Limit of Vision (10 page)

8

A ROving Silicon
Agent owned by NetFlash News detected the anomaly on the Hammer several minutes before the module fell. Following its training, the
R
osa
directed video streams from the Hammer’s public cams back to a supercomputer in Iowa, which synthesized and released a first-pass story announcing that an eighty-ton armored and insulated missile was coming down to Earth.

Updates followed every thirty seconds. By the time the module broke loose the article had generated seventy-three million hits, including one from Ela Suvanatat’s personal
R
osa
. Kathang monitored the situation, following the explosive creation of betting pools aimed at predicting the exact site of impact.

Tens of thousands of
R
osa
s specialized in complex mathematical theory went to work on the problem while the venerable betting site LuckyNumber sponsored amateur calculations by posting figures for the weight, shape, and mass distribution of the module, the speed of the Hammer’s rotation, and the exact moment of severance, along with continuously updated reports on conditions in the upper atmosphere.

Initial estimates established the impact zone as a very long, very broad corridor running in a diagonal swath across the Pacific, from the Aleutian Islands to the South China Sea. Kathang compared this track to the geographic locations of past incidents that had drawn Ela’s interest and came up with a medium-high rating. This combined with the incident’s high news value to stimulate Kathang to action. The
R
osa
sent an audible signal through Ela’s farsights, a faint beeping that swiftly rose in volume.

Ela
lay on her back, wrapped up in a light sleeping bag on the hard, damp floor of Phuong’s platform, still wearing her farsights from the night before. At the alarm’s third pulse she opened startled eyes onto the beautiful, deep blue vault of the predawn sky, blinking at the white fires of lingering stars. “Enough,” she murmured. “I’m awake.”

As she stretched and rubbed the sleep from her eyes Kathang whispered, “
News alert
.” The
R
osa
displayed a LuckyNumber graphic map explaining, “
An object is falling from orbit, with an estimated impact corridor that includes this area
.”

Ela eyed the map, smiling at the
R
osa
’s optimism. Their sliver of coastline barely made it into the corridor. She would be lucky to see even a faint glimmer of reentry. Still, she was awake. She might as well look into the incident.

She sat up, pushing her hair out of her face. Phuong lay asleep against a pile of boxes, but several of the fisherfolk on neighboring platforms were stirring. A few had already put out to sea, the tiny lights on their boats looking like stars come down to the ocean. Ela tapped her fingers, summoning the articles Kathang had gathered. She skimmed the facts, while the LuckyNumber map updated once again. The estimated impact corridor had narrowed and shortened to a brushstroke that paralleled the Chinese coast, before sweeping through the South China Sea, to end at Borneo, just north of the equator.

She cocked her head, turning to gaze at the northern sky. A wall of black clouds hid the horizon, their western edges aglow with a pearly lining of moonlight. The module would come from the north.

Ela stood up, whispering to Kathang to record. “And get me a contract for this video.”

But Ela had responded too slowly: By the time Kathang posted her readiness, the major news agencies had already contracted a host of ground-based observers. Ela refused to accept the tiny fees offered by smaller outfits, reasoning that if she scored good coverage of the event, she could sell the vid afterward for real money, and if she didn’t, the tiny fee she had lost would hardly matter.

Next she linked to NetFlash News, where she accessed a static-slashed image relayed from a camera on the outside of the falling module. The image showed twilight arctic wastes, and then afternoon in Canada. The estimated impact corridor narrowed again, closing in on the sea south and west of Hong Kong. For the first time, Ela felt a flutter of concern. If the debris came down in a populated area, people would die. If it came down here, these people could die.

She could die.

She told herself the odds were long against it. Still, her heart beat in an anxious rhythm as she watched the feed from the falling module. There wasn’t much to see anymore, just a tangle of white clouds over an ocean that seemed to go on forever until finally, daylight began to fade. The module was chasing a fleeing night across the Pacific. Time seemed to run backward as the clouds in the image grew pink with the light of a retreating dawn, and then abruptly, the signal vanished from the screen of Ela’s farsights. At the same time an eye-searing fog-glow of deepest blue flared into existence high up in the northern bank of clouds. Shouts of surprise, and fright, arose across the village.

“
It’s
ignited,” Panwar said as he watched a collage of images gathered by ground-based observers working for NetFlash News. His voice was low, and cracking with emotion. “Maybe eighty kilometers up? Maybe eighty-five? It’s all ending now, Virgil. What a waste. What a fucking waste.”

Virgil nodded. Eighty kilometers up the atmosphere thickened, enough that friction would heat the module and slow its fall. The construction roaches must have been stripped away only a moment before the hull began to burn—but it would take time for the heat to work its way inward. Every module on the Hammer was armored against random impacts with orbital junk. That insulation would protect the
L
ov
s for a few seconds more. Despite Panwar’s lament, Virgil felt sure that E-3 was still alive, still immersed in its own personal complex of thought and dream.

It could not last much longer.

Could Epsilon-3 comprehend what was happening to it? What was about to happen? Perversely, Virgil hoped it could. If it knew, then it truly was aware and sentient—though not necessarily afraid. Fear was an emotion of naturally evolved minds, a spur to survival, but Epsilon-3 had come to intelligence along a different path. There was no reason to assume it must be afraid of its own ending . . . but why had it chosen such an impossible solution? Where was the intelligence in that?

Ela
looked to the north, watching the light within the cloud grow brighter and brighter with every passing second. Thunder rumbled in the distance, like the first warning of a summer storm, growing gradually louder until it buried the fearful screams of the villagers and the terrified crying of their children.

The blue glow broke free of the cloud. For just a moment Ela saw the intact module, like a brilliant star in the north. Then it shattered in a fat, golden explosion. One long segment spun off to the east, a fiery knife slicing through the velvety sky. Another chunk tumbled south above the ocean, leaving a nimbus of red-and-gold particles glowing behind it.

The concussion marking the breakup arrived a moment later as a deafening clap of thunder that made the platform tremble beneath Ela’s feet.

Out on the water, ghostly gold reflections expanded to meet the two huge pieces of debris as they plunged, almost vertically, toward the ocean’s calm surface. Ela heard a whistling noise, and behind that a churning beat like a helicopter’s whipping blades as the long segment spun through its descent.

The smaller chunk of incandescent rubble hit the water first, perhaps half a mile off the coast. Its gold glow vanished, swallowed up by the eruption of a mighty fountain. The second piece followed it in, striking at an angle and raising a wall of spray hundreds of meters into the air.

Abruptly, the ocean all along the coastline was leaping skyward in a contagion of geysers as unseen fragments of the massive module tumbled one by one into the water. Seconds later the tardy sound of the impact rolled over the shore as a great roaring splash and patter. A swell escaped the chaos of white water, a miniature tsunami that ran for shore like the black back of a gigantic sea serpent, tumbling the fishing boats that had already put out to sea. It reached the shore, looking less like a wave than a spill of water that swept in a frothy roar across the mudflat.

Ela dropped to her belly, ducking her head and holding on to the edge of the platform as the wave hit. Water sprayed in the air. People were screaming. The platform sagged and started to collapse. Ela rode it down into a whirl of frothy, muddied water, plunging facefirst into the deluge. She twisted, fighting to get her feet underneath her. Something struck her in the shoulder. Then her feet found the ground. She staggered, standing up against a torrent of muddy water sucking past her as it drained back into the sea.

Her backpack went skating past. She gasped and grabbed for it. Then she dropped it again to grab instead the brown shape of a toddler sluicing past her knees. The child’s eyes and mouth were covered in mud, but she came up screaming. It was the finest sound Ela had ever heard. Tears of relief started in her eyes as she held the little girl against her breast, patting the cold, muddy skin of her tiny back, and murmuring, “It’s okay, it’s okay, you’re okay,” until the last of the water drained away.

Out on the horizon a fire burned. One of the fish farms must have taken a direct hit from the debris.

The
impact was recorded by hundreds of observers, onshore and off. Virgil watched the module shatter. He watched a haze-blurred image of the debris spinning apart and the vague, distant explosion of white water. He saw an oceanic platform on fire.

He told himself it could have been worse. It could have been so much worse. Another mile to the west, and thousands of people might have been killed. As it was, there were certainly deaths among the boats scattered like tiny chips of Styrofoam across the gray dawn waters.

“Enough,” Panwar said. “Kill the screens.”

He walked around the table toward Virgil. His face was cold. Frozen. An unused thing waiting for some emotion to seize it. Virgil saw himself in Panwar’s face. He felt consumed by the same cold shock. They had never planned this. Never had they imagined that such a thing could happen.

Panwar’s fingers twitched and jumped as he signaled farsights that were not there. Then he leaned close to Virgil, and whispered in his ear. “
We have nothing left to lose, my friend.
It’s now or never, okay?
”

Cold certainty gleamed in Panwar’s eyes. The odds had been long before, but the rebellion of E-3, the fall of the module: These events had banished their very last chance at clemency. It had all seemed so harmless that day they decided to smuggle the
L
ov
s. But now they had lost. They had lost badly. Their lives were over.
These
lives were over.

Panwar’s
L
ov
s glittered faintly in the light of the blank, blue screens. Virgil felt a responding coolness in his own mind.

Trust me?
Panwar mouthed the words.

Virgil nodded. Then he watched Panwar’s face transform.

What had been a terribly empty, expressionless mask became something much worse: a twisted rictus of horrible pain, and fury. “You self-righteous son of a bitch!” Panwar screamed. Then he dived at Virgil. His right hand closed on Virgil’s shirt. His left hand slammed against his throat as he drove Virgil to the wall, snapping his head back against the insulation in a dizzying blow. “You did this to me!” Panwar screamed in his face. “You did this! You did this!”

Virgil squirmed, uncertain if it was playacting, forgetting his promise to trust. His frantic gaze took in the aerostat camera hovering over their heads. The police officers assigned to guard duty would be here in seconds.

Understanding dawned:
That was Panwar’s plan
.

It was crazy.

Crazy
.

And still Virgil found himself acting out the charade. He grabbed his friend’s arm, making a show of wrenching the throttling hand away from his throat, but Panwar did not resist. He had already turned toward the door, poised in the defensive position taught in
Tae Kwan Do
.

Judging by their footfalls, the cops on guard duty were only a step away.

9

Despite the variety
of nonlethal equipment that had been developed to subdue offenders, from sticky traps to stink bombs to toxic aerosols, most police still preferred lead bullets. The youthful officer who pivoted first through the doorway was no exception. He was short, barely five-four, with pale skin, sleek black farsights, and a round Asian face. He had his gun out.

It didn’t help him.

Panwar lashed out with his left foot, striking the officer’s elbow. The kid screamed; his gun clattered to the floor. Panwar directed a second blow at his chest, sending him to the ground. Then he pounced on the gun, scooped it up and, still in a crouch, turned toward the hallway and fired. The shot resounded in an instantaneous echo.
Boom-boom
.

Panwar gasped, dropping to one knee as he scooped up the kid’s farsights. Then he sprang forward, the gun at ready in front of him as he charged the hallway screaming, “
Don’t touch it!
”

Virgil sprang after him, turning the corner in time to see Panwar dive for a second gun that lay in hard contrast against the beige carpet. He came down on top of a gray-haired officer who was scrambling after the weapon, crawling and sprawling like a paraplegic across the floor. Her thigh glistened with brilliant red blood. More blood stained the carpet in an ever-expanding crimson pool.

Panwar caught her hand just as she reached the weapon. He bent her wrist, forcing her to drop it again. Then he scooped it up and pitched it to the end of the hallway.

“I’m hit! I’m hit!” she screamed, as Panwar rolled off her. “Get in here now. We need help now. Yuen is down!”

Virgil could not believe this was real. “
Panwar whatthefuck are you doing?
”

“Shut up, Virgil, and help me!” He clambered to his feet, shoving the stolen farsights into Virgil’s hands. “Pop the chip out of this.”

“Panwar—”

“Pop the chip out!
Now
.”

Virgil bent his head, examining the glossy black farsights, sleek new Heroes, probably private issue. He slid his trembling fingers along an earpiece, wondering why he was doing this. Then he found the tiny latch that held the main chip, and he popped it. The wafer fell to the floor. With his free hand, Panwar pulled a replacement chip from his shirt pocket. “Here’s another. Swap them—”

“I don’t—”

“Just do it! There’s no choice. The colonies are lost. Extinguished. And we’re next. You can’t believe anything else. The IBC will come after our
L
ov
s and—”

He brought the barrel of his gun level with the gray-haired cop’s eyes. “Don’t do it,” he said softly.

Virgil popped the new chip in, then turned, to see the cop’s hand on her belt; a canister of some unknown noxious substance already halfway out of its holster.

“I’d rather not kill you,” Panwar warned her, “but I have nothing to lose.”

The cop’s glare promised vengeance, but she moved her hand away from her belt. Panwar switched the gun to his left hand. Then he took the Heroes from Virgil, slipped them on, and started tapping frantically with his right hand.

Back in the conference room, the other officer groaned. The woman listened. Then her gaze returned to Panwar. “You see my farsights?” Her voice was a whisper, the words crisp and bitten, reflecting her fight against blood loss, and pain. “They’re still linked. This scene is going straight to police headquarters. A thousand cops will be here in a minute.” Her words were fierce, but she looked very pale. The pool of blood on the carpet had expanded all the way across the hall.

Panwar did not answer her. “Go for the door, Virg. Now.”

Virgil felt trapped in some irresistible nightmare. This was not his life. It couldn’t be. He edged past the wounded officer, careful to stay out of the line of fire from Panwar’s gun. When he was clear, Panwar followed. “She’s losing a lot of blood,” Virgil whispered. There was more blood on Panwar’s hands and on the hem of his black jacket. “Have you been hit?”

“It’s her blood. Let’s go.”

“We can’t leave her to bleed to death.”

Panwar’s eyes were invisible behind the black screen of the Heroes as he grabbed Virgil’s arm and shoved him toward the door. “Did you hear what she said about a thousand cops? It’s true! We go now or we don’t go at all.”

“Go where?” Virgil demanded, as he stumbled past the suite’s open door. Panwar turned to slam it shut behind them. “We live on an island! There’s no way out of here, and you know it.”

“You are so damn stupid!” Panwar said as he scrambled toward the elevator. “You never made any contingency plans when we brought the
L
ov
s down, did you? You never bothered to think what would happen if we got caught.”

“And you did?”

“Damn right.”

Virgil jumped, as the elevator doors opened onto an empty car. Had Panwar summoned it through his farsights?

“Get on,” Panwar ordered. There was more blood on his hands now. It dripped off the barrel of the gun. “Get on the elevator!” He pushed Virgil to ensure that it was done. The doors closed behind them. “I’ve got us on a priority run to the subbasement. No stops.”

The elevator dropped. Virgil hung on to the crash bar. Panwar leaned against the wall, his shoulders hunched, the fist that held the gun pressed against his stomach. Red blood glistened against black fabric.

“You are hurt,” Virgil said.

“Not badly. It’s her blood.”

“You shot her!”

“I didn’t kill her.”

Virgil shook his head. “Why are we doing this? There’s no way we can get out of this building. Security’s going to be all over the lobby. They’re going to lock up this elevator.”

Panwar let the gun drop to the floor. “I’m linked, Virg. I’ve got control of the elevator. It’s taking us to the subbasement. I’ve planned for this. On the day we decided to bring the
L
ov
s down, I made plans to get out if things ever soured.”

“You didn’t try to go last night.”

“Last night I still figured we had a chance in court.”

The elevator stopped. The doors opened on the subbasement. Equipment hummed, but it was a solemn, lifeless sound. Panwar hustled him out. “Every door between us and the lobby is locked. The directory that held the building plans has been corrupted. If we go now, we can be far away before they have any idea how we got out.”

“This is a subbasement,” Virgil objected.

“With a utility tunnel that’ll take us to the waterfront.” Panwar ran for the west wall.

Virgil felt obliged to follow, though his pace slowed at the sight of Panwar’s bloody footprints. “That cop is going to bleed to death.”

“I didn’t lock the upper floors. Security will be there in seconds. Now come on.” He stood at a small metal door, set flush with the wall. He tapped his fingers, and the door unlocked. Virgil followed him inside.

Utility conduits were stacked floor to ceiling on both sides of a narrow tunnel. There were no lights. Panwar put his left hand against one of the insulated trunk lines, and started to run. Virgil leaped after him. If Panwar could run, then he couldn’t be too badly hurt. That cop, though, she must have lost a lot of blood; he hoped security was with her.

For the first few tens of meters faint light from the door showed the way, but that faded swiftly, until Virgil could see nothing but darkness. He ran blind, following Panwar, hoping that his farsights had a photomultiplier function and that he could see something. Their footfalls drummed, an echoing cacophony in the tunnel, but even over that reverberant beat Virgil could hear the sound of Panwar breathing; breathing hard. It didn’t make sense. Panwar was in great shape. He ran three or four times a week. He used the corporate gym to practice his martial arts. “Panwar—?”

“I’m okay!” Panwar gasped from the darkness ahead. “But listen—” “I’ve got a boat at the new marina.” “It’s registered to an alias.” “No one knows I own it. I’ve sent your . . . profile . . . to the onboard
R
osa
. . . it knows . . . who you are.”

“You want to try for South America?”

“No. I want to try for the
L
ov
s.” He stumbled forward a few more paces. Then he stopped, his desperate wheezing filling up the tunnel and echoing off the walls. Virgil barely avoided crashing into him in the dark. “Gotta . . . sit down a minute.”

Virgil could smell blood. Lots of it. And now that Panwar was still he could see a faint blue-green radiance around him, just enough to give vague shape to his downturned face, and the black slash of the farsights that hid his eyes. Virgil reached for him, catching him by his shirt as he sagged to the floor. They went down together. The fabric of Panwar’s shirt was warm and wet in his hands. “Are you crazy?” Virgil whispered. “What have you done to yourself?”

“Shut up,” Panwar hissed between wheezing breaths. “Take the Heroes.” He slipped the farsights off, but then his hand sagged. His head tipped back. The blue-green glow brightened as the
L
ov
s across his forehead were exposed. In that eerie light his face looked horribly pale. “Listen to me, okay? I wouldn’t have done this if it was only about you and me, but it’s about the
L
ov
s too—”

“They’re
gone
,” Virgil protested.

Panwar’s hand closed clawlike on Virgil’s shirt. “Listen to me! They could have survived the crash. There’s a chance. That module was armored and insulated against collisions with orbital junk, the
L
ov
lockdown was built like a bank vault, and it came down fast. If the interior didn’t get too hot, there’s a chance the
L
ov
s survived. You have to find out. No one else is going to care.”

“
I
don’t care! Look what the
L
ov
s have done. They killed Gabrielle. They’re killing you. And that cop. And God knows how many people when the debris came down. We did this, Panwar!”

“It wasn’t wrong!” Panwar’s gaze shifted to Virgil’s forehead, where his
L
ov
s must be shedding their own eerie light. His chest labored, as he breathed in short, panting gasps. “Change this profound . . . it never comes peacefully. It’s never safe. Safety’s a . . . dead end. Not many see that. All the great moments in history . . . made out of desperation.”

“You’re crazy,” Virgil said again, his voice breaking. “Completely crazy.”

Panwar’s grip on his shirt relaxed; his hand fell away. But his wheezy voice carried on: “Listen. I’ve sent a data file to your
R
osa
. You’ve got access to my financial accounts. Take the Heroes. Cops can’t . . . trace ’em now. Get to the boat and . . . you’ll be okay.”

“I have to get help for you.”

Panwar chuckled weakly. “Knew you’d say that. We’re . . . in a tunnel. No signal . . . here. Take the Heroes.”

“But you were running! How could you be running when you were hurt this bad?”

“
L
ov
s can . . . stimulate adrenaline flow too. Heard of it? Wounded soldiers fight on ‘cause they don’t know they’re dead yet.”

“You knew,” Virgil accused.

Panwar closed his eyes; he didn’t answer.

Virgil bent forward, listening for a wheezing breath; waiting for the warm fog of exhalation. Nothing. He felt for a heartbeat, but Panwar was still, not even the drip of seeping blood.

“Panwar, you knew!” His shout echoed up and down the tunnel, but it brought no response.

Virgil leaned back, feeling utterly lost. Panwar’s
L
ov
s still glistened . . . but was their light already fading? He looked back down the tunnel; he listened. There was no sound there yet. A voice whispered inside him,
go
. Truly, what else was there to do? What else was there to lose?

He looked at Panwar one more time. He cupped his face. He kissed his forehead. Then he took the Heroes from Panwar’s slack hand and put them on.

The photomultiplier function was on, and Panwar was suddenly drenched in a sickly green tomb-light.

Virgil stood, his heart pumping faster, faster at every stroke, as if Panwar’s escaping spirit had leaped inside him and now his body had to do the work of two wills. He took a moment to remember the direction they had come from. In the dark, monotonous passage it was so easy to be confused. Only the bloody footprints on the floor confirmed the right direction.

Virgil set off, counting the steps that carried him away from the life he used to know.