The Great Symmetry (15 page)

No. That was rude. Evan averted his eyes. “S
orry.”

“Hey, you can look. I don’t care.”

She never had minded. In the confined spaces of remote expeditions, the conventions on topics like nudity tended to fade away, and he had seen Mira unclothed any number of times. Probably a big reason that Kate disliked her so intensely. O
ne of the reasons, anyway.

Mira did a forward flip with a twist, landed perfectly, and kept walking. “I would enjoy it more if you were anything to look at,” she told him. “I mean, where did you get that flab? And the way it just bloops in the low gravity
. Wah, wah, wah.” The noise was of a slow motion wave. “Life is being so unfair right now. You get to look at me, and I don’t want to look at you. Old man.”

“Three years! I am three years older than you.”

“Thirty three
years older, by the look of it.”

Their escorts hushed them as they came to the next portal. It was time for their audience. Time to talk to the most wanted, the most reviled infoterrorist on Kelter, or perhaps in all of known space.

The next room was plain. There were a few low chairs, or sofas, or perhaps something in between. Various paintings and other art hung from the walls. Drinks and snacks were on a table.

In one of the
sofachairs reclined the oldest-looking man Evan had ever seen. He was wrinkled and shrunken at the same time, although apparently well fed. His eyes regarded them clearly.

He was also completely naked.

“
Have a seat,” the man offered. “Or two, if you each want one for yourself.”

Separate chairs it was.

“Mira, how are you?” the old man asked.

“Well, we’re in a bit of a pickle, and
−”

“No. I did not ask situationally. I asked of you.”

“I am strong. And awake. More awake than in many years.” Mira gave a fierce smile.

“I am so glad to hear of this.”

“And you?” Mira asked.

“I have to say, arthritis is cruel,” he told her. “Three meds now, every day. They’re supposed to work together, but I swear they do battle within me for the honor of being the chemical to vanquish their target. It clouds me.”

“I am sorry. But really, why don’t you go with the Parrin Process? You know you could.
And it’s not too late, but only if you act quickly.”

“Parrin Process.” Axiom seemed to be looking at the phrase, just in front of him. “I don’t think my credit is good out there. And if it was, then tell me, should I cease to welcome
each moment, and should I bloody my fingers scraping for that which is past?”

“You could stay alive, for, well, more years than, you know−”

“Should I linger past my children? And if I provided it for them, what of their loved ones? My nie
ces and nephews? My cousins? Should I linger past you?”

Mira sat at the edge of her seat, like a child before her most beloved teacher. “But so many people need you.”

“Perhaps someday it will be available for all. Then, I would consider it, before I turned away. The cost, the full cost, that is invisible to
those who look in the store window, desperately wishing for a key, or a brick. I will welcome my day. But that is my choice.”

The man turned his attention to Evan. “So you are Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, are you not? Welcome, friend, to our ranks.”

“I’m sorry – What?”

“It took me decades to acquire such disrepute. In just one day, your comet
has blazed through the Kelter system. Now we have something in common, as fellow infoterrorists, of the very top tier. Please, have something to drink, and a snack.”

Evan looked over at the tray. What was it with the mutant carrots?

“Infoterrorist? I’m not sure I would call myself that.”

“You do not embrace it. So it embraces you
. Sometimes, that is how it starts.” The infoterrorist gave him a faint smile.

“But you embrace it! You are an activist, and that’s what makes you an infoterrorist. Once, I read something of yours, before I realized it was sequestered. And I couldn’t make any sense of it.
None whatsoever. There was this whole riff about information screaming to be free. That you could hear it begging to be liberated, if you listened carefully. Well, I know what a solid state drive sounds like, and it doesn’t sound like anything. It just sits there, no matter what’s stored on it.”

Axiom sighed.
“A literalist. So sad for you. Evan, there is more to be heard than what is carried through the air. When I speak like that, I am telling of that which quacks like a duck. I could just as well have written about osmotic pressure, but everyone has forgotten their chemistry. How it
behaves, that’s what matters. How it quacks. Seeking freedom, out in the world.”

“You could be more straightforward, you know.”

“The full signal arrives only when you tune to several channels at once. You think your big tangle of neurons works logically, all in a line. But there is a reason that it’s such a mess inside your skull.
A good reason. It is so that that understanding can arrive in the space of a moment.”

Evan was exasperated. “I have to tell you, it’s not arriving for me right now.”

“It is not just about the information.
I’ll tell you a little joke. The information itself is nothing. What matters is about the fear.”

“Fear.” Evan was trying to stay afloat, in the alternate universe of the conversation.

“When people tighten their grasp on secrets, even knowing that the knowledge could help others
, why is that? Of all the reasons, there is one that stands out. Fear. Of loss. Of truth. The shroud of fear cloaks much that could be a force for good, because the unknown carries more fear than the suffering of the present. At the end, I am only about washing off the taint of fear and walking out into the day.”

Evan wanted to change the subject. “So what’s this whole naked thing?”

“It’s partly security, you know. People who came to talk with me, they would take my picture with a hidden camera, like taking a scalp. Such a nuisance. And embarrassing. I am not as handsome as I once was, you know.
Then there are some people these days who have implants, so we have to scan for that. You wouldn’t do that to me, now would you, Mira?”

“Of course not,” she assured him. “Your likeness belongs to you.”

“I assumed no less. Thank you. But as to why I ask
you to leave your clothes behind, it is simple. When you visit me, I wish to be with all of you, and nothing more. Better conversation.”

Evan wasn’t sure how it could be worse.

“Now Evan, please just admit to me one little thing. You know something, and you are not telling us.”

Evan stiffened, then looked around. Where were the men who had escorted them in
? He could see nobody else.

Axiom cackled. “Ha! It is a trick! In the known universe, everyone has something that they know, that they have held back. Fear, you know. And now you have told me something. What you have, it is big. Perhaps truly as big as your c
omet. I thought it might be. So much going on these days.”

Evan glanced at Mira, who gave him an encouraging nod and waved her hand. Forward, the gesture said.

“I do have something to tell you of,” Evan said. “And to ask your advice about.
You see, I was working on an asteroid in the Aurora system, digging at a Versari colony site−”

“We need a quorum to hear this,” the infoterrorist declared. “I have called for certain friends, but still it will be an hour or more.
Everyone is choosing their path with care, to avoid dropping any crumbs, and that takes some extra time.”

“Are you sure we should wait?”

“The truce will protect us, as it has for decades,” Axiom said, and held his hands open. “But I have forgotten to say something important. Friends, welcome. We will share with you that which you most need.
Shelter. Food. Time. Visit our Codex, if you wish. It is a great wonder. I offer you the key to our home.”

Mira came over to the low seat and reached out gently. “Thank you, uncle. It is wonderful to see you.”

“Your awakening fills me with joy, little one.”

Little one? Evan would have to save that one up for the right time.

“Mira, how is your mother?” the infoterrorist asked.

“Um, well, you see−”

“
She would so like to talk with you. I know this. Please consider it. But perhaps not quite yet. When things are quieter.”

“I will.
I promise.”

“Cherished Mira, you warm my heart. Take these readers and keep them with you always. Any time, if there is something you want to send to me, just put a card in, with whatever you want to send. Or a blank card, to ask for help, wherever you are. If you have a connection, the reader will take care of the rest.”

She reached out with both hands to accept them, in a manner that honored the gift. “We
accept them. Thank you.”

“I would like to speak with you again as soon as the rest of our friends arrive. Please take your leave of me now. I have just enough time for a nap.”

The interview was at an end. Evan and Mira left the most feared man on Kelter to his nap, and headed back for their clothes.

Part 4: Valley of Dreams

When the Music Stops

The blank door stared at them, unresponsive to their pleas.

“I think you just need to accept it,” Denison told Kate. “Mira’s not here. And if she doesn’t want to be found right now, she won’t be.”

“But I need her! She’s got − I mean she knows −argh!” Kate gave the door a kick, and her foot got the worst of the exchange.

Kate’s phone had been alerting her insistently. Not just
one message or call, but a herd of them. Relating to the collapse of her family, Kate knew. Finally she pulled it out and scanned the list.

“Duty calls,” she said.

“Mine too,” Denison agreed. “I’ve got to get my courier message delivered. But we still have time to catch up on our way out of here.”

The two of them left Mira’s apartment building and set out into the Untrusted Zone once again.

“So Rod, why don’t you give me a rundown of your circuit?”
Anything to put off thinking about her family for a few more minutes, and perhaps Rod would slip up and tell her something interesting about his trip down with Mira.

“So my route was Allatar to Caledonia, to here,” he told her. “Picked up some good titles in both systems, setting myself up for the Goodhope market. I even had a full live recording of Oggy Blare’s latest concert. Armageddon II, on Caledonia. That would be worth a whole lot on Goodhope.”

“That sounds good,” she agreed.

Oggy Blare was big because he lived on the edge. He was the only big name act who performed in front of a truly live audience, directly playing the instruments at that moment. Recording what was actually played, and shamelessly distributing it without any post-processing, no matter how it sounded. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the concerts sold like wildfire, as did the recordings.

“I have to tell you about something, on Caledonia,” Denison continued. “I needed to go to surface, to pick up some high value content that they wouldn’t transmit.”

“Even encoded?”

“An object, which contained the content. So I went to the business district in Edinburgh. Been there a dozen times before, always a hopping place.”

“And?” Kate prompted.

“Now it’s – different. Drawn in. Security forces everywhere. When you get inside the office for your appointment, there’s a kind of forced normal, but only there. After I was done with the meeting I wanted to go to a diner that I like, and they said I couldn’t – gone out of business. So I went that way, to find a place like it. It was more than out of business. Burned to the ground. The whole building, where twenty or thirty businesses once
were.”

“But that’s just one place. On a whole planet.”

“Sure enough,” Denison conceded. “And on the ship I did a little reading. Their GPP is going up, and the market is close to an all-time high. It just made me wonder, that’s all.”

“About what?”

“Twenty three billion people on that planet.
And still the families roll out new products that everyone has to buy, or else be left behind. This dance, moving everything all around the planet just in time for each need, and more of everything, each and every year. Do you think there could be a time when the music stops?”

“Seems we have the opposite problem around here. Poor old Kelter, just fifty million or so.”

“That might be why I like it so much around here,” Denison agreed. “Tell you one thing, if there was any water here, we’d be swamped with people. So after that little adventure, I arrived here in a really good position.
But now there’s no leaving the system. I sold what I could at Top Station, and I have a little more for dirtside. Even if I could get to Goodhope now, everything I’ve got will be stale.”

“Somebody will have reached Goodhope already.”

“Yup. With a market that big, you can get a good payoff even knowing that you’re only a few hours ahead of the next ship. But now we’ll be starting from nothing. You can thank Affirmatix for that.”

Kate emphatically agreed. “The Sisters. They are all evil! Squeezing and squeezing until there’s no blood left.”

“I’ll leave the moral stuff to you, but this last trip, the only reason I expected to come out ahead was picking up some bonus content from Ricken’s ship. You know, from Tal Broker.”

“Your spy.”

“Tal is my contractor,” Denison corrected. “Our lawyers reviewed it, you know this. His employment agreement with Ricken has a gaping hole. When he went to work for Ricken, he
was allowed to continue trailing services for his former employer, that’s us, and it doesn’t specify a time limit, or the type of services. And those trailing services have been very good to me. I set it up perfectly this time. Three days ahead of Ricken to Kelter, refuel and wait for him, Tal sends me his best stuff as soon as their ship arrives, and boom! Off to Goodhope.”

“A technicality. A tortured reading of a contract, allowing us to steal content from Ricken without even telling him.”

“It’s totally legal.”

“We’re done with that,” Kate declared.

“What?”

“You heard me,” she told him. “You will never, ever poach Ricken’s content ever again. And we will find a way to pay him back for what we have stolen. Do you understand me?”

“You said it yourself, the Sisters have been squeezing us. If you want to stay in business, we need to use every advantage we have. Not that it’s looking good for that now.”

“And we turn around and squeeze someone else. Doing their dirty work for them. Anyway it’s moot. I don’t suppose I can tell you what to do any more.”

“It’s a good thing you never did,” he agreed.

They were getting close to the entry gates to civilization.

“Time to watch our words,” she said.

“I’ve got to split anyway,” Rod told her. “Delivery boy, you know. Don’t do anything foolish, now.”

Kate extended her arms to him. A few moments of comfort did her a world of good. And then it was time for her next task. A short tube ride and she was there.

She had grown to love the office and what it meant. But now it just smelled of despair. In the lobby, a group of workers were transferring fish from the wall aquarium into a set of small portable tanks. They had found a collector, who had offered a good price for the entire set.

John Lieberthal was waiting for her.

In just two years, John looked even older than he had, if that was possible. His right eye now drooped half closed. “Katey,” he greeted her. “I will help you if I can.”

“You are so kind to come as I asked. Thank you.”

They started as Kate walked Lieberthal to her private office. He had read the documents she had sent over, and had questions. Many of them.

They set up at the visitor table, and in just a few minutes had four displays showing various documents, and even a few printed copies of others. He was old fashioned that way.

After an hour, the pace of the questions slowed. Lieberthal spent progressively more time reading and taking notes. It was time to make a break for it.

“So here is a full power of attorney,” she told him. “And the rest of the passwords. I’ve told you what I know, and I’m not really tracking this any
more.”

“You’re not staying?”

“I have to go. There’s a place I need to be.”

“More important than this?” He looked at her like she was still a child.

“Just for a little while. But I have to.”

“I’ll recover everything that can possibly be sheltered, Katey. But I can’t promise you anything. The ruling finds you personally responsible, not just family assets. There might be nothing left at all by the time it’s all said and done.” As he explained this, Kate suddenly remembered a much younger man, who regularly came over to visit for dinner. Kate would be dismissed, and he would stay into the evening, going over the family accounts
with her parents.

The moment faded. That had been years ago.

Kate could not be inside walls any longer. There was only one place to go. The sooner, the better. She would consider her future, once she got there.

Local Custom

The first few hours on the surface did not go well for Lobeck and his squad. They had quickly located Adastra’s ship. Except that it was empty, and it wasn’t her ship. They purchased the ship and its contents from CoreValue and examined it in fine detail.

One finding of great interest inside the ship was the EVA suit. It was the same specialty model that they used at the research station, and the serial number matched one of the suits that had been issued to the runabout. McElroy’s, without a doubt.
Genetic tests on the inside surfaces would be back in a few hours to confirm it.

The search of Adastra’s apartment was largely fruitless. Of course she was not there. They had found clothes, sundries, and one older model computer, now being picked apart for clues.

Imagery was somewhat helpful. With the help of General Erickson from the Kelter government, Lobeck and his team assembled a motley collection of ground level camera sequences showing what they believed to be Mira Adastra and one other man, almost certainly McElroy, walking to the plaza of the buttonwood tree.

There, all traces of the pair ended. They stepped out of view from one camera and simply did not appear in the next logical field of view. A check at the location revealed that the gap between the views was not much more than a meter wide. Within that seam, the pair had vaporized.

They were able to trace one other person. Rod Denison, who had chartered a ride down to the surface in the shuttle, had immediately met with Kate DelMonaco, CEO of DelMonaco Trading. The pair had proceeded to Mira Adastra’s home but had not been able to gain entry. Then they had split. DelMonaco had gone to her
office and then continued on from there. By coincidence, or not, Kate DelMonaco had once been a long time partner of McElroy, although they had never married.

Both Denison and DelMonaco were very high priority subjects to surveil, and so Lobeck assigned a top team to each of them.

But as for Adastra and McElroy, nothing.

The biggest problem was the nature of the Untrusted Zone itself. The camera coverage was poor, largely consisting of units which had been covertly deployed by Kelter security. Apparently the residents took it upon themselves to rem
ove and destroy any cameras they found.

Lobeck wasn’t sure what surprised him more, the destructive behavior or the lack of the government’s response to it. It had been going on for decades, and the government did nothing. The harvest of inaction was disrespect and lawlessness.

He should have nuked the place.

“Explain this to me again,” he asked Erickson. “Is this city subject to your laws, or is it not?”

“Technically speaking, all the laws of Kelter apply here,” the operative told him. “If someone commits a crime, whether in the Untrusted Zone or elsewhere in the Kelter system, they can be apprehended and prosecuted, here or anywhere else.”

“So, what’s the problem?”

Erickson did his best. “The simplest way to explain it is that the people here reject the Sisters. The effect is that we lose almost all of our law enforcement resources, because most law enforcement is actually done as part of the interactions between people and the families. Break a law or a contract, and you
lose your purchasing ability. That doesn’t apply here.”

The chopper was projecting an image onto the exterior windows, showing the path followed by McElroy and Adastra as they had walked away from the ship. The bright orange line was translucently superimposed on top of the current traffic, which was the usual collection of pedestrians, cyclists, and motor vehicles. Every fifty meters a set of large floating numbers showed the exact time that the pair had passed that spot.

Lobeck gestured out the window. “Do you patrol?”

“We can, but it’s not effective, because we don’t get any help from the citizens.”

“Why do you let this go on?”

“The funny thing is that it works,” Erickson explained. “If there is a violent crime, the locals step up and help solve it. Usually they take care of the whole matter
themselves. Violence is lower in the Untrusted Zone than anywhere else on Kelter.”

They were coming to a large open plaza. The orange line split briefly, then reconnected. It ducked into a building and out into the open, then over to the enormous tree and back to a table. The team had carefully accounted for the details of these movements.

“Tell me, Mr. Erickson, about serious crimes, those against the Families. Do you do anything about them?”

“If it’s a crime not to buy the latest products, then we let that go by. But we draw the line at encouraging boycotts. That’s terrorism, plain and simple, and if we see that, we crack down.”

“And the growing of food,” Lobeck pressed. “Using live fertile seeds without supervision! That goes against the heart of our deepest charters.
There is no telling what catastrophe could spread from that practice. Entire planets could be infested with trifids.”

“We tried, once upon a time.” Erickson looked deeply uncomfortable. Good. He should, if he had allowed a situation like this to go on. “But now, there’s a kind of truce in place. The people, all their customs, and the seeds, they all stay out here.”

“We concentrate on the matter at hand for now,” Lobeck decided. “After this is done, we will have to discuss some systematic issues that you have here. Places like this, they can fester if untended. Like an infection or a cancer.”

“We’re
at the plaza where Adastra and McElroy spent a fair amount of time. Do you want to get out and look at the details of their movements?”

Lobeck shook his head. “I can see perfectly well from here. Let us return to the spot where they disappeared, and see if we can find anything new.”

At the edge of the plaza, the chopper turned to the right, beginning a circumnavigation. Other vehicles slowly gave way, alerted by the law enforcement transponder. The bright orange line headed away to their left, going past the enormous tree to the far side of the plaza.