“Good,” I said, “though I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“Are you sure you won’t let me monitor the conversation?” he said.
“Yes. I owe her privacy.” And, I thought, I can’t let you find out how old I am, something any conversation could easily make clear.
When we reached the gate, I identified myself.
A few seconds later, a man’s voice told me to come to the front of the house.
A man stood waiting outside the front steps as we pulled up.
I told the vehicle to stay until I returned and got out of it slowly. An old man wouldn’t hurry, and I welcomed the time to look around a bit. The man waited while I walked to him.
“Mr. Moore,” he said. “Ms. Pimlani has been expecting you—for quite some time, actually. How is it that you chose today?”
“And you are?” I said. I kept my voice low and soft.
“Balin Randar, head of security.” He didn’t extend his hand to shake mine, though I couldn’t tell if that was from courtesy to an old man in an exoskeleton or some feelings about me. “I attend to Ms. Pimlani personally as well as run her team.”
I chuckled. “Did she worry she’d need security with me?” I lifted my arms slowly. “Do I look like a threat?”
“She didn’t,” he said. “I did. I worry about everything and everyone who might hurt her. It’s my job.” He clapped his hand on my left forearm. “That exoskeleton packs more than enough power to hurt or even kill someone.”
I shook my head. “Not my intention, I assure you.”
“So I repeat my question,” he said. “How did you choose today?”
“I found one of her messages a few jumps away, and I came as quickly as I could.”
“Most people would have called for an appointment first.”
“Most people wouldn’t have the history with Omani that I do. This isn’t exactly easy.”
“Is that why you circled the estate the first time? Cold feet?”
I nodded.
He smiled, a thin smile that had little to do with genuine happiness. “I’m glad it’s not easy for you,” he said. “From what I understand, you deserve to suffer for what you did.”
I shook my head, as if that might help dispel the memories that were flooding over me as I stood on those steps again after more than twelve decades. “I do,” I said, “and I have.”
“Not as much as she did.”
“No, I suspect not.” I looked him in the eyes. “Here’s the important fact, though: She asked me to come. So, you can either take me to her, or I can climb back inside that transport and leave. I’ll stand for abuse from her; she’s earned that right. I don’t have to take it from you.”
Randar stepped closer to me, so close our noses were almost touching. “Ms. Pimlani saved my family when we were about to lose everything. She saved me personally when I was young and my temper tended to land me in trouble. I’ve worked for her my entire adult life. You’d do well to keep that in mind.”
I laughed. “Or what?” I said. “You’ll beat me up? Shoot me? Do you want to explain to her that you’re the reason she never got to speak to me?”
“I wouldn’t have to say anything,” he said. “I’ve turned off the security monitors on this part of the house. She would never know you’d visited.”
“Two problems,” I said. “First, she’ll get the message I’ve scheduled for delivery if I don’t make it back by this evening.”
His eyes widened a bit.
“I’m not as stupid as you seem to think I am, and I’ve worked jobs like yours. Second, and more importantly, do you want to live with the knowledge that you stopped her from getting a chance to finally yell at the man who walked out on her all those years ago?” I shook my head. “I’ve lived for a great many years with a great many regrets. My advice to you is not to add to your own.” I shrugged. “Your call.”
He stared at me for a few more seconds, then turned and said, “Follow me. I’ll take you to her.” He looked back over his shoulder. “I’m not like you. I don’t let her down, and I don’t play games with her. I told her you had arrived the moment you cleared the front gate.”
I had nothing to say to that, so I followed him inside. I had never paid much attention to most of what was in the house, so I couldn’t tell how much it had changed, but the elevator was definitely new, now transparent and providing a great view of the grounds as we rode up. The foyer outside the office felt the same, though no security cameras were visible. I assumed they had simply updated to more recent and smaller cameras and other sensors.
“Wait here,” Randar said. He entered the office. The door was much thicker than I’d remembered; perhaps they’d rebuilt that wall with a great deal more armor than it had in the past.
He returned a few minutes later and beckoned me to follow him. “I tried to talk her out of seeing you,” he said, “but I failed.”
“So you don’t know why she wants to see me, either,” I said.
He glared at me. “No, I don’t.”
We walked through what had been the library with its row after row of bookshelves. Now, though, it looked more like some wood fetishist’s interpretation of an open-office enterprise. Several five-meter-long, oval meeting tables, each surrounded by chairs, all in an almost white wood with a rich, wavy grain. Smaller, round meeting tables, each with four chairs, all of a black wood that could have been bits of moonless night polished to a high sheen. Desks of red and tan and golden and silver wood, each with a matching chair.
All around the room, scattered under windows and among the furniture, fountains crafted to look like waterfalls stood on meter-high pedestals. Rugs in earth tones protected the floor under each one, catching the mist that fell from them. I recognized many of the fountains from the park Omani and I had frequented. I loved the sound they made, but my heart filled with guilt at the sight of them.
The room within the room at the end of the space, the place that had once been her father’s office, now had a wall of the same light wood as the oval tables. An old-fashioned, hinged door barred our way. The lock on it looked new and strong.
Before he opened it, Randar faced me and said, “You shut up, listen, do what she says, and leave. Anything else, and exoskeleton or not, you might have an accidental fall on the way back to your vehicle. Accidents are among the leading killers of the elderly.”
I shook my head and smiled. I wondered what this old-man version of me looked like to him. “I believe I understand you. Now, isn’t she waiting?”
He swung the door inward, entered, and stepped to the side.
I followed him and stopped in the doorway. Directly across from me, sitting up in a bed with supporting struts that resembled those of my exoskeleton, was Omani Pimlani. I’d never stayed around anyone long enough to have a strong sense of how very much people change with age, but my mental images—all I had—of Omani were so very different from the person in front of me that it took me several seconds to reconcile the two. Bald and so gaunt her arms looked thinner than my wrists, she could easily have passed as a corpse were it not for her eyes. Alert and focused directly on me, they were the large, strong, beautiful eyes I remembered, not as dark as they had been, but still compelling.
“Now that you’ve gotten a good look and the shock is starting to wear off,” she said, “why don’t you come all the way inside?”
I forced a smile. “No shock,” I said. “It’s just been a long time. I wanted to make sure it was you.”
She laughed, a clear but weak laugh. “You were never a good liar. That’s one of the things I loved about you.” She pointed to the floor next to her. Between the three towers of machines that stood next to her on my right and the three desks and chairs that they’d pushed against the wall on my left, the room was a bit crowded. “Balin, please bring Jon a chair so he can sit next to me.”
He never let his gaze wander from me as he did as she asked.
“Thank you, Balin.” To me, she said, “B
alin here takes great care of me. Now, Jon, sit, please. People our age need to rest when we can.”
As I did, I angled the chair so I could keep an eye on Randar while mostly facing Omani.
She towered above me. She lowered the bed until we were eye to eye.
She’d staged this show, so I waited.
After a few seconds, she laughed. “Still not a big talker.”
“I’m better than I was when I have to talk, but I don’t feel the need to fill the air. Besides, as I recall, you generally led us.”
“That I did,” she said, “though,” she paused, “not everywhere I’d hoped we’d go.”
I nodded. I had no idea how to respond.
“I thought for a long time,” she said, “about what I’d say if I ever got to see you again. After a while, I moved on, as one does, and I didn’t think much about you at all. With all of this,” she took in her bed and the machines with a twirl of her finger, “I decided I needed to see you again, and then the topic was back in my mind.”
“What’d you decide?”
She laughed the same clear, weak laugh. “The first thing I decided was that I wasn’t going to be one of those weak-brained people who begin their speeches by telling you how they didn’t know what they were going to say—but I already messed that up. Truth is, I made a lot of different decisions about what to say, but I threw out most of them, because I expect you already have some idea of how hurt and angry and disappointed I was.”
“Some idea,” I said, “but probably not a complete picture. No two people react the same way to anything.”
“True enough,” she said. “So why don’t we start with something you know that I don’t: Why did you run away like that? And, if you were going to run away, why didn’t you say so to my face?”
I’d rehearsed a lot of answers since Lobo had shown me her recorded message. I’d played through variations of the scene as I was falling asleep last night and again as I was showering this morning. None of them involved me telling her the truth, because I could no more afford that risk now than I could twelve decades ago. What I had come to realize was that once I removed the truth, I had almost nothing believable to say.
I’d finally decided that the one thing I could do was not lie to her.
“I can’t tell you,” I said.
She grabbed the railing beside her, pulled herself upright, and twisted slightly to face me more directly.
“Ms. Pimlani,” Randar said.
“I’m fine, Balin,” she said without looking at him. To me, she said, “Can’t, as in some force is preventing you, or won’t?”
“You’re right,” I said. “Almost all the time, when people say they can’t do something that is obviously within their power, what they really mean is that for whatever reasons, they won’t. I’m doing my best here to be honest, so the more accurate, more honest answer is, I won’t tell you.”
“Ms. Pimlani,” Randar said, “I’d be more than happy to help persuade Mr. Moore to answer your questions.”
“No, Balin,” she said, “that won’t be necessary. Also, though your offer is tempting, despite his appearance, I suspect Jon would prove to be a far more difficult subject to persuade than you might guess.”
Balin stepped closer to us. “I sincerely doubt that.”
“I think it’s time for you to leave us,” she said to him. “I’d like a little time alone with Jon.”
“My job—” he began.
“—is to protect me,” she said. “I know, and I appreciate how very good you are at it. I want this time alone with him, though, and your job sometimes also involves doing as I ask.” She stared at him.
“Of course,” he said. “I’ll be watching and listening on the security feed right outside.”
“No,” she said. “You’ll be watching. I’m going to turn off the audio so Jon and I can chat privately.” She leaned back into the bed and stared at him. “And don’t waste your time with all your controls; mine override yours, as you know. I’m also going to tell Jon to sit so the cams don’t capture my face or his; I don’t want the lip-reading software helping you.”
“This is so very contrary to our standard protocols,” he said, “that—”
She cut him off again. “I know, but I want a private conversation with Jon, and after more than a hundred and twenty years, I’m going to have it.” Her voice grew stronger. “I’m going to have it.”
Randar held up his hands and backed out of the room. “Of course,” he said. “I’m sorry I pushed so much. I’ll be right outside if you want to call me, and I’ll watch to make sure he doesn’t try to hurt you.”
“Thank you,” she said, her voice soft again.
When Randar had left the room and closed the door behind him, Omani pulled a comm from a tray on the other side of her and poked at a few controls. She showed me its display, which indicated that the door was locked and the audio muted.
“Fine,” I said, “though I really don’t have any answers for you.”
“Turn your chair around this way,” she said. She motioned with her right hand for me to put my back to the door. “And tilt my bed toward you a little.”
I did both and sat again.
“Good,” she said. “Now, we’re as alone as we’re going to be able to get.” She showed me the comm. The back of my head was in the center of its display. Her head wasn’t visible. “Agreed?”
“I have to trust you on that,” I said. “I have no way to confirm anything.”
“Fair enough,” she said.
I waited as she sucked some water from a tube that hung near her mouth.
“So I have two questions for you, Jon,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that old-man costume hot,” she said, “and what would it take for me to hire you?”
CHAPTER 23
Jon Moore
My surprised expression was genuine, even though my response wasn’t. “Omani, what game are you playing?”
She shook her head. “You may not age, but I do, so I value time a lot more than you do. I’m alive only because of these machines,” she waved her left hand toward the stacks of gear behind her, “and only as long as I stay connected to them. Think about how small most medical devices are. That I need this much sheer equipment ought to tell you the kind of shape I’m in. Anyway, if you insist on playing games, we can, but we can also save time and jump to the end of them and move on to something useful.”
I shook my head as if I were worried about her sanity. “You know I’m five years younger than you are, but I’m still old. Maybe the drugs they’re pumping into you have done something to your brain; I don’t know. What I do know is that you’re not making sense.” I stood. “Maybe I should be going.”
“Sit down,” she said. “You’re going to want to hear what I have to say.”
I stared at her for a few seconds but did not sit.
“If you try to leave before I’m done,” she said, “Balin will stop you.”
I smiled.
“You might get past him,” she said. “I admit that possibility, though he’s more formidable than you might think. If you did, though, I’d have to discuss with him and a whole lot of other people everything I know about you, all of which I have—for now—kept to myself.” She smiled, the kind of smile a snake gives a rodent it’s about to eat. “Your choice.”
“There are other ways this could go,” I said. “I’ve never responded well to threats.”
“Ah, that’s the man I’ve read about,” she said. “It’s good to finally see a little of him. The Jon I knew avoided conflict at all costs. You, you seem to seek it out. In any case, if anything happens to me while you’re here, the data I’ve accumulated about you will automatically find its way to a whole lot of people who will not be as nice to you as I’m being right now.”
I sat.
“Do you understand how the worlds work, Jon?” she said. She waved her right hand in front of her chest. “I don’t mean which
governments rule which populations, or how planets elect members to the three planetary coalition councils. I mean how all the worlds really work, what operates behind the coalitions.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought I had a fair handle on it, but maybe not. Regardless, what does this have to do with me?”
“Bear with me,” she said. “We’ll get you there.” She took another sip of water. “Damn machines and medicine leave me dry. What runs the worlds, Jon, is money, of course. Everyone with half a brain is at some level aware of that fact. What very few understand is how much of the money a relatively small number of families still control, even after all this time since humanity left Earth.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but she held up her hand.
“Bear with me for a minute, and I’ll bring this back to you,” she said. “Okay?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’m always up for a nice bit of fiction.”
“No fiction,” she said. “When humanity finally accepted that we had only a few centuries left before we would have to leave Earth, because we’d ruined it beyond repair, we launched a generation ship. One. It crashed on Pinkelponker. Then, we found the jump gates, and we started planning our exodus. Those who’ve possessed money and power for long periods of time are never the first to take major risks, so they left the colonization of the first planet, Freedom, to those with less to lose. When Freedom worked out well, those same people were ready to go. That’s how Haven became the first nonEarth home of most of the richest families in history—including mine.”
“I’ve heard variations of this historical perspective before,” I said. “Even assuming it’s entirely correct, I’m still missing what this has to do with me.” I’d had time to accept that she knew I didn’t age and that she almost certainly had other data about me, data I’d rather no one had. What worried me right then was whether she knew about Pinkelponker, or Aggro, or my nanomachines.
“When we were dating,” she said, “the coalitions were still coming together. Our families were building their control, but while they were doing so, a lot of data was lost. That’s why I’ve never learned where you were trained or what you were doing before we met. I’m willing to believe you were telling the truth when you said you’d worked for some governments, because you really were a terrible liar, but for the most part, I don’t care anymore what you did before we met.
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