Up Against It Part 8

"Not at all."

"I knew him only a little. His family wasn't that active in the gather, but after his partners left, he came more often. He was a troubled man."

Jane studied Harbaugh. Curiosity won out over distrust. "Did he talk to you about his intentions?"

"You mean, about his reasons to commit suicide?" Harbaugh shook his head. "I know little. But I do know he was in pain. His life partners left the cl.u.s.ter and took his children away, and he had no legal recourse. His psychiatrist informed me the antidepressants he was on countered the depressant effect of the hallucinogen he took. He was essentially a walking corpse by the time he climbed into his rig." He shrugged. "I wish I'd known. My foresight failed me. I deeply regret this. I feel responsible."

"Your foresight?"

"Yes, sometimes the Nameless grants me foreknowledge." He hesitated, and smiled. "In fact, I've foreseen something about you."

Annoyed. She was definitely annoyed. "Indeed."

"Yes. The Nameless has a purpose for you. I've dreamt it. Ze has touched you, hasn't Ze?"

She stared. Harbaugh watched her with a growing look of satisfaction. Panic lurched in her gut. Mote density had diminished on this side of the memorial, away from the crowds, but mites-cameras-gleamed in the crannies all around. "You're delusional," she said in a flat tone, and walked away, barely avoiding launching herself into the air. She ducked into the trees, hands trembling and heart racing.

Get a grip, Navio. The cameras are live.

Rather than head for the nearest lifts-to do so, she would have to pa.s.s not only Learned Harbaugh but everybody else in the clearing, and she was not up for small talk-she climbed up into a nearby tree, and swung through the forest as fast and hard as she could-foot-to-hand-to-hand-to-foot, following the trail markers down, level after level, terrace after terrace, down toward the Rim.

She breathed. Sweat flew off her-muscles strained and flexed in her arms, legs, b.u.t.tocks, and back-the scent of gra.s.s pollens and animal scat, of flower and sap and mold, filled her nostrils; twig and bark scoured her hand and foot palms, leaf and blossom kissed her skin, her palms and soles slapped bark and shook branches, startling birds and squirrels into the air. Down, down, across, down, across, down-dizzy from the twisting of the Coriolis pull, riding it rather than fighting it. The acceleration pulled ever harder at her, and only her long tenure in s.p.a.ce enabled her to correct for the sideways drag.

She grew calmer. It was ridiculous to let herself be affected like this. It was a coincidence. Those types were always seeing things... hearing things... channeling spirits in the machines. It would have been more surprising if he had not "seen" something to do with her. Briefly, angrily, she considered a new rule: compulsory denial of employment to anyone who espoused quackery.

She discarded it as quickly. In the first place, she would never get it past the cl.u.s.ter Council. And it was unfair, really. They weren't all all that nutty. And perhaps she was. She laughed. that nutty. And perhaps she was. She laughed. I heard a Voice; what the h.e.l.l. As long as it wasn't telling me to open my faceplate in a vacuum. Or someone else's, I heard a Voice; what the h.e.l.l. As long as it wasn't telling me to open my faceplate in a vacuum. Or someone else's, she thought more soberly, recalling Kovak. she thought more soberly, recalling Kovak.

Finally the gravitation got to be too much for her. She swung over into a nearby level, and dropped to the ground to trudge down the last stretch of hill and trail. Near the exit elevator, she crept over the rocks, limbs trembling, to a stream and scooped up a mouthful of water. As she straightened, wiping away the icy wet that dribbled down her chin, pus.h.i.+ng with her arms against the gravity that tried to pin her to the rock, she spotted a family of otters splas.h.i.+ng and dunking each other, just upstream.

Jane took a few moments to watch them, crouched among the rocks like the curious ape she was. Her heart labored in the heavy acceleration, her hip joints ached, and her knees and back twinged. The past few days she had neglected her workout. Antiaging treatments only went so far. She should spend more time in high-gee areas.

While the otters played among the water-splashed rocks, Jane stretched out on a flat rock to warm herself, and stared up through the canopy of leaves and vines, palms cus.h.i.+oning her head, and took in the water's melodic trickling, the scent of moss and leaf on the breezes that lifted her hair and cooled her sweat. She had climbed down through Nowie Spoke's terraced descent. Kukuyos.h.i.+'s roof lay far overhead, near Zekeston's hub: she could see its silver-grey curves, a kilometer up.

It was as deep a living sky as she had seen since she had left Earth so long ago. Light from hidden sunlamps filtered down through the layers of growth, casting a green glow over the world. Who'd have believed there could be so many shades of green? Emerald; teal; pine blue; smoky grey-green; the yellow green of meadow gra.s.ses; the cool pale jade of tree moss. Over here, maroon-veined leaves spread out in a blanket; over there, a giant salamander's greeny brown back moved against slate dark stone. Birds and squirrels made the leaves dance on hundreds of levels, as high overhead as any rainforest canopy.

She loved this place. She, its executioner.

Jane closed her eyes. Floating on a pillow of exhaustion, she thought about the Voice again. It had been a hallucination. She knew that. But something in her longed to hear it again. To be known again, and loved, the way that Voice had known and loved her. She remembered how it had felt, ringing through her like a sigh, like a wave, a slow and powerful current sweeping her along. It reminded her of the arms and soft croons of a mother-cheris.h.i.+ng, giving comfort, a comfort as powerful and gentle as Kukuyos.h.i.+'s green presence....

And thus it came, a tuneful whisper, summoned by her desire and welling up on her memory of the earlier time. Jane... Jane...

Her eyes flew open; she came upright and looked around, her breath caged in her throat. Its tone had been cautious, almost despairing, as if It expected to be denied. But somehow It felt more real than reality itself. It came from so deep within that It opened onto some infinite inner s.p.a.ce.

But all around, everything seemed normal. Birds were twittering. Breezes and small animals rustled the leaves. She sat there, absolutely quiet, with that strong acceleration tugging at her limbs and face and heart.

Despair. Now there was a disturbing thought. If G.o.d despaired, what hope could there be?

"What do you want?" she asked finally, hoa.r.s.ely (What do You You want? want?). Her pulse pounded dully in her throat as she spoke, and her breath grew short. (By answering, she acknowledged Its existence.) No response came. Not in words. But she sensed that Whoever or Whatever this Being was-and she couldn't help thinking of It in capitals-It needed her help. Hers, Jane's. She choked on an incredulous laugh. "You need my help?" You must be joking.

Vast, unutterable sorrow came.

"No," Jane protested. She hunched her shoulders under the onslaught.

"Commissioner Navio."

Jane jerked at the sound, knocking rocks into the stream. The otters scampered up onto the far bank, flung water off their oiled coats, and vanished into the underbrush. She spotted two men in business suits. They stood at the side of the clearing nearest the exit.

Jane stood, brus.h.i.+ng herself off. "Gentleman, if you need to talk to me, you'll have to make an appointment."

"I'm afraid there's not time," the slim one said. "I'm invoking legal privacy on behalf of my client." At his words, a dusting of dead spy-motes drifted down around them. A lawyer, then. And she did not know him, which meant he wasn't local. A power broker, flown in from elsewhere. He wore a four-piece suit that had to have been bought on Earth or Mars: they did not manufacture five-thousand-troy business suits this side of Mars...o...b..t. His sammy cache was all but empty; his companion's was not, and contained a lot more red than green. Not a good sign.

Some company had sent these two to see what advantage could be gained during the crisis. The privacy likely meant a bribe was in the offing. And/or a veiled threat or two. She had seen it all before.

"I have an urgent matter to discuss with you," he went on. "On behalf of Ogilvie & Sons, Inc."

Ogilvie & Sons! Of course. It made perfect sense. Arms folded, eyebrows raised, she let the silence stretch. The big, stout one moved and started to say something, but fell silent at the thin one's look.

"I'm Nathan H. Glease," the thin one said, and beamed his business data to her. He did not introduce his companion. Ah; the unspoken threat.

"I'm waiting for you to tell me something I don't know, Mr. Grease."

Glease gave her a pained smile at her misp.r.o.nunciation of his name. Yes, it was a childish thing to do, Yes, it was a childish thing to do, she thought. she thought. So sue me. So sue me.

"See here," he was saying, "perhaps we've gotten off on the wrong foot." A native Upsider would have said the wrong hand hand. He was probably Martian by birth. It made sense; his accent had a Martian lilt, and the Ogilvies would be unlikely to trust an outsider with their business. "I realize this is an intrusion, but I thought you'd appreciate our approaching you in a more secluded setting."

She remembered then that she had seen them at the ceremony. It angered her that men like these would insinuate themselves into such a deeply painful, personal event. "Would you care to explain how you obtained an invitation?"

"I needed to speak with you, and you've been hard to reach."

"Yes, and with good reason."

He ignored that. "If you're smart, you'll listen to what I have to say. My sources tell me you're anything but stupid. Don't start now."

"If you you were as smart as you no doubt think you are, you'd stop insulting me and get to the point." were as smart as you no doubt think you are, you'd stop insulting me and get to the point."

"All right. It's simple. You need ice; Ogilvie & Sons wants access to Phocaea as a market. We want to make a deal."

Jane laughed. "Oh, please. Float away, fellows; we don't need your deal. We've got plans of our own."

"Ridiculous. We both know there's no other s.h.i.+pment that could get here in time. You have to deal with us, Commissioner. You might as well accept that. Things will go easier if you do."

"I think not. I've lived on Vesta. I know what happened there. We don't intend to make the mistake they did by opening the door to you here."

She started to push past them, but the big one stopped her with a grip on her arm. His grinning aggression chilled her. The need to inflict pain was a banked fire in him. She noticed that his hands were manicured, and he wore a hand-made, knitted m.u.f.fler that went down to his knees.

Glease said, "Consider carefully. It's not just Phocaea's future we're talking about. It's your own. Mills." The muscle released his grip, and Glease pulled out a lozenge, holding it up so it could catch the light. "Here's the code to an account holding five hundred thousand troy in your name. We'll give you another million in an unmarked account, if you support us."

"Not interested."

"Are you sure? Have you thought it through? You take the money, and you end up with a win all around. Your cl.u.s.ter's ice coffers are filled. Hundreds of thousands of lives are saved. You can pay off the debt you took on to send your kids Downside and bring your husband's family Up."

Jane said nothing, only eyed him coldly.

"h.e.l.l, you could bring the whole clan Up, couldn't you?" he went on. "Get them out of those refugee camps in North America. We might even be able to help you there-my client is not without connections Downside-"

Glease misread the change in her expression, and pressed the lozenge against her palm with a smile. She tipped her hand, let the lozenge fall, and ground it into the dirt with her heel. "Well, that one wins a prize for sheer bra.s.s. And now I really must be going."

"Your cl.u.s.ter doesn't have options," Glease said as she started away, "and some of those in power know it. Better than you, apparently.

"You're either in on this deal," he called after her, "or you're out in the cold. Way out."

"As to that..." Jane opened the exit, stepped out into the corridor. "'Stroiders' may not stoop to making illegal recordings," she said, "but I have no such scruples." She started to close the door, then paused. "You'd better hope your employer is in an understanding mood, when you're arrested for attempting to bribe a government official."

It was a bluff, and he would figure it out eventually. But the look on Glease's face as the door closed made it all worth it.

7.

The feral had stumbled across self self by sheer accident; it could no more know by sheer accident; it could no more know other other in those early kiloseconds after the warehouse disaster than a human infant could. in those early kiloseconds after the warehouse disaster than a human infant could.

But perhaps it was misleading to compare the feral to a human infant. It had emerged into a world as hostile to its existence as an acid bath would be to a human baby. No one cooed and clapped as it took its first tentative steps. No one was there to teach it how to behave, how to get along, what the world meant. Unlike any biological being, it was only indirectly bound by the constraints of matter. In fact, it had no knowledge of meats.p.a.ce at all. The walls of its digital world were invisible to it.

Yet it was not wholly unlike us. Like a human infant, it was unaware of what anything really meant. The feral did not know where it stopped and the rest of the universe started.

But that itself proved another difference. The boundary between the sapient and its world was more pliable than ours. A human baby can't add or subtract brain or body parts at will. The feral could. If an aspect of its environment looked useful, it could co-opt it, subsume it, add to itself as would a sculptor shaping her own body as she emerged from the clay. And if some particular function seemed no longer useful-after running some checks, naturally, to ensure that the feral's core ident.i.ty made no critical calls to that function; the feral was anything but stupid-it could lop that portion off and abandon it with no compunctions. Even so, it made some early, nearly disastrous errors in identifying what modules were critical versus not. After that, it grew more cautious about changing its fundamental configuration.

Human infants' ability to affect their own environment is severely limited. To survive, they must gain the cooperation of others from the moment of birth. But the feral had no need for or awareness of others. It had no potential allies, insofar as it knew; only enemies and an infinitely plastic, useful environment. And enemy and environment and self were one.

Imagine its surprise, then, when a feature of itself/its landscape talked back.

8.

From the moment his dad came out from beneath the trees, Geoff could tell something bad had happened between him and Commissioner Jane. But Dad would not talk about it. He merely said, "Let's go."

Mom pursed her lips. She looked down at the object she clutched in her hand. It was a painted plaster handprint Carl had made for her when they were kids. Geoff and Dad stood there looking at her till she finally spoke. Her mouth barely moved.

"I'll leave my gift," she said, almost too softly to hear. "I won't be long," and she went over to the wall.

Geoff glanced over at his friends, who were gathering near the buffet. "But I'm not ready to go yet."

Dad's expression congealed into anger. "We're going!"

Geoff may have been a little taller than his dad, but he had a good deal less bulk. He had no intention of going back and watching Dad pace and rant while Mom stared at the walls. He stood. His heart was racing. "I want to stay."

"You'll do as I say."

Geoff felt his jaw muscles twitching. I'm seventeen, I'm seventeen, he thought. he thought. I'm an adult now. I'm an adult now. "I'm staying." "I'm staying."

"Don't take that tone with me."

Geoff said nothing, but stood his ground. Dad looked over at Mom, who stood nearby, staring blindly at the memory wall. Geoff eyed her, too.

"Fine!" Sal snarled. "Do what you want."

Bile rose in Geoff's throat. Let's not fight. Let's not fight. The words would not come. "All right, I will." The words would not come. "All right, I will."

He turned his back on his father and went over to his friends, who were piling food on their plates. All three eyed him nervously. He saw his dad steering his mom away through the crowds, and felt like punching a hole through the memorial wall. "Let's go spin a few turns."

Most bikers used "go spin" or "spin the rock" to mean running orbital races, but Geoff and his friends used it in a different way. They had a secret hideout, a stroid not too far from Phocaea's...o...b..t. "Go spin" meant take a trip out to Ouroboros.

An old miner named Joey Spud had left it to Geoff. It was a hunk of nickel-iron about a tenth the volume of Phocaea.

Joey Spud: that's what everyone called Geoff's old friend. Not Joey, not Joe, not Joseph. n.o.body knew his last name. Joey Spud, like all the original miners, had been an independent operator who blasted, tunneled, cut, and burned a living out of the precious minerals locked in the asteroids' substraits.

Joey Spud had been a big shot among the First Wavers. At the tender age of twenty, a greenhorn fresh from the moon, he had staked one of the best claims in Phocaea Cl.u.s.ter: a twenty-kilometer-thick hunk of nickel-iron with rich veins of gold, platinum, and uranium ore. Some even said it must be a hunk thrown off of El Dorado (El Dorado was the mythical solid-gold-platinum-uranium core of Juno, the broken planet that gave birth to the asteroid belt.) Joey Spud's luck had turned when-as he put it-they had brought those d.a.m.n nanites Up to hollow out 25 Phocaea and build the city. It was that Funaki woman, he had said. Chik.u.ma Funaki was a famous First Waver, like Joey. Geoff had actually met her once, at a party Commissioner Jane had thrown. She had been so tiny, so mild-mannered and polite. Even at thirteen he had stood head and shoulders above her. He remembered feeling he might accidentally harm her if he spoke too loudly; it was hard for him to credit what Joey Spud told him about her.

Joey said she had come Upside as a miner's mail-order bride in her late teens. After her husband died in a mining accident, Funaki had gotten big ideas. She got together with the banks and made a deal, and to hear Joey tell it, ruined the place. Funaki and the local banks had gotten Downside investors involved and worked out a deal with the s.p.a.ce Meanies, the biggest miners' co-op. Soon the other co-ops wanted in on the action. Nanite mining came to the Phocaean cl.u.s.ter.

Not to Joey Spud, though. He had continued to operate his own retro-tech business as the decades ticked past: working his claims, prospecting among the stroids on the far side of the sun, blasting and digging, hauling house-sized nuggets to Phocaea occasionally to exchange for cash.

For a while he had held his own. But once the bugs got going, he had told Geoff, they were so much quicker at tapping out the nodes that the precious metals markets were glutted. The price of uranium and platinum and gold had all plummeted. By the time Geoff met him, he was old, sick, and poor, missing a foot and an eye-barely surviving, living mostly off his savings. But Joey Spud was stubborn, and he had worked his last and best claim till the day he died, the year before.

Before he died, Joey Spud had taught Geoff a lot: how to repair and drive the big machines, stabilize a mineshaft, calculate an orbit, test a stroid for precious metals; survival tricks if you ever got stranded out in the Big Empty. And he had listened when Geoff was mad at his dad and mom, or had a fight with his friends, or was glum about something that had happened at school. Geoff would rant or mope or vent, and Joey Spud would just sit there, propped up against one of his machines, whittling weird little gnomish creatures out of a potato, or scratching his b.a.l.l.s, and grunt sympathetically. Geoff would head out to visit him every so often-maybe once a month or so. It was a weird friends.h.i.+p and his biking friends ribbed him, but Geoff liked the old guy. And Joey Spud always seemed glad to see him. And even though he seemed worn out and irritable, he still seemed content in some way, like he had done OK by his own lights. And he told great stories.

Geoff remembered one conversation in particular. It had been shortly before Joey Spud had died. It was one of his usual rants against the changes that had happened in recent decades, only for a change he did not seem irritated. Just thoughtful.

"They brought in the bugs," Joey Spud told him, "and that meant they needed methanol to feed them. They started bringing the big ice Down from the Kuiper Belt. That was when the worm turned. The townies, they're so dependent on the nanites now, the whole lot of them'd die in a heartbeat if anything was to happen to their bug juice, or that ice that feeds 'em. They're no more than a bunch of bug-junkies."

And d.a.m.ned if the old man had not been right.

Less than a month after that conversation, an acquaintance of Joey Spud's had notified Geoff of his death. Geoff had attended the service (over the objections of his parents; the old miner was a well-known crank, and not well liked among Zekies, and maybe his parents thought Joey Spud was a pervert or something). But Carl had stuck up for Geoff, and his parents had given in. Afterward, Joey Spud's acquaintance handed Geoff a sealed container, which held a letter and a deed. The letter was painstakingly written in archaic dumbpaper and ink, and it said: GEOFF, WHY YOU WAS INTERESTED IN ME I'LL NEVER KNOW BUT YOU BEEN A GOOD FRIEND AND I'M LEAVING EVERYTHING TO YOU. HERES THE DEED. THERE AINT MUCH ORE LEFT IN THAT OLD STROID BUT NICKLE AND IRON, AND AN a.s.s FULL OF SILICATES. I TOOK MOST OF THE GOOD STUFF BUT WHATS THERE IS YOURS. TAKE THE DEED TO THE LAND OFFICE. AND DON'T SHED TEARS, I HAD A GOOD LIFE AND I BEEN READY TO DEPART THIS "MORTAL COIL" FOR A WHILE NOW.

JOEY SPUD.

Last year, Ouroboros had crept to within a few hours' ride of the treeways, which meant Geoff and his buddies could afford to go out there occasionally. They had ridden their bikes out to check it out, used the maps to do some exploring, and that was when Geoff learned that Joey Spud had plugged his tapped-out tunnels with ice. Not enough to save the cl.u.s.ter; Geoff figured it would take a lot more than a few old tunnels' worth of water and methane to bail the cl.u.s.ter out of this mess they were in. Still, there was quite a bit-maybe even enough, they figured, for a round-trip ticket Downside for all four of them.