Author: Joan D. Vinge
Category: Science
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Kedalion realized that the stranger was still standing beside him, taking it all in, with something that was almost fascination in his own eyes. “Join us—?” Kedalion asked, not particularly wanting to, but feeling that he could hardly do anything else, under the circumstances. The service unit under the smooth onyx-colored table obliged him, spitting out an extra cup.
“Not my poison,” the stranger murmured. He shook his head, unkempt fingers of brown hair brushing his shoulders. Kedalion started to breathe again as the man began to turn away; but the man shrugged abruptly, and turned back. He pulled out a seat and sat down. “I’m Reede,” he said.
Kedalion made introductions, trying not to look like a man sitting next to an armed bomb. He poured water of life for himself and the two Ondineans, somehow managing not to spill a drop, even though his hands weren’t steady.
He stole another glance at Reede, wondering how the other man had come by something like this bottle, and why he was willing to give it up so casually. It was a rich man’s gesture, but Reede didn’t look like a rich man. He wore nondescript black breeches and heavy dockhand’s boots, a sleeveless jerkin dangling bits of jewelry and flash—souvenirs. Not an unusual outfit for a young hireling of some drug cartel. Reede’s bare arms were covered with tattoos, telling his life history in the Hegemony’s underworld to anyone who wanted to look close enough. There was nothing unusual about that, either; the only thing odd about the tattoos was that there were none on his hands.
Probably he was another smuggler, looking for work, and this bottle was a flamboyant way of advertising his services. Just what they needed; competition. But Kedalion intended to enjoy Reede’s generosity anyway. Even though Kedalion didn’t advertise, his reputation for reliability was usually enough to get him all the work he could handle. “You a runner?” he asked Reede.
Reede looked surprised. “Me? No.” He didn’t say what he did do. Kedalion didn’t ask. “Why?” Reede asked, a little sharply, and then, “You need one?”
“I am one.” Kedalion shook his head.
Reede nodded, easing off. “I knew your name was familiar. Your ship is the Prajna. That’s a Samathan word for ‘God’—?” He raised his eyebrows.
“One of them,” Kedalion said. “It means ‘astral light,’ actually. It’s supposed to bring luck.” He shrugged, mildly annoyed at having to explain himself.
“It seems to work for you.” Reede’s mouth twitched. “You have a good reputation. And you had your share of good fortune tonight.” He spoke Trade, the universal second language of most people who did interstellar business. Everyone here in the port spoke it; even the boy Ananke handled it well enough. It was easy to learn a language with an enhancer; Kedalion spoke several. It wasn’t easy to make a construct like Trade sound graceful. And from what he had seen tonight, Reede was the last person he would have expected to manage the feat. He glanced at Reede again, wondering where in hell somebody like this came from anyway. Reede looked back at him, with an expression that was close to thoughtful. “So ‘honor among thieves’ is the code you live by?”
Kedalion smiled, hoping the question was rhetorical. “I only wondered how you came by this.” He raised his cup of the water of life in a toast; its scent filled the air he breathed. The silver liquid lay in the cup like molten metal, waiting.
Reede shrugged. “I got it at the bar.”
“From Ravien?” Kedalion asked, incredulous. “That bastard.” He pointed at his own bottle. “He claimed this was the best he had; he’s been serving me swill for years.”
Reede grinned ferally. “He does that to everyone. You just have to know how to ask.…” He fingered the expensive-looking jeweled ear cuff that dangled against his neck; jerked it off suddenly, as if it was burning hot, and flung it down on the table in disgust.
Kedalion looked away nervously. “Uh-huh,” he murmured. He wondered how old Reede actually was; sitting here he had begun to realize that the other man was much younger than he had thought. Reede had a strikingly handsome face, and surprisingly nobody had smashed it in yet. But it was the face of someone barely out of his teens—hardly older than Ananke, and a good ten years younger than he was himself. The thought was depressing. But maybe Reede was just baby-faced; his punk-kid looks were peculiarly at odds with his manner and his apparent status. Kedalion decided that whatever Reede’s real age was, someone who lived like that was not likely to get much older.
Reede sat moodily biting his thumbnail. He noticed Shalfaz staring at his cast-off earring, and flicked it across the table at her. She picked it up with long, slim fingers that hesitated slightly, and put it on. She glanced at him, her expression grave. He smiled and nodded, and slowly she smiled too. Ananke watched them silently; he barely seemed to be breathing.
Kedalion let out his own breath in a sigh, and lifted his cup again. “Good business,” he said, offering the toast, savoring his anticipation. The two Ondineans raised their cups.
“Good fortune.” Shalfaz gave the answer, still fingering her new earring as she lifted her cup.
As the cup touched Kedalion’s lips, a loud sudden noise made him jerk around. The rest of the room seemed to turn with him, a hundred heads swiveling at once, looking toward the club’s entrance. And then chairs were squealing on the patterned floor and the crowd found its voice, the room became a sea of shouting, cursing motion.
“Son of a bitch,” Reede muttered irritably. “A raid.” He leaned back in his chair, folding his arms in resignation, like a man waiting out an inconvenient rainstorm.
Kedalion exchanged glances with the two Ondineans, not feeling as sanguine about the outcome. He had never been present when the Church Police raided a club, and never wanted to be. He had heard enough stories about their brutality toward offworlders—that it was even worse than their brutality toward their own people. The Hegemonic authorities were supposed to have jurisdiction over noncitizens, but the Church inquisitors seldom bothered to notify or cooperate with them.
A half dozen armed, uniformed men stood in the entrance, blocking it off, searching the crowd as if they were looking for someone in particular. Kedalion felt the habitual cold fist of paranoia squeeze his gut; realizing that in a crowd like this it was monstrous egotism to think they were looking for him, but not able to stop the sudden surge of fear.
And then a local man stepped from between the uniformed police—one of the youths Ravien had thrown out of the club. He pointed. He pointed directly at Kedalion.
Kedalion swore, sliding down from his chair as Shalfaz and Ananke rose from theirs. Reede looked toward the entrance as he noticed their panic. “You better get out of here—” He was already on his feet as he spoke, beside Shalfaz, taking her arm. “You know another way out?”
She nodded, already moving toward the back of the club, with Ananke on her heels. Kedalion started after them; hesitated, turned back to grab the silver bottle off the table. He plunged back into the sea of milling bodies like a man diving into the ocean; he was immediately in over his head, battered by the surge of panic-stricken strangers. Cursing, he fought his way through them in the direction he thought Shalfaz had taken, but the others were lost from sight.
Hands seized him around the waist and dragged him back and up. He struggled to break the hold, aimed a hard blow at his captor’s groin—
“Goddamn it!”
He realized, half a moment too late, that the man was not wearing a uniform.
Reede swore, doubling up over him. “You asshole!” He straightened with an effort, holding Kedalion under one arm like a stubborn child.
Cursing under his breath, Kedalion let himself be carried ignominiously but rapidly through the crush of bodies, through a maze of dark tunnels, and finally out into the reeking back-alley gloom. The others stood waiting, fading against the darkness. Reede dropped him on his feet.
“Go, quickly,” Shalfaz said, waving them on. “I must get back.”
“But—” Kedalion gasped, with what breath he still had in hi
m. “Will you be safe?”
She shrugged, her body going soft with resignation. “I am only a woman. I am not held responsible. If I let them—”
“No!” Ananke said. “Don’t! Come with us.” He pulled at her arm almost desperately.
“The earring,” Reede said. “The stones are genuine. Buy them off. You know the customs.” She nodded, and he shoved Ananke out into the street. “Get moving.” He jerked Kedalion off his feet again.
“Damn it, put me down!” Kedalion swore as Reede began to run. “I can—”
“No, you can’t.”
“Goddammit, I’m not—”
“Yes, you are. In big trouble. Complain about your injured dignity later,” Reede hissed, looking back over his shoulder as he heard shouting. Light burst on them from up ahead, lancing through the mudbrick alleyway between building walls; they collided with Ananke as the boy skidded to a stop. “We’re trapped!” Ananke cried, his voice going high like a girl’s.
Reede glanced up, at something beyond sight, and grunted, “They’re high-tracking us.” He turned and forced them into the narrow tunnel between two buildings, out into a small open plaza; all Kedalion could see was mudbrick and shadows, all he could hear was the sound of angry voices shouting at them to stop. He shut his eyes. Any minute Reede would go down to someone’s weapon, and this grotesque ignominy would reach its inevitable conclusion—
They slammed through the high double doors in a mountain of building facade, into the vast cavern of its interior, the befuddling darkness barely defined by the glow of countless candles. Up ahead of them a wall of hologramic illumination burst across Kedalion’s vision—a thousand views of paradise painted in light, rising to an ecstatic apex, a finger pointing toward heaven like the pyramidal structure of which it formed one wall.
“We’re in a temple!” he gasped. “Can we ask for sanctuary?”
“From the Church Police? Who do you think they work for?” Reede muttered. He dropped Kedalion onto his feet again and hesitated, searching the candlelit darkness. There were still a few worshipers prostrating themselves before the high altar and the radiant images of light. He turned back as the heavy doors burst open behind them. “Lose yourselves,” he said. “I’ll draw them off.… Hey! Police!” he shouted, a warning or an invitation, Kedalion wasn’t sure.
“Reede—” Kedalion began, but Reede was already bounding away, silhouetting himself against the blinding light. “Gods! Come on.” He nudged Ananke forward through the forest of candelabra, hoping that they could fade into the random motion of bodies as people picked themselves up from their prayers and scurried toward the exits. He pulled on the boy’s arm, forcing him into the crowd. Ananke followed like someone in a trance; Kedalion felt the boy’s body tremble.
Kedalion glanced back as people in the scattering crowd cried out, to see Reede scramble up onto the gold-crusted altar, climbing higher among its rococo pinnacles in an act of unthinkable desecration. Ananke gasped in horror, and Kedalion swore in empathy and disgust as the black-uniformed figures of the police closed in on Reede.
And then Reede leaped—throwing himself off of the altar into the embrace of the light, into the wall of heaven.
Kedalion heard a splintering crash and stopped dead, gaping in disbelief. The image hadn’t been a hologram at all—it had been a wall of backlit glass. Now it bore a gaping black hole where Reede had gone through it into the night outside. Kedalion groaned, beyond words to express what filled him then.
He stared on again, but too late. Armored hands fell on his shoulders, wrenching him around and into the embrace of a body manacle; a volley of blows and kicks drove him to his knees, retching.
The police dragged him outside, with curses so graphic that he couldn’t even translate most of them … or maybe they were promises. Ananke staggered beside him, bloody and dazed. Something was digging into his ribs beneath his jacket—the silver and gold flask of the water of life. Sweet Edhu, he thought, I’m going to die. They’ll kill us for this. And I never even got to taste it. A gasp of hysterical laughter escaped him, and someone slapped him hard.
Behind the temple, in a glittering snowfall of broken glass, the rest of the police were gathered around Reede’s sprawled body. Kedalion thought with a sick lurch that they’d killed Reede already. But as he was dragged closer he saw them haul Reede up, his face bloody but his eyes wide open, and knock him sprawling again into the field of glass.
Wanting to look away, Kedalion kept watching as a man who looked like an officer pulled Reede to his feet, shaking him. “You think that’s pain you feel, you whey-faced filth? You don’t know what pain is, yet—”
Reede stared at him with wild eyes, and laughed, as if the threat was completely absurd. Kedalion grimaced.
“Take him to the inquisitory,” the officer snarled, gesturing toward the police ground-van waiting across the square. Reede did not protest or resist as they hauled him roughly toward it. “Take them all!”
Reede looked back as the officer’s words registered on him. He stiffened suddenly, resisting the efforts to force him inside. Something like chagrin filled his face as he watched the police drag the others toward the van, and saw their own faces as they were dumped beside him. “Wait—” Reede called out, and ducked the blow someone aimed at his head. “Elasark!”
The second officer, who had overseen Kedalion’s capture, turned toward them abruptly, away from staring at the gaping hole in the glass wall of the temple. “You—?” he said, registering Reede’s presence with something that looked like disbelief. He swore, and broke off whatever he had been going to say next. He came toward the van, stood before Reede for a moment that seemed endless to Kedalion, before he turned away again, his eyes hot with fury. “Let him go.”
The other officer, the one who had knocked Reede down, let out a stream of outraged protest that Kedalion could barely follow. The first officer answered him, in Ondinean as rapid and angry, in which the names “Reede” and “Humbaba” stood out like alien stones. He finished the outburst by drawing his finger across his own throat in a blunt, graphic motion. “Let him go,” he repeated.
The other officer didn’t move. The rest of the police stood sullenly glaring at him, at the prisoners, as Elasark turned back and released the manacle that held Reede. No one moved to stop him.
Reede climbed down out of the van, shaking himself out. He turned and glanced up at Kedalion and Ananke, looked back at Elasark. “Those two work for me,” he said.
Elasark stiffened, and the sudden hope inside Kedalion began to curdle. “The window will be repaired perfectly inside of three days,” Reede said. “You will receive a large, anonymous donation to the Church Security Fund.” Slowly Elasark moved back to them and released their bonds, his motions rough with barely controlled rage as he shoved them down out of the van. He shouted an order and the police climbed inside, without their prisoners. The doors slammed and the black van left the square, howling like a frustrated beast.
Ananke stood watching silently until the van was out of sight. And then his eyes rolled up and back in his head, and he collapsed in a billowing heap of robes. Kedalion crouched down beside him, glad for the excuse to sit as he lifted the boy’s head.
“Is he all right?” Reede asked, looking more surprised than concerned.
“No,” Kedalion said, the word sounding more irritable than he had intended. “But he will be. Are you?”
Reede wiped absently at his lacerated face, not even wincing. Kedalion winced. Reede studied his reddened fingers in mild disgust, as if it were paint staining them, and not his own blood. He wiped his hand on his pants. “Sure.” A bark of mocking laughter burst out of him as he looked away across the deserted square in the direction the van had taken. “Stupid bastards,” he said.
“You just saved all our lives,” Kedalion murmured, well aware that the Church Police were anything but stupid; and equally aware that there couldn’t be more than half a dozen people on this entire planet who could do wha
t he had just seen Reede do to them. “You don’t have to be so goddamn casual about it!” His voice was shaking now. He reached into the numerous pockets of his coat, and found the one with the silver bottle still safely inside it.
Reede looked at him, and shrugged. “Sorry,” he murmured. But there was no comprehension in it.
“Goddammit,” Kedalion muttered again, still glaring at Reede as he struggled to pull the bottle free. He unstoppered it and took a large mouthful of the silver liquid heedlessly. He gasped as it slid down his throat with an almost sentient caress, bringing his shock-numbed body back to life from the inside. “Gods,” he whispered, almost a prayer, “it’s like sex.”
“I like a man who knows what’s really important,” Reede said sardonically.
“If you think I was going to miss a chance to drink this, after all that’s happened tonight, you’re crazy,” Kedalion snapped, beyond caring by now whether Reede really was crazy. “Who the hell are you, anyway?” Not really expecting an answer to the question this time, either.
“I work for Sab Emo Humbaba,” Reede said, picking his teeth. “Therefore the police and I have a kind of symbiotic relationship.”
“A lot of people work for Humbaba,” Kedalion said. “I’ve worked for him myself. But the Church Police don’t scatter like cats when I say so.”
Reede sighed, and looked pained. “My full name is Reede Kulleva Kullervo. I’m Humbaba’s brains. I head his research and development. If anything happened to me.…” He shrugged meaningfully. “You know who the real gods are, around here.”
The name sounded familiar, but Kedalion couldn’t place it. He stared at Reede, trying to picture the tattooed lunatic in front of him at work in a sterile lab somewhere, peacefully accessing restricted information, datamodeling illegal chemicals inside a holofield. “No…” he said, shaking his head. “Bullshit. What are you really?”