Loralynn Kennakris 1: The Alecto Initiative (13 page)

“Something not right?” she asked, wondering what had just
happened. He turned and smiled at her. “Oh, no—you’re all set. It’s not
palatial but you should be comfortable. It ought to have about everything you
need but if it doesn’t, just ask.”

“Thanks.” Kris did not fully understand but couldn’t bring
herself to inquire further. The things happening to her now were things she’d
seen in vids, but never actually
done
. Being downside was disorienting
and alien—something you did only for a brief stopover—and the thought of
staying
here was daunting. For starters, it involved so many weird details . . .
“How many people?”

It took a moment for Huron to understand what she meant.
“Just you. No one else.”

“You mean my own bunk?”

“I mean your own
bed
. In your own apartment.”

“Oh.” Unaccountably, that thought made Kris shiver. Alone?
She’d never actually been
alone
—not that she could remember. Even back
on Parson’s Acre. “Umm . . . Ok.”

Huron smiled and it was oddly, touchingly gentle. “You’ll do
fine, Kris. And if you do need anything, you have my card. And Mariwen’s.”

He tapped the window and the driver pulled out. Kris looked
up through the transparent port in the car’s armored roof at the alien stars
shining through wisps of alien cloud in an alien sky. She swallowed hard. And
said nothing.

Mare Nemeton
Nedaema, Pleiades Sector

The apartment was unbelievably huge; bigger than the
dwellings on Parson’s Acre, bigger than almost any of the downside places
they’d made brief stays at. It had two actual sleeping rooms, a large living
area, a kitchen full of food that could automatically be prepared to order with
an alcove to eat it in that was itself the size a small cabin, and another room
that was just left over.

There were two heads—
bathrooms
, they called them
here. Incredibly both had showers and one had an actual
tub
in it. She
looked for the water ration and couldn’t find any. Everywhere she’d been had a
water ration. Parson’s Acre had had a generous allowance and this being a
Homeworld where they had actual tubs it had to be even better, but she still
wondered how much it was. She assumed someone would tell her before she used it
up, even though she thought that was pretty unlikely to happen.

There were beds and sofas and chairs and tables and
knickknacks and decorations on the walls and a huge console. One of the
sleeping rooms—
bedrooms
—had a few changes of clothes in an autovalet
fancier than any she’d ever seen. And they had given her a xel and showed her
how to call on the bots if she needed anything.

Kris wandered around feeling lost for half an hour. There
was nothing to
do
. The console offered a truly bewildering array of
options but she was just too tired to deal with it and recalling the news
feeds, she shut it off. A little while later she was trying to figure out the
environmental controls and the walls of the living space turned a pale peach.
It actually made her jump.

“What the hell?” she muttered, recovering. She’d never seen
that, not even in vids. She poked again and watched the walls fade to a pale
sea green while the kitchen turned a nice sunny yellow. “
Jeezus
Christ.”
A few pokes more and she realized what she was poking a palette control that
would change the walls, ceiling, trim, and borders—even the carpet. After she
turned the carpet a perfectly hideous pattern of garish bleeding rainbow
colors, she decided enough was enough.

“Fuck’n
weird
!” Shaking her head, she reset
everything to neutral. Then she walked over to the long couch and regarded it
with the utmost suspicion. What did
it
do? Walk? Speak? Morph? Could she
be confident it would remain a couch if she sat on it?

Unwilling to risk it, she sat on the floor and took out the
calling card Mariwen had given her. Huron had showed her how they worked when
he made her one of her own in the car. He had her press her thumb to the
surface for about ten seconds and then it lit up with a soft glow. It didn’t
need to be activated—it just didn’t work off-planet, he told her. “Not these
anyway,” he added, implying that some did. Kris had put it in her pocket and
noticed it felt slightly warm. It still did.

She tapped Mariwen’s card on her palm. Mariwen was back home
now—back with her wife—back where she belonged—and there was no telling what
sort of reception she might receive. But she had made Kris promise to call. And
Kris
had
promised . . .

She put the card away and, not wanting the try to figure out
the kitchen yet, ordered dinner and waited for it to arrive. Eating without
tasting much (the lack of meat still annoyed her) she took out Mariwen’s card
again and fidgeted with it. A few days spent together on the ship; a few more
days in rehab. Pretty intense days but . . . did she really think she knew
Mariwen at all?

She bit the head off an alien vegetable that tasted faintly
of citrus. Kris new very little about society off a slave ship, but she knew a great
deal about playing games and playing roles and the people who did both. No
slave survived long without gaining that knowledge—without being able to
manipulate and detect manipulation. Kris had excelled at both of those on
Harlot’s
Ruse
and yet she didn’t know what to think about Mariwen.

Mariwen
was
different but she didn’t know
how
she was different. Mariwen was paid vast amounts to assume a role and
manipulate people’s feelings and everyone knew it and no one cared and they all
went along with it, very happily. It was all false but it wasn’t. There was
something—there
seemed
to be something—in Mariwen that made it all
okay. Something essential and true. You couldn’t really touch it or get to know
it, but it was there and when Mariwen was playing a role, however brazenly or
subtlety, she also seemed to be saying:
the real me is better
. But there
was no malice in it—no hurtful teasing. Not even conceit. It was just a
condition—an essential fact that had to be accepted.

And yet . . . Kris stroked the little smiling holographic
image in the corner and shivered slightly. There had been times on the ship—more
than a few times—when Kris felt . . . no, when she could have
sworn
that she was talking to the
real
Mariwen—no roles, no games, no
filters. Just Mariwen. Was that possible?

She tapped
CALL
.

Mariwen answered at once, her face radiating pleasure.
“Kris!”

“Hi.” Kris’s voice faltered—she hadn’t been expecting a
greeting quite that enthusiastic. “I . . . I promised I’d call. I hope I’m not
interrupting,”

“Oh no!
No
. Of course not. I was so hoping you’d
call. I didn’t know when they were letting you out.”

“Just this AM actually. Huron brought me down.”

An expression Kris couldn’t catch flickered across Mariwen’s
face. “That was thoughtful of him. You got a place and everything?”

“Yeah. They assigned this . . . apartment to me.”

“Apartment?” Mariwen’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Not the
short-term quarters then.”

“I dunno. Maybe not. It’s . . . big.” She laughed,
self-conscious. “I don’t know my way around it yet. The walls change color. It
has a
tub
.”

Mariwen laughed, eyes sparkling. “Of
course
, it has a
tub.”

Of course
? Kris could not help but grin. “Anyway, how
are you? Everything going okay?”

Mariwen’s face fell into a sort of annoyed pout. “Well,
things are certainly
going
. You’d think I came back from the dead or
something. No one will leave me alone. And then there are these big hearings.
Now they want me to testify—”

“Hearings? On what?”

Mariwen shook her head, eyes rolling. “The slaving problem.
They’ve been planned for—I don’t know—months. Grand Senators, the Archon—”

“Mari!” a woman’s voice called from the background.
“Sweetie, are you forgetting we have to go in just a few minutes? They’ll be
waiting.”

Mariwen’s face froze for a moment, then fell as she mouthed
a single word. “Sorry. Just a—” She turned and as she did so, the line muted
and Kris saw her speaking to the other woman. Kris didn’t know what she’d seen
for a second in Mariwen’s face but she didn’t like it. Mariwen turned back to
her. “Sorry—I
do
have to go. Look, I’ll be in touch, okay? Take care of
yourself.” And she cut the line without waiting for Kris to respond.

Kris sat for a moment, unmoving, feeling that the bottom had
just dropped out of her stomach. She slid the card onto a side table, got up,
walked slowly into a bedroom and slammed the door.

 *     *     *

Lora Comargo, inserting an earring, came and stood by
Mariwen’s shoulder as the line dropped. “Who was that?”

“A girl I met on the ship.” Mariwen looked at the blank card
for a few moments before putting it away. “She’s nice. Her name’s Loralynn.”

“Pretty.”

“Yeah. Unusual too.”

“I meant the girl.” Lora put her hand on Mariwen’s shoulder.
“Is she sweet?”

“No.” Mariwen stood up, turned and gave Lora a quick hug.
“No, I wouldn’t say she’s sweet. Exactly.”

Lora watched Mariwen as she went into the next room for her
coat. “Exactly? How
exactly
?”

Mariwen came back, shrugging the coat on. It was almost
floor length and the rich chameleon-silk brocade swirled about her beautifully.
“She was the captain’s—” She paused to fumble with the buttons, her fingers
clumsy. Lora came over and started to button it for her.

“The
captain’s
?”

“Of the—the . . . Of the slave ship.”

“Oh.”

Mariwen nodded. Lora saw her swallow twice as she finished
with the coat buttons.

Lora gave her wife a quick kiss. “It’s okay, sweetie. She’ll
be fine now.” She picked up a collection of cards, keys, and a small wallet
from a low ornate table. “Ready? Don’t forget your purse.”

“Oh.” Mariwen left the room to get it. When she came back
Lora was holding open one of the tall, paneled double-entry doors. “Got
everything?”

“I think so.”

“Your medicine?”

Mariwen glanced quickly into her purse. “Yes.”

“Okay.” Lora ushered her through and out onto a wide,
columned portico. Beyond, a garden split by a broad flagstone path stretched
for fifty meters to a low wall that supported the invisible security fence.
Outside a wrought-iron gate, a groundcar waited, three men standing by it. Lora
slipped her arm under Mariwen’s as they went down the wide shallow portico
steps to the path.

Two steps on, Lora swore softly. “Mari, honey, I forgot my
card. Run down there please and tell them I’ll just be a second?” She turned
back to the house and patted Mariwen’s arm. “Sorry!”

As Mariwen walked toward the car, Lora ran up the steps and
let herself in. Once inside, she checked the console, saw that Mariwen was
standing with the three men by the car and pulled a blank card out of her
pocket. She tapped a short code on it. A central icon lit red, blinked for a
few seconds and then cycled to green.

“Get me Larson,” Lora said quietly. A man’s voice answered
with a single syllable. “Larson, we may have a situation here.”

*     *     *

Kris slept badly that first night. The silence, the
solidness, kept jarring her awake. All ships, and even space stations, had a
note, a sound, a vibration that you were always aware of even if you couldn’t
hear it. A sense of moving, of being alive, that produced an ingrained
understanding, and eventually a pure instinct, that if it ever stopped, you
were dead. Without it, she lurched out of her dreams again and again—gasping
for air, lunging for hatch dogs that were not there, frantically looking for
gauges and valves that did not exist—never fully awake. Then falling back
against the pillow, falling down again into the dream—the dream where hatches
blew and the ship’s brittle skin split open like a rotten fruit, spilling out
men like seeds into that utter lack of anything at all to just float float 
float
. . .

Finally, she did wake up and saw a promise of light through
the curtains: the beginning of Nedaema’s 37-hour day. She got up and splashed
her face with the incredible treat of pure cold water and went to the kitchen.
She found a tuberous thing with a yellowish skin and white flesh, embedded in
what she took to be a butter sauce. She zipped the clear foil to heat it and a
few minutes later was eating it straight from the package with a spoon.

It
was
butter, but unlike any butter she’d ever
known. It was silky and amazingly rich with a clean taste spiked with
unidentifiable savory flavors that went with the tuber outstandingly well.
Although initially she had not felt hungry, she ate it all, wolfing the last
bites and scooping out the remaining sauce with her fingers and licking it off.
Then she went to the larger bathroom and stared defiantly at the tub. Well,
fuck
it
. She was going to fill the thing, goddammit, and she was going to fill
it with
warm
water!

She started the taps, adjusted the temperature and stripped,
feeling rebellious and almost sinful. Then she slid gingerly into the inviting
liquid, the absurd inconceivable luxury of
gallons
of warm water—feeling
the thrill as her ankles, calves, and thighs submerged, and then plunged her
torso in, all the way up to the shoulders. Water slopped and splashed
alarmingly and she
did not care
.

Leaning back, wetting the hair that fell half-way to her
waist, she closed her eyes, let go a shuddering sigh and settled deeper onto
the tub, feeling the warmth invade and caress her muscles. And within minutes,
she was fast asleep.