by Kate Elliott
“Horn filed a wrongful use claim against Surbrent-Xia for theft of their cell transduction protocol.”
“Which came to nothing. But they had a grievance, too, and plenty of markets out-system who won’t ask too many questions about whether they have patent rights. This is so much useless speculation, now. We got the array. They did not.”
How could they analyze the day’s nasty work so dispassionately, as though it were the script of an actie in development?
“You killed two men! Eleanor was really nice to me!” Another second and she would be blubbering, but she held it in, sniffing hard, choking down the lump in her throat.
“We killed no one,” said Marcos angrily.“Just two hurt, in the Zona, but they are only stunned.”
“There was blood.”
“There is always blood. This other, this Eleanor—no se. There was a hover that flew off once they saw they had lost.”
“What about me?”
Señora Maria gestured.
Rose eased up to her feet, wincing with pain as her knees unbent. “Ow.”
“We should let this pauvre go home. She can use the call-up in Anselmo’s house.”
“The Constabulary will come,” said Rose.
“Not soon,” said Marcos. “Your flight plan registers a stop at San Lorenzo to visit the museum. They do not know otherwise. They will not be expecting you to leave for some hours. We have time.”
“Ándale,” said Señora Maria.
Marcos shrugged, sighed, and motioned with his gun for Rose to follow him. Perhaps he wasn’t the commander after all, or perhaps he was just behaving as men ought—as her mother used to say: respectful toward the grandmother of his tribe.
The house belonging to Anselmo sat riverside, one door facing the road and a second overlooking the bank. A small receiver dish tilted precariously on the roof, fastened to the topmost beam. They had to walk up two steps made of stacked concrete blocks to get onto the elevated wood floor inside. Like the entire village, the little one-room hut was untenanted, except for a burlap cot without bedding, a table, and a bright yellow molded plastic bench pitted with pinprick holes. An old-fashioned all-in-one sat closed up on the table. Looking out through the other door, Rose watched as a loose branch drifted past on the water and snagged on a tree, while Marcos powered up the box and tilted up its view screen.
“Where did you take the others?” she asked. The driftwood tugged loose from its trap and spun away down the river.
He mulled over the controls, not looking up at her, although a hand remained cupped over the scatter gun’s readouts.“They will be safe.” He spoke to the box in his own language. Lights winked on the console. “Here. You may enter a number. Use the keypad.”
She had a priority imavision code, of course, that identified her immediately to her father’s secretary since her father never ever took incoming calls personally.
A whir. A beep.
“One moment, Miss Rose. Putting you through.”
The secretary did not turn on his own imavision. Although the screen remained blank, Marcos stepped away and turned sideways to give her privacy and to keep an eye out the door. But even so he started when that famous golden voice spoke across the net in a tone richly affectionate and so precisely intimate, using the pet name for her that no other dared speak.
“Mouse?”
“D—d—daddy.”
“I didn’t expect you to call.” He hadn’t turned on the imavision. Maybe he was getting dressed or entertaining visitors. Maybe today he just didn’t want to see her face. “It’s been so long since we talked. I’ve missed your voice so much, here at home. All your little quiet noises in the background. It seems so empty here without you puttering around. How are you? Are you having fun up there in the eternal sunshine?”
“N—n—no, Daddy. I’m just—” She faltered, glancing toward Marcos, who still stared out the door at the sluggish river.
“You should be in—” A pause. A voice murmured in the background. “San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán. Some kind of a museum there, I see. Olmec civilization. Pride of the collection is a large stone head! What will you children think of next!”
“D—daddy.” She wiped away a tear with the back of her hand.
“Are you crying, little mouse?”
“Daddy, I’m in trouble.”
A pause.
A silence.
“Rosie, you have a contraceptive implant—”
“No, Daddy. No. I’m in trouble. Please come get me.”
“Come get you?”
The screen flashed, a nova of light that spread, swirled with color, coalesced, and formed into an image of his face. The most famous face in the universe, so people said.
He looked put out.
“Come get you?” he repeated, as though she just told him he had turned purple.“I have three interviews today to support the opening of Judge Not. The ratings aren’t as strong as they need to be. After this a meeting with the Fodera-Euler Consortium to sign the contract for the Alpha Trek 3-D.”
He glanced back over his shoulder, speaking to a person not within the imavision’s range.“What’s the time frame?”
“Ten days,” said his secretary, off screen.
“And the Consortium wants to begin recording—?”
“Fourteen days.”
He turned his brilliant smile on her. He had the most glorious blue eyes, warming as he stared intently at her through the imavision, as though he were really right by her side, comforting her infant sobs on a stormy night. “Listen, Rosie. You hang in there for ten more days and I’ll come get you. We’ll make the most of it, father and daughter reunited, that kind of thing. Let Joseph know when your first landfall comes once the ten days are up. I’ll be there to meet you. No need to mention you called now and arranged it in advance. Pretend you’re surprised to see me.”
“But, Daddy—”
“Are you in danger of being killed?”
Marcos had not shifted position, nor his grip on the scatter gun.“No. I don’t think so, but—”
“Rosie. Mouse.” His tone softened, lowered. “You know I will never let you down. But as long as your life or health isn’t in danger, it can’t be done for ten days. I made an arrangement with Surbrent-Xia that you would stick with the Sunseekers for three months. You weren’t to know, but I trust you can see how important it is that I fulfill my contracts. You know how tight money is these days—”
“You ‘made an arrangement’ with Surbrent-Xia! I thought I ran away!”
“You did. You did. Fortunately, you picked the right place to run away to.”
“But I want to come home, Daddy. Now. I need to. You don’t understand—”
“It can’t be done. If I break the contract, we get nothing. Just ten more days.”
She hated that tone. “But, Daddy, the—the—” What was Marcos going to do? Shoot her with a nonlethal weapon while her father could see and hear? “I am in danger. An awful thing happened. We landed at San Lorenzo and then we were attacked by corporate raiders who wanted the solar array. And then we were caught in the crossfire when another group who had their technology stolen stole it back. I thought they were bandits, first, but it’s all some kind of corporate espionage that goes back for years and years, like they’re always stealing things, bits or patents from each other and stealing them back and selling them out-system—”
“Joseph! Joseph!” He turned away from her, showing his profile. Always aware of the camera’s eye, he never lifted his chin because it distorted the angle of his nose. “Did you get that down? We need more information! This could be a gold mine if we get it into development first. I see it as a serial. A family saga about ruthless technology pirates!” His beautiful face loomed again, grinning at her. “What a good girl, Rosie! I knew I could count on you! Is there someone there I can talk to, who would be interested in a contract? Who has inside information?”
“A contract!” She recoiled from the table, sure she hadn’t
heard him right.
Marcos was already pushing past her.“What kind of contract? Is there money? Is there publicity? We’ll need leverage. . . .” He leaned down in front of the view screen, introduced himself, and began bargaining.
“Daddy!”
“Love you, Rosie! Now, M. Marcos. First we’ll need an all-hours contact number—”
“Daddy!”
Marcos ignored her, and her father had forgotten her. Amazingly, Marcos didn’t even object, or seem to notice, as Rose left the hut and trudged down the dirt street back to the church, her only companions half a dozen chickens and two mangy dogs who circled warily, darting in to sniff at her heels until she kicked one. Yelping, they raced away.
The church remained empty, abandoned, six chairs overturned and one drying bloodstain, nothing serious.
Only bruised.
Señora Maria had departed from the little back chamber, but she had left Doctor Baby Jesus sitting upright on the shelf, plump arms spread in a welcoming gesture as Rose halted in front of him.
“I speak English,” said Rose, her voice choked. Tears spilled, but she fought against them.“I need help.”
A whirr. A squeal.
“Please wait while I connect you.”
A different voice, this time.A woman.“Please state your location and need. I am M. Maldonado, medical technician. I am here to help you.”
A pause.
“Are you there?” The voice deepened with concern.
She found her voice, lost beneath the streaming tears. “I just need your help. Can you connect me to my brother? His name is Anton Mikhailov. He’s an advocate at—uh—” She traced down through her sim-screen.“This is his priority number.”
“Are you in danger?”
“No. No. Kind of. Nobody’s going to kill me. But I’m lost—I’m sorry. I know this isn’t what you’re here for. I know this isn’t important. You must get thousands of life-and-death calls every hour.”
The woman made a sound, like a swallowed chuckle. “This system was defunct twenty years ago, but we keep a few personnel on-line because of people who have no other access. It’s all right. It’s all right. What’s your name?”
“Rose.”
“Please stay on the line, Rose. I’ll get a channel to your brother. If you want to talk, just say something. I’m here listening.”
She had nothing to say. She fidgeted anxiously, swallowing compulsively, each time hoping to consume the lump that constricted her throat.
Dull, officious Anton, who worked as an advocate for troubled children or some other equally worthy and boring vocation. He had left the family fourteen years before, when she was only a baby. He had been raised by someone else, by traitors, thieves, defectives. He had rarely visited his parents and then only on supervised visitations, because the ones who had stolen him had poisoned his mind. Yet he always wrote to her four times a year on the quarter, chatty notes detailing the obscenely tedious details of his life. Each note repeated at the end the same tired cliché: Call me any time, Rosie. Any time.
She didn’t really know him. He could as well have been a stranger. Why should he do anything for her if her father didn’t even care enough to come when she asked? Wasn’t this the only time she had ever asked anything of her father?
All these years she had never asked.
“Patching you through,” said helpful M. Maldonado. “M. Mikhailov, I’ll remain on stepped-back link if you need me.”
“Thank you. Rose?” Anton had a reedy tenor, rising querulously. She didn’t know him well enough to know if he was surprised, annoyed, or pleased.
“Anton, it’s Rose.”
I’m Rose, she thought, half astonished, hearing her own voice speak her own name: a small, isolated voice, lost in the dim room, in the old church, in the forgotten village, in the green jungle, on the common earth beneath clouds that covered the all-seeing eye of the sun. It was amazing anyone could hear her at all. She sobbed, choking on it, so it came out sounding halfway between a cough and a sneeze. She could barely squeeze out words.
“Please, come get me.”
“Of course, Rose. Right away. Where are you?”
“I’m all alone.”
The buzz of the fluorescent lamp accompanied her other companion: the solitude, not even a mouse or a roach. The world had emptied out around her. For an instant, she thought the connection had failed until Doctor Baby Jesus whirred and Anton spoke again, an odd tone in his suddenly very even, level all-on-the-same-note voice.
“Did you call Dad?”
She sobbed. She could get no word past her throat, no comprehensible sound, only this wrenching, gasping, ugly sound.
The baby doctor sighed with Anton’s voice. “He’ll never love you, Rosie. Never. He can’t love anyone but himself.”
Fury made her articulate.“He does love me. He says so.”
“Love is just another commodity to him. Maybe you get something, but there’s always a price to be paid. I’m so sorry.”
“He does love me.”
“I’ll come get you. Stay where you are, Rosie. I’ll come. Will you stay? Will you be there? Don’t go running off anywhere? You’re not going to change your mind and follow those damned Sunseekers?”
“But he doesn’t want me.” She began to sob again, torn in two. She heard Anton reply, faintly, only maybe his voice wasn’t any fainter and it was just her own weeping that drowned him.
“I’m coming, Rosie. Just tell me where you are.”
She couldn’t speak. She could only cry as their voices filtered through the creaky stutter of the baby doll’s speaker.
“M. Mikhailov, I’m attempting to triangulate, but the intercessor has been partially disabled so I can’t get a lock on your sister’s position.”
“Do you have a position on the Sunseekers?”
“The Sunseekers?”
“That ship with the new solar array technology. That grotesque advertising ploy—‘you need never set foot in darkness again,’ something like that. I can’t remember their idiot slogan. Maybe in your line of work you don’t have to keep up on the gossip rags—”
“Oh!” said the voice of M. Maldonado. “Isn’t that the ship that the actor Vasil Veselov’s daughter ran away to—”
“That one,” interrupted Anton. “Do you have any way to get a fix on it? Here, let me see, they’ve got a public relations site that tracks—Yes. Here it is. I’ve got it touched down in a municipio called San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán.”
“I’ll get all transport information for that region, but if you’re in— ah—London, it will take you at least eighteen hours with the most efficient connections, including ground transport or hovercab.”
“I have access to a private ’car. Rose. Rose?”
“I’m here.” Amazing how tiny and mouselike her voice sounded, barely audible, the merest squeak.
“Rose, now listen. It says here there’s an old historic museum in San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán. Do you know where that is? Can you get there and wait there?”
Of course, maybe it wasn’t more than open welts sown with salt, discovering the truth: her father had wanted her with the Sunseekers all along. Had manipulated her to get her there. Surbrent-Xia had paid him to get his daughter onto the ship in the most publicly scandalous way possible. He had set it all up, used her to get the money and the publicity.
“Daddy doesn’t want me,” she said, voice all liquid as the horrible truth flooded over her, soaking her to the bones.
“I know, Rosie. But I love you. I’m coming. Just tell me where you are. Tell me if you can get to the museum.”
“Okay,” she said, to say something because she had forgotten what words meant. A chasm gaped; she knelt on the edge, scrabbling not to tumble into the awful yawning void. What would she do now, if no one wanted her? Why would anyone want her anyway? Blemished, disfigured, stained. Ugly.
“Okay,” he repeated, sounding a little annoyed, but maybe he was just worried.
Maybe he was actually worried about her. The notion shocked her into paying attention.
“Okay,” he repeated.“I will be there in no less than six hours.You must wait by the museum. Don’t go off with the Sunseekers, Rosie. I will meet you there, no matter what. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Doctor Baby Jesus fell silent, having done his work. The fluorescent light flickered. A roach scuttled across the shelf, and froze, sensing her shadow. Her tears stained the concrete floor, speckles of moisture evaporating around her feet. She just stood there, stunned, unable to think or act. She couldn’t even remember what she had agreed to. The light hummed. The roach vanished under the safety of the baby doll’s lacy robe.
“Hola! Hey! You in here, chica?” The voice, male and bossy, spoke perfectly indigenous Standard. The young shirtless tough who had hit Akvir upside the head and cursed at him in Spanish pushed aside the curtain and ducked in. “There you are. I’m taking you back to the village.”
“The village?” she echoed stupidly, staring at the rifle he held. Staring at him. He had pulled the bandanna down and the ski mask off, revealing a pleasant face marred only by the half-cocked smirk on his lips. He sounded just like one of her friends from home, except for the Western Hemisphere flatness of his accent.
“The village,” he agreed, rolling his eyes. He did not threaten her with the gun.“Those Sunseeker people, they’re all there, waiting to get picked up. You’re supposed to go with them. We got to go, pronto. You know. Fast.”
“That’s by the old museum, isn’t it?”
“Si,” he said, eyes squinted as he examined her.“You okay?”
She wiped her cheeks. Maybe the dim light hid the messy cry.
“We got to go,” he repeated, shifting his feet, dancing up two steps and pressing the curtain aside with his rifle as he glanced out into the church. “They got some ’cars coming in to get all of you out of here before sunset. You got to get out before sunset, right?”
“The museum,” she said.“Okay. Is it far?”
“Four or five kilometers. Not far. But we got to go now.”
She nodded like a marionette, moving to the strings pulled by someone else. She got her feet to move, one before the next, and soon enough as they came out of the church she found her legs worked pretty well, just moving along like a normal person’s legs would, nothing to it. A group of little boys played soccer along the dirt track of the hamlet, shouting and laughing as the ball rolled toward the river but was captured just in time. They turned off into the ragged forest growth before they passed the house where she had talked to her father; she saw no sign of Marcos except the flash of the ceramic satellite dish wired to the roof.