To Hold Infinity Read online

  As he walked, he plotted a mental map, predicting her destination, while Rashella's flyer turned away and headed for Lucis City.

  He hurried into his own flyer, a Flengmar SkyYacht which could hold fifty people in its lounge. Before he had sat down, he was already in direct command interface—

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  {{{WingConfigure(MaxSpread)}}}

  {{{ProcessFlight(SpinRise)}}}

  —and causing the flyer to rise and turn, heading in a long arc towards the outskirts of Lucis City, intersecting Rashella's trajectory near her predicted destination of the exclusive Inez Banlieues.

  An involuntary grin spread across Rafael's face as he balanced the tasks of flight interface and his Rashella-link, while creating a third parallel mindset and entering Skein.

  He called one of the small comms-tech enterprises in which he held stakes, and announced he would be dropping in for a visit. The Fulgida manager had only time to stammer her agreement before he dropped back out of Skein.

  It would provide an excuse for flying this way, should the question arise. The business park lay just beyond the Banlieues, coming from this direction.

  Three minutes.

  Fougère Tower arced and spread over lawns and arbours, and ellipsoid apartments—one pierced by the silver dart of Rashella's Gestrax Prime—clung like jewelled grapes to its branches.

  Releasing a smartatom mist to confuse later SatScan analysis, Rafael slowed his flyer down. He walked back into the flyer's lounge, and caused the main port lateral door to open.

  There she was.

  Across a hundred metres of empty space, he could see her stepping out onto her balcony.

  She was beautiful.

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  ThreadFour: .linkfile = HyperVampireOne

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  Eyes met. Souls conjoined.

  Infiltration code ripped through LuxPrime protocols.

  Interface.

  “Rashella.”

  The link was an arrow from his soul to hers.

  Quantum states were devastated as Incarnation ScanWare tore into neurons and plexcore matrices alike, destroying even as it measured, flinging its scan results back into Rafael's cache.

  Hopes and dreams, fears and nightmares, the trivial pleasures and pains of quotidian life, the abstract constructs of intellect and the joys of passion all flooded into Rafael, and the Rafael/Rashella combination grew universally supreme as the discarded Rashella body toppled from the balcony and fell towards oblivion.

  “Goodbye,” he said, and godlike laughter filled his soul, and echoed back from the flyer's cabin walls.

  Glowing footsteps led across the wide canyon floor and into a dark defile. Some tracks split off from the main group and headed up other trails.

  Tetsuo shook his head.

  When he looked again, the glowing traces were gone. Another trick of the mindware in his head.

  But the footprint at his feet was very real. Perhaps the mindware was enhancing the actual traces of people here inside the uninhabitable hypozone.

  He ought to turn himself in.

  The canyon's red-and-mint vertical walls seemed unimaginably distant and infinitely high, as though the world were drawing away from him. His heart was pounding. Sweat was gathering inside his jumpsuit, despite its heat exchangers. Though hot, he shivered.

  A tenday ago, he had sat in a proctor's office, waiting for an interview which was a mere formality, and he had seen the opportunity to filch confidential info. Like a fool, he had taken it.

  “Come into my office, boy.” The cane stung his palm like a viper. “That will teach you to steal data.”

  He jumped at remembered pain. He had been so young, then, and the school's NetNode had seemed so inviting, its security a joke. A mistake: and now, over two decades later, he had repeated it.

  He was shaking, and his breathing was laboured.

  What was happening to him?

  “Damn it.”

  Wheezing heavily, he climbed back up his flyer's wing, eased himself through the cockpit membrane, and dropped into the command seat.

  He tore the resp-mask from his face, and threw it aside.

  Chest pain. He was too young for cardiac arrest. Wasn't he?

  Anxiety attack?

  The pain bent him over.

  PULSE……………………………………97min–1

  B.P.……………………………………199/103mmHg

  Migraine behind both eyes, and golden script flowing across his vision.

  BLOOD GLUCOSE……………………………………0.6 mg ml–1

  02……………………………………USAGE 2.5 dm3 min–1

  BLOODFLOW BRAIN……………………………………747 ml min–1

  “Get…out…of…my…head!”

  BLOODFLOW HEART………………249 ml min–1

  BLOODFLOW LIVER………………1292 ml min–1

  He slammed his fist against the console.

  DO THIS. DO THIS. INGEST GLUCOSE 3.7g

  Cabin walls blurred by tears, but the damned words would not go away.

  DO THIS. DO THIS.

  “I'm doing it!” Hands shaking, he pulled the portadoc from the wall, and slammed its feed-tube into his forearm.

  Couldn't see the display to activate it.

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  The portadoc's display flashed into life, though he had not physically turned it on. Indicators swirled as it adjusted his metabolism, and he lay back, gasping.

  INSPIRE.

  What?

  EXPIRE.

  INSPIRE.

  Getting the message. He forced his breathing to slow, matching the timing of the mindware's commands.

  A gravel path stretched away before him…

  Hallucinating. Just breathe. Under control. That's the way.

  Green lawn…

  Getting back to normal. His cabin's cool interior. Familiar surroundings.

  “Goodbye, Mother.”

  “Don't be late for school.”

  He didn't like this.

  “Who are you?” Thickly accented Nihongo. A slight boy was standing on the gravel path beneath a graceful weeping willow.

  “Sunadomari Tetsuo.”

  “I'm Morio. The school's not far.”

  Tetsuo, clutching the box containing his lunch, followed the other boy. They walked past a wooded dell, and into a cheerful schoolyard packed with primary-coloured climbing frames and slides and roundabouts.

  Oh, gods, he remembered this. Just after leaving Vancouver, because of Dad and his new job.

  A larger, older boy pushed his way through a group of dismayed girls, disrupting their hopping and skipping game.

  “Hey, Morio. Who's the fat kid?”

  “Damn,” muttered Morio. “Chobi's early.”

  There were scars on Chobi's forearms.

  “From chopping the necks off glass bottles with his hands,” said Morio, following Tetsuo's gaze. “He makes them in his father's autofact.”

  Tetsuo swallowed, as Chobi snarle
d something unintelligible.

  “I'm sorry,” said Tetsuo. “I don't speak Ho-gen.”

  “Not Okinawan?” Chobi looked at him with a dead expression. “Too good for the rest of us?”

  Tetsuo could only shake his head.

  “Give me the box.” Chobi's fists were clenched.

  Tetsuo held his lunch tightly, saying nothing.

  “Stupid—”

  The schoolyard's rough floor smashed into Tetsuo's face. A great weight—Chobi's foot, he realized—ground into the back of Tetsuo's neck, then released him.

  Chobi strode away into the woods, carrying Tetsuo's lunch.

  He remembered.

  Later, he had to buy lunch in the cafeteria. He sat with Morio and half a dozen jovial boys whose names he forgot almost immediately.

  When they had finished, Morio and the others got up to go outside.

  “Coming?” asked Morio.

  Tetsuo shook his head.

  “Chobi won't be back,” said Morio. “He'll bunk off for the rest of day, most likely.”

  “That's not why.”

  Tetsuo made a show of helping himself to seconds from the autofact. Afterwards, he sat by a window and ate slowly, watching the other kids at play.

  He stayed there till the buzzer sounded for afternoon classes.

  Loud. Buzzing very loud.

  VSI MIGRATION TEST COMPLETE.

  “Oh, gods.”

  For a moment, he was still there: the polished grain of the tabletop, clattering cafeteria echoes, the smell of rice and fish, the steamy warmth—

  PRIMARY PLEXCORE ENABLED.

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  “No. I want to stay—”

  EXTENDED COGNITION ON-LINE.

  Tetsuo was in his flyer's cabin. Outside, a cold and inky black night had fallen on Nether Canyon. He had been wrapped in code-dreams for hours.

  His face was chilled, and he wiped away the tracks of old, cold tears.

  Musical chimes fell through Yoshiko's awareness. Struggling upwards out of a pool of sleep, she saw a yellow box of light hanging above her. It backed off as she sat up in bed.

  “What—Uh, what's this?” She rubbed her face.

  “Personal call. Do you accept?”

  It must be Tetsuo.

  “Go ahead.” She patted down her tangled hair.

  The light cube swirled with colours, and rearranged itself into the lean, handsome features of a grey-haired man.

  “Apologies for disturbing you. My name is Joseph Stargonier.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Are you any relation to Tetsuo Sunadomari?”

  Yoshiko hesitated. “Yes. He's my son. Is there anything wrong?”

  “Just a business matter. When I couldn't contact him, I performed a name search. Will you be seeing him in the near future?”

  “I—don't know.” Yoshiko swallowed. “He wasn't at the spaceport to meet me.”

  “I'm so sorry.” Stargonier glanced to one side, checking something beyond Yoshiko's view. “I'd be grateful if you'd let me know, should he contact you. Apologies again.”

  The display winked out.

  Yoshiko swung her legs off the bed, and staggered to the bathroom closet, feeling her age.

  Afterwards, not allowing herself to think, she commanded the bed to fold itself into the wall, and forced herself through a stretching routine.

  She wasn't the only person who couldn't find Tetsuo.

  From her toilet-bag, she grabbed a tube of smartgel and extruded some onto her face and neck. While the gel crawled across her skin, she tugged out a new jumpsuit from her bag.

  Its cleansing work over, the smartgel gathered in a pool on the floor. Yoshiko put the tube down, and the smartgel crawled back inside.

  She pulled on her jumpsuit.

  The local police, the proctors. She ought to call them.

  Her toilet-bag's microdoc was blinking a warning. The shift in time zones, and Fulgor's twenty-seven-hour day, were going to cause problems until she reprogrammed. For now, she overrode the warning and slapped the device onto her wrist. Her antiradical femtocyte count was low, and it gave her a booster shot.

  On the other hand, calling the proctors might be going too far. Tetsuo might not thank her for her interference.

  He had sent an h-mail suggesting she postpone her visit. Though, in the absence of a reply, he should have been there to meet her, all the same.

  “Command mode. Personal call to Vin, aka Lavinia, Maximilian. Mother's—ah, soul-mother's name is Luculenta Lori Maximilian. Address unknown. End command mode.”

  Vin came on-line.

  “Hi, Yoshiko. Sorry we missed you. Did you meet up with your son OK?”

  “I'm afraid not.” Yoshiko told her about Tetsuo's nonappearance, and about the call she had received from the Fulgidus man, Stargonier.

  “Stay right there. You're at the Hotel St. Lucia, the one inside the terminal at Cicanda Spaceport?”

  “That's right.”

  “Meet you in the restaurant in an hour?”

  Yoshiko nodded.

  “Don't worry.” Vin waved. “Everything will be fine.”

  The display closed down.

  Rafael opened his eyes and stretched languorously. His bed, sensing his intention, raised him to a seated position, and the mattress slid him to the edge. His gown wrapped itself around him, and slippers crept onto his feet.

  The wall cleared into transparency as he took a seat. A smartcart rolled up, bearing breakfast.

  He sipped from a glass, watching the morning brighten over the steel and stone courtyard. The place was clean and bare, its few sculptures spare and angular.

  Rashella was part of him now, torn apart and distributed thinly through the organic whole that was Rafael. Only the moment of her death and sweet fulfilment was clear in his mind.

  Her death would be ruled a suicide, or misadventure. Still, his flight could have been tracked, and it was best to make sure. He would have to call Federico.

  He pictured Federico's ideogram, and accessed its code.

  {{Luculentus Federico Gisanthro, ident 5γ33G3• {sept Δ2Σ}}}

  A please-wait icon displayed momentarily, then faded.

  <<<MsgRcv LUCCOM213887; cause = SkeinLink established.>>>

  A grassy slope dropped away beneath him. Below, hurdlers raced around a red oval track. Nearby, combat-suited men and women, hair soaked with sweat, were performing slow stretches or lying on their backs, chests heaving.

  Through the SkeinLink, the smell of grass was sharp. Rafael sniffed.

  The sun was already high in a lime-green sky. Federico must be a good ninety degrees east of Rafael's home.

  “Just having a little workout,” said the familiar voice.

  Federico had thrown back the hood of his suit, which was currently tuned to forest green. His cropped blond hair was wet and spiky. Perspiration collected at the insertions of his Luculentus headgear, and trickled down his gaunt face.

  “Such a pity I'm not here to join you,” said Rafael.

  He was peripherally aware of his physical body, still reclining at home.

  “My thoughts precisely, old chap.” A light glinted in Federico's pale mismatched eyes—one blue, the other green—and Rafael shivered, though only in reality, not in Skein.

  “So how far have they run?” Rafael indicated the TacCorps squad members down by the track.

  “Thirty klicks, after CQB.”

  Rafael had seen their close quarter battle training before, and the memory made him wince.

  “You trained with them, of course.”

  “It's rather expected of me, don't you thi
nk?”

  Not really, Rafael was tempted to say. Instead, he laughed. “They look exhausted.”

  “Soft bastards. Must be in their genes.”

  Rafael gestured, forming a magnifying-glass icon, and zoomed in on a face wracked with exhaustion.

  As he had thought, every man and woman had Federico's eye colouration. Clones from his Alpha Squad, their differences from Federico due to variations in womb chemistry and later environment, not in DNA.

  None of them bore Luculentus headgear.

  Rafael waved the icon away.

  “Anyway, here's the investment analysis I promised you. A little country on Salkran Six shows a lot of promise. And the whole Renyarn system's poised for expansion.”

  “So I'd heard. I'd like the details, however.”

  “Of course.”

  A golden tesseract formed between them, as the info flowed from Rafael to Federico. For a moment, Federico's form wavered slightly, and Rafael could see the outlines of his own courtyard's angular sculptures. Then the Skein image regained full strength.

  It was a weakness Rafael would have to remember. A lapse of Federico's concentration at a vital moment might be important some day.

  “This is splendid, Rafael. Thank you.”

  On the other hand, Federico was subtle enough to have weakened the image on purpose. This was a dangerous man to play games with.

  Dangerous games, though, were always the best.

  “I'm glad your people are around to protect us,” said Rafael. “One never knows. Just look at those violent deaths in Lucis.”

  Federico looked at him steadily.

  “There was another one yesterday. A woman in Inez Banlieues.”

  “A Luculenta? Good Lord.”

  “Quite. This seems to be a suicide.”

  “A Luculenta suicide—”

  “Yes. As you said, one never knows.”

  A delicious frisson of fear passed down Rafael's spine.

  “I should let you get back to work.”

  “Of course. Whose Aphelion Ball are you attending?”

  “I don't know yet,” said Rafael.

  “It's only seven days away.”

  Federico had spent the New Year at a thirty-hour party—during the course of which his deputy commander had got married—which had flown around the globe. He took celebrations seriously, a moral—and morale—obligation.