Mappa Mundi (26 page)

Calum Armstrong was on a flight back to England already. He drank black coffees and listened to the engine sound change and the vibration echo in his body as they reached sufficient altitude to go super-sonic. The tremor in his hands wouldn't die down. He kept thinking of Charlotte, his wife. She'd be cursing him now from her grave, for allowing Natalie to become fouled in this mire, letting Guskov take control of the situation with his persuasiveness. He didn't even recall now what had made the arguments seem so powerful.

He rubbed his shoulders against the seat where his back rested against it, as if he was trying to scour them. But nothing relieved the sensation that he was coated in filth. Of course it wouldn't, and wasn't
that so interesting, knowing so much about psychology but still being its plaything?

He took two aspirin. They didn't touch his headache. He knew they wouldn't. He knew so goddamned much, but he wasn't the one to save her. That sly, fop-haired fool had done it. Dan, whom Natalie liked so much and kept in employment when no other lab on Earth would have him. It set him to thinking that maybe her judgement wasn't so bad after all and he smiled with unstoppable pride.

My girl.

What have I done?

But the accident was totally unforeseeable, that was true. As to its cause and the results of the Selfware run on Bobby X—he didn't believe the reports. They didn't add up to anything except hysteria and the accounts of eyewitnesses too confused to make sense. Human beings did not vanish into thin air. Any explanation claiming such a thing was pure wish fulfilment.

Calum ground his coffee cup down on its saucer and gripped the handrests beside his seat until he could feel the struts beneath the soft padding.

They didn't. It was a fact.

She wouldn't.

Would she?

Jude walked home the nine blocks from the bar, trying not to breathe too deeply of the city's late-night humid air. Kitchens vented odours of Thai, Mexican, Indian, and Chinese cooking, one after the other. The popular Arabic coffee houses strung veils of smoke around his face on the next street. From windows above the scentsations of the evening's mellow legal highs drooped to road level in soft, invisible blooms. At times like this he remembered the high, clean air of Montana with the wind from the north, sweeping off Canada and its uninhabited vastnesses. The sophistication and choice of the city paled by comparison with that prairie air, even if the Arctic blasts did enjoy tearing warmth out of his skin and coating his hair with fine sheens of ice so that he could hear the strands chiming faintly against each other.

He was looking at his feet, not stepping on a crack, thinking about Fort Detrick and his suspicion that every face in the stolen file had at some time belonged to the same man. From his left pocket the ten dollars he'd put aside in change for the panhandlers went without his seeing a single one of their faces as they oiled up from the shadows, murmuring. Perhaps they were the same person, too, doubling back on the easy marks and relying on their desire not to look too closely to get away with it. He wouldn't have been surprised. There was nowhere like a city for learning how to see properly; what you had to notice and
what you shouldn't, under any circumstances, allow to exist. It was an ability of the middle class that was ripe for exploitation.

Was it possible that Yuri Ivanov, Mikhail Guskov, and the list of other identities belonged to one man? What did that mean? Why had it happened? If they were, physically, the same person who had been cosmetically or otherwise altered that was one thing. But he'd read the entries more closely since the first night and there were far bigger differences involved than that. Nationality, mother tongue, qualifications, skills, and psychological profiles: all of these were unique. It was not as though switching them was as easy as changing clothes. Anyone could change a name or a passport or a face. But could anyone be so versatile that they were capable of moving from one life to the next in such a complete way—new job, new associates, new everything?

Jude was wondering what it added up to, and again why and, horribly,
how
he had obtained the information, when he was startled by the apartment messaging his Pad to tell him that White Horse had returned.

He ran up the steps two at a time and burst through the half-open door. He could hear music and there she was, sitting on the floor, playing cards and looking up at him as though she'd never left. He got down on his knees to hug her.

“Where the hell have you been?”

For the first time in an age she didn't immediately wriggle away and cool-stare him. He could feel a lot of tension in her that wouldn't yield, either. When he drew back and sat by her she shrugged.

“I got your message about the machine. I went to get rid of it.”

“And and and? C'mon, that isn't it. You didn't go to Fort Detrick on your own.” He sat back on his heels and scrutinized her face. As with many of the People hers was no easy giveaway of her feelings. But she was pale, there were dark circles under her eyes, and he could see her struggling to hold in what was on her mind.

“Is that it?” She nodded slowly and turned up another three cards, looking down at her Patience game. “I wondered where it was.”

“Who was it?” Jude tried to look her over unobtrusively. She didn't seem hurt—no more than she had been when she left, anyway. Her rat's-tail dreadlocks were tied back with a bandanna and the burns on her jawline and neck shone hot pink and oily with medication.

White Horse thought a while and turned over more cards.

“If they told you not to tell me…”

“No,” she said, interrupting him. She put up a Jack and two tens. “They want me to tell you to keep on investigating. They said if I didn't that we would lose Deer Ridge to the mineral development proposal.” She'd got her cool back now. She finished her dealing and tidied the deck in her hands. “Can they do that?”

Jude's mind reeled. He didn't understand the connection at all, “You mean, can they influence the judge's decision?”

White Horse nodded and began another round. She waited for his answer, the cards moving with metronomic accuracy in her hands.

“I guess that goes a way to telling me who they are if they can. Why say it if they can't? Did you believe them?”

She nodded without looking up.

“Fuck.” He ran his hands through his hair. “Are you okay?”

“Mmn hmmn.” She took out a nine and another Jack. “They want me to get a case together like I planned. Find a big-time lawyer. Go to court. Stage demonstrations. Get AIM on the case.”

Jude's mind felt like it had been blown out. He couldn't think. He'd already had enough to drink but he wanted another one. Instead of going to get it he leaned against the sofa and closed his eyes tight, listening to the insistent drum White Horse had chosen to listen to and the snap, snap of the cards as she dealt.

Deer Ridge. The oil exploration. The mindware test. The threat of eviction from the reservation. White Horse's abduction to Fort Detrick. How did they all add up together?

The coal and oil thing had been going on for over two years now. As domestic reserves had started to dwindle, following the boom
development of India and the African Allegiance nations who had imported so much at such vast expense to fuel their industries and their motors, the search for new supplies had become more urgent. Having exhausted all its own land the government had begun to legislate so that search and development was permitted on private land.

Any contractor could go to the county courthouse, apply for a search permit in a limited area, and begin tests. People whose properties were affected had to be compensated and, if the search was successful, their cooperation with any subsequent extraction was rewarded with large cash handouts and substantial share options in their own “microcompany” that would be a subsidiary of the contractor's. Most people were glad to become overnight millionaires. Those who objected were allowed an appeal. If they were turned down they were evicted and compensated at the market rate for their land and homes.

Deer Ridge had fought and sabotaged its way through site testing by Thomson Cushener, a large consortium that had located some small oil and mineral deposits on the reservation. They were now at the appeal stage. Thanks to White Horse's vigorous lobbying, nobody on the land wanted to move out of their home, no matter how attractive the price. They knew that if they did then their land would become part of the USA in perpetuity—and that they would not tolerate.

Deer Ridge's appeal proceedings were in adjournment at the moment, pending further investigations on the “findings” of Thomson Cushener, but they were due to be heard in another couple of months. Oil prices from the Arabic suppliers weren't too bad right now, so it hadn't seemed like they would lose; other places had a lot more to offer. Jude had considered it a safe bet that the appeal court would find for the People. Considering the political blowback of not doing so when the Native American issue was a sympathetic cause for a wide range of voters, he didn't see it happening. He had certainly never connected it with this bizarre “test” of a corrupt medical system. Could
they be linked? The oil wealth involved didn't seem nearly high enough. It couldn't be the money side. It just couldn't.

“I don't get it,” he said finally and opened his eyes. White Horse's game was nearly completed.

“It isn't the oil,” she said, looking down at the last five cards. “It's because of the FBI test. And it isn't just the Feds. The army, too.” She turned her head and looked him in the eye. “I heard them say they had support everywhere. People who are against Micromedica being used as a Perfection tool. They want to stop the work. They made Deer Ridge happen so that you and I would start to ask questions about the government's research plans. They thought you would be high up and safe enough to cause trouble before the others found you. They want it in the media. A trial on TV and the newsnets. They want the Democrats out, too.” She made a hand waggle that showed that last part was chickenfeed by comparison.

“They?” Jude wondered aloud.

“Christian Right. Conservatives on both sides. Worried minorities. Moral majority. Lots of people are afraid of Micromedica,” White Horse said. “Like gene therapy. They don't want anyone to have it, unless they can control it.”

Jude wasn't sure he agreed with her but he said nothing. It was true that people feared Micromedica as one of the “supertechnologies” that seemed to promise humanity, a godlike power over natural events, but most people were as yet unaware that there was an application for the mind as well as the body—NervePath. But he didn't think that a scare story about that would be enough to cause a public outcry—too technical and remote from ordinary affairs—although all those who'd complained for years about government mind control would have a field day. First he'd need proof of misuse and the willingness of the authorities to use it without individual permission.

“Will you?” she asked.

“Will I what?”

“Investigate.”

And save Deer Ridge
, he finished in his own mind.
And probably save you and me. I'd be surprised if that wasn't part of the deal, too. And save the free world.

Jude felt once again the sensation of branching paths and set destinies as he looked into his sister's face; sensed that he was walking into something there was only one way out of. One way or another it would be a nightmare. A mess. It would chew him up and spit him out and he might never get anywhere with it at all. She would see it as him paying his dues to their roots and all the time he would be doing it because he would anyway. For no reason except that it was the Thing That Jude Does. What did it matter how you reasoned about your reasons? You were a list of habits recycling themselves or you were on a great quest in your own head. Who the hell knew the difference?

He was so glad she was okay.

“With forces like that ranged against us,” he said, “how can we fail?”

White Horse nodded. A small, sweet smile flitted across her face and she turned the five cards face down on the floor so that she could clasp his hand in both of hers. “The People will help you.”

“The People had better keep their asses out of this one and look for a new home,” Jude said, suddenly exhausted by the day. “I don't think it has a lot of mileage in it.” He wanted to go home even as he was already in it. Everything he'd said and done in the last forty-eight hours made no sense to him at all. It was purely reflexive. Never mind Ivanov, he didn't think he could have passed an identity test himself at that moment, not even the one that checks for a basic coherent personality.

“Is there any vodka left?” he asked.

“I'll get it.” White Horse let go of his hand. But he was asleep before she got back.

Mikhail Guskov read the reports and accompanying files on the Selfware test and put them aside. It was the early hours and he preferred
to do his thinking in total darkness to keep his sleep disturbance to the barest minimum. Sleep was precious and slow to come, as though his mind had accumulated inertia along with its knowledge and braking its momentum was a longer and tougher job than it used to be. Some kinds of knowledge had much more weight than others.

The footage of the incidents was possibly doctored, he had to admit that. But there was no motivation for anyone to do so, unless someone involved was trying to play a joke. The suppressed hysteria in the accompanying text suggested that they weren't, unless it was Bill doing the writing, but Guskov had no illusions about Bill's sense of humour. The man had settled to do the job for a mere two million and a glorious
dacha
, a change of identity and a supply of young women from any dubious source that his old colleagues in Russia could provide. It was the kind of price that expressed only the extreme mediocrity of the ideals of such a human being as would accept it. Whereas, if this were a hoax, it was delightful.

Guskov had played and replayed the recordings to see the mystery patient, X, appear to disappear. He'd seen something like a half-tone version of X's body tear through the same space as Doctor Armstrong's fully fleshed one. But it was possible to see all kinds of unreal things on film, or in life: the brain was a marvellous interpreter, and he had long since learned not to trust it. But in this case the convincing factor came from the output data of the NervePath scanner; first where it had read Patient X, and later when it had taken information from Dr. Armstrong herself.

Guskov understood that they had shut down the system infecting her and he was glad, and more than ready to cause trouble for the Europeans if they attempted to interfere with his instructions again. It was one thing to run on with Patient X as the subject—admittedly a loss to his family but hardly to humankind as a whole—but quite another to allow a talent like Dr. Armstrong's to be thrown away for the sake of data. If this was as it seemed, then there was nobody more potentially useful on Earth than Natalie Armstrong. He had already added her name to his list and posted
it on to Delaney. He wanted to be sure Dr. Armstrong arrived as a participant, and not as a subject. To that end Calum Armstrong had been an invaluable partner, convincing the Ministry authorities to release her into his care instead of holding her prisoner.