Palace (19 page)

‘Well, yeah. But someone could be killed by that thing. I couldn’t just not say anything.’

‘You didn’t consider just keeping your mouth shut and hoping that a master would track it down from the Pansect disaster?’

‘Well, no.’ Rico felt profoundly embarrassed. ‘That never occurred to me.’

Barra grinned. He could remember once before, seeing his mother smiling that way, when he’d won the first position in his year’s crop of guild apprentices and entered the program with full honours. As she had then, too, she suddenly turned away and wiped her eyes on the back of her hand.

‘It never even occurred to you,’ she repeated.

‘Well, no. I guess that was kind of dumb of me.’

Barra looked at him with the grin back in place.

‘No, it wasn’t dumb,’ she said. ‘Know something? I think your father would have been proud of you.’

Rico looked away fast with tears threatening. His father had been killed so long ago that he barely remembered him, but he did remember how loss felt and the pain of watching his mother cry.

‘Sorry,’ Barra said. ‘Well, come on, I want to spray something on that burn. You’ve got to look decent for the reception.’

‘I can’t go. I mean, what am I going to say to Hi, knowing that you’re well, uh ...’

Barra considered, letting her smile fade into a genuine sadness.

‘Know something, Rico?’ she said. ‘I raised you to be honest because I never thought you’d have a public life. Arno was so brilliant. It was obvious from the time he learned to talk that he was going to succeed Hi and take over the guild. You always loved to be alone, figuring things out, working puzzles, fiddling around with frames the minute you were old enough to kneel on a chair and reach one. A researcher, I thought. Maybe my little boy’s going to be the person who figures out how to build a new AI - something grand like that. I never dreamed things would work out like this.’

‘Well, yeah, Mom. Neither did I. But-’

She held up one hand for silence.

‘You’ve got to learn to lie, Rico. If you can’t lie, you won’t last two minutes in the guild. And you can start tonight.’

Rico stared. Barra forced out a small laugh, but her eyes stayed sad.

‘You’re going to go to this reception, and you’re going to be the life of the party,’ she said at last.

‘What? I can’t do that!’

‘Well, then, you’re going to go and be miserable, but either way, you’re going. Hi will figure out that something’s up, knowing him. Fine. Just don’t tell him what it is. Tell him he’s got to talk to me first. You got that? Look him in the face and lie.’

‘Well.’ Rico considered for a long moment. ‘Yeah, I do get it. I don’t like it much.’

‘Neither do I. Why do you think I’ve always stayed in tech support instead of angling for power in the guild? Now let’s go get rid of that mess on your face. And you can start telling me about this candle.’

* * *

Rage was always an enemy. Rage meant haste, impulse, and failure. Vi-Kata sprawled in the dirt underneath a frond-tree beside the Boulain. All round him in white and red heaps lay litter from the festival. Yellow-green scavenger flies whined around him. Jadewings rooted through the garbage nearby. He merely sat, dressed in rags; he’d sprung his long beaky mouth at the jaw, as Leps could do, and now he drooled helplessly down the filthy remains of his wrap jacket. Every now and then workers from Service Sect trotted by, guiding their clean-up bots down the actual street. It would take them all day to get around to sweeping up among the trees. No-one noticed him, this single sapient casualty among the many that drifted through Pleasure Sect.

Through the trees he could see the back of The Close. Inside, hid the girl who’d beaten him, the filthy little human, barely more than a hatchling. Somehow or other, she’d managed to slip out of that bell tower and then lose him on the streets. The finder he’d been using had tracked her to the tower, then suddenly lost her, only to pick her up some blocks away. It could well be, he supposed, that the tower contained a hidden, pulse-shielded stairway. Whatever the case, he’d never caught up with her again.

He breathed out, long and slow, and visualized his rage flowing out, thinning out, vanishing like a mist hit by strong sun. He would take her yet, slit through her throat perhaps with one long claw and see the bright red human blood run. The thought cheered him and dissolved the last of his rage. Sooner or later, she would leave The Close again. When she did, she would be his.

Once he’d eliminated the girl, he could turn his attention to the second kill, this Arno Jons y Perres, who had managed to disappear on him - but only temporarily, Kata reminded himself, only for a little while. The easy camaraderie at the bottom of society among the trash addicts and other sapient refuse, had already given Kata plenty of information about this Arno, who was, as he was, only pretending to belong here.

From overhead came the stuttering roar of an airhopper, circling over Pleasure, dropping lower, heading toward The Close. Even from this distance Kata could see the Eye glyph of the Lifegivers on the ‘hopper’s side. What were celibate monks doing, heading for a brothel in the middle of the day? The Close seemed to be an important sort of place. Some hours earlier, Kata had watched an aircar glyph-marked to the Cyberguild lift off, carrying some important person away. From its trajectory, this airhopper would land out in front, he realized, on the opposite side of the building from his lair among the garbage. Out in the middle of the Boulain a pair of red-armoured Protectors came hurrying along, swinging their stunsticks. Kata went very still, willing himself to blend in with the garbage and the shadows, until they’d moved out of sight. This was the third pair he’d seen this morning odd, since the festival had left the Sect too exhausted for trouble. He got up, making a great show of moaning and staggering in case someone might watch, then shuffled along, head bent as if he were looking for edible scraps in the litter, until he reached the cross-street that would lead him round to the front of The Close. Even then he walked slowly, talking to himself in Gen, drooling down his front and waving his hands randomly in the air. The people he passed either looked away or moved away fast; no-one would be able to describe him, if they should be asked.

By the time Kata reached the front of The Close, children had gathered round the sleek silver airhopper. He hung back across the street, found a doorway with raised steps, and hunkered down at the top to watch. While he waited, he memorized the airhopper’s markings and registration numbers, just in case he needed to find out where it had come from and where it might be going.

‘Are you looking forward to seeing Centre?’ Tia said.

‘Oh yes.’ Vida felt as if her body had become a bubbleflare, floating higher and higher, aching to burst into coloured light. ‘But I won’t forget you. I’ll call you, and as soon as I can. I’ll call everyone.’

‘Well, I think you might have a little trouble finding the time for long talks on the comm screens.’

‘Maybe so. But I promise to write to you about everything. And then you can download the letter and pass it around.’

Tia merely smiled in a weary sort of way. They were waiting for the Lifegivers in a small blue room near the front doors of The Close. Although Vida was wearing her best green dress, she carried nothing else, not even a belt pouch.

‘I don’t know,’ Tia said at last. ‘It might be best to keep your past separate for a while.’

‘Yeah, I suppose so. Tia, you want to know something strange? I don’t know who I am any more. You and Madam call me the last of the L’Vars, but that name doesn’t mean anything to me, except that they were all a bunch of traitors. I’m Vida of The Close. I always will be.’

Tia reached up to put her arm around Vida’s shoulders.

‘Inside, in your heart. But you’ve got to learn how to act like a chief patron. One of these days, Wan Peronida might be ruling Palace.’

‘Well, maybe. I-’

The outer door opened, and a saccule servant bustled in, bowing, nodding, exuding an anxiety-scent like spilled alcohol. Behind it strode two tall men, draped in the star-scattered cloaks and cowls of the Lifegivers. The faces that peered out were pale, the bleached features of men who spent most of their lives in the cathedrals of the Eye. One of them carried a flat black case, which he put down on an end table.

‘Madam Aleen?’ He had a pleasant enough voice, though he sounded bored.

‘No, I’m Tia, her business manager.’

‘This is the girl?’

‘Yes.’ Tia held out a datastrip. ‘Her papers.’

The Lifegiver flipped open the case. The strip went into a reader, where he could study it, rubbing his chin with the back of a long hand.

‘Come here, girl,’ he said. ‘I want a bit of your hair - just one strand will do.’

Vida separated one hair and broke it off, then handed him the fragment to put into a portable gene scanner. When he smiled, nodding, the second Lifegiver knelt on the floor in front of a startled Vida. What was she supposed to do? Bow to the man? He fumbled with a belt pouch and brought out a small metal device halfway between a pair of tongs and a transmit cylinder.

‘Hold out your wrist, child.’

‘What are you going to do? What’s that?’

‘It’s not going to hurt. It’s a gene-specific releaser.’

‘Do what he says, Vida,’ Tia said.

Two soft touches on her wrist and the wrist-tel fell into his open hand. He smashed it with the releaser, which broke from the impact, and for good measure he stamped both into fragments with his boot.

‘Have your servant clean that up,’ he snarled at Tia.

She looked at him for a long moment, seemed to be about to speak, then snapped her fingers for a saccule. Vida stared with wonder at the unblemished band of skin around her wrist, as if she’d painted it with white light. Free. She really was free. Crying a little, Tia gave her one last hug. Vida could no longer hold back her own tears.

‘I wish I could say goodbye to Aleen.’

‘It’s better this way.’

Tia turned with a wave to the servant. The two of them walked through the inner door, which slid shut behind them with a crisp hiss.

‘Come along,’ the Lifegiver said. ‘We can’t keep Government House waiting.’

Out on the Boulain, surrounded by curious children, sat the sleek silver airhopper with its egg-shaped body, flanked by big windows and swept-back wings. Just aft of the passenger cabin a transponder
I
transmit disk rose like an unfurled umbrella. When they saw the Lifegivers, the children scattered fast. One Lifegiver opened the hatch and handed Vida into the blue formfit seat. Before the hatch closed, Tia ran out to her with something bunched in her hands.

She pressed it into Vida’s lap, kissed her on the cheek, and ran back into The Close. As the airhopper rose, Vida looked at what Tia had given her. It was Aleen’s green shimmercloak, rippling in her hands like a tree in the wind. Had Aleen relented, then, and sent her a parting gift? Or had generous Tia just found the first gift at hand and figured on paying for it out of her salary? The latter, Vida assumed. Most likely Aleen didn’t even care that she was gone.

Vida turned in her seat to stare out the window at the city below. Since it was the first time in her life that she’d ever been so high, the sight of Pleasure Sect from above made her feel both lightheaded and sombre. The Sect spread out in a roughly circular area, some few thousand acres jumbled with gold and silver buildings, nestled like a jewel in the spider trap of wiretrains and powerlines that spread out from it in every direction. All round its huge wall she could see filigree of pulse transmitters that kept Marked citizens in their place. With a start, Vida recognized the Straight bisecting the Hub and the serpentine length of the Boulain that snaked lazily over most of the Sect. Off to one side stood Carillon Tower and its roof park. The sprinklers sprayed a fine mist, casting rainbows in the morning air. The airhopper continued to rise, until Pleasure Sect shrank to the size of a fist covered with jewelled rings. With a whine from the engine, they began skimming south over other sects: Tech, a geometrically precise arrangement of canals and hugely tall buildings; Import with its warehouses, clustered round landing fields for gigantic airtrucks; Power, hidden under sheets of tri-still, sending out tendrils to every other sect from its dozen fusion reactors; the Hort Sects, angular squares of orchards and farms, growing speciality foods and flowers for the luxury trade. In between lay smaller sects, jumbled together and unrecognizable. In and among all of them ran the blue network of canals, draining off the ground water and rain that constantly threatened to pull the city down.

Vida pressed her face against the glass of the airhopper’s passenger window and watched, smiling. Every beat of her heart brought something new: the pink dome of a structure so tall that it dwarfed its Sect; a flight of birds flashing in the silvery light like coins flung into water; a ziggurat with thousands of people swarming over its steps; a barren crater like a hole in the world, surrounded by roboguards, black and needled with strange weapons; and in every interstice, the web of wiretrain tracks, silver crosshatching arching over sect and open field.

‘Se Vida?’ asked one of the Lifegivers.

Vida started. She’d forgotten they were there, forgotten where she was, even who she was.

‘We’re approaching Centre.’ He pointed to a curve of light ahead of them. Centre spread out in a strange amalgam of the ancient and the modern. The histories said that Palace had been built as a scientific colony over two thousand years ago, located where Centre was now. Lost technology had built an infrastructure that showed no signs of wear after two millennia of hard use, though wars, floods, and other disasters - including the explosion of a fusion reactor -had left scars. From her vantage, Vida could see the bones of that original colony, the strange blueglass metal that ran through Centre like a skeleton. In the rest of the Sect rose every imaginable structure, all jammed in together, from ancient moss-encrusted bridge-homes across the patchwork of canals in the north of the Sect to the hypermodern flailtowns in the south - immense tapered needles with enormous faceted spheres hanging from their tips like drops of water on the end of a bent blade of grass. Bright geometries of colour, the window shades of the people who lived there, faceted each sphere. Through the Sect ran wiretrains and robocabs, while above flitted hundreds of flying vehicles of every kind, like a swarm of songflies over flowers. Among turquoise lawns stood a huge lavender hemisphere, or rather, it seemed to float above the ground. From above, Vida could see nothing supporting it.