To Hold Infinity (10 page)

 

A light rain was falling as Rafael reached a small paved square, and he headed for the bright amber helix which advertised a taxi-pad.

A human driver opened the old-fashioned gull door for Rafael—as though he couldn't have gestured or spoken himself—and climbed into his separate cockpit only when he was sure Rafael was comfortable in the back.

Bright lights dropped away below them.

During the twenty-minute flight to Rafael's town house, he lay back and thought of the nameless little Fulgida wretch, and the wild light in her eyes—overcoming her cold detachment—which had faded as she died.

If he could somehow subsume the mind of an unenhanced woman, the way he could with a Luculenta…Would that make it more satisfying? Or less?

He suspected a Fulgida mind would be a petty thing, too light and insignificant to bother with.

“Here we are, sir.”

The courtyard lit up as Rafael stepped out. Not bothering with a cred-ring, he lightly entered Skein and transferred fare and generous tip to the driver's account. Then he stood back, and watched the taxi lift up into the darkness and disappear.

Something was wrong.

There were no squeals of alarm from the house systems, but subtle indications from external sensors—unnatural air-flow patterns, few nocturnal birds—were causing its AIs to quest heuristically through knowledge space. It was as though the house itself were uneasy.

Something massive passed across the alpha moon, blocking it from sight.

Blue bands of light grew from points and strobed backwards across delta-shapes. Three proctors' flyers, descending from the night.

A uniformed woman with cropped grey hair alighted from the nearest flyer, and walked up to Rafael. Three armed proctors hung back, watching.

The crews of the other two flyers remained inside.

“Luculentus Rafael Garcia de la Vega?”

“At your service.” Rafael bowed.

“I'm Major Reilly. You may be able to help us.”

“My pleasure.”

 

[[[HeaderBegin: Module = Node78AF99: Type = PivotCentre:Axes = 24.

Priority = absolute

Concurrent_Execute

 ThreadOne:

  ThreadTwo:

     ThreadThree: QryTrace(2899A3.000)

     ThreadFour: Locate(2899A3.000)

     ThreadFive: ThreadScan(“Lowtown,” “murder”)

     ThreadSix: WeaponsEnable

End_Concurrent_Execute]]]

 

<<>>

 

How could they have found him so quickly? There was no mention of the girl in Skein, and he was searching with all the power of his plexcore array, two orders of magnitude greater than any other Luculentus alive.

Some private comm system? Undercover proctors in Floating Worlds?

Adrenaline flooded through Rafael. The stakes were getting higher. What a fine game!

 

[[[HeaderBegin: Module = Node10012.JK998: Type = TrinaryHyperCode: Axes = 12

Concurrent_Execute

     ThreadOne: .linkfile = GraserArray1

     ThreadTwo: .linkfile = GraserArray2

     ThreadThree: .linkfile = GraserArray3

End_Concurrent_Execute]]]

 

<<>>

 

His house weapons were trained on the proctors and their flyers, and the interface was enabled at the deepest level: he could destroy them all by reflex.

But he didn't want to do that, until he could find out what they knew.

“Won't you come in, Major?” he said easily. “I'd be happy to help, in any way I can.”

“Thank you.”

Major Reilly followed him inside.

Pink snow fell like cotton candy, gently icing the boulders outside.

Tetsuo shivered, though it was warm in the long cabin. Then the cramps came again, wracking his body, and he held himself clenched inside until the spasm had passed.

“Are you OK?”

The blonde girl was sitting on the couch opposite, looking concerned.

“Wonderful.” His voice was hoarse.

“You startled Brevan.”

Tetsuo started to laugh, but it caught in his throat and became a hacking cough.

When it subsided, he sat back, breathing quickly. The high-pitched wheeze in his lungs slowly died away.

In a semitransparent chamber at the end of the room, her companion was drifting in clouds of grey smoke. Narrow wires, almost invisible, suspended his couch hammock-like amid the psychedelic vapours.

“Nasty habit.” The young woman had followed his gaze. “I'm Dhana, by the way.”

“Nice—” Tetsuo's voice cracked drily, and he swallowed. “Nice to meet you.”

“Ready to try a drink yet?”

When she had offered daistral earlier, his stomach had heaved, rippled with contractions.

“I think so. Yes. Please.”

There were lightweight bracelets around his wrists. He had seen them before, though only in holodramas. At Dhana's command, they could snap together, or induce excruciating pain directly through his nerves.

Another pair enclosed his ankles. Not that a man of his bulk could run very far or fast—but he really was not going anywhere, when his feet could be locked together in an instant.

From a jug, Dhana filled a heavy cup, and fetched it to him.

It tasted of apricots. The hot liquid slipped down inside him, and for a moment he almost gagged. Then it settled, and he felt much better.

“The…silence must be awful for you.” She ran a hand through her short blonde hair.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Don't worry, you're not injured. There's a null-sheet lamina in the cabin's walls. That's why you can't go into Skein.”

No doubt there was a smartatom outer layer, too, providing visual camouflage. This cabin was designed to avoid detection, by SatScan or other means. It just happened handily to provide a functional prison for a Luculentus, who would otherwise be able to summon help through Skein.

Silent laughter shook his body.

“Oh, my God. You just don't realize—”

He stopped.

For all her civility, this woman, Dhana, was not his friend. Nor was she in charge here. Perhaps he was alive only because they thought he was a true Luculentus, who might already have relayed their presence to someone else in Skein.

No point in guessing. Silence seemed a good strategy.

He wondered where he was—the view through the windows was not Nether Canyon, though he was surely still in the hypozone—and how long he had been unconscious.

3 hours 23.7 minutes.

“What?” he said, but realized immediately that Dhana had not spoken.

“I didn't say anything.”

“Never mind.”

The damned mindware was playing tricks again. If only it could make itself useful, and get him out of here.

Suddenly, without volition, he keeled sideways on the couch, as though his whole body had somehow slipped beyond his control.

As salt tears tracked across his face, he distantly watched the girl back away. Concern was plain upon her unpretty face. She was a slip of a thing compared to him, though, and could not risk getting too close.

He closed his eyes. This was all too much.

He remembered the woman, Dhana, turning to face him in the gully, and he remembered her as having a demon's face, like an evil
kami
, glistening mouth and pulsing gills—An hallucination, surely. It must have been a resp-mask.

The mindware was playing havoc with his brain. He knew the dangers: cascading neural failure or, worse, a psychotic semi-autonomous plexcore which was only partially integrated with his mind. He was losing it, losing everything he had worked for—

“Drink this.”

Her small hand balanced his head, without disturbing the headgear, and he sipped from the glass she held.

He sank back onto the couch.

“Good,” he murmured.

“It will help you sleep.”

Her face drifted in and out of his awareness. She had even, pearly teeth.

“Who are you?”

“I'm Dhana.” Something silver glistened at the back of her throat when she spoke. “I thought I told you that.”

“Mmm.”

His eyelids drooped, and his whole great comfortable body felt dragged down by gravity, pulled towards the planet's core, and the cabin seemed to fold up and shrink all around him, and Dhana's face was floating like a pale distant moon saying “Sleep now,” so he did.

 

She was gone when he awoke.

Voices faded. Perhaps he had dreamed about her.

Throbbing pain filled his head as he levered his bulk upright. He slid his feet to the cold floor and felt around for his boots. They felt good as they fastened themselves snugly round his ankles and immediately heated up.

The low lounge was sparse, deserted, The external door faintly shimmered: a smartatom film hanging in front of it. No doubt it was programmed to activate Tetsuo's restraint bracelets if he tried to pass through.

At the far end were doors to other rooms. On a low table, a small bubbling vat of liquids seemed to be the main source of heat. A menthol scent wafted through the air.

Who would live out here, so far from the habitable regions? It might be centuries before terraforming would spread this deep into the hypozone.

A clinking sound, outside.

Tetsuo hobbled over to a window, breath wheezing faintly.

In a barren landscape frosted with pink frozen snow, his two captors were bending over something—

No, it was two men. Strangers. They wore no resp-masks, yet the atmosphere must be toxic unless Tetsuo had been transported much farther than he thought.

One of them shouted, stumbling. Something small and grey shot out from between his feet, but the other man was quicker. His wickedly curved blade hooked into the small creature's back.

There was no scream, but the creature's skin flowed desperately as it tried to gain traction on the ground. Ichor spurted as the man pulled back on the hook.

For a moment Tetsuo thought the creature might escape as it heaved back, twisting, but the second man hooked his own blade into its side, and from then on its fate was certain.

The first man unslung a pointed rod from his belt and stabbed downwards with relentless precision. The creature thrashed wildly, then lay still. Shades of grey rippled gently across its skin.

Before it was truly dead, they were butchering it. Steam rose from its entrails as they slit its body cleanly open. Then they hacked great chops from its body.

One of them unslung a backpack, adjusted some controls, and opened a small hatch in the pack's side. The other man tossed over some limp gobbets of flesh, which went inside the pack.

When they took out knives and plates, Tetsuo turned away, gorge rising. Then, unable to help himself, he looked back. One man had risen and was staring straight at him.

Tetsuo looked around wildly.

If he stayed in here, he was trapped. The outer door looked like standard membrane. Even if there were a recognition mechanism, even if the strangers did not belong here, they could cut their way through. But if Tetsuo tried to get out, the smartatom curtain would trip his bracelets.

There were three couches, the table with the vat of bubbling liquids—perhaps that could be a weapon—and some glowglobes. Nothing else.

Who was he kidding? He was no fighter.

He ran blindly for the door, taking the chance, but his wrists snapped together, jarring his bones, and then his ankle restraints smashed into each other. He stiffened, and the floor came up and slammed his face, and knocked the breath from his body.

Warm blood trickled from his nose. Dazed, he could only wait for them to come.

There was a slight pop, and a sulphurous smell stung his nose. Someone passing through the membrane. He could not even turn his head to look.

“Hey, a Luculentus. You were right.”

“Well, what we gonna do? Take him back?”

Tetsuo swallowed.

They're going to kill me.

“If we take him outside, ain't no null-sheet keepin' him off Skein.”

“Only if he's conscious.”

A pause.

“Or alive.”

There was dry, rasping laughter. Then pain exploded in Tetsuo's back, over his kidneys.

“Why ain't ya in some high'n'mighty palace of your'n?”

“I—” Pain racked him, and he coughed. “—Can pay. Get me out of here.”

“Pay, is it?”

A massive blow to his ribs, and something broke.

Then a cold blade, like ice, touched his cheek.

“Think I'm gonna do you, Luculentus.”

“Hey, I'm not sure. He belongs to them Simnalari.”

“Yeah? Well they're almost as bad. I say we do him.”

Tetsuo shut his eyes.

“I'm wanted by proctors,” he said quickly. “There's a massive man-hunt underway. Kill me, and there'll be forensic techs all over the place—”

“Shuddup.”

“Hey, Manadray. Someone's coming.”

“Damnit.”

“Come on!”

“Your lucky day—”

The blade stung Tetsuo's cheek, and then it was gone. Footsteps heading for the door. Silence, then a distant shout and the sharp sizzle-and-crack of an energy weapon.

Then nothing.

Another scurry of footsteps.

Dhana was kneeling in front of him. Her hand graser pulsed with the room's colours, its smartatom finish running in chameleon mode.

“They're gone.” A deeper voice from the doorway. Dhana's companion.

Brevan.
That was his name.
Concentrate.

“Looks like they tried to take him.” Brevan's tone was hard.

“No.” With Dhana's help, Tetsuo managed to sit up on the floor. “They were going to kill me.”

Brevan looked at him, as though he were going to finish the job himself.

“Damned Agrazzi,” he said finally. “We're supposed to be on the same bloody side.”

“I'll get the med-kit.” Dhana peered at Tetsuo's cut face.

“Nice friends you've got—” Tetsuo muttered, but his voice was thick and he was not sure they understood.

“Stay here.” Brevan hefted a graser rifle. “I'll make sure they haven't circled back.”

“But—”

“Yeah, sure. We're all Shadow People. Let then come back here—” he slapped his weapon's resonator housing “—and I'll show them a little solidarity. All right?”

Dhana said nothing. Brevan glowered, then he turned and was gone.

“Your arm's broken, I think, where you fell on it. A bruised bone, at least.”

“And my ribs. Where they—ah, damn it.”

She came back with a microdoc, and released his restraints by voice command.

“I wish,” she said quietly, “we knew just what to do with you.”

“Letting me go is out of the question, I suppose.”

She looked away, with troubled eyes.

 

Treat her
, Rafael told himself,
as though she were a Luculenta. There is danger here.

“Would you care for a drink, Major?”

“No, thank you. This is a nice house, Luculentus de la Vega.”

“Very kind of you.”

The lounge was tuned to plain grey, the furniture to black, with solid silver statuettes—real, not holo—standing here and there. It was a décor, Rafael hoped, which gave away nothing of his personality.

“I hope you weren't waiting long,” he added. He assumed Major Reilly's flyer had been hovering in cloud cover, awaiting his return.

He had been lounging back with his ankles crossed, and now he deliberately uncrossed them. His body language should be open rather than defensive.

“Not long,” said Major Reilly.

His mind, though, was racing. How much did the proctors know?

He had to find out. There was a risk, an enormous risk, but he took it.

 

[[[HeaderBegin: Module = Node78AF97: Type = PivotCentre: Axes = 24.

Priority = absolute

Concurrent_Execute

     ThreadOne: ImageID = 187BK7:089, linkfile = MySelf; GlobalsSearch(Today)

     ThreadTwo: ImageID = G18966. :003, linkfile = MyFlyer; GlobalsSearch(Today)

End_Concurrent_Execute]]]

<<>>

<<>>

 

He had been seen.

Trajectory maps unfurled in his mind: four-dimensional geodesics plotting his movements for the day. Privacy laws prevented continuous surveillance—except under court order—but SatScan's AIs could interpolate heuristically between random sightings.

He was taking a huge risk, infiltrating SatScan with the benefit of Tetsuo's mu-space commsware, but he had needed to know.