by M M Buckner
Kaioko got to her feet and tried to intervene. “Stop, Gee. He a good man.”
But Geraldine’s rage had its own momentum. The muscles of her face bunched in knots, and she aimed her hammer at my teeth. In reflex, I knocked the tool out of her hand.
“Augh.” She bent double and cradled her wrist This made me smile. Then Liam came through the door. He cast a confused glance at Kaioko, who stood by my side.
“He hit her.” Geraldine pointed at me. “He trying to get away.”
Liam laid a restraining hand on Geraldine’s shoulder. “Kai-Kai, how you feeling? You look better.”
He was right. Her ashy, pale complexion had softened. Pink spots glowed in her cheeks, and her lips had changed from lavender to rose. She virtually bloomed with health. How extraordinary. I wanted to explore this novel phenomenon, but before I could form a single hypothesis, I forgot! My mind darted back to the main priority: escape and seek resources. The open airlock waited.
Liam saw the direction of my gaze and moved to block me. “I can’t let you go,” he said quietly.
“You want to fight me? Bring it on, junior.”
He widened his stance, lifted his fists and crouched, waiting for me to make the first move. Stupid kid. I wanted to take him out. Hot virile instincts flushed up my chest, and my hands automatically clenched. I wanted to wipe the floor with his insolent carcass. But this wasn’t the time.
So I snorted and fumed and forced myself to calm down. “We’ll finish this later, punk.”
With effortless speed, I lifted him off his feet and tossed him into the pallets. Bales of product tumbled down on top of his lanky form, burying everything except for one boot. Geraldine roared curses and ran to dig him out, and while they were distracted, I dropped into the airlock.
When I tried to close the hatch, Kaioko leaned inside. “Please stay here, sir. Your blood can cure the people.”
At that moment, I honestly couldn’t recall the malady, or the euthanasia order, or my part in this sad little war. My focus had never been so sharply defined. I pushed Kaioko away.
Then, out of nowhere, Sheeba appeared. Her burnished face hovered above me, framed in the hatch rim like a magnificent cameo portrait. Where had Sheeba come from? I hadn’t heard footsteps approaching. I’d been too focused on escape.
“Nasir, stay and help us.”
“Sheeba?”
“I beg you. Stay and make amends for what you’ve done.”
“What I’ve done?”
Alarms went off in my brain. Sheeba, my heart’s blood. My one and only desire. I longed to pull her down into the airlock and take her away at once. But she wasn’t wearing a space suit. And somewhere in my edit-censored consciousness, a thin voice warned the time wasn’t right. Sheeba had too many allies here. She was sunk too deep in her zone intoxication. To wrest her free, I would need reinforcements.
“I’ll come back,” I whispered. “That’s a promise.”
Then Geraldine grabbed my sleeve. Her injured right arm hung like a broken wing, but with her left, she savagely pinched a handful of my biceps and twisted. Enraged NEM chemicals blasted through my veins and riveted my attention. I scraped her hand against the sharp metal rim of the airlock. Her cry almost made me stop, but the glass man immediately zipped, shunted and stored away my remorse, and I scraped her hand again, forcing her to let go. Sheeba pleaded, but I couldn’t hear what she said. I concentrated only on exiting the zone alive.
Then Liam rose above me like a vengeful hawk. His forehead was bleeding, and his rope of blond hair had come unbraided. Bits of dried pro-glu stuck to the side of his face. I bared my teeth. “We’ll settle this later, count on it.”
Just as I yanked the airlock, Geraldine’s clawhammer slammed down and struck my forearm. Its sharp fangs bit straight through the old gray space suit and punctured my skin. Blood spurted through the gash, and the brief pain made my eyes water.
“He can’t leave now,” the wench cackled. “I tore his space suit.”
But it was my turn to laugh. In a split second, the hatch sealed, I jammed the manual override, and instead of waiting for the lock to decompress, I immediately opened the outer door. The escaping air blew me out of Heaven like projectile diarrhea. I barely caught the handhold, but the powerful vigor of the glass man kept me hanging on. Buttering in the void, I grinned at my bloody arm. The NEMs had “healed” my space suit. Clever little sodders.
A heartbeat later, I spotted the Agonists lurking in Heaven’s shadow, exactly where I knew they would be.
24
THE BIG I
“Keep on raging—to stop the aging.”
-THE DELLTONES
“We have to go back!”
My shout detonated through Kat’s shuttle. I seized Kat’s helmet and twisted it off with such force that the gasket tore. We jostled together in the cabin’s zero gravity
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? We just saved your skinny ass.” Kat wiped sweaty red hair from her eyes and pushed me away.
My heart thundered against my rib cage, and my muscles twitched with excess energy. My attention remained as centered as a collimated laser beam: Seek reinforcements and return for Sheeba.
When Kat voiced a command to ignite her rockets, I dragged her bodily out of the pilot’s seat. “Do NOT move this shuttle.”
“Nasir, calm down.” Verinne interceded with her gravelly voice of reason. “We’re running low on fuel. We’ll come back later.”
“There’s no time.” Every iota of my emotional energy centered on Sheeba’s welfare—but there was also a darker motive driving me—an alien desire. The NEMs wanted to stay inside the Net blockade. They didn’t want to take any more doctors’ orders.
“Avoid the Net,” I said aloud, not stopping to analyze my reasons.
“What did those fucking agitators do to you?” Grunze caught my shoulders and hugged me to his chest.
“Nasty Nass, did they pluck out your fingernails?” Winston giggled. “I bet fifty thousand you’d come back with exotic scars.”
“Whatever they did, you’re going to pay for my neck gasket.” Kat picked at her damaged helmet. “We’ve been killing ourselves for days, hiring mercs, dealing with lawyers, paying off that slimy Captain Trencher….”
Grunze released me from the hug, but continued to grip both my shoulders. “You won’t believe how famous we are, sweet-pee. We’re back in first place again. By the way, Chad had to sell some of your furniture.”
“Yeah, your gunship captain has a cosmic appetite for gratuities,” said Kat
“Sheeba’s in terrible danger. I need your help—”
When Kat drifted toward the pilot’s seat again, the NEMs electrified my rage. I could not let her move us in range of the Net, where the doctors would rein in my glass man—not while Shee was still in danger. I knocked Grunze aside to get at Kat—using more force than I realized. Grunze thumped against the control housing with a vicious pulpy smack, and my sharp ears recognized exactly which of his ribs had fractured.
“Huh?” My old friend gaped at me.
“He’s nuts.” Kat threw her helmet at my chest.
“He’s having a psychotic episode. Grab him,” Verinne said coolly.
As they grappled my four limbs, we bucked and wrestled in weightlessness, butting heads, shoulders and knees against the confining oval of the cabin. But even my glassy strength could not hold out against four superannuated codgers pumped up on human growth factor. Verinne sprayed my nostrils full of Sleep-Eze. Then Kat strapped me into Winston’s bunk and tied my hands with millicord.
Dreams have sounds, did you know that? Snippets of audio, recorded who knows how many decades past, they lodge in your brain like tidbits of rotting debris. In time, their meanings break apart, recompose and gather new context. I awoke hearing Prashka’s voice. “We’re falling,” she said. “Hold me.”
I opened my eyes to rosy light glimmering against a silk-upholstered ceiling. I lay nude in a sunken pool of pi
llows. Gentle sizz music chimed from hidden speakers, and a smell of cherries wafted through the air. It took me another groggy minute to understand what had happened. The Agonists had brought me back to my luxury hotel suite at Mira. They thought I needed rest, so they left me in the care of my Net-linked doctors while they went back for Sheeba. Sheeba, my beloved. I bolted out of bed.
And got tangled in the blankets. And fell on my chin. My limbs wobbled like Jell-O. What the heck?
When I tapped my IBiS, holographic icons gushed out of my thumb. The glass man was virtually begging me to notice what the doctors were doing. Dozens of physicians were barraging me with warnings that my NEMs had gone rogue, and they were launching programs to blunt my brainpower, dull my senses and constrain my muscles back to the flaccid condition they called “normal.” And for these services, they were metering unspeakable fees.
“Screw this.” I bit my thumb and got on the phone to Chad.
“Boss, you’re alive! I’ve been trying to get through for hours. Your Fortia bonds are maturing, and it’s time to roll over—”
I cut him off. “Find the Agonists. Where are they? Get me coordinates, and order a damned taxi. I need to get back there.”
“I’m on it,” Chad said.
I rubbed my eyes. Wasn’t there something else? My memory was still way too disconnected. Something I was supposed to do…With a jolt, I remembered the failing hull.
“Chad. Tell Provendia to call off the gunship. No more stupido noisemakers. And put that euth’ order on pause.”
“But boss—”
“This is corning straight from my lips to your cyber-ears. Do it now.”
“It isn’t that easy. You know Provendia won’t break the chain of command.”
Gilty gods, Chad was right. Those geezer bureaucrats couldn’t make a move without first crossing every T. The stodgy CEO would want to convene a board meeting and get everyone’s input. Then someone’s assistant would have to generate a memo. Every Com followed the same sluggish rigmarole. Top-heavy command, that was the problem. Too many senior execs.
I sighed and rubbed sleep from my eyes. “Okay, let the CEO chase down enough rubber stamps to cover his ass in ink. Just make sure he calls off the gunship.”
“Got it, boss.”
“And get me two new space suits. Make one pearly pink.”
I stumbled into the bathroom, looking for my clothes, and for the first time in days, I saw myself in the mirror. Ye gold-plated statues. My body rippled with youth! Glossy black ringlets, tight manly buns—the only thing real was the haggard droop of my eyes. I deactivated the mirror and got dressed.
Then I surfed through the hotel’s online gift shop and bought some things for Sheeba. A new pink-and-white smartskin, moisturizing body wash, chocolate truffles, a handheld movie viewer, a diamond tiara.
Climbing into the taxi, my spirits lifted like the fake-happy bounce of Peps. And I could guess the reason. My NEMs were blissed to be heading back toward the Net blockade, away from the meddlesome doctors. My energy centered on a different goal though. I was going to liberate Sheeba. But so many details remained fuzzy.
“Listen, crystal guy, we need an understanding,” I said aloud in the speeding taxi. “The extra muscle power comes in handy, and better vision is good. The beefed-up IQ is also cool. But you can’t screw with my memories. That could be dangerous to both of us.”
The cybercabbie bobbed his plastic head, but the glass man didn’t respond.
A shiver rifled up my spine. What was I doing, talking to myself like a lunatic? The glass man wasn’t a real person. He was a whimsical fantasy I’d dreamed up. A metaphor. The NEMs were millions of separate healing machines, at least a thousand different kinds, and each one had a narrow, specialized function. Sure, they assembled into an interlocked lattice to relay health data, but mat didn’t mean they could think as a unit. They were medical devices, not a life-form.
“Are we clear?” I said to the empty taxi. “Hell, I’m coming unzipped.”
But then, as if a floodgate had opened, my memories surged back. I recalled everything. Prashka. Lahore. The lychee nuts. Sheeba’s scornful voice. “Murderer!” A dozen times, I watched her bury her face in Liam’s shirt. How in hell would I convince her to come away with me?
My vertebrae compressed like a stack of millstones. It was worse than the Reel. All the way to the rendezvous, my neck ached. How could I redeem myself in Sheeba’s eyes if she didn’t trust me? I sorted through the paltry items from Mira’s gift shop—silly junk. These trinkets would never induce her to leave Heaven. I needed a better gift—but what?
“Amends,” she had said.
The two freighted syllables resonated like a hundred children’s voices singing through steel. Memories were a curse.
I phoned the Agonists en route. Grunze answered, but he refused to talk. His ribs were still mending from where I’d smacked him, and he was doing psychotropics to ease his hurt feelings. He passed the phone to Kat.
“Are you over your fit of nerves?” Kat’s teeth clicked against the phone mike. “We’re going in for Sheeba.”
Verinne joined the conference call. “Nasir, we’re trying a soft dock on Heaven’s port. Why won’t the cargo doors open?”
“No, that won’t work. I cleared the airlock, but the cargo doors are weighted down with product.” Then I told them about the lethal gas in the airlocks.
“Well, we can’t go in through the hull rip,” Kat said. “That whole area’s mined with tactical nukes.”
“What lame bimbus would have done that?’ I said.
Winston giggled. “Ask your gunship captain.”
“There’s something else,” Verinne said. “Captain Trencher mentioned a health quarantine.”
‘Trencher? Robert Trencher? Fucking Robert A. Trencher is the gunship captain?” Only a few weeks ago, I’d personally demoted that asshole. How had he turned up here? Someone had been pulling strings behind my back.
“He’s the one,” Verinne said. “He’s taking bribes to keep quiet, but he doesn’t know who we are.”
I paused to contemplate the vicious justice of the universe. My onetime protege Robert Trencher—liar, coward, incompetent numbnuts—he was the captain to whom I’d nearly surrendered? Gods, wouldn’t he love to turn the tables and get me in his power.
“Life is strange,” I reflected. “Just keep looking for an entrance. I’m on my way.”
The taxi rendezvoused with Kat’s shuttle directly over the South Pole. The big Dolphin 88 was there, too, overloaded with fans and tourists. Hovering nearby were a chartered wide-body Hedgehog and a sleek Astral yacht with Greenland.Com markings. Our live audience of fans had sextupled, and Chad informed me that millions more watched from home. A few hundred kilometers away, Heaven spun on its chain, followed by the ever-vigilant gunship. Apparently, Trencher hadn’t received a recall order yet. My Provendia colleagues were still crossing their t’s.
“We can’t find a way in,” Verinne said.
“Keep trying.” I tugged my hair. We were this close, with all the right gear, plenty of money, virtually unlimited surfer resources, and we couldn’t find a way into Heaven? It was almost laughable.
While Verinne and Kat pored over A13’s schematics, Grunze sat in the pilot’s seat, maintaining a stern silence. He was pouting. I took the navigator seat beside him and squeezed his knee. “Okay, Grunzie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bust your ribs.”
“You ambushed me,” he said, peeved. He wasn’t used to losing fights. “Are you on some kind of pills?”
“Grunzie, I was overwrought. That zone was pure hell.”
Win sat Velcroed in his bunk, grinning like a mental patient. “Show us your scars, Nasty Nass.”
Verinne queried for new data. “We’ll settle bets later. Right now we need a tactical plan to rescue Shee.”
“Shee may not want to come away with us,” I admitted, shamefaced.
“Why the fuck not?” said Grunze.
Veri
nne stopped scrolling through her search results. “Nasir, what have you done?”
Why did everybody assume it was my fault? Hell, were was no easy way to explain without humiliating myself. “There’s this guy,” I began. Then I told them how a crafty young agitator had put Sheeba under a spell. He was a devil. He’d mesmerized Shee with his wicked lies. Of course, I didn’t mention the malady. No point scaring my friends. As I reeled off Liam’s crimes, they grew incensed. That dangerous agitator was brainwashing our darling. My friends agreed we had to get her away fast, whether she wanted to come or not. Shee was such a child, she couldn’t see her own best interest.
“We’ll need weapons,” Grunze said.
“No prob. I packed a picnic.” Kat’s eyes gleamed. She sailed across the narrow cabin and flipped open a bin containing a rack of stun guns, sticky-string pumps, sleep gas and riot gear. All nonlethal of course. It wasn’t considered sporting for surfers to carry deadly weapons. Kat said, “You like my yummy gadgets?”
“We still need a way in. Guess we’ll have to punch another hole in the hull.” Grunze laced his fingers behind his bald head and leaned back in his seat “Where’s the best place, sweet-pee?”
“Grunzie, you forgive me?” I asked.
He smiled and cuffed me across the jaw, just hard enough to bounce my skull against the headrest It was his way of showing tenderness. “One mil says I get to Sheeba before you do. So where do we rip a new door?”
I studied the cutaway drawing, and my mind flip-flopped between the glass man’s driving instincts and my own guilty memories. Deck One? Sheeba might still be there in the cargo bay, along with Liam, Geraldine and Kaioko. No, we couldn’t risk a rupture on One. Deck Two? That held the solar plant and the circulating pumps. Besides, half of Two had already been blown away. Another hull breach there might shiver Heaven to pieces. Deck Three housed the thermionic generator, where Juani would be working on his CAES. Deck Four was sick-ward, and the juves needed that medical equipment.
