Undertow (20 page)

“Of course, if you were—”

“I would say the same thing.” He had a good, flickering smile. “Honey, there’s one way I know I can prove I’m on your side. I can tell you what was in the file I gave Lucienne.”

She really shouldn’t have been so surprised. It had to have come from somewhere. Somewhere close to Closs or Greene, specifically, or somebody who had stumbled across the information. But—

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

And Maurice clucked his tongue. “Lucienne took a risk to meet with me,” he said. “I took one to meet with you. Take a risk yourself: this is too big not to.”

Nouel stood back. Cricket studied Maurice instead, watching his eyes, the corners of his mouth.

Rim, she thought, would just have killed her. The way they had killed Lucienne. They didn’t need to talk to her. Unless they somehow thought she could lead them to a bigger fish, but that hadn’t been a concern in the past. Quick, ruthless, but not prone to long-term strategy—that was the Charter Trade Company.

“Do you have any proof? Anything we can use to force the media to follow up?”

He glanced at Huc. Huc, jowled head lowered, seemed not to notice. “I purged the file once I transmitted it. You don’t keep something like that in your head. I can promise, however, that the tracker didn’t come from me, or with that data.”

“You say that as if it was good news.” Cricket snorted. “It also doesn’t help us sell this to Com.”

“People love conspiracies.” Huc, without raising his head.

“They also,” Cricket said calmly, “tend to think they’re full of shit. Tell me something, Maurice. What could Lucienne have done with your information that an archinformist couldn’t?”

“Give it provenance,” he said. He rubbed his palms together, fiddled a gold bracelet. “I could connex it. But not without revealing myself—and we’ve seen how that works out.”

“Lucienne?”

Maurice’s eyebrow went up. He glanced at Nouel, who was still simulating withdrawal. “Well,” he said, “I guess it’s okay if I tell you now. Lucienne was an agent.”

“Oh, no,” Cricket said, gulping against bitter nausea. She hadn’t trusted anyone, not since Patience. Not since Moon Morrow’s confidential secretary had turned out to be not so confidential, after all. “Core? Not Rim, or Rim wouldn’t have killed her. What, infiltrating the insurgents?”

“You are not analyzing the evidence,” he said. “Think again.”

She did so, paused, staring at the back of her hands. “Holy shit. Unified Earth.”

“Yes. Apparently some senator or another actually thinks bringing down a corrupt Charter Trade Corporation might just be a ticket to reelection.”

“Earth thinks it can bring legal proceedings against Rim? Against Core?”

“Monopolies,” he said, echoing Huc, “make people nervous. You don’t know who she was reporting to? You can’t get us in contact?”

Cricket shook her head. “I can’t.” She turned away, folded her hands behind her back, and stared at the wall. Nouel had withdrawn against it and was still waiting with his arms folded. “I’ve got no authority.”

“You’ve got Lucienne’s froggie friends, don’t you? What about Jean Gris? Would he know?”

Ah, of course.
That
was the thing she could give Rim that they couldn’t get without her.

Assuming Maurice wasn’t trustworthy. A big assumption, because if he was, they needed him. On the other hand, Lucienne had been shot immediately after meeting with him. And he was conspicuously healthy. “No,” she said. “With Lucienne gone…and anyway, what news feed is going to care what a ranid has to say for itself? We could manufacture a provenance for the documents, if they’re authentic.”

“They are.” No trace of impatience. “There’s more I need to tell you, though. There’s another thing I find unlikely to be coincidental, and extremely fascinating.”

Slowly, Cricket turned her head and stared, not at Maurice but at Nouel. It was thirty seconds at least before he lifted his head, returned her gaze, and shrugged. “You’re looking at the wrong man, Fisher.”

She rotated on her heels. Maurice had been staring at the back of her neck. “What do you know?”

“I know this,” he said, and pulled a flat chip of hard plastic from his pocket. He flipped it at her; she caught it out of the air reflexively, and slapped it onto the back of her left hand. It was an Australian dollar from A.G. 50 or so, when they were still using the old notation:2048.

Tails. “So what?”

“Do it again.”

Heads. Tails. Heads. Tails.

“Trick coin.”

“It’s not.”

She tossed the coin at him. He fumbled the catch, and it rolled off his fingers and under a chair. Cricket almost
heard
Nouel roll his eyes, but nobody went after the coin. “So
what
?” Cricket asked again, though she knew, more or less, so what.

So they were neck-deep in a probability storm, and there was no telling what might happen. And as if to prove her conjecture, what Maurice said next was an almost complete non sequitur.

“So you’re a quantum clone of Moon Constancy Morrow.” And while she stood there, blinking at him, he continued: “And Closs
almost
knows. He’s this close to figuring it out, and when he does, I have no idea what he’ll do about it. Also, I wouldn’t connex if I were you until we scrub your head completely; the real Moon has ways of finding you when you do that. Which is why I’m absolutely certain it wasn’t my data.”

“Thank you,” she said. Her throat hurt; after a moment she realized that it was because she was dry-swallowing, over and over. “I figured that out.”

No, no point in playing it cool at all. And Huc hadn’t known either, based on his reflexive step forward and then the cringe that started in his neck and shoulders and traveled his length. “But I’m not a clone. I’m the original.
She’s
the clone.”

“From what I understand,” Maurice said, “I would guess she told Closs the same thing. There’s only one problem with that.”

“Yes?”

“If it’s so, how did
you
get
here
?”

11

WHILE ANDRÉ WAITED ON SHORE, GOURAMI TALKED TO
the greatparent. Se voice was deep and grand, a reverberation through the water that tickled Gourami’s skin like a caress. The greatparent’s attention soothed and opened Gourami’s thought, made se pliant and considering and willing, increased se concentration and powers of recollection.

The effect was biochemical. Taken to an extreme, if a person stopped swimming and matured; it was memorizy that made greatparents the center of people’s culture and history.

Because greatparents could remember
everything
. Everything they had experienced, every story they were told. So younger persons—adults and far-swimmers, not the presentient egglings—told greatparents their stories, and some of the ones that did not get eaten or killed in accidents or while defending their bandweal became greatparents in their turn, and memorizy other things. Old persons did not die. They either swam until they stopped, or they were killed somehow.

Gourami tried to explain this to André, on the slate, while se spoke with the greatparent, but soon gave up and left the human on the bank.

—
They’re like living databases?
he had asked at one point, and se was forced to admit that this was close to the truth. Except not exactly, of course. Because the humen remembering-machines did not tell stories. Or make patterns. Or make sense of things. Or comfort the afflicted.

Or soothe the young and fragile with the weight of their experience and wisdom and accumulated centuries of knowledge.

The remembering-machines could talk like greatparents, across vast distances. But greatparents also had the knack of changing luck, for which they used the same coiled organs with which they generated bioelectricity. Like some of the small swimming things, greatparents could defend themselves with shock if their bands and clans did not succeed in keeping danger at bay. It was a talent that only developed with the final metamorphosis. Adults and far-swimmers were expected to run from danger, or fight it.

Coming to a particular point in se narrative, se dug in se beltpouch and pulled out Jean Kroc’s watertight case, explaining what he had wanted done with the device inside. Conversation with a greatparent was so easy: they understood, and explained back, sometimes more than one understood oneself. Though
this
greatparent was one of the youngest—se had stopped swimming since the humen came—se was also interpersonally gifted.

Gourami found se challenging and reassuring by turns.

—The human wanted to entangle you?

—He did.
Gourami basked in the ambient calm and well-being. The sort of inclusion that se had not felt since se went to live among humen.

It had been a sacrifice. But having adventures and bringing home new stories was one way to make oneself worthy. Even if, sitting in shallow water with the greatparent floating beside se, Gourami could not imagine how se would ever become what this person so effortlessly was.

Oh, but se wanted it.

Of course, as Tetra and Caetei had hinted, first se had to admit that want, and take the first steps.

—You did well in not accepting the entanglement. As you grow, you will not wish to be bound to the humen.

—No.
They were erratic and inconsistent, and their political structures seemed to be applied with very little consideration for bandweal or anything but individual gain. Gourami suspected it had something to do with their method of reproduction, which seemed very…competitive. Probably everything could be traced back to that: their hierarchies, their violence, their jealousies. Their survival strategies were very different from those of people.

They were climbers, not schoolers.

—The Company humen are dangerous,
Gourami added. Which of course the greatparent knew already, but it bore reinforcing. An opinion expressed was a step toward consensus.
—We do not wish to be bound to the rebel humen, but we wish their assistance in opposing the Company humen.

The greatparent thrummed, stroking Gourami’s forelimbs with se fringe, draping a curtain of tendrils over se shoulders and back. No sting and no shock, just the comfort, the calm of the womb, of being enclosed in and protected by another. It was a memory that lingered in every person, peace from the eggling’s first seasons in an endoparent’s care.

The greatparent continued,
—Many of the others do not care to have any humen here.

Gourami thought of how fast rumor could swim, and of the attempts on se own life. Se thought of one-armed, so-scarred Parrot, whom se knew from the drill platforms in other days and whom se had become reacquainted with after se and Tetra and Caetei had brought André, unconscious, to the one-tree-island band. Se thought of Tetra’s harpoon gun, which se had been at pains to conceal from André. Of se own crossbow. And what a person might do with a weapon like that.

—Will it be fighting? Tetra and se followers? Will they do more?
There was already skirmishing, and Gourami knew at least some of the greatparents were involved. It was only they that had the skills to make their luck. They rooted deep, sent down trunks into the sediment, and brought up the oils the humen dug for, too.

The greatparent bobbed placidly in the shallows. Water slopped over Gourami’s back, refreshing se mucous; cool mud squelched under se handfingers.

—There will be a war,
the greatparent said. Loud enough that the echoes would carry wide, to many ears, when se could have murmured it against Gourami’s skin, under the curtain of tendrils draped between them. —
You will swim with Tetra and the others, when the time comes. You will bear a weapon.

Gourami’s throat swelled. Se would. Se would do it. The greatparent had decided. Had foreseen.

It was not an unalloyed tribulation. There would be adventure, risk. Glory. Status to be won.

Stories.

—You must tell the persons who work for the humen, they must stop. They must come away, come home. You must be the messenger, as you were between people and the humen.

—And there is no way of avoiding it?
Gourami asked. Not an argument: se was incapable of argument, huddled against the greatparent’s fringe as se was. But a question, a fair question to ask.

—The humen could become peaceable.
The greatparent’s tone, murmured softly now, indicated heavy irony. Not a likely outcome, no.
—Speaking of Tetra, se thinks well of you,
se said, changing the subject entirely. Although of course it didn’t call Tetra by that name, but the one that could not be translated, or spoken by humen.
—When are you going to start making your vest?

Seductive, yes. Gourami croaked harshly, in pain. Se knew—se
knew
—what the humen would do. Could do. Not so many who came home to the clans knew the humen culture as se did. Not so many had studied it.

—I must tell you some humen stories, greatparent,
se said. Not arguing. Telling was not arguing. Just providing information that the greatparent might not already have. That, also, was permissible. —
They will destroy us if we try to fight.

Jean rather thought Ziyi Zhou was expecting him. Her door swung open as he came up the gangplank, and she was dressed for company. “No,” she said, before he could open his mouth.

He stopped, one foot on planks, one on a strip of tarpaper nailed crosswise to the gangway. “I haven’t asked yet.”

“What are you doing with André Deschênes?”

Jean closed his eyes and let an extended hand fall back to his side. “I have uses for him.”

When he looked up again, Ziyi was slowly shaking her head. “That’s like keeping a nessie in your bathtub, Jean. You’re not actually planning to train him?”

“He’s too gifted to leave wandering loose,” Jean said. “He’s more of a threat untrained than trained.”

“There’s another solution to that.”

“Maybe,” he suggested, quietly, “we should take this conversation inside.”

She bit her lip but stood aside, and he walked past her into the cool, dim living room. Unlike Jean, Ziyi didn’t isolate herself from technology. Which was the reason he was here.

She shut the door and immediately said, “You took him as a
pupil
?”

“I think I can straighten him out.” Not waiting to be asked, Jean settled himself on a soft burgundy sofa. “But it’ll get ugly, Ziyi. Soon.”

“I turned him down, you know,” she said. “Do you want lemonade?”

“Make it a double.”

When she came back from the kitchen, she had two glasses in her hands. She poured the lemonade from one to the other, to assure him that it was unadulterated, and held both out for him to pick from. He chose the glass to port and waited until after she tasted hers to drink.

“He killed
Lucienne
.” Not stridently, but the stress was there under her voice, a suppressed whine. “Jean, how could you?”

“We’re holding this planet together with our teeth and fingernails. We’re going to need him, and the ranids, and everybody else we can find with an ounce of talent.”

“I hope I’m not included in that we.”

“You can’t be blind to the toxic level of coincidence lately. Unless you’ve stopped tugging God’s coat-sleeve.”

She rolled lemonade over her tongue, resting the tall glass on one palm and steadying it with the opposite fingertips. “I’ve noticed,” she said. A tactical retreat. “It’s the worst I’ve ever seen. But…Deschênes. I’ve been tracking his probabilities.”

“Divination? That’s about as useful as casting tarot cards.”

“Which I happen to know you keep a set of.”

He snorted. “What did you find?”

“Deschênes’s line crosses yours. Practically winds around Closs’s. And crossed Lucienne’s, before it ended.”

Jean threw one arm over the back of the sofa. “He’s not entangled. Your readings are no better than guesses.”

But she shook her head, rolling the glass between her palms, and he swallowed. He was not used to being taken by surprise, and even before she spoke he knew he’d just walked into a doozy.

“He is now.” You could have cut cake with her smile. “I know his baker.”

He set the lemonade down on the arm of the sofa and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Oral application? You might as well throw darts.”

She lowered her gaze, redolent of false modesty. “Two months of trying,” she said.

“Damn. I never want to hear another
word
about my ethics—”

“Jean,” she said, suddenly serious, her expression smoothing. “I just wanted to let you know I wasn’t going to weep if anything happened.”

“Don’t cry for him,” Jean said. “Cry for me. Look, I need your help. Before she died, Lucienne sent some data to her friend Cricket. The packet was interrupted. Cricket got the data out—”

“How bad?”

“Bad enough. It would help if we had the rest.”

She seemed to contract, elbows pressed to her sides, chin dropping. “I already said no once.”

“Rim has it,” Jean said. “If it’s anywhere. I’ve got the best archinformist in the business”—if we can get her head fixed, he did not add—“and I’ve got André Deschênes, though I have to go fetch him back first. And I have Nouel Huc.”

“That’s already two people more than can keep a secret.”

“It doesn’t have to be kept for long. If we can get this information, Ziyi, we can bring down Rim.”

“Rim?”

“Charter Trade on Greene’s World at the very least. Get Jefferson Greene the hell out of there. We’ve got them dead to rights on environmental and safety issues. But we need to find out who contacted Lucienne. And we need to establish a provenance for the data before the media will touch it. We have a witness—”

“Shouldn’t that be enough?”

“It’s a ranid,” he admitted, and Ziyi winced.

“Oh, hell, Jean…”

“For Lucienne?” he asked. “If you won’t do it for me?”

“What do you need?”

“I need this data broken out,” he said, extending a chip across the gap between the two of them. She leaned forward to take it, manicured nails brushing his fingertips. The opposite of Lucienne. “It’ll need to be combined with whatever we bring back. Careful—there might be mines in there. Don’t stick it in your head.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Dad.” She turned the chip over curiously, rolling it across her fingertips. “This isn’t an original?”

“Not on a bet.”

She nodded, considering. “Mines?”

“I’m told that Rim was locating the person who had it whenever she connexed. Even after a biometrics swap.”

“
Damn
. That’s vicious.”

He nodded. Of course, it probably wasn’t the data, but it didn’t hurt to install caution. “That’s Rim. I’ll bring you the rest when we have it. Start thinking, would you, about how we’re going to get hold of somebody who will push the story.”

“Jean, darling,” she said, setting the chip down on the table beside her. “I know perfectly well why you came to me. You don’t have to dissemble. But he won’t take it unless you make it good. It’s his career and his life, too, taking on Rim.”

Her lover—via connex, anyway; a decades-long-relationship that she had told Jean had started in university and that would never result in a meeting in the flesh unless they
both
went relativistic and met in the middle—was Bryson Pace, a minor newsnet legend.

Ziyi’s mojo got bent to make sure she knew everyone. Jean had no idea when she had time to earn a living.

“I know,” Jean said. “I’ll make sure it’s unimpeachable.”

“And what about Deschênes? If it doesn’t work out, your plan to…whatever it is you think you can do.”

“If it doesn’t work out,” Jean relied, “I’ll shoot the son of a bitch myself. Just give me the chance to find out if I can help him turn into a human being.”

Her eyes widened, all perfect feral innocence.

“Ziyi.”

“All right,” she said. “All right. I’ll stop trying to kill him, Jean. For now.”

A sensible man would take off into the bayou and stay there until it blew over, whatever
it
turned out to be. A sensible man would have stayed home in the first place. Would never have taken on Closs and Greene.