Futureland. Part 8

"I would buy your stocks for RadCon and forget my quest for financial support."

Kismet smiled again. "If only I were going public. But alas, dear M, MacroCode has evolved past the primitive whims of the stock market. Our roots are deeper than any econsystem."

"Then," Akwande postulated, "I have no interest in your magic beans."

This response brought laughter to the would-be Tsar's lips. Never in any vidclip, photograph, or written report had Akwande seen anything intimating that the madman was capable of laughter.

"You see?" Kismet said. "Your appreciation resonates with mine. You surprise me with your acuity and challenge me with your observations. And you understand people. Why spend all your time on the plight of those most of whom do not even know that you exist? Help me to organize off-planet colonization. Make a difference in history."

The offer filtered past the radical leader's resolve. Unbidden, the notion of power came to him. Rather than fight for ideals he could create millions of real jobs with the flash of an eyescan. Akwande never felt at home among the fanatics and madmen of the Radical Congress. He did not enjoy a research of conspiracies and the poverty pressed upon him. He wanted a comfortable life for his wife and children, good schools and a woody lane. But his desires could not eclipse the fact that the Malians died, and others too, by the thousands each day.

"I haven't seen your famous tennis courts, Doctor."

"What?"

"Your tennis courts. The Data Times says that you still play from time to time, between national buyouts."

"Do you understand what I'm offering you?" It was more a threat than a question. "I'm willing to run my faux-petrol project out of any nation you elect. I haven't paid that much for even an American president."

"I understand you, Doctor. The problem is that you don't understand me."

The monocle flashed on and stayed that way for ten seconds or more. M Akwande was pleased to think how many resources he was tying up. He imagined that somewhere in the mysterious Blue Zone, databases of language and slang were studying his question about tennis courts. Maybe specialists were being consulted. His own personal history was being scrutinized.

Finally, "Do you play tennis?" Kismet asked.

"As a young man I did. I was very impressed with the Williams sisters and how they stormed the tennis world."

"As was I. But I was more interested in their father. There was a man of vision. He created champions. Creation comes before all else."

"I wasn't very good at it," Akwande continued. "Tennis, that is." He was thinking about the nine months of training that began a week after he left Ptolemy's cell. Six hours a day of play, another three of special exercises, and endless hours of concentration meditations. Specialized strength-enhancing and flexibility-increasing injections, electronic acupuncture treatments--all paid for in cash or in kind. There were no electronic trails, no one knew who didn't need to. Even Aja was unaware of his scheme. The only evidence was a trace of body-enhancing chemicals in his bloodstream. And to cover even that, all of the leaders of RadCon6 had entered a quasi-secret training program where body enhancing drugs were requisite. They were preparing for another period of violence, it was leaked, and the leaders were expected to fight side by side with the rank and file.

"Yes," Kismet said. "You played when you went to Howard. Not a bad record, really. You could have gone pro."

"I couldn't sell you my freedom, Doctor. Such a betrayal by any RadCon leader would set us back a century or more."

Kismet did not answer. Maybe this silence was meant as some kind of threat, Akwande wasn't sure. But he decided to act as if it were.

"But maybe we could make a wager," the radical leader offered.

The ruler's one eye searched for the trick. "A wager?"

He's a half-a.s.sed gambler, XX Y, co-chair of the Sixth Radical Congress, had said. He's always entering into contests of skill and knowledge but never games of chance. He'll bet a billion dollars against a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b. One time he poisoned a dude and then bet him the antidote in a contest of memory.

Who won? Akwande asked. He was breathing hard after an hour of returning serves from a state-of-the-art servo-master.

Guy fell on his knees and begged Kismet to ask what he wanted. The MacroCode/Infotel merger was signed that day.

"A bet," Akwande said.

"What kind of bet?"

"The bean farms set up in Mali against my servitude on this plantation." Before he had come there Akwande was unaware of the petroleum subst.i.tute. But he had known that there would be some way that the CEO of MacroCode could save the starving millions of Mali.

"Go?" Kismet suggested.

"No. Ton Li defeated me once. Maybe he's given you lessons."

"How about a contest of knowledge about the topic of your choice?"

Akwande appeared to hesitate.

"African-American history, shall we say?" Kismet teased. "You did teach that subject for a while, I understand."

A moment's more hesitation, then, "No. I'd better not. My people tell me that you have the second highest IQ in the history of such things. Anything that has to do with the intellect might give you an unfair advantage."

Kismet's frown came at the claim of his second place standing.

"Intelligence is highly overrated," the leader cooed. "How old are you, Doctor?"

"Forty-nine last Thursday."

"I'm thirty-nine," Akwande said. "That gives me a physical advantage, theoretically."

"You want to fight for your freedom?" The humor in Kismet's voice was chilling.

"In a way. I was thinking of tennis."

2.

There didn't seem to be walls in the room they'd brought him to. It was called the Serengeti room. A woven gra.s.s mat was laid on real soil among plants that grew naturally. The sounds of wildlife, Akwande a.s.sumed, were recordings or computer generated. But the air--it was real savannah air. How could he create that? Akwande wondered if there was some kind of machine that excited past memories, brought them forward by the use of familiar surroundings.

They had separated after the terms of the wager had been settled. Tournament rules. The first to take three sets was the winner. If Kismet was victorious Akwande would move his family to Atlantis and agree to have at least twelve dinners and twelve lunches a year with the king, whom he would refer to as sire. Additionally, he would agree to work for the off-planet colonization project, which he had never heard of before that day. It would be his job to recruit colonists to sign away their lives on Earth in order to a.s.sure the future of the race.

"The human race," Kismet said with heavy emphasis.

Akwande wondered for the ninth time whether he should simply take Kismet up on his original offer. Generations of political struggle hadn't been enough to fully liberate his people. The weight of poverty, the failure of justice, came down on the heads of dark people around the globe. Capitalism along with technology had a.s.sured a perpetual white upper cla.s.s. Maybe by infiltrating the MacroCode infrastructure he could bring about change. If he took the job he could ensure the safety and future of his children. Maybe he could create an off-planet black colony. Maybe he could build a support station in the Sahara.

For the ninth time Akwande rejected Kismet's offer. XX Y, the radical co-chair of RadCon6, had spoken the truth when he declared that "the purpose of our war is victory, not peace, not compromise."

For his part, if Kismet lost he would give complete rights to his faux-petro project to the sovereign nation of Mali. He would not attempt a hostile takeover and he would protect that nation against other corporate aggressors.

"And if I lose, Doctor--"

"You will."

"--what if I refuse to uphold my part of the bargain?"

"Do you know of Bjornn Svengaard?" asked Kismet.

Akwande did know of the Swedish explorer. His daughter, it was said, had been taken to the land of Home after Kismet proved to have a greater knowledge of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs than her father.

Some months later, Svengaard had been found dead in a hotel room in Jakarta. The death seemed natural, except that the baby finger of his left hand had been surgically removed.

"No," Akwande said. "Who is he?"

Kismet smiled. "If you don't know of him my point would be lost."

When a lion roared Akwande jumped up from his gra.s.s mat. His heart was thumping. He could feel his muscles straining across bone.

He's trying to waste me before the game, Akwande thought. With this realization came a smile. He allowed himself to fall into the deep patterns of his concentration meditation. The image of a man thrown from a ship in the middle of the ocean came to mind. He was swimming minute by minute, year after year. Swimming toward an alien sh.o.r.e or home, he knew not which. He swam over a deep slumber--exhausted, relaxed, and reprieved all in one.

The next morning, the hairless and naked black woman from the day before came to his room and informed him that they would be driving to the Blue Zone. She waited for him to dress and then drove him in an electric cart down a paved road through a palm forest.

"What's your name?"

"Eye."

"The p.r.o.noun?"

"The organ."

"Why do you humiliate yourself for this rich white man?" Akwande asked, certain that his question would disconcert and embarra.s.s the woman.

"It is you who feel humiliation," she said, eyes on the road, more calm, Akwande thought, than stone.

"It's not me," he said, "stripped naked, all my hair shaved off. What am I supposed to think when a woman sits next to me like that? Out here?"

"If you want there's time before the game."

"You offer me your body just like that and you say you haven't debased yourself."

Eye stopped the cart and turned her perfect body toward Akwande.

"In the beginning, there was nothing but cosmic dust," she recited from Beginnings, the first book in the Infochurch bible. "This dust led unerringly to the multiplicity of G.o.d."

"I know his party line, sister."

"But do you know the sister?" she asked. "Did you know the Ugandan child whose parents survived the chemical baths rained down in the U.S.--Sudan wars? The child who was born eyeless and legless, with no hair and only stumps for hands? The child set out on a tiny wheeled wagon and made to beg from wealthy black American tourists? The child who prayed every night into the fiber line that goes to the great Idaho transmitter that sends our pleas to Infinity, G.o.d's fifth child?"

This was Kismet's genius. A direct link to G.o.d. A telephone to eternity. Actually, RadCon agents had learned, every prayer and confession was recorded and logged into what was called the Database of Hope.

"He did this for you?" Akwande asked, looking into her pa.s.sionate and empty eyes.

"Yes."

"Then drive on."

"When do we get to the Blue Zone?" Akwande asked Eye after some minutes.

"We are there."

"But the color--"

"Is an illusion," she said, finishing his sentence.

They came to a stop at a stand of bamboo.

A man in a scarlet robe was waiting for them. He was short, white, and rather stocky. He had also been transcapped. The top of his skull had been removed and replaced with a transparent Synthsteel dome. His brain was visible. Even small vessels pumping blood were discernible. Transcaps contained electrodes and transistors that could deliver impulses to the nervous system. They could also read electronic emanations. Transcappers could actually send and receive messages in a manner that could only be called telepathy.

"I am Tristan the First," the robed man said in a mild tone. "Dominar of the Blue Zone."

"Don't you think that t.i.tle sounds kinda ridiculous? I mean, my nine-year-old would say something like that after reading a comic vid."

"Follow me."

Akwande followed Tristan and was followed by Eye down a slender path of crushed white stone through the thick bamboo forest. The radical leader regretted his bravado, but it was an unavoidable side effect of his mental preparations to play. A silent mantra of rage and restraint sang at the back of each thought.

A few minutes more and they came to a large clearing that contained two professional-size tennis courts, one gra.s.s and the other clay. Behind the courts stood a large wall that seemed to be made from solid gold. But this, too, Akwande realized, was an illusion. Mayan hieroglyphs appeared in dark brown relief at various places upon the screen. These hieroglyphs came to life and took on the characteristics of their totems. They traveled the screen fighting, fornicating, or simply pa.s.sing through one another.

"Good morning, citizen," Dr. Kismet said, rising from a chair at the foot of the giant screen. "Gra.s.s or clay?"

"It's up to you, Doctor," Akwande said, suppressing the urge to add, you motherf.u.c.king b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

"But you are my guest."

"But you are my elder."

Akwande did have a preference, but he wanted to give his opponent a sense of control.

You could never beat him under normal circ.u.mstances, John Robinson, his coach, told him. But if you play to his weakness . . .

"Clay, then," Kismet said. "Last night I sent a representative to your home and asked your wife for this."

Eye came up with Akwande's college tennis racket.

"I had it restrung," Kismet said. "Test it to see if it is to your liking."