by John Meaney
“You have a ‘trope which can teach that?”
“You can already do that.” Brino’s smile was beatific. “We can just open up the possibilities of your own perceptions.”
“Let me think about that.”
The nausea hit him two strata from home.
Home? His palace, his—Sweet Fate!
Bad cramps were clenching his intestines. He was in a wide cargo-access corridor, and he had to stumble past heavily laden smoothcarts, searching around the hong’s bays, until he found the servitors’ washrooms.
Ignoring a startled exclamation from a liveried cargo-loader, Tom rushed inside and vomited into a red-enamelled sink.
What’s wrong with me?
But a part of him knew: as he had left the Kilware Associates tent, the shaven-headed man, Brino, had bowed too low, in full acknowledgement of Tom’s rank.
I refused the logotrope. But somehow—
A jangled lattice of red light fell across his vision; a thousand fingernails clawed across his skin; strange kinaesthetic waves danced through his skull.
Pain . . .
How had they achieved it? Anaesthetic nanodart? Some form of inductive coding, using resonance to reprogram the femtocytes already inside him?
Regardless, the waves of agony swept through him, a logotropic tide of neural disruption.
In all the pain, there was one constant: it was his left arm, finally, the unchanging burning which could never be overridden, that gave him something to cling on to.
And then it was past.
He slipped out of the hong before its steward and his watchmen could arrive. Though he had his thumb ring, Tom did not want to fall back on his authority unless he had to.
Wouldn’t want them to think their Liege Lord was just an ordinary human being.
At a clothing shop, he used an anonymous cred-needle to buy a new cape, dark blue and unhooded, for twelve coronae. He dumped the old, tattered cloak—now stained and unpleasant—in a reclamation vat.
Looking more respectable, he found a small daistral house, and took a seat among flowering potted trees which overlooked a broad piazza. Above, the ceiling was an ochre mosaic among azure inlays.
The drink and a small pastry began to revive him.
“Thank you.” He smiled at the pretty servitrix and she bobbed him a curtsy.
Her sidelong glances, as she bent to clear and polish a nearby table, made him wonder: did she think him a half-rich freedman, a hong-owner’s son perhaps? Or—
Hands wringing, endlessly.
It was something about the girl’s polishing motion, the way she twisted the damp cloth . . .
Hands.
Like the old woman, the would-be thief who had rubbed her hands together, stung endlessly by the membrane toxins which guarded Kil-ware Associates’ goods.
Like Mother . . .
In a moment of intuition, Tom realized: Mother, too, had once been burned by whatever pain-gel was in the membrane. Somewhere, at some time, she had stolen, or attempted to steal. To support a dreamtrope habit?
Always, under stress, she would wring her hands like that. . .
But you had to pay, normally, to get the antidote. That’s what Brino had said.
How did you pay, Mother? What were you forced to do, to atone for your crime?
And Father’s defensive words to Trude: “She was down on her luck, that’s all.” Wasn’t that what he had said?
Red lines pulsed across his vision as he stood.
Breathe . . .
Regaining control, he credited the daistral shop with a generous tip, and walked on. Heading for his palace, where his servitors would be glad—he hoped—to see him. Then to send some of the palace watchmen downstratum to find Kilware Associates.
The watchmen would be out of their depth if it came to violence. But Tom was sure that Brino and all trace of the weapons emporium would be gone by the time they arrived.
But a dizzy spell hit him, doubling him over.
“Are you all right, sir?”
Tom allowed himself to be taken back into the daistral shop, sat down in a quiet corner, and plied with analgesic. Someone fetched a diagnostrip which oscillated wildly, unable to pin down symptoms—much less form a diagnosis—and finally tossed it aside.
They settled for the restorative powers of simple broth, and finally allowed Tom to doze in a chair. It was when he saw them moving chairs into the inner chambers that he realized the entire working day had passed, and they were closing up.
“No, no.” They refused additional payment, beyond that for broth, but Tom made note of their name: the Dancing Bee. “You take care of yourself,” they said. “Come back and see us.”
Smiling, Tom agreed that he would.
Death came in the dark.
His running-gallery had been deserted. Even the kitchens—barely lit by two glimmering glowclusters—had no staff, and Tom had helped himself to a small piece of fruit tart from a procblock, and taken a cup of sweet mint daistral.
Afterwards, he had walked, pleased by his ability to take a solitary tour, among his rudimentary art collection: primitive flatpaints, rhythmic dust-sculptures mutating in their lev-fields, musical self-composing interference patterns made visible by thermal imagery.
Still not sleepy, he headed for the conference chamber, where he could find the crystals he had been working on. He was humming to himself as he slipped off his cape and stepped through the membrane—
Scarlet arrays slatted into place across his vision.
—there: one man in the shadows, almost upon him—
Waves pulsed across his skin. The darkness was pitch black.
—from left and right; Tom leaped forwards but there was another one rushing him—
Faint silver glimmer of eyes, half-glimpsed.
—and he moved faster, avoiding, spinning, but there were seven attackers and footwork could grant him only milliseconds—
They were using corneal smart-gel, photomultiplying and IR-sensitive, but it didn’t matter because Tom’s entire skin and body were a sensory organ, creating a doppler-map in three dimensions. He felt attack-vectors as proprioceptive flow.
—and a heel-kick stabbed close to Tom’s spleen—
Sweeping block, without looking.
—with follow-up hook-punch.
The man was big and murderously fast, punching for Tom’s throat, but as the hand came close, scarlet spots sprang out across the man’s inner forearm—targets—and Tom went for the lung-8 point over the radial nerve, elbowed the radiobrachialis and whipped a sword-hand strike against the carotid sinus, and the big man dropped.
Pause.
One stumbled, but—glint: watch out!—another, bringing a graser rifle to bear—
Crescent kick, deflecting the weapon, then Tom concentrated on limb destruction until the rifle clattered to the floor. Hip-throw.
—and the other four were dangerous, moving in pairs: trained attack team—
Overdrive. Pure Zen. He rolled over the glass conference table, using the environment, driving off the wall.
—lattice blade crackling—arm, burning—very close—
Tom’s kick took out the knee with a crunch as he tangled the man’s arms together, twisted, whipped his leg up high and dropped an axe-kick.
—three left—
Sidestepped as a graser beam split the air apart—move now—and he dropped low, grabbing the weapon as he shoulder-barged—left stump good for something—tossing the man against his comrades.
—one man in the clear—
A spinning kick faster than thought, and he was down.
—but three were still moving on the floor, scrabbling for weapons—
And Tom’s motion became a blur as he darted among the shadows, striking out, choking, until seven shadowed lumps lay motionless.
Victory.
Sudden bright lights sprang into being as the door membrane dissolved and glowclusters blazed with full intensity. Squinting, Tom froze as
four mirror-visored troopers entered, rifles locked on.
But their officer was dissolving her visor, looking at him with clear grey eyes. She frowned.
“I know you.”
~ * ~
42
TERRA AD 2123
<
[10]
An unmarked skimmer picked her up at the pension (which was quaint, overdecorated in the alpine mode, with precise cuckoo-clock charm), and dropped her off at the lakeside, far from habitation, where waves gently lapped against the deserted shingles. Then, in less than a minute, unseen endothermal filaments created an ice bridge, greenish blue and solid, arrowing across the surface. Karyn had walked perhaps ten precarious metres from shore when a bullet-sub surfaced, and its uniformed crew waved her aboard.
The ice bridge was already dissolving as they sank beneath the waves.
“Isn’t there a public-access tunnel?” Karyn asked, made nervous by the apparent subterfuge.
“Closed for inspection.”
Have I overplayed my hand? After the flurry of h-mail—denied requests—had she hinted at too much?
Her paranoia intensified as they drifted closer to the crystalline complex which was Genève-sous-Lac.
After docking, she was taken to an empty waiting-room, and left alone. One wall was convex, transparent, looking out upon the clear, dark waters. Small white-and-gold fish nibbled at it.
Damn! She paced restlessly, then forced herself to sit. What the hell am I doing here?
Her leverage, for the forthcoming meeting, was in the handful of crystalline splinters tucked away in her jumpsuit’s pockets.
Decision.
Risk everything.
To save Dart, she had to be prepared to throw away their only chance.
“Frau Doktor Schwenger,” said an automatic system in English, “will see you now.”
“L’affaire,” said Karyn peevishly, “est dans le lac.”
Colloquially it meant: everything’s a mess. The AI made no reply.
A holo arrow indicated the way she should go. Reluctantly, Karyn stood again and followed; the arrow moved, projectile-like, ahead of her.
Doktor Schwenger’s suite spectacularly looked out upon the lake’s bed: low lighting glittered on quartz insertions, and shadows played among tendril-like aquatic plants which Karyn could not have named.
“Sit down.” Schwenger was small and blonde, and wore her authority easily. “Please.”
“Vielen Dank.”
A small smile crossed Schwenger’s face. “Sie haben aber viel gut Deutsch, nichtwahr?” Karyn shrugged, as Schwenger added: “Wir konnen uns auf irgenden Sprache unterhalten.”
“Also gut,” replied Karyn. “But I bow to your superior command of English.”
“So.” Schwenger’s smile was a little too quick.
I shouldn’t have conceded that, was Karyn’s first thought. But her aikido training gave her deeper insight: I need to blend and flow, not score points.
“Thank you for seeing me so quickly, Doktor Schwenger,” she said. “You must have a busy schedule, as do I.”
A tiny frown. “I understood you were on leave.”
Disingenuous: Schwenger would not have rearranged her schedule to meet a mere Pilot Candidate without suspecting something.
“Some PR matters.” Karyn tried to appear nonchalant. “An interview with TechnoMonde Vingt-Deux. Other things.”
“Unusual, for a Pilot Candidate.”
Ice-blue eyes. A disconcerting hint of ironic smile.
“Isn’t it?” Karyn nodded. “I was hoping to talk about the projected rewiring of my nervous system.”
Schwenger was very still.
Zero points for subtlety, McNamara, Karyn told herself. But at least she’s got the message.
“In what respect?” Schwenger asked quietly.
What Karyn really wanted was all-out search-and-rescue, using the entire fleet; but no amount of leverage would give her that.
“Bringing forward my Phase II.” Centring herself, Karyn added: “And giving me the next new ship.”
Frau Doktor Ilse Schwenger was a divisional director, with board-level responsibility for the Commissioning Programme. She could do this.
“That would not be very easy, as you must appreciate.”
Atemi is 90 per cent of aikido, O-Sensei Ueshiba had allegedly once said. The founder of that most gentle of arts knew when to blend and when to strike.
Show her.
Nerves screaming—flashes of Dart: alone and dying—Karyn laid out the crystal shards upon Schwenger’s desk, knowing that in the next few seconds her own career in UNSA might be over.
Blue toroid, engineered foetus. Blurred text and graphs.
Damn the career. But Dart needed her.
“Low-res images,” murmured Schwenger, as she slid each fragment in turn through her desktop’s lasing slot. “Hard to make out detail.”
The last image hung there: actinic blue.
“Not in the original crystals.”
Tear the corner off a photograph. In that corner, one has a small piece of the picture. Any piece of a still hologram, though, contains the whole solid image: the smaller the shard, the lower the resolution.
“Who has the crystals?” Schwenger’s eyes were glacial blue. “You or TechnoMonde Vingt-Deux?”
She knew, all right. Schwenger had hardly had to glance at the images to understand what they were.
What should I do?
One option: play hard to get. The other—
Gamble.
“They’re in my room at the Gasthaus Irving, in Lausanne. Can you send someone to pick them up?”
Schwenger frowned, then nodded agreement.
“Let me call the reception desk there.” Karyn waited for Schwenger to hand over control of the desktop holo, and made the call, authorizing UNSA personnel to visit her room.
I hope I’m doing the right thing.
“The crystals are time-stamped and logged,” Karyn added, closing down the comms display. “Along with the camera. Full set. Nothing missing. No duplicates.”
The Frau Doktor made the arrangements for pick-up, closed the call, then opened up a second session. But she minimized and silenced the display, then clasped her hands and looked directly at Karyn.
“Thank you, Pilot Candidate McNamara. We appreciate your cooperation.”
“Just doing my duty: we can’t let misguided UNSA personnel put our public standing at risk.”
“I agree with you, of course.”
“Sheer good luck I found out about them . . . You know, I take my career very seriously.” Meaning: she was prepared to throw it away, if she had to.
The slightest narrowing of ice-blue eyes. “That’s good, Pilot Candidate. How are your plans progressing?”
“I’m speaking openly”—both of them smiled at that—”when I say how much I hope you’ll change the new vessel’s mission profile. As well as put me on board, of course.”
“You’re referring to Pilot Mulligan.” It was as though a mask had dropped: Schwenger’s concern looked genuine. “An effective rescue mission, though, given the timescale—”
Before Dart’s ship disintegrates. Karyn knew what she meant.
A subtle hand gesture, which Karyn almost missed. Then Schwenger leaned forward: “Officially, I accept that there are no additional copies of the stolen data. But this is off the record.”
She’s switched off a holo-log. Everything had been recorded, until now.
Assume trickery: a second holocamera might exist.
“Your price for silence,” Schwenger demanded, “is this assignment? Am I correct?”
“Yes.”
“Even if—”
“It’s not futile. Please look at this.” Karyn handed over a crystal: the projections which she and Chojun Akazawa had laboriously put together.
Holo, blossoming.
“Please.” There was no disguising the desperation in Karyn’s voice as she begged Sch
wenger to believe the data. “See here.” Her finger traced a trajectory through a twisting manifold: a representational phase-space, not physical mu-space. “It’s a kind of reverse relativity: I can reach Dart in minimal time, according to his timeline, by following this subjectively longer geodesic.”
