Spheres of Influence

by Ryk E. Spoor

  “Tarell . . . Oh my God, you mean Tarellimade Shantrakar?” Ariane gasped, and for a moment she didn’t look like the tough racing pilot or Leader of Humanity. She looks like a fifteen-year-old talking about her first crush. “They made him?”

  DuQuesne’s smile was surprised, sad. “Hardly a question about it; central hero in the most popular sim-universe at that time. The player’d died the year before they started but his character-recording turned out to be really good at self-continuations and the Hyperion ‘researchers’ were able to use that to do a really good development design. Fan, huh?”

  Ariane was blushing. And if anything it makes her look lovelier.

  You know, Simon, if you’re going to moon over her, perhaps you should do something about it, Mio said in his head.

  It would be much easier if we would stop going from crisis to crisis. Perhaps soon.

  “Yes, I was,” Ariane admitted. “In a big way. I even . . . um, I did the romance arc with him and it turned out really well. I was fourteen, so . . .”

  The laughs weren’t unkind, and DuQuesne smiled again. “Well, I know he’d have been honored and flattered.”

  Simon felt a private ping, opened up. DuQuesne’s transmitted voice said, On the other hand, if slender noble elven prettyboys defending fantasy realms are her style, what’s her interest in us?

  I’m not entirely outside of all those classifications, unlike a certain giant Hyperion I could name, Simon pointed out with an electronic grin. But then she was, as she said, fourteen. Tastes do mature and change.

  “So Eris . . . that must be Erision from the UE Chronicles, I’d guess,” Gabrielle joined in.

  “Got it in one. Hell of a woman and stable as hell; of course, being designed off of the Unreality Effect universe, there wasn’t all that much that’d throw her off.” DuQuesne frowned. “But I’d rather not dwell on that part of the past, okay? Yeah, if you can think of some popular lead character, there’s a good chance he or she or it had a parallel in Hyperion; they picked over a thousand examples from history all the way up to the day the project started—some from mythology, quite a few from the First Media Explosion in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, same for the Simworld Media explosion in the mid-twenty-second, and a fair number from more modern sources, too. But I’m not going to list ’em out or talk about them, okay?”

  “All right, Marc,” Ariane said. “Sorry.”

  He waved it away, though Simon could still see the subject hung over him, and Oasis, like a shroud. “Nah, it’s okay. Can’t blame people for the curiosity, and it’s been fifty years, I should probably think about getting over it. Anyway,” DuQuesne said, shifting the subject, “what’s the plan overall, Captain?”

  “Well, first we go and let Tom know he’s been confirmed as Governor of the Sphere, and make sure he stays in the loop with the Council regularly. He’s also going to be first in the list of succession, if something happens to me before enough years pass that we’ve got enough candidates to do an election for appointment on.”

  “What?” Simon was startled. “Don’t mistake me, I have no desire to be at the front of your list and I suspect Marc feels the same way, but I thought Marc was your front-runner?”

  “He was,” Ariane confirmed, with an apologetic glance at DuQuesne. “But . . .”

  DuQuesne shook his head, teeth flashing whitely for a moment. “Simon’s got it pegged, to about a thousand decimals. Don’t want the job, want one of the others to take it. One big difference between me and my literary original; I haven’t the faintest desire to boss around planetsful of people. So go on, but don’t worry about my feelings, I’m overjoyed.”

  “Oh. All right.” Ariane’s face showed her relief. “Anyway, the fact is I’m going to want you and Simon around most of the time. Thomas will always be either in-system or on our Sphere, with just occasional vacations elsewhere. He’ll know more about current operations in Arenaspace than just about anyone, and he’s used to running things—unobtrusively and efficiently. He’s a perfect candidate as a backup for me. So I changed him to the first place. After that the Council put Saul, which I was overjoyed to see, and I hope Saul turns out to handle the Arena well. Then I put down Laila Canning, which rather surprised a few people.”

  “Surprises the hell out of me,” DuQuesne rumbled. “Why Laila?”

  “Well, again, normally I’d choose one of the two of you, but I don’t want you in the lead spots; that means if I take you with me I’m potentially leaving gaps in the succession. Gabrielle,” she smiled at her friend, “is a doctor, not a politician, and I want her available for that duty in the Arena; Steve is not at all interested in the work, and Carl Edlund’s my third choice. Laila’s shown she can work with people who are suspicious of her—since we were, for a while—she’s analytical, very smart, and takes no bullshit from anyone. She also, as far as I can tell, has no interest in being a boss as such, just in getting things done, which fits with the kind of person we want in charge.” She looked at Wu and Oasis. “And I don’t think either of you is cut out for the job.”

  “Ha! It would be difficult to be your bodyguard if I was stuck in dusty Council Chambers getting lazy and fat. And I would rather you sent me out to run on bare feet over the Mountains of Shattered Vases of Heaven than force me to be in such an office!”

  “I wouldn’t go quite that far,” Oasis laughed and tossed her multi-ponytailed head. “Mountains of shattered vases sounds pretty darn ouchy to run over. But no, I don’t want to be a desk-jockey, even if the desk says ‘Leader of Humanity.’”

  “Well,” Ariane said with her own grin, “it’s not going to be that bad. After all, look at the Leaders we already know; Orphan, Nyanthus, Dajzail, Selpa, Doctor Rel, and the others. Most of them don’t seem to be the type to just sit in offices and council chambers. When the time requires it, they get up and do things—they lead.” That sharp-edged, dangerously attractive grin widened. “And it’s sure as hell not the way I have been leading. I’m not going to be hiding in the Embassy or attending tea parties all the time.”

  DuQuesne leaned forward. “I see you’ve already got something in mind. So what’s your next crazy venture, Captain?”

  “I made a promise, Marc. A promise to Orphan, who trusted us to fulfill that promise and then did a lot more than we’d ever have expected. We’re going to pay up on that debt.”

  “And by ‘pay up,’ you mean . . .”

  “We, Marc, are going to be Orphan’s crew. He said it had to do with the secret behind a power that could oppose a Shadeweaver head-on. We need to know about secrets like that. And whatever has the power to do that . . . might just also be able to teach me what I can do . . .” she smiled wryly, “. . . other than the universe’s most spectacular wardrobe change.”

  “Um . . . I hope I’m not going to be a wet blanket here,” Oasis said, “but . . . is that a good idea?”

  “Oasis does have a point, Ariane,” Simon said, as Ariane looked at the redhead with a surprised glance. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but if I reduce everything of recent events to its essence, we were fighting to convince the SSC that you were responsible enough to be trusted with the power of the Leader of Humanity.”

  DuQuesne nodded. “Yeah. Not saying you can’t do it, but you’d better have a reason that you have to go, one that’ll check to nine decimals with even the people who’ll be suspicious of you—like Esterhauer.”

  Ariane smiled at Oasis, then at the rest of them. “You’re all correct. But really, I’ve thought about this. The reason’s pretty simple, actually. Like I said, we need to know about these secrets. More, we need—I need—to find out how to unleash and control this power that I got almost by accident. I suppose I could send other people, like you and Simon, out and hope you could get the information yourself and bring it back, but let’s face it: whoever has that information probably isn’t giving it out to anyone if they can help it, and I doubt the instructions are going to be something you can just write down,
anyway.

  “And of course there’s the issue of safety.”

  Simon raised an eyebrow. “You think you’ll be safer going out on such an expedition?”

  “Oh, no, not at all,” Ariane said. “I think you will all be safer if I’m with you.”

  DuQuesne’s expression was priceless. Record that one, Mio, I don’t want to forget it!

  “Excuse me, Captain?” he managed after a moment.

  “Marc, you’re amazingly competent. So’s pretty much everyone here. But if we’re going somewhere that might have a power on a par with the Faith or the Shadeweavers, one thing we’ve learned is that they totally outclass us. But I have, at least, the potential to match them. Having me along means a possible defense—or at least a convincing chance to bluff. It also means I might sense, or be able to access, things that are only meant for those with these powers.

  “These are things that no one else can do, and overall it’s a vital intelligence-gathering operation. Any other Faction would give virtually anything to get a crewman aboard Orphan’s ship, if they realized it might give them insight into, well, what makes the Survivor the Survivor. There’s no way of even guessing the value of what his secrets are, except that they’re very, very valuable. So . . . yes, I think I should go, and in fact I have to go, and that’s based on not just my own curiosity but my professional judgment as Leader of the Faction.” She looked at Oasis. “Good enough for you?”

  The deceptively young-looking girl nodded cheerfully. “Good enough, Captain!”

  “So,” Simon said slowly, looking around at the others, “the Leader of Humanity is going to risk herself on a ship with a sometimes devious ally, traveling to some secret destination in the Deeps of the Arena, to confront some nameless force where there won’t even be a Sky Gate to help us return if things go wrong?”

  He stood and lifted his glass. “Sign me up, Captain!”