Analog SFF, November 2005

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Fifteen hundred feet,” murmured the servant, almost inaudibly.

  Venera whirled. He was trailing a few yards behind her, his expression distracted and wondering. “What did you say?” she hissed.

  “That ship in the picture ... was fifteen hundred feet long,” he said, looking apologetic.

  “How do you know that? Tell me!"

  “By the contrails, ma'am."

  She stared at him for a few seconds. The man was either far more cunning than she'd given him credit for, or he was an idiot.

  Or, she reluctantly admitted to herself, maybe he really had no idea that she'd met with someone in the lady's room, and didn't expect a lady like herself to be carrying sensitive information. In which case the photos, to him, were just photos.

  “Show me.” She fished out the two shots of the behemoth and handed them to him.

  Now he looked doubtful. “I can't be sure."

  “Just show me how you reached that conclusion!"

  He pointed to the first picture. “You see in the near space here, there's a bike passing. That's a standard Grey 45, and it's running at optimum speed, which is a hundred twenty-five knots. See the shape of its contrail? It only gets that feathered look under optimum burn. It's passing close by the docks so you can tell...” he flipped to the second picture, “that here it's gone about six hundred feet, if that dock is the size it looks to be. The means the second picture was taken about two seconds after the first.

  “Now look at the contrails around the big ship. Lady, I can't see any bikes that aren't Grey 45s in the picture. So if we assume that the ones in the distance are Greys too, and that they're going at optimum speed, then these ones skimming the surface of the big ship have traveled a little less than half its length since the first picture. That makes it a bit over twelve hundred feet long."

  “Mother of Virga.” Venera stared at the picture, then at him. She noticed now that he was missing the tips of several fingers: frostbite, in all likelihood. And his young face was red and wind-burned, except around the eyes.

  She took back the pictures. “You're a flyer."

  “Yes, ma'am."

  “Then what are you doing working as a body servant in my household?"

  “Flying bikes is a dead-end career,” he said with a shrug.

  They resumed walking. Venera was mulling things over. As they reached the broad clattering galleries of the cable car station, she nodded sharply and said, “Don't tell anybody about these, if you value your job. They're sensitive."

  “Yes, ma'am.” He looked past her. “Uh-oh."

  Venera followed his gaze, and frowned. The long cable car gallery was full of people, all of whom were crowding in a grumbling mass under the rusty cable stays and iron-work beams of the town that formed the chamber's ceiling. Six green cable cars hung swaying and empty in the midst of the throng. “What's the hold-up?” she demanded of a nearby naval officer.

  “Cable snapped,” he said with a sigh. “Wind shear pulled the towns apart and the springs couldn't compensate."

  “Don't drown me in details. When will it be fixed?"

  “You'd have to ask the cable monkeys, and they're all out there now."

  “I have to get to the palace!"

  “I'm sure the monkeys sympathize, ma'am."

  She was about to erupt in a tirade against the man, when the servant touched her arm. “This way,” he murmured.

  With a furious hmmph, Venera followed him out of the crowd. He was heading for an innocuous side entrance. “What's down there?” she asked.

  “Bike berths,” he said as he opened the door to another windy gallery. This one was nearly empty. It curved up and out of sight, its right wall full of small offices with frosted-glass doors, its left wall opening out in a series of floor-to-ceiling arched windows. Beyond the windows was a braveway and then open turning air.

  The gallery floor was full of hatches. About half of them had bikes suspended over them. The place smelled of engine oil, a masculine smell Venera found simultaneously rank and intriguing. Men in coveralls were rebuilding a bike nearby. Its parts were laid out in a neat line across a tarpaulin, their clean order betraying the apparent chaos of the opened chassis.

  She was in a place of men; she liked that. “You have your own bike?” she asked the servant.

  “Yes. It's right over there.” He took a chit to the dock master and traded it in for a key and a worn leather jacket. They went over to the bike and he knelt to unlock the hatch beneath the gently swaying bike.

  “Let me guess,” she said. “A Grey 45?"

  He laughed. “Those are work-haulers. This is a racer. It's a Canfield Arrow, Model 14. I bought it with my first paycheck from your household."

  “There's a passenger seat,” she said, suddenly thrilled at the prospect of riding the thing.

  He squinted at her. “Have you never flown a bike, Lady?"

  “No. Does that surprise you?"

  “I guess it's always been nice covered taxis for you,” he said with a shrug. “Makes sense.” He winched open the hatch and she took an apprehensive step back. Venera had no fear of the open air; it was speed that frightened her. Right now the air below the hatch was whipping by at gale force.

  “We'll get blown off!"

  He shook his head. “The dock master's lowering a shield ahead of the hatch. It'll give us several seconds of slipstream to cruise in. Just hunker down behind me—the windscreen's big—and you'll be fine. Besides, I won't take us flat out; too dangerous inside city limits."

  He straddled the bike and held out his hand. Venera suppressed her grin until she was seated behind him. There were foot straps, but she had nothing to hold onto with her hands except him. She wrapped her arms tightly around his waist.

  He pushed the starter and she felt the engine rumble into life beneath her. Then he said, “All set?” and reached up to unclip the winch.

  They fell into the air and for a few seconds the curve of the town's undersurface formed a ceiling. There was the shield, a long tongue of metal hanging down but pulling up quickly. “Head down!” he shouted and she buried her face in his back. Then the engine was roaring to drown all thought, the vibration rattling up through her spine, and they were free in the air between the city cylinders. The wind wasn't tearing her from this man's grasp, so Venera cautiously leaned back and looked around. She gave an involuntary gasp of delight.

  Contrails like spikes and ropes stood still in the air around them. Tethers with gay flags on them slung here and there, and everywhere taxies, winged humans, and other bikes shot through the air. The quartet of towns that included the admiralty was already receding behind them; she turned to look back and saw that the cable-car system, whose independent loop touched the axle of the vast spinning cylinder, was indeed slack. Men floated in open air around the break, their tools arrayed in constellations about them as they argued over what to do. Venera turned forward again, laughing giddily at the sensation of power that pulled her up and up towards the next quartet.

  They passed heavy steel cables and then the broad cross-shaped spokes of a town's pinwheel. Up close the brightly colored sails were torn and patched. In far too little time the bike was rising under another town, the long slot of a jet entrance visible overhead. Venera's flyer expertly inched them into a perfect tangent course, and it seemed as if the town's curving underside simply reached out and settled around them. Her flyer shut down the engine and held up a hook, clipping it to an overhead cable just as they began to fall again. And there they were, hanging in a gallery almost identical to the one they just left. A palace footman ran up and began winching them away from the slot. They had arrived.

  Venera dismounted and staggered back a few steps. Her legs had turned to jelly. Her servant swung off the back of the bike as though nothing had just happened. He grinned happily at her. “It's a good beast,” he said.

  “Well.” She cast about for something to say. “I'm glad we're paying you enough that you can afford it."
/>   “Oh, I never said I could afford it."

  She frowned, and led the way out of the gallery. From here she knew the stairs and corridors to take to reach Slipstream's strategic command office. Her husband, Admiral Fanning, was tied up in meetings there, but he would see her, she knew. She thought about how much she would tell him regarding her spy network. As little as possible, she decided.

  At the entrance to the office she turned and looked frankly at the servant. “This is as far as you can go. Wait down at the docks—you can run me back home the same way you brought me."

  He looked disappointed. “Yes, ma'am."

  “Hmm. What's your name, anyway?"

  “Griffin, ma'am. Hayden Griffin."

  “All right. Remember what I said, Griffin. Don't talk about the photos to anyone.” She waggled a finger at him, but even though her head was pounding, she couldn't summon any anger at the moment. She turned and gestured for the armed palace guard to open the giant teak doors.

  As she walked away she thought of the beautiful freedom Griffin must have in those moments when he flew alone. She'd caught a glimpse of it when she rode with him. But entangled as she was in a life of obligation and conspiracy, it could never be hers.

  How miserable. How abandoned.

  Hayden watched her go in frustration. So close! He'd gotten to within a few yards of his target today. And then to be thwarted at the very entrance to the command center. He eyed the palace guard, but he knew he couldn't take the man and the guard was eyeing him back. Reluctantly, Hayden turned and headed back towards the docks.

  He'd nearly blown it picking up those pictures. Obviously he'd underestimated Lady Fanning. He wouldn't do it again. But since he had been assigned to her, he hadn't been able to get anywhere near Fanning himself. If she liked him, though ... ?

  It was only a matter of time, he decided. Admiral Fanning would come within arm's reach one day soon.

  And then Hayden would kill him.

  * * * *

  3

  A flock of fish had wandered into the airspace inside Quartet One, Cylinder Two. Disoriented by the city lights spinning around them and caught in the cyclone of air that Rush's rooftops swept up, they foundered lower and lower in a quickening spiral, until with fatal suddenness they shot between the eaves of two close-leaning, gargoyle-coigned apartments. They banged off window and ledge, flagpole and fire escape, to end flapping and dying in a narrow street along which they'd scattered like a blast of buckshot.

  Hayden ignored the cheering locals who ran out to scoop up the unexpected windfall. He paced on through the darkened alleys of Rush's night market, noticing nothing, but instinctively avoiding the grifters and thieves who also drifted through the crowds of out-country rubes. He felt slightly nauseous, and twitched at every loud laugh or thud of crate on cement.

  The market was stuffed into a warren of small streets. Hayden loved walking through the mobs; even after living here for two years, the very fact that the city comprised more than one cylinder amazed him. The rusting wheels of the city provided gravity for over thirty thousand souls. Throw in the many outlying towns and countless estates that hung in the nearby air like sprays of tossed seed, and the population must push a hundred thousand. The anonymity this afforded was a heady experience for an unhappy young man. Hayden could be with people yet aloof and he liked it this way.

  He was dead tired after another long day at the Fanning estate; but if he went back to the boarding house now, he would just pace until his downstairs neighbors complained. He would pull at his hair, and mutter to himself as if he were mad. He didn't want to do that.

  It was all stress, of course—a result of spending his days so close to his goal. He walked through the Fanning household like a dutiful servant for hours while his mind raced through scenarios: Fanning walking by distracted in a hallway; Hayden slipping into the admiralty unnoticed by the omnipresent security police ... It was all useless. He was paralyzed by indecision and he knew it. But he would be patient, and his chance would come.

  He paused to buy a sticky bun at a vendor he favored, and continued on down a twisting run sided with fading clapboard. Slipstream's sun was on its maintenance cycle, and darkness and chill had settled over the city. Here and there in the alleys, homeless people kept barrel fires going and charged a penny or two to anyone who stopped to warm their hands. Hayden sometimes stopped to talk to these men, whose faces he knew only as red sketches lit from below. They could be valuable sources of information, but he never revealed anything about himself to them, least of all his name.

  He'd driven Venera Fanning again today—unnecessarily, for she could easily have taken a cable car. He wondered at her motives in riding with him. When he'd returned to his room he'd discovered that a faint scent of her perfume still hovered on his jacket. It was alluring, as she was with her porcelain complexion—marred only by the scar on her chin—and her hair the color of Winter skies. Attractive she might be, but she was also without doubt the most callous human being he'd ever met. And she traded on her beauty.

  Considering his lonely existence and his reasons for being here, it was painfully ironic to think that she was the first woman he'd given a ride to since arriving in Rush.

  Halfway down the alley was a cul de sac. A knife seller had set up his table across its entrance, and had mounted targets on the blank wall at the dead end. Hayden stopped to balance a sleek dart knife on his finger. He held it out facing away from him, then at right angles to that.

  “It's good in all the directions of gravity,” said the vendor, who in this light was visible only as a black cut-out shape with a swath of distant lamp-light revealing his beige shirt collar. The black silhouette of an arm rose in an indistinct gesture. “Try it out."

  Hayden balanced the knife for a second more, then flipped it and caught it behind the guard fins. He threw it with a single twitch of his wrist and it buried itself in the center of a target with a satisfying thump. The vendor murmured appreciatively.

  “That's not our best, you know,” he said as he waddled back to retrieve the knife. His mottled hand momentarily became visible as he pulled the knife from the wall. “Try this.” Back at the table, he fished in a case and drew out a long arrow-shape. Hayden took it from him and turned it over with a professional eye. Triangular cross-section to the blade, guards that doubled as fins for throwing, and a long tang behind that with another fin on its end. Its heft was definitely better than the last one.

  He thought of Admiral Fanning, who had led the attack on Aerie's secret sun and blew Gavin Town to smithereens on the way by. Without even thinking he spun and let fly the knife. It sank dead center in the smallest target.

  “Son, you should be in the circus,” said the vendor. Hayden heard the admiration in his voice, but it didn't matter. “Say, do you want to hang around a while and throw for the crowd? Could bring in some business."

  Hayden shook his head. He wasn't supposed to have skills like knife throwing. “Just dumb luck,” he said. “I guess your knives are just so good that even an idiot can hit the bulls-eye with one.” Ducking his head and aware of the lameness of his excuse, he backed away and then paced hurriedly down the alley.

  “That wasn't smart,” said a shadow at his elbow.

  Hayden shrugged and kept going. “What's it to you?"

  The other fell into step beside him. Hayden glimpsed a tall, rangy figure in the dim light. “Somebody you owe a favor, Hayden."

  He stepped away involuntarily. “Who the—"

  The man in the shadows laughed and moved into a pale lozenge of candle light that squeezed out between the cracks of a low window. He presented his profile to Hayden. “Don'tcha recognize me, Hayden? Last time I saw you, you were dropping out of Gavin Town on a runaway bike!"

  “Miles?” Hayden just stood there, painfully aware of how meetings like this were supposed to go: the prodigal and the old soldier, laughing and slapping each other's backs in surprise and delight. They would head for a bar or something, a
nd regale each other with stories of their exploits, only to stagger out again singing at three the next morning. Or so it went. But he'd never much liked Miles, and what did it matter, really, to find out now that one other person had survived the attack on the sun? It didn't change anything.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked after the silence between them had stretched too long.

  “Looking after you, boy,” said the ex-soldier. “You're not happy to see me?"

  “It's not that,” he said with a shrug. “It's ... been a long time."

  “Well, long or not, I'm here now. What do you say?"

  “It's ... good to see you."

  Miles laughed humorlessly. “Right. But you'll be thanking me before long, believe me.” He started walking. “Come on. We need to find a place to talk."

  Here it came, thought Hayden: the bar, the war stories, the laughing. He hesitated, and Miles sighed heavily. “Kid, what if I told you that I'd saved your ass today? That if it weren't for me, you'd be on your way out of Rush by now with a permanent deport order issued against you?"

  “I don't believe you."

  “Suit yourself.” Miles started walking. After a moment Hayden ran after him.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “'It's so good to see you, Miles. How are you doing, Miles? How did you survive Gavin Town?'” The ex-soldier glared at Hayden as they crossed a busy and well-lit thoroughfare. “Jeez, you were always a surly little runt, but let me tell you, I'm wondering whether I should have bothered faking the docs for your background check."

  “Background check? What background check?” He'd had two of them already, he knew, a cursory one when he first applied for Rush residency, and a more thorough check after he answered the call for work at the Fanning residence. It seemed all too plausible that somebody somewhere should want to do more digging—and now he realized who. “Venera Fanning. She had me investigated."