Heart of Gold

by Sharon Shinn

  And they all caught Colt’s voice, raised for the whole lab to hear, eerily calm and freighted with the singsong malevolence of a curse: “Dishonor to you. Dishonor to your family. May you be punished according to your crimes.”

  Then more footsteps, quieter this time, and the sound of the outer door opening and falling shut. And then silence.

  * * *

  * * *

  They had all been afraid to leave their offices for the rest of the day. Dread hung over the lab, seeped in under the closed doors, wound around their uneasy fingers, and made them clumsy at their keyboards. They all listened for the sound of Cerisa leaving, but the sound did not come, and so they felt tied to their own desks and computers until the final hour of the day. In silence, they left their offices, traded glances in the halls, and shrugged to indicate that they had no news. Even Melina, who could glean information from the most casually dropped word, could not guess what had transpired.

  “Tomorrow,” she whispered to Nolan as they exited from the building. “Come early. We’ll ask Pakt.”

  And so the next morning, Nolan arrived an hour early, to find Melina ahead of him by five minutes. Pakt was not in his office yet, but neither was Cerisa, so they settled themselves in Pakt’s chairs and waited.

  “It must be bad,” Nolan said. “I don’t know much about it, but that dishonor thing sounded terrible.”

  Melina nodded. “I don’t know much about it, either. I think it’s the worst thing you can wish on somebody.”

  “Will Pakt tell us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  But Pakt, when he arrived a few minutes later, merely nodded when he saw them sitting in his office. The big guldman looked exhausted, his pale skin stretched and blotchy, his copper hair barely combed. It occurred to Nolan to wonder how old Pakt was. Today, he looked eighty. Normally he looked twenty-five years younger. It must be even worse than he and Melina suspected.

  “Is she here?” were Pakt’s first words. Melina shook her head. “All right. What do you know? What did you hear?”

  “Nothing. Except that bit about dishonor,” Melina said.

  “That’s the least of it,” Pakt said.

  “Well, tell us. If you can.”

  Pakt dropped heavily into his own chair behind his desk and rubbed his big hand across his forehead. “Cerisa caught Colt going to visit Jex Zanlan,” he said.

  “Oh, no,” Melina said.

  “How did she catch him?” Nolan asked.

  “Apparently, she had some suspicion that Colt had been to see Jex before. She briefed the guard, and she monitored Colt’s lunch hours. She was up there yesterday when Colt dropped by for a visit.”

  “I suppose that’s the end of Colt, then,” Melina murmured.

  Nolan was wholly confused. “What? So what? Why does she care who visits Jex Zanlan? What’s it to her?”

  Melina shot him a pitying look; Pakt regarded him somberly. “Jex Zanlan is a known criminal, incarcerated for crimes against the city. Colt is a city employee, and city employees are not allowed to fraternize with felons. If you didn’t know that, you should.”

  “I don’t know any felons,” Nolan said. “But if I did—I still don’t get it. I didn’t even know Colt was friends with Jex Zanlan.”

  “He wasn’t,” Melina said briefly. “I asked him that once, a few months back. He’d never met him.”

  “But then—” Nolan felt a nightmarish incomprehension; none of this made sense.

  “Jex Zanlan is a terrorist,” Melina said in a patient voice. “He and his friends have already blown up at least two buildings, though they’ve never proved he had anything to do with the fire at the Carbonnier Extension. If Colt never knew him before, he only knows him now by association. He’s made friends with Jex’s terrorist friends living in the city. Is that the way it goes, Pakt?”

  Pakt nodded. “That’s the way Cerisa sees it. Frankly, I can’t read it any other way myself.”

  “And if he only knows Jex through these terrorist friends,” Melina continued, her voice growing smaller and softer, “what reason could he have for visiting Jex in prison? What information could he have been trying to pass to Chay Zanlan’s son?”

  Nolan spread his hands, a gesture of ignorance. “I can’t imagine! What information? What could Colt know that would matter to Jex—or anyone?”

  “It doesn’t matter what he actually knows or doesn’t know,” Pakt said in a slow, hurt voice. “The point is, he’s a city employee. He works for a confidante of the mayor. He could have overheard anything, at any time, that would be valuable information to a terrorist and devastating to the city. Whatever reason he had for trying to meet with Jex Zanlan, innocent or not, cannot in fact be innocent, because he is capable of doing real damage just by what he knows.”

  “He’s been fired,” Melina said suddenly.

  “Yes.”

  “And you agree with Cerisa,” she added.

  “Yes,” Pakt said. “I do.”

  “Then he won’t—he won’t ever be back here,” Nolan said, still trying to take it in. “He’s gone. We won’t see him again.”

  “I will try to see him,” Pakt said. “But I doubt I’ll be successful. I was in the room with Cerisa, and I backed everything she said.”

  Melina suddenly looked frightened. “That curse, as he left—that thing about dishonor—was he saying it to you?”

  Pakt shook his head. “I don’t believe so. But it’s possible. I will watch my step very carefully in the next few weeks, in any case.”

  “Will he—what exactly did it mean?” Melina asked. “Will he try to harm you—or something?”

  Pakt shook his head again. He looked even more tired than before. “It was not a challenge to defend my honor—or for Cerisa to defend hers. It was more of a—a statement, a notice to the fates that here walks an unprotected soul.” At their matching looks of confusion, Pakt explained. “A man or woman walks through the world defended by his honor. Whatever ill befalls him, if he still has his honor, he cannot be materially harmed. But once his honor is flawed, he has no shield—nothing can deflect from him the tribulations and disgraces that float freely around us every day, looking for a place to settle. Colt was merely pointing out to the universe at large that Cerisa—and, perhaps, I—can be destroyed by some petty trial. I don’t believe he will make the attempt to destroy us.”

  “This is terrible,” Melina said. “This is worse than I thought.”

  “What happens now?” Nolan asked.

  “We hire a new technician,” Pakt said.

  “No, I meant—what happens to Colt? Will he return to his mother’s home?”

  “His father’s house,” Pakt corrected. “No, I don’t believe so. He has skills, and there are other labs in the city. There’s a gulden pharmacy near the West Two gate that could use a man with Colt’s ability. I don’t see him going back to Geldricht.”

  “What about Cerisa?” Melina asked. “Is she upset?”

  “Furious, yes. Upset? I don’t think so. Not about losing Colt. She doesn’t really like guldmen.”

  “She doesn’t like any of us,” Melina said.

  “She hired Colt when there was a quota on. And, make no mistake, he was the best candidate we interviewed. But there’s no quota on now, and I’d bet you my father’s reputation that she hired an indigo to replace him.”

  “But there are three other guldmen here,” Melina said. “Even if she’s going by quotas, she has hired fairly.”

  “She’d get rid of us all if she could do it,” Pakt said.

  “Even you?” Nolan asked.

  Pakt smiled, an expression that was an odd mixture of sadness and anger. “Especially me,” he said.

  * * *

  * * *

  Naturally, no one talked of anything else for the rest of the day, though the conversations were
whispered and tended to break down along race lines. Cerisa, who had been absent much of the past few days, was very much in evidence, saying little to any of them but making sure they marked her presence. As soon as she appeared, they all melted back into their offices to try and continue the hopeless task of concentrating on their projects. Nolan, for his part, accomplished nothing useful the entire day.

  As the quitting hour rolled around, Melina appeared in his office. “Are you busy tomorrow night?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so. Why?”

  “I want you to come with me.”

  “Come with you where?” he replied suspiciously.

  “To see Colt.”

  “To see—” Nolan stared at her. “That can’t be a good idea.”

  Melina shrugged. “That’s what Pakt said. Will you come?”

  “I don’t even know where he lives.”

  “I got his address from Dade.”

  “Do you know how to find it?”

  “It’s somewhere off West One.”

  “West One! Not once in my life have I ever exited there.”

  “I know. Me either. Will you come?”

  “What if I won’t?”

  She shrugged. “I’ll go by myself.”

  “You can’t do that!”

  “Well, I will.”

  “Why don’t you just let Pakt go? He said he would.”

  “Because Colt put a curse on Pakt, and he didn’t put one on you and me. Because it’s important that we show him that we haven’t abandoned him. Because he’s a friend of ours.”

  “I don’t know that I’d actually consider him a friend,” Nolan said slowly. “I don’t know that he actually likes either of us.”

  She shrugged again. “Fine,” she said, and left before Nolan could say another word.

  He left without speaking to her again. During the trip home (which seemed longer than usual this night), he could think of nothing else. There was no reason, of course, they should not go to the gulden residential districts off of West One. Those were not areas particularly known for violence, and, like other parts of the city, they were regularly patroled by security forces. And yet—it was the heart of gulden territory within the city. It would be like traveling to a foreign land.

  Where the natives were not particularly well-disposed toward visitors.

  But he could not let Melina go there alone. Even Leesa would tell him that. And Melina, of course, knew it.

  At work the next day, he made no attempt to talk to her, and she only nodded neutrally when she passed him in the hall. He took his lunch with Varella and Hiram (naturally they talked about Colt; there was no other topic), then spent the afternoon going over some of his recent formulas with Pakt. He was in his own office straightening his desk as the final hour of the day passed, and Melina appeared in his doorway.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “Just let me turn off my computer,” he said. And that was all the discussion they had on the topic.

  They took the trolley to the Centrifuge, arguing over who would pilot the ringcar. Melina wanted to be the driver, but Nolan had ridden with her in the past and refused to do it again. She was—like all the indigo women who bothered to use the Centrifuge—a reckless and inconsiderate driver, and he told her so.

  “I’m no worse than anyone else,” she said impatiently.

  “You’re worse than I am,” he said. “And I’m not getting in the car with you. If you want to drive, you can take your own ringcar, and I’ll take the one that comes right after.”

  She was annoyed but ultimately acquiesced. “Well, I’m driving on the way back,” she said. Nolan merely shrugged.

  The trip from North Zero to West One was relatively quick, despite heavy traffic; but then, it was only about half the distance of Nolan’s normal commute. Nolan felt a strange sense of uneasy excitement overtake him as he maneuvered the craft to the unfamiliar gate. It was ridiculous, he knew, but he half-expected to step through the door onto another planet, ridged with unknown red mountains and lit by an aqueous sun. How could a place only a few miles from his own home seem so foreign and fraught with danger?

  Melina had jumped to the curb before the ringcar had come to a complete halt. Nolan climbed out without bothering to reprimand her, and glanced around him. Same arched stone doorway, same apron of asphalt on the interior side of the gate. As far as he could tell, same hazy sunlight on the other side of the door, a light gradually fading to dusk. The only difference between West One and South Zero was that here, every single commuter besides the two of them was a gulden male.

  And they were drawing no little attention.

  No one approached them or questioned them, however, and Melina made her way through the crowd at her usual brisk pace. Force of habit, or perhaps surprise, induced the guldmen to fall back for her, but all of them watched her pass and then looked appraisingly at Nolan.

  She emerged into the twilight and looked around. “Now, we’re supposed to take the Elmtree shuttle, Dade said.”

  “They have shuttles here?” Nolan asked before he could stop himself.

  Melina gave him a look of supreme irritation. “Of course they have shuttles here! Nolan, we haven’t even left the city limits! Why would you think we’d suddenly wandered into a wasteland?”

  “I just—I’ve never been—oh, never mind.”

  The bus arrived five minutes later. Elmtree was apparently a popular route, for a crowd of gulden men scrambled for the bus as soon as it pulled to the curb. Luck had positioned the blueskins in just the right spot; they were among the first to board. Nolan’s eyes went immediately to the back of the shuttle, where twenty or thirty gulden women were crammed together in seats that were clearly meant to accommodate about half their number. The benches up front, he guessed, must have been left empty for the men.

  Melina, oblivious, headed for the first unoccupied seats and sat down. “I think,” Nolan began, but she grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him down next to her. “I think women are supposed to sit in the back,” he whispered in her ear.

  “Nonsense,” she said aloud. “It’s a public conveyance, and I can sit anywhere I choose.”

  The rest of the seats filled rapidly, and about a dozen men remained standing in the aisles, wrapping their hands around chrome rails. The bus lurched forward, and Nolan was thrown against Melina. He righted himself quickly and took a furtive glance around.

  No one was actually staring at them, though he would have sworn all eyes were turned in their direction. A few of the riders glanced his way, took a few moments to consider Melina, then returned their attention to their printouts or their conversations. Yet every nerve in Nolan’s body screamed its awareness that he did not belong here. He felt like a foreign particle introduced to a host body that had begun to marshal all its resources to throw him out.

  “We should be on the shuttle fifteen minutes or so,” Melina said. She was looking out the window, apparently watching for landmarks, for every once in a while she nodded. “We want to get off at Cloverton.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then we walk.”

  “How far?” Nolan asked nervously.

  “A few blocks. I don’t think the exercise will be too much for you.”

  “I just thought—it’s going to be dark soon, and—”

  She turned to give him a malicious smile. “Just think how dark it will be when we come back this way,” she said.

  Which made his stomach lurch with apprehension. He did not know why he felt so certain they would be lucky to return from this adventure alive.

  “Here it is,” she said suddenly and jumped to her feet. Nolan scrambled up beside her and began excusing himself as he edged through the press of guldmen. Everyone politely squeezed back to allow him and Melina room to disembark. Surely it was his imagination that one of them pa
ntomimed a quick kick to his backside.

  “Well, isn’t this pretty!” Melina exclaimed, pausing a moment on the street corner to survey the scenery. Nolan, who had spent the whole ride watching the action on the interior, now caught his first glimpse of a gulden neighborhood. It stopped him in his tracks.

  Instead of the stark blacks, whites, and grays of his own district, here the buildings wore festive pastel hues on their painted brick, on their draped awnings, on the flags and signboards and shutters that decorated their exteriors. There were plants and flowers everywhere, climbing up trellises, pouring out of hanging baskets, peering out from the windows of houses and retail shops. Every storefront featured a fountain of varying complexity, and the sound of splashing water murmured up and down the street.

  “Well, I think I like this much better than the neighborhood where I live,” Melina said.

  “You don’t think it’s a little—inelegant? Overdone?” Nolan asked.

  “No, I think it’s cheerful.”

  “You’d get tired of it after a while.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose we’ll be here long enough to find out.”

  “Which way now?”

  She pointed. “North on Cloverton. To number 1811.”

  They walked slowly down the street, Nolan at least trying not to gawk. Melina frankly looked about her, lifting her arm to point to views she found particularly intriguing. Nolan hoped no one was watching from the windows, indignant at the blueskins sightseeing through their neighborhood. The few other pedestrians they encountered tended to be young men, apparently heading home from work, and older women shepherding flocks of children down the sidewalk. They saw no young women out walking alone. They saw no couples.

  “Is there a curfew for girls?” Melina wondered.

  “I don’t know. You see gulden women in the city all the time.”

  “Older women,” Melina said thoughtfully. “We’ll have to ask Pakt.”