Neurolink (11 page)

“Son, don’t speak aloud. Just form the words in the back of your throat. You know, articulate subvocally. I can sense your muscle movements. I’ll hear you, but other people won’t.”

Dominic curled his fingernails into his palms. “As soon as we get back to Trondheim, I’ll have you surgically removed.”

“Sure, son. First, find the Net Link.”

Dominic literally gripped his short hair by the roots. When he let go, he felt better. He chewed the inside of his cheek and tried to think. A nano-sized NP was living in his eye. Right. He had to stay very severely composed in order to deal with this new information. He drew a deep, calming breath, then stood up and stretched till his vertebrae popped. Next, he scrubbed his face with his bare hands. Finally, he smoothed his hair, brushed dirt from his silk shorts, and knotted the drawstring tighter around his empty stomach. He was ready. He could do this.

“Talk to me, son. My only interface is live chat.”

“Don’t start the father-son business.” Dominic shouldered his way to the wall.

“I dote on you, boy. I remember every day of your life. Who knows you better than me?”

Ignoring the voice, Dominic studied the solid steel. He was more desperate than ever to find the way out, but all he encountered were welded seams and layers of thick gray paint. Still no opening.

Not far away, he noticed women sorting a pile of rags. It was almost comical how much pleasure that sight brought him. He had to smile at the irony as he reached his long arm between their bodies and clutched a few pieces, whatever was closest. He got fraying orange polyester, a strip of white plasticene and one square meter of textrose, stained an uneven dirty gray. First, he used the polyester to thoroughly blow and wipe his nose. Then he tore the other rags with his teeth, ripped them into strips, and sat on the deck to wind them around his bare feet. His new footwear made a poor fit, but it was better than nothing.

“Richter left us here for a reason,” the NP ranted.

“To make ZahlenBank richer.” Dominic got up and started moving clockwise around the wall again.

“To keep the markets alive, boy. The markets feed everyone.”

Dominic sidestepped along the wall, sliding his hands over the steel to search for hidden switches or concealed sliding panels. He didn’t want to think about his father just then. He didn’t want to remember their last bitter year, the tedious quarrels over deals. Money. Always how much money. Every argument seemed so crucial. Now, what did it matter? The only thing he cared about was finding that stairway up to the bridge.

“According to my sensors, that’s an exterior wall you’re fondling,” the genie announced. “Nothing on the other side but ocean. You won’t find a door.”

Dominic pressed his aching temples. “You’re saying the perimeter search is futile.”

“Big news. What is this, your third time around?”

Dominic stood on tiptoes to see across the dim, muggy deck. He could make out several new partition walls, but if this deck had a stairway, it was invisible. Protes squeezed against him on every side, and when he elbowed their bodies away, they ricocheted right back. The heat. The stink. What was he doing in this place?

“To hell with it. I’ll hijack that bathysphere and get out,” he said.

“You can’t leave!” The NP’s voice radiated through his eye like a solar flare. “You have to find the Net link!”

Dominic tried to shove his way back toward the bathysphere dock, but the crowd had a natural spiraling current that pulled him along with its own gravity. He tried to fight it, but the mob had grown too thick. Its circling tide carried him around like a piece of lightweight flotsam. Finally, he gave up resisting, and in no time, the crowd’s random orbit brought him to the brink of a wide stairwell opening down into the floor. This was so unexpected, he almost tripped and fell in. How had he missed the opening before? Bewildered, he peered down into the lighted steel shaft, where a young woman sat on the stairs, humming a tune and braiding her blue-black hair.

She glanced up and winked. “Hi ya, Nick-O.”

“YOU
finally showed up. I’ve been waiting all morning.” Qi lounged on the steep, ladderlike stairs with one ankle crossed over the other, flashing her merry smile. With her hair pulled back in a short untidy braid, the dark, slanting planes of her cheeks stood out, and Dominic thought she looked more alien than ever.

“Who is this person?” the NP demanded. “My files need an update.”

Beside Qi sat two uniformed protes, and they were laughing together as if they’d just shared a joke.

Dominic bellowed, “Major, you deserted me!”

Her two friends glanced up. One was a pasty, red-haired man of Euro descent. He stared just past Dominic’s head and wouldn’t make eye contact. The other was a small, sallow Asian woman with stooped shoulders and a sad, plain face. She was not especially remarkable—yet something about her eyes caught Dominic’s attention. She seemed familiar. Had he met her before? He couldn’t look away from her. Qi whispered a few words, and the two protes hurried away down the ladder.

Then Qi climbed up a couple rungs to meet him. “Nick-O, remember our cover story. Better not call me major.”

He scowled. “Who was that Asian woman? I’ve seen her before.”

“Ane Zaki? She was born on this ship. Maybe you saw her photo in a file.”

Ane Zaki. He turned the name over in his mind. After a moment, he said, “I’m not in the habit of studying prote files,” just as the NP said, “I don’t clutter my memory with prote files.”

Qi pinched his arm and shushed him. “Don’t say ‘prote’! These people consider it a slur. I mean it, Nick. Don’t use that word again.”

With some difficulty, he shook off her grip. “I demand to see the captain. Take me to the bridge.”

Almost simultaneously, the NP said, “The Net link should be on the bridge.”

Dominic clenched his teeth, then tried making silent words with his throat muscles. The subvocalizing was easier than he expected. “NP, we need a better working arrangement.”

“Anything, son. I’m here to help.”

Dominic bit the inside of his cheek. Then he drew a calming breath and subvocalized, “You’ll be more helpful if you speak only when I ask a specific question. Agreed?”

“If you think that’s best.” The NP sounded miffed.

Dominic spoke aloud to Major Qi. “I’m here to negotiate, and you’re here to guide, correct? So guide me to the bridge.”

“Put this on.” Qi tossed him a smelly pullover tee shirt laced with holes.

He held the thing at arm’s length. “You expect me to wear this.”

“C’mon, Nicky. Unbend. You need a shirt to meet the captain.”

“I didn’t realize the
Benthica
had a dress code.” He held the rag at arm’s length.

Qi raised an eyebrow. “The
Pressure of Light
. Remember that.”

She seemed less playful now, and that suited Dominic fine. With only a slight widening of nostrils, he pulled on the grubby shirt. It was too small, and it bound under his armpits, so he flexed his muscles and ripped a few more holes.

Counter to all logic, Qi said the captain was stationed belowdecks, so they had to go down, not up. Another annoying delay. But the captain would be a key information source, and with better information, Dominic could finish his job much faster. So he backed down the ladder, holding the grimy rungs with both hands.

The vertical steel shaft smelled of fungus and paint. Two ladders ran down it, and the space between them was so narrow that Dominic couldn’t help but rub against protes on the other ladder. At each deck, a catwalk attached the ladders to a bulkhead door. Two landings down, Qi stopped at one of the catwalks and led him through the bulkhead into a passage so congested, they had to walk sideways. He glimpsed a man shaving pale stripes in a woman’s eyebrows and a young girl making music by rubbing the rims of glass jars. Juveniles were scratching designs in the wall paint, but he didn’t have time to see much because Qi moved fast. She took three left turns, then a right—he memorized the route. No way was he going to forget how to find that bathysphere. It was still his surest hope of escape.

“Tell me about this captain,” he said, following on her heels. “Does he have authority to negotiate?”

“
She
will give us five minutes, as a favor. Her name’s Gervasia. I figured you would wanna meet her.”

Dominic subvocalized, “NP, do you have anything on Captain Gervasia?”

“She’s not the captain. She’s a prote. Like I said before, I didn’t clutter my memory with prote files. I’m nano-sized. I can’t exactly store the entire Ark inside your eye.”

An old couple was bending over a smoking brazier, toasting a piece of seaweed, and Dominic started to say something. Open fire shouldn’t be allowed on a submarine. But what was the use? This ship had no execs to enforce order.

Qi’s braid swung between her shoulder blades as she walked. He spoke to her back. “Your Org bosses didn’t give me much of a briefing. What are the miners’ demands?”

“Nick, I don’t know anything more than you.”

“Right. Splendid arrangement.”

Dominic kept himself in shape at his gym—every exec did—but he wasn’t used to walking in shoes made of rags, stepping over sleeping bodies and climbing down ladders. His sinus pain was clearing up, but he still had a nasal drip, and he’d lost the silk scrap he called a handkerchief.

“Major, I need an antiviral tab,” he said.

“Just Qi. Get it straight, Nick.” She fished the tab from a pocket in her uniform. “This is the last one I have. You decide when to take it.” She put it in his palm and curled his fingers around it. Dominic immediately popped it into his mouth.

They found the captain sitting alone in a cramped workstation, dictating an entry into her log. Her desk faced a broad round window looking out on the seafloor, but the view was blocked by a solid wall of underwater debris pressing against the glass from outside. When the captain glanced up, Dominic drew a quick breath. Captain Gervasia was stunning. A willowy blonde with round blue eyes, just the feminine type he preferred. Unconsciously, he straightened his shoulders and thrust his chest out. The woman frowned.

“You asked to see me. I can’t believe anyone asked to see me. I’m the captain, you understand? The captain of a ship that doesn’t go anywhere. Never will go anywhere. We’re sunk to our eyelids in a garbage dump. See here, look at these controls. I’m a genius with these controls. I can put this tub through a needle’s eye. I can stand it on its nose and spin a pirouette.” She slapped the controls with her palm. “They’re frozen. Locked down till the next ice age. So what did you want to see me about?”

Her complaint caught Dominic by surprise, but he decided the arrogant tone suited a captain. When he tried to see what she was writing, she immediately blanked her screen and glared at him. She intrigued him.

The major spoke up. “Captain Gervasia, my name is Qi, and this is my friend, Nick. We’re new.”

“New. Everyone’s new. The whole world is new. What am I supposed to do about it?”

Dominic didn’t like her self-important whine. Still, he sat on the edge of her desk and crossed his arms to show off his biceps. “Gervasia. That’s a lovely name. Belgian, isn’t it?”

It was Gervasia’s turn to show surprise. “You’ve heard of Belgium?”

“Who could forget that beautiful coastline? My people came from Holland.” He tilted his head with a wistful, faraway air.

Qi snorted, literally snorted through her nose. Sometimes Dominic didn’t know what to make of the major’s mood shifts.

“That’s my boy! Pour on the charm,” said the NP. “Schmooze this bogus captain and make her talk about the Net link.”

“My family lived in Brussels,” Gervasia said, “before it sank in the English Sea. The floods took everything good in Euro. Only trash floats to the top.” She leaned back in her chair and rested her knee against the desk. Her downy face would have been perfect, except for the glum way she stuck out her lower lip.

Dominic slid closer. Dare he take her hand? She might be offended if he moved too fast. “I know how you feel, Gervasia. People like us, we appreciate the past.”

“My town is fifty meters underwater now,” she said.

“It’s a tragedy.” Dominic lowered his eyes with a grief so sincere, he almost believed it himself.

Gervasia lifted her proud chin and nodded.

Very slightly, he leaned toward her, angling his face so his wide, sea-colored eyes caught the light. His hand crept along the desk and stopped just short of her fingertips. “Gervasia. Is that the name of a flower?”

Qi plunked herself between them and sat on his hand. When he jerked back, she grinned wickedly. Then she turned to Gervasia. “Captain, we saw divers with welding torches. What are you building?”

Gervasia’s exquisite mouth twisted out of shape. “Paradise in a pile of trash. It’s the council’s ego. They’re erecting a monument to their stupidity. I tell them we need to run, and they sink us so deep we’ll never move again. We’re a target. Dead in the water. Who listens to me?”

Dominic motioned Qi out of his way, but she ignored him and stayed put. He craned around her and spoke to Gervasia. “This council, they sound like amateurs.”

Gervasia threw her head back. “Our gallant governing body. You should run for office.”

“Get her to talk about the Net link,” the NP purred.

Dominic’s jaw muscle quivered. The NP was proving a supreme annoyance. He had to consciously relax and breathe through his nose. Then he squeezed Qi’s upper arm, hard enough to make his point, and glibly shoved her away.

“At least your broadcast can’t be traced, Gervasia. That signal disguise is ingenious. I have a communications background myself. Maybe you could show me the Net link.”

“Oh hallelujah, our marvelous Net link.” Gervasia tilted her chair back on two legs and rocked. “The council moves it every day, as if that makes any difference.”

At that moment, the lights switched off, and more alarming, the air exchangers shut down. Darkness. Total silence. Dominic felt a jolt of hard fear. He whispered, “Did life support just go off-line?” Before anyone could answer, the power sputtered back on.