Hyperthought (10 page)

My gloves and boots were caked with ocean slime, and my hold on the cruddy metal kept slipping. It was dark in there, and I was trying to sling the muck off my gloves, so I just didn’t notice the stranger waiting inside.

“Jolie!” Luc shouted. “Attendez!”

The stranger introduced himself with a kick-punch to my helmet.

WHEN THE LIGHTS
came back on, I lay sprawled and dripping on a grimy floor with this guy standing over me. Massive legs and shoulders. Dirty prote uniform. He held my piton gun, checking it out I glanced around and saw shelves, boxes, trash. I was lying in a small cube with metal walls and one dim overhead light source. A portable generator growled in the corner. My helmet was gone. When the guy saw me moving, he pointed the gun at my throat, but his finger wasn’t on the trigger.

“I am Vincente,” he said in thick Spanglish. “Why have you broken into my home?”

“Hey, amigo, sorry. I must be in the wrong place.”

Spanglish came easily to me because it had cognates with my native Paris gutter-Fragñol. I sat up fast and skidded backward on my butt till my shoulder pressed against something sharp. I kept my eye on that gun. Pitons in the throat leave nasty scars.

“So, Vincente, this your cube? Nice cube, amigo. Roomy.” I was blathering. “Me, I’m looking for a clinic. Merida Institute of Neuroscience. You know about that?”

Vincente tipped his head to one side, and his long heavy hair swung over his shoulder. “Your name?”

He wanted formality. D’accord, I gave him a name. Then I made up some elaborate story about needing to see my cousin in the clinic. I’m no good at lying. Vincente just nodded, giving no indication whether he believed me or not. So I kept talking.

Finally, I calmed down enough to notice the wily humor in his small blue eyes. He was laughing up his sleeve at me. I also noticed that Vincente was old. Tough and brawny and hard-packed, but old. His long mane wasn’t the lusterless white so common among deep-Earth protes. No, his iron gray hair had once been black. And his skin was brown and leathery. This man had seen plenty of solar radiation. In fact, he looked like an old surface dweller. Maybe a guide. Maybe someone like me.

“So anyway,” I wound up, “Whaddya say, Vincente? Do you know where I can find this clinic I’m talking about? This Merida Institute?”

“You’re there.” He twirled my piton gun around his middle ringer and caught it with the barrel pointed straight at my throat again. He grinned slyly. I watched his finger tease the trigger, then move away.

I exhaled. “Oh.”

“Visitors, they use the front door.” He hefted the little gun flat in his palm. Then he tossed it onto a counter littered with tools and machine parts, and he lifted a flat blue object. I slapped my forearm. My Net node was missing! Vincente had it. That node contained my quantum computer, my GPSNS, my Net link, my lifeline to the outside world. I sucked air through my teeth.

Vincente had stripped off my boots and gear belt as well. Time to bargain. I unzipped my suit and fumbled in my bra for the wad of hot-market cash. “I’ve got money.”

He watched what I did, men hunkered over the counter to examine my Net node. “What do you want?”

“Like I said, to see my cousin, Jin Sura.”

“I will call the doctor,” he said.

“NO! That won’t be necessary. Please.”

But Vincente wasn’t making any move to call. He turned his profile to me, and in one quick sweep, he gathered his long hair tight into an elastic band. Then he sat at his work counter, fitted a monocle to his right eye, and began methodically unclipping the cover of my Net node.

“Hey, don’t mess with that!” I sprang up, grabbed it away from him, and scurried back to my corner like a rat with cheese.

Vincente heaved a sigh. His broad shoulders rose and fell like mountains. His blue eyes narrowed, and the seams in his face deepened. His squint seemed familiar to me. The mark of a surf-dweller. Someday, I’d probably have a squint like that.

He said, “Give me the box, and I’ll show you your cousin.”

“Jin is here?” My hope rose. The force of it surprised me. “Where? Take me now.”

“Give me the box, or I shoot you.”

“Shoot me?” He was making no move for the gun, just staring at me with those crafty blue eyes. All at once, I saw through his act. The man was harmless. “You’re not gonna shoot me. Where are my boots? You give me back my stuff, you old pervert.” I found my helmet on the floor. It had a split across the left side where Vincente had kicked me. I scowled and looked around for the rest of my things.

Vincente sat hunched on his stool, shaking his head. “I’ve never seen a box like that.”

I strapped the Net node to my arm, ignoring him.

He said, “Let me look inside. I’ll give it back.”

I tugged on my boots, sealed the gaskets, and clipped the damaged helmet to my gear belt. Then I brazenly marched over and grabbed my gun.

He said, “Your cousin, I remember him. The prince, we called him. El principe. The brain-dead one.”

I froze. What did he say? Creepy old man. I didn’t breathe. Very calmly I said, “That’s not him. You must mean someone else. My cousin wasn’t a prince.”

“Fancy young man from Pacific.Com. I remember the name. Sura. Completely comatose. We pumped out his lungs and kidneys every day. I remember El principe.”

“That’s not him!” I yelled the words in Vincente’s face and raised my fist to hit him.

But he didn’t react. He watched me with those wily, twinkling old eyes. “Sí, the brain-dead one. He’s gone now. The clinic is empty.”

“You’re lying!”

“Go and look. There is no one.”

“You lead the way!” I waved my gun, feeling hope dissolve.

The electricity was out, so most of the clinic lay in pitch darkness. Hot as an oven. The. walls sweated putrid oily beads. And there was a stench. Vincente activated a laser torch and started edging down a corridor whose floor rose and fell in uneven ripples. I followed close, pretending to push him along, but really just needing contact. The idea of getting lost in that place made my skin crawl.

What a slum! Merida hadn’t invested a cent in fixing this place up. All the floors were buckled and ridged, and the corridors twisted like a maze. We kept going up and down ramps. I wanted to look in every room, but there were so many, squeezed one on top of another in uneven layers. What kind of insane plan was this for a clinic? As we moved farther in, the air grew so stale, it made me cough. All I could see was the blue-white beam of Vincente’s torch playing over vacant cots and empty toilet stalls. We found rotting food in the pantry. I almost gagged.

“Let me hold the light,” I said, but Vincente stubbornly lifted it beyond my reach. Annoyed, I unclipped a lightcube from my belt and squeezed it. The cube glowed pale green in my palm. I kept stepping on Vincente’s heels because I was following too close. Finally, I grabbed his arm and just hung on.

He used a metal key to unlock a door. “The record office,” he said. “You’ll find information here.”

The door opened, and before I knew what was happening, Vincente spun me off balance. I dropped my lightcube and fell through the doorway. He tried to push me inside, but my leg was caught, and he couldn’t get the door shut Pain shot up my side as he slammed the door on my ankle. When I started kicking at him, he took off.

I wedged the door open with a dented aluminum biowaste can, then belly-crawled to my lightcube and grabbed it to my chest as if the little thing would save me. Slowly I sat up and looked around the dim, shadowy room. It was just another clinic ward, not a record office. I moved out into the pitch-black hall and tried to remember the way back—but to where?

My Net node activated at my touch. Its screen glowed like a friendly face.

“Jollers, are you safe?” “What’s happening?” “Where are you, love?”

My friends’ voices rushed at me like a warm wind. “Relax, I’m blissin’. Thank the Laws of Physics for GPSNS.”

“You’re lost,” Adrienne scolded.

I called up the clinic floorplan, and my location flashed clearly onscreen. “I am not lost, Adrienne. I’m looking for Jin.”

A muffled noise sounded in the corridor behind me. A soft drop. Someone was there. I muted the Net node. Now I heard footsteps in front of me, too. And to the right, I saw torch beams dancing against a distant wall. Many footsteps. And voices.

Just then, someone leaped out of a doorway and seized me from behind. My attacker was too strong for me. He covered my mouth, pinned my arms to my sides, and dragged me backward through the doorway. I heard his heavy breathing and recognized Vincente. I struggled and bit his hand, but he wouldn’t let go.

“Quiet. You’ve drawn the troopers, foolish whore. Be quiet or we’re dead.”

I settled down fast when he said that. Nome.Com troopers. They must have been tracking me all along. So much for my no-brainer. Vincente dragged me awkwardly across the dark room and pressed me against the wall with his body while he used his free hand to open some kind of bin.

“Through here, chica, and be quick!” He sniffed me into the chute, and I crawled forward blindly until he grabbed my ankle and stopped me. “Lie still.”

His hand gripped my leg like a vise. I could hear his breathing, and my own. I had clipped my helmet to my belt, and now it wedged uncomfortably under my hip. The steel chute in which we lay felt gritty, and when I shifted to move the helmet, my nostrils filled with an odd-flavored dust. Like charcoal. “Where are we?” I whispered.

“Quiet. Better you don’t know.”

We lay there for only a few minutes. Then we heard a terrible clatter. Laser blasts. The troopers were shooting their way into our chute. They’d located us, probably by GPSNS.

“Move!” Vincente shoved me forward.

I scrambled ahead in the darkness, kicking my way along the gritty chute. A couple of meters along, I came to the lip of a downshaft and slid my hand downward, trying to gauge its depth. Vincente pushed me from behind, but I resisted.

“Jump!” he said.

“How deep is this thing?” When I heard the first bullet ricochet past my ear, I put doubts aside and tumbled forward into thin air.

I landed in a pool of fine dry powder. It felt almost too soft to bear my weight, and when Vincente landed on top of me, he drove me under the surface. I shut my eyes, held my breath and fought my way up. But it seemed the more I kicked and squirmed, the deeper I sank into the powder. At last I felt Vincente’s grip pulling me upward. I couldn’t see in the blackness, but I could feel when my face broke the surface. For several minutes, I spit and coughed and sneezed. The powder tasted like ashes.

Vincente must have crawled into some structure suspended above the powder. Even in total darkness, I could sense him hanging above me, holding my wrist, letting me dangle chest deep in the soot.

“Now we bargain, chica. Give me the device you wear, and I save you, sí?”

I lifted my left arm free of the soot, slung open the Net node cover and spoke a command. The screen glowed. “Luc, this is Jolie. You have my coordinates. A man named Vincente is threatening to kill me. Track him down, Luc!”

Vincente laughed. “You’re play-acting, chica. No beam can escape this place.”

“You’ve never seen a device like this before,” I reminded him.

Suddenly, light flooded the well from above. The troopers had found us. Before I realized what was happening, Vincente hauled me out of the ashes and swung me onto a ledge. Lasers flashed, and bullets rang out. “Quick!” He shoved me toward a narrow slot in the wall. I had to edge sideways to get through, and looking back toward the light, I saw Vincente sucking in his gut to force his large body through after me. Then we dropped about three meters down, in total darkness again. After a few tentative steps, I sensed an uneven stone floor.

“Run!” he said.

“Which way?”

He grabbed my arm, and we ran together blindly, stumbling over broken stones and trash, supporting each other as best we could. Our steps echoed like gunshot. At last, we entered a passage, rounded a bend, and passed through a door. Vincente slammed the door with all his might. Then he switched on a light, and I saw him activate an electronic lock. We were back in his cube again. He sagged against the door panting for breath. Vincente was a strong man, but old.

“How do we get out of here?” I asked desperately. “We can’t hide from Nome.Com troopers.”

“You led them here.” He wiped his sweaty face and scowled at me.

I said, “That’s right. It’s me they want. Show me the way out, and I’ll lead them off.”

“Sí,” he nodded. “Give me the box.”

“The damned box! Is that all you can think of? I need this. I’ll send you another one later. It’s just a Net node. It’s nothing.”

“Then give it to me,” he said again. Mes dieux, but the man was persistent.

“Look, Vincente, we don’t have time for this. I can’t survive without my Net node. Show me how to leave, or the troopers will kill us both.”

“You cousin, El principe, he is no longer important to you?”

“You said he’s not here.”

“I know where he lies sleeping. Shall I tell you?”

LETTING GO OF
that Net node may have been the most difficult choice I’ve ever made. And the dumbest, Adrienne would add. That node was my link to everything I needed to make this venture succeed—my location finder, schematics, reference pages, and, most important, my friends. How on earth did I, think I could pull this off alone? Maybe I expected to find another Net node drifting around in the Pacific Ocean.

But if I hadn’t traded that node to Vincente, he would never have told me where they’d taken Jin. So I didn’t have a choice, did I?

Twenty minutes later, I found myself flushed out to sea in a load of clotted effluent. Vincente had stuffed me inside an old diving sphere and ejected me with the weekly waste. The sphere looked like a hot-air balloon made of glass, about two meters in diameter, with a hatch and a knot of clunky hoses and control devices hanging below. Its segmented walls were made of triple-layer fabriglass interlaminated with ceramic micromesh—hyper-tough, impervious, and supposedly transparent. But time had hazed the walls with fragrant green-gray scum.