Her business paint brought up her cheekbones, played down her wide mouth. She gave Wyeth a swift hug and a peck on the cheek.
“Hallo, Ginneh.”
The executive studied him. “Same old Wyeth. Taciturn as ever.” Then she noticed Rebel. “Well!” Ginneh smiled, but made no further comment. She gestured Wyeth to a chair, and he dropped the leash, leaving Rebel ground-hitched.
Rebel stood by, as good as invisible, as the two exchanged pleasantries and moved on to business. Wyeth said, “I wondered if you were still providing professionalsfor the Outer System. Maybe the Jovian satellites?”
“You were hoping for something on Ganymede? Oh, Wyeth, I’m so sorry.” She placed a small hand on his forearm. “This comes at such a bad time in our orbit.
Please.” A schematic phased in over her desk, showing Eros Kluster leaving the inner edge main sequence asteroid belts, heading sunward. “We’re losing our competitive edge, industrially. Half the refineries are shut down. And we’re not close enough to the Inner System for the mercantile economy to come up full. You know how difficult it is to find a position in a service economy. Maybe if you came back in a month. Thank you.” The schematic faded away.
“Well, perhaps I will.” Wyeth stood and retrieved his leash. “Been nice chatting you up, Ginneh.”
“Oh, don’t rush off! Stay and talk. You haven’t even asked what I’m working on. I’ve been transferred to the People’s Mars project. You must let me show you it.”
“Mars?” Wyeth frowned. “I’m not sure I’d be interested—”
“It’s a lovely package! Overview, please.” Holographic projections appeared behind her, like a line of windows winking open in the air. Spacejacks working on an enormous geodesic. A cluster of tank towns. Cold fusion reactors being towed slowly through the Kluster. An elaborate floating sheraton nearing completion. “The total cost is upwards of half a million man-years. It was wonderful how the whole thing just snowballed. It began with the orbital sheraton—the Stavka wanted to create a tourist industry. See the transformation storms, that sort of thing.” They swiveled to look at the holos. Wyeth took a chair.
Now that their backs were turned, Rebel felt free to slouch. She scratched an itch that had been bothering her for some time. Already she felt bored and ridiculous and annoyed at Wyeth for getting her into this. People did thiskind of thing for fun?
Ginneh and Wyeth were discussing the tank towns. “I don’t understand why the Stavka would want them,”
Wyeth said. “Even as scrap, they can’t be worth much.”
“Don’t be naive, dear. People’s Mars is having labor trouble. We dump a few dozen slums in their neighborhood, and the price of labor takes a nosedive.”
“Hmmm.” Wyeth glanced over his shoulder and frowned at Rebel’s posture. She straightened involuntarily, then stuck out her tongue. He’d already turned back, though. “That puts you in something of a morally ambiguous position, doesn’t it? I mean, if you squint at it just right, it looks a lot like dealing in slaves.”
The executive laughed. “We’re selling People’s Mars the tanks. Whether the people living in them choose to go along or not is up to them. Oh, we’re distributing the Stavka’s propaganda for them, and we’ll sweeten the deal by suspending rent for the duration of transit, but nobody’s being forced to do anything. Next sequence, please.” All the scenes changed. “This is simply a terrific deal. It’s big and hot and fast. We’ve even had to go out-Kluster for some of the skills. Most of the muscle and skulls come from Londongrad, of course, and we’re providing the slums, the sheraton, the geodesic and the raw oxygen. But—you see that holding sphere? Closeup, if you would.” A translucent sphere packed with something green and leafy and wet zoomed closer. “That contains a young air plant. We hired a team of macro-biologists from that pod of comets passing through the other side of the system, to look after it.”
The view switched to wraparound, and they were in the center of a small biolab. Some twenty people were at work there, dressed treehanger style, their bodies covered neck to foot in heavy clothing with embroidered inserts and oversized pockets. They talked as they worked, oblivious of their viewers, and touched each other casually, a tap onthe shoulder here, a nudge in the ribs there. Somebody said something and the others laughed. Rebel wished she could join them, sign on to work among them. (But what would she do? Her skills were gone, along with most of her memories. No matter. In the largest possible sense they were all family, and she longed to be with them.)
“This is all tourist stuff, Ginneh,” Wyeth said in a flat voice.
“Ah? Well, perhaps this next one will interest you. You haven’t asked how we expect to transport the slums to Mars orbit without crushing everything within them.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Oh my goodness, yes. Even the slightest acceleration would be enough to collapse the interiors, shanties, people and all. Didn’t they teach you any physics in kindergarten? Please show us the ring.”
“Well, I—” Wyeth stopped. The wraparound had switched to the interior of a floating weapons platform. It had been built cheap, all boilerplate and seam weld, but the laser sniper systems that crouched on the metal desk, gently shifting to track their targets, were bright, state-of-the-art killing machines. The human triggers floating beside them had the unblinking, fanatic look of the rigidly wetwired.
The systems were aimed through laser-neutral glass walls at individual specks moving through a cluttered floating construction site. The holo zoomed up on one speck, and it became a worker in distress-orange vacuum suit. She was bolting together complex-looking machinery, hooking cables to ports, wiring terminals to terminals.
Other orange-suited workers labored nearby, climbing blindly over one another as needed, yet perfectly synchronized. Tanks were mated to valves installed an instant before, complex wiring sequences were abandoned by one to be picked up by another, with never a glance to see how the others were doing. Hundredsworked in scattered clusters along the length of a half-kilometer arch of machinery, looking more like hive insects than humans. Beyond them hung more weapons platforms, enough to track each worker individually. “We brought in a team of Earth to build the transit ring,”
Ginneh said.
“My God,” Wyeth said, horrified. “You can’t deal with the Comprise.”
“Don’t be silly, dear. Only Earth knows how to build an accelerator ring. This deal isn’t possible without help from the Comprise. Please expand from the third quadrant. You see the green tanks? Liquid helium. We’ve rented half the liquid helium in the Kluster for this caper.”
“Let me make myself a little clearer, Ginneh. Earth and humanity are natural enemies. We’re talking survival of the species here. You don’t cut deals with something that threatens every human being in existence. I’m not talking abstractions here, Ginneh. I’m talking about you, me, and everyone we know—our selves, our minds, our souls, our identities. Our future.”
Ginneh shrugged. “Oh, I’m sure you exaggerate. Our security is excellent. You saw the weapons platforms. If anything, we’re being overcautious.”
“Machines!” Wyeth snorted. “Machines are the easiest things in the universe to outwit because they’re predictable—that’s their function, to be predictable, to do exactly what they’re designed for, time after time. And you’ve put them under the control of guards so tightly programmed they’re almost machines themselves. Real bright, Ginneh. I ought to strangle you and every one of your fellow corporate whores myself. It would only improve the breed.”
“I suppose you could do better?”
“Damn right I could!”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” Ginneh saidcomplacently. “Because I believe I do have a position for you, after all.”
Rebel’s nose itched. She scratched it, and the leash tapped her belly lightly. Grimacing, she pulled her hands free of the thing and dropped it on the ground. The hell with it. She rubbed her wrists slowly and luxuriously, staring at
the back of Wyeth’s head with shrewd speculation. How much did she actually know about him?
Very little. Enough, though, to know that he was involved hip-deep in some kind of weirdness. It certainly wasn’t altruism that powered his actions. He had his own plans, whatever they were, and somehow she had been fitted into them. Logic told her it was time to cut and run. Leave him and his bitch to their little schemes.
Ginneh and Wyeth had their heads together, conferring quietly. Neither noticed her go.
* * *
The biolab had been retrofitted between two underwriting firms on Fanchurch Prospekt in midtown Londongrad. Rebel got the address from a public data port. She might not have her skills, but any working group needed someone to do the scutwork, and she could fetch and carry with the best of them. Her plan was to hide among her own kind, where she would be effectively invisible, because she wouldn’t stand out. And when they left to return to their comet worlds, she’d go with them.
All it’d take was a little grit.
At the doorway she hesitated, remembering the public surveillance cameras inside. Well, there were millions such throughout the Kluster. What were the odds that somebody looking for her would be watching? Slim.
Taking a deep breath, she went in.
“Hey-lo!” A lanky treehanger stuck a genecounter in his hip pocket and leered at her. Another man whistled. All activity within the lab came to a halt.
Rebel stopped in confusion. Everyone was looking at her. They were staring at her breasts and stomach, some involuntarily and with embarrassment, and others not.
She fought down the urge to snap her cloak shut, and her face flushed. A short, grey-haired woman turned from a potting bench, brushing her hands together, and said mildly, “Can I help you, dearie?”
“Uh, yes, well… Actually, I just wanted to stop by for a chat. You see, I come from a dyson world myself.” The words sounded false, and Rebel felt irrationally guilty.
Sweat beaded up under her arms.
“Gone a bit native then, ain’t you?” the lanky one said.
“Haven’t you work to do?” the woman said in a warning voice. “All of you! What are we getting paid for, hey?
Squatting in the bushlines?” Then, in a gentler tone,
“Where do you hail from then?”
“Tirnannog. It’s part of the original archipelago, just moving out into the Oort.” The names came to her without urging, but none of them sounded familiar to her.
The other engineers were working quietly, not talking, so they could overhear what was said. Now a stocky, blond-haired kid with walnut skin looked up, interested.
“Oh yeah, I been there,” he said. “We’re all from Hibrasil, practically spitting distance, hey? Couple weeks transit in coldpack is all. Got family in Stanhix, ever heard of that?
Just outside of Blisterville.”
She shook her head helplessly. “Blisterville?”
“You never heard of Blisterville? Threetrunk past the Sargasso? Five hundred thousand people?”
A woman looked up from a tank of water voles and said,
“Bet you we got one of those ravers on our hands. You know—too much electricity shot up the medulla oblongata.” The treehanger beside her laughed and punched her shoulder.
“Hey, listen, I’m not lying to you, sport! I really am from Tirnannog. I can explain—”
“Where does an airwhale fit into an ecosystem? What do they sell in Green City? Why can’t an anogenic construct eat? What are the seven basic adaptations to weightlessness?” the stocky kid asked. He looked Rebel in the eye and sneered. “How many bones are in your hand?”
She didn’t have the answers. It was all information that had been destroyed with her original body. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. One of her hands was trembling.
“Freeboy,” the grey-haired woman snapped, “are you going to get back to work or am I going to have to kick butt?” The boy rolled his eyes upward, but turned back to a stacked petri array. The woman said to Rebel, “We believe you, dear.”
“But I really am—”
“I could run a blood test,” Freeboy offered. “Even adapted for gravity, there’s still five major differences…”
“What did I tell you?” the woman began ominously. But Rebel was already halfway to the door.
As she stepped outside, a man who hadn’t spoken before called after her, “What do them lines on your face mean, girlie?” By his tone, she knew that he had been tasting what pleasures a wettechnic civilization had to offer and knew exactly what her paint indicated.
She bit her lip, but did not look back.
* * *
Out on the Prospekt, the crowds swallowed her whole.
There were far more people here than either uptown or downtown, and the corridors were wide, like plazas infinitely extended. Rows of palms divided the surge of people into lanes, and cartoon stars and planets hung from a high ceiling. Underfoot, the Prospekt was paved with outdated currency, silver thalers, gold kronerrands,green ceramic rubles, all encased under diamond-hard transparent flooring. Expensively dressed people, all painted financial—cargo insurance, gas futures, bankruptcy investment—coursed over it. Rebel let the crowd carry her away, transforming her anger and humiliation and confusion into blessed anonymity.
A clown came striding toward her.
In the sea of bobbing, somber cloaks, the puffy white costume seemed to glow, as if lit from within. The pierrette smiled slightly as her eyes met Rebel’s. The crowds parted for her, like waters before a religious master, and she descended upon Rebel as calm and inevitable as an angel.
Rebel stopped, and the pierrette bowed and proffered a white envelope. She took it from the gloved hand and slid out a paper rectangle. It was a holographic advertising flat. Above it floated the same false ideal of Rebel Mudlark she had seen in downtown New High Kamden.
She looked questioningly at the pierrette, who dipped a short curtsey. She might as well try interrogating the floor.
Rebel turned the paper over, and on its back was written,
“Request that we talk.” She crumpled the paper in her hand. The image folded into itself and was gone.
She nodded to the clown.
The pierrette led her to a nearby bank. They went to the negotiating rooms, bypassing several that were discreetly equipped for sex, and found a walnut-paneled niche with a single bench and table. Rebel sat, and the pierrette flipped on privacy screen and sound baffles. She produced a holograph generator, placed it atop the table, and curtsied away.
After a moment to compose herself, Rebel reached out to switch on the generator.
* * *
She was looking into a small hollow—obviously part of an upscale business park. At first glance Rebel thought thehollow held a drift of snow. Then she saw that she was looking down on an oval of white tiles. The only spot of color in all that white was a red prayer rug at its center. A
lone figure knelt there, hood down, shaven head bowed.
“Snow!” Rebel exclaimed. The image panned downslope.
The figure raised its head, studied her with cold, reptilian eyes. Skin white as marble, face painted in the hexangular lines of ice crystals or starbursts. He cocked his head slightly, listening. “In a sense,” he said at last,
“perhaps I am. Snow and I are both part of the same thing.” His face was every bit as gaunt and fleshless as hers had been. “I have a message for you.”
“What are you?” she asked. “Just exactly what are you that you and Snow are part of the same thing?”
He made a small sideways jerk of his head, a gesture perhaps of annoyance. Or maybe he was just accessing data through some new channel. “Irrelevant. I am not required to give you any information other than the message. If you choose not to receive it…”He shrugged.
“All right. I’m listening.”
The man looked directly at her. “Deutsche Nakasone has licensed a team of dedicated assassins to your case.”
; “No,” Rebel said. Without thinking about it, she clenched her fists so tight the nails dug into her hands.
The skin over her knuckles hurt. “That’s ridiculous.
Deutsche Nakasone wants my persona. They need me alive.”
“Not necessarily.” A bony hand slid from his cloak to stab the empty air, and an appliance with smooth, cherry-red finish appeared on insert. “The assassins are equipped with cryonic transport devices. They need only kill you, flash-freeze your brain, and let their technicians dig out the desired information using destructive techniques.” The hand disappeared into his cloak. “That’swhat they should have done originally. But they also wanted to salvage you as a petty officer of the corporation.
Now, however, you’ve been written off.”
The machine was slick and featureless on the outside, with a popup handle on the top. It was just the right size to hold Rebel’s head. She hunched her shoulders and brought up her hands. “Why are you telling me this?”
“You are not ready to deal yet.” The man stood suddenly, strode three paces to one side, stopped. “Very well. We wish to keep you alive until you are ready. You must take this threat seriously.” He paused to examine something Rebel could not see. “You’ve been careless. You should have realized there are few enough groups of dyson worlders in the Kluster that they all would be watched. If we hadn’t reached you first, you’d be dead now.”
The scene shifted, and she was looking down on Fanchurch Prospekt. From above, the jostling zombies blended together like a sluggish flow of mud. Bright circles appeared around three faces, and she saw that they were moving through the crowd in formation, searching among the faces for something. One by one, the image zoomed up on them: A heavy woman with fanatically set face and a black slash across her left eye. An unblinking sylph of a girl with a black slash across her left eye. And then a third with that same paint, a red-haired man with a face like a fox.
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