Aurora in Four Voices

by Catherine Asaro

  Jato stared at her. "Not a chance. That’s Crankenshaft’s private node. Everyone knows his security is unbreakable."

  A cold smile touched her lips. "Security is my game."

  A moment later she said, "I can call up his holosculpture of you if you want."

  Jato swallowed. She might as well have hit him with that ancient proverbial ton of bricks. "Yes. I want."

  She indicated the center of the studio. "That’s it."

  He turned-and almost gasped.

  The air above the pool was glowing with a rainbow-hued mist. It drifted across the glistening white cones that stood in the water, like shadows made on outcroppings of rock by clouds obscuring a sun. This, from a man who had lived his entire life in the night. Holos of Jato appeared on every cone. On the tallest, the one with the circular cross-section, he sat with knees to his chest, shivering, his clothes and hair dripping. He was younger, eight years younger, only a husky teenager. His face cycled through emotions: rage, confusion, resentment.

  An older Jato stood on the next cone, the one with its top cut off at a slant, giving it an elliptical cross-section. He remembered when he had modelled for it, how he stood for hours on a narrow shelf protruding from the surface. Crankenshaft had since removed the shelf and erased it in the image, so the Jato holo simply floated in the air, with red and blue clouds scudding across his face. He was shouting, fists clenched at his sides. No sound: just his mouth moving. With the play of light, it was hard to make out words, but he knew what they were. He had been cursing Crankenshaft in his native tongue.

  The Jato by the parabolic cone was sitting, submerged to his hips in the pool. He trailed his hands back and forth in the water, a habit he had developed to cope with the boredom. He was kneeling by the hyperbolic cone, up to his waist in water. Crankenshaft had doctored the holo to make him look old. Ancient. His face was a map of age untouched by the biosculpting the rich used to sustain youth during their prolonged lives. Gusts blew brittle white hair around his head. Stooped, gnarled, decrepit: it was a portrait of his mortality.

  That tableau remained frozen for a few seconds. Then all the Jatos stood up and began stepping from cone to cone, passing through each other while multi-colored clouds flowed across their bodies. Some raged, others shivered, others moved like machines.

  Each figure split, becoming two Jatos, all continuing their strange march. They split again, the original of each quartet stepping from cone to cone while the others kept pace in the air. New images appeared like shadows, all different by just a small amount, creating a feathered effect. A younger one was crying. He remembered that day; he had told Crankenshaft about his family, how he loved them, how they must think he had died. Another Jato image was laughing. Laughing. Yet there were times he had laughed-even had civil conversations with Crankenshaft.

  Holos of water augmented the pool, overlaid on the real water like multiple exposures: waves in impossibly sharp points, or serrated like a saw, glowing phosphorescence in red, purple, green, blue-green, gold, and silver. Gusts in the studio whipped the true water into peaks that added random accents to the holos.

  The Jatos split again, along with their shadows. They all stopped and raised their hands, the motion feathered among the images, as if it portrayed multiple quantum universes, each projecting a future that diverged from the original. The image of a rainbow-hued waterfall sprayed over the figures, making them shimmer. But no blurring could hide the fury on those faces.

  "Saints almighty," Soz said. "It’s spectacular."

  Jato tried not to grit his teeth. "That’s why he’s so famous."

  "I can see why he wanted you for his model."

  "You can?"

  She motioned at the holos. "You couldn’t get that purity of emotion-that fury-from a Dreamer. From most anyone. But from you, it’s perfect. Pure passion unadulterated by civilization."

  "Am I supposed to be flattered by that?"

  Soz winced. "I didn’t mean-" She stopped, staring at the sculpture. "Jato, look at your eyes."

  "That would be a feat." But he knew what she meant. He studied the images-and when he saw it, he nearly choked. Crimson. Ruby hard and ruby cold. The eyes on each image had turned red. The hair was changing too, going from dark brown to crystalline black. He couldn’t believe it. Crankenshaft was making him look like a Trader.

  He stood up, his fists clenching at his sides. "I’ll kill him."

  "It’s guilt," Soz said. "And catharsis."

  "What the hell does that mean?"

  "It’s all there," she said. "The guilt the Dreamers feel, knowing the brutality their disowned kin have inflicted on a thousand peoples. And catharsis. Realizing the monster isn’t in them anymore. They’ve freed themselves, become Dreamers instead of Traders."

  "Then it’s a lie." Jato was so angry he could barely get the words out. "For this ‘catharsis,’ Crankenshaft made himself into the very thing this is supposed to free him from. He’s made me look like what he hates in himself, what he can never get rid-" Jato stopped cold. Then he sat down again. "Oh, hell."

  Soz was watching his face. "What?"

  "His greatest work. Face his demons and exorcise them. I’m the substrate." It was suddenly all too obvious. "Get rid of me and he loses his inner devils." Jato swallowed. "He’s going to kill me as part of the sculpture. It’s what he’s always intended."

  She stared at him. "That’s sick."

  Jato wished he had never pulled her into this. "If we had died on the Promenade, he would have worked with that footage. Now you’re onto him, so he has nothing to lose by bringing us here where he can tailor the work to his needs."

  "Actually," a voice said. "You’re the one who is going to kill her."

  He looked up with a jerk. Crankenshaft was standing across the studio, by the console in the corner where the two holo-walls met. In one hand he held Jato’s bird sculpture; in the other, he had a laser carbine.

  "A tragedy," Crankenshaft continued, in the voice he used when he wanted to bait Jato, to drive his rage. "She came to the greatest artist alive hoping to inspire a dream. A beautiful woman, after all, has certain advantages. Unfortunately she arrived while you were here." He sighed. "I should never have left you two alone. But who would have thought an Imperial Messenger would be in danger? Besides, Jato, we thought we had cured you." He shook his head. "She was overconfident. An unguarded moment and you were able to bind her." Lifting the bird, he said, "A blunt instrument you stole from me brought about her death. I was forced to kill you in self-defense."

  Jato stood up, an explosion working up inside of him. But before it let loose, Soz spoke in a mild voice. "You’re Granite Crankenshaft."

  Unease showed on their captor’s face. "You should have never pried into his records, Messenger."

  "Why would you claim Jato stole that bird from you?" she asked. "He made it."

  The tic under Crankenshaft’s eye gave a violent twitch. He shifted the sculpture, his hand gripped around it as if he held a weapon. "No one would ever believe he created a work as stunning as this, with that fugue. Only his exposure to me enabled him to do it. Me. He could never have done it by himself. So the credit belongs to me."

  Jato knew he should be infuriated that Crankenshaft would claim credit for his work. But the implication in his captor’s words so staggered him that the arrogance of the statement rolled off his back. He could hardly believe it. The great Granite Crankenshaft was threatened by his work.

  Crankenshaft unhooked a cord from his belt and threw it at them. It landed at Jato’s feet, a leather thong with ceramoplex balls on each end that could have been anything from decorations to superconducting webs.

  "Tie her hands behind her back," Crankenshaft said.

  Jato crossed his arms. "No."

  Crankenshaft touched a panel on the console. A giant globe crept through a slit in the thermoplastic wall and floated to the center of the studio.

  "Non-linear dynamics and metapsychology," he commented. "Do you know that
with detailed enough initial conditions, you can model procreation? The correlation between the calculated results and an actual act that proceeded from those conditions is quite high."

  Jato scowled. "What are you talking about?"

  "Sex," he said. "Establish the initial scene well enough and you can model the rest with amazing accuracy."

  "Go to hell," Jato said.

  "Tie her hands."

  "No."

  "Commence protocol," he said.

  Three syringe guns slid out of the globe. Jato didn’t duck fast enough, but it didn’t matter: none of the shots were aimed at him. Soz moved in a blur, but she couldn’t go anywhere with her ankles chained to the ledge. One shot missed her, but judged from her reaction, the other two hit home. She jerked as if she had been struck and her entire body tensed.

  "What are you doing?" Jato shouted at Crankenshaft.

  "Jato, it’s all right," Soz said. "I’m fine."

  "It’s a clockwork venom," Crankenshaft told her. "Even your meds can’t adapt enough to deal with it."

  She said nothing, just focused her attention on him with an unsettling intensity.

  "What’s a clockwork venom?" Jato asked.

  Soz glanced at him. "The name comes from clock reactions." Although she sounded cool, sweat was beading at her temple. "Combine certain chemicals under proper conditions and they cycle through a series of reactions. In human blood, clockwork venoms undergo a cycle, each step producing a different

  poison."

  "Can your nanomeds fight it?" Jato asked.

  Crankenshaft answered. "Even sophisticated meds have trouble with complicated cycles. This one has hundreds of steps, all with varying duration lengths and side reactions that change from cycle to cycle. It’s a brilliant work of chemistry." He gave Jato an appraising look. "You’ve felt one poison in the cycle. Last time you were here. Perhaps you recall?"

  Jato remembered all right. It had burned like hell.

  "The others have different effects," Crankenshaft observed, as if Soz were a lab experiment. "Nausea, muscle stiffness, dizziness, pain. She’ll start vomiting soon. Eventually she will die."

  Soz remained calm, but sweat was running down her temples. When she wiped at it, the motion looked mechanical, as if she had let the hydraulics in her body take over.

  "As soon as her hands are bound," Crankenshaft said, "I’ll give her the antidote."

  "Jato." She spoke quietly. "Do what he says. Please."

  There was no mistaking the strain in her voice. Jato grabbed the thong off the floor and wrapped it around her wrists. The broken lock mechanism on her manacles felt warm, probably from the energy released when her chompers ate it. He tied the thong loosely around her wrists, making no attempt to knot it. But the ceramoplex balls activated and yanked the cords tight, binding her wrists and then locking into each other.

  "Leather," Crankenshaft said.

  Jato straightened up. "What?"

  "In molecular terms, it’s complex," he said. "More heterogeneous than, say, manacles. Not as strong, but a logical backup when dealing with disassemblers."

  Jato gritted his teeth. How did Soz stay so cool? She just watched Crankenshaft, intent and quiet. Crankenshaft took a ring with two mag-keys off his belt and threw it to them. As the keys hit the floor near Jato’s foot, a syringe on the globe hissed. Soz moved like an automaton, trying to duck, but the shot hit her anyway.

  "That had better be the antidotes," Jato said.

  "The red key unlocks your ankles," Crankenshaft said. "Gold unlocks hers."

  After Jato freed their ankles, Soz moved stiffly, swinging her legs off the ledge.

  "Go to the pool," Crankenshaft said. "Both of you."

  "No," Jato said.

  "Don’t make it harder on her than necessary," Crankenshaft said. "I can calculate a lot of what I need, but I’ll achieve better results with genuine images of the two of you to work from."

  Jato stayed put. "I won’t rape her and I won’t kill her. You can doctor holos to make me look like a Trader, but nothing can make me act like one."

  Crankenshaft’s voice hardened. "Go to the pool. Otherwise, I’ll pump her so full of clockwork venom she’ll beg you to kill her."

  With no warning, Soz moved. Fast. Dropping to one knee by her boots, she whipped out her hands, shreds of leather flying away from her wrists. She yanked the "decorative" tubes off her boots and brought them up, one in each hand, liquid shooting out from both. One stream splattered over the drone, creating clouds of gas. The other hit Crankenshaft’s carbine and splashed into his face. He shouted, dropping the laser as he covered his face with his hands. When the gun hit the ground, it shattered like porcelain.

  The Mandelbrot globe hissed and a shot from its air-syringe hit Jato in the neck. In a bizarre blur of motion, Soz threw her boots. They hurtled through the air and smashed into the globe, shattering its outer shell where the liquid from her cylinder had doused it. The whole assembly crashed to the floor, its innards breaking apart on the stone. Blinking and humming, the debris moved in twitches as it began to reassemble itself.

  "Smash the components!" Soz yelled, sprinting across the studio. She moved like a puppet, her body under control of hydraulics rather than muscles and bones.

  As Jato strode over to crush the remains of the drone, he saw Crankenshaft lower his hands, revealing a face covered with burns. In the same instant that he grabbed for a gun on his belt, Soz reached him. She brought her hands up with eerie speed and hit him under the chin, snapping back his head. He flew over backward, crashing to the ground. His head hit the floor and he lay still, breathing but unconscious.

  "Soz, no!" Jato raced forward when she jerked up her leg. He collided with her as her foot came down, and they staggered to the side, enough to make her miss Crankenshaft. Her foot hit the floor with a teeth-jarring impact that would have crushed the Dreamer’s chest.

  Jato gulped in a breath. "No killing."

  She turned to him like a machine, no emotion on her face. It was hard to believe this was the same woman he had kissed on the Promenade.

  Then her expression became human again, as if she had reset herself. She exhaled. "He’ll live." Grimly she added, "We might not. Are you all right?"

  A familiar burning was spreading in his neck and torso. "I took a shot of venom. Did he give you an antidote?"

  "No. More venom." She went to retrieve her boots and their tubes. "My meds are trying to synthesize an antidote, but it’s hard to do when their target keeps changing."

  "We better hurry." He grabbed his bird off the console. "His node must have alerted the city and his other drones."

  She pulled on her boots. "I put locks on his system. It will take a few minutes for it to break them." Her voice sounded strained. Labored.

  As Jato turned toward the door across the room, his gaze raked the pool-and he froze.

  The holosculpture was still evolving. It had spawned more and yet more Jatos, until they blended into a design of feathered motion. A superimage had formed, a fractal, its pattern repeating on a finer and finer scale. Superimposed on the fractal, a face was coming clear. A giant Trader face.

  His face.

  "No." He spun back to the console.

  "Come on!" Soz called.

  He stabbed at the console. "We have to destroy that sculpture."

  "We have to go! We don’t have much time."

  "He stole my life." Jato gave up on the computer and swung around to her. "He created a mirror of himself, but he put it on me. It’s like-like-" He slammed his palm against the console. "He’s a thief. Of my soul." He pointed at the sculpture. "That’s me. No matter where I go or what I do, as long as that exists he owns me."

  Sweat was dripping down her face. "I can’t guarantee I’ll find all his backups."

  "If anyone can, it’s you." He clenched his fists. "He owes me. And for him, losing his ‘masterpiece’ will be a punishment worse than dying."

  Soz strode to the console and went to work,
making hieroglyphics ripple across its panels in garish displays. She didn’t waste time pulling out her wrist socket; instead, she hauled off her boot and set her foot on the console, showing no strain with the contorted position as she plugged a prong from the console into her ankle socket.

  Seconds passed.

  Longer.

  Waiting.

  "Got it!" Soz jerked out the prong. "Downloaded one copy into my internal memory for you. Erased everything else." She yanked on her boot. "Now let’s go."

  They ran across the studio to the cliff door. As they stepped outside, into the blasting wind, she stared down the stairs. "No rail."

  Jato struggled to keep his balance, fighting the gales and his venom-induced dizziness. "I’ll go first. If I fall, I won’t hit you. You’re light enough so if you fall you probably won’t knock me off."

  "All right." Her voice sounded thick.

  He had expected her to insist on going first. His gut reaction ignored the obvious; she was part computer and machines worked on logic rather than heroics.

  Clutching his statue, he started down the stairs. An abyss of air and rushing wind surrounded them, turbulent, violent. Step. Step again. He took it slow, halting when waves of dizziness hit.

  Step.

  Step again.

  Scrapes came from above and he jerked his head up to see Soz lose her footing. Lunging for her, he lost his own balance and stumbled on the step, teetering over the void. Lurching back, he reeled to the step’s inner edge, where he fell to one knee and found himself staring down the shaft of air in the center of the spiral.

  "Jato?" Soz rasped.

  He took a breath, looking up to see her kneeling on the step above him.

  "You all right?" he asked. She nodded and they got up, then continued their descent.

  The wind was probably cold, but with the fever burning in his body he couldn’t tell. He moved in a haze of nausea and dizziness.

  Step.

  Step again.

  Step-

  No step. He looked down. They had reached the bottom.