Neurolink (31 page)

Traveling submerged at a depth of twenty meters, they took three hours to cross the Arctic Ocean. Dominic jerked awake when Qi’s automatic timer sounded reveille. He yawned and scratched his belly and rubbed his face. His beard had grown thick and soft, and he liked the way it felt under his stroking fingers. Still half asleep, he pictured his colleagues’ reactions to his new fashion look.

“Are we there yet?”

“Yep. Are you ready to place your call?”

He watched her power up the
Devi’s
small Net link and activate the onboard node. The dull blue frame of a standard browser appeared on screen.

“Call from here?” he said. “No, let’s surface.”

“Safer to stay down,” she said.

“But we’re this close.”

His face must have shown his eagerness, because Qi laughed and tickled him under the chin. “Aw, poor Nick. You miss the sunshine.”

He started to speak, then closed his mouth. His feelings at the moment were too complicated. He didn’t want Qi to laugh at him.

“What the hell,” she said. “They’ll trace us anyway. Let’s go up and catch some rays.”

When she flicked her cybernails, Dominic felt his seat shudder, and the
Devi
rose out of the sea with a frothy crash of waves. Sunlight blazed through the cockpit, and Dominic covered his eye. Tears blurred his vision. The surface! After so long in the dark, he could barely see.

After a moment, he uncovered his eye and tried to focus on the panoramic view through his headband. Another long summer day was passing over the face of the northern hemisphere. To his left, black mountains rose from the purple waves.

“Norway?” he asked.

“Yep, that’s the Varanger Fjord.”

Dominic twisted in his seat and gazed through the window at the craggy peaks of his homeland, less than five kilometers away. He could swim that distance, he knew he could. He could cross those mountains on foot, with or without his father’s custom-made climbing boots. He could walk all the way to Trondheim if he had to. That would be the easy part.

“MAYBE
there’s a compromise. Supplies for silence.”

“What’s come over you, son? We never bargain with protes.”

The NP’s voice flowed from the
Devi’s
Net node like warm breath. This version sounded much more authentic than the genie in his eye. The impersonation was so rich and supple, so true to Richter’s living tone, that Dominic felt old fears and hopes battling inside him. A vivid holographic head rose from the screen and seemed to blush with sudden pleasure. A sheen of sweat dampened its forehead, and its handsome sea gray eyes held Dominic enthralled. The NP had drastically upgraded its interface.

“You’re still in that stealth car? I watched it sink.” The gray eyes leered at Qi, then sliced back to Dominic. “You need a wash, boy. And a shave! Krishna Christ, you’ve been through hell. What’s wrong with your eye?”

Dominic glanced at Qi, who merely shrugged. He resisted the impulse to touch his dead socket. “We’re talking a straight business loan. A standard contract with—”

“We’re talking NO DEAL! Tell me where you are, and I’ll send the guards. This circus has lasted long enough.”

Dominic gripped his seat cushion but managed to hold his features still. “The miners will pay you back. You have my personal guarantee.”

“You vouch for protes? You’re not my son. You’re a forgery. Hold your palm to the screen so I can verify your ID.”

Dominic ground his teeth and pressed his hand through the NP’s immaterial face. When his palm flattened against the screen, the face flickered and re-formed. He hated that face. He hated the way the square jaw moved back and forth. He despised the straight nose and the thick, full lips. It made him want to rip his own skin off.

“Yeah, okay, I recognize the palm print. They’ve brainwashed you, boy. Just come home, and we’ll straighten everything out.”

As the NP spoke, another shape began to stream out from the screen, and Dominic flinched back. But in the small cockpit, he couldn’t draw far enough away. In shock, he watched a shimmering white hand reach to touch his face. A short, thick finger delved into his left eye, crackling with electricity, but his ruined flesh felt nothing.

Quietly, he said, “Looking for your nanoquans? They’re gone.”

“So I find.” The NP raised its holographic eyebrows, and the hand withdrew. “That is a serious loss of data, not to mention the investment. I am not freakin’ pleased.”

Dominic forced a ragged smile. “This deal with the miners, I admit it’s unorthodox. But if you loan this money, the miners will—”

“The miners are fuckin’ debris! When I find that ship, I’ll sweep it up and toss it in a dump.”

Dominic bit his lip, trying not to react. “Let’s calm down and talk like reasonable pe—” He faltered over the word. “Like reasonable bankers. Our priority is to stop the Org lawsuit, correct? So if the miners promise no more broadcast—end of lawsuit, problem solved.”

“The miners’ existence is the problem. We can’t let them set up a haven for runaways. It’ll cause no end of labor troubles.”

“But if they’re quiet—”

“Protes don’t know how to be quiet. They whisper like gutterbugs. Chatter chatter chatter. Freakin’ gossips. You should listen in sometime.”

Dominic rolled his head till his neck made a cracking sound. How could he appeal to the NP’s interests? His father taught him a skillful negotiator had to crawl into his adversary’s mind, understand his secrets, figure out what made him salivate, and play to his greed. Right. He had to crawl into the mind of a bit-brain? The NP was copied after his father. What argument would move Richter Jedes?

He sat up straighter and lowered his voice. “My estate’s worth a million times the value of this loan. Use my money to secure the deal. I’ll pay the interest up front.”

“
Your
estate?
Your
money?”

“It’s my legal property. My inheritance.”

“I gave you that money! Every cent. To hear you talking this way, speaking up for protes—it shames me, son.”

Dominic gripped the little Net node so hard, he nearly tore it off the
Devi’s
console, but he held his voice steady. “Let’s drop the father-son fiction.”

The NP howled with laughter. “Absolutely right. You’re nobody’s son. Richter manufactured us both. I’m intelligent code, whereas you, he jerked off in a dish.”

Dominic took deep breaths through his nose and counted ten.

“Sure, let’s drop the fantasy,” the NP went on. “I like facts better. We’re Richter’s proxies, and he put us here to guard ZahlenBank. But you screwed up the very first day. That’s always the problem with analog copies.”

Dominic lurched in his seat. “Say another word, and I—”

“You what? Quit?” The NP snickered. “You won’t quit. Richter gave you a motivation you can’t resist. I think the word was ‘honor.’”

Dominic put his fist through the screen.

“Well, that was smooth.” Qi brushed shards of plastic from her lap. “I don’t have another Net node. What’s your next move?”

“This.” Dominic grabbed Qi’s hand. He remembered which icon in her light matrix retracted the cockpit cover, so he forced her to prod it with one of her cybernails. Instantly, the
Devi’s
ceiling split across the middle and retracted. “I’m going for a swim,” he said. Then he lurched up onto the cockpit rim and dove.

He pulled long hard strokes, lengthening his spine and stretching his limbs. The Nord.Com uniform hampered his movement, but it felt good to plow through the oily ocean. What did he care about the brown foam lapping in his face every time he took a breath. He’d been exposed to sea fluid before, and seeds of cancer had already germinated in his flesh. So be it. He’d just lost the deal. He’d lost it!

Ahead lay a flat horizon. He was moving out to sea, not in toward the mountains of Norway. With only one eye, he had trouble gauging distances, but that didn’t matter. He never stood a chance negotiating with the digital genie. It was too much like arguing with his father. And he lost all those battles. If he was an exact duplicate of Richter, they must have shared the same innate gifts. Why couldn’t he stand up to his father like an equal? Why did he always feel like a lesser man? Several meters out, it occurred to him that opening the cockpit had probably revealed their position, and that bank guards would arrive any moment to arrest them. He pushed the thought away. Right now, he needed to swim.

After a while, he swung around and headed back to the
Devi.

“Cooled down, are we? You wanna climb back in? I’m making lunch.” Qi swung a ladder over the
Devi’s
flank. As he pulled himself in and shook liquid from his hair, she said, “You blew our cover. Not to make a pun.”

“Stupid, I know. We should submerge.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Qi tossed him a sack of yellow goo and a straw. “Your dear old Da was bound to find us. The
Devi’s
stealth is way obsolete compared to your NP’s new add-ons.”

“I don’t want to be found yet. I have an idea.” Dominic sat in his dripping uniform and sucked the goo, remembering how much he liked the taste of Naomi’s pudding.

Qi slurped the last few drops through her straw. “So where to?”

“Trondheim,” he said, licking his lips.

She crushed her empty food sack between her hands. “Just like that? You’re going home? Giving up?”

He grinned. “I haven’t even started.”

They closed the cockpit and dove straight down, then crept along the seafloor, changing direction often, hoping to outwit the NP’s scans. Hidden in the murky depths, Dominic whispered the strategy he’d formulated. He’d been thinking it through during their long journey across the Arctic. The NP would never approve a loan to the miners. That was a given, he said, rubbing his hands together in nervous admission of defeat. But he owned personal assets. He’d inherited one of the richest estates in the northern hemisphere. He would simply make a withdrawal.

One billion deutschdollars should cover their immediate needs. He’d have to sell some stocks, but that was easy. Giving the miners access to the funds would be more difficult. He planned to set up a new dummy bank account under a fake ID. That would require hacking into ZahlenBank’s Ark, but he had a notion how to do that. He would call his young assistant, Karel Folger. Karel would be glad to help.

When no guards appeared after half an hour, Qi decided it was safe to head for the Norwegian coast. They parked the
Devi
in an underwater cave and swam into a rocky inlet a few kilometers north of Trondheim. Standing on the beach, Dominic peered at the pallid midnight sky. They had one day left. Or maybe less, as Millard would be sure to say. The smog hovered like wool. Dominic heard no air-cars circling above, but still, he felt uneasy.

“Don’t look up!” Qi’s shout startled him. “The satellites might recognize your face. Keep your head down.” She drew a fresh dry Nord.Com uniform from her pack and slithered into it. In the shadows, her dark body was almost invisible.

“We’ll have to disable the logos on these uniforms,” she said. “Every surveillance camera in this hemisphere will be watching for Nord.Com insignia. Ugh, Nicky. You’re all wet.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll dry fast.” He turned away from her, stripped off his uniform and started wringing it out.

“Sweet,” she said, “moonshine.”

Dominic laughed. He’d discarded his filthy silk underwear, and the night wasn’t dark enough to hide his pale buttocks. As he slung the uniform in a circle over his head to spin the liquid out, he said, “How do we disable the logos?”

“We remove their chips so they can’t beam an AR readout,” she said. “I brought along some counterfeits. From now on, we’re middle managers at Lapp.Com. You’re Veltin in HR, and I’m Sanwalt in quality assurance.”

“Delightful.”

“Just remember our new names, okay?”

It took Qi only a minute to replace the chips and reconfigure the logos on their executive uniforms. Her pack held lots of tools. She’d obviously performed such a switch before. Under her hand, Nord.Com’s slanting silver N unraveled and re-formed as a quirky brown quadruped—a reindeer, Dominic recalled—the Lapp.Com logo. He dressed quickly in his damp uniform, while Qi hid her pack among the rocks. Then she slicked his beard down with her fingers.

“We need to find you an eye patch.” She started tying her hair in a knot.

“Don’t,” he said, touching her hand. “It looks better down.”

She shook her hair free. Then she touched his bare foot with her toes. “Sorry, Nick. The Nord.Com aristos didn’t leave us any shoes.”

She led off through the twilight, and he followed, picking his way barefoot through the sharp rocks. Wind whistled around them. Like every landmass that was still livable, Norway’s surface bristled with the domes, towers, rain mills and solar collectors of dense human habitation. Dominic saw it all for the first time, in true color, without the intervention of a windshield or face mask or metavision headband. How bleak the mountains looked, the soil blasted away by winds, the rocks bare and pitted. Black, gray, brown, these were the colors of his homeland. A clabbered dawn gathered in the east, increasing their exposure to the roving eyes of satellites. Qi tugged at his sleeve, and they started to run. Soon they found a dome with an airlock, and Qi knew a trick or two for getting it open.

Inside the dome, refrigerated air swallowed Dominic like a cold bath, and the fresh, sterile scent brought back a glut of memories. He stretched his arms and rolled his neck, relishing the ambient cool, until Qi yanked him behind a column. Their counterfeit chips offered thin protection, she warned him, and if the authorities checked their palm prints, the NP would be on them in nanoseconds. Surveillance cameras scanned every tunnel, so they kept their heads down and slunk along with the steady stream of foot traffic.

Norway’s suburban levels weren’t as well appointed as the executive domes, but they were clean and uncluttered, freshly painted every week to hide the graffiti. Municipal employees grudgingly swept the floors and sprayed antiseptic, and though the halls smelled astringent, they were free of toxins. Dominic slapped his arms to warm up. His uniform wasn’t quite dry, and the chill air made him shiver. At last, they found a public air chute, and Qi fooled the mechanism into thinking she’d fed it a coin. Then they rode its pneumatic cushion down, inhaling the dry empty air.