Curse of the Iris (19 page)

“Oh,” Yana said. “Well, can we see Aunt Carina? We have news!”

Parsons rarely if ever asked about news, but they were still mildly disappointed that he betrayed no curiosity.

“Your aunt is preparing for tomorrow's meeting,” he said. “I will tell her you are in the living area. But you may have to wait awhile.”

He was correct—five minutes dragged into ten, and then ten dragged into fifteen, and still there was no sign of Carina.

“Calm down,” Carlo said, annoyed by the
rat-a-tat-tat
of Yana's fingers drumming on the table. “You look like you're about to go into orbit.”

“You heard what Loris said! We know where the treasure is, and we have the scanner we need to get it. He told us it's—”

“Under old Josef's home,” Carlo said. “Which was at the southern end of the Sidon Flexus. I heard him, Yana. But Pieter knew where his father lived—so why didn't he dig the treasure up?”

“Because he never had a signal to receive,” Yana said.

Carlo shook his head. “I've been thinking more about that. Pieter spent his whole life searching for that treasure, and
he
didn't think it was on Europa. And remember, he thought someone had stolen it.”

Yana tossed her head in exasperation. “Loris said that was crazy talk. The signal's transmitting—don't you want to at least take a look? Let's tell Aunt Carina and then go get it.”

“I don't think it's going to be quite that simple,” Carlo said, getting to his feet and stretching. “I'm going to put in some time on the simulator—I feel like my flying's getting rusty already.”

“Don't complain when we head for Europa without you,” Yana said.

“I'll take my chances.”

Carina finally appeared after another couple of minutes and sat quietly as Yana recounted what Loris had said.

“Yana, slow down and listen to me,” she said. “Going to Europa isn't like hopping over to Port Town. We'd have to get through the ice into the ocean and then get out again. We don't have the equipment or training for that.”

Yana brought her fists down on the table, rattling the plates and glasses. Parsons poked his head out of the kitchen, looking mildly concerned, then disappeared from view again.

“None of you are taking this seriously—it's just another stupid exercise for the stupid Log! You lectured us about precautions, and gave us currency chips, and let us go to Port Town, but you never thought we'd get anywhere, so you never bothered making a plan in case we did. That signal will stop transmitting in less than eleven days. If you won't let us actually look for the treasure, why don't you just lock us in the simulator room until then? That would at least be more honest!”

Carina ran her fingers through her gray hair but said nothing. Yana started to say something else, then stopped, her shoulders slumped.

“Yana—” Tycho began.

“Now you're going to tell me I'm being disrespectful, and then that will go in the Log,” Yana said in a small but still angry voice.

She was probably right. And Tycho's instincts told him to stand aside while his sister kept letting her turbulent emotions lead her into further mistakes. The only problem was that he agreed with Yana—and why should she be punished for being brave enough to say what they were both feeling?

But then his aunt surprised him.

“I'm not going to tell you that, and nothing's going in the Log,” Carina said. “Because you're not entirely wrong. We didn't take this very seriously. And we did treat it like an exercise.”

Yana looked up at her aunt, wary but hopeful.

“But you're not entirely
right
, either,” Carina said.

“It's different now that we've learned . . . ,” Yana said, but subsided at the sight of her aunt's upraised hand.

“I'll speak to our cousins at the Water Authority about borrowing an underwater suit and an impeller sled—they're used for well inspections here on Callisto. And I can set up simulator exercises for training with that equipment.”

“Simulator exercises?” Yana asked unhappily.

“If you do get to Europa, you'll have to know how to maneuver underwater. In the meantime, tomorrow your parents are headed to Ganymede. Isn't that where Lord Sicyon lives?”

Yana nodded.

“Well, it wouldn't do to find the
Iris
cache and have to give him his share, would it?”

“I think Lord Sicyon has enough money already,” Tycho said with a smile.

“You two may not believe it, but I do remember what this is like—and so does your mother,” Carina said. “She knows, just like I do, that it's hard enough being bridge crew without having to spend every hour thinking about what you did wrong and what that means for your future.”

She smiled at them, but the smile didn't reach her eyes. Tycho saw the hurt there and thought of what their aunt might have added—that what was even harder, so much harder, was reaching that future and then having it ripped away from you forever by a few terrible minutes.

Renting a grav-sled on Ganymede cost nearly twice as much as it did on Callisto, but Tycho supposed he shouldn't be surprised—the pressure domes of Tros, the moon's largest settlement, were filled with luxury retail shops that made Port Town look like a refugee camp.

“To your average Ganymedan noble, a refugee camp is exactly what Port Town is,” Carlo said after Tycho shared this observation from the grav-sled's backseat.

Gaining an audience with Honorius Saxton-Koenig, properly addressed as Lord Sicyon, had been surprisingly easy. The Hashoones had claimed to be students making an interactive documentary about notable families of the Jovian Union, which led Lord Sicyon's personal secretary to grant them a thirty-minute interview at his estate, located on the edge of the jumble of scarps and grooves known as Sicyon Sulcus.

“I'm doing the talking this time, right?” Carlo asked as the grav-sled bumped down the track into the shadowy hollow that contained Lord Sicyon's estate.

“Of course,” said Yana, tugging irritably at the collar of her formal tunic. “Of the three of us, you're the obvious choice to make small talk with a snooty nobleman.”

Carlo, busy activating the grav-sled's transponders, either missed the remark or chose to ignore it. Yana turned, stuck out her tongue at Tycho, and grinned.

The grav-sled garage at Sicyon Sulcus looked the same as the one at Darklands, but all comparisons between the two homesteads ceased when the Hashoones emerged from the garage airlock.

The pressure dome they found themselves in was small but paneled in wood and filled with greenery—small trees reached from thick pots toward warm yellow lights overhead, while planters were full of flowers, with ferns and ivy spilling over the sides.

Carlo ran his finger over the paneling and raised his eyebrows, impressed.

“Real wood,” he said. “Must cost a fortune.”

“The floor's wood too,” Yana said, taking a nervous step back onto the concrete apron leading to the garage. “I don't think we're supposed to walk on it.”

A door slid aside on the other side of a dome, and a man entered, dressed in a formal suit of black velvet that seemed to ripple and shimmer in the light.

“Lord Sicyon?” Tycho asked.

The man's eyebrows shot skyward.

“His butler,” he said, dipping his chin in a minuscule bow. “Calvert, at your service. If you'll follow me?”

They passed through two more domes, each more lavish than the last, walking on carpets and wood floors and gawking at paintings, mirrors in gilt frames, and shelves crammed with old books. Tycho spotted objects he'd never seen except on a screen—a piano, a jukebox, a grandfather clock, an easel, a chandelier. He felt like he was in some kind of trivia game or an interactive drama of old Earth, and he desperately wanted to stop and pick up everything and examine it for hours or days or until he got tired of it, which he suspected would be never.

Calvert led them through the main dome to a door of wood edged in gilt, which led to a small study with thick carpets, tall bookcases, and a long sofa made of sumptuous-looking scarlet material. An ancient desk stood against one wall, with a top-of-the-line mediapad set in a cradle atop it. Papers were scattered across the desk—crisp white paper, not scrap turned beige by endless recycling.

“Make yourselves comfortable,” Calvert said. “May I fetch you something to drink?”

“Sparkling water, if you please,” Carlo said.

Calvert dipped his chin, then turned to Yana.

“Jump-pop?”

“I shall have to see,” the butler said. “And for you, Master Hashoone?”

“Um . . . do you have any juice?” Tycho asked.

“Orange, apple, cranberry, carrot, acai, mango, or pomegranate?” Calvert asked.

“Whatever you think is best,” Tycho managed.

Calvert glided away as the Hashoones sank into the sofa. Tycho couldn't resist feeling the cushion, then poking at it. Embarrassed, he looked up to find Yana and Carlo doing the same thing.

Something began chirping, and Yana grabbed Tycho's arm. He followed her gaze to a cage on a stand near the desk. Inside it, several bright forms darted back and forth.

“Birds,”
Yana said, getting to her feet and crossing the study to stare in fascination. “
Real
birds. Oh, they're
beautiful
. Come see!”

Tycho got to his feet to look at this latest wonder, but before he could join his sister, a man entered the study—though Tycho had to look twice to convince himself it really was a man. He was tall and wore a black uniform—vest, tight-fitting short-sleeved shirt and trousers, polished boots. His forearms were cradled in metal, with one hand wrapped around the chrome barrel of a carbine and the other forming a fist around wicked-looking spikes that crackled with brilliant light. A mirrored lens hid his right eye, and a halo of wires crowned his head.

The new arrival's eyes jumped from Carlo to Tycho and then to Yana, indicator lights flaring to life on the harness around his head.

“No need for alarm,” said a deep voice in a Ganymede accent. “Matthias is my bodyguard.”

The voice belonged to another man, one with close-cropped gray hair and a mustache, wearing a bright blue jacket and a lemon-yellow waistcoat. On his shoulder sat a bird with bright red feathers and a hooked black beak, shifting uneasily back and forth.

“Is that a parrot?” asked a wide-eyed Yana.

“Indeed it is,” said Lord Sicyon, crossing to the desk and settling the bird on a perch of dark wood. “And those lovelies in their cage are tanagers.”

The parrot cocked its head at the visitors and squawked, provoking a flurry of chirps from the songbirds. Matthias came to stand beside Lord Sicyon, arms held loosely at his sides. Tycho noticed that he left enough room to bring his weapons up without clipping either the desk or the man he was guarding.

“Please sit,” Lord Sicyon said as Calvert arrived with their drinks. Carlo introduced himself and his siblings while Tycho took a sip of the deep-red juice. The smell of it and the way it felt on his tongue were like nothing he'd ever experienced.

The parrot squawked again, while its master looked them over with mild curiosity.

Tycho eyed the bodyguard, then tried to cover a start of surprise. The man's forearms weren't cradled in metal, as he'd first thought. Rather, the metal was fused with the skin, just as the mirrored eyepiece was set in his face, and the sensors from the metal crown plugged into sockets near his ears and nose.

Lord Sicyon saw Tycho's gaze and nodded.

“Matthias is outfitted with military-grade hardware—a rapid-fire cannon and an energy prod,” he said. “Plus his reflexes and senses have been enhanced dramatically. He has superior hearing, a remarkable sense of smell that references a state-of-the-art chemical-signature database, and eyes—quite literally—in the back of his head. I'd give you a demonstration of his capabilities, but it would be a shame to burn down my study. You've no doubt seen prosthetics used for those who have suffered injuries that can't be regenerated, but this is next-generation technology. And of course the augmentations were voluntary.”

Tycho tried not to look horrified. Huff's body was more metal than flesh, but he needed his cybernetic parts to stay alive. This man had apparently changed himself of his own free will, agreeing to have parts of his own body carved away and replaced with machinery.

“If you'll forgive my asking, Lord Sicyon, why do you need a bodyguard amid such . . . peaceful surroundings?” Carlo asked.

“You're no doubt aware of my work with Gibraltar Artisans' research-and-development division?” Lord Sicyon asked.

When Carlo shook his head, Lord Sicyon's handsome features darkened.

“No? I would have thought you'd be more prepared, given the subject of your documentary.”

“We like to have our subjects tell us what they do in their own words,” Yana said quickly. “It makes for a more natural presentation.”

“I suppose,” Lord Sicyon said. “Well then. I control a substantial stake in Gibraltar Artisans, headquartered on this moon . . . say, shouldn't you be recording this?”

“Oh, of course,” Yana said, blushing. She took her mediapad out of her bag under Matthias's watchful gaze, then held it up in front of her, aimed at Lord Sicyon.

“That's what you're using?” Lord Sicyon asked, looking bewildered.

“It's just a student project,” Yana said.

Lord Sicyon shook his head.

“Anyway, Gibraltar Artisans supplies military technology to the Jovian Union and is one of our greatest assets in the struggle with Earth,” he said. “Matthias here is the product of decades of research into mental and physical augmentation for personal security and defense.”

Lord Sicyon smiled, revealing an expanse of white teeth. “So understand that I'm not just a shareholder—I'm also a product tester.”