She walked across the rolling deck with her usual unhurried grace, her folded wings giving her the appearance of a serene but gaudy angel. Aristide watched with interest until a bare foot planted itself in his vision.
“Done with this, Franz?”
Aristide looked up to see Ari’i, the boat’s captain. Ari’i had the thick, powerful body of a Polynesian and long hair that dangled in plaits past his shoulders. He wore only a colorful pair of swim trunks, and stood a head taller than anyone else on his boat.
“Take it away,” Aristide said. Ari’i picked up the bucket of steamers and looked down at Bitsy.
“Would the meherio like a snack?” Ari’i asked. “I’ve got a yellowtail cut up for my supper, and she can have a slice if she likes.”
Bitsy sat at attention. “Yum yum,” she said.
“You follow the captain now, Bitsy,” Aristide said.
Ari’i led Bitsy away. Aristide stretched his limbs and then stood, the sea breeze lifting his wings and trailing them behind like a cloak. Half a dozen small green islands were in view. Above, the long yellow line of sunlight stretched off into the northern darkness.
Softly Aristide spoke to himself.
Below the antic surf, serene
Waters gently filter the light.
Schools of fish flash silver sides,
Life’s bright billboard.
While in the deep the sharks cruise, purposeful,
Oblivious to the hideous din.
He laughed, shook himself, and walked to the foredeck, where the spray moistened his skin.
Although all three of those visitors reported missing had been in the Thousand Islands when they disappeared, each had stayed at a different hotel on a different island. Aristide had chosen one of the three, and hoped that whatever mechanism the kidnapers used to choose their victims, it was still in place at the Manua Resort.
The Manua owned an entire island, and filled much of the shore of a sickle-shaped bay. The main building was an odd hodgepodge of brightly colored modular units crammed into and atop one another, and given a furry outline by trees in planters. In silhouette the building resembled a reef, with layers of corals, sponges, and fans. Visitors who preferred the simple life could choose grass huts farther up the beach, and water-breathers could curl up in cozy blue-lit subaquatic dens next to submarine pens.
Franz Sandow had chosen a suite built right at the water’s edge. He could swim into the unit from the bay, rinse in fresh water, change, and then step through a door into the fragrant tropical garden, awash with bougainvillea and frangipani, that led to the tennis courts.
He entered the suite now, having leaped into the water from Mareva as it moved toward the resort’s pier. Followed by Bitsy, he rose from the deep pool that occupied the center of the suite, sluiced himself off in a fresh-water stream, and dried himself with a towel warmed by a blast of steam.
Bitsy sluiced herself in the fresh water, then bounded out into the suite. Her movement on land was somewhat handicapped by the fact that her legs were shorter than her cat’s legs had been. To keep it from dragging in the sand or mud, she had to carry her tail over her back, like a heraldic salamander.
“We should send off our mail,” Franz said.
“Already done,” Bitsy said.
Franz Sandow had joined a massively popular virtual sodality called Let’s Be Friends! that posted pictures, videos, essays, and games for one another to browse through. His own contributions were a complete waste of bandwidth, resolutely pedestrian views of everyone he had met during the course of his journey, with names attached where possible, and sometimes a comment or two about people encountered, or about the day’s activities.
Commissar Lin, by viewing Let’s Be Friends!, was able to follow his activities without the risk of direct communication.
Franz went to the refrigerator and got a lemonade. Its sugary bite on his tongue, he dressed in fresh clothes and had his AI assistant read and deliver the news from Topaz. There were no reports of any threats to civilization.
“Incoming message from our friend on Topaz,” Bitsy said.
That would be Lin himself. The communication had to be important, otherwise he would not have risked sending a message that could be intercepted. Unlike Topaz, where Endora or her various extensions were in charge of all communications, Hawaiki was reached through Aloysius, who was a suspect.
Because a secure military cypher would have been suspicious, Lin’s message would have been handled with an ordinary commercial cypher, which Aloysius could break easily if he so desired. But presumably even vast computational intelligences had better things to do than break every innocuous-looking code that sailed into their ken.
Aristide sat on a chair that was adapted to cradle his wings and gills. He drew Tecmessa, and held it so that Bitsy could reach it.
Bitsy reached up and delicately took the AI assistant into her mouth. Her fangs entered sockets on the assistant, and she was able to transfer the decoded message without broadcasting it where some malign agency or other might pick it up.
Aristide raised Tecmessa’s hilt, and gave it instructions. The flatscreen glowed. He was presented a picture of Lin standing on the street, puffing his pipe. The view came from above, by which Aristide knew that Lin had hijacked the feed of a street camera in order to provide video.
The words came voice-over, without Lin’s lips having to move. He was mentally dictating into his implant. Aristide kept the volume of the audio low, so that any listeners would have difficulty sorting it out from the background sound of the fresh-water cascade.
“A woman named Dee Nakai, from New Rome, was reported missing in the Thousand Islands two days ago. They were staying at the Imperial Gardens, and the report came from her fiancé. She reappeared yesterday. The fiancé reported that she had been found, but now he isn’t answering calls. His name is Peter Siringo. He is a media stylist, but Miss Nakai is a sergeant in the Vatican police.”
With access to her higher-ups, presumably.
“Just to keep the department in training,” Lin said, “I’m empowered to order various sorts of drills and alerts. So I ordered one this morning, and told everyone in my department to get their brains backed up within forty-eight hours.”
In the background of the image, a girl rode by on a velocipede. Lin waited till she had passed before continuing—not, Aristide thought, because she could overhear him in any conventional sense, but because she might have been equipped with a short-range detector.
“The order was countermanded half an hour later, without explanation. By my immediate superior, General Tumusok.” Lin took the pipe from his mouth, raised a heel so that his legs formed the figure four, and then knocked the pipe against his heel until the dottle was loosened, and he could drop it to the gutter.
“Tumusok commands the Domus across all Endora,” Lin continued, “and he’s third in the chain of command of the entire organization. And by the way, he took a vacation on Hawaiki a little over two months ago. He stayed at the Manua, so you may be in the right place.”
With slow deliberation, Lin began to refill his pipe. Behind him a man and woman appeared, chatting, and paused waiting to cross the street. Lin waited till they had gone before dictating again.
“I have ways of working around my superiors. In the meantime, I hope you are being careful.” Lin lit his pipe, then looked up at the camera. “Have a good vacation.”
The video ended. Aristide turned to Bitsy.
“Well,” he said. “That’s interesting.”
“Do you think Lin put himself in danger?”
“Possibly.” Aristide looked at Bitsy. ”But if he’s taken, Endora will know.”
“Almost certainly.”
“And who by.”
“That, too.”
“And if Sergeant Nakai gets loose in New Saint Peter’s, we might have history’s second Pod Pope.” He frowned. “Of course, considering the pontiff’s sparkling personality, we probably couldn’t tell the dif
ference.”
Bitsy sounded the least bit weary. “I knew you would make that joke.”
“Sorry to be so predictable.” Aristide rubbed his chin.
He knew what he would do about General Tumusok if he had been on Endora. But he couldn’t tell Bitsy, because the Asimovian Protocols would then require Bitsy to prevent his action.
It was an interesting trap he’d built for himself.
“Should we go to the Imperial Gardens?” he asked.
“If you left here suddenly and appeared there to start asking questions about Siringo, that would be breaking your cover as surely as if you’d painted ‘SPY’ on your forehead in bright red letters.”
He sighed. “I hate to do nothing.”
“You’re not doing nothing,” Bitsy said. “You’re walking around with a large target fixed to your back, and hoping someone takes a shot.”
“Thanks.”
Bitsy had always been such a comfort.
The horizon was flaming red shading to black. A fresh wind whipped the flags by the monument on the bay. The water was a myriad of silver ripples, like a school of fish turning.
Aristide sipped his umbrella drink on a terrace overlooking the water—cocktails tasted better when not drunk along with sea water. Bitsy, squatting on the tiles near his feet, nibbled the ceviche he’d put in a saucer.
“I’ve missed proper sunsets,” Aristide said. “When was my last trip to Earth?”
“Before we disassembled Mars.”
“That long ago.” He sighed. “I should visit Earth again, if we live.”
“If we live.”
Most of the pockets, like Midgarth and Topaz, were built in the form of a Dyson sphere, with an artificial sun in the center. Hawaiki was built as a cylinder, with the wormhole at one end. Hawaiki had no artificial sun, but instead brought in the light of Sol through an ingenious series of collectors and mirrors at the wormhole. The long bar of illumination was arranged to rotate within Hawaiki, producing a natural-seeming sequence of daylight and night. There was also a wide variation in climate, from tropical areas near the warmth of the wormhole to a cold Arctic icecap at the far end, where the sun’s illumination faded to a distant, frosty light.
The only disadvantage to this arrangement was that if the wormhole for some reason failed, Hawaiki was cut off from its only source of light and heat, and the population condemned to freeze and die in the dark.
Elaborate safeguards were in place to prevent this, of course.
“Would you like another drink, Mister Sandow?”
The resort had actual human beings serving as wait staff, a measure of how expensive the place truly was. Aristide’s waiter was an unmodified human with sun-bleached hair and sandals and a tropical shirt. He seemed to be in his mid-twenties but of course could have been a thousand years old and doing this job simply because it amused him.
“Nothing right now, thanks,” said Aristide, and as the waiter turned, he added, “No, wait—a glass of water, please.”
The waiter brought him a chill glass and a clear glass carafe of ice water beaded with condensation. He poured the water with a degree of panache. The ice tinkled pleasantly.
“Did you come for the mass chorale?” asked the waiter.
This gave Aristide the chance to explain that Franz Sandow had come for no reason at all, that he was alone and had just sold his business and had no responsibilities. The same story that he told everyone.
“You should go to the mass chorale,” the waiter said. “It’s magnificent. You can even participate if you like.”
“I can’t sing.”
The waiter grinned. “You can now,” he said. “I think your body type comes with perfect pitch as one of its features.”
Tecmessa’s AI assistant gave a chirp. Aristide took it in his hand and gave the waiter an apologetic look. The waiter nodded and withdrew.
In the flatscreen Aristide saw Herenui. She was standing on a quay beneath a spotlight that caused her yellow skin to fluoresce. Moths flew crazily around the spotlight and their shadows flashed across her face.
“Mr. Sandow,” she said, “you jumped ship before I could talk to you.”
“Did I leave something aboard?”
“No. I meant to invite you to a night dive. We’re taking a more experienced group out tonight, and we have a few seats open. You handled yourself well today, so I thought you might care to join us.”
“Oh,” said Aristide. “Thank you very much. I’d like that.”
“We’ll be at the pier at 2030. The dive costs an additional sixty-five ςD.”
“Put the sand dollars on my account.”
“See you soon.”
Herenui’s picture vanished. Aristide looked at Bitsy.
“Update the entry on Let’s Be Friends!”
“Already done.”
Aristide thoughtfully replaced the sword hilt in his harness.
“It makes sense that the bad guys might be one of the dive tour companies,” he said. “We’ve been wondering why people vanish from different hotels, but the tour companies don’t work for any single hotel—they pick up their passengers everywhere.”
“I’ll go onto the boat first,” said Bitsy. “If someone’s waiting to knock you on the head, I’ll give a warning.”
“Say woof woof,” said Aristide.
But Bitsy didn’t have to bark like a dog. When Aristide met the boat he was surprised to see that it was crowded with sightseers. Ari’i and Herenui were aboard, along with another dive leader, Cadwal. The catamaran raced five or six kilometers to a passage between two small islands, and then hovered on the surface while the passengers jumped in the water.
It was magical. They descended on the reef with their underwater torches lit, like a formation of silent assault craft descending on an objective. Phosphorescence trailed from the edges of their wings. An octopus, caught on the open sand, tried to escape the circle of lights that hedged it in, frantically changing color from red to purple to green to beige as it writhed away, each color change lasting less than a second. Green and spotted morays prowled across the bottom. The corals flared into blazing colors as the lights moved across them, blue, green, crimson. The tendrils of the corals reached out into the darkness, fingers straining the current, and made the coral formations seem less like rocks than strange, furry, lumpish animals. Lobster and crab danced with surprising agility over the bottom. Sharks slept in hollows in the reef with their round blank eyes staring at nothing. Squid as long as Aristide’s forearm were caught in their mating dance, tentacles twined around each other, bodies flushing scarlet with arousal.
Aristide floated weightless in this environment for two hours, completely enchanted. He found it difficult to stay alert to the possibility of attack.
When Cadwal signaled it was time to return to the boat, Aristide rose to the surface with reluctance. As he rose and fell on the waves he looked overhead and saw half a world waiting there, blue and white set with strings of green jewels, the distant half of Hawaiki’s cylinder that was currently in daylight.
The sightseers were overstimulated after this experience and chattered without cease as the boat returned to the hotel. He joined a group of them for dinner, then went on a tour of the local night spots with Bitsy as a companion.
“I shouldn’t be entirely in the company of visitors,” Aristide said as he walked from one place to another. “Presumably it’s long-time residents who are doing the abducting.”
“It was visitors who were reported missing,” Bitsy said. “So if you went places where only locals are found, you’d probably miss the people you came to see.”
Aristide passed a hand over his bald, bulging head. He had not yet grown used to the sensation of having no hair.
“This is a resort community,” he said. “A private island. I imagine the locals—the employees—would have to socialize with the clients if they go out at all.”
“I’ve looked at the maps,” Bitsy said, “and I can’t seem to find
any public place that’s off-limits to visitors. Even the employee market and canteen can be patronized by outsiders.”
Music sparkled from a grass-roofed structure ahead. Its walls were open to the ocean breezes, and Aristide saw tables, dancers, colored lights. He shrugged. “Might as well go into these places at random,” he said.
Service in the club was by robot, so Aristide went to the bar, where there was an amphibian bartender. There wasn’t a stool for Bitsy, so he lifted her to his shoulder.
The bartender favored a glossy, rounded, seal-like appearance, complete with whiskers on her pointed face. Aristide ordered a spindrift punch, a complex cocktail made of fruit juices, rums, and liqueurs that would take some time to make, providing an opening that would enable him to begin a conversation. The bartender began it for him.
“That’s a cute little meherio you’ve got,” she said.
“Her name is Bitsy. Can you get her a bowl of water?”
“Bowl, no. Shotglass, yes.”
She filled the glass and dropped it to the beaten-copper surface of the bar. Bitsy slid down Aristide’s arm to lap at the water.
“Are you here for the massed chorale?” she asked.
“No. I’ve sold my business, and I’m thinking of immigrating.”
“The chorales are one of the reasons to move here, if you ask me.”
They chatted briefly before she finished making his drink and other business occupied her. He sipped his cocktail and found it expertly made, but she failed to invite Aristide to join her for a secluded rendezvous behind the palm trees with just her and her tall, blue-skinned cult leader. He finished his drink, tipped generously, and made his way to the next place.
Aristide visited two more night spots. The last was deep in the resort’s core, with one bar above water, and the other beneath. The underwater bars didn’t deliver liquid intoxicants, but gases either inhaled through a mask or bubbled past the gills. It was an efficient method of delivering a high, but it seemed more a piece of engineering than a social, companionable act. Aristide chose the dry bar, and sipped another cocktail while watching amphibian dancers through a transparent wall.
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