Implied Spaces (21 page)

He supposed he would have to make a concession to the modern world and accept an implant.

His capsule hissed up to the platform. “See you tonight?” he said.

“Sure.”

“Where shall we meet?”

“Come to my apartment after work hours. You know where it is.”

The small capsule had filled with impatient people glaring at him. He waved goodbye and stepped inside, where he had time to grab a strap before accelerating smoothly away. Two minutes later the car stopped at the Medical Center, and as he exited Aristide was almost trampled by rushing medical personnel.

Moving at a more refined pace, Aristide walked past the two glowing holographic balls that marked the station entrance—each was blazoned with a caduceus, as those of the port station had been marked with an anchor—and then he strolled to the annex that contained the pools of life. While waiting his turn he called Commissar Lin on his implant.

“I can’t talk for long,” Lin answered “I’m about to go into a meeting with Coy Coy.”

“Who’s Coy Coy?” Aristide asked.

“General Tumusok,” said Lin. “It’s what his friends call him.”

“You’re his friend now?”

“I have that pleasure, yes.”

“Felicitations,” Aristide said. “I thought I’d call to let you know I have returned to the city, and to offer my services to you or to the general.”

Lin’s tone was distracted. “I imagine you’ll be formally debriefed within the next few days. But as you have no official standing—”

“War is a matter for officials?”

“At present, yes.”

“You know,” thoughtfully, “that isn’t my experience of war at all.”

“I’m sure that once things get under way, your presence would be of great value on committees and other consultative bodies.”

Aristide was vexed. It seemed to him that he had earned a place on Coy Coy’s council of war.

“Let’s hope so,” he said, a bit pointedly.

“By the way, I’ve heard from my opposite numbers on Hawaiki. They were wondering about your weapon.”

“Beg pardon?”

“What did you use to take off the big one’s leg? They said microsurgery couldn’t have been neater. And a part of the boat was cut away as well.”

“Was it? I don’t remember.”

“Did you use some kind of laser?”

“Something like that,” Aristide said. “If you’ll excuse me, I see that it’s my turn for a pool of life.”

Lin excused him. Aristide, who had not in fact been summoned for anything, sat in the waiting room and considered for a long moment the features of the ongoing war. How would the other pockets be alerted safely? The others of the Eleven? How many of Courtland’s population had been converted to the cause of the Venger? Possibly Coy Coy knew the answers, but Aristide didn’t.

Vast and important things were happening, and he was not a part of it. Though he was willing to admit that the Domus had a point in not making use of him, he resented being kept in the dark.

He had been through this kind of war once already. He wondered if Coy Coy could say the same.

When his turn came, he went to the pool of life. A few hours later, he rose a new man. Franz Sandow’s clothes did not fit him well, and he used his implant to order new clothing to be delivered to Daljit’s apartment.

For a moment he considered whether or not to pick up the new Bitsy, who had been created but was currently deactivated, waiting in storage. He decided that as he planned to spend the night with Daljit, and she wasn’t fond of Bitsy, he’d return on the morrow and activate Bitsy then.

As Aristide left the Life Annex, he saw crowds surging around the entrance to the main hospital building. The air had a smoky tang. Aristide asked his implant what was going on, and was told that there had been an explosion at the Stellar chemical plant. He felt a degree of relief—his nerves were keyed to war, and they were eased by the reminder that accidents, too, could cause casualties.

He walked to the trackline station, and immediately a sleek capsule, all windows and streamlined composites, drew up and disgorged a mob of chemical plant employees coming to be checked for contamination. Though none seemed to have injuries, they all seemed angry, and shouted at each other as they barged past Aristide toward the hospital entrance.

Aristide stepped into the capsule and asked it to take him to Daljit’s apartment. Apparently he was the only person in the trackline system who wanted to go there, because the capsule didn’t stop to pick up anyone else en route. Aristide left the capsule, took the escalators to the apartment lobby, and was challenged by the building’s AI—which, after scanning his biometrics, let him pass. Daljit must have told the AI to expect him.

Daljit’s apartment was on the forty-ninth floor, with a view of the River District. He heard soft tones sounding inside the apartment as he approached the door. When Daljit opened the door, she looked at him with narrowed eyes.

“Just as I was getting used to you being blond,” she said. She gestured at a pile on the floor of the hall. “Here’s your stuff. I wish you’d warn me when you’re having crap delivered here.”

She evaded his kiss and withdrew to the kitchen.

The scent of frying onions filled the apartment. Aristide looked ruefully at his new clothing in the paper delivery bags that Daljit had first torn open, then dropped in the hall when she realized they weren’t meant for her. He picked up his belongings and withdrew to the bathroom, where he changed. He wrapped Franz Sandow’s clothing in the torn remains of the bags and placed them on the small table near the door, then stepped to the kitchen door, where Daljit was furiously chopping vegetables with a Chinese cleaver.

“Are you cooking dinner?” he asked. “That’s liberal of you.”

Daljit slapped spices with the flat of her blade. There was a sudden scent of cardamom and cloves.

“I’ll make
badaami murgh,
” she said, “if I can just get some peace.”

“There was an explosion at the Stellar plant,” Aristide said. “Some casualties, apparently, since the hospital was very busy.”

She looked at him with anger in her eyes. Light glittered off the cleaver. “I’m trying to
concentrate
,” she said.

“Sorry,” Aristide said, and withdrew to the front room.

One wall of the apartment was polarized glass, currently set to darken the room. Aristide told the glass to lighten, and then stepped forward to admire the view, Myriad City’s wild architectural profusion in brilliant crystalline light. He opened the door onto a terrace and stood for a moment with his hands on the smooth curves of the shining composite rail, the sharp wind ruffling his hair as he considered the contrast in Daljit’s mood between the morning and the present.

The barque of the previous evening, with its cargo of poetry and delight, seemed to have run aground. He did not hold out much hope for a rescue.

Daljit had clearly reconsidered her connection with Aristide. Perhaps the ardor of the previous evening had been the result of overstimulation—Tumusok had been her first murder, after all, and passions had been high. But in the cold light of day, she had seemingly reconsidered. Perhaps she had decided that they had been correct to end their first relationship, those long decades ago.

And this on top of Ashtra’s rejection. Aristide wondered if he had finally reached the age when his life experience, his birth on Earth, and the great weight of his experience had finally made it impossible for him to relate to anyone born in the centuries since humanity had abandoned its birthplace.

A shame. It was desire that kept him human. The limbic system hadn’t failed him yet.

He looked down at the sound of a siren. On Rampart Street below a police car slithered through traffic like an eel, computer guidance giving it an uncanny ability to weave through moving vehicles with a clearance of millimeters. Ahead was a fugitive car, the fact that it was caroming off other vehicles providing clear evidence that its own computer guidance had been sabotaged—normally the traffic AI would seize control of a vehicle seconds after an accident, and steer it to a safe stop.

As Aristide watched, the fugitive driver made a mistake, hit another car, and his vehicle spun off the road in a cloud of dust and blue tiresmoke. The car struck the stanchion of a streetlight and crumpled. A wheel bounced free and leaped down the road in a series of high, exuberant bounds.

By the time the driver fought free of his safety gear and left the vehicle, the police car had already stopped, and its uniformed driver had disembarked. The renegade driver saw the officer approaching, and turned to run.

The police officer shot him. From his position on the terrace Aristide could hear the distinct
pop-pop-pop
of the officer’s sidearm. The renegade driver fell.

Aristide stared in complete surprise. He hadn’t thought the police in Myriad City were armed.

The police officer walked up to the prone driver, fired a finishing round into her victim’s head at close range, then returned to her vehicle. Aristide turned and returned to the kitchen.

“I saw the most amazing thing,” he said. “A police officer just shot someone.”

He ducked as a bowl of raw chicken clanged into the wall above his head. Lemon marinade spattered his face. Pale pieces of chicken fell limp to the floor.

Daljit’s lip curled. “You might have the
courtesy
,” she said, “not to
interrupt
me when I’m working on something
important
.”

“I—” Aristide began, and then cold certainty froze him.

“
Now you’ve wrecked dinner!”
Daljit shrieked into the silence.

Aristide ordered himself to remain calm. He took a step away from Daljit.

“I apologize,” he said.

Daljit looked terrible. She was flushed. Her eyes glittered. Sweat glued strands of hair to her forehead, and she panted for breath.

He hadn’t been paying attention when he’d first spoken to her. He hadn’t seen the signs.

“Daljit,” he began carefully, “I would like to suggest that you’re not well.”

“
I’m
not well!” She gave a bitter laugh. “You have a lot of nerve, coming here and saying
that!”

Aristide tried silently calling for help on his implant. A polite voice echoed in his head, telling him that emergency services were busy right now but that he could dictate a message into their memory buffer and they would respond as soon as possible.

That told him all he needed to know.

“
You!”
Daljit snarled. “
You’re
the one who wanders around primitive pockets with a sword and a rag on your head,” she said. “How healthy is that, if you’d be so good as to tell me?”

“I would like to suggest that the enemy’s agents have spread a zombie plague in the city,” he told Daljit. “I think you caught it.”

“
Me?”
Daljit said. She sneered. “I think you’re fucking mistaken, is what I think.”

But behind the denial, behind the fevered eyes, Aristide thought he saw a puzzled, anguished lucidity, a moment in which her mind tried to grapple with the idea he’d just handed her.

“My god,” she said. “I—”

Her words failed. A tremor ran through her jaw muscles. Then she shook her head, and Aristide could see the last vestiges of sanity vanish as her mind crumbled beneath the onslaught of serotonin, adrenaline, norepinephrine, dopamine, and testosterone that the plague was pouring into her bloodstream.

She gave him a red-eyed feral look, and he felt his own nervous system turn to fire as he remembered the exact same look in Antonia’s eyes.

The moment of shocked recognition almost cost him his face as Daljit hurled the skillet of frying onions at his head. As he dodged he stepped on one of the chicken pieces and fell, landing hard in the hallway. Hot oil stung his hand.

“
Stupid fuck!”
Daljit shouted, and threw an empty bowl at him. It bounced off his warding hand. Aristide scuttled out of range, palming himself backward toward the front room.

Pop-pop-pop
. The sounds came through the open terrace door. The police, or someone, was shooting again.

Aristide rose to his feet just as Daljit came out of the kitchen with a gleaming kitchen knife in one hand.

“
Get out!”
she cried. “
Get out get out get out!”

It was useless to point out that she stood between him and the only exit. Aristide cautiously circled to his right and put a sofa between himself and Daljit.

He reached for Tecmessa and hesitated. He didn’t want to banish Daljit to Holbrook, a place he reserved for enemies whose crimes were committed while in their right minds.

If he’d returned Tecmessa’s blade to the hilt, he might have a chance of subduing Daljit with the flat of the blade. But the hilt still contained the wandlike AI, which on its own was not very useful as a weapon.

Aristide picked up a floor lamp and assumed a guard stance.

“
Put that down!”
shouted Daljit. “That’s mine!”

“I’ll leave,” he said, “if you’ll let me get to the door.”

“Oh, I’ll let you leave all right,” she said, and licked her lips. She flashed the kitchen knife at him, and laughed when he reacted, jerking the lamp awkwardly in the direction of the threat.

He wished she’d kept the cleaver. It was a more vicious weapon, but a less flexible one.

Deception was beyond her now, and when she lunged for him she telegraphed the move in half a dozen ways. Aristide thrust the lamp at her face. She fell back, frustrated, then screamed and came on again.

Again he thrust the lamp at her face. She grabbed the lamp and tried to wrench it out of his grasp. She was surprisingly strong. She slashed at his hand and he pulled it back and lost control of the lamp. She laughed in triumph and came over the sofa at him. He punched her in the nose, feeling a crunch of cartilage under his knuckles, and her reaction gave him enough time to dance away. A slash of the knife cut lint from his sleeve.

Aristide looked for another weapon and saw a metal-framed chair on the terrace. He lunged for it, brought it up in the guard position, and held the terrace door with his improvised shield. She came after him panting for breath, and her knife drew sparks from the chair legs. Blood ran freely from her broken nose.