Grounded!

by Claremont, Chris

  “Son of a bitch,” she snarled, wondering what she could have been thinking of. If thinking at all.

  Ground scan offered up a canyon, and he ducked into it on afterburner, the overpressure of his wake as he passed triggering small rockslides. Following was like diving into a rapids; the plane bucked around her, bubbling and rolling and skidding across every flight dimension—vertical and horizontal—as she fought for control, all thought of the dogfight banished by the overriding necessity of keeping from crashing, alarms flashing from every screen, the infernally serene voice of the computer warning her that she was stressing the plane beyond its design maximums. It was like an arcade video, one impossible situation after another, flashing at her out of nowhere, except that only hazarded a dollar token; here, she bet her life.

  She saw an opening, knew he’d be waiting—it was too perfect a setup—saw no other alternative that offered even a ghost of a chance. Well, not quite true. A sidebar pass off to the right, very narrow, very nasty, something she could handle if she was totally in tune with herself and her aircraft, that would blind her from sight and scan long and far enough either to make a break or come up behind him to continue the engagement on more equal terms. But the very fact that she had to make the choice, a conscious decision, meant she didn’t dare. And she nudged her Mustang over the crest of the ridge, terrain-following radar allowing her maybe ten meters clearance tops, hoping ground clutter would mask her.

  He didn’t even bother with his toys, just bounced her all of twenty meters above her canopy, at full military power, transitioning Mach as he ripped by, generating a shock wave that hammered her out of the sky before she even knew she’d been hit. As instantaneous as such a thing could be, she registered the shadow of his passing—Bastard, she thought incredulously, you’re inverted!—streaking past her upside down, and in that terrible moment she realized just how badly she’d been suckered because even though the aircraft was full size, there was nobody in the cockpit, this was nothing but a drone, the man she’d been fighting hadn’t been anywhere near here, never at risk in the slightest, she’d wasted herself for nothing—and then...

  ...the ground was in her face. Aches from top to toe as she tried to regain her feet, settled for rolling over onto her back. Darkness overhead, too much haze to see any stars, the air soft and sultry, with a clinging warmth that made her want to close her eyes and sleep her life away.

  But instead, she tucked her legs underneath her and pushed, a wobbly rise to her feet, sighing with slight exasperation at the genius who’d mandated spike-heeled boots for women’s flight uniforms. Not to mention the leather suits themselves. Jaunty they may be—head-turners both on recruiting posters and anytime a pilot made an entrance—but not always the most practical of attire. The night was still, the only sounds coming from up the path a ways, surprisingly lively, a jazz combo mixing guitar, piano, and sax.

  She made her way cautiously on the uneven terrain, in a sort of bent-leg, crooked-back, old-lady posture, until she reached the building where she heard the jazz combo playing.

  Inside was all smoke and shadows, the kind of place where everything is suggested and the imagination is free to run riot. Turn on some decent lights, come back during daylight, there’d be not the slightest hint of magic. What seemed elegant would become tawdry and cheap, making you feel like a fool for having fallen under its spell. Hardly anyone present, which seemed strange considering how good the band was, especially Alex, downstage front, playing his sax like he was making love. The hollow-faced maître d’ offered Nicole her own choice of seating with an airy wave of the hand and a predatory smile that made her stumble, he really couldn’t care less, they were all meat to him, and she wondered how she could ever have thought that Charles Russell was a handsome man.

  She moved as close to the stage as possible without straying into the spotlight. She liked the dark, a fighter pilot’s instinctive need to see without being seen, because what mattered in a fight was getting in the first shot and making it count. If you staged the ambush, you dictated the dynamics of the engagement and that edge was generally what made the difference between coming home and not.

  She took her tequila neat, the whole glass at once, with a lick of salt and lime for chasers, closing her eyes and sucking in her cheeks as the liquor burned through her. Then, a satisfied exhalation and a slow smile as she realized the sax player’s eyes were on her, his body twisted ever so slightly her way, the tone and temper of his song changing as he shifted gears to something more haunting and evocative. And she realized that what she’d heard coming in had been an invitation, a siren’s call that she had willingly, unknowingly answered.

  Hana Murai sauntered across the room and Nicole smiled, offered a wave, the slightest of questions furrowing her brow—after all, wasn’t Hana supposed to be in deep space, months from planet-fall—but eyes full of appreciation of how well her best friend looked, snug in dark crimson silk with a dangerous slit up the side seam of her skirt to show off her legs to best advantage. Only Hana looked right past her, to another table, another woman, Grace Kinsella.

  Nicole didn’t understand why that bothered her, drained another tequila to settle her thoughts a little more so she could puzzle things out. Wondered too late if she’d lost her capacity for the drink and was overreacting because she was drunk? But why react at all, it was no big deal who Hana spoke with—or, for that matter, slept with, that facet of her life was none of Nicole’s business—did that mean their friendship was affected?

  Russell was looking at her, taunting her, and she knew that whatever she decided would be for his pleasure.

  The music made the decision for her, pulling her out of her seat, and she sidled sideways between the tables until she stood before the sax player. Alex was sitting, and her high heels combined with the low height of the stage put them pretty much on eye level. He played to her and for her—eyes meeting hers under his lowered lids, full of a passion nothing would deny—and she responded with a relaxed, devil-may-care abandon that matched him, move for note.

  And then it was over.

  She smiled, gloriously flushed, wanting him more than she’d desired anything in her life. Even, she realized, awed at the casual ease of this inner treachery, more than her slot as an astronaut.

  Not even a smile in return. Alex capped the mouthpiece of his sax and tucked the instrument in its case, taking a proffered bottle of beer from the piano man and toasting the others in the combo before draining half. His gaze flashed over the darkened space, a perfunctory checkup wherein she scored about the same as the furniture around her. There was no emotion on his face anymore, as though some inner switch had been thrown, with one persona active while he played and another for the rest of his life. The stage was one world, and the audience another, and the two had nothing in common.

  He stepped past her, gathering Hana and Grace from their table and moving off through the door. Russell offering them a bow and Nicole a look of sated triumph. She’d given him a show worth the watching.

  She shook her head, she felt wrapped in slimy cushions, a clumsy sponge rubber doll unable to move unless something bounced into her. She looked around the club, matching its empty silence with the hollowness of shame growing inside herself, fixing a bleary focus on the bar and deciding to treat herself to a virgin bottle of Gold and see how much of it would be needed to sign her out.

  But even as she took a first step, she heard a scream from outside, a deep-voiced bellow of defiance that spiraled almost immediately into a falsetto ululation. She sprang for the door, shoving tables and chairs aside as they tumbled into her path, finally bursting out onto the porch.

  To see bodies, recognizable only by the ragged strips of cloth that were the remnants of what the three of them had been wearing. Before now, Nicole had never understood the full meaning of the term “savaged.” But this was “savaged,” if ever a word had meaning, and savagery besides.

  The swinging doors banged, the maître d’ looming behin
d her, taking in the carnage with a glance, looking from it to Nicole with an air of eager expectation, as though his show had just taken some delightfully unexpected turn and he couldn’t wait for what would happen next. Revulsion made her stagger backward, almost losing her balance on the steps, catching herself at last on ground so soaked with blood and gore that her boots made squishy noises with each step. And Russell laughed.

  Rage blazed white-hot in her breast, her own face twisting into a roar, hands hooking as though to extend claws, dropping into a slight crouch that would launch her at that hateful creature, desiring nothing so much as the crack of his bones, coupled with a shriek of terror to match those he’d aroused in so many others. She leapt...

  ...and dove into the pool, surfacing on the move, a fast, steady crawl to the far end and back, building with each circuit to a blistering pace that was near Olympic time to match the Olympic dimensions of the course. Six laps and then she called it quits, levering herself out of the water and to her feet in one easy motion that bespoke a perfect physical condition her years hadn’t even begun to touch.

  As she emerged, a ShimmerField activated automatically an arm’s length from her, presenting a holographic projection of herself, as seen by the ScanCams scattered about the room. Much better than a simple mirror, this was her identical twin in every superficial respect, capable of being projected to any location on the estate. Indeed, more than once she’d used it as her own stand-in, when she wasn’t feeling well or simply didn’t want to cope or, as often happened on social occasions, found it necessary to be in seemingly dozens of places at once. Long ago, she’d started building a repertoire of files in the primary data base that allowed for creative interaction with the event. All she had to do was set the program in motion and it would do the rest.

  Wet and naked, she picked a comb off her table and swept her hair straight back from her brow. She wore it longer these days, since she no longer flew as a pilot out of the atmosphere. No grey yet, and not for a good long time to come, the water accented the darker tones, turning it a much deeper black, with only the barest hint of russet. The planes of her face were softer, more overtly feminine, as was her body. The bone structure was there, but the bones themselves were no longer as easy to see. Not much as cosmetic surgery went but well worth the inconvenience and the price. Perhaps it was a function of growing older, or of the dramatic change in her life, but when she looked at flats or holos of herself from the old days, it seemed very much like a stranger. Like trying to relate to being a kid or a teenager, that was a phase she’d gone through, put gladly behind her with surprisingly few regrets.

  (So why the dampness in her eyes, a voice seemed to whisper in her head, a flash flood of tearing, wiped hurriedly away before they could spill free?)

  She looked around sharply, shifting ever so slightly onto the balls of her feet in an instinctive combat reflex she hadn’t used since those old days as she pivoted through a full three-sixty, without a clue of what she was searching for, only that it had triggered cues in her that had lain dormant for ages.

  The pool—indeed, this whole wing of the house—had been inspired by Louis Comfort Tiffany’s mansion, Laurelton. Manuel had seen the exhibit at the Met, back in ’90, and fallen under the spell of those few remnants of the master artisan’s stained-glass work. He’d spent a small fortune gathering the finest private collection of favrile glass in the world, and a significantly larger one financing a master artisan’s studio, in the process bringing about a minor renaissance in the decorating arts. High ceiling and open architecture, meant to convey as vast and airy a sense of space as possible, a room that bespoke quiet but all-embracing elegance and a sense of taste that was very much its own.

  She heard voices from the next room, Alex’s loudest of all, with that edge to it that meant he’d just scored his breakfast hit of Dust. And her mouth twitched, twisted, set into an expression far more appropriate to the Nicole of old than what she’d become, as she remembered waking in the middle of the night, pitched from her bunk so violently she’d gashed her face across her right eye and cheek—and a finger absently traced the line of the scar, or rather where it had been before her surgery—scrambling up the companionway to find the boat in the heart of a nightmare storm, with Alex laughing hysterically at the wheel, babbling about matching his skill against the raw power of the elements.

  He’d Dusted, of course, jazzed himself to the limits with the RNA patterns of a ’round-the-world champion yachtsman, taking on the storm when she thought they’d agreed to steer well clear of it. When all was done, his crash was as extreme as the high. The Forty was in little better shape, dismasted, taking water, com systems so much expensive junk, well off the shipping routes and weeks travel from anywhere. She’d been taking inventory of their survival equipment, against the inevitable transfer to a life raft, when a big private Sikorsky rolled in from the horizon to sather them up and sweep them home. There’d been no need to call for help, Manuel Cobri already knew they were in trouble. The moment they left Coronado, and it became clear they weren’t coming back, he simply pisgybacked an EyeSpy program on as many commercial and military surveillance satellites as proved necessary to keep them under pretty much constant watch. Alex had never forgiven him; Nicole had been very much impressed.

  On a table lay a single rose, a small card in Manuel’s crabbed handwriting wishing her Happy Birthday, and beside it a necklace and earrings of such exquisite beauty they took her breath away. Custom-made and one of a kind, she recognized the design, from one of Studio Cobri’s off-world proteges, easily worth more than she could have made in an entire Air Force career.

  Again, the sense of another presence and she called to the ScanCams for a status, to be told she was all alone.

  She pulled on a robe, then—impulsively thinking to surprise Manuel (she couldn’t care less about Alex, and hadn’t for years)—reached for the necklace.

  It was gone, the earrings as well, and in their place a choker of raw, almost elemental passion, silver splashed around an oval gem that vaguely resembled a ruby, but whose color seemed to come from some mysterious source in the heart of the crystal, a rich glow that helped give the fireheart its name. It was Hal, found only on s’N’dare, and then so rarely that each discovery was front-page news. To possess one was a minor miracle; to be given one as a gift, a gesture of incomparable respect. This had come from Shavrin, after her return home. She’d never worn it—hadn’t dared at first, then it hadn’t seemed appropriate as relations with the Halyan’t’a had started breaking down, following Charles Russell’s assassination. His Treaty had died with him and the world had balkanized, all the various countries and factions—public and private, civil and military—jockeying for the best possible bargaining position with the Hal. Who themselves had simply taken two steps back, to wait for the dust to settle, before making any new moves.

  She hadn’t seen Shavrin since their last parting on the Moon, before she’d been grounded. Nor Ben Ciari, either. Nor anyone else from that life, it was a book she’d closed and filed away, forgotten intentionally until this morning. And she wasn’t happy at the reminder.

  The choker was a perfect fit and as magnificent a complement to her features. No, not quite, she had to concede that, examining the still-naked ShimmerField image of herself. It had been meant for the woman she had been, the baby warrior, following the path blazed by the likes of Canfield and Ciari.

  Not the woman she’d become, willingly bound to Cobri.

  And she thought of Robert Frost’s poem about the paths not taken, and shook her head angrily, as though the sudden, violent motion would catch these annoying demons of conscience and memory by surprise and cast them from her skull.

  Her long, rangy stride took her quickly into the next room, her eyes glazing at the sight of Alex and another ShimmerField of her, switching selection by selection through the latest in trendoid designer leathers. He liked things short and tight and borderline scandalous and the giggles coming from the
couch beside him told her his companion was of the same opinion. A sales rep—equally cute, dressed to show her shop’s wares to best advantage—stood attentively by, along with an entire stockroom on racks. Anyone else, they’d simply go to the store. For the Cobris, the store always came to the house.

  When they found something that caught their fancy, the woman by Alex’s side got to her feet and the sales rep helped her try it on. She was naked to start with, barely out of her teens, and made no secret of her attraction for the sales rep, who didn’t know how to respond. This was a professional call, she considered herself a professional woman, presenting herself to a client who could wipe out her entire establishment with little more than chump change.

  And Nicole felt her insides pull tight as she watched a seventeen-year-old replicant of herself push the other woman into a comer. She started forward, determined to put a stop to this, but Alex was a beat ahead of her, muttering something with a languid wave of the hand to call the child-Nicole off. The sales rep turned partially away, trying to regain her composure, while the child-Nicole straddled Alex’s legs, rucking the micro-skirt up to her hips as she ground them against his crotch.

  “Why do you watch?” Amelia asked.

  “I still can’t believe it.”

  “He’s happy”—a dismissive shrug—“and you’re free of him. The ideal solution.”

  “Amy, that’s me down there.”

  “A simulacrum,” her father said quietly.

  “You make it sound like an object. Clone or not, that’s a real being.”

  “Who bears a superficial resemblance to you, Nicole, but who in reality is no more ‘you’ than these ShimmerField replications. I must say,” the old man continued, with grudging admiration, “access to their optical technology is one of the few incontestable benefits of our encounter with the Halyan’t’a.”