by Spider
Rand was honored to be included in the merriment. It was apparent to him that this trip was a sentimental journey for Reb—and for Meiya, Reb’s successor as Head Teacher at Top Step. While they had been training and graduating a quarter of a million Stardancers together over the past half century, Fat Humphrey had been one of the very few constants in their lives. Meiya, a quiet, solemn woman, wore an expression that reminded Rand of old pictures he had seen of mothers sending their sons off to war.
As he watched Fat Humphrey mock the moves of a Stardancer, he suddenly wondered why Fat had not accepted Symbiosis on retirement. But he knew he would not ask, not today anyway. The question was in an area of privacy you learned not to violate if you spent any time at Top Step: he didn’t know Fat well enough yet.
And the man read his mind. The moment the laughter for his performance had died away, he looked at Rand and said, “You wonderin’ how come I didn’t eat the red Jell-O for my dessert, huh?”
“Well…yes, Fat, I was, as a matter of fact.”
Fat Humphrey grinned. “You ever hear about the time them assholes blew up about a cubic kilometer of Sym?”
“Sure.” Almost a decade before Rand’s birth, a fanatic antiStardancer terrorist group, headed by Chen Ling Ho’s father, had somehow managed to destroy a large mass of Symbiote on its way from its source in the upper atmosphere of Titan to Earth orbit, where it was supposed to serve the needs of the next generation of Top Step graduates. Several Stardancers riding herd on the load had been killed.
“Well, most o’ that was suppose’ be for me. They been tryin’ to catch up ever since, but it’s gonna be another twenty year or so before they ready to handle me again.” Rand cracked up; so did Reb and Meiya. “I figure in the meantime I watch a little TV, go for a swim, catch a show. You get me a good seat?”
“Well, I’ll tell you, Fat,” he said thoughtfully, “in terms of sightlines and vectors, maybe what we should do is mount a special show just for you.”
“How you mean?”
“Put you in the center of the theater, and work around you.”
Fat roared with glee and slapped him on the back; fortunately his seat belt held. “You’re all right, kid.”
They reached the Shimizu by 19:30. The deceleration was as mild as the acceleration had been, no more than half a gee, and for only a few minutes. Rand could have taken more easily, but the others were all spacers, intolerant of gees.
Fat Humphrey had specifically requested that there be no reception on his arrival. Of course Evelyn Martin had double-crossed him, and was waiting at dockside to drag him off to a press conference. But Rand had halfway expected that: he debarked first, took Martin aside, and threatened to take him by the testicles and fling him through the nearest bulkhead into hard vacuum if he didn’t change orbits, now. Grumbling and muttering, the little PR man complied. It is difficult to slink in free-fall, but he managed it. “Don’t bother with check-in,” he snarled over his shoulder as he went. “It’s covered. Just take him right to P-427.”
Rand rapped on the hatch to signal that it was safe, and the others emerged. As nanobots scurried away with luggage, he tried to show Fat Humphrey where to insert the wafer that would install his AI in the Shimizu’s data crystals…and was startled and a little nonplussed to learn that Fat did not have one.
“How about you, Meiya?” he tried.
But she shook her head too. “I won’t be inboard long enough to bother. We’ll all use Reb’s to get around.”
“Well, okay,” he said. “But stick close to him. This place can be a rabbit warren if you don’t have an AI.”
“There are public terminals all over, left over from the old days,” she pointed out. “If I get lost, I can just ask for you.”
“Sure. I’m not listed, but my AI is: Antonio Salieri. How about if I go get my brother and meet you all at Fat’s new suite in about an hour? I’d like to grab a shower too; I’ve been in this p-suit all day.”
“Good with me,” Fat Humphrey said.
“We’ll meet you there in an hour,” Reb said, and installed his own AI. “Rild—direct us to Suite Prime 427, please.”
One of several exits began to blink softly. “This way, Tenshin.”
Rand jaunted to his own room, checked the time, and decided to phone Jay before showering. He would have just finished dinner by now.
“Hey, bro, what’s shapin’? When are you coming back?”
“About five minutes ago. Want to meet the happiest fat man in human space?”
Jay blinked. “‘…the happiest fat man…’ Hey, you mean Fat Humphrey? Is he here?”
“To stay. He’s just retired; it’s his centennial. I came along for the ride; I’m going back with Reb tomorrow. Little gathering at his new digs in about an hour: just him, you, me, Reb and Meiya, as far as I know. You know Meiya, right?”
“Sure. Hey, this is great! I’ve always wanted a chance to kick back and talk with Fat for a few hours. Where’s he at?”
“Prime 427. Meet me at the nearest corner at 20:25 and we’ll go in together.”
“See you there.”
Fifty minutes later he was waiting at the appointed spot. Almost at once, Jay arrived from another direction, grinning. They hugged, and pounded each other’s shoulder blades.
“How are you, bro?”
“Fine,” Rand said. “I’ve gotten a little work done—I’ll show you later.”
“The hell with that—how are you?”
“Okay,” he said. “Not well, yet, but I can see daylight, you know?”
“That’s good. I told you that place’d be good for you. Hey, Eva’s gonna be here too: Reb called her. Probably in the suite already, in fact; I spoke with her half an hour ago and she said she was leaving right away. I get the idea she and Fat are old friends.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me in the—”
The lights went out.
“What the fuck—” Jay said. “Diaghilev!”
No answer.
“Diaghilev, God dammit!”
“Salieri?” Rand tried.
Silence.
There was a public terminal nearby, but it was unlit, presumed dead. “Jesus,” Jay said softly, clearly controlling his voice with an obvious effort. “I think the whole fucking system is down. That’s never happened. I’d have bet a billion dollars it couldn’t possibly happen.”
They heard a scream somewhere in the far distance; no telling even the direction. The Shimizu corridors had some funny acoustics.
Rand’s heart hammered. “Oh my God…” If they had no lights, no AIs, no phones—how long before they had no air? He fought for calm in the claustrophobic darkness. “All right, what’s our move?”
Just then lights came on. Small red emergency lights, every hundred meters along the corridor, with larger blinking ones marking intersections. Rand found them an immense relief, a sign of recovery, but he saw Jay frowning. “They should have kicked on a lot sooner, even if this is a total system collapse,” Jay said. “Something really weird is going on.”
“Have we got air?”
Jay spotted the nearest grille, jaunted to it, and put his face near it. “Yeah. Reduced flow, but it’s air.”
“What do you think: is this just local, or is the whole damn hotel really dark right now?”
“Beats me. They’re supposed to be equally impossible. I pray to God it’s local.”
A suite door opened not far from them, and someone stuck his head out. “Hey, mate,” he called in an Aussie accent, “any idea what the bloody hell is goin’ on?”
“Look at it this way,” Jay called back. “You’re getting tonight’s rent free.”
“Too right,” he said, and closed his door again.
“God,” Rand said, “Fat and the others must be freaking out in there. If they had the window closed when the power failed, they’re in minimal emergency lighting: it could take them an hour to find the manual door release, let alone figure out how to use it.”
&nbs
p; “Hell of a welcome to the Shimizu,” Jay agreed. “Come on, let’s go try and calm them down.”
They jaunted in the eerie pale red light to Suite 427. “We’ll never convince Fat the place is safe now,” Jay complained as they neared it. “Shit, I just don’t believe this. The only thing I can imagine taking out the Shimizu system is a comet right through the core crystals—and we didn’t feel any impact. It just doesn’t…oh, you asshole.” Automatically, he had stopped in front of the door and waited for an AI to ask his business. “Hit that release for me, will you, bro?” he said, pointing.
Rand pulled open the access hatch indicated and pulled the handle inside. It moved easily—but the door did not move. “Seems to be broken,” he reported.
Jay grimaced. “Naturally. Things never go wrong one at a time.” He put his hands on his hips. “Christ, the door’s soundproof—we can’t even bang out ‘Calm down’ in Morse code.”
“What’s Morse code?” Rand asked.
“Eva would know, but it doesn’t—wait a god damn minute! What do you mean, ‘broken’? That’s a mechanical latch: it can’t be broken.”
“Okay,” Rand said agreeably. “Then what does nonfunction and a blinking red light mean?”
“A blinking—”
In free-fall one almost never pales visibly; blood does not drain from the head as pressure drops. But even in the poor light, Rand could see his brother’s expression come apart. He jaunted quickly to Rand’s side and stared at the little flashing pilot bulb. After a few seconds, he began to shake his head slowly back and forth, the picture of denial.
Rand grabbed his shoulder, hard, and shook him. “What does it mean?” he cried.
Jay turned to him. There was horror in his eyes. He needed three tries to get the words out, and when he did, they were barely audible. “There is no pressure on the other side of that door.”
21
High Earth Orbit
25 February 2065
SULKE DRAGER HAD ALWAYS HATED IT when everybody talked at once. Thirty years as a member of a telepathic community had taught her a great deal about handling multiple inputs—more than any human being had ever known—but never before in history had so much of the Starmind all been sending at the same time. And underlying it all, pervading the whole Solar System like a taste of metal in the back of the mouth, was the wordless shriek from Saturn.
And naturally, the “voices” she most needed to “hear” were the weakest. They were also the closest, but distance means nothing to a telepath; signal strength and bandwidth were all that counted.
So she borrowed energy from every Stardancer in the heavens who was not shouting something, and used it to drive a message that had never before been sent across the matrix.
Shut the fuck up!
The System seemed to echo in the sudden relative quiet. Even the wordless wail from the Ring halved its “volume” and “pitch” and dropped back down into the region of speech. The words—Save him, Sulke!—repeated endlessly, like a mantra.
And now Sulke could clearly hear the gentle voice she most needed to hear. All right so far, cousins, Reb said. We are all unharmed so far, which means they intend to parley. Be calm.
She knew his location precisely now. The vessel in which he was imprisoned was superbly stealthed—the combined power of the United Nations could not have found it—but she had detection gear no battle cruiser could match, if the target was another telepath. Reb had been one years before he’d met his first Stardancer; a natural adept. So were Fat Humphrey and Meiya.
So were four other humans currently in space, and fourteen on Terra. About average for humanity. All of them had been kidnapped too, at the same time as Reb, Fat and Meiya—every one was now a prisoner—but this vessel was Sulke’s pidgin: the one she personally happened to be close enough to do something about. She instructed her subconscious to monitor the other ongoing rescue operations for data relevant to her own problem, and consciously ignored them.
She fed Reb’s location to those who were good at orbital ballistics, grabbed the report that echoed back and swore. You’re going nowhere fast! Your trajectory is taking you up out of the ecliptic, and there’s nothing there!
He was still calm. Naturally. We knew they must have a covert base in space; now they’re leading us to it. We already know where the ones dirtside are being taken.
Yeah, and we can’t touch the place. What if where you’re going is just as well defended?
Then we will have to be very clever. And very lucky.
She went briefly into rapport with those who had had military training back in their human lives, and swore again. We have Stardancers vectoring to intercept your projected path at multiple points…but there’s no way to know where you’re going until they decelerate. And if they maneuver in the meantime, we could lose you completely.
They probably will. They’re paranoid; they’ll assume their stealthing may not be good enough, and try every trick there is.
I can match orbits with you right now, she said. You’re coming right at me, near enough.
What about relative speeds?
She was already adjusting her lightsail, spinning out Symbiote like pizza dough. You’re a bat out of hell—but if I can grab hold, and it doesn’t kill me…She had an unusually powerful thruster on her belt she had never expected to use; she poked it carefully through the Symbiote membrane, borrowed a hundred brains to help her aim it, and fired it to exhaustion.
What can you accomplish? Meiya asked.
Tear off antennas, bugger up their communications, bang on the hull and distract them while you jump ’em…if I have to, I’ll unscrew the fucking drive with my fingernails.
There was a hint of a chuckle in Reb’s voice. I love you too, Sulke. Whoops—they’re about to drug me…
Me too, Fat Humphrey said. Watch your ass, Sulke.
She could see them now, by eyeball, and they were indeed coming on fast. But she was confident; she had learned to board a moving freight when she was eight years old, leaving a place then called East Germany. Yeah? she sent back. I’ll give you a two-kilo gold asteroid if you can pull off that trick, pal.
His answering giggle was the last thing she ever heard. She never saw the white-winged figure who came up behind her and put a laser bolt through her brain.
PART EIGHT
22
The Shimizu Hotel
25 February 2065
JAY REMEMBERED AN OLD STORY from the dawn of spaceflight: a Skylab astronaut had awakened to a lighting failure, and had taken nearly twenty minutes to find the backup switch—in a sleeping compartment the size of a phone booth. Darkness and free-fall were a disorienting combination.
He knew his way around the Shimizu about as well as anyone alive—but in the eerie, feeble glow of emergency lighting, everything looked different. In places even the emergency lights had failed, and almost everywhere he and Rand encountered adherents of the ancient philosophy, “When in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.” There was absolutely no doubt in Jay’s mind that somewhere Evelyn Martin was hemorrhaging and tearing his hair out in clumps.
For the first time in his life, Jay did not give a damn about offending guests; he and Rand went through them like buckshot, leaving a trail of outrage and broken bones that was sure to give birth to expensive litigation.
The destination that would most efficiently allow them to find out what was going on, report what had happened, and do something effective about it, was Kate Tokugawa’s office. There were other nerve centers, but that was the only one Jay was confident he could find in his sleep without AI assistance. It was startling to realize how much you depended on the damn things. God help me if I suddenly need a cube root or something, he thought wildly, bouncing a fat bald groundhog off a bulkhead.
Rand deked expertly around the ricocheting guest and pulled up alongside him. “They couldn’t have started losing pressure before the blackout, or we’d have heard alarms. To reach zero by the time we
tried that latch, they must have blown out fast.”
“The whole window must have gone,” Jay said.
“Is that possible?”
“No. Not without help.”
“So they’re dead?” He clotheslined an employee who was, quite properly, trying to prevent them from speeding recklessly through a developing riot—and, since it was the quickest way to explain, regretfully sucker-punched the woman as he went by.
“Probably. But maybe not.”
“How do you figure?”
“I ask myself, what could take out a whole window? I come up with a ship designed for the purpose. I think they’ve been snatched. I think when they jaunted into that room, the window was already gone: they saw a holo of one. And at some point they all got sleepy…”
“And somebody came through the holo and towed them away…wouldn’t somebody notice a fucking barnacle attached to the Shimizu?”
“Remora,” Jay corrected. “It moves. Not if it was stealthed well enough. Fat’s room is all the way around from the docks. And by now it’s gone—and the sphere of space within which it could possibly lie is expanding every second. You can spot even the best-stealthed ship by eyeball, by occultation of background stars—but you have to know just where to look.”
“Maybe we should quit dawdling, then.” They were into the final corridor now, a straight run of perhaps two thousand meters; perhaps a dozen flailing figures cluttering the way between them and the door to Management country. He lifted his head, bellowed “FORE!” at the top of his lungs, tucked his chin and triggered all his thrusters at max.
Jay did likewise. Miraculously, everyone managed to scatter out of their way. Halfway to the door, they shut down, flipped over, and began to decelerate—and discovered that they had both burned themselves dry. They impacted with bone-jarring crashes, desperately grabbed handholds, and nearly had their arms pulled out of their sockets by the rebound. Jay’s first thought was for Rand, but his brother threw him a shaky grin and a circled thumb and forefinger.