To Hold Infinity (33 page)

 

“Solid ceramic.” Tetsuo rapped cautiously. “Really solid.”

He leaned back out of the doorway. Looking up, it was like an artist's paintbrush dipped in a running stream: at the tower's apex, some hundred metres above, violet vapour still spumed into the winds.

“We are going in through the door, aren't we?”

Kerrigan, standing at one side of the arched stone doorway, looked at him curiously. “How did you think we were going to get in?”

“Never mind.” Tetsuo shook his head. “So what's next? We fight our way up through fifty levels of warriors, each a master of a different deadly art?”

One of the Agrazzi sniggered. “You been inhaling some of them funny smokes Brevan has?”

Kerrigan looked away, trying not to smile.

“Well?” Tetsuo pressed his palm against the door. “Who's going to open—?”

 

[[[Begin: Module = Node089C.1067: Type = BinaryHyperCode Axes = 2

Execute

     .linkfile = IRprotocol. Common.Gamma

End_Execute]]]

 

“You are,” said Kerrigan.

Pain hammered into Tetsuo's head.

 

<<>>

 

“God, you bastards.” Tetsuo screwed up his face in suffering, and pressed his fist against his forehead. “You bloody bastards.”

Plumes of scarlet light blossomed in his vision. Slowly, one by one, he blinked them away.

The big ceramic door slid open.

“Sorry,” said Kerrigan, with no trace of apology in his voice. “I had no idea it would be difficult.”

Dhana pushed her way past Kerrigan, deliberately knocking him with her shoulder. She stopped inside the tower's entrance and looked around.

Tetsuo, sniffing and wishing he were less of a wimp, followed her inside. It was not his fault he had no tolerance for pain, but in this company it was embarrassing.

He did not look at Kerrigan.

Inside, an old stone staircase spiralled clockwise around a central shaft.

“Oh, my God.”

Tetsuo looked at the steps to the left, leading up.

“You guessed it.” Dhana grinned at him brightly. “See you up there.”

She took the steps at a slow but steady jog. Tetsuo shook his head.

Brevan and the tallest of the Agrazzi slipped past Tetsuo, heading right, where the steps continued downwards.

Brevan winked at Tetsuo, then followed his companion down.

“Now what?” Tetsuo asked Kerrigan, who was pulling something from his pockets. “What are those?”

In each hand, Kerrigan held a sphere, which began to glow. Silvery light made his shock of white hair grow brilliant, and etched black shadows among his gaunt, narrow features.

“Something to make them sleep.”

He smiled, a slow predator's smile, and loosed the spheres.

One flew upwards, coasting above the steps, while the other departed downwards to the underground levels.

“Come on.”

One of the two remaining Agrazzi, the one called Avern, gave a thumbs-up sign to Tetsuo. Then Avern and his companion followed Dhana upstairs. Kerrigan began to climb after them.

“See you in a minute,” muttered Tetsuo, as they disappeared around the curve. He started to trudge up the steps.

If he had not turned up, would this Luculenta sympathizer, Felice Lectinaria, have come along anyway? Or would they have climbed the tower's exterior and burned their way into the command centre? Or something equally crazy?

He moved upwards slowly, fatigue spreading through his thighs.

A hundred metres high, the tower. Ten metres diameter, the helical staircase inside. Maybe twenty five centimetres, each tread. Climbing through three metres or so to perform a revolution.

Five hundred steps. Travel distance of five hundred and thirty metres, if he kept to the centre of the treads. Eighty kilojoules of work, not much less than it would have been on Earth.

He stopped for a rest, then started upwards again.

Not much wear on the treads. Few people climbed up this two-century-old relic. Did no one come here any more, or did they just fly directly to the control centre at the apex?

Maybe they were all just light-footed, like Dhana, and danced up the steps like sprites.

Rest again. Then climb.

A series of periodic breaks and slow climbing. Seemed to stretch on forever.

Doorway. He stepped through the membrane, found himself in a shadowy well. The control centre's floor ran all around, just above head height.

He looked straight up. The domed ceiling was flooded with light, cool and inviting. He could do with a chilled drink.

Steps led up to floor level. More bloody steps.

I'm here
, he wanted to call, but did not have the breath.

Ten more steps. Just ten…

A beam of light spat overhead with a sizzling crack.

Tetsuo froze.

“
Nobody bloody move!
”

A man's voice; tight with fear and anger.

“We're not doing anything.” Kerrigan, his voice deliberately flat and calm. “You're in control, now.”

“God damn right, I am. Now, you all back away from that console.” Silence. “Move it!”

Shuffling sounds above, and some distant part of Tetsuo's mind noted that the sound was good cover, and he carefully climbed the last few steps.

Tetsuo came up behind a short man with cropped hair, the hood of his environment suit thrown back. The man was holding a graser rifle.

One of the Agrazzi was lying on the floor, face blanched, holding his shoulder where the jumpsuit was black and charred. Dhana and Kerrigan crouched beside him, looking concerned. The other Agrazzus merely looked sullen.

The man's rifle was aimed squarely at Kerrigan.

“You're in charge,” Kerrigan said softly, not betraying Tetsuo's presence by the slightest flicker of his eyes. “What do you want us to do?”

There was a walk-in closet off to one side, filled with hanging envsuits. The man must have been in there, or right next to it, when Kerrigan's flying sphere had exploded and filled the place with gas.

Dispersed now, obviously.

“Just—” The man aimed at Kerrigan. “Shut up, OK?”

Tetsuo was peripherally aware of orange-clothed bodies slumped all around, but his attention was focussed on the man with the graser rifle.

Very short hair, fat neck, red and blotchy now with tension.

Target the neck. Wasn't that what Mother would do?

Tetsuo raised his hand to strike.

The man spun, sensing movement—

A wild fragment of memory, Mother to Akira, with a wooden practice knife:
Go for the weapon, son. Just keep attacking the arm and don't worry about getting cut, because you will unless they're amateur. Attack the limb until the functionality's destroyed and the weapon's dropped.

—and then he was doing it for real, grabbing the rifle's easy-grip stock and jerking it up and grasping the man's sleeve.

Something struck his face, an elbow perhaps, and greenish-yellow lights swam before his eyes.

A crack of energy.

Tetsuo hung on to the man's sleeve with desperate strength, turning in a deadly dance, and then Dhana stepped neatly forwards and kicked the man straight between the legs and he dropped to the floor.

A deep groan issued from the fallen man. Hands jammed between his thighs, he was tucked into a tight foetal ball.

Dhana took the graser rifle from Tetsuo's suddenly feeble hands.

“What kept you, honey?”

Her eyes were very bright, her high cheeks flushed.

“Remind me—” Tetsuo shook his head. “—never to argue with you. Darling.”

 

“What are all these people doing here?”

Nobody answered Tetsuo.

All around the great ellipsoidal room, orange-jumpsuited men and women were slumped on chairs and cushions, terminal pads scattered where they had fallen.

Tech types. He was sure of it. This place was more than an abandoned terraformer.

He stepped past the man whom Dhana had dropped. Sleeping now: a derm patch, swiftly applied by Kerrigan, stood out on the man's fleshy neck.

Waking up was not going to be pleasant for him.

Something beeped behind Tetsuo, as he crouched down beside Kerrigan and Avern. Their wounded comrade lay still, eyes closed and ashen-faced. Ice-blue med-gel coated his shoulder.

“Hi, Brevan.” Dhana had waved a display into life. “How are things with you?”

“All clear down here. You?”

She looked over at Tetsuo, who grimaced.

“One graser wound,” she said to Brevan. “Vargred took a hit.”

In the image beside Brevan, his Agrazzus companion looked concerned.

“He'll be all right,” Kerrigan called. “Are the specimens there?”

“Yeah.” The solemn Agrazzus turned, and stepped out of the display's view-field.

“We're checking them now.” Brevan looked grim. “Looks like Felice was right.”

Behind him, in the image, rows of cages held a bewildering mix of Terran species. A barn owl. A lynxette, prowling back and forth in its narrow confines. Furry forms curled up, sleeping.

“What about the test subject?” asked Brevan. “The human one, I mean.”

An angry chimpanzee scolded them from its cage.

Behind Tetsuo, the other Agrazzus, Avern, called out, “I think we've got him.”

He was examining a blond man slumped in a black control chair.

“Keep the link open,” muttered Kerrigan, and went to join Avern.

With his thumb, he opened one of the unconscious blond man's eyelids, then the other.

From the holo display, Brevan said, “Tetsuo's met Federico Gisanthro, you know.”

“Has he?” There was an indefinable look in Kerrigan's eyes. “What did you think of him?”

“Of Federico Gisanthro?” Tetsuo glanced at Dhana. “Bit of a hard case. I met him at a big trade exhibition. I never did work out what the head of TacCorps was doing there.”

“Really.” Kerrigan used both thumbs to keep the man's eyelids open. “Come over here, and see what you think.”

Tetsuo walked over, and jerked to a halt.

The pale man's eyes were mismatched—one blue, one green—like Federico's.

“That's not Federico.”

“But?” Kerrigan let go, and the man slid down in the chair like a deactivated doll.

“—But there's a resemblance, I agree.”

“This is one of Federico's clones.”

“You're kidding.”

Tetsuo watched as Kerrigan ran some form of handheld scanner across the man's head.

“Oh, yes.” A sour satisfaction tightened Kerrigan's drawn features. “There's no doubt.”

“He doesn't look that much like Federico.” And he obviously was non-Luculentus: no headgear.

“Isn't your mother a biologist?” said Kerrigan. “His DNA's identical; it takes a lot more than that to determine an organism, starting with the womb environment.”

Different upbringing, right.

Federico Gisanthro had looked supremely fit, skin stretched taut across his face. This man looked softer, and his tunic bulged out to the rear behind one shoulderblade. Some sort of deformity.

Tetsuo frowned.

“Let's see what else we've got.” Kerrigan picked up a terminal pad, and flicked through a series of tech-info displays. He seemed to know what he was doing.

“Do you know what this is all about?” Tetsuo quietly asked Dhana.

She glanced back at Brevan—he was still in the image, looking intense—and shook her head.

Brevan knew. He had been the first to mention Federico Gisanthro.

“There.” Kerrigan looked triumphant. “There's his VSI code.”

A blue pulsing space hung in the air.

VSI?

“Impossible.”

The man had no headgear.

“Are you that naïve?”

“What do you mean?” Tetsuo reached up to touch the fine fibres rooted in his scalp. The LuxPrime pre-op tutorial-ware, part of his upraise preparation, had specifically mentioned this: the amp functions were replicated internally, but only as backup.

“Tradition. Nothing more.”

Tetsuo looked at the pulsing display.

VSI. At least one plexcore.

“How would anyone know Luculenti are superior,” added Kerrigan, “if they looked just like the rest of us?”

Dhana shifted her feet uncomfortably. Tetsuo wondered if she was going to kick Kerrigan. He rather hoped she might.

“Interesting.” Kerrigan was still working the display.

Five silver clouds, linked by pulsing emerald flows.

“I think that one—” Kerrigan pointed at a cloud. “—is his organic brain.”

“LuxPrime wouldn't—” Tetsuo bit his lip. “The legal max is three. Three plexcores.”

“NMR scanner.” Avern tossed a small device to Tetsuo.

Tetsuo caught it. “All right.” He tuned a terminal to the scanner's output. “Let's see what we've got.”

Two plexcores, embedded in the man's body.

Puzzled, he looked back at Kerrigan's display.

Five thought-domains.

The man's organic brain, two embedded plexcores, and—what were the extra two volumes?

For that matter,
where
were they?

“This is a TacCorps research project,” Kerrigan said flatly. “Quite beyond their legal remit.” He shut down his display. “And you're right, LuxPrime would not supply extra plexcores to anyone, for any reason.”

Stolen, then?

Where would you steal a plexcore from?

“Grave robbers.” Tetsuo gave a disbelieving laugh. “You're kidding.”

“No.” Kerrigan shook his head. “There are safeguards against that.”

“What kind of safeguards?”

“You can't reinitialize a plexcore from a corpse. The core lattice destroys itself as soon as it's powered up.”

Tetsuo looked at the display again, and frowned. Two extra centres of thought. Not plexcores.

“The only alternative to a plexcore,” he said, musing, “is an organic—”