“You have every right to be.”
“Humans,” she said.
“I know.”
“All those poor Thesps.”
“I know.”
“Do we have to worry about Cloethe?” asked Pax.
“No,” said Revelstoke. “Leave her to me. She only has the best interests of her people in mind.”
“A dangerous mindset,” said Pax.
“Thumbscrews?” asked Box.
Revelstoke scowled.
“How are we going for money?” asked Pax.
“We have none.”
“How are you paying for this?”
“Credit, and favors.”
“Your credit?”
“Yes, and my favors.”
“Then it’s time to get going,” said Pax.
“Yes,” said Revelstoke. “It is. Your refurbished chariot awaits you.”
“Alois?”
“Please take the androform copy. It’s already asked my permission. I don’t want it around here. Merge the real one later.”
“Alright,” said Pax. “Then let’s do it.”
The Water Bear was whole again. To Box’s eye, she looked unchanged, but now she was configured to cross 3,000 light-years of space, to Fluxor and back, with a detour to Praxis. This was her long configuration.
In the last few hours before departing, Box visited Cloethe.
“Dr Box,” said the surgical suite.
“Cloethe, thank you for healing Alois. You healed me too. All of us.”
“Thank you, Ophelia. This is what I do. Sometimes, it’s more than what I do. This is one of those times.”
“I’m sorry about the Antenna.”
“I know, it isn’t your fault. It isn’t the fault of any of you. It’s the way humans operate. The apotheosis of the individual. It’s your strength, and your weakness.”
“Take care of Alois,” said Box.
“Has anyone said, take care of yourself?”
“Heh, I’ve heard it before.”
“You have a good heart, Ophelia Box.”
“You think so?”
“I know it.”
6 ∞ Risk
2056
The car hummed powerfully from lane to lane, pressing her down in her seat. Curtains of rain fell through forests of glimmering towers. Fast trains flowed like quicksilver between island conurbations. Each turn opened a new vista. It was like all her adolescent dreams of an advanced, spacefaring civilization.
Five hundred million souls, in a cube.
Praxis.
It was Box’s first look at the orbital city, after her brief glimpse, six weeks before. If she narrowed her eyes, it looked like lambent forests of glass. Pax said the appearance of floaty architectural disconnectedness was an illusion.
“This is a stiff structure, as befits a starship,” he said.
“This place can move?” she asked.
“Far across the galaxy, if need be. In a serious emergency, this spacecraft could reach Andromeda, in a series of hyperluminal jumps.”
“The art of running away?”
“An excellent strategy, for a city.”
They’d entered through the docks that speckled one side of the cube. These vast industrial works made Avalon seem like a roadside garage. Box watched a ship being repaired: a teardrop-shaped lozenge, the size of a mountain.
“A municipal project,” said Pax, “built here by the local community of spacers.”
“Where does it go to?”
“It’s a deep space exploration vessel. It goes where it likes.”
The Water Bear had reached into her bag of disguises, and become a small tramp freighter, battered and tough, with gases venting from welds.
“Good luck,” she’d said, before departing.
Now they were on their own.
[Ophelia Box?] said a voice in her head.
[Praxis?]
[No, this is the Aldebaran Orbiter, the vehicle that carries Praxis through space. Praxis has chosen to be unaware of you.]
[Did we do something wrong?]
[No, you’re on a covert operation.]
[But you can see us.]
[I lack the city’s talent for self-deception.]
[Zing.]
[I’m pleased you have a sense of humor.]
[I’m glad you do too.]
[Welcome to Aldebaran. Call me if you need me. Remember, I’m a ship.]
[You mean you kick ass?]
[I can.]
Their safe house was an apartment, set high in a dormitory zone of the city. Alois and Pax confirmed it was perfectly ordinary, as a safe house should be. It backed onto rice paddies, which Box could see were the terraced rooftops of adjacent buildings. If she looked through the gap between the buildings, she could see Aldebaran spaceport, kilometers below.
Back where she’d started from.
Kitou threw herself on a couch, like an Earthly teenager would, and powered up a wall-sized entertainment system. The room filled with thumping music, like a mix between grindcore and Icelandic trance. Onscreen, performers bowed and banged and plucked at their instruments, while a crowd waved its hands in the air.
“Churn,” said Kitou, brightly.
“I like it,” said Box.
Androform Alois was doing just fine, in his dual role as the passenger and occasional captain of the Water Bear’s cyborg remote. Today he was the captain. You could tell by his beatific expression. He sat beside Kitou, and smiled at the music.
Box asked him the reason for his good mood.
“It’s because I’m a new person,” he said. “Without this mission, I’d never have existed.”
[Alois is an ideal houseguest,] said the Water Bear, from her listening post, five thousand kilometers away.
“That’s easy for you to say,” said her remote.
“As long as he doesn’t move in,” said Box.
[I can always make another androform body,] said the Water Bear.
Alois ignored them, and smiled.
For three days they wargamed their mission, testing assumptions, rehearsing the angles.
“We’re here to commit a serious crime,” said Pax. “Let’s waste no time on the ethics of that. Sometimes, we work in strange places. This is such an occasion.
“Given time, we could do it in secret. No one would know we were here. No one would know the money was gone. But we don’t have the time, so we need some support.”
“I propose to make contact with the local crime syndicates,” he said. “These will have already been penetrated by Po intelligence, although I don’t know the details. I’ll find out. We have signals.”
“More bar fights?” asked Box.
“No,” said Pax. This is a more complicated society. A particular commercial transaction will occur.”
“I intend to sell you as a slave,” he explained.
“What?”
Pax and Box were sitting relaxed in an open-air brasserie, in a park below their apartment, among happy families, with laughing children running through. The last of the afternoon rain was being deflected by shadesails. A freshness filled the air. The aroma of flowers and grass, and delicious food being cooked.
Pax summoned a waitress, about Kitou’s age.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hello,” said Pax. “What’s your name?”
“Sophie,” she smiled.
“Why are you here, Sophie?”
“Why am I working?”
“Yes.”
Her smile increased by a few thousand watts. “I’m saving for my grand tour,” she said. “Would you like to order?”
“Yes,” said Box. “We’re ravenous.”
“What was that about?” Box asked, when Sophie left with their orders.
“I want to introduce our economics.
“We live in what you might call a post-scarcity society. The state provides what people need, but not all they want. That’s a deliberate choice. Effortless societies are unstable. They s
elect for decadent behaviors. As pleasant as that might be for a while, it’s no way to run a civilization.
“So, we encourage people to contribute. Sophie is contributing. In return, she receives money.”
“Which she can spend on her tour,” said Box.
“Exactly,” said Pax. “And with it a sense of accomplishment. No one gave her that tour. She earned it. Anyone can look in the history of her money, and see it.”
“I like it,” said Box.
“Thus, as well as being a post-scarcity society, we’re also a quasi-capitalist, socialist, utopian one.”
“You saucy devils.”
“We must also deal with other societies. Thus we have trade, diplomacy, and war, usually in combinations of two. That means our currency has an extrinsic value.”
“So… you have crime?”
“Yes. We have organized crime, and a black market for all kinds of goods.”
Evening was gathering, and with it a powerful sense of expectancy. Box could feel it in the air, like electricity. Cities were cities, and this was the mother of cities. Lanterns lit up among the trees. Partygoers were gathering on the cantilevered boulevards. A happy clattering spilled out of the kitchen. Sophie returned with their meal, and the particulars of her travel itinerary, to show them.
“The Magellanic Clouds?” asked Pax. “That’s an expedition, not a tour.”
“It’s a grand tour,” said the girl.
Box recommended a hotel, in Avalon. “It’s nothing flash,” she said. “But it overlooks a perfect street market, and the people there are lovely.”
“You’ve been to the Smear?” asked the girl, wide-eyed.
At that point, Box might’ve exploded with pleasure.
“My friend is from Earth,” said Pax.
“You’re shittin’ me?”
“No, no shit,” said Pax.
“You made her day,” said Box, later, after Sophie left with their empty dishes.
“The gratuity will make her day,” said Pax.
“We aren’t law enforcement,” said Pax, “We probably break more laws than we uphold. But there is a crime we take a direct interest in: slavery.”
The paddy field was larger, and wilder than she’d thought from above. During the growing season it’d be flooded. Now it was lush. Box heard tiny animals rustling near her feet. She’d taken the liberty of entwining her hand in his.
“Why?”
“Because it falls in the gaps between societies.”
“Where you people operate?”
“Yes, we’re uniquely placed to police it, so we make it our business. It’s also an assault on those least able to protect themselves. Praxis is a center of human trafficking.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, in part because we help make it so. We cultivate the conditions for certain crimes to exist here.”
“A honey trap?”
“Not quite, no. A market intervention.”
Box frowned. “But Pax,” she said. “for that to work, there has to be actual honey. People must be sold. You end up policing a trade that only exists because of your intervention.”
Pax nodded. “We understand the complexities, yet we grasp the calculation.”
“You mean you buy and sell people.”
“We do. What choice is there? To condemn a larger number to the same fate by our inaction would be immoral.”
She shook her head.
“There’s no such thing as a moral dilemma,” he said. “Only a lack of moral clarity.
She sighed.
“I know there’ll be a Po agent,” he continued. “At or near the top of the slave trade here. I need that person’s help. Specifically, I want a dark way out of the city, so we can escape, once the robbery is complete. A coded signal will be deployed, like the barfight signal on Avalon. I’ll offer to sell a human woman – you - after betting a perfect number of Praxic cryptos on Bolo. 8,126, which signifies the utmost secrecy.”
“What’s a perfect number?”
“In mathematics, a positive integer that is equal to the sum of its proper divisors.”
“You learn something new every day. And Bolo?”
“A bloodsport.”
“Can it possibly get worse?”
“It can, and it does. I’ll be betting on Black Bolo, an illegal death sport.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
They boarded a train, that rose from a vertical platform, slowly at first, then with increasing speed, until they were spearing into the heart of the city.
“Now this is cool,” said Box.
Polyhedral towers gave way to onion domes, then slippery lozenges, then neogothic follies, like a flickering architectural slideshow.
“Fashion,” said Pax, following her startled glances. “Changing over the centuries.”
She’d decided she liked Praxis almost as much as Avalon. It wasn’t as exotic, or as strikingly alien. It was like any great city on Earth, until a vista opened, and the cityscape marched to infinity. Then, it was magnificent.
After just a few minutes, they reached their destination. A dripping-wet metal plain shone dully overhead, like nothing else she’d seen here. It was pitted and rough, like she imagined an asteroid might be. It was like the emerald city had a pig-iron core, and they were about to climb into its belly.
“Warning,” said a voice. “Please disembark now. You’ve reached the Deregulated Zone.”
They stepped onto an escalator. For a few dizzying moments, Box wondered if the Orbiter was messing with her wetware, replaying her cultural references.
She came to her senses.
This place was real.
The air above the metal plain was warmer than the city below, and steamy, so that water beaded on every surface. And crowded. People of every size, shape and ethnicity; every imaginable body modification. Not just humans. Chimeric beings wore bristles and fur. Aliens, like on Avalon Station. Music spilled out from bars and floating soundsystems.
Instead of buildings were machines: huge turbines that must’ve once delivered services to the city below, and were now infested with people. It was as though life here had adapted to survive in the spaces between.
And information. Everywhere, neon, or neon-equivalents. Holograms. Interference patterns in the air. Steam from vents that shimmered to conjure up advertisements. Drones buzzing in her ear. Subliminal displays, neutralized by her wetware.
Box was fascinated. “This was how I imagined space would be,” she said.
“The original Orbiter,” said Pax. “With all its imperfections. Ten thousand years ago, all human space was like this, so in a sense you’re right. This is how space was.”
“Why are people... so much poorer here?”
“They’re not,” said Pax. “The style is a choice. The Praxis DRZ is among the wealthiest places in the human galaxy.”
They found a basement bar, smoke-filled and as crowded as the street outside, built in the bearings of an outsize electric motor. People of every gender looked on disinterestedly as they found a table near the middle of the floor. A pulsing arrow said, Sex. A half-dressed couple copulated in a corner.
She noted abstractly that here she was again, doing Po business, in another slaphouse.
“Now,” said Pax. “This is where it becomes interesting. Don’t look, but do you see those two men over there?”
Box looked in her wetware, which opened a window on her peripheral vision.
“The goons with the Soviet haircuts?”
“Yes, they’ve been following us.”
“Is that normal?”
“No, but I permitted it to happen.”
“They’re the police?”
“Yes, and we’re going to make a run for it.”
“Why?”
“Trust me.”
She nodded, remembering Revelstoke and his three knuckleheads.
“First, some instructions. If we get separated, trust the Orbiter, completely. If y
ou’re arrested, go quietly. Say nothing. We’ll come and get you.”
“I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
Why was she so nervous? Did she trust Pax? Of course. He was the most capable person imaginable.
It was the lack of the Water Bear. No amount of human competence could make up for an omnipresent warship with gravity drives.
“Trust me,” said Pax.
She nodded.
“Remember the market in Avalon. The worst that can happen is you spend a few hours in a cell. The real powers here are all on your side. You’ll be fine.”
“Okay.”
“Dr Box, relax.”
“I am relaxed,” she lied.
“I need to give you some wetware,” he said. “Look straight in my eyes.”
She felt a slight shiver. Now she was two people. She was Ophelia Box, and she was also a woman called Pris, from the Trappist-1 confederacy.
“My god, I have a backstory.”
She was here to sold, as a consensual slave.
For six months.
Six months.
A timeshare agreement. Someone gets part of her life. She gets part of the money.
Not enough of the money.
“It’s called a wirewall,” said Pax. “Military spec. It will stand up to the most intrusive scanning. All you have to do is get in character.”
Pax was called Ray, and he was a small-time crook, and a part-time human trafficker.
A despicable piece of shit.
“You see?”
She nodded.
“Otherwise, stay close and follow my lead.
“Okay, let’s start. I want you to stand up when I do, and have a good look at those two police officers. Don’t stare, but I want them to know you see them.”
“Why, Ray?”
“To put them off balance. Law enforcement works best in managed encounters, where they can fall back on their systems. A regular person would avoid eye contact. You eyeballing them takes us outside the soft part of the bell curve. By displaying unpredictability, we gain an advantage.”
She snorted derision.
Since when did Ray know anything?
“Let’s go.”
Ray stood up. Pris turned around and gave the cops the evil eye. They - or men like them - were why she was here. They glanced away, then turned and stared right back at her. She got up and followed her owner. Ray moved expertly. He got the bulk of the bar between him and the goons, then turned into an open doorway. Pris followed, and Ray locked the door behind them. They sprinted headlong down an unlit alleyway. There was a crash, and then the goons reappeared, fifty meters behind them. Pris wasn’t sure who she hated the most, Ray or the cops.
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