War Surf (26 page)

A quiet noise vibrated through the steel. An echo of steps. Someone was walking down the corridor toward my cell. I wiped wetness from my cheeks and ducked into the far corner, blinking my one good eye and waiting as the door scraped open. There in the half-light stood Juani. No mistaking his awkward teenaged frame, though shadows hid his face. He propped the door open with his bare toe and placed a tray on the floor. Then he turned to go.

“Juani, wait. Talk to me. What did they tell you?” Without my dental implants, the sentences slurred together. Maybe I hoped to trick Juani into letting me out. Maybe I feared the loneliness.

He held the door with his hand. “Gee showed me your picture, blade. Why you want to euth’ us? We living as fast as we can.”

I drew the folds of the shredded blanket around me. Juani rubbed his thumb back and forth over a flange on the door. When he saw I couldn’t answer, he stepped over the sill to leave.

“How’s Kaioko?” I blurted. “Did she—go to the garden yet?”

Juani spoke over his shoulder. “Kaioko still breathe.” Then he shut the door and left.

I threw off the blanket and pounded the steel door. Kaioko. Juani. The girl with the amoeba birthmark. “Murderer,” Sheeba said.

She thought euthanasia was evil. Yet in my day…in my time…

“Emotional blocks,” I said aloud to the empty darkness. “Deepra, you’re the ace of war surfers. Who gives a flying fuck about a handful of teenaged protes?”

I did. I cared. There, I said it. Damn the Reel. Damn my soul to hell.

I curled on the floor and buried my head in my arms, but I could not forget the scorn in Sheeba’s eyes or the taste of lychee nuts. The gunship’s noisemakers started up another racket, and Heaven’s rusty walls creaked. On a higher deck, something wrenched loose with a loud popping screech. It sounded as if another piece of the hull had come loose. For several seconds, the entire factory reverberated, and I held my breath. Then, silence fell.

I crawled across to Juani’s tray. In the darkness, my hands closed on a water sack and a shallow dish that held something knobby and firm—broccoli. I stuck a piece in my mouth, longing for that fresh sweet taste. But I couldn’t chew. I couldn’t remember where I’d dropped my teeth.

And then, ye gods, I saw something few people ever get to see. I saw that my time had passed.

Death is an autoimmune disease. Medical researchers have confirmed that fact finally. After learning the keys to our biocode and defeating all the antagonistic little d’s of disease, disorder and decay, the physicians still can’t put an end to Death. We’ve added centuries, but immortality remains beyond our outstretched fingertips. Perhaps our bodies finally die from a lack of distraction. With no more ailments and infections to battle, the human organism grows bored and launches an attack on itself. So the true cause of Death is boredom. This is my theory, at least.

Consider an example: I’ve been sitting here all this while, telling you my story, waiting in the anteroom to sick-ward. This is the last evening of my life. A few hours ago, one of Provendia’s noisemakers knocked out the last functioning solar panel and blew Heaven’s lights again, so my only illumination is this emergency fluorescent tube. I’m waiting for Heaven to pass out of Earth’s shadow into the sun so Juani can fire up his thermionic generator and recharge our grid. As soon as that happens, I will die. You’d think I’d be making the most of my remaining time.

Picture me sitting cross-legged on the anteroom floor, listening for noises, sporadically recording this story in my implanted memory stick, and at times dreading the end. I’ve been trying to understand Sheeba. Yet now and here in this fleeting instant, all I can think about is that damned fluorescent tube blinking over my head. It makes my skin look green, and Ican’t shut it off. I’m sick of waiting. I crack my knuckles. I try yoga. In thwarted fury, I consider ramming my head against the wall to get it over with. You see what I mean about boredom?

Sheeba said we make up our past like a fairy tale. Her words inspire me to get on with this pack of lies. My life, yes.

“Murderer.” Her judgment rang through the cold air of my cell on Deck One, and between alternate bouts of wretched self-loathing and total boredom, I slept. In Heaven, time has no measure. More than once, I awoke to Provendia’s gunfire. The rusty hull trembled and grated, but the barrages sounded casual, almost languid. Thank the gods, they didn’t use the sonic lathe again, only the noise-makers. The gunship captain was rinding this war too tame. It offered no opportunity for career advancement. I dozed again.

My final round of sleep in that dark, locked cell must have lasted several hours because I awoke with a feeling of satiety. My first anguished thoughts were of Sheeba. Yet it was clear that my body had rested long and well. Not only that—my broken cheek had healed. I explored it with my tongue. Bizarre.

Then I pressed my ribs where Geraldine had kicked me—and felt no pain! The fractures had mended. And the swelling in my bloodied nose had gone down. I found my teeth and fitted them into my gums. Then I touched my face—and cried aloud. Smooth skin. Taut and springy with youthful elastins. I jumped to my feet, found the direction of spin by instinct, and bounced on my toes like a giddy adolescent. The glass man had made me whole again.

My thumb projected a stream of glowing icons, and I scanned them eagerly, learning what had happened. Incredible as this sounds, my injured false eye had regenerated. All my dormant NEMs were bringing themselves back online!

Cut off from the Net, with no access to their handlers, their hard-coded urge to heal drove them to improvise. Whole herds of the little NEMs were teaching themselves independence and developing work-arounds. My liver enzymes had moved back to normal. My T-cells were leveling out. This old body had revived without doctors’ orders.

And what about this joy I felt, this confident new hope? Where did it spring from? Sheeba still hated me, and doubdess, the juves still intended to fling me into the void. How could a few hours of sleep so completely change my wretchedness to cheery optimism? This attitude was false.

This buoyant mood had to be a product of NEM secretions in my brain. Still, they were damned good drugs, and they charged me with vigor. No more self-pity for Nasir Deepra. Time to get moving!

There was bound to be a way to break Sheeba’s addiction to this war zone, and I absolutely knew I would find it After devouring the water and sweet veggies someone had left on a tray, I checked to see if the door was locked. Yes, but the mechanism was a simple latch. My brain must have picked up IQ during the night, and I could see at once how to defeat the latch. Okay, so I needed something thin and narrow to slide through and—my hand closed on the ankh zippered in my longjohn pocket. Sheeba had given me the charm for good luck. This had to be a sign mat I was destined to triumph.

The juves, the euthanasia order, my dismal insights from the night before, all those memories faded. No recollections distracted me from the present moment. I slipped the little talisman under the latch—gently, steadily—and with a click, the lock fell open.

Out in the curving corridor, I looked both ways and saw no one. Instinct told me to seek food. The NEMs had synthesized quite a variety of compounds to heal my injuries, and my organism needed replenishment. I recalled hoisting cartloads of food and water up to the ‘pactor room on Deck Four, and although the memory had no context, I didn’t stop to wonder why. I headed for the food.

With a stealthy, war-surfer tread, I cycled up through the ladder segments, listening to the walls with my fingers. My nerve endings browsed vibrations and fed back eerie tactile images of rooms, objects, humming machinery, humans. It was as if I could use sound waves to see through steel. A group of juveniles conspired in the solar plant. I slipped by, undetected.

On Deck Four, I immediately recognized the ‘pactor room. Where did that other door lead? I recalled an anteroom, but I didn’t waste time thinking about it. The ‘pactor room held a row of ordinary presses that compacted pro-glu bales into dense, hard cubes. And stacked on the floor, on top of the machines, and in every conceivable niche were the provisions. I tore open the first water sack within reach and gulped.

A familiar Provendia logo branded every bag of hard crackers and can of stew. I could have torn the cans open with my teeth, but the glass man wanted something better to eat than that pro-glu crap. The lid to one of the compactors hung open, so I looked inside. And what I saw made me salivate like a beast. The glass man recognized what was in there. Seeds.

Mega-kilos of seeds from the garden. Hard round seeds. Soft pulpy ones. Black. White. Varicolored. Silky. Winged. Big as my thumb. Fine as sand. I plunged in, up to my elbows, scooped up great handfuls and let them slide through my fingers. My mouth craved to taste them. I stuffed my cheeks and crunched the delicious kernels.

See me hunching over the compactor, chomping, chewing, slobbering in ecstasy. How the glass man relished the nutty flavors, as spicy and carnal as grains of Earth. Half-chewed husks dribbled down my chin as I closed my eyes and feasted. And on my tongue, the fetal DNA unreeled.

I sampled. I gorged. My belly swelled and ached, and still, the glass man wanted more. Deep hungers drifted toward consciousness. I ate more, fueling more desire for novel strains of DNA. As the unfamiliar compounds hit my bloodstream, my energy surged, and there came a moment when ideas churned and clicked into place. Mine or the glass man’s? I’m still not sure. It was as if the flavors catalyzed a transmutation. A plan formed at the back of my brain: Escape and seek resources, then return.

I pushed back from the seeds as if waking from a trance. Did I stop to wonder about this abnormal binge? Not for a moment I thought with my feet and made straight for the ladder well.

Someone’s ragged old EVA suit still draped my body, and the air gauge still read almost full. I slapped my hip and found a collapsible helmet dangling from my belt. The gloves were wadded in my pocket. Outside, a ship waited, and on that ship were resources I needed to break Sheeba free. That’s all I could remember. I headed for the airlock. No more pandering to caution or looking for thrusters. I would space-dive to the ship and take command. One, two, three, like clockwork.

Not for days had I experienced this level of mental clarity. Deck Two had an airlock exit, but juveniles were there, plotting in the solar plant. How could I slip by them? Then, like flipping a switch, I recalled a full-blown photographic memory of the A13 schematics. The engineers had installed an airlock in the cargo bay. Of course.

I dropped down through the ladder segments to Deck One, silent as breath, and opened the door to the cargo bay. As soon as the door fell open, the sugary reek of pro-glu wafted into the ladder well. I stood in the doorway, examining the bales stacked on top of the hidden airlock.

A slight vibration warned me that someone was coming down from Two. Instantly, I stepped into the cargo bay, pushed the door closed and listened. My hearing had sharpened. I could sense when the person dropped down the ladder and moved away through the opposite door. From the light step, I knew the person was small, probably a child gone astray. Did I waste time questioning why a child would be here? My logic centers ticked through possibilities like a computer. Then I forgot the child and focused on the airlock.

In full Earth gravity, I shifted the bales aside—never wondering how I could lift objects more than twice my weight. There in the sugary dust, the rim of the airlock gleamed like a jar lid. One full pallet still blocked my way, so I leaned hard and slid it across the deck.

My mind worked at light-speed, yet how could I fail to notice the blind spots? Familiar details churned like disconnected motes in a fog. Only later did I piece together the clues and understand the full scope of my transmutation. Without my doctors issuing restraining orders through the Net, my NEMs were reinventing themselves on the fly, and for the first time in their constricted little lives, they probed new healing frontiers. Though I didn’t realize it then, my brain NEMs had adapted one of my own native thought patterns, a behavior long established in war surfs. The crystal bugs were editing my memories to safeguard me from the Reel.

They did a first-rate job, too. They eliminated every troubling doubt,’ every diversion. I felt blissfully at one with the zone. Those NEMs kept me preter-focused, and you should have seen me shoving that pallet out of the way. I performed like a superhero.

I tell you this now, but at the time, I didn’t even pause to consider it. I wanted only to get outside and find help for Sheeba. The chemicals of zone rush charged through my flesh and saturated my blood. With rapid grace, I donned the old helmet and gloves, opened the airlock and jumped in. I was just about to close the hatch and start the airlock cycling, when an instinct stopped me. Something looked out of place.

My artificial eyes roved everywhere, scanning for anomalies. Aha. Someone had jimmied the compressor vent. I could almost read the oily fingerprints left on the metal grill. In one confident stroke, I ripped off the vent cover and recognized the booby trap inside. A canister of lethal gas.

It was connected to the vent’s control valve through a snarl of primitive copper wire. I recalled someone saying how airlocks could be rigged as execution chambers. With uncanny speed, I calculated how to disable the triggering device. Then I did something inexplicable—yet it seemed right. I took off my gloves, nicked my right index finger on the sharp hatch rim, and squeezed a few drops of blood onto the copper wires. At the time, this insane act didn’t faze me, but only now, after long and terrible thought, can I explain it to you. The glass man viewed that booby trap as a cancer, and he deployed those drops of NEM-rich blood to “cure” it.

While I curled inside the airlock, watching my blood seep among the wires—this may sound incredible, but I swear it’s true—I could perceive the movement of each individual nanoelectronic machine. Not through human eyesight, no, but through some other species of perception altogether, a sort of bond or quantum entanglement. Somehow, I
knew
what my NEMs were doing. They were dissolving the wire, molecule by molecule—safeguarding my health. And the little suckers worked fast.

Then I heard another noise in the ladder well. A squeaking door hinge. A muted footstep that only my meta-normally enhanced hearing could pick up. That child was coming back. After two more footsteps, I extrapolated that the child had thin bones, narrow arches and one supinated ankle. The door to the cargo bay wasn’t completely sealed, and through the sugary reek of product, I deciphered a fine pungency of teenaged female sweat. I eased out of the airlock, leaving my small bloody army to do its work on the wires, and I tiptoed toward the door.

Something about the child’s gait felt familiar. I knew the sound of that breath. For an instant, my brain went on pause as—inconceivable as this sounds—my NEMs split in factions and debated. The mites were trying to resolve whether this girl would…

• a. remind me of the Reel and therefore distract me, or
  
• b. provide me with crucial need-to-know data.
  

The b’s won, and I identified the child three seconds before she pushed open the cargo bay door.

“Kaioko.”

She stepped over the sill, batting her tiny, bright eyes. She looked ghostly. “Hello, sir. You go spacewalk?”

At the sight of this resurrected girl, my mental concentration fell apart like a depolarized array. Suppressed memories came rioting back in one befuddling swirl. I tugged off my helmet and lowered myself to the floor.

Kaioko glanced at the open airlock, the vent cover lying askew, the bales of product scattered helter-skelter. She registered each impression with a slight nod. Then she touched my cheek where the bone was still knitting back together.

“What are you doing here?” I managed to wheeze.

She blinked her beady eyes. “Sir, I not sure. I feel—changed.”

Changed was an understatement. The last time I saw Kaioko, she’d been strapped to a mattress in sick-ward, lost in a coma. Now here she was standing in the cargo bay like a spectral vision, interrupting my escape. She must have climbed all the way down the ladders without assistance. Her head scarf was gone, and a fine black fuzz of new hair covered her scalp.

“I knew you be wanting to leave, sir, so I came.” She tottered a little unsteadily on her feet.