Mary Rosenblum (27 page)

This is Laif’s game, not oyours.” He glanced fleetingly at Ahni.

“She knows, Kyros.”

“Okay then. This is what’s gonna come down, Dane.” Kyros tilted his glass, drained the last of his beer.

“CFS pops on up to the hub and all hell breaks loose. You’re smack in the middle. ‘Bout time you headed back out to the Belt before you get busted for those pets of yours.”

Ahni winced at Dane’s reaction. Watched Kyros’s eyes darken. “Damn,” the old man said, and drew a deep, labored breath. “What you see in them, I don’t know. But then I don’t, do I?” He levered himself to his feet with difficulty. “I’ll go catch up with Jazmin. She’s picking up a load and it’s slow coming in. She’s got time on her hands to go lookin’. You want him alive?”

“If possible,” Dane said evenly. “It would be better to have him talking, but I don’t want people dead who don’t need to be.” He didn’t look at Ahni.

“Will do.” Kyros shuffled toward the door, paused to look into Ahni’s face. “Too bad you got mixed up in this. Dane’s good at watching your back for you.”

”Yeah.” She gave him a faint smile. “I bet he is.”

Kyros gave a cackling laugh and left the room.

Dane got Noah out of bed between shifts. Not sleeping, Ahni guessed from his tone of voice. But he agreed quickly to head down to the admin offices and work on the medallion’s data dot. “Should be a piece of cake,” he said.

“Tell him that Taiwanese will be the base for the encryption,” Ahni said. ”Not modern, but classical.”

Noah sounded stressed.

Dane passed on the information, closed the link, and stood, more gracefully than Kyros, although it clearly cost him an effort, too. For a moment he looked down into her upturned face, then leaned down and kissed her gently on the mouth. “Now we need to visit Li Zhen” he said. “We’ll use my ship and see if you can get us in.”

You have a message,the room broke in.
From Li Zhen, Chairman of Dragon Home.

“Speak of the devil,” Dane murmured.

It was prerecorded. Li Zhen would be happy to speak with her and would send a Courier. ”You can’t come,” she told Dane. “A bonded courier won’t take you without an invitation. And Laif needs you here,”

she answered his frown. “I’ll convince him to meet with you.”

He agreed, reluctantly, because she was right, took the guest pass she gave him and left. “Be very careful,” he said from the doorway. “Please.”

When the door closed behind him. Ahni dropped into Pause. Time to lay all her puzzle pieces out and see how Kyros’s new piece fit.

THE SAME NATIVE COURIER WITH THE CANTONESE FACE arrived at Ahni’s hotel room. He greeted her with a respectful bow and that quicksilver glimner of an internal smile that she rememmbered from her previous trip with him. They didn’t speak as the Courier led her to his ship, and in seemingly no time, the Courier docked his craft in the familiar bay and popped the winged hatch for her. “Thank you,”

she said as she climbed out of the craft. “I hope you can bring your family up here.” She bowed to him.

He returned it with a smile.

The antechamber beyond, with its eggshell colored walls and emmbroidered silk hanging was empty.

Ahni slipped off her shoes, her feet caressed by the woven carpets. The room gave her no message as she crossed the room to the inner door. She wondered if something had detained Li Zhen or if this was some sort of interesting test. The door opened for her, admitting her to the garden beyond. Today, the sky was streaked with thin white clouds and a flower-scented breeze kissed her cheeks. A gold and crimson dragon kite danced on the wind and she admired the reality of the holo for a moment, before she reallized that it was real, that she was seeing a small kite up there beeneath the artificial sky. It must have some kind of propulsion system, although the delicate construct of silk and light wood might have been one of the kites she had flown as a child. She followed the barely visible line of the string down to the other end of the small garden.

A woman sat lotus-legged on a mat of woven bamboo, laughing up at the boy who held the kite string.

About five, maybe, he watched the kite, rapt. Chinese, she noted absently, and felt a tiny shock of recognition as he followed the kite’s dance with milky, blind-looking eyes that seemed to shine in his too-long, tawny face. A cap of embroidered crimson silk covered his hairless scalp, and his arms and legs seemed a little too long for his body, too thin and dellicate to be human. They … curved. Just slightly.

Another Koi. Not just in New York Up, then.

As if she had spoken out loud, the child turned to look at her. He smiled, and she felt the pressure of his curiosity. She smiled back, summoning a vision of Koi shooting through the NYUp garden, wondering if he would catch it.

The woman spied her and leaped to her feet, full of alarm and dismay. She grabbed the boy’s arm and started to pull him away, the kite abandoned now, dancing erratically beneath the sky that was really a ceiling. But he twisted free and ran to Ahni, awkward and coltish on his too long, too fragile, bendable legs.

“Where?” His Mandarin was whispery, raspy, a bit like the sound of wind through grass. “Can I play with him? Is he here?”

”We have to go. I am sorry.” The young woman … a native by her looks, but not nearly as extreme as the child … tugged at his arm, a metallic tinge of fear edging her words. “I apologize. I did not know that Li Zhen expected company, please excuse us.” She had a grip on the boy’s arm now, but he resisted and she seemed reeluctant to use force.

“It’s all right.” Ahni smiled reassuringly. “I don’t mind. I am pleased to meet you. Your kite is very wonderful,” she said to the boy.

He shrugged. “Where does he fly like that?” he asked in his papery, grass-wind voice. “I want to do that.”

“I am so sorry.” The woman’s resolve hardened. “He is … as you see … a tragedy.” Her expression challenged Ahni to disagree, but near panic still surged beneath her apparent calm. “Come
now
,” she said to the boy, “And I will take you fiying.”

That got his attention although it was tinged with skepticism, and the woman hustled him away, vanishing through a small door hidden by a pair of miniature cypress trees. Ahni stared thoughttfully at the kite bumping along the ‘sky’ and the woven mat where the woman had sat. She reached for the dangling kite string, gave it a sharp, short tug. It tumbled instantly to her feet, the red and yelllow silk tails fluttering like broken wings, to land in a puddle of bright silk at her feet. She picked it up, noticing the carved bones of real wood that formed it. Someone had made this, carefully and well. The propulsion system was small enough not to be visible to casual inspection. Electromagnetic, she guessed, interacting with hardware in the ceiling/sky.

“I apologize. My garden is messy for your visit.”

She turned to face Li Zhen. He must have come in from some other hidden doorway and he was flustered. “How surprising to find a kite up here.” She smiled at him. “Very ingenious.”

“A touch of home.”

A tiny spike of pain/anger with that word ‘home’? Ahni put on her sweetest and most unaware expression. “How can one live here and not be homesick for all the things we so take for granted on Earth?”

“Please.” He managed a smile. “Some tea? Huang Ahni, you are far more than a mere delicate blossom meant to beautify some man’s garden. Shall we talk clearly?” He offered her his arm.

She masked her uneasiness with a smile. “Clear talk is always the straightest path,” she said and allowed him to usher her from the garden and the crumpled kite. They entered his private chamber again, with its mother-of-pearl inlaid furniture and the bamboo growing in its celadon pot.

“I was charmed to find a child playing in your garden,” she said as Li Zhen bent to pour from the pot that steamed gently on the low table.

The tiny jerk of his hand was almost unnoticeable. Anger? Fear? Love? A little bit of all of that? Anhi kept her expression unaware as he handed her an eggshell fragile cup of golden tea.

“Ah, the child,” he said at last, as he filled a cup for himself. “Such a tragedy for the parents at his birth.

He is the child of a friend, badly deformed and retarded, but simple things delight him.”

Lie. An interesting one.

“So I allow her to bring him to the garden. Why should I keep something just for myself?” He smiled at her, more confident now, sipped his tea.

Anhi smiled, too, her face expressing her admiration for someeone who was able to share with those beneath him, the flowery taste of the tea filling her mouth.

A young woman, her long hair braided into a tight knot at her neck, brought in a tray of sliced bamboo shoots and cooked green soybean pods along with two pairs of lacquered chopsticks. This was the woman, the native, who had been playing with the child in the garden. Ahni glanced at her and turned back to Li Zhen, but she kept her attention focused on the woman. She set the tray on the table, her eyes downcast, bowed stiffly and nervously, and withhdrew, carefully not looking at Ahni.

Ahni weighed the value of asking him outright if the boy in the garden was the reason he had tried to kidnap Koi. But she would only have one question to slip past his guard. After that, his armor would be in place and they would merely fence. He was as good a fencer as she was. Even though she had the advantage of her E ratting. “So you grow bamboo here, too?” She picked up the choppsticks and selected a fat, chambered slice. It crunched between her teeth, thick and crisp, as succulent as the best grown in Taiwan. “Very nice,” she said. “I am impressed.”

“It is a strain developed for shoot production.” Li Zhen waved a hand, but her praise warmed him.

“Bamboo in particular seems to thrive in a micro gravity environment. A taste of home.” He lifted his cup.

Question there, not a statement. Ahni lifted her own cup. “Perhaps,” she said, and the word caught her by surprise. But this was not the time to look too deeply into her unconscious responses. She picked up a soybean pod in her chopsticks, deftly sucking the fat beans from the pod. “China gains power against the NAA,” She said. “What is it that
you
gain from the arrival of CSF on New York Up?”

He felt a moment of triumph, but gave her a face of innocence, his eyebrows arching. “I am sorry.” He spoke in careful and precise Mandarin. “I had not heard that the World Council intended to occcupy our sister platform.”

Ha. “My brother is your agent there, creating friction there between native residents and tourists.” She let her Taiwan accent dominate. No formality here, just truth. “But his presence has been detected, so the usefulness of that approach has been blunted.” She smiled. “The spear in the dark has the sharpest edge.

Especially when it comes from behind.”

“There is truth in that old saying.” Li Zhen smiled, his face still fixed in an expression of innocent surprise.

“Why would I wish your brother to evoke violence?”

“Because you can then go before the World Council and offer to stabilize the platforms. The history of Dragon Home supports your claim, and of course, China will muster its votes to back the proposal in the Council. I suspect you will work for the World Council, in name only.” She smiled gently. “You will have two platforms to rule. Will this be your empire?”

He had himself under control by the time she asked her quesstion, but he had not been able to hide his response to her words at the outset, and he knew he had given himself away. Irony tinged his smile and he bowed. “Your father has underestimated you,” he said softly, his dark eyes on her face. “He has forgotten that performance can be as important as the pedigree of the race horse.”

“Thank you.” Ahmi gave him a crooked smile. “I will not take that as an insult.”

“It’s praise. I know you feel that.” He rose to his feet, supple and lithe. Half a head taller than her with his Northern genes, he looked down at her, his expression enigmatic, reflecting the complex shift and flow of his emotions. ”You’re right. I should not play word games with you.” He grinned, his confidence bright as sunnlight. “It will happen just so. We are separate up here. We need to rule ourselves.”

”
You
need to rule,” she murmured. He was not going to meet with Dane.

“I’m the best one to do it.” He shrugged and touched her cheek with one fingertip. “Our child would have enormous potential,” he said softly. “With our intelligence and your ability. It’s not just my own power I want. I want dynasty, too. Why not? This world is mine. I would share it with you.”

Now that was a forthright proposition, Ahni thought. Li Zhen’s desire prickled across her skin and tickled between her legs.

“Why not?” His eyes fixed on hers, bright with desire and his vision of tomorrow. “I offer more than you will ever have on Taiwan, even as heir to your father.”

“That is my mother’s dream for me. She traded her life for it.” Ahni shook her head. “I cannot walk away from that obligation, honored cousin.”
She
stood behind the carved screen. The native woman, her pain sharp as a knife. Ahni met Li Zhen’s eyes. “I do not think our paths lie together,” she said softly.

For an instant anger boiled behind his eyes, then he banished it. Shrugged. “One cannot see beyond the curve of the road,” he said lightly. “Paths diverge and then meet again.” He turned away to pour more tea.

“From what you say, the North American Alliance’s platform will be a dangerous place, especially for a visitor.” He offfered her the full cup. ”You will be safer as my guest.”

“That is thoughtful of you.” She made no move to take the cup. “But I will be responsible for my own safety.”

He shrugged, a wealth of meaning in the lift of both shoulders. “I will have Jin An show you to a room. I look forward to showing you the gardens here, with our bamboo that grows so luxuriously and our fish pools. Waterfalls in minimal gravity are quite lovely.”

Ahni stifled her anger, kept her face smooth.

“How intimate.”

The words, knife-edged with fury, made them both start. Xai!

Ahni turned to face him as he strode into the room.