Neurolink (13 page)

“Nope, down. Trust me, Nick.”

“She’s a bloody liar!” the NP shrieked inside his eye.

Qi was already descending a ladder in yet another crowded steel tube, and Dominic could see her blue-black hair swinging through the rungs below. He thought of the bathysphere, docked at least five decks above his head, and the Net link located somewhere above that. But he had no idea how to find a ladder leading up.

“The Net link has to be on the bridge!” he shouted over the hubbub.

“What’s your obsession with the Net link?” she called back. “We have to see why the oxygen’s out of kilter.”

“This is a distraction,” Dominic and the NP said in unison.

Then Dominic subvocalized, “I’ve had enough of this echo effect.”

“Okay, okay, consider me muted,” the NP said.

Qi had already disappeared in the shadowy press of bodies. This tube held three ladders, with barely enough room for people to squirm past each other. As Dominic started down, someone kneed him in the back. He didn’t relish being left alone among all these protes. “Major, wait for me!”

Thick curls of paint crumbled off the metal rungs and stuck to his hands. When he swung out to let some rowdy juveniles pass, his bare leg brushed against the wet, corroded wall. “Delightful,” he said through clenched teeth. Everything looked grainy, like a low-resolution video.

“Your tunnel vision’s getting worse,” the NP said.

“Thanks for the news flash.”

“Be snide if you like. I’m sampling the air, and I read a 12 percent oxygen deficit. This spy girl’s delaying you on purpose. What can a banker do about the oxygen level?”

“I assume you have her profile in that famous quantronic memory of yours.”

The NP chuckled. “If you ask me, her file’s been doctored. Parents allegedly dead. She signed up with the Orgs at age nine, and the WTO locked her file on grounds of security. Ha!”

“Thin.” Dominic thought about this information as he climbed down the ladder. “She joined the Orgs when she was nine?”

“Ask someone for directions to the upper deck,” the NP said. “Don’t follow her down. She’s tricking you.”

Dominic glanced up the ladder shaft, and for an instant, he thought he saw someone watching him. A dwarfish face with beady black eyes. He squinted for a better view, but the face vanished in the crowd. Had he imagined it? Mucus streamed from his nose, and he began to cough. On top of everything, his head cold was the crowning insult. His foot slipped off the rung, and he plummeted, but fortunately, the landing was just below.

Qi helped steady him. “You okay?”

“Splendid.”

He pressed one hand against the ladder and peered into the shadows above. No dwarfish face. No one in the crowd paid him any special attention. It must have been his nerves. Another coughing jag seized him, and he bent over.

Qi had given him that last antiviral tab maybe an hour ago, but its effect was already wearing off. He wanted a drink of water. Or a nice hot cup of caffie with thick foamy creamer and a dusting of spice. And a scone, yes, with bitter black choco chips. How long had they been on this hellish submarine? He’d completely lost track of time.

Slowly the lights flickered back to normal, and as soon as Dominic got his cough under control, he laid his hands on Qi’s shoulders and looked her in the eyes. “Let’s remember why we’re here, Major. The miners’ broadcast disturbs the markets, so we have to stop it. Because the markets feed everyone.”

He felt odd echoing the NP’s words. After a beat, he continued, “We don’t have time to deal with the ship’s infrastructure. Now be a good girl and help me find that Net link.”

“For the last time, don’t call me major.” Qi wet her fingers in her mouth and scrubbed his chin. “Yuck, Nick-O, you’re a mess. Be reasonable. We need time to figure out the politics here so we can negotiate. That’s our mission, right? To negotiate?” She leaned her weight against him and grinned. “Am I right?”

When Dominic didn’t answer, she went on. “The sensible thing is to boost the oxygen level if we can—so we’ll survive long enough to accomplish our mission. Now be a good boy and nod if you agree.”

“Forget her, Dominic. I’ll guide you to that Net link. Climb that ladder, boy.”

Dominic ground his molars with an audible crunch. The idea of a pint-sized computer ordering him around made him want to smash his fist through a wall. He was no flunky. He was Dominic Jedes, president of ZahlenBank. He would decide when to break with Major Qi, and this wasn’t the time. He wanted to figure out her game.

Qi grinned wider. “I see we’re in perfect accord.”

The ship’s respirator was two levels farther down the ladder, and Dominic gripped the flaking metal rungs till his breath came in shallow gasps and his knees felt ready to buckle. Worse, he could barely see. Either the lights were actually dimmer, or oxygen deprivation was clouding his vision. The walls were sweating, yet he found himself shaking with cold. The good news was, his nose was so clogged that he couldn’t smell.

Negotiation. His mind still churned over the idea. Why did the Orgs want him to negotiate instead of simply seizing the ship? Qi could have led an army of cops here the first day. The Orgs could have arrested these rebels, and the markets wouldn’t have skipped a beat. Instead, they seemed to be shielding the miners and making the crisis worse. What was their angle?

“You can bet they have an angle,” the NP said. “It’s some new plot to split up ZahlenBank.”

Dominic gripped the ladder in his fists. “Your blasted nanoquans are reading my thoughts!”

“That would be a sweet trick.” The NP laughed. “No, son, I’m not psychic. We just think alike. That’s what makes us ideal partners.”

We don’t think alike, Dominic wanted to roar. I’m human, and you’re a set of algorithms. When he tried to sub-vocalize, phlegm clotted his throat, and he coughed.

“You okay?” Qi called out.

He backed doggedly down the ladder and said, “Are we there yet?”

Qi kept descending, and Dominic followed. Once again, he sensed someone watching him, and he caught a pair of eyes shining in the dim light above him, a thin face vanishing in the crowd. But it might have been his headache. His cold was merciless.

“Over five thousand runaways,” he subvocalized. “How did they escape our surveillance?”

“They had help,” said the NP. “The Orgs are using them to get at us.”

Dominic agreed, but he refused to second any idea from the genie. He wiped sweat from his forehead. Maybe the Orgs wanted him to die on this submarine—their weird sense of justice.

“You can still back-trace my route to that bathysphere?” he subvocalized.

“You keep harping on that. Trust me, son, you won’t need the bathysphere.”

A moment later, a swarm of insects flew into Dominic’s face, and when he tried to bat them away, they weren’t there. Just imaginary black spots in his vision.

“Steady, boy. The oxygen’s dropped to a 14 percent deficit.”

Dominic hugged the ladder and drew several deep breaths to clear his head. His heart thumped violently. He didn’t want to suffocate in this stinking metal coffin. Finally, he said, “Take me back to the bathysphere. Once the air goes bad, that broadcast won’t last long.”

Light strobed through his eye. “Long enough to screw us! Every second that message goes out, more evidence piles up against ZahlenBank. Do you want the Orgs to win?”

Dominic scrubbed his left eye with his fist. The flash left a bright orange afterimage on his retina.

The NP continued, “I’ll lay odds those prote leaders have a private stash of air, and they’ll hole up and keep broadcasting till they’ve totally fucked us.”

“Why aren’t they already dead?” Dominic asked. “You’re the genius. Give me some answers.”

The NP’s voice dropped a level. “My greater self probably knows by now. I’m an abridged version, remember?”

Again, Dominic silently cursed the major for destroying all his Net nodes. This genie in his eye was useless. Perhaps the markets had already crashed. He’d give a fortune for a market report.

“I’d give a billion bucks for a market report,” the NP said.

Far below, Qi’s laughter echoed like distant, lively music. “Nick, I think we’re there.”

He sneezed and rubbed his nose on his grimy shirttail. On the landing below, Qi was strong-arming the door lever, and when it popped open, he heard the waffling whir of the submarine’s respirator pumps. At least the electricity was still on. Qi made a funny face and beckoned him with a sweep of her arm. His curiosity was aroused. Might as well find out why she’d brought him here. He jumped heavily down to the landing and followed her in.

Dominic had a vague theoretical notion about how a ship’s respirator worked. He knew electricity was involved. Pumps sucked murky ocean fluid into a reservoir, where it was sterilized with ozone. Then by some electrochemical process, the fluid was made to decompose into its various components, breathable oxygen, heavy and light minerals, organic compounds, toxic waste and a limited amount of pure H
₂
O. The ship probably used most of these materials one way or another. As for the oxygen, it was added to freshen up the recycled air supply. Most respirator systems also included microfilters and caustic soda chambers to clear the air of infectious agents and carbon dioxide—when the equipment worked properly.

The respiration process was energy-intensive, and as Dominic studied the tangle of pipes and cables and shuddering pumps, his curiosity mounted. The miners hadn’t received fuel in weeks. No wonder they were experiencing brownouts. He couldn’t conceive how they kept the respirator working at all.

Just then he swayed, and the room went black again. He sagged against a column and hugged it with both arms and pressed his forehead to the wet steel.

“Dominic!” The NP sounded frantic. “This isn’t a power outage. You’re losing consciousness. Fight it, boy. My own dear boy, fight it!”

Dominic didn’t want to faint. He could hear the major bounding ahead with her usual lanky energy, and he didn’t want to appear weak in front of her. So he bent over and put his head between his knees and waited for the dizziness to pass.

“Deep, slow breaths,” the NP urged.

Slowly, his vision returned. When he could stand again, he staggered closer to the machinery and pretended to be studying the layout. The pipes were rusty, and fluids pooled on the floor under dripping leaks. He rubbed his bleary eyes with his knuckles. The sheathing on the electrical cables had cracked and deteriorated, leaving long stretches of bare copper wire. This tech was worse than obsolete.

“Qi, I expected you earlier. Is that the banker? Tell him not to touch anything.”

Dominic squinted to see who had spoken. Red hair. Freckles. He recognized the pasty face. The man standing beside Qi was one of the two uniformed protes she’d been talking to earlier. Dominic wondered if that small Asian woman was there, too, the one who’d seemed so familiar. He stumbled forward, and the nearer he came, the uglier the red-haired man appeared. His frizzy mane was cut square above (he ears like a hedge, and sickly freckles spotted his cheeks. For a mouth, he had a straight white slit with no sign of lip. The oddest thing, though, was the glass-and-steel contraption he wore balanced on his nose.

Spectacles, Dominic recalled the archaic word. The man had made himself a pair of spectacles to correct his vision. The two glass lenses were so etched with scars, they obscured his eyes, and the wire framework showed many twists and kinks. Still, the apparatus clung to the man’s face as if it belonged there.

Dominic’s mind was fuzzy. He stared at the spectacles and subvocalized, “Why didn’t this man have vision surgery?”

“Not covered by prote medical plans,” the NP answered.

“Right,” he said aloud. For the first time, it struck Dominic that a large fraction of workers must have poor eyesight. No wonder so many of them couldn’t read. He’d always puzzled over that.

“We’ve talked about this before,” the NP went on. “You know our system can’t afford med care for 12 billion people. We have to concentrate resources where they’ll do the most good.”

“Among the execs,” Dominic finished the sentence. He pictured Tooksook’s milky corneas and thought about the simple procedure to remove cataracts.

“Don’t go soft, boy,” the NP warned.

About then, Dominic’s knees buckled, and he sat down—whomp!—on the scummy steel deck.

“Nick, you’re green.” Qi hurried over and knelt beside him. She grabbed his ears and turned his face toward the overhead light tubes. “Millard, he’s gonna faint again. You have to do something.”

The red-haired Millard twirled an old-fashioned writing instrument between his fingers and seemed to weigh the evidence. “Oh, very well.”

Millard crossed to a control board in short, mincing steps, and Dominic saw him adjust a dial. After that, the room went very black.

“Nicky. Nick-O.”

He came awake with a gasp. Qi had snapped a vial of ammonium carbonate under his nose. He was still in the respirator room, still sitting on the floor—in a puddle, he noticed, of nasty blue oil. The red-haired Millard still stood at the control board twirling his pen and playing with dials. Only a minute could have passed.

“This is imprudent.” Millard tapped his writing instrument viciously against his pant leg. “I’ve said it once. I won’t repeat myself.”

“Yes, Millard. I hear you.” Qi bathed Dominic’s face with a damp gauze pad. It felt like heaven. Dominic didn’t think to ask where she’d found it. When she offered him a sack of water, he seized it and gulped. She said, “Do you feel better? There’s more oxygen in the air now. Take a deep breath.”

As she helped him stand, he tottered and clutched her arm before finding his balance. The room had grown lighter, and he could see more clearly. He sneezed twice and gestured for the gauze pad, which Qi promptly handed over.

She said, “Nick, I’d like you to meet Millard, the ship’s engineer.”

The red-haired man minced forward and stopped. He tilted his head to one side and stared at the floor, refusing to make eye contact. Abruptly, he nodded. “I was rationing the oxygen. It had to be done.”

“Millard, show Nick your calculations.”