Join (37 page)

Chance is thinking about two
different songs. The first, “Petals of the Rose,” is an up-tempo ballad:

the petals of the rose unfold
revealing what the center holds
an emptiness whose presence molds
the petals of the rose

 

It was a hit for Sky and Lick, fifteen years ago. Chance is overlaying a lyric Chance Five heard while waiting for a drug infusion:

 

so this song is
what we can promise
peace and justice
if you trust us
hope and freedom
whenever you need 'em
love and honor
when you're a goner

 

For the most part, joins filter out information they aren't interested in from the different environments surrounding their drives—sounds, smells, feels—just as solos do. But they also sometimes choose to pay attention to multiple things simultaneously. The interplay of sound heard simultaneously in different places inspired the genre of comusic, in which whole songs are overlaid on top of each other. It's not an enormously popular genre, but Chance likes it. Every once in a while, as a distraction, Chance tries to work out how two or more songs might sound as comusic. Where they'd fit together, where they wouldn't.

Chance is trying not to think about what will happen if the flip is not cured. Leap and Chance agreed to let the Directorate complete the join, though Chance is not sure whether Leap had really been paying attention. They made the final decision after the adjustment to Leap Four's caduceus, and Leap was still in shock. Hamish was clearly relieved when Chance told him.

For Chance, the decision was easy. Join should be an almost risk-free procedure. The Arcadians had failed two out of the eight times they'd tried it, killing both participants in each failure. Hamish had explained that there were particular complications with each of the eight cases that the Arcadians worked on. With a record like that, however, the Arcadians had no business even attempting joins. On the other hand, the team the Directorate had assembled was the very best.

The possibility of making a contribution to the understanding of exactly what was happening during a join was exciting. It might eventually lead to a fundamental change in the nature of the human species. Of course, that was only a theoretical possibility, subject to many dependencies. Whereas improved understanding and an increase in knowledge was a high likelihood. Considered on its own, that was a good thing.

So Chance Four and Leap had taken sleeping pills. They'd said goodbye to the Arcadians and then closed their eyes. They were fed intravenously for three days while they were unconscious.

Once, Chance Four jolted awake briefly. She was traveling in a pod, beside a drive that Chance didn't recognize. At that moment, Chance was mixing Chance One and Chance Two. Something about the upcoming procedure had made Chance sexually hungry. Chance Five wasn't healthy enough to participate, so One and Two were alone. The sex was particularly intense, and the combined orgasm broke Chance's concentration and sent a thrill through all four of Chance's drives. Afterward, Chance Four quickly resumed her dreamless slumber. She eventually awoke in a Directorate hospital.

All of Chance's drives are lying down now, in anticipation of the join. Each of them fading into a gentle drug-induced rest. Chance will soon be completely unconscious. Each join procedure that Chance has undergone has felt unique. The wealth of experience gained during a join tended to reveal itself gradually over the course of the weeks, months, and years afterward. Memories or even skills often became evident only when events called them forth. That aspect of being a join was consistent.

But for Chance, memories of procedures—the time before and after a particular join—were more akin to a taste or a color, the quality of a touch or a specific time of day. They were core, sensual experiences, each unique, each requiring a new and different kind of language to adequately describe. Focusing on the memory of a procedure could shake Chance with a mixture of emotions that might leave one drive plastered with a silly grin and another weeping.

So Chance had some idea of what to expect, but this join would also be different. Leap was already a five, with mental resources reduced to that of a single drive. Even after Chance's years of personal experience and years of studying join science, this join felt like a dive into an unknown as profound and complete as Chance's imagination was capable of encompassing.

Chance and Leap have joined.
A person is speaking, using Josette's voice. The complex of memories that Chance is experiencing has an acid-etched quality, as of things that have been worked endlessly, touched and returned to by a corrosive, anxious attention.

There is Mark Pearsun's office, elongated, filled with dark places that may be merely shadows or may not exist at all. A sense of panic and more than panic, an immense and unspecific emotional charge hangs in the air between Chance and a clear reading of what is happening.

Mark makes a dismissive gesture. He's sitting behind his desk, his face slightly aslant. The memory ripples as waves of anger and guilt break against one another.

And then a cyclone of conflicting emotion, a real and tangible pain that makes eyes clench shut, jaws freeze, makes muscles wooden so that no words can be formed and teeth cannot meet, even to grind together.

The world is decaying, and a wall of churning night rises around Chance. First, it is a memory of the join between Leap and Josette, stark and intrusive, unavoidably absorbing. Then there is a rushing outward from the boundaries of memory. It overwhelms. It consumes Chance.

Tomohiro, Himiko's uncle, was a
stubborn man. He had that, at least, to answer for.

After all of Josette's work, the years of unraveling risk while fending off her brother-in-law's idiotic attempts to run things, the flip has its roots in a single deal—a kind of financing Josette would normally never touch—mezzanine financing for a parts supplier for deep-water mineral extraction.

Everyone is enthusiastic. The company is exceeding milestones against an earlier round of secured debt. Their technology is state of the art. They're well positioned in a booming trade. If Josette's finance group supplies the money, she'll get a board seat and a detailed look inside the industry. A loss would be painful, but she could recover. Because they've already participated in an earlier round, they do quick diligence. Everyone else, already smitten, follows her lead.

Four months later, Mark tells her about a conversation with a line manager and a bitter comment about Monterey Bay. Monterey Bay, one of the few recovering coastal marine ecosystems. She brings it up with the CEO. “We're not concerned,” he says. He won't say it isn't true.

She and Mark begin months of research. Their first real jolt is connecting company executives to a web of proxies and holding companies. From there, they go down a rabbit hole. The manufacturing company they've backed is at the public end of a long and live high-voltage wire.

An appointment with Tomohiro, her gardener, appears on her calendar. It's odd. They see each other regularly at the estate. But he has called her admin and scheduled a time. She's actually happy to see him, assuming it'll be a change of pace.

Tomohiro blindsides her. God knows how he got wind of it, but he's done his homework. It's almost eerie. He recites data—numbers, a précis of salient facts about the Monterey Bay and Monterey Canyon, lists of chemical compounds and their effects on living tissue. He gives her a history of complex changes in seawater composition, cumulative effects on various habitats, a long list of regulatory concerns. He's spellbinding. All of it delivered rapidly and with a quiet, unblinking certainty that leaves her weak with fury.

Into the silence that sweeps the room when he's done, she says simply, “Let me look into it.”

If he did it on his own, as appears to be the case, Tomohiro would have had to have been working on that performance for months. But all he really has is an avalanche of correlations. It's extremely persuasive, but there is no smoking gun tying the company directly to the environmental damage. There are potentially arguable assumptions. She knows that might not matter.

As Mark says, when she tells him of Tomohiro's “project,” “If this gets to the press, there'll be an investigation, and those guys are dirty. This is a black hole. Everything we have could be sucked in.”

If they can reach Tomohiro and get him to listen, they might limit the damage.

Chance remembers a large man
lit from behind by strong sunlight. Chance is a small girl. Her name is Himiko. She is six years old. Everything is bigger than her. Quiet is her shield.

The man hits her face. She falls backward onto asphalt, her neck twisting so her cheek and forehead strike stone. She's scared for one of her eyes, but after a moment her vision clears again.

She doesn't know him. He had helped her, but when she asked someone else a question, he got angry.

He yells at her. His face is dark. His clothes are filthy and stained. There is blood on her cheek and on her hand. He turns. She stands and runs away as fast as she can.

That is one of Himiko's earliest memories as she traveled alone from Ulaanbaatar to her uncle Tomohiro's house. She spent the whole trip running away from that man.

The first time she sees Tomohiro, he reminds her of the man. But while the man was a darkness, she soon learns that Tomohiro lives in a world of vivid color. Tomohiro's tidy cottage is different than anything she has known before, filled with the braided fragrances of cut flowers and sharpened by a faint, acerbic scent of cleanser.

She wore a chain around her neck during her journey. Tomohiro told her it held a laminated card, explaining that her name was Himiko, and she was going to live with him. They don't know what happened to it, but Himiko likes the idea that she has been explained. Every so often, she gives Tomohiro a new explanation, written on a square of paper.

“I am Himiko. I am clure my hare. I am at house.”

“My name is Himiko. I await for cake.”