Asimov's SF, July 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  His sleep system eased him awake gradually, so he wouldn't make any sudden moves. He had placed a minimum set of clothes in the room he used for an office. The records and programs he needed for his business were all stored in his internal systems. The bank had backups, in addition, and he had cached backup storage devices in his clothes.

  Lift yourself out of the bed one slow, calculated move at a time. Listen to her breathe while you stand on the rug. Pad across the room on bare feet. Slip into shoes, pants, and shirt. Watch the minutes change on your clock display.

  Now!

  The windows had been fabricated from an elegant solar-powered material that could reconfigure into a screen when you felt the need for ventilation. And yield before a steady push when you felt you needed an emergency exit. They had placed him on the third floor of a three-story building, but he could reduce the drop by the time-honored method of hanging from the bottom of the window with his arms stretched above him.

  The building had been surrounded with a border of native plants. He rolled onto his side when he hit but a sharp spike of pain advised him he had twisted his right ankle. He blocked off the pain and flowed into a run as he stood up.

  The roar and crash of the rapids dominated the nightscape. Nobody had set off an alarm. No loudspeakers ordered him to stop. It wasn't necessary. The security system would have responded as soon as he pushed on the window. Cameras were watching his every move. Watchcats were racing across the grounds. Messages had awakened the people who had been assigned to security duty.

  A cat trotted around a group of bushes. Yellow eyes regarded him. The cat angled toward him and he let it travel three more steps before he subvocalized four nonsense syllables.

  He was holding his anxiety responses at the level they would normally reach if he was engaging in a competitive sport—a reaction that would keep him alert and fully rational. There was a moment when he actually felt his arms and legs start to knot up. The cat hadn't missed a step. Another cat had emerged from the shadows ahead of him and veered toward him with the same mechanical relentlessness.

  The first cat rose on its rear legs and clawed at the air as if it was trying to scratch an opening in an invisible wall. He subvocalized the trigger again and the second cat covered three full meters before it shrieked and swung away from him.

  Janip ran past the end of the quarters building and turned toward the river. The top of the skimmer ramp was only a hundred meters away. The first cat was still clawing at the air behind him. The second cat had settled onto its belly with its head swinging from side to side and its body bent into a curve.

  They had opted for the simplest defensive program Elisette's sources could design. Once the program squirmed through the defenses around the cat's programming, it would overload the system with a blizzard of rapidly multiplying random data. The effect wouldn't last forever. The cat's defenses could shut it down and erase everything it had received from the time it started its approach. But by that time he would be clambering down the ramp toward the skimmer.

  He was running along a walkway that curved through patches of ornamental shrubbery. Shrines displayed statues of the deities associated with the Power the Cultivators served. He thought he could hear a motor over the noise of the rapids but he couldn't be sure. They had decided he wouldn't communicate with the skimmer unless he had to. Ideally, the security team wouldn't know what he was trying to do until the skimmer pulled up to the ramp just before he started down.

  He picked up the whir of the skimmer's power plant as he galloped across the vines that covered the ground around the statue closest to the ramp. There was a gate across the ramp but he knew he could climb over it if it was locked.

  A cat landed in front of the gate, stiff legs braced against the ground. A growl cultivated by generations of genetic designers brought him to a halt.

  He knew he was probably wasting his time before he activated his defensive program but he subvocalized the code words anyway. The cat held its pose and he switched on his communications system and flashed a picture of the situation to the skimmer.

  The response sounded matter of fact and unfazed. “I'll come up the ramp. Hold on."

  The cat growled again. Janip looked around and discovered he and the cat seemed to be alone. Lights had switched on all over the grounds but he couldn't see any indication the security team had left the comfort of its posts.

  It was possible the cat had recovered faster than they'd assumed it would. But there was another explanation that was less encouraging. . . .

  The skimmer whirred up the ramp and stopped behind the gate. “Let's see what we can do with this kitty,” the matter of fact voice said.

  The skimmer was supposed to be equipped with a program that would confront the cat's system with an entirely different challenge. The pilot did whatever he was supposed to do and the cat rose on its hind legs. It flopped onto the ground with its back arched and Janip hurled himself forward. His hands grabbed the top of the gate.

  Janip had absorbed hits from laser-electric stunners during a period in his early youth when he had engaged in mock battles with several of his friends. He knew what was happening as soon as he felt the shock slam through his body. It was a low-power effect. The gunner was positioned at least fifteen meters behind him. The charge had lost 30 percent of its power as it traveled down the tunnel of ionized air created by the laser. But it did what it was supposed to. A cat landed on his chest seconds after his back hit the ground.

  * * * *

  They had known about the smuggled program from the start, of course. The cats had been responding to commands from their controllers when they had acted as if they were reacting to the program. Sivmati had applied a standard psychological technique. Let your victim think he's made it. Hit him at the last possible moment. Maximize his disappointment and frustration.

  "I can understand why you might try that,” Sivmati said. “I'd probably do the same thing. But we'd all be better off if we just presented Elisette with a united front. Let her know you've decided we're right. Tell her she won't receive her new eyes until she abandons her ambitions and dissolves every molecule she's added to her second dam."

  Farello had been standing by the door when they escorted him back to the apartment. Two people from the security team had been propping him up. They had hit him with a second blast from the stunner while he had been lying under the cat. They dropped him on the bed and he huddled there by himself for the rest of the night.

  He didn't call to her. In the morning he wondered if he should have. But he didn't. He stayed in the bedroom, after he woke up, until he heard her leave.

  The first person he talked to was Elisette. She had left him a message minutes after the skimmer had left the ramp but he didn't return the call until he had spent an hour moping around the apartment.

  "We knew that could happen,” Elisette said. “We took the chance and it didn't work out."

  "They could have stopped me at any time. I didn't see the people with the stunners but they must have been shadowing me all the time I thought I was clear."

  "And now you're just as shaken as they hoped you'd be, right? Snatch it away right at the moment you think you've got it."

  "They aren't going to give in, Elisette. They're just as stubborn as you are."

  "What's your love interest doing?"

  "She left before I got up. I haven't said a word to her."

  "Find her. Talk to her. Get her back."

  "After this? What am I supposed to tell her?"

  "Tell her whatever you need to tell her. She's yours. She wants to stay with you. Give her the excuse."

  * * * *

  She came back to him. Late in the afternoon. While he was still telling himself he had to think about the best way to approach her.

  "I guess I'll just have to depend on the security system,” she said. “I seem to have underestimated my personal charms."

  She smiled. She gave her hips a little toss. It was a brave response.
>
  "I didn't want to leave you,” Janip said. “You're the only aspect of this whole situation that could make me hesitate. I'd just stay here and let things drift if you were the only consideration. I don't want to leave, Fari. I just feel I have to."

  It wasn't the best speech he had ever offered a woman but she accepted it. She led him into the bedroom and the present blocked out the past.

  * * * *

  Sivmati's surveillance programs had detected the defensive program while it was being transmitted and installed a neutralizer in the cats’ systems. But there were hundreds of other programs Janip could use the next time he made a break. They just had to get one to him.

  "You've got two possibilities,” Elisette said. “We can transmit it through your bank. Or we can make a physical transferal."

  "And there's no way an outsider can pass me something,” Janip said. “Given the way I'm being watched. So someone else has to make the pickup. And we only have one serious candidate."

  Elisette smiled. “We seem to have been thinking along the same lines."

  "Not really. I've just developed some understanding of your thought processes."

  "She's vulnerable, Janip. She's still vulnerable. She's probably even more conflicted than she was, after the shock you gave her when you tried to escape. Keep working on her. Keep strengthening the bond."

  "And get her to where she's willing to betray her group just so she can keep someone who's going to leave this world sooner or later no matter what happens? That's a cruel thing to do, Elisette. She'll be in a turmoil for decades, no matter what happens."

  "Do you want to stay there until you've gotten so worn down you start believing their sermons? I'm not giving in on this. That dam is going up. I can always get a temporary set of eyes while I wait for them to understand what they're up against."

  * * * *

  Margelina was caught between Janip and her overseers in the bank. She stuck to the official position but she didn't hide her sympathy.

  In the end, they always returned to the same issue. The bank had to think about the future. Janip had been given access to the ultra-secure communication system because Sivmati knew the bank would keep its bargain. If the bank violated its agreement for Janip, the next group of kidnappers wouldn't be so trusting. And the next kidnap victim would have to conduct his business over a less secure system.

  "This isn't the last time we're going to have this problem, Janip. We're a new world. How would you feel if you couldn't use our system because your captors knew the last kidnap victim had violated his agreement?"

  "Then send in a rescue force. Smash up some buildings. Kill some crops. Let them know you aren't going to tolerate this kind of behavior."

  "We're looking at all the options. Kaltuji isn't a dictatorship. We can't plunge into that kind of action without a solid consensus."

  "You've got influential people in your city who think you should let thugs and religious zealots disrupt legal business deals?"

  "Sivmati knows what we can do. Elisette knows what we can do. We're a factor in every calculation they're making."

  "Do they know what you're willing to do? I haven't seen much evidence they have to think about that."

  * * * *

  Dancing played a central role in the Cultivators’ communal life. They danced every night after dinner and they seemed to use every style of dance humans had developed for their mating rituals, from staid promenades to heated twosomes and floor- shaking communal stomps.

  Janip had added the entire library to his internal programming when he initiated his relationship with Farello. They had practiced the couple dances together in private and he had managed to survive his first dance session without committing a fumble that disrupted a communal number. The implanted programs could give you an automatic grasp of the steps but they couldn't install the intuitive adjustments to your partners that Farello had developed.

  Sivmati was a practiced expert, of course. His straight back and hard stamps created a classic image when he joined a partner in one of the more vivid courting dances. His bellows and chest thumps dominated an all-male dance that bore a suspicious resemblance to a stylized combat. He did it with a smile and a proper touch of satire but his attitudes became the primary message of the event. The other men on the floor faded into the background.

  If you drew a diagram of the human food chain, Janip had concluded, politicians would occupy the top perch. Soldiers and other experts in violence clutched the second rung. Creators and traders lit where they could. He had realized Sivmati was a politician but he had assumed Elisette belonged to his own class. Instead, he seemed to be caught between two of a kind. Sivmati reigned over a flock of religious communalists. Elisette wanted to turn a power system into an empire.

  Janip slipped his arm around Farello's waist and she smiled at him as he swung her through the first steps of a light-hearted couples dance that included mock displays of disdainful rejection. They clowned their way through the dance as if he had never attempted to leave her and she saw him as a friendly, good-humored source of fun and companionship.

  Elisette was a customer. He needed her money. That was the heart of the matter.

  * * * *

  "Our allies in Kaltuji have decided they can send a delegation,” Elisette said. “They can claim their engineers want a direct onsite look at the facility the Cultivators are constructing. It's not a total fake either. There are people in the government who think they can set up a compromise if they get a better understanding of the things we're building."

  "They're willing to plant somebody in the delegation who will make the delivery?"

  "Just tell us where to drop it."

  "And when. I still have to discuss this with the person who's going to pick it up."

  "Give her an excuse. Tell her it's a business message. Indicate you're doing something a little underhanded."

  "It's still a risk, Elisette. She can do everything we ask her and tell Sivmati, too."

  "She won't. Give her an excuse. That's all she needs."

  Elisette's face softened. She actually looked sympathetic. She was probably generating a high priced implanted simulation but Janip was surprised she could even manage that.

  "You aren't to blame for this, Janip. You didn't put her in the bind she's in. Sivmati set her up. Not you."

  * * * *

  Conalia was half a billion years older than Arlane, but the largest mobile organisms on the planet were essentially variations on the insect life found on other habitable planets.

  Conalia was a low temperature “equatorial planet"—life flourished in a narrow band around the equator. Ice caps and frigid barrens covered 80 percent of its surface. The planet was still plodding toward the glories of reptiles and mammals, according to the most widely accepted theory, because natural selection had less to work with.

  Other theories touted other explanations. But everybody agreed the native life forms were just as interesting as the fuzzier creatures that had evolved on more hospitable planets. Guests always visited the observation deck, even in winter. The rapids seemed to foster large water creatures who could handle the currents. Spectacular eight-winged flyers skimmed across the whitecaps and skewered swimmers with telescoping spears. Snaky swimmers arced above the surface and attacked flyers. Clouds of famished smaller creatures descended on their overgrown rivals at predictable intervals. A visitor could paste a wafer under a railing and be confident no one would notice.

  Retrieving the wafer would be a different matter. “I'm working on an especially delicate business deal,” Janip told Farello. “The whole project depends on secrecy. Even Margelina doesn't know about it. Nobody in the bank knows about it."

  "And you don't trust the bank's security system?"

  "They're protecting me from intruders from outside their system. I'd rather not take it for granted they aren't watching me themselves. Not in this case."

  She knew he was lying, of course. Elisette had been right. Farello didn't ev
en ask him why she couldn't tell Sivmati about the pickup. He had prepared an answer if she asked that. But the question never came up.

  * * * *

  Janip advised Elisette he was ready, Elisette negotiated with her contacts, the Kaltuji representatives negotiated with Sivmati, and Janip received a date. Sivmati would receive the delegation on a morning that was exactly three tendays in the future.

  "It's the best they could do,” Elisette said. “We are dealing with one of mankind's better experts at stalling."

  "And he never once expressed any hostility. . . ."

  "Or any sense he thought there might be something irregular about his relations with the rest of society. Kidnapping is just another element in normal business negotiations."

  "You're telling me I have to keep Farello committed for another three tendays."

  "Just keep on doing what you're doing."

  Janip had been feeding Elisette daily reports on Farello's behavior, complete with a few minutes of visuals. Elisette insisted Farello would remain committed, but she wasn't the one who had to live with Farello's day-to-day mood swings. Elisette didn't feel the desperation in Farello's grip when she held onto him in bed. Elisette didn't have to cope with the emotions that assailed him when he saw Farello staring at her plate during dinner.

  He just had to remind himself he hadn't created this situation. Elisette was right. Sivmati had created it. And Elisette.

  * * * *

  Two of Sivmati's personal adherents loomed over the scene when the leader of the delegation inspected Janip's quarters and interviewed him about his treatment. Sivmati advised him his captors would appreciate it if he would stay away from the observation deck when the delegation was observing the action and Janip graciously agreed to abide by their request.

  "I think you can see the problem,” Sivmati said. “The platform will be crowded. There will be a lot of distractions."

  "It's perfectly understandable. Don't let it trouble you."

  Janip started worrying about the exchange as soon as they broke the connection. Had he done anything that might indicate the observation deck had some special significance? Had he been too obliging? Should he have Farello run over to the observation deck as soon as the delegation left it? And pick up the wafer before Sivmati could have the deck inspected?