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CHAPTER EIGHT

Adya collapsed into bed in the Iris Room and let out a long sigh. She felt tears tickling the corners of her eyes, and wiped them with the back of her hand. The scene with her mother when she had finally returned from her detective expedition to Viranmar Plaza had been a real emotional battle of attrition, no quarter asked or given on either side.

It was very late, and she thought of inducing sleep, but decided it would be better to calm herself by natural methods first. In her current state, inducing would just give her angry dreams.

Adya’s favorite way to relax was to learn something. So she stared up at the ceiling and let herself dive into the infosphere, hunting for anything she could find about the Polyarchists. Not history and origins, but what they were doing at the moment.

Predictably, Miranda’s current economic slump had strengthened the movement. During good times they had been objects of mockery, a bunch of crackpots who wanted to replace the success of the Sixty Families with some risky, impractical scheme. Now Adya found a number of quite serious informationals and opinions putting forth the idea that maybe the oligarchy had become decadent and hidebound, the Families too obsessed with coalition politics rather than public service.

She couldn’t really disagree with that, either. During her journeys across the Solar System Adya had found herself explaining Miranda and how the oligarchy worked to a variety of people, and as a result she had come to see some of the flaws of the system. Making rich people pay for everything sounded good to most people—but it did mean that all of Miranda’s government was perpetually underfunded. The family holding a particular ministry would inevitably put off solving problems, especially if they were likely to require expensive solutions, and then dump the whole thing in the lap of whoever took over the position. The few new projects were chosen to enrich the officeholders or at least win prestige, and any public benefit was just a side effect.

Adya’s travels had also shown her that every other system in use had flaws of its own—some of them much worse than Miranda’s—but she could still wish that the Sixty Families would pay attention to things outside the sealed bubble of Coordinating Committee politics, marriage alliances, and social gamesmanship. Living inside a literal sealed bubble encased in a kilometer of ice didn’t help.

The question which kept nagging at her was why? Why would the Polyarchists, no matter what their goals might be, attack the Elso family in particular?

She located her parents. Her mother had retreated to her private office, and her father was in the sculpture rotunda. Adya got up and mentally plotted a route to the gallery which would minimize the risk of crossing paths with her mother. Maybe in the morning one of them would feel like apologizing, or at least negotiating a truce, but not now.

To minimize signs of her passage she asked the house not to light up rooms for her, and navigated entirely by the light coming from glowing plants or filtering through windows and skylights. It reminded her of nocturnal expeditions when she was little, prowling the house when she was supposed to be in bed, sometimes with Kavita, more often alone.

Achan sat on the floor in the center of the rotunda with an open bottle of wine and a glass next to him. When Adya came in he smiled sadly and patted the floor next to him. “Join me in admiring our ancestral art.”

She sat. “I have a question.”

He gestured at the wood carving directly in front of him. “Do you know the story behind this one? Three centuries ago the Nashichu family were in a poor position. They were the least of the great families—the Sixty-Three Families, as it was then. Sunitha Nashichu was the last leader of that line. With but a day left before she would have to resign as a magistrate and Minister of Mechanical Affairs, she put an arterial tap in her arm and went out rowing. Her nephew Ajith Elso-Nashichu carved that himself as a memorial.”

The sculpture really was beautiful, carved with hand tools from a slab of red cedar wood grown in one of the Equatorial habs. Adya’s ancestor Ajith had made use of a natural streak of brighter red in the wood, so that the simplified shape of a rower in a boat was at the apex of a widening wake of red against the golden water.

“Their name ended with Sunitha. We Elsos inherited some of their treasures—and a stack of debts, but in those days we had wealth to waste. Will our withering leave anything as wondrous as that woodwork?”

Adya had spent her life listening to her father predict decline and doom, but this time his voice held an unfamiliar tone. There was none of his usual outrage or complaint. This time his sadness was real, and unfathomably deep.

“Father, I have a question. It’s very important. What would the Polyarchists achieve by attacking our family interests?”

“Who can understand the motives of fools and madmen? We are of the Sixty Families, and vulnerable, so they attack us.”

“Maybe so, but what will happen politically if you have to give up your seats on the Coordinating Committee? What would change?”

He took a deep breath and frowned in concentration, willing himself to think. “It will probably mean a new coalition in power. With me gone, the opposition gains a majority, and can then bolster it by assigning our seats to their own side. Probably Taracu or Miti.”

“And what would that do? Are they sympathetic to the Polyarchists?”

“Not that I know. Most ministries would remain with the current holders, so there would be little change in day-to-day matters. The biggest effect would probably be in our offworld relations. The Committee does determine overall policy there. Since you were small Miranda has generally leagued ourselves with the Trojan Empire. I think the opposition prefer a stricter neutrality.”

“Would that do anything to help the Polyarchists?”

He shook his head vigorously, as if trying to clear it. “I am too drunk for this. Leave me to wine and woe.”

“Just speculate. Why would the Polyarchists support neutrality?”

“As I said, they are fools and madmen. They may think the Trojans too tyrannical—as they are, after all. I cannot say for sure.” He ignored his glass and picked up the bottle. “To the devisers of our difficulties! They have shown supreme skill in secret struggles!”

Achan drained the bottle in four swallows and let it fall, spattering himself with purple drops.

“Father—”

“If the Families are fated to fall, then I will make my end as a man of Miranda! I will not see my house and treasures sold, my daughters reduced to bourgeois banality. I will follow Sunitha and die with honor!”

“Please don’t talk that way! Even if we lose everything, Mother still needs you. Kavita and I need you, and Sundari, too. Losing your seats on the Committee won’t change anything.”

He stared off into the middle distance, ignoring her. “Failure. Last of the line. I will not live that way. No charity, no pity. I will not accept it.” Achan rolled away from her, knocking the glass over, and lay on his side in the puddle that spread from it. Adya started to speak again, but stopped when she saw he was asleep.

She summoned some bots to take him to his bedroom, and another to clean up the spilled wine. Then she returned to the Iris Room and tried to make herself feel like sleep. She was just about to shut down her comm implant when one of Kavita’s irritating updates appeared in her field of vision. “KAVITA goes speedboarding! watch her race against champions SUMAN WIJAYA and YUKI!”

She started to send it to her filtering agent, so that it could do a better job of stopping Kavita’s mass invites, but then Adya hesitated. She had resolutely avoided participating in Kavita’s stream—on the justifiable grounds that she of all people didn’t need a link to know what her sister was doing. But this time her desperate need for distraction overcame her sisterly disdain. So she selected “join.”

As she was new to Kavita’s stream there was a little bit of opt-in required, including authorization for the stream to use her medical implant’s recreational setting in order to let Adya experience Kavita’s moods. Adya agreed—but only for the next hour. After that Kavita would have to go back to tried-and-true methods of manipulating Adya’s emotions, like catty remarks and whining.

With that little formality out of the way, Adya settled herself comfortably and activated the link.

Instantly she was on the surface of Miranda wearing a skinsuit and bubble helmet, balanced on a speedboard as it shot down the famous Red-rated track that snaked among the hills and canyons of Sicilia Regio. The landscape beyond the track passed by in a blur, but Kavita couldn’t spare any attention for sightseeing as she used her legs and body to shift the board around the curved interior of the track, balancing the gee forces created by the bends and spirals. The main risk wasn’t falling down—not in Miranda’s gravity—but rather in not falling. If the board left the surface of the track Kavita would find herself in a ballistic trajectory with no way to slow or stop herself until she hit the surface again.

That was what the rational part of Adya’s mind was thinking, but the rest of her was bending and swaying as the track ahead writhed and coiled like a cephalopod making rude gestures. Adya could see the little map display showing Kavita’s position on the course, see the dots marking the two professionals—Suman Wijaya about twenty meters behind and Yuki fifty meters in the lead—and feel Kavita’s fist clutching the board’s control unit.

Then her medical implant started feeding her Kavita’s emotions. Adrenaline surged through her as her sister felt fear, exhilaration, and a burning desire to win the race.

She could hear the high-pitched whine of the board’s propulsion unit and the slashing sound of the board’s frictionless underside against the slick ice of the track. Behind that Adya became aware of an undercurrent of voices: the audience feedback channel giving the cheers, excited squeals, shouts of encouragement, gasps, warnings, and applause of Kavita’s followers.

The feedback rose to a crescendo as Kavita squeezed the control unit hard, sending the board surging ahead, gaining on Yuki. She kept her grip tight even as the straightaway segment ended and the track whipped around in a hairpin bend at the head of a canyon, then spiraled up through a tunnel to the surface level above the rim.

In the tunnel she crouched, keeping her center of mass low, letting the board find the right angle, but then the track burst out into the open surface under Uranus’s bright crescent, and Kavita had to roll and get the board right at the edge of the track above her head to keep from flying off across the landscape.

Adya’s own leg muscles tensed as she tried to keep Kavita’s board on the track, and she could hear the terror in the myriad voices of the feedback channel. When the board slid back away from the edge as Kavita entered another nearly straight section, she heard a hundred sighs of relief.

“Ooh, that was tight,” Kavita said aloud, calling forth more cheers.

Clutching the control hard enough to make her arm spasm, Kavita gained steadily on Yuki. At first she just caught glimpses of them, then Yuki was in sight except when sharp curves interfered, and finally Kavita was almost close enough to reach forward and touch their distinctive all-white skinsuit. Adya could clearly hear a group of fans chanting “KA-VI-TA” in unison.

Yuki wasn’t going to give up the lead easily. They started moving back and forth unpredictably, keeping Kavita from passing. The two were moving at nearly fifty-eight meters per second—a collision at this speed would be a bone-breaker at least, possibly fatal if the boarders slammed into a tight curve.

Kavita stayed close to Yuki, waiting for her moment. The track entered a curve, looping all the way around a hill, and Yuki took the outside, riding at the edge of the track as the surface went nearly vertical. Kavita tensed her fist and leaned to the right. Her board shot forward, digging into the ice with one edge, sending up a spray of particles that twinkled in the sunlight. But there simply wasn’t enough friction, and Kavita’s path converged with Yuki’s. The distance between the boards shrank to half a meter, then twenty centimeters, then ten, then five . . . 

It was Yuki who blinked first. Their board slowed a tiny amount, and Kavita slid past, taking the lead.

Ahead lay a tricky series of three hairpins leading down the side of a canyon, followed by a straightaway along the canyon floor to the finish line. On the topmost turn Yuki tried to regain the lead by cutting inside Kavita’s path, but they had to sacrifice so much speed to start the turn early that they couldn’t quite get level with Kavita.

The middle turn, out near the canyon mouth, was so narrow there simply wasn’t enough room for Yuki to pass. The last was a nice wide curve, and for a couple of tense seconds the two boards were side by side again. Kavita accelerated out of the bend and went down the final stretch at an insane sixty meters per second, breaking the tape at the canyon mouth before turning her board side-on to slow down.

Adya felt the surge of triumph and joy from her sister, like an emotional orgasm. The fan feedback included screams and moans like some giant exhibitionistic orgy.

She disconnected and let out a deep breath, relaxing herself all over. Just “riding along” in Kavita’s sensorium had been the most intense thing Adya had done in months—and for most of Kavita’s fans it must have been far more powerful than anything in their own lives.

After that she felt so drained and exhausted there was no need for the inducer, and her dreams were full of motion.


Zee insisted on a rest and a snack before trying to contact Adya, but Daslakh could sense considerable stress every time it brought up the subject. Finally Zee could put it off no longer. He pushed away his empty noodle bowl and stared into the middle distance. Daslakh discreetly listened in—but Adya was in privacy mode and did not respond.

Her filtering and security were better than Zee’s, but Daslakh had spent months traveling with the two of them, so Adya’s comm implant was a very soft target. It didn’t do anything to alert her, but it did at least check on her location and physical status.

She was not far away, actually. Sitting in a tea shop at Viranmar Plaza, about forty levels above the noodle shop where Zee was trying to contact her. The tea shop was apparently a trendy place, judging by how often Adya’s sister Kavita had been there recently.

Daslakh did wonder why she was there. Adya wasn’t the sort to look for the hippest place to hang out, and she was a considerable distance from the Elso manor. Was she looking for Zee? Or someone else?

The noodle shop where Zee was sitting was a tiny place lashed to the wall of an atrium running the full height of the floating arcology of Svarnam. The floor of the shop was a rectangle of diamondoid, giving a vertiginous view down sixty levels, the bottom lost in haze. The sides were open, and the top was a fabric canopy, set up to catch drops of condensation or random litter falling from above. A mer woman ran the place, with pots of stock, packets of dough, rollers, cutters, and bowls all within arm’s reach of her stool. Her tail dangled over the edge of the floor, but she didn’t seem to care.

The only other customers were a pair of hungry teenagers sharing a giant bowl piled with fish and shrimp, which they had doused with hot sauce until the owner glared at them. They finished while Zee was still fiddling with his cup of tea, trying to contact Adya for the fourth time.

“I don’t think she wants to talk to me,” said Zee.

“Maybe she’s busy.”

The teenagers handed their empty bowl to the mer woman and hurried out. Zee drained his lukewarm tea and piled it and his chopsticks into the empty noodle bowl.

As he started to get up they all heard a snapping sound, like a spark, and the whole shop jerked. A cable whipped past and the corner of the floor just beyond Zee suddenly sagged. Everything in the little shop began sliding toward him—tables, pots, and the owner.

Daslakh, naturally, reacted first. It got to the gallery which ran around the entire atrium in one jump, in time to see the second cable, attached to the other outer corner of the diamondoid platform, suddenly glow bright yellow in one spot and then part. The platform, now only supported where it was attached to the gallery, flopped down like a trapdoor. Pots and tables fell tumbling down the atrium.

But not Zee or the owner. With one hand Zee gripped the canopy, which now dangled loose from where it was attached to the edge of the gallery above. His other held the owner’s tail. In Miranda’s low gravity he had no trouble with her weight, but she still had plenty of inertia and Zee’s muscles strained as she bobbed back and forth at the end of her tail.

He swung her out and back a couple of times to build up momentum, then let go as she cleared the railing of the gallery below and slammed into the window of a shop. Just then Zee himself dropped a couple of meters as one corner of the canopy came loose, the ends of the severed line smoldering. Zee grabbed the flapping loose cloth with both hands and flung himself up and over the rail to land next to Daslakh as the canopy’s remaining attached corner burst into flame and the whole thing drifted down the atrium after the furniture, twisting in the air currents and leaving a trail of smoke.

“Get down!” said Daslakh. “That was a laser.”

Zee obediently dropped flat onto the walkway and rolled behind a decorative planter, which provided a little cover as long as he stayed down. “Can you see who did it?”

“Three levels up on the far side of the atrium. A bot, maybe remote operated.” Daslakh raised one limb above the edge of the planter to look again. “It’s gone now.”

Svarnam security arrived seconds later, a squadron of bots and two biologicals in smart-matter combat suits—one human and one cephalopod. Medics and investigators followed, and Zee spent the next half hour giving his statement and getting checked over in case he had a laser burn through his torso that had gone unremarked in the excitement. He did have a burn along one forearm where hot stock had splashed while his sleeves were pushed up, and the medics covered it with a bandage that merged into his skin.

Daslakh, out of long habit, disappeared as soon as the authorities came in sight, but this turned out to be a mistake. Kini Kohu, the mer who owned the ruined noodle shop, was convinced that “the creepy little spider bot” was responsible for all the damage.

“It was in here, and jumped away right when everything started,” she said. “Looks pretty cloudy to me. Why would a bot come in here at all? Find that bot and you’ll find out what’s going on.”

Zee knew about Daslakh’s aversion to official attention, but wasn’t about to lie to the security service. “My friend ran off,” he explained. “It’s an old mech and it hasn’t backed itself up in a while. I think it was afraid of losing memories.”

The human cop seemed satisfied by that, but the cephalopod was more curious. “Are you certain? How well do you know this mech?” he asked via comm.

“Oh, very well. We’ve known each other for years. We used to work together back in Raba habitat.”

There was some kind of private exchange between the two security officers, which apparently the cephalopod didn’t like very much. He stalked off with his suit colored hazard orange.

“That’s all we need from you,” said the human. “And in the future I think you and your friend should be more careful about where you go.”

Zee nodded and helped Ms. Kohu haul all the debris of her shop which hadn’t fallen into the abyss onto the gallery. She looked over the edge. “All my stuff’s on the seafloor by now. The atrium’s open at the bottom. Easier to print up replacements than look for everything down in the muck. Thanks for helping out, but you didn’t have to squeeze my tail so hard.”

“I didn’t want you to fall.”

“You’re from some spin hab, aren’t you? One gee? You’re in Miranda now. It’s only a couple of hundred meters down, and water at the bottom. Not dangerous. Thanks anyway.” She stacked the bundle of cords and fabric and the diamondoid panel against the inner wall of the gallery and then headed off for the nearest lift.

Zee went the other way and ducked into a side passage where Daslakh waited on the ceiling. “I just got another message,” said Zee. He forwarded it to Daslakh.

“NEXT TIME IT’S YOUR HEAD.” As before, it was devoid of any metadata.

“That sounds distinctly threatening. Are you going to tell the Security Service people about it?”

“I’m not sure. That human officer sounded a little threatening, too, right at the end. I don’t know what’s going on but I’m pretty sure something is. What do you think?”

“Well, something is always going on, more or less by definition. But I think you’re right. I think someone’s trying to scare you off from finding that payload.”

“Could it be Dai Chichi?”

“Could be anyone, but he’s about the least likely candidate. He’s the one who offered you a deal—if he didn’t want you to find who owns the payload, he could have just said no, or refuse to see you. Or crush you like a grape with one arm.”

“Maybe the security people think I’m involved in one of Dai Chichi’s rackets.”

“Or maybe they got orders from one of Papa Elso’s political opponents to warn you off.”

“Maybe.”

Daslakh dropped onto Zee’s shoulder. “Maybe you should talk to Adya about this.”

“No,” said Zee, in what Daslakh had come to recognize as the tone he used when making a noble and stupid decision. “I don’t want to worry her, and I don’t want to put her in danger.”

“What danger?”

“Someone’s trying to kill me!”

“Are they? When they zapped the cables holding up that noodle shop, it would have dropped you a hundred seventy meters into some cold water. The gravity here’s pretty feeble. Your impact velocity would be the same as jumping off the high board at the pool back in Raba. You’d get cold and wet and that’s about it. Remember what the mer woman said: not dangerous.”

“Okay, so someone’s trying to scare me. They could still get rougher if I don’t give up. I don’t want Adya getting hurt.”

“I can’t avoid the suspicion that you want to keep your distance until you can drop the payload in her lap all wrapped in pretty paper and then bask in her gratitude.”

Zee was silent for a little while. “I want to be useful,” he said at last. “Show Adya I can get things done here in Miranda, without her help.”

“Shorn of emotional verbiage, that amounts to what I said. Now: Let us reason together. You want to impress Adya and show you can accomplish something within Miranda society even though you’ve only been here a short time, correct?”

“Yes,” said Zee.

“So you want to locate the payload’s owner. And in order to do that you need to satisfy Dai Chichi’s demand for information about this Qi Tian individual, correct?”

“Right—unless you can come up with a better way to find out who controls the payload now. That would be really helpful.”

“No doubt. I’ll be candid, Zee: I could try to finesse or brute-force my way into the secure data caches and learn who currently claims ownership. I’m old and cunning that way. But I’m also old and cunning enough to know that people would notice. Maybe not biologicals, but some of the mechs living in Miranda or on top of the ice could probably figure it out, and they could talk. Plus, I have always believed it’s a bad idea to reveal your capabilities to potential adversaries.”

“What potential adversaries? You don’t have any enemies here.”

“I don’t know about any. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist,” said Daslakh. “Or might exist in the future.”

“You’re paranoid.”

“I prefer the term ‘appropriately cautious.’ It’s how I’ve managed to live as long as I have. Now stop interrupting. Assume for the moment that I can’t, or won’t, defeat the data security protecting the information you’re looking for. Which means you need to do what Dai Chichi asked of you. Yes?”

“Yes,” said Zee, a little sulkily.

“And that in turn means you need to get some advice from someone with knowledge of Miranda society and politics.”

“Adya’s father!” said Zee.

“Exactly,” said Daslakh—trying to sound as if that was the conclusion it had been leading to all along, although it wasn’t. It had been trying to send Zee back to Adya, but even Daslakh sometimes underestimated Zee.


The mercenaries assembling at Taishi spent their time getting their physical assets ready for combat, and training together in virtual environments. Leiting insisted that every exercise had to include both digital and biological minds. “It is inconvenient, but so is actual combat. Digitals must deal with lag time in both information and response to instructions. Biologicals must cope with the rapid pace of events. The exercises should be as difficult and frustrating as reality.”

Pelagia actually enjoyed the practice battles. Dealing with real opponents was always more stimulating. Whenever she played a game, or ran a training sim, there was always the lurking suspicion in her mind that she was simply training herself to exploit the limits of the sub-Baseline software. Whereas fighting alongside actual autonomous beings against other sentient minds was real, even if the lasers and projectiles were simulated. If an enemy or an ally made a puzzling decision, it was for a reason—possibly even a good reason—rather than just a random number generator deciding it was time to bite the player’s tail.

Leiting ran them through dozens of situations, gradually increasing the scale and complexity as the mercenaries got used to working together and figured out how to play to one another’s strengths. Pelagia and Repun made a good team for raiding and shock tactics, despite their mutual dislike. In combat they could operate on reflexes and ancient ocean-predator instinct which let them almost keep up with digital minds in decision-making speed. And for sheer bloody-minded aggression they couldn’t be surpassed. Even digitals with secure backups at Osorizan or buried deep inside Titania, fighting in a completely virtual battle exercise, would veer off in sheer self-preservation when faced with a pair of opponents whose very DNA was telling them to kill the weak and wounded.

When she wasn’t training or keeping her spaceframe in shape, Pelagia socialized with her new comrades-in-arms. The biological and digital intelligences tended to self-segregate, if only because of compatibility of time frames and communication channels.

Since neither Pelagia nor Repun could stand one another’s company, she wound up spending most of her time interacting with a team of six gorillas who specialized in policing and Civil-Military Operations. The idea of an ape in a suit trying to arrest a cybership for some violation of unit regulations was hilarious to her at first, but after a few virtual bull and gripe sessions with the team Pelagia got interested in their work.

“Keeping big dumb fish like you in line isn’t what we’re paid for. That’s just a sideline, really. A mech could do that. Our job is to interface with the civilians in the AO. Keep ’em friendly—or at least quiet.”

“I always say a blue megajoule laser is the best way to make friends.”

The gorillas all hooted and then Armelle, the centro of the crew, said “That’s why you don’t see orcas in civil-military ops. Hard to win anyone’s heart or amygdala if they’ve been vaporized.”

“So what’s your role in this operation? Just keeping the civvies out of the way until the shooting stops?”

“No, no. That’s when our work starts. We’re going to be keeping order and basically running the local government, and serving as cadre to train up a new local security force. This is a long-term gig: our contract’s renewable for up to ten standard years.”

“That’s a big job for six little monkeys.”

“We’ll have bots to do the rough stuff, and there’s a whole second unit of dolphins to share the load. Plus Leiting says it expects a significant number of local allies.”

A tall, white-haired human figure materialized inside the virtual hangout. “Leiting reminds all personnel that operational security is of maximum importance. No data about force composition, tactical plans, or objectives should be shared with any individuals lacking a need to know.”

“Sorry, sir,” said Armelle. “It won’t happen again.”

“Asking questions about topics for which you do not have authorization is forbidden by contract,” said Leiting to Pelagia.

“I was just making conversation. Sorry, sir.” If Pelagia had possessed actual teeth, she would have clenched them. “Can we talk about old battles?”

“Your contract does not forbid discussion of events prior to the signing date.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Pelagia. As soon as the human figure vanished her own avatar blew out a breath from her blowhole with a loud raspberry noise.

“I’ve known plenty of combat mechs,” one of the other gorillas observed after a few seconds. “Some of them aren’t assholes.”

“I think I met one, once,” said Pelagia. “Do you suppose the others deliberately choose to be like that?”

“Nah,” said Armelle. “It’s just laziness. Emotional intelligence takes a lot of work, especially if your brain doesn’t do it automatically. Ever spend time with a lotor?”

“Not to speak to. I carried some as shuttle passengers a few times, but that’s about it.”

“They’re almost as bad as mechs when it comes to social behavior. Especially on comms. Though in person they’re always very polite.” Armelle gave a soft hoot and thumped her chest. In the virtual environment it sounded like a kettle drum. “I guess it’s my big brown eyes.”

Pelagia and the other gorillas laughed.

After another hour of “no shit, there I was when—” stories, Pelagia dropped out of the virtual space. She did swim around the comm network Leiting had set up for the mercenaries. It took her just a few seconds to find the dolphins, playing a game of Kejum in a simulated aerosphere full of clouds and legless birds. They invited her to join and she accepted cheerfully, scaling her own avatar to be just a little bit bigger than any of theirs.

The game was moderately entertaining, and this time Pelagia asked no questions and volunteered no information. The dolphins—living the stereotype—kept up a steady chatter, and within fifteen minutes Pelagia knew that they were another Civil-Military Operations team, they were originally from Europa, and they were very unhappy about the quality of the chow. “I hear the operational area’s got some good seafood,” said one, and the others chorused agreement.

Pelagia waited but Leiting didn’t appear. She played with the dolphins a little longer and then excused herself, dropping out of the comm network entirely to consider a few things. Just to be sure, she severed all hard links and shut off everything on board capable of broadcasting. She didn’t want Leiting to pop up and fuss at her inside her own brain.

Leiting had appeared to shut down her conversation with the gorillas, but hadn’t done anything about the talkative dolphins. Even their speculation about seafood in the AO hadn’t attracted the boss’s attention. Pelagia reviewed her comm logs carefully. As far as she could tell, there were two possible explanations for Leiting’s intervention: either it had simply flagged its own name, and used operational security as an excuse to silence any grumbling; or it didn’t want the gorillas talking about possible local allies.

The two options hung perfectly balanced in Pelagia’s mind. Leiting certainly was a martinet, but keeping information about local assets quiet was good command practice. Finally Pelagia decided there was no need to choose at all. Leiting could be both a skilled commander and a tail-biter at the same time. It was not uncommon.

More interesting was what she had learned about the mission and the target. If Leiting had hired not one but two Civil-Military Operations groups, it was clear this was no mere smash-and-grab raid, nor anything like that. Whoever had hired Leiting was expecting a long occupation period, and a change of regime. Probably some counterinsurgency work, too.

Pelagia felt a bit of relief that spacecraft were almost useless for that sort of operation. Once they overcame the local defenses and got the troops down, or in, or wherever they were going, her own job would be pretty much done. Maybe some patrol and interdiction to cut the locals off from outside help, but after that she would be surplus to requirements. A good thing, too—Pelagia bored easily.

As to the target, now she knew a few things she hadn’t. It must be a good-sized object or habitat, with a substantial amount of water environment. Out in the ice-rich parts of the Solar System beyond the Old Belt, water habs were not uncommon. Pelagia’s near-Baseline software assistant searched through all six million inhabited objects in Uranus equatorial-orbit space, filtering out the ones with no biological inhabitants, no water, or a population smaller than twenty thousand beings. That knocked out about three-quarters of the potential targets, but still left a million and a half habitats, moons, and megastructures, any of which might be Leiting’s mission objective.

She could definitely eliminate the fifteen or so most populous worlds and habs among the Uranus Equatorials. With populations in the tens of billions they were simply too powerful for a mercenary force to tackle. The biggest three—the moon Titania and the giant habitats Caelus and Dagda—had so much clout that Pelagia also filtered out any of the lesser worlds which were allies, client states, or puppets of those superpowers. Busting into their spheres of influence would be as bad as attacking them directly, and any of them could hire hundreds of ships and millions of troops for a proxy war without noticing the effort. Leiting might be a jerk, but it wasn’t a fool.

Even after all her filtering the list was still far too long. But now Pelagia’s curiosity was aroused—and her competitive streak. She wanted to figure out the mission objective before Leiting informed the mercenary force, just for the sheer swagger of it. Show that bossy digital mind that it couldn’t outwit an orca. If nothing else, it would give her something to do.

Unbidden, the thought came to her that Daslakh would be a big help in this project, and she felt a profound sense of relief when she realized there was no way for that to happen. Some things were just too humiliating to contemplate.


Adya’s inducer woke her before dawn. In the nearly empty house it was easy to avoid her mother, and her father was still asleep. He would miss his morning fishing, and Adya hoped he would be in better spirits when he got up.

She donned her own gills and suit in the Water Salon, and followed the mosaic-tiled channel out into the open sea. For the sake of efficiency she used an impeller. Her destination was some eight kilometers off and she did not want to be tired out when she got there.

As a child Adya had spent hours in the water almost every day. Kavita preferred playing games, and had a regular crew of dolphins and mers to play Yudham or team Kejum—graduating to organized jack and swordfish hunts when they got older. Sometimes Adya joined them, but more often she went off exploring on her own. She knew all the other sea farms and floating platforms within ten kilometers of the Elso mansion.

When she had done her research on the Polyarchists she had been a little startled to discover that one of their most outspoken advocates lived just an hour’s impeller ride from her home. Pulu Visap’s Polyarchist friend Janitha Velicham was a mer, the managing partner in a farm that sold live herring to cetaceans throughout Uranus orbital space. Since that farm and the Elso operation were so near one another, Adya was amused to realize that there was probably some biological crossover between the two. Her father and the hated Polyarchists were raising some of the same fish.

She made most of the journey just below the surface, so that she could remain linked to the Miranda infosphere. Her software agents had picked up Zee’s trail: his name was mentioned in a Security Service report about the collapse of a noodle shop in Svarnam. Apparently it had happened while she was searching for Pulu Visap in Viranmar Plaza, a couple of hundred meters above. Had Zee been tracking her? She wasn’t sure if she should be annoyed or flattered.

The reports about the incident troubled her a little. The Security people were reviewing the cause, and were contacting witnesses and reviewing feeds. They asked anyone with information to contact them, offering limited privacy protection.

That last was the troubling part. Adya knew that Security only offered privacy to witnesses if there was the possibility a crime had been committed. Had the shop been sabotaged somehow? Or had there been a fight? What was Zee up to?

She aimed her impeller down, angling toward the sea bottom complex of Samrudhi Natural Foods. Navigation was simple: The farm had seven tall towers shining solar-spectrum light into the water, all surrounded by clouds of plankton. Tiny fish and crustaceans fed on the plankton, and schools of herring and cuttlefish fed on them in turn. A squadron of bots circled the perimeter, emitting weak electric fields to chase away larger predators and keep the valuable organisms from straying. The system wasn’t perfectly effective, especially when young dolphins and orcas deliberately snuck in for a snack.

The farm was bigger than Adya remembered. When she had come here as a child there had been only three light towers, not as tall as they were now. Judging by the warmth of the water they must have added more fusion power plants. Evidently Samrudhi Natural Foods weren’t suffering any negative publicity.

Was that all this was? Adya wondered. Just an underhanded way of gaining market share? It seemed plausible—but a little disappointing. No sinister Polyarchist plots, no Sixty Families intrigues, just petty grubbing for gigajoules.

Adya could make out three power plants on the sea bottom, spaced around the central tower, and between them were three clusters of bubble habitats—one for living space and offices, one for processing, and one for storage. As she got into laser range the Samrudhi Natural Foods infospace appeared around her. She asked where she could find Janitha Velicham, and a sub-Baseline software agent appeared, manifesting as a cheerful bright turquoise cartoon fish wearing a chef’s hood.

“If you want to place an order for Samrudhi Natural Foods products, or want to ask questions about our product lines, I can help!”

“I’d like to speak with Janitha Velicham in person.”

“Can I tell her what you want to discuss? Maybe I can help!”

“This is a personal matter, and I’d prefer to have it in privacy.”

After an almost imperceptible pause, the turquoise fish vanished, replaced by a glowing green trail in the water leading to the processing center, where the live fish were put into hibernation for shipment. Adya steered her impeller along the path, which led down under the main processing bubble and up into a moon pool. The air inside the bubble stank of fish and machinery.

With no more glowing trail to follow, Adya climbed out of the water and waited. After two minutes a trio of mers dropped down from one of the upper floors, accompanied by a freight handling bot. None of them had visible comm tags.

“You want privacy? You’ve got it. No feeds at all from this space,” said the shortest of the three mers. “I’m Janitha. What do you want?”

Adya decided there was no reason to be subtle. “Why are you slandering my family?”

“Slandering the Elsos? Why would I do that?” The mer’s skin showed a confused mix of orange and teal.

“Your friend Pulu Visap did. She’s been selling stories about our farm foods, attacking our assets, driving us into debt.” Adya kept her own skin icy blue, and spoke with as much Sixty Families formal hauteur as she could muster.

“Maybe Pulu’s just telling truth?”

“I can document her deceptions.”

“Well, that’s between you and Pulu. I know nothing of this nonsense.”

“Will she say the same? Especially to the Security Service, with full monitoring of brain and body?”

“If she says I hired her, that’s the only lie I know about. Our foods are the finest quality, and most of our markets are beyond Miranda. I’d never hire an influencer to make insinuations about anyone, even an annoying aristocrat, and I’ll say that with any monitors you can muster.”

Adya’s mind was racing. Janitha seemed sincere, showing an entirely plausible mix of anger and puzzlement. If she really knew nothing about the matter, then confronting her had been the wrong approach—and since Janitha was Adya’s best chance to get in touch with Pulu Visap and uncover the truth, a sudden change in vectors was needed.

What would Zee do in a situation like this? He would tell the truth and ask nicely for help. “I’m sorry,” said Adya, dropping into the vernacular and making herself a warm olive green. “I made a mistake. I thought these attacks on my family had something to do with the Polyarchist movement.”

Janitha shifted redder. “Don’t blame us for your bad business decisions! Polyarchism stands for economic freedom and fairness above all.”

One of the other two mers spoke up, sounding much calmer, with skin all blue. “How much do you know about the Polyarchist movement, anyway?” he asked.

“I know it has always been against the oligarchy. That’s why I suspected you might be behind this campaign of memetic attacks.”

Janitha shifted from red-orange to violet. “That is Revolutionary Polyarchism, which was discredited years ago. We are Rational Polyarchists.”

Her first impulse was to look up the difference, but instead Adya decided to keep Janitha talking. “Forgive my ignorance. Would you detail the distinction for me?”

“The old revolutionaries wanted to replace the Sixty Families oligarchy with a completely new system, with temporary administrators chosen by merit, or popular vote, or possibly by random selection. This would in turn lead to taxation, inexperienced leadership, corruption, and other perverse incentives.”

“You sound just like my father,” said Adya. “But if you aren’t trying to destroy the oligarchy, what do you want?”

“We want different oligarchs!” said Janitha. “Restricting the purchase of ministries and seats on the Coordinating Committee to a hereditary subculture of self-proclaimed aristocrats is inefficient. Under Rational Polyarchy, ministries would be open to purchase by any individual—”

“Or partnership!” said the other mer who had spoken, shifting a little into the purple himself.

“Or limited partnership which can bid the most gigajoule credits. This would have a number of benefits: access to a greater pool of wealth, expanded opportunity for talented individuals, reduction in the number of seats on the Committee, improved—”

“Isn’t that like the old Plutocratic movement?” asked Adya.

“Not at all! The Plutocrats wanted to allow joint-stock companies to bid on seats, and that’s just a back door to majoritarian populism!” Janitha had turned an indignant red again just thinking about it.

“I see. That’s very interesting,” said Adya. “I’d love to learn more. Can you recommend some references?”

Adya wasn’t just being polite. Her normal curiosity was aroused, and she was a little embarrassed to discover there was a political movement on her own world which she didn’t understand completely. She had accepted her father’s version of things too much.

“Our entire manifesto is in the infosphere,” said Janitha.

“And in physical form, all over Miranda,” added the male mer.

“The primary tenet of Rational Polyarchy is that the right to rule is based on merit, but contending subcultures define merit to benefit themselves. Therefore only an objective, quantifiable metric is valid. Like the oligarchs, we believe that the expense of maintaining society should be borne by those with the most resources. Synthesizing those two principles leads inevitably to the conclusion that anyone with enough wealth should be allowed to bid on ministries and take part in government. This in turn has six corollaries, as follows—”

Eight corollaries,” said the male. “We expanded the list at the last Party Conclave.” While he spoke the cargo handling bot suddenly left, jumping to the wall and then trotting back up the way it and the mers had come. Though it was sub-Baseline, it was hard for Adya to avoid the suspicion it had heard all this before.

“Those two are still provisional. I’m trying to keep it simple,” said Janitha.

“Again, I humbly pray you pardon for my tone earlier,” said Adya. “These attacks have really harmed my family. Our position is very shaky, and all of us are desperate. Do you have any way to get in touch with Pulu Visap? I just want to find out who hired her, and why.”

“She’s staying dark for now,” said Janitha. “Something scared her.”

“It wasn’t me. I just want to talk to her.”

Janitha looked thoughtful, her skin fading from reddish purple to a brownish blue. “I have a way to contact her. I’ll set up a meeting. Or try to—no guarantees, you understand. And if anything happens to her, I’ll know.”

“You have my word as a woman of the proud and patrician house of Elso that I intend no injury to anyone,” said Adya.

“You actually believe that stuff, don’t you? All right. I’ll contact you once I hear from Pulu. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have to put our fish to bed.”


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Framed