Eternity's End (70 page)

Alien sun.

Any
sun was an alien sun.

Her eyes blinked several times, then opened. Stayed open. Peering at the curtains.

Why curtains—?

Remembered running for her life. Leaning on Legroeder. Why Legroeder? They were fleeing... pirates in pursuit.

Maris groaned softly. She tried to sit up, and failed. Her head was on a pillow. She turned it slightly to look around.
Where am I?
she wanted to ask, but swallowed the words.
Don't talk yet; don't know where you are
. She remembered excruciating pain—and footsteps, pounding. Pursuit. Must hide. But where? Nowhere to hide.

She wondered if she could move now; maybe just a hand. Slowly, forcing every inch of movement, she dragged her left hand across her chest and brought it to touch the hurt on her right shoulder and neck. What was it?
Neutraser fire... there was shooting
... Probing under the loose fabric, she felt a spray-on bandage; and under the bandage, the ridges and bumps of a wound. At first there was no sensation from the touch of her fingers; then the fire flashed up her neck. She rasped in a sharp, agonized breath and lay trembling, clutching her arms together.

A wooden door to her right burst open.

She blinked, trying to focus. A man and a woman stood in the doorway, staring at her in astonishment. "You're awake!" the woman said.

Maris struggled to find her voice. She couldn't; couldn't even swallow. Her throat was dry and cracked.

"Here, now," said the man, pushing past the woman. "Don't try to sit up, you're not ready for that." He stepped to Maris's side and bent to peer at a medical monitor.

She tried to move her right arm and felt a new pain. She was tied to a monitor and a set of IV's. Was she in a hospital?

The man urged her to lie still, and she didn't argue; she was dizzy anyway. But not too dizzy to wonder, Who are these people? Had she made it away with Legroeder? Where was she? And where was Legroeder?

She tried once more to swallow, then heard the man send the woman for a glass of water. Good. Good. The water arrived, and the man lifted her head as she tried to drink. She sipped greedily, water splashing down her chin, soaking her neck. With a gasp, she sank back as the woman dabbed at her with a towel. "Take it easy, now," the man was saying. "You've had a tough time of it."

Tough time of it...

The woman was muttering something she couldn't quite make out, and the man replied, "We really should get her seen by a doctor."

"No doctor!" the woman said sharply.

"Look at her, Lydia. You can see she needs help."

No doctors. Not a hospital, then
. Maris listened with growing alarm.
Where am I? What's happened to Legroeder?

"What's she saying?"

"Legroeder," the woman said. "She's calling for Legroeder. Her boyfriend. The one who skipped bail."

Had she spoken out loud?
No—you have it wrong. What do you mean, he skipped bail?

"Watch what you say, now she's awake," the man murmured. He leaned in closer. "Miss O'Hare—can you hear me?"

Maris drew a breath, and with an almost superhuman effort, shouted:
"Where—am—I—?"

"She said something," said the woman. "What'd she say?"

"I'm not sure," said the man. "Miss O'Hare?"

She grunted in frustration and tried again, harder. This time words came out. "Where... am... I?" Her voice sounded harsh and unnatural.

"I think she said, 'Where am I?' "

"Huh," said the woman. "Don't worry about—"

"Wait," said the man, cutting her off. He moved around the bed, to where Maris could see him more easily. "Miss O'Hare, you've been in a coma for weeks. We finally managed to deactivate your implants—"

Implants
. Of course, the pirates had put them in the back of her neck. How had she been able to escape? There'd been a plasma leak...

"—which were keeping you unconscious."

She tried to focus. The pirates had told her that escape was impossible; the programming in her implants was like a knife at her throat.

"Damn near killed you, as far as I could tell. But I guess they were rigged to incapacitate, rather than kill."

Maris strained. "Where—?"

"You're in the North Country. Away from the city."

Maris shook her head weakly.

The man finally seemed to catch on. "On Faber Eridani."

Maris's breath caught. "Faber—" She'd made it out, then. Made it back to civilization. Or had she? She squinted at the man and woman, and thought with a shiver,
Why won't they let me see a doctor?

"You're safe here," the man continued reassuringly. "You're among friends." He smiled and turned away.

Chapter 34

The Centrist Connection

"But Harriet—we can record the whole thing on VR and bring it to you here in the embassy. There's no need to risk your going out." Peter stretched his big hands out pleadingly.

Harriet fixed the Clendornan PI with her gaze. "I don't
want
to see it on the VR, Peter. I want to see it in person. You can bring me right back when we're done. But if I'm going to use this for a legal case, I need to know everything. How it sounds, how it feels, how it smells. And not through some damn electronic reproduction!"

The light in the back of the Clendornan's eyes flickered as he gazed at her.

"Peter, I appreciate your concern. But I've got to do this."
Besides, if I don't get out of this embassy soon, I'm going to lose my mind. How can such a beautiful place feel like such a prison?

Peter gave in at last. "All right. But at least let me talk to the embassy staff. Maybe they'll let us travel in one of their vans. Less likely to be intercepted that way."

"I knew you'd understand." Harriet grabbed Peter's arm. "Come on, let's go find the assistant ambassador..."

All the way in the Narseil floater-van, Harriet found herself checking the security sensors, and peering back through the darkened windows to see if they were being followed. Her courage of an hour ago had evaporated. She sank back in her seat with a sigh. "Harriet, there's no reason to think we've been seen," Peter said, glancing back from the front seat.

"I'm sure you're right," she murmured. She glanced to her right at the tall form of Dendridan, the embassy attaché. He had come along to observe, as well as to lend diplomatic legitimacy to their use of the Narseil vehicle. Dendridan's vertical eyes gleamed, but he said nothing.

Leaving the city proper, they glided through the northeast suburbs, past an area Harriet barely knew even though she'd lived in Elmira all her adult life. The Narseil driver followed Peter's directions flawlessly, and twenty minutes later they were parked between two other vehicles in back of a peeling white wood-frame house.

"Stay here a moment while I do a check," Peter said. He ducked out of the van, leaving Harriet with Dendridan and the Narseil driver. He reappeared a few minutes later, with one of his men. "The coast is clear. Let's go inside."

Leaving the driver with the van, they entered the house through the kitchen and made their way upstairs to a large bedroom that had been converted into a makeshift VR studio. There were cameras on tripods everywhere, and a large white screen across one wall. Peter introduced his assistants Norman and Irv, whom Harriet recognized from the earlier holo. There was no need to introduce Rufus the dog, who lay on a small cot, panting slowly. He was wired up like a marionette with optiwire feeds. The dog's tail twitched when he saw Harriet—was it possible he remembered her?—but everything about him seemed in slow motion. "He's under a relaxation field," Peter explained. He cocked his head, studying the setup. "Downloading information from a dog is not as easy as you might think."

"Oh, really," Harriet said dryly.

"I'm afraid I don't quite follow," said the Narseil.

"Well," said Peter, "since the data in Rufus's implants was a direct memory feed from McGinnis, a lot of it isn't necessarily in verbal form. Some of it's visual, some of it's sound and smell and touch; some of it's pure emotion. To be valid in court, it must be read and interpreted by a certified intermediary."

"One of your people?"

Peter shook his head. "We hire the Kell, who make this something of a specialty. I've brought one in from the city of Port Huron."

"On the other side of the continent."

"Right. She's not well known here, but she's one of the best." Peter paused to survey the setup. "If everyone's ready, I'll go get her." Peter disappeared into another room, while Harriet and Dendridan waited uncomfortably.

"Irv here's the one who found Rufus, at the McGinnis place," Norman said, nodding. Norman was a large man who seemed comfortable around the dog. Irv, on the other hand, was skinny and nervous looking. Harriet remembered Peter saying that Irv was afraid of dogs. Apparently he had gotten over his fear; he paused to scratch Rufus's head as he made some adjustments to the hookup.

"Everyone," said Peter, returning with the blue-robed Kell, "may I introduce the interpreter who will be assisting us today? This is Counselor Corellay. She is certified for Level-3 implant reading and Level-2 telepathic extraction."

Counselor Corellay was just over a meter tall, with silken grey fur and a hamster-like face. Her eyes were black with bright silver dots slightly off-center. She nodded to the observers and then walked, with a rippling gait, across the room to the dog. She touched Rufus on the head and murmured to him for a moment. Then she turned. "Are we ready to begin?"

"Quadrocam?" Peter asked Irv.

"Ready."

"Sensory feed? Data storage?"

"Ready."

Peter nodded to the Kell. "You may begin your certification." Corellay bent to examine the wiring attached to the dog. As she made her inspection, Peter explained to the Narseil, "We've made test tracings, but this will be the first court-certified reading. I'll ask you and Harriet to sign off as witnesses." Dendridan agreed, and Peter produced a small retinal scanner-recorder into which the two of them would make their attestations.

When Corellay was satisfied, she adjusted her own collar, which looked a bit like a cervical brace glinting with opticom processors. She stepped to the center of the room, in front of the white screen. Drawing a lightwand out of her robe, she faced Peter and the others. "Begin recording. This is Counselor Corellay of Kell, licensed to the courts of Faber Eridani in Port Huron. Here begins my translation of memory-data presently stored in the cortical implants of Mr. Robert McGinnis's dog, Rufus..."

The formal preface went on for a while. Suddenly Corellay's voice deepened. She raised the lightwand.
"This is the record of Robert McGinnis. I may have only minutes left in which to live."
She waved the lightwand in a sudden blur in front of the screen. A sketch appeared in midair, first in black and white, then color. Harriet marveled at the speed of the rendering while focusing on the image: a room with flames licking through the walls and a bank of consoles glowing. Robert McGinnis appeared in the foreground, his face contorted with pain.

Corellay's voice changed to her own. "This is how Robert McGinnis looks to me as he uploads. He is fighting for his life. The flames are in his mind only; but he expects their physical presence soon." Corellay's voice dropped again; she sounded startlingly like McGinnis, even to the cadence and inflection.

"What will follow is a list of crimes that I hereby attest have been committed by Kyber agents and certain representatives of the RiggerGuild and the Spacing Authority over the past thirty years. I have compiled this record in deliberate isolation from my implants, which have otherwise prevented me from coming forward. It is my hope that this record will now be used to bring the guilty to justice." Corellay paused a moment, then waved the wand rapidly in the air. A holoimage took shape, surrounding her as though she were standing in a cavern. Faces appeared in the blur of the wand, flickering with streaks of light that flashed onto Corellay's face. The Kell winced in pain. Suddenly she gestured urgently to Harriet and Dendridan to step forward, into the image.

The Narseil looked unsure, but Harriet grasped his elbow and propelled him forward. As she stepped into the hologram, Harriet's breath went out; she felt as if she'd been punched. She gasped in fear and looked around wildly for an instant. Threatening faces glared from the walls of the holographic image, and Harriet felt a sudden wash of fear of what would happen if she revealed the truths that she knew. Who were these people? Some had implants on the sides of their heads; others didn't. The faces were indistinct; her feelings of vulnerability and fear were so powerful it was difficult to focus on the images. The Corellay/McGinnis voice was rapidly running down a long list of dates, and coercive threats, and instructions he had been given for undercover activities. The instructions ranged from espionage to destruction of evidence to creation of false navigational data for use by riggers. He could not always successfully resist...

After a moment, the images began to spin, until they were gathered into a whirlpool. As Harriet watched, stunned, they drained down into a holographic box on the floor.

Corellay's voice sounded like her own again. "Those details have been stored in the permanent record. Step out now, please."

With a sigh of relief, Harriet and Dendridan moved back to a safe distance. Harriet could see that Dendridan was confused about their role in this. "We were just witnessing McGinnis's emotional responses to the physical details embedded in the recording," Harriet whispered to the Narseil. "That becomes part of the testimony, and it can be used to support the claim of intimidation via implant—which is criminal assault under Faber Eridani law."

McGinnis's voice returned.

"It was not just Kyber agents behind these actions, I am convinced—but the Spacing Authority itself. And the RiggerGuild—betraying its charge to protect the life and liberty of riggers, by sending its members into areas of known pirate activity..."

Harriet felt a knot tightening in her stomach as she watched Corellay's hand speed up to a blur again. A long written list of ships scrolled down the middle of the holo. Was the
L.A
. one of them?
Bobby?
It was scrolling too fast to read. The list funneled down into the data storage and vanished.