“You don’t need to anymore,” said Medusa.
Whether that was because most of the monsters had been killed on the party shuttle or because no one would be willing to cross someone who was paired with a Medusa unit, no one felt inclined to say.
We made our way to the movers from Adem’s lonely, almost-fancy corner of Olympia. It occurred to me that the message these surroundings had sent to the Kotos after the destruction of Titania had far more impact than it would have done for me. What to me had seemed enchanting and cozy had been a symbol to them of the slow demise of their clan.
Adem was walking with his back to us. We moved closer, silently. When we judged we could do so without alarming him, we broke his neck, and then we lowered him gently to the ground.
We had moved so quickly, his expression never changed. That mercy was the best I could offer him. Because Adem had lied.
We went back into his quarters and found the cup that would have been mine. It sat next to the pot and Adem’s cup. I had said no to his offer, yet my cup had a small amount of liquid in the bottom. I’m assuming he would have poured my tea into that mixture. Medusa dipped a tentacle into it. After a few minutes, she said,
Adem’s heart rate and pupils hadn’t changed that much when he lied about his collusion with Baylor. But they changed just enough to tell me what I needed to know. His offer to help me understand the Executives tipped the balance. That, and his prior communications with Baylor Charmayne concerning Sezen’s suitability as a bride for Ryan. Adem didn’t keep silent because he missed his sister and wanted a substitute. He kept silent because he didn’t want his leverage to evaporate.
After I was exposed, his support of the Music in Education bill gave him back the leverage he’d lost. And he became the perfect ally for Baylor’s power grab. But Baylor underestimated Adem. I could not have afforded to do the same.
His sister, whom he was pimping out to Baylor. I sighed.
We locked the Koto quarters and bundled Adem’s body into the movers, completely unaware, despite our presumably superior resources, that someone was dogging our steps.
38
An Imperfect Killer
If you’re going to be the Grand Motherfucker, you can’t have loved ones. Sooner or later, someone will kill them to get back at you.
I wouldn’t do that—necessarily. In my case, vengeance takes a back seat to my long-term mission. But somebody will—usually the Lesser Motherfuckers who are vying with you for power. Even the least of them can damage you beyond repair, given the right motivation.
But how much had any of that influenced Baylor Charmayne when he decided to murder the piggies? Was it a plan he and his mother had cooked up years ago? How I wish I had asked him that before I killed him. Now that the dust had settled, I could see I had been hasty. Though I am a killer, I am no Grand Motherfucker. I fear for my loved ones. In my opinion, that makes me all the more dangerous. Baylor could testify to that.
Adem was no GM either. He had lied about quite a lot, and he had put his sister in Baylor’s path, but her loss had injured him. He would have risen to the duty of speaking for his shattered clan, and I suspected he would have acquitted himself well in that role. Too damn well. But he never would have gotten over his sadness.
Not that it would have stopped him from creating more of it. His private garden included some of the deadliest plants.
Oddly, the one best equipped to get over her sadness was Edna Charmayne. After Adem “committed suicide,” I paid Edna a visit to ask her to represent the Constantins in the House of Clans. I went alone, because I wanted Edna to see that I was the woman she had once liked, the one she had warned when she thought Sezen was in danger.
I was ushered into the office of a young woman who immediately reminded me of her grandmother, because Edna sat at a writing desk, engaged in correspondence.
But she smiled when I came in. And there was genuine affection in her tone. “Miriam and Halka told me you were alive. That’s something, anyway. What should I call you now?”
“Call me Oichi.” I explained why I was there. I couldn’t tell whether my proposal surprised her, but I could at least see that it didn’t upset her.
“I can do it,” she said. “In fact, I’ve gotten a lot of messages from Micah Constantin. You may not remember meeting him, but my grandmother tried to force Sezen Koto to marry him.”
“I do remember him. Not a bad fellow.”
“No, not a bad fellow at all. As the head of the Constantin clan, I can take him under my wing and make sure he marries someone he likes.”
Did you marry someone you liked? I wanted to ask her, because she seemed anything but shattered. “As a voting member, you’ll have to pair with a Medusa unit,” I said. “Are you comfortable with that?”
“Yes.” She gestured to her stylus and pad. “If nothing else, it will make all this easier.” She gazed at me for a long moment. “Oichi, did you ever think of asking me to join your insurrection?”
“I did. But I decided you should be free to pursue your own agenda. I didn’t want to endanger you.”
She laughed. “Yes, because I certainly would have considered removing my grandmother from the picture, given half a chance.”
Did I call that? I really did.
Edna sobered again. “Marco hoped I would move on from all that. If nothing else, I can honor his memory by living up to the potential he saw in me. I accept your offer, Oichi. You can count me in.”
I called Miriam and Halka to attend Edna’s pairing. I asked Medusa to do the operation, and explained her lofty position to Edna. I wanted her to know how much we valued her.
“You’ll spend the night with us,” Miriam said when it was done and Edna had named her unit Elizabeth (after an ancient queen). “We’ll have a little ceremony.”
Edna smiled at them, and now she could not have looked less like her grandmother.
I left them to their celebration. Edna was the last end I had hoped to tie up—or at least, the last one with whom I had a personal connection. I didn’t even have Medusa with me as I wandered away through the tunnels, without much direction. As the Mistress of Units, Medusa had her tentacles full with assignments and candidates. And the children were only half-done with their project of creating Minis—which had become very popular now that people had met Kitten, Teddy, et al.
Do they need me anymore? I wondered. Even at the time, it sounded self-indulgent, but I rather enjoyed the luxury. Poor me, so consumed with my plans for so many years, and now superfluous. The revolution had gotten away from me. I may as well retire into my music library and watch all Nuruddin’s movies to get the jump on the next movie discussion meeting.
It was an odd feeling to wander without the desire to go anywhere in particular. Probably I would have picked a destination on my own, eventually. But I didn’t feel lonely yet, and it wasn’t quiet inside my head. By then, anyone with an implant could listen in on a considerable amount of chatter from people, Medusa units, and Minis. People were exploring Olympia both inside and out, and pretty soon my halfhearted attempts at self-pity were overwhelmed by the good spirits.
And then a voice broke into my reverie.
I recognized the annoying tone.
On everything.
* * *
All networks on Olympia went down. Anyone who had been exploring the outside was now stranded out there. They had their Medusa units with them, but I wasn’t sure if the communications failure included air lock codes. Anyone outside might have to stay put until the null zone was turned off. If they had to wait too long, we could lose them.
I ran to the nearest mover.
On my way to the Habitat Sector, I harbored no illusions about why Sultana had told me to come alone. Without Medusa, I would not be the deadly weapon who could move faster than their eyes could follow. I would be an imperfect killer, at best.
But I have to admit, I was curious about what they would tell me when Medusa wasn’t around. That’s my excuse for running right into the danger—concern for the safety of my Medusa clansmen coupled with morbid curiosity.
You may recall Baylor’s Grand Ballroom from my description of the party to which Gennady had squired me. It consisted of a large entryway where people could be seen as they came in and a rotunda where they could be channeled out of the way of new people arriving. When I walked in, I felt dwarfed in that grandeur. I seemed to be alone.
At the far end of that space, beyond the rotunda, the ornate doors that led to the garden were shut. The cutlery carts that had been wheeled in after Baylor’s last party were still standing on either side of the rotunda. That gave me a shiver.
I walked into the rotunda. There weren’t many places where someone could hide in there, but there were one or two, and I felt compelled to check them out. No one lurked there. “Are you going to stand me up?” I called in the voice I had composed for Sezen Koto.
“We’re here.” Sultana spoke from the arrival area. I turned and saw her standing with Tetsuko. Behind them, the arrival doors spun shut. They advanced on me, one on each side.
I stood my ground. I had no desire to engage in a comic chase with them. “There are people stranded outside Olympia,” I said. “You should allow them to come in.”
“They can get in. We don’t waste assets if we don’t have to.” Sultana was the one who wore the smirk this time.
Tetsuko had lost his. Now he was looking at me with the expression of someone who sees a bug he wants to squash.
I took a step back, in the general direction of the cutlery carts. I wondered if I could survive a little longer if I put one of them between us.
“I thought the Medusa units were your assets,” I said.
Sultana’s laugh was as dissonant as her speaking voice. “Actually, they’re standing in the way of our assets, in my opinion. But the Weapons Clan doesn’t see it that way.”
“So they’re not chasing you,” I said. “They’re your bosses.”
Sultana shrugged. “We’re contractors. We’ll be splitting a big paycheck, once we hand you over to the people who made you. After we’re done with you here, we’ll round up Ashur and his friends. They’re the most valuable assets on Olympia.”
Your children! Baylor had said. Just how defiant do you think you’ll be when your children’s lives are on the line?
That was what made me snap and kill him. But I had been too hasty. I had done the one thing my father had advised me not to do, acted before thinking. I let my emotions get the better of me, and I hadn’t understood what he was actually trying to say.
He shares some of the blame, though. If he could have, for once in his life, simply come out and said, The Weapons Clan are planning to enslave us all! They’ll keep our children hostage! that certainly would have gotten my attention. It might have saved his life.
But Baylor’s speech habits had been shaped by his mother’s, and they never spoke that plainly. It was the perfect storm, that last conversation between a Servant and an Executive.
“Finally figuring it out, Oichi?” Sultana closed the distance between us. “Honestly, you don’t seem to have gotten the lion’s share of the supersmart alien DNA.”
I started to edge back, thinking once again about how much time I could buy with a cutlery cart, but Tetsuko proved that he had some useful skills after all. He punched me so hard in the stomach, I would have thrown up if I could have caught my breath.
* * *
In my opinion, they had way too much fun kicking my ass. They slapped and punched and kicked me from one end of that room to the other. I found out that keeping blood out of your eyes is one of the biggest challenges of surviving a beating. That and figuring out which way is up.
“I’m kind of getting the feeling,” I panted, “that you guys are mad at me for spoiling all your plans or something.”
“You didn’t spoil a thing.” Sultana looked down her nose at me (quite a long distance, since I was on the floor). “You played right into our hands.”
“Then shouldn’t you be kissing me on the cheek instead?”
“Good point.” Sultana almost seemed to be considering the idea. Then she kicked me again.
I couldn’t get to the door, couldn’t stay on my feet, and couldn’t call for help. So I just tried to stay conscious.
“I thought you were supposed to be such a badass killer.” Sultana aimed a kick at my teeth that I barely managed to deflect with my forearm—which promptly went numb.
“She can’t kill without her Medusa unit.” Tetsuko sneered.
“Come on, Oichi, get up,” said Sultana. “You should die on your feet like a warrior. Or maybe I should just squash you like a worm.”
That insult didn’t hit me where she hoped it would, but I did manage to stand up. I really didn’t think I could deflect another kick to my teeth. I wasn’t even sure I could stay upright. I had to buy some time.
I blinked the sweat out of my eyes. “I’ve been talking to those old ships in the Graveyard. Did you know that?”
A quick glance at both of them told me they hadn’t known it.
“If you kill me,” I said, “it’s going to make them angry. They won’t forgive you.”
Tetsuko grinned. “You know what? I’m good with that. We wasted one hundred years of our lives on this dumb scheme, just so that prick Mironenko could stab us in the back. He blew up Titania to get rid of us. He trusted Baylor Charmayne not to double-cross him—how stupid was that?”
“Pretty stupid,” I had to admit.
“Let the Weapons Clan see the fallout for what he did,” said Tetsuko. “It’ll ruin the Mironenkos. And in the meantime, we’ll still get paid.”
I was about to point out that the Weapons Clan would blame Tetsuko for the fallout, not Gennady, but I could see from Sultana’s expression that she was thinking the same thing. In a flash, I understood that I wasn’t the only one who was supposed to die in that meeting.
“Tetsuko, she’s going to—” I started to say, but then Sultana kicked me so hard, the breath went out of me. I crashed into a cutlery cart and went down with it. Spilled utensils jabbed me when I rolled onto my stomach.
Tetsuko knelt beside me and grabbed my hair, pulling my head back so he could look me in the face. “You’re the only thing standing between us and a really big payday, Oichi. It’s nothing personal.”
“I know,” I said. And I slashed his neck open with the knife I had managed to palm when I had rolled onto my stomach. He staggered back, trying to stem the blood with his hands, but I had opened an artery.
I didn’t even bother to track where he fell. I pulled my limbs in and crouched there with the knife in my hand, my eyes on Sultana.
Her eyes were wide, but not with fear. “Look at you,” she said. “Acting all professional when we got sloppy. This whole time, you’ve been trying to figure out how to get to that cutlery, haven’t you.”
Since it wasn’t a question, I didn’t answer.
“I could take that knife away from you,” s
he said.
I didn’t say she couldn’t. I braced myself for her attack.
And then she ran.
* * *
I followed as fast as I could, but that wasn’t very fast. My vision blurred, and I reeled more than I ran. But I managed to keep her in sight. And pretty quickly I figured out where she was going. She got into a lift before I could catch up, so I had no choice but to get into another and send it where I thought she might go. I was pretty sure that would be an air lock in Aft Sector.
You may think I’m about to describe an epic chase with space suits and jets. But the easiest way to get from one sector to another on Olympia is from the inside, and a pursuit inside movers and lifts is not exactly something that would excite movie audiences. There’s a way better chase scene in The French Connection. And The Great Race has one that ends in an exploding cake.
The only thing that could have made us less dramatic would have been “The Girl from Ipanema” playing from overhead speakers. True, my heart was pumping pretty fast. I believed Sultana when she said she intended to kidnap our children. If she was going where I thought she was going, she could do that at her leisure, and we would never see her coming.
The final lift door opened; I lurched into the hall. At the far end, I saw a light signaling that someone was inside Lock 179. The depressurizing cycle was under way, and I couldn’t stop it.
Lock 177 was farther from the engines. But I couldn’t wait for 179 to get all the way through its cycle—and Sultana could just leave the outer door of her lock open. Even if I could override the codes, it would take longer to use that air lock than I had.
So I ran into 177 and suited up. Once I got halfway into my gear, I punched in the sequence to force open the outer door. Alarm klaxons warned me, but I had the suit pressurized before the door opened.
I launched myself into the void.
My jets took me far enough away from the door that I could see the engine rims clearly. Being out of physical contact with Olympia without Medusa made my mouth go dry, but at least I had something to do. I searched the horizon of Olympia’s Aft end for the spark of light that would reveal Sultana’s position.
Medusa Uploaded_A Novel_The Medusa Cycle Page 34
