Part 15 (1/2)

”But you can't--””I'm Cap'n, son. Cermo!”Toby opened his mouth, words not coming--and felt Cermo grab himfirmly from behind, pinning his arms. He wrestled, shouted, swore, tried a back-kick that found only air. Cermo had the reach on him. The whole room was watery, clogged with heavy air that did not seem to carry his words, his shouted words, as Cermo pulled him strongly backward, backward down a long aisle. Little pale dwarf faces looked bug-eyed at him, all hiding behind the stuffy air of this strangely rippling room. Toby's throat filled again, this time with a thick, sour taste, a bitter black draft of foreboding.

6.

The Charm of Commerce Toby spent two days under lock in a small bunk room, subject to strict s.h.i.+p's discipline. This meant that he saw n.o.body, knew nothing. Not even Quath could visit. The room wasn't big enough, anyway. Food and study materials were all he got, so he boned up on math and history, listening to Isaac's drone more than he ever had. He spent time doing exercises in the tiny cell. Cermo brought the chow, reluctantly keeping silence, following orders, even when Toby joshed him about it.This meant that he didn't get to attend the general education sessions, explaining how this place worked. Which rankled him so much he worked out his frustration on the room, doing servo'd exercises by rebounding from the ceiling, scuffing the walls, slamming into the floor and then back to ceiling again. He tried to figure out how this place worked by himself, using Isaac, but nothing made much sense as he reviewed it. The deepest mystery was how this impossible solid ground existed at all, whirling around the razor edge of a black hole.After two days Besen w.a.n.gled a visit somehow. Her hair shone with fresh highlights--something in the water here, she said--and she beamed. He held her in his arms, kissed her, murmured of his cares and worries ... but something was wrong. He felt himself stiffen as she touched him provocatively, a palm sliding confidently up his thigh, nestling on his hip.--slick skin sliding--Her kiss seemed metallic, an oxidizing flick of her tongue.--musky warmth spilling over her in the fitful dark--And her hand fell leaden on him, inquiring into his hardness.--light laughter as the two of them rolled, leg over leg--He stiffened in her grip, found it tight and close and hot.--startled yelp of pleasure and pleased surprise--She frowned as he pushed away, slapped away her hand. ”What, what--”

184.”I don't feel like that right now.””Huh?” Stricken eyes.”I've got things on my mind,” he said lamely, confused.”Well, this sure isn't like the Mr. Anytime I knew.””I guess not.””Toby, maybe if you talked some, we--””Look, I--come back tomorrow, okay? Something isn't sitting rightwith me just now.”She went, frowning, mouth quivering uncertainly. He felt sad andangry with himself the moment the door sealed. But then he started talkingto s.h.i.+bo about it and the whole thing didn't seem so important anymore.Besen didn't come back. He exercised, slept, thought fruitlessly.By the time Cermo unlocked the cell, Toby was going buggy. Besenwas there to embrace him, giving a soulful kiss that promised more thantalk ever could. This time it didn't bother him.., but it didn't kindle muchreaction in him, either. Not Mr. Anytime, no--and he didn't know why.First, he was in a mood to splash around in a shower--the nativeshere had tapped Argo into their own apparently plentiful supply--and getoutside. The stubby city was more open than the s.h.i.+p's helical corridors,and he needed s.p.a.ces, range. He got himself spruced up as fast as hecould.He had expected to be summoned to see the Cap'n, but his comm linewas silent. As he strode through the sloped corridors, fidgety from con finement and depressed in general, n.o.body seemed interested in talking tohim. Teams worked to flush and fix up Argo; even in port, s.h.i.+p work wasnever finished.When he struck up a few conversations, crew members discoveredpressing business elsewhere. Finally he decided to not call Besen. She ]ight not understand that he just wanted some distance for a while, a few urs.

As he approached the main lock something looked funny. There were a dozen of the dwarf natives talking to the watch under-officers, haggling . and trying to cull favors--and they all stopped abruptly as he came near.

The Lieutenant in charge stiffly told Toby that there was a hold on his movements. He wasn't to leave the s.h.i.+p.

That got his back up, of course. He mulled over going to see Quath, to .get the drift of what was happening, and then he remembered the dam- :.'aged farm domes. In the big balloon-shaped dome devoted to grain crops, 'he had once tried to fix a small personnel vent that didn't seal quite right. It probably still didn't, but now there was positive pressure outside.

He got there without anybody paying any obvious attention. Sure enough, the vent popped free with just a little wrench work. Somehow the docking fields held the s.h.i.+p delicately isolated from nearby decks. Soft, but firm if you pushed on them.

They brushed him gently aside, like a good- natured wind holding him aloft.

He slipped down, around the bulging slick skin of the dome, and 185.

dropped into shadows below Argo's hovering hulk. Within moments he had made his way through the reception area, nodding to the bored attendants--and was out, away, into the gray city.It was a shock. Rather than the glum, sour streets he remembered, these thronged with life--stalls and shops and incessant chattering that ricocheted from every avenue. This showed how stilted and planned their reception had been before, all part of their bargaining strategy.Toby wandered, stunned. He had spent days worrying and fretting, and now all that seemed to drop away. It had been many years since he had simply let himself go, ambling aimlessly. Then it struck him--not since the Citadel. Not since the spring celebration when his grandfather Abraham had financed a ball-throwing contest between the generations, at a sports booth in the Citadel Square. Sweaty work, cheering and catcalls, itchy dust from many feet. And there had been hot, piping sweetchurns in paper bags, cool drinks, laughter, grins.The memories made him bite his lip, and he plunged into the busy crowds. A few people gave him startled looks, but most ignored his size and strange jumpsuit. It took a while to get used to markets, deals, the quick calculus of value. What Toby thought of as just plain things had a special word, making them somehow better--”goods.” You got ”goods”

with money, then had to make some other ”good” to replace the money you spent. He wondered how you got a ”bad” or maybe a ”better,” but n.o.body spoke of such things.He had credit, it seemed, from a first payment the judge had given all Bishops days before. He minded it wisely. This wasn't like the bartering between Families he had known back on Snowglade. There you could get a syntho-s.h.i.+rt in trade for two of your self-made, gleaming carbon-steel knives, say. Then you had to find somebody who needed knives before you could get something else. Money was easier, really--you just decided whether the ”good” was worth so many of the little round coins, or not.

Simple.But the bustle this conjured up here! The place was aswarm to bursting with shopkeepers and hawkers, fortune-tellers, merchants, the nimble-fingered and sadly wise, peddlers, grifters, senso artists, back-alley investment counselors, doxies of sullen smiles, men and women with ”goods”

hidden in their s.h.i.+rtsleeves or ballooning pantaloons, and ”bads” alike in their hearts. You could buy anything, from a yellow powder that addicted you for life inside of two minutes, to a strange, luminous alien gla.s.sware--which proved to be the alien itself, when he touched it.Some had learned how to beg for ready cash, too. Sitting in a back alley eating a treat, he watched a one-eyed woman who saw better than most could with two. She was getting dressed for her trade and, for a small coin, let Toby watch. Smooth-faced, she daubed on makeup, adding hideous blue hollows under the eyes. A light, comfortable sheath slid over her calf, making her spider-walk like a cripple.Toby watched her set up shop on a busy corner. People threw her 186.coins and looked away. Somehow the illogic of it--surely there were treatments for such ailments?--didn't rob the trade of a jot of its credibility.

Toby couldn't fathom why, but then glimpsed a possibility. She was providing a form of ego-boosting entertainment. Looking at her miserable sell pa.s.sersby could feel a rush of gladness: troubled they might be, but not that badly. She was in show business.

These weren't the demiG.o.ds who made the Chandeliers, no.

There was a sprawling tangle of streets designed to separate people looking for amus.e.m.e.nt from their cash. Games, booths, things to throw at for a prize--and others where somebody got to throw at you. Dance halls open eternally, fever-bright, with syntho-music that wound around on a long loop, filming the air with p.r.i.c.kly scents and startling pheromone-triggers.

Toby lingered in one, and then in a brief moment when the effects turned off (required by law), he saw what was happening to him and his pocket change. He went back to wandering the streets, which was at least cheaper, though his nervous system kept trying to make his feet circle back.

There were science games and events, operating right next to fortunetellers, a tribute to humanity's ability to believe two contradictory things at once. Hawkers of wonders. Gambling. Feats of strength (care to try?).

Dispensers of drugs and even alcohol, all legal and heavily taxed to offset their probable social effects. Soft drink stands, one offering an ancient dark bubbly fluid that Toby hated and threw away, shocking some kids. They seemed insulted that he hadn't liked the authentic folk treat, KocaKoola, rich and true. But the paprika was enough to turn his tongue.

He began to get the sense of a city again, after years on the move.

Citadel Bishop had been a rambling, dusty pueblo on a canyon floor. It had water-starved gardens and one broad plaza--nothing compared with this.ehad seen ruins of a lesser Arcology at a distance--the mechs were ipping it for materials at the time--and this place resembled that.

The brisk order reminded him of how restful it was to cook a meal, knowing that lamp oil or salt was just around a corner, available. Of how a girl, crossing a street, never paused but swung her head both ways before stepping off the curb. Of how hypnotizing it had been, as a boy, to sit at an upstairs window and watch the people parade past on a sidewalk, oblivious that they were pa.s.sing actors in his imaginary dramas. Cities--a magical compression of humanity, a vessel he could learn.

Toby imagined that his new language-chip must be glowing white-hot, with all the use he was giving it. No set of rigid digital rules can blanket a sprawling, living language, any more than a fine silk handkerchief can cover a slattern. Most of what Toby heard was quick, vivid, direct. Fine for bargaining, but not nuances. He knew as little of those as a dog does of doggerel. Tradeswomen gave him an eye and tried to guess his birthplace from his vowels, thinking he had come from places named Ragpicker, or Avalon, or Tuscaloosa. From his size alone they knew he was 187.

from the Hunker Down Families, shaped by mech war and gravity, but they guessed Jacks or Queens, not Bishops or Knights.There were a band of kids his own age that showed pa.s.sing, mild interest in where he was from, what he had seen--and then quickly focused back on their own amus.e.m.e.nts. Their talk was quick, amusing, slangy, hard to follow. Mostly they just lounged around scruffy back alleys, absorbed, tinkering with gadgets.They wore padded goggles, headphones, gloves and boots, curiously heavy things. Toby tried them on while they snickered knowingly, and found himself immersed in a sensorium of a forest. Big animals came charging out of the thickets, roaring and flas.h.i.+ng huge teeth. A fierce cat-creature with tawny fur bowled Toby over--an odd sensation, because he also could feel himself still standing upright, while his eyes and ears told him that he was tumbling head over heels.After a few minutes he got the knack of this game, though, and started shooting at the animals. They were pretty easy to hit. He tired of that and so tossed aside the weapon he had found in his pseudo-hand. He wrestled the next animal, a big lizard with hot red eyes. It pseudo-scratched and bit him, painful, slas.h.i.+ng--all real enough impressions, but somehow disconnected because Toby knew they weren't anything more than electrical stimuli from a machine, blurred and oddly hollow.Then it struck him--his own in-built systems did this, but finer-grained.

His eyes could ratchet through the spectrum, pick up Dopplered targets, fix ranges and calibrations with the blink of an eyelid, a touch of a tongue to the right tooth. His servos cut in without prompting. All specialized survival gear, added to him before he could do more than squall and fill his diapers.But here, such skills were exotic, down-worlder stuff. Other uses of the same tech were playthings.He threw the big scabby lizard a few times and it threw him, until he got tired of the putrid reek of the leathery green skin, a stench of the rotting meat wedged in its teeth. The kids were there in the jungle around him, shooting and laughing and running around--all without having to do anything for real, or even move their own legs or arms.They liked Toby's idea of wrestling the animals, and one of them got mock-crushed by a huge leprous rat with purple whiskers. But then Toby tired of that, too, and took his helmet off. The kids stayed in the game, though, their arms and legs jerking with fake hits and kicks, fingers tightening around imaginary triggers, killing ghost-creatures that seethed before their blinded eyes. He sat and watched them for a while, slumped into doorways, clasped in momentary action, thrilling to pseudo-lives they could lead as an amus.e.m.e.nt.They were fun kids, but to them the world was just a bunch of signs and symbols and electronic fakery. They had elaborate, hip reasons why their world was better than the crude press of slow-witted reality--a 188.

philosophy, Toby thought, for people who spent too much time indoors.

He wandered off and went for a real walk through a real park and though there were no exciting big green lizards, he liked it better.That was where Quath found him. The hulking ma.s.s did not need to fight the crowds; they got out of the way. And Toby knew she was coming before he even saw her. Into his sensorium pushed a brooding, anxious curtain. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

7.

Animal Spirits <you are=”” sought.=””>”By you, anyway, big-bug,” Toby said to cover his surprise. ”People give you any trouble getting here?””That big, I guess you can not notice whatever you like. Then too, I don't think the devil himself on red stilts would turn many heads here.” Quath clanked and squeaked and many-legged her way into a sitting posture, which Toby knew was a sign that she was serious. Her great head lowered to get under a willowy tree limb. ”You couldn't have gotten in the door,” Toby said with a lightness he didn't feel.”What'd they want to know? I mean, after they'd read our Legacies?”

Toby asked bitterly.<they asked=”” much=”” about=”” the=”” chronicles=”” of=”” the=”” myriapodia.=”” i=”” told=”” them=”” of=”” our=”” weapons,=”” our=”” victories,=”” and=”” what=”” we=”” know=”” of=”” the=”” mechanicals.especially=”” of=”” their=”” interests=”” here.=””>”You told them?”<the philosophs=”” so=”” allow.=”” this=”” is=”” a=”” cusp=”” moment=”” in=”” the=”” long=”” conflict=”” with=”” the=”” mechanicals.=””>”Mechs get in here much?”<they have=”” defenses,=”” as=”” do=”” the=”” myriapodia.=””>”They'd better be pretty fine ones.” Toby liked the lush greenery of this park, but it missed a quiet, slumbering ambience of Citadel Bishop's--at least, in boyhood memory. Neither did this city equal those lost, charming avenues he had toddled along, led by his mother's hand. And he knew that nothing ever could.<they wished=”” to=”” hear=”” of=”” the=”” mechanicals'=”” work=”” on=”” antimatter.=””> 190.

”Aunt who?”

Quath made a metallic rrrrrttttt that might be something like laughter, though Toby had never been able to tell. She made the same sound at times that weren't remotely funny, at least to Toby. When the rrrrrttttt stopped, she told Toby about how ordinary matter had an opposite kind, and if they met, both kinds disappeared in a flash of light.

”Seems dangerous stuff to tinker with,” Toby mused.

<they are=”” studying=”” the=”” small=”” specks=”” which=”” carry=”” currents,=”” the=”” electrons,=”” and=”” especially=”” their=”” opposites,=”” the=”” positrons.=”” clouds=”” of=”” such=”” pairs=”” are=”” created=”” by=”” spinning=”” small=”” stars,=”” the=”” neutron=”” stars.=”” the=”” mechanicals=”” study=”” intensely=”” in=”” such=”” places.=””> Toby shook his head. ”I want to understand this place, Quath--don't trouble my head with tales of stars.”

”That's small talk?” Toby paced in the little grove, listening to the mutter of people and commerce only a block away. Even this sc.r.a.p of the natural world, a few trees and bushes, was enough to make him realize how much he had missed it. ”I think I know what you're working up to, though. My dad wants me back, tail between my legs--right?”

<you state=”” things=”” in=”” animal=”” metaphors.=”” a=”” very=”” primate=”” skill.=””> ”But I'm dead on target?”

<more. he=”” has=”” concluded=”” his=”” negotiations.=”” to=”” gain=”” what=”” he=”” wishes,=”” he=”” needs=”” to=”” trade=”” some=”” items=”” from=”” the=”” s.h.i.+p.=””> ”Let him. After he's bargained away the Legacies, why be choosy?”

<the merchants=”” here=”” are=”” avid=”” for=”” information=”” on=”” the=”” clothing=”” and=”” jewelry=”” of=”” the=”” old=”” bishops.=”” their=”” ”folk=”” art.”=””> ”Fas.h.i.+on, huh?”

a”Hey, you stick on an extra eye or leg fast as I can change my s.h.i.+rt.”

<you seldom=”” change=”” it.=””> ”Hey! I forget, sure, but--”

Toby didn't see why, but he felt something in Quath's manner that made him uneasy. ”Why come looking for me, mother of all c.o.c.kroaches?”

<your father=”” has=”” finished=”” his=”” trading.=”” now,=”” to=”” complete=”” his=”” own=”” ends,=”” he=”” needs=”” one=”” thing=”” more.=””> Toby kicked at a fallen branch. ”Should I care? Let him sell his teeth for it.”

<the important=”” piece=”” only=”” you=”” have.=””> ”Me? I haven't got anything.”

<you carry=”” a=”” personality.=””> ”Sure, but--say, what's my dad been negotiating?”

<they have=”” a=”” different=”” way=”” of=”” death=”” here.=”” an=”” inst.i.tution=”” known=”” as=””></they>< p=””>

the Restorer, or the Preserving Machine. With a tissue sample and amemory reserve, it can recreate any person who once lived.> Toby felt cold, sharp horror strike into him. ”s.h.i.+bo.”

<yes.>”I don't like that.”Toby blushed. He tottered, reeled--and sat down abruptly, head swimming. The air swarmed with blue-white dots. His chest heaved to drag in thick, moist gasps. He knew what Killeen wanted was wrong in some dark, terrible way, but he could not muster arguments. ”I... I don't ”They'll confer with her?””Sure, it'll have to be through me.”His head pounded and his hands clenched, strangely cold, but he made himself think. He had only to turn his attention inward and s.h.i.+bo's Personality rose like a ma.s.sive stony wedge inside his mind.

It is tempting to go back into all that. I will have to think about it.

”What?” he asked her soundlessly. ”But we're so close. I've hardly even started to learn what you're really like. Your memories, I love them.”

They are digital dust.

”They're just as real as, as this gra.s.s, those trees.”