Mainline

by Deborah Christian

  "We're more mobile out here if we're sighted," came the reply, "and 'Jammers can screen us better. Lords of Ice, Reva, stick with the plan, will you?"

  When they reassembled in the water their clothes were different, Reva in a white and gray bodysuit, Vask in bronze, Lish in red with headcowl snugged close to conceal her hair. The assassin bit back her questions. There would be time enough for that when they were clear of Rinoco Park.

  The Holdout wanted them to split up and travel with separate groups of 'Jammers. When Reva protested, the smuggler rounded on her on Com 1, where every Skiffjammer could hear.

  "I've had enough of your contrariness," Lish said harshly. you're on my team, you're on my team, and you take my orders. If you're not on my team, you can clear out. Now which is it?"

  Reva's lips compressed to a thin line. Vask's gaze flickered from one to the other. This was not a normal confrontation, though what motivated the undercurrent of hostility evaded him.

  "How about we have this out after we're clear of the Park?" the assassin said with forced neutrality.

  "How about we get things clear right here?" Lish came back "You do it my way, or you're gone. Is that understood?"

  The assassin's eyes narrowed. "I'll talk to you about thislater," she said coldly, and swam off on her own. Vask followed, and left the Holdout fuming.

  The escape from Rinoco Park was easy. With the waterland's main flex filter damaged by the borgbeasts' forced entry, silty bottom water was infiltrating the Park and spoiling the view. Tourists were leaving, and though visitors were kept clear of areas where Internal Security was handling mop-up, rumor of disaster and marauding beasts spread rapidly. Half the Park guests seemed to head toward the fire spouts, hoping to glimpse death and destruction, while the other half left as quickly as they could, unwilling to risk endangerment from unsafe attractions or sea-monsters running amok.

  Assassin and Fixer rejoined Lish in the entrance dome. The Holdout ripped off her breather with a sigh of relief, and led the trek through the dryer stations and the exit gates. They slipped through with hundreds of other refugees fleeing Rinoco for more desirable surroundings. 'Jammers scattered to catch public conveyances, leaving the area as soon as possible on their employer's order. The smuggler seemed to have a mission of her own, striding ahead of the pair who followed her, using her com link for communications on frequencies her friends could not monitor.

  Reva and Vask exchanged puzzled looks before they caught up with Lish. She stood right-side on to them, affecting a distant pose while she watched the passenger loading lanes impatiently.

  "It's not safe to wait here," Reva said, glancing uneasily around the traffic loop that fronted the Park's entrance. "Let's move on, before the Grinds show up."

  Lish glanced at her sidelong, then returned her gaze to the traffic lanes. "We'll catch our ride here. Devin is on his way."

  "Devin?" Vask spoke in surprise. "I thought he'd be sound asleep by now." The Fixer remembered the drugged-out pilot who had greeted them at Avelar Field.

  Lish raised a brow. "Why would he be asleep? He's waiting for us."

  Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods, thought Reva, looking from Vask to Lish. The one remembers too much, the other remembers too little. Are things happening like I think they're happening?

  Her questions were put on hold as an air car pulled up at the curb. Devin gave a half-wave, and Reva studied him warily. Same man, same face-—and it bore absolutely no sign of days on drugs to push the Fortune through her tortuous travels. If anything, he seemed cool and rested and aloof. He motioned to Reva; she and Vask got into the back. Lish went around the front, slipped in beside the spacer, then leaned over to kiss him hello. It was a warm and welcoming kiss, like they'd been doing it for a while.

  A kiss that showed Lish's left jaw, and the red Rus'karfa battleslash laser-scribed there.

  Reva felt the ground drop away beneath her.

  It's happened again. I've switched Lines.

  In spite of her best intentions, she'd been swept away from the Mainline she had tried so hard to stay in. Once again she was living a different Mainline, and who knew how far she had come from the original, from the Lish who was her friend?

  Her throat tightened. It hit her like the disappearance of her mother, or the abandonment of her parents, or the loss of the lover she'd had once, all long discarded on distant Lines that she could never go back to. Tears welled in frustration over her powerlessness. It wasn't fair to be yanked across the Lines like this, not when she'd made a commitment, by all the hells, for the first time in her life tried to stay, to work things out—

  Lish broke off with Devin and spoke to Reva. Her voice was cold. "Your behavior today was inexcusable. We'll talk about it tomorrow, and see if we have any reason to continue our association." She faced forward as if that was the end of the conversation. Devin moved the vehicle into traffic, and Reva stared fixedly at the woman who was not her friend.

  I swore I'd stay, she thought, not move Lines, help Lish out -but I didn't promise myself to help this woman. This isn't thr person I care about. She's a ghost, like all the others when you stray off Mainline. A ghost.

  She blinked the tears away, feeling a layer of protective ice settle back around her heart, a return to the safe feeling of distance she had cultivated for so long, that she had grown away from in that other Mainline. Her "real" Mainline, she was starting to think of it, she had spent so much time there out of choice. The thought was bitter and ironic. Now she would never know what happened to the people she had almost grown attached to, like Devin with his battered freighter, and the real Lish, her friend, and Vask, who puppy-dogged her—

  Vask, whose hand touched her thigh, not an intimate gesture but a hard, panicked grip. She realized the Fixer was staring at Lish's caste mark, pointing surreptitiously to see if Reva noticed.

  Of course she did. But why would he? Then it struck her. She reached out, wrapped steely fingers around Vask's hand, pried it from her leg. He looked at her beseechingly and she locked eyes with him as if she could see into the depths of his soul.

  "You notice, too?" she choked out in hoarse disbelief. He nodded, and she clutched his hand harder. "You came, too? You're the same?"

  His brows furrowed as he glanced toward Lish. "The same? As I was? Of course."

  "Not of course." She gave a hurried shake of the head. "There are ways to know, memories to compare... we'll have to talk Liter." Her mind reeled with the possibilities.

  "What's going on?" Vask whispered worriedly. "I saw you, there, in that... place. . .."

  She stared at him earnestly, every bit of deadly reserve forgotten completely. Her eyes were those of a child, hopeful, astonished. "I saw you, too. I thought you weren't real, you couldn't possibly be real. I've never met anyone who could—"

  She was near babbling, and Lish's sharp remark cut her off. "We'll drop you back at your place. Come to the Lairdome tomorrow at 0900 and we'll see where we go from here."

  The Holdout's words were like a dash of cold water. Reva tore her eyes from Vask with difficulty, and saw now the supercilious caste to Lish's features as she awaited a response from the assassin.

  Shiran Gabrieya Lish. Was she in mortal danger here, too? Do I even care? Reva asked herself, and knew she didn't have the answer. "O-nine hundred," she acknowledged. Lish nodded and raised the privacy shield that cut off the front seat from the back. Reva shot a nettled glare at the woman's back; it went unnoticed.

  She let the Fixer's hand go and turned in her seat to face the shorter man. "I don't believe you're sitting here," she said, hoping to sound matter-of-fact about it all.

  "We have to talk." He sounded distressed. "You seem to know what's going on better than I do. I want to understand it, too "

  "I ... I don't have all the answers." More like a lot of questions, after what happened today. "But I'll tell you what I can." Her vows of secrecy meant nothing if there was someone she would really share this with, this gift, this curse, of traveling th
e

  Lines. She realized as she said it that she was eager to talk.

  "Good enough," Vask said soberly, and twined his fingers through hers. She let his grasp stay, for it was not a suggestive or a sensual touch. It was reassuring, like the handclasp shared by two children lost very far from home, and afraid of what they might find there.

  FOUR

  "Victims of circumstance owe it to fate. Victims of choice owe it to themselves."

  CIII

  Reva had forgotten how it hurt, to lose the sense of the familiar. How jarring it was, to become a secret outcast amid places and people grown alien in subtle, disturbing ways.

  Amasl's skyline had changed in a way she could not define. The beacon pylons that guided air car traffic were a different color, dark steeloy with green lights strobing instead of blue. The occasional security mecho on street patrol was of matte-browned steel, not the buffed white metal of Mainline. A holovert on a sign showed an androgynous couple embracing in an ad for "Breathless"—an aphrodisiac Reva had never heard of before.

  Subtle changes but significant ones. The more visible the differences between Lines, the farther she had traveled. If this was anything like other times, she was nearly as far off Main as she could get and have the same bank account.

  Off Main. That distant Timeline remained her reference point. This was a ghost-world, a shadow place full of people who were incorrect imitations of the ones she knew and had reluctantly grown to care for.

  Yet even ghosts live out their lives, and in this Realtime, however incorrect it seemed to Reva, the analogs of people from Mainline went about their business like it was just another day.

  Behaving like—but not exactly like—their counterparts across the Lines.

  CIV

  "Aawwwrrrrrrrrrr!''

  The Dorleoni called Okorr stumbled out the door of Storage Unit B, Lairdome 38, in the backwater suburbs of Amasl's neighboring Saleks Bay. He staggered like a blind man, bumping against the door frame, doddering to a halt at street's edge.

  "Aawwwrrrrrrrrrr!" He repeated his heartfelt cry, back-arched and braying toward the afternoon sky.

  Passersby walked a little faster, and Karuu closed his eyes to their indifference. He stood swaying, a furred and disconsolate figure, deciding whether the anguish in his heart warranted another outcry or not.

  He decided not. He could not risk the attention he might draw to himself and so forced his eyes back open, liquid brown orbs turning to the warehouse door, drawn by the tragedy that lay beyond. His feet followed the magnet of disaster and led him back into the security-locked haven, where a wealth of stolen cargo containers had once awaited him.

  There was nothing there now. The yawning expanse of empty plascrete offended his eyes as he scanned the vacant unit once again. Nothing was left, not a crate, not a packing strap. Nothing. Of hundreds of items, carefully chosen, each worth their weight in andorium in the offworld markets, especially tariff-free as only he could move them—

  All gone.

  Where could the goods be? Stolen? No. The security codes showed authorized entry only. Someone had come in his absence and cleaned out his stash. And this was not the first, but the last place he had checked. The best of his caches, all six of them, gone. Someone had methodically and thoroughly emptied his emergency reserves, the security Karuu had counted on to gain financial independence from Gerick's stranglehold. There was only one person it could be. Or could have been. Daribi, the only one who knew of all the Holdout's personal caches. Daribi the backstabber, now dead and irrevocably beyond Karuu's reach.

  I'm ruined, Karuu fretted. I have no resources. What am I going to do?

  The Dorleoni followed up the thought with another ear-piercing shriek, though it didn't help him feel any better. He needed to come up with answers, not wail about his fate. To get out from under Gerick's thumb was going to take money and cleverness. He had thought he had both, until this tour of his secret reserves proved him wrong.

  Now I'm as reliant on Adahn as that MazeRat offal thought I was, he fretted. What am I going to do?

  Karuu gnashed his teeth at the thought and left the warehouse, slamming the door shut behind him.

  CV

  Reva punched up the vidnews and left the volume loud.

  "... Also this late-breaking word from Rinoco Park, where disaster has struck the waterland and forced the park to close..."

  She listened with half an ear as she walked about the apartment, checking out the space she shared with Vask in this Line. The Fixer stood inside the doorway of the apartment suite looking lost while she investigated their rooms. Neutral upscale furnishings, nothing very personal, but cluttered with the detritus that collects after weeks of residence. A jacket slung on the couch arm; holonovels stacked by a float-chair, and one on the kitchen counter by a crumb-speckled plate.

  "... portion of the ring dome is damaged and leaking ..."

  She went on down the hallway, opening cabinet doors, inspecting contents, stepping into the bedroom to see what clothes she had accumulated in this Line. Men's clothing hung in the closet, too, of a size to fit Vask, and she frowned at the only bed—ample enough for two—as if it willfully refused to tell its tale.

  They had skipped across many Lines indeed, if her self in this Realtime had something going on with the Fixer. How drastically had other relationships changed? Well, Lish was probably a good indicator of that....

  She shoved that line of thought to the back of her mind, into the category of issues to deal with later. The first order of business Was to get the lay of the land, see if the extreme timeshift had left her with any big surprises or problems to deal with. She needed to know how far from Main they'd come.

  That thought brought her situation home once more, and she clamped her jaw shut on a grimace that threatened to dissolve into tears. She concentrated on the news instead, where live coverage from Rinoco showed the continuing exodus of park visitors and a heavy security presence at the gates. "... claim to have seen the mythical Sea Father of R'debh, a monstrous creature 'of solid water' which grabbed a borgbeast and then disappeared. These incredible reports are unconfirmed—"

  The words sank in, and Reva took long-legged strides back into the room where the news was on.

  "What are we—" Vask began.

  "Not now." She grabbed his arm, pulled him down beside her on the couch. "Listen."

  The news cut to a handcam image, a stolen interview with injured water-breathers in the back of a care-van. The camera closed with the least-bloodied man, blinking with nictitating eyelids against shock.

  "What happened down there?" The reporter's insistent voice came from off-camera. "How did you get injured?"

  The water-breather answered unthinkingly, dazed. "Borgbeast slammed into us, trying to get away ... was an accident. Frightened by ... the Sea Father."

  "Sea Father? What do you mean?"

  "He came. He was there. Gigantic ... took one away. Just vanished in the water, like that...."

  "Here, now. Get out of here. Go on!" A security escort pushed between camera eye and prisoner-patient. The lens caught an anger-furrowed brow, then jumbled impressions as the guard pulled the door shut in the face of the intruding camera.

  The scene cut back to studio coverage. The exodus from the Park had slowed to a trickle, and guards were locking off gateways. "There you have it," came the voice-over. "An eyewitness report. The Sea Father of R 'debh is said to have materialized in Rinoco Park, along with borgbeasts. Simply amazing! A creature of legend, and the tools of terrorism, working together for what ends? More on this within the hour."

  "Reva, what is it?" Vask put a hand on her arm, a touch he would not have dared a week before. But everything was different now, everything....

  "You alright?"

  She heard the worry in his voice, realized she was staring blindly at the news screen. "News off," she snapped, and the room fell silent. She turned to Vask and threaded her fingers together to keep them from trembling.
<
br />   "That must be it," she said. "What happened to us."

  "What is?"

  "The Sea Father."

  The Fixer gave her a confused look. "You're not making any sense."

  "No. I suppose not." She drew in a deep, shaky breath. "Look. Let's start at the start. First, I want to know this. How did you come along with me? Can you ... shift, like I do? Move Lines?" The question came hard. It was the first time she'd ever mentioned her own ability to another.

  Vask heaved a sigh. "I don't know what you mean by Lines, but shift—yes, I can do that."

  "How?" Her question was urgent, the look in her eyes like a dagger.

  "I'm a ..." He hesitated. "I have a wild psi talent," he spoke confidentially. "I can do a thing called sideslipping—an upward shift in the energy frequency of my molecular state. It makes me Invisible, lets me move through solid matter."

  Keva stiffened. "Wait a minute. You're a Mutate?"

  It was slang from Sa'adani space, and hit Vask uncomfortably close to home. He swallowed. Mutate implied a mutant identified and, by law, trained to control the psi powers that might otherwise endanger those around them.

  "Not exactly," he said. "Not officially."