“No anyspace maths,” Frankie said. “Since you’re supposed to have stolen them.”
The calculations vanished as Maud’s augments painted the family defaults over the walls.
“Yeah, but. The nav data from Iktomi has discrepancies,” Ember said. “Champ’s hops, after he left the Dumpster? Each was a little off course. I’m wondering if that means saucers drift within anyspace. What if there are currents? They might need comms. Homing beacons, basically, to compensate—”
“Stay off the space maths,” Frankie repeated.
“Then I’ll help Babs.”
“With what?”
“She’s still convinced a sapp can EMbody,” he said.
“I agree with her,” Maud said, thinking of Irma du Toit. “I’m certain of it.”
If this registered with anyone, they didn’t pick it up.
Frankie did a quick turn in place, scanning the suite—a single, since Ember had been out there alone. Her primer loosened, sagging from a form-fitting jumpsuit into loose silk, lightening to a saffron color that suited her skin. She rolled over into a forward bend, loosening her spine.
Then she made for bed. “I’ll be killing zombies if anyone wants me.”
“What?” Maud’s mouth fell open.
Frankie mojied love, throwing blown kisses to them both. She lay down, arranged the smartfoam cushion of Ember’s bed to her own defaults, pulled saffron primer over her eyes to block out ambient light, and glazed.
“That’s the only bed.” Ember frowned. “Crane, we’ll have to move.”
“There are additional rooms available across the hall, Ember,” Crane said. “Space enough for everyone, once Dr. Mwangi arrives.”
“Maybe I can take your place in jail,” Maud said. “Since I’m locked out anyway.”
Ember missed the point of the jab. “Do you think the Kinze accept proxy prisoners?”
“Bad joke, that’s all.”
“Invite to join, Mer Maud.” Crane pinged her with a virtual envelope emblazoned with the words personal and confidential.
“You really gotta do that,” Ember said.
With a glower, Maud checked the mini-fridge instead, taking out a cluster of hydrogel, and ate three in rapid succession. There was only one protein mallow, flavored peanut butter.
“Crane,” Babs said. “You’re supposed to keep Ember’s food intake diversified.”
“Ember has been eating arguably balanced meals at Mission Control.”
“How fast can Jermaine get here?”
“Given his vertigo issues in nullgrav, at least thirty hours.” Crane shared travel contingencies, arrival times, and luxury pricing for Jermaine’s sedation and transport.
Maud subbed, “Any chance the Kinze will snap Ember up before Jerm gets here?”
The subject of this speculation was deep in conversation with Babs now, writing with his finger on the air.
“Pardon my presumption, Maud, but you’ll feel better, I think, once you’ve—”
Crane gestured at the bedroom with a wingtip.
Frankie had scrunched hard against the wall, leaving half of the narrow smartfoam mattress for her. Maud reclined onto it, spooning against her body. She hesitated before taking Frankie’s hand, but in the end, she found she couldn’t lie back and go fully virtual without that familiar curl of stubby fingers entwined in her own. She took a deep breath, whiff of smoky air, left over from the Emerald station fires, in Frankie’s hair. Her stomach settled.
She glazed. The invite—personal and confidential!—was waiting on a plinth in her e-state.
Maud tore it open.
A rose arbor flourished into view, blotting out her vestibule. She stepped over its threshold, into an arched corridor studded with white blooms.
“You are entering a therapeutic simulation,” said a familiar voice. “To indicate consent to assessment or treatment, provide verbal acceptance or simply turn left. To learn more about psychotherapy or catharsis therapy, turn right. If you are in immediate crisis, continue straight.”
She’d had to declare an absolute ban on Frankie trying to drag her into therapy. But now … Rubi had been urging it too. Ember had just said the same. Even Crane …
They’re ganging up. She raised her hand, furious, meaning to disperse the sim. Maybe trigger moji to burn the link entirely.
Reluctantly, she turned left, trudging into a row where the roses were yellow.
An animated frog regarded her from atop one bud and continued the spiel. “This virtual space is sequestered under regulations for doctor/patient privilege. Transcripts of sessions will be withheld from the Haystack until patient death. To indicate comprehension, turn left—”
“Death?” Maud said sharply. “Medical confidentiality has a ten-year statute of limitations.”
The frog blew out its big bubble of a throat. “Patients in this group therapy session are tagged with special exemptions under the childhood trauma statutes of the Mitternacht event—”
“Stop. Right. I remember.”
Frankie was exploiting the fact of their having been in Manhattan to get them a locked room, a truly private conversation … within a counseling sim.
She spent the whole week before shipping out, this time, trying to coax me in here.
Maud winced. Maybe it hadn’t been as simple as the others locking her out.
Here, in the counseling sim, rose blossoms threw petals in a banner in front of her, lettered with content warnings. Frankie’s concept of therapy included literally slaying your demons.
Beyond the warnings was an actual toon, digital representation of the quack in charge. Ah, and that was why the voice was familiar! It was Frankie’s childhood friend Kansas, from Tampico.
“Conspiracies have conspirators,” she muttered.
Ei indicated a final arch, signifying the end of the rose arbor and waivers phase. “Since this is your first appointment, a preliminary consult is required.”
Maud felt herself wanting to snarl. “How long will it take?”
“First we say hello. Hello, Maud, you probably remember me from your handfasting. I’m Kansas.”
“Hello.” She gritted it out.
“I’ll say how are you feeling, and you say? One word will do.”
“Uncomfortable.”
“Excellent choice.” Ei handed her a pistol and a machete, stepping out of her way.
“That’s it?”
“Is there anything else you’d like to discuss? I’m totally available.”
Maud shook her head.
“Then ping me anytime,” Kansas said, and vanished.
Maud stepped through the arch into the sim proper. The rose arbor morphed into the roof of a three-story concrete walk-up apartment, vintage, from the twentieth or twenty-first century. Frankie was nestled between two cornices, firing a sniper’s rifle at …
Maud dialed down the gore to kiddie level. The sim went from hard-edged hyperrealism to cartoon before she’d properly seen it. Bright colors exploded around her; the corners of the building softened and rounded. She stepped to the edge of the roof and saw goofy-looking, bloodless zombies mobbing the entire neighborhood where the building sat. Frankie was picking them off one by one.
Your view of the world in a nutshell, she thought. Endless threat, constant vigilance, and a battle you can’t abandon, no matter the cost.
Thanks to the child-level rating Maud had chosen, even the blasts from Frankie’s rifle came with silly sound effects: Kerpow! Pyew! Each zombie, once shot, made a sort of humorous “Ack!” noise before dropping into the crowd with a squelch.
“How can you play this at maximum gore?”
Frankie missed her shot and turned, stark relief stamped on her face as Maud joined her, sitting cross-legged on the roof.
“Want a machine gun?”
“Hells, no.”
“Hand me a clip,” Frankie said.
“Answer my question.”
“Making game reality look worse than the Surface
? I dunno. Actual challenges feel more doable? Anyway, pitch in. We gotta beat ’em back before they eat us.”
“There’s no pause button in catharsis therapy?”
“The horde has to be held at bay,” Frankie said, tone implacable.
“By you personally.”
“Maud.” Frankie let out a long breath. “That’s the family business.”
Maud had always known, of course, that Frankie’s stepmother Rubi was deep in the Solakinder bureaucracy, heading up Diplomatic, negotiating terms with the Kinze and their other offworld visitors. She’d known—everyone did—that Frankie’s other surviving parent, the notorious Gimlet Barnes, had gone offworld to gather user agreements between other races, contracts upon which Earth’s independence had, so far, hinged.
“I thought all you cared about was flying.”
“Freedom, flying, and the Feral5.”
“Don’t be glib.”
“It’s all the same fight, don’t you see?” Frankie said. “Break the FTL barrier, invent the #supertechs. Hold off hostile takeover. Join the commonwealth of advanced offworlder communities.”
“The Exemplars.”
“Something’s been off in the Bootstrap Project.” Frankie swapped ammo clips, leaned her cheek against her gun almost lovingly, and began picking shots. Kapow! Pyew! Splorch! “I should’ve topped the pilot leaderboard easy, but I kept getting dinged. When I played it safe, Champ and Rastopher beat me on timed trials. When I went all out, I got strikes for recklessness.”
“You weren’t the best, so the system was rigged?” Maud laughed. “The ego on you.”
“I bloody know how it sounds. I told myself it was rubbish, paranoia, but … it’s just that I am the best, actually.”
“If you were getting hamstrung, why did Bootstrap jump you to the head of the queue for implant surgery?”
“That’s just it: they didn’t jump me. They were about to broom me from FTL.”
“What?” Maud felt her jaw flapping.
Frankie fiddled with the gunsight. “I was borderline on the psych tests. They think I profile reckless.”
Maud laughed. “You are bloody reckless!”
“I know my limits, Maud. I’m not suicidal—that’s just #newscycle spin.” She actually looked hurt. “Anyway, I talked to my granddad’s old hoaxer friend—”
“Jackal?”
“Yeah—he got you my note? He and I started nosing around. Could someone want me off Bootstrap? And no sooner had I started looking than—”
“What?”
“They flip-flopped. Got me to agree that if I stopped negging the project and did beta on the pilot’s augment, I could stay on Project Hopscotch.”
“Risking the surgery. Doing the first runs in the prototype. Hazard duty all the way.”
“Holding off hostile takeover,” Frankie repeated. “I thought it was just Rubi, pulling strings…”
“Pulling strings to use you as bait?”
“It was more of a bet, really.” Frankie shot three zombies, one after another. “She didn’t think I’d actually find footdraggers or saboteurs.”
“Can I—can I really say anything here?”
Kapow! Pyew! “Why? Are there sex kinks you don’t want on the record?”
“Nobody will know? Really? Nobody?”
“Well. Kansas. But ei’ll take it to the grave.”
A deep voice interrupted: “Side quest.”
Within Maud’s peripheral vision, a new image bloomed: a cote of pigeons, trapped in their cage.
The birds cooed. Maud accepted the quest, examining the locks on their cage. “This amazing bubble of secrecy, this license to come into sim and spill your guts and never have it go on the record … it’s just because we had a problematic childhood?”
At problematic, Frankie’s face did something angry-looking and complicated. “Abused kids get lifetime safe-space waivers.”
Maud unlocked the first door on the cote, chewing on abused and emphatically disliking the taste of it.
A dove fluttered by, in a kiss of feathers that smelled of baby powder.
Frankie tossed the gun away, unshipping a machete. She stood, knife hanging loosely in hand, back to the undead throng in the street.
Maud drew air through her front teeth. She could tell Frankie about Upton. But …
Tell her the truth and she won’t agree to the comms augments.
Won’t she? She said it herself—she’s all about taking mad risks for the cause.
One of the cartoon zombies got a hand on the precipice, pulling itself up. It slung a well-gnawed leg over the concrete and took a second getting its balance. Green and yellow eyes locked on Frankie. It took a shambling step toward her. Frankie seemed determined to ignore it, even as two of its undead friends started to crest the rooftop too.
“Maud,” she said. “I know I said no more hazard—”
“But you’re not quite done, are you?” Maud said.
Frankie was opening her mouth to answer when the zombie grabbed her. A mouth full of wicked white cartoon teeth yawned wide as it prepared for the chomp.
Maud jumped in, swinging a loose board from the dovecote. She hit Frankie’s attackers like a ballplayer making a home run; two of them went flying.
“This play to grab Ember,” Frankie said. “We can’t lie back and take it.”
Maud kicked over the cote, releasing the rest of the trapped birds, watching them rise skyward amid a soothing percussion of wings.
“The portals work—his maths were fine. And you know he didn’t steal anything.”
“No, of course he didn’t.” More zombies were almost on them now, and Frankie still hadn’t raised her blade. Maud swapped the board in her hand for the machete at her waist and hacked into them, splitting one bloodlessly down the middle, cutting the legs out from under another and punting it off the roof.
“Bwaaaiiiiiiiiins!” Its shriek receded as it did.
“We need to prove Champ is guilty.” Frankie picked up the rifle. “Need to find out who he’s working with.”
“Conspiracies need conspirators,” Maud glowered.
“Exactly.”
“Like you and Rastopher and Ember and Babs—”
“I looped you in soon as I—”
“—setting up unauthorized portal launches.”
“That worked a treat, I thought.” Frankie let out her daredevil grin, and Maud couldn’t quite keep herself from answering it.
“Fine. What’s your plan, Hedgehog?”
“I need to get back on track at Hopscotch, get in the running for Heyoka’s test flights—”
“You think you’ll find another rotten pilot?” Maud tossed the machete, equipping the gun instead and firing six shots. Still playing beginner level, so she made them.
“The next test run is an obvious candidate for sabotage,” Frankie said.
“So, you win the bid to test the new saucer, strap another target to your head, and see if someone takes a shot?”
“It worked at Emerald.”
“That’s not an argument for trying to get killed twice.”
Frankie seemed to consider arguing, then changed out her ammo clip instead. “What do you want me to do?”
“Don’t be bait, be a hunter. Find an actual conspirator.”
The grin widened. “I’m liking the general shape of it. But how?”
The rooftop shuddered beneath them.
“Thirty more kills to level two,” said the controller.
“Buy into the quantum-comms project,” Maud said. “It’s nanosurgery. It won’t take any time out of your busy schedule of risking your hide or offending the public.”
“What good’s that gonna do?” A rescue helicopter appeared in the distance. Frankie set off a flare, marking their position.
“You’re looking for conspirators working against Bootstrap, right? They can’t all be in FTL. There’s someone in Medical. Someone from Manhattan.”
Frankie’s eyes narrowed. “Who?”
“A doctor on the comms project.” Maud struggled … then found she couldn’t let out the whole truth, not all at once. It had been so long; she was too locked down. “Jerm brought him to the vigil and I recognized him.”
“You’ve met with someone from the Chamber of Bloody Horrors? Are you okay? Maud! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because! You were lost in space.”
The mob of cartoon zombies climbing the side of the building numbered in the hundreds, but Frankie was in work mode—she barely noticed. “The Chamber was in thick with Allure18.”
“Exactly! If you want a co-conspirator, a doctor from Manhattan’s a pretty good place to start, isn’t it? Anyway, I want in on your super-private pilot’s texting channel. If only so we don’t have to do this”—she gestured, indicating the whole therapy sim—“anymore.”
Frankie was nodding. “The time ask is minimal, and my augment needs updates anyway. It won’t actually stop us from chasing other clues or trying to get—”
“Hedgehog. Nobody’s going to let you fly a test run in that shiny new FTL ship they’re building unless Ember is conclusively cleared.” Maud set her gun to rapid fire and sprayed the oncoming mob.
“Comms it is!” Frankie tossed the gun. “We’ll play it safe for now.”
Maud had thought this fight would be about Frankie throwing herself through an untested portal. About Frankie trying to die in six different ways at once, by getting marooned on Sneezy, all in the apparent hope that Champ would try to murder her.
Now, somehow, she had ended up dangling Upton like a carrot. “We test the comms,” Maud insisted. “You deal me in. No more Braille notes after the fact. We try to tie old @ChamberofHorrors people to this accusation against Ember.”
Frankie caught the ladder from the rescue chopper, steadying it. “If your guy’s dirty—and he might not be, you know—he’s not gonna let me get close. Not after I accused Champ publicly.”
“He’ll trust me.” Maud started climbing. “He approached me, didn’t he?”
“Not sure I like the sound of that.”
“I don’t much care for that black eye on your mug, or facing off against security bots who want to grab Ember. Is this family business or not, Frankie?” Maud could kick her into the horde right now, send her to a virtual death, and reset the level.
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