Permanence

by Karl Schroeder

  This view was so crassly deceptive that he couldn't stand to look at it, so he tried a few other views of the city, finally settling on a garden view that emphasized the bowers and fountains that really did dot the streets. He found an outdoor cafe and sat in the sun sipping coffee while gene-adapted finches sang to him from their perches among the crimson leaves of bright bamboolike trees. With some judicious tuning he was able to bring the brightly clad citizenry back into this view and he watched them go by for a while, enjoying the ambience.

  The expedition would be leaving for Jentry's Envy in a couple of days. Dr. Herat had given Michael the choice: He could come along or stay behind. The offer was made with seeming lightness, but both knew the implications. This investigation was not like any of the others and it would likely last for years. If Michael stayed behind, he would be leaving Dr. Herat's employ.

  Common sense told him it was time to leave. He had to resolve his own problems; he couldn't put it off.

  And how would he do that? He could return to Kimpurusha— but the monasteries had become gaming houses and he didn't know if he could find any of the brothers if he tried. Anxious and depressed, he finished his coffee and went walking again.

  His footsteps seemed to naturally lead him into the older quarter of the city. Here he was able to switch off inscape entirely, and merely enjoy the architecture for its own sake. Human hands had crafted the stones here for the eyes of generations yet unborn, but not unimagined.

  As he was crossing a plaza that had once had an active fountain at its center, he heard a distant clap of sound. At first he took no notice, since the city was full of noises. Then the clap came back to him, from the buildings across the plaza: an echo of a distant and apparently powerful explosion.

  Michael shaded his eyes and looked up. A twisting contrail rose up from outside the city, vanishing almost directly overhead. That looked like a rocket launch.

  Another bang came from the opposite direction. He turned, and this time he saw the thing rising from somewhere in the suburbs. Michael had time to realize that he shouldn't be standing where he was before the one directly overhead exploded.

  The flash was insignificant, merely making him blink. With it came a loud clicking that seemed to come from inside his own head. And the bone behind his right ear felt hot suddenly. That was all: But throughout the plaza, people who had been walking like him only seconds ago were falling to the cobblestones, like dancers obeying music he couldn't hear.

  And that was it, of course. He felt behind his ear. The skin there was quite warm— and that, of course, was where his inscape antenna was located, inside the bone. He didn't need to try accessing inscape to know his implants had been fried by the microwave bomb that had gone off a kilometer overhead.

  Those who were using inscape at the time— nearly everybody— would have had their world go mad for an instant. There were too many fail-safes in the implant system to permit real brain damage, but these people were as stunned as though lightning had hit right next to them.

  Michael took a few steps toward the nearest person, some vague notion of helping in his mind. Then he noticed how the few others who had not fallen were jogging purposefully across the plaza, in the direction of downtown. As he watched, one drew a pistol from inside his tunic.

  Only now did Michael start to feel afraid. He was caught outside in the middle of a rebel attack. Common sense told him he should get indoors before real missiles— the explosive kind— started flying. It wasn't the fear that paralyzed him for long seconds, though, but simple déjà vu. He had seen this happen before.

  Nor was it fear for his physical safety that had him turning in his tracks, looking for another exit from the plaza, but the realization that if he were caught up in a mass police sweep, they would find his rebel history. Herat might be able to vouch for him; then again, he might not.

  Michael ran away from the city center, leaping over people who lay groaning and clutching their heads. He crossed an avenue full of cars, all stopped in orderly lines, drivers slumped in their seats. As he ran he remembered that other time years ago, when he had run through similarly silent, shocked streets carrying dispatches on foot because inscape was down, wire and fiber had been cut, and microwave bombs continued to go off, regular as a metronome. He remembered the echoes, which had bounced between tower and mountain over and over until the louder thunder of government lasers cutting down from orbit had drowned them out.

  The rebels would use the current confusion to finish what the microwave bombs had started. They would go on an orgy of destruction in which not a single stone of the city would be damaged, but the values in every nanotag would be wiped clean. Ownership, credit histories, monetary value itself resided in the physical objects traded in these streets. There were no central records, as there might have been in centuries past. In the Rights Economy, information was immanent, and by the time the rebels were done, the citizens of this city would no longer own anything, not even the shoes on their feet. Whole inscape domains would be erased, taking with them jobs and pensions.

  Any object that lost its nanotags automatically became government property, so hard-working people and those who had lived for generations in ancestral homes here would see their properties expropriated. The farmers who had brought their produce to sell no longer owned that produce. The government knew this would drive people into the rebel cause in droves, but they had no alternative. Their orders came from Earth, after all. Earth was very far away, and the Rights Owners there would not be sympathetic.

  As people climbed to their feet, they would begin to realize all this, and then the rage would come. Within an hour, the city center would be a riot scene. Anyone identified as a rebel would be lynched, but that hardly mattered because resentment against the government economic hardship would drive those who had done the lynching into the rebel fold eventually, in weeks or months.

  Michael circled the city, panting with exertion after the first few minutes. People were getting back to their feet, cursing and helping one another up. Some watched him go by suspiciously. And in the distance, he heard the sound of aircars droning low over the buildings.

  New echoes came: "R-r-r-remain calm calm calm." Police cars spun in fans of dust ahead of Michael. Officers were leaping out into a milling crowd of workers who were locked out of their office building because its AI doorman no longer recognized them. Michael tried to hang back, but the growing crowd behind him was pushing him forward. Before he knew what was happening he was in a sea of running people, and he heard guns firing. Someone started screaming.

  Somehow he managed to make it to an alley, and from there to an underground highway used by automated freight vehicles. Light came from ceiling grates; the vehicles were all frozen in place, and so he wove among them, and by this means made his way back to the streets near the Redoubt.

  A few minutes later he paused at the top of the hill to look back at the city. Smoke was rising from a dozen places in the towers, which were now all unrelenting gray, the illusion of faerie riches ripped away. Michael stood still for a minute, letting his breathing slow as he tried to compose himself. Then he walked through the gates into the Redoubt. Just inside the doors, he let himself slump against the walls. He'd made it.

  "Dr. Bequith?"

  He looked up. A slim figure clad in black stood before him. Rue Cassels was inscrutable behind her black sunglasses, but her forehead was pinched in the suggestion of worry. "What's happened?" she asked. "You look like you've run a marathon!"

  "I have." He turned and put his back to the cool stone. "Rebel attack— on the city…"

  "You were there?"

  He started to nod, but a commotion from deeper inside the Redoubt caught his attention.

  Rue Cassels pointed. Someone was shouting at the gates to the garden— several people, one yelling, "Help!"

  They ran that way. The entrance to the garden was one of those giant valve doors that were the only egress from the Redoubt. A woman crouched there. "Go
ds and kami, gods and kami," she was saying. A small knot of people was clustered around her and something lying on the ground. These all looked like local people, Michael noted— townsmen come to trade to the large transient population that stayed in the Redoubt.

  "They're on their way," said a man as he stood. At his feet a woman lay in a position that couldn't possibly be comfortable; Michael's scalp crawled as he realized she was dead.

  "Linda!" Dr. Herat had appeared from somewhere. He knelt beside the prone figure and only now did Michael realize who this was. His vision dimmed for a moment from the shock.

  "Dr. Ophir," whispered Rue. "What happened…"

  "Shot," said the young man who had just stood. "I found her like this— it was just a minute ago! Whoever it is…" He gestured vaguely at the entrance hall, which was the way Michael had come.

  "No, they must be gone by now." The woman who spoke looked around herself nervously.

  Michael felt sick. Had he not gone walking in the city, he might have been with her and able to shield or hide her from the killer. Or he might have been killed as well…

  He had to distance himself and so looked clinically and closely at everyone in the small crowd. Then he turned his attention to the body. Dr. Ophir's eyes were open, but her face was expressionless. She lay on her side, one arm flung back, and there was blood all over her chest and back. There wasn't much blood on the ground where she lay, but a splash of it stained the great doors that towered above her. Only a weapon could cause such a wound and not the sort of trifling rat-shooter you could buy from standard black market sources. This had punched a hole right through her chest.

  Yes. This was just like that other time, when having been caught, Michael was marched through the streets by troops of the Reconquista, his message pack in the hands of the squad leader. They had passed Michael's designated rendezvous point and there in a doorway a man had lain crumpled like Dr. Ophir, with a hole in his neck and the same expression of dull surprise on his face.

  And standing next to that dead man…

  He turned away.

  "It's the rebels," someone said. "Look, they didn't touch her satchel."

  "Who is she? A visitor?"

  Dr. Herat took Michael's arm and led him inside. Herat's other hand encircled Rue Cassels's arm.

  "I've called Crisler," said Herat. "We'll tell him all about it. But from what you said to me the other day, Bequith, I don't think you'd fancy having to explain ourselves to the local authorities." Captain Cassels pursed her lips for a second, her head turning almost imperceptibly in Michael's direction.

  "But who could have done such a thing?" she said. "Why?"

  "The rebels?" It took a moment for Michael to realize Dr. Herat was asking him. He felt a surge of resentment at the implication that he might know.

  He shook his head— not to deny it, but in confusion. "Why would rebels do this? — shoot one person, then run? It doesn't make sense. Unless…"

  "What?"

  "Unless the rebels know about the expedition."

  "People know about us," said Cassels. "We got interviewed and everything."

  "They don't know about Jentry's Envy, do they?" asked Michael.

  "Well, we said it was a wrecked halo cycler. Nobody knew the alien bit except the people we contacted— the ones who got us in touch with the admiral."

  Michael and the professor exchanged a glance. "Somebody knows," said Herat.

  The captain wanted to talk to her people, so they escorted her back to her chambers. Then Dr. Herat and Michael went to find Crisler.

  On the way, Dr. Herat said, "Does any of this make it easier for you to decide?"

  "Decide what?"

  "Are you coming along on this trip, or not?"

  "I can't leave you now, after what's just happened."

  "That's ridiculous, son. I can take care of myself."

  Michael shook his head. It was shameful, the bombs, the people falling, and his own race through the streets— all this had made him feel alive in a way he hadn't felt in years. Something fundamental had happened today, and memories were flooding back of his brief time with the rebels: the excitement, the feeling of commitment.

  There was one other memory that he could not deny, though. On the day when they had made their attack and Michael had been captured, he had been marched through the streets and had seen the body of a friend, shot like Linda Ophir had been today.

  Standing next to that body, laughing with a colonel of the security forces, had been Michael's commander, Errend. Errend, free and relaxed, watching Michael being marched past after having betrayed all his comrades to the army.

  "I'm going with you," Michael said firmly.

  PART THREE

  Jentry's Envy

  10

  W AKING CAME SLOWLY. For a while Rue drifted, wondering why the sounds around her were so like her habitat on the Envy and yet different— pumps whirred, voices muttered through the plastic walls, but not the pumps she was used to; and these voices were different. She blinked at the ceiling for a few seconds, realized she was on the Banshee, then groaned, rolled over, and tried to bury herself under the pillow.

  Her alarm chimed again. In the past she'd been able to ignore such things; even if Jentry yelled at her for being late, nothing was really riding on her shoulders. Now, she had her people to think about. And Creepy Crisler and his band of merry men and those oh-so-serious scientists who were sharpening their knives even now for the dissection of her cycler.

  Which they were going to do today, she realized. They had been at the Envy for two weeks now, four full days out of cold sleep. Everything was set to start exploring.

  The thought of them going out without her supervision galvanized Rue. She threw off the covers and hurried to the bathroom. Tomorrow, she thought as she sat staring at the fake wood paneling. Tomorrow I will sleep in. She knew if she repeated this mantra once every day, after a few hundred repetitions it might come true.

  The habitat balloons of the Banshee were palatial compared to her shuttle. Together the two balloons totalled twelve decks of large rooms and ample private space. There were labs, garrisons and weapons lockers, a complete medical facility and a gym. The lights were kept at Earth-normal most of the time, so she wore her sunglasses everywhere; luckily she had finally adapted to higher temperatures, so the twenty degrees Celsius air no longer made her wilt.

  Her crew were awake now, though not entirely up to speed; despite their loginess, today would be their first EVA.

  Rue's stateroom had a window, another contrast to her first time out. She turned the lights off to watch the stars wheel by. They looked no different than they had from Allemagne; she even recognized some constellations. In Rights Economy terms, she was still next door to Erythrion— and only two dozen light-years from Earth.

  She turned away from the window with reluctance. There had been a couple of times when she'd had panic attacks standing here; looking out at the stars had been the only thing that had calmed her. Now, looking out had become a ritual.

  After taking a couple of deep breaths, she fixed a confident smile on her face and stepped out into the curving hall of B Dormitory. A few of Crisler's people nodded to her in passing; the soldiers had a habit of checking her out, pushing the envelope of propriety, but they were always faultlessly polite when she spoke to them. Everybody radiated confidence; they were at the Envy and ready to start investigating its secrets.

  They weren't like her— they were graduates of the finest universities, disciplined military minds. She was just a woman from the middle of nowhere, yet they treated her like an equal. It made her want to scream.

  She entered the galley and immediately Corinna waved at her from an otherwise empty table. Blair had a tray and was headed that way too and she saw Max talking to the chef. Good. She nodded at Corinna, but before heading over there she took a detour.

  Crisler sat with Dr. Herat, the lead scientist, at a table in the back of the room. Rue clenched her fists, loosened
them and walked up to the two men. "How are you gentlemen this morning?"

  They both nodded and greeted her courteously. Max had a term for guys like these: alpha males. Both men were instinctively dominant. They reminded her a lot of Jentry and having that frame of reference helped her. Alphas couldn't be coerced, but they could always be tricked; before Max had revealed that she owned Jentry's Envy, she had let him serve as foil with Crisler while she nosed around on her own. Now that he knew about her, Crisler was wary. She had been trying to appear young and naive around him, but lately was regretting that strategy. You become what you pretend.

  Dr. Herat was a lot harder to figure out than Crisler. He seemed utterly relaxed, as usual. Being at the cycler seemed to have no effect on him, except maybe to increase his already considerable enthusiasm.

  She remembered how she had been before her first EVA to Lake Flaccid. She'd thrown up. It wasn't the environment that had wrought her nerves that time— from the outside, Lake Flaccid bore a remarkable resemblance to Allemagne. It was no colder here than where she had grown up. No, it was a fear that hied her back to old stories about robbing graves. The cycler was cold and silent, after all: It was likely that it was in fact a tomb. She still felt uneasy whenever she thought about all the places here that they had yet to visit.