by Wil McCarthy
Hmm. Too weak? Get back here, you bitch. Nobody roots around in my system without asking first.
Feeling something land on his shoulder, he jumped, grunted, turned.
Asia stood behind him, frowning, her hair in disarray and lit from behind by the bedroom lights. She looked as if she'd been asleep.
“Jafre, what is it?”
“Don't do that!” He snapped at her.
“What's going on, what are you doing?” Asia's yellow robe was falling open at the collar, the dark edge of an aureola peeking out on one side. Her feet were bare.
“Just got a transmission from Introspectia. It seems they'll be staying a while longer than I'd anticipated.”
“What's going on?” Asia repeated.
Jafre put his fingers against his forehead and rubbed. He should get Asia to massage his back for him, that would help him think. He should be nice, warm her up for that. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm not thinking straight. The Terrans have discovered artifacts buried in the Soleco gravity well, where artifacts have no right to be. Alien. Artifacts. I think... that's something important. They will think so, at any rate.”
Asia seemed to be waking up quickly. “Are you serious? What kind of artifacts?”
“Eggs, I guess.” He shrugged. “Giant centrokrist eggs.”
“You're kidding! Darkness, are they hollow? Is there something inside them?”
“I don't know. Maybe.” His voice, he realized, didn't sound quite right. He'd let a sliver of his anger leak through again. Damn!
Asia picked up on it right away. Her eyes narrowed. “You're up to something. Is this all true, what you're telling me?” She pulled the robe tighter around her, covering her cleavage with folded arms.
Jafre sent her one of his disarming, confused-but-covering-it smiles, and reached out to touch her arms where they crossed. “I have never lied to you, my dear.”
“Hmm,” was Asia's only reply. Her face was slack, neutral in a way that suggested she wanted to look like she wasn't thinking. Which meant, of course, that she was.
Jafre moved his hand, dug for the soft breast hidden behind her arm. Leaning closer, breathing harder. He loved it when she fought him, resisted the forces pulling her into his orbit, because he knew she couldn't hold out for long.
“Heard from Ralfh Chang lately?” he said, easing her arms away, undoing the sash and pulling aside the bright yellow satin of her robe.
“What?” she said, off balance, confused by the question.
Jafre chuckled in private pleasure. His hand slid up across warm flesh, toward her face. His thumb, hooking up over the jawline, began to probe at her lips, demanding they open to admit it. Frowning, she resisted, turned her face away. But he had hold of her jaw, and turned her face back toward him. He rose from the chair.
What does she get out of this? he wondered, in a moment of peculiar almost-empathy, as the Director of Port Chrysanthemum and the Fleets of Malhela acquiesced, and quietly took his thumb into her mouth. Even after all these years, he felt that same little thrill in his belly, in his guts. The most powerful woman in all Malhela, and self-made, her supremacy dating back longer and farther than his own. And yet, in the end she would do almost anything he wanted her to. Almost... anything.
He wondered at the natural force that could do this to her, and thought, for a moment, that it must be something very much like gravity.
Chapter Ten
“I've been hearing rumors,” Luna said as she toyed with her eating utensils.
“Really,” Jhoe said, and gave her an encouraging look.
“About Introspectia. I hear they found something out at Soleco. Some stuff made out of centrokrist.”
“Really? That must have excited them.”
“Oh, I think it did. I heard the spaceports were clogged this morning with Terran scientists returning to Port Chrysanthemum. I'm not sure what they plan to do up there...”
“What kind of stuff did they find, exactly?”
“I don't know. Artifacts of some sort. Maybe treasure chests.” She chuckled a little.
Jhoe put his elbows down on the table. Artifacts? So Malhela had aliens after all? He felt hairs prickling up and down his arms. “Recent artifacts? Recent aliens?”
Luna waved a hand, put on a derisive scowl. “No, of course not. It's all very old, like millions and millions of years.” She seemed to study him for a moment. “Why? Were you worried?”
“Well, yes,” Jhoe said. “I thought maybe... Well, if something changed because of Introspectia's arrival... I'd hate to think we'd brought some kind of trouble to you people.”
Luna put a hand on Jhoe's own. “Worried for us. That's sweet of you, Doctor.”
He almost pulled his hand away, but resisted the urge. Day after day, Luna touched him and thumped him and brushed against him, and seemed slightly offended when he flinched away. And here, Jhoe felt very much at a loss; what exactly was her interest, her intent? Mere indifference, in a society with little concept of tactile privacy? A strange, frontier-style overture of friendship? A blatant romantic play, which he had rudely failed to acknowledge?
It seemed all these things, by turn, and others, and none. And why had Jhoe's brain dedicated so much of its time to unraveling the mystery? It hardly seemed relevant to his work.
And yet, Luna had brought him here each evening to the SudVerva Restoracio (one branch, he had found, of a monapellate poligarchy of restaurants which, despite the name, existed mainly outside the SudVerva district). She paid, also, for his dinner and refreshments, and he had no idea whether anyone would reimburse her for the expenses. Should he read something into that?
And he faced still another enigma, one named Uriel Zeng. She took him around the city nearly every day, showing him things, telling him things, discussing things with him. As he understood it, she had made considerable sacrifices to have this task assigned to her. And yet, he had never seen a smile from her, never heard a kindly word, never felt even the slightest, most fleeting touch.
She glared at him, even now, from across the room. As she did nearly every night.
The SudVerva Restoracio sat across the street from the Power Board building, and was therefore frequented by many of Luna's employees and colleagues. But not all of them made a habit of staring at Jhoe. He did not understand, and this bothered him greatly. Had decades of Social Science taught him so little?
“Hello?” Luna said, waving a hand in front of his face.
Jhoe blinked. “What?”
“I said, don't you think we can take care of ourselves? We've been doing it for four hundred years.”
Jhoe picked up a spoon, put it down again. “I, uh. I'm sure you can. I mean, as long as nothing really serious happens.”
“Oh really?” Her voice sounded sharper now, and a little bit angry. Jhoe chalked up another faux pas. Number sixty?
“You do quite well here,” he said, lamely. Then, to change the subject as abruptly and completely as he could, “Listen, I wonder if we should invite Uriel over here. I mean, she works so hard with me during the days, and in the evening I...”
Luna shook her head a little, forming a vague smile while she did it. “Uriel has been shirking her real duties to do that, and she's gotten everybody angry at everybody else in the process. And she's concocted some sort of personal gripe against me, which... Let's leave her be, okay?”
“It's you she's glaring at? Not me?”
Luna sighed. “Maybe not, I don't know. I really don't care.”
“You don't like her much?”
Luna sighed again, more heavily. “She's like a daughter to me. Really. She's a very hard worker, very diligent, but she has no patience at all. Like a spoiled little girl. She's only thirty-four, did you know that?”
“Yes, I did.”
“She's come far, done really well for herself. But it's just never enough. Poor, persecuted little Uriel.”
Jhoe fidgeted again with the spoon, caught sight of his distorted reflection within
it. Wide neck, wide shoulders, a tiny, tapered head sitting atop them. Did Black Hole Bahb's face look like that, as gravity and relativity had their way?
“I didn't know you two were fighting,” he said.
“We're always fighting. I said she was like a daughter.”
“Hmm.”
An uncomfortable silence descended between them. Jhoe tried for a few moments to listen to the conversations going on among nearby patrons, but saw Luna frowning that opaque, incomprehensible frown at him again. What? he wanted to ask. What do you want from me? What do you expect?
Maybe he should come straight out with that, get the confusion over with once and for all. Yeah. Right. And maybe he should reprogram his symbionts to churn out elephant pheromones. Me Jhoe, you Luna! Ungh!
“Um,” he said, “would you excuse me for a minute? I need to visit the bathroom. Excuse me, the sanito.”
“All right,” Luna said, still giving him the look.
Jhoe eased his chair back, stood, waded through the noise and confusion of the restaurant. Uriel Zeng's glare followed him as he moved. “Hello,” he said as he passed her.
“Salutes,” she said back to him, in a distinctly unfriendly tone.
Bother. Had he really traveled forty light years for this?
He kept walking, found and opened the sanito door. What a planet. Quakes and darkness, weird hostilities and demands... Fortunately, one thing about Unua really pleased him—the sanitary facilities could hardly be distinguished from those of Earth.
When he returned, Uriel had vacated her chair, and a young man now sat there, sipping something from a low, wide glass that looked to Jhoe's eyes almost like a bowl. Where had Uriel gone? Ah, there she sat, in Jhoe's seat. Arguing heatedly with Luna.
“...and you stole him!” he heard Uriel say.
“Kiss me, virineto,” he heard Luna snarl back. “I haven't done a thing except eat dinner with him, and anyway I didn't know you liked him. Darkness, you sure don't act like it.”
“I'm sneaking up on it. Being patient, like you're always telling me.”
“Oh, for darkness' sake, you can't act like you hate somebody and then expect... Wait, this is ridiculous. He's hundred years older than you are.”
Uriel pounded the table with both fists, making the utensils jump and clatter. “Look around you, Luna! Everyone's hundred years older than me! Everything is off limits! No matter what I do or how hard I work, there's nothing anywhere that I'm supposed to be able to have.”
Luna shook her head, as if in sadness. “This conversation is pointless, virineto. Can I have my dinner in peace?”
“Absolutely,” Uriel said, pushing off the table, coming fully erect and turning toward the door in a single furious motion. She saw Jhoe standing there before her, then, and froze.
Jhoe felt a keen embarrassment, and found he could not meet her eyes. “Hello again,” he said quietly.
“Salutes, Doctor,” Uriel said, in a voice that was softer than before, but ringing with the same sense of outrage and betrayal. No fair, no fair! “I was just leaving.”
She brushed past him and, without another word, slipped out of the building.
Jhoe looked around him, saw all the restaurant patrons looking back silently, curiously. His face burned, surely hot enough to melt candle wax, hot enough to ignite candle wax. Quietly, he took his seat.
“Um,” Luna said, “Our dinner is here.”
He looked at the platters, shuddered inwardly. Like most of Luna's meal choices, this one consisted mainly of shiny, black, fist-sized bugs. Properly spiced they went down okay, especially with the heavy beers the SudVerva Restoracio served. But he would have to eat, yet again, with his eyes on the ceiling.
“You know,” he said to her, “This night doesn't seem to favor me.”
She picked up a bug, and the curved “flick” utensil meant for scooping the meat out of it. With quick and terrible sounds, she split the carapace in two. She was giving him that look again.
~~~
Later, they strolled together down a hot and darkened avenue, with streetlight shadows dancing all around them, tent buildings and low, crumbly plastered-brick edifices lurking on either side. Luna curled an arm around Jhoe's and squeezed it a little.
“Kids,” she said.
“Oh, don't bring that up,” Jhoe said, mockingly half-pleading. “Good heaven, I've never felt so embarrassed.”
“Well, she is over twenty-five. I mean, legally you could...”
“Please,” Jhoe said, more seriously. “Stop it.”
Luna laughed at this. “I'm sorry. She's quite a handful though, isn't she? In another fifty years, she'll be a real force around here, but right now she's...”
“Precocious?” Jhoe suggested.
“Yes, exactly. In a way, I'm proud of her, though.” She chuckled again. “At least she knows what she wants, and tries for it.”
“Well, I could have done without it.”
They came to a dark corner, draped in shadows. Above, the stars burned yellow through the haze. Luna stopped, pulling him to a halt beside her. She turned, turning him with her, and fine grit crunched between their shoe soles and the cracked, rubberized pavement beneath.
“Kiss me, Doctor Jhoe Freetz.”
Kiss me. That phrase seemed popular as an invective, and Luna had used it often in speaking to Uriel. He wondered what he had done or said to earn it. Faux pas number sixty-umph?
“Kiss me!” she said again, grabbing his face with both hands and pulling it toward her. No one handled him this way, came inside his space-of-reach and intruded upon his tactile privacy in this way. No one since Shareen Brugiere. Then Luna's lips brushed against his own and, finding them in the darkness, crushed against them with moist firmness.
It occurred to Jhoe that she had meant the phrase, for once, quite literally. Her kiss shot bolts of electricity through his body, through his brain. Through his loins, most particularly. He stiffened, twitched, then melted in her arms.
Chapter Eleven
SHEM:Captain Chelsea, I'm told you are not, in fact, returning to Port Chrysanthemum at this time. Perhaps I was not clear enough: please return at once. Also, everyone seems to know our little secret. Can you offer me some insight into how this came about?
CHELSEA:Mr. President, I apologize for the rumors. We've conferred with our people at Port Chrysanthemum, and evidently no one told them not to discuss it. Presently, we plan to take some measurements of the Malsato hypermass. We may head back toward Unua in as little as a week or two. Certainly, our scientists would appreciate the return of their lab equipment.
SHEM:Chelsea, we are obviously working to different protocols. This is understandable, but of course you are in Malhela system now, and under the jurisdiction of the Malhelan government. Being duly authorized by the Director of Fleets, I am ordering you to return to Port Chrysanthemum without delay.
CHELSEA:According to my charter, Mr. President, I don't take orders from anyone but Solar Commercial. Since the corporation currently has no offices in Malhela system, you may consider me an ambassador of sorts. If you have a specific complaint, I'll happily pass it on to my superiors. It will arrive in Sol system well before I do.
SHEM:Darkness and damnation, Chelsea, why are you making this difficult? I have the welfare of millions to look after.
CHELSEA:I understand your complaint, I think. In the interests of diplomacy, we'll coordinate all further releases of information through your offices. And we will come to Port Chrysanthemum, just as soon as we've finished here. I hope you'll find this acceptable.
SHEM:
~~~
“There you have it,” Miguel said to Tech Aid Lahler.
“Yup,” she agreed.
“Fascinating? Incredible?”
“Yup.”
“Strangest damn thing you ever saw?”
“Um... sure.”
> Down in the Malsato hypermass, another group of objects lurked against the event horizon. Right there in the muddy particle storm at the equator, where Lacigo bled and screamed and fed the nothingness. Down close, the white dwarf's lifeblood redshifted away to dull, seething black that only special instruments could see through. And down farther still, the objects! A stunning discovery.
Or one that should stun, Miguel thought. In truth, the thrill had begun to wear off for him. Unlike the Soleco objects, these had come as no real surprise. But like them, these new ones didn't do anything, couldn't do anything. Passing through time like bubbles in honey, in amber, in stone.
Miguel had visited the Grand Canyon once, and the top of Everest Mons, and the floor of Trench Marianis in the deeps of the Pacific Ocean. Staggering views, all, but day trips nonetheless. When presented with fixed imagery, the mind did not remain staggered for long.
“I wonder what Unua is like,” Lahler said.
Miguel turned and looked sharply at her. “Your work here displeases you, Tech Aid?”
Beneath her Medusa harness she blinked, straightened. “No, Chief, it doesn't. Um, did my question upset you?”
Upset me? Upset me? Miguel slumped. “No. My apologies, Beth, I didn't mean to snap. You struck a nerve, I guess.”
“A nerve?” she said, politely prompting him to continue.
“Do you realize I've never visited the surface of an alien planet? Not even Mars. Not even Luna. Here I've burned all these decades, logged over seventy light years, and I get nothing more than a view from the window and a peek at the instruments for my trouble. Plus the money, of course.”
“I have upset you,” Lahler said.