Major Reilly seemed pretty serious, thought Yoshiko, but said nothing.
Something wet dripped onto her cheek. Above, at a drifting table, revellers clinked glasses and laughed uproariously, unheeding.
As they flew over mist-shrouded woods, Maggie raised the subject of LuxPrime technology.
“There's practically no info about it in EveryWare,” she said.
“I'm not surprised.” Vin must have been lightly interfaced, or not at all, with the flyer. Her attention was on Maggie and Yoshiko. “We don't discuss it much.”
“Please, don't talk about anything which makes you uncomfortable.”
“No problem. I guess you want your audience to think what it must feel like to be Tetsuo right now. I can't imagine.” Vin shook her head. “I'm no more conscious of my implanted plexcores than of my brain.”
“Plexcores?”
“Well—”
Yoshiko half-listened to them, feeling very tired. Down below were a few miserable sheep, bigger than the Terran norm. Soon, though, the pastureland was gone, swallowed by rolling mists.
“VSI comprises smartatom sheets, folded throughout the brain. Interfaces to the plexcores.”
“So a neural impulse can start in the organic brain, and continue seamlessly into the plexcore?”
Maggie's really very good at this, thought Yoshiko.
“And vice versa. Thought is distributed, almost holographic,” said Vin. “Consciousness is an emergent property of competing waves sweeping across the brain…or across brain-plus-plexcores.”
“So you've just increased, ah, processing capacity?” Maggie paused. “Or are there qualitative differences?”
“How can I tell? I've never been an unenhanced human. Er…Sorry.”
“No need to be embarrassed.” Maggie grinned. “I'm used to being stupid.”
Vin laughed.
“What about Skein?” Yoshiko surprised herself by asking.
Vin's laughter died. “I can't imagine life without it. That's why Septor hated Earth so much, I think. We had fast-comm links between the three of us, but our Skein access was limited to gateways through EveryWare. It was appalling.”
“Like fish out of water?” suggested Maggie.
“Exactly so.”
Entwined curves, like pale-blue nautilus shells, nestled among pristine lawns. Maggie's hotel.
Vin brought the flyer in very fast past some tennis courts, then dropped smoothly to land.
“Thanks, Vin,” said Maggie. “As soon as I've picked up Jason, I'll start work on my article.”
As the cockpit membrane softened, Yoshiko suddenly remembered what Vin had said to Major Reilly.
“Vin? Didn't you mention something about a sponsor?”
“For upraise? Yes, that's a requirement.” Vin frowned. “Tetsuo was sponsored by Rafael de la Vega.”
“Maybe Maggie could—”
“I've met him!” Maggie gripped Yoshiko's arm. “When I was interviewing someone at the Skein conference. I'm sure that was the name. Do you know him, Vin?”
“Not really, but Lori, my soul-mother, does. Very sexy, she thinks.”
“And—?”
“And she's right, but sometimes he makes my blood run cold. I can't say why.” With no physical gesture, Vin caused a holo still to appear: a dark-featured man, extraordinarily handsome, with piercing eyes.
“That's him,” said Maggie. “Rashella introduced us.”
Vin froze. “You mean Rashella Syntharinova?”
“Yes. I was interviewing her. Why? What's the matter?”
“It's not been released to the lower—ah, the public access levels, but Skein's awash with the news. Rashella Syntharinova killed herself.”
“Suicide? Are you sure?”
Vin looked from Maggie to Yoshiko.
“That's what everyone says.”
“Which would you recommend?” asked a coarse-looking man, raising his collar against the night's cold breeze.
“That one's OK.” His companion pointed at a floating bubble, which descended to the cobbled street.
The bubble's membrane opened, and a scantily dressed woman beckoned the man inside.
Rafael, from his seat under a glowglobe, watched as prostitute and client drifted upwards, into the darkness.
He pulled his dark heated cloak warmly about him.
The remaining man walked underneath bobbing spheres containing glamorous-looking girls, some performing dance steps, then stopped below one whose occupant was a huge woman, standing with her massive thighs apart. He gestured, and the bubble descended. He stepped inside and then that sphere, too, lifted and was gone.
Rafael stood up, unobtrusively pulled a smartfilm mask across his face, and continued his peregrination through the Floating Worlds district. No one glanced at him; the mask convincingly altered his features.
Dark alleys, bright sleaze: holos beckoning the unwary and the desperate into clubs where any taste was catered for. He walked, enjoying the feel of hopeless hunger which hovered behind the counterfeit glamour.
He turned away from the crowded main thoroughfare. The streets grew quieter, with unlit stretches between the clubs, and fewer floating bubbles. The lower end of the market plied their trade from doorways and street corners. Some of them bore black eyes, chipped teeth.
Rafael pulled up his cloak's hood, hiding his headgear.
A girl turned to look at Rafael. She stood casually, but her eyes were reptilian, hard and calculating.
“Show you a good time?”
Coarse accent, makeup thickly applied. Young. Legs in stockings, or perhaps a tattooed web—a centuries-old courtesans’ code. Narrow hips. Much scrawnier than the mature Luculentae that Rafael preferred.
“Why not?”
He followed her into a bleak hallway. Paint flaked from dank walls, and the corridor reeked of bodily fluids and despair.
The girl stopped and turned. “Thirteen credits, all the way.”
Light from a fitful glowglobe cast the lines of her young/old face into unflattering relief.
Wordlessly, Rafael held up his anonymous cred-ring to her sensor.
“Follow me, babe.”
His skin tingled. Surveillance system.
<<<MsgRcv VEGASCN22700; cause = Surveillance detected.>>>
Ignore.
His smartmask, which had already altered his features, was extending itself to cover hair and exposed flesh with an invisibly thin layer, melding at the throat with his monomolecular suit. His hands, too, were protected.
He would leave no trace of himself behind, in this place of tawdry dreams and disappointed fantasies.
The girl's room was bare, furnished only with a narrow bed and a stool. A blurry holo of a small house stood on the window sill. Her home? What kind of childhood had she led?
“Let's get you ready, honey.”
“If you like.” Rafael threw back his cloak, then ran a finger down her slender, fragile neck.
His senses quested, but there was no surveillance in here. Unless the girl yelled, her hidden help would not come to her assistance.
“Oh, yes, baby—” She closed her eyes and rocked her hips in a parody of pleasure.
She pressed herself against him.
“No—”
His fingers dug like steel claws, constricting her arteries, and her breathing quickened, like a runner at the marathon's end. His own excitement mounted.
Come on, fight. That's it. Fight for life.
She struggled.
Rafael's breath, too, was coming hard and fast.
She fought and kicked, and Rafael's heart thumped wildly with pleasure, ever faster as her strength slowly ebbed. Finally, in a nicety of timing, he climaxed just as death rattled in her crushed throat and life's light faded from her small pale eyes.
He let the body slump to the floor.
It lay there, twisted unnaturally. Already, a stench was rising from the soiled meat.
Rafael gathered his cloak and swept out of the room, down the ha
llway—ignoring the worthless surveillance system—and out into the street.
Power thrummed inside him.
At the corner, two big men took a step in his direction, perhaps just to sell him some illegal pleasure, but he met their eyes and they glanced away.
Power.
He used the underground tube system, in preference to an air-cab. As his car pulled into Lucis Central, it detached itself from the rest of the train and rose up a vertical shaft, and deposited him in a small cobbled plaza.
An unarmed proctor nodded to him, and Rafael smiled back. In the Floating Worlds district, only two kilometres away, the proctor would have had a partner and a drone, and carried a hand graser.
As Rafael walked, he retuned his cloak to a gaudy blue, slashed through with gold. He reconfigured his smartmask into an obvious caricature of a wolf.
The Lupus Festival was in full swing. Crowds were thronging Pietanaro Square, and the neighbouring Vitanova Gardens. Rafael took one of the suspended silver walkways, bought a drink from a vendor, and stood against a rail, admiring the dark trees and their bright symbiotic blooms lit by a thousand dancing glowglobes.
Flute music drifted through the leaves.
“Happy Lupus!”
A Luculenta, arm in arm with two Fulgidi—her staff, perhaps: it was festival time—greeted Rafael. She tuned her wolf mask to transparency. Her face was lovely.
“Happy Lupus,” Rafael replied, but kept his mask opaque. It was the most polite way to decline an invitation to join them at an opera or poetry contest.
She smiled without regret, and continued along the walkway. Elegant people passed below, going about their genteel celebrations. Floating Worlds, and the other Lowtown districts: did they ever think of them?
Rafael breathed deeply of the scented night air. It was so wonderful to be alive.
A human driver opened the old-fashioned gull door for Rafael—as though he couldn't have gestured or spoken himself—and climbed into his separate cockpit only when he was sure Rafael was comfortable in the back.
Bright lights dropped away below them.
During the twenty-minute flight to Rafael's town house, he lay back and thought of the nameless little Fulgida wretch, and the wild light in her eyes—overcoming her cold detachment—which had faded as she died.
If he could somehow subsume the mind of an unenhanced woman, the way he could with a Luculenta…Would that make it more satisfying? Or less?
He suspected a Fulgida mind would be a petty thing, too light and insignificant to bother with.
“Here we are, sir.”
The courtyard lit up as Rafael stepped out. Not bothering with a cred-ring, he lightly entered Skein and transferred fare and generous tip to the driver's account. Then he stood back, and watched the taxi lift up into the darkness and disappear.
Something was wrong.
There were no squeals of alarm from the house systems, but subtle indications from external sensors—unnatural air-flow patterns, few nocturnal birds—were causing its AIs to quest heuristically through knowledge space. It was as though the house itself were uneasy.
Something massive passed across the alpha moon, blocking it from sight.
Blue bands of light grew from points and strobed backwards across delta-shapes. Three proctors’ flyers, descending from the night.
A uniformed woman with cropped grey hair alighted from the nearest flyer, and walked up to Rafael. Three armed proctors hung back, watching.
The crews of the other two flyers remained inside.
“Luculentus Rafael Garcia de la Vega?”
“At your service.” Rafael bowed.
“I'm Major Reilly. You may be able to help us.”
“My pleasure.”
[[[HeaderBegin: Module = Node78AF99: Type = PivotCentre:Axes = 24.
Priority = absolute
Concurrent_Execute
ThreadOne: <video> ImagelD = 2899A3:000. linkfile = HoloLog.1998
ThreadTwo: <video> timestamp = 23091313:001, linkfile = personal.thislog
ThreadThree: QryTrace(2899A3.000)
ThreadFour: <SkeinSearch> Locate(2899A3.000)
ThreadFive: <SkeinSearch> ThreadScan(“Lowtown,” “murder”)
ThreadSix: <TownHouseAlpha> WeaponsEnable
End_Concurrent_Execute]]]
<<<MsgRcv VEGASCN000100; cause = Query failed.>>>
How could they have found him so quickly? There was no mention of the girl in Skein, and he was searching with all the power of his plexcore array, two orders of magnitude greater than any other Luculentus alive.
Some private comm system? Undercover proctors in Floating Worlds?
Adrenaline flooded through Rafael. The stakes were getting higher. What a fine game!
[[[HeaderBegin: Module = Node10012.JK998: Type = TrinaryHyperCode: Axes = 12
Concurrent_Execute
ThreadOne: <intrapeduncular matrix>.linkfile = GraserArray1
ThreadTwo: <intrapeduncular matrix>.linkfile = GraserArray2
ThreadThree: <intrapeduncular matrix>.linkfile = GraserArray3
End_Concurrent_Execute]]]
<<<MsgRcv VEGAWPN022107; cause = Targets acquired. Weapons are tracking.>>>
His house weapons were trained on the proctors and their flyers, and the interface was enabled at the deepest level: he could destroy them all by reflex.
But he didn't want to do that, until he could find out what they knew.
“Won't you come in, Major?” he said easily. “I'd be happy to help, in any way I can.”
“Thank you.”
Major Reilly followed him inside.
Pink snow fell like cotton candy, gently icing the boulders outside.
Tetsuo shivered, though it was warm in the long cabin. Then the cramps came again, wracking his body, and he held himself clenched inside until the spasm had passed.
The blonde girl was sitting on the couch opposite, looking concerned.
“Wonderful.” His voice was hoarse.
“You startled Brevan.”
Tetsuo started to laugh, but it caught in his throat and became a hacking cough.
When it subsided, he sat back, breathing quickly. The high-pitched wheeze in his lungs slowly died away.
In a semitransparent chamber at the end of the room, her companion was drifting in clouds of grey smoke. Narrow wires, almost invisible, suspended his couch hammock-like amid the psychedelic vapours.
“Nasty habit.” The young woman had followed his gaze. “I'm Dhana, by the way.”
“Nice—” Tetsuo's voice cracked drily, and he swallowed. “Nice to meet you.”
“Ready to try a drink yet?”
When she had offered daistral earlier, his stomach had heaved, rippled with contractions.
“I think so. Yes. Please.”
There were lightweight bracelets around his wrists. He had seen them before, though only in holodramas. At Dhana's command, they could snap together, or induce excruciating pain directly through his nerves.
Another pair enclosed his ankles. Not that a man of his bulk could run very far or fast—but he really was not going anywhere, when his feet could be locked together in an instant.
From a jug, Dhana filled a heavy cup, and fetched it to him.
It tasted of apricots. The hot liquid slipped down inside him, and for a moment he almost gagged. Then it settled, and he felt much better.
“The…silence must be awful for you.” She ran a hand through her short blonde hair.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Don't worry, you're not injured. There's a null-sheet lamina in the cabin's walls. That's why you can't go into Skein.”
No doubt there was a smartatom outer layer, too, providing visual camouflage. This cabin was designed to avoid detection, by SatScan or other means. It just happened handily to pr
ovide a functional prison for a Luculentus, who would otherwise be able to summon help through Skein.
Silent laughter shook his body.
“Oh, my God. You just don't realize—”
He stopped.
For all her civility, this woman, Dhana, was not his friend. Nor was she in charge here. Perhaps he was alive only because they thought he was a true Luculentus, who might already have relayed their presence to someone else in Skein.
No point in guessing. Silence seemed a good strategy.
He wondered where he was—the view through the windows was not Nether Canyon, though he was surely still in the hypozone—and how long he had been unconscious.
3 hours 23.7 minutes.
“What?” he said, but realized immediately that Dhana had not spoken.
“I didn't say anything.”
“Never mind.”
The damned mindware was playing tricks again. If only it could make itself useful, and get him out of here.
Suddenly, without volition, he keeled sideways on the couch, as though his whole body had somehow slipped beyond his control.
As salt tears tracked across his face, he distantly watched the girl back away. Concern was plain upon her unpretty face. She was a slip of a thing compared to him, though, and could not risk getting too close.
He closed his eyes. This was all too much.
He remembered the woman, Dhana, turning to face him in the gully, and he remembered her as having a demon's face, like an evil kami, glistening mouth and pulsing gills—An hallucination, surely. It must have been a resp-mask.
The mindware was playing havoc with his brain. He knew the dangers: cascading neural failure or, worse, a psychotic semi-autonomous plexcore which was only partially integrated with his mind. He was losing it, losing everything he had worked for—
“Drink this.”
Her small hand balanced his head, without disturbing the headgear, and he sipped from the glass she held.
He sank back onto the couch.
“Good,” he murmured.
“It will help you sleep.”
Her face drifted in and out of his awareness. She had even, pearly teeth.
“Who are you?”