To Hold Infinity (16 page)

Dhana touched the gill-like bands across her neck.

“It's not worth it, unless you live out here for a long time.”

“I suppose not.”

The shadows drew in across the canyon.

“It's peaceful here,” he said. “I'm not surprised no one knows about your work, if you're all this far out in the wilderness.”

“We've organized small demonstration sites before, and tried to make them public. And once we actually staged a small march in Soltar City.”

There was a bitter expression on her face.

“What went wrong?” he asked carefully.

“Proctors. TacTeams broke up the demos, and broke a few heads in the process.”

After a pause, Tetsuo said, “I met Federico Gisanthro once. The head of TacCorps.”

“Really.”

“Seemed like a bit of a hard case,” said Tetsuo. “Can't say I liked him.”

“Damned Luculentus—” Dhana looked up at his headgear briefly.

“Sorry. But we've heard about Federico Gisanthro. Machiavellian as they get.”

“I'm not surprised.”

“His identity as head of TacCorps is only public knowledge because of legislation, you know. It's said that he manipulates other Luculenti as easily as they could manipulate schoolchildren.”

“Said by whom?”

“Our political analysts.”

Tetsuo remembered the piercing gaze of those mismatched eyes. He shivered.

“But you have Luculenti help, don't you?” he said. “Otherwise Brevan would never have known about my upraise op. The information was only in Skein.”

“Yes, there are Luculenti who are sympathetic to us. So far, they've kept our existence pretty much secret. TacCorps taught us the wisdom of that.”

He wasn't really paying attention to her now. Had he really been so forgetful, so ready to ignore the trouble he was in?

“I suppose you know I left my flyer in Nether Canyon, don't you?” asked Tetsuo. “Do you think I could go back to it? With you or Brevan as escort?”

“I don't know.” Dhana's glance flicked quickly to her left.

Tetsuo wondered what it was she was failing to tell him, and decided that his only recourse was to be open himself.

“There's a small set of infocrystals in the flyer. That's all I'm after.”

“What kind of info?”

“I don't know.” He held up a hand as Dhana started to speak. “Honestly. I couldn't access it before. It's all held in intelligent facets, encrypted and protected. But I might be able to get at the info now.”

He pointed at his Luculentus headgear. He had no idea whether his mindware, which had come with his prime—and so far only—plexcore, embedded in his torso, was still active in the background at some deep neural level.

He desperately needed training ware and Luculentus guidance. But there was a chance he had integrated enough to access the infocrystals' contents: he was sure that the strange info-formats were LuxPrime design, for Luculentus access.

“Where did it come from?” asked Dhana. “This info, that you couldn't read?”

He closed his eyes and let out a long breath.

“Stolen from LuxPrime, I think.”

“You're kidding. From LuxPrime?”

“I think so.”

“That's impossible.”

“Is it? Their staff are only human.”

“Incorruptible, more like.”

“Perhaps—” Tetsuo looked hard at Dhana, willing her to trust him. “I was visiting the Bureau for Offworld Affairs,” he said slowly. “A Captain Rogers was giving me clearance for the upraise. Pretty much a formality if you already have a work permit; they do a full check on you when you apply for that.”

Dhana leaned her head to one side. “What's this got to do with LuxPrime?”

“Well—I was waiting outside his office,” Tetsuo said, “and I could hear a blazing row between two men going on inside, though I couldn't make out what they were shouting about. After a while, the door opened and a tall thin guy stormed out, wearing LuxPrime colours, and then Captain Rogers came puffing out after him…”

Tetsuo swallowed. Was the LuxPrime employee the same man who had been in the video-log? Farsteen?

Thin, fair-haired. It could have been him. Easily.

Tetsuo shook his head. If only he hadn't left the video-log crystal in his house…

“Go on,” Dhana said.

Tetsuo was peripherally aware of the intent concentration in her eyes.

“Rogers pounded off down the corridor. And I—couldn't resist the temptation.”

“You stole infocrystals from a proctor's office?”

“Copied them,” Tetsuo said simply. “I had a wrist terminal and a set of crystals on me.”

“I wouldn't have thought,” said Dhana, “that you could copy something in Luculentus formats.”

Tetsuo smiled sadly.

“Cracking systems,” he said, “is the one thing I'm really good at. Besides, the first crystal was easy—a different format, relatively unprotected. That just made the remaining crystals a challenge I couldn't ignore, don't you see?”

“No. Not really.”

“Ah, well. When Rogers came back, we both pretended nothing had happened, and he rushed through the procedures in ten minutes flat, told me I was authorized as far as he was concerned, and saw me out of the building. He locked his door that time, too.”

“A bit late,” said Dhana.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“So there's at least one crystal in the flyer which we, you, can read?”

Tetsuo shook his head. “I left two crystals at home. I hid the unprotected one: it seemed to be a LuxPrime diagram of how a nexus works, but I didn't spend much time looking at it. I was far too busy.”

“Busy?”

“With work, you know?” Tetsuo shook his head. “Funny, how all that suddenly seems a bad dream, when I've only been here a few days.”

“You mean, you'd rather be here?”

Tetsuo shrugged. “You live here all the time, and work hard, so you probably think this place is nothing special. But it is.”

He gestured at the dark canyon. Up above, the small beta moon was just rising above the rim.

“I don't suppose,” said Dhana slowly, “that you know the courier's name?”

Tetsuo shook his head.

“I didn't know him. But there was another crystal, which I partially decoded, with a fragmented video log, and a stored Skein-ghost of someone called Farsteen. He might be the same man. The crystal was damaged, though. I'm not certain.”

“I thought so.”

“Captain Rogers called him ‘Adam.'”

Dhana hugged herself. Her expression was hard to read in the gathering darkness.

“He's dead.”

“Who is?”

“Adam Farsteen's body was found at your house,” said Dhana. “Someone killed him.”

Tetsuo gave a sort of disbelieving half-laugh, as though this were some kind of joke, but he knew straight away she was telling the truth.

“At my house?” he said. “How would you know—?”

“Brevan told me. We're not entirely out of touch.”

“No, I suppose not.”

He stared at the darkness, seeing nothing. Farsteen dead, at his house? It made no sense.

“An attack squad broke into my house. I thought it was proctors at first, but then I realized they weren't trying to arrest me. They were trying to kill me. Because of the crystals. What the hell have I got into?”

Dhana touched his arm.

“Time to get back to the cabin,” she said. “Supper's waiting, and I'm getting cold.”

Neither of them spoke as they followed the winding trail back through the night, to the small brightly lit cabin.

Tetsuo screamed as the faceless men beat him, blood welling from his wounds as he collapsed with a gurgling, strangled cough and the last rattle of his dying breath. Tetsuo ‘s eyes—Ken eyes—clouded as life left forever with a beat of silent wings.

Yoshiko forced her eyes open.

She breathed out slowly. She had dozed off, that was all. Trying to think of a way to find Tetsuo.

She should remember what she always told her trainees at the lab: this is the time to aim for—that moment of feeling utterly stuck, the feeling which always precedes enlightenment.

There was a low chime, and Lori stepped through the door membrane.

“Morning,” said Lori. “I see you've synchronized with local time.”

“Just about.” Recalibrating her med-kit's femtocyte-processor had taken a long time.

The processor fascinated her: tiny matter-lasers used coherent atomic and electron beams to build up smartatom processors. In this case, to form femtocytes which rebuilt telomeres so that cells might continue to reproduce, and hunted down free radicals, and performed the hundred other tasks which helped a human body fight senescence.

But death would come, in the end.

“That's good,” said Lori. “Listen, I've arranged a real-time comms connection to Earth's NetEnv, in EveryWare, in five minutes' time. It was the only time-window I could get.” Lori pointed at the small bedside terminal. “You'll be able to access your h-mail and such.”

“But that will cost a fortune. You can't possibly—”

“If you want to prepare any outgoing h-mail,” said Lori, “I'm afraid you'll need to do it now. The actual connection will only last a few seconds.”

“OK.” Yoshiko bowed her head. “Thank you, very much.”

“You're welcome.” Lori smiled.

For just a moment, Yoshiko could see where Vin's girlish grin came from. She nodded her thanks as Lori left the room.

“Command: create mail object one,” she said to the terminal. “Command: record.”

A small winking dot of red light hung in the air above the terminal.

“Hello, Akira,” she said. “I'm sorry this comm is so short. I'm fine. The planet is everything you said it would be. Tetsuo…”

She shook her head. Her first instinct had been to lie, to say everything was all right, but Akira had a right to know about his elder brother.

“…Tetsuo has had some difficulty, but I'm sure he's going to be all right. Ah—More soon. Take care, and give my love to Kumiko. Out.”

She waved an end-record command at the terminal.

Was there anyone else she should mail?

“Command: create mail object two,” she said. “Command: record…Hello, Anichi. Many apologies for the brevity of this message. Could you do me a favour, please? Could you send any info we have on VSI tech, or LuxPrime? Many thanks. How are the new team getting on? Is Richard following any good leads? His cross-coupling idea seemed promising. Can Dorothy and Morio manage them all? Oh, and has Tanya had her baby yet?…More soon. Out.”

She waved an end to the second message just as the comms session opened up. The familiar encircled-Earth holo-logo of the Terran NetEnv appeared.

“Logon: Sunadomari Yoshiko,” she said.

A round-faced gentle golden Buddha, floating in the lotus position, opened his eyes.

Yoshiko waved away the Buddha's image. It was one of her NetAgents, and she didn't have time for its usual greetings.

She pointed at the flowing-words icon to download her incoming mail, while using voice instruction to say: “Command: attach mail object one to ID Sunadomari Akira, my son. Command: attach mail object two to ID Higashionna Anichi at Sudarasys Lifetech, my employers. Command: upload and send mail.”

That done, she pointed at the tiny Buddha icon, and her NetAgent sprang into full size, a metre-high image.

“Greetings,” it said, in its mellifluous voice. “Ah—I fear this connection is being—”

Apologetic text flashed up as the Buddha disappeared and the comms connection to Earth was severed.

Yoshiko's heart was thumping and her throat was dry, though she could not have explained why. Perhaps it was the sudden vicarious contact with the home she had left behind, with its warmth and safety. Except that Ken, her love, was no longer there, or anywhere else in this cold, old universe.

Shaking a little, she requested daistral from the house system and tried to clear her head. A small servo-drone trundled up bearing the drink. Taking the cup, she thought for a moment and then waved the terminal back into life.

“List in-tray messages, personal messages only.”

Though the comm session had been brief, there had been plenty of time to download her waiting h-mail, which she could now read at her leisure.

“You have three personal messages,” the system said, while simultaneously displaying text. “One: Higashionna Anichi, Chairman, Sudarasys Lifetech Inc., subject equals ‘
Office gossip, Yoshiko
.' Two: Eric Rasmussen, Scientific Officer, Ardua Station, subject equals ‘
Howya doin' Prof
?' Three: Sunadomari Akira, Headmaster, Okinawan Prefecture School one-zero-seven, subject equals ‘
Hi, mother. Ça va? Genki?
'”

She could guess the contents of each h-mail without opening it. From Anichi, there would be a gentle personal message with cheery project reports appended as text and results-graphics. He would not mention how much he missed her at the labs, but would concentrate on the good work done by the youngsters she had been coaching.

Akira would send details of small domestic incidents, with little discussion of his own work. How like his brother, in that at least, Yoshiko realized for the first time.

What about Eric, that big red-bearded giant of a man back at Ardua Station? Why would he h-mail her?

She pointed to Eric's name on the list, and a display volume grew into being.

Eric's hair was combed neatly, by his standards, and he was wearing a pristine jumpsuit unlike the more tattered affairs Yoshiko had seen him in. The blank wall of his small cabin was behind him.

“Hi, Yoshiko,” he said in the display.

Looked like he was alone in his cabin this time.

“I just wanted to say, ah—Oh, I don't know. I hope the toy monkey's keeping you company. Are you all right? Call me. Call soon. Bye.”

That was it. The image blinked out.

Eric.

Ignore that. She had Tetsuo to think about.

She shut down the incoming-mail display and tried to clear her head.

“Command: clear temp objects,” she said, so that the local copies of her outgoing mail would be deleted. “Command: create mail object one. Command: record…”

She thought for a moment.

“Please could I have permission to visit my son's house? Would that be possible?…Out.”

Should she add more? No point. Either she would get permission, or she wouldn't. She picked up her daistral cup.

“Command: attach mail object one to local ID Major Reilly, Proctor. Command: upload and send.”

Then she waved the display into oblivion and sat there, cup between her hands but quite forgotten, and stared at the wall, seeing nothing.

 

A thousand Xanthias, each dressed in a flowing grey silk neo-Grecian gown, walked straight-backed across a white marble plain beneath a featureless sky. Every one of them paused, leg poised and revealed where the gown's split fell away, lowered her chin and looked at him with dark sparkling eyes, and held out a hand in invitation…

Cursing, Rafael dispelled the illusion.

The room in which he sat was empty, its grey and black plainness mocking him, and be closed his eyes and began again.

One Xanthia, skin a shade darker, that's right, and the Mona Lisa smile and the dark secretive eyes and the gloss of her raven-dark hair and the sparkling highlights sprinkled across her finely jewelled headgear. Smooth neck, not too long. Bare olive shoulders. Firm and full, her dark-nippled breasts…

What was he, a pubescent boy? He clothed the illusion, stored it, and swept it away.

Nothingness, tinged with blue. Anger and desire washed through him, and he pictured her identideogram, and entered Skein.

 

<<>>

 

“Rafael.” Xanthia, sitting on a low bench by a dark placid river, whose tree-lined banks led past trimmed green lawns. “What a pleasant surprise.”

“Ah, Xanthia. It's good to see you again.”

“What can I do for you?”

Rafael did not attempt any within SkeinLink. Best to keep this formal, for now.

“I was hoping I could help you,” said Rafael. “It seems you're conducting an investigation into Tetsuo Sunadomari's disappearance, which I've only just become aware of.”

“That was when Maggie Brown was interviewing you, was it?”

“The Earther journo, yes.” Rafael smiled. “Quite resourceful, isn't she?”

Xanthia, he noted, couldn't help smiling in return.

“Quite,” she said. “So, when did you last see Tetsuo?”

“Here you are,” he said, and a time-stamped compressed-format log of their last meeting.

“Thank you,” said Xanthia, absorbing it instantly. “It looks as though it was a straightforward discussion of upraise procedures and his business projects. I can't pinpoint any likely predictor of a chaotic transition in his personality.”

“Doesn't look like it, does it?” said Rafael. “If you check his stress indicators when he talks about the project with Stargonier and Malone, you'll see they get quite high, but there's no hint of phase-transition precursors.”

“So whatever happened was the result of an external event?”

“That's the high-probability scenario,” said Rafael. “You know, as his upraise-sponsor, I can't help feeling some responsibility for his welfare. Do you have any other info I might help correlate or analyse?”

“Sorry,” said Xanthia, shaking her head. “We've very little at all.”

“OK, then. I hate to ask this, but—Do you think he's still alive?”

“Why do you ask?” said Xanthia.

Rafael could feel all her perceptions zeroing in on him. He willed his Skein-image to betray nothing.

“Unless he's being harboured by a Luculentus—” His tone was careful. “—If he is alive, he has no access to learning protocols or developmental support.”

“That's true. Are you worried about catastrophic breakdown?”

“It's a possibility. I hate to think of the poor devil stuck somewhere, maybe in hiding, and his whole mind crashing down in shards—”

Xanthia shuddered.

“I'm sorry,” said Rafael. “But there's a more hopeful possibility. If he can manage the integration process unattended, perhaps he'll figure out how to access Skein.”

“My God.” Xanthia's eyes widened: true reaction, or what she allowed him to see? “You're right. I didn't think of that. I'll set a NetAngel to keep permanent watch on the public log.”

Rafael had already done just that.

“Let me know if there's anything else I can do.”

“I will,” said Xanthia, and just for a moment her expression was open and hopeful.

Xanthia
, thought Rafael.
My beautiful ripe Xanthia, soft and delicious—

Deep inside him, his infiltration code stirred.

“Perhaps you would care to join me for dinner?” he said. “In person.”

Gentle with himself, he calmed his desire.

“I'm sorry,” said Xanthia. “I've so much work on at the moment—”

Anger flared—

 

[[[HeaderBegin: Module = Node12A3.33Q8: Type = QuaternaryHyperCode: Axes = 256

Concurrent_Load

     ThreadOne:.linkfile = Infiltrate.Alpha

     ThreadTwo:.linkfile = Infiltrate.Beta

     ThreadThree:.linkfile = CodeSmash

     ThreadFour:.linkfile =SubvertArray

     ThreadFive:.linkfile = MindWolf

End_Concurrent_Load]]]

 

—mixed with that overwhelming attraction which said she must be his, and his vampire modules fairly throbbed in cache, wanting to be loose, wanting to take the risk and plunge through Skein—

“—But we'll meet soon enough, in person, at the Maximilians' Aphelion Ball.”

Gasping in reality, Rafael edited his Skein-image to appear unconcerned. He fought down the rush of his infiltration code, and cleared it from his cache.

Control, control. You'll get your chance.

“Really?” he said, and his voice was calm and level only in Skein. “I'm very much looking forward to it.”

“I'm conducting the Sun Wheel Dance,” Xanthia said.

 

<>

<>

 

Rafael saw that the little stick figures had tiny silver dots on their heads, indicating their Luculentus status.