Black Steel (9 page)

They walked to the entrance and Sleel palmed the ancient lock. The thin plastic door squeaked as it rolled open on its warped track. Sleel shook his head. It shouldn't surprise him that they hadn't changed the lock.

"Just going to walk in?" Reason asked.

"Sure."

The two men entered the cube, a spacious one by local standards. Living area, dining-kitchen, three bedrooms-his parents had never slept in the same room that Sleel had known about-two offices, three freshers. They dropped their gear.

"Doesn't seem as if anybody is home," Reason ventured.

"They're here," Sleel said.

Sure enough, after a few seconds, his mother peered around the doorway into her office. "Yes?

Something?"

"Hello, Mother," Sleel said.

The woman blinked. Twenty years hadn't done much to her that he could tell. The lines were deeper, the hair all gray instead of just mostly that color. She looked smaller, but that figured. And she could have been wearing that same set of jumper coveralls when he'd left.

Elith Liotulia blinked again, as if unable to process what her eyes beheld. Then: "Oh. Oh. How are you?"

"Fine," Sleel said. "This is Jersey Reason, the famous thief."

"Ex-thief," Reason said, smiling.

"Oh. How nice. Well. Come in. Make yourself comfortable. I have a report to finish. I'll be with you later."

With that, she ducked back into her office.

Sleel's face felt tight, the thin smile chiseled into his features set as if it were made of stone.

Reason said, "How long has it been since she's seen you?" "A little over twenty years."

"Good God."

"Wait until you meet my father."

With that, Sleel led Reason to his father's office.

Sampson Lewis Edmonds sat in the center of a computer work station, surrounded on three sides by machineries that hummed and purred with bioelectronic effort, his back to the door.

"Hello, Father," Sleel said.

The man spared them a glance away from his computations, took in the two, and nodded. "Busy," he said. He turned back to his work.

Sleel's frozen smile stayed in place. He nodded and turned away. That had always been enough, that single word. It was dismissal needing no amplification: Busy.

How in the name of any sexual god had these two ever managed to produce a child? Had they done it while working together, never missing a single datum between insertion and ejaculation? Sleel sighed.

"This way," he said.

Except for whatever the cleaning dins had done to it, his room was the same as he had left it. There were two beds, for when he had infrequent company who wanted to sleep alone. Toward the end of his life here, there had been a few who'd shared his bed with him; if his parents had noticed or cared, they had never said.

"We'll stay here. You can have either bed you want."

Reason nodded. He tossed his bags on the guest bed.

Sleel put his own gear on his bed. Welcome home, son. It's so nice to see you again. How has your life been?

Sleel shook his head. What exactly did you expect, pal? A parade? Well, no. But maybe something other than Oh, have you been gone?

Some things never changed.

Chapter NINE

IN THE DINING room, Sleel worked the com, linking into the White Radio net that spanned the inhabited galaxy.

The name was a double misnomer, being that Desmond White had not invented it, though he had paid for it, and neither was it radio. The invention was more properly known in scientific circles as the A-17 Chronometric/E-RE-PN Impiotic Particle Acceleration/Reception Augmenter, and for that reason it quickly came to be called White Radio.

What it did was allow communication across light years with very small time lags, and for some reason no one had ever been able to determine exactly, the longer the distance, the shorter the lag. In the early days, the computer augmentation had problems with the color, but that was long since corrected, so when Sleel called Dirisha, she looked as though she could be in the next room.

"Well, well," Dirisha said. "I thought sure you'd be in jail again by now." The chocolate-colored woman sat in front of her com in a bedroom, nude except for her spetsdods. A thin sheen of sweat shined on her, highlighting her tight muscles.

Geneva lay on the bed behind Dirisha, and save for her weapons, she was also naked. "Hey, Sleel!" the blonde yelled from the bed. She waved.

Sleel grinned. The last time the three of them had been together he had fulfilled a major fantasy, and felt for a few hours during it that there was indeed some justice in the galaxy. These two were the brightest, deadliest and most beautiful women anywhere, at least in Sleel's experience. They were salt and pepper, dark and pale, lovers since the years of training at the Villa. He'd tried for longer than that to get Dirisha to sleep with him, since the days they'd been bouncers at the Jade Flower on Greaves, and finally, she and Geneva both had agreed at the same time. Some justice, sure enough.

"Hello, Dirisha. Geneva. Did I interrupt something?"

"Nah. We wouldn't have answered the com if we'd been really busy. How's it going, deuce?"

"You know me, no problems I can't handle."

She laughed. "Same old Sleel. What's up?"

"I need some information. You used to walk the Flex."

"Long time ago."

"You ever run into anybody who used a black sword? Some odd kind of steel, not anodized or painted or anything, black all the way through."

Dirisha thought about it for a few seconds. "I never fought them. I heard about a couple, just streetscat, but never saw them work myself."

"A couple of them?"

"It was about the time I left to go look up Emile when he was doing his Pen impersonation on Renault. I didn't do a lot of weapon work myself, those who did tended to find each other to play with, but there were a few who waved blades."

"You have any contacts who might know?"

"This important?"

"No, I just wanted to spend a week's worth of stads calling halfway across the universe to pass the time of day."

Geneva laughed and sat up on the bed. "You need to work on that, Sleel. Not cutting enough. Needs more irony."

"Fuck you, brat," he said. That was Dirisha's pet name for Geneva, but they'd given him use of it. He grinned when he said it.

"Oh, yeah? Last time I offered, you said you were too tired."

"I never said that."

"Okay, you didn't say it, but the physical evidence was overwhelming. Or should I say underwhelming?"

"Any time you want a return match . . ." Sleel said.

"Ooh, Dirisha, listen, idle threats!"

"I'll check around, you want," Dirisha said.

"I'd appreciate it."

"This biz?"

"Yeah. You remember Jersey Reason? He's my client."

Dirisha smiled, white teeth shining against her dark skin. "Say hello to the old man for me." There was a short pause. "You doing okay with it? Need any help?"

"Nah, piece of easy, I just need to check some things out." He kept his voice even.

"All right. My com get the right number?"

"Yeah, I'm not hiding."

Dirisha glanced up at the corner of her screen. "Mtu?"

He felt himself grow tight, but he forced a smile. "Yeah, home for a visit to my parents."

Geneva slid off the bed and came to sit next to Dirisha. She put one pale hand on the darker woman's shoulder. The contrast in skin color was attractive. "Christo, you have parents?" Geneva said. "My. Will wonders never cease? I thought maybe you sprang full-size from the forehead of some god."

"A natural mistake," he said. "Gimme a call if you get something."

"Later, Sleel."

When the holoproj faded, Sleel found himself shaking his head. Those two were part of his real family.

He found that he missed them, though he wouldn't have admitted that to them. Or to anybody else.

Behind him, Reason said, "I just caught the fade-out. How are your fellow matadors doing?"

"Fine. They're visiting the casinos on Vishnu."

"Expensive com from here."

"My parents can afford it. And they'll never notice it anyhow. All their bills go through a manager and he's learned to expect weird things from them."

Sleel glanced at his timepiece. "Almost eighteen. I'd better call the catering service and tell them there are two more of us for supper."

Reason looked puzzled.

"Neither my father nor my mother will remember that we are here. They have all their meals delivered, same time every day. A din brings the food and rings a loud bell until one of my parents stirs enough to shut it off manually. Otherwise they'd probably starve."

"I hope you won't take offense, but your parents are passing strange. "

Sleel laughed, a short, sharp sound. "You might just qualify as a master of understatement with that one."

The vessel carrying Kildee Wu to Rift was one of the old Melanie-class hoppers, an ancient ship from the height of the Confed's reign. In those days, travel schedules were based on policy and not practicality, and so the ship had been appointed with enough luxuries and space for voyages that could last months for some passengers. There were parks, convoluted walking paths through genetically stunted small forests, streams and ponds, and individual cubicles built to resemble tiny houses. Named The Skate, the ship was a study in deception, for although it created the illusion of size and space, it was scarcely larger than a standard troop ship. The arts of bonsai and architectural eyeweave had peaked in such vessels, and even when you knew you were being fooled, it still looked like a small village.

Wu wandered along one of the paths, listening to the sounds of artificial birds and the tread-actuated buzz and rasp of various insects. The pull was a standard one-gee. A permanent repeating holoproj overhead showed a sunshiny blue sky with fleecy clouds, and a gentle breeze wafted through the trees carrying the scent of pine. The sounds and lights and smells were all artfully designed to convince a walker that he or she was in a real, albeit a tiny, wood, but like the old flat wall paintings of trompe l'oeil, there was a not-real feeling about it all.

Something deep within her sensed the illusory nature of her surroundings; still, it was pleasant enough. And a walk in the forest without company allowed her space enough to reach for the inner calm she needed. Although Wu meditated regularly using various martial disciplines, she wanted her spirit to be like a still pool for the task to come. It mattered not how sharp a woman's blade was, could she not wield it with dispassion. Attachment to victory or even technique was bad. In swordplay, there was no past and no future, only now, and nothing must be allowed to pull or push the moment.

Wu laughed at herself. Right. As if such high-mindedness could make it so. Her sensei, Master Ven, would be whacking her with the bamboo in this moment, were she sitting zazen, no doubt about it. Don't think, be! he would roar. She kept the smile after the laugh, remembering the old man. Now there was one who'd had control of his art. His last battle was the stuff of legends. He had challenged five of the best swordplayers in the Musashi Flex to a duel, five against his one, and met them in combat using a wooden blade against their steel. After defeating them, he had sat seiza, bowed once, and achieved satori, after which he left the shell of his body behind by sheer force of will. He had been eighty years old.

Wu wished she could have seen it. Of the four players who survived the encounter with her master, she had spoken to three, and all of them had come away radically changed. One had put down the sword and gone into a religious order. One had secluded himself, seeing no one for six months, to ponder his life.

One had begun a full-time study under Master Ven's then most highly ranked student, Kildee's uncle.

The fourth player committed suicide before Kildee could reach her.

Master Ven was a man who had lived his life exactly as he wished, and left it when he thought the moment penultimate. Every player of note in the Musashi Flex had heard the story, and though it sometimes was amplified in the telling, it was amazing enough in fact. The great Musashi himself had used a wooden sword near the end of his career, but never against five opponents at once.

Wu hoped that when her time came, she could leave life with as much grace as her master.

Given the mission she was on, that time might be near.

So she walked through the pretend forest, striving for inner quietness, seeking to become one with her self. She had a long way to go, she knew, both in space and in time. Ah, well, a woman had to do what a woman had to do, and demons take the rest. That made her smile, too.

Cierto's fortune was such that he need not be limited to commercial star hoppers as were ordinary men.

His ship, The Lanza, was sufficient to transport fifty passengers in extreme comfort, with a range of nearly that number of light years before resupply was needed. On this voyage, there were only ten passengers, including himself. His top four fencing students, two men and two women, were on board, as was a three-person team of expert computerists who could electronically forge nearly any document.

There was also a pair of biologists who had expertise relating to the guarded plants upon the world to which they traveled. Already the forgers were at work on positioning materials needed to secure legitimate entry into the area called The Brambles, and the scientists were preparing briefings for Cierto and his students regarding the same place.

The grease of many standards made for smooth workings, Cierto thought for perhaps the thousandth time.

He stood in the ship's gymnasium, a small space, but adequate for his needs. Once on Mtu he would be contacted by a certain disaffected scientist who had quit or been fired from the project, depending upon which story you chose to believe, and learn more about the place where his quarry had fled. After that, it would be only a matter of time before the thief was made to pay for his crime. Honor would be served, finally.

Sleel's parents emerged from their offices, called by the food delivery din's loud bell. The pair of them brought to mind nothing so much as soggy butterflies emerging from their cocoons, not quite finished with their metamorphosis, blinking against unaccustomed brightness and a new life.