Infinite Stars

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  “Be well,” Aristide said, escorting her to his apartment’s door, and she nodded. Be careful, was what he really meant, but it probably would have been impolitic to point that out.

  * * *

  Eloise rode the lift downward and muttered balefully as she checked her chrono. She hated leaving Estelle waiting for her at the diner, and she’d allowed plenty of time for the trip… she’d thought. But that was before the delay on Hundred-Fifty. She didn’t know what had caused the holdup—not officially—but she suspected she wouldn’t have liked the answer if she’d known it. The regular uniformed Shaft Police keeping the lifts shut down hadn’t been answering any questions. In fact, they hadn’t been saying anything, and that usually indicated that one of the federal police agencies—usually InSec or Mental Hygiene—was involved. Which, in turn, meant that some hapless “malcontent” or “anti-social provocateur” was being dragged from her apartment.

  It was bad enough to be running late, but the suspicion that government thugs were hauling yet another citizen off, probably to disappear forever, had put her in a truly foul mood. At least whoever it was, she—or they; there was no reason there couldn’t be more of them, and InSec, especially, preferred to arrest entire families “just in case”—wasn’t one of the Pritcharts’ neighbors. The raid was taking someplace between One-Fifty and One Hundred, judging from where the lifts were shut down, which meant it almost certainly wasn’t someone Eloise knew personally.

  And wasn’t it a hell of a note when that was the closest thing to a bright side she could find?

  She checked the time again as her current lift car slid to a halt. Unlike many of Nouveau Paris’s newer towers, Duquesne used zonal “half-century” lift s, with dedicated shafts serving each fifty floors. Passengers had to change lifts at each boundary, but the system precluded the kind of wait times to which even a high-speed lift was subject if it served a tower’s full three or four hundred—or, for that matter, five hundred, in the newer towers—floors. The problem was potentially even worse in those taller, newer towers, but most of them had been built with smart shafts, with multiple lift cars and bypass shunting sections. Each smart shaft could handle up to a dozen cars simultaneously, with the computers keeping track of them and moving them out of one another’s way when necessary. It would have been nice if Duquesne had boasted the same technology, but it hadn’t been available when the older tower was built. And, predictably, none of the bureaus and agencies theoretically responsible for maintaining and updating Duquesne had any interest in investing the funds to make it available here.

  She’d already changed lifts twice since leaving the Cardot apartment, including the sixty-eight-minute delay on One-Fifty, and she’d have to change twice more before she reached ground level. Most of the trip didn’t bother her, but the next change was on Floor Fifty, and that was something else. That was where The Terraces, with almost 200,000 square meters of floor space, had once been one of Duquesne Tower’s crown jewels. Located at the transfer point of two of the residential floors’ main banks of dedicated lift shafts, it had served almost 800,000 people. That had been a sufficient volume of customers to make it a highly profitable location even in the People’s Republic of Haven.

  Until fifteen or twenty T-years ago, at least.

  Eloise could remember childhood trips to The Terraces. Trips when her mother had been laughing and happy, when they’d shared ice-cream cones while they dabbled their feet in one of the fountains. When there’d been shopkeepers and clerks who’d actually looked customers in the eye, smiled, greeted them courteously, sometimes even known them by name.

  But then, probably inevitably, the endemic corruption had changed that. First the floor police force had begun charging higher and higher prices for “protection,” and the independents had found themselves being forced out. As they’d begun going under, cronies of the local Dolist manager and fronts for his Legislaturalist friends had made them fire-sale offers for their shops. One by one, they’d vanished, merged into far larger stores which relied upon the fact that they had a captive market rather than the quality of the service and the goods they offered. The taxes—although, of course, they were officially only “service and handling charges”—on goods ordered from somewhere outside Duquesne meant that only the tower’s wealthier residents could avoid The Terraces or one of the other smaller, less conveniently located, and more poorly stocked malls. And, of course, there were very few wealthy residents in Duquesne. People that adjective described could always find better places to live.

  And so The Terraces had deteriorated, slowly at first, but with gathering momentum, into someplace shoppers avoided after hours and where prudent people—especially women and girls—never ventured alone, regardless of the time of day. A place where gangs—both youth gangs and those not so young—routinely robbed and beat customers, more often for fun than for profit, as far as Eloise could tell.

  She and Estelle could have avoided The Terraces by using the Beta Bank of lift s, but that would have cost them a full hour of extra transit time between shafts… and that was if the slidewalks were up and running, which they often weren’t. Still, if things got much worse at Fifty, they’d just have to bite the bullet and change their route, and wouldn’t that suck?

  And at that, she thought now, as the lift car stopped, it’s still better than the situation on Eighth. The only good thing about Eighth is that we go right past it, so unless somebody gets on as we go by…

  She stood with one hand in her left hip pocket and the other in the right jacket pocket as the lift car slid to a halt. There were six men and seven other women in the car with her, and perhaps two or three dozen people from other floors were changing shafts when the doors opened. She saw no sign of any of the competing gangs’ colors, which made a nice change, but she didn’t take her hands out of her pockets. At least one of the other women in her car had a hand in her pocket, too, Eloise noted, and wondered what sort of “little friend” the other might be carrying.

  She moved smoothly, confidently across to the next bank of lift s, her eyes sweeping the concourse steadily and alertly. The best way to avoid trouble, as she’d pointed out to Kevin, was to see it before it saw her, and though her expression never so much as flickered, she drew a breath of relief as she made it to the appropriate shaft, stepped into the car, and started it downward once more.

  Now all I have to do is get past Eighth, she told herself. Piece of cake.

  * * *

  Eloise’s eyes widened in shock as she stepped off the slidewalk outside the tube station in Subbasement One and saw the cordon of yellow holo flashers around Jorge’s Diner. The diner’s windows were smashed, its doors were jammed in the open position, drunkenly crooked on their tracks, and a uniformed floor cop in full riot gear stood in front of the door.

  His eyes flitted to Eloise as she left the slidewalk and his right hand moved to the pulser holstered at his hip, but he didn’t draw the weapon. The armorplast visor of his helmet was up, and he watched her with neither the interest she saw in most men’s eyes nor the boredom or hostility she saw in too many cops’ eyes.

  “Help you, Citizen?” he asked gruffly as she came to a halt.

  “My… my sister works here,” she said. “I walk her home at the end of every shift. What… what happened?”

  “Can’t rightly say,” he told her, taking his hand from his pulser, and she heard a note of sympathy in his voice. “We caught the call about an hour ago, I guess. Passer-by said there was some kind of riot going on. By the time we got here, the place was trashed. Found a guy we think is the owner from his ID back in the kitchen. He didn’t look good, but medevac got here faster than usual, and I’m pretty sure he’ll make it. He’s in the clinic over off Broad and Vine. Know where it is?”

  “Yeah,” she said even as ice flowed through her veins. “It’s four or five blocks from here. You say you found Jorge—I mean the owner?”

  “Yep,” the floor cop said, and her muscles tightened as his to
ne answered the question she’d been going to ask next. But she went ahead anyway, almost as if her vocal cords belonged to someone else.

  “And my sister?”

  “Nobody here but him. I’m sorry,” the cop told her compassionately.

  “And you don’t have any idea what happened?” she asked desperately.

  “Not any more than the original call,” he said, “but I noticed that.” He pointed, and her eyes followed the gesture to a shattered camera. “I happen to know that camera and the two between here and the Alpha Bank were up and running when I went on duty this morning. They aren’t now. And there’s new gang graffiti on the wall under the camera right outside the lift s. That wasn’t there this morning, either.”

  “Did you recognize which gang’s?” she heard herself ask.

  “Not one of ours. Looks like the Hellhounds. They’re from up—”

  “Up on Fifty,” she finished for him, her voice as grim as her topaz eyes. “The Terraces.”

  “That’s what our gang warfare unit tells me, anyway,” the cop agreed. “We didn’t know there was any staff here besides the owner, so we didn’t put out an AFB on her. I can do that now, if you’ll give me a description.”

  “She looks like me,” Eloise said bleakly. “She looks exactly like me.”

  Something flickered deep in the cop’s eyes, and she remembered her discussion with Kevin.

  “I’ll put it on the full tower net,” he promised her, reaching for the button of his com.

  “Thank you,” she said, but she knew as well as he did that an All-Floors Bulletin wouldn’t do a damned bit of good if it had been the Hellhounds. No one on Fifty was going to risk her life by telling anybody anything about the Hellhounds. And even if someone had been willing to, the Fifty Floor Police would never go after a gang that powerful over something as trivial as a single missing young Dolist woman no one could prove was even anywhere in their hypothetical jurisdiction.

  “All floors, be on the lookout—”

  The cop broke off as Eloise turned toward the outbound slidewalk.

  “Where you going?” he asked sharply, and she paused to look back at him.

  “To find my sister.” Her voice was flat, unyielding as steel. For a moment, she thought he might try to stop her. But then his lips thinned and he shook his head instead, his eyes dark.

  “You be careful up there,” he told her quietly. “You be real careful up there. Won’t do your sister any good if you get yourself killed.”

  At least he hadn’t said “get yourself killed, too,” she reflected. Maybe he was an optimist.

  “Oh, I’ll be careful,” she told him softly. “Thanks.”

  He nodded again as she turned once more for the slidewalk. Behind her, she heard him speaking into his com once more.

  Not that it was going to do any good.

  * * *

  She got off the lift at Fifty.

  The handful of other passengers with whom she’d shared the car flowed around her as she stood motionless in the middle of the lift concourse. She didn’t know any of them. She hadn’t spoken to any of them as they rode up with her, and none of them had tried to speak to her. She didn’t know what they’d seen in her eyes, but a couple had looked at her oddly, even warily. Now they all moved away from her more rapidly than usual, even for people changing lifts on Fifty.

  She realized she didn’t have the least idea what to do, how to begin. The thought of going to the floor cops didn’t even occur to her, but what could one woman possibly hope to accomplish? It was insane, and she knew it, but that didn’t matter. All she could think of was Estelle, and she made herself draw a deep breath, turned, and strode into The Terraces.

  She took a hair tie from her pocket as she walked, reached back, and gathered her long, gleaming hair into the ponytail she wore during her workouts with Kevin. Then she drew her baton, holding it reversed against the inside of her left forearm, instantly ready yet effectively invisible. That, too, was something she practiced regularly, but the familiar weight, the familiar pressure against her forearm, was less reassuring today.

  Kevin had often remarked on her “situational awareness,” and he’d helped her devise exercises and contests to keep it honed. Now her eyes swept back and forth and her hearing seemed preternaturally sharp. Even the pores of her skin seemed to vibrate like tiny sensors, and her mind was a hollow, singing stillness. She didn’t even think, not really. She just walked into the refuse-strewn wasteland which was all that remained of the vast, thriving mall her childhood memories recalled.

  There were people about, even here. Most were dressed even more flashily—and cheaply—than the Dolist norm, and many of them wore colored scarfs which identified the floor gang to whom they paid protection. Whether or not to wear them, and when, was always a judgment call, that icy hollowness at her core reflected. When the gang front was fairly quiet, rivals tended to leave one another’s “clients” in peace, lest they provoke retaliation against their own. When gangs went to war—which happened depressingly often—the scarves only served to better identify targets of opportunity.

  Eloise and Estelle had always eschewed the bright colors and cheap costume jewelry the majority of Dolists favored. Now, a bubble seemed to form about her as she passed through that gaudier sea of color in her dark trousers, dark-blue jacket and long-sleeved white blouse, its tailored severity relieved only by touches of embroidery at collar and cuffs. The Terrace’s denizens had the wary, well-honed instincts of any prey animal. They recognized the intruder and probably wondered what insanity had brought a single woman here all by herself.

  She walked on, deeper into the dilapidated mall, and the bubble moved with her. Five minutes she walked. Ten.

  “Honey,” a voice said quietly. She turned her head and saw an older woman—or one who’d lived the sort of life that aged someone, at any rate. “Honey, was I you, I’d go home,” the other woman said. She glanced around nervously. “Woman looks like you, doesn’t come from around here, doesn’t wear one of these,” she touched the red-, black-, and yellow-checked ganger scarf around her own neck, “she doesn’t make out well. Go home.”

  “I’m looking for someone,” Eloise replied, her voice calm. Then the colors of that scarf registered. “Maybe you could tell me where to find her.”

  “I don’t know nothing about any off-floor people,” the other woman said more sharply. She started to step back, but Eloise’s right hand fastened on her forearm. The woman’s eyes widened at the power of that grip. She tried to jerk free, but she couldn’t.

  “I’m looking for the Hellhounds,” Eloise said, twitching her head at that telltale scarf. “Where could I find them?”

  “You’re crazy,” the woman whispered, shaking her head violently. “You’re gonna get yourself killed!”

  “Maybe,” Eloise conceded emptily. “Where can I find them?”

  The woman stared at her for perhaps ten seconds, licking her lips nervously. Then she drew a deep breath.

  “Down that way.” She twitched her head. “Hankies—it’s a bar, belongs to the Hounds. Usually some of ’em hanging out there. But you don’t want no part of those people! Trust me—you don’t.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” Eloise told her, and released her grip.

  She started in the indicated direction. Her informant stared after her, then shook her head and moved rapidly in opposite way.

  * * *

  Hankies was exactly the sort of bar Eloise usually avoided like the plague.

  The flashing holo sign above the door showed a naked, improbably endowed woman holding a single strategically placed lacy handkerchief. It was as tasteless as it was flashy, and it needed maintenance. So did the rest of the bar, for that matter. Two thirds of the windowed wall looking out over the mall’s promenade were sparkling clean; the center third was streaked and dirty. Clearly someone had replaced the original self-cleaning smart crystoplast with a cheaper substitute, and that central third was littered with the graffi
ti which wouldn’t cling to the surviving self-cleaning panels.

  The fire-breathing dog’s head of the Hellhounds was prominent among them.

  Her stride never paused. The doors slid open, a little haltingly, before her and admitted her to a dim, dark cave that smelled of stale beer, spilled drinks, and at least half a dozen of the more popular smoked and inhaled recreational drugs, all with a faint but unmistakable garnish of urine.

  Somewhat to her surprise, it was deserted when she walked in. There wasn’t even a bartender behind the streaked and grimy bar or keeping an eye on the self-service dispensers along one wall.

  She started to turn on her heel, but she changed her mind. Instead, she crossed to a corner table, choosing one that would let her sit with solid walls on two sides, and pulled out a chair. She couldn’t see the chair seat clearly in the poor lighting, which was probably a good thing, judging by the condition of the tabletop and the floor.

  She sat, laying the baton in her lap, and leaned the back of her skull against the wall. Under her brain’s icy calm a voice she recognized screamed that she had to be up, had to be out, had to be looking for Estelle. But that cold stillness knew better. Racing around, hunting blindly, would achieve nothing. She needed to know where to hunt.

  Minutes trickled past while she sat there, forcing herself not to think. To simply be there, waiting. And then the doors opened again and a tallish, dark-haired young man in an especially gaudy, tasteless red, black, and yellow jacket sauntered arrogantly through them.

  The newcomer glanced around casually, but he didn’t notice Eloise as she sat motionless at her corner table. Instead, he crossed to the bar and leaned over it, looking both directions. Then he snorted harshly and smacked his palm on a glowing square set into the top of the bar. A bell clanged discordantly.

  “Marcel!” he bellowed. “Damn it, Marcel! You’re supposed to be watching the frigging bar!”