Stealing Light (5 page)

As so often these days, loneliness and depression swept over Dakota, lying alone in the dark. The ship’s soft fur felt warm under her skin, yet something was missing.

It didn’t take long for the
Piri
to respond to her unspoken need.

She was facing the wrong way to see a familiar shape detach itself from one wall, but she could imagine it easily. A tall, warm-bodied effigy of a man, its face as smooth and bland as its artificial flesh, its machine eyes imbued with fake emotion.

In the dim red light seeping through from the command module, she saw the silhouette of its smooth curved buttocks as it kneeled over her, soft moist lips kissing her gently on her naked belly.

‘Dakota?’

Her ship spoke to her through the lips of the effigy. It had soft brown hair, almost indistinguishable from the real thing. Cables like umbilicals ran from its spine and into the wall-slot where it spent most of its existence—her ship made flesh.

She was so used to it now, it was beginning to feel natural.

‘Dakota, your nervous system is again flooded with high-grade Samadhi neural boosters. Perhaps you are over-indulging—’

‘Don’t lecture me,
Piri.’
Dakota smiled, both her thoughts and body warm and fuzzy.

‘Yes, Dakota. However, it does concern me that—’

That I’m not dealing properly with my past.
Dakota felt a surge of anger, but it was soon gone under a flood of neurochem that washed the bad feelings away.
If you were really intelligent and not just doing a remarkable imitation of sentience, I’d
—

Dakota wasn’t sure what she would do, but it would be mean. Mean and nasty. She smiled as she felt the effigy press down on her, smooth and soft and almost indistinguishable from the real thing in the warm dark.

—

Bourdain’s Rock measured fifteen kilometres along its widest axis, eight along its narrowest. Before Concorrant Industries had drilled out the asteroid’s core and plugged a planet engine into its empty centre, it had drifted for the better part of a billion years on a looping elliptical orbit, taking it close to the edge of the heliosphere before circling back in past Jupiter and Saturn. Several years before, Concorrant-built fusion jets had manoeuvred the asteroid into a permanent, stable orbit out beyond the most remote of Jupiter’s native moons.

Dakota had seen pictures of the asteroid before Alexander Bourdain had paid the Shoal to work their magic on it. The images had then reminded her of a fossilized turd she had once seen on display in a museum. To some extent it still looked like a fossilized turd, but one that had been sculpted with explosive nuclear chisels until its shape approximated that of a rough-edged flattened sphere. Its surface was still cratered with deep cracks running along one side, but had now been transformed into a chiaroscuro of blues and greens, like a child’s drawing of a tiny world with exaggerated people and buildings towering over its minuscule surface area.

The planet engine created a field of gravity by some arcane trick of physics that still baffled those human scientists who took it upon themselves to try and figure out the Shoal super-science behind it. The engine also generated a series of shaped fields that surrounded the asteroid, containing a pressurized atmosphere that extended no more than a few hundred metres beyond the asteroid’s surface while also filtering out radiation and retaining heat. It was a grand, baroque gesture on the part of a man who had inherited a fortune reaped from the helium-three mining operations at the heart of Jovian industry. More, it was a demonstration of the power the outer-system civilizations now wielded.

Once the gravity field and atmosphere were in place—the latter drawn from the substance of the asteroid itself—Bourdain had clearly spared little expense furnishing his new world with a complete flora and fauna, all prevented by Shoal magic from spontaneously floating away into interplanetary space.

Like Sant’Arcangelo, Bourdain’s Rock looked like a god’s discarded toy. Some of the buildings on the asteroid were tall enough to push through the atmosphere-containment fields like fingers poked through a soap bubble.

The
Piri Reis
had been decelerating for half an hour now, its engines pointing towards the asteroid in a braking manoeuvre. Strapped into an acceleration couch, Dakota looked up at a viewscreen showing densely wooded forests that fell away into deep crevasses. A herd of deer moved past grey cliffs, while the distant face of Jupiter was reflected in the crystal waters of a lake.

Light came from incandescent fusion units mounted on poles that also extended out above the thin cladding of air. She watched the Rock turn before the ever-watching eye of Jupiter, banks of lights strung along the asteroid’s longitude winked out to create a simulated night across one misshapen hemisphere.

It was utterly beautiful.

—

It took Dakota a while to find her way from the docking bays, across the asteroid surface and into the Great Hall. Enormous deerhounds ran past as she entered its vast space, their claws skittering and slipping on the polished mirror-like sheen of the marble flooring. The Rock’s gravity had been set to about two-thirds Earth-normal. Beyond, in the distance, the sound of revelry echoed from the curved stone buttresses of a cathedral-like ceiling that looked at least a thousand years old, but had actually been in place less than five.

In the distance she saw two Shoal-members, each floating in their separate water-filled containment fields, each bubble supported by tiny anti-grav units. A retinue of Consortium bodyguards accompanied each of the creatures at a distance. Long tables held food and drink, all served by human waiting staff.

Dakota had dressed quickly, in loose light multi-pocketed trousers, and the one clean t-shirt she’d been able to find in a frenzied search through the zero-gravity maelstrom of her ship in the moments prior to docking.

She’d waited for several minutes in the antechamber that led into the main hall itself, composing herself and trying to quell the hammering in her chest. She had nothing to worry about, not really. Bourdain would be busy throwing endless parties in order to attract new investors, but she hadn’t expected to find herself attending any of these lavish dos.

All she wanted to do was sort out her payment, then leave immediately, and start a new life somewhere very far away.

Nothing could be simpler.

‘Piri,
can you hear me?’ Dakota asked the air, unnecessarily.

the
Piri Reis
responded.

The computer’s voice was sharp and masculine, and Dakota had a mental flash of
Piri’s
effigy.
Piri
wasn’t really intelligent, of course, any more than her Ghost implants: that latter technology had been created in response to humanity’s failure to yet develop anything close to true artificial intelligence. But, even so, there were times when it felt close enough.

None,
Dakota sub-vocalized, stepping forward into the noise and light of the party.
Just keep an eye on things.

Sheets of transparent crystal allowed her to look up between the vast stone buttresses of the hall towards the black sky above. For the next few hours, it would be night on Bourdain’s Rock. Beyond the windows she could see where a sheet of rock rose sharply to a knife-edge peak, its vertiginous incline dripping with mosses and blue flowers. Everything she saw had been designed for maximum impact.

There must have been several hundred people at this particular gathering, but even they managed to look a little lost in such a vast interior space. She was very conscious of the clack of her boot heels as she crossed the marble floor.

The noise of the party grew louder, with a full-blown live orchestra, positioned on a raised dais, playing light classical music. Parakeets and finches flew overhead, darting towards nests built in carefully sculpted twists of ivy that grew up the walls. Unlike the Sant’Arcangelo asteroid, which had been designed as a financial centre for the outer-systems mining industry, Bourdain’s Rock was developed solely as a theme park for the obscenely rich.

Apart from the two Shoal-members, almost all the guests present were human. A couple of dark-furred Bandati had settled down on various perches just above the milling heads of the guests below, their vast roseate wings twitching above their tiny bodies while they conversed, via translator devices, with a group of men and women who had the hard-faced look of deep-space miners.

Dakota felt a small thrill of nerves when she saw the Bandati, but the chances they might have any idea who she was, or that she had stolen something from them, were vanishingly tiny . . .

‘Miss Merrick?’

She turned to see a gaunt-faced man in a formal suit, his hands clasped in front of him. She’d met Hugh Moss before on previous trips to the Rock, yet every time she managed to forget how badly he creeped her out. He had, as ever, the demeanour of a bloodless corpse that had been resurrected on a mortuary slab less than five minutes before and already regarded the experience with a warm nostalgic glow.

‘Miss Merrick,’ he repeated, in a voice drier than a desert grave. ‘If you’d care to follow me, Mr Bourdain is waiting for you.’ He gestured towards a door set into one wall, and began to turn away.

‘Wait a minute.’ She put up both hands as if physically trying to stop him. He halted and regarded her with a baleful eye. ‘I don’t have any intention of going anywhere unless it’s absolutely necessary. I’ve done my job. Just pay me now so I can get out of here.’

Moss smiled, revealing a row of yellowing tombstone teeth. ‘It seems Mr Bourdain wants to talk with you first.’

Dakota chuckled nervously. ‘C’mon, what for? He must have a hundred cargo shipments coming in here every day. What’s to discuss?’

‘That’s a matter for yourself and Mr Bourdain.’

Dakota studied him for a moment. ‘Is there some problem?’

Moss shook his head. ‘No problem.’

‘But there’s no point in my meeting him now I’ve done my job, right? I could just get paid and go. How does that sound?’

Moss regarded her silently for several moments, then shook his head slowly. ‘Speaking to Mr Bourdain is now a condition of payment’—that tombstone smile again -’and then you can be on your way.’

Dakota thought for several seconds, the sudden pounding of her heart merging with the sounds of the party around them. ‘I’m going to tell you right now, I don’t like this.’

One corner of Moss’s mouth curled upwards. ‘Nonetheless.’

Dakota made an exasperated noise, shook her head and waved a hand at Moss.
Go on, then.
He started moving towards the door again, and she followed him.

—

They passed a whole circus of people in their progress. There were at least a dozen Catholic priests standing together in a loose knot, a few of them engrossed in conversation with an entirely human Imam wearing the gold earring of the Ministry of Islam. She caught a glimpse of a woman in a long dark gown, her hair pulled back in a tight bun—one of the many avatars of Pope Eliza, who stood in the centre of this gaggle of metal-skinned priests. Perhaps they were explaining to the Imam how they were free of sin because they were free of corruptible flesh.

Gas paintings partitioned the hall into sections, forming curtains of dry ice that trailed down from the ceiling, with images of mythical beasts projected on them, creating the illusion of ghostly monsters rampaging high overhead or wheeling through arched spaces on vast ribbed wings. In the centre of the hall a small artificial lake lapped at shores of finely crumbled marble, again creating the impression that the walls around it had stood here for millennia.

Mosses and vines wreathed the statues scattered here and there around the perimeter of the miniature lake, while clearly non-Terran shapes moved through its waters, sending up spumes of water from their blowholes as they surged from one side to the other. Hidden holo-projectors painted the air with abstract patterns of light through which guests passed as they walked from one fresh attraction to the next. Significantly, each constantly evolving pattern was based around the logo for Concorrant Industries.

Despite her qualms, Dakota felt a tug of excitement at the sight, mingled with deep unease. There was no doubt that Sant’Arcangelo was impressive, being one of the first asteroids to be equipped with a planet engine, but this one had it solidly beat.

But a darker side to Bourdain’s Rock quickly became evident. She followed Moss through the door, and then along a corridor opening into an enfilade of cavernous spaces that managed to make her feel claustrophobic after the sheer epic scale of the Great Hall behind them.

There were even more guests gathered here, but their activities were rather less salubrious. In a pit a pair of mogs—half-human, half-dog hybrids—fought with steel-tipped claws, while a crowd cheered and jeered encouragement from above. The beasts were vicious, lupine things, their human element barely recognizable in the dull vacancy of their eyes.

Even by the relatively lawless standards of the outer solar system, for all its lawlessness, breeding mogs was stunningly illegal. By such a display, Bourdain was openly flaunting his power and influence in the face of the Consortium.

Moss led her along past the edge of the pit and she glanced down on hearing an agonized howl. Just then one of the mogs collapsed, bright red blood gushing from its eviscerated torso.

The next cavern they entered was given over to the darkest sexual desires. There were mogs here too, hairless muzzled bitches with perfumed bodies, caged and set on plinths and awaiting the attentions of those whose tastes were so inclined.

Moss led her blithely through this cavern and on into the next, where human whores cavorted or copulated or danced with their clients, many glassy-eyed from the skin euphorics Bourdain’s employees had painted on their flesh. None of this would have bothered Dakota, except that some of these whores, male and female alike, were bead-zombies.