To Hold Infinity (42 page)

“What? Rafael?” Those haughty features looked shaken. “You're talking about Xanthia Delaggropos. And Rashella Syntharinova.”

“There are one hundred and two plexcores in Rafael's nexus,” said Yoshiko, as a look of horror crept across Felice's face. “You're talking about research into the same kind of thing…”

The things Rafael had done. The nonhuman thing he might become. Felice obviously saw the implications immediately.

“But the TacCorps research was without extra plexcores.” Felice was collecting her thoughts. “You can't just buy them from LuxPrime. Perhaps Rafael's found a way to stop them randomizing. I'm talking about grave-robbing—”

A soft, brushing sound. A foot sliding just above the carpet.

“Tell me about plexcores,” said Yoshiko, but she was not listening to Felice's reply.

“After death, the plexcore is powered down, and buried. It's supposed basically to self-destruct if someone were to dig it up and try—”

There were two of them, at least. Possibly three.

“Felice!” Yoshiko whispered urgently. “Call for—”

A beam flicked out of the darkness, and Felice fell.

I can't initiate a SkeinLink.

“Guido's not too happy with you.” A TacCorps agent, a grim-looking man, walked into the light, aiming a graser at Yoshiko. “In fact, he's rather pissed off.”

Try anyway.

Like a child wishing evil ghosts away, Yoshiko concentrated on accessing Skein.

Nothing.

Another TacCorps agent, a short-haired woman, knelt by Felice and checked the pulse in her throat. The woman nodded.

Her colleague kept his graser trained on Yoshiko. He was crouched in a low stance, left hand outstretched, graser held in his right hand close to his body. Aware of Yoshiko's skills, neutralizing any chance of deflecting or seizing the weapon before he could fire.

Anger.

The third shadow moved. For a second, hope leaped as Yoshiko thought it might be Brian, but the figure was far too big.

The thing was to make them angry.

“The trouble with you—” Yoshiko started.

Getting closer.

Make some noise.

“
It's not fair!
” Yoshiko let all her fear and anger rip. “You bastards set my son up for murder and now you're trying to kill me and I just won't have it, do you hear? I JUST WON'T HAVE IT!”

The TacCorps man looked puzzled, then grim, and as his finger tightened on the firing-stud the shadow moved behind him and something dark and polished glinted as it hammered into the man's skull. He dropped like a stone.

The female agent near Felice was straightening up and aiming
when Yoshiko grabbed her weapon's barrel and twisted and it fired into the agent's own torso and her face screwed up in pain as she fell.

“Yoshiko.”

The woman was dead. Yoshiko had never used her art in anger before today, and now a woman was dead.

Something keened inside Yoshiko, a voice crying to the fallen woman to get up. But the body was an extinct shell, its eyes already coated with death's opacity.

“My God, Yoshiko.”

The big bearish man was standing there.

“Oh, Eric.”

Then her face was against his massive chest. Eric's strong arms enclosed her. He was warm and solid, infinitely comforting, and she felt safe at last.

 

A NewsNet broadcast? Irritably, Rafael put the NetAngel on hold.

Luculenta Yoshiko Sunadomari.

He had failed to kill her in person, and peacekeepers had descended in droves on the med-centre to prevent another attempt. Then she had made herself a prize, plump target. A Luculenta!

The NetAngel bleated another comm-request, and he quelled it once more.

He had never risked striking through Skein, for fear of being tracked through audit logs. Always, he had used untraceable line-of-sight fast-comm links. And yet, and yet—

Through Skein, he could subsume anyone, anywhere, without moving from his home.

A third request, and he nearly banished the NetAngel for good. A NewsNet retrieval was hardly likely to reveal his target. His NetAngels were supposed to prowl more promising infoseams.

Sighing, he gave the insistent ghost-Rafael his attention.

Tetsuo! Could it be—?

The simulation overlay pulsed red with an estimated match of seventy-three percent. Tetsuo should have disguised his walk, as well as his face.

If it really was Tetsuo…

For a second, the possible-Tetsuo bent close to the blonde-haired girl, and a portion of her cheek seemed to disappear inside the man's face. A holo-mask.

Alive. The only link to Rafael's use of comms tech.

Rafael had failed to kill the mother, but the real prey had crept out into the open, just the same.

Right out in the open.

For a moment, the unfairness of the situation overwhelmed Rafael, then he pushed the feeling to one side.

Focus on one thing: Tetsuo must die.

Quickly, before the proctors could get to him.

Twenty thousand witnesses. Unless…

{{Luculentus Tetsuo Sunadomari, ident400lA2.001}}

<<>>

Damn it.
No response from Tetsuo's ident.

He might have risked it, striking at Tetsuo through Skein, but the dumb bastard was not capable of logging on. It was almost embarrassing, to be known as the stupid Earther's upraise sponsor.

What about the mother? Could Yoshiko have been upraised
specifically to entrap Rafael? Unlikely. If LuxPrime suspected anything, the proctors would have descended upon him before now.

In any event, Yoshiko's death was now unnecessary. All he needed was to murder her beloved son, in front of twenty thousand onlookers.

Before his prey could fade back into cover, Rafael would deliver another virtuoso performance.

 

A dark sea, where waves of anger coursed, propagated through twenty thousand people. No, it was more than that: a giant organism, reacting fiercely as if by chemical instinct to the disturbance at its outer edge.

“
…disperse…immediate action…if…will not…peacefully.
”

The muted roar of muttered anger overlaid the proctor's warning.

Dhana stumbled, but Tetsuo caught her. Around them, a crush of people. The ranks were filling up from behind, as more came flocking down the slopes, past the quiet woods.

It was an organism, the crowd, and it curled around to trap the annoyance at its outer skin, the peacekeepers.

I don't like this.

An owl flew overhead, like a portent, and wheeled back into the forest.

Tetsuo held Dhana tightly. All around, people swirled. Only minutes ago, he and Dhana had been at the periphery of a peaceful gathering. Now, they were in the heart of a roiling mob, on the edge of chaos. The smallest disturbance, like a sky-borne dust particle precipitating a storm, would tip them over the brink.

There was a sweet scent, the tang of damp wild grass crushed by many feet.

“Out of the shadows!”

It became a battle cry, taken up by twenty thousand roaring voices.

“OUT OF THE SHADOWS!”

Anger became a tidal wave, and a tsunami of Shadow People fell upon the peacekeepers.

Escape. Now.

He dragged Dhana against the pull of the crowd, and for a moment fury blazed in her eyes. Then the fervent light faded, and she began to help him. They were two tiny organisms, swimming against the tide.

Milling bodies. They dodged and pushed and shoved, while collective adrenaline enraged the Shadow People's eyes and angry shouts were a swelling visceral roar of rage.

Suddenly, Tetsuo and Dhana broke free, were spat from the crowd's turbulence. The sudden absence of swaying, shoving bodies was shocking.

“Come on.”

Reeling slightly, Tetsuo led Dhana to a sweeping buttress by the nearest building. They leaned against the hard grey wall.

“It's going to be awful, isn't it?” There was pain in Dhana's eyes.

Beyond, the mob still boiled and roared.

“Just wait here. I'm going to check something.”

Around the buttress, an archway led inside. In the shadowed interior, a thin long-haired man was gesticulating at two big men who were blocking his way. TacCorps agents.

The man made a break for it, dodging the agents and running out. Then he stopped dead as lights sparkled in the archway and he dropped back, clutching his hand in pain.

Smartatom shield.

If that man could not get out, then neither could Tetsuo and Dhana get inside.

Unless…

Tetsuo reached up and pulled off the neck-ring, deactivating the holo-mask. For this to work, they would have to see his headgear, if they noticed him.

His heart was pounding, and the sweat of fear bathed his face, but he had to get Dhana to safety.

A faint shimmer in the air betrayed the shield's presence, as he
drew close. If there ever was a time for him to take conscious control of his wild abilities, that time was now.

Do it. Do it.

Tears sprang to his eyes. Nothing.

Shuddering, he turned all his attention inwards, remembered the microwards, the terraformer tower, and dug deep inside himself, deep into his soul.

{{{HeaderBegin: Module = Node089C.1060: Type = BinaryHyperCode: Axes = 16

Concurrent_Execute

     .linkfile = IRprotocol. Common.Alpha

     .linkfile = IRprotocol. Common.Beta

     .linkfile = IRprotocol.Common.Gamma

     .linkfile = IRprotocol.Common.Delta

End_Concurrent_Execute}}}

The shield wavered.

<<>>

Tetsuo stepped inside.

“—know my rights!” the long-haired man was shouting.

“You're not a citizen of this province, not even this world.” Hardedged, the TacCorps agent's voice. “You have no rights.”

“Lucky we're here to protect you.” The other agent.

“Look at my video-globes. Completely dead!”

Offworld journalist.

“Antisurveillance spray. Criminal elements in the mob. Come along, sir. For your own protection.”

They wrist-locked him, then, and forced him farther into the building's interior. As they rounded a corner, the struggling journalist looked back, and just for a second his eyes met Tetsuo's.

Tyranny
, they said.
And you're part of it.

Then he was gone, and the hallway was silent.

 

The archway shields deadened sound.

Outside, a silent beam flickered through the gathering gloom. There were no screams, as the noiseless crowd broke apart, and became a panicking mob.

Dhana.

Attuned to him now, the shield let him pass. A roar of sound hit him. In the torrent of people, individuals tripped and fell, and were lost among the flooding mass of scared humanity.

She wasn't behind the buttress.

“Dhana!”

Beyond the mob, mirror-visored TacCorps agents on skimmers fired warnings, graser beams cracking through the air. Smartatom mists fell, anaesthetizing rioters who promptly dropped and were trampled. Elsewhere, hard-core demonstrators fought back with deadly miasmas of their own.

“Tetsuo!”

She was holding a small girl, pale and frightened, in her arms.

Tetsuo bulldozed a panicking man out of his way and grabbed Dhana and the child.

A graser beam licked out, and a TacCorps agent fell from a skimmer.

Immediately, a group of skimmers whirled in formation, and answering beams stabbed into the crowd.

“Come on.”

He stood in the archway, deactivating the shield, and pushed Dhana inside.

In the crowd, a woman screamed.

“This way!” Tetsuo shouted. “Over here!”

They came running, their faces twisted by panic.

A flood of people passed Tetsuo. He hauled and pushed, helping the flow where he could, getting them indoors. It was only a trickle, compared to the vast mass of people panicking outside.

What was going on? Luculenti were not tyrants, though the effect of their existence might be oppressive. The Shadow People had real grievances. The Luculenti, and the Fulgidi merchants he had dealt with, were superlative negotiators. How could this breakdown happen?

“My daughter!”

He pushed a girl towards a stricken woman: a lucky guess. A tearful, joyful face, lost in the swirling mass of people.

Rain began to fall.

An elbow struck Tetsuo and he bent over, coughing, but he held position and the shield remained down.