Away to the south she could see a couple of dark oval shapes stationary in the sky, just outside the city boundary. A hundred twenty years ago when the revitalization project was at its peak, it had employed a fleet of over two hundred fifty blimpbots. At first they’d been used to spray soil bacteria across the desolate post-flare landscape, loading up from the newly constructed clone vats at the aerodrome outside Armstrong City. Then once the soil was revived they’d scattered seeds and even insect eggs across the planet in an effort to return it to full H-congruous status. Several had succumbed to hostilities between the Guardians and the Institute, and a number were lost in the storms that raged around the Grand Triad, but it was age that claimed most of them. Those that remained, barely thirty now, were running on components cannibalized from warehouses filled with the shells of their retired cousins, their gas envelopes patched and fraying, undeserving of the flightworthy certificates that the Governor’s House ritually issued to them every year.
Blimpbots and pollution were only half of Mellanie’s sense of uncoupling. She realized what really bothered her: the lack of trains. There were no embankments and cuttings taking priority through the architecture. No elevated rails slicing above the clogged-up traffic. More than anything, trains symbolized Commonwealth society.
“What a weird place,” Mellanie said. “I can’t see why so many people emigrated here. It’s all so backward; as if the Victorians invented starflight and transported their culture here. Maybe that is where the Marie Celeste came from.”
“You’re too young to understand,” Dudley said.
She turned, mildly surprised at the confidence in his voice.
Dudley stood beside her, smiling admiringly at the ramshackle city spread out around them. “Try rejuvenating five times, having to go back to a nine-to-five job for century after century just so you can pay half of your salary into an R and R pension fund that allows you to do exactly the same thing all over again. You might have a different job, wife, children; but for all that you’re just stuck on the same loop with no prospect of change. Once you’ve been through all that, Mellanie, even you would consider coming here to live your last life without a safety net.”
“I didn’t know you felt that way, Dudley.”
“I don’t. Or didn’t. Not during my last life, anyway. But I remember accessing a lot of files on emigration here. A couple more rejuve treatments, having to spend another fifty years fighting the dean for funding, married to another bitch like Wendy, and, yes, I could see myself doing it. There’s something very appealing about walking off into the wilderness and seeing what’s out there. The prospect of telling modern life to fuck off, and just for once build something substantial for yourself with your own two hands, revert to the hunter-gatherer state. It’s not as far away as we like to think, you know.”
“And now?”
“Now? None of us have that luxury anymore.” His face flinched. “I made sure of that, didn’t I?”
“No. You were a very minor part of what’s happened. Sorry to dent your ego, my darling, but you’re not that responsible.”
He grunted, unconvinced.
She wasn’t sure how to respond. The times when the old Dudley appeared she felt small and stupid beside him. Strange, considering this was the state she was supposed to be helping him return to.
The SI’s icon flashed emerald in her virtual vision, allowing her to postpone thinking about Dudley and his new future. “Yes?” she asked it.
“We’re only three hours from the end of the wormhole cycle, Mellanie. This would be a good time to establish our subroutine in the city net. We can verify operational authenticity.”
“All right.” She walked back into the lounge. There was a pine desk beside the door into the bedroom with a small, ancient desktop array on top. She placed both hands on the array’s first-generation i-spot, and a webbing of faint silver lines appeared on her fingers. A whole new display of icons materialized in her virtual vision, and seeker programs began to analyze the local net from inside her inserts. “Doesn’t look like there are any decent monitor programs in the nodes,” she said.
“We concur, Mellanie. Please release our subroutine.”
Her gold snakeskin virtual hands tapped out the code sequence, and the subroutine decompressed out of her inserts, flowing into the city net through her contact with the desktop array. The SI had formatted it as a simple observer system, with enough independence to advise and assist Mellanie when the wormhole was closed. She’d brought it with her in her inserts because any program that large entering Far Away through the narrow bandwidth of the Half Way relay would easily be detected by monitors. That opened the SIsubroutine to the risk of corruption, especially if the Guardians or the Starflyer were running hostile smartware in the city’s nodes.
“I am installed,” the SIsubroutine reported. “The city net has enough capacity for me to run in distributed mode within its on-line arrays.”
“We confirm that,” the SI said.
“Great,” Mellanie said. She took her hands away from the desktop array.
“See if you can find any kind of activity that might be the Guardians. All I need’s a name, or an address. Some way I can make contact with them.”
“I will begin analysis,” the SIsubroutine said. “There are a great many systems that have restricted access. Given the age of the processors I am operating in, it will take some time to circumvent their fireshields.”
“Do what you can.”
Dudley had come back into the lounge. “Who are you calling?” he asked.
“The Michelangelo office.” She told her e-butler to close the connection to the SI. “Just checking in and getting an update.”
“Okay.” His gaze crept over to the bedroom’s door. “What are we going to do next?”
“Go down to the bar, and get some information. Bars are always the best place for that. Besides, I could do with a big drink, we’ve been traveling for ages.” She yawned, stretching her arms to try to loosen the knotted shoulder muscles. “Come on, let’s go see if Far Away’s heard of a Murderous Seduction cocktail.”
The bar and restaurant at the Langford Towers were the only parts of the hotel doing any decent business. They catered to an upmarket cliental, such as it was in Armstrong City, providing a décor with decidedly Indian influences. The chef favored spiced dishes, and the in-house music system played a lot of sitar classics.
Stig found himself a small empty table in the bar, and sipped a beer quietly while he tried to catalogue the other customers. He’d been there forty minutes when Mellanie and Dudley walked in. He’d intended to give them a brief look, then show no further interest, just as Adam had taught him. But Mellanie made that difficult. Her longish chin and flat nose denied her the kind of perfection a classic beauty would have, but her physical presence was striking. Powerful strides carried her quickly across the bar, yet she’d already developed a controlled rhythm to her movements that most offworlders took at least a week to learn. Every motion made her wavy gold hair flutter leisurely above her shoulders.
Dudley followed her with unsteady footsteps. When they arrived at the counter he grabbed it to steady himself. It was hard not to draw comparisons between the two of them, given the way Dudley stayed so close. The re-lifed astronomer came over as completely inadequate both physically and mentally.
Stig finally managed to look away. Most of the other patrons were watching the newcomers. Despite his earlier assessment, he couldn’t tell if any of them were Starflyer operatives from the Institute. Surely at least one of them must be?
The Institute was becoming a lot bolder in the city since the Prime attack. Its director had offered assistance to the Governor as crime and disturbances increased; already several routine police patrols in the center were accompanied by Institute troops in their dark armor. Stig thought it unlikely the only two offworlders on Far Away wouldn’t be kept under observation.
He heard Mellanie try to order some exotic cocktail that t
he barkeeper had never heard of. She settled for a pitcher of margaritas. As the barkeeper started mixing the ingredients she eased herself closer to him, and spoke in low tones. Stig casually glanced around, just in time to catch the barkeeper’s startled expression. The man quickly shook his head, and gave her the pitcher before hurrying off to the other end of the counter.
A disgruntled Mellanie hauled Dudley over to a vacant table.
Stig was almost laughing. The whole scene was like a badly acted TSI drama.
Fortunately there was no second act. Mellanie and Dudley drank their pitcher and went off back to their suite, both of them yawning. Stig remained in the bar, watching who left and when. Nobody else was acting remotely suspicious.
Closing time was midnight. He finished his beer and waited in the deserted lobby. Finally the barkeeper came through from the kitchen, pulling his coat on.
“A word,” Stig said presently.
The barkeeper glanced about nervously, but the hotel’s night staff was nowhere to be seen. He was in his mid-thirties, with the kind of spindly frame that most Far Away residents acquired, which made his burgeoning beer belly unusually prominent.
“Yes, sir?”
Stig produced an Earth fifty-dollar bill, and pressed it into the barkeeper’s hand. The man was professional enough to pocket it at once.
“Very attractive offworld girl in here earlier tonight.”
“The Royal Suite, sir, top floor.”
“Thank you, I already know that. What I would really appreciate knowing is what she asked you for.”
The barkeeper gave him an awkward look. Stig waited. He wouldn’t have to make any threats, not against the barkeeper. At the worst it would cost him another fifty dollars.
“She wanted to know where she could meet a member of the Guardians. I told her I didn’t know. Which I don’t. Obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“I never said anything else.”
“I see. Thank you.”
The barkeeper let out a short relieved breath, and hurried out. Stig waited a couple of minutes, then made his own way out into the night, the hotel’s automatic doors locking behind him.
Solar-charged polyphoto globes gave off an uninspiring yellow shimmer down the length of the wide street. The faint throb of dance music was just audible, drifting from the back door of a club. A cool air washed the salty ozone smell of the sea across Armstrong City. Somewhere in the distance a police siren wailed its lonely note along the empty roads. It couldn’t be for the Institute’s vehicles; they’d been destroyed hours ago, hit by mortars and masers not ten kilometers outside the city. Trevelyan Halgarth and Ferelith Alwon would never reach the Institute now, never help the Starflyer. With any luck their memorycells had been ruined by the fire that consumed the Land Rover Cruiser. They’d be just as dead as Kazimir.
Stig pulled a cigarette from his packet and thumbed an old-fashioned gasoline lighter. A bad habit, picked up back in the decadent Commonwealth. The mix of nicotine and grass felt good as he pulled it down. He needed a lifter from the stress of the day.
“That illumination makes you a perfect target,” Olwen said from the shadows.
“If you’re relying on a cigarette glow instead of a decent nightsight you’re in deep trouble,” he told her.
She came out of a doorway and joined him as he walked away from the hotel, down the slight slope that led toward the harbor.
“Where’s Finlay?”
“Got himself a good spot. He’ll call if they leave the hotel tonight.”
“Anybody else interested?”
“If they are, they’re better than us. We haven’t seen anyone.”
Stig stopped, and looked back at the high whitewashed façade of the Langford Towers. The Royal Suite balcony was a gray rectangle just under the roof. What in the dreaming heavens does a girl like that see in a piece of wreckage like Dudley Bose? They have to be here for a purpose.
“They went to bed about ten minutes after they went back to the room,” Olwen said.
“I thought that suite was too high to get a proper line of sight inside.”
“It is. I’ll rephrase. The light went off ten minutes after they got back upstairs. Hasn’t come on again since.” She sniggered. “Probably couldn’t wait to rip each other’s clothes off. Here by themselves. Hint of danger. Young. You could practically smell the hormones sweating off them.”
Stig didn’t say anything. His own mind had been filled by the image of a naked Mellanie on the bed with Dudley Bose. It bothered him slightly. That it was Dudley, not him. Which it really shouldn’t do.
“What do you want to do about them?” Olwen asked.
“Not sure. They want to find us, apparently. Let’s see what they do tomorrow.”
Stig was using Halkin Ironmongery, an old hardware store, for his headquarters in Armstrong City. It was fairly central, had a big useful garage at the back, and the neighbors believed the clan members were new owners taking their time to do the place up, an opportune impression that allowed for a lot of people and vehicles to come and go without attracting comment. As covers went, Adam Elvin would have been proud.
When Stig arrived in the morning Murdo McPeierls and young Felix McSobel had already started stripping down the engine from one of the Mazda Volta jeeps. They had nine of the sturdy old vehicles jammed into the garage and yard. Stig had brought them in as part of the reception for the Boongate blockade run that Adam was putting together. Adam hadn’t sent too many details yet, not even by encrypted message. But it would go ahead, Stig was certain of that; the new inspections on Boongate had essentially cut them off from their Commonwealth supplies. One of Stig’s other jobs was putting together the technical teams who would assemble the multitude of components into the specialized force field generators needed for the planet’s revenge. So he knew how desperate the clans were for fresh components. They were desperate for the Martian data as well. He’d talked to Samantha who was in charge of the control group assembling the large array that would run the network of manipulator stations. She’d explained how urgent it was. Now Kazimir was dead and the data lost. That should have been my run. Fate had been evil to them that day.
Stig spent the first half hour of the morning working out in the makeshift gym in the store’s basement, kickboxing the heavy leather bags, imagining each and every one of them to be Bruce McFoster. It was good exercise, something he could lose himself in, not having to think.
“You are troubled, Stig McSobel,” said a voice that had a permanent whispering echo.
Stig hadn’t heard anyone come in. He finished his kick and slid around smoothly, dropping into a crouch. The Barsoomian who called himself Dr. Friland was standing at the bottom of the wooden stairs, a tall figure clad in dark robes of semiorganic cloth. His face was partially hidden inside a deep monk’s hood, which was perpetually haunted by shadows. Stig had once used his retinal inserts to try to get a clear image, only to find the effect was actually some kind of distortion field. The Barsoomians always veiled their true appearance. Rumor had it they didn’t want anyone to know how far their modifications had taken them from their original human form. Dr. Friland was certainly taller than any normal human Stig had ever seen; though plenty of Commonwealth citizens had reprofiled themselves for media sports shows like wrestling, producing ridiculous freak-variants on the human body. This was different, not that he knew how exactly.
Stig straightened up, allowing the muscles in his shoulders and arms to loosen. “What makes you say that?”
“You always resort to physical activity when confronted with a vexing problem,” Dr. Friland said in his euphonious voice. “It allows your subconscious to review possibilities.”
“Right.” Stig retrieved his towel and started to dry himself. He’d managed to work up quite a sweat. “By the way, our people say to thank you again for the bioprocessors. They’ve been integrated into our large array. Apparently they were way ahead of anything the Commonwealth is producing. It
should make our digital simulations a lot quicker.”
“Our pleasure.”
Stig walked over to the bench and pulled on a simple short-sleeved shirt. He was always grateful to the Barsoomians for the assistance they gave the clans, yet he never knew what to say on the rare occasions he encountered one. How could you make small talk to an unknowable entity? Dr. Friland had arrived in Armstrong City a week ago, delivering the requested processors for the command group. For reasons best known to himself he’d remained in the city, staying in the big private residence the Barsoomians maintained for themselves out in the Chinese quarter.
Without any visible leg movement, Dr. Friland rotated on the spot, keeping his shielded face pointing at Stig. “There is something new in the city’s net.”
“A new monitor program?” He was surprised the clan’s webheads hadn’t detected it; they were interfaced just about continuously.
“No. This is a…presence.”
The Barsoomian sounded uncertain, which sent a tingle down Stig’s spine. He placed a lot of weight on the supposed infallibility of the Barsoomians. Even his time in the Commonwealth with its everyday technology could never fully quash all the fabulous childhood stories of the others who shared this world. “You mean like a ghost or something?”
“A ghost in the machine? How appropriate. It is certainly a machine’s ghost.”
“Ah, right. So, what’s it doing?”
The darkness within Dr. Friland’s hood lessened to reveal a row of smiling teeth. “Whatever it wants.”
“I’ll get my people to watch for it.”
“It is elusive. Even I can only gather hints of its passage.” The darkness closed back over Dr. Friland’s smile.
“Wait…We’re not talking about the Starflyer, here, are we?”
“No. This is a binary construction; it is not a child of biological life. But it did not come through the gateway. We would have felt its passage within the datastream.”