Authors: Catherine Cerveny
Opening the door wide, I got an eyeful of chain-breaker. Four to be exact, overly muscled and neck-kinkingly tall. They were so identical in dress, features, and coloring, I couldn't tell one from the other. Standing in their midst, not quite as tall but certainly as impressively built, was Alexei Petriv. He wore a dark suit that seemed to blend into his black hair, and an ice-blue shirt that matched his eyes. He looked good. Too good. When he smiled and hit me with those startling blue eyes, I suspected I was in for trouble.
“I could have met you in the lobby. Still, I'm glad you're here,” I said with a wave to my suitcases. “I could use a hand.”
“I wanted to see where you live,” Petriv answered, stepping inside. The chain-breakers flowed around him, enveloping me in the same human shield as he approached. A quick exchange of Russian, then, “My men have asked permission to scan you for weapons. It's their job and they're paid well to do so. I try not to get in their way if I can help it. I promise it will be noninvasive.”
So we were back to business then. Good. I could handle that. “Go ahead.”
One of the chain-breakers, the brown-haired one, removed a tiny gray marble from his suit jacket. It emitted a high-pitched hum. He held it a few inches above my body, my suitcases, and then the small travel case I used for my Tarot cards. The marble hummed and pinged as it read both me and the luggage.
“
Nyet
,” he said.
Even I knew what that meant. I arched an eyebrow at Petriv. He shrugged. “In some respects, my life is not my own.” Then he brushed by me, chain-breakers following in his wake. I caught the musky scent of his cologne, and while I didn't swoon, part of me wanted to.
“Umâ¦what do you think you're doing?”
“As I said, I want to see your home.”
He looked around the condo, taking in the decor as he moved from room to room. I trailed behind as if he were giving me a tour of his home, not the other way round. It wasâ¦odd. The scorch mark on the wall was noticed, without comment. When he entered the bedroom he spent a long moment looking at the bed. I could feel myself blush, more so when he cast an inscrutable glance at me before exiting. I wanted to ask the reason for it, but he'd moved on and I lost the opportunity. Besides, I wasn't sure I truly wanted to know what he was thinking.
“Very different from your shop,” he said eventually. “You live here with your boyfriend?”
“Yes. It will be a year together this June.” It came out more defensively than intended. “Shouldn't we get going? Don't we have to catch a flight or something?”
Petriv looked down at my suitcases. “You truly need all this?”
“Unless you plan to keep me rolling in clean underwear, shoes, and hair products, yes.”
He laughed, then directed one of the chain-breakers to take my bags before claiming my arm. “The flight-limo is waiting downstairs.”
There is nothing remotely sexy about riding in an elevator when it's full of armed security and luggage. Or, there shouldn't be. Instead, I found myself pressed shoulder to shoulder with Petriv. He looked down at me, his eyes on my breasts first before moving to my face. I boldly returned the stare, daring him to say something, try something. Instead, I got a big fat nothing. What a letdown.
“Must be interesting always traveling with your own posse,” I said finally. “I bet they're lots of fun at parties.”
“They're excellent at determining and reacting to potential threats. Conversation is not their primary function.”
The ride ended and we were escorted to two waiting flight-limos. I kept my travel case containing my cards beside me. The chain-breakers took up positions around the first vehicle as Petriv and I slid inside. One of the chain-breakers slid in with us, forcing me to sit on the bench seat next to Petriv rather than the one facing him. The two men exchanged words in Russian, the conversation ending with an annoyed look from Petriv and an impassive one from the chain-breaker. So, no alone time with Petriv then. Oddly, I couldn't tell if I was relieved or upset.
Moments later, I watched with interest as we ascended to low street orbit. I swallowed to unplug my ears as we climbed, then momentarily closed my eyes when the buildings were too small to see and I felt the weight of acceleration press me back. I breathed a quiet sigh once it eased. As rough as I found the initial takeoff, it kicked the crap out of the Y-Line commute.
I studied Petriv. He was staring off into the distance, probably linked to the CN-net. I'd never met anyone who so exceeded One Gov's genetic specification guidelines. It almost seemed as if he'd been crafted as a means of showing off. Whoever whipped up his MH Factor had captured perfection. It made me curious since my own genetic makeup was so lacking. Any genetic manipulation would have come through my mother's side, with limited adjustments while in the womb.
I cleared my throat and Petriv turned to me. Gods, how would I keep from shivering under his gaze? “When my assistant dropped off my cards, she said two men came to the shop looking for me. They had accents she didn't recognize. You show up, tell me my mother is still alive, and suddenly I have strangers interested in my whereabouts. That's too much coincidence. I suspect that the language was Portuguese, which would make them Brazilian. Is there anything you'd like to share?”
Petriv looked thoughtful. “Since our meeting, I've had you followed for your own protection, as I'm sure you noticed.” I hadn't, but nodded like I'd realized it all along. My eyes slid to the chain-breaker across from us. “However, I hadn't considered that TransWorld's people might approach those closest to you.”
“Are you saying someone might hurt my friends? My family? Roy?” Gods, so I'd been right about Roy's off behavior! They
had
gotten to him!
“Nothing so extreme. However, just because you believed your mother was dead doesn't mean they were unaware of you. The Tsarist Consortium is TransWorld's primary competition in the transit bid. They would certainly be interested to learn of our association.”
“How did they know we'd met?”
“I wasn't subtle in my efforts to remove you from One Gov's clutches.”
“If that asshole Mr. Pennyworth hadn't hung me out to dry none of this would have happened.”
Petriv laughed. “Despite what you may think, Pennyworth has his uses.”
“You'll have to forgive me if I disagree. If TransWorld suspects we're working together, what does that mean for the auction? How will I get through their security?”
“You are an invited participant. You just chose to accept at the last minute. Furthermore, it's a private event. The same checks won't apply, even though the guest list indicates many of their employees will be there. I'm not saying it's entirely risk-free, but we have the element of surprise on our side.”
“And at some point, I'll be meeting my mother?” I asked with no less than a little fear.
“I would say it's inevitable.”
I turned to gaze out the window, not wanting to continue the conversation. What would I say to her? After the card readings last night, I had an inkling of what she might be like and suspected any meeting would be civil, but cold. I pushed the depressing thought aside to focus on what was right in front of me.
Which, to my amazement, was Spencer Lift Point. We were coming in to land at the terminal point of the space elevator itself! No flight from Jomo to Moi. No shuttle to the harbor. I glanced at my bracelet for a time check. All of twenty minutes had passed.
I looked at Petriv, whistling in admiration. “Must be nice bypassing the crowds.”
“What's the English expression? âGo big or go home,' I believe.” He looked just this side of smug. Most men couldn't do smug wellânot without me wanting to kick them in the gonads, at any rate. Petriv's smug expression made my heartbeat kick up a notch.
“You could have warned me we'd be taking a high-orbit, low-g flight instead of regular commercial. I'd have done something different with my hair. Karol left that out of his itinerary.”
“It could be because I asked him to. I hate to lose the opportunity to impress a beautiful woman,” he said, taking another sweeping glance of my hair and the rest of me. Yes, heart rate increasing. I'd scoffed before when he'd called me beautiful. But after the incident at the Kremlin, I was starting to buy the bullshit. Damn it, I needed to get away from Petriv. I repeated my new mantra:
Roy, Roy, Roy. Focus on the end goal.
“We're taking the Consortium's jet. It's already docked at the JLA Station. Your hair will be fine.”
That did it. Without waiting for the chain-breaker, I slid open the flight-limo door and climbed out. The smell of salt air was strong as the wind caught my hair, tossing it in my face.
I stood at the terminal point proper. Soaring to heights unimaginable was Tsiolkovsky Tower Two, or TT2âa mass of carbon nanotube cabling that ran up to the JLA Space Station and was named after the Russian scientist who'd first conceptualized the idea of a space elevator and how it might work. At the base of the cable was the spiderlike climber known as the Daddy Longlegs. It waited to ferry passengers to the JLA Station. The station itself was the counterweight that kept the cable in a geosynchronous orbit around Earth. There, some would catch speedy high-orbit, low-g commercial flights to TT1, located in the Pacific and connected to the GLC Space Station. Then from there, one could continue on to Mars or to other points on that side of the Earth. Anyone else at TT2 would be a colonist en route to Venus.
Of course, those were all facts I knew about the space elevator. None reflected the reality I saw in front of me. I had to hold on to the flight-limo door to steady myself as I looked up. Roy used it all the time because of work, but I'd never had the opportunity. Now I stood on the platform itself, where only an authorized few, or the rich and powerful like Petriv, were allowed to be. Everyone else would be in a protected pod or on the catwalk leading from the hovercraft to the DLL.
I looked up. The cable, deceptively thin given the job it did, reached into the clear, blue sky. I couldn't see the end of it. It just went up and up until it disappeared into a blue-white expanse of nothing. Clouds drifted around it. Seagulls dipped by, flying around a cable arcing into infinity.
“It's so high,” I whispered, voice trailing off.
Vertigo hit as I tried to follow its length with my eyes. I couldn't breathe. It was so massive, so mind-boggling. It was one thing to read about it or see images on the CN-net, but quite another to be this close and so exposed. I felt like I was standing at the beginning of infinity.
Hands caught me, holding me upright. Then strong arms lifted me off my feet. I was swung around so that the cable was behind me and blessedly out of sight.
“Don't look at it,” said a voice in my ear. “Just breathe and close your eyes. Let the sea air calm you. It's refreshing, isn't it? You can hear the waves.”
Petriv carried me. He had me pressed against his chest. He seemed like the most solid thing in a world gone crazy. I clung to him, my face to his throat and my arms around his neck, fighting to keep from throwing up. When I could raise my head, we were no longer on the platform. We were inside, away from the elements, and about to be lifted to the DLL.
My eyes met his. He smiled. “Better?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“You're welcome. It happens to everyone the first time they see the elevator. The scale is so colossal few can wrap their minds around it.”
“What about you?”
He shrugged; a difficult move he made look easy considering he had his hands full.
“You can put me down. I think the danger of me fainting is over.”
He grinned. “Far be it from me to go against a lady's wishes.”
As soon as I was on my feet, I smoothed my skirt, hair, and whatever else I could find that needed smoothing. Petriv had caught me in a vulnerable state, and I didn't want to seem weak. I also didn't want to encourage whatever the hell was happening between us. This would destroy everything I had with Roy. I wasn't stupid, despite evidence to the contrary. Even if he never learned about Petriv, guilt would consume me until I ruined it myself.
My eyes darted to the floor-to-ceiling windows. Through them I could see the Indian Ocean and make out the shadowy line of the Kenyan coastline. The elevator pod rose slowly. I found if I concentrated on the shoreline, my panic hovered at a minimum. I shot a quick glance around the elevator and found that myself, Petriv, and the four chain-breakers were the pod's only occupants. It could have held dozens more.
“Security concerns. We've booked the DLL as well,” Petriv said. “The entire climb takes an hour and a half. Once we board the Consortium's jet, we'll reach Tsiolkovsky Tower One in the Pacific in three hours; then it's a quick flight to Denver. There's a nine-hour time delay between Nairobi and Denver, so it will be three in the morning local time when we arrive.”
“So we left before we started,” I offered, doing my best to play along like all of this was completely normal. “I should have plenty of time to overcome any jet lag before the auction.”
“If you had t-mods, you could reset your internal clock. But there are zone acclimatization meds I can provide to help your body adapt.”
“I don't have t-mods and I'd prefer to avoid the drugs unless it's absolutely necessary.”
“That could pose a difficulty. You've no idea what could be required of you in the next few weeks.”
I shot him a look. Was he smirking? “I'll take my chances,” I said drily.
Eventually, the pod stopped and we entered the DLL. I kept my eyes straight ahead, worried I'd have another fainting episode. I expected the DLL to look like the elevator pod, but it was an actual roomârectangle shaped, long and thin, with a low ceiling. Tiny windows of thick pressurized glass lined each wall. Seats were arranged in rows of four across, an aisle down the middle, with fifty or so rows in total. Gray and utilitarian looking, their cushions were emblazoned with One Gov's tri-system symbol of a yellow sun and three white dots.