by M M Buckner
Vincente dabbed my lip with the gauze. His hairy form loomed above me like a mountain, blocking out the yellow fabric sun. I heard him whispering in my ear.
“Señorita, we are in a cave, maybe 50 meters below the surface of Frisco. The Doctor Merida, she is close. She come here soon with metal robots and weapons. No, don’t move. Lie still and listen, sí? Your friends from the south, they are coming, too. But Merida is closer. This niño and I, we have mined the senda with explosives.”
I struggled to loosen my tongue, and I started coughing again.
“Sssh! No, chica. Just listen.” Vincente’s gentle touch scorched my arm like a firebrand. “The bruja witch, she can’t get through. Your friends from the south are coming. Above us, the Nome troopers prowl. They don’t know our location, but they search everywhere. We must be very quiet”
I tried to move my lips.
The boy named Tan knelt on the other side of my cot. “Them Nome cops want your hide, ma’am. Yer the Angel of Euro.”
Huh? My expression must have shown bewilderment.
Tan grinned. “Lady, you ain’t seen the news lately. Them Frenchie protes are taking back their tunnels. They’re slammin’ the Commies. They got big signs painted with your picture.”
Vincente said, “They call you the Angel, chica. Sí, it’s true. They even make songs about you.”
Tan fretted with the blanket near my feet and then made a quick grab for my fingers. “Ma’am, I just wanna say, it is a real honor to shake yer hand.”
I thought this over. My logic had slowed way down, and as you know, it had never been exactly swift. Ça va. The protes in Euro had picked my face for their posters? I bet Adrienne had something to do with that. She was always jabbering about poignant visuals. “Angel of Euro,” that sounded like a slogan Adrienne would invent. Funny thing, I’d almost forgotten the war. That rescue project seemed like something I remembered from a movie. Bien, that fight didn’t belong to me anymore. Euro would have to take care of itself.
I wheezed out a single word. “Jin?”
“El principe, sí.” Vincente frowned. “He is well. The toxins have not affected him.” Vincente lifted me slightly so I could see Jin sleeping in the other cot. He lay on his side, and his long hair trailed across his outflung arm.
Vincente settled me down in my own cot again. “Chica, I have given you meds but—”
Tan sighed. “We can’t reverse the damage, ma’am. Your skin—it’s bad.”
Vincente scowled at the boy, and Tan hung his head.
Just then, we heard a deep rumbling growl. The lantern danced overhead, and the whole tent shook. One of the cases tumbled off the stack. Tan and Vincente looked at each other with raised eyebrows, and Tan rushed back to his workstation.
“Ha, we got ourselves a robot!” the boy hooted. “Nothing like good old-fashioned TNT. That’ll stop the doc in her tracks.” He worked his finger through the glowing light matrix, and I heard him speaking to Luc in a subdued voice.
“All is well, muchacha.” Vincente stroked my arm. “You sleep. We must be quiet and wait.”
But then Tan came scrambling back toward me. “Ma’am, your friends need to talk to you. It sounds kinda urgent. I think you might oughtta take the call.”
I nodded. It was all I could do.
“Sorry, it’s audio only. I cain’t get the visual.” Tan held one of his gadgets near my ear, and a tinny voice piped out.
“Chérie, is it you?”
Luc! Mon petit frère. I tried to speak, but my tongue filled my mouth like a great swollen glob of gum.
“You are well, chérie? We’re coming. We will be there soon.”
“Jollers? Well, finally.” Sweet Adrienne. How I’d missed her gentle presence. “Jollers, you have to speak to Euro. Do it now, Jollers. Our friends think you’ve betrayed them.”
Huh?
“Jolie love, this is Jonas. Adrienne’s right, we need you to say a few words. I’m set to broadcast live. Say something inspirational. Tell the Parisians to keep fighting. It’s important that they hear you.”
Tan held the gadget to his mouth and asked, “What’s up, Mr. Tajor? The lady’s sick. She cain’t talk very well.”
“Adrienne here, Jollers. Listen carefully to what I say. Those northern Coms have been counterfeiting your holo-image on the Net. They’ve got you telling the Parisians to lay down their arms. We can’t have that”
“You owe ’em, Jo.” That was Rebel Jeanne’s voice. She sounded angry. “Your pacifist shit is creeping a mind-blitz on the comrades. Even if it’s not really you.”
Huh?
Jonas spoke next, but I could hardly follow his words. “Those counterfeit holos are wrecking morale. The rebels see you pleading with them to stop the war. They’re confused, love. They don’t know what to believe. We only re-established communications this week, and we’ve tried to tell everyone it’s a Commie trick. We’re getting the word out, but the holos look so real.”
“Your peacenik speeches’ve got the comrades de-zoned,” Rebel Jeanne growled.
Jonas added, “We can broadcast your real voice to Euro now. I’ve set up an authentication code to certify your identity. Just say a few words, that’s all we need.”
“No silly excuses, Jollers. You have to speak,” Adrienne commanded.
The words swirled too fast around my head. I couldn’t make sense of anything. How had I become the center of such a storm? My friends in Euro thought I’d betrayed them? “I—I—” Words stuck in my throat.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Tan point to the flat blue Net node strapped to Vincente’s wrist. The old man took it off and gave it to Tan. The boy crawled under his workstation and extricated a shiny little tool from the litter on the floor. Sitting lotus fashion, he flipped open the Net node and started poking at it. Light from the overhead lantern stabbed my eyes, and I squeezed them shut. Could I be hallucinating all this?
“Hand her this gadget, Vince.” I opened my eyes just in time to see Tan toss the blue box through the air over my cot. Vincente caught it one-handed and held it open where I could see. Tan had programmed a small digital slate onscreen, and he’d improvised a stylus from his shiny worktool. “She can write on it,” the boy explained.
Adrienne said, “No, that won’t work. We need her voice.”
“Maybe,” said Jonas. “Let’s try it.”
“Can you hold this, chica? Write your words, sí?”
I studied the slender tool. About as long as an ink pen, it gleamed like chrome, and one end came to a needle-sharp point. I clenched the stylus in my fist, but Vincente had to clasp his hand around mine to keep the stylus from slipping out of my weak grip. Slowly, laboriously, I scrawled a big question mark. I still didn’t have a clue what they wanted.
Luc broke through the chaos of responses. His was the only voice that sounded the least bit kind. “Much has happened, chérie. Till last week, the Parisians were winning the war. C’est vrai! Our friends controlled half of Paris.”
Jonas said, “That was your doing, love.”
“The tunnel-fighters call you their Angel,” Luc continued. “You showed the Parisians how to walk on the surface, remember? The people you saved, they returned to the shores of Euro and attacked from above. Greenland.Com didn’t expect that. They weren’t prepared. That turned the tide, chérie. The protes started winning.”
Huh. I had to think about that. Just men, I went into a coughing jag. Every convulsion felt like razors slicing through my chest. When my breathing finally calmed down, I grasped the stylus again. I intended to write: “I’ll talk. Feed me stimulants.” But before I’d finished the loop of the I, my Net screen strobed, and a shimmering holo rose into the air just centimeters from my face. Pretty black eyes. Wide red mouth. Merida.
18
Here’s the Deal
“HAVE YOU ENJOYED your little escapade, Jolie? You know I’ve tracked your every move, pet. Jin made his breakthrough, didn’t he? Tell me what happened.”
&
nbsp; Merida’s hologram drifted above my cot, sparkling with iridescence. All I could see was her mouth. The stylus slipped from my hand.
Merida smiled. “You’re full of toxin, pet. I have the meds you need. Save yourself, and speak to the protes in Euro. The Parisians need to hear your true voice. Sí, I’ve been eavesdropping. The Coms are my enemy, too. I can help you, Jolie. Give Jin back to me.”
Tan whispered, “We’ve lost contact with the others, ma’am.”
Merida undulated above me like a wisp of colored smoke. “I’ll make you well, so you can lead the protes to victory. We’re on the same side, Jolie. Give Jin to me, and I promise to make you well so you can speak.”
“Ma’am, them Nome troopers is less than a quarter kilometer away. Luc and Trinni and Miguel, they haven’t even landed yet. They ain’t gonna get here in time.”
Miguel? That name triggered a memory—but I lost it.
“Look at him, pet.” Merida drifted toward Jin’s sleeping form. “That last episode mangled his limbic function. Unless I treat him, he’ll be feeble-minded. I can repair his damaged brain. Can you do that? Admit the truth, pet. He’s better off with me.”
I tossed my head back and forth on the pillow. Never! I wanted to shout. The pillow’s fabric sliced at me like a rasp.
Merida said, “You can’t keep him, you little fool. Look at yourself. You’re dying. Vincente, give her a mirror.”
I felt Vincente’s rough hand stroking my cheek. “We’re a long way from help, niña. You are very sick. The doctor, she can fix you. Perhaps you consider her offer, sí?”
“Who’s this Commie actor to you anyway?” Tan asked.
Even if I could have spoken, I’m not sure how I would have answered the boy’s question. If it had been me alone, the choice would have been easy. I would have gladly died rather than let Merida get her hands on Jin. But now Vincente and Tan—and all the people of Paris it seemed—had been added to the equation. Violently, I tossed my head against the thorny pillow, trying to think of another option. Some new place to leap. I just did not want to give up.
“Listen to me, Jolie.” Merida’s voice sighed in my ear. I could almost feel its whispering heat “Luc is coming. That’s right, your dear little brother. Remember who’s with him? Remember?”
A vague fear hovered at the edge of my memory. What did she mean?
“Miguel,” she said. “Remember now? My agent Miguel is sitting right beside your cher Luc. Miguel is waiting for my orders. Do what I say, pet.”
I recoiled deeper into the cot, away from her smoky hologram. Bien sûr, Miguel. I remembered the name now.
“Uh-oh. We got another call comin’ in.” Tan cocked his head, listening to a small transceiver plugged in his ear. “It’s the dern cops! They found us. Lordy, they got their neutrino cannons trained right on us! Them beams can pass straight through solid rock and give us a instant case of deep-fry. Ma’am, they wanna talk to you pronto. They wanna upload yer signal to their holo-stage, okay?”
When I nodded, Tan wormed the plug out of his ear and stuck it in mine. Then he pulled something out of a case that looked like a fist-sized wad of orange mesh. I recognized it as a virtual reality sensor net—travel size. He flung it over my head—it wasn’t big enough to cover my body. Then he drew it tight around my throat with a drawstring. “This won’t hurt,” he said as he flipped a little toggle switch. The lights went dim. I saw a swirl of colors, and Nome.Com sucked my digital signal up like cola through a straw.
A man sat in a yellow plastic chair. He held a thick, shabby portfolio of papers on his lap, and he looked inexpressibly bored. Vincente, Tan, and the little blue tent had vanished. Merida’s hologram was gone. All I could see were gray shadows in the background and this man in his chair. Me, I was floating. I glanced down at my body, and it wasn’t there.
“My name’s Richard Sprague. Call me Dick.” That was the friendliest he ever got.
The scene was so spooky, I started hyperventilating.
“Relax, it’s just VR,” the man said.
Bien, virtual space. Transient light waves and vibrating code. The reason I didn’t have a body was because Tan’s sensor mesh covered only my head. Get a grip, Jolie.
Sprague sneezed. He seemed to be suffering from a head cold. A VR head cold? “Here’s the deal,” he said. “Nome.Com assigned me to represent you, got it? I.e., I’m your lawyer.”
“What do you want?” In VR, I could talk again. That was a plus.
Sprague sighed and scratched his two-day beard. His clothes looked slept-in. “One thing at a time, Ms. Sauvage. First off, our forces have you cornered. You and your friends are illegal trespassers. You might wonder why we haven’t executed you.”
He’d raised a good point. Why were we meeting like this? Nome had us in their crosshairs. They could annihilate us with a single voice command—and not even leave a mess.
Sprague took: his time explaining, but I couldn’t really follow his story. He said the big three remaining Coms—Nome, Greenland and Pacific—were “restructuring.” Greenland.Com was waging a proxy war against Pacific.Com because Greenland had always been paranoid about Suradon Sura. Bien, that much I could grasp. Greenland had already spun off 19 of Pacific.Com’s divisions before Suradon could lift a finger. But back in Euro, Greenland was having way too much trouble with those pesky Parisian rebels. Nome.Com was waiting to see which of its two partners would survive.
So how did paltry little Jolie Blanche Sauvage fit into this world drama? It seems I had Lord Suradon to thank. Suradon had called his old pal, Allistaire Wagstaff, the Nome CEO. In the wee hours of the morning, Suradon had whispered a suggestion. “Rescue the Angel of Euro. Greenland hates her, and the Parisian protes love her. You can use her as leverage.”
Funny, huh? I thought Suradon had forgotten me. But on second thought, Suradon probably never let any bit of information stray if it might serve his interests; Ça va. He’d planted his suggestion, Allistaire Wagstaff had listened, and thus far at least, the neutrino cannons hadn’t torched us.
Sprague fished a soiled handkerchief from his briefcase and wiped his nose. “Here’s the deal. Nome.Com is making a generous offer. Just record a few holos denouncing violence, got it? I.e., tell the protes to lay down their arms. War is ugly. You’ll save lives. And to show our gratitude, we’ll give you complete restorative therapy, the best Frisco has to offer.”
I glowered at Sprague. “You’re already broadcasting those holos. You can counterfeit all you want”
He shook his head. “That’s Greenland’s gig. It’s only a matter of time before the rebels spot the fake. We want the genuine article, got it? The real Angel of Euro. With an ID certificate to prove it’s you.”
“So you can help Greenland crush my comrades?”
“We want merchandise, Ms. Sauvage. We’ll sell to the highest bidder.”
“I’ll record your holo when Earth freezes,” I said. My voice carried way more edgy power than usual. I suppose VR does that.
“Take my advice, unless you get therapy soon—” Sprague pulled a mirror out of his pocket and tried to make me look at my face.
“Scuzz that!” I knocked it away.
He turned his handkerchief over, hunting for a dry spot. “There’s more to the deal. I.e., you might want to hear about the other people in that tent with you.” He shifted in his seat and squinted at me, expecting a reaction. I didn’t move an eyelash. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
He opened the thick folder of papers on his lap, then licked his thumb and tabbed through a file. Why didn’t the man use a Net node for all that data?
“Let’s see. Vincent Ramores and Calvin Hooper. As bona fide protected workers of Nome.Com, these two will be remanded to City General for psychiatric repair.”
“Huh? Who’s Calvin Hooper?”
“Your associate Hooper is a runaway prote,” Sprague said. “Missing since the age of nine. I believe you know him by his Net alias. Tan? Yes. He’ll be returned to his fa
ctory compound as soon as psychiatric repair’s complete.”
Psychiatric repair. The Com’s euphemism for lobotomy. Their penalty for runaways.
“No!” I yelled, wobbling my disembodied head around. “Tan’s not a prote. He’s…”
Sprague sighed when I couldn’t finish the sentence. “About those recordings, Ms. Sauvage. We’ll need to do some initial plastic surgery on your face—”
“What about Jin?” I asked. A small pain shot through my invisible rib cage.
Sprague sighed again and paged through the file. “Lord Sura’s heir, yes. We have reports on unauthorized brain experiments. Nanotherapy to expand IQ—you know about that? Since the procedure was conducted in our territory, said brain has, ipso facto, become the intellectual property of Nome.Com. I.e., young Sura will be detained pending financial discussions with his father.”
“You’ll hold Jin for ransom? You gutter mold.” The pain in my disembodied rib cage throbbed again. That wasn’t right. In VR, I shouldn’t feel pain. I said, “Jin comes with me. Tan and Vincente, too. They all come with me, or no deal.”
Sprague smiled unctuously. “Then do I understand you to say that if we release your friends, we do have a deal?”
I blinked. That wasn’t what I meant. This lawyer was spinning me in circles. Nome wanted to use me against my own sisters and brothers in Paris. No way. This Angel of Euro business—Adrienne’s propaganda campaign—I couldn’t believe it really meant anything. But Nome must think so. Imagine me telling the Parisians to surrender. The pain cut into my side like a knife.
Sprague was trying to scare me. And he’d succeeded. Tan’s brilliance—erased? Vincente—entombed in a factory? And Jin? Suradon might not pay the ransom for his son. He might let Nome keep Jin, and who knows what those sadists would do to learn Jin’s secrets. Mes dieux, how did I manage to endanger everyone I cared about?