Mary Rosenblum (22 page)

“I can’t find a better explanation.” Dane shrugged. “We still don’t completely understand what triggers some DNA to express while other segments seem to have no function. That’s why so many clone attempts fail. Look back in history to the Cambrian explosion.” He looked after the vanished Koi. “I think we’re seeing what happens when those unexpressed alleles express. Don’t forget we’re starting our second generation of kids born without any planetary influences–tidal forces, Earthnormal gravity, the planetar electromagnetic field, and probably factors we don’t even realize are important. “

“Non Darwinian evolution?” Ahni shook her head.

“Come up with a better theory. This is the best I can do.”

“But if it’s the environment–why aren’t kids like this showing up in the rest of the population?” Her eyes widened at his silence “They are,” she said softly. “I think I saw a couple.”

“They’re not as extreme as Koi’s family, for the most part. But by Darwinian standards … this generation shouldn’t be showing the skeletal, neuromuscular, and biochemical changes that they are.

Natural selection is a long slow process.”

“Let me guess,” she said softly. “The big push for secession’ mostly from the … native born?”

“Bingo.” Dane nudged himself away from the control panel with one toe, drifted slowly across the space.

“I’m not even sure that the majority are aware that they are different. They just know that you smell wrong, move wrong … don’t seem like them. Body language, facial expressions, body odor … you’re
different
. Not tribe. It’s tenuous in Noah’s generation of native born, seems to be stronger in their kids.

But they’re young, yet. I don’t think we’ve lost the tribe/not tribe hard wiring,” he said thoughtfully. “That will … cause problems. We’re going to turn into aliens.”

Aliens in our sky. She shivered.

“You get it.” Dane nodded. “That’s why we need to be sepaarate … and soon … but peacefully separate. Cooperative. Linked in some way that is greater than our ‘mutual humanity’. Friends and trading partners. Or we’re going to be at war.”

“Race … ” She had started to say that race was no longer an issue to humanity, stopped herself. It didn’t cause bloodshed in big wars, like it had once. But it was still an issue. In a global economy, with access to business partners on every continent, her father mostly did business with … Chinese.

Sometimes Koreans or Cambodians. Rarely Europeans or Latinos. And he was not the exception. If anything, the vanishing barriers of distance and physical isolation had increased the racial divides rather than healing them.

You didn’t have to do business with your physical neighbor. You could do business with someone like you, a continent away. Her family mostly did business with other Asians. Casually, race no longer mattered. Deep down, it did.

“That’s where the anger is coming from.” She reached for a delicate white blossom, snapping its fleshy stem. “Natives are seeing the tourists as the ‘aliens’.”

“That’s only part of it.” Dane’s tone reflected his suddenly grim mood. “We need to shut those ghosts down.”

“I thought my brother might contact me.” She studied the flower, noting the tiny veins in each perfect petal, delicate, pale green, a symmetrical lacework that made the most expensive jewelry look coarse. “I don’t think he’s going to. I think Li Zhen needs to talk to you as soon as possible.” Although Dane had no lever to move him. He would be a supplicant, and she doubted Li Zhen would respect a supplicant. She looked at Dane. “If CSF troops come up here … they’ll find Koi.”

He was silent for nearly a full minute and the rippling palette of his emotion shifted and changed too rapidly for her to follow it. “I think Koi and his family are the blueprint for where humanity will go. I’d like to see them live rather than die. Koi’s mother was … killed by a hunter.” A hard darkness charged the air between them again. “The man here before me sold hunting rights. For the ‘rats’. It was a … private club. It’s pretty easy to dispose of a body down here.”

Ahni closed her eyes against the images that kept forming in her head, thought of the girl with the milky eyes and her wordles greeting.

“He was a newborn. The … hunter was going to dispose of him along with his mother’s body. I guess he thought nothing had changed when I took over. He found out.”

His tone sent a shiver of ice down Ahni’s spine. Dane didn’t run things through favors only, she thought.

“That was the last hunt.” Dane’s shrug sent him drifting this time. “I did some work on Security to make sure. But the others wouldn’t show themselves, and I didn’t know how many there were, or if any of them could nurse Koi. So I … kept him.” Dane expression didn’t change but a remembering smile warmed him. ”We did okay … much to my amazement.” That warmth faded as he met her gaze. “They will be the casualties if we take Earth headon. It won’t stop what’s happening … but Koi and his family will be dead or in a lab the minute the downside media discovers them.”

And you will be dead, too, she thought. “You’re a zealot.”

“I am.” He met her eyes, smiled. “You sure you don’t want to take the next climber down?”

“No,” she said softly. “Sometimes … the universe needs zealots.”

He drifted closer, touched her arm, sending shivers through her. They hung motionless in the bower, face to face, a handspan apart. Ahni focused on the heat of his palm and fingers as his hand closed around her wrist. She closed her eyes and drew a breath that shuddered into her lungs as he pulled her gently toward him. Felt the pulse leaping in her throat.

His lips touched hers and he pulled her against him suddenly, fiercely, his arms around her, his mouth on hers, all sense of flesh boundaries, of
you
and
me
dissolving, vanishing. She ran her hands down the lean muscles of his back, over the flat curve of his flanks. He touched her face, fingertips tracing her cheekbones, sliding featherlight along her throat, burning hot and tingling like ice. His excitement matched her own and Ahni laughed deep in her throat, sucked in her breath as his lips moved down the groove of her neck. She shrugged her singlesuit over her shoulder, shivered as his lips followed the spare swell of her breast, her hands on his hips, now, reaching for him. “How do you do this?” she asked, her voice hoarse. Laughed. “This is what the tourists come up here for, right?”

“If you want to get pregnant you use straps. Elastic.” Dane touched one of her nipples with the tip of his tongue. “If you don’t want to get pregnant there are … other things that work better here.”

She didn’t need to ask for details as he left a burning trail of kisses down her flat belly, groaned as he slid his fingers inside her. She was content to follow the dance. She knew what she wanted and wanted to do, and it worked, she found, quite well in microG. There came an exquisite moment when sweetly scented blossoms brushed her face and shoulders as she cried aloud in pleasure. He groaned when he came, gasping out her name.

Mter, they drifted, arms and legs entwined, wrapped in a sweet lethargy. Absently, Ahni noticed the tiny frog things zipping out from the shelter of the leaf wall, snatching up the droplets that drifted like miniscule pearls in the air around them, before they vanished once more into the leaves. Dane’s body comforted her, warm against her naked flesh, rich with a sense of shelter that went beyond the physical. “What was it like?” she asked drowsily. “When you came here? Koi says you did all this.”

He was thoughtful for a moment. “The infrastructure was the same. Except for this.” A smile suffused his tone as he reached languidly to brush his fingertips across the wall of leaves and blossoms that surrounded them. “I needed a place to live and I was tired of small artificial spaces.”

“When did you come up here?” she asked, her head against his shoulder, watching the gray of his eyes change like a cloudy spring sky. “Where did you grow up?”

“I was born on Earth. I came up to the asteroid belt with my brother. I was about ten. I mined for awhile. Got tired of it after my brother died in an accident. Did some online education and applied for this job. You have to live here and not many like microG full time.” His shoulder, the one against her cheek, moved in a shrug. “I just stayed.”

He was silent for a moment. “We were born in the refugee camps left over from the Terror Wars. My brother was a lot older than me. He traded a lot to get up here to Darkside. I never saw much of a future for Earth. Just more of the same. Up here …” He touched her cheek lightly, tracing the curve of her jaw.

”Up here, we can leave the past behind. I think we need to do that.”

“Koi,” she said.

“They aren’t us. Maybe they won’t have to make the same mistakes.”

Ahni pulled him close, savoring the feel of him. The permanent camps still existed, housing the survivors of the wasteland that had been the Middle East, and their descendents.
They have been forgotten
, she thought. The camps were not kind places. She bit him lightly on the neck, then harder, felt his darkness fade, warming into passion. For awhile, they were too busy to talk about anything.

“HEY, YOU GUYS,” Koi’s bright energy intruded as they drowsed among the leaves and blossoms.

“You done yet?”

Ahni jerked awake.

“I guess we are now.” Dane was laughing in spite of his mocksevere tone.

“So are you going to visit Li Zhen?” Koi eyed them with the head tilted curiosity of a dog watching primate antics. “Righ now?”

“I have to get him to invite Dane, Koi,” Ahni looked around for her singlesuit, discovered it snagged among leaves a couple of meters away. She pushed off from Dane, collected it, and pulled it on with all the casual dignity she could muster. Her nakedness didn’t seem to attract any particular focus from Koi, never mind that he certainly did seem to have a crush on her. She thought of what Dane had said about the second generation upsiders. Smell and taste were a big part of sexuality. Maybe Koi’s ‘crush’ was something that had little to do with sex, unlike the Earthly version. Certainly he wasn’t reacting much to the obvious evidence of recent sex, she thought. Well, he was, but more the way he might react to a new game that hadn’t included him.

Interesting.

And a bit chilling, too.

“Are you really sure Li Zhen has your brother on a leash?” Dane – still naked – nudged himself over to drift beside her. “Would you like to stay here?” His pewter gaze held hers. “I’d be … happier. Security up here, I’m sure of.”

She wanted to. A lot. She shook her head, mildly annoyed when the gesture sent her drifting, clutched at Dane’s hand to still her drift. “I can’t. I need to contact Li Zhen through formal channels. And … I’m your only link to my brother,” Ahni said slowly. “He may still contact me.” Or try to kill her if she was wrong.

“Bait.” Dane twined his fingers through hers. Not happy.

“Yep.” She kissed him lightly, lingeringly. “Very wary bait.”

“She’ll be careful.” Koi somersaulted impatiently. “She’s not stupid, Dane.”

“Thank you for reminding me, Koi, I had forgotten,” Dane said dryly.

“I’ll go back to tl1e hotel.” She suppressed regret. “I’ll ask Li Zhen to see me, and I’ll try to arrange a meeting between you.”

“I can’t see a better alternative.” Dane sighed, still unhappy. He accompanied her as she left the bower.

“I’ll be okay,” she said as they reached the elevator. “You don’t need to do guard duty.” He merely shook his head, and to be honest, she was glad. The seething, suppressed anger of this place was really getting to her.

“I’ll set a shadow to watch you,” he told her as they rode down to the open levels. “You won’t see them, but they’ll be there.” Locals got on and got off. Some of them looked at her with anger or curiosity Some of them noticed Dane. Their eyes connected Ahni to Dane and they made a note of it. Interesting that only a few of them actually greeted him. The others pretended they didn’t know him. But they did. She could tell Li Zhen with truth that Dane ran this platform, not the NAA. Li Zhen would respect power, especially when it was self -created.

Nobody said a negative word to her. When they reached the skinside level, Dane exited with her, and walked beside her, his posture casual, although he was on the alert.

Her doorman was on duty. He knew Dane, too. Ahni caught his brief sharp sizzle of attention before his face went bland and bored, and he bowed them past with the unseeing smile of the welltrained servant.

”Your status shows,” she murmured as they crossed the inner courtyard together.

“Hush.” His lips barely moved. “They record all guests here. Focused mike.”

“That’s okay.” She twined her fingers through his. “Some of my embedded hardware takes care of that.

They will get visuals.” She gave him a sideways look. “Do you mind?”

“We should make it worth someone’s time.” He halted, arm sliding around her waist, swinging her around to face him. “Keep them awake.”

Their mouths met and she caught her breath, the oxygen insuffficient here suddenly. She twisted away from him, his arm still around her, led him to her door, which opened for them. “My world,” she said as they crossed the threshold. “Gravity.”

“My world once, too.” He smiled. “I don’t miss it.”

The door whispered closed behind her and automatically she scanned her small telltales to see if anyone had been in the room.

No one.

Good. She put serious thought aside and attended to what mattered here and now.

THE DELEGATES TO THE WORLD COUNCIL SCHOOLED LIKE nervous fish on the sea of bright mosaic tiles that floored the World Council’s Atrium. The floating island that was home to the Council belonged to no nation, protected by its own elite Council Security Forces, the world’s top employer of the offspring of the lower classes, backed by state of the art technology and satellite protection left over from the Terror War. The buzz of conversation in a hunndred languages and dialects swelled and ebbed as the assembled members sipped beverages and nibbled on snacks that represented the delicacies of half a hundred cultures. Robes swept the polished tiles, sandaled feet shifted nervously or planted aggressively, trousered legs and skirts clothed both genders, native dress being the fashion of the moment. Handwoven camel hair and cotton brushed against supple seal skins and vests shimmering with appliqued parrot feathers.