This Alien Shore (52 page)

It wasn't there.

Across the light-years of inspace and outspace, across the vast synapses of the human brain, he stared at the code he knew all too well. This wasn't Lucifer-X, his own safe creation. This was another spore. The real thing. And from the way it was held still in the heart of what had been the dead zone, he was willing to bet this was what his quarry had been working with, hidden inside Northstar's system.

Heart pounding, he gathered up the deadly spore in a network of code so tightly woven that not even
it
could slip through. He'd never been this close to the thing before without a protective interface between them. But he could hardly go away and leave it here. Any minute now Northstar's security would be storming through the place, repairing crucial pathways, clearing out debris.

Slowly, carefully, cradling the killer to him, he backed out the way he had come. Through the sickening chaos of the outernet, which these people called home. Across the vistas of his own fear, cold sweat-drenched body sitting rigid behind its desk, headset and the hair beneath made clammy by the exudates of physical tension.

Carefully, as one might handle a bomb, he outloaded the spore that he had rescued and quickly sealed it up in a sterile chip. His wellseeker told him to go get food and drink, and to take a bath. Instead he picked up the chip and headed out to his special lab, where he might study it in safety.

Five hours later, he knew that the spore had been altered, and not by the Guild.

Six hours later, one of his sniffers returned to tell him where it had come from.

 

C
ALM WAS the outward world of Guildmaster Ian Kent. So calm. A world rendered in shades of gray upon gray, a tranquilized universe of ordered shapes and emotions. Peaceful gray halls with soft-edge shadows. Skylights of pearl and mist. Human flesh rendered in tones of clay and ash, with no hint of living blush, noxious sallow, or any other hue of life. And behind this bleached world, always, the gentle flow of chemicals into his bloodstream. He could hear it if he listened closely enough, sedatives seeping out into his veins with the measured precision of nuclear decay. Chemicals that diluted his despair until it was, like the rest of his world, muted and colorless.

The entrance to his home was impressive in its size, and doubtless it was pleasing in its design. He wouldn't know. His staff hadn't told him what colors they had used, and he would never ask. The words would mean nothing to him. Though the rods and cones of his eyes functioned perfectly, though the optic nerves transmitted signals without flaw, that portion of his brain which would interpret such concepts was gone. One moment was all it had taken. One moment of equipment malfunction, one second of feedback into his neural circuits, a flash of heat and unbearable light and then the slow awakening ... into hell.

You are lucky, they told him. Damage confined to optical processing, and only a small part of that. You are so lucky, so very lucky. You could have lost motor control, and been crippled. Or intellect. You could have lost that. You could have lived life as a vegetable, not even knowing who you were. This is better, they told him, much better. You'll see.

Fools!

Be wary of dragons breathing
red, his own notes warned him. Ainniq memories, recorded in happier days. Now he couldn't even read the simple message without a tightening in his gut, a sharp pain in his heart ... and a twinge in his arm as the outpilot's mechanism within squeezed forth another precious drop of tranquilizer. What was red? He could recite its definition, he could list its associations—heat, anger, lust, violence—but it was book-learning only; the words might be in a foreign language for all he understood them.

Color.

You could survive without color, in the outworlds. You could maneuver without it, you could identify dangers, you could make your way from one day to the other without being devoured by monsters. You could live gray, and work gray, and die at the end of a gray life, a natural death.

Not so in the ainniq.

“Sir?”

He looked up from the work he was doing to acknowledge his secretary's appearance. Chezare Arbela was a man who had long since become accustomed to Kent's tranquil nature and adapted to it. Accordingly he never looked hurried, even when he was, and never, ever seemed anxious. It was as if he had established some osmotic link to the Guildmaster which allowed Kent's pharmacopoeia to flow directly into his bloodstream. Others found the relationship disturbing, and Kent knew they gossiped nervously about it when he wasn't listening. He found it calming to have a man so in sync with his moods, even if the moods were artificially induced. Even his Syndrome found this man acceptable company, which was saying a lot; without the flood of chemicals to rein it in, his Syndrome tended to regard every living creature as an enemy.

And yet, there was a pleasure in that. An honesty, in facing the darkness in your soul head-on, without mask or artifice. He used to say that piloting was his safety valve, for only then could he let the monster inside himself run free. The memory of those times was terrifying, but also exhilarating. To let this drugged tranquillity fade into the background, and slip off the yoke of conformity which brainware imposed upon his soul ... and there was a thrill in that. There was life in that, as vital and as dangerous as the primeval experience. Man as prey, fleeing hunters. Man as victor, emerging unscathed. The unbelievable rush of triumph as your outship broke through the surface of the ainniq, dragons snapping at your very heels....

What did he have now to take the place of that? Paperwork. Administrative duties. Occasionally diplomatic assignments, in deference to his drugged and adaptable nature. It wasn't what his soul wanted. It wasn't what it
craved.

“What is it, Che?”

“The latest report on the League, sir.” The secretary put a chip down in front of him.

With a sigh he picked it up and loaded it into his headset. Data scrolled before his eyes, and he glanced over it once just to see that everything was in order. It was. A little less data than usual, perhaps, but nothing to trigger alarms. At least not on the surface.

“Nothing unusual?”

“No, sir.”

This was such a waste of effort. Having him scrutinize the Hausman League in the hopes that he would catch the Guild's saboteur was just ... well, ridiculous. Granted, their station technically had Isolationist status and therefore fell into the Prima's
most suspect
category, but how could one even imagine that they were involved with Lucifer? The League venerated all the children of Hausman and believed the outworlds should belong to them alone. Their Isolationist status reflected the fact that no Terran, Earthborn or otherwise, was allowed in their station space. The disruption of ainniq-based transportation would hurt the Variant races much more than it would hurt the Terrans, so why would they ever launch something like Lucifer? Yes, they were extremists, but not stupid extremists.

“All right. Thank you, Che. Keep watching.”

The secretary bowed and withdrew.

All right now. It was time to remember that there were other enemies, very real, whom he had to watch. Not aliens, nor saboteurs, but men and women who wore the same Guild sigil that he did. They were his allies in name, but no Guildmaster was foolish enough to believe that alliance was anything more than a token gesture. At least not anyone who had climbed as far up the ladder of Guild hierarchy as he had.

This E-month the competition was even more intense than usual, thanks to Lucifer. The Prima had chosen her five most trusted Guildmasters, and in doing so, defined the field of battle for them all. Kent had no doubt that any one of them would go after him in a minute if he gave them the opening to do so. Even Ra. Gentle, accommodating, hedonistic Ra. He trusted her least of all, for he knew from his own experience what kind of monster could lie coiled behind such a pleasant façade. Those who seemed most above suspicion were the ones you had to suspect the most.

Like all the Guildmasters, he had a cadre of communications experts who kept watch over his rivals' encrypted transmissions. His had been working double time since the day the Prima met with them, not only searching for Lucifer's source, but keeping a close eye on the others who were searching. He knew Delhi well enough to know that she thrived on situations like this, for a snake strikes best when its prey is distracted. He had spies in her node, of course, and mechanical spycams, and even a few data pirates whom he paid under the table, just to back up his more legal efforts. It was more effort than he had expended with any other Guildmaster, but she was truly dangerous, and only a fool would underestimate her. Varsav was devious but not as openly malicious, and Hsing's focus had all been internal since the day he returned from Guera. Nevertheless Kent went over their records as well, looking for some change in the pattern of data transmission which would indicate that something unusual was happening. A peak in communications activity, for instance, much like that which had drawn his attention to Delhi's node about an E-month ago. Some big project was underway in that woman's house, and the laws of political survival demanded that he figure out what it was.

He was halfway through the report on Delhi's activity when something began to bother him.

He shut down the data feed for a moment, so that his eyes saw nothing but the real world again, and tried to put his finger on just what manner of unease was stirring in the back of his brain, begging for definition. Something about the pattern of his search, the significance of a sudden peak in communications activity—

Or maybe ... the lack thereof?

Very slowly, very calmly, he loaded the League chip into his headset again. And scanned the figures which his people had provided. No peak of activity there ... but maybe just the opposite. Was that significant? He flashed an icon that would connect him to the house computer, gave instructions for isolating the information he needed, and waited several seconds while it digested the project. Then fresh new data began to scroll across his field of vision—a record of communications activity for the League during the past few E-months—and the numbers were remarkably uniform, profiling an active station with pretty much regular business in the outworlds.

Until now.

With a frown he flashed an icon to call his secretary back in. Arbela must have been close by, for the knock came almost immediately.

“Come in.”

The secretary looked puzzled. As well he should, given that Kent was a creature of ritual and habit, and this behavior fell into neither category. “Sir?”

“Those files you gave me on the League. The com report.” He paused. “Was it complete?”

Arbela's brow furrowed. “It's the same report you've gotten each day, sir.”

“You're sure? Nothing's been left off? This is complete, absolutely complete as is?”

“Yes, sir. But I can check, if you like.”

“Please do.”

Arbela hesitated. “May I ask ... sir ...”

He stood, banishing the strange data from his head with a thought. “Let's say for now the League is ... unusually quiet. Remarkably so. I don't know yet what that means, but I have no doubt it's significant.” Damn it all, he could think of a hundred reasons why a station would suddenly become more active—a thousand, easily—but the opposite? How did you explain something like that?

It might not be Lucifer, he
thought,
but something unusual is going on there.
“Confirm the data for me,” he ordered Arbela. “Then let's start a more detailed sampling of the League's transmissions. I want to know why they're suddenly going quiet. Any ideas you have are welcome. This is most unusual.” He shook his head in frustration. “Do we have informants on their station?”

Arbela hesitated. “Yes, sir. Two, as I recall. Do you want me to get in touch with them?”

“Not yet. Too risky. Let's see where the data analysis takes us first, so we know what questions to ask.” He scowled, then flinched slightly as a twitch in his arm told him that yet more sedative was being released. “This may all be innocent as hell, but if that's the case I want it confirmed. You understand?”