Mary Rosenblum (39 page)

It occurred to her that her father would perhaps have rather died on the Council Island than have the world get to witness the details of his clone-son’s betrayal. “What is the arrest warrant for?” she asked as she pulled herself forward to where Dane and Kyros hovered.

“Most likely escape,” Dane said mildly.

“Nah. It’s for trying to drop a rock on Earth.” Kyros rolled his eyes. “Go figure.”

THE CSF TROOPS BOARDED AND ARRESTED EVERYONE. Hard eyed and efficient, the squad put all three of them into restraints and towed them onto the armed patrol vehicle they had docked to Dane’s reluctant ship. Nobody asked any questions or spoke to them at all beyond the commands necessary to secure them. During the trip back it occurred to Ahni that Li Zhen might have seen a way to use them to his advantage. She was getting used to betrayal.

She had no idea where the CSF took them. The opaque hull provided no views and her query to the woman wearing the Captain’s insignia didn’t even earn her a glance. Neither Kyros nor Dane said a word, although Kyros grumbled to himself in what she decided was probably Greek. The grumbling sounded surly, but beeneath it, he was afraid.

Not so, Dane. His resigned calm made her angry.

Shewanted to hit someone. Hard.

They finally docked, were towed into microG and separated. She felt Dane’s touch diminish as her captors hauled her into a small, barren room and left her floating. A cell? The spherical chamber had no corners, no features at all to mar the bland white walls, except for the door. She tested the restraints that strapped her arms to her sides, but they had been well designed and she couldn’t get her arms free or even gain any slack. The fabric seemed to tighten whenever she strained against it. Marooned in the center of the space, she contemplated wriggling enough to get over to a wall, where she could launch herself if needed, but to what purpose? Any escape here would come officially or not at all.

After a long time, a pair of CSF privates entered, fitted her with a control collar, released her and handed her a squeeze of tepid waater. When she had drunk he handed her another squeeze full of some thick, faintly fruit flavored liquid that she guessed was a complete ration of some sort. It tasted awful. She handed it back without a word, the silent treatment contagious, she thought wryly.

The solid wall of the cell was comforting, she found. After awhile, she drowsed, waked, and drowsed again, although nightmares haunted her sleep.

The two guards took her to the lavatory after awhile, gave her more water which she drank, and more of the syrupy liquid which she did not drink, then towed her back to the cell again. This happened twice more, although with a different pair of guards. Ahni fiinally dropped into Pause where the nightmares couldn’t reach her. Unlike the NYUp guards, nobody panicked and rushed in to check on her. That, at least, was good.

She was deep in Pause, hibernating, when the door opened. Too soon for another visit to the lavatory and water squeeze, her time sense told her. She had already marked that rhythm. She opened her eyes as two new guards entered, one man and one woman. All senses on alert now, she feigned indifference as they towed her down the corridor and through a dock portal and onto another shuttle.

This time, when they docked, she had weight, and she recognized NYUp. The smell, she thought as they marched her out of the lock and into an empty corridor. Sure enough, she recognized Laif’s office as the door slid open, although the men and women in the space all wore CSF blue.

Nobody paid any attention to her as she crossed the room with her guards at heel. Just business as usual, Ahni thought wryly, and wondered just what was coming now. An inner door slid open and she stepped through. A man with unselected Mediterranean features and a Major’s insignia sat behind a desktop, his arms folded, radiating restrained irritation. The cause for his irritation was immmediately apparent.

Her father sat in the single chair beside the desk, seething. Ahni stopped still, one pace inside the door.

“Ahni Huang, your entry visa to the North American Alliance territory of the New York Up orbital facility has been revoked,” The Major said. “We are releasing you into the custody of Wen Huang. He will accompany you to the shuttle that will transport you to the Elevator.”

“Honored Father.” She bowed at him, speaking Old Taiwanese, aware by the Major’s prick of interest that he was fluent in Old Taiiwanese. Of course. “The two arrested with me saved my worthless self from death.” She switched to Mandarin, used the convoluted Han syntax of supplication. “It would be impossible for one so worthless as I to depart this place without confirmation that these men have received a just reward for their intervention.”

“And what reward would be appropriate for such an action?” Her father spoke through stiff lips.

Ahni kept her eyes downcast. “Their release from this place,” she murmured. “A small thing for one of your stature.”

“Did you need something?” The Major, who had surely spent time in someone’s diplomatic corps, pitched his voice to innocence, chuckling deep inside. “Is there a problem?”

“Their names?” Her father’s snap would have left a bruise had it been a physical blow.

“Kyros.” No reaction from the Major. “Dane Nilsson.” Ahni’s heart sank at the Major’s reaction.

It took her father a full fifteen minutes to negotiate Kyros’s release, which he had to do now, or lose face in front of his daughter. And the Major extracted his pound of flesh in the process, clearly enjoying his power here. Wen Huang’s anger had turned to white-hot coals by the time the last concession was granted and the Major gave him a nod that would have been a deadly insult at a Beijing business dinner.

He did not speak to her as another CSF, a woman this time, removed Ahni’s collar and had her thumbprint a release form.

As they left the office, Ahni turned to her father, bowed once more. “Thank you,” she said, meaning it.

He didn’t answer her, pushed past her into the corridor and halted.

“There. There she is!”

“Hey!”

”Nice catch! Not bad for a downsider!” People, dozens of them, milled in the main corridor watched by four or five nervous CSF. A vendor sold skewers of fruit and filled mugs with juice, as if it was a party.

As Ahni stepped through the door they closed in, leaving her a wide ring of respect but reaching into it to flip fingers at her, grinnning, or pump fists.

“Downsiders thought they could play games with us.”

“Thought we were blind up here, huh?”

”You want to move up here, you do it, girl. You’re no downsider, not really.”

Laif appeared at the edge of the crowd, head and shoulders above the grinning men and women. They parted for him, swepping aside into a formal path that led straight to Ahni. Her father actually flinched as the tall, dark man strode up to them, an impossible lapse that revealed his fear of this alien place.

“You’re quite the hero, you know.” Laif swept her into a bear hug that squeezed the breath from her lungs. The small crowd cheered and waved food and mugs of juice. “Your friend Noah hacked Li Zhen’s link downside and dumped it straight into the Con.” Laif was grinning. “Nothing like hacking the hacker.

Talk about setting everybody straight all at once. You, Dane, and that crazy miner are everybody’s heroes right now. You want it, you got it. Everybody heard on the Con that you were getting out. The CSF got a few leaks inside and they can’t shut the Con down for more than a few hours at a time. Hi.”

He turned to her father, nodding down at him. “Pleased to meet you.”

Wen Huang stiffened. “What is this?” He stepped forward, chin out, insult in his posture to cover fear.

“We must hurry to catch the shuttle.”

”There are many shuttles, Father. Laif, this is Wen Huang, my father.”

The people in the corridor called greetings and compliments some of which Ahni hoped her father wasn’t able to translate. Someone pushed a mug of juice at Ahni. She took it, drank and acccepted the skewer of strawberries someone handed her. Dane’s fruit. She swallowed a pang, ate one of the sweet, luscious berries. Her father shook jerked his head in a sharp
no
as food and juice were offered to him. He took a brisk step forward, clearly expecting the crowd–which was increasing to the unease of the CSF

guards–to move aside. They didn’t.

This was not turning into a good day for Wen Huang, Ahni thought wryly.

“Everybody heard you’d been kicked out.” Laif spoke casually, but he had tensed up. “A lot of folk here feel you got the right to stay if you want to. Just so you know.”

And he didn’t want her to, and if she chose to, it would mean a new confrontation between CSF and upsiders. “I need to go downnside.” Ahni pitched her voice for the crowd, felt Laif’s relief. What did you think I was going to do? she thought crossly. Start a riot? “Dane Nilsson – most of you probably know of him – he’s been falsely accused by the World Council.” The crowd’s reaction told her she was right, and she lifted her hands before the mood darkened any more. “I mean to appear before the World Council on his behalf. He has done nothing wrong, and I’m a witness to that. The situation is critical.” She raised her voice a hair as silence settled over the crowd. “The Council will judge him as a resident of New York Up. They’ll judge him, in part, by your behavior up here.”

“Oh, don’t worry.” A young man with a dark red celtic cross lightfibered into his naked scalp grinned at her, winked one green eye. ”We’re gonna be model citizens up here. We know we just won ourselves the jackpot of brownie points. We’re not gonna screw it up.” A chorus of affirmations followed his words.

“Get Nilsson back up here and we’ll sort out our own affairs.”

“Just let us know what you need.”

“Quite the Joan of Arc, aren’t you?” Laif put one arm around her waist, one around her father’s. “Bless you,” he whispered.

“Don’t push him away,” she said sharply to her father in Old Taiwanese.

He did not. Which said a lot about his fear of this place.

“I hope not Joan of Arc.” She looked up and sideways at Laif as he strolled them toward the Arrival Hall. “I’ve read my history.”

“I didn’t mean
that
part of the story.” Beneath his smile he was grim. “By the way, it’s still dicey downside. Some folk still want us shut down and they’re using Dane as a reason. I really hope you can help him. I hope that wasn’t just for the crowd.”

“They sent him downside already?”

Laif nodded. “Koi and his family are on Dragon Home. With Zhen’s kid. Dane’ll want to know. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but something. Some of the smaller Council members are all of a sudden calling for debate on orbital independence. There’s a media feeding frenzy over that live link Li Zhen opened. Every seccond of your time on the tug is bouncing all over the place, upside and downside, and nobody has been able to shut it down for long. Everybody downside got the shit scared out of them and I kind of get the feeling a bunch of folk would be shooting at us … if the pilot of that tug hadn’t been a downsider. Thank all the gods for that.”

“We must leave.” The Huang stepped firmly from beneath Laif’s arm, finally recovering his downside presence as Head of the Taiwan Families as they reached the bustle of the Arrival Hall. “You may go.”

He spoke English, his tone putting Laif neatly in his place as something equal to a dog’s accident.

It was the most insulting tone she had ever heard her father use. “Yeah, I know. In a minute.” The insult went right past Laif. “I’m almost done.”

Ahni winced at her father’s reaction and stifled a smile. Nobody had ever talked to him like that.

Laif’s gaze shifted to a spot behind her, down the corridor. “I think you’re about to get an escort to the shuttle,” he murmured “Guess they think you might want to stay. Skedaddle, will you? Beefore the crowd gets protective.”

“We are going,” her father snapped in Old Taiwanese. “Now.”

“Of course, Honored Father.” She let him propel her forward. “So what’s going to happen if the Council makes you independent?” she called back over her shoulder. “What then?”

“I’ll get myself elected to run things.” Laif didn’t follow them.

“I’ll grant you the first immigration visa when it happens. Get Dane back up here, will you? I need him.”

I’ll try, she thought. But as her father propelled her through the corridor and into the Arrival Hall, his anger buzzing though his grip on her arm like electricity, her confidence ebbed.

It was an old pattern in global politics. If you had to cede a batttle, find a scapegoat. Memories of the ugly human engineering years still lingered like nightmares in the global subconscious. Dane had scapegoat written all over him.

THE ELEVATOR TRIP seemed to take a month. Her father believed that Tania had been the would-be assassin, that she had brainwashed and destroyed Xai. He could understand a woman betraying her lover. It made sense to him, and he also believed that Ahni had attempted his rescue.

Her mother’s doing, Ahni realized, although her father’s approval of his daughter’s actions was tempered with anger that she had brought this family disgrace to world attention. Her mother’s spin on events and her father’s willing belief disturbed her enormously, but Ahni remained silent in the face of his misinformation. Let her mother believe that she had given in to the temptation of heir. When the enemy holds the knife and you are weaponless, it is not time to fight.

And Dane came first.

She spent her time checking the news media. Xai’s face was everywhere, and so was Tania’s kiss and the glimpse from the link’s view, of the edges of her hands as she cupped Tania’s face to betray that moment of trust. Ahni had her link excise those images automatically, but she found them everywhere she looked, their absence like a missing tooth, inviting the tongue over and over again.

The planet was in turmoil, a host of fanatics demanding the destruction of the orbitals as a place of demons, another host of fanatics claiming them as wise keepers of Earth, probably with divine powers.