Palace (44 page)

‘Think the bill will pass?’ Pero said.

‘I don’t know. The lower Council’s already cut our appropriations request to the bone.’

‘Gratitude usually is short-lived.’

‘I can’t say I’m surprised.’ Karlo shrugged. ‘It was always the same at home, people grumbling about how much the Fleet cost them. If the Cyberguild gets Nimue back online, Palace will get even more miserly.’

‘It’s too bad there’s no way we can stop that, then.’

‘Who says there isn’t? I’ve been thinking about the problem.’

When Pero raised a questioning eyebrow, Karlo shook his head.

‘You’ll find out later,’ Karlo said. ‘Maybe. I’m not going to worry about it unless it looks like the guild can actually repair the thing. Se Barra warned me that there’s a good chance they can’t.’

The two men sat down on the white silk sofa in front of the vidscreen, which was running a loop of the pro and con spoke-sapients, each with their two-minute opinion summary. Karlo muted the sound. Onscreen Vanna stood before a podium, mouthing her arguments for giving the Fleet full funding. Pero stretched his long legs out in front of him and glanced round.

‘Where’s Wan?’

‘Oh, who the hell knows?’ Karlo snapped. ‘I told him to get over here, but he probably won’t bother.’

Pero looked his father’s way with an expression stripped of feeling. Karlo found it hard to look him in the eye.

Wan never did appear during the four-hour voting block. Once the process got fully underway, Dukayn joined them, ushering in a pair of saccules bringing drinks and food. Damo slipped in as well to sit on the floor at his father’s feet. As every Mapscreen in every home and work place automatically tuned itself to ballot mode, graphs - blue pro, red con, and purple undecided - took over both the big vidscreens. In small windows around the edges ran maps and numbers: votes in, votes tallied as all over Palace, Sects and sub-Sects reporting. Karlo cast his vote as soon as the screen allowed. Vanna would cast hers over in the Council Hall. In a fit of annoyance he wondered if Wan would even bother to vote, while Pero of course wasn’t a citizen. There was nothing more for Karlo to do but watch and swear when the con tower built ahead of the pro or sigh when the negative swing reversed itself. At least the undecided vote held low. And at least a funding matter needed only a simple majority to pass. He’d been dreading seeing the entire matter remanded back to the Councils for further debate. Reworking a bill usually meant lost funds.

‘It’s going to be close,’ Dukayn said at one point. ‘We’re three hours in.’

Karlo nodded. The blue tower stood a sliver higher than the red, with the purple lurking down at the bottom of the screens. Three and a half hours in - red made a surge, and Karlo heard himself using street language he thought he’d forgotten.

‘Blue’s rallying,’ Pero said abruptly.

‘You bet,’ Dukayn said. ‘There it goes.’

Karlo sank back in his seat and let out a sigh of relief. A side window announced that tallies from Tech Sect were coming in. Maintaining a Fleet meant money for Tech Sect. Blue surged. Although red made a feeble rally toward the end, the gains held. All four of them, even Damo, cheered when the gongs rang out, three long electronic pulses signalling the end of the voting block.

‘She did it!’ Pero raised his glass to the screens. ‘Here’s to Vanna!’

‘Damn right,’ Karlo said. ‘Without her this bill would still be stuck in some damned committee somewhere.’

Damo clambered up, stretched, and looked longingly at the last of the ultrajuice on the refreshments table.

‘Go ahead,’ Karlo said.

‘Thank you, Se.’

Karlo watched while the boy flipped the top of the carafe back and poured the pale pink soda into his glass. He did everything with concentration, Damo, as if the fate of the Pinch depended on his filling his glass just so, neither spilling a drop nor leaving more than a drop behind.

‘Hey,’ Pero said to him. ‘Looking forward to going out to Orbital?’

‘Yes Se.’ Damo never looked away from his task.

‘Have you met your new patron yet? Se Barra, I mean?’

‘Yes Se.’

‘Like her?’

For an answer Damo grinned, then put the carafe down and wiped his hands on a napkin. When he was done, he smoothed the napkin out, folded it precisely in half, and laid it down on a tray. Karlo turned to Dukayn, who was staring absently at the air while he took download from his chips. When he noticed Karlo glancing his way, he sat up straight, all attention.

‘Know where Wan is?’ Karlo said.

‘No. I was just trying to find out.’

‘Damn him! I wonder if he even got my message.’

‘I can mount an all-out search.’

Pero was listening to this exchange with his arms crossed over his chest and a fixed smile on his face. When he caught Karlo watching him, he made an attempt to relax.

‘I don’t think that’s necessary,’ Karlo said to Dukayn. ‘But if you can find him fast, do it.’

‘The grids are going to want footage of you.’ Dukayn got up, stretching, reaching for his perpetual tablet and scriber.

‘Yeah, I’ve got a speech all ready for them. My gratitude to the citizens of Palace.’

‘Sounds good, Se. I’ll just head to the briefing room now and see who’s there. I’ll start a few of my people looking for Wan, too.’

‘Good. Call me when the gridjockeys are ready.’

Karlo and Pero both rose, but when Pero started to follow Dukayn out, Karlo gestured to him to stay. On the vidscreen the ballot mode had turned itself off, although the totals lingered in a side window. Presenters chatted back and forth from their separate panels, analysing the vote, while pictures of warships filled the main screen and captions floated in overlay, the lep threat: still with us? interstellar guild warns of dangers to shunt nexi. Damo Sat Cross-legged on the floor and stared at the screen while he ate precisely cut squares of cake.

‘Come into my office a minute,’ Karlo said to Pero.

The two men stood at the window and looked down to the roof garden below, where workers were scraping bulbous green fungi off the walks and benches. At times the spores drifting in from the swamps managed to take hold and grow, and always in the most unlikely places.

‘They grow so damn fast,’ Pero echoed his thought. ‘Once they hit, you can practically see the cells dividing. If you let them get established, their rhizomorphs break things up.’

‘Their what?’

‘Roots. Well, their equivalent of roots. They can get into a crack in a slab of concrete and split it open if you let them.’

‘Where the hell did you learn that?’

‘I asked a cleaner.’

‘Yeah? Why?’

‘I was curious, that’s all.’

For a moment they watched the maintenance people, who wore white masks over their mouths and noses. One worker would slice a growth away from its perch with a thin, flat blade while others stood ready to catch and seal it inside plastic bags.

‘They explode once they’re big enough,’ Pero said. ‘They release more spores that way.’

‘Yeah?’ Karlo said. ‘The damnedest things interest you.’

Pero shrugged and said nothing.

‘Anyway,’ Karlo went on. ‘I wanted a word with you. You’ve been on Palace for about a Standard year now, attached to staff. How does that sit with you?’

Automatically Pero fell into parade rest, clasping his hands behind his back and straightening up while he considered the question - considered it for a long while, as if he knew that answering held its dangers.

‘It’s all right,’ Pero said at last. ‘It has its compensations, ground duty.’

‘I’ve been thinking that it was time for you to move on to a new assignment.’

‘As the Fleet commands, Se.’

‘Of course. But I want to know how that would sit with you. I’m not talking about endless patrols or hanging around a shunt gate, waiting for pirates. There are places out there where someone I trusted could build up some elite units.’

‘Oh.’ Pero allowed himself a brief smile. ‘I see.’

‘The day is going to come when we won’t have to grovel in front of civilian councils for operating expenses. I intend to be ready for it.’

Pero nodded.

‘I’m not sure of the details yet,’ Karlo went on. ‘Let me think about it. I’ll be glad of input from you, too, Captain Nikolaides.’

‘Yes Se. I’ll put some work into it.’

On the screen the commcall buzzed, and Dukayn’s image appeared.

‘Be right there,’ Karlo said to him. ‘Pero, we’ll talk about this later.’

* * *

‘Huh,’ Rico said. ‘Are you sure Vida isn’t a cybersorcerer after all?’

‘What?’ Hi said. ‘What are you talking about?’

Rico leaned back in his desk chair and considered his uncle, who was standing in the doorway to Rico’s room. Hi carried a schedplate - a specialized writing tablet for guild work tucked under his arm.

‘And what are you doing?’ Hi went on. ‘What’s that on your Mapscreen?’

‘Old code, Se, the oldest I know. I’m trying to break through a membrane, but I didn’t want to jack in right now.’

‘We’ve got official work to do, yeah. But what membrane, and what’s it got to do with the L’Var girl?’

‘She’s got a ferret, that’s what. I tried to get a look at it, but her Mapstation’s sealed off by a membrane. It’s built in some weird old code, just like that umbrella over the Calios station in Pleasure.’

Hi frowned at the lines of symbols.

‘That language you’re using isn’t very old at all,’ Hi said at last. ‘Not compared to Calios. You’ll have to go back about a thousand year’s worth of modifications to talk to him on his own terms. He’s probably the ferret, by the way, just like he’s probably the one who installed the umbrella.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Those old-style "citizen’s assistance" metas did a lot of things routinely that it takes a trained Maprunner to do now. Keeping private data private was part of their job.’

‘You know what? I found membranes around all kinds of things belonging to Vida - her school records, her database, even her medical history.’

‘And what were you doing, hacking into her records?’

Rico felt himself blush.

‘Ah, it’s love!’ Hi winked at him. ‘Let me give you a tip, kid. Never read a girl’s medical records. They blight the romance real fast.’

‘Sounds like you’re saying that from personal experience.’

‘Bitter personal experience. Anyway, I sure would like to get a look at Calios. Wonder if Vida would let us play around with him?’

‘I’m working on that.’

‘Yeah? Don’t tell me how. I’m willing to bet I don’t want to know. Now wipe that code off your screen and pay attention. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.’

‘Yes, Se. I found those old records you asked for, the Caliostro repair sheets. They go back about six hundred years.’

‘Standard or Palace?’

‘Standard.’

‘Ah. Well, that’s still a lot of data. I want to plot the rate of deterioration and see if it’s holding steady or getting worse. Did you find anything like a schematic?’

‘Lots of them, including one that’s only fifty years old. It’s really complete - all the damage marked and noted, in Gen as well as code.’

‘Great! Then we’ll use that as our starting point. I’ve got an errand for you first, though. Have you ever actually seen Caliostro? His box, I mean.’

‘No, Se.’

‘Here.’ Hi handed over the tablet. ‘I want you to take a look at him. Here’s the last set of photonics diagrams made, back about fifty years ago, same time as that schematic. See how it checks out.’

‘I’ll do it right now, if you like.’

‘I would, yeah. I’ll be gone till evening, so this will keep you out of trouble. That reminds me

- how are you doing with the drug training?’

‘Fine. It sure is easier to get work done when you use them.’

Hi considered him, his dark eyes so shrewd that Rico felt like a box full of faulty photonics himself.

‘How do the drugs feel to you?’ Hi said at last.

‘Okay.’ Rico shrugged. ‘I’m pretty much used to them. I’m sure glad you can use a pressure injector, though, and not one of those needles like the medic had.’

‘You’ve adapted real fast, you know.’

‘Uh, have I? Didn’t know that.’

‘Real fast. Rico, listen to me. We both know that the addiction was just Arno’s cover story. But that doesn’t mean the damn drugs aren’t dangerous.’

‘Well, yes, Se, sure. Hey, I passed the readiness course.’

Rico found himself wondering about his voice - had he snapped at his uncle? He was surprised at his own sudden discomfort.

‘Good,’ Hi went on. ‘Then you know what I’m talking about. Remember what you learned.’

‘I will. I promise.’

‘Okay. Let’s meet back here at the eighteens. We’ll have dinner, and you can give me a quick report.’

That was all: no more help, no more instructions, not even a clear goal. He was a journeyman now, all right, not an apprentice.

Caliostro lay deep inside the underground areas of West Tower in what had originally been the engine rooms of the colony ship. Getting there from the suite in East required going down seven levels, taking a movebelt through a longtube to the other tower, and riding a maintenance lift booth down even further. Once Rico finally found the correct booth, he had to wait while workers in Peronida green loaded cleaning bots. He glanced idly around and out of the corner of his eye saw a girl with short cropped red hair. His heart pounding, he spun around - but she wasn’t Vida, just some other redhead. Weird, he thought. Vida’s the first girl with red hair I ever saw, and now here’s another one.

‘Bots are all loaded, fella,’ someone called out.

When Rico elbowed his way in after, the maintenance people paid him no attention. He slid his heavy toolkit off its shoulder strap and set it beside him. In a corner near the controls stood a man wearing the grey coveralls of the Industrial Guild.

‘Level?’ he said; he was a tall silver-haired fellow, his skull studded with chips. ‘Hey, kid, I’m talking to you. What level? These old tubes don’t respond to voice.’

‘Yeah? That’s weird.’

‘Nah, just old.’ He grinned. ‘But hell, it’s a job. What level?’

Rico consulted the plate.