Nexus by Robert Boyczuk (best large ebook reader txt) 📕

Then a strange thing happened.

Yilda blinked, barely a flicker of his eyes. Immediately Hebuiza clamped his jaw shut and went rigid, as if he’d been slapped. His face became a flat, indecipherable mask. Sav stared at the dark cable connecting the two Facilitators, wondering what had just passed through it.

“Their was a woman,” Sav said, turning back to Josua. “A woman named Vela.”

“I’m afraid she’s dead,” Penirdth said. “Took a knife to her wrists just after we made orbit. Made a god awful mess in zero-gee….”

Sav remembered the darkened stasis cell for which Vela had been designated as the contact. It had contained another woman, a dozen years younger, with a different family name. Probably a lover.

“She had the right idea,” Binlosson spat out, his voice a nasal whine. He jerked upright in his seat and glared at Penirdth. “We’re all dead anyway. At least she chose her own time.”

“No,” Penirdth said. “She acted too hastily.”

“She understood,” Ruen said with vehemence. “The Dissolution is at hand.”

“Thank you, but your opinion wasn’t asked for, patrix,” Penirdth said. Though his words were quiet, his contempt for the holy man was evident.

The patrix‘s face darkened and his arm dropped; he fixed Penirdth with a indignant stare. “You’d do well to prepare yourself, Captain.” Looking around the table, he added, “You all would.” His gaze settled on Mira as if there was something particularly significant in his words for her.

Mira face colored; she lowered her eyes.

Binlosson snorted his derision, a nasally explosion of pent up breath. “Hah! Tell your tales to someone who cares.”

“Blasphemer,” Ruen hissed at the smaller man.

“Quiet!” Penirdth said loudly. “We’re not here to argue about the validity of the Dissolution.” He looked from one man to the other. Binlosson slouched even further down in his chair, but he still seemed agitated; the muscles in Ruen’s jaw worked silently, but he too kept his mouth clamped shut. “We’re here to listen to Yilda and Hebuiza.” He looked around at the circle of faces. “They think we still have a chance.”

More bullshit, Sav thought. But he sat up a little straighter.

Yilda cleared his throat. “Yes,” he said, stretching the ‘s’ out in the slightest of lisps so that it sounded like a tiny hiss. “Thank you, ah, Captain.” His was the voice Sav had heard in the corridor, sibilant and cloying, a voice that you had to strain forward to hear. Perhaps, Sav thought, he did that purposefully.

“Just begun,” Yilda said. “Yes. But first, Sav, something Hebuiza made for you.” He nodded at the other Facilitator.

Hebuiza reached in the pocket of his shorts, withdrew a small object and slid it across the table. Sav had to reach out quickly to snatch it before it flew past the edge. When he opened his hand, he saw he held a square wrist watch with a digital display and a black, elasticized band.

“A device that, um, might be useful. Yes. Distributed them to everyone else already.”

Sav looked at the face of the watch. The figure 104-12:50 hovered in sickly, green characters. Below that, in smaller characters, was the current time and date.

“The number of days, hours and minutes before the onset of the first symptoms, hey? That’s what they display. Our preparations will take the better part of the time remaining. A reminder to you of this, ah, constraint.”

One hundred and four days left. Sav held the watch in his palm, stared at the green numerals. The number changed from 104-12:50 to 104-12:49. Another irretrievable moment lost to him. Looking up, he saw the others-except for Liis, whose arms were obscured by the table-had already strapped on their watches. Hebuiza and Yilda had nothing on their wrists. But they’d have no need: as Facilitators, they had internal clocks which they could modify to do the same thing. Sav closed his fist and slipped the device into his pocket.

“Hebuiza and I have a gathered a great deal of, um, intelligence, about Nexus. Yes.” Yilda smiled wanly; the gesture, like his slight lisp, rasped on Sav’s nerves like fine sandpaper. “Part of our job, you see: to collect information on the Polyarchy. Hebuiza, ah, speculated-and quite rightly, I may add-that Nexus was responsible for the plague. Evidence he’s collected is quite simply overwhelming. Yes. Nexus views itself as a living, growing entity. You see? Non-affiliates reluctant to join are considered to be dangerous-cancerous, if you’ll allow me to extend the metaphor. Nexus removes them, like a surgeon, yes, a surgeon, would a tumour. I say this having spent the better part of my life studying the Polyarchy and their methods. During the last millennium they have decimated, ah, at least six non-affiliates reluctant to participate in the Ascension program. No evidence to directly implicate Nexus, no, but in every case the, ah, ‘disaster’ visited upon the non-affiliate had the desired effect on surrounding systems. Non-affiliates rushed to join, hey?”

During Yilda’s speech, Hebuiza had pursed his lips, nodding dutifully to underscore Yilda’s points. It was a curious deferential gesture. At the same time, Ruen, who sat next to Mira, was whispering in her ear, perhaps trying to instil in her fear of thwarting the Dissolution, trying to win a convert. She had gone pale.

Yilda ignored Ruen’s hushed whisper. “Hebuiza and I think we may be able to exert, ah, leverage on Nexus. Yes.”

“Leverage?” Sav sat up straight. “To what end?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Hebuiza said contemptuously. “Whoever manufactured the plague can also cure it.”

“Yes,” Yilda agreed. “Nexus would have a readily available counteragent. In case infection bypasses the, um, isolation protocol of the orbital lazarettes and spreads to affiliated worlds. We think we can make them hand it over.”

Sav was dumbfounded. Ruen, who had sat back from Mira, shook his head sadly, remorsefully, as if at their folly.

“And how do you propose to do that?” Penirdth said. Sav could hear him struggling to keep his voice even. “What kind of threat could we possibly make against Nexus? Even with the abilities of two such accomplished Facilitators?”

The sarcasm of Penirdth last question wasn’t lost on Hebuiza. He leaned forward. “I do not think that you are in any position-”

“It’s possible,” Yilda answered, cutting off Hebuiza’s response.

Hebuiza sat back abruptly. His lips drew into a thin line. Sav guessed Yilda had flashed another mental retort across the cable that bridged them.

Picking up a stack of data cards from the table, Yilda fanned them out like playing cards. “We-that is, ‘we’ meaning Facilitators-have amassed information on Nexus over a considerable time.” Inserting one of the cards into the reader on the table beside him, he said, “Remember the, ah, incident on Berin?”

“A speaker was kidnapped,” Mira said uncertainly. Her voice was high and child-like, surprising for a woman of her girth. She looked around to see if anyone would disagree with her.

Yilda nodded, Hebuiza’s head mirroring the motion.

“Nexus has built their empire by controlling the flow of technological information. Yes. Speakers are the linchpin. Lone individuals who, with no apparent equipment, can communicate instantaneously over interstellar distances with other Speakers. A neat trick, eh? One that side steps the law of physics. Communications faster than light. It’s mechanism a mystery to all save a few in the Nexus hierarchy, yes, and the Speakers who represent the Polyarchy on affiliated worlds. A secret that’s given them a monopoly on communications-and control over the information they disseminate.”

The Polyarchy already linked over a hundred of the seeded worlds in the Left and Right Clusters. Sav had followed the debate the last time Nexus had invited Bh’Haret to join the Ascension program. In exchange for the services of a Speaker to link Bh’Haret to the other Nexus affiliates, they would be obligated to follow the tenets of the Ascension program, a blueprint for the dissemination of ‘sensitive’ technologies to ‘developing’ worlds. But Bh’Haret’s politicians had steadfastly refused. Independence. Intellectual freedom. Technological vitality. These were the terms they had trumpeted. Under Nexus, technology would be doled out to them (or so the politicians characterised it) piecemeal, scraps from a master’s table. It would sound the death knell for Bh’Haret’s own research programs, they claimed. And the climb up the arbitrary ladder of the Ascension Program, though tantalising at first, would slow to a painful crawl in the space of a generation. Then it would be too late to do anything else, for Bh’Haret would have become, like an addict, hopelessly dependent on the Polyarchy.

“An anti-affiliation group stormed the Nexus compound shortly after the Speaker’s arrival,” Yilda continued. “Managed to, ah, spirit the woman off-world in a small vessel. Quite an astounding feat. Yes. And one that hadn’t occurred before-and hasn’t since.” Yilda touched the featureless surface of the reader. The room lights dimmed, and in the centre of the table a projection of a narrow corridor appeared. Two men whose faces had been electronically obscured carried the limp body of a woman into a tiny cabin and dropped her on a bunk. She had a narrow, hatchet-like face beneath curls of jet hair that glistened with sweat. Her complexion was waxen, and her thin lips had a blue tinge. One of the men moved an IV drip next to her, inserted a catheter into her arm. “We obtained this, um, record many years ago. Made by the kidnappers. Or so we were told. She is the Speaker taken hostage.”

Binlosson swore softly. Everyone else-except for Ruen who had closed his eyes and seemed to be meditating-stared at the projection, Mira with her mouth agape. Josua’s chair complained as he shifted; he leaned in toward the projection, studying it intently. Even Liis, who up until now had kept her head lowered, was watching the scene warily.

“Chance encounter, really. Privateer limping away from, ah, a disastrous encounter. Bridge of the ship almost completely sheared off. Sole survivor managed to seal herself in the only section of the ship without a major hull breach. She, too, would have died had one of our longhaul ships not encountered the damaged vessel. Yes. Still, she might have been left to die except for the, ah, interesting story she had to tell. Claimed to have been part of the kidnapping. Offered the Facilitator on the longhaul ship documents and recordings as proof.” Yilda tapped the cards on the table. “She insisted that she was the one who made the recording of the men carrying the Speaker into the cabin. Hey? But an analysis of the, um, recordings proved that to be a lie. A blatant lie. The height of the camera and its movement suggested a body profile that didn’t match hers. No. Nevertheless, the recording appears to be authentic. Perhaps it belonged to one of her comrades. Or maybe she found it on one of the vessels they, ah, boarded.” Yilda pressed the surface of the reader again, and the scene changed. The Speaker was in a chair now, pinioned by restraints around her ankles, thighs, wrists, forearms and neck. Her head was locked in an elaborate clamp, the skin of her scalp cut and folded back, the flaps of flesh pinned in place. Dozens of electrodes projected from her holes in her skull; blackened goggles covered her eyes. Despite her restraints, she trembled visibly.

“In any case, a detailed record of their actions. Yes. Initially kept the Speaker sedated. Then, ah, placed her in cryosuspension until they were a considerable distance from Berin. Followed an erratic, random course. Yes. To be safe. Woke her periodically to make her pass