Mary Rosenblum (7 page)

“Ahni?” Dane shook his head. “I hope she’s safe.” His smile disappeared. “The people who took you tried to come back up here.”

Koi shivered. “It hurts down there. I can’t breathe.” He pushed himself off with one toe, drifted toward the refreshment panel. “The ones who took me … they hurt me. But the one down there, he looked at me for a long time. Took blood out of my arm, but he didn’t hurt me, like they did.”

“I think it was Li Zhen, the Chairman of Dragon Home. I sure wonder how he fits into this.” Dane closed his hand gently around Koi’s fragile arm. “You need to stay invisible. It’s really important.”

“We will.” Koi gave him a sideways look. “How come we scare them?”

“You scare them, because you’re different.” Dane let his breath out in exasperation. “The downsiders, I mean. The people up here … they’ll get used to you. Later. When the downsiders can’t do anything about you.”

“Stupid.” Koi pushed off delicately with one toe, arching into a slow and perfect back somersault, his body supple as an Earth-ocean dolphin. “I don’t want to live down there anyway.”

“You’re right, it is stupid, and it’s really a downsider fear,” Dane said patiently. “Right now, we’ve got some other things to fix.”

“Uh oh, is Laif in trouble again?” Koi rolled an eye at him. “He’s always in trouble isn’t he?”

”Not really.” But Dane had to smile. “It’s a tough job, trying to run the orbital from our end of the Elevator and from the North American Alliance’s side at the same time. But we need him.”

“Okay.” Koi pushed off harder this time, arching into another perfect somersault.

The chip in Dane’s shoulder tickled, and he pushed over to the control desk, brought up the field. “Laif’s on his way up. Let’s go meet him.” He snagged an extra pair of goggles from a gear hammmock, pushed off for the lock. Koi drifted along beside him.

“You take it easy,” Dane told him sternly. “I let you out early. Get wild and those bones might crack again.”

“I’m not going to get wild,” Koi said loftily.

“Noah’s going to need your help,” Dane told him. “Somebody bought an expensive aqua culture farm Earthside. They did it with credit registered to Laif. It’s a frame, but we need to know who did it and how, and Noah’s stuck downside for a few days.”

“No problem.” Koi spun effortlessly, his trajectory wobbling not at all. “That why you woke me up early?” He smirked at Dane as he shot ahead of him.

“I woke you up so you wouldn’t be a gift-wrapped prize for someone walking through Security,” Dane snapped after him.

“Sorry, Dane.” Koi slowed his momentum with a complex shiver of limbs. “If somebody made that downside buy so easy, I bet I can track ‘em back, if Noah’s busy. He says I’m almost as good as he is, now.”

“I hope so.” Dane killed his momentum on a tube planted to Asian eggplant, placing his hand carefully between the narrow, black fruits. What had Noah said of Koi?
A pain to teach, but really creative
. A shred of blossom drifted away from the tube and one of his frog-flies darted out to seize it, ricocheted off the next tube, vannished back into its sheltered niche on the eggplant tube. The small creatures he had created had adapted so effortlessly to microG. Within a single generation, many of them - phenotypes shifting radically, genes expressing in surprising ways.

Like Koi and his family.

The elevator doors opened and Laif drifted out, squinting in the brilliant light. He looked … battered.

Dane pushed off. “Here.” He shoved the spare set of goggles into Laif’s hand. “Sorry I had to cut out. I had an intruder down here, and not an accidental one either.”

“That’s all we need.” Laif pulled the goggles into place, his voice weary. “A legal fuss about Koi’s folk would be the last straw right now.”

“I sort of thought of that,” Dane drawled.

“You know, you and your family are a great big pain, kid.” Laif had drifted clear of the tubes, stalled now, out of reach of anything to push off of. “Damn, I’m bad at this. Koi, gimme a hand.” He , eld out one of his long-fingered hands. It engulfed Koi’s but instead of pulling Laif in closer to a tube, Koi pushed off, gave Laif’s arm a sharp downward jerk and spun the tall Administrator into an ungainly somersault.

Laif yelled.

Doing a neat somersault turn off another tube … without bruising a leaf … Koi snagged Laif by one wrist and stilled his spin with impressive precision, then shoved the Admin face first into a rube planted with tomato vines–just hard enough to squash the fruit–and arrowed away into the green light.

“Damn!” Laif sputtered, wiping red tomato juice from his face . A cloud of frog-flies darted about him, scooping up the drifting droplets and fragments of pulp. “Double damn.” Laif waived at them. “Good thing you didn’t make them bite. Everything up here is better than I am in microG. What did I say to piss him off?” Laif wiped his face on his arm. ”You got a towel somewhere? I need you to find out who planted that fake purchase. I had hell’s own time getting up here without anyone seeing. Everybody wants to ask me personally about that. If I ever get hold of the SOB who did it, he’s airlocked.”

”You called Koi’s family a pain in the butt, Laif. And whoever that was down there today, he sure stuck it to us.” Dane regarded the Administrator thoughtfully. “Come along and clean up. Tell me how bad it got after I left. I did manage to seed some questions about that ‘sale’ into the Con. Dunno if it did any good. Haven’t had time to drop in again. Noah’ll tell me.”

“I guess it worked. Last time I sampled – on the way down here – people were wondering just when I got so stupid. Something I wonder almost daily, but we won’t tell anyone.” Laif’s laugh sounded loud, even down here in the vastness of the garden.

Dane smiled. “Only you could laugh right now.”

“Beats screaming and crying and tearing my hair … which I don’t have. Slow down will you?” Panting he caught up to Dane, leaving a trail of damage behind him about as bad as Ahni had done. “So where did that asshole come from? Is he one of your crowd?”

”No, he’s not a member of NOW. Not yet.” Dane slowed as they approached his home, waited for Laif to catch up to him. “I think I’ll invite him though. If I can find him. He’s an outsider. New to me. Makes me wonder.”

Laif grunted, made his way through the twined tubes that made up the shell of Dane’s living space. “We need to know who holds his leash. According to his entry data, he’s an NAA citizen, recently employed as a contract code writer for some little manufacturing. That’s crap. Made up story.”

“I thought so, too.” Dane pushed across the spherical space, reetrieved a towel from a storage hammock, sailed it toward Laif. “I think he’s a pro, doing a job. Did you get my forward of Noah’s report?”

“Yes.” Laif snagged the towel, scrubbed his face. “Two percent is bad. We can’t go to the Council yet.

That pricey synthesist we hired downside tells me it’s a ninety-two percent certainty that an autonomy motion on behalf of the platforms would go down. I don’t get it. People up here have been getting increasingly unhappy with NAA control, but it’s been a steady curve. How come it’s heatting up now?”

He wadded the stained towel into a ball. “It’s the edge of violence that bothers me. Where the hell did this come from?” he growled. “We’re not a violent folk up here! Except on the Scrum field.”

“Dragon Home.” Dane said.

“What about it?”

“I’m not sure,” Dane said thoughtfully. “Li Zhen was prowling around here recently. Unofficially. Noah says the hot threads in the Con are starting out with people he hasn’t seen before. I doubt Noah is the only person capable of hacking up a fake persona that can pass Security.”

”What in nine hells is Zhen up to? He’s ambitious and has his own agenda, everybody knows that. And China is a power-hungry loner, up here, and downside on the World Council. Why us?”

“I don’t know.” Dane frowned at the orchids blooming along thecurve of the inside wall, touched one perfect petal. “I ran into a wildcard up here. Private war from downside, I gather, but Zhen is involved.”

“Who?” Laif snapped, his emerald earring glinting.

“Name is Xai Huang. Taiwan Families.” No need to mention Ahni. He wondered if she had checked the DNA sequence he had done for her. “I don’t know what Huang’s agenda is.”

“I’ll get an image of him, plug it into Security. I hate wildcards.” Laif scrubbed his face again, glowered at the stained towel in his hands. “We’re so damn close,” he said softly. “If we increase the resident population just a little … within the current livingspace limits we’ll tip the balance. We’ll have a stable economy. Producers and consumers. It’ll be tough, but then we can start expanding for real. And we won’t need Earth. We can run our own show, make our own rules. Put our interests first.”

“Ifwe can start dropping rocks down here.” Dane shook his head. ”We can’t do it if we have to depend on the asteroid miners refining up in the belt. Darkside figures they own the moon and they’re willing to fight for resources. Rocks make Earth nervouss– as you so aptly pointed out this evening. I think you’re underestimating downside opposition to that. They’ve got the weaponry to shoot at us and hit us, Laif.”

”Hey, you’re the leader of the secession group, what’s with this pessimism?” Laif stilled his sudden drift with a grab at a nearby vine. “The Council can be swayed. We’re spending every spare credit we can scrape up to sway them and we all know better than to talk rocks at this stage. Meanwhile, a wildcard war is not what we need up here right now. They’re messy.”

“I think it might be more than that,” Dane said slowly. “Huang family doesn’t have any interests up here. I checked. I’ll keep all my ears open.” He pushed himself away from the Administrator. “And I’ve got a list of favors I need from you. A couple of subsidized loans, some jobs, and a couple of ‘get out of jail free’

cards.”

“Not too many, I hope.” Laif sighed. “All I need is a corruption charge from some whistle-blower.”

“No more than usual.” Dane sailed a data sphere his way.

“Will do.” Laif snagged it. “Now I’d better find Koi and apollogize.”

“Yeah, you’d better apologize.” Koi stuck his head through the wall of leaves. “You know, a six-month-old baby gets around better than you.”

“I believe it.” Laif gave Koi a lopsided smile. “Okay, I was an asshole and didn’t think about what I was saying. Didn’t mean it either, was still kind of fried from getting my butt whipped at that townplaza this afternoon. But you stuck it to me proper, so how about it we call it a tie? Or a truce, anyway?”

“Tie? I won. You looked pretty stupid with tomato all over your face.”

Dane swallowed a chuckle, turned it into a cough.

“Okay, fine.” Laif sent Dane a sizzling glance. “I cede the game, kid. And you’re not only better at me in microG–
way
better–you’re better in the Con, too. So please find out who scammed that fish farm purchase for me, will you, so that I can airlock the bastard?” Laif held out a hand. “Don’t throw me this time, okay? I might break someething of Dane’s.”

“You might.” Koi grabbed his wrist, vaulted past Laif’s head, rebounded from the far wall and came to a perfect halt at eye level and upside down in front of the Admin. “That was a dirty trick,” Koi said. “I’ll find out who did it.”

“Thanks,” Laif said and nodded. “You’re impressive, kid. If this is how we’re gonna evolve, I guess it could be a lot worse.”

HANDRAILS LINED THE CORRIDOR BEYOND THE LOCK IN the Pan Malaysian Elevator.

Ahni blessed them as she pulled herself confidently along, trying hard to look as if she belonged there.

Painted a soft and boring green, lacking the protective resilient carrpeting that lined the tourist areas, the corridor clearly handled service traffic. At the end of the corridor she halted herself, and drifting, dropped briefly into Pause, calling up the specs for this Ellevator.

She located the service lock where Dane had let her off, traced a route to the travel plaza, the main arrival and departure areas where the climbers docked. Most of the retail trade clustered around the travel plaza. She wondered how long it would take Xai’s dogs to check this Elevator once they realized they had lost her trail on NYUp? The door in front of her wasn’t locked from this side and opened to the touch of her palm.

A dense plush carpet in a soft blue-lined floor and walls contrasting with a pale, carpeted ceiling. If tourists bounced off the walls, they wouldn’t even bruise. The Elevator interiors were still founded on the right angle, unlike the upper levels of the platforms, and a part of Ahni’s mind found the corners where wall met floor comforting. The corridor was moderately busy, full of tourists still awkward in microG.

Few even glanced at her.

Ahni found she blended nicely into the mostly Indonesian and Indo-Pakistani crowd, her tawny skin and black crop a bonus. A dress shop offering microG-spun spider silk caught her eye. Ahni stepped into the shop, nodded to the shopkeeper’s smiling bow, waved away her offer of assistance and browsed quickly down the display of scarves, sheathes, singlets, sari-suits, and even full saris. She chose a full sari in a shimmering salmon embroidered with gold, and found a creamy undershirt to match it. The shopkeeper was nearly beside herself with delight as she floated gracefully to a high shelf to retrieve a packaged model. Ahni could certainly understand her enthusiasm as the shopkeeper totaled the purchases. Tourist prices, she thought sourly, but the spider silk was lovely, shimmerring in the light, finer than real silk to the touch. “Don’t wrap it,” she told the woman as she started to fold the sari. “I think I’ll wear it right now.”

“Oh, what a marvelous idea!” the woman gushed. “You’ll look lovely in it and it’s quite secure in microG

with the hidden closures. Are you headed to a Platform?”

“Dragon Home.” Ahni nodded and palmed the milky oval of the reader set into the counter. It chimed completion of her purrchase as the woman scooped the sari and shirt into her arms. ”We have a fitting room here.”

Ahni followed her into a curtained alcove lined with mirrors and hangers for garments. She stripped awkwardly, even with the woman’s deft hand to keep her from drifting, pulled the shirt on over her head, and let the woman wrap the sari around her. Hissing softly to herself, the shopkeeper tucked and arranged the drape of the fabric to her satisfaction, fastening it into place so that it wouldn’t float too freely. “You can open the fasteners when you reach Dragon Home,” she said as she pushed herself away to eye Ahni critically. “It looks even better on you than I expected.”