Geosynchron (36 page)

Natch joins him and lets the brute put one arm around his
shoulder as they walk up and down the grid of patients, threading
their way between doctors and med techs. He glances around the enormous room, looking for an authority figure who might notice any
sudden display of violence. But everyone from the medical techs to the
nurses to the patients seems to be following the 49th Heaven ethos of
studiously staying out of other people's business. Even the friendly woman from the order of the Prepared has decided that Natch's welfare is not her concern.

"This kid, Rodrigo," says Molloy, muscles still slack and face still
unruffled. "I don't know what he did for you in Grub Town last
night-"

"He stabbed me in the back with a knife."

Molloy throws his head back and laughs with gusto. It's such a
strange noise in this place that two of the med techs snap their necks
around, but on spotting Molloy they quickly turn away. "He did, did
he? Spirited little fucker. Believe me, you're not the first. The Chomp
must really be messing with him-his aim's usually better'n that, and
he stabs 'em in the heart. What, you looking to take some revenge?
Get him before someone else does?"

Natch narrows his eyes. Such was the type of logic he might have
steered by during his ascent through the bio/logic fiefcorps to number
one on Primo's, but now the idea of revenge seems shockingly pointless and primitive. "No, nothing like that," he tells Molloy evenly.
"I'm going to help him."

The thug sniffs bemusedly. "Why?"

The entrepreneur doesn't respond. Why indeed?

They've turned to the next row of patients, and Natch can see that
Rodrigo is back to his sightless stare once more. He looks over at the
boy and sees himself. Himself as he might have ended up had he failed
in the ROD coding game all those years ago, had he run out of money
and finally exhausted Horvil's good graces. Himself as he was not too
long ago in Old Chicago, lost inside his own desires, ringed by enemies with nowhere to go.

He thinks of his actions in the OrbiCo ship Practical. Creating
something from nothing.

Natch looks at Rodrigo again, and he wonders if his engineering
achievements on the Practical can be replicated in human beings. Can
he take this wretched, nonfunctioning boy, so caught up in want for black code that he will pursue it to incoherence, can he take this boy
and create something new? Can he somehow take a life running dangerously in the red and somehow eke out a life in the black?

And what of this orbital colony, 49th Heaven? Natch looks around
at the concentrated misery, at the decay and decadence. It's a place that
swallows and digests human beings, a parasitic structure that feeds off
desire. Perhaps completely reshaping the place is a foolish ambition.
But is it possible that Natch-a ghost, a man who doesn't exist-can
nudge an entire colony out of its inevitable death spiral into the nothingness at the center of the universe? He knows how to move the levers
of the world; he proved that in his climb to number one on Primo's and
his drive to get a hearing from the Prime Committee on MultiReal.
Now he wonders if he's found a place to move the levers to.

Molloy has taken Natch's silence for a challenge. "Let me offer you a
little unsolicited advice," he says, hand squeezing the entrepreneur's
shoulder almost hard enough to bruise. "You can't help this kid. He's too
stupid. He's pissed off too many people-no, it's not just me. Rodrigo
knew that sooner or later someone was gonna catch up to him in a dark
alley. He knew the consequences, but he played the game anyway."

The ruffian's obtuseness is starting to irritate Natch. "What happens if I try to stop you?" he says.

Again the smile, the licking of the lips. "I don't know what your
angle is, but I seen this all a thousand times. You want to know what's
going to happen? Fine. We start with threats. We find your weaknesses. You come out with a few broken bones. Aw, nothing your
OCHREs can't patch up, but it's gonna hurt." The bully tightens his
grip on Natch's collarbone to emphasize his point. "After that, if you
still haven't gotten the message, I give you a nice little batch of
credits-yeah, real Vault credits-and you go away." Another painful
squeeze. "If after that, you still haven't got the message ..." Molloy
stops and turns to face Natch, then brusquely turns Natch to face him.
The grin abruptly turns into a rictus of pure cruelty. "How about you save me some legwork, man. I ping you some Vault credits, right now.
You turn and walk out the door. So what's it going to be then, eh?"

Natch listens to the thug's patter and watches his hypnotically
spiky eyebrows, and he thinks: I've met this man before.

This man threatened him in the hive when he was a child and beat
him senseless for the crime of being peculiar. He confronted Natch
during initiation. He took on Natch in the ROD coding game and
tried to sabotage his business. When Natch was on the rise in the
Primo's rankings, this man tried to steal his customers. And when the
opportunity of a lifetime fell into Natch's lap, this man was there,
wearing the white robe and yellow star.

Natch knows every scabrous centimeter of this man Molloy's flesh.
He knows the inner workings of his mind. Threats? Broken bones?
Payoffs? It barely even rises to the level of laughability. Natch can eviscerate this man.

Once the entrepreneur might have felt a swell of fiery anger at the
man's arrogance and his supposition that he can get the better of
Natch. Now he feels only an icy sense of purpose and, alongside that,
pity. Does this idiot have any idea who he's threatening? Does he know that
I've outsmarted Len Borda? Does he know that I've had a whole auditorium
full of Defense and Wellness Council dartguns pointed at my head, and emerged
unscathed? Does he know that I've faced Khann Frejohr, Magan Kai Lee, the
Patel Brothers, and Brone-and I've beaten them all?

He looks over Molloy's shoulder and catches a glimpse of the boy
Rodrigo, stupid and helpless. The thug is right; in the end there's no
saving this boy. There is no uplifting of the downtrodden. There's only
restoring of balance.

Natch turns his attention back to Molloy. "You've said your piece,"
he announces coldly. "Now let me tell you what's going to happen."

Three days later.

Molloy kneels on the dingy floor of a small hotel in the Second
Ring of 49th Heaven. Head bowed low, hands fidgeting, he's cowed.
Humiliated. Beaten and afraid. "What do you want?" he says, his insolent voice of command now reduced to a whimper. "Fine, you got the
best of me. But I'm just one guy. There's a network out there, a whole
fucking conglomerate. Once they find out about this, they're gonna
come after you."

Natch stands by the window with hands clasped behind his back
and head bowed forward. "Yes, they are."

"So ... so ..."

"So what am I going to do about it?" Natch stares out the window
into the darkness, full of death and fear and vitriol. He stares at it all
with scythelike purpose in his eyes. "I'm going to hire you. And you're
going to help me track down every last fucking Chomp dealer in this
colony. Then I'm going to scour 49th Heaven clean of them."

Molloy, aghast: "But ... why?"

"Let's just say I'm curious."

25

The black code kingpins of 49th Heaven have a new nemesis, but he
is a nemesis without a name. All they have to go on is the absurdly
flimsy pseudonym of "Nohwan."

Nohwan has come at them with furious and humorless determination, gyroscoping allegiances at will, overturning business arrangements of long standing, slaughtering entire organizations at a clip.
Molloy is the first to go down, followed in short order by the Lacey
cartel, Chim Chavez, and the Syndicate of Deviant Exuberance. Vazor
the Gimp watches his entire street force defect to a rival, causing him
to quickly flee 49th Heaven lest his creditors catch up with him. The
Shits inexplicably start losing money on every petabyte of Chomp they
sell, and quickly decide to move out of black code and into knockoff
tourist memorabilia. Geena the Weasel overdoses on her own tainted
supply and has to suffer through an agonizingly painful rehabilitation.

Weeks become months, and still the bloodbath continues.

It quickly becomes apparent that Nohwan is not acting alone. He
has deduced that the black code dealerships of 49th Heaven are a tightly
interwoven, if not incestuous, bunch. The cartels share information, personnel, client lists, even product. While this spirit of cooperation might
have strengthened them all immeasurably during the upswing of the
trade, turns out it's a major liability on the downturn. Nohwan's particular genius is in recruiting (or sometimes blackmailing) the defeated
into turning on their rivals. Once he has found a weak strand in the web,
he has weakened them all; and with every new defeat, his knowledge of
the remaining kingpins and leverage to defeat them only grows.

The black code cartels have no intention of simply rolling over and
admitting defeat. But they cannot fight what they do not understand.

And this Nohwan is completely beyond their comprehension. He is not an agent of the orbital colony L-PRACGs, the Defense and Wellness Council, or any known body of government; in fact, he shuns their
assistance and even hinders their operations when they get in his way.
He makes no demands. He is immune to offers of bribery and attempts
at compromise. He has no known weaknesses, no family, no friends or
close associates who can be threatened. He has no business interests of
his own that can be targeted for retaliation.

At first, the kingpins suspect that Nohwan might be a widower or
grieving relative of one of the cartels' victims; a revenge seeker. But he
operates with impersonal and passionless persistence, excising black
code dealers from the colony like a surgeon might excise tumors with
a scalpel. He does not kill. He does not use violence. His main weapons
are the inherent greed of the system and the inexorable laws of supply
and demand.

And he only targets the dealers of Chomp.

This is the most baffling element of all. If Nohwan is a crusader for
justice, why does he ignore those that specialize in Chill Polly, Big
Black Thunder, and Suffr-N? Don't those specimens of black code
inflict an equal amount of misery? But no, for some reason the kingpins cannot fathom, Nohwan passes over their organizations-though
he has no compunction about going after those dealers who choose to
actively support and assist the Chompers. Many organizations refuse
on principle to bow down to Nohwan's wrath. But there are plenty of
dealers who decide that the easiest way of dealing with the problem is
to migrate to a different product line. Face Nohwan and perish; bow
to his wishes and survive to deal another day. Within two months of
Molloy's fall, Chomp has become a scarce commodity on 49th Heaven.

And still, the black code kingpins are baffled. It's as if this Nohwan
is sweeping the orbital colony of Chomp solely for the sake of ...
experimentation.