Forge of Heaven (52 page)

“No.”

3 4 0 • C . J . C h e r r y h

“Can you make it clear to the Ila in some reasonable way that trouble is proliferating up here, that people have died needlessly, and if she knows anything, or if she’s in contact with any illicit tap in our area, she should tell us and give us identities. This Third Movement group has taken her name as their cause, if what you suspect is true, Earth’s heard about it, and they’re trying to insinuate its own investigation onto the station. They’ve subverted the governor’s security, and the
ondat
may be making some move, and if they haven’t yet, they’re likely to. Doesn’t anything in that set of facts catch her notice? It had damned well better, Ian, or I don’t know what comes next up here.”

“I’ll inform her of all that. And I’m trying to prevent another such outburst on the system. As you point out, Marak is likely going to throw the
next hell-fit. He’s cold, it’s raining, he thought he had the beshti, but they
took out to another terrace, just out of his reach, while he was incapacitated with that tap-spike, and his area is becoming more and more hazardous. He’s well out of patience.”

“I can’t help him. He’s put himself where we haven’t even got good overhead image and we can’t get through to him reliably. If we start trying to direct him up that maze and then lose contact, he could be worse off than he is. Best he uses his own instincts.”

“He wants the boy back, Antonio. If you could just do that, you could
do a great deal toward getting communication calmed down all round.”

“I assure you I’m trying to get him back. Ask the Ila, while you’re at it. Is there something else she hasn’t told us? Has she been passing notes to this illicit tap source, or has she been fighting it? I’d estimate she hasn’t been fighting it, if the whole system hasn’t blown up. I need to know if that illicit tap is her doing.”

“I’ll try to get your answer. It all depends on the Ila’s goodwill, which
may be extremely ruffled at the moment. In any case, I’ll be back as soon
as I have any information.”

“Thanks, Ian.”

What else could he say? An honest answer depended on the Ila’s personal comfort and how far she thought she could annoy them.

It depended on her idea of how much damage she could safely cause them and then back off untouched. He knew of incidents in the past, long before his lifetime, that had wreaked havoc on the powers of Concord, all thanks to her.

Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 3 4 1

And what could they do with her if she’d violated quarantine?

Isolate her? She was already isolated. They’d bet everything they held dear that she was isolated.

Now she’d found a way to evolve her tap and God knew what other nanotech into something they hadn’t detected until she did it with someone who wasn’t even on the planet. His technicians said the thing had hopped frequencies. They’d never seen the like.

And if she was passing notes to conspirators up here—

If there was a cell here, if she’d found her way into the common taps, or if a rogue tap in the Project had helped her—she could have communicated all sorts of technology elsewhere. Her frequency-hopping nanocele, this recent innovation, could be on Orb by now. It could be all the way to Earth.

WO B B L E A N D WO B B L E . Procyon knew he didn’t hew a straight line down the street. He stopped and rubbed his eyes, trying to drive the lights out of them.

Buzz. Buzz.

And voices.
“Brazisss,”
one said, and he tried to answer it.

“Sir?”

“Procyon!” Not from the tap, from behind him. He turned awk-wardly, caught his balance, seeing a haze of blue and gold, a presence that reached out and held his arms.

“Brother . . .”

It was Ardath, Ardath, in public, on the street. “I’ve got troubles,” he began to say. “No. Don’t be here.”

But Ardath had help, one dark, and one gold, who took him each by an arm and told him come along, now, no argument.

Direction, from someone who could see clearly, someone he knew was on his side.

“He’s fevered,” one said, the darkness. “You can feel the heat in him.”

“It’s a mod.” A female voice, the gold. “No question it’s a mod taking hold.”

Light flash. The terrible pain in his head made his eyes water as he tried to walk with them. He couldn’t coordinate an objection. He just breathed, and walked, and hoped they would get him home.

3 4 2 • C . J . C h e r r y h

They went through a doorway, into shadow, a relief, at least for his eyes. He could smell alcohol, old beer, not his sister’s ordinary level of establishment. He heard synth-wood chairs moving on a synth-wood floor, voices that echoed around and around. It was Auntie Murphy’s, he thought. He knew the older, rougher bars up and down the street. It smelled like Auntie Murphy’s.

“Hush,” Ardath said, and a chair scraped. “Sit down. Sit down, brother, and catch your breath. Your mods are having a war with this thing. Help them settle. I’ll get you something to drink.”

He fell into the chair he hoped was under him, finding a welcome table under his elbows. He was so tired. Sickness and fever buzzed in his veins. Mods, they said. And he didn’t have mods this fierce. Not what the government had ever given him. Panic beat in his veins, riding his pulse.

Commotion around him diminished. He heard his sister’s voice somewhere, giving directions.

A scrape of a chair. “Stupid brother.” She was back. She shoved a cold baggette into his hand, and pulled out the straw, bringing it to his lips. “Drink it all down.” Her hand was on his back.

He drank it. The stuff didn’t taste that bad. Tasted of salt, which he wanted, needed terribly, chased by the complex tang of other minerals.

He grew dizzy. Put his head down on his folded arms. Didn’t know how long he sat there, trying to keep down what he’d swallowed.

A little improvement in the nausea. But the flashes in his skull multiplied, blinded him. The buzzing began to make words in his ears, flat-sounding words, like a synthesized voice.

“Marak,”
it said, or he imagined it said.
“Brazis.”
Over and over again.

Then a different voice:
“No question he’s alive, sir. Procyon Stafford
is the most notorious face on Grozny right now.”

“Procyon! Can you hear? Answer me!”

Tap. Brazis.

“Yes, sir.” He sat up and tried. He tried desperately, and saw and heard nothing but static bursts.

“Procyon,” Ardath said, right at his ear, hand on his arm; and he blinked through the illusory lights and saw his sister’s face Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 3 4 3

inches from his, the blue and the gold cleared back, now, to show the Arden-mask. “Procyon.” Cool, anxious fingers brushed across his forehead. “Who did this?” Anguish. “Who’d have dared do this to you?”

Did he know that answer? Did he know anything, at all? But he remembered what he’d seen in the mirror, that mark, that horrid mark. He’d looked to her for help, and saw by the look on her face he’d brought her more problems than she remotely knew what to do with. Or should deal with. “I fell down. I think I fell down the rabbit hole.” Child’s story. “But it’s not funny, Arden.”

“I know.” A brush of her cool fingers across his wounded forehead. “I know it’s not.”

“Somebody shot the ambassador. But I couldn’t. I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.”

“Idiot,” she said. “I know that. But they’re looking for you all over.”

“Down the rabbit hole. Only not full of rabbits. Scary things.

Like the old story. Jabberwocky.”

“What’s this mark?” She touched the wound on his forehead, which felt like a bad burn. “Who’s our enemy, Procyon? Who’s crazy enough to do this?”

“Bad mods.” It was all he could think of, the card that he’d been dealt in a quarrel he didn’t understand. And then did. “The Earther. Looking for illicits.” A sick feeling, his head aching with pressure and dizziness that seemed to center in that mark. “Found them, found them, haven’t I?”

“Algol,” Ardath said. “Damn him,
damn
him.”

Algol was almost certainly in the middle of it. She was right in that. And if it was bad mods, if his body was trying to organize a defense, he was holding his own. Barely.

“There’re slinks out in force,” Spider said, a voice from the shadows of the room. “Station security’s grabbed a lot of Algol’s people. They got Capricorn.”

And Arden: “Whoever the slinks haven’t got,
we
get. Find Algol wherever he hides.”

“No.” It was a government quarrel. Not hers. It was an attack on the Project, nothing his sister could deal with. Procyon reached out and took hold of Arden’s hand. “No. It’s too dangerous.”

“That fool’s touched my brother,” Arden said. “He goes down.”

3 4 4 • C . J . C h e r r y h

“No. Listen.” The stuff that she’d given him was the right thing, to supply the warring nanoceles trying to pull the chemicals they needed out of his bloodstream. Now the threat to his sister roused up his adrenaline, and he began to feel for two breaths as if he could think, as if, doing that, if he could just hold on to his focus, he might be able to function. “No, there’s more, Arden. There’s a lot more than that. Not street business. Not the Trend. You can’t settle Algol. He doesn’t care about us.”

“Trust me,” his sister said, his little sister, his naïve little sister, whose little wars were fought with cold looks and whispers and the turn of a shoulder.

“No, not with this!” He saw her turn away from him, and he seized her arm. “Listen to me.
Listen,
Arden: I work for the government.”

She laughed and patted his restraining hand. “Oh, brother, that’s old news.”

“Listen. There’s trouble you don’t want to know, I swear to you, you don’t want to know. The ambassador’s shot, there’s something going on with the government taps . . .”

“This ambassador person is alive, in hospital, sleeping off a not very major wound. He’s been exposed to Concord now, poor dear, so he has to stay, and he’s cursed all the doctors, but he’ll have to come around to our view of the universe, won’t he, or he’ll be very unhappy in his life.”

Her information was newer than his, clearly. It made her too confident. “Listen,” he pleaded with her. “Someone’s shot him.

That’s the point, Ardath. Someone shot him. This is guns.”

“And we know who would bring guns, don’t we?”

“Algol’s holed up in the Michaelangelo,” Isis said, and others had gathered close, listening, a ring of shadows in the dim light of the bar.

“I’ve got to tell you.” He made up his mind to that, because she knew too much, and not enough. “I need to talk to you. You. I need to tell you things.”

“Back,”
she said to those hovering about, moving them with a wave of her hand, until there was a clear space, and he had to go through with it. “So say, brother. What? What do I need to know?”

Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 3 4 5

He took a breath, shaky, all over. “It’s
not
just Earth. Marak’s in a fix out in the desert, the Ila’s breaking in on us, and these people, these people who shot the ambassador—we’re dealing with the Movement.”

Ardath’s flickering mask, gold and blue, actually retreated to her hairline and lost itself. “Honest truth?” Childish question.

“Hope to die,” he answered, childhood oath, making the old slight move across his heart. “I’m not lying. I’m a Project tap. I’ve got to get home, Ardath. I’ve got to call people to take care of this.”

“Well, if there’s Movement, we know who they are, don’t we?”

“Ardath, for God’s sake . . .”

“Your government slinks came looking for me, for
me,
brother. They wouldn’t say why. They didn’t say someone had done
that
to you.”

“This.” He lifted a hand to the burn on his forehead. Flash of dark. Something moving. He didn’t want to see that. “This—no.

Not them.” She started to turn away from him and he caught her hand, too hard. “Ardath, what I want you to do—what I want you to do is get word to Brazis. Tell Brazis. He’ll send someone. He’ll take care of Algol.”

“And I just drop my brother down another rabbit hole, where maybe he won’t come out the same, or come out, ever. No thanks.”

“I’m already not the same.”

“You listen to
me,
brother. I know where our problems are. I know who’d be crazy enough to have done that to you.”

“You don’t know! This.” He touched the welt on his forehead.

“This—I was in a place. I was in a dark place. And it happened there. Ardath, I don’t give a damn about Algol. Help me get a message out. Let Brazis handle it.”

“No.” She wasn’t believing him. “Not to take you away where you may not come out. Not to come tramping through the Street, breaking up everything. You’ll see, brother. You’ll see what we can do about fools.”

“Ardath, no.”

“Movement? Entirely déclassé.”

“No,” he said, and got up onto his feet, or tried to. And the buzzes accelerated, like a tap trying to come into focus. Buzz.

Buzz. Buzz.
“Brazissss.”
Click. Click.
“Kekellen.”
Hiss. Crackle.

3 4 6 • C . J . C h e r r y h

Brazis.

Kekellen.

A dark gold mask, a purse-mouthed face in the dim light, with the smell of ammonia. Oblong lenses glinted silver, hiding the eyes. Cleaner-bots, all around him, the station’s fearsome secret.

And he was aware of something else of a sudden. Of a wild presence . . . a dangerous presence in his head.

Hiss. “Braziss.”

“What is this?”
Angrily. The Ila’s voice.
“Who is this?”

Spike. Procyon felt it coming, convulsed, tangled with the chair and fell back into it, his head near exploding.

“Procyon!” he heard his sister say. “Procyon! Hold on!”

“ S I R . S I R ! ” Ernst broke protocols, broke through the door, pale-faced. “Eberly, at the hospital. The ambassador’s having a seizure.”

Reaux sat at his desk, stunned.

“They say, sir, they say he could die.”

“ S I R .” Dianne sent Brazis a physical call. “Technical’s on.”