‘I know. Believe me, I know.’
They both sighed, leaning back, letting the water bubble around them.
‘Speaking of fleets,’ Karlo remarked, ‘I noticed that
Kefs Ribbon
left orbit today.’
‘Um? That’s right, yes. Jale called me yesterday after they shuttled up. Just to say goodbye.’
‘Just?’ Karlo raised an eyebrow at her.
Vanna smiled and cupped scented water in one hand.
‘I was wondering,’ he went on, ‘if those datablocks went with him. The plague blocks, I mean.’
Vanna considered, scooping water and dribbling it again like a child.
‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘No reason you shouldn’t know. You could send the whole Fleet after them, but they’d never catch Ket.’
‘Probably not, no. I’m mostly curious, anyway. I said they were yours, and they are.’
‘Still worried about the plague data?’
‘A little, but I know it’s not rational. It’s just after what I saw -’
‘Don’t.’ She leaned forward, all sudden attention. ‘Karlo, don’t let yourself drift.’
He made himself concentrate on the feel of the water, the warmth and the caress of bubbles, and on her body, too, so close to his. Perfumed steam beaded on her breasts and slid down over her nipples.
‘That’s better.’ She was smiling at him. ‘Ket’s got the blocks safe, off planet where we wanted them, so I’ll tell you something. There’s a copy of the human genome map on them.’
‘What? The whole damn thing?’
‘It’s compressed and it’s stylized, but it’s better than the partials that the Lifegivers dole out. I don’t know how the Lep research team got it, but they did. And now it’s ours.’
‘What in hell does Interstellar want with a genome map?’
‘That I’m not going to tell you.’ She laughed, lounging back. ‘Did you really think I would?’
‘No, not really.’ He slid round on the bench. ‘At the moment I don’t care, either.’
With another laugh she turned into his arms and kissed him.
* * *
‘They’re sending you out fast, huh?’ Hi said.
‘I’m glad of it,’ Barra said. ‘I’ve been dying to get my hands on Nimue for years.’
With the lighting turned down to glow setting and the windows polarized for maximum visibility, they were sitting in the gather and looking out in the direction of Centre Sect. The lights of the vast city caught the cloud cover and turned it to a magical canopy of gold streaked with pink and silver. At times Hi was aware of how he loved this city - like bloodkin. He’d been born here, spent his hundred and five years here, and had never felt the least desire to go anywhere else. There were whole sects of Palace that he hadn’t explored yet. Why waste time elsewhere? Barra had always felt differently.
‘I haven’t been off planet in years,’ she remarked between yawns. ‘I’m actually as excited as a kid about this trip, especially since we’ve got rid of the military escort. But, well, the timing could have been better. I hate leaving you and Rico right now.’
‘Rico could use your being here, all right.’
‘And you couldn’t?’
‘Yeah, yeah, well. But it can’t be helped.’ Hi tried to steady his voice, but he could hear himself failing. ‘After all, it’s not like this came as a surprise. Trash addicts never live long lives.’
‘Save that for the newsjockeys.’
He looked at her, studied her face, saw only concern, not any knowledge of the truth.
‘Hi, for God’s sake, I’m your sister. I know you better than anyone else ever will. You can’t fool me into thinking you don’t care about Arno.’
Never had he wanted to tell her the truth more; never had he been more aware that he could never tell her, not when her son was going to take over Arno’s work.
‘You’re right,’ Hi said instead. ‘It’s tearing me up inside. I should have done more for him. When he left the hospital, I shouldn’t have been so goddamn stubborn about searching for him. That’s what’s really eating me now.’
‘Ah. I figured. But the doctors agreed. Hi, you can’t help someone who refuses to be helped. You really can’t.’
Hi stared out the window at the silver-streaked sky. Jewelled with red and gold safety lights, airhoppers flitted under the high fog.
‘He was so young, that’s what I keep thinking,’ Barra said. ‘All that wasted life ahead of him, a hundred years or more of life, and now it’s gone, just thrown away.’
Hi nodded, not trusting his voice. The silence built between them and threatened tears.
‘I wouldn’t push on you if I wasn’t leaving in a few days,’ Barra said at last.
‘I know. I just haven’t taken it in yet, that’s all. It’s just not real, and so I don’t know what I want to say.’ She merely looked at him.
‘Well, hell,’ Hi went on. ‘It’s not like I don’t have anything else on my mind.’
‘That’s true, but-’
‘But what? We’ve got some goddamned object on the Map that can delete locked executives and burn virtual circuits like paper. We don’t know who put it there. Wynn and our best team have been trying to track it down and can’t. I can’t trust anyone in the guild and so I’m going to have to go after it myself. Isn’t that enough to keep a man busy?’
‘Sure. Especially when he’s determined to stay that way.’
‘Damn it, Barra!’
‘All right, all right.’ She hesitated a moment. ‘What about his funeral?’
‘I’ve transmitted my instructions to the morgue already. A standard cremation. They’ll do it tomorrow, first thing in the morning, and it’ll be over with. No fuss, no service. Hell, if we gave a public funeral, the whole guild would show up, pretending they cared, trying to suck up to me. Arno hated crap like that.’
‘That’s true. He did.’ With a long sigh she stood up, hesitated for a minute, running her hands through her long dark hair and pushing it back. ‘I’m going to go see if Rico’s still awake.’
‘Good idea.’
‘But I - well, you know I’m always available if you want to talk.’
‘I do know. And thanks. I just don’t know when, is all. We’re moving into Government House tomorrow, too.’
‘Tomorrow? That’s fast!’
‘We don’t have a lot of time to lose. I want to be pretty much in charge of Caliostro, I want to know him like I know this house before you reach Nimue. Then, when we team up on the Hyper-map, we’ll be in a position to really throw the photons around.’
‘And make ‘em stick, yeah.’ She smiled, just briefly, her eyes brimming tears. ‘Okay. But call me tomorrow?’
‘Sure. And go check on Rico. I’ll bet he’s still awake.’
For a long time, after Barra left, Hi sat at the window and thought of very little. When he finally went to bed, he realized that he ached all over, as if he’d rolled down a flight of stairs.
* * *
Although her eyes were stinging from sheer exhaustion, Jevon stayed in her office after the rest of the Jons y Hernanes compound had gone to bed. The large, airy room, decorated in blues and greys, had windows that opened out onto the gardens. On the waft of damp night air, soothing in itself, she could smell flowers, a mutated form of the ancient honeysuckle and the little blood-red vines indigenous to Palace. She leaned back precariously in her chair and stared at the Mapscreen on the wall, where the day’s mail listed out in a triple column display. She’d already answered all the business letters and deleted all the advertisements from the queue. With the transmit ring on her index finger, she was tagging the remaining headers on the list and separating them into two groups: condolence letters that would have to be answered and those that did not. A great many people, most of the important people of four different species here on Palace, had seen fit to have their factors drop Se Hivel a few lines of sympathy upon his son’s death. No matter how little it meant to him. With the letters tagged, Jevon got up and walked to the windows. The high sill was just the right beight for her to lean upon it and look out into the shadows. A strange diffuse light fell from the cloudy sky above - a glow of city lights, just bright enough for her to make out the dark outlines of the garden walls, the fern trees nodding in the wind, the dim shapes of the flowering vines, clustered on trellises. It was about this time of night that Arno would show up in this office or come knocking at the door to her private suite across the hall. Never again. His father had let him die out on the street like a dog hit by a fivewheel. You should quit. Her friends kept telling her so, and she believed them. She told it to herself every night, but every night she thought of her high wages, the extra money that meant so much to her family, and of her suite, so beautifully, so generously appointed, and of Barra, who had spent hours letting Jevon cry in her company, rather than alone, when Arno escaped from the drug hospital and Hi refused to scour the streets for him. Still, how much was the money worth? She could get almost as much elsewhere. Barra would make sure that Se Hivel gave her a splendid recommendation.
She went back to her desk and sat down, cleared the mail list from the screen with a voice command, brought up the house utilities instead. No-one was awake, or at least out of bed, besides her.
‘Write.’
The screen changed to an eye-soothing green, and an oblong note pad appeared.
‘Dear Se Jons. I cannot remain in your employment any longer. No, erase. I’m very sorry to tell you that I have to leave your no, erase.’
On the screen her one finished line hung, Dear Se Jons. ‘Close write. No save.’
The screen glowed an opalescent blue. The readout from the house utilities returned. She was too tired to struggle with a resignation letter, she realized. Better to leave it to the morning, if she could even bring herself to write it then. She was just about to shut down her Mapstation when the comm terminal rang. Two beats, two pulses, then silence. She waited was this just a wrong number or was it the signal? On the schematic of the house status report, she could see that all the multiple defences - the scrambler utilities, the pulse code generators, the electronic alarms and the Map firewalls that permeated the compound were fully online. If it was the signal, she would be able to talk safely. The comm pulsed again. She let it ring twice, then said aloud, ‘Pick up.’
On the screen formed the scrambled image of the person she knew only as UJU Prime, a glittering blue humanoid shape. The voice, too, ran through some sort of distort utility; it sounded rumbling-deep yet syrupy at the same time.
‘Good evening, UJU Quarz. We will reign in what?’
‘Splendour and the light of God’s Eye. When will the time of splendour be?’
‘At the opening of the return.’
‘Then we understand each other. Good evening, UJU Prime.’
The humanoid shape had no real face, only darkly shadowed areas where features would be. These moved, but what they might be expressing, she had no hint.
‘I’ve heard from UJU Trey,’ the figure said, ‘that you’re thinking of leaving Se Jons’
employment.’
‘Well, yes, I am. It’s for sheerly personal reasons.’
‘You have no personal reasons any more. UJU requires you to stay.’
Jevon felt her hands clench, her nails bite into her palms.
‘Your work there is invaluable,’ Prime continued. ‘We need to know what the Cyberguild is at all times doing and thinking. You will stay.’
‘Very well.’ She felt as if she were dragging the words out, one at a time, from a great distance within. ‘If you need me here, then I’ll stay.’
‘I don’t need you. There is no I in UJU. The cause needs you. You are one of those preparing for the glory of the return, when the long exile ends, and the chosen people go home.’
‘May the end of exile come swiftly, but always it is His will, not mine.’
The screen went blank. The comm buzzed and whistled to signal the connection’s ending. For a long time Jevon stared into the opalescent blue of the screen. It was only when she reached out to punch in a manual shut-down confirmation on the Map terminal that she realized her palms were bleeding.
* * *
In the cold grey light of a Palace dawn Vida woke, sitting straight up in bed. Although the blue blanket lay warm around her waist, the room itself seemed cold, stark with shadows on white walls. ‘Close drapes.’
In a rustle of brocade the dark blue drapes slid down their tracks and darkened the room. For a while Vida lay still, thinking about her dreams, hoping to get back to sleep. No luck. She’d been dreaming about her father’s image morphing on a black screen, back and forth between his face and that of some screaming demon. She got out of bed, yawning while she considered the Mapstation pillar. When she touched Access, Calios appeared.
‘Good morning, Veelivar.’
‘Good morning, Calios. Do I have any messages?’
‘You do, including a priority code message from the First Citizen.’
‘Oh now what? Summarize.’ The revenant blinked twice.
‘Summary of priority mail communication,’ he said. ‘From: Karlo Peronida. To: Vida L’Var y Smid. Subject: Wedding date. Summary: Se Peronida puts forth his reasons for deciding today when you will sign the marriage contract his son has proposed to you. His suggested date is the Seventeen of Gust.’
‘That’s next week!’
‘Six days from now, to be precise, but within the definition of the word, week.’
Vida ran both hands through her hair, lifted up the heavy mass, let it fall again. Six days?
Only six days? She picked up her black pants from the floor and stood holding them while Calios seemed to watch her.
‘I can’t do this, I just can’t!’
‘Do what?’ Calios said. ‘How may I be of assistance to you?’
‘There’s no way you can help. I mean: I don’t want to sign Wan’s contract, I don’t want to have his children, I want to go home.’
‘I could arrange for transport from this complex to Pleasure Sect.’
‘It’s not that simple. It just isn’t.’
‘Summoning personal transportation is a very simple action.’
‘I know that. Cancel request.’
She put on the pants, then went to the window to look out at the far view, where the blueglass wall sealed Government House away from the rest of the city. Out there somewhere an assassin roamed, waiting to kill her.
‘Shall I display the full message from Karlo Peronida?’ Calios said.