Hyperthought (15 page)

For the next several minutes, the musketeers escorted me through the preter-spooky maze of Merida’s habitat. We caught a ride on a squeaking prehistoric pedestrian beltway that dumped us straight into a dripping natural cave. The cave branched in fifty directions, and I couldn’t have guessed which way to go. One of the goons pushed my head down and led me through a low fissure into a rusting steel conduit. We crab-walked through the conduit to an adobe tunnel decorated with finger-daub paintings. Shadows darted up the walls as kerosene torches gave way to clunky sodium lamps strung on cables. This was the most schizoid habitat I’d ever seen. I took note of portals and cross corridors, but it was impossible to memorize such an irrational layout.

It wasn’t just the floorplan that made Merida’s habitat creepy. There was too much empty space. Before the war, back when my life was sane, I’d spent some private moments up top, savoring the beauty of Earth’s surface. But most of the time, I had lived like the rest of the world, cheek by jowl with a few billion other people in some crowded subterrain. As the climate heated up and more people migrated toward the poles, it seemed like our habitats shrank smaller every year. I guess we were used to living on top of each other. That’s why Merida’s habitat freaked me. Only three live human beings shared this whole rambling structure. Jin, Merida and me. You could hear echoes. The place didn’t feel like the Earth I knew at all.

The musketeers led me to the paint-crusted steel door of Jin’s cell. I pushed it open, and Jin was sitting up in his cot, wearing the same threadbare hospital wrapper. A nest of monitors and drip tubes surrounded him. The light level was set at low, and Jin stared at me with huge hollow eyes. He wore an old plastic neck brace, I suppose to hold up his cranium, which now weighed half a kilo more than usual. His long black hair lay tangled on his shoulders, and the right side of his face drooped in paralysis. I knew what that meant. A stroke. Mes dieux, had my actions caused that?

Beside him, Merida stood guard. There were stains on her gray unisuit, and a lot of medical apparatus dangled from her belt. She’d lined her pretty black eyes with kohl. Her wide red lips wavered between a smile and a grimace. “We’re partners now, Jolie. We may as well be friends.”

“When Earth freezes,” I said.

She chuckled and plumped the pillows for Jin. I sensed she was hiding irritation. “Relax, pet. Lord Suradon wants you to stay with his son. Much to my dismay, you’re to have free run of the place. You made an impression on the old man. That must please you.”

I pulled up a chair on the other side of Jin’s cot, and he shifted to face me. It was clear he still didn’t recognize me. I asked, “So how much is he paying you, Merida?”

She sighed. “Ah, Jolie. Money is just the enabler.”

“Yeah right.”

“It’s true.” She smoothed Jin’s hair, and he turned toward her as she spoke. “You’ve always known what I want, Jolie. To build more clinics. To make my procedure available everywhere. People will benefit. They will. You’ve only seen the side effects. You haven’t seen the new capabilities Jin is gaining. Be patient. The gestation is still in progress.”

“Liar.” I wished she would shut up and leave me alone with Jin.

Slowly, thoughtfully, she smoothed his bedcovers. “You think I’m your adversary, Jolie, but the truth is, you and I are alike. We come from the bottom of the heap, both of us. We know what it’s like to go hungry. And we’ve clawed our way up, despite the odds. We could be sisters.”

“Not in this life!” I made a face. Still, her words started me thinking.

“You detest the Com managers,” she went on. “They killed your parents. Now they’re killing your friends. I know how you feel.” She looked me straight in the eye and spoke in dead earnest. “Jolie, I hate them more.”

“You’re partners with Suradon,” I reminded her.

“I hate him most of all, Jolie. Taking his money is my way of getting even.”

She could have stolen the words right out of my mouth. I shoved hair out of my eyes and thought about that.

Merida moved around the bed toward me. Jin followed her with his eyes. She said, “Ask yourself, Jolie, why are you helping this Com lordling when you know his people are murdering your friends?”

Ça va. That hit home. Luc had asked me the same question. Jonas and Adrienne both thought I’d flaked out.

Then she bent over me and breathed in my face. Her lips glistened like a wound. “You think Jin’s a good man. On what evidence? His movie roles? You don’t know him. You’re in love with a fantasy.”

I leaned away, but she moved closer. I could feel her breath on my cheek.

“Jin Sura is exactly like his father, pet. They’re cut from the same cloth. A pair of vain, selfish egotists, each trying to outdo the other. The old man hates the young one because he’s young. And, the young one mewls like a pup because Papa never cuddled him.”

Merida smoothed my stiff white hair back behind my ears with her fingernails. She smiled at me, knowing I couldn’t contradict her. “Suradon and his allies are slaughtering your friends, and yet you risk your life to save his brat of a son. A man you slept with once. A man with whom you have nothing in common. A man who doesn’t even recognize your face.”

Conflicting urges whirled through my mind. I felt stupid and wrong and confused.

But then Merida grasped my shoulders and shook me. “You and I are on the same side!” she yelled in my face. I felt her nails biting my skin. “Jolie, we can help each other!”

She was hammering the point too hard. She sounded desperate for me to believe her. I am undoubtedly a sap, but by this time, even I had started wising up.

“You’re making Jin suffer. And you threatened Luc. No, we are not alike.” I glanced at Jin. He right cheek and mouth sagged pitifully. “Don’t hurt him any more,” I said. Whatever else might be true, I still cared for Jin. That was bedrock.

“Hurt him?” Merida cackled, backing away from me. “You’re such a little fool, Jolie. I’ve made him a god!”

Jin lifted his left hand and drew a circle in the air with his finger.

“I’ve given him everything he wanted,” Merida went on. She was gloating now, strutting around the bed. Pleasure stretched her mourn out of shape and made her ugly. “My nanobot will succeed, you’ll see. The whole world will recognize my genius. I’ll build a hundred clinics. A thousand! Jin is my supreme creation.”

“You didn’t create him,” I said.

“I made him better!” Merida lifted her chin and glared defiantly.

Jin continued to draw ciphers in the air. I watched for a while, then sadly reached out and caught his hand. “Merida, you’ve turned him into an imbecile. What will become of him?”

“He’ll bring us a revelation!” She laughed in that way that sounded like barking. Then she flounced out of the room, slamming the door.

Jin winced at the noise. Maybe his head was hurting. When I leaned over him and began to massage his temples, he clenched his eyes shut. That’s when I noticed a tiny red line circling one of the scars on his forehead. That pair of parenthesis-shaped scars where Merida had first injected her nanobots had nearly faded away. I almost couldn’t see them anymore. But now, one of the scars looked inflamed. I spoke a command to brighten the room light, and Jin moaned. Even with his eyes shut, the light hurt him.

“Sorry,” I whispered, shielding his closed eyes with my hand. I bent closer and examined the scar. It was outlined in faint crimson. Had it become infected? I touched it, and to my surprise, a bit of make-up came off on my fingertip. Someone had deliberately camouflaged that scar with flesh-colored paint.

By now, tears were streaming from Jin’s tight-clenched eyelids, and he was gritting his teeth in pain.

“Dim,” I commanded the room lights. “Jin, forgive me.”

Then I dabbed at the scar with a sterile wipe. Jin moaned, but I didn’t stop till I’d wiped both scars clean. They were both fresh and livid. Someone had very recently reopened those incisions. Merida!

Fury engulfed me. Merida had operated again! She must have injected more demon nanobots—even though she knew she couldn’t control them! The first ones must not have wrought enough havoc in Jin’s brain to satisfy her. She had to vindicate her research to the mighty Lord Suradon. Apparently the woman would do anything to ensure success. I sprang up and rushed toward the door. All I could think of was getting my hands around her throat.

“S-s-sound,” Jin stammered.

His voice stopped me in my tracks. He’d spoken! I hurried back to his side. His face was contorted in agony. “L-l-louder than before.”

“Oh my Jin.” I bathed his forehead with a damp cloth and rubbed his chest with cooling alcohol. After a while, his suffering seemed to ease.

It was absolutely a miracle that Jin spoke right then and stopped me from leaving the room. If I’d rushed out and confronted Merida, I would have botched everything. I’ve always been way too impulsive. I needed time to cool down.

As I sat there stroking his forehead, Jin turned his deep, hollow eyes toward me and focused on my face. “The s-surgery worked this time?” he asked.

The question shocked me. He knew what Merida had done to him? He had agreed to this outrage? Sacrée Loi! Merida boasted that Jin had come to her of his own free will, that he wanted what she could do for him. I couldn’t deny that. But this wasn’t right. Her experiments were killing him. Despite what he wanted, this insanity had to stop.

I wracked my brain for ideas. I would take Jin away from this place before Merida could do any more damage. Someday, maybe he would thank me, or maybe he wouldn’t. Anyway, he would live. And he would have his whole life ahead to judge me. If I could just think of a way to get him out of here.

If I’d had my Net node, I could have called Adrienne. She would have known what to do. Jonas would have come up with a million ideas. Cher Luc, he would have put me on the right track. Mes dieux, but I needed my friends! They’d saved me from worse scrapes a dozen times. I couldn’t do this without them. I didn’t have the intelligence.

Ça va, I moaned for about half an hour and shed a few hot tears on Jin’s white hospital wrapper. I hugged him and buried my face against his shoulder, but when I moved to kiss him, I saw he was gazing at me with a totally blank expression. It hit me this was wasting time.

So I sat up and looked around the room. My glance landed on the sterile wipe I’d used to clean Jin’s scars. It was still all globby with flesh-toned makeup, and the next thing I knew, I picked up that wipe and dabbed the paint right back on Jin’s scars.

See, it came home to me that my preter-vicious Net node was not going to fall down from heaven, and that no one was going to burst through those doors and tell me what to do. I would have to think of something myself. This time, I would have to keep my head and be reasonable and work out the logistics. Laws of Physics preserve me, I would need a giga-brilliant plan. But until I had one, Merida couldn’t know I was onto her. I had to keep playing the fool. You’re probably saying, for Jolie Blanche Sauvage that should be a breeze.

To this day, I don’t know why Suradon ordered Merida to give me free run of the habitat. Maybe it amused him to watch me. Like kids who watch gutter bugs crossing a pedestrian belt. Funny little bugs, they’re blind. They can’t see all the people stomping around. Sometimes they make it across the belt Sometimes they get squashed and never know why. I think Suradon was watching me like that. Scuzzy old man.

Anyway, I took full advantage of my new freedom to search every cluttered storeroom and twisted tunnel. Merida surely knew what I was doing. I guess she felt smug about her security. For good reason. It was airtight.

Everything about Merida’s place was low-budget, cut-rate and stingy. There were only two laser-blasted exits, the airlock in the sea cave and a pneumatic air chute that ran straight up through centuries of buried debris to the surface. Both exits were securely locked and electronically monitored by her metallic musketeers. I checked out the habitat’s waste pipe. It was the size of my arm, no escape route there. Honeycombed plastic filled the air ducts, nothing solid could pass that way. My hope centered on the power plant beneath the kitchen.

I’d discovered an unguarded maintenance hatch in the kitchen floor, marked “Danger: High Voltage.” It opened down into an airlock that exited to the power plant. The airlock meant the power plant had no breathable air, and that meant it lay outside the habitat walls, beyond Merida’s security. The plant had probably been built in a crawl space beneath the structure. Usually, when contractors blast rock to build a sealed underground habitat, they leave a rough crawl space around the exterior walls for safety inspections and repairs. Unless Merida had cut more corners than usual, her habitat had probably been built that way.

If I could manage to carry Jin down through the power plant, maybe we could squirm up through the crawl space to the habitat’s roof. Maybe I could find the air chute that shot straight up to the surface. Maybe the borehole around the chute would be a little larger than the chute structure itself, and maybe there would be enough free space in the borehole for Jin and me to scale up to the surface. 1,500 meters. Maybe we could. It would be the meta-primo scary trip, that’s for sure. In any case, I knew from my deep-Paris childhood that the Earth’s crust was riddled with fissures and caves. One way or another, we’d find a way up.

The problem was, Merida had taken my surface suit, and I couldn’t find it anywhere. What’s more, we would need not one surfsuit, but two.

Jin’s condition was worsening. Though he mumbled words now and then, he’d grown glassy-eyed and distracted. Often he seemed to be reliving past events in flashback. He moaned and tossed on his cot in terrible pain. Sometimes he screamed. Merida seemed honestly concerned, although I had gained a new perspective on Merida’s concerns now. As the days went by, I watched Jin in helpless worry. I also invented a hundred preposterous and totally unfeasible ways to improvise a surfsuit.

Luck changed when I found my old helmet. One of the musketeers had chucked it into a storage bin. When I found it, the duct tape had completely peeled away, leaving a gummy residue around the exposed gash. And the sea liquid in the liner had dried to a foul-smelling rime.