Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

As Adya and Zee spiraled down toward the city, Adya was orange with worry. “What is she thinking? This isn’t some spontaneous party she’s discovered. Everything I can find about this Miranda Millennium group sounds dangerous. They’re accusing Yudif Al-Harba of being in the pay of the Inner Ring minds.”

“Remind me what we were just talking about with Sabbath Okada a few minutes ago,” said Daslakh, from its position between Zee’s wings. “Seems to me spreading some gigajoules around Miranda’s ruling class to buy influence works just fine.”

“I can believe Deimos would buy influence here. I suppose I can even believe some elements in the Inner Ring might try it. But the idea that Marshal Al-Harba would collaborate with the Ring is absurd. It used to be one of the Exawatt operators in Pluto! They vet all their recruits very thoroughly.”

“It left Pluto almost twenty standard years ago. People change. I’m not saying I believe it either, just pointing out that you can’t simply dismiss the idea.”

“Is there any proof?” asked Zee.

“Nothing conclusive that I can find,” she said. “Images, personal accounts, news reports—all from obscure places around the Solar System, impossible to verify. Almost certainly made up.”

“None of which matters,” said Daslakh. “Humans use evidence to support what they already believe.”

“Well, the important thing is to get Kavita out of there before something happens to her, and warn her about what’s going on.”

“From her feed images I put her right there,” said Daslakh, and little target reticles appeared in Adya and Zee’s field of vision.

“That’s right on top of Defense headquarters.”

“Your sister’s making a big speech in the topiary garden on the roof.”

Adya looked into Kavita’s stream. It wasn’t from her viewpoint this time, but rather showed images from a series of little drone eyes around her, cutting from distant shots of the mob on the roof and the even bigger throng down in the street, to close-ups of Kavita’s impassioned face.

“. . . and there’s even some reports that these ornamental plant designs were supplied by unknown higher-level minds. Marshal Al-Harba’s garden prizes may be frauds! All of it adds up to a very disturbing pattern of behavior. This is too serious to ignore, or wait for the process of a formal hearing. Yudif Al-Harba needs to resign from its position right now! If the accusations are false, it can be reinstated, no harm done. I’ll apologize, and so will all of its critics. But we can’t afford to have a possible traitor in charge of our defense force!”

The air above the defense headquarters was crowded: aerial drones, angels, corvids, dragons, humans and dolphins wearing wings, even a couple of cephalopods wearing ducted-fan flight packs. The chaotic mass had spontaneously evolved a counterclockwise circulation pattern, as flyers approached, worked their way to the center, gained altitude, and then spread out.

“Can we just swoop in and grab her?” Adya asked.

“I’m not sure I can manage that,” said Zee. “I need my arms to work my wings, and I don’t have foot-hands.”

“Where’s the Security Service?” Daslakh wondered aloud. “I can’t believe you can just bring a mob into the garden on top of the defense headquarters building without the cops telling you to leave.”

“They’re standing off,” said Zee. “A quarter kilometer out and about the same distance up. See?” He gestured at a line of hovering bots and suited humans.

“Huh,” said Daslakh. “They’re facing the wrong way. Looking outward instead of at the riot.”

“There’s probably a metaphor in there somewhere,” said Adya. “About the state of Miranda’s administration.”

“If a handful of topiary fans could learn these facts, why didn’t the Coordinating Committee find them before they hired the Marshal? And if they did know in advance, why cover it up?” Kavita’s amplified voice continued, echoing from dozens of drones. “We demand answers!”

“I’ll go down and talk to her,” said Adya. “Wait for me.”

She rolled to the left and began to turn into a dive—but a great gold dragon surged up at her from the crowd, snatching Adya in one scaly hand.

“Sorry, Miss Adya,” said the dragon. His voice was appropriately deep and powerful. “This is Kavita’s big public moment. Can’t have anyone interrupting her. My name’s Vritra and it’s an honor to meet you; please don’t be awkward.”

By that time Zee had caught up to the dragon as it descended toward the more uncrowded areas at the north end of Ksetram. Vritra was big—too big to get airborne without mechanical help on Mars or Earth. His wingspan was a good sixteen meters, matching his length from horned nose to barbed tail.

Zee flapped as fast as he could to draw level with Vritra’s head. The dragon was obviously a bit of a dandy, with horns, sawtooth back crest, and tail barbs all painted lapis blue, matching his neatly manicured claws.

“Hey! Let her go!” Zee shouted.

“As soon as I set down,” said Vritra. “You must be Zee! Delighted to meet you! I follow Kavita’s stream and I’ve been hoping to see more of you. Are you going to have any more kinky sessions with her?”

Zee looked down at the dragon’s clawed hand gripping Adya around the waist. Each finger was about the size of Adya’s forearm. The fact that the beautiful blue-painted claws were carefully blunted didn’t alter the fact that Vritra could probably break Adya’s spine just by making a fist. Zee had a realistic understanding of his own ability as a nuledor, and slaying—or even obstructing—a full-grown dragon with his bare hands was not something he could do.

So he held his tongue and kept pace with Vritra until the dragon made a neat three-foot landing in a plaza covered by wildflowers on the outer edge of Ksetram. Zee shed his wings in midair and dropped to the ground just as Vritra released Adya.

“I’m sorry to inconvenience you,” said the dragon, lowering its head to just a couple of meters above Adya and Zee’s upturned faces. “But Kavita was very clear about no interruptions. I’ll let her know you were here.”

“She’s making a huge mistake!” said Adya. “You’ve got to warn her. This is all some scheme of her husband’s and I think Kavita’s in danger!”

Vritra’s head tipped to one side in puzzlement, and his underside changed color in standard Miranda fashion from deep green to a brownish-purple. The iridescent gold scales on his sides and back didn’t change. “Danger? Don’t worry. She’s got plenty of security volunteers—and between you and me, the Security Service are cooperating with us for this demonstration. Your sister’s perfectly safe.”

At that moment a pair of humans in blue-green Security Service armor dropped down out of the sky to stand behind Zee and Adya. “Thanks for helping,” one of them said to Vritra. “We’ll take it from here.”

“There’s nothing to worry about, Officers. This is Kavita’s sister Adya Elso, and her boyfriend Zee. They just strayed into the event space by accident.”

“Would you two mind coming with us?” asked one of the armored officers. “It’s for your own protection.”

“Just so you both know, these two are in full emission-control mode. Completely dark,” said Daslakh via comm.

Without missing a beat, Adya smiled up at the dragon. “I think Mr. Vritra is perfectly capable of protecting us. Would you do us the honor of escorting us to the nearest bubble stop?”

“Sorry, this is Security Service business,” said the second armored human.

Adya rounded on him, turning purple-red all over. “Don’t be ridiculous! Your only official business here is crowd control—and the three of us hardly constitute a crowd. I don’t know what you think you’re doing but you can stop this instant.”

The first Security officer took a conciliatory tone. “What Suresh means is that she and I would be pleased and honored to escort you to the bubble stop. After all, it would be terrible if anything happened to Kavita’s sister in this chaotic situation.”

“I must decline,” said Adya, shifting to a proper blue. “The situation, as you say, is chaotic, and I’m afraid I’m not sure where anyone’s loyalties lie. You two officers can return to your duties.”

The essence of a chaotic situation is that it can change state suddenly, and that is exactly what happened next. The Security officer called Suresh took a step toward Adya, Zee took a step in between them, the first officer took a step back and raised his right arm, which boasted a pair of weapon pods on the forearm. Everybody except Zee started turning redder.

And then Vritra grabbed both Adya and Zee and took to the air with a couple of mighty flaps of his great wings. The Security officers followed: Suresh climbing behind and above Vritra while the other one caught up with the dragon’s head.

“Drop them and clear the area! No more warnings!” Since Vritra was still only thirty meters up, the fall wasn’t anything for Adya and Zee to worry about.

But the dragon reared back, using his wings to come to a halt in the air while the officers zoomed ahead. “Begone!” Vritra boomed, and when the Security pair came about he raised his head and spat a stream of flaming bionapalm at the officer called Suresh. The Security Service armor suit protected her, but a coating of burning butanol and saturated fats played merry hell with her helmet sensors and targeting.

Evidently Vritra had never breathed fire at a person before. “Oh! I’m so sorry!” he cried, looking in horror at the flame-coated Security officer. His underside turned a deep blue-purple and he hovered uncertainly. “I didn’t mean—”

The second officer didn’t hesitate, and fired a barrage of four finger-sized missiles from the weapon pod on his arm. They all struck Vritra and he went rigid as the mix of pulsed electric shocks and injected toxins shut down his voluntary nervous system. The dragon—along with Adya and Zee still clutched in his immobile hands—began to fall slowly toward the sea below.

He had been holding Adya gently enough that she could wriggle out of his grip, though with her arm wings still abandoned back at the plaza that meant she had to hang on. She leaped over to the other hand, where Zee was having trouble getting his own arms free. Even using her own legs for leverage Adya couldn’t budge the dragon’s thumb.

Vritra took nearly a minute to fall to the surface of the sea, and hit the water tail-first before toppling to float on his back, wings still outstretched. By the time Zee got free of his hand, Security officer Suresh had doused the flames enveloping her by the simple expedient of diving into the ocean. The other officer hovered a few meters above Vritra’s floating form, and was joined by a squad of four security bots, who began towing the dragon toward the quay at the edge of the city, a few dozen meters away.

A solitary human stood at the water’s edge waiting for them. It was Vidhi Zugori, Kavita’s husband.

“You!” Adya cried, turning red. “You’re responsible for all of this! I—”

“Just be quiet,” he said, with unusual firmness. “Kavita sent me to give you a message. She’s busy right now but if you’ll calm down and stop trying to steal her big scene, she’ll explain everything in a few minutes. Can you do that?”

“Is he telling the truth?” Adya asked aloud, and when she got no response she looked around for Daslakh. But it had vanished to who-knows-where at some point during the confrontation.

“Of course I am,” said Vidhi, getting a bit red himself. “If you’ve got a problem, take it up with her, not me. I’ve got a lot of things to do, much more important than playing babysitter to you and your boyfriend.”

“I know about the payload—what are you trying to do?”

Vidhi shrugged. “Kavita will tell you all you need to know,” he said. “Just don’t do anything, all right?”

The two human Security officers and a couple of bots were engaged in getting Vritra out of the water, but that still left a pair of bots to watch over Adya and Zee. Like the humans they were still running information-dark, which led Adya to conclude they must be fully embodied mech intelligences rather than remote-operated drones.

“Are we under arrest?” she called up to one of them, floating a couple of meters over her head.

“Not at the moment. But as Mr. Zugori said, you really should wait here for a little while.”

One of the Security officers was speaking to Vritra as he lay rigid on the flower-covered plaza, her voice perfectly modulated to be calm and reassuring. “We’re going to administer the antidote now. You may feel a little weak and shaky for a while, so it would be a good idea to just sit quietly. I’ll be here to keep an eye on you. My name’s Swarna. It would be a big help if you could let me communicate with your medical implant, just to make sure it’s not over-compensating for the paralyzer. Can you do that for me, Vritra?”

The dragon gave a faint grunt. About a minute later his eyes closed for the first time since the missiles hit him. Tears dribbled from the corners of his eyes, and when he opened them again he was able to look over, first at Swarna in her Security armor, and then past her at Adya and Zee.

He sent Adya a comm message. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.”

“Nobody was hurt,” she replied. “The Security officers have good armor suits. You did fine. Thank you.”

Five minutes later he was able to roll over onto his stomach, and support himself on his legs. They looked shaky, and in anything stronger than Miranda gravity might have buckled.

Then Kavita spoke to all of them via comm. “I’m taking a break right now so I only have a little time. First of all: Officers, thank you so much. You handled this whole situation perfectly. Great job! I’ll remember this forever.”

With their suits still fully buttoned up, Adya couldn’t see the faces or coloring of the Security Service people, but she did notice a slight shift in the postures of the human officers.

“Vritra, I’m glad you’re okay. It’s a complicated situation here today and you didn’t have all the data, so you made the wrong call for the right reasons. I’m proud to have you working crowd control at this event, and I think maybe you’re ready for a more important role. You’ve done well.”

The dragon sighed and his underside turned a contented green.

“Adya—let’s take this private, okay?” The comm loop contracted to just Kavita, Adya, Zee, and Vidhi. “What are you doing here?” Kavita asked, without her usual bubbly enthusiasm.

“Kavita, I think you’re in danger. Vidhi made some kind of deal with Dai Chichi. He’s got control of the Oort payload and he’s been keeping it a secret! I don’t know if this protest is part of his plan or just a way to keep you distracted, but you may be at risk. I think the Security people are working for him, and—”

“Stop,” said Kavita firmly. “I know about Great-Gran’s payload. It’s a secret because I wanted it to be a surprise for everyone—and I’d appreciate it if you don’t say anything until it’s on the ground and we can claim it. The last thing we want is for some of Father’s creditors to seize it.”

“You knew? All right, I see what you mean about keeping it secret,” said Adya, still bewildered. “But this protest, those Security officers...they shot at Zee when he was trying to talk to Dai Chichi! You aren’t safe.”

“Somebody took a shot at Zee,” Kavita agreed, still quite firm and untroubled. “They were trying to protect me. It was a mistake, and it has been fixed. You really shouldn’t worry. I am absolutely safe right now.”

“What is all this commotion about, anyway? I can’t follow what’s going on.”

“Reform! Some of my fans turned up evidence of fraud in Yudif Al-Harba’s past, and there’s a lot more. Treason against Miranda by some of Jothi Rayador’s close associates, abuse of power by the Intelligence Service and the courts—all kinds of dirt. I’m letting it out one piece at a time for maximum impact. This is going to be huge, Adya. Don’t distract me right now, okay?”

“Kavita, are you sure? About Vidhi, and everything else?”

“Have I ever lied to you?”

“Yes! You used to lie all the time. To me, to Mother, everyone.”

“And I got away with it. More often than not, anyway. Point is: I’m not the gullible one. Vidhi’s not fooling me—right, dear?”

“Of course not,” he said.

“But—” Adya began, but Kavita cut her off.

“I know what you’re going to say: He wouldn’t admit it if he was lying to me. Well, he’s not. We’re bonded, remember? Vidhi and I love each other, now and forever, no matter what happens. No way to change that without brain surgery. Would you lie to Zee, or put him in danger? Would he do that to you? No. So stop worrying, go off and do something fun, and leave everything to me.”

The group comm ended without any notice, and Vidhi took up the conversation out loud. “I have lots of things to do right now. Are you going to listen to Kavita and stay out of trouble?”

Adya looked him right in the eyes and smiled, turning herself a warm pink. “I’m so sorry we caused any bother. We’ll stay out of your way from now on. I promise.”

His expression softened, and he looked at Adya almost fondly. “Thank you. I’m glad you understand. I think you’ll really like what Kavita’s doing, once you see how it comes out. It’s going to be amazing.”

He turned and raised his arms so that one of the hovering Security mechs could take his hands and fly him out of the plaza.

Adya and Zee stood for a moment watching him disappear over the rooftops of Ksetram. Then Zee let out a big sigh. “I don’t believe any of this,” he said.

Adya looked at him in surprise. “What?”

“None of it. I think Vidhi’s lying. I think your sister is lying. I think those security people are lying.”

“I thought Daslakh was the suspicious one.”

“It’s not here, so I’m taking over that job for now. Let’s get out of here and figure out what to do.”

They started walking toward the nearest bubble tube. Only when they were inside a bubble and shooting along the sea bottom did Adya speak again. “If Kavita’s telling the truth, and she is going to use the payload to restore the family’s finances, then I suppose the whole situation with Mr. Qi Tian is resolved. Father keeps his Ministry, the current coalition keeps control of the Committee, Deimos is defeated and all goes on as before.”

“Your parents will stop pushing you to marry Entum.”

“Everything will be fine.” She turned a slightly brown. “So why don’t I believe it?”

“I don’t believe it either,” said Zee.

“Well, the payload is already decelerating, so we’ll know in a hundred hours.”


For the second time in four weeks, Pelagia found herself diving at Uranus. The first time had been a nice simple aerobraking and plane-change maneuver, with nothing but random obstacles and the planet’s own environment to worry about.

This time she had Repun on her tail, and the rest of Leiting’s fleet were following a few hours behind. They all knew exactly where Pelagia was trying to go, which meant even a legacy human with nothing but a writing surface and a knowledge of basic physics could figure out where to intercept her.

Repun would make a shallower braking pass, staying higher and getting a little ahead of Pelagia, so that as Pelagia rose from Uranus’s cloud tops bound for Miranda, Repun would be perfectly lined up for torpedo and laser attacks. The two of them were evenly matched in spaceframe, loadout, and skill. Normally Pelagia would have the edge in recklessness and aggression, but Repun appeared to be harboring considerable resentment, and that could easily make up the difference.

If Pelagia went straight for Miranda, Repun would jump her. If she tried to play hide-and-seek among the methane clouds of Uranus, then Repun could simply wait for Leiting’s vanguard to arrive and overwhelm her.

The biggest mystery confronting Pelagia was the lack of response from Miranda. For three hours, ever since she’d been in comm laser range, Pelagia had been sending warnings to Miranda Control that a hostile fleet was right behind her. Her first alert brought a simple “Message acknowledged,” the second got a “Please do not use active traffic operations channels for frivolous purposes,” and the third through tenth evoked an automated “Unauthorized use of priority message channels is a criminal offense.” She had switched to sending messages through the commercial network to Miranda’s Security Service, but they didn’t respond at all.

Finally in desperation Pelagia sent personal notes to Adya and Zee—even to Daslakh. She’d been too far out for a real-time chat, but the lack of response was disturbing. Even if they didn’t believe her, she was surprised that none of them had answered. Her feelings were a little hurt that Daslakh apparently didn’t feel like making any wisecracks about crazy fish.

When Pelagia left Taishi, she’d put herself on a course to hit Uranus’s atmosphere at a steep angle, roughly along the equator about halfway between the center of the disk and the edge, a few hundred kilometers away from the Uranosynchronous Ring and its numerous elevator cables. Repun, matching her vector exactly, was on the same path but just under a thousand kilometers behind her. Leiting’s main force, by contrast, was on a much more orthodox course to brake in Uranus’s upper atmosphere for a Miranda rendezvous and wouldn’t arrive for another two days. They’d managed a more graceful acceleration in order to have a decent propellant reserve on board in case it came to fighting.

She felt the first thin wisps of hydrogen tugging at her wings when she was still a thousand kilometers above the visible clouds, but it wasn’t enough to generate any significant lift. She did roll to her left and ease her nose up five or ten milliradians, trying to shift her course a bit to the north, narrowing the distance to the ring.

At a couple of hundred kilometers above the clouds Pelagia’s hull began heating, and she could hear the crackle of ionization through her radio antenna. In just a few moments, between the glowing superheated hydrogen and the ionization static she was half blind.

Repun was nine hundred kilometers back, which meant she would be wrapped in ionized plasma five seconds later than Pelagia. So she waited exactly that long and then rolled to the right, using all the lift from her wings to push herself south. She pulled into a curve, as tight as she could manage—tighter than the planet-spanning turn she’d managed last time she’d been flying in Uranus’s atmosphere.

She was diving deep now, well below the methane cloud level which someone in antiquity had arbitrarily decided to call the “surface” of Uranus, and she didn’t need to remind herself that she wasn’t a whale or a submarine, but a spaceship. Her hull was built to keep pressure in, not out. Below Uranus’s one-bar atmosphere level the pressure outside would be greater than Pelagia’s interior. Her diamondoid armor could resist the crushing force for a while, but it was designed to stop sudden point forces, not constant overall pressure. And with no propellant to speak of and precious little fresh water there just wasn’t enough stuff on board for Pelagia to try pressurizing her own hull to counter the force from outside.

In the thicker air, with outside pressure climbing above half a standard atmosphere, she was shedding velocity and turning and trying to level off, all without letting the combined acceleration vectors climb above ten gees. That was deadly.

For a digital mind, or even a human pilot, this would have been an interesting trigonometry problem, but a cybership could do it by feel. Pelagia perceived the heating of her outer hull as a burning sensation, and the stress on her structure as pain in muscles and bones she didn’t actually have. Her biomonitors and medical implants very definitely did not administer anything to counter those sensations—just as in a living body shaped by evolution, pain had a valuable meaning. A cybership with a brain full of painkillers would cheerfully break apart.

That being said, Pelagia distinguished between levels of heat and stress that hurt and levels that really hurt. Now she discovered a third level: really really hurt make it stop. How had the shipbuilders calibrated her pain levels? Was this still within safety margins, or was she about to lose a wing?

In the end she just had to gut it out, dipping almost to the two-bar level and whimpering from the pain of her wings as her dive bottomed out pulling 9.8 gees, and she could climb again to the safety of the methane clouds at the half-bar level, still turning as hard as she could to the south. Traffic control had given her a map of objects in the atmosphere, so she could avoid elevator cables and balloon cities. Other vehicles would just have to avoid her.

She was still going faster than Uranus escape velocity, and the hydrogen around her was glowing hot. With a blanket of plasma blinding her in the entire electromagnetic spectrum, Pelagia fell back on her most ancient sense, and listened to the atmosphere around her. The scream of air rushing past was noisy, but she could filter that out and then strain to hear other sources of sound in Uranus’s atmosphere.

There! Off to the north she could hear another hypersonic transit, its path diverging from hers as her agonized wings pulled her ever more southward. Repun had missed her. Given her altitude and heading, Pelagia was pretty sure Repun was bound directly for Miranda. Presumably she’d take up a position in orbit, ready to intercept Pelagia when she appeared.

Pelagia continued her turn, bleeding off more speed, trying to get around the curve of the planet in case Leiting had sent out any sensor drones ahead of the main force. They would all pass through the upper atmosphere in the equatorial zone, and right now she was a bright shining infrared target. She let herself climb some more, up above the ten-millibar level where the plasma around her was thin enough to see through.

She made a complete circuit of Uranus in the next twenty minutes, slowing to a reasonable flight speed and letting her hull cool, blending in with the rest of the airborne traffic among the thousands of balloon cities.

Pelagia spread her wings like an albatross and came in for a graceful touchdown on the landing platform attached to the side of a massive heat exchanger and element processor anchoring the bottom end of an orbital elevator cable.

Most of the processor’s weight was supported by five continuous jets of hot gas, powered by waste heat from the Ring far above. As the Uranus atmosphere passed through the processor, structures like giant gills sucked heavier elements out of the hydrogen flow. The processor was big, with a mass of four hundred kilotons, so keeping it aloft meant pushing fifty tons of hydrogen through the heat exchanger every second.

The fraction of not-hydrogen in that stream was tiny, but hundreds of filters processing thousands of tons every minute generated a useful amount of material—carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen, obviously; but also more valuable stuff like phosphorus, sulfur, calcium, and even a little magnesium. The cable up to the orbital ring carried a steady train of cars full of neatly sorted elements, along with a conduit of supercooled helium going back up to take on a new cargo of unwanted heat.

The elevator could handle other freight as needed, of course, and it took only a little arguing with the processor’s operating intelligence for Pelagia to buy passage up to the ring as soon as possible. Three hours later she was riding up the cable like any other load of inert matter.

Her journey to the Uranosynchronous Ring took thirteen hours. Pelagia rode inside an open-frame car used to transport odd-shaped payloads (“Like you,” the processor intelligence had told her) and so had a wonderful view of the Uranus cloudscape lit by the distant Sun and millions of habs in orbit as she rose through the upper air, going faster and faster.

This wasn’t space flight. She was climbing, like a human walking up a flight of stairs, not orbiting. If for some reason she were to toss something away through one of her waste ports, it wouldn’t slowly dwindle into the distance on a nearly parallel course, but instead would drop directly back to Uranus and probably make a dent in anything it hit.

The urge to do just that was strong, but Pelagia managed to suppress it.

During the journey she took the opportunity to sleep for the first time since leaving Taishi, and her dreams were all about trying to call out but being unable to make a sound.


Instead of going back to the Elso house, Zee suggested the two of them stay aboard the boat Taraka, at the Mohan-Elso Center. But when he called ahead to make sure a room was available, the boat had some news.

“I’m not moored at the Center anymore,” said the crimson whale in his sensorium. “They asked me to move—Vidhi Zugori came out personally to tell me. He said the renovations might cause some hazard, so there’s now an exclusion zone around the place. I relocated to the Pukalam Gardens.”

“That’s all right. Is there still space?”

“Of course! Right now I’m completely empty. I’ve been thinking about doing some fishing cruises to get a little cash flow.”

When he informed Adya, she frowned. “Renovations? The current building is only fifteen standard years old!”

“Maybe he doesn’t like the architecture.”

“It won a bunch of awards when it was built. No, he’s up to something. The timing is a little too convenient. What’s Vidhi doing over there?”

“Daslakh mentioned something about storing party supplies for the Constructor’s Jubilee.”

“I’m not sure if that’s even going to happen this year, if Kavita’s decided to be a political gadfly. She’s making a lot of people unhappy. I wouldn’t be surprised if none of the Committee show up for the Jubilee.” Adya’s expression and color shifted. “In fact, she hasn’t said a word about it for a couple of days.”

The two of them glided down to the garden on the roof of the houseboat a few minutes later. One of Taraka’s bots was waiting with a tray holding two bubbly gold-colored drinks with ice cubes and mango wedges. “You two have obviously been doing stressful things. I insist that you relax for the next full day cycle. A hot soak, massage, and dinner tonight, a long sleep, and then tomorrow do nothing but fish or fly kites.”

Neither Zee nor Adya was inclined to put up much resistance. By the time they sat down to dinner—four different kinds of sashimi cut from a tuna caught just after they arrived, a mixed seaweed salad, and yakisoba noodles; all served with tea and glass after glass of Riesling—the day’s accumulated fatigue was starting to hit. When they were comfortably full and thoroughly buzzed, they more or less collapsed into bed with no need of sleep inducers.

Twelve hours later, Adya woke and spent some time admiring Zee’s sleeping form. The side of his face was still bruised, and she fought a tough battle with herself not to kiss him there.

Taraka had made the two of them promise not to venture into the infosphere, so Adya was left with the rare luxury of her own thoughts. She found herself thinking about Kavita’s followers. For most of them, life was a series of entertainments, a little work—as much to occupy time as to earn gigajoules—and the vague hope of a romantic partner. The ones who actually found that partner would probably drift out of the community of dedicated fans once their own lives brought them as much satisfaction as Kavita’s did.

What that left was the hard core, the ones who depended on Kavita for all the things their own lives lacked. She was their best friend, their lover, and her adventures were far more vivid and enjoyable than anything they did. What would those followers be willing to do for Kavita? She had watched a dragon willing to fight against suited Security Service officers, and then put aside any resentment over being paralyzed—all because he thought it would please Kavita.

Was there any limit to what Kavita’s fans would do for her?

Adya still had trouble accepting how devoted Zee was to her. The idea of thousands, possibly millions of people acting that way was close to incomprehensible to Adya.

Taraka appeared, unbidden, in Adya’s vision. The red whale avatar looked very unhappy. “You have a visitor,” she said. “I tried to—”

The door opened, even though Zee had carefully fastened the bolt when they retired. A small but massive object with seven limbs landed on Adya’s knees. It was strobing bright hazard orange.

“I got a message from the fish,” said Daslakh. “Miranda’s about to be invaded.”


Back | Next
Framed