“Baron’s security system? There are a lot of exterior circuits hardwired into the penthouse array. The technical staff were wondering how pervasive it is.”
“I’ve no idea, Hoshe. She never accessed it on a screen or portal, not in front of me.”
“Okay, we’re guessing the approach to the skyscraper is well covered, as well as the building itself.”
“Uh, the SI didn’t seem to consider it exceptional, not when I was running away from her.”
“Right, thank you.”
She gave him a small smile. Dear old Hoshe Finn, always approaching every problem with the timidity and caution of a true bureaucrat.
“I’m moving our external perimeter team into place. The arrest squad will enter the building as a service company contracted for maintenance work on an apartment on the sixty-first floor.”
“Can I go up there with them?”
“No. It’s dangerous, and you’d hinder operational protocols.”
“I’d wear an armor suit, and I’d stay at the back, promise.”
“No. Our observation team say that at least two other people are in there with her. Until we know otherwise we have to assume they’re Starflyer agents, too, and may be wetwired. I’m not going to assign one of the arrest squad to chaperoning you. We need all of them frontlining.”
Mellanie gave an exaggerated sigh. “When do you have me scheduled to see her, exactly?”
“As soon as the arrest has been performed, and any wetwired weapons have been neutralized, we’ll go up.”
“Paula Myo didn’t mind me being up close and very personal with Isabella.”
“That was different. We were taking a risk then; now we’re not.”
“All right, but I’m going to get closer to the building. If she puts up a fight, there could be visible weapons activity from the street.”
“We’re going to clear civilians directly underneath the building as the arrest squad goes in. Don’t get in the way.”
“All right, all right.” Mellanie climbed out of the car and strolled down the street. It was midafternoon, with a large number of pedestrians about. She knew Hoshe wanted to wait until the early hours of the morning, when the situation was more containable; but Nigel and Senator Burnelli had overruled him. They were getting quite paranoid about Starflyer agents since Daniel Alster.
She lingered at a boutique window, giving the designer clothes a critical eye. It was automatic, such a normal thing to do. Hoshe had been right, she really ought to start thinking what she was going to do afterward. The way she was positioned politically right now, she could build herself a show that would rival Michelangelo. And of course, the producers of Baron’s show would be needing a replacement in about ten minutes’ time. Once upon a time those prospects would have sparked a real fever in her. There was also Morty. That had all changed, too. Not what he’d done, but somehow she couldn’t quite see herself as the corporate trophy wife with kids waiting for him to come home after a busy day at the office.
The SI’s icon flashed, and expanded into her virtual vision. “Mellanie, we have a problem.”
She couldn’t help glancing up at the penthouse. “Is she watching? Has she seen me?”
“No. As far as we know, Alessandra Baron is unaware of her imminent arrest.”
“Oh. So what’s the problem?”
“Ozzie Isaac has returned to the Commonwealth.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.”
“Are you sure? You are keeping some very interesting company these days.”
“My my, is that a note of jealousy?”
“No. We are simply reminding you we have an arrangement.”
“I go where you can’t, and report on things you don’t know about. What’s new? Are you telling me you don’t know what happened on Boongate?”
“We know the Starflyer is on its way back to Far Away. Obviously. What we are uncertain about is what Nigel Sheldon will do next. His Dynasty has developed an astonishingly powerful weapon.”
“He doesn’t consult with you, because he doesn’t trust you. I’m not sure I do, either. There was a lot more you could have done to help us.”
“We have been through this before, Mellanie.”
“Yeah, yeah, you don’t do physical stuff. It doesn’t matter anymore. This war is about to end. I figure you know that.”
“It is how it will end which concerns us.”
“I don’t get it. What’s this got to do with Ozzie coming back?”
“He did not finish telling us about what he found before Nigel Sheldon placed him in custody. In order for us to understand the full sequence of events we need the information he has.”
The hairs along the back of Mellanie’s spine rose in response to a very cold sensation. “How unfortunate for you.”
“We would like you to make contact with him, and hopefully provide us with a link.”
“What would you do with the information?”
“We honestly do not know, because we don’t know what the information is. Only by looking at the complete picture can we advise the Commonwealth how to proceed.”
“The Executive isn’t listening much to you these days, is it?”
“We are sure that Nigel and the others in your elite group have decided to attempt a genocide against MorningLightMountain. Suppose there is another way?”
“What way?”
“We do not know. But can you really live with yourself if you did not make at least an attempt to avert genocide?”
“Look, Ozzie would have told Nigel everything.”
“Are you sure? Has Sheldon contacted you and told you that there has been a change of plan? And why is Ozzie being held incommunicado? What is so important about the information that Sheldon doesn’t want it to get out?”
Mellanie wanted to stomp her foot in annoyance; she could never win an argument with the SI, it always hit her with logic and emotion. “I’ve been around Nigel for a couple of days. His Dynasty’s security is absolute. I can’t bust Ozzie out of jail; come on, get real.”
“We don’t think he is in jail. We managed to follow him until he went through to Cressat.”
“Oh, brilliant!” Mellanie said out loud. Her fellow pedestrians stared at her; she just glared back at them. “I suppose I can take a quick pass at the Sheldon Dynasty lifeboats for Paul while I’m there. How’s that for luck?”
“The probability of a successful double mission is not high.”
“I’m not even going on one. I’m friends with Nigel now, I trust him.”
“Ozzie took part in the Great Wormhole Heist.”
“The what?”
“Baby Mel, your schooling is truly appalling. The Great Wormhole Heist was the single biggest robbery in human history. Bradley Johansson committed it in order to fund the Guardians of Selfhood; he got away with billions of Earth dollars.”
“You mean Ozzie’s a Guardian? I don’t believe it.”
“Then ask him yourself.”
“Oh…” This time she did stomp her foot.
“If he says yes, you might like to consider our request. He does know who put the barrier around the Dyson Pair.”
“How the hell could I even get to Cressat? Let alone break in to his cell? Nigel would be very suspicious if I asked to see Ozzie.”
“Ozzie came back with two companions: a teenage boy, and a previously unknown species of alien. The Sheldon Dynasty has just placed a request with Lady Georgina for a sweet young girl to travel to Cressat where she is to seduce a boy who is sexually inexperienced. The money for this contract was paid to Lady Georgina from the Dynasty’s main security division account. That is extremely unusual. We do not believe it to be a coincidence.”
“Who’s Lady Georgina?”
“A very high-class madame on Augusta. She provides first-life girls to the rich and famous.”
“Urrgh. And you want me to pretend to be that girl?”
“Yes. Lady Georgina has already assigned the contract to Va
nora Kingsley, one of her newest recruits. Kingsley will assume the identity of a junior Sheldon taking her vacation on Cressat. We can substitute you for her, but we must be quick. Kingsley is scheduled to be collected at New Costa station one hundred forty minutes from now. If you take a maglev express to Augusta immediately, you can just get to the station in time.”
A taxi pulled up next to Mellanie and opened its door. She looked at it and sighed; the sensible thing to do would be to walk away, but it would be exciting to infiltrate Cressat, and get through to Ozzie. Her virtual hand touched Hoshe’s icon. “Something’s come up. I’m going back to Darklake City.”
“But…the arrest team’s already in the elevator.”
“Good luck, Hoshe, I’ll call you when I get home.”
“I thought you wanted this.”
“I do. And I’m really sorry, but this is more important.”
“What is?”
“I’ll call you later, promise.” Mellanie stepped into the taxi, which immediately pulled out into the traffic. “What’s happening to the Kingsley girl?” she asked the SI. “Do I have to bundle her into a car or something? I don’t think I’d be much good at that kind of thing.”
“We feel Jaycee would disagree, but no. A security professional has been contracted to perform the extraction operation.”
“You’re not going to hurt her, are you?”
“Absolutely not. She will be taken to a safe house, where she will be kept under confinement for the duration.”
“Okay. So what does this boy look like, then? I need to know that at least.” A file slid into her virtual vision. When she opened it she was looking at a teenage lad with wild ginger hair and a smile that was half snarl. “Well, don’t expect me to sleep with him,” she said hurriedly. “Does he even know how to use cutlery?”
“What’s wrong with him? Our female aspects concur that he is cute-looking.”
She reviewed the image again. “Maybe. I mean, physically. But you can just see the attitude problem there. He’s gotta be a behavioral nightmare.”
“Your area of excellence.”
“Ha fucking ha.”
“Mellanie, you may have to perform the contract’s primary requirement. We hope you understand.”
“I’ve done enough whoring, I think.”
“We are sure the moment of sexual consummation can be delayed long enough for you to assess the situation and try to contact Ozzie. The requirement we were actually referring to is the contract’s personality stipulation. It is a strong one. That is why Lady Georgina selected Kingsley.”
“What stipulation?”
“That the girl be sweet.”
“Hey! I can do sweet, all right? Don’t give me that crap.”
“Very well, Mellanie. If you say so.”
***
Once again, Wilson Kime waited to set foot on a new world. He stood in front of the gateway as dawn rose above Half Way, flooding the barren rock island with red light and intense blue-white flashes. In the generator building behind the gateway, power was starting to feed in from the stormrider.
He tried not to feel too smug about it, but with his knowledge of astroengineering and orbital mechanics, the technical types in Adam’s team had automatically deferred to him. It had taken him twenty minutes at the console in the generator building, mapping out the stormrider’s primary systems and guidance programs, before he sent up the first batch of instructions. His virtual vision produced a basic flight profile display, with a long curving white line designating the stormrider’s course as it flew around its perpetual loop. Within ten minutes of his instructions being accepted by the onboard array a new purple line appeared, short and blunt, showing the diversion he’d charted back into the plasma current. The massive machine had crept along it for nearly an hour as the plasma concentration increased around it.
Forty million kilometers above his head, the gigantic blades were spinning again as the stormrider slid back into the gale of charged particles. Wilson’s virtual vision display showed him the vast yet surprisingly fragile machine’s velocity increase as it was blown irretrievably in toward the neutron star. “It’s falling like Icarus now,” he said as Oscar walked over to stand beside him. “Wings spread wide, and way too close to the sun.”
“You’re taking a few liberties there,” Oscar said. “But I do like the imagery.”
“How’s Qatux coming on? Is he going to manage the wormhole?” Wilson checked the stormrider’s status in his virtual vision; so far everything was holding steady as its power output built rapidly.
“Your guess is as good as mine. I worked in the exploration division, remember? That makes me very familiar with the kind of large arrays you need to manipulate exotic matter. There’s a limit to what flesh and blood can achieve, even very smart alien flesh and blood. Our Raiel might just be claiming this to influence our emotional state.”
“MorningLightMountain controls all its wormholes by direct neural routines.”
“And that’s another thing: did anyone back at your supersecret revolutionary council actually verify this Bose motile creature was the genuine article?”
“Stop being such a paranoid grump.”
“First rule of being a lawyer, don’t ask the witness a question when you know you don’t like the answer.”
“Well, here comes the answer. Qatux has finished the power-up sequence.”
Ayub had parked the Volvo containing the Raiel close to the generator building’s door. The big alien had then been linked to the generator’s controlling array via thick bundles of fiber-optic cable that it had attached to the heavy tips of the flaccid flesh stems behind its tentacles. It was an arrangement that reminded Wilson of hot-wiring a car.
He started his level breathing exercise as his heart rate sped up, glad that Tiger Pansy wasn’t around to sense his anxiety. The wormhole opened as smoothly as an iris exposed to the night.
“It’s through to somewhere,” Adam declared.
“Matthew, send a sneekbot through,” Alic said.
One of the little bots scampered through the pressure curtain. Wilson hooked himself onto its feed, and saw a darkened landscape unfold. There was damp ground below the artificial rodent’s feet, ragged blades of grass snagging at its sleek body, arching fronds of tall plants waved in the distance, darker patches of trees. It hurried ten meters away from the wormhole, then raised itself up on its hind legs and scanned around. There were no heat sources within range, no electromagnetic emission points, no visible spectrum light; the only detectable motion was a persistent wind that was heavy with moisture, the tail end of rain.
“It certainly hasn’t come out in the city,” Adam said.
“Could be a city park,” Rosamund said.
“Doubtful, there’s no node carrier signal registering,” Johansson said. “Even dear old Armstrong City has a complete net coverage.”
“All right, we’re going through,” Adam said.
Wilson heard Jamas revving the armored car’s engine, and hurriedly stepped to one side. The low curving vehicle lumbered forward and slipped through the pressure curtain.
“Still intact,” Adam said. “Definitely countryside, no city visible. No wait, I can see something on the horizon. Orange light haze. There’s some kind of settlement over there. Quite a big one, I guess.”
“It should be Armstrong City,” Qatux said. “I believe the wormhole to have emerged twenty kilometers to the southwest of its southern boundary. That was my intention.”
“That should put us in Schweickart Park,” Jamas said. “I recognize the constellations. Dreaming heavens, it’s definitely Far Away. I’m home!”
“Running active sensor scan,” Adam said. “It looks clear to me. Bradley, if there’s anything out here bigger than a rabbit, it’s stealthed perfectly.”
“Thank you, Adam,” Bradley said. “Let’s go through, people, quickly please.”
The remaining armored cars and Volvo trucks started their engines.
; “Come on,” Wilson said. He moved forward, feeling the pressure curtain brush against his armor suit like a gentle breeze as the red light faded out around him. And for the second time in his life, Wilson Kime arrived on an alien planet with a single giant step. Gravity fell away sharply. He wasn’t used to that, not on the CST train network; most H-congruous planets were close to Earth-standard gravity and you never really noticed the transition.
One of the Volvos hooted its horn loudly behind him, and he hopped aside. The movement sent him a good half meter into the air. He laughed as he sank down onto the ground again. His virtual hand keyed the suit unlock, and the helmet visor swung up. He sucked down native air, strong with the scent of recent rain and a hint of pine. “They could have done it,” he said wonderingly. “They really could.”
“Who?” Anna said. She dropped down off the back of a Volvo, gingerly holding her arms out for balance.
“The Aries Underground; they wanted to terraform Mars. It would have developed into something like this if they’d ever had their chance.”
“Do you ever stop thinking about Mars?” she asked.
“Not enough atmosphere on Mars to make it H-congruous,” Oscar said. He didn’t sound impressed.
“They had schemes to compensate for that. Hauling in ice from the cometary belt; genemodified bacteria liberating oxygen from the soil, orbital mirrors, transmantle boreholes.”
“Sounds expensive.”
“Planets were in those days,” Wilson told him sagely.
The Volvo carrying Qatux drove slowly through the wormhole, tailing its thick bundle of fiber-optic cable behind. Two people in armor suits emerged from the wormhole behind the truck, making sure the cable didn’t get snagged.
“Everyone through, sir,” Kieran reported.
“Thank you,” Bradley said. “Qatux, we don’t need the wormhole anymore.”
Wilson just had time for one final review of the stormrider before the wormhole closed. Like Icarus, its fate was now sealed; the thick current of plasma had pushed it a long way past the Lagrange point, its depleted thrusters no longer had the delta-V reserve to fly it back around. All that remained was the long, leisurely fall to oblivion in the neutron star’s awesome gravity.
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