“She could never go out . . . We didn’t know what she might do, how she would react, how the ecosystem would react to her.”
“No one’s gotten sick yet.”
“Right. After over a decade of tests. Run on humans, and food organisms. Not on any other organism at the top of its food chain. No one on Ubastis is allowed a companion animal.” I smirked a little, looking at him.
Aside from a quirk of one eyebrow he let that one slide. “But you got one.”
“Moira. Moira blacked it in. She said I needed something to take my mind off of Lasse . . .”
“Being pregnant wasn’t enough?”
My laugh sounded more like a cough. “No. Mumtaz wasn’t enough. You aren’t enough. All the oxytocin in the galaxy isn’t enough. Nothing is enough.” Christ, if someone ever reviewed the record of this, I’d be put on medication for sure. I needed to turn the focus away from myself. “Did you like being outside, O-389?”
He said nothing. His eyes spoke for him.
I looked at him for a long time. What a pair of fools we must’ve looked, gazing—not at each other, but into each other.
I could well believe we’d both been snared by his hormonal transmission. Yet what I appraised—or thought I did—put me on my feet and hitting the call button for Z. Ismael.
She came in with her weapon unslung and ready: the prime light glowed green.
“Citizen, do you have access to the code for this cell?”
Her mouth actually fell open. “Commander, don’t do it.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m a little shocked myself. But listen to me, ya akhti, would you be willing to fight alongside this man if—” I took a deep breath, the words strange in my mouth “—there were a war?”
She measured him with her gaze, her mouth grim. “He’s dangerous,” she said finally.
“He is. But I’m dangerous too.” I brought up a wry smile. “Certainly that’s what the educators believe. You’re dangerous, Zahara. But I trust you.”
She jerked her head at the cell. “You trust him?”
Don’t do it; it’s the oxytocin, he’s got you totally befuddled—
Lasse, standing in front of us all those years ago. “Will you take the open hand?”
“I do.”
Z. Ismail did not cue the prime to red, but flipped open the control panel and jabbed in her keystrokes. She kept the foam thrower trained on the Beast as the current switched off and the door slid down.
The Beast stood on the verge, looking down at the seam where the door had withdrawn, to Ismail, to me.
“It’s all right,” I said.
“If we misbehave, you’ll kill us without a thought, won’t you?”
“Bank on it.”
“Like the cheetah? Like Mumtaz?”
I took a deep breath. “She got out, somehow.” She sped so fast across the Big Tawny she was only a streak the color of winter grass. Nothing yet discovered on Ubastis could move with that kind of speed. “Wait,” I had said to András, trailing after her in the hovercraft. “Let’s see what she’s going to do.”
What did she do? She was a cheetah. A small herd of lesser wulanghari foraging too close to the tufa had triggered her chase instinct, and she blew into the small herd, bowling over one of the dogs. Dazed and bleeding, it had tried to escape—Mumtaz knocked it down again and clamped her teeth over its muzzle to suffocate it.
I leapt out of the hovercraft and ran. Mumtaz did not know about wulanghari pack structure. I did. I saw the adults form a circle around her, some of them hooting, some of them with heads snaked down to the dirt, blowing up little gusts in their threat display. She was scared now, with no escape route—she hunched down over her kill, snarling, the hair along her spine ridged.
I shouted. Shot my rifle in the air. The juveniles bounced away, but the adults ignored me. I could not feel my feet, pounding across the hard-packed earth; I could not feel my screams sawing my throat: as Mumtaz spat at one bulking bitch, another, smaller one scuttled in sideways and snatched at her flank. She lashed around, exposing her belly, and the big bitch wulanghari bolted in and laid her guts out.
“If the situation dictates that you have to be shot the way I shot Mumtaz,” I said carefully, “there’s a good possibility I will be next.”
I could not tell whether or not my slow pace with the walker frustrated him. Certainly he made no impatient gestures, no move to pick me up and carry me—though Christ knows that might have been easier. It was he, not Zahara, who walked beside me out of the detention block; and both of us ignored the stares.
“Where are you taking us?” he asked, before we headed into the main passageway.
“Outside.”
Going through the public thoroughfares he seemed easier than he had at the party. But then on an ordinary New Albuquerque workday licentiousness and bare skin were certainly at a minimum. We passed a trio of masons smoothing an expanse of wall; one of them nodded at me as we passed, brown eyes bright above his dust mask.
In an ornately carved recess a group of people sat drinking tea, eating, watching a screen cluttered with the latest news. Through archways I could look into offices where citizens bent over computers, various sigils and wraps glimmering in the dim rooms. Accounting, shipping, maintenance deployment. Departments both tedious and—since we of Ubastis knew where each piece of bank went, had worked the vegetable rows where so many kilos of fertilizer were needed, and what damn ventilation shaft needed to be swept—comfortingly intimate.
Gusts of conversation blew about us in a slangy mélange of Arabic, Spanish, Russian, English.
“Dazvedanya, habib, I’ll see you at the meeting.”
“These filters are tan crappy. Lo siento mucho, Sidi. You think I should call UBI on that People’s Party mandavoška?”
“La, with the current devaluation, that’s el mejor I could get at that price, wallahi.”
To my right ran a lane of permanent dry goods shops, but out in the mall the comestible stalls had opened up for the daily souq. Strawberry kiosks from three different fields smelled like Heaven. The fresh broccoli flats looked like a miniature forest. Fog from the ice packing at the soygurt booths and fish tables smeared the air. And the place was packed with people.
I bit back a groan. This would mean more than a few stares from workers on their daily rounds.
“Is there another way back to your quarters?” the Beast asked.
“I didn’t realize I’d been at your cell so long,” I said.
“It takes some people that way.”
I looked up at him. One line at the corner of his mouth deepened in the hint of a smile.
“Don’t do anything rash.”
“Of course not, Commander.” The smile broadened fractionally.
“It occurs to me I could order you to walk the length of the mall on your hands, couldn’t I?”
“We would dispute such an order. But yes, you could.” His gaze flicked down to the walker. “You could order us to stand here as long as it takes for your knee to stop hurting.”
“It doesn’t—”
“You’re hurting. We can read it on you. Your face. The way you stand.”
I sagged a little against the walker. “I can’t hide anything from you, can I?”
“You’re not supposed to. You’re our Natch.” One hand out, he made as if to touch me—I leaned away as far as the walker would allow.
“I’m fine.”
He slid up behind me. When he spoke, his breath stirred my hair and I shuddered all over like the surface of the lake.
“You just got the next best thing to a synthetic knee. The psych people won’t stop torturing you. We knocked you for six with the intel that your husband foresaw something that could destroy this world and he never told you about it.
“How the sweet fuck do you expect us to believe you’re fine?”
I twisted in my alloy crate to face him. “Then can you fix me? Are you going to be my savior? Can you make it all go away?”
To my embarrassment my lips began to tremble. I whipped my head away so fast the tears skated across my skin. “Yallah, O-389. I have to give New Albuquerque its eyeful.”
He was quiet while I took the first stumping step onto the agora. Then as he came around to walk in front of me, a break for the press of people, I heard him say, “We should think you’re used to people staring at you, ya nuri.”
I had thought myself finally numb to shock. I was wrong.
In the Beast’s wake, I limped through the crowd. I tried to smile back at the citizens I recognized, or strangers who offered me a smile; somehow I ended up with a bottle of wine, a bag of mushrooms, flatbread. The Beast would not let me take these, but carried them instead, with as much gravity as if he held a rifle. Plodding across the agora this morning had been slow, but tolerable. Now—by the time we reached the top of the shallow stairs at the far side, everything was trembling.
“Give me a minute,” I muttered. I cranked the walker around to get a view of the expanse I had just traversed. I badly needed a breather, and I was damned if I would let half the city see me with my back to them, slumped and gasping.
Through the ebb and flow of color two black-clad figures cut towards us. Offworld clothes. Offworld faces. A little grunt escaped me.
“We see them,” the Beast said.
“I wondered when they’d come. I was hoping Sundari would be the only psych treatment I’d get.”
“Get your guns back yet?”
“No . . .” I drew myself up as well as I could, trying to find the mien of haughty competence my mother had always assumed. To some level of relief I saw that Numair and a couple of turbaned security followed them. “For all I know they may be in the Lazarette museum by now.”
At least we had the literal higher ground, I thought as they approached us. I stood at the edge of the top step, looking down on them, not touching the walker. For once the Beast’s bulk beside me was a reassurance rather than a threat—to me, anyway.
“Good afternoon, Governor,” I called over their heads. “Have you eaten?”
Numair’s camelid lip curved in a slight smile. “Dr. Loren, I’m glad to see you doing so well,” he replied.
Doctor, then; not Commander. I smiled and leaned a little against the walker, sliding from queen to safe citizen. “I am always well, Governor, in the service of Ubastis.”
To their credit the visitors remained on the step below, their eye level only a little below mine. I stretched my mouth in a smile. “You have the advantage of me, sirs.”
I paid no attention to their names as Numair introduced us. They stared at me gravely, their pale, stern faces forgettable, interchangeable. Offworlders all looked alike to me. These two white men, dark-haired, light-eyed, might have shaken out of a box for all their individuality.
We self-consciously shook hands. They did not like the walker, I saw; their gaze reverted to it in tell-tale blinks.
“You’ve come to summon me to the hearing,” I said.
“We have,” the man to my left said. He began the recital I had heard before, four years ago. “Vashti Loren, you have taken a human life. You have used a lethal weapon to wound or to kill. You must appear before council to defend your actions. This council is made up of both Ubasti and Commonwealth representatives and will hear you with consideration of both Ubasti law and Commonwealth law.
“There will be a shuttle provided to take you to Lazarette 1. We will expect you at the port forty-eight hours from now. There will be a leniency of time of one hour. If you are not at the port within that time, you will be found and arrested. Do you give me your verbal that you agree and understand?”
“I do.”
He brought out an ID pad. “Thumb, please.”
“And what about us?” the Beast rumbled.
“You . . .” Blatantly he looked the Beast up and down, with all the feeling a shopper might spare a market stall. The corners of his mouth twitched, perhaps in amusement at the corner of his mouth at the sight of a Beast carrying victuals. “I’ve been given to understand this is a BioEngineered ASsault Tactician.”
The Beast flexed his hand in a digit-loosening gesture. He wanted to roll his shoulders, inflate his chest, I could tell—all the primate intimidation gestures. I shifted my weight and brushed against him, as if casually. “He’s my assistant. And thus employed under Ubasti law.”
“Like your weapons, Doctor?” The other man stopped just shy of a sneer. “Your construct here has no rights under law. Your law, Commonwealth law, any law.”
“He’s here illegally,” said Left. “Surely you must know this.”
“Of course she does, Leo; she—” Right heard his voice rise and cut himself off. He looked around and behind him at the agora, where people had started to drift together in little snarls and clots, watching us. Numair made no helpful suggestion that we sojourn to somewhere more private; he remained on the edge of our stiff little square, more impassive than the Beast.
Right could not have known how badly I wanted to mark him when he leaned in to murmur to me. “Steps are going to be taken to ensure the Gen’s dealt with. You can’t have its kind here.” His gaze was hot; the pupils tight. “It’s a Gen and a murderer and if I had any say it’d get spaced on the way to the Lazarette.”
I stared at Right. Not my exact words, but near enough. Weeks ago I had wanted the same thing. I reached up and put my hand on the Beast’s shoulder, keeping my face stone even as I felt him flinch. “He stays with me,” I said.
“Governor?” Left turned to find Numair. “Please tell her—”
“With all due respect, Mr. Irfan, please don’t talk about Dr. Loren as though she’s not here.”
Right’s sigh was a gust of contempt and irritation. “There is no political asylum for that Gen,” he said. “If anyone told you that, they lied. If you don’t give it up, you will be charged with criminal possession.”
“Possession of what?”
“A weapon of war.”
I snatched my hand away from the Beast as if he burned. Moira’s voice twisted in my mind. “It’s a matter of time before the fucking profiteers put their heads together and decide that they’re above any treaties, verdicts, agreements . . .”
Moira’s dream of a military: ten thousand weapons of war. Ten thousand weapons of war that wanted to come to Ubastis. Ten thousand weapons of war that had conspired with my husband to get here.
Damn you, Lasse, for keeping this from me.
I took a deep breath. Found that smile once more. “How about this, then? How if I bring him in at my hearing?”
The two offworlders looked at each other. Left shrugged. “I don’t see any problem with that.”
“Leo, this is not what we—”
“The hearing is day after tomorrow, Pieter. She’ll be confined to quarters until she’s escorted to the shuttle.”
Again, ignoring my presence and talking about me as if I had no more status than the Beast. “You want to have that hearing? Let’s go now; I’ve got nothing better to do!”
Numair finally moved, putting his bulk half between me and the offworlders. “Gentlemen—this is precipitate. The usual time between summons and hearing is a week.”
“But this situation is unusual,” Leo said. “Can you think of any other of your citizens who has ever been summoned for more than one hearing? On the same charge?”
“She’s a recidivist,” Pieter said, sneering.
“That’s enough!” snapped Numair.
One of the vendors lurking on the edge of our little knot finally drifted in. “Is there a problem, Citizens?” she said. Her dark gaze moved from face to face, touching on mine.
“Everything’s under control, ma’am,” Pieter said.
“Excuse me: I was not addressing you,” she said. She touched the bar of my walker briefly with one forefinger. “Citizen, are these offworlder men bothering you?”
Of course I wanted to respond with a hearty hell yes, but I shook my head. “They’re doi
ng their job, Citizen. Though I thank you.”
She looked from them to me, her expression one of polite disbelief. “If you don’t mind, ya ukhti, I think I’ll just place myself next to you for a minute, hey?”
Pieter’s complexion went from pale to pink. “This is Commonwealth business; there’s no reason to involve—”
“She feels there is,” said Numair. I heard the smile in his voice. “It’s how we do things here. We’re all in it together.”
“Bare is back without brother,” I added.
“Huh!” Pieter rounded on the Ubasti woman. “You want to know what we want with your ‘brother,’ then?” He pointed at me. “She’s being taken up to Lazarette 1 for a hearing—a trial. For killing people.”
Instead of recoiling from me, the woman stepped back from Pieter and Leo. “Is this true, Citizen?” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re Dr. Loren, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“You’d better go with them and get it over with, and then get back down here, inshallah. There’s a lot to do here, and arguing with those people is just going to waste time.” Her gaze cut to them and her lips thinned. Without another word she turned and left us for the agora.
“I’m afraid the people on Ubastis are not overly impressed by offworlders,” Numair said.
“Change comes to us all, Governor.” The smooth self-superiority had returned to Pieter’s voice. “Soon, offworlders will have a chance to greatly impress people on Ubastis.”
Ubastis.
I hesitated at the landing that would have taken me to the residential area. To my left was the egress that led to the outside. I had always wondered whether or not it might be my imagination, but the hallway to the outside had always seemed less welcoming than the rest of the corridors: less lit, the tufa less finished, more roughly carved, the walls narrower. All of these things merely a matter of degree, but taken together it made for a dark, confined passage—a cloaca, even, to the bright sweep of the Big Tawny.
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