by Gwynn White
In the space where hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, could live stacked in the Homeland, there appeared to be no people.
As the orchard rose to greet them, Abby fixated on the myriad of lemon, lime, and grapefruit trees, each bursting with fresh fruit.
The Delta Wing silently touched down on a manicured lawn of near iridescent green grass. The cabin doors slid open. The sudden silence and intake of fresh air—more than that, the scent of fresh orchard fruit—was peculiar to Abby, the type of thing he wouldn’t have recognized without being removed from the Low of the Manhattan sector and immersed in the orchard. He glanced over at Leta and was relieved that she had the same awestruck expression.
“Well,” he said, to add some levity, “we’re here.”
“So we are,” she said, and the two disembarked.
He bent back into the craft to remove his vid card credentials from his coat. “Not as hot as I imagined,” he said across the cabin. Quietly, he added, “We have a friend.”
Beneath a lime tree at the edge of the clearing, a short, well-groomed man in a white jacket waited with a silver tray in hand. Abby and Leta came around the side of the Delta Wing to meet him. The tray held a yellow rosebud in a small glass vase, two glasses of water, and two rolled white hand towels. When the man reached them, he anxiously said, “Please enjoy some refreshing water and a moist towel.” He held the tray to their chest while submissively bowing his head.
Abby kindly said, “No, thank you.”
But the man didn’t move. He stood still, head bowed, tray lifted. Abby gave Leta an awkward look and she returned a shrug. He gestured for her to take the water and she briskly shook her head. He scowled and mouthed ‘you go.’
She winced, her hands flying up to cover her ears.
He hadn’t thought that Leta, an Umbra, may have a chin chip. He’d essentially just screamed at her. He opened his eyes wide and chin-chipped, “Sorry.” He wiped his hands with the towel, returned it to the tray, then drank from one of the glasses. Leta did the same.
This seemed to please the man. “Mister Winslow sends his apologies,” he said. “He is not yet ready to see you. Please enjoy a stroll down the stone path, go through the hedge to the rose garden, then follow the covered walkway until you pass the third fountain, a waterfall. Someone will be waiting to greet you.”
“Thank you,” Abby said. The two agents moved forward.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” the man added.
They stopped. “No, thank you,” Abby said kindly, and the two again moved toward the stone path, leaving the porter and the tray behind.
The stone path was a wide walkway that ran through the orchard toward the manor. From the symmetrical layout of the grounds, Abby judged the stone path was composed of four walkways that each ran through the orchard perpendicular to one of the inner sides of the square manor.
“You just gave me a squinty look,” he said to Leta.
“What?”
“A squinty look. I saw you in my peripheral.”
She shrugged her mouth. “I didn’t realize. I suppose I was noticing you’re tall.”
“You’re noticing I’m tall?”
“Well, I noticed you were tall when I met you. I knew you would be. In that white shirt and this Arcadian light, you look taller, I guess.”
“Thank you.” He gestured his hand to her full body uniform, no longer black leather. “And you look nice.”
“Yes,” she said, hesitating. “Thanks. I prefer the black, but white is Arcadian friendly.” Leta bent her brow. “You’re scrunching your face again.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“We’re both tall, thin, and wearing white.”
“So?”
“We match.”
Leta didn’t respond. Instead, she pushed her chin up and forward, and he thought he detected a slight grin. The comment was Abby’s way of letting her know he was ready to get close, and the message obviously came through.
“These trees are quite amazing,” he said.
“Yeah.” She said dryly. “They’re what I imagine real fruit trees would look like. Dewey, fragrant, and with lots of fruit.”
“That’s because they are real.”
“Really?”
“I told you. The resonators are only in the surrounding deadlands. Everything in the estates is real. When the Arcadians first came over, they brought seeds, livestock, anything they could fit through the Bubble.”
The fragrance of the rose orchard hit them as they approached the arch of the high hedge. A collection of well-manicured rose varietals ranging in color and size was arranged around a small courtyard that buzzed with several small syn insects, moving from one dewy rose petal to the next. At the edge of the courtyard, the walkway entered into the manor’s colonnade. From there, they could see the covered columned walk continue past a series of doors and other courtyards, each part of an elaborate garden. Several meters down stood two robed women. The first of the courtyards held a large round fountain, a high ornate sculpture in the center of twisted stone. Water gushed up into four- and five-foot-high spurts then splashed down loudly into the surface of the surrounding pool.
Abby and Leta shared a glance. That much water flowing freely, like the water jetting high from the Planar Plaza, was pure muscle flexing. He gestured with his brow to just past the next hedge to the next courtyard. A pedestal fountain sputtered a small fount into what Abby recognized from the university to be a birdbath. The fountain and courtyard were both quaint in size after the first, but the grandeur wasn’t by dimension, rather by the inhabitants. Lining the high hedges of the courtyard were trumpet-shaped blooms of inky pinks, blues, and purples, and buzzing beside them were syn hummingbirds. Both Leta and Abby slowed then stopped altogether.
“Well, I’ll be,” he said slowly. He recognized what they were. He’d seen them in his mother’s paintings, but he’d never seen a real hummingbird. He realized these were syn, but hummingbirds just the same.
Leta spoke, also slowly. “They are so…” She paused.
“Amazing,” finished Abby, and they were; each a different iridescent color, one green, one ruby, and one a royal blue.
They stood there for a moment, watching the hummingbirds and the insects, listening to the gushing splashes of the huge fountain at their backs. Then, finally, Abby sighed.
“C’mon,” he said softly, but he didn’t look away.
“Yeah,” Leta said. She, too, moved forward with her gaze still fixed on the petite birds.
13
Beyond the next hedge, loud gushing dissipated to the crashing and gurgling of the third and final fountain, which was, indeed, a waterfall flowing from a rock face built into the back wall of the garden. Along with the full pour of the waterfall, Abby heard another sound. He focused his chin chip on the whimpers of a man along with something else.
Leta glanced up at him. She had heard the man too.
He focused on the gasps and what he determined were the snaps of a lash. The sound waves an equal distance, he calculated the source to be at the same point as the two women further up the walk.
Abby added weight to his step. Leta matched his pace. The palm of his blade hand itched, ready to draw.
As they closed in on the two women, Abby became certain that there was something odd with the whimpers. He slowed. The two women before them were remarkably similar, twins perhaps. They wore matching white collars, each with a polished red garnet. The man in the garden wore a similar collar on his shirt, though his stone was green. Apart from the collars, they wore translucent, loosely fastened house robes and nothing else. In their hands, each held a tray; one of small folded towels, the other of small bowls filled with creams and salves. There was another crack of the lash and another gasp. Not an aspiration of pain, or at least disappointment from pain, rather an excited, anticipatory release.
The two women, definitely twins, pleasantly smiled as Abby and Leta peeked through th
e open double doors.
The room was spartan, with not much inside except two tables near the far wall and a naked man facing it, his wrists suspended by silk bindings tied taut and high to wooden poles on either side. The man’s blushed flesh wasn’t broken, but he was beaded with sweat. Closer to them, at the man’s back, was a tall brunette wearing only black thigh-high stiletto boots and a matching tight leather corset. In her hand, she held a nine-tail lash.
Abby searched for the appropriate moment to interrupt but was unsure if he wanted to. In a rhythmic, fluid motion, the dominatrix lifted then dropped the lash across the man’s back, another crack and another shudder of glee. The odd gasps hadn’t been whimpers at all.
“For the man who has everything,” Abby said.
The brunette snapped her head toward the doorway with a punishing glare, her thick, full hair flowing around her shoulders as she did. Upon seeing that Winslow’s guests had arrived, she coyly raised her hand that held the whip and extended a long finger perfectly vertical across her ruby red lips. Whether she hushed him or kissed him or both, Abby wasn’t quite sure.
“Right this way, please,” said a voice from Abby’s side. A short man had appeared from nowhere, a man identical to the one who had greeted them in the orchard, though dressed in different attire, the gem on his neck blue. The man gave them an awkwardly similar smile as the previous man then gestured toward the glass doors next to the waterfall. “You may wait in the parlor until Mister Winslow is ready to see you.”
Leta leaned into Abby and whispered, “How?”
Abby twitched his jaw to broadcast the chip embedded in the dimple of his chin then mouthed the word. “Syns.” Leta nodded. The Planar Accords bound the other planes. Syn allocation was strictly regulated. In Arcadia, a man could have anything he wanted, including mortal syns.
14
The instant they entered the parlor, Abby forgot about Winslow, strung up, playing some twisted masochistic game across the courtyard. Antiquities were Abby’s honey trap, and the parlor was peppered with them: artifacts from the last millennia, each a relic from different cultures and periods. Unable to help himself, he began to index each piece. Though he could identify every one of them by pure sight alone, a series of augments popped up above every object in the room. They were all authentic, of that he was sure, and all legitimately acquired. The mid-twentieth century ham radio receiver, an early crystal device, purchased in Paris one hundred and twenty years ago. The early Ming Dynasty rug on the wall under glass, purchased seventy-five years ago, a second century Zhuge repeating crossbow from the Three Kingdoms, multi-bolt magazine intact, record of purchase one hundred five years ago. Every object, machinery and pottery, lamps and statuettes, rugs and tapestries, the heavy tomes, each opened mid-binding to detailed handwritten and painted lambskin pages. He quickly matched them all with a sale, all over sixty years ago.
The short man said something.
“Abby,” Leta said through her chin chip.
He smiled cordially.
The short man continued, either unaware of or unaffected by Abby’s lack of attention. “If you would like to freshen up, there is an area for each of you through this corridor.” The man gestured to the first of the two archways on the sidewall.
“Thank you,” Abby said.
The attendant bowed then exited through the second archway.
Abby lifted his hand to scratch his nose and hide his mouth. During the spontaneous inventory, his ocular implants had detailed a few modern pieces of electronics hidden among the antiques, and where there were cameras, there was lip-reading tech. Silently, he said, “The lamps and the bookcase.”
Leta responded with a wink.
From a side table, she lifted a delicate porcelain figurine, a beautiful Chinese maiden adorned in a detailed red floral kimono.
Abby watched as she ran her fingertips across the surface of the statuette in the same way she had touched the grain of the sugar maple paneling. He was again taken by the way Leta appeared to breathe in the world in such a childlike manner. “You like that piece?” he asked.
“What’s not to like? Is this old?”
“Ancient Qing Dynasty, seventeenth century,” he said. “She’s a royal consort, and that instrument across her lap is a Gu-zheng, like a zither, if you know what that is.”
“My people are very musically inclined,” Leta said, her eyes not breaking from the small maiden. “What is a consort?”
“Well, a concubine. She would entertain the emperor then—”
“Entertain the emperor. I understand. Is a statue like this worth much?”
“Probably five or six times the credits you’ll make as an agent.”
“In a year?”
“In your life.”
“Oh.”
“Sorry,” he said. He walked toward the first archway. “Listen, I’m going to have a look around. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Okay,” she said.
There was a hint of disappointment in her voice. He paused and stepped back. Leta appeared to be staring at the face of the small girl. “You really like her.”
Leta’s reply was matter of fact. “She has black eyes.”
15
Abby returned to the parlor to find a woman in the adjoining courtyard, naked with the exception of a wide chrome bangle. The two female syns they’d passed on the walk were also disrobed and were sponging her down with water from a pool beneath the waterfall.
“Did you find anything?” Leta asked.
“Nothing, got caught up in an archive, that’s all.” He grabbed a small vase from the side table. “There’s a lot of old stuff in here.”
Leta smirked. “I should’ve known. Please keep yourself together.”
Abby gave Leta an embarrassed laugh and held up the vase. “Ha, yeah, sorry. You know, always an academic.”
“It’s all right. That butler came back and said Lady Darya will be with us in a moment, so…” She gestured a head tilt back toward the woman in the courtyard.
“Lady? Really?”
“Yup,” Leta said. “I guess Arcadia comes with titles.”
The woman, Darya, watched Abby and Leta through the parlor door as one young woman squeezed a soaked sponge across her breast and the other scrubbed her inner thigh. A peculiar smile crossed her face, more of pleasure than greeting, and certainly with a hint of vanity. Abby was sure that she was more than aware of the way the droplets of water, trickling down her flat belly into her groin, glistened in the tangerine Arcadian light.
The butler, or maybe another syn identical to the short man who had greeted them, approached from the side of the garden with a silver tray and a sparkling amber drink. Without taking her eyes off of Abby, she delicately clutched the glass with the ends of her long fingers and drew a long teasing sip.
“Please,” he heard Leta say into his chin bone, “too much.”
They waited patiently, politely, as the maids cleaned their lady, and for the butler to gather the discarded corset and black thigh-high boots from the lawn. When Darya had been washed, toweled and, in Abby’s assumption, was through being entertained with the exhibition, she allowed the girls to dress her in a short translucent cloth robe that draped loosely over her full breasts and revealed the length of her legs. She slipped on another set of heels then approached the parlor.
“Thank you for waiting,” she said. Her words dripped with the thick accent of the Black Sea fortress cities.
“My pleasure,” Abby said.
Darya’s immovable smile stayed pleasant as she approached Abby. He thought she was about to press herself against him, then, a breath away, she veered past him toward a gilded table he’d recognized from the era of the Sun King, Louis the XIV. She reached the long fingers of one hand up the back of her neck, raked her black hair back and away, then spun around to face them. Her dark lurid eyes bore an air of confidence that her show outside the parlor was a success.
Abby was pleased. He was a man. But it was me
rely a cheap pleasure, and neither he nor Leta were taken in by such simple manipulation. They were special agents and well-versed in power play. They had a manipulation of their own. To let Lady Darya believe she was in control. She would be more forthcoming that way.
Darya leaned back on the priceless table, lifted a glass of sparkling amber to her breast, and with the middle finger of her other hand, lightly circled the rim. She kept her teasing eyes fixed on Abby. An assessment, he thought, then she kindly said, “Welcome Commander Squire, Captain Serene. I trust you enjoyed the flight down the coast?” She spoke to both, but her dark eyes remained fixed on only one.
“The flight was fine,” Abby said, downplaying the grandeur of Arcadia.
“You didn’t like what you saw? Most men”—she paused to touch her tongue to her upper lip—“find the views in Arcadia breathtaking.”
“And so they are,” he said. “However, we aren’t here on an excursion, rather at the invitation of Mister Winslow.”
“How rude of me. I apologize. I am Darya Bedrosian, Mister Winslow’s personal physician and counselor.”
I bet you are, he thought. The muscles above his eyes wanted to lift in an exaggerated response, but due to training or age, he kept his facial expression still.
“Mister Winslow has recently finished his pain therapy,” she said with a wicked smile. “He is preparing to meet with you in the private gallery where the theft occurred.” She raised herself from the edge of the table and held the glass out to her side. The butler rushed in from the corner of the room and slid his silver tray beneath the suspended glass, bowed his head, then backed out the way he’d come in.
Darya’s eyes darted to Leta. Her brow tensed.
“Captain Serene, I apologize again,” she said. “You didn’t expect to find syns, am I correct?”
