Geosynchron (50 page)

"You are still concerned about the message from the Children
Unshackled," says Richard Taylor, mistaking Natch's introspection for
introspection about him.

"Uh, well, actually ..."

Actually, the entrepreneur has barely thought about Taylor's
bizarre message since 49th Heaven. Despite the evidence that's been
presented to him that the Autonomous Minds are still out there and
taking an interest in his affairs, Natch still can't bring himself to
believe it. All-knowing thinking machines, centuries old, outside of
time and space? Absurd. Yet the only alternate explanations he can
come up with for the presence of that block of wood from his childhood bureau-that Taylor has been able to read his mind, that Taylor
is somehow a manifestation of his own subconscious, that the resemblance of the block of wood is just a monstrous coincidence-are even
more ridiculous. But even if he does take the Autonomous Minds' message at face value ... what does it even mean? Warfare between the
Surinas? A jump? A decision in the darkness? What are they even
talking about?

Luckily, Natch never needs to explain any of this to the Pharisee,
because at that moment they arrive at the prefab medical building and
Natch is ushered inside, alone.

Magan's bio/logic surgeons are considerate, but they are also
laconic. They lead Natch to a distressingly white room with yellow
trim, as if it might be the very soul of the Defense and Wellness
Council. They give him a few reassuring words, pat him on the back,
and then strap him down to a gurney. Natch has barely been in the
building for ten minutes when they wave a syringe before his eyes and
plunge it into his forearm. Consciousness quickly slips away from his
grasp.

If the surgery's successful, he thinks before the darkness takes him, I
won't need to worry about dealing with Brone at all.

Blackness.

Flashing lights.

A chorus of chimes.

Natch awakens, not on the gurney, but sitting up strapped to a
chair. He's instantly reminded of those horrific few days he spent as the
Patels' prisoner in Sao Paulo. But before the horror can even register,
he sees Magan's chief engineer, Papizon, leaning over and undoing the
straps. They're still in the white-and-yellow operating room, but the
surgeons have vanished.

Papizon has no interest in being tactful. "It didn't work."

"What does that mean?" says Natch, standing up and trying to get
the circulation back in his arms and legs.

"Means the conduit's still inside you, untouched. Surgeons
couldn't figure out how to remove it without killing you. Or worse,
letting Brone know that we're trying to remove it." He giggles. "They
said it's grown inside you like an old tree. Big long roots, so to speak.
Gonna be next to impossible to get rid of it without digging out the
scalpels and carving it out one OCHRE at a time."

Next to impossible to get rid of it. The words feel like a death sentence.

"There's good news though, too," continues Papizon. "The surgeons were able to install OCHRE intrusion repellents." The entrepreneur gives him a blank look. "In nontechnical terms ... Brone still has
access to pull stuff out of your neural systems through the conduit. But
if he tries to inject anything new in there, we can intercept it, zap it.
So he can't kill you again just by looking at you. I'd say that's good
news, wouldn't you?" Papizon stands up, hums a strange tune in an
Oriental scale to himself. He's about to leave before he remembers: "In
case you haven't figured it out, that means you're still gonna need to
go to the Thassel Complex." And then, before he's made it out the
door: "Well, aren't you coming?"

Natch is too disoriented to ask where they're going. The storkish
Council engineer leads him through a series of corridors, past medical
personnel in uniform, out into the daylight, then immediately into
another prefab structure. This one appears to be an armory of some
sort, as it's full of metal shelving and box after box of black code darts.
There are grenades, carefully crated and labeled PULSE, DARK MIST,
and COMBUSTION. Guns of all shapes and sizes hang on the walls, and
everywhere he looks Natch can see a Council guard giving him a menacing stare.

They emerge in a cavernous, echoing room of polished and laminated wood that might serve as a sparring chamber. Standing in the
middle of the room on a mannequin of sorts is a flesh-colored bodysuit.
Standing next to the bodysuit are Horvil, Serr Vigal, Quell, Frederic
Patel, and Richard Taylor, along with a tall, lithe man with an immaculately clipped goatee and camouflage fatigues.

He's holding a rather large dartgun in his right hand.

Before Natch even has a chance to say hello, Papizon is exhorting
him to strip down and climb into the bodysuit. It's made of some slick,
rubbery substance that reminds Natch of scuba gear. As he dresses, the
man in the fatigues introduces himself as Special Operative Jorge
Monck. Natch would describe him as no-nonsense, except there appears to be quite a bit of nonsense in the man that's carefully compartmentalized away from work and duty.

"I'll be accompanying you into the Thassel Complex along with
eighteen of my team," says Monck. "Disguised, but armed. We'll be
with you every step of the way. Well, every step, except ..

"Except when you plug the motherfucker with black code," adds
Papizon cheerily as he adjusts Natch's suit.

"And here's what you'll be doing it with," says Monck, holding up
the large dartgun. "You can use the selector on the pommel to switch
between the upper and lower chambers of the gun. The lower chamber
is armed with your standard offensive black code capabilities. Paralysis, blindness, unconsciousness. Horvil's got OCHREs to inoculate
you against all of them."

Horvil holds up a capped syringe and points to it with raised
eyebrows.

"As for the upper chamber," continues the operative, "I'll leave
that to your friend Quell to explain."

The Islander takes the gun and points to its upper chamber. Natch
notices that he's still wearing the golden rings that enable him to use
his idiosyncratic finger-weaving programming technique. "Horvil,
Frederic, and I put together a little concoction for Brone," says Quell.
"Vigal had some input too. It's kind of like a bio/logic loopback. It'll
completely block any outgoing subaether transmissions from his
OCHREs, so he shouldn't be able to send any signal to release Possibilities 2.0 on the Data Sea."

Natch has finished donning the battle suit by this point, and
Papizon immediately begins explaining its many features to him. The
treads are designed to trek through virtually any type of terrain
without leaving a footprint or admitting the slightest droplet of moisture. The suit itself will shift color in the blink of an eye to camouflage
itself against the surrounding environment. ("Not that you'll need
that," says Papizon, "because you'll be wearing a robe of one-way trans parency weave over this so you'll blend in with the crowd. Lets the
cameras see out without anyone else being able to see in.") There's a
utility belt filled with miniature versions of just about every stealth
contraption in existence-magnetic cable, collapsible knife, pulse
grenade, miniature flamethrower-all arranged in some arcane order
that beggars logic. It's disguised with a retractable cover that makes
the whole thing look like one of those stylish wide belts that Natch has
seen Robby Robby wear. The gun fits snugly in a pocket and is
somehow virtually undetectable from more than a meter away.

When Natch is completely outfitted in the battle suit and holding
the dartgun in his hand, he feels utterly ridiculous. He suddenly has a
new appreciation for actors like Bill Rixx and Juan Nguyen who can
look like they were born to wear such badass weaponry.

"Am I going to need all this?" asks Natch apprehensively.

Papizon shrugs. "Doubt it. But you know what they say-always
be prepared!"

"Speaking of prepared-you're going to show me to a bio/logic
workbench soon, right? There's something I need to do."

"Yep. In a little bit. Be patient."

Horvil, Vigal, and Richard Taylor stand to the side during this
entire production with polite smiles on their faces, saying nothing.
Even Frederic Patel is staying out of the way. It's clear that there's more
prep work to be done, and they don't want to impede the mission.

Soon Papizon is leading Natch and Jorge Monck out of the room
towards some other briefing. But Serr Vigal catches up to them before
they've made it out the door and encloses Natch in a very uncharacteristic hug. "Good luck," he says in a hoarse voice that's little above a
whisper.

"Luck is for the unprepared," Natch quips.

The neural programmer manages a slight smile. "Then let's hope
you're prepared."

True to its name, the warehouse district was a vast segment of Manila
largely given over to rambling open storage facilities and pits of leftover construction debris. But it contained at least one building with
something close to modern amenities. Magan guessed that this had
once been the overseer's office for some kind of industrial operation,
and appropriated it as his headquarters. The top floor jutted out over
the rest of the building, with a flexible glass window overlooking a
large open courtyard. Today the space was serving as training grounds
for a legion of men and women in white robes and yellow stars. Magan
stood at the window and watched the drill instructor lead his troops
through the basics of their unfamiliar weapons. On the other side of
the room, Magan's commanders were standing in a cluster poring over
tactical diagrams on viewscreens.

"Do you trust him?" said Rey Gonerev from a chair in the corner
nearest the window.

"Who?" replied Magan. "Cheronna? Josiah?"

"Natch."

The lieutenant executive shifted uncomfortably from one foot to
the other. "Trust is a multifaceted concept," he replied after some consideration.

"So you don't trust him," said the Blade.

"I trust that he despises Brone and will conduct the mission as
directed. I trust that he'll do his best to sneak into the Kordez Thassel
Complex and take out the bodhisattva. But after that?" Magan exhaled
sharply. "After that, no, I don't really trust him."

"We could end up with Natch on the loose again. We could end
up facing the same situation as before-searching through tube trains,
following his friends and colleagues, trying to figure out where he
could have disappeared to."

"We could," agreed Magan. "But somehow I don't think so. That
whole experience on the run changed him, Rey. The operation against
the cartels in 49th Heaven changed him. After we've got Brone safely
contained, I don't know if he'll just hand MultiReal over to Jara. I'd be
rather surprised if he did. But now that he knows where I'm coming
from, I think the disagreements we have in the future will be more ...
civilized."

Rey Gonerev was evidently not placated by his words. "Civilized,"
she said doubtfully. "Don't we have any other options than trusting him?"

"Perhaps you'd like to see the alternative?"

Magan called over one of his senior commanders from the group of
Council officers huddled on the other side of the room. A short, pale
man with closely cropped hair stepped over and gave the lieutenant
executive a quick bow. "Ferris, show Chief Solicitor Gonerev the video
of the alternate plan for the Kordez Thassel Complex."

Without a word in response, the man waved his hand at the
window in front of Magan. A horizontal chunk of glass instantly
turned opaque. On the black display appeared a tactical representation
of the Thassel Complex drawn in crisp yellow vectors. Two seconds
later, a small spherical object came streaking down from the top right
of the display.

The missile slammed into the center of the Complex and reduced
it to cinders between one breath and the next.

"You know we can't do that!" shouted Gonerev, leaping to her feet
and leveling an angry stare at the commander. "The Thasselians have
that place open for business twenty-four hours a day. There could be
thousands of civilians in that building! Businesspeople, drudges,
L-PRACG people, who knows who else. And what if Brone's got the
program rigged to automatically launch onto the Data Sea if he dies,
like Natch said?"

Ferris took a step back and folded his arms across his chest defensively. "The lieutenant executive asked for options. This is an option."

Magan wiped the display with a sweep of his hand, and they were
once again looking at the figures in white robes, awkwardly shouldering their dartrifles in something approximating unison. A few rifles
went clattering to the ground as he watched. "Relax," said the lieutenant executive. "I have no intention of leveling the Thassel Complex
unless as a very last resort."

The Blade frowned with suspicion. "Then why prepare for it in so
much detail? Why diagram the whole thing out?"