Neurolink (25 page)

“Why’re you so angry, Major?” Dominic tried to moisten his lips, but his mouth had gone dry. “Haven’t I done everything you asked?”

“Everything but open your eyes. Oh, what’s the point. It’s too late now.”

“But Major Qi—”

“Once and for all, I’m not your preter-vicious major! I never have been.” Qi pulled a rag from one of her pockets and blew her nose. It sounded like a trumpet. Then she massaged her forehead. Dominic wondered if she’d caught his cold. She said, “Wanna trade with me, Nick-O? Truth for truth?”

“Sure.” He wondered what new trick she would try.

“I’m not an exec, okay? I’m a scuzzy, lowlife protected employee. Born in a Sub-Jersey factory.”

“You’re a what!” He spoke louder than he meant to. She had managed to shock him again.

“Yep, you heard me. My parents were agitators. Before I was old enough to talk, they hacked your famous ZahlenBank Ark and forged me a new profile. Made me a little executive child so I could get special training and work my way inside the system.”

Dominic was speechless. Her parents had hacked the Ark? But ZahlenBank’s security was fail-safe. No one had ever broken the Ark’s firewall. He wasn’t quite sure he believed her.

Qi rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. “I wasn’t a very good spy though. I’ve never accomplished anything. Okay, that’s my whole sad freakin’ story.” Tears welled in her eyes, and she tilted her head back so they wouldn’t spill over.

Dominic blinked. He felt light-headed. “You’re a prote?”

She sprang toward him with a raised fist, but instead of punching him, she pounded the empty air, and her face puckered. “You know that word’s a slur.”

Dominic reached to touch her hand, but she jerked away.

“Forget the brunette,” said the NP. “You don’t need her.”

Then to Dominic’s surprise, Qi laughed at the top of her lungs. “Hoo-hoo, my big confession. Look at me. A prote impersonating an exec impersonating a prote. Sleek, huh? Sixteen years I’ve carried fake IDs. I’m a total imitation. Sometimes I forget which version of me is real.”

She ran fingers through her blue-black hair, and Dominic noticed how it hung in sweaty strands. Fatigue pulled at her features like gravity, but she smiled and pretended to be as carefree as ever. Then she slipped something small and shiny from her pocket. He couldn’t see what it was.

She spoke in a lower register, “Do you hear me, Gig? Thought you knew everything? Well, I’ve been lying to you for sixteen years.”

Dominic said, “You’re still in contact with Gig?”

“Gig thinks the world’s his private stage. He chooses the actors and sets the scene. Then he sits back to watch the entertainment.” The object in her hand reflected the dim light like a mirror. She added, “He’s a lot like your dear old Da.”

“If you’re linked to the Net, tell the Orgs to save these people,” Dominic pleaded.

She went on in a rising voice, “Gig will record us to the very last breath. Every hiccup, every sniffle, every preterinane heartbeat. Then he’ll analyze. And
judge
. Why did she raise her voice? Why did she sweat? Gig’s a connoisseur of human motive.”

Qi turned the small object over in her hand. It was a shard of broken glass.

“What are you doing?” He lunged to grab her hand, but the boy got in his way.

In a rush, Qi twisted the glass behind her earlobe, and crimson blood spurted down her dark throat. A second later, she tossed the glass shard aside and gazed at the small bloody chip lying in her open hand—the implant. She’d cut it out of her skin.

“Sixteen years,” she said softly. “The masquerade’s over.” She squeezed her fist, lifted it over her head, and hurled it down the ladder tube with all her might. For a long while, she stared at the shadows. Blood trickled down her neck and soaked her collar. “Good-bye, you old pervert,” she murmured, in a tone that sounded very much like grief.

Dominic bit his lip. Benito said, “Hn.”

The NP chuckled. “Serves him right, the S.O.B.”

Abruptly, Qi curled her toes around the ladder rail and laughed. She was trying very hard to appear unruffled. “Okay, truth for truth, Nick-O. That’s my story. Now yours. You’re hiding secrets, too. We’re gonna die here. No reason to pretend anymore.”

Dominic noticed that her long ebony legs were bruised and scraped. He could sense her despair, and he almost reached out to touch her knee, but the boy wriggled between them.

“Truth for truth?” he said. “Okay, I’m an imitation, too. I’m Richter Jedes’ clone. Is that good enough for you?”

Qi shrugged. “Your Da wanted a son. Lots of parents have clone kids. That’s not shattering news.”

Dominic steeled himself and went on. “I’m not an ordinary clone. I’m an exact duplicate. The technicians controlled my epigenetics, too, even in the gestation tank. No random cell mutations. No developmental modulations. They left nothing to chance. In every way, I am a second Richter.”

Qi merely gazed at him with her black Asian eyes.

“You knew that already,” he said. He didn’t think anyone outside the Bank knew that.

Benito squirmed to get their attention. Distracted, Dominic noticed the pencil point had broken again, so he clicked the button to extrude more lead. Meanwhile, Qi dug an old candy wrapper from her pocket and gave it to the boy to use as drawing paper.

“Zhhh,” Benito gurgled. He spread the wrapper across his bare thigh and began to draw elaborate flourishes. He grinned as the two adults watched. Dominic knew time was passing and that he should get up and start climbing again. The NP droned a nonstop reminder. Yet he didn’t move.

Qi stroked the boy’s hair. “I thought this place would succeed, you know? The labor market’s glutted. Too many workers. If a few runaways build a place outta trash at the bottom of the ocean, why should anyone care?”

“As you said, they made too much noise.” Dominic tried to identify the image Benito was scribbling, but he was so tired, his eyelids fluttered shut. He came awake with a jerk when Qi spoke again.

“The day Gig gave me this assignment, I thought, yeah, this is why I gave up my real life. This is the mission I’ve waited for. Now it’s over.”

Dominic glanced up and saw her forehead pressed against a ladder rung. All her merriment was gone. She seemed done in.

He let his eyelids fall shut. He didn’t know how to comfort Qi. She said it was too late, and she was probably right. Even if he reached the Net link in time, could ZahlenBank’s guards evacuate nine thousand people in less than two hours? No, he’d have to place a rush order of fuel and oxygen to supply the colony—at triple the regular charge. But even before he could do that, he would have to persuade the bank directors, and how long would that take? And what if the miners wouldn’t accept the new jobs he found? He felt tired just thinking about it. He’d come here to fix his mistake, keep ZahlenBank in one piece and put everything back the way it was. How did he get saddled with nine thousand dependents?

Benito was thumping his chest. He opened his eyes and squinted at the boy’s drawing till he made out a raft riding a ferocious ocean. Among the passengers, Benito had sketched one stick figure taller than the rest, with a block-shaped head and huge feet and one astonishingly long arm holding up the sail. Dominic shut his, eyes. I have to get up and do something now, he told himself, or this boy will die.

Like my father.

His father’s sightless stare came back to him. He should have stood up and called the medics. He should have adjourned the stupid meeting and called for help. That Monday in the conference room, there hadn’t been much blood on the table, just a few dark drops trickling from his father’s mouth. “Please!” Dominic had shouted, furiously, pathetically, while his colleagues turned away. Klas Lorn had fiddled with his notebook. Ulla Mannheim fled through the double doors. And someone—Oscar Blein—made a joke. Karel Folger was the one who shut Richter’s eyelids and called the disposal team. Dominic remembered how youthful his father’s broken body looked as they folded it into the bag.

He woke in panic. He was still sitting on the catwalk with Benito sleeping in his arms. The metal grate bit through his thin silk trunks. He couldn’t have dozed long. Light glimmered against the walls, outlining the wet orange stains of bacterial colonies. The ladders creaked with moving workers, and the hot air stank of living. For a moment, every detail sprang out in stark wonder. I’m still alive. I still nave time.

He tried to get up, but when he reached out for the rail, his vision blurred, and he almost vomited. Wooziness. Everything was spinning. He sat back down and willed himself to hold steady. Benito shifted in his arms. On the ladder above, Qi had managed to fall into a deep slumber. She was incredible. He focused on the bruised soles of her feet.

“How long did I sleep?” he whispered.

“Too long! You have less than an hour left,” the NP said.

Dominic shook Benito awake.

“While you were dreaming, the power blacked out three times, and the oxygen level dropped to a 10 percent deficit. Does that interest you? No, you’d rather play nursemaid to your brat and chump to your brunette tart.”

“Shut up!” Dominic clawed at his eye.

“Oh, was I snoring?” Qi leaned out from the ladder and stared down at him. “Something in your eye, Nick-O?”

With animal agility, she slid down the ladder and bounded onto the catwalk beside him, flashing a smile. Her mood had changed again. The nap must have revived her. She was back to her old sardonic self. Now she knelt and put her thumbs against his temples, tilted his head back roughly and scrutinized his left pupil.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “We have to keep climbing. Do you have any water?”

“Truth for truth, Nick.” As she leaned closer, her face hovered only centimeters away, and he could see the sheen of sweat on her upper lip. Her smell was pungent.

“You cheated, Nick-O. You didn’t mention the nasty little secret hiding in your eyeball. Yep, Gig told me. Gig knew all along.” She sat back against the ladder and smirked.

The NP sizzled. “Lurking bastard. How did he find out?”

Dominic tried to moisten his lips. “You had your bit-brain, I had mine. It’s only fair.”

“Fair? You poor stiff.” Qi sucked her teeth. Then she crossed her arms and watched him steadily. “You’ve been hunting the Net link because you plan to call your guards and arrest these people. Then you’ll go home and comfort your conscience with cheap talk about market order.”

“Qi, these people are running out of air.” He set the boy on the ladder and would’ve started climbing, but Qi seized his wrist.

“All they need is a little more time, Nick.” She wasn’t smirking now. Her mouth tightened in a straight line, and for a moment, she reminded him of earnest Elsa Bremen. “The colony can survive if you buy them more time. Arrange a loan for the supplies they need, just till they’re self-sufficient.”

He shook his head. “ZahlenBank will never deal with protes. I’ll find them jobs, so they’ll be safe.”

“Safe?” Qi’s face contorted. The intensity of her anger startled him. “You are so deluded. Arrests cost money. Your dear old Da isn’t gonna arrest these people. He’s gonna blast this place outta the water.”

“What? That’s nonsense. The NP wouldn’t murder all these people just to save money.”

“You would.”

Dominic blinked. As her words sank in, he leaned back against the wet wall and gazed at the bright round opening above. Strange, he’d forgotten that small fact.

“Two thousand protes. Nine thousand protes. What’s the difference? You’ve got billions more,” she went on. “The NP sent you here to light up the target.”

Dominic said nothing.

“It’s a cost-benefit equation,” Qi said. “Any dumb logic engine could figure it out.”

He nodded. He knew she was right. Swift and simple, nominal cost, no loose ends. Eliminating the colony would be ZahlenBank’s cleanest way out of its problems. It’s what he suggested in the first place.

He subvocalized to the NP, “You plan to destroy this colony?”

“Sure, with space-based weapons. Don’t tell me you’re surprised. We always knew the miners were expendable.”

Right. He knew. It was the kind of solution his father taught him to aim for. The old man liked sure bets. The genie said they shared the same values. They were practically twin brothers. Dominic wondered why he hadn’t anticipated this move all along.

“I won’t shoot till you’re safely away,” the genie added. “All I need is a location.”

Dominic forced himself to look into Qi’s fierce black eyes. “That’s why you led me away from the Net link.”

“Yeah. That demon in your eye wants to contact its big brother. If you touch the Net link, we’re dead.” Qi pulled a water sack from the folds of her uniform and flung it at him.

He caught the sack in reflex and squeezed it between his fingers. Barely a swallow left. He gave it to Benito and watched the boy suck it down. By the NP’s logic, this boy was counted expendable. In the balance of pure value, Benito didn’t carry enough weight.

But Dominic was the one who first sentenced Benito to die. Not Richter. Not the NP. He did it to save a month’s salary. Realizing this, he would have cursed the day he was born, but that was impossible. He was never born at all.

“Wanna hear some more nonsense?” Qi said. “Your dear old bit-brain doesn’t trust you. It thinks you’re too soft. So that agent in your eye is getting ready to metastasize and take over your motor controls.”

“Liar!” the NP blazed. “Don’t believe her, Dominic.”

Qi went on. “Yeah, it’s gonna force you to touch the Net link and call down the laser strike, whether you want to or not. Still think that’s fair?”

Dominic dropped the water sack. Metastasize? Like cancer? He pictured ugly threads of glittering digital rot lacing through his brain. It couldn’t be true. A wave of nausea made him choke, and he leaned over the rail, but his stomach was too empty to throw up. He heaved with dry spasms.

“You get the idea,” Qi said, watching him. “Your dead papa wants to repossess you.”

“That is total bullshit,” the NP said. “I grew some memory and evolved a few add-ons. Practical stuff for the mission, that’s all.”