by Ginn Hale
The long pause rolled across Lake’s skin like a heavy sigh.
Why don’t you come by my place this evening, say 19:00? We can talk then.
Lake didn’t want to interrupt Aguilar if he was in the middle of questioning someone, so he tapped out a quick simple response and sent it to Aguilar’s message queue.
19:00. OK. Gotta catch a D-lift up to the Drift.
• • •
Soothing music and a lull of pleasant conversation piped through the sound system of the tightly packed D-lift. Cool air, scented like Lake imagined flowers were never supposed to smell, drifted over him. Soft-voiced attendants moved between each individual securing station, reminding commuters to close down their comms and relax when they felt the gravity shift. The breathy young woman addressing Lake spent a moment checking his biometric readouts before asking if he traveled to the Drift regularly.
“Not more than I have to,” Lake replied. He’d managed several trips before his most recent jaunt after Holly Ryan. But it was always his first time up into the heights, nine years ago that stayed with him. Then all that had existed of the spacious green habitats had been the exposed supports and the wild bursts of energy that crackled like lightning. Eventually all of that became the mass-relay lines that fed the gravitational locus of the Drift. Lake had gone up with Aguilar to retrieve the corpse of a suicide. By the time they’d crawled up in their pressure suits, the floating, frozen body had caught on a mass-relay line and fused into the golden foundations of the Drift’s architecture.
That one image remained in Lake’s mind; the shining foundation of a new world engulfing a fragile human mass, transforming flesh into unassailable, uncaring machinery.
“Well, you probably remember this from last time—” the attendant spoke as if she were soothing a senile AI through its final shutdown, “—but I’m required to remind you that the shift in gravity orientation will cause extreme distortions in any nonvisual sensory systems adapted to the Maze and Arc. D-lift policy requires that I verify that you are using a secondary sensory system to navigate the Drift.”
Lake tugged his right earlobe, and the attendant’s florescent white teeth dazzled out at him from a smile as sharp and professional as a chef’s knife. She keyed a code into the overhead control. The padded walls of Lake’s securing station closed in around him, swelling up like warm wet sponges. They supported his body, holding him tight and upright.
“Thank you so much for choosing to travel by D-lift, valued citizen,” the willowy attendant told him. As she turned away to the next station, she added, “Do enjoy a safe and pleasant journey.”
Beyond her, half a dozen other slim, pretty attendants in a variety of genders repeated much the same lines to a sea of bored commuters. Most of the passengers struck Lake as shift labor bound for less than glamorous service work in maintenance corridors, substructural shafts, and kitchens. Though here and there he picked out the smug expressions and costly clothes that indicated denizens of the Drift returning to their homes after business meetings or illicit rendezvous. One blond head bowed at a particularly furtive angle, and Lake pretended not to notice the young detective who had plainly trailed him from the police station.
A group of tall, dark-haired children, wearing expensive woven school uniforms, tromped to their stations. They laughed and teased each other for stinking of the sweet-fried crickets that were a staple of Arc meals. Up in the Drift, they possessed space enough to cultivate gardens and indulged themselves in the belief that their protein cakes weren’t stewed from the same insect slurry as everyone else’s.
A rumor even persisted that a few very wealthy individuals maintained private water systems and dined on real fish. True or not, images of sea life abounded in the Drift and even here on the D-lift.
All across the massive walls a happy cartoon squid, the supposed mascot of Sisu Station, floated and waved at passengers. Several of the children wore charms or carried bags decorated with the design. Lake frowned as the thing blinked to life near his face.
The flaring mantle at the top of the squid represented the fused dome of captive asteroids that made up the Maze, while the head—complete with large round eyes and a smug little mouth—stood in for the Arc. Last, the beautifully decorative tentacles captured the Drift’s long sprawl of the twelve modern, ribbonlike habitats. They clutched the perfect sphere of the new mass generator, which provided a separate, much more stable gravitational field for denizens of the Drift.
Watching the cheery little creature wiggle and flash across the wall made Lake’s head ache. He closed his eyes.
Moments later the D-lift accelerated upward. The grasp of the Maze’s gravity pulled at him, and then suddenly he seemed to break free. For a brief moment Lake felt as if he was floating, weightless. His stomach did a little flip as the D-lift accelerated upward into the gentle pull of the Drift’s gravity. He experienced the physical sensation of descending slowly, but he knew that the D-lift continued to rise, being steadily pulled into the gravity of the Drift.
Lake’s Maze-adapted awareness of gravity fields jolted and kicked at the reversed fields emanating from the Drift. He fought against the nauseating sensation of all the surrounding masses rolling upside down.
The inside of Lake’s head felt like someone was vomiting in his skull. His stomach heaved and his body tensed, instinctively attempting to turn the right way around.
He opened his eyes and concentrated on the sharp gray images that his optics fed him. Upright. Everyone on their feet. Gleeful squids danced across the walls, leering at him. Lake scowled at the cartoon—vicious little cannibals, that’s what squid really were. Hating the mascot helped him focus his thoughts away from his vertigo.
The D-lift stilled and the squids waved their tentacles in welcome.
The securing station walls sighed as they deflated and shrank back. The sharp sting of salt-scent pumped into the air. People around Lake straightened their clothes and gathered their belongings from storage. Then they filed out through the open doors as if merely exiting an elevator.
Lake followed, feeling dazed but fighting not to give it away. Above him shoals of silver fish swam across the brilliant sunset that blazed from the sky screens. At his feet the flooring illuminated his footsteps in luminous ripples as if he were wading through shallow pools. Blocks of towering buildings walled the long concourse—most of them displaying wide circular doorways and sweeping, decoratively tiled roofs. Motifs of kelp, seashells and coral abounded. Shopping plazas and the giant depth screens that served as parks bore names like Atlantis and Mazu’s Garden.
The sounds of a distant rainstorm played as vents released cool, damp air. A fine mist of perfumed rain showered down.
Lake ignored the sleek transit vehicles and walked. He didn’t intend to make things too easy for the detective following him.
After five kilometers, Lake cut through a narrow service tunnel and emerged in a circular courtyard where the hazy rain dribbled off tiled rooftops in a stream and lent an almost natural air to the mounds of synthetic moss that covered the ground and draped down the eves of the building ahead of him.
In complete disregard of the design standards imposed across most of the Drift, here a curtain of tiny plastic cages hung from the window awnings, each displaying a different depth-pic of glossy rhinoceros beetles engaged in combat. Two bored-looking old women stood outside the arched doors, sharing a vapor pipe. Their amiable gossip barely carried over the shouts and cheers of the hundreds of patrons on the other side of the thick walls.
The women nodded to Lake. They knew he wasn’t with the police anymore, and he hadn’t given them trouble even when he had worked for the pigs.
“I’ve got a fair-haired tail dragging at my ass,” Lake informed the women. “One of Chief Cullen’s.”
“Thanks for the heads-up,” the taller of the two women replied. Her companion switched off the vapor pipe and hid it in the deep folds of her sleeve.
“Put a little money on Chul in th
e next round,” the taller woman whispered to him. “You’ll see a profit.”
Lake tipped his hat to them both and went in.
Inside, tiny fairy-lights fought to illuminate deep shadows. The steamy scents of tea, cricket broth and human bodies filled the air as thickly as the heat and noise. A horde of people—young and old, sober and staggering drunk, but all dressed with more flash and flare than Lake—crowded around the small raised stage at the center of the circular room. They shouted and howled, waved their hands and clutched their betting forms as two fist-sized, horned beetles wrestled atop a carved branch on the stage.
Magnified images of the beetles butting and shoving each other filled the depth screen floating over them all. Extravagantly coifed patrons seated at the booths and tables that encircled the scene glanced up from their tea and noodles, some with looks of amusement and others with the intense expressions of anxious coaches. Table servers and bookies wove their ways through the crowd.
Lake placed his bet on Chul for the next fight and ordered a shot of Nam Yune’s 90-proof ginger medicine to settle his stomach. Then he wandered back to the booth near the giant swinging doors of the bustling kitchen. He removed his hat and waited until the Beetle Queen invited him to sit.
Dark, wrinkled, and round as a teakettle, Nam Yune stood a little over a meter tall. She’d lost her hair long before Lake first set eyes on her twenty years ago. Then, she’d worked as a contractor for the Federal forces, recruiting and managing spies from among the Maze-born. Lake had worked his ass off for her throughout the war. When it ended, she’d smuggled him up to the Arc in a shipping crate of waste-compost. Not the sweetest ride, but it had saved him from the reprisal-murders that had followed the declaration of peace. Maze denizens hadn’t enjoyed the Loviatars’ brutality, but they didn’t tolerate traitors either.
Now, Nam Yune bowed her gleaming head over the plump white body of a beetle grub. She smiled at it and carefully tucked it into a terrarium of warm compost. The next generation of her fighters. Then she looked up at Lake and offered him the same broad wrinkled smile.
“Sit down, sweetheart. It hurts my feet to see you standing there looking so worn out.” Nam’s voice was rich and smooth and hinted at the singing career she’d left behind more than a half-century earlier. She beckoned him to the seat across from her, and Lake settled into the plush, leatherlike padding.
“Here about the dead girl?” Nam gestured to a passing server without looking away from Lake. “Holly Ryan.”
“Her and two boys from the Maze. Leaf Koivu and Clay Torni.” Lake caught himself sitting up straight like he was still a nine-year-old boy reporting the locations of weapons stashes to her. He slouched purposely and watched her large dark eyes. “According to records, they rented rooms from you upstairs.”
“I figured somebody would come nosing around after them sooner or later.” Nam nodded. She seemed at ease and maybe a little amused by his suspicious glance. “I expected police.”
“Yeah?” Lake closed his eyes for a moment and regretted it as the whole room seemed to lurch from under him. His hands dug into the padding of the bench. How had two Maze-born kids managed to live up here?
“It gets better after a couple of days,” Nam told him.
When he’d been a boy he’d half-thought she could read his mind when she answered questions he hadn’t asked aloud. Now he suspected that his discomfort was obvious to anyone who cared to notice. Nam always noticed.
“Leaf and Clay adjusted after a day,” Nam said as she closed the terrarium lid and set the humidity gauges. Then she lifted her gaze to Lake again. “But those two had work done. Mass-buffering implants and full-color optics.”
“That couldn’t have come cheap,” Lake commented. Full-color optics alone would have put him back two years’ pay. The buffer he couldn’t imagine springing for.
“They were working it off—not for me,” Nam added as Lake opened his mouth to ask. “I got out of that business when I came up here.”
Lake didn’t comment and Nam too fell silent as the server returned with tea, Lake’s medicinal ginger and a bowl brimming with oily black noodles and spicy ants. Lake tossed back the searing shot of alcohol. It burned down his throat and spread heat through his stomach. Nam poured tea for them both and pushed the bowl of noodles to Lake. He’d missed breakfast and lunch. He didn’t protest her presumption.
“How’d they come to rent from you?” Lake asked.
“Just because they aren’t working for me doesn’t mean I’ll rat them out,” Nam replied. “Tell me why you’re asking and I’ll think about it.”
“I’m asking because they broke into my office and came gunning for me.” Lake’s attention remained on Nam, observing her for any hint of guilt. Instead he caught just an instant of surprise and then concern not for herself but for him.
“You’re all right?” Nam’s gaze flicked over him quickly, and she frowned at his stiff left arm. Then she added, in a whisper, “Do you need a ride off the station? I can get you out past security and customs—”
“No, I’m a little scratched and bruised but still on the right side of the law,” Lake assured her. He didn’t want to admit it, but her care brought some stunted, childish part of him a feeling of pleasure.
“And the two boys?” Nam sipped her tea.
“Both dead. The bigger one, Leaf, I shot in my office. But his partner, Clay, ran. Someone else jumped him and put him down with a bolt gun.” Lake studied the slick black noodles coiled in the bowl in front of him, then gulped back a slug of smoky tea. “You can see why I want to know who had them on retainer.”
Nam nodded but her expression only grew more troubled. Absently she curled her free hand around the beetle terrarium as if comforting it. She took another sip of tea.
“Their rent credits came through security accounts.” Nam spoke quietly despite the shouts and hoots that filled the air around them. “I figured them for informants. Maybe police snouts being groomed to go back into the Maze to dig something up to finally pin on Forest Joki. But I couldn’t say for certain who was handling them.”
Lake scowled. Security & Intelligence wasn’t an agency he wanted to tangle with. Its divisions oversaw everything from local policing to interstellar espionage. Lake’s arm ached, and his gut felt twisted and angry. He shoveled in a couple of mouthfuls of slick, hot noodles just to give his stomach something else to gripe about.
Up on the stage, one of the beetles at last clamped the other in a sure grip with its oversized mandibles and hefted its opponent into the air and tossed it aside. The defeated beetle toppled gracelessly from the carved branch. A wild roar tore through the room.
A downcast trainer took the stage to collect her defeated beetle, while the winning insect received a light misting and a whiff of pheromones and retained his place atop the branch. Bookies and servers raced through the crowd, distributing winnings, taking new bets and drink orders. The blond detective who’d followed Lake from the Arc station made an attempt at moving nearer Nam Yune’s table. Two of Nam’s solid-bodied bouncers blocked him and advised him to find a seat near the front door.
A new trainer carried her beetle up onto the stage and after whispering something into the insect’s cage, deposited it on the branch.
Moments later the battle began anew, and the blond detective settled at a small table. Lake resisted the urge to grin at the young man’s lazy attempt to hide his petulant face behind his teacup.
“Did Leaf or Clay have any contact with the Ryan girl, that you know of?” Lake asked Nam.
“They did.” Nam looked thoughtful for a moment. “A month after you tracked her down, the girl approached Clay. She hired him to take her into the Maze. Leaf went along since it can get rough down there, even now. That Holly Ryan was just the type not to recognize when she ought to shut her mouth and haul her ass, you know?”
Lake nodded.
Nam continued, “I don’t know exactly what happened down there, but it didn’t go well, and
when they came back, the Ryan girl started shouting about how she wouldn’t pay Clay what she promised him.” She paused to sip her tea.
Lake considered how angry he would have been at Clay’s age if a rich Drift girl pulled something like that with him. Angry enough to kill her? He didn’t think so, more likely to rob her. Either way, he certainly wouldn’t have waited months.
“She ended up paying the full amount a couple of days later when she cooled down,” Nam went on. “I remember because she also paid off all the debts she’d racked up here. She was like that. She’d spend, spend, spend down to nothing and start shouting and throwing tantrums. Then a day later she’d waltz in and pay everything off. There was something strange in that.”
“Her parents have money. And her father seems to have indulged her.” Lake shrugged. He ate more noodles and then wiped his chin. “He didn’t shut down any of her accounts when she took off. So she should have been able to spend all she liked.”
“Yes…but there were things she said, and something about the way she acted, that made me think it wasn’t family money that she was throwing around.” Nam refilled Lake’s teacup. “I got the feeling that it was money she’d gouged out of someone, and she wanted to waste it just to rub it in their face. You know what I mean?”
“Blackmail?” Lake asked.
“Maybe,” Nam allowed but she frowned. “She didn’t strike me as the type who could make a demand or put the pressure on for credits without creating a scene. Lots of screaming with her. I would have heard something if she’d approached anyone in the Drift or the Arc.”
Lake smiled to himself. Nam might be out of the business of spying, but she would always be the type to gather information and assess the people around her. And she was dead-on about the teapot-tossing Holly Ryan—not a subtle girl.
