Bright of the Sky (40 page)

“No, Shen,” she said. “You know all that you need to know. You are all that you need to be. Without me.”

“I need you with me, Anzi.”

Her mouth formed the word
no
. He had the sinking feeling that she was going to leave him.

She pulled him toward the edge of the dock, where the mercurial sea lapped up against immortal pilings. “Shen, you will succeed without me. You have the redstones; you have your story.”

“We’ve been together all this way, Anzi. I’m not sure I can do this without you.”

Now her face had grown stubborn. “Yes you can. Despite what my uncle thinks, I believe you can succeed at the Inyx sway. You can earn back this daughter.”

Unexpectedly, and at the mention of his daughter, he found he couldn’t speak.

Anzi nodded. “You’ll love your daughter finally, and enough.”

They stood looking at each other. The dock seemed bleak indeed, and its views more daunting than before. “You know what I was,” Quinn said in a low voice. “All that I did and didn’t do—before.”

“Yes. But you remember Ci Dehai’s wisdom? The river runs forward. We are what we will be. I have to believe this. So I can be good in my own view.”

“Anzi, come with me. We’ll make this legate listen.” The legate might be mistaken, it might be cleared up—his mind cast about for ways around the gatekeeper.

“No.” She put a hand on his arm and tightened her grip. “You’re like that gatekeeper, Shen. You stand at the place where our worlds will cross, will mix. You’ll have to choose how it will happen—who will win and who will suffer.”

“I don’t have that kind of power. If you only knew how little—”

She waved the response away. “Titus,” she whispered, “the navitar is right.”

She had used his true name. It gave him a shiver.

“Things converge in you. Because of who you are, because of Johanna, I don’t know why. But you’re a great man. Bei told me. The navitar says so. I believe. I’ve always believed.”

He turned away, looking at the sea, blindingly reflective. What Anzi said was true. Maybe he wouldn’t control the gate. But it would come down to the question of where his loyalties lay: with this land that held his daughter, or the one where she used to reside. Rather than straddling the worlds, he would have to put both feet in one place. And he had no idea which place that would be. Even though he couldn’t say exactly why—and when—he must choose; he knew that if he didn’t, he would never stand on firm ground again.

The line of travelers was moving forward. Now and then the legate frowned at Quinn and Anzi. Cho waved from the elevator capsule, urging him to hurry.

There was no more time for conversation.

Anzi looked as though she wished to say more. As though she wanted to confess that she had feelings for him. He wanted that from her, but he had no right to hear it.

In a rush, he said, “Anzi, why are you so aloof? You say that you admire Rose passion, but you’re composed, even now.”

She looked away. “Bei asked me to bind you to me—by intimate means. To win your loyalty to our world. So it became part of my honor not to.”

He looked at her, those features that had become so familiar to him: ivory and white. Once so cold. “Anzi, I . . .”

She put her hand on his mouth. “Say nothing. Go.”

“You can’t wait here,” he said.

“I’ll take lodging in the Rim City. The first place I come to. You can find me when you’re done, above. Make no more trouble here. Pass through, like the common thing that it is.” She gave him a small push, tense and urgent.

Quinn picked up his satchel, still thinking how to persuade the legate. But in the end, he knew that Anzi was right: making a scene would draw the kind of attention that they must, at all costs, avoid.

Quinn walked to the elevator, his stomach clenched, still casting about for a solution, but finding none. He turned around just as the doors began closing. He saw Anzi standing, the silver sea behind her, a smile on her face that he was ashamed to find he could not return. He lifted his hand in farewell.

The door closed.

At his side, he heard Cho exclaim, “Oh dear. That was ill luck. I wouldn’t be surprised if Min Fe was behind it, may God look at him.” He sighed. “Politics.”

People found seats on benches. “Make way,” Cho spat at someone. “A personage must sit here.” Quinn was so stunned by the turn of events that he hardly registered the launch of the elevator. He sat next to Chalin officials who no doubt had made the trip many times.

There was no view in the cabin as they shot upward. Someone turned a spindle, pulling a filament from a spinning basket.

It would be a long ride.

PART III
DARK
AS
ROSE
NIGHT

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

T
HE PREACHER ON THE CORNER
proclaimed that the end was near. He kept his post despite the relentless drizzle, waving tracts at people on lunch break. He managed to thrust one into the hands of Stefan Polich.

Stefan was surprised. It had been a long time since he’d gone on foot at street level. He’d assumed that the city was more presentable, that people, with their basic needs met, were less inspired to deal religion and drugs. But he’d forgotten that some folks had runaway minds. The ones who thought they’d spoken to Jesus, and the ones who thought they
were
Jesus.

“Jesus got room for you, too,” the preacher said—a vagrant dispensing grace to a billionaire.

The tract was a pulpy wad in Stefan’s fist. He hurried onward, putting distance between himself and the thoughts of the kingdom to come. He was trying to clear his thoughts, not complicate them.

But Titus Quinn kept coming to mind. Like this street preacher, and the losers who congregated out of the rain under awnings, Quinn was a mental runaway.

Stefan had thought so from the day they’d found the man in a mining camp on Lyra, where no out-of-system freighter had come in years. Aside from being on a planet where he couldn’t be, Quinn had done little to inspire confidence in his exotic claims. Even after hospitalization and rehab, the man was a wreck: a loner, a misfit, and a dropout.

Now, Stefan depended on that same man to save him. He needed Titus Quinn a damn sight more than he needed Jesus.

Especially since a Kardashev tunnel had devoured another shipload of colonists.

At the residential tower where Caitlin and Rob Quinn lived, he entered the lobby, shaking the rain from his umbrella. He bypassed the elevators and took the stairs to give his quads a workout.

There came a time, Stefan mused, when a man had to decide what he believed—about death, about what it all means. At forty-three, Stefan Polich thought it might be time to nail that down. Once the newsTides got word about the evaporation of the starship
Appolonia
—and that would be about twenty minutes ago—he’d be hounded for an interview, explaining, justifying, apologizing. He’d done it before. But there were those on the Minerva board who might challenge him after two such failures in as many years. Suzene Gninenko, for example, always watched for an opening. If he started replacing ships, it would be an admission that they weren’t seaworthy. No one would book passage on the older ships. At 900 million a pop, the fleet replacement would drive profits into a gopher hole.

Thus his crisis of faith.

Floor two. He removed his wool coat, tucking it over his arm and continuing the climb. By floor six he ought to have the meaning of life figured out. As a savvy, he was always good at the big picture. But the ultimate big picture? Stefan shook his head, trudging up the terrafab stairs.

Floor ten. His legs felt like molten ingots. Giving up on his quads, he pushed through the door to the elevator stack, no closer to his epiphany.

Minerva controlled nineteen Kardashev tunnels, domesticating them and creating a transport system that linked the thirty extrasolar colonized planets. It was a kingdom dependent upon cataclysmic forces. An empire based on blindingly violent past events: the supernovae of stars of more than five solar masses.

So when these handy space-time tunnels ripped apart a ship or two, it wasn’t as though anyone should be surprised. All passengers signed papers that openly disclosed the dangers in excruciating detail.

In his pocket, he fingered the damp religious tract. He wondered if the passengers on the ill-fated
Appolonia
went straight to heaven—or made a stop in Titus Quinn’s
adjoining region
. As the man himself had once done, when all this began.

He stood in front of the Quinns’ apartment door, flashed his silvered hand in front of the smart surface, and waited. Caitlin Quinn had little reason to open the door to the likes of him. She knew that Minerva had threatened Rob’s job to get her brother-in-law to go. What she didn’t know was that Helice had thrown fuel on that fire, putting Mateo’s future on the line, too. He was glad Lamar had blown the whistle on her. Helice was an amoral zealot, with ambitions to succeed her betters . . . thinking she’d go along with Quinn, threatening their man without consulting him. She was walking the edge, and at the first chance Stefan would give her a little push. So Caitlin Quinn owed him a little payback, and he was here to get it.

She did open the door. It took her a moment to recognize him. She couldn’t help knowing his face from the company newsTides.

A shadow fell on her face. “Titus . . .”

“No, it’s not about Titus. There’s no word yet.” He looked beyond her shoulder, into the apartment, but he knew that Rob was at work. “May I come in for a moment?”

Caitlin crumpled her lips. “I’m not sure. I don’t know if I want to hear some things.”

“I swear. Nothing like that.”

After a moment she stepped back, and he entered the apartment.

He avoided looking around. It was ugly and cramped. The walls had little divots where new data structures had been replaced. He observed this with his peripheral vision, taking care not to embarrass her. This residential cube had its share of virtual enhancements, and when they were live, the walls must look considerably better. Her husband could afford it. Minerva paid top prices even for talent like his.

She closed the door. “So Rob still has his position?”

He nodded. The forty-year-old savant tender should be retired to the dole. But wouldn’t be, because his brother was protecting him. Caitlin Quinn no doubt considered this Rob’s due. Entitlement was the game, and every dred and middie knew exactly how to play it.

“In that case,” she said, “you can sit down.”

They faced off. Caitlin was stocky and healthy looking. Nice features for her age; might once have been pretty. Probably no aesthetic enhancements, unlike his own wife, who frankly made Caitlin look like a wet dog.

Now that he was here it was hard to make a beginning. He made a stab at it: “I know you despise me.”

She looked as though she was weighing this idea.

Stefan continued, “Quinn and I had our differences when he lost his ship.” After a pause: “I made mistakes.”

Caitlin wasn’t giving him much. She just sat there, looking at him without any trace of fear or toadyism. He didn’t much care for the judgmental gaze. He went on: “I didn’t believe his story. I couldn’t entrust another starship to someone with ideas like his. No ship would have fully booked under his command. He ruined himself. I know you don’t believe that.”

“Nope. I don’t.”

“I take some of the blame. I was wrong about what happened. But if I’d championed him, the board would have dumped me in an instant. With Titus no better off.”

“All right. But you went beyond just sacking him. You said things that made sure he’d never work again.”

He stared at the floor. “Mistakes.” Stefan had never liked Titus Quinn. When the man had come home raving, it was just that much worse.

“Do you expect me to forgive you, Mr. Polich? Is that why you’re here?”

“No.” He looked into her eyes. She had a quality that the poor often had, of what might be called integrity. And he wanted some of that, even if only for a moment, so that he could stand himself. “Up to Titus, isn’t it?”

“Damn right.”

The warm room began drying his wet collar and shoes, making him feel little pinpricks at his neck and ankles. He shouldn’t have come. There was too much past. Ugly past. But he was here now, so he blurted, “You and Titus are close. Even closer than he and his brother.”

A movement distracted him. He looked up to find that her son was standing in the doorway to a bedroom.

Caitlin turned to him. “Honey, school’s still in session.”

“I heard voices.”

“This is Stefan Polich, Mateo.”

The boy looked at him a long beat. By the cool gaze, Stefan was afraid his name had been taken in vain a few times around this household.

“Are you a savvy?” Mateo asked. “You look like one.”

The question startled Stefan. “I . . . am. Yes.”

Mateo smiled. “Me, too. I’m studying.”

Stefan felt an awful half-smile paste up on his face. You either tested or you didn’t. Studying made no difference. And sometimes, even if you did test well, things happened to your score records. Confronted with the boy’s brown eyes, Stefan cemented his resolve to protect this boy. Stefan might be a sinner, but he wasn’t a ghoul.

Caitlin escorted Mateo back to his virtual tie-in. She closed the door, eyeing Stefan.

“Sweet, isn’t it? He actually thinks there’s room for self-improvement.”

The room was growing hotter. He should never have come. He couldn’t fix the world. He couldn’t change the fact that there was a natural divide in ability for the human race. That the world had become so detailed and complex that it surpassed the Caitlins and Robs of the world.

He was desperate to be gone, but he plodded on, wanting the thing that Caitlin could give him: hope.

“You’re close to Quinn,” he said. “That’s why I came. To ask you.”

“Ask then, Mr. Polich. I’m a busy woman.”

He paused. “Do you believe him?”

A small smile came into her face. She knew exactly what he meant. But she turned away, looking out the sliding-glass door that led out onto a lanai. She stared into the city. “That he went somewhere? Do I believe he went to the other place and lived?”