Haze

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  The vaulted waiting hall that served all the platforms was dimly lit, but Roget suspected it would have been dim in midday and even on that handful of days when the wind blew enough so that the sun shone unhampered by the miasma created by too many people at too high an altitude for too many centuries, even with relatively clean power sources.

  “Personal soltaic cells, cheaper here than anywhere!” called out a thin, scraggly-bearded youth.

  “Commcards… less than ten yuan a minute…”

  “The best in personal servicing…”

  Roget sidestepped a would-be lifter, then unbalanced him, leaving him to totter into a muscular man in the desert camouflage of a mere’s uniform, who slammed the unfortunate to the composite tile. There was always a market for mercs in the chaos of Afrique where Federation control was limited to destroying large concentrations of anything, but primarily of soldiers or weapons.

  Roget kept moving, his senses and internals alert to anything moving toward him, but he reached the eastbound tram platform without incident. According to the directions Meira had sent him, all he had to do was take the local tram east for three stops and then walk south along 100 Fourth for three blocks to the Willis-D’Almeida.

  As large as Fort Greeley was—a good three million-plus people, close to 90 percent of those in the Federation District that encompassed all of old Colorado and half of old Wyoming—the trams ran frequently. Roget waited less than five minutes but kept an agent’s scan going the whole time.

  Even at close to nine thirty at night, once he was on the tram, he had to stand, but he did manage to slip into a corner where it would be difficult for lifters. Ten minutes later, he stepped out onto another platform, this one older and synthbrick-walled, a style that had graced midlevel condo areas a century before. Two older women, not gray haired but excessively careful in their steps, left the tram by the same door as Roget, as did a couple with two children, a boy and a girl who looked to be twins, one of the few exceptions to taxation surcharges on families with more than one child.

  Once he walked down the steps and onto the well-lighted walkway, flanking 100 Fourth on the west side, Roget was careful to stay in the center. A couple walked swiftly past him, each carrying a half-staff, one of the more popular self-defense weapons allowed by the Federation. Each capped end held an immobilizing jolt, and the staff was sturdy enough to inflict major structural damage to an immobilized or stunned assailant. Neither the man nor the woman gave Roget more than a passing glance.

  The first block south of the tram station held a market complex, but it had already closed, and Roget could see cleaning personnel inside. Three young men paced around one of the entrances, glancing toward it now and again but not toward the walkway or the passing pedestrians. Roget’s sister’s condo was in the block ahead, on the third level, opposite the recreation area and park. Despite the late fall chill, Roget could see several volleyball games in progress and a soccer game on the main field. He shook his head. He’d never been that enthused about team sports.

  The fifth-story Willis-D’Almeida was neat from the outside, and seemingly well maintained, but from the off-tan shade of the snythbrick facade, it probably dated back more than a century. All the security lights were functioning, although several flickered as Roget climbed the outside steps to the third level and then made his way along the wide balcony to the front door of unit thirty-three. There he pressed the buzzer.

  Brighter lights flared around him, and his internals caught the energy from the low-grade scanner even before he noticed the faint hum of the unit.

  The door opened.

  “Keir!” Meira stepped back. “You’re here. Come on in.”

  Roget stepped inside, and his sister quickly closed and locked the door, reactivating the security system as she did.

  “Where’s Wallace?” asked Roget, setting his bag down beside the door.

  “He’s on the night shift. The pay’s better, and he’s here when Neomi gets home from school. Let me get Neomi. It’s really past her bedtime, but she wanted to see her uncle. She’s talked about your coming ever since you let me know.”

  As Meira headed for Neomi’s bedroom, Roget glanced around the main room, a space a good six meters by four, but with a couch and two worn brownish tan armchairs at one end and a table with four chairs at the other. He could see a narrow kitchen beyond the table. The short hallway taken by Meira at the other end of the main room led to two small bedrooms and a fresher. While the condo’s living area was larger than the room he had in officers’ quarters in Cheyenne, it certainly wasn’t much larger than the apartment he’d had in his brief stay in St. George, and Meira had to share the space with Wallace and Neomi.

  Meira returned, holding the hand of a dark-haired and gray-eyed girl who looked up at Roget sleepily.

  “Uncle Keir?”

  “That’s me.” Roget squatted so that his face was almost level with Neomi’s. “It’s been a while since I last saw you.”

  “A long time.” Neomi yawned. Roget straightened.

  Meira led Neomi over to the couch, where she seated her daughter and then settled beside her. Roget took the nearer armchair. It squeaked as he sat down.

  “How was your trip?”

  “The maglev was like always… crowded and stinky, but Cheyenne’s close enough that it took less than an hour.”

  “Where are you headed next?”

  Roget shrugged. “They don’t tell me until I report for my briefing after I get off leave.”

  “Can you say where you’ve been?”

  “Let’s just say it was hot and dry.”

  “That describes about half the world these days,” she replied. “And everyone speaks Stenglish.”

  “Everyone? That might limit it to a third of the world.”

  “It was definitely in a dry third of the world.” Roget laughed softly. It was better not to reveal anything if he didn’t have to. “Do you use an assumed name?”

  “I haven’t had to so far. I’m just listed in all the databases as a Federation Information Specialist, along with the thousands of others. Most of them are Federation Information Specialists. I can do that job.” And quite a few others as well.

  “Is there anything you can tell us?”

  Roget laughed. “Where’s your holojector?”

  Meira pointed to a square cube on the small end table beside her. “There.”

  Roget copied the image of Hildegarde to Meira’s system, frowning as he could feel and sense the heat. The holojector was probably on its last legs, but it did project Hildegarde’s image out from the blank section of the wall reserved for just that.

  “Don’t tell me you managed to get a dog?”

  “No. That’s an image of a painting. You can see how good it is. I was walking through a gallery, and I saw it. The actual painting was for sale for something like seven hundred yuan. If I had a normal job I would have bought it, but I liked it enough to buy an image. When I visited the gallery later, the painting was gone. It had been put up for sale by heirs before they realized its value and its antiquity. It was worth over twenty thousand.” Roget deliberately low-balled the value, knowing what Meira’s reaction would be.

  “You should have bought it.” Meira’s voice was cool. “At the least, you could have sold it back. The fools.”

  “Pretty doggy,” said Neomi.

  “Couldn’t you have bought it?”

  “I knew it was good, but not that good,” Roget replied. “If I had, I’d have bought it and worked out something.”

  “It is a good painting,” said Meira. “You’ve always had a fondness for dachshunds. I hated the way Muffin followed you.”

  “She was a good dog,” Roget said.

  “She was friendly to everyone, but she loved you.”

  “She liked everyone.” Roget didn’t mention that it might have been because he’d been the one to play with her and let her sleep at the foot of his narrow bed. “Anyway, I thought it was interesting that I ran ac
ross such a valuable painting, and it was a dachshund.” He collapsed the holo image.

  “That’s all you can tell me?”

  Roget nodded. “It’s a requirement and better that way.”

  “You always kept everything to yourself,” Meira continued, almost as if Roget had not said that he couldn’t say more. “I sometimes think that Muffin was the only one you talked to.”

  “That could be. Father was always using anything I said against me. Mother…” Roget shrugged.

  “You’re still rebelling against them, even after what happened…” Meira’s eyes brightened.

  “No. I gave that up years ago, even before that.” Roget didn’t want to get into recriminations. It certainly hadn’t been his fault that they’d been killed in the great southern hurricane of 6741 that had destroyed what had been left of Baton Rouge. The Federation hadn’t been about to spend billions of yuan on land being eaten away by the sea, especially not in Noram. “But I have thought about childish rebellion, Meira.”

  “Oh?”

  “We react, one way or another, to the circumstances that existed when we were growing up, but so did our parents, and those in their generation. Usually, at the time when we were children, they couldn’t do much, but as they got older they did their best to change things.”

  “My, aren’t you being generous now?”

  “When people try to change things, it can be bad or good,” Roget pointed out. “All I’m saying is that they did the best they knew how.”

  “With the Federation restrictions, no one can do much, not unless you’ve got billions, and words are cheap.” Her words held an edge. “You must be doing well after all these years.”

  “I’m still the same rank. I get a bit more pay for seniority.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you that the Sinese get preference, no matter what they say?”

  “I can only do the best I can do. What about you? How are things here?”

  “I did get a half-time position with the local health outreach organization. They can always use trained nurses or medics. They say I can go full-time once Neomi is in school all day. She goes to the children’s center here in the afternoon, but… going all day would cost more than I could make. Since Wallace is the night maintenance director at the university, we have staff family privileges, and that does help.” She shook her head. “We lost so much in the hurricane … we’ll probably never recover it all. Coming here was all we could do. What real choice did we have?”

  Neomi yawned.

  “I do need to put her to bed.”

  Roget stood. “You probably need sleep as well. I thought maybe I could take you all out to dinner tomorrow.”

  “That would be nice … and appreciated. If you could make it early, sixish, Wallace could enjoy it without rushing off.”

  “If you’d like to pick a place…?”

  “CindeeLee’s!” burst in Neomi.

  “We can talk about it later.” A wry expression crossed Meira’s face. “Oh … I forgot to tell you. You can stay with us…”

  “No, there’s no need to inconvenience you. I have a room at the Palais, and the Federation’s paying for it.” That wasn’t true, but he didn’t want Meira to feel guilty. She had enough problems as it was.

  “We had a dinner there once, a banquet, actually,” said Meira. “We couldn’t have afforded it if we hadn’t been guests.”

  The Palais was far from the most expensive hotel in Fort Greeley. Roget knew that. “I’ll call you, and you need to put my niece to bed.”

  “It might be better, this late … You can get an electrocab at the kiosk on the main level.”

  And safer, thought Roget, although neither of them uttered that thought. “Thank you.”

  He walked to the door of the condo, picking up his bag from where he had left it by the door. Then he turned and smiled. “It’s good to see you.”

  “You, too, Keir.”

  The balcony walkway was deserted as he made his way to the central stairs and down to the main level to the kiosk. There was actually a cab waiting.

  As he sat in the rear seat on the way to the Palais, he reflected, yet again, on the possible reasons why he and Meira had never been all that close. Had it been that she resented him and the extra costs their parents had borne to have a second child? Or just that they were so different? The health outreach job was so like his sister—trying to care for everyone. Roget had the feeling that, no matter how hard you tried, there were some people beyond help.

  Societies had to have rules, too, and rules that applied to everyone. He couldn’t help but think about Marni and her collaborators. They’d wanted a Saint-ruled world—or at least their corner of it ruled by Saint principles. But that was what had led to the Wars of Confederation and the iron crackdown that had followed. When every group’s principles were different, and every group was willing to fight to the death for those principles, you couldn’t have a civilization. You could only have warfare, rebellion, and chaos.

  If he had to be honest with himself, Roget didn’t agree 100 percent with all the Federation laws and policies, but… what was the alternative? As Meira had asked, what choices did any of them have?

  Still… Meira had looked so tired. At least he could offer dinner and slip some credits into her account on the pretense that they were to be used for Neomi. They would be, but that would free some money for Meira. He hoped.

  27

  24 MARIS 1811 p. d.

  After an early breakfast at yet another unnamed bistro, Roget and Lyvia walked four blocks to the central square, where they made their way down to the regional subtrans concourse. Roget had donned his original pale blue shipsuit, although he wore the outer jacket over it, but with the variety of attire in Skeptos, he certainly wasn’t wearing anything nearly as outlandish as some of those they passed on the ramp heading down to the concourse.

  As they stood waiting in front of the leftmost green translucent door of the eastbound side of the concourse, Roget asked, “How many stops?”

  “Just two.”

  “How long?”

  “Forty standard minutes or so.”

  That meant a trip of around eight hundred klicks. From what Roget recalled, that would have put them in the middle of flatlands between two mountain ranges and north of a large inland lake. There was a city near there, but he couldn’t recall the name and didn’t want to dig the maps Lyvia had given him out of his pack.

  The subtrans doors opened, and Roget carried his pack into the train. There were few enough passengers that Lyvia sat across from him, and he put his pack in the seat adjoining his. The doors closed.

  “Are you nervous?” she asked.

  “Not about the subtrans. Later… wouldn’t you be?” he countered.

  “I thought Federation pilots had nerves of steel, or composite or something,” she said with a smile.

  “They might. I’m an agent first, and a pilot second.”

  “That’s what the Director thought.”

  “What else does she think?”

  “That would only be speculation on my part.”

  “I’m certain that some things aren’t speculation.”

  “You’re fond of dogs, and you’ve never had a deep relationship with anyone. You don’t quite fit the Federation mold. That’s why you’re both useful and not totally trusted…”

  Roget realized that Lyvia was speaking in old American, and he was having no trouble at all following her.

  “It’s also why you’re still sane and the other agent isn’t.”

  “Dubiety isn’t that strange.”

  Lyvia laughed.

  After a moment, so did Roget.

  Superficially, he realized, the differences weren’t that great, but beneath that superficial similarity was a huge gap. “Did the other agent slowly lose it, the more he saw?”

  “I never saw any reports.”

  The way she said the words suggested to Roget that she thought so.

  Before long, the subtra
ns glided to a stop. Three people from the back of the car got off. A man wearing an orange vest over a brilliant flame-green singlesuit towed a wheeled case that rumbled slightly. No one entered their car, and the doors closed.

  “That was Knossos. We’ll be getting off at Rhodes.”

  “Are all the towns and cities in Socrates named after something Greek?”

  “No, but a disproportionate number are.”

  “The original skeptics?”

  “Probably not. Just the first with enough power and confidence to write their doubts down. Even so, there were enough conformists in ancient Greece that they ended up forcing Socrates to suicide.”

  Roget wondered if there might be a village or town called Hemlock, but didn’t ask. Me still could help thinking about the last words the director had offered … about events two and twenty-five centuries earlier. They’d been almost tossed off, as if they were absolute and yet as if whatever the Federation found would be disregarded.

  When they disembarked at Rhodes, so did some twenty young men and women, mostly from other cars. Only a handful of men and women were waiting to board.

  “Just wait a moment,” Lyvia said.

  Roget slung his pack over his shoulder and stood there.

  Only when the concourse appeared empty did Lyvia turn and walk to the end away from the ramp leading up to the surface. At the end of the concourse, as they neared, a section of the wall slid open, revealing a narrow ramp. The hidden doorway closed silently behind them.

  The ramp led straight down for a good hundred meters, then ended in a small foyer. On the right side was a single set of translucent doors of the same type used in the subtrans concourses, except that these were a dull yet deep red—the first of that color Roget had seen. This time Lyvia used her belt-tube and the doors opened, revealing a much smaller conveyance, almost a large capsule with but four seats, two on each side facing each other. All four seats were a deep green without trim.

  Lyvia gestured and Roget stepped inside, taking a seat and putting his pack on the one beside him. Lyvia settled across from him, and the doors closed.