The Gambit with Perfection (The Phantom of the Earth Book 2) (20 page)

Verne pointed up at the sky and raised a finger to his lips. The last of the skiffs sailed by. The bridge lowered. Damy and Verne crossed the river, their transparent lab coats fluttering in the wind. Damy smelled the hint of berries, veggies, and burning charcoal from the grills in the valley bazaar and felt a hotter Granville sun upon her skin, a taste of what summer might be like on the surface, down here in Phanes.

“I don’t think they’d mess with a commonwealth mission,” Verne said, “and the traders aren’t
always
right.”

The bid-and-ask prices from Navita City were also displayed in the valley, including those for the mission. Bids were highest for the contracts that expected “exotic failure,” which Damy had learned was synonymous with
death
. Those expecting conversion placed second.

“Traders are never right,” Damy said, narrowing her eyes at him. She sighed. “It’s better this way. I’d rather their lives end on the gods’ terms than on the chancellor’s.”

Verne furrowed his brow. “They’ll make it,” he said, pointing again at the eye in the sky.

Damy shrugged and wiped her eyes. She half wished that Lady Isabelle would capture her seditious thoughts and make an example of her, rather than live without Brody. Beyond the loss she would suffer, chaos would likely reign again in the RDD. Prior to Brody, research had been in constant flux. High turnover, constant demotions, and short-lived Jubilees were the norm. And it impacted the way the chancellor dealt with the board. The chancellor, they said, was as hard as granite before Brody’s appointment by the ministry and confirmation by the board to Project Reassortment. His present mercy stemmed from his belief in Brody’s loyalty—no more, Damy thought, for the Warning had destroyed any illusion of Captain Broden Barão’s once formidable alliance with Chancellor Masimovian.

“Did I ever tell you how much I love the valley this time of year?” Damy said, diverting her thoughts. Verne shook his head. “Every second trimester since Brody and I moved to the city, I’ve sent Merrell here to purchase all the fruits and vegetables Brody uses in his stew.”

“Brody cooks?”

Damy nodded. “He combines beef with lamb, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, parsley, and whole peppercorns. And we order the finest Loverealan wine. Last year,” Damy chuckled, pressing her hand to Verne’s chest, “Carillon Decca shows up in this goat costume his keeper bot sewed, and the waiter bots tripped over his hoof and the pumpkin pies flew all over Lady Isabelle. I wish you could’ve seen her.” Verne held her hand where it lay. Damy laughed. “Won’t you join us for the feast this year?”

“I’d be honored.”

Someone in the crowd screamed, startling them. Damy broke away from Verne, looking toward Lagrange point one.

The view brightened, but the shuttle didn’t emerge.

It was a radioactive ejection from the sun.

Damy gasped. “I don’t how much longer I can stay here.”

“Did I ever tell you about Brooke?” Verne said.

Damy wasn’t sure she wanted to hear this story, but she went along. “I don’t think so.”

“You remind me a bit of her.”

“A brook?”

Verne laughed. He rubbed Damy’s curly hair between his forefinger and thumb. “No, not
a
brook.” He dropped her hair and looked in her eyes. “Brooke.” He emphasized the difference as if Damy should’ve known.

“Who was she?”

“She grew up an illegal in Navita, like me. I found her outside the city, curled in a ball near the Great Falls, after trading hours. Those days I was a scavenger, starved and dry like her, shells of our adolescent selves. Her skin flaked when I lifted her from the ground. I took her to my home, assured her I wouldn’t lead her to harm. She told me to leave her to die.”

The crowd roared with approval when the trading contracts hit new highs. Damy didn’t know when it had happened, but she held Verne’s hand as they ambled along the riverbank, farther from the crowd and the holograms.

“My hideout,” he said, “was in the abandoned units, in the shanty wards near the outskirts of Navita City, all rusted alloy and limestone, a part of the territory Minister Orosiris wished would disappear. Synthetic resources aren’t as freely distributed to territories not called Palaestra or Phanes, or Dunamis, Lovereal, Gubertiana—”

“I’m sorry, Verne.”

“It’s not your fault.” Verne turned to the dunes. “Those wards became my home after my parents abandoned me there, an illegal offspring, I was told. I wasn’t registered in Marstone’s Database.” He turned back to Damy. “And the city’s outcasts accepted me as if I was one of their own, raised me, fed me, trained me in the ways of the unregistered, cloaked and hidden, scavengers. I found employment in the factories deep inside the city, and when the Janzers closed in, I fled to the pit where men behaved more like their animal ancestors, where I became a trader—”

“Where you turned into a
phenom
trader,” Damy corrected, “the Boy Plunger—”

“They didn’t call me that to flatter. It’s a zero sum game. If I was winning, someone on the other end was losing. Soon I wasn’t even allowed on the trading floors, and not long after that, the tenehounds surrounded me with the Janzers and—”

“They arrested you, and you nearly starved to death until Lord Rueben saved you.” They stopped, blocked by the crowd. “Where is she now, your Brooke, did she make it out?”

“She was arrested, same as me …” He paused. “Sent to the Lower Level, I think.”

“Maybe she’s alive, maybe we could request—”

“Enough about me,” Verne said. He nodded toward the portal. “All will be right soon.” He turned to Damy, took her other hand, and said, “You’ll be able to tell Brody about all the progress we’ve made on Project Silkscape.”

“We haven’t rendered the prehistoric species without viable genetic materials the chancellor expects—”

“We will.”

Damy didn’t respond. She felt a sensation in her belly and suddenly thought of her child, forming inside her. The chancellor’s Fifth Precept rowed through her head:
Citizen heirs of the chancellor are a blessing. They are also property of the Office of the Chancellor. All pregnancies must be reported to the nearest medical facility and all citizens must be registered with the government at the time of birth, prior to development.

Must I register you?
Damy thought.

“It’s difficult,” she said, trying to think about something,
anything
else. “Sometimes it feels impossible, I don’t know what—”

“We’ll work on the specimens, you and I, starting with the
Deinotherium
—”

“That’s not what I was talking about.” Damy dropped his hands and turned, looking back over the dunes. “Brody and I used to talk all the time about heirs, but I hear a story like yours, and I don’t know if I can bring a child into this world.”

Or if I can give my baby to the commonwealth
, she thought.
Oh gods, please bring Brody back.

Navita City

Navita, Underground East

2,500 meters deep

Spring turned to summer upon the surface while Connor and Luke traveled along the Archimedes underground. Their first stop was Vivo City, the island where Luke picked up Loverealan silk to replace Connor’s ripped and smelly clothes. Now and then a raft would float by, and Luke would wink and sing, and the visitors dropped off benaris or trunks or satchels filled with sustenance synisms, uficilin, and Vitamin T. When Connor asked Luke where the supplies came from, all Luke would say was this: “The synbio thief takes care of the Front.” Who was the thief? Why did the thief help the Front? How could
anyone
break into the Research & Development Department and survive? Connor wanted to know.

Luke never told him.

At their last stop in Hartstone Village, not far from Navita City, an innkeeper gave them a bound leather package. In it, Connor found slacks, suspenders, and a bow tie with instructions on how to wear a trader’s clothes and where to meet in Navita City. Luke’s package contained similar garb.

Neither Luke nor he knew what had happened to Murray the evening of the attack in Mantlestone Village. It was too dangerous to send messages through the ZPF, Luke assured him, and no one on the Underground Passage had word of him. Connor often thought of Murray’s last message:
Get out of here. Don’t look back!
It seemed he had no way back and no home to return to, should he even try. News of Lady Isabelle’s surgical search in Piscator had reached them. Though it was too late for Hans and poor Mari, Connor clung to the hope that Arturo, Murray, and Jeremiah might still be alive. He would see Hans’s z-disk to Blackeye Cavern, for all their sakes.

Connor and Luke arrived in Navita City, looking like genuine traders down to their polished leather shoes, leather satchels, sparkling cufflinks, and striped suspenders. It was easy to be anonymous in Navita. They walked the streets with their eyes slightly raised, as if tracking contract fluctuations in their extended consciousness, like everyone else.

Luke led them to a pub carved into granite near Capitanian Wharf, at the city’s base, not far from the Great Falls. The bright green lighting flashed,
PROCYON’S, PROCYON’S, PROCYON’S
. Steam sifted through the floor near a tropical fish tank that wrapped around and glowed with aqua bioluminescence.

“What’s that awful smell?” Connor said.

It was fishy but not fresh, not like the Block. He rubbed his nose and spied the crowd, mostly men, men who, Luke told him, arrived nightly for the live music and dancers half-clothed on granite blocks, along with alcoholic concoctions that could make even the sturdiest Portagen gag.

“Sweat, piss, and puke, bub,” Luke said, “though after a few hours and a few drinks, it’ll all blend together.”

Connor supposed that after countless days curled beneath a blanket on a catamaran, he could deal with a few hours in a place like this. But soon he felt the weight of all eyes that dwelled on him, eyes that seemed to pass over Luke. Connor had lost a lot of weight and looked like an adolescent, no longer passing for the developed transhuman he’d once seemed, full of muscle, on the Block. He tried not to think of the curiosity these strangers would be registering with Marstone. He tried to look comfortable. A comely dancer dressed in black lace twisted through a holographic effigy of Procyon, the purported owner of this pub.

Connor had heard all about Mr. Procyon in Hartstone Village. Some said he had died. Some said he’s swum through the Fountain of Youth decades ago and disappeared in Marshlands Territory. Some said he’d been sent to the Lower Level. A “Cyon Sighting” was as legendary as the man himself. His likeness decorated the pub—a man with bronze skin who looked as fit as a Yeuronian fighter. MOMENTS WITH CYON floated above one of the walls: Cyon in Vivo with his arms wrapped around growers in overalls, Cyon in Navita City near the Great Falls, Cyon between Janzers under the light of Hammerton Hall, Cyon holding an actress known as Lournella like a baby sprawled across his arms, Cyon boozing, Cyon swooshing.

Now a man floated through the crowd. Connor recognized him but could not believe he stood before him.

“Fellas,” Murray said, “glad you made it.” He swiped his beard, grinning. He slapped Connor’s back, then leaned beside him. “A Polemon isn’t so easy to kill.”

“They killed my brother easy enough,” Connor said.

“Lieutenant Arnao isn’t Lady Isabelle—”

“That’s true, and I’ll kill her for what she did.”

Murray put a hand on Connor’s bony shoulder. “It sounds like you’ve had a rough trip, kid. Let me get you a drink.”

Still a kid to Murray?
Connor wondered. He’d eluded capture from Lady Isabelle in the Dunes of Phanes, escaped Lieutenant Arnao’s onslaught in Mantlestone Village, and made it all the way to Navita City from Portage. When would Murray, Luke, and all the rest think of him as the Polemon he was?

They took a booth in the corner. Murray signaled a waitress, whose voluptuous hips swayed in the sapphire lights. Her name tag read JEZEBEL. “Welcome to Procyon’s,” she said. “What’re you drinking?”

“Two Vegas on ice,” Murray said.

Murray handed Luke a satchel that jingled. “Thanks, bub,” Luke said. “This’ll buy a lot of strings.”

Jezebel returned with their drinks. Connor sipped his and choked, to Murray’s delight. Luke moved to the stage, where a guitar and spotlight lay in wait. He removed his bow tie, unbuttoned his shirt, and ruffled his hair. He stroked his guitar and sang an Eastern song called “Through the Falls,” and the men at the bar cheered, smashing their mugs together. A dancer made her way to Luke’s lap. He artfully flipped a benari over his forefingers onto her hand.

“Why’d you pay him?” Connor asked.

“For bringing you back safe,” Murray said.

Connor frowned and watched Luke, now surrounded by dancers. “I guess that explains why he took such good care of me.”

“Everyone needs to eat, Connor. That doesn’t mean they don’t want to help.” Murray waved to Jezebel and flipped a benari coin in his hand. The notation was a hundred with a
B
that featured a squiggly maroon line through it on one side, with a likeness of Chancellor Masimovian affixed to the other. Jezebel watched the coin land in his palm. Murray dropped it into her eager fingers.

“We’ll need the shutters closed, ma’am.”

She nodded, winked, and slid closed a plastic partition, followed by a thick elliptical curtain.

“Ready?” Murray said.

“What about Luke?”

“Luke’s busy.”

“How’d you escape—”

“Not now, Connor.” Murray slid open a compartment on top of the table, and a needle struck his finger, followed by uficilin and gauze.

Murray tapped in a nonrandom pattern on a digital display and palmed a black panel, which turned bright red. The table rotated one hundred eighty degrees.

“Won’t they wonder where we are?” Connor said.

“All the tables in the pub rotate into … private rooms,” Murray said with a twist to his lips, “where sometimes traders don’t emerge for days.”