Paradise Drift

by Sherwood Smith

  Beka stepped closer once again, and this time was ready when the components burst apart again. They looked like bees, almost, a black, shiny bee and they hummed very, very softly as they whizzed through the air into new shapes and patterns.

  Amazing—but she had things to do. “Time to take off,” she murmured.

  Trance turned her head. Beka saw her profile against the coalescing bees. Trance tipped her head. “I think I’ll stay here.”

  Beka looked up. This time the statue reminded her of a giant bird, wings outstretched, but only for a moment: the bees burst apart, gyrating in dizzying knotwork patterns, then re-formed into a Vedran meditation form familiar from vids.

  “Ahhh.” The sigh was universal.

  Beka sighed too, but silently. And inside her mind, that part of her always wary, always on the watch, said: Ujio Steelblade would love to find you standing around here goggling at artwork.

  She walked away, and felt the peace flow away, leaving her with an even more pressing sense of urgency.

  A last thought made her turn to say something to Trance, but the strange girl had moved so close to the statue that the bees swarmed around her, and moments later she was hidden within.

  Beka stared for a heartbeat then turned her back. “I hate it when she’s weird,” she muttered.

  She stalked away to stand by a kiosk out of sight of the statuary. She forced her attention onto the chip, and began her research.

  Yes, sure enough: goods and services were strictly spelled out. And while she and the other crew members had access to just about all the subheadings under “services”—all restaurants, theaters, and sports emporia—that did not cover “goods.” So, for instance, they could walk into any gambling den but Star Chamber, but they would be charged for any actual gambling they did. They could eat or drink “diplomat-basic” food—which here was better than luxury in some places Beka had been, but they would be charged for any shopping. So her modest purchases so far would have to be paid for at the end of their stay—which of course would be no problem.

  Well, if she couldn’t do any real shopping, she could find some other fun, she decided, and changed the search parameters for an array of sports. Most of the good ones were down several levels, where the big arenas were located, clustered around the vast central tube that housed the null-g sports.

  She dropped into another dive-tube, watching the paradises spin past as she tabbed another search on her chit. When she stepped out of the dive-tube onto a platform directly across from a huge facade evoking the Roman Colosseum on Earth, she glanced down at the chit, then activated the entry display. Time to further confuse the issue.

  The ship name, of course, was locked down. “Well, after all, we’ve got room for several thousand crew,” she murmured, and entered the name Lana Shan, and the world of origin Qetzl’s Star, which she knew was a small planet on the fringes of the Than-Thre-Kull hegemony, organized around a cult that forbade them, among other things, from sharing data with other worlds. It would be almost impossibly difficult for Ujio to track that fake name, although if he got into the Drift system far enough, a thorough search might reveal her true identity. But that would take time—hopefully more time than they’d be here, and anyway, Rommie could flag it.

  Rommie.

  Beka walked fast, momentarily distracted by another of those strange bee statuary places, this one set in a garden of flowers from a hundred worlds. Her step faltered when she saw that the bees formed slowly evolving patterns at twelve points, framing the garden. There was something compelling, almost soothing about those shapes….

  She turned her back. Pocketed her chit.

  Time to contact Rommie. She reached to tab her own communicator—to see the light blinking.

  “Rommie?”

  “I’m deeper into the system than they think—one level below the general corns—but it’s going to take time to get past the real walls without being traced. But I’ve already turned up a search on your name.”

  “Source?”

  “Unknown. Whoever it is has good stealthware. No ID—all I could find was the time of the search, which was seventeen point thirty-five minutes ago.”

  Beka hefted the chit in its shielding bag and grimaced down at it. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance they neglected to embed a locator in the chit?”

  “No chance,” Rommie returned, dry as ever. “I would, if just to ensure the safety of the elite landing party of the very famous Captain Hunt. But at least so far the location-data protocols are resisting decryption, and I doubt your searcher has my resources. He’ll eventually go at it a different way, most likely.”

  Beka sighed. Didn’t really matter where she was seventeen minutes ago, or what she was doing. She knew who was searching, all right. What she didn’t know was why.

  “Here’s the data,” Beka said rapidly, and told Rommie everything she knew about Ujio Steelblade, even though of course he’d be using false ID—false everything. But still. “And oh. I reprogrammed my chit under the name Lana Shan, from Qetzl’s Star. Why make it easy?”

  “Why indeed? I can add the name to my own trackers, see who might take an interest in it. Give us some clues.”

  “Thanks, Rommie.”

  “No problem. My kind of fun. We Als are weird that way. Are you going to return to the Andromeda, then?”

  Beka hesitated. She suspected Dylan, if he knew the circumstances, would order her to. It was, after all, the prudent course. The safe and sure course.

  Beka was prudent, but safe and sure could also be boring, cowardly, and an admission of defeat. Surely Beka Valentine was good enough at evading unwanted bounty hunters on a Drift housing over nine thousand separate places to have to search.

  “No,” she said. “I’m going to lose myself. Unless there’s far more danger than there is now—I mean, we don’t even know for sure why the search was initiated. Could be he—if it really is Ujio—wants to meet over a beer, apologize for the past, dish the present.”

  “Right,” Rommie said, sounding ironic. But since she had no orders, she was not going to comment further.

  “Better let Harper and Trance know what’s going on,” Beka added.

  “Already done, though neither is answering. But the data will be there when they do check in from whatever they are doing.”

  Beka tabbed off. Whatever they are doing. In Trance’s case, who could possibly imagine why she just had to watch those weird art forms?

  She shook her head, deciding to chose an emporium at random; as for Harper, it took no imagination to guess what he was doing.

  SIX

  Four things greater than all things are—Women and Horses and Power and War.

  —RUDYARD KIPLING,

  1892 CE.,

  FROM THE MUSEVENI COLLECTED PROVERBS

  Harper, as Beka very well knew, was in paradise.

  It was Ali Baba’s paradise, to be specific. He lay on a cushioned divan, six fluted glasses of different liquors lined up on a fine mosaic table next to him. Before those lay golden dishes piled with fresh, succulent fruits, tiny rolled bites of highly spiced foods, and very cold, very creamy yoghurt to quench the fire from the spices.

  All of it scarcely touched.

  Harper’s divan was set back in an alcove with cool, fragrant breezes wafting from unseen vents that billowed the gauzy curtains framing either side. He could not see any other alcoves, though there had to be plenty; the lights on the stage before him were so bright he could not see beyond. For all intents and purposes he was alone.

  Alone except for the hidden musicians playing a variety of drums in slow, languorous beat that suddenly accelerated into blood-pulsing speed, punctuated by cymbals and flutes.

  And. Alone except for the women.

  There were singing women, beautiful, dressed in filmy layers that only obscured equally beautiful curves instead of hiding them. They sang songs of love and passion, some tragic, some triumphant, and then out came the dancing women.

  Ha
rper swallowed, as, unseen, a hand placed a new dish beside him, sending up tendrils of steam.

  Clash! Ching! Tall women, short women, all sizes, shapes, colors of skin, eyes, and hair danced by, toes pointed, hips gyrating, arms curved delightfully overhead as they played their finger cymbals.

  Harper groaned in ecstasy. Supposing he could meet one, which one would he pick?

  A private performance! Now, there was a concept! Harper lost himself for a moment in pleasant reverie…musicians—hidden, of course—playing…beautiful dancer seductively swaying…at the right psychological moment she gracefully joins him on the divan, feeding him grapes, one by one…she looks into his baby blues, whispers—

  Whoa. Can this happen? Harper realized the dance had ended. As the musicians began playing for an unseen singer, Harper pulled out his chit and tabbed swiftly at it. Aha. Goods and services—right, that would mean entertainment, but no actual goods.

  So the question was, did a private performance come under the heading of entertainment, or goods?

  He was sending his query to the Ali Baba site when he heard a whisper somewhere on the other side of his curtain. Odd. Until now, the service had been silent, utterly unobtrusive.

  He shrugged and turned back to the chit, but just as he was about to start his search again, the curtain opened to reveal a short female carrying a tray. She was draped in swaths of scarves, with a scarf over her head and shoulders, covering most of her face.

  Harper looked up in surprise, then glanced at the tray. “Hey,” he said. “Is that more wine? I’m, ah, still behind on these other glasses here, in case you didn’t notice.” He waved at the refreshment table. “You know what I’d really like—”

  His voice died away when the woman stepped up and sat right next to him. Perfume smote his nose, and some of her brightly colored scarves drifted onto his lap and over his shoulder.

  “Hey,” he began, carefully lifting one. “I really appreciate the extra attention, but—”

  The tray was bumping against his side. The bottle and glass on it rattled, started to fall. He lunged forward, reaching for them both before they could slide off the tray—

  And just as his hands closed around the bottle and glass, the tray dropped to the other side, there was a blur of patterned scarves, a businesslike knee took Harper right in the chest, knocking him back onto the divan.

  He gave a yelp, felt something sharp right below the point at which his jawbone joined his neck, and gasped. Froze. The bottle and glass still gripped in his hands.

  “Seamus,” said a high female voice.

  A familiar voice?

  With her free hand she flung aside the scarves, including the one across her face.

  He knew that face—round, short cap of yellow hair not too much different from his own. Heavy scars. That’s bad.

  Worse, though, was the narrow-eyed glare.

  Oh yeah. There was also the knife she was holding at his neck.

  SEVEN

  YOUNG CHESS PLAYER: “How many moves do you see ahead?”

  CHESS MASTER: “One move—the best one.”

  —ATTRIBUTED TO CAPABLANCA, CY 1940

  ALL SYSTEMS UNIVERSITY, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

  “And that is why Capablanca lost. He was watching the board when he should have been watching his opponent.”

  —DRAGO MUSEVENI, THE PROGENITOR, CY 8691

  “Feel that?” the woman whispered.

  Harper tried to clear his throat for a yell, but the knife pressed closer. He whispered in a hoarse voice. “Not to give you any ideas or anything, but I’d be dead if I didn’t.”

  “There’s poison on it,” the woman murmured. Harper was sure he knew her. He was also sure she was, ho ho, on edge herself. The sweat-sheen on her brow, the desperation shaping her eyes just visible over the edge of the scarf, made that much clear, even if nothing else was. “Feel the burn yet?” she added.

  Harper realized she wasn’t pressing the knife—the hot sensation was independent of the steel edge. “Oh. Poison.” He added plaintively, “Why?”

  “Keep your voice down!”

  The knife pressed against his carotid artery; Harper could feel her hand trembling. Not a good idea to provoke her. No, no, no, no.

  She continued in her hoarse whisper, “Because you and I have to talk. And I don’t want to walk out of here like this.” She nodded down at the knife. “Even here, it might cause questions.”

  “If we’re talking, let’s get back to the poison,” Harper said. “Did you really poison me?”

  “Yes. Depending on your heart rate and so forth, you have…not that many hours before your bones start turning to jelly. And that’s the nice part.”

  Hours: Earth time.

  “I do know you,” Harper murmured, frowning up at her as the burn in his neck turned to an itch.

  “You did once. Not anymore. We’ll talk about that,” she added, prodding him to his feet. “We’ll talk about everything. Move.”

  “You will have noticed,” the young Perseid said in the helpful tones of an instructor, “that Paradise Drift, unlike most drifts, is not constructed in a wheel shape. The wheel, of course, is the simplest—the cheapest—method of creating artificial gravitation: the outer rim is the heavier gravity, the inner where null-gravity activities can take place….”

  Rommie monitored the pleasant, dull voice while watching the tour. Dylan stood near Director Alphyra, his face so bland Rommie did not have to read his vital signs to know he was bored almost catatonic. As she watched, his jaw muscles stiffened and he fought yet another yawn.

  “… one of the features of Paradise is that we could use the six Perseid ships to generate six different gravitational fields, which enabled us to extend our creative reach in making Paradise truly a playground for imaginative beings from all over the Known Worlds….”

  Rommie glanced at the others who had been invited: Than of fairly high caste, Perseids, and humans whose expensive clothing and jewelry hinted at power and prestige.

  And every single one of them looked bored. At least, the Perseids were unnaturally quiet, instead of whispering and referring to their flexis, and who could ever really tell about the Than?

  More important, for whom was this elementary lesson on grav fields intended, then? How odd—when it would have been so easy to make it far more interesting.

  “… expensive to maintain separate large grav fields, but of course we have unlimited energy from Rigos’s primary.” The young woman had called up a holographic image of the system, pointing at last to the sun. Then she stepped back. “And this concludes the introduction to our engineering department. Are there any questions?”

  No one spoke; Rommie saw two or three guests stifling yawns.

  The young Perseid guide said brightly, “In that case, we invite you to go to Environmental, which includes our innovative Design and Art Department.”

  Rommie followed the procession to one of the private lifts. At the front, walking in strict order of prominence, were the codirectors and their aides, followed by Captain Hunt, next the invited guests. After them came the department heads. Delta Kodos, Rommie noted, walked at the very last.

  Delta, meanwhile, was frowning at her flexi.

  Delta was worried.

  This was not the tour she had set up earlier. The tour was still conducted with attention to all proper procedure, except why were the speakers all from Alphyra’s own aides—and so very, very boring? Delta felt a spurt of sympathy as they left behind the Engineering sector. That could so easily have been fascinating.

  But Environmental should be better—for one thing, her own area, Design, was a subdepartment. Would Alphyra give her a chance to speak about her kinetic statuary?

  Delta glanced at the tall High Guard captain, whose air of courteous interest caused her to feel another spurt of sympathy. Whatever else you could say about the High Guard of the past, they’d obviously had excellent manners.

  The shuffling tour filed into the capacious
restricted lift. It took them to the Environmental pod, off which led doors to all the sub-departments. Alphyra smilingly halted the group directly outside of Design.

  Delta waited for her sister to motion to her to talk about her art projects, but instead Alphyra said something in a soft voice to Dylan Hunt, whose face was a polite mask.

  Then Alphyra stepped back, and from the chamber came a tall, pale-haired man dressed in gold-piped gray.

  Rommie saw dismay, quickly smoothed, in Delta. The younger Kodos sister subvocalized, and Rommie, who was not human and therefore had no compunctions whatsoever about eavesdropping, snapped her sensors to highest mode and listened in.

  “Alphyra? You don’t want me to talk about my art?”

  “To expose your dabbling in hobbies lowers our prestige, my dear. Let the aides talk about the general art and design. I will reserve you for individual briefing. After all, you are Kodos as well as I.”

  Rommie pursed her lips. Alphyra’s physical clues—heart rate, breathing, subtle chemical scents, were inconsistent with her tone—suggesting misdirection, if not duplicity.

  “This is Torbal,” Alphyra stated, smiling. “My specialist in the human side of artistic design.”

  Standing at the back, Rommie observed several things: a resigned stillness in the Perseids, and an expression of surprise and all the physical signs of hurt in Delta Kodos.

  Torbal twitched at the gold piping on his gray robe. He was tall, quite broad through the shoulders and chest, and as good-looking as nanosculpting could make him. Rommie, sensitive to the infinity of variations in the human voice, heard self-satisfaction in the mellow baritone as Torbal launched into a detailed account of the thoughts behind the architecture of the main concourse and the elite sections, culminating in the idea behind one of the Drift’s biggest attractions, the Roman Gladiator Arena. He did not pause for questions, but smoothly transitioned to general design of the areas containing the various bontemps.