House of Gold, page 23
The afternoon streets are quieter than usual today, and the few people I see walking around seem glued to the augmented news feeds being streamed into their contacts or ocular implants. Even the waiter’s attention is elsewhere; he trips on a chair as he brings my tea, and it’s a miracle he recovers his balance just in time to avoid dousing me with the stuff.
He apologizes profusely, but I wave his concern away. It’s not like I blame him. The Abode polls are still ongoing, a new batch of twenty people presented for judgment every half hour or so. Supposedly over two hundred digitized Oloye have already been deleted from the Abode. I’m pretty sure the whole world is riveted.
Hondo appears minutes later, eyes hidden behind darkened sunglasses. His checkered sky-blue button-down is tucked neatly into khaki chinos, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Light-brown dress shoes and a black leather backpack complete the ruse of a harmless filing clerk or an urbane university student.
He even manages to look nervous as he removes his backpack and sits down on the chair across my table.
The gall. He should thank his ancestors I don’t attack him on sight.
He removes his glasses and stares at my nose, like he can’t even look me in the eye. “You’re angry with me,” he observes.
“Of course I am,” I snap. “Your Prime’s fucked-up schemes almost got Adaolisa killed. People are dying because of the war he started, and you helped him.”
He puts his hands on the table, posture hunched like he doesn’t know what to say to defend himself. “I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”
I want to stay angry. Prove that Adaolisa was wrong, that I’d never put anything or anyone above her needs or ambitions. And if this were Jamal, I’d have no problem telling him to piss off. But Hondo . . .
He didn’t plan for any of this. “I know,” my lips say, almost of their own accord. I wince inwardly at my weakness. “Well? You wanted us to meet. Here I am.”
Hondo finally looks into my eyes, and something electric passes between us. “I . . . wanted to say goodbye,” he says. “Jamal has decided to leave the city.”
I draw everything into myself, masking my emotions so well not even I can tell what I was about to feel. This is why I came here, isn’t it? Makes things easier.
“Where are you going?” I ask, a casual question.
“I can’t tell you that,” he says automatically. Then he shakes himself out of it, his shoulders relaxing. “Mostly because I don’t know.”
“Are you coming back?”
“I doubt it.”
There. A problem solving itself. I should be celebrating. “Goodbye, then. I guess.”
We sit there, the sounds of the shiftless streets filling the silence between us, and I begin to fear that the mask I’ve constructed is slipping.
Abruptly, Hondo sits forward and speaks in a near whisper. “Nandipa,” he says, and the way he says my name does things to me he has no right to do. “These last few months have been the best of my life. I’ll . . . I’ll miss you. A lot. I wish . . .”
Momentarily a searing wave of emotion engulfs me, and I’m filled with so much hatred for him, this naive and gentle boy, this foolish, honest boy who would make me doubt myself and question my devotion to my Prime. The hate consumes me, and I try to hold it in my heart, crystallize it into something I can grab onto so I can be glad to be rid of him. But it suddenly melts, and I realize what I’m feeling isn’t hate at all but a deep vein of sorrow that’s been torn open right through me.
I reach forward and take his hand, and now my mask has chipped away, but right now I don’t care. “I know,” I say. I don’t need to hear the rest, because I know. Ancestors, I, too, wish we were different people with different lives, whose duties to the people we love didn’t have to drive a wedge between us. “I know,” I say again. “And I’ll miss you too.”
He smiles, and I burn that image of us sitting there into my mind. In an alternate universe, we’re just two ordinary people out for a coffee.
“I have to go,” he says, and I release his hand.
He picks up his backpack, getting up from his chair. “Take care of yourself,” he says.
“You too,” I reply, and then he’s gone.
I try to enjoy the rest of my tea, but it’s suddenly turned bitter in my mouth. So I pay the bill, tip the waiter, and go home.
PART 3:
ILE WURA
CHAPTER 13:
HONDO
We started a fire in ZimbaTech, and now we’re running from it.
I don’t find out where we’re going or how we’re getting there until Jamal brings me to a marina north of the bay, where he shows me the used omni-vehicle he bought through his broker.
I know what it is by the telltale bulges of concealed ion thrusters on the sides of its narrow hull, a lustrous ivory in the waning daylight. This thing isn’t just a submarine; it can fly, hover, float, and dive, an almost omnipotent machine, hence the name.
The word SEAJACK is printed on the sides of the raised top deck. Jamal leads the way across the gangway to the starboard entrance, lugging two brand-new rucksacks filled with essentials we bought using anonymous cash. I follow behind, pushing cases of the gear we used last night in a trolley cart, unable to keep the indignant scowl off my face.
I thought we’d be going back home after our attack on the Abode, but all of a sudden Jamal got paranoid and decided we needed to leave everything behind and escape the city. I’d gotten used to the comforts of the apartment. And it was nice getting to pretend we were normal people who didn’t have to worry about getting recycled or shot at. At the very least he could have let me pack a few things.
I look around as the hatch closes behind me. Omnis are supposed to be recreational vehicles built for luxury, but the spartan, almost industrial amenities and the overabundance of computing equipment in the Seajack’s interior tell me it’s a custom retrofit.
The glazed cockpit is visible up front, submerged in water, and in the aft sections I see a kitchenette, a small bathroom, and two narrow bunk beds way in the back. The rest of the habitation area hosts racks upon racks of processors, monitors, and other computing equipment installed on either side of the cabin, with a main multi-display terminal mounted in front of a single swivel chair.
This would have taken time to organize. Weeks at least. Jamal must have been planning our escape since the day he gained access to the Nzuko.
I put a lid on my ire and stow the cases away in a storage compartment toward the rear of the ship. Nearby Jamal drops our bags onto the lower bunk bed and begins to undo the buttons of his coat. Beneath it he’s still wearing the pin-striped suit vest from last night.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Far from this place,” he answers.
“I thought you wanted to change things in this city.” I don’t mean it as an accusation, but it comes out like one.
“I do, and I will.” He tosses his coat onto the bunk and rolls up the sleeves of his shirt. There’s enough room for him to walk past me on his way up front without us touching. “But I don’t think my dear sister will tolerate our continued presence after what we just did.”
I watch him settle down at the terminal and fire up the computers. The processors begin to beep and blink with lights, and I hear the liquid cooling systems humming as they come online.
“We should probably start moving,” he says. “Take us out of the bay, then dive. We’ll head southeast for a while, until I’m sure we’re off Adaolisa’s radar. She can’t know where we are.”
“I think you’re being paranoid,” I grumble, but I make my way to the cockpit. As I reach the pilot’s seat, Jamal calls my name. I look over my shoulder. “What?”
Seated on his swivel chair, he fails to look me in the eye. “I’m sorry about Nandipa,” he says. “I know you two were . . . close.”
Conflicting emotions pull me in too many directions. “There’s nothing to be sorry about,” I say, then settle down by the controls.
With its robust life-support systems, the Seajack could keep us submerged for as long as there’s power in its fluoride-ion batteries. Seawater is drawn in and made potable through reverse osmosis or electrolyzed into oxygen. The onboard computer makes any needed adjustments to maintain optimum air composition.
I take us southeast of the city’s coast in a slow subaquatic trek, keeping us at a depth of one hundred feet. Jamal deploys the omni’s antenna drone so that it tails us from the surface, connecting us to the world through a wireless optical telemetry system.
I’ve come to love the open skies and the crisp winds of the surface, but being back in the ocean improves my mood a little, to my surprise. I’d forgotten how peaceful it can be down here, how humbling to have the unknowable expanse of the deep pressing toward me, kept away by mere inches of reinforced glass and metal. It’s like coming back home.
I remain too prickly for Jamal to bother attempting conversation with me, so we spend our first night away from ZimbaTech in brooding silence. Jamal offers me the lower bunk by way of silent apology. I also find a brand-new sketch tablet next to my pillow, and in the morning, I wake up to the smell of cooking breakfast. The plant-based fry-up looks amazing, but I still feel waspish, so I give him a tepid thanks and take my plate to the cockpit. I’m a little annoyed when he follows me to sit down in the copilot’s seat.
“I’m sorry that the person I am is incompatible with the things you want,” he gripes, finally losing his patience.
“What I want,” I say, “is to not have this conversation.”
He glares at me. “Then stop being miserable.”
“I’m not miserable.”
“He said miserably.”
“I’ll get over it.”
Jamal frowns at his own plate, pushing his eggs around with a plastic fork. “You could go back if you wanted. You don’t have to stay with me. I’ve told you this before.”
“Now you’re just pissing me off.”
“You know what? Go fuck yourself,” he tells me, then storms off.
Left alone in the cockpit, I feel a weight of guilt settling over me. It’s never pretty, I remember Counselor telling me. Ancestors. Nothing even happened between Nandipa and me—correction: we held hands, once—but it’s already putting a rift between me and my Prime.
I can still feel the warmth of her hand in mine. I hold that thought for a moment, and then I let it go, promising myself never to reach for it again.
I clean up as my way of apologizing. Jamal has never held a grudge against me, so the air between us gradually mellows. As I finish wiping down the kitchenette, he looks over at me from his seat by the terminal.
“Are we good?” he asks.
“We’re good,” I tell him, and I try to pretend we are.
We stay submerged for another two days. During that time, I get acquainted with some of the systems Jamal installed, including the surveillance station with live satnav data tracking pretty much every vehicle on the planet.
I use the station to monitor the movements of the Free People flotilla some several hundred miles south of us. The Free People rove about the seas of this world in their floating mobile cities, away from the reach and control of the corporate states. Jamal tells me we’ll need to visit the flotilla to recharge and restock, but for now it’s better to stay out of their way.
If I’m not on the surveillance station, I’m sitting in the cockpit with my feet up on the dashboard, drawing on my tablet or browsing the news. Jamal forbids any direct interaction with the Nzuko since Adaolisa will probably be watching for us, but there are other networks from which to get news about what’s happening in ZimbaTech.
The Abode has been temporarily shut down, apparently, which means Jamal’s automated judgment polls are no longer running. Last time I checked, over three hundred minds had been deleted. After what I saw at the Hive, I still don’t know why Jamal didn’t go ahead and wipe the whole thing out.
All three skelems have now declared the Jondolos autonomous. Government forces are preparing to invade, and someone on the Board publicly threatened to obliterate the whole island with a Rod of God. I know what these are; release a tungsten rod the size of a streetlamp from a satellite in orbit, and it will gather enough kinetic energy as it falls to hit like a nuclear bomb, except without any radioactive fallout. Their speed and slender profiles make them incredibly difficult to intercept.
“Aren’t you concerned by this?” I ask Jamal from the cockpit.
It’s our third day in the omni, and Jamal is at his workstation, as usual.
“Nothing like that will happen unless Adaolisa lets it happen,” he answers.
I turn in my seat so I can look at him. “You seem very sure of that.”
“Because I am sure. If the city isn’t already under her control, it will be soon. She can’t help herself. It’s a pathology, you see. She hates anything she can’t directly influence, and if she can’t bend it to her will, she destroys it.” Jamal glances at me. “In fact, I reckon your friendship with Nandipa is the only reason she didn’t take us out at the earliest opportunity.”
I simmer with residual bitterness at the mention of that name, but I’ve told myself that I should forgive him, so I don’t make a fuss. “Adaolisa isn’t that cold blooded,” I argue.
“No, she wouldn’t have us killed,” Jamal agrees, turning back to his monitors. “She’d have us arrested and imprisoned. Or something like that.”
“So what was the point?” I ask. “Why pit the skelems against the government or set up those polls if we were only going to run away?”
“To keep Adaolisa too busy to notice or care about what I’m really doing,” Jamal tells me, confirming what I’ve been thinking all along: he had ulterior motives for attacking that data center. Motives he kept from me.
Perhaps sensing the tenor of my thoughts, Jamal sighs loudly. “It’s not that I didn’t trust you, Hondo. I just didn’t want to risk you unwittingly giving something away to Nandipa.”
I turn away from him and face the front of the cockpit. “Good to know you don’t think I can keep a secret.”
“It’s not like that,” he protests. “All right, fine. Come take a look. I’ll show you everything.”
I want to be petulant, but I’m curious to know what he’s up to, so I get up and go take a look.
“They built this thing like a tower of dominoes,” Jamal explains with a sparkle in his eye. “Pull one, and the whole thing falls down.”
And he’s right. Turns out each of the seven corporate city-states has its own version of the Abode as well as its own supranetwork—that is, an omniscient network like ZimbaTech’s Nzuko. The supranets are closed off from each other to prevent corporate espionage, but the Abodes are essentially a federated network with free communication among themselves, an interlinked heaven for Oloye from every city.
“When I compromised the Abode in ZimbaTech,” Jamal says, “I infected the whole federated network, which allowed me to access each city’s supranetwork from the inside. I still have two more to go, but the rest are now under my thumb.”
The scale of his actions almost makes me dizzy. On his screens are live feeds from the cities whose networks he’s hacked. ZimbaTech. SalisuCorp. Molefe Star Industrial. Kenrock City. Transworld. He still hasn’t cracked into Nkala Interstellar and Heynes Group City as of yet, but I spot running scripts and progress bars that tell me it won’t be long before he controls those networks too.
“What are you planning on doing with all this access?” I ask him.
“The cybernetic menace is worldwide,” he says, not bothering to hide his zeal. “It won’t be enough to change ZimbaTech alone. The other cities would be warned and take steps to protect themselves. They must be brought down swiftly and all at once. It’s the only way to win.”
“The only way for who, Jamal?” I ask.
His confidence falters only for a moment. “For the people of this world, Hondo. Who else?”
CHAPTER 14:
NANDIPA
I am a weapon, designed by my creators to kill with coldhearted efficiency, but tonight I’m a star, and all eyes watch me as I sing my deceptions up on the stage.
In my glittering jewelry and tasseled silver dress, I lie to my audience with my voice, singing of love and sunshine and bright days to come even as Rods of God threaten to rain down onto the city.
The bar’s patronage has grown since I started performing here every other night. Most of them are students from the nearby technical institute, but a good deal have come from other parts of the bronze-tier district to enjoy the bar’s lively new entertainments and, more illicitly, the political discussions that have started to follow.
I move my body in tandem with the jazz from the band behind me. I make eye contact with members of my audience as I sing, coaxing them with my smile to believe that my song is for them and them alone. I’ve gotten used to this, the addictive rush that goes through me when I see the impact of my performance on the faces watching me.
I have grown used to the way their static bends around me, letting me know I have their full attention. But tonight a different flavor of static draws my gaze to a figure at the back of the busy bar, both quiet and inquisitive, and sharp like the tapering point of a honed knife.
My voice doesn’t waver, nor does my performance, but I become less interested in my audience, my senses shifting to focus on this new presence. The lights shining on me prevent me from seeing clearly to the back, so I fail to make out any facial features, but I know it’s not Hondo. I’d have sensed his virtually silent static the second he walked through the door.
I finish the performance as usual, to rapturous cheers. The student activists going next, dressed in green leather jackets and black bandannas as headbands, are ready to take the stage, and as their leader steps up to the microphone, she gestures at me and whistles.
“Another round of applause for the sensational Ms. Lindiwe!”
