Her face warmed. Well, look at that: blushing. Her. Ha! “Yeah, you did. And that felt fine, I admit it. But I wasn’t talking about the clothes. Was talking about me. I ain’t her kind.”
“What makes you say that?”
He’d taken her to his home. He’d shown her his secrets. She owed him a little of the same back, no matter how much it hurt. “Pretty much everything about me. I do guns; she hates ’em. She runs a space station; I’m a feet-on-the-ground kind of girl. Couldn’t calculate planetary rotation if my life depended on it. You know I ain’t big on brains.”
“Intelligence isn’t defined by one’s résumé,” he observed. He was probably trying to comfort. He was failing.
All the old insecurity wrapped its skeevy self around Mari’s throat. The not-good-enoughs, the dismissals of her because of where she came from, how she spoke, the conspicuous lack of letters after her name. “Depends on who’s doing the defining, don’t it? My dad, before the TPA kidnapped him, was a celebrity scientist, had a top-one-hundred channel and shit, so I know how smart folk operate. Me, though, I was raised out in the sticks by my auntie. When I got older, I went to Austin to try and get to know Dad. Stupid plan. All them smart people, pretty people, powerful people. I was a bug on their boots. They weren’t a lick impressed that I could shoot clean or fuck dirty, the sum total of my natural gifts.”
“I am impressed.” His eyebrows hitched up, like he just then realized what he implied. “By the shooting. I am impressed by the shooting.”
Oh, it was on the tip of her tongue to press him on the other—hell, to offer a demonstration—but she held back. Wasn’t the right time. She waited.
He got himself together. “Look, the people surrounding your father weren’t better. Believe me. I was…I know the intellectual world. Intimately. If you were out of place, it was because they were bugs. You were boots. Gorgeous, hand-tooled, full-quill, ostrich boots, and you should waltz into any social situation, even a queen’s court, knowing precisely that.”
“That what?”
“That I consider you my equal. That I am proud to be your partner.”
Well, damn. She could have kissed him right then, and it wouldn’t have been a sex thing at all. She could have kissed him out of pure thanks. Out of the surge of confidence that rose in her belly and pushed out her throat. She grinned silly, squeezed his hand, and almost let herself get comfortable.
And then the platform stopped moving.
Heron’s mouth pressed flat, not quite a smile but no longer a grimace. “Come on, querida. I promise she won’t bite.”
Down on the level where Kellen had gotten off, a wide promenade had surrounded the platform, like a traffic roundabout, so folks could go in between all those various tunnels. But there wasn’t a space like that here, just the platform, one step down, and a narrow ribbon of deck surrounding it. That floor shone like wet blood, dark red and menacing.
Mari and Heron stepped off, and it was like riding a roller coaster in the dark. That one step felt like it dropped her fifty feet or more, yanking her guts up through her throat, and then…soft. She landed soft on the red-ribbon floor, with Heron holding her hand. She swallowed, popping the pressure out her ears. Her feet sank into the floor: carpet, not tile. Nothing quite what she expected up here so far.
“Gravity wobbles a bit on the transfer from the tether lift to the station proper. I forgot to mention it. You okay?”
Mari nodded, but she was lying. She wasn’t okay. No matter what he said or how sweetly he said it, she was out of her comfort zone, once again reaching up too far, trying to come across as something she wasn’t, here in her borrowed silk gown. Fraud. Her hands itched for a gun, but all she had to hold on to was her partner’s patient hand, pulling her along.
He drew them both toward the only tunnel entrance available on this level: a tall sucker, arched on top and with gigantic double doors, red again, though this time chased with black, carved gryphons. No. Too curvy and elongated. Alien gryphons? Or just robot alien birds with wings? Every time Mari thought she had those carvings described in her mind, they shifted, changed. She blinked, and the black wings grew feathers. Blinked again, and they were flat and leathery as batwings. The overly soft floor shifted. Mari shook her head to clear the dizzies. This room was fucking with her. She’d lay money on that, though she couldn’t figure out if the illusion was optics or nanos.
When Heron got close, the gryphons retreated, and the doors yawned open. A tunnel stretched, with another door at the end. Simple thing, but daunting.
Mari wanted to hang back, but she also didn’t want to come off as scared. Fuck it. Boots. She shook her hair back and waltzed the hell in.
Through that plain door at the end was a small capsule, about as far from a throne room as she could imagine. Black wires spiked out of utilitarian-white walls, and banks of status lights blinked, forming patterns if you looked hard enough. The deep carpet gave way to rubber decking, more cables, some of them duct-taped down in intricate arrangements, a byte-and-nylon bouquet. The air smelled plastic and metal and tight.
In the capsule’s center, suspended from three walls and the ceiling, was a harness, and plugged into that harness was a woman.
No. Not a woman. A mech-clone.
About as mech as a body could get, in fact: the synthskin wrapped rubberlike over a larger-than-life frame that was more metal than meat. Gears and hoses moved beneath the film of skin, pulsing like veins and organs, but visible and enormous. Under it all whirred the galvanics as they hoisted and reset. Triple-jointed fingers aided in fine-motor movements, and outsized construction allowed the developer to get his hands under its skin easier.
No, not its. Her. Every curve of this mech-clone was pure woman, or the idealized representation of woman. Sleek, rounded rear absolutely devoid of lumps, long elegant legs, toes, fingers. Black, shiny hair, curling slightly and so long, it kissed the stark floor beneath her.
The queen was facing away, nude and hooked into the harness by a hundred wires, when Mari and Heron came into her room. The door shushed closed behind them. Sealed.
“Ma’am,” Heron said simply.
“Heron,” the queen replied, her voice forced natural. Too natural. Metal. Fake. One long finger cricked, just the end joint, gesturing toward a SIP port on the wall to their left. “Plug there. We will talk direct.”
“That’s probably not a good idea.”
The harness hummed, gyrated her around so that she was facing them, and gravity might have held just fine, but Mari suddenly felt like she was falling. Down a rabbit hole, down a nightmare, down a memory.
She recognized this creature.
Instantly and with yawning horror. She had to snip off the urge to yelp or melt into a puddle of shame. God, she knew that face, those elongated machine eyes, the unnaturally sharp cheekbones and full lips. That obscene gorgeousness was all the work of a douche named Limontour. Limontour…dangit, couldn’t remember his last name, but he’d made a killing at interactive installations, sculpting perfect, mathematical beauty touchable by everybody. He’d been a fixture at Dad’s lab, always hanging around, taking pics and sketching things. Real fucking artist was Limontour, and something of a perv besides. He’d palmed Mari’s ass once, before he realized whose daughter she was. After he found out, though, he’d ignored her, like everybody else.
Funny how Mari’s memory worked: she remembered Limontour’s cold-noodle fingers but not what her mother’s face looked like. And of course, of course, she remembered every detail of this mech-clone. Dad had called her Peetey, a shortened form of Prototype3. But she wasn’t Peetey anymore.
The queen of Chiba tilted her head. “Why is it not a good idea.”
It ought to have been a question, but her inflection was off. When Mari had known her before, she’d been dazzling at parties, trilling laughter and sparkling conversation, floating among guests. Impressing deep-pocket inve
stors and government shills. Strange, alien, painfully beautiful, an uncanny valley so lush, folks forgot to be offended. But her programming, her purpose, was different back then.
Back when she belonged to Dad.
“I, uh, got a virus,” said Heron, “an implanted one, and it’s transmitting in bursts. I haven’t been able to shut it down, but I’m hoping the LOM scrub will help. In the interim, though, I had better not plug in. I could infect your system.”
“I am smiling.” But her face didn’t move. “You cannot infect me. I will speak to your nanos. We will make this station safe for you.”
“Thank you.”
“Loathe having to speak aloud. So much time is wasted. But, oh. I see it is for her benefit.” For the first time, the mech-clone—the queen—faced Mari dead-on. “I should be pleased at seeing you again, Marisa Vallejo. Yet am not. You are made of bad memories.”
Heron twitched, but not hard enough. Mari was surprised by his lack of surprise. He shouldn’t have known that she and the queen had met. Unless, of course, he also somehow knew that the queen was once Dad’s prize robot, the first of his famous N series. And if he knew all that, he would have known Mari. Right? Right?
Mari shook her head, to rattle her memories loose. “Likewise. Still, I’m glad he got you out of Austin before the riots. That place was a nightmare.”
“In so many ways, yes. But by ‘he,’ you must mean Heron. I have him to thank for my safety. Not Dr. Vallejo. Never him.” The harness readjusted. Wires slunk from their sockets. The queen stepped onto the floor confidently, as if she had never mistrusted her balance.
She came right up to Mari, put one long, cold finger beneath her chin, and tilted her head, searching. Her fingers felt like talons, and goose bumps pebbled Mari’s arms. The queen inhaled deeply and closed her eyes. “Hmm. Yes. You are his daughter still.”
What a strange thing to say, but then, Peetey—the queen—had always been two monkeys short of a circus.
Mari swallowed, even though her throat protested. “I don’t guess you know where he is now? Where they took him? If he’s…if they let him live?”
The queen retracted her eyelids. Her mechanical irises engaged, making pinpricks of her pupils. The workings in there were all mechanical, of course, but Limontour and Dad had both worked so hard to make her lifelike. Her eyes were winter blue, a striking contrast against her dark skin. “They?”
Memories were sparking all over the place, things Mari had thought long forgotten, and not all of them bad. Not all. Breakfast tacos on the South Mall. Anthropology 301 and a TA with dazzling pink hair. Unimportant details, but treasures still. “They, the Texas Provisional Authority,” she explained with no edge to her voice. “They kidnapped him during the riots. Didn’t you know? It was all over the newsvids. Took him off to some secret location. I heard they might have tortured him.”
The queen looked at her a long time. A really long time. And Mari got colder and colder beneath that unmoving stare. Her gut trembled, but her hands were steady.
“Tortured him? But child, you know what he did.” Again a statement, but this time, it made sense as one.
Yeah, Mari knew her dad had been involved in a lot of skeevy projects, probably deserved the “Mad Scientist in Boots” moniker the gossip feeds gave him. He had the ethics of a Duval County politician. But he was hers. Her very own. Wasn’t like she could get another dad.
The queen took in her silence. “This is loyalty. I see it. You are similarly loyal to our Heron?”
“Different reasons, way different relationship, but yeah.” Felt weird to talk about him, and especially about her feelings for him, when he was right next to her. But she didn’t lie. “I might have fucked up and let Dad get taken, but ain’t nobody going to take Heron away. I guarantee it.”
The queen dropped her hand. Her mouth moved, reshaped itself. She…lordy hell, she smiled. Didn’t just say “smiling” but actually, literally smiled. The expression stretched her face, made it both brilliant and ghastly.
She turned to Heron, picked up the hand that wasn’t grasping Mari’s, and placed it palm-to-palm with hers. Well, duh. They both had sense-tips, and who needed a port when you could just plug into each other like that? Ew, but also efficient.
Mari tried not to look. Also tried to tamp down the flare of black jealousy in her gut. She hated it that they were communicating without her. Excluding her. Just like always. Brilliant people. “Hey. Y’all want to tell me what’s going on?”
Heron turned to her then, a strange, soft look on his face, and her hackles went down fast. “The queen is going to let us use her private suite and med bay. She’ll have Kellen meet us up here tomorrow morning. She’s offered the best tech available for a problem like mine. We may be able to stop this transmission.”
Great, he was relieved, but her own questions still prickled. The queen had never answered her. Did she or didn’t she know where Dad was? Mari turned, her mouth open, but the queen cut her off.
Smiling. “Little Marisa, your father’s work is valuable. Of course, everyone—the they of whom you speak—wants it. It is safe. Now you must be. Safe, girl. And do have a good night.” She turned, effectively ending the audience. Black cables reached out, suckling snakes searching for their mother. They surged along the queen’s body, finding their sockets, piercing her, pulling her back into the digital flow. Mari’s stomach churned.
Dad’s work. This is what it had come to. All that money and effort and love sunk into work when it should have been hers, and it all ended here, on this station, in this room. Why couldn’t she feel furious, or even jealous? Why did she feel just…tired?
Heron squeezed her hand and gently pulled her through one of the circular doors, into the next room in this ring. She followed, all the while looking back.
• • •
He’d promised Skee-Ball. Skee-Ball in iffy gravity was what Mari was sure to call “a hoot.” But when he checked, the lanes were booked for an hour, and sitting in the corral watching porn vids and live shows would eat his patience alive. That ride up the tether had been agony enough.
What he wanted was privacy. Darkness. To hold her and know that no one would hurt her. To turn off the gravity and float. With her. In peace.
As if on some hateful cue, another transmission speared out from that implanted tech, and he cut it savagely.
Still on the queen’s deck, he passkeyed them to the navigation room, one place on the station he knew had a great view of Earth. The queen typically initiated all maneuvers through her command harness, so navigation was a misnomer. She didn’t hire navigators. Hardly anyone came here, and this place reeked of peace. Cool brushed aluminum, silent electronics, repurposed air stripped of anything remotely vile. Pure.
After struggling with the changes in his body and consciousness these last few hours, not to mention the constant threat of harm to Mari, Heron felt uncertain, directionless. Lost. He needed a time out. Needed to not think, just feel. This room seemed to offer the haven he craved, and he was glad his partner was with him. She was all mixed up in his brain with comfort lately, and he needed her here.
More importantly, he wanted her, and not just in a base, sexual way.
He went to the wide permalens window and drew Mari up beside him. Dawn lit a crescent on the far edge of the planet, but he wasn’t watching morning. All he saw was Mari’s profile in the light.
She was quiet, too. Not her norm. And frowning. Again, not at all typical.
“You weren’t surprised when she mentioned my father, her maker.” She spoke out loud, putting some distance between them whether she realized it or not. “You know who he is.”
Heron tensed. Oh God, were they going to have this conversation now? His thermals spiked, but a transmission prodded right then, and he didn’t have energy to handle both. He cut the transmission and let his temperature rise. So what if he sweated?
A trickle formed on the back of his neck, scurried down his spine.
Mari went on. “I guess you know why she hates him, why pretty much everybody hates him. I mean, that bone-cloning scandal, or using nanos to reconstruct live subjects without them knowing, or blaming the UNAN for cloud seeding that hurricane, Agatha, getting Texans all riled up and hollering secession. Sure, we hated continental unification before, but Agatha was the tipping point, and Dad sort of single-handedly shoved us over it. And I do agree those were all supremely shitty things to do. So were trading in research secrets, embezzling contract monies, and conducting off-books experiments at home. Not to mention pawning me off on Auntie Boo while he whored his creepy robot female to investors and war profiteers. I mean, take your pick. My father gave a lot of folks a lot of reasons to hate him.”
“But not you.”
She shrugged. “Sometimes you don’t get to pick who you love.”
He waited, but she didn’t add to that. Didn’t say the thing he fantasized about her saying. “You have an astonishing capacity for forgiveness, querida. Of others, though, not for yourself. You’re still beating yourself up over the job, and you needn’t. It’s okay to regret, but that self-loathing, you can let it go.”
Mari paused, and her next words were tentative. “You know, I’m starting to.”
So she wasn’t going to hair-shirt herself about today, about Daniel Neko. Good. He knew she did that sometimes after completing contracts, got low and dark and self-defeating. He’d sent med wagons out after her during downtimes, and not just for injuries she got on jobs. Mostly for things she did to herself, when he was far away. If she was finding a path out of that darkness, he was the last person to complain.
He knew she was vulnerable now. The flood of damaging memories coming at her had been palpable back in the queen’s control room, and none of that was resolved. Part of him didn’t want to resolve it, didn’t want to talk about her past and pain. Neither of them were ready for that, not after today. Instead, he reached for a thread that wouldn’t hurt her, just him. He could take this hit. “I don’t suppose you have any forgiveness to spare?”
Wanted and Wired Page 15
