To Hold Infinity (39 page)

“Yes, directing drones. Emergency access.”

“There was a Luculentus, a big man, directing engineers—” Yoshiko cast her mind back. “He didn't seem overjoyed when you put me in charge.”

“You're saying Rafael had an accomplice?”

“Looks that way. Perhaps Major Reilly can find out who he was.”

Maggie shook her head. “How do we know we can trust her? If the accomplice was a proctor, I mean?”

Unsettled, Yoshiko got up from her seat, and paced across the room.

“There's a gym here in the med-centre.” Lavinia's voice was amused. “I'm sure they'll let you use it.”

“That's what I need, all right. To steady my nerves.”

“We've got to know each other pretty well, haven't we?” asked Lavinia. “Considering what a private person you are, and—well, even I don't know who I am, right now.”

Yoshiko stared at her. “That's right.”

Maggie looked from Lavinia to Yoshiko, frowning.

“So,” said Lavinia. “Why don't you tell me what's really on your mind?”

Yoshiko exhaled, calming herself. “First, let me show you the rest of what's on the crystal.”

Billowing clouds of light called to mind the Baton Ceremony and Lori's demise, and Yoshiko shivered as though ice had enveloped her.

 

“Is he even human any more?” Maggie's face looked sickened. “Can we even imagine his thought processes?”

One hundred and two translucent blocks surrounded the central ovoid.

“We need to show this to someone at LuxPrime,” said Lavinia. “A mind this size—Perhaps he truly did scan Xanthia, as in a Baton Ceremony, but taking absolutely everything that was her: all her thoughts, all her memories. Everything.”

“How often—?” Maggie seemed on the verge of throwing up. “How many times has he done this before?”

“Many, perhaps.” Lavinia's face was stony. “Though it's hard to tell. His mind has migrated across all the plexcores. You're right: his thoughts may no longer be remotely human.”

“Haven't you people ever thought of this possibility?”

Lavinia shook her head, but said nothing.

“There's a dead LuxPrime courier involved in this,” Yoshiko pointed out. “Perhaps Rafael had help in committing the unthinkable.”

“Yes.” Lavinia looked away. “That's just what it is. Unthinkable.”

For a moment, she grew infinitely distant, then she turned back to Yoshiko and focussed on her. “Go on.”

Yoshiko nodded at the diagram. “That's not all Edralix found.” Yoshiko manipulated the display, and a sphere appeared, tiny nodes dotted across the surface, the joining arcs clearly labelled. “This shows physical separation.”

“I don't understand.”

“Rafael used my son's comms ware for this.”

Maggie looked up. “What do you mean?”

“I understand.” Lavinia sounded thoughtful. “Rafael's plexcores are scattered across the face of Fulgor.” She turned to Maggie. “He would need instantaneous interfaces, to avoid lightspeed delays.”

“Oh,” said Maggie. “Mu-space comms. Of course.”

“Actually,” Lavinia continued, “with a nexus this size, even stacking all the plexcores together in one room would cause problems, without mu-space links. And they certainly wouldn't all fit inside Rafael's body as implants.”

“Can Jana do anything?” asked Maggie.

“I don't think so.” Yoshiko tried to remember what Jana had said about comms architectures. “Their systems aren't designed with eavesdropping in mind. I don't think they can isolate a particular individual's comms.”

“So it's back to Plan A.”

“What's Plan A?” asked Lavinia.

“Bait,” replied Yoshiko, as Maggie simultaneously said, “A Judas goat.”

“I'll call the LuxPrime tech who prepared the ceremony. He was very sympathetic.” Lavinia spoke slowly. “There must be tracking ware, debugging modules, what have you. Yes, that's the way.” She picked nervously at her lip. “If only integration didn't take so long. I'm not supposed to interface at all for a tenday.”

“Er—” Maggie cleared her throat. “I don't think it was you that Yoshiko, had in mind.”

“But she isn't a—Oh, I see.”

Those young-old eyes seemed to bore into Yoshiko's soul.

Then, “I would be honoured,” Lavinia said formally, “to sponsor you for upraise, Professor Sunadomari.”

The words seemed to ring deep inside Yoshiko's soul.

Maggie stared into the diagram of Rafael's extended mind.

“Gotcha, you bastard.”

“
Not long now.
” The words sounded close by his ear.

Tetsuo jerked fully awake. He was on a sideways-facing bench seat in the rear of the flyer.

Up front, Felice Lectinaria turned back to look at him intensely. How had her voice sounded so near?

Felice turned to Kerrigan, sitting up beside her. They seemed to talk fiercely, but then Felice threw back her head and laughed.

“How are you do—?” Tetsuo started to ask Dhana, but she was scrunched up beside him, fast asleep. “Never mind.”

Avern was watching over the wounded Agrazzus, now on a stretcher. Brevan and the remaining Agrazzus, seated opposite Tetsuo, were playing
go
using their wrist terminals.

No windows. Tetsuo stared up towards the front. Beyond Kerrigan's shock of white hair, he could see the Devindrani Mountains, blue-tinged and forested. Grey clouds smudged the darkening sky.

He sat back and watched the patterns of black and white stones floating between Brevan and his opponent, above a fine translucent grid.

Strategy. Tetsuo was not even sure why he was here. His only objective was to go along with the flow.

And to find out about Mother. So far, Felice had told him only that she was staying with friends. Luculenti friends.

The flyer dropped sharply in to land, flipping Tetsuo's stomach and waking Dhana.

“Can you wait a moment, Tetsuo?” called Felice, as the doors liquefied and the Agrazzi began to disembark.

Clean mountain air wafted in, clearing Tetsuo's head.

“All right.”

Dhana winked back at him as she stepped out.

When everyone had left—besides the unconscious wounded man, whom Felice was taking elsewhere for treatment—the doors hardened and grew opaque, and the cabin lights grew dim.

“So what did you want to—?”

 

[[The eagle flew at him, wings beating, pinions tearing…]]

 

“My God!” He crossed his forearms in front of his face, just as the eagle vanished.

“Sorry,” said Felice.

“Very funny.” He wiped sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. “Why do you have a holoprocessor back here, anyway?”

“I don't, young man.”

It had been a few years since anyone had called him that, and he laughed.

“So what did I just see?”

“Close your eyes.”

 

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Tetsuo snapped his eyes open, and jerked upright.

“The first image was a [public vision]. Had there been any other Luculenti present, they, too, would have seen the eagle.” Felice's voice was soft, but every word dripped into his awareness with awful clarity. “The second was a : for your eyes—and every other sense organ—only.”

“I guess the op worked, then.”

“Yes. But we knew that, didn't we?” In the dim cabin, Felice's eyes seemed to shine. “Have you tried to log on to Skein yet? Tell the truth.”

“No—But I nearly managed it, anyway.”

He told her about the mind-twisting visions, the feeling of closeness with an observing malevolent spirit.

“Don't do it again.”

“I wasn't planning to.”

“I'm serious, Tetsuo. There are NetAngels questing through Skein for you right now, and they may not all belong to proctors. You have deadlier enemies.”

Tetsuo pushed aside his growing dread: “There's no need to be mysterious. Just explain, in easy words.”

“I will. Later. And I promise I will argue your case with the proctors.” Felice held up a comms relay, which Kerrigan, no doubt, had given to her. “This is powerful evidence.”

“Sure.” Unauthorized copy though it was, Tetsuo's name was still on the ware's copyright. It could damn him more easily than it could clear him.

“Just don't get arrested in the meantime.”

Knowing he was being dismissed, Tetsuo clambered out of the flyer.

 

“Stinking Rogavdarian!”

A small boy sprinted out of the undergrowth, followed by three bigger lads.

“I suggest,” said Tetsuo, standing in front of the trio and sucking in his stomach, “that you return to camp.”

Beside him, Dhana said nothing as they looked hard at Tetsuo. Then they turned away without a word, drifted back down a wooded path, and were lost from sight.

“So—” Tetsuo turned to the fugitive.

“Yeah? What do you want?” The boy spat. “A medal?”

Laughing, he ran off into the forest.

“Charming.” Tetsuo shook his head. “What sept were the other three?”

“Segradorvedes, from their jumpsuit insignia.” Dhana shrugged. “Your friend was a Rogavdarian.”

“A stinking one, as I recall.”

Side by side, they walked along the leafy trail. Once, an owl called. Shortly afterwards, two more skimmed between the branches overhead. Tetsuo shivered, recalling the specimens they had freed.

They came out on a ridge. Below them, the slopes arced down to the head of a wooded valley.

“These demos,” Tetsuo said. “They're going to be peaceful protests?”

The evening sky was reflected in Dhana's eyes, glinting from smartgel or from incipient tears.

“Yes, they are.”

“I hope—” Tetsuo looked downslope. “—I won't have to remind you later that you said that.”

Down below in the encampment, a thousand skimmers moved like bright beetles, while the dark ants that were Shadow People milled among the rows of tents.

 

Their eyes held hints of dangerous knowledge, of unnerving sights which had stripped away their humanity.

Is he even human any more?
That was the question Maggie had asked earlier, regarding Rafael. But now, seeing the piercing yet otherworldly stares of these three men, Yoshiko wondered how far down that path the LuxPrime techs themselves had ventured.

They wore ceremonial helmets, like pewter claws across their skulls, and their clothes were uniformly of burgundy and green. They should have looked ridiculous, but instead they appeared cold and hard and infinitely distant.

Yoshiko wore only a one-piece leotard-suit, which left her arms and feet bare. She shivered, though the chamber was not cold.

“Luculenta Candidate Sunadomari.” A narrow-faced tech addressed her. “If you would, please—”

The waiting pallet floated in a column of amber sunlight, streaming from the crystal ellipse which formed the chamber's ceiling. In the shadows at the room's edge, Maggie stood by Lavinia's bedside, both of them intently watching Yoshiko.

Yoshiko climbed onto the floating pallet, and carefully assumed the lotus position. She unsealed the leotard, and slipped it down around her waist. She placed her hands on her knees, palms up, and controlled her breathing.

I don't want to do this.

It shone brilliantly in the sunlight.

She was too old to change. What if it altered her core personality, the very self she had built through decades of self-discipline?

The small cylinder, held by mag-fields, floated beside her pallet.

For Tetsuo's sake—

She shuddered as the cylinder, her plexcore, drew closer, and a kaleidoscope of shifting rainbows played across its surface: smartatom femtofactors coming to life, destined for brief but intense existence.

There is no pain.

It touched her bare stomach: searing heat and bitter cold; abrasive roughness that was silky smooth; shuddering joy and tearing agony.

It entered.

At some deep cellular level, she knew: femtofactors furiously pushed aside or tore apart the skin and fat, the interlaced tissue where abdominal muscles joined, as the plexcore insinuated itself among her organs. Skin healing, closing shut. The tendinous raphe, the seam between her stomach muscles, was reconstructed by femtofactors left behind as the plexcore bored deep inside.

She closed her eyes.

No pain.

Pushing aside where it could, tearing and rebuilding where it must, the plexcore sidled past blood vessels, the coeliac trunk, repairing damaged lymph nodes, and crawled upwards.

Extruding protein filaments to hold itself in place, the plexcore shunted into final position.

I will not cry out.

Among muscles, femtofactors repaired actin and myosin, rearranged the structural stroma proteins to their original configuration. In damaged nerves, they rebuilt neurofibrillae, reconstructed the cytoplasmic matrix of every injured cell.

As repair-femtofactors completed their tasks and died, deconstructing themselves, others directed the products harmlessly into Yoshiko's bloodstream, to the renal artery. The next time she urinated, fragments of billions of dead femtofactors would be flushed from Yoshiko's body.

Now it begins.

How could she know this? She felt, with a deep awareness, the insinuation of femtofactors along her neurons, as the interface construction began. Synaptic arrays formed across the end-feet of axons. The commssubstrate spread upwards, through hindbrain—rhombencephalon—and cerebellum, up into the deep structures of the brain, and onwards.

There was no single moment of transition, but at some point she realized the plexcore had powered up, and its VSI code was already exploring the network of her mind.

“We have success.”

Yoshiko opened her eyes.

Vertigo. A dizzying sense of dislocation.

“The implant—” The LuxPrime tech's thin face seemed almost to float, disembodied, whitened by the shaft of sunlight. “—is successful.”

A piercing whistle split the solemn atmosphere.

“Yo, Yoshiko!” At the room's shadowed edge, Maggie raised a triumphant fist. “Way to go!”

 

Everything glowed with an inner light: the smooth pallet, the soft fabric covering the floor, the techs' ascetic faces. The shadows, cloaking Maggie and Lavinia, held their own palpable warmth. Sitting in the sunlight falling from the skylight was like bathing in liquid gold.

“We won't be implanting headgear until later,” said a LuxPrime tech. “The plexcore is partitioned for minimum functionality, and its basic integration will proceed very rapidly.”

Every word seemed tinged with nuance and harmonics, complex and immediate.

The second man added, “You understand, it will be several tendays before we can enhance the plexcore, remove its internal partitioning.”

“I understand.” Yoshiko, still sitting on the pallet, pulled up her leotard and sealed it.

Her spine seemed to have grown straighter, her skin smoother and more sensitive. Even in lotus, she was preternaturally aware of her own balance, of the subtle perturbations and corrections in the pallet's levfield.

The timbre of her voice had subtly shifted, and she was more aware of her ability to control it. “I can log on to Skein, though?”

“Sufficiently, yes. Much of the Skein is configured for phase-space perceptions of five dimensions and upwards. But the rest is available to you.”

“I—can't thank you enough for doing this. When Lavinia said she'd sponsor me, I thought the process would take days, at least.”

The third LuxPrime tech stepped forward. He had been silent until now.

“My name is Dougan Farsteen.” It did not need Yoshiko's new awareness to pick up the dark harmonics in his voice. “Whatever you need—” The man swallowed, and for a moment Yoshiko glimpsed nascent tears. “Whoever it was, we'll help you trap them.”

The other two techs looked away.

There was a hint of questioning in his tone, also. Though using only voice, it was a Luculentus-to-Luculenta communication: a plea for more information, which he was certain Yoshiko held.

Lavinia had told LuxPrime of their suspicions, the possibility that Xanthia had undergone scanning as in a Baton Ceremony, from scanware which infiltrated LuxPrime defences. The likelihood that this was involved with Adam Farsteen's death.

She had said nothing about the attacker's presumed identity.

If LuxPrime suspected Rafael, they would immediately contact the proctors. But the hacking of the Maximilians' house system, and the smartatom bugs which had been planted on Yoshiko—“
I wouldn't expect civilian tech to behave that way
,” Major Reilly had said—all spoke of peacekeeper involvement. Corruption among the proctors? They could not risk the possibility that Rafael might be warned, maybe even protected.

“Are you ready to proceed with the integration?”

“Yes.”

Judas goat.

“As soon as we have interface, we'll present you in Skein.”

Tethered to a virtual tree, waiting for the predator to strike.

“I'm ready.”