Black Steel

by Steve Perry

  The boxcar to the ship leaving Koji was scheduled for a midday lift and Wu had her seat confirmed. The port was in Rakkaus, the City of Love, and it was a town unto itself. Wu carried her sword inside an officially sealed security travel tube, hanging from a strap over her left shoulder, and what little else she’d packed in a small bag slung over the other shoulder. She had almost an hour before boarding, and she wandered through the port, looking at the displays. Since this was Koji, most of the holoprojic or real displays had religious themes. Here were the Tillbedjare Artifacts, or a stylized rendering of them, the Hand and Eye and Mind; a few meters away the Libhober display showed the Prophet Stekarie achieving his cosmic flash of Oneness. Here sat the Buddha, contemplating the Eightfold Way; there the Trimenagists Shifting Triangle pulsed and glowed, beckoning. The Siblings of the Shroud had a computer to answer questions. The Jesuits manned a recruiting station. And past that-Past that was a war memorial.

  Wu stopped in front of the memorial and stared at it. It was an endlessly changing projection of faces, taken from ID graphs, people and mues, children, men, women, dozens of them, but each dissolving into another face within a few seconds, timed so that the effect was almost hypnotic. Bearded men transformed into smooth-faced boys, old women into younger ones, mues into basic stocks.

  As each face faded and was replaced, the colors of skin and hair and eyes shifted through the ranges of all races and configurations. The family of man was indeed vast, including in it genetically altered brothers and sisters who stretched the boundaries far and wide. These were the faces of those who had died during the galactic revolution that had toppled the Confed, millions of them, and it would take a lot longer than any one person could stand here to see the cycle through. There was no sound, no identification attached to the images, just the continuing pulse of humanity.

  Whenever she traveled, Wu would pause here for a few moments. Somewhere in those constantly altering faces was her sister. She had never seen her appear; she was in the viral matrix of the computer’s program, just as she continued in Wu’s own memory. A heroine of the revolution she had been.

  Ah, sister. If I could only have a few minutes with you, to say all I never got to say.

  Wu turned away. So many faces. It sometimes overwhelmed her to think about it. The numbers of those who had died had no meaning, but looking upon this memorial made them real. The sons and daughters and fathers and mothers and uncles and cousins who had been caught in the sweep of history and taken away from those who had loved them continued to pulse behind her, but she could not look. She wanted to see her sister, and yet, she did not think she could bear it if ever she finally did.

  On the floor under the display were various items left by those who had come to see the memorial.

  Holographs, flowers, medals, a candy bar, coins, tiny world flags and other things that had some meaning to those who had left them, and perhaps once to those who silently appeared and faded in the flux above them. Offerings to memory they were, and even though a service din came and cleaned them all up once a day, the floor was never bare here.

  It must be getting close to boarding time.

  Wu walked away from the memorial.

  Sleel and Reason arrived at Prime and the cart rolled to a quiet stop, then opened itself. What luggage they had was easily carried, small personal items bought in port, a change of clothes, little else. They had left in a hurry.

  Sleel’s breath came and went in a sigh as he stepped out onto the land of his birth and childhood. The smell was all too familiar, the feel of the air, the heat of the tropical sun. Sweat gathered under his orthoskins, seeking evaporation and failing to find it.

  “Little warm,” Reason observed.

  “Yeah. This way.”

  The main complex was shaped roughly like a letter G. The top curve was of biolabs and climate-controlled greenhouses, of which there were five separate-but-joined-by-tubeway buildings. The back of the letter was given over to four supply and stores buildings, as well as a formal gathering hall, almost never used. The base of the curve was a pair of large shops for maintenance of dins and other machineries, and a power plant. The inverted and reversed Langle consisted of housing; single, double and family units sufficient to hold fifty families in moderate comfort. Sleel’s parents’ unit was the last one on the inside tip, past the center of the G. Prime was the size of a small village, and stocked fully, easily self-sufficient for more than three years.

  When Sleel and Reason arrived, there was nobody else in sight, save a pair of old exterior dins set to maintain the grounds. One of the robots lurched to the left on a damaged tread and had to keep correcting itself, moving in a jerky fan-shaped pattern.

  Sleel laughed.

  “Something funny about a lame din?”

  “Not by itself. Only, that din was doing the same thing when I saw it last.”

  “You sure it’s the same one?”

  “Yeah. I carved my initials into it with a grafting laser, see?” He pointed at the lurching robot.

  “Poor maintenance?” Reason said.

  “Nah. They probably fixed it a dozen times. Things just don’t program well, have to replace the whole brain and it’s easier to patch it than replace it.”

  “Odd philosophy.”

  “They’re all scientists here, they spend a lot of time in the future and not the present. Old cliche, but true, they tend to be dreamy about the little things.” Yeah. Dreamy about things like food, shelter and …children.

  The cube looked the same from the outside. The wear-ever plastic was a little more faded from the effects of weather, a paler blue than he remembered. The exterior gardens had different growths in them, but that had changed fairly frequently even when he’d lived here.

  They walked to the entrance and Sleel palmed the ancient lock. The thin plastic door squeaked as it rolled open on its warped track. Sleel shook his head. It shouldn’t surprise him that they hadn’t changed the lock.

  “Just going to walk in?” Reason asked.

  “Sure.”

  The two men entered the cube, a spacious one by local standards. Living area, dining-kitchen, three bedrooms-his parents had never slept in the same room that Sleel had known about-two offices, three freshers. They dropped their gear.

  “Doesn’t seem as if anybody is home,” Reason ventured.

  “They’re here,” Sleel said.

  Sure enough, after a few seconds, his mother peered around the doorway into her office. “Yes?

  Something?”

  “Hello, Mother,” Sleel said.

  The woman blinked. Twenty years hadn’t done much to her that he could tell. The lines were deeper, the hair all gray instead of just mostly that color. She looked smaller, but that figured. And she could have been wearing that same set of jumper coveralls when he’d left.

  Elith Liotulia blinked again, as if unable to process what her eyes beheld. Then: “Oh. Oh. How are you?”

  “Fine,” Sleel said. “This is Jersey Reason, the famous thief.”

  “Ex-thief,” Reason said, smiling.

  “Oh. How nice. Well. Come in. Make yourself comfortable. I have a report to finish. I’ll be with you later.”

  With that, she ducked back into her office.

  Sleel’s face felt tight, the thin smile chiseled into his features set as if it were made of stone.

  Reason said, “How long has it been since she’s seen you?” “A little over twenty years.”

  “Good God.”

  “Wait until you meet my father.”

  With that, Sleel led Reason to his father’s office.

  Sampson Lewis Edmonds sat in the center of a computer work station, surrounded on three sides by machineries that hummed and purred with bioelectronic effort, his back to the door.

  “Hello, Father,” Sleel said.

  The man spared them a glance away from his computations, took in the two, and nodded. “Busy,” he said. He turned back to his work.

  Sleel’s frozen smi
le stayed in place. He nodded and turned away. That had always been enough, that single word. It was dismissal needing no amplification: Busy.

  How in the name of any sexual god had these two ever managed to produce a child? Had they done it while working together, never missing a single datum between insertion and ejaculation? Sleel sighed.

  “This way,” he said.

  Except for whatever the cleaning dins had done to it, his room was the same as he had left it. There were two beds, for when he had infrequent company who wanted to sleep alone. Toward the end of his life here, there had been a few who’d shared his bed with him; if his parents had noticed or cared, they had never said.

  “We’ll stay here. You can have either bed you want.”

  Reason nodded. He tossed his bags on the guest bed.

  Sleel put his own gear on his bed. Welcome home, son. It’s so nice to see you again. How has your life been?

  Sleel shook his head. What exactly did you expect, pal? A parade? Well, no. But maybe something other than Oh, have you been gone?

  Some things never changed.

  Chapter NINE

  IN THE DINING room, Sleel worked the com, linking into the White Radio net that spanned the inhabited galaxy.

  The name was a double misnomer, being that Desmond White had not invented it, though he had paid for it, and neither was it radio. The invention was more properly known in scientific circles as the A-17 Chronometric/E-RE-PN Impiotic Particle Acceleration/Reception Augmenter, and for that reason it quickly came to be called White Radio.

  What it did was allow communication across light years with very small time lags, and for some reason no one had ever been able to determine exactly, the longer the distance, the shorter the lag. In the early days, the computer augmentation had problems with the color, but that was long since corrected, so when Sleel called Dirisha, she looked as though she could be in the next room.

  “Well, well,” Dirisha said. “I thought sure you’d be in jail again by now.” The chocolate-colored woman sat in front of her com in a bedroom, nude except for her spetsdods. A thin sheen of sweat shined on her, highlighting her tight muscles.

  Geneva lay on the bed behind Dirisha, and save for her weapons, she was also naked. “Hey, Sleel!” the blonde yelled from the bed. She waved.

  Sleel grinned. The last time the three of them had been together he had fulfilled a major fantasy, and felt for a few hours during it that there was indeed some justice in the galaxy. These two were the brightest, deadliest and most beautiful women anywhere, at least in Sleel’s experience. They were salt and pepper, dark and pale, lovers since the years of training at the Villa. He’d tried for longer than that to get Dirisha to sleep with him, since the days they’d been bouncers at the Jade Flower on Greaves, and finally, she and Geneva both had agreed at the same time. Some justice, sure enough.

  “Hello, Dirisha. Geneva. Did I interrupt something?”

  “Nah. We wouldn’t have answered the com if we’d been really busy. How’s it going, deuce?”

  “You know me, no problems I can’t handle.”

  She laughed. “Same old Sleel. What’s up?”

  “I need some information. You used to walk the Flex.”

  “Long time ago.”

  “You ever run into anybody who used a black sword? Some odd kind of steel, not anodized or painted or anything, black all the way through.”

  Dirisha thought about it for a few seconds. “I never fought them. I heard about a couple, just streetscat, but never saw them work myself.”

  “A couple of them?”

  “It was about the time I left to go look up Emile when he was doing his Pen impersonation on Renault. I didn’t do a lot of weapon work myself, those who did tended to find each other to play with, but there were a few who waved blades.”

  “You have any contacts who might know?”

  “This important?”

  “No, I just wanted to spend a week’s worth of stads calling halfway across the universe to pass the time of day.”

  Geneva laughed and sat up on the bed. “You need to work on that, Sleel. Not cutting enough. Needs more irony.”

  “Fuck you, brat,” he said. That was Dirisha’s pet name for Geneva, but they’d given him use of it. He grinned when he said it.

  “Oh, yeah? Last time I offered, you said you were too tired.”

  “I never said that.”

  “Okay, you didn’t say it, but the physical evidence was overwhelming. Or should I say underwhelming?”

  “Any time you want a return match …” Sleel said.

  “Ooh, Dirisha, listen, idle threats!”

  “I’ll check around, you want,” Dirisha said.

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  “This biz?”

  “Yeah. You remember Jersey Reason? He’s my client.”

  Dirisha smiled, white teeth shining against her dark skin. “Say hello to the old man for me.” There was a short pause. “You doing okay with it? Need any help?”

  “Nah, piece of easy, I just need to check some things out.” He kept his voice even.

  “All right. My com get the right number?”

  “Yeah, I’m not hiding.”

  Dirisha glanced up at the corner of her screen. “Mtu?”

  He felt himself grow tight, but he forced a smile. “Yeah, home for a visit to my parents.”

  Geneva slid off the bed and came to sit next to Dirisha. She put one pale hand on the darker woman’s shoulder. The contrast in skin color was attractive. “Christo, you have parents?” Geneva said. “My. Will wonders never cease? I thought maybe you sprang full-size from the forehead of some god.”

  “A natural mistake,” he said. “Gimme a call if you get something.”

  “Later, Sleel.”

  When the holoproj faded, Sleel found himself shaking his head. Those two were part of his real family.

  He found that he missed them, though he wouldn’t have admitted that to them. Or to anybody else.

  Behind him, Reason said, “I just caught the fade-out. How are your fellow matadors doing?”

  “Fine. They’re visiting the casinos on Vishnu.”

  “Expensive com from here.”

  “My parents can afford it. And they’ll never notice it anyhow. All their bills go through a manager and he’s learned to expect weird things from them.”

  Sleel glanced at his timepiece. “Almost eighteen. I’d better call the catering service and tell them there are two more of us for supper.”

  Reason looked puzzled.

  “Neither my father nor my mother will remember that we are here. They have all their meals delivered, same time every day. A din brings the food and rings a loud bell until one of my parents stirs enough to shut it off manually. Otherwise they’d probably starve.”

  “I hope you won’t take offense, but your parents are passing strange. “

  Sleel laughed, a short, sharp sound. “You might just qualify as a master of understatement with that one.”

  The vessel carrying Kildee Wu to Rift was one of the old Melanie-class hoppers, an ancient ship from the height of the Confed’s reign. In those days, travel schedules were based on policy and not practicality, and so the ship had been appointed with enough luxuries and space for voyages that could last months for some passengers. There were parks, convoluted walking paths through genetically stunted small forests, streams and ponds, and individual cubicles built to resemble tiny houses. Named The Skate, the ship was a study in deception, for although it created the illusion of size and space, it was scarcely larger than a standard troop ship. The arts of bonsai and architectural eyeweave had peaked in such vessels, and even when you knew you were being fooled, it still looked like a small village.

  Wu wandered along one of the paths, listening to the sounds of artificial birds and the tread-actuated buzz and rasp of various insects. The pull was a standard one-gee. A permanent repeating holoproj overhead showed a sunshiny blue sky with fleecy clouds, and a gentle breeze
wafted through the trees carrying the scent of pine. The sounds and lights and smells were all artfully designed to convince a walker that he or she was in a real, albeit a tiny, wood, but like the old flat wall paintings of trompe l’oeil, there was a not-real feeling about it all.

  Something deep within her sensed the illusory nature of her surroundings; still, it was pleasant enough. And a walk in the forest without company allowed her space enough to reach for the inner calm she needed. Although Wu meditated regularly using various martial disciplines, she wanted her spirit to be like a still pool for the task to come. It mattered not how sharp a woman’s blade was, could she not wield it with dispassion. Attachment to victory or even technique was bad. In swordplay, there was no past and no future, only now, and nothing must be allowed to pull or push the moment.

  Wu laughed at herself. Right. As if such high-mindedness could make it so. Her sensei, Master Ven, would be whacking her with the bamboo in this moment, were she sitting zazen, no doubt about it. Don’t think, be! he would roar. She kept the smile after the laugh, remembering the old man. Now there was one who’d had control of his art. His last battle was the stuff of legends. He had challenged five of the best swordplayers in the Musashi Flex to a duel, five against his one, and met them in combat using a wooden blade against their steel. After defeating them, he had sat seiza, bowed once, and achieved satori, after which he left the shell of his body behind by sheer force of will. He had been eighty years old.

  Wu wished she could have seen it. Of the four players who survived the encounter with her master, she had spoken to three, and all of them had come away radically changed. One had put down the sword and gone into a religious order. One had secluded himself, seeing no one for six months, to ponder his life.

  One had begun a full-time study under Master Ven’s then most highly ranked student, Kildee’s uncle.

  The fourth player committed suicide before Kildee could reach her.

  Master Ven was a man who had lived his life exactly as he wished, and left it when he thought the moment penultimate. Every player of note in the Musashi Flex had heard the story, and though it sometimes was amplified in the telling, it was amazing enough in fact. The great Musashi himself had used a wooden sword near the end of his career, but never against five opponents at once.