Dresden smiled graciously. “It’s never a bad time to receive such a distinguished visitor. Come.” Dresden gestured toward a golden archway draped in crimson velvet, which led to more private rooms. Had his people failed to tell him that Jericho was coming? Or had he simply forgotten? These days his mind was filled with so many facts and numbers pertaining to his Festival, sometimes there was room for little else.
As they started toward the archway, a pretty young woman in a casino uniform approached Jericho, holding out a tray of masks. “Compliments of the house,” she said with a smile. He hesitated, so Dresden picked one out for him—a half mask of black satin with glittering stars. As she left he handed it to Jericho. “The theme tonight is a masked ball.”
“Seems an odd thing to give to someone wearing kaja. Sort of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?”
“I told them to offer masks to anyone who didn’t have one. A gesture of hospitality.”
“I gather the normal prohibition on face-coverings in public has been lifted?”
“Suspended for the duration.” He waved expansively toward the main floor, where guests in glittering masks were gambling and gossiping and drinking and dancing. There were half-masks of stiffened lace, narrow eye-strips edged in beaded fringe, dramatic demon visages, and of course animal masks, both real and fantastic. “What better way to escape the stresses of daily life, than to dress up as something that has no daily stresses?”
He led Jericho into the high rollers’ wing, where small rooms awaited those patrons who wished to play games away from the public eye. Each room was lavishly furnished, with a bar outlet. As he led Jericho into one he gestured toward an overstuffed chair. “Please make yourself comfortable. Would you like something to drink?”
“No, thank you. I’m still a bit lightheaded from the ainniq. But please, feel free to have one yourself.”
He had the bar pour him one, not because he really wanted a drink, but to buy himself a moment to query the outernet about Jericho’s history. It turned out his visitor had an impressive résumé, both in and out of the Guild. That was good to know; he might prove a valuable contact in the future if he was treated well. Dresden adopted his broadest host-smile as he turned back, briefly observed the number of buttoned tufts on the couch, then took a seat opposite his guest. “Are you here on business or pleasure?”
“How could one not find pleasure here? Your Festival is splendid. The list of events I saw when I arrived was quite tempting. Even the most dour businessman would be helpless to resist such temptations.”
It was ritual praise, and coming from a nantana it meant little more than ‘hello,’ but it was pleasing nonetheless. “When you only have a harvest once every fifty years, it deserves an all-out celebration. Will you be staying for the countdown?”
“I haven’t decided yet. I suppose that depends on how our conversation goes.”
Ah, conversation. Of course. A nantana would rather be flayed alive than state his business directly. Fortunately Dresden was skilled in such arts, and so they took turns asking polite questions of each other, and pretending they cared about the answers, for as long as protocol required.
At last, when it seemed they had invested enough time in the ritual exchange, Dresden said, “But you haven’t told me yet: what can I do for you?”
Jericho leaned back in his chair. “I think it’s more like what I can do for you.”
Now Dresden was intrigued. “Go on.”
“Back at headquarters we’ve received intelligence that there might be an attempt to compromise your data security during the Festival.”
His expression darkened. “By whom?”
“Not sure yet. We believe the effort is connected with one of your independent stations. Given the circumstances, I thought it best to let you know immediately.”
Dresden muttered under his breath. “Megacorps.”
“Word is they’re planning to take advantage of the change in transmission protocols. Evidently you’re adjusting your security filters for that?”
He nodded. “We can’t channel data quickly enough by our usual methods. It’s just temporary, though. A few days at most.”
“Respectfully, Guildmaster, once someone has breached your security, he can easily establish a back door to give him access later.”
Dresden raised an eyebrow. “So you are suggesting . . . ?”
“That you reconsider the adjustments you’ve planned.”
He sighed. “Yet another rendition of a tired theme. It’s amazing how many people who have never run a waystation feel they know best what’s good for it.”
“I think they’re just concerned. As am I.”
“Don’t you think I know my station better than an outsider? Including how to adjust my security protocols without putting the station at risk? We have protections in place. Nothing was done recklessly.”
“Forgive me. I meant no offense.”
Dresden drew in a deep breath, taking a moment to settle his spirit. The Festival had his nerves wound up too tightly; he didn’t want to alienate such a valuable contact. “No, it’s I who should apologize. You’ve been perfectly polite. I’ve just been under pressure lately from a lot of people who aren’t.”
“Planning a Festival of this scope would have anyone’s nerves on edge. I’m sorry to add to that stress. But we are concerned about these reports. Harmony Station has been attacked before. It’s not unreasonable to think someone might try again.”
Dresden stiffened. “If you mean the terrorist attack, that’s been dealt with. The perpetrator is dead, so there’s no more threat from that source. I appreciate your coming here to warn me. I really do. It was a great courtesy. But I assure you, everything is under control. My vision—” He stopped suddenly.
“Your vision?”
He hesitated. If he told Jericho about his visions, would the man think him mad? Or inspired? Hell, in a few hours it won’t matter. Jericho will see my plans play out and witness the results. Everyone who has doubted me will see it. They’ll celebrate my insight. Why not let Jericho know that he had been guided by something greater than mere logic? That his mind functioned on a level few other men would ever experience? Maybe it was time to share that. “I had a vision a while back, of what this node could become. I saw what I had to do to help it reach its full potential. I saw where all my policies would lead, as clearly as if I was watching them play out in a viddie. And believe me, every angle has been considered. Every danger has been anticipated and allowed for. I’ve seen it, Director.”
The look on his visitor’s face was strange. Unreadable. “I didn’t realize you had such a clear vision,” Jericho said quietly. There was no emotion in his tone, no hint of the thoughts behind it. “Of course you would trust in that. Now that I know, I fully understand. Forgive me for taking up your time.” He stood. “We’ll keep you informed of what we learn, of course.”
“I appreciate that.” He was startled by Jericho’s abrupt exit, but stood up to see him out. “So will you stay for the grand countdown? Witness events for yourself so you can report to Tiananmen that their fears were unfounded?”
Again that strange look. “I’m afraid not,” Jericho said. “I have someone else I need to meet with. But I wish you the best, Guildmaster. And if you do discover cause for concern, remember, it’s never too late to be cautious.”
Dresden walked him back to the main room, then watched as he crossed it. At one point Jericho paused by a mask-bearer, and Dresden thought he intended to give the black mask to her, but instead he chose another from her tray. How very strange.
Then the music of laughter and the tinkling of glasses caught him up and carried him away, leaving the Guild’s unfounded fears far behind.
SAIMEN
The saimen is an island, untouched by seas of emotion.
The saimen is a rock, unmoved by storms of sentiment.
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Standing apart, it gains perspective. Divorced from passion, it gains understanding.
Bereft of illusion, it draws strength from reality.
KAJA: An Outworlder’s Guide to the Gueran Social Contract, Volume 2: Signs of the Soul
HARMONY NODE
INSHIP: ARTEMIS
“RU?”
She awoke so quickly it startled him. Was that a normal outrider reflex, or were her nerves just so on edge that even sleep couldn’t soothe them? He certainly felt that way. “What? Are we there already?” Her eyes unfocused for a second as she consulted her chrono. “Has something happened?”
“We’re passing the harvester. Thought you might like to see it.”
She didn’t glare at him and go back to sleep, so apparently he’d guessed right.
The main display was dominated by the image of an immense ship. At its head was the blunted spire of a deep-space vessel, designed to deflect or absorb any random debris it might run into; at interstellar speeds, even something the size of a grain of sand could do devastating damage. Indeed, the spire was heavily scored and pockmarked, bearing witness to how many such encounters had marked its fifty-year journey. Behind that protective cap, the main body of the ship was long and sleek, able to slip through a gas cloud or even a planet’s outer atmosphere with minimal friction. Such a design was rare in the outworlds, where the only atmosphere was contained within space stations, and free mass had enough value that any spaceborne debris was swept up as soon as it was detected.
Suspended in the darkness of deep space, the harvester looked like a vast marine creature slipping through an ink-black sea. The few small vessels that were flanking it kept perfect pace with it, like pilot fish, with one riding closer, tucked beneath the belly of the beast.
“Vid bots?” Ru asked.
He nodded. “Dresden probably doesn’t want to risk missing the deployment. That’s the money shot for his whole Festival. I’d imagine he’s probably been watching this thing since it slowed down enough for his bots to catch up to it.”
“We’ll stay out of range, then, so we don’t wind up in their broadcast. Though I imagine they’re all focused on the harvester.” She paused. “You do know this kind of thing isn’t a big deal elsewhere, right? Round trip from Tiananmen Station to Guera only takes a year or so, so harvesters make that journey regularly. No one gets excited about it.”
He shrugged. “It’s a good excuse for partying. I think that’s what matters most. But Guera’s harvesters aren’t on the same scale as this one, are they? When you’re in a node that hasn’t got a planetary system within light years, you’ve got to pack all you can into one trip. Including enough excavation equipment to carve up a moon, if need be.” He gazed at the immense ship on the screen and murmured, “I wonder how many swallows there will be?”
“Swallows?”
“The porter ships. When there are enough of them clustered together they look like a flock of birds. I’d imagine in Guera Node you don’t see that many at one time. It’s really something. Mind you, I’m judging that from past vids. Never seen that big a deployment in person.”
“Your last assignment was in an orphan node too, wasn’t it?”
He looked at her. “I do forget sometimes how much you know about my history.” He turned his attention back to the display. “Yeah, I worked on Preservation for a while. But that was between harvests, so this is new to me.” He whistled softly. “Can’t even imagine how much mass that mothership is carrying right now. Maybe even enough to generate its own gravity. Wouldn’t that be something to experience? I hear real gravity feels different than the tractor-field variety.”
“It does, though I’d be hard pressed to describe how.” She cocked her head slightly. “Have you never been dirtside?”
He shook his head. “Station baby, born and raised in deep space.”
She smiled slightly. “I’ll have to take you to visit Guera, before my next mission starts. You can’t imagine how different things are on the surface of a planet. Just being able to see so far without obstruction is amazing. Everything out here is contained in walls, or in shells, or else you’re in deep space, where there’s no sense of scale at all. To gaze at a natural sunset—to see the sky over an entire planet blaze with color and to know just how vast that sky is—is something words can’t capture.”
“I would like to see that someday,” he said quietly. “And an ocean. I’ve always wondered what that looked like, such a vast expanse of water, uncontrolled by anything but nature.”
She chuckled. “It smells of decay. Growing up by the ocean you learn to like that, but I’m told offworlders find it disconcerting.”
“Stink is good,” he reminded her. “Stink is real.”
“I’m going to print that on a T-shirt for you.”
“As long as it’s not pink.” He sighed. “I’d offer to show you my world, but oceans of data aren’t as impressive to look at. Though I could wax poetic about mathematical algorithms shining on the crests of probability waves.”
She chuckled.
They’d be docking at Harmony Station soon, right ahead of the harvester’s arrival. Hopefully they’d be able to pass on a warning to the powers that be, in time for them to head off the immediate threat from Icelus. After that . . . that damn virus had survived two decades of being hunted by humans, and it wasn’t going to go down quickly or easily. He remembered how he’d had to fight for his life against an army of fake Rus, unable to identify the real attackers, and he shuddered. I’m glad I won’t be the one responsible for eradicating that thing.
The console chimed.
INCOMING MESSAGE FROM TYE JERICHO.
“Your contact?” Micah asked.
She nodded. “I sent him a report while you were asleep. Wanted to make sure—” She didn’t finish the sentence, but he knew what she meant. Their data needed to get to Harmony even if they didn’t make it. It was a sobering reminder of how much danger they were still in.
She told the vid screen to display the message.
DOCK AT GREEN RING SECTION 8A.
I WILL MEET YOU THERE.
TALK TO NO ONE BEFORE THEN.
They stared at it in silence for a moment, then Micah said, “Is it just me, or does that not sound good?”
“No,” she said. Her smile had faded. “It’s definitely not just you.”
* * *
To say that Harmony Station was crowded would be an understatement. Between the ships moored to its docking rings and the ships cruising between them, the luxury yachts flanking the station and the transports clustered around its core like flies on honey, you could hardly see the station itself. Micah could swear that when Ru contacted Traffic Control to request a fight path to 8A he heard laughter in the background. But there was a berth reserved in her name, so she got her instructions. Whatever strings Jericho had pulled, it was an impressive feat.
They moored the Artemis, then waited for Jericho to arrive. Micah was acutely aware that each minute that passed meant they were closer to Dresden’s scheduled protocol shift. From the way Ru was fidgeting, he was sure she was aware of it, too. Finally the inner door chimed with an entry request. T JERICHO, the screen said. As Ru signaled for the door to open, Micah found himself reflexively smoothing his hair back. As if it mattered in the middle of all this whether his hair was neat.
Tye Jericho was dressed in standard Guild attire, or what Micah and his friends called Grim Reaper Chic. Micah knew that the purpose of the long black robe was to mask the terramorph outline of the Gueran body, out of respect for the Variations that involved physical mutation, but to his mind there was a kind of arrogance in that. Wasn’t the whole Gueran narrative about learning to accept people for who they were, rather than measuring them against some nebulous concept of “normalcy”? Why did Guerans assume that no one else was capable of that?
The Guildsman gr
eeted Ru, then turned to Micah. “So this is the famous Micah Bello? Or should I say, infamous?”
Micah blinked. “Sorry, but you must have me confused with someone. My name is Anthony Bester.”
A corner of his mouth twitched. “Of course. My apologies, Mr. Bester.”
Ru said, “You got my report?”
“I did. And first, allow me to thank you for your service. Of course all appropriate rewards—”
She waved off the rest. “Time is short, so that can wait. We need to find someone who has the authority to change Harmony’s data protocols . . . or, more accurately, to order that they not be changed.”
The casual warmth of his greeting faded. “The only person with the authority to do that is Guildmaster Dresden, and I’ve already tried to get him to change his plans. But nothing I say or do is going to make a difference.” His tone was bitter.
“Why not?”
“He told me he was having visions. That’s what inspired him to alter the protocols in the first place. He said he’d seen the consequences of his actions as clearly as if he’d been watching a vid, so he knew that everything would be fine with his current plan.” His eyes narrowed. “Does that mean what I think it does?”
“Sounds like Icelus got to him,” Micah muttered. “Damn.”
“But how?” Ru asked. “All the other visions we know about happened on Hydra or Shenshido—stations the virus controlled. It used their innernets to get into people’s heads.”
“There’s the Dragonslayer attack,” Micah reminded her. “That took place on Harmony.”
“But the players may have been receiving instructions from Hydra. Isn’t that what prompted our investigation in the first place, a signal they’d received from there? If so, Dresden’s the only person having visions who isn’t connected to Hydra or Shenshido.”
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