To Hold Infinity (37 page)

 

“The thing is—” Yoshiko was explaining, “—Major Reilly wasn't really friendly, but she didn't try to intimidate me, either.”

She tensed her muscles, relaxed. She was wearing a borrowed black jumpsuit, having freshened up, and felt ready for a training session.

“Well—” Jana's deep black eyes glanced at Edralix. “From Ed's political analysis, this Federico may be quite a potent force behind the scenes.”

“He wasn't trying to help Yoshiko,” Edralix said. “He was trying to keep her out of the investigation.”

“Yes. That's just what he was doing.”

That was what they had been discussing outside the room. Yoshiko had always known that Pilots kept their own intelligence services. It paid commerce to know what was happening among their clients' cultures.

Of course, no energy weapon had ever been transported from one settled world to another. On one level at least, the Pilots' intentions were overt, and patently benign.

“Are you going to give the video-log to Major Reilly?”

“That seems best. With Edralix's analysis, if that's OK?”

“Of course.”

Jana leaned forward.

“There's something else.”

Looking into her eyes was like falling through a black endless space.

“What?” asked Yoshiko, feeling suddenly fearful.

“This Felice Lectinaria—do you know her?”

“Her name's vaguely familiar, from the journals. I've been meaning to check.”

“But you didn't meet her before the Aphelion Ball?”

“No. We only talked briefly. Why do you ask?”

“Because—” Jana's black eyes held distant golden sparks, threatening to flare. “There's more to her message, I think, than seems apparent.”

“Oh.” Yoshiko glanced at Edralix. “Encrypted info?”

“Not in that sense,” said Jana. “I think she was being subtle, not knowing under which circumstances—in what company—you might receive her message.”

A tree.

A bush, the tree's very different descendant.

“The second generation—” Yoshiko spoke slowly. “Grew up to be quite different from the parent.”

“But it thrived.” Jana's soft voice seemed to cut through the air.

“Yes, it did.”

It had been her greatest fear. Only now, could she acknowledge it.

“Tetsuo's alive, isn't he?”

 

Ghostly images stalked the control room, walking among the fallen researchers like lost souls.

“You two go on.”

Kerrigan bent over the holoprocessor, refining the decoy images. All around the ellipsoid control centre, a horizontal band had been tuned to transparency.

From outside—at least, from a distance—everything would look OK. As soon as the unconscious bodies were dragged out of sight.

“Come on,” said Dhana. “It'll be easier going down.”

“I should hope so.”

Tetsuo followed. The walk downstairs was tedious, but not exhausting.

“You OK?”

“I'm not that unfit.”

Dhana was out of sight. Rounding the turn, he saw that she was waiting for him.

“So why are you breathing heavily?” she asked.

“Because you're near me?” He made it a question.

“Yeah?” Dhana grinned. “In your dreams.”

They carried on.

At ground level, Tetsuo steered well clear of the open doorway. No control signals blasted into his brain.

They continued descending, until they reached the basement level.

The kitten was dead.

“Oh, no.”

It was the first cage they came to, among the rows of experimental specimens. Dhana gently took the small white body out. Dark crimson blood stained the tiny head around the implant incision.

“How could they?”

Tetsuo said nothing. He had heard both sides of this debate from Mother—live experiments were a last resort, but were used when other options were exhausted—and still had no answer.

He would never do this to an animal. He knew that much.

 

“Major Reilly, please.”

“I'm sorry, that officer is unavailable at this time.”

“Never mind.” Yoshiko made knot-tying motions with her fingers, joining three bobbing crystalline spheres of light. “I have some info for her.” The three objects were the Maximilians' video log, Edralix's analysis of the editing, and a copy of the Luculentus mind diagram. “Can you accept?”

“Go ahead.”

The mind-schematic had been reconfigured so that the initial display showed the all-important physical dimensions, the vast number of plexcores forming the nexus. There was a short text addendum, explaining that Yoshiko had found it among Tetsuo's personal effects.

Yoshiko pointed, and the objects were gone.

“Info accepted. Do you wish to record a message?”

“No—I think it's self-explanatory. Thank you.”

“You are welcome, ma'am.”

As the display faded, Yoshiko dabbed a faint film of perspiration from her forehead.

“You did the right thing.” Jana spoke from behind her.

“I hope so.” She felt shaky but relieved. “At any rate, it's done now.”

 

The capuchin, sitting on Brevan's shoulder, chattered away into his ear.

“I wish I knew what he was saying.”

“Complaining, by the sound of it,” said Dhana.

“The attrition rate has been awful. According to the logs, they've only just started surviving the interface.”

The Agrazzus moved among the cages, making notes on his wrist terminal.

There were chimps and macaques. There were parrots and parakeets, ravens and owls. There were large lynxettes and tiny tabby cats.

“We have to—”

“No.” Tetsuo interrupted Dhana. “No, we can't let them go.”

“I can't believe you said that.”

“They're better off here than in the wild. We're only just into the habitable zone.”

“Subsonics.” Dhana looked pensive. “We could drive them towards the forest.”

“But if they were bred for research—”

“She's right.” Brevan looked around. “TacCorps will shut this place down, as soon as they realize it's been discovered. The animals will be destroyed.”

Tetsuo stared. There were so many of them. So many cages.

“Besides—” A wry smile flitted across Brevan's face. “—you won't win an argument with Dhana.”

“Very funny.”

“Yeah,” said Tetsuo. “But he's right.”

 

It was the last cage.

Two hours of wrestling the cages onto the loading bay's elevator
disk, and taking them up to ground level a dozen at a time. The disk surfaced at the tower's base, close to the doorway.

There was an acrid tang to the air. Though Tetsuo did not need his resp-mask, they were close to the escarpment edge, close to the hypozone beyond the clifflike drop.

Wind whipped heather all about, and a flock of grey owls—released by Dhana from the previous load of cages—sensed the subsonics, and perhaps the stench of unbreathable atmosphere from the hypozone, and wheeled in the intended direction, heading for the dark forest.

“It'll bite you,” Brevan warned, as Tetsuo opened the final cage.

A great white lynxette padded out, and looked up at Tetsuo with wide pale green-and-amber eyes. Its tufted ears were laid flat, in protest against the subsonics, but it made no move to leave.

The implant was a tiny scar on the back of its head.

“I wouldn't—”

But Tetsuo was already running the back of his hand along the lynxette's whiskers.

“Bloody hell.”

Brevan looked at Dhana, who shrugged.

“Go,” said Tetsuo.

It ran.

The white lynxette loped across the swirling heather, towards the forest.

“Get the cages out of sight.” Brevan's voice was gruff.

Tetsuo rubbed his nose.

“This wind really stings, doesn't it?”

“Yeah.” Dhana sniffed, and dabbed at her own eyes. “You guys.”

The lynxette reached the trees, and was gone.

Blanched face, trembling hands. A crash had seemed inevitable.

“Are you OK?” Jana's slightly waspish voice cut into her thoughts.

“Oh, yes.”

Yoshiko hid her amusement. The flyer had been manned—a tourist taxi—and the fellow had been scared witless at the notion of two Pilots for passengers, besides Yoshiko. He had dared to speak only to her. She had insisted on paying, and had tipped him generously.

“It's up ahead.” Edralix, first out of the taxi-landing pagoda, pointed to a long black building on a low rise.

In the darkness, a plain orange holo floated over the med-centre's surrounding parkland.

 

***LUCIS MEDICAL COMPLEX GAMMA***

 

Vin was in there, somewhere. Yoshiko's amusement faded as quickly as it had arrived, and she shivered.

“Don't worry.” Jana briefly touched Yoshiko's arm. “It can't be an emergency, if it's scheduled.”

“No—you're right.”

When Yoshiko had called the med-centre earlier, there had been a message waiting for her: an invitation to attend the med-centre's Neurological Institute at twenty five hundred hours, precisely.

Flanked by the two black-caped Pilots, Yoshiko slowly walked up the dark brick path which led to the main entrance. A small holo floated outside: an unravelling DNA double-helix surrounding a vertical tower processor, the ancient Hippocratic logo.

Small batlike flitterbugs darted back and forth around drifting glowglobes, attracted by the clouds of moths. The flitterbugs' erratic flight, hovering then flicking away, reminded Yoshiko of the hummingbird she had seen back on Ardua Station.

“Wait.” Jana stopped, seemed almost to sniff the cold night air.

“What is it?” Yoshiko heard the nervousness in her own voice.

A flitterbug dipped down, flew past them, was gone.

Jana said nothing, black eyes questing in the darkness.

Trees rustled.

Edralix raised a hand as the flitterbug returned, arcing down towards Yoshiko—

Something flashed in Edralix's hand, and the flitterbug dropped onto the dark bricks with a soft splat.

Not a real flitterbug, at all.

“Ed—” Yoshiko stopped. A fluorescent blue fluid was leaking from the tiny body.

She reached down to examine the thing, but Edralix caught her injured arm, just above the cast.

“Smartvenom,” he whispered.

“Quiet.” Jana.

Normal night sounds.
Ignore.

Yoshiko forced herself to breathe calmly.

Shadows. No movement in the darkness—

There.

A glint of silver.

“Look out!” Edralix pushed Yoshiko down, just as she started to move.

There was a crack of sound, and white fire lanced out of the trees towards them, but Jana had stepped into its path, whipping her cloak upwards.

A vertical shield of golden motes.

White fire splashed against sparkling gold. It spat and sprayed, but could not burst through.

“Come on.”

Yoshiko got to her feet and sprinted for the main entrance, flanked by Jana and Edralix. No time to think. Heart pounding, mind reacting like an automaton, she just ran, while fire split the night behind her.

The Pilots' hands grasped her, almost lifting her up the last few steps, and then they were through. They nearly skidded across the polished pink granite floor.

“Peacekeeper emergency,” Jana said urgently to the human receptionist, but the foyer's windows were already turning to impenetrable silver. “Someone's firing energy weapons out there.”

“My God.” The receptionist's face grew pale, as he waved open a display with fluttering hands. “You're not joking, are you?”

The impossibly handsome proctor appeared: the public face of the Peacekeeper AIs. “ProctorNet. Is this an enquiry or an emergency?”

Jana leaned over the receptionist's shoulder.

“Emergency. Get Major Reilly.”

From the doorway, Edralix called back, “This is secured. The building system's very quick.”

Small daylight-bright images of the grounds appeared in holo spheres above the reception desk—including fast-moving viewfields broadcast by smartbats—while three blank-carapaced drones skimmed into the foyer and hovered.

The med-centre's systems would already be interfaced with the proctors, Yoshiko thought. The entire building was sealed and under surveillance.

“What's going on?”

Yoshiko's heart thumped as she recognized the voice.

“Maggie! What are you doing here?”

“Same as you—I think. What is all this?”

“Someone's firing a graser outside.”

“Not someone.” Jana had appeared beside them, out of nowhere, and Maggie yelped in surprise.

“I don't—” Yoshiko began.

Jana interrupted. “It was Rafael de la Vega.”

 

The receptionist twittered around them nervously, assuring them that the proctors would be here any second now. In fact, in one of the holo spheres above the polished desk, Yoshiko could see strobing blue rings sweeping across the dart-shaped outline of a flyer.

First priority—securing the grounds.

Maggie was looking agitated. She did not even have her video-globe active.

“What's wrong?” asked Yoshiko.

“The Baton Ceremony. We've ten minutes before it starts.”

“I don't understand.”

“Why do you think we're here? Hasn't anyone—?” Maggie hugged herself. “Obviously not.”

Yoshiko felt bewildered. She wanted to cry, to sit down and let her body tremble. But there was no time for that.

Edralix, tentatively, touched her shoulder.

“What is it, Edralix?”

From the corner of her eye, she could see Maggie growing pale. Sometimes, it was hard to remember how much in awe the Pilots were held.

“Oh, Edralix, this is Maggie Brown.” Yoshiko performed the introductions. “Maggie, Pilot Noviciate Edralix Corsdavin.”

“Er—Pleased to meet you, ma'am.”

“Thank you, s—” Maggie, obviously about to call him “sir,” stopped. She was at least half again his age.

Yoshiko felt a smile flicker across her face, despite the urgent manoeuvres she knew were taking place outside.

“Jana said—” Edralix looked in Jana's direction; she was by the desk, intent on the displays. “—we'll wait for the proctors. You two should go ahead.”

“I—”

“Come on.” Maggie, recovering her composure, took Yoshiko's uninjured arm. “We can't be late.”

They saw Xanthia on the way.

The hushed grey corridor led past a membrane tuned to transparency. Inside, solemnly waiting on observation seats, were Maggie's son, Jason, and a fair-haired girl, maybe two years older. In her lap, she held Jason's toy monkey.

“That's Amanda.” Maggie whispered, although their voices could not carry through the membrane. “Xanthia's soul-daughter. Her genetic daughter, too.”

Beyond the seats, separated from the children by another membrane, Xanthia sat.

Xanthia's eyes were locked on infinity, and her pale bare arms clutched herself, as her upper body swung back and forth in endless metronomic repetition. There was no light of intelligence in those eyes.

Yoshiko could only stand and stare at what had once been Xanthia.

“Come on.” Maggie's voice was gentle. “That's the ceremony up ahead.” She pointed to the far end of the corridor, where Luculenti were gathering in a small antechamber.

From behind, a voice called them to a halt.

Major Reilly, accompanied by the Pilots and half a dozen dark-uniformed proctors, was hurrying towards them.

“You've an important ceremony to attend,” Reilly said without preamble. “So I'm going to keep this short. You were fired at by Luculentus Rafael de la Vega, whom you suspect of having attacked Luculenta Xanthia Delaggropos—” Her eyes flickered to one side; she recognized the now-mindless Xanthia. “—through some sort of Luculentus communications channel. Is that correct?”

Yoshiko nodded.

“You saw him in the darkness?”

“No—I couldn't see a thing.”

“But—” Reilly turned to Jana. “You could see him?”

“Yes,” said Jana, and her eyes grew impossibly black.

“How well do you know him?”

“I have never met him. I saw a holostill, in a NewsNet item.”

“I see.” Reilly thrust out her square jaw pugnaciously, apparently unfazed by talking to two Pilots.

“Have you seen the video log?” asked Yoshiko.

“Yes. And that rather interesting diagram. Your son's role in this is still unclear.”

“I—didn't have to hand it over to you.”

Reilly looked hard at Yoshiko. “That's one reason I'm not pressing you on this.”

Yoshiko swallowed.

“Major—” began Maggie.

“I know. You can make a full statement later.” Reilly's voice was brisk. “Right now, you'd better get a move on.”

Yoshiko did not move.

“We're still searching outside,” Reilly continued. “When we find something—”

She stopped, seeing Yoshiko's frozen expression.

“Professor Sunadomari—Do you have any idea how many non-Luculenti get invited to a Baton Ceremony?” Her voice softened a little. “I'll wait for you.”

“OK.” Yoshiko swallowed.

“Come on.” Maggie took her arm.

The group of Luculenti in the antechamber had grown bigger. Jana and Edralix followed, as Yoshiko and Maggie joined them.

No one, as far as Yoshiko knew, had invited the Pilots. There were surreptitious glances from Luculenti, but no audible remarks.

“Professor. Thank God you're here.”

It was Septor, his face flushed and his stance unsteady, a half-empty glass in one hand.

“It's my privilege,” said Yoshiko.

Up close, she could see that his eyes were watery and mildly bloodshot.

“Maybe you can convince her not to go through with it.”

“Convince whom?” Yoshiko did not understand. “Of what?”

“Lori, of course,” Septor said, and he was almost in tears. “She's too young. It's far too soon.”

“Too soon?”

“Years too soon. She should live another decade, at the least.”

“Live?” asked Yoshiko stupidly.

Septor gulped from his glass, as a grey-uniformed medical attendant came up to him.

“I'm all right,” Septor said.

“I believe he means—” Jana's voice was soft. “—that Lori won't survive this Baton Ceremony, the passing on of memories. The soul-parent never does. Am I right?”

Septor looked away.

Yoshiko looked at Jana in shock. She was vaguely aware of Maggie standing open-mouthed beside her.

“I am right,” said Jana.

There was no satisfaction in her voice.

 

Dark and cold: a thousand tonnes of black water above him, and acceleration's unseen hand pressing him back into his seat, and the memory of bitter failure in his mind.

Pilots!

Not like the damned coconut shy. This time the target had bodyguards. Two Pilots. Who could have expected that?

Should he have tried to shoot them, once his faux-flitterbug assassin had failed? Well, it was done.

Damn it…

He had run, drenched in sweat, while stars whirled and split apart in the night-sky above him—a smartatom spiral, spinning overhead, breaking up his image. Found a crowded plaza, configured his mask, and boarded a Pariduan shuttle.

Running from his prey. And Yoshiko was still alive.

Webbing clawed him back into the seat as the spit-capsule slowed, popped out of the tunnel's end, and screeched to a halt. Brilliance flooded the stark chamber.

Home. It gave him no feeling of security.

The lift-tube took him up to the lounge.

Had the Pilots seen him?

No matter. He had to establish his alibi firmly, on the assumption that they had. The windows depolarized at his unspoken command, and he looked out at the orange-lit Zen garden and saw himself walking in the moonlight.

No Skein ghost-Rafael, this, but a holo which was visible in reality: visible to SatScan and passersby alike.

The holo-Rafael turned at his command and walked towards the house. The false image had been perambulating right to the edge of the grounds—close enough to the neighbouring fishing lodge to have been logged by its surveillance system.

Rafael's spectral alter ego did not waver as it reached the lounge window and appeared to step through the membrane.

The holo-Rafael dissolved. Just one more piece of misdirection.

None of this was foolproof. An analysis of Rafael's home would reveal the top-of-the-range hi-res projectors hidden outside, and the tunnel which ran beneath Lake Darintia to a small villa on the Pariduan foothills. 410

He had to buy time, to shore up his alibi.

A ghost-Rafael directed the house drones, under smartatom cover, to remove the projectors outside. Simultaneously, a second Rafael under direct control opened a SkeinLink session with Septor Maximilian.