Neurolink (26 page)

As Dominic fought back his next urge to vomit, Benito drew closer and patted his shoulder.

Qi kept talking. “Why do you think Richter spawned a clone so late in life? He planned all along to hijack your body. He wants to live again. Gig told me.”

“No way!” the genie blared in his eye. “You know I wouldn’t do that. You’re my own dear boy.”

Dominic shook with another dry heave.

“It’s the truth,” Qi said.

But he wasn’t listening anymore. He couldn’t look away from the ugly picture in his mind—the NP’s nanoquans marching through his cerebellum, taking over his central nervous system, turning him into a grotesque husk with no will of his own. He wanted to deny it. His father wouldn’t use him that way. His father had been a brilliant, honorable banker. The man who read him stories and taught him to count would not use him like a mindless husk. But the NP might.

Yes, the NP was a damaged copy. Dominic felt sure his father didn’t plan this. Richter couldn’t foresee how his Neural Profile would evolve. Migrating to the Net must have corrupted its data. Yes, it was the genie, not his father. Dominic prodded his left eye to make it hurt.

“If you knew what the NP planned, why did you bring me here?” he asked Qi. “Why take that risk? What do you want from me? What do the Orgs want?”

Qi didn’t answer.

“Your whore wants to make us doubt each other,” the NP said. “You know I’ll bring you home safe. You’re the only thing in the world I love.”

Another fog of wooziness made Dominic shiver. He leaned against the ladder and gazed down through the grill-work at people moving in the shaft. Benito kept softly patting his back, and he couldn’t help but imagine how it would feel if the NP took control of him. Would he be unconscious? Or would he look on, paralyzed, while the NP jerked his arms and legs like a marionette and forced him to give away the miners’ location? He didn’t want to kill these people. He clenched his jaws so tight, his head trembled.

But I’m the one who sentenced Benito to die. It’s me.

Lightning flashed in his eye as the NP spoke. “Okay, I’m glad you know the truth. Imagine the power we’ll have with two minds merged in one body. We’re made for each other, boy. We’ll unite the speed of machine logic with savvy human cunning. Genius beyond reckoning. Did I mention immortality? Those Orgs will eat our dust.”

“I won’t do it,” Dominic subvocalized deep in his throat. “Curse your demonic soul. You can’t force me to murder people.”

“I knew you’d turn to mush.” The NP snickered. Suddenly, Dominic’s right hand rose-—of its own accord—then dropped like deadweight. The NP teased, “See what I can do?”

“Bastard.” Dominic saw his hand rising again, and he clenched his fist to stop the motion.

“Okay. You resist me now,” the genie said, “but not for long. I’m getting stronger.”

Benito whimpered, and Dominic saw he’d sunk his fingernails into the boy’s shoulder. When he relaxed his grip, Benito drew away from him. I’m a monster, he thought.

“Flush me out to sea.”

“Huh?” Qi opened her mouth.

“Through an airlock.” He squeezed her hand. “I’m dangerous. You have to get rid of me. The NP draws power from my nervous system. Kill me, and it dies, too.”

Qi stared at him as if she didn’t understand what language he was speaking.

He leaned closer and pointed to his eye. “Take the genie out of the equation. That should buy you more time. You’ll think of something, Qi.”

She touched his stubbly chin, and the tension which had masked her features eased. She seemed only tired. Yellowish liquid coursed down the shaft wall, and they leaned away from it. A couple of workers climbed past them down the ladder, and they had to shift positions.

He said, “You can trade for fuel on the hot market. Bargain for credit terms. Use your wits, Qi. This isn’t over.”

She drew her knuckle along his whiskery jawline, and her ink black eyes glistened. With a look of pure anguish, she pointed up the ladder.

“Right,” he nodded. The airlock would be above. He stood and steadied himself against the wall. His left leg had gone numb, and he stomped his foot to get the circulation going. “Let’s do this.”

THE
ladder shaft did not twist or curve. It did not lead to a dead end or stop abruptly at a locked bulkhead door. It led straight up, straight as a rocket launch. The rest on the catwalk had given Dominic a second wind, and as he climbed steadily up toward the airlock where he would be flushed out to sea, he glanced from side to side, observing everything. With unusual clarity, he perceived that, before this moment, even when he was lost in the tunnels and fainting from lack of oxygen, he had always believed the NP would save him. He’d been sure he would return safe to Trondheim, to neat, pressed trousers and air-conditioned sanity. But now he understood, even as the NP harangued him to call the guards, that his life was slipping away by the second. So he drank in every detail. Things looked different now.

Portals stood wide open, and he could see workers teeming through the decks. His ship—the
Dominic Jedes
—appeared tight and dry, though repairs were still under way. Welding torches sprayed blue-white sparks, and people called out to each other as they hauled tools and materials into place. Their voices echoed musically against the steel walls. Temporary light tubes had been draped in haste along the passages, and their bright, sagging loops hung like garlands. Often Dominic heard the groan of warping metal as some part of the hull deformed under pressure. Still, the ship had a lightness. A clean smell.

For the first time since he’d arrived in the miners’ colony, he recognized the promise of this place. Given time, the workers would build a real town, a bright, friendly refuge under the sea, where people could live and work and raise families—and even make their own choices, in a limited way. He wondered how the matching hall would evolve, and how soon they would recognize the need for currency. Yes, and a banking system, too. He could have helped with that. He had ideas. For the first time, Dominic began to see the possible values of freedom. Just as he was leaving.

He stopped and gripped the ladder. The rungs vibrated softly as Qi and Benito continued climbing. He ignored the NP’s insistent voice and watched their shadowy bodies. A foreboding of death passed over him like hard vacuum. He felt weightless and blank. He didn’t want his life to end just as he was beginning to understand. He imagined choking on a lungful of water, and fear froze him. That blank wall. No one could say what waited on the other side. Maybe justice. He was the one who had cast the miners adrift. As he pressed a cheek against the coarse metal rung, he knew himself—a cold, cynical murderer. Who was he to judge his genie brother?

He started climbing again. He’d grown deaf to the NP’s tirade, but when a cramp seized his thigh, he suspected the genie had caused it. His limbs felt heavy. The NP was trying to slow him down. He stooped to massage his cramping thigh and glanced down the length of his body. He’d lost weight, and his muscles stood out visibly. More than ever, he looked like his athletic, mountain-climbing father.

I
am
my father, he thought. Bred in a glass dish, trained and conditioned from infancy to succeed the great Richter Jedes, I’m a facsimile. Is there nothing about me that’s mine alone? What makes one individual distinct from another? My father had every major organ surgically replaced. His skeleton was mostly carbon composite. What made him continue to be Richter Jedes for nearly three centuries? And me, am I just another replacement part on a larger scale?

The ladder stopped shaking. He glanced up and saw Benito’s little buttocks swathed in the huge, striped shorts. The boy was waiting for him, expecting miracles. Very well, he would perform. One choice remained within his control. The airlock. One short swim in the hot, sulfuric sea. With a quivering jaw, he mounted up the ladder.

He passed a deck where a gang of workers hauled a large piece of equipment along on a sledge, and he paused to watch them bend in unison to tug at the heavy ropes. It was inconceivable that all this effort would go for nothing. He felt sure these work-hardened miners would find a way to survive. Qi would contact the hot markets. Millard would salvage another respirator pump, and Ane Zaki’s crew would cobble together more turbines. Naomi could build more food vats if she would let people help. Tooksook might persuade her. Again, Dominic imagined the quick flush into the ocean, and he gulped as if he were already drowning.

The NP talked nonstop, and its fireworks nearly occluded Dominic’s vision. “You’re too intelligent to believe that black whore.”

“I can’t see. You’ll make me fall.”

The light show faded, but the NP kept speaking. “Once you find the link, we’ll be outta here. You’ll save the whole fucking market system, Dominic. You’ll be a celebrity. Imagine the party we’re gonna have. The women. Anything you want.”

Dominic gritted his teeth and climbed another rung.

“Your whore says nine thousand protes are here. How does that balance against a global die-off of 12 billion people? That’s what’ll happen if we let ZahlenBank fail.”

Dominic swung to one side of the ladder as two young men climbed past him carrying a heavy crock of soup. Mealtime for someone. He sniffed the salty aroma and felt his mouth water.

The NP shot sparks. “It’s on your head! Do you wanna kick us back to the dark ages?”

Like a rupturing dam, Dominic broke into gales of laughter. Benito had splashed into the soup crock. As the two young men wrestled to snatch him out, Dominic held his stomach. He was laughing so hard, his ribs ached. His emotions were pitched so high, he was almost hysterical. When the men finally hauled Benito out of the crock, the boy’s hair, shoulders and chest streamed with oily soup, and his grin stretched the whole width of his face. “Mmm.”

“Chaos. Looting. The tail end of things.” The NP had never stopped talking. “Make no mistake, Dominic, that’s the price we’ll pay.”

Soup dripped from Benito’s hair onto Dominic’s forearm, and he licked it off. Savory, with a hint of citrus. Then he grabbed the boy and hugged him. It felt good to laugh.

“The role of martyr doesn’t suit you, son.”

Dominic decided to answer. “Do you think I’ll stand still and let you take over my mind?”

“She’s lying about that. We’ll be equal partners.”

“Screw you.”

“Nicky, are you coming?” Qi called down from above.

He started to shout an answer, but for a brief instant, he glimpsed her unguarded expression. Her anguish unsettled him. It reminded him of what he was about to do. He whispered too softly for her to hear, “Wish I could have known you better, Major Qi.”

She started climbing again, and when she reached the top, her image was silhouetted against the bright round opening. Then she clambered through and disappeared. Benito followed close on her heels, and Dominic felt a wave of dread. Let it be quick, he thought. I hate the ocean. He climbed the last few rungs humming aloud the tune Djuju had taught him, jamming the NP’s tirade.

Qi was waiting quietly with Benito. She’d shoved her blue-black hair behind her ears, and Dominic noticed again how striking she looked, despite her fatigue. She beckoned him to follow, then turned and sprinted away. She was leading him to his death. Why was she in such a hurry? Of course. Every minute he lived, the NP in his eye grew stronger. His very existence put nine thousand people at risk.

“Billions will die,” the NP buzzed. “If you fail in your duty, it won’t be just ZahlenBank. The other big Coms will fall like dominoes.”

Nine thousand or 12 billion, which statement was true? Once, he’d been very sure of the answer. Once he would have done anything to save ZahlenBank and avert a market crash. He’d been brought up to weigh people in a scale like coins. If ZahlenBank failed, civilization would be kicked back to the dark ages, his father used to say. Dominic pictured the miners crowded in dank, grimy corridors, eating scraps and suffering the ravages of disease. It occurred to him to wonder, which dark ages would that be?

Lightning strobed across his retina. “I’m not a monster, son. I’m just thinking of the greater good! Sacrifice the few to save the many. You used to understand that.”

Dominic saw Qi disappear into a narrow passage, and he followed several steps behind. Just as he entered, the passage walls began to twist and flow like liquid. I’m hallucinating, he thought. Either the air’s going bad, or the NP is already controlling my brain!

He clawed his way along the passage as blue shadows surged up the walls and gushed across the ceiling in waves. Swaying forward, he put out his hand, expecting to tumble headlong, but when he closed his eyes, there was only the slight motion of a ship rocking on its moorings. He opened his eyes and saw the windows.

Windows! A row of them along one side of the passage. He stumbled over and pressed his face against the thick warm glass. Outside, he could see the ocean. Underwater floodlights illuminated the area near the ship, and welding rigs threw bright strobing arcs through the water. Liquid shadows heaved up and down the passage walls like turbulent surf. He wanted to laugh. It was the ocean casting these drunken shadows, not his rotting brain. The effect was an optical illusion, like an amusement ride at a juvenile arcade. He wiped his mouth with his arm.

Then he sucked in his cheek and bit down hard. Soon, he would be out there breathing that poisonous water.

Soon, but not yet. This was his first view of the outside world in days. He leaned against the glass to drink it in. The mountains of junk stood out clearly—crushed vehicles, chunks of concrete, barrels and crates of unmarked waste. And there, maybe two hundred meters away, lay the
Benthica
. No, they called her the
Pressure of Light
, he reminded himself. She lay half buried under an Everest of cable and metal boxes. What were those boxes, old computers?

The NP whined at the edge of his awareness. “You won’t let the bank fail. There’s too much Richter in you.”

Dominic ignored the genie’s words. This place was a treasure trove. Surely the workers could find what they needed in this continent of junk to produce all the energy and oxygen and food they needed. He began to feel hopeful. He pressed closer against the glass to see the flank of his own ship, the
Dominic Jedes
. He counted seven, no, eight other wrecks clustered nearby. Divers with their curious bubbling tanks swarmed over the hulls, cutting and grinding and patching. His vantage was high, and as he looked down on their work from above, he felt the ship sway again, almost imperceptibly.