Asimov's Science Fiction: March 2014 (19 page)

As she does, she scans the ambient, though not with the expectation of finding anything. She even risks a glance or two back over her shoulder. There's no sign of Phidippus Audax.

Eight minutes and forty seconds later—eight and twenty to go to get that bonus— she rides a glass-bubble up the side of one of the superskyscrapers that ring the CloudSpire, clustering near the slender stem of its base, then curving away like the leaves of a flowering plant to give its ovoid upper structure plenty of room. Cascades and fountains of light play across the buildings, logos and abstract patterns and giant Mona Lisa smiles. Bud and Ahmad's client must have serious resources to afford this real estate. The only people who've gone all-virtual are the ones who can't afford the concrete.

She rides the bubble straight up into a three-sided courtyard; its fourth side is a mere three-foot rail guarding against a sixty-five-story drop. The other three sides are sheets of black glass across which coruscate shimmering meteoric falls of light, with a door nearly indistinguishable from the glass around it in the wall opposite the drop. The platform is empty. She heads for the door.

The cable whips around the rail with a loud snap. Phidippus Audax follows it, one foot bracing on the courtyard's edge as the cable retracts, then vaults the railing using her free hand. Five minutes, thirty-five seconds. But it doesn't matter. Laughter rings through the ambient. >

"Hell if I will." Silence reigns in the air between them, except for the rain; there's no need to speak in the ambient.

>

"After you saved my life?"

>

Kip feels as cold as if the rain has turned to ice. Her own skills in the ambient all have to do with hiding and evasion. But Phidippus Audax doesn't seem to have any trouble remembering her... or finding her.

Trembling, she prepares another one-time mask. She can't think what else to do. She chooses a spot with an ambient geography just a little in front of where she's actually standing, and triggers it. The mask slams into place.

Kip leaps away, hidden in the ambient behind the mask, her physical presence disguised behind the hologram the woman now perceives instead of Kip herself.

The cable snakes around her wrist, yanking her off balance. She spins and skitters, falls to the deck. The woman reels her in. Kip's body slides across the platform's smooth surface. Phidippus Audax pulls her to her feet, reaches into the pocket no one knows about and winkles out the chip.

Kip draws her knife. The hand holding the chip slices down, hard. Kip's hand goes numb. The knife skitters across the platform.

> She holds the chip up to her eyes, easily keeping a one-handed grip on her captive. chip? >> Kip shrugs. >

> Phidippus Audax lowers her face to Kip's and kisses her. Kip breaks away, but not before Phidippus Audax's tongue thoroughly invades her mouth.

> Three minutes, twenty-three seconds, not that it matters anymore. > She releases Kip and is gone over the railing, leaving Kip alone in the rain.

For an eternal moment—>—she just stands there. Her arms feel like lead weights. The rain is cold on her face, colder than it's been all night.

They'll never call on her again. One shot, one simple, straightforward, crosstown shot, and she planted it. Right into solid concrete.

She can't imagine going home. She wants to run, off the grid maybe, away from the news of her failure that'll be all over the ambient soon. Doesn't matter how many races she wins from now on, she'll be remembered as the one who took Bud and Ahmad's hire and screwed it up.

Something tickles her in the ambient. She turns around.

The door's open. >

Kip walks in, numb, through a second set of doors, and into a bright antechamber lit up with the logo of one of the city's better-known corporations. Despite this, the room is deserted, save for a small man standing next to a medical robot.

"Ah, there you are." The man has a soft, pleasant voice, like a nursery facilitator in the Gymnasium. He's shorter than Kip and even paler than Bud. "Step this way, please, we don't have much time if you want to earn that bonus."

Kip stops. "I lost the package. I'm not earning anything."

"Oh no, oh no." The man laughs gently. Kip's skin crawls. "It's a purloined letter, dear. Come here, please." He waves her toward the robot, which is turning its head back and forth, its antennae flicking this way and that.

"How'd you know I'd make it? That woman might've let me drown."

> The voice isn't the man's. It's someone else's, somewhere else.

> The dummy. Goddamn it. The robot's needle pricks her briefly, draws out some blood. Its face lights up. > Its ambient presence sounds cheerful. Whoever decided to give robots humanlike expressiveness should be shot.

And the rest of the agreed amount, bonus included, hits Kip's account. She almost doesn't notice. "What did those two fuckers put in me?" >

The man looks surprised. "Just a key. That's all."

"A key." Knowledge floods her at this response, but she can't make sense of it. DNA sequences and genomes and genetic codes and—>

"Nothing you need to worry about." The man smiles in a way that is probably meant to be reassuring. "Your friends had some important data to send. They used your own genome to hide it from some other friends who would very much like to get their hands on it. Then they made you the key."

She looks down at her arm, where the blood draw came out. "Oh." She could've just handed the dummy over, and not done all that work of evasion...

>

"Well goddamn it." She wants to punch this kindly little doctor or whatever he is in the face. The robot would probably shoot her full of anesthesia if she tried it, though. Then she thinks of something else.

"The woman. Phidippus Audax. She kissed me. That means she got my genetics."

The doctor shrugs. "Doesn't matter. Your genome? That's on the ambient along with everyone else's. She stole a key, but she can't access what it unlocks. No one can, but the intended recipient. Don't worry," he says again. "You made the delivery. Your job is done." Behind her, there's a whisper of moving air. "You can go now."

Kip, who knows a dismissal when she hears one, starts to walk away.

"Unless," he continues, "you find that you like this sort of work."

Kip stops. Turns back. Looks at the man again. "What?"

"You're talented. We recognize that. There might be opportunities for something... more consistent."

Kip stares. "But I failed."

"I keep telling you. You didn't."

She knows what he's saying. Bud and Ahmad play everybody. It's what they do. She didn't fail, not really, even though it feels like she did. The public story of her run, of how she almost made it but was caught at the last second, already flickers across the ambient. But it's just a story. The Garage's client has some code, or data, or something that no one else but Kip knows they have. And who'd listen to her, since from the ambient's perspective, she's lost?

Fucking PR.

And she knows what he's offering. She can run. But they want to know if she can be a courier, and that's something else entirely. One where her public legacy is of failure, and she disappears.

They want her to be like Phidippus Audax.

It beats the alternative.

"Where do I sign?"

Dominica Phetteplace tells us, "In addition to writing I also dance. My favorite 'genres' are ballet and contemporary. Dance is the interaction of space, time, and the body. This story is about the disruption of all three."

It all began with a picnic. A flat, grassy plain on the muggy surface of Omega-Alpha-III. Volcano to the north, algae-green forest on all sides. Sparkling wine in plastic cups for Cail and Akhtar, pear juice for Emmy. An afternoon on land to relieve the boredom of geosynchrous orbit.

Cail rested his eyes as Akhtar examined the exotic grass, in its prebudding stage. An eerie silence crept up on them.

They looked at each other, then looked around the picnic site, and back at each other.

"Emmy," they both said at once. Emmy, who was gone. After a scan of the horizon, Cail saw an Emmy-shaped silhouette walking toward the volcanic caves. He sprinted after her, calling for her. She did not stop. She seemed very determined to explore. She had always been that way.

The cave was illuminated by an Ancient portal, glowing purple.

Emmy walked in, without looking back.

Cail did not dare follow. The portal was the advanced machinery of a long-dead civilization. Emmy might already be dead.

Akhtar called for backup. Dr. Mwaru Monroe arrived with a two-person team. He set up his instruments a safe distance from the portal, twenty feet back, almost at the cave entrance.

After an hour of analysis, he declared, "It's a time portal."

"How far back is she?" asked Akhtar.

"Five to ten thousand years," said Dr. Monroe.

"Was the planet even habitable then?"

"According to my calculations, yes."

"Was it inhabited?"

"There's no evidence that it was."

Akhtar gasped. "She's only eight years old. She won't be able to survive on her own for very long."

"I know. I'm sorry."

Before we were we,

I was I.

On one side of the portal I was a solitary girl. I didn't fall in. It wasn't an accident.

I walked through because Portal asked me to.

One the other side, I became many. Once I entered, Portal closed. There was no going back.

For a brief moment it was terrifying. But I was only alone for one heartbeat. I was right behind me. And behind me. One is I and two is I, but three makes we.

Cail had a minor lobotomy to take the edge off his grief. Akhtar opted for a modified ECT. There is no ridding yourself of sadness, but technology can make your tragedies smaller and more manageable. Akhtar dreamt about Emmy, alone in the wilderness. The dreams were sometimes nightmares.

Cail and Akhtar asked Dr. Monroe if they could throw some supplies through the portal. A water purifier, a nutrient bar. Dr. Monroe said no. Every disturbance of the portal's surface made it unstable. It could bubble up and consume the whole planet.

"Ridiculous. Has such a thing ever happened before?" asked Cail.

"Theoretically, it is possible," said Dr. Monroe.

And then another came through, exactly the same as the two of us.

We already knew about heartbeats, how to count and how to keep time.

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34...

In our old life we had a name for this sequence, but it was a name no longer needed and thus discarded. Then we made up our own name. We called it the I-I sequence, since one and I were the same. One beat, the first of us.

One beat, the next.

Two beats, another. Three, again.

Five, again.

We never forgot how to count.

We arrived so close together at first. Then farther apart, beat by beat. And though the gaps between us were growing larger, we were still filling up the cavern.

Visiting scholar Dr. Coyo Tran had published several papers on chrononautics. He met with Cail and Akhtar immediately upon his arrival at SpB-Baikal.

"It's not likely she's still alive," said Cail. "She fell through the portal seven months ago."

"Yes, but if I can calibrate my instruments properly, I think I can retrieve her moments after she disappeared." Cail wanted to look over the specs. Akhtar wanted to start right away. "No," Cail said to her privately. "This has to be done right. There are so many ways to get mangled crossing the portal."

Akhtar watched Cail scroll through the plans. He furrowed his brows as he read, making a show of his skepticism. Akhtar didn't believe Cail truly understood what he was looking at. Mechanics aboard space bases have to do a little bit of everything, which makes them think they can do anything.

To Akhtar, the choice between giving up on Emmy and attempting the improbable was really no choice at all. She didn't understand how it could be otherwise for Cail.

Dr. Tran's device looked like a giant vacuum cleaner and sounded a bit like one, too. Everyone present had to wear hazmat suits. They looked like a bunch of astronauts. Akhtar wondered if the portal decided to suck up the whole planet, would it take them too, or would it leave them behind? And which would be worse?

Dr. Tran had assured her the odds of such an implosion were "vanishingly" small. He was trying to be funny.

The device fired up. The room was briefly heated with a flash of bright light. Once Akhtar adjusted her visor settings, she could see a girl being sucked out of the portal. She was struggling, trying to get back in. She appeared to be in pain. The portal turned lavender, than pink. Once the girl was through, the portal flashed green. She tried to run back through, but it wouldn't accept her. Green did not mean go, not to the Ancients.

She screamed. The wail was unfamiliar to Akhtar. She had never heard this voice. That did not mean this was not Emmy. It clearly was, only much older. Girl might not be the right word. Possibly a woman. It was hard to tell.

Because the cave was crowded, we ventured out into the forest. There were trees and a stream and fruit.

Some of this fruit was poison, we had to learn the hard way. The hard way was the only way. Later, we made a burial ritual.

Later, when we grew out of our clothes, we made our own. We fashioned dresses from the skin and bones of the wolves and dragons we killed.

Our bodies changed until we reminded ourselves of Mama.

Mama. Mama. Mama.

One of our old words that we kept. We didn't keep very many. We didn't need very many.

As the heartbeat gaps between us grew, as the I-I sequence marched on, we arrived just the same as we always did. Red overalls, clean skin untouched by the grime of survival. We are always confused when we arrived, always asking about Mama.