Deception Well (The Nanotech Succession Book 2) (15 page)

“It won’t be me. It won’t be any of you here tonight. Ados! Fully half the population of this city—we can’t vote. We have no voice in our own future.

“But the real people can change that.

“The election is in ten days. We need ten thousand signatures to put two initiatives on the ballot. One to lower the voting age to twenty. One to allow citizenship for our immigrant population. And after that, we can link on our collective future.”

The DI in his retina finally tweaked his optical system, getting him a rough silvered image of gleaming faces. Their shock rolled in on him, immediately cooling his tirade. He became aware of his own heaving shoulders, of the sweat that poured off his face and the exhaustion in his muscles like a slow poison more potent than any trank.

Whispering broke out around him, sibilant arguments. The ado mob teetered on a pinnacle. He watched them, waiting to see which way they would fall.

It started by the balustrade, that ado howl again, and then the scattered hooting of a nascent ovation interspersed with deep bass screams of
L-o-t!
Ado boys feeling high, a natural contest to see who could be more wild. The hooting swept across the promenade, and an angry roar accompanied it as ados began to process what Lot had said, not really believing it, not yet, but asking themselves
What if it’s true?
and
What would Silk be like if we could vote?

There were so many of them; to have that kind of power! The Heights seemed to rumble, howl. Lot raised his hands again and shouted over the cacophony: “Ten thousand signatures! And I know where to start!”

He twisted around, sliding off the shoulders that supported him. The crowd loomed around him in silvery, anonymous volume. He pressed through, disturbing their array like a magnet in a field of iron filings. They clung to him. They fell in behind him as he moved swiftly through the streets. They
believed
in him. He’d caught them in Jupiter’s cult tide and it felt good. He could give them what they needed, he could fill up all those chemical sockets in their brains that needed filling, that they couldn’t feel whole or safe without having filled. He could draw out of each and every one of them a neurotransmitter mix that would keep the innate human fear of death at bay. He could give them the illusion of a future, and maybe that was all anybody needed: faith. Better than food and drink and sex and kids and love. Faith is love at its most intense and selfless. Society was built on faith.

Overhead, the swan burster had begun to expand into a feminine oval. Lot felt as if a goddess had opened her eye to look down on him. Yulyssa.

Yulyssa was well over five hundred years old, and she had known Jupiter.

The congregation was strung out behind him in a long running wave that filled the narrow streets between the Heights and Spoken Verities. Lot had brought them to the base of a tower. He gazed speculatively up at its face. “Yulyssa lives here?” he asked, and looked to his side, surprised to see Urban still there.

“I think so.”

Lot stared at him. Alone among the crowd, Urban did not seem to be touched by the melting, silver wash of faith.
Why?
Lot felt suddenly uneasy. He wanted to patch up the deficiency, or eliminate it altogether . . . but not now. A sense of urgency had come over him. He looked again at the tower. “Yulyssa will sign the petition. Once we have her support, half the city will follow.”

Urban laughed. “You’re crazy, fury. No one’s more real.”

But somebody had already scampered around to the entrance, to check the doors. “We’re locked out!”

“She’s probably not home anyway,” Urban said, his presence like a cold thermal cell in the heated night. “Let’s move this thing into Ado Town, before someone gets hurt. Let the real people come to us.”

Lot studied the building. It had a vertical face, at least twenty stories high. But each story had wide balconies, their rails glinting in the light of the ring. He could climb it. A hedge of oleander grew around the base, but Urban could boost him past that. “Come here,” he said. He crushed a path through the tall bushes, twigs snapping and grabbing at his shirt.

On the other side he faced a concrete wall almost ten feet high. Urban moved up beside him. “You don’t want to do this, fury.”

“Boost me,” Lot said.

A couple of other ado boys came up. They were ready to help. Urban really didn’t have much choice. They picked him up, and when he stood on their shoulders he was able to reach the first railing.

Camera bees buzzed close as he seized two posts of the balustrade: rods cast in a design of stacked human faces, each carefully detailed in natural colors, their expressions ranging across the spectrum of human emotion—delirious, despondent, joyful, furious, bored—gazing out from every angle, reminding him unexpectedly that this city was made by strangers, and these faces—they were the faces of a dead people. Yet they seemed
alive
. . . so real he half-expected them to scream or bite or at least curse him soundly as his hand closed around their tiny features, but they seemed not to have the capacity for movement or for speech.

CHAPTER

11

H
E GRIPPED THE SCULPTED BALUSTER, THEN PULLED
himself up, climbing to the top of the rail. There he balanced on the two inch span while the ado mob packed into the narrow street below, roaring at his antics like some maddened piece of machinery.

He leaned back a little, to survey the distance to the next balustrade. He could reach it without jumping. So he took hold of the posts—just like the first, covered with tiny faces—and pulled himself up again, and to the next one after that, each with the same peopled railings, as if every individual in Old Silk had been represented on the face of this building. Camera bees swarmed behind him.

Now real people began to appear on some of the balconies. They talked to him. Some weren’t happy. But most offered encouragement and advice. A few said they would sign the petition, but most just smiled when he asked. The camera bees picked up the dialogue, and with each non-answer, the ado mob in the street below roared their disapproval.

Before long, Lot’s shirt had become sweat-soaked, and his arms were trembling. Somewhere around the tenth floor, his vision dropped down to a dim representation of shadows. “Yulyssa!” he screamed. “Yulyssa, I’m calling you. Where are you?”

“Fifteenth floor,” said a gentleman in a white beard, who leaned on his railing a couple of floors above, a beer in one hand and an expression of undisguised amusement on his face.

Lot hauled himself up until he was even with the man. “What floor is this?” he panted, breathing so hard he could hardly get the words out.

“Twelve, son. We don’t have a thirteenth floor, so you’ve got two to go.”

“Thanks.” He stood swaying on the railing, ready to reach for the next level, when suddenly he became aware of another presence besides the helpful gentleman. He looked down between his supple black boots to see Ord climbing up the railing beneath him. A slow smile slid across his face. “What are you going to do?” he called to the little robot. “Trank me now?” And he leaped for the next railing, hanging in open space a moment before he caught the posts in both hands. “Go ahead!” he shouted. “I don’t care. I’ll just let go and fly.” He hauled himself higher. Got his feet on the next terrace while Ord extended a long tentacle, using pliant, formfitting suction cups to lock on to the concrete flooring. “It’ll be a bit of a mess,” Lot observed as he scrambled up. “Bit of a mess in the street, but that’s okay. Authority will just scrape it all up and tuck it into cold storage, plenty of room there. Or better yet, serve me up to the city for dinner—” Ord had started to pull itself up on its tentacle, but now it hesitated. “Yum,” Lot said, balancing rather unsteadily. “Scrambled madman—” And the robot slowly lowered itself back down to the balcony below. The tentacle popped free. Lot grinned.

“
Where are the flowers?
”

His head snapped up as Yulyssa’s distinctive voice floated down over him. He saw her leaning on her railing, smiling down from the floor above. “If you climb to a woman’s balcony,” she went on, “you’re supposed to bring her flowers.”

“Oh.” He looked around quickly. On this floor, a wide, open-air terrace fronted the glass doors of an apartment. In an arbor over a cushioned bench there twined a vine of mandevillea, the pink flowers silvered in the ring light. He jumped onto the balcony, an action that brought an immediate yelp of surprise from Yulyssa.

“Lot! I was only teasing.”

He neglected to pay attention. Striding quickly across the terrace, he knocked on the double glass doors. Hardly a second later one popped open, and a little girl stared at him. Only she wasn’t a little girl, he realized on second glance. Despite her size, her apparent age, she was real—as real as Kona, Yulyssa, Clemantine. He felt sure of it. There was something distinctive about the way real people carried themselves, and the way they interacted with the people around them. They seemed buoyed by a warm reserve, a measured calm that Lot could breathe in, but had never managed to adopt.

She told him, “I’ve been watching you.”

He said, “I need some flowers.”

“Oh, you can have that.”

So he plucked a spray of mandevillea, though he knew it was a risk because the stuff leaked a white sap. And sure, two fat drops of the thick, sticky liquid soiled the terrace floor, gleaming like pearls in the ring light. He looked apologetically at the real child. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged, “It’s okay,” and tagged after him to the railing. He put the stem in his teeth, boosted himself onto the railing, stood there a moment taking the measure of space just over his head. Yulyssa was leaning over the railing, laughing hysterically. She was dressed in a close-fitting stretch wrap that hugged her body from breast to knee like a second skin; her five-hundred-year-old body. Her toes curled over the concrete floor. Her bare legs were thrust partly through the rail, and he was half-tempted to grab for them. But he caught the balusters instead, the mandevillea dripping white goo down his black shirt. Yulyssa laughed and laughed, like an ado girl who’d had too much to drink. Lot hadn’t known real people could laugh like that. He felt himself begin to catch her mood.

He hauled out, and flipped over the railing. His boots hit the balcony. He grinned at her, his shoulders heaving while she giggled behind her hands. “I brought you flowers.” He held the spray of blossoms out for her consideration. “Hope you don’t mind.”

She became suddenly quiet. Her ambivalence washed his sensory tears. She seemed on the verge of saying something when a camera bee buzzed past. She glanced at it, self-consciously straightening her shoulders. Then her gaze cut back to him. “I’ll sign your petition.”

From the street below the ado mob roared, screaming her name at the night. But the cheering sounded remote. It struck Lot then that Yulyssa might be acting. She was a mediot. Maybe she was just upping the ratings, playing to the crowd.

Or maybe not. He wasn’t sure. And he was used to being sure about other people’s feelings.

She caught his uncertainty with an immediacy that frightened him. Stepping forward, she put one hand on his and with the other she took the flowers, getting the sticky white juices on her own palm. All the humor had gone out of her. She looked somberly at the camera bee and said, “Go away, Shao.”

That wouldn’t do much for the ratings. The bee buzzed off. The public show was over.

She led him into her apartment. They sat together on the couch, very close, their shoulders touching. He could smell her sex, and it addled him. She felt very warm. She was quite a bit more than five centuries old. “You shouldn’t have gone to see Kona,” she told him.

“He says the city’s dying.”

“Umm. It seems that’s true.”

Lot tried to keep his temper in check. “You knew then? Another secret?”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t a secret to anybody who cared to look. I looked today, after you showed me cold storage.” Her lips turned in a smile of self-derision. “I’ve never been too quick.”

“Yeah,” he said bitterly. “Some people say I’m slow too.” Slow poison? He wondered again why Kona had made his accusations about a Chenzeme influence. It was absurd! But it haunted him.

“Lot?”

He blinked. Yulyssa was gazing at him in gentle amusement. Suddenly he suspected she’d said his name more than once.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“Something Kona said.” He hesitated, unsure if he should tell her. He wanted to trust her. He caught nothing but warm interest in her aura. But the subject left him uneasy. “Kona said some things about the Chenzeme, that’s all.”

Her brows rose in amusement. “And why should that worry you? Kona’s obsessed with the Chenzeme. For him, everything that goes wrong becomes a metaphor of the Chenzeme. They’re the source of his profanity.”

He gave her a guarded look. “It’s more than that.” How much did she already know? “He said there’s been some sort of research project into Chenzeme neural patterns. He claimed . . .” A sudden flush touched his cheeks. “Well, he claimed they’d found some similarities with my neural patterns.” He wanted to smile when he said it, make a joke out of it—
don’t take this too seriously, okay?
—but Yulyssa’s shocked expression quashed that intention.

He could almost feel the heat of thought behind her sweetly furrowed brow. “How could Kona know anything about Chenzeme neural patterns?”

Lot hunched his shoulders, feeling suddenly out of his depth. “From the library, I guess.”

“No. There’s nothing like that in the library. We don’t even know who the Chenzeme were.”

Lot’s flush deepened. Sure. The Chenzeme were known only by their weapons. No one could say what they’d looked like, how they’d lived and thought, or why they’d left such a terrible legacy of destruction. In that vacuum of information it was easy to think of the killing machines as direct representations of the Chenzeme themselves. But in truth there was no reason to believe the logic systems of the surviving weapons reflected Chenzeme thought patterns in any way. It seemed more likely the weapons would operate on artificial protocols aimed at maximizing their dual functions of aggression and self-propagation. “Sorry,” Lot said. “Kona referred to the weapons. Not the Chenzeme themselves.”