Текст книги "Burning Bright"

Автор книги: Melissa Scott

Соавторы: Melissa Scott
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

“As you say,” Bettis murmured, “another good reason to sever ties with TMN. I’ve never understood why you dealt with them in the first place, Damiano. They’ve got a reputation for shady dealing, buying smuggled goods and the like.”

That was why I started dealing with them. Damian curbed his tongue, said mildly, “They were cheap, and they’re brokers for a growers’ union that–until last year, anyway–was reliable, gave us a quality product. I agree, I think they’ve outlived their usefulness.”

Chrestillio said, “I’m still concerned that C‑and‑I was down on one of our houses, Damiano.”

“It wasn’t us they were after, but I agree,” Damian said. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Chrestillio shook his head. “Not good enough. Are you running shadow cargoes, Damiano?”

Damian hesitated, not sure how he wanted to answer this– of course I am, but I’m not sure you want to hear that–and Chrestillio went on, “We do a lot of business with the Republic. I don’t want to screw up our good relations there.”

“We do a lot of business in HsaioiAn, too,” Damian said, sure of his ground in this well‑worn argument. “We need to keep on good terms with them, too.”

“But I don’t want to do it at the expense of our Republican connections,” Chrestillio said.

“They could make it pretty difficult to get the red‑carpet if they wanted to,” Calligan Brisch said. “We have stockpiles, of course, and they will get us through Storm, but they won’t last long after that. And the distillery will need a few weeks to get back up to speed.”

“To put it bluntly,” Chrestillio said, “what do we get out of this, in return for this risk?”

“What risk?” Damian asked, and suddenly realized that his siblings knew, or guessed, more than he’d intended. Not that it should surprise me. But I didn’t expect them to challenge me quite so soon. “What I’m hoping to get is permission to trade directly with Highhopes and the human settlement on Nan‑pianmar. I’m doing a favor for certain persons, and those worlds lie within his sphere of influence.”

“It would be nice not to go through the Jericho brokers,” Bettis said, “but do you really think they’ll allow it?”

Damian grinned. “Frankly, I think it’s a long shot, but the–the main person with whom I’m dealing has invested status in the question, and it’ll be worth his while to buy us off. And ours, too. And he will be indebted to us.”

“Well?” Chrestillio looked at the others.

“As long as it doesn’t screw up my production schedules,” Calligan Brisch said. “Otherwise, it sounds like a chance worth taking.”

Bettis nodded. “I agree. Our investments in the Republic can stand a little scandal.”

Chrestillio nodded. “All right. But I don’t want trouble on Demeter.”

“There won’t be,” Damian answered, and kept himself from crossing his fingers under the tabletop, as though he were a child again. And there shouldn’t be any trouble, not if ji‑Imbaoa gets me the codes he’s promised. With Ransome off the nets, or at least busy with the Game, there’s no one else on the hsai side who can spot what’s happening, and I know there aren’t any traces on Demeter that will lead to me. TMN can fend for itself. And if I win–never mind the trading rights, there will be people on both sides deep in debt to me. He smiled to himself, and reached for the dish of preserves.

Day 31

High Spring: Shadows, Face Road,

Dock Road District Below the Old Dike

Lioe settled herself at a console in one of the club’s workrooms, her fingers moving easily over the controls, probing the club’s extensive libraries for ideas for a new scenario. It would be nice to pursue some of the ideas from Ixion’s Wheel–particularly Avellar’s bid for the throne, dependent as it was on the same psionics that had been banned throughout the Imperium. Avellar, tied to his surviving clone‑siblings by a telepathic link, was potentially a fascinating character, though she would have to find a player who could be relied on to avoid Gamer angst. Ambidexter could do it, she thought, if he was still playing. She shook that thought away. Ambidexter was no longer a player; there was no use pining over what might have been. Avellar’s bid for the throne would provide the most interesting resolution to the unstable political and emotional balance within the Game itself; his plot had ties to all the other versions and variants of the Game, could pull it all together into one final, complete scenario that would take years to run. She could see how it could be structured, how to use Avellar to bring in each strand of the Game, all the plots that had evolved and mutated from the original scenario–they were linked anyway, so intermingled that a schematic of the Game looked more like a snarled web of string than a normal variant tree. But Avellar, or, more precisely, Avellar’s bid to take the throne, could untangle it all, and bring the situation to a final resolution.

And that, of course, was the problem, and the main reason she would never float that grand scenario. To follow that line would mean coming dangerously close to the end of the Game. About the only convention that was held sacrosanct by every Gamer was that no scenario could be allowed to tip the balance between Rebellion and Imperium: to change that would be to change the Game itself. It wouldn’t be the end, not really, a voice whispered, just the start of a new Game, but that was almost as unacceptable. She had been told, years ago, when she was just starting out in the Game, that she had too much of a taste for endings. She sighed, and touched the key sequence that would load another file into her Gameboard–Shadows had given her unlimited copy privileges–and got the double beep that warned her that the datasphere was reaching capacity. She sighed again, released it from the read/write slot, and fumbled in her carryall until she found the case of disks she had bought that morning. She fitted a new one into place, touched keys again, and saw the monitor screen shift to the familiar transmission pattern.

She leaned back in her chair, watching the patterns change, and wondered what she would do for another scenario. Ixion’s Wheel was fun, but neither last night’s session nor any of the off‑line test sessions back on Callixte had been quite what she wanted. There was always somebody who wouldn’t play the templates the way they were written, or something to throw off the balance she had imagined. Maybe a different set of players would do better, or maybe a different scenario–something in the Court Life variant, say, secret rebels working at court–would give her what she was looking for, would give her the perfect session that no one would ever want to rewrite.

She turned her thoughts away from that impossibility–the point of the Game was that everything could be rewritten, that the main points of the evolving story could only be arrived at by concensus, the acceptance of large numbers of one’s peers–and flipped a secondary screen to the in‑house narrowcast. One of the house notables was running Ixion’s Wheel already, and she paused for a moment, touched keys to bring up the audio feed.

“–but can you be trusted to support the Rebellion, my lord?” a voice said, and she winced, and flipped the screen away. She hadn’t expected the players to be very good, playing in a low‑level session like this one, but that was the kind of Gamer dialogue that she particularly disliked.

She called up another set of menus, but let them sit untouched, staring at the complex symbol strings. Just at the moment, none of them were terribly interesting. She sighed again, and touched keys to move out of the Game systems and into the regular communications net. It was probably past time to check her temporary mailbox; it would be just like Kerestel to call to see how she was doing, and to worry if he received no answer. She touched codes, frowned for a moment at the mailbox prompt, and then searched her bag until she found the slip of foil with the account numbers printed on it. She typed them in, followed it with her password, and the screen went blank for an instant before obediently presenting her with a list of messages. As expected, Kerestel had called–twice–but at least the second message confirmed that they would be staying on Burning Bright for a full ten days. She dispatched a quick acknowledgment– at least he’ll know I’m all right, and checking my mail–and called up the third message. The sender’s code was unfamiliar. She wondered for an instant if Roscha had sent some kind of note–that sort of gesture didn’t seem to be at all her style–and then the screen windowed again on the short printed message:

I ENJOYED YOUR SCENARIO, AND WOULD LIKE TO TALK MORE ABOUT IT. WOULD YOU BE INTERESTED IN COMING TO A PARTY TONIGHT AT THE HSAI AMBASSADOR’S WITH ME? I THINK YOU MIGHT FIND IT INSTRUCTIVE. RANSOME.

Lioe studied the note for a moment, trying to work out the implications. It was flattering that Ransome/Ambidexter had thought enough of the scenario to extend this invitation, and if sex was intended, she wasn’t entirely sure she’d say no– but I really don’t think I like the word “instructive.” And why is the hsai ambassador inviting him to parties, anyway? She left the message hanging on that screen, touched her keyboard to move onto a general data net. A chime sounded and glyphs flashed, warning her that any charges from this node were her personal responsibility. She sighed, and hit the accept button, though she touched a second series of keys to post a running total at the base of the screen. The screen went dark for a moment, then presented her with another series of menus.

Burning Bright’s datastore was indexed according to an unfamiliar system. She wasted perhaps five minutes and ten reallearning how to phrase her questions, but at last found the hsai ambassador’s public file. He was human– and I probably oughtn’t be surprised at that; the hsai do tend to staff their embassies with adopted members of the local species–but not jericho‑human, not born inside the borders of HsaioiAn. What was unusual was that he had been born on Burning Bright, one of the select few who had been coopted for adoption into the hsai kinship system. Lioe stared at that information for a moment, wondering how it must feel to come back to your homeworld after all this time–over thirty years, if his age was correct, and he had been coopted in his twenties, like most chaoi‑mon. She shook herself then, seeing the list of honors that followed his name: membership in the imperial family, half a dozen different awards for merit, including a personal letter from the Father‑Emperor himself. Whatever he had felt about cooption at the time, Tal Chauvelin had adapted, and flourished. And there were reasons to accept cooption, after all. Lioe frowned slightly, remembering the last big series of hsai cooption raids. She had just begun piloting then, and the risk had been real enough, even on the fringes of the Republic, that she had had to consider what she would do if she were faced with that choice. The hsai wanted to join the entire galaxy in kinship, according to their own phrase, and, however you felt about it personally, they did live up to their side of that philosophy. Chaoi‑monwere, by law and custom, full members of hsai society, fully part of the elaborate system. Given a choice between that and death, or at best a few years in a holding pen while the metagovernments squabbled over repatriation, becoming chaoi‑monwas not that bad an option. And if you came from a poor world, either in the Free Zone or on the fringes of the Republic, or even from a poor sector of a good world, it was a definite step forward.

However, Chauvelin’s background didn’t tell her why Ransome was invited to his party, or why Ransome would invite her. She skimmed through the rest of the file, and found nothing useful. Ransome’s public file was short, and heavily edited: it made no mention of his Gaming career, and concentrated on a list of the awards he had won for his story eggs and other image installations. He had been born on Burning Bright, held Burning Bright citizenship, but the only remotely personal piece of information in the file was the note that his parents had been Syncretist Observants, minister/administrators of Burning Bright’s peculiar religion. She hesitated, wondering if it was worth her while to try to hack the system–there had to be other records available somewhere–but then smiled, slowly. There was, of course, an even simpler way to answer her question: ask him directly.

She flipped herself out of the datastore–the charges read fifty real, and she made a face at the total–and back onto the main communications net, transferring Ransome’s mailcode from the message that still waited on the secondary screen. There was another brief pause, and then the communications screen lit and windowed.

“Na Lioe. I see you got my message.”

Lioe leaned back in her chair to look at the face in the screen. Ransome was looking even paler than he had the night before, and a hectic flush stained his high cheekbones. But then, I probably don’t look so great myself, after last night. She had not slept well on Roscha’s boat. She put that thought aside, said aloud, “I did. I was wondering why.”

There was a little pause, and Ransome said, “Why what?”

“Why you invited me,” Lioe answered. And why you were invited in the first place.

Ransome grinned. “I told you, I like your play, and I think you might find hsai politics amusing–maybe even useful. Are you committed to a session tonight?”

“No.” Lioe hesitated, unsure of the right move. But I want to go, she realized abruptly. I’ve never seen real hsai society, just the jericho‑humans who broker for them. And most of all, I want to find out more about Ransome. “Yes,” she said slowly. “Yes, I’d like to come. How do I get there–and how formal is this, anyway?”

“Moderately,” Ransome said. “I’ll meet you at the Governor’s Point lift station at eighteen‑thirty, and we can ride together–if that’s agreeable to you.”

“Thanks,” Lioe said. “I’ll be there.”

“Until tonight, then,” Ransome said, and cut the connection.

Lioe stared at the empty screen for a moment longer, then made herself begin closing down the systems. From what she had seen of Burning Bright, “moderately formal” here should probably be translated as “strictly formal” in Republican terms. Nothing in her carryall–nothing in the storage cells back on the ship, or indeed left behind in her one‑room flat on Callixte–fit that description; she would have to find the local shop district, and hope she could pick up something appropriate. She hesitated then, her fingers poised for the final sequence. The cab driver had said something about Warden Street, the street that ran along the top of the Old Dike, being a center for fashion. Why not go there, especially when she had money to spend? Less than she had before she’d gone into the datastores, but still enough to afford a few more indulgences. She smiled to herself, and finished closing down the system.

She paid her fee at the main desk in the lobby, and found her way to the nearest waterbus stop. Roscha had tried to explain the local transit system before she’d dropped Lioe off on the canalside south of Shadows, and so far the hurried explanation seemed to make sense. She bought a regular ticket–she didn’t want to indulge in express buses, not when she was planning to buy clothing–and when the bus arrived, seated herself in the stern, under the faded brick‑red awning. The bus was crowded, and slow, stopping every two hundred meters or so to take on more passengers or to drop someone off, and for once Lioe let herself enjoy the scenery.

The canal was filled with traffic, from covered barges half again as long as the waterbus to the narrow, high‑tailed passenger boats that Roscha had called gondas, to one‑and two‑person skids. Most of the people riding skids were young, standing barefoot on the platform, skimming in and out of the traffic trailing a plume of spray. One bright‑red craft cut close enough to the bus to send water spraying across the open passenger compartment, and Lioe joined in the general shout of anger. A woman at the head of the bus pitched a piece of fruit after the skid’s driver, hitting him neatly in the back of the head, and the other passengers applauded. The woman stood and bowed, like an actor, and Lioe saw the mask sitting on the bench beside her, a grinning devil‑face, the gold and black vivid against the faded grey of the seats.

At the next stop, a gaggle of children in school uniforms, black high‑collared smocks open over a variety of shirts and trousers, climbed aboard; they vanished one by one as the bus wound its way up the canal toward the Crooked River. At last the bus turned onto a much broader canal, this one paralleling the Old Dike, so that they moved between a narrow embankment, and the houses shouldering each other for place beyond it, and the immense bulk of the Dike itself. Even in the daylight, with the sunlight to soften it, it was an impressive sight, towering over the traffic, bicycles and three‑wheeled carts and denki‑bikes and the occasional heavy carrier, that moved along the embankment at its foot. The stone of its face had faded from its original near‑black, and the salt stains had all but vanished, replaced by the softer faded lavender and grey‑green of rock‑rust. Lioe leaned back, trying to see Warden Street at the top of the wall, but she could only hear it, the traffic moving in counterpoint to the noise of the street at its base.

The canal widened perceptibly, and the banks were crowded with low‑slung barges, their open decks piled high with crates and boxes. Shoppers, men and women alike in loose shirts and trousers, many of them barefoot on the sun‑warmed stones, moved along the banks with string sacks balanced on each shoulder, calling to each other and to the merchants on the barges. The barge tenders seemed to sell anything, Lioe saw with amazement. There was one stocked with food, set up like any land‑bound store with neat aisles and display cases; tied to its stern was a much smaller boat that seemed to be filled with rags. A couple of adolescents were pawing through the piles. As Lioe watched, one of them straightened with a crow of delight, and slung a salvaged cape around his thin shoulders, striking a dramatic attitude. Farther on, a closed barge sold custom masks, a white, unpainted face peering from each of the tiny portholes. It was an unsettling effect, and Lioe looked away quickly.

The bus stopped three times in the market basin–Warden Mecomber’s Market, the signs read, in Burning Bright’s old‑fashioned, legible script–and the passengers climbed out in droves, calling to the driver as they went. As the bus pulled away from the final stop, only Lioe and a trio of musicians, two towheaded young men who looked like siblings and a stocky, flat‑faced woman, remained. The musicians huddled together, talking in low voices, their cased instruments tucked between their feet. The woman, sketching phrasing and tempo in the air, had beautiful hands.

The bus moved more slowly now, and the tone of its engine deepened, as though it were fighting a new current. Lioe glanced over the side, curious, but the oily water slid past, apparently unchanged. Then she heard a new rushing noise–not so new, she realized; she had been hearing it since the market, but the babble of voices had kept her from realizing what it was. The bus slanted in toward the left‑hand bank, the embankment side, and the driver’s voice crackled in the speakers.

“Crooked Underpass, people. End of the line.”

Lioe followed the musicians up onto the bank, and stopped short, staring at the Dike. Directly ahead of her, the embankment ended in a woven iron railing; beyond that, water spurted from a hole in the Dike, a short, meter‑long fall to the river below–not a hole, she realized instantly, but a tunnel. The Crooked River had to pass through the Dike–she had known that, but it hadn’t quite sunk in to her consciousness–and this was the mouth of the tunnel that carried it. The tunnel probably has hydro generators in it, too, she thought, striving for some kind of perspective. Burning Brighters don’t seem to waste power. Beyond the railing, the water roared, and a segment of the spectrum danced in the spray. She stared for a moment longer, then made herself look away.

She rode the elevator up the face of the Dike–it was a closed car, and she wasn’t entirely sure if she was glad or sorry–and passed through the elevator station and into a blaze of noise and color. She blinked, startled, checked instinctively, and nearly ran into someone. Warden Street was mobbed, people jostling shoulder to shoulder along the walkways and spilling out into the street, so that the trolley sounded its two‑toned whistle almost continually, and still barely moved more than a few meters at a time. A group of musicians–not the trio from the bus–were playing on a wooden platform that looked temporary, the stinging sound of steel strings ringing over the crowd, but the singer’s words were lost in the general uproar. Lioe blinked again, realized that she was becoming a traffic hazard, and made herself start walking.

The crowds here were better dressed than they had been on the streets below. Here most of the people, men and women, wore either the full‑skirted, nipwaisted coats or loose, unshaped wraps of some silky fabric that seemed to float in the air around them, trailing strange perfumes. Quite a few wore strands of bells, silver or gold or enameled in many colors, slung from shoulder to hip, and Lioe found herself eyeing them curiously, wondering if the style would suit her. The shop windows were enticing, holograms revolving in the thick display glass, showing off clothes more improbable even than the Republic’s highest fashion, the prices flickering discreetly just below the items. A few of the older buildings had real windows, with real goods in the boxes behind them. Lioe slowed her step to stare, not caring if that betrayed her as a foreigner–the neat hat would do that anyway, marked her as a pilot and a Republican on any human‑settled world–and realized that the prices in these windows were sandwiched in the glass itself, faint opalescent numbers visible only from a certain angle. She couldn’t begin to guess how much such a display would cost, but she suspected the shops made more than enough to cover their expenses. Still, one of them was bound to have what she needed.

She found what she was looking for at last, in a smaller store toward the center of the Dike, a place crammed with racks of the full‑skirted coats and the silky wraps, and a pile of skirts made of reembroidered lace, each pattern in the lace itself redefined by an overlay of colored shapes cut from sequensa shells. She fingered that fabric cautiously, admiring its elaborate beauty, but knew better than to buy. She wouldn’t know how to wear a skirt, how to make herself look good in it, but even so, she sighed for the lost possibility. She bought a coat instead, this one straight‑bodied, a rich gold‑on‑gold brocade embroidered at the neck and shoulders with gold beads and leaf‑shaped paillettes of gold‑dyed sequensas. It looked good, she had to admit as she looked at herself in the shop mirror, the counterwoman hovering in the background, good enough to make her reckless. She bought a shirt as well, a loose tunic of the floating silk dyed a darker mustard color, and a thin scarf bordered with more sequensas and gold embroidery. It took everything that was left of the voucher from Shadows to pay for it all, but she shrugged away the thought that she was doing it to impress Ransome. This was easy money, easy come and easy go, to be spent on indulgences like this. And if I want to impress somebody with it, well, I’ll just call Roscha. I might do that anyway. She passed the last of the vouchers over the countertop, watched the woman feed them one by one into the bank machine. I think I’ll do just that–and if I need money, there’s always Republican C‑and‑I. Kichi Desjourdy’s station chief here, and she always paid well for information. There’s bound to be enough stuff going on here that would interest her. She watched the counterwoman wrap the clothes into a tidy bundle, accepted it with thanks. Certainly there should be enough happening at this party of Ransome’s. She tucked the bundle under her arm, and stepped out of the shop to catch the trolley back toward Governor’s Point and her hostel in the Ghetto beyond.

Evening, Day 31

High Spring: The Hsai

Ambassador’s House, in the

Ghetto, Landing Isle Above

Old City North

It was evening in Chauvelin’s garden, and Damian Chrestil stood with his back to the terrace wall, looking inward toward the house. It was almost as large as a midsize palazze, the sort that cousins of Five Points families built in the districts below the Five Points cliffs. The white stone glowed in the twilight, very bright against the purpling haze of the sky; the open windows were filled with golden light, spilling a distant music into the cooling air. In the gap between the southern wing and the main house, he could just see a blue‑black expanse of ocean, reflecting a rising moon in a scattering of light like foam. He looked away from that, made uneasy by the sight of open water–the sea should be viewed from the security of the barrier hills, or from an open deck, not glimpsed like this across a garden–and found the lesser moon, just rising, riding low beneath a bank of cloud. The larger moon was well up, and all but invisible, just a faint glow of pewter light behind the thickening clouds. The street brokers were saying it was thirty‑to‑one that the storm that was building to the south would hit the city, but no one was taking odds on strength.

The distant rumble of an orbiter, lifting from Newfields, caught his attention, drew his eyes west just in time to see the spark of light dwindle into a pinpoint no brighter than a star, and vanish in the twilight. The sky behind it was streaked with cloud and layered with the orange and reds of the sunset, the distant housetops outlined against it as though against a sheet of flame. The sound of the takeoff hung in the air, undercutting the drifting music. It was nothing special, and he looked away, back toward the crowd of people filling the terrace. One of them–a woman, tall, face thin and sculpturally beautiful, the lines of her bones drawn hard and pure under skin like old honey–had heard the orbiter too, was still staring upward as though she could pick out the light of its passage from among the scudding clouds. There was some expression behind that still face, knowledge, perhaps, that was no longer hunger, and Damian caught his breath in spite of himself, watching her watch the orbiter’s flight. Then there was a movement in the crowd beside her, and she turned away, her face breaking into movement, the stone‑hard beauty shattering into a sort of vivid ugliness. Ransome smiled crookedly at her–they were of a height–and drew her away with him toward the house. As she turned, Damian saw the hat slung over her shoulder, dangling from a spangled scarf that from this distance looked as though it had been woven from the sunset sky. A short grey plume flowed like a cloud from the hat’s crown. So that’s the pilot, he thought. She’ll certainly bear watching.

“I see you’ve spotted her. That’s Lioe.”

Damian looked down and down again, smiled in spite of himself at Cella’s delicate face turned up to him. She was a tiny woman, barely tall enough to reach his shoulder; even her eight‑centimeter heels did not bring her chin above his armpit. She was beautifully dressed, as always, this time in a sleeveless bodice the color of bitter chocolate that hugged breasts and hips and gave way to a swirling skirt embroidered at the hem with a band of pale copper apples. The almost‑sheer fabric emphasized perfect calves and elegant ankles. Her breasts swelled distractingly above the jerkin’s square neckline.

“Have you found out anything more?” Damian asked.

Cella smiled. She had painted her lips and cheeks and nails to match the new‑copper apples on her skirt, a cool metallic pink barely paler than her skin. “Not much. She’s from Callixte–born there, apparently, not just works from there. She’s a notable by anyone’s reckoning, and the people on the intersystems nets like her a lot. If she’s political, she’s a Republican, but that’s a big if. Between piloting and the Game, I can’t see that she’s had much time for politics. She did know Kichi Desjourdy when Desjourdy was on Falconsreach, but I can’t trace anything more than just knowing each other. Desjourdy’s a Gamer, after all, and a class‑four arbiter.”

Damian nodded thoughtfully. Kichi Desjourdy was the new Customs‑and‑Intelligence representative to Burning Bright, a clever woman, and therefore dangerous. And that made any connection between her and this Lioe a dangerous one. “Do you think this–this whole thing, meeting with Ransome and all–could be some kind of setup?”

Cella shook her head. “Not with his consent, anyway. I’m quite certain they met at the club–that that was their first meeting, and that it wasn’t staged in any way.” She paused then, and her smile took on a new edge. “I did find out one thing interesting, though. She spent last night with one of yours, Damiano. A john‑boat girl called Roscha.”

“Did she, now?” Damian said, softly. Trust Roscha to be more trouble. “Why didn’t I hear about it?”

“No one knew you were interested,” Cella said. “I didn’t know you were interested, until last night.”

“They’re sleeping together?”

“I would say so.” Cella shrugged. “I would.”

“Charming.” Damian stared out into the crowd, did not find the pilot, turned slowly so that he faced back toward the cliff and the Old City spread out beyond the lower terrace. Most of the lights were on now, the sky faded to a thick and dusty purple, and the pattern of the lights in the lower garden echoed the play of light from the city below, disrupted only by the figures moving along the silvered stones of the pathways. Neither Ransome nor Lioe was anywhere to be seen.