This Alien Shore

by C. S. Friedman

  “I am from Shido.” She said it slowly, picking her way through each word with care. “That much is true.” Where could she lie safely, and where would he catch her? There might be more to this message, she realized suddenly, which he had not shared with her. She’d better stay very, very close to the truth. “There was a hostile takeover about the time the Aurora was leaving Earth. The habitat was destroyed. I...” She saw the look in his eyes and was suddenly wary. He knows what happened to Shido, she thought. He researched that before he came to me. She felt tears beginning to build in her eyes, and dreaded the moment they would begin to trickle down her cheeks, advertising her fear.

  “I got away,” she said at last. “One of my ... family sent me here. To go join my outworld relatives.” One more deep breath: shaky though it was, the rush of oxygen lent her strength. “My father was involved in research for Shido. He was teaching me about his work, he ...” The first tear began a slow course down her cheek, and she decided to use it. “He’s dead,” she whispered. “He died in the explosion. All of my family died.”

  She broke down then, and wept openly; it was only partly for show, mostly it was genuine grief pouring out of her. It had been so long since she’d mourned the loss of everything she’d had, everyone she’d loved, she’d been holding it all in....

  That’s it, one of the Others whispered. She didn’t even know which one. Let the tears flow, Jamie, he’ll respond to that.

  And he did. After a moment’s hesitation he came to her and gathered her tenderly into his arms. The embrace felt awkward—he was little more than a stranger to her, though a lover to Katlyn—but the warmth was good and the caring was genuine, and in the back of her mind a flicker of hope began to spark.

  Verina began to feed concepts into her brain; she tried not to hesitate as she absorbed them, tried to make the words flow like her own. “His work was highly secretive. It’s worth a lot to Shido’s rivals. I don’t know all the details, but I know—” Careful! Derik warned. “Enough to be afraid of them. Enough to know that they think I have information I don’t ... and they’re not going to believe that.” She met Justin’s eyes then, and tried to pour all her desperate need for masculine support into that precious contact. “Shido’s rivals will be looking for me. They want to bring me back to Earth; once we’re there, corporate law gives them the right to what’s in my brain. Only they’d have to ... they’d have to ...” She choked out the words. “It’s ... not a safe process,” she said at last. “It might ...” she hesitated, not wanting to push the truth too far. Then: oh, what the hell... “I might not survive it.”

  He fingered the paper in silence for a moment, as if weighing her words against the formal titles printed on it. He isn’t a corporate, Verina judged. Most likely a rockborn for whom this type of affair is the subject of viddies, little more. He probably doesn’t know enough of corporate law to judge if what you’re saying is reasonable or not.

  But that could be an advantage, Derik offered. Brave mudder hero helps comely young victim to escape the clutches of an evil syndicate.... Someone giggled. Fuck it, if it works, go for it!

  At last he folded up the message. It took him a while, lean fingers pressing each crease before going on to the next. She held her breath while she watched, afraid to ask what he was thinking. What he intended.

  At last he said, “When you get to these relatives of yours ... you’ll be okay?”

  Her heart pounded wildly. She tried to sound calm. “Yes. Yes. Earth law doesn’t hold in the outworlds ... once I’m there, they can’t come get me.”

  He said nothing more for a moment.

  “Justin?”

  “Mom hasn’t seen this yet,” he muttered. He slid it into the pocket of his jumpsuit; a faint smile touched the comer of his lips. “Guess she doesn’t have to, does she?”

  Yes! Zusu crowed, and Derik cheered, You did it, girl!

  Not yet, Katlyn warned. The deal’s been offered, not sealed.

  Jamisia could barely make out her own thoughts, for all the voices inside her. “What if there are more?” she asked nervously. Half afraid to even broach the subject. “What if they write again?”

  He took her by the arms, and pulled her gently toward him. “Don’t worry, I’ll watch for it. No one on this ship will sell you out, Jamie. I promise.”

  He kissed her then, and she could feel herself slipping away. No, not slipping away, exactly ... slipping from this self into an Other. Don’t try to fight it, Jamie. This is our life now. Let go.... So she let go, sinking back. Giving up. Granting control to one who understood the rules of this fragile moment, and could make the most of it.

  “My hero,” Katlyn breathed, smiling.

  The disembarkation went surprisingly smoothly, considering how many thousands of people were involved. That was no small accomplishment, when you took into account that the stewards overseeing the effort were, by definition, inexperienced ; with two round trips providing enough pay for retirement, it was rare for anyone to dedicate their lives to metroliner service. All the ship’s officers were doing their part as well, and anyone the officers could draft into duty ... which meant that Justin was too busy to spend any time with her.

  Just as well.

  She had the Earth transmission hardcopy in her pocket, along with two others which had come later. Shido’s enemies were determined to find her, all right. She tried not to think about what they would do to her if they did. For all of the dreamscapes her tutor had provided, none of them actually told Jamisia what they wanted with her, or even what the point of Shido’s work had been. She had the impression he really didn’t want her to know, as if he had thought the knowledge was more than she could handle.

  So I’ll never know, she thought as she closed her cabin door for the last time. Because I sure as hell am not going back to Earth to find out.

  They said you could see the ainniq from the forward domes, but they also said it was so crowded up there that it was hard to see anything if you were merely human. She watched as Variants hurried past her, racing to the spot: Alegonki, with long, spindly legs that would raise them high above a crowd; Salvationers, whose prehensile feet made them perfectly suited for climbing the support struts of an observation dome; other Variants whose form gave them advantage and not a few true-humans as well, all rushing to the place where they could, if they were lucky, see that most marvelous of all natural phenomena. The rift in space which had given man the stars.

  We really should go look, Raven began, but the Others shouted her down. In Derek’s words, Now is not the fucking time! As for Jamisia ... all she could think about was getting off the ship in one piece, and avoiding whatever dangers might be waiting for her. And apparently the majority of her Others agreed, for she heard no further protests as she turned away from the corridor that would lead her to the observation dome, and headed toward the bay.

  She had both her bags slung over her shoulder; it was an awkward burden but a necessary one. She didn’t want to get slowed up in baggage protocol, not with ten thousand people all claiming their household effects at one time. The fact that there was a hefty fine for every pound of baggage above a certain limit hadn’t stopped these people from cramming the great ship with their belongings; most of them were rich, after all, and many of them were emigrants proper who would never be coming back to Earth again. You couldn’t expect them to make a trip like this without all their property, could you? Stewards hurried past her with servocarts laden down with everything from furniture to architectural fragments. And that was just from the staterooms. God alone knew what there was in storage.

  Crazy, she thought to the Others, as she made her way through the madness. Derik’s word for it was considerably less refined. She could feel him come to the surface once or twice as the press of the crowd got too close, but he never quite took over. This wasn’t a good time for him, he lacked patience. She could hear the Others chiding him as she made her way to the exit bay, and having an argument raging in the back of her he
ad didn’t help her own nerves at all.

  There could have been another transmission, she thought as she slipped into a tube. Overloaded, the system started with a jerk. They could be waiting for me. What if Justin hadn’t intercepted them all? What if her enemies had made contact with the station they were approaching, and the authorities there were ready to seize her?

  Unlikely, Verina told her. We’ll be processed through emigration, which is in the hands of the Guild. I doubt the Guerans would cooperate with such a thing, and the price of lying to them is surely too high to risk.

  Are Guildsmen so incorruptible? Jamisia wondered.

  It seemed to her Verina smiled. No, my dear. But it’s said that they hate Earth with a passion, so I doubt they would lower themselves to becoming a tool of corporate politics.

  If they hate Earth so much, then why are they here? They’re the ones who taught us about the ainniq. Without them we never could have left safespace.

  Yes, Verina mused. Isn’t that the question?

  And Derik added dryly, Gueran ethics. Whatever the hell that means.

  At last she reached the exit bay to which she had been assigned. She shifted the heavy bags to a new and more comfortable position and gave her ID chip to the steward on duty there. He read it, nodded shortly, and gave it back to her. “Confirmation?” he asked. For a moment she didn’t know what he was referring to, then she saw him holding out a small disk for her use. She placed it against her temple, flashed up her brainware’s ID program, and had it reel off her personal specs into the small receiver. False specs, of course; in her months on the metroliner she had altered all of her ID programming, as per dreamscape instructions. Thank God for her tutor’s foresight.

  Apparently the subterfuge passed muster, for he nodded at last, took back the receiver, and gestured for her to move forward into the bay. He even managed to smile at her as she passed by, though clearly the day had tired him. “Hauck 9200, huh? That’s a nice piece of circuitry to have.” She smiled weakly back, but didn’t answer. How could she? God alone knew what was really in her head. Considering that her brainware had to respond to as many as a dozen individuals at one time, each with his or her own agenda, it was amazing there was still any room for gray matter in there.

  She passed through multiple checkpoints and had no problem at any of them. She even began to relax a bit, though several of the Others warned against it. God, if she could only shut them all up for just an hour, one precious hour of peace....

  And then she was ushered into a small room with two people in it. One was a woman, whose right arm and right leg seemed strangely twisted. One was a man.

  Gueran.

  It was amazing how powerful he seemed. In truth he was neither tall nor strongly built, nor possessed of any other attribute the mind might associate with power. His body was so swathed in loose black robes it was hard to get any physical sense of him at all. But even as she felt her breath catch in her throat, she knew where the feeling came from. He was powerful: not in presence, but in truth. His word could give her freedom, or bar her from the ainniq. His race could bring planets into the fellowship of human nations, or cut them off from it forever. And his face ... she knew even as she looked at him that the fine black lines which seemed almost barbaric in origin—like the tattoos of Earth-primitives before the first age of space had begun—were in fact a language as rich as any spoken. A form of communication which (it was said) rivaled the telepathic in its ability to communicate fine gradations of mood and intention.

  She felt suddenly lost, not knowing how to speak to him.

  He was silent for a few seconds—she could almost see the fine transmissions linking him to the ship’s computer, a spider’s web of data—and then said, “Jamisia Capra.”

  She nodded. So far so good. They might suspect who she really was ... but they didn’t know.

  “Medical records ...” Again a pause. She hadn’t boarded with the others, so she didn’t have quite the exhaustive dossier the other passengers did; nevertheless, they had tested her pretty thoroughly before accepting her for passage. There were several dozen medical conditions, she knew, which would not be permitted into Guild-controlled space. The Guerans claimed it was because they were highly contagious, and could devastate populations that had lost their natural immunity. Detractors claimed that the Guild culled out genotypes it didn’t like as well, sorting among the physical and mental types of old Earth for the ones it preferred, discarding the rest.

  She held her breath, waiting for his verdict.

  “Clean,” he said at last. He held out a small instrument toward her; she recognized a DNA curette. “For confirmation only, Ms. Capra.”

  She held out her arm and let him touch it briefly with the instrument, garnering cells for examination. The curette hummed briefly, then buzzed. Whatever the sound meant, it seemed to satisfy him.

  “Very well.” The Guildsman stepped aside, signaling a far door to open. “Everything’s in order, Ms. Capra. Please proceed.”

  She hesitated, then moved forward. Her path to the door brought her close to the room’s other occupant; the woman gazed at her from a strangely twisted face as she walked cautiously past her, but she said nothing.

  And then she was past the door and entering the docking bay proper. There were Guerans loading luggage into a mid-sized transport, with twenty to thirty passengers already inside. She accepted a hand up the entrance ramp and found a seat by one of the curved, clear windows. In the distance stars were gleaming, and there between them ... was that it, that flicker of radiance? Was that the ainniq, signpost of her freedom?

  We made it! one of the Others exulted. It didn’t even matter who; for once, it seemed, they were all in agreement.

  Jamisia leaned against the wall of the transport, exhausted by the tension “of the last few days. But it was over now, at least for a while. Soon she would be in Guild space, protected by galactic law from the greed and the politics of corporate Earth. And then, for a time, she would be safe. The Guild had no interest in her. Shido’s enemies couldn’t reach her. Not until an outship brought her to the first access station would her enemies have a chance to get to her again ... and by then she would think of some way to evade them. Somehow.

  Yes, she agreed. We made it.

  Fingering her icon necklace, she gazed out at the starscape, searching for the ainniq.

  “Well?” the Guildsman asked.

  The Yin thought long and hard and then chose her words carefully. “She has secrets, that one.”

  “Many have secrets.”

  “She is pursued.”

  “We know that.”

  “She knows it, too.”

  The Guildsman shrugged; the motion was anything but casual. “And?”

  The Yin paused, considering. “I don’t think she herself understands why they’re after her. If so ...”

  “Then we would gain nothing from questioning her at this point.”

  “Exactly.”

  The Guildsman drew out an item from the pocket of his robe. Hardcopy of an Earth transmission, folded in thirds. He unfolded it. Opened it. Read.

  We have reason to believe there may be a fugitive hiding among your passengers ...

  “Let’s see where she goes,” he said at last. “Let’s see who comes after her.” He refolded the letter and tucked it away inside his robe once more. “Let’s see if her knowledge increases.”

  “You’ll warn the outship?”

  He shut his eyes for barely an instant, flashing the icons that would link him to that ship. Thoughts became binary code became a signal beam ... several seconds to span the space between where his signal began and where it would be answered. Several seconds more for the answer to get to him.

  “It’s done,” he said. And he took up his place before the inner door once more. “They’ll take care of it.”

  The door whisked open. A young man was waiting, baggage in hand.

  Next....

  ASSIVAK

  T
he assivak does not speak, or cry out, or leap upon its enemies. Its customary appearance is as one dead, for it is motionless, reserving strength. If one looks closely one might see the flicker of an eye or the twitch of a sensory hair, but even those things are rare.

  It does not have to move, or scream, or rush about in any way. It is an architect, who builds what it must build and then waits for that structure to serve its purpose. It does not pursue food, for food comes right to it. It does not hunt, but receives. Its pattern is ordered, so finely designed that one who is not looking closely will never even see it ... and by then it is too late.

  No one can guess what thoughts are stirring within its brain. No excess motion betrays its purpose. It builds its traps just so, and waits. Nothing more. If the trap is right, if the prey is not alert to its existence, there is no doubt as to the outcome. No reason to waste energy.

  It rarely goes hungry.

  KAJA : An Outworlder’s Guide to the Gueran Social Contract, Volume 2: Signs of the Soul

  SERPENT’S REACH NODE SERPENT’S REACH STATION

  IN THE WEB the spider waited: centered, silent. Crystalline strands stretched out from beneath her feet to node, station, outship and beyond. A thousand strands as fine as thought, to bind the human worlds together. They shivered now and then, as one event or another altered the tenuous balance of human power, and the creature at the heart of the web shifted her attention accordingly. Slender fingers stroking the web with loving care, coaxing maximum data from each frail vibration.

  There were thick strands for each of the Guild stations, paths of shimmering data whose far ends lodged in the souls of the Guildmasters. Those were the most important strands, the armature of the entire structure. If Hsing so much as twitched in his golden palace, the spider knew it. If Ra took a lover who might prove her weakness, the news was carried along that slender thread, until it came within the spider’s reach. If Kent or Varsav so much as drew a breath that might prove relevant, by darkshift the spider was tasting his exhalation. There were other strands that led to other Guildmasters as well, twenty of her strongest lines and over two hundred of lesser strength, but those were the four that mattered right now. Those were the four whom the Prima, in her wisdom, had declared the spider’s rivals.