Hyperthought (2 page)

Dr. M. just couldn’t blend with those Commie snobs. She didn’t understand their sense of personal space. Her clothes were a tinge too colorful, and her Spanic accent marred her attempt to sound high-toned. In the end, she scared them.

Anyway, Merida worked hard, and I admired her persistence. I thought, best of luck to you, Dr. M. Fleece your golden geese. Someday, you’ll get the funding you need to expand your clinic. So why should I think twice about introducing her to a rich Indonesian movie star with a long, pretentious name? Jin Airlangga Sura.

My assistant, Luc Viollett, was already halfway through the safety talk when Jin made his entrance. Everyone turned to stare. He seemed to expect it. After a weighty pause, the clients starting chattering and pretending to ignore him, but they couldn’t stop rubbernecking. Jin Sura had a presence, no denying it. Sir Jin, I dubbed him. In that first glance, I decided he personified the arrogant Commie prick from head to toe.

For one thing, he was wearing the most expensive faux-silk traveling suit money could buy. Second, it fit him like a glove. Third, he stood six feet tall, as stunning as some dark Polynesian god of fire, and I felt sure he knew it.

He graced us with his movie star smile and apologized for being late. While he waited for someone to find him a chair, I signaled Luc to continue. Luc was explaining about the cyclonic winds that constantly blast Earth’s surface and the necessity of staying tethered together. All the while Luc talked, I kept eyeing Sir Jin.

By noon the next day, we would be rock climbing in the Sudirman Range of Irian Jaya. It’s one of my favorite places. The old volcanic peaks rise above the visible gas layer—that unbroken blanket of greenhouse smog that now engulfs our glorious planet. From Mt. Puncak Jaya, you can actually look down on the yellow muck, and you get a clear view of mountaintops breaking through the smog for kilometers in every direction. There’s something euphoric about gazing into the distance, something you never experience living underground or even under domes on the surface. That view gives you scope. Elbow room for the mind. That’s worth risking a little gale-force wind and lethal smog, I think.

The whole time Luc was explaining our safety procedures, the guests kept turning to gawk at Jin, He flashed his eyebrows at them. I took note of his manicure, his polished boots, his expensive cinnamon brown tan.

Javanese, his letter had said, though I knew his family managed Pacific.Com, headquartered in Tokyo. Going back to find his roots, he’d written. He seemed troubled. Even a bit melancholy. Something in the line of his mouth. A shadow under his eye. That softened my opinion a little—but not much. I’d met plenty of his ilk—bored, pampered, self-absorbed. The Commie management classes produced little else.

“Who’s that dark young lion?” Dr. M. was leaning against me, whispering in my ear. I felt her stiff black curls brush my cheek. She said, “I’ve seen him before, sí? He’s gorgeous. Yum.” She made a sucking sound with her tongue against her teeth. “But so dolorous.”

“Jin Airlangga Sura,” I whispered back. “You know. The actor.”

Merida’s eyelids drooped halfway, and she moistened her lips with her tongue. “His father is CEO of Pacific.Com. Lord Suradon Sura.” Then her pretty eyes sliced toward me. “This Jin is a bad boy. I’ve seen his face in the scandal ezines.”

“D’accord, I’m not surprised,” I said. I was liking this dark lion less and less. Jin Sura represented everything I hated about the Commies, wealth, privilege, and self-conceit.

“Well, well. Lord Suradon’s wayward son. Introduce us,” Merida whispered, squeezing my arm.

“Sure,” I said. And with that one thoughtless word, I made the most disastrous decision of my life.

Don’t worry, this story isn’t about me. You don’t want to hear about Jolie Blanche Sauvage, the skinny, bleached white Paris rat, one of the millions of Euro orphans left over after the Great Dislocation. Maybe you’ve browsed video about the big European die-off in the summer of 2057. That was before they knew how fast the atmosphere was changing, before they’d built enough sealed underground habitats to protect everyone from the toxins. Decades later, even with safe housing, Parisians were still dropping dead.

Anyway, I was one of the leftover kids, one of the deep-Earth tunnel rats. Living in packs, we infested the transit system, begging food and water, stealing municipal air. The only difference about me was, when I was eight, I found an old surface suit.

It was my preter-treasure, my secret. That oversized old suit and helmet allowed me to sneak up through a maintenance well, all by myself, and explore the forbidden open surface. To my astonishment, the open Earth was not a death zone as we’d been warned, but a wide storm-blasted plane full of misty sunlight and strange beauty. After my first visit, the city below seemed blighted and cramped. I took to spending a lot of time up top. Wandering through the smog. Finding things to sell. Learning.

I never planned anything, but gradually I started getting jobs on the open surface. Hardly anyone wanted to go there, ça va? The Com managers hired me for stuff they didn’t want to supervise—like foaming communication towers, cleaning out vents, and guiding dome repairmen through the haze. I saved my funds and bought gear on the hot market. Finally, I acquired my first aircar through a freeboot Net site based out of Sydney. The car brought new liberty. I started roaming all over the Euro islands.

Like I said, I never planned any of it, just made things up as I went. Before long, I launched my own Net site and started a tour guide service, Jolie’s Trips, extreme surface adventure for individuals of means. For a while, in my own way, I was richer than any of them. And that’s all there is to say about me.

This is my account of Jin Airlangga Sura, whose strange pilgrimage I’ve witnessed in intermittent spurts over the last three years. What happened to Jin was my fault for sure, and I swear by the Laws of Physics, I would change it if I could. But it’s done now. Jin’s journey began that muggy night at Rennie’s. Or maybe his journey began long before. Maybe you could say it began with the Big Bang. Don’t worry, I’m not going back that far.

After I introduced them, Dr. M. linked her arm in Jin’s and led him off into a corner. They talked for a solid hour. I saw Judith Merida’s large, scarlet mouth working nonstop. I saw them laugh and flirt with each other, and when I looked again, they’d grown solemn and strangely intense. This time, Merida hadn’t scared off her prey. But I couldn’t eavesdrop. I had work to do.

Luc and I were fitting the clients in surfsuits and helmets and boots, showing them how to seal the gaskets, and answering their questions—always the same questions. Luc was good with people. Cher petit Luc. Milk white, dimple-cheeked, he looked like a skinny cherub. Only seventeen, already he knew how to say the right thing.

“Ah oui, it’s possible to survive on the surface without a suit, but only for a little while, and you must get the therapy right away. Out, monsieur, the winds can lift you many kilometers into the sky. That is why we use a safety tether. Ah oui, we’ve done this before.” Luc spoke Net English with a quaint Fragñol accent that everyone adored. Me, I’d worked hard to lose my Euro twang. Ironic, huh.

When everyone else had been dealt with, I called Jin by name. “Mr. Sura. It’s time for your fitting.”

Jin lifted his shapely dark head and glanced my way with an air of distraction. So patently aristo. Mes dieux, but he set me on fire.

I said, “Luc, you take care of Mr. Sura.” And I stalked out to the toilet.

The truth was, Jin Sura embarrassed me. He made me conscious of my broken fingernails. We were the same age, he and I, but in his twenty-five years, he’d lived like a prince, whereas I’d had to claw and fight just to eat. Now here he was, glittering with high Com polish, a movie star no less, whereas I bad nothing to show but a pile of used gear and an overabundance of cheekiness. He made me feel raw.

Luc was measuring him for boots when I returned. Watching them, I drew myself a glass of beer and drank most of it—Rennie’s Bar was strictly self-serve. Jin shifted in his seat and gave me another view of his perfect profile. Then he glanced at me as if he were seeing my face for the first time. I could tell he was noticing the five-point star tattooed around my left eye like a violet bruise.

He said, “May I ask a question?”

I shrugged and drained my glass.

“Will we see the carvings at Belahan?” He spoke Net English with the soft sibilant accent of the Pacific Rim.

His question caught me off guard, so I didn’t answer at once. Hardly anyone knew about those ancient icons carved in the Javanese rocks. That site had been flooded decades ago. I enjoyed browsing the history of surface places, but few people did that anymore.

He went on in what I took to be a patronizing tone. “The Belahan carvings date back to the eleventh century. That’s before global warming, before the sea level rose. There was once a coastal kingdom. It could have been paradise—”

“No,” I interrupted him. “In the first place, that’s in Java. We’re going to Irian Jaya, which is a completely different island. In the second place, those carvings are way underwater.”

“I thought perhaps a side trip?” He slipped his elegant foot into the boot Luc held. “I’d be willing to pay.”

“That’s a custom-order tour. You’d need insulated dive gear. That ocean is hot. If you wanted that kind of trip, you should have said so earlier.”

Luc grimaced at me and made signs that I should take Jin’s offer. But I grimaced back and shook my head. I wasn’t in the mood.

“Have you seen the carvings yourself?” Jin asked, in that damned polite tone.

“No.” I took another swallow but found my glass empty.

“That’s good,” he said to Luc, who had just finished tightening his boots.

I said, “Walk around, Mr. Sura. Make sure. We don’t want you getting blisters.”

Jin got up and gracefully stamped around in the surf boots. He glanced at me with that melancholy smile. “The inscriptions commemorate one of my ancestors. I wanted to see them firsthand. It’s a whimsical idea, I know. As if that would change anything.”

With a slight shrug, he crossed to the bar where I was standing and lifted the beer nozzle and refilled my glass. “Here’s to making the right choices, Mademoiselle Sauvage.” He flashed his dazzling white teeth and winked at me. Then he took my glass and put his lips just where mine had been, and he drank till the glass was empty.

THE NEXT DAY,
we flew to our drop point in a chartered plasma jump-jet. About midmorning, our pilot—Rebel Jeanne Sabat—touched down on a narrow, irregular rock shelf. It was maybe twenty meters wide, and it stuck out halfway down a palisade on Mt. Puncak Jaya’s southern face. The shelf had a high cliff on one side and a sheer drop-off on the other. I’d found that the cliffs angle usually protected this shelf from the vicious Sudirman wind shears, so I called it Tranquility Base. We’d used it before.

Our six guests trooped out of the small fuselage. They were stiff and sullen. Even though we’d outfitted them in the newest lightweight gear, they moved awkwardly. Except for Jin Sura—naturellement, he moved like a dancer. The giddy young widow from Greenland.Com slipped and fell and started singing the most eloquent lullaby of curses. Jin helped her up.

The wind was flinging sheets of grit along our shelf, but far out on the horizon, the sun had turned the smog blanket a lustrous amber. Wisps of smoky dust stirred up in delicate vortexes and cast blue shadows over the denser clouds below. To the south, a herd of rose-colored thunderheads seemed to be galloping toward us in slow motion. I had to stop and stare.

As usual, Luc and I off-loaded the baggage while the clients toddled around aimlessly. We had to hustle because Rebel Jeanne Sabat was antsy to lift off. Rebel Jeanne survived on amphetamines. She never could settle down. We had arranged that Rebel Jeanne would return to this spot in exactly one week to pick us up.

The guests wore helmets equipped with interference-resistant, line-of-sight radios. I ordered everyone to stay close. Wouldn’t you know, the bodybuilder couple dug out their little geology hammers and started wandering down the shelf, chipping at rocks. Before I could yell an order, Luc touched my arm. I saw him wink at me through his faceplate.

“Relax, ma chérie. I take care of those two.”

Petit Luc. That kid had more savvy about handling people than I ever would. I nodded, and he sauntered off to nursemaid the amateur geologists.

Rebel Jeanne doesn’t handle baggage, so I had to finish offloading the heavy cases by myself. Jin offered to help, but I fussed and said he was getting in my way. He stepped back obediently.

“This is Puncak Jaya, yes? Irian Jaya’s tallest mountain?” he asked. “Mademoiselle Sauvage—or may I call you Jolie?”

“Whatever.”

“Imagine, Jolie, one short century ago, this mountain rose over five kilometers above sea level. What’s the altitude now? It’s seventy meters less I think.”

He sounded like some balmy narrator on the History Channel. “Puncak Jaya’s still plenty high,” I grunted, heaving a crate out of the jet’s cargo hold.

“Yes, it’s lovely,” he said. “I can’t decide whether to be glad about global warming or disappointed. We’ve gained and lost, yes? It’s hard to know which is better. This island used to be the second largest on the planet, second only to Greenland. Now it’s mostly underwater.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Perhaps you know,” he crooned on in that professorial tone, “this island was home to the mythical Bird of Paradise, a creature who spent its entire life flying through the air because it was born without feet.”

“That I didn’t know.” I had to grin despite myself. “You’ve done your homework, Mr. Sura. A-plus. Now why don’t you go gaze at the view for a while. Give my other guests a history lesson. I don’t want one of these crates to land on your toe by accident.”

Maybe fifteen minutes later, right after Rebel Jeanne blasted off, I realized Luc and the amateur geologists had disappeared around an outcropping at the far end of the shelf. And the winds were picking up. This did not improve my mood.