Geosynchron (24 page)

Five minutes later, all the officers in white had departed, and the
train went back to skimming the ocean's surface at high speed. Of
Quell there was no sign. Jara looked in the direction from which they
had come and saw the white streaks of Council hoverbirds taking
flight.

Ben lightly punched the padded seat in front of him in frustration.
"So ... what do we do?"

Nobody had an answer. Robby walked down to Quell's end of the
car, peered under the chair, and produced the Islander's shock baton.
They all stared at it dolefully for a moment. Then Robby delicately
replaced the baton where he had found it and returned to his seat.

16

Twenty minutes outside Manila, they plunged through the unconnectible curtain.

Jara still had her crash course on Islander lore fresh in her mind, so
she could easily recall how Toradicus had forced passage of the Islander
Tolerance Act of 146, which essentially cost him the high executive's
seat. It also gave the fledgling society in Manila a framework for opting
out of modern technology that all connectible companies and government entities were legally bound to obey-the centerpiece of which
was the Dogmatic Opposition, a formal declaration of Luddism
revolving around a particular technological advance....

But none of that dry research could convey the sensation of
bio/logic programs abruptly stuttering to a halt and multi network
transmissions suddenly cutting off. One second Jara was seeing the
world dressed in all its bio/logically enhanced finery; the next second
she was seeing the world stripped bare of virtual frills.

From here on out, the fiefcorp master told herself, everyone I see in front
of me will actually, physically be in front of me, in the flesh. How odd. She
pictured Quell ripping off his connectible collar and making some
irascible comment about smoke and mirrors.

Benyamin took the passage into unconnectible territory without incident, but Robby Robby had been listening to a peppy xpression board
composition on the Jamm when the music stopped. "We can get this back,
right?" he pouted to Ben. "The Jamm's not gone for good, right?" It was
only the third time Jara had ever seen the channeler lose his cool, and the
frequency of these episodes was starting to get alarming in and of itself.

"Music's still coming through the Data Sea," replied Ben without
raising his head from his pillow. "It's just not on a frequency that you
can feed straight into the neural cortex."

"So how do I get it?" asked the channeler, momentarily vexed.

"You can reroute. There's a bio/logic program that'll transpose the
signal so you can play it on the OCHREs in the aural canal. Here, let
me show you ..." Within seconds, Ben had fixed Robby's Jamm feed
to broadcast over actual sound waves instead of brain waves. Robby
Robby was soon back on an even keel.

But the channeler didn't have long to savor his restored virtual
music box before the city of Manila came into view.

Jara watched the approaching skyline in awe. Manila, capital of the
Free Republic of the Pacific Islands. The last photographs she had seen
of the place must not have been of recent vintage, because this metropolis hardly resembled the picture in her head at all.

It was an immensely tall city, perhaps taller than any Jara had seen
in connectible territories. Whereas the collapsible buildings that filled
modern cities tended to produce a low, curved, organic blend of architecture, the Islanders' ethos of plain practicality had resulted in a jagged,
almost crystalline style. The city had already expanded eastwards from
its historical base until it hit the coastline. Without movable structures
and without large swaths of open real estate, there was no direction for
the Manilans to build but up, like the ancients had done. The ancients
did not have Reawakening-era building materials like flexible glass,
stretched stone, and permasteel, so their cities had largely been straitjacketed in two-dimensional grids. Not so Manila. Here the buildings
had not only expanded upwards, but side-to-side as well. Connecting
corridors floated dozens or even hundreds of meters off the ground, some
cantilevered into space as if flaunting their disdain for the law of gravity.
Jara spotted one building that actually snaked around two of its neighbors in ever-tightening coils. She saw another shaped like a giant T with
immense arms that rested atop four neighboring towers.

There was plenty of time for the fiefcorpers to examine these structures in detail, since the tube train had slowed to a creep as it passed
through the streets. Of course, Jara realized, people without bio/logic safeguards would have no warning systems to keep them from sauntering into the path of an oncoming train. They could literally climb
onto the tracks without sounding any kind of OCHRE alarm. Jara
looked at the faces of the pedestrians loitering right out the window of
her tube car. How could these people live only footsteps away from
death at all times without constantly shuddering at its presence?

The train came to a smooth stop at a station labeled DOWNTOWN
CROSSING/CITY CENTER. As the fiefcorpers grabbed their packs and
slung them over their shoulders, Jara tried not to think what would
happen if this Chandler did not show up to meet their tube. How
would they go about finding a single individual in a foreign civilization of three hundred million? And even if he did show up, how would
they recognize him?

But no sooner had the fiefcorpers disembarked from the tube
when a lean man with crazily kinked hair came running up to them,
looking surprisingly spry for a man in his midseventies. He wore an
olive green uniform that suggested some kind of government or military affiliation.

"Guess we stand out here, huh?" said Jara.

The man gave a curious look at Robby's blue vinyl trenchcoat.
"Like ants in a bowl of sugar," he said. He held out his hand in peculiar Islander fashion. "Name's Bali Chandler."

"I'm Jara, master of the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp," replied
Jara, grasping Chandler's hand for an awkward shake. "This is my
apprentice Benyamin and our channeling partner Robby Robby. Our
channel manager Merri is en route from Luna as we speak."

"So where's the big man?" said the Islander. He peered over their
heads as if expecting the approach of a giant.

Chandler's face darkened considerably as Jara recounted the
Defense and Wellness Council's incursion into their train just outside
the unconnectible curtain. He listened carefully and scratched at the
stubble on his face but said nothing.

"We're kind of in an awkward position," said Jara. "Quell wouldn't
even tell us why he wanted us here. He kept us totally in the dark. So
... aside from tracking down his son Josiah, we're sort of at loose
ends."

"That was smart," mused the Islander. "Always was a wily bastard,
but looks like Borda was on to him anyway." He thrust his hands into
his pockets and stared back down the tube track in the direction they
had come. Jara half expected to see Quell jogging down the track
herself.

"You think he'll be okay?" said Benyamin.

Chandler let out a relaxed laugh. "You've met Quell, right? I'm still
trying to figure out how he escaped from the Council the last time.
Though I guess if he's relying on Magan Kai Lee to spring him ..."
The man rubbed his chin silently for a few seconds, then sighed and
shrugged at the same time. "Suppose we'd better get to Josiah already."

Jara cleared his throat. She wasn't sure if this man's easy manner
should make her feel more or less reassured about their situation. "Do
you think you could ... clue us in on what's going on?" she said.

Chandler shook his head. "Nope," he said good-naturedly. "Not
until Josiah says so. Come on." And then they were off.

Jara had no idea where the Islander was leading them, but she figured they had no recourse but to follow. By the looks of things,
Benyamin and Robby had resigned themselves to staying quiet and
following Jara's lead until further notice. Soon all three of them were
absorbed in the sights and sounds of the Pacific Islands.

Chandler did his best to put the fiefcorpers at ease. Though he had
only actually left the Pacific Islands twice, he knew much more about
connectible culture than Jara knew about the Islanders. He had seen
several Juan Nguyen dramas, he regularly tuned in to some of the more
eclectic channels on the Jamm, and he followed dozens of connectible
drudges on a daily basis, including Sen Sivv Sor, John Ridglee, and
Mah Lo Vertiginous.

Robby Robby looked like he had found a friend, especially when
he discovered that one of Chandler's foreign journeys had been to
attend Yarn Trip's reunion concert in Vladivostok. "Are all Islanders as
hip as you?" he asked with a smile.

"Only the ones who run border districts," replied Chandler with
pride, pointing to a patch on his uniform that Jara assumed to be a
badge of office.

"Run ... ?"

"I guess Quell didn't tell you I'm a representative in the parliament?"

Jara frowned. Quell had told them nothing.

The crowds wandering the streets of Manila were alien in more
than one sense. To begin with, they were simply larger than connectible crowds, a fact Jara attributed to the lack of multi technology.
If you couldn't hop onto a red tile and materialize wherever you
wanted to go in milliseconds, obviously you would spend more time
traveling from place to place. Skin colors were a shade paler here than
in most connectible cities Jara had seen, though by no means monochromatic. And on average, the Islanders appeared to be a centimeter
or two taller than connectibles, though they were not the race of Brobdingnagian giants Jara had feared. Even here, Quell was a colossus.

Most disconcerting was the Islanders' odd notion of personal space.
In the course of half a dozen city blocks, Jara was jostled, poked,
prodded, and elbowed more than she had been in London the entire
past year. People hugged one another and clasped hands to say hello.
They slapped each other on the back and walked arm-in-arm. Jara felt
an instinctive burst of disapproval. Just because you can touch the flesh of
everyone you meet doesn't mean you have to fetishize it.

Suddenly Jara was clobbered by the absurdity of their predicament.
She had spent several hours studying up on the history and the culture
of the Islands, but now that preparation seemed laughably insufficient.
She couldn't even remember what kind of monetary system these
people used. Didn't it occur to you that this mission Quell's hiring you for could be dangerous? Horvil had asked her. And he had been correct.
Without Bali Chandler, she could starve out here, or get beaten bloody,
or wind up in a jail cell for violating some unknown taboo. And parliament representative or not, who knew how trustworthy this man
Chandler really was?

Jara shuddered and quickened her step to keep up.

The four of them were headed towards a line of skyscrapers that
divided the city like the pickets of a fence. Between the buildings sat
an immense public square that might have made excellent parading
grounds for an army. Chandler led them into the square underneath an
archway inscribed with the stern directive to HONOR THE SPIRIT OF THE
BAND OF TWELVE. Jara remembered the Band of Twelve from her readings: the Founding Fathers of the Islander movement, the ones who had
cajoled, bartered, and negotiated (some say swindled) the land to build
a new nation. As they walked past each of the skyscrapers in the square,
Jara noticed a statue in front of each building bearing the likeness of
one of the Band, frozen in an appropriately grandiose posture.

Jara scratched her head. "There's only seven buildings," she said.
"Shouldn't there be twelve?"

"Oh, there will be," said Chandler breezily. "As soon as the government gets the money to build them."

"When will that be?"

"Hopefully before the Earth gets swallowed up in a fiery supernova, but I wouldn't count on it." The Islander stopped and pointed to
the empty spaces at the far edge of the square, which were cordoned off
and piled high with debris from long-dormant construction. "At least
we've got our priorities straight. You'll notice that the five missing
buildings belong to the tax evaders." His tone was jocular, but Jara
could sense an undercurrent of disgust.