The Bloodlight Chronicles: Reconciliation (8 page)

“That's good,” he said.

“My name is Mia.”

“Did Phillip send you?”

“No.”

A shadow of consternation passed quickly across Jimmy's face. The top of his skull was shiny and smooth, his chin blockish and strong and showing a wisp of a goatee. He smiled. “Ahhh, private enterprise.”

Mia took a few steps closer, into the male personal sphere. “So how have you been?”

“Good. Business is good. Still smuggling the same old shit.” He waved his hands at the bright confusion of data on his holodesk. He winked out a few lights with a pointing diode.

Mia pressed her hands down on her long, knitted tunic. She summoned her chi. “Zak mentioned your name with fondness many times.”

“That so?”

“Yes.”

“So what can I do for you?” He smirked playfully. “For old time's sake.”

“I'm just checking back through his contact list. Hoping to get lucky. Was he here?”

Jimmy grinned broadly. “He sure was, honey.”

Mia felt muscles tighten involuntarily in her upper body. She wished she could exercise more control. Zak would never have flinched. “Where is he now?”

Jimmy checked his wristband, a gaudy designer model, probably fake judging by his reputation. “He should be dropping through the Macpherson Doorway any minute now.”

“You're kidding.”

“He's heading for the Source of the virus. It wasn't my idea.”

“That's impossible.”

“Perhaps it is. Who am I to say? Zak seems to think he knows what he's doing, poor sod. You're even more radiant than he described, by the way. I was expecting some sort of karate kid with a bandana round her forehead.”

“You'll help me, then?” Mia watched his face carefully. She didn't trust him. She didn't believe in urban legends about smugglers or the freeworld hacker ideology. But she was desperate. She had fallen in love with a dangerous man and wanted him back.

Jimmy looked like he was stifling a laugh for the sake of social modesty, that he really wanted to belt out a howl at her audacity.

“You got any money?” he asked.

The gaping maw of the Macpherson Doorway lay on the other side of a gauntlet of laser scanners and detection systems. The large chamber echoed with the hum of heaters and oxygen generators. The launch tubes lay lined end to end in front of the Doorway like an assembly line of silver coffins in front of a powerful vortex. Seventeen capsules had been reserved for human occupants.

Zakariah studied the Doorway intently, feeling philosophical and trying to psych himself to readiness. In the dark centre of the orifice lay a foreign universe, an enchanted creation where humans had no natural home. He imagined the Doorway a telescope, and himself a speck of sand peering out into heaven, looking for a Source akin to deity, looking for his fate and his son's eternal destiny. While he watched, an incoming series of capsules materialized in the core and floated noiselessly down a conveyor belt with no apparent energy exchange—no sparks, no drama, nothing to indicate the mysterious forces in action. A magnetic friction system slowed them down, and a hydraulic restraining harness brought them to a complete halt. A team in bright orange staff regalia then manoeuvred the weightless containers toward the shuttlecraft cargo hold.

Out of habit and good training, Zakariah kept his field of vision in constant motion, his eyes like quick searchlights and his brain absorbing data like a sponge. He studied the launch personnel, the passengers in line with him, the domelike architecture of the chamber, the emergency exits above and below. He located computer terminals and ran quick schematics of the electronics layout. He located main power cables and traced them up to the ceiling.

He was the first to notice the assassin drifting down from above.

By the time Zakariah decided to move it was almost too late. He correctly determined the Director to be the target of the assassin's trajectory and rushed to protect her. He vaulted himself over her, pushing her down and shielding her from the assassin's gunsight, and he was suitably rewarded for his effort. A metal projectile entered his upper back, passed through his body at an upward angle, and exited his left shoulder just under his collarbone, taking with it a spurting gout of blood and bodily fluids. The projectile itself spun harmlessly away, and the recoil from the weapon powered the assassin's quick escape up into a tangle of air pumps and ductwork near the ceiling. The lights went out.

The gunshot echoed directionless in the chamber in a staccato cluster. Emergency bulbs blinked on like Christmas lights in the darkness. A bleating alarm began to sound, and airlocks automatically powered down for vacuum protection. Green lights switched to flashing yellow as computerized safety systems began a rigid program of security containment. People screamed.

Most of the onlookers had never seen a firearm in use, on Earth or anywhere else. None had any experience with gunshot wounds on the human body. A few panicked outright and launched themselves, flailing, in various directions.

Helena immediately stanched Zakariah's wound with a hand on either side of his shoulder. A female flight attendant knelt beside them within seconds and stared in horror at the wound.

“Signal ahead for a medical crew,” Helena ordered. “We'll get him in a capsule right away.”

The attendant nodded and rushed to get events in motion. Another attendant, a red-haired boy barely out of Academy, appeared with a first-aid kit. He pulled out a small bottle that looked like a fire extinguisher.

“We'll immobilize for transport,” he told her with hesitant authority.

She obediently withdrew her crimson hands from Zakariah's greasy red
NASA
jacket. “Oh, Zak,” she whispered as small globules of blood began to erupt from his wound and float skyward. A spray of white foam quickly stopped the flow and solidified instantly on his shoulder. In seconds his upper body was encased in pink protective armour. Several more attendants congregated on the scene amid a cacophony of wailing alarms.

“Keep these people back. A man's been shot,” a supervisor shouted. “Let's move,” he directed, “one . . . two . . . up,” and four men hoisted Zakariah with quick but fluid grace.

Helena was shouldered aside.

“Stand back. Remain calm,” the supervisor told her. “We're shutting the Door down after this capsule.” They drifted Zakariah aloft past screaming metal detectors and flashing red lights and settled him gently in a silver sarcophagus.

Helena tagged after. “You can't shut it down. I've got to go along with him.”

“No one gets in or out. Standard procedures. We're locked down for emergency measures.”

“For how long?”

“Could be days, for all I know. Stand back, please, ma'am.”

“But we're travelling together.”

“Stand back, please, ma'am.”

The lid closed over Zakariah with a hiss of pneumatic pressure, shutting the circus of noise outside. In the darkness of his tomb, he clamped his teeth against incoming pain as shock began to subside. “Goodbye, Mia,” he murmured, and he felt his capsule begin sliding toward infinity.

It was the same dream he always had—the tunnel, the long, serpentine tunnel that led him toward the superlight in the distance. He didn't want to see the light; he knew he couldn't bear it. He felt fear, an icy terror that paralyzed his lungs. It wasn't fair, he wasn't ready, and he had too much work to do back home where he had been safe and secure. He wanted to go back, he wanted to see his family and friends, but the dream was relentless, his speed accelerating, the pure white resplendence coming closer and closer. At this fiery throne all his mistakes would be tallied and final judgment pronounced. White lies and black lies, immoral thoughts and actions, a dollar sign, a decimal here and there—
not one jot or tittle of the law shall be overlooked
, a voice told him, and a chorus of heckling laughter echoed around him.

Sometimes he screamed and woke up, sweaty and twisted in his blankets; sometimes he clenched his spine and closed his eyes and felt the white light consume him like a dust mote travelling too close to the sun, a wisp of galactic vapour in the abyss, a passing shadow in a cosmic void.
And if I die before I wake
, he recited, a childhood mantra,
I pray the Lord my soul to take
.

B
y the time Helena arrived on the other side of space and time, Zakariah's trail had grown cold. She stood fuming at the desk of a local
NFTA
administrator in a shuttle station just outside New Jerusalem, the largest and most populated city in the Cromeus colonies. The air was dry and searing, close to one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and she felt sweaty and flushed in her thick flight suit.

“What do you mean there's no record? The man came through just a few days ago. He'd been shot. He was bleeding all over the place.” She offered her bloodstained arms as evidence.

The administrator, a young man with fair hair and a breezy tunic, looked up at her but showed no concern in his eyes. “Well, there's also a small timewarp variance to account for,” he said as he tapped his computer screen.

“What timewarp variance?”

“I'm told it's about three percent. I think it has something to do with the variable expansion of space, but I wouldn't want to overstep my bounds. I'm not a scientist.”

“Time moves at a different rate? Are you kidding me?” Helena felt reality bend around her like rubber.

The young man leaned forward to scrutinize his computer screen. “Here it is. There was a medical emergency on the log three days ago. The data's locked out due to a security investigation.” The administrator shuttered his eyes a few times, his demeanour at rest.

“Well, where is he now?”

The fair-haired man smiled vacantly and shook his head. “I don't know. The data's locked out.”

“Do you have medical facilities here?”

“Not really.”

“Are there hospitals in New Jerusalem?”

“Three.”

“Any idea which one might have been used?”

He shook his head again. “I wouldn't want to overstep my bounds. I'm not a doctor.”

Helena curled and uncurled her fingers as she suppressed an urge to throttle this pansy-ass bureaucrat. “Can you direct me to an information centre?”

The administrator hesitated for a moment, his lips grim.

“Perhaps I can be of some aid,” said a man behind her in bright falsetto.

Helena whirled to face him, a tall man, thin, with a gracious smile. Wrinkle lines radiated out from his eyes toward a brush of silver at his temples and brown hair tucked behind his ears.

“My name is Ian Miller. I'm from the Overlords. We missed you at the spaceport. There seems to have been some mix-up at the Doorway. Conflicting reports.” He offered an arm outstretched in greeting with a flowing genteel mannerism.

Helena took his hand and shook it firmly in a signal of strength, remembering her early days as a hungry businesswoman. “My travelling companion was shot. Zakariah Davis. He seems to have disappeared.”

“Good heavens. So it's true. That is most distressing.”

“I'm still trying to put the pieces together.”

“Perhaps I can help. I have transportation passes for both of us. We could check the hospitals.” His friendly smile showed large teeth evenly spaced. His face seemed relaxed with the mature confidence of his years, but his stance betrayed some caution, his arms rigid at his side and spine tilted away from her. She must look a sight, and probably smelled like a vagrant after three days stuck in orbit.

“Thank you.” Helena allowed herself to be led away. Her flight suit now felt like a suit of armour in the stifling heat of New Jerusalem. She cast a scowl backward at the young administrator at his desk. She could not seem to get her bearings among these strange people. They appeared not to use the simple social signals that she took for granted among humans. Apart from Ian Miller, she had yet to see any evidence of empathy or basic commonality, as though natural instincts were held in check by some higher power.

“You must be from Earth,” she said.

He smiled and nodded. “Forty-seven years ago. Is it still that obvious?”

“I'm just feeling a bit of culture shock. And this heat is unbearable.”

“We'll stop at an outfitter and get you properly attired. You may want to trim your hair. It's the beginning of first summer in this hemisphere. I must apologize for the horrid local cosmos.”

Helena smiled at that. The man was a delight.

They stepped through plate glass doors into a fresh blast of hot air on a transit stand high above the city surface. An electric tram waited on a monorail as passengers queued for entry. Ian Miller handed her a plastic laminate on a loop of cord.

“This is a diplomatic transit pass for use during your stay, courtesy of the Overlords.”

“Thank you,” she said but realized that her every movement would now be subject to scrutiny. She swallowed back a wave of paranoia. They climbed aboard and sat on padded bench seats. No seatbelts, no hand grips. The tram eased slowly forward and accelerated gently.

“There's no evidence of fossil fuels on any of the Cromeus planets,” Ian Miller told her conversationally, “so no ground transportation. Lots of geothermal power and volcanic metals.”

“I see.” Helena looked down from their lofty perch, feeling vertiginous. The crowds on the street below looked like frothy silver bubbles under their glinting parasols.

“You don't want to be out in the sun unprotected,” he added, noting her interest. “The umbrellas serve as power-cell generators and communications array. Our technology is unrivalled.”

“Efficient.”

Ian Miller nodded, his smile pleasant. “We do our best.”

They made a short trip to a local outfitter, where Helena had her hair cut short and coiffed up from her forehead like a crown. Ian checked through hospital databases on his handheld until he found Zakariah's admission data. Helena purchased a silver tunic fitted at the neck, tight at the waist, with puffy sleeves to the elbow and an air-cooling system built into large epaulettes and vented at the back. With a sigh of relief, she pulled on silver dress pants, belted with elastic and tight at the ankle to trap in precious moisture.

They ate a quick meal of protein paste in a cafeteria that was little more than a vestibule outside New Jerusalem Central West Hospital. The spicy grey food was provided freely to all inhabitants from ubiquitous vending machines at the touch of a button. No one ever went hungry in the Cromeus colonies, and no animal ever suffered, thanks to a single factory producing cloned cattle musculature. Baseline nourishment had become a human right, rather than a privilege, although finer delicacies were certainly available for a price. The guided tour, Helena thought to herself as she listened to Ian Miller's reasoned discourse. She might have preferred a chicken salad but was grateful for the education.

They confirmed appointments and said polite goodbyes, and Ian ducked down a flight of stairs to a subway underneath the building. Helena made her way to an elevator and, after several false starts and little assistance from hospital staff, managed to locate the appropriate wing and ward. She found Zakariah wearing blue hospital pyjamas with his left arm in a sling, busy dismantling a portable computer system in his room.

“Helena,” he said in greeting, barely glancing up. “Come and hold this for me.”

She looked back over her shoulder and rushed to close the door behind her. She stepped forward and held a pair of needlenose forceps as directed.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“This is what they use for a V-net link up here. It's a simple jackbox.” He tapped the plug outlet on the face of the machine. “We had these when we were kids. This one's been modified.”

“Modified?”

“It's bugged.”

“Oh.”

“I charged it to your account. I signed for it with your scribble.”

Helena nodded, feeling uneasy. “You saved my life,” she said.

“Yeah, the guy must've been an amateur. Here, hold this.” Zakariah handed up a small black hard drive on a ponytail of brightly coloured wires.

“What happened to your hair?” Zakariah finally noticed her makeover. “You look like a queen from the Emerald City.”

“Oh, thanks. You look pretty cute yourself.”

Zakariah nodded and rubbed his unshaven face. He looked more like an prison escapee than a professional field runner.

“Are you taking the bugs out?” Helena asked.

“No, we should go with what they give us for now, rather than show our hand early. I'll let them see what they want to see. No harm done.” He beamed with sly confidence. “That way I can put a trace on the tracers. It's an old user corollary: where data goes in, data comes out. The first rule of gaming is to know the limitations of your hardware,” Zakariah said. He sounded like a lecturer in front of eager-faced students. “Okay, slide that drive back between these two brackets here,” he instructed. “You ready to jack in?”

“Already? I thought you'd be convalescing.”

“What do you mean? Resting?”

“Oh, excuse me. I had a weak thought.”

Zakariah smile seemed devilish. “C'mon, Helena, the Source is waiting for us. I've flashed the
BIOS
to allow for our peculiar logistics. We can use twin avatars or share, but not both at the same time. Just like back home. This wall console taps directly into the hospital's fiberoptic mainline.” He pointed to slots for audio, video, feelie, or game interfaces.

“What's the second rule?” Helena asked hesitantly, fingering her V-net plug on its pendant earring.

“The second rule is that there are no rules.” Zakariah offered forward a thin extension cable that looked like a spider web.

“I've already arranged for a meeting with the Overlords,” Helena said. “Face to face.”

The silver cable drooped between them.

“How archaic,” Zakariah replied humourlessly. “Who are the Overlords?”

“They're the Eternal power brokers up here. They contacted me upon arrival. We're already on the fast track.”

“I see,” Zakariah said. “So I'm flying solo now.”

“I'm in charge of the mission. You work for me.”

“What's the problem with a little tactical reconnaissance?”

“All I'm saying is to take it slow until after my meeting. This may be a sensitive political negotiation.”

“I've outlived my usefulness already?”

“I didn't say that, Zak.”

Something was wrong. Helena could feel it. Their relationship had altered dramatically. “You saved my life,” she said, wondering if that was the key.

Zakariah waved his wrist backhand. “Don't fixate on it. You would have done the same for me.”

Helena stared at him thoughtfully. Would she have jumped in front of an assassin to save him? She doubted it. “Taking a bullet for someone is a big thing to ask. I can't believe you're so blasé about this. What sort of medication are they giving you?”

Zakariah stood up, his stance confrontational, bristling with energy. “I'm ready for action, Helena. We're still a team. We're hotwired together like Siamese twins. Go by land, if you want—that's fine. I'll go by sea and fish the deep waters. When we meet again we'll both be enriched.”

Helena took two steps back at his outburst, studying his every move. He seemed haggard and desperate, like an addict looking for a quick fix. He was a V-net junkie, but it wasn't just the sustaining neurotransmission that he craved so badly. Not after only three days. This was something more, some dangerous, driving need.

“I want you to rest, Zak. I don't want you under any pressure. And I don't want any action taken in my name on the V-net or anywhere else. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal,” he replied, his face a stern mask.

They eyed each other intimately, comrades in arms now suddenly unsure of the shifting sands under their feet. Helena imagined a young and crazy cowboy ready to jockey for power on a strange new electronic landscape, a chronic gamer looking for new thrills and bigger deals. She shook her head. They were both tired, both stretched out taut like piano strings tuned near the breaking point.

“Thank you,” Helena said. Too much was at stake to gamble at this critical juncture, to risk losing control.

“You're welcome,” Zakariah replied, but there was little assurance in his voice.

Niko loved the smell of Prime Five, the playground of the rich and famous. She visited only rarely, when her mentor, Phillip, deigned to summon her, but the fragrance of the place always overwhelmed her. Some artsy animator had programmed Prime Level Five with a perpetual wind of freshness. The air was not flowery with blossoms, nor saturated with cologne like some feelie queen on Main Street. The smell was much more subtle than that but unmistakable, a pleasant breeze with a hint of moisture and a whiff of negative ions.

She wondered why anyone would bother trying to mimic these olfactory sensations in her brain, this delicate incongruity. Why spend time and money on the trappings of nature in a digital wonderland? The higher levels of Prime were the domain of the Beast, and Prime Five was under Class A encryption every microsecond, the source code scrubbed and filtered, antiseptic and precise. The Beast did not tolerate mistakes or shirk on capital budgets. Out of this expensive ether, her benefactor coalesced in a Buddha pose, palms on splayed knees in a lotus position, completely at ease and confident. “Hello, Phillip.”

“Niko, good to see you as always. You're looking well.”

“I've been working out, keeping the temple in good shape.”

“I know. You're amazing.”

“Something you need done on the ground?”

“No, just a pep talk today. How's the boy?”

“He's hardly a boy. He's got all the hormones of a grown man.”

“Is that presenting a problem?”

“Nothing I can't handle.”

“Of course. So he's progressing?”

“He's learning fast. He's a bit impetuous.”

“Good.”

“If you say so.”