Deception Well (The Nanotech Succession Book 2) (20 page)

He studied the prospect. An overlay in his optic field informed him that the elevator column was some 1.5 miles distant. It was anchored on a black platform that filled the circular valley floor, looming at least a hundred feet above the tops of the nearest trees. He could see the dark lines of the vertical tracks on the column’s gray face. Three tracks were visible from his position, though all were partly obscured by tufts of vegetation that had begun to grow on the structure. Almost hidden by the dark bellies of rain clouds, a single elevator car hung some twelve hundred feet above the terminal building. Lot felt a chill on his spine, wondering if that could have been Jupiter’s car. Softly: “What happened that day?”

Kona said, “We don’t know.”

Urban hissed his doubt, and immediately the commandant rose to the defense. “It’s true!” he insisted. “No one was monitoring the wardens that day. We had other things on our minds.”

“But the wardens are guided by DIs—”

“Yes, and their experiences are recorded, and uploaded to authority, yes. But not that day. Not from this area. We found no records in the archives. When we investigated this region, we found no wardens.”

“They’d apparently been disassembled,” Kona said. “It’s not unusual. It happens.”

“Not like that,” the commandant countered. “When they vanish, it’s always one at a time. But not that day. We maintain a force of at least ten wardens in the vicinity of the elevator column. That day, every one of them vanished, in a radius of some eighty miles.”

The frustration, the anger in his voice: it startled Lot. He’d believed for so long that authority
knew
.

But apparently, no one knew.

Except Jupiter?

“There was damage to the column too,” Kona added. “We found minor pitting and scarring over the lowest half-mile. That’s where the plants took root.”

“That’s right,” the commandant agreed. “It seems Jupiter stirred up the wrath of the governors against all things human-made: the wardens, the column, and his holy self.”

Lot grimaced at the sarcasm. “You’re just guessing,” he accused. “You don’t know.”

The warden shrugged. “It’s just a good thing the column held together, or we’d all be in cold storage now, adrift a million miles from nowhere.”

Lot let his gaze wander as the commandant talked. A broken mist swirled slowly through the valley, chased by brief rain showers. The land smelled wet, and full of the healthy rot of microscopic life. He found it beautiful, and did not want to believe that sinister, molecular-scale guardians lay everywhere beneath it.

A sudden hiss from Urban made him jump. “Shift your optics to long-range, fury.”

“Yes, yes, there,” the commandant muttered, pointing into the valley, toward the base of the elevator column. “Look there. It’s what you came to see.”

To the north of the terminal building, where the mist tumbled around the ruins of the road that led out of the valley, Lot thought he could see something moving. In the mist, it seemed to be a gray, nebulous shape, human in outline, but not in detail. Like the shadow of a man, rather than the man himself. Shifting. Shimmering as it walked slowly down the road, like a warden suffering a failed camouflage function, except it was far too big to be a warden. Measured against the road, it seemed to be fully man-sized. He sighted another off to the right of the first.

Then the mist thickened. The men—or whatever they had been—were no longer visible. But several seconds later he saw them again. Now there were three. They were a good hundred yards from their previous position, near the trees that crowded the periphery of the roadway. The forest seemed to pour mist out across the open road. Soon, the images were obscured once more.

But in the brief time the apparitions had been visible, they had seemed to be gazing directly at Lot.

“We call them phantoms,” Kona said, with a note of grim satisfaction in his voice. “You can see they’re not human. It’s a phenomenon only, that has nothing to do with Jupiter.”

“But what is it?” Urban insisted. “What creates it?”

“No, no, we don’t know that,” the commandant said. “It’s unknown—like the rest of this poisonous world.”

“A phenomenon,” Kona said again, as if by repetition he could force some standard of meaning on the word. “It registers faintly in the infrared, but it doesn’t seem to have any solid physical structure. It may be a projection. It lasts for only a few minutes at most, and doesn’t generate or respond to radio frequencies.”

Urban moved up close beside Lot. “Do you know what it is, fury?” he asked. “Do you recognize them?”

Lot looked at him in sharp surprise. “No! I don’t know.” His own defensiveness startled him. “You think . . . this is what happened to them?” He shook his head. “No, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. . . .” His voice trailed off. In truth, he didn’t know anything. Jupiter had never really said what life would be like in the Well. He’d talked about the mitochondrial analog, two life-forms blending into one. He’d said there’d be harmony. An infinite union. Nirvana. Words as vague as the faces on the phantoms.

Lot stared at the drifting fog, willing it to move off so he could see the old roadway once more. Surely for every phenomenon there must be an explanation awaiting discovery. “Let’s get closer.”

With instructions from the commandant, he switched to observer status, allowing the warden’s resident Dull Intelligence to assume motor function. Under the DI’s guidance, the little warden slipped through the bedewed vegetation, as quick and quiet as any small jungle creature. It ducked around several large mounds of upthrust soil, and in less than six minutes he was on the old roadway—but the phantoms were gone.

Twenty minutes later Urban stood in the rain, shaking his head in frustration. “No scent trails. No footprints.”

Lot tramped in a slow circle just off the roadway, watching the warden’s tiny feet. They left almost no impression in the spongy mulch of leaves and rotting bark that carpeted the ground beneath the trees.

“If they’re projections, then what’s producing them?” Urban asked, of no one in particular.

The commandant shrugged.

Lot pressed his warden toes into the cold humus. “How long has this been going on?”

Kona answered—too quickly. “Not quite a year.”

Lot gave him a sharp look, but could read nothing in the warden’s marbled interpretation of his face. Still, he sensed some unspoken factor.

Urban asked, “Have you tried to identify the images as individuals? Do they match any data in city records?”

“No, no,” the commandant said. “The resolution is too poor.”

Urban crouched on the road bed, his gaze following its rise out of the valley. “This has to be something left from Old Silk. After all, the elevator column’s still here. It’s possible some other branch of their technology survived too.”

“No.” The commandant shook his head. “The wardens have been in this valley two hundred fifty years. If there was something here, they would have found it.”

L
ATER, THEY SAT ON THE WHITE CARPET
in Kona’s apartment, sunlight falling around them while they drank beer and talked about the Well. Kona waved his hand, indicating the sprawling planet beyond the city’s horizon. “This land . . . it’s the most valuable thing in the system,” he told them, “if only it could be made livable.”

Lot stared at the golden bubbles rising in his beer. Though his fingers were steadily gaining strength, he didn’t trust himself to hold the glass. So Urban had dropped a straw into it. Bubbles clung to the straw, huddling together on the column like refugees. No one alive today in Silk had ever intended to make this city their home. He shook off the thought, and forced himself to look at Kona. “Could you do that?” he asked. “Could you subdue the governors and make the Well livable?”

“Maybe. We need to move slowly. We need to look at all options. You understand?”

“I don’t know.” Though Kona seemed open, and ready to include them both in his deliberations, still Lot sensed something had been left unsaid.

“Try,” Kona said. “We’re facing difficult decisions. I won’t pretend I wanted you to be part of the decision-making process, but you are, and that means you have a responsibility to act in the best interest of the people—all the people. You could help hold us all together, Lot, or you could plunge this city into chaos.”

Urban scowled. “Nobody wants that. All we’re asking for is a vote, a voice. You could help us get it. Daddy?”

Kona stretched, cleansing his body with a long sigh. “I’ll do what I can, Urban. All right? No promises. But I’ll do what I can.”

CHAPTER

15

“
T
HE OFFICIAL ESTIMATE IS OUT TODAY,” THE MEDIOT SAID
, his smile faint, his mood somber. “Authority predicts we have eight months, at current levels of use, before shortages become evident. Do you have any comment on that?”

“Eight months?” Lot echoed the mediot’s question. It startled him to hear their remaining time summed in concrete measure. Eight months. He glanced at the faces of the watching ado pack. Camera bees buzzed over the blooming azalea bushes in Splendid Peace. Already, the ritual of the interview seemed old to him. He’d been through so many. Over the last nine days he’d become the nominal leader of a significant political party, though nearly all his supporters lacked voting rights. That would change with tomorrow’s election. Urban’s initiatives had easily gathered the signatures necessary to appear on the ballot. It was only a matter of time.

“Eight months will be enough,” Lot said in a confident voice that called on people to sit up and listen, “if we work together. If we give an equal voice to all. If the distinction between ados and real people is forgotten. We’ll find a consensus.”

“You’re confident the election tomorrow will give you the vote?”

Lot smiled. “Not me personally. I won’t be twenty for two more years.” A ripple of laughter ran through the quiet ados. “But for many people in this city, yes. In the past, it’s sometimes been forgotten that real people and ados are
not
different species. We’re the same. The real people know that, and they’ll remember it tomorrow when they vote.”

B
ACK IN THE REFUGEE QUARTER,
L
OT STEPPED UP
to Alta’s apartment door for the ninth time in as many days. Her majordomo acknowledged him. “Greetings, Master Lot Apolinario.”

“Alta, may I see you?” he asked the door’s blank face. “I would very much like to see you.” He waited, but for the ninth time in as many days, she refused to answer him. She had not stirred from her apartment since learning of her mother’s death. Lot had sent Urban to talk to her, but she wouldn’t acknowledge him either. Gent had seen her, but he revealed no details of their conversations, saying only that she was grieving, but rational, give her time.

Lot could not bring himself to do it. Every afternoon he slipped loose from the ado packs and came alone to her door. He could not say exactly why. Part of it felt like love. She’d gotten inside him that day in the tunnel. He felt bonded to her and in consequence he desired to see her, care for her, share her grief and her joy. But love was an easy and nonexclusive emotion for him. He felt similar things for other girls in a shifting, adolescent version of Jupiter’s own group marriage.

If it were only love he could step away. But his hurt was more complex than that. He’d felt the silvery touch of her faith the night of the rally. Her belief had ignited the crowd. The loss of that belief felt like a chink in the silver armor of his influence, a weakness that could grow like rot if he didn’t patch it quickly. He leaned against her door for several minutes, considering. “Alta, please talk to me.” The door remained stubbornly closed, the majordomo silent. Finally he sighed and straightened. “I’ll come back tomorrow.” But the election was tomorrow. Perhaps he wouldn’t have time. “I’ll try to come back tomorrow,” he amended. He took a step away; but then he turned back. “I’m sorry for your mama, Alta. I never desired for Captain Antigua to come to any harm. It was an accident.” He pressed his palm against her door, striving to see her, to sense her beyond the opaque barrier. “I wish that you would forgive me.”

He waited several seconds, but the door remained stubbornly closed. He turned away again, feeling stupid. She’d probably switched off the majordomo’s audio pickups as soon as he’d shown up, leaving him to talk to an insensate door. Great cult leader, oh yeah.

G
ENT WAITED IN THE STREET OUTSIDE.
L
OT MET HIM
with a cursory nod, still distracted by his failure with Alta. “I have an appointment,” Lot told him.

“Where?”

“Library.”

“You’ve been spending many hours at that.”

“Sooth.” The election’s persistent questions had awakened Lot to his own ignorance. He’d been profoundly shocked at the scope of it. “Authority says we only have eight months.”

“More time than we need, I think.”

Yulyssa’s story about the phantoms had swept the city, creating a special stir in the refugee quarter. Gent would not account them yet as evidence of the Communion, but many in the quarter did.

They fell into step with one another, leaving the walled refugee quarter via the narrow lane that wound through the neighborhood of Nine Turnings. Here the small apartment buildings had rounded prows that seemed to push the lane into a sharp sine wave. Ancient tulip trees shaded the streets, their branches twining overhead, huge orange flowers catching the sunlight so that it seemed as if they walked under a winding river of fire.

Gent broke the silence. “Let me hear you say Jupiter’s name.”

“What?” Lot looked at him, abruptly conscious of the discordant tone of Gent’s mood. “Why?”

“You haven’t said his name in days.”

Lot felt himself flush. “Gent—”

“Jupiter’s name is not forbidden, and it’s not profane.” There was judgment in his voice.

Lot sought to defuse that. Softly: “That’s not what this election’s about.”

“If you’ll forgive me, sir, that’s a polite lie.”