by Dan Moren
The guards had remained outside, she realized suddenly, leaving her alone in the room. Well, almost alone.
“It’s quite something, isn’t it?” Ofeibia Xi drifted into view, wearing a gown that sparkled from chest to floor. Even more scintillating than the one she’d worn this morning, this one picked up the lights around the room and refracted them back, glittering like starlight.
“It’s… beautiful,” said Addy honestly.
Xi bent her head, her neck a graceful curve. “Thank you. I do believe in collecting beautiful things.”
Addy felt heat start to rise to her cheeks. Keep a grip on it, Sayers. You’re here for the mission. She clutched her purse tighter. Taylor had helped her slip a femtoweave antenna into the lining of the bag; get it close enough to Xi and it ought to be able to clone her sleeve. Meanwhile, the ocular scanners she was wearing as contacts would be building a three-dimensional model of Xi’s face throughout the evening. She just had to maintain eye contact.
Which might be dangerous in a different way. She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry.
Xi shimmered closer. “You look lovely, Charlotte. Is that dress from Chez Matisse?”
“Yes. I didn’t have anything else that I thought was quite appropriate in my luggage.”
“Well, it was an excellent choice.” Turning, Xi hooked Addy’s arm through her own. “Let’s go have a drink, shall we?”
Xi led her out of the gallery and through another set of doors into an elegantly set dining room. Above a black lacquered table floated a pair of spherical flames, flickering and glowing.
Addy peered closer at these decorations. These were real fire, not merely holograms – she was sure of it. So much for not risking open flame on a spaceship.
“You like them?” Xi asked. “A fascinating use of microrepulsor fields. I saw something similar in an art exhibition on Illyrica, and I put my engineers to work recreating it. I think the effect is rather stunning.”
Addy nodded mutely, still staring at the flames dancing and writhing.
“Don’t worry,” said Xi, tracing a fingernail down Addy’s arm. “They’re perfectly safe. Still, it brings a little thrill, doesn’t it?”
Goosebumps rose on Addy’s skin along the path of Xi’s finger, and she barely managed to suppress a shiver.
“Ah,” said Xi. “I believe our drinks are here.”
Nina, the bartender from downstairs, had appeared, bearing two of the drinks that Addy had seen her preparing. If anything, they were more impressive from close up, the blood red globe sitting in the middle like the pit of a peach. Nina gave Addy a look that was part surprise and part knowing glance, then withdrew.
Xi pulled out a chair for Addy, then took a seat at the head of the table, so that they were next to each other, but with the corner of the table decorously in the way. Addy hung her bag on the back of her chair, angled in Xi’s direction – this ought to be close enough for the cloner to do its job.
Leaning back in her chair, languid and sinuous, Xi raised her glass in Addy’s direction. “Santé.”
Addy raised her own glass and then took a small sip. A melange of flavors swept across her palate: a deep, strong citrus married to the bite of alcohol and with just a hint of real spiciness that left a burning sensation on her lips. Wide-eyed, she stared at the drink, then back to Xi. “What is this?”
Xi shrugged, and Addy watched, mesmerized, as her collarbone rose and descended like a ship sinking beneath the waves. “My bartender created it. She calls it a Sabaean Sunrise.”
“It’s delicious,” said Addy. She hadn’t spent a lot of time drinking alcohol for the taste; maybe it was time to start. “What’s in it?”
“Trade secrets, my dear. Shall we eat?”
As if summoned by the question, a pair of attendants in White Star livery appeared and deposited bowls in front of both of them, filled with a steaming dark brown soup, topped with what appeared to be crispy noodles.
“Manchow soup,” said Xi. “I hope you don’t mind spicy.” Her eyes danced.
Addy smiled. “I’m game.”
The soup was spicy as promised, but also deeply savory, with a broth of scallions and vegetables that was thick on the tongue.
“So,” said Xi. “You must tell me more about yourself, Charlotte. What brings you to my little corner of the galaxy?”
“A little bit of this, a little bit of that,” she said, trying to match the other woman’s playful tone.
Xi’s carefully sculpted eyebrows went up, but the amusement hadn’t vanished. “You told Domina that you’d played the casinos of the Juarez system. Surely, you must be acquainted with my old friend Jaime Agbaje?”
Addy bought time with another sip of her drink. Xi was testing her, waiting for a misstep. Best to short circuit that. “I may have… exaggerated my qualifications.”
Xi didn’t say anything for a moment, one fingernail tapping on her cocktail glass. Her gaze on Addy was level and unwavering.
Shit. She’s going to have me hauled out of here, isn’t she?
“Well, I suppose that makes you quite the gambler, indeed,” said Xi. “But a woman of your skill, well, you really ought to try Juarez one of these days. Jaime is the manager of the Praetorian, one of the most sumptuous casinos in the galaxy – present surroundings excluded, of course.”
The meal proceeded through a variety of opulent courses, Xi proving a captivating conversationalist, though Addy suspected the cocktail and subsequent glasses of wine were playing a part. Keep your head, Addy. You’re supposed to be working, not being worked. She tried to focus, but the candlelight kept sparkling in her vision, and every time she looked over at Xi, her breath caught anew.
“So, what was life like for you, growing up?”
“Oh, it wasn’t so bad,” said Addy. “I guess you could say I learned about life the hard way. The haves and have-nots. Anyway, I did all right for myself.”
“That you did,” said Xi, leaning back in her chair. “As a matter of fact, I’d say you… Yes, what is it?” she said, her voice turning sharp as an attendant entered. He leaned over and murmured something in Xi’s ear, and the woman’s smile tightened. Waving him away, Xi sighed and turned to Addy. “I’m so sorry for the interruption, my dear, but there’s something I must take care of. It will only take a few minutes, but I insist you continue with your dinner. I wouldn’t want it to get cold.” She beckoned with one bangled hand and another attendant appeared to refill Addy’s wine glass. Reaching across the table, Xi laid a warm hand on her arm. “Forgive me.”
“Oh, of course,” said Addy, a bit more waveringly than she would have liked. “I understand completely.”
Xi smiled, squeezed her wrist, then rose, her gown shimmering in the light of the floating flame bulbs. “If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask.” And with that, she disappeared behind one of the screens.
OK, Addy, concentrate. You’ve got a minute.
As she dug into her bag for her sleeve, she blinked twice and looked out of the left corners of her eyes to access the ocular camera Taylor had given her. The HUD flickered to life.
Come on, come on, she thought, as she flitted through the cumbersome menu. After a moment a map of Xi’s face appeared in her screen: most of it was in photorealistic detail, complete with contour mapping, but a few last portions of it – mostly on the right side, which had been facing away from Addy during dinner – were still missing. It shouldn’t be too much trouble to fill it in once they left the dinner table.
A quick glance at the sleeve’s display showed that it had cloned about fifty percent of Xi’s sleeve so far – in order to not be detected, the antenna used a low-power signal with limited bandwidth. She slid the sleeve back into her purse.
Blinking the HUD off again, she rubbed her shoulder and took another sip of wine.
Of course, capturing Xi’s face was the easy part; tricking the lockbox into believing that the 3D model they created was the real Xi was where the fun began. But that was Taylo
r’s problem.
Even that was a stroll in the park compared to getting Xi’s access code. How the hell was she supposed to convince her to do that? Kovalic had told her to work any angle, and she could think of one way, but that raised the question of how far she was willing to go for this particular job. Not that it would be much of a sacrifice, with those eyes. She shivered slightly, and eyed the wine. Enough of that. Gotta keep my head about me.
True to her word, Xi returned about ten minutes later, looking apologetic as she sank back into her chair.
“Everything all right?” Addy asked.
“Quite,” said Xi, setting her napkin back in her lap. “The Queen Amina is, as you can see, a full-time job. I prefer to delegate as much as I can, but some matters are…unavoidable.”
“I can’t even imagine. I’m not sure I’d be cut out for it.”
“These are hardly skills one is born with – there’s no substitute for on the job learning.”
Addy snorted, then covered her mouth in embarrassment. “Excuse me.”
Xi laughed. “No need. But I’m serious. All this has taken me a lifetime to build. And what it required, more than anything, was the will.” Glancing at Addy’s plate to confirm she was finished, she rose from her chair and extended a hand down at Addy. “If you’re up for it, I’d like to show you exactly what will can accomplish.”
CHAPTER 18
Café Turek was a level up from the noodle shop where Kovalic had done his brief stint as a dishwasher, but still three levels below the esplanade – close enough that its clientele was a mix of passengers and crew, though weighted more towards the latter. The walls were green with geometric decorations and wooden screens partitioned off the main seating area, filled with worn armchairs and threadbare pillows.
Sitting at the bar, Kovalic sipped a very black and very hot coffee. Nat had generously transferred a few credits from her account to a wallet on his new sleeve, along with a barely suppressed smile and an injunction to not spend it all in one place.
As he drank, he scanned the room for Seku al-Kitab. The picture on the Rizkin University website had been of a man with light brown skin, thick black hair, and a pencil mustache. Somehow he looked nervous even in the still image.
“You trust Cortez’s intel?” said Nat’s voice in his ear.
Turning on his stool, Kovalic peered past the screens and into the main room, where the commander was sitting in one of the overstuffed armchairs, pretending to read from a tablet.
“He seemed truthful,” said Kovalic, covering his comment with another sip of coffee. He saw the minute shake of Nat’s head that signaled a suppressed laugh. “What?”
“You always did pride yourself on your ability to read people.”
“And I’m usually right.”
“But not always.”
“Who is?”
Even from his spot at the bar, Kovalic could see Nat’s mouth set in a line as he punched a button on the tablet.
“This still about Maverick?”
“It’s your team, you made that very clear.”
Kovalic sighed. “I may have spoken too hastily. What I meant was, I appreciate any input you have to give on personnel.”
“It’s fine. After this job, I’ll just head back to the old grind and leave you all to it.” She said it with a deliberate carelessness that was in itself indicative of just how much she cared about it.
“Look, I don’t think–”
“Heads up, on your six. I think that’s our man.”
Even after years of working in covert operations, Kovalic still had to actively tamp down the urge to look directly at the man who had just entered the café. Instead, he turned back toward the bar and watched the mirrored panel that hung below the menu.
It was hard to tell completely in the reflection, but the man who had entered certainly did bear a striking resemblance to the image on the university’s website. He wore a tweed jacket, plaid bowtie and, unusually, a pair of round spectacles.
Having ordered, with precision, a cup of rooibos tea, brewed for exactly seven minutes, with one teaspoon of sugar, the man took an empty seat near Kovalic, then set down a tablet, straightened it on the bar, and began to read.
Kovalic reached up to double tap his earbud, then studied the man out of the corner of his eye.
It was al-Kitab, of that he was certain. The same face, the same carefully trimmed mustache; and that nervous energy from the picture was clearly conveyed in his carriage and behavior. Kovalic continued to watch him as he sipped his coffee and idly watched the video feeds that hung over the bar. He didn’t want to seem too interested in the man – and, more to the point, he wanted a chance to make sure that nobody else was too interested either. Seven minutes ought to be plenty of time to suss out anybody tailing the good professor, whether it be White Star security or Mirza’s team.
When al-Kitab’s tea arrived, he very precisely aligned it to the upper right corner of his tablet, turning the handle to a ninety-degree angle so he could hold it with his right hand while continuing to read. At the end of every page he would reach out, tap a control on the tablet to move to the next page, then move his hand to the tea cup and raise it to his lips for another sip.
“No sign of babysitters,” said Nat in his ear, her assessment jibing with his own. “You want this one? Or should I make an approach?”
The woman who had been sitting between Kovalic and al-Kitab got up and left.
“Me,” Kovalic murmured. “You’re the hard sell if we need it.”
“Copy. On you.”
Kovalic slid over towards al-Kitab, taking his coffee with him. He peered over at the tablet, trying to make out what was on it.
The text was in small print, too fine for Kovalic’s eyes to at this distance. No wonder the man needed glasses.
Only, as Kovalic glanced up at al-Kitab’s eyes, rapidly zipping back and forth like a game of world class table tennis, he realized that al-Kitab did need the glasses precisely for this reason. The text on the page wasn’t really text at all, but computer-generated codes that the glasses displayed as text, video, three-dimensional models, and so on. What al-Kitab was looking at through the glasses was far more informationally dense than text on a page.
“Must be riveting stuff,” he said.
At first, al-Kitab didn’t respond; not rout of rudeness, but because he was so enraptured in what he was reading that he either didn’t hear Kovalic or couldn’t imagine anybody was talking to him.
When his brain did register, he looked up and blinked through the glasses at Kovalic, his eyes disoriented as they focused back on what was in front of him. “I’m sorry?”
Kovalic nodded at the tablet. “Whatever you’re reading. Must be pretty interesting.”
“Oh. Yes.” He turned back to the tablet.
“Never was much of a book learner myself.”
Smiling politely, al-Kitab continued reading.
“What’s it about, then?”
Drawing the deep breath of everybody who has been bothered by a stranger while trying to read their book, al-Kitab turned back to Kovalic. “A paper on archaeological finds on Earth in the late twenty-first century.”
“Oh. Sure. You a professor then?”
“Indeed.”
“Of archaeology?”
Al-Kitab sighed, clearly resigning himself to the fact that Kovalic wasn’t about to leave him alone. “Yes. Archaeology.” He gestured at the tablet as if the answer should have been self-evident.
“Wow. That must be fascinating. You ever find any dinosaur bones?”
One of al-Kitab’s eyebrows began to twitch. “That’s paleontology. An entirely different field, though there is occasionally some similarity in techniques.”
“Gotcha, gotcha. So what kind of old bones do you look at?”
“Mostly human,” said al-Kitab, his intense gaze seeming to suggest he might enjoy studying Kovalic’s skeleton in the distant future. “If you’ll excuse me, I really must get back
to it.” He gave another polite smile.
“Of course, of course. Say, I had an argument with a friend – maybe you could settle it.”
Al-Kitab’s shoulders drooped and he cast a wistful look at his tablet. “What kind of argument?”
“Well, my friend, he thinks some ancient alien civilization terraformed all of the planets that humans now live on; me, I think if that were the case, we’d definitely have found some evidence that there used to be aliens, you know? What do you think about that, doc?” Kovalic took a slow sip of his coffee, his eyes locked on al-Kitab.
The professor blinked, the glasses making his eyes especially owlish. He took off the spectacles, produced a cloth from the inside of his coat, and began wiping the lenses. “That… is a very interesting question, Mister… I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”
“Godwin.”
“Mr Godwin. You’ve stumbled on one of the fundamental discussions in my field of study.”
“What a coincidence,” said Kovalic, his voice level.
Al-Kitab hooked the glasses back over his ears. “There are those who believe – and I count myself among their number – that a sufficiently advanced alien civilization might not have left behind any traces that human science is capable of detecting. Perhaps, for example, their technology was largely organic, or maybe they deliberately obfuscated any evidence of their existence so as not to influence later civilizations. Maybe they never lived on these planets at all, merely terraformed them from afar, creating conditions ripe for human life.”
“Hmm. I guess that’s all plausible. But, if it is true, I still have one question.”
Al-Kitab gave a chuckle, smoothing his mustache with a finger. “Just one?”
“Well, one that I can think of right now,” Kovalic admitted. “If their technology was undetectable, or they wanted to hide it, then why would they leave behind a single artifact like the Aleph Tablet?”
