Hyperthought (3 page)

Whenever I led tour groups back then, I wore a full-function miniature Net node strapped to my left forearm. It was hardened against solar radiation, and its beam could find a Net satellite from anywhere on the planet. On my trips, having a dependable link to the Net was mandatory. So I ripped back the cover flap on my sleeve, activated the cybernails in my right glove, and started tapping the small screen. On Earth’s open surface, you can’t use voice commands. You have to tap. Anyway, I patched a signal through the Net to Luc’s helmet radio to let him know I was trying to reach him. Luc had a Net node on his wrist, too, so he could tap a reply. I signaled for a full minute, but Luc didn’t respond. Hell.

“Are they in trouble?” Jin surprised me. He was standing really close. I realized he was touching his helmet to mine so he didn’t have to speak through the radio. He’d had the foresight not to disturb the other guests. That should have softened my opinion of him, but I was agitated.

I chinned the radio switch in my helmet. “Get on the tether now! Everyone! Now!”

Then I realized I hadn’t unpacked the tether yet, so I did that. Jin helped me shake out the tangles. All the time, I kept checking my Net node screen for Luc’s reply. A simple malfunction, it had to be. I unclipped the piton gun from my belt and fired titanium spikes into the rock cliff, then secured the tether in place with carabiners.

“Over here,” I motioned impatiently. My Net screen was still not showing Luc’s reply, and the winds were getting stiffer, blowing up billows of smog from below. I switched to meta-vision. That’s the adaptive optics that use laser and infrared tomography and magnetic resonance plus a few other tricks to help our feeble human eyes penetrate the smog. Through my metavisor, I saw Jin helping the other guests clip their carabiners to the tether.

“You too!” I yelled.

“What should we do first, secure the gear or break out the safety beacon?” Jin pointed to where the wind was rolling an air cylinder down the rocky shelf.

“I know my job!” I just barely managed not to spit

I clipped Jin to the tether, then chased the cylinder down. We would need that air. Next, I wrestled the big cargo net out of its bag and flung it over the pile of cases. I’m plenty strong for my size. Gusts were toying with some of the lighter items, so I had to run around kicking them under the net as I fastened the edges down with more pitons. Going by the book for once, I set up a beacon laser. Its bright red beam shot straight up through the whirling smog like a pencil-thin pillar of fire.

A real gale was brewing. My Net screen still showed no response from Luc, and the guests were demanding information. “Stay on the tether,” I warned them in my gruffest voice. “If you move from this spot, I will personally beat you to bloody gore.”

Luc would have said something nicer. Cher enfant. I’d met him in Paris, when he was twelve and I was twenty. An orphan like me, he’d been following me around ever since. I swallowed my worry and headed toward the outcropping.

The atmosphere was getting murkier by the minute. Suddenly a gust lifted me off my feet and sailed me several meters along the shelf. I landed sliding, grabbing for a hold. My left glove caught in a cranny. I knew I couldn’t risk another flight like that. Our climbing gear was still packed in its case under the cargo net, but I carried a spool of emergency monothread for just this sort of occasion. Monothread is tough enough to bear more than twice my weight. The spool at my belt had thumb levers for brake, release, and rewind. I’d used it plenty of times. Lying flat on my face, I shot a piton into the rock, close enough to shower chips against my faceplate. I’m used to working in gloves, even with tiny monothread, so I knotted a couple of quick half hitches around the piton to make a belay.

With this security, I belly-crawled farther along the shelf and eased around the outcropping, reeling out thread and shooting more pitons as I went. The shelf narrowed to a mere ledge beyond the outcropping, maybe a meter wide, and the winds were regularly lifting me off the rock, fluttering me like a kite. Who knows how much time passed before I heard one of the bodybuilders moaning? Metavision is sort of low-resolution, so I didn’t see his gloves grasping the ledge till I was right on top of him.

The guy was practically hanging by his thumbs. His bulging muscles had locked up so tight, he couldn’t move. The wind had saved him. After flinging him over the edge, it had pressed him into a small declivity in the rock face. He was a big, brawny guy, and it took all my strength to haul him up. He was too numb to speak clearly. I secured him to a piton—the last one I had with me—and I peered down over the ledge for the others.

Hell and double hell. His significant other was hunkered on another narrow ledge maybe eight meters below, cradling his ankle in both hands and rocking back and forth, oblivious to the fact that the wind could blow him away any second. The background rustle in my radio turned out to be his whimpering. About then, a hard, muddy ram pelted us like a hail of golf balls. The drops carried more grit than moisture, and one of them pitted my faceplate with its force. Thank the Laws, the mud rain stopped as quickly as it had begun.

“Where’s Luc?” I yelled into my helmet radio.

“My leg,” the guy panted. “It’s broken. I fell. It hurts like mad.”

Ça va. So much for manly men. Both these guys sported the muscle-bound physiques of hard-core weight lifters. They must have been taking supplements for years.

“Where is Luc?” I articulated each word separately.

The guy with the broken ankle pointed down, indicating Luc was below him, beyond my sight I think my heart missed a beat.

Funny how fast a situation can get out of hand. There must be another ledge below, and Luc is safe—that’s the first thing I told myself because I wanted to believe it My hands were shaking as I eased over the ledge, and the wind was rushing so hard I could hear it whistling up the face of the palisade, even through my helmet. All sorts of feminine feelings surged through my brain. Motherly love and panic and ferocity. I had to force myself to forget about Luc and to concentrate on making clean, controlled moves down the cliff.

I reached the injured man and clipped him to my belay. Then I couldn’t wait any longer. I hung out over the ledge to look for Luc. Oh God O God I can hardly breathe as I record this now. The memory is so strong. A dozen meters below, Luc was clinging to the sheer rock wall with his gloved fingers. The kid was skilled. He’d found tiny handholds where no one else would have found them. I imagined I could see him gazing at me. But his faceplate was cracked, and moisture had condensed inside. Only one thing caused that—hot Earth atmosphere mixing with the breathable refrigerated air inside a surfsuit. Luc was breathing poison.

The cliff dropped sheer as glass into a crevasse maybe a kilometer below. All I could think was, if Luc blacks out, he’ll fall. In a heartbeat, I unclipped the injured bodybuilder from my belay. The monothread would support only two. I would have to spool myself down to Luc and haul him up, then come back for this guy later. There were no more pitons to anchor the guy in place, so I told him just to sit tight. The Laws of Physics had protected him so far, and anyway, I didn’t worry about that. I leaped over the ledge and rappelled down fast toward Luc.

Monothread slid through my gloves—and then jerked me to a halt. I’d come to the end of the spool! Mes dieux, but I had to stop myself from screaming. About then, a sharp gust swung me out and dashed me back against the cliff. I took the impact with my wrists and dangled for a minute. The bodybuilders were whining complaints in my helmet. I gathered my wits.

Two, maybe three meters below me, Luc lay flat against the cliff. It wasn’t that far. I started feeling for handholds and footholds in the rock. If I could just find a position that would support my weight, then unclip from the spool and free-climb down to Luc, and then somehow shove or drag his semiconscious body back up this cliff, three meters, with no belay…

The crevasse yawned below. Even with metavision, I couldn’t see its bottom. Ideas assaulted me from many directions. Could I reach Luc in time? Could I haul his body up that sheer cliff, fighting the wind, without a belay?

As the muddy rain started pelting us again, a vision of the six trusting clients passed briefly through my mind. If I should the trying to rescue Luc, they would survive for maybe half a day. Six people versus one. Maybe I should have thought through the logic of that, but I’m a doer, not a thinker. What I’ve learned is, if you want to survive, you have to make up your own logic—sometimes out of thin air. No matter what the chances, I would not give up on Luc.

Gritting my teeth, I rammed fingers into a tiny crevice, pressed my toes against rock and squeezed the carabiner to free myself from the belay. And I started free-climbing down.

“Sauvage! Stay where you are!”

That’s when I saw Jin rappelling from above. He was wearing my bright yellow climbing harness. He must have found it among the gear. I learned later that he’d followed the trail of my monothread. He descended steadily, like an expert, and as he dropped past me, I let my body collapse against the cliff. I saw nun clip a safety line to Luc’s belt, and I heard him say, “It’s okay. We’re coming up.”

I cried then. But no one ever knew that.

FOUR HOURS LATER,
we were waiting in a Sydney medical clinic, while a cyberdoctor injected Luc with molecule-sized robots to clean the toxins out of his cells. Luc was unconscious. Mucus oozed from his eyes and nose, and his skin had turned an ugly color, but the cyberdoc said his prognosis looked hopeful.

Me, I felt like a piece of garbage. I’d bungled everything. It was Jin who took the time to think things through, to unpack the climbing gear, to call the Australian rescue squad. It was Jin who saved Luc’s life. I sat across from him in the clinic cafeteria, resting my elbows on the plastic table, huddling over a cup of horrible cold tea. All around, people were murmuring about the exotic celebrity, but me, I felt ashamed to meet his eyes. Through my negligence, my cher Luc had nearly… I had to bite the insides of my cheeks to keep from shaking.

Someone came into the cafeteria, and I turned so fast, I knocked the table and spilled tea. But it wasn’t die cyberdoc with news about Luc, just somebody wanting Jin’s autograph.

“You love him, don’t you?”

“Huh?”

“Luc Viollett. You love him?”

Jin’s question caught me off guard. He’d been silent so long. I saw his concerned expression and quickly lowered my eyes. Funny, my other five tour guests couldn’t wait to get away from me, but Jin had stayed. I stared at the puddle of pale green tea on the white table. There was no napkin, and in my muddled state, I started pushing the liquid around with my hand. Then I soaked some of it up with my shirtsleeve. I made a big mess.

Jin grabbed my hand and smiled at me in a troubled sort of way, as if he could see right into my heart. His mouth moved, but he stopped short of saying anything. I wondered about that. His uneasiness touched me.

“Mr. Sura,” I studied the tabletop and began steeling myself for humiliation. “Thank you for saving Luc’s life. I should have said that before.”

“People say a lot without words,” he replied.

I glanced up again. His black eyes flashed liquid light. Had he sensed my dislike all along? “Sometimes we get things wrong,” I said.

He smiled. “You weren’t wrong about me. I’m just as rotten as you imagine.”

He must have read my embarrassment, because he laughed. He had a pleasant laugh. It lightened my mood.

He asked me questions about Luc, so I told him how we first met. One hot night years ago in Paris, I saw this scrawny little towhead standing on a crate, peddling counterfeit edu-disks. The boy had the slickest line I’d ever heard. He looked like an underfed cherub, but I swear he could have charmed the horns off a devil.

Me, I’m always hoping to learn stuff, so I asked if he had any disks on the Laws of Physics. Luc said I could have three disks free if I would buy two at the regular price. Sounded like a good deal to me. Anyway, while I was bending over his plastic case, pawing through his stock, little did I know he was secretly rifling my backpack.

Then he yelled, “Jesús, Newton and Einstein! You are the Surfer Girl!” That was my Net alias back then. Anyway, I spun around and caught him holding my surface helmet, staring at me in disbelief. He started sputtering in pure gutter-Fragñol, his English all forgotten. “You are my priestess. I know of your exploits in the world above. I worship your feet…” and other similar trash. He made me laugh till I hyperventilated. Talk about turning on the charm, he did.

Ça va, I made the mistake of letting him clean my helmet. Next thing, Luc was following me everywhere, polishing my surf-boots, sweeping my cube, sorting my email, managing my schedule. He latched on to me for good.

Jin listened attentively. “Luc is your family, yes? Your little brother?”

“You could say that.” The thought made me grin.

Sir Jin liked the story about Luc. I decided he wasn’t such a prick after all. Talking about Luc came as a relief, and after that, Jin asked me about me. So I told him some scary trip stories. My “Jolie’s Trip” stories were always a hit.

First, the infamous “Jolie’s Trip to Mecca.” Most of North Africa is just a moving ocean of sand now. On our one and only trip there, we nearly lost three clients in a rogue dune that blew up out of nowhere. That drift stood ten meters high, I swear. Thank the Laws, we’d brought sail-skids to carry the gear, so Luc got the other clients windsurfing the sand waves in those skids, while I hauled the first three out of that monster drift using a souped-up-metal detector. Everybody had a blast. They thought we’d planned the whole thing for their amusement.

I really liked the sound of Jin’s laugh. He wanted to hear more, so I narrated “Jolie’s Trip to Hawaii,” which is a cluster of sunken islands in the bubbly hot latitudes of the Pacific. Usually, my guests on the Hawaii trip are content to hover above the waves in a copter-jet and view the flooded cities with remote-control bathyscaphe cameras. Bathysnorkeling, we call it. But one time, I had this guy—from Nome.Com wouldn’t you know—who insisted on SCUBA diving. The Hawaii story has been much embroidered over time, and I can’t remember how it really ended, but in the version I narrated to Jin, the guy paid us double the fee because we convinced him the parboiling effect made his skin look younger. Jin laughed so hard, his eyes watered. He said he knew that guy.