To Hold Infinity (44 page)

Pain stabbed through her grazed hands as she pushed herself upright. The flat roof was gravelled, one of seventeen vast interlocking circular roofs, at varying heights. Above her, smooth white ceramics blocked her view of the sky: the great wing-shaped hovering roof, held by mag-fields some two metres above the complex proper.

She took Felice's crystal from her pocket, and placed it beside her.

Way of the warrior.
Bushido.

Yoshiko picked tiny stones out of her torn and bloody palms, and looked around. There were patches of moss and streaks of bird-dung, defacing the gravelled roof. A small fat Terran sparrow took off, alarmed, and arrowed away, its small wings a blur.

Later, in Hagakure:
if you are ready to discard life at a moment's notice, you and the
bushido
will become one.

This high, the air was cold, but there was no draught. Though the hovering wing above blocked off the sky, still she was breathing fresh air, seeing every stone upon the roof with a preternatural sharpness. This was the living cosmos, and she was privileged to be part of it, for a while.

The thing was, to make her death count for something.

 

<<>>

 

<>

<>

 

“Vin! Lavinia…”

 

  <>

 

“He made it fail. Rafael did.”

Sounds of disturbances, pandemonium, taking place on the ground where she could not see, drifted through the still, chilled air.

“He's coming for me, Lavinia. Break this link, or he'll get you, too.”

 

<>

“It's too late.”

 

<>

 

Pilots?

On hands and knees, ignoring the pain, Yoshiko crawled to the roof's edge. Though gravel bit into her knuckles, she still clutched the tanto in her hand.

Green slopes. Down below, among a profusion of demonstrators who were dressed in every fashion imaginable, green-uniformed men and women were placing their weapons on the ground, as dark-uniformed proctors surrounded them. Here and there, Pilots moved among them.

If only she could call to them…but Rafael could strike through Skein. No time to get assistance, no way to seek escape.

 

<>

 

The world blurred.

A screeching sound, like ten thousand fingernails scraping slate, rose up from the smashed skylight, and Yoshiko knew immediately what it was. A lev-platform, wrenching itself from the crashed heap in the auditorium.

Rafael.

Desperately, she looked up. Like a gull's wings, the hovering roof spread above. Flimsily translucent areas suggested membranes which might lead to the upper surface.

“Lavinia?”

 

<>

 

“The Baton Ceremony code. I need to access it.”

 

<>

<>

<>

 

“It's the only way. He's coming. Rafael.”

 

{{{Priority obj_ident: ∞}}}

 

{{{HeaderBegin: Module = Node0000.00000: Type = n-way: Axes = unlimited

ScanWare.load

On_confirm( ): ScanWare.execute}}}

 

<<>>

 

She was on her own. The SkeinLink to Lavinia was cut without any warning, as the scanware took precedence in her mind.

 

<<>>

<<>>

 

“No.” Her voice was cold.

Lines of code shimmered before her eyes. A true Luculenta swam in a beautiful universe of Skein, where images were summoned at a whim, information was absorbed without pain, and perceptions ranged through dimensions unknown to ordinary minds. But Yoshiko, who would never see those wonders, had to root among the nuts and bolts, the fabric of that other world.

She concentrated, and the underlying code changed and shifted, and then she breathed out, a long slow relaxing breath, as the editing concluded.

<<•
{sept
}}}>>>

<<>>

 

Reversal achieved.
Scanware loaded, and ready to run.

Execution time.

 

Molecules danced. Copper orbs, freed by old-fashioned sound, were carried along the broken expanse of lattice. Some were diverted to resonate in microcavities, finally lasing free. Sound and matter-waves converged, laying down nanofactors: metallic-hued arrays, rotating in time to soothing background music.

Behind the display, Rafael turned his face against the wall as his cape tuned to chameleon mode, while a team of proctors hurried by. As he waited, crouched, a ghost-Rafael came to him in Skein. The NetAngel deposited its find—a schematic of the conference centre, falling into place in Rafael's perceptions—and vanished.

Rafael trembled. Felice's bright and lovely mind sang in his cache, awaiting his loving attention, but he had to find Yoshiko before he could take time for integration.

When the proctors had gone, Rafael slipped out from behind the image, and its depiction of historical manufacturing techniques. Rushing now—for the lev-platform he had set to divert Yoshiko's attention would already be ascending—he stepped straight into the corridor wall, as the schematic in his mind's eye lit up, highlighting maintenance access-membranes.

A vertical shaft led all the way up. Swaying from vertigo, Rafael stepped onto the elevator disk which formed the shaft's apparent floor, and executed the command.

The disk whisked him upwards, slowing as it approached the membrane-ceiling. A brief sensation of dampness as he ascended through the membrane, and then the disk was level with the roof and he was in open air. He stepped off, and gravel scrunched underfoot.

No sign of the Earther woman.

Across the roofs flat expanse, nothing. Beyond, other roofs lay at lower or higher levels. Had she really jumped onto one of them?

“Yoshiko?” he called softly. “Where are you, Yoshiko?”

One metre above his head, the great wing-shaped hovering roof floated. Its underside was marred here and there with rusty streaks. Access membranes, leading to its upper surface, glistened softly.

There.

Just a tiny shift in opacity, but it was enough. A membrane, rehardened no more than seconds ago.

Her courage was admirable.

Stepping beneath the membrane, he extended his arms, palms raised as though to heaven. A shaft of liquefied membrane flowed down to him, enwrapped him, and carried him upwards.

Ships.

Mu-space ships!

Rafael staggered slightly, as he stepped out onto the upper surface. All around, the broad wing-shaped expanse, the hovering roof, shimmered with rainbow hues. It was beautiful in its simplicity, a great
curve of diffracted light high above the ground, and he was a tiny figure on its grand surface.

No Yoshiko. But, high in the storm-darkened sky, three mu-space vessels glinted, bronze and silver, unnaturally bright against the inky clouds.

A chill wind suddenly blew, and Rafael dropped to one knee, and pulled his cape about him. It was high, up here—far too high—and he felt suddenly exposed. He crouched lower, as the wind's force increased. It began to buffet him, and its slipstream tugged his breath away.

Damn the woman. Where was she?

And were the ships observing him?

Icy rain fell.

It plunged from the sky, dropped in torrents, and sprayed across the hovering roof like a field of metallic grass.

Wait—

 

<>>

 

Yoshiko.

Love sang in his breast. Yoshiko was opening up herself to him.

Felice's soul seemed to cry with joy from his cache as he loosed her, subsumed her, and every thought and hope and dream of that bright mind, that joyful spirit, that childlike sense of wonder and enquiry, flooded through his being. He cried aloud as a maelstrom of fragmented images whirled through his extended mind.

Threshold. Power thrummed inside him, for his mind, spread across his Fulgor-wide nexus, had reached some new point of criticality.

Hold back, hold back. There was Yoshiko to deal with.

Her SkeinLink request shimmered in his soul.

A second mind, so quickly?

Yes.

Do it now.

Yoshiko must think she could lock him, while Felice's mind swirled through his, but she was wrong. This time, he was ready to defuse her lock code and plunge through her defences and strip her mind, like plucking petals from a flower.

Crouching on hands and knees, palms splayed upon the suddenly wet and slippery roof, Rafael squeezed his eyes shut against ricocheting rain, and focussed his thoughts.

 

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

Concurrent_Execute

     ThreadOne:.linkfile = Infiltrate.Alpha

     ThreadTwo:.linkfile = Infiltrate.Beta

     ThreadThree:.linkfile = CodeSmash

     ThreadFour:.linkfile = SubvertArray

     ThreadFive:.linkfile = MindWolf

End_Concurrent_Execute}}}

 

Rafael struck at Yoshiko, as thunder crashed and rain fell.

 

The white chrysanthemum.

A white globe of florets, floating in her mind's eye: in the absence of a death-poem, the last construct of her imagining, before her death.

 

<<>>

 

Yoshiko shuddered, as Rafael's code plunged into her.

Eyes flickering open, involuntarily. The blue comms-crystal was blindingly bright, as she directed her SkeinLink through its instantaneous relay.

Gravel biting into her knees. One ankle very sore: she had twisted it when she had dropped down to this lower roof, out of Rafael's line of sight.

The glowing crystal struck sapphire reflections from the steel, as she gripped the tanto dagger in both hands.

Something, at the edge of her awareness…

In samurai days, a woman would have bound her ankles to prevent immodesty in death, but Yoshiko wore a jumpsuit and her battleground was now. This was more than suicide, it was
ai-uchi:
striking simultaneously with the enemy; throwing away her life to take the enemy's own.

Rafael's code tore into her. She felt his dark joy, his cold power, the huge extent of his mind piercing into hers.