Neurolink

by M M Buckner

  Dominic reached to touch her hand, but she jerked away.

  “Forget the brunette,” said the NP. “You don’t need her.”

  Then to Dominic’s surprise, Qi laughed at the top of her lungs. “Hoo-hoo, my big confession. Look at me. A prote impersonating an exec impersonating a prote. Sleek, huh? Sixteen years I’ve carried fake IDs. I’m a total imitation. Sometimes I forget which version of me is real.”

  She ran fingers through her blue-black hair, and Dominic noticed how it hung in sweaty strands. Fatigue pulled at her features like gravity, but she smiled and pretended to be as carefree as ever. Then she slipped something small and shiny from her pocket. He couldn’t see what it was.

  She spoke in a lower register, “Do you hear me, Gig? Thought you knew everything? Well, I’ve been lying to you for sixteen years.”

  Dominic said, “You’re still in contact with Gig?”

  “Gig thinks the world’s his private stage. He chooses the actors and sets the scene. Then he sits back to watch the entertainment.” The object in her hand reflected the dim light like a mirror. She added, “He’s a lot like your dear old Da.”

  “If you’re linked to the Net, tell the Orgs to save these people,” Dominic pleaded.

  She went on in a rising voice, “Gig will record us to the very last breath. Every hiccup, every sniffle, every preterinane heartbeat. Then he’ll analyze. And judge. Why did she raise her voice? Why did she sweat? Gig’s a connoisseur of human motive.”

  Qi turned the small object over in her hand. It was a shard of broken glass.

  “What are you doing?” He lunged to grab her hand, but the boy got in his way.

  In a rush, Qi twisted the glass behind her earlobe, and crimson blood spurted down her dark throat. A second later, she tossed the glass shard aside and gazed at the small bloody chip lying in her open hand—the implant. She’d cut it out of her skin.

  “Sixteen years,” she said softly. “The masquerade’s over.” She squeezed her fist, lifted it over her head, and hurled it down the ladder tube with all her might. For a long while, she stared at the shadows. Blood trickled down her neck and soaked her collar. “Good-bye, you old pervert,” she murmured, in a tone that sounded very much like grief.

  Dominic bit his lip. Benito said, “Hn.”

  The NP chuckled. “Serves him right, the S.O.B.”

  Abruptly, Qi curled her toes around the ladder rail and laughed. She was trying very hard to appear unruffled. “Okay, truth for truth, Nick-O. That’s my story. Now yours. You’re hiding secrets, too. We’re gonna die here. No reason to pretend anymore.”

  Dominic noticed that her long ebony legs were bruised and scraped. He could sense her despair, and he almost reached out to touch her knee, but the boy wriggled between them.

  “Truth for truth?” he said. “Okay, I’m an imitation, too. I’m Richter Jedes’ clone. Is that good enough for you?”

  Qi shrugged. “Your Da wanted a son. Lots of parents have clone kids. That’s not shattering news.”

  Dominic steeled himself and went on. “I’m not an ordinary clone. I’m an exact duplicate. The technicians controlled my epigenetics, too, even in the gestation tank. No random cell mutations. No developmental modulations. They left nothing to chance. In every way, I am a second Richter.”

  Qi merely gazed at him with her black Asian eyes.

  “You knew that already,” he said. He didn’t think anyone outside the Bank knew that.

  Benito squirmed to get their attention. Distracted, Dominic noticed the pencil point had broken again, so he clicked the button to extrude more lead. Meanwhile, Qi dug an old candy wrapper from her pocket and gave it to the boy to use as drawing paper.

  “Zhhh,” Benito gurgled. He spread the wrapper across his bare thigh and began to draw elaborate flourishes. He grinned as the two adults watched. Dominic knew time was passing and that he should get up and start climbing again. The NP droned a nonstop reminder. Yet he didn’t move.

  Qi stroked the boy’s hair. “I thought this place would succeed, you know? The labor market’s glutted. Too many workers. If a few runaways build a place outta trash at the bottom of the ocean, why should anyone care?”

  “As you said, they made too much noise.” Dominic tried to identify the image Benito was scribbling, but he was so tired, his eyelids fluttered shut. He came awake with a jerk when Qi spoke again.

  “The day Gig gave me this assignment, I thought, yeah, this is why I gave up my real life. This is the mission I’ve waited for. Now it’s over.”

  Dominic glanced up and saw her forehead pressed against a ladder rung. All her merriment was gone. She seemed done in.

  He let his eyelids fall shut. He didn’t know how to comfort Qi. She said it was too late, and she was probably right. Even if he reached the Net link in time, could ZahlenBank’s guards evacuate nine thousand people in less than two hours? No, he’d have to place a rush order of fuel and oxygen to supply the colony—at triple the regular charge. But even before he could do that, he would have to persuade the bank directors, and how long would that take? And what if the miners wouldn’t accept the new jobs he found? He felt tired just thinking about it. He’d come here to fix his mistake, keep ZahlenBank in one piece and put everything back the way it was. How did he get saddled with nine thousand dependents?

  Benito was thumping his chest. He opened his eyes and squinted at the boy’s drawing till he made out a raft riding a ferocious ocean. Among the passengers, Benito had sketched one stick figure taller than the rest, with a block-shaped head and huge feet and one astonishingly long arm holding up the sail. Dominic shut his, eyes. I have to get up and do something now, he told himself, or this boy will die.

  Like my father.

  His father’s sightless stare came back to him. He should have stood up and called the medics. He should have adjourned the stupid meeting and called for help. That Monday in the conference room, there hadn’t been much blood on the table, just a few dark drops trickling from his father’s mouth. “Please!” Dominic had shouted, furiously, pathetically, while his colleagues turned away. Klas Lorn had fiddled with his notebook. Ulla Mannheim fled through the double doors. And someone—Oscar Blein—made a joke. Karel Folger was the one who shut Richter’s eyelids and called the disposal team. Dominic remembered how youthful his father’s broken body looked as they folded it into the bag.

  He woke in panic. He was still sitting on the catwalk with Benito sleeping in his arms. The metal grate bit through his thin silk trunks. He couldn’t have dozed long. Light glimmered against the walls, outlining the wet orange stains of bacterial colonies. The ladders creaked with moving workers, and the hot air stank of living. For a moment, every detail sprang out in stark wonder. I’m still alive. I still nave time.

  He tried to get up, but when he reached out for the rail, his vision blurred, and he almost vomited. Wooziness. Everything was spinning. He sat back down and willed himself to hold steady. Benito shifted in his arms. On the ladder above, Qi had managed to fall into a deep slumber. She was incredible. He focused on the bruised soles of her feet.

  “How long did I sleep?” he whispered.

  “Too long! You have less than an hour left,” the NP said.

  Dominic shook Benito awake.

  “While you were dreaming, the power blacked out three times, and the oxygen level dropped to a 10 percent deficit. Does that interest you? No, you’d rather play nursemaid to your brat and chump to your brunette tart.”

  “Shut up!” Dominic clawed at his eye.

  “Oh, was I snoring?” Qi leaned out from the ladder and stared down at him. “Something in your eye, Nick-O?”

  With animal agility, she slid down the ladder and bounded onto the catwalk beside him, flashing a smile. Her mood had changed again. The nap must have revived her. She was back to her old sardonic self. Now she knelt and put her thumbs against his temples, tilted his head back roughly and scrutinized his left pupil.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. �
��We have to keep climbing. Do you have any water?”

  “Truth for truth, Nick.” As she leaned closer, her face hovered only centimeters away, and he could see the sheen of sweat on her upper lip. Her smell was pungent.

  “You cheated, Nick-O. You didn’t mention the nasty little secret hiding in your eyeball. Yep, Gig told me. Gig knew all along.” She sat back against the ladder and smirked.

  The NP sizzled. “Lurking bastard. How did he find out?”

  Dominic tried to moisten his lips. “You had your bit-brain, I had mine. It’s only fair.”

  “Fair? You poor stiff.” Qi sucked her teeth. Then she crossed her arms and watched him steadily. “You’ve been hunting the Net link because you plan to call your guards and arrest these people. Then you’ll go home and comfort your conscience with cheap talk about market order.”

  “Qi, these people are running out of air.” He set the boy on the ladder and would’ve started climbing, but Qi seized his wrist.

  “All they need is a little more time, Nick.” She wasn’t smirking now. Her mouth tightened in a straight line, and for a moment, she reminded him of earnest Elsa Bremen. “The colony can survive if you buy them more time. Arrange a loan for the supplies they need, just till they’re self-sufficient.”

  He shook his head. “ZahlenBank will never deal with protes. I’ll find them jobs, so they’ll be safe.”

  “Safe?” Qi’s face contorted. The intensity of her anger startled him. “You are so deluded. Arrests cost money. Your dear old Da isn’t gonna arrest these people. He’s gonna blast this place outta the water.”

  “What? That’s nonsense. The NP wouldn’t murder all these people just to save money.”

  “You would.”

  Dominic blinked. As her words sank in, he leaned back against the wet wall and gazed at the bright round opening above. Strange, he’d forgotten that small fact.

  “Two thousand protes. Nine thousand protes. What’s the difference? You’ve got billions more,” she went on. “The NP sent you here to light up the target.”

  Dominic said nothing.

  “It’s a cost-benefit equation,” Qi said. “Any dumb logic engine could figure it out.”

  He nodded. He knew she was right. Swift and simple, nominal cost, no loose ends. Eliminating the colony would be ZahlenBank’s cleanest way out of its problems. It’s what he suggested in the first place.

  He subvocalized to the NP, “You plan to destroy this colony?”

  “Sure, with space-based weapons. Don’t tell me you’re surprised. We always knew the miners were expendable.”

  Right. He knew. It was the kind of solution his father taught him to aim for. The old man liked sure bets. The genie said they shared the same values. They were practically twin brothers. Dominic wondered why he hadn’t anticipated this move all along.

  “I won’t shoot till you’re safely away,” the genie added. “All I need is a location.”

  Dominic forced himself to look into Qi’s fierce black eyes. “That’s why you led me away from the Net link.”

  “Yeah. That demon in your eye wants to contact its big brother. If you touch the Net link, we’re dead.” Qi pulled a water sack from the folds of her uniform and flung it at him.

  He caught the sack in reflex and squeezed it between his fingers. Barely a swallow left. He gave it to Benito and watched the boy suck it down. By the NP’s logic, this boy was counted expendable. In the balance of pure value, Benito didn’t carry enough weight.

  But Dominic was the one who first sentenced Benito to die. Not Richter. Not the NP. He did it to save a month’s salary. Realizing this, he would have cursed the day he was born, but that was impossible. He was never born at all.

  “Wanna hear some more nonsense?” Qi said. “Your dear old bit-brain doesn’t trust you. It thinks you’re too soft. So that agent in your eye is getting ready to metastasize and take over your motor controls.”

  “Liar!” the NP blazed. “Don’t believe her, Dominic.”

  Qi went on. “Yeah, it’s gonna force you to touch the Net link and call down the laser strike, whether you want to or not. Still think that’s fair?”

  Dominic dropped the water sack. Metastasize? Like cancer? He pictured ugly threads of glittering digital rot lacing through his brain. It couldn’t be true. A wave of nausea made him choke, and he leaned over the rail, but his stomach was too empty to throw up. He heaved with dry spasms.

  “You get the idea,” Qi said, watching him. “Your dead papa wants to repossess you.”

  “That is total bullshit,” the NP said. “I grew some memory and evolved a few add-ons. Practical stuff for the mission, that’s all.”

  As Dominic fought back his next urge to vomit, Benito drew closer and patted his shoulder.

  Qi kept talking. “Why do you think Richter spawned a clone so late in life? He planned all along to hijack your body. He wants to live again. Gig told me.”

  “No way!” the genie blared in his eye. “You know I wouldn’t do that. You’re my own dear boy.”

  Dominic shook with another dry heave.

  “It’s the truth,” Qi said.

  But he wasn’t listening anymore. He couldn’t look away from the ugly picture in his mind—the NP’s nanoquans marching through his cerebellum, taking over his central nervous system, turning him into a grotesque husk with no will of his own. He wanted to deny it. His father wouldn’t use him that way. His father had been a brilliant, honorable banker. The man who read him stories and taught him to count would not use him like a mindless husk. But the NP might.

  Yes, the NP was a damaged copy. Dominic felt sure his father didn’t plan this. Richter couldn’t foresee how his Neural Profile would evolve. Migrating to the Net must have corrupted its data. Yes, it was the genie, not his father. Dominic prodded his left eye to make it hurt.

  “If you knew what the NP planned, why did you bring me here?” he asked Qi. “Why take that risk? What do you want from me? What do the Orgs want?”

  Qi didn’t answer.

  “Your whore wants to make us doubt each other,” the NP said. “You know I’ll bring you home safe. You’re the only thing in the world I love.”

  Another fog of wooziness made Dominic shiver. He leaned against the ladder and gazed down through the grill-work at people moving in the shaft. Benito kept softly patting his back, and he couldn’t help but imagine how it would feel if the NP took control of him. Would he be unconscious? Or would he look on, paralyzed, while the NP jerked his arms and legs like a marionette and forced him to give away the miners’ location? He didn’t want to kill these people. He clenched his jaws so tight, his head trembled.

  But I’m the one who sentenced Benito to die. It’s me.

  Lightning flashed in his eye as the NP spoke. “Okay, I’m glad you know the truth. Imagine the power we’ll have with two minds merged in one body. We’re made for each other, boy. We’ll unite the speed of machine logic with savvy human cunning. Genius beyond reckoning. Did I mention immortality? Those Orgs will eat our dust.”

  “I won’t do it,” Dominic subvocalized deep in his throat. “Curse your demonic soul. You can’t force me to murder people.”

  “I knew you’d turn to mush.” The NP snickered. Suddenly, Dominic’s right hand rose-—of its own accord—then dropped like deadweight. The NP teased, “See what I can do?”

  “Bastard.” Dominic saw his hand rising again, and he clenched his fist to stop the motion.

  “Okay. You resist me now,” the genie said, “but not for long. I’m getting stronger.”

  Benito whimpered, and Dominic saw he’d sunk his fingernails into the boy’s shoulder. When he relaxed his grip, Benito drew away from him. I’m a monster, he thought.

  “Flush me out to sea.”

  “Huh?” Qi opened her mouth.

  “Through an airlock.” He squeezed her hand. “I’m dangerous. You have to get rid of me. The NP draws power from my nervous system. Kill me, and it dies, too.”

  Qi s
tared at him as if she didn’t understand what language he was speaking.

  He leaned closer and pointed to his eye. “Take the genie out of the equation. That should buy you more time. You’ll think of something, Qi.”

  She touched his stubbly chin, and the tension which had masked her features eased. She seemed only tired. Yellowish liquid coursed down the shaft wall, and they leaned away from it. A couple of workers climbed past them down the ladder, and they had to shift positions.

  He said, “You can trade for fuel on the hot market. Bargain for credit terms. Use your wits, Qi. This isn’t over.”

  She drew her knuckle along his whiskery jawline, and her ink black eyes glistened. With a look of pure anguish, she pointed up the ladder.

  “Right,” he nodded. The airlock would be above. He stood and steadied himself against the wall. His left leg had gone numb, and he stomped his foot to get the circulation going. “Let’s do this.”

  CHAPTER 16

  * * *

  TURNAROUND

  THE ladder shaft did not twist or curve. It did not lead to a dead end or stop abruptly at a locked bulkhead door. It led straight up, straight as a rocket launch. The rest on the catwalk had given Dominic a second wind, and as he climbed steadily up toward the airlock where he would be flushed out to sea, he glanced from side to side, observing everything. With unusual clarity, he perceived that, before this moment, even when he was lost in the tunnels and fainting from lack of oxygen, he had always believed the NP would save him. He’d been sure he would return safe to Trondheim, to neat, pressed trousers and air-conditioned sanity. But now he understood, even as the NP harangued him to call the guards, that his life was slipping away by the second. So he drank in every detail. Things looked different now.

  Portals stood wide open, and he could see workers teeming through the decks. His ship—the Dominic Jedes—appeared tight and dry, though repairs were still under way. Welding torches sprayed blue-white sparks, and people called out to each other as they hauled tools and materials into place. Their voices echoed musically against the steel walls. Temporary light tubes had been draped in haste along the passages, and their bright, sagging loops hung like garlands. Often Dominic heard the groan of warping metal as some part of the hull deformed under pressure. Still, the ship had a lightness. A clean smell.