The Dark Imbalance (14 page)

“And what’s to stop her simply throwing us out?”

“She won’t. She has heard of you, and I know her well enough to say that she will be curious.”

“If that’s so, then why would it take so long to get an
official
meeting with her?”

“Because the chances are she is unaware of your presence right now,” said Ansourian. “Whoever is behind all of this is more than likely protecting her from you, making sure your request to meet her goes through official channels—which would ensure a delay of a couple of days, at least.” Roche opened her mouth to object, but before she could speak, Ansourian jumped in with: “Believe me, Roche, this
is
the best option available to us at the moment.”

Roche carefully considered what he was saying. “Okay, but once I’ve talked to her, then what?”

“That depends on how it turns out. If it goes as well as I hope it to go, there’s a good chance I will reveal myself there and then in order to press home my case. If it goes badly, I will make other plans. I know of various flaws in security’s prisoner-holding bays. I may still be able to set Alta free and find a way off the habitat.”

Roche was under no illusions as to where she might fit into the latter part of such a plan. There was no way, though, that she intended to commit herself to anything but the most basic level of support for Ansourian—who was still, after all, a complete stranger whom she had little reason to trust.

<1 think you should follow your instincts, Morgan,> the girl said.

That was fair enough, Roche thought. She couldn’t ask any member of her crew to give her advice when they didn’t have enough information to decide; that was her job, after all.

Not that she thought of Maii as merely a crew member; she had become more than that in the previous weeks, especially after her capture and imprisonment by Linegar Rufo.

Roche had felt bad enough over that; she could only imagine what Ansourian had been feeling since his daughter’s arrest.

“Okay,” she said. “Let me talk to the administer and we’ll see what happens. I can’t guarantee you anything, but it’s worth a try.”

“Thank you.” He smiled then. Surprisingly, it looked genuine. “Inderdeep will not be in her quarters for a couple of hours yet; I will endeavor to find out precisely how long. Also, Overseer Pacecca will be expecting Quare back at some point and I don’t want to needlessly arouse suspicion.”

Roche nodded. “Can you give me some way to communicate with you?”

“I think it’s best if you remain completely isolated in here,” he said. “Even from your own ship.” Seeing concern on her face, he added: “It really
is
the only way to be certain that you won’t be discovered before time.”

He seemed sincere, and his reasoning was sound, if a little overcautious. And she did have Maii, after all.

Roche asked the girl.

Maii said.

Roche nodded. The reave’s power to influence those around her, not just read them, hadn’t been necessary so far in Sol System. She hoped it wouldn’t be necessary at all. At the very worst, though, Maii could force the administer to give them what they wanted.

“Okay,” she told Ansourian. “I’ll give you two hours. If we don’t hear from you by then, the deal is off.”

He nodded. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll be back before then.”

They all stood, and he left the room. The door leading out of the suite hissed open, then clicked shut. There was no handle and no keyhole on the inside.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Roche muttered to herself.

Maii slid her helmet back and sniffed the air.

Roche smiled.

Maii didn’t disagree.

* * *

Time passed slowly. Roche hadn’t realized how dependent she was on data from the
Ana Vereine
’s datapool to keep her occupied. The hazard suit’s capabilities didn’t include much in the way of sophisticated software. Even though the Box had access to vast amounts of data, she still didn’t entirely trust the AI to give her what she wanted. There were too many ways it could exploit her ignorance.

she did ask it at one point.

not
Ansourian, then that leaves us with the original mystery: why did Alta Ansourian kill her father in such a brutal and apparently unprovoked way?>

can
do is hypothesize.>

She gave up on that line of conversation. Talking to the Box for too long when it was bored could give anyone a headache. But she needed to do something, too, to stave off her own boredom. Sleep wasn’t an option, and neither was eating; her stomach was too tense to make an easy meal of the concentrates stored in the hazard suit’s compartments.

she asked Maii.

said the girl. Her mind touched Roche’s gently once, then again with more pressure.

Roche forced herself to relax. After all, she had already done this a couple of times before—on Sciacca’s World, before Maii had agreed not to go digging around in her mind. As on those occasions, when Maii touched a true sensory experience in someone else’s head, that experience conveyed itself to Roche with the same vividness as if it had been her own. She could easily see how the girl survived on the senses of the people around her.

For a second, she seemed to see an echo of Maii, as she saw directly through her own eyes and
through her own eyes via Maii
simultaneously. But the effect was fleeting. Her own vision seemed to fold in on itself as Maii moved to another viewpoint.

They belonged to a woman who was performing repairs on an air filter somewhere along the corridor just outside the quarters they were in. Barely had Roche determined this when Maii skipped to another pair of eyes—these belonging to a courier on his way to deliver a package. A quick succession of viewpoints from various people followed as they moved ever deeper into the habitat, catching glimpses of people Roche didn’t know doing things that didn’t concern her. Maii never lingered for more than a few moments at a time; no sooner had they found an open mind than they were moving off in search of another. And none of the people seemed aware they had been touched by a reave, for Maii’s mind was gentle and fleeting. But Roche knew that if provoked, the girl’s butterfly touch could just as quickly become the sting of a wasp.

For a while, Roche forgot about Ansourian and their situation. As she and Maii danced across the minds of the habitat’s populace, she became aware of another level situated beyond the sensory experiences she was receiving—or beneath it; it was difficult finding words to describe how she was feeling. Having never before gone along as the reave’s willing passenger, she hadn’t had the chance to appreciate the subtleties of what Maii did.

Each mind was separated by a moment of subtle dislocation, as old sights and sounds were replaced by new ones. In between, Roche felt Maii’s mind searching, and for that split second she caught a glimpse of n-space—the theoretical realm in which the reave operated. It was like looking into the mind of a creature that used sound to echo-locate rather than sight to see. Maii was at the center of her universe, and the minds of everyone around her stood out like bumps on a flat plain—but in three dimensions. Some minds jutted out like peaks; others were no more than slight swellings on the surface. Roche understood intuitively that this impression bore no relation to the quality of the minds in the “real” world; they were no more or less intelligent, or epsense-adept, or Human for having odd-Shape n-space contours. They were just different, in the same way that people’s physical characteristics were different. Roche couldn’t be sure from the brief glimpses, but every one seemed unique in its own way, like a signature or a fingerprint.

As they jumped from mind to mind, like someone circling an island on stepping stones, Roche became more and more intrigued by what she saw between the jumps. Eventually, she asked Maii to stop jumping entirely and show her the reave’s world without any sensory input whatsoever.

It was wildly disorienting.

Maii said.

Roche wondered, not letting herself get her hopes up. Like most children in the COE, she had dreamed of epsense powers blossoming at puberty. The life of a trained reave was much better than average, orphan or not. To be in demand, to travel to different systems, to delve into minds for government or private business... Roche had dreamed but, also like most children, had never shown any promise.

<1 guess not,> Maii admitted.

said Maii.

Roche asked, curious to see a mind with a shield.

Maii guided her to the spot where the man’s mind should have been. All Roche could see was a steep, circular lip, like the edge around a very deep crater. No matter how Maii tried, she couldn’t get inside or even look over the wall.

Roche said.

Maii took her on a whirlwind tour of the habitat, showing her shielded and unshielded minds, minds with epsense powers and no epsense at all, minds that had been damaged by epsense attacks and minds that possessed strange outgrowths into n-space that the reave couldn’t explain, except to say that she had seen their like before and that they didn’t seem to serve any purpose. Roche tagged along for the ride, an eager student delighted to have discovered a new skill.

she asked the Box, explaining briefly what she was experiencing.

Roche stopped, feeling a new pressure on her mind.

Maii asked. Roche went cold. She hadn’t thought that the link with the girl might expose the existence of the Box inside her.

She was unable to think of anything even remotely convincing. she said lamely.

Roche felt a short, sharp probe penetrating deep inside her mind—then abruptly the girl was gone.

Roche rocked back into her chair, stunned by the girl’s absence. The real world flooded her senses, dispelling the gray clarity of n-space.

Maii said, reaching out and taking her hand, gripping it tightly through two layers of hazard suit glove. <1 shouldn’t have looked. But when I felt you talking to it...> A profound sense of remorse came with the words.

Roche didn’t know what to do. Although the girl hadn’t actually said it, there was no doubting that she now knew about the Box. That went against everything Roche and the Box had arranged; it could even jeopardize the Box’s mission for the Crescend.

But it didn’t
have
to be a problem. If Maii told no one, the secret stopped there—and unless Roche told the Box, it would never know either.

The simplest thing, she thought, might be to trust the girl.

she said.

The girl nodded. inside
you!>

Roche couldn’t put the girl’s mind at ease on that score,

Maii’s thoughts were tinged with an annoyance Roche could relate to. But that was all history now; the present had given her a whole new set of problems to deal with.

said Roche. There was a long stretch of silence which she ended with:

said Maii eventually.

said Roche.

<1 understand, Morgan,> said the girl.

Roche cut in quickly. Her attitude surprised even herself. A month ago when she had first met the girl, she would have been furious with what Maii had just done. But her time with the young Surin had tempered her hostility toward reaves—or at least toward this one.

she said.