Authors: John Meaney
Absorption (52 page)
‘I don’t know.’
‘But you made your way here without problems.’
‘Not without—’ Roger thought about it. ‘If they were actively hunting me, I wouldn’t have got here as I did.’
Thanks, Dad.
Still looking out for his son, even as he ran for his ship - that was Dad.
‘Superintendent Sunadomari,’ he added, ‘knows you warned Dad, and gave him what he needed to shield against the scanners.’
‘Yes, and no one’s brought charges yet. Either Sunadomari is busy with more urgent affairs, or he intends to keep this knowledge as leverage. A primary social node is a useful asset for him to obtain, don’t you think?’
‘Er, yes.’
‘But then to protect me, to keep me useful, he has to be my friend also. Isn’t it interesting how that works out?’
Roger wanted to yell, but he made his voice soften.
‘It’s Alisha we need to be—’
But one of the steel eagles turned its head, and its eyes flashed yellow.
‘Interesting.’ Xavier’s smartlenses shone for a second. ‘You have access to the house. The student house on campus.’
‘I live there. Er . . .’
He used to. Where he lived now, that was undefined. Everyday life was in suspension.
‘Quite. So between your authorization and my resources, we can poll the system and trawl the logs. Alisha was in the house last night - she called me late - but this morning she’s gone.’
‘And she’s off Skein.’
‘My . . . friends . . . have been looking, unofficially. No sign in public.’
‘What if you make it official?’
‘A young woman is off Skein for a few hours. You think that will launch a high-priority surveillance sweep?’
‘I . . .’ Roger forced an exhalation. ‘You should talk to Superintendent Sunadomari.’
‘That’s right, and I will. But after you’ve gone.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re a Pilot, and that comes with certain abilities. And you care about Alisha.’
‘So?’
‘My friends here’ - Xavier nodded, and three steel eagles rattled their wings - ‘can maintain line-of-sight tightbeam. You access the house from somewhere on campus, and they’ll relay the whole session via here.’
‘I don’t—’
‘This room will appear to be the point of origin for the signal.’
‘Oh.’
‘So if our peacekeeper friends are surprised by your continued presence on Fulgor, and decide they’d like to chat, they’ll think you’re with me, not in the city.’
‘And Sunadomari?’
‘Take one of my flyers, get to campus, interrogate the student house. Then I’ll call Sunadomari.’
‘While other peacekeepers are maybe already descending on this place?’ Roger gestured around the black-and-grey room. ‘Are you going to hold them off by force?’
‘I could, but that isn’t the way.’
A vertical steel cylinder was rotating to reveal an opening.
‘Lift-tube,’ Xavier went on. ‘It’ll take you to the flyer bay. The white flyer is ready to go.’
‘What if we’re already under full surveillance?’
‘Then it doesn’t matter what we do.’
‘I’m not sure we’re doing the—’
‘Get going, son. We need to find Alisha.’
Roger felt light-headed as he pushed himself up from the chair, realized he had eaten nothing, then pushed the feeling away. The lift-tube was waiting for him.
Sunadomari, in his flyer with two of Helen Eisberg’s tac troopers, could not wait to reach the Via Lucis Institute in reality. There were things he did not want to say, even in Skein, not until he was deep inside the physical as well as Skeinware barriers available to LuxPrime’s senior people. But he needed to talk to someone now.
In Skein, a Luculentus with golden headgear smiled at him.
‘Keinosuke Sunadomari, and you’re on your way here in person.’
‘Hsiu Li-Cheng, I certainly am.’
They used in-Skein audio, zipblips of sound, compressing sentences to millisecond-duration.
‘This can’t wait. Can you ensure we’re not being eavesdropped on?’
‘Excuse me, this
is
Skein.’
is
Skein.’
‘Assume you had a rogue Skein designer, with full knowledge.’
‘That’s not—All right, we’re secured.’
Neither of them made any attempt to create in-Skein images of themselves matching the spoken words; but Li-Cheng caused his visual representation to raise one eyebrow - a thousand times faster than reality.
‘Tell me,’ said Sunadomari, ‘about the worst rogue Luculentus of all. Rafael de la Vega.’
‘Problems with the soul-father transfer caused it . . . a long time ago. Come off it, Keinosuke, we don’t even do that any more.’
‘Soul-fathers.’
‘Right.’
Gradually during the past century, the practice had, well, died out. In the past, a Luculenta chose a soul-daughter, a psychological successor; while a Luculentus chose a soul-son. When the elder was nearing a natural death, he or she would transfer chosen fragments of their selves into their chosen successor. Passing on the best to another generation.
It was a form of continuation; it was a form of suicide. For the scanware to work so deeply, it had to deconstruct the neural quantum states. Like smashing an object to see how hard it is, quantum scan destroys the very state it records. The Luculenti minds were heisenberged to random oblivion.
But fragments of their minds survived, incorporated in the next generation, who might or might not be genetic descendants.
‘De la Vega’s mind was screwed up during the procedure? When he received from his soul-father?’
‘That was the finding of forensic examination a century ago. Modern methods might reveal more.’
‘I don’t think that matters,’ said Sunadomari. ‘When I learned the story, it called him a mind-plunderer. Ah . . . He used similar ware?’
‘Exactly. His vampire code - that’s how forensics named it - derived from the old soul-successor transfer systems.’
‘Have you always known this, my friend? Or are you retrieving it from knowledge archives as we speak?’
‘From archive. I’m no historian.’
‘So tell me more about his demise.’
‘He was defeated by—’ Li-Cheng’s eyes widened. ‘Are you playing a clever game, old friend? Or do you truly not know who the Judas goat was?’
‘Judas goat?’
‘A newly upraised adult of mature years - newly arrived on Fulgor - with plexcores embedded purely to tempt de la Vega to attack her. So you didn’t know. But the whole case was classified, obviously.’
‘Tell me.’
‘The person who acted as bait was called Yoshiko Sunadomari. ’
‘But—’
‘Bravery clearly runs across the generations.’
‘Coincidence.’
‘Of course. Or subtle causality, for how many of us’ - Li-Cheng meant Luculenti - ‘have any interest in being a peacekeeper? ’
Sunadomari could dive into his childhood reflections for influences, but for now it was irrelevant.
‘So my ancestor was the bait, and peacekeepers trapped de la Vega?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘I don’t—’
‘Perhaps this should wait until you get here.’
‘If anyone is eavesdropping now, despite your monitoring, will they guess what it is you want to tell me?’
Li-Cheng’s image, in Skein, gave a thousand-times-accelerated smile.
‘If they already possess the knowledge, then they’ll know what I’m referring to. If they have no idea, then I’ll be providing them with classified information.’
‘They know already.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I take responsibility for the decision.’
‘I’m sure your great-great-grandmother would have approved. So. De la Vega expanded his plexcore array, to increase the capacity. He was attempting to plunder dozens of minds.’
‘That would tip his neural systems through phase transitions, wouldn’t it?’
‘If you mean the new mind would no longer think like a human being, you’re right. Yet it would still be a coherent entity, provided the plexcore array functioned correctly. But you can’t scale them up.’
‘Surely you can. The topology is—’
‘Lightspeed delays across synaptic interfaces. The farther apart the processors are, the more—’
‘Understood. I hadn’t realized. He was spreading his mind across physically distant plexcores.’
‘In the end, yes. We have the whole collection in our museum here, the old plexcores. Or nearly the whole collection, at the moment.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘One’s on loan to the multiversity for study. It’s a long-term thing.’
For an entire second, Sunadomari withdrew from Skein, sucked in a breath, glanced at the two peacekeepers in his flyer’s cabin with him, then immersed himself in Skein once more.
‘Let me guess,’ he said. ‘You lent it to a Dr Greg Ranulph.’
‘No, it’s a team effort, but he’s not on the list.’
‘Then Dr Petra Helsen.’
‘She’s on the team. But . . . tell me you don’t think there’s another de la Vega.’
‘There is.’
‘Helsen’s an ordinary human, my friend.’
‘I wonder about that, but she’s no Luculenta. I do know someone who fits the description well, however.’
‘So are you hunting for this person?’
‘SatScan and full surveillance on the ground, but it’s not helping. On the other hand, I don’t think it matters where she is physically.’
‘She’s attacking through Skein?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Then that’s how we’ll find her.’
‘See you in reality, soon.’
The flyer cabin came back into awareness. His conversation with Hsiu Li-Cheng had lasted less than two seconds. Neither of the peacekeepers showed any awareness that there had even been a discussion taking place. It was the kind of thing one grew used to as a Luculentus, the ability to move things along at the speed of thought.
But Rafaella Stargonier was just as fast.
FORTY-THREE
FULGOR, 2603 AD
A steel eagle circled overhead, while Roger stood on the quickstone forecourt, stared at the student house he theoretically still lived in, and used his tu-ring to open up a small holospace. Thanks to the eagle, this enquiry would appear to originate from the Spalding home, where it clanked along inside the hypozone. But not everything depended on Xavier - the turing had spyware functions he had never used before, his last gift from Dad.
‘Got it.’ It was quicker to use control gestures and abbreviated subvocalizations. ‘And show.’
He now had access to the logs from Alisha’s room. Her nipples were so pink on soft white breasts, as she climbed from the bed where she had slept naked—
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