The Credulity Nexus (17 page)

Rik walked to
the fire. The simulation was so good, he could see the flames
dancing and feel the warmth increase as he got closer. And that was
just with a neural inducer clamped to his neck. For the people who
lived here, the experience must be completely lifelike.

He watched the
flames, thinking about heretics and ‘witches’, Jews and Muslims,
ordinary people dying because someone didn't like the ideas they
had. It made him shiver, despite the warmth. Next time round, the
uploads would be included too. And who else? Gays? Feminists?

Rik had
nothing against uploads. He couldn't see any reason for religious
types to get so het up about them. He had nothing against religious
types either, unless they started preaching at him. Live and let
live, was about the sum total of his moral outlook. If Lanham was
right...

“
OK, make your pitch,” he said.

“
You really don't know where the package
is?”

“
I really don't.”

“
But you have some ideas for finding
it?”

“
If you can promise me I don't have to
worry about my friends and family any more.”

“
Whatever Celestina was doing, I'll make
her stop.”

“
OK. Then, yes, I have some ideas. What's
the offer?”

Lanham gave him his dead-fish stare for a
few more seconds. “Very well. You can have
The Phenomenon of Man
for as long as it takes. The
ship and her crew are at your disposal. I've arranged for an
account for you to draw on.” A small smirk crossed his face.
“Money, for once, is not at all important. Spend whatever it takes.
Just so you understand, the funding available to this project
amounts to many trillions of dollars. If you need additional
resources – anything at all – just ask. You'd be amazed how far our
influence extends.”

“
I'm already amazed. You're staking a lot
on a long shot.”

“
I don't have any better play at this time,
but rest assured I will be exploring every possible avenue. If I
find the virus before you do, that's it; our association is over.
If you find it first, I will make sure you receive more money than
you know what to do with.”

“
That's a hell of a lot of money, Mr.
Lanham.”

“
One more thing. I've been talking to
Celestina.”

When?
Rik wondered, but ghosts could think and
communicate at quantum computer speeds. No doubt the conversation
with Rik had occupied a tiny portion of Lanham's
capacity.

“
She suggested you take her associate,
Rivers Valdinger, along with you. Apparently she has many valuable
talents.”

Rik shook his
head. “No way. I don't need your psycho-killer looking over my
shoulder.”

“
Sorry. That is not negotiable. The ship
has been prepped and is ready for take-off. Goodbye, Mr.
Drew.”

“
Wait a–”

“–
minute!”

Rik was lying
on a gurney in an office in Omega Point. The black-skinned upload
leaned over him. She looked unhappy.

“
Looks like you and me are partners,
shithead,” she said.

A one-way
ticket to the Moon. Just thinking about it made Maria feel cold
inside. But with people trying to kill her and Rik nowhere to be
found, what else could she do? She couldn't go to her sister's or
to any of her friends. She'd only be taking the danger to them. And
she wanted to put that damned package firmly into Rik's hands and
make it his problem again.

“
First time?”

The voice had
come from the seat next to hers. “Sorry?”

“
In space? You seem a bit
nervous.”

The speaker
was a woman in late middle age. Maria studied her carefully. She
looked harmless enough. She was even holding a bundle of knitting
in her lap. Could they have found her already? She'd paid cash for
everything. She'd used false names whenever she could. But she'd
had to use her cogplus at the passport scanner. Would they have
access to government datastreams? Would they have people on the
inside watching for her leaving the country? And if they did, how
did they get the old woman on the gondola so quickly, and in the
seat next to hers?

Shaking her
head, she relaxed into her seat, laughing at herself.

“
I'm sorry,” she told the woman. “Yes, it's
my first time. I should try to relax more. I'm driving myself nuts
worrying about every little thing.”

“
That's right. Now me, I'm a seasoned
traveller. I've been whizzing up and down this wire since they
built it when I was a little girl. And I'm pretty sure I'll wear
out before it does.” She gave a small, cackling laugh. “My name's
Kirsty – bit old-fashioned, but then, so am I. Kirsty
Winters.”

Maria
introduced herself. “What takes you up into space so often?”

“
Men. Husband was an astro-engineer. Worked
on half the cities on the Moon, spent most of his life up there. I
wouldn't stay with him. The Moon's no place to raise kids. So I
used to go and visit a lot. He passed away nearly ten years ago.
Molotov's Syndrome. You ever hear of it? You get it from breathing
too much of that moondust. Rots your lungs.”

“
I'm sorry. He can't have been very
old.”

Kirsty Winters
gave a dismissive wave. “Occupational hazard. At least I don't have
to worry about Bren going that way.”

“
Bren?”

“
My oldest boy. He's an engineer too.
Working on Alltheway Station. Only thing I need worry about with
him is solar storms. They're killers, those storms.” She paused and
put a hand on Maria's arm. “You should look out the window, you
know. You're missing the view.”

Maria turned
away from the chatty old lady and looked out at the view. The sky
above had turned to a velvety twilight, while below, the Gulf of
Mexico shone like polished silver. The coasts of Louisiana, Texas
and Mexico itself were a beige arc at the limits of her vision.

“
Wow.” She'd seen it on vids, of course,
but the reality made her heart skip a beat. She was in space. Just
a couple of hundred kilometres up – she still had weight, even –
but space, all the same.

“
Still a long way to go,” Kirsty said. “But
I like the view from around here. There ain't nothing can beat
it.”

Maria watched
her planet inching slowly away from her, and wondered how long it
might be before she could go back. The ground below looked bright
and inviting, while above her, a terrible darkness was
gathering.

-oOo-

“
What do you mean, he's disappeared?”
Newton Cordell rounded on his wife, eyes bulging.

“
Don't take that tone with me. I'm not one
of your nasty little henchmen.” She sat down in one of the
square-sided armchairs, her white business suit matching the white
leather, her long legs sliding against one another as she crossed
them.

Cordell looked
away sharply and made an effort to control himself. “I'm sorry,
darling. But you know how important this is!”

Peth picked up
a reader from a coffee table and began flicking through the pages
of a magazine. “His wife's gone, too,” she said.

“
His wives, you mean. Two wives. The evil,
fornicating...” He pulled himself up. “Both dead.”

Peth kept
flicking through the magazine. “I mean his ex-wife. The one in New
York. When our people got to her house, they found a dead man and
no trace of the woman.”

“
Why would she run?” Cordell asked. He
steered his wheelchair erratically about the enormous room, its
motors whining and pausing, whining and pausing. He needed the
practice.

“
Because people are trying to kill
her?”

“
Did they search the house?”

“
Of course, but it had already been
ransacked before we got there. There was nothing left to find.” She
looked across at him. “You know we'll find her again, don't
you?”

Cordell
ignored her. “Our people in the FBI say the Bonomi woman doesn't
know anything. Her husband is still in a coma and might not live.
We should search that bar in Heinlein. Get somebody on that right
away. And stake it out. Drew might go back there.”

He shook his
head. His voice, when he spoke again, was full of admiration. “How
in the world did they get to him before we did? We've got the
police in our pockets, scores of agents all over the world; we even
put a tracker in him! Yet that black-skinned demon just whisks him
into space like... like Satan taking our Lord up to a high
place.”

Peth snorted.
“I don't think you can really compare Drew to Jesus, darling. You'd
understand if you'd ever met him.”

Again, Cordell
turned to his wife. “This is no time for flippancy. What's the
matter with you? You're acting as if losing track of both of them
hardly matters.”

Peth finally
put down her reader and gave Cordell some attention. “It's a
setback, that's all. We always knew there was a chance we might
lose track of him. But as long as Lanham's people have him, we'll
find him again. And what does it matter? He doesn't have the
phials. We're pretty sure the wife has them.”

Cordell stared
at her, blinking for several seconds. “They blew GeneWerken up.
They are trying to ensure that I can't have another batch brewed.
And how could I, when the half-dozen people alive who knew how to
do it have all been killed?”

“
Killed? All of them?”

“
Yes. All of them. Some died in the
explosion. The rest met with accidents, all in the last couple of
days.”

“
Are we sure it's Lanham who sent that
zombie after the package? They seem to have become too violent too
soon.”

Cordell shook
his head and continued his motorised wanderings. “I know. There's
something not quite right about it. My sources tell me it's the
Mafia. The Chicago Mob, would you believe? But why would they want
to become involved? How would they even know what this is all
about? I need you to dig deeper into this. I need us to pray for
guidance. There's something strange going on, someone else hiding
in the shadows.” He spun his wheelchair to face her. “And I need
you to find Drew and that damned woman.”

The trip back
to Earth took a long time: three-and-a-half days, with half a day
of accelerating and decelerating at two-G at either end. Rik and
his new partner did not spend the time getting to know each
other.

Rivers
explained her position even before Rik was back on his feet. “Just
stay out of my way, asshole,” she said.

“
Fine,” Rik replied.

“
As long as we understand each
other.”

“
Up yours.”

After that, even though
The Phenomenon of
Man
was not a large
ship, Rik saw nothing of the upload except when they accidentally
bumped into one another in the narrow corridors.

Rik used his
enforced leisure time to catch up on his sleep and to let some of
his bruises heal. He also made all those calls he had been trying
to make since he reached LA.

His calls to
Maria were disturbingly fruitless. When he got through to her
sister, an eight minute time lag made conversation almost
impossible. Not that she was in any mood for conversation. From
what he could gather, between her angry shouting and the many
inventive ways she found of cursing him, she and her husband had
been beaten up, tied up and held prisoner in their home while their
captors waited for Maria to show up. For reasons she couldn't
understand – but which Rik could – the 'thugs' had just got up and
gone away a few hours ago.

“
I'm glad you're OK,” Rik replied, but what
he had assumed was the end of the tirade was just a pause for
breath. In the rest, she explained how the day Maria met Rik was
the sorriest day in her sister's life, and that she hoped whoever
he owed money to caught up with him and beat it out of his
miserable hide. And, what's more, if any harm came to Maria, the
damned Solar System would be too small for him to hide in when she
came looking for him.

He hung up
without attempting any further pleasantries.

Despite the
harangue, he felt much better for the call. At least he now knew
they hadn't found Maria. Somehow she had known they were after her,
and she had gone to ground.

It was a
different story with his current wives. They seemed to be
permanently disconnected – both of them. So he called the bar and
Veb answered.

“
Why are you behind the bar, Veb?” The
delay was a little under three minutes by that time, but a sensible
conversation was still hopeless. They kept talking over one another
and interrupting one another until Veb said, “Look, Rik, this isn't
the right way or the best way to say this, and I can't get it out
at all with you asking me questions and talking when I talk. So I'm
just going to tell you everything and keep on talking 'till it's
over, and I hope you'll stop talking at some point and listen,
'cause it's bad news, and you've got to hear it from someone. So be
quiet for a minute, huh?”

Then Veb began
the story of how Rik's wives had died. He told it from start to end
without a break, and by the time he'd finished, Rik was silently
listening on the other end.

“
I'll just wait now, Rik,” he concluded,
“in case there's something you want to say, or something you want
me to do. Don't worry about the bar. I've fixed it up and I'm
running things.”