Black Steel (10 page)

Already seated at the table with Reason, Sleel watched them come. Here were two people unsuited to reality, he thought. Certainly not qualified to be parents. You had to have a license to carry a weapon or pilot a flitter or to run a business, and none of those came close to the responsibilities of caring for children, but civilization had not seen the light regarding that yet.

The two scientists arrived at the table and regarded Sleel and Reason, blinking and with some puzzlement, as though the matador and his charge had appeared there by magic.

"Mother. Father. This is Jersey Reason."

His parents nodded, almost as one, and sat.

The din circled the table on quiet rollers, setting small microwave steam trays in front of each diner.

Elith Liotulia opened the cover of her tray. The smell of soypro and blue beans mushroomed up in a small cloud of hot vapor. And some kind of fruit pie, probably lolaberry, Sleel thought. His mother looked at the food for a moment, then up at Sleel. "How are you?" And as an afterthought, she added,

"Son?"

"Fine. "

"Um." She stirred the steaming collection of beans around with her spork. "It has been a while since we've seen you. How have you spent your time?"

Sleel could not suppress a chuckle. "For the last twenty years? Oh, this and that."

Sampson Lewis Edmonds shoveled soypro into his mouth, then hastily reached for the glass of water to cool the too-hot bite of cutlet. When he had drenched the heat, he said, "What is the uniform?"

"I am a matador, Father. A bodyguard."

Edmonds nodded absently, and grunted as he took another bite of soypro. The term meant nothing to him; he had not heard of the matadors. "A bodyguard." The tone was disapproving.

Sleel, unable to stop himself, rushed in to defend against the metaphorically raised eyebrow. "I've done other things," he said, too quickly.

"Really?" his mother said.

"I went to Bocca when I left here."

"And-?" his father said.

"I graduated with signal honors. Third in a class of seventeen hundred, a doctorate in poetic literature, with a minor in anthrokinetics. "

"A doctorate," his mother said. "That's nice."

"Not in botany, though," his father said. "And only third."

The spot that Sleel had managed to squeeze into a tiny sphere over the years suddenly expanded under his sternum, filling him with emptiness again. Just like that, it stole his heart and soul and made him hollow once again.

Aching, Sleel rushed ahead. "I also wrote several novels that were well received. Under the name of Gerard Repe."

Reason stared at Sleel. "You are Gerard Repe? The man of mystery? The author nobody sees? My God, why aren't you living in a palace? Repe's books have sold in the tens of millions. I've read all six of them. First time I finished Heartsick I cried myself to sleep."

"I gave all the money to charity. Established a foundation that attends to orphaned children."

"That was nice of you," his mother said.

Sleel felt the pressure of Reason's gaze and amazement. The older man muttered, "Disingenuous. There was an understatement. My God. You're a, genius and I never suspected."

"Yeah, and don't forget I was a hero of the Revolution," Sleel said.

"Revolution?" his father said, around a mouthful of blue beans.

Sleel's laugh was bitter; it came up from his depths, full of all the years. How could you impress a man who was so out of touch with life that he missed-he missed!-the upheaval that rearranged the entire galaxy?

"That's nice," his mother said. On some level Sleel knew she could feel his pain, had always been able to feel it, but had never known what to do about it. It affected her just enough to make her vaguely uncomfortable. If his father felt anything similar, it had never shown.

If he wrote this scene in a novel, nobody would believe it, Sleel thought. But Sleel felt the old wounds reopen afresh, as if no time had passed, as if he were still sixteen and vowing to do something to impress them or die. Nothing impressed them, nothing outside their own deep but very narrow expertise.

Sleel did what he always did when he wanted to see his parents smile. That way, he could pretend they were smiling at him. "So, how's the new variation coming?"

There was always a new variation, always.

Both his parents lit up as if they'd been jolted with a sudden charge of high energy. They both smiled.

They both started talking at once:

"-genome reconfiguration optimizes photosynthetic processes-"

"-model augmentation indicates an increased reproductive rate equal to the current maximums-"

"-which alters the chemical composition by almost nine percent, low, but obviously only a transitional sequence that can be improved-"

"-however the Liebig Constant will not be reached for another six generations unless the Gesner Effect can be recapitulated without the Hooker Variant-"

Sleel allowed the botanical patois to wash over him as he had allowed it during his entire life with them, smiling and nodding as if he understood it all. It was like a simultaneous lecture from two brilliant professors to a doctoral class, and even an expert would be hard pressed to keep up with either, much less both at the same time. But it was a game Sleel knew all too well. Even at five years old he could play it and fool them. How anyone could look at a small child smiling and nodding as they spewed such esoterica and think he understood had always escaped him. He smiled and chewed it up and swallowed it into that void where his heart and soul should be.

Some things change frequently, some things seldom, some things never.

Thought of the day from Sleel, the hollow man.

Chapter TEN

WHEN KILDEE Wu arrived on Rift, she had no trouble finding La Casa del Acero Negro. Or in reaching the Romantic Enclave and the gates of the estate itself.

Ah, si, fem, this is indeed the famous House of Black Steel, the guard told her. No, you cannot see it from this location, it is far beyond the fence, but it is a magnificent structure. Here, here is a holocard with a picture for you, compliments of El Patron. Si, is permitted to use your camera for pictures. No, the Patron is offworld at the moment. No, the guard did not know to where he journeyed, but then, your pardon, even if well paid and charged with great responsibility, he was after all only a guard.

The master of the casa was apparently unworried if anyone knew where he had gone, Wu found when she checked at the port where one of his personal boxcars was normally berthed. His starship, The Lanza, had departed only a week ago for orbit around Mtu, in the Bibi Arusi System. Though the information officer at the port did not know why such a man would wish to spend his time on such a backward planet, the motives of the very rich were sometimes hard to fathom, no? They are not like ordinary people such as we, the officer allowed.

Indeed not, Wu said.

She walked through the port, thinking. While the school brought in fair money and she had spent little of it over the years, she was not rich. Should she wait here for Cierto's return? Or should she buy another ticket and follow him? Both had their advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, she could be fairly certain the man would arrive here eventually. When that might happen was another thing but she knew how to be patient. On the other hand, this was Cierto's base, and he would be strongest on his home grounds. Meeting him in a neutral setting could be to her advantage.

He was only a week ahead of her, and Mtu was only that far away by Bender drive. A man with his own starship should be relatively easy to find on an agroworld like Mtu.

Yes. Go there and find him, then.

The scientist, who called himself Cembor Jaan, was a nervous, sweaty man, dark hair and skin, and full of bitterness against those who had cast him aside. He was only too eager to spill whatever he knew about The Brambles to Cierto.

They sat in a suite at the largest and most expensive hotel in Bandari, itself the largest city on the planet, though large was a relative term. Less than a million people lived here, mostly basic stock, with perhaps ten percent of them assorted mues.

Two of Cierto's students, Miguel and Juanita, stood guard just outside the door to this, the biggest of the eight rooms in the suite; the other students, Luis and Dona, were stationed at the entrances in the hallway. The rooms had been swept for listening devices, of which there had been none.

Jaan said, "The defenses were the best the Confed could devise when they were first installed. Nothing without clearance is allowed to overfly the area, save at orbital heights, and these satellites are all tracked. Any craft below that is warned by automatic transmissions; if they do not change course, they are shot down.

"There is the fence, of course. Anyone attempting to climb or cut through it is pinpointed on the security sensors. Guards can reach any area of the perimeter within a few minutes from one of the two hundred stations just inside the wire. And there are sensors underground to prevent digging.

"While the entire complex is too vast to cover every square meter with movement sensors, there are enough of them strategically located to make movement for more than a klick or two very risky. Armed guards patrol key lanes among the trees, as do heat reader dins."

Cierto waved one hand in dismissal. Circumventing even the best security was not impossible; for every device invented to stop someone, a counterdevice was almost always created. His own estate's security was similar, though probably of a lesser degree of thoroughness. No, merely being able to get into an area the size of a country was not the problem. Locating the quarry exactly and arranging all the steps necessary to take him were apt to be more difficult. Still, with the proper equipment and a certain level of adeptness, it could be done.

"Tell me," he said. "This plant, will it burn?"

In the days after their arrival, Sleel and Reason could have easily fallen into a very dull routine. Sleel's parents lived in their world, unaffected by and nearly oblivious of their guests. The weather was hot and muggy, activities outside of the scientific work almost nonexistent, and by and large, the two men were ignored. Sleel worked out, practiced shooting, and waited for Dirisha to get back to him with whatever information she could find. Of course, he also tied into the local nets, checking for what he expected, somebody come looking for them.

As a matador, Sleel knew there were no truly secure places. But like the old castles which had specially built floors that creaked and sang when trod upon, getting to the center of The Brambles would require a certain amount of noise. The trick was in knowing what to listen for.

So he trained and listened and waited. Like watching an intricate game of Go or chess, it was slow, at times boring, even when lives were at risk. Still, it had to be done.

Three weeks after they had arrived, there came a distant electronic creak at the entrance to the castle.

Sleel heard it during his morning scan of the security database he had built.

There was a private ship hanging in high orbit over the world.

On Earth or Mason or Vishnu or any one of a dozen other planets thick with humanity, a private ship would draw little attention. Even though the monies needed for interstellar travel were vast compared to what an ordinary middle-class citizen had, there were in the galaxy hundreds of thousands of those rich enough to afford such things. Here on Mtu, the main visitors were scientists, and they usually came by commercial transport or foundation charters, science per se being not nearly so well-paying a career field as entertainment or sports. According to Sleel's sources at Orbital Control, this vessel was registered to a corporation on Rift, in the Delta System. The ship was called The Lanza.

Not a major warning bell, but enough to tickle Sleel's attention. A small creak, maybe only the settling of the house caused by a temperature change. Or maybe not. Sleel plugged it into his consciousness, and made a few calls to check it out further.

Dirisha called back that same afternoon.

"Yo, Sleel."

"Dirisha. Where's the blonde shadow?"

"Geneva's at the swimming pool inciting lust in half the casino's transient population."

They both smiled.

"I got something for you on one of the swordplayers. The guy I heard about was considered the best at the edged stuff for a time. About fourteen, fifteen years back. He did nineteen duels in the last six months we can track him."

Sleel heard a trace of something in her voice. He said, "That a lot?"

"Yeah. In a busy year I did maybe six. A dozen in that time would be considered pushing it, least in the top ranks. Guy liked to fight. He had eighteen wins; twelve were outright kills, six were wounded badly enough so they barely made it even with full-medical rides. He used a black sword. "

"Sounds like what I'm looking for. Eighteen wins, you said, but nineteen fights?"

"Yep. There aren't any official records on the nineteenth fight. The word is, in the last one, our boy lost a foot. He went away after that, no further mention of him in the Flex. Probably regrew the foot and retired. Not many old players in the dance. It's a game for the young and stupid, mostly. The smart ones get out, they survive long enough."

"What about the player who beat him?"

"No record on them. They didn't claim the victory and Cierto never said."

"Cierto."

"Yeah, that's the guy with the black sword. Hoja Cierto, from Rift."

Oh, ho, Sleel thought. Rift, as in private ship hanging in the sky up there is from Rift.

Sleel found Reason lying under the shade of a big umbrella, sipping at a drink he'd programmed the dispense-din to make. Something with a lot of color in it, red and blue and even a touch of green. The older man was reading something, the words of which were barely visible, the holoproj washed dim by the reflected tropical sunlight even here in the shadows.

"We got company," Sleel said.

"Oh?"

"A ship owned by one Hoja Cierto of the planet Rift is hanging offworld in a parking orbit. Mean anything to you?"