Distress - A Novel Part 23

Kuwale said, "Andrew! Listen!"

There was a deep rhythmic pulsing sound coming through the hull, growing steadily louder. I'd finally learned to recognize an MHD engine-and this one wasn't ours.

I waited, sick with uncertainty. My hands were beginning to shake as badly as Kuwale's. After a few minutes, there was shouting in the distance. I couldn't make out the words-but there were new voices, with Polynesian accents.

Three said quietly, "You keep your mouth shut, or they'll all have to die. Or is Violet Mosala worth a dozen farmers to you?"

I stared at him, light-headed. Would the rest of the ACs think like that! How many real deaths would they have to confront, before they admitted that they might be mistaken? Or had they surrendered completely to a moral calculus where even the smallest chance of the unraveling outweighed any crime, any atrocity?

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The voices grew nearer, then the engine stopped; it sounded as if the fishing boat had pulled up right beside us. But I could already hear another one in the distance.

I caught s.n.a.t.c.hes of a conversation: "But I leased you this boat, so it's my responsibility. The emergency system should not have malfunctioned." It was a deep voice, a woman's, puzzled, reasonable, persistent. I glanced at Kuwale; vis eyes were shut, vis teeth clenched tight. The sight of ver in pain cut me up badly; I didn't trust what I was beginning to feel for ver, but that wasn't the point. Ve needed treatment, we had to get away.

But if I called out. . . how many people would I endanger?

I heard a third ship approaching. Mayday . . . false-alarm code . . . mayday . . . flares. The whole local fleet seemed to think that was strange enough to be worth looking into. Even if all these people were unarmed, the ACs were now completely outnumbered.

I raised my head and bellowed, "In here!"

Three tensed, as if preparing to move. I fired the gun into the floor near his head, and he froze. A wave of vertigo swept over me-and I waited for a barrage of automatic fire. I was insane-what had 1 done?

There were heavy footfalls on the deck, more shouting.

Twenty-and a tall Polynesian woman in blue coveralls-approached the edge of the hold.

The farmer glanced down at us, frowning. She said, "If they've threatened violence, gather your evidence and take it to an adjudicator back on the island. But whatever's gone on here-don't you think both sides would be better off separated?"

Twenty faked outrage. "They hide on board, they intimidate us with firearms, they take a man hostage! And you expect us to hand them over to you, so you can let them go free!"

The farmer looked straight at me. I couldn't speak, but I met her gaze, and I let my right hand drop to my side. She addressed Twenty again, deadpan. "I'm happy to testify for you, about what I've seen here. So if they're willing to give up their hostage and come with us-you have my word, justice won't be compromised."

Four other farmers appeared at the edge of the hold. Kuwale, still sitting by the wall, raised a hand in greeting, and called out something in a Polynesian language. One of the farmers laughed raucously, and replied. I felt a surge of hope. The ship was swarming with people-and when it 255.

came down to the prospect of a ma.s.sacre, face-to-face, the ACs had buckled.

I put the gun in my back pocket. I shouted up, "He's free to go!"

Three rose to his feet, looking surly. I said quietly, "She's dead anyway. You said so yourself. You're already savior of the universe." I tapped my stomach. "Think of your place in history. Don't tarnish your image now." He exchanged glances with Twenty, then started climbing the rope ladder.

I threw the gun into a comer of the hold, then went to help Kuwale. Ve took the ladder slowly; I followed close behind, hoping I'd be able to catch ver if ve lost vis grip.

There must have been thirty farmers on deck-and eight ACs, most of them with guns, who seemed far more tense than the unarmed anarchists. I felt a reprise of horror at the thought of what might have happened. I looked around for Helen Wu, but she was nowhere in sight. Had she returned to the island during the night, to oversee Mosala's death? I'd heard no boat. . . but she might have donned scuba gear, and ridden the harvester.

As we started making our way toward the edge of the deck, where a concertina bridge linked the two ships, Twenty called out, "Don't think you're going to walk away with stolen property."

The farmer was losing patience; she turned to me. "Do you want to empty out your pockets, and save us all some time? Your friend needs a doctor."

"I know."

Twenty approached me. She looked around the deck, meaningfully, and my blood froze. It wasn't over yet. They hoped that whatever they'd done to Mosala was irreversible by now . . . but they weren't certain, and they were ready to start shooting rather than turn me loose with footage which proved that the danger was real.

They knew Mosala too well. I had no idea how I'd convince her, without it; she already believed that I'd cried wolf, once.

I had no choice, though. I invoked Witness, and wiped everything. "Okay. It's done. It's erased."

"I don't believe you."

I gestured at the protruding fiber. "Plug in a notepad, do an inventory. See for yourself."

"That's no proof. You could fake that."

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"Then . . . what do you want? Do you want to put me in a tuned microwave field, and fry all the RAM?"

She shook her head solemnly. "We don't have that kind of equipment here."

I glanced at the bridge, which was sighing with the shifting pressure as the boats bobbed and swayed in the gentle swell. "Okay. Let Kuwale go. I'll stay."

Kuwale groaned. "Don't. You can't trust-"

Twenty cut ver off. "It's the only way. And you have my word that you'll be returned to Stateless, unharmed, once this is over."

She gazed at me calmly; so far as I could tell, she was perfectly sincere. Once Mosala was dead, I'd be free.

But if she survived, and completed her TOE-proving that these people were nothing but failed homicidal conspirators? How would they feel about their chosen messenger then?

I sank to my knees. I thought, among other things: The sooner 1 start, the sooner it's over.

I wrapped the fiber around my hand and started hauling the memory chips out of my gut. The wound left by the optical port was too small- but the chips' capsule-shaped protective casings forced it open, and they emerged into the light one by one, like the gleaming segments of some strange cybernetic parasite which was fighting hard to stay inside its host. The farmers backed away, alarmed and confused. The louder I bellowed, the more it dulled the pain.

The processor emerged last, the buried head of the worm, trailing a fine gold cable which lead to my spinal cord, and the nerve taps in my brain. I snapped it off where it vanished into the chip, then rose to my feet, bent double, a fist pressed against the ragged hole.

I pushed the b.l.o.o.d.y offering toward Twenty with my foot. I couldn't stand up straight enough to look her in the eye.

"You can go." She sounded shaken, but unrepentant. I wondered what kind of death she'd chosen for Mosala. Clean and painless, no doubt: straight into a fairytale coma, without a speck of blood or s.h.i.t or vomit.

I said, "Mail it back to me, once you're finished with it. Or you'll be hearing from my bank manager."

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24.In the cramped sick bay, a scan of Kuwale's leg revealed ruptured blood vessels and broken ligaments, a trail of damage like an aircraft's crash path leading to the bullet buried at the back of vis thigh. Ve watched the screen with grim amus.e.m.e.nt, sweat dripping from vis face as the ancient software ground away at a detailed a.s.sessment; the final line read: Probable gunshot injury. "Oh, I was. .h.i.t!" One of the farmers, Prasad Jwala, cleaned and dressed our wounds, and pumped us full of (off-the-shelf) drugs to limit bleeding, infection, and shock. The only strong painkillers on board were crude synthetic opiates which left me so high that I couldn't have given a coherent account of the ACs' plans to anyone if the fate of the universe had depended on it. Kuwale lost consciousness completely; I sat beside ver, fantasizing about gathering my thoughts. It was just as well that my stomach was tightly bandaged; I had a strong urge to reach through the portal I'd made and probe the machinery which remained inside me: the tight smooth coil of the intestines, the demon snake which Kuwale's magic bullet had tamed; the warm, blood-drenched liver, ten billion microscopic enzyme factories plugged straight into the circulation, a bootleg pharm dispensing whatever its chemical intuition desired. I wanted to drag every dark mysterious organ out into the daylight one by one, and arrange them all in front of me in their proper positions, until I was nothing but a sh.e.l.l of skin and muscle, face-to-face at last with my inner twin.

After about fifteen minutes, the same enzyme factories finally began degrading the opiates in my blood, and I clawed my way down from marshmallow heaven. I begged for a notepad; Jwala obliged, then left to help out on deck.

I managed to get through to Karin De Groot immediately. I stuck to the essentials. De Groot heard me out in silence; my appearance must 258.

have given the story a degree of credibility. "You have to talk Violet into heading back to civilization. Even if she's not convinced of the danger . . . what has she got to lose? She can always deliver her final paper from Cape Town."

De Groot said, "Believe me, she'll take every word of this seriously. Yasuko Nishide died last night. It was pneumonia-and he was very frail -but Violet's still badly shaken. And she's seen the cholera genome a.n.a.lysis, which was done by a reputable Bombay lab. But-"

"So you'll fly out with her?" Nishide's death saddened me, but Mos-ala's loss of complacency was pure good news. "I know, it's a risk, she might get sick on the plane, but-"

De Groot cut me off. "Listen. There've been some problems here, while you were away. No one's flying anywhere."

"Why? What kind of problems?"

"A boatload of... mercenaries, I don't know . . . arrived on the island overnight. They've occupied the airport."

Jwala had come back to check on Kuwale; he caught the last part of the conversation, and interjected derisively, "Agents provocateurs. Every few years a different pack of apes in designer camouflage show up, try to make trouble . . . fail, and go away." He sounded about as concerned as someone from an ordinary democracy, complaining about the periodic irritation of election campaigns. "I saw them last night, landing in the harbor. They were heavily armed, we had to let them pa.s.s." He grinned. "But they're in for some surprises. I'll give them six months, at the most."

"Six months?"

He shrugged. "It's never been longer."

A boatload of mercenaries, trying to make trouble-the boat which had rammed the ACs? In any case, Twenty and her colleagues must have known by morning that the airport had been seized-and that my testimony would make little difference to Mosala's chances.

The timing could not have been worse, but it was hardly surprising. The Einstein Conference was already lending Stateless too much respectability, and Mosala's planned migration would be an even greater embarra.s.sment. But EnGeneUity and their allies wouldn't try to a.s.sa.s.sinate her, creating an instant martyr. Nor would they dissolve the island back into the ocean, and risk scaring off legitimate customers worth billions of dollars. All they could do was try, one last time, to bring the 259.

social order of Stateless crashing down-proving to the world that the whole naive experiment had been doomed from the start.

I said, "Where's Violet now?"

"Talking to Henry Buzzo. She's trying to convince him to go with her to the hospital."

"Good idea." Immersed in the schemes of the "moderates," I'd almost forgotten that Buzzo was also in danger-and Mosala was at risk on two fronts. The extremists had already triumphed in Kyoto-and whoever had infected me with the cholera, en route from Sydney, was probably on Stateless right now, looking for a chance to make up for the botched first attempt.

De Groot said, "I'll show them this conversation immediately."

"And give a copy to security."

"Right. For what that's worth." She seemed to be holding up under the pressure far better than I was; she added wrily, "No sign of Helen Wu in flippers, so far. But I'll keep you posted."

We arranged to meet at the hospital. I signed off, and closed my eyes, fighting the temptation to sink back into the lingering opiate fog.

It had taken the mainstream ACs five days to smuggle in a cure for me even with the airport open. After everything I'd been through, I wasn't ready to swallow the fact that Mosala was now a walking corpse- but short of a counter-invasion by African technoliberateurs, over a distance of tens of thousands of kilometers, in the next day or two, at the latest... I could see no hope of her surviving.

As the boat approached the northern harbor, I sat watching over Akili. I badly wanted to take vis hand, but I was afraid it would only make things worse. How could I have fallen for someone who'd surgically excised even the possibility of desire?

Easily enough, apparently: a shared trauma, an intense experience, the confusing absence of gender cues ... it was no great mystery. People became infatuated with as.e.x all the time. And no doubt it would pa.s.s, soon enough-once I accepted the simple fact that nothing I felt could ever be reciprocated.

After a while, I found I could no longer bear to look at vis face; it hurt too much. So 1 watched the glowing traces on the bedside monitor, and listened for each shallow exhalation, and tried to understand why the ache I felt would not go away.

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The trams were reportedly still running, but one of the farmers offered to drive us all the way to the city. "Quicker than waiting for an ambulance," she explained. "There are only ten on the island." She was a young Fijian named Adelle Vunibobo; I remembered seeing her looking down into the hold on the ACs' boat.

Kuwale sat between us in the cab of the truck, half awake but still stupefied. I watched the vivid coral inlets shrinking around us, like a fast-motion view of the reefs' slow compaction.

I said, "You risked your life back there."

"Maydays at sea are taken very seriously." Her tone was gently mocking, as if she was trying to puncture my deferential manner.

"Lucky we weren't on land." I persisted, "But you could see that the boat wasn't in danger. The crew told you to clear off and mind your own business. Underlining the suggestion with guns."

She glanced at me curiously. "So you think it was reckless? Foolish? There's no police force here. Who else would have helped you?"

"No one," I admitted.

She fixed her eyes on the uneven terrain ahead. "I was in a fishing boat that capsized, five years ago. We were caught in a storm. My parents, and my sister. My parents were knocked unconscious, they drowned straight away. My sister and I spent ten hours in the ocean, treading water, taking turns holding each other up."

"I'm sorry. The Greenhouse Storms have claimed so many people-"

She groaned. "I don't want your sympathy. I'm just trying to explain."

I waited in silence. After a while, she said, "Ten hours. I still dream about it. I grew up on a fishing boat-and I'd seen storms sweep away whole villages. I thought I already knew exactly how I felt about the ocean. But that time in the water with my sister changed everything."

"In what way? Do you have more respect, more fear?"

Vunibobo shook her head impatiently. "More lifejackets, actually, but that's not what I'm talking about." She grimaced, frustrated, but then she said, "Would you do something for me? Close your eyes, and try to picture the world. All ten billion people at once. I know it's impossible- but try."

I was baffled, but I obliged. "Okay."

"Now describe what you see."

"A view of the Earth from s.p.a.ce. It's more like a sketch than a photograph, though. North is up. The Indian Ocean is in the center-but the 261.

view stretches from West Africa to New Zealand, from Ireland to j.a.pan. There are crowds of people-not to scale-standing on all the continents and islands. Don't ask me to count them, but I'd guess there are about a hundred, in all."

I opened my eyes. I'd left her old and new homes right off the map, but I had a feeling this wasn't a consciousness-raising exercise in the marginalizing force of geographical representations.

She said, "I used to see something like that, myself. But since the accident, it's changed. When I close my eyes and imagine the world, now ... I see the same map, the same continents . . . but the land isn't land at all. What looks like solid ground is really a solid ma.s.s of people; there is no dry land, there is nowhere to stand. We're all in the ocean, treading water, holding each other up. That's how we're born, that's how we die. Struggling to keep each other's heads above the waves." She laughed, suddenly self-conscious, but then she said defiantly, "Well, you asked for an explanation." "I did."

The dazzling coral inlets had turned to rivers of bleached limestone sludge, but the reef-rock around us now shimmered with delicate greens and silver-grays. I wondered what the other farmers would have told me, if I'd asked them the same question. A dozen different answers, probably; Stateless seemed to run on the principle of people agreeing to do the same thing for entirely different reasons. It was a sum over mutually contradictory topologies which left the calculus of pre-s.p.a.ce for dead; no imposed politics, philosophy, religion, no idiot cheer-squad worship of flags or symbols-but order emerged nonetheless.

And I still couldn't decide if that was miraculous, or utterly unmyste-rious. Order only arose and survived, anywhere, because enough people desired it. Every democracy was a kind of anarchy in slow motion: any statute, any const.i.tution could be changed, given time; any social contract, written or unwritten, could be dishonored. The ultimate safety nets were inertia, apathy and obfuscation. On Stateless, they'd had the- possibly insane-courage to unravel the whole political knot into its simplest form, to gaze at the undecorated structures of power and responsibility, tolerance and consensus.

I said, "You kept me from drowning. So how do I repay you?" Vunibobo glanced at me, measuring my seriousness. "Swim harder. Help us all to stay afloat."

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"I'll try. If I ever have the chance."

She smiled at this crudely hedged half-promise, and reminded me, "We're heading straight into a storm, right now. I think you'll get your chance."