She’s clearly happiest as a hunter, so when she kisses me, I accept her passively, opening my arms to receive her embrace. And then her program takes an unexpected twist. “I want to be yours, Kate. Put this on.” She passes me a small-eyed mask. I pull it on while she works at the fastenings of her intricate aristo outfit with digits that shake from overcontrol. “You want to own me, don’t you, dear? I’m yours, your property! Use me!” So the icy aristo harbors secret submissive fantasies, a covert hankering for a strict Creator? I boggle slightly, even as my training takes over, and I start working out how best to satisfy her needs.
Later, as I’m lying exhausted and glistening beside her, she turns her head slightly and smiles at me. “I know what you are,” she whispers.
“What am I?” I can barely speak; my metabolic debt is high. I haven’t had a workout like this since I bedded Paris—Granita is a very demanding sub.
“I’ve met your kind before. Your disguise is very good, but your primary conditioning gives you away.”
I sigh, very quietly. I was afraid of this—but I’ve got a secondary cover ready and waiting. “What am I?” I ask again.
“You’re no runaway serf, certainly. But your kind make poor aristocrats, dear. It stands out like a sore ...” She glances down at her chest and tugs on her bonds: I take the hint, and unstrap her hand. “You have too much empathy for this age. You were never designed to hold and to own. Are you certain you don’t need a protector? I’d make a place of honor for you in my household—dress you in blackened steel armor and call you my mistress—”
For a moment I picture my life as this ancient slave-owning aristo’s house dominatrix. Not indentured but a free associate—indentured arbeiters, fitted with slave chips and stripped of their free will, simply can’t perform this calling—brandishing a barbed whip at her word. A pampered favorite, as long as I can avoid looking her beneficence in the eye. “I’d love to, but I have a prior commitment,” I say. And it’s true. I would love it—I love to be wanted—but I’d feel corrupted by it, too, not by the sex but by knowing the source of her wealth. Of all the other bodies chained by her word, unwilling and unable to resist.
“You didn’t just bring me here for a quick fuck, did you?”
She makes an odd noise. After a moment I recognize it as a chuckle. “Oh child, you’re delightful. No, of course I didn’t.” She falls silent.
“Why, then?”
“Ah, me. One becomes paranoid in one’s old age; do I surprise you? One learns to jump at shadows . . . you’re very similar to my personal nemesis, Kate. Don’t look so surprised; assassins and spies have disguised themselves as concubines and lovers since the dawn of creation. Surely this can’t be news to you? I had to make sure.”
An ugly fear twists at the edges of my awareness. “What have you done?”
She runs a fingertip idly along my ribs, leaving a trail in the thin sheen of silicone sweat. “I had my retainers search your compartment,” she admits. “Certain parties—a consortium of black labs, run by a fellow known as Dr. Sleepless—is trying to smuggle a living weapon to Mars. One of my sources thought you might be the courier. But I must apologize—they were wrong.”
I shiver. “What kind of living weapon?” I ask coolly, forcing myself to keep my hand away from the pit of my stomach.
“A—a fully autonomous piece of pink goo,” she says reluctantly. “A generator module able to produce more of its own kind.” It’s her turn to shudder now. “Horrible!”
“But you know it’s not me,” I insist angrily. “Why did you do it?”
“I’m—” She pauses: “I’m sorry, Kate. I should not have suspected you, but I had to be sure. The enemy is not above using your kind as couriers.” She reaches out to me, and I shove her hand away with carefully calculated anger, narrowing my achingly oversized eyes at her.
If only you knew ...
Small Bodies, Loosely Coupled
WHEN THINGS GO wrong in space, they tend to go wrong with very little warning. This time it’s an exception.
We’re on day eighty-eight of the cruise. After a stormy argument and a sulky three-day cooling-off period, I allowed Granita to woo me back into her web, where her submissive contrition and shameless self-abasement went a long way to assuaging my indignation. Who knew? It can’t be easy being a ruthless industrialist by day and yearning for the kiss of a Creator’s lash by night. So we use each other furtively, working out a wary accommodation until we fetch up gasping on the far shore of ecstasy. It must be making us the talk of the saloon, but Granita is old enough and ruthless enough that she doesn’t care—and as for myself, I’m used to being a freak.
So when Pygmalion electrospeaks me one night in my stateroom, she takes me completely by surprise.
“Lady Sorico,” says the ship, “we have a problem.”
I boot straight into wakefulness from a confusing dream of pole-dancing dwarfs. I’m alone in my room; Bill and Ben are elsewhere, doing whatever it is that they get up to in the night. My precious cargo is a warm ovoid pressure inside me, where a Creator female would harbor her reproductive fabricator. For a dreadful moment I think Pygmalion has scanned me and recognized it for what it is, but the moment passes. “What’s happening?” I reply.
“There’s an unexplained latency whenever I try and talk to traffic control. Packets are taking too long to get through. And I’ve just noticed that we are not alone out here.”
“Not alone?”
“Let me draw you a diagram.”
We’ve been on final approach to Marsport for the past week, and we’re still decelerating at a hundredth of a gee, with more than a day to go. We’ve got nearly ten kilometers per second of delta vee to shed before Mars can capture us. Our plasma sail—a huge and tenuous shell of gas, held in place by carefully controlled magnetic fields—is still inflated, billowing as it responds to the braking magbeam from our destination. At less than half a million kilometers, Mars is showing a visible disk, but we’re not in parking orbit yet.
“We are here,” Pygmalion indicates. “The ping time to Marsport should be three seconds. Instead, it’s more like six, and there is unaccountable corruption as well. Almost a quarter of my data is showing signs of tampering.”
Whoops. “Why are you telling me this?” I ask cautiously. “Surely it’s a matter for traffic control, or all the passengers...”
“Higgins Line’s security office performs predictive risk assessment on all paying fares,” Pygmalion says blandly. “Especially ones who have paid for extra services. Two passengers were identified as possible targets for interference. You are one of them. The other is the Venerable Granita Ford, with whom you may be intimately familiar.”
“Her I can understand, she’s loaded! But why me—”
“Higgins Line is aware that your ticket was purchased through the offices of Jeeves Corporation. Jeeves Corporation simultaneously purchased a number of tickets on behalf of various other persons traveling via other lines. Three of them have been assassinated as of this date.” She continues, palpably smug: “Higgins Line has never lost a passenger to external attack, and we have no intention of starting now. Even more so in view of the special arrangements surrounding your passage. However, my threat-assessment agent tells me that there is a seventy percent probability that an attempt will be made on your life prior to our arrival in orbit, and the corruption of my external communication link suggests that infiltrators are already aboard this ship.”
“Oh dear.” I lie tensely in my bed, fighting the urge to swear aloud. “What do you propose to do?”
“Allow me to continue?” Pygmalion sounds slightly piqued at my lack of panic.
I take a second to compose myself. “Go ahead.”
“An hour ago I requested a routine long-range traffic update from Marsport. As you may be aware, the Pink Police are conducting audits of all orbital traffic. There appears to be a ship inbound for Marsport on a schedule coincident with our own and approximately a thousand seconds
ahead of us which was not mentioned in my traffic update. Furthermore, the vessel appears to be a coaster, designed for low-impulse high-thrust maneuvering. I do not have its full flight plan, and do not intend to request it, but I should note that it strongly resembles a type previously employed by the Pink Police as a boarding craft. Of course, mere resemblance is not evidence of identity, and the current security alert would be an excellent cover for parties interested in carrying out nefarious activities—such as illicitly boarding commercial vessels.”
“Okay.” I think hard before I ask my next question. “When do you expect them to intercept us?”
“We have about twelve hours. And I can’t outmaneuver them.” Pygmalion pauses. “But I have a suggestion...”
IF ONE WISHES to live to a ripe old age, there are certain activities one should avoid. Chief among these is eating anything larger than one’s own head—but not so very far down the list is any activity that involves clambering around the outside of a spaceship. This is especially true when the ship in question is an interplanetary liner that is under acceleration, and its propulsion system involves rotating magnetic fields that generate currents in the mega-amp range in the plasma envelope surrounding it. Get too close to the drive antennae, or accidentally short out the plasma loop against the ship’s hull, and if you’re lucky, you’ll simply die. If you’re unlucky, well, internal electrophoresis is famously neither quick nor painless.
Which is why I’m sitting in Pygmalion’s aft maintenance air lock, my graveyard strapped to my chest inside a hastily woven black-painted chain-mail suit, clutching one end of a rope threaded with a fiber-optic bearer. I’m about to jump overboard, and I’ll be aiming right for that plasma envelope.
“This cannot be good,” says Bill, or maybe Ben. “How about we gut her, stash the payload, and claim the reward?”
“You’re just afraid of heights,” sneers Ben, or maybe Bill. “Anyway, the payload’s environment-sensitive. Like the boss said, it won’t hatch without the freak. We need her alive.”
“You don’t scare me,” I say, dangling my feet over the blue-glowing abyss. “Can either of you see the ship yet?”
“Naah.”
“Good.” It was visible a minute ago, before our slow roll took it out of view over the near horizon of Pygmalion’s hull. I lean forward, feeling viscerally ill but unwilling to admit it in front of my two oafish assistants. “Okay, you two, climb aboard.”
Bill (or Ben) bounces toward me and clings to my shoulders. He’s got the activation unit for my payload strapped to his back like a miniature pack. I roll forward slowly and drift down and out of the air lock, clinging to the edge by one hand. The two bags that my salvation depends on—one empty and one full—hang from my belt. With my free hand I hold the end of the cable where Ben (or Bill) can get it. “Can you see the socket?”
“In sight.” They’re all business, now we’re overboard. “Got it.” I look up, my vision hampered by the narrow eye slot that’s the only gap in my suit. His tiny fingers are working feverishly, lashing the cable to one of the emergency handholds under the air lock lip. The fiber-optic jack goes into a comms socket. Then another chibi-head peers over the side of the hatch.
“Move it!” He whispers. “They’ll be coming over the horizon in another minute.”
“Just finishing up. Okay, close it now.” I dangle from the cable while Bill and Ben shut the air-lock door and clamber down my back. “Make with the sack, manikin.”
“Done.” I hold the empty bag open while they climb inside, then wire it shut and double-check that it’s fastened to my belt. It balances out the other, full bag on the opposite side. I start reeling out the cable, lowering myself down toward the fuzzy blue floor beneath me.
The fuzz is the plasma magnet that Pygmalion’s M2P2 sail depends on. Powerful radio transmitters ionize the gas and induce electrical currents in it, generating a magnetic field that blocks the solar wind. We’re dropping headlong toward Mars, straight into the braking magbeam from Phobos, with the ten-kilometer-wide plasma bubble balanced between ship and destination. I’m lowering myself into it on the end of an insulating cable, wearing a half-assed hot suit I ran up on my stateroom’s printer. A funny thing about plasma bubbles is that they tend to block radar. Dangling at the end of a fifty-meter-long cable, wearing a black conductive suit, Bill and Ben and I are going to be invisible to the intruder—I hope. I try not to think about the alternatives. Maybe I got the chain weave wrong and I’m going to cook from the inside out; or maybe they’re going to locate us optically and reel us in at their leisure. Worse, maybe Pygmalion miscalculated on the length of the tether? If the plasma sail is too thin, we’re going to end up lethally exposed, dangling in the middle of the magbeam from Mars like a dust mote before a blowtorch. Neither fate is anything to look forward to, but it beats cowering in my stateroom as the bulls come stomping through the air lock.
My skin crawls briefly as we near the plasma shell, then we’re inside. A couple of blue sparks flash across the surface of my chain-mail hot suit, but there’s no arcing. A mimetic reflex makes me try to breathe a sigh of relief, which is very disconcerting in vacuum. Down. The empty gulf swings below me, as the ship decelerates at ten centimeters per second squared. From this side of the barrier the far side of the magsail is almost invisible, many kilometers away.
I hang in the bubble, with nothing to do but watch my power consumption and keep an eye on the stealthy feed Pygmalion has fed to Bill and Ben. I’ve got maybe twelve hours before I have to start shutting down limbs to save juice. In the worst case, I’ll have to rely on the terrible twosome to get me out of here when Pygmalion reaches Marsport and powers down her sail. But at least I’ve got a good view of the other passengers. Which is why I’m watching events in the saloon, with mixed feelings of boredom and wistfulness, when things start to happen.
It’s early morning, shipboard time, and Pygmalion has alerted everybody that something is happening. The Lyrae twins squat in their usual corner, stolidly chewing their way through a platter of pancakes. Reza Agile and Sinbad-15 sit nearby, sharing a go board while Mary X. Valusia dances attendance to Granita’s entourage, who are gathered in a gaggle at the opposite end of the saloon from the dreadful duo. As for the venerable Granita Ford herself—
“Attention.” Brash electrospeak ripples through my head, forwarded from Pygmalion’s general announcement feed: I tense. “Attention passengers and spacecraft Pygmalion. This is Port Control. You are ordered to stand to for boarding and inspection. A police cutter will come alongside shortly. Any resistance constitutes a violation of quarantine regulations and will be punished severely.”
“What?” shouts Reza Agile, jumping so suddenly that she bounces off the ceiling. “What’s going on? Ship! Are we delayed, or waylaid? I demand an explanation!” Then she’s drowned out by a hubbub from the other passengers.
“Attention. Coming alongside now.”
“It was too good to be true,” Sinbad-15 moans.
“Has anyone seen the other passengers today?” One of the Lyrae twins asks thoughtfully. “I find it interesting that Ford and her floozy are absent.”
“It’s a conspiracy!” Agile is clearly very agitated indeed. “She’s been studying us for the entire voyage—she’s going to have her minions chip and file us! We’re being press-ganged!”
At which precise moment Granita storms into the saloon. Two arbeiters trail behind, desperately battling to finish dressing her. “What is this disturbance about?” she demands.
“Attention! You will comply with all instructions on pain of immediate arrest. We are coming aboard now.”
I look away from my stealth feed. Above me, beyond the blue nimbus of the drive field, I see a slim black knife shape. Painfully bright lights flash on and off along its flanks as it maneuvers toward the Pygmalion . Lightning plays across the glowing magsail ceiling; the intruder’s exhaust stream is doing strange things to the plasma bubble.
“Hey, do you see that?” (I
stitched a patch cable into the neck of my sack of troublesome assistants, just in case I needed their withering sarcasm for a change. Now it seems like a good thing I took the precaution. ) “Do we need to think about moving?”
“Yep.” I can’t tell whether it’s Bill or Ben, but he doesn’t sound happy. “Looks like a VASIMR on high thrust. They can’t hold it for long, but if they don’t dock quickly, it’ll short out the plasma bubble. Look down.”
I take his advice, and wish I hadn’t. The blue nowhere beneath my feet is rippling and shimmering like an ocean surface before a storm front. Pinpricks stipple it like rust. “That’s not good, is it?”
“I think it’s going to be alright,” says Ben, or Bill—the other one, anyway. “They’re on final approach. Won’t be long now. Look at it move! That’s military thrust, alright.”
I look back at the approaching intruder. Pirates? Or police? I’m not sure it really matters at this point. Neither of them would be good news. The ship is slim and smooth-edged, with triangular-tiled surfaces that make my eyes hurt as I try to trace its outline. The stubby cone of its main drive is just visible now, the bell nozzle glowing violet-hot even through the hazy plasma overcast. It sideslips toward Pygmalion, and for almost a minute I’m frozen with fear, terrified that it’s going to ram the ship we dangle from, or quench the ionized bubble, or angle its main engine just wrong and blast us all to white-hot shrapnel with its plasma rocket . . .
Then the glare vanishes, and there’s a ripple in the cable that tells me the two ships have locked together above us. And part of me realizes, Of course. They don’t want to destabilize the sail, not with us riding the Phobos magbeam on final approach.
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