“So what are you?”
“Some kind of secret agent, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t you know?”
“Not really.”
“What do you mean?”
“Simple enough. If I don’t know anything, I can’t reveal anything. I just have things I know I have to do.”
“You mean you haven’t got any memories of who you are?”
“Not really, no.”
“Do you know who you’re working for?”
“No.”
“So how do you know you should be working for them?”
“Excuse me?”
“How do you know you’re not working for the Ocisen Empire, that you’re not helping bring down the Greater Commonwealth? Or what if you’re a leftover Starflyer agent? They say Paula Myo never did catch all of them.”
“Unlikely, but admittedly I don’t know.”
“Then how can you live with yourself?”
“I think it’s improbable that I’m doing something like that. If you asked me to do it now, I wouldn’t. So I wouldn’t have agreed to do it before my full memory was removed.”
“Your full memory.” Corrie-Lyn tasted the idea with the same care with which she had sampled the bluefruit. “Anyone who agrees to have their memory taken out just to get an illegal contract has got to be pretty extreme. And you kill people, too. You’re good at it.”
“My combat software was superior to theirs. And they’ll be re-lifed. Your friend Captain Manby is probably already walking around looking for us. Think how much improved his motivation is now thanks to me.”
“Without your memories you can’t know what your true personality is.”
Aaron reached for his French toast. “And your point is?”
“For Ozzie’s sake, doesn’t that trouble you?”
“No.”
She shook her head in amazement. “That’s got to be an artificial feeling.”
“Again, so what? It makes me efficient at what I do. Personality trait realignment is a useful procedure in re-life. If you want to be a management type, then have your neural structure altered to give yourself confidence and aggression.”
“Choose a vocation and mold yourself to fit. Great; that’s so human.”
“Now, then, what’s your definition of human these days? Higher? Advancer? Originals? How about the Hive? Huxley’s Haven has kept a regulated society functioning for close to one and a half thousand years, every one of them proscribed by genetic determination, and they’re still going strong, with a population that’s healthy and happy. Now you tell me plain and clear: Which of us won the human race?”
“I’m not arguing evolution with you. Besides, it’s just a distraction from what you are.”
“I thought we’d agreed that neither of us knows what I am. Is that what fascinates you about me?”
“In your pervert dreams!”
Aaron grinned and crunched some toast.
“So what’s your mission?” Corrie-Lyn asked. “What do you have to do, kidnap Living Dream Councillors?”
“Ex-Councillors. But no, that’s not the way of it.”
“So what do you want with me?”
“I need to find Inigo. I believe you can help.”
Corrie-Lyn dropped her spoon and stared at him in disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No.”
“You expect me to help you? After what you just said?”
“Yes. Why not?”
“But …” she sputtered.
“Living Dream is trying to kill you. Understand this: They’re not going to stop. If anything, the other night will only make them more determined. The only person left in the galaxy who can put the brakes on your dear new Cleric Conservator is Inigo himself.”
“So that’s who you’re working for: the anti-Pilgrimage lobby.”
“There’s no guarantee that Inigo will stop the Pilgrimage if he comes back. You know him better than anybody, do I speak the right in that?”
She nodded forlornly. “Yeah. I think you might be.”
“So help me find him.”
“I can’t do that,” she said in a low voice. “How can you ask when even you don’t know what you’ll do to him if we find him?”
“Anyone who has hidden himself this well is never going to be taken by surprise even if we do manage to track him down. He knows there are a lot of serious people looking for him. Besides, if I wanted to kill him, why would I take the trouble of hunting him down? If he’s off the stage, he can’t direct any of the actors, now, can he? So if I want him back, I must want him back intact.”
“I don’t know,” she said weakly.
“I saved your life.”
Corrie-Lyn gave him a sly smile. “The software running you saved my life. It did it because you needed me. I’m your best hope, remember.”
“You’re my number one choice.”
“Better get ready to schmooze number two.”
“Not even my liver could take another night in Rakas. I do need you, Corrie-Lyn. And what about you? What do you need? Don’t you want to find him? Don’t you want to hear why he upped and left you and all the billions who believed in him? Did he lose faith? Was Living Dream just that all along, nothing more than a dream?”
“Low blow.”
“You can’t do nothing. You’re not that kind of person. You know Inigo must be found before the Pilgrimage leaves. Somebody will find him. Nobody can stay hidden forever, not in this universe. Politics simply won’t allow it. Who do you want to find him?”
“I … I can’t,” Corrie-Lyn said.
“I understand. I can wait, at least for a little while longer.”
“Thanks.” She put her head down and started to eat her French toast, almost as if she were ashamed of the decision.
Aaron did not see her for nearly three hours after breakfast. She went back into her bedroom and stayed there. His u-shadow monitored a small amount of unisphere use; she was running through standard information files from the Living Dream fanes in the city. He had a shrewd idea what she was looking for—a friend she could trust, which meant things could well be swinging his way. If they set foot outside, it would not be long before Manby or his replacement was racing up behind them, guns flaring.
When she came out, she was wearing a loose-neck red sweater and tight black trousers; a silver necklace made a couple of long loops around her neck before wrapping around her hips. She had fluffed her dark hair neatly and infused it with purple and green sparks that glimmered on a long cycle. He gave her an appreciative smile, which she ignored.
“I need to talk to someone,” she announced.
Aaron tried to make his smirk not too obvious. “Sure thing. I hope you’re not going to insist on going alone. There are bad people out there.”
“You can come with me, but the conversation is private.”
“Okay. Can I ask if you’ve already set up a meeting?”
“No.”
“Good. Don’t call anyone. The Ellezelin cybersphere has government monitors in its nodes. Manby’s team will fall on you like a planet-killer asteroid.”
Her expression flickered with worry. “I already accessed the unisphere.”
“That’s okay. They probably can’t trace your u-shadow access,” he lied. “Do you know where this person is likely to be?”
“The Daeas fane. That’s over on the south side of the city.”
“Right, then; we’ll take a taxi to that district and land a couple of blocks away. Once we’re at the fane, we’ll try to get a visual on your friend.”
“He’s not a friend,” she said automatically.
Aaron shrugged. “Whoever the person is. If we find him, then you can have your chat in private. Calling him is our last resort, and please let me do that; my u-shadow has fixes available that should circumvent the monitor systems.”
She nodded agreement, picked up her scarlet bag, and wrapped
a long fawn-colored scarf around her shoulders. “Let’s go.”
Aaron was perfectly relaxed in the taxi flight over the city. He spent it looking down on the buildings, enjoying the vertical perspective as the towers flipped past underneath. The inhabitants certainly enjoyed their roof gardens; nearly half of them had some kind of terrace fenced in by greenery, and swimming pools were everywhere.
He did not know what the outcome of Corrie-Lyn’s meeting would be, nor did he really care. His only certainty was that he would know exactly what to do when the time came. There was, he reflected, a lot of comfort to be had in his unique level of ignorance.
They landed on an intersection at the edge of the Daeas district. It was a commercial area dominated by the monolithic buildings that had been the Ellezelin Offworld Office, the ministry that had masterminded the Free Market Zone and Ellezelin’s subsequent commercial and diplomatic domination of neighboring star systems. The structures had been turned into hotels, casinos, and exclusive malls. They walked along the ornate stone facades toward the fane, with Aaron making sure they didn’t take a direct route. He wanted time to scan and check for possible hostiles—make that probable hostiles.
“Did you know he was leaving before he actually went?” Aaron asked.
Corrie-Lyn gave him an unsettled glance. “No.” She sighed. “But we’d cooled off quite a while back. I hadn’t been excluded exactly, but I wasn’t in the inner circle anymore.”
“Who was?”
“That’s the thing. No one, really. Inigo had been getting more and more withdrawn for a long time. Years. Because we were so close, it took time for me to notice how distant he was growing. You know what it’s like.”
“I can imagine,” he said, which earned him a frown. “So there was no one event, then?”
“Ah, you’re talking about the fabled Last Dream, aren’t you? No, not that I was aware. But then, that rumor had to come from somewhere.”
Even before they won a majority in Parliament, the Living Dream’s Chief Councillor of Riasi had boasted that one could never travel more than a mile in the city without encountering a fane. The buildings did not have a specific layout; anything that had a hall large enough to accommodate the faithful, along with office space and living quarters, would do. Given the inherent wealth of the Daeas district, it was inevitable that the local fane should be impressive: a contemporary Berzaz cube with horizontal stripes twisted at fifteen degrees to each other, their fluid-luminal surfaces shining with an intensity that automatically matched the sunlight, delineating each floor in a spectromatic waterfall. The overall effect was of a city block that was trying to screw itself into the ground. It was surrounded by a broad plaza with a fountain at each point. Tall jets squirted out from the center of inclined rings that were ticked out with ingrav to make the water flow upslope.
Aaron scanned the bustling plaza, performing a meticulous assessment of the locale, allowing his combat software to plot escape routes. His u-shadow was busy extracting the civic plans for the neighboring buildings, along with utility tunnels and traffic routes. Directly opposite the fane’s main entrance was an arcade with a curving crystal roof sheltering fifty high-class shops and boutiques on three levels; it had multiple entrances onto three streets and five underground cargo depots as well as seven cab platforms and ten rooftop landing pads. That would be difficult to cover even for a large surveillance team. Next to it was a staid old ministry building that now housed several financial institutions and a couple of export merchants. There weren’t as many ways in and out, but it did have a large subterranean garage full of expensive regrav capsules. The boulevard running alongside it was lined with shops and entertainment salons mixed in with bars and restaurants, with the tables outside playing host to a vibrant café culture. Aaron’s u-shadow called down three taxis and parked them on public pads nearby, paying for them to wait with three independent and genuinely untraceable coin accounts.
“Do you want me to go in and try to find him?” Corrie-Lyn asked.
Aaron studied the fane’s main entrance, a truncated archway that the fluid-luminal flowed around on either side, presenting it as a dark passageway. Plenty of people were coming and going, the majority dressed in the kind of clothes found on Querencia. Brightly colored Cleric robes were easy to spot.
“I’m assuming this somebody is a Living Dream Cleric, quite a senior one given your own rank.”
She gave him a short nod. “Yves. He’s still the deputy here. I’ve known him for fifty years. Completely devoted to Inigo’s vision.”
“Old guard, then.”
“Yes.”
“Okay, not likely to bump into him running errands around the place, then. He’s going to stay put in his office.”
“That’s on the fourth floor. I can probably get up there. I do have some clearance. I’m not sure I can take you with me.”
“Any clearance you had will be revoked by now. And if you interface with a Living Dream network, it’ll send up an alert they can see back on Old Earth.”
“So what do you want to do, then?”
“If honesty doesn’t pay, I have a few tricks that should be able to get us up to his office without drawing attention to ourselves. All you have to do is pray he doesn’t turn us in the minute we say hello.”
“I say hello,” she emphasized.
“Whatever.” His software had identified three probable hostiles amid the bustle of pedestrians across the plaza. Looking at the shimmering building, he got the distinct sensation of a trap waiting to snap shut. His trouble was that pointing out the three suspects wouldn’t be anything like enough to convince Corrie-Lyn that she should be doing her utmost to help him. That would require a genuine scare on the same scale as the one Captain Manby had provided back in Greater Makkathran, the difference being this time she would be awake, sober, and clean. She had to realize that Living Dream was her enemy on every level.
“We’ll go in by the front door,” he said. “No sense drawing attention to ourselves by trying to sneak in the back.”
“Each side of the fane has an entrance which leads to the main reception hall. They’re all open; we welcome everyone.”
“I was speaking metaphorically,” he said. “Come on.” His u-shadow told him the Riasi metropolitan police had just received an alert that two known political activists known to be aggressive had been seen in the city. “Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis is well and truly back in the building,” he muttered without really knowing why.
Corrie-Lyn let out a hiss of exasperation at his nonsense and headed off toward the fane’s entrance. Aaron followed, smiling at her attitude. The thoughts within the plaza’s gaiafield were pleasurable and enticing, a mélange of sensations that made the hair along his spine stand up. It was almost as if the inside of his skull were being caressed. Something wonderful resided inside the fane, the gaiafield promised him. He just had to step inside …
Aaron grinned at the crudity of the allure. It was the mental equivalent of freshly baked bread on a winter morning. He imagined it would be quite an attraction to any casual passerby; the problem he had with that was the lack of any such specimen, as the majority of Ellezelin’s population were all Living Dream devotees. But this fane, like all the others in the Greater Commonwealth, housed a gaiafield confluence nest. It was inevitable that the lure effect would be at its peak in the plaza.
No one looked at them as they walked into the archway with its moiré curtain of luminescence. Aaron’s level-one field scan showed him that the three suspects outside had started to move toward the fane. He hoped they couldn’t detect such a low-power scan; they certainly did not appear to be enriched with biononics.
There were sensors built into the entrance, standard systems that were recording their faces and signatures, making sure they had no concealed weapons, the kind every public building was equipped with. Aaron’s biononics deflected them easily enough.
Inside, the siren call within the gaiafield slacked off, to be replaced by a sin
gle note of harmony. Decor and ether blended to give a sense of peaceful refuge; even the air was pleasantly cool. The reception hall was a replica of the main audience chamber in the Orchard Palace where the Mayor greeted honored citizens. Here, Clerics talked quietly to small groups of people. Aaron and Corrie-Lyn walked through the hall and into the cloister that led to the eastern entrance. A corridor on the right had no visible barrier. Aaron’s biononic fields manipulated the electronics guarding it, and the force field disengaged. He paused, checking the building network, but there was no alarm.
“In we go,” he told her quietly.
An elevator took them up to the fourth floor, opening into a windowless corridor narrower than the one downstairs. As they stepped out, his u-shadow informed him that the three waiting taxis had all just had their management programs examined. Aaron was undecided at what point to tell her that they were being targeted again. The longer he left it, the more difficult it would be to extricate them from the fane. He needed her just rattled enough to sign up for his mission but not so scared that she lost all sense.
With activity in the fane still at a minimum, he walked with her along several corridors until they reached Yves’s office. The room had an active screen, but Aaron’s field scan could cut right through it. There was just one person inside, no enrichments showing.
Corrie-Lyn put a hand lightly on Aaron’s chest. “Just me,” she said. Her voice had dropped to a husky tone. He couldn’t tell if she was being playful or insistent. Either way, there did not seem to be a threat in the office, so he smiled gracefully and gestured at the door.
Once she was inside, he walked down the rest of the corridor, checking the other rooms. A woman in plain brown-and-blue Cleric robes came out of one after he had passed. She frowned and said: “Can I help—”
Aaron shot her with a low-power stun pulse from the weapons enrichment in his left forearm. His scrambler field severed her connection with the unisphere as she crumpled to the floor, blocking the automatic call for help to the police and city medical service emitted by her multicellular clusters. He didn’t bother scooping her up and shoving her inside an empty room. That simply was not the kind of time scale he was looking at.
The Void Trilogy 3-Book Bundle Page 18