by Tony Daniel
“A little longer. A little longer, dear Lace.”
“Lace,” she said. “My name is Lace.”
“Lace Criur is your name,” C said.
She began to move the chair again. “Pleased to meet you,” she said. She rocked, and C finished his tea. The sun set in the west, and a crescent moon rose in the sky. Venus burned near the moon’s arms. It was a long, long time ago, when you couldn’t go to either place.
“I have to be moving along now,” C told her. “But I promise to return.”
“You have to be going?” she said. “Who are you?”
He set the tea glass on a side table. When he returned, he knew he would find it back in the cabinet, washed.
“Oh,” he said, “nobody in particular.”
She turned from him and gazed back out the window. She pulled the shawl more tightly about her shoulders.
“When will he come?” she asked.
C left through the arches of San Souci and went out to face the Mercurian night. He thought to go to his office, but instead found himself wandering the corridors of the lower levels of Bach. He kept to the shadows out of habit, and you might not have even noticed a man passing you if you had not been looking directly at him. Or perhaps you could not look directly at him. If you tried, you might find something uncertain in your gaze.
He was puzzling over a cipher in his mind. It was a task he had set himself two years before. He had chanced upon something that looked very like a secret code one day in his relative youth when he had cracked open a pecan. Instead of nut meat inside, a slip of paper had fallen out, as if the pecan were a fortune cookie. Like a good operative, he had memorized the message and then eaten it.
It had said, simply, “Clue in Clare.”
It had been a pecan Lace had handed him to open, but there was no way, of course, she could have put the message in there. No one could have put it there.
It was impossible.
The impossible is inconceivable.
C wandered on into the darker and darker reaches. There was so much to think about, all at once. He was not a man given to despair. If that had been the case, he should have fallen into oblivion centuries ago. He was not a man given to despair, but he was confused. This was not often the case. There were hidden variables he was dealing with here. Wheels within wheels. It was either that, or he was going mad. He did not discount that possibility.
Sometimes he missed talking with dear old mad Tod. Now there was a true lunatic for you.
Perfect for this mad war, this mad time.
He was glad the old booger had escaped.
And, in that moment, C hit upon the missing piece to his puzzle. He stopped walking, looked around. He was standing a hundred feet from his office. It was enough to make you believe in predestination. Pure coincidence, though.
“I have to find this Leo Sherman,” C said, to no one in particular.
And then, he thought: I’ll get to the bottom of this.
Everything is pure coincidence, but it all has a twisted sort of logic. It is a matter of finding the right key. And, then, everything becomes music.
PART FOUR
HOW THE SKY CAN BURN
* * *
One
It was a good thing Leo knew when the transmitter pod would brake, because if he hadn’t they would all have been caught by surprise and pasted into the outer wall of the pod. As it was, they got ready and found a particularly thick part of the fiber to put behind them. Outside, a receiving tube would suck them in, according to Leo, and they would slow down as they slid down its length to docking.
And that is what happened. Slowing down was not as hard as speeding up had been, although Aubry supposed that exactly the same physical forces were involved.
And then, just like that, they were there. Nirvana.
Leo got a door to pucker open, and they walked out into the light of a fusion-lamp sun. It was always day in this bolsa of Nirvana, Leo said, and the light was always on.
“Then the Parleyman said to me ‘Come to the wasteland and be sure to bring the cheese,’ “ Tod said, as they came out of the access corridor they had taken from the Nirvana Integument. They had steadily grown heavier as their spin rate increased in the corridor, and now they stepped onto a grassy lawn with Earth-normal spin under their feet.
Across the lawn was a wood, and from the wood, people emerged.
“Amazing,” said Leo. “Every time it works, I’m amazed.”
The people were getting nearer, and Aubry felt an unfamiliar wariness in her stomach. It had been weeks since she’d seen anyone who wasn’t out to catch or kill her. She did not know these people. She felt the weight of her pistol against her back, where she had it secured in the waistband of her pants. Then the people began to run, and she tensed, ready for anything. But it was Tod they were running toward. When they reached him, they all gathered around him in a circle. There were eleven of them, seven women and four men. They all held out their hands and bowed, not deeply, and not all at the same time.
“Old bone dancer,” they each said, as if it were a greeting.
“James threw up and Ettiene got the big pieces,” Tod said, after they were finished.
Leo seemed to recognize one of the men, and he signaled Jill to come with him to say hello. He waited until the man’s bow was complete, then touched him on the shoulder. “Franklin,” he said.
“Leo! What a day! You brought him, you goatmother!”
“Here we are,” said Leo. “A little worse for wear. Where are Otis and Game?”
“Enthalpy,” said Franklin.
“Wow,” Leo replied. “But we have to talk.”
“Yeah. Their converts aren’t stoned. We can talk in the virtuality. Let’s go to the village. You hungry?”
“Sure.”
“Who are these?” Franklin said, looking at Jill and Aubry. “Youth and youth.”
“This is Aubry and Jill. Jill is the one who saved Tod’s ass.”
Franklin fixed Jill in his gaze. His eyes were a dark brown and his skin a lighter shade than they were. “Thank you,” he said. “From all of us.”
“You’re welcome,” Jill said.
Then they went into the woods, where they found a circle of huts. Food was brought to them—steaming rice and vegetables. It was delicious. Leo seemed to know everyone in the “camp,” but Aubry kept close to Jill, and once she found herself unconsciously holding Jill’s hand.
Leo returned from talking to a group of people and sat down beside them, eating his rice with chopsticks. They all had water to drink.
“This bolsa is called Oregon,” Leo said. “They’ve had troubles. Problems coming through the grist.”
“If all these people are Friends of Tod, then why wasn’t he here in the first place?” Aubry asked.
“They’ve been preparing this place for him for nearly seventy years. There are some pretty rich Friends.”
“Who are these people?” Aubry said. She’d been wanting to ask this question since they arrived, and now it burst out.
“The Friends of Tod are the nerds who run the world.”
“Nerds?”
“Technicals, Aubry. Grist engineers. Algorithm programmers. Security consultants,” said Leo. “The people who created the patterns for the first free converts are here on Oregon.”
“What are we doing here? Are we going to stay?”
“That depends on what Otis and Game have to say,” said Leo. “I think they are seeking a vision to guide them. But the thing about these Friends visions—they usually turn out to be common sense.”
While they were eating, Otis and Game came into the hut where they were sitting. Jill knew it was them because the Friends who were there greeted them by name. The two stumbled about and went to a corner and collapsed together.
“We’re meeting withthem ?” said Jill.
“With their converts. They just let their bodies be affected by the drug.” Leo smiled what seemed a sad smile, Jill thought. �
��I wish I had known how to do that back when I was having my problems with enthalpy. But the real problem wasme , of course, and not that I was an e-head.”
After they ate, they went to another hut, and Aubry could feel that this one was thick with grist. It was a type she’d never experienced. And when they entered the virtuality, she realized that what she had sensed was heavy-duty encryption algorithms—and something even stronger. They appeared as a nest of vines and tree branches surrounding them. This virtual space was a forest clearing with a circle of stone on which they could sit, and a blue-white fire burning in a fire pit in the middle. A pipe was passed around and everyone took a pull. The smoke tasted a bit sweet—not at all like tobacco or any herb. And it seemed to have the effect of making her very clearheaded.
Several of the Friends they had met were present with virtual likenesses, including Franklin. Otis, who was a man, sat on one side of the circle and Game, a female, sat on the other.
“Old bone dancer is now with us,” Otis began. “You can feel him in the grist.”
Several of the friends nodded.
“We have seen,” said Game, “that it is the time to light him up and smoke him. As was foretold, so it has come to pass.”
Several of the Friends broke into applause. Game let it die down, and then continued. “But with freedom comes a responsibility. And that is why we are here today.”
Jill glanced over at Leo. He seemed genuinely puzzled.
“The time has come for coalitions,” said Otis, taking up where Game left off. “For the forging of alliances.”
“Excuse me,” Leo said. “But what do you mean about firing Tod up and smoking him?”
“Ah, ye of little faith,” Otis said. “Did you not know of the special property of time towers when they are used in a certain manner prescribed by wisdom and science?”
“I know that they can’t be co-opted by other intelligences,” Leo replied.
“Yes,” said Game. Her voice was a baritone purr. “And that effect can be spread out, all over a self-contained grist space. Nirvana, for instance.”
“So Amés can’t get in here on the merci, or through the virtuality at all? Tod can act as a sort of jamming system?”
“It has already been done,” Otis said, pointing to the vegetation that surrounded them.
“I’ll be damned,” muttered Leo. “So the time towers really have a use after all.”
“The Director is aware of this, as well. Other time towers are being put to despicable uses. Tortured, forced aboard warships with minimal food and water, and used as merci-jamming devices.”
“The problem is,” Otis said, “we are pacifists.”
“Conscientious objectors,” Game added.
“We can jam the grist, but we cannot fight off a physical invasion or rescue the other time towers who are imprisoned. Our fighting would cause Tod to go mad.”
“Don’t want to make Tod mad,” said Leo. “He might become sane.”
“Now you’re cooking with gas,” Otis replied.
“So we have come together to talk this,” Game said.
“Because we saw no answer in the enthalpy.”
And the Friends began to talk among themselves, in low voices. Aubry, Jill and Leo sat silently and let them go at it. After maybe half an hour, the talk became a murmur, and then died out.
Otis and Game turned simultaneously to the travelers. They fixed their eyes on Jill. “We need help,” Otis said. “Your help.”
Jill was silent for a long time, but Otis and Game kept looking steadily at her.
“I have strange friends,” Jill finally said.
“Any friends of yours,” Game said, “are friends of ours.”
“And what will you do for me?”
“We will help you.”
“Help me do what?”
Game laughed and, for the first time, the woman seemed to Aubry . . . not evil. But extremely knowing. Full of frightening knowledge acquired by arcane methods.
“We know who you are looking for,” Game said to Jill. “We will help you find Alethea.”
Again, Jill was silent for a long moment. Her expression barely changed, but Aubry had spent enough time with her to see that she had come to a decision. It was Jill’s nose. It twitched—very slightly, but noticeably—when she was concentrating closely on something. Aubry suddenly had a strong urge to scratch Jill’s nose, but managed to fight it off.
“How can I get word to my friends?” Jill asked. “Provided I want to.” She approached the fire, warmed her hands. Sometimes they still looked like paws to Aubry, they were so small in comparison with most people’s.
Jill sighed. “We’re just a bunch of rats and ferrets and other vermin.”
“We can do something about that,” Game said.
“We know a lot about grist and how it cohabits with biology. We know how to break the lockout codes.”
“We?”
“Haven’t you guessed who the Friends are yet?” said Leo. “They are the ones who wrote your code in the first place.”
“I can’t answer for all the rats, then,” Jill said, “but the ferrets are ready to fight.”
“Well then,” said Otis, smiling around at the circle of Friends and fellow travelers. “Good death to us all!”
There was general applause. Aubry didn’t join in. She gazed at Jill, who kept on grinning, running her tongue over the sharp tips of her teeth.
Aubry was not sure exactly what had happened in the clearing, but one thing she was certain of—she wasn’t going to be joining her family anytime soon. She had realized this on the trip, somewhere in the back of her mind, but it was only now that she began to consider it as a cold, hard fact.
She must have been appearing gloomy for the past few days after the meeting, because finally Leo came up to her and asked her to go for a walk with him in the woods. The trees were all evergreens here, and the path was dim. It was almost as if they’d stepped into twilight.
“Even in a place where the light shines all the time,” Leo said, “people work it out so that they can have a place for a shady existence.” They walked about half a mile, and then Leo spoke again. “Okay, kid. What’s bothering you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You miss your folks?”
“Yes. And my brother.”
Leo slowed his pace a little “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I didn’t know I was going to be taking you on such a march when I pulled you away from your dad. I honestly thought we’d hook up with the Friends at Tod’s place, and I’d pass you along to the ship that was smuggling the half–free converts off the Met. Jesus, I hope that ship got off all right.”
“Didn’t you know where it was?”
“Nope. We were trying to keep that info compartmentalized.”
“You think maybe they got caught, don’t you?”
Leo stopped walking for a moment, took a handful of needles from a nearby young fir tree. “Yeah, I think they probably did. Amés was just moving too fast for us.”
“I heard you and Jill talking about what you think his real plans are for the free converts.”
“Yes.”
Then a new thought entered Aubry’s mind. “Oh God,” she said. “Then my mother’s escape ship was probably caught, too.”
Leo winced. He said nothing. Aubry felt as if someone had just kicked her in the stomach. All along she had been imagining her mother as having escaped. Separated from the family, but away on some ship. But the truth was probably much worse. The worst of all.
“Oh, no,” Aubry said.
They walked a little farther, but Aubry felt as if her head was spinning, and she had to stop. They sat down, their backs against a tree. Aubry wanted to cry. She felt the tears building. But nothing came. After a while, she swallowed and reached over and held Leo’s hand. “I can’t believe it. What was the name of that place? The place they are sending free converts?”
“Noctis Labyrinthus.”
“Then sh
e’s probably there.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Come on, Leo,” Aubry said. “You can’t keep something from me if I already know it.”
Leo squeezed her hand a bit tighter. “You’ve got me there, kid.”
Aubry sat for a while, trying to think. There had to be something—something she hadn’t thought of—but all she could think was that she had to get her mother out of there. She had to get Danis out.
But I’m eleven, Aubry thought. I’m eleven. The number seemed to echo in her brain.
And, damn it, something was bugging her. Something was pressing into the small of her back. She realized it was the particle gun Jill had given her, and insisted that she always carry.
Even an eleven-year-old could pull a trigger and kill somebody. That wasn’t so hard. And Aubry was a dead-sight aim.
You don’t shoot people just because you don’t like them, Aubry thought.
Unless those people are trying to kill your mother.
“I’m going to learn everything I can about fighting,” Aubry said. “And then I’m going to get my mother out of there.”
They returned silently through the shadows of the trees and stepped back into the fake sunlight of Oregon.
Two
from
First Constitutional Congress of
the Cloudships of the Outer System
April 2, 3013 (e-standard)
a transcript
C. Lebedev: My dear Beatrice, have you heard none of what has been said? Or, failing that, have you had a ramble through the merci lately? He intends to have it all.
C. Beatrice: But Elgar Triptych has specifically promised us that no hostilities will be directed at us.
C. Lebedev: Yes, the Directorate’s envoy has been doing a great deal of talking lately. A great deal. If we are to believe him, all of the outer planets welcome Amés with open arms, and only their evil, illegal governments prevent the citizens from rushing into his arms. I will tell you how it seems to me. That is all I can do. You will have to decide between me, whom you have known since you first ventured out to the Oorts—and Señor Triptych, who strikes me as being a great deal wider than he is deep. Here is what I have to say: We have a navy, and we are it. The outer system has no military craft of its own to speak of. They haven’t needed any—we have been the de facto policers of the spaceways for generations now. We are blocked—blocked!—from Jupiter. Now, Señor Triptych calls this a temporary measure not directed at us, but it doesn’t matter its intent. We are effectively cut off from half our capital, and almost all of our army. I am speaking of the Federal Army of the Planets, which must be our infantry—for we have no other. The situation is grave, Cloudship Beatrice, grave. I do not wish to cry doom in these proceedings, but the time to act is before us. Now! If we lose the army, we may have lost all hope. Our first order of business must be to break the Jupiter blockade and get our armyout .
