Undercity

by Catherine Asaro

  “I have my own small business.” He motioned at the holosheets on his desk. “I’ve designed buildings in a few places, including Cries. Also in your corner of space, Selei City.”

  Ho! Those were two of the most prestigious markets in the Imperialate. “You have your own firm? How?”

  Paolo was watching me closely. “That I can’t leave this place, Major, doesn’t mean I can’t work. I have a staff. They take care of anything that requires interaction with the outside world. It leaves me free to be creative.”

  “Nice setup,” I said. “Except you can never touch your creations.” He could walk through virtual simulations of his buildings, but he could never set foot in them.

  He shrugged. “We all pay a price for our dreams.”

  “And Dayj?”

  “Ah, well. Dayj.” His exhaled. “He has more than the rest of us. And less.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You’ve seen holos of him?” When I nodded, he said, “Then you know. He’s one of the best-looking men in the Imperialate.”

  What was it with them and this beauty thing? Even as a child, I had resented it when vendors in Cries gave me food because they thought I was pretty but let my friends go hungry.

  I crossed my arms. “Life has more to it than appearance.”

  “Yes, well, no one ever bothered to tell my nephew that.” He shook his head. “From a certain point of view, Dayj is perfect. The epitome of the Majda prince.”

  Even knowing they were recording this interview, I couldn’t hide my anger. “A prize, right? The ultimate trophy, bred from birth to marry a Ruby heir.”

  His voice cooled. “Take care, Major.”

  Yes, antagonizing the House of Majda was dangerous. But if I was going to find Dayj when none of their own people had managed, I needed to look where they didn’t want to go even if my process of getting there offended them.

  I said only, “How did he respond when the betrothal fell through?”

  Paolo remained silent as he studied my face. Finally he said, “He seemed numb. It wasn’t that he mourned her loss. He hardly knew her. But what did he have left? Nothing.”

  For flaming sakes. “Did you people actually tell him that?”

  Paolo spoke with an edge. “Make no mistake, Major. This family loves Dayj and will do anything to bring him back. You may not like what you hear, but that won’t change the truth.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem.” I met his gaze. “Dayj’s truth might be different than what everyone here believes.”

  His face took on an aristocratic chill. “Whereas you claim to know it?”

  “No,” I said. “But I mean to find out.”

  * * *

  Dayj’s parents were Corejida and Ahktar. Corejida was the middle Majda sister, younger than the Matriarch but older than Lavinda. She resembled General Majda, but with a less imposing presence. Her clothes had a softer look, light blue trousers and a tunic that molded to her body. Right now, she was pacing across the circular alcove. The room had polished walls tiled in pale blue and silver mosaics, as if we were inside a jeweled box. Its arched windows stretched from floor to ceiling and showed a lofty view of the mountains outside, peaks with a desolate beauty. General Majda stood by one of the windows facing us, her gaze intent on her sister.

  Chief Takkar, the head of the Majda police force, was leaning against the wall with her brawny arms crossed. She had only a cold stare for me. Her black uniform matched the one worn by the pilot who had picked me up in the flycar. Like everyone else here, Takkar was physically fit, with black hair and dark eyes. Hell, I was physically fit, with black hair and dark eyes. Did the Majdas subconsciously choose their employees to resemble themselves? Who knew, maybe it wasn’t subconscious.

  Four guards stood by the arched exit across the room, making sure that, gods forbid, I didn’t sneak deeper into the palace and trespass on the men’s quarters. At least Krestone, their captain, didn’t show any of Chief Takkar’s hostility toward me. Krestone remained by the doorway, alert and focused, the solid sort who spoke rarely and saw a great deal.

  “We have to find him,” Corejida was saying as she paced through a panel of sunlight that slanted through a window and across the floor. “Gods only know what has happened out there. He could be hurt, lost, starving.” She looked as if she hadn’t slept for the last three days.

  “Has he talked about anything outside the palace?” I asked. “Any place, in any context?”

  “We’ve already been through this,” Takkar told me. “He never spoke of other places.”

  “I’d like to hear Lady Corejida’s thoughts.” I wasn’t sure why Corejida went by the honorific Lady; it seemed rather modest for such a highly placed House. She was hard to read. Although Majda women seemed to prefer military titles to noble address, she had never joined the military. Finance was her specialty. Someone had to run the Majda empire.

  “Does Prince Dayjarind have any special interests?” I asked. “Subjects he likes to read about? Hobbies? Favorite pursuits?”

  “He’s been talking about landscapes lately.” Corejida rubbed the back of her neck as she paced, working at the muscles. “He looks at holo-images in the library.”

  “Did he mention any holo in particular?” I asked.

  She paused in front of a window and stood facing me, backlit by the streaming sunlight. “He likes imaginary scenes, impossible images created by mesh systems.”

  Vaj spoke in her husky voice. “Dayj has always been that way. Dreaming whatever boys dream.”

  I hardly thought a twenty-three-year-old man qualified as a boy. “Did he want to make landscapes?”

  They stared at me blankly. Corejida said, “Make them?”

  I thought of Paolo with his architectural firm. “Yes, design them.”

  His mother squinted at me. “You mean, create his own art?”

  “Maybe that was why he enjoyed looking at those scenes,” I said. “He wants to be an artist.”

  “I don’t think so,” Corejida said.

  “Did you check his mesh account?” I asked.

  Chief Takkar spoke tightly. “We’ve checked every account he’s ever used.” Then she added, “Major” as if it were an afterthought, making my title sound like an insult.

  I considered the police chief. “I’d like to take a look.”

  Corejida spoke quickly, before Takkar could respond. “It can be arranged.” Lines of strain showed around her eyes. “Anything you need. Just find my son.”

  Takkar pressed her lips together. If I found a clue that she had missed, it wouldn’t reflect well on her. Well, tough. I wasn’t sure what to make of her. Territorial, yes, and defensive. That her people had failed to locate the prince put her in a tight spot. Anything I found that she had missed could make her look bad. As much as she might resent my presence, however, it would benefit her to work with me. The sooner we located Dayj, the better for everyone.

  Whether or not Takkar saw it that way remained to be seen.

  * * *

  “I’m not sure what you think I would know,” Krestone told me. “I’m assigned to Lavinda Majda’s guard, and her husband Prince Paolo. I don’t interact much with Prince Dayjarind.”

  We were in the living room of my palace suite, relaxing on large pillows on the floor. The black lacquered table between us reflected the crystal goblets of wine a servant had poured and the matching decanter he left on the table, half full of a red liquid. It was all gorgeous, but really, how could anyone enjoy a drink packaged like that? You couldn’t swig ale from a crystal goblet.

  “I’m talking to all the palace guards,” I said. Which was true, though that was partly so it didn’t look as if I had singled out Krestone. Of all the people I’d dealt with here, she struck me as the one most likely to offer useful information. I doubted the Majdas were deliberately making matters difficult; they wanted me to succeed. But they rarely if ever had strangers prying into their private lives, and they raised barriers without realizing they wer
e hindering my work.

  “I wondered when you last saw Prince Dayjarind,” I said. “I’m trying to get a sense of his actions before he disappeared.”

  “Three days ago,” Krestone said. “It was a few hours before he disappeared.” She picked up her goblet, which startled me. Then again, she was no longer on duty. During her free time, she could drink whatever she pleased. Well, what the hell. Even if it looked too perfect to consume, the wine was still just wine. I picked up my goblet, too.

  “I saw him that morning.” Krestone took a swallow of her drink, then blinked at the glass. “You know, this is actually good.” With a rueful smile, she added, “When it comes to liquor, I’m more of a shoot-’em-first-and-ask-questions-later type.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Yah.” I took a swallow of wine. Ho! Good hardly described that blissful moment. I said only, “It’s not bad.”

  Krestone grinned, and we both drank some more. Then she said, “Dayj came by Paolo’s office that morning. He wanted to return a book Paolo had lent him.”

  “Did Dayj seem upset?”

  “Maybe a little distant. He’s often that way, though.” She shook her head. “It’s hard to say. I was outside. Only his guards went inside Paolo’s office with him.”

  “Did they talk long?”

  “A few minutes.”

  I nodded, disappointed. Dayj’s guards had told me the same. “Had you seen him with anyone unusual recently?”

  “Never. Just his family, and of course Captain Ebersole, Hazi, Oxil, or Nazina.”

  That was quite a list. “Who are Hazi, Oxil, and Nazina?”

  “Bodyguards attached to the palace,” Krestone said.

  Oh. No surprise there. I’d have to check my notes, but I’d already talked to Duane Ebersole, and I was pretty sure Hazi, Oxil, and Nazina were also on my list. No wonder Dayj was going stir crazy, with so many people constraining his life.

  “Do you remember anything else?” I asked.

  “Nothing, sorry.” As the captain put down her drink, the comm on her gauntlet pinged. She tapped the receive panel. “Krestone here.”

  Takkar’s voice rose out of the comm. “Heya, Kres. You busy?”

  “I’m off right now,” Krestone said. “What do you need?”

  “We could use your help. We’re doing shift assignments.”

  “Be right there,” Krestone said. “I was just talking with Major Bhaajan.”

  Takkar’s tone cooled markedly. “Well, fuck. She causing you any trouble?”

  Krestone glanced at me with a look of apology. Into the comm, she said, “None at all.”

  I spoke, raising my voice enough so Takkar could hear. “Got a problem with me, Chief?”

  A silence followed my question. Then Takkar said, “Krestone, we’re at the station. Come when you can. Out here.” The comm fell silent.

  Krestone gave me a rueful look. “Sorry about that.”

  “No problem.” I shouldn’t push Takkar, but you could find out a lot about people from the way they reacted when they were irritated.

  Unfortunately, so far I hadn’t found out squat.

  * * *

  “Lumos down to five percent,” I said.

  The lights in my suite dimmed until I could barely see the console that curved around my chair. I leaned back, my hands clasped behind my head, and put my feet on the console. “Jan, show me the landscapes that Prince Dayjarind collected.”

  “Accessed.” Jan’s androgynous voice came from the Evolving Intelligence brain, or EI, that ran the console. A holo appeared above the console, a startling scene in three dimensions. Waves rose impossibly high over a sapphire beach and crashed down on the glittering blue sand, spraying phosphorescent foam. The physics made no sense. Unless it was an unusually low-gravity world, those waves went up far too high and came down far too slowly. When they built to their highest point, they looked like tidal waves. The ocean should have receded far back from the beach as each wave pulled up all the water, but it didn’t. None of that mattered, though. Artistically, the scene was breathtaking.

  “What planet is that on?” I asked.

  “It isn’t,” Jan said.

  “Is it pure fiction?” I asked. “Or does it resemble a known place?”

  After a pause, Jan said, “The scene has a nine percent correlation to the Urban Sea on the planet Metropoli.”

  Nine percent didn’t say much, but it wasn’t negligible. “Show me another one he liked.”

  Over the next hour, Jan showed me Dayj’s collection of oceans, beaches, and mountains, a valley of opal hills, a plain of red reeds under a cobalt sky, a forest of stained-glass trees. At first I didn’t see any correlation between them, other than their eerie beauty. Then it hit me.

  They were all empty.

  “Do any of his landscapes have people in them?” I asked.

  Another pause. Then Jan said, “None.”

  I exhaled, saddened.

  * * *

  Vaj Majda spoke coldly. “Offending my family and staff achieves nothing, Major Bhaajan.”

  One day at the palace and already I had insulted people. Apparently neither Takkar nor Prince Paolo liked my attitude.

  We were standing before a window in the library, bathed in sunlight. “The whole point of bringing me in,” I said, “was to get new insights, to see if I can find what others missed.”

  She considered me, one of the few people I knew who was tall enough to look down at me, not by much, but it was still unsettling.

  “And have you found anything?” she asked.

  “I ran correlations on Dayj’s landscapes with real places.”

  The general waved her hand in dismissal. “So did Takkar’s people.”

  “True. But I searched for negatives.”

  “Negative in what sense?”

  “I looked for what was missing.”

  “And?”

  “He doesn’t like the desert. No images at all.”

  Majda tilted her head, her face thoughtful. “He lives on the edge of a desert. It might seem harsh or mundane to him.”

  I’d wondered the same. “He likes the ocean.”

  She smiled with unexpected grace. “Perhaps he dreams of the age when the Vanished Sea stretched here to the horizon and sent waves crashing into the shore.”

  Interesting. A bit of a poet lived in the conservative general. I struggled to express an idea that was more intuition than analysis. “You say he’s a dreamer. He likes to read stories. He enjoys exotic landscapes that exist only in the mind of an artist. All places. No people.”

  “I’m not sure I follow your meaning.”

  “He’s lonely.”

  She frowned. “That is the best you can do? His holos have no people, therefore he is lonely?”

  “Doesn’t it bother you?”

  “I hired you to find him. Not give him therapy.”

  I spoke carefully. “Your Highness, if I offend, I ask your pardon. But to find him, I have to explore all possibilities. Maybe your nephew dreamed of places rather than people because he saw his life as empty. Without companionship. Actual places are no more real to him than the creations of an artist’s imagination. What greater freedom is there than to visit a place that doesn’t exist?”

  “If it doesn’t exist,” she asked dryly, “how will you find it?”

  “I think he went to the sea.” I let loose with one of my intuitive leaps. “He feels he is vanishing. And he lives by the Vanished Sea. So he went to find a sea that exists.”

  “That strikes me as exceedingly far-fetched.” She sounded puzzled, though, rather than dismissive.

  “Maybe.” I waited.

  “Raylicon has no true seas,” she said.

  “So he’s never seen a real ocean.”

  “We have found no trace that he went offworld.”

  “Then either he faked his ID or he didn’t go offworld.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I’m paying you for that analysis?”

  Well, al
l right, it didn’t come out sounding brilliant. I tried again. “I think he will try to buy a false identity and passage offworld. He was wearing expensive clothes the day he disappeared. The gems alone on them are worth a fortune. He didn’t lack for resources.”

  The general shook her head. “Takkar and her people checked the black market, not just in Cries, but across the planet. They found no trace of his gems.”

  “I can do it better.”

  She gave me one of those appraising Majda stares. “You certainly don’t lack for self-confidence.”

  “With good reason.”

  “What do you need, then, to find him?”

  “Complete freedom.” I met her gaze. “I work on my own. No Chief Takkar, no surveillance, no guards, no palace suite, no records of my research, nothing.”

  “Why? We have immense resources at your disposal.” She continued to study me with an unsettling intensity. “What do you have to hide?”

  “Nothing.” I shook off the odd sense that she was trying to look into my thoughts. “I know this city in ways your police force never will. But I won’t get anywhere without privacy, not where I’m going. If people think Majda is looking over my shoulder, they won’t talk to me.”

  Vaj stood there with the sunlight slanting across her tall form. Finally she said, “Very well. We will try it your way.” Then she added, “For now.”

  * * *

  A visitor showed up as I was preparing to leave my palace suite. The knock came when I was packing my duffel. I opened the door to find Captain Krestone and four male guards outside. A hooded figure stood in their midst.

  I froze, flustered. That hidden enigma had to be a Majda man. His dark blue robe had metallic patterns embroidered along the hems, probably thread with real gold spun into the strands. I saw a shadowed face within the cowl, but no details. No clues to his identity.

  I wasn’t certain if protocol allowed me to address him, so I spoke to Krestone. “My greetings, Captain.”

  She wasted no time. “Prince Ahktar wishes to speak with you.”

  Ahktar. Dayj’s father. Good. “Yes, certainly.”

  Krestone handed me a scroll tied with a gold cord. I blinked. The Majda universe had almost no intersection with the one where I lived, where few people even used paper, let alone parchment. I unrolled the scroll. Inked in calligraphy, it granted me permission to speak with Prince Ahktar.