Paradise Drift

by Sherwood Smith

  Rommie’s peripheral vision was also cyber enhanced. Though she appeared to be sipping a drink and staring out at the constant flow of pleasure seekers arriving and departing, she noted Delta’s glances her way, a considering pair of quick looks. She reviewed what Delta saw: her small stature, her pleasant, youthful face. She knew she looked unobtrusive, unthreatening.

  Rommie knew she looked human.

  When Delta looked up from her flexi at last, Rommie turned her way. “A fascinating view,” she said. “Not just the ships, but the planet. I am partial to water worlds,” she added. “Probably because they remind me of old Earth, cradle of human civilization. I would like to know more about the history of Rigos.”

  Delta’s expression stayed easy until that last sentence, and again her facial muscles tightened, her breathing changed. She said in a neutral voice, “We have a full history in the Drift database.”

  Rommie said brightly, “Which must be a mirror to the planetary database, yes?”

  Delta’s gaze shifted to her flexi as she said, “The salient points, I believe.”

  She’s lying. And she’s not inviting me to investigate for myself. Rommie said, “My main interest, my hobby, you might say, is in the development of human expression. Including the arts.”

  Delta smiled again, her expression not just relieved but pleased.

  Rommie said, “So if you have time for a question or two, I confess I was disappointed in the brevity of the talk your Environmental guide gave. I’d like to hear more about art and design on Paradise Drift.”

  Delta said, “I can’t promise I can go into everything, and of course I don’t want to be a bore.”

  Ping. One of Rommie’s monitor subroutines flashed for attention: there were high-grade military seekerbots in the air. Seekerbots so high grade they were not, in fact, for sale through legitimate sources through the Known Worlds: Rommie squirted their signature over to the Andromeda with a request to track down more information. As far as her probes into the Drift indicated, they hadn’t been detected yet, so it was likely they’d only recently been released…perhaps as recently as that search on Beka?

  And then, while Delta started in on the artistic theories that lay behind the conversion of the Drift, Rommie left her avatar standing there holding the drink, smiling, and recording every word.

  Internally, she first pinged Beka, reporting the bots, and adding that the militarybots did not match up with anything that the Drift seemed to use—in fact, its environmental filters were not calibrated to sense them, and its immune protocols might not catch up with them anytime soon.

  She recorded the conversation between Alphyra and Dylan (the one asking questions in a well-modulated voice, the other talking about the Imperial Museum at Etashi Tarn, where his father had worked, and the ancient Vedran art forms it housed); she used her ship self to continue monitoring Tyr Anasazi (who was down in the rec room working out) and check in on the subroutines still patiently hacking at the Drift’s encryption protocols.

  And she issued a communication directly from the ship to the planet, bypassing the Drift. It was a diplomatic communication, based on long-established forms, relaying a query about the history of the planet….

  TEN

  Relationships are for the young and reckless.

  —THE WANDERING MINSTREL OF MAGELLAN IV,

  CY 9241

  For what seemed a very long time Seamus Harper left his head resting on the table, forehead squarely in a wet ring left by his beer. Cyn watched, at first angry, then slowly more concerned. Was the poison somehow speeding up?

  She leaned forward, lips parted to say his name, then she heard him groaning softly.

  It was not the groan of someone in extremis. It was the groan of someone very, very pissed.

  “Harper.” She forced her voice to sharpen.

  He turned his head. His eyes were as blue as the Earth’s ocean when seen from outside the gravity well. “I’ve been here before,” he said.

  Anger flared through her again. She set aside her beer, leaned forward, and grabbed a handful of his short blond hair. “Yes,” she said, and now she gave in to instinct, and unleashed the long monologue she’d performed before the bulkheads in her stolen slip-fighter, all the way from Earth. “You’ve been here, and you left. You left us, but the second time it wasn’t just you, it was you and your famous warship too, the one that was supposed to attack the Dragon armored forces from space? The one that never appeared at all, you crawling, rotten slime. You left and we fought anyway, because Brendan La-hey believed in you, and so did I, and so did everyone else. And this is what happened after you left, and you’re going to sit there and hear every word.”

  Her voice trembled, and broke, but she was too angry to care.

  “Crap, crap, crap,” Beka muttered, and ripped the little null-g flyer into a vicious bank, sending a squad of Than breaking apart, some of them looking back and chittering angrily at her.

  “What kind of bots, Rommie? From where? Why weren’t they filtered?”

  “Taking your questions from last to first: because the Drift system doesn’t recognize them, I don’t know from where but I would guess from your bounty-hunter friend, as—to answer your first—these things match the specs on some highly illegal, extremely secret bots that I have very little data on, from the Consensus of Parts.”

  “The Consensus of Parts.” Beka felt a sick chill squeeze her guts. Everyone knew about the vicious AI community—smart, fast, sophisticated, in which the concept of goodwill was nonexistent—that floated around as a threat about as nasty as the Magog.

  “I don’t even want to know how he got anything from the Consensus of Parts. So I take it you can’t do anything about them?”

  Rommie’s voice was wry. “Not about the bots, but I can about you. First thing you need to do is take your chit out of the faraday pocket and leave it out. I’ve cracked the locator protocols on it, so it can’t be used to find you anymore. That takes care of one weak spot, and I’m downloading a subroutine into your comlink that will combine with the ID data on the chit to confuse the next wave of bots. I can’t stop them from recognizing you, but they won’t be able to attach, nor report your location accurately. And you’ll know they’ve spotted you.”

  “But now the Drift will be able to listen in on us, won’t they?” Beka pulled her null-g fighter into an Immelman—wondering again where that word came from—gaining some time by inviting her pursuers of the moment to take after an easier target.

  “Yes, but I haven’t distinguished any particular interest in you or any other of the crew, and I’ll know if they start listening real time. If the comlink I gave you is tingling, you’re on the air. Otherwise they’ll have to listen to recordings, and I expect you’ll be moving too fast for that to be of much help.”

  Beka pushed her fighter into a steep dive. “But I trust that you will be sitting on my shoulder listening to every golden word I speak.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem unless things go really sour. Speak to me and I’ll hear.”

  Beka felt her snarkiness drain away as she realized that, for once, she really did want Rommie listening in on her. “Can you give me an ETA on Steelblade’s arrival?”

  “No. I wasn’t deep enough into the system yet when the bots located you. They were gone before I could respond.” Rommie added, “You know Dylan is going to order you to get out, and back to the ship.”

  “Yeah, well, taking orders goes along with my uniform and my military pay. Nonexistent.” But before Rommie could speak, Beka gave a short, unhumorous laugh, and said, “That means I’m on my way, but it was my idea, all right? So no preaching about what’s good for me. Right, Dylan?”

  Rommie’s voice was wry again. “He’s busy. And you know what he’d say to you.”

  Beka laughed, reached to cut the connection, then pulled her hand away.

  Memory: slamming the Eureka Maru into a dangerous dive, twisting through the knotwork of battered ships docked haphazardly a
ll over the Drift as she accelerated. Fast, skillful, jaw-grittingly dangerous, she knew she was up against even her own limits—

  And Steelblade’s vessel stayed right on her tail….

  She banked the flyer once more, and looped-the-loop over into an angled dive toward the launch platform. Customers awaiting their turns scattered. Beka ignored them, smacked the thrusters into reverse at exactly the right moment, and brought the craft to a neat landing precisely within its square. Then, while it pinged and cracked, she hopped out, ignoring the protests of the workers.

  “Hey, I brought it in undamaged,” she called over her shoulder. So what if the landing had not been exactly horizontal, or at the mandated slow speed.

  She dove headfirst into the lift-tube, leaving the worker to turn away in disgust, hands out, as costumers emerged from hiding places, all of them chattering, complaining, or exclaiming, leaving three or four very young people looking after Beka and whistling in admiration.

  She glanced at her chrono and cursed. “Didn’t even get a full turn!” Of course she wasn’t paying for it, either.

  Not that that mattered; what did was putting as much space between this place and Ujio Steelblade as she could.

  Cyn had been listing every single death, every torture, every lost battle after the Bunker Hill uprising on Earth against the Drago-Kazov Pride. It was a speech she’d planned for a long time, and rehearsed over and over during that journey from Earth to this Drift on the other side of nowhere. She’d expected Seamus to get mad, or even to argue, or whine, not to sit there and wince as though he’d been struck at every single name mentioned.

  Finally she slowed, and then stopped, and they sat there, looking at each other, just breathing.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Harper said abruptly.

  Cyn finished off her beer in a swig so fast her eyes watered. The beer tasted good, and felt good going down her throat, but it gave her no courage.

  So she said nothing, just got to her feet, and the two of them walked out side by side.

  Ujio Steelblade looked around the concourse, gaze flickering past the strange moving statuary that looked like flowing beads. Beka Valentine would have no interest in such trivia.

  Memory: The slim young woman, unafraid. “My name is Beka Valentine. We’ve never met, which means I have no problems with you.”

  And he says, “I have none with you. But I’ve been paid to bring in your head. “And as he speaks he realizes he is warning her—and sure enough, she flips a tray of drinks at him, shoots out the lights, slams her way out of the bar—

  —and he stood where he was to give her a head start. To give her a fighting chance. No, to make the hunt more fun.

  No. Be honest. To give her a fighting chance…

  She obviously wasn’t there in the laser-tag gym, but her tastes, he knew, ran to contests of speed, danger, and skill. She might be in one of these null-gyms, or perhaps an arena—unless she’d somehow been tipped to his search. But that was unlikely—the bots were illegal everywhere, and from all reports, the High Guard captain was a stickler for the old laws.

  Unlikely, not impossible. He’d learned over the years that “impossible” was a last choice, not a first, on a search.

  So he decided to risk a second botsearch: he wasn’t worried about Beka Valentine finding out about them, but there were a few beings here whose tech was sophisticated enough to sniff them out, and who might get in his way.

  Compromise. He had to be close. This time he’d limit their range, keep them nearby in a random pattern never centered on him, but keeping a lookout for Beka.

  And in the meantime, since he and she had similar tastes, why not indulge them, perhaps check out some of the arenas. It was likely she was doing the same.

  The way Beka saw it, she thought as she ducked into yet another lift, she had two goals. First, to get back to the Andromeda, but of course Steelblade would know that. If he was not alone, he’d have his minions watching all the key intersections leading back to the warship. If he was alone, he’d have some kind of sophisticated spyware deployed to do the same job.

  Therefore, goal number two: a real disguise.

  It was time to hide in plain sight, the old Valentine way: by borrowing, preferably without the owner knowing. Just borrowing, just borrowing, that’s what Rafe used to say, with his most winsome smile….

  Her brain rattled on like that as she dropped into a concourse with few humans. Good. Except she stood out. Bad.

  So? She looked around again, distracted for a moment when she caught sight of one of those strange moving statues, this one forming a kind of constantly weaving arc over ice roses from a planet so cold it barely supported life. The mist surrounding the roses, the gleam of light through the crystals, the ever-moving archway drew the eye….

  And she had to wrench her sight away.

  Read the signs—gambling—gaming…jousting…

  Jousting? What was that?

  She stood on tiptoe, peering past some tall beings that looked a lot like giraffes mated with Magog, only they made friendly blatting noises. They and a lot of Than were all crowding into the jousting arena, whatever that was.

  Nearby, a gracile being like an attenuated weasel tended a booth of pan-species cloaks and hats in all sizes. She used the last of her cash to buy a long cloak with a hood. Then she turned away, regretfully glancing back at the arena. That wasn’t hiding in plain sight; that was just the sort of place anyone who knew her would expect to find her. She held up the chit, tuning its little display away from the preferences it had already learned from her previous choices of entertainment, paging through the come-ons until she found something almost incomprehensible. The Neek Neek Theater?

  Beka shrugged and followed the director wisp projected by the chit. Neek Neek was better than bang bang, or whatever other means of termination Ujio had in mind for her.

  And so, while Beka slipped into a line funneling into a very different sort of attraction, and Cyn and Harper walked moodily along the concourse with other spacers looking for fun or profit, locked into memory as well as their duel of will, farther away in the Drift Trance slipped through security points, barely conscious, in her characteristic way, that she was even doing so. For she had more important things on her mind. She had just discovered that the bees were not confined to discreet locations in the little parks. They veined the entire Drift, flowing with grand design through all the levels.

  And so she was searching for the heart.

  ELEVEN

  Betrayal is permanent, obscure, and dark—And shares the nature of infinity.

  —THE MAD MONK OF WORTWERT SYSTEM,

  CY 9842

  “… and so my mother sent me as a reward to Vedra-Shin, since Tarn-Vedra itself is still hidden, and I spent two glorious weeks entirely in the Museum. Not the usual choice for a twelve-year-old girl, of course, but that was what I had wanted more than anything….” She leaned forward, her voice dropping to a low murmur. “Since there is no chance, ever, of meeting the empress.”

  Dylan shook his head.

  “So my question for you is, what was she like?” Alphyra leaned forward, her gaze unwavering. Intent.

  At that moment Delta’s voice broke in subliminally: They are on their way. And angry.

  Alphyra gritted her teeth in frustration, then fought to control her reaction. Of course they would be angry, but that was just because they misunderstood. Misjudged.

  While she was thinking, Rommie’s voice resonated through Dylan’s bones. “You’re apparently not supposed to be alone with her,” Rommie said. “Negotiations with all the directors present.”

  Dylan Hunt gazed at the lovely woman sitting across from him, her shapely arms resting on the table accentuating the cleavage hinted at in the neck of her classical Vedran gown. She seemed distracted, but when she looked up, he gave her his most diplomatic smile.

  “I’ve enjoyed this break very much,” he said. “But shouldn’t we be talking with all the directors ab
out now?”

  And he saw the tiny, inadvertent tightening at the edge of her mouth, the flicker of her upper eyelids, that she too had been taken by surprise.

  “Of course!” she exclaimed, a little breathless. “I do so apologize! I meant to give you no more than a moment of relief after that tiresome tour, but I was so fascinated, I lost track of time. By all means, let us rejoin the others. Right through here.”

  She tapped a hidden control on the table, and silent doors slid open at the other side of the folding screen.

  Dylan rose, courteously stepped aside so that she could lead the way. Her gaze was distracted, her throat working: subvocalization. Behind the doors he heard a hubbub of voices.

  Perseids did not rant or shout when they got angry, they whispered.

  “Where is she?”

  Dylan saw Delta standing across the reception chamber from Director Vandat, who led what seemed a full phalanx of robed Perseids, probably his entire staff. Delta’s head turned with a snap, and Dylan saw what he realized was the first expression he’d seen in Director Kodos’s quiet assistant: she was pale and stricken.

  “Where is Director Kodos?” Vandat asked, his eyes narrowed, his long bony chin jutting. “Or more precisely, where are she and Captain Hunt?”

  “Right here,” Dylan said, before anyone could speak. “Director Kodos offered me a glass of wine.” He smiled around the room. “I assumed that you all had arranged this human touch to make me feel at home.”

  The doors opened soundlessly, but the shift of air currents brought everyone’s attention round and in clattered the high-caste Than, their breathing a faint keen, their limbs hissing, followed by a rainbow of lower-caste assistants.

  Dylan lifted his voice. “In the time it took to drink a glass of wine, we talked about the museums of Tarn-Vedra. After a long journey, I appreciated the gesture, but now I’m ready to begin our negotiations. So if everyone is here, shall we begin?” He continued to smile at the three groups of officials, assistants, and important business leaders, who were all displaying various degrees of anger, though by now his teeth felt cold.