part0017

James’s feet splashed in the thankfully shallow runoff water in the circular tunnel of the Luddeccea Prime’s main sewer line. On his back he carried a pack stuffed with credits. Noa had wanted Eliza to drive them closer to Ghost’s abode; unfortunately, Eliza was too shaky to pilot the hover. She’d been relying on an “ethernet chauffeur” for years. So now they were hiking again, this time without Carl Sagan.

“She’s crazy,” Noa grumbled beside him. Her breathing was slightly labored, although their pace wasn’t particularly fast. “You saw how she thinks of 6T9 as a person!”

James tilted his head. “Eliza is the only person on the planet who has any experience in the Ark.”

“She won’t make it to the Ark! She’s too frail. She’ll be injured and shot … ” Noa waved a hand.

“If she makes it, she may be useful, but if she is shot, you can leave her behind,” James said. Noa might have experience flying the same model ship as the Ark, but every ship had its idiosyncrasies—even James knew that.

Drawing up short and spinning toward him, Noa said, “How can you say that?”

James came to a halt and tried to work out what had offended her.

“She’s like an aunt to me!” Noa said. “A crazy aunt, but an aunt just the same! How can you suggest I just leave her?”

James stared at her. “Because that is her wish?”

Noa frowned. “How can you be so unfeeling?” she hissed.

James tilted his head. He didn’t have any feelings toward Eliza, either positive or negative; but, if Noa was injured, he knew he couldn’t leave her behind. It wasn’t rational, and he had no explanation for it. “I have feelings,” he said. Noa drew back. She took a breath, and then turned away. “If we didn’t have so little time … I would have convinced her not to come.”

Breathing heavily, she continued on the path back to Ghost’s lair. “As it is—” They reached a wide fork in the tunnel. The faint echo of voices sounded from the left. James grabbed her arm and drew her against the wall. Noa’s eyes met his. She didn’t speak or ask questions, but she inclined her chin to a branch off the main line just across from them. It was much smaller, just wide enough to crawl through, and it was at shoulder height. James nodded; the voices were getting closer, and they had to hide. They moved to the other side of the tunnel. Noa reached up and gritted her teeth. James had a memory of helping a girlfriend up onto a horse. Looping his hands, he nudged her with his shoulders. Dropping her eyes, she caught his meaning immediately. She slipped a boot between his fingers, gave a bounce at the same time he gave a lift, and she disappeared down the shaft a few moments later. James followed, the sound of the Guard sloshing in shallow water echoing in his ears.

Heart beating in her throat, Noa sat with her back to the wall in the thankfully drier secondary sewer shaft. She held her breath, afraid even that could give them away. She felt James’s legs brush hers and could just make out the sound of his breathing. Light from the Guard’s flashlights reflected from the water in the sewers, and for a moment she could almost make out his features across from her. A few minutes ago she’d felt so angry at him for his lack of compassion that she thought she might self-combust. That feeling was gone now, and all she felt was relief that he was here and she wasn’t alone.

From the tunnel, she heard the sound of retreating footsteps and a patrolman say, “This tunnel is clear.” The patrol had just missed them. They must not have seen the small tributary they were hiding in. The patrol didn’t have a map of the sewers stored in their neural nets like James and Noa did.

Noa closed her eyes and waited for the sound of their voices and footsteps to fade. Lifting her head, she mouthed the word, “safe?” knowing that James would be able to read her lips even in the nearly pitch blackness of the narrow shaft.

“Yes,” he whispered.

James scooted to the comparatively brighter main tunnel and then lowered himself down. Noa followed. Her arms shook as she lowered herself, but James caught her and she landed gently. Feeling a bit guilty for the way she’d snapped at him earlier, Noa whispered, “We make a good team.”

He didn’t reply. “Thanks for the lift earlier.” She sighed and started down the tunnel. “I don’t know who will be more a danger to the team—Eliza or me.” She ground her teeth. What they were planning to do—well, they had no plan, and little hope.

“Leg-up,” James whispered.

“What?” Noa said.

“In equestrian circles, we call that lift a ‘leg-up.’”

“You were in equestrian circles?” Noa asked.

“I just remembered, I used to play polo.”

Noa stopped in a slanting beam of sunlight coming through a grate above their heads. She had to throw a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing aloud at the completely random statement. Biting said hand to stifle the chortle, she looked up at James. He raised an eyebrow and whispered, “I am glad you find that amusing.”

“Rich much?” she asked, resuming her path down the tunnel. Horses—polo—enormous off-world country “cottage”?

James looked heavenward.

“Should I have told Ghost we could have given him double his money on arrival at Sol Station?” Noa chided in a hushed voice.

James stopped short. His jaw twitched—as it did when she expected a smile or a frown. “No … I … since the accident, I am not sure … ”

Noa’s smile dropped. “The augments … your family … ” Enhanced sight, his appearance, his strength—James’s augments were state of the art. “They spent it all on you.”

James looked at the ground. “I think maybe … ”

Noa put her hand on his arm. “Hey, at least you’re here.”

James looked up at her. Raising both brows, he looked pointedly down at the puddled water beneath their feet and then up at her. “Joy,” he said.

And Noa had to bite back her laughter again. As they continued down the tunnel, her eyes slid to James. She could just barely see him in the dim tunnel. He carried the backpack swung over one shoulder. She trusted him implicitly with the burden. He could have left her behind long ago—but he hadn’t. And he wasn’t Fleet, or Luddeccean, but of all the off-worlder civilians to be stuck with, well, she could have done much worse. And he had that dry wit of his. She smiled to herself.

“What?” James whispered.

They had too many serious moments ahead of them. She wasn’t about to let the ball of levity drop in this moment of calm. Alluding to a silly tee-vee show from the United States in the 1970s, Noa whispered, “The six-million credit man.”

James didn’t smile, of course. But she knew he found it funny, when, in a perfect imitation of the strange sound effects of the show, he said, “Sprrrrrooooooyoooyoooinnnngggg.”

“Ghost’s not answering,” Noa whispered. She was hanging on a rusty ladder about a meter from James’s head, rapping on an equally rusty metal hatch. The ladder continued up to a manhole. Sunlight was streaming over Noa, turning her skin to dark orange. Occasionally someone would walk overhead and Noa would press herself to the wall.

“Maybe I can break the lock?” James said, remembering the train.

“Yeah, I think you’ll have to,” Noa said, giving a tug to the door handle. Dust fell into James’s eyes and mouth. He coughed and blinked upward.

Noa was staring at a piece of metal in her hands. The narrow hatch was slightly ajar in front of her. “Okay, that was really rusty,” she whispered.

Because it had made her smile before, James made the same sound effect from the 1970s television show. Biting her lip, she gave him a dirty look. “Don’t make me laugh—” A shadow passed above her and she pressed her slender frame against the wall. The shadow didn’t slow. Noa pulled away from the wall with a sigh that James could barely hear, but could see. And then he saw her mouth drop open and heard her gasp.

“What is it?” James said, his body already dropping into a crouch, preparing to jump up to the ladder.

Dropping her head to face him, Noa put a finger to her lips, and then without explanation, she slid forward through the hatch; it slipped closed behind her with a soft clang.

Above the manhole someone stopped and James jumped back. “A rat down there?” someone said.

“Damn things hitchhike on spaceships all the time,” said someone else.

“Not anymore,” said another voice. “And good riddance.” There was a sound of retreating footsteps. Jumping, James caught the lowest rung of the ladder with ease, and pulled himself up from a dead hang. He reached the hatch, and saw that not just the lock had come off, but a portion of the ancient brick surrounding the door. He didn’t reflect on it, just opened the ancient door marked with the seal of a defunct electrical utility. Where there should have been the darkness of Ghost’s hideout there was blinding light—and no Noa. Pressing himself to his stomach, he slithered through the narrow space, using his elbows to propel himself forward. He heard the door clang behind him as his head popped out of the narrow access shaft. He gasped. Instead of the unkempt room he remembered, there was brightness, and where the geothermal heater had been was a chrome column four meters wide, burnished so brightly he could see his own reflection and Noa’s as she stood to the side of the entrance shaft, craning her neck upward.

“What’s going on?” he said, pulling himself out of the shaft.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. The light was so bright, so natural, that for a moment James was transported to a memory of a church of the New Era with white walls and sunlight streaming through the roof. He lifted his eyes, and saw the ceiling that had been barely above his head before was now vaulted several stories high. Neat metal ducts protruded from the column at regular angles above their heads. He looked down. Below them was wire flooring, and below that he could see machinery that was eerily silent. Turning slowly in place, he saw a podium with gauges set into it, and a keyboard, much like the one on his laptops. He heard Noa’s footsteps. Spinning, he found her lifting a hand toward the chrome cylinder. Her hand passed right through. “It’s a hologram of the Ark’s engine room,” she said, her voice hushed. She inclined her head to the chrome column. “That must be a holo of a fission reactor … but I can’t figure out what it’s projected on.”

“Another one of Ghost’s creations,” James said, reaching out to touch the keyboard. The illusion was so real he saw the shadow of his hand on the keys. When his fingers passed through the holographic keyboard, he almost sighed in dismay.

From around the giant column came Ghost’s mutter, “Oh, no, that doesn’t sound good at all.”

Noa’s eyes met James’s, her lips parted but she didn’t even whisper.

Ghost’s voice echoed again. “But then how to fix it? Hmmm … ”

Holding out her hands, Noa slowly walked around the chrome column. James quickly fell into step behind her.

They found Ghost with his back to them, staring down at another console, muttering, “That sounds better, but still not good—”

“That’s because nothing good ever came out of a holodeck,” Noa said, referring to a television show they had watched. She gave a wink to James. He wanted to frown at her. The “holodeck” they were in was ingenious, breathtaking, and deserved some respect.

Ghost spun around, eyes wide, nostrils flared. “I’m impressed your education was sophisticated enough to make that reference, Sato.”

Noa shrugged and smiled. “Already preparing to go with us?” Her eyes narrowed. “Maybe you don’t have as many options as you said you did?”

The hologram dissipated, and for a moment James could see nothing. His eyes adjusted, and he found himself in the familiar darkness of Ghost’s basement. Where the shiny chrome nuclear core had been, there was now the geothermal generator. All of the furniture in the room had been pushed to the side.

Ghost’s eyes narrowed. “The Ark is the only one of all my potential escape craft that I don’t know like the back of my hand. I was merely educating myself on the peculiarities of its engineering before you returned with my credits.”

Lowering her chin, Noa glared at Ghost for all of thirty seconds. He sniffled and wiped the side of his nose.

Jaw tight, she indicated the floor with a tilt of her chin. “James, let’s give him the credits.”

James dropped the backpack with the credits on the floor.

“The deposit’s all there,” Noa said.

Ghost looked down at the floor, and then up at Noa. He didn’t ask questions about how they acquired the money, or even pick up the backpack, but James thought he saw a light by the side of his head flash in the direction of the credit-laden bag.

“You’ll give us access to the population data?” Noa asked.

Lifting his gaze, Ghost said, “Yes.” He tapped his head. “It’s all in here … ”

Noa leaned back, and her lip curled slightly. “I’m not interested in some dirty hard link.”

Ghost sniffed. “I wasn’t going to suggest it. I was only thinking of the best way to get the most up-to-date data from the Luddeccean main computer to—”

James’s neurons fired like fireworks on Unification Day. “Up-to-date data from the main computer—but that would require the ethernet if you’re not hard linking into it.”

Noa’s eyes went wide. “Ghost, if you’re using some other sort of remote signal, their amplifiers could catch it.”

“It’s not like that.” He smirked, and his eyes shone. “There is no signal to pick up.”

Noa’s jaw dropped. “You have some sort of landline—”

Ghost beamed. “No.”

James’s mind spun, thinking of the holograms that had to be the result of applications of quantum theory, and came up with another conceivable application. “Does it rely on quantum entanglement?” Theoretically, entangled particles could be in the same state in two different places at once, and such states could be measured and used to communicate between one place and anywhere else in the universe.

Noa huffed. “It’s not quantum magic.”

Ghost’s smile dropped. His lip quivered. “No,” he said, leveling his gaze at James.

“Then how—” James began.

“I use it all the time and they still haven’t found me.” Ghost said, beginning to pace. “But how to get the data to you and allow you to sort through it?” His eyes widened. “Oh, the Ark’s antiquated interfaces have given me an idea!”

James was blinded by a bright flash of light, but then the light dimmed, and he found Noa and himself facing a semi-transparent wall. Between them were two consoles like the one James and Noa had just seen, complete with keyboards. In front of each, the wall blinked with illuminated text: Please input search parameters.

“You couldn’t have made it voice-activated?” Noa said, looking down at the keypad.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to study the engineering systems of the Ark without interruption,” Ghost snapped back.

Noa glared at him but went to the keypad. She pressed down on a key and said, “My finger is hitting empty air.”

Waving his hand, Ghost said, “It still registers your input.”

Noa slowly plunked out a query and the semi-transparent wall of light began scrolling with names. Noa’s eyes went wide. “This works. James, why don’t you commit all the sewer, electrical, and service tunnels here in Prime to memory, and streets and alleys, too?”

“Will do,” James said. His own mental map was not that complete. He bent to his console, but his eyes went through the wall, now filled with names. Ghost was staring at engineering schematics, similarly projected in the air before him.

Catching his gaze, Ghost said, “I don’t just want to upload the schematics to my memory app—I want to commit them to my neurons—and really understand them.” He sighed. “I have a feeling it will be a bumpy ride.”

James suspected Ghost was right. He nodded at the inventor. Noa might not like or trust him, but James was beginning to respect his intellect. The man flushed slightly, and then his eyes went back to the schematics.