No Going Back (21 page)

Another involved activefiber fabric pieces stitched seamlessly together and spread over all of the surfaces of a village’s worth of buildings. You couldn’t see the buildings, but you could see their effects on the fabric as they rose and fell and wandered and morphed from multi- to single-story structures and back again. The activefibers adapted to the changing shape of the fabric so that variations in color and luminosity ran over it like waves. We considered creating a hiding place under the fabric, but the location would be at best a distraction and at worst a trap if we were caught there.

A manmade lake sat in the great northwestern desert region of the main continent. An irregularly edged body of water about a hundred meters wide and twice as long, it was under the watchful eyes of a large group of statues perched on a low cliff at its western end. The cliff aligned with the center of that side of the lake. The statues were gods from more religions than I knew, all looking down on the lake. The artist had hollowed out the cliff so an audience could sit or stand there. The space might once have housed seating of some sort, but now it was empty and large enough to hold Lobo four or five times over. As the sun rose during the day, its light would cut through the water to reveal statues under the surface, hundreds and hundreds of them, men and women and children, singly and in groups, all suspended as if frozen in the midst of some action, hugging and running and waving goodbye and on and on. Holos activated by the intensity of the sun’s light showed above the water the statues that lurked below, so you saw the people both through the filter of the water and in the intentionally shimmery and imperfect holo renderings. Some looked up, others straight ahead, still others down. Smiles decorated some faces, frowns others. Every single one had at least a few tears on its face, all of them weeping, some in happiness and others in sadness, at the joys and trials of life. All of them weeping in sight of their gods.

We landed in the cave under the cliff, and I stared at the piece a long time. I thought of the stories of all the children I’d seen lost, and of their families. I knew so little about most of them. I wondered about their faiths and beliefs. Would each one have been looking up, and if so, at what god? Would they have always gazed forward? Or back, perhaps toward a missing loved one, as some of the statues did? Those who had died young had never had the chance to create their own stories, while the abused who still lived would fight forever not to let their stories be colored by what they had survived.

“This is the place,” I said, “if we have to hide out here, and if we have to fight.”

“The cave is useful,” Lobo said. “It’s within reasonable flight time of Dardan, which is also good.”

“The water forces anyone on foot to come around it,” I said, “and anyone seeking to land in the cave with us will be easy to spot.”

“As will we,” Lobo said. “It’s better than anything else we’ve seen, but it’s far from ideal.”

“You and I have both gone over the catalog of older exhibits, and you’ve studied the planet. Name any better options.”

“Every other place has its own set of trade-offs,” Lobo said, “so this will do.”

“Then let’s consider this done and head back to orbit. We have to figure out how to get into Schmidt’s estate.”

* * *

Once we were settled again among a group of satellites, Lobo filled half of his front area with a holo of Schmidt’s property.

“Are you finally going to tell me what we’re after here?” Lobo said.

“Technology,” I said, “though I’m not completely sure whether it will be in the form of online data, medicine, one or more people, or something else entirely.”

“How very helpful,” Lobo said. “Knowing the type of tech might help us figure out where to look.”

I didn’t have to mention Omani’s desire to capture me or her knowledge of my true age to tell Lobo what Schmidt had been doing. “Bring up an image of Schmidt,” I said, “one as recent as possible.”

“Hanson Schmidt has not been seen in public for almost thirty years,” Lobo said. “Here’s the last image I found in the data I searched while we were on Haven.”

A holo appeared above the estate. The man’s golden skin was mottled and wrinkled. He looked reasonably fit but was definitely in his declining years.

“How old is he in this image?” I said.

“Assuming the public data is accurate,” Lobo said, “he is one hundred and forty-five years old. His appearance and sense of vigor are consistent with that of the very wealthiest humans at that age.”

“Leave it up, and bring up the son who has recently been in the Haven social feeds.”

The corporate executive I’d seen in Omani’s house appeared. He was unremarkable physically but definitely a much younger man, his skin and eyes clear, his hair a rich black.

“If Omani is right,” I said, “and she most certainly believes she is, both of these men are Hanson Schmidt. That younger ‘son’ is a hundred and seventy-five years old.”

“Interesting,” Lobo said. “Let me try something and see how it looks.” A duplicate image appeared next to each of the two holos. The one next to the elder Schmidt grew younger and younger until Lobo froze it. The one next to the younger man grew older and older until Lobo froze it.

The two pairs were mirror images.

“The best aging software I have,” Lobo said, “certainly supports that conjecture. To the best of my knowledge, however, humanity has never figured out how to stop aging, much less reverse its effects. Stall it, yes, even halt its visible effects for decades. If Pimlani’s beliefs are accurate, however, then Schmidt has access to technology that would be invaluable.”

“And that might save her life,” I said, “because she told me that what is killing her is a complete breakdown of her body’s major systems due to her age.”

“So what we’re seeking,” Lobo said, “is that technology.”

“Yes,” I said. I took a deep breath. I couldn’t tell him of the tiny chance that it might be Jennie, or even that she had been a healer. I could, though, I realized, assign the belief to Omani. “Though with an odd caveat: Omani believes it’s possible that a person is somehow doing this to Schmidt.”

“One or more scientists would naturally be conducting the work,” Lobo said, “but a great deal of supporting and important information would also be in online databases.”

“She has heard rumors of a healer, someone who does this in ways no one yet understands.”

“Though no data exists to support that such a person exists,” Lobo said, “both that and Pimlani’s belief are irrelevant, because for the purposes of our mission a person we have to abduct, whether scientist or something else, poses the same issues for us.”

“Agreed,” I said, “but I wanted you to have the information.”

“Speaking of those issues,” he said, “what do you propose to do should you find we would have to kidnap one or more people?”

If it had anything to do with Pinkelponker in any way, I wanted to learn what it was and whether it related to me. If by some miracle my sister was there, I would of course free her. Beyond that, I hadn’t thought through the problem. I shook my head. “To be honest, I’m a little unclear on that point. Omani wanted me to steal the technology for her, but only so she could control it. That felt wrong. I suppose I would want to rescue the people involved.”

“What if they’re working for Schmidt voluntarily?” Lobo said. “Isn’t that the more likely scenario? He’d hardly be the first rich person to employ a lot of people whose job it was to keep him looking young. He’d just be the first to do so effectively. He certainly has enough money that he could pay them so well that anyone would be happy to have the job.”

“If they are there of their own accord,” I said, “I would probably just try to copy the technology. It’s too important for all of humanity for it to be in the control of a single person.”

“Since when have you made those choices for the worlds?” Lobo said. “People and organizations privately develop technology all the time. They take it to market, refine it, sell it, make a lot of money with it, and eventually competitors appear. Why should this be any different?”

I couldn’t explain that if the technology here was just my sister, I had to rescue her—assuming, I realized, that she wanted to be rescued. I couldn’t honestly believe, though, that she was still alive; without the combination of the changes she’d made to me and the nanomachines in me, I sure wouldn’t be, and she didn’t have either of those advantages.

“People are dying without it,” I said. “Omani is dying.”

“At the risk of sounding cruel,” Lobo said, “which of course is sometimes the same as sounding logical and therefore is appropriate, people are dying all over all the worlds from causes for which cures are under development. It’s always been that way, and unless humanity figures out a path to immortality, it always will be. I fail to understand why this case is different.”

I shook my head. “Maybe it’s just because I want to save Omani, and I feel I owe her. Whatever the reason, I’m going to do this.”

“And if the old man Hanson is in that estate and that is really his son, who happens to greatly resemble his father?”

“Then I’ll tell Omani and be done with it.”

“You understand I believe we should run away,” Lobo said, “and that doing anything else is unwise.”

“Yes, but I’m going to do this job.”

“Fine,” Lobo said. He sighed. “In that case, we have the three obvious problems: getting inside the estate, locating and obtaining the technology, and getting out with it. Where do you want to start?”

“At the beginning,” I said. “Getting in.”

The four human holos disappeared. I walked around the holo of the estate. It was not quite as big as Omani’s, but it was close in size. Most of the space went to outdoor features: a small lake, a pool, multiple heavily wooded areas, various sports courts and fields, grass, gardens, and so on. All of them provided buffers from the outside world. The main house was rather larger than Omani’s, which made it huge. An amphitheater was directly behind the house, separated from the building by a wide stretch of grass and flowers. Productions in it would be visible from the house’s upper stories. A large landing area with hangar space for at least twenty vehicles was behind and to the south of the amphitheater, separated from it by a thick stand of trees. A road ran from it, alongside the amphitheater, and to the house. Three more roads wound their way through the natural features from gates in the front and side walls that ringed the estate. Three guest cottages sat north of the amphitheater, well across the property from it, on the edges of the heavily forested areas, a bit farther from the main house than the amphitheater.

With all those different areas and buildings to cover, breaking in might well prove not to be the biggest challenge; it might be harder to get safely to wherever Schmidt’s secret was once I was on the property.

If you want to avoid a fight, the very best option is simply not to be there when it starts. If you want to avoid wasting time breaking into a target, the very best plan is to already be there.

“Omani mentioned that Schmidt’s son—or Schmidt, whoever he is—had been throwing a lot of social events, dances and concerts and stuff like that. The easiest way into his estate is to get him to invite me. Then, you fly me in, I’ll look around, and I’ll have an excuse for having you near at hand.”

“That would be a wonderful plan,” Lobo said, “were your name on the guest lists Schmidt uses. Given that we have not received an invitation to any of these events, I must conclude that we will not be getting such an invitation.”

“So let’s get on one of those lists,” I said.

“Given Schmidt’s stature and the power of his family and the variety of his holdings,” Lobo said, “I have to assume that his security systems will be first-rate. I consequently doubt I can hack into them in any reasonable amount of time, if at all.”

When I was a con man, we rarely relied on computers for our approaches. There were easier ways to be invited, though not necessarily as a high-profile guest. I’ve been a caterer and a gardener and a server and even on the security details of places I wanted to enter. The more secure the location, the more difficult it was to obtain such a role, but it was an avenue worth pursuing.

“Is his estate hiring?” I said.

“I don’t have access to the live data from here, obviously,” Lobo said, “but the data I saw showed some job openings. His screening process, though, is rigorous. Setting up a background that would pass it would take a great deal of time, because it would involve breaking into multiple systems, many of them owned by the government of Haven.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “Let’s try another angle. Schmidt can’t force his guests to let him run checks on their staffs, not with the kind of people he’s likely to invite. If we could find out who attends his events, I could try to land a job helping one of them.”

“Some such information is available publicly,” Lobo said, “but I am sure many of his guests arrive privately and are not on any records we can access. As you implied, though, the type of people he tends to invite have their own staffs and their own background checks. Passing those would also be an involved, complex effort.”

“Of course. Caterers are an option, if he uses them; they worked for us at Privus.”

“He maintains a private cooking staff and multiple chefs, according to the data I’ve read,” Lobo said. “That information might be wrong, or he might make exceptions, but we couldn’t count on it.”

“Are any of his upcoming events public on any of the feeds that track the rich and the famous?”

“Not as something to which he’s issued invitations,” Lobo said. “He’s too private for that. What is public, however, is that a singer, Passion Ling, apparently a famous one, will be doing a private charity fundraising concert on his estate. She’ll be performing with a backing band of live musicians.”

“Perfect!” I said.

“Do you have some musical talent of which I’m unaware,” Lobo said, “and the connections to get yourself into her ensemble?”

I laughed. “No, as you well know. I do, however, have a transport vehicle, and I can load in sets as well as the next person she might hire—as long as that person hasn’t worked shows in almost twenty years.” In the Saw, in slow times you did whatever the brass wanted, which for me proved to be working on the load-in and load-out of shows they brought to areas where troops were on long-term duty. The shows boosted the morale of some of us, at least for a time, and the sheer amount of intoxicants most people consumed during the entertainments definitely left them happier.