The Octagonal Raven (24 page)

The image vanished, replaced with the UniComm news symbol, an arc, with a light beam streaking toward the viewer.

The entire screen vanished, and I lurched to my feet, realizing I hadn’t been exactly the most alert of would-be investigators. Then, I wasn’t an action type. I was an edartist and a methodizer.

Elysa looked at me from the foyer arch. She wore a dark maroon singlesuit with a black jacket trimmed in maroon, and carried a heavier overcoat. “I assume you saw the stories on perceptual testing and the new epidemic?”

“Yes. What’s your connection, and what’s mine?” I stood slowly, picked up my bag, and walked toward her.

Elysa waited until I stopped less than a meter from her. She studied my face slowly. “Actually, Daryn, your connection is because your sister is dead. Let’s leave it at that for the moment. Are you ready to go?”

“Leave it at that? Leave it at that?” I found my voice rising. “‘You’re in this because your sister is dead. Please be a good boy and cooperate.’” I snorted. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Elysa shrugged. “That’s your choice. How do you propose to find out the answers to your questions?”

Again…I could sense both the truth and the tension of her response. But I didn’t answer the question.

“Let’s just say that it wouldn’t have to be this way if your sister had survived. She would have come to you and explained it.”

“So why don’t you?”

She sighed. “That’s what I’m about to do, but it’s something you have to see as well as hear.”

“But I’m the second choice.” Again. Second choice behind Gerrat. Second choice behind Elora. Then, if I’d been the first choice, instead of Elora, I’d probably be dead. I still might end up that way.

I stood and waited to see what Elysa would do, but she just looked at me, as if waiting for me to decide. Finally, I shrugged. I knew I was reacting again, but there didn’t seem to be that many options.

“Lead on.” I stepped forward to help her with her coat, trying to swallow my anger and frustration.

Fledgling: Kewood, 446 N.E.

The glider dropped down coming off the last dip before leaving the redwoods, and the mulched bark of the lane crackled under the momentarily higher air pressure. The effect of the standard ground limiters bothered me, and I had an idea that, as time and finances permitted, I would be making more than a few modifications to the glider.

The air around me mixed the scent of firs with that of sun-warmed and dried grass. Then I was bringing the glider to a halt in the tree-shaded glider park that served UniComm. The midsummer sky was hazy as I walked up the polished gray stone steps to the black marble archway set into the hillside, beyond which lay the hidden spaces of UniComm, the largest communications organization anywhere in the human galaxy.

The guard in the green-trimmed gray singlesuit of UniComm security looked up politely. “Might I ask your business, ser?”

“I’m Daryn Alwyn, to see my father.”

“Yes, ser. Is your profile on the system?” His voice was slow and even, a sign of a brain-damped norm.

“I would guess so, but I honestly don’t know.”

He frowned, then touched the console. After a moment, he gestured toward the security gate. I stepped through, and the door beyond opened. After striding along the left-hand corridor, I marched up the inclined ramp past the museum cases displaying the history of communications equipment, beginning with drums and flags, and then models of messengers, first on foot, then on horseback, with dispatch cases. The replica of the ancient telegraph always amused me, as did the small circular CRT screen that had led the way to VR technology.

“You can go in, ser,” said the guard by Father’s open door. “The director general is expecting you.”

Father’s office desk was merely a larger version of the antique cherry businessman’s desk at home—and neither had changed in all the years I could remember. The office had the same green leather chairs, and even the same setup as his home study with the concealed vyrtor, but the office had three of the large cherry wood bookcases. Of course, there were no window hangings.

The door closed behind me, even before I’d taken two steps into the office that looked out over the inside courtyard.

“Sit down, Daryn. Sit down. You look fit and rested.” Father smiled. “We could have talked at home, but…I’m old-fashioned. Business should be discussed in the workplace. Otherwise, everything becomes business.”

That was one of the few maxims of Father’s that I had little trouble accepting. I nodded as I sat down in the green leather armchair directly across the polished cherry desk from him.

“There’s a great future for you—almost anywhere you want to go, Daryn.” My father smiled broadly. “With the years as an FS officer, and your educational background, you could start in almost any section of UniComm….”

“Did you see the rough cut of the piece on Cydonya?” I asked.

“It’s very good. As a stand-alone, it will bring you a few credits, and you can use it to show the talent in UniComm that you understand them.”

“I’m not joining UniComm.”

“You can’t live the way you’re accustomed to on occasional net royalties from a few edart pieces.” Father’s voice was reasonable, as it always was when he was convinced that he was right beyond doubt or question.

“I don’t intend to. I’ve got the FS retirement, plus a fair amount that I saved while I was in the FS. It brings in almost as much as my retirement stipend.” I didn’t mention the shares in UniComm I’d received in trust from Grandfather’s estate. The trust had expired when I’d turned thirty-five, but the only thing I’d done was ensure the dividends were reinvested into a diversified portfolio. “And…I’ve already reached an arrangement with a methodizing firm in Vallura.” I shrugged. “I was trained as a methodizer, and they need someone who understands the FS.”

“Procurement weasels.” Father snorted.

“I have to start somewhere.” I smiled. “I guess I’m sort of like Elora. I wouldn’t feel comfortable joining UniComm unless I could prove my abilities elsewhere.”

Father frowned, but the frown vanished with a rueful smile. “You’re more like her than I’d have ever guessed. Well…if that’s what you want to do…. You have to live your own life, son, but I can’t see as this freelancing methodizing and edart work will lead anywhere.”

“It may not,” I admitted. “That’s why I also worked out a retainer arrangement as a freelance methodizer for EcLong.”

“Freelance?”

“I’ve already gotten my first assignment.”

“That won’t pay the bills for long.”

I smiled. “You may be right, and if you are, I’ll have to figure out something else.” I knew that my being reasonable would be far more effective than disputing him. “And…well…if that’s the case, we’ll probably talk again.”

“I’ll leave the offer open for now.” He fingered his chin. “You understand that I can’t promise how long that will be.”

“Yes, sir.” I understood. At some point, Gerrat would be the one to control UniComm, unless Elora relented, but I had my doubts about that. She’d never forgotten Father’s offhand comment about wanting to see his sons continue the family tradition.

“Well.” Father smiled again. “I suppose that’s it. I’ll see you at dinner, won’t I?”

“For a few days. I’m getting my own place.”

“That would be best, I think.”

Since I’d never really had one, it was definitely for the best. I stood, then bowed. “Thank you for understanding.”

“I can’t say as I do, Daryn, but I understand you well enough to know you’ll do things your way and on your schedule.”

That was what I hoped, all I could have hoped for.

Raven: Tyanjin, 459 N.E.

The light rain that had been falling earlier had become more mist-like, and despite the cool air, with the combination of the swift pace Elysa set, the nanite body shield, and the humidity, I could feel myself heating up after we had walked the first hundred meters past the untended gatehouse—strangely occidental in Sinese Tyanjin.

“Where are we going?” I asked, drawing up beside Elysa.

“To show you your answers and then send you to make a choice.”

“Are you always this obscure?”

“When the future is at stake, it’s necessary.” She didn’t look at me, but kept walking. “Look around. Look at the people—those that are out.”

Despite the gloomy weather, handfuls of people walked the street, and almost all looked to be norms, fairly well attired, healthy-looking people. Unlike in Noram, there were far more wearing multipiece outfits, with trousers and collarless jackets, or even flowing robes in several cases. I didn’t see any smiles, but that didn’t seem surprising in the rain. I certainly wasn’t smiling.

A younger man who was approaching, talking to a dark-haired woman, glanced up, and his eyes met mine, if momentarily, and he abruptly eased his companion into what appeared to be a confectionery shop.

An older woman wearing an elaborate ankle-length robe-gown of some sort, but carrying a rain-parasol, stood by another door, her eyes meeting mine, gray eyes as cold and impassive as the clouds above. Her gaze did not flinch as we passed her and turned the corner onto a fractionally wider street, one with the same low permastone buildings that seemed to dominate Tyanjin, or what of the city that I had seen.

We walked less than eight hundred meters more before Elysa led me down a ramp and onto an induction tube platform, except it wasn’t an induction tube, but an older-style subsurface magfield transit system. I hadn’t realized that there were any left.

“It shouldn’t be long,” she said in a low voice.

I nodded, and slowly surveyed the platform. It was filled with people, and we towered above almost all of them…standing alone with a circle of space around us. I strained to catch the strange words, but even with the nanites and the translation protocols, my understanding was limited, to say the least, since all I heard was a standard word, often meaningless, in place of whatever the locals were speaking.

“…outsider…his whore…”

“…barbarian boars…rut…”

I glanced at Elysa and could see the flush beneath her skin, but she said nothing.

“…time will come…”

“…none too soon…”

The train that appeared at one end of the platform rumbled, rather than glided, and it lurched to a halt, a sign of equipment not in the best of repair. Elysa gestured, and we made for the front compartment, stepping inside only moments before the doors hissed shut.

Even in the close confines of the compartment, a compartment where I had to slouch to avoid banging my skull on the overhead, there was a zone of space around us, and the odors were remarkably like an aged space vessel, and totally unlike the scented sanitary air of an induction tube.

Although I felt like a curiosity, the remarkable thing was that no one looked at us—more as though we were an embarrassment to be suffered or endured without being acknowledged.

I leaned toward Elysa and whispered, “Does everyone avoid looking at me because I’m a Noraman? Or because I’m a pre-select?”

“What do you think?”

Another question. “Both.”

“You’re right.”

I stood, hanging onto a polished tubular steel pole, as the old magtrain hissed and lurched through three more stops. At each stop people disembarked, but fewer got on, and those that did tended to be taller, better dressed, although I didn’t see any that could have been overtly identified as pre-selects.

As the train slowed for the fourth stop, Elysa glanced at me. “We’ll get off here.”

I followed her out and onto a platform that was nearly empty, then up another ramp, and back into the open. Elysa took a deep breath, as if of relief, then promptly turned left and began to walk swiftly. Caught off guard, I had to take two quick steps to catch up with her.

The open air felt good—less confining—although the misty rain brought out a pervasive odor of age as we headed along the damp permacrete of the walk that flanked a gentle inclined street. Each step took us past buildings with signs I could not read, and I had to wonder if standard was as universal as I had thought…or as the net systems of the world would have had me and others believe.

Only a handful of gliders—mainly taxis—slipped down the street, deftly avoiding the ubiquitous composite magscooters that seemed to comprise most of the vehicular traffic, as well as the silent but awkwardly blocky electrobuses. In Noram, scooters were used seldom, and then by youths, or norms, while in the Sinoplex it seemed as though everyone used them—except for pre-selects.

Elysa caught one of my glances at another unreadable sign. “How does it feel?”

“What? To be illiterate in a culture?” I smiled ruefully. “If I lived here, I’d spend the time and effort to make sure I wouldn’t be.”

“Most pre-selects wouldn’t.”

I had never been one of “most” pre-selects, but there wasn’t any point in saying that, especially since that wasn’t her point. She was trying to tell me that the pre-selects had created a culture foreign to norms, as if most elites in history hadn’t. But then, most elites in history had eventually failed. “Where are we headed?”

“To the base of the hill there.” She pointed slightly to the left, over a low two-story structure. Over the top of the faded blue stone tiles rose several trees overlooking a red tile roof.

A hundred meters ahead the street ended by running into a larger avenue, running perpendicular to the one we walked. A black wall rose on the far side of the cross street.

The buildings we passed were now newer, with wider display windows, and we passed the first true uniquery I had seen in Tyanjin, with a chrome-trimmed door and mauve window hangings, and a tasteful inscription I could not read within a blue green oval. Under the oval was a smaller standard translation inscribed in silver letters:
DINING WITH THE ARTFUL MANDARIN
.

As we came to the intersection, I realized just how impressive the wall on the far side of the avenue was, towering as it did over the flow of glider-taxis, electrobuses, and the ubiquitous magscooters. The wall was of black stones, set so closely that I could not discern a joint, stones polished as smooth as glass. It rose a good ten meters straight up from the narrow walk on the far side of the avenue, a structure so even and featureless that it might have been created by a VR artist, rather than being an actual physical construct less than twenty meters from me. To our right, perhaps fifty meters away, was a gate. Although the composite double gates were recessed into the wall, if closed, they would meld with the rest of the wall, and offer a barrier impassible to anything short of heavy military equipment.

My personal scanners also sensed the nanite and electronic fields buried within and designed to protect the wall.

I looked upward, beyond the deep black composite. Immediately beyond the wall were trees, and farther beyond were houses—some more like small ancient palaces with delicate minaret-like steeples, others with red tile roofs that shimmered damply in the gray day.

“This is where most of the pre-selects of Tyanjin live,” Elysa said quietly. She did not move.

Standing in the mist that was slowly turning into a steady light rain, I studied the wall, noting that, if the curvature were as gentle and as uniform as it seemed, it probably enclosed a space almost ten klicks across. The area above and beyond the wall appeared park-like, meticulously maintained in the open spaces between structures. A long black glider slid away from the dwelling with minaret-like steeples, then vanished behind an ancient fir of some sort. The scene beyond the wall was serene, peaceful—different from the scooters and electrobuses and crowds that sifted around and past us.

I could sense the indirect attention from more than a few of the passersby when I finally looked down and at Elysa.

Without a word, she turned and crossed the street we had been following. We walked along the avenue paralleling the black wall—past three other streets, before she turned back eastward once more.

After another two blocks, Elysa stopped and opened a door under a faded marquee of some sort—one in Sinese and without a translation. Behind the door was a small restaurant—something I would have expected to have vanished centuries before, since anyone could get any kind of cuisine by simply lifting replicator parameters off one of the netsys libraries and programming them into a home replicator. At least in Noram, the replicator had greatly reduced the number of traditional restaurants, another factor, the historical economists had claimed, in contributing to the economic disruption that had preceded the chaos. I had never been that sure—restaurants as a major economic factor?

The gray-haired woman standing beside a polished wood table on which rested a blue and white porcelain vase nodded at Elysa and murmured something in Sinese or a local dialect. Elysa replied, but I didn’t catch it, and probably wasn’t meant to.

“This way…” Elysa said quietly.

I bowed to the older woman as I passed. She actually acknowledged my presence with a minute head bow.

Elysa led the way through the main room and past a curtained archway. I tried not to stiffen, but forced myself into greater awareness and alertness. But there was nothing in the second room, more like an overlarge closet containing a circular booth surrounding a table. She slipped to one side, I to the other.

“What did you think about the wall?” Elysa asked.

“It’s physically impressive. There are also electronic and nanitic defense systems built into it.”

“The defense systems have been upgraded every few years,” she replied.

“You’re suggesting that we have the same kinds of barriers in Noram….” I paused. “Or barriers, in any case.”

“The Sinese lands have been heavily populated for more than six millennia. Land is not inexpensive, and the experiments of holding it as a public trust failed miserably, several times.”

“Market economies are the worse form of economic structure, except for any other kind ever tried.” I knew I was misquoting a statement about political structures, but it fit, even if I didn’t remember the original author.

“You can change a market economy to make it reflect social as well as economic diseconomies….” Elysa broke off as the curtain in the archway to her right was pushed back and the gray-haired Sinese woman appeared with a tray.

The older woman quickly set down two platters, two small cups, and a teapot. She filled both cups, bowed to Elysa, and slipped back past the curtain.

“I need to eat,” Elysa said.

As she served herself, I took a sip from the small handleless cup—green tea, and like brewed Grey tea, better than anything from a replicator. Then I followed her example.

I had no idea exactly what the food was, except that it had vegetables I did recognize—such as snow peas and water chestnuts and bamboo slices, with some I didn’t, with small chunks of chicken and a totally unfamiliar sauce. I took a bite. It wasn’t great, but it was hand-cooked and original, and I was hungry. Then, while it was barely midday for Elysa, it was past dinner for me.

After several bites, I looked up. “What does all of this have to do with me—and with Elora? Except to show me that I haven’t looked into the lives and comparative isolation of the pre-selects? That isn’t a very good reason for you and others to attack me.”

“It is a very good reason,” said Elysa after a bite of the spicy mixture she had spread over the rice. “You only know of the attacks against you and your sister. There have been others. Can you deny that someone has a reason?”

“No. But a power grab by other pre-selects doesn’t seem to have much to do with the isolation between—”

“You’ve created a hereditary elite. You deceive yourselves that it’s based on ability, and claim that anyone with ability can join you, and with the resources of the nets, and the socialization of UniComm and OneCys…and all the others…you’ve conditioned the world to believe it.”

“And you’re not a part of this?” My eyebrows rose.

“No. I never was.” Elysa took a small sip of tea.

The calm certainty and lack of physiological agitation chilled me more than her words.

“You don’t want to understand. You look, and still you don’t see.” She spread her hands, as if helplessly.

I watched, wondering if I could say anything, anything at all. I had to try. “You had me see the barriers here, and you want me to come to the conclusion that pre-selection is just another form of human elite, and…pretty clearly, that it’s a tyrannical or halfway despotical elite. It may be both tyrannical and despotical in certain ways, but genetics doesn’t make that much of a difference in people. There’s less than a tenth of a percent difference in DNA between a pre-select and the norm that individual would have been. And even if it did, rebellions don’t start with attacks against people who aren’t in control of things, unless it’s a random uprising, and planned attacks against me don’t exactly qualify as random.”

“Most honored edartist, I must beg to differ. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You give numbers. You express reasons. What do you really know about social structures and how they work? How many norms do you work with? How many live where you live?”

“You know the answer,” I pointed out. “Almost none.”

“What percentage of the population uses pre-selection?”

“Five to seven percent.” My answer was wary.

“And how much of the world’s wealth and power is controlled by those five to seven percent?” Elysa was acting like a barrister.

“Almost all of the power, by definition, obviously. Sixty or seventy percent of the wealth.”

“How does the present situation differ from that in pre-Collapse days?”

“Statistically, it doesn’t,” I conceded, “but as you were pointing out a minute ago in a different context, numbers aren’t everything.”