“I don’t like being awake,” she says.
“You can’t sleep forever.”
She doesn’t look convinced.
“I made you say it,” I say.
“No baby,” she says, “you didn’t. I wish I could think as fast as you.”
She sits up and holds me tightly.
“Did Bal what?” she asks.
It seems less urgent now, in Ursula’s arms. I can smell the natural oils in her hair and the warm aroma of her body. For a moment I don’t move.
I remember Ursula is not a princess like she deserves to be anymore. Someone took that from her. Someone put Mum in a coma, sent an assassin after Dad and arranged for 88 Rabian to burn alive in front of us. Rage stabs through me like ice. I pull away from Ursula.
“I think Bal set us up,” I say.
“Bal? Why?”
“The meet and greet was his idea.”
“So?”
“VIA Holdings bankroll the Sons of the Crystal Mind and use them as a kind of army. Hobb does what Loren and Bal want.”
“How do you know?”
“Dad sent me the mission files; it’s in there. Also, very few people knew we were at New Runcton and Bal was one of them. Did he ever mention the Sons?”
“No.”
“Suppose Bal is behind it, for whatever reason. Did anything about him seem strange?”
“No,” Ursula says. “It was all about the merger. He was… very professional. I don’t know why he would sabotage me like this.”
“I think Mum and Dad found something out while they were monitoring the New Form Enterprise,” I say.
“What have the NFE got to do with the Sons?” Ursula says.
“Nothing,” I say, my ideas becoming words as I think them. “It all comes back to Centria, something being wrong with Centria. The NFE, the Sons, they’re just symptoms of something else, something bigger.”
“Why go through all that shit in New Runcton?”
“Mum and Dad were attacked because of what they discovered,” I say. “You and I were about to become a lot more powerful; whoever is behind this couldn’t allow that. You were too public to kill so you had to be destroyed some other way. Disgrace in Diamond City is just as devastating.”
It’s very odd not to be part of the wedding anymore. However, the ease with which Centria simply replaced us depresses me less than I expected.
“Ursula, I’ve got some… other news.”
She looks up. I don’t want to do this.
“There’s an assassin after Dad,” I say.
“Dad will fuck him up,” Ursula says.
“Not this time,” I say. “The assassin is brainwashed into doing it and can move faster than you can see.”
She looks at me with such disbelieving anguish it causes me physical pain, like a cramp in my heart. I think she is about to cry but instead she gets up.
“So,” she says, “what are we going to do about it?”
I let my mind drift over the mission file contents.
“Mum was obsessed with a company in MidZone called Fulcrus,” I say. “I think we start there.”
18
Fulcrus is a hundred floors up in a broad, cylindrical building that connects the floor and ceiling of a wide, circular chamber. Four large evenly spaced openings reveal neighbouring chambers, the nearest darker than this one and full of moving assemblies shaped like planets. Well-populated and expensive, the Fulcrus chamber is clear of adverts and illuminated by the glow of two round-sectioned circular assemblies. They ring the tower and move slowly up and down it, away from each other towards the floor and ceiling and then ascending/descending to meet at the centre.
Fulcrus has no Aer presence and doesn’t advertise its location; I had to get the coordinates from Dad’s mission file. As we walk into the elevator I glance nervously up at Ursula.
In a headscarf and large dark glasses she looks like someone doing a bad impression of her but anything more permanent would be a waste of kilos. She can change her face but not her Aerac so anyone who scans her will know who she is, while her ID will show on every transaction. It is only a matter of time before someone challenges us over 88 Rabian’s death.
I tap my leg with the n-gun as the elevator fires us up one hundred floors.
The elevator slows, stops and its doors open. Fulcrus extends to the building’s transparent circular periphery. Opaque, brightly coloured geometric shapes fill the huge open area, their tops just shy of the ceiling. Red cubes, green pyramids, blue cylinders, orange cones, purple rhomboids and yellow spheres are spread in no discernible pattern from one side of the great room to the other. They look like toys, except any child who played with them would have to be twenty metres tall.
Ursula and I walk out of the elevator and stand self-consciously. There are hundreds of people working in here. Few employees make eye contact with each other and none look at us; many just recline in tense positions to work with rapid eye movement behind closed lids. The sibilant rustle of many whispering voices gives the bright room a strange, haunted feel.
I start to regret coming. Ursula grunts like Dad does and walks toward the centre of the room, her usual confident strut only slightly diminished. I follow her.
A stocky, ferocious woman whose red hair is the only soft thing about her strides out from behind a green cube towards us. She holds one of her eyes slightly more closed than the other and the muscles in her jaw are visible. Grotesquely, her mouth is an exact cosmetic copy of Keris’s.
As we focus on the tall woman, seven large guards in old-fashioned blue business suits surround us. Undaunted, Ursula keeps going as if she can break through. I grab her arm. She spins round, sees it’s me and stops, confused she hasn’t got her way. I scan the red-haired woman, whose name is Lin Lin Lin.
“Well look who the fuck it is!” Lin Lin Lin says. “Hey, you’ll have heard this one. Why does Ursula Freestone never get pregnant? Eh? No? All right: her boyfriends all fire Blanks!”
No one laughs. I feel Ursula tense and tighten my grip on her.
“That’s genius that is,” Lin Lin Lin says, her mismatched mouth twitching.
“Funny,” says one of the guards, female I think.
“My girlfriend’s a Blank,” a male guard says, glaring at us rather than at Lin Lin Lin.
“Look,” I say, “we didn’t want that poor man to get killed. The Sons of the Crystal Mind are insane - one of them had a gun pointed at Ursula…”
Ursula snatches off her scarf and glasses.
“We don’t have to justify anything to you lumpy dickheads,” she snarls.
Seven fuzes aim at us. They will shred me and Ursula before anyone in a blue business suit is even grazed. I try to put the insult to Ursula out of my mind and imagine what Dad would do. My gun finger wants to twitch against my leg. I don’t let it.
“We’d like to hire you,” I say, finally.
Lin Lin Lin is not impressed. I thought everyone in Diamond City was for sale.
“Oh?” she says. “To do what?”
“To do… financial… services,” I say.
Ursula slowly turns to look at me without expression. I ignore her. Lin Lin Lin relaxes her tense eye as she gets a message from someone we can’t see.
“How did you find out about us?” she asks.
“I had sufficient clearance for…”
“Don’t lie to me.”
I chew my lower lip and swallow. Lin Lin Lin’s eye narrows again; she looks like she wants to rip my head off. I sense the others get closer.
“I worked with Balatar Descarreaux,” I say. “He mentioned you.”
“That’s not it either,” Lin Lin Lin says. “Tell me how you know.”
“Or what?” Ursula says.
“Or I will make you tell me,” Lin Lin Lin says.
Ursula doesn’t look scared, just annoyed at the presumption of these people. She has forgotten she’s not a princess anymore.
“We’ll just go,” I say.
I try and force myself to relax. It’s impossible; I am helpless, helpless…
“Well?” she says.
I think of Dad in the vix link, the feel of his simple practicality. He assessed each occurring moment without panic or distraction no matter how terrifying. His conscious decision to remain calm enabled him to spot opportunity in chaos.
I take a deep breath. I take another.
I realise I am punishing myself for some reason. Perhaps it is for being in a place where I am not welcome. Perhaps it is for simply being. I decide to stop that, now and for good.
At once I remember the mission files. I get one up about Fulcrus and send it to Lin Lin Lin with a message:
I WILL SEND THIS TO EVERYONE BEFORE YOU CAN KILL ME
Lin Lin Lin’s expression does not change. The guard with the Blank girlfriend growls softly. I activate the n-gun and set it to level 3 as the target sight settles on Lin Lin Lin.
“Well?” I say.
“Come with me,” Lin Lin Lin says.
Some of the guards move off although unfortunately not the one with the Blank girlfriend. Randomly, I wonder what sex with a Blank is like. The same as with anyone else I imagine. The whole belly button thing sounds a bit of a distraction. You probably get used to it.
Lin Lin Lin leads us into Fulcrus. The floor and ceiling throughout are white and the space is evenly illuminated. The only features are the large coloured shapes and the furniture that supports people as they work. The whispered conversations get louder but I can’t make out individual words. The voices are angry and cold.
I glimpse a man sitting on the floor. He sobs and shakes his head as blue-suited guards surround and dwarf him. We are past the scene before I can make sense of it and I know better than to ask.
After a while the floor begins to move us and we speed past the brightly coloured geometric shapes. Close up I see shadows inside each one and immediately wish I hadn’t.
The coloured shapes contain people. They are motionless and suspended in a variety of positions: upside down, at angles, supine as if floating. The geometric shapes are solid structures, as if they have formed like crystals around the people at their hearts. The people don’t look conscious, thankfully.
We arrive at the centre of Fulcrus, where geometric shapes create a discrete barrier so there is no view of the windows. In front of a large yellow cone that contains the small figure of a child a man stands and watches us arrive. As the floor eases to a stop a few metres away from him, Lin Lin Lin and her remaining entourage move silently out of sight although I sense they’re not far. The man waits a long enough to make me uneasy and then comes forward, solemnly extending his hand.
I scan him. His name is Steeber Loke.
Steeber is of indeterminate racial heritage with a bulky, powerful body that moves with deceptive grace and utter control. His hair looks attended to in a last-minute sort of way and his skin is oily with scars across his forehead and cheeks.
I shake his hand. His palms are dry and unusually coarse.
“Sorry about the ceremony on the way in,” he says.
His quiet voice is scrupulously polite and every word seems measured.
“So I should fucking think,” Ursula says.
“My sister is… ah, still troubled by recent events,” I say.
Steeber nods understandingly.
“Horrible,” he says, “just horrible. Please, sit.”
A ring of three chairs grows out of the floor, one red, one yellow and one blue. Steeber sits and slowly crosses his legs. A large glass blooms from the arm of each chair and fills with a matching liquid. Steeber picks up his drink and sips with a strange, absent-minded expression as if the taste doesn’t quite register.
I lower myself into the chair opposite and tuck my legs to the side. Ursula glares at Steeber and then sits as well, her legs spread like an invitation, a challenge. She snatches her glass and gulps the contents. I sigh inwardly and hope it wasn’t drugged.
“Was that nice then?” I ask her.
“It was all right, yeah,” she says.
I ignore my drink. Steeber puts his down, meshes his fingers contemplatively and regards the small circle of empty floor between us.
“Lin Lin Lin sent me your document,” he says. “What concerns me is that it was created in utmost secrecy. I am aware of your new circumstances; if you let me know how you came by the document I could be of help to you.”
“Help how?” Ursula says.
“We have many opportunities in Fulcrus,” Steeber says.
“You’re offering me a job?” I say.
“Yes,” Steeber says. “You should take it; I know what happens to exes from Centria. It’s very different out here in the rest of Diamond City.”
“What is it you do?” Ursula says.
Steeber looks at her finally.
“We assist,” he says.
“I don’t understand,” Ursula says.
“The nano-finance system in Diamond City is so simple and so fair that it’s almost impossible to make decent money out of it,” Steeber says.
“Hm,” I say.
Ursula looks at me, then at Steeber and nods slowly. She’s got no idea what we are talking about.
“Alternative revenues must therefore be found,” Steeber continues.
I glance at the encased human figure behind him.
“You have like for like kilo exchanges,” he says, “a kilo of plastic for a kilo of metal for example. Then you have relative values, which are where the profit is.”
“Are you brokers of some kind?” I say.
“Not quite. Brokerage is all very well but I find that the market determines most product values.”
“People won’t pay over the odds for something whose worth they already know,” I say.
“Exactly,” Steeber says. “So companies create products whose wealth is hard to quantify. We assist them in these ventures financially.”
“How?” I ask.
“We buy the product from them for an agreed price, usually a very high one. That purchase sets a precedent that enables them to sell for more.”
“What if it doesn’t sell?” I ask.
Steeber waves at the shapes around him.
“That is where they come in,” he says.
“Hostages?” Ursula says.
“Securities,” Steeber says. “Everyone has somebody they value.”
He smiles at Ursula and something cold clutches at my heart.
“Do people actually agree to this?” I ask.
“Sometimes they do,” Steeber says, “sometimes not.”
“So you kidnap their families?” Ursula says.
“Not whole families, we haven’t got the space. But someone important, yes.”
“Do they always pay?” I ask.
“One way or another.”
“I’d be tempted to blow you into the Outer Spheres,” Ursula says.
“As would I,” Steeber says. “Hence our secrecy, although people who need us still seem able to get in touch. That’s why we keep the securities here.”
“As human shields,” I say.
“Exactly,” Steeber says. “The containers let you see that there is someone inside but not who it is. You would never find your loved one in time and launching an all-out attack would be even riskier. We always get our kilos back, plus substantial interest. Charity, you look confused.”
“It seems so much trouble,” I say. “Why not just exchange terms?”
“Terms?” Ursula says.
“You can grow most things out of the floor but not all,” Steeber tells her patiently. “Services, for example, fall into a category that is hard to quantify. How do you avoid getting ripped off? Trust is a very rare commodity in Diamond City.”
“Right,” Ursula says uncertainly.
“Exchanging terms is like buying trust,” Steeber says. “Suppose I’ve got something that can’t be grown by the Basis, l
ike an Old World item. I need to get it to another location but can’t go myself because, say, the journey is too dangerous. I need a courier to take it. What’s to stop the courier from stealing the item and selling it?”
“Nothing,” Ursula says.
“Diamond City abhors a commercial vacuum so a solution has been found,” Steeber continues. “Terms are patents in which you write the details of your agreement. Once the courier and I buy the completed patent, he commits to delivery and I commit to pay him.
“The terms contain instructions to the Basis. If the courier does not deliver the item to the agreed location at the agreed time then something bad happens.”
“How bad?” Ursula says.
“The bad thing could be as simple as transferring every kilo in the courier’s Aerac to mine. Or the terms could instruct the Basis to grow a cannon next to the courier and blow his head off.
“In common with most of Diamond City, we don’t like terms. Both parties have to agree to them and once agreed, the terms can’t be changed or cancelled. Then there are in-Aer records, that sort of thing. Our solution is more open-ended.”
“Do you ever give the people back?” I say.
“Yes. There are many different ways to make money out of people Charity. Coming from Centria, you should know.”
“Centria is different,” I say, not quite convinced.
“Centria likes publicity,” Steeber says. “That’s the only difference I can see.”
I feel more alienated from this man than I ever did in Centria.
“I don’t think we can work for you Steeber,” I say.
“Pity,” Steeber says, “especially now you know so much about us.”
“We won’t say anything,” I say.
He looks at Ursula again and then smiles at me. I want to run but instead I grip the chair so my hands won’t shake because whatever is wrong with Centria somehow involves Steeber Loke.
“Tell me how you got that document,” he says.
His face holds no expression, the state in which I think Steeber is most comfortable.
“My dad is a Centrian spy and he sent it to me,” I say.
Ursula looks at me. I hear her swallow.
“Who was he spying on?” Steeber says.
Sons of the Crystal Mind (Diamond Roads Book 1) Page 13
