by Mel Keegan
“Fourteen,” Travers corrected, watching as Vaurien found himself scissored between Jazinsky’s powerful legs. “She’s right, Richard. You need the downtime. We all do. What’s a few hours? Because as soon as you get the info from this Reanie character, we’re headed out into Freespace, next stop God knows where, but it won’t be anywhere good, or they wouldn’t be buying slave labor.”
He was right, and Vaurien could hardly argue. Richard’s right arm crooked about Jazinsky’s shoulder; with the left he caught Travers and held him for a moment. “All right. You have me outnumbered. Where’s that partner of yours, Neil?”
“Messaging Borushek.” Travers gestured back in the direction of their quarters. “Briefing Mark, I believe. Dendra Shemiji business.”
“Then, go get dressed,” Vaurien suggested. “I’ll show you the best restaurant in Xanadu, buy you dinner while we track down this dealer with the offices in nosebleed territory who prefers to go slumming in the worst pit the ass-end of Halfway has to offer.”
“Half an hour,” Travers told him.
“Take an hour,” Vaurien stirred deliberately. He kissed Jazinsky’s neck, pulled the band from his hair and shook it out around his shoulders as if it were a luxury. “I have a few things to do.”
“You’re going to play that goddamned message,” Travers guessed. Like all of them, he knew it could only be from Tonio Teniko.
Richard took a breath as if he were about to argue, and then exhaled it as a hissed sigh. “It could be something important.”
“If it was important, it would come from Mark or his kids,” Jazinsky argued. “It would come from Riga or that ball of ice in the middle of nowhere, Kjor’in, or one of Mark’s ships.”
“It’s carrying the Riga codes,” Vaurien reminded.
She hopped down off the bench and stood, fists on hips, head cocked at him critically. “The little shit is often in Riga. You know that. Tonio’s getting gene tweaked by the best Resalq therapists. Being sober enough for long enough to make a call doesn’t mean he has enough functional brain cells to get any work done. If he did, he’d be working in one of Mark’s labs, and if the news was important, it’d come from Mark, not from Tonio.” She glared at the threedee where the message was still waiting. “You know what this is. This is all more whining and carping, ‘Richard, I gotta do this, let me come back, let me dope myself to the eyeballs and have you run about after me while I turn myself into some Pak monstrosity, so I can get on top of you, and screw the survival of the Deep Sky, and every soul in it, human and Resalq!’”
She must have heard the litany of excuses so often, she had the inflection and even the accent down pat. She sounded enough like Tonio Teniko to make Vaurien wince, and Travers swore softly. “Enough, Richard,” he said quietly. “You thought you’d found another protégé, and you were halfway right. The kid’s the most brilliant mind to come along since – since Barb. Even Mark says so. But it’s his life to live.”
“To throw away,” Vaurien amended.
“That too, if he wants to trash himself.” Travers set one hand on Vaurien’s arm. “Let it be. Let the dumb, selfish little brat go. We don’t need him.”
“We do,” Vaurien said acidly.
“Do we?” Travers looked up into Jazinsky’s pale blue eyes.
For a moment she hesitated, and then the white-blond head shook. “For the first time in a week, I’m one jump ahead of the data. I made a couple of intuitive leaps, played a couple of hunches, and they turned out to be right. If you’d asked me yesterday or the day before, I’d have said we needed Teniko. Now? We’ll get through.”
Vaurien’s face was haunted. “Be sure, Barb.”
“I am sure.” Her voice was level, the tone steely.
“And these intuitive leaps,” he pressed. “You jumped a couple of parsecs of prep work, didn’t you? Made some inspired guesses? Just be bloody sure they’re the right ones.”
A lopsided grin seemed to ambush her. “When did you ever know me to bet a nickel on a shaggy dog?” Jazinsky gave him a solid push. “If you’re going to show us a high time in the best restaurant in Xanadu, you better turn up looking like the Velcastran elite, or you won’t get table service.”
“They know me,” Vaurien argued. He hesitated a moment longer, cast a dark glance at the threedee, and then turned his back on it and walked out of the lab.
Travers watched him go with a frown, and joined Jazinsky at the threedee where she was monitoring the progress of the AI she had insinuated into the Halfway mainframe. “He’s showing the wear and tear,” he said quietly.
She answered with an eloquent shrug. “You’ve known Richard as long as I have. Longer, in fact. He’s an idealist, and he loves a challenge. Now and then he bites off a chunk so big, trying to chew it almost chokes him.”
Every word was true. Vaurien’s idealism, and his willingness to attempt the impossible, had put him in the position he enjoyed today. “And Tonio?” Neil wondered in the same quiet tone. “Christ, Richard’s not in love with the little snot, is he?”
The question was a good one. Jazinsky left the threedee, turned toward him, and studied him with unnerving candor. “Infatuated,” she judged. “Fact – Tonio is so beautiful, it hurts to look at him. Or, he was. I saw a few seconds of a vid he sent a little while ago. He’s … deteriorating. Richard was blinded by the beauty, like a lot of other people, when Tonio first came aboard. Beauty does that to you. Makes you forget your sense and forgive anything. For a while.”
“You?” Travers’s brows rose.
“Maybe.” Jazinsky knuckled her eyes. “But I took him out of an institution on Velcastra, remember. I knew he was nuts from the start. He had Richard fooled for a while, convinced him it was nothing, just the minor instabilities that go along with being a genius.”
Travers chuckled. “Like you?”
She echoed the chuckle. “I’ve been called nuts. Married to my work. So seduced by the magic of Resalq trans-dimensional physics, I’m throwing away my youth in the lab. One day I’ll look in a mirror and see a wrinkly old face looking back, and it’ll be too late.”
“Too late for what?” Travers wondered, amused.
“The naysayers are never specific about that part.” Jazinsky was shutting down systems, putting the lab on standby. “They’re probably talking about keeping house and making babies, as if that’s the only Holy Grail of womanhood. As if,” she added, “humans can’t be fulfilled without it.” She looked sidelong at him. “And then there’s you.”
“What about me?” Travers demanded as the lights began to go out across the lab.
“You and Curtis.” Jazinsky picked up her jacket and slung it over one shoulder. “Scuttlebutt says you’re in the market for a horse property. You’re going to watch the grass grow … watch the fences rust. Same difference, Neil. Take it, if you want it.”
“We will,” Travers mused. “It’s not your style, is it?”
She shook her head emphatically. “No. I’ve had offers, but the only one I ever took semi-seriously was from Richard.”
“Richard,” Travers echoed. “You and he have been partners for a long, long time.”
“But not handfasted.” In the passage outside the lab she turned toward him, studying him, this time with a faint smile. “He was waiting for you, you know. He would have waited for you till the Intrepid was destroyed in Hellgate, if Curtis Marin hadn’t happened along. And then suddenly it was you and him, and Richard realized it was too late.”
“I know,” Travers admitted. He gave Jazinsky a smile which mocked only himself. “I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed at times. Not when it comes to the personal stuff.”
“Neither is Richard. It’s a guy thing. It’s always been a guy thing.”
“And he – what, made you an offer on the rebound?” Travers wondered. “I’m not trying to pry, I’m just curious.”
She did not seem concerned, even if he had intended prying. “We were lovers for years, and then we were just friends
, and I always knew he was waiting for you. Everything changed when Curtis arrived, and I should think he’d have been devastated, depressed, if there’d been time. As it was, Shapiro bounced us around too hard, too fast, to give Richard the time to wallow in self-pity! The fling with Tonio? Shit, Neil, you could have predicted it. There was your rebound. Richard needed something, someone, and I was so damned busy – and still am! – it couldn’t be me. Tonio took everything he offered and threw it back at him. I could have strangled the little brat. And now?” Jazinsky glanced back into the dark cavern of the lab. “It’s the war, and the Zunshu, the Resalq … Hellgate. There’s no time for individuals. Well, not unless your name happens to be Teniko, in which case –”
“Screw the Deep Sky and every soul in it,” Travers finished. He sighed, and regarded Jazinsky with a frown. “Richard means a lot to me. He always did. I do love him, even if I’m not in love with him. But I don’t think I can give him what he needs.”
“No,” Jazinsky agreed. “But maybe I can.” She dragged both hands back through the mane of her hair. “Christ! If any of us makes it through this alive.”
“Xanadu?” Travers hazarded.
But Jazinsky’s pale blue eyes were hollow with some knowledge Travers did not yet share. “Hellgate,” she said softly. “Elarne. The stormy side of the sky. The Rabelais Drift. Pick a name for it. It killed Mick Vidal and Jo Queneau –”
“You don’t know that, not for certain.”
“– and it’s where Lai’a has to go,” Jazinsky finished. “Jesus, this whole thing is so insane, if I stop to think about it, I start to lose any kind of grasp on what we’re doing. I don’t know how Mark keeps it in focus, every second, every minute. One day, I think I understand what goes on in the guts of Hellgate. The next day, it slips through my fingers like water and the numbers look like gibberish.” She gave him a haunted look. “It scares the crap out of me, Neil.”
Travers suppressed a shiver. “You and me both.” He gestured back into the lab. “You told Richard you’re ahead of the curve, you’ve got a jump on the data. True?”
“True. A few of the pieces clicked into place. In here.” She tapped her temple. “I made a shrewd guess, and when it turned out to be right, I used that as a platform to make another informed gamble. I just got lucky. Etienne checked every equation backwards and sideways, and then I bounced the work through to Mark. He messaged me via the Carellan, just four hours ago.”
There was a zealot light in her eyes, glittering and not entirely sane, Travers thought. “It’s coming together, isn’t it?” he asked quietly. “The top-fuel to power the mines that’ll turn back the DeepSky Fleet, win freedom for the colonies, and then power Lai’a through the Drift, take the war right back to the Zunshu.”
“That, and Paul Wymark’s idea of manipulating the Zunshunium with micro-fine Arago fields.” She worked her neck around to ease the tension he could almost feel in her. “You know Paul.”
“I know him,” Travers said thoughtfully. “Not well, but we’ve played folgen and drunk beer a couple of times.” Wymark was the best Arago specialist in the business, and still aboard the Wings of Freedom, still hidden deep inside the Drift, in one of its quiet, safe shoals. Alshie’nya.
“Horizon dynamics,” Jazinsky whispered with a visible shiver, “the science of plotting a course through the ten dimensions of Elarne. And spinning off that, like its bratty bastard child, the whole new technology developed specifically to manufacture the hull alloy from the Zunshu probe, which will armor Lai’a against gravitational flux you can’t begin to imagine, Neil – thousands of gees from ten directions at once. And then, the AI design, Mark’s project, a whole new concept based on the Zunshu’s own AI in the stasis chamber on Kjorin. Some of its algorithms will become the higher functions of the mind of Lai’a, and Lai’a will romp through Hellgate like a thoroughbred in its own paddock.”
The result of Mark’s work was a machine pilot, almost but not quite alive in its own right, which could handle Hellgate the way Mick Vidal handled it. The AI was not yet finished, and when it was, its routines would be uploaded and assimilated into the core routines of Lai’a itself. The hull of the old Intrepid was being armored, plate by plate, while a fuel that defied Travers’s imagination was mined, refined, and loaded.
“Don’t even try to understand,” Jazinsky advised. She clapped his shoulder hard. “Just roll with the punches, and learn how to duck.”
He answered with a ribald snort. “Ducking’s the part I’m good at – that and the diving. I don’t even try to follow you and Mark when you start to drone on about this stuff! You reckon Shapiro understands?”
The question gave her pause. “Harrison’s smart. Probably a lot smarter than you give him credit for. Can he follow the physics of horizon dynamics, temporal flux calculus? No. But he can grasp the big picture. He never took a degree in political science either, but I’d back him in a stand-up fight between the political machines in this region, this war. You saw how fast Jon Kim fell in beside him, and Jon-boy has the political pedigree.”
“You researched Jon Kim?” Travers knew he should not have been surprised.
She only shrugged. “For a long time Mark and I have made it our business to know everything about everyone that has, or could have, any influence on the status quo. We looked into Kim the moment we became aware of Harrison’s feelings toward the man – and no one was more surprised than me! I didn’t think there was a sexual bone left in Harrison’s body. I was so sure the situation in the Deep Sky had broken them all – so much for women’s intuition!”
“And Kim?” Travers shared her humor.
“He’s a nice guy,” Jazinsky mused. “He checks out. He’s highly intelligent, well educated, with a career in government, a couple of failed relationships behind him, like the rest of us. Then he finds himself Minister for the Environment in Marak City just in time to have the El Khouri event land on him. Enter Harrison Shapiro … they work together, play racquetball together, weather the political storm, get friendly, have a drink, and the rest is history. Last I heard, the authorities in Marak were starting to round up anyone even suspected of being a Fleet or Confederate sympathizer. Jon Kim had the sense to get out and do the proverbial runner.”
“He’s on his way to Velcastra, via the trade routes.” Travers jerked a thumb over his shoulder in what might have been the right direction. He had no real idea where Velcastra was. “When he gets there, he makes a call to some associates of Mick’s.”
“Daku?” she hazarded.
“Daku,” he confirmed. “They get him out of harm’s way, maybe get him a cash card that works, or some money, whatever it takes, till Shapiro can put him on a ship to Borushek.”
“And I hope we all live long enough to get to the ‘happily ever after’ part.” She gave him a wink and turned away in the direction of the quarters she technically shared with Vaurien, save that they were almost never there at the same time.
Travers watched her go with an odd blend of elation and foreboding, and at length he admitted that she was right. “Just roll with the punches,” he told himself. “Figure out when to duck.”
To pass muster in the part of Halfway known as Xanadu, they must dress like Robert Chandra Liang’s associates, who were perched on the highest rungs on Velcastra’s social ladder. Travers had mixed feelings about them, and odd, conflicting memories of Elstrom StarCity. He had been a hired hand when he came to know the floating fantasy in the sky. Now, Chandra Liang accepted him on almost equal terms. He was the last commander of the Intrepid, and one of the elite who stood at Harrison Shapiro’s right hand.
The clothes to blend into Chandra Liang’s world hung in a dozen closets across the Wastrel’s private staterooms. They were salvage from a freight hauler which had gone up on the Bronowski Reef. The insurance underwriter had already paid out before the hulk was found; the last thing Cygnus Logistics wanted was the ruined ship towed out for its scrap value and the cargo returned. The paperwork would ha
ve been a decade’s work, with no one wanting the goods returned, and everyone demanding a share in the proceeds if a receiver could be found for them.
Most of the cargo was broken down and hauled into Omaru, helping to keep the colony alive in the teeth of the Fleet blockade. Medical supplies, technology, light aircraft, entertainment – all the things Omaru could no longer manufacture, with its cities and industrial sectors in smoking ruins.
Some of the cargo remained on the Wastrel. Coffee, brandy, smoked salmon, truffles – a shipping container of designer clothing, manufactured on Haven and consigned to the markets in Elstrom, Sark, Westminster.
The clothes looked good on Marin. Travers reminded himself, Curtis was independently wealthy. He could have owned an apartment on StarCity, sharing the rarefied atmosphere with Robert Chandra Liang and Sonja Mei Ming Deuel, who was the daughter of a colonial governor, and the hub around whom much of the Republican and Daku movements revolved.
He was in gray slacks, a pale mauve shirt that floated about his limbs, open at the neck and high in the collar; and the jewelry was platinum and white gold. The look of understated wealth and prestige suited him. Travers might have wondered how Marin would take to the simple, rural life of Three Rivers, but Curtis forestalled any remark he could make.
“Damnit, I’d forgotten how much I hate getting tricked out like a bloody show pony. You know Shapiro’s going to drag us to Velcastra. Mick Vidal’s memorial. You and me Neil, in spanking new Fleet dress uniforms, trying to look like we’re actually in the service.”
“When we’re not,” Travers said ruefully as he stepped into the stateroom and leaned over to drop a kiss on Marin’s neck. The closet was still open, displaying an assortment of fashion statements from a dozen worlds, some more outlandish than others. “What the hell do you wear when you’re trying to impress the uptown rubbish?”
“On you?” Marin leaned past him and pulled out several items. “Stick to black and white, Neil. Black slacks, tight as you like, white shirt with the Rubinstein lace at the collar, as loose as it’ll fit. The good thing about the loose shirt is, you can hide a few of these.” From the folds of his own shirt he produced a palmgun, as if from nowhere. “We’re going to be scanned, head to foot, not only by Zwerner’s security but by the goons of a dozen other princes of Halfway. They won’t let a weapon into Xanadu – not if they can see it. If they had their way, they’d put a ban on steak knives. But these little things … scanners don’t see them. They don’t have a lot of range, but they’re deadly.”