Read Online The Wellstone by Wil McCarthy - Free Book Online Page B

paranoid fantasy seemed less paranoid, less fantastic. If that rail wasn’t full of microphones already, it easily could be on a moment’s notice. If the Constabulary had tracked the boys here, for example, or if the café staff had decided something suspicious was going on. Hell, the building could even make that judgment itself; most of the symptoms of human intelligence could be duplicated with a wellstone hypercomputer the size of a fingernail. Conrad’s own house was always scolding him, checking up on him, ratting him out to his parents....
    The black-haired, fiery-lipped Xmary reappeared, inserting herself deftly between Conrad and Bascal once more. “I found someone who can help you, Bas. Several someones.”
    Bascal looked up at her, and the confidence was back in his eyes. “Excellent. Thank you. And will these someones require payment?”
    “I didn’t ask, but I also didn’t tell them who you were. When they see your face, they’ll want to help. They’ve snuck out of the house, right? Hoping something interesting will happen. And what’s more interesting than you, on a mysterious errand? I’m sure you realize, you’re kind of a symbol around here.”
    “The prince who won’t be king? Lord of the oppressed? Spokeschild for the permanent children? I can’t imagine.” Bascal flourished comically with his arms, but couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of his voice. “Take me to your underground, then. We’ll see what mischief this town can endure.”
    “You need more people?” she asked. “I can find more people. Easily.”
    “Bascal,” Conrad warned, raising his voice above the general hubbub, “we should get out of here. This place isn’t as run-down as it looks. This isn’t wood; it’s wellstone. It could be a—”
    The prince arched an eyebrow, and not in amusement. “There’s business at hand, Conrad. Connections to be made, a whole underground to be mobilized. One way or another, Garbage Day is a party I intend to throw.”
    Conrad became aware of some noise in the street, rising up like the soft
clickety-click
of a few dozen tap shoes. Like marching boots, approaching at a trot? Like the platinum feet of robots, dancing fluidly along the street?
    “Bloodfuck!” Ho Ng called out, from his seat along the railing. “Constabulary coming. Lots of them.”
    “Ah,” Bascal said, and his tone was of regret, not surprise. “All right, lads, hit the ground running. Scatter for me, and do as much damage as possible. Brew me up a genuine riot.”
    Conrad
was
surprised, and afraid, and maybe not entirely sorry they’d been caught. He looked Bascal in the eye, almost challengingly. “What are you going to do?”
    “What do you
think
?” the prince snapped, then walked to the railing and punched it with his signet ring, producing a kind of porcelain
clink
. At the point of impact, there was a momentary sparkle of blue-white light, fading quickly to darkness. Nobody moved; nobody spoke. Conrad didn’t so much as breathe. Half a second after impact, the change began: a sprouting and sprawling of shapes and colors. It shot along the balcony rail, down through its supports and onto the floor, onto the wall, up along the roof. The sound of it was like tearing paper, like crinkling foil. The building turned to garbage around them, and the narrow spaces between the garbage glowed, and sang, and cracked away.
    Conrad watched Ho Ng drop right through the floor, just moments before the whole structure gave way, and suddenly they were
all
falling, in a storm of hand-sized wellstone fragments, like shiny black bugs. The sound of the building’s collapse was remarkably low, more felt than heard. Weightless for so short a time that it barely registered, Conrad thudded onto the steep riverbank, his fall partly broken by the plasticky fragments raining around him. His momentum carried him downward, skidding, briefly glimpsing the lights of an upside-down suburb reflected in the blurry water. And