Empire of Dust

by Jacey Bedford

  He stepped back and the enforcer grabbed the man as Ben let go.

  “Mother Ramona doesn’t like her customers interfered with.” The enforcer growled at his prisoner and dragged him into the shadows of the yard.

  Ben winced at the dull sound of stun bands hitting flesh, but considered it wise to let the enforcer do his job. He shepherded Cara beneath overhanging vines and gaudy jungle flowers, past a white-coated houseboy who nodded them through an open door.

  • • •

  Ben and Cara stepped over the threshold into a cool, inviting interior.

  “Thornhill renaissance,” said a low, female voice from the shadows. “It’s two years at least since I’ve used that code.”

  “That’s the last time we spoke. You gave me a good contact in a very efficient law firm. It’s even longer since I’ve been here in person.” Ben turned. “Just after the Burnish rebellion.”

  Mother Ramona stepped forward into the light. She was small and delicate with white skin marbled in blues and grays; pretty in her strangeness. Her hair was a deep cerulean blue with silver and black highlights. An exotic from the planet Eldibane where body mods were commonplace, especially among those in the sex trade. If Mother Ramona had begun life as a sex worker, she must quickly have bought out the whole whorehouse. Her business acumen was legendary on Crossways.

  “Benjamin. I remember. We made love on the couch, and I sold you illegal idents for some Burnish refugees.”

  “I’m flattered after all this time.” He hadn’t forgotten their last encounter, either.

  “Will we seal bargains on the couch this time, hey?” She turned, looked at Cara, and made the obvious but incorrect assumption. “Your woman looks as though you should take better care of her.”

  Mother Ramona had a cackly old-woman laugh, though her body still held the promise of youth.

  “Are you still working for the Trust?” she asked.

  “Yes. This is a private matter, though. I need a new ident for Cara.”

  “Fast and no trace-route, I presume. Come into my den.”

  It was a den rather than an office. The couch was covered in furs and sagged from overuse. The walls were lined with glaring bad-taste trophies: animal, mineral, and possibly vegetable as well. Mother Ramona took Cara’s hand and lowered her onto the couch. Then she swept aside a pile of plasfilms to clear a spot on the overcrowded table opposite and perched on it.

  Ben looked across at Cara, tight-lipped and silent. Scared, he thought, even if she was trying not to show it. His heart did a backflip.

  Stop it, Benjamin, don’t get involved. But it was already too late for that.

  Mother Ramona reached out and held Cara’s chin, turning her head this way and that, noting the bruise, studying the planes of her face. “How much time have you got?”

  Ben shook his head. “Very little.”

  “Four thousand.” Mother Ramona leaned forward.

  “Three and a half.”

  Mother Ramona put her head on one side. “Three eight, that’s my bottom line. Take it or leave it . . . and I’ll throw in the new haircut for free.”

  “We’ll take it.”

  “Can we trust you?” Cara said from the couch. Her voice sounded weak.

  “As much as I can trust you.” Mother Ramona paused, then smiled. “Benjamin knows me. Give me your hand, child, and let’s get started.”

  “I excised the tracer chip.”

  “You did? Oh, well, not much use anyway. I only need the bio one.”

  Cara held out her left hand and Mother Ramona scanned it into her pad. She swore under her breath. “There’s a search out on this one.”

  “Who’s looking?”

  “Can’t tell without pinging it right back to its source. I’m guessing you don’t want me to do that?”

  Cara shook her head mutely.

  “It’s going to take too long to alter it. I’ll have to do a complete new build.”

  “What does that involve?” Ben asked.

  “Time.”

  “How much time?”

  “Three, maybe four days.”

  “Too long.”

  “Of course, it would save time if I could use a real ident,” Mother Ramona said. “Have to buy one in. Only cost you an extra three thousand.”

  Ben shrugged. “Haven’t got that.”

  “Then it’s going to take at least three days to build a new ident from scratch.”

  He couldn’t wait that long, but he didn’t want to leave Cara behind. He took a deep breath. “How about this?” He held his own handpad forward and transferred information into the port on Mother Ramona’s machine.

  “This looks good. Complete, too. These babies are hard to get hold of. How did you manage it?”

  “She disappeared. It took me some time to find her, and I cracked the central records to get her full download to make it easier. Might as well make use of it; she’s not coming back.”

  “Serena Benjamin. Your sister?”

  “Wife. Ex-wife to be more precise. Like I said, she’s not coming anywhere close to where I am. She’s out on Romanov, with a baby and an alpaca farmer, and that’s where she intends to stay. Had enough of following a Monitor around from posting to posting, and she hated it out on the Rim. Can you use it?”

  “I’ll have to make Cara look more like her, but that’s not impossible. They’re about the same build, and I can do something about the face shape temporarily.”

  “Wife?” Cara came round from her daze. “If you think . . .”

  “Would you rather stay here?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then go with Mother Ramona.”

  Mother Ramona took Cara’s arm. “Wait here, Benjamin. The physical alterations will be temporary, so better get her through Immigration on Chenon within the next seven days. Give me about two hours. You’ll not recognize her when I’ve finished.”

  Ben watched her lead a slightly dazed Cara away.

  • • •

  Maybe the concussion had eliminated all her natural inhibitions, but Cara wasn’t scared of this strange exotic woman at all. Ben seemed to trust her and that was good enough.

  So when did she start trusting Ben?

  “Just a hypospray. It’ll feel cold.” Mother Ramona pressed something to the corner of her jaw, first the left and then the right. “Sit. While that’s taking effect, I’ll see to your hair. I’d normally have one of my boys do this. Not everyone gets personal attention.” She painted something that stank of chemicals onto the shorter strands and tousled it all together with gloved fingers.

  She stripped off the gloves, felt along Cara’s jaw, and grunted in satisfaction. “It’s working. Your jawline’s heavier now, but it still looks natural. Changing your skin color will be the hardest, and I need to add six or seven kilos to your weight. I can probably make your breasts look a lot heavier with the right underwear.

  “Here, strip and lie on the bench.”

  Cara complied and Mother Ramona draped a lightweight blanket over her, adjusted the angle of the head, and raised the section beneath Cara’s knees so that she was comfortably supported. She checked the bruising on Cara’s shoulder and went to the other side instead, fixing a drip. Then she rolled back the blanket and used the hypospray again around Cara’s waist and across her belly.

  “This will add some fluid and bodyweight. Don’t worry, it’s temporary. I need you to keep still for an hour now while the drip does its job. Can you do that?”

  “No problem. Do you mind if I snore?”

  Mother Ramona laughed. “Go ahead.”

  Cara dreamed of Donida McLellan saying something about Mr. van Blaiden wanting to know that his secrets were safe.

  McLellan turned into Ari van Blaiden, but the question was still the same. *Are you looking after my secrets, Cara, my love?*

  Of course. Why wouldn’t she?

  She surfaced from the dream and wrenched her mind into the present, but there was a lingering desire to drop eve
rything and run to Ari’s embrace.

  She jerked awake. That was one step too far. These memories weren’t natural.

  Eyes. She could just remember eyes boring into her own.

  Not Ari’s eyes. Cold eyes.

  Donida McLellan. The Telepath from hell.

  The dream sucked her back into its depths.

  A mind bored into hers. She had no defenses.

  *Mr. van Blaiden wants to know that his secrets are safe.*

  *What have you done to me?*

  *Keep his secrets safe. Bring them home.*

  The words echoed. Secrets. Safe. Home.

  *Never tell what you know.*

  It was like stepping off a cliff.

  *Never . . . *

  She was falling.

  *tell . . . *

  Still falling.

  *what . . . *

  The ground rose toward her.

  *you . . . *

  She put out both arms and arched her back, tilting her head up and up like a diver bottoming out in deep water and reaching for the surface.

  *know.*

  She reached up to the air and . . .

  *Now forget.*

  forgot. . . .

  Cara came to in a daze and felt a tug on her arm. Oh, that’s right, the drip.

  “Sorry, was I snoring?”

  “No, you were sleeping like a baby.” Mother Ramona checked the drip. “Nearly ready. Ben will hardly recognize you.”

  “If I look like his ex-wife, he may recognize me too well.”

  Chapter Seven

  CHENON

  Ben guided Cara back to the port and onto the Dixie Flyer without incident. She stumbled on the ramp, flopped onto the passenger couch, and fumbled with the harness fastenings. He leaned over her to check it. He’d done some dumb things in his time, but this was probably the dumbest.

  “Don’t touch me. I can do it. Not helpless, y’know.” She pushed his hand away, then changed her mind and held onto it. “Sorry. Not quite myself at the moment. No need to snap, is there? Just feel so . . . so . . .” She searched for a word. “Out of control. Don’t like it at all. There are holes in my head, and I keep falling down them. I just climb out of one and—oops—here comes another.”

  She released his hand. He clicked the fastening and activated the environment unit that provided some cushioning against the effects of the Folds. He did the pre-flight checks as the Dixie Flyer rode the elevator back up to the docking bay.

  “Don’t think you’re claiming matrimonial rights,” she said.

  He wasn’t intending to claim any kind of rights, matrimonial or otherwise. Sex in space sounded exotic, but it was very overrated, especially in the confines of a small flyer, fitted only with narrow contour seats. Besides, Cara had made it very plain that their first night together had been their last. That was a pity, but he didn’t have any right to argue with her decision.

  He was grateful when she stopped struggling with her demons and drifted into a light sleep. He needed all his concentration for the jump through foldspace. This was where a psi-tech Navigator really won out. You could go through the Folds on automatic, but ships had been lost that way. His own parents had taken a luxury cruise to celebrate their tenth anniversary and had been lost along with three hundred passengers and eighty crew. Every time he crossed into foldspace he imagined their vessel drifting forever, the pilot frozen in the command chair, out of time, out of oxygen, out of luck. It was never entirely clear whether the losses were due to pilots not being able to latch onto the nav beacon, or whether foldspace held unknown terrors. Only the dead knew . . . and they weren’t telling.

  Sometimes Ben thought he saw the ghosts of lost ships, but nothing was as it seemed in foldspace. Instrumentation went wild for no apparent reason, so if you had the ability, it was better to fly on manual. His psi-nav skills kept him on the right course even when the ship told him lies. Sometimes the boundary between natural instinct and implant blurred into insignificance.

  Cara’s sleep didn’t last. She woke with a jerk and tried to sit up against the harness. Her eyes were glazed over. “Y’know, Benjamin, a peck on the cheek or even a smile wouldn’t have gone amiss. After all, it’s not every day a girl gets married.”

  “You’re out of your head.” He kept his eyes on the console display. The gate was less than two hundred seconds away.

  “Maybe, just maybe, I’ve got under your skin a bit. I’m sorry. Y’know, Benjamin.” She slurred it. “I’m truly sorry if I have, because in the emotion stakes, I’d have to fly very high to reach absolute zero.”

  “Who left you feeling like that?” Maybe in this state she’d let the information slip.

  She didn’t. “Fucking you proved it once and for all. No spark. I’ve got no fucking spark.” She giggled. “No spark to fuck. No fucking spark. Get it?”

  A hundred and twenty-seven seconds to the gate.

  “Clear screen shields,” he told the onboard computer. The shields slid back, and the forward bubble looked out onto a portal hanging in space. Two modules, one three times the size of the other orbited gently around each other, crew quarters and gate impeller itself. The gates were a blessing and a curse, allowing humanity to expand throughout the galaxy in an increasingly crazy spiderweb of overlapping and interlocking gates and hubs—hundreds of hubs, thousands of colonies—while creating their own monster in their insatiable hunger for platinum. Amazing to think how much platinum leeched without trace into the Folds every jump. That platinum loss—which no one had yet been able to eliminate from the system—left corporations cutting each other’s throats for the next discovery of easily extractable ore.

  A technological miracle. An economic curse.

  Thirty seconds to the gate.

  Between the modules hung an ellipse of pure black. Total absence of light.

  The gate.

  Ben felt the pull and distortion of foldspace, even from this distance. It absorbed him totally, ate into his brain, and left little room for unrelated thought.

  “I said, d’you get it? Answer me, dammit.” Cara cut through his concentration.

  “You’ll get it back. Your spark.” He tried to fob her off to shut her up.

  “Perhaps I don’t want to.”

  They were on the brink of the ellipse. Ben briefly considered warning Cara that the Folds were coming up, but whatever hell was out there waiting for them, Cara was locked up inside her own personal version. He ignored her and concentrated on the gate.

  • • •

  There’s a pop and the blackness of space becomes a deeper blackness. At first nothing moves, then something begins to swirl as if it’s alive. It’s long and narrow, sinuous and serpentine. At first it lacks definition, but as it swims toward the Dixie, one golden eye opens and it stares. Ben stares back. Void dragons are a myth. He’s heard theories and dismissed them, but here, up close, it’s hard to disbelieve.

  “You’re not real,” he says.

  Aren’t I?

  His imagination provides an answer.

  “Not real.”

  Its lips curl back from crocodilian teeth punctuated by saber-like canines. Teeth that could punch a hole in the Dixie’s hull like a hot knife through butter.

  Not. Real.

  This time he doesn’t say the words out loud, but he believes them with all his heart.

  The void dragon begins to fade and he hears its sigh. Again. Soon. The words are in the air, floating on an impossible breeze.

  It’s gone.

  The journey to Chenon stretches into weightless infinity, and then it’s over.

  • • •

  Ben shook his head to clear away the illusions. Void dragons, indeed. For a moment he’d almost believed.

  Cara seemed aware that they’d reached their destination.

  “How are you doing?” Ben asked her.

  “I’ve been better.” Her voice sounded croaky.

  “Can you walk?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

&n
bsp; He put his arm under hers and for the first few steps she leaned heavily on him, but then she straightened. Once through the formalities as Mrs. Benjamin, Ben hustled her into a rented hoverpod and she relaxed in the passenger seat behind darkened plasglass and closed her eyes.

  Ben’s instincts told him Cara was bad news, but whatever had passed between them during that first mind-contact had jolted him to his core. It wasn’t just his White Knight Syndrome; it wasn’t even that she now looked like the woman that he’d once thought to spend a lifetime with. His feelings had become much more complicated than that. He should be building a wall between them if he didn’t want to get hurt, but walls sometimes kept in the bad and kept out the good. You couldn’t live your life behind walls. It wasn’t living.

  He piloted the little hoverpod quickly to a hospitality complex and booked in.

  Once in their room Cara looked nervously at the bed and backed against a wall. “Are you some kind of closet weirdo?”

  He sighed. “Would you believe me if I said no?”

  There was no strength in her limbs. She staggered forward and perched on the enormous bed, rocking gently from side to side. Then she rolled over and curled into a fetal position. Ben ignored her and used the holo-comm to make a call. “Crowder?”

  “Ben. Where are you?”

  “Indira Ridge.”

  “What are you doing there?”

  “Sorting out your new Psi-1. Cara’s concussed. I’m going to let her sleep it off for a couple of days.” It was more than a concussion. He realized that the concussion was compounded by the withdrawal from the tranqs she’d been dosing on for too long.

  “Ben, watch yourself. Do you know what you’re getting into?”

  “You sound like you ought to be my dad, Crowder.”

  “I feel like it sometimes. Get here as soon as you can.”

  “I’ll be there. And . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  Crowder chuckled. His holo image faded, and the line went dead.

  Ben checked the bathroom, pulled off his buddysuit, and found a clean shirt and trousers in his bag. He freed his hair from the tight braid, shook it out down to his shoulders, and then tied it in a loose ponytail. That felt better. He turned to Cara. “Do you want a drink?”