Aurora in Four Voices (4 page)

"Grey, with red rings."

"Bloodshot?"

"No. The irises have red in them."

She blew out a gust of air. "This is making more sense."

"It is?"

"The Traders established this colony."

It wasn't her comment that surprised him, but how she said it, as an accepted fact rather than a long-debated theory the Dreamers vehemently denied. The Traders were a genetically engineered race distinguished by red eyes, and black hair with a distinctive shimmering quality. Their creators had only been trying to engineer for a higher pain tolerance, but the work produced an unplanned side-effect: Traders felt almost no emotional pain either — they had no compassion.

A race with no compunction about hurting people could do a lot of damage. Fast. When they began to spread the stain of their brutality across the stars, the colonized worlds had two choices: submit to them or join the Imperialate. As far as Jato knew, no one had ever willingly chosen the Traders.

There were those who claimed the Dreamers descended from a group of Trader geniuses morally opposed to their own brutal instincts. They manipulated their genes to rid themselves of those instincts and produced their translucent coloring as an unexpected side-effect. It led them to settle on Ansatz in the forgiving dark, where they traded the fruits of their genius for dreams, in penance for the sins of their violent siblings.

"It's possible Crankenshaft carries throwback genes," Jato said. "His wife, too. She's like ice."

Soz considered him. "You realize that except for your eyes and the relative dullness of your hair, you could pass for a Trader."

He stiffened. "Like hell. I can trace my family — "

"Jato." She laid her hand on his arm. "No one would ever mistake you for a Trader. It's the Dreamers' problem, not yours. They evolved themselves into a mild people, rejecting their heritage. Your large size, dark hair, and muscular build may stir memories they can't deal with. It's probably why your appearance bothers them."

A strange thought, that. It would never have occurred to him that perhaps he repulsed the Dreamers because he reminded them of themselves.

She peered down the stairs, though they were too far up to see much except the lonely circle of light from a lamp at the bottom. "Who do you think activated the Wind Lions?" She turned back to him. "Are we up against the city government or this Crankenshaft? Or both?"

He considered. "Most city officials don't believe I was set up. Those few involved with the set up would be more subtle, use a scenario easier to pass off as an accident. This is Crankenshaft's style. He would go for drama and make it look like I planned it, some rape-murder-suicide thing."

"Charming man," she muttered. "Stupid, though. ISC would never buy it. I have augmented strength and reflexes. You would more likely end up dead than me."

"Even with the Promenade breaking?"

That made her think. "It would complicate things," she admitted. She motioned at the plateau. "If he's the one who turned on the Lions, those drones down there must be his."

"Drones?" Jato swore and started back up the steps.

Soz grabbed his arm. "There's nowhere to go that way."

He stopped, seeing her point. They couldn't go up, they couldn't go down, and the chasm waited beneath them. Now was the time to find out what arsenal, if any, they had at their disposal. "What else can you do besides see in the dark?"

"I've a computer node in my spine with a library of combat reflexes." She bent her arm at the elbow. "My skeleton and muscles are augmented by high-pressure hydraulics and powered by a microfusion reactor that delivers a few kilowatts. It gives me reflexes and strength two to three times greater than normal, as much as my body can sustain without overheating."

"Can you stop the globes?"

"Three or four, I could handle. But there are nine there." She looked down the stairs again. "They're coming."

He saw it now too, the Mandelbrot sparkle of globes revving into active mode. Their lights flowed upward in a fractal curve of luminance.

"Jato," a voice said.

He nearly jumped. The voice came out of empty air: cool, impersonal, commanding.

"Come down here," it said. "Bring the woman."

As Jato's adrenalin surge calmed, he realized it was only a globe transmitting the voice. "Go to hell, Crankenshaft."

"You have twenty seconds to resume descending," his tormentor said.

"Let her go and I'll do what you want," Jato said.

"Fifteen seconds."

The globes continued up the stairs, whirring like a swarm of huge bugs. Ten steps away, five, two. A syringe hissed, and Soz feinted with a speed that blurred, kicking up her leg. Her heel smashed into a globe, and it spun out from the cliff in a spiral of glittering lights.

A second globe rolled in to fill the gap, a third came from the side, a fourth whirred behind Soz, and a fifth hung over them, its syringe pointing down like the cannon on a miniature battlecruiser. Jato and Soz kept moving; feint, dodge, feint, Soz using her augmented speed. Two globes collided in midair with the grating racket of ceramoplex crashing together.

It was only a matter of seconds before a syringe shot hit Jato in the chest. The area went numb almost instantly and the sensation spread fast. As his arms dropped like stones to his sides, he lost his balance and tumbled down the stairs, stars and mountains careening past his vision.

He had one final glimpse of Soz lying on her back on the stairs, pinned down by globes, before his head hit stone.

A high ceiling came into focus. After a while a thought surfaced in Jato's mind. He was alive.

He sat up, favoring his bruises. He was alone in Crankenshaft's studio. No, not alone. Soz lay on the other end of the ledge, eyes closed, her torso rising and falling with each breath. Relief rushed over him, followed by a Neanderthal impulse to go over, stake out his territory, and protect her from Crankenshaft. It wasn't the world's most logical response given she was an Imperial Messenger, but he had it just the same.

He wondered why she was still unconscious. Even his body contained nanomeds designed to repair and maintain it. An ISC officer probably carried molecule-sized laboratories.

As he got off the ledge, a clink sounded. Turning, he saw a chain with one end attached to a ring in the wall. Its other end fastened to a manacle around his ankle.

He gritted his teeth, wishing he could wrap the chain around Crankenshaft's neck. At least the tether was long enough to let him reach Soz. That almost made him back off; he trusted nothing Crankenshaft did. But his instincts were still at work, conjuring up
protect mate
impulses, so he went over to her.

Crankenshaft had no illusions about Soz needing protection. Her wrists were manacled behind her back and also to a ring in the ledge. He had set her boots on the floor and chained her ankles to the ledge. For some inexplicable reason, he also put metal bands around her neck and waist. Jato leaned over to lay his palm on her forehead —

Her hand clamped around his wrist so fast he barely saw her move. He froze, staring as she sat up. It hadn't been obvious from the way she had been lying, but the chain joining her manacles was broken.

He found his voice. "How did you get free?"

She dropped his hand, her face relaxing as she recognized him. "Nano-chomps. I carry a few hundred species."

"You mean molecular disassemblers?"

"In my sweat."

He stepped back. He had no desire to have voracious bugs in her sweat take him apart atom by atom.

"They can't hurt you," Soz said. "Each chomper disassembles a specific material. The ones I carry are rigidly particular, even down to factory lot numbers."

He motioned at her manacled feet. "Wrong lot number?"

"Apparently so. Or else flaws in the molecular structure." Leaning over, she rubbed her wrist against the chain attached to his ankle.

"Hey." He jerked away his leg. "What are you doing?"

"They might work on yours."

"You don't think that's dangerous, carrying bugs in your body that take things apart?"

"They aren't bugs. They're just enzymes. And they're no more dangerous than being trapped here."

He knew it was probably true, but even so, he was having second thoughts about his amorous impulses. People sweated when they made love. A lot.

"Jato, don't look like that," she said. "The chompers are produced by nodules in my sweat glands that only activate when I go into combat mode. Besides, they can't take apart people. Our composition is too heterogeneous."

He sat on the ledge, near her but not too close, and motioned at his still-chained ankle. "Wrong lot, I guess."

"I guess so." She tugged the manacle on her wrist, managing to slide it up about a centimeter. The skin on her wrist was more elastic than normal tissue, not a lot, but enough so she could drag it out from under the manacle. He saw what she was after, a small round socket in her wrist.

"You have a hole," he said.

"Six of them, actually. In my wrists, ankles, lower spine, and neck."

That explained the neck and waist bands. "What do they do?"

"Pick up signals." She held up her arm so the socket faced the console across the room. "If I insert a plug from that node into this socket, it links the computer web inside my body to the console."

That didn't sound like much help. "The plug is there and you're here."

"That's why consoles transmit infrared signals." Her face had a inwardly directed quality, as if she were running a canned routine to answer him while she focused her attention elsewhere. "The sockets act as IR receivers and transmitters. Bio-optic threads in my body carry signals to the computer node in my spine. It processes the data and either responds or contacts my brain. Bio-electrodes in my neurons translate its binary into thought: 1 makes the neuron fire and 0 does nothing. It works in reverse too, so I can 'talk' to my spinal node."

He suspected Nightingale was probably flooded with IR signals. "How can you stand so much noise hitting you all the time?"

"It doesn't. Only if I toggle Receive." Her full attention came back to him. "The signals do get noisy and it isn't as secure as a physical link. But it's enough to let me interact with a node as close as the one over there."

"And?"

She made a frustrated noise. "This room ought to be bathed in public signals. But I'm getting nothing at all."

He doubted Crankenshaft would cut himself off from the city. "Maybe he did something to you."

"My diagnostics register no software viruses or tampering." She paused. "But you know, my internal web is engineered in part from my own DNA. Maybe he infected it with a biological virus." Without another word, she lifted her wrist and spit into its socket.

Dryly Jato said, "Insulting it won't help."

She smiled. "The nanomeds in my saliva may be able to make antibodies if there's a virus loose in my biomech web."

"Are you getting anything?"

"Nothing." Several moments later she said, "Yes. A notice about a ballet." Her concentration had turned inward again. "I still can't link to the city system . . . but I think I can get into the node in that console over there."

Jato stared at her. "Not a chance. That's Crankenshaft's private node. Everyone knows his security is unbreakable."

A cold smile touched her lips. "Security is my game."

A moment later she said, "I can call up his holosculpture of you if you want."

Jato swallowed. She might as well have hit him with that ancient proverbial ton of bricks. "Yes. I want."

She indicated the center of the studio. "That's it."

He turned — and almost gasped.

The air above the pool was glowing with a rainbow-hued mist. It drifted across the glistening white cones that stood in the water, like shadows made on outcroppings of rock by clouds obscuring a sun. This, from a man who had lived his entire life in the night. Holos of Jato appeared on every cone. On the tallest, the one with the circular cross-section, he sat with knees to his chest, shivering, his clothes and hair dripping. He was younger, eight years younger, only a husky teenager. His face cycled through emotions: rage, confusion, resentment.

An older Jato stood on the next cone, the one with its top cut off at a slant, giving it an elliptical cross-section. He remembered when he had modelled for it, how he stood for hours on a narrow shelf protruding from the surface. Crankenshaft had since removed the shelf and erased it in the image, so the Jato holo simply floated in the air, with red and blue clouds scudding across his face. He was shouting, fists clenched at his sides. No sound: just his mouth moving. With the play of light, it was hard to make out words, but he knew what they were. He had been cursing Crankenshaft in his native tongue.

The Jato by the parabolic cone was sitting, submerged to his hips in the pool. He trailed his hands back and forth in the water, a habit he had developed to cope with the boredom. He was kneeling by the hyperbolic cone, up to his waist in water. Crankenshaft had doctored the holo to make him look old. Ancient. His face was a map of age untouched by the biosculpting the rich used to sustain youth during their prolonged lives. Gusts blew brittle white hair around his head. Stooped, gnarled, decrepit: it was a portrait of his mortality.

That tableau remained frozen for a few seconds. Then all the Jatos stood up and began stepping from cone to cone, passing through each other while multi-colored clouds flowed across their bodies. Some raged, others shivered, others moved like machines.

Each figure split, becoming two Jatos, all continuing their strange march. They split again, the original of each quartet stepping from cone to cone while the others kept pace in the air. New images appeared like shadows, all different by just a small amount, creating a feathered effect. A younger one was crying. He remembered that day; he had told Crankenshaft about his family, how he loved them, how they must think he had died. Another Jato image was laughing.
Laughing.
Yet there were times he had laughed — even had civil conversations with Crankenshaft.

Holos of water augmented the pool, overlaid on the real water like multiple exposures: waves in impossibly sharp points, or serrated like a saw, glowing phosphorescence in red, purple, green, blue-green, gold, and silver. Gusts in the studio whipped the true water into peaks that added random accents to the holos.

The Jatos split again, along with their shadows. They all stopped and raised their hands, the motion feathered among the images, as if it portrayed multiple quantum universes, each projecting a future that diverged from the original. The image of a rainbow-hued waterfall sprayed over the figures, making them shimmer. But no blurring could hide the fury on those faces.

"Saints almighty," Soz said. "It's spectacular."

Jato tried not to grit his teeth. "That's why he's so famous."

"I can see why he wanted you for his model."

"You can?"

She motioned at the holos. "You couldn't get that purity of emotion — that fury — from a Dreamer. From most anyone. But from you, it's perfect. Pure passion unadulterated by civilization."

"Am I supposed to be flattered by that?"

Soz winced. "I didn't mean — " She stopped, staring at the sculpture. "Jato, look at your eyes."

"That would be a feat." But he knew what she meant. He studied the images — and when he saw it, he nearly choked. Crimson. Ruby hard and ruby cold. The eyes on each image had turned red. The hair was changing too, going from dark brown to crystalline black. He couldn't believe it. Crankenshaft was making
him
look like a Trader.

He stood up, his fists clenching at his sides. "I'll kill him."

"It's guilt," Soz said. "And catharsis."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"It's all there," she said. "The guilt the Dreamers feel, knowing the brutality their disowned kin have inflicted on a thousand peoples. And catharsis. Realizing the monster isn't in them anymore. They've freed themselves, become Dreamers instead of Traders."

"Then it's a
lie
." Jato was so angry he could barely get the words out. "For this 'catharsis,' Crankenshaft made himself into the very thing this is supposed to free him from. He's made me look like what he hates in himself, what he can never get rid — " Jato stopped cold. Then he sat down again. "Oh, hell."

Soz was watching his face. "What?"

"His greatest work. Face his demons and exorcise them. I'm the substrate." It was suddenly all too obvious. "Get rid of me and he loses his inner devils." Jato swallowed. "He's going to kill me as part of the sculpture. It's what he's always intended."

She stared at him. "That's sick."

Jato wished he had never pulled her into this. "If we had died on the Promenade, he would have worked with that footage. Now you're onto him, so he has nothing to lose by bringing us here where he can tailor the work to his needs."

"Actually," a voice said. "You're the one who is going to kill her."

He looked up with a jerk. Crankenshaft was standing across the studio, by the console in the corner where the two holo-walls met. In one hand he held Jato's bird sculpture; in the other, he had a laser carbine.

"A tragedy," Crankenshaft continued, in the voice he used when he wanted to bait Jato, to drive his rage. "She came to the greatest artist alive hoping to inspire a dream. A beautiful woman, after all, has certain advantages. Unfortunately she arrived while you were here." He sighed. "I should never have left you two alone. But who would have thought an Imperial Messenger would be in danger? Besides, Jato, we thought we had cured you." He shook his head. "She was overconfident. An unguarded moment and you were able to bind her." Lifting the bird, he said, "A blunt instrument you stole from me brought about her death. I was forced to kill you in self-defense."

Jato stood up, an explosion working up inside of him. But before it let loose, Soz spoke in a mild voice. "You're Granite Crankenshaft."

Unease showed on their captor's face. "You should have never pried into his records, Messenger."

"Why would you claim Jato stole that bird from you?" she asked. "He made it."

The tic under Crankenshaft's eye gave a violent twitch. He shifted the sculpture, his hand gripped around it as if he held a weapon. "No one would ever believe he created a work as stunning as this, with that fugue. Only his exposure to me enabled him to do it. Me. He could never have done it by himself. So the credit belongs to me."

Jato knew he should be infuriated that Crankenshaft would claim credit for his work. But the implication in his captor's words so staggered him that the arrogance of the statement rolled off his back. He could hardly believe it. The great Granite Crankenshaft was threatened by
his
work.

Crankenshaft unhooked a cord from his belt and threw it at them. It landed at Jato's feet, a leather thong with ceramoplex balls on each end that could have been anything from decorations to superconducting webs.

"Tie her hands behind her back," Crankenshaft said.

Jato crossed his arms. "No."

Crankenshaft touched a panel on the console. A giant globe crept through a slit in the thermoplastic wall and floated to the center of the studio.

"Non-linear dynamics and metapsychology," he commented. "Do you know that with detailed enough initial conditions, you can model procreation? The correlation between the calculated results and an actual act that proceeded from those conditions is quite high."

Jato scowled. "What are you talking about?"

"Sex," he said. "Establish the initial scene well enough and you can model the rest with amazing accuracy."