Undertow (7 page)

The world went flat. Isotherms, stock ticker, weather report, chat group, reality skins dropped off his display, leaving his head and his vision curiously empty. Even in the mornings, when he ran, he wasn’t this naked.

As if it were a security blanket, he kept the sense augment on. Not even Jean could complain about that. “You want my hardware, baby?”

“No,” said Cricket. “Jean Gris isn’t worried about your guns.”

The body was tangled in the cables, halfway down.

And every time Gourami let the nictitating membranes flicker across se eyes, se remembered. So Gourami tapped the slate on the bar beside se cup to summon another glass of poison, and drew webbed fingery feet up in the rung of the humen-type stool where they wouldn’t get stepped on, balancing awkwardly with knees drawn up to either side of se shoulders.

Gourami was the only person in the tavern. Not that persons were forbidden to enter humen taverns, but generally they kept to themselves, slept wet, stayed low. The contractors didn’t like it if the persons caused trouble. And a lot of humen didn’t care to take the time to understand, to parse a slate or study hand gestures.

But the people’s bars weren’t open yet; everybody was still on shift. And Gourami had badly, badly needed a drink.

Because the body had been tangled in the cables, halfway down, and none of the humen on the tender had been particularly concerned. They’d given Gourami the rest of the day off when se’d brought it up—all limp dangling and waterlogged mammal flesh. But what se’d seen cutting across the green water toward the anchor platform wasn’t a humen hearse or ambulance, but a black-windowed limousine—

The bartender slid a clean glass of cold green tea across the bar and retrieved the dirty one. It wasn’t as poisonous to people’s physiology as alcohol, but had enough of a sting to make one woozy—a pleasant recreational toxin rather than a life-threatening one.

The humen had brought all sorts of interesting things.

Including disrespect for their dead.

Gourami nursed the tea, cupping the humen-shaped drinking vessel between spidery handfingers, the webs tucked together so they wouldn’t cling to the glass. Se rolled the fluid around se mouth, pushing it back and forth through the same fluted cartilaginous plates used for straining water weed and insects from the marshes, if one did not have soup.

It made gums and tongue and palate numb.

Se swallowed and became aware of a shadow darkening the sun-warmth that dappled se back. Gourami disentangled handfingers from the glass and turned, nictitating for a better view. A human stood there, tall and male, by the ringlets of fur on his face. He dropped his hand on Gourami’s shoulder, the dry mammal warmth chafing through se protective mucous gloss.

Gourami pulled back automatically.

—
Stand up,
the human mouthed.
Stand up, frog.

Lips moved, breath brushed across Gourami’s face. Se heard nothing but squeaks and rumbles, and could not have duplicated them to save se life. The frequency of humen voices was all wrong. But se could lipread much humen speech from se job as liaison. And humen body language, too, after a fashion.

Se was in grave trouble.

Gourami could have run; could have fought, exploded off the bar stool and barreled through the big human that stood making exaggerated lip movements and calling se “Froggie.” The humen who weren’t contractors always said they couldn’t tell one person from another.

Except the human was making eye contact, was making physical contact, and while Gourami knew that humen did that to intimidate, between the tea and the endorphins released by the kinesthetic signals, se was too relaxed to initiate violent movement.

—Stand up!
The human shaped again, and then made some other short noises and tossed his head, shaking shaggy mud-brown fur out in every direction. Then he reached for Gourami’s slate, grabbing with frustration.

But Gourami did not wish to relinquish it, and so, with the eye and hand contact broken, stood.

The human stepped back a pace, fumbling at his belt. But then Gourami wobbled—standing at full extension required balance, and after…several…helpings of poison, se had little left—and sank back.

Se toefingers curled on the hard dry floor, contracting automatically to protect the delicate webs, but still seeking purchase. The bar rose on the swell of a taxiing lighter. Gourami could have run, again, but still fumbled with the slate, hoping to explain or to obtain an explanation of the human’s odd behavior, when the human managed to slip the shocker from his belt and touch it to the base of Gourami’s skull, above the retracted neck, behind the ear membrane.

Nobody intervened. It was a humen bar.

4

IF CRICKET HAD A MAN, IT WOULD BE ANDRÉ DESCHÊNES.
But she didn’t. And after last night, she was doubly glad. She hadn’t wanted a man before and she didn’t want one now. They had both been happier with the sort of halfway state in which—
things
—stood, the one where nobody owned either one of them.

And now there was Lucienne.

She knew what he’d say if she asked him. It was business, and he didn’t talk about business.

She wondered if she would ever forgive him. Even if Jean was right. She wondered if she would ever
want
to forgive. So she let her fingertips brush his palm when she relieved him of the bucket, and smiled back when he smiled, white teeth flashing in the dim, damp entrylock of the minifab, and felt mostly like she’d swallowed ice. There was more plascrete underfoot, badly poured so her sandals scuffed on the ripples, and the bolts holding the structure’s shell to the slab around the margin protruded enough to tear careless toenails off. No smart matter here, no computronium, nothing electronic at all.

André blinked heavily in the darkness, his eyes adjusting without the help from his headset. Cricket nibbled her lip to stop the frown, even if he probably wouldn’t have seen it, and walked past him to the inner door. She knew her way around in the dark.

The main room of the minifab had a galley kitchen in the back corner, just where your line of sight would land as you came in the lock. The walls had a curious texture under the paint that hid the extruded surface. Somebody—Jean Kroc, as far as Cricket knew—had papered over them in layers, tearing the sheets into ragged bits, so the edges left abstract patterns under saturated blues and greens and oranges and yellows. The colors were bold but not glaring, and the overall effect was sunny, reinforced by braided rag rugs softening the plum-colored plascrete floor.

In addition to the warm decor, the room was full of light. Jean had torched curved windows in the minifab shell and fixed clear poly over them expediently, by cutting the sheets larger than the windows and running a torch around the edges so the bubbled scars made a weld. With Cricket’s help, Lucienne had sunk hooks and hung curtains across the scorched bits; it looked pretty good.

“Shoes,” Cricket said, once there was enough light for André to see his feet. She toed out of her sandals and kicked them back into the entry. After a moment, André copied her, though she noticed him craning his neck as if searching for signs of either Jean or a flicker stage-set of a conjure man’s workshop.

He caught her looking, and tipped his head. “I was expecting—”

“—stuffed alligators,” Cricket agreed. “Lucienne gave them all to Planetary Relief. Have a seat, André. I’ll get the tea.”

“Where’s Kroc?” He did as she said, though, and settled his long body into a blue-cushioned basket chair that creaked under his weight. When he leaned forward to lock his hand around his wrist, hugging his knees, his red brocade fogjacket strained over muscular shoulders. He’d shut down the autofit, too.

She kissed the top of his head as she went past, a calculated reward for following orders, and made sure she held the muddy bottom of the bucket clear of both the upholstery and his clothes. “He’ll be inside in a minute,” she said, as she dropped the bucket in the sink. “He knows you’re here.”

The plumbing was old-fashioned, too. She had to turn a knob to pull water from the pipes. She slid a copper kettle under the stream and started the gas fire while it filled. Water droplets sizzled when she set the kettle on the burner.

She stretched on tiptoe over the stove to pull down pottery cups—teal and rose, cheerful and antiquated as everything else in the ’fab—and let them clink on the tile counter. The silence that followed lasted until the water boiled, and then André cleared his throat again.

“Did you put a word in for me, Cricket?”

She turned off the stove and came back to him, balancing two cups in hands damp from washing the dirt and pea-pod strings from under her nails. She slid André one cup and plumped down on a cushion on the floor, elevating her own mug until she was settled so it wouldn’t spill. “Who else would have done it?”

“Good.” He sipped the tea. “Glad I can count on you.”

Cricket smiled around the rim of her cup. She had loved how André could never quite meet her eyes when she glanced up at him through her lashes. It made her feel powerful. Now it made her feel lied to. “You should come by more often,” she said. “You haven’t seen where I sleep now.”

“I thought you might be with Kroc, too.”

“I haven’t got a man,” she said. And might have said more, but she heard slapping footsteps beyond the door beside the galley and twisted where she sat to catch Jean Kroc’s eye as he entered. He was barefoot, his rinsed toes leaving damp pad-prints on the plascrete. He dried his hands on his shorts and smiled. He was a ropy, sallow, middle-aged man whose round spectacles sat unevenly on crooked ears, half-concealing slight epicanthic folds that gave his eyes an Earthasian cast. Cricket knew one of his grandmothers had been Korean, and that was probably also where he got the high forehead that shone with sweat on either side of a widow’s peak. A short grizzled beard softened his gaunt cheeks and the worn line of his jaw, but that wasn’t why they called him
Jean Gray
.

He half-nodded to Cricket and André, then fetched another mug down from over the stove. Jean Kroc wasn’t as tall or as broad as André, but he didn’t have to stand on tiptoe to reach as Cricket did. “You lived,” he said with his back to Cricket and André both. “Good, that’s good.”

“I lived,” André answered. He finished his tea in three gulps; it was still hot enough that steam came out with his breath when he continued. “So, Jean Gris. Who is it that you would like for me to kill?”

Gourami woke dry and aching. The surface se lay on was spongy without being soft, a kind of foam mat like the ones the humen used under their offspring’s climbing apparatus. The adults mostly seemed landbound, but the offspring were as light and agile as mossgliders, without the vestigial wings—

Gourami curled handfingers over eyes and squinched them tight, trying to chase out random thoughts for something a little more presently useful. Se neck hurt, fizzing pain like a chemical burn, and se remembered the shocker and the hand on the shoulder. Se flinched, and then gingerly slid fingers around the back of se skull in order to check the burn.

The flesh felt crusted and cracked, two finger-pad-size sores that were moist in the middle but dry at the edges. Se dabbed skin mucous over the wounds and the pain eased at once, leaving only lingering tenderness and a ringing in se skull like the vibrations from an outboard motor.

Se sat upright, blinking in the darkness. If se eyes had been going to adapt, they would have by now, which meant there was very little light. And se slate was missing, along with the web-rig, rigging kit, and passcode stick.

No way to call for help.

Se rolled belly-down, pressing soft-tacky skin to the mat, and laid jaw to floor. Bone conduction might tell more—like whether the structure in which se was trapped was a floating one or rested on land.

Se held a breath, and listened.

Waves. Waves slapping against the hull, and the thrum of engines attenuated by water. And voices, people voices, which could be carrying ten or a dozen humen miles. They spoke of commonplaces: work and egglings, food and education. Gourami’s handfingers twitched toward them spastically.

Se pushed up, unmolding from the mat. The mat was bad; it was not helpful. Se could not send signals ringing through the water by tapping on the decking, for example, even if se had something with which to tap.

The wounds itched. Se resealed them and set about exploring the prison in a crouch, sweeping long arms through the darkness, feeling for obstacles. Se touched nothing. Gourami clicked tongue against palate to generate saliva, and dragged each webbed hand across the tongue in turn. Sticky saliva adhered to the webs, mingling in strings with the mucous; se chafed the palms and fingerpads together, licking dry eyes in concentration. The chemical reaction was fast and a moment later se palms began to glow with blue-green bioluminescence.

Se lifted glowing hands in the darkness. As long as se didn’t look at them directly, the light was enough for dark-adapted eyes to see.

The prison was small. There was a metal door in one wall, and the bulkheads were all metal, too. Gourami couldn’t make out the color by biolume, and anyway the humen would see it differently. Their eyesight was shifted into the infrared; they could see as colors wavelengths that Gourami perceived only as heat.

Metal. The walls were metal. Which meant that the flooring under the padding was probably metal, too.

Well, that was something, then.

Se plumped down on the padded floor with knees lifted on either side of se head, smoothed more mucous—glowing now—over the wounds, extended claws from toefingers, and dug hard into the tough membrane of the mat, peeling it back.

Jefferson Greene sat back and amused himself by contemplating the humors and nature of his second-in-command. Timothy Closs did not think of himself a nice man, or even a particularly good one, but if pressed he would call himself honest. He believed in hard work, deserved rewards, and a refined form of Social Darwinism, though he didn’t actually identify it as such.

He was currently furious almost beyond the capacity for rational thought, and Jefferson could tell because he was sitting quietly, all of his usual intent energy focused on the backs of his hands as if he could bore through skin and bones and the desktop interface and the decking below, and sink the whole damned office cruiser into Novo Haven Bay.

He could have been checking his tickers, instant messages, voicemail. But Jefferson knew he wasn’t, because his eyes were perfectly still, his lips compressed, his fingers motionless—not shivering with nearly imperceptible commands.

Jefferson sat still for five minutes, thirty-two seconds, timed on his head’s-up, and listened to Closs think. He managed not to sigh when Closs lifted his head, but the truth was that he’d been close to resorting to a pharmaceutical drip.

The expression on Closs’s face provided no relief, just a clarifying rush of adrenaline. Jefferson sank his nails into the arms of his chair. “This is bad.”

Closs nodded with sarcastic slowness and got up out of his chair. He was a smallish man, fit in middle age, still military in his bearing though his hair was ash gray at the temples. “We’re going to have to kill it,” he said.

Jefferson shuddered. He’d been hoping for a softer solution, or at least a calming euphemism. “Major”—Closs was still
the Major,
though he hadn’t seen military service in twenty standard years his body-time. Which came out to 150 or so nonrelativistic since he’d become attached to the Colonial Rim Company, Greene’s World, and associated territories—“there’s got to be another way.”

Jefferson wasn’t the Greene that Greene’s World was named after, but rather the grandson of the famous explorer. Those were big shoes to fill: by Novo Haven standards, the biggest. He forced himself to meet Closs’s gaze when Closs turned to stare at him.

“Your position here rests on keeping the stream of omelite coming. No tanglestone, no Slide. No Slide, no connex. No Rim, no Core, no nothing, except a scatter of planets hundreds of years of travel time apart. Nobody’s going to let the Roman Empire fall, Jefferson, because you didn’t have the balls to do what you have to do. Make no mistake, this is your balls-up. If you’d just let the frog
go,
there would have been nothing to explain except a drowning. Now that you’ve
grabbed
the poor creature, what did you expect us to do with it?”

Closs paced back and forth in front of the curved windows overlooking the bay, the spaceport, and the sparse ranks of drill platforms marching out to sea beyond. Jefferson relaxed slightly: a pacing Closs was a Closs with a plan. “Not only have you given it a better story to tell and a reason to tell it,” Closs continued, “but if it can ever prove it was detained, you’ve validated its word. I already have ranid terrorism to contend with, reformers and Greens picketing my drill platforms, omelite and petroleum quotas to meet—”

“It’s a fucking ranid,” Jefferson replied, fiddling his ring, not bothering to rise. Omelite was a proprietary secret; as far as most of the galaxy was concerned, there were no natural sources of entangled pairs. The primary mission of the Greene’s World Charter Trade Company was classified. “It doesn’t even know the
word
tanglestone, much less what it’s mining. And it brought up the body. There hasn’t been time for the hard memory to dump yet, and Security will download whatever’s in there.”

“Which at best will prove her a criminal.”

“And at worst will prove somebody killed her, and maybe uncork the thing you wanted her dealt with to cork in the first place. Can we talk about how close we are to a native uprising right this second, Tim?”

Closs lifted an eyebrow at him, and for a moment Jefferson thought he’d won the round. None of his employees gave him half the trouble Closs did. But then, Closs wasn’t exactly an employee, though he controlled a smaller percentage of the Greene’s World Rim Charter Trade Company than Jefferson did. Jefferson cleared his throat. “I thought we could question it, find out how much it knew.”

“More now than it did this morning, that’s for damned sure.”

Jefferson took a breath. Losing his temper with Closs wouldn’t get him anything either, except Closs’s scorn. “Who the hell is it going to talk to? The local media?”

Which was Rim-owned. Like Security. And easier, in general, to control. There were idealists in Security. Far more of them, ironically, than in Com. A good thing there was no chance of it getting in touch with Earth; the press
there
liked to bring down governments.

Closs shook his head. He put his back to the glass and folded his hands. “It’ll have to be killed.”

Jefferson clambered from his chair, finally, to face Closs on his feet. “I hope you don’t think—”