Saturn's Children (3 page)

“Fuck!” I duck as it whooshes overhead, straight out the open doorway on a blast of highly illegal exhaust. The gas bottle’s not for respiration, it seems. I spin around just in case, but it shows no sign of coming back. Instead—is that a rip in the wall opposite?
Whoops.
Yes, it is. The little burglar just punched a hole in the outer membrane of the town.
The crew won’t be happy about that,
I figure.
Better get out of here.
I scramble down the ladder, and, carrying all of my dead sisters’ soul chips in a shoulder bag, I go in search of whatever deal Victor has lined up for me.

Telemus and Lindy

VICTOR’S DIVE IS barely busier than it was before I vamoosed, but there’s a stranger sitting in with Victor, and Milton nods me over as I step in the door. “Ah, Freya,” says Victor. “I’d like you to meet Ichiban.”

Ichiban—
Number One,
I translate—turns blue porcelain eyes the size of dinner plates on me and bows his head, very slightly. I nearly take a step back as a reflex yells
aristo!
at me, but then I realize:
no.
He wants to
look
like an aristo, but he isn’t one—never can be. “I am very pleased to meet you,” I say, bowing back at him. Mindless courtesies ensue as I try to get a handle on what he is.

“Ichiban has a minor problem that you might be able to help him resolve,” Victor explains. “It involves travel.”

“I’d be very happy to offer any advice I can,” I agree cautiously.

“Yes.” Ichiban nods thoughtfully. “You are very big.” He looks up at me. It’s true: I’m almost a hundred and seventy centimeters tall. An idealized replica of our Creators’ kind, in fact, unlike the super-deformed midgets who are the commonest phenotype of the nouveau riche these days. “Good thermal inertia,” adds Ichiban, unexpectedly. “And you were designed for Earth, before the emancipation.”

Good thermal inertia?
I smile as my biomimetic reflexes cut in: my cheeks flush delicately, signaling mild embarrassment or confusion.
Emancipation? What’s he talking about?
“I’m afraid I don’t quite follow,” I say.

“My sponsors have an object that requires transportation from the inner system to Mars,” Ichiban says, then pauses delicately.

So why talk to me?
I wonder. Travel isn’t my strong point—it’s too expensive for those of my lineage to indulge in frequently. When you double the dimensions, you multiply the volume by eight—and hence the mass and the energy budget required to make orbit. I’m twice as tall as the next person: That’s largely why I’m stuck here, and the solar system is a playground for chibi dwarfs instead of real people. I summon up a mask of polite attentiveness to conceal my disappointment.

“It is currently being prepared on Mercury and needs to depart in approximately eighty days. Our problem is that the object is a delicate research item of considerable value. It requires supervision and must be maintained in a shockproof environment under conditions of constant temperature, pressure, and oxygenation.” He continues to stare at me. “I believe others of your type have on occasion worked as escorts or couriers, yes?”

Where did he get that from?
I boggle briefly. “My archetype was indeed designed as an escort,” I say cautiously.
Escort for what?
I leave unsaid, just in case. Certain prejudices die hard.

“As an escort for organisms of a strictly biological variety,” Ichiban agrees, nodding amiably. “Pink goo replicators.”

I try to hide my shock. “What exactly is this research artifact?” I ask.

“I am not able to tell you that.” Ichiban is still smiling faintly. “The details have been withheld from me for reasons of commercial confidentiality. However, I am authorized to pay for your immediate steerage passage to Cinnabar, if you will agree to meet with my colleagues and consider their assignment.” He raises a warning finger. “You are not the only contractor we are approaching. This is a task of some delicacy—our competitors would be delighted to disrupt this project— so there is no guarantee that you will be chosen. But I understand you require off-world transportation in any event, so it is my hope that we may help each other.”

They want me to transport a
biological sample
? A
living
one?
I almost reel with shock. “I—I would be delighted to help,” I stutter on automatic. “But—in steerage?”

Ichiban’s smile fades slightly. “It will cost us dearly to put those big limbs of yours in orbit,” he warns. Which is to say,
Don’t push your luck
.

I nod, resigning myself to the inevitable. A walkabout berth would be too much to hope for. “When do you want me to leave?”

Ichiban glances at Victor. “Immediately,” he says. “You will come with me now.” And the interview’s over.

ICHIBAN HUSTLES ME out a back alley I didn’t know about and up a steep companionway to a road where there’s a waiting rickshaw, drawn by a pair of ponyboys who give me a walleyed glare when I get in. It creaks under my weight, but Ichiban seems unconcerned. “Fly,” he tells the ponyboys, and they’re off at a trot, tails held high.

I notice a couple of small ornithopters tracking us. “Are they yours?” I ask.

Ichiban gives me a bland look. “Leave them to me.” He leans back in the seat and closes his eyes. A few seconds later one of the birdbots begins to smoke and veers wildly off course. The other gives us a more cautious berth.

We turn down a side passage and draw up outside a spacious boat bay, where a tiny gondola is waiting beneath a semi-inflated gasbag on the other side of the air lock. “What’s this?” I ask.

“Best to get you out of town as fast as possible: Get in.” Ichiban gestures at the gondola. “It’s got power and feedstock. Make yourself comfortable; it’s going to be your home for a while.”

I examine the thing doubtfully. It’s a snug cocoon of struts and wispy padding, sitting atop a cylindrical power and feedstock adapter, with some kind of grapple under the seat. I probably outweigh it three to one. “You expect me to wear that all the way to Mercury?”

“Yes.” He smiles blandly. “Your lift arrives in just over an hour.”

“My—” I stop, with one leg already half-inside the cocoon. “You’ve bought me a
lift ride
?” I can’t help it: I end on a whine.

“Of course.” It’s Ichiban’s turn to look slightly bemused. “How else did you expect to reach orbit this diurn?”

I sit down gingerly and slide my other leg into the cocoon. It’s beginning to sink in.
Take it,
my memories urge, and I cave. My gas-exchange system is too well designed to surge; but were I of my True Love’s species, there would be damp palms and thudding heartbeats in profusion. I don’t know what I expected: a leisurely jet ride to one of the equatorial stations, perhaps, then a slot in a scheduled launch. But we’re near the north polar plateau, and that would take time. Ichiban’s backers have bought time on an orbital pinwheel, and even now it is cranking its thousand-kilometer-long arm into position, ready to dip down into the stratosphere and grab me like a floating blossom on the breeze. I lie down and let the cocoon suck me in.
This has got to be costing them thousands,
I realize.
More than an aristo-class berth.
“How do I talk to—”

“Your cocoon will tell you everything you need to know,” says Ichiban, turning away. The glittering tattoos on his shoulders and arms wink at me as he walks off.

“Hello!” The cocoon squeaks breathlessly. “I’m Lindy! Thank you for choosing to travel with my owners, Astradyne Tours! What’s your name?”

Source code preserve me, she sounds
enthusiastic.
As if I need that.
“I’m Freya,” I admit. “Are you—”

“Hello, Freya! I’ll be your spaceship for today! Are you comfortable? Feeling tense? I know how to deal with that! Let me give you a massage? I hope you don’t mind, but I see you’re a classic design! Do you have any cavities? Ooh! A gas-exchange lung! I’d better pack it well! I need to install a few probes; don’t worry, I’ll make it feel good—”

Lindy chatters away breathlessly as her probes nuzzle and squeeze into my orifices, filling my intimate spaces front and rear, top and bottom. It’s not the intromission that offends—she is considerate and lubricious, the pulsing sense of congestion pleasant after so long without intimate contact—but I find her personality annoying. It’s like being molested by a sleeping bag that speaks in Comic Sans with little love-hearts over the
i
’s.

“Ooh, that’s a big colon you’ve got! Does it go anywhere? It’s a long time since I’ve been inside one of
these
! Here, I’ll just hook your visuals up, and you’ll be snug inside me. How’s that?!?”

A brief lurch, and I can see out again. She’s hooked my eyes and ears and output line up to her sensorium, and now I can see that I’m lying on the deck, cocooned inside her white tube as she squeezes slippery packing foam into all my internal spaces. It’s a good thing I’m not claustrophobic. I lie back and stare up at the underside of Lindy’s balloon. I wonder what my True Love’s kind would have made of this means of transport: Probably most of them would have fled screaming at the impersonal sense of violation, but a few . . . “When do we launch?” I ask, trying to ignore the warmth filling me.

“Any moment now!” Lindy says brightly, then squeezes my nipples affectionately. “Relax and let me help you enjoy the ride?!?”

I shudder as the balloon lifts free of the deck. My cocoon is paying rather more attention to certain bits of my anatomy than is strictly businesslike: It’s been a long time since anyone took that kind of interest in me. “Lindy, do you make love to all your passengers?” I ask.

“Only the ones who’re equipped for it!” she chirps, throbbing inside me. “It helps them pass the time. Ooh, I see we’re in for a ride on Telemus! That’ll be fun! I like him! He’s cute!” I groan, silently—my mouth is agape, constrained by the soft spacer that holds my lips and throat open—and feel the unscratched itch building up inside me. I can’t help myself; some reflexes are built into my lineage too deeply to control consciously, and it has been a
very
long time—too long—since anyone made love to me. Even a not-very-bright surface-to-orbit sleeping bag. I writhe, or try to—Lindy has me thoroughly immobilized—and just as I’m about to ask her to back off on the customer-care front, she squirms again. “Ooh! Ooh! Yes! Yes! Oh!”

One of the peculiarities of my lineage is that although we superficially resemble a female of our Creators’ kind, we differ profoundly in some ways—especially our sexual reflexes. In our default state (unless we’re unconditionally imprinted on our One True Love), when someone becomes aroused over one of us,
we
become aroused over
them
. This is conditioned into us at a very low level, with the aid of some low-level modification to our basic neural architecture, and the addition of something called an “enhanced vomeronasal loop reflex.” Without that reflexive arousal, I’d be useless for my design purpose—but it sometimes has annoying side effects. And so I lose most of three minutes to a very overdue orgasm, and the afterglow keeps me preoccupied for another hour.

(This is probably a good thing, because if I were left alone to contemplate my predicament—helpless and hog-tied inside a launch cocoon, floating through the sulfuric acid clouds of Venus with only a soap-bubble-thin gasbag between me and the red-hot foothills below, waiting to be yanked violently into low orbit by a thousand-kilometer-long cable—I might be close to panic. Especially as a malign aristo wishes me ill, and strangers have turned over my pad, all in the past six hours. And then there’s the upcoming lift ride. But Lindy knows exactly how to distract nervous passengers, and I suspect assigning one of her kind to keep me quiet was part of Ichiban’s plan all along.)

I’ve ridden in lift pods before; it’s the easiest way off Earth. But leaving Earth was different. That time I was already in hibernation, packed in a commercial widebody load and hiked up to speed on a hypersonic sled before docking.
This
is a solo ride on a big dipper with an arm a thousand kilometers long, the tip counterrotating along its orbital path, dipping down until it’s just fifty kilometers above mean ground level in order to yank me up to orbital velocity in half a rotation: I’m going to be pulling tens of gees. (Which is partly why Lindy has been so enthusiastically stuffing me: I need the padding.) “What happens once we reach orbit?” I ask her, trying not to dwell on the process.

“Who cares?” she says dreamily. “Telemus is wild! I haven’t ridden him in
ages
!” I’d grind my teeth if she hadn’t carefully gagged me. “Well, my template has, but this is all new to me! This is my first flight! Ooh! I’m so excited!”

She shivers slightly, and I feel the tremors running through her skin.

“My flight itinerary,” I say carefully. “It matters to
me
.”

“We’ll get you there!” She giggles briefly. “Telemus will drop us just in time to catch the
High Wire
, and he’ll take us the rest of the way! It’ll be fun!”

“You’re going the whole way?” I ask, trying to conceal my dismay.

“Yes! Once
High Wire
has us, I’ll morph into my second instar, to keep you snug and safe from all the nasty radiation and micrometeoroids! ” she simpers as she flashes up a schematic of her type’s second instar—a form with stubby solar wings, a heat exchanger, and a mirrored parasol. They form a fetching ensemble for a cocoon hanging off a bough of the great ship
High Wire
, or one of his sibs. “We’ll have lots of time to get to know each other!
Squee!
”

I’m still searching for a suitably withering retort when I glimpse the arm of Telemus tracing a white scar down through the beaten-bronze dome of the sky toward us. And then I
do
have second thoughts—but by then it’s too late.

LINDY HAS OBVIOUSLY been looking forward to sex with Telemus for
ages
, if not her entire life, and he reciprocates. They fuck hard and fast at too many gees, his docking hectocotylus locked tight inside her launch adapter. I find the comm setting to screen out their groans and shuddering endearments before I get caught up in it. I lie alone and slimy in Lindy’s abdomen, squished down by the centripetal acceleration as Telemus yanks us into orbit. I have a lot of time to think black thoughts. It’s not that I mind that my steerage cocoon is a slut, but if I don’t get some decent conversation en route, I’ll go mad before we arrive.
I should have plugged in the graveyard before we left,
I realize. At least the ghosts of my sisters would keep me well-grounded. But it’s too late now, and I’m not going to ask Lindy to hook me up—some things are too private.