by Sarah Zettel
“You are a free individual, Sar Born, you may come and go as you like. I have no claim on you. Especially since you say you will pay for what you use. One of my clerks will see that your debts are totaled and sent to your room.”
Eric left. Behind him, Ross must have given notice that he was coming out, because the security man was waiting to remove his patches and the floor indicators were lit up with the way back to the courtyard clearly marked. An auto waited for him with the door raised.
He climbed in. The door closed. It was then he realized he had no planet ID to enter to make the thing move.
Eric leaned back in the seat, closed his eyes and began to curse. He did it slowly and methodically, using all the blasphemies in all the languages he knew. He even added some he hadn’t heard since he’d been a student in the Temple. By the time he was finished, the entire complement of the Unifiers, and the Rhudolant Vitae, and their ancestors back seven generations had been manned, rendered impotent, ripped away from the shelter of any divinity, accused of bestiality, and blasted headfirst into the marshes the Notouch used for toilets.
A slight vibration trembled the soles of his shoes and the car began to move.
Eric’s head jerked up. A voice spoke over the intercom. “Can’t leave you alone for a moment, can I?”
“Dorias.” A wave of relief washed over him followed fast by a wave of anger. “Dorias, were you listening to what your Madame Chairman said?”
“I was. We’ll talk when we get to your room. I’m making it safe for us now.”
They gave me a bugged room? Eric began cursing through his teeth. The Vitae first, now the Unifiers. Who do these people think they are?
The car traveled three kilometers’ worth of tidy city blocks and finally parked itself in front of a three-story, brown brick building built like an abstract sculpture made of uneven blocks. The silver cables of access elevators stretched between its widespread wings. The car door raised itself and Eric picked up his bundle. As soon as he stepped onto the pedestrian walkway, the car door closed itself up and the vehicle drove itself away.
A second car pulled up in the spot his had vacated. Eric looked back automatically and saw Schippend heave himself out of the vehicle.
“Sar Born,” he puffed. “I have your IDs, Sar.”
Schippend held out four flat squares of shiny polymer embossed with his name, the location of his ship, and his arrival date. One was labeled for access to public transportation, one for the libraries and other public buildings, one for automatic access to communications networks outside his ship, and one for drawing on the credit he’d been required to transfer to a May 16 account.
Eric tucked the squares into his tunic pocket and sealed it. “Thank you for your help, Sar Schippend.”
“I apologize for the delay.” Schippend’s eyes glittered. “Madame Chairman frequently makes things difficult for people who don’t give her her own way.”
“Does she?” said Eric carefully.
“And if she is making things difficult for you, Sar Born, I’ll be glad to help you leave May 16. Immediately.”
Eric’s back stiffened and he wasn’t able to keep his surprise from showing. He also couldn’t help noticing the greedy look in Schippend’s little blue eyes.
“Thank you for the offer, Sar Schippend,” Eric said. “I’ll have to consider it.”
“I am on the public lines, Sar Born. One is open for you.” Schippend climbed into his car and was gone.
Garismit’s Eyes! Eric rolled his own toward the heavens. “Anyone else?” he demanded. The street remained quiet, except for the traffic rushing past.
The hotel did not have a main doorway. Instead, the hatches for six separate access elevators faced the sidewalk. Eric slid his ID card into the labeled slot and a door opened to let him inside. He watched the shiny, gold walls as the elevator rose for about thirty seconds, glided sideways, then forward, then rose again. He did not touch the key that would have turned the cabin translucent and allowed him to see the panorama of the City of Alliances spread across its perfectly flat field.
When the door opened, it led to a comfortably furnished room, about twice the size of the common room on the U-Kenai. Instead of a window, the outer wall was taken up by an elaborate comm center, with all its keys labeled in three different languages.
“Very nice.” Eric dropped his pack on a table.
He sat in the comm screen’s chair and tried not to squirm while it adjusted to fit the contours of his body. He opened the line to Dorias’s home space.
The screen filled with the blur of shifting colors cut by rippling, horizontal lines that was Dorias’s idea of a self-portrait.
“Hello, Teacher Hand,” Dorias said, and the lines jumped, matching the frequency and intensity of his voice. Dorias had never completely dropped Eric’s title. You taught me I could make my own choices, Dorias had said. I choose to remember your earned name.
“Hello, Dorias. I hope you’re doing well,” he added with more than a trace of irony to his tone.
“Quite,” replied Dorias blandly. “Better than you are, I think.” He paused. “Eric, I’m sorry. I didn’t know this would happen.”
“I’m sure you didn’t.” Eric slumped and the chair undulated against his spine. “I’m sure Madame Chairman didn’t give you any reason to be alarmed about what might happen once I got here.”
“Teacher Hand, that is unfair.”
“Is it?” asked Eric bitterly. “Your friend is a schemer and a fanatic, Dorias.”
“Of course she is,” replied Dorias calmly. “It’s fanatics who get caught up in events like this. Normal people know when to give up and go home.”
“Thank you very much,” Eric muttered.
“You were the one who told me the power gifted were trained to be fanatics in the Temple.”
“I know. I know.” He sighed. “What are you doing here, Dorias? What could you possibly want with these people?”
“They’re the only ones around who have even a small chance of making an effective block against the Vitae. They are interested in establishing a permanent, open communications network. If I help Ross with…Family matters…she works on making sure that network is one I can use and the more space there is, the more chances there are that there’ll be others like me found, or made.”
Eric blinked. “Does Madame Chairman know about this grand scheme?”
“Of course she does.”
“Dorias.” Eric leaned forward. “I don’t know how safe you are here. I don’t think Madame Chairman approves of people who are either not Human or not under Family control.”
“Never fear, Teacher, I’ve made myself extremely useful to her. She has a lot riding on my continued goodwill.”
And you’ve got a lot riding on hers. It was easy to forget that Dorias was only six years old. His experiences and memories were mature and complex, but his knowledge of human duplicity, while it existed, was limited. He hadn’t had to plumb many depths yet. Eric debated telling him about Schippend for a moment, then decided against it.
Who knows what kind of pressure Madame Chairman would lay on Dorias if she found out he knew about a member of…Of what, a conspiracy? Political opposition? Black market? What?
Eric’s shoulders started to ache from the weight on them. “Dorias, I have a feeling things are moving double-quick around me. I’ve got to get going.”
“What are you thinking of doing?”
“I’m going to try to tap into the Vitae private network so I can find out what they’re doing in the Realm.”
“You don’t pick the easy targets, do you?” A pair of lines arched in an imitation of raised eyebrows. “You know it’s physically impossible for me to get inside their net, don’t you? It’s like you trying to walk through a brick wall.”
Eric grimaced. “I know. I’m counting on being able to use my power gift to at least open a line in there. I might even be able to work the data retrieval commands. But I won’t be able to interpr
et anything I pull out.”
“Ah, and that would be my job?” said Dorias.
Eric nodded and then remembered Dorias couldn’t see him. “Yes. The only real problem is I can’t do my part from here. I’ll have to get close to a station or terminal that’s got access to a Vitae system. But I can’t risk a transmission from the U-Kenai to May 16. I’ve got no idea who the Vitae have watching for me. I need…I need to ask you to come with me.” He said it carefully. Dorias did not like data boxes. They could be picked up and carried away too easily.
Dorias’s frequency lines wriggled and bunched sharply. “There’s another possibility.” His lines smoothed out. “I could, if you can give me time, provide you with a copy of myself.”
That took Eric aback. The idea sank in and he smiled. “You’d give me your firstborn? Dorias, I’m honored.”
The frequency lines bowed upward momentarily to parody a human smile. “It would not be my firstborn, although it is certainly not something I do frequently, but yes, that is the idea. I’ll estimate the required storage space.”
Eric mentally ran through an inventory of his ship’s information systems. “I haven’t got a whole lot of the dynamic storage to spare, Dorias. I run pretty close to capacity.” He stopped. “Unless you could fit a new program into Cam.”
“The android?” There was a split-second pause. “Yes. I could do that. In fact, it would be easier to fit a program based on my own makeup into the android’s network than the normal ship systems. It’s much more flexible. I am beginning work on it now.” A section of waves and colors fenced itself off in the lower right-hand corner of the screen.
“Thank you.” Eric watched his friend’s fluctuations for a moment. “How long do you think this will take?”
“Until tomorrow morning, I’m afraid. This is a precise job.”
“That’ll do fine. I have some other…inquiries I want to make. I’ll call back later, all right?”
“And I’ll keep an ear out for anything new about…you.”
“I’d appreciate that. Good-bye, Dorias.”
They broke the connection and Eric sat staring at the blank screen for a long time. Why didn’t I tell him? He might even know what Schippend’s up to, or who he’s working for. Garismit’s Eyes, what’re things coming to when I won’t trust Dorias with what I know…
Rather than think about that, he opened his satchel and pulled out a cobalt blue box, six inches on a side, with a small display screen on the top. A hardwire jack had been set in each side. The box could have been anything at all, from a storage box to a private data recorder to a virus apiary.
Actually it was a couple of ghosts.
Eric put the box on the chair and fished a coil of cables out of his pack to lay beside it. Then he knelt in front of the comm board. He ran his fingertips around the edges until he found the catches for the circuit cover. After a moment’s scrabbling, he managed to snap them open and lift the cover away.
In some ways it would be safer to do this aboard the U-Kenai, but from there it would be harder to hide the point of origin for his signal.
Eric opened a flap on his tool belt and laid a pair of small screwdrivers and a delicate knife on the floor. Then he sat cross-legged in front of the board and did nothing for a long moment but study the circuits. Some of the major blocks were labeled. Some were color coded. He noted with a certain amusement that the Unifiers were using a coding system derived from the Vitae’s public standard.
He located four of the major transfer points. After that, it was only a few minutes’ work with the knife and the screwdrivers to splice a quartet of cables into the existing system.
He looked back at the squirming chair in disgust and dragged a single-phase seat over from the table and sat down in it.
He retrieved the box and plugged the free ends of the cables into its sockets.
Perivar had made this box. As soon as he had been able to pick himself up off the deck where Tasa Ad and Kessa had died, he had ordered Dorias to ransack the ship’s data-holds and gather together anything and everything about its owners. Fighting the sickness spreading from his wounded arm, he had taken the readings from Kessa and Tasa Ad as they lay dead on the deck. He had almost lost their chance of escape, but he knew he’d need their retina and finger scans, their DNA echoes, and their images. When he and Eric had ducked the other runners and climbed aboard the U-Kenai, Perivar had dumped all that information into this box. Eric remembered how he had paced between the airlock and the common room while Perivar bent over the box, selecting, organizing, creating. Eric laid his hand on Dorias’s carrying case and, for the first and last time, he pleaded to the Nameless for a Skyman. Perivar jacked the box into the comm board and, using the ship’s intercom, sent orders to Cam to get the U-Kenai under way. The android verified that the orders came from its owners and obeyed.
When Eric got onto Schippend’s line, Schippend would not see him. His screen would show him Tasa Ad standing a little in front of Kessa, who would be hanging back to act as his backup and advisor. Just as they had appeared when they lived. He could scan their retinas, if he had the equipment, and verify the DNA records of their arrival and registry on May 16. As far as the network was concerned, they were alive and well and in residence in the City of Alliances. Eric could view the runner’s images on the box’s display screen and control them with a touch.
Their projected behaviors had been so like what he had seen from their living counterparts, Eric had once asked Dorias to analyze the processes inside the box to see if he could find any sign of independent consciousness in them. He still did not know what he would have done if Dorias had said yes.
Eric cradled the box on his lap and, with one hand, called up the public directory to trace the open line Schippend had reserved.
Schippend’s face appeared on the main screen, and he was obviously none too pleased to see a pair of strangers on his screen. “This is a reserved line, and I…”
Eric touched the image of Tasa Ad and said, “Your pardon, Sar Schippend.” on the box’s display, Tasa Ad’s head inclined smoothly. “I just wanted to be certain that I would reach you,” he went on. “We have a mutual acquaintance, I believe. Sar Eric Born.”
Schippend stiffened. “Sar Born is no acquaintance of mine. I was assigned to clear his planetside IDs. That’s all.”
“He told me that you also offered to help him leave the planet if things got…difficult for him.” Tasa Ad’s face took on a knowing smile. Perivar had done a great job programming the body language. Not surprising, Eric supposed, since ghosts had been his specialty as a revolutionary.
Eric tapped the screen over Kessa and mouthed the words for her. She straightened up. “Or if Madame Chairman made them difficult.”
“What do you want?” asked Schippend.
“Credit,” said Kessa. Eric touched Tasa Ad and gave him his lines.
He waved his sister back. “If there’s someplace you or your employers want Sar Born to be, or not to be, we can take care of it for you.”
Schippend’s expression became wary. “And how is it you can manage that?”
“We are the ones who gave him passage off his home-world,” said Tasa Ad. “He owes us for a few things.”
“And we owe him,” added Kessa darkly.
“I need to clear this line,” said Schippend.
“Of course. We can be contacted at this space.” Eric cut the line, leaned back, and waited.
He didn’t have to wait for long. The box screen lit up in less than a minute. Text lines spilled across it, reporting that Schippend was running his checks. He was making sure that Tasa Ad and Kessa had actually landed, that they had been checked in and verified. As long as he looked in the May 16 network, all his calls would be routed to the ghost box. If he started checking outside, he would find that Tasa Ad and Kessa had vanished six years ago. And then Kessa would just explain that being driven underground was what they “owed” Sar Born for.
Eric stretched. Betwee
n checking up on Tasa Ad and then contacting his employers, Schippend could be at this for hours. Eric used an unaltered line in the corner of the comm board to order a meal from the kitchen. He yawned. Some sleep would be good, but he couldn’t risk it. He had to be awake in case something went wrong with the ghost box. He called up his account from the clear line, saw the negative balance, and choked. If he wanted to keep his word to Madame Chairman, he’d have to drain his own accounts to the bone. The credit listing flicked over as he watched. Now, he’d have to go into debt.
When it only took Schippend three hours to open the line to Tasa Ad again, Eric was surprised. The man was nowhere near as slow as he pretended to be.
Eric activated the ghosts and tapped Tasa Ad. “Sar Schippend, I did not expect to hear from you so soon.”
“For this particular project, there is not much time to waste.” Schippend leaned forward.
“We’ll keep that in mind,” Eric said for Kessa. “Is there a way we can help you?”
“Yes. You can get Eric Born off May 16 and take him to the ship the Morning Glory, docked at Orbit one.”
“We’d be glad to,” said Kessa. “If the pay’s good.”
“Oh, very good. It’s Vitae pay.”
Eric almost swallowed his tongue. The ghosts froze for a dangerously long pause. He jabbed a finger at Tasa Ad and choked out the words. “I should have guessed.”
“Is there a problem?”
Kessa laughed. “No. I just prefer working with men with hair, that’s all.” All three of them laughed.
They haggled over prices then and delivery of credit, which went straight into the ghost box. Eric smiled grimly to himself as he realized he now had an easy way to pay off the outrageous bill he was running up.
He cut the line to Schippend and opened a new one to Dorias.
“Dorias. Is the copy done yet?”
“I told you, tomorrow morning, Teacher.”
“Dorias, I have got to get out of here.” He explained the conversation he had just finished with Schippend.