The search would take time. Getting into Aea was not easy, but once in, disappearing was not so difficult. Structural Authority managed to keep track of residents, but any other agency found impediments in the aversion Aeans had to surveillance for any reason other than safety. Even so, there were ways to make associational connections—purchases were recorded, housing assignments required identification, and of course certain SA records could be accessed by InFlux. As a volunteer, Mace did not officially possess clearance for those files, but he had found ways around the rules.
“Your caller is still waiting,” Helen said. “Shall I put Mr. Koeln through now?”
Mace sighed. “Yes.”
The screen cleared and a face appeared. Strong cheekbones and wide-set eyes, Linder Koeln appeared otherwise unremarkable.
“Mr. Koeln, what can I do for you?”
“Mr. Preston. I’d hoped to speak with you earlier. I would like to get together with you to ask a few questions.”
“Anything you can’t ask over the comm?”
“I prefer personal contact. It’s a matter of some importance.”
“Concerning?”
“Specifically, your wife.”
Mace felt himself cool toward the man. “My wife is dead, Mr. Koeln.”
“Of course.”
“There can’t possibly be anything that hasn’t been gone over a hundred times in the last few years.”
“Lives are complex. Details often remain hidden in spite of the most careful analysis. When they do finally surface, all the rest can change. Does the name Glim Toler mean anything to you?”
Mace hesitated. “Is this an internal PolyCarb matter? You are aware that I’m retired.”
“It’s perhaps a bit more than that, and yes, I am. Some files do not conveniently close, though, when we walk away from them. I assure you, this will take very little time.”
“I doubt that. I have plans for this evening. Perhaps tomorrow.”
“This is important, Mr. Preston.”
“So are my evening plans. Tomorrow.”
“I’ll call then.”
“Do that.” He broke the connection. “Shit. Helen, add a new parameter to the search protocol. See if anything comes up relating Helen to this Glim Toler.”
“Done. Do you want me to remind you about his call in the morning?”
“I suppose you better. What time is it?”
“Eighteen-fourteen. Your shower is up to temperature.”
He stood. “What would I do without you, Helen?”
“Be consistently late or adapt. By the way, if you’re going to be gone more than two days, please let me know so I can forward my findings.”
On the shunt, to get his mind off the conversation with Linder Koeln, he tried to recall his last date, the one before Helen, before everything changed. Memory failed. He remembered her face—rounded, small chin, large brown eyes—and the way her head seemed to float on her neck, as if attached by a spring; she had worn.. .blue? No, periwinkle, which he had found erotic for some reason; her name was Pam... Pamela ... no, Pamiel, a Lunase derivation, and yes, it had been in Lunase, during his one and only trip there.
But he could not remember what he had done.
The shunt slowed to a stop and the doors opened. There were only three other people in the car with him, two women who seemed to be together, and a man studiously reading Pen-ching, the bonsai society newsletter.
One of the women debarked, waving good-bye to the other. The shunt rolled on.
He got off at the first stop in segment three. The man remained on board and Mace stared down the tube as the shunt moved on, the faint slipstream tugging at his sleeves. He realized after a few moments that he had expected to be followed tonight and he was mildly disappointed that he was not.
He climbed the steps to the interior. Corner lights glowed warmly on the cornices of the buildings with the onset of nightcycle. The dirt patch led from the shunt station into the cluster of domiciles that resembled giant toy blocks jumbled together across the landscape. Walkways stretched overhead, connecting balconies. Here and there abstract designs covered walls in bright colors. Mace had only peripherally noticed any of this the other night. He had lived in a place like this during his first months on Aea after Helen’s death, having found it impossible to stay in their old dom, waiting for the insurance settlements and his official severance from PolyCarb. He walked among the doms now with a warm sense of nostalgia.
Dom Sixteen stood at the apex of the path’s long curve, just as it started to turn back spinward. Mace looked up at the balcony rails on the south-spinward side—that one, yes, Nemily’s—and his anticipation increased.
Inside the small foyer, he read the resident list. Dollard, Nemily third level, apartment G. He touched the icon by the name and proceeded up the stairs.
At her door, he hesitated. For a moment he seemed to experience vertigo, a sensation he had not felt in years. It passed, and in its wake Mace sensed the debris of several emotions. He quickly tried to sort through them—excitement, fear, bewilderment, embarrassment, guilt. He felt briefly that he should be doing something else, somewhere else. He raised his hand to knock on the door.
One emotion emerged very clearly. It did not, as far as he knew, have a name, but he recognized it. A combination of fear and a sense of betrayal, mingled with sharp pleasure. Nothing will ever be the same again, who you are now you will never be after this.
He had felt it only twice before. Once when Helen had asked him to marry her. Again when he realized that she was dead. For an instant he considered leaving.
His hand resumed its path, his knuckles struck the door, twice, and he stepped back to wait for Nemily’s system to recognize and admit him.
Instead, she opened the door herself.
“Urn...”
“Mace.” She grinned broadly, the gesture pushing her cheeks up and narrowing her eyes.
“Of course.”
She examined him, lower lip caught by her teeth. Self-consciously, Mace clasped his hands behind his back and glanced down the corridor.
“So do I pass?” he asked.
She laughed and moved aside. “Yes, absolutely. Please.” She gave a mock bow and waved him inside.
Nemily wore a dark, shimmering blue dress that looked expensive.
“Is this fine?” she asked. “You didn’t say where...”
“You look “ Mace wanted to undress her and make love, never
mind the rest of the evening’s plans. “Yes, that’s fine. More than fine.”
She stepped close to him. “May I?”
Mace nodded and felt himself tighten as she touched his face, then kissed him. He tried to pay attention to her taste, the feel of her lips moving against his; her tongue stroked along his teeth until he opened his mouth, and the sensations moiled, individual aspects losing distinction. Her hands touched his hair, his neck. She pressed against him.
“It’s all right if you touch me,” she said.
Mace carefully pressed his palms to her hips as she kissed him again. He pulled away.
“We should eat first,” he said thickly. “This time.”
“Where?’5
Mace cleared his throat. “A surprise.” He studied her, then touched two fingers to the back of his own neck and asked, “Sensualist?” “The best way to have dinner.”
“I almost never leave the dom this way,” she said as they walked down the path. “There’s a direct tunnel to the tube platform.”
“We’re not taking the tube.” Mace checked his watch: nineteen-twenty.
“Another surprise?”
“Well....”
As they started along the stretch to the shunt station, the pad above the entrance came into view A gondola squatted ponderously on the slab, its twin rotors spinning lazily at either end, creating a wash of air. A small crowd stood nearby; gondolas rarely landed this far down-shaft.
Nemily stared.
“Our carriage awaits,” Mace said, gesturing grand
ly.
The gondola seated twelve. Four other passengers huddled around a table at the rear, laughing and drinking and eating small cakes. Nemily sat by a window, midway down the length of the cabin. When they lifted off, she pressed a hand against the transparency.
The gondola followed the spin of Aea until it approached the core. It lost angular momentum and gravity lessened noticeably. It followed a leisure corkscrew up the length of Aea toward the northern cap, its rotation just enough to keep everyone in their seats and the food from floating off.
Mace watched Nemily watch, her eyes wide and childlike. Her right hand found his thigh and squeezed.
“It’s beautiful...”
What would it be like, he wondered, to live with all the receivers on all the time... ?
“I made reservations at the Earthview.”
“I didn’t realize you were wealthy.”
Mace brushed the shape of Helen’s pendant through his shirt. “I’m not, really, but it’s been so long since I indulged myself like this...”
“Am I an indulgence?”
“I’d like to indulge you.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
For an instant she looked intolerably fragile, emotions held suspended by a surface tension of vulnerability. Mace did not breathe, wondering which way she would turn. Then she smiled brightly and kissed him. When she drew back her face was flushed and it seemed as though she had transferred her fragility to Mace. He felt tenuous. Not uncertain, but with such a light grasp on his certainty that it might slip from him with the next full revolution of the gondola, snatched by the stepped gravity of the spinning world.
“I’ve been asked to a party later tonight,” she said. “Some friends... I wondered if you’d like to come with me?”
“I’d hoped to spend the whole night with you.”
“Then you’ll come.”
“I think that’s the idea.”
She laughed.
Twenty minutes later, the gondola settled onto the landing pad that extended from the cap wall, just antispinward from the top floor of the restaurant. Private balconies extruded from the top and middle floor and a wide shelf from the lower floor supported an “open air” cafe. A transparency covered the three levels.
The three floors of the Earthview occupied a section of the upshaft cap two-thirds of the way from the core. Two hundred fifty meters above the living surface of Aea substantially lessened g, but not so much as to be a problem for people who had difficulties with food in low gravity.
Mace took Nemily’s arm. “Careful on the stairs.”
Mace escorted her to the top floor entrance. A maitre d’ bowed slightly and led them to a table near the other wall, opposite the transparency overlooking Aea’s interior.
Nemily almost stopped walking as they approached.
The wall showed stars.
“Is that—?”
“No,” Mace said. “Though management wishes it were real.”
She sat down in the chair the maitre d’ held for her.
“But,” Mace continued when the man had left, “it is a real-time projection. They have a live feed from the external monitors. I understand that this whole chamber used to extend all the way to the exterior, part of a research facility in the early days of the second ring.”
“It sounds mythic, doesn’t it?” She deepened her voice, mock dramatic. “‘In the days of the second ring, when space was a vacuum and life was lived between punctures.’“ She laughed. “When you look at Aea it’s hard to imagine when it didn’t exist.” She looked up at the stars again. “But they say there was a time when none of that existed, either.” She sighed and looked back toward the interior. “I suppose it’s a required question for someone who hasn’t been here before—”
“Why is it called the Earthview when you can’t see Earth?”
She nodded.
“‘In the days when it was just the second ring,’“ he intoned, imitating her melodrama, “Earth was visible.” He pointed in the direction of Aea’s interior. “That way. Just over the shoulder of the moon. Then the first ring was moved into position to anchor the first segment. The space between the spokes stayed open. As each ring joined itself to the construction to extend Aea, it was still possible to see Earth from here. The view wasn’t cut off till the outer wall was complete and the opposite cap closed in the interior space.”
Several areas were screened off, giving the place the look of a vast underground chamber with thick ceiling supports. Aural dampers kept the ambient noise low.
“Who’s here tonight?” Nemily asked.
“Shareholders,” Mace said. He glanced from table to table. He indicated a couple sitting three tables away. “Tyler Dickinson, son of Paul and Vera, potential heir to the Kopernike Cartage Company. Kopernike transports raw material from the Belt to the six major orbitals and Lunase. They own four smaller transport firms. Kopernike is over fifty years old. Along with Tower Enterprises, PolyCarb IntraSolar, and We-ber-Schicke-Geston, they’re the closest thing we have up here to ‘old money’ It might not stay a family-owned firm, though, since Tyler there has no interest in it. But he likes to spend its money. He never uses privacy screens because he likes to be seen spending the family fortune.”
“Who’s with him?”
“His sister, Prist.”
“She’s beautiful.”
“Tyler thinks so. Now, over there is Lauris San Cove—”
Nemily’s head snapped around. “The artist?” She followed Mace’s aimed finger. “She’s alone.”
“Usually Not many people can place the face and the name together. You know her work?”
“Yes, it’s incredible.”
“Painting isn’t the most widely appreciated form—”
“It’s making a comeback, they say.”
“Possibly. It may take another decade or two.”
“I hope not that long! Who are these people coming in just now?”
Mace craned his neck to see toward the entrance. The maitre d’ led a group of eight through the maze of tables and blanked private areas. Three men and five women. One of them was Oswald Listrom. He had not seen him since the disciplinary hearing after Hellas Planitia. Cambel Guerrera had defended him then, which had cost her. Listrom, Mace recalled, had been unsympathetic: Mace had abandoned him, his assignment.
“PolyCarb,” Mace said.
“Is that bad?”
“Hmm? Why would it be bad?”
“The way you said it, as if it hurt.”
Mace stared at her until she looked away. “I, uh...my wife and I worked for PolyCarb.”
“Oh.”
As he tried to sort out his reactions, it occurred to Mace that being sensually amped did not necessarily mean everything experienced would be a joy. He watched Nemily’s face as she seemed to fold inward around the knowledge that Mace associated PolyCarb—the company she worked for—with Helen and, presumably, her death. Her eyes dis-focussed and her lips hung open slightly, the image of disconsolate empathy. He stabbed the menu icon on the edge of the table.
“It’s time to explore new flavors,” he said. “There is nothing bad on their entire menu.”
Nemily blinked at the glowing square before her. In swift increments, her eyes cleared and the unhappy moue changed to a slight smile. By the time the waiter arrived, she seemed to have completely forgotten her brief depression.
Conversation ceased during the meal. Salad, clam cakes, angel-hair pasta with a fine olive-and-garlic sauce, spring rolls, fresh bread, and a bottle of merlot... watching Nemily eat, each bite inspected, smelled, savored intensely, startled Mace. He considered himself something of an epicurean, but Nemily’s evident pleasure made him wonder how much he never tasted.
Before dessert he excused himself and made his way to the rest-room.
Only one other person stood at a urinal. The quiet hum of the siphon was the loudest noise in the room. As Mace stepped up to a stall, the other man finished and left.
<
br /> Someone else came in. Mace glanced over his shoulder.
A woman leaned over the sink, carefully washing her hands. She met his eyes in the mirror.
“Mace,” she said.
The voice sounded familiar. He shook himself and sealed his fly, then stepped up to the basin beside her. She was taller than him, broad-shouldered, thick yellow-white hair. He glanced at her hands—wide, powerful—and then remembered that she had come in with the PolyCarb party. He knew what she must be—security.
She finished soaping and rinsed, a smile teasing at the corners of her mouth.
“You don’t recognize me, do you?” she said.
That voice “No, I’m afraid—”
She flicked her hands at the basin, then rubbed her fingertips together in a very familiar gesture.
“Syvestri?”
She grinned. “You must not be paying attention tonight. You must be distracted.”
“Uh-huh. The fact that the last time we spoke, you were male has nothing to do with it.”
She shrugged and slid her hands into the drying slots next to the basin. “Might.”
“When...?”
“Year and a half ago. What do you think?”
“Impressive.”
“You’re supposed to say ‘beautiful’ or lovely’ or something like that. They told me that would be an expected response at the pathic where I had it done.”
“Forgive me. Nobody told me.”
“Forgiven. ‘Impressive’ will do just fine. What’ve you been doing lately, Mace?”
“This and that. Retirement stuff. And just in case you haven’t heard, PolyCarb and I have settled.”
Syvestri looked doubtful. “Really?”
“Yes, really. No more court time, at least not over that. What about you?”
“Still doing personal security for VIPs.” Syvestri leaned closer to the mirror, making a show of checking her hair. “Who’s your companion?”
Mace felt wary now. Syvestri had never learned how to ask an important question innocuously. He—she—always stressed the nonchalance too much and gave away her interest.
“Her name is Nemily. Is there a reason you want to know?”
Syvestri nodded. “A favor returned, Mace. You got me this job and helped me through the first levels. It paid off, that help. I never had a chance to say thank you.” She straightened and turned to face him fully. “Nemily Dollard. She’s on a to-be-watched list. So far it’s entirely an internal PolyCarb matter and it’s very recent. Her name came up in connection to another matter and now she’s under scrutiny.”
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