‘Damo? I already have. He’s a very strange child.’
Barra got up, glancing out of the window with a frown. Automatically Rico rose as well, grabbing his travelling sack. Together they drifted toward the door out.
‘Is he as smart as they say he is?’ Rico said.
‘Oh yes, no doubt about it. He took some tests for me, the ones from the apprenticeship folder - they’re open to everyone, after all. And then I squeezed the rules a little and let him try some puzzles from the next round. He solved them instantly, Rico. He read the questions and told me the answers. Even Arno had to think about them, and he was a couple of years older when he took those tests.’
‘Yeah? Hey, that’s really something. Everyone keeps talking about his mother, how dumb she was.’
‘Huh. Well, there’s dumb when it gets you what you want and dumb when it gets in your way. Magla falls into the first category. She’s a Makeesa, did you know that? Vanna’s first cousin. That’s how Karlo met Vanna, in fact, through Magla.’
‘Yeah? Fascinating.’
‘Don’t bother to lie, dearest son of mine. I know gossip bores you. But if you’re going to be in Government House, you have to pay attention to gossip.’
‘Uncle Hi says the same thing.’
‘Good. Listen to him. I keep wondering something. Why didn’t they get a birth licence for Damo? The Lifegivers never would have denied an extra permit to Karlo, Saviour of Palace, would they? One of his two children wasn’t even a Palace citizen.’
Rico did become interested.
‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘But why then -’
‘Why, indeed? Do me a favour, will you? If you hear anything about this, let me know, okay?’
‘Sure. I don’t suppose I’d better ask outright.’
‘I wouldn’t recommend it, no. And you’d better get down to guild HQ right now.’
‘You bet. I’m on my way.’
The medical centre in the Guildhall took up the entire seventh floor. Directly opposite the lift booths lay a reception area, carpeted in peaceful blue, with chairs and the much shorter Hirrel-sized rest bars scattered round. On the far wall stood a closed door. Behind a curved desk a human woman in blue coveralls with readout sleeves sat frowning at a screen. Half her face glowed with circuit plate, but flesh eyes looked up at him.
‘Journeyman Hernanes y Jons,’ Rico said. ‘I’ve got an appointment at the sixteens.’
‘Right. The doctor will be with you in a minute.’
Rico found a chair, sat down, and wished that the test guidelines hadn’t insisted he fast all day. He could hear his stomach growling loud enough to be embarrassing. The medical tech laid her hand on her terminal with a flash of metal fingers - two of them, as far as he could tell, were full replacements.
‘All right.’ She looked up with a glow of circuitry and half a smile. ‘I’ve accessed your records, and they tell me you passed all your pre-tests.’ She sat for a moment, staring at nothing, so slack, so motionless, that he wondered if perhaps she were merely a rev. She smelled, however, of perfume and freshly washed flesh. ‘You did sign the disclaimer?’
‘Oh yes. And I gave a blood smear for the DNA confirmation.’
Her eyes moved as she accessed some inner screen.
‘Here it is!’ She glanced his way. ‘Sorry. Someone linked it to the wrong socket. All right, Hernanes. You’re cleared. Ah. Here’s the doctor now.’
The inner door slid open to reveal a smiling human man, on the stout side, with brown eyes and dark brown skin. His white suit smelled faintly of disinfectants.
‘Rico? I’m Dr. Sisky,’ he said. ‘Come on in. Now, you’ve heard the lecture about the drug tests, right?’
‘Right. They measure tolerance. I didn’t eat anything this morning.’
‘Good. I was going to ask you that next. Some people cheat, and it can get pretty messy.’
Sisky flashed a grin. ‘Now, if you do feel nauseated, tell me, and I’ll give you a shot to settle your stomach. Once the drug takes hold, I’ll give you a piece of equipment to wear, and we’ll see how you work under suppressants.’
‘Okay, sure.’
The test chair looked to be an ordinary med tech recliner with built-in pressure jacks at the base of his skull and paste-on electrodes for the nerve bundles on the backs of his hands. Once Rico got himself settled, lying back just right to align with the jacks, the doctor switched on a ceiling display. A beach appeared in warm sun beside an ocean, the water a turquoise-blue streaked with purple.
‘That’s from the equatorial region on Souk,’ Sisky said. ‘The purple stuff’s algae. I understand that they harvest it for food. Sounds pretty tasty, huh?’
Since he was obviously expected to smile, Rico did. Sisky opened a white cabinet and took out a bulbous helmet-like thing made of shiny white plasto. Transmit spines stuck out of the top like a cluster of long hairs.
‘This is the equipment. When you put it on, it covers your eyes and ears. In a crude way it reproduces jacking in. You’ll see the test once you’re wearing it.’
‘Okay. Sounds interesting.’
‘Good. Now just relax.’
Sisky was so deft with his needles, so smooth with his patter, that Rico barely felt the hypo slide into his arm and drive the chemicals deep.
‘Remember, this is the maximum dose. You’ll be using a tenth of this from now on, so the needles won’t be necessary, just a pressure skin pump.’ Sisky withdrew the needle and tossed the unit into a receptacle. ‘Now, it’ll take a few minutes to take effect. Remember - you tell me if you feel nauseated. You won’t be able to throw up, and we don’t want you choking.’
Sisky stood frowning at the pressure jack readouts while Rico stared at the long purple waves, rolling up onto the white sand of the beach. Looking at the scene made him smile, or rather, it might have done so if he could have felt his face. His face was gone. So were his hands, his legs, all of him - nothing diere any longer, just mind, just thought, just the images of the beach on Souk, the purple waves and the white sand. He was not floating; he was not numb. He simply was not there. He made, himself remember Vida and the touch of her hand on his arm. He could see her image as clearly as if she stood in the room with him, but he felt nothing, not the usual stab of desire that her memory invoked. Sisky’s voice was a separate creature, handing him words.
‘How are you doing, Rico?’
‘Okay.’ He spoke, but he did not feel his lips move, did not feel his chest move. ‘Not sick at all.’
‘Wonderful!’ The words dropped into his brain, one at a time. ‘Let’s try the helmet now.’
The view changed. For a moment he saw silver darkness, the inside of the helmet; then he saw a glow, the program being loaded. All at once he existed in a pale blue light. He did not float; there was no up and down; he merely existed, but he was himself, too, still Rico Hernanes y Jons, perfectly aware that he was being tested for drug tolerance. A voice dropped words like ripples in the pale light.
‘Rico? How do you feel?’
‘Just fine, doctor.’ He laughed at the perfect ease with which his words came into being.
‘Start the test whenever you want to.’ In a ripple of darkness the helmet floated away from his head.
He saw Dr. Sisky, grinning at him, holding the helmet, setting it down onto the side table.
‘Well, Rico, that was the test.’
‘What? Did I fail already?
‘No, oh no. You passed the whole thing. The medical readouts are all fine. But what counts the most is the way you accepted your complete lack of any propriorperceptive sensation. A lot of people start screaming the minute that helmet covers their face.’ He picked up another hypo. ‘Let me just give you the antidote now. No use you hanging around for another hour when you could be bragging to your patron.’
Rico wanted to yell at him to stop, to keep the damn antidote in the tube where it belonged, to let him float there in the light forever, free, for the first time in his life free. Instinct stopped him. If he admitted how much he liked this stuff, they’d never let him have it again.
‘Sure. I’ve got a lot of work to finish tonight.’
* * *
By the time Vida finally chose a dress for dinner, every piece of clothing she owned lay, tried and rejected, strewn across the bed. Since she had only costume jewellery, she decided to follow Anja’s example from the disastrous reception and picked a short sleeveless dress of pale smartsilk - a few voice commands, and the fabric colour began cycling in a subtle range, from dusty pale green to blue to green again. She unbraided her hair and found it nicely curly from its day’s confinement - a hard session of brushing and she had a mane of wavy red hair that would simply have to do instead of jewels.
‘What do you think, Greenie?’
The saccule let out the scent of flowers, but she doubted if it had understood the question. More likely the poor thing was responding to a kind tone of voice. Some commands, though, it did know.
‘Hang up all those dresses and the other clothes. Can you do that?’
Honking and hissing, it picked up a dress in one hand and a padded hanger in the other. At least Vanna had sent her a saccule that had started its training as a lady’s maid. Idly Vida wondered if they kept records on individual saccules at the pens. Sister Romero would know, she supposed.
From the other room she heard the door alarm buzzing, and
Samante’s voice. Vida slipped on a pair of silver sandals, grabbed a bluish-grey velvet stole, and hurried out. Wan was waiting for her, his hands shoved into the pockets of his grey Fleet uniform jacket. He looked so perfect, with his beautiful eyes and ramrod posture, that Vida found herself thinking of him as a recruiting holo, designed by experts to lure young people into the navy. Her heart thudded in her throat; somehow she’d been hoping for Pero or even a servant. Samante stood at the other end of the room, as if perhaps she’d moved as far away from him as she could.
‘You look lovely, Vida,’ Wan said. ‘Only a girl as beautiful as you could get away with dressing like that.’
Vida stared. Was this the same man who’d grabbed her by the hair and tried to hit her? She had the brief fantasy that Karlo had replaced him with an android, but around Wan’s neck, just barely visible above the high collar of his white shirt, lay the marks of the bruises that Dukayn had given him.
‘Uh, well, thank you.’ Vida swallowed heavily. ‘Samante, would you just hand me that evening bag? Thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘All right.’ Samante handed over the silver reticule. ‘Have a lovely dinner.’
Wan gallantly offered Vida his arm. As she took it, she found herself wondering just what Karlo and Dukayn had done to him. The pain he’d caused her was still fresh enough to keep her from feeling any sympathy. The door slid open, and they walked out into a mob scene. Reporters, cameras, assistants holding up light bars - they crowded round, called out incomprehensible questions, pressed forward. Vida took a step back and found the wall behind her. Only Jak, still in his Cyberguild blues, stood in the mob’s way, but his presence seemed protection enough. Under his breath he was growling, and the mob stayed back.
‘Ah shit!’ Wan whispered. Louder, he said, ‘I’m so glad you’ve got that bodyguard, darling. Obviously you need him.’
‘Well, yes,’ Vida said. ‘Jak, come with us, will you? Keep them back?’
Jak nodded and growled a little louder. When he raised his hands, implant claws flashed in the camera lights. Some of the noise dimmed.
‘The family and more guards are waiting up on the top floor,’ Wan whispered. ‘If we can make it to the lift booth -’ They started walking; the mob crammed itself forward; Jak took one perfectly aimed swipe at the nearest pix’s face. Although he made sure to miss, the message went through. Shoving backwards, cursing, elbowing and kicking, the mob slid to the other side of the hall. With Jak bringing up the rear, Wan and Vida trotted rather than walked to the lift booth. All three rushed into a booth, and Jak slammed the door shut manually.
‘I am sorry, Se Vida,’ Jak said. ‘That I had not returned to your room in time to precede you out of it.’
‘Well, you were there when it counted,’ Vida said. ‘Jak, I don’t think that one of you is going to be enough.’
‘I doubt this myself, Se Vida.’ Jak cast a calm eye Wan’s way. ‘Perhaps your affianced can be of some assistance?’
‘Of course,’ Wan said. ‘Jak, do you want another Garang or a pair of humans? If it’s the humans, I can supply a military guard whenever Vida wants to go somewhere.’
Jak considered.
‘The military guard would be best, Se Peronida. We can set up a three-point formation that way.’
‘All right,’ Wan said. ‘Vida, after this, if you want to leave this tower for any reason, have Jak contact Dukayn first.’
Vida nodded, suddenly miserable and for no reason she could name. The lift booth stopped. When the door opened, Jak punched a button to keep it that way and stepped out, glancing around. ‘Let me just go down this corridor and make sure that no pix are lurking.’
‘Fine,’ Wan said. ‘Good idea.’
As soon as Jak walked off, Wan turned to Vida.
‘I owe you an apology,’ he muttered. ‘I was drunk. I’m sorry.’
He sounded like a child, blurting out an imposed speech. It was better than nothing, Vida supposed.
‘Well, okay then,’ she said. ‘Do you get drunk a lot?’
He shrugged, staring at the floor, scuffing the carpet in the lift booth with the polished toe of a black boot.
‘Wan, what did they say to you? Your father and Dukayn, I mean.’
He stared unmoving at the floor. Vida waited, waited some more, thought she might speak, then hesitated, searching for words until she saw her bodyguard returning.
‘Oh good, here’s Jak.’
Wan looked up at last, his face wiped clean of any trace of feeling. ‘Then let’s go,’ Wan said. ‘And I hope to God that my law-mother’s in a good mood tonight.’
‘So do I.’
Wan actually laughed, a little mutter like a Garang. ‘Yeah, I bet you do,’ he said. ‘I just bet you do.’
* * *
The UJU rally would be held in Algol Park over in Centre Sect, according to the posters Kata had seen. To reconnoitre the site, he and Elen rode the wiretrain, blending in with the evening crowds. As they were gliding down on the long escalator from the train platform, Kata could hear yelling in the street below and see a crowd forming at the intersection. He could pick out a line of Protectors in their red helmets, holding the crowd back behind yellow-flashing barriers. He could also see that the barriers extended for at least several blocks in each direction.