To Hold Infinity (36 page)

“Sir? Try your luck?”

Damn, and damn.

New tactics were required, now.

“Sir?”

Rafael realized he was standing in front of a coconut shy, no different from a Terran fair of centuries past.

“Of course.”

New tactics.

Rafael took four wooden balls from the girl.

He threw the first.

 

[[Luculenta Lorelei Maximilian, ident 6654к7
•
{sept5ΘΞ3}]]

 

Picturing Lori Maximilian's ideogram, he concentrated; a reply immediately returned.

 

<<>>

 

Frowning, he threw the second ball. The soul-daughter, Vin. He had seen her on the bed, skull crushed, tended by those interfering Earther women. Was Vin dead?

 

[[Luculenta Lavinia Maximilian, ident 6654%8
•
{sept5ΘΞ}]]

 

 

<<>>

 

No reason code was appended; she could be alive or dead.

Third ball.

In Skein, he sent more NetAngels questing. A ghost-Rafael returned from a NewsNet search: the most severely injured partygoers had been flown to Medical Complex Gamma, here in Lucis.

Fourth ball.

Yoshiko Sunadomari. Tetsuo's mother. She, too, was a possibility. Perhaps as bait. Perhaps to die.

“Oh.”

The girl was looking at him, stunned.

His first ball had whacked the coconut off its stand, and the following three had smacked into it one after the other as it fell to the ground.

Very slowly, the girl turned to fetch the coconut.

Another game he had won.

“Don't bother. I don't care for them, anyway.”

He held in his soaring laughter as he strode away.

His strategy was clear. Strike first. Kill the mother, to draw the son out from hiding.

The concern on Yoshiko Sunadomari's face had been obvious. Concern for Vin Maximilian, whose whereabouts the ghost-Rafael had determined to high probability. Sooner or later, Yoshiko would turn up at the med-centre.

The bigger game was growing more interesting, and the stakes were getting higher. Absolute certainty grew in him that he would win again—as he always did. As he always would.

Win.

 

The bannerman, kneeling, offered her the scroll.

As soon as Yoshiko touched the icon, her h-mail queue opened: a string of three glistening teardrops.

“Would you like to be alone?” asked Jana.

A palm-up gesture to the first teardrop revealed the sender's name. Luculenta Felice Lectinaria.

“Not at all.” Yoshiko smiled at Edralix. “You don't know what a relief it is, being able to use my own NetAgents.”

Though Yoshiko had said she needed no privacy, Edralix got up to perform some task out of her sight, and Jana busied herself with replenishing the cups of coffee.

Yoshiko gestured at the second teardrop. Lori was the sender, so Yoshiko pointed to play that message first.

In text, it said Lori was staying at the med-centre where Vin was being treated. Medical Complex Gamma, Lucis City. A graphic showed the med-centre's location, by Accordia Square in the north of the city.

Vin wasn't dead.

Yoshiko shook her head, then pinched the bridge of her nose, to stop the sudden wavering of her vision. With the injuries Vin had sustained, wasn't death preferable?

After a while, Yoshiko felt able to open the other messages. She pointed to the one from Felice Lectinaria.

“Professor Sunadomari. It was a pleasure to meet you at the Aphelion Ball, despite the dreadful events of later that night.”

In the display, the tall grey-haired Luculenta bowed her head.

“I thought you might be interested in this article,” she continued. “It's not posted yet in Skein, but feel free to cite from it if you wish.”

The woman's eyes looked directly at Yoshiko, very piercing in their intensity, and it was hard to believe this was a passive recording, without AI capabilities.

“Endit.”

The icon was an owl whose head rotated ceaselessly from left to right. Yoshiko pointed, and it metamorphosed into a circle of nine translucent spheres, each containing a tiny moving scene.

Yoshiko worked her way through them one by one, watching intently as each unfurled its full-size image, its attendant text and graphs.

The first depicted a white-trunked tree, growing on a rocky hill in bright sunlight. Later spheres showed a small copse of the same type of tree, then a widespread bush. The bush spread runners along the ground; each clump of growth bore the same spear-shaped copper leaves as the tree.

Yoshiko read intently about both tree and bush: capillary pressures, mitosis rates, photoreactive activity plotted versus sunlight intensity and ambient temperature.

Finally, she sat back and sighed.

“Very interesting.” Edralix was behind her, and his tone was ironic.

“Well, it is.” Yoshiko pointed at the solitary tree, and its descendant, the bush with vinelike runners. “There are two different forms of the same organism. The bush adapts to the lack of shade caused by its parent, you see—”

She let out a sigh and shook her head.

“The thing is, Edralix—this is my work, you know?” Maybe too much so, thinking of how Tetsuo had turned out. “And if you're good at what you do, you practically are your work.” She paused. “Like you and Jana.”

“I know. I'm sorry.” Edralix waved a hand awkwardly. “It's just, well, you met this woman at the Aphelion Ball, and now she's sending you stuff about a plant.”

Yoshiko stared back at the display, as Edralix continued. “With all the other stuff that's going on, it just seems a little, I don't know, incongruous.”

Yoshiko frowned. “Felice Lectinaria's obviously quite well known in the field,” she said slowly. “But…you're right. Let's forget this, huh? Let's see what the third message was.”

It was from Federico Gisanthro.

“We were going to meet, weren't we?” Federico's pale face was thin, with the strong ascetic look of a long-distance runner. “The events at the ball must have been particularly distressing for you. Please call me any time, or visit in person.”

Yoshiko froze the display with a gesture.

“I forgot to mention,” she said to Jana. “Federico Gisanthro's the head of TacCorps—” When the others nodded their understanding, she added, “He invited me to meet him today.”

She explained how Lori had engineered their meeting, during the Aphelion Ball, and enlisted Federico's help.

“Very good.” Jana sounded impressed.

Edralix started to speak, then closed his mouth.

Yoshiko waved at the display to continue.

“I'm at the TacCorps Academy today, Quatt'Day, and at Peacekeeper Central all day QuinzeDay. See you. Endit.”

The display faded.

Jana sipped coffee.

“You'll need to give this Federico a copy of the video log.”

“I know.” Yoshiko sighed. “I guess I've been withholding evidence, haven't I?”

“Er—” Edralix looked diffident. “Jana? May I talk with you for a moment?”

Jana stood up. “Excuse us, Yoshiko.”

Yoshiko waited until they had left. She stared out of the window, not seeing the pleasant grounds at all, but gathering her thoughts. Then she opened up a realtime call, and almost immediately her request was acknowledged.

Strange sense of vertigo.

To Yoshiko's left, below the balustrade in reality, lay the Sanctuary's dojo. In front, down the vanishing perspective of the preternaturally real holo display, lay a long training hall. Men and women in jumpsuits tuned olive green were warming up: butterfly jumps and flickflack somersaults.

Even in her youth, Yoshiko would not have trained like this.

“What do you think?”

Federico's gaunt image stood on the right, overlooking his agents. He was dressed in the same fashion, and his face was bathed in sweat.

“Lori told me you were interested in the fighting arts, Professor.”

In front of Yoshiko, the agents paired up and began to spar. Boots thudded into ribs, elbows into jaws. Yoshiko saw one heavyset woman grab a smaller man by groin and throat and throw him bodily against a wall.

“What do you think?”

“Very impressive,” Yoshiko said weakly.

An enormously muscled man at the side of the room barked an order. The agents formed groups: four against one.

“Go!” shouted the instructor.

The sparring grew fierce as the outnumbered single fighters tried to tangle up their opponents, punching and pushing them into each other's path.

The lights flickered out. In the darkness, bright pulses blazed like lightning, amid thunderous crashes of sound. The men and women continued fighting without pause.

“Battlefield conditions.”

Battlefield?
Yoshiko wondered.
I thought these were supposed to be law officers.

The lights came up. The fighting ceased. Those who could stand to attention, did so.

“I gather your medics keep busy,” said Yoshiko.

A dry chuckle from Federico.

“You've got that right.” In the display, he turned his back to Yoshiko. “Guido? Perhaps a demonstration for our caller?”

The hugely muscled instructor stepped into the centre. He pointed to five of the biggest men, and they formed a circle around him.

Without warning, two of the men barrelled straight at Guido: one kicking at Guido's knees, the other throwing elbow strikes. Guido locked the kicker around the neck, and threw the convulsing man into the other attacker, and both men went down.

Guido took the attack to the other three, felling them quickly. Sweeping the last one to the floor, Guido dropped knees-first straight onto the man's chest, and there was an audible crack.

“Well, enough of that.” Federico smiled pleasantly at Yoshiko.

The smile chilled her soul.

Guido came up to Federico.

“This is Professor Sunadomari.” Federico gestured in Yoshiko's direction. “She practices the, ah, traditional arts, you know?”

Yoshiko wondered how much more Lori had told him about her.

“Flower or stone?” Guido's voice was as rough as she had expected.

Yoshiko had to think about what he meant.

“Flower, I guess.”

Ornamentation, rather than rough stuff.
Dō
—disciplined path—more than
jutsu
, hard and practical.

“Anyway.” Federico stepped in front of Guido, and the training hall became indistinct background. “This wasn't why you called, was it? I just thought you'd like to see TacCorps in training.”

“Do they always train like this?”

“This is the Alpha Squad. They do.”

In the shade beyond the image, Yoshiko could see that Jana and Edralix had returned. Edralix shook his head.

Yoshiko said, “I guess you don't have too much trouble, ah, subduing suspects.”

“Not much.” Federico smiled again. “You'll be happy to know I've already assigned two of my agents to the investigation, and Guido may be joining them.”

“I—thank you.”

Would Major Reilly appreciate the additions to her team?

“They will get results, I promise.” His pale mismatched eyes looked intent. “You don't have any information, beyond what you gave to Major Reilly?”

“I'm sorry.” Yoshiko shook her head,

“Be assured, we will do our utmost to find Tetsuo. Thank you for calling, Professor Sunadomari. Endit.”

The display terminated, and Yoshiko let out a long sigh of relief.

“Bloody hell,” said Edralix. “They don't mess around, do they?”

Jana stepped in front of the window. Sunlight created a bright nimbus around her unruly mass of black hair, her witchlike pointed face.

“You didn't give him the evidence.”

“No,” said Yoshiko. “I didn't.”