Geosynchron Page 3

  Don't think, he tells himself. You'll know soon enough. Or you won't.

  Petrucio Patel walks into the room several hours later, as thin and dapper as his brother is squat and slovenly. Petrucio is dressed, as always, in a slick brown suit that would look perfectly at home in a corporate board meeting or the sales office of a luxury hoverbird manufacturer. He stops in approximately the same spot as Frederic and regards Natch with a suspicious gaze, noting that the entrepreneur has made no move to untie his legs from the chair. "What are we going to do with you?" he says, giving an almost playful tug at his mustache.

  Natch shrugs. "I don't know."

  "You don't know, huh? You wouldn't say that if you knew some of the things Frederic's been suggesting. He wants to start testing weapons on you." The dry humor never sits far beneath the surface of Petrucio's voice, and today is no exception.

  "Frederic doesn't scare me," says Natch.

  "No, I suppose not. You've got MultiReal! Why would you be afraid of anyone?" Petrucio takes a step closer and crouches down on his haunches. Natch expects the mocking stare of the hyena in Petrucio's eyes, but he doesn't expect to see another emotion that is almost ... pitying. "All right, Natch. You don't really want to sit in this chair all day, do you? Go ahead, then. Activate MultiReal. Catch me in a choice cycle loop and make me untie you."

  Natch's thoughts drift back to that MultiReal conflict in the Tul Jabbor Complex. Petrucio firing a dart at him, Natch dodging, over and over again. Possibility stacked on top of possibility, will versus will, until Natch abruptly found himself out of choice cycles. He remembers the bite of the black code dart in the back of his leg as he jumped onto Brone's waiting hoverbird.

  "This isn't like the Tul Jabbor Complex," growls Natch, suddenly irritated at Petrucio's mockery. "The only reason you were able to hit me with that dart was because Jara fucked with the program behind my back. It's not like that anymore. I've moved the databases."

  "Yes, you sure have." Petrucio drawls the words in childish singsong. His face remains cool and collected. "I don't have access to MultiReal at all. Frederic and I haven't been able to open the program in MindSpace for a week. So go ahead. I'm defenseless. Find that possibility where you humiliate me, where you make me fall on my face right here in front of you. Come on, I'm waiting." He points to his nose, and then to the floor.

  Bait, thinks Natch. I'm being thrown bait. Obviously Petrucio is doing his best to provoke him, to goad him into a rash decisionsomething to which Natch is admittedly all too vulnerable. Yet what does he possibly have to fear from the Patel Brothers? He has faced down ten thousand Defense and Wellness Council black code darts and emerged without a scratch. He has used the power of MultiReal to bend the will of Speaker Khann Frejohr. Why should he be intimidated by a chair, a rope, and a smirk? Why not take the bait and find out what's behind Petrucio's smugness?

  Natch gives his internal system a silent command to activate MultiReal.

  Within the flicker of an instant, Natch can feel his previous ennui retreating before the dazzle of MultiReal. He can sense the infinite probability of the multiverse unfolding before him. Anything he can imagine, any combination of event and happenstance-it all lies sprawled before him, no more than a mathematical progression of muscle movements away. He can sense potential realities ranging from the vindictive to the comical to the absurd-realities where Natch hurls insults or oozes flatteries or utters nonsense syllables. All he needs now is to use the power of MultiReal to latch on to Petrucio's neural interfaces. And then the pas de deux will begin: Natch's mind leaping with possibilities, Petrucio's mind twirling in unwitting response, over and over again in the space between frozen seconds. At the Tul Jabbor Complex, when Petrucio had his own version of MultiReal, he could choose realities of his own; here he will be helpless as a marionette, victim to Natch's manipulation of his own subconscious. When Natch finds the one potential reality that suits his purposes, he will close the choice cycle, and for that instant the world will conform to his desires. Petrucio will follow through with the possibility Natch has selected for him, powerless to do otherwise.

  Natch lunges for Petrucio's neural interfaces with a mental reflex that feels like throwing a lasso.

  And finds nothing.

  It is as if Natch has attempted to engage in a tete-a-tete with the slab of domed concrete above him. MultiReal has called out, but Petrucio's mental facilities are not responding.

  The panic must be visible in his eyes, because after a few seconds a wry smile creeps up one side of Petrucio's face. It is not a cruel smile or a malicious smile so much as an amused one. He straightens up and smoothes the wrinkles from his designer slacks with a brisk flick of the wrist.

  "I thought so," says Petrucio. "Frederic and I aren't afraid of your MultiReal tricks. They won't work in this place." He gestures at the shadowy apex of the dome above him. "You might as well conserve your energy, Natch. You're not going anywhere."

  And within a few seconds, he is gone, leaving Natch alone with the gloom and the darkness.

  3

  At first it was nothing more than an occlusion of the stars, one of the million bits of detritus covering the Earth like an aura. Satellites functioning and not, metal garbage from ancient construction, dead space elevators. But unlike the rest of the rubbish, this occlusion was expanding in that telltale pattern that indicated an approaching vector. A ship. It was an ugly bastard, too, mottled gray and brown, with guns protruding on all sides. Big enough to transport half a dozen hoverbirds, agile enough to conduct military exercises-but not quite fast enough to avoid detection. By the time the ship extended its grappling gear to make the hookup with the Orbital Detention and Rehabilitation Facility, Twelfth Meridian, the unconnectibles were ready for it.

  Quell had been kneeling behind an unlabeled crate on the dock with dartrifle in hand for over ten minutes. Something must have staggered into that crate and died months ago, by the smell of it. He was just about to make for another spot when a finger tapped him on the shoulder. "What now?" he grunted.

  "You're sure it's Islanders on this one?" said Plithy, his voice squeaky with nerves. Quell turned to face the boy and noticed that the cartridge of black code darts on his gun was loaded crookedly and primed for a misfire.

  "Course I'm not sure," said Quell. "You got the same information I did."

  "And what if the information's wrong? What if they get the jump on us, like last time?" Plithy craned his scrawny neck towards the opposite side of the dock, where the connectibles were hunkered down awaiting the same ship. Every once in a while, Quell caught the glint of an overhead light bouncing off the barrel of one of their dartguns. There were only about twenty meters separating the two teams; it would be difficult to miss at such close range.

  Quell shrugged. "Stick to the plan, and you'll be fine. I'm the one who should be worrying."

  "But-"

  The Islander made a strangled noise of frustration. "Just be quiet and get back in position. And for the last time-" He grabbed Plithy's dartgun and snapped the misloaded cartridge into place with a single aggravated motion. The boy shut up and retreated to some crack or crevice outside Quell's view. Wisest thing he's done all day.

  He could hardly blame Plithy for his jangly nerves. The boy was only sixteen, much too young to be worrying about black code darts. Even for someone of Quell's age and experience, it wasn't easy, racing to the dock at a moment's notice with weapon in hand, never sure who would emerge from the airlock. Sometimes the ships carried connectible prisoners; sometimes they carried unconnectible prisoners. The information was sketchy and of unknown provenance. Your job was twofold: shepherd the unconnectibles to the unconnectible level of the prison before the enemy captured them, and capture as many connectibles as possible before they escaped to the connectible level of the prison. If you had accurate information and brought the right number of troops, the job was pretty straightforward. Otherwise you had a long and messy dartgun battle on your hands.

  And if y
ou failed? If the connectibles managed to drag the newcomers away first? The Defense and Wellness Council wouldn't tolerate out-and-out murder in their prisons. But anything short of that could be winkingly ignored.

  Quell glanced over at poor Rick Willets, huddled behind a metal post, trying to cradle a rifle in his mangled hands. The connectibles had caught him two weeks ago nosing around the dock for food. He was found three days later. The microscopic OCHREs in his blood and tissue would eventually return his thumbs to their opposable positions; until then Willets would be down a few chits in the evolutionary game. If he had neural bio/logic machinery, he could heal even faster, but Willets was an Islander, an unconnectible, a technological skeptic. He would just have to wait.

  The Islander turned and spat on the floor. The whole business reminded him of the shoot-'em-up holo games he had played as a kid, all monotony and repetition and mindless adrenaline. Except this is only half as exciting, he thought, and twice as pointless.

  Still, he didn't expect any casualties like Rick Willets today. The manifest indicated a batch of Islanders along with a few Pharisees and one prisoner with no stated place of origin, usually shorthand for the diss. Quell had brought fifteen men to the dock. The connectibles only had a token force of twelve, and were not expected to put up much of a fight. Not worth risking too many men unless reinforcements were at stake.

  A few meters down, Plithy settled in behind a drum of industrial lubricant and aimed his pistol at the hangar doors. The others were safely out of sight, as the plan dictated. Twenty minutes passed. Uncertainty stretched the nerves, but it was the long waits that snapped them. Quell watched the gun slowly droop out of the boy's quivering hands until the barrel was lying on top of the drum along with the grip.

  "Crazy crazy crazy," muttered Willets to himself, a mantra to ward off harm. "Crazy crazy crazy."

  Quell nodded. Yes. Crazy way to run a prison indeed.

  This was decidedly not what Quell had expected from prison.

  The Islander had known the Defense and Wellness Council would not treat him lightly. In their eyes, he was a dissident, an agitator, member of the only group to cast off central government rule and form a functioning opposition. Not only that, but Quell had defied the Council's direct orders during the chaos at Andra Pradesh-and lobbed a pulse grenade at a dozen Council officers-and taken a shock baton to Lieutenant Executive Magan Kai Lee himself. With the help of MultiReal and the crackling energy of the baton, he had given Lee a blow that might have split another man in two. But at the last possible instant, her words had come bubbling to the front of Quell's mind: All of us are looking for a way to deflect our own suffering. Words she had spoken to him decades ago when he was a stubborn student and she was merely a sheltered rich girl.

  He had wondered if killing Magan Kai Lee would be the deliberate act of a rational mind, or a decision made cowering under the aegis of searing pain. Did he really want Magan dead-or was he just deflecting his own suffering?

  No. Quell would prove her wrong. He would not deflect; he would absorb.

  So Quell had pulled the blow at the last instant, and Magan had lived. He had let the officers of the Defense and Wellness Council take his weapon away and yank the thin copper collar off his neck, severing his Islander lifeline to the multi network. He hadn't protested the kicks to the stomach and groin that had followed in the elevator, or the blow with the gun butt that had broken his knee in the courtyard. He had known that he could use the quantum prestidigitation of MultiReal to escape the Council's clutches at any minute. He had known that he could kill every single one of those motherfuckers if he wanted to, dartguns or no dartguns. But he would not. He would not.

  The Council officers had shoved the Islander into a waiting hoverbird and lined up for one last beating. It had suddenly occurred to Quell that this might be his last opportunity for escape. Rumor had it that the hulls of these government 'birds could even block subaether transmissions, a feat that seemingly violated the universal law of physics. No subaether meant no access to the Data Sea meant no access to MultiReal-possibly forever.

  All of us are looking for a way to deflect our own suffering.

  He had let it happen. The door had slammed shut.

  There had been a long interregnum of blackness, pain, and silence. Three hoverbird transfers with no food or water. More beatings.

  So much for a trial by jury, Quell had thought.

  When he had come to, Quell was kneeling on the icy floor of an airlock with his wrists shackled, surrounded by dispassionate guards wearing the white robe and the yellow star. Outside the airlock, he had heard the metal din of ships coupling. He had waited for the taunts and excoriations to resume, but instead the guards had simply stood there, for two hours. Quell had been torn. On the one hand, he had wanted to give his OCHREs time to prepare for another battering. On the other, he had just wanted to fucking arrive wherever he was going to arrive already.

  And then, in quick succession, as if they'd been rehearsing for days, the door had opened, the guards had lifted Quell by his elbows and knees, they had flung him out onto his face, and the door had whooshed shut behind him.

  At which point the chaos had begun.

  A black code dart had zipped by Quell's ear, missing by centimeters. Someone had kicked him in the stomach, then someone else had smashed the kicker in the back with a metal pipe. The Islander had soon found himself ducking and bobbing through the middle of an epic melee, goal unknown, strategy uncertain, clutching onto that primal instinct to just stay alive for another few seconds. There had been three dozen people in the corridor hell-bent on pummeling each other to pieces. A man had stepped in front of him swinging some crude variety of welding tool. Quell had formed a cudgel with his cuffed fists and delivered an uppercut to the man's chin, lifting him a few centimeters off the ground before relieving him of consciousness.

  The Islander had been trying to pick up the man's dropped weapon when a voice had come streaking through the maelstrom: "Remember the Band of Twelve!"

  Quell had looked up, startled. The Band of Twelve. The original unconnectible dissidents, the legendary founders of the Islander movement. As a child in Manila, Quell had memorized their names before he had learned long division. Years later, his proctors would peel back the onionskin and reveal a number of unpleasant truths about the Band of Twelve-three were convicted thieves, one was a rapist, and five of them were tax evaders. But none of that had mattered to Quell in the middle of the prison tumult. Remember the Band of Twelve! That familiar morsel of propaganda had been like a taste of home. He had lunged in that direction.

  The voice had belonged to a young Islander named Plithy who had been cringing behind a structural support pillar. He had greasy brown hair and the posture you might expect from a zombie. Quell had followed him out of the battle towards the unconnectible level of the prison, head-butting a charging connectible in the process.

  The prison itself was your basic nightmare of design by committee: lots of long corridors and useless alcoves. But strangely, there were no doors or locks anywhere to be found, and no sign of the Defense and Wellness Council either. Quell had followed the boy through the labyrinth, weaving around glazed-over and disaffected Islanders by the score. Finally they had arrived at a room with a bunk waiting, newly made, along with a bowl of greasy stew left like a burnt offering. Quell had wanted nothing less than to be in a stranger's debt, but hunger had trumped any other considerations. He had sat on the bed and tucked into the bowl.

  "What're you in for?" Quell had muttered between spoonfuls of stew to the boy, who, disconcertingly, did not leave. It had seemed like a question prisoners were supposed to ask one another.

  Plithy had plunked his hands into his pockets and looked down at the floor. "Throwing stones at Council officers," he had said.

  Quell had nearly dropped his spoon. "They put you in here for that?" Harassing Council officers with stones and bottles was practically a team sport for young men in Manila. Quell had gotten
quite proficient at it himself as a boy.

  "One of the stones hit a commander," Plithy had explained.

  "But-"

  "In the eye."

  The Islander had begun to get the feeling that Plithy was an albatross in search of a neck to latch on to. Evidently the old proverb about rumor traveling faster than the speed of light was true, because Quell had soon discovered that the boy had already heard about the altercation with Magan Kai Lee. He had apparently then magnified the story to mythical proportions and used it as an excuse to dedicate his life to Quell's service. Quell had wanted no part of it, but he couldn't afford to be so selective in his friends right then. He had scraped the bowl clean of gravy, laid back on the bunk, and asked Plithy for the lowdown on the prison. The boy had obliged.

  The Orbital Detention and Rehabilitation Facility that hovered over Earth's Twelfth Meridian was a simple structure: two wheelshaped platforms connected by a thick axle. The unconnectibles inhabited the "lower" wheel and the connectibles inhabited the "upper," the terms being more or less arbitrary in space. The axle contained the dock, where Council ships arrived to deliver the prisoners, the foodand the weapons.

  The whole setup beggared belief. And in fact, Quell had refused to accept it until he had seen the stockpiles for himself. What kind of prison gave its prisoners weapons? But there they had sat, still crated and fresh from the factory. Dartguns, dartrifles, magazine after magazine of black code darts loaded with nonlethal stun programs. Quell had picked one of the rifles up, polished the barrel on his sleeve, and aimed it at an imaginary Council officer bursting through the airlock. "Aren't they afraid we're going to break out of here?" he had asked Plithy.