The Bloodlight Chronicles: Reconciliation (9 page)

Phillip paused as though considering another conversation. Niko wondered if he was multitasking, splitting his avatar on some other Prime level. Even in person he kept his inner feelings hidden away, and his online presence was dispassionate at best, but he was her father, one petri dish removed. She trusted him without reserve.

Phillip blinked back to focus. “Any sign of the Davis gift?”

“He's bright, but he's no savant.”

“I suppose it takes a war to bring out the big guns.”

“You want me to push him?”

“No, just keep him happy for now. After a few more days off, we will begin preparations for our return package. You do good work, as always.”

“What's our upside on this deal, Phillip?”

“Do I detect a note of dissatisfaction?”

“No, I'm happy to serve. I was just wondering how anything of value might arise from colonial backwaters. What could they possibly have that we can't make for ourselves?”

“They have freedom from legislation in the Cromeus colonies. They have sovereignty to work unrestricted by fear and have developed a microcosm of experimental innovation. Our terrestrial governments continue to strangle the future, to mire important technologies in legal quicksand. You will be well paid, Niko. You shall inherit the Earth.”

“Great, just what I always wanted.”

Phillip chuckled at her sarcasm, but Niko could tell his heart was not in it. He had an acute sense of wit but rarely showed any joy.

“At night we dream of System Intelligence. By day we fight.”

Zakariah rode the datastream like a Viking, a man of heritage and brazen courage. The sense of movement was visceral, the vibration coarse and palpable, like driving a motorcycle on a gravel roadway at night, each speed bump a spy subprogram tracking his progress. Digital parasites. One by one Zakariah located the tracer codes and mirrored the intruders until he became completely invisible to their roving scrutiny. The alien tunnel was dark, confining, far removed from the wide open space on Main Street back home. This V-net substructure was cold and linear, perfectly ordered, completely artificial—to Zakariah, it was an outright sham. Without the expensive password in his pocket, he would surely have turned back long ago. He had been promised his heart's desire and more, and he had nothing left to lose.

Each tunnel segment could only be accessed at one end and exited at the other into a candelabra selection of new portals. There were no common hubs or free creative zones—just stale architecture and predictable patterns. Movement was slow and halting in this dark virtual world, a place where logic defied reason. Zakariah began to install programs of his own to widen his access—trapdoors and zoomtubes at critical junctures—but this work was tedious and time consuming and he had bigger games to play.

“So you finally got the bandits off your tail, slumlord.” A leprechaun-like image suddenly appeared in front of him, smiling with mischievous confidence, young, bright-eyed, with a long nose and pointed chin. He wore a red toque with white trim and a skin-tight red jumpsuit.

Zakariah could feel the hum of quiet power from this strange avatar, the expensive aura of deep, stable harmonics.

“Who are you?” he asked, spreading a gossamer shield over his work in progress and throwing false access codes in the ether around him.

The red leprechaun smiled at his efforts. “I'm your fairy godmother, slumlord. I'm the best thing that ever happened to you.”

“Are you with the Overlords?” Zakariah replied, probing for any traces of the surveillance programs that had plagued him.

“Nope. I'm with you. The female get-up is great by the way. Very convincing.”

Zakariah looked down at his feminine hands, Helena's hands. He became conscious of the weight of her breasts in front of him, and her regal stance. He felt at home in this avatar now, his second skin. The stranger could not have discerned the truth of his heritage without prior knowledge.

He decided to play it straight for a few moments to glean whatever data might be available. His only other choice was to close the connection before he lost all his own secrets. “Then you know I've been having some trouble with this new architecture.”

“Yep. I had the same trouble getting acclimated Earthside. I'm going to upload my own configuration for you as part of our business agreement. Don't worry too much about scaling the ivory towers on your own strength. You're already in play. The Architect will contact you when he needs you. For now, I can only warn you not to trust him.”

“Right,” Zakariah said, nodding, understanding nothing. “What's in it for you?”

The red leprechaun shrugged. “I have my duty of course and will fulfill it with token heart. We are all pawns of convenience on some level, slumlord, and as a fellow slave to circumstance I can only warn you: a blessing never comes as you expect it, and the source of a curse can be difficult to pinpoint. Your delivery has already upset the balance of power. The Architect's getting ready to crack the walls of heaven weeks ahead of schedule.”

A pipeline conduit coalesced beside the little man, and he offered it forward with slender fingernails sharpened to dagger points. Only programmers who used the new laserboard systems needed fingernails that sharp. Zakariah braced himself.

“The most vital decisions are yours to make, of course. You'll need everything here.” The young man clamped the conduit to a sturdy table that materialized beside him. “Secure your domain. The upload will take several seconds.”

Zakariah took a moment to shut down his feelers and close all the back doors he had painstakingly tunnelled in the crude alien landscape. He felt like a young slider again, gambling with destiny for the chance of a bigger gig uplevel. All hope of retreat had vanished a long time ago. “Okay, dump it,” he said and opened his mind.

The torrent came like a horizontal waterfall, like liquid electricity under great pressure. At first he could barely hold steady against the onslaught, let alone breathe or attempt to make some sense out of the screaming patterns of raw data. Red lights of pain and green of comfort alternated with a crazy blue laser body wash that seemed to penetrate right through his trembling frame like an x-ray strobe light. Groping like a blind man, he struggled to feel the vibration, the deep core code on which he might begin to build compatibility. He began to panic when he noticed his shortness of breath, his elevated, giddy state of consciousness. He felt weak and desperate, fighting for survival in a cruel universe. He was vulnerable, too vulnerable. He clenched every synapse against the rushing flow of energy.

The hyperpulse hit him deep in the abdomen like a lifeline, a manic hum undergirding everything. He focused on it, isolated it, and shunted it to his program core, gasping for oxygen like a drowning man. The source code fit like a missing puzzle piece in his heart. He sighed with pleasure as the torrent slowed and transformed into a recognizable datastream, smooth as a lazy summer river. It felt like Prime Level Five back home, like true love.

When he opened his eyes, the leprechaun was gone.

Director Helena Sharp pushed open double doors to make her appearance before the Overlords. The meeting room was opulent by New Jerusalem standards. The floor covering of beige nylon fabric approached the texture of Earthside broadloom, a far cry from the grey synthetic panels that covered most floors in New Jerusalem. Sparse functionality gave place here to soft cushioned sofa chairs in a circle around an oval coffee table that framed a clear carafe of drinking water and white ceramic cups. Overlords occupied three of the four chairs. Ian Miller stood in respect as Helena entered the room.

“Let me be the first to offer my greetings for the digital transcript,” he said grandly. “We greet you in peace on behalf of all Eternals across the galaxy.”

“Thank you,” Helena replied, ducking her head in polite deference as she approached. The walls were hung with textured tapestries that vaguely depicted deciduous leaves in rose and grey neutral tones. Two cameras pointed down from corner braces on the wall.

“This is Prelate Markord.” Director Miller pointed to the seated elder. “And Director Smith-Beauchamp,” he said with an open palm to the third man already on his feet and bowing graciously. He looked up to a series of display monitors on the back wall where faces looked on via webcam. “I introduce Director Sharp from Earth.”

“Your beauty is rivalled only by your reputation,” said Smith-Beauchamp. He was a bulky man with bags of flesh at his cheeks and neck. His smile effused an aura of gentle trust.

As she shook his mammoth paw and exchanged pleasantries, Helena noticed a downcast glare from Prelate Markord at such undue civility. She felt tension in the room, an uneasy, artificial calm.

The elder Prelate cleared his throat and got right to the point. “As the Overlord Cooperative has expressed to you fully, Director Sharp, we are happy to share resources with the Eternal Research Institute of Earth and extend our hospitality to you personally.” His voice was steady and measured, his spine ramrod straight in the soft chair. He appeared frail and impossibly old for an Eternal, completely bald, his skin wrinkled and folded. His nose was hawkish and pitted, his eyebrows mere wisps of white cotton. “However, it appears that you or some members of your party have used our good graces for evil intent by smuggling computer enhancements through diplomatic channels to our rivals.” His blue eyes locked onto her own like daggers.

Helena froze in complete astonishment before the Prelate. A crowd of silent witnesses on the back wall glared down with stern faces and furrowed brows.

“I'm afraid I don't understand,” she said.

The Prelate studied her carefully. “Three-dimensional rotaxane molecular chips in cylindrical arrays, something theorists on this side of the Doorway have only dreamt about.”

As a surge of shock passed through her, Helena remembered appearing before a boarding-school principal as a young teenager on a planet far away. A group of classmates had taken lipstick from her purse and drawn crude slogans on the washroom mirrors. A tutorial assistant had discovered her holding the bent and bruised evidence and staring in disbelief at red-painted obscenities. Helena remembered standing in the hall outside the principal's office, waiting in anguish to be punished for crimes never committed. She remembered the hot sting of a rubber strap on her open palms, her tears of pain burning with holy injustice. She would not gladly pay for the sins of someone else again, in this world or the next.

“I assure you I have no knowledge of any wrongdoing,” Helena stammered. “Are you absolutely certain?” she asked, her voice breaking with anxiety, her pulse throbbing.

Prelate Markord spread his hands. “We have traced the shipment precisely to your arrival. We still don't know how something so valuable could have passed through extensive security systems unnoticed. We have reports of a terrorist attack . . .” He left unspoken possibilities hanging.

Helena could not believe it. She thought of Zakariah. Had he tricked her somehow? Had he used her? Had he ruined everything? Here she was with hat in hand before the most powerful figure on the planet—before one of the apostolic Eternals, perhaps the first human to carry the virus—and all he wanted was to clap her in irons and send her away.

She hung her head in dismay. “May I sit down?”

“Certainly, certainly,” said Ian Miller beside her, taking her arm and steering her toward the sofa seat nearest him and farthest away from Prelate Markord. “This whole situation has been very upsetting for all of us,” he added, glancing quickly to the Prelate and back again. “The damage has been done, unfortunately. Blame will fall where blame is due.”

Prelate Markord remained stolid and grim. He scrutinized Helena with icy, buttonhole eyes, looking for any weakness, for a sign. The two others sat and fidgeted while Helena collected her thoughts. Her skin felt clammy with perspiration and her fancy new tunic itched against her flesh. “These rivals you speak of . . .” she began, trying to imagine such a question.

Director Smith-Beauchamp was appointed spokesman by a twitch of the Prelate's eye. “A corporation in New Jerusalem has developed the technology to upload human intelligence to drive, thereby creating an immortal community of cyber-entities with questionable legal status,” he said.

“Fantasists,” Ian Miller interjected.

“This movement has been gathering resources and power for some time, and now with the illicit advancement recently gained, they could conceivably wrest control of the whole stellar system from the Overlords and our colony allies. Although the New World is a pure and free constitutional democracy, much of the true political power in the Cromeus colonies is informal, and the current question of balloting eligibility of the cyber-entities is perhaps immaterial.” Smith-Beauchamp poured himself a cup of water and took a sip as a show of civility.

Helena had difficulty following the native politics, but the question of human evolution intrigued her. Uploaded human consciousness? Artificial intelligence? The dividing line between man and machine was becoming increasingly blurred. “But surely the Eternal virus is of infinitely more value than human technology, no matter how advanced.”

“Of course,” Director Smith-Beauchamp agreed. “We have no doubt whatsoever. The so-called life they offer is cheap and frivolous, an empty, bodiless experience. We are certain it is just a fad and will die out in due time.”

“But in the short term,” Prelate Markord interrupted, “we cannot allow the interests of the Overlords to be compromised in any way.”

“Do you have media resources at your disposal? Spin doctors to market the Eternal virus more aggressively in response? What countermeasures have you taken to make the virus more accessible?”

“That is not within our bounds,” Prelate Markord replied coldly.

Helena stared at him in surprise, feeling quiet panic growing in her abdomen. “Is the virus produced here in New Jerusalem?”