War Surf (30 page)

“This greenware’s worth a pile of deutsch.” Grunze sniffed one of the vats. “Is it some kind of research project?”

I caught Vlad’s eye and winked. “Maximal nondisclosure. None of you say a word about this.”

Why did I lie to my own crew? It felt wrongheaded, and yet an instinct prodded me to shield the garden.

Kat plucked more blossoms, and Verinne squeezed the juice of a yellow fruit onto her tongue. Winny stuffed more veggies in his suit, and Grunze slid an arm down in one of the vats to check out the nutrient.

“Focus, guys. We’ve come for Sheeba,” I reminded them.

As Vlad led us through the maze of flora down toward the ladder well, my pals tripped over vines and grabbed the trees for stability. They weren’t accustomed to the Coriolis effect, but that didn’t slow them down. They swung on vines and threw fruit at each other and spat seeds. Totally infantile. They would have lest themselves among the glimmering plants if I hadn’t hustled them along.

The whole time, I kept my eye peeled for errant juves, but thankfully, none of them showed their faces. When we found the airlock to Deck Four, I discreetly asked Vlad to wait behind and be the last one through. I felt oddly protective of the toads.

Had I made a mistake bringing the Agonists here? What would happen when my friends met the Heavenians? I began to have serious doubts, but there was a momentum building, a sort of rising tide, and it carried me along at breakneck speed. My eyesight grew sharp, and my reactions quickened. The Agonists were resources, a voice kept telling me. The glass man flexed his (my) overtensed muscles.

No solar cells brightened the ladder well. Heaven’s fickle power grid had crashed again. So with helmet lights glaring, we descended the dark ladder and gathered around the bulkhead leading into sick-ward’s anteroom.

“I’ll go in first and talk to them,” I whispered while Vlad was still above us in the garden. “Maybe we can get Sheeba away without violence.”

‘Talk? They’re fuckin’
agitators
.” Grunze checked the settings on his stun gun.

“Violence is what we came for,” Kat said as she slotted a load of sticky-string in her pump. “One hundred says we have casualties before this is over. We’ll get primo Reel.”

Winston chuckled and sprayed laser beams at the wall. “Mega-sleek surf.”

When Verinne unpacked her cameras, I saw disaster building. She’d brought a bag full of Bumblebees, and she clipped tiny camcorders to each of our collars. She wanted to cover every angle. “This Reel will be very special to me, Nasir. Imagine. We’re actually surfing inside Heaven.”

“Wait while I go first. If we swarm in there all at once, they might hurt Sheeba.”

My friends accepted that reasoning. They agreed to wait in the ladder well while I went ahead. But Verinne activated the small camera in my collar. “We’ll be watching, and if we see trouble, we’ll come.”

Warily, I touched the wall and listened for vibrations. Sheeba was in the anteroom speaking to Kaioko. Liam was there, too, along with Geraldine and Juani. With my NEM-sharpened senses, I could feel their different respiration rates. All the ringleaders were gathered on the other side of that door. Behind me in the ladder well, the Agonists fondled their weapons. Ye graven beasts, I felt caught between fire and kindling. “This is all about Sheeba,” I whispered.

“Of course it is.” Verinne patted my shoulder. “Settle down. We can do this.”

When Vlad dropped into the well, the others hid their weapons, and I drew him aside. “You and I should go first. We don’t want to start an accidental fight.”

Vlad glanced at the others. “You don’t trust them. I understand.”

His words brought me up short—because he was right, I didn’t trust them. Or did I? Who was I conspiring with and who was I deceiving? Neither? Both? Vlad opened the bulkhead door, and with a quickening breath, I peered into the anteroom.

“Beau, what happens after death?” Sheeba asked me that question the night before we entered Heaven. It was late. We were lounging in my suite at Mira, and she was rubbing my toes with a smooth, round, polarizing magnet. Her question startled me out of a luxurious doze.

“After death? Nothing,” I said. “Your mind’s obliterated.”

“No paradise? Rebirth to a higher plane? Lake of fire, maybe?”

“You just black out.”

She squeezed lotion in her hands and rubbed my heels. “Do we go on dreaming?”

“
Nada. Nichts. Niente
. We cease to exist. End of story.”

“Hm. That’s a funny thing to wish for.”

I jerked as if she’d pinched me. “Sheeba, why do you keep saying that? I don’t wish for death.”

She tickled my feet “Cross your heart and hope to die?”

“It’s no joke,” I said.

“Nass, it’s okay to wish for death sometimes. Everybody does.”

“Not me. Not you. Not anybody we know.”

Her questions were ruining our otherwise magnificent therapy session. My muscles tensed up again, so she massaged my calves and worked her thumbs along the backs of my thighs. Then she straddled my legs and kneaded my buttocks. I groaned softly, and just as I was relaxing, she said, “You look for death in these wars.”

“Wrong. I am totally at one with the survival instinct.” She giggled and bounced on my legs. “And you say I’m full of fizz. Ha ha ha.” Then she tickled my ribs. “You don’t have the slightest inkling what happens after death.” I twisted and grabbed her hands to make her stop tickling me, but she arm-wrestled me down. The girl was strong.

“Swear it doesn’t fascinate you.” She laughed. “Swear.” She had me pinned. I said, “Sheeba, this isn’t funny.” “You think about death all the time.” She squeezed my wrists. “You fear it and hope for it, and you spend molto deutsch running away from it. That’s a lot to feel about
nada
.”

A lot to feel, yes. Megatons. As I peeked into the anteroom, Kat and Grunze milled restlessly behind me in the dark ladder well, fingering their concealed weapons. Verinne checked her video feeds, and Winston covertly recharged his laser pistol. I felt their menace building like voltage.

When Vlad and I slipped into the anteroom and closed the door behind us, Sheeba didn’t notice at first. She was bending over the work counter, studying an image through the nanoscope. Liam stood beside her, draping his lanky arm around her shoulder. Kaioko sat on the table swinging her legs, while Juani and Geraldine leaned against the opposite counter, chewing plant stems. The scene was quiet, domestic. The fluorescent light flickered.

Only an instant elapsed before Sheeba turned and saw me. Or perhaps it was an age. In that immeasurable time, I perceived the contented way she leaned into Liam’s caress, and jealousy sliced through me.

“Vlad!” Kaioko jumped off the table and ran into the medic’s outstretched arms.

Juani grinned. “Blade, is that you? You found Vlad.”

Geraldine hefted her hammer. While Kaioko hugged the medic, Sheeba faced me uneasily, and Liam swept up a heavy scrap of metal from the floor. He would have thrown it at me, but Sheeba touched his hand. “Put it down. He brought Vlad.”

My heightened senses picked up exactly how much pressure she used and how intimately their gazes locked. Liam lowered the weapon.

I took off my backpack, drew out the portable cyberdoc and set it on the table as a peace offering. Liam eyed me warily, noticing my new suit. He kept the scrap metal handy.

Sheeba ran her fingers over the cyberdoc’s controls. “You came back to make amends.”

“I stopped the euthanasia order, Shee.”

“He tricking us.” Geraldine came toward me.

“No, wait,” I said. “The gunship’s gone. The war’s over.”

“Liar.” Geraldine twirled the hammer left-handed. Her right arm hung in a sling. I’d done that when I escaped. I’d broken her wrist

A splint shackled Liam’s leg, and even in the reduced gravity, he moved with a limp as he edged around the table. I must have done that, too, when I tossed him into the bales. His face showed bruises. “Why you here?” he asked.

“Sheeba…” I couldn’t think what else to say.

Vlad met Liam in a hasty embrace, and they exchanged quick greetings. Then Vlad gestured toward the door. “Four ‘xecs waiting outside to take Sheeba Zee.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Sheeba said.

Liam gripped his metal bludgeon and signaled to Juani and Geraldine to guard the door. The boy leaped to obey, but Geraldine didn’t follow the chief’s order. She moved behind me and hooked her hammer claws around my throat. “Let me kill him.”

“He save my life,” Vlad said. Rapidly, the medic told them how I’d bargained him away from the gunship and given him a transfusion. Sheeba shot me a startled smile, but Liam narrowed his eyes and chewed his mustache.

Kaioko said, “Gee, let him go. I told you he a good man.”

But Gee didn’t. When I tried to move, her clawhammer pressed into my Adam’s apple. I could have flung her against the wall with one hand, but my goal was peace, not violence.

So I drew a deep breath. “Heaven’s yours, Sheeba. I bought it for you. All these employees belong to you now. You can do whatever you like with them.”

Sheeba’s eyes went wide—with anger. “Say you don’t mean that the way it sounds.”

That wasn’t the reaction I expected. This was going all wrong. I meant to make her happy. When I tried to explain, Geraldine’s hammer claw bit into my neck and cut off my wind.

Sheeba took a step toward me, but Liam drew her back, and I hated him for that. He shielded her with his body—as if I would ever harm her. He said, “You bring these others to euth’ us.”

I pushed Geraldine’s hammer away. “Stupido punk. I came for Sheeba. Do you want her to stay here and die?”

Liam’s face reddened, and he raised the chunk of metal to strike me. Then, in a spasm of voiceless rage, he flung it across the deck. Its ringing clatter unsettled everyone, and the sound he made in his rich, manly baritone came out more a -whimper than a roar. Words rumbled deep in his throat as if he were strangling. “Sheeba, go with him. You be better away from here.”

“But we found the cure!” Shee turned to her nanoscope and bounced on her tiptoes. “Vlad, you have to see this.”

The medic crossed the small room and bent to peer through the eyepiece. Sheeba jittered with excitement. “You see? It’s a sample of Kaioko’s blood. Those crystals are called NEMs. They made her well.”

Vlad drew away with a puzzled frown. Then he lifted the cyberdoc from the table and activated its memory. “That’s the same thing Nasir gave me.”

“It’s the cure,” Kaioko whispered, almost reverently.

She stood at his elbow, bright-eyed and pink-cheeked. I think she’d grown taller.

Vlad beckoned me toward the nanoscope. “Come and look, Nasir.”

Liam nodded to Geraldine, and grudgingly, the wench let me pass. I squinted through the eyepiece, and there among the pearl and ruby platelets, I saw diamonds. The faceted silicon molecules zigged and zagged in linear search patterns, sharply sculpted, transparent, methodical. As I watched, a few of them linked to form a tiny diaphanous membrane, which folded up like origami to create a multilimbed crystal. This fantastical, jagged creature rolled along in a jerky dance till it found mates and formed a six-pointed ring. As more rings adhered together, they began to shape the first trace outlines of a lattice.

Sheeba nudged my elbow. “I was hoping to use Kaioko’s blood to inoculate the others, but her NEM count is still too low. She doesn’t have nearly the concentration you have, Nass.”

“I’ve been collecting the suckers for decades,” I muttered, lost in wonder. Under the nanoscope, glassy NEMs circled and flashed. They glowed with internal energy. They scintillated.

“There are 114 people living here,” Sheeba said, breaking my concentration. “Kaioko can never give enough blood to save them all. We need a hell of a lot more NEMs.”

I let Sheeba’s words sink in. That was way more toads than I’d guessed. “Dearest, I’ll buy NEMs for everyone if you’ll come away with me.”

She sat on the counter. “You can’t buy NEMs. They’re a controlled substance.”

Yes, I knew. NEMs were impossible to buy without an official, biometrically certified prescription. You couldn’t even get them on the hot market. Believe me, I had tried. But I was desperate.

“Sheeba, I’ve ordered a complete medical lab with all the latest gadgets. Vlad can give everyone the best possible treatment. I’ll—I’ll—transfer these people to Earth if need be.”

“Earth?” Juani fidgeted, guarding the door. “But we can’t live there. Our bones crack.”

“Nass, I’m staying to help. You can stay, too.” Sheeba stooped a little so we were face-to-face. Her water-colored eyes sparkled with reflections from the strobing fluorescent light, and her pupils widened. Dear child, how blithely she wanted to throw her life away.

“What about the four ‘xecs?” Geraldine moved to the door and flattened her ear against the steel. “They got those Nemmy things. Why don’t we take
their
blood?”

Everyone turned to face the wench. “She’s right,” Vlad murmured.

“Yes!” Sheeba’s face brightened. “We’ll get the Agonists to donate blood.”

In reflex, I covered the camera hidden in my collar, but it was too late. The Agonists had just overheard mat exchange. Out in the ladder well, they were watching my surf on their wrist screens, and I could imagine their reactions all too clearly.

Sheeba bounded toward the door, glowing with enthusiasm. “They can give two liters apiece if we draw it slowly. That can save at least eight or ten more people.”

“Don’t say that,” I whispered, dreading what my friends might do. Covertly, I gestured toward the camera clipped to my collar, but Shee didn’t notice.

Liam did, though. He grabbed my collar, plucked off the Bumblebee and rolled it between his fingers. “Surveillance camera. You betray your friends? Whose side you on?”

“I’m on Sheeba’s side.” I knocked the camera from Liam’s hand, and I would’ve taken possession of Shee by brute force, but at that moment, Geraldine screamed and jolted away from the door.

She landed flat on her back, and a wisp of smoke curled up from her hair. Juani yelped and leaped aside, too, just as more electric sparks crackled around the doorjamb. Then the door banged open, and Grunze stepped in, aiming his stun gun. Kat and Verinne stumbled in behind him, firing sticky-string at random, and Winston followed, blasting the ceiling with his laser pistol.

“Grunzie, stop,” I implored. “There’s no need for aggression.”

Grunze slammed Juani against the wall, then zapped Geraldine’s bare foot with his stun gun. Kaioko crept across the floor to her injured husband, and when Vlad tried defend her, Grunze tossed the medic into the stack of benches.

“No!” Sheeba and I wailed in unison.

Liam shoved past me and reached for Grunzie’s gun. The two of them wrestled like gladiators, grunting and twisting, but it was clear who would win. Grunze was fresh, well fed and thoroughly buff, whereas Liam shuddered with exhaustion. With a banshee cry, Sheeba leaped onto Grunze’s back and pounded his head and ears.

“This isn’t necessary,” I shouted again, trying to separate them.

Howling mightily, Grunze flung Sheeba off and pinned Liam to the deck. In the confusion, I helped Shee to her feet and steered her toward the ladder well, hoping to spirit her away before anyone got seriously hurt.

“Let me go.” Sheeba elbowed me and tried to pull free.

I forced her toward the ladder. “You’re too young to die. You hate me now, but someday you’ll—”

“I’ll what? Forgive you?”

Her tone distressed me. When I briefly loosened my grip, she broke away and raced back toward her lover. But just as she crossed over the sill, Kat pumped a load of sticky-string full in her face.

“Don’t,” I yelled.

Sheeba halted, stunned.

“I was just trying to be helpful,” Kat said.

The smart string slithered around Shee’s body and trapped her in a fine, mesh cage. Then it constricted, drawing her arms and legs together till she toppled over. Liam struggled and cursed, locked in Grunze’s meaty arms. Winston shot bright blue laser beams through the air. “Molto plasmic!”

“Don’t move, Shee. That only makes the string draw tighter.” Verinne softly uncapped a sedative spray.

The defeated juves lay still, and my triumphant friends kept their weapons aimed. Grunze planted a knee on Liam’s chest. While Winston waved his pistol, Kat gave me a hearty thumbs-up and reloaded her sticky-string pump.

Verinne held the sedative close to Sheeba’s nostrils, but I knelt and stopped her from spraying it. Sheeba’s dewy face stared through the mesh, helpless and full of scorn. With every furious breath she drew, the strings tightened across her damp bronze cheeks.

I cradled her in my arms. “Dearest, this isn’t how I meant it to be.”

“Sonovabitch.” Grunzie winced and rubbed his head. Kaioko had popped him with Gee’s hammer.

There was a scuffle. Laser beams danced, blue bolts crackled, and in the confusion, Liam hurled Grunze backward against the counter. The young man’s speed astonished me. Weak as he was, he must have been mainlining adrenaline. He jumped to his feet, rushed toward me and got hold of Sheeba. He almost ripped her fettered body from my arms. Insolent prote, his audacity maddened me.

I tugged Sheeba free and circled him, holding her body under one arm like a package. I waved Grunze off. “This punk’s all mine, burly boy.”

My muscles went taut, and NEM-boosted power rippled through my limbs. Zone bliss fired my neurons. When the punk feinted left, I read his intentions and dodged. This was the fight I’d lived for. I hoisted Shee on one shoulder to free my hands.

Then I kicked the punk in the face. My blow could have cracked his skull if I’d wanted. As he staggered against the table, clutching his bloody nose, I almost chuckled. His splinted leg made a funny stumping sound till he found his balance. The kid was no match for me. Not even close.

When he rushed me again, I sent him spinning with an easy backhand. My crew cheered and whistled. But he caught the table and kept himself from falling.