Analog SFF, July-August 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Centuries later, a black asteroid collided with Wendis with disastrous results. It tumbled. The ecological zones were ruptured, many people and animals died, and the port was out of commission for decades, economic ruin following physical disaster. The engineers stabilized the spin, the scientists repaired the park as best they could, and, as one of very few possible ways back to economic health, the city-state remade itself as an interstellar amusement park. Wendis.

  These days some people called it Dis for short. Which was a short, handy word—and an ancient synonym for Hell.

  * * * *

  If she never descended the Spiral Stair again in three lifetimes, it would be too soon, Nia thought when they finally reached the bottom.

  A narrow lane paved with stones led to a cottage set back in trees. It was a well-camouflaged university research station, and her key got them in.

  They found an attendant on duty. “Hey, I know you—you're the proctor!” The voice sounded like a university person. But the body was an animated replica of an ancient suit of armor, with a metallic grill for a face under a helmet topped by a fluffy white feather.

  “Do I know you?” Martan asked.

  “Sure! You come through the High Street pub every night at undergraduate curfew hour. I wear my city shell then, of course."

  “The blue racing shell."

  The suit of armor nodded, making his feather bob.

  Crossing the stars for new worlds had left the human genome rifted with radiation damage. When genetic damage surfaced in a newborn child in Wendis, it was corrected, if possible. The worst cases were implanted in mobile life-supporting mechanisms. Martan had probably seen some baby cyborgs scooting around in the hallways during his own long stay in the University Hospital. Some of the doctors were adult cyborgs themselves. “Why change shells?” Martan asked.

  “It's a Fair costume.” Nia leaned against the wall with her arms crossed. “An ancient knight."

  The feather bobbed agreement. “I'm doing doctoral research in anthropology here."

  “And you work as the university's station attendant, right? We need to contact the university,” said Nia.

  “I'm not supposed to—"

  “We have a serious problem, and we need to contact the university!” she snapped.

  “But you must be Nia Courant from the University Counsel's Office. I have orders not to send out any messages that might indicate that you're here, but give you a message."

  “Then what is it?"

  “I wasn't supposed to open it unless I saw you.” Tiny lights flashed behind the metal grill under the plumed helmet. “Wow!"

  “What?” Nia demanded.

  “The University Counsel says you're both in grave danger. And I should give you the latest highway advisory. Lessee—uh-oh! The highway robbers are out today."

  “Oh, no,” said Nia, feeling a cold shock of fear.

  “And—wow! Old Scratch has been trying to get in the Back Gate!” The tiny lights behind the grill sequenced excitedly. “The Counsel says get back to Haven as fast as you can, however you can, and whatever you do, don't get separated. What's going on?"

  “It's none of your business."

  “Is there going to be an abduction? Can I watch? I could use one for my thesis—"

  Taller than the cyborg, Nia stepped close enough to glare down at him and she let anger heat her voice. “You will help us as much as you can, and if you don't, I will file charges of malfeasance in the conduct of university business and violation of the Honor Code, and you'll be lucky to merely be kicked out of the university!"

  He stepped back with an audible clank. “You mean this isn't a simulation?"

  “No, it is not!” Nia turned on her heel and said to Martan, “Up to the observation deck.” That meant climbing a narrow vertical ladder. Martan climbed close behind her to steady her, guiding her shoe to the rung when her foot fumbled in thin air. Damn the spin-gee!

  Martan said, “It seems pretty clear that I'm putting you at risk. You should stay here with the cyborg. I'll take care of myself."

  She shook her head. “If the Counsel said we're both in danger, she meant it."

  “Can't she call in help?"

  “No. No one runs the Wends. We're on our own."

  They emerged on an observation deck. The hillside rose behind the deck, forested with beech and oak and eucalyptus trees. Tall trees flanked the deck and even grew through holes in the surface, making the deck look like a treehouse. A compact weather station with a whirling wind gauge perched on one of the guard rails.

  From here they could see the Highway curving up from the foothills and on through the nearby village. Twilight was settling into the deepest parts of the valley. Soft yellow points of light gleamed in the village. Further uphill, the Highway ran through grassy meadows toward the snowy summit of Zaber. The sunball was on the verge of setting behind the mountain's bulk.

  Nia said, “This part of the Fair Country resembles Old Europe, and my looks fit in better here than anywhere else. You look like everybody everywhere. We better not go downhill on the Highway, as tempting as that is. Not with the highway robbers on the move. We can follow the highway up through Davos. That's the real name of the village. Then we'll take the Fair Lane to the tram station and ride the tram down to Haven. At least I hope so. If something goes wrong with that plan, there's the low road. It starts in the village and goes underground. But the low road is dangerous as hell."

  “This is a very strange place,” said Martan. But he had a slight smile, like somebody looking at a long-loved, much-missed place he'd just returned to. But it wasn't the village he was smiling to see again after long absence, it was the face of danger.

  With his head cocked, Martan seemed to be assessing the sounds around them. Nia only heard a few birds, a rustle of wind in the trees, and just at the edge of her hearing, one of the air handlers in the hillside. Martan heard more than that. “Where the lane leaves the Highway there are big animals with metal harnesses, and voices. Men on horses, I think, coming this way."

  “The highway robbers! Let's get out of here!"

  Instead of going back into the university station, they scrambled down a tree to the ground, then went downhill toward the village, slanting away from the lane and the highway robbers. Fallen leaves, wet and limp, muffled their steps. “We aren't dressed like locals,” Nia said. “I hope there are a lot of other visitors in Davos today. Anyway, the only way up the highway is through the village."

  “Will everyone and everything in this place be against us?” Again a light, interested tone, the tone in which anybody else might ask if the dessert menu included ice cream.

  “Not necessarily,” Nia said curtly. “We're caught in a danger game. The zone we skipped was the one called Warway, and I've never been near the war games, and I'd be useless there. But here I know the rules. No, everything and everyone won't be against us, not if we play the game well."

  * * * *

  Nia reviewed the guidebook's pages about Davos to make sure she hadn't left something important out of her calculations. At the edge of the village, the highway arched up over a bridge above a sparkling little river that tumbled down the heart of the valley. In the middle of the bridge was a conspicuous plastic trapdoor. The bridge itself was made of rough fauxstone. Interested, Martan stopped to examine the material on the far side of the bridge.

  He abruptly looked past Nia, alertness flashing across his features like light reflecting on polished metal. She whirled. Something was climbing out of the trapdoor. Huge, humanoid, wet, and covered with matted hair, it lurched toward them.

  Nia dashed to the nearest alleyway. Martan loped after her. In the mouth of the alley, Martan deftly caught and stopped her. “Just stand back and I'll deal with—"

  “Don't bother.” As they peered out of the alley, the matted monster shuffled back and forth near the end of the bridge, then lumbered back to disappear through the plastic trapdoor.

  Martan wore a baffled expressio
n. Nia suppressed an urge to laugh. “That was the troll. It's not supposed to go more than twenty paces from water, those are the rules."

  He started to say something, but then his face reflected sharp alertness again. He wheeled around toward two men who were rushing out of depths of the alley. One of the men sprang toward Martan with a knife in his hand.

  The other man lunged toward Nia. She twisted away while Martan met his attacker halfway. An instant later, Martan's attacker was slamming into the nearest wall and sliding to the ground. Nia darted behind Martan. Martan delivered a lightning-fast kick to the second man's groin. The attacker doubled up with a yowl of pain. Martan seized the attacker by the throat and hair, yanked him upright, and glared into his eyes. Then the only sound in the sudden silence and stillness was a faint gurgling noise from the attacker semiconscious on the ground. The one Martan had by the throat mouthed inaudible words.

  Nia realized that Martan was doing a hellhound interrogation, ransacking the man's mind. Shaken out of her shocked immobility, Nia pulled Martan back by the shoulders. “Don't kill him! If we kill a native, they'll all turn on us!"

  Martan let go of the attacker, who collapsed like wet paper. In one fluid motion, Martan picked up a knife on the ground—Nia now remembered seeing him kick it out of the hand that held it—and shouldered their knapsack with its load of rocks again—she thought it had slammed into at least one of the two men at one point. She had never seen anybody move so fast or fight so well. In all likelihood the attackers hadn't either.

  Spiders of anxiety skittered up and down Nia's spine. “Come on. Come on.” Martan ran with Nia through the alley into a slightly less dank and narrow street. She said, “We are far too obvious. It's our clothes. We've got to do something about that."

  Martan raised his eyebrow.

  “This way.” She threaded her way through the open-air market, closed for the day. The market and the houses and shops nearby were deserted, like the stage set they were. These buildings were mere facades, garish, quaint, and empty.

  “Did you inflict—” Why mince words? She knew what he was. She had to find out what he'd done. “Did you wreck his mind?"

  “No. He'll wake up with a hangover and a hole in his memory, that's all."

  Nia started breathing again. Hellhounds interrogate to get information, she thought. “Did you find out anything?"

  Martan nodded. “They're bounty hunters. Past the prospect of collecting a bounty, he was vague about the why. He was clear on who they were after, though. You and any male companion of yours. They knew exactly what you look like. They were after you."

  “Me?"

  “I can blend into in any crowd, anywhere, but your looks really stand out. I think whoever offered the bounty had the idea of using you as a marker."

  A corner of Nia's will wanted to stop and panic, but that was not a useful idea. They had to find real help. She picked an inconspicuous hinged gate and yanked it open to enter a street behind the facades.

  “You might thank me for saving you from those thugs,” he said.

  “But you enjoyed it,” she retorted.

  * * * *

  Located out of the line of sight from the tourists’ deserted marketplace, this looked like a typical neighborhood in the city environs of Wendis. The residences were cozy glassbrick houses, the farthest uphill reached by latticeworks of stairs fringed with potted plants. Each house had a trilingual Wendisan address plate beside the door. The air smelled like any Wendisan neighborhood at suppertime: stir-fry and curry.

  The few people on the sidewalks noticed Martan and Nia—visitors in expedition clothes more suitable for the wild zones of the park—but the Wendisans had business of their own and were unconcerned about a couple of purposeful visitors. Nia found the house she was looking for, with a distinctive blue door where the address plate read ELZEBET SELLER. A shiny bellbar underscored the name. Nia pressed the bar harder and longer than she meant to.

  The door was opened by a heavy-set, gray-haired, dark-skinned woman with pleasant, rounded features. “Canter! Quick—in.” Elzebet secured the door behind them.

  Nia was so relieved to see Elzebet that she felt herself shaking. “This is Night, and—"

  “Oh yes, Canter's Knight! The park is witherspin today, and you two are in trouble, but it seems you can take care of yourselves. Now you want some garb so you'll blend in better here! I told my friend Vendana (she's the Gatekeeper's Chief of Staff, she called me right after you left the gate—jumping over from Inferno with Scratch on your heels!) ‘Vendana,’ I said, ‘she'll have sense enough to come to my house as straight as she can get here.’”

  Elzebet escorted them to her showroom, which was crammed with colorful clothing arrayed on racks. “These are sorry times, that's all I'll say! Imagine an unsanctioned danger game breaking out in broad daylight with two unwitting university people! Mark my words, an investigation of this will go all the way up to City Council, but that won't help you today—you'll have to rescue yourselves, dear, and I'll do what I can to help. Well, well, you two are the same height! Let's see what I can find for you to wear.” Elzebet disappeared into her showroom.

  Martan asked Nia, “How well does news travel here?"

  “Fast as photons. Tourists can't have communications devices, but the Denizens do and use them incessantly."

  Like a wide fish flitting through the tight crevices of its home reef, Elzebet emerged from her showroom with thick clothing piled high in her arms.

  “Start with him. I need to use your lavatory,” Nia said.

  Elzebet's lavatory was a nice little room, too small for the ubiquitous curvature of Wendisan architecture to be noticeable. There was a sweet-smelling bar soap and a real cloth hand towel. Suddenly, in that cozy and familiar place, the shock of danger came home to Nia. She put her head in her hands and sobbed.

  An unsanctioned danger game, Elzebet had said. The so-called Most Dangerous Game, even with Old Scratch being a part of it, wasn't really the most dangerous game in Wendis. The most dangerous game in Wendis was this. An undesigned game with unknown players playing for high rewards—money, lust, revenge were recurring themes—and playing for keeps.

  Nia's tears mixed with the dust of Inferno on her face. The mixture stung her skin. She struggled to regain her composure as she washed and dried her face. Then she opened the lavatory door and froze. She couldn't face any more of this day. She wanted time to stand still. Fresh tears welled up in her eyes.

  She heard Elzebet talking to Martan. “Try this one on. Now, I've heard that the new proctor of the university has a fine talent for melting into a Wendisan crowd. He slides into a nightspot in the port looking like a port worker, finds the undergraduates who shouldn't be there, and he's scanned their ID's before their lookouts utter a peep of warning. Good for you. There's too much trouble for young people to get into in that port. Well now, that color does bring out the gold undertone in your skin. A cloak is what a Wendisan man would wear up here tonight, and you've got to act the part if you're to pass for Wendisan."

  “I can do that,” said Martan's voice. “How did you meet her—Canter?"

  “I know her real name is Inanna,” Elzebet confided. “That's a fine Wendisan name for a woman and it was her great-grandmother's. Inanna Riga was a famous actress and singer, and I'm old enough to remember the sensation when she upped and married a man from Azure, but Inanna Riga bequeathed her Wendisan citizenship to her great-granddaughter, so that's all right. This cloak will be perfect for you after I adjust it. It's smart fabric, so I can split and rejoin this seam—just stand still. ‘Nia’ sounds just like a good proper social nickname in Wendis, so she's Nia Inanna to her friends here. A few Wendyears ago, she'd just come to work at the university, and we needed someone to play the role of a Europan queen in the Ascendance Fair. Her legal assistant was on the Fair Committee, and told us his new boss was from Azure with the classic Azurean looks; the pale skin, blue eyes, silver hair. And any good lawyer is a good actor! Everyone
immediately realized that she'd be the perfect queen, and she agreed to help us out. She made such a good impression on everyone that she earned a Fair name."

  “Canter,” said Martan.

  “I'm sure Azure is a respectable place with decent people, but really, it's one of those thin new worlds, stretched across a great big planet. She's too extraordinary for it. This is a better place for her. Wendis is nice and thick, like baklava. There! Now the fit is perfect, and it won't get in your way whether you fight or fly."

  They'd already had to fight and to flee, and it wasn't over, Nia thought miserably. Was it just bad luck that had made everything go witherspin around them today?

  Or was it less arbitrary and more ominous than bad luck? Still standing in the lavatory door, she suddenly recognized a chain of logic as strong as steel.

  Only a few days ago, she'd made the initial inquiries for the background legal information she might need to establish Martan's human rights under Faxen law. Now an enemy knew he was here. She'd been careful not to be specific enough in her inquiries to let out the secret that he was alive in Wendis. But maybe she'd not been discreet enough. Maybe there had already been suspicions that the explosion Faxe's hellhound disappeared in hadn't been quite fatal.

  If so, then she herself had unwittingly made the first move in the game, not knowing how swiftly the countermove would come. That was the critical core of what was happening today. Martan's enemies wanted him badly. Possibly they also wanted to preempt what she could do within the law to win him human rights and freedom from Faxe. So when she made the mistake of bringing Martan out of the university—one of the safest, best protected places in Wendis—into the wild Wends, a bounty was offered and the hunt was on.