Expatria: The Box Set (46 page)

CHAPTER 22

'You want to FIre, maybe?'

Katya Tatin looked at the wires dangling from Petra's hand, the plastic induction plate on her palm. She was tempted. She had rarely needed to Max as much as she needed to now. The gaps between sessions seemed so long these days. Free-wIring might give her the boost she needed, it might simulate the holy buzz in her Glory Chip, it might deliver some of the balance she was struggling to regain.

She shook her head, cut her blood pressure by thirty over ten, her pulse by fifteen.

She hadn't known Petra was a FIrer; she had always thought the activity was restricted to evangelicals. The self-discipline of an active should remove the need for this kind of self-abuse.

She turned away and listened to Petra's retreating footsteps. She was standing in the entrance lobby of a four storey building known as El Faiyum House. Once, the building had been a merchants' office, with boarding rooms in the top storey; now it was a Roman mission house. She had called in on her way to the Primal Manse in an attempt to settle her mind after the confrontation with Director Roux. Now it all seemed futile... even her inbred discipline had escaped her. She looked at the grubby walls of the lobby, at the slumped figures of a trio of evangelicals, exhausted after a turn of duty in Free Newry. It didn't seem right, somehow.

She headed in through another door, paused by the entrance to a large room, crowded with Charities and Death Krishnas and Nano-Hippies. She raised her eyebrows at an evangelical guarding the door. 'What is it, RoDani?' she asked.

Dani shook her head dismissively. 'Bunch of shit, RoKatya. Nothing more. Charities that were blocking the way on Cathay Street, chanting and drinking and like—RoHay says they're catching rebelitis off of the menials. The Dee Kays are part of last night's Direction—they didn't fight much.' Dani looked disappointed. 'The Nanos are just Nanos, they mix in with anything's happening.'

Katya headed up a tight stairway, unsatisfied with the response, angry with herself for wanting to question everything. Why couldn't she just be
Roman
like anybody else?

She found one of the tiny boarding rooms free of people and barricaded herself in; she stretched herself out on the dusty floor, slotted down into plusRem, let her unconscious sort its way through the threads of recent experience, editing, filing, erasing.

She woke a lot calmer. She stretched, rubbed her face.

A signal caught her between the templars. Director Roux again. What could he want?

He rose up before her, dipped his floater, smiled. Katya closed her eyes, concentrating on the hallucination. 'RoKatya Tatin,' said the director. 'Re: our earlier exchange. Cancel your meeting with Mathias Hanrahan. It is no longer applicable. Hanrahan has left Newest Delhi in a twin-hulled boat. He wants no more involvement. He is no longer a part of the matrix. We have alternative strategies.'

'But did he ever know he was a
part
of the matrix?' She couldn't help herself, the challenge had burst out before she could stop it. 'Please, Director Roux. Give me a chance to go after him, make him a proposition. You've been using my judgement all along—I think this is the best way.'

'Enough.' Director Roux paused momentarily with his head to one side, consulting his electric gods. 'The MetaPlex places great credence in the power of individual human judgement,' he said. She saw the tensions in his expression, saw in a flash of insight the truth in his words, the fear. She wondered what the directors must lose when they progressed into MetaPlexity; and worse, what they must
know
they would lose. 'The Holy Corporation will defer all other options until further notice. You will go immediately and determine if this Mathias Hanrahan is a man fit to do business with the Holy Corporation of GenGen. Transport will be available at the foot of West Wall. Enough.' His image cut to nothing and Katya was left to come down on the flood of her repressed emotions; she didn't have time for any of that, didn't have time for anything.

~

As Katya reached the foot of the steps on West Wall's seaward side the autonome called her name and rose three metres from the ground so that she could easily locate it.

She ran over, ordered it to drop, mounted, and sat on its yielding bench. Fibre optic tendrils emerged from the autonome's skin, found their way into Katya's left carpal interface, and then she saw through her vehicle's eyes, felt the sensual vibrations of the interaction between its ground jets and the stone pavement. Data scrolled into her mind from the autonome's link to its supervisory centres in Roux and the MetaPlex, a mind map of Newest Delhi, spreading, reducing in scale. The blue of Liffey Bay, the rocky promontory known as Gorra Point, the outlying settlements and cult centres of North Cape, Free Newry, Caravaggio, all identifiable by their subliminal labelling, their religious, political, demographic profiles—if known—instantly available if Katya cared to nudge the correct PsychoLogic prompt.

Mathias Hanrahan had set out five hours earlier. The MetaPlex had reconstructed the wind and current profiles and projected his position to within ten or twelve kilometres; survey satellites had just completed a study of that area, scanning at a resolution of a little over three metres. The catamaran's current position was an electric pin-prick on the mind map.

The littoral winds were up and he had made good time, but Katya would be able to catch him easily.

She prompted the autonome and it threaded its way through the dockside crowds, glided down some steps, skidded out onto the surface of the sea, its ground effect jets drilling columns of activated air deep into the water. She set the autonome to counteract the motion of the waves and then headed out from the harbour, into the light chop of Liffey Bay. On Earth a small autonome like this would not be safe on the open sea, but the satellites had monitored Expatria and the weather and current patterns had been intricately modelled; the waves were far too small to present any kind of problem.

She set the speed at an easy twenty-five kph. She would be at Mathias's current position in two hours, at his catamaran in three, depending on the winds.

~

The catamaran was a nick in the horizon, a dark incision in the sky. Katya would match its course in four minutes. She watched it grow, studying the boat from infrared through ultraviolet. It had been crafted crudely but its construction appeared reasonably solid.

A trio of cutters skimmed the waves between Katya and the boat, chased by a large Terran gull. Katya pulled the goggles from her eyes, the cut back to normal spectrum dizzying for a moment before her templars cut in with reassurance. Green slabs of water rose gently together, subsiding merely to rise again. The foam at the waves' crests glinted in the sunlight, as if bejewelled, part-crystallised, vitrified.

One hundred metres, closing all the time.

He was standing there, watching, hands on his hips, swaying from side to side with the movements of the sea.

Fifty metres, forty, thirty.

Katya pulled the autonome's tendrils from her carpal interface, aware that Expatrians were often disturbed by the sight. The 'nome could take it from here.

Ten metres, five, and still he was standing there, hands on hips, staring down at her. The catamaran had looked tiny in the distance, yet now it loomed above Katya and her borrowed autonome, a black shape against the harsh white of the sky.

The autonome rose smoothly from just above sea level, up to higher than the catamaran's side and then came in to settle on one of the few clear spaces on the deck. Katya took a long breath, cut blood pressure by forty over ten, pulse by twenty, constricted the capillaries beneath her skin.
Control of the body is control of the mind
.

Mathias had moved out of the autonome's way. He stared at Katya, anger all over his face. He pulled at the front of his shirt, opened it wide, thrust his chest forward. 'Come on,' he said. 'Why don't you just shoot me?'

'It would serve no purpose,' said Katya, perplexed by his attitude. 'Why would I come here to kill you? An evangelical could do that just as well.' She thought of RoValentin, how well suited he would be to such a purpose. She had never reported him for his FIring, she had been curious about how he had known so much, she had planned to investigate him further. Such a lot had happened since then... She looked at Mathias. He was waiting for her to continue, and in that moment she remembered her first encounter with him, on the balcony at the Primal Manse. She remembered how something in his energy—in his
anger
—had awoken memories of Vladi, memories she had suppressed for so long. She thought of the sexual intensity when Vladi had held her on the beach at Marseilles, her own confused response. She shuddered and forced control. She had to speak, she had to think why she was here. 'Can we talk?' she said, the tension in her vocal cords making her voice sound awkward.

She cut her blood pressure and pulse again. Why was she here? 'I'm trying to get away from all that,' said Mathias. His body slumped, he let his shirt hang free again. 'OK, OK. Tell me what you want.' He squatted and leaned back against a bulkhead.

Katya crouched with a hand on the deck to keep her balance. She wondered what it was that had brought her all the way out here alone, exposed. 'We're screwing up in Newest Delhi,' she said, surprising herself, glancing guiltily at the autonome, aware that Roux would be monitoring this exchange, wondering if her comment could be construed as blasphemous. 'We tried for peaceful integration but some people didn't like that at all, they didn't want us to have happened, they can't see that they can only move ahead. They want to wish us away but it won't work.'

'GenGen are taking over,' said Mathias. 'That's clear as air.'

'No. The balance of power had to change, that's dictated by the numbers we have brought—we can't be here and not have any influence, but that's what lots of your people seem to think. Now there's fighting, unrest, the Holy Corporation must protect its interests. We are as moderate as we can—'

'Hang on,' said Mathias. 'They're not
my
people, not even when I was there.'

'But they can be, Mathias.' She fixed his eyes with her own, held them with all the training she could muster. 'You were destined to be Prime. The fact that your half-brother took your place is irrelevant. For years your people looked upon you as the heir. To them Edward is an impostor. We have profiles, Mathias, projections, extrapolations; you are the Prime of Newest Delhi in every sense but the practical one.'

Mathias broke the eye-to-eye link, wouldn't meet her gaze again. 'Vera-Lynne Perse wanted me to lead the Underground back in Orlyons,' he said. 'She told me much the same things you've just said, less of the jargon though. I ran then, went back to Alabama City. I've seen it happen so clearly: the person at the top has all the power, but it gets away from under them. Every time. They get so they don't know what they're leading, even if they did to start with. I'm not making much sense, you'll have to excuse me. It's the sea, it's got me hypnotised. It always gets me like that, it's beautiful.'

'You would be leading the people of Newest Delhi, maybe all the people of Expatria—Salvo Andric doesn't have long, by his projections. You would be leading them into cooperation with the Holy Corporation of GenGen. We would help you, we would guide you, we would avoid all the conflict that has just begun.'

'Will you look at this?' Mathias spread his arms, taking in the sea all around. 'It's a watery desert, it's wild. See the cutters? Look, over there. That's right. They're free, no worries, no ties. Listen, Katya. I love being in the city, or Orlyons or Alabama City. It's wonderful. I love the people, the energy, the currents that pass through the whole lot. But I've got to get away. I tried being a good statesperson but it didn't work, it's not really me—I can see that now. Listen, I know what you're offering me but I can't take it. You say I have all this power, you project that everyone will follow me—that doesn't make it any easier, that makes it worse. What if I was wrong? And everyone followed me? What if you're tricking me and you just want me to lead the people into some kind of trap? I know, I know—I can read your pheno, all that shit. You're sincere, even though you're wearing another mask of sincerity over the top of it all. But what if your gods are tricking
you?

'Listen. The leaders don't matter, it's the people that make the difference. They don't need me. One day I'll come back. If GenGen are as pure as you make out then things'll be OK, this is just teething troubles, it'll settle. If they're not, then I don't know what I'll find but I'll know I wasn't a part of it. Right now there's a whole planet out here. I'm following the winds and they're taking me northwest, towards the equator. Doesn't that excite you? It does me. Listen, I'm sorry, Katya, but I have to go on. Here, will you have some tea?'

His face was set, his answer clear. She nodded, took the cup. Took a sip of the oily liquid. Sweet with a bitter after-taste. She drank some more.

~

The autonome edged into the harbour as the sun was setting, casting the sky a deep reddish purple. Katya had filed her report to a Roux hallucination forty minutes into the return journey. There had been no judgement on his face, but then a director does not betray his or her emotions any more than an active.

She had stayed too long with Mathias, reluctant to leave him, to acknowledge the failure of her judgement. She had never thought he would even consider turning her down.

He had been silent as she left, as if he had wanted to say something. She had almost thought he would ask her to stay with him, she had seen the fear of loneliness so clearly in his eyes. But instead he had stood to watch her leave and then returned to his seat amongst the rigging.

She was glad he hadn't asked. She was scared of what she might have said.

She left the autonome as it climbed the steps up to the harbour. There was something different in the air this evening, an energy, a feeling of excitement. People hurried about their business more urgently than usual, lashing their lock-ups with ropes and chains, dragging their supplies and equipment away with them.