Skye Object 3270a (4 page)

Full dark had fallen by the time Skye followed Ord past the exclusive district of Old Guard Heights, to the equally exclusive complex of three tapering white towers called the Ice Sisters. Ord made to enter the lobby of the tallest Sister, but Skye hesitated. “Ord, are you sure this is the right address?” Only the oldest of the real people lived in these towers. It was said some of them never came out.

“Yes Skye. Please come.”

The lobby was empty. Ord called the elevator. It was glass, and as it rose up the tower's outer face, Skye felt as if the city was falling away from her feet.
Like jumping in reverse
. It carried her all the way to the top without stopping.

When the doors opened, she stepped out into a dimly lit alcove. It opened onto a wide balcony populated with tall, tropical shrubs and small flowering trees, all growing in neat planters. Through the foliage she glimpsed the formal double doors of an exclusive apartment. No hint of light leaked through the glass panes, and she began to wonder if M. Hand had forgotten her appointment. Perhaps no one was home?

The Dull Intelligence that served as major-domo for the apartment quickly banished that doubt. “Welcome Mistress Object!” it called in a cheery masculine voice that emanated from somewhere above the elevator doors. “Your host awaits you on the roof. He asks that you please follow the footlights to the stairway.”

Dim lights on the floor came to life, illuminating a slate path that wound through the shrubbery before curving out of sight. Skye nodded nervously – “All right” – but she kept a close watch on Ord, looking for any sign of tension or alarm. She trusted the little robot to know if something was suspicious, or wrong, but Ord showed no concern as it scuttled beside her.

An ornate metal railing encircled the balcony. Skye was tempted to look over, for she could hear music and voices drifting up from far below, but the path guided her away, to the other side of the rooftop. From here she could look up to the city's summit, and beyond it, to the elevator column, its far end still glistening in Kheth's light. Only a few stars were visible within the faint, milky wash of the nebula. The distant, ruined swan burster was a black circle drawn against that luminous sky.

She found the stairs behind a stand of dwarf banana trees. They rose in a single, narrow flight to a flat roof. She craned her neck, straining to see what might be up there, but all she could make out was a railing like the one that ringed the balcony. On the stairs, the footlights were dull red, dimming steadily with each step.

Well.

Skye drew in a deep breath of the flower-scented air. Then she straightened her shoulders and cautiously mounted the stairs. Halfway up, she paused again. Now she could just see the rooftop. It was fully encircled by the railing. No plants grew there. Skye saw only a single shadowy figure, hunched in a chair, peering intently into the eyepiece of a telescope longer than her arm.

“Hello,” Skye said softly. “M. Hand?”

“Come quickly, you've almost missed it.”

The figure at the telescope neither looked at her, nor sat up. His left hand though, circled in a gesture that clearly said
Come here
. Skye looked around for Ord, but the little robot had disappeared into the shadows. So she swallowed her misgivings and went to join the astronomer, telling herself that real people were supposed to be eccentric, and that M. Hand could be expected to be especially odd, as he must be among the oldest of the old to own such a fine apartment.

As she drew near, the astronomer slid gracefully out of his chair. Skye tried to get a look at his face, but it was very dark here, high above the city. When he bent to check the telescope's mount, long, light-colored hair slipped in loops across his cheek. “Quickly,” he said. “Sit down and look. It'll pass out of sight soon.”

Skye sat. She leaned forward, careful not to touch the telescope. It perched on the railing with bird-feet, its barrel pointed close to the horizon. She squirmed a little to get just the right position. Then she looked through the eye piece.

She gasped.

The field of view was bisected by a line of bright, sparkling objects. She counted six, eight, twelve spots of jewel-like light. “What is this? I never saw a line of stars like that. They look so close and bright.”

“Stars?” He sounded puzzled. “That's the construction zoo.”

She sat up abruptly, squinting along the top of the telescope, trying to see the speckles with her own eyes.
There
. A thumb's length above the horizon. She could just make them out, if she didn't look directly at them. They appeared to be below the city, dropping toward the dark rim of Deception Well.

The construction zoo was a site in an extremely high orbit, farther out than the end of the elevator cable, where a great ship was being slowly fabricated. The ship-building had begun only five years ago, and it would be many years more before it was completed. For now the great ship existed as separate pieces growing slowly larger as raw materials were carried up the elevator column.

Also to be found in the construction zoo was a habitat for the small work crew, along with several gigantic tentacled lydra, the “construction beasts,” that did most of the assembly. Somewhere among all those other things was the lifeboat in which Skye first arrived, for city authority had decided it should be stored in the zoo.

She looked through the telescope again, studying the beautiful line of objects for a few seconds more. Then she turned to M. Hand, not trying to disguise her disappointment. “It all looks so small. I thought you'd be able to see so much more. How did you ever track that fragment of the swan burster?”

“Oh. Well not with this instrument. This is just a little hobby telescope I . . . I built it when I was twelve. The city's two primary telescopes are both in orbit.”

So this was an antique instrument. She wondered how many centuries old it might be. “So you tracked the fragment with the . . .
primary
telescopes?”

“Well, no.” His voice was soft and low and almost . . . uncertain? She still could not make out the features of his face. “Actually, the fragments were all located and tagged in the first few years after the swan burster was hit, so all I did was track the signals from this particular fragment. The challenge came in predicting when its orbital path would bring it close to the city . . . close enough to stimulate the defensive lasers, you see . . . ?”

She did, only too well. “So you didn't actually find the fragment at all?”

“No. That was all done before . . . well, it was done before I was born. I wish I'd been in on it.”

“Before you were born? But the swan burster was shattered only twenty years ago.” As soon as she said it, she understood. Her hand went to her mouth in a futile attempt to stifle a giggle.

“What?” M. Hand demanded.

“Nothing,” she choked out. “Sorry. Except . . . I thought you were some awesome old man.” And she started giggling all over again.

“Oh. It doesn't matter. Does it?”

Skye's humor vanished as she remembered why she had come. “Actually, I think it does, M.—” She caught herself. She was not going to address him formally if he was only a dumb ado like her. “What was your first name?”

“Devi.” He said it quickly, as if afraid it might turn on him, or get away.

“Devi,” she repeated. “I think it does matter. I wanted to talk to the person who found the fragments. The person who picked them out of the dark.”

“Oh. That would be Tannasen. He helped me with my project, but he's not in the city now. He spends most of his time aboard
Spindrift
.”

“The research ship.” Skye shivered as vague memories surfaced. Her lifeboat had been found by
Spindrift
. She'd spent over a year aboard the tiny ship, though for most of that time she'd been kept in cold sleep. Tannasen had brought her to consciousness only in the last two weeks before
Spindrift
returned to Silk. She'd been hardly two years old, so almost the only thing she could remember was being afraid.

Devi stirred. “What . . . did you want of Tannasen? If you don't mind my asking . . . ?”

Skye wrinkled her nose. Devi was an ado. At most he was only a few years older than her, yet he spoke like the formal old man she had expected to find. “I wanted to ask him how small objects are found. Can a telescope like this—”

“Oh no. It'd be hard even for the big orbital scopes to see a piece of the swan burster after all these years. The fragments don't reflect light.” He leaned over the telescope, gazing along its line. “Look at the construction zoo again before it sets. All those objects are gleaming bright because they're lit up by Kheth. The city is in the planet's shadow, so it's night for us. But the construction zoo's orbit is so high it's still in the light. Everything that reflects that light is highly visible. The only object that doesn't reflect light is the lifeboat that was picked up several years ago. If you watch the construction zoo long enough, you can sometimes see one of the lights dim, or even go out. That happens when the lifeboat drifts across your line of sight, blocking the view of the brighter object,
eclipsing
it. If that didn't happen from time to time, it would be impossible to tell the lifeboat was there . . . at least with a scope like this.”

“That's right,” Skye whispered. “Lifeboats don't reflect light.” Of course they could not be seen with a telescope. Why hadn't she thought of that before?

“Are you all right?” Devi asked.

She shook her head, glad that it was dark. “Were you . . . going to say more about the lifeboat?”

“Oh. Right. Well, lifeboats were made to be hard to see. They were for escape, after all.”

Sooth.

The great ship must have been under attack. Lifeboats were filled and launched, in the hope that a few might escape the guns of the Chenzeme ship.

Or so she imagined. She had no memory of those days. If she thought hard on it, she could remember the feel of her mother's hands, or the sound of her father's voice, but she could not remember an attack, she could not remember being put aboard the lifeboat, and she could not remember saying goodbye.

“How did Tannasen find the swan burster fragments?” she asked. “If they could not be seen?”

“He used radar. He built a small dish antenna, and launched it into the swan burster's orbit. The antenna sends out pulses of radio waves. Then it listens, to see if any echoes come back. If there's an echo, then there must be an object out there, reflecting the radio waves. One pass won't yield much information, but the antenna can sweep the area over and over again, until a detailed image is assembled. It's kind of like waving a flashlight in a dark room.”

Skye imagined probing beams of radio waves searching the dust and pebbles of the nebula, feeling for the presence of a lifeboat. It could work. “How can I get permission to use radar?”

Devi laughed. “Study astronomy for a century or two, I guess. There's a huge waiting list for all the equipment . . . Why do you ask? The fragments from the swan burster have all been tagged. What else is there to find?”

Skye felt a sudden heat in her cheeks. “Maybe nothing, but . . . there might be other lifeboats, like the one I came in.”

“You . . . ?” Devi's voice skidded to a high note. “Then you're . . .”

“Skye Object 3270a. Yes.”

“I . . . thought your name was Zia.”

“Zia's my friend. She was supposed to come with me tonight. She couldn't make it, and . . . I'm the one who really wants to know anyway.”

He was silent for several seconds. Then, “Let's go somewhere else, okay? And we can talk.”

T
hey walked around to the dark glass doors of the apartment. “Just a minute,” Devi said.

He touched the door handle and the apartment's interior flooded with light. Through the glass panes Skye saw an exquisitely decorated living room, with red and gold carpets and black furnishings. Then her gaze shifted. For the first time, Devi was in the light. He was wearing gray slacks, with a black sweater and boots. His hair was bi-colored: an even mix of dark brown and red strands, tied in a loose ponytail behind his neck. He had given in to the ado boy fad for beards: there was a small triangle of dense, rusty-red fuzz on his chin. Heavy brown eyebrows sheltered almond-shaped eyes. The irises were green, flecked with gold. He smiled at Skye. “I'll be right back.” Then he stepped inside.

A streak of purple shot out from under a table, hitting Devi in the back of the knee. He stumbled. Skye heard him shout. Then the streak slowed down, resolving into a purple and gold dokey that leaped to Devi's outstretched hand. He turned around to Skye and held his hand out for her to see. The little six-limbed creature clambered and swayed as it pulled itself upright. Devi shrugged helplessly. “Do you mind?”

Skye laughed. “Not at all. What's its name?”

“Jem. He's from the second batch of dokeys ever made. I've had him since . . . since I was thirteen.” Jem had climbed up around Devi's shoulders. The dokey started patting his long, straight hair, pinching together the red strands.

Dokeys had been created only three years ago. Skye put the facts together. “So you're sixteen?” she said as he returned to the balcony.

“Yes. Major domo? Call the elevator.”

“Yes master Devi. The elevator will arrive in twenty two seconds.”

“Did you really build that telescope yourself?” Skye asked.

He shrugged, while she reached up to scratch Jem behind his purple ear. “I mined the design from the library. I refined it some, and put the components together. Is that building it?”

“Good enough for me. All my projects have been virtual.”

The elevator door opened, spilling more light onto the wide balcony. A woman started to step off the elevator, but she hesitated, staring at Skye in surprise. She had creamy skin and red hair in complicated braids that lay flat against her head. She was slender, and at least three inches shorter than Skye. Her eyes looked like Devi's, green flecked with gold . . . and very pretty when she finally remembered to smile. “Divine, I didn't know you'd invited a friend,” she said, stepping out of the elevator at last.

“We were just going out, mother.”

Divine?
Skye turned to stare at Devi. Beneath his golden skin his cheeks had flushed a rosy hue.

“Mother, this is Skye—”

“Yes,” Devi's mother said. “I recognize her.”

Skye frowned, resenting the way real people could link to the city library and withdraw any information they might need at a moment's notice. They could do this because every real person had an atrium—an artificial organ that grew in tendrils throughout their brains. Atriums were biomechanical tissue, capable of receiving and sending subtle radio communications—and of translating those communications into words or pictures or smell or even a sense of touch. When Devi's mother had looked at Skye, she had probably captured Skye's image, sent it to the city library with a request for identification, and received an answer, all in less than a second and in perfect silence.

Ados were not permitted to have atriums, and so they had to rely on fallible memories. It was a rule Skye resented, but she could not hold it against Devi's mother, not in the face of her warm smile.

“Hello, Skye. I'm Siva Hand.” She extended her hand and Skye shook it. “Say hello to Yulyssa for me, will you? I haven't seen her in ages.”

“I will, ma'am.”

Next Siva turned to Devi. “Divine, you won't be out too late?”

“No mother.”

“You need to practice the sitar.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I'm glad to see you going out with your friends. Well . . . goodnight.”

The elevator car had waited for them. Skye hurried aboard, turning in time to see Siva Hand at the apartment door, gazing wistfully at Devi as he followed Skye onto the elevator.

The doors started to close. Ord slipped in just before they sealed. Jem hissed, and Devi took a startled step back. “What's that?”

Skye held out her hand so the little robot could climb aboard. “My dokey, I guess. Its name is Ord.”

The elevator began its descent, dropping at stomach jolting speed, like a jump off the column except the sensation lasted only a second.

An awkward silence came over them. Might as well talk about it, Skye thought. Get it over with. So, staring straight ahead and stifling a giggle, she said, “Divine?”

Devi groaned. “Don't ask.”

Skye wasn't good at following instructions. “Divine
Hand
?”

“Cute, isn't it?”

Shut up
, she told herself.
Shut up.
It
'
s not your business.
But she really was bad at following instructions. “You're sixteen, Devi. You could change it.”

“You don't know my mother.”

“Oh.” Siva had seemed very nice. “She must think a lot of you.”

“You don't know the half. So who's this Yulyssa my mother mentioned?”

“Oh, you must know her. Yulyssa DeSearange? The mediot? She does the news almost every day. I live with her.”

“Oh right. She's a founder too.”

Founders were the original citizens of the city, who had emigrated to Silk 272 years ago. They had arrived to find the city strewn with the bones of the people who had built it, all of them dead of a mysterious plague spawned in Deception Well. Only in the last twenty years had city authority begun to understand the plague. Before then, no one had been allowed down to the planet for fear of contracting the disease. Now anyone could visit, though only on closely supervised tours. There were two small settlements on the coast where a group of scientists and engineers lived full-time, but only a few elite explorers were allowed to mount expeditions into new territory.

The elevator reached the bottom floor and opened. “I'm fourteen now,” Skye said as they walked through the lobby. “But I'm not ready to live in Ado Town. I like living with Yulyssa. I had other guardians, but I never got along with them . . . I guess I was a little angry then. Yulyssa is different. She's one of the oldest people in the city, you know . . . old enough to let me be myself.”

Devi looked uncomfortable. “I wish I could say the same about my mother.”

The lobby doors opened and they stepped outside onto a path that glowed with a soft white light. Devi paused to scan the sky. Skye followed his gaze. Only a few stars could be seen through the milky glow of the nebula. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “We could get something to eat.”

“Oh. I guess so. I mean, sure. Where—?”

“Message, Skye,” Ord interrupted. It rode on her shoulder, so its silky voice spoke directly in her ear. “A message from Zia.”

Devi's dokey glared at Ord, growling at the robot's artificial voice.

Skye too felt annoyed at the interruption, but at the same time she also felt strangely relieved. “So play it.”

“Hey ado,” Ord said, precisely imitating Zia's voice. “So I guess you went to see M. Hand after all. Meet me at the Subtle Virus when you get free, okay? I want to know what M. Hand said, helpful or not. And don't get moody on me if the news was bad. If you don't show up, I'm going to sneak into Yulyssa's apartment and lock a gutter doggie in your breather.”

“Wow,” Skye said. “Glad that wasn't personal or anything.” Then she laughed at the embarrassed look on Devi's face. “Is the Subtle Virus okay with you?”