Neurolink

by M M Buckner

  For the first time since he’d arrived in the miners’ colony, he recognized the promise of this place. Given time, the workers would build a real town, a bright, friendly refuge under the sea, where people could live and work and raise families—and even make their own choices, in a limited way. He wondered how the matching hall would evolve, and how soon they would recognize the need for currency. Yes, and a banking system, too. He could have helped with that. He had ideas. For the first time, Dominic began to see the possible values of freedom. Just as he was leaving.

  He stopped and gripped the ladder. The rungs vibrated softly as Qi and Benito continued climbing. He ignored the NP’s insistent voice and watched their shadowy bodies. A foreboding of death passed over him like hard vacuum. He felt weightless and blank. He didn’t want his life to end just as he was beginning to understand. He imagined choking on a lungful of water, and fear froze him. That blank wall. No one could say what waited on the other side. Maybe justice. He was the one who had cast the miners adrift. As he pressed a cheek against the coarse metal rung, he knew himself—a cold, cynical murderer. Who was he to judge his genie brother?

  He started climbing again. He’d grown deaf to the NP’s tirade, but when a cramp seized his thigh, he suspected the genie had caused it. His limbs felt heavy. The NP was trying to slow him down. He stooped to massage his cramping thigh and glanced down the length of his body. He’d lost weight, and his muscles stood out visibly. More than ever, he looked like his athletic, mountain-climbing father.

  I am my father, he thought. Bred in a glass dish, trained and conditioned from infancy to succeed the great Richter Jedes, I’m a facsimile. Is there nothing about me that’s mine alone? What makes one individual distinct from another? My father had every major organ surgically replaced. His skeleton was mostly carbon composite. What made him continue to be Richter Jedes for nearly three centuries? And me, am I just another replacement part on a larger scale?

  The ladder stopped shaking. He glanced up and saw Benito’s little buttocks swathed in the huge, striped shorts. The boy was waiting for him, expecting miracles. Very well, he would perform. One choice remained within his control. The airlock. One short swim in the hot, sulfuric sea. With a quivering jaw, he mounted up the ladder.

  He passed a deck where a gang of workers hauled a large piece of equipment along on a sledge, and he paused to watch them bend in unison to tug at the heavy ropes. It was inconceivable that all this effort would go for nothing. He felt sure these work-hardened miners would find a way to survive. Qi would contact the hot markets. Millard would salvage another respirator pump, and Ane Zaki’s crew would cobble together more turbines. Naomi could build more food vats if she would let people help. Tooksook might persuade her. Again, Dominic imagined the quick flush into the ocean, and he gulped as if he were already drowning.

  The NP talked nonstop, and its fireworks nearly occluded Dominic’s vision. “You’re too intelligent to believe that black whore.”

  “I can’t see. You’ll make me fall.”

  The light show faded, but the NP kept speaking. “Once you find the link, we’ll be outta here. You’ll save the whole fucking market system, Dominic. You’ll be a celebrity. Imagine the party we’re gonna have. The women. Anything you want.”

  Dominic gritted his teeth and climbed another rung.

  “Your whore says nine thousand protes are here. How does that balance against a global die-off of 12 billion people? That’s what’ll happen if we let ZahlenBank fail.”

  Dominic swung to one side of the ladder as two young men climbed past him carrying a heavy crock of soup. Mealtime for someone. He sniffed the salty aroma and felt his mouth water.

  The NP shot sparks. “It’s on your head! Do you wanna kick us back to the dark ages?”

  Like a rupturing dam, Dominic broke into gales of laughter. Benito had splashed into the soup crock. As the two young men wrestled to snatch him out, Dominic held his stomach. He was laughing so hard, his ribs ached. His emotions were pitched so high, he was almost hysterical. When the men finally hauled Benito out of the crock, the boy’s hair, shoulders and chest streamed with oily soup, and his grin stretched the whole width of his face. “Mmm.”

  “Chaos. Looting. The tail end of things.” The NP had never stopped talking. “Make no mistake, Dominic, that’s the price we’ll pay.”

  Soup dripped from Benito’s hair onto Dominic’s forearm, and he licked it off. Savory, with a hint of citrus. Then he grabbed the boy and hugged him. It felt good to laugh.

  “The role of martyr doesn’t suit you, son.”

  Dominic decided to answer. “Do you think I’ll stand still and let you take over my mind?”

  “She’s lying about that. We’ll be equal partners.”

  “Screw you.”

  “Nicky, are you coming?” Qi called down from above.

  He started to shout an answer, but for a brief instant, he glimpsed her unguarded expression. Her anguish unsettled him. It reminded him of what he was about to do. He whispered too softly for her to hear, “Wish I could have known you better, Major Qi.”

  She started climbing again, and when she reached the top, her image was silhouetted against the bright round opening. Then she clambered through and disappeared. Benito followed close on her heels, and Dominic felt a wave of dread. Let it be quick, he thought. I hate the ocean. He climbed the last few rungs humming aloud the tune Djuju had taught him, jamming the NP’s tirade.

  Qi was waiting quietly with Benito. She’d shoved her blue-black hair behind her ears, and Dominic noticed again how striking she looked, despite her fatigue. She beckoned him to follow, then turned and sprinted away. She was leading him to his death. Why was she in such a hurry? Of course. Every minute he lived, the NP in his eye grew stronger. His very existence put nine thousand people at risk.

  “Billions will die,” the NP buzzed. “If you fail in your duty, it won’t be just ZahlenBank. The other big Coms will fall like dominoes.”

  Nine thousand or 12 billion, which statement was true? Once, he’d been very sure of the answer. Once he would have done anything to save ZahlenBank and avert a market crash. He’d been brought up to weigh people in a scale like coins. If ZahlenBank failed, civilization would be kicked back to the dark ages, his father used to say. Dominic pictured the miners crowded in dank, grimy corridors, eating scraps and suffering the ravages of disease. It occurred to him to wonder, which dark ages would that be?

  Lightning strobed across his retina. “I’m not a monster, son. I’m just thinking of the greater good! Sacrifice the few to save the many. You used to understand that.”

  Dominic saw Qi disappear into a narrow passage, and he followed several steps behind. Just as he entered, the passage walls began to twist and flow like liquid. I’m hallucinating, he thought. Either the air’s going bad, or the NP is already controlling my brain!

  He clawed his way along the passage as blue shadows surged up the walls and gushed across the ceiling in waves. Swaying forward, he put out his hand, expecting to tumble headlong, but when he closed his eyes, there was only the slight motion of a ship rocking on its moorings. He opened his eyes and saw the windows.

  Windows! A row of them along one side of the passage. He stumbled over and pressed his face against the thick warm glass. Outside, he could see the ocean. Underwater floodlights illuminated the area near the ship, and welding rigs threw bright strobing arcs through the water. Liquid shadows heaved up and down the passage walls like turbulent surf. He wanted to laugh. It was the ocean casting these drunken shadows, not his rotting brain. The effect was an optical illusion, like an amusement ride at a juvenile arcade. He wiped his mouth with his arm.

  Then he sucked in his cheek and bit down hard. Soon, he would be out there breathing that poisonous water.

  Soon, but not yet. This was his first view of the outside world in days. He leaned against the glass to drink it in. The mountains of junk stood out clearly—crushed vehicles, chunks of concrete, barrels and crat
es of unmarked waste. And there, maybe two hundred meters away, lay the Benthica. No, they called her the Pressure of Light, he reminded himself. She lay half buried under an Everest of cable and metal boxes. What were those boxes, old computers?

  The NP whined at the edge of his awareness. “You won’t let the bank fail. There’s too much Richter in you.”

  Dominic ignored the genie’s words. This place was a treasure trove. Surely the workers could find what they needed in this continent of junk to produce all the energy and oxygen and food they needed. He began to feel hopeful. He pressed closer against the glass to see the flank of his own ship, the Dominic Jedes. He counted seven, no, eight other wrecks clustered nearby. Divers with their curious bubbling tanks swarmed over the hulls, cutting and grinding and patching. His vantage was high, and as he looked down on their work from above, he felt the ship sway again, almost imperceptibly.

  “We’re near the bridge.” The NP spoke in a hush.

  That tone sounded ominous. Why would Qi bring him near the bridge? The Net link was there. No, she wouldn’t bring him anywhere near the Net link, he was certain of that much. She was leading him to the nearest airlock. “How deep are we?” he asked the genie.

  “Easy. From the light refraction, I calculate we’re 62.487 meters below sea level.”

  “That’s shallow.” Dominic wondered how fast his drowned body would pop to the surface.

  “This has to be the Canadian shelf,” said the NP. “Used to be hundreds of islands around here.”

  “Before the snow melted,” Dominic said. “You remember snow.”

  “I remember the Net link. Don’t play games with me, boy. We’re close.”

  The airlock. Do it now, Dominic told himself. After one last look at the view, he pushed away from the window and marched toward the door at the end of the passage. It was like the others, heavy and oval-shaped, painted gray. What awaited him on the other side. Oblivion? He hesitated only an instant. Then he leaned his weight on the lever and pushed through.

  But he didn’t find an airlock, only a small dim room. More blue shadows rippled along the walls, but these were not from ocean reflections. Here were the flickering displays of a dozen active computers. A semicircular bank of flat plasma screens dominated the room, and one cone projected a rippling 3-D hologram of the local seafloor. Its shimmering green projection showed a scale copy of the miners’ underwater town rising out of the waste dump, and Dominic gazed at it for a long while.

  Audio signals overlapped in a soft background babble, and the dense array of instrument panels made the room feel cozy. Several moments passed before he chanced to look overhead. Above this room rose the thick glass hemisphere of a lookout dome, and he glimpsed stairs leading up to the instrumentation. This could be only one place—the bridge! Dominic spun around and located Qi pressed against the wall. Her dark face was hidden in shadow, and she wouldn’t meet his glance. Seated in the captain’s chair, square in the middle of everything, was Gervasia.

  “You!” Dominic said.

  Gervasia’s beautiful blue eyes transfixed him. She’d tucked her blond hair under a cap, and she seemed more at ease than before, clearly at home in the seat of command.

  “So you’ve come at last, coin giver. Are you ready?”

  Ready to be flushed out to sea? Hell no, he wasn’t ready. There was no graceful way to drown. He could already imagine the dark waves rushing into his mouth, the choking panic. He realized he was breathing too fast and willed himself to calm down. He said, “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  A bolt of pain shot through his left eye. “You’re a Jedes, born and bred. No way are you gonna sacrifice yourself to save protes.”

  Dominic smiled with grim irony and spoke aloud to the NP, no longer caring who overhead him. “You’re right about one thing. I’ve got too much of Richter in me. No one dictates what I do.” Then he turned to Gervasia. “Where’s the airlock?”

  She glanced to her left, and Dominic saw someone standing there, in the shadows behind the bank of computers. Several people. He began to recognize faces. Estaban, the bathysphere pilot, the one he’d planned to knock in the head. Millard in his wire-rim spectacles, with a ballpoint pen stuck in his hedge of red hair. Naomi in her dress blue uniform. Massoud stepped out of the shadows and winked roguishly. Sereb, the mining chief, saluted him, while Djuju gave a solemn nod. Then Dominic saw something even more unexpected. Sitting cross-legged on the floor was the old grandmother, Juanita Inez. She rocked back and forth, gripping her long-lost grandson in her arms, and as Benito gurgled with joy, tears washed her wrinkled brown cheeks.

  “Am I late? Sorry!”

  Dominic spun around and saw Penderowski rush through the door, red-faced and out of breath, with his green turban half undone and his amber glasses pushed up on his forehead.

  The young man flashed a dimpled smile. “Hullo, mate!”

  “What does this mean?” Dominic swung to face Qi, but unaccountably, she wouldn’t look him in the eye. This was some new trick. Here he was, preparing for a gruesome death, and she was still playing games!

  He turned to Gervasia. “Explain to me what’s going on.”

  “You wanted to meet the council on the bridge. Here we are.”

  “What? You people are the council?”

  Gervasia pointed to the observation dome above her head. High in the air on a suspended platform, tottering on a rickety step stool, with a floppy set of paper instructions unfolded in his hands, stood Tooksook. How did the old man move around so fast? A heartbeat later, Dominic noticed what Tooksook was polishing with his tattered yellow cloth. The Net link.

  “That’s it.” The NP’s whisper seemed to vibrate down the length of Dominic’s spine.

  He remembered its shape perfectly. An upright black box on a squat swiveling base. And there was the diaphanous silver disk, two meters across, tilted toward the heavens.

  Dominic said, “What hoax is this?”

  “It’s real.” The NP spoke with raw lust. “I’m picking up signal frequencies. That link’s active, and it’s broadcasting. Just make physical contact anywhere on the surface, and I’ll call for our limousine.”

  Dominic backed away. He had no intention of approaching the Net link.

  “Touch it, boy. That’s all you have to do.”

  When Dominic tried to move farther back, his muscles locked up, and he staggered.

  “Hello, Nick.” Tooksook stepped down from his stool and gestured toward the stair that led up to the silvery Net link. “You wanted to see it, yes?”

  Dominic turned away, then spun back around against his will. The flashes in his eye throbbed brighter. “Touch it,” the NP whispered. “This is what we’ve come for.”

  He felt his limbs shaking as if he had some kind of palsy. The NP was trying to direct his muscles. “Qi, it’s already penetrated my motor controls,” he shouted. “You know what that means.”

  “Climb the stairs,” the NP’s voice echoed inside his skull, “to save ZahlenBank.”

  “Qi, talk to me!” His right foot moved without his volition toward the staircase. He clutched at a column, but his hands failed to grip.

  Frantically, he grabbed a teacup from Gervasia’s console and hurled it toward the silver disk, hoping to smash the link before the NP could use it. But the cup fell short and bounced against the wall.

  Gervasia moved out of his way and said nothing. All of them simply watched. Why didn’t they stop him!

  “Climb. We share the same nature. We want this.” The NP’s voice no longer carried sound. It threaded through Dominic’s mind like a brilliant thought, and he began to mount the stairs.

  “Qi, help me!” he called out.

  Qi sprang toward him, but Gervasia blocked her. Were they fools? “Tell them what the NP will do!” he shouted, clenching his muscles to resist the NP’s power. But his legs moved as if pulled by wires.

  “Why are you resisting?” The NP’s thought whispered like an embrace. “The same father made us
both.”.

  “No!” He took another step up the stairs. This was crazy. He was about to destroy all of them. Why didn’t Qi stop him? “Qi!” he screamed, fighting for control. But his legs jerked up the steps.

  Then a memory flashed. The Net link had a vulnerable point at the base. If he could smash it there, without making contact. What could he throw? Penderowski’s torch? It was still stuck in his waistband, at the small of his back. He reached for it, but his arm stopped midway as if turned to stone.

  His eye ached, and when he willed his arm to reach for the torch, a bolt of pain sharper than any he’d known pierced his cranium. But his arm moved. First a centimeter. Then two. Bunching his muscles like ropes, he pushed against an invisible force and drove his arm farther behind his back, stretching his fingers, compelling his hand with a conscious thought to close on the torch. He had it! In one smooth motion, he spun and hurled it at the swiveling base. But his aim was high. The torch sliced a small rip in the receiver dish and ricocheted against the dome.

  Inside his eye, the NP laughed. “Piss poor!”

  Out of control now, Dominic’s body leaped up to the platform and staggered closer to the apparatus. He pleaded with Tooksook, “Push me away. Knock me down.”

  The old man stuck a knuckle in his mouth.

  “Don’t you know what’s at stake?” Dominic yelled, even as his left eye sizzled with a new, agonizing light. “I’ll destroy all of you. Stop me!”

  Without meaning to, he lifted his arm. Tears streamed down his left cheek. His fingers stretched forward as if moved by unseen magnetic fields, and as he fought to keep from touching the link, his muscles shuddered. When he tried to speak again, his words came out as a guttural roar. Was it his imagination, or could he smell the aqueous tissue of his eyeball burning?