She’d been afraid the Coalition would try to send stud males, to pass them off–even to replace Katherinessen with an impostor. These weren’t quite like the gentle males of her acquaintance, though. They were wary, feral, watching the rooflines, eyes flickering to her honor and to the weapons of the other women. She shouldn’t have been surprised. Without women in a position to protect them, gentle males would find rough going in a society dominated by stud males and hormonally driven aggression. She liked the way they backed each other, the dark one and the tawny one, shoulder to shoulder like sister khir against a stranger pack. She wondered how old they were, with their strange smooth faces and silken skin, and the muscled hands that didn’t match their educated voices.
They survived the receiving line without a diplomatic incident, but both men seemed relieved when she ushered them inside. Even filtered by the nebula–invisible in daytime–the sun was intense at the equator, and they weren’t accustomed to it. She’d read that on Old Earth the cities were small, widely spaced, and densely packed, the population strictly limited–through culling and fetal murder, when necessary–and the regenerated ecosystems were strictly off‑limits without travel permits.
She shuddered, thinking of that circumscribed existence, locked away from the jungle for her own protection and the world’s–unable to pick up a long arm, sling it over her back with a daypack and a satphone, and vanish into the bush for a day or a week, free to range as far as her daring would support. She could have been like these men, she realized: coddled, blinking in the bright sunlight–or worse, because a woman wouldn’t rise to their position in the OECC. They’d probably never been outside a filter field in their lives.
Good. That was an advantage. One she’d need, given what Claude had told her about Katherinessen. The legendary Vincent Katherinessen, and his legendary ability to know what one thought before one knew it oneself.
She collected herself and focused on the deal at hand–which was, after all, a deal like any deal. Something to be negotiated from the position of strength that she was fortunate to have inherited. “We’ve arranged a reception before we sit down to dinner. And some entertainment first. If you’re not too tired from traveling.”
Katherinessen’s gaze flicked to his partner; Kusanagi‑Jones tipped his head in something that wasn’t quite a nod. The communication between them was interesting, almost transparent. Most people wouldn’t have even seen it; shecouldn’t quite read it, but she thought she might learn. In the meantime, it was good to know that it was going on, that the dynamic between the two men was not quite the leader‑and‑subordinate hierarchy they projected. Something else developed for navigating a male‑dominated space, no doubt.
“I think we’re acceptably fresh,” Katherinessen said, “as long as our licenses hold out. We both got a lot of sleep on the ship. But it would be nice to have a few moments to relax.”
Lesa wanted to ask if he meant cryo, but wasn’t sure if it would be in poor taste, so she nodded. “Come with me. The prime minister is eager to greet you, but she can wait half a tick.”
“She thought it best not to overdignify our arrival with her presence?” Katherinessen asked. A sharp, forward question; Lesa glanced at him twice, but his face stayed bland.
“I’ve negotiating authority, Miss Katherinessen. Parliament, of course, will have to ratify whatever we agree.”
“On our end, too. I’m assured it’s a formality.” His shrug continued, but so are we always assured, are we not? The raised eyebrow was a nice touch, including her in the conspiracy of those who labor at the unreasoning whim of the state. “Am I supposed to inquire as to the nature of the entertainment?”
She smiled back, playing the game. “It’s the day before Carnival. We thought you might like a real frontier experience, and the Trials began at first light today. If that meets with your approval.”
His smile broadened cautiously. He was really a striking man, with his freckles and his auburn hair. Pity he’s gentle,she thought, and then mocked herself for thinking it. If he wasn’t, after all, he wouldn’t be here. And she shouldn’t be anywhere near him, honor on her hip and security detail or not.
“We are at your disposal, Miss Pretoria,” he said, and gestured her graciously ahead. The security detail followed.
One reason Kusanagi‑Jones trained as rigorously as he did was because it speeded adaptation. He could have taken augmentation to increase or maintain his strength, but doing the work himself gave additional benefits in confidence, balance, and reflex integration. His brain knew what his body was capable of, and that could be the edge that kept him, or Vincent, alive.
That never changed the fact that for the first day or two in a changed environment, he struggled as if finding his sea legs. But as far as he was concerned, the less time spent tripping over invisible, immaterial objects, the better.
So it was a mixed blessing to discover that wherever Miss Pretoria was taking them, they were walking. It would help with acclimation, but it also left Vincent exposed. Kusanagi‑Jones clung to his side, only half an ear on the conversation, and kept an eye on the windows and the rooftops. To say that he didn’t trust the Penthesilean security was an understatement.
“Tell me about these Trials,” Vincent was saying. “And about Carnival.”
Lesa gave Vincent an arch look–over Kusanagi‑Jones’s shoulder–but he pretended oblivion. “Your briefings didn’t cover that?”
“You are mysterious,” Vincent answered diplomatically. “Intentionally so, I might add. Are they a sporting event?”
“A competition,” Lesa answered. “You’ll see. We’re in time for a few rounds before high heat.”
Around them, the atmosphere had textures with which Kusanagi‑Jones was unfamiliar. The heat was no worse than Cairo, but the air felt dense and wet, even filtered by his wardrobe, and it carried a charge. Expectant.
“It gets hotter than this?” Vincent asked.
Lesa flipped her hair behind her ear. “This is just morning. Early afternoon is the worst.”
They crossed another broad square that would have had Kusanagi‑Jones breaking out in a cold sweat if the heat wasn’t already stressing his wardrobe. Here, there were onlookers–mostly armed women, some of them going about their business and some not even pretending to, but all obviously interested in the delegates from Earth. Kusanagi‑Jones was grateful that Vincent knew how the game was played and stuck close to him, using his body as protection.
Smooth as if they had never been apart.
Miss Pretoria led them under cover at last, into the shade of an archway broad enough for two groundcars abreast. The path they followed descended, and women in small, chatting groups emerged from below–settling hats and draping scarves against the climbing sun–or fell in behind, following them down.
This place was cooler, and the air now carried not just electric expectation, but the scent of an arena. Chalk dust, sweat, and cooking oil tickled Kusanagi‑Jones’s sinuses. He sneezed, and Miss Pretoria smiled at him. He spared her a frown; she looked away quickly.
“Down this way,” she instructed, stepping out of the flow of traffic and gesturing them through a door that irised open when she passed her hand across it. Kusanagi‑Jones stepped through second, because the taller of the two security agents beat him to first place.
This was a smaller passageway, well lit without being uncomfortably bright. With a sigh, he let his wardrobe drop its inadequate compensations for the equatorial sun.
“Private passage,” Miss Pretoria said. “Would you rather sit in my household’s box, or the one reserved by Parliament for dignitaries?”
Vincent hesitated, searching her face for a cue. “Is yours nicer?” he asked.
Her mouth thinned. “It is,” she said. “And closer to the action.”
Kusanagi‑Jones caught the shift in Vincent’s weight, the sideways glance, as he was meant to. Miss Pretoria didn’t approve of them, or perhaps she didn’t approve of the “action.”
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Kusanagi‑Jones stepped aside to let her take the lead again. It wasn’t far: a few dozen yards and they could hear cheering, jeering, the almost inorganic noise of a crowd.
There must have been other concealed side passages, because this one led them directly to the Pretoria house box. They emerged through another irising door and among comfortable seats halfway up the wall of an oblong arena. The galleries were severely raked, vertiginous, and one of the security agents reached out as if to steady him when he marched up to the edge. He stepped away from her hand, and she let it fall.
When he leaned out, he looked down on the heads of the group seated immediately below. And Vincent was just as unprotected from anybody watching from the next tier above.
While the immediate security concerns distracted Kusanagi‑Jones, Vincent touched his elbow. He didn’t need to be told to follow Vincent’s line of sight; he did it automatically, his alerted interest becoming a startle and a reflexive step closer as another cheer went up.
The floor of the arena was divided into long ovals, each one bounded by white walls that were thick, but not higher than a man’s waist. And in each of the pits were men.
Young men, judging from the distance, paired off and engaged in contests of martial arts, each pair attended by an older man and a woman–referees or adjutants. Kusanagi‑Jones, his hands tightening on the railing, had the expertise to know what he was seeing. These were men trained in a sort of barbaric amalgam of styles, and they were not fighting for points. He saw blood on the white walls, saw at least one individual fall and try to rise while his opponent continued kicking him, saw another absorb a punishing roundhouse and go down like a dropped handkerchief.
Beside him, Miss Pretoria cleared her throat. “There are screens,” she said, and touched the wall he leaned against. “Please sit.”
Vincent did, back to the wall, and Kusanagi‑Jones was comforted when he saw Vincent surreptitiously dial his wardrobe higher. Kusanagi‑Jones wasn’t the only one feeling exposed.
Miss Pretoria continued fussing with the wall, and images blossomed under her hands. These were the same combats being carried out below, close‑up, in real time. Nothing here was faked, or even as ritualized as the pre‑Diaspora bloodsports that had masqueraded as contests of athletic prowess.
It was a public display of barbarism that Kusanagi‑Jones should have found shocking if he were at all well socialized.
Vincent shifted slightly, leaning back in his chair, but Kusanagi‑Jones wouldn’t allow himself to give away so much. Instead, he placed himself in the seat before Vincent, beside Miss Pretoria, and leaned forward to speak into her ear as another roar went up from the galleries and–on the sand, on the monitors–another man fell. Medics came to him, capable women checking his airway and securing him to a back board, and the view on the monitor shifted to the weary champion feted by the referees. Around them, Kusanagi‑Jones saw women consulting datacarts and bending in close conversation.
“What’s the prize?”
Miss Pretoria considered him for a moment. “Status. To the victors go a choice of contracts; households with more status will bid for preferred males. Which benefits both them, and their mothers and sisters–”
Kusanagi‑Jones didn’t need to turn to see Vincent’s expression. He hadn’t let his fisheye drop since they set foot planetside.
Vincent reached past him, leaning forward, and indicated the monitor. “You’re selecting foraggressive men?”
Miss Pretoria showed her teeth. “We’re not docile, Miss Katherinessen. And we’re not interested in forcing males to conform to standards that ignore what nature intended for them.”
She said it easily, without apparent irony. But the look Vincent shot the back of Kusanagi‑Jones’s head had enough of that for all three of them and the self‑effacing security agents, too.
They lingered at the arena for an hour or so longer than Vincent really wanted to be there, although he supposed it was beneficial in terms of information gathered–both regarding the society they found themselves contending with, and what Miss Pretoria chose to show them about it. Angelo, of course, watched the bloodsport with as much appearance of interest as he might have mustered for a particularly tiresome political speech. Even Vincent wasn’t certain if he was analyzing the technique of the duelists and finding it wanting, musing on the ironies of this open display of arts that on Old Earth would be considered illegal, or sleeping with his eyes open.
Vincent, by contrast, let himself wince whenever he felt like it. Which was fairly frequently. Eventually, Miss Pretoria chose to take note of her guest’s discomfort, and suggested she show them their quarters so that they could take advantage of siesta to get ready for the reception and dinner.
The walk back was quiet and uneventful, though the still‑increasing heat left Vincent feeling unwell enough that he was grateful it wasn’t long. He recognized the courtyard where they’d first emerged from the limousine by its colors and layout. The particular building they approached–if any given portion of the city could be called a separate building–had a long sensual single‑story arch rising into a slender tower with a dimpled curve like that of a hip into a high‑kicked leg. The tower was even shaped like a human leg–a strong, shapely one, with a pointed toe and a smooth swell of calf near the peak. An oval window or door opened into that small valley; Vincent would have liked to see a garden there, pots and orchids, maybe. On Ur, on Old Earth, there would have been flowers, great waterfalls of them growing up the wall. The swags and garlands of dead, cut flowers were another alien grace note, a funereal touch. They even smelled dead, sweet rot, although if you ignored the fact that they were corpses they were pretty.
Miss Pretoria smiled a quiet professional smile. “We think the Dragons were fliers. That’s one of the reasons we call them Dragons; half the access points to the dwellings are above ground level, some of them at the tips of spires. It used to be more like four‑fifths of them, but now that people have been living here for a hundred years, things have changed.”
A hundred New Amazonian years; 150, give or take, of Earth’s. “I was noticing the lack of plants.”
“Oh,” she said. “We don’t really–well, I’ll show you.” She gestured them inside, through a curtain of cool air that ruffled the fine hairs on Vincent’s neck. The doorway was simply open to the outside, air exchange permitted as if it cost nothing in resources to heat or cool. He bit his lip–and then lost his suppressed comment totally as they walked through the dim entryway and he got his first glimpse of the interior.
For a moment, he forgot he was inside a building at all. The walls seemed to vanish; he had the eerie sensation of standing in the center of a broad, gently rolling meadow bordered on three sides by jungle and on the fourth by the sunlit curve of the bay. A dark blue sky overhead poured sunlight, but less brilliantly. Vincent’s headache eased as his squint relaxed. He no longer had to fight the urge to shade his eyes with his hand; this was like the sunlight he was accustomed to, the tame sunlight of Ur or Old Earth.
“Better?” Pretoria asked, pulling off her shoe.
“Very much so.” He glanced around, aware of Michelangelo’s solid presence on his left side, and pressed his foot into the flooring. It was soft, living. Not grass, of course, or the tough broad‑turf of home, but a carpet of multiple‑leaved, short‑stemmed plants sprinkled with bluish‑gray trefoils. He gestured at the ceiling and walls. “This is…awesome.”
He adjusted his wardrobe so he, too, was barefoot. Michelangelo did the same, without seeming to have noticed anyone else’s actions.
Miss Pretoria placed her shoes on a rack by the door, and Vincent stole a look at them. He couldn’t identify the material. The security detail kept their boots, custom bowing to practicality.
“This is the guests’ quarters of government center. The lobby is yours to make use of as you please. For your safety, we ask that you do not venture out unescorted.”
“Is Penthesilea so dangerous for t
ourists?” Vincent asked. It had seemed tame enough on their two brief jaunts, and he was interested by how casually the local dignitaries ventured out in public. The culture, in that way, reminded him of pre‑Repatriation Ur, a small‑town society in which everybody knew everybody else. He craned his neck, looking through the almost‑invisible ceiling, and watched some small winged animal dart overhead.
“Dangerous enough,” Miss Pretoria said, with a smile that might almost have been flirting, before she beckoned them on.
Somewhere between shaking Miss Pretoria’s hand and being shown to their quarters so they could get ready for dinner, Vincent started to wonder if he was ever going to hit his stride. Normally, he would have felt it happen, felt it fall into place with an almost audible click. Still, he had some advantages. Pretoria didn’t know how to respond to his relentless good humor. He didn’t rise to her provocation, and it set her back on her heels. Which was all to the good, because he needed her off‑balance and questioning her assumptions. If nothing else, it would make it easier to keep up appearances for Michelangelo, who needed to see Vincent doing what they had come here to do: thejob. The damned job, so important it took a definite article.
Angelo was restless again, fidgeting as he pretended to examine documents in the hours they were given to themselves. Vincent pretended to nap, his eyes closed, and listened first to the silence of heavy heat and then to the patter of rain on the sill of the windowless frame that looked out over Penthesilea.
For a moment, Vincent felt a pang at the necessity of that deceit. And then he remembered the Kaiwo Maru,the transparency of Michelangelo’s desire to bloody him. I took the therapy.
It explained, at least, why Michelangelo had never tried to contact him, even through their private channels. They were spies, for the Christ’s sake. They’d kept their affair secret for thirty years; Michelangelo could have passed a note without getting caught. If he’d wanted to. If the job and the goddamned Coalition hadn’t been more important than Vincent. Probably the job, frankly. Michelangelo had never cared for politics, for all he’d been willing to sacrifice just about anything to them.
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