Geosynchron (34 page)

It's in one of these quiet moments, on his bunk after a long day of
adjusting valves and balancing chemical ratios, when Natch wants
nothing more than to lie still and let the universe pass around and
through him, that he notices.

There is a presence within him.

The presence is infinitely subtle, like an itch in a blanketed corner
of his mind. As Natch studies the feeling, he realizes that this presence
is not new. He's felt it many times before, but it's always been shunted
into the background by the incessant tremors of Margaret's backdoor
MultiReal access, or the time-shattering MultiReal-D code Petrucio
put inside him-or the mere adrenaline of running from the Defense
and Wellness Council.

He knows what this presence is. It's the illicit code that the Thasselians infected him with in Shenandoah months ago. Quiescent, in a
state of hibernation, perhaps-but still there.

Natch wants to leap up from his bunk and run for a MindSpace
workbench. He wants to grab his bio/logic programming bars and tear
this thing out of him, no matter what it takes, no matter the consequences. How does he know that Brone's not using the code to track
him? But of course, he will find no MindSpace workbench aboard the
Practical. And if he does find one in the remote colony of Furtoid, he
won't have enough shore leave to make effective use of it. No, Natch
realizes that he must be patient. Whatever nefarious duty Brone has
assigned to this code, the entrepreneur will have to put up with it for
a while.

Mind awhirl with the evil possibilities and looking for a distraction, Natch dives into his work.

He knew precious little about the mechanics of space freighters when he first climbed aboard the Practical with the chemical vats and
chunks of raw ore. Meandering around reading gauges has taught him
almost nothing. But now he is eager to learn. He spends all his free
time reading engineering manuals. He disassembles machinery and
pores through access panels when his supervisor's not looking, which
is most of the time.

As the days pass, Natch begins to get a command of the ship's
systems-and what he finds there frightens him. Grav modules, engine
components, and oxygen generators in a woeful state of neglect, caught
in the tide of dismal economics. OrbiCo has not made a profit in fifty
years. The company only stays afloat because of the billions of credits
the Prime Committee pumps into it every year. (Surely the august members of the Committee don't want their constituents on Furtoid to starve? cry the
orbital colony representatives in budget sessions quarter after quarter.
Who's going to supply than if OrbiCo doesn't?) But government money only
goes so far, and it's the freighter's innards that suffer for it.

Nobody has asked Natch to fix faulty equipment, but he has no
intention of asking for permission. The ethics of engineering are
refreshingly simple: increasing efficiency is good. So Natch goes to
work tinkering in the bowels of the ship, jiggering the programming,
rewiring entire sections of machinery, adjusting valves and joints.
Where he lacks the permission to make modifications, he either finds
a workaround or hacks his way through.

Most of the improvements he makes are pro forma and unlikely to
impact the bottom line. But he finds one major hiccup in the gravity
generators that is wasting vast amounts of power. And it's a trifling
problem too, one that any gravitational engineer could diagnose if
OrbiCo could afford to pay her. Natch smuggles some spare parts on
board when they hit Furtoid to replace the malfunctioning ones, and
cleans up the code to save processing cycles.

And all the time, Natch is asking himself: Why do you care? Why
not just do your job like the rest of the crew and then catch up on your sleep?

It feels like a vital question that Natch must answer before he can
slip into a new skin. Why would he do a job he is not being paid to
do? This might have started as mental calisthenics to keep his skills
sharp and his attention away from Brone's black code, but it's not just
an exercise anymore. Why can't Natch walk past a frayed wire or a
leaking valve without feeling an inexorable urge to fix it? It's not a
conscious thought, but more like a visceral impulse. Where does that
urge come from? Is it a desire to restore the universe to some hypothetical state of perfection? And if so, why is the universe constantly
working to undermine him?

The entrepreneur tweaks the OrbiCo ship to greater efficiency all
the way from Furtoid to 49th Heaven, its next destination. Once they
dock and the unloading of goods is nearly complete, Natch sidles close
enough to the officers' deck to hear their stunned discovery of an unexpected energy surplus. Enough to tip the ledger for the voyage ever so
slightly into positive territory. The bonus he and the other ship's engineers receive is substantial.

Natch is intrigued.

He is a ghost. He has ceased to exist. And yet he has singlehandedly created a change that will ripple through the local economy long
after he has ceased to be involved. Engineers will bring small gifts
home to their families, or pad their Vault accounts, or order that extra
drink in the bodega. Something he has done will have tangible effects
and lasting permanence in the world, and it has cost him next to
nothing to do it. The balance sheet of the universe will have slid just
that infinitesimal amount from the red to the black.

It is a kind of immortality.

Natch disembarks from the Practical and steps into the Seventh Ring
of 49th Heaven. He's got a week of shore leave before his next voyage-should he decide to sign up for it-and there is little to do
here except explore.

Keep moving, he exhorts himself.

He finds an entirely different kind of economy at work here in 49th
Heaven. The Vault's credits are (virtually) untraceable and (practically)
unforgeable, and yet Vault credits are not trusted currency just about
anywhere but the Seventh Ring tourist traps. In 49th Heaven, vials of
black code-laden OCHREs are the preferred form of exchange. Merge,
Chomp, Suffr-G, Suffr-N, Chill Polly. Programs that shatter the will;
programs that insert the user into an endless loop of wanton need and
insufficient fulfillment. Programs that warp the human mind in ways
the Prime Committee has deemed unacceptable.

But Natch doesn't mind. In fact, he feels an affinity for the underground market; after all, Natch himself has been deemed unacceptable
by the Prime Committee. So he quickly locates a dealer and spends a
chunk of his OrbiCo wages acquiring a small stockpile. Then he goes
scouting for ways to spend it. He walks through gambling dens, wanders past galleries devoted to decadent forms of art, skirts the roughand-tumble sex emporiums.

In a dark corridor between the Sixth Ring bodegas, a skeletal arm
reaches out and grabs him. Natch turns and stares at the ghoulish presence
slouching against the wall. She's tall as a pillar, her skin black as void, her
fingers cold as unforgiven sin. "A fuck for Chill Polly," she mumbles.

"What did you say?"

"Fuck. For. Chill. Polly."

The entrepreneur blanches. It's an unthinkable proposition. Why
would anyone pay for pleasures of the flesh when it's cheaper, safer, and
easier to find them virtually? If you look on the Sigh, any degradation
imaginable, no matter how obscure or grotesque, has already been
imagined, organized, advertised, and transformed into an excuse for a
semiannual convention. It only costs a handful of credits, and it's indistinguishable from the real thing.

Natch is about to brush off this deranged skeleton when he catches
the look in her eye.

He knows that stare, because he's given it himself. It's the look of
a human soul tangled up in desire so endless that it overshadows the
world. The look of someone who has surrendered herself to the endless
cycle of need and fulfillment. It's not Natch she desires; it's the black
code known as Chill Polly. A miserable set of algorithms designed to
utterly obliterate sensation, to truly make you one with the cosmosor perhaps to bring the cosmos down to your level.

As Natch looks in her eyes, it suddenly occurs to him what this
woman is really selling. Sex is only a tangential part of the transaction.
She is selling a ringside seat for a life reduced to a spectacle of need,
and a drug designed to do nothing but nullify that need.

A closed system. Wanton need, insufficient fulfillment.

Natch lets the nameless woman take his arm and escort him down
a predictably dark alleyway. "Where we going?" he asks.

"Grub Town," says the woman.

She leads him to the colony's main avenue, where security lets
them pass through gate after gate without asking for the requisite
payment. Soon they have found their way to a maze of repurposed
ductwork on the inner rim of Third Ring. It's a tangled skein of permasteel walls three meters high, not so much constructed as haphazardly tacked together metal sheet by metal sheet. Hidden alcoves and
makeshift rooms abound. Overlooking the maze on the ceiling is an
enormous mural showing endless fields after the rain where the worms
come out to frolic. Grub Town. The place serves no purpose that
Natch can see other than to keep the uninitiated out and the transactions private.

The woman leads Natch to an unused corner deep in the labyrinth.
He hands over a canister of Chill Polly, watches the application on the
woman's wrists. Sees the writhing, insensate dance of desire then fulfillment, desire then fulfillment, over and over until the blackness comes. She does not ask nor appear to notice that Natch has made no
move to touch her since their arrival.

For the next three days, Natch returns to the alleyway between
bodegas and repeats the process. It occurs to him that this might be
the closest to invisibility one can get in 49th Heaven, where unspoken
fiat places the privacy of sexual transactions above all else. While on
the arm of a black code junkie headed for Grub Town, the authorities
look through him; passersby turn a blind eye to him; other junkies see
nothing but the canvas shoulder bag Natch is carrying, location of his
black code stockpile.

Of course they don't see me. I don't exist.

The boy on the fourth day is much like the others. Shorter, perhaps. A little cannier, a little rougher around the edges. He tries to
engage Natch in small talk on the way to Grub Town, which Natch
does his best to deflect. The boy's name is Rodrigo, as it turns out.
Rodrigo leads him into Grub Town and through a minotaur's
labyrinth of makeshift rooms, most empty, a few occupied by the
uncaring or the unconscious.

Finally they arrive at a darkened den populated by nothing but a
strangely clean mattress. Natch tries to imagine someone dragging a
mattress through all of the seemingly random twists and turns they
took to arrive here. Not likely. Perhaps the mattress has been here since
the beginning, and this shantytown has expanded over it? No matter.
Natch throws his bag on the floor and leans down to join it.

But before he gets there, he feels a white-hot pain lancing between
his shoulder blades. The blade stabs swift and deep and quickly shoves
Natch outside the veil of consciousness.

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