War Surf (29 page)

“Poor Trencher.” I tucked his plush blanket around Vlad’s shoulders.

“That schlemiel? You’d feel sorry for the WTO.” Kat stuffed her cheeks with ersatz lobster roll.

Grunze licked mayo from his fingers. “Just like Sheeba. You two are a pair of bleeding hearts.”

“But you spin lies like a true artist, caro.” Verinne patted my hand and sipped a squeeze-bulb of champagne.

Recovering in the captain’s suite, we shared the afterglow that follows a difficult surf. We told jokes, relived critical moments, devoured large quantities of food. I slipped a satin pillow under Vlad’s head and tried to feed him some water.

“Why don’t you buy Trencher’s contract and ship him out to Uranus?” Grunze seized another sandwich. “Show him who’s alpha male.”

“You can afford it.” Kat picked meat fiber from her teeth.

“Yeah, while you’re at it, buy this whole fuckin’ gun-ship.” Grunzie gestured at the cabin’s elegant fixtures. “It’d make a primo trophy.”

“Right, I can afford it.” My crewmates were always egging me to spend money. It was part of our game. Yes, I could afford the gunship. I could afford lots of things. While I dribbled water between Vlad’s lips, Grunze and Kat smirked, waiting to hear how I would meet their challenge. I blew kisses and almost spouted a wisecrack, but then, somewhere, the karmic scales of justice pivoted on their axes. Or possibly, the NEMs inspired me. For whatever reason, I got a new idea.

“I know what Sheeba wants.”

The Agonists stopped chewing and stared at me strangely. Perhaps it was the tremble in my voice.

“It’s a stroke of genius,” I went on. “Why didn’t I think of this before?”

“Don’t keep us guessing. What is it?” said Kat.

I smiled mysteriously and lowered Vlad’s head to the pillow. Saving the medic’s life might earn Shee’s forgiveness, but this brilliant new gift could actually convince her to like me again!

The medic was too sleepy to drink water, so I let him rest, and while my friends razzed me for details, I used Trencher’s phone to call Chad. My cyberassistant had megatons to tell me. He’d succeeded in killing the euthanasia scheme, but the board wanted an emergency meeting to find out what was going on. He offered to go as my proxy. Chad was very talented at blowing smoke rings and spinning cover stories—but I cut him off midsentence.

“Chad, I want you to buy Heaven.”

Kat dropped her crème brulee. “That’s what you’re giving Sheeba? That shabby old tank?”

“Buy all the worker contracts, too,” I shouted jubilantly over the phone.

Verinne arched both eyebrows, and Grunze choked on his chocolate chip cookie. They acted as if I’d wobbled right over the edge. “That’s too much.” “It’ll bankrupt you.” “Nasir, think.”

I grinned like a loon.

Chad went into diligence mode. Had I weighed this decision carefully? Did I realize the magnitude of the transaction? I spoke a preprogrammed code word to short-circuit his questions, and we worked out the details in minutes. When my friends objected, I cavalierly waved them away. Everything had to fall together at light-speed, with absolute secrecy, and Chad loved that kind of intrigue. He suggested that we set up a blind trust.

I covered the phone and said, “Hey, guys, will you serve as my trustees?”

“You’re loco, Nass. Absolutely unzipped,” said Grunze. “What’s the annual salary for a trustee?”

When I named a figure, my companions displayed a unanimous change of heart. “Yeah, put my name down.” “Me too.” “I’m in.”

“We’ll serve in perpetuity, caro”—Verinne gave me a devious wink and whispered behind her hand—“once you share your immortal bioNEMs.” Running the risk of a little capital punishment didn’t frighten Verinne one bit.

Naturally, Chad and I were of one mind about hiring cy-berstaff instead of human managers. In seconds, Chad recruited a team of AIs to control Heaven’s orbit, maintain the Net blockade and file the tax returns. Oh, Sheeba was going to love this.

After further consideration, I asked Chad to make some rush purchases on the hot market. For starters, I wanted…

• a. end-to-end hull renovations
  
• b. new orbit synchronizers
  
• c. a state-of-the-art medical lab
  
• d. a gross of EVA suits
  
• e. a complete new lighting system
  
• f. interactive learning modules for grades K through 30
  
• g. some windows
  

Despite my code word, Chad introduced another note of caution. “Boss, how are we going to pay for all this? I already cashed most of your bonds to bribe that Captain Trencher.”

“Sell more. Sell my Provendia stocks.”

Dumping those shares would bring an end to my cushy chairman-emeritus gig, but I didn’t reflect on my future. All I wanted was to regain Sheeba’s good graces, and this was bound to do it

Vlad still lay in a daze on Trencher’s bed, but the glass man would help me cure him. I rubbed my hands together, imagining Shee’s delight when she saw her lop-jawed medic again. A sweet euphoria eased through my veins. Everything was going to be all right. Heaven would be safe, and Shee would come home, and our lives would get back to normal.

As soon as my friends felt well enough to travel, I asked them to carry Vlad to the shuttle and give him first aid. I would stay behind and deal with the captain.

Poor Trencher was such a wreck, I decided not to tease him any further. We kept the terms simple. Trencher agreed to return our bribe money and to remain cosmically mute about our surf. In return, I would deep-six the “report” on his lame security. As an afterthought, I told Chad to recommend the numbnuts for promotion. After so thoroughly humiliating him, it was the least I could do. Besides, he and Provendia deserved each other.

As I prepared to depart, he personally checked the self-sealed dart holes in my space suit. “Mr. Chairman, you teach me new lessons every time we meet. You’re my guru, sir.” Then he gave roe a tearful hug. No doubt about it, Trencher was destined to rise.

By now you may have asked yourself—many times—why you keep browsing this memoir. The narrator, you will say, has no redeeming traits. He’s a pint-sized, elderly blowhard with false hair and a small lump of biomachinery for a heart. Yet here you sit scrolling through my words, well past the middle of my story, and you may still be wondering, just as I am—why the freaking hell is Nasir Deepra waiting in that anteroom to die? We’re coming close now. Please keep me company. This place is lonesome.

Back in the shuttle, Vlad’s thin body rested in the bunk. We covered him with Win’s blanket and Velcroed him in so he wouldn’t float free. Kat dribbled a little water into the young man’s mouth through a microgravity tube—but he didn’t swallow. He showed all the symptoms of the malady.

“Do you have a cyberdoc?” I asked.

Kat pointed aft toward the medical bin. “What kind of drug does he need?”

“He needs blood,” I said. “A couple of liters.”

Picture, if you will, the alarm that glared at me from four executive faces. Imagine how they drifted into walls, speechless with outrage. Unfortunately, the speechless phase didn’t last long.

“Are you totally brain-dead?”

“Share executive blood with a prote?”

“You’re not serious.”

My friends nervously laughed and elbowed each other, assuring themselves I’d made a bad joke, but when they saw me fish through Kat’s medical bin and pull out the portable cyberdoc, they moved closer and watched with suspicion. When I asked the device how to set up a blood transfusion, Kat knocked it out of my hands.

“Deepra, you’re loco.”

Then they all spoke at once, and I had to yell to make myself heard. “Vlad can’t help us if he’s dead.”

My shout temporarily shut them up. I found the cyberdoc drifting under the bunk and latched it to the wall so I could study its control panel. The mechanism was about the size of an espresso machine, and it looked equally complicated. I’d never operated one before, but the screen alleged mat, with its user-friendly help features, even a child could perform open-heart surgery. Again, I asked the device how to set up a blood transfusion.

“Nasir, tell us what you’re doing.” Verinne sounded like a psychiatrist trying to soothe a raging lunatic. The others quietly surrounded me.

“Don’t try anything,” I warned them. “This boy has a condition, and I can cure it with a large concentration of my NEMs. Two liters of blood will do the trick.”

“Smutty talk,” Kat hissed.

“But Nasir,” Verinne said, “what you’re suggesting’s unethical.”

“Plus it’s obscene,” Kat said with a sniff. “Mixing blood. Ick.”

“Who says so, huh?” I slipped a pillow under Vlad’s arm. “Who decides what’s obscene and what’s not?”

Grunze eased next to me. “Sweet-pee, this isn’t you talking. Something’s got into you..”

“Sheeba found the cure by accident,” I said. “At first, we thought one liter would be enough.” I tapped Vlad’s arm and scrutinized his veins. His head lolled back and forth. “Look at him. He’s dying of thirst, but he won’t drink.”

“Who cares? He’s a hostile.” Kat made a grab for the cyberdoc, and when I caught her wrist, she scratched me. “Why don’t we just feed this guy some more Peps and interrogate him?”

I ignored her and watched the cyberdoc extrude an appendage to tap Vlad’s vein. Then I rolled up my sleeve.

“Katherine asked you a question.” Grunze gripped the back of my neck. “Why do we need to cure this sodder’s disease?”

Glassy NEM power rippled through me, and I shook off Grunze’s hand. With a look, I dared him to touch me again. “Everything I do is for Sheeba.”

Figuring out how to work Kat’s cyberdoc proved much easier than convincing the Agonists to let me do it. Kat’s whine about obscenity was absurd. She was kowtowing to moral fashion, I saw that now. On the other hand, Verinne made logical arguments against sharing NEMs with employees. Widespread longevity would change all the equations of supply and demand, she said, and it wasn’t fair to saddle unschooled workers with so many extra years.

“Yeah, think about it,” said Grunze. “If protes started living as long as we do, where in hell would we put ‘em all?”

“This is only one boy, and we need his help to find Sheeba,” I reminded them, smoothly failing to mention the liters of blood I’d already donated to Kaioko.

It was Winston who came closest to stopping me. “Nasir, if workers get NEMs, it might cause another Crash.”

Winston’s words touched each of us. At a profound level, he stirred the old fear that drove all our decisions. The Crash. No one liked to speak of it. I’m not sure which memory we hated worse, the Crash or what we did to survive it. Do you imagine we wanted to face that sordid time again?

But the global climate was still degrading, and our fragile economy was growing feebler by the decade—because we senior execs were the only ones shoring it up. That’s why we kept ourselves strong and vigorous—we knew what could happen. If we didn’t fend off another Crash, who would? The survival of our society, our values, our culture, everything of worth depended on the lessons we’d learned from history, and no short-lived employee could appreciate our hindsight For the good of humankind, we had to keep longevity to ourselves. I am not a wicked man. Let me confess, breaking that taboo made me shudder.

“But I don’t care. Sheeba needs us.”

“Well, I’m not watching.” Kat put on her helmet and went EVA.

Verinne flinched when the cyberdoc tapped my vein. Grunze wouldn’t make eye contact. They soon followed Kat outside and left me to perform my depravities in private. Maybe they did so out of friendship rather than repugnance. I wanted to believe that.

Winston stayed, though. I floated in free space beside Vlad’s bunk during the transfusion, and Win held my foot so I didn’t drift too far from the cyberdoc. I thought he’d forgotten what I was doing, but he surprised me.

“Why do you wanna save these protes, Nass?”

“It’s not them. It’s Sheeba.”

“Slippery Nass, you’ve made friends with ‘em.”

“You’re dreaming. Hand me that gauze.”

An hour later, Vlad sat up and asked for water. The Agonists had returned by then, but at first Vlad didn’t see them. I was still feeling woozy myself from giving so much blood, and as I drifted against the bunk, one of the metal rails barked my shin. Damn, this bloodletting gnarled me. My NEMs always took a while to recover.

As soon as Vlad understood how to suck nutrient through a microgravity straw, he downed a full liter. His color was returning, and I could swear his lopsided face was filling out with new flesh. We toasted each other with squeeze-bulbs of orangeade. Then Vlad stretched out his fingers and stared at his hand, as if he were flabbergasted to find himself still alive.

“Feeling better?” I said. “You want to go home?”

He nodded and gave a slight smile. “Thank you.” When he noticed the others, he drew back in the bunk, clinging to the straps that held him secure in the weightless cabin. No doubt, they’d given him unkind treatment earlier. “Nasir, you know these commies?”

“Don’t call us that, you filthy agitator.”

“Katherine, be calm,” I said, waving her back.

My friends hovered in a loose knot near the console, watching with sour expressions while I floated beside the bunk shielding Vlad.

“I’ll take you home if you’ll show me how to get in,” I said, unrolling a printout of Heaven’s plan.

Vlad eyed my crew, then shook his head.

“Kaioko’s sick, and she’s been calling your name,” I whispered.

“Everyone die sooner later,” he said. But he didn’t deny knowing a way in.

Since my small lie hadn’t worked, I tried another tack. I showed him the cyberdoc screen that still displayed stats from our transfusion. “Look, we found the cure. You were right about good blood chasing out the bad. I gave you some of mine, and it made you well.”

Vlad grasped the cyberdoc and read the state. Then he asked the device for additional reports. He seemed well versed in its capabilities. Before this, I didn’t even know he could read.

“There’s something here in your blood,” he said, pointing his stubby finger to an arcane line of code on the screen. “Something I don’t recognize. What is it?’

“It’s probably some medication I take. What does it matter? You’re cured.”

Vlad studied the data with an uncertain frown. Then he placed his hand in the cyberdoc’s mouth and gave himself a health exam. Evidently, the results astonished him. Perusing the report, he absentmindedly polished off a second liter of orangeade.

“Will you give your blood to the others?” he asked.

“Sure,” I lied, tapping the map of Heaven. “Show us how to get in.”

It took time and cunning to overcome Vlad’s mistrust of my crewmates. My generous blood donation and his own restored health were the strongest points in our favor. I kept feeding him squeeze-bulbs of nutrient, and finally, we bamboozled him into showing us Heaven’s back door. When his finger touched the spot on the map, it seemed so obvious that, subconsciously, I must have already known it. Or maybe the glass man did.

Heaven was made from a fuel tank, and its pointy end had once been the tank’s nozzle. That made a natural opening. There in that nozzle, Liam had improvised an emergency airlock out of scrap and spare parts. Surrounding this makeshift airlock like a protective fence were the six colossal couplings that linked Heaven to its tether. And shielded within this fence, the secret lock led straight into the garden.

“Heaven’s blind,” I told my friends. “They’ve lost all external sensors. Unless Liam happens to be spacewalking when we board, they won’t see us coming.”

“We can tap the hull to let them know,” Vlad said innocently.

“Dear boy, that’s brilliant.” Kat snuggled under Vlad’s arm.

She’d gotten very chummy with the medic since my NEMs had restored his looks. Her favorite live-action role play was Mata Hari, the exotic lady spy. So she flapped her fake eyelashes and worked her scarlet-dyed mouth into a kind of sexual grimace. She probably thought this would seduce the youth into revealing information. Or maybe the medic had caught her fancy. His physique was growing more supple with each passing minute, and the intelligent gleam had returned to his brown eyes. Even his lopsided jaw seemed more symmetrical.

Kat ran her fingernails through his wavy brown hair. “Is there a secret code we should know?”

“Nothing special. Just tap a few times.” Vlad shied from her advances with a perplexed raise of eyebrows.

He recommended that we wait for Heaven to pass into Earth’s shadow. No sense exposing ourselves to solar radiation. When the time came, we suited up, all six of us. I didn’t have the heart to leave Winston behind again. While Vlad wasn’t looking, Kat handed out the stun guns and sticky-string pumps, and we quietly slipped the weapons into our pockets. I didn’t want the medic to know we were armed. As an afterthought, I grabbed the portable cyberdoc and zipped it in my backpack, explaining that Sheeba might need first aid.

Kat positioned her shuttle as close as possible to the tether couplings, then programmed the autopilot to track Heaven’s spin. We were taking a risk leaving the shuttle unattended, but everyone was stoked for the surf. We set our thrusters on low, stepped through the airlock and dove.

This close to the center of rotation, we spun with less angular momentum than we had on the gunship. Earth’s night face cast a cloudy glow, but with metavision, we could see continents glistening through the smog, like hazy galaxies scattered across the dark oceans.

At first, the massive alloy couplings that attached Heaven’s tether appeared to be fixed hardware. But closer, we could see the metal joints flex and buckle. The tether’s thick, woven composite stretched wider than a city street, and it oscillated constantly. If there had been a medium to carry sound waves, we might have heard it singing. Those shocks created by the orbital adjustment had never completely disappeared. They’d merely died to a steady quiver, dampened by the tether’s friction.

Maneuvering between the couplings proved trickier than we expected. Grunze and I miscalculated and overshot Kat collided with a metal buckle. Vlad bounced like a newbie. Only Verinne navigated with style and touched down at the nozzle rim.

Heaven’s secret airlock was small, and we had to enter one at a time. Vlad dropped through first while the rest of us clung to the couplings and waited our turns. I went next. Since we were in Earth’s shadow, I expected the garden to be dark, but it wasn’t. Small solar cells glimmered through the foliage like ultraviolet glowworms, backlighting the leaves and haloing every object with a silvery sheen. The effect was enchanting. By this soft luminescence, I found Vlad perched in the leafy crown of a tree. Beside him sat three little boys and a young girl with a baby.

A weight thudded onto my back, and thin arms reached around my neck. With a laugh, the child swung around in front of me. Keesha. Her birthmark blushed purple in the silvery light. She squealed and smeared my faceplate with fingerprints.

I set her on a limb and ripped off my helmet. ‘Tell the kids to hide. Quick, Vlad. Before my friends come.” It was only too easy to imagine Grunzie scorching one of the kids with his stun gun.

Vlad didn’t hesitate. He stuck a thumb and finger in his mouth and gave three shrill whistles. Like magic, Keesha and the others vanished among the leaves. Throughout the length and breadth of Deck Five, foliage trembled as kids scrambled into hiding, and I watched them disappear with relief.

Seconds later, the Agonists dropped through the airlock and gathered in the treetop. They gawked at their surroundings like tourists. The garden frankly astonished them. Nothing had prepared them for this botanical opulence limned in spectral silver light. One by one, they slipped off their helmets and inhaled the humid air.

When the misters switched on, moisture beaded our skin, and Verinne laughed like a girl. “Nasir, what is this place?”

Kat slid down a huge wet leaf and bounced in a web of vines. “This is plasmic!”

Grunze tore off a branch. “It’s real. I’ve seen a few hothouses on Earth, but nothing like this.”

Verinne rolled her face against the wet leaves and caught the dripping vines in her arms. Her shoulders relaxed as if years of stress had fallen away. Winston stuffed a long green veggie down the front of his EVA suit and pranced like a clown. Kat poked a flower behind her ear.