by Horizons
The words spilled from her heart, and the moment they emerged she regretted them. “I’m sorry.” Ahni looked away. “I–it was automatic. It’s just … I haven’t seen you in … years.”
“You know where I live.” Tania said the words with a determined lightness. “You’re still soapy.” And she shoved Ahni’s head under the water.
Ahni came up sputtering. “Ha. Even a Daughter of the Gaia can get wet!” She reached up and tumbled Tania into the pool, her shift ballooning around her, filled with trapped air as Ahni caught her on her hip so that she didn’t bruise herself on the pool’s edge. Tania laughed and tried to duck Ahni, got ducked herself and came up laughing, her fair hair plastered to her face, a wave of warm water sloshing over the edge of the pool, splattering like rain onto the grass bamboo beyond the screen, startling the small ground-scratching birds there. For an instant they were kids together again, wrestling breast to breast, the thin wet cotton of Tania’s shift the only barrier between them. Tania’s nipples, dark as her eyes, hardened beneath the thin gauze and for a moment, as her eyes met Ahni’s, her arms tightened around her, her belly and breasts hot against Ahni’s naked skin.
Ahni tensed, then turned away, Tania’s hands falling from her shoulders.
“I’ve missed you.” Tania sat back in the pool, pushing wet hair the color of old straw out of her eyes. “1
was sorry when you left to oversee the European concerns.”
“I’ve been back here to visit.” Ahni stepped out of the pool, water sheeting from her onto the tiles to drain away into the bamboo garden. “Did you come to see your father?”
“I came to see you,” Tania said softly. “Your mother told me. That you were in danger.”
“My mother?” Another newness here. Ahni reached for one of the soft cotton towels hanging on the wall. “I … am surprised.”
“Oh, we’re friends, Ahni.” Tania laughed as she stripped off her wet clothes and perched naked on the edge of the pool. “She knows I’m no threat, now. Did you kill him? The person who killed your brother?
The one your father sent you to kill?”
“No.” Something was wrong here. Ahni threw the towel onto the floor near the pool, crossed to the closet and pulled out two silk shifts, one blue, one sea green. She tossed the blue one to Tania who now stood arms akimbo beneath the blast of warm dry air from the dryer. “Xai’s not dead.” Her voice quivered in spite of her control as she pulled this shift over her head. “My mother … I don’t understand.”
“Tell me.” Tania’s arms went around her and this time, they offfered only comfort.
The words tumbled out. Xai. Her plea.
“You don’t see it, do you?” Tania murmured, her cheek against Ahni’s hair. “What your mother gave up?”
“What has she given up?” Ahni pushed away, wiped tears with her forearm. “She’s one of the best-known artists on the planet.”
“She gave up power, Ahni.” Tania stroked Ahni’s hair back from her face. “Before she married your
father, she was nearly his equal in the families. But after … ” Tania shrugged. “The Huang has a very traditional Chinese ideal of ‘wife.’ Do you really think artistic success would outweigh loss of her power?”
Ahni recalled her mother’s bitter words. “I never considered it,” she said slowly. “She never seemed …
unhappy. How did you find all this out?”
Tania laughed and shook her drying hair back from her face. “I wanted to find a reason for blackmail,”
she said. “To punish her for coming between us. Instead, I found a woman I could admire. She anderstands our goals, Ahni.”
Our. The Gaiists.
Ahni sighed and ran both hands through her cropped hair. “Let’s not go there.”
“We’re changing things, Ahni. Us. The Gaiists.” Tania came up behind her, put her hands on Ahni’s shoulders. “You don’t hear about it in the media because we don’t want you to hear about it. But we are.
What is your father doing but making money? I know you think we’re a bunch of ostriches with our heads in the sand but that’s just because we don’t draw attention on what we are doing. We–our planet came close to the edge a couple of generations ago. The sea was dying, the land was dying. And now we pat ourselves on the back about how much progress we’ve made, but it’s not enough. We still pay attention to our human wants first. She must come first, the Mother who gave us birth.”
Tania drew a slow deep breath, her nipples brushing Ahni’s shoulder blades. “Humanity hasn’t really evolved. We came down from the trees as apes and our technology froze us as a species, even as it made us comfortable. We have stopped, Ahni. We are a dead end. If we want to move beyond that, we need to be in balance with our Mother. We help the process along, help Her, one small act at a time. The oceans are coming to health again and the animals are coming back. Bird watchers have reported loons in Canada, and lions walk the savannah in Africa. They were extinct, Ahni. With Her power we brought them back to life. Six years ago, when I left for the monastery, you almost came along. Do you remember that?”
But not because I believed. Ahni looked away. Because I loved you .
Fanatic. It was so easy to dismiss her, but Ahni thought of Dane, the fervor behind his words when he spoke of Koi’s people. “So what should I do, Tania?” Ahni closed her eyes. “What do I say to my mother?”
“Xai chose his path.” Tania’s breath tickled her ear. “Let him walk it. Become your father’s heir. You will be a better leader for the families than he is. You will give your mother back the life she gave up for you.”
Ahni shivered as Tania’s lips brushed her neck. “Don’t,” she whispered. Shivered again as Tania’s tongue traced the corner of her jaw. “That’s over, Tania.” She stepped from beneath Tania’s hands.
“Ahni? Daughter, are you there?” Her mother’s voice. Urgent.
Tania sprang back, was examining the antique bowl as her mother appeared in the doorway.
“Your father has arrived.” In the wash of moonlight and floods tuned to simulate moonlight, her face looked taut and expectant. “He flew directly back when he … was informed of your arrival. Tania, please excuse us? This is a family matter.”
“Of course.” Tania bowed and a look passed between the two women.
“At least you had time to wash and dress.” Her mother took her arm and escorted Ahni along the paths of river-polished stones.
To Ahni’s surprise, a dinner waited, not in his private dining chamber, but in the banquet hall, normally reserved for visits and special occasions. Her father waited, hands clasped behind his back, head tilted back to study a scroll from tlle Forest of Stone Tablets in Xi’an, a hand rubbing from one of the stone texts kept there, blackkened with ink, a chiseled archive of the evolution of Chinese writting over thousands of years. History, she thought. What would we be without its weight? Thought again of Koi.
Ahni studied her father’s rigid shoulders, seeing Xai in the curves and planes of his flesh, aware of her mother’s tension.
“Your daughter is here,” her mother murmured.
Ahni bowed.
He returned her formal greeting briskly. At his nod, one of the house servants began to carry food to the table. “We’ll eat,” he said, and it was a command.
The kitchen had done a very good job on short notice, Ahni thought absently. She nibbled at the small dishes of bamboo tips with sauce, fresh green soy beans, and tiny fried fish with chilis. It wasn’t banquet fare, but the steamed fish sliced artistically and layered with thin squares of fried bean curd, and the dish of braised pork with white fungus were special for a family dinner. Ahni, starvving an hour ago, picked at her food, her appetite vanished. Her mother ate calmly, she noticed, her eyes fixed on her food. The meal ended with clear lotus seed soup, seasoned lightly with sugar. It was only then that he pushed his bowl away, drank some tea, and faced his daughter. “Have you fulfilled the task 1 gave you?”
Ahni lo
oked down at her tea cup, aware of her mother’s attention like a prodding fingernail in her back.
“I did not kill my brother’s killer,” she said carefully.
“And yet you returned.” His palm slammed down on the table. “You have turned your back on our family honor. You are worthhless. Less than worthless.”
His rage would have stunned her, only days ago. She had seen, felt, that same rage as her brother flung his cup across the orbital hotel room. Anger scalded her. My mother is right , she thought. This is between you and Xai . She had not decided about what she would and would not say. She decided now, pressed her lips together and bowed her head.
“I have not prepared you adequately.” Her father’s voice shook with anger. “This is my failing. But I will make amends for this lack on my part. I am posting you to our southern station.” The Huang rose to his feet, staring down at her. “You will leave for our main factory ship, The Soo Li , in the morning. I will contact our manager there. You will replace him to oversee the krill harvest. He will reeturn on the flight that brings you there.”
Ahni studied his face, struck again by the feeling that she was a stranger here, an outsider, meeting these people for the first time.
Punishment, she thought. And humiliation. The krill fleet was a mainstay of the Huang Family fishing business. For him to send her, a novice, to manage the operation and remove the experienced manager at the same stroke, ensured failure on her part. And a siggnificant injury to the family income if she failed spectacularly.
“May I be excused to go prepare?” she murmured in formal Mandarin.
At her father’s curt nod, she rose from the table and left the bannquet hall, passing the carefully averted gaze of the servant who was bringing in a plate of fresh melon, on the way out.
Tania waited at the door to her chamber, her face expectant. “I am sent to ruin our krill fishery,” she said.
“Don’t worry.” Tania put an arm around her. “He is angry and needed to hurt someone. Your mother will change his mind when he calms down.” She smiled. “She has had a lot of practice at that, remember?”
Ahni dropped onto the low couch with its embroidered silk cushions. “Tania, I need time … to think.”
“I understand. You are exhausted.” Tania leaned down to kiss the top of Ahni’s head lightly. “Sleep well, and don’t worry.”
Ahni listened to her steps fade. She could read Tania, Easily. And she had read … triumph. A battle won? What war is this ? she thought. She was a player, like it or not. She remembered the nested boxes her grandmother had had. Each time you opened one, you found a smaller one inside. And the battlefield for this war seemed to be NYUp. What would Xai destroy before it played out? You are right, Dane , she thought bitterly. We brought a war up to your world . “I do not know enough to play your role, Mother,” she whispered.
Ahni stood. “Room, video record,” she said. A silvery chime told her that the room was recording.
“Honored father.” She bowed. “Before I gratefully undertake the task you have set me, your lowly daughter, I must fulfill my duty. To fail in this would be to further fail the Huang family honor. I will return when I have carried out that duty. Room, end record. Email to The Huang at 9 AM local time tomorrow.”
Tania’s wet clothes lay tangled on the floor beside the pool. Automatically, Ahni picked them up.
Something metallic clattered on the tiles. Ahni picked it up. Xai’s medallion. She stared at the silver oval inscribed with her brother’s success. How had Tania entered Xai’s room?
And why take this ?
Frowning, she pocketed it, less certain than before of what lay behind this day’s events. “Security,” she murmured over her private link. “I want a skimmer at the service dock immediately. Private departure.”
Security affirmed. Only The Huang himself would be able to access the log to determine when she had left and how. If she was a player in this war, so be it. She would not play from the sidelines. The battlefield lay in NYUp. This was her war, too, even if she had no idea whose side she was on, or what the sides were.
SIX
MEETING TIME WAS SCHEDULED FOR THE FOURTH sixhour, this day. They rotated the times so that everyone could make some of the meetings, no matter what shift they worked. Dane drifted near Elevator 3B, watching the swift rise of the car on his handheld security link. Already a half dozen NOW
members talked or watched the Con on their com links, keeping up with the flow of NYUp’s conversation with itself. Beside him, Kyros yawned, his odd eyes, one brown, one green, speculative.
“Politics.” He ran a freeze-scarred hand across his naked scalp. “Good reason to stay out in the Belt.
Got to say though, would be more fun to drop rocks down here than balloons full of ice. Ain’t gonna happen, though, Dane.”
“You might be surprised,” Dane said mildly. He scanned the two men and two women who kicked out of the ‘vator and drifted toward the thickly planted tubes that surrounded the column. “Ripe tomatoes a couple of tubes that way.” He raised his voice, pointed with a subtle jut of his chin that barely stirred him.
“Help yourselves. No strawberries right now. The harvesters went through yesterday.”
”You’re a good host, Dane.” One of the women, Kani, a small business owner with a square, blunt, russky face and the long skinny body of a native, flashed him a grin. “That’s why we keep electing you.”
“For you, I have a few strawberries.” He led her down an aisle, plucked a huge, ruby berry.
“Lovely.” Kani bit into it. “Sweet, Dane.”
“You know, Jaret’s complaining that your juice sellers are squeezing him. He’s a solo operation.”
“Hey, Dane, that’s commerce.” Kani shrugged, stilled her drift on a tube. “If I can sell cheaper … too bad.”
“You’re not selling cheaper in other neighborhoods.” Dane seelected another berry. “Just in his turf.”
Kani shrugged.
“If we’re gonna make this work, we have to keep our backs together, Kani. Your business is making a good profit. You don’t need the few credits you’re squeezing out of Jaret.”
“Look, Dane, it’s not your business.” But she looked worried. He examined the fat strawberry. “I heard Sheila might have some money troubles. She might have to call in that note of yours she holds. How much do you still owe her?”
Kani flushed, looked away. “I’m not pulling my sellers out of Jaret’s neighborhood.”
“Just keep the price fair.” He held out the berry.
Kani glared at it, snatched it from his hand. Bit into it. “This one’s sour.”
“Sometimes they are.” Dane followed her back to the elevator.
“Keeping the population in line?” Kyros eyed him.
“You might call it that.” The elevator sighed open on its final trip and Dane narrowed his eyes as Raj and Kurt, two fringers, kicked out, followed by a small, taut man with a narrow, mixedeuro face followed them.
The troublemaker. Good. He’d gotten the word he was invited, then.
Dane nodded to him, received a grudging tilt of the man’s head and a quick, challenging stare in return.
The man had kicked off a bit too hard and had to spill his forward with both hands on the nearby tube.
Shredded leaves drifted and frog-flies darted from the surrounding foliage, scooping the ragged bits of drifting leaves from the air.
“Shit.” The newcomer recoiled. “What kind of bugs are those?”
“They don’t bite.” Dane lifted one shoulder. “Nice to meet you stranger. Name’s Dane.”
“Sharn.”
Dane faced the loose scatter of NOW members. Some of them sucked on tomatoes, catching drips of juice with the ease of practice, others hung in the bright, humid air, waiting. “This is Kyros. Belt miner.
Ice.” Dane nodded in Kyros’s direction. “He’s been around a long time, knows folk out there. He’s been asking around, keeping his ear to the ground
.” He hooked himself backward, giving Kyros space.
“Yeah, I talked around some, listened a lot.” Kyros scanned the scattered group of drifting natives with his mismatched eyes. “Ain’t no re-pre-sent-ta-tive ya’ know.” He drawled the word out. “You repr’sent yerself out there mostly. But yeah, sure, most of us’d be happy to sling rocks down to ya. Long as you catch ‘em and pay us for throwin’ ‘em.”
“You want pay, you ride ‘em down.” Kani, the juice seller, lifted her chin at him. “Hand ‘em to us.”
“Then you pay for our climb back out, sweetlips.” Kyros smiled at her, his grafted-in teeth gleaming neon blue in the harsh light.
Kani didn’t lower her chin. “Catching’s the hard part.”
“You got rock jocks. They stupid, or what?”
“Look, we’ll work out the numbers and who does what when the time comes.” Dane kicked forward just enough to end the confrontation. “What you’re saying is the miner’s will back us on this?”
“Some of ‘em.” Kyros’s shrug didn’t move him a millimeter. “Most don’t care who pays. You, Darkside, or the mudball. Doesn’t matter to us.”
“We’ve got plenty of rock jocks out there sweeping for the spitballs,” Dane swept the crowd with his eyes. “We can increase the teams, get the rocks into stable orbits, then do the refining close to home here.” He grinned. “Darkside doesn’t field rock jocks with all that nice protective moonscape for a shield, so they can buy from us. That’ll pay for the extra teams. I finally got the last of the numbers from Maria and Florez,” he nodded his thanks. ”We crossed the line a month ago. We got the numbers, we got enough supplies tucked away thanks to our network of hoarders to make it for two years if we live lean and work our butts off. By then, our economy should begin to balance. We’ve got refined metals, some local microG manufacturing that should be well competitive with the big corps that lease space here–after we impose our tariffs.” Dane grinned. “Add in the luxury and art trade and even before tourism gets going again, we can get by.” He let his eye travel from one to the other. “We can do it,” he said quietly. “It’s just a matter of when . We need to focus on that, now.”
