“Heard a whisper. Singer is here.”
“Haven’t heard.”
If Jak hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have known, either. “Would you hide here?”
“Depends. Who’d she sing for?”
“Herself.” As far as we knew, no one had hired or ordered Calaj to commit murder. That didn’t mean it hadn’t happened, just that we didn’t know. “Maybe others.”
“Why’d she start singing?”
“If the brass-buttons knew, wouldn’t need me.”
“You got strange jobs, Bhaaj.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “True.”
Her smoke stick glowed. “See, this is the thing. Coming here, in the dark, sure, hiding is easier. So yah, smart move. But if she has to sing, can’t stay here.” Her voice rasped. “It drives you.”
I couldn’t imagine what demons ruled Singer’s life. I knew nothing about her except that she used to kill people for her living. That, and one other thing. She had a baby. A genuine gurgling, yelling, cooing, crapping baby. A little child that turned Singer, the worst assassin in recent history, into a mother. No one knew about the baby until that day Singer walked to the Rec Center to take the Kyle tests, not for herself, but for her kid. Maybe she wanted to change for her daughter. Then again, maybe she wanted to take over the damn cartel and turn it into an empire for her kid to inherit.
“Drives you how?” I was asking as much now about Singer as about Calaj.
“To hide.” The red end of her smoke stick moved downward and disappeared as she put it out. “Against the darkness. You try to make walls. To stop it.”
“You mean walls inside the Undercity?”
“Nahya. Inside your head.”
I got that. She barricaded herself against the emotions of others. She’d worked for the cartel, the ugliest side of the Undercity. Their dark moods must have saturated her empath’s mind. Maybe she had sought out the Dust Knights to surround herself with something lighter.
“Walls good?” I asked.
“Sometimes.” Rustles came from her direction, the sound of clothes crinkling. She was standing up. “Build them right, they work. Build them wrong, you get sicker.”
I rose to my feet. “Sicker how?”
“In the mind.” She sounded as if she were moving away. “You can’t see. You get—hard.”
“Singer, listen.” I spoke quickly. “The testers, the ones at the Rec Center, they can teach how to build good walls. Protect yourself.”
“I protect myself fine.” She sounded like she had stopped moving. “Bhaaj, you listen. This Jagernaut singer, she’s probably got damaged walls. Won’t stay here. She’ll seek light.”
“Where?” Maybe I was looking at this wrong. Calaj might have sought out the Ruby Pharaoh because she was desperate for the light of Dyhianna Selei’s mind.
“Don’t know where,” Singer said. “You figure it out.”
She walked away then, leaving me alone in the silence. That was the longest conversation we’d ever had. If Singer was right, Calaj wouldn’t stay here. I needed to talk to a deeper, a person who lived here. My sitting in the dark had brought Singer instead, but the deepers must know I was here, if not before Singer showed up, then surely after Vakaar’s notorious assassin invaded their realm.
Max, I thought. Activate my IR. I’m going for a walk.
The world appeared, a ghostly cave lit by a faint red glow.
I exited the cave on the side opposite from where I had entered. I walked between two ancient columns encrusted with minerals. No weather had ever eroded them, no sun baked the stone, no wind worked its damage. They survived the millennia with nothing but mineral-laden water dripping on their engravings. I brushed my palm over one, tracing the figure of a lizard in flight, its wingspan so large, it wrapped about the pole.
Max, have you ever wondered about dragons? I asked.
No, it has never occurred to me to wonder about dragons.
I smiled as I walked. Maybe the myths of dragons on Earth come from the flying lizards on Raylicon.
I don’t see how. Far more likely, the myths come from the fossil records of their flying dinosaurs.
I suppose. I followed a tunnel beyond the pillars. They’re native to Earth, right? The dinosaurs, I mean.
Yes, Earth is their world of origin.
Home. I felt cold despite my climate-controlled clothes. We’re the lost children of Earth. Why? Is it possible Raylicon was our true home?
The evidence that humanity originated on Earth is overwhelming.
What if someone directed human development? Maybe they brought my ancestors here to see how we turned out.
I have no idea. You should ask an anthropologist.
I did. Doctor Orin at the university in Cries. He studied the aqueducts. Orin would have loved the ruins down here. In my youth, he’d given me food in return for my acting as his guide in the aqueducts. My gang protected him, so no one tried to off him while he dug around. I’d never brought him this deep, though. I’d been too busy avoiding my repressed grief about the family I’d never know.
I ran my hand along the wall. Orin wondered about the size of the aqueducts. They’re so big. Maybe whoever built them was larger than us.
I thought your ancestors built the Undercity.
That’s the accepted theory. He wasn’t convinced, though.
They are certainly the strangest “aqueducts” I’ve ever seen. Their logic escapes me.
You and the rest of humanity. He summed up my feelings well, which probably wasn’t coincidence given that he had evolved as my personal EI for over a decade.
Someone is following us, Max thought.
I stopped. Silence settled over the tunnel, an absence of sound even greater than in the desert. That silence was full of air and light; here, it pressed on you.
A stone clattered.
Up ahead, Max thought.
Got it. I headed toward the sound.
The tunnel ended at a room unlike anything in the aqueducts. Space opened before me, a chamber about thirty paces across, its floor swept clear of debris. Whoever lived here tended the chamber well; no mineral drips had accreted here into jagged rock formations. I could just make out a domed ceiling far overhead. In my IR vision, it all looked blurred, too cold to register much. Without the climate control in my clothes, the freezing air would have driven me to higher, warmer regions.
Light flared, and I spun toward it, my gun drawn. A person blazed in an archway, his body white-gold with heat. I stood with my weapon out and aimed while my mind did a fast appraisal of his potential threat. He had no weapons I could see or that Max detected. Despite the icy air, he wore only trousers and a ragged, sleeveless shirt. If the cold bothered him, he gave no sign. My internal sensors registered his body temperature as a few degrees cooler than normal.
I lowered my gun. “Eh,” I said, by way of greeting.
He spoke in an accent heavy even for the Undercity. “The Bhaaj.”
“Yah.” I’d never figured out why people added “The” in front of my name, but we never asked about names in the aqueducts, so I’d given up trying to stop that particular meme.
“Why here?” he asked. “Why bring singer?”
I didn’t want them to think I was inviting assassins to prowl their territory. “She heard I wanted to talk to her. Came to find me. Talked. Left.”
“And you?”
“Looking for an intruder.”
“Why?”
“Killer,” I said. “Not Undercity.”
“Above-city?” He sounded skeptical.
“More than above-city. Offworld.”
Silence. He probably didn’t believe me. I didn’t blame him. I hardly believed me.
“Who kill?” he asked.
“Political aide.”
“What mean, ‘political aide’?”
“Helper to offworld boss.”
“And the killer? She’s a cyber-rider?”
Ho! Where had that come from? Riders we
re our least violent population. Sure, they could get into trouble with the best of us, but they found their tech far more interesting than gang rumbles.
“Jagernaut,” I said.
“What is Jagernaut?”
Good gods. They were even more isolated than I realized. “Like a rider, but military.”
“Fighter.”
“Yah.” At least he recognized the word “military.” If the deepers battled among themselves, we never heard about it in the whisper mill. What did they do here? Live, I supposed. How they managed, I had no idea. Undercity farmers could grow small amounts of food, genetically altering the plant proteins so they survived in the darkness and aridity of the aqueducts, but it wasn’t easy and the crops never thrived. This deep down, finding food and drinkable water had to be even more difficult.
“Got proposal,” I said. It was how we took care of business. Never accept charity, never give away information, but you could always propose a bargain.
“Tell,” he said.
A good sign. He could have refused. I holstered my gun and slipped off my backpack. In addition to my shroud, it carried another vital resource—bottles of fresh water.
I pulled out a bottle. “Got three snaps. Filtered.”
He drew in an audible breath. “Maybe interested. What bargain?”
“I need whispers. Buzz about the Jagernaut.”
He came closer, until I could see him better. His eyes were huge. His skin seemed different, though I couldn’t figure out why.
Max, turn off my IR.
The red light vanished—and the man before me remained visible, his skin glowing with ghostly blue light. Bioluminescence. It was faint enough that in regular light, it wouldn’t show.
I handed him the snap bottle. “Give water. Get whispers.”
He looked at the bottle, at me, at the bottle. Then he said, “Got some whispers to give.”
I nodded. “Drink.”
He snapped open the bottle. His throat worked as he gulped down the water. When he had finished about a third of it, he made himself stop. Then he nodded. Our bargain was sealed.
“Come with,” he said.
I went with him, headed deeper into his realm.
* * *
Bioluminescence. It was the emission of light by an organism. My biology teacher in officer candidate school had talked about fireflies on Earth, how they glowed at sunset, lighting the dusk in their search for a mate. Bug romance. Bioluminescence showed up in the deep sea, in caves, in the darkness of worlds forever facing away from a star. Without IR, I saw that eerie light everywhere in the Down-deep. Lines along the tunnel walls glowed in abstract swirls and the tips of stalactites lit up the darkness. Specks on the ground came and went in an ephemeral glitter.
Eventually we reached another vaulted chamber. More people waited for us. How they knew we were coming, I had no idea, because the man with me had never contacted anyone, at least not using any tech I recognized. Yet six people stood in the chamber, all visible by the glow of their bodies. I couldn’t tell if the light came from their skin or their clothes. Whatever produced the effect, it couldn’t be normal bioluminescent algae given the scarcity of water here.
My guide stopped in front of a woman at the center of the group. As they considered each other in silence, I waited.
The woman turned, regarding me with her large eyes. Her pupils were so big, they looked like dark pools. “You come from up-under?” she asked.
“Up-under?” I asked.
My guide spoke. “Aqueducts.”
Ah. Clever name. “Yah,” I said. “Looking for a singer.”
The woman frowned at me. “Brought a singer.”
“Not that one. Offworld singer.”
They looked around at each other. After several moments of communing, or whatever they were doing, the woman turned her otherworldly gaze back to me. “We feel her.”
“The offworlder?” I asked.
“Yah.” She tapped her temple. “Pressure.”
If they felt her with their minds, that meant Calaj was close enough that the EM fields of her brain could interact with theirs. Too damn close.
“Seen her?” I asked.
My guide answered. “Nahya. Only feel. Heavy.”
Heavy. Not good. Down-deepers had a mental sensitivity greater even than other psions. Calaj could injure these people mentally as well as physically. “Brings harm?” I asked.
The woman shrugged. “Her pressure comes, we go.”
“Go where?”
“Elsewhere.”
Well, that was helpful. I tried again. “Take me to her?”
“Dangerous.”
I wanted to say I could take care of myself, no problems. Calaj, however, was no drug punker or gang duster. I doubted I could best a Jagernaut. “Just take me closer. I’ll be a whisper.”
The deepers considered each other, doing that communing thing. I felt a pressure on my mind. Stop it, I told myself. You’re imagining it because of what they said about Calaj.
Maybe not, Max thought. Apparently you do have psiamine in your brain. You may be feeling their mental communication.
Stop eavesdropping. Maybe that was why Calaj went wacko. Gods only knew what had happened to the EI in her spinal node, and she was stuck with it in her brain, unlike my gauntlets, which I could take off anytime.
Actually, Max thought, her node would have alerted ISC if she exhibited any hint of mental instability. Then he added, And I can’t help but hear when you shout your thoughts.
Yah, I know. Sorry, Max. No insult intended.
You are right, though, that she can’t take off her node even if it’s damaged.
That kind of damage would set off alarms the instant she jacked into any ISC mesh. It didn’t.
The deepers finished their communication, and the woman turned back to me. The pressure on my brain increased. “Stop,” I said. “Hurts.”
“You make interference,” the woman told me.
I rubbed my temple. “What?”
“Your signal interferes with ours.” She tapped her head. “Here.”
“Oh. Sorry.” I had no idea what she meant.
She nodded, accepting my response. “Come with. To the singer.”
VI
River of the Ages
Calaj found us first.
We were following a tunnel lit by ghostly blue and white tracings on the walls. Two deepers accompanied me, my guide and the woman who acted as their leader. I had no doubt others were following us as well, hidden and adept, but I caught no hint of their passage even when Max cranked up my hearing.
I heard Calaj, however, an instant before she fired. I threw my body at the deepers, slamming into them both as a jumbler shot passed just above our heads. We crashed to the ground while the wall behind us exploded in a flash of orange light. A loud crack came from my arm.
Your left wrist is broken, Max thought.
I rolled over fast, putting my body in front of the deepers as I fired in the direction of the jumbler shot. I felt no pain in my wrist, not yet, but my left hand wasn’t responding. I ignored it. I had to protect these people. A jumbler fired abitons, the antiparticle of a biton, a wimpy little thing almost impossible to isolate. The annihilations of abitons and bitons created orange light, unlike the killing energies of most particles. But bitons were part of electrons, and all matter contained electrons, which meant a jumbler shot disintegrated whatever it hit. Only Jagernauts could legally carry them. The military tuned the gun to their brain waves, so no one could fire the weapon but its owner.
Silence descended, broken only by the clatter of stones falling from the wall behind us. Damn. I hoped no deepers had been behind that barrier. The dusty smell of pulverized rock saturated the air. I strained to hear our attacker, but even my hypersensitized senses picked up nothing. The jumbler flash had burned away the swirls of light on the wall, leaving only the barest trace of luminance.
I climbed to my feet. “Are you two all right?” I ha
d no name for either of them.
“Fine.” The man stood up, shaking out his clothes, his motions barely visible in the dim light.
The woman stood up with us. “Heard a bone break.”
“My wrist,” I said. It was starting to hurt. Max, have my meds release painkillers.
Already done, he answered. They’re tending the injury, but they can’t set bone.
“Got healer?” I asked the deepers.
“Yah.” The woman looked around the tunnel. “Got to leave here. Might collapse.”
Good point. The jumbler shot had weakened the walls. Max, crank up—
IR activated, he answered. Red light suddenly bathed the tunnel, especially around the broken wall, where broken rocks were still trickling into piles of debris on the tunnel floor.
I blinked, startled as much by how he always knew what I wanted as by the sudden light. The jumbler shot had left a gaping hole in the tunnel wall only a few steps away from us. Mercifully I saw no bodies beyond it. On this side, the man and woman stood together, their clothes crumpled, their faces strained. I held my broken wrist against my body.
The woman motioned in the direction we had been walking. “We go.”
I nodded and followed them down the tunnel, bringing up the rear. If Calaj attacked again, she’d have to go through me to reach the deepers.
No shots came. Had I hit Calaj? I could move fast, sure, but a Jagernaut was faster, assuming her biomech web hadn’t malfunctioned. I could always hope.
“Why she shoot?” my guide asked. He sounded calm, but his voice cracked on the last word.
“Recognized me, maybe.” How, I didn’t know, since Calaj had no access to the whisper mill, which was purely word of mouth. It involved no tech. She couldn’t get anything about me from the Cries mesh, either, because no one there knew what I did down here.
“This happen before?” I asked. “Singer shoot at you?”
“Nahya,” the leader said. “Never.”
Great, just great, my showing up got these people attacked. I felt like a slime-slug. “My sorry.”
“No need.” The woman pressed her fingers against her temples. “Too much pressure.”
I still didn’t understand what they meant by pressure. I had felt something before, when they were doing their communing thing, but it hardly seemed dangerous.