Tony Daniel (29 page)

“Well,” said Funk, and he pulled at his cheek until it stretched a good two inches away from his face. “Nobody’s come up with any name for these rings, yet. For all of them, I mean, as a system. How about calling them after her?”

“Why not?” said Ogawa. “I guess we’re the government in exile of Titan and Saturn and all her moons.”

Funk released his facial skin. It made a sucking sound at it wobbled back into place. “Shall we get the hell out of here, Mr. Prime Minister?”

“Absolutely, Mr. President,” said Ogawa.

He powered up his thrusters and, with the free convert to guide him, soon cleared the Del Rings of Saturn and sped away from his native sun as fast as antimatter propulsion could take him.

Aubry woke up before Leo. She slipped from beside him and gently made her way over to press her nose against the side of their bubble. It was warmer in there than it had been, and the air was noticeably stale. She had been dreaming that she was lost in a gigantic department store—the kind that advertised a billion kinds of goods and services, with a square kilometer of display space. Choose an item and get an instant instantiation of it from the grist at the service counter. She had had to give the store her full name upon entering (which you never had to do in real life) and she’d wandered bewildered among all the items as they screamed advertisements for themselves and called out her name whenever she passed them by as if she had personally insulted them beyond measure. In the dream, she kept apologizing to things like swimsuits and household appliances, but none of them would take her word that she was sorry, and they all kept yelling at her through what sounded like tears of rage.

A few minutes of gazing out at the sluice calmed her down, but then she began thinking of her family once again, and her frustration was replaced with sadness. Leo woke up after a while, and the two of them spent about an hour of wordless sluice-watching. It was amazing how what she had once thought of as snot now appeared incredibly pretty to her and fascinating to be within.

Finally Leo told her that they were approaching their destination and to get ready. She had awakened feeling very hungry. Leo said he would show her some stuff you could eat that grew in the Integument. Then he had described what it looked like, and she had instructed her pellicle to do what it could to dampen down her hunger. Maybe you could get to like swimming through snot, even breathing it. But eating boogers . . . she was going to wait on that one until it became absolutely necessary.

Aubry couldn’t tell, but Leo said that they had slowed down considerably relative to the speed that they had been traveling. She saw him carefully noting several side passages that they passed. Try as she might she couldn’t see any special markings on these. Then Leo saw the one that he wanted, and he told her how to exit the bubble. She gave one last look around. The place was starting to feel, not like home, but comforting, at least. Then she jumped as high as she could up from the stickiness of the “floor.” When she came down, she wriggled her hips like a belly dancer . . . and slid right through the surface tension of the air bubble and into the sluice juice once again.

Leo quickly followed her, and she once again held on to his ankle and let him lead her. For a moment, Aubry couldn’t get herself to suck in the juice. But then she did and it filled her lungs with oxygen—more than had been left in the bubble, actually. She felt giddy and light-headed for a moment, but she held on to Leo and the feeling passed.

Again they made their way through a series of passageways. These did not have the red markings at their entrances as the others had, but were differently shaped. Leo always took the ones that were elliptical rather than circular. Finally, they squirted through an opening and when the juice pressure stopped, Aubry raised her head into—air. An e-mix of atmosphere. She was in a cavern very similar to the one where she’d first encountered the sluice juice. Leo helped her up out of the juice and Aubry found herself standing on firm ground for the first time in almost one e-day. Her legs felt wobbly, and she stumbled a couple of times before she found her footing.

“Take your time getting used to walking again,” Leo told her. “We’re almost there.”

Without another word, Leo led her back into the Integument. After an hour or so of scrambling and crawling, they emerged into a passageway that seemed very harsh and geometrically arranged. It took Aubry a moment to realize that they were back in the Met proper, and that this was just a regular corridor in a bolsa somewhere. The spin was a little greater than Mercury’s pull, but not, Aubry thought, a full Earth gee.

“This is still a serviceway,” Leo said. “We want to stay away from DI sensors as much as possible.”

“Where are we?” Aubry asked. “Are we still on the Diaphany?”

“Indeed we are,” Leo answered. “This is actually a pretty famous bolsa. It is the remains of the 2993 Diaphany Conjunction span. Some important historic events took place in these parts.”

“Don’t tell me, I know,” said Aubry. “It was the Conjubilation of ’93, right? The Merge?”

“That’s correct, miss. And this bolsa is known as Conjubilation East—though how they decided what was east and west, I do not comprehend.”

After only a few more minutes of walking, a door portal opened for them, and Leo and Aubry stepped into a small room that looked like the reception area of an office. In a corner there was a table that might have been a communications console, but nobody was present in the room.

“Mrs. Candidate?” Leo said to the room. There was no answer. “That’s odd. She’s the free convert who is the receptionist and office manager here,” he said. He walked to the table, and touched it. “Dead,” Leo murmured. “I guess we just go in and . . . uh-oh.” Leo put his hand to the door on the opposite side of the room. “I’m having to override some kind of lockout . . . good thing I bought that lockpick grist instead of paying my rent that time . . . there. Okay.”

The door irised open. Leo stepped inside and Aubry followed close at his heels. She glimpsed red, something sticky on the floor. Then Leo stepped out from in front of her vision.

Bodies. The room was full of bodies. They were carefully lined up against the wall. Each was slumped over, with his or her throat carefully cut. That was where all the blood came from.

Aubry stared at the bodies. Without thinking, she began to count them. Ten. Twelve. Fifteen. Fifteen bodies with cut throats. She couldn’t tell how many males or females and she suddenly couldn’t breathe right. Couldn’t breathe right at all.

Leo scooped her into his arms and ran with her back to the reception area. He set her down, then hurriedly closed the door behind them.

“What?” Aubry stammered. It was her voice, she thought. It sounded like her voice. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Leo said. “Obviously the Department of Immunity has been here.”

“
They
did that? But they stop things like that from happening! They don’t . . . they don’t . . .” Aubry couldn’t finish her thought, and she didn’t finish her sentence.

“I need . . . kid, I need you to stay here and let me go back in there for a second.”

“No!” Aubry said. “I mean . . . don’t go in there.”

“I’ve got to, kid,” Leo replied grimly. “Got to see if he’s there.”

“The time-tower LAP?”

“That’s the one. Tod. Be right back. Stay here.”

Leo opened the door and Aubry caught another flash of blood. Then he closed it behind him. Within a minute, he stepped back out.

“Can’t find him,” said Leo. “We’d better get out of here.”

“Where will we go?”

Leo frowned, rubbed his forehead. “At the moment, I’m not real sure about that, Aubry,” he said. “Away from here; that’s for sure.” He let out a long sigh. “This was my contact point to pass you along to the ship that was supposed to take you out of the Met.”

“What do we do?” she asked.

At that very moment, as if in answer, the room spoke in a very clear, metallic voice.

“Remain in position. You have violated Department of Immunity Protocol Districting. Remain in position. Any attempt to flee will be added to the charges against you. Remain in position.”

General C.C. Haysay used his spare body to dig out the remains of his main aspect from the rubble of the fremden sneak attack. He was mad as hell. He’d had his original body for over a hundred years, and he’d always taken good care of it so it would be good for a hundred more. And now here it was all mangled—and burnt even beyond the ability of the best grist to repair it. One of these days he’d catch whoever was responsible for that dive-bomb attack and slowly disassemble them, molecule by molecule. That is, if the fool hadn’t been killed in the attack itself. These fremden were just about fanatical enough to do it.

Though what they had to be fanatical about, Haysay failed to see. This smog-ball moon was certainly nothing to go dying for. Of course, that was precisely what
he
had done. Fortunately, however, Haysay was a LAP, and killing one body didn’t amount to much if you wanted to take him out. In fact, it was just about impossible to kill a LAP. He’d never heard of it happening, not once. Hurting a LAP, though, was well within the realm of the imagination—in actuality, as a matter of fact.

“Haysay, front and center!” It was the familiar voice of Haysay’s dreams and nightmares. A deadly calm voice. Of medium pitch. Precise enunciation, as if the words were notes plucked on a harpsichord.

“Here, Director!” Haysay left only a portion of his awareness on Titan to deal with the body detail. He wanted, at least, to give himself a decent burial.

“I’d say you had one hell of a fuck-up on your hands, wouldn’t you?”

There was no use trying to deny anything to Amés. The Director knew. He always, somehow, knew. Everything.

“Yes, Director,” Haysay answered. “One hell of a fuck-up on my part.”

“Now that’s what I like to hear,” Amés said. Haysay felt the virtual equivalent of a hand on his elbow, and he let himself be pulled along. He found himself in a black void—how big it was was impossible to tell.

Standing, as if in space, was Amés. He wore the silver, blue, and red uniform of his office, with the solar burst upon his chest, dangling as a medal. There was firm, though invisible, footing under Haysay’s feet, and he stood before his Director. Haysay was a good eighteen inches taller than Amés. But this size difference gave Haysay absolutely no sense of mastery over the smaller man. On the contrary. Amés seemed lithe and quick, and Haysay felt like a big, gangly moron.

“What are we going to do about that fuck-up?”

“I’ve purged the moon’s defense system, Director,” said Haysay. “We’re obtaining an indentured convert of sufficient sophistication to take over. In the meantime, we’ve manned each rocket with its own soldier-convert crew.”

Amés looked up at his general with contempt in his eyes. He turned his back and strode away a few steps into the black void. No matter how far he went, he stayed evenly lit, with solar burst shining.

“I meant,” Amés said, “ ‘we’ as in ‘me.’ ”

“Oh,” said Haysay.

“I think you have had far too much Glory for the nonce, General Haysay. I think I overindulged you, even.”

Haysay swallowed, found his voice. “That may be so, Director.”

“It
is
so,” Amés replied. “It is so.”

“Yes, Director.”

“For a LAP,” said Amés, “you are an extraordinarily sloppy thinker. Everything that happened—every mistake you made—was something that you perfectly well should have foreseen.”

“I . . . I did not foresee these things,” said Haysay. “But we took the moon and, in fact, the entire local system of moons.”

“Haysay, take off your shirt.”

“Director?”

“Take off your shirt.”

“My shirt, Director?”

Amés had turned, and now he was approaching Haysay with quick strides. There was something in his hand. What was that in his right hand?

“Off with the shirt, General.”

With a murmur of befuddlement, Haysay did as he was ordered.

“Now turn around.”

“Director, may I ask . . .”

“I’m going to beat you, Haysay. I’m going to give you one lash for every fremden rebel who got away.”

“Beat me? But, Director, that was over five hundred—”

“Five hundred and twelve aspects,” Amés said. “Haysay, this is going to hurt . . .”

Amés lashed out. It was a whip! He was holding a bullwhip. The leather tip caught Haysay across the cheek and tore into his flesh.

“Better turn around, Haysay, or I’m afraid I might tear the face right off of you.”

Haysay spun wildly. A door. He had to find a way out of there! But there wasn’t any door. What kind of place had Amés led him into? There was always a door out of the virtuality!

Pop! Haysay reeled as the whip dug into his back. The welt was barely bloodying up when the second strike came, and then the third.

Haysay turned in sputtering protest, and another lash caught him across the mouth. He tasted blood from where he had bitten his tongue. What kind of awful simulation was this?

“Don’t worry, General,” said Amés. “You’re still in the virtuality. None of this is real.”

Another blow, this time across his chest.

“Perhaps you can take comfort in that,” said Amés.

Haysay felt a sudden anger at Amés’s irony. He lunged at the Director like an animal . . . and bounced off an invisible wall of force.

“There’s nowhere to go, you stupid fool,” Amés said. “So why don’t you give me your back and stand still like a man?”

He allowed Haysay a moment of respite. The general, who was not stupid at all, merely bullheaded, realized the position he was in, and calculated his chances for escape.

Zero.

Without another word, he turned his back to Amés, and bent down with his hands on his knees to brace himself for the blows. They were not long in coming.

He would just have to try very hard not to disappoint the Director again. That was the lesson he was being taught.

But what a very long lesson it was.