Horizons

by Mary Rosenblum

  “And you have the North American Alliance’s military platform with those great big guns that they put up there expressly to shoot anybody up here who might think about doing anything they didn’t like,” Terrington’s business partner murmured.

  “Of course.” Jones-Egret smiled. “So you’re perfectly safe.”

  Terrington’s partner and in-tow’s husband were paying very close attention to this conversation.

  Interesting. Ahni blinked their faces into short term memory. She’d run a search on them later.

  ”There is some… feeling that the orbitals should be independent. That’s true,” the Administrator was saying. “But it’s just a lot of hot air… people venting. The media on Earth is blowing it out of proportion.”

  “Bunch of terrorists.” Terrington glared at his empty glass, transferred the glare to a woman who leaned over him to refill it. “I say send the CSF up here and clean the place out before those terrorists start dropping rocks on us.”

  Silence gripped the table.

  “How could rocks hurt?” In-tow asked.

  Ahni thought she was playing the dumb blonde act a bit hard. She looked up and found the Administrator watching her, but he shifted his glance away quickly. Terrington was explaining in graphic detail just how rocks could hurt Earth and In-tow was doing a very nice job of shrinking in horror which seemed to please both hubby and Terrington equally. The other businessman, meanwhile, was carrying on a quiet conversation with Spike Hair. Ahni had realized some time ago that she wasn’t drunk at all.

  Good acting. For whose benefit? By now the delicate creme brulee served for desert had been finished and the wait staff removed the plates.

  The Administrator invited the guests to relax in a loose semicircle of comfortable smart chairs surrounding an actual open fire pit, although the logs were fake, Ahni noted. Brandy was served here, but the peak of the evening had passed and the businessman and his wife started the exodus. Terrington also stumbled off, complaining that they needed CSF up here to teach these spoiled hicks manners. Spike Hair’s bed mate also left, her demeanor sulky and feline.

  Ahni, Terrington’s partner, and Spike Hair settled in with their brandies.

  “You were very quiet tonight.” The Administrator smiled at Ahni. “I hope we didn’t bore you?”

  “Oh, not at all,” Ahni said lightly. “I don’t know anything about the platforms so it was all very interesting.”

  “You traveled on the climber with Mr. and Mrs. Santos.” He contemplated his brandy. Did you have a good trip?”

  The connection finally closed. Santos was a Small Family member of Pacific Fisheries, the huge NAA conglomeration. He had had dealings with Huang Family.

  “I did have a good trip,” she gave him a bland smile. “But of course, my brother dealt with Senor Santos.

  I never actually met him.”

  “Of course.” The Administrator swirled the brandy in his glass, his eyes fixed on the climb of the amber liquid up the curve of the glass.

  Everyone’s attention was fixed on their brandies.

  She didn’t know the password here. “I think it’s time for Huang to look up,” she said lightly. “My father has been stubborn about avoiding commerce with the platforms. But I am more… open to new connections.”

  Clean miss. Their collective lack of response made her wince. Damn.

  “You’ll have to forgive me.” The Administrator gave her an apologetic smile that hid irritation. “I have not met your brother. But I’m delighted to hear that Huang Family is interested in exploring a trade relationship with us up here.” He shifted his glance briefly to Spike Hair.

  “Great dinner you put on. You guys are doing better and better with the hydroponic stuff.” The woman drained her brandy snifter and stretched. “I’d better be off. I’ve got business in Europe to deal with and their morning comes pretty damn soon now. Nice meeting you.” She nodded to the spidersilk manufacturer and to Ahni. “See you around.”

  The Administrator rose, too, and so did the spidersilk manufacturer.

  Meeting adjourned. Ahni let the Administrator usher her out to the entrance and the cart that waited to transport her to her hotel. Spike Hair had already vanished, but the spidersilk manufacturer hung back as Jones-Egret handed her into the cart. Everyone made pleasantries, and as the cart did a U-turn and headed down the corridor toward her hotel room, Ahni saw the Administrator and the manufacturer step back into the room. The meeting hadn’t been adjourned after all. Ahni wondered if Spike Hair would return, too.

  Ahni rode in silence to her hotel, slipped a generous cash card onto the driver’s seat as the woman hopped down to hand her out. Her doorman with the red cornrows was back on duty. She caught his spike of attention as he recognized her, loitered a bit as the cart wheeled away.

  “Your flowers,” he said softly as he bowed her through the door. “Dragon Home by a private courier.”

  Ahni nodded without speaking, slipped a cash card into the man’s hand. “I would like to know the identity of anyone interested in me.” She didn’t wait for his nod, passed through the door and crossed the inner atrium, beneath an Earthly full moon and Milky Way. Northern hemisphere constellations on this platform, of course. Her door opened for her, warm yellow light filled the room, and soft cello murmured in the background. Someone had turned her bed down, left a single tiny rosebud and a chocolate on the pilllow. She sniffed it, smiled at the pheromone load. Laced with a transitory chip so that the hotel could keep track of her. She dropped it into recycle, left her sandals near the door and sat down crosslegged on the dense rug, the spider silk whispering against her skin. Dropped into Pause, the room vanishing.

  Searched for a public acccess for Li Zhen. Found one. “Honored cousin, Li Zhen, I wish to thank you for your so very lovely flowers,” she said in precise Beiijing Mandarin, using all the traditional flourishes of antique etiquette. “You do me much more honor than my worthless self deserves. I humbly wish to express my gratitude to you in person, and perhaps chat about your friend, my esteemed brother Xai Huang. At your convenience. And again, I humbly thank you for your lovely gift of these flowers.”

  She ended the link, then began to research the platform secession movement. Too bad she hadn’t guessed the open sesame for the meeting this evening. She would like to be a fly on the wall right now.

  Negotiations for post-secession trade? The orbital lobby for independence had been gaining ground with the World Council. What did it have to do with Xai? Too tired to think anymore, she let her clothes puddle around her feet, climbed under the silk commforter and pulled it over her. Before she could even turn over, she was asleep.

  EIGHT

  IN THE MORNING, AHNI WENT BACK TO THE PARK WHERE she met Noah. Time to take him up on his invitation to play games in microG, where there would be witnesses if Xai or Li Zhen showed up. It was too early for the lunch crowd he sold to, but he was there, playing a thready melody on a small flute, his portable grill propped against a spreading oak tree. Too large for the space, Ahni thought and realized as her fingertips brushed the rough bark that the crown and branches were holo, that only the bottom part of the trunk was real. Birds even flitted among the branches and a fat gray squirrel chittered at her.

  “Hey, you’re up early.” Noah scrambled to his feet, pocketing his flute. “Did you get some breakfast yet?

  I’ve got half a melon. Real nice one.”

  “Thanks,” she said, and took the thick orange slice he handed her. “Are you working, or can we sneak off?” She wiped juice from her chin. “I really want to try your ball game.”

  “Let’s go.” He bounded to his feet. “People off this sixhour have had breakfast if they’re just getting up, or they’re done with dinner, and the park’ll be filling up. I was just about to head up there. Cleo — my girlfriend — she’ll already be up there, getting together a good pickup scrum. She’s an addict.” He chuckled as he leaned his pack up against the tree beside his grill and scrubbed his han
ds on his singlesuit. “I bet you’ll pick it up in a sec.”

  “You just going to leave that there?” She nodded at the pack.

  “Yeah.” He looked puzzled. “Why not?”

  That said a lot right there. About this world up here in her sky. She smiled. “Why not.”

  They took the elevator upward and when it beeped at them, she slipped into the padded straps as if she had done it every day of her life. This time, when the door slid open at the axle, she squinted automatically, but it wasn’t necessary. The air was bright, with a harsh brilliance that the ‘sunlight’ in the park and the light in the corridors didn’t have, but it was quite bearable. No green here, no planted tubes.

  Instead, thick cables crisscrossed the space. Lots of room to fly and that’s what people were doing.

  Off to her right, a woven lattice offered hand and toe holds along a string of kiosks selling squeezes of juice, tea, and water, skewered snacks, and bright nylon backpacks with small directional air jets for propulsion and steering. “For the tourists.” Noah’s lip curled.”You got cables all over the place.”

  The brightly colored cables seemed to crisscross randomly at first sight, but Ahni noticed that they enclosed several large spherical patches of clear air. In the one just beyond the kiosks and elevator terminal, five skinny figures darted about like thrown spears. Fascinated, Ahni anchored herself with one hand and watched the game. Sure enough… they used a ball, although it had two grip loops attached.

  A stiff mesh bag hung not too far from where she drifted. One of the players grabbed the ball by a loop, her foot twined around a cable, gave the ball a two handed jerk that whipped the man gripping the other loop head over heels. He lost his grip and she was off in a second, kicking off the stiff cable and soaring straight for the bag, the others angling in on trajectories to cross hers.

  She snagged a bright blue cable as she sped by, whipped around it, and shot off at an angle, feet first, toes pointed, evading her closing pursuers neatly and earning a hoot of frustration from the clossest, who grabbed, missed, and spun out of control, grabbing for cables just out of his reach. The ball handler spun 180 degrees around another cable, but this one gave too much to her pull and sent her spiraling, close to out of control. The opposing players were on her now, yelling as they arrowed in, deflecting the ball handler’s teammates who hurtled in to run interference so that they went tumbling, grabbing for cables to kill their momentum, rebounding as they slammed into cables and one another. No helmets, Ahni noticed and winced as a player connected face first with a shoulder at full speed. Rough game.

  With a whoop, Noah launched himself on a flat, shallow trajectory that would take him past the bag. The ball handler caught a caable, whipped around it, and used her momentum to shoot the ball on a perfect intersecting trajectory to Noah. He snagged it, somersaulted around another cable, spilling a lot of momentum, and spun himself feet first toward the bag.

  Yelling, two of the other team hurtled toward him, certain to deflect him before he connected.

  Ahni shrugged, grinned, and kicked off hard from the cable she’d anchored to. It was stiffer than she had guessed, with less give, and she rocketed forward, almost out of control but not quite. Her aim was good and the pair of interceptors weren’t watching for her. She tucked her head, hit the first one hard with her shoulder, heard his yelp as he spun, momentum transferring, caroming off her like a cue ball on a pool table. She’d imparted enough of her force that he hit his teammate. Not hard, but it deflected his trajectory and there was nothing for him to catch, to correct it. Yelling, he missed Noah by a handful of centimeters, writhing wildly as he tried to close that tiny gap.

  With a howl of victory, Noah slammed the ball into the bag and rocked into a series of diminishing somersaults. The other players had spilled their momentum and rescued floundering teammates. They converged on Ahni now, radiating satisfied aggression, pleasure, and curiosity in equal amounts.

  “Cheater, NO all! You weren’t playing!”

  “Neither was she!”

  “Would have been if you’d waited.” Noah grinned. “And Cleo was short, so I figure she’d pick me. I told you!” Noah reached Ahni first, arrowing back to spill most of his momentum on a nearby cable and kill the rest with a resounding slap on her back that sent her tumbling, out of control. “This is Ahni. A friend of mine. Not bad for a downsider, huh?”

  Ahni sensed what was coming and tucked herself into a roll, just as a pair of hands connected and shoved.

  She shot away from the push, felt another, less powerful connection that this time sent her spinning sideways. Initiation? She closed her eyes as blue and green cables spun around her and nausea spiked in her gut. Waiting to see if she panicked? Flailed? Another contact, this time from someone in motion, so that they shared the momentum and she spun off in a new direction. Her stomach protested and she squelched the sensation. How to win? She cracked her eyelids, focused on fleeting glimpses. A cable comming. If nobody hit her…

  Fingertips brushed her, but the pusher had misjudged the trajectory. Now! She flung out her arms, back arching, her straightline path wavering, momentum faltering a hair. The cable slapped her palm and she clamped her fingers around it, readying herself for the jerk on her shoulder joint, her muscles flexing with it, taking up the shock. She whipped around, momentum spilling, and grinned. “Cool.” She laughed.

  “You do this to all the new kids on the block?’”

  The skinny rope-and-bone girl who had headed for the basket laughed with her, diamond inlays glinting in her teeth. “Next game, she’s on my team!”

  “I brought her here, Cleo. She’s mine,” Noah drifted up beside her, grinning, totally pleased with himself.

  “Okay, beer is on me. Tell Jacques at the stand.” He winked at Ahni, offered her a hand. “Nice save.

  You sure you never saw scrum before?”

  “Sure I have.” Ahni grinned and grabbed his wrist. “It’s called ‘pool’ downside. And we’re not the balls.”

  Noah laughed, planted his foot against the cable, swung her into a sharp arc and launched her.

  Ahni had the presence of mind to let go of his wrist and look ahead to see where she was going. Right toward the kiosks, with the rest of the scrum players in a loose scatter around her. She had a moment or two to watch a couple of them deftly grab cables, spinning around them to increase momentum, then arrowing off precisely toward the next cable, zig-zagging feet-first toward their goal. She tried it, did a sloppy launch on the first one, barely had enough momenntum to reach the next cable, did better there, and managed to reach the kiosk under her own power, if not as neatly or as quickly as the rest. From the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of a couple of young kids playing tag… maybe ten years old.

  They darted like fish and looked sort of like Koi.

  “Your downside shows,” the diamond-toothed Cleo said when Ahni caught the guiding cables that fenced the kiosks. “But you do okay for all that.”

  “Ah, she needs practice, is all.” A skinny man with a fuzz of bright red hair and freckles handed her a squeeze.

  Ahni looked for the kids, but they had vanished. She stuck the spout of the squeeze in her mouth.

  “Good,” she said, swallowing rich, bitter beer.

  “Friend of ours makes it, sells it here.” The redheaded man poked his chin toward one of the kiosks.

  “I’m Paul.” He gripped her wrist.

  “Ahni.” One by one they introduced themselves, gripped her wrist. Cleo, Noah’s scrum-addict girlfriend, worked the Con, too, along with Illie, the other girl, a near albino with lavender eyes. Paul made and sold fruit wine locally, the other two players, Jose and Von, worked in Security, one in Customs and the other on patrol. They carried their beers to one of several loose hammocks of netting strung around the kiosks, perched there, one ankle woven through the mesh, orienting in the same direction.

  “We’re here every day,” Cleo told Ahni. “Just hop on up. You gonna be here for a
while?”

  “I don’t know how long I’ll be around.” Ahni grinned. “But I’ll be back. That was fun.”

  “Good way to do some bump and bang, you know?” Illie spoke up, her voice a rich, jazz-singer alto that didn’t go with her snowwqueen color. “Get rid of it when you’re about ready to hit someone.”

  “Some of these creeps heating up the Con oughta come up here more,” Von wiped sweat from his ebony face with the front of his singlesuit. “Energy level is getting hot, down at the skin.”

  “That stuff’s not all for real.” Noah sucked the last drops from his squeeze. “Some of it’s ghosts. Whole bunch all of a sudden.” He shrugged. “Some wise ass dicking around.”

  “Ghosts?” Ahni finished her own beer.

  “People hacking a fake persona, pretending to be real in the Can. You can do it, but the system catches you eventually. Too hard to create really solid ghosts. Keyboard patterns, word use, syntax–they all give you away eventually, and your real name starts showing up. We’ve got a couple of real virtuosos playing hide and seek in there, though.”

  “So who cares?” Cleo made a face, flashing her diamonds. “You know the type–got to prove they can get around the game–they got a bigger dick than you do. Kids and hormones. Doesn’t have anything to do with people getting ticked off skinside.”

  “Well, we’re sure having a lot more trouble with the tourists.” Von stuffed his squeeze into a recycle slot on the side of the closest kiosk. “Everybody’s touchy and I don’t know how many complaints we got just this last week. From silly stuff to a couple of actual fights — like punches, right there in public space.

  Heavies don’t have any manners.” Shaking his head, he waggled his fingers. “I’m off. On shift in a couple of hours. Stuff to do.” With a precise thrust of his foot against the webbing of the hammock, he arrowed away toward the elevator.

  “I think you just got sort of a compliment.” Illie winked at Ahni. “He forgot you’re a downsider.”

  “I figured.” Ahni made a face. “I’d better go, too.” She disposed of her own squeeze. “Thanks for the intro. Next game I’ll buy.” She pushed off and headed for the elevator, looking vainly for the kids she had seen earlier.