“And your mother?” I asked.
“The ransom negotiations weren’t going well. Mom thought that if SilverDollar’s president could just see for herself how much the Augments were needed, she would be persuaded. So Mom went down to Earth to negotiate. Two days later she died of a heart attack.
“They said the strain of the extra gravity had stressed her heart too much, but I’ve been on Earth longer, and my heart’s weaker than hers was. They lied. They must have frightened her or hurt her to cause the heart attack. But even if they didn’t cause the attack, my mother shouldn’t have died. Earth has medical resources we can’t hope to touch in space. SilverDollar could have saved her life if they’d wanted to.”
Timothy looked sick.
I had a flash of memory.President Castellan accusing Eddy of incompetence for not having a doctor on hand.I felt ill, too, but I had to ask. “If your mother had the same heart condition as you, does that mean she also had a trapdoor in her chest?”
“Yes.” Rianne studied me narrowly.
“Was there a word inscribed on it? Your father’s name, perhaps? Alex?”
“Yes.” Rianne looked spooked. “How did you know?”
“I know, because I’ve seen it. Eddy wears it around his neck when he wants to taunt your father—Anaximander.”
SILENCE.
“What did you say?” Rianne asked, a dangerous glint in her eye.
“Anaximander is your father.” Alexander, Anaximander. Eddy would have found the closeness between the two names amusing.
“My father is dead.” Rianne brushed that matter aside. “What did you say Eddy wears around his neck?”
I turned to Timothy; Rianne wasn’t the only one I needed to convince. “Have you seen it? When Eddy’s with Anaximander, he pulls it out and strokes it.”
Timothy’s gray eyes widened. “Oh, God. I have seen it. A piece of black plastic on a cord—just like the one over your heart, Rianne. I asked him what it was once. He said it was his good luck charm.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Rianne said.
Fortunately, she wasn’t, but several moments passed before she spoke again. “Anaximandercan’t be my father. I’ve seen him. I would have recognized him.”
“Are you sure? What if he’s been Augmented since you last saw him? Shaved his head, been given the silver eyes he needed, maybe had the shape of his face altered. . . . Couldn’t Anaximander be your father?”
She was still shaking her head. I changed tack. “Did you actually see your father’s body?”
“It was cremated before being shipped to space,” Rianne said reluctantly. “But that doesn’t mean anything. I’m telling you: my father is dead.”
“No.” I shook my head, compassion in my gaze. “I’m afraid he’s not. Eddy did something much worse to him than kill him. He turned him into his own worst enemy.” Another practical joke for Eddy to laugh at.
“He is not Anaximander! My dad would never have—”
“Would never have stood by and watched your mother die?” I finished when she broke off. “Would never have left you alone? Not half an hour ago my Loyalty chip almost made me kill Mike.”
Mike spoke up. “I told you how SilverDollar erased Angel’s memories. If she hadn’t managed to leave herself some clues, she never would have remembered me, never would have been anything but a loyal employee.”
“Whenever I started to remember, a feedback loop would kick in, throwing me into a memory of drowning. None of my own memories were negative enough, so they implanted someone else’s memory—your father’s memory from his Memory Recorder Augment.”
Rianne was shaking her head. No.
“Eddy,” I added bitterly, “would have thought it amusing to make your father watch your mother die.” As he had insisted that I help Anaximander capture Mike. I remembered suddenly that Anaximander had tried to talk Eddy out of it.
Rianne was crying. I touched her shoulder, but she shrugged me off, and I didn’t try again. She had been alone too long. Timothy stood by, looking helpless. Her tears lasted under a minute. When she looked up again, hatred was carved into her face. “How do we get him?”
“Wecan’t,” I said. “We need to call in help, either the UN or President Castellan. I might have an in with someone who works for the UN.” I explained about Dr. Hatcher’s apology and offer of help. “I think he meant it. He gave me his aircar.”
“Probably so he could tail you to the beanstalk,” Mike said cynically. “No. I’m not winning free of SilverDollar just to let the UN put a leash on us. So he apologized. So what? Where was he for the years we spent stuck in the past?”
I thought Mike was being paranoid, but I wasn’t one hundred percent sure of Dr. Hatcher. Mike and I had thought we knew what we were doing when we allowed one of us to be captured by SilverDollar. We had been very wrong then, so I stayed silent.
“It doesn’t matter,” Timothy said. “If we go to the UN, they’ll arrest Rianne for kidnapping.”
I winced. I hadn’t thought about that. “President Castellan it is, then.”
Neither Mike nor Rianne was happy with thatdecision, but they couldn’t come up with a better idea.
“Timothy, I need you to call Graciana,” I said. “Eddy’s screening your mother’s calls. If we try to phone her directly, the message will never get through.”
Timothy agreed and went into the conference room to make the call. I watched over his shoulder.
Graciana was overjoyed to see Timothy, spat when Timothy told her his uncle Eddy had arranged his kidnapping, and eagerly agreed to contact Timothy’s mother for him.
We all sighed in relief, but less than a minute later, Graciana called back, forehead creased with worry. “Anaximander will not put me through to Madam. He says she is unavailable; she has gone to the Spacer ship to negotiate your ransom.”
“But I’m not on the Spacer ship! I’m free.” Timothy looked horror-stricken. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he said after he’d disconnected. “The Spacers must be bluffing, pretending they have me when they don’t.”
It made sense to me. “Rianne, you have to contact your people. Tell them it’s a trap. As soon as President Castellan boards their ship, Eddy will claim that they’ve killed her and attack the Spacers.”
“But why?” Timothy asked.
Mike had figured it out. “Eddy wants the presidency.”
Rianne didn’t listen to any more. “I have to call my ship and warn them. You guys leave the room. I’m going to have a hard enough time convincing them as it is.”
We left.
Five minutes later when Rianne wheeled herself out of the conference room, anxiety had tightened her skin. “They think I’ve been coerced. President Castellan is almost there. They won’t listen to me. Unless . . .” Miserably, she looked at Timothy. “Unless they have some insurance.”
Timothy took an involuntary step back. “No.”
Rianne turned to Mike and me. “You have to help me. If I don’t deliver Timothy to them, they’ll fall into Eddy’s trap.”
Mike held up his hands. “Don’t look at us. It has to be Timothy’s decision.”
“He won’t do it.” Guiltily, Rianne avoided looking at Timothy. “We’ll have to take him captive. Give me the gun.”
“How do you know he won’t do it?” I asked. “You haven’t asked him.”
“Of course he won’t do it,” Rianne snapped.
“Ask him.”
A long, painful moment passed. Rianne finally looked at Timothy. I was afraid she would ask him the wrong way, sarcastically, but she surprised me. “Please, Timothy. I know it’s a lot to ask—”
It was more than a lot. Considering Timothy’s past experience at the hands of Spacers, it was asking for the moon.
Timothy cut her off before she could beg. “I’ll do it. On one condition.”
“Anything.”Rianne’s voice was intense.
“That as soon as you’ve delivered me, your part in this is over. Y
ou go to the beanstalk hospital on a stretcher and you do whatever the doctor tells you to do.”
“The doctor’s not going to be able to do anything more than the medication I already took, but okay, I promise.”
“I wasn’t finished,” Timothy said. “You also have to let me pay for your treatment.”
“That’s two conditions,” Rianne said.
Timothy folded his arms, looking stern.
“All right, you win. It’s a deal.” She struggled with herself for a moment, then managed to grind out, “Thank you.”
We were too late.
We’d set the elevator to maximum speed, but it had still taken another eight minutes to reach the space station at the top of the beanstalk. Another five minutes were spent discovering where the Spacer ship was docked. We lost another minute to an argument between Timothy and Rianne. Timothy had refused to let her exert herself even the tiny amount required to glide through zero-G and insisted that she ride piggyback.
Altogether, eighteen minutes had passed by the time we swung off the zero-G version of a motorized walkway—a lot of leather straps attached to a moving track in the “ceiling”— and reached the small, run-down spaceship that Rianne named as our destination. Too late.
The Spacer man who opened the airlock said, “Hurry up. President Castellan is demanding to see her son. Jerome can’t stall her much longer.”
“I told him not to let her on board!” Rianne said furiously from her position on Timothy’s back.
The Spacer looked surprised. “Why would he do that? A face-to-face meeting with SilverDollar’spresident is what we’ve wanted all along. Someone with the authority to negotiate, not a flunky.”
Eddy would have hated being called a flunky.
“Never mind, just hurry up and take us there,” Rianne said.
Offended, the Spacer shoved off and glided inside the ship. He moved efficiently, guiding himself with the occasional touch.
The rest of us followed less gracefully as he took us down a curved corridor. At least I told myself it was a corridor. At odd moments my perspective would change, and I would feel as if we were falling down a well—albeit very slowly—or swimming up a tunnel. I preferred to think of it as a corridor.
Our guide turned left at the third intersection and opened the first hatch. He stayed outside while the four of us swam through. Rianne detached herself from Timothy’s back. The people inside were oriented as if the hatchway was on the floor, not a wall, and my perspective shifted dizzyingly again.
“Timothy!” An avalanche of relief obliterated President Castellan’s poker face. She let go of her handhold and launched herself at Timothy.
Her force sent them both bumping up against a wall, but she didn’t seem to care, hugging him. “Are you all right?”
Timothy grabbed a handhold and steadied them both. “Yes, but—”
“He is fine, just as you were told,” a smooth-voiced man, whom I took to be Jerome, interrupted. He had Asian features, but his skin was reddish, as if badly sunburned. Radiation? I wondered.One of his legs was hooked around the zero-G version of a chair, but the other leg ended at the knee.
“It is my wish that both of you will leave here in good health.”
President Castellan’s face hardened again at the blatant threat. “Yes, your good intentions are crystal clear to everyone,” she said bitingly while clinging to the wall.
Jerome grew angry. “It’s your company that’s forced us to this.”
“Mom.” Timothy pulled at her arm. “We have to get out of here. Uncle Eddy’s going to—”
President Castellan ignored her son, all her focus on annihilating the man who had stolen Timothy from her not once, but twice. “Nobody can force someone else to commit a criminal act. You’re the one who abandoned morality—”
“Your hands are hardly lily-white. If the mines are closed down, my people will die.”
“You exaggerate,” President Castellan said coldly. “If such a decision were made, the Spacer population would be relocated to Earth free of charge.”
Mike and I exchanged glances. This could go on for hours, and Eddy could strike at any moment.
“President Castellan,” I said loudly, “look around you! Where are all the Spacers with silver eyes? Where are all the Augments SilverDollar paid for?”
Jerome looked impatient at the interruption, but President Castellan frowned. She looked around the room at Jerome and the four other Spacers hanging silently against the walls.
“Rianne, show her your heart.”
Rianne scowled but obeyed, pulling down her neckline so that the trapdoor showed.
“Why weren’t you given an Augmented heart?” President Castellan asked the very question that had been bothering me. I had a theory about the answer.
“Precisely my point,” Jerome said. “Birth defects that are tolerable in zero-G will be crippling in Earth’s gravity. I can move easily in space; on Earth I will be constrained to use canes and wheelchairs. Even if we wanted to, I and my people cannot return to Earth as easily as taking an elevator. Without Augments, Earth will kill us.”
President Castellan’s forehead wrinkled. “Yes, yes, I know. That’s why I insisted on spending millions on Augments for Spacers even when the board of directors opposed me.”
Jerome looked blank. The two of them were talking at cross-purposes. I intervened again.
“The Spacers never received the millions of dollars you budgeted for Augments for them.” I spoke as if I knew it for a fact, not just a logical guess. “Eddy embezzled the money. And that’s not all. Ask them how much ransom they received.”
President Castellan’s mouth fell open. “Is this true?” She turned to Jerome. “I paid two and a half million to get Timothy back.”
Timothy stared at his mother in astonishment.
Jerome’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. “We asked for one million. After months of negotiating, we settled for one hundred thousand dollars.”
“He won’t get away with it,” President Castellan seethed. “I’ll nail his carcass to the wall.”
“But hewillget away with it,” Mike said.“Unless we get out of here right now. In order to cover up his crime, Eddy needs all of us to die. He’s going to attack and then tell the world it was a reprisal for the unprovoked killing of President Castellan and her son.”
President Castellan turned to Jerome. “Release us, and as soon as I’ve cleaned house, we can talk about compensation. I’ll forget about the kidnapping charges I should level against you.”
It was a generous offer; I couldn’t believe it when Jerome refused. “No. I have only your word Edward Castellan was responsible. SilverDollar has promised before and reneged. No one is released until you sign the Martian mines over to the Spacers.” He indicated a paper held to a magnetic table.
“Like hell I will,” President Castellan said.
SHOUTS AND THE CRACK OF GUNFIRE from down the hall ended the argument. The attack had begun. Jerome and President Castellan were caught with their mouths open.
“Congratulations,” Mike said angrily. “You just got yourselves killed.”
“Eddy will have put Anaximander in charge of the strike force,” I told Jerome. The irony would provide Eddy with more pulling-off-butterfly-wings fun. “Leave Anaximander to us.” Anaximander wouldn’t shoot Mike or me on sight. “Protect your hostages. I don’t have time to convince you, but that isnota rescue mission out there.”
“Think of it this way,” Mike said. “You can’t afford to be wrong. Rianne, hop on.”
I pushed back into the corridor and began to pull myself hand over hand toward the sound of the battle.
“So what’s our plan?” Rianne asked from Mike’s back. “We ambush Anaximander?”
“No,” Mike said. “We drown him.”
We rounded a corner, and the gunshots got louder. As we stood there, two Spacers retreated past us, one bleeding bubbles of blood that floated away in zero-G.
“How many at
tackers?” I yelled as they went by.
“Six. Four robots and two men in armor.” The injured Spacer and her companion had softguns but no body armor.
I waited for a break in the noise and then yelled: “Anaximander! Don’t shoot. It’s me, Angel.” My voice echoed down the corridor, but Anaximander’s Memory Recorder had a voice identification feature and the gunfire stopped.
“Angel? What are you doing here?”
“It’s a long story—Mike’s here, too. We’re here to help you rescue Timothy and his mother.”
Anaximander didn’t confirm that he was there to rescue them. “Come out with your hands up, and we’ll talk.”
I went first, launching myself around the corner, both hands well away from my body. Mike followed with Rianne still on his back.
Anaximander didn’t shoot. Neither did the two robots with him. Two, not four. The other armored man must have taken two robots and gone down a branching passageway. I could hear faint gunfire in the distance.
Both Anaximander and the robots were armed with blastguns. Blastguns used the same kind of bullets as softguns, but like machine guns, theywere capable of firing many rounds per second. They weren’t as safe; if fired point-blank at a wall, the wall would probably remain standing, but there would be holes in it.
From the quick look Mike shot me, I knew he’d noted the significance of the missing man and robots. We would have to act fast. There was a good chance that only Anaximander had been entrusted with the orders to kill President Castellan and Timothy, but Eddy might have other employees with Loyalty chips.
Anaximander flinched when he looked atRianne—drowning, I hoped. The movement carried him back half a foot in zero-G. “Who’s this?” he asked.
Rianne didn’t take her eyes off Anaximander. I could sense her trying to find her father beneath the opaque silver gaze.
“An ally of ours, Rianne Pelletier,” I said.
Another small stagger that zero-G exaggerated into a slow spin so that Anaximander had to grab a handhold to keep his blastgun pointed at us.
“She’s a Spacer. Her father’s name was Alexander,” I said quickly, before Anaximander could speak.
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