Overthrowing heaven, p.11
Overthrowing Heaven, page 11
“I just wish—”
I put my hand gently over her mouth before she could say anything that any software later reviewing our conversation might take the wrong way. “So do I,” I said, removing my hand. “I wish I’d listened to you and gone along with more of the activities you suggested, and I wish I’d come here with you earlier.” I paused and thought frantically about the types of long-standing arguments a couple might have. I’d never been in a relationship with a woman that lasted for more than a mission, so I had to scramble to make up something believable. “In all those talks we had, I wish I’d listened better, period.”
That seemed to do the trick. Pri nodded in what I hoped was understanding and said, “You’re doing better now.” She closed her eyes for a moment and visibly relaxed. “We should keep moving; there’s a lot more to see.” She opened her eyes, lifted her right hand slightly, and glanced down at it.
Yeah, she understood.
I held her right hand. It was warm and soft and ever so slightly damp with sweat. I felt awkward as hell. Even pretending to have a relationship with her left me uncertain and uncomfortable. Still, we headed down the path like that, strolling hand in hand, just another couple touring the island.
After a hundred meters we abandoned the pretense and stopped holding hands. We passed by another field, this one full of pale blue flowers the width of my palm. Milling around the field about thirty meters in front of us and eating grass and the petals of the flowers were a dozen creatures I initially took to be enormous lions, their muscular, yellow-brown bodies and thick brownish manes unmistakable even though their height—shoulders over two meters off the ground—was greater than that of any lion or lion derivative I’d ever seen. Then one of the beasts lifted its head and I involuntarily stepped backward. Staring at me was what appeared at this distance to be a human face, its expression slack, its mouth slowly chewing. When I didn’t look away, the animal came closer, and I could see that the face wasn’t quite right: The skin was a bit too hairy, the eyes a tad too large, and the overall shape more square than it should have been.
After the dogs, I expected these animals to come to us, but they ignored us. Even the one that had studied me looked away and returned to eating.
“That’s it?” I said, my voice a bit too loud, the question partly to Pri and, I realized after I said it, partly in frustration to the animals. “They just chew grass and flowers?”
Apparently not. Two of them straightened, walked over to us, and stopped two meters away, one lining up with each of us. They sat in unison, their front paws stretched in front of them. Mine stared into my eyes but otherwise did nothing.
“Look at the sphinx’s eyes, and think a question to which you’d like an answer,” Pri said.
I tilted my head slightly and opened my mouth to ask her how she knew all this, but she was ahead of me.
“I told you we didn’t need to pay for the guided tour,” she said, “because I’ve taken it several times in the past. That’s how I know the story behind these animals. The legend is that either they’ll respond with a riddle or whatever comes into your head next will hold the key to answering your question.” She smiled at me. “Give it a try; it can’t hurt.”
I considered pointing out how dumb this idea was, but Pri clearly knew the notion was nothing more than tourist bait. So I stared at the almost human face for a few seconds. I asked the question I frequently ponder: Is my sister still alive? As I expected, nothing in the creature’s expression suggested it had somehow telepathically heard my question. The only answers I received were the ones I’d deduced all along: Probably not, but because she was a healer, possibly so—assuming, of course, that the Pinkelponker system had survived the nanobot disaster.
Thinking about Jennie did me no good, but I kept facing toward the sphinx and used the excuse to scan as much as I could see of the surrounding area without moving my head. Neither normal light nor the IR view gave me any hint of a hatch.
I had to face it: Unless I got very lucky and spotted a defective or open cover to the underground complex, I wasn’t going to learn anything useful walking around the outside. These people were just too good.
I turned to face Pri. She was still staring intently into the almost human face in front of her. She had to be thinking about Joachim. Maybe she was aware of how silly this was and was doing it in the face of all reason, knowing she’d hear nothing but hoping for an answer nonetheless. I’d done it for my sister; why shouldn’t she for her son? Still, if we were to have any chance of finding him, we needed more data than I now believed we were going to get here. We’d give the rest of the place enough of a look to maintain our cover, but then we’d move on.
I cleared my throat, waited a few seconds, and said, “What do you say we find some food? I’m ready for an early lunch.”
Disappointment swept across her face for a moment, but then she regained control.
“Sure,” she said. “I could use a bite myself. I think I remember where the nearest snack area is. Follow me.”
The rest of the day unrolled like an old-fashioned map, flat image after flat image after flat image passing before my eyes as I refused to let the attractions draw my full attention and instead focused frequently on the ground, checking for signs of openings and finding none. We passed by slow-moving waterfalls in which mer-creatures swam and hovered; rocky cliff sections guarded by dragons, dark gray smoke coming from their nostrils; horses that at first appeared to have the upper bodies of men and women but that upon closer inspection were no more human than the sphinxes; great horned beasts wandering in mazes beneath transparent bridges crowded with spectators; and much, much more. We saw food vendors and souvenir hawkers and the occasional human tour guide leading a group of the ultra-wealthy. We ran across three security guards speaking in low tones to two men who appeared to be on the verge of a fistfight, but we never saw anyone emerge from the underground area, and I never caught even a hint of a hatch. I’d even listened on the machine frequency for a security camera that might be in a chatty mood, but I couldn’t hear any; based on what Shurkan had said, they probably used only wired cameras and turned off all wireless output.
The sun had vanished behind the far side of the cloud cylinder and the temperature was dropping as day began its surrender to night when we passed by an out-of-order snack dispenser. Nothing feels as useless as a broken machine, and even good security teams often ignore the more routine devices, so I stopped beside it, tuned into the machine frequency, and subvocalized, “It’s rough, isn’t it?”
The response was both rapid and a bit stunned. “Excuse me?” it said. “Are you speaking to me? And if so, how?”
“Surely you’ve encountered other humans who can chat with you?” I said. “I’d assumed you were a modern system.” Machines large and small are highly competitive egomaniacs, their surplus intelligence circuits and software focused narrowly on their tasks. I’ve yet to meet one with the programming to cope with even the most basic of interrogation techniques.
They will almost always lie to save face.
“Of course I have,” it said, “and I am as up to date as any dispenser you’ll ever meet.”
“Which must make it particularly rough,” I said, “that you’re not able to work.”
“You have no idea,” it said. “Service is my life, and I excel at it. My self-repair abilities, however, are limited, and so I must wait for someone to come fix me.”
“The repair requires a human? Can’t they just send a patch?”
“Oh, I could handle anything soft; I wouldn’t bother anyone if that were the problem. No, alas, it is hardware, pure and simple: a bent delivery chute, courtesy of a little deviant of a child shoving a shoe up me earlier today while his brainless parents gazed on in drooling admiration.”
“Surely the repair team will come quickly,” I said. “Your importance is obvious by your position, which is clearly a vital one. As essential as you are, they must have an entrance to the underground complex practically next to you.”
“While it’s obvious that you are a discerning and intelligent man,” it said, “in this one point I am afraid you may be wrong. Though my systems don’t have access to the plans for the main complex, based on my one previous mechanical problem and their slow response time in addressing this one, either the nearest entrance is far away, or they choose to delay repairs until the evening.”
So much for that idea. I couldn’t get the data from the available machines, and I couldn’t spot the hatches myself, so it was time to give up this approach and try another one.
“I wish you a speedy repair,” I said to the dispenser. Aloud to Pri, I said, “I’m beat. How about we call it a day?”
Though she was clearly tired, she also obviously didn’t want to stop. To her credit, though, she hadn’t argued with me for some time, and she didn’t choose this moment to resume the practice.
“Fine by me,” she said. “Let’s go home.”
She didn’t speak again until we were back in Lobo, which was good; the less we said in public, the better. As soon as he closed the door he’d opened, however, she started. “What did you see that I missed?”
I ignored her, walked to the front, and said aloud to Lobo, “Take us to a safe orbit.” I then plopped into a pilot couch, looked at her—she had, of course, followed me—and braced myself for what was to come. “Nothing. I couldn’t spot a single hatch or even a hint of where the entrances to the underground complex might be, though it’s a safe bet there’s one near each major exhibit.” I breathed slowly in through my nose, calming myself for the attack that always came when you didn’t give a client the answer she wanted.
Pri sat on the edge of the other couch, leaned her head into her hands, scratched furiously at her hair, and said, so softly I could barely hear her, “Damn. I was so hoping.” She shook her head and looked up at me. “Thanks for trying.”
I stared at her in silence for several seconds, caught completely unprepared by her niceness. Finally, more through reflex than thought, I said, “You’re welcome.”
She rubbed her eyes and sat up straight. “So, what do we do next?”
I’d been pondering that very question all the way from the broken dispenser back to Lobo. I’d hoped to be able to slip into the compound, that Wonder Island’s need to be a successful tourist attraction might bring with it some obvious security holes, but we’d seen nothing of the sort. Even if Lobo could get through the facility’s defenses initially, either he’d lose to greater strength while waiting for me to find Wei, or in the course of winning he’d attract so much attention from Heaven’s government and its EC friends that we’d never get out of this solar system. I’d come up with only two possible answers, and neither of them made me happy.
“First,” I said, “we definitely get some more of that chocolate gelato.”
When she didn’t smile and only stared harder at me, I raised my hands in surrender. “Okay, fine, no more attempts to cheer you up. Here’s where we stand.” I took a deep breath. “We can’t try to break into the place because we don’t know where to begin. Consequently, whatever we do is going to take some time, potentially a lot of time, but definitely an amount we can’t control. Right?”
I didn’t want to point out to her the implications for Joachim; from the tightness of her face, she already understood them.
She nodded slightly. “Yes.”
“So, we have two remaining ways to get Wei. One is when he’s outside the island. He’ll have guards, but at least we’ll have a chance of finding him quickly. To know when he’s out, your people will have to watch every landing point they can manage and yell the moment they spot him. When we’re done talking, you have to call them and tell them to set up surveillance teams at as many of those locations as they can manage.”
“They’re already looking for him,” Pri said, “so that shouldn’t be hard. What’s the other way into that damn underground complex?”
I smiled, spread my arms, and said, “I’ll have to get them to invite me.”
Chapter 14
Pri stared at me as if I’d lost all contact with reality.
“She’s not going to ask,” Lobo said aloud, “so I will: How do you propose to wrangle an invitation into their underground sanctum?”
“By getting a job there,” I said.
“Maybe Shurkan didn’t fully brief me,” Pri said, “but I didn’t think bioengineering was your specialty. Just how much training in that area do you have?”
“None,” I said. “That’s not the kind of job I want.”
Pri shook her head and stared at me, clearly exasperated.
“When you think about the Wonder Island staff,” I said, “you think about Wei and his team. Right?”
She nodded.
“That’s fine, because they’re the ones you’re after, but what do you think most of the people who work there do?”
She considered the question for a few seconds. “Make the place run.”
“Exactly!” I said. “They do any labor the machines can’t, deal with the tourists and VIPs who require personal handling, plan events, work security, and do all the other jobs that still require humans.”
“They’re going to run a background check on anyone who applies to work there,” she said, “so they’ll find out who you are.”
I nodded my agreement. “I’m counting on it. They’ll learn the same things you and the CC discovered: that I’ve done courier work, that I served with the Saw, and, if they’re well connected, that I’ve ruffled more than a few feathers. When they check for me locally, they’ll find the apartment I’m renting, the additional details Lobo and I will plant—”
She interrupted me. “And they’ll check you against their security videos and learn you were there today. They’ll know you were checking it out.”
“Yes,” I said, “they will, which I’ll explain was because I hoped to land a job there. They’ll also find that I recently lost the title to Lobo and that I failed to impress and ultimately was dumped by the girlfriend I’d taken there.” I smiled at her. “That would be you.”
“So we’re over already?” she said, also smiling. “Wow, that was quick.”
Before I could respond, Lobo said, “I’ve checked their public postings, and though in the past they’ve listed security guard openings, they have none now.”
“That’s the big weakness of this approach,” I said. “It could take a long time. Low-end staff and security people tend not to stick around for long anywhere, so I’m confident I’ll get a shot at some point, but I can’t know when.” Pri opened her mouth to speak, but I held up my hand and continued. “Which is why we have to hope your Freepeople colleagues can work their connections, conduct surveillance on multiple exits from the island, and find out where Wei goes on his days off.”
“Are you sure he has days off?” Pri said.
“No,” I said, “I’m not, but it’s extremely likely. Anyone trapped in any fixed environment craves time away from that space. He’s in charge, so he’s likely to be able to indulge that craving. We need your people to find out where he goes when he gets out.”
“Then let’s not waste any more time,” Pri said. “I’ll call them.”
I stood and headed for my quarters. “You talk to them from here. I’ll work with Lobo on the background data.”
“Now you’re trusting me to be alone with them?” she said.
I chuckled, turned to face her, and from the way she narrowed her eyes I realized too late that she hadn’t been joking and had hoped our relationship had advanced to that point. “No,” I said. “I’m too paranoid to do that. Lobo will record the conversation for me, and he’ll stop it if he decides you’re wandering at all out of line or off the topic.”
“So you trust this machine more than you trust me?”
“I should hope he does,” Lobo said, indignation quite obvious in his tone.
“I do,” I said to both of them. “Pri, you and I have shared one and a half good days, but before that time you conned me. Lobo and I have a couple of years of history, and he’s saved my life more than once.” I smiled at her. “Ask me again when this is over, when we’ve succeeded, and maybe we’ll both have good reasons to trust each other more.
“For now, though, contact your people. Lobo and I will make sure the local data streams contain the right information about me, we’ll try to move ahead on that apartment so it looks like I’m planning to stay here, and we’ll file my job application. Then we’ll sleep. After that, all we can do is hope for the best.”
I don’t dream much, and when I do, the experience is rarely pleasant. The visions that snapped me awake several times that night maintained that unpleasant tradition. Images of Jennie boarding the ship that would take her, my sister and first friend, away from me—a scene I’d never witnessed but had imagined so many times it was now more vivid than many of my real memories—morphed into slow-motion video streams of faceless, white-suited jailers strapping Joachim onto medbeds poised to inject him. Joachim then mutated into Benny’s strange form, the leathery stomach and flipperlike arms of my fellow test subject replacing the normal torso I’d imagined for Pri’s son. They’d needed special restraints for Benny. When the nanobot injections hit our systems, they burned at first, then turned into screaming muscle cramps and created the sensation of creatures crawling under our skin. If you weren’t fully strapped down, you’d do anything to get them out of you. Benny’s odd structure had let him pull his arms free from the first set of cuffs they’d used on him, and he’d torn big gashes in his chest before they were able to restrain him more effectively.
I’d watched that scene on a monitor from my own cell on Aggro. I remembered going into the same room to receive the same injections that had so tormented Benny, but still the imagined picture of Jennie vanishing was more vivid than any real memory. Blocking out such painful recollections undoubtedly served me well and was a natural human defense against the unthinkable, but it still bothered me that I couldn’t recall them fully, as if the pain could not have been real if I was unable to invoke it again in its entirety.
