Forge of Heaven

by C. J. Cherryh

  And Dortland stopped him. Which meant Dortland didn't want that on record, either. So where was truth?

  But at a certain remove-he didn't care. He didn't give a damn. He had had all the doubts his mind could hold. He had laid his course.

  He looked up at Jewel, feeling himself inexplicably short of breath, about to do something he never could have envisioned doing. At a certain stage of his life he might have considered Judy and Kathy, but they had both distanced themselves from him-deserted him, if he consulted his gut. And fixing this mess was up to him.

  To get his necessary moves past Dortland, whose agents could intercept and stifle a message from his communication system, just like that ship, he counted on one conduit, his opposite number in the Outsider government-the very man he should be most nervous about trusting. and the one whose physical lines were the most immune to that ship out there, and to Dortland. Everyone considered that Outsider communications flowed almost universally by tap, immune to anything but physical eavesdropping on the sender. But there were internal office nets, well shielded. And a few shielded outside lines, which Outsiders guarded jealously, absolutely licensed to protect themselves and their communications from that ship and from Dortland, by force of arms if need be.

  On a station riddled with surveillance, Brazis had the physical lines he needed.

  "Ms. Jewel."

  "Jewel."

  "Of course." Outsider names. No Ms. He copied the computer file, Kekellen's letter, and gave it to her. He wondered where the bugs in his office did reside. But the kind he had to fear now were the kind that could focus their pickup through several walls, the highly professional and elaborate kind that Dortland commanded. "It's important the Chairman understands my official position. Extremely."

  "Yes, sir," Jewel said, and took the item into her keeping, in a button-purse she wore at her waist, clearly understanding where that was supposed to go.

  "I'm sending Ernst to walk you home. With thanks to Brazis for your help. I hope you'll convey that, personally. Take care."

  "Yes, sir." Jewel's eyes flicked left and right, as if a threat might be evident in the walls, resident with the ages-sealed lizards-or she might be aware of electronics he couldn't detect. She might be amped. The ability of some of these couriers was legend. "Thank you, sir. I will thank him for you."

  "Good," he said, and relayed the order to Ernst to go with her. Ernst gave him a look-Ernst hadn't gotten such a request since Kathy's last rebellion, in far safer times for the governor to be sitting in his office absolutely undefended.

  "Shall I ask Mr. Dortland to send someone to my office for the interim?" Ernst asked.

  "No," he said. "I'm sure I'll be fine. That's a firm order, Ernst. Go. Use the lift key. I want you back here as soon as possible."

  "Yes, sir."

  Dubious, clearly worried, Ernst left with Jewel, who was physically carrying a message for the ondat.

  He'd done it. And he had to sit and wait, and rethink his course of action, now that it was, positing Ernst's reliability and Brazis's agreement, sliding toward irrevocability.

  The clientele at Michaelangelo's was glamorous, even if the place was gray and aged. Glorious creatures enjoyed drinks, and Algol, their rescuer, secured their lodgings, showed them up to a trendy room, then took them back down where the Fashionables gathered, set them at a table and asked them what they would have.

  "Blanc," Mignette said, "Couredin." It was what her father always had when he took them out, and she knew it was pricey.

  "Beer," Noble said. "A lager."

  "Just a lager, modest fellow?" Algol ran a light finger along Noble's stiff shoulder and waved a circular gesture toward the bar. "Couredin for the daring Mignette. A good common lager for this unassuming boy, who makes no greater demands of life."

  A ripple of laughter. Several people got up to stand near and stare at them. Mignette stared back at the most extraordinary faces she'd ever seen-green eyes, lavender lips, tattoos that glowed and changed constantly in serpentine patterns. Noble, slouched in his chair, looked miserable.

  A hand brushed her shoulders. A white face loomed near. "What are you doing tonight, petite?"

  "I'm with Noble," she said. Not Algol. It was scary to be asked by a grown-up stranger. Noble was safe. She'd thought once he was a handsome boy, but Noble lost all his luster among these people, and she saw the sulk that made a hard line of his mouth. She was scared he would blow up at someone and get hurt.

  "Well," Algol said, winding down into the next chair. He brushed her cheek, lifted her chin on a finger. "Loyalty. So much loyalty and virtue in such an appealing little package. Let us educate this novice gentleman. Let us provide him critique, and improve him."

  "He's all right," she said desperately, but someone else had moved up on Noble, a young man who ran fingers through Noble's hair.

  "This needs changing."

  Another: "The skin needs improvement."

  Noble jerked free of the fingers and reached for her hand, pulling at her. "Come on, Mignette. We can find somewhere better than this."

  "Oh, I don't think so, little flower." Algol leaned close to her, pinned her other arm to the table. "The streets are very dangerous right now. And there's so little to improve about you, and so much to be done for your friend."

  "Mignette," Noble said, sounding desperate.

  "I want to leave now," she said, and tried to get up, but Algol was stronger than he looked. He imposed a grip like iron, Noble was pulling her other hand, and they were surrounded by these inhabitants of the place, these glamorous, these suddenly threatening presences.

  She fought to get free of Algol's grip. And couldn't. "Noble," she cried, "run!"

  Noble tried. They caught him in a net of interlaced arms, harmlessly, laughing at him, and Algol effortlessly held her hand so she couldn't get up to help him. "No, no, no," Algol said, patting her arm above that painful grip. "Little Mignette, stay put. Don't be so silly. You're among kindred souls. Perfectly safe. He had it coming."

  A waiter, someone, set the wine and the beer on the table.

  She suddenly remembered you should never eat or drink on the street, if you couldn't guarantee the bottle. And the wine and the beer were in glasses, moisture like jewels on the outside of liquid lightest and darkest gold, on a scarred tabletop in a dingy bar, surrounded by beautiful faces.

  "Your wine," Algol said, and, releasing her wrist, edged the glass toward her with an elegant fingertip. He smiled engagingly, half red, half black, with patterns twisting across his skin. The eyes flickered from dark to fire. "Dear Mignette. Trust me. It's quite safe."

  She conceived a plan to get to the door. She relaxed. She looked in Algol's eyes-one dark, one fire-and let her hand under his go limp. He slid the wine toward her.

  She reached out and took the stem in her fingers.

  And threw the contents at his eyes, and lunged for her feet.

  Noble shoved at the people holding him. She ducked past that struggling knot and grabbed the door latch-latches always had to open from the inside. The law said so.

  It was locked.

  Place to sit. Procyon wanted that, just a dark little nook between fa‡ades. He found a grimy green molding to sit on, a plastic continuation of a store windowsill around the corner into a false window. His knees were shaky. His forehead hurt. He was fevered. It felt like nanos kicking in, that overheated, overflushed condition, blushing right down to the scratches on his fingers. The blood flaked off. Skin there was pink, scrapes, not scratches, where Gide's nails had raked him.

  Flash of Gide, lying there, Gide wanting not to be touched.

  Then dark, the bots and the chute. He smelled ammonia, still clinging to him, and a green glow grew in memory. His heart raced, fear flooding his system with chemicals that only made the nano-feeling worse. Maybe the Project nanocele had some hidden tricks. Repair capability outside its ordinary sites. At least that was how he rationalized the sick, fevered feeling in his stomach. He hoped so. />
  Flashes of that dark kept intruding, trying to surface. He saw a shadow. He didn't know what he'd seen, what had happened to him. He felt rubbery, wet touches on his face, soft and clinging.

  His fingers were shaking. He clenched one hand in the other, trying to stop it. He couldn't figure how, step by step, he'd gotten into this mess.

  Dark place. And something like shredded cloth. Cloth that moved. He'd seen dim photos of ondat. That was what his brain kept insisting. He felt that touch. Smelled ammonia.

  He didn't know why the headache became blindingly severe every time he thought of it.

  A dark place. A lancing pain.

  He sat somewhere else, on the tiles in a service nook, facing one of the service accesses. A cleaner bot darted out, right in his face. He lurched to his feet, back to the wall, avoiding it, and turned and ran.

  A shadow blocked his path, an envelopment of cloth, a hard, opposing body and an iron grip on his arm between him and the neon light outside the service nook.

  "Procyon!" the man said forcefully-one of the Project agents, he thought, one of Brazis's men, who knew him by name. He struggled, not to get away, only to free his arm, and stared at the black-coated man, who looked to belong in the Trend, but whose grip was damned hard to break.

  The man as suddenly let him go, staring at him with green, shocked eyes.

  Nothing made sense. But Brazis wouldn't let him go. He began backing away.

  "Wait," the man said. "Procyon. Procyon Stafford."

  Dark, dark and green light. He didn't trust it. He didn't trust anything now. He took out running down Blunt, hugging the edge of the walk, in the green neon. Normal traffic clogged the street, walkers of every sort. He dodged in and out of the traffic, and took refuge in a dark little bar he recognized from his student days. The Grotto. Low profile. Cheap.

  Safe. Safe for the moment. His thinking mind was trying to come back on-line, and he melted back to the wall and into a chair at a vacant table, head bowed, chest heaving while he caught his breath and his balance and tried to get the dark and the touch and the smell out of his head. He didn't look up at anybody, didn't invite being looked at.

  He felt as much as saw a shadow come into the place, then, and when he did venture a look up under his hands he saw a shadow that could belong here, just a man in a long dark coat, moving among the Trend fringe and bottom crawlers that frequented the Grotto. Moving with the persistence of a hunter.

  It was the man from the nook he'd fled. The man was still tracking him.

  Procyon kept his head down, hands shading his eyes, his arms in the pose of a man protecting his drink.

  Dark. Pain centered on his forehead.

  The man had gone, when he ventured a sidelong glance. He found a breath. A waiter slouched over, wanting an order or else.

  He needed his card. He tried to think of something, an order. "Beer," he said, and the waiter went off. But intelligence cut in. Wariness. If he used his card, they could find him.

  He didn't wait for the beer. He got up, and tried to walk, and all of a sudden the tap cut in like electric shock through his brain.

  "Boy."

  Luz. Or the Ila. He gripped the rounded table edge, sank down and discovered the chair, finding difficulty controlling his limbs even to fall into it.

  "Boy, listen to me. There's an outlaw tap near you, someone not on the Project system. Shut down! Shut down now!"

  He tried to shut down. He tried. He shunted blood away from that the tap toward his fingertips, as hard as he could, and breathed small controlled breaths, feeling the whole world blur as he tried to keep his feet. If the man following him had left, he might have reported to get help. He had to get out of here.

  "You." It was the waiter. With the beer. And the waiter backed up. Staring at him.

  Flurry of flashes behind his eyes. He recognized pattern in the blinks. He didn't know what it was or what it meant.

  He turned full circle. Caught a pale phosphorescent glow in the mirror above the bar, glow on a shadowy figure.

  It was him. His forehead glowed with gold light. Looping curls of light, all in a circle on his skin.

  Even mirror-reversed, he knew that sign. It was the symbol on ondat ships. On doors that should never be opened. On items the ondat wanted. Everyone on the station knew it and avoided it.

  Ondat property. Don't touch.

  The waiter edged farther away from him. Patrons cleared the area, chairs overturning. People yelled.

  He was the center of it. He was scared, heart-pounding scared. He tried to organize his pulse in a forbidden, desperate tap to the office, and shooting pain in his ear all but dropped him to the floor. He was in a dark room deserted except for the waiter, and the woman behind the bar.

  "Call the cops," the woman said, but he didn't stay for that. He got his feet under him and walked out, back onto the street, keeping to the shadows. Ordinary traffic reassured him. People didn't run.

  Until one drunk, coming directly at him, melted aside from his path with a look of horror.

  The man in the black coat had tried to grab him and he had run. Maybe that was a mistake. Maybe it had been rescue, back there, and he'd run right where the Project didn't want him-into public, which was the last thing the Project ever wanted its people to do, but other people were looking at him now, people stopping one another and pointing, and getting away.

  He couldn't tap in. He needed a public phone. He tried to spot one. Meanwhile he kept walking, trying the tap, desperately.

  "This is Procyon," he said to the empty air. His head buzzed, and he thought for a fleeting instant he might have a contact. "I'm on Blunt. I think I'm on Blunt. I need help."

  He heard a hum.

  He looked down. One of the cleaner-bots raced along near his feet. He shied off from it, staggering, vision full of flashing lights. He hit a window, caught his balance, and ran, knocking into traffic, people crying out in alarm, dodging away from him, one determined to fight, and then dodging back. He ran until his side hurt, and then he walked, weaving as he went, in a street where people stood along the fringes and stared.

  Long-dot-dot-dot-long, the signal in his head said: a long-dot-dot-dot-long that sounded like the alarms everybody on the station learned from infancy.

  Long-dot-dot-dot-long became a flash, flash, flash of lights in his eyes, then dot-dot, the signal that meant Avoid.

  He shied off from the direction he was going, and got the long-dot-dot-dot-long again.

  He stopped, stood blind, but thinking maybe Brazis was trying to get through to him that way, audio pared down to its simplest on-off signal. Go, don't go.

  He walked, and when he went one way, he heard the run-signal, and when he went another he heard the avoid signal.

  "Sir?" he said. "Sir? Anybody? Can you hear me?"

  "Marak!" Hati said, and Marak sat still, in the first hard spatters of rain, with beshti moaning and complaining near them, with wind tearing at the tarp that was their shelter. He was cold, but sat bolt upright, after forcing his way through the relays. Makers rushed to his defense, heating his body with fever.

  He had confronted the Ila within the system. She had not opposed him.

  But something had blocked him. He was angry, and took Hati's warm hand to be sure of Hati's safety while he hurled his indignation at Ian.

  "Ian!" he demanded.

  And Ian said: "Luz?"

  "Something is wrong," Luz said. "Something is very wrong. The Ila says so and I believe her, in this. The boy was absent from the system, and now something else is on the system, something that ought not to be there. There is an outlaw tap. Get off. Get completely out of the system."

  "Marak." That was Auguste, faint and far and wounded. "Are you all right, omi?"

  "What's happening?" other voices asked, most in the accent of the heavens, echoing into one another.

  "Shut down!" Ian said sharply, through the racket. Walls that separated one tap from another were tumbling down. Everything dissolved
in a babble of voices, and Marak shut down quickly, seized on both Hati's hands and made sure she was paying full attention to him.

  Her braids blew in the gale. Lightning flickered across her face, dark eyes staring into his, deep as the dark, deep as caves into the earth.

  "Attack in the heavens," he said to her. "The whole system is threatened."

  "Let Procyon go," she urged him fervently, nails biting into his hands, Hati, who had always detested the system. "Damn Brazis and all his watchers. They can go begging a hundred years, and who on earth will miss them? Let us get out of here!"