by M. J. Locke
“All right,” he said finally. “Val, I want you to analyze Jane’s data on those troops. See what records you can dig up about their purchase. Find out what we are up against in terms of their military capacity. What kind of fighting equipment do they have? And what about the troops? Did they just give shock rifles to a bunch of Martian farmers, or are those soldiers a real threat? Begin planning for how we would counter it. Yes, I know you are up to your eyeballs. We all are. But we can’t neglect this threat.”
Val looked as though he had bitten into a lemon. “Understood.”
“Contact Sean if you need him,” Jane told Val. “He’s ex-military.”
“Emily,” Benavidez said, “I need you to be thinking about the public relations aspect. How much do we tell people? When? What format? I’d like your recommendations before dinnertime.”
“Yes, sir.” Emily scribbled notes into the air.
“Thomas, I’m sure I don’t need to emphasize that you must apprise me the instant we hear from one of the Ogilvies,” Benavidez told him. “In the meantime, get me everything you can on them—their connections, their methods, their history. Who do we know who has influence over them? I want as many levers as we can find.”
“Will do.”
The prime minister turned to Jane. “You know what you have to do. Find proof of their complicity. Find us other sources of ice. And be quick.”
* * *
It took Geoff longer to get home than it should have. The lifts were congested, but many already seemed to know of his role in saving the ice, and insisted he cut in line; he reached his neighborhood within half an hour of leaving his friends up top in the rocketbike hangar. It was the last few meters that took the most time to traverse.
He and his parents lived in a mid-gee, working-class neighborhood in the Main Metro district. He found a bench in a small plaza near his parents’ apartment and rested there. He dangled his helmet between his knees, threw bits of his uneaten burrito to the chattering birds and squirrels at his feet, and watched some kids playing basketball against a nearby bulkhead.
For a while he tried to come up with entry lines, but language failed him. I’m home seemed hollow. I’m sorry was more how he felt, but he was damned if he was going to apologize for having lived. He didn’t even know if they knew yet, and he didn’t want to be the first to tell them. There was this big empty hole he teetered at the edge of. A place where his brother had been. Burn hot, he thought, thinking of his last words to his brother. Fucking awful.
How could he be gone? How? Geoff just slumped there—speechless—staring into that invisible, endless space, while the lights dangling from the rafters overhead shifted their colors toward late afternoon and the shopkeepers started closing up shop. Burn hot, he thought.
Finally, he stood. It’s not going to get any easier. Get it over with.
As he passed by a gap between buildings, someone grabbed his arm and pulled him into it. He jerked free. “Hey!” Then he stared. The one who had grabbed him—he didn’t know how he could tell she was the real thing, and not just a wannabe—was a Viridian.
She was as tall as he, perhaps six or eight years older. Her eyes were a warm brown, her skin a smooth honey tan, and her hair a cropped cap of tight, reddish curls. She wore Viridian garb: a multilayered, diaphanous top spun with more metal and lighted fibers that reached her waist; leggings; a delicate set of tattoos traced her cheekbones and forehead. No other mods showed on the surface, but with a Viridian, Geoff knew better than to trust his eyes.
While he was sizing her up, she was doing likewise to him. “Hey, yourself.” She had a mild accent, a pleasant one: perhaps British, or Luny ex-pat.
“What do you want?”
“Very sorry about your brother. It sucks.” She hesitated. “Don’t know what I’d do if something happened to mine.”
Anger surged in him. “What do you want, I said?” Then confusion. Carl’s death had occurred less than an hour before. Geoff wasn’t even sure whether his parents knew yet. How could she know?
She lifted her hand, almost too quickly to see. If Geoff had not been looking right at her hand, he would not have noticed the globe she tossed upward. It grew into a big, flimsy bubble, which settled over them. Cool, moist velvet touched his face and hands, and then they were encased in a globe. Through the bubble’s faint rainbow traceries, he could see their surroundings clearly, but the sound of the boys playing across the plaza was noticeably muffled and distorted. He had not noticed how many motes were out till they fell in a soft haze around the bottom seam of the bubble.
“Assemblers?”
“Yes. My own creation.” A quick grin. “Repels ‘Stroider’ motes and distorts sound. Only lasts thirty seconds at this gee-level, so I need to make this quick. We know it was you who made the skeletons dance today.”
Geoff gasped. He had all but forgotten about it. “What— How can you—” He drew a breath. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She rolled her eyes. Then she wiggled her fingers—link up?
Grudgingly, he brought up his own waveface and touched her fingers. In response, he saw an image of himself dropping the triggering proteins into the fountain.
“Wait, there weren’t any cameras in that location! How did you—” He bit his lip to avoid incriminating himself further. She just smiled.
“No cameras you know about. Don’t worry; you covered your tracks well enough. Nobody caught you at it but us.”
“‘Us’ being the Viridians?”
“Duh.” She went on. “The police are investigating, but they think a university student did it. Besides, they’ll be busy now with the disaster. You’re safe enough, for now, as long as you don’t spill.
“So. Here’s the deal. We were suitably impressed by your stunt. We can teach you more. A hell of a lot more.”
The Viridians hacked their own DNA. He did not want to admit it to this young woman … or whatever he, she, or it was … but the notion of being in close proximity with them for any length of time made his skin crawl.
She read his expression, and shrugged. “Your call. If you change your mind, just go to this café and tell them you are a friend of mine.” She transmitted the name of a restaurant—Portia’s Mess—and an address.
“No thanks.”
“Uh-huh.” She gave him an arch stare. “One thing you should know. Bug hacking is harder to control than you think. Doing it solo can get you into serious shit. We’ve all been where you are right now, so we get it. But. If you try something stupid, we will be all over your shit in no time.”
His fingernails dug into his palms. “And there’s one thing you should know: I don’t take well to being threatened.”
She shrugged. “Nothing personal. But if you screw up and hurt or kill somebody, the first ones they are going to blame are us Viridians. And we don’t take well to being scapegoated.”
“Well, I’m not stupid, and I don’t plan to let anyone get hurt. My art project didn’t hurt anybody.”
She shrugged. “Just continue with the nonstupid approach, then.”
With a flick of her fingers, she severed the wave connection. The bubble around them burst. Glimmering motes swirled around them on the breeze.
He was almost too irritated to ask, but did anyway. “I can’t exactly ask for you if I don’t know your name.”
“Good point.” She flashed him another smile. “Call me Vivian.”
Her fingertips brushed his forearm as she passed him. She strode away. He didn’t know which disturbed him more: the way his skin crawled at her touch, or the intense erection he got at that dazzling smile.
* * *
He reached his flat. Motes swarmed in with him as the door opened. They filled the small space with their distinctive scent of mint and acetone. Mites—little mechanical insects—also scurried in as the door closed. Geoff stomped a “Stroider” minicam, in a flash of rage, kicked several others out the door, and slammed it shut. Downsiders. A bunch of ghouls.
His parents, Sal and Dierdre Agre, lurched to their feet at the sound.
“Where the hell have you been?” Dad demanded. “What are you doing? We are going to have to pay for that!”
But Mom shoved past Dad with a cry and grabbed Geoff. “We were worried sick! Thank God you’re all right.” Geoff wrapped his arms around her. Mom’s shoulders shook and her tears left wet spots on his shirt. For a moment, he thought they already knew about Carl, but Dad turned away, frowning and gesturing in a way that told Geoff he was trying to make a call. “Dammit, pick up.”
Carl’s not going to answer, Geoff wanted to say. But he couldn’t force the words out. A rock-hard knot had formed in his throat. He glanced toward his room. The door felt like another black hole. He’d shared the tiny space with Carl. He went and stood at the door, and felt his parents’ stares on his back.
Everything was just as they had left it that morning. It was all so ordinary. Carl was organized. Tidy. Unlike Geoff, whose clothes and belongings were scattered all over. Geoff started picking up his things, stuffing them in the locker. Sorry, Carl. I left the room a mess on your last day. The world’s worst brother. In the front room, Dad and Mom got into a fight over why Carl wasn’t answering and what to do next, which Geoff tried to tune out. He sat down at his desk and called up his waveface.
Kam had already posted the video of the dancing skeletons—anonymously, of course—on the local wave hangout. There were already thousands of views and over eight hundred comments—most of them raves. Geoff called up the video and watched the ensuing bone dance. It was hard to believe that was his handiwork, getting all that attention.
At some point during his parents’ argument, Dad left. Almost immediately thereafter, the doorbell rang. Mom didn’t answer right away; maybe she thought it was Dad again, or maybe she was on the toilet or something. So Geoff went back into the front room and opened the door.
It was Commissioner Jane. Her russet skin was wan, but her expression composed. She dressed formally in a long silvery grey vest and leggings, and carried what looked like a real smoked turkey.
Mom walked in from her room, holding out her hands. “Jane! What brings you here?” But her pleased smile vanished at her friend’s expression.
“Geoff,” the commissioner said. “Dee.” She set the turkey down and took Mom’s outstretched hands. “I’m afraid I have hard news.”
Mom took a step back. “No.”
“Carl was killed in the disaster, up top.”
Mom went ashen. “It’s a mistake.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“It can’t be right.”
Commissioner Jane said nothing. Mom bent her face into her hands, rigid. Geoff shifted. The motion caught the commissioner’s eye. She turned her nickel grey gaze to him. “I’m so sorry.”
Eventually they’d find out he had been there when Carl had died, and then they’d know he had spent a half hour in their company afterward without telling them. They’d wonder whether he had done everything he could to save him. He’d fucked up. Again.
Geoff hunched his shoulders. “Thanks,” he said.
Commissioner Jane sat next to Geoff’s mom and covered her hand. Mom hadn’t moved yet. Geoff felt when she did, she might explode. He got up and went back into his room, dropped fully clothed onto his bunk. Burn hot.
It had been he, Geoff, who was supposed to die young. Not Carl. He fell into a deep sleep that lasted eighteen hours.
4
Jane Navio heard the Voice late Wednesday evening as she jetted home along the commuter treeway that fanned out among the asteroids of the Phocaean cluster.
This summons from Beyond—or this psychotic break, she thought; let’s be honest with ourselves, Navio—was the last thing she needed. Her suit stank and her back hurt. Her fatigue went right down to the cellular level: her DNA, she felt sure, was knotted in snarls of disarray. Even her mitochondria hurt. She couldn’t possibly feel this lousy otherwise.
She had to be back in Phocaea in nine hours. There were a million things to do, and the memorial services were to be held first thing in the morning. She could have waited a day or two—and she should have; at the very least she would have gotten another hour’s sleep tonight. But she needed to go home so badly she could hardly stand it. She needed her own bed and Xuan’s arms around her.
The suit gave her an alert. Klosti Xi-Upsilon-Alpha was coming up: her exit. Jane launched her port tether. It shot out. Ten minutes and twenty kilometers later, the tether latched onto Xi-Upsilon-Alpha’s tether rail, then reeled in the slack, jostling her onto her new trajectory: a high-tech primate swinging on her vine. As she detached her starboard tether from Klosti Alpha, she glanced back over her shoulder.
She often wondered afterward why she looked back just then. She couldn’t think of a particular reason, yet it seemed significant. As if she would not have heard the Voice, if she had not.
Beyond her retracting starboard tether, Cable Klosti Alpha’s receding marquis of red lights did its stately march. Sol, a brilliant button, dominated the dark sky. A quarter of the way across the heavens, back the way she had come, was 25 Phocaea. The stroid shone in the middle distance, a small bright blob about which swarmed a flock of orange, green, blue, and white sparks: the confiscated ships.
Two handspans above the faintly visible cable and the arrays of buckybeam branches that made up the commuter treeway—along with a scattering of asteroids moving against the starry backdrop—hovered distant Earth: a bright cerulean fleck with the moon a faint dot snuggling beneath it.
It was as her gaze fell on Earth that she heard the Voice.
Jane? It said, Jane…?
It held a hint of inquiry, and spoke in a timbre so resonant—so saturated with love-passion-mercy-Beingness—that tears stung her sinuses. Though barely a whisper, it rang through her like tones from a great, distant bell. Jane spasmed in the confines of her suit. Hairs bristled along her arms and on her neck. “What the hell—?”
Even as the Voice ebbed she looked around for the source, wondering if someone was playing a prank, cracking her commlink. Just as quickly, she knew that couldn’t be. She had not heard it outside, she had heard it inside. Something had filled her: a presence so vast that despite its velvet-gentle touch, its departure left her limp and useless as exhaled vapor.
Calm down, Navio. Think. She slowed her breathing and waited for the pounding in her chest and throat to subside as her starboard tether’s electrostatic grappler slid into its wrist holster.
She was no fool. She had lived out in the stroids for most of her adult life, and she was as tough-minded as they came. She had no patience for the damn religious freaks who came out here looking for God or Nirvana, magic or space angels or beneficent aliens, and heard voices out in the rocks. Noodgers, Pagans, Viridians, conspiracy nuts, abductees. They were a hazard to themselves and everyone else. Crackpots and losers, the lot of them.
Even old-timers hallucinated, though, once in a while—when they were out alone in four Kelvins with nothing but their helmet light, tethers, and pneumopacks for company; when the cold seeped in or the pneumopack faltered and they remembered how far they were from the nearest aid station; when they reflected on just how many people had died out here, with their frozen corpses not found for years, if ever. Or when they were grieving, or in shock.
She had heard her mother’s voice once, shortly after her parents had died. She had dreamt of their death before it happened, too, in a bizarre dream sequence that made it seem as if she had somehow known—though of course that was nonsense. She wasn’t the type the unexplainable happened to.
I’m sorry, she told the Voice; you’ve reached an address that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. She said aloud, “Let’s hear it for free will!” and smiled, feeling better for this small rebellion against Fate.
Which would have been fine if that had been the end of it.
Twenty minutes later, her telemetry told her that she was nearing home. She spotte
d it: a dim dot that moved against the deep black. She launched her port tether and it blasted away, steering itself like a kite in gusty winds as it homed in on the stroid’s mooring beacon. The tether took ten minutes to find the magnetic hook. It latched on, and the line tugged at her, sending Jane into a lazy loop until her pneumojets and processors stabilized her. She detached her starboard tether from Klosti Xi-Upsilon-Alpha, which passed by twenty kilometers away with its own sparkling marquis, and turned on her brakes as the tether began the long process of reeling itself into her holster. Soon she could make it out: a carbonaceous peanut of a rock, a phrenologist’s dream. Now the rock neared quickly, but her deceleration was swifter: within moments she was falling slowly toward the two-kilometer-thick rock that housed the habitat she shared with Ngo Minh Xuan, her husband of thirty-nine years.
She shut off the autopilot and reeled her port tether in with the asteroid tumbling under her, her suit making the needed corrections, till she had circled the small asteroid, and touched down at the mooring station. She stumbled and braced herself on a boulder.
This was a tiny world: perpetually twilit on this side, with its pole of rotation pointed toward the sun. Its horizons were coarse and close, curving sharply away underfoot on all sides. It gave her a hell of a view of the wheeling, starry sky. They had claimed the stroid together, she and Xuan, back in ’72. Officially it had only a number, but they had dubbed it No-Moss.
Ordinarily she took a few moments to soak in the view, but today her thoughts coiled inward.
I killed eight. Eight dead, because I made it so.
Their families’ faces loomed in her thoughts as they had appeared when she had notified them: faces twisting into horror, or going blank with shock. She propped herself against the boulder for a moment to rest, with sweat cooling on her face and under her arms, looked out at the Big Empty, and let dread wash over her: dread for herself, and the fate of her people.
Hold it together, she told herself. You did what you had to, and there’s still work to be done. She stood.
