Hyperthought

by M M Buckner

  Jonas said, “You’re flaking, love. This obsession is deeply unzipped.” But he went to work with a will. Maybe it was the tedium of inaction. We were all feeling it by then. Like a pressure between the ears, and fingers that couldn’t stop drumming, and words stuck in our throats that we knew were a waste of breath. Anyway, Jonas did everything he could to find Jin. He hacked Nome.Com’s internal datafiles—a stunning feat. Before they shut him out, he downloaded a few terabytes of newsworthy data and earned his five minutes of fame on the Net, but not another word from Jin.

  I wasted six weeks on dreary routine, welding surface ducts all day, avoiding the crew boss, checking my Net node every hour. We could only guess the fate of our friends, and no one wanted to talk about it anymore. The carnival was over. We were left with ignorance and dread—and denial. We concentrated on trivial things and pretended that tune wasn’t passing.

  Often I dreamed about Jin. I dreamed Merida had sawed off the top of his skull, and I saw his brain rise up and metamorphose into a furry brown bat. When I woke from those dreams, I prayed that Nome’s troopers would march into that scuzzy clinic and spray napalm. My beautiful Jin, he’d be better off dead than transmogrified by that quack Merida. Almost at once, I reversed my prayer and begged for Jin’s life.

  At night I hung out with Adrienne, watching the Net’s inadequate half-news about half a world. What a glum pair we made, drifting through random bars. I guzzled beer while Adrienne sipped some zero-calorie swill and smiled halfheartedly at the men who flocked around her. I put off going home, because I knew Luc would be there, snuggled up with his curly-headed Arab friend, Trinni al-Uq. Seeing them together made my insides hurt. I hadn’t snuggled with anyone since Godthaab. Since Jin.

  I knew I didn’t belong in Antarctica, welding ducts and drinking too much beer, letting my muscles go soft—while half the world might be suffering the fate of the damned. And Jin. What if he were counting on me to come and save him? “Wish you were here,” he’d written. Twice. I guess my anguish about prote friends and the captive Com aristocrat got mixed up together. I forgot they were supposed to be on opposite sides. I awoke one morning—July it was, the middle of southern winter—with an idea already fully mature in my head. I couldn’t help the people in Euro anymore. That door was closed. But maybe I could still help Jin.

  Luc rolled over in his hammock and asked why I was packing.

  “Can you believe I’ve never been to California?” Piling gear in the middle of the floor, I started humming. I felt better than I had in weeks. It was as if my spirit had been wilting, and now it was springing back to life.

  Luc rubbed his eyes. “Jolie, please tell me you’re not…”

  I coiled rope around my forearm and grinned at him.

  Trinni raised his curly head from Luc’s pillow and sighed. “She’s going after that Commie.” I didn’t think Trinni had been listening.

  Luc sat up and frowned at me with that wise expression that always made him seem so much older than his years. “Tell me it isn’t so, chérie. Remember the pilots we lost over Paris? California will be the same. You can’t get through. They will certainly shoot you down.”

  “That’s why I’m not asking anyone else to go.”

  “Chérie, your life is worth more than this. What does Adrienne say?”

  “I didn’t consult Adrienne,” I answered, grinning.

  That made Luc angry. “You would risk your life for this aristo prince when his people are slaughtering our friends?”

  “His people. Not him, Luc. He saved your life, remember?”

  “Ma chérie, you know it’s impossible.”

  I just kept grinning. “At least it’s something to do.”

  7

  California

  I LEFT PALMERTOWN on a Monday, early in August, and set course on the shortest arc toward California. I had saved enough of my wages to buy a used aircar—a Durban Bee. Thinking about Luc made me sad. Luc had offered to help me search for Jin, but I couldn’t let him. Palmertown had been good to Luc. He was getting a life together, making friends, earning good money. I think he was even recovering from his grief over the war. I didn’t want to mess that up. So I asked him to stay put in case I needed backup. He took it in good grace, and we parted with hugs and tears. I even shook hands with Trinni. D’accord, Luc didn’t need me hanging around anymore. I experienced a kind of revelation about that. Maudlin stuff.

  By design, I didn’t tell anyone else goodbye till I was airborne. I knew what certain people would say.

  “Jollers, this is not a lucid decision.”

  “Adrienne—” I tried to answer, but she wouldn’t let me.

  “Who is this Sura person to you? You hardly know him. Did you forget the war? What about your friends? The project? Jollers, you just spin right around and come home.”

  “Adrienne, I—”

  “You’re infatuated with a movie star, Jollers. It’s an addiction. That aristo trash won’t even remember your name.”

  “It’s not like that. I—”

  “You’re heading into a war zone, love.” That was Jonas.

  Adrienne added, “Those Nome troopers will blast you out of the sky. Why do you mink we halted the Euro airlift?”

  As if I didn’t remember. Adrienne was like that, always arguing and giving me advice. I love her dearly, but sometimes you just need someone to agree with you. So I went off-wave for a while and flew in silence through the smog. “Wish you were here,” that’s what Jin had said. Twice. To keep from thinking about Adrienne’s warnings, I fantasized romantic scenes with Jin. Tender words and caresses. I fantasized till my juices flowed. Chalk it up to hormones.

  For more than 20,000 kilometers my metavision scanned nothing below but ocean. Near the equator, heat roiled the turbid surface and made the sea look like molten lava. It’s hard to believe humans ever lived in that part of the world.

  Bien sûr, I couldn’t stay off the Net for long, so I linked back up and started moaning my worries. Did Jin really want me to come? Would I be intruding? Adrienne had plenty of answers, none of which were the ones I wanted. Jonas said the rescue project still needed my leadership, but who was he kidding?

  After nine long hours, I spotted land. Gigantic rolling waves crashed at the base of a barren mountain range. The Sierra Nevadas, western edge of North America. I followed the coastal mountains north and, in minutes, sighted the dun-colored domes of Frisco, the southernmost habitable region of California. Any closer to the equator, the climate was simply too hot for cost-efficient housing.

  Frisco’s domes fringed the mountains like leftover sea foam. I circled lower. And then I saw a grisly sight. One side of a big dome had blown out. Debris and bodies littered the plain to the east for half a kilometer. Thousands must have died. I scouted closer and saw human scavengers in surfsuits picking through the wreckage.

  All at once, my sensors read surface radar, and a voice rumbled on a public radio frequency. “Durban Bee. You are flying in prohibited airspace. Leave at once, or you will be shot down.”

  “Jollers, get out of there!” Adrienne shrieked.

  Jonas’s calm, easy voice said, “Jolie, love, Nome doesn’t bluff. Retreat would be wise.”

  “Move your tail, chérie!” That was Luc. So the petit infant had tuned in! He still cared about me.

  I executed a tight turn and fled due east into the desert. When I’d passed safely beyond the horizon of Frisco’s perimeter towers, I spotted a caravan of those surface scavengers who’d been picking through the litter from that blown-out dome. I followed their caravan and touched down at their camp. They were living inside a big mound constructed of sun-baked mud lined with the lightweight fabriglass we use for emergency tent shelters. When the surfers saw me waving hot-market cash, they welcomed me in to dinner.

  I’ve met a lot of surface dwellers in my time. They’re mostly juvenile gangs. You can’t spend your whole life on the surface and expect to live very long. Being young, surfers are often touchy and va
in about things you wouldn’t expect. You have to approach them with care. But once you’re in, it’s preter-fun. Surf dwellers know how to party.

  Around midnight, they were playing loud sizz music on their homemade instruments, and we were sniffing something they called “mock orange.” I guess I was plenty high. There was a small delicate kid with burns all over his face and shoulders, and everybody called him Tan. He kept hovering around me, bragging about a Net link he’d built out of spare parts. He wore a red rodeo helmet, and his breath was ghastly.

  “Lady, ’f you need any kinda code, I’m yer man. I’ve hacked through Nome.Com security hunderds and hunderds of times. I can breach any dern database in the northern hemisphere.”

  “And I can see through any scam in the solar system,” I said. This kid amused me.

  “Scam? You think—? No way I’m gonna scam a fine lady surfer like herself.”

  I couldn’t help but be charmed by the boy. I said, “Bien sûr, and your mother’s a priest.”

  “Yes ma’am. You come look at my gadgets, and you’ll see.”

  I must have been way too full of myself when I agreed to try out his “gadgets.” He’d walled off a comer of the mud hut with a torn blanket, and when he ushered me in, a hundred tiny green lights winked at me from a rack-mounted unit that towered over my head.

  The boy strutted around tapping at the equipment with his knuckle. “I can do anything on the Net you name. Jus’ try me.”

  On a whim, I said, “Okay, place a video call to Lord Suradon Sura, the Pacific.Com CEO.”

  “Hell yes ma’am. On time and on the dime.”

  Tan must have been a genius geek, because the vid call did not hang up in the usual twisted logic of an automated answering system. It pinged right into Suradon’s wrist node, and he answered at once. His face loomed massively on the screen. I was stunned. I recognized him from the news. At my side, Tan winked.

  “Who is this?” Suradon demanded.

  Tan pointed to the tiny video cam-eye which, at that moment, was tight-focused on my face. I must have looked plenty weird to the Pacific.Com CEO. Onscreen, Lord Suradon Sura was every inch the Asian aristo in a buttoned silk suit, whereas me, with my scraggly locks and facial décor—what can I say? Tan was squirming around behind me so full of himself I thought he might pop.

  I smoothed my hair with my fingers. “I’m your son’s friend. Do you know where he is?”

  “Sauvage?” My name sounded brutal the way Suradon pronounced it. To my surprise, he smiled.

  The fact that he knew my name should have clued me, but I was feeling way reckless. The mock orange had addled my judgment “What kind of father are you? You know what’s happening to him, and you don’t do anything!”

  Beside me, the boy Tan bit his finger and shook with soundless laughter. He thought I was playing a prank.

  Suradon’s good humor died, and the fierce scowl that replaced it cleared my head. He literally thundered at me, “My son makes his own choices, Sauvage. I take it, so do you. Be ready for the consequences.” Abruptly the contact terminated, and Tan slammed his fist against his knee, twitching with silent giggles.

  “Jollers, are you insane?” Adrienne’s voice shrieked from my wrist Net node. “You just gave him your location!”

  “That was not smart, love,” Jonas said.

  “Plenty damn cool, I think.” Tan snickered through his nose and crooked his little finger at me—the surfer’s gesture of respect.

  Luc just sighed. “Ma chérie.”

  That’s when I realized my drug high had vanished. I was trembling.

  I spent that night outside in the desert with the surfers. Tan and I lay on our backs, shoulder to shoulder, snugged up in our surfsuits. We were gazing at the heavens, and I let him link into my telescopic metavision. Did he love that! We talked about what the stars must have looked like, once upon a time, back when the atmosphere was clear enough to see through.

  Tan, what a chatter-mouth. Plenty bright for a kid. He knew all about galaxy clusters and parallel universes, and he loved showing off his knowledge. Me, I played audience. Tan reminded me of Luc. Anyway, that night I calmed down and got my head straight, and next morning I left behind half my supply of food. The surfers didn’t have a lot to eat. They needed it.

  You think I was crazy to try breaking into a city at war? Crazy cunning, that’s Jolie Blanche Sauvage. Before leaving Palmertown, I’d downloaded a bunch of schematics and cool reference pages about the Frisco area from the Net. At Frisco’s western edge, a cliff dropped straight down into the ocean, and under this cliff lay the ruins of another older city, crushed long ago by earthquakes. Jin was right about the clinic’s unusual location. Merida’s building had been hard-foamed into the cliff face about 100 meters below the ocean surface, right into the rubble of this old city called San Francisco.

  The Net node I wore strapped to my left forearm carried a brand-new GPSNS—Global Positioning by Satellite Neutrino Scan. I’d spent a bundle to get this particular model because it would function deep underground. During my long flight, Jonas had programmed it, remotely, to guide me down to the clinic, and already the audio pulse was playing inside my helmet. All I had to do was listen and follow.

  Another thing playing in my helmet was the running commentary from my friends on the Net. “This isn’t something you can ad-lib, Jollers. What exactly are you planning?” Adrienne could be such a nanny.

  I said, “It’s very simple. I’ll just scramble Frisco security, then hike along the ocean cliff till I’m standing right above the clinic. My maps show a rock wall sloping down for nearly 1,500 meters. I’ll dive, find the clinic’s fluid intake pipe, and cut my way in.”

  “What gear are you carrying?” Now Luc was playing nursemaid, too. Sacrée Loi, I’m the one who taught him how to pack! My kit held nutrients, water, hypercompressed air, tools, dive gear, a deep sea inflatable airlock, and a fistful of hot-market cash for good measure. Also one illegal security field scrambler—a going-away gift from Trinni.

  “People, this is Jolie Blanche Sauvage you’re talking to. D’accord?”

  “Spike ’em, Jo.” That gruff voice had to be Rebel Jeanne Sabat. At least she was on my side.

  I steered the Durban Bee south, skirting just beyond the range of Frisco’s scan. I touched down in a saddle among the craggy Sierran peaks and camouflaged the Bee with a holographic field so it looked tike a big rock. A few kilometers offshore, my metavisor picked up the telltale gas plumes of active undersea volcanoes. If I could have taken off my helmet, I would have heard the ocean hiss.

  My blood was up. I felt tingly. Alone on the surface, with the prospect of a vigorous hike and a swim—and no scuzzing crew boss to order me around! Mes dieux, but it felt right. I hoisted my pack. This should be a no-brainer. I felt certain Frisco security would be preoccupied by their internal troubles. They wouldn’t notice one lone surface hiker. Sure enough, my scrambler zapped their security scan, and I waltzed right through their perimeter without a bleep. Standing on the cliff, I gazed down at the choppy ochre sea.

  “Are you sure that cliff slopes down evenly?” Adrienne asked. “What about outcroppings? Maybe you should rappel instead of dive.”

  “I’m monitoring by satellite, and that’s not a natural cliff.” Luc’s voice. “It’s a pair of massive upswellings along a fault line. Two grand bulges of sediment almost identical in shape and size. Meta-weird, chérie.”

  I heard Jonas laughing. “We wouldn’t want you to bash your skull, love.”

  “Double-check your air tank. Do it now.” This from Adrienne.

  Offshore, I saw gouts of volcanic steam burst from the waves. The ocean fluid looked glutinous and nasty. I swallowed hard and rechecked my GPSNS. The ocean ran preter-deep under this cliff, and I would be going down deeper than the light could reach. Ironic, for a surface-loving girl like me to choose such a direction.

  “D’accord.” I backed up and got a running start and dove.

  The Pacific welcom
ed me like a hot sulfur bath. Thank the Laws, my suit filtered out the stink. Under the surface, even with a powerful headlamp and metavision, I could see only dim outlines and shadows. Swimming through that murk was like plowing through gelatin. Above me, breakers crashed against the cliff, churning with fleshy clots of refuse. The tide drove me against the cliff face.

  Not a single cliff, but as Luc had said, a pair. The underwater forms bulged out from shore like two enormous fists pressed together. My GPSNS signal was pointing me toward the deep canyon that ran between them. Light from the surface shafted through violent eddies boiling in the narrow cleft. I entered cautiously, touching the rock on either side. Powerful currents whacked me against the ridges that gnarled each surface.

  “Must be some kind of hardened lava flow,” I said.

  “Angle downward.” Jonas was following my progress with his own GPSNS. “Steeper. You’re still too high.”

  The currents buffeted me as I fought deeper into the narrow cleft. More than once, the ocean hurled me against the cliff on my right, and I had to fend off the craggy rock with my gloves. But my GPSNS signal was getting louder. I broke a sweat, swimming through the turbulence, but at last, my headlamp lit up the clinic’s intake pipe, and I grasped the slimy little grille with relief.

  “She found it!” I heard someone say, probably Adrienne.

  I tried prying the grille off, but that didn’t work. Fortunately, I’d brought my trusty seventeen-in-one, multifunction Ojiwa™ pneumatic pocket tool. It took me another twenty minutes to wrestle the scuzzin’ grille off with the vise-grip accessory. I squeezed into the pipe and followed the schematic that glowed on my wrist screen.

  “She’s in!” Adrienne narrated.

  At the fourth junction in the pipe, Jonas said, “That’s the spot, love.”

  I stopped and tapped. The pipe echoed a comforting hollow sound. “Thanks, Jonas!” The schematics I’d downloaded showed a maintenance shaft just on the other side. Jonas had the same schematics, and he was giving me prompts. Having him there made me feel a lot more confident.