Deception Well (The Nanotech Succession Book 2) (10 page)

“How?”

He slipped off his backpack and reached into it. Out came a waferlike instrument, some four by six inches, mounted on a short handle. Embedded in its black surface was a sculpture of a scarlet anthurium, its heart-shaped red bract freshly opened around a thick, erect white spike. Just above the flower, a miniature pair of finely sculpted androgynous lips—recessed, so they didn’t protrude from the surface—smiled slyly. Lot took one look at the thing and burst out laughing. “A mate finder?” he croaked. “Come on, Gent!”

Even Urban lost his sour look. He grinned at Lot, quoting commercial scripture: “‘Hunlo’s Mate Finder: Whether you’re seeking millennial marriage, a one night affair, or anything in between, we can help you find the perfect . . .’” His grin faded, as his voice trailed off in surprise.

“‘We can help you find the perfect genetic match,’” Lot finished for him. He turned to Gent, suddenly anxious. “Will it work?”

Gent held the device in two hands. “Why not? It has an optical scan that can access the data in the panels. We’ll just tell it to look for familial similarities.” He pointed to the smiling lips. “Put your finger here. Let it take a cell sample.”

Lot had seen ados play this game in the drunken hours after midnight. He pressed his finger against the lips. They mouthed his fingertip and moaned suggestively, touching him with a hint of warmth and moisture, though there was no tongue. When he took his finger away, the lips moved, and a low, androgynous voice cooed, “
You’re in me now. Would you like to define a personality file? Or are you a bioexclusivist?
”

Gent touched the vox tab. “Bioexclusivist. Look for a mate with at least fifty percent genetic similarities.”

“
Ah
.” The mate finder seemed intrigued. “
There’s no place like home
.”

“Did you have any other relatives?” Urban asked.

Lot smiled faintly. “Dozens.” He glanced at Gent. Group marriage had been the custom aboard Nesseleth. Gent had lived in Jupiter’s household as a full adult partner, one of seven spouses in the family warren. “But not by blood.”

Gent handed the mate finder to Urban. “Jupiter’s genetic system was . . . not compatible with most women. None of the children in his household were his by nature.” He drew another mate finder from his pack, and held it out for Lot to touch. “Jupiter wanted a child. So in the abyss he took another wife.”

“
You’re in me now.
”

He shoved the mate finder into Lot’s hands and went on with his story. “She was very young. She’d been born on the voyage out, and there were some that said she’d been especially made for him.” Gent said this as he pulled a third mate finder out of his pack. He didn’t look at Lot, just held the instrument out. Numbly, Lot touched the lips. He’d never heard any of this before. Gent glanced at Urban. “Maybe it was true, because she didn’t conceive off of us, and we’d had children with our other wives. But after a few anxious years she got Jupiter his child.”

“
You’re in me now.
”

Lot yanked his hand back.

“
Bioexclusivist?
”

He started when Gent squeezed his shoulder. “You should know these things.”

“But you’re saying I’m no part of my mother after all. She was a vessel.”

“I have not said that! Jupiter called you a natural child and it was never my place to question him. Neither is it your place. He loved her. We all did.”

And they were all gone now, every member of Jupiter’s household, except Lot and Gent.

Urban touched Lot’s arm. “Come on. Nobody’s natural anyway. You can work out the family history later. Let’s see what we can find, okay?”

Lot nodded, trying not to hear the accusing voices in his head. His memories of his mother were clear and detailed. She had
not
been an empty vessel. She’d been fiery and proud. He remembered the solid strength in her lithe arms, her hard belly. He could remember how it had felt to nurse at her breast, and hear her heart beat, cradled on the bed between her and Jupiter, long before he could walk.

“Lot.”

He started at Urban’s insistent voice, then nodded shortly. Remembering the mate finder in his hands, he looked down, forcing himself to examine it. Turning it over, he found a scanning window in its base. A similar port existed in each one of the floor panels. Holding the mate finder at waist height, Lot swept it over a panel window. Optical data cascaded in invisible streams between the two instruments. The mate finder sighed in a careworn way and whispered “
No match
.”

“Don’t be looking for scandal where it doesn’t exist,” Gent said. He swept another mate finder over an adjacent panel.

“
No match.
”

Lot nodded and stepped forward to the next square.

“
No match.
”

Urban worked on his other side. They moved around the circumference of the grid, and by the time they’d completed one circuit, the sighs of the mate finders had grown increasingly despondent. “Patience,” Gent urged. “We’re not trying to find Jupiter. We’re trying to prove he’s not here, and that means we have to check all seven thousand one hundred and ninety-six panels.”

“Is that the count they gave you?” Lot asked, as they stepped forward in a slow line from panel to panel.

“
No match. No match. No match.
”

Behind his mask, Gent’s face was grim. “That’s what they said. Add that to the known survivors here in Silk, and we’ve got nine hundred seven unaccounted for.”

Lot looked at him sharply.

He shook his head. “It’s doubtful more than a handful went with Jupiter. Most of those unaccounted for were lost when the Silkens attacked the upper tracks with the meteor defense lasers. An entire car was dislodged, you know. It fell into the atmosphere.”

Lot hadn’t known that.

“
No match.
”

He told Gent, “I requested access to the planetary wardens once. Authority denied it, of course.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

They completed the second circuit in silence. They’d been at the task two and a half hours, and Lot could feel tension building inside him. There were only a few hundred more panels to go. If they could get past those with no matches, then they would know Jupiter had made it out of the city. They could prove city authority had lied.

Urban had been working the inside track, so that he’d completed his circuit well ahead of Lot. He’d gone on to start his third pass and was almost out of sight around the curve of the chamber when he called back to Lot in a low voice, full of trepidation. “Hey fury. There’s a match here.”

Lot felt the skin on the back of his neck tighten. His heart began to boom. “
No!
” he whispered. He started to bolt toward Urban, when Gent’s voice barked out a command: “Hold on!”

Lot looked back at him. “Don’t assume the worst. Now mark that square before you move. We’re not done with this survey yet.”

Lot looked around quickly, trying to decide the best way to mark his position. Finally, he laid the mate finder down on the streaming lines of code illuminating the panel. Then he took off after Urban.

Urban’s mate finder was still happily cooing about the genetic similarity when Lot stepped up to his side. Urban looked up from the panel display. “Sorry fury, it’s a false alarm. This one’s female.”

“It’s Helena, then,” Gent said, coming up on the other side. He craned his neck to see the panel display. There was a slight catch in his voice as he added, “It has to be her.” She’d been Gent’s wife as much as Jupiter’s.

“Your mother?” Urban asked.

Lot nodded.

“Shit. Let’s move on.”

Gent flinched at the profanity. Lot shook his head. “No. I want to see her.”

Urban drew back, an expression of distaste on his face. “Why? You can’t bring her back, fury.”

“Sure. No shit. I know the rules here. But I want to know for sure it’s her.”

“I do too,” Gent said.

“We don’t have time!”

“Get out of the way!” He turned to Gent. “How do we open this thing?”

Gent touched a series of pressure pads on the panel display. “Stand back,” he warned. With a smooth, electronic whir the panel lifted on a hinge, revealing a hollow beneath. Lot gazed into perfect darkness. A musty odor rose up, worming its way past the seal of his mask. A light snapped on just below floor level. Another electronic whir, and a metal frame rose smoothly out of the hole. The light was fixed to the frame’s top. It shone down on an inflated silver body bag.

“The corpse will be vitrified,” Gent said. “It will appear glassy and artificial. And it could be badly damaged. We don’t know how she died.”

Lot nodded, drawing in a long breath to steady himself. Urban stepped up close to his side. Gent reached up to the top of the bag. With his gloved hands he slipped the bag off its hook and flipped the seal. A gush of musty air raced out and the bag collapsed to the floor in a crumpled silver heap, revealing . . .
nothing
. Lot stared, trying to make sense of the scene that presented itself to his stunned eyes.

“There’s no body!” Urban burst out, each word sharp-edged with an incredulous anger.

Gent bent down to probe the empty bag, as if he expected Helena to suddenly materialize there. Lot watched him, his throat dry as he sucked in harsh gasps of air. “
They’ve lost her!
”

Gent shook his head. “No. This storage cell has a full biological map. She
was
here.”

“They found out who she was, then. They destroyed her.”

“But the record is still here! Look, neural maps!” He waved his hand at a knitted three-dimensional display of intersecting lines on the lower side of the cell’s raised panel. “The record is still here. They haven’t destroyed her. Only the body—”

Possibilities and suspicions boiled into existence. Lot couldn’t put them into words. Not yet. He leaped past Gent, dropping to his knees on another panel.

“Lot!” Gent caught his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

Lot puzzled over the display, then punched in a slow sequence to open the cell. Urban watched him closely. “You think it was just her, fury?”

Lot didn’t answer, though he could feel Gent’s grip tighten even through the padded vest. He sat back as the panel opened, as the inflated silver bag rose in its frame. Urban reached up to undo the bag. Again, the gust of air. The bag collapsed. Empty.

Lot stared at it for several seconds before turning to Gent. “Did you actually see any bodies when you were down here last year?”

Gent let go of his shoulder. He took a step back, his eyes wide. “Yes, sir. We did. We looked at several on the periphery, to check the storage conditions.”

Urban turned and walked deliberately to the outer edge of the chamber. He bent down, worked at the display on a panel, then stepped back as the aluminum frame rose. He opened the bag to find it empty.

Lot rose to his feet. “Come,” he said, crooking his fingers at Gent. He trotted back to the entrance. “Do you remember which ones you examined?”

“We did it randomly, sir. We started with this one, I believe. Yes. That’s it.”

“Open it.”

Gent did. It was empty.

By this time, Urban had cracked six more at random points around the circular chamber. All empty. He stepped up beside Lot. “The bodies were here last year. Now they’re gone. Why?”

“Authority found something. They heard from him.”

“Get off it. It doesn’t take ten years to make your presence known. He’s dead.”

“Then why? Why now?”

“Maybe it’s you, fury. Maybe they’re scared of you.”

Lot snorted. Urban was always working on him. Urban valued that cult-leader persona. It could play so well in his hands.

Gent spoke up hesitantly. “We’re not done, Lot.”

Lot frowned at him. “You want to finish? The cells are empty.”

“The data’s still in the panels. We have to know if Jupiter was ever here.”

“He’s right,” Urban said. “Come on. It won’t take twenty minutes.”

A camera bee cruised slowly past, its wings buzzing hard to maintain its elevation in the thin air. It circled once around Urban’s head. “
Shit
,” Lot whispered.

Without warning, Urban lunged at the thumbnail-size device. With a sweep of his hand he tried to knock it out of the air, but it gracefully evaded the blow, whispering past the tips of his fingers to settle in front of Lot, hovering on a golden blur of wings.

Lot glared at its bulbous eye, as smooth and curved as a drop of water.

“
Who’s on it?
” Gent whispered (as if the bee couldn’t detect a whisper).

Lot scowled. “Authority. Who else?” Despite Gent’s promises, they were logged in, and he and Gent were going to the monkey house, maybe to cold storage—there was room enough.

But Urban had moved up softly to his side. “
Shut up, Lot
,” he said softly. “
Just shut up
.”

The camera bee backed off, then turned and sped away, quickly disappearing down the curve of cold storage. Lot glared after it. They would have only minutes, at most, before security officers arrived. “Let’s finish it!”

He sprang away, racing across the black panels to the point where they’d left the mate finders. Red display lights exploded under his pounding feet. He could hear the thunder of Urban and Gent following several paces behind him. Then the camera bee was at his shoulder, its wings buzzing hard like nasty toddlers’ tongues, full of contempt. It hovered beside him, staying even as he half-turned and dropped to the ground. Smoothly sliding past the mate finder, he grabbed the device and came up on his knees on the next panel
No match
.

And the next panel
No match
.

And the next
No match
.

Grimly delighted with the continuing negative results, sadistic delight in the sad sighing of the mate finder’s artificial voice, in the equally sad laments of Urban’s and Gent’s mate finders bemoaning their dismal luck.

A sudden, soft, rapid percussion sounded from the direction of the lock. Lot stepped forward to the next panel. The reverberant clacking grew louder. Gold flashed on the edge of his vision, and a moment later he heard the close, cold rattle of Ord’s scuttling limbs. “Don’t touch me,” he warned the little robot. “Stay away.”