Carnival-SA (22 page)

“Kii is not-House,” it said. “House is House. House is a construct. Kii is of the Consent.”

Not I. Kii.
Maybe not a personal pronoun. But it understood them—it used
you
fluently enough. So there was some reason it didn’t think of itself as I. Or even
we,
the logical choice if it were a hive-mind.

“Kii is a virtual intelligence?”

“Kii is translated.” It stopped again, nictitating. “Transformed.
Molted,
” it said, and then, triumphantly, the spiked fingertips flipping up to reveal cream-and-ultramarine wing leather in blurred, torn-paper patterns: “Fledged!”

Kusanagi-Jones put his hand against his mouth. He pressed it there, and thought. “You’re a transcendent intelligence,” he said. Kii blinked great translucent eyes. “What do you want?”

What he meant was,
why haven’t you killed me the way you killed the last Coalition forces to land
here?
But that seemed an impolitic question.
I’m not trained for first contact—

But this wasn’t first contact either. First contact was
handled
. First contact was more than a hundred Terran years ago. It didn’t matter if the New Amazonians knew that the Dragons still inhabited their cities, after a fashion—which was something that Kusanagi-Jones wasn’t prepared to assume—because the Dragons definitely knew rather a lot about humans.

“Your population is expansionist,” Kii said, after it had given Kusanagi-Jones adequate time to consider the stupidity of his blurted question. “But intelligent. Kii wishes to encourage détente.” It showed him teeth, back-curved spikes suitable for holding and shredding meat. “Kii is not eager to repeat, no, reiterate a massacre.”

“I am not eager to be massacred,” Kusanagi-Jones replied. “You’ve ethics.”

“You have aesthetics,” Kii said. “But no Consent. No true Consent.” It hissed, frustrated. “You act in ways that are not species-ordained.”

“And you do not?” It was surprisingly easy to relax with the thing. For all its alienness, it made no threatening gestures, did nothing but occasionally tilt its head and twitch the spikes of its wingtips into a more comfortable pose.

“Kii follows Consent,” it said. That ripple of the downy feathers on its neck almost looked like a skin-shiver. “Consent is…ordained.”

It was watching him. Trying the words in turn and seeing how he reacted. Testing them on him, until something—his body language, his scent—told it he was understanding as it wished.

“I follow my leaders, too.”

Could that be the thing’s answer to a smile? After 150 years of observation, it must comprehend human body language. Especially if it was reading his responses.

But he was a
Liar
.

“Biochemical,” it explained after another pause.

Oh.
Ah
. Not a group mind, then, but something closer to a political structure…albeit one enforced by biology. Or programming, in the case of a life form that wasn’t biological anymore. “Consent?”

“Yes.”

“Can’t argue my people out of coming here. They’ll—” Kusanagi-Jones shrugged and spread his hands out, pale palms up, dark backs inverted.
They won’t leave something like you at their flank.
A raw frontier world with a powerful bargaining chip, they
might
negotiate with, if the cost of occupation was deemed higher than the benefit gained. But a Transcendent alien species, with no apparent defenses, and the promise of all that energy, all that technology—

The Coalition had proven its acquisitiveness. On Ur, on New Earth—spectacular failure though
that
had been—and on half a dozen other worlds.
This
would be one bastard of an interesting brawl in Cabinet, in any case. It might be worthwhile to send combat fogs into the population centers just on the chance there might be pieces to pick up later.

“If you cannot convince your population to leave Kii’s…pets, Kii’s associates, in possession of these resources,” Kii said, “Kii will kill them. As necessary.”

Lesa had made Cathay and Asha wait in the hall as she passcoded the door to the Coalition agents’ suite and went inside. The simulacra in the bed were effective, but they wouldn’t bear up to a touch. Still, she stood over them, listening to the sound of their breathing—“Vincent’s” a regular hiss, “Michelangelo’s”

touched by a faint hint of snore—and closed her eyes.

Robert had end-run her. And the essential link to Ur and rebellion could be walking into a trap right now—or, worse or better, arranging a deal with a rival faction.

Lesa knew her mother. If Elena wasn’t in charge, Elena was unlikely to play. And if Elena didn’t play—

—Lesa’s own chances of getting Julian off-planet to Ur, if he didn’t prove gentle, went from reasonable to infinitesimal.

Ignoring the monitors (she’d be the one who examined the recordings), she tugged the covers up slightly, as if tucking in a couple of sleeping spies, and padded back toward the door. It opened and she passed between Asha and Cathay without a word.

“Everything all right?” Asha asked, hooking lustrous dark hair behind her ear with a thumb.

“Fine,” Lesa said over her shoulder. “Sleeping the sleep of the just. Make sure they’re up at five hundred for the repatriation ceremony?” She paused and turned long enough to throw Cathay a wink. “I think they wore themselves out.”

The lift brought her down quickly. Her watch buzzed against her wrist; she touched it and tilted her head to her shoulder to block external noise. Her earpiece needed replacing. “Agnes?”

“Lesa, Robert’s not in the rooms,” Agnes said, her high-pitched voice shivering. The words came crisp and clipped, as if she’d had them all lined up, ready to rush forward as soon as her mouth was opened.

“Do you want a constable on it?”

Lesa’s mouth filled with bitter acid. “Does Mother know?”

Agnes paused. “I called you before I woke her.” Which was a violation of protocol. But Lesa would have done the same.

There were any number of possibilities, but only two seemed likely. Robert was a double. Which meant he was working for either a free male faction, like Parity or—she prayed not—Right Hand Path. Or he was working for security directorate, and she’d just bought herself a sunrise execution.

“You did the right thing,” Lesa said. As she walked out into Government Center she passed the community car she’d taken here, which was parked silently at the curb waiting for its next call. She paused, frowned at her watch, and then continued, “And send me Walter, would you?”

She leaned a hip and shoulder against the wall as she waited, closing her eyes to cadge a few moments of dozing. Less than ten minutes later the whuff of hot breath on her hand and the tickle of feathers alerted her. She stroked a palm across Walter’s skull, laying his ear fronds flat and caressing warm down and scales. He panted slightly with the run, but he’d had no trouble finding her. Penthesilea wasn’t a big city in terms of area; he was trained as a package-runner, and he regularly went on errands with Robert or Katya. Agnes would have just told him
find Lesa at work,
and once he was at Government Center, he would have traced her scent.

“Good khir,” she said, and gave him her other hand, the one she’d stroked through the Coalition agents’

bedding. He whuffed again and went down on his haunches, not sitting but crouching. He lifted his head, ear-fronds and crest fluffing, and waited, his eyes glowing dimly with gathered light.

“Find it, please,” Lesa said. Walter nosed her hand again. “No cookie,” she said, shaking her head. She had nothing to bribe him with. “Find.”

He whuffed one last time, disappointed, and bounced up into an ambling trot, nose to the ground. She waited while he cast back and forth, darting one way and then the other, feathery whiskers sweeping the square. They framed the end of his mouth like a Van Dyke, above and below the labial pits, and served a dual purpose—as sensitive instruments of touch and for stirring up, gathering, and concentrating aromas. Then, not far from the doorway she’d exited, he made two short, sharp dashes at right angles to each other and glanced over his shoulder with quivering ear-fronds for a decision. They hadn’t gone the same way.

Lesa raised her hand and pointed at random. Walter took off like a spring-loaded chase dummy, and Lesa bounded after, running until her knees ached and her lungs burned. The scent was fresh.

Elder Kyoto closed her fingers around Vincent’s biceps and drew him under the archway. “Any problem getting away?”

She kept her voice low, down in her throat like a lover’s, and Vincent answered the same way. “None. Given who passed your note, I expected Miss Pretoria—”

“What a pity to confound your expectations,” she replied. “You have a message from your mother, I understand?”

“I am empowered by the government-in-anticipation of Ur to seek alliances, if that’s what you mean.” He checked his fisheye: slightly more subtle than glancing over his shoulder. “We’re unmonitored here?”

“Jammed,” she said, and held up her wrist. The device strapped to it looked like an ordinary watch. She smiled. “I apologize for my boorish behavior at the reception, by the way.”

“Quite all right.” He draped himself around her shoulder, leaning down as if to murmur in her ear. “Elder Singapore isn’t sympathetic, I take it?”

“Elder Singapore is convinced that the Coalition can be bargained with.” She snuggled under the curve of his arm, her shoulders stiff behind a mask of insincere affection.

“Yes,” Vincent said. “So was my grandmother. Is it worth trying to convince her?”

It was so easy now, now that it was happening. The tension of waiting and secrets and subtleties released, and he was here, working, calculating. “On a male’s word?” Kyoto shrugged. “There isn’t. Singapore was Separatist before her conversion to mainstream politics, and her closest associates—Montevideo, Saide Austin—are still deeply involved in antimale politics.” Kyoto grimaced.

“Pretoria house might be sympathetic—actually, we used sleight of hand to talk to you first—”

“We?”

“Parity.”

“Excuse me?”

She tossed her hair back roughly. “That’s our name. Parity. What you might call a radical underground movement. We’re pro men’s right’s, anti-Trials, in favor of population control. Opposed to Coalition appeasement—”

“And illegal.”

“How ever did you guess?” She might have become someone else since the night before, the cold mask replaced by passionate urgency.

“You’re a
Liar,
” he answered. “I would have known—”

“I’m not. And you don’t know everything. I’m on your side.”

“My mother’s side.”

“The rebel prince,” she mocked. She folded her arms across her chest. “Do you actually
care
what your mother stands for, or did you just grow up twisted in her shadow? Katherine Lexasdaughter is a famously charismatic leader, of course. But what do
you
believe in, Vincent Katherinessen?”

His lips drew tight across his teeth while he considered it. “You think it’s wise to overthrow the entire planetary social system as a prelude to an armed revolt, Elder Kyoto?”

“Armed revolt first,” she answered. “
Then
revolution. We have a hundred thousand combat-trained stud males on this planet. We have half a million armed, educated, fiercely independent women. I don’t want to see them come to blows with each other. I want to give them an enemy in common.”

He watched her, still, and she shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. Maybe not a Liar, then. Not a trained one, anyway. Just very controlled, very good. “I was
supposed
to contact Lesa Pretoria, wasn’t I?” he asked. “You intercepted the codes.”

“We needed you first. It’s not just about the Coalition—”

“It’s about the Coalition first.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What about personal dignity? Personal freedom?”

“Never mind the
Coalition
.” His hands wanted to curl into fists. Tendons pressed the inside of his bracer. “Never mind New Amazonia. Do you think there’s any of that under the Governors?”

“I think,” she said, “the Governors come first. And then the internal reforms.”

He bit his lip, leaning forward, voice low and focused, taut with wrath. “Elena
Pretoria
can bring me the New Amazonian government, once Singapore is out of the way. Can you? My mother
will
supply the Captains’ council. We can guarantee New Earth. That’s three. It’s not enough, but it’s what we’ve got, and once things are started, a few more may take their chances. You were right when you said my mother is famously charismatic. But this is a civil
war
we’re discussing, Antonia, and one Old Earth will fight like hell to win, because every planet it loses means one less place for the population to expand to. Will your half a million armed women fight for you, fight against Coalition technology, if they think you’re going to take away
their
spot at the top of the pecking order?”

“They’ll fight to keep New Amazonia free. We can explain the rest afterward,” Kyoto said. Determination squared her. She unfolded her hands and let them drop against her thighs, the right one hovering close to her holster. “And, if you wouldn’t mind putting the rest of the lecture on hold for a minute, Miss Katherinessen, we have company.”

Vincent had caught the motion in his fisheye, and was already putting his back to the wall. Someone walked toward them, a tripled shadow cast by multiple light sources splayed on the pavement before her. The unfastened safety snap bounced against her holster and her hair caught blond and crimson and fuchsia highlights off the domed street lights lining the walls of the half-empty square. A big animal—a khir—stood beside her, the angular silhouette also casting three long shadows that interlocked with the woman’s.

“You shouldn’t raise your voice so, Miss Katherinessen,” Lesa said, pausing, her thumb resting on the butt of her weapon. “It’s unseemly to shout.”

He slid his arm off Elder Kyoto’s shoulder and stepped back with a sigh. Kyoto glanced at him and he shrugged. He didn’t say it, but he didn’t think you’d have to be a superperceiver to read the
I told you
so
in the twist of his mouth. “Miss Pretoria,” he said. “Welcome to the party. Is Robert coming?”