Venus of Dreams (18 page)

The screen had shown him a detailed picture of the hotel and had given him directions to it. He had taken the tubeway train into Winnipeg, then had left it a few blocks from the hotel, wanting to walk the rest of the way. He had not realized how cold it would be. His teeth were chattering by the time he reached his destination.

A glassy door adorned with the hotel's insignia opened as he entered. The small lobby was modest; simple chairs and sofas stood against the pale blue walls. He glanced at the desk, surprised to see a clerk behind it; that meant that this hotel offered more luxury and service than its interior indicated. A young blond woman sitting in the lobby smiled at him, beckoning him with one finger. Chen looked away awkwardly. After two years of working for the Plains Communes, he had not been able to get used to the manners of their women, the frank looks and suggestive invitations; the women on the Islands had never been quite so bold. The Plainsmen were even worse, exchanging lewd talk about their various encounters with no sign of shame. Chen was no stranger to such talk; the Island workers were often blunt in their speech and had their share of erotic diversions, but Plainsfolk seemed to fall into bed with one another casually, with no thought of love or caring at all. At the same time, however, they seemed oddly intolerant of those who sought love with members of their own sex, and that made no sense in a place where men and women lived such separate lives. There was no doubt about it; Plainspeople were baffling.

Chen walked to the desk and put his left arm next to the small screen's eye; the band on his arm was scanned as the clerk read the symbols on the screen.

The man gazed at Chen and smiled stiffly. "I see that your room's already paid for," he said. "The cost of your meals has also been covered." The clerk surveyed Chen coldly with eyes as pale as a demon's. "Do you wish to have your bag carried to your room?"

Chen shook his head. "I'll carry it up." He was not used to having a clerk inquire about his needs and wasn't sure how to respond.

"You may go to that lift, then," the clerk said, indicating the second of four doors to the left of the desk; a silver arrow on the door pointed toward the ceiling. "You'll be let off at your floor, and a servo will guide you to your room. I hope you have a pleasant stay with us." The man smiled again.

"Thank you," Chen said, bowing a little. He hurried to the lift, feeling conspicuous in his plain clothes and suddenly anxious to be away from the lobby. The door opened, humming slightly as his bracelet was scanned and his identity confirmed.

The transparent platform under his feet carried him up through a wide, lighted corridor; he passed a stream of doors until one opened and the platform came to a gentle stop. He entered a hall carpeted in blue and stepped aside quickly as a man and woman rushed past him to claim the lift. The door slid shut; he was alone. On the door, a painted hand pointed toward the ceiling; next to it, another door had a painted hand pointing toward the floor.

Several servos, small domes on wheels, stood near one wall; one rolled over to him and beeped. Chen held out his left arm so that the servo could scan his bracelet; it beeped again and rolled down the hallway, stopping in front of one door. Chen glanced at the numbers on his door, noting a twelve followed by two fives; though he could not manipulate such symbols, he could recognize their shapes.

The door opened and he stepped inside. The room was small, with a bed and two chairs; a small screen, keyboard, and band sat on a table in one comer. Another door faced the bed; Chen opened it and saw a shower, toilet, and sink. He grinned, surprised at the unexpected luxury of a private bathroom.

Stepping back, he dropped his duffel on the floor and then sat down on the bed, wondering if he should eat first or enjoy a long shower. He had decided on the shower when he heard a chime.

"Administrator Nancy Fassi wishes to enter," a voice said from the wall. "Will you speak to her?"

Chen tensed, wondering what an Administrator could want with him, then stood up quickly. He shrugged out of his coat, looked around the room, folded the thin cloth garment, and thrust it into a drawer near the bed.

"Will you speak to Administrator Nancy Fassi?" the voice asked again.

Chen smoothed back his hair. "Yes, of course," he replied. "Please let her in."

The door opened as a tall, dark-haired woman stepped inside. "Liang Chen?"

He nodded, trying to relax; there was a note of uncertainty in her voice, and she was slouching, as if trying to minimize her height.

"I'm Nancy Fassi." Do sit down." She stepped around the duffel he had left on the floor, took off her fur coat, tossed it onto the bed, then went to the screen. "Have you eaten yet?"

"I'm not hungry," he said as he sat in one of the chairs, his appetite suddenly gone.

"I'll get us some wine, then." She gave her order to the screen, then seated herself in the other chair. "Sorry about the room. I would have found you something larger, but this was all they had available." She rubbed at the gem on her forehead, as if unaccustomed to her Link.

"It's fine," he murmured, feeling like an intruder in the room.

"Still better than a workers' hostel, I suppose," the Linker said. "Don't be fooled by those signs on the lifts, by the way. You're so close to the top floor that, if you need to get to the lobby, you can take the lift going up and then ride it down instead of waiting around for the other one." Her voice trailed off; her fingers plucked at one sleeve of her blue silk shirt. She seemed almost as uncomfortable as he was; he was now certain that she hadn't been an Administrator for very long.

"I'll remember about the lifts," he said.

"Well. You've probably guessed that we didn't send you here because of a lack of space. As a matter of fact, I have some important things to discuss with you, and fetching you from a hostel would have caused a bit of talk. Here, we can talk privately, and people will think I brought you here as a lover."

Chen looked down, understanding why the desk clerk had smirked at him.

"Let's get one thing settled immediately," Nancy Fassi went on, sounding as though she had regained her composure. "I've looked at your records. You do your job well enough, and you're not inclined to idle chatter. That's just what we're looking for." She paused. "You used to work on the Venus Project."

He nodded.

"But when you came back, you asked not to be sent to your own Nomarchy. In fact, you said you'd be willing to go anywhere else. Now, we always appreciate a willing and adaptable worker, but why did you make such a request?"

He fumbled for words. "It's hard to say. I just didn't want to go back. They have too many workers like me there anyway."

"You didn't want to go back because you would have felt trapped again. You'd rather wander around and go where you're sent until the time comes when you can return to the place you think of as your real home." Why, he thought, had she asked him the question if she already knew the answer? Nancy tilted her head, watching him with her round black eyes. "You
do
want to rejoin the Project."

"Yes."

"Well, maybe you'll get a chance to go back. It depends on you, Chen."

He sat very still, trying not to let the hope he felt show in his expression. The chime rang again; after a moment, the door opened and a cart carrying a bottle of wine and two glasses rolled into the room. He got up and poured the wine, handing one glass to the Linker before seating himself again.

"I'd like to help you," Nancy said. "Personally, I think it was a mistake to remove committed people from that Project just so the Nomarchies could reassert their authority over it. It hurts morale. They need the patient ones there, the ones who are willing to spend their lives there shaping a world many of them won't live to see. It isn't just another job to such people, and they don't work as well when they feel that their position may be precarious. They have to feel that their children might benefit from the work. People with that land of commitment to an uncertain, long-term venture are hard to come by."

Chen felt uneasy. One could never tell, with Linkers, what part of their talk was sincere and what might be a trap for the unwary. "I was angry when I came back," he admitted. "But they told me I'd get another chance, so I put my anger aside. I tell myself I'd be a better worker there now because I know what it's like to lose the chance." That answer seemed to have the sound of sincerity, and for once he had not tripped over the words. He could never admit to the rage he still felt at his loss.

"I certainly think you deserve such a chance," Nancy said, "but we need you for another task first. I came here to speak with you about a new assignment. We need people like you for this particular job, people who have some familiarity with the Plains but who are also outsiders and less likely to talk. You have even more reason to keep silent than most if you ever want to return to Venus."

Chen sipped his wine nervously as Nancy leaned back in her seat "We've had some problems recently," she said in a low voice. "A while back, a Counselor was killed in one Plains town, and recently, another was attacked. We had quite a time hushing it up, but luckily, there were few witnesses to either event. You must have heard rumors."

"A few," he admitted.

"Stories that can't be proved, of course. We made sure of that. Even the witnesses are no longer quite sure of what they saw. But this sort of thing can be contagious. Most of the Plains Counselors know the truth, and they're nervous. If someone strikes out at a Counselor, he's striking directly at the authority the Counselor represents, and we can't have that. Counselors are our primary representatives in most of these Plains towns, the one personal contact most people have with the Administrative Committees for whom the Counselors speak. The Council of Mukhtars is worried—our Counselors must be protected."

He longed for more wine, but restrained himself. She was leading him into dangerous conversational currents, and he needed a clear head.

"That's why I've brought you here. We need your help, and the aid of a few others like you. We've developed a new device to protect Counselors on their visits. It's really quite simple. A small alteration in the scanner of a door can allow us to detect any weapons concealed by someone entering the room. The Counselor would then see a light on his desk; by pressing a button, the Counselor would then set up a sensing shield around himself." Nancy took a breath. "If the visitor reaches for a weapon and makes a violent move toward the Counselor, a beam from the scanner will disrupt the cranial blood vessels of the visitor. The intruder then dies instantly, the Counselor removes the weapon from the body, and the town finds out that one of its people is tragically dead of a stroke."

Chen's mouth was dry; his shoulders ached with tension. "A stroke?" he asked.

"I know—it's an unusual way to die, but it still happens sometimes."

"But Counselors know the people in those towns, and they're trained to care about them. Some of them come from towns like that themselves. How can you get them to go along?"

"They know they must protect themselves. Anyway, the Counselor won't be responsible for what an assassin brings upon himself by triggering the scanner."

"What if someone enters with a weapon," Chen said, "and then changes his mind?"

"His meeting with the Counselor goes on. The screen won't block sounds, and the program is very specific about the presence of a weapon and violent emotions. The assailant could speak to the Counselor without ever knowing that the screen is there. The Counselor would probably recommend a specialist and treatment at that point. If it isn't accepted, of course, the visitor is unlikely to leave the room alive."

Chen set his glass on the cart. His hand trembled a little. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because we need workers like you to go to these towns and install the equipment. You'll be trained while you're here. It shouldn't take long. You're already familiar with the installation of scanners."

"Why me?" Chen asked. "You could send in your own people."

"That might cause talk. We can't risk it. People would wonder what Linkers were doing in their towns."

His eyes narrowed. "Surely you could disguise yourselves."

"That's not so easy as you might think. We train for years, you know. It's difficult to fit in with those who are—with those we serve. Our training changes us. A careless gesture could give one of us away. And most of us aren't skilled in such work." She pressed her fingertips together. "And we can't send in workers who are Plainsfolk themselves. They might become divided in their loyalties." She grimaced, showing her teeth, then picked up her glass again, gulping the wine.

"There are Guardians," he said. "It sounds like work for them."

The corners of her mouth turned down. "Never. We don't want Guardians—" A veiled look came over her face as she gazed past him. "Your presence won't be noticed. You'll have other work to do as well, and will be expected by the townfolk in the places you visit. You see the point. We can't arouse suspicion—that would do more damage than a wave of assassinations. We can't destroy the trust people have in their Counselors."

Chen felt sick. The same thing might be happening in other places; he imagined a Plains worker installing similar devices in a Chinese town. He recoiled from the task, wondering why he felt so revulsed. He would be protecting lives, and a quick death for an assassin was merciful compared to some punishments he could imagine. But what was going on?

He had always thought of Counselors as the kindest members of the Nomarchies' administration, the ones who sympathized even when their recommendations and advice were painful. Even his encounter with Ari Isaacson on the Islands had not completely robbed him of that attitude; Ari had probably been given little choice in the matter. Now he was seeing the crafty ruthlessness that the smiling faces of Counselors masked.

Something could go wrong with such a device; nothing human beings made was infallible. Worse still, a Counselor might find it very convenient to get rid of troublesome people for his own reasons. Did Nancy believe that a Counselor's training and empathy with others would always restrain him? If so, she was a fool; she would only corrupt those she was trying to protect.