The New Space Opera

by Gardner Dozois

  For the next several days we bounced around the apartment with increasing energy and frustration. The news was grim. Shuttles from the Chrysalis were exploring uninhabited parts of Socorro. There had been one near-miss between a Storch shuttle and a Pryor transport. Fail-safes normally kept ships from getting remotely close to one another, so the miss had been a deliberate provocation.

  Guards stood at our door and even on the next terrace, sensors deployed, looking for any assassins lurking on the horizon. Tonio’s blazemobile privileges had been revoked, and he wasn’t allowed out of the building.

  “I love my little Katarina, yiss,” he said one day as he stalked about the main room. “But this is growing onerous.”

  A bored Tonio was a dangerous Tonio. If he walked out on Katarina, we were both just so much dog food.

  “She’s just trying to protect you,” I said. “It’ll only last until the business with the Storches is resolved.”

  He flung out his arms. “But how long will that be?”

  I looked at him. “What if Adora’s up there, Tonio?”

  He gave me an exasperated look. “What if she is?”

  “Do you think you can talk to her? Find out what she wants?”

  Tonio stopped his pacing. His startled face began to look thoughtful.

  “Do you think I can?” he asked.

  “If you try it from here, Katarina will be listening in before you can spit.”

  “But she won’t let me leave here!”

  “Let me work on that.”

  His adjutant bleeped, and he answered. His face broke into a look of pure joy as he said, “Hello, lover.”

  Go on pleasing them, Tonio, I thought.

  I went to one of the security guards at our door and told him that I needed to speak to Denys Pryor.

  “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you,” said Denys. I had been called into his office, the design of which told me that he liked clean sight lines, no clutter, curved geometries, and a terrace with a water view. He remained at his desk as I entered, and was turned slightly away, so that I saw his perfect chiseled features in three-quarter profile. He wore fewer ruffles in his office than at the party.

  There was no chair for me to sit in. Not anywhere in the room. I had a choice of responses—Denys would probably have preferred an awkward shuffle—so instead I leaned on his immaculate white wall.

  “I’m here to solve your problems,” I said.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  No wonder Katarina was dissatisfied with him, I thought. She could have conveyed the same suspicion and contempt without twitching a single hair.

  “Your Chrysalis problem,” I clarified, “and your Tonio problem.”

  “Tonio Hope,” he said, “is welcome to my wife. They deserve each other, and I hope you’ll tell them that. But the problem represented by the Chrysalis is rather more urgent.” He turned in his chair to face me. “Tell me your scheme, please. Then I can have a good hearty laugh and have you thrown out of here.”

  Cuckolded husbands, I have observed, are rarely models of courtesy.

  “Tell me one thing first,” I said. “Is Adora Storch on the Chrysalis?”

  “Your friend’s former lover? Yes.” His tone was bored. “Apparently, he stole something from her, but she’s too embarrassed to admit what it was.”

  “Her heart,” I said. He looked away suddenly, toward the distant lake.

  “What I would like,” I said, “is a secure means of communication between Tonio and Adora.” And then, at the sudden, sharp violet-eyed look, I added, “Secure, I mean, from Katarina.”

  “Start with flowers,” I suggested. Tonio contacted a florist on the Chrysalis and sent an extravagant bouquet, with a humble little message. There was no reply. “Just call her,” I said finally.

  Her secretary kept him waiting for half an hour, while he paced about gripping the adjutant I’d got from Denys. I played quiet, tinkly music on the aurora to keep him calmed down, while I watched the muscles leaping on his face. Finally, I heard Adora’s voice.

  “Tonio! You have the nerve to call me after the way you walked out on me?”

  Adora had taken half an hour to work up sufficient anger to decide to confront Tonio instead of just leaving him hanging. Things had worked out more or less as I’d hoped.

  Tonio looked at the adjutant’s screen. Over his shoulder I saw Adora’s brilliant red hair, her flashing green eyes, her pale rose complexion. He didn’t reply.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she demanded. “Have the lies stuck in your throat for the first time in your life?”

  “I—I am but stunned, seeing you again,” Tonio said. “I know you’re angry and suchlike, but—at least the anger shows you still care.”

  Adora began screaming at that point, and I left the room.

  Just do what you do best, I told Tonio silently.

  I heard Tonio murmur, and more fury from Adora, and then a lot of silence, which meant Adora was doing the talking and Tonio was listening. It went on for nearly two hours.

  While it went on, I strummed the aurora, volume at a low setting. I really didn’t want to know how Tonio did these things: I didn’t think I could be trusted with the knowledge.

  After the murmuring stopped, I walked back out into the main room. Tonio sat on the sofa, his hands dangling over his knees. He shook his head.

  “I’d forgotten what Adora was like,” he said. “How beautiful she is. How passionate.”

  “You’ve got to tell Katarina,” I said. He looked up in shock.

  “Tell her that I—”

  “Tell her that you’re in touch with Adora. Tell her it was my idea, and I made you do it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you don’t, Denys will. He’ll use it to turn Katarina against you.”

  He rubbed his face with one of his big hands. “This is complicated.”

  “Tell Katarina the next time you see her,” I said.

  Which he did, that night. By morning, he had Katarina thinking this was a good idea, and the three of us plotted strategy over breakfast.

  When, later that day, Denys told her of Tonio’s supposed treachery, she laughed in his face.

  While Denys was fuming, and Tonio and Adora were cooing at each other with Katarina’s approval, I decided that it was time to find out as much as I could about the ring. I got free of security by telling them I was going to report to Denys, and took the ring to a jeweler. If I got no answer there, I’d take it to a laboratory.

  I could feel my blood sizzle as I walked into the shop. There was a little extra oxygen in the air here, I thought, to make the customers happy and more willing to buy.

  The jeweler was a dark-haired woman with a low, scratchy voice and long, elegant hands. She stood amid cases of brilliant splendor, but refused to be distracted by them. Her attention was devoted entirely to the customer.

  “Splendid work,” she said, gazing at a hologram of the ring as big as her head. “The emerald is a natural emerald, which makes it slightly more valuable than an artificial one.”

  “How do you know?” I asked. She’d made the judgment a split second after she’d put the ring into the laser scanner.

  “Natural gems have flaws,” the jeweler said. “Artificial gems are perfect.”

  Imperfection is worth more. Perhaps that says something about our world. Perhaps that says something about how women relate to Tonio.

  “The setting is common gold and platinum,” the jeweler continued, “but it’s more valuable than the gem, because it’s clearly handmade, and by a master. Let me see if it’s signed anywhere.”

  She called up a program that would scan the ring thoroughly for numbers or letters. “No,” she said, and then cocked her head. She rotated the image, then magnified it.

  “This is curious. There are letters laser-inscribed in the gem, and that’s not unusual—most gems are coded that way. But this is a type of code I’ve never seen.” She frowned, and her long fingers
reached for her keyboard. “Let me check—”

  “No,” I said quickly. “That’s not necessary.”

  I only recognized the number sequence because I was a pilot. The numbers had nothing to do with the gem. They weren’t a code, they were a set of coordinates.

  For a Probability. And given how badly Shawn wanted it back, it was almost certainly a brand-new Probability.

  Feeney researchers must have developed it, very possibly a Probability with one of the Holy Grails of Probability research, like a Probability where electromagnetism never broke into a separate force from gravity, or where atoms heavier than uranium have a greater stability than in the Home Universe, thus allowing atomic power with reduced radioactivity. The Feeneys had discovered this new universe, but they needed an industrial combine with the power of the Storches to exploit it properly. Hence a marriage to seal the bargain. Hence a gem given by one line to the other with the coordinates secretly graven onto it.

  I wasn’t foolish enough to think the ring held the only copy of the coordinates—the Feeneys wouldn’t have been that stupid. But it was the only copy outside the gene lines’ control. If we gave the coordinates to the Pryors, the Storches would have competition in their new realm before they ever made their investment back.

  No wonder something as huge and powerful as the Chrysalis had been sent after us.

  I asked the jeweler for an estimate of the ring’s worth—“so I know how much insurance to buy”—and then I took the ring and walked out of the shop with billions on my finger. The store’s oxygenated atmosphere boiled in my blood.

  The ring was the best insurance in the world, I thought. Shawn didn’t dare kill us until he got his wedding present back.

  That night, Tonio and Katarina had their first fight. She complained about the time he was spending talking to Adora. He pointed out that he was stuck here in the apartment and had nothing else to do. It degenerated from there.

  I went to my room and played the aurora, loudly this time, and tried to decide what needed to happen next. It might be a good idea to get Tonio closer to Adora, just in case he needed a fast transfer from one girlfriend to another.

  I went to Denys and suggested that we all go up the grapevine to Upside, in case any face-to-face meetings became necessary. He understood my point at once.

  And so we all moved off the planet, spending a day and a half in the first-class compartment of a car roaring up the grapevine. Katarina spent the time adhered to Tonio, who looked uncomfortable. Denys kept to a cubicle where he worked, except for his occasional parades through the lounge, where he was all ostentatious about paying no attention to his wife.

  The atmosphere on the car was sullen and ominous and filled with electricity, like the air before a thunderstorm. Even the other passengers felt it.

  To dispel the lowering atmosphere, I played my aurora, until some pompous rich bastard told me to stop that damned noise or he’d call an attendant. “I’m with Miss Katarina Pryor,” I told him. “Take it up with her.”

  He turned pale. I played on for a while, but the mood, such as it was, had been completely spoiled. I went to my cabin and lay on my bed and tried to sleep.

  I needed to get away from Tonio and Katarina and Denys. I needed to get away from this freakish Probability where my blood sizzled all the time and my skin burned with fever. I needed to get away.

  “I’d like to move onto Olympe,” I told Katarina. She was curled around the spot on a lounge sofa where Tonio had just been sitting. He had gone to the bar for a cup of coffee, but you could still see his impression on the cushions.

  Her cold eyes drifted over me. “Why?”

  “I’ll be out of your way. And it’s where I live.” When she didn’t answer, I added, “Look, I can’t leave the dock without your permission. I’m not going anywhere.”

  She turned away, dismissing me. “I’ll tell the guards to let you pass,” she said.

  “There are guards?”

  The only answer was an exasperated set to her lips, as if she didn’t consider the question worthy of answer.

  So it was that I showed the guards my ID and moved back onto Olympe. The air was stale, the corridors silent. I stepped into the stateroom and told the lights to go on and the first thing I saw was the painting of the naked woman, staring at me. She reminded me too much of some people I’d grown to know, so I put the painting in storage.

  I went to the pilot’s station, where I’d talked to Eldridge, and checked the ship’s systems, which were normal. I wondered what would happen if I powered up the engines, and decided not to find out.

  For a few days, I indulged myself in the fantasy that I was going to escape. I filled the larder with food and drink, enough for eight months of flight to whatever Probability struck my fancy. I tuned every system on the ship except the drive. I made plans about where I’d like to travel next.

  I thought about putting the ring back in the safe, but I figured that the safe was no real obstacle to people like Denys or Shawn, so I kept the ring in the special pocket in my trousers. Maybe Denys or Shawn was less likely to rip off my pants than rip off the door to the safe.

  I went to some of the places I’d enjoyed when I was living Topside the first time. All the bars and restaurants that had seemed so bright and inviting when I was just off a five-month voyage now seemed garish and third-rate. Guards followed me and tried to be inconspicuous. Without a friend, I didn’t seem to be having any fun.

  It really was time to leave.

  I brought a bottle home to the Olympe and drank while I worked out a plan. I’d sell the ring’s coordinates to Denys in exchange for our safety and a lot of money. Then I’d sell the ring itself back to Shawn for the same thing. I’d split the money with Tonio, and then I’d run for it while the running was good.

  I looked at the plan again the next morning, when I was sober, and it still seemed good. I was trying to work out my best approach to Denys when Tonio came aboard. He was a reminder of everything I was trying to escape and his presence annoyed me, but he was exasperated and didn’t notice.

  “Katarina is more onerous than ever before,” he said. He flapped his big hands. “I am watched every moment, yiss. She says she is protecting me but I know it’s all because she doesn’t want me to speak to Adora. Yet out of every port I see the Chrysalis floating in the sky, with Adora so near.”

  “You’ve got to keep Katarina’s trust,” I said.

  “Olympe is the only place where I’m free,” Tonio said. “Katarina doesn’t mind if I come here. And that’s why you’ve got to help me get Adora on board.”

  “Adora?” I said. “Here?”

  “There’s no place else.”

  “But the ship’s being watched. So is the Chrysalis. If Adora comes here, they’ll see her.”

  Tonio smiled. “The Pryors and the Storches do not confront each other all the time. Even if they’re playing chicken with each other’s cargo ships, both the Chrysalis and Socorro possess resources the other finds useful. There are ships coming from the Chrysalis, to purchase certain commodities and sell others and perform transactions of that nature. Adora will come in one of these ships, and when the business is being transacted by her minions she will fly here to me in a vacuum suit, and enter through our very airlock, bypassing those inconvenient guards upon the door.”

  I was appalled. Tonio smiled. “Adora assures me that it will be perfectly safe.”

  For whom? I wondered.

  “I don’t want to be on board when this happens,” I said.

  When Tonio entertained Adora on my ship, I spent the time shopping for stuff I never bought, and when I got bored with that, I found a bar and huffed some gas. I didn’t return to Olympe until Tonio sent me a prearranged little beep on my adjutant.

  Olympe’s lounge still smelled faintly of Adora’s flowery perfume. Tonio was splayed on the couch. Energy filled his skinny body. His blue eyes were aglow.

  “Such a passion it was!” he said. “Such zealocity! Such
a twining of bodies and souls!”

  “Glad to know she doesn’t want to kill you anymore,” I said.

  He waved a hand. “All in the past.” He heaved a sigh, and looked around the lounge, the old furniture, Aram’s brass-and-mahogany trim. “I am glad to bring happiness here,” he said, “to counter those memories of sorrow and tragedy.”

  I looked at him. “What memories are those?”

  “The afternoon I spent here with beautiful little Maud. The day before she gave herself that overdose.”

  I stared at Tonio. Drugs whirled in my head as insects crawled along my nerves.

  “You’re telling me that—”

  He looked away and brushed a cushion with the back of his knuckles. “She was so sweet, yiss. So giving.”

  I had been off the ship that day, I remembered, making final preparations for departure. Aram was saying goodbye to some of his friends and picking up a new shipment of drugs from the Maheu office. That must have been the time when Maud Rain had finally succumbed to the magic that was Tonio.

  And then, in remorse, she’d decided to grow closer to Aram. By becoming a user, like him.

  And now she lived in a little white room in the country, her mind as white and blank as the walls that surrounded her.

  I stood over Tonio. I felt sick. “Remember you’re spending tonight with Katarina,” I said.

  The glow in his eyes faded. “I know,” he said. “It is not that I am not fond of her, but the circumstances—”

  “I don’t want to hear about the circumstances,” I said. “Right now I need to be alone so I can think.”

  Tonio was on his feet at once. “I know I have made an imposition upon you,” he said. “I hope you understand my gratitude.”

  “I understand,” I said. “But I need to be by myself.”

  “Whatsoever thou desirest, my captain.” Tonio rose and loped away.

  I went to the captain’s station and sat on the goatskin chair and decided that I had better get my escape plan under way. I called Denys’s office and asked for an appointment. His secretary told me to come early the next day.

  Tonio had been in prison, I thought. In prison, you learn how to handle people. You learn how to tell them what they want and how to please them.