The Starry Rift Part 32

But there was no one there.

Not a sound.

Not a movement.

I pivoted in a circle, scanning my surroundings, but nothing stirred.

Waves of pain started to throb from my left side. It must have been a kick, but it hurt like no kick I'd ever received.

"Diego?"

Nothing.

My feet went out from under me and my open mouth hit the dirt. I thought I felt a tooth break. I rolled to try to get clearance, going into an open guard so that I could keep him away with my legs. Only one problem: he wasn't there.

I couldn't see him at all.

"Diego? Diego, what the-?"

No response. No sight of the enemy.

I got up. Paced the area. Picked up a stick and poked it into holes between the boulders. Banged it on the side of an excavator. Nothing.

Then my ears rang as something metallic hit me in the side of the neck. I staggered, managed to spin to confront him; but he wasn't there.

I tried to straighten up, but as soon as I did I started to retch. My stomach was empty, so I brought up only bile.

"Times like this are when I really need you to be there, Diego," I whispered. But the unnerving silence from the Project continued. I started to scramble away from the construction site, making for the woods. When I got under cover of the trees, I stopped and checked Away Mode.

Damage a.s.sessment: The data-processing trees on Jain's World orbital have come under chemical attack. The biological computer farms have been obliterated.

A scan at the orbital level reveals the a.s.sailant powering down. It's a high-powered battle cruiser, one of the best s.h.i.+ps in our fleet. Yes, that's right. Our fleet.

I changed to Local Mode.

I felt shaky and nauseous.

"Diego? Diego, what is going on? What's with the friendly fire?"

But his link was still dead.

How had Jarel attacked me without my even seeing him?

And if Jarel had attacked me, how come the source of the attack was registering as one of our own s.h.i.+ps?

"Diego! Diego-something's going seriously wrong here."

Silence.

I thought: I'm not old enough to drive a car, vote, or drink. But it's all up to me.

I thought: This bites.

By morning it was raining, and I sheltered inside some giant sewer pipes that had been left aboveground, unused. According to my onboard, the Battle was still in effect, even though I couldn't contact Diego. Jarel had to be here somewhere, but I needed to keep a low profile if I didn't want to get in trouble for playing hooky from school.

My body slowly repaired the injuries, and robots worked frenetically in Broca's Belt.

I spent the day avoiding the locals. I couldn't go "home" for refreshments, but I did sneak into the kitchen of an unlocked house on Ryerson Avenue, where I filched bread and an orange before returning to the sand pit. Jarel never showed, so when it got dark I started to prowl. On Yawpo Avenue, near the Battleground border, I paused. A group of girls I knew from school were huddled together in the bus stop, laughing, their hair blowing in the stiff breeze. They were dressed in the uniform of hip-hop jeans and Doc Martens, multiple pierces, temporary tattoos. Their backpacks would be heavy with biology textbooks or whatever.

I thought how safe their lives were: parents getting divorced their biggest problem, or maybe bad skin. I had made sure not to become good friends with any of them. I went to the occasional party, I worked on the theater crew, I ran track. But I didn't get close to anybody.

That sucked. I would have liked to have had friends. But it wasn't possible, not for me.

They didn't know what I knew. About all of it. How fragile their world was. And people like Diego in charge of everything. Diego could only find his own b.u.t.t by smell. It was worrying, it really was.

I don't know if I'm addicted to the rush, or what. I guess it's like, I know there's this one thing I can do really, really well. And I want to do it. The problem is, I'm only a weapon in somebody's hand. I'd like to be my own weapon, but that isn't the world I live in. That's like ancient Greece or something.

You can't just drop out of the Program. They don't take kindly to that. If I ditched Diego and stayed in deep cover, I'd be stuck here. Forever. No more M-folding. Just growing up in 1994, buried forever in history.

Once you know something, you can't pretend you don't know it. Once you've seen certain atrocities, those images can't be erased. I look at these girls and I don't know whether I despise them or envy them.

They belong here. I don't belong anywhere.

Then the bus came and the girls got on. The bus pulled away and I saw Jarel. He was standing in the darkness just on the edge of the streetlamp's pool of illumination. Watching me. Then he reached up and did something to his face. . . .

He was taking off the M-ask. He put it on the bench and backed away into the shadows outside the chiropractor's office.

He might as well have sent me a written invitation.

I edged forward.

The M-ask was sitting on the plastic seat under the bus shelter. Its nose lay in a shallow puddle of water where rain had found its way through a gouge in the shelter roof. Two messages had been scratched in the plexi of the shelter wall: Ferris is a f.a.g and Jenny loves Tom The M-ask gleamed, and I felt the top of my head p.r.i.c.kle softly.

I closed my eyes.

It had to be a trap.

I picked up the M-ask and went toward Jarel. There was a dignity about him that I couldn't quite place. He was supposed to be a primitive, but there was something pure about the way he moved.

Then he turned and in the light of the streetlamp I saw his face.

It was a ruin. M-erge agents swarmed over it, the primitive glue that bound his flesh to the M-ask. His eyes were filmed with vermil-lion. The insurgents had copied our early M-ask designs; thankfully I'd never had to wear one of those. I felt a weird mixture of triumph and pity.

He said, "You got me. Goods convoys disrupted, com patterns scrambled or broken. Climate on two worlds irreversibly changed. And I can't hear my advisor-how did you do that?"

I stared at him in disbelief. Then I opened my jacket, so he could see the bruises on my neck coming up purple. I couldn't figure out how he had managed to injure himself so badly, when I hadn't even been able to get near him all this time.

"I can't hear my advisor, either," I said slowly.

He took several ragged breaths as the implication of what I'd said sank into both of us.

"So there's a third party," Jarel said. "Something's hunting us."

We were both thinking fast now, racing each other to leap to conclusions.

"Whatever it is, it must be inside the M-eq," I said. "It's manipulating the M-ask system. That's why we can't see it."

"So it might not be localized here at all. It could be some kind of bug, operating all across the Scatter."

"I don't know. According to my M-ask, one of our most sophisticated s.h.i.+ps attacked our own target. The worst damage from friendly fire I've ever seen."

"You're saying . . . that your injuries are a result of feedback? You're saying . . ."

"The M-ask isn't supposed to cut both ways," I said. "But that's what's happening. We're getting hurt because of events in M-times.p.a.ce."

He thought about this. He nodded slowly. Then he said, "We could take off our M-asks. Both of us. Be real champions. Break the links. Fight with honor."

I snorted. "You'd like that, wouldn't you? You know I have a better M-ask than you do. Without M-asks, you'd be able to beat me easily. Then you could put on your own M-ask and declare victory."

He waved his hands in negation. "It's not just about us. These M-asks are like executioners' hoods. They keep anyone from seeing us and holding us to account for what we're doing."

He sounded just like that Cute Blond Guy in Friendly's, with his accusations of ma.s.s murder.

I said, "This is war. You can't have a war without people getting killed."

"But it's not you or me who are getting killed, Maja. The M-asks will determine a winner before that can happen. And the M-eq in Broca's Belt will sign itself over to that side."

"Yeah, that's the system. We both agreed to it. Now you want to change it."

"I want to change it because if we don't, then this thing will use us to get to the M-eq."

"You don't know that."

"Let me put it to you like this," Jarel said. "As long as you remain M-asked, this bug, whatever it is, can get to the whole system through you. And the same thing with me. If we take the battle off-line, then it can attack us, but it can't destroy all of the Scatter through us."

"How do you know that?"

"Isn't it obvious?"

"No," I said.

Actually, I had to agree with what he was saying, in principle. But what if it was a trick?

"We have to work together, Maja."

I shook my head. I gave a belligerent Sniff! worthy of Dave. I said, "I have no way of knowing if this is for real, or just some stratagem you guys are using against me. So put your M-ask back on and let's do it."

"That's it?"

"That's it. End of conversation."

"You want to keep fighting?" he cried, incredulous.

"That's what I'm here to do. You putting your M-ask on or not?"

"No, I'm not. I think it's been corrupted."

I opened my mouth to tell him what I thought of that when I spotted somebody coming our way. Speak of the devil, it was Cute Blond Guy. He nodded at me and smiled as he approached the bus shelter.

Jarel quickly donned his M-ask, but just as it touched his face, he sucked in his breath with a shocked hiss and doubled over, staggering sideways until he sat down on the narrow metal bench.

I started to back away. I wasn't sure what was going down, but I didn't like it.

"Diego?" I tried again. Nothing.

Cute Blond Guy stopped just outside of my striking range. He looked easy, calm.

"Hi, Maja."

"I'm not talking to you," I blurted. "I don't do politics. Whatever you want to say, take it up with Diego and the Project."

"You don't know who I am."

"Why should I?"

He shook his head, looking at the ground and scuffing the sidewalk with the tip of his sneaker.

"Maja. I'm your predecessor. I'm Jack."

I took a step back.

"Did they tell you I cracked? Went soft?"

"No," I lied. "What do you want?"

"I want to talk to you about Medusa."

"Which?" I glanced at Jarel, who looked like he was suffering from an acute appendix attack. Jack ignored him.

"Don't play dumb. The thing that's been attacking you both. Medusa. It lives in M-s.p.a.ce."

Jarel tugged the M-ask off again and leaned back against the Plexiglas, eyes closed, teeth chattering.

"This thing, Medusa," Jack began. "It doesn't even exist as a four-dimensional being. But when you cross into M-s.p.a.ce, it can use you to act on its behalf. And it can use your M-ask against you, too. It can hurt you, destroy your targets, all without ever manifesting itself in any visible way."

"If you can't see it, how do you know what it is?" I said. I knew I sounded dumb; I never claimed to understand M-s.p.a.ce. I just use it.

"Maja, Maja. It's very simple. The M-ask lets you use M-s.p.a.ce. While you're in M-s.p.a.ce, Medusa attacks you, and you think it's a strike from Jarel. So you strike back at Jarel, and he at you, until eventually the two of you either destroy each other-which is good for Medusa because it doesn't like either of you encroaching on its times.p.a.ce-or you realize there is a third party involved. And when you realize there is a third party involved, and that the M-ask technology itself is to blame for both of your injuries, naturally you will remove the M-asks so as to prevent further bloodshed and horror. As Jarel has already done."