This Alien Shore

by C. S. Friedman

  A smile spread slowly across his face. “You’re saying... you want my data.”

  Masada said nothing.

  “And for me?”

  “Name your price.”

  “You know my price.”

  Masada stared at him. Just that, for an awfully long time. God alone knew what was going on inside that Variant head of his, but Phoenix could bet it involved issues of confidentiality and trust. Moddies weren’t known for keeping secrets from one another. He wanted to start to say something like, to get back at this bastard I’d hold to any conditions, but it sounded lame, like something out of a bad spy viddie. And he wasn’t all that sure that Masada would believe him.

  Masada looked at the girl. She took the hint without a word and moved into the bedroom; the door hissed shut between them. Then the Professor looked at him and said, “The Guild wants this done.”

  Phoenix felt his heart skip a beat. Between those five words there was a whole contract assumed, and his name was already on the dotted line. “Why?” he dared.

  Masada shook his head. “No. That can’t be shared.”

  “Ever?”

  The dark eyes fixed on him. “No. Not that.”

  Bottom line. Take it or leave it.

  He offered, “I’m part of this now.”

  The dark eyes fixed on him for a moment, then moved quickly away. “As much as any outsider can be.”

  From another man he wouldn’t have accepted such a condition. But from Kio Masada ... he felt a rush of elation as the full scope of that agreement hit home, the fact that he was going to work with this man, not to mention handle sensitive data—maybe—and get his revenge for the deaths of Chaos and Torch. “Okay, then. All right. What do you want to know?”

  “Where you’ve found this thing. Who else is working with it. I don’t need your code analysis—I’ve done my own—but I want all the rest. The things that come through the moddie network.”

  “That’s a lot of data.”

  Masada said nothing.

  “Okay. Okay. I can give that to you.”

  “For now the high points will do. Where has it been active the longest?”

  “That one’s easy. Prosperity Node. Moddies there found something almost four years back, didn’t know what it was then, but now they’re saying it looks a lot like this—like Lucifer. Just a fragment of replication programming, apparently sent out on a test run. They forgot all about it until I started sending samples around.”

  “Does it have the same programming chart?”

  Phoenix blinked. “Huh?”

  For a moment Masada just stared at him. At last he said, “You’ve never charted it.”

  He felt somehow like he had just been discovered doing something dirty. “Well, I... no.”

  Masada reached to the sideboard behind him for the nearest stack of papers. The one he wanted was at the bottom; he withdrew it from the pile and slid it across the table. Phoenix picked it up and looked at it.

  “Holy shit. This is its programming chart?”

  “That’s right.”

  “This is... wow.”

  A double helix. The symbol of life.

  He shook his head. “Man, this guy is crazy.”

  A faint smile touched the professor’s lips. “Not a word we use often on Guera. But perhaps it would apply here.”

  He wanted to ask why the guy had done it, what he’d hoped to accomplish with this virus. He knew it was searching for information, but information on what? But those were all forbidden questions. For now. He had no doubt that he could win Masada over in time and be privy to all his secrets, but it wasn’t going to happen fast and it wasn’t going to happen easy.

  He couldn’t brag about it either. That was going to be a real bitch.

  Masada had questions, many of them. Phoenix did his best to answer them. They weren’t programming questions, more like things that the moddies had gossiped about. He couldn’t begin to judge what data would be useful to him, so he just told him everything he could. Masada was particularly interested in the moddie deaths; they seemed to really surprise him. “Lucifer wasn’t designed to kill outsiders,” he mused aloud. Outsiders? Phoenix started to ask what he meant, but Masada’s expression warned him that he was once more treading on ground where no one could be trusted, not even him. But what could that mean, other than the Guild? This thing was designed to kill Guild people? He stared at Masada in astonishment, but didn’t even attempt to voice the words. There was no way in hell Masada was going to confirm something like that, even if it was utterly true.

  “Possibly it could not predict how late-life brainware modifications would affect the basic program,” Masada said. “Maybe something triggered it into thinking...” he subsided into silence then, thoughtful and deep. You could almost hear the data churning in his head. But no more secrets were forthcoming.

  “Very well,” he said at last. “You have been most helpful ... as I suspected you would be. I would like to speak to your colleagues in Prosperity. Is that possible?”

  He bit his lower lip, considering. “Maybe.” For you, anything is possible. “They’re pretty paranoid. You’d have to go there.”

  “That goes without saying. None of this is ever to be ’netted, by Guild orders.” A faint smile touched the comers of his mouth. “I seem to be traveling a lot recently.”

  “I’m surprised you left Guera,” he dared.

  “No more than I.” He stood, an official end to their meeting. “I’ll be in touch. In the meantime, if you need to reach me again, it will be through Guild headquarters on this station.”

  Awkwardly Phoenix rose to his feet. It was hard to know exactly how to say good-bye. It was a good bet Masada still wouldn’t shake hands, and the weird way he never quite met your eyes made you feel like some part of him had already left the meeting. “It’s been... an honor.” Stilted words, but what did you say to the one man all moddies idolized? “I really mean it.”

  Again the faint smile. “Thank you.” He glanced to the door of the bedroom, still closed. “I hope your friend wasn’t too frustrated with the waiting.”

  “She’ll be okay.”

  The dark eyes met his, fixed them in a powerful gaze. “When this is done, I’ll give you the deactivation codes for Lucifer. You can spread them across the outernet as easily as I can ... and I think you will enjoy it more.”

  Deactivation... ? He’d have the codes? He, Phoenix, was going to shut down Lucifer? That was the stuff that legends were made of, in his turf. More than payment enough for keeping his mouth shut about other things.

  Which was exactly what it was, of course. Payment in kind. This guy knew him inside and out.

  He went to the bedroom door to get Jamisia. He hoped she wasn’t too upset with being shut out of things, but then, he’d warned her that might happen. Would she have understood any of what they’d talked about, if she had listened? He’d have to think of something to tell her about the meeting, because he knew she’d ask about it and he couldn’t brush her off with total lies ... not anymore... but that wasn’t the real problem. There was something far worse than that coming, and he didn’t know how he was going to deal with it.

  What the hell was he going to tell Nuke?

  Green fields. Clear water. Blue sky with a single crescent moon.

  She knows this place. She remembers.

  She walks quickly past the trees whose names she once recited for her tutor, trying to find the field where she once met her Others. She has to find it soon, before he has a chance to leave.

  Can he leave?

  She looks around quickly, searching for landmarks. There. There.

  She breaks into a run and the landscape becomes more and more familiar; her footfalls make soft squishy sounds on the wet grass. Earth, Earth, this is Earth. He should be here. She searches around, and as she cannot find him, begins to feel a rising tide of panic. What if he’s gone? What will she do then? Her heart begins to pound from fear, and she thinks, he must be here
....

  And then she sees the huddled mass lying on the ground some yards ahead of her. Her breath catches in her throat in pure relief. She walks toward him, and it seems as she does so that the blue sky grows darker, and a wind begins to blow across the open field, spiced with the cold bite of winter. But that’s all right. He’s still here, and still whole, and that’s all that matters right now.

  His naked body is shivering, and covered in sweat. She can sense the fear pouring out of him in waves, a terror so intense that it seems no human mind could sustain it. Yet sustain it he does. He is strong, so very strong, not with Derik’s obvious strength but with raw endurance. No one else sees that in him, but she does.

  She kneels down by the side of the crying one and gently holds out her hand toward him. She doesn’t touch him, not this time; she’s learned from before that he fears her touch more than all his internal terrors combined, and the last time she made contact it kicked off some kind of seizure in him. So she just waits, the offer made, wet grass cool against her knees.

  And he moves.

  His hand edges forward, gripping grass as it moves, tearing the green stalks loose with its spastic, clutching motion. She holds her breath, afraid to move either forward or back, sensing how fragile this moment is. Still the hand moves even closer to where her own hand lies, and the fingers slowly open, knobby knuckles bending with painful effort—

  And he touches her. Flesh on flesh. Electrifying contact.

  And he looks at her.

  Dark eyes, as empty as space itself.

  Tears like blood coursing redly down his cheeks.

  Black lines swirling across his face, primitive pattern reminiscent of—

  “Jamie?”

  Startled, she lost hold of the image. It took her a minute to remember where she was, and who the face belonged to that was staring at her with such obvious concern.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Sure.” She managed a smile. “Just fell asleep while waiting for you, is all.”

  Except she hadn’t really been asleep, not in the usual sense of the word. She had been awake, just... elsewhere.

  Dazed, she let Phoenix help her up. The dream had come as if in response to her summons. Could she do that again? Was there perhaps another dreamscape from her tutor waiting in the wings of her brain, struggling to get through? Damn, she had been so close to learning something. With a sigh she let Phoenix lead her through the motions of departure, and nodded a polite farewell to the strange and somewhat disturbing man they had come to visit. Phoenix was obviously elated about their meeting, which was good; it would keep him from noticing her own distraction on the way home.

  Guerans are the key, she thought. But what is it I’m supposed to know about them?

  It was late when they finally got back to Phoenix’s apartment, and both of them were tired. Jamie had been having internal conversations all the way home, and frustrating ones at that. Most of the Others didn’t seem to know much more than she did, although a few were conspicuously silent. Was it possible that one of them knew what was going on, and just wasn’t telling her? If so, she would be pretty angry about it if she ever found out. What was that like, to be furious with someone who was in your own head? The Others did it all the time with each other, but she had never been a part of it.

  The dream itself both frightened and elated her. If she could bring on such images and explore them at will, that was great. But if they were going to start showing up of their own accord in her waking life, that was going to be a real problem. It was hard enough to navigate through life already with a dozen different identities sharing her head; if she now had to fight her way through dream-images to perceive reality, the whole thing might finally prove to be more than she could handle.

  Finally they were in the narrow corridor leading to Phoenix’s apartment, and she desperately hoped that Katlyn wouldn’t feel the need to cement their relationship further when they got inside, because she was dead tired. She waited while Phoenix opened the door and then smiled wanly while he ushered her inside. Maybe they could go to sleep soon, and more useful dreams would come.

  She walked into the cluttered space, past piles of chips and wires and bits and pieces of electronic equipment she had so carefully cleaned around what seemed like an eternity ago.

  No, a voice warned. That’s wrong.

  Startled, she asked, Raven?

  The table. It’s wrong.

  She looked at it closely, and at the pile of electronic clutter in its center. It was hard to dredge up the memory of what it had looked like before, but not impossible; she had studied his mess long and hard when she was cleaning, trying to determine what parts of it did and didn’t matter to him. And yes, hadn’t there been a pile of chips round about there, and a couple by the forward edge of the table....

  She said nothing, but reached out for Phoenix. He was close enough that she got his arm. She warned him with a glance to keep quiet and then nodded toward the table. Would he notice? Apparently so, for she saw him stiffen immediately, suddenly wary. He looked about at other things in the room and she could see from his expression that some of them were wrong also. Someone had been here, gone through his things, and maybe even taken a few bits and pieces. Which meant they wanted something he had. Or something she had.

  Which meant they might come back, if they hadn’t found it yet.

  The bedroom door was closed. She didn’t remember closing it.

  She felt her heart skip a beat in sudden fear. She glanced at Phoenix, toward the door, and back at him. He was managing somehow not to look perturbed, but it was clear to her that it was just a mask for her benefit; the color was all gone from his face, and he gripped her arm and squeezed it tightly as a warning of his own.

  He smiled then, a forced expression, and said, “You know? We forgot to get food. I don’t have anything in the apartment. You want to go pick something up? There’s a decent food court a few corridors over. We could bring it back and eat here.”

  “Sounds good,” she managed.

  They moved quickly toward the door. Maybe too quickly. Or maybe whoever was waiting in the apartment didn’t have enough patience to wait for them to come back.

  The bedroom door hissed open.

  Something small came flying toward her, and it grazed her upper arm as she jerked away. ALERT! her wellseeker warned in bright red letters. FOREIGN SUBSTANCE IN EPIDERMAL LAYER. There wasn’t any time to respond to it. Phoenix pulled her back out the door with enough force to jerk her off her feet. Someone was coming at them, but the door hissed shut too quickly for her to see who or what it was. Then Phoenix stared at the door for a few seconds, his brow furrowed as if in concentration; she guessed that he was accessing the locking mechanism and jamming it somehow.

  “That’ll hold for a few seconds,” he muttered at last. Even as he grabbed her arm to pull her away from the door, she could hear some kind of weapon or tool being used inside, presumably to break it open.

  They ran. Down one corridor and then another, taking turns that seemed random. Once, in the distance, Jamisia heard someone cursing, and guessed that their pursuers had finally broken out. Hopefully Phoenix’s trick with the lock had bought them enough time to help them.

  “This way!” Phoenix whispered sharply, and he grabbed her arm and pulled her to the left with a force that almost knocked her off her feet. Couldn’t he see that she was none too steady right now? Whatever had been shot into her arm was seeping into her head now, and she could scarcely think. Were those hurried footsteps ahead of them to match the ones behind? Of course, she thought. You didn’t set up an ambush like that without closing off the avenues of escape. Which meant that there was no way out. They would have all the corridors covered.

  Visions came back to her of another flight three years ago, and the substance of Shido Habitat vibrating beneath her feet as explosions rocked the corporate center. She stumbled and Phoenix had to help her back to her feet. She could barely feel his hand on her arm.
The sounds of pursuit were getting closer. Oh God, this was it—

  And then he faced the wall and was still again, just for a second. And a hidden maintenance panel slid open. “Inside!” he commanded, but she didn’t need to be told. She fell through the narrow hatchway, hitting the floor hard on the other side. He moved in after her and ordered the door shut once more. Then they both held their breath while the muffled sound of footsteps on the other side came from the way they had come and continued without pause beyond the door.

  “That won’t hold them long,” she managed to whisper. Words tasted strange, and her tongue was oddly swollen.

  “Isn’t meant to. But every little bit helps.”

  He waited for her to get to her feet and she tried, she really tried, but her body would no longer respond to her orders like it should. Finally he pulled her up and draped her arm over his shoulder—far from a comfortable fit, as he was much taller than she was—and with a hand around her waist he tried to help her forward. She stumbled but managed to make some progress. Not fast enough. The drug they’d hit her with was taking effect fast and hard, and she didn’t know how much longer she could fight it.

  How long would it be before their pursuers realized that the quarry had escaped them, and figured out where they’d gone?

  Phoenix froze then, and she could see that his concentration was elsewhere. Just for a moment, and then he was back to her. “Nuke is going to try to close down the access systems so they can’t come in this way. If he pulls that off, we might be okay.” He looked down at her. “You all right?”

  She smiled weakly and lied. “Sure.”

  He helped her move along the narrow maintenance passage, through a labyrinth of pipes and wires and things whose purpose she couldn’t even begin to guess at. He seemed to know his way, but of course he probably had maps in his head for that kind of thing. She couldn’t even walk straight, much less think clearly. The numbness from the drug had spread into her shoulder, and her lungs tingled ominously each time she moved. Was it meant to kill in higher doses, or just incapacitate? Her wellseeker kept flashing her warnings and asking for instructions, but she couldn’t think clearly enough to deal with it.