by Mason Adgett
“It’s bazza,” Mike protested.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s personal business.” I left the table and went back to my own room, waited five minutes and called Charles. He answered, having already escaped Mike’s clutches.
“I’m back in my room,” he said.
“Perfect,” I said. “Meet me out front in fifteen minutes.”
“Got it,” he said, then before he hung up he said, “How do you get outside? Do you know?” He looked abashed. Charles didn’t like asking for help. In this case, I couldn’t help anyway.
“No idea,” I said. “I guess we’ve got fifteen minutes to figure it out.”
“What is that in cents?” he asked, and a half-second later our phones informed us both. 17 cents. 1700 clicks. This was going to take some major getting used to.
“See you in 17,” I said, and disconnected.
····7····
Fifteen minutes later I stepped out of the tunnel that served as the north entryway into the dim light of the Asitot day. Charles was already waiting, sitting on a rock that was probably intended as a bench as it overlooked a lovely garden with a tiny fountain and an arrangement of sculpted stones. As a bench it was lacking – the rock was hard and uncomfortable and not shaped well for my human posterior – but I sat next to Charles anyway and we chatted idly for a bit, enjoying the quiet outdoors and the break from the others. For much of the year Asitot’s surface was too hot to be outdoors but we had come in its mildest season and the weather wasn’t too different from the Dallas-Houston area.
Charles and I talked about our usual things: politics, earthen news and gossip, sports, and so on. By some unspoken agreement we pushed all other worries aside and enjoyed ourselves for a bit.
At bazza the large orange sun hung atop a mint green sky like a giant full moon, dim enough it seemed you could look right at it if you didn’t care about your long-term vision. It seemed like autumn but that was earthen sensibilities. Asitot’s limited surface plant life just photosynthesized a different spectrum. What grass and weeds clumped through the sandy ground were vibrant orange instead of Earthen green. Isolated trees in the distance, scattered like sentries around the perimeter, rose from short black trunks to arcing leaves of burnt umbers and blood reds. But above all Asitot was a rocky, sandy, bare and ugly surface.
Only in the garden did the colors range more deeply and I saw as I sat there how artfully it had been arranged to highlight blues, purples, and greens that must have been gathered from all over Asitot if not beyond. I was impressed. My experience of the planet in sim had been almost entirely underground and I had honestly thought Asitot incapable of even this simple beauty. Here in this spot it was somehow more earthen than I would have expected.
Eventually Charles turned our conversation to business with the question, “So why did you want to meet outside?”
I sat up straighter, shaking out of my relaxed languor, but took a moment before answering. I looked around at the garden. Up at the sky.
“Satellites,” he said, before I had spoken. “Can’t see them from here but sure they’re up there.” He had pegged my hesitation. I was considering the possibility of surveillance.
“Nothing like in the house or in the tunnels,” I said. I didn’t know if we were being spied on but it seemed good practice to assume the worst. I had no reason to trust Vavaka or his staff. I stood up and said, “Walk with me.” Charles followed me from the garden down a path that led around the estate and eventually to the road that went out through the front gate. Though most of the transportation happened underground, Asitot did have surface roads. This particular one served almost as a personal driveway for Vavaka. I imaged he connected to the city in other ways underground. “Do you think,” I asked when I had put some space between us and the manor, “that our investigation of Vavaka and the attack on the shuttle are related?” Charles followed slightly behind me. I had to peek over my left shoulder as I said the words.
He didn’t hesitate. “Related? Yes. I think somehow they’re related.” He stepped a little quicker, keeping pace so we could converse while walking. The brick path was just wide enough for the two of us.
“You think Vavaka’s behind it?”
This time he took a second. “I didn’t say that. I don’t know how that would make sense really. You could say the timing is a coincidence but... I’m not much for coincidences.”
“Me either,” I said, but they did happen all the time. I couldn’t completely rule them out.
Charles voiced some of my other thoughts. “The kidnapper knew we were going to be there. Had to, right? He knew the ship would be there and he knew who was going to be on it. He seemed to know everything he needed to about the shuttle. Was any of that public record? Where did he get all this information?”
I nodded, frowning. “Exactly.”
“So maybe it’s an inside job, right? We can rule out Mike and we can rule out Lewis and I don’t see what the camera crew would have to do with it. Maybe it’s Vavaka or maybe somebody associated with Vavaka. Or maybe somebody from the Phoenix family. Maybe a jealous lover, something like that.” He thought it over and shook his head. “But it seems more likely it’s some kind of tech wiz, maybe someone who hacked India’s cell or into our itinerary. Which means discard all that, it’s maybe not an inside job at all. Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.” I confirmed. I told him what little I knew about India’s previous trouble – some unnamed stalker, a fellow gamer or something. Hacking throughout civilization was considered both piracy and privacy invasion and was taken very seriously, since everyone in the universe relied heavily on reliable tech. Even small-time hacking could get you eliminated and civilization for the most part leaned heavily against the elimination of enemies. Hacking, in short, was among the worst of crimes. Still, obsession being what it was virtual stalking would never disappear completely.
“That’s interesting,” he said. “You think she told Vavaka about that?”
“She’s planning on marrying him. I would think so.” Though truthfully I didn’t think it necessarily meant anything like that. I had my doubts about how deep the relationship really went.
“But her family knows.”
I nodded. “I have been told they are handling that end,” I told him. “I’m supposed to focus on Vavaka.”
“But maybe the two are related,” he said. “I see. You just need justification.”
“Exactly,” I nodded. “That’s why I’m going to have you look into the hacker side. And I need you to find a reason to be doing so.”
“A gaming stalker.” He nodded thoughtfully. “He must be good too, the way he handled our shuttle so easily. And to be hacking India Phoenix? He must have both talent and chutz. I guess I have to be careful what I search.” His forehead crunched uncomfortably as he considered the ramifications. “And on a foreign planet where I don’t know half of what anything is? That’s not going to be easy.”
“You need to research. We can’t assume a hacker is monitoring our every wiki question,” I said. “Just keep it light and ambiguous and stay anonymous wherever possible. Do what you can during bazza when there’s no camera crew too, since there’s the possibility someone’s monitoring the footage. I’ll try to keep them following me the rest of the time. I should be back well before the end of bazza.”
“Yeah,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ll try to keep a low profile but you know that’s hard for me.” He laughed, then bumped my fist and turned back toward the estate. “I’ll get to the web immediately. See what I can find out generically speaking. I’ll let you know what I got when you get back.”
“Sure,” I said, and couldn’t help adding, “but time is of the essence.” The occasional hyperbolic cliché made me feel important and I really didn’t think I was overstating it. The attacker – stalker, kidnapper, hacker – was obviously following a plan and from his vague threats it seemed it had a few parts left to complet
ion. I intended to interrupt them before it reached that point, but who knew how long that would be?
I sighed, accepting the difficult reality: so far I still knew nothing about what was going on. All I had were speculations. Of course it wasn’t really my job – my job was background on Vavaka – but I wasn’t going to let that get in my way either.
As Charles headed back to the mansion I continued the other way, walking toward the gate that exited the estate. I had looked over some maps of the area and knew we were only about eight kilometers away from the nearest pedto, which my phone translated – terribly – as “suburb” but which was more like a downtown main street, a community center above the town, which itself existed mostly underground. The pedto looked easy to find from the map and I decided to hoof it rather than be so rude as to rustle up a taxi during bazza. I really didn’t know for sure but I had gotten the impression I was supposed to bother as few gobos as possible.
As I neared the gate though I saw the guards still at their posts. Three of them watched me silently as I approached. I raised a hand in friendly greeting but none returned it. Before I was within speaking distance one moved to press a button then waved me through as the gate slowly opened. If they thought my notion to take a long walk an odd one they gave no sign.
Once through the gate the road turned to the right, widening into a deep industrial cleft set into the ground. It was about twelve meters wide, coated with a shiny black metal pavement that had no sympathy for my feet. After a short while I stepped up to the orange grass instead, walking beside the road instead of on it. I enjoyed walking in general and enjoyed this walk especially as everything about the day – literally everything – was splendidly new to me.
The grass eventually gave way to sand. I recalled the flight above the estate and how the color of the landscape had changed as we approached. It was cultivated, I realized. Asitot was a desert planet and the grass only stretched as far as water could be provided. I saw no sign of irrigation but presumed they handled it with piping from below.
The grass was odd besides just the color, curling at the tip into little spirals that gave it a springier, spongier quality than that back home. Did I mention the sand was yellow? And I don’t mean tannish brown earthy yellow, I mean like neon bright, brighter than sunflowers and dandelions. I knew the intense color wasn’t really the sand, per se – it was a bacteria that permeated the uppermost layer. I had read that if you were lost in the desert you could – as a last resort – suck the nutrient straight out of the sand. The pedias called it “sand plankton” and it somehow survived on the minimal sunlight and air.
Speaking of sunlight and air, there wasn’t much of either and it wasn’t long before I found myself gasping for breath. The walk seemed longer than I had expected but then I rarely pedaled 8km and the landscape was after a certain point not much to look at. The sun hung dimly above, the ground glowed its mustard glow and ahead the road pointed a black arrow to the horizon.
Twice vehicles rolled past. Rugged work vehicles with two wheels in front, one in back. The first had a lone driver who lifted his hand in a rolling wave that I awkwardly returned. The second was operated by a similarly grizzly driver and carried in addition two young scrappers on the back, standing and holding on for dear life. One of them yelled something at me, a grin on his face, but even had I understood him the driver didn’t slow enough for me to make a reply.
Eventually I reached the crest of a dune and found myself looking down on the village laid out in the valley on the other side. It appeared suddenly, almost magically, like an oasis, and I stopped to look at it. My cell had assured me the market operated during bazza and I saw in the center of the pedto tents and food carts with gobos standing and walking around. The road continued into a tunnel that went underneath it, coming out, I presumed on the other side. Around the market mound-like buildings ran in rows like an irregular wall.
I stopped, a bit intimidated even though I was still probably a half km away. I had roughly memorized the map. I knew the road looped around the pedto and that the road on the other side – which led to the city – would be much busier. Vavaka’s estate was isolated by design it seemed and there would be little reason for anyone else to go back the way I had come. Another road broke off on the north side and led to the Burrows, the translated name my phone gave to the area of caves where most of these gobos actually lived.
“Suburb” seemed an especially bad translation once you’d seen it. Though Earth had very little in the way of rural communities left this is what it most reminded me of. An old desert town. 3V was full of historical dramas and the way the pedto was laid out seemed like something you might see in an old Western.
I continued down the road and after a bit I could tell that I’d been seen, though no one offered any greeting. As I came nearer I saw that the gobos out in the market were all silent, engaged in their own tasks. I saw no conversations or socialization. I had not really known what I expected when I left Vavaka’s estate but I had downloaded a comprehensive translator in the hopes of gathering some information – with the phone offline, of course. Bazza, I thought, meant a period free of work, but the gobos in the pedto did not seem like they were on siesta, they seemed instead to be avoiding any interaction.
I came to where the road turned sharply down and started to descend into the tunnel and stepped instead to the path that led to the market. The small sign on the building to my left translated as “Infrastructure Paradigm,” which meant nothing to me, and the stubby, mud-brick mound on the right was labeled “Suburban Military,” though the two vehicles – flyers – parked outside were both small sedans and didn’t seem especially dangerous. At best it was the town police and I figured I would probably be giving the translation app a pretty bad rating when I went back online. If it struggled with the written text I couldn’t imagine it would do too great a job with the spoken language. I could always go back to the built-in translator, I thought, but I hadn’t downloaded the full guvian pack before going offline.
Anyway, neither building showed the least sign of activity so I crossed the street and ascended the ramp into the main market. I say “market” because it seemed stuff was for sale and I just don’t have a better word to describe it. I thought back on my sim experience, my brief outing as a street painter. The environment looked similar but that had been crowded, active, full of chatter. Here the gobos studiously avoided eye contact and went about their business. It must be because it’s bazza, I thought, or perhaps the sim had been an inauthentic experience adjusted for the gaming platform. Or maybe it was just this local community wasn’t very friendly.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see one or two of the gobos watching me as I walked by but no one greeted me or even acknowledged my presence. All wore the same style of clothing – both men and women in tightly wound cloth wraps that reminded me of old mummy movies except instead of white the gobos wore a variety of patterns and colors. I didn’t see any wearing cells. They could have been carrying them somewhere, there’s all kinds of styles for cell devices, but I saw no sign of any and in fact I saw hardly any technology at all. The whole vibe was very last millennium. I felt a bit out of place with my own cell on my eye but I didn’t think I could get by without it. If any of them did talk to me it would have to provide a translation.
But the longer I walked among the shops in the center the more I became convinced they were all deliberately avoiding me. I didn’t think it was just because I was human either. I thought maybe it had something to do with Vavaka, that somehow they knew of me through his reputation. Of course they must have heard of the kidnapping of Vavaka’s fiancé unless they didn’t follow news and gossip like humans did and that didn’t seem likely.
About midway down the market I found a shop I was actually interested in, a small tent that carried actual books. Most were guvian – heavy things with covers made of engraved stone and thin sheets of strange blue paper accordioned between – but several were earthen and a large
variety of other species were also represented.
The earthen ones were all classics I was familiar with. Works of Shakespeare, a collection of Hemingway, The Dark Tower by Stephen King. I could have downloaded any of them easily enough but I was one of those few modern readers who still appreciated the look and feel of actual paper (or even the modern plastic synthetic that was used in these particular earthen copies). My real interest though was in the original guvian manuscripts. I had been collecting alien manuscripts since childhood and I entered the tent with the intention of feeding my long-term addiction.
The bookseller ignored me as studiously as the others had. My cell provided helpful translations of the titles and I eventually settled on two. One was a collection of guvian fiction called The Freido Mistern Archive (Freido Mistern being the editor as far as I could tell) and the other Epochs of Asitot which I took to be a history. None of the books were marked with price tags but my cell estimated both to be affordable. I carried them to where the shopkeeper stood by a small table.
“How much?” I asked and my cell, in foreign travel mode, translated aloud something that sounded like “Sola bremin.” Even though the clerk could hear my cell just fine I repeated the words myself, practicing the guvian. Based on the unpleasant look that crossed the bookseller’s face I shouldn’t have. I thought maybe I had offended him. It was obvious he had heard but he didn’t answer me, instead looking pointedly over my shoulder as though I wasn’t there.
“Sola bremin?” I repeated, and his eyes slid to mine briefly.
“Not for sale,” he said, or so my cell informed me as his eyes slid away again.
I was surprised by the rude behavior. I had double-checked my cell and it said nothing about avoiding contact or maintaining silence on bazza and the shop was definitely open. Maybe they didn’t like humans in this area, I thought, wondering if so how would they take Vavaka’s new bride? India Phoenix was pretty much a poster child for stereotypical humanity.