by Neal Asher
He indicated a chair opposite the couch. "She and I had a conversation before the meeting, but it was more confusing than informative."
"Heineman and Carrolson are together tonight," Farley said, sitting. "Patricia didn't tell me that—Lenore did. And before we left the Stone, I noticed Wu and Chang were sneaking away together." She smiled at him, a brisk, armored smile with a touch of puzzlement and irritation.
Lanier lifted his shoulders and clapped his hands together softly, then rubbed them. "That's normal," he said.
"Yes. But I caught you when your guard was down, didn't I? I mean—"
"I appreciate what you did."
"I don't know what to say." She looked around the apartment curiously. "I've never really had a leech for you—"
"Letch," he said, grinning.
"Oh, yes, my God. Letch. I haven't. But you looked so lost. And I was feeling lost, too. Honest, you're still the boss."
"That's not important," he said. "What did Patricia—"
"It is important," Farley said flatly. "I enjoyed you. I believe you enjoyed me. It was healthy too. I just wanted you to know I thought so and don't resent you."
Lanier said nothing for a moment, regarding her with his dark, falsely Amerindian eyes. "I wish I spoke Chinese so we could really understand each other. I could learn..."
"That would be useful, but not necessary right away." She smiled. "I could teach you."
"What did Patricia say?"
"She thinks we're being used by somebody—Olmy or somebody else—to some end. Olmy has been talking to her a lot, and she's even had some conversations with the Frant. She thinks there's a lot of politics in the Axis City, and we can't possibly know what any of it means. Not yet. Also, she says the data service in her apartment actually accesses less information than the ones in the third chamber city. She thinks they may be censored for us."
"That doesn't sound good," Lanier mused. "Or rather, it might not be good—it might not mean anything. They might want to treat us gently, let us get accustomed slowly."
"I told her I thought that, and she just smiled. She's behaving strangely, Garry. She also said she has a way to get us all home. There was a real tinkle in her eye when she said that."
Lanier did not correct her. "She told me that, too. Did she elaborate?"
"Pardon? Oh, yes. She did. She said the corridor moves forward in time about one year every thousand kilometers. And she said it's the most beautiful curve she's ever conceived. Gar, they kidnapped her—she believes they kidnapped her because they were afraid we might interfere in the sixth chamber. Remember all the people—all those Naderites—in the second chamber being forced to move out, years after the third chamber exodus?"
He nodded.
"Patricia says she thinks they were forced out against their will, because the people on the Axis City wanted the Stone empty. No interference, no sabotage. That's why she think we're stuck in the middle of politics. There is still division between Naderites and Geshels."
"Has it occurred to anybody that no matter what we're told, these rooms are bugged?" Lanier asked. "That means we shouldn't be discussing these things here?"
"Where can we discuss them?" she asked innocently. "They could follow us anywhere they wanted and listen to us, maybe even read our minds. We're children here, very ill-educated children."
Lanier looked down at the milky translucent table between the couch and the chair. "That makes sense. I really like the way this apartment is decorated."
"Mine's nice, too."
"And how would they—the rooms, I presume—know what we like?"
Her expression became conspiratorial. "Right," she said. "I've asked the room voice and it just says, 'The rooms are made to suit.' "
Lanier leaned forward on the couch. "This whole place is incredible. Unbelievable. Are we dreaming, Karen?"
She shook her head solemnly.
"All right, then. Is Patricia dreaming she's found a way out, a way to go back to Earth?"
"Oh, she doesn't want to go back to Earth the way it is now. She says she can take us 'home,' whatever she means. And she's serious. She'll explain later, she said."
"You're a physicist. Is what she says possible?"
"I'm just another child here, Garry. I don't know."
"What else did she say?"
"That's it. And..." She stood. "I'll go now. But I didn't just ... Oh." She clasped her arms around herself and looked at him. "Not just to tell you what she said. To make sure you understood I wasn't taking advantage."
"I understand."
"It's just, like you say, healthy, though I've been worrying."
He hadn't called it healthy; she had, but he found the transference acceptable.
"Don't."
"Okay," Farley said..
He stood. "In fact..." His face flushed again. "I feel just like a teenager when ... when you're here and we talk like this."
"I'm sorry," she said, her face falling.
"No, that's good. Until now, I've felt like a very old man, losing all my marbles. I would enjoy it if you stayed with me."
She smiled, then abruptly frowned. "I will enjoy that, and I will stay," she said. "But it worries me about Patricia."
"Yes?"
"She is now the only one of us sleeping alone."
*48*
Step by step, Patricia traced the progress of the curve through five dimensions, watching it unfold like some nightmare
staircase, one part shadowing, one part a necessary negative of the primary curve. Her eyes were closed so tightly they hurt, and her face was convulsed into an expression between ecstasy and grief. She had never known an intensity of thought like this, so deep an involvement in her inner calculations. It frightened her. Even when she opened her eyes to the twilight blueness of the ceiling and rolled over on her side, one hand reaching into the emptiness beyond the bed—
Even then, her finger traced a part of the curve, a projected and living snake in the air. Clenching her fist, she saw little spots of light gather along the path her finger had made. She closed her eyes again.
And immediately slept, dreaming the curve. She was still half-aware in her sleep, and she watched from a distant vantage point as her brain continued, though at a reduced level, the work she could not put a stop to.
Only a few hours later, she came instantly awake, realizing she needed to reexamine her seminal article—the one she had yet to write, which she had found in the third chamber library. With some apprehension—the data service, in the four times she had resorted to it, had not always provided what she needed—she got out of the oval bed and donned her lavender robe, tying the belt as she walked through the dimly lit living room.
"Data, City Memory," she said. An armillary sphere appeared before her, its bands glowing red and gold. Two circlets, one above the other and twice the diameter, followed, a replacement for the antiquated question mark.
"Access to article by Patricia Luisa Vasquez ... Oh, Lord, I've forgotten the exact title and date. Do you need them?"
Complicated picts flashed until she deactivated them and requested spoken language only. "Do you wish to see a complete list of the short works of Patricia Luisa Vasquez?" the data service voice asked.
"Yes," she said, again touched by the prickling spookiness of what she was doing.
Roman alphabet listings appeared before her as if on an extensive sheet of white paper. About midway through the list appeared, Theory of n-Spatial Geodesics as Applied to Newtonian Physics with a Special Discourse on Rho-Simplon Worm Lines.
"That's it," she said. "Display."
She reread the paper carefully and drummed the fingers of her free hand on the edge of the seat. "It's brilliant," she said grimly, "and it's wrong." It might have been an influential paper, but it was obvious to her now that it was an early and primitive work. "Please display the list again."
The service obliged and she picked out a later piece and requested that it be displayed.
The ol
d and familiar symbol of the spiked ball appeared. "Interdicted," the voice said.
She chose another, feeling her anger rise. "Interdicted."
And another, toward the end of the list, written when she was—would be about eighty-eight. "Interdicted."
"Why are my papers interdicted?" she asked angrily.
The spiked ball was the only reply.
"Why is this service being censored?" She suddenly experienced the neck-itching realization she was no longer alone in the room. "Olmy? Lights up." The room brightened. No answer.
She stood up and looked around slowly, her whole back tensing.
Then she saw the intruder, hovering near the ceiling, a gray baseball-sized roundness with a face in the middle. For a moment, she did nothing but return the face's scrutiny. It seemed masculine, with small dark Asiatic eyes and a pug nose. Its expression was hardly menacing; if anything, it was intensely curious.
She backed up against the wall. The face did not move, but its eyes followed her closely.
"Who are you?" she asked. Symbols appeared around the room, incomprehensible to her. "I don't pict," she said. "Please, what are you doing here?"
"True, I'm not supposed to be here," the face said. It fell a couple of feet, the ball assuming the color of a rosy dawn.
"But then, I'm just an icon myself. Please don't be alarmed."
"I am alarmed. You're scaring me. Who are you?"
"I'm from City Memory. A rogue."
"I don't know you," she said. "Please go away."
"I can't possibly harm you. Irritate you, perhaps. I only need a few questions answered."
The globe dropped and fleshed out like a vampire in an old horror movie to form a masculine body, clothed in loose white shirt and forest-green pants. The figure seemed to solidify. In her room now stood a small, delicate man appearing slightly younger than middle age, with long black hair and a weary, thin face. Patricia's heart slowed and she moved a few inches out from the wall.
"I pride myself in my accomplishments," the image said. "I have access to the very best records. Forgotten records,
actually. There's such an awful clutter in the lower levels of City Memory. And what I've found is the partially purged record of a court case ... Something serious, actually. Violation of flaw security. Bits and pieces of information pointed
here. Subtle connections, I admit, but intriguing."
The figure seemed familiar, as if she had met him or seen him somewhere else. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm a rogue. A rather violent one, actually, though you wouldn't know it to look at me. I go where I please, and so long as I'm careful, I maintain. I've been non-corporeal for a hundred and fifty years now, supposedly condemned to inactive Memory. Of course, there's only a copy of me inactivated. Sometimes I'm hired for various jobs. Usually I duel with other rogues. I've taken down sixty in my time. Lethal chess."
"You haven't answered my question." She was close to tears now. She couldn't think who the rogue reminded her of. "Leave me alone. I just want to think."
"Rogues are never very polite. You're attracting a lot of attention in Axis Nader. I hadn't any idea where you were, though, until you used the data service just now. A tracer found you—one of my very best tracers. Based on the patterns of a mouse."
"Please!" Patricia shouted to the apartment. "Get him out of here!"
"It's no use," the rogue said. "Where are you from?"
Patricia didn't answer. She edged toward the bedroom door.
"I've been commissioned to find out where you're from. I've been paid in advantages over a very long-term adversary. I will not leave until you tell me."
"Who hired you?" she shouted, really frightened now.
"Let's see ... I'm speaking twentieth-century English—American, actually. That's very surprising. Only the most diehard Ameriphiles actually learn to speak the language as well as you do. But why would anybody be interested in an Ameriphile?" The image followed her into the bedroom. "They aren't paying me for guesswork. Tell me."
Patricia ran to the main door and ordered it to open. It did not. She gulped a breath of air and turned to face the image, suddenly determined not to lose control. "What ... what do I get in return?" she asked. "If I tell you?"
"Maybe we can trade."
"Let me sit down, then."
"Oh, I wouldn't stop you from doing that. I'm not cruel, you know."
"You're a ghost," she said decisively.
"More so than most ghosts you meet," the image elaborated.
"What's your name?"
"I don't have one now. Spoor, but no name. Yours?"
"Patricia."
"Not a common name."
Suddenly, she retrieved the memory of the rogue's face. Just as suddenly, she rejected the clue; it was ridiculous. "I'm really an American," she said.
"What percentage? Most are happy to claim three or four percent, though statistically that has to be a pose—"
"One hundred percent. I was born in the United States of America, in California. Santa Barbara."
The image wobbled again. "Not much time, Patricia Luisa Vasquez. What you say doesn't make any sense, by itself, but you seem to believe it. How did you grow up so uncluttered and primary?"
"Where I come from—and when"—she took another deep breath to calm herself—"that's almost all the choice there is." She cocked her head to one side. "I know you,'" she said. "You look like Edgar Allan Poe."
The rogue betrayed some surprise. "Fancy you recognizing that. Fancy that indeed. Did you know Poe?"
"Of course not," Patricia said, feeling an incongruous tingle of delight beneath her fear. "I read him. He's dead."
"He's my chosen mentor. Such a mind!" The rogue surrounded itself with rapid picts of sepulchral figures, live burials, ships in whirlpools and arctic wastes. "Patricia Luisa Vasquez recognizes Poe. Claims to be a twenty-first-century American. Fascinating.
"I have to go soon. Ask me what you need to know, and then I'll ask you one more thing."
"What are they going to do with us?"
"Us? There are others?"
"Four others. What are they going to do?"
"I really don't know. I'll try to find out. Now, my last question for this visit. Why are you so special to them?"
"Because of what I just said." To her surprise, all her fear was gone. The rogue or ghost or whatever it was seemed to be willing to cooperate, and she saw no reason to be foolishly loyal to their kidnappers.
"We can help each other, I think. Did you know your data service has a block on it? They're keeping you here and they're selectively cutting off your access. If you tell them I've been here, I may not be able to come back, and I won't be able to answer your question. Think about it. Until next time," the man said, and vanished. The apartment
suddenly found its voice.
"Ser Vasquez, are you well? There has been interference—"
"Don't I know it," Patricia said.
"Could you describe the difficulty?"
She bit on her knuckle for a moment, then shook her head. "No," she said. "It wasn't much of a problem." The image had frightened her—but it had told her a number of interesting things, too. She doubted the incident was a test or experiment. The rogue might prove a useful source of information ... "Must have been a short circuit or something, in your works, you know."
The room did not respond for some seconds. "Repairs will be made, if necessary. Do you need anything?"
"No, no thank you," Patricia said. She looked at the pictor, frowning, and again bit at her knuckle.
*49*
The Presiding Minister of the Infinite Hexamon Nexus, Ilyin Taur Engle, kept his quarters in one of Central City's six
broad ventilation shafts, buried deep in the spreading Wald. Olmy had never wished to settle into a primary home, but he envied the P.M. his quarters nonetheless. There was such an air of isolation and peace in the Wald, and such a fantasy of elegance in the quarters themselves.
T
he six shafts ran straight from the outermost facets of Central City to the governing spheres at the precinct's core.
Within each shaft, as many as ten thousand corporeals lived among the winding paths through the Wald. Their homes varied from thick clusters of communal glass floats anchored to the broad aerial roots, to small free-moving cells adequate for one or at most two homorphs, or no more than four of the average neomorphs.
