Neurolink (40 page)

Instinct told him the NP was bluffing. He couldn’t back down, so he prayed to whatever logic ruled a gambler’s luck, and he answered in a low, dangerous whisper. “Do it.”

The genie sliced its hand through the air, and the satellites erupted with a brilliant blue flash.

“Wait! Don’t kill them! I concede everything!” Dominic lurched toward the globe as if he could shield the miners with his bare hands.

“You give your word? You’ll be my loyal son again, and merge with me of your own free will?”

“Yes. Everything.” Dominic bit his lip.

Instantly, the holographic eruptions froze—like a video on pause. He raised an eyebrow and squinted at the fuzzy, motionless starbursts hovering around the globe. Real laser fire wouldn’t freeze like that.

“It’s just a light show. You bastard.”

“I want your respect, boy.”

Dominic swung around and shouted in the genie’s face. “Then do something I can respect!”

They stood toe to toe, leaning into each other, showing teeth, If the NP had been real, they would have started a shoving contest.

“Look at me. I’m you. We’re Richter,” said the genie. “We built the Ark. We single-handedly turned ZahlenBank into a world power.”

“Power.” Dominic spat the word.

“Our power is what keeps the markets alive, boy. That means food in every belly, coins in every pocket. That means, even though we pissed away our atmosphere, 12 billion people get to keep on breathing. Even your bullshit miners depend on ZahlenBank.”

Dominic held out his hands, almost pleading. “Be dependable. Let the miners trust you.”

The genie’s holographic face went dark. “Hear me once and for all. No deals with protes! Richter wrote that policy in my hard code.”

“Then change your code! Change, goddamn you! Change your mind!”

Dominic balled his fists, but his father was dead. There was no one to bit. He stepped through the hologram as if it weren’t there and leaned his knuckles on the table. A smoky double reflection gazed up at him from its polished surface.

“You ask which version of Richter to be?” he said. “I’d like to tell you to choose a young Richter, one who still believed in honor. But the truth is, if Richter were still alive, he’d be someone new. That’s what we flesh types do. For good or ill, we alter.”

The NP moved around in front of him. “Like the markets?”

Dominic had never thought of it that way before. He pictured the erratic highs and lows of the indexes. Chaotic, unpredictable, forever mysterious. “Yes, like the markets.”

“How do you revise yourself?” the NP said. “What’s the process?”

Dominic’s mouth twisted in a wry smile as he remembered his journey through the tunnels. “Things foul up, you lose familiar ground, you take prisoners when you don’t mean to.”

“That doesn’t make sense. That’s worthless. You have to be more specific.”

Dominic’s left eye watered freely, and he didn’t bother to wipe it. He felt the deal slipping through his fingers. Somewhere real satellites circled the earth, armed with real weapons, and the NP would always have a finger on the trigger. The miners would never be free, because he simply didn’t know how to explain himself to this bit-brain. It was impossible.

For some reason, an image of Tooksook popped into his mind, grinning like a fool and cutting those stale chocolate bars into thirty-eight tiny pieces so everyone in the colony got a treat. The picture was so ludicrous, a half-blind old man sawing away at candy bars with a plastic knife. Not impossible. A matter of division.

Dominic parted his lips. Silently he repeated his father’s words: “There’s no such thing as a simple deal.” Somewhere inside him, a savvy negotiator came wide-awake, and he got an idea.

He turned to the hologram and gestured. “Let’s break this down. You want to control ZahlenBank. I want to finance the miners.” He sensed the NP trying to object, so he raised his hand. “Hear me out. I’ve already agreed to merge with you, but you say that’s not enough. What if I add a sweetener to the deal?”

“Sweetener? Go on. I’m listening.”

Dominic rocked on his heels and smiled. “You need your directors and shareholders to trust you. Well, I can make them love you. With my help, you can give them the one thing they want most—the one thing Richter tried to do for decades and never could.”

“Beat the Orgs’ lawsuit!”

“Correct. Stop the divestiture and keep ZahlenBank intact for good.” Dominic rubbed his eye, and briefly the duplicated world slid together. “Give your investors that, and you own them. I’ll merge with you and help you do it.”

“I see your little scheme. Hell no! We’d be ruined!”

“I haven’t explained yet.”

“You wanna start up a new bank!”

“How did you know that?” said Dominic.

“Talk about bad precedents. You’re toying to con me, boy.” Then the NP snickered. “Fuck, it just might work.”

Dominic frowned. “Have you invented some way to read my thoughts?”

“Yeah, I have.” The NP snickered again and tapped the left side of its head. “We’re already merged. Have been for an hour. Your fancy new eyepiece, it’s a little design of my own.”

“This came from you?” Dominic covered the artificial eye with his hand. He should have known. Runaways couldn’t afford that kind of expense.

“Direct interface,” the genie said. “I’ve invented a way to browse your real-time cognition? Call it my bit-brain style of empathy.”

The NP’s hologram flickered and went inert, frozen on standby mode with an inane smile plastered across its square open face. Dominic flinched when the voice vibrated inside his eye. “Your circuits are wet, boy. Stringy and wet. I don’t like wet.”

The new eye felt warmer than before. With a shudder, he imagined the NP roaming at will through his private thoughts. A spasm pulsed through his cheek, his neck muscle cramped, and the scarred left side of his face itched like a rash. How long, he wondered, before his identity began to submerge in the genie’s vast sea of data?

He gripped the table edge and drew a sharp breath. No time to waste. He had to close this deal.

“At least you understand my idea,” he said. “If a competing bank starts up in this hemisphere, ZahlenBank no longer holds a monopoly. And by law, the WTO can’t force our breakup. Case closed. You win.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m already there,” the NP said. “But you wanna bring in the fuckin’ miners. That’s nuts!”

“That’s the key that makes it work.” Dominic paced with nervous energy, twisting his hands in his pockets. “This new bank has to belong to total outsiders with no connection to ZahlenBank. Otherwise, the WTO will smell collusion.”

“Fuckin’ Orgs.”

“Exactly.” Dominic paced back and forth, remembering the vibrant confusion of the matching hall. He went on eagerly, “You need me to make this happen, NP. I know the miners. I can convince them to start a bank.”

His artificial eye pulsed with sarcastic laughter. “A prote bank. That is so pathetic.”

“It’ll stop the lawsuit,” Dominic said. “That’s what counts. You’ll win your case, and the investors will love you.”

“So you say.”

“You know it’s true. You’ll get everything you want. Me. The bank. Total control. And you’ll even make a decent profit on the miners’ loan.”

“It might work.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Awright, awright. Yeah, I like it. You want a handshake, too?”

Dominic rubbed his damp palms together and moistened his lips. Now the important part was coming. He had to do this perfectly. “Before we ink the contract, there’s one more thing.”

“You want more!” The NP’s voice exploded like wildfire. “Don’t push me, boy.”

Dominic’s shoulder muscles tensed. He gripped the in-sides of his pockets and forced himself to breathe. “Look, you’re getting free access to my every thought. How long will it take to figure me out? You’re a mega-genius.”

“Don’t try to flatter me. I wrote the book.”

Dominic consciously relaxed his arms at his sides. When he spoke next, it was with the firm assurance of a master banker. “One year. I’ll be your bonded slave for one year, then I want out. You’re a quick study. That should be enough.”

“Lifetime contract or nothing!” the NP barked.

“Think about it.” Dominic modulated his voice to a confiding murmur. “I’ll help you beat the Orgs. You’ll humiliate those S.O.B.s. You’ll make them eat your dust.” Dominic paused dramatically, then lowered his voice to a whisper. “What’s that worth to you?”

No answer.

Dominic rushed to the window and peered at his reflection to see what was happening in his eye. The dark iris gleamed. He blinked his mutilated eyelid and thought of Qi’s narrow back running away from him. He wanted to hold her again, to whisper the words he couldn’t say before. There was so much he wanted. He had to take this to the end.

“One year,” he said to his image in the glass. “That’s my final offer.”

“You’re lying, boy. I’m browsing your thoughts, remember? You care too much about those idiot miners. You’ll do anything for ’em. You’ll give me your whole life.”

“But I’ll hate you,” Dominic blurted. Then he dropped into one of the heavy chairs and groaned. He’d run out of arguments. His bargaining ploys were exhausted. Benito, Tooksook, Ane Zaki, they were all running away from him. He watched them recede in the distance. Qi’s blue-black hair swung between her shoulder blades as she sprinted away. One last deal—and he couldn’t close it.

“Yes, I’ll do anything,” he surrendered. “You can have my whole life.” Then he shut his eyes. He’d lost her.

At last, the voice in his head rumbled, “Okay. I get the picture.”

“NICK
. N-I-C-K. Try to say it.” Dominic mouthed the word elaborately. “N-n-n-nick.”

Benito grinned. His black eyes gleamed with mischief as if he were relishing a secret joke. He said nothing.

They sat on the flotation collar around the ZahlenBank van, kicking their bare legs in the warm, late-summer waves of the Arctic. Both of them knew this moment couldn’t last. As the breeze ruffled Dominic’s wet, curly beard and the sea fluid dried on his chest, he gazed up at the smog and waved. Somewhere overhead, the NP watched through a lens.

“How about another swim before we go?” he asked the boy.

They stood together and dove into the oily gray sea. Side by side they swam, one turn out and back. He paddled slowly so the boy could keep up, and they splashed each other and ducked their heads to wash foamy scum off their faces. When they scrambled back onto the rubbery inflated collar, Dominic lay on his side and gazed at the horizon.

“Look at that, Benito. The sunset.”

He pointed west, where blood-colored clouds opened like wounds. This might be the last time they would see a sunset together with naked eyes. In a few minutes, Benito would have to get in line with the others and go through cell hygiene.

The mining colonists had been cycling through ZahlenBank’s fleet of medical vans for the past seven days—all part of Dominic’s new contract with the NP. Now Benito’s turn had come. Soon he would sit in the folding chair and lay his little arm on the padded rest, and the automated doc would inject molecule-size robots into his veins. While he sipped a sweet drink and watched videos, the cleaning robots would spread through his tissues and eradicate every trace of environmental toxin. Cell hygiene would wash him clean, and his flesh would be whole again. After that, he would not be allowed outside without a surfsuit.

Dominic puffed up his cheeks and blew, and Benito did the same. They got to their feet on the slippery flotation collar, took one last look at the scarlet clouds, then stepped together into the airlock. Ane Zaki was waiting inside the van. She sat with her feet tucked under her chair, sipping tea. Goose bumps stippled her pale arms, and a cotton ball was taped inside her elbow where the needle had gone.

“This cell hygiene makes you chilly.” She shivered and smiled. “Like an ice bath.”

Benito climbed into her lap, and she cuddled him.

“We could use a bath. Couldn’t we, boy?” Dominic lifted Benito and placed him in a vacant chair. Together, they watched the automated doc shine a purple light to sterilize the boy’s skin for the injection.

“What do you think of Änderungen?” the NP’s voice hummed inside Dominic’s artificial eye.

Dominic grimaced and subvocalized, “In what context?”

“I’ve been trying out names. It has a nice ring, don’t you think? Änderungen. I’m sick of people calling me NP. That’s not a fuckin’ name. It’s a product description.”

“Does it matter?” Dominic showed Benito how to palm a coin and make it vanish and reappear. He wanted to distract the boy from the auto-doc’s needle.

“Everybody deserves their own name,” said the genie. “From now on, call me Änderungen.”

“You’re in a good mood. Let me guess. The Orgs settled.” Dominic handed Benito the coin.

“Hell yes! We won, boy! I got the call just now. The court approved the miners’ new bank charter and dismissed the lawsuit. And you’ll love this, the Orgs have to eat fifty years’ worth of court costs. Those wet-heads must be blowin’ their circuits.”

Benito waved his empty hands—he’d made the coin vanish! The boy was quick at learning. He pretended to find the coin in Dominic’s belly button.

Dominic laughed and ruffled Benito’s hair. Then he gazed out the van’s side window, where a ZahlenBank air-car was just landing in the gray waves. “So it’s done,” he subvocalized. He’d gotten used to forming silent words at the back of his throat. It came naturally now.

“We have to be in Nome in one hour to dot the i’s and sign the documents. Your transportation’s waiting. Don’t be late.”

Dominic felt no sense of victory, no elation now that he’d finally won his father’s long battle. His vision was clear. The double images had stopped troubling him. Already, smart nanoquans were migrating from his new artificial eye and healing the scarred tissue around his socket. The dark iris has changed color, too. Now it matched his other one perfectly. Sea gray, the classic Jedes’ trait. The nanoquans had cured his skin rash, too. Dominic suspected the ’quans were performing other tasks as well, like smoothing his wrinkles and lifting the loose flesh under his chin. Jedes’ vanity, he couldn’t escape it.