"YOU lied to me!"
"Yep."
"You tricked me, so you could use me!"
"Yep."
"This entire expedition, the people I've met, everything was staged."
"Some of it. Not all."
"And you'll lie again if it suits you."
Qi flashed a grin and shook her head. "Not that I wouldn't enjoy it. You're such an easy mark. But no, we can't fart around anymore."
Dominic tried to prop himself on one elbow. As the dizziness hit him, he grabbed an overhead rail. He was lying in the lower bunk of a small cabin. Indirect light glowed against the walls, and he heard the faint electric whir of a cooling fan.
He clenched his jaw and spoke in a dangerous whisper. "Was Benito part of the act?"
"No, not the boy," Qi said.
Dominic studied her face. He had never been able to read her, and he couldn't do it now. He glanced at his surroundings, a desk with charts, a rack of crystal liquor bottles, the sheen of faux leather upholstery. He touched his left temple and felt bandages covering the side of his face. Memory of a terrible pain flitted through his head, but there was no pain now. Qi must have given him a local anesthetic.
"Where am I?"
"You're in the first officer's quarters," she said, "of the good ship, Dominic Jedes. We thought you'd feel more at home here. The council's waiting next door."
"Don't patronize me." He sat up and gripped the edge of the bunk to keep from swaying. "You've played a cynical game. You're no different from the NP."
It was then Dominic noticed what he was wearing. Crisp blue trousers with a sharp hand-pressed crease running down his thigh. He touched his chest and felt the smooth pleats of a tailored shirt. Someone had dressed him in Nord.Com executive blues.
"Is this a joke?"
Qi wasn't smiling. She was leaning forward and scrutinizing him with such intensity, he involuntarily jerked back.
To cover his confusion, he barked, "Why did you let me get so close to the Net link? The NP might have locked on our location."
"The link is dead. We killed the broadcast last night."
"But the NP picked up an active signal."
"We faked it," Qi said. "We had to make both of you believe it was real so you would fight. That's what killed the demon in your eye." Her dark fingers slid across the blue fabric covering his chest. She lifted his chin and forced him to look at her.
"You could have drowned me," he said. "I was willing."
"Dominic." She brushed her lips against his. Soft. Dry. Barely a touch. It took him by surprise. "We need you," she said.
When he leaned toward her for more, the room swam. His one-eyed perspective disoriented him, and he couldn't gauge distances. He swung his arms to embrace her, but she moved out of reach.
"Qi, I'm sorry. That offer to trade fuel and supplies, you know mat was just a ruse. ZahlenBank will never bargain with prot—protected employees."
"You told us an untruth? I'm floored."
Qi offered him a water sack and a plate of cookies. He gulped water and picked up a lumpy hard cookie, studded with bits of synthetic fruit. Because his stomach was so empty, he no longer felt like eating, so he merely held it in his hand. "I know you want me to negotiate with the council, but—"
"No, Dominic. We don't want you to negotiate with the council. We want you to negotiate for the council."
"What?"
"We want you to speak for us. Go head to head with ZahlenBank, and get us a loan."
For a moment, Dominic could think of nothing to say. She wanted him to represent the miners? He was president of the bank. Had she never heard the phrase, "conflict of interest"? Unaware of what he was doing, he crammed the whole cookie in his mouth, where it melted like sweet glue.
A short while later, he found himself perched on the edge of a faux leather chair, gazing across a polished table in the officers' mess. Gervasia was talking, but Dominic listened with only half an ear. Qi's outrageous request still revolved in his head, and he had no attention left for mundane matters, such as how the genie in his eye had been destroyed. But Gervasia explained anyway. Apparently, when he resisted the NP's attempt to take over his muscles, his epinephrine spiked off the chart and zapped the nanoquans in a lethal chemical bath. Now the fried mites were dissolving in his bloodstream and washing away.
"The next time you urinate," Gervasia said, "you'll be pissing liquid bit-brain."
Still in a fog, Dominic fingered the gauze bandage and nodded. He had to admit, it was a relief to have only one brain in his skull again. He would have savored the blessed silence, but there were questions he needed to ask, and around this table sat all the people who could answer.
Millard, Naomi, Estaban, Penderowski, Sereb, Djuju, Massoud—all the characters in the play staged for his benefit. Qi lounged in the chair to his left, his blind side, so he had to turn deliberately to see her long slender legs thrown up over the chair arm. At his right, Tooksook slid the plate of fruit cookies closer to his hand, and Juanita refilled his executive-issue crystal tumbler with water. He didn't see Benito. Benito hadn't been part of the play. That pudgy teacher was missing, too, he noted. At the head of the small table, Gervasia laid down her gavel and gave him the floor. The council stared at him with open, expectant faces.
What should he say? He tried to formulate a statement in his head, but then a thought struck, and he blurted, "Where's AneZaki?"
"Anzie's not well," Qi said in a taut voice. "She knew you'd ask. She sends regards."
"That brings up an important issue," Gervasia said. "Why we need money. As you know, we're running short on supplies."
"That's putting it mildly," Naomi said.
"Right," Dominic broke in, "you have less than an hour's worth of oxygen."
"Or maybe two more days." Millard's wire-rim spectacles caught the light. He unclipped the ballpoint pen from his hair and tapped at a small notebook lying open on the table before him. "It's a moving target, but numbers don't lie. We're on the verge of catastrophe."
"Hey, let's not be pessimistic." Massoud smoothed his mustache. "We'll give the coin guy the wrong impression."
'Two more days?" To Dominic, that seemed like a lifetime. "How long have I been here?"
No one seemed to hear him. They were all talking at once, and he had to resist the urge to pound the table. Instead, he raised his voice. 'This disaster is your own doing. Your experiment could have worked, but you invited too many people."
"We invited everyone!" Naomi hammered the table with her fist. "We even invited you!"
Penderowski said, "Who should we leave out, mate?"
"Exclusivity contradicts our stated aims." Millard stared at the table and frantically clicked his pen.
"Yes, yes, but we've stopped the broadcast, Nick." Tooksook fluttered his hands for everyone to calm down, then he pushed the cookie plate till it bumped Dominic's elbow. Dominic just managed to keep it from sliding off the table.
"That's right, college." Sereb leaned on his beefy elbows. "Last night, your freakin' NP nearly traced us. We were forced to shut it down."
"That devil in your eye may be dead, but its big brother patrols the airwaves like a demigod," said Gervasia. "Since you've been away, that bit-brain has collected some potent add-ons. It calls itself Chairman Jedes, and it's prying into everything. It even tried to sabotage the WTO."
Naomi jutted out her chin. "Doesn't matter about the broadcast. People will still come. One person tells another. Everyone wants to be free."
"Not everyone," Sereb boomed. "Getting here is no stroll in the mall. There's plenty of cowards wanna play it safe." He leaned back and folded his massive arms across his chest.
A general hubbub broke out then as council members interrupted each other. Dominic smiled wryly. These people behaved just like execs, everyone spouting opinions, no one listening. He turned to trade a wink with the major, but Qi sprawled sideways in her chair with one arm flung across her eyes. He marveled at her ability to fall asleep. She still wore the same cutoff uniform, pungent with sweat. Almost all of the councilors wore soiled, ragged clothes. Only he and Naomi sported Nord.Com dress blues, and for a moment, he felt keenly self-conscious.
Gervasia pounded her gavel, and the group gradually settled down.
"Back to the original issue," Gervasia said. "Why we need money. Given enough time, we can be self-sustaining. But we're in a short-term bind. We need fuel cells, antibiotics and cancer drugs, in that order."
"And I need a pump," said Millard.
Dominic processed this information. In a hesitant voice, he asked, "Does Ane Zaki have cancer?"
"She'll appreciate your worry," Qi snapped.
So the major wasn't sleeping after all. Dominic saw the tight set of her mouth. What was she angry about now?
"We all have cancer, Nick. Even you," said Gervasia. "Look at your right hand."
Dominic glanced at the inflammation that had now spread halfway up his forearm. Skin rash. First sign of toxic exposure. So his executive blood had not protected him after all. He felt amazingly calm about it. After what had happened, a little touch of cancer seemed trivial.
Djuju, the miner woman, stood up and spoke in an even voice. "I believe we skipped over the most important thing." Dominic noticed the respectful attention everyone paid to Djuju, so he turned to study her—and found her observant gray eyes studying him. Her scrutiny made him uncomfortable. After a short pause, she said, "We wanted to thank you, coin man."
"Yes, I suppose we did." Naomi sniffed and smoothed her hair.
"You made everything possible," said Estaban. "You set us free."
"That's why we named this ship," said Penderowski, "to honor you."
Another hubbub erupted as everyone offered gratitude, and Dominic was flabbergasted. "I haven't done anything," he repeated more than once.
Gervasia pounded her gavel, and Dominic tugged at his eye bandage. The skin underneath was beginning to itch.
Wiry Massoud hopped up and waved his hand. "You mentioned a straight loan package at prime plus two. We're willing to go with that."
"We don't want handouts," said Sereb. "We'll pay it back."
"Assuming the terms are reasonable," said Millard.
"You can vouch for us," said Djuju. 'Tell Z-Bank we're good for our word."
"I still think Nord.Com owes us punitive damages," Naomi muttered.
Dominic drummed his fingers on the table. Even now, the NP was hunting them with satellite-based weapons— and they expected ZahlenBank to lend them money? The idea was preposterous. Lending to employees was against bank policy. Even if the NP didn't oppose them, the board would reject their application. That broadcast had been their only bargaining chip. Without it, they had nothing to trade. They were dreaming.
But Dominic couldn't say all that to the grave, earnest people facing him around this table. Penderowski leaned forward and crossed his young, work-hardened hands. Gervasia's blue eyes smoldered. Djuju impaled him with her intelligent gaze. Tooksook slipped a cookie off the plate and passed it to Naomi.
Dominic rolled his head till one aching vertebra popped in his neck. More than anything, he wanted to laugh. This negotiation would be a farce, and they were asking him to play the chief buffoon. He said, "Go on. I'm listening."
In the next three hours, he learned many things. Gervasia did most of the talking, though Millard interrupted with statistics-, and others emphasized key points. Djuju propped her feet on the table, and Massoud jerked at his mustache as if he meant to rip it out by the roots. Only Major Qi remained silent, curled sideways in her chair with an arm covering her eyes.
Gervasia explained how they first came to the difficult decision of giving up their mobility. They could have kept running. That was the safest course. But other workers couldn't have found them, and that was no good. From the moment Dominic Jedes appeared on the Net and gave them their submarine, they knew the world had turned upside down. Dominic's gift was too precious to keep to themselves. They had a duty to share it. So they hid in the largest refuse dump in the Arctic Ocean and sent out their first broadcast.
"You recognized me from the beginning?" Dominic asked.
"Sure," said Gervasia. "We knew who you were."
"How could we forget your face, mate? You're our founding father." Penderowski's dimples deepened.
Then Dominic asked about the signal cloaking. How did they devise a looping echo technique that even ZahlenBank's data masters couldn't break? Yes, it was ingenious, Gervasia said. Someone sent it to them over the Net. An angel. They didn't know who.
The Orgs! Dominic felt certain Gig had sent that cloaking scheme, but he kept silent and let Gervasia go on.
Almost twenty thousand people now inhabited the colony. Dominic nearly choked when he heard that number. Estaban and his team had been running a steady shuttle service to the rendezvous point. It wasn't the factory ship anymore. For security, they changed the rendezvous every few hours. How did they communicate its location? Simple. Volunteers in handmade boats patrolled the inlets and bays of the Arctic coast to meet the newcomers. They used old-fashioned horns to signal each other through the smog.
Their Net broadcast reached workers as far away as Uzbekistan and California. Until last night. Last night, they got an anonymous tip that ZahlenBank was very close to tracing them, so they shut down. Dominic wanted to know about this anonymous whistle-blower. Was it the same mysterious angel who gave them the cloaking technique? Gervasia claimed not to know. Who else could it be but the Orgs, Dominic thought, though he kept his suspicions private.
They moved on to the topic of life support. Food was not an issue. Naomi's bugs were infinitely prolific, and vats were easy to build. It turned out Dominic had seen only one of the many vat rooms hewn into the bedrock below the Arctic Sea. He also learned that some of Penderowski's homemade sealant worked rather well. And Sereb's miners had built an underground electrolysis plant to harvest potable water from the ocean. When Dominic asked how they built so much so quickly, the mining chief laughed and reminded him of the one item they didn't lack—labor.
Food and water were coveted, but air was another story. Just as Dominic had feared, Millard was already rationing oxygen in the less crowded areas. He had salvaged a third respirator from one of the wrecks, and he'd been working around the clock to bring it online. Meanwhile as a stopgap, divers were constructing oversize snorkels to draw atmosphere directly from the surface with a rotary-cranked bellows. They planned to filter it through a set of old respirator membranes they'd found in the junk heap, and Millard thought they could eke out enough breathable air with this antiquated tech to keep everyone conscious—as long as the electrical power lasted.
Power, that was the ultimate key to everything. Power grew the food, ran the water plant, purified the air. The combined Pressure and Jedes power plants were operating at maximum output, and divers had scoured the other wrecks for working fuel cells—to no avail. Ane Zaki had implemented rolling blackouts, and her technicians were building more gas turbines to boost cell efficiency. But that wouldn't be enough. Her group had been experimenting with ocean thermal energy conversion when she fell ill. Now progress was slow. The blackouts were getting longer and more frequent—which didn't bode well for air production, or food, or water or anything else.
As an emergency measure, they'd improvised primitive floating windmills to generate extra power. But they hadn't deployed them yet because satellites would spot the mills the instant they surfaced. As long as the NP was scanning for their location, deploying the mills meant giving up their dream.
"So we need a loan," Tooksook said, as if that were simplicity itself.
"In two days, or maybe less, we'll be forced to float the windmills," said Millard.
"Two days. Splendid."
"Or maybe less," said Millard.
Dominic tried to scratch the skin under his bandage. He didn't know whether to laugh or bash his head against the wall. Maybe he should bash the council's heads together to knock sense into them. Two days? Negotiate with the world's mightiest financial institution, without a single point in their favor, when the only thing the NP wanted was to destroy them? And do it all in two days? He almost hooted like Major Qi.
Then he felt ashamed. These people had been working themselves to exhaustion. His mistake, he realized, was not in freeing the miner but in undervaluing them. He had discounted their ingenuity at every turn. He'd called them fools and fanatics, and he'd accused them of luring people to a death trap. Now he realized that in their naive good faith, they intended to save everyone.
Dominic puffed his cheeks and calculated. "Your Net link is still functional?"
"Yes," Gervasia answered, narrowing her blue eyes. "But if we go onwave, that bit-brain will trace us."
"Can we browse passively? I need information. Market reports. News."
Gervasia frowned. Her suspicions were obvious.
"I won't give you away," Dominic said, "but I can't operate in the dark. You have to let me gather data."
Around the table, all eyes turned to Tooksook. Dominic wondered why. The old man was rearranging the cookies on the plate for the umpteenth time, and he didn't even seem to be listening. After a moment, he glanced up with his gummy, toothless smile and winked at Dominic. His long eyebrows moved up and down.
He said, "Time for your decision, Nick. You gave us liberty. Will you help us keep it?"
"Tooksook, I—" Dominic was about to fall back on disclaimers. He couldn't promise anything. He wanted to help, but the miners had no bargaining position. Every point was against them. Yet as he looked into the man's cloudy, trusting eyes, his excuses failed. He understood the full weight of Tooksook's question: Will you break faith with your father's bank to help protes?
That's what his decision would mean. If he spoke for the miners, he would abandon his father's values. The directors would fire him, that was a given. Newscasters would brand him a prote sympathizer. His colleagues would call him a traitor—or an idiot. He could never hold his head up in executive society. Even his vast Jedes wealth would not save him. He would become a pariah. Worse, the Orgs might use his action finally to break ZahlenBank apart. Divestiture, the hated word. The only thing his father truly feared.
Could he, Dominic Jedes, live out the rest of his life with that kind of betrayal? Compared to that, drowning would have been easy. He could almost hear his father beseeching him. "ZahlenBank is our sacred trust."
Dominic bowed his head and sighed, because there wasn't any decision to make. Hadn't he already offered his own death? He would not cast these people adrift again. He knew them.
Tooksook patted his arm. "The coin giver will not betray us."
I'll betray my father instead, Dominic subvocalized—as if someone in his head were still listening.
Gervasia gave a brisk nod. "Nick, you heard what the president said. You may use the Net link."
President? Gervasia's eyes were aimed at Tooksook. This was so unexpected, Dominic did a double take. Tooksook scraped at one of the cookies with his fingernail. Then he bent over the plate and snuffled loud enough to stir up crumbs. Dominic turned back to Gervasia. "Tooksook's your president? I thought you were in charge."
"You were wrong." With one quick motion, Gervasia slid a small gray notebook down the table, and Dominic caught it against his chest. It was a Net node, the old-fashioned kind with a keyboard interface. She rapped her gavel. "Meeting adjourned. We'll recess for one hour while Nick browses the news."
As the councilors dispersed, Dominic sat still in his chair, shaking his head at this latest revelation. Old Tooksook was the council president? What next? He grabbed Qi's arm when she tried to slip away. "You can't desert me now."
"I'm tired," she said, and her head hung like a heavy dark blossom on a stem.
"Sleep when this is over." He pointed to the chair beside him. "Major, no joke, I need you."
When they were alone in the officers' mess, she drained his water glass and licked her lips. "Do you realize it's two hours after midnight?"
Dominic noticed a large round analog clock on the wall. He'd been out of touch with local time for so long, he'd almost forgotten how to measure it. "What day is this?" he said.
"June 30th." Qi found the water jug and drank some more. "You've been here eleven days, if that's what you're wondering."
"Eleven days!" Dominic whistled. He flipped open Gervasia's gray notebook and absentmindedly tapped the control key. The node powered up and fired a tiny collimated beam to the ship's Net link, which relayed it straight up into the articulated chaos of microwaves propagating through the Earth's aura.
After half an hour on the Net, he didn't want to see any more. Qi sat beside him, fuming and spitting. Earlier in the week, the Euro Bourse sank to historic lows, the Nikkei dropped 44 percent, and the American Stock Exchange halted trading. Numerous factories reported work stoppages, and an estimated 2 million employees were fined for absence without leave. In isolated areas, a few thousand workers were shot trying to escape, and riots ended brutally. But the markets hadn't crashed, and there was no evidence of chaos or looting, not a hint of cannibalism.
Last night after the miners shut down their broadcast, all northern markets came roaring back to new highs, and Chairman Richter Jedes of ZahlenBank was named the man of the hour. Features about his bold market rescue blazoned every news site. Odd, the newscasters spoke of this so-called Chairman as a real man. Dominic browsed video and realized the NP was using a holographic projection for public appearances. Did anyone believe this? Had they forgotten the report of Richter's death?
"That blasted genie runs the bank," said Dominic. "You know this loan scheme is pointless."
Qi chewed her thumb and spat out a piece of nail. "Your Da's vulnerable. He—" She was about to say something more, but an alarm tone sounded, and a plain-text box popped open on the screen.
"DETECTION IMMINENT. TERMINATE SESSION NOW."
"Where'd that come from?" said Dominic.
"Who cares! Turn the thing off!" Qi punched the escape key, but nothing happened.
Dominic clicked End Session, but the little notebook kept beaming an active signal through the Net link. The connection seemed frozen in a live position. "This is bizarre," he said.
Qi lifted the notebook and rapped it hard against the edge of the table. It splintered to pieces, and plastic shards flew in all directions. But the alarm tone was still ringing.
'That did a lot of good." Dominic was already sprinting for the door.
The officers' mess adjoined the bridge, and when he burst in, Gervasia spun in her chair. "What happened?"
He didn't pause to speak. He bounded up the winding stairs toward the Net link. Penderowski was bending over the fragile receiver dish, soldering the rip Dominic had made earlier. Juanita was handing him tools. Sure enough, all indicators showed the Net link was actively transmitting. The NP was sucking data!
Dominic didn't hesitate. He yanked the soldering tool out of Penderowski's hand and stabbed it into the vulnerable electronics in the base. Over and over, he gouged the delicate works, mutilating the connections, shouldering Penderowski out of the way and ignoring Gervasia's commands to stop. Sparks shot out, and when the fine silver mesh of the receiver dish caught fire, it went up in a whoof of black smoke. This time the Net link went dead for good. Broadcast and reception both terminated. Flakes of ash filtered softly through the air like snow.