Stars Beyond

by S. K. Dunstall

  Maybe as a change of subject it was a bad choice, for Cam took a long time to answer.

  “She was . . . a goddess.”

  Strong words. Unusual words.

  The aircar arrived. Cam didn’t notice. Alistair had to push him into it.

  “You’re so confident, Alistair. You don’t know how important body image is to some people. Before Nika got hold of me, I was just another fifth-generation rich kid.”

  Cam rarely spoke about his past. Once or twice he’d said things that made Alistair suspect he belonged to an executive family in one of the Big Twenty-Seven companies, but he’d never asked. And given what he’d just said about going to the Santiago representative for a position at the Justice Department, Alistair was certain he knew which family he’d come from. He just hoped Cam wasn’t there to spy on him.

  “I wasn’t ugly. I’d been modded before. Latest fashion, you know. But I was bored, and I had an income I could never spend. I became a lawyer because that was what my family expected, but I never worked as one. Not before Zell.” He shrugged. “I’m a lousy lawyer.”

  “You get a new body and suddenly you’re a different person?”

  “It’s hard to explain.” Cam leaned back in his seat. “Nika is . . . was . . . demanding, abrasive. Honest. She’s a lot like you, in fact.”

  Was that how Cam thought of him?

  “It’s a compliment.”

  It was?

  “You go in and you think you’ll come out soon with a new body. Same inside but new package. Nothing really changes. Because that’s what always happens. But you don’t. You sit down and talk. And talk. And talk. You start off talking about the body you want, then suddenly you’re talking about how bad a lawyer you are, or how you hate law, anyway. How you don’t like your family. How you hate your work, your life, yourself.”

  Cam rubbed his eyes. “I hope she’s alive.” He rubbed his eyes again. “She didn’t just give people new bodies; she gave them what they needed. I mean, look at me.” He gestured down at himself. “I wanted to be handsome.”

  Cam’s look was striking rather than handsome, and he had that smile that made everyone swoon. And the first thing he’d done was taken himself and his new body off to a nowhere world with fifty other people.

  “This is not handsome.” Cam pointed a thumb at his chest. “This is me. This is what I always wanted to be but didn’t know it until I got it.”

  Alistair was still trying to think of something to say when the aircar arrived at the Songyan factory.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Nikolas Comantra was servicing the genemod machines,” Dagar Songyan told them.

  She was lying. Alistair could see it in the color generated by the extra heat that flowed around her body. There were advantages to being able to see beyond the visible spectrum. An increase in adrenaline increased the heat emitted from the body. To Alistair, Dagar may as well have blushed bright red instead of the spots of color high on each cheek. He put his eye-covers on momentarily to check what Cam would have seen.

  “Let’s start again,” Alistair said gently. “With the truth this time.”

  The color intensified. “Are you calling me a liar?”

  “Nika wouldn’t have let anyone look at her machines without her being there,” Cam said.

  He said it with conviction. Alistair wasn’t sure if he was guessing or he knew that for certain.

  “The body modder wasn’t there. Leonard Wickmore said one of his own staff—who happened to be the woman’s partner—let them in.”

  Dagar scowled. “This is business confidential. I can’t tell you what it’s about.”

  “We are the Justice Department. People were murdered.”

  “Which is why I refuse to talk about it. A prize like this. People will kill for it.”

  This time she was telling the truth.

  Alistair had interviewed a lot of people like Dagar Songyan. The longer she dug in, the less likely she was to talk. He tried the shock approach. It had gotten a reaction from Leonard Wickmore.

  Which he’d forgotten to mention to Paola.

  “Are we talking about body swapping?” He was embarrassed to say it. He still didn’t believe it was possible.

  “Exchanging, please. Swapping bodies sounds so crude.”

  “Is there a difference?” How did Paola hit the target every time? Body swapping should have been impossible.

  “A swap implies a physical transfer of bodies and minds. This is only temporary. And one of you has to be unconscious.”

  “So it’s more like taking over someone else’s mind.” He wanted to rub his eyes, the way Cam was doing. Instead he called on all his twenty years of experience at the Justice Department to keep his expression neutral.

  “Of course not.”

  “So how does it work?”

  Dagar Songyan hesitated. “I’ve only heard about it, never seen it.”

  “And it takes a body modder to do?”

  “It takes a genemod machine. A Songyan.”

  “And you build these things.”

  “You sound appalled, Agent. Don’t be. This is the most important invention since the genemod machine itself. Human progress,” she said dreamily. “The things we can do. The Justice Department should love it. You can use it in undercover work.” She must have seen something in his expression. “Seriously. You will. All you need to do is switch bodies with someone you know will be at the scene of a crime. Catch them in the middle of doing it.”

  “I don’t quite see—”

  “Suppose you hear someone plans to rob a warehouse. You know one of the people who’s working with the ringleader, but you can’t get close to him, because if you do, the mastermind will know.”

  The best heists nowadays were all done by computer. By the time the empty warehouse was discovered, the missing goods had long disappeared.

  “You could grab the worker one night off the street, switch bodies, and you go in and do the heist. You catch them red-handed.”

  “What about the body you’ve snatched?” Cam asked. “Even a lawyer as bad as I am can see a winning lawsuit coming.”

  Dagar waved that away. “I’m sure you could cover it.”

  Alistair tried not to look as appalled as he felt. It was time to stop talking horror stories and get some real information. His current urgent need was not to get sidetracked by trails Paola could follow up herself, and she certainly needed to follow this one.

  “Did Comantra break in to Rik Terri’s studio?” Because Wickmore knew about body swapping, it was a fair assumption that Comantra had gone with Wickmore, but Alistair wanted to know if Dagar would admit to it.

  “What a terrible accusation. He accompanied Executive Wickmore and Alejandro Duarte.” She sighed. “Such a loss. A lovely man, and so charming.”

  “But Nika wasn’t there.”

  “Well, no. But Alejandro had access. He was her partner.”

  “What were Wickmore and Comantra doing at Rik Terri’s studio?”

  “Waiting to see Nika, of course.”

  According to the reports, Nika hadn’t been seen for two weeks prior to the explosion, probably longer. “Are you sure?”

  “Why don’t you ask Executive Wickmore?”

  He kept his gaze steady, fixed on her.

  She waved a hand impatiently. “Nikolas was there to look over the Songyan.”

  “In someone else’s studio?” Cam said.

  “Nika had disappeared.”

  “You just said Wickmore and Comantra were waiting for her.”

  Dagar looked flustered. “They must have been expecting her back.”

  “I don’t think so. You know Rik Terri has disappeared and you don’t ask why? You don’t report her missing. You don’t ask how these people know she is missing. Instead y
our engineer and his friends just walk in, and . . . look?”

  Dagar pressed her lips together and didn’t say anything.

  “Why?” Alistair asked. “Why her Songyan?”

  “Duh.” Dagar Songyan turned away. “We’ve just been talking about why.”

  “The exchanger was built into Nika Rik Terri’s genemod machine?” It made a crazy kind of sense. “Nika Rik Terri has a body-swap machine?”

  What kind of person was Rik Terri if she made technology that allowed people to swap bodies?

  “Exchanger.”

  “And because you don’t have an exchanger, you sent your engineer off to steal the technology.”

  “Of course not,” Dagar said. “Executive Wickmore asked about the machine, asked whether we could make one. Nika had disappeared, so I sent Nikolas along to see if he could figure out how it was done.”

  “Now he’s dead and you don’t know where Nika Rik Terri is.” This was a waste of time.

  Dagar straightened her shoulders. “Rik Terri is dead, Agent Laughton.”

  “You know this for certain?”

  “I . . . no.”

  Samson Sa had said that Nika only used a Songyan. It had been months. If she wasn’t dead, she’d have ordered a machine, surely. And modding machines could only be sold to registered doctors and modders. Maybe she had ordered one. Alistair said, “I’d like to see any Songyan orders that have come through in the last six months.”

  “All of them?” Dagar’s mouth became a thin line.

  “All of them.”

  “We are breaching client confidentiality there.”

  “Or I can arrest you for obstructing a murder investigation.”

  Dagar pushed the list of orders through to Alistair’s link. “You won’t find anything there.”

  “Thank you.” Alistair forwarded it to Cam, and they both took a moment to read it. There were only three orders. Three names, one of which was familiar.

  “The apprentice,” Cam breathed.

  Alistair nodded. Bertram Snowshoe, who, according to Samson Sa, was not an apprentice. He looked up to Dagar, who was staring at the list as if something had finally clicked. “I want that machine.” He tapped orders into his link. “Someone from the Justice Department will be around to collect it.”

  “But you can’t—”

  “I can, and I just have. It’s a potential weapon.”

  Something about her expression made him add, “Make sure it’s the right machine. You have all the part numbers here. Be sure we’ll be checking them.” Thank God the Songyan was custom built, with custom-made, numbered components. It was all on the order. “Thank you for your time.” He hesitated. “Tell Snowshoe he can collect his genemod machine from the Justice Department. Tell him to ask for me. And please call me when he arrives.”

  8

  ALISTAIR LAUGHTON

  “Do you think this will work?” Cam asked as they supervised the loading of the just-completed Songyan onto an antigrav trolley.

  Alistair used his thumb to sign for it. “It’s the closest we’ve come. I don’t know about you, Cam, but I’m getting desperate. Just because we have an agreement with the Ort doesn’t mean Santiago won’t decide they can do better by getting rid of the colonists. They won’t wait forever.”

  It wasn’t even a formal agreement, just an understanding that the Ort worked with the colonists rather than the Santiagans. A bluff, perpetuated by Melda and Alistair, to try to save their people.

  Angel was gone, and Barry—nominally in charge for the moment—had encountered the Ort and was therefore more cautious, but how long would that last? First contact would be a boost to anyone’s career, and someone was bound to be ambitious.

  “But we’re the only ones who can understand them.”

  “So far.” The Ort might have sided with the settlers for the moment, but they had bigger problems, and if Alistair and Cam couldn’t deliver what they’d promised, the Ort would turn to someone who promised they could.

  * * *

  • • •

  After the Santiagan visitors had settled for the night, Alistair had gone to his office, where he added Mayeso’s kidnapping to the map of instances.

  He sat back and studied the result.

  The captures were starting to make a loose circle, each capture closer than the last. Now they were coming inside the bounds, inside the force fence around the perimeter.

  The fence had been set up to stop salynxes—small, furred creatures, a pack of which could strip the flesh off a human in under five minutes—but it was strong enough to discourage a three-ton bovine as well. There were gates. The shuttle landing field was outside the bounds, as were some of the settling ponds. Alistair had no doubt the Ort were intelligent enough to figure out how to operate the gates.

  What did they want? Why didn’t they come straight out and visit?

  If the Ort were close, they’d have heard the shuttle arrive. That’s if they could hear. They’d certainly see the heat trails if they’d made Alistair’s vision match their own.

  Maybe the settlers should bunker down for the next two weeks.

  Tomorrow he’d see if Barry was amenable to loaning out people for security. For tonight? There wasn’t much he could do except know if any of the Ort tried to enter the building. Alistair padded downstairs and set the old motion detectors they’d used early on, before they’d built the bounds, and made sure the physical locks—which they hadn’t used in months—were also set.

  If the Ort tried to come in, they’d have warning.

  He sent a link to everyone in the building, telling them he’d set the perimeter motion-detector alarm. The last thing he wanted to do was wake everyone up by someone stepping outside early.

  After which he dropped into bed, exhausted.

  The klaxon blare of the perimeter alarm woke him.

  He fell out of the bed in his hurry to get up.

  They were here.

  He flicked on the screens to see. Small, catlike creatures swarmed at the east corner. Not Ort. Salynxes. How had they gotten past the force fences?

  Alistair dressed quickly and put on the oiled jacket Yakusha had improvised. It helped with the teeth. He grabbed his fire-breather, which he slipped into the holster on his back, and a knife. Cutting a salynx off a human without a knife was impossible.

  Cam met him at the door.

  “Salynxes,” Alistair said. “Stay inside. You’ll never see them.” The first light was chasing away the night. He flicked on the infrared security lights. To him, everything in the compound would be visible.

  The Ort had given him two advantages when they’d restored his sight. Salynxes were visible in both ultraviolet and infrared. Alistair could see them long before anyone else could.

  The second advantage he had was the weapon he’d stolen when he’d escaped. Cam had christened it a fire-breather. Its closest human relative was a sparker—if a sparker shot out a flat, horizontal voltage. It looked like a sheet of lightning. It was ideal for getting rid of a pack of salynxes fast.

  He had no idea how to power it, but it hadn’t failed yet. Alistair was glad of that. He’d used it a lot, for their last three blasters had run out of charge months ago. And no matter how many times they requested new ones, no new blasters, or charges, had arrived with any of the six-monthly ship deliveries.

  Someone screamed, kept screaming. Molten beams of blaster fire punched through the early-morning light.

  The Santiagans. What were they doing outside this early in the morning? Packing? “Keep everyone inside.” Alistair ran.

  Someone had turned on a light. It didn’t help, for most people couldn’t see salynxes well at any time. The only thing they had going for them was that salynxes were pack animals and stayed in the pack.

  Someone else screamed.

  As soon as Alistai
r was close enough, he sprayed the fire-breather. White light sheeted out. Half the salynxes dropped.

  The Santiagans were firing in all the wrong places.

  “Hold your fire,” Alistair roared as one of the blasters burned past him. “Do you want to kill us all?”

  He sprayed another sweep. Then a smaller burst at one of the Santiagans’ feet. When he was sure the salynxes were all dead except those on the two screaming guards, he switched to the knife. Came in sideways and slashed at the first animal, slicing it so that it bled out. For all their toughness, they had thin skins.

  When it was over, he inspected the area around them. Not a salynx moved.

  Behind him he heard Barry order, “Get these two back to the main building.”

  Alistair turned. There were six of them. They could manage.

  He joined Barry as they started back to the main building. “Was there a reason you turned off the force fence? You put us all in danger?” He managed to keep his voice mild but had to grit his teeth and force his lips into a smile to do so. They’d shipped fifty-one people in two years ago. Fifty of those people were still alive. It would be stupid to lose them two weeks before the end due to some ignorant visitor.

  “It wasn’t deliberate,” Barry said.

  “It wasn’t? A force fence doesn’t turn itself off.”

  “We weren’t trying to turn off the fence. We turned off the motion detectors. The one you so kindly sent us the message telling us you’d set.”

  That was worse. Alistair waited until the pounding anger subsided before he asked, “Why?”

  “If you didn’t want us wandering, we wanted to know why.”

  He was serious.

  “Couldn’t you have just asked?” Alistair nodded his thanks to Cam, waiting inside the door, and moved over to the fence controller. They hadn’t turned it off; they’d set up a bypass. The bypass had created a feedback loop that had finally surged and reset everything. “You’re lucky the reset turned the alarms back on. Otherwise the first we’d know of your early-morning walk would be coming out to find you stripped to bone this morning.”