Cosmic Cabaret

by SFR Shooting Stars

  Those same fingers that stripped her nearly bare in front of her peers to expose every single quirk visible on her skin, every curve determined by her build and bones. “Flawless,” the crone had said. “Breeding shows true on the surface.” Then the old woman stabbed a needle deep into her side. “Let’s see if it shows in the blood.”

  She remembered the betrayal of the shock and the pain, and remembered that it was something to be endured. A minor inconvenience, a brief humiliation in return for--

  Her eyes snapped open. “Thann!”

  His beautiful, expressive eyes, ringed by dark circles now, met hers as he bent over her, his hair hanging down in a privacy curtain around them. “Meiji?”

  At the same time, Palma spoke from her other side. “Milady!”

  The name felt foreign to her, but at the same time familiar. She’d been answering to “Milady” for two years, had forgotten “Meiji” almost altogether, but now the name had been returned to her and she nearly couldn’t remember what it was like to not know her name.

  She licked dry lips and tried to speak, but her voice caught in her throat and she coughed. Her head throbbed and she reached up to the source of the pain on the side of her ear, only to feel the knot of scar tissue there.

  Acid rose to the back of her tongue. She swallowed it back and turned away. The scar running down the side of her face was evidence she was no longer flawless on the outside.

  His gentle fingers touched her chin as he turned her back to meet his gaze again. He moved his hand to cover her own. “I never loved you just for your face.”

  She remembered the Trustee.

  She remembered the old woman’s hot breath on her face as her rheumy eyes searched Milady’s--Meiji’s--face for imperfections, murmuring to herself about bone structure and heritage and the folly of a round face on a young girl. She remembered fighting the urge to shrink away from the old woman’s perfume, heavily applied to cover up other scents that betrayed her age, and possibly her health as well.

  She remembered the Trustee’s pronouncement. “Rejected!” The feel of her world crumbling around her. Her parents’ devastated faces, her own sobs as if coming from a great distance. She remembered her parents locking their arms around her, pulling her away from the boy she loved, desperately needed to get to. If she could just touch his hand once more, the world could be made anew and--

  She remembered falling, and why she jumped.

  “All right, off with you all. She’s going under again for the reset. Best you can do is leave her the hells alone while her brain defragments. If the memories come back, she’ll be the first to tell you.”

  She was grateful for the doctor’s curt tones, even though Thann’s face looked haggard. “I’m canceling my appointments and calling in a team to do the install. I’ll be right here when you wake up again.”

  When Meiji woke up again, she did so to a purr in her head. Welcome back, mistress! It was agony to be unable to reach you for so long. Would you like to hear the news?

  “E-evad?” The hood of the diagnostic bed blocked most of her view, but what little she could see of the room was now overlaid with transparent informational cards that glowed softly and moved away as she flicked her eyes. She somehow knew which visual commands moved the distracting cards out of the way, and which ones zoomed in so the information became more prominent.

  She couldn’t figure out which ones made them less nauseating.

  Yes, mistress! I am your EV-AD AI neural interface unit, ready to serve! I regret that my capacity is as yet limited by the full diagnostic and rebuild of my auxiliary systems, but I will be fully online in a matter of hours. Isn’t it lovely?

  She didn’t know how to feel about a perky, peppy fellow providing running commentary in her head, but something bubbled up from her previously inaccessible memories--”Evad, did I...ever write an essay on why neural AI are gendered?”

  I’m sorry, mistress, I can’t yet access that data. I have logged your question in the queue, though.

  Memories were starting to return to her. Meiji, my name is Meiji. And Milady. In a weird way, the idea was new and foreign, yet felt as if it had always been true. Other memories, too, were sneaking back in via the access tunnels of her brain--Just like we used to smuggle liquor and luxuries into the Academy through the access tunnels. Once accessed, the memory slotted into place as if she’d always known it.

  The effect was disorienting at best. Looking at something as innocuous as a doorway triggered a memory of losing her grandmother and she found sudden tears on her face, only to be followed by a fit of the giggles as she remembered something her younger sister had done, which prompted more tears as she realized her sister would have gone to Meiji’s own funeral two years ago.

  The bed suddenly felt too closed-in. The room suddenly felt too closed in. The entire ship, if she were being honest about it. She pushed the hood up and to the side and sat upright. It took her a few minutes, but she found her legs. “Evad, what time is it?” She even knew how to sub-vocalize so silently that she barely even heard her own voice, yet the neural AI could pick up the command.

  Oh-dark-thirty, mistress.

  That explained the dimmed lighting in the hall outside the cubicle. She traded the med-bay wrap for a pair of coveralls that lay folded on the chair next to the bed and crept out to be alone while the memories stole into and out of her brain.

  Fourteen

  Fourteen hours passed. Fourteen hours of agony spent forcing himself not to even breathe a word about her to anyone, not even his family, who questioned his sudden requisition for a team. He was forced to deliver a wholly unbelievable story about having too much fun sampling the delights of the Cabaret offerings to his mother, of all people, who gave him a side-eye he could feel even through tight beam holo-communication.

  The concierge insisted he attend another dinner, when he really wanted to be by Meiji’s side, even if she were unconscious. Instead, he was being escorted to his table by the nosy drinks girl, Kella, who took his arm in a too-familiar manner and stood on tiptoe to speak something for his ears only. “She’s fine. Checked on her myself just a little bit ago.”

  Her tight whisper incongruous with the bright smile she wore, she seated him at his table and leaned too far over him when it came time to dispense the drinks from her--he looked up at the ceiling, rather than down her cleavage. Under cover of the popping sounds of the zingberries that punctuated her, er, performance, she muttered so only he could hear her. “You owe me an exclusive.”

  “A what?”

  EV-1A responded. Handshake protocol requested from unit IV-0R. Accept?

  Thann nodded. A tell--a private, text-only message floated up on the augmented reality of his neural. Your tablemate, Garibaldi, works for the Trust. I don’t imagine you’re a fan, and I’d buy an entry on the Probabilities Market that says the feeling from the Trust is mutual. Not a word about Milady.

  Agreed.

  And I want an exclusive interview.

  EV-1A provided him with the context of her identity, earned through the neural handshake. You’re a journalist?

  Kella was currently bent over Garibaldi’s drink, performing her trick to the grizzled man’s delight. She didn’t even glance his way to respond. You think drinks girls can afford neurals?

  Thann shook his head at the sound of zingberries plopping into champagne flutes. Nothing on this ship was as it appeared.

  After dinner, he returned to the medical ward, only to find the show had included a disappearing act.

  Meiji was gone.

  Meiji’s absence sent him into a panic. Thann tore through the corridors of the engineering and maintenance decks like a man possessed. She wasn’t in the common room, nor was she in the engine troughs.

  He finally found her on the darkened stage, perched on the acrobatic swing high above. The glittering crescent moon affixed to the swing had been lifted up on its own guy ropes high enough to store out of reach, but as he climbed up to the catwalk and
joined her, he felt like he might be able to touch one of the real moons.

  Without a word, she used the pneumatic controls to move the swing to where he could reach it from the catwalk. He passed from the catwalk to the swing and settled himself gingerly in the narrow space next to her. As the swing glided away, he felt the air pressure change in the center of the stage and heard the hum of a gravitational nullifier cycling through its settings. Of course. The gravity dancers didn’t really fly. One more illusion.

  Finally, she spoke. “The Dome. The Academy has a dome over the grand ballroom. Everyone sneaks outside to the catwalks for secret meetings.”

  Thann nodded slowly. “The airspace is restricted, and it’s outside where the cams can’t really go. High enough up that the air is breathable.”

  “We were so lucky.” Something in his just being next to her calmed her, but at the same time heightened her awareness. “I remember kissing you. Loving you.”

  He moved carefully, cupping her cheek with his hand. She could smell the faint whiff of flux that everyone who worked with stardrives eventually adopted as cologne and she remembered it from before her fall. Her eyes widened as the connection clicked. “Drives,” she said. “They always felt like a piece of me because of the flux.” I’m not making any sense, she thought in despair.

  But Thann nodded. “We spent a lot of time in the flitter garage, too.” A slow grin spread across his face. “In the back seats.”

  She echoed his nod with one of her own. “The flitter--I crashed a flitter and it went down. I didn’t remember anything, except how to rebuild that flitter. It gave me a new life.”

  “If I’d known--” Those three words held tight anguish.

  She shook her head. “Everyone else would have, too.”

  They sat in silence for several minutes before he broke the spell.

  “Do you remember now?”

  Her eyes filled with tears and she nodded. “We can’t--the Trust--”

  “None of that matters. My family never sought another alliance for me, and I never made Scion. I think my family is hoping I become the eccentric drunk. Or disappear into a wormhole of my own making.” He grinned. “Or fall into a plasma coil.” He glanced sideways at her. “I’d make one hell of a heavy impurity, you think?”

  The catch in her chest, followed by the laugh that bubbled up at his quip, felt familiar to her, like an old friend she’d almost forgotten. I did forget. “Strange things bring the memories back. Fits and starts, sometimes feedback from EV-AD. Palma banished me from the stardrive troughs until I get my head on straight again.”

  “I sent for a team yesterday. They’ll be here in--” he checked his neural, “--an hour.”

  “I still don’t have all my memories. I--I know they’re there, but I can’t just remember everything that happened before I fell. It was only partway intentional. The fall, I mean. I had to escape. After the Trust killed our alliance…” She trailed off, her voice uncertain. “I couldn’t stay. Princess Ione tried to help me, and I thought I could keep on going, make Scion myself, and--I don’t know, rewrite the rules, I guess.”

  “That sounds like the Meiji I know and love.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not...quite that girl anymore. I know I can’t change the rules. I don’t even want to play the game. Being together--we could hurt your family. Your House can’t want me near you.”

  He slipped a careful arm around her shoulders. The swing moved in the breeze from the air circulators. “My House will do fine without me representing it. Alliances, Social Capital, even Scionhood--I don’t care about any of that anymore.”

  “Ah, but I am afraid, Lord Zalco, that the Trust does.” This voice came from outside their tiny world on the swing above the stage. Its owner stepped out from the shadows of the mezzanine’s columns, a charge rifle aimed at the two of them.

  Thann’s eyes widened in horror as he saw the laser target illuminate the scar on Meiji’s temple. Even as the swing bobbed with her involuntary flinch, the laser’s auto-targeting remained locked on to Meiji’s head.

  Thann narrowed his eyes and the AR interface in his neural zoomed in on the man holding the charger. He recognized the old man as Garibaldi, his dinner companion. He realized the mistake in his assumption that the old guy was just a pompous blowhard obsessed with status and the Trust, but it was too late to rectify. “Why? What objection does the Trust have to me? I’m not the heir, I’m not even a Scion. I’m a spare with no controlling interest in my House’s affairs.”

  While he spoke, he shifted his body weight ever so slightly, setting the swing in motion again. He twisted his hips and the swing followed, turning just enough so that Meiji was angled away from the mezzanine. Far below them, he might have spotted a flash in the deep shadows of the darkened stage, but he couldn’t be sure, and holding the aged assassin’s attention was more important. “Nothing I do has any bearing on House Zalco’s standing. I don’t even have a SoCap index anymore.”

  The charger wavered as the man tracked their spin. Thann had overshot and they spun completely around twice before he heard Garibaldi’s answer. “I’m afraid it’s less about you, young lord. The Trust has a sacred duty to the Empire to preserve the integrity of the peerage, as it was from the first colonists to make landfall. House Michado’s heiress has been found.” and must be returned to her House to fulfill her alliance obligation to House Kush.”

  The flash came again, this time to the assassin’s right. A drinks girl stepped out of the shadows with an overly exaggerated expression and a dramatic glide that belonged on the stage, not the mezzanine. “There you are, Mister Garibaldi! I’ve been looking for my favorite customer! You’re going to miss the Cirque! Here, let me refill your drink--”

  Her high-speed chatter echoed through the empty stage and as Thann watched, Kella the drinks girl and intrepid journalist minced out from behind the column and right up to the assassin, filling the air with distracted chatter. He spared a single glance at her, growled, and focused back on the charge rifle. What are you doing? He’s got a charger! He sent the tell to IV-0R.

  To Thann’s horror, she leaned in and champagne erupted in a high-pressure fountain from her breasts. The bubbling drink sprayed in the assassin’s face and he sputtered, jerking to the side. “You little--”

  Thann fumbled with the lift controls for the swing, sending it in agonizing slowness towards the balcony. If he could get close enough to intervene--Then what, dumbass?

  “Oh, look at me, my harness seems to have malfunctioned!” Kella reached for the man and her arm swept over the mezzanine’s railing, knocking the charge rifle out of the old man’s grip and sending it plummeting to the stage below.

  But beside him, Meiji began to swing her legs, pumping them back and forth. By the time the swing made it close enough to the mezzanine railing, they were swinging back and forth almost in a half-circle arc. He tore his eyes from the assassin and the drinks girl, who were now tangled in a bubbly mess, and saw Meiji’s eyes narrow in determination. “Don’t--”

  Garibaldi roared in rage, but the drinks girl turned her torso towards him and his roar ended in a gurgle as more champagne hit his face. He flailed his arms and managed to knock her aside.

  “I can make it,” Meiji said, and launched herself into the air.

  The swing jerked back with her motion, sending him away from the balcony, and he reached out.

  Meiji flew through the air in an arc, her body headed towards the two people on the mezzanine. She overshot her target on purpose, and made the calculations in her mind, but she hadn’t been prepared for the sensation of falling.

  Falling.

  She was falling once again, surrounded by red velvet curtains and gold curlicued buttresses, but her memory flashed in front of her and she saw the facades of once-sleek arco-scrapers as she plummeted down, flashing lurid neon signs before her, and the running lights of flitters in traffic patterns making burning streaks as her own flitter raged out of control, heading for the gap
ing maw of an intake tunnel that might just keep her from falling all the way down to the planet’s surface and certain death.

  Now, her vision narrowed down to the drinks girl’s cleavage. I can make it. I can make it.

  But the arc of her trajectory was too steep. Even accounting for her own force, she didn’t have enough forward momentum to flatten out the parabola so it intersected with the mezzanine railing.

  I can’t make it.

  Her best bet was the draperies below. She stretched her arms out and extended her legs behind her, as if she were in zero-gee, to keep the forces neutral and just...reached.

  She felt the subtle shift of...everything...around her. The air rushing past her face, the inexorable pull of the stage below, and a hundred decks below that, the graviton generator that kept the floor from turning into the ceiling. And she hit the edge of the grav nullifier’s passive field. Everything...lessened. Her trajectory shifted, leveled out. She felt the pull towards the floor lessen, but her momentum still carried her across the empty space, just enough to graze the railing of the balcony and crash into the old man.

  He staggered backwards, his feet flying out from under him on the champagne-slicked marble and Meiji landed on top of him, the air forced from her lungs.

  Her eyes met those of the drinks girl, who gaped at her. The fountains of champagne coming out of her bra slowed to a trickle, leaving the front of her costume soaking wet and filling the air with the rich scent of sparkling wine. “Are you a Sh--” she clamped her lips shut

  Meiji waved her away. “I’m not--who you think. Nothing on this ship is.” The wind took its time getting back into her lungs. The old man lay motionless on the ground and Thann was calling her name.

  “You’re the Michado heiress, and people have been looking for you for years.”

  Meiji froze, mid-way in rolling off the old man. The advice from Itaru, the Drift community leader in the sublevels, fixed itself in her mind. Somebody up there wanted you gone, or you needed to be gone. “They can keep looking. I’m not the one.”