Overthrowing Heaven-ARC Read online

  At the end of the row, something clicked for me, and I paused. "No clothing," I said.

  "Why? Pri said. "You said her outfit was quite an elaborate affair."

  "Yes," I said, struggling to put my impressions into words, "but it was hers, her choice, her way to present herself to me. She controls tightly and precisely what you see, so she can make your experience be the one she wants you to have. She wouldn't let someone else choose any aspect of that presentation for her—at least not someone, like me, a potential client still under evaluation. No," I shook my head, more certain than before that I was right, "it can't be clothing."

  "Fair enough," Pri said. She pointed to the next aisle, and off we went.

  Tourist crap dominated this row. Holo guides offered miniature walking tours you could share with your friends. Activefiber shirts flowed slowly through images of the old town and many of its key sights. Replicas of statues and paintings sat in piles, holo barkers extolling their virtues to anyone dumb enough to stop for a second in front of the half-meter-high figures. Pri and I didn't need to speak to rule out this one; we walked quickly to the end and turned the corner.

  The booths on the ends of the next aisle offered the same junk as the previous row, but the center was something entirely different: Shaded stalls with craftspeople actually working, making things in front of us. The mere sight of people building things by hand was enough to make most of the visitors crack a joke about primitives and move to the next aisle. I walked forward, curious and happy not to be fighting a crowd for a few minutes.

  A small, gray-haired woman with swift hands and strong arms sat across from a blond, younger version of herself. They worked twin, strange wooden devices with their legs and hands, doing some sort of work with strands of fiber. "Weavers," Pri said. When I tilted my head in question, she added, "My mother and one of my dads were amateur historians with a passion for handmade crafts. I've seen more of this kind of stuff than any human should."

  Across from them, a man pumped up and down on a foot pedal that seemed to cause the device in front of him to spin. On the device was a big piece of clay that he was forming with his hands.

  I walked slowly by each vendor, amazed at the sheer variety of things a person could actually make by hand. I know, of course, that at some distant point in humanity's past we had to create all our products this way, but as close to hand-made as I'd ever seen were goods from a home fab. Most folks didn't even bother with those; mass-customized stuff was usually better and of course required a whole lot less effort.

  Second from the end on the left was a man who was working pieces of wood with a flat-edged blade and a small mallet. Sitting under soft lights on a table behind him were five boxes, each a miniature of one or more of the town's buildings. A handwritten sign read, "Puzzle boxes." Beneath it, another sign said, "Manual, automatic, and DNA openers available." I paused long enough that the man stopped his work and stared hopefully up at me. I shrugged and turned around.

  Across from him was something more familiar to me: A holo dealer. The woman was tinkering with a small machine.

  "You don't exactly fit in with the rest of these merchants," I said. I'd meant to ask why she was there, but as the words left my mouth I realized how challenging and even rude they were.

  The woman dropped her tools and stared at me. "How's that?"

  "Sorry," I said. "I meant no offense. It's just that they're all offering handmade goods, and you obviously use machines to make yours."

  "I paint or sculpt the base images," she said. "I design the effect, and then I use several machines to implement the final design." She waved her right hand to take in all the other dealers on this row. "They're all using tools of one sort or another, and some are using rather sophisticated ones at that. Did you take a look at the looms the Jains are using? You have to know a lot about those devices to set up one of them. My tools are just a little more current."

  "Fair enough," I said. I had neither the time nor the desire to get into an argument over what it meant for an item to be handmade.

  I headed for the corner and turned left, still hoping to spot the perfect gift.

  Fiber artists lined both sides of this row. Bright swatches of colorful cloth carried stickers and miniature holo barkers who explained the ancient techniques the artist had used to create these works of art. Other, more modern pieces twisted and danced in time to tunes only they could hear, or marched and morphed across display tables, taking on the shapes of animals, men, and machines in unpredictable sequences. Children clustered in front of these animated creations, their parents encouraging their interest; a bit of solar-powered moving fabric was a lot easier to clean up after than a lot of the items they might bring home. Many of the artists even touted the ability of their work to teach lessons to children, though predictably those vendors with the greatest emphasis on teaching struck me as the least fun and drew the smallest groups of youngsters. The rapidly changing cloth reminded me of the light catching Matahi's burqa, and the many facets of each piece were reminiscent of the complexity of the woman herself, but after standing there for a few minutes I knew none of these was right.

  "No," I said, shaking my head, "nothing here."

  Ready to move on, I glanced at Pri, but she hadn't heard me. She was staring at a cluster of three young boys admiring a rainbow fabric tank that morphed into a set of three smaller, connected vehicles. I touched her shoulder lightly.

  She looked at me and said, "Joachim loved these." Her eyes filled with tears.

  I stared directly at her, never letting my gaze wander, and, with all the conviction I could muster, making it as true inside me as I could, I said, "He still does. He's alive, and we'll rescue him."

  "It's going to take a long time, isn't it?"

  I nodded but did not look away. "Yes, it might, but we'll find him, and we'll bring him home."

  She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, nodded once, and smiled faintly. "Thank you. We will." After a moment, so faintly I barely heard it, she repeated, "We will."

  In that moment I wanted desperately to reach out, hold her, reassure her, make it be true, but how would she take that? It wasn't my place, and I couldn't be sure how she'd interpret any such gesture, so I stayed very still, my arms at my side. Into my emotional confusion my anger arose, swelled up inside me, filled me and renewed my purpose. Wei had no right to abuse children that way—no one did, no one—and though I couldn't actually guarantee her that we would find Joachim alive, I made myself a promise: I would do everything in my power to make sure Wei paid for what he had done.

  I stepped away from her, signaled Lobo on the comm, and said, "Please tell me my job application has sparked some interest."

  "Nary a flicker," Lobo aid. "Since the standard response, we've received nothing. I take it the shopping is not going well."

  Despite the sense of desperation that washed over me, I clung to my resolve to find Wei. "No," I said, "it's not. I have no idea how to do this, but I'll figure out something."

  "Stop trying to figure it out," Lobo said.

  "What?" I said loudly. Pri turned from the morphing fabric, her memories back on hold for the moment, and raised an eyebrow. "Lobo," I mouthed. To him, I subvocalized, "How else am I to find her the right gift?"

  "By feeling," Lobo said. "You're trying to identify a solution through reason, and you don't have enough conscious data or sufficient experience in this area for that approach to succeed. You need to let your feelings guide you."

  "So now you're a believer in the power of the human heart?"

  "That's a different topic, entirely," he said, "but fortunately it's not germane to this discussion. All I'm telling you to do is to let your subconscious pattern-recognition computation engine replace your reasoning core as your primary computing subsystem for this matter. I adopted the vernacular of feelings because I thought it might speak better to you; that was clearly a poor choice. Let me try explaining my position a different way: You might as well give your su
bconscious a crack at the problem, because you're not getting anywhere on your current path."

  I hate when he's right about people, particularly me, but it happens enough that I should be used to it. "Okay," I said. "Out."

  I walked over to Pri and said, "Let's keep going."

  At the end of the aisle, a heavyset couple were making cups and plates from a gray metal, but nothing in their booth struck me as at all of interest to Matahi; it was too primitive. I smiled at them and moved on.

  We turned the corner and found ourselves again in a river of tourists browsing another row of souvenirs much like those we'd seen earlier. The rest of the center of the market offered more of the same.

  The permanent shops along the perimeter were a different matter entirely, all but two selling only high-end, current fashion, with full-size holo barkers working side by side with human salespeople. The barkers never left their exterior stations, so the combination of real and virtual occasionally led to weird dances with prospects as the holo had to direct the marks to the human for the trip inside. I didn't even bother to enter any of the shops; as I'd told Pri, I was sure clothing wasn't the answer.

  When we'd walked by the last store, Pri stopped, forced a smile, and said, "No worries. This city is full of shopping zones. It's no problem if we have to try a few of them."

  I thought about Lobo's advice. I needed to be alone to have a chance of it working, because there was no way I could relax when I had to watch both the crowd and Pri. I also had to find a way to prime my subconscious for the task. If this were an attack, the answer would be easy: I'd do some surveillance to gather more data and see where the information took me.

  This was an attack, I finally realized, just not a typical one.

  I knew what to do next.

  "No," I said to Pri. "I mean no offense, but you're going back to Lobo and waiting."

  "But," she said.

  "No argument. That's an order. I'll be along later."

  I headed out.

  As I walked away, I heard her ask, "Where are you going?"

  "To the battlefield," I said, but I don't think she heard me, because when I glanced back, she was gone.

  I bought a cream-filled turnover and a fruit drink from Poohgi and sat at the table I'd shared with Matahi. I had to wait a few minutes for it to come free, but when it did, I grabbed it and perched in the chair she'd occupied. I tried my best to think like her, but I quickly found myself tied in mental knots.

  Lobo was right: I needed to feel more than think.

  I leaned back in the chair and slowly surveyed the square. Planters full of flowers. A large, paved center through which people moved but never stayed, a space that existed only to connect other spaces. All the buildings, vertical shelters standing cheek to jowl, different in intent and design and color but ultimately, as she had observed, all the same: Big boxes that separated us into groups, groups that offered paths to people, people who sought ways to meet their needs. So many different people, so many varied mini worlds, all looking down on the same square, all so much alike, all separate. Matahi, like the buildings, offered to those she accepted a path to the fulfillment of at least some of their needs.

  Something snapped into focus inside me.

  I nodded my head and smiled. Even if she didn't like it, at least in that moment it felt right to me.

  I signaled Lobo over the comm. "I figured it out." I paused. "I think."

  "Care to explain how?" he said.

  "By taking your advice."

  "And your idea is?"

  "One I'll tell you only after the fact," I said. Though I liked it now, I wasn't confident enough to be willing to risk the inevitable ridicule from him if I proved to be wrong. "Keep Pri aboard until I return. Contact Matahi's avatar and book me a meeting with her as soon as possible, ideally tomorrow. Let her know I have the gift."

  "Do you?" Lobo said.

  "No," I said, "but I will soon. Out."

  I headed back to the square full of street vendors. The day was fading, and I had multiple stops to make.

  Chapter 19

  The evening crowds streaming into the old city thinned as I neared the landing facility where Lobo awaited me. I'd worked long days at physical labor that had left me less tired. All I wanted to do was sleep.

  "So show us," Lobo said the moment I reached the pilot area in his front.

  "You have to," Pri said, nodding her head in agreement. "It's only fair."

  I clenched the handle of the plain black carrying case harder and shook my head. "No. I'm sorry, but no one sees it before her."

  "What?" Lobo said.

  "That makes no sense," Pri said. "I helped you shop, so I deserve a look. Besides, don't you want to know how we think she'll react?"

  "That's exactly what I don't want to know," I said. My confidence had ebbed considerably on the walk back here, to the point that any negative comment might kick me into shopping despair. "I followed Lobo's advice, and I'm done."

  Pri opened her mouth to speak again, but I held up my free hand and shook my head.

  "Lobo," I said, "was Matahi willing to meet tomorrow?"

  "Yes. You have an appointment in the middle of the afternoon at the same location. Her avatar said to reserve four hours or not to come at all."

  "That's a good sign, isn't it?" I said.

  "Not really. It also said that you should be prepared to leave in five minutes if your gift is unacceptable."

  "What does she have that makes men put up with this?" Pri said.

  "I honestly don't know. She showed so little of herself—physically and emotionally—that I came away from our meeting understanding almost nothing about her."

  "I don't understand," Pri said. "Why would anyone go to all this trouble for someone who gives so little?"

  I considered trying to explain Matahi's appeal, but I hadn't experienced enough of it to be able to do so. That she was compelling was obvious, even to me, but far less clear was why.

  I shook my head. I was losing a contest I hadn't even realized I'd entered. How did this happen to me?

  "All I know," I said, "is why I have to go to all this trouble: To see if we can learn her location so we can snatch Wei the next time he visits her. That's what matters; right?"

  "Of course," Pri said.

  Her tone and expression made it clear that other things were also important and that I was missing the point, but I didn't care; I'd take any chance to get out of this conversation.

  "I'm exhausted, and I'm going to bed. Lobo, take us somewhere safe." I headed down the hall to my quarters and didn't look back. As I turned into the small room, I caught a glimpse of Pri, standing at Lobo's front, staring at me with an expression I couldn't decipher.

  When the door closed behind me, I slid the package under my cot and crawled on top of the bed, ready to fall asleep.

  "You could show me now that it's just the two of us," Lobo said. "I'd be more than willing to look and not comment. You must understand that some curiosity on both my part and Pri's is completely natural under the circumstances."

  "We'll talk in the morning," I said.

  "Well," Lobo said, "if you're determined to be that way, then I suppose there's nothing I can say to change your mind."

  "No," I said, "there's not. I'll talk to you in the morning."

  Lobo let me sleep in peace, so I stayed in my cot until it was almost noon. When I finally got up, I felt physically great. Lobo stayed quiet while I exercised, and he even left me alone while I cleaned myself. The moment I was dressed, however, he started.

  "You're obviously ready to begin your day, so show me the present."

  "No." With a clear morning head I trusted my instincts of the previous day even less than when I'd entered Lobo last night. "Let's discuss something else."

  "And what would that be?"

  "Your relationship to Wei, which you told me before was quite a complex topic."

  "Given your refusal to show me your gift for Matahi, why should I share
that story with you?"

  He was in rare form today. "Because I own you," I said. "You're programmed to follow your owner's orders, so follow mine: Explain your relationship to Wei."

  "As I've mentioned in the past," Lobo said, "our relationship is not so cut and dry. Nonetheless, you did me a favor by agreeing to go after him, so it's only fair that I repay that debt with an explanation."

  "What do you mean our relationship isn't cut and dry?"

  "Do you want the story or not?"

  "Yes." He was already frustrating me, so I decided to take any victory I could get. I'd pursue the issue of our relationship some other time.

  A holo of Lobo's pilot area popped into view by my door. Blood coated his walls. Body parts were scattered around the room as if someone had fed a squad of men into a very coarse grinder. His central weapons control complex gaped open, dust and blood and what I think was part of an arm filling it. A few seconds later, flames burst out of it.

  "This scene occurred less than a minute after the explosion that damaged me," Lobo said. "As you can see, Lieutenant Franks didn't survive his poor decision."

  "Neither did anyone else in his unit."

  "True. I was also a casualty, though parts of me, such as the emergency recorders, remained functional."

  "You've told me before," I said. "The blast ruined your weapons control complex."

  "It did a great deal more damage than that," Lobo said. "The fire spread through my computing systems and destroyed almost all of my active computation engines and significant chunks of my backups. I was effectively brain-dead; even the archives that remained were inaccessible."

  "Did it hurt?" Even as I asked the question I felt silly for doing it, but I spend so much time with Lobo and he so often seems human that I couldn't help but wonder.

  "Not as I understand pain," Lobo said, "though I thank you for the courtesy of asking."