by Linda Nagata
Marevic’s breathing suddenly became deep and husky as she fought to resist the biochemical urge to speak. “Phousita,” she grunted. “No known last name. Arif. No known last name.”
Kirstin grinned, while her officers muttered in quiet triumph.
“Phousita and Arif,” the interrogator said, the only one in the room who hadn’t changed expression. “Are these two presently aboard a vessel bound for Summer House?”
Marevic’s hands had been lying still in her lap. Now they suddenly grasped each other, the fingers working madly. “They’re bound for Gold Wing,” she said, between clenched teeth.
“And is Gold Wing an on-site subsidiary of Summer House?”
Her face was turning red; her expression was furious. “Yes.”
“Is Phousita or Arif presently in possession of the artifact popularly known as Bohr’s Maker?”
“I don’t know.”
The interrogator didn’t stumble. “Do you believe that they are presently in possession of the artifact popularly known as Bohr’s Maker?”
“Yes!” The word emerged like a small explosion.
Kirstin leaned forward. “Are you aware of the location of any ghost of Nikko Jiang-Tibayan?”
“That question does not pertain to this investigation!” the lawyer protested.
But Marevic answered it anyway. “Yes.”
“Admission of a felony,” Kirstin said. “We’re broadening the investigation.”
“Not without a warrant.” The lawyer rose to his feet. He stood in front of Marevic, as if he could protect her.
From his corner, Allende spoke in a deep, angry voice. “This forced interrogation is for the sole purpose of investigating Marevic Chun’s involvement with the forged identity chips. If you venture beyond that specific without a warrant, Chief Adair, I will have you removed from the police force.”
Kirstin felt a chill run up her spine. Allende was hiding something. She was certain of it. “Request a warrant,” she instructed one of her officers.
There was silence in the room for several minutes. Then the warrant arrived simultaneously in the atriums of everyone present. The lawyer sat down again beside his client. The interrogator repeated Kirstin’s question. “Marevic Chun, are you aware of the location of any ghost of Nikko Jiang-Tibayan?”
“Yes,” she said again.
“What is that location?”
“An atrium.”
“Whose atrium?”
“Arif.”
“This ghost is aboard the ship that—”
Marevic’s chin came up. Her eyes squeezed shut as if she’d been lanced with sudden pain.
Kirstin rose to her feet, sensing disaster. “The control codes!” she shouted. “What are the ship’s control codes?”
The alphanumeric sequence emerged from Marevic’s throat in forced, guttural, monosyllabic bursts. After twelve digits she collapsed against the back of the couch. Her head lolled on the cushions. Kirstin stood over her, fists clenched as she resisted an urge to slap her awake.
One of the medics skidded to her side. The lawyer tried to shove him away, but Kirstin signaled to her uniforms, and they hauled the lawyer out of the way. “Tell us what’s wrong with you, Marevic,” Kirstin commanded.
“I don’t remember.”
“Tell us your name,” the medic said in a gentler voice, as he pressed a series of dermal patches against her neck.
“Marevic Chun.”
“What are the ship’s control codes?” Kirstin growled.
“What ship?” Her eyes were open now, fluttering.
The interrogator tapped Kirstin on the shoulder, inviting her to step back so that he could resume his job. She cast him a scathing glance. But this was his specialty. She stepped aside.
Ignoring the lawyer’s protests, the interrogator crouched in front of Marevic. “The ship we’ve been discussing,” he said gently. “You remember it, don’t you?”
Marevic slouched in her seat, a confused frown on her face. “No, I don’t remember.”
“How can she lie?” Kirstin demanded.
“She’s poisoned herself,” the medic said. He examined one of the dermal patches on her neck. “There are indications of brain tissue destruction.”
“Where do you live, Marevic?” the interrogator asked.
“Ecuador.”
Kirstin’s teeth came together in a hard line. Marevic and Fox had lived together in Ecuador almost a hundred years ago. “How old are you, Marevic?” she asked, in a voice cold with fury.
“Twenty-four.”
The interrogator settled back on his heels. He looked up at Kirstin. “We can keep trying if you like, but it’s fairly obvious she’s induced extensive—and probably permanent—amnesia.”
Kirstin’s hands clenched behind her back. “Issue a warrant for her ghosts.” Not that she expected to find any. Not at this late hour. But she had twelve digits of the ship’s control codes. It should be possible to work out the remainder through trial and error. And once they had control of the ship, it would be a small task to program a missile to destroy it.
She glanced again at Allende. He was glaring at Marevic, his yellow teeth bared.
Fox wanted to say no. Nikko could see it in his posture. He paced back and forth across the wheat-colored carpet, shoulders bowed, hands clasped behind his back, his red hair bouncing up and down around his ears. He did not want to cross the police. But he wanted Sandor. Fox was a devoted father.
He stopped abruptly in the middle of the room and straightened his shoulders. Sweat shone on his wrinkled forehead. His eyetooth bit down so hard on the inside of his lip that Nikko was sure it must have drawn blood. “I can’t act autonomously,” he announced. “I’ll have to get the approval of the Board of Directors.”
Nikko felt the first flush of triumph. “You can sway them.”
“The rescue should be as secretive as possible.”
“Sure.”
“I’ve got a scheme in mind, but it requires you to go out after them, in a small ship, without life support.”
“Really?” Nikko found the notion both appealing and frightening. He’d never been away from Summer House. Not physically anyway. Then he remembered: “What can I do on my own? I’m a ghost.”
“We can address that. I recorded your pattern, you know.” His brow wrinkled uncertainly. “No. You don’t know. This ghost originated before that event. . . .” He started pacing again. The sweat on his brow began to bead on the crests of thoughtful furrows.
“You’re saying you can resurrect me, then?” Nikko pressed.
Fox looked put out. “The biogenesis function,” he said. “Remember?”
“You preserved my code. But it’ll take months to develop a physical clone.”
“No. It’ll only take a day and a half.”
“You said a day and a half.”
Fox frowned. “Maybe not that long,” he admitted. “Maybe thirty hours.”
“But that’s impossible. It takes half a year to grow a clone in the mausoleum tanks.”
“The biogenesis function involves a modular growth system. We’ve tested it on various animals. The assembly takes place in segments, under low temperatures. The available work surfaces are enormous and of course the nutritional matrix is kept fully supplied.” He stopped pacing again to look at Nikko. “But I’m allowing myself to be overconfident. I won’t mislead you. We’ve never done it quite this way before. You see, after Summer House mapped your cell structure, the data was scattered in packets throughout the biogenesis function to make it harder to detect. The linking codes were highly redundant of course, and reassembling your physical structure shouldn’t be a problem. Still, reality remains the only good check of a virgin system.”
“Thanks for the shot of confidence, Fox. Are you going to be able to correct the nervous disorder?” He held up his trembling hands.
Fox stared at them resentfully. “You’ll be exactly the same as you were when you went in. I won’t introduce any modifications un
til you’re whole again. After that. . . .” He shrugged. “No point in holding back now, is there?”
“I never saw any point to it.” He wondered for a moment if Fox would have bothered to go after the fugitive ship if Sandor had made it back to Summer House, and Nikko had been the one stranded on the robotic vessel. But that wasn’t fair. Fox had preserved his pattern in defiance of the law—although at very little risk to himself. Nikko’s fingers tapped against his thigh. “So tell me, Dad. If this ghost hadn’t made it back here, how long would you have kept me dormant?”
Fox shrugged. “Until you were safe.”
Nikko didn’t like the vague feeling that answer gave him. He visualized himself, tucked away and forgotten. “And how long did you think that would be?” he pressed. “A year? Fifty years? A few hundred?”
A guarded expression slipped across Fox’s face. “I hadn’t worked up a projection.”
“No, of course not. The cops might have been looking over your shoulder. They might have caught on. Right, Fox?”
“There’s no point in snapping at me, Nikko. I’m on your side.”
But Nikko hadn’t had physiological responses in so long—even simulated ones—that he felt overwhelmed by them now. Bitter. Angry. Almost out of control. He could feel himself sliding into a reflexive verbal assault. “You’re on my side so long as it’s safe for you and the House. That’s how it’s always been with you.”
Fox gazed at him, his expression oddly calm. “I know you think I’m a coward. But you don’t have children. You don’t know what it’s like to really be afraid.”
“Right. Well you didn’t fight too hard to keep me around. And now that Sandor’s gone, you don’t have any children at all, do you, Fox? Not anymore.” The words emerged out of anger. But once spoken, they were impossible to recall.
Fox went very still. His chin came up. “It’s true I could have done more for you, Nikko. I guess I probably should have. But revolutions have a way of consuming their originators. I was afraid for myself. I was afraid for the House.”
“The House: that’s your first child, isn’t it?”
Fox didn’t deny it. Instead he returned to the business at hand, as if he could eliminate the hurt by pretending it didn’t exist. “I want you to download into your physical construction as soon as the brain tissue is adequate to support you. If the police suspect your ghost exists, my atrium is the first place they’ll look.”
Chapter
21
Ghosts could claim no freedom. While Summer House developed his physical clone, Nikko could do little except tag along with Fox. It was an awkward situation. They’d never been able to put up with each other’s company for long. But they both tried hard to ignore the history between them while Fox went about designing the craft that would rendezvous with Phousita’s ship. Nikko looked over his shoulder, and offered suggestions when he could. His ghost still imitated the tremors that had afflicted his now-vanished body, reminding him of why he’d gone after the Bohr Maker in the first place.
Shortly before the scheduled departure they took the elevator up through the core of the tether to the central docking ring. The local police captain was there. But he worked for Fox now, assigned to clear the area of any police Makers.
With Fox, Nikko examined the little ship. It was a jury-rigged vessel, composed of three coffins from the mausoleum, set end to end and attached to a fusion motor that Nikko would control through his atrium. Smart glue knit the molecular structures of each piece to the next. The craft would be secured with a temporary bond to the side of a robotic cargo vessel that had been held back in port for a day. It would remain coupled to the cargo ship for the taxi out to the magnetic launch tube and the subsequent burst of acceleration. After that, the bonding agent would wither, and Nikko would be on his own.
It was a dizzying sensation to see his inert body being loaded into the lead coffin. He watched as a pink-tinged, semitransparent acceleration gel was hosed in on all sides. A quick system check followed, confirming that all was well. Then the lid was closed and sealed.
Fox said: “I’m still working on the Maker that was used to sabotage your atrium.”
Nikko had almost forgotten about that; it seemed so long ago. “You haven’t cracked it?”
“It was elusive. Very sophisticated. Self-protective. The original sample is long gone, of course. I’m trying to deduce its structure from environmental clues.”
One of the workers approached Fox. “We’re done here. Time for Nikko to download—if he still wants to go.” Only a handful of Fox’s assistants were aware of Nikko’s return. They seemed ambivalent about the situation—exhibiting an underlying resentment because they’d compromised themselves with the police, but at the same time enjoying their act of defiance. That was Summer House: strong on revolutionary talk, uneasy with action.
“Tell him I won’t be backing out,” Nikko said. “Tell him, if he’s getting nervous, he can always reformat his memories and forget I ever happened.”
Fox smiled uncomfortably. “Take care, Nikko.”
“Sure, Dad.”
Was that all they could find to say? The tension between them weighed in multiple G’s, but it was too late to change that now. Nikko wrote himself to his home address.
There was a moment of blankness, and then a growing, vague awareness of the cramped feel of his body, the slow breath in and out of his lungs, the claustrophobic press of the acceleration gel that stole any possible movement from his limbs.
He remembered his last living moments on Summer House, when Kirstin had come to visit him. He remembered his weeks with Phousita. So the ghost had already assimilated. He must have been unconscious for a while. But peering out the transparent cover of the coffin, he could still see the lights of the loading bay.
His heart began to beat faster. He’d never ventured beyond the outer walls of Summer House. He knew absolutely nothing about boarding a reluctant ship.
Fox rapped on the transparent lid. Okay? his silent lips asked. Nikko nodded. From this point on there would be no radio communication.
As if to enforce his isolation, his kisheer responded to the declining level of O2 in the coffin by sliding past the restrictive gel to fuse with the papillae of his mouth, nose, and ears. No more atmosphere for him. He would breathe through the kisheer until he reached the target ship, or until he died.
Fox withdrew. The coffin shook as a tractor engaged. A pump hummed, then gradually faded into silence. A gentle nudge of acceleration from the tractor sent the ship drifting out of the bay. After a few minutes it engaged with a clang to the robotic cargo vessel that would carry it piggyback through the launch.
It took nearly two hours to taxi out to the magnetic launch tube. That was a long time to be awake, and unmoving. A long time to think about what he was doing.
The acceleration came without warning. Nikko wasn’t even aware the two ships had entered the launch tube when suddenly his brain slammed against his skull. A huge weight crushed his heart. His lungs were a joke. He blacked out.
When he came to, the coffin lid was fogged. The acceleration gel had been absorbed by the coffin’s maintenance system and he was free to move in the cramped space. He raised his arm and wiped at the transparent lid. He saw stars beyond. In the coffin it was very dark. He checked his atrium clock. Four hours had passed since he’d left Summer House. He had a headache.
He ordered the coffin to open. It depressurized, then the lid popped free. He felt cold for a moment, then the feeling was gone. He climbed carefully out.
His hands were already shaking badly under the influence of his advancing palsy. Fox had given him a Maker to correct the disability, but it hadn’t done a thing yet. He found it a challenge to grip the handholds.
Fortunately, he’d been fitted with a shoulder harness and tether before leaving Summer House. It kept him secured to the little vessel as he clambered back to the next coffin. He opened the lid, then pulled out the camera pack he’d ordered stashed
there. He slipped it on, then drifted out on the tether’s slack. The camera hovered on its tentacle, recording an image of the little vessel.
While on Summer House, Fox had helped him recover the data from the camera pack he’d used before his death. When he combined that with the data stored in the camera pack aboard Phousita’s vessel, he’d have a continuous history of events surrounding the Bohr Maker’s liberation.
“That’s my ship,” he said, continuing his documentary. He subvocalized the words. The atrium translated them and sent them on to the camera. “Absurd-looking, isn’t it? But functional, I hope.”
He went on to describe how it had been designed and assembled. Eventually, the radiation from the sun began to upset his thermoregulatory system, so he pulled himself in on the rope and sought refuge in the shade of the lead coffin, as far from the engine as he could get. He was concerned about radiation. Fox had insisted it was safe enough, and he had Makers to repair any damage. Still, he didn’t like being close to the engine.
He was hungry. He popped the lid of the coffin and withdrew a long tube. He wrapped his toes around a handy grip, then struggled with his palsy until finally he was able to stick the end of the tube into a socket Fox had fixed in his forearm. Nutrients began to flow directly into his bloodstream. His mood improved briefly, though he was hungrier than ever when he removed the tube. His belly did not appreciate being cut out of the feeding cycle.
He began to record:
“The emptiness and silence of the void are beginning to weigh on me. I feel utterly alone, with Summer House unimaginably far behind.”
His words opened a cavern of emotion. Suddenly, he felt every kilometer of separation like a minute in time, hard and real, but impossible to cross again once he’d gone by.
But gradually his perspective changed. “As the hours pass I find myself growing used to the isolation. It begins to seem less threatening, more beneficent. I understand now why Fox insisted this ship be as small as possible. Because I am tiny, I’m almost invisible in the vast empty reaches that surround me. I’m so far from anywhere that it’s unlikely anyone will notice me, even when the fusion engines finally fire on schedule. Some astronomical instrument may record my presence. But will any human eye ever review that record?”
