Geosynchron (22 page)

But what if she had missed her opportunity? What if this mysterious consulting job of Quell's turned out to be much more complicated than she anticipated? What if Horvil got into bad trouble in that
orbital colony whose name was synonymous with bad trouble? What
if this internecine conflict between Len Borda and Magan Kai Lee led
to some kind of global catastrophe?

Jara had jumped into this game without a thought about the
danger. It hadn't really occurred to her that by taking on Quell's commission, she had called an end to her much-deserved recess of the past
two months. What if she could never find her way back to this place?
This life plateau that she had fought so tenaciously to reach could come
to an abrupt drop, leaving her with nothing to show for it but a lost
court case and weeks of lazy, squandered evenings on the Sigh.

At some point in the past few minutes, Horvil's backrub had
slowed to a halt without either of them noticing. "Horvil," she said,
"do you trust this Richard Taylor?"

The engineer considered the question for a minute. "I don't think
he's out to hurt us," he answered. "Whether we accomplish anything
productive up there in 49th Heaven, I have no idea. Odds are we find
ourselves back here in a week with nothing gained and nothing lost.
... What about you?"

"I haven't even met him."

"No, not Taylor. Quell. Do you trust Quell?"

"I think-I think the same thing goes for him as for Taylor," said
Jara. "I just wish ..." She stopped short. Jara didn't really know what
she wished. She had some idea now of what the potential consequences
were of playing this game, but the potential rewards-and whether
they were worth the sacrifice-remained unknown.

Horvil was a man of rationality, an engineer with a deep and abiding
confidence in the powers of science. He did not believe in omens or premonitions that filtered down to the material plane from Places Beyond.
Yet he couldn't help but feel that it didn't bode well for their trip to 49th
Heaven that Richard Taylor wouldn't even board the hoverbird.

"It's not that I've never been on a hoverbird before," said Taylor,
staring in wide-eyed trepidation at the small vessel Vigal had chartered
for them. "We do have motorized vehicles out in the Principalities of
Spiritual Enlightenment, you know. Wheeled transports mostly, but
some flying craft as well. I even flew one of them on a challenge once,
back in my daredevil days. Back when I was a youth. But this! This!
To actually ... leave the Earth's atmosphere ... ?"

"Hundreds of thousands of people live up there, outside the Earth's
atmosphere," said Vigal, a font of patience, pointing into the heavens.
"It's quite safe. You can see the lights blinking on Allowell if you look
up on a clear night."

"Living on an orbital platform that has been floating in the sky for
two hundred and fifty years I can understand. But this tiny vehiclekilometers up in the sky, above the clouds-what happens if it malfunctions? Or-or crashes?"

Horvil shrugged. "No different than if a regular hoverbird crashes.
Or a tube train, for that matter." He peeked around Taylor's bushy
beard at the craft's interior. This was about as luxurious a four-seater as
money could buy, with upholstered seats and viewscreens aplenty, not
to mention a foldable MindSpace workbench with specialized holders
for bio/logic programming bars.

Serr Vigal put a comradely hand on the Pharisee's shoulder. He had
been trying to soothe Taylor's raw nerves with the balm of logic for
almost half an hour now. Not that he had achieved any results. "Trust in the numbers, Richard," said Vigal. "Statistically, it's almost as safe
as multi."

"I don't multi," replied Taylor, giving a tug at the connectible
collar around his neck.

"Then it's almost as safe as walking. Listen to these statistics.
According to the Committee on Aerospace Safety, there were only two
hundred and twelve mechanical failures on orbital hoverbird flights in
the past six months. Not all of them fatal. Divide that by the total
number of hoverbird flights during those six months, and you get
point oh oh five sev-no, wait, I'm sorry, I'm actually looking at a
three-month period...."

Horvil walked to the hoverbird's nose where the pilot was
standing, blase as cardboard, doubtless reminding himself that he was
getting paid by the hour whether they took off or not. The engineer
gave the man a congenial roll of the eyes and parked himself on a
steamer trunk that sat on the dock awaiting the next flight.

Vigal hadn't realized yet that the Pharisee would not be mollified
with facts and figures; the man would simply have to tamp down his
fear or stay Earthbound. Horvil was not unsympathetic. Richard
Taylor was facing a paradigm shift beyond any that the fiefcorp had
faced with MultiReal. Connectibles skirted death each minute of their
lives. Hoverbirds crashed on a daily basis. Bio/logic programming
mishaps led to a handful of horrible deaths every month. Despite the
most elaborate safety precautions, collapsible buildings killed at least
twenty or thirty disobedient children each year. To live in modern
society and partake of its miracles-instantaneous travel across thousands of kilometers, silent mental communication, immunity from
disease-meant accepting that the universe would extract payment in
the form of sudden, random death. It was a bargain connectibles had
been born into. But the Pharisees-they had never signed up for such
a bargain.

Horvil wondered for the fifteenth time that morning whether this entire trip was really necessary. He wondered whether Richard Taylor
really did have some lead on Natch's whereabouts, or if he was simply
naive and misguided. And he wondered whether it was absolutely necessary to take Taylor along even if he could help them.

Serr Vigal stepped over to the pilot with the Pharisee tagging
behind. "You must have colleagues who fly hoverbirds every day," said
the neural programmer. "Tell my friend here how many of them have
crashed."

The pilot ran a mistrustful eye over Richard Taylor's immense
beard and exotically braided hair, his outlandish black robe and
glinting jewelry. "Hey, man," said the pilot, deadpan, "we all crash
eventually. That's life. You just gotta be ready to go at any minute."

Taylor regarded the pilot with horror and began slowly backing
away from the vehicle. Just what we needed, thought Horvil.

But Vigal wasn't about to give up so easily. "You see?" he said,
extending a hand towards the pilot. "If flying in a hoverbird wasn't so
safe, would this gentleman feel comfortable joking about it?"

In the end, Vigal was able to lure Richard Taylor onto the hovercraft.
Horvil quickly climbed aboard and buckled himself in, blocking the
Pharisee's exit. Within ten minutes, the four of them were rocketing
off the dock and headed for the aether.

Horvil could have predicted what would happen next. Taylor went
into a convulsive panic for a few moments as the 'bird shot up in its initial ascent. When he realized that connectible engineers had long ago
figured out ways to nullify the g-forces of flight, the panic gave way to
utter fascination. The Pharisee started a long, rambling discourse about
a fishing trip he had taken as a young man, the relevance of which Horvil
could not quite see. Then as soon as the vista of Andra Pradesh had morphed into dull, unbroken cloud, he promptly fell asleep.

The engineer pinged the neural programmer on ConfidentialWhisper as soon as Taylor's snores began to permeate the cabin. "What
the fuck have we gotten ourselves into?"

Vigal laughed silently. "I think I'm beginning to like him, actually."

"Sure, he's friendly, but that's not the point. Like him or not, the
chances of Taylor actually leading us within a thousand kilometers of
Natch are pretty slim. And if that's the case, this whole trip could end
up being a big waste of time and money."

"Admittedly. Though we seem to be in the same situation as the
rest of the fiefcorp. What other options do we have?"

"None," said Horvil with a sigh.

"So what do we have to lose?"

"We've got plenty to lose, Vigal. What if this whole thing is a
setup? How do we even know Richard Taylor is a Pharisee and not just
a good actor? It's not like we can look up his profile on the public
directory or check his references. `The Faithful Order of the Children
Unshackled'? We have no idea if this organization even exists. Sounds
phony to me."

The neural programmer ran his fingers through his salt-andpepper goatee as he examined the slumbering Taylor. "I think he's
being sincere."

"And this conversation you had with Natch-that thing about
choosing your future-you're sure that's legitimate? You said those
words to Natch?"

"I'm sure."

"You're so trusting," said Horvil with a shake of his head. "Okay,
so maybe Taylor's being sincere. Maybe he's really trying to deliver
some message to Natch from the Order of Faithful Children, or whoever they are. What does this organization stand for? What's in this
message of his, and why is he being so secretive about it? How do we
know these people aren't trying to find Natch so they can kill him?
How do we know they're not on Len Borda's payroll?"

Serr Vigal stared out the window and watched the hoverbird burst
through the last of the clouds. The path back down to Earth was now
completely obscured, and the path ahead lay out of their vision. An apt
metaphor for their current predicament. "We don't know any of these
things," he said. "You'll learn this when you get older, Horvil. Sometimes there's nothing else you can do but put yourself in the world's
hands and trust that things will turn out all right."

And then he, too, drifted off to sleep.

15

Preparing for a trip of indeterminate length to the Pacific Islands was
much more difficult than Jara had anticipated. Everywhere she looked
was another commonplace item that might or might not work behind
the unconnectible curtain. Did the Islanders have MindSpace workbenches, and if so, would Jara's fancy new set of bio/logic programming bars function on them? Would she be able to hang clothes in the
closet of her hotel and have them magically emerge clean and pressed
as they would in a connectible hotel? Would all the standard cosmetic
programs for sanitizing and deodorizing the human body still work
out there?