He cleared his throat, more to see if there would be any response than because he had to. There wasn’t.
At last he dared, “You wanted to see me?”
The display clicked off. The projector nodes withdrew into the conference table, leaving its surface flat once more. A dim light came up—very dim—that allowed him to make out the form of a woman at the end of the table. Her features were in shadow.
“Tell me about the girl,” she said.
He took a step forward, to where the end of the long table stopped him from going any farther. There was a chair there, turned out to receive him. He chose not to sit in it.
“We’ve lost her.”
If there was anger in her, it wasn’t visible. But of course not, he thought. You don’t rise to the vice presidency of a Terran corporation by giving out emotional data for free.
“Give me details,” she said quietly.
“She was on the metroliner as Jamisia Capra. We’ve got her records going through Immigration under that name. We lost her after that.”
“I sent out enough people to cover Immigration.”
“The Guild took her out of line. They processed her privately, and got her into the ring before we knew what had happened.”
He could sense the anger rising in her. At him, at the Guild, or at the girl? “We should have had the whole ring covered, then.” He started to answer, but she waved him to silence with a short and angry gesture. “Twenty-twenty hindsight. Immigration was a guaranteed bottleneck, we counted on it.” He heard her draw in a deep breath as she considered the ramifications of what he had said. “So,” she said at last. Her voice was like ice. “The Guild knows.”
“How much, do you think?”
“They know she’s important. That’s all that matters. They know they need to have control of her.”
“They let her go free.”
He could sense her eyes on him: cold, uncompromising. Unforgiving. “So it would seem” she agreed. “Perhaps to see where she would go. Perhaps they’re not sure just what exactly she is, and hope that she’ll reveal herself.”
“Do we know what she is?” he asked.
There was a long, long silence after that. The invisible eyes were fixed on him, and he could feel their scrutiny like a cold caress along his skin. You didn’t ask for information from the Corporation, not if you valued your job. Then again, he was one of the few she trusted.
“We know,” she said slowly, “that she is an experiment. We know that if the experiment proves successful, it will put the Guild out of business. And we risked a lot to get hold of her, for that reason.” There was a long pause after that. Was it true that the Corporation’s masters could access the wellseekers of their underlings? He felt himself being dissected mentally, and wondered just how much data she had on him. “That’s enough for you to know, I think. Any more would be ... dangerous for you.”
“I thank you for your trust.”
“It isn’t a question of trust. We have to find the girl. You’re in charge of that effort. You need to understand what the stakes are here, and just how far we’re willing to go to accomplish our goal.”
She stood, then, and for a brief moment the light in the room played over her features as she moved. Eyes and lips carved out of ice, an imperious nose, blonde hair slicked back tightly against her scalp. The corporate logo was bright on her lapel, three interlocking triangles in gold with a star at their center. The Star of Earth.
“You will find her,” she said. “Period. I don’t care what you have to spend, I don’t care whom you have to hire. Do it.”
“But—”
“She is somewhere. She will use the outernet, she will access her money, she will walk and talk and breathe the recycled air—and every minute she does so, she will leave her mark on some data system. Find her. If you can think of no better way, then go through every security tape in the outworlds with a face recognition program. Hire some moddies to put sniffers on the outernet, I’m told they can find anything once they put their minds to it. Pay them whatever it requires. Just don’t give them information. Nothing. You understand me?”
“I understand.”
“Expect the Guild to be making a similar effort. Watch them closely, for they may have access to data that we don’t. I’m tapping into every data line I can, and if I hear of anything relevant, I’ll forward it to you.” She paused. “In the meantime, remember this. We need this girl. We need her alive and we need her undamaged, so that we can study what Shido did and benefit from it. She does us no good dead ... and she probably knows that. But as for the Guild—I doubt they’ve heard anything more than rumors of what Shido was doing. Right now they would like to get hold of her and see how accurate those rumors are ... but if that becomes too much of a luxury, if the choice comes down to letting her go free or removing her from the picture ... she is no threat to them if she’s dead. And if she leads them on a long enough chase, if it looks as if she might really manage to escape them for good, then it’s only a matter of time before they decide to end this little game, while the odds are still in their favor. A dead experiment benefits no one, and they are the default victors in this scenario.”
“I understand.”
“Make sure you do.” She leaned forward over the table; gloved hands splayed out to rest on its polished surface, displaying the corporate logo on their cuffs. “Make sure you grasp that this may prove our most important campaign since the end of Isolation. If there’s a chance—even the remotest chance—that this girl can help break the Guild monopoly, then we have to control her. Period. Failure isn’t an option.”
“I understand.”
She leaned back again, drawing herself up to her full height. At nearly six feet, she was an impressive figure. “Do what you must. I expect a better report next time.”
“Of course.” He bowed slightly and began to back up, but a raised hand from her signaled him that the interview was not yet over.
“There are legal parameters to such a search,” she said quietly. “If you act outside those ...” The sentence went unfinished, but the words were clear enough even so.
Don’t get caught.
He cleared his throat; this time it was for real. “The Corporation, of course, would not support me in such a case.”
“Of course not,” she said quietly. “I’m glad you understand.” They were speaking for the record now, and both of them knew it. He wondered how many separate recorders were taking every word down for posterity. To be disassociated from their previous words, of course. “We all must obey the strictures that the Guild has set, you see. For as long as their monopoly holds, they are the ultimate authority in outspace. Do nothing that would ... displease them.”
He felt a faint thrill then, the first one he had allowed himself in all his time on this project. If the Guild monopoly were broken at last, so that they no longer had the power to impose their will on all the citizens of outspace—good God, what a revolution that would be! And with his corporation at the head of it....
“Thank you for your time, Miklas.” Her head inclined slightly, a cold but regal gesture. “Keep me informed of your progress.”
“Of course.”
He bowed and took his leave. He’d need new plans, and maybe new equipment. The search would clearly not end just because the girl was lost; it would not end until she was m the Corporation’s hands, or dead. And if he could be the one to deliver her to the company ... then next time it might be him at the other end of that table. Miklas Tridac, giving orders to his subordinates.
As he left, he could see the Earth holo flicker back to life before her.
That which is alien repels us.
It also draws us, fascinates us, obsesses us.
How many wars have been fought down through history, for the sake of those two conflicting instincts?
DUAEN CORREN, On Human Nature
INSHIP: EXETER
THEY FINALLY unloaded the drugs, at a small private station
at the far side of the node. Some billionaire tech baron owned the place, but Sumi suspected that the man who gave them their entrance codes to the estate and later paid them in unregistered cash chits wasn’t working for him at that moment. It was a pretty bizarre setup, with fantastic, glittering air-lock gates that looked like they belonged on an amusment station, and surreal architecture to match. But when you were rich, Sumi thought, you could have whatever environment you wanted. Wasn’t that why so many of Earth’s financial elite had moved out here, when outspace was first colonized?
The price they got for their cargo wasn’t half of what they could have gotten elsewhere, and Allo clearly was having second thoughts about the sale. Sumi watched him stand silently with furrowed brow, no doubt weighing the buyer’s bottom line against the manifold risks of keeping the drugs on board. In the end he nodded stiffly, and the station’s bots began to move the crates out. Sumi thought of warning their contact to wipe the bot logs clean when he was done, so that there’d be no record of the unloading—for all of their contact’s tough attitude, he didn’t seem like a professional smuggler, and might not realize the importance of that—but Allo caught his eye and shook his head sharply, slightly. The man had dickered price with them well past the point of polite negotiation. If he was so stupid that he didn’t realize that a simple bot log could be used to convict him at some future date, let him pay the price for his ignorance.
They had Tam do one last scan for surveillence activity—as promised, all cams had been turned off for the duration of the delivery—and then they took off again, to deal with their next order of business.
The girl.
She was the real reason for the sale, of course. Allo could have gotten a much better price on Paradise for what they were carrying, but Sumi knew his captain, knew he liked his business clean, knew that he wouldn’t want to deal with a puzzle like this girl while his holds were stuffed with enough contraband to earn them all life sentences from the feds. And so he had accepted lower profits on one deal in order to focus all his attention on the other ... which said much for what he thought of her potential value in the open market.
The girl ...
Sumi couldn’t stop thinking about her. He’d done so even during the unloading, when his attention should have been focused on their work, and on watching for trouble. That wasn’t like him. He liked women well enough—he enjoyed them immensely when the shipping schedule allowed for indulgence, and when station custom was obliging—but it was rare that one of them got under his skin the way this one had. Was it those strange blue eyes, or something in the taste of her skin? Or was it the unfathomable mystery of her, those strange mood changes, her secret past? Or was it (this was really alarming) that she was an Earthie? That she was the first Earthie who had ever responded to him with something other than revulsion, and he was curious to see just how far her tolerance would go?
He shivered and tried to focus on the screen before him, watching numbers scroll across it as the small ship made for open space once more. Allo liked the fact that his first mate was steady, reliable, unshakable. Allo wouldn’t like the fact that right now Sumi was thinking about the soft touch of Earthie fingers, the musky smell that lingered about her flesh. No, he wouldn’t like that at all. Sumi felt his wellseeker stir as he input the data for the next leg of their flight, scouring his biological systems for any sign of sexual arousal, chemically compensating for his fantasies. One thing was certain, he sure as hell didn’t want Allo to guess what was on his mind. The captain would imagine ... well, all sorts of things.
Worse than the truth?
He had dreams that nightshift. Strange dreams, that mixed together sex and guilt and racial hatred into an odd brew indeed. Was it the lure of the forbidden that drew him to her, the fantasy of having Earth itself between his strong hands, of forcing the heat of his body into the hated mother race itself? He’d always laughed at people who talked about things like that. He knew some men who who hired Earthie whores on a regular basis, just to vent their racial hatred. He’d always looked down on them, feeling himself above such things. Was that what he wanted now? Was the hunger inside him as well, two thousand years of racial resentment just waiting for the proper forum to express itself?
If so, that was yet another reason not to indulge himself. The poor girl was hardly responsible for all the evils of Earth. He knew that intellectually, even if his glands argued otherwise. It was better not to mess with a mix of feelings like that. Better just to focus on work, put his wellseeker on automatic, and hope nobody noticed his agitation. It was only one dive to Paradise Node, and then she would be gone.
But he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
The bed had straps attached, tough plastic bands that pulled out from one side, wrapped over the top, and clipped onto a narrow bar on the far side. Jamisia looked at them dubiously, nervously, then at Calia again.
“It’s for the dive,” the Calistan said impatiently. She was clearly tired of explaining things to Jamisia, and spat out the words with the kind of disdain one usually reserves for morons. Tall, broad-shouldered, lean and muscular, she was physically well-suited for arrogance, and the sleek striped fur which the Hausman Effect had given to her people only added to her feral aura. “The headset will run all the programs to put you to sleep. In the meantime you want to be held in place, don’t you?” When Jamisia said nothing, she snapped, “Or would you rather be pitched to the floor if things get rough, maybe break one of those precious Earthie bones?” She snorted in disgust and turned away from Jamisia. “Do as you like, girl. Tam’ll be in later to program the headset. You can ride it out standing on your head for all I care.”
The door slid shut behind her with a finality that seemed almost personal. Jamisia stared at it for a moment, then looked back at the straps on the bed. Yes, there was apparently a damned good reason for them being there, but their presence still seemed ominous. Or was that just her paranoia speaking?
Damn, Raven observed, she really hates Terrans, doesn’t she?
They all do, Verina answered. She’s just the most open about it.
Not like we had anything to do with Isolation. Derick snorted. Okay, so our ancestors were assholes. They’re dead and gone now, and we’re here. Why blame us for their mistakes?
That “mistake” killed millions, and sent some colonies back to the Stone Age. Verina’s tone, as always, was utterly reasonable, even when she was discussing such volatile issues as race hatred. There are cultures still paying the cost for that mistake. Don’t ever forget it.
It’s not like we did anything wrong, Zusu said miserably.
That doesn’t matter. Identity’s a genetic thing out here, and we’ve got the genes of the race that betrayed them. We’re an infection to them, unclean, an insult to the worlds they struggled to save.
There were reasons—Raven began.
Yes, Verina interrupted. Earth reasons. Try explaining them to a colony that starved for two centuries, because Earth cut them off. Try telling such people that the reason they haven’t been able to raise their population above the point of minimal survival is still because billions of people once rioted, and their leaders decided to cut off the Hausman colonies so they could pretend they didn’t exist, to quell the tide of panic. Tell them that, and see if they understand.
She paused for an instant, then continued in a quieter tone: How can they know what it’s like to have ten billion people crowded on a single planet, with the only hope for escape suddenly cut off ? How can they understand the mindset of such a world, or the extremes to which it might have to resort, for the sanity of its masses? Rats in a cage will kill each other, you know, if there are too many of them confined together. Terrans aren’t so very different. Our ancestors understood that, and they knew that when the cage door was suddenly slammed shut again, after two decades of hope, there’d be hell to pay. I’m not condoning what they did, mind you ... but neither can we condemn them, without understanding their world..
Th
e Variants like to believe they’re superior to us, that under the same circumstances they wouldn’t turn on one another, wouldn’t cut off their own children. Perhaps . . . but I suspect that’s only because they haven’t yet been locked in a small enough cage. To them every Terran is a diseased individual, heir to a genetic heritage of violence and irrationality —a heritage they imagine themselves freed from by virtue of their cultural trials. Little wonder they hate us! It’s a marvel they let Terrans come to the outworlds at all. And I’m pretty sure they wouldn‘t, if the Guerans didn’t force the issue. Most Variants would much rather leave us to rot in our own home system.
I would have been very happy rotting away on Earth, Zusu mourned.
Easy for you to say, Derik snapped. We weren’t on Earth, remember? Plenty of space on the habitats, since they don’t let anyone reproduce without a permit.
Their words and images filled Jamisia’s head, battering her imagination from a dozen different sources at once. That was the problem when the Others argued, or even just discussed things; she felt like a battleground. “All right,” she muttered. “This is all very interesting, but it’s getting us nowhere. We can hit the history books later, okay? For now, can we get back to making plans?”
To her surprise they all went along with her. That was a first. All of the rational ones, that is. She could still hear the most frightening one of all, the crying one, whose muffled sobs had become a counterpoint to all internal conversation. When the Others had first made their presence known, she’d almost never heard him, but by now the soft cadence of his terror had become a backdrop to almost every conversation. She didn’t want to know what had frightened him. She really didn’t want to know why his presence was slowly becoming more obtrusive. She tried to block out of her mind the day her tutor’s dreamscape had shown him to her, naked and trembling and oblivious to the world around him. What would happen to her if he ever took over?
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