Trang (51 page)

After his interrogation, Philippe
had carefully smoothed his black hair and eyebrows, and he gave them another
check now with his steadying hands. He rubbed his face to bring a little color
into it again—his complexion was perhaps too olive for him to become believably
rosy-cheeked, but he was willing to try anything to look healthy. And Kelly Pax
had complimented his looks earlier, so encouraging the circulation to his face
had clearly done something.

He gave his hands a last,
deliberate shake from the wrists.
There,
he thought,
all better now.

He turned and walked to the ship.
The hallway was white and sparse, exactly like every other hallway the Union's
Space Authority had ever designed. It attached to the side of the spaceship just
like a jetway on Earth would attach to the side of an airplane. Aside from the
substantial looking seal where the hallway met the ship, and the lightness of
Philippe's step, there was nothing to indicate that he was on Titan, a moon of
Saturn, and not back on Earth.

He saw the open doorway to the ship
and paused. The ship was small and laid out somewhat like an airplane, with an
open cockpit for its two pilots in front of several rows of seats, divided by a
center aisle, for the soldiers. His traveling companion would most likely be in
the row directly behind the pilots.

The doorway was located between
that row and the pilots' seats, meaning that Philippe was going to have all
eyes on him the moment he entered. He smiled slightly before stepping in—hopefully
not so much as to make him look manic, but just enough to make him look
content. A quiet joy.

And then he blew it by tripping
over the threshold of the ship and falling flat on his face.

"Fuck, Trang!"

That would be Shanti.

"Jesus fucking Christ, what
did they do to you?"

He looked up, smiling. The massive
mission commander loomed over him already—he had learned from nine months of
living with the Union's Special Forces that
large
did not always equal
slow.

This particular SFer was bristling
with outrage and protectiveness and lethal training—no doubt primed to race
back onto Titan station and crack a few skulls. Even the pilots, Cheep and
Pinky, were out of their chairs.

That was bad. He needed them to sit
back down. He needed—no,
they
needed—to stop wasting time. They all
needed to go back through the portal, back to the station, back to the aliens.
They needed to get to their jobs.

"I'm fine, really. I am
fine," Philippe said, standing up quickly in what he hoped was the jaunty
and energetic fashion of a man in the absolute bloom of health. "I just
tripped."

Cheep and Pinky immediately sat
back down, returning their attention to the panel filled with readouts in front
of them. Philippe smiled, more genuinely now, as the door shut and sealed
behind him. Shanti glared at him, her dark eyes in dubious slits, but when he
gestured to the seats behind Pinky, who was the farthest from the door, she
sat.

He sat down next to her, on the
aisle. Philippe hoped that his presence between her and the door would act as a
barrier—if only a psychological one—to her leaving.

"So, how was your stay?"
he asked, buckling up.

"Not bad," Shanti
replied, following his lead and buckling up herself. "I took apart the
desk this time."

Philippe laughed—perhaps a little
more than he should. Distraction was necessary, but it couldn't be obvious. He
had to keep things light and pleasant. Then, even if the conversation went to
the topic he wanted to avoid, everyone would stay relaxed and would remain
reasonable.

If he did this right, no one would
get upset—and he didn't want to upset his friends. They should be happy and
calm. Everyone should be calm and reasonable.

Philippe took another look around
the ship. The momentum was there now—Shanti and the pilots were all buckled up.
They were
going
,
traveling back to the aliens, not staying on
Titan station to kick up some sort of unnecessary fuss.

"Did you find anything
interesting?" he asked Shanti. "In the desk?"

"No, it was boring," she
said. "No bugs or secret drawers or anything."

"Did you put it back together
afterward?"

She smiled (good sign) and shook
her head. He laughed again.

The ship tilted back, and they took
off. Philippe exhaled, releasing tension in his shoulders he hadn't fully realized
was there. They were on their way. The farther they got, the less likely it was
that Shanti would return to Titan station.

Of course, she'd probably yell at
Philippe instead, but there was no getting around that. Shanti Pax was
forceful, as Philippe supposed was required of a Special Forces mission
commander. You didn't rise to a command position in the Union's only lethal
combat force without being the sort to charge ahead.

But charging ahead left your sides
vulnerable, and Philippe Trang was a master at coming in sideways. Shanti might
rant and rail to him whenever she wanted, but she already was too late.

She was too late, and she didn't
even know it. Philippe smiled again. The DiploCorps had been right to make him
Earth's first diplomat to the aliens: He was good at his job.

But not so good at space travel, he
realized as they shed Titan's yellow atmosphere and the moon's gravity loosened
its hold. Philippe hadn't remembered a sick patch, so he just swallowed hard
and hoped for the best as he watched Saturn splay its rings out across the
dark.

Shanti, demonstrating what was for
her a remarkable level of restraint, waited until his struggle with nausea had
been resolved in his favor before commencing her interrogation.

"Did you see Kali?" she
asked.

"You mean Kelly? Yes," he
replied. "You didn't call her Kali did you? I think conversations in
quarantine are monitored."

Shanti shrugged. "She called
me Syrup."

Philippe laughed. It was rude to
call the Paxes clones—after all, no one else was expected to identify
themselves by their method of conception—but that didn't change the fact that
Shanti and Kelly were two of 52 genetically identical sisters, created
illegally and raised as fighting machines as part of a madman's apocalyptic
plot. Their rehabilitation had, as far as Philippe could tell, been a complete
success. But others in the Union remained skeptical, and minor slipups like
using the old war-goddess names could have ramifications.

Syrup
had not been one of
those names, however.

"That's what they called you?
That's not very intimidating," he teased her.

She shrugged. "Neither is
Surpanakha."

"It must have been nice to see
your sister," Philippe remarked, deliberately pushing the conversation on
to the subject.

But Shanti's reaction was not what he
expected: She looked apprehensive. Before he was assigned to the alien station,
Philippe had gotten to know Kelly Pax on Earth—she worked for a human-rights
group, which sometimes brought her into contact with the DiploCorps. While he
viewed Kelly more as a colleague than as a friend, he knew that the exact
nature of his relationship with her was somewhat of a mystery to Shanti.

"Or, maybe it wasn't," he
continued.

"No, no—it was . . . sort
of," she stammered. "I just wasn't expecting her. She said that the
girls were worried that maybe I wasn't being treated too well after, you know,
everything that happened. They thought maybe the Union was mad at us for our
role in all that."

All that.
That's how they
referred to it now.
All that,
or
everything that happened.

Philippe nodded, returning his
attention to managing the conversation. Bringing up Kelly had been a good
move—even though the Paxes had hardly been a traditional family, Shanti could
talk about her sisters for days, which would keep her off more-unpleasant
topics.

He looked out the only windows,
which were in front of the pilots, and saw the pulsing lights of the nuclear
mines—they'd be deep into the defenses that littered the Earth side of the
portal soon, which was good. Every meter forward made it less likely that they
would turn back.

"Do you think Kelly could be
UI?" Shanti asked.

"
Kelly?
" Philippe
turned his attention away from the window, surprised out of his game.
"Union Intelligence?"

He shook his head, disbelieving.
"I'd be shocked
.
The organization she works for has been pretty
aggressive in exposing some of the sleazier deals the Union has struck with
poorer countries. I can think of at least two or three instances when they
probably embarrassed Union Intelligence very badly. Why do you think she's
UI?"

"Oh, I dunno," said
Shanti, relaxing. "Just paranoid, I guess. I only knew her as a kid. And
Kelly was—well, I know she's your friend, but when we were little, she was
always kind of an ass-licker. She wouldn't have any part in taking out the Old
Man. She abstained."

Philippe shook his head again.
"I just can't see it," he said. "Kelly's the type of person who
gets bitterly disappointed when the Union fails to live up to its ideals, and
that's not the type of person who joins the UI. Maybe she'd do it if she was
convinced that Earth's very existence was at stake—maybe. As for not taking
part in the execution of your father, she may just have a genuine distaste for
violence." Philippe looked slyly at Shanti. "Some people do."

"Hey, I do, too," she
replied.

Cheep and Pinky started to laugh.

"I do!" she said.
"Shut up!"

They shut up, but whether because
their mission commander had issued an order or because they had begun
navigating the minefield, Philippe couldn't say. The Special Forces were indeed
special, with much looser command structure than the Union Police whom Philippe
had worked with before. According to his research into the topic, this had to
do with the SF's history: It was an outgrowth of what were once called commando
units, which were small groups of highly trained soldiers who performed very
dangerous raids. These special soldiers operated with a great deal more
individual autonomy than the run-of-the-mill members of the armed forces.

"Well, I really enjoyed seeing
Kelly," he said.

He truly had, although to be
perfectly honest, his first thought on seeing her was,
Wow, she's bloated.
Being
clones, both Paxes had started out with the same build and bone structure, but
years at a desk job had made Kelly round-faced and soft where Shanti was
angular and hard. Kelly's long hair had been braided into an updo that had
seemed perfectly innocuous before but now struck Philippe as extravagant and
overdone when compared to Shanti's short SF crop. Even their mahogany skin was
subtly different in tone—Kelly seemed to have a slight undertone of gray, which
Philippe hoped wasn't indicative of some sort of creeping cardiovascular
disorder.

"She ask you about the
patch-and-probe?" Shanti asked.

"She took a somewhat
professional interest in my situation," he replied carefully.

"And did you tell her it was
none of her fucking business, like you did me?"

Philippe sat for a moment in
silence. So, here they were, on the topic at last. At least now they were well
into the minefield, although he was going to have to tread lightly with Shanti,
anyway—it would be difficult to turn the ship around, but it wouldn't be
impossible, and she still might do it.

"I'm sorry I said that the
patch-and-probe wasn't any of your business," he said. "I was being
childish and repeating back to you what you had said to me, which I admit was
inappropriate. Your situation is different from mine."

Shanti nodded, and Philippe knew
the apology had been accepted. She was quick to anger, but equally quick to
forgive.

"I am sorry you found out
about the roster thing the way you did, though," she said.

Philippe gave a nervous laugh.

The roster was one of those
traditions among the Special Forces that brought home to Philippe exactly why
he had never joined it. When SFers were away on a mission, they drew up a list
of those in the unit who were available for sex with everybody else also on the
list.

It wasn't like Philippe had never
had a casual sexual liaison, but the bloodlessness of the roster, the lack of
any sort of romance or passion involved in the drawing up of a list, the idea
of having sex with people as some sort of professional courtesy
—
well,
that was beyond him.

In addition, the vast majority of
the SFers were men—there were only two women among Philippe's military guard.
While the SFers unquestionably had a very open attitude toward male homosexual
encounters, and the SF had stringent regulations designed to prevent people
from being forced onto the roster, it was obvious to Philippe that there was
pressure on the female SFers to sign on. He himself had seen an SFer ask Shanti
to put herself on it, and the same fellow (Five-Eighths who, granted, was
considered a shameless dog even by SF standards) had kicked a hole into one of
the virtual entertainment booths after the unit's other woman, Baby, had taken
herself off the roster to enter into an exclusive relationship with George, the
unit's doctor.

Just before they left for Titan,
Shanti had signed on to the roster. Philippe was willing to admit that if one
looked at that decision dispassionately, it was probably a good sign,
indicating she was healing emotionally from her recent divorce.

But it had been hard to look at the
situation dispassionately when, on the morning before Philippe left to undergo
a particularly intrusive form of interrogation, Five-Eighths had run into the
mess hall and loudly announced that there was now a woman—or rather, a
particular part of a woman's anatomy—on the roster. And it got even harder to
be dispassionate when Five-Eighths had jumped on a table and, using the most
vulgar language and gestures imaginable, had explained in explicit detail just
how he planned to exercise his considerable libido on Shanti's various
orifices.