Deception Well (The Nanotech Succession Book 2)

by Linda Nagata

  Her dark eyes opened. “I can’t access closed files.”

  And neither could any of Gent’s nameless Silken friends. Lot frowned, struggling to put the right flavor on his words. “I thought you might know someone… .”

  Her sharp gaze cut him off. “I won’t violate council security for you, Lot.”

  He nodded and looked away, a flush warming his cheeks. His dignity seemed destined for repeated trampling this afternoon.

  “Next?” Yulyssa’s gaze did not soften.

  Lot swallowed his misgivings, groping to express a line of thought that had puzzled him for days now. “The great ship that brought us here: her name was Nesseleth.”

  “Yes.”

  Childhood recollections encumbered him: the tight corridors, the close, sweet scent of a child’s sweat, soft sounds of lovemaking in the night, and the voice of the stream in Jupiter’s garden. Nesseleth had been his playmate, the projection of a pretty little girl, just his age. It had been her delight to show him secret places, and to share with him memories from her own youth on a world that was now gone, its mass broken and transformed into one of the swarming cordons of the Hallowed Vasties. “Nesseleth was human once.”

  “Sooth. That’s the way of great ships.”

  “She died for him, you know. She didn’t go down because of accident or sabotage. She did it to herself, at his request. So none of us could back out.”

  Yulyssa’s face paled. She didn’t answer.

  Lot felt an inexplicable stirring of anger. “That was a very human thing to do, don’t you think?”

  “Lot—”

  “Sorry,” he said swiftly, and out of habit he averted his gaze, though of course the charismata couldn’t affect her image. “Really, I’m thinking of Sypaon.”

  “The great ship of the Old Silkens?”

  “Sooth. The librarian says she created this city, using her own body as the seed.” Sypaon had become the city. She would have existed within it, as he existed within his own body … at least for a time. “She wouldn’t have been susceptible to the plague that killed her people. So what became of her?”

  Yulyssa sighed. In the cool glint of the ring light, her expression seemed infinitely sad. “Her people … they must have been like children to her. It’s cruel, to ask a mother to survive that.”

  Lot marveled at his cool reaction. He could not be drawn in by the synthetic pain of a projection. He told her, “Sypaon might not have been such a loving mother. She seems to have left the city at least a year before the plague hit. At least, there’s no record of her in the library after that.”

  Yulyssa looked up in surprise. “No?” Her expression blanked, as she accessed her atrium.

  Lot laid his central question across her questing silence: “Where could she have gone?”

  “Perhaps another great ship came by—”

  His brows rose at that speculative response. “And she joined with it? Two entities in one body?”

  “I suppose it’s not likely.”

  “No record of any visitors, anyway.” His fingers tapped thoughtfully on the arm of his chair. “She made the city to run without consciousness.” He looked up at Yulyssa. “That was why it was alive and still habitable when you came here.”

  Yulyssa nodded a slow yes, her gaze distant, remembering. “The parks and streets were overgrown. Everything so lush. The air was good.”

  “Could a great ship exist without consciousness?”

  She frowned. “A great ship is active. It must navigate and forage, balance its environment, plan for lean times, and the appearance of Chenzeme weapons, negotiate with its human complement, and seek out others … like itself… . In short, the analog of a motile animal.”

  “And by contrast, this city is sessile.”

  “Yes,” Yulyssa said. “Like a plant, anchored in one place, drawing energy from the sun, a constant source. And protected from the Chenzeme by the Well … ?”

  Lot shrugged. “We do know the city’s internal systems were designed to operate by feedback mechanisms, with no need for an overseer, no central control.”

  She nodded, cautiously following the thought. “And there was no need to forage for resources. Sypaon must have planned for the city to draw up all that it needed from its roots in the Well. So, Sypaon intended to leave—that’s what you’re saying.”

  “I’m asking: Where did she go?”

  Personas were often transferred from one substrate to another. Real people did that when they ghosted, gifting copies of themselves to dwell in the atrium of another. Yulyssa spoke to him now as an independent copy of her original persona, residing within the machinery of the archival booth. The great ship that had been Sypaon’s body must have received her original persona in the same way. Sypaon had been a sculpted entity. Not a natural creature, but an electronic ghost that haunted the body of the great ship. He knew of no reason that would force her to remain in that body, if she had another place to go.

  “You think there’s a structure on the planet,” Yulyssa said.

  Lot started. “No. I hadn’t thought about that. There’s no evidence for it?”

  “No,” Yulyssa admitted. “Still, we don’t know the planet well.”

  “The commandant of wardens would disagree with you.”

  Yulyssa frowned. “You have another idea.”

  Lot nodded. “The Old Silkens came here to study the swan burster. Sypaon was supposed to be a great engineer, and very curious.”

  “The ring’s not even a human artifact. She couldn’t have found a proper substrate there. And besides, the ring’s quiescent.”

  He cocked his head. “But what can we really conclude from that?”

  She glanced nervously at the milky sky. The swan burster was hidden behind the overarching tree, but its light spilled like lace across the garden. An anxious smile flitted across her face. “We can conclude it has not killed us … yet. Oh Lot, you can’t seriously think—”

  He snorted. “Sure, I’m slow.”

  “Oh, stop it.”

  He shrugged. “Sypaon built this city, intending to abandon it. She had to have some place in mind to go. And the records are clear as to why she came—she wanted to investigate the ring.”

  “That was over five hundred years ago.”

  “You’ve lived that long. What does time mean to a sculpted entity?”

  She sighed uncertainly. “I don’t know. Do you really think she’s still there?”

  He leaned back, his hands clasped behind his head. “You should ask Kona.”

  “I will.”

  He straightened. “I’ve been thinking about that day. Captain Aceret sent me to crawl through the air ducts. Our advance troops were trapped behind a sealed door. Their assault Makers wouldn’t work against it.”

  He started at Yulyssa’s sharp intake of breath. “They used assault Makers?”

  He looked at her in dull surprise. Could such a prominent fact remain unknown? But then Captain Antigua had been the only surviving officer. She might have kept quiet, seeing no advantage in promoting an image of brutality. And the regular troopers had probably never known. “The point is, the assault Makers failed to function. Why?”

  “City authority must have neutralized them—”

  “I don’t think so. Authority wasn’t ready for us. They had access to assault Makers—sooth, the wardens are armed with them. But they didn’t use that against us.”

  She seemed puzzled. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m not sure. But something stopped our assault Makers. And long ago, something stopped the Chenzeme ring.” He shook his head, trying to define his nascent suspicions. “We all know the Well has its own molecular defenses. The governors cause things to fail in the Well.” He held her in his stare, willing her to see the same connection. “But things fail here too. And even as far out as the swan burster. I have to wonder if the enemy we’re hiding from isn’t living in our midst.”

  That drew from her a patient smile. “If that
were so, Lot, don’t you think we would have noticed?”

  “I think we have.”

  Her smile faltered. “You mean the city gnomes. But they’re harmless. They’re almost extinct.”

  “For all we know, the city gnomes are governors too.”

  She shook her head. “If that were true, we’d all be dead.”

  “You don’t know that. Jupiter survived the Well. And the Old Silkens lived with the governors for ten years—”

  “Before they died.”

  “Yes. We need to know why they died.”

  The room slowly darkened, as the ring made its roll from zero to one. “You want to go down there, don’t you?”

  “We don’t really have a choice. So I want to know what’s there before we have to go.”

  That actually made her laugh. “Oh ho! That’s something Jupiter never would have bothered with.”

  He felt mortified at that response. Like Gent, she knew how shallow his faith was. Could everyone see it in him? Still, he tried to defend himself. “I just want to be cautious, that’s all.”

  “It’s all right. If you’re different from him …”

  “I believe in him, Yulyssa. I do.” And maybe if he said it enough, he could convince himself. “We belong to him.”

  “No, that isn’t true, Lot. No one owns you.”

  “It doesn’t really matter. Yulyssa, don’t you see? The Well reached out across open space to take the swan burster. It reached up the column of the elevator to take the Old Silkens. It defeated our assault Makers only ten years ago, so we know it’s still here, in the city. And Jupiter’s part of it now. Don’t think he’s forgotten us. He’ll take us if he can.”

  CHAPTER

  16

  HE SAT IN THE DARKENED ROOM, SEVERAL MINUTES after Yulyssa’s ghost had departed. Ord hung motionless in a corner, like a giant spider perched within the reaching branches of the projected tree. Gradually, Lot’s body began to accept the evidence of evening. He could feel his metabolism pick up—a half-nocturnal creature, always at his most active in the dark hours before midnight. In the cool air the only emotional scent was that of his own cold concentration. He breathed that in, amplifying his intellectual focus in a cascading feedback reaction.

  He tried to move beyond the sticky web of questions that encumbered his mind. He sought to visualize himself one year into the future. Who would he be then? What would the city be like? Only a year. He could not make himself see the disaster predicted by all reasonable studies. In the long run, he had to believe there would be options… .

  He stiffened, suddenly aware that the quality of light within the room had changed. A dark shadow had appeared, pouring from a hole in the garden wall. It flowed across the masonry, eclipsing the reflected, silvery glow of ring light. It flooded the sky, extinguishing the milky wash of the nebula. It swept around and between the complex shapes of shrubs and trees, erasing their forms like black ink poured over a painting, before it finally swept the patio stones at his feet, replacing substance with black emptiness. The chair disappeared beneath him, and for a disorienting moment he imagined himself falling. Quickly, he let his assumptions go. Dropped his expectations so that this new environment could freely write its own definition in his mind. In another moment the garden had vanished entirely and he felt himself floating in undimensioned darkness. Fantastic illusion. His body seemed to drift like a camera bee, a pinpoint observer in a nonexistent world. Ord had become a dim companion object visible only in the infrared.

  Then a faint, three-dimensional silver patterning began to emerge from the darkness, as if the vanished ring light would reassert itself within the chinks and flaws of this un-world. At first Lot could see the silver presence only from the corner of his eye: a dimly glowing net. None of his enhancements could bring the image into better resolution. Only time could accomplish that. Gradually, the silvery pattern brightened until it was revealed as a working field of innumerable tiny, interlocking barbs, myriad tool shapes seizing and clutching at one another, at many others, tugging, twisting, reshaping and reordering a delicate silver mesh of tiny parts … like the mural in Kona’s apartment and in the monkey house, except it didn’t exist on only one surface, but instead surrounded him, embedding him within the depths of its structure.

  The taste of the air changed. Humidity rolled across him, the moisture acting as a vehicle for a complex sensual array. Abruptly, he felt himself immersed in a stew of communicative emotional states, more complex, more detailed than he’d ever experienced before, like a crowd-buzz conversation of the senses, except that every inhabitant of the crowd spoke the same words, in the same order, only slightly out of sync with one another so that Lot’s first impression was of chaos, but after that he swiftly began to discern a repeated and coherent sense of curiosity.

  Speak to me.

  He did not hear the words, yet he had them in his mind. “Who are you?” he asked, too startled to be afraid. “… Jupiter?”

  The shivering machinework vibrated, flexed, pulled. It began to move past him in a slow, continuous stream, washing him with its substance until he felt coated with silver, a mineral being, the focused eye of a mob, briefly parting the current, only to have the silver stream close in again behind him.

  The flavor changed: he sensed temptation. The current’s speed increased. Velocity blurred the interlinking barbs into an undifferentiated flow. Trust me.

  This was not Jupiter. It could not be. There was no real taste of him here, none of the tidal pressure of his compelling presence. And yet a vague sense of familiarity tugged at Lot. “Who are you?” he insisted. “Explain yourself. Now.”

  This brash demand solicited a wash of amusement. Lot felt it clearly. He had to smile in return. This game intrigued him. Who could have written this silent conversation? Who besides Jupiter? Evoked in the mood language of crowds. It was his own private language. In the city, he alone was conscious at this level.

  He felt his silvered body extended far into the current. Details washed over him, and gradually, he grew aware of an unsettling strangeness layered within the human emotive pattern. An alien accent that he was shocked to find already within his memory. “Tell me who you are,” he urged.

  But the answer that reached him was only more amusement: Guess.

  Okay. He did not think it could be Yulyssa. She didn’t know him well enough to speak to him this way. Dr. Alloin, then? With her belittling pharmacy? He could not imagine Dr. Alloin playing frivolous games. He noticed Ord in the slow flow, its body disrupting the current like an insoluble stone.

  “Ord?” he asked softly. “What do you think?”

  The little robot seemed to come awake suddenly, snapping over in the current. “Psychoactive viruses line the chamber walls. They are producing olfactory elements.”

  “Slick.”

  “Bad,” Ord countered. But it seemed oddly lethargic, and did not elaborate on this moral judgment.

  Now the speed of the stream flow began to slow—no. Somehow his perspective had changed, and it was himself that swept like the point of a needle through the silver matrix so that his stomach clenched at his own perceived deceleration … now he moved only slowly against the flow. Once again he could perceive some of the frantic workings of the barbed network, and a presence… .

  He caught her female scent a moment before he discerned her body. She surrounded him, carrying him through the current. He existed inside her … if she could be said to have an inside. Her body was not human, not silver-solid like his but like a woven net instead, or like beaded lace, each bead a mouth emitting a babble of scents, so that every part of her seemed to talk in chemical whispers: her feet, her calves, her thighs, hips, buttocks, belly, breasts, shoulders, back. Her face too.

  He gazed at her face from behind her eyes, as if he were seeing a holographic surface from the wrong side. Her mouth seemed beaded of hundreds of tiny mouths; her eyes the same. Sketched lines of speaking mouths linked her features together, drawing a hollow sugge
stion of a woman, every part of her breathing incoherent histories that impacted his sensory tears, inspiring odd flashes of imagery in his mind: the swan burster aglow with a terrible white light that burns his retina; and himself, part of the ring, a mindless spark in a fascist rally, pulled to the will of all those other cells around him; and above him, blackened worlds; radio communications howling past him in languages that don’t even inspire his curiosity, signals that abruptly cut out; in the void, a sexual merger as alien cells infest the familiar matrix, intoxicating in their diversity, he must sink inside of the other, watch his worldview shred as his assumptions fail the test of her experiences, he will become something new… .

  “Sypaon?” he whispered.

  Her mouth (linked chains of tiny mouths) smiled. Thousands of lips parted, to speak in brief synchrony: The ring light coats you—a burst of tiny voices—you see it even when the ring is in eclipse.

  “Sometimes,” he admitted, stretching slowly against a skin of silver armor so like the silver glow of the swan burster … the silver flow of Sypaon’s current? He could feel a sense of discord from the matrix, and a swift soothing coo from Sypaon that closed off the discontent. “This flow,” he said, “it’s endless because we’re moving in a circle, right? We circle the ring.”

  The cells are ever restless. They have their own opinions, and the aggressive ones must be soothed … though they all were made with a contempt for complacency. In a war, one must always change.

  He shook his head, not understanding. Around him, Sypaon bestowed calm and patience and concord on the matrix, closing off dissent like a zipper forever sealing a rent in an otherwise harmonious fabric, around and around the ring we go… . How many circuits had she accomplished in five hundred years? She had an alien accent, and it reminded him of Jupiter.

  Speak of it, Sypaon urged. The Chenzeme influence. Where did you get it?

  Lot shuddered, gazing at his silvered hand while the current swept past them, a seemingly infinite river of dissent that Sypaon somehow knit into consensus.

  We both perceive with the neural patterns of the Chenzeme, she insisted.