To Hold Infinity (38 page)

 

<<>>

 

“All my best wishes, sir,” said Rafael in Skein, causing his image to bow formally. “Let us rejoice in this continuance, and give thanks for Lorelei's beautiful life among us.”

“My thanks, Rafael.” Septor replied as if by rote, his voice dead. “And Lori's, too.”

“At this time, my thoughts are with you.”

 

<<>>

 

He did not know the Maximilians well…but well enough to express his sympathy on the occasion of Lori's Baton Ceremony. Another small addition to the flimsy construct of his alibi.

Withdrawing from Skein, he felt its waves and eddies lapping at the edges of his consciousness. His questing NetAngels, his ghost-Rafaels, were like distant phantom limbs, sensed but autonomous.

A blaze of red, a howl of sound: emergency request. In Skein, a ghost-Rafael screamed into its master's mind, slamming its perceptions directly into Rafael's own, sharp and immediate:

 

And then it was gone, before his infiltration code could attempt a lock.

Luck. Bad luck. Tetsuo had entered Skein, just for a moment, as his mindware tried to integrate without proper supervision, test-running its linked modules.

Scowling, Rafael increased the instantiations of his NetAngel template, and a hundred thousand ghost-Rafaels prowled through Skein, searching for any sign of Tetsuo.

They would not stop questing, until Tetsuo was found alive, or proven dead.

Rafael exited from Skein. He had other problems to worry about.

Pilots.

Rafael's one vulnerability was the great size of his plexcore nexus—one hundred and two plexcores scattered across Fulgor, linked by mu-space comms, routed through the massive standard facilities rented out by the Pilots themselves.

Tetsuo's mother would have to die.

A wolfish smile spread across Rafael's face. He had just one weak spot, and Yoshiko had enlisted the help of the only people who could possibly attack it: Pilots.

It raised the stakes, yet again, of this ultimate game. It made life, and all his deaths, worthwhile.

“Good night, sweet Yoshiko.” Grim amusement touched Rafael's voice. “And may flights of NetAngels sing thee to thy rest.”

 

Vin's eyes were closed, as though in sleep. Her scarlet hair had been rearranged, to cover the shiny patch of repaired scalp above her left temple.

Vin—

Her chest rose slowly, and fell. Another shallow breath.

Atonal music muttered a low discord.

“This way,” Grey tunic. A medical assistant, escorting Yoshiko and Maggie to their seats. Jana and Edralix were somewhere behind them.

Lori.

Lying on another couch, near Vin's, Lori's face bore the graven look of a Zen student in deepest meditation.

Feeling numb, Yoshiko sat down. All around her, Luculenti were taking their places among the rows of seats. The room was softly lit, its walls, floor and ceiling covered in soft grey furlike fabric. The atmosphere was hushed.

Septor, dressed in a formal grey and silver robe with white brocade and lace, made his way unsteadily down an aisle, and was escorted to a raised seat at the front, near the twin couches.

Motes of light. Shards of glass.

Panes of colour fell, broke up, swirled, rearranged their orbits, then slowly coalesced. Above the couches, a giant image of Lori's face grew into being.

“My first farewell,” the image said, as its kind eyes directed their gaze at Septor, “is to you, my love. Farewell, and deep peace. May your soul-lineage be long and coherent.”

Septor was still, but pain was etched into every line on his face, his shadowed eyes, the clawlike grip of his hands upon the chair.

“And to all of you, my friends—” Lori's image looked upon them. “—this is untimely soon for my passing onwards, but circumstances force us. You have each enriched my world, and I thank you for it.

“There is inorganic stardust, and there are layers upon layers of emergent phenomena, and there is human consciousness. Such wonder!

“I thank you for being my companions on the miraculous journey called life. I love you all.”

The faces around Yoshiko were enraptured. What joy was Lori sharing with her peers? Yoshiko would never know.

Slowly, like stars before the dawn, the image faded.

Above Lori's couch, sapphire clouds depicted the glory of an inquisitive joyful mind. Over Vin, the tattered crimson-tinged remnants, rent here and there with darkness, of that bright and innocent soul.

Like the shifting of the tide, waves lapped into Vin's damaged mind, brightening its hue, as Lori's slowly ebbed. Yoshiko watched the flowing neural correlates of consciousness as one might sit at the ocean's edge. Processes migrated, calm and unstoppable. For how long? It felt like forever.

And then it was done.

Vin's aura was bright with shining life; Lori's was gone.

Gentle white-gloved hands touched Yoshiko's sleeve, then, and led her with all the other silent watchers from the room.

Only Septor remained, watching over the dark and lifeless remnant which had once been Lori. Rose and icy highlights bathed his face, reflections from Vin's mind-display, at which he could not bear to look.

 

“Who died?” Maggie's face was stricken. “Lori, or Vin?”

“I don't know.” Yoshiko put a hand on Maggie's arm, comforting her. “Lori's body, for sure. But I think the Vin we knew was already gone.”

The corridor's lighting was bright, almost obscenely harsh. Luculenti filed past them, heading outside to waiting flyers.

Jana and Edralix silently joined Yoshiko and Maggie. Together, they followed the Luculenti—past the observation room where Xanthia was held—back to the main entrance area. The huge windows were transparent once more, offering a view of armed proctors in the night, of their flyers hovering like patient bees.

A Luculentus, whom Yoshiko vaguely recognized from the Aphelion Ball, bowed to her.

“It was a good Passing.” His smile was sad. “What more can one hope for?”

Yoshiko swallowed, unable to reply. The Luculentus nodded, and rejoined a group of his departing peers.

Tetsuo is one of these.

Major Reilly was waiting for them. They all sat down on a semicircular couch surrounding a low suspensor-table. Reilly waved away its offer of refreshments.

Jana leaned forwards. “Are you going to arrest Rafael de la Vega, Major?”

Reilly shook her head.

“He's got an alibi. SatScan and other surveillance places him elsewhere.”

Golden fire glimmered in the obsidian depths of Jana's eyes. The blood drained from Reilly's face.

“I didn't say I believe the scans,” Reilly said swiftly. “But I'm lacking what you might call admissible evidence.”

The golden lights slowly died in Jana's eyes, and Reilly's relief was palpable.

“How did he know Yoshiko would be here?” asked Edralix.

“Hmm.” Reilly looked thoughtful. “It was a reasonable assumption, if he had found that Lorelei or Lavinia Maximilian were here.”

Lori. Vin. Everything was dreadful.

Yoshiko fought hard to concentrate on the conversation.

“I'll bet—” Reilly looked grim. “—he didn't count on two Pilots being here.”

“I forgot to mention something.” Yoshiko directed her remarks at Jana and Edralix, as much as at Major Reilly. “Someone planted smartatom bugs on me. I went to a place in Lucis yesterday, to get them swept.”

“Successfully?”

“I thought so. Actually, they self-destructed as soon as they detected the scan.”

“Oh, really?” Reilly's expression revealed nothing. “I wouldn't expect civilian tech to behave that way.”

“This Rafael seems quite resourceful,” said Edralix. “Perhaps he tried to find out what Yoshiko knew about her son's whereabouts. When she destroyed the bugs, he decided he had to silence her.”

“Perhaps.”

And then Yoshiko knew.

There are three timings in strategy, and this called for
tai no sen
—to wait for the attack, body calm and immobile, while the mind raced with possibilities.

Rafael, my enemy.

“Major Reilly—do you believe Rafael will try to kill me again?”

Reilly looked at her sharply. “That's a possibility. But we're obviously alerted.”

“I wonder.” Yoshiko spoke slowly. “Could you make that more obvious? Keep guards posted, whatever?”

“Standard procedure.”

“Yes, but I was thinking of something, well, ostentatious. So that physical attack will be the last thing on Rafael's mind.”

The area was quite deserted now. The Luculenti had left. The lone receptionist was bent over his desk, carefully ignoring them.

Proctors still patrolled the grounds outside.

Yoshiko turned to Jana and Edralix. “What do you know of Luculenti communication? Of what happened tonight, in the Baton Ceremony?”

Edralix cleared his throat. “Well—in general, they communicate by line-of-sight fast-comm links—which strictly speaking are not in Skein—or through Skein itself. Is that what you're getting at?”

“And the ceremony?”

“Deep scan. The elder passing on edited thoughts, memories, to her successor. The thing is, to scan that deeply, you're going to heisenberg the original into chaos. That's why the elder chooses to die.”

“Chooses?” Yoshiko felt cold.

“Lori's physical death was caused by a euthanasia toxin. Self-administered, before the ceremony started.”

“And if she hadn't taken it—?”

“You've seen Xanthia.”

“Yes.” Yoshiko let out a long, shaky breath. “Yes, I have.”

Tai no sen.
To wait for the enemy.

Yoshiko got up, and stood by the window. Her reflection was a pale and insubstantial ghost. The black night was real.

Wait for the enemy's commitment. Then counterstrike.

Finally, she rejoined the others.

“Lori made a suggestion.” She forced her voice to remain steady. “Though she did not mean it quite literally—but there is an offworld quota.”

A frown etched Jana's pointed features.

“I don't understand,” said Reilly.

“Oh, no.” Maggie stood up. “Yoshiko, you can't mean it.”

“If Rafael can't reach me physically—” Yoshiko looked at Major Reilly. “—then he'll have to strike through Skein.”

“A Judas goat,” breathed Jana.

Reilly frowned.

Maggie said, “She's talking about upraise. Becoming a Luculenta.”

“That's impossible.”

“No.” Jana's jet-black eyes glinted. “That's perfect.”

Chasms fell away beneath him: sheer planes, steely grey ribbed with black, around which angular darts and polygons flew. A shower of crystal spheres flew past, and each contained a universe of visions, mathematical realms and seafaring vessels, poetry and picnics, music and—

“Tetsuo?”

Flicker: just inside the habitable zone, sitting on a fallen tree at the forest's edge. Morning mist steamed at the forest's edge.

“I don't—”

Turquoise info-waves crashed upon him, each a tumult of voices and white noise—so strange, these inconsistent fragments, as though he were missing something important—and twisted jangling constructs fell among the paths of his nervous system.

Then his mind twisted apart as the universe expanded:
blazing avenues stretching along twenty dimensions, more, all at right angles to each other, and he screamed inwardly as he tried to encompass impossible perspectives on endless data, shapes and communication-forms beyond simple primate comprehension.

“Are you alright?”

Something…

Suddenly, it was there. Urgent and malevolent, an awful sense of presence, of something or someone terribly aware of all he was, of all the petty fears which made him Tetsuo. It reached inside him with protocols like pincers, with code-like claws, burrowing into the computations of his mind—

Out.

“Talk to me, Tetsuo.” Dhana's small strong hands pulled off his resp-mask. A faint ammoniac whiff in the air, but otherwise fine to breathe. “What's going on?”

“Oh, God—”

Realms of data, questing phantoms…

“—I think I just logged on to Skein.”

Dhana looked around urgently. “Keep your voice down.”

 

<<>>

 

“Sorry.” Tetsuo pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “I won't do it again, if I can help it.”

How could he explain? For a moment, he had existed in dimensions beyond human understanding.

“They're pitching the bubbles.”

On a ridge overlooking a wooded dell, the air shimmered slightly. A disembodied hand briefly appeared behind it—one of the Agrazzi reaching through the smartatom chameleon-film for something—and a slightly shifted foreground image accompanied it: a dark circle, a hand appearing to reach into the dome-shaped disturbance. Then both hands were withdrawn, and the dome became quite invisible.

Tetsuo shook his head, feeling nauseated. Illusions in reality, nightmarish mindscapes in Skein. It was too much.

“Over here.” Brevan beckoned.

Tetsuo stumbled twice as they walked, but Dhana was there to steady him.

Among the roots of a giant mossy tree, Brevan had set up a smartatom bubble, still opaque. Kerrigan and Avern were inside already.

Tetsuo and Dhana ducked inside, then Brevan followed and sealed the gap, and spoke urgent instructions into his wrist terminal. Inside the tentlike bubble, nothing changed. Outside, Tetsuo hoped, light falling at every angle onto the bubble was partially redirected around it, and amplified and retransmitted in the original direction.

“I can't see the tower.”

“Over there, between the forked trees.”

“Got it.”

They all watched the terraformer tower. Tetsuo's nerves grew steadier.

“Are you sure they're coming?” Dhana asked impatiently.

Kerrigan glanced at her.” “Bound to be. Any—”

“There.”

Hunched over, trying to get a better view, Tetsuo was acutely aware of Dhana pressed beside him, intent on the distant tower.

Predatory flyers slowly circled the tower.

“They're not landing.”

“No. I think they're going to—”

There was no explosion.

A low hum, a buzzing which seemed to reach inside Tetsuo's guts, was accompanied by the merest puff of dust from the tower's base. Then, slowly, the tower crumpled and collapsed.

One flyer hovered over the settling dust. Blue lightning stabbed into a sequence of precise points amid the debris.

Then the flyers resumed formation, and steadily glided away.

“My God.”

“What about the graser fire?”

Kerrigan looked grim. “Destroying the evidence. Including Federico's Luculentus clone.”

Killing their own.

“Nice people.”

Tetsuo looked around the faces in the smartatom shelter. Despite their words, none of them looked truly shocked. They had known TacCorps were this ruthless.

“You're bloody mad,” he said. “All of you.”

 

The dead girl sat up in bed and smiled.

“Yoshiko. Maggie.” Lori's eyes looked out from Vin's sweet face. “It's good to see you.”

Yoshiko's skin crawled.

“Vin?” she forced herself to ask. “Are—you all right?”

Scarlet hair, teenage face. Luxuriously appointed room: white and gold, carpet of mobile mandelbrots gently swimming, the med-scanners disguised as ornamental sculptures and decorative glass orbs. Morning sunshine poured through a skylight.

“Oh, Yoshiko.” Those young features held an expression of ancient gravitas. “Perhaps you had better call me Lavinia.”

“I—yes, OK.”

Yoshiko and Maggie sat on faux Louis Quinze chairs, on either side of Vin's—Lavinia's—bed.

Yoshiko felt drained. She and Maggie had stayed overnight in guest rooms here at the med-centre—after Jana and Edralix had left—but sleep had not come easily.

Turning to Maggie, Lavinia said, “Yoshiko remembers Vin saying how much she hated her real name.”

Dread crossed Maggie's face as Lavinia continued, “I recall saying those words to Yoshiko, on Ardua Station. But I also remember giving that name to my soul-daughter, when she was designated to me, aged eight.”

“Lori?” Yoshiko tentatively asked.

“No, I'm not Lori.” Lavinia shook her head. “But so much of Vin was lost, replaced with blank tissue and initialized plexcore lattice, that I am much more Lori than I should have been.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be.” Lavinia shrugged. “Whoever I am, this person you see was born because of what happened.
I am me.
How can I be unhappy that I exist?”

Yoshiko shook her head, and Maggie looked away. This was too much to grasp.

 

“Hurry now.” Kerrigan's voice was abrupt. “Or we'll miss the rendezvous.” Beside him, Avern and the other Agrazzus were helping their wounded—and glassy-eyed—comrade to walk.

Tetsuo paused, halfway up a leaf-strewn slope. A lone bird cheeped in a branch above his head.

“Good job he didn't say ‘meeting,'” said Tetsuo in a stage whisper. “Wouldn't want to sound like an amateur.”

Dhana snickered, then fell silent before Kerrigan's glare.

“You have a problem, Mister Sunadomari?”

“No, sir.”

They forced a path among undergrowth, then headed downslope on soft ground. Among the tangled trees, Tetsuo caught a glimpse of white and orange.

A flyer, already landed and waiting for them.

A tall grey-haired Luculenta was there. While the wounded Agrazzus was put aboard her flyer, she conferred with Kerrigan and Brevan.

“Looks like we're honoured,” murmured Dhana.

“You mean they're talking about me?”

“Who could blame 'em?”

Tetsuo, trying to think of a smart reply, realized that the Luculenta was walking towards them.

“I'm Felice Lectinaria.” The woman's voice was very elegant. “I know Yoshiko.”

Tetsuo felt the ground drop away beneath his feet.

“My mother?”

 

“…and they won't let me log on to Skein for ten bloody days!”

Maggie snorted with laughter, and the tension decreased.

Lavinia had chatted about her boredom in this room, her enforced abstinence from any form of interface. She revealed the sunny disposition of Lori or Vin, Yoshiko thought, and yet was neither.

Maggie sighed. “What about Septor? Shall we send for him?”

Journalistic instinct. Yoshiko smiled inwardly. Maggie's question had gone right to the heart of things.

The expression on Lavinia's face shut down.

“Relationships do not survive a Passing.”

“But if you bump into him at a dinner or something—”

“Then we'll be exceedingly polite and formal with each other. There is a protocol which governs such occasions.”

Yoshiko intervened before the silence grew awkward.

“What about young Brian?”

A flashing grin.

“He's not bad, is he?” For a moment, it was Vin sitting up in bed. “Can't dance, though.”

Yoshiko remembered Vin and Brian in each other's arms, in the ballroom.

Lavinia's expression was suddenly stricken. “I—no, Lori—saw Xanthia. They say it's not my fault, but it was my ware, my safety routines which failed in the laser array.”

“It wasn't your fault.” There was cold fury in Maggie's voice.

“I don't agree. My house, my system.”

“Haven't they told you anything?” asked Maggie. “Although—the med-centre staff can't know much about it, anyway.”

“I'm supposed to rest.” Lavinia's pale face was tight, and she shivered. “I don't deserve to live—”

Maggie's voice was low and fierce. “Whatever happened to Xanthia, it was Rafael de la Vega who did it.”

“Who? Oh, yes. Rafael.” Lavinia looked confused. “What could he do? Sabotage the laser array?”

Maggie looked at Yoshiko.

“We think,” said Yoshiko softly, “he attacked Xanthia through Luculentus fast comms.”

“What? But—There are LuxPrime protocols, safeguards.” Lavinia was holding back tears. “And there were hundreds of us there, watching.”

“Maybe that was part of the thrill. He could have used something like the scanware from, ah, Baton Ceremonies.”

“He scanned Xanthia?”

“Or just initialized her mind.” Maggie looked grim. “Scrambled it.”

“But—”

“Here.” Yoshiko dug in her pocket, then held out the infocrystal. “I don't know about the psychological effect of seeing this. If you're supposed to be resting—”

“Show me,” said Lavinia, with an iron grimness neither Lori nor Vin had ever possessed.

 

“
Warning: stress levels indicate the patient needs rest. Visitors will please leave—
”

“Shut up!” Lavinia's voice was furious as she stopped the display, a hundred frozen dancers around Xanthia's tortured figure.

The med-centre system fell silent.

Yoshiko swallowed. She was not sure this was wise, but she could not have Lavinia torturing herself with misplaced guilt.

“Lavinia—” Maggie took Lavinia's hand, as once more debris fell and Yoshiko knocked Vin out of the way far too late, and Vin's head was a bloody ruin.

“I'm alright.” Lavinia froze the display once more. “Federico Gisanthro moved fast.”

“Yes.” Yoshiko remembered the speed of his sprint across the ballroom floor, straight towards Xanthia. “He reacted very quickly.”

“But I don't see Rafael at all. Where is he?”

“That,” said Maggie, “is another story.”

 

“I don't know much of this would be admissible in court.” Lavinia pointed at the dark shadowy figure, the reconstruction produced by Edralix's analysis.

Maggie, who was also seeing this for the first time, said, “I remember him standing there. Rafael. That's just where he was.”

“But your memory could be fooled, by virtue of seeing this. And the Pilots could have faked this analysis, more easily than someone could have edited my house-system's logs.”

“You're playing devil's advocate, right?”

“Oh, Yes.” Lavinia's face was grim. “In fact, Lori saw Rafael stumbling across the lawns towards the parked flyers. I—she—thought he was sick.”

“Not too sick to hack into your house-system.”

Yoshiko, who had been observing silently, said, “I don't know. Lavinia, before Lori gave me global authority to the system, weren't the proctors using it?”