As their turn approached, Morgan enhanced her hearing to eavesdrop on the man being processed. Short in stature, dark haired, he looked well-fed and well-dressed, but his shoulders slumped when the hard-faced woman at the desk pushed a data stick back at him. "This is open ended. We don't accept open-ended arrivals from Solvaria."
"It's a business meeting, a negotiation. I don't know how long I'll need." The despair in his tone was obvious.
Morgan would have bet the woman rolled her eyes at this point, her voice oozing long-suffering boredom. "We don't accept open-ended arrivals. Either you book a return or you leave now."
The visitor straightened up, jutting out his chin. "Fine. I'll book a return."
The woman gestured at a guard, who escorted the fellow away, while Morgan connected her implant to the station's data network. Solvaria. A list of items appeared in her mind. First things first: where was it, and what did it look like? The graphic displayed the usual cloud-covered sphere, a typical inhabited planet with a mass a little less than standard. Solvaria had been settled since before the Cyber Wars. Now, the weather patterns were changing. Storms had become more frequent and more severe, water levels were rising, and people were trying to leave. She flicked past rising unemployment rates, food shortages and riots, and looked for references to Solvaria in the local press. It seemed Solvarian arrivals were not popular.
"They're blocking arrivals from a planet called Solvaria," she told Prasad and Ravindra in Manesai. "It's in the nearest system to this one. Ocean levels are beginning to rise, society's collapsing, and people want to get out."
"I guess they would," Prasad said.
"Well, it seems they're not welcome. You should see all the comments panning these people because they don't use much tech. Ignorant, back-world, no-good, loafers. And they're the polite ones." Morgan jerked her eyebrows. "The news is full of reports of illegal immigration. I'll bet that's what that tramp freighter was about."
"Makes sense. It explains why they stopped us, too," Ravindra said.
"Next." The hard-faced woman gazed at them, one eyebrow arched, 'don't keep me waiting' etched onto her features.
As they stepped up to the desk, Morgan sensed the scanner check her implant, and wished once again that she could have pretended to be somebody else. But this was easier until she'd had a chance to hack their systems. Ravindra and Prasad handed over the ID sticks she'd created for them. Calm. She had to stay calm. This woman would have been trained to notice nervousness. She wouldn't get any from Prasad and Ravindra. The two of them might have been ordering drinks from a bar, not trying to slip past a planet's border control.
"You seem very busy," Prasad said, smiling at her.
The woman grunted, examining the data on the sticks. "A lot less busy than it has been." She locked gazes with Morgan, her blue eyes narrowed. "I see you were questioned about docking fees?"
Morgan pressed down the bubbling irritation. She hated officious little, jumped-up, petty bureaucrats. "I'll do the transfer as soon as we're through. I notice you have a line of booths over there."
"Humph." The woman looked away. Morgan was almost ashamed of her delight at the small triumph. The official couldn't hold her gaze, even with the contacts in place.
"Well, you've been warned about not making the payment." Smirking, the clerk thrust the IDs back at the two men and opened the exit gate. "Enjoy your stay."
Oh, that would go down well with Ravindra. The furrow between those black eyebrows attested to his reaction. "So far so good," Morgan said, lightly holding his arm. "Give me your ID stick. I'll go and organize the transfer."
Clutching Ravindra's ID stick, Morgan eased into the chair in the middle booth. A multi-dim transfer would cost a normal person, but not her. Using the data ports in her artificial eyes, she connected to the booth's input port and waited, watching the data packets fly between the logic gates like orchestrated lightning bolts. The booths were busy; two contained people transacting business, but not something she could use. Morgan wiled away the minutes, looking up a dress catalog with the human part of her mind, until someone entered the booth next to hers. She intercepted the data transmission, with its attendant security codes. Good enough to get her through to the multi-dim transmitter.
Once before she had done a job for Makasa which required her to use a false identity. She'd stored the data on her implant for 'just in case'. 'Just in case' had arrived. She sent off a batch of transactions: create a new account in the name of Marion Sefton, remove the alert from her account, transfer funds to the new account, replace the alert. Her account had held a sizable amount of credit before she disappeared and it would have attracted interest. Even so, she left the balance in credit, toying briefly with the notion of diverting funds from somewhere else to top up the amount. No. That would be stealing. She wouldn't stoop to that, yet. They had assets they could sell, and her funds would take them a long way. Next, she created an account for Ravindra. When they sold their assets, the funds would go to him.
The responses came through for each transaction, then she lodged the docking fees with the station authorities. And now it was time for Morgan Selwood to disappear. Using her Supertech skills, she changed the name and history on her ordinary human implant to Marion Sefton.
Sucking in a huge breath, she rose casually to her feet and walked out of the booth. Once they left this port, she'd change the ship's name from Curlew to Ravindra's chosen name — Vulsaur, the flying beast tattooed on his shoulder.
Ravindra and Prasad had strolled on, looking in the windows in the station shops. She caught up with them outside a souvenir shop, where they were picking through the guide books.
Ravindra looked up from the viewer and smiled as he took the ID back from her outstretched hand. "What now?"
"Now we go and sell some jewelry." Iniciaran credits would be accepted on any Coalition planet.
"This way to the transfer shuttle." Prasad nodded his head at the overhead sign.
A short walk brought them to a station, where they waited, with five other people, for the service to arrive. The doors hissed open as the automated voice announced the stop. The carriage wasn't crowded, but none of them bothered to sit, hanging on to the side rails instead. The two men gazed around them, interested in everything, their eyes moving to the people, then the advertizing strips. Neither of them would have missed a thing. One young man smirked and had a quiet conversation with his companion, his eyes on the back of Ravindra's head. Morgan eavesdropped.
"Look at that. He's got a ponytail. What a ponce."
"Yeah, so has the other one. Wonder if they're a coupla naffs?"
Naffs. That was a new one. She found a definition in a language database, and choked down the laugh. She remembered trying to explain homosexuals to Ravindra. The idea of him and Prasad… Words failed her. She chuckled.
Ravindra raised his eyebrows at her.
"Nothing. Really." She rubbed a hand over her mouth to hide the smile.
The transit carriage slowed to a halt. A slightly tinny, mechanical voice announced, "This is the shuttle service. Passengers requiring transport to Neo Space Port should make their way to the departure gate immediately."
A chrono on the wall displayed a departure time: ten minutes. Morgan showed Ravindra how to use the data stick to buy tickets at a machine, then they joined the queue shuffling onto the waiting transport. Ravindra and Prasad slid into a window seat each, and Morgan settled next to Ravindra.
***
Ravindra didn't know where to look. They were all so different. The woman passing down the aisle had pale skin and straw-colored hair. And the fellow behind her had reddish hair and a face full of… what? It wouldn't be disease, would it? Ravindra placed a hand on Morgan's where it lay on the armrest. "The man passing now. Is he ill?"
She glanced around to look, then turned back to him, her lips twitching as she hid the grin. "They're freckles. You often see that with people with red hair. He's fine."
"I can't get ove
r it. So many different colors, and even a few that look like us," he said as more people passed.
She grinned. "What did you expect? You saw the images from Curlew."
True, he had. But images weren't the same as the real thing. "I suppose I hadn't expected so much diversity."
"On some planets there's not a lot. I suppose it depends on their racial origins and how much they mix with people with different characteristics."
Most of the seats in the craft were filled. The doors closed, the harnesses came out of the seat back and locked over his shoulders. The ship jolted as it released from the station, then slid out of its holding bay into space. He loved space, the star-speckled, velvet blackness scattered with occasional jewels like this planet. Their destination, Neo, Iniciara's capital city, was situated on a peninsula jutting into the smallest of the planet's oceans. The descent slowed as the ship skimmed the atmosphere, sliding smoothly into the gravity well, where it deployed its wings. The aircraft banked, circling around for its landing approach, flying around the tops of buildings that towered high into the atmosphere, surrounded by a sea of swirling cloud.
What would it have been like three thousand years ago, before the Cyber Wars? Artemis, the massive spaceship controlled by one of the fabled artificial intelligences, had been built here. The footage of events Artemis's AI had shown him and Morgan had been sketchy. By that time Artemis the ship was up here in space, further out even, beyond the planet's nearest moon. Her creator, a man she'd called Doctor Rosmenyo, told the AI to leave as a mob attacked his laboratory. The building would be gone, of course. Mobs became a single, wild animal intent on destruction. What they didn't destroy couldn't have lasted three thousand years.
The shuttle swept lower, shuddering with the dull rumble of the reverse thrusters. Ravindra glanced at Morgan. She seemed tense, but then he probably was, too. Outside the cloud thickened, the outlines of buildings becoming increasingly ghostly in the haze. One more burst of power, and then the ship settled onto its landing pads. They waited in their seats while most of the other passengers struggled to stand, wedged in the narrow aisles with bags and jackets. At last, Morgan slipped out behind Prasad, and he followed, out of the aircraft and into an arrivals hall.
The tension in the place was palpable, a cloying, invisible blanket. People spoke in subdued voices, few laughed or even smiled. Armed guards cradling weapons stood near the exits, loitered around the walls, watched the stream of people heading for baggage collection or the exits. This was not a happy planet.
Morgan hesitated, craning her head.
"That way," Prasad said. "We want the western suburbs for the jewelry sector."
She grinned at him. "You've done your homework."
Prasad was already walking toward one of the doors. "Of course. It's my job."
Ravindra wrinkled his nose. The closer they were to the external doors, the more the air stank, an olfactory kaleidoscope of rot, mold, body odor and who knew what else? Prasad clearly thought so, too, his nostrils were twitching. Each time the doors slid open, another waft of the outside blasted in. Even Morgan had curled a lip. Never mind. They wouldn't be on this world long. At least, Ravindra hoped not.
Outside, the people dispersed, catching transport or walking off along grimy pavements to merge with the throng. Ravindra gazed through the murk at rows of rectangular buildings rising along both sides of the streets. He couldn't see far. A block away, the buildings faded into shadowy shapes in the smog. Somebody jostled him and muttered what he assumed was an obscenity. The fellow disappeared into the crowd.
Morgan pulled Ravindra toward a line of vehicles standing along the curb.
"These are autocabs," she said. "You get them in most Coalition cities. They're not cheap, but I don't want to wade through this dump."
She pushed Ravindra's ID stick into a unit in the door, causing the top to slide back. When they were seated, Morgan asked Prasad to set the destination on the vehicle's city display. As soon as he'd touched the screen and confirmed, the top slid back into place. Ravindra took a lungful of clean, recycled air as the machine drove into the sparse traffic before rising above the pavement.
"Is it always like this?" Prasad asked, his gaze on the grimy facades.
"I haven't been here before, and I'll tell you for free I won't be coming again if I can help it," Morgan said. "This city is a basket case. I'd make a pretty good guess their effluent disposal units aren't coping."
Prasad cocked an eyebrow. "Neither are their pavements."
The autocab landed in a road as canyon-like and filthy as where they'd come from, and it took off again when they had alighted in front of a windowless office building, identical to those on the rest of the street.
Prasad checked his sanvad. "This is the right address. This Forbes character has good reviews. Let's see how we go." He pressed a button next to the closed door.
"Can I help you?" a voice said.
"Forbes Jewelers?"
The door slid aside.
The interior of the building turned out to be much cleaner than the outside. A guard sitting behind a desk rose to his feet when they entered, his hand hovering over the butt of the weapon at his hip.
Eyes narrowing, he ran his gaze over them. "Do you have any weapons?"
"No."
He did something with his hands behind the desk and jerked his head to the left. "Through there."
Ravindra strode through the open door into a spacious, carpeted office. A short, wiry woman with a young body and old, shrewd eyes stood behind a desk that took up half the space.
She smiled, showing gleaming white teeth, while she evaluated them. "I'm Forbes. What can I do for you?"
Prasad pulled a sack from his jacket, and poured three uncut gems onto his palm, jiggling them to make sure the light caught the fire in their hearts. "We have gems for sale. Would you care to offer us a price?"
The woman was good at hiding her emotions, but Ravindra had noted the dilation of her pupils. She was impressed, and so she should be. An expert had chosen the best quality gems for this trip.
"Come and sit down." Forbes waved a hand at visitors' chairs in front of her desk and sat down, elbows on the table, fingers interlaced. Her mass of curly, blonde hair hung around her shoulders, framing a face which had once been beautiful, and now looked well-tended.
Prasad put the gems on the desk.
The jeweler gazed at the stones for a long moment, then glanced up. "Why do you need to sell these?"
"We don't need to sell these," Prasad said. "But we see some advantages in obtaining further reserves of your currency."
"Let me see."
Forbes examined each with a jeweler's eye piece, then took a device out of a desk draw. She placed each gem, one at a time, on a tray, and read off the results. "Yes, they're good." She named a price.
Prasad's eyebrows shot up. "You're joking, aren't you? I checked the market prices on the exchange for gems of this quality. That's half what they're worth."
The jeweler waved a hand. "I'd be taking a risk. You're Solvarian, aren't you?"
"No, madam," Ravindra said. "We're from Coromandel."
"Oh." Frowning she gazed down at the gems again. "Even so…"
For the first time, Morgan moved, leaning forward, her hands on her knees. "Why do you think we're Solvarian?"
"Not you," Forbes waved a hand in dismissal. "But you two gentlemen don't have an implant. Neither do the Solvarians. And your clothes…" She waved her hand again. "You look foreign."
"What if we were Solvarian?" Morgan demanded.
"Well… it becomes difficult. Not the gems, you understand. You. I expect you'd be illegal immigrants, yes? Oh, don't misconstrue. I appreciate your circumstances. I'd be doing what I could to get off that planet, too. Especially if you can afford it, which you clearly can." Forbes glanced between them, assessing, waiting.
"Like he said, we're from Coromandel," Morgan said.
"Can you prove it?" Forbes's gaze rested on Ravin
dra, a hint of a smile tugging at her cheek. "Because I might be able to assist you." Her voice trailed off, hinting at a question. Ravindra filled in the end of the sentence; 'might be able to assist you if you are Solvarian'.
Morgan snorted. "Oh, for fuck's sake. We don't need any other services you might be offering." She started to stand.
Ravindra pulled her back down, despite the glower. Ah, my love, you'll never make a negotiator. "What does she need as proof?" he asked Morgan in Manesai.
"Let her check your ID stick," Morgan said. "She can only see the public data."
"Check for yourself," Ravindra said, handing over the stick.
Forbes ran a scanner over the device. Ravindra thought she seemed disappointed. Perhaps aiding illegal immigrants was a lucrative side activity. "Would you like to reconsider your offer for the gems, madam? We can take our business elsewhere."
In the end they accepted a little less than the market price, paid electronically into Ravindra's account. Morgan gave him a tiny half-wink, the agreed signal that the transaction had been made.
"Do you have any plans for the remainder of your time here?" Forbes fluttered her eyelashes.
Ravindra could swear she was flirting. If she was, she was wasting her time.
"I'm interested in relics from the Cyber Wars," Prasad interjected. "Is there anywhere in the city with a collection? Artifacts? Books?"
Forbes pursed her lips. "There's not much. If my memory serves me from my school days, very little survived the Conflagration. But there is a museum at the university. I think it's open to the public." She checked on her screen. "Yes, it is. Free admission, too. I'd take a cab if I were you. You'll have to pass through an unsavory part of town."
Ravindra stood. "Thank you, madam. We'll take your advice."
She beamed. Was that a wink? "My pleasure. Do come again if there's anything else I can help you with." Forbes twirled her fingers through a lock of blonde hair trailing on her shoulder.
Ravindra almost shuddered. Even if Morgan hadn't been with him, Forbes would not be a temptation.
Morgan's Return Page 2
