A Princess of the Aerie

by John Barnes

  It was impossible to find a good place from which to guard the people speaking, and anyway the speakers had not consulted their improvised (and desperately undermanned, and underRubahyed) security detail. Durol Eldothaler, with his row of about ten supporters and other speakers behind him, stood directly in front of the body of the separator, which provided a plain white-and-black backdrop. Someone had hung a banner, “Strike Against Tyranny,” on the side of the separator’s main tank, about two meters off the ground. Dwarfed by the four-story-high, sixty-meter-wide tank, it looked pathetic.

  He was wide open to any shot coming out of the crowd, and anyone in the front row might have tossed a grenade or a bomb in among the platform party. For that matter, there were excellent sniper positions all around the crater rim, and in the low gravity a man with a club or an ax might pop out of the crowd and be in among the speakers in three hard bounds. Worse still, Kyffimna caught them and said, “Pop wants you well out of the way. He says having bodyguards makes it look like he’s done something wrong.”

  Dujuv whined in his throat, for all the world like a frustrated German shepherd, but Jak realized that it was on their personal channel. “That’s what I feel too,” he said to Dujuv, as they meekly followed Kyffimna.

  “If that sound means This whole situation is dreadful, but I don’t know what to do about it, then I must learn to make that noise.” Shadow on the Frost added, also on private channel.

  Kyffimna led them up onto the ledge the speakers stood on, but they were at least two hundred meters from the platform party, too far away to do more than be witnesses if anything happened. She left her brothers with them as well. Jak sourly muttered, “So all us embarrassments are together,” on the private channel.

  Dujuv hand-signed, Absolute maximum affirmative.

  Over the public channel, Durol said, “Make sure your neighbors have Channel Nine on, that’s the one we’ll be using for the main event. All right, friends, we know why we’re here, but we ought to say it again, just for the record. We are here not because we’re greedy, not because we’re complainers, not because we can’t cope with what Mercury does to us. We’ve been had by every crook in the solar system and we’ve eaten radzundslag till we glow, and we still bring in metal when they need it and as much as they need it. But when we get one terrible abuse after another, when we see nothing but worse conditions and eventually our planet being turned into a giant slave camp, by a company whose only purpose seems to be complete tyranny, it’s time to say enough is enough.

  “So let me just lay out the facts here. The solar system lives by what we do here on Mercury; without us there wouldn’t be half the human settlements, they’d never have dug out from the Rubahy Wars, neither the Hive nor the Aerie would exist at all, and in a thousand ways they’d all be poorer and colder and less numerous. They owe their existence to us, and they are more than welcome to that, but in return we are owed some measure of protection, if not from the ordinary thieves and dullards they send to exploit us, then at least from the worst kinds of pirates, thugs, and goons—which is what MLB is. To begin with, they imposed a contract on us that—”

  A white-hot spot appeared on the side of the separator; Jak, Shadow, and Dujuv were bounding toward the platform before there was even time to think, Laser.

  Not even Dujuv could have been fast enough. The bright spot whirled out a circle two stories high, on the side of the separator tank. In seeming slow motion, due to the distance, but actually with terrible speed, the circular piece fell out, and a flood of white-hot magma dropped out and splashed over the group of speakers and leaders.

  Durol had only time to say, “What—” Then there was a deep bass howl of pain and a hissing sound, and the public address channel went dead. The flood of magma poured over the ledge toward the crowd below.

  In less than fifteen seconds the three toves reached the edge of the stream of magma; by then, all there was to do was to help Bref and Kyffimna hold Narav back from rushing into the magma itself, trying, in his confusion and panic, to rescue Durol. Unfortunately the delay meant they were all still close to the magma, close enough to feel, through their feet, the whump-thud of pressure suits bursting under the magma. When Narav stopped struggling, Kyffimna rushed to the side of the separator and slammed the red “close intakes” button, shutting off the flow of fresh magma from the heated well under the ground.

  Below, the crowd scattered and fled from the white-hot flood; fortunately there wasn’t enough of it to flow all the way across the crater, and soon the assembled thousands were packing and clogging the tunnel like a wad of bran flakes in a drain, getting through but not quickly.

  On the general speaking frequency, Riveroma’s voice said, “Return to your kriljs and await orders. Return to your kriljs and await orders. This is the Provisional Government of the Republic of Bigpile. We have taken control to restore public order and to prevent further deterioration of the economy. Return home and resume work. Everything is being taken care of.”

  “This is a Principle 4 case,” Jak said, “if ever there was one. MLB could very well be ruling this planet in a short time.”

  Dujuv was angry but still listening. “Go on.” Kyffimna nodded through tears. Jak looked around the big common room of the krilj, at the blank faces of the Eldothaler Quacco. He was being listened to, but the only person who looked normal was Shadow on the Frost, who never had any facial expressions.

  “Well,” Jak said, “like I said, Principle 4.” One of Nakasen’s most important insights was that “the other bastard can’t win if you can kick over the table.” He drew a deep breath and said, “Toktru, I would be glad to never see Mreek Sinda again. Believe me, or don’t, but it’s toktru. But she wants to talk to me. If I dump the whole story to her, Riveroma at least will have to run for it, because his cover will be blown, and he’s bait for every bounty hunter in the solar system. Not only will that get rid of MLB’s leader, but (since I bet none of Riveroma’s business associates are any more savory than he is), aside from the bounty hunters going after Riveroma, there will be thousands of them going after most of MLB.

  “If I talk with Sinda, I know she’ll do one of her stupid bloated puff pieces about me and make me out to be the hero, and it’s embarrassing and I’m sorry and I wish other people would get the credit, or the truth would get told, but at least MLB will be on the run, and off the miners’ backs. So I’m going to, and you can hate me if it helps.

  “I’m afraid that Bex Riveroma will find a way to take a hard kick at everything he can while he’s on his way out. So I speck that the quacco should evacuate, right away.”

  Kyffimna looked up, wiped her face with her hand, and took a couple of long deep breaths. “You’re right, but as soon as we leave with work under contract, we forfeit, and MLB can salvage all our equipment.”

  “Not if you can prove they were stealing from you with that metal-relabeling operation,” Dujuv said, looking at the wall, avoiding seeing Jak. “If you prove that, you get back rights on everything they stole, and reclaim whatever they claimed salvage on, and their insurance company will have to pay you plenty.”

  “You’re right,” Kyffimna said, “but how do we prove—”

  “Got it.” Bref looked up from his purse; he had been working quietly in the corner ever since Jak and Dujuv had taken him aside and explained things, just before the quacco meeting began. He looked around the room in mild surprise at how everyone stared at him.

  “Well,” he said, “obviously that was the very first issue—how we were going to prove what MLB had been up to. So I went looking into that. We knew they had to be changing isotope tracers, which meant they had an isotope separator. Well, those are pretty big and have a major energy demand, and they’re not easy to hide—we already knew it had to be in those big chambers in the crater wall over on the other side—so I’d been processing all our old records, and I’ve got it.

  “There’s one chamber over there that would be right next to where they were running the
reactor, with an easy pathway to good surface positions for solar collectors, that would be big enough for the isotope separator and the several months of metal they’d have to warehouse until they got it relabeled. If anyone was to investigate that chamber, they’d find a whole lot of ingots that we’d sold too low, and a whole bunch of new ones marked to sell too high, and the machines to turn one into the other. And just possibly some records about it all, too, for that matter. Or in short, that big chamber contains all the evidence you’d need to shut down MLB and get every member of it erased and sold into a labor brigade.”

  “So if I spill the story to Sinda,” Jak said, “will they be able to hide the evidence after she accesscasts?”

  Kyffimna visibly brightened. “Maybe if they blew it all up with an atom bomb. Otherwise, no. My little brother’s right. This is it. We get everyone we can out of here, we leave behind just enough people to jam it up for Riveroma and MLB if they try to destroy the evidence, and Jak runs and squeals like an informing rat-fink son of a whore to that media bitch, and after all this is over, just maybe we’ll win. At least we take one more good kick at their heads, eh?”

  CHAPTER 15

  Nobody’s Going to Blame Me

  I don’t like you at all,” Jak said.

  He was sitting in the conversation pit in Mreek Sinda’s hotel suite, in Bigpile, and she was sitting across from him. He was trying hard to pay no attention to the cloud of camera drones around him. He was not succeeding. “I know you can make me say anything you want by the time you put it out on to accesscast, but just now I want you to hear that. I don’t like you at all. I don’t trust you. I loathe what you do for a living.”

  Four of Mreek Sinda’s drones positioned themselves at forty-five-degree angles to her face, creating the corners of a square, and focused soft warm lighting on her; it made her look perfect, so that even the traditional helmet-hair looked comfortably natural. “Then why are you even bothering to talk to me? You know your family has money. And this is Mercury. You and your two friends could be on a ship out of here in no time. No one would stop you.”

  Jak stared at her. “We must see the world completely differently,” he said at last.

  “Yes, well, the difference is, the way I see the world, and what I choose to see, is the way everyone will see it. So my view of it matters, unlike yours. Now what do you want to show me?”

  She lowered her gaze slightly; her cheeks came up as she parted her lips in a smile.

  She thinks she’s getting to me. He felt amusement and rage and swallowed both. “Well,” he said, “here’s a story for you. It even ties everything in to the previous series you did about me.”

  Quickly he told her about Bex Riveroma: that a crime syndicate might soon control the richest mines in the solar system. “So if they let him get away with it, it’s war, runaway inflation, letting a thug create the richest single fief in the system and run it as a slave camp, most likely all of the above. And right now a battalion of beanies from anywhere could stop it cold. But there is no battalion of beanies. Just a bunch of broke, hungry miners who won’t take it anymore, on strike for their lives, being murdered and tortured by Riveroma and his MLB goons. How’s that for a story?”

  “And are you here to do something about it?”

  “I came here not knowing what was going on. I’m going to do my small part to stop it, sure, but others will pay higher prices and accomplish more.

  “What’s important is for people to know that the leader of MLB is Bex Riveroma. Somewhere in the solar system there must be some honest pokheets, and every one of them will want a shot at Riveroma. If anyone takes a good look at MLB’s isotope-separating facility in the southwest of Crater Hamner, which they’re using to starve miners and raise metals prices at the same time, they’ll see what’s up and put a stop to it.” Jak hesitated, and as foolish as he felt trying to appeal to Sinda’s better side, he added, “Please accesscast at least those sentences. Please. It would make such a difference if you did.” She nodded and gestured for him to continue his statement. “I’m asking everyone who has the power to do something about this.” He could think of no more to say.

  The drones turned off their lights and flew back into Sinda’s bag. “Well,” she said. “Weehu. Tense stuff there. I think that’s going to sell. You’ll be surprised at how much makes it into the accesscast unmodified. Of course, there’s a lot of stuff to be generated before the accesscast, and you’ve already made it abundantly clear that you won’t cooperate with me in producing the prefatory material I need. So I will have to generate all that prefatory material by animation. That will take at least six or seven days to get the minimum scripted material into place. So I hope that your miners can hold out for those six days—plus whatever time it takes the politicians to negotiate an international intervention, and whatever time it then takes the nearest warships to get here to participate in it, and then there’s some planning time but they may be able to do that on the way—”

  “You’re talking about a month.”

  “Easily. Just tell your miners to hold on that long. Or a little longer. Things can take that long.”

  “You could accesscast what I just gave you and then make up more.” Jak felt as if the room were slowly turning, screwing its way down through the floor, down through all the radzundslag of Mercury, right down into the iron ball at its core.

  “I could.” She was more businesslike than he’d ever seen her. “But it blows a major punch line and loses much of the interest. And if I wait, nothing bad can happen, because even if Bex Riveroma slaughters half of Mercury, the story will only get better, you know. A bigger war, and a bigger scandal, and I can make it all look like you could have stopped him and sat on it. Nobody’s going to blame me. So the sensible thing for me to do would be to sit on this for the forty days or so until I have the generated parts that I want, making you say the things that I need for the broadcast, that you won’t say for me.

  “Luckily for you, there is a solution available. I will accesscast absolutely everything about MLB, Bex Riveroma, the falsified metals claims, all the things that will have the League of Polities meeting tonight, and troops headed this way in two days. I’ll use it all, uncut and unmodified, right away. If.”

  Jak almost said If what? before he realized how obvious it was. He felt as if a snake, with a texture like fine chilly leather, were trying to find its way upward through his bowels. “And if I say what you tell me to—”

  “And make it convincing.” Her jaw was set and she looked ready to slap him. “By the way, I hate and despise you too. For saying the kinds of things you have said to a person in my position. For mocking me and my job. For deliberately acting as if I didn’t matter. You don’t ever look away from a camera, old tove.” The tone would have been more appropriate to her calling him a child-rapist or a torturer. “So let me just add—make it convincing. If it’s not, the deal’s off.”

  The snake’s head reached into Jak’s heart and paused there, flat expressionless eyes looking into the dark of each chamber, venom oozing from the fangs into his bloodstream. “You’ll accesscast the material I need to get out there, if I cooperate, and not if I don’t?”

  Sinda smiled, not a smile he’d ever seen on any access-cast. “Results soon are much better than results later, silly boy. If ten minutes from now I have the stuff I need, and it takes twenty minutes to edit it, then thirty-one minutes from now it will be out there grabbing audience.”

  “The parts about MLB—”

  “All great, toktru, I wouldn’t cut it for a billion utils, because it’ll make that much. But I’ll hold it till I can frame it as I like. If you give me what I want, right now, I can frame it as I like, right now, and it goes out, right now.” Anyone looking in at that moment might have thought she was flirting with him. “Now, Jak, do I get my interview with the answers I want? Before you’re even back at the krilj, or wherever you’re going next, it will be all over Mercury and on its way to everywhere else. You are ri
ght. Once this is accesscast, Riveroma’s little scheme will be over.”

  “Well, then,” Jak said. “Well.” He swallowed hard. “And you won’t give me any evidence I can take with me, about why I actually said these things?”

  She laughed. “Do you know how much you could sell that for, to a competitor, as an accesscast? One second after you say it, I’ll be denying everything—and I intend to be in a position to make those denials stick.”

  He stared at the situation. He preferred his friends alive (and wrongly hating him) rather than dead (and rightly trusting). “All right then.”

  “Full cooperation?”

  “Full.”

  Drones flew from her bag, and surrounded Jak in a mass of tiny lights and cameras. “Now,” she said, “start with explaining how the whole purpose of this is to win back Shyf Karrinynya’s heart, and how you’ll do anything for her. Then slide into how angry you are with Dujuv Gonzawara for screwing everything up and for being a big stupid panth. Stress how much he lied about you and what a fool he is. Remember, be convincing.”

  * * *

  Just four people remained in the krilj when Jak returned: Dujuv, Shadow, and Bref, who had to be there, and Narav, who wanted to be everywhere his brother went. With Durol dead there was no one to tell Narav no. Shadow looked up from his diagrams and said, “No doubt my tove will explain that accesscast, and apologize later. Right now we have a plan to carry out and I cannot be sure how much time remains to us. Bref’s data penetrations show that MLB knows what is going on, and we have to worry about the possibility of the rest of the quacco being held as hostages, either by capture or by some weapons being sighted in on their ferry. So we need to move fast and decisively. Therefore I am going to tell you all what to do; I have some experience at this kind of thing. Please accept any offense to your customs as a matter of pure necessity.

  “Here’s what we’re going to try.” He talked quickly to his purse; maps and diagrams danced across the projected screen on the wall. “That’s it.” He made each of them review his part. “We’re ready. Any serious reason to delay?”