Neurolink

by M M Buckner

  When he pointed to the old woman and the grandchildren, the boy Benito flashed him an angry glare that radiated the pure antagonism of the innocent. Dominic knew the boy had caught his lie, and for an instant, he felt a curious pang of guilt. But the boy said nothing, and the moment passed.

  “See, here she is.” Estaban pointed with pride to a blurry round screen in the center of his console, and Dominic stepped over the seated bodies for a closer look.

  On the screen, in the false colors of metavision, an extraordinary image was coming into focus. Dominic had to study it for several minutes before it made sense. Below them, where the seafloor flattened to a broad, sloping plane, lay a mountain range of garbage. Peak after peak, the mountains stretched as far as he could see in every direction. Estaban moved his control yoke, and the shuttle banked and dove between two ridges. Its running lights flickered against the mountainsides, revealing twisted girders, crushed vehicles and abandoned machinery. Methane bubbles rose in sluggish columns. Shreds of plastic and fabriglass blew in the current like flags.

  This was a solid-waste site, Dominic realized, probably the dumping grounds for some coastal city. As the bathysphere wound through the V-shaped valley, Dominic studied the cliffs of cast-off debris with amazement. So much of it. He’d never realized how large these dump sites could be. The shuttle cruised just meters above the junk, and he noticed that Estaban showed real piloting skill following its jagged contours. They rounded a bend, dropped into a deeper gorge, and there behind a cone-shaped mound of rock crouched a familiar bottle-shaped vessel. The Benthica!

  This close, the submarine looked larger than Dominic had expected. Its belt-driven treads were mired so deep in bottom debris, it couldn’t possibly move. He studied its shape, looking for the bridge. Yes, there on the forward section, at the very top, he saw the lookout dome. That’s where the Net link would be.

  Then he observed something more astonishing. Other ships also loomed in the rubble. Dominic had to squint to make sure he was seeing accurately. At least six other vessels lay scattered close to the crawler. They were wrecks, all of them. Their hulls were rusted, gashed and riddled with holes, and they lay at odd angles just as they’d fallen. One old barge stood on end with its bow buried twenty meters deep.

  As the bathysphere descended, Dominic began to make out small figures in diving suits swimming through the wreckage. Blue-white flashes sparked around them, and it took Dominic a moment to realize the divers were using underwater welding torches. He motioned Qi to join him. Estaban was clearly enjoying his reaction.

  “The Pressure of Light,” Estaban announced.

  At those words, a hush fell over the cabin. The passengers all turned to look at the pilot, and even though they couldn’t see Estaban’s little screen, they stared reverently in that direction. Dominic watched the divers moving among the wrecked ships. When he sensed Qi standing beside him, he traced their outlines with his finger. “Did you know about this?”

  She shook her head and studied the screen in frank wonder.

  “All this metal. How could satellite scans miss this?” he asked.

  “It’s the will of God,” the pilot Estaban declared with a broad smile.

  Behind Estaban’s back, Qi shrugged and shook her head again. Her surprise seemed genuine, but Dominic knew better than to trust her. He remembered the sonic noise field. “Gig’s cloaking our position,” she had said earlier. Could the Orgs generate a sonic field large enough to hide all this? Who knew what those quasi-biochemical computers might dream up in their spare time?

  Dominic leaned on his knuckles and peered at the sunken ships. The divers’ suits looked like relics from the twentieth century. Old-fashioned air tanks hung in external harnesses on their backs, and they used fins to kick through the water. Evidently, they had no internal recycling systems because every time they exhaled, tiny bubbles of air rose above them in wavering fountains. Inefficient resource use, he noted.

  Then he took a closer survey of the cone-shaped mound next to the submarine. The mound wasn’t made of junk. It looked like a fresh pile of rock and mud. All at once, he recognized what it was—mine tailings thrown up by an underwater drilling rig. The miners must be digging a tunnel under the trash. What next?

  As he studied the tailings, three divers passed right across the bathysphere’s screen, giving him a close-up view. They were hauling a cargo net filled with jagged sheets of steel. Now he understood what the welders were doing. They were cannibalizing some of the wrecks to patch the others. The miners were building a town!

  But these derelict hulls were rusted and damaged beyond repair. Didn’t they see that? Why else would the ships have been junked? He couldn’t believe the immensity—and utter futility—of their enterprise. Protes. What could you expect?

  The screen blurred as they neared the Benthica. When the shuttle jolted hard, passengers tumbled into each other, and one beat late, Estaban said, “Take hold!” They had docked with the submarine. Estaban opened the hatch and climbed through, and the passengers began helping each other out. Dominic held Qi behind. “We need to talk,” he whispered.

  “This isn’t the time.”

  She moved around him toward the hatch, but he grabbed her arm, and in his anger, he sprayed saliva when he spoke. “Gig’s sonic field is hiding them.”

  She glanced at the thick fingers circling her biceps. “Maybe no one thought to look in the junk pile. It could be that simple.”

  “Ask him!” Dominic hissed. “I know about your ear-Plug”

  “Actually…” Qi tilted her head to one side and pointed to a tiny, perfectly square bruise behind her earlobe, just a shade darker, than her skin. Dominic saw the dusky smooth curve of her throat before he noticed the bruise. Not an earplug. It was a surgical implant. How was he going to steal that?

  She said, “Gig tells me only what he wants me to know.”

  “You’ve been hiding these protes all along. Why?” he barked in her face. “I thought the WTO wanted these people silenced. You have to explain this to me now.”

  All the passengers had climbed through the hatch, but Benito’s head reappeared in the portal. The boy watched them with narrow, distrustful eyes.

  Qi said, “C’mon, Nick. We’ll talk later.”

  Dominic blocked her way and gripped both her arms. “Why are the Orgs hiding these protes?”

  “Freaker, keep your voice down! I don’t know anything. Do you think I asked for this preter-lame assignment?”

  With a move that seemed easy, Qi freed her arms and flung him backward. He’d forgotten how strong she was. He just managed not to fall.

  “This is how Gig does things. Neither of us has a choice.” She rubbed her arms where he’d gripped her, and her black eyes blazed. Then, with a show of exaggerated cheer, she turned to the boy. “Lead the way, Benito.”

  Inside Dominic’s jaw, a small bone popped against its cartilage. He pushed out of the bathysphere like a newborn—red and furious and somewhat deformed. The first person he saw inside the submarine was a barefoot old man wearing nothing but a pair of stained trousers, and waving a spoon. The man said, “Welcome, friend. You want soup?”

  CHAPTER 6

  * * *

  BEARER BOND

  DOMINIC sneezed three times in a row. Before he could push himself up off the grimy deck and stand, he sneezed again.

  “Bless you, friend.” The old soup man patted his back. “Sounds like you’ve caught a cold.”

  A cold? Inconceivable. A whole pharmacy of designer antibodies coursed through Dominic’s executive blood. Whether that protected him from toxic pollution he couldn’t say, but he certainly felt safe from a common cold. His left eye itched, and he rubbed it with his knuckle. The low cavernous room in which he stood was crammed with half-naked people. Scattered sodium lights cast gloomy shadows, and condensation dripped from the steel ceiling. The air reeked of urine. I’m in hell, he thought.

  He studied the docking port from which he’d just emerged. Its
round hatch opened like an oven door, and thousands of fingerprints smudged the steel wall around it. He memorized the surroundings so he could find this docking port again. If things went wrong, the bathysphere might be his only escape.

  Major Qi was not in sight, but he noticed the old grandmother, Juanita, and her dirty-faced brats. Someone had given her a garment shaped like a sack. As she slipped it over her bare shoulders, he averted his eyes, but in every direction, he saw nakedness. People’s clothing fell away in shreds and soggy tatters. They covered themselves with their arms and clumped together and waited—like herd beasts, he thought. They’d run from their shepherds, and now they didn’t know what to do next. He could almost pity them—if only they didn’t smell so bad.

  “Taste, please! It’s very good!” The half-blind old man was trying to force a plastic cup of soup into Dominic’s hands. “I’m Tooksook, the greeter. If you have questions, ask me, ask me.”

  Hours had passed since Dominic’s last meal, and he was ravenous. The cup felt warm in his hand, but the soup looked questionable. When he swirled the thin gray liquid, dubious brown particles stirred up from the bottom. He sniffed it. Cloyingly sweet.

  “Please, please.” The old man pantomimed drinking. His long yellow fingernails curled at the ends, and he grinned like a half-wit. “It’s my own recipe. Hot soup. Good for the soul.”

  Dominic frowned at the protes in dirty aprons who were ladling the gray brew into mismatched containers. The whole operation looked unclean, so he dumped his soup on the floor.

  The old man stepped back and jammed a knuckle in his mouth. His overgrown eyebrows trembled as he stared at the puddle of soup. Then he gazed up through his milky cataracts with a look so tragic, Dominic almost laughed.

  But this was no time for humor. Dominic had a Net link to find. Pressure was building in his sinus cavities, and he wanted this trip to be over. Without another word, he tossed his empty cup to a worker, turned his back on the soup man and strode through the crowd, calling Qi’s name. From behind a steel column, the little boy, Benito, shot him a hostile scowl.

  “Do you know where my friend went?” he asked the boy.

  Benito slipped around the column and hid.

  Splendid, Dominic thought. I’ve been abandoned.

  The submarine deck stretched away like a flat, dark mouth. Peering over the tops of people’s heads, Dominic could see skeletal columns and beams where walls had been removed. The miners must have gutted this deck to make room for new arrivals. The ceiling was so low, he could reach up and touch it with his hand, and he had to duck under light fixtures. The low ceiling made him uneasy.

  “Major Qi!” he called aloud. “Answer, blast you!”

  He scanned the crowd, massaging his temples and searching for an official in charge. But this place had no leaders. Everyone looked alike—filthy, ragged and ignorant. Negotiating with this unwashed mob would be preposterous.

  He had memorized the Benthica’s layout, so now he oriented himself toward what he presumed was the bow. Surely he would find the access stairs to the bridge. To his right, workers were throwing up a new partition wall, so using that as a landmark, he set a course straight across the deck, through the thickest part of the noisy, milling crowd. Since he stood taller and broader than any prote, he could make his own path.

  Overhead, the sodium lights popped and sputtered, drizzling a thin light. As he worked his way forward, he ran into a clutter of tables and chairs, every seat occupied by a dozing prote. People curled on the floor, slumped against the chair legs, and some even slept on the tables. Slumbering bodies covered every available surface. It annoyed Dominic to have to detour off his straight course because of these sluggards. But then he glimpsed a middle-aged woman bathing the blistered, peeling shoulders of a beautiful young girl. Skin rash! He saw a man with a fiery red face and a boy with swollen hands. These people were sick! He spun away fast and collided immediately with the old soup man.

  “Good, good, I was looking for you. We need a strong back. Come, please. This way. Come, come.”

  Dominic exploded, “I’m not a laborer!”

  He spoke much louder than he intended, and people glanced their way. When he saw the soup man’s startled expression, he felt a qualm. He hadn’t meant to shout at this simpleminded old fellow. He suppressed an urge to sneeze. When he craned his neck to get his bearings again, he saw three new partition walls. Which one was his landmark?

  “Where’s the bow?” he asked the old man.

  “It isn’t far. This way. This way.”

  The soup man clapped his hands like a delighted child and led off through the crowd, and they soon wound up back at the bathysphere dock where newcomers were lining up for soup. Dominic grabbed handfuls of his silk shorts and twisted the fabric. He was furious. He started to say something, but the old man spoke first.

  “Look what Estaban brought us. Isn’t it wonderful? A gift from heaven, a gift” The man fluttered his long yellow fingers at a crate Estaban was unloading from the bathysphere.

  Fuming, Dominic eyed Estaban’s thick muscular arms and calculated what he’d have to do to hijack the bathysphere. He had never knocked anyone unconscious before, and he wondered how it was done.

  “Can you lift this?” Tooksook said. “Put it on the table, yes? And open it, please?”

  Dominic started to object, but the old man was already straining to lift the heavy crate by himself, so Dominic felt obliged to help. Since they didn’t have tools, he used a soup spoon to pry the lid off. The crate contained nutrient bars, chocolate-flavored, the kind that tasted like glue. Tooksook spread his fingers on his cheeks and gazed at them, and Dominic wondered how much the old fellow could really see through the milky film covering his eyes.

  After a moment, the old man touched Dominic’s arm. “Can you count?”

  “Of course.” Dominic pulled away.

  “Thought so, thought so. You’re an educated man. I knew it as soon as you spoke. Count and tell me how we can divide this food to feed all these people?”

  Dominic would have laughed if he’d been in a better mood. “That’s impossible.”

  “No, no, no. Not impossible. It’s a matter of division.” The old man pawed through the bars as if seeking a hidden treasure. “You’ve been to school, friend. You know how to count and divide. Tell me how many pieces to cut from each bar. Everyone gets a treat tonight. Everyone.”

  Dominic decided to humor the old fellow. He scanned the top layer. “I’d say this crate contains about 150 bars. How many people on board?”

  The soup man picked at a scab on his ear, rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and ran a pink tongue around his lips. “Five thousand four hundred and sixty-eight. Now that you’re here.”

  Dominic thought the fellow must be dreaming. A few days ago, there were only two thousand. “How do you know mat, old man?”

  “I’m Tooksook, the greeter. Call me Tooksook. I see everyone.”

  “That many people wouldn’t fit on this ship.”

  Dominic stooped till he was eye to eye with the soup man. From long practice, he knew how to read a face, although he’d never seen a face as old and wizened as Tooksook’s. The man had an American look, with his mongrel mix of large flat nose, prominent cheekbones and canted eyes—eyes that might have been any color before the cataracts hazed them over. Except for the long wispy eyebrows, Tooksook was perfectly hairless. Also guileless, Dominic decided. Probably senile.

  His sinuses were pounding now, and his throat was beginning to feel raw. He rubbed his stinging left eye. “How about a trade, Tooksook? I’ll help you with the chocolate bars if you’ll guide me to the ship’s Net link. Do we have a deal?”

  Tooksook stroked his cheek with a fingernail and smiled foolishly.

  “You’ll take me to the bridge?” Dominic watched the soup man’s eyes. “Where the ship sends its broadcast, understand?”

  Tooksook kept smiling and stroking his cheek. He selected a chocolate bar from the crate and pre
ssed it into Dominic’s hand. Without thinking, Dominic tore the bar from its plastic wrapper and devoured it in three bites. The soup man watched his lips till he’d swallowed the last mouthful and brushed the crumbs away. Then Tooksook kept watching Dominic’s mouth, as if he expected the chocolate bar to reappear. Innocent old guy. Dominic couldn’t help but smile.

  “Very well, Tooksook. I’ll do the math on your chocolate bars. Five thousand people, you said?”

  “Five thousand four hundred and sixty-eight. Now that you’re here.” The old man’s grin revealed an almost toothless pair of gums.

  Dominic actually laughed. “I don’t have my calculator. Let’s just round off, shall we?” He sneezed twice, then did a rough reckoning. The simple math made his head hurt. “If you cut each bar into thirty-eight pieces, everyone gets a treat. Can you do that?”

  “Each bar, thirty-eight pieces. You’ll need our sharpest knife,” said Tooksook.

  “Not me. Find someone else to do your kitchen work.” Dominic grabbed another chocolate bar from the crate and stuck it in his waistband for later. “What deck is this? No idea. Right, just point me to the stairway. You know. The stairs. The way up to the bridge.”

  He couldn’t make the witless old fellow understand. After taking another quick survey for Major Qi, he decided to forget her. He would do a methodical perimeter search on his own. His memory of the ship’s layout didn’t match what he was seeing. Not only had most of the original walls been removed. He counted three separate squads of protes erecting new walls and shoring up the wide ceiling span with improvised supports. Hadn’t they calculated stress loads before they ripped out the original walls? No wonder he’d gotten turned around. Worse, he was starting to feel achy all over. He’d never been ill before, and the unfamiliar sensations annoyed him. Surely if he circled the deck’s perimeter, he was bound to find the access stairs.