Forgotten Suns (39 page)

She heard Aunt Khalida choke, but couldn’t tell if it was
laughter or outrage. Probably laughter.

Meanwhile they sailed on along the route that Central had
set, aiming toward the heart of it all, the planetoid that had been the first
settlement in this system. It was a full-on space station now, surrounded by a
webwork of docking bays and biospheres: habitat modules for alien as well as
human species.

The bay they’d been assigned was on the outer level above
the planetoid’s south pole. It had been built to hold a starship; it was just
big enough for Ship.

Ship was happy enough. There was star-stuff to feed on, thin
enough here, but the bay was positioned to catch the wind from Kom Ombo’s sun.
It was like a terrestrial whale floating in an ocean current, waiting for
plankton to stream past.

While they docked, Rama left the screen he’d been monitoring
and moved toward the conn. Dr. Ma let him have it.

“Central,” he said. “May we come aboard?”

“We were just about to say,” said the voice on the feed. “By
all means. A shuttle will be ready for you when docking is complete.”

~~~

The shuttle was actually a sort of elevator: a string of
cars on cables that connected the bay to the outer level of the station. Most
of the crew would stay on Ship until Rama was sure of what was below, but he
couldn’t stop Aisha from going, and Aunt Khalida didn’t intend to stay behind,
either. He took Marta, who knew people in Kom Ombo, and to Aisha’s not entirely
pleasant surprise, the former Lieutenant Zhao.

He left Kirkov and Robrecht and Dr. Ma in charge of the
ship—balancing each other out, Aisha thought. Nobody would hijack it in any
case. It wouldn’t go unless Rama asked it to.

They were a nicely piratical collection of people. Aisha
even wore her swords; nobody said anything about them, and there didn’t seem to
be any restrictions against them. Unlike energy weapons, which were supposed to
be peace-bonded, or projectile weapons, which were outright banned.

Central’s web ran a stream of what regulations there were, along
with information, instructions, and so much advertising for goods and services
that it made Aisha dizzy. Most of Central, as far as she could tell, was one
huge open bazaar, where a person could buy just about anything, and just about
anything was legal, as long as admin got a cut of the take.

Aunt Khalida shut that off before Aisha could test it. “Not
till we’re down,” she said. “Everything on this feed is jacked for the
tourists.”

“They get tourists out here?”

“Tourists are everywhere.” Khalida sounded almost cheerful.
She’d been terribly quiet since they left Araceli, but something about this
place had opened her up—or made her stop caring.

Aisha eyed her warily, but there wasn’t anything to be done
here. All she could do was watch and wait.

~~~

The shuttle passed through the outer levels, then through
a tunnel into Central itself. Everything was pitch black except for the faint
glow of emergency lights and a glimmer around Rama that Aisha almost might have
thought she was imagining. Then suddenly they burst out into light: clear and
bright, shaded more toward the blue spectrum than the suns of Earth or
Nevermore, but still not so far along that it made her eyes hurt.

The whole world was hollow. Bubbles floated in it, full of
people and buildings and machines, and some that were empty except for water
and greenery. Cars hummed and darted and swarmed in patterns controlled by the
worldweb, flowing all around and about and into the bubbles.

A car was waiting for them when they came out the shuttle,
with a pilot who greeted Marta as if they were long-lost cousins. Aisha didn’t
think they were technically related, and the web wasn’t helpful when she asked,
but they obviously went back a while.

He was a smallish man, no taller than Rama, and built
square, with black hair cut short, and bright black eyes. He took them all in
with transparent pleasure. “Welcome!” he said, spreading his arms wide. “Welcome
to Kom Ombo!”

“Meser Abaad,” Aunt Khalida said. “We’re honored.”

“The honor is mine,” he said. “Come, there’s someone who’s
eager to meet you.”

Aisha followed the rest into the car with the pilot who was
actually, the worldsweb said, one of the principals of Kom Ombo. That being
what they called someone who ran the system.

He didn’t act like any important person Aisha had ever met.
He was easy, casual, and full of information as they flew in a long arc toward
the center of Central. The bubble there was almost big enough to be a planetoid
in its own right. There was a whole city inside, and a lake on the bottom, surrounded
by deep green woods.

The car flew through the surface of the bubble—slowing a
little and stretching the bubble until the world outside blurred and then came
clear again—and wove into a swarm of traffic, aiming down toward the lake.

Marta called Meser Abaad Jonathan. He didn’t feel like a
null, but he didn’t feel ordinary, either. Sometimes when Aisha turned away to
look out at the city floating past, and then looked back again, there seemed to
be two of him: one laid over the other, as if he rode in a bubble of his own.

She’d never met a grown person who was so happy without
being impaired somehow. The city he flew through made the port of Araceli look
clean and simple, and he was in charge of it. It didn’t seem to taint him at
all.

The car slowed as it descended toward the lake. The water
was dark and looked deep, but Aisha could see something moving in it. Something
huge, though not as big as Ship.

“My dear,” Jonathan said, and this time he wasn’t speaking
to anyone in the car, “our guests are here. When you’re ready…”

A voice even brighter than his came lilting over the comm. “My
dear! Of course I’m ready. Bring them in, if you please.”

“Immediately, my dear,” Jonathan said, sweeping a smile
around the car. “Going down,” he said.

By which he meant into the water: nose down, diving
straight, with the searchlight arrowing ahead of him.

Aisha had never been in a submarine. She didn’t think Aunt
Khalida had, either, and Rama was no seafarer. Neither of them allowed any
expression to show, but Aunt gripped the arms of her seat so hard the padding
bulged.

There was something about the pressure of water on a hull.
No pressure at all, in space, or whatever weirdness jumpspace was made of, didn’t
feel as perfectly dangerous as this.

Strands and coils of weed curled up past the searchlight.
Small shiny creatures darted out of the way. They weren’t fish, exactly, but
close enough.

Something rose up from below. At first Aisha thought it was
more of the weed, but it moved differently. Its undulations weren’t random. It
was swimming.

She’d seen something like it in an aquarium on Earth. A
lionfish: an explosion of shimmering striped fins and spines, daring the world
to try, just try, to get in its way.

This was enormous. Bigger than the car, and its eyes were
bright gold, flaring like a cat’s when the light struck them.

“My dear!” Jonathan cried.

“My dear,” the voice on the comm trilled. It came from the
thing in the water, which had stopped swimming upward to hover in front of
them.

Aisha could see it perfectly well. The car’s hull had gone
transparent. They floated in a bubble, with nothing between them and the dark
water but a few millimeters of glasteel.

“Sers and seras,” Jonathan said, “this is my beloved, my
dear one, my sweet Alexandra.”

They all murmured polite things. Aisha felt faintly stunned.
She’d seen aliens before, of course she had. She’d been through enough
spaceports and traveled on enough ships. But never one like this.

“My dears,” Alexandra said. Her voice must be synthetic, but
it sounded wonderfully real. “You’re most welcome. I do apologize for dragging
you here without even a pause for a rest or a bite. I’ve been waiting so long,
you see. I’m just a little overeager.”

“That’s easily remedied,” Jonathan said. He waved his hands
like a stage magician. It all came out of the blanked storage bins, of course:
water and wine and something light and fizzy and alarmingly good, and boxes
that opened into smaller boxes full of food.

Aisha didn’t want to imagine that the creature called
Alexandra ate for dinner. She was hungry enough to not particularly care.

Even Zhao ate a little, under the force of Jonathan’s good
humor and Alexandra’s luminous eyes. They were being studied, and no one pretended
otherwise. It was all very open and uncomplicated.

It was weird. Aisha should have been ready to crawl out of
her skin, but she was as comfortable as if she’d been at home on Nevermore.

Even that didn’t hurt as much as usual. She breathed past
the too-familiar pain in her heart, and focused on the food in front of her and
the alien now wrapped partway around the car.

“Dear Marta,” Alexandra said after they’d been eating for a
while and were starting to slow down, “would it be terribly rude of me to ask
if you would sing for us while you’re in Central?”

“Not rude at all,” Marta said smiling, “and of course I
will. Only tell me when and where.”

“We’ll do that,” Jonathan said. Then Aisha caught a glimpse
of his other side, crisp and professional, before he shifted back to his happy
self. “My dear, shall I take them to Home Above now, and let them rest?”

“By all means,” Alexandra said. “You’ve all been most kind.”

That was one of the stranger meals Khalida had eaten. They
were on display to the alien who was also, obviously, the human principal’s
lover and lifemate. What the creature really thought, or why it was so
important that they be brought to her in her own habitat, Khalida lacked the
data to know.

It was a test, she supposed. She noticed that no one had
much to say while they ate, and Rama had not spoken a word since he left the
Ra-Harakhte
.

He was not in the fugue state that had taken him down on
Araceli. His eyes were alert and his movements as light and powerful as ever.
He was in observation mode, even while he was being observed.

Khalida for one was glad to leave the lake behind and be
delivered to a house halfway up the curve of the city’s bubble. It was a
near-perfect replica of an early Industrial Age villa in Luxor in Old Egypt,
complete with palm trees and mock Pharaonic columns.

Aisha laughed when she saw it. Fortunately their host took
no offense. “Isn’t it delightful?” he said to her.

“It looks like my grandfather’s house,” she said. “You
really live here?”

“I really do,” he answered. “Now you will be my guests while
you’re in Central. The house is keyed to all of you; you have only to ask and
it will provide.”

“A bed,” Aisha said promptly. “Sleep.”

“As madam wishes,” the wall said. It sounded exactly like
Khalida’s father’s major-domo.

She suppressed the start of recognition. That was a test,
too. Everything here was a test. She did not know what it led to, but she meant
to pass, or at least to come out intact.

~~~

The guests, however willing or unwilling they might be,
were housed along a corridor on the second story. Aisha made sure to claim one
of the rooms next to Rama’s, and Khalida tossed her kit into the one on the
other side.

The others seemed happy to put themselves to bed once their
rooms were sorted, but Khalida had no sleep in her. She prowled the house,
investigating its nooks and corners, and made note of which doors failed to
open when she approached.

When she set an alert on Aisha, the house was cooperative.
It had no objection to her going out, either.

Their host was long gone. Being a principal, she supposed.
Or being lifemate to his alien beloved. It was none of her business either way,
unless it threatened her or her niece.

Central’s web was extremely well designed and impeccably
maintained. For a pirate network on the edge of nowhere, it compared favorably
with Centrum itself—and probably intentionally, considering the name.

It provided her with a detailed map of the city, though not
of the people in it, except in terms of traffic patterns and, here and there,
species. Not every sector had human-breathable atmosphere.

She was almost tempted to test one of those, but her mood
was not quite that contrary. She found her way to the center, to the Mercado as
it was called here: the bazaar, they would have said at home in Egypt.

Odd that she was thinking of Egypt as home. She had stopped
that along about the time she enlisted in MI. Now that she was out, old habits
seemed to be coming back.

She had her sidearm tucked in a pocket—no one had shown any
interest in relieving her of it, in spite of the regulations that had been
streamed at them on the shuttle. Her jacket and pants with the insignia removed
were still a little too obviously MI, but if any eyes took note of it, they
slid on by.

She was not being stalked, either, that she could detect.
Predators tended to go for the weak, and she had never projected that, even as
a raw young recruit with more temper than sense. She was anonymous, and
somewhat surprisingly safe.

She turned in to one of the dozen bars along that particular
stretch of street. It was an honest dive, not trying to be anything else: walls
held up by a combination of grime and smoke and the smell of ancient beer,
screens showing random streams from the worldweb, and a holobar tended by a
person of approximately the same vintage and provenance as Vikram on Nevermore.
The radiation scars if anything were thicker, the skin was darker, and the
gender indeterminate, but the voice was smoky sweet and so was the brown-golden
liquid the bartender set in front of Khalida.

She tipped back the shot and paused while the liquor burned
its way to her stomach. A low whistle escaped her. “That was pure peat. Not the
real Lagavulin?”