Palace (4 page)

At a narrow flight of steps she took her chance to get above the street. She hurried up to a terrace that ran in front of a fancy-looking clothing shop, where other festival goers were standing to watch the fun below. Vida squeezed between them to a trefoil flying buttress, where she could climb Out and sit, looking down. Hogging the terrace railing stood gridjockeys, Lep, Hirrel, and human. All the pix kept their camera hands busy, pointing and shooting, while the recording units in their headbands picked up background sound. The intakes walked back and forth subvocalizing, their lips moving as if they spoke, channelling data into the record implants prominent and shiny at the base of their skulls.

Vida looked down and saw what the pix were angling to capture. Just at the edge of the square, some patrons from Centre rode an immense tenwheel cart, ornately designed with a webwork of gleaming rails and fanciful scrollwork Instead of an engine, two albino vakr with huge ruffs of ice-white skin drew it, or were, rather, attempting to move forward in the mobbed square. Garang bodyguards, dressed in grey uniforms and carrying stunsticks, marched round the tenwheel. The guards, seven feet of lithe muscle, with golden complexions and golden hair, superficially resembled humans, until you looked closely at the extra joints in their arms and legs and the bizarre angles and slopes of their skulls under their golden-furred skin. Vida noticed a slender human man with a dark-skinned face like a knife blade trotting back and forth among them, snapping orders, glancing this way and that into the crowd. From the way he moved, she could tell he was both furious and worried. Every now and then he would come to the side of the open carriage and lean in to discuss something with the man sitting behind the saccule driver. Tall and powerfully built, with dark skin and the slash of old scars across his face, the man would answer, then shrug as if dismissing danger. He wore a plain black tunic belted with metal segments that, Vida was willing to guess, were generating a forceshield. Next to him sat a beautiful woman, her skin pale, her long hair streaked red and blue, dressed in a fancier version of the grey uniform; blue tattoos covered her face and hands. Behind them, in the back seat, sat two young men and a boy, all uniformed. They looked bored and the boy, miserable.

The bodyguards began chanting, the deadly low sound of angry Garang Japat. Suddenly the crowd in front of the cart found it could move, after all. As the two vakr lurched forward and plodded into the square, Vida realized that she was seeing Karlo Peronida and his family, close by and live, not on the vidscreens. The crowd recognized him, too, and began to call out, Karlo! Karlo! the saviour of Palace! This was the military genius who had beaten back the Lep invasion of fourteen years before. Karlo had ridden the popular wave to establish himself as Palace’s First Citizen, the first time a sapient from off planet had ever held the post. At an order from Karlo, the cart paused below the terrace to allow the gridjockeys their holo op. The woman by his side, Vanna Makeesa y Parrel, was his current marriage partner, whose position as the head of the ruling Council made Karlo’s position doubly strong. Everyone knew that her clan wallowed in money, the richest family on Palace, especially so ever since Vanna had destroyed their only rivals, the L’Vars, some thirteen years past. Vida wondered how you could hate a family so much you’d get them all killed, even by legal means, even if they were all traitors, betraying Palace to the Leps like the L’Vars had done. Vanna had lived long enough to nurse enormous hatreds; at two hundred years old, she was the oldest woman, if not the oldest sapient, on Palace. The constant twitches of her head and fluttering motions of her hands showed that she’d pushed the life-extension process to its limit. At another order from Karlo, the young men in the back seat stood up to smile and wave for the pix on the terrace. She recognized Wan, who would be his father’s heir if Karlo got his way and made the office of First Citizen hereditary. One of the Not-children, about twenty-two, Vida remembered, he was an extremely handsome man with his deep green eyes and his light brown skin - his mother, Karlo’s previous marriage partner, had been a holostar and a great beauty. The small boy - as pretty as a girl, slouched back in his seat, now, looking at no-one - was the youngest son, Damo, whom the grids had labelled a cyber genius. The third man, well into his thirties and Karlo’s son by some woman he’d never even married back on his homeworld, was tall and rangy, all rough angles and big homely grin. Vida stared, fascinated by his square face, too long in the jaw, and his mouth, too thin for its stretch. You rarely saw anyone ugly on Palace, where every birth had to be licensed and every genotype examined and corrected for such flaws. All at once he flexed his long, muscular arms, grinned, and jumped up to the carriage’s frame, which swayed under his weight. He waved to the crowd, who shouted his name in delight. Pero! Daring Pero! He dug into a trouser pocket and pulled out something - a handful of small coins, which he flung to the crowd. A mob of children rushed forward; the carriage swayed alarmingly. Pero tossed his head and laughed as the pix above leaned over dangerously far to capture every second. Chanting fast, two Garang charged up, swinging stunsticks. When the mob fell back, one of the Garang leapt onto the carriage so gracefully it seemed he floated. He laid one enormous hand on Pero’s shoulder and forced him down into his seat. Pero took it with good humour, laughing, waggling a forefinger at the Garang as the guard leapt down again. Karlo gave the saccule driver an order; with a boom it lashed its whip, and the albino vakr jerked forward. This time the crowd fell back and let them pass.

With the excitement over, and her klosh finished as well, Vida climbed down from her perch and regained the street. The mob trailed after the Peronidas and cleared, at least temporarily, the public square. A procession of Lifegivers, mostly humans, took the space over, walking solemnly in twos. Their silver-speckled dark robes, symbolizing endless space, fluttered around them as they traced out the sacred spiral of the galaxy, which had come from the darkness of space and to which in the end it would return. Each held a small speaker, and the clash of electronic gongs and drums marked out their steps.

Once they’d finished their dance, Vida headed across the square. Shoving back their hoods, the Lifegivers were breaking their formation, and the younger ones among them were laughing, caught up in the spirit of the festival. A young fellow not much older than she hailed her as she passed and handed her an Eye of God, a carved wooden disk with a hole drilled in the top so that it could he worn around the neck on a chain.

‘Blessings upon you, child,’ he said. ‘Blessings for the festival. In the name of Calios.’

‘Thank you, Se.’ Vida touched her thumbs and forefingers together to form a triangular, more or less eye shape, a gesture of respect that she had seen Aleen use many times. The Lifegiver’s eyebrows shot up. He really was rather handsome, she decided. Pity he was a monk. ‘Excuse me, Se,’ Vida started. ‘What-’

‘Brother Lennos!’ called out one of the older monks. ‘Get over here right now!’

The Lifegiver scurried off, leaving Vida smiling. Overhead, the sky was swirling and lightening in the promise of a few moments of sunshine and a glimpse of blue sky. The light that fell round her turned silver and cast faint flat shadows. Vida pulled off her cloak and let the fugitive warmth touch her skin. The sound of bells, notes of music so pure that they seemed to burn in the air like candles caught her and drew her on. She’d always wanted to see the famous Pleasure Sect Carillon when it was sounding, and today it would give a proper concert. A floating clock told her the time had just reached the fifteens. If she hitched a ride on a wiretrain heading for the Hub, and there was a stop right near the Carillon, she could easily get back to The Close before Aleen left her important reception. A few blocks from the square stood the Crossroads, an intersection of multi-levels that led to pretty much every interesting place in Pleasure Sect. Vida climbed the helical stair, pausing at each landing for the view, each a different part of the Southern Quad. The topmost landing opened into a longtube, a flexible tunnel whose diameter was about four times her height, made of a metal that was smooth and warm to the touch. Why the Colonizers had built the longtubes no-one knew, but nowadays they functioned as conduits for supply shipments, emergency vehicles and the like. Vida knew where all the longtubes were, where they went, and who used them. Her memory had amazed the people around her all her life. To Vida herself, remembering anything she’d ever seen was effordess and obvious. She still couldn’t really believe that no-one else could look at diagrams and spatial displays and remember them the way she could or even to do more than just remember - she could turn the images this way and that in her head, add or subtract data, and then remember the new diagram as easily as another might work with it on a Mapscreen.

When Vida walked into the tube, she hesitated, wondering if she should go on. Only half the longtube’s strip lights glowed. Powerflucs were happening more and more often, according to Aleen, who seemed to spend most of her time these days dealing with what she called the

‘depraving infrastructure’. Vida could smell the musk of ver, little slinkers with a nasty bite. She closed her eyes for a moment and called up her image of the holographic wireframe of the Pleasure Sect she’d hacked from Aleen’s master files. Even for her, rotating the entire image in her mind wasn’t easy, but she eventually found the sinusoidal wiggle of red that marked this particular longtube.

The tube ran short and snaky, though at the far end her map marked some kind of construction problem. If she could make it to the other side, the shortcut would save her a quarter hour of travel time. She started trotting through the longtube, keeping her eyes moving for any sign of vers. She had a canister of Protec flipped to her belt; a squirt of that particular chemical would stop anything short of an enraged Garang Japat. Her boots slapped against the bottom of the tube as she moved, setting up a silky echo. She’d just seen a faint glow of light at the opposite end of the longtube when she first heard another echo behind her. When she stopped to listen, the other echo also stopped. Had she imagined it? At a quarter past fifteens, no-one from The Close would be thinking of looking for her, but when Vida glanced at her wrist-tel, she found the flashing red proximity warning flickering. Vida unhooked her Protec canister. Whoever was following her was in for a surprise

- except she knew better. Aleen had drilled it into her, what to do if she ever got caught in a dangerous situation. Avoid a fight. Never engage an enemy whose resources are unknown. Someone who’d gone to the trouble to find out her proximity code was a dangerous enemy. She put the canister back, then began to run.

She trotted as silently as she could, keeping close to the curving wall of the longtube. She could hear the echoes behind her speeding up, too, and when she slowed, she heard the echo slowing - but a good heartbeat late. Someone followed, all right. She took off running flat out, raced for the open end of the tube. In the boom and slap of echoes she found it hard to hear, but she was sure that the person behind her was gaining. All at once she remembered that odd mark on her map, that indication of unfinished construction. Was she going to be trapped?

Ahead the circle of light grew bigger; the air grew fresher; the opening loomed. Vida raced across the tube, looking ahead and saw a pierced steel gantry standing between the tube and the nearest roof. She hopped up onto the arm and climbed up the catwalk ladder. The sudden light struck her like a flash of fire and made her eyes water, but she kept climbing, blinking back tears. Just as she swung over to the top of the tube, she heard a curse from below her. She went tense, listening for a shriek, a fall - nothing. Whoever was chasing her had stopped in time. The top of the longtube bridged over to the verdant roof park on top of the Carillon Tower. As she dashed across, she glanced back and saw a ripple of speckled black flap to the right side of the longtube. Her pursuer! She tried to think, but could only stare at the robe. A Lifegiver! A Lifegiver was chasing her. But why? She shook her head. No, it had to be someone wearing a Lifegiver’s robes, an imposter. Pretending to be a Lifegiver was a capital offence. Vida’s mouth went dry. Whoever was chasing her was a serious criminal. She jumped off the bridge into the garden.

Moving as quietly as she could, Vida angled through the roof park until she found temporary shelter. She crouched down under a crescent of grey vines dotted with black and orange flowers, oozing sweet perfume. Her wrist-tel kept flashing, a crimson warning and a betrayal, locked on her arm beyond her removing it. Looking round she saw fern trees, red flowering poles, drapes of blue vines, and sprays of orange flowers. Glancing up, she saw the bell tower, a lacy fold and wrap of sculptured metal. The bell sounds themselves were photonic, of course, though an old brass bell had been installed in the tower as an artistic gesture. Was there a way down from inside the tower? She could only hope so. One step at a time, trying to keep the rustling to a minimum, Vida made her way through the vegetation. With the holiday, there would be no workers up here to help her, not even a mech, much less a saccule gardener. Gardeners - tools. Vida crouched and searched for the sprinkler lines, then followed them, trotting bent double, to a valve. Her wrist-tel gave off bloody flashes that beat almost as quickly as her heart. The false Lifegiver was closing in. Vida found a valve, then let out a shaky sigh of relief. Just above hung a section panel, all powered up and set for automatic. She switched it to manual and ran the side of her hand down every button on the panel. Instantly, the roof park exploded with water jets from whirring sprinklers; light bars poured out a flood of high-cal amber light; sprays of insect repellent spewed out of fluted pipes. She heard a string of curses too foul for any real Lifegiver to know. With a laugh touched with terror, Vida ran for the bell tower. The Carillon stood inside a tangled growth of vines and decorative grillwork. Vida scrambled up this makeshift ladder to the opening at the top of the tower; she clung there for a moment, panting lor breath. She could just see the curve of brass of the Carillon’s false bell and what might be a stairwell panel. When she looked down, she saw a figure wearing black and white starred robes, all stained and wet, who was mercifully looking in the other direction at the moment. She froze, clinging with aching hands. Although he kept his cowl drawn around his face and his hands inside the wide sleeves, his broad build, wide-set hips and springy gait meant he had to be a Lep. When he drew something long, dark, and metallic out of his sleeve, Vida scrambled up the last metre of grillwork and hurled herself inside the bell tower. She lay gasping on the floor. Up above her the roof gleamed and glistened as the rare sunlight filtered in from outside; cubes of the strange blue glass-metal of the Colonizers lined the ceiling and continued down the walls a way. She rose to her knees, glanced round, and her heart turned cold. There was no way out.