Only Superhuman (35 page)

“Ohh, no.” Kari shook her head. “With all due respect, sir … that bitch is mine.”

Tai kept his smile to himself. Under the circumstances, he could forgive her defiance.

December 2107
Neogaia habitat
Sun-Earth L3 point

Emry didn’t like being this close to the Sun. It gave her freckles.

That was the least of her discomfort about attending a conference on Neogaia. But she had striven to overcome her revulsion. Eliot was convinced that the new regime could be worked with—that although they still retained their ideological goal of returning to Earth and transforming it into a natural paradise, they had renounced terrorism as a means of achieving it. And if Eliot said it was so, she believed it. Still, there were some difficult memories to overcome.

Zephyr hadn’t been much help either. He’d refused to let go of his suspicions about the Thornes. He’d even made insinuations about Psyche being the last person to see Sensei alive. Emry had exploded at that, saying some hurtful things about cold machine logic. She’d tried to apologize later, but he had refused to apologize for “reminding you of your job,” and matters remained unsettled between them. Zephyr had still come along to Neogaia, insisting that he’d stay close if she needed him. But Emry herself had traveled with Eliot in his official diplomatic ship. After all, it was a long journey, and she couldn’t stand to be apart from him for a single night. Zephyr had instead carried a couple of the Vanguardian delegates, including Rachel, now halfway through her pregnancy but as active as ever.

Zephyr had also been disturbed that Emry had chosen to travel without her Green Blaze outfit. But it didn’t seem consistent with her purpose at this conference. Eliot said she had a vital role to play, testifying about the plans of UNECS and the co-opted TSC. As much as she hated the thought, with Sensei dead, the Troubleshooters were probably a lost cause, and it was best to cast off their trappings if she wanted to make a convincing argument against them. Besides, Eliot had added, something less flamboyant would be more appropriate for a diplomatic affair. He’d had his best tailor custom-make some formal and business wear in a Vanguardian style, making her a better match with the Thornes. She wasn’t overly fond of it at first, but she liked the way she looked alongside Eliot.

The Vanguard delegation included a number of their leading citizens, statespersons such as Soaring Hawk Darrow and Thuy Dinh and scientists such as Krishna Ramchandra and Rachel. They rendezvoused with Psyche at Neogaia; the Vanguard’s top diplomat had been racing around half the Belt for the past two and a half weeks, making last-minute pleas to recruit as many delegates as possible. This time, invitations had been extended to “mainstream” as well as “mod” nations, and Eliot’s hope was that the conference would end with the formal declaration of a Strider alliance, a unified force strong enough to give Earth pause—and, of course, to bring peace and stability to the Belt. Psyche had taken the Vanguard’s fastest ship and managed to squeeze in stops at Vesta and both the major Outers hubs, Europa and Hygiea. She’d managed to wangle a number of commitments before having to rocket inward to Neogaia. There would even be a delegation from Ceres, though Psyche had not had time to travel there herself. A delegation from Ferdinandea, a minor Cerean hab independent of the Sheaf, had accepted Thorne’s initial invitation without needing further persuasion. Emry hoped that an ally from Ceres might set a precedent; maybe Demetria would come around as well, and perhaps even the Sheaf could be pressured into dropping its opposition.

Neogaia itself consisted of two adjacent toruses, less than a kilometer in radius but fairly thick in cross section, with the usual free-fall industrial section at the hub and a sun mirror floating nearby. Aside from a few other support structures, it was oddly alone in its Lissajous orbit around the “Counter-Earth” L3 point—sharing Earth’s orbit but directly opposing it, blocked from its line of sight to keep the yearning for it strong (and to hide from routine observation by UNECS telescopes). The Neogaians had never bothered to capture a stroid as a materials source, instead relying on the smattering of meteoroids that clustered around the Lagrange point or on mining expeditions to those Near-Earth stroids that UNECS hadn’t already captured or claimed. The symbolism was clear: the Neogaians saw this as only a temporary home.

Despite that, they had put a great deal of work into the habitat itself. The docking area at the hub was typical enough, but once Hanuman Kwan met Emry, the Thornes, and their accompanying delegates and began leading them down to the habitat rings, it became clear that Neogaia was a very unusual place. For one thing, the normal elevators were missing. “We believe in doing things the natural way as much as possible,” the monkeylike Neogaian explained. Apparently that included dressing up the walls of the radial shafts to look like cliff faces and climb them on faux vines that stretched hundreds of meters to the ground below. Which wasn’t that unreasonable, given that the faster they descended, the more the Cori force angled their weight vectors to antispinward and made the slope feel shallower. And it was only in the last hundred meters or so that the gravity became substantial. Still, some of the older delegates needed assistance.

The bottom of the shaft was styled like a largish cavern, and Kwan led them out onto a terraformed hillside looking down into a lush valley. The gravity at ground level was a full gee. The torus’s large cross section allowed for more level ground and more aerial clearance for trees and birds. The lateral walls were disguised as hillsides, and the circumferential curvature of the landscape was obscured by mountains on this end, dense forest on the other. The roof overhead, rather than being the standard skylight arch, looked like some kind of fiber-optic array that could shunt the sunlight from outside to any set of pixels on its inner surface, creating an illusion of a vivid blue Terrestrial sky and a sun just cresting the hills. As Kwan led the tour group through the valley, Emry’s eyes were drawn to their oddly elongated shadows, and she realized they were very gradually shortening as the “sun” crept higher up the (literal) arch of the (virtual) sky.
Weird.

But this was only the beginning. “We have striven,” the elderly simian continued, “to re-create as much of Mother Earth’s extraordinary diversity of climates as possible. Everything from steppes to savannah, rain forest to desert, tropics to tundra. All perfectly balanced and in ecological harmony with one another.” Their surroundings bore out his words as Kwan escorted them from one climate zone to another, each one isolated from the others by artificial barriers, with the circulation of air, heat, and moisture through the habitat carefully modified to provide each sector with just the right conditions. There were even two arctic sectors on opposite ends, and Emry realized they corresponded to the extra heat radiators she’d noticed sticking out from the sides of the torus. Emry was impressed despite herself. She’d always thought of the Neogaians as a small bunch of crazy thugs, but this was the most remarkable, delicate feat of biosphere engineering she’d ever seen.

“And you can rest assured,” Kwan went on, “that the richness and diversity of these ecosystems are more than matched by that of the Neogaian people. Every environment you see has people living in it, thriving in it, perfectly adapted to its special conditions.” Indeed, every region they passed through was populated by suitably specialized therianthropes, generally going without clothing, selfones, or other technology (although Kwan and the others participating in the conference wore at least some clothing as a courtesy to their guests). Small, simian brachiators and deerlike foragers populated the forests alongside the normal wildlife. The grasslands bore herds of sheep, bison, and the like, but they were herded by men and women with canine muzzles and furry coats. Emry saw an eland taken down by a pride of leonine Neogaians who tore at its raw flesh with their teeth. Mercifully, she saw no humans modded to fill the eland’s particular niche in that ecosystem.
That,
she thought,
would really be pushing the antelope.

Even the rivers and lakes contained streamlined people swimming with uncanny ease, occasionally breaking the surface to take a breath and waving web-fingered hands at the delegates. The one environment that remained unpopulated by therianthropes was the air. “We’re still working on producing a human form capable of flight in normal gravity,” Kwan explained. “It’s difficult to do the research in these conditions, with the actual space available for flight being so limited. But once we are ultimately welcomed back to Mother Earth, I’m confident we will perfect true human flight.” Emry glared at him, wondering how many live test subjects they would sacrifice in pursuit of this bizarre ambition.

Don’t expect change overnight,
she reminded herself.
Once we have the alliance, we can work to bring them back into the mainstream.

As the tour went on, Emry noticed Psyche working the delegates, buddying up to them and allaying their concerns. Yes, she assured them, the Neogaians had more conventional facilities underground, and the delegates would have actual beds to sleep in—unless they wanted to try camping out under the illusion of an empty, starlit sky soaring overhead. The thought did not sit well with the inherent claustrophilia of the average Strider, Emry included, but Psyche somehow managed to make it sound enticing. She was certainly laying on her usual charm offensive, focusing mostly on those delegates she hadn’t already won over at the previous conference or during the recruitment drive for this one. Eliot himself did the same, though in a more understated way. For a man of his size and intensity, coming on too strong could be intimidating. The other Vanguardians did their part too, but Eliot and Psyche could have easily done it all by themselves.

*   *   *

By the end of the reception and dinner that evening, the Thornes had managed to produce an extraordinary degree of consensus from the delegates—meaning that they wouldn’t have to spend the first week hashing out the seating arrangements and procedures, and nobody had stormed out in protest. That made for a smooth beginning to the next morning’s assembly. The event was held in a “natural” amphitheater, with its stone walls conveniently shaped to amplify sounds—somewhat belying the Neogaians’ insistence that they wished to shape themselves to nature rather than the reverse. But Emry had decided to take such things as mere eccentricities rather than grounds for contempt.
The old regime is gone,
she reminded herself.
Eliot helped see to that.
Even without her transceiver implant active, she could almost hear Zephyr’s voice in her mind, dryly pointing out that revolutionary regimes were typically no better than the ones they kicked out. But she owed it to the Thornes to give this alliance a fair chance.
And regimes aside, there’s no reason to be prejudiced against the Neogaians as people. Sure, their beliefs are a little wacky, but most of them probably mean well, right?

Her open mind was sorely tested when she saw Hanuman Kwan come into the arena with a thong-clad, otherwise naked woman on each arm. The one on his right was Selkie, the curvaceous and bubbly seal-woman from the first conference. But the one on his left …

Was Bast.

Emry stormed over to the threesome, and the she-cat promptly snarled and splayed her claws. Kwan held her back as Emry cried, “What the vack is
she
doing here, Kwan? I thought you told me her bunch had been kicked out.”

“Indeed they were, my dear, and Bast here was instrumental in that defeat.” He reached up and skritched the panther-woman under her chin to calm her. “A cat’s primary loyalty is to her own comfort. Bast has no deeper ideology than that. She sniffed out the way the wind was blowing and switched to the winning side.”

“You think that’s reassuring? She’s one of the ones responsible for killing my mentor!”

“My dear Emerald, I have already extended you Neogaia’s deepest regrets for that tragedy,” Kwan said in dulcet tones, though Bast simply looked bored. “Let me remind you that she was simply following the orders of more dedicated fanatics. And that she herself was incapacitated at the time of the disaster—thanks, so she tells me, to your own actions. If anything, you spared her the burden of being a conscious party to such regrettable events. Isn’t that right, my sweet?” he asked, stroking the silky black fur of Bast’s shoulder.

“Whatever,” Bast said, following it up with a prodigious yawn. “Where’s the food?” She moved off without another glance at Emry—although the tip of her tail twitched fiercely as she moved past. Emry resisted the urge to give it a good yank.

“Oh, you know cats,” Kwan said, laughing it off. “Always having to save face. Believe me, underneath, she regrets the acts she committed under the old regime. And she doesn’t hold a grudge. I do hope the same is true of you.” He began stroking Emry’s shoulder much as he had Bast’s. “After all, she’s not the only one who’s been manipulated into doing unfortunate things by an unscrupulous superior.” He leaned closer to speak more softly. “I believe you’ll see a case in point if you subtly direct your attention thirty degrees eastward, at the top of the rock face.”

Emry blinked in surprise, but didn’t betray it beyond that. She casually looked around the amphitheater, casting a split-second glance in the specified direction. Noticing Kwan gazing down her blouse, she pretended to be annoyed with him and walked away, enabling her to get a glance from another angle. While Kwan followed and continued to flirt, she called up the images on her retinal HUD, ran an image analysis, and noticed a subtle distortion in a bulge in the rock face. Once she knew what she was looking for, she was able to spot the telltales; the bulge was actually a person-sized metamaterial cloak, virtually invisible and morphed to blend in with the contours of the rock.
Hijab?
No doubt there were others with comparable camouflage tech, but few could remain as still and soundless. And the figure’s size was right. Besides, who else would it be? Of course Tai would want to spy on this conference, maybe sabotage it.
But is Maryam a dupe or a willing conspirator?
She didn’t know the woman well enough to judge.