as he fought the urge to flee. His kisheer was shivering. What was going on?
Then he knew. He’d been hit with a behavioral virus. What else could explain the sudden, demanding intensity of his desire?
But who had tailored the virus to his system? Who had released it? Surely not Kirstin. She still stared at the floor, as motionless as the two dogs.
His body shook. Back in the Spill, Phousita had found a way around the dogs’ defensive Makers. She’d proved then she could overcome the best defensive Makers the police had.
“Kirstin,” Nikko whispered.
She didn’t respond.
He drew a shuddering breath. Phousita.
So the young witch had cast a spell to mesmerize the Chief of Police.
He started for the elevator doors, then hesitated. Turning back, he bent down and grabbed the camera pack by its strap. Then he remembered the land line. If he disconnected it, Galapagos might fire. He studied the spool strapped to the dog’s back, then tugged experimentally at the line. It came smoothly off the inside of the spool. He suppressed a grim chuckle and picked up the pack. Then he stepped into the elevator while the land line fed out behind him.
He glanced up. The other end of the line came down into the elevator through an access panel in the ceiling. It was as thin as the secondary strands of a spider’s web. Thin enough to feed cleanly through the elevator doors even when they closed.
“Take me down,” Nikko said. “Lowest—”
Another quake shuddered through the decaying body of the city. Nikko grabbed at the handrails to keep from falling. With the doors still open, the elevator suddenly dropped nearly a meter
. A knee-high wave ran through the floor of the corridor, bending it like water and knocking Kirstin onto her side. He saw her body stiffen with the sudden return of awareness. The dogs sprang to their feet. Kirstin rolled onto her belly, her head swiveling as she took in the situation. She had it in a glance. “No!” she roared, and scrambled for the elevator car, diving forward as the doors began to close.
Nikko jumped to block her. If the doors touched her they would open again! The dogs would get through.
They met at the doorway. It was too late to shove her back. So he grabbed her instead, one hand in her hair, the other on her collar, and hauled her through just as the doors whispered shut behind her feet. A great weight thudded against the door’s exterior, and then the car began to drop.
Kirstin scrambled to the camera pack. She flipped it over, reaching for the switch that would free the land line.
Nikko fell against her. His long-fingered hand closed around her wrist. “I’m real this time,” he growled in her ear. He caught her other hand. His fingers were tremendously strong.
“It’s too late!” Kirstin screamed at him. “The transmission’s done. When I don’t pick up, Galapagos will fire.”
“How romantic,” Nikko said. “You’ll get to die in my arms.”
The elevator’s smooth descent faltered. It hung suspended in zero gravity for a moment, then it plummeted. The walls rattled. Nikko felt himself bouncing crazily around, Kirstin under him, then on top of him. Then the car was still.
Nikko let Kirstin go. He leapt to his feet. He could still feel the pseudogravity of the House spin holding him to the floor. But how long could it last? He felt as if the walls around him were holding their collective breath, waiting.
Kirstin stared up at him from the floor. “It’s all over, Nikko darling,” she growled—and yanked the land line out of the pack.
The elevator doors creaked open a few centimeters, then stopped. Nikko bounded to the gap, thrust his long fingers in and pulled. The doors grudgingly gave way. He wedged his shoulder in. A wall blocked the opening. Kirstin saw it and laughed. “Too late,” she said, her voice soft and menacing. “You’re going to die.”
“Not before you,” Nikko whispered. He could feel the wall’s soft, yielding texture against his shoulder—a welcoming touch that told him Fox had heard him, and prepared the way. His foot shot out. He grabbed the strap of his camera pack with his long, prehensile toes, yanked it to him, then shoved it against the wall. It sank into the dark, gel-like substance, until only the lens protruded. The Dull Intelligence focused on Kirstin as she started to her feet. “Summer House has won,” Nikko told her. “The Commonwealth is dead.”
The camera recorded the twisted look of horror that bloomed on her face as Nikko thrust himself into the wall. He felt the wall grasp him. His kisheer rolled up over his shoulders as the gel wrapped around him like a woman’s smooth muscles, and pulled him in.
Kirstin still felt sluggish from the assault Maker that had hit her on the twenty-first level. It had spoiled her reaction time, so that she hesitated a second before diving after Nikko. Too late! The wall had already hardened. She rammed it with her shoulder, roared at the pain of the impact, and skidded to the floor, her fists pounding helplessly against her thighs.
Why hadn’t Beryl fired? What was she waiting for?
Clearance, Kirstin thought, as her lips twisted in rage. Beryl didn’t have the guts to authorize the destruction of Summer House on her own.
A tremendous quake shook the elevator car once again. Kirstin clutched futilely at the smooth floor, while the quake bounced her like a marble in a box. Then suddenly, she could hear Beryl’s voice screaming in her head: “Kirstin! What’s happening in there?”
Beryl might have said more, but Kirstin couldn’t hear her. Her auditory nerve had been overwhelmed by a deafening, drawn-out screech that howled from the walls around her, followed by a sudden, harsh clap. She felt her eardrums burst. Something sucked the air out of her lungs. She clawed at the floor. But suddenly it wasn’t there anymore. She could see stars. She could feel a tremendous, crushing cold, pain flaring in every nerve of her body. With her last thought, she ordered her ghost to flee—
—manifesting on the bridge of the Galapagos, where she fell to her knees, screaming. Her hands slapped frantically at the blood she knew must be bubbling from her ears. She couldn’t stop screaming. Then Beryl was there. Her hands closed over Kirstin’s wrists. “Come out of it!” she shouted. “You’re a ghost. You’re not hurt. Come out of it, Kirstin. I need an order. I need clearance to fire.”
Kirstin threw her head back. She breathed deeply, striving for composure. Her teeth were pressed together in a death-head’s grimace.
With an effort she fixed her gaze on the display screen, and gasped.
The inhabited portion of the House had come apart like a child’s three-dimensional puzzle. She could see flashes of sunlight between the separating pieces. Hundreds of pieces. Then suddenly, the tether snapped, and the puzzle exploded apart, the individual pieces careening off into the void. Each piece as dark as the void, disappearing almost instantly. “Fire!” Kirstin howled. “Fire, fire, fire. Now!”
Two missiles darted out across the screen almost faster than the eye could follow. One second ticked past, and then another. The missiles found targets simultaneously and exploded, bathing the ship in hard radiation. The staff murmured in deep concern.
“What did we hit?” Beryl asked.
“Two small fragments,” one of her officers replied, his voice laden with disgust. “At a rough estimate, I’d say there’s over nine hundred left.”
EPILOGUE
(1)
News Release/Congressional Office of Public Information:
A Congressional investigation has concluded that the destruction of Summer House was caused by a runaway molecular event. While details will probably remain forever unknown, investigators now believe that a program designed to record and store biogenic information was deliberately released into the House plexus without adequate testing. It malfunctioned, converting all living physiological tissue to electronic code. Only those foreign residents not listed on the corporate roster were spared. Eventually, the organic body of the House itself was attacked, a process that ultimately led to catastrophic collapse.
Numerous fragments of the House have been surveyed. None have shown any indication of further biogenic function. Investigators believe that exposure to vacuum denatured the aggressive Makers.
Rumors of survivors have proven unfounded.
No survivors. That was the official police response. And it was true, in a way. Because after a few days even the most stubborn inhabitants of the dispersing cells had to admit that given the limited resources and energy of their arks, there was no possibility of long-term survival in physiological form. Gradually, they transformed themselves into a vast haunting of electronic ghosts, each cell plotting its future in quiet isolation.
Except Nikko. He was alone and he had no atrium so the electronic world was closed to him. But being alone, he caused no great drain on the cell’s resources.
Time passed: abstract minutes to abstract hours to abstract days. He spent a lot of that time asleep. There wasn’t much else to do. He talked to the camera, and watched the pictures play back on the little monitor and meditated to stave off depression and wondered every waking minute: What’s going on?
Until after three weeks his incessant query finally brought a response. Knowledge flooded into him as his newly developed atrium established a communications link with the Dull Intelligence that supervised the cell. He discovered a ghost of Fox waiting for him in the cell plexus, and immediately, he issued an invitation.
“Dad.”
Fox smiled at him. He looked strained, but happier than the last time Nikko had seen him. “It’s all on the table now,” he said.
Nikko nodded. The cops were still out there. But for how much longer? “We’ll rebuild the House, won’t we?”
Fox�
��s eyes shone. “Of course. At least those who stay.” He shrugged. “Some have chosen to move beyond the solar system. The solar sails are already being spun.”
Fox seemed so proud when he said this. Nikko felt a stab of loneliness, more intense than he had ever known. “You, Fox?”
“No.” Fox shook his head. “Not yet anyway. I want to try it here one more time.” He smiled shyly. “There’s an Apollo asteroid that some of us have an eye on. We’ve nudged a few of the cells onto intercept courses. It’s slow going. Not much propellant available. It’ll be a few years before any of us make contact. But the more time that goes by, the better. The Bohr Maker’s out there. It’ll be changing things.” His gaze cut away. “We, uh, took the liberty of instructing this cell to rendezvous at the asteroid too.” He looked up quickly, concern in his eyes. “You’re free to change that, of course. If you want to leave the system, or, or . . . anything. You’re free, Nikko.”
Free. He mouthed the word like soft candy. The research permit was void. His days were not numbered. He still faced a death sentence in the Commonwealth, but at least now they’d have to catch him first!
Free.
Suddenly a world of potential seemed to expand around him, almost at the speed of light. His kisheer shivered against his neck, and for the first time in years he found that reaction inadequate. He wished that he could smile. Instead, he shook his head. “Don’t change a thing, Fox.”
He turned to the watching camera lens, wanting to put an end on his documentary, eager to do that now that he knew this one would not be his last. Now that he knew he could start another.