The Lead Cloak (The Lattice Trilogy Book 1) (23 page)

“Is he usually with the spheres?”

Annalise put her hand on the door to the great room and they entered, Shaw momentarily caught off-guard again by the brilliance of the Earth. “No, he does a bit of everything. He helps Jpeg with the spheres, he helps Wulf and Taveena with their projects, he helps me with repairs or piloting the
Walden
. The kid’s brilliant.”

Annalise’s list made Shaw realize he hadn’t yet seen a key room. “Speaking of piloting, are we going to see the control room?”

Annalise clucked and shook her head. “That room’s off limits to you until after the vote. Sorry. I’m curious, though, can you tell me where it is?”

He pictured all that he had seen of the sphere, and realized that there was a section he hadn’t seen below decks, right underneath the great room. Shaw pointed below him and she nodded.

“Well, if I can’t see the control room, will you show me the airlocks? I know the one I entered through, but are there more?”

“There are two. On either side of the main floor. You’re not planning an escape are you?”

“Taveena said something about tossing me out of an airlock if I lost the vote. I didn’t know if I got to choose which one.” He tried to smile.

“She was probably just being dramatic. In case you haven’t noticed, she’s very serious,” Annalise said, her voice deep and brow furrowed in an impression of a serious person. Shaw laughed, despite himself.

“Really, though, sending you out of an airlock would be way too risky. Someone could easily find your body in space and wonder where you’d come from.”

Shaw wasn’t laughing as much now.

“Sorry if that’s morbid. Things aren’t any easier if they’re sugar-coated.” She cocked her head to the side and squinted.

“Are you plotting an escape, Byron?”

Shaw remembered that Annalise had said people would be jumping into his head a lot. Why lie? “The thought has occurred to me.”

Annalise smiled at his honesty. She looked out the window at the hotel. “The Orbitel’s airlock isn’t too far. A few hundred meters maybe. How long can you hold your breath?”

Shaw saw she was smiling. “I’ll have to practice.”

“I was underground when they recruited me,” Annalise said. “So it wasn’t an airlock I was looking for. But I thought about escaping just the same. Tunneling out of that small space. It was so claustrophobic. The
Walden
is bigger than it needs to be, because I wanted the space to move around. I hate small spaces. And I wanted out of that one. I thought about rebelling. About taking everyone with me and burying us all alive. Everyone since me has had similar thoughts. So don’t sweat it. You’ll grow out of it eventually.”

“Should I take it as a good sign that you’re giving me advice?”

Annalise laughed. “You should. Once you stop plotting to kill us all, you’ll certainly have my vote.”

Good enough, Shaw thought.

That was four.
But four was not a majority.
It was half, but it wasn’t a majority. Could he scrounge up one more vote? Could he flip Tranq, Kuhn, Helix, or Jpeg? He’d gotten the cold shoulder from Helix and Jpeg, and Tranq wasn’t about to flip for him. That left Kuhn. Right where he’d started.

“What next?” he asked.

“You haven’t asked me the most basic question yet.”

“What is the most basic question?”

“Why do I want to destroy the Lattice?”

Shaw nodded, and let the question stand.

Annalise began unbuttoning her shirt.

“Uh—” Shaw stuttered.

“I have a breastband on,” she said, shaking her head at his reaction. “When they killed me, they sent an OJ after me. He tried to rob me, but the nanoshock he used was special—as you discovered.”

“You can’t just kill people with nanoshocks and not have the police do a little investigating, though.”

“Not normally,” Annalise said. She took off her shirt and let it hang in the air by her side. Shaw kept his gaze high as she started wiggling out of her pants. “But if one junkie kills another junkie, people just don’t care that much.”

“You were addicted to the Lattice?”

“People don’t get addicted to the Lattice, exactly. They get addicted to a feeling, or a place, or a rush—like an OJ. The Lattice just … facilitates that. For me, I spent every Carib guilder I could jumping back to spend time with Anders.”

“Your husband?”

She nodded. “We were married only a few months. And then he was in an accident. Drowned, on his way back home to see me. I loved him so much … I went crazy with grief. I sold everything I could, to jump back with him again. I spent days and days in jump boxes, not eating, not sleeping, not doing anything but just reliving our time together. I went through our life together at least three times before I ran out of money, but it still wasn’t enough.

“I started selling more. I tried to become a jump whore, but no one would pay me anything—I couldn’t stop thinking about Anders, and that kind of ruins the experience, I guess. Not like that slut Monique What’s-her-name. I don’t know how she has a soul left—how she can seem to so truly love each client so much. It’s freaky.”

“It is,” Shaw agreed. He’d never paid for her, of course, but everyone knew of her. She was the first to offer her clients not only sex, but—through a jump—the intensity of her love for her john at the same time. Her clients were overwhelmed, and paid millions for a single night. She’d inspired thousands of copycats, but no one could do it quite like Monique.

“Anders and I lived in Willemstad, on Curaçao, but after he died, there wasn’t anything for me there. And too few potential buyers for what I needed to sell. I went to Rio. Where there’s a market for anything. And where I truly sold my body.”

Annalise turned and let the Earth’s light shine on her midsection.

“First it was my kidney,” she said, running her finger along a light scar. “After that, it was a choice between either my leg, or my lung. Either would give me enough for five months of time in a jump box. I decided on the leg.” Annalise ran her hand over her left leg and showed him a line across her skin, just an inch below her pelvis.

“After that, it became easier. Once you’ve started, there’s less fear. I sold my hand.” She held up her left hand. Again, there was a scar line just below the bump on her wrist. “Then my other leg.” Another scar. This one was more jagged, Shaw thought. “I was getting desperate by that point. I almost died. I would have kept going. By that point, I didn’t know anything else. I weighed almost nothing, I was barely sane from lack of sleep. All that time with Anders.

“Wulf and Taveena saved me from all that. They saved me by killing me. I wanted to escape them and rebel, but the truth is, I wanted to escape them so I could see Anders again. They helped me realize that. They cloned new legs for me, and a new hand. They gave me my life back so I could work again. Work on the greatest project I’ve ever attempted.”

“The
Walden
?” Shaw asked.

“Destroying the Lattice. Although the
Walden
is a strong runner-up,” she said, smiling.

“Do you still jump to see Anders?”

“I don’t jump at all. I can’t just dip a toe into the Lattice without wanting to dive all the way in.”

Shaw nodded. He understood that. As Annalise started putting her clothes back on, he looked up at the Earth, and the blue light that surrounded him.

“What do you think of the Blue Sky pledge?”

“Their hearts are in the right place, I suppose.”

“They’re too evangelical and self-righteous for my tastes.”

“People trying to overthrow a corrupt system usually come off that way.”

“You don’t.”

She smiled. “Maybe not. But I’m not trying to sway you with a blue arm band and some nice words.”

“How are you trying to sway me then? By showing me your scars?”

Annalise’s eyes went hard. “I’m not trying to sway you, or anyone else. I trust Wulf and Taveena. If they think we need you, and that we can trust you, then you have my vote. So I’m assuming that somewhere inside you, whether you know it or not, you’re already swayed. You just have to recognize that yourself.”

“Then what are you trying to do?”

“I told you. I signed up for the greatest project I’ve ever attempted—destroying the Lattice. I couldn’t care less who agreed with me. I wouldn’t care if I were the only one. Let them take the Blue Sky Pledge. Fine by me. But how many of them are willing to give their lives to destroy it? To be willing to die in the attempt? That’s the difference between them and me. The Lattice already took my kidney. It took my hand and my legs. I’m willing to give the rest if it means destroying it.”

Shaw had the great room to himself. He played around on the walls and in the air in between, trying to get the hang of maneuvering in micro gravity. It felt wonderful to stretch his body, to twist and bend and work the muscles that hadn’t been touched in ages. He wished he had a punching bag, even a small speed bag would feel good to lay his fists into for awhile. Would that work in orbit? He wondered. It seemed like it should.

While he exercised and watched the Walden’s orbit around the Earth, he kept hoping someone would join him. Kuhn, of course. She held all the cards and he’d like to spend more time talking with her. Taveena. She had some sort of pull over him that he couldn’t shake—he’d never met someone with such intensity and lack of humor. Maybe Tranq would wander in, and they could try some hand-to-hand combat “training.”

But mostly Shaw wanted to see Wulf. Because Wulf had the ring.

“Have an open mind,” Wulf had said. “If you can do that, then tomorrow night I’ll give you this.”

I’ve done that, Wulf. I’ve met the crew, I’ve listened to Annalise
—a story he tried to push to the back of his mind.
I’m open.

Shaw ran through all the people and places he would like to see. Ellie, of course. He’d follow all her days since he’d died. Listen in as she learned she was having a girl. Maybe jump in close and see his baby girl in the womb.

What else? Wulf was right, he might go to his funeral. He’d drop in on his parents. On Sagan. Peter was down in Mexico. Maybe he’d see how he’d taken the news of his death. A Blue Skyer might be almost jubilant. On the other hand, he would have loved that conversation he’d had over the sphere. Would Peter be conflicted about his death?

And what about jumping into the lives of his new crewmates? Annalise had said they needed permission, but maybe that didn’t apply to him? He wanted to watch as they pulled each crew member out of their graves and see how their reaction was compared to his.

There was so much he wanted to find out and it was maddening that Wulf was in hiding, not letting him have the ring that he’d promised him. It had been more than a full day since he’d promised him the ring, counting the sleep.

I’ve lived up to my end of the bargain. I’m not going to let him cheat me out of this. He owes me.

“Byron.”

Shaw looked down from the middle of the great room. Wulf was there, his hands in his pockets. Just as he’d dreamed it. Just as he’d hoped.

One of those pockets has a ring in it.

Shaw started maneuvering to come down to the floor, but Wulf’s voice stopped him.

“I don’t think you had an open mind today. Too much plotting, not enough listening. Let’s check in again tomorrow night and we’ll see if you’ve earned a chance to use the Lattice by then. Good night, Byron.”

Wulf turned and walked out of the room, leaving Shaw clawing at the empty air and getting nowhere.

Shaw couldn’t say what time he awoke that night to find Tranq in his bunkroom, staring at Shaw like he was a specimen in a Petri dish. He was startled, but didn’t cry out, didn’t flinch too badly. Too tired to flinch? Or had he been partially on guard, even in his sleep, for something like this. Shaw flexed his forearm, testing it, ready for a fight if it came to it.

“Sleeping well?” Tranq asked.

“Well enough,” Shaw lied. He’d tossed and turned for an hour before he’d fallen asleep.

“Seems to me like you’re showing classic signs of withdrawal. Lack of sleep. Tremor in your left hand. Anger toward everyone, except Wulf, your supplier.”

“I’m not going through withdrawals.”

“That’s right. Keep fighting it, Shaw. The longer it takes you to admit it, the less likely any of these people will trust you enough come time for the vote.”

Shaw pursed his lips together and kept silent.

“I might be a grunt, but I can count to five just as well as you can. And I know who you think will be your fifth. I’m here to tell you to give it up. Kuhn’s too smart to bring a junkie on board. You may as well just enjoy the view these last few days and let it go.”

“If she’s so smart, then why bother coming to tell me that?”

Tranq paused and shrugged. “I know how I’d want to spend my last few days.”

“We’re nothing alike, Tranq.”

“Damn right! I didn’t let them cut my balls off in exchange for a soft-shell helmet when I go outside. I didn’t let them take my masculinity because they found aggression to be ‘counter-productive.’ I opted out, I fought back. Unlike you.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“These women have you brainwashed into thinking there’s something wrong with you. They use the Lattice to look inside your thoughts, and then use them against you. Biologically we’re men. We’re aggressive and we want to fuck, but if we show those tendencies, if we even
think
of them, we’re considered too dangerous, and they want to pump us full of drugs to make us more docile. Turn down the drugs and the helmets, and all you’re fit to be is a fucking grunt. That’s the difference. I had the balls to turn them down. You lapped it up.”

“The world’s changed, Tranq. You want to return to how it was a hundred years ago? To keep women under your thumb?”

“I want to return to some basic fucking equality. Where my testosterone doesn’t make me a liability for a job because it’s too goddamn sensitive and they can’t risk me getting too hormonal on them. Where a woman looks at my genes and decides that I’m a risk to beat her, even though I would
never
raise my hand against a woman.”