Geosynchron (11 page)

He tries to reconstruct that day in Old Chicago with his newfound knowledge. Natch discovered that Brone was not telling the truth
about the black code, and so he fled from the hotel. He was pursued by
Brone and his minions. But this time, Brone was not satisfied with
threats; he actually killed Natch. Or at least, death was so imminent
and irrefutable that MultiReal-D concluded Natch's only recourse was
to wade into the morass of unhappening. The program began erasing
memories, both his and Brone's, until it found a point where Natch
could escape the Null Current one more time.

"How ... how much time did I lose?" says Natch.

Petrucio's eyes are closed now, and he's clearly only keeping himself awake with great effort. "You couldn't have lost too much, or you
would have noticed. I imagine only an hour or so. Don't forget that
this is all still experimental, Natch. There are plenty of things the program can't reverse. It can't actually move objects. It can't reprogram
bio/logic code. If you burn down a building, MultiReal-D isn't going
to bring the building back. There are a number of Vault transactions
that we can't figure out how to reverse."

"Don't you think it would be easier if the user didn't lose his
memory?"

Patel shrugs. "Perhaps. But that brings its own problems. You can
imagine how that could be quite disorienting in a combat situation,
which is what the program was commissioned for.... Listen, we're a
long, long way away from this being ready to deploy. A lot could
change between now and then."

Natch nods. He's still trying to make that last mental leap, from
him lying in the street in Old Chicago to the Patels heaving him onto
a hoverbird bound for Sao Paulo. "How did you find me?"

"I told you, Natch-this is just a prototype. When we're testing
the program, we can't risk someone's memories getting erased to the
point where they're lost with no idea how to get home. It's almost happened too many times to count. So whenever the rollback kicks in,
Frederic and I get notified exactly where and when it happened." He shifts in his seat and crosses one leg over the other. "We got a ping
from Old Chicago. You were the only one running the program."

Natch staggers back into the seat next to the one where Petrucio's
feet are now resting. There seems to be no end to the vertiginous
implications of this infernal program. It can enable impossible feats of
physical skill, it can control minds, it can enable you to be in two
places at once ... and now it can even reverse death? All by opening
up a vista of possibilities and allowing you to cherry-pick between
them. "If only Margaret had known about this," he says quietly over
the 'Whisper channel. "She wouldn't have ended up how she did."

"If only she had known?" Petrucio opens his eyes and fixes them on
Natch. The levity has completely drained from his face. "Who do you
think built all this in the first place? You don't think Frederic and I
wrote that whole program in nine months, do you? Everything we
needed to make MultiReal-D work was already inside those databases.
All we had to do was find it."

And then Petrucio cuts off the Confidential Whisper program and
falls asleep.

7

It was three a.m. Which meant little to those like Rick Willets who had
been in orbit long enough to have discarded any hope of trial or release.
Why bother synchronizing to the Earth's circadian rhythms when you
would likely spend the rest of your life under artificial light? But that was
not Quell. Quell intended to get out of there, he intended to reintegrate
himself with the planet, and so, for fuck's sake, three a.m. meant sleep.

"What?" he growled to the hand shaking his shoulder.

"Get up," said a voice. Quell rolled over on his bunk to face his tormentor, and found himself staring deep into the eyes of Papizon. The
man was much closer than anyone who wasn't a lover or a parent ought
to be.

The Islander shoved him brusquely across the room. Papizon wobbled like a scarecrow to regain his balance, but didn't seem to take
offense. In fact, his face morphed into some rough approximation of a
smile. "What do you want?" said Quell. He yawned, stretched, struggled to prop himself on his left elbow-all the while, discreetly
reaching with his other hand for the dartgun he kept wedged between
the mattress and the wall.

"Looking for ... this?" grinned Papizon, brandishing Quell's
pistol with the barrel in his fist as if he intended to stir soup with it.

Quell gaped at him, trying to summon a contingency plan from
beneath the fog of his sleep-addled brain. He glanced in his peripheral
vision for Plithy, but the boy was nowhere to be found. Had Quell's
doom finally caught up to him? And despite all his stubborn survivalist instincts, did he really care?

Then Papizon tossed the pistol into Quell's lap. He followed this
with an assortment of dart canisters that he produced from inside his
jacket. "Might need these-paralysis, blindness, infusion of fear...."

Not knowing what else to do, Quell pocketed them. "You mind
telling me what's going on?"

"Shhh," said Papizon. "In a bit. First we've got to-wait, hold on
... ten seconds ..."

"Ten seconds to what?"

"Four, three, two, one ..."

An explosion.

The prison shuddered beneath them as if the whole bloody thing
had just slammed aground. Something not too far away had combusted
like nothing on an orbital station should combust. Before Quell knew
what was happening, he was hauling ass down the corridor in pursuit
of Papizon, loading his gun with one of the canisters of darts from his
pocket. Magan Kai Lee's subordinate seemed to know exactly where he
was headed. In fact, he seemed to be timing his steps to some internal
metronome, speeding up at certain intersections and slowing down at
others. They had been sprinting for a good two minutes before Quell
realized that he had forgotten to throw on a pair of shoes.

Four unconnectibles came barreling around a corner. Quell
plugged the first one in the chest with a black code dart before realizing it was Plithy. He dimly remembered that the boy was scheduled
to be on the team meeting the next shipment of prisoners. Always in
the wrong fucking place at the wrong fucking time. Plithy clawed at his face
and tumbled screaming to the floor. Papizon stepped neatly over the
boy without even breaking stride, as if his plan had called for a body
to be twitching in that spot all along.

Quell clapped one of the other stunned unconnectibles on the
shoulder, yelled in his ear. "Just blindness, I think! Wear off in ten
minutes!" He wanted to stay and help pick Plithy off the floor. Though
the boy might not have saved his life, he had certainly saved Quell
from a pair of broken thumbs. But Papizon was already disappearing
out of sight, and the Islander knew that whatever opportunity the
lanky Councilman was offering-freedom, revenge, a quick death-it was an opportunity he couldn't pass up. "Sorry!" bellowed Quell to the
boy, hoping it would be some consolation. Plithy mewled something
unintelligible, and then Quell was off.

Another explosion, this one deeper, louder.

The Islander caught up to Papizon and grabbed hold of his bony
right forearm. "Where are we going?" he yelled.

"To the dock," replied the Council officer, stupid grin still pegged
to his face.

"Dock's that way," said Quell, pointing back in the direction they
had just come. The direction Plithy's team had been headed.

Papizon pursed his lips like an eight-year-old boy playing a practical joke. "Not that dock. Our dock."

"Our ... ?" But before Quell could complete his question, the scarecrow had wriggled free and was tearing off down the corridor again.

The Islander looked down at the dartgun in his hand, then looked
at Magan Kai Lee's rapidly fleeing minion. Did he have any reason to
trust Papizon? It was entirely possible that the Council officer was setting up some kind of deadly retribution for what had happened at the
top of the Revelation Spire. Quell remembered the thunk of his shock
baton striking Magan's chest, the sound like a chef tenderizing meat.
Just shoot this idiot in the back and run for safety, the Islander told himself. He centered the pistol on a spot between Papizon's shoulder
blades. An easy shot ...

But of course, it wasn't that simple. With Magan Kai Lee, it never
was. The ammunition in Quell's dartgun had come from Papizon's own
hands, hadn't it? Not likely Papizon would be stupid enough to hand
out black code darts that he himself hadn't been inoculated against.

Sounds of running, shouting, shooting unconnectibles came
wafting down the corridor.

Quell didn't think he had it in him to shoot Papizon in the back.
But that didn't mean he couldn't be prepared for whatever lay in wait.
The Islander slid a hand into his pocket, wriggled around until he found another hidden inner pocket, and retrieved a carefully wrapped
tube of black code needles. Guaranteed he's not inoculated against this
shit, thought the Islander, quietly replacing the ammunition in the
pistol. "Trust in your fellows, but depend on yourself," he muttered,
quoting one of the aphorisms of Creed Thassel.

Papizon had disappeared somewhere around the next corner. There
were only three doors he could have entered, and the first two contained only shelving units stocked with standard industrial supplies.
The Islander opened the third door and was greeted by the odd sight
of Papizon hopping on one leg, fumbling his way into a black evac
suit. Hanging on a wall hook was another black evac suit, size extra
large, built to contain Quell's massive frame.

"Well?" said Papizon, as if his plan were self-evident.

The Islander looked back and forth from the Council officer to the
shelving units to his gun. If there was an airlock anywhere in sight,
Quell certainly couldn't see it. Then something else exploded far off in
another part of the prison. Quell hastily donned the extra suit, grumbling to himself about the coldness of the material. Shoes would have
been a big help here.

He doubted many Islanders had worn anything like this before, and
he was sure his father would have had something disdainful to say about
it. The suit had row upon row of gleaming yellow buttons lining the
arms and nothing but a slick transparent film to protect his face. Quell
had seen any number of videos of OrbiCo workers bouncing around
EVA in these skintight contraptions, limber and carefree as chimpanzees. But now that he was actually wearing one, it seemed much too
brittle to withstand the coldness of space. Quell poked at the bubble
covering his nose and mouth. Could this thing really generate enough
oxygen to keep a man of his size alive for more than a few seconds?

"Ready?" said Papizon, now fully suited and looking like some
mutated crossbreed of seal and stickman. "Then hang on to your
knickers-"

Before Quell even had a chance to ask what knickers were, the door
shut behind him and the room echoed with a deafening bang, like the
blast of an ancient shotgun. The Islander flinched. He could hear the
clatter of metal bolts bouncing off something solid.

Suddenly, the shelving unit and the wall opposite him collapsed
outward. Not into the blackness of space, as Quell had feared, but into
the mustiness of a docking tube. The corrugated metal cylinder
extended perhaps ten meters to the door of a hoverbird, painted white
with a yellow star on its handle.

Papizon tapped the chest of his evac suit. "Just a precaution," he
said, then scrambled for the hoverbird door.

Quell let out a sigh, both relieved and disappointed that he wouldn't
get a chance to play around with the suit. He looked back at the room
they had entered, thinking that the next man to open that door would
be in for a big surprise. But surely Magan would have planned for that
too? Quell realized that at some point he was going to have to lay his
humanitarian impulses aside if he wanted to get out of here. He grabbed
the dartgun off the shelf where he had left it and followed the Council
engineer to the door, which was already opening for them.