To Hold Infinity (26 page)

Was Xanthia's mind going to push him beyond that transition boundary?

Was she the one?

“Xanthia.” His whisper was hoarse.

Would she and he together be the first of a new form of life?

Had to let—

Ultimate freedom, ultimate enlightenment, thanks to Xanthia and all the soft, delicious, sweet and beautiful Luculentae before her, all the minds subsumed within his nexus.

—to let—

“Command: fly home!”

—go.

He hardly felt the flyer lift.

Such relief, as the cache containment codes unlocked.

Finally, it gave up its compressed code, emptied out its buffers, into Rafael's waiting plexcore nexus.

Xanthia's mind flooded through him.

He gasped aloud.

 

All those fragments: first love, secret dreams, examination hell. Lost virginity, business success. Holodramas and poetry. Aged three months, the first flower she had seen: bright yellow, bursting in wonderful light before a baby's stunned and joyful senses.

Xanthia's pure and beautiful life was his.

The code tore her copied soul apart, ripped it into tiny shreds, and reworked it, rethreaded it, into the larger, darker fabric of the whole.

Joy. Love. Bright hope and dark despair.

A shout of triumph burst from Rafael's lips, as he arched in ecstasy on the cockpit floor.

In the growing, swelling mass of his extended being, he was conscious of all of them.

Gregor:
Rafael's soul-father. Long dark hours of solitary concentration. Lonely triumphs in secret and complex games in Skein, which only the brightest of Luculenti could appreciate.

Depression. Rages. Striking out at Maria, his beloved wife…

Pedro:
Gregor's soul-father, gentle and filled with childlike wonder, always. Visual artist, dreamer, for a hundred and eighty years. Pain, too, in the later times, which he had passed on unedited to Gregor so that their lesson of transitory sweetness be not lost.

Adam:
Pedro's soul-father.

Donal:
Adam's soul-father…

But more: he was the darkest, ripped-apart and incomplete fragments of Marianan del'Ortega: her sleazy seduction in a Lowtown doorway, gritty stone pressed against her back, and the spicy breath of the Fulgidus boy whose hand was inside her clothes…

He was the dark shadows, too, of those other once-sweet lives: of Rachel and Florentia and Magasrabina and Drionay. Like Marianan, they were deceased Luculentae whose plexcores he had exhumed and sucked of their contents. Unlike Marianan—her death an unlikely accident, the horror of the flyer diving out of control as fresh in his mind as the day she died—unlike her, they had completed the Baton Ceremony, and their plexcores contained the dark, the vicious and the inane, all the dreck and dregs of life they did not want to burden their successors with.

And there were the flakes of memory, the half-read resonances picked up from Voretta and his other almost-loves, the ones he had penetrated but not subsumed.

But, torn apart from the holographic whole, flailing the desperate hooks of distributed thought needing to meld into a pattern, the black soul fragments of the dead were the most powerful force of all.

He was all of them, and they were him.

His own beginnings? His core was there, sparked into being when Gregor's memories had flooded into the youthful Rafael, while lightning played outside and freakish storms smashed the forest trees and blew the conservatory's dome apart. No LuxPrime supervision in those days. The Baton Ceremony was a private thing, and the dark and melancholy Gregor ignored the most elementary safety precautions, ending his life and birthing a wild new spirit in the storm.

A spirit strong enough to subdue and subsume a wealth of clamouring mind-fragments.

A mind powerful enough to encompass the hopes and dreams of countless others.

The interference pattern of their desperate thoughts and hot emotions; the whole greater than the sum of souls, the addition of minds; emergent, a new and more powerful type of being.

Such power.

Thank you, Xanthia.

He was on the brink, the very threshold of something marvellous. Xanthia had made him ready, and he knew with certainty that one more mind, just one more sweet Luculenta mind, and the divine change would cascade through his nexus, flood through his plexcores, and sweep him to a new stage of evolution.

The power sang in Rafael. Outside the cockpit, the night was inky black, as though the very stars had retired in deference.

He knew, with deep and utter certainty, that he could become anything he pleased. The power sang, a trumpet note of triumph, and he laughed with the joy of impending victory.

 

A row of tiny blue lights sparked into existence along the damaged corridor.

“I'm surprised that still works,” said Maggie.

Beside Yoshiko, the lynxette—called Dawn, Yoshiko remembered—wrinkled her nose at the dust, and delivered a feline sneeze.

“Bless you. What are those lights, Maggie?”

“House video, I should think.” Maggie picked her way over crumbled remnants of wall. “There's a—oh, damn it!—a local privacy law. If you're recording, you have to display some indication.”

Yoshiko looked up at the video-globe, following in faithful companionship.

“That's exempt.” Maggie followed her gaze. “Because it's so obvious. The recorders in these walls are probably damn near invisible.”

“I understand.” Yoshiko nodded. “Listen, I'd like to go back to my own room. But we can't go through the foyer, not with all that wreckage there.”

“Why not?—Oh, the cat's paws. Right.”

Yoshiko stopped at a big lounge to their right. Between flowing drapes, French doors led out to the grounds.

“You thinking of going around the outside?” There was a rueful expression on Maggie's face.

Yoshiko, too, remembered: only an hour or two ago, they had fled through the night like shrieking schoolgirls, when a rustle sounded in the bushes.

“This house is big enough to get lost in.” Yoshiko tried to think practically. “And we don't know which corridors are blocked. If we attempt to find our way round the ballroom indoors, we could end up being missing for days.”

“I've told you a million times—” started Maggie.

“—not to exaggerate. Right.”

“OK.” Maggie let out a long sigh. “I'm taking the scenic route. If you go round the outside, I can meet you in your room. First, I'd like to go back to the entrance and talk to that Luculentus who acted like he was in charge.”

“Going to interview him?”

“If he'll talk to me. But it's occurred to me that he might be able to hand control of the house system over to you, since Lori put you in charge.”

“Oh. OK.” Yoshiko was not sure what good that would do, or if she really needed the responsibility.

Maggie headed back towards the house's shattered hub.

Yoshiko, sighing, shook her head, then cut through the lounge, with the lynxette tagging along beside her.

The French doors were a highly permeable membrane. When Yoshiko passed through, the membrane felt chilled and wet. The lynxette spat.

The night had grown bitterly cold. Yoshiko hurried across the grass, though her clothes were beginning to warm automatically.

Yoshiko was afraid that Dawn might go loping off into the night, but she stayed by Yoshiko's side. They crossed the lawns together.

Only two of the big flyers remained. That still left a lot of people—fifty? more?—staying in rooms being treated by autodocs or medical drones, or watching over injured friends or loved ones. And the emergency teams were still here, of course. Probably a forensic team had already swept the ballroom by now, for all the good that would do.

Whatever had happened to poor Xanthia?

Rafael. He was behind it. Of that she was certain.

Yoshiko and the lynxette came to a brightly lighted room with a floor-length window which softened at their approach, and they went inside. Yoshiko was grateful for the sudden warmth. Her athlete's body began to sweat with the heat—ready as always for training—until her trouser suit started to cool in compensation.

The room was occupied. A man, keeping watch on a transparent-lidded medical drone. Inside it lay a young woman whom Yoshiko didn't recognize. The man, grey-faced, nodded dispiritedly at Yoshiko as she passed. He paid the lynxette no heed at all.

Maggie was already waiting in her room when Yoshiko got there. Dawn went in past Yoshiko and jumped straight up onto the bed, lay down and began to lick her paws.

“Thom—that's the Luculentus in charge—” Maggie spoke without bothering with a greeting. “—He said you have control of all the house
system's comms and domestic modules. He'd like you to hold back the cleaning-drones for a while longer. They'll clean up the debris in no time, apparently, but right now they'd just get in everyone's way.”

“Fine.” Yoshiko sat wearily down on the bed, and absently rubbed the lynxette's head with her knuckles.

“I've ordered some drinks.” Maggie pointed at the bedside terminal. “Had to clear that crazy image first. What was it, again?”

Yoshiko shrugged. “Just some hand-waving graphic meant to explain the concept of a Luculentus extended mind.” It was significant, of course. If only she could figure out why.

“Oh.”

“Well…. Is your video-globe still on?”

“No.” Maggie looked interested. “Should it be?”

“I don't think so.” Yoshiko took a deep breath. “The image came from a crystal I found in Tetsuo's house. It doesn't mean anything by itself, but I think it's the image of a Luculentus mind. A real scan, of an actual mind.”

“Can I see it?”

“I haven't managed to look at it yet…I think I'm going to need Vin's—oh, damn it. Lori's help. Or Xanthia's. This Thom fellow didn't say how she is, did he?”

“No. Nor where she is, either. I can't seem to find out much at all, but things are pretty confused out there still.”

“What happened to that tall Fulgidus you were dancing with? Roberto, was it?”

“Oh, him.” Maggie shook her head ruefully. “He was last seen running for the exit. Runs fast, too.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Yeah—Look, d'you think you could check your comms? Thom said that he would reroute incoming comms to you, unless they were marked ‘personal.'”

“OK.”

“Try your new terminal.” Maggie pointed at Yoshiko's wrist.

Yoshiko thumbed the bracelet into life. A cluster of icons and holo volumes grew into being. She gestured for her mail.

“There's one to Lori from InfoBurst Five.” Yoshiko's fingers flickered as displays flew past. She was getting used to the local systems. “The description is, ‘
Request for info coverage
.'”

“Privacy laws.” Maggie laughed. “I love 'em.”

“What do you mean?”

“If there's somebody
compos mentis
in charge of a situation, the NewsNets have to get permission to cover it. Unless it's a public venue.”

“They're a NewsNet, you mean?” Yoshiko read the message again.

“You got it.”

“I see.” Yoshiko waved the communication volume open.

She got a recorded talking head reciting a standard request. Before she could say anything, though, a request-for-override icon appeared—spreading white-gloved hands and a pleading disembodied cartoon grin and eyebrows—which she acknowledged.

An harassed-looking balding man appeared before her.

“You are—?” He spoke quickly; Yoshiko suspected he always did.

“Yoshiko Sunadomari, acting for Lori Maximilian.”

“Mikhail Whittaker, here. I've been trying to get through for ages. If you give permission, I can get a team there in twenty minutes, or hook up with the emergency teams' systems in about a second. Here are the financial details and the copyright clauses—”

Text and graphics grew into being to Yoshiko's left.

“—They're standard and they're very reasonable. Guaranteed payment in the top-100 currency-space. Very worthwhile for Luculenta Maximilian.”

“Well…” Yoshiko looked at Maggie, whose eyes were very bright. “You're lucky. One of Earth's best-known journalists, Maggie Brown, was here when the incident happened. She has extensive recorded coverage of the whole thing. Want to talk to her?”

“Yes! Yes, please—”

“Just one moment.” Yoshiko formed the mute/dark gesture to freeze the outgoing signal. “Can I just pass him over to you? Is there anything else you need?”

“No, I'll talk to him.” Maggie thumbed her bracelet, requesting control of the display. “And—thank you.”

Yoshiko unfroze the comms, relinquishing control, and let Maggie haggle terms. It took less than a minute. When they had agreed, Yoshiko gave her consent, acting as proxy on Lori's behalf.

Maggie checked the technical formatting details for speed-linking her info to an InfoBurst Five NetNode, then signed off.

“Right, then.” Her voice was eager. “I've an hour, max, to do the editing. Then we'll be seen Fulgor-wide, in no time.”

Yoshiko nodded, hiding her disquiet. Maggie had a job to do.

A drone delivered daistral. Maggie's drink went untouched, as she bent over her display, intent concentration written on her face.

Yoshiko drank, realizing for the first time how deadly tired she was.

“I'm going to pick the last few ballroom shots.” Maggie's voice sounded far away. “Then Vin's being taken out to the flyer with Lori beside the drone. Finish with the flyer taking off.”

Her rapid fingers plucked cubic images from the air, rearranged them in a string, and played each cube once or twice, adjusting the duration.

Like a player with perfect pitch tuning a stringed instrument, she constrained narrative flow into an exact sixty seconds with deceptive ease.

Running her hands through her hair, she leaned back. “Command: record. Disaster struck this evening at the palatial home of Luculenta Lori Maximilian—”