Wildcard (54 page)

“So, where does it come from?”

:3: went away.

“He already answered that question,” the
Accountant said.

Eventually, they solved the problem. He
negotiated the on-demand process time from :3: and all they had to
do was wait for the moment.

It came. They had been monitoring Seeker.
They couldn’t take him and hold him. Planning to kill Named had
consequences enough, but if they held him, part of their machine
would break. Nobody even had to say that.

The Benefactor contacted him. “Now.” That
was all she said. He never knew how the conditions came together.
He went light-tek into “Starbucks.” Coms only. An Ott-1 eye-patch
contact lens, invisible to an outside observer, but he could get
images directly from the Accountant. Or as directly as he wanted at
any rate.

They took Seeker into an 18-wheeler outside.
One of the men tapped in a code on a pad, then opened the plain
steel door. A man stayed outside, checking his watch frequently.
Seeker heard the chirp of a bird swallowed by a car horn as the
door shut. God, he wanted to live. It was not fair. All he wanted
was to be human, to feel what being a human was like, and now he
was going to die. He knew the Mechanic had lied. But he also knew
when he had lost a power play.

They brought out a large bag. The bag was no
color, but not clear. It was not there in some way.

“What is that thing?”

“That is one-half of a q-tek force portal
single door suit, my friend. Recently built by :3:, himself. State
of the art. Would you care to try it on?”

“I prefer not.”

“Fortunately for me, the neuro-zero we gave
you keeps you paralyzed and you have no choice.” The Mechanic was
putting on his suit, with arms and legs. A man strapped the bag
onto Seeker.

“Why is my half a bag?”

“Probabilistic, as :3: would say. Your
movements will not exist in this space-time, except as a very large
set of probabilities. Those possibilities also exist where Karl is.
So the relative position I take will be probabilistically remapped
as Karl’s current position. See?”

“Yes. Why do you think it’s OK to kill two
of the Named at once?”

“Three.”

“:3: said it stood clear? I disbelieve you.
:3: is not so reckless.”

“No, three of the Named are going to die in
this operation.”

“Three? Who is the third?”

“Me. Sort of.”

“You kill yourself? Are you insane?”

“Probably. Does that interest you? You seem
very curious for a man who’s about to die.”

“You admit I will die?”

“Sure. I could tell you only bought it for a
second. It was true about the willingness, though. Easier for us
both if you let go.”

“May I speak to Dartagnan?”

“Absolutely not.”

“:3:?”

“No way.”

“Let me speak to him or I fight you.”

“Go ahead.”

“I can will myself to death. It is a Mans
skill.”

“Bullshit. You all have a survival
instinct.”

“Ask yourself how Juniper was destroyed.
That was simply taken away. I have studied mind techniques for
stopping one’s heart. I have only practiced them in Mansworld, but
I could do it.”

The Mechanic looked Seeker in the eyes, held
it. Longer. Seeker returned the stare with a blank curiosity. His
eyes began to flutter. “Shit. Doctor. Start his heart again.”

“No need,” said Seeker. “May I speak to
:3:?”

The Mechanic spoke to his wrist. “Ma’am, he
wants to speak to :3:.”

The Benefactor’s voice. “Yes, he may.”

The Mechanic signaled to a technician, who
punched in some things on the console. The tech looked up,
nodded.

“Say his name,” said the Mechanic. “If he
answers, you can talk.”

“:3:. Seeker. My death. You intended?”

The Mechanic had his arms crossed. “He won’t
answer.”

“130 seconds. You know his response times.”
The Mechanic made no reply, just looked intently into Seeker’s
eyes, who gazed back.

“Why do you stare at me?”

“I’m going to pass through you in a few
moments. I need to connect something. It will make it less painful
for you.”

“How does it work?” He felt curious, or
fearful. Amazing to feel fear. He had not felt afraid ever, really,
and the sensation was exhilarating.

“Quantites.”

“What is that?”

“If you’d kept up, you might have lived,
Seeker. But you didn’t. Quantites are great. You do need :3:’s
help, though.”

“Never seemed worth my time to get his help.
What could he tell me worth knowing?” Seeker really wanted to
live.

“Maybe he would have warned you about
this.”

The Mechanic zipped his own q-tek suit. It
looked like a negative of the bag. A river of silvery-blue. It was
tight-fitted and more than tight fitted. It made the body seem to
narrow, thinning to a line. You could see through it, or sight
wrapped around it. The Mechanic’s head seemed to float in space, or
be balanced on a stick.

“No.” It was :3:, the voice sounding like a
million bass rattlesnakes.

“You knew?”

“Yes.”

“How I live?”

Long equation in return. Long for Seeker,
who didn’t care for equations.

“In words.”

“No.” :3: wouldn’t tell him in words. But
Seeker knew a funny trick. :3: would answer yes/no questions almost
indefinitely, if he didn’t get the same question twice.

“Solution exists probability above .000001.
1 in a million chance or better, big brother?”

“Yes.”

“You help?” Did he need :3:’s help for
it?

“No.”

“Who?”

“Dartagnan.” :3: was gone, slipped out on
the non-yes/no question. He had answered, though, a parting
gift.

“Let me speak to Dartagnan.”

“Too late. I’ve a pacemaker attached to you,
now, sweetheart. Wouldn’t want you to check out early.”

“Tell Dartagnan that roses smell wonderful,
will you?”

“Maybe she will. I’ll be dead.”

He pushed Seeker backwards with one hand.
His limp body pulleyed into a quantum orb. As he passed through the
opaque, light absorbing sphere, his sense of time fractured. He saw
the possibility that would have saved his life. He could have asked
:3: if he would put Dartagnan there. He might have strung together
enough questions in the right way, that :3: would have seen the
puzzle of undoing his death as more interesting than the puzzle of
killing him in that way.

He felt himself dividing slowly into beings
who made various choices. One split version of Seeker fought,
prepared to prevent the Mechanic if at all possible. Seeker knew
some mind warfare techniques. The fighter cracked into faces, one
of them visualizing itself as a wall of fire, another as a ninja,
another as a cutting wind.

Other Seeker faces moved to accept the fate
of the original, who had become a remote dot among the multiplying
Seekers in the quantum sphere. He could weight the faces so that
they had higher probabilities of occurrence. A conciliatory Seeker
found Karl through their link, helping the Mechanic greatly, and
ending Seeker’s suffering sooner. Another found a state of
concentration that would allow the Mechanic a passage with less
obstruction.

They gave him drugs to help, but not too
many different kinds. Just one, good old-fashioned LSD.
Nanite-forced into his synapses, over 10 billion micro-grams. It
was a Seeker death. As he let go, he heard the Benefactor from
non-space say, “Now, :3:.” The Mechanic stepped backward into the
sphere and the world turned to fire.

They began moving a few days after Dartagnan
disappeared. The Sergeant didn’t know where, and didn’t worry too
much. It felt different this time, more directed, almost guided.
Last time it had felt like one possibility of what was supposed to
happen, a random act of fate, or like they had guided themselves by
wanting to go. “Trident. This movement feels different.
Analysis.”

“We are being moved, and directed, by the
Quantites on the outside of the ship. It is good that you noticed.
I did not until you told me.”

“Dartagnan’s work. Where are we headed?”

“I do not know.”

“Can we do anything?”

“I doubt it. :3: is controlling the
Quantites.”

“Is Dartagnan working with :3:?”

“Unknown.”

“Work on breaking us free.”

“Will do, boss.

He laid down, tried to sleep. A day passed,
then another.

Karl screamed. A ship alarm went off.
“Intruder alert,” said Trident. The Sergeant was on feet,
assessing, looking outside the ship for Dartagnan. “Behind Karl,”
Trident said.

He moved, leaping through the air, toward
Karl, between the clingways, using them to add momentum and nudge
him as he flew past. Karl was in a stupor, and barely recognized
where he was.

“There’s nothing there, T. Talk to me.”

“Behind and 20 degrees to Karl’s right side.
It is standing on the clingway, reaching for Karl.”

Karl was staggering, grabbing absently at
clingholds, vaguely trying to escape the attacker, but faring
poorly. He screamed and waved his arms spastically.

“Boss, the thing isn’t doing much better
than Karl. It’s pretty stupid. I’m going to hit you with the
q-link. You will get a flash of it.”

Pain, the headache was like a sun in his
brain. He saw a ghost, for about a thirtieth of a second, reaching
for Karl, trying to walk into him, it seemed.

He flashed through the holds of the
invisible clingway, hoping he got it right. They fit tight,
specified for this kind of thing. He grabbed Karl, stopped on a
clinghold, then kicked hard in another direction, toward an
exit.

“Open the tangent tube I’m headed for, and
gimme a nano-thread attached to me with a length half the
circumference of the ship.”

“Roger. I have them ready to go at all of
the exits. It’s more of a reel, so stop it at the length you
need.”

“Seek,” Karl mumbled. “Kill being in front.
Martha. Benefixer.”

“Can you add momentum as I go through? I
need as tangential a departure vector to the ship as we can
get.”

“I can give you something to kick off
against. Will that work?”

“It’ll have to. Ghost report.” He had
reached the nano-tube, found the line, attached it to a grab at his
belt.

“Can you tolerate another hit with the
q-link?”

“Will it save Karl?”

“THREE MECHANICS,” Karl shouted. He was
frothing, but his arm waving had become less vigorous.

“No.”

“Then no. Just describe.” He pushed off,
through the tangent tube, feeding out the nano-wire. He slowed the
feed enough to begin wrapping his trajectory around the sphere,
back to other side. He could feel the velocity relative to the
Space Between out here. The ship was moving FTL, if that concept
had meaning in wildspace. It caused a brain warp, blurry images,
patterns of distortions, intense memories that seemed real for a
second, loss of orientation, nausea.

“Karl, you with me?” Karl vomited. It looked
like glittering dust.

“The ghost is following you,” Trident was
saying. “It seems to be tracking Karl’s location. It was headed for
the tangent tube, but now is attempting to move directly towards
you.”

“Can you kill it?”

“Where is the Wound?” Karl was ranging his
head around, staring, unaware of the Sergeant. “Not the box! No
BOX!”

“I am trying. I am hitting it with some
q-pulses. It adjusts quickly, however. Nano-tek is not useful.
Ultraviolet flashes disorient it some.”

“Can it get through the ship walls?”

“Not yet, but it is still gathering data. It
may be able to soon.”

“Get it out of the ship.”

“OK. Keep wrapping to the other tangent
tube. When I say ‘now’, jump and wrap back to the first.”

“Do I need to swap nano-wires so that we can
arc back in?”

“No, I can accelerate the reel of the
current nano-wire. Jump at the best tangent you can manage.”

“Build some exterior grabs when you
can.”

“That is a bad idea at present velocity. It
will unbalance the sphere.”

“And we aren’t?”

“Yes, you are.”

“Forget it, then. I need to get in fast.
Karl’s looking pretty bad.”

“Now, boss.”

He leapt, hit the reel at
the 1/3
^rd
point, felt the nano-wire yank hard. He held Karl between
himself and the return point to make it easy to hang onto him and
do anything else he might need to do. Just use his body to push
Karl’s body. Guide his body as needed. “Is it outside the
ship?”

“Yes.”

He landed. “I’m a bit disoriented. Can you
show me the tube?” A ring lit up on the ship. He was off by about
30 centimeters. No big deal. He landed, stuffed Karl into the tube
and went back out. “How can I knock this thing off?”

“Dartagnan’s sword.”

He froze, thinking Dartagnan had appeared.
No.

“Thanks. Any other ideas? Maybe something I
can use?”

“Searching. Try the knife.”

“The Swiss Army knife? Is that in play right
now?”

“I do not know until you try it.”

“OK, move me to the thing.”

“It is almost upon you, seeking Karl.”

“Hit me with the q-link.” Brain-fire, and he
saw it, clear. As clear as he could see a thing like that. It was a
blue-ish outline of a man, protozoan. It was there and not there,
very difficult to attach the mind to what one saw. It moved like
Frankenstein, jerky and spasmodic, arms outstretched, floating. How
it moved, what it propelled against, was impossible to say. “I know
what to do. Open the tube.”

“The genial,” Karl said to no one. “He did
it.”

He dove in, snatched Karl. Headed to the
back side of the ship, the direction they were coming from.

“You can see it without the q-link, now,
boss. Don’t look too long or too many times, though. I created a
gamma particle oscillator. The particles will burn your retina if
it receives too many.”