Hyperthought (6 page)

Scientific mumbo jumbo wasn’t what I wanted. I’d taught myself to read by watching Net ads. All the science I knew came from the Nature Channel. But Jin kept talking. He’d switched to professor mode.

“You see, the neurons, the cells in the brain, they generate tiny electrical fields that resonate with each other. And sometimes they oscillate in phase. Think of voices in a crowd all suddenly humming the same chord.” I could hear him choosing short easy words to fit my simple mind. Why did he even bother? I said nothing.

“As we receive input, these electrical fields build up and wash around our brains like weather. Imagine cyclones and warm fronts. Invisible rainbows. Silent thunder.”

He rocked nervously. His eagerness disturbed me. I stroked his silky eyebrows with my fingers.

“Scientists fixate on consciousness, Jolie. They ignore our unconscious senses. Judith knows all about it. She and I, we’re going to play with the quantum states in my brain’s electrical weather. She has a way to modulate the quantum charge densities. To tune them, yes? Like a radio. If she’s right, I’ll be the first human to directly perceive sensations at the quantum level. I’ll wake up from the dream. Then I’ll understand what to do.”

What a lot of rubbish! He should know better than to believe Judith Merida. But his speech had grown rapid and hectic. His enthusiasm reminded me uncomfortably of his manic episode the night before. I had to stay calm.

“That sounds fine,” I said, “but why choose Merida for a partner? You told me yourself she lies through her teeth.”

Jin lay back in the pillows with a smug expression. I noticed his face and chest were glistening with sweat. “The good doctor suits me. She wants to move fast, and she won’t be hampered by ethical prudence.”

All at once, I pictured Merida bending over a surgery table, her mouth stretched wide, laughing in that earthy voice. I saw her probing Jin’s brain with her red-lacquered fingernails. “Mes dieux, but think what you’re risking! Oh Jin.”

“Oh Jolie,” he mimicked my anxious whine. “Pretty wild one, you worry too much.”

I knew he wouldn’t be serious now. He wouldn’t listen. “What’s next?” I asked.

Reclining in the pillows, Jin clasped his hands behind his head and sighed. “Measurements. I fly back to the clinic tonight so we can start recording data. By now, the nanobots will have replicated throughout my cortex.”

“Sacred Laws of Heaven!” I threw myself on his chest and squeezed him tight. I pictured swarms of tiny demons chewing through his brain.

“Jolie, don’t be afraid for me. Look at the risks you take, yes? I’m not afraid for you.”

“You’ll be alone with that monster!”

“Judith? I thought you liked the good doctor. You introduced us.”

I opened my mouth in astonishment. Odd, I hadn’t considered that point before. In my dawning comprehension, I felt muscle-weak.

“Jin, please reconsider. The woman can’t be trusted. At least, take someone to watch over you.”

“Father will receive updates.”

With my face nuzzled against his chest, I couldn’t see his expression, but I heard the bitterness. What was going on between Jin and his father? I embraced him tighter and kissed his salty skin. Ignorance made me powerless even to guess at motivations. It was maddening.

“Send me the updates, too,” I said on impulse. Why did I stammer on, committing myself without thinking? “If something goes wrong, I’ll come get you.”

A promise. It was a thing I didn’t like, a thing I had vowed never to give to anyone. But already I’d broken that vow for Luc Viollett, and for others. Truth to tell, I wasn’t half so aloof from people as I wanted to believe. And there it was, lying between Jin and me like a thrown gauntlet, my promise of help.

“Hmm.” He drew back and gazed at me for a moment with an expression I couldn’t read. Then he kissed me gently on the forehead. “You’re my good angel, Jolie.”

“Jin.” I didn’t mean to whimper. It just came out that way.

He turned toward the southwest, and I looked past him toward the east. In the distance, among the efficient white air compressors, I saw a tiny puff of black smoke, an explosion. A filtration unit flew apart in jagged pieces. That seemed odd.

“Very well.” Jin’s words broke my reverie. “You’ll have the updates, too, pretty pet. You’ll be my witness.”

LITTLE DID WE
realize, as Jin and I made love once more in our artificial tower, that the city below was fragmenting. That puff of smoke I’d seen among the compressors had been the first faint signal. Terrorists had penetrated Greenland.Com. The world had changed.

Toward evening, Jin walked me to the hotel lobby, but a squad of police had blocked the exits. They were scanning everyone. Jin made a scene. “Let her through. She’s with me.” He flashed his autograph ring and offered bribes, but the police ignored him. I grabbed his fingers as a cop ran a scanner wand over my body. Jin fumed. “Don’t worry, pet. This is a farce.”

Jin didn’t know the universal ID chip in my signet ring was counterfeit. The chip tagged me as a free agent with Transkei credentials. Usually, I could travel through Com protectorates without hassle. I prayed the forgery would pass muster now. But the cop with the scanner barked an order, and they took me into custody.

I lost sight of Jin when two orange-suited guards marched me toward a rail bus with a lot of other terrified foreign tourists. Someone shoved me in and slammed the door. For two days I paced a jail cell, getting out only for toilet breaks. They fed me tube-goo and synthetic coffee, and they wouldn’t even talk to me. When they finally said I could leave, it was a lie.

Oh yeah, the guards escorted me out of the security complex, but by the time I made it back to my lodge and found Luc, no sanctioned transport of any description was leaving Godthaab. What’s more, they’d locked up my credit account. The smart chip in my signet ring had gone dead. I couldn’t pay the lodge bill or access the Net. I couldn’t call Jin’s hotel. I couldn’t even buy a cola from the vending machine. We were stuck.

Thank the Laws, I’m a resourceful girl. I always carry a few extra signet rings with alternative IDs. And I know better than to store the bulk of my money in a public Net account. Maybe I never attended an edu, but you learn a lot growing up in the Paris tunnels.

Armed with a new ID, I sent an encrypted call to Jin. His hotel took a while to answer, and they couldn’t locate him at first. Finally, they patched me through to his wrist Net node.

“La Sauvage, my angel. Isn’t the world hilarious?”

I could tell he’d been drinking again, and I heard someone else in the room with him. I didn’t want to see who, and yet I strained to hear if the voice was female. He must have recognized my suspicion, because he leaned close to his node’s little cam-eye so his face filled my screen.

“You’re still my angel?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Sweet Jolie. I don’t deserve you. Stay where you are. Godthaab is dangerous now. I’m working on something for you. We’ll talk later.” And he terminated the link.

He was right about the dangerous part. The city corridors had turned malevolent. All the downtown sections were empty—an unsettling sight And there was a smell. Godthaab usually cleaned its air with electrostatic microfilters. It never smelted, not like other human places. Paris had its own perfume of yeasty musk. Sydney smelted like fruit. Even on the surface, you could smell a distinctive burnt-sweat aroma in your surf suit. But Godthaab had always been too sterile for anything as human as smell. Until now.

And the temperature was rising. Somewhere a refrigeration plant must have failed. In the wee hours, Luc and I stole out of our lodge with just what we could carry. I wanted to go find Jin, but Luc cautioned against it. I knew he was right. Jin could take care of himself, and anyway, I didn’t want to find him with some other woman. So Luc and I took off through a labyrinth of dark, narrow maintenance corridors, heading toward the seaport.

We couldn’t even get close. At least four kilometers out, we ran into a pack of terrified Greenland protes using the same route. They had children and baggage, and the ones we could see were caught up in mob mind, shoving and crushing each other in unleashed panic. We heard wailing ahead. Luc and I backed up fast and got away.

As usual, I didn’t have a plan so much as an urge to survive, and I was willing to try anything. So when Luc found a hatch leading into a public corridor, we climbed through. The corridor was deserted. I’d never seen an empty pedestrian belt before. Those wide gray belts had always been packed with commuters. We passed barred shop windows, locked residences. That smell gave me the jitters. We sprinted through the corridor in eerie silence.

“Jolie.” Luc pointed up. A surveillance camera pivoted on its mount to watch us, and a red laser beam shot out. It was scanning our signet rings, identifying us. I had one ring on my finger and two more in my boot. The scanner would read them all. Somewhere in the distance, we heard the mud of heavy footsteps coming our way. No wonder the corridors were empty.

“Let’s go!” I shouted, racing on, scouting urgently for any kind of opening to duck into.

Luc saw it first, an electrical service shaft with a voice-recognition lock. “Voilà!” he said.

I ripped my handy piton gun from my belt and shot titanium bolts at the hinges. Luc used his fingernails. Alarms went off, but we got the lightweight little hatch open and shimmied inside. A ladder ran straight down, and we let ourselves drop.

For most of the afternoon, we wormed through the tight-fitting electrical service conduits. We went deep—so deep our GPS locators stopped working. With no sense of direction, we kept descending. Finally, when we were too tired to go on, we collapsed against each other and waited. We slept. After a while we woke up, and Luc fished some liquid nutrient tubes out of his backpack.

“Just like Paris, eh, chérie? Shall we dine?” Luc’s cheek dimpled. He was enjoying the adventure.

“Yum, my favorite cuisine! Give me the chocolate one,” I said.

“Naturellement! I would never stand between you and your chocolate.”

When we’d sucked the tubes flat Luc grinned at me. “Share your secrets, chérie. What’s he like, Le Magicien?”

I knew who Luc meant. The Magician was Jin’s most popular movie role, a cult favorite. I fluttered my eyelashes. “Aren’t you dying to know!”

“Don’t play coy, ma soeur. You slept with him. Oui, you’re blushing. You can tell your petit frère Luc. Is his cock like a piston?”

I gave him a rough shove that sent him sprawling. “Luc, you’re wicked!”

“Mais oui!” He sat up and dusted himself off. “But truly, chérie, why are you mixing with this aristo trash? He is handsome, but dangerous for you.”

“Oh Luc, it was just one night”

Luc gazed at me with his intelligent gray eyes. He had the sweet impish face of a child, but those eyes never missed a thing.

I said, “Luc, he’s already found his next lover. He was with someone when I called. Mes dieux, Jin Sura’s a world-famous celebrity. I’m nothing to him, I know that”

“Do you, chérie? You’re heart is fragile. Sometimes you don’t take very good care of it.”

“It was just one night, Luc. It’s over.”

He nodded slowly, studying my face. When he wore that expression, he put me in mind of some wise old monk on the History Channel. I didn’t dare tell Luc about the promise I’d made—to come if Jin called. Luc thought I was tough as iron. The idea of disappointing him, of letting him see my weak side, well it made me cringe.

“Let’s move,” I said, shoving stuff in my pack. So we took another ladder down.

Luc and I spent a month in Godthaab. We tracked the time on our chronometers, and for eighteen days, we scrambled through a dozen levels of automated machinery, playing hide-and-seek with the cops. Robotic equipment pounded above and below us till our very cells vibrated to the rhythm. It reminded me of the Paris tunnels. I felt like a kid again.

In fact, Godthaab’s underworks looked almost exactly like Paris. The same brands of automated machinery converted solar and wind energy from the surface into power to clean and refrigerate the city’s air, to distill water from the rain, to illuminate the nutrient vats, and to pump electricity into the citywide grid. And the same brands of robotic repair drogues stalked though like ghosts, fixing what was broken.

Luc and I tapped the nutrient pipes and bled off all the food we could drink. We opened water valves and treated ourselves to marvelous showers. We pulled insulation foam out of the heat sinks and built nests. Ça va, we could have survived down there for years. But then we met the locals.

Four of them. At gunpoint. Two grown men, a woman, and a young boy. Their eyes glinted with suspicion. Luc immediately went into his charm routine and offered chocolate bars. To me, he whispered, “Smile, chérie. You look like the angel of wrath. You’re scaring them.”

I did my best to warm up my expression, but they were having none of it. The boy slapped the chocolate bars out of Luc’s hands and growled. They were small people, with ice white skin and hair the color of dry chalk—like mine. The boy’s eyes were pink, and the woman was balding. And all four of them had long thick yellowish fingernails. Way weird. These people obviously lived deep underground in the absence of wide-spectrum light Runaway protes, criminals, terrorists? We didn’t ask, and they didn’t say.

So I tried the universal language. I waved a wad of cash.

The woman muttered a patois I didn’t understand, and the two men grabbed us. With handheld electric torches, they led us deeper into the underworks, so far down my ears hurt from the pressure. The air tasted like metal. After a long, tense hike, we entered a warren of rusting ducts and air exchange tanks. The seams had been caulked with luminous plastic. It looked as if a child had been scribbling on the walls with lavender glow-foam.

Many people were living there. We passed small domestic scenes, three old men huddled around a stone brazier, a young woman teaching children some game involving stones. Everyone turned to stare at us. Villagers popped up through hatches and slid down chutes to gather around us in a tight, curious circle. They wore a motley mix of prote uniforms and designer fashions stolen from the Godthaab shops. Luc and I nonchalantly fingered our piton guns.