Deception Well (The Nanotech Succession Book 2) (26 page)

And what then? How many times could one breath be made to go round and round?

L
ATER,
G
ENT TOOK ONE LOOK AT HIM
and asked—with an approving air—if he was fasting. Lot didn’t know what that meant, so Gent explained, and Lot agreed that it was so. He hadn’t eaten anything for over a day, but his metabolism wasn’t slowed by the deprivation. If anything, his metabolic rate had picked up. His body was a furnace, swiftly burning off his mass, reducing his volume of flesh so that his innate pharmacopoeia of brain chemicals gradually became concentrated into a smaller and smaller volume. By evening he felt only lightly attached to his body, and everything around him carried a tint of silver.

As the day’s light failed he walked outside with Alta, her hand cool against his own blazing palm. A celebration had been ongoing in the refugee quarter since the Silken curfew had been lifted in late morning. The burster had failed; the Well had been spared. The continuation of their journey down the elevator seemed inevitable now, for what choice would the Silkens have but to let them go—no, even to go with them? For no sane people would choose to starve.

Gent and David met them, and they sprawled together on a flow of lawn that ran between two of the pyramids, listening to a small orchestra dominated by the quickening rhythm of flutes and drums while the talk ran soft and eager around them:
How long would it be? How long, before the Silkens let them go?

The city had swung into full darkness when Urban finally showed up, at the head of a pack of silver-tinged ados that must have numbered close to two hundred. Urban’s grin faded when he crouched next to Lot and got a good look at him by the colored light of festival lamps drifting among the branches of the trees. “You don’t look too good, fury.”

Ord’s tentacles emerged from beneath Lot’s hair. “Nutritional deprivation leads to imbalanced body chemistry,” it said, its little voice loaded with a full measure of worry.

“Which focuses the mind,” Gent added.

“He looks like some crazy virtual prophet. Fury, the real people are already nervous. They aren’t going to buy this shit.”

Lot shrugged. Urban would always worry. It was his particular blindness that he couldn’t feel the silver flow of the deeper world around him. “Trust me,” Lot said. “The council’s been exposed, the ring has failed, and there’s only one way out of Silk.”

“Yeah? Would that be the same way your old man got out? I heard that was a pretty scene.”

Alta started to rise, her hands fixed in a combative stance. Lot laid a restraining hand on her arm. “It’s okay.”

“No it’s not,” Urban said. “You seem to be confused, so let me clarify. This election’s about choice, not annihilation.”

“I know that.” Lot spoke calmly. It wasn’t the time for conflict. He gave Urban a reassuring smile, letting the charismata of his confidence loose upon the air. But Urban seemed oblivious and the gesture fell flat, leaving Lot disconcerted and deeply troubled. What was Urban, anyway? “You’ll have what you want,” Lot promised, in an attempt to cover his unease. He got to his feet, his clothes slightly damp from contact with the grass. “Time to go down to Splendid Peace, you think?”

The people around him had seemed before to be paying no particular attention to him, but now, suddenly, a wave of quiet ran out from his position. Faces turned his way. “Yeah,” Urban said. “I think it’s time.”

S
PLENDID
P
EACE
P
ARK RAN IN A BELT
around the foot of the conical city. It was only a few steps from the quarter to the park itself, but the main gathering tonight would be at the soccer fields below Old Guard Heights. They followed the park promenade past intervening neighborhoods, a mixed procession gathering behind them, refugees and ados falling into step, laughing, talking, buzzing like tiny, unconscious flies, swarming together out of instinct. . . .

Crowds thronged the greenway. The real people among them moved out of the way as Lot advanced, their eyes warily tracking the mob at his back. But his presence acted like an attractor on the ados, pulling them out, drawing them to him. He did not have to speak, or even raise his eyes. They came, their faces tinged in silver, lured by the energy of the mob.

Urban’s mood lightened as he watched them gather. Soon he was grinning as if he had the election in hand, and Lot didn’t doubt that it was so.

A white gazebo had been erected on the soccer fields. There were nine fields and the barriers between them had been removed. Already, the area was crammed nearly to capacity, mostly by ados, but with a heavy cut of real people too, under the drifting festival lights. Lot’s arrival set off a pressure wave through the crowd, as the people behind him pushed onto the field. The air felt dizzying, almost overwhelming in its seethe of emotion.

At a distance, Lot saw three figures emerge from a glimmering fog in the gazebo. He blinked, briefly telescoping his gaze. The figure in the middle was Kona. The other two he recognized as longtime members of the counsel. David eased up on one side of him. “Clemantine’s coming.”

Lot glanced around, sighting the big-boned security officer making polite but determined way through the press. Urban muttered profanities under his breath, but Lot stayed easy as Clemantine gently elbowed aside the last ados standing in her way. She grinned at him. “Hey Lot, stepping up in the world, I see.” Her words were friendly, but her animosity floated over him like a darkening fog. She squinted as she took a closer look at his face. “All prepared for the part?”

“You want something?” Urban asked with full ado surliness.

“Sure.” Her grin widened. “Master Lot Apolinario, the council invites you to a brief question-and-answer session on the lawn.” Her palm swept in a smooth arc, indicating the gazebo. “It seems the day’s events have muddied some election issues, and the council would prefer to clarify points of debate before the vote is taken.”

“Forget it,” Urban said. “The issue is voting rights, and the choices are clear enough.”

“No, it’s okay,” Lot said. “I’ll talk to them.”

“I said no, fury. They’ll string you up.”

“I
want
to talk to them. Urban, don’t worry. It’ll be all right.”

H
E CLIMBED THE GAZEBO STEPS ALONE
, feeling as if he were ascending temple stairs. Kona watched him. He sat with the two councilors in a semicircle, facing an empty chair. Meeting his gaze, Lot felt a brush of trepidation. Kona was in image, and Lot could get no real sense of his mood.

Did it matter?

Lot knew how Kona felt.

He gave the vacant chair a slight kick, determined that it was real, and sat down in it. Camera bees hummed softly all around.

“There seems to be some confusion about the election issues—” Kona began, but Lot interrupted him.

“It’s voting rights,” he said, echoing Urban’s lead.

“It’s more than that. We’re concerned that any change in eligibility might dilute our electorate’s capacity for judgment—”

“Because ados don’t think?” Lot felt a dark mood dropping in around him, a contagious anger that swept both to and from the watching crowd. “How old are you anyway?”

A faint smile crimped Kona’s face. “Three hundred sixty-three this month. I’ve lived your life several times over.”

Not a day of it
, Lot thought. But aloud he only said, “That’s a long time . . . at least in human terms.” He let his gaze rove across the surrounding sea of silvered faces, feeling himself gliding in to meet their expectation. “Still, it’s hardly any time in the life of a species, of a world. Do you think three hundred sixty-three years has given you enough perspective?”

“Perspective on what?” Kona asked, impatience in his voice, but anticipation too, as if he was getting exactly what he wanted out of Lot.

“Well, on the future, real one. Do you have enough experience now that you can see into the future?”

Kona rolled his eyes. “Each day has always been a surprise to me.”

“Sure. The future is inherently unknowable. No one can predict even the next moment. So what difference does it make if we are twenty years old or seventy-five or a thousand? None of us is really fit to gauge our next best move. Maybe, instead of lowering the voting age, we should raise it.”

That drew an approving chuckle from the attentive ados. Lot watched them closely, willing them to belief. “Experience is an illusion. We’re faced with the unknown, and our judgment is equal.”

Kona laughed . . . rousing Lot’s ire. But Lot knew he was able to do that only because he was a projected image, his human self locked safely away from the dangers of contact.

“It’s not as simple as that,” Kona said. “Experience doesn’t mean only knowing what to do, but what not to do. Especially in the young, enthusiasm has been known to overcome good sense—”

“Good sense?” Lot could hardly believe Kona would choose such vulnerable ground. “Has the council shown good sense? By hiding this city’s resource problems? By adopting the tactics of the Chenzeme and attacking a living world? A world fully capable of defending itself?”

Kona didn’t try to answer. He held his silence, as if waiting. . . .

Lot let instinct guide him. He stood slowly. Cameras tracked him. Millions of eyes were watching him tonight. Never before so many. A fine silver current seemed to flow through him and out, into the heat of the mob, before returning to him in a circular path. “What good sense did the council show when they condemned my father’s people to die in the packed corridor of the industrial core? Where in that action can goodness be found? Or sense? For all their experience of centuries, the council acted out of reflexive fear, and thousands of people died.” He turned back to Kona’s image, and asked, in a soft voice picked up by the camera bees and flung around the city: “If not goodness and sense, what is it that makes you qualified to determine our collective future?”

Kona nodded, a look of grim satisfaction on his face. “That will be for the voters to decide.”

“
A
RE YOU CRAZY?”
U
RBAN SCREAMED AT HIM
. “Why did you bring Jupiter into it? Is that supposed to convince the real people to trust you?”

Kona’s image had winked out. Now ados swarmed over the gazebo’s railings and roof. Lot slouched in his chair, feeling embarrassed by Urban’s bout of hysteria. “They needed to hear it. They wanted to hear it. No one’s ever called them to account for what happened that day. It’s been festering.”

“And you just had to slit open the gutter doggie tonight.”

Lot shrugged. “A lot of real people believed Jupiter. They trusted him. They’ll trust me too. I have that power.
I
want the initiatives to pass. So they will pass. Trust me, Urban. Believe in me.”

“You and the angels and the fairies?”

“It’ll be okay.”

Urban shook his head. “Look at yourself, fury. Crazy cult leader. You finally get to play the role. But for how long? If you don’t pull yourself together, you’ll be back in the monkey house tomorrow.”

Lot smiled at him. Even Urban could not shake his confidence tonight. “Wait a bit. You’ll see that things have changed.”

“Yeah. I’m sure it’s nice to think so.”

L
OT STILL PRESIDED FROM HIS CHAIR
within the gazebo when the vote was taken. It would have been possible to display the tally on the soccer fields’ scoreboards, as city authority compiled the results, but real people liked to keep certain privileges for themselves. So the results were tabulated privately, and broadcast first through the atrial net.

Little groups of real people were scattered among the ados on the fields. Lot watched them closely as the results arrived. He saw them murmur in surprise, saw the sudden blossoming of relief on their faces. Some of them started to laugh. Not in any mean way, but as if a child had done something cute though unadvisable and now it was over and they were delighted with the harmless performance. They looked at Lot and they looked at Urban and that kind of laugh was on their faces.

“It’s over,” Urban said.

Lot felt his guts twist. The flowing silver current that had carried him all night finally began to break up, patches of turbulence rocking his surety. Perspiration broke out across his cheeks as he tried to convince himself he misunderstood. He wiped his face on his sleeve. His hands were wet, his skin a slick, brassy color. He stood slowly, and walked to the edge of the gazebo’s deck. Seconds later the tally appeared on the scoreboards, while a booming male voice read off the results. First the new council, nine seats. Two point nine million ballots had been cast, producing eight clear winners and lastly the chair and that was Kona Lukamosch again, no surprise.

“The initiatives,” Urban growled. Lot felt suddenly dizzy. Ord shifted nervously under his hair as the results of the first initiative appeared:

On lowering the voting age from one hundred years to twenty years: 219 for, 2,924,339 against. The measure fails.

For a moment the park was utterly silent. Lot could hear his breath whistling in and out of his lungs. Two hundred nineteen. He looked at Urban. Two hundred nineteen had to be statistically less than they could have expected from the inadvertent votes of drunkards. A low babble of disbelief erupted from the ado mob.

The results concluded:
On adjusting the citizenship requirement of Level 1 psychological profile to Level 2.5: 187 for, 2,924,371 against. The measure fails.

Lot swayed on his feet.

Statistically less than voter error.

The clustered knots of real people on the lawn smiled encouragement at him. Such a bright child. Wait until he grows up.

Around him, ados whispered his name. They climbed the gazebo railings, crowded the stairs, bumped against him. Foul language and loyal sentiments. A display of bigotry to cement their devotion to him. He felt Urban’s grip on his arm, on his shoulder, “Come on, Lot. Let’s get out of here.”