Deception Well (The Nanotech Succession Book 2)

by Linda Nagata

  He sat up, startled by the sound of his own voice. Sunlight filled the room, illuminating the white carpet and the soft floral pattern of the sofa on which he’d been sleeping. Through a window wall he could see the vegetated slopes of the Broken Fingers and beyond that, a green run of Splendid Peace Park before the prospect sank into the cloud-filled atmosphere of the Well.

  Urban crouched in his field of view, his dark eyes anxious, his hand on Lot’s knee. “Fury?”

  “What was that?” Lot whispered. “I saw him.”

  Urban’s eyes narrowed. “It was a dream.”

  Lot couldn’t recall ever having a dream. “Do you dream?”

  “Sometimes.”

  He looked down at his arms. They were crossed over his bare chest, wrapped in opaque cushions and supported in slings. Tubes ran out of the slings at his elbows. He followed their paths to two half-empty nutrient bags on a table behind the sofa.

  He turned back to Urban, worry furrowing his brow. “Did they arrest you?”

  Urban’s face went waxy. “House arrest, that’s all.” In his Daddy’s house. This was Kona’s house.

  “And Gent?” Lot asked.

  Urban shifted position, to sit with Lot on the sofa. “I saw him arrested. But they won’t tell me anything.” Then he corrected himself. “They told me what happened to you. I’m sorry, Lot. I never …” He shook his head, dropping that unprofitable line, starting over: “It’s been wild.” There was a hint of pride in his voice as he explained: “Yesterday a few thousand ados blocked all the transit stations for an hour—to get attention, you know?—they wanted you released. That’s why you’re here now. ’Course, some real people are screaming for you to be confined to cold storage. But don’t worry,” he added quickly. “That’s nothing. Authority won’t go for it. The council’s already under enough pressure. People are angry. They want the resource problem dealt with. They want the ados dealt with too. While the ados want you.” He smiled in quiet triumph. And why not? Lot thought. It was his doing.

  “Authority’s been trying to keep things calm all around,” Urban went on. “They’ve had the monkey house hosting formal reconciliations for the entire city—hey, maybe they haven’t had time to mess up Gent—but you know this—” He nodded at the thick wraps on Lot’s arms. “—this hasn’t gone public yet. When it does, it’s going to make things worse.” Urban didn’t sound entirely displeased at that prospect.

  “How’s Alta?” Lot asked.

  “I don’t know. Why?” Then his expression changed to something like distaste. “Yeah. That’s right.” Alta Antigua didn’t have a mama anymore. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  Lot shrugged. “Jupiter’s still alive.”

  “He’s not.”

  “Captain Antigua thought so. She said the planetary wardens have seen a change, and Jupiter’s coming back. She sounded pretty sure.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  Lot didn’t answer.

  “You want some food?” Urban asked.

  “No.”

  A few minutes later the door slipped open. Lot scented Dr. Alloin’s surprise even before she spoke. “Lot. Up already?” She circled the sofa and smiled down at him, her soft brown face as warm and reassuring as a patch of floaters: a façade that could not hide her tension. “You always beat my best tranks,” she said as she picked up the nutrient bags and tucked one in each sling. “And a good thing, too. It was your odd physiology that saved you—I’ve never seen such a swift defensive reaction.”

  Lot felt the first ugly stirrings of anger. Dr. Alloin had left him in that room. She’d let Captain Antigua come in. She’d probably messed up Gent, too. He breathed softly, slowly, determined to stay calm. He kept his gaze fixed on the brilliant white carpet, his pupils stopped down hard against the sun’s glare … until a shadow fell across his line of sight.

  “Your temper tantrums are always so quiet, Lot. You really do have a lot of emotional control. More than Dr. Alloin gives you credit for.”

  Kona. Lot smiled in wistful satisfaction. Dr. Alloin only followed orders, after all. He started to stand. “Don’t!” Dr. Alloin protested, while Urban laid a restraining hand on Lot’s shoulder. “You haven’t the strength.”

  Lot turned to Urban. “You should be helping me.”

  Guilt flashed across Urban’s face. His lips came together in a tight line, but he nodded. He put his arm around Lot’s back, got his hand under his armpit and steadied him while he rose to his feet. Lot swayed a moment, startled at how weak he felt. Finally, he looked at Kona.

  The strain of the past few days was evident in Kona’s face. Taut muscles stretched in sharp relief beneath his skin. Worry lines furrowed his brow and his eyes seemed deeper set, somehow robbed of moisture. He seemed vulnerable, but that roused no sympathy in Lot. “You sent her,” he accused. “You sent Captain Antigua.”

  Urban’s supporting arm stiffened around him. “That’s not true, fury. Daddy … ?”

  Kona’s gaze shifted to Urban. He nodded in reluctant admission. “It is true.” He looked back at Lot. “I sent her to see you. Not for that purpose. She was to reason with you.”

  “You say that.” His legs wavered. Urban’s grip tightened.

  “I couldn’t know, Lot. There was no reason to suspect. She’d been emotionally stable for years.”

  “You’ve lied to me all those same years!”

  Kona shook his head, and spread his hands helplessly. “It was necessary.”

  “It was wrong.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Lot glanced past him, out the window, to the emerald and aquamarine glow of the Well. Fragmented clouds drifted over the ocean in formless ranks.

  “Try to understand how fragile our position is,” Kona pleaded. “We don’t know how the Well functions. We devise theories about the governors, but that doesn’t mean we understand them. They slide off our analytical tools, and treat our Makers like raw material to be stripped and sorted. We are inferior here. To let anyone go down there would be murder. To give your people any reason to believe they should make the descent would be a gross irresponsibility.”

  Words. “He’s alive, isn’t he?” Lot asked. “The wardens have seen him.”

  From Dr. Alloin there came a small gasp of shock. But Kona denied it. “No. The wardens have not seen him.”

  Lot cocked his head, trying to strain truth out of a soup of anxiety. He had so little strength, that slight shift would have toppled him if Urban hadn’t been holding on. “Someone else?” he asked.

  “Something,” Kona admitted with a nonchalant wave of one hand. “A weather phenomenon. It doesn’t matter.”

  “I want to see it.”

  Kona gazed at him for several seconds. He might have been consulting with someone over his atrium. He might have been finding counsel in his own thoughts. Finally, he nodded. “Okay.”

  “Urban too.”

  “Now?” Kona asked.

  “Tomorrow, fury,” Urban said. “You need to rest.”

  “Tomorrow then,” Kona agreed. “When you’re ready, call me.”

  “And Gent?”

  “Gent Romer was released this morning,” Dr. Alloin said with a maternal smile.

  Lot felt his hackles rise. “Did you touch him?”

  She looked hurt. “We don’t ruin people, Lot. We help them.” She gazed at him a moment, than shook her head in resignation. “We didn’t ‘touch him.’“

  “The council has agreed to support a general amnesty,” Kona explained. “We will do what we can to achieve a reconciliation. I hope you’ll consider the same.”

  He led them downstairs, to a private transit station beneath the house. Urban half-carried Lot down the steps. Kona offered to help, but Urban—perhaps sensing Lot’s reluctance—shook his head. A car waited for them. Lot collapsed on the seat and let his head flop back, feeling his face glazed in sweat. He tried to raise an arm to wipe it away, but his arm didn’t respond. Dr. Alloin leaned in the door, running down instru
ctions on what he needed to do to take care of himself. Beyond the streamflow of her voice, he could hear Kona speaking softly to Urban: “I want you to think about what I’ve said.”

  “Sure, Daddy.”

  “Urban, we need you.”

  “I’ve gotta go.”

  Dr. Alloin withdrew. Urban stuck his head in, then climbed past Lot and sat down. The door closed. “He’s scared,” Urban said. There was a mix of guilt and triumph behind his words.

  Lot closed his eyes, feeling the car accelerate.

  “What’s happening in the Well, fury? Do you know?”

  “No.”

  “Why do you think he’s letting us look?”

  “’Cause it’s not Jupiter.”

  “Sooth,” Urban quickly agreed. “Still—”

  “I think he owes me,” Lot interrupted. He shrugged, and his wounded arms rose and fell in their slings. “This looks bad.”

  “He didn’t plan that.”

  “Sometimes it doesn’t matter.” For several seconds silence filled the car. Lot felt the slight centrifugal tug generated by the slow curve of the track around the conical base of the city, turning away, always turning away from a straight line’s path, moving in an infinite sequence of tangential motion. “I want to sleep for a few hours,” Lot said. “But tonight we could go down to Splendid Peace.”

  He felt Urban tense beside him. “You’re still in it, then?”

  Lot shrugged. Wasn’t he running on a program? Jupiter Junior in the chutes. He glanced tentatively at Urban. “Do you think … Captain Antigua could’ve been right?”

  “About what?”

  “About me.”

  “She tried to kill you.”

  “Yeah.”

  Twin beats of silence, then: “Shut up, fury. She was crazy.” Lot didn’t see that as a special distinction. Maybe Urban didn’t either, because immediately, he got defensive. “There’s nothing wrong with what you do. People need somebody to follow. They always have.”

  “People don’t follow me because they want to, Urban. It’s because they have to. What makes them feel that way?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Just get them to stop listening to city authority and we’ll be okay.”

  A few seconds later the car stopped in Ado Town, at the Narcissus Street station. Urban boosted Lot out the door, then followed, never letting his supporting hand drop from Lot’s shoulder.

  They hesitated on the platform, looking around in surprise. It was the middle of the day, yet the station was empty. They crossed the tile, then climbed the stairs. Two security officers had been stationed at the top. They greeted Lot and Urban with cautious nods. Beyond them, Narcissus Street was utterly deserted. Urban greeted the scene with a low whistle of surprise. No one attended the shops. No lunch crowds chatted at the sidewalk cafés. Fancy filigree balconies rose six stories on either side, but no one lounged behind the grillwork.

  “Get the message?” Urban said. “Don’t start anything.”

  “I didn’t start it.”

  “Sooth.”

  They walked down empty Narcissus as far as Oasis, then followed the smaller street to Reini Lane, still without seeing anyone. Ord waited for them on the stairs to Lot’s breather. It slipped a hesitant tentacle, to touch the back of Lot’s hand. “No good. No good.”

  “Hey Ord.”

  They floundered up the stairs. Once inside, Urban plugged Lot into a new set of nutrient bags that had been delivered from the monkey house.

  “I’m staying with you,” he announced.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Yeah? You can’t even get your pants down to pee.”

  Lot felt a flush warm his cheeks.

  “So I get to be your girlfriend for the day,” Urban said. “What a privilege.”

  Lot laughed. But then he got to thinking again about Alta. He wanted to talk to her, to explain, but it was impossible to put a call through to the refugee quarter. Gent would take care of her, wouldn’t he?

  After a while Lot fell asleep to the sound of Urban’s voice working the phone. He didn’t wake until after dark. By then he could flex his arms a little, though his balance was still shaky. He reeled to the toilet hutch. Ord helped him with his clothes.

  URBAN HAD PULLED A QUIET CROWD down to Splendid Peace Park. Lot sat on a soft sponge boulder in a grove of sterile sapote trees, his arms still cramped in slings across his chest. A few camera bees buzzed about curiously. Ord had slipped off into the vegetation.

  They were far from the streets, and the night was very dark. The swan burster had set behind the Well, leaving only a few stars to prick the swath of Kheth’s nebula. Urban had called for a flock of floating festival lights, but somebody in authority must have countermanded the request, because none had come. The ados didn’t seem to mind. They’d gathered under the trees in dense throngs. Lot perceived them as glowing heat signatures, ghost trails of warm air blurring behind them as they moved.

  David sat alert on the boulder beside him. He wore shorts and a sleeveless shirt, a glowing tattoo in the shape of a red dragon squirming on his arm, hair slicked back, pure ado, his ten-year stint as a security officer only a troubling memory. He’d come by Lot’s breather early in the evening, to crouch ill-at-ease among the sundews, not saying much until Urban went out to get dinner. His ensuing confession had taken Lot by surprise:

  “You’ve been part of me since that day. I didn’t understand it then. You were just a little kid, and I couldn’t see why the real ones were so scared of you. But after a while I started to feel your presence inside me. I got scared too, though I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want the monkey-house docs to know. I didn’t want to be cured.”

  Now his face was a wash of silver: he was more susceptible to Lot’s influence than any refugee. David hadn’t known Jupiter; his loyalties were undiluted.

  Lot watched him lazily, feeling the soft, enticing edge of a trance slip close. David noticed the attention, and turned, an aggressive edge to his mood. “If authority tries to break this up, we have to be ready.”

  “It’ll be okay,” Lot assured him.

  David thought about it, then said, with a touch of sarcasm, “Yeah. We’re only ados. We don’t scare them.”

  Through the crowd a silver current: Gent, with a small contingent of faithful. Authority had felt obliged to ease back on their restrictions. Lot looked for Alta, but she wasn’t with them. David eyed them warily. “They aren’t supposed to be near you.”

  Lot’s mood sharpened. “You still with authority?”

  David stiffened. “Don’t, Lot. I’m with you.” He looked nervously at a passing camera bee. “Rule change?”

  “Rule change,” Lot agreed. “We make our own choices now.”

  “Sooth.”

  Gent approached, and gripped Lot’s hand, nodding in greeting. He introduced his pack. Three men and two women, their faces gleaming silver in Lot’s addled vision. He shook each one’s hand, feeling his heart rate rise as the oils of their skin rubbed across his palm. He caught Gent’s sleeve. “How’s Alta?”

  Gent shrugged. “The monkey house has her in light therapy. She’ll be all right.”

  “I wanted to call her.”

  “In her heart, she’s with you.”

  The soft, dark-party chatter of the ados had begun to chill. Silver tide rolled slowly, thinly across the gathering. Urban came threading through it, a spot of darkness, a light sink. Lot watched him, fascinated. Different species? Silver armor encased Lot’s hand, but he couldn’t use it to hold Urban, any more than he could hold a pocket of darkness.

  Urban climbed on the rock, unaware of his distinction. “All ados,” he said with disappointment.

  David reprimanded him. “You know the real people are watching.”

  Urban glared at him. “Don’t lose yourself, ado.” He looked back at Lot. “Keep it soft, fury. Can you?”

  Lot nodded. They didn’t want to scare anybody. Not yet. He turned to David, drinking in his vulnera
bility, pulling it into himself … then sending it out again as a soft, silver blanket descending over the congregation. He felt his arms bound across his chest, but he didn’t need them. He was a worm, with frictionless skin. He could burrow into the minds and hearts of everyone around him. David was his point of entry.

  Lot lowered his chin, fixing David with a hard eye. “I am not worried,” he said. And though his voice still had the nap of softly spoken words, it had hidden volume too, and carried through the shifting silver gathering like a slow electric charge. “I am not worried,” he repeated as silence gradually fell around him. But he still spoke to David. David’s eyes were wide, his cheeks hollow. The warmth had left his face. He might have been caught in the eye of the Unknown God. “There is no real division in this city,” Lot told him. “We all want one thing—you, me, city authority—we want to speak for our own future.”

  David’s lip trembled. “I’m with you, Lot.”

  The claim echoed through the silver tide wound between the dark trees. Lot scanned the glow. They lived, as did the trees around them and a few feet of oxygenated soil beneath their feet. A veneer of life above the static, honeycombed bulk of Silk. This was everything. There were no reserves left. “Our vitality is not diminished by the thin state of our existence. We are alive. We have a voice.”

  From under the trees a woman cried out: “But they would murder you!”

  Lot smiled. “That helps, sometimes … when you want to be heard… .”

  THAT NIGHT HE SLEPT WITH AN IV plugged into the back of his hand. His medical Makers continued their reconstruction, and by morning enough muscle tissue had been replaced that he had partial use of his fingers. As he sat flexing them, a tiny motion drew his eye. The sundew closest to his bed had caught another fly. It wriggled on the plant’s glistening yellow paddle.

  Lot got Ord to heat a stew of beans and rice. He ate it, wondering how the flies got into the room. Did they wait by the door and slip through during the few seconds every day that it was open? Or did they come in through the ventilation system? He frowned, remembering his own slow passage through the air ducts that day. It wasn’t an analogy he wished to pursue.