Through her boiling anger, Lou heard this description, and felt something in her mind click into place. Despite herself, she listened.
“This man,” Tourignon said, leaning in, sensing he had Lou’s reluctant attention, “he often seemed drunk. But he told me about a time to come, decades hence, the time of the Bridge, he called it, when a being would link our world with a world beyond; with the gods who strode the Unseen Realm above space. This Bridge was a man and not a man. He was a god and not a god. He was a genius and a fool. He had no name. But he had been chosen by the godlike entities of this Unseen Realm as their agent, their link to our realm, in human space. In his description of this future, we would have access to the transcendental glory of the Unseen Realm; they would participate in our world, and we in theirs. Humanity would grow far beyond all conceivable limits and boundaries.”
Lou used a finger to push one of her eyebrows up. “Uh-huh…”
Tourignon looked unbothered. He had a buzz going. “Ah, but I haven’t told you the interesting part. The Bridge, this chap told me, was already alive, living on Kestrel. He was a child. A disposable child, with no name, and no future. A dying child.”
Lou’s first instinct, tainted by hatred of this man, was to laugh in his face at his inspired nonsense. But then her beleaguered, highly caffeinated brain kicked in, and she thought about what he had said. She frowned, thinking impossible, ludicrous, laughable thoughts, and stared some more. “You’re not serious! Who the hell buys that ‘Special Child’ crap?” But she was also thinking about the other things she had figured out so far. About the Bastard’s disappearance…
And remembering, feeling a new kind of shock sweep over her now, the morning in the Akane central lockup, and the dream she had, of a teenage-looking Kid, looking at her. How eerie he looked.
She felt dizzy again, but for different reasons. “God…”
He allowed an expansive shrug. “More or less, Madame Meagher. I knew that if I could get this child to work for me, I could get people to pay a lot of money to access his special abilities.”
“Abilities? What?”
“Through his connection with the entities of the ‘Unseen Realm, this child will be able to access unthinkable power. He will be able to transform mere humans into beings beyond flesh, a new form of human being beyond mortality, beyond matter. A transcendence of form.” Etienne’s eyes glittered behind his glasses.
Lou felt an urge to take several steps away from him.
She said, “You figure you can get people to pay you money to get Kid to do this number on them?”
Nodding, looking triumphant, with expansive hand gestures, he said, “Absolutely. I just need the child. Sadly, the child in question is conspicuous by his absence. So, we must wait.”
She said, “Well, gee, what a bloody shame.”
He laughed. “But, there is one more exciting detail. This time-traveler told me we would see the child’s return here. Today.”
Lou blinked, interested despite herself. “Today? Are you sure about this? You didn’t misunderstand?”
“Quite so. There was no misunderstanding. The time traveler told me that the Bridge, far in the future, remembered his return to this spot, at this time, very, very well.”
“And this same time-traveling guy told you where to find said ‘Kid’, and when he’d be alone, available for capture, right?”
Tourignon grinned. “Quite so, though it took some persuasion on our part, some encouragement. The Bridge, in this future, a god of sorts, decides to help those individuals who were looking after his interests back in our time. He sends a pair of agents, a man and—”
Lou saw it now, or was beginning to. “—A woman, a crazy woman. Always trying to help me.” She was staring into space. “Traveling across time?”
“These entities exist in the higher dimensions, my dear Madame Meagher. From their point of view, time is a surface. For them, time-travel is akin to a chess problem. Moving pieces on the board. You see?”
Lou rubbed at her head. “This is hard to think about.”
“For me as well, Madame Meagher.”
For a short, weird moment Lou glanced at Tourignon and saw in him the confused, miserable old man who had wondered, in a moment of apparent madness, if he’d been given a second chance. She said, puzzlement displacing her anger, “Why you?”
“Why did the time-traveler come to me?”
“Yeah,” she said, working her aching finger-joints.
He called for a fresh mineral water, not looking happy at the prospect. To Lou he said, “It was pure chance. A fluke of fate.”
“Nothing,” she said, “happens by chance. Nothing.”
“Madame Meagher,” he glanced at her, “at the level of the seething quantum foam, everything happens by chance.”
Not happy with this, Lou changed the subject. “Okay. What about Otaru? What’s your feud with Otaru about?”
His drink arrived. To Lou he said, “Otaru is — how to put this? —a networked consciousness, a synthetic mind. Fantastically old, subjectively. It has long since departed the realm of physical media, decanting itself into the interstices of spacetime, living amid the energetic seething of virtual particles fizzing and popping in and out of existence across the surface of reality itself. This process powers it, keeps it moving. The loci of its consciousness exist as a Planck-scale mist of coherent energy, drifting through human space.”
Lou could think of nothing to say. She blinked, affecting an air of nonchalance. She was still pissed off. “So?”
“So, my good lady, Otaru wants access to the child’s power for itself, to achieve its own goal. If Tourignon controls the child, Otaru has a problem.”
“This is where I’m meant to ask what that might be, right?” She curled her lip.
He grinned, looking impish with the glee of the one who knows what’s really going on in the world. “Otaru wants to end its existence.”
“I have heard that Otaru is worried about what might happen to his immortal soul if he suicides.”
Etienne nodded, looking grave. “Oh yes, very much so. And worse, it cannot do the deed itself; it must have assistance, and this is where the child enters the picture. Only the child, with his projected abilities, will be able to bring about Otaru’s ascension to a new existence living as a godlike spirit entity in the Unseen Realm.” It is extraordinary, is it not, that this vast and powerful machine should, in the final analysis, be as afraid of death as anyone else.”
“How did I get mixed up in all this?”
“You took pity on a dog. You did a good deed, and this is your reward!” Tourignon guffawed again, enjoying himself.
“So,” Lou said, thinking through all this, “we’re waiting for Kid to show up, and your information is that he will turn up today?”
“Quite so.”
“Hmm.” Lou was still thinking about the time-travelers. “So I got the strange lady, and you got this strange guy. I don’t buy that it was all just pure chance.”
Tourignon shrugged. “As if I would know, a maker of spacecraft nobody wants!” He laughed. “In any case, this man, he wound up with me only after a long time of wandering loose on this Orbital, confused by his trip across the chess board of time, looking for someone interested in his story. He’d become confused about the details of his mission, which he said was to find you, of course.
“So they were both trying to get to me?” Lou thought about this, chewing a nail. She remembered the strange lady’s visit to the orbital ferry, saying, “they should have sent the other one…” Lou swore under her breath.
Tourignon went on, “One of my staffers heard about him on a news feed, which had a report about a strange man here causing a public disturbance and talking about peculiar things, and showed me the story. He seemed intriguing. I was at a low point in my lif
e. I was interested in anything with a promise of rebirth, of transformation beyond my bodily limits, the promise of beginning afresh in a new existence. I made some arrangements.”
Lou rested her head in her hands. Time-travel, godlike aliens in higher dimensions, weird power plays, transformation, people buying the idea of — what would you call it? —Metahumanity? Transhumanity? Or something else entirely? A new race, perhaps, traveling between stars, without need of, well, anything! And a disembodied synthetic mind wanting its plug pulled. It made no sense at all. She said so.
Tourignon, as ever, had the answer. “It is bored, depressed. It feels every passing picosecond. Nanoseconds are as years to it. Each moment passing feels like nails across the back of your hand. And since you were already on the case involving the missing child, you were the ideal candidate to make sure I didn’t get to control the child. If only my useless nephews had the brains of their uncle!”
Lou’s turn for a sour smile. “Something went wrong?”
Tourignon sipped his new mineral water and made a disgusted-looking face; his hands sketched an angry flourish. “They knew they were on a timetable. The idea was to get the child into the van, and, in the few minutes before the aliens took him, they were to apply a deep conditioning device to implant the notion into his brain that I was his owner…” He gestured upwards. “But the idiots were late getting the van organized, which put them behind schedule. The entity stepped in on schedule, of course. The idiots dumped the child and ran for their useless lives.”
Lou nodded. “Uh-huh.” Nobody could hope to deal with this stuff, not when it meant everything about the ordinary world she knew was wrong. She reflected back to her earlier conviction, based on her parents’ sensible ideas about evidence and measurement. Now, she thought about it again: what if the aliens did not exist in our universe? It changed everything.
First question. “Who was the body in the nephews’ hotel room?”
“Michel. Marcel killed him after they had yet another fight over whose fault it was that they screwed up. Marcel tried to escape upStalk, to come back to the family. We took care of him.”
Lou nodded, thinking about all her mis-steps, frowning. “Damn!” she said, with feeling.
Tourignon nodded in sympathy. “How do you think we feel? Poor Giselle only wanted to know how much you knew about Otaru, to see how much of a threat you were to our operation. She knew ahead of time you were armed with some very nasty guns, so she had to take precautions. A fine mess, yes? We could have shared all this before, and avoided so much complicated unpleasantness.”
Unpleasantness! She screamed inside at the man who tinkered with her brain without her consent. In that respect, he and Otaru seemed to be cut from the same cloth. Lou felt as if she was their pawn, a plaything. And why shouldn’t they see her that way? She wasn’t even a real person.
She felt the anger piling up again.
Jen cut in abruptly. “Lou? Trouble.”
She turned away from Tourignon without excusing herself. Not a good time, Jen.
“Lou, Orbital authorities have issued a warrant for your arrest.”
What?
“Not kidding, Lou. It’s serious. I just got the word from Otaru. OrbCommand here thinks you’re a Class One NanoHazard.” There was no graver nano-related threat to organic life; it referred to an actively contagious source of extremely mutagenic agents.
What the hell? Did you say Otaru—
Jen sounded desperate. “Get out of there now!”
Already, Lou could hear the faint sound of sirens.
Chapter 23
Lou checked the time on her Paper: five-twenty. Forty minutes before her meeting with Dog.
In the distance, she heard sirens and hovs, lots of them. She remembered the night the cops got her. The way they’d been able to track her down.
“Madame Meagher? You look shocked. Are you quite all right? Can I get you anything?”
She ignored him, trying to think fast. Jen, you there?
“Yo,” her Friend said into her ear.
Monitor emergency services traffic. I need to know when they start looking for me. Keep me apprised of their locations.
“I’m monitoring emergency services traffic already. They’re having trouble locating you. The tech guys say they removed your Orbital security implants.”
Lou blinked. They did?
“They’re giving Otaru lots of grief right now, believe me.”
Tourignon reached across, touched her hand. “Louise, are you listening? I’m trying to help you.”
She had a weak moment; she considered asking him what he had in mind. Lou got her head together and pulled her hand out from under his. “No thanks. My problem. I might need to get out of here fast. When and where is the kid meant to show up?”
He shrugged, looking a little distressed, glancing about. “We are not sure. Best information suggests, surprisingly enough, somewhere around here. Which is why I was in the area. My people are establishing a perimeter as we speak.”
Lou was distracted, but not so much that she wasn’t shocked by what he said. “You’re still planning to capture the kid?”
He looked surprised that she should ask such a silly question. “Madame Meagher. Contracts have been signed, deals done. It is imperative that we gain exclusive control of the child.”
She wanted to laugh. “But you said yourself, he’s been transformed, he’s not even fully human anymore. He’s got…” She hated using the term. “Abilities.”
He demonstrated that casual who-cares shrug again.
Lou whispered, “We’re all going to die, aren’t we?”
Laughing, he answered, “Not at all. We’ll establish control in short order, and once that’s achieved, all will be well.”
She began folding up her Paper. To Jen she sent the order, Contact Dog. Tell him I need to meet him a.s.a.p.! Same location. The eighteen hundred meeting is too complicated.
Jen acknowledged. A moment later she said it was done. “Dog is moving now, Lou.”
Lou tucked her page in her inside jacket pocket and stood. “Excuse me, Etienne. It’s been most enlightening, but I have an appointment.”
Like a gentleman of old Earth, he stood as well, extending his hand for her to shake. “That is perfectly all right. As it happens, I have pressing business of my own. And please, Madame, allow me to say that I’m sorry our meeting was not more enjoyable for you.”
Wanting to tell him to go screw himself, she frowned, feeling mixed up, panicky. She thought ahead to what would happen once she had Dog back, and wondered when Kid would show up.
And what form Kid might take. Her mind could not quite take it all in. There were too many variables. It felt like it was all happening far too fast.
She stuck her hand out. What the hell? He had given her a lot of info — and a way to keep her from spreading it. She felt complex feelings. He shook her hand, and, without warning pulled her to him. Before she could properly express her disgust or horror, or bring her knee up to his groin, he kissed her once, briefly, on each cheek, then took a step back, looking grim. “Adieu, Madame.”
Lou stared at him, wondering what in hell he meant by that. It seemed overly formal. Strange. Her cold cheeks tingled with the heat of his lips.
Jen’s voice piped up in her ear, “Lou — the cops have posted a humongous reward for information leading to your capture, and they’re circulating your picture. Already they’re getting calls from terrified shopkeepers in the waterfront area.”
Lou swore, thanked Jen, and took off for the seawall, some fifty meters away, near a small woodland park area and some kiosks. She was thinking about that bastard Tourignon. She’d bet anything he was behind all this. He knows I’m a threat, so he arranges to have me taken off the board. The bastard!
And now, she kn
ew, if Tourignon’s people did try to seize whatever Kid had become, there could be massive, deadly trouble for everyone. She might have only a handful of time left. It wasn’t enough. She could already see cop-hovs converging on the area. On foot, she would have no hope of evading them. Indeed, if they thought she was a serious threat to public health, they might just kill her where she stood, rather than try to contain a moving target.
She wondered, too, if Otaru would do anything to protect her. Who knew?
Listen, she said to Jen, I probably don’t have long, so I want you to do something.
Jen said, “Anything, Lou.”
That letter from my mother. You never told me what she had to say. Read it. Lou was running, heading for the limestone seawall, where all her Orbital troubles began. The “sunlight” was dimming; the sea was growing dark. Approaching the spot near the wall, she smelled the sea; the breeze off the water was cold against her face. Her lungs hurt from running. She was out of breath.
Jen said, “Uh, subject line: ‘And you thought I’d forgotten’.”
Lou glanced around, trying to find the exact spot. The wall stretched a long way in both directions. Tables and chairs were spread around, with several stands of trees surrounding and overhanging the area. The boardwalk and the fishing boat harbor were not far away. Restaurants nearby were closed, dark. No cooking smells emerged to drift on the breeze. No people around, either, she noticed.
“Uh-oh…” She’d stumbled into Tourignon’s perimeter, by the looks of it. And nobody warned her to leave.
Not a good sign.
Overhead, the plasma channel shutters were almost closed; display tiles were shifting to night-scenes: stars, other worlds. Rarely had she felt more like an actor on a stage, surrounded by simulation, by seeming reality, and not reality itself.
Lou didn’t like this sense of imminence, either: an empty stage awaiting the show’s beginning.
She found a table, pulled out a chair. Okay, Jenny. The table generated a menu. Lou ignored it.
Orbital Burn Page 28
