Neurolink (21 page)

“Dominic, you sound like you wanna see these lunatics win!”

He barely heard the NP. He was watching the people on the platform call out job openings and write on their slates. “The matching hall,” he said to himself, “of course.”

Colored lights exploded across his retina. “Remember which side you’re on! These protes wanna destroy ZahlenBank.”

“No, the Orgs want that,” Dominic said. “They’re using these protes as game pieces.”

“Game pieces? They’re fucking runaways. Son, your mind’s turning to mush!”

Dominic didn’t bother to answer. Benito was fidgeting, so he set the boy down on the stone floor. “Stay close, Benito. Come when I call.”

Benito immediately dashed off to watch a young man painting pictures on scraps of sheet metal. Dominic observed from a distance as the painter sketched a quick caricature of the boy with a few brushstrokes. At once, Benito squatted on the floor and began to draw with his pencil, but the young man gave him a piece of metal instead.

“Let the kid go. He’s found his mentor,” said the NP. “We have barely seventeen hours, and our tunnel’s straight ahead.”

Dominic still didn’t answer. He watched Benito and the painter exchange drawings and solemnly admire each other’s work. Turning around, he saw the same exchange enacted in a dozen more scenes, people trading handmade items and raw materials in plain barter. Without the expertise of bankers or attorneys or regulatory agencies, this matching hall had bloomed like a beautiful life-form. Too bad ZahlenBank’s surveillance web didn’t reach into this place. This would make a rich data source for the Ark. Dominic knew this embryonic marketplace would continue to grow in a multitude of unforeseeable directions, and he wished he had the time to stay and witness it, perhaps offer a suggestion here and there, a gentle tweak.

“You look lost,” someone said.

A trim, middle-aged man with iron-colored hair was standing at his side. The man wore a neat mustache, and he stood with a stiff, military bearing. Like most protes, he was shorter than Dominic. “Maybe you’re lost in thought,” he said with a quick smile. “What happened to your eye? You got a real shiner there.”

Dominic touched the swollen tissue where Benito had hit him earlier. He’d almost forgotten the black eye, not to mention the whack on his jaw and the lump on his head. His face roust be several shades of purple by now.

“I’m Massoud. Ship’s bursar. I think I know who you are.”

“You’re in charge here?” Dominic shook the bursar’s outstretched hand. “I have some questions.”

“You’re the coin dispenser. Nick. Am I right?” Massoud pinched his mustache and rocked on his heels. His eyebrows rose and fell three times in quick succession. He seemed to pulsate with energy. “You like coins? I’ve got a ton of ’em. I’ve got all the copper scrip Nord.Com left behind.”

“Coins? Excellent. Why aren’t they in circulation?”

“You’re joking.” Massoud thumped him in the arm hard enough to leave a bruise, and Dominic tried not to flinch. “You of all people should know why. Because every one of them carries a miserable ZahlenBank logo.”

With some effort, Dominic kept himself from reacting.

Massoud made a rude gesture. “As soon as we build a furnace, we’ll melt ’em down and make toilet bowls.”

“Fucking prote,” said the NP.

Dominic clamped his jaw and held himself very still, thinking how glad he was to be traveling incognito.

Massoud smiled roguishly. “Step into my office, Nick. We’ll talk.”

The NP sputtered sparks. “Seventeen hours, zero minutes, six seconds. Forget this jerk. Son, you’ve got other business.”

“You’re not even sure which way we should go,” Dominic subvocalized. “I want to hear about this market.”

“Do I have to remind you what’ll happen if you fail? It won’t just be the ruin of ZahlenBank, son.”

“I’m not your son.” Dominic ignored the splinters of light chasing each other across his left eye.

Massoud led him to a tall narrow tent made of green plastic tarps wrapped around three stacked sections of metal scaffolding. With rapid gestures, Massoud ushered him inside and pointed to a strip of cloth on the floor—apparently a place to sit. Dominic moved in cautiously. Overhead, caches of strange objects dangled in plastic bags tied with string and bungee cords. Massoud’s office looked like the inner workings of some bizarre plastic grandfather clock. Scattered on the floor were warped and rusted appliances, apparently rescued from the junk heaps. Dominic sat down, and was startled to see an old flat-screen computer flashing a Japanese animation. He noticed a bedroll stuffed in one corner.

“You sleep here?”

“I like to be close to the action.” Massoud folded himself into the remaining floor space and gestured again. Apparently, he couldn’t talk without waving his hands. “Nick, you’re an educated man. So am I. Nord.Com trained me as an accountant.”

Dominic leaned forward. “Then you know the practical uses of currency.”

“They taught you that old scam?” Massoud fished something out of his pocket and stuck it between his teeth. He kept talking with the object in his mouth, and a gleam of spit appeared at the corner of his lip. “That’s the old way. We’re in a revolution, Nick.”

Dominic studied the curious object between Massoud’s teeth. “Some of the old ways make sense,” he said. “Standard valuations. A medium of exchange. You can’t just toss out—”

“Whoa. Hold up, Nick. You’re getting way too serious.” Massoud took out a small pouch and opened the zipper. The pouch was stuffed with matted gray-green fibers. He took a pinch between his fingers and rubbed the twiggy bits together. “You were trained to dispense coins. Naturally, that’s what you believe in. I bet they taught you the money game.”

Dominic frowned. “I studied economic game theory, if that’s what you mean.”

Massoud took the object out of his mouth, and Dominic finally recognized it—an old-fashioned clay pipe. The bowl was charred from use, and the stem had been chewed to splinters. Massoud grinned. “The money game, yeah. Basically, it’s a fight between two guys, each trying to take the most coins for himself and leave the least behind for the other guy. Is that about right?”

“Competitors try to maximize earnings. It’s a primary game rule.”

“My point is, we don’t do that anymore. We let the pattern develop organically.”

Pinwheels of light flared on Dominic’s retina as the NP said, “Why are you talking to this imbecile? You can’t possibly expect a literate discussion.”

When Massoud finished stuffing the bowl with matted fibers, he clicked a plastic lighter, and Dominic watched the flame dive into the pipe bowl as Massoud sucked at the stem.

“Granted, your matching hall works now,” Dominic said, “but eventually, you’ll need a formal management structure to maintain balance. You’ll have to start a bank.”

Massoud’s eyes darted up at him. The fibers in the pipe caught fire, and blue smoke leaked from Massoud’s nostrils. He spoke tensely, as if trying not to exhale. “Maybe ZahlenBank’ll locate a branch office here—if we ask nice.”

Dominic recognized the odor. Ersatz marijuana. This man was getting high on pot. When he offered the pipe, Dominic took it in reflex and studied the chewed mouthpiece.

The NP gasped. “Don’t put that in your mouth!”

Dominic sniffed it, then took a drag and exhaled with a cough. The weed burned his throat. It wasn’t the silky blend he’d sometimes sampled at exec dinner parties. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “Do you have any water?”

Massoud leaned to his left and searched through a pile of objects, knocking some aside. He found a half-full water sack and bounced it in his hand like a flaccid ball. Dominic eyed it.

Massoud said, “What if I tell you this water costs five million deutschdollars? And the only way you can earn that much is by working for me your whole miserable life?”

“I’d say that’s disproportionate.”

“You mean outta whack, right? But look, I got the water.”

“I’ll find water elsewhere.”

Massoud smiled and jerked at his mustache. “What if I cut a deal with the waterworks so I own it all?”

Dominic handed the pipe back to Massoud. “I understand. You mink the markets victimized you. But still, the concept of money…”

Just then, Dominic noticed a bright, beautiful droplet of color to his right, and he turned to see what it was. A small faceted crystal hung on a string in Massoud’s tent, and as it twirled slowly in the air current, its glassy faces shimmered blue-green, crimson and amber. Dominic stared.

“Fine weed, huh?” Massoud laughed and sucked another drag of the ersatz pot. Blue smoke eddied out of his mouth when he said, “Somebody found a bale of this stuff last night in the dump. It’s got a salty aftertaste, but it’s mellow.”

Massoud tossed the water sack, and Dominic turned just in time to catch it between his knees. “See? No coins. The water’s free,” Massoud said. He leaned back against a stack of what looked like microwave ovens and crossed his wiry arms over his chest.

Dominic lost his train of thought. He felt light-headed. When he squeezed a stream of water into his mouth, it tasted like sweet wine. He drank for a long time, then laid the water sack on the floor and vaguely noticed Massoud jerking it up to close the nozzle. He saw a wet spill, dark gray on pale gray, spreading like an organic form across the floor. All the objects in the tent flared with luminous auras, like holographic halos. Perhaps he was dreaming all of this. He touched something that looked like a stuffed black mouse with big ears and white, gloves. He sensed that he and this mouse were exactly where they belonged. A place for everything, everything in its place. He fell off the crate.

“Ow!” His forehead smacked against the corner of a metal strongbox. The left side again, directly above his swelling black eye.

“You did that on purpose!” the NP said.

When Dominic rubbed the wound, it felt like a metal spike driving through his temporal lobe. “I was going to say something vital,” he wheezed.

Massoud slapped his knee. “Coin guy, you need to relax.”

A
moment later—or so it seemed—Dominic came awake sputtering and choking. Benito was squirting a stream of droplets in his face from the water sack. He sat up in alarm, and his brain wobbled in his skull like a wet sponge.

His voice made a croaking sound. “What’s my status?”

“Now you’re asking,” said the NP. “You ignored me before, but after you poison your brain with that toxic marijuana, you ask me for help.”

“I took one experimental toke.”

“You were out nearly an hour!”

Benito watched with big brown eyes as Dominic touched the new gash on his temple. His legs were tangled in a thin blanket on the floor of Massoud’s tent, but the wiry little bursar was gone. He accepted the water sack from Benito and rinsed out his mouth. “Just tell me how much time is left,” he said.

“Nine hours, eleven minutes, forget the seconds. You were hallucinating about a monster coin machine. That reefer had to be tainted. I can’t believe you inhaled it.”

Dominic kicked off the blanket and pushed himself up to his knees. The left side of his head throbbed, and he fought down the urge to wretch. “Benito, stick close,” he said.

Blue smoke hung in layers over the crowd in the matching hall, and the aroma seemed sweeter man before. Dominic saw a lot of people smiling. “That bale of marijuana must be in play,” he said aloud.

Edging through the clumps of traders, he and the boy made their way to the tunnel which, according to the NP’s best guess, led to the
Dominic Jedes
. Near its mouth stood a caffie-colored boy with a pushcart full of water sacks glistening like hazy diamonds. Dominic felt in his waistband for Penderowski’s torch.

“How many sacks for this torch?” he asked.

The boy fingered the torch, then shook his dark head. “Keep it. The water’s free.”

Dominic grabbed a sack and handed it to Benito, then stuffed two more into his waistband.

The NP whined like a repeating loop, “Enough delays. We have to find that link.”

We have to get out of here, or we’ll die, Dominic thought. When he looked back over his shoulder, a fresh group of protes was climbing up on the center stage, donning the colorful coats and hauling up a load of new slates covered with chalk marks. Their movements were quick and purposeful. Were the Orgs really cynical enough to play these people like pawns? How serious they looked, with their rosters of job postings and their urgent mission to accomplish great deeds. He actually admired them.

Silence fell around the platform as someone on stage shouted an employment opportunity. Then a throng of hands shot up, waving white cards, offering their families to work. These laborers had run away from good safe jobs. They gave up secure air supplies, crossed a poisonous ocean, gambled the lives of their children on nothing more than a promise, and now all they wanted was to find work again. The desire to work must run in their veins. Dominic shook his head and smiled as he absorbed the wild tangled vitality of the matching hall. And he couldn’t help thinking again, what they really needed was a bank.

The water sacks he’d stuffed into his waistband kept slipping down because his shorts had gotten looser. He’d lost weight. When he slapped his belly, it pleased him to feel hard flesh. He tightened the drawstring around his waist, adjusted the sacks and lodged Penderowski’s torch between them. Then he herded Benito into the tunnel.

Pedestrian traffic was dense, and not far along, they met an oncoming cart loaded with a rickety unbalanced stack of crates. A woman walked beside the cart, holding them in place while her partner jerked the entire load along the uneven stone floor. Dominic immediately scooped Benito up and stepped into a side passage to avoid a mishap.

“What do you want?” someone said behind his back.

Dominic turned to see who had addressed him. “I’m in a hurry. Urgent business,” he said. He intended to wait there only long enough to let the cart pass, but the sights in the small stone room derailed him. He had entered a science lab. At least mat’s what it looked like at first He saw old-fashioned crucibles and gas jets and specimen jars—and children. The lab was full of children! Three work counters divided the space into sections, and the youngsters sat squashed together on the countertops, with straight backs and hands clasped in their laps, as grim as soldiers. Older adolescents stood against the walls, and toddlers sat cross-legged on the stone floor.