by Jenn Lyons
us would wear, and with what jewelry and hairstyle and shoes, until I wanted to scream at her or kiss her, because she succeeded where Medusa failed: I was distracted. I was so distracted that, when the Flight Control officer called back to tell us permission to land was granted, I was surprised to discover that we’d been flying in a holding pattern for over an hour.
Vanessa swept her hair into a chignon, little red-gold curls escaping like new growth through a copse of flowers. Then she picked out a seashell print chiffon dress with a pink, laced bodice and fringes of luminous green and lavender crystal-beaded scarves that flew up and around each ankle as she walked like sea foam crashing against the beach. She announced that the dress was completely unsuited to me (which was the whole point) and that Vanessa should therefore take possession of it immediately. She looked about as intimidating as a bowl of strawberries with whipped cream, but if it helped her mood, I wasn’t going to argue.
For me, she rummaged through storage and found a suit that I hadn’t worn in years: a pair of pants made from buttery black leather with matching belts that wrapped and tied and draped around the waist just so, joined with a black mesh shirt so extravagantly beaded it was no longer sheer. The sleeves mated with long leather gloves, and the top fastened with a high-necked collar that managed to follow all the technicalities of a Sarcodinay High Guard’s jumpsuit while maintaining a slinky disregard for intent. The ensemble was the kind that one couldn’t wear without standing taller, swaying the hips, strutting instead of walking. Wearing it, I looked dangerous, felt dangerous, and no one who saw me needed to be told that I did dangerous, sexy things for a living. It was very much ‘me.’
This was, of course, why I never wore it.
The docking bay was silent and still, with none of the chaos and activity that I associated with a megacity port. A few prickly porcupine Sarcodinay shuttles were in dock, but they had not moved in several weeks at least, and none of them appeared ready to move in the near future, either. Maintenance crews were absent. Ship loaders were not needed here.
Automated defenses were active though; shiny chromium-plated maser barrels tracked us into the hanger the entire way. I felt the itch between my shoulder blades, that nagging sense of vulnerability.
On the far side of the bay, a giant section of wall slid up while another slid down, like a titan’s mouth preparing to swallow us whole. Two lines of Sarcodinay guards, two dozen total, entered the room on hover sleds. Their weapons were held ready, and pointed at us. They meant to look intimidating, and succeeded; I could feel Vanessa’s heartbeat quicken as she fidgeted and began to lose her composure.
“If they planned to kill us, they would have used the automated weapons,” I whispered to her.
She nodded. It seemed to help.
“Deuce,” I whispered. “You know what you need to do.”
“Already started. It’s about as unfriendly as a typical Sarcodinay system.”
“But you can get inside?”
“Sweet talk, Weaver. It’s all about the sweet talk.”
I tried not to smile.
We watched as the soldiers approached, and I did my best to make it seem like they were the honor guard I’d ordered, and not something more sinister. The clothes helped: when they reached us they paused and eyed me like they couldn’t quite figure out whether or not I could possibly be joking.
Finally, a Sarcodinay on one of the sleds said: “There are two red circles on the ground, ten meters in front of you. Each of you enter a circle, hold out your arms to the side, and remain still.”
There was no point in arguing or playing my normal verbal games. I moved to a circle, held out my arms, and didn’t move. I saw the red motions of minute laser lights play over me and checked the usual: fingerprints, DNA, retinal and diseases. The computer also checked for pollens, which was odd. I wasn’t surprised when the computer called out the familiar black flag warning. The soldiers didn’t seem surprised either.
What did surprise me was when the computer called me Seris-Kaimer Mallory.
The lead officer looked down at me from the hover sled the way one might examine an escaped black mamba—warily, with vambrace ready.
“No jewelry,” he finally said. “We’ll give you clothes to wear.”
I raised an eyebrow, and rubbed the edges of my caste-mark; not the scholar caste now, but High Guard. Like hell I was leaving Medusa’s link behind. “You don’t trust your own scans?”
“We’re not taking any chances. Leave your clothes on the floor.” Some of the fire in his voice had chilled. He was finding my black costume a little unnerving. Human or not, I wore the right caste mark and the right color and I made him as nervous as a Sarcodinay polygamist.
I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at him through my eyelashes. He didn’t seem to have any extra changes of clothing on him, and I had no intention of being marched through the halls of Keepers’ Hospital naked.
“What ARE you doing, Tagallian?” A new voice snapped. “I ordered my guests brought to me immediately, not strip-searched and humiliated.”
I looked across the bay to see a human male angrily approaching. His stride suggested that he was in charge, no matter who was taller. I stared, and then stared harder.
After that I gave him a third look, because he was worth it.
If Alexander Rhodes was Maia-Leia Shana’s favorite pet, I could only assume he was also a walking advertisement of the Maia’s impressive bio-engineering skills. He didn’t look like Nicholas Rhodes, and not just because Nick was in his late fifties, and this man didn’t look a day over twenty-five. Alexander Rhodes was some sort of transcendent creation. He was not just handsome by human standards, but by Sarcodinay ones; not just gorgeous, but divinely exquisite. He was Adonis recast in the modern age. I hesitated to call him beautiful, because the word had long since lost its meaning in a swarm of flowers and sunsets, children and normal (but oh yes, beautiful) high-castes. We needed to invent some other word to describe Alexander Rhodes, something that conveyed a sense of graceful movement, flawless cinnamon skin, golden lion eyes, and the black curls of a Persian king. For a scholar-caste, his garb was downright austere; a tight-sleeved khani coat of vermillion red worn over silver-gray pants. His gaze was sharp and analytical, his body posture confident and relaxed. I saw no sign of weapons—unless you counted the two-dozen Sarcodinay soldiers he wore like accessories.
Paul’s husband, I reminded myself. Paul was this man’s lover.
“She’s a Black Flag,” the Sarcodinay protested.
“I don’t care if she’s a Kantari. I gave orders, and I expect those orders to be followed—or have you forgotten how to do that?”
The Sarcodinay flinched and ducked his head. “No, Gala.”
I raised an eyebrow. Was the Sarcodinay afraid of Rhodes or afraid of Rhodes’ pull with the Maia?
“Return to your stations,” Rhodes ordered. “Seris-Kaimer and Gala-Lee are granted full visiting privileges.” He waved the Sarcodinay away with an elegant gesture, the way an Arabian horse would swat away a fly, then turned to face us.
Poor Paul hadn’t stood a chance. I lost all my animosity, all my jealousy. How could anyone withstand this man’s attention if he decided he wanted you? I shivered, and decided I was glad Alexander Rhodes’ taste didn’t run towards women. Nicholas Rhodes had nothing on his brother.
He smiled, showing even white teeth. “I’m so sorry! Allow me to extend my apologies for your treatment. The security here is a bit paranoid right now. I had no idea that either of you would visit until after the treaty. I’m Alexander.” He held out his hand.
I stared at it.
Vanessa pulled herself out of the trance first. “It’s so nice to see you again.” She gestured to me. “My friend, who is attempting to pick her jaw up off the floor, is Mallory.”
The blood traitorously flowed to my cheeks. Alexander grinned as if he was all too used to that reaction. I supposed he was: it seemed unlikely he’d gone his whole life bereft of a mi
rror.
He took my hand and, instead of shaking it, kissed it while staring at my eyes through his thick eyelashes. “A real pleasure. Paul has told me so much about you, but I never imagined you would be so striking.”
I blinked at him, owl-like. “Likewise,” I said.
He laughed at that. Even his laugh was beautiful.
Something in my expression, or in Vanessa’s, gave us away. Perhaps it finally occurred to him that we were not smiling now, and had not smiled when he arrived. Perhaps he wondered why Paul wasn’t making these introductions. The brightness slowly washed out of his eyes. “What’s happened?” Alexander asked.
“Is there somewhere we can talk?”
He stared at me for a long minute, and then his eyes slid over to Vanessa’s sad look, and back to my grim one.
“Follow me,” he said.
ggg
I had no damn excuse. I knew that Keepers’ Hospital used the same stock outer dome as any other megacity. I knew that Keepers’ Hospital was not a megacity, and had a total staff and population of less than 1/1000th of one. And yet, knowing all that, not once did it occur to me to wonder what Keepers’ Hospital did with all the extra space.
So, when Alexander took us by elevator up to the main dome level and opened the doors, I stood there like an idiot and gaped. At least Vanessa gaped with me. I felt better knowing I wasn’t alone in looking like a fool, but then, who doesn’t?
Over the past century, Maia-Leia Shana had slowly recreated her own tiny piece of Sarcos within the megadome. Giant naquella trees, as tall as any Terran redwood, reached with gold leaves towards a vault of artificial violet, while the warm light of a mock white-hot sun filled the dome sky. A slight breeze moved in the upper branches, moving the metallic leaves against each other with a sound like tiny bells. Light filtered through the canopy to sparkle against Sarcodinay buildings, towers of crystal and steel colored in purple, yellow, green, red, blue, and orange. As bright as they were, the spires often blended with trees, flowers, and bushes that were their equal in intensity. In the distance, a hedge of crystalvines had been slowly trained to form a maze of sweet-scented flowers. Alabaster fountains splashed water down sculpted spillways, feeding into clear reflecting pools. Crystal formations that seemingly grew out of the earth like cacti arched up and towards the light, refracting prisms out across an already incredible view.
Like Rhodes himself, the view needed a new word—something other than beautiful—to describe it. I groped for the appropriate adjectives but could only manage breathtaking, surreal, astonishing, and awe-inspiring, all of which I mulled over before discarding as inadequate. This was the cause of every tacky, overdone obsession I ever encountered with the Sarcodinay, their fascination with clashing bright colors, gems, crystalline surfaces and glowing unreal light. Like humanity, they had learned their first lessons of aesthetics from the world around them, but Sarcos was painted in a very different palate than Terra. Perhaps that is why most Sarcodinay attempts at imitation fell woefully short, into a clashing disharmony so extreme it was vulgar. Not this attempt, though. Not Maia-Leia’s conceit. This was neither tacky nor overdone. It was magic.
Shipments of plants and soil must have been sent from Sarcos, entire cargo holds devoted to live flora with zero economic benefit. Hundreds of men and women would have been required to maintain it all once those plants reached Terra. Decades of work, at an incalculable cost, all to sate the desires of one woman who wanted to recreate her memories of home. If other people enjoyed this view, walked under dappled shadows and sprawled by perfumed gardens of rare flowers, that was an unimportant side-effect. This expanse was built for the pleasure of the Maia, and for no other reason.
Now I understood why no effort had been made at evacuation. Keepers’ Hospital could not be evacuated—only abandoned.
“Welcome to the garden, as we like to call it,” Alexander said with a sweep of his arm.
Vanessa stared at it all and then scoffed. “This is one of the loveliest spots on the whole bloody planet, and she goes and builds a Sarcodinay terrarium here? She could have built this anywhere! The middle of the desert would have worked just as well.”
Alexander coughed apologetically. “The Maia is a bit eccentric. The weather here is very close to Sarcos’ norm, so we don’t waste power trying to recreate it, and we use the volcanic activity for geothermal power.”
Her mouth twitched. “Still.”
“If it helps,” Alexander added, “the megadome means that all the Sarcodinay plants stay here where they can’t disrupt any native ecosystems, and the local native flora and fauna are left relatively undisturbed. I imagine this will be quite a vacation spot in a few years.”
“The best of both worlds?” I raised an eyebrow.
He nodded. “Something like that.” Then he pointed to a small sled. “We can use that to reach my office.”
Vanessa and I rode in silence while Alexander pointed out the sights: the recovery bay, the laboratory towers, the surgery bays, the buildings for nanites, and the spires where genetic engineering was researched and performed. Keepers’ Hospital was home to fifty thousand staff and patients, but in the past had held up to two million. The conspicuous vacancies gave the hospital complex a ghost-town air, and made the presence of the large numbers of edgy Sarcodinay soldiers all the more obvious.
“Why is the hospital on alert?” I asked.
Alexander glanced at me sideways, and grudgingly answered, “Because I ordered it.”
“Afraid someone is going to take a shot at Maia-Leia?”
His expression held no emotion at all. “You never know.”
“Stars, why would anyone want to kill Maia-Leia?” Vanessa said. “We are talking about the woman who cured the Plague, after all. Does that woman even have an enemy?”
“Perhaps one or two.” His voice was soft, but not gentle. Then he shook his head and smiled. “You see that silver tower? That’s where we keep sample of various diseases, including the Rio strain of MDR-Tuberculosis.”
“You have the Plague? Here?” Vanessa’s voice squeaked a little.
“We have samples of every human disease known, from anthrax to yellow fever. When a new one rears its head, it’s sent here immediately. We know we will never cure all disease for all time, but Keepers’ Hospital works very hard to make sure infectious agents cause as little damage as possible.” His patter was full of the same professional, smooth tones that I might have expected of a salesman using his favorite pitch.
“Do you keep samples of Sarcodinay diseases?” I asked.
“There’s no real need. We’ve yet to find a Sarcodinay disease that affects humans, or the reverse. We’re thankfully too incompatible.”
I scowled and looked away from the impossibly beautiful Alexander, to the impossibly beautiful garden. In a way, they matched, but then I suspected they had the same creator.
What I feared was that I had that same creator too.
The pectoral on my chest vibrated softly, for just a few seconds—Medusa was ‘in.’ I touched the gold to let Medusa know I understood.
The sled rounded a small hill, where large naquella trees blocked the view. When we reached the other side both Vanessa and I gave a small gasp of surprise. The building before us was a massive, cathedral-like structure of blood red, white, and black, starkly contrasting with the rainbow colors around it. Its many towers rose, castle-like, in patterned, striped, spiraling fingers, each one crested with an enameled, onion-shaped top.
The architecture was in no-way Sarcodinay, and as I frowned, trying to place where I knew it from, Vanessa spoke first.
“What’s a Russian Orthodox church doing in the middle of Keeper’s Hospital?” She blinked at it, open-mouthed. “That may just be one of the most surreal juxtapositions I’ve ever seen.”
The corner of Alexander’s mouth twitched. “That’s Maia-Leia Shana’s personal residence. She calls it the Temple.”
Vanessa raised an eyebrow. “How delightfully whi
msical.”
He laughed. “You have no idea.”
A few minutes later, he led us into a smaller builder closer to the main cluster. Inside was a lavish apartment that I assumed was his own. There was a lot of warm gray and taupe, black and ivory, broken by the occasional splash of crimson. Behind an impressive double-sized mahogany desk, the wall was painted in an eyebrow-raising mural of two ancient human armies fighting, all flashing chariots, horses and spears. The chair, or rather, the throne, behind the desk wasn’t Sarcodinay either: it was an antique pre-plague piece, with lion heads carved into armrests and a double-headed eagle carved into the back. A few other chairs were carefully placed in the room, along with several carved wooden benches with small red throw pillows. There was nothing that resembled a divan or curoquo couch. There was little need for further decoration: the south wall was a large plate of glass overlooking the colorful landscaping, the view centered on the black, red and white spirals of Maia-Leia Shana’s ‘Temple.’
I stood over by the window and stared out, arms crossed over my chest.
Alexander Rhodes walked over to a cabinet, opened it, threw some ice into a glass and then poured some clear liquid over it that was theoretically water, but didn’t flow quite right. He didn’t say a thing, or glance at us. He crossed over to his desk and sat down behind it.
“Alexander—” Vanessa said.
“Is Paul in trouble?” Rhodes asked.
“No,” I said, and turned around to look at him. “Paul’s dead.”
He stared at me the way people do when you’ve surprised them around a corner, politely said ‘hello’ and then stabbed them in the gut—glassy, dull-eyed shock. Disbelief fenced with dismay. I could feel the emotions churn in him. Was I joking? I couldn’t be serious, not when he’d seen Paul just a few days previous, when he knew Paul was still alive. I wasn’t joking, he knew I wasn’t joking, and there was a part of him that had known from the moment he’d seen me in the landing bay. Paul hadn’t called, and he should have. Paul should have been here too. Something was so very wrong.
Whatever the liquid was, he downed in all in one long gulp. Alexander leaned back in his chair. He closed his eyes. I saw the knuckles of his hand turn white around the glass. The line of his jaw turned hard and sharp.
I had been wrong about Alexander. I could see that. Maybe he was just as power hungry and ambitious as his brother; maybe he really was a Sarcodinay sycophant—a skald; maybe everything I feared about him was true: but whatever his faults, he loved Paul. There was misery in him, and grief, and a hate so strong I was surprised I couldn’t see it flapping around his head like a screaming crow.
“Don’t you want to know how?” I asked.
“Mallory!” Vanessa said. “Give the man a chance—”
“No,” Alexander
