Ululara said, “He was my kinsman and you are far too flippant with his body.”
I sent four weapons after her physical location on Waystonn! The plextank displayed nothing.
Aurigar whirled. She stood behind him, rather disarming in pink pajamas, but quite well-armed with a cutting laser pointed at his face. He was acutely aware that he had holstered his own, and then modesty made him reach for his open fly.
“No,” she said. “Keep your hands away from your body.” She smiled, then, the genuine warm smile she’d had as Miriette, so long ago. “Poor Aurigar, we both had secrets we couldn’t tell. I actually knew that I really was the Empress after my fourth trip into the multimapped dwellspace you had Geepo build for me. A kidnapper and pimp like you, Aurigar, might not choose to pay attention to politics, but a businessperson with interstellar interests like me has no choice. Once I had confirmed that whatever I did as madam and CEO in my dwellspace had an exact analogy in the actions of the new-crowned Empress, I knew the truth, and shortly I found my way out of the world Geepo built and into the real one. I have been ruling the galaxy directly ever since, just leaving a shell up to fool you, Cetuso, and Geepo.”
Geepo moaned, “I am stupid.”
“No,” Empress Ululara said, “I am competent.”
“You cannot stop the robots and replicators already at work,” Aurigar said. “You remain alive, and you may kill me, but you can no longer rule your empire; you are an Empress only in name.”
“That is exactly right,” she said.
And now Aurigar was certain, as he had been for so many marqs, since well before they put her on the throne, and he smiled broadly. “I am tired of this game,” he said, “and curious about what I have forgotten and will wake to. You may press that trigger at any time.”
“Of course I may,” she said. “An Empress does what she likes, always.” And she pushed the button down.
For Aurigar, the world ceased. If he had existed to feel it, he would have been startled beyond all words to find that he did not wake into any other existence.
Miriette lifted the dwellcap from her head and shook her damp hair. The clock showed she had been in the simulation for just under two micromarqs. She had a few more micromarqs till old Phodway would come home; the kitchen and the kids were already clean and dinner-ready.
The image of Lord Leader Cetuso Sir appeared at the corner of her screen. “Any luck?”
“Another one who got a bad case of conscience and went radical—very cleverly, too. I’ve sent you the file. Quite ingenious and well worth study. He assassinated you, by the way, and it seemed rather personal. Generally a bad boy all around. How many more lost princess men do we have left to try?”
“More than a hundred to go, and this was only the twelfth one we’ve examined, Princess. We’ll find you the right one to get you out of the Krevpiceaux country, don’t worry. Never fear. At one or two per your day, it won’t even take very long.”
She felt like pouting, but she did not feel like it nearly enough to do so and spoil her dignity. “I’m getting very tired of caring for all Phodway’s fostindents, and having to keep him sober, and all that. I really want to start working my way out of hiding.”
“Oh, you’ll have to hide somewhere till your brother dies, in any case. I’ve told you that. And we’re working on that too, of course. Just remember that until your memplant woke up and told you to contact me, you had no idea you even were in hiding, or that you were anything other than a purchased orphan. Let alone who you actually are.” The mirrors in his eye sockets flashed and twinkled. “We will find a lost princess man who will stay loyal. And then we will get you out of the Krevpiceaux, but not out of hiding. I barely got you out of your mother’s palace ahead of the explosion, and your brother’s disposition, you may trust me, has not improved in the intervening twenty-nine marqs. Patience, Your Supreme Might-to-Be, patience.”
“I know. I know. It’s just I’m facing feeding four kids, sobering up a drunk, cleaning the shack as far as it can be cleaned, and sharing a bed with two of the other fostindents. But I can manage patience. I did have one question to raise—this was the third lost princess man in a row to figure out that he was in a simulation. Like the other ones, he thought it was his and he was the center of it.”
“Naturally. What man doesn’t think he’s the center of the universe?” Cetuso’s image on the screen paused for not more than a hundred nanomarqs, then shrugged, the immense blue muscles of his shoulders rising and falling like waves on the sea. “I’ve scanned his moments of recognition, and I don’t think we can change policy; our lost princess man will have to be smart enough to do what we need, simulations cannot be perfect, and many of them will see through it. At least none of them so far has figured out where or how we read and recorded him, or why we’re doing it, so there’s no danger that one of them will leave behind any warning for the others, and as long as they don’t, it doesn’t complicate the task, really.” He smiled warmly. “And everything really is on course, Princess. Regrettable as it is, just put in another—”
“Miriette!” Henredd was calling from the kitchen. “Miriette, the water is boiling!”
“Drop the noodles in and I’ll be there in a moment,” she said. Cetuso’s image looked disgustingly pitying, so she stuck her tongue out at him before she blanked the screen.
Through the kitchen viewwall, she watched the Krevpiceauxi mistral wail and shriek its way up into a full-blown black-dust storm, the kind that was equally likely to strand them inside for days or blow over before bedtime. Phodway would appreciate a hot meal and a clean bed after making his way home through that, anyway. At least he was not unkind and he thanked her often.
Henredd stood beside her, his bony shoulder pressing against her lower ribs, arm around her unself-consciously, and said, “I like being here when you cook.” They’d gotten Henredd from an illegal dealer, and the first year they’d had him, he’d barely spoken, mostly just cried; a little kind attention and some efficient care had brought him around, and Miriette had to admit she’d learned how to do that from Phodway’s treatment of her when she was young, back before he’d fallen into the bottle. She turned the fish cakes over and rubbed Henredd’s head; he snuggled more closely against her.
Once I’m on the throne, I will have Cetuso take care of these people, very, very generously. An empress does not have much need for love, but it is good to know about it, and an empress must show gratitude.
The boy under her arm squirmed and ran off to play; she contemplated her skill in the kitchen with proud dismay. Patience, patience, patience.
Cetuso could feel nothing from his extended hand; to get the maximum bandwidth for accessing Aurigar’s mind and memories, he’d had to turn every available nerve to the purpose. The lost princess man’s facial expression showed that the filaments rushing through Aurigar’s body to his heart and brain were painful and distressing; it could and would all be erased at need, if the man lived. The plate of mussels and noodles lay inverted and broken on the floor. Aurigar’s boot touched it and slipped slightly, and Cetuso made that foot move to a secure spot on the dry floor behind.
Cetuso had no fear of being disturbed, knowing as he did that everyone in the place feared to disturb him, or even to look at him to see what he was doing. He relayed the copy of Aurigar to the princess’s computer, waited through the micromarqs while she played Aurigar out in simulation, and talked her through the usual disappointment. He might have pointed out that they needed a man of extraordinary abilities to accomplish what was needed, and also one who would not resent how he was used, one who would understand the Imperium as well as the Empress herself and yet feel only deep loyalty. There would be such a man, he was confident, but this was not he.
A few micromarqs later, when he knew she was feeling better, and she had been called off to cook supper for the miner’s brats, he turned his attention back to Aurigar. A few people had gotten up and left quietly, not wanting to be witnesses; the rest l
ooked at their drinks, their plates, or the wall.
Cetuso proceeded systematically. First he erased the simulation data from Aurigar’s brain, then the memory of their conversation, then all the memories, and finally the instincts, the sensory processing, and the autonomic processes, before his filaments slashed Aurigar’s brains into wet chopped meat beyond any possibility of neurodissection or nanoreconstruction.
Cetuso’s filaments withdrew, merging into thin tentacles between the corpse’s ribs, then broad thick strands outside the chest. As the tips popped free, they reshaped into fingers splayed on the man’s chest. Cetuso pushed lightly.
Aurigar’s corpse crashed to the floor. No one looked up, but a number of people winced; Cetuso recorded their reaction and relayed it to the political police. Probably they just had weak stomachs (you never could tell what would bother even the most normal, practical, hardened heart), but better safe than sorry.
He flashed the main mirror in his left eye to draw the bartender’s gaze. Cetuso pointed to the accounting screen behind the bar, using his mind-link to add a few month’s revenues to the bar’s receipts. The bartender looked down, saw the numbers, looked up, and was mindful enough not to do anything but look away. Cetuso smiled; silence, like all good things, was at its best and costliest when absolutely pure, and it never paid to skimp on it.
He would have nodded nicely enough at anyone who looked up as he left, but as usual, no one did. Out on the street, where everyone could see him and what he was, he walked as if invisible.
KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH
DEFECT
Kristine Kathryn Rusch started out the decade of the nineties as one of the fastest-rising and most prolific young authors on the scene, took a few years out in mid-decade for a very successful turn as editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and, since stepping down from that position, has returned to her old standards of production here in the twenty-first century, publishing a slew of novels in four genres, writing fantasy, mystery, and romance novels under various pseudonyms, as well as science fiction. She has published more than twenty novels under her own name, including The White Mists of Power, The Disappeared, Extremes, and Fantasy Life, the four-volume Fey series, the Black Throne series, Alien Influences, and several Star Wars, Star Trek, and other media tie-in books, both solo and written with husband, Dean Wesley Smith, and with others. Her most recent books (as Rusch, anyway) are the SF novels of the popular Retrieval Artist series, which include The Disappeared, Extremes, Consequences, Buried Deep, Paloma, Recovery Man, and a collection of Retrieval Artist stories, The Retrieval Artist and Other Stories. Her copious short fiction has been collected in Stained Black: Horror Stories, Stories for an Enchanted Afternoon, Little Miracles: And Other Tales of Murder, and Millennium Babies. In 1999, she won Readers Award polls from the readerships of both Asimov’s Science Fiction and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, an unprecedented double honor! As an editor, she was honored with the Hugo Award for her work on The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and shared the World Fantasy Award with Dean Wesley Smith for her work as editor of the original hardcover anthology version of Pulphouse. As a writer, she has won the Herodotus Award for Best Historical Mystery (for A Dangerous Road, written as Kris Nelscott) and the Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award (for Utterly Charming, written as Kristine Grayson); as Kristine Kathryn Rusch, she won the John W. Campbell Award, been a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and took home a Hugo Award in 2000 for her story Millennium Babies, which made her one of the few people in genre history to win Hugos for both editing and writing.
Here, she spins the suspenseful tale of an interstellar agent who tries to come in from the cold—only to find that the place where she ends up isn’t very warm either.
She walked into the docking ring, wearing an all black tunic over black pants, outlined with silver trim. The suit looked like half the governmental clothing in the galaxy, which, she knew, made it impossible to tell exactly where she was from.
She would use the clothes, her demeanor, and her old identification chip, which was still active, to get into the ship.
The docking ring circled the entire starbase. She had entered through doors 65–66. She hadn’t been in this part before, but she only knew that because of the numbers. Otherwise, everything looked the same.
The docking ring was wide. The walking platform threaded its way through the ring. Arching above and below it was the ring itself, all black cable and gray siding.
Most starbases used see-through material on their rings, so that everything remained visible—the ships, the space beyond, even the planets of the nearby systems, which generally looked small enough to cup in a single hand.
Here though, everything was hidden. This starbase didn’t even have an official name, although its docking registry called it Starbase Alpha, one of half a dozen Starbase Alphas she had visited during her career.
The old-timers called this starbase the NetherRealm, which was much more appropriate. The NetherRealm existed between the Nechev System and the Kazen System. Both systems had fought over the NetherRealm in the past, both systems had owned it once, and both systems found that they couldn’t defend it.
Finally, they negotiated their coordinates to leave a small slice of space to the NetherRealm and considered the battle lost.
As long as she was here, she would be safe.
At least, that was the theory. It was, as yet, untested.
The walking platform branched to each docking site. Unlike other starbases where the docking ring doors led directly into the ship, the docking ring doors here recessed into the gray sides. A ring of sickly yellow lights were the only indication that a berth was occupied.
It had taken her two days to locate the ship. To get the docking codes and the entry passes, she had to violate a personal covenant. At least the docking agent’s hair wasn’t as greasy as it looked, but his skin smelled of garlic. She had actually had to spend money for a water shower to get the stench off herself.
She shuddered at the memory, then she made herself focus. She squared her shoulders, adjusted her tunic, and strode purposely across the walking platform, heading for berth 66-CE.
Her heels clicked on the platform. Two human guards stepped out of their guardhouses, built into the side of the ring, and watched her.
At least sixteen robotic heads moved from the arches, watching her as well.
She resisted the urge to smile. Who was it—her first instructor, André? Or Dmitry?—who used to say, It is always best to smile when you’re on camera; then they know you know that you’re being watched.
She didn’t care if they knew. They were going to catch her. She didn’t need to pretend a bravado she did not feel.
Berth 66-CE had eight burned-out panels. The circling yellow light would fade as it reached those panels, then reappear as it passed them.
She reached the control panel and managed to press the first sequence in the override code before a robotic hand slid out of the wall and clamped on her wrist. The hand’s grip was too tight and extremely painful, probably by design.
She didn’t flinch, however. She just brought up her other hand and pressed the rest of the code.
The second robotic hand lowered as the docking door kicked into its release sequence. The thuds behind it were reassuring even as the fingers of her right hand slowly turned purple.
“Don’t know what you think you’re doing,” a male voice said behind her. “The hand won’t let you go, even if you tried it. And I’ll just lock the door up tight again.”
She turned enough so that she could see one of the guards. He was beefy and young, his flesh jiggling in his too-tight suit. His appearance told her that he’d been raised on the base in the artificial gravity; he preferred his beer to exercise, so he only did the minimum routine required by his job; and he’d worked security in the docking ring since he’d gotten out of mandatory classes—which couldn’t have been that long ago.
She glared a
t him. “I am here to inspect the ship.”
“You’re not one of ours,” he said.
“No, of course not.” She nodded toward the docking door. “I’m one of theirs.”
Her wrist ached. Her fingers were going numb. But she didn’t look at them. She continued to glare at him.
He swallowed visibly, then he licked his lower lip. He’d clearly never come across this situation before.
“How do you think I got the codes?” she said.
She hoped the ruse would work, that the docking agent hadn’t been lying when he said he never did things like that. In those situations, she usually took the word “never” to mean “rarely,” but she couldn’t be sure. Sometimes it meant “always.” Given how nervous the agent had been, she believed in “rarely.”
Now she was putting that belief to the test.
“Check my ID,” she said.
The guard glanced around and licked his bottom lip again. The robotic heads were all turned in his direction. If she ever planned a return trip to this docking bay for a similar reason, she would use that design feature; she’d plan an old-fashioned distraction on one level, while she broke into another.
But that was a future job—if there were going to be future jobs. This was now, and she had to concentrate.
The other guard meandered over. He was thinner and older, with lines around his eyes and mouth. He had traveled on a ship without artificial gravity, and it had had an effect on his entire build. He probably was as fragile as he looked.
Clearly, then, the starbase had human guards for reasons other than thuggish security. The robotic equipment obviously handled that kind of security very, very well.
“Trouble?” the second guard asked, pointedly looking at her captured wrist.
This time, she looked too. Her hand was swelling. The stupid robotic clench had shut off her circulation—and if it went on too long, it would become dangerous.
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