Springboard nf-9 Read online

  Wu’s grin was one of knowledge.

  Mayli seemed to be doing her job properly. She had a watcher about whom she did not know, of course. Mayli’s watcher would eventually have one of his own, too.

  Wu was not a man to trust anyone blindly.

  Once Shing was gone, Wu walked back to the window again, to stare through the rain at the neon lights in the distance. Great plans took time, but this one was nearer the end than the beginning. Destiny was not that far in the distance.

  Wu smiled.

  He returned to his desk, and touched the intercom button.

  “Locke?”

  “Here.”

  “Join me.”

  “What did you think?” Wu asked. He now spoke in Yao, with bits of Sho thrown in, dialects Jack Locke had learned in Hong Kong while running with the street gangs. There were a lot of southern boys in the gangs, and Yao was a favorite dialect. Locke was also fluent in Cantonese, Putonghua, Guoyu, English, and a little Spanish. He was working on German.

  Locke, sitting in that same chair in front of Wu’s desk, shook his head. “The boy is an idiot savant. He has the touch with computers and can make them sing and dance, but outside that…” He shrugged.

  General Wu nodded. He leaned back in his chair, and steepled his fingers. “And our plans?”

  “On target. If Shing does half what he claims he can do.”

  “You foresee no problems.”

  Locke laughed. “Oh, I foresee problems. Scores, hundreds, thousands of problems, crouched and hidden like hungry tigers, waiting for us to stumble. A misstep, and we’ll be eaten, our gnawed bones left to bleach in the sun. But I’ll deal with those.” He paused. The general was a fan of Sun Tzu and of the Japanese swordsman, Musashi, and Locke had made it his business to learn their work. He said, “What is it Musashi says? When faced with the ten thousand…?”

  “Fight them the same way as one,” Wu finished. He smiled slightly. “I am trusting you with a great deal,” he said.

  “Comrade General, you don’t trust me any farther than you can see me,” Locke said. “Instead, you recognize that our interests lie on the same path, and you trust me to travel that way until we achieve our common goal.”

  Wu smiled again, but did not speak.

  It was a slight risk, tweaking the general’s nose this way, but Locke also knew that the man respected ability, and Locke would not be sitting here if Wu didn’t believe he had the skill and talent to do what the general wanted. Plus, toadies were easy to come by — to impress a general, you needed to show some starch.

  Jack Locke was aware of the file on Shing in Wu’s desk. And he was certain there was a file on him somewhere — Wu never chose to be sightless when there was any way he could see.

  Locke also had a pretty good idea what was in Wu’s secret file on him, and what was not. He knew he was not a particularly impressive or handsome man, at least not as he understood the words. Too many angles and planes in his face, nose a little too long, lips too thin, and almost-black eyes that, to him, seemed a bit bug-eyed from within deep sockets. His hair was black, with a sharp widow’s peak, and while he was in excellent shape from swimming and lifting weights, he was only average height, and not so muscular or broad in the shoulders as to draw attention. Most men looking at a crowd would pass over Locke without a second glance, just another Eurasian face, nothing to mark him out of the ordinary.

  Most women, however, saw something there. He had tried to get them to explain it to him, but no two answers were ever quite the same, and there was a vagueness about them when pressed. The most consistent comment women offered was that he looked “interesting.” And that part of that look included a hint of cruelty.

  Women were ever attracted to bad boys.

  Wu would know all this, and more.

  Born in Hong Kong, Locke was a mongrel foundling who had been dropped off at a British orphanage forty years ago. He had some Chinese in him, some European — probably English, given where he turned up. He had run away from there at sixteen, and they hadn’t made any great effort to find him and drag him back.

  He spent some time learning how to live in the mean, crowded streets of Hong Kong, learned how to fight with a knife and his hands while in the gangs, and was certainly on the short road to jail or an early grave when he had been found by a high-born English woman, Lady Patricia Knowles. Patricia — one never called her “Pat,” even in bed — had thought him a diamond in the rough. She was richer than the Queen, thirty-six years old, and married to a dotty English lord who was pushing seventy-five and beyond Viagra’s help.

  She cleaned Locke up, gave him his new name, installed him in an apartment in a good neighborhood, and taught him all manner of things, ranging from how to dress, eat, and behave in polite society to most of the positions found in the Kama Sutra. Patricia had been that classic storybook woman — a proper English lady at a formal dinner — and a shameless whore in bed. He could barely keep up with her, even though he was half her age.

  After five years, she and her husband had returned to England, but by then Locke was more than a little adept at pleasing a woman, and polished enough to pass for a gentleman. Patricia had directed him to one of her friends, Martha, and he hadn’t even had to change apartments.

  After Martha, there had been other women eager enough to pay for his company. Sometimes he was merely arm-candy, most times he earned his way in private, but there was always another woman waiting. He had learned his lessons well, and he knew that his appeal, whatever it was, was something upon which he could depend.

  He supposed he could have lived that life for a long time. But one can only lie in so many beds, drink so much expensive champagne, attend so many tuxedoed parties before those things begin to pall.

  So Locke had turned to crime.

  Not because he needed the money — his benefactors had been generous enough over the years, and he was well enough off that he could live on his investments. No, it was the challenge, the spike of adrenaline that let you know you were alive — but that death was coming up just behind you.

  Locke’s talent here had not been in strong-arm robberies, but in setting up heists worth small fortunes. He traveled in circles wherein there were rich people with cash, jewelry, and art in their homes. That was the beginning. From there, Locke had gone on to bigger things: galleries, jewelry merchants, museums. He had scores all over the Orient, and even into Europe.

  If one moves in certain circles, and becomes expert in them, word gets around. Even though Locke hadn’t been looking for a job, Wu had found him. Wu had a proposition. When he had put it to him, Locke had been surprised, but intrigued. What Wu could bring to the table made the venture not quite as impossible as it seemed on the face of it.

  Locke had said he would consider it. He spent a week mulling it over, then went back to Wu. He was in.

  And Wu had known that, too.

  “What next?” Wu asked.

  “France, then America,” Locke said. “Shing’s mastery of the virtual does not extend to the real world. There are things that must be seen in person to be known.”

  Wu nodded. “Yes.”

  “I will keep you apprised.”

  Locke stood. The two men gave each other military bows. Locke made sure his gesture was deeper than Wu’s. The general would notice. Locke considered himself an equal in this project, not an employee, but it never hurt to be well mannered. Patricia had taught him that. Bless her, wherever she might be.

  Route du Parc

  Near Nice, France

  Charles Seurat exited the A-8 toward Sophia Antipolis, accelerating into a tight, controlled turn in the little Peugeot he’d rented at the airport in Nice. The car was a natural-gas /electric hybrid and had surprising power.

  Not too bad.

  Still, he missed the larger engines and power afforded by essence—gasoline.

  C’est la vie.

  It would have been gauche to drive anything else to this particular meeting, however. I
t certainly wouldn’t do to drive up in one of his restored Porsches — particularly not when the meeting was in the very PC, cutting-edge environment of Sophia Antipolis.

  The small town had started off as little more than a research park in the 1970s, and by the turn of the century had grown to be one of the largest tech centers in western Europe. With streets named after famous scientists and artists: Rue Albert Einstein, Rue Dostoievski, Rue Ludvig Von Beethoven, and the like, it was the place to do business, particularly if you were CyberNation.

  Art and science coming together, the height of French ambition.

  So a PC car: French, and enviro-friendly. All for the movement.

  The early morning sun painted the trees with golden light as he drove along the Route du Parc. A heavy cloud layer was coming in, but it didn’t look like rain yet. With any luck the weather would hold, and he could make an outdoor dinner this evening with some of CyberNation’s friends in Cannes, a little farther north on the A-8.

  But first, business.

  Today he would meet with Michael LeBathe, CEO of Azure Telecommunications. They manufactured new optical-gate switches and routers that could vastly improve throughput on CyberNation’s net backbones. And if his information was correct, LeBathe was a believer, one of the CyberNation faithful, even if the company he led remained publicly neutral.

  It is up to me to give him a reason to change that.

  He drove across a roundabout with some older statuary in the center, surrounded by lush flowers. The stone faces looked like they might have been prerevolution, possibly brought in from somewhere north, or taken from an old estate.

  Revolution.

  It was what he was about, the revolution of the world, its essence expressed by the slogans of two centuries past: liberty, equality, fraternity. Only this time it wasn’t just for France.

  It was time for a change — the nations of the world continued to grow faster and faster, populations skyrocketing, and still they did not yet possess those three key traits. Fraternity, certainly not. Fighting in the Middle East continued, ethnic cleansing, religious rivalries. Liberty? Only in some countries, and even there, true freedom did not ring. Most nations traded freedoms for security, all to protect their territories, arbitrary lines on a map.

  And of course there was no equality. The world had shrunk in this day of instant communication, the stage dominated by the greedy West, countries like the United States taking the role of a deranged Sun King, gobbling everything it could to keep its excessive lifestyle and feed its overweight children.

  The parallels to the French Revolution were there if you but looked. Seurat had been looking since the early days of CyberNation.

  He did not plot to take over the world, no. He did not need to. When CyberNation gained power, when they began to have the political clout they needed to give their citizens new freedoms, there would come a time when enough people were a part of things that there would simply be no need for any other government.

  There would be no need for the seizing of a Bastille, le Guillotine, the Terror, or bloody guerrilla war. Instead, there would simply be a critical mass of desire, an acceptance of the equality of peoples from all over the world who could join an ideal world of no poverty, physical equality, and no language barriers by stepping into CyberNation. True liberty, equality, and fraternity.

  Given this ultimate freedom, the ability to live in a world of platonic ideals, where everything could be the best, the most stylish, who would want to settle for less in their own homes and towns? Even dictators had to answer to the people at some point.

  And that point was coming.

  But first there was work to do.

  As a child, Charles had studied the famous paintings of his distant ancestor, Georges Seurat, the Impressionist. The huge canvases were filled with static and serene images that had comforted him throughout his turbulent childhood. Because of his link to the artist, he’d looked beyond the paintings themselves, researching the techniques and methods by which the man had worked.

  Months of preliminary painting on smaller canvases had gone into the creation of each great work, extrapolations of how colors would visually mix from a distance, the calculated effect of a tiny yellow dot and a tiny blue one side by side making green, the position of a figure lying down or standing up — all to a purpose.

  This understanding had shown him a method for dealing with the complexities of the world through careful planning, research, execution, and a purpose.

  Today, for instance.

  LeBathe, the man he was going to see, was the CEO of a publicly traded company: He had to explain his decisions to shareholders, to justify his actions based on profits alone.

  One of CyberNation’s key selling points to its erstwhile citizens had been the eventual cessation of taxes. The advertising from major corporations would pay for everything, and it would all be free.

  Seurat knew this was more marketing than reality: No company would want to foot the bill for the web access of an entire nation. And for now, at least, there was no way he could extend any taxation benefits to a corporation, even if they did agree to join CyberNation as an entity.

  But, like his ancestor, he had made careful studies and plans; there were other considerations.

  He would offer LeBathe a possibility: supplying the switching gear for the entire CyberNation network. He happened to know that Azure Communications had not yet distributed their gear to major clients; their work was still new enough and untried enough that most corporations didn’t want to bleed at the cutting edge.

  Such a large order would give publicity to Azure, and would make other clients sign up. Certainly there would be an immediate benefit from this that the CEO could sell to his board of directors. Perhaps throwing in some extra equipment for nothing would seal this exclusive deal, no? Economies of scale, oui?

  And then Seurat would wave another banner for LeBathe and the board of directors: patriotism. The management at Azure was known to be extremely nationalistic. Seurat might point out how the expansion of French technology could impact the world now, and the possible world offered by CyberNation in the future.

  Where the Toubon law from the last century had failed to stem the influence of the outside world on France — by removing words like “cheeseburger,” “jumbo jet,” and “e-mail” from the language — the expansion of French technology into a new nation would succeed. And if Azure were to get in on the ground floor, why, perhaps it would have more say in the shape of things to come.

  Vive la France.

  Of course, if Azure’s equipment hadn’t truly been the fastest his team could find, CyberNation would have gone with another supplier, whether it be Japanese, Chinese, or American. But CyberNation had to have the best, and in this case, that was French. Charles’s patriotism, his loyalty, was not to France, but to the dream that was the heart of CyberNation. Eventually, there would be no borders, only a single, unified, information-based world. What was the phrase? Geography was history?

  He looked forward to the day when he could dispense with the machinations and sleights of hand he was required to perform to achieve this glorious end. The men at Azure would of course never be allowed to impact the shape of CyberNation with their own biases; but their believing so was necessary. For now.

  Ahead, Seurat saw the turnoff to Rue Albert Einstein. He smiled as he drove toward Azure’s building, imagining the future, a huge canvas made from carefully worked-out plans and studies, each one helping build a masterpiece that would change the world. It was still a ways off, but it was coming.

  It was a heavy responsibility, the future of humanity, but he accepted it gladly.

  Vive la CyberNation!

  2

  People’s Computer Concern

  Ürümqui, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Northwestern China

  Chang Han Yao sighed and shook his head at the image on the computer screen. Pornography, and from a Chinese website no less. At least the server was in Beijing, tho
usands of kilometers away from him.

  It was not particularly inspired, the picture, a plain-vanilla Chinese man and woman, both naked, coupling, nothing perverse about it. They appeared young, but they were not children. They might even be married, so that what they were doing could be perfectly legal in and of itself, although the posting of it in public to drum up sales for more of the same was certainly not.

  Chang ran the simple backlook bot he had gotten in England the last time he’d been there, a basic, no-frills, easily fooled piece of software he’d been using for almost a year — a lifetime in computer circles — and it took all of two seconds for the program to render the address of the person who had posted the image of the young couple. A telephone call, and the People’s Police would drop round and gather up the sleaze artists. And that would be the end of that — at least as far as Chang was concerned.

  If only all his work was this easy.

  Fortunately, most Chinese were still not as sophisticated as the rest of the world when it came to computers, and that made some of Chang’s job relatively simple.

  Unfortunately, that was changing. Once his people had gained access to the international net, the home-grown product had started to improve dramatically. Now there were people in his country who would not be caught so easily as this would-be smut peddler, those who could rascal their addresses from all but the most cutting-edge huntbots. Chang’s generally superior software and abilities were constantly being overtaken by a new breed of operator, and his goal of running a Chinese agency at the sophisticated level of the United States’ own Net Force was a very long way from being realized.

  Still, if one reached, one should reach high.

  Pandora’s box had been opened, the cat allowed to escape from the bag, the thousand-year-old egg hatched — and there was no turning back. This new breed of hackers and sysops was smart. More, they had grown up enjoying private enterprise, so they had money, and money gave access to better and better software and hardware, not all of which was legal.