by Sean Danker
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. Have a good evening.”
He smiled at us and left the shop. The android clerk had come out from behind the counter and was sweeping the floor. She paused by the big device that I recognized as a music cabinet, or something like that.
“Would you like to hear a song?” she asked, beaming at us.
“No, thanks.”
She went back to cleaning. The two women at the table by the window watched Cyril go, then swooped down on us. I’d expected that.
“So who are you guys?” the taller one asked, taking the stool behind me. The other one moved in on Sei. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I replied. “I’m just not good with sleepers. I’m having a bad wake-up. We’re just visitors. We’re taking a look.”
“Oh—oh, you’re thinking of joining us,” the shorter one said, breaking into a wide smile. “What’s your background?”
“Well,” I replied, looking at Sei, “we’re both former military.”
The two women exchanged a look. “Oh,” the tall one said, looking impressed. “You must’ve seen some things.”
“You could say that,” Sei replied. He was as puzzled as I was, but he knew better than to let on. Neither one of us knew what to expect from these people, but this exchange didn’t feel quite right.
“Can you tell us anything about Cyril?” I asked, eating a spoonful of my malt. “We like it here, but he’s the one we’re not sure about.”
“Cyril’s amazing,” the shorter woman said immediately, and I could tell she meant it. There was so much positive energy radiating from her that it was a little stifling. Was this what happened when you lived the simple life?
“What do you mean?” Sei asked.
“He knows things,” the taller one said.
“What kinds of things?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Things that . . . you wouldn’t expect him to know. He’s special.”
“Is he an empath?”
“No, not like that.”
Interesting.
“So,” the shorter one said, eyes lighting up, “you want to come with us? We can show you around.”
I put my arm around Sei and pulled him close. “It’s been a long one,” I said. They could see how bad I looked—let them think it was exhaustion. “We’re probably about to turn in.”
Surprised, they drew back a little.
“But we’ll see you around,” I added.
They excused themselves and left the shop.
Now Sei and I were alone with the android. I let him go and rubbed my chin, thinking hard.
“I didn’t expect that,” Sei said.
“We don’t have time for them right now.”
He saw me gazing at the android.
“You said she was a negotiator, right? Your girl?” He looked concerned.
“Yeah, she is.” Why was he asking this?
“Then she’ll be fine. It’s actually kind of rude to worry about her.”
I looked down at my malt. There was a misunderstanding here. I felt a stab of guilt; I hadn’t been thinking about Salmagard at all. Wherever she was, she was fine. She knew how to take care of herself.
He raised an eyebrow. “If not her, then what is it? What’s wrong? These guys are insane—but they seem okay.”
I sat up and turned around to lean on the counter, gazing out the window. The foot traffic out there had slowed down; it was getting dark. I didn’t think I had to worry about the android clerk overhearing what I was about to say.
“He’s going to kill us.”
Sei choked, setting down his malt and thumping his chest with a fist. “What? How do you get that?”
“Just adding it up. He’s trying too hard to put us at ease, setting a short deadline for a promise he knows he can’t make good on. He said we’d have answers in the morning. That means we’re not going to live that long. He didn’t even ask for our names. He doesn’t expect us to be in his life long enough for them to matter. He’ll make his move tonight.”
Sei didn’t want to believe me, and I didn’t blame him. But he wasn’t stupid. He’d been in combat. He wasn’t boxed in by the false sense of security that living in polite society tended to give people—he wouldn’t close his eyes to danger just because he didn’t like it. He sighed.
“We surprised him by waking up, didn’t we?”
I nodded. “I’m not sure we were ever supposed to wake up. In fact—we definitely weren’t.”
“But he answered all your questions.”
“The answers don’t hold up. He admitted it himself—this is a modern place full of modern people. There’s no reason to physically bring living humans here for reproductive purposes, not if there’s no religious reason that they have to do it that way. They can keep their gene pool fresh with a chemistry set. That was all just talk. He was stalling us, buying himself time. Telling us something we might not mind hearing. I mean, who doesn’t want to get laid, right? Tell people things they like, and they don’t ask questions.”
“Buying time for what?” Sei asked, turning serious. We both looked out the window at the street.
“Time to figure out what to do about us. He’s good. He knows how to adapt. He was winging it the whole time he was with us, and half of it had me convinced. And we can’t get in front of this until we know who these people really are.”
“You don’t think we have a good chance?”
“I don’t know what our chances are. I’m not saying our case is closed here. I’ve got a lot left to do, so I’d like to find a way out of this.”
“Gotta get back to that girl.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. If we do get off this planet alive, I think I’ll stay away from her. I’ve done enough damage.”
“I don’t know your story.” Sei rubbed tiredly at his eyes. “But if you really think we’re in danger, we should worry about our love lives later.”
“I do.” I tried to focus.
Sei had a future. If he made it out of this, he actually had things to look forward to. I’d try to be considerate about that if I could.
“The people here definitely know something. They were all excited to see us, though,” he said.
“But it wasn’t the right kind of excited,” I told him. “I’m not sure what that’s about, but I don’t like it. And he’s lying about communications. He’s got something. There’s no way he doesn’t.”
“What do you think is going to happen? Are we in trouble right now?”
“No—if there’s one thing he’s said that I believe, it’s that there isn’t anywhere for us to go. He wouldn’t leave us like this if there was. So that much is probably true.”
“Sounds like you’re just guessing.”
“Maybe,” I admitted. “I don’t have the answer, but I have details that the answer has to include, and whatever Cyril has in mind, it does not involve us still being alive this time tomorrow. That’s what everything’s telling me.”
“Are you always this cheery?”
“Only when I’m dying.”
Sei raised any eyebrow.
“Look,” I said. “He can put on the friendly act all he wants, and he can make it seem more genuine by telling us some things that we aren’t expecting to hear. He can be self-deprecating and try to throw us off by not immediately caving—none of that matters. He can do what he wants. It’s all misdirection. Ignore him and focus on the facts. He bought people. He bought people with purposes in mind other than freeing them. That’s all you need to know about him.”
“That’s definitely what the Empress would say,” Sei replied, nodding.
“She knows best,” I said, stirring my malt.
“So? What’s coming?”
I considered it. “Based o
n what I’ve seen so far, I think someone will show up here and take us home, just like he said. I think chances are good that they’ll have a couple attractive daughters or something. I think they’ll break their backs to make us happy. Until we’re asleep, and then they’ll get us back under control.”
“If it’s daughters, I’ll have to be drunk first.”
I snorted. “That’s just an example of the sort of thing they might do. Maybe it’ll just be good food or something, but people have been bribing each other since the dawn of time. It works. I feel like I have a read on Cyril’s style. If they’re smart, they won’t hold back. They’ll do whatever they can to lower our guard, and that would be one way.”
I watched the android sweep. “That’s what he’s doing now by leaving us alone. They’re cautious, or at least Cyril is. He’s not sure who he’s dealing with, and he doesn’t want to take chances with us. I don’t know if he’s the bad guy or if all these people are rotten, but whatever they are, they aren’t soldiers. At least, not all of them.” I’d been watching; I’d seen only one man who had a noticeably ex-military air about him.
He might be a problem later.
“I’m not picking up on half of this—I know these people are weird, but of course they are. You couldn’t have a crew like this and expect them to be normal. What’s your plan?”
“I haven’t got one. It’s a bad situation.”
“Man, it feels good to be able to talk again.”
“Talk? I like having feeling in my hands.” A little, at least.
“That too. I’m not trying to push you. I’m just trying to follow your lead here. Is it time for us to do something?”
“Yes,” I said immediately. “I’m just not sure what.”
“Do we play along and go to somebody’s house?”
“Better not. We don’t know that I’m right about that.” There was only one pedestrian out there at the moment, and she wasn’t headed for the shop. She got into a vehicle, which rolled away without a sound. “They could move sooner.”
“Or not at all,” Sei reminded me. “You don’t have proof, do you?”
“Who’re you going to trust?”
“I’m pretty sure you’re New Unity. You want me to choose between a terrorist and a spiritual leader?”
“Should be easy.”
“Yeah, I’ll stick with you. I’m just saying.”
“I know—we shouldn’t hurt anyone unless we have to, and even then, not unless we know for sure. We still want to play by Evagardian law, even if we aren’t in Evagardian space,” I said. “Who knows how many of these people are actually complicit? But I’ve got my own suspicions about that.”
“And they are?”
I got up. “That we don’t have to go easy on them.”
“Come by again soon, mister,” the peppy android said from behind the counter.
“Take it easy,” I told her, making for the back of the shop. Sei followed me through a door promising restrooms. “There ought to be a way out the back, right?”
“I don’t know. I went to a theme park that had these kinds of buildings once, but they weren’t this detailed. And I think that era was a little farther forward. I love this shirt.”
“Yeah, it looks good on you,” I told him.
I found a door, unlatched it, and pushed it open. We were in a narrow space between two buildings. It was fully dark now, and though there were lights on the street, the alley was in deep shadow.
“We can’t blend out here—we have no shoes,” Sei pointed out, easing the door shut behind us. “And they all know each other—they’ll spot strangers straightaway.”
“I know. I want to go back to the church. Something’s wrong with these people, and I want to know what. I think we’ll find it there.” Whatever we were going to do, we had to do it soon.
“Why?”
“Because he didn’t turn on the lights.”
“What?”
“Cyril. Back when we first met him in the church. It was dark. He was going to turn on the lights, but he stopped when he saw it was us. At the time I was thinking about other things, but now I don’t like it. There’s something in there he didn’t want us to see. He did everything he could to make it not seem like an issue, like he just happened to be doing it, but I’m not sure I buy it. Like I said—” I looked down at my hands. “We can’t get out of this until we know what it is. Come on.” I started down the alley.
“This is a hell of a planet,” Sei said, looking up. “This weather is to die for.”
“Yeah, that’s another problem.”
“What?”
“This planet. Terra imitators like this are priority—and while someone’s obviously got some money to put something like this together, I don’t believe they’d terraform for it. This is too perfect, too hospitable—I’m starting to think we must be on New Earth, which would mean he was lying about being in unregulated space. I mean, a planet like this wouldn’t stay unregulated for long, would it? Everybody would want to come here—it’s perfect.”
“But then there’d be somewhere to go. If it’s New Earth. Plenty of places to go—the whole planet’s inhabited. There’re, like, five billion people on New Earth.”
“We could be on an island, or just someone’s personal preserve—it wouldn’t have to be very big to be too big to escape on foot, or even by land. But I can’t believe we’re in unregulated space—he just said that to get the advantage, to keep us from acting like divas.”
“Didn’t really stop you,” Sei pointed out, rubbing his hands together and shivering.
“I’m making this up as I go,” I said, pausing at the end of the alley. “I’m trying to be convincing. Is it working?”
“I don’t know. I think so.”
“We’ll go behind those houses.”
“You sure you’re up to it?”
“We can’t risk whatever they’d give me to help.”
“You think they’d drug you?” Sei asked.
“I don’t know, but if they wanted to, walking in and letting their doctor shoot me up wouldn’t make it much of a challenge for them.”
“I see your point. Are they looking this way?”
“Just wait,” I said, holding up my hand. “We’ll get out of the proper, stay out of the light. Then we can go around, get back to the road, and follow it.”
“How long before they know we’re AWOL?”
I considered it. “I don’t know. Cyril doesn’t want this to get loud, or he’d have come back with a bunch of guys five minutes after he left.”
“You’ve thought of everything.”
“Probably not,” I said, giving him a push. It took us a couple minutes to make our way out of the village. It was small, but we had to be careful not to be seen. Did it matter if some kid saw us? Probably not, but I didn’t want to give Cyril anything to work with. He might not expect us to go back the way we’d come.
The obvious route of escape would be to follow the road through the village and away. Going deeper into his territory would seem counterproductive. I couldn’t read Cyril’s mind; I could only predict how I would act in his place.
We’d find out if I was right soon enough.
It wasn’t a long trip back to the church, and even in the dark it was simple enough to follow the road. The vehicles these people used didn’t make a lot of noise, but they all had bright twin lights on the front, so we’d know if someone was coming.
I looked back at the town. There were plenty of lights on, and it was a charming sight against the black night. In another life, another reality, an isolated community like this—either on New Earth or out in unregulated space somewhere—would’ve been a nice place to visit.
And while I was wishing for things that weren’t going to happen, maybe I could go back in time and fix everything else too.
&nb
sp; It would’ve been great if we could’ve just believed what Cyril was trying to tell us. If the day’s disastrous events had somehow delivered us to a safe place.
I would have loved for it to be true. But I knew it wasn’t, and nothing could change that.
Cyril was a predator. He could fool Sei, and maybe he was fooling these people. But my instincts couldn’t be deceived. Cyril was good, but he didn’t know who he was dealing with—for all the good it would do me. I wasn’t at my best, and he was holding most of the cards.
A bad situation was only getting worse.
Ahead, the church was dark, but I could see the steeple standing up against the night. I had nothing against temples or religion, but I doubted I’d ever be completely free of the negative associations with them that I’d formed on Nidaros.
And very faintly, we could see a little yellow out there, beyond the church, through the trees.
Cyril’s house. Was he there now? It would have been good if we’d known where he was at the moment. But we didn’t know. We had nothing to work with.
Sei paused and looked back at me.
“Tell me the truth,” he said. “Are we getting out of here?”
I didn’t have an answer for him.
• • •
We stole across the grass and let ourselves into the church. I felt my way to the panel Cyril had gone for, and activated the lights. Together, Sei and I considered the sanctuary.
My hands shook.
The Ganraen Royals were the longest-running joke in history. Contrary to what most of the galaxy believed, there was an incredibly competent government beneath the dozen or so deeply inbred families that reigned over the Commonwealth—but that government could only do so much.
For example: Princess Oriana, Prince Dalton’s second cousin. Her conduct toward me when I was in that role gave me some very disturbing notions about what might have gone on between the two of them as children. Hardly a flattering impression with regard to the dignity and image of the family.
And there was the Squire, Earlus Manne, who spent untold billions on a fully zero-g planetside palace full of costumed comfort androids, diamond fixtures, and thousands upon thousands of gallons’ worth of aquariums filled with priceless fish imported from Old Earth.