“What channel is this?” Chaandi asked, and Jian shrugged.
“I don’t remember.”
“Try All-Hours.”
Jian nodded, recalled the screen menu with a touch of her finger, and cycled through the selection glyphs. The image shifted, became a shot of a midworld plaza—no, she realized abruptly, a Zodiac plaza, and those are emergency lights—and a crowd backing away from armored Security who were stringing barrier tape across the open space. “What the hell—?” she began, and Chaandi leaned forward, frowning.
“That’s the Middle Oasis—that’s three stops from here.”
On the electrobus line, she meant, and Jian’s attention sharpened. A newsreader’s head appeared in the corner of the screen, a plump, gold-skinned woman with a scarlet caste mark on her forehead. The diamond in her nose glittered as she looked down at the sheaf of papers in her hands.
“We interrupt our financial debate to bring you a breaking story. Cartel and FPG Security confirm that a bomb threat has been issued against a Zodiac nightclub, the Middle Oasis, and that the club has been evacuated. Security, both Cartel and FPG, is on the scene but has no further comment. All-Hours’ correspondent Tasany Almanansy is on the scene, and will be bringing more word shortly.”
Something bumped the tabletop, and Jian jumped, turned to see the service karakuri resting against the table, its hatch open to reveal the drink Chaandi had ordered. Chaandi looked at it blankly for an instant, then took the tall glass, its sides already furred with frost. The karakuri closed its hatch, backing away, and Jian turned her attention to the screen. A new woman—the correspondent, presumably—was standing by a blank-screened newskiosk, frowning into the invisible camera. Behind her, more newsdogs were clustering around a tall, thin woman with a green-and-gold transfer on her forehead, and the correspondent glanced quickly toward her before she spoke.
“Semhar, the Middle Oasis’s manager, Saadi Tobu, has agreed to speak to the media.”
“Go ahead,” the reader answered, and the image in the screen swung and steadied, framing the tall woman against the club’s dead sign. It was a perfect foil for the brilliance of her skirt and makeup, and the raven sleekness of her chin-length hair, and Chaandi made a small sound of approval.
“Very nice.”
“Earlier today,” the tall woman began, and had to stop and clear her throat. “Earlier today, I received a message claiming to be from Realpeace saying there would be trouble tonight if we went ahead with the planned show—”
“Was it traced?” a voice shouted from the pack of newsdogs, and Tobu grimaced.
“Of course it wasn’t traced, it came in through a scrambler and a no-name drop.”
“What was the show?”
“A new band, Fire/Work—”
“When was this?” someone else shouted, and Tobu fixed her stare on the speaker.
“I got the first message at fifteen hundred, and I reported it to Security. Then I got a second message an hour later, saying the same thing. I reported that, too, but Security wasn’t able to trace it.”
“And you decided to go on, despite the earlier bombing? The deaths of Micki Tantai and the rest of Hati?”
The voice was familiar, high and supercilious, and Jian saw Chaandi roll her eyes.
“I didn’t like that shit when he covered the Manfred Riots.”
“I don’t think you’re going to like him any better now,” Jian answered, and was pleased to surprise a smile from the other woman.
In the screen, Tobu lifted an eyebrow, unconsciously arrogant. “I called Security, and they advised me that they would be monitoring the situation. And there was no mention of any bomb then, just unspecific trouble. And we don’t believe in giving in to terrorists, ba’ Loma.”
“Even at the risk of lives?” Loma called, but Tobu ignored him, answering a question that hadn’t carried clearly to the pickups.
“You’ll have to ask Security for details. I understood that they would be watching the Oasis and our service conduits, but exactly what their arrangements were, I don’t know.”
“Can you tell us exactly what happened tonight?”
Tobu nodded jerkily. “We had extra security—our own house security—on the doors, but they didn’t spot anything. We had a good crowd, better than usual, but no problems with any of them. About halfway into the band’s second set, I got a flash from Security saying that they’d received a threat they were taking seriously, and that they were coming to evacuate the club. They did that, and”—she shrugged—“here we are.”
“How long did it take Security to arrive, and how long to evacuate the club?”
“I have no idea.” Tobu stopped, controlling her irritation. “They were at the club within a couple of minutes of warning me. I don’t know how long it took to clear the room, but it wasn’t very long.”
“Tell us about the band tonight. Would their presence have provoked a threat?” That was the All-Hours newsdog, and Jian nodded her approval.
“That does seem to be a big part of the question.”
“The band is called Fire/Work,” Tobu said again. “They’re—their sound is similar to Hati’s, and they’re a mixed band—”
“Well, that kind of explains it,” Jian said, and Chaandi nodded thoughtfully.
“I’ve seen them, actually. It’s not so much that they sound like Hati as that they think like them, somehow. But I bet they wanted to be Hati when they started out.”
“Bi’ Tobu,” a voice said from the screen. “Bi’ Tobu, is there any truth to the rumor that Mays Littlekin was in the Oasis tonight, and that he was the target of any bomb?”
“No comment—” Tobu began, and Chaandi gave a slow whistle.
“That would make things interesting,” Jian said.
The picture in the screen shifted suddenly, the camera moving away from Tobu to focus on the Oasis’s facade. Dark figures, Security in full armor, were moving into an access tunnel, their armor very dark against the pale poured stone of the walls. Jian frowned, and thought she saw a podpig, one of the heavily armored, ungainly robots Security used for investigating tight spaces and potential cave-ins. Before she could comment, however, the newsreader spoke again.
“We’ve interrupted the interview with Middle Oasis manager Saadi Tobu because we’re receiving reports from Security that some kind of device has been found, possibly in the service conduits. The central clearinghouses have refused comment, and of course the captain on the scene is unavailable, but our cameras are picking up a great deal of activity near one of the access hatches. Can you clarify any of that, Tasany?”
“Um, Semhar, we believe that Security has introduced a pig—” the newsdog began, and the reader interrupted her.
“Excuse me, Tasany. We’ve gotten conduit plans for that sector of the Zodiac, and you should have them on-line now.”
Tasany’s eyes dropped briefly, then rose to meet the camera. “Thank you, Semhar. As you can see in our main shot, Security has sent a pig into the access tunnels that serve this section of the Zodiac. From the maps you’ve just flipped me, these should be the power lines. Although no one will confirm it, we have heard several Security people mention a device or devices, and we suspect that they believe they have located something suspicious in the conduit that serves the Middle Oasis.”
“Shit,” Jian said, and saw her own alarm reflected in Chaandi’s face. They weren’t that far from the Middle Oasis—three electrobus stops, Chaandi had said. A well-placed bomb, and by definition a bomb in the service conduits was “well placed,” could easily do enough damage to reach this far. If it was close enough to a main link, or even just a step-down box, the bomb wouldn’t just take out the club, or the plaza, bad as that would be, but it would interrupt power flow throughout the midworld.
“Should we be getting out of here?” Chaandi said softly, and Jian looked past her to see the bar’s patrons rising from their booths, piling down the long corridor not toward the Zodiac exit but south onto Shaifen. N
ot a bad plan, she thought, and probably what I would have done, if everybody else wasn’t doing it. She closed her eyes for a minute, trying to remember the interchange pattern. Most of the interchanges, with the exception of the major stations like Dzi-Gin and Sanbonte, went down, into the midworld; if anything happened, they would be better off above the blast.
“I don’t know,” she said, and matched Chaandi’s tone. “I don’t think there’s much point.”
Chaandi shook her head, but she was smiling. “You’re always an interesting date, Reverdy.”
“Thanks,” Jian answered, sourly, and one of the shadowy figures that had been moving past their booth stopped abruptly.
“Bi’ Jian? May I join you for a moment?”
Jian looked up, started, and for an instant didn’t recognize the stocky man at the end of the table. “Ba' Garay,” she said, and knew she sounded wary. “Be my guest.”
“Thanks.”
Chaandi shifted sideways to make room, both eyebrows elevated in unspoken question, but Garay ignored her, his eyes darting from the screen, now showing a cluster of Security peering at what looked like an all-access panel, to Jian and back again.
“I’m glad I found you. I’ve been looking for you for a while.”
“I’m not usually hard to find,” Jian answered.
Garay gave a flickering smile. “Red—and his boyfriend—can be very protective.”
Jian said, “So you found me. What did you want with me, Ba’ Garay?”
“To give you a warning.”
Jian frowned at that, and Garay lifted a hand.
“That’s not a threat, truly, it’s meant for the best. I—someone broke into my workship, trashed it badly.” He took a deep breath. “I think they were looking for that construct you sold me.”
“Why would anyone do that?” Jian asked, but a familiar cold clutched her, like icy fingers on the back of her neck. She could see Chaandi watching her intently, but pushed that aside, focusing on the hard-hacker. “What’s so special about that construct?”
“You tell me.” Garay glared for a moment, but then his eyes strayed back to the screen. He was sweating, Jian saw, even though the air in the bar was pleasantly chilled. “You felt it, it was different—I don’t know why the hell you sold it, anyway, but it was something special.”
“I didn’t like it,” Jian said.
“What do you mean, different?” Chaandi said, softly, and Jian looked at her.
“It’s not like Manfred. This is nothing like.”
Chaandi made a soft sound, derision or disbelief, and Garay shook his head. “No, not like Manfred, but—it’s special, and somebody wants it, badly. They know you sold it, Jian, and I figured I owed you that much warning. Me, I’m heading for the desert, and if I were you, I’d do the same.”
“What have you done with the construct?” Jian asked, with some reluctance. Vaughn had said they should go off-world, should pull rank to get the next available job regardless of what the other pilots thought; he might be right, was looking more right all the time, but, remembering the construct, its definite presence and personality, she felt weirdly responsible for it.
“I sold it.” Garay gave another wincing smile. “I sold it to somebody who’ll never notice, who those Realpeace bastards would never think of looking at. And if I were you, I’d leave it there.”
He pushed himself to his feet, but Jian leaned across the table, caught his wrist. “Who’d you sell it to, Garay?”
“You don’t want to know,” Garay said, and jerked ineffectually at her grip. “What you don’t know—”
“Could well hurt me, if these people come looking for me like you think they will,” Jian said. “Tell me.”
“The conjurer, the one at Tin Hau. Fortune.” Garay pulled against her hand. “Let me go.”
“Thanks,” Jian said, and released him.
Chaandi looked at her, frowning. “I know the stage manager at the Tin Hau Empire—I think I’ve met Fortune, too, and I’ve certainly seen her act. What the hell is this construct, Reverdy?”
Jian took a deep breath. “I’ve been having—problems—with my Spelvin constructs ever since Manfred. They all feel, well, too real, too much like him. This one—” She shrugged, trying to shrug away the sudden certainty that it had been different even from the others. “This one felt like Manfred, too, maybe even a little bit more, so I traded it for something I thought I might like better. To that guy. Apparently he thinks it’s something unusual.”
“Apparently,” Chaandi said. “And apparently so do some other people.”
“Hard-hackers make enemies,” Jian said.
“Not like this,” Chaandi said, and Jian looked away, knowing it was true. “So what do you think, Reverdy? Is it—special?”
“I—” Jian stopped. “Chaandi, I don’t know.”
“But you thought it was.”
Jian shook her head, unable to explain the mix of feelings—the conflicting certainties, the way the construct had matched her moves just as Manfred had done, the whole feeling of its world interacting with her own, and the certain knowledge that it was not, could not be, true AI—and in the screen the picture changed, the camera focusing back on the access tunnel and the cluster of armored Security. Almanansy’s voice was suddenly high and breathless.
“Semhar, we understand that Security has found a device alongside the power cables at the club’s main transference point. They have disarmed it and are bringing it out now.”
A siren sounded, and an armored carrier backed into the scene, all but hiding the access hatch. Behind it, Jian caught a quick glimpse of Security lifting a heavy object—the pig? the device? a containment unit?—into the back of the carrier.
“Tasany,” the newsreader said. “Earlier you mentioned the possibility of there being more than one device. Has there been any clarification as to the number of devices involved?”
“I’m afraid not, Semhar,” Almanansy answered. “And to be fair we have not received official confirmation that there is any device at all.”
“Right,” Jian said, and looked at Chaandi, the image crystallizing a decision she hadn’t realized she’d made. “I need a favor.”
“Oh, no,” Chaandi said, and emphasized the words with sign. *Not this time.*
“You said you knew somebody at the Tin Hau,” Jian said, as though she hadn’t spoken. “I want to meet this conjurer, this Fortune—I owe it to her to pass on the warning.”
Chaandi relaxed slightly, hands easing from their angry readiness. “Haya. That I can maybe do. I can probably do it, in fact. I thought you were going to go rescue this construct, Reverdy.”
Jian shook her head, forcing a smile. “Not this time,” she said, and hoped it was the truth.
11
Celinde Fortune
Celeste woke me early with word of the new bomb scare, and by the time I’d pulled on trousers and a loose tunic, she had four screens open on the media wall. Three were showing older clips—including one of Fire/Work, clustered unhappily by a power node, trying to answer the newsdogs’ questions—and the fourth showed a standard pressroom, a banner scrolling across the bottom to announce that Realpeace would be issuing a statement momentarily. A small clock-icon above the banner indicated that the channel had been waiting for that statement for three minutes and seventeen seconds, and I looked at the clip of Fire/Work.
“Celeste, bring up the sound on screen one.”
There was a chirp from the ceiling speaker. “Sound on.”
“—tell us what you saw,” a newsdog was saying, and Dhao shrugged.
“Nothing, really. We were playing, we’d just started the second set—”
“Four songs in,” Timin Marleveld interjected, softly. He was ashen—they were all very pale, looked almost more shaken than I would have expected. But then, they’d been at the funeral, had been caught in the stampede that followed that bombing; if anyone had a right to be frightened, it was them.
Dhao nodded. “A
nd Security cut the power and came in and moved everybody out. Somebody said it was a bomb.”
“What kind of music do you play?” another voice asked, and Dhao and the coolie woman, Niantai Li, exchanged glances.
“We’re pretty much a fusion band—” Dhao began, and a babble of voices cut him off.
“Are you influenced by Hati?”
“Do you consider yourself to be following in their footsteps?”
“Do you think you’re the cause of this incident?”
Li took a deep breath, her expression ugly, between anger and tears, and Fanning put his arm around her shoulders. He was looking just as bad as the others, his eyes reddened, as though he’d been crying. Before either of them could speak, however, Marleveld scowled into the camera.
“Hell, yes, we’re following in Hati’s footsteps—as best we can, and we’re proud to do it. They were a good band, the best this planet’s ever produced, and they sure as hell didn’t deserve to be murdered by a bunch of crazy fanatics.”
“And at a funeral, too,” Li said.
The drummer Catayong nodded, too vigorously, setting her braids dancing, and even Dhao, who had been trying so hard to be genially reasonable, nodded with her. Fanning said, “This isn’t right. None of it, not Micki Tantai, not the funeral, not this—it’s not right.”
His voice was a little blurred, as though he hadn’t fine-tuned his ear, but clear enough, and I sighed. He was right, but that wouldn’t do him, or anybody, any good. The people who were doing this, whether they were directly under Realpeace’s control or just the crazies on the edge of every movement, weren’t going to listen to that, not from a yanqui. I looked back at the fourth screen, and saw the banner vanish as Realpeace’s three speakers filed into view.
“Celeste, kill the sound on one, and bring up the sound on four,” I said, and the speaker chirped again.
“Confirmed.”
The triumvirate were all in black today, heavy-textured fabric with a sheen like silk; only the woman wore a spot of red, a thin scarf as bright as an emergency icon wound around her neck. They took their places behind the podium without responding to the calls and questions of the newsdogs sitting out of camera range, but then the younger man lifted his hand.
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