“I’d enjoy it for about two hours, and then I’d start to twitch.”
“Gaffed on work, are we?”
“Through the bag.” He grinned. “And what about you, wouldn’t you rather be prowling about the wilds of Ubastis?”
“I’m waiting for the day when my daughter’s old enough to carry her own pack. We’ll live off the hangars and never set foot in town again.”
“Shall we report you ‘missing’ on the rolls?”
“Put up a bell on the edge of the Big Tawny and ring it once a year,” I said.
“With solemn and proper ritual.”
“And a five-sec spot on that month’s Source News.” I glanced down at the end of table. Moira lifted one graceful hand to her mouth, stifling a yawn. Her gaze caught mine and I felt a grin break out on my face. “Speaking of spots—I think it’s time to provide more of the evening’s entertainment.” I dabbed at my mouth with my napkin and nodded in farewell. “Citizen.”
“Citizen.” For a moment I saw the light in his eyes, the light of passion, the hot core of the Ubasti explorers, and it reassured and nourished me. I caught Moira’s eye again. Her eyelashes swept downward, then up as she smiled sweetly at DeBeers.
Act two.
Imperceptibly at first, the lighting in the room dimmed and changed to a somber violet. Shadows bloomed on the walls. Not, to the imaginative mind, unlike the dark forms of the arboros. Somehow the trickle of the water stole through the human voices, subduing them.
“It was on a night like this,” I said, rising, “that the Corporate Governor of Cissokho Engineering, Zeeman Maes, fell in love with Ubastis.”
Those who had been to Moira’s parties before pushed aside their flatware and settled back in their chairs. The newcomers frowned, looked to the others in confusion, and were hushed. The man next to my turquoise-draped seatmate silenced her with one finger touched to her lips.
“Imagine, if you will, the end of a very long day. What began as a walking jaunt across a gorgeous landscape that few humans have ever seen has ended in sore legs—” I rubbed my thighs “—aching feet—” rocking from foot to foot “—and a back that won’t shut up. We don’t have soft beds and clean sheets to look forward to. We don’t have Moira—” I gestured toward her “—waiting for us with melon halves filled with strawberry gelato.
“What we have,” I went on, “is a frame tent and bedrolls colonized by cracx just waiting for juicy human to be served.” I mimed unpacking a pack. “We have toilet paper.” I held up the imaginary roll. “Good! Come on, you have to help, here.” I waved the roll at my audience. “We have toilet paper—”
“Good!” a few responded, laughing.
I pulled something else out of the invisible pack. “We have the recycler—”
“Good!”
“We have reconstituted soyloaf!”
“Oh, bad!” some wag called. More laughter.
I closed my eyes and pretended to shove my arm into the very depths of the pack, hand scrabbling around. “We have—” I pulled out my prize “—half a fifth of brandy—”
“Good!”
“—but shh! Don’t tell!” I straightened up, rearranging my jacket. “So, we’re well prepared. Zeeman doesn’t know this. Where’s Zeeman from?” I picked on the turquoise girl. “Where’s Zeeman from, Citizen?” If she was a citizen, I’d eat my bandolier.
Flustered, she stammered. “I don’t know—Cissokho.”
“He runs the company, but he’s not like us—he doesn’t live on the mining station.” I pointed to András who was just draining another flute. “Where’s Zeeman from, Captain?”
“From Xin Beijing,” he replied.
“That’s why you’re a captain in Patrol & Rescue. Zeeman Maes has his home at Xin Beijing, that ultra-lux station where they think a recycler is someone who exercises too much.”
Groans, eyes rolling.
“He sees the tent pop up, he sees his ration of delicious soyloaf, and he looks as if he’s about to cry. ‘I can’t believe this,’ he says. He says, ‘I think I want my money back.’”
The room had darkened even further, to a twilight bruise. The only light in the room was the holo-quarium, and even that had faded. Moira had a lot of toys hidden at the console built beneath the table.
“We heard the wulanghari singing a few miles south of us. The whoop of the night-flying pterrhytis. And all around Cassene salamanders calling to each other, no bigger than your little finger.”
Moira once again hit her cue, and a silvery chiming susurration filled the room.
András’s eyes flashed in the glow from the holo-quarium. The sinuous eel backlit Caspian’s profile, kindled in Mieu’s ringlets. My voice hushed, I repeated the word I’d whispered to Zeeman as I held his arm, that first time he’d come out into the bush with me, even more frightened and disoriented than I would ever let on at a party.
“Look.” I pointed upward. And there, scattered in careless glory, shone the stars.
Not the real stars, of course. Moira and Numair had lights implanted in the ceiling a few years ago as a pretty conceit. Even so, a long sigh drifted up from the listeners.
“Murzim. Muliphen. Arcturus. Dervish Zosma. Orange Dubhe. The wealth of the galaxy.” I took a breath. “There was a little breeze that had sprung up. I took my finger—” Licking the tip of it as if about to turn an antique page “—and rubbed it on his face.” Demonstrating on Caspian, who made no move to wipe his cheek clean. In fact, I could have sworn that another wet warmth met mine. Surreptitiously I touched my tongue again—salt. Oh, Caspian. Still one of us.
“I said, ‘Feel that? That’s not generated. There’s no programmed ventilator here, blowing rose petals. That’s real.’
“He didn’t ask for his money back. Not that time, not the next two times. Not even three days ago, when we almost died.”
I segued into the vignette with the axehead, trying to be as self-deprecating as possible, emphasizing the beauty of the terrain, the potency of the animals. Yet there was no real downplaying the gravity of the situation, nor the mistake that nearly got me killed. I might color some facts a bit, or shift an incident from one hunt to another, but as far as the bare bones of my most recent hunt, citizens wanted to know. They wanted to believe that their trust in UBI was justified, that my license to carry firepower signified wisdom rather than catering to profiteer conventions.
“So,” I said, my hand on my chair, ready to sit and relieve my aching thigh muscle, “if you see me limping, you’ll know why.”
Yao capped it. “If I show you mine, Vashti, will you show me yours?”
“I already showed you plenty, Yao!”
Senator DeBeers’s drawl acted on the laughter like carbon dioxide on a fire. “Seems like you’re endangering lives, Commander Loren.”
I froze. Get past it, I told myself. “That’s an interesting perception, Senator. Care to elaborate?”
“You’re going out with obsolete weaponry against vicious animals that outweigh you by tons. And don’t give me that archaic argument about evening the odds. We can spare a lot more dinosaurs than we can human beings. If you’re going to play . . . Tarzan out there, why don’t you go with something a little more practical?”
It was nothing I hadn’t heard before. But the tone of his voice, the lift of his upper lip stoked my temper. “What would you suggest, Senator?”
“What I would suggest, Commander, is for you to take more help than a nervous offworlder and an analog robot, and pack something more substantial than a popgun. Say, a laser pack.”
I threw my head back and laughed. Some of the other guests did as well, but more politely, tittering behind their hands. “A laser pack, Senator? Sure, if I wanted to set half of Ubastis on fire and die in the bargain!”
“Lasers are the most efficient weapon known—”
“If you’re fighting a war,” I interrupted. “If you want to kill another human, lots of ‘em.” A few people flinched. András was scowling. Whis
pers rustled like dead grasses. “Not to mention, lasers are clumsy as hell. I’m going out in the bush, trying to be quiet, hunting animals, for Chrissake, and I need all of my reflexes, my agility, my speed. If I have the whole laser apparatus strapped on my back, I’m screwed.” I looked around at the assembled company. “For those of you who don’t know, a laser pack weighs about a hundred pounds.”
“You’d have your hands free,” DeBeers said. He had assumed an expression of patience now.
“I’d have all my limbs free. But I’d be hampered in my movements. How effective am I going to be?”
DeBeers snorted, then tried to cover it with a manufactured laugh. “Well, yes, I do understand your thinking; I mean, I can see that a Natch would have to make accommodations . . .”
The whole table went still.
I tried to be careful. “I’m sorry, Senator, what accommodations do you mean?”
“Well, strength, for instance—”
“We could back away from that whole issue of physicality and simply talk about safety to the biome. Lasers have an extremely high incendiary quality; I don’t want to set fire to—” I could not stand that pitying smile on his face. “Why don’t you try it, Senator?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’ve never served in any military?”
“I’ve been fortunate enough not to have to.”
“And you’re not a Natch, are you?”
“Of course not!”
I endeavored to appear beguilingly feminine. Melting gaze, petal-soft curve to my lips. I think that’s how it goes, anyway. “Do please come up here and show me how unencumbered a normal, Enhanced person would be? Liaison Officer Pham weighs about a hundred pounds. Why don’t you try carrying her on your back and see how agile you are then?”
He looked from me to Moira, his blandly pleasant face hard. Moira rested a hand on his sleeve and whispered something in his ear. Love to have been a cracx in his scalp just then.
“I’m afraid I can’t oblige at the moment,” he said. “Doctor’s orders. Anyway—” he picked up knife and fork “—after one shot, you wouldn’t have to worry about it. You can’t miss with the scopes.”
“How if I’m attacked? How if I have to run?”
“So blast whatever’s attacking you.”
“Blast whatever’s attacking me? If it’s not my legal prey object, it’s incumbent upon me to escape rather than defend myself, if it’s in my capacity to do so.” I shrugged, leaning on my chair, trying to give the appearance of nonchalance. My leg throbbed. If Selphanie had popped up now and ordered me to see the doctor, I might have actually considered it.
What lay behind that politician’s mask? He held my gaze for a beat. “You’ve broken that law before, haven’t you, Commander? If you’d been armed with lasers four years ago, would your husband be alive now?”
I heard a few gasps, mutters. One deep breath, two, then I could speak. “He might be alive, or we might both be dead. We might be alive, but horribly burned. There was drought all through the Wadjet Valley that year. I’m not exaggerating when I say that laser fire would’ve set the whole region up in flames.” How could I spin this through my rage? “If you’d come out with me, Senator—” no fear of that happening “—you could see that this planet is worth all our caution, whether it’s weaponry or food production or settlement.” I held out my hand to him, trying not to imagine that hand a fist punching him in the throat.
“Go with you? And have you get me killed too? God help your little girl when she gets older; I can’t imagine what HGC was thinking when they signed off on your pregnancy.” I’m not sure I’d ever been looked at by anyone the way he looked at me then. As if I stank. “What the hell have you ever done for Ubastis anyway? It should have been you who died out there, not Lasse.”
I leaned across the table and stole András’s wine. He alone of all the people within a meter of me did not flinch.
“Skål, Senator,” I said, lifting the flute. It would’ve been so satisfying to throw it in his face—for a second. “That’s what I love so much about Moira’s parties—I learn what her guests really think.”
Blood flushed beneath DeBeers’s tan skin. I tipped my head back and gulped the liquid down. It tasted like strawberry juice that an enterprising tech had used for turbine lubricant. Blindly I set the glass down. Perhaps Caspian caught it.
I was not halfway across the room before the conversation swelled. Someone—András? Mieu?—called after me. I did not look back. I picked up my alloy box, tucking it beneath one arm, and left the party.
I held the metal box hard enough to dig into my arm through the fabric. Maybe if I held it hard enough an edge would break the skin. DeBeers was right, of course. I should have been the one to die, not Lasse.
Moira caught up with me at the second landing between private apartments. I’d known she followed me; the lightwell around which the stairs and landings turned bounced sound back and forth like a ball down a pipe. At night the well sent a shaft of darkness through the levels, with only glimmers here and there from the windows looking inwards on the open space.
“Please wait,” she called, and I stopped. At least she had the courage to come after me. The way I felt right now—I turned and faced her.
Moira, so pretty, so assured, so thoughtless with her toys. I hugged my metal box with both arms. “You agree with him? You think it should’ve been me out there? I can sure as fuck fix that, you know. Well, I can’t get Lasse back but I can sure take care of the other thing.”
“Oh, no, Vashti, no. No, I don’t think that.” Her expression showed only concern, her hands raised as though she did not quite dare to touch me. “He’s just an awful man who doesn’t know how to deal with us.”
“You seem to know how to deal with him just fine.”
“Numair didn’t marry me and bring me here because he loved me, Vashti. He brought me here because I was the best ass-kisser he’d ever met.”
“That’s the truth.”
“Next to running about shooting things and coming home trailing clouds of blood and glory, what I do doesn’t look like much. But I get it done.” The beading of her dress glittered fitfully as she shook her head. “You and Lasse—you were the flash, the dazzle. People liked to watch you. No one thinks what Numair and I do is hard work too—damned hard work.”
“Oh, you fucking like to watch too! Were you bored of your hard work that night? Thought you’d yank the Beast out of Q early to see what would happen?”
She flinched. “Stop it! I called you because you’re the best in an emergency. You already knew he was here.”
“God—” I wanted to hit her with the box. I wanted to throw it over the railing and down the lightwell. And maybe send myself after it. “I can’t believe he’s here. I can’t believe, after everything, you would do this to me—”
Nothing resembling concern showed in her face now; her eyes were very pale in the gloom. “Vashti—did you stop to think that perhaps this is not about you?”
My comlink beeped softly in my ear. I tapped it. “Subject conscious. Subject conscious,” the computer cooed. “All biosystems online.”
If the adrenaline had been flowing before, now it gushed. “If it wasn’t about me then why the fuck did you show him to me in the first place?”
I wheeled around, cutting off whatever response she might have offered, and stamped off. My eyes burned; my throat ached. Be damned if I would cry. Be damned. In my stupidity I punched a wall as I stalked down the corridor; I cursed in pain and anger with the gain of only a skinned knuckle.
By the time I arrived at the medbay, I wanted blood.
My hand shook when I touched the admittance buzzer. I licked my lips, and dug the com out of my ear while I waited. When the door hissed open, I barged through.
The same sleepy lighting permeated the lab. Dr. Haas, in a blue galabeya, sat typing at one of the consoles. The quarantine pod was closed and clean. A faint burnt scent of decontaminate lingered. The
Beast was nowhere to be seen.
“Where is he?” My pulse positively whacking in my veins.
Haas did not look up from her typing. “He’s in one of the cots. Second one on the left.” She waved toward the threshold at the far end of the room. Past that threshold ran a corridor. From where I stood I made out the shadows of open doors. Each of those doors opened onto a cot, a small room furnished with bed, holo, and medical equipment. Five of the rooms were meant for two patients. Five were meant for utter privacy. Only one door was closed—the door to a private room.
I started toward it, then checked. “Don’t you need to come with me?”
Haas shrugged. “I’m a fraction busy, as you can see.”
“Is he secure? Is he strapped down?”
“This isn’t a prison, Vashti. He’s only got the belt on, standard for agitated patients.” One tick of her gaze, tinged with what I thought of as contempt. “If you’re afraid, don’t go in. Commander.”
I took a breath, then another, as if I were strapped into a hang glider’s harness and ready to step off the ledge. Then I went. I could not hear my own footfalls, but the pulse in my ears, my own breathing marked the seconds it took me to cross the room.
“Don’t forget the burst remote,” Haas said when I reached the threshold.
“Where is it?”
The light from the monitor swarmed greenly across her face. She pointed. I swooped forward and snatched it up from the table where Moira had left it, noting the indented button at one edge.
Abruptly—and so slowly I ached—I slipped past my own event horizon. That black hole within me had been born long before the moment Moira had revealed what she’d done. Every minute, sixty multiplied by twenty-eight multiplied by three-hundred seventy-two multiplied by four, sucked me in and crushed me.
My hands shook. I looked at Haas, and she did not see me. Gravity’s equivalent in that dimension could be called destiny. Did anything at all lie on the other side of that void? Was it Hell? Was light the equivalent of Christ, unable to fight a way through despair?
I chose sin.
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