Medusa Uploaded_A Novel_The Medusa Cycle
Page 13
We shot across the space the alien had walked with the Charmaynes at roughly the speed of lightning.
Okay, maybe not that fast, but it would have looked that way to the human eye. We scrubbed our record as we went, just in case someone felt they ought to study it frame by frame. We had a hunch about where the alien and his cohorts had gone.
Those flowering shrubs concealed a door. It had no lock, because someone had cut it recently. It was so well disguised, no gardener would discover it accidentally. We pulled it into place behind us.
Our access point dropped us midway down a passage that was probably used by gardeners and high-level Maintenance personnel—though from the look of it, people did not pass through very often.
We listened with Medusa’s ears. We scanned from infrared to ultraviolet. The tunnel claimed to be empty.
So we picked a direction and prowled, Medusa-style.
If you’ve ever seen recordings of tentacled creatures moving through an environment, you’ll have some grasp of the power and grace of a Medusa unit, of the range of her speed and control. Medusa’s touch could be soft as a feather, but she could crush in a lightning strike. I felt no fear for my safety when we were together. I worried instead that we would be exposed if someone saw her and realized that Executives were not the apex predators they believed themselves to be.
She paid particular attention to the sides of the tunnel, and very soon this approach paid off. We found another hollow space. Medusa pulled the false wall free from its mounting.
I would not have been entirely surprised if we had found something we hadn’t seen before. Lately many of my expectations had been upended. But I was even less surprised when we found exactly what we had anticipated.
A second deepsleep unit.
Two aliens were hiding aboard Olympia?
I remembered the expression on their faces, which I had had plenty of time to memorize when I watched the recording multiple times, enjoying their discomfort.
A sound tickled our ears. It came from the end of the tunnel toward which we had been going when we found the deepsleep unit. Medusa moved us in that direction without making the slightest sound. We hadn’t gone far when we heard voices.
We followed them into a juncture. On the other side of it, the ceiling was higher and the walls wider. Heavy equipment might have moved through it in the past.
At the far end of it stood three men.
I would have recognized them even if I couldn’t have seen their features. It was like that final scene in “Hoichi the Earless,” with the noblemen placing themselves so carefully around the stage. Two of the men stood with that awareness of protocol. The third did not. Yet he dominated.
“You were the one who said all the deepsleep units were on Titania.” The light falling on Baylor’s face made him look ill. “I took you at your word.”
“Interesting,” said the alien, “since I never gave you my word. I promise—if I ever do, you won’t have any doubt about it.”
“We’ve found only two of them,” said Ryan. “We’ll keep an eye on the deepsleep units from now on.”
said Medusa.
That seemed archaic. But I could think of no other explanation.
“The deepsleep units were relevant before they got out of them,” said the alien. “They’re not relevant now. I don’t care what you do with them.” His voice had a midrange timbre. He sounded a lot calmer than Ryan.
“If they look anything like you, they should be fairly easy to spot.” Did I imagine a defensive quality in Baylor’s tone?
“I wouldn’t count on that,” said the alien, and once again his tone was light. But his expression sure wasn’t. I had half a second to enjoy that, and then the alien pivoted and walked right toward us.
Medusa flattened us against the roof of the tunnel, a good four meters above the floor. It was dark up there, but I hoped no one would look up. Baylor and Ryan were still useful to me, whether they knew it or not. And I had no idea what to expect from the alien.
But they passed beneath without seeing us.
Once again, music from Yasushi Akutagawa’s score for Gate of Hell filled my head. One nobleman in that story would not honor the courtesies and protocols of the royal court, and he created chaos that would eventually cost the one life he held dearest.
And I remembered the first conversation on which I had eavesdropped, between Baylor and Lady Sheba.
Enough of this beating around the bush, she had said. How do we kill them before they figure out what we’re up to?
* * *
Nefertari waited until we were well away from the Habitat Sector before sending me a copy of a communication she thought was important. It belonged to Terry Charmayne and P. Schnebly.
P. Schnebly: Anzia Thammavong did not report action she observed at 19:55. Baylor and Ryan Charmayne walked through her quadrant with an unidentified man. The man is not in any database on Olympia. It was exactly the sort of anomaly she’s supposed to report.
T. Charmayne: I didn’t report it either. Did you?
My blood ran cold. Schnebly was watching me a lot more closely than I had realized.
That wasn’t so much an order as an affirmation. I had known Terry was important from the first moment I laid (remote) eyes on him.
So Medusa and I changed direction and made our second foray into enemy territory. And this was when my experience with the Constantins paid off, because I had learned something about In-Skin Executive compounds from them. They always had at least one secret door, so the youngsters could venture out without being seen by their Security staff.
The Charmayne compound proved to be no exception to this rule. In fact, Terry himself may have used this escape hatch when he was younger (though considering the history he shared with his grandmother, maybe not).
When Medusa and I slipped inside, we found a similar crawl space to the one in the Constantin compound. The difference was that it didn’t coil toward a central point. But it accessed several of the living quarters, and the walls in between had also been compromised—at least at one time. We could see someone had taken effort to secure them in the recent past. Whoever it was had not done a good enough job to keep Medusa out.
The Charmayne compound inspired twice as much paranoia as the Constantin. True, it was the living quarters of lower-level Executives, but their family was among the wiliest—otherwise, they would not have been at the top of the food chain. So we c
onsulted our true (or at least true-er) Security overlay before moving into any space.
We located Terry Charmayne’s quarters. His locator indicated he was home and alone.
We spied on him through the slats of the access plate. Terry sat at a monitor, watching footage of a Security recording. I recognized myself in the recording. I was disguised as the Servant Kumiko, and it was the moment of my death.
Over and over, Terry watched me being blown out of the air lock in slow motion. He kept freezing frames and studying them. Then he would advance a few and study those. Finally he settled on one frame and enhanced it, and I saw what interested him so much.
Medusa’s membrane was transparent, but for one second, just as she extended it into the lock to swallow me, its curving edge refracted light.
After he had studied that for a while, he let the footage advance frame by frame again. You could see my mouth open to take that involuntary breath. You could see the blood droplets extrude from my nose. You could see me travel several meters out of the hatch. And then I seemed to tumble out of sight of surveillance.
Medusa and I had made the decision to leave it at that instead of cobbling together false footage of me floating away from the ship, because most surveillance outside Olympia was limited to ten meters from the hull. Around the series-200 locks, it extended a lot farther, but it wasn’t uncommon for someone who had been executed by air lock to disappear pretty quickly from surveillance. And as far as I knew, I was the only one who had ever defied death under those circumstances, so it was a rare person who was suspicious enough to wonder if he was seeing what he seemed to be seeing. Schnebly was such a person. Apparently Terry was, too.
Medusa made a tiny sound when she pulled the access plate loose. Terry glanced up and saw us as we emerged from the crawl space.
The color drained from his face. But he didn’t do what any of the Constantins had done. He didn’t demand to know who we were and just what we thought we were doing. He didn’t scream or try to run. And he didn’t laugh like a loon. He remained in his seat and gazed at Medusa’s face, which hid mine. I lifted her mask so he could see whatever truth my visage had to offer.
“Your eyes gave you away,” he said.
13
The Haunted
“I shaved my eyebrows!” I complained to Terry Charmayne. “And my eyes are a different color! It’s very annoying that you recognized them.”
“It’s not the way they look,” he said. “It’s—the look in them. When you were Kumiko, and they marched you through the staging center on the way to your death, you weren’t afraid. I know what fear looks like; I saw it in my mother’s eyes.” Terry shook his head. “You can make the rest of your face do what you want, but you can’t fake your eyes.”
“So, when you met me as Thammavong, and you looked into my eyes…”
“The color was different—because you have artificial eyes—but the look was the same. It’s unique. Just so you know.”
Well, I did now.
Terry made no effort to get out of his chair, which would have been useless anyway. When Medusa had fully extended her tentacles, they reached into every corner of the room. It must have been like being cornered by a kraken. His pale face and trembling hands told me that much.
But I also saw the brave kid who had watched his mother die. I saw how much that experience had haunted him in the years since.
And I saw an opportunity. “Terry, do you want to live?”
I expected him to say yes, to plead with me. But he said, “I don’t want to die for nothing! It’s the only thing that kept me going after they killed my mother. I want justice!”
“Don’t know if I can promise that for anyone,” I said. “But I can offer you something else.”
* * *
“Tell me about P. Schnebly.” I held Terry’s head still while Medusa implanted my father’s technology into his brain. I stood facing him so I could detect any changes in his eyes when he answered me. I also monitored his heartbeat through Medusa.
Terry lay on the table in our operating room, which was very much like the one my father had used to give me upgraded implants. I was no doctor, but Medusa knew everything my father had known about surgery. She could do remarkably delicate work with those tentacles. Terry stayed awake the whole time, his eyes fixed on mine. His Medusa unit waited in a corner, her tentacles stirring gently as if tugged by the ebb and flow of the sea.
Medusa had summoned her from Lucifer Tower. I had shown Terry what Medusa had shown me—rows upon rows of Medusa units waiting to be paired with Olympians. He looked at his own Medusa unit, and the tension in his face gave way to wonder. “Of course…” he murmured.
“Of course—what?” I said.
“Of course they didn’t tell us. This would have ended their stranglehold on us.”
“I assume you’re referring to Baylor and Lady Sheba.”
His laugh was devoid of humor. “Is there anyone else who matters?”
“I think P. Schnebly matters. He came very close to killing me.”
Terry frowned, but his eyes stayed the same, and his heartbeat remained steady. “I don’t know Schnebly well. I know he’s a spook.”
I had heard that term a few times, but had never met someone to whom it could be applied. “You mean—his work tends to be secret?”
“Yes.”
“Who is his patron?”
Terry started to shrug, but stilled himself to avoid bumping Medusa. “I’ve always thought it must be Baylor. Ryan talks to him, but Schnebly doesn’t take orders from Ryan.” He fell silent and considered for a moment before saying, “Schnebly doesn’t say much to me, but what he says is usually important.”
Still no sign of deception. “He’s a danger to both of us now,” I said.
This time, Terry’s smile contained some actual humor. “That’s no big change.”
Medusa closed the small incisions in his head and began to swab his hair with a disinfectant towel. I had to learn what I could while there was still time. “We found two deepsleep units under the Habitat Sector, in territory shared by Chang and Charmayne gardeners.”
He frowned. “For hibernation? Seriously?”
“They have both been used. The users were inside those units for almost a hundred years.”
“That’s not good.” His autonomic reactions indicated surprise but not deception.
“Medusa can hear heartbeats,” I said, watching his face.
He took a deep breath. “She can hear my heartbeat? While you’re asking me questions?”
“Yes, but even more important, she heard a heartbeat right after we discovered the first deepsleep unit—and it wasn’t human. It was alien.”
I saw a reaction in his pupils. “There are other people out here?”
“At least one alien,” I said. “Possibly two or more.”
“We were supposed to be on our own,” he said. “Orphaned, isolated—!” Now he seemed a little angry. But excitement crept into his voice, too.
I nodded, pasting a sympathetic look on my face. “I have reason to believe that the story we were told about our origin is false. Or the part of it about the Homeworld, anyway.”
He seemed less shocked about that. “The whole ‘Enemy Clans’ story always sounded a bit fishy to me. Besides, with a family like mine, who needs enemies?”
Good point. “Why has Schnebly been watching me?” I said.
“I thought Schnebly was watching me,” said Terry. “You think he’s after you?” Once again, his autonomic functions stayed normal.
“Terry—why would he be watching you?”
“Because of my mother.”
“Bunny was that big a radical?” I said.
His pupils reacted to that. But he answered without hesitation. “The truth scared the hell out of them.”
“What truth?”
“That your DNA and mine are the same.”
I would have thought that was pretty obvious. What was I missing?
&nb
sp;
“Purity,” agreed Terry. “The Executives think our DNA is different, that we Executives are pure descendants of ancient, highborn families.”
“And we worms are—what? Mongrels?”
That remark made him a little nervous. But once again, he answered without hesitation. “If you’re mongrels, so are we. Because we’re no different at all. There’s nothing ‘pure’ about Constantin or Charmayne DNA. It’s a bunch of nonsense. My mother made the mistake of coming to the defense of a twelve-year-old Constantin girl that one of my uncles wanted to marry. She blurted something that never should have been said aloud.”
I thought it might be best to drop the subject of the Constantins for now. Terry was still afraid of me, and I didn’t want to make that worse.
If he knew I was joking, he didn’t show it.
I let go of his head.
Oddly, that seemed to calm him, maybe because it was what he expected.
Medusa threw the cleaning towel into a disposal unit.
Terry looked at his unit. She rose from her corner and drew closer. At first, she moved like a mechanical puppet. Then he established his link with her, and her eyes became aware. Her face filled with a wonder that matched his.
He glanced at me, and I nodded.