Geosynchron Read online

  "It's a neat trick," says Natch, "but I still don't see how that's going to reverse-" He stops short.

  Petrucio's face blooms into a massive smile. "You're starting to see it, aren't you? Anything that happens during that sixty secondssomeone shooting you with a dartgun, someone pushing you off a ledge-"

  "Frederic cutting off my head with a samurai sword," grumbles Natch.

  11 -it hasn't really happened yet, right? It's just a possibility you're exploring in your head. A collaborative fantasy. You've still got time to alter your path and avoid that future. So back to our original analogy. If you're a multi projection standing in a building when it collapses, the system cuts you off and brings you back to reality. Same thing here. If someone decapitates you with a sword ..."

  "You get snapped back to `real' time, one minute in the past."

  "Exactly."

  Natch stands up abruptly, tries to pace in the cramped hoverbird cabin. Now that he's caught the scent, his mind is charging ahead, galloping through the possibilities with furious speed. From the pilot's chair, Hiro starts to turn around to see what's going on, then thinks better of it and disappears back into his mocha grind haze.

  "You told me MultiReal-D erases nascent memories," says Natch. "Then why do I still remember Frederic swinging that sword at my neck?"

  "Did you see the syringe he injected you with?"

  "Yes."

  "Modified OCHREs, for testing. So you'd remember the whole thing."

  Natch's mind is reeling. It's insane, ludicrous, borderline nonsensical-but if he accepts the original premise of MultiReal, where's the logical break? There is none. It follows. And furthermore ...

  "A bio/logic program can't really know when you're about to die," he says over ConfidentialWhisper, more to himself than to Petrucio. "All MultiReal-D can do is guess. All it can do is take your sensory input and calculate the probability of death, based on the factors it's given."

  "Correct."

  "So if someone shoots you in the back, or poisons your food, or pushes you over a cliff when you're not looking ... If you can't see the assassin coming, and he's not looped in to your collaborative process, then MultiReal-D provides no defense."

  Petrucio purses his lips thoughtfully. "True."

  "Yet if you can see death coming ... somebody could take advantage of that. That person could set up a SeeNaRee environment where you're completely surrounded by certain death. Every time you get close to the edge of the room, a guillotine comes down from the ceiling and cuts you in half. It's not a real guillotine, but you don't know that. As long as your brain thinks you're going to die, MultiReal-D will keep yanking you back a minute into the past-into the present-every time. The potential memories would get erased. You'd be trapped."

  Petrucio extends his hands behind his head and puts his heels up on the seat that Natch has just vacated. He seems extraordinarily pleased with himself. "Clever, isn't it?" he says. "But don't give me the credit for that idea-that was all Frederic's doing."

  Natch's mind won't stop its mad charge through the possibilities, as if trying to make up for lost time. He's been in the dark for so longboth literally and figuratively-he feels like he must continue pressing on until all the questions are answered.

  He wheels on Petrucio and extends an accusatory finger. "You're still not telling me everything. Someone tried to kill me in Old Chicago."

  The programmer has quickly moved from satisfied to pleasantly exhausted, and seems on the verge of slipping into a nap. "We think so, yes. That's why Magan had me put the code in you to begin with. To protect you, and to track you."

  "I don't understand this. I'm standing on the street in Chicago when someone tries to kill me. The program stops calculating my future and snaps me back a minute in the past, to `real time.' But what if in real time, I'm still standing on the same street with the person who's trying to kill me? Neither of us would know any better, because our memories have been erased. So why wouldn't we do the same thing over and over again until our OCHREs wore out? Why wouldn't he just try to kill me again?"

  "Ah," says Petrucio playfully. "Here's where things get fun. We think he did."

  "So then what happened?"

  "Nothing happened. Things unhappened."

  Natch simply gapes at the programmer.

  Petrucio, though caught in a sleep spiral, is clearly happy at the entrepreneur's befuddlement. He has the same kind of brain as Horvil, one that derives pleasure from tough logical conundrums and mathematical challenges. "You're right," says Petrucio, letting out an enormous yawn. "The program's not all that useful unless you can solve that problem. But it's not as difficult as it sounds. During the whole time that MultiReal-D is active and calculating the future ... why not keep a record of everything that's happening? Keep the whole memory trail stored in case you get caught in an endless loop of attack and reprisal. If that happens, start backtracking."

  "How?"

  "By undoing everything you've done." Petrucio interrupts Natch's budding protest with another yawn. "Impossible? Hardly. We live in a virtual world, Natch. Memories can be erased. Vault transactions can be reversed. Posts on the Data Sea can be taken down. You can rearrange the furniture in your apartment by editing a database entry. You can move your multi projection back to the same place you were standing yesterday with the blink of an eye. You'd be surprised how many of your actions can easily be reversed."

  "Until?"

  "Until the program finds a point in the past when you're no longer in imminent danger."

  Natch catches himself on the ceiling of the hoverbird, feeling as if he's about to faint. Margaret Surina promised in her big speech before the world to eliminate the tyranny of cause and effect-and from all appearances, her program has done just that.

  He tries to reconstruct that day in Old Chicago with his newfound knowledge. Natch discovered that Brone was not telling the truth about the black code, and so he fled from the hotel. He was pursued by Brone and his minions. But this time, Brone was not satisfied with threats; he actually killed Natch. Or at least, death was so imminent and irrefutable that MultiReal-D concluded Natch's only recourse was to wade into the morass of unhappening. The program began erasing memories, both his and Brone's, until it found a point where Natch could escape the Null Current one more time.

  "How ... how much time did I lose?" says Natch.

  Petrucio's eyes are closed now, and he's clearly only keeping himself awake with great effort. "You couldn't have lost too much, or you would have noticed. I imagine only an hour or so. Don't forget that this is all still experimental, Natch. There are plenty of things the program can't reverse. It can't actually move objects. It can't reprogram bio/logic code. If you burn down a building, MultiReal-D isn't going to bring the building back. There are a number of Vault transactions that we can't figure out how to reverse."

  "Don't you think it would be easier if the user didn't lose his memory?"

  Patel shrugs. "Perhaps. But that brings its own problems. You can imagine how that could be quite disorienting in a combat situation, which is what the program was commissioned for.... Listen, we're a long, long way away from this being ready to deploy. A lot could change between now and then."

  Natch nods. He's still trying to make that last mental leap, from him lying in the street in Old Chicago to the Patels heaving him onto a hoverbird bound for Sao Paulo. "How did you find me?"

  "I told you, Natch-this is just a prototype. When we're testing the program, we can't risk someone's memories getting erased to the point where they're lost with no idea how to get home. It's almost happened too many times to count. So whenever the rollback kicks in, Frederic and I get notified exactly where and when it happened." He shifts in his seat and crosses one leg over the other. "We got a ping from Old Chicago. You were the only one running the program."

  Natch staggers back into the seat next to the one where Petrucio's feet are now resting. There seems to be no end to the vertiginous implications of this infernal prog
ram. It can enable impossible feats of physical skill, it can control minds, it can enable you to be in two places at once ... and now it can even reverse death? All by opening up a vista of possibilities and allowing you to cherry-pick between them. "If only Margaret had known about this," he says quietly over the 'Whisper channel. "She wouldn't have ended up how she did."

  "If only she had known?" Petrucio opens his eyes and fixes them on Natch. The levity has completely drained from his face. "Who do you think built all this in the first place? You don't think Frederic and I wrote that whole program in nine months, do you? Everything we needed to make MultiReal-D work was already inside those databases. All we had to do was find it."

  And then Petrucio cuts off the Confidential Whisper program and falls asleep.

  7

  It was three a.m. Which meant little to those like Rick Willets who had been in orbit long enough to have discarded any hope of trial or release. Why bother synchronizing to the Earth's circadian rhythms when you would likely spend the rest of your life under artificial light? But that was not Quell. Quell intended to get out of there, he intended to reintegrate himself with the planet, and so, for fuck's sake, three a.m. meant sleep.

  "What?" he growled to the hand shaking his shoulder.

  "Get up," said a voice. Quell rolled over on his bunk to face his tormentor, and found himself staring deep into the eyes of Papizon. The man was much closer than anyone who wasn't a lover or a parent ought to be.

  The Islander shoved him brusquely across the room. Papizon wobbled like a scarecrow to regain his balance, but didn't seem to take offense. In fact, his face morphed into some rough approximation of a smile. "What do you want?" said Quell. He yawned, stretched, struggled to prop himself on his left elbow-all the while, discreetly reaching with his other hand for the dartgun he kept wedged between the mattress and the wall.

  "Looking for ... this?" grinned Papizon, brandishing Quell's pistol with the barrel in his fist as if he intended to stir soup with it.

  Quell gaped at him, trying to summon a contingency plan from beneath the fog of his sleep-addled brain. He glanced in his peripheral vision for Plithy, but the boy was nowhere to be found. Had Quell's doom finally caught up to him? And despite all his stubborn survivalist instincts, did he really care?

  Then Papizon tossed the pistol into Quell's lap. He followed this with an assortment of dart canisters that he produced from inside his jacket. "Might need these-paralysis, blindness, infusion of fear...."

  Not knowing what else to do, Quell pocketed them. "You mind telling me what's going on?"

  "Shhh," said Papizon. "In a bit. First we've got to-wait, hold on ... ten seconds ..."

  "Ten seconds to what?"

  "Four, three, two, one ..."

  An explosion.

  The prison shuddered beneath them as if the whole bloody thing had just slammed aground. Something not too far away had combusted like nothing on an orbital station should combust. Before Quell knew what was happening, he was hauling ass down the corridor in pursuit of Papizon, loading his gun with one of the canisters of darts from his pocket. Magan Kai Lee's subordinate seemed to know exactly where he was headed. In fact, he seemed to be timing his steps to some internal metronome, speeding up at certain intersections and slowing down at others. They had been sprinting for a good two minutes before Quell realized that he had forgotten to throw on a pair of shoes.

  Four unconnectibles came barreling around a corner. Quell plugged the first one in the chest with a black code dart before realizing it was Plithy. He dimly remembered that the boy was scheduled to be on the team meeting the next shipment of prisoners. Always in the wrong fucking place at the wrong fucking time. Plithy clawed at his face and tumbled screaming to the floor. Papizon stepped neatly over the boy without even breaking stride, as if his plan had called for a body to be twitching in that spot all along.

  Quell clapped one of the other stunned unconnectibles on the shoulder, yelled in his ear. "Just blindness, I think! Wear off in ten minutes!" He wanted to stay and help pick Plithy off the floor. Though the boy might not have saved his life, he had certainly saved Quell from a pair of broken thumbs. But Papizon was already disappearing out of sight, and the Islander knew that whatever opportunity the lanky Councilman was offering-freedom, revenge, a quick death-it was an opportunity he couldn't pass up. "Sorry!" bellowed Quell to the boy, hoping it would be some consolation. Plithy mewled something unintelligible, and then Quell was off.

  Another explosion, this one deeper, louder.

  The Islander caught up to Papizon and grabbed hold of his bony right forearm. "Where are we going?" he yelled.

  "To the dock," replied the Council officer, stupid grin still pegged to his face.

  "Dock's that way," said Quell, pointing back in the direction they had just come. The direction Plithy's team had been headed.

  Papizon pursed his lips like an eight-year-old boy playing a practical joke. "Not that dock. Our dock."

  "Our ... ?" But before Quell could complete his question, the scarecrow had wriggled free and was tearing off down the corridor again.

  The Islander looked down at the dartgun in his hand, then looked at Magan Kai Lee's rapidly fleeing minion. Did he have any reason to trust Papizon? It was entirely possible that the Council officer was setting up some kind of deadly retribution for what had happened at the top of the Revelation Spire. Quell remembered the thunk of his shock baton striking Magan's chest, the sound like a chef tenderizing meat. Just shoot this idiot in the back and run for safety, the Islander told himself. He centered the pistol on a spot between Papizon's shoulder blades. An easy shot ...

  But of course, it wasn't that simple. With Magan Kai Lee, it never was. The ammunition in Quell's dartgun had come from Papizon's own hands, hadn't it? Not likely Papizon would be stupid enough to hand out black code darts that he himself hadn't been inoculated against.

  Sounds of running, shouting, shooting unconnectibles came wafting down the corridor.

  Quell didn't think he had it in him to shoot Papizon in the back. But that didn't mean he couldn't be prepared for whatever lay in wait. The Islander slid a hand into his pocket, wriggled around until he found another hidden inner pocket, and retrieved a carefully wrapped tube of black code needles. Guaranteed he's not inoculated against this shit, thought the Islander, quietly replacing the ammunition in the pistol. "Trust in your fellows, but depend on yourself," he muttered, quoting one of the aphorisms of Creed Thassel.

  Papizon had disappeared somewhere around the next corner. There were only three doors he could have entered, and the first two contained only shelving units stocked with standard industrial supplies. The Islander opened the third door and was greeted by the odd sight of Papizon hopping on one leg, fumbling his way into a black evac suit. Hanging on a wall hook was another black evac suit, size extra large, built to contain Quell's massive frame.

  "Well?" said Papizon, as if his plan were self-evident.

  The Islander looked back and forth from the Council officer to the shelving units to his gun. If there was an airlock anywhere in sight, Quell certainly couldn't see it. Then something else exploded far off in another part of the prison. Quell hastily donned the extra suit, grumbling to himself about the coldness of the material. Shoes would have been a big help here.

  He doubted many Islanders had worn anything like this before, and he was sure his father would have had something disdainful to say about it. The suit had row upon row of gleaming yellow buttons lining the arms and nothing but a slick transparent film to protect his face. Quell had seen any number of videos of OrbiCo workers bouncing around EVA in these skintight contraptions, limber and carefree as chimpanzees. But now that he was actually wearing one, it seemed much too brittle to withstand the coldness of space. Quell poked at the bubble covering his nose and mouth. Could this thing really generate enough oxygen to keep a man of his size alive for more than a few seconds?

  "Ready?" said Papizon, now fully suited and looking like s
ome mutated crossbreed of seal and stickman. "Then hang on to your knickers-"

  Before Quell even had a chance to ask what knickers were, the door shut behind him and the room echoed with a deafening bang, like the blast of an ancient shotgun. The Islander flinched. He could hear the clatter of metal bolts bouncing off something solid.

  Suddenly, the shelving unit and the wall opposite him collapsed outward. Not into the blackness of space, as Quell had feared, but into the mustiness of a docking tube. The corrugated metal cylinder extended perhaps ten meters to the door of a hoverbird, painted white with a yellow star on its handle.

  Papizon tapped the chest of his evac suit. "Just a precaution," he said, then scrambled for the hoverbird door.

  Quell let out a sigh, both relieved and disappointed that he wouldn't get a chance to play around with the suit. He looked back at the room they had entered, thinking that the next man to open that door would be in for a big surprise. But surely Magan would have planned for that too? Quell realized that at some point he was going to have to lay his humanitarian impulses aside if he wanted to get out of here. He grabbed the dartgun off the shelf where he had left it and followed the Council engineer to the door, which was already opening for them.

  The hoverbird was a standard Vulture model used by business executives the world over. There were two facing rows of plush passenger seating, multiple viewscreens, and a foldable conference table. Quell half expected to see a couple of stiff executives sipping Turkish coffee and discussing Primo's ratings. Papizon was already halfway out of his evac suit and halfway into the copilot's seat, next to a jovial woman with short red hair. Sitting in the row of passenger seats facing the door was a lithe woman with long, braided hair and skin of dark mocha-the Defense and Wellness Council's chief solicitor, Rey Gonerev, whom some called the Blade.

  Gonerev gestured at Quell's dartgun, which he had unconsciously aimed in her direction. "So are you going to shoot me, or are you going to come in and sit down? We don't have all day."