Distress

with a bioweapon days ago. Do you think they would have confessed everything, on camera, if the assassination wasn’t already a fait accompli?. They wanted to ensure that they’d receive due credit, they had to get in early and avoid the rush, before everyone from PACDF to EnGeneUity comes under suspicion. But it would have to be the last thing they’d do, before confirming that she’s dead, and fleeing Stateless.” Meaning that nothing I’d said above deck could have made the slightest difference? Not quite. They might still have furnished an antidote, their own pre-existing magic bullet.

Kuwale fell silent. I listened for distant voices or footsteps, but there was nothing: the creaking of the hull, the white noise of a thousand waves.

So much for my grandiose visions of rebirth through adversity as a fearless champion of technoliberation. All I’d done was stumble into a vicious game between rival lunatic god-makers—and been cut back down to my proper station in life: conveyor of someone else’s messages.

Kuwale said, “Do you think they’re monitoring us, right now? Up on deck?”

“Who knows?” I looked around the dark hold; I wasn’t even sure if the faint gray light which might have been the far wall was real, or just retinal static and imagination. I laughed. “What do they think we’re going to do? Jump six meters into the air, punch a hole in the hatch, and then swim a hundred kilometers—all dressed as Siamese twins?”

I felt a sudden sharp tug on the rope around my hands. Irritated, I almost protested aloud—but I stopped myself in time. It seemed Kuwale had made good use of an hour without vis wrists jammed between our backs. Working some slack into vis own bonds and then hiding the loop between vis hands… which in turn might have helped ver keep them slightly apart, when we were tied together again? Whatever houdini ve’d used, after a few more minutes of painstaking manipulation the tension on the rope vanished. Kuwale pulled vis arms free of the space between us, and stretched them wide.

I couldn’t help feeling a rush of pure, dumb elation—but I waited for the inevitable sound of boots on the deck. IR cameras in the hold, monitored non-stop by software, would have registered this transgression easily.

The silence stretched on. Grabbing us must have been a spur-of-the-moment decision when they intercepted my call to Kuwale—if they’d planned it in advance, they would have had handcuffs, at the very least. Maybe their surveillance technology, at short notice, was as down-market as their ropes and nets.

Kuwale shuddered with relief—I envied ver; my own shoulders were painfully cramped—then squeezed vis hands back into the gap.

The polymer rope was slippery, and knotted tight—and Kuwale’s fingernails were cut short (they ended up in my flesh several times). When my hands were finally untied, it was an anticlimax; the surge of elation had long faded, I knew we didn’t have the slightest chance of escape. But anything was better than sitting in the dark and waiting for the honor of announcing Mosala’s death to the world.

The net was made from a smart plastic which adhered selectively to its own opposite surface—presumably for ease of repair—and the join was as strong as the stuff itself. We’d been wrapped tight with our arms behind us, though; now that they were free, there was some slack—four or five centimeters. We rose to our feet awkwardly, shoes slipping on the algal slime. I exhaled, and flattened my stomach, glad of my recent fast.

The first dozen attempts failed. In the dark, it took ten or fifteen minutes of tortuous repositioning to find a way of standing which minimized our combined girth all the way down. It seemed like the kind of arduous, inane activity contestants would have to go through on game shows in Hell. By the time the net touched the floor, I’d lost all feeling in my calves;

I took a few steps across the hold and almost keeled over. I could hear the faint click of fingernails slipping over plastic; Kuwale was already working on the rope around vis feet. No one had bothered to bind my legs, the second time; I paced a few meters in the darkness, working out the kinks, making the most of the visceral illusion of freedom while it lasted.

I walked back to where Kuwale was sitting, and bent down until I could make out the whites of vis eyes; ve reached up and pressed a vertical finger to my lips. I nodded assent. So far, it seemed we’d been lucky— no IR camera—but there might still be audio surveillance, and there was no way of knowing how smart the listening software might be.

Kuwale stood up, turned and vanished; vis T-shirt had gone dead, deprived of sunlight for so long. I heard occasional squeaks from the wet soles of vis shoes; ve seemed to be slowly circumnavigating the hold. I had no idea what ve was hoping to find—some unlikely breach in the structure itself? I stood and waited. The faint line of light on the floor was visible again, just barely. Dawn was breaking, and daylight could only mean more people awake on deck.

I heard Kuwale approach; ve tapped my arm, then took my elbow. I followed ver to a corner of the hold. Ve pressed my hand to the wall, about a meter up. Ve’d found some kind of utilities panel, guarded by a protective cover, a small spring-loaded door flush with the wall. I hadn’t noticed it when we were being lowered in, but the walls were heavily stained and spattered, an effective camouflage pattern.

I explored the exposed panel with my fingertips. There was a low voltage DC power socket. Two threaded metal fittings, each a couple of centimeters wide, with flow-control levers beneath them. Whatever they supplied— or whatever they were meant to pump out—they didn’t strike me as much of an asset. Unless Kuwale had visions of flooding the hold, so we could float up to the hatch?

I almost missed it. At the far right of the panel, there was a shallow-rimmed circular aperture, just five or six millimeters wide. An optical interface port.

Connected to what? The boat’s main computer? If the vessel’s original design had allowed for carrying cargo, maybe a crew member with a portable terminal would have fed in inventory data from here. In a fishing boat leased to Anthrocosmologists, I didn’t have high hopes that it was configured to do anything at all.

I unbuttoned my shirt, while invoking Witness. The software had a crude “virtual terminal” option which would let me view any incoming data, and mime-type as if on a keyboard. I unsealed the interface port in my navel, and stood pressed against the wall, trying to align the two connectors. It was awkward —but after wriggling out of the fishing net, this seemed like no challenge at all.

The best I could get was a brief surge of random text—and then an error message from the software itself. It was picking up an answering signal but the data was scrambled beyond recognition. Both ports were sockets, designed to be joined to an umbilical’s connector. Their identical protective rims kept them too far apart—their photodetectors a millimeter beyond the plane of focus of each others signal lasers.

I stepped back, trying not to vent my frustration audibly. Kuwale touched my arm, inquiringly. I put vis hand to my face, shook my head, then guided vis finger to my artificial navel. Ve clapped me on the shoulder: I understand. Okay. We tried.

I stood slumped against the wall beside the panel. It occurred to me that if I buried the ACs’ confession, EnGeneUity might still get the blame. If Helen Wu and friends, in hiding, tried claiming responsibility after the fact, they were more than likely to be written off as obscure cranks. No one had ever heard of Anthrocosmologists. Mosala’s martyrdom could, still, break the boycott wide open.

I could already hear myself reciting the comforting rationalization over and over in my head: It would have been what she wanted.

I took off my belt and forced the prong of the buckle into the flesh around my metal navel. There was a thin layer of bioengineered connective tissue around the surgical steel, sealing the permanent wound against infection; the sound of tearing collagen set my teeth on edge, but there were no nerve endings to register the damage. A couple of centimeters down, though, I hit the metal flange which anchored the port in place. I levered the flesh away from the tube, and managed to force the prong past the edge of the flange.

It had seemed like a small enough piece of DIY surgery: enlarging the existing hole in the abdominal wall by seven or eight millimeters. My body disagreed. I persisted, digging around under the flange and trying to twist it free, while conflicting waves of chemical messengers flooded out from the site, delivering razor-sharp rebukes and analgesic comfort in turn. Kuwale came over and helped me, pulling the aperture open. As vis warm fingers brushed the scars where I’d slashed myself in front of Gina, I found I had an erection; it was the wrong response for so many reasons that I almost burst out laughing. Sweat ran into my eyes, blood trickled down toward my groin—and my body kept on blindly signaling desire. And the truth was, if ve’d been willing, I would have happily lain down on the floor and made love in any way possible. Just to feel more of vis skin against my skin. Just to believe that we’d made some kind of connection.