Deception Well (The Nanotech Succession Book 2)

by Linda Nagata

  With an effort, he pushed to his feet. This room was larger than his breather. Ornamental grasses with rust red tassels grew in wall-mounted pots near the door. The carpet was thick and white, with pillows scattered on the floor. The furnishings were simple. Besides the sleeping pallet, there was only a small table with a phone visor and two chairs. Looking at this last, he grimaced, wondering how many hours they planned to make him sit and chat with Dr. Alloin. Then he remembered where he was, and carefully, he forced all expression to fall from his face. For they would be watching him, and he didn’t want to show them anything.

  Responding to the needs of his body, he staggered to the far corner of the room, then pressed an icon on the wall. The toilet slid out of its chamber. He stared down into the smooth, peach-colored bowl. Time to give them some piss to analyze. When he was finished, the toilet retreated.

  He tossed his hair back, out of his face. Madman, he thought, remembering his chemical vision: the electric aura of the crowd, the silver swirl of faces, the sense of control, of command, his body encased in an invulnerable silver armor. His heart beat faster, thinking about it. Immediately, he tried to suppress that reaction, knowing they would hear. But he couldn’t deny the memory excited him. To feel such a quantity of energy at his back …

  Quickly, he closed his eyes, breathing deeply to calm himself. The allure of power …

  Why, he wondered, does it feel so good?

  He remembered the swan burster, and the desire he’d felt that first time he’d seen it modeled in Jupiter’s strategic chamber aboard Nesseleth, and Jupiter’s rebuke:

  We all carry the seeds of destruction within us. Boys grasp for weapons as soon as they have learned to make a fist.

  An instinct as natural as breathing …

  Jupiter had held fourteen thousand people in his fist.

  There were over six and a half million people in the city of Silk. Given the decline in oxygen, in hydrogen—how long before we notice our demise? And what would be the first physical signs? He already knew. The first sign would be an increase of emotional pressure—and he could feed on that.

  Uneasy now, he opened his eyes. The bed had folded itself into a couch with a blue floral print. A low table arose from the floor in front of it, bearing a plate of scenic cookies, each decorated with a different three-dimensional image. He picked one up. It showed a great ship moving in orbit over the slowly turning geography of the Well. At first he thought the ship was Nesseleth, but the lines were subtly different. Maybe it was Null Boundary, then, the ship that had brought Kona and Yulyssa and the rest of them from the ruins of Heyertori. He squinted, examining the planet’s image more closely.

  There was no elevator.

  The familiar continent rolled past, barren of any anchored thread. Intrigued, he inspected the ship again. The Old Silkens had built the elevator. Maybe this was their ship. Sypaon. That was her name. Yulyssa had talked about her once. Sypaon had been a great engineer.

  He put the cookie down and picked up another. It showed a tournament soccer game, the crowds vibrant with motion as the players scurried around the field. Another cookie displayed a garden bright with day lilies and iris nodding in a subtle breeze. He picked up the last one. Silvery machine parts vibrated in intricate motion across its face: the same motif as the wall mural, both here and in Kona’s apartment. It was supposed to be a neural structure of the Chenzeme. It didn’t mean anything to Lot.

  He tossed the cookie back onto the plate, wondering if Dr. Alloin had arranged the snack as a kind of psychological test. He couldn’t help but smile. Did she seek to gauge his sanity by the food he chose to eat? And what was sanity? Was it crazy to consider escape from a dying city?

  Years ago, Dr. Alloin had sent him on a VR run of Silk—but not the Silk he knew. Urban’s people had been force-landed here 252 years ago, dumped by the damaged Null Boundary at the end of the elevator column, knowing only that the constant radio queries they’d directed at Silk had gotten no response.

  As Lot thought about it, a deep chill wrapped around his spine, like the first touch of cold storage. Kona and Yulyssa and a handful of others had gone first down the elevator column. In the VR run, Lot had gone with them: part of the exploration party, living remotes for the 5,000 incarnates (and the 212,000 in hatch storage) all crammed into the cargo slug at the elevator’s end, every one of them waiting to learn if they had any future at all.

  Closing his eyes, Lot could see again the skeletons that had inhabited Silk. City of Bones. That’s what they’d called it. Human bones had littered the streets. On the balconies, knee-high weedy shrubs with dark green leaves and blood red flowers sprouted from the detritus of decaying human bodies. In the park, skulls glistened like rounded mushrooms among overgrown meadow grasses. In a bedroom in Old Guard Heights he watched his own flesh-covered hand descend through a slow, reluctant arc (fully conscious of the skeleton biding inside it) to touch the smooth white skull of a child nestled in the center of a bed among parental ribs, enfolded like treasure within long, bony arms. The child had its baby teeth, and a second set of adult teeth embedded in the maxilla. Lot touched these, one by one, and more than the bones themselves those preemergent teeth testified to the potential that had once been.

  The Old Silkens believed the Well had killed them. In the city library, their sweat-soaked, emaciated images described how their medical Makers had been decimated and their lives stolen by a plague spawned in the Well’s seething biomass. But no one really knew. The plague had died with its victims, leaving no evidence of its origin.

  Had Jupiter died too?

  In the City of Bones, maybe it was crazy to believe in even the surety of the next moment. But Jupiter had lived here, and he’d come away from this city preaching communion, not death. By that standard, the people of Old Silk could not be really dead, but just changed, become part of the Communion, their souls mixed up with the fragmented remnants of the ancient beings that had held this place to be their home. Lot remembered the feel of his finger sliding across the infant’s double row of teeth. Many things could be hidden under the skin, in the bones. Jupiter had been down there, and he had lived.

  The oxygen content of the room was rising. Lot felt more alert, and suspected Dr. Alloin might arrive soon. Restless now, he wandered to the table and picked up the phone visor. It seemed incredible that he would be allowed net access. And indeed, when he slipped the visor over his eyes no images appeared against the background of the room. It had been disconnected. He tossed it back onto the table, beginning to pace now, five short strides from one end of the room to the other. After three laps, he caught himself; took a deep breath of the rich air, then forced himself to sit down on the sofa. Minutes decayed at the leisurely pace of stable atoms. He had time to wonder if Urban had been arrested too, and the thought brought on a brief burst of panic: Urban had no defense against Dr. Alloin’s therapies. Neither did Gent.

  He jumped to his feet, paced the room again twice, his fingers trailing along one wall as he sought to discover the locations of the cameras. He wanted to look at Dr. Alloin, fix her with his best imitation of Jupiter’s commanding eye. Finally, he stopped in the center of the room, arms stiff at his sides. “Dr. Alloin!” he called. “Listen to me. Listen: You won’t touch Urban, or Gent. You won’t change them. You know it’s because of me.” His words silver as a second skin. “Come see me. Come talk to me. You know it’s me.”

  He shuddered, not so sure of that last anymore. Chenzeme neural patterns mixed with human emotions to produce bizarre results.

  What am I?

  He paced the room again. Tried the phone again. Sat down again. Another minute of his life decayed. And then another until two hours had burned away, and still no one came.

  He got up and pounded on the door. “You want me out of sight?” he shouted. “You think I’m dangerous?” He whirled away, three strides to cross the room, hit the wall and turn. “I am dangerous.” He muttered it, knowing the volume wouldn’t matter. They co
uld hear the very growl of his blood stumbling through his capillaries. “I am dangerous.”

  He raised his hand to strike the door again, but as he did so, the door popped open. Startled, he took two short steps back. Captain Antigua stood in the entrance.

  She seemed softer, chubbier, maybe even shorter than the woman in armor he remembered from that day. Her coppery hair curled around the perimeter of a broad, open face. Her hand touched the doorframe, the fingers thick, friendly and hearty. He wondered how much of her changed appearance could be attributed to his own changing viewpoint. He’d been smaller that day, and more vulnerable. Still, he sensed the difference was real. Placid Antigua had force-fitted herself into a society that could not trust her. Given that, it wasn’t really surprising that she would let her aspect evolve into something less threatening and more maternal. But who was she inside?

  He couldn’t begin to guess. She’d abandoned Jupiter to become a maker of useless trinkets and children’s fads. She was a leaf fluttering in the wind, turning this way and that, one day loyal to Jupiter Apolinario, the next a stolid citizen of Silk. And the next?

  He felt the hair rise on the back of his neck as he caught a sense of calm satisfaction from Placid Antigua. What could Captain Antigua have to be satisfied about? He widened the distance between them, retreating two more steps until he stood by the couch.

  She watched in mild amusement, a friendly smile on her soft, matronly face. “That was an impressive debut you made the other night. You’re better than Jupiter, I think, at least when your heart’s in it.” He saw a flash of green in her hand.

  “Where’s Dr. Alloin?” Lot asked nervously.

  “Busy.” Captain Antigua stepped fully into the room. The door closed behind her. “You brought her a number of new patients.” She looked around, her gaze taking in the mural, the furnishings, before settling again on Lot’s face. Her anger surfaced. It hit him in a sudden pulse, rattling him badly. “You’ve heard from Jupiter, haven’t you?”

  Shock flicked across his face, a moment only before he had it under control, but she saw it.

  She misinterpreted it. “Devil! How long have you known?” Like a chameleon’s skin her face darkened from pale cream to the brown of singed paper. She raised her hand, showing him a glistening green lozenge about two inches long. Her index finger poised clawlike over the tiny spray head. Suddenly, the room seemed several times smaller. “The planetary wardens have seen the change. It’s time, isn’t it? He’s coming back.” She stepped forward, closing the gap between them. “Answer me!”

  He was suddenly conscious of his heart, doing crazy things in his chest. Everybody was crazy. Where was monkey-house security? Where was Dr. Alloin?

  “Answer me!” Placid Antigua screamed.

  “I don’t know.” Lot kept his voice calm, quiet, but his gaze was fixed on the green capsule and the poised talon of her index finger, searching for any slight flexion of muscles.

  She gave him a curious look. “Do you think I want to hurt you?”

  “No.” Maybe he answered too quickly.

  “Lot, I didn’t betray him.”

  He nodded, as calm as possible, doing everything he could not to provoke her. “None of us did.”

  “He sent me back up the tunnels to supervise the off-loading. But it was too late! The troops were already panicking. I couldn’t bring order to that chaos. Lot, it wasn’t my fault.”

  “Sooth.” Had she been laboring under that guilt all these years?

  “He left us behind,” Placid insisted.

  “I know.”

  She nodded, as if they’d suddenly become confidants. “I had a life before I knew him. He took that away from me.” She pressed the cylinder against her chest. “He came to my house. I had a husband. I had children. But he got inside me. He took me away from them. And he won’t let me go! I can still feel his presence, his abiding presence—that’s what they call it in the refugee quarter—his abiding presence, alive inside me, always accusing me, blaming me, but it wasn’t my fault—”

  “I’m sorry,” Lot whispered. “I’m sorry. Maybe Dr. Alloin could help you.”

  She looked at him with a half-smile. “I don’t want help. I want to go back to the life I had before he poisoned me with this need. I want to see my other children again. I want to go home.”

  Lot swallowed hard, groping for an effective strategy. “I don’t know how I can help you.”

  She smiled in a shy, distracted way. “That’s okay. The wardens will take care of it. They’ll dissolve any trace of him they find.” She looked at the little capsule in her hand. “They’re armed with a neat assault Maker.”

  “Captain Antigua…”

  “You know it was always his fault.” Her claw flexed.

  Lot threw his hands over his face and dove past her across the tiny room as the aerosol hissed from the spray head. He felt cold moisture on his forearms, his bare chest. His shoulder plowed into Placid, and then he hit the floor on his elbows. It hurt. He had time to wonder if he’d shattered bones, before his back slammed into the wall and he crumpled. He heard Placid screaming. Through dark spots of looming unconsciousness, he saw the capsule on the floor and he guessed that he’d knocked it out of her grasp when he’d jumped, but why didn’t she pick it up again? He kicked at it, sending it skipping across the rug. His arms were burning. His chest too, and not in a mild, allegorical way. He screamed and reared back against the wall, eyes clenched shut and face screwed up, sure that someone must be holding a torch against his skin even if he couldn’t see it. His medical Makers kicked in. Foam on a fire. Pain receptors blanked. His arms and chest went numb. Placid’s screaming kept on and on. He forced his eyes open. A single glance told him she’d poisoned herself too. The aerosol must have spewed across her face when he’d bumped her. Her face was gone. Her eyes were empty sockets, her nose bone visible. Cheek bones. He could see the hearty roots of her teeth, blackened tissue pulling away around her skull, bubbling, dissolving.

  Assault Makers. He hadn’t even known the wardens had an arsenal. The Silkens: they could have used it that day.

  But they hadn’t.

  His arms were still half-folded over his face. Tentatively, he looked down at them, and almost choked when he saw twin slivers of white bone, running from elbow to wrist, glistening amid the pinched pink of exposed muscle. Corrupted tissue hung in a bubbling black globe from his right elbow. As he watched, it dripped off and rolled away from him. Another small mass of blackened tissue had already migrated across the carpeted floor. He didn’t want to look at his chest.

  Placid’s screaming stopped abruptly. In the sudden silence he could hear his breathing and another sound. A soft frothing hiss: the sound of Placid’s head and chest as they boiled with black corruption. A wave of nausea swept over him. He braced himself against the wall, glancing again at his own arms, but his exposed flesh was still pink. Wounds pitted his chest. He could see bits of ribs, a fingernail patch of sternum. But no degradation. The wounds were clean. The contaminated flesh had sloughed off and the wounds were clean.

  Why?

  Now the black corruption had spread across Placid’s body. Lot could feel heat pumping off it. The fizz grew louder. He could almost make out words in it, but that was crazy.

  Crazy, crazy.

  Why was he still alive? That was crazy too. Maybe he wasn’t human after all; maybe the bloody Chenzeme influence had protected him. He closed his eyes. “Get me out of here!” He still held his wounded arms mantislike in front of him. “Get me out!”

  But the door wouldn’t open with a hot agent loose in the room.

  Airflow. The word came as a worried whisper from his subconscious. The ventilation system would seal in the presence of contaminants.

  He listened to his panicked breathing, straining to feel even a hint of air movement against his sweaty face, but there was nothing. The collapsing black mound on the floor continued to fizz and bubble—destructive metabolic processes adding heat, stealing ox
ygen. Stealing from him. He couldn’t stop the theft. But perhaps he could outlast it?

  He envisioned stillness. He sought the stagnant order that lies on the edge of death, dropping into the ever-slowing rhythm of his breathing, his heartbeat, darkness like a cooling blanket while time accelerated around him.

  CHAPTER

  13

  HE BLINKED HARD AGAINST A LAYER OF DUST AND OIL that sought to seal his eyes shut, finally opening his eyes to discover only darkness. His shoulder ached. He lay on his side, on a cold, hard surface that slanted beneath him at an angle immediately familiar: he was in the spiraling tunnel of the city’s core. He found confirmation of that conclusion in the stale panic and putrid decay that permeated the thin air.

  He blinked on his IR function, and discovered vague mounds of radiance on the floor, glowing warmer than the surrounding air. A bobbing white light appeared below him, just rounding the curve of the corridor. Its clean rays stabbed his retinas, and he squeezed his eyes shut hard in instinctive reaction. The sound of footsteps reached him, and he struggled to sit up. His arms wouldn’t function. He got his knees under him though. He was kneeling when he opened his eyes again. A clean white light bathed the floor around him, illuminating the mounded shapes, revealing them to be the bodies of armored troopers. A gasp caught in his throat. The troopers’ medical Makers had failed to protect their flesh from corruption. Their bodies were decomposing, and the gases produced by that process had caused their heads and hands to swell grotesquely out of the confining shells of their armor. He ducked his head, only to discover that his own arms and hands had been reduced to a clatter of bare white bones crossed over his chest. Clean white.

  “Aren’t you coming?” Jupiter asked, his voice sharp-edged. Impatient.

  Lot’s gaze rose. Jupiter stood over him, dressed in gray body armor, his blond hair neatly arranged across his shoulders. He wore a headlamp like a crown, its light a soft radiance at the center of his brow. Looking at him, Lot felt a flush of dark emotion, as if a sordid mix of guilt and anger had been injected into a main arterial line. “It was you!” he screamed. “You made me stay behind.”