The Dreaming Void (23 page)

Aaron's u-shadow went for the unguarded systems managing the plaza's fountains, changing the direction of the ingrav effect on the angled rings. The tall jets began to waver, then suddenly swung down until they were horizontal. They slashed from side to side, hosing everyone in the plaza like giant water cannons. People went tumbling across the stone floor, buffeted by thick waves of spray. Aaron reached the fane's entrance and began sprinting across the plaza, partially obscured from the police by the seething spume clouds. His biononics strengthened his leg muscles, the field effect amplifying and quickening every movement. He covered the first hundred meters in seven seconds. Flailing bodies washed past him as the jets continued to play back and forth. Police officers were singled out for merciless drubbing. Their force fields did little to protect them from the powerful deluge, and they toppled easily from the soaking punches. Those who did fire energy shots into the furious spray simply created crackling vortices of ions that spit out curlicues of scalding steam. Victims on the ground scrabbled desperately out of the way as the dangerous vapor stabbed out, screaming at them to stop shooting.

The fountains began to run out of water when Aaron was two-thirds of the way across the plaza. Two energy shots hit his force field, throwing off a plume of sparks. The strike made him skid on the wet stone.

“Slow down,” Corrie-Lyn yelped as he regained his footing. “Oh, Ozzie, NO!”

Aaron's sensory field scanned the area. The fane was starting to collapse, folding in on itself and twisting gently, as if in mimicry of the pattern of its fluid-luminal surfaces. “I must have damaged more than I realized,” he grunted. Dust and smoke were flaring out of the entrances like antique rocket engine plumes, billowing over the plaza.

He reached the entrance to the arcade. People had crowded around, watching the spectacle in the plaza. When Aaron had appeared out of the chaos and started charging toward them, they had backed away fast. Now they scattered like frightened birds; no one in the Commonwealth was accustomed to civil trouble, let alone Riasi's residents. As he paused on the threshold, at least five police officers were given a clear line of sight. Energy slammed into his force field, producing a fearsome starblast of photons, its screeching loud enough to overwhelm Corrie-Lyn's howls. Unprotected surfaces around him started to blister and smolder. He fired three bolts of his own, hidden in the melee, targeting structural girders around the archway. The crystal ceiling began to sag; huge cracks ripped through the thick material. Behind them the fane finally crumpled, the process accelerating. Chunks of debris went scything across the plaza to impact the surrounding buildings. Tens of thousands of glass fragments created a lethal shrapnel cloud racing outward. The police officers stopped shooting as they sought cover.

Corrie-Lyn was sobbing hysterically at the sight; then the arcade's archway started to disintegrate. She froze as giant daggers of the crystal roof plunged down around them. Fire alarms were yammering, and bright-blue suppressor foam started to pour down from the remaining nozzles overhead. Aaron dived into the third store, which sold handmade lingerie. A slush of foam rippled out across the floor as it slid off his force field. Two remaining assistants saw him and sprinted for a fire exit.

“Can you walk?” he asked Corrie-Lyn. His u-shadow was attacking the police programs in the arcade's nodes, interfering with the building's internal sensors, and trying to cut power lines directly. It sent out a call to one of the parked taxis, directing it to land at the back of the arcade.

When he pulled Corrie-Lyn off his shoulder, all she could do was cross her arms and hug her chest. Her legs were trembling, unable to hold her weight.

“Shit!” He shunted her over his shoulder again and went into the back of the store. There was a door at the top of the stairs that led down into the basement stockroom, and he descended it quickly. His field scan showed a whole flock of police regrav capsules swooping low over the plaza while a couple of hardy officers were making their way over the tangle of archway girders. They seemed to be carrying some very high-powered weaponry.

It was cooler in the stockroom, the air dry and still. Overhead lights came on to reveal a rectangular room with smooth concrete walls filled with ranks of metal shelving. The far end was piled up with old advertising displays. His u-shadow reported that it was having some success in blocking the police software from nearby electronics. They would know he was there but not what he was doing.

The big malmetal door to the loading bay furled aside, and he went out into the narrow underground delivery road that served all the stores. It was empty; the police prohibition on all traffic was preventing any cargo capsules from using it. Ten meters away on the other side was a hatchway into a utility tunnel. His u-shadow popped the lock, and it swung open. He sprinted across the delivery road and clambered inside, pushing an unresisting Corrie-Lyn ahead of him. The hatch snapped shut.

Aaron scanned again. There was no light in the tunnel other than a yellow circle glowing around the hatch's emergency handle. It was not high enough for him to walk along; he would have to stoop. Corrie-Lyn was sitting slumped against the wall just beside the hatch.

“There are no visual sensors inside the tunnel,” his u-shadow reported. “Only fire and water alarms.”

“Water?”

“In case of flooding. It is a city regulation.”

“Typical bureaucratic overkill,” he muttered. “Corrie-Lyn, we have to keep going.”

She did not acknowledge his words. Her limbs still were trembling uncontrollably, but she moved when he pushed at her. Together they shuffled along the tunnel, hunched over like monkeys. There were hatches every fifty meters. He stopped at the sixth one and let his field scan function review the immediate vicinity outside. It did not detect anyone nearby. His u-shadow unlocked it, and they crawled out into the base of a stairwell illuminated by blue-tinged polyphoto strips on the wall.

“The building network is functioning normally,” his u-shadow said. “The police sentients are currently concentrating their monitor routines on the fane and the arcade.”

“That won't last,” he said. “They'll expand outward soon enough. Crack one of the private capsules for me.”

He pulled Corrie-Lyn to her feet. With one arm under her shoulder to support her, they went up a flight of stairs. The door opened into the underground car park of the old ministry building. His u-shadow had infiltrated the control net of a luxury capsule and brought it right over to the stairwell.

The capsule slid up out of the park's chuteway at the back of the building and zipped up into the nearby traffic stream. Police sentients queried it, and Aaron's u-shadow provided them with a genuine owner certificate code. Corrie-Lyn stared down at the sluggish mass of boiling dust behind them. Her limbs had stopped trembling. He was not sure if that was the mild suppressor drug he had given her finally flushing the aerosol out of her system or if a deeper level of shock was setting in.

A small fleet of civic emergency capsules and ambulances was heading into the fane.

“They just shot at us,” she said. “They didn't warn us or tell us to stop first. They just opened fire.”

“I had jumped down an elevator shaft to try to get out,” he pointed out. “That's a reasonable admission of guilt.”

“For Ozzie's sake, if you didn't have a force field web, we'd be dead. That's not how the police are supposed to act. They were police, weren't they?”

“Yeah. They're the city police, all right.”

“But we did get out.” She sounded puzzled. “There were how many, ten of them? Twenty?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“You just walked out like nothing could stop you. It didn't matter what they did.”

“That's Higher biononics for you. The only way standard weaponry can gain an advantage is overwhelming firepower. They weren't carrying that much hardware.”

“You're Higher?”

“I have weapons-grade biononics. I'm not sure about the culture part of it. That way of life seems slightly pointless to me, sort of like the pre-Commonwealth aristocracy.”

“What's that?”

“Very rich people living a life of considerable ease and decadence while the common people slaved away into an early grave, with all their labor going to support the aristocrats and their way of life.”

“Oh. Right.” She did not sound interested. “Inigo was Higher.”

“No, he wasn't,” Aaron said automatically.

“Actually, he was, but he kept that extremely quiet. Only a couple of us ever knew. I don't think our new Cleric Conservator is aware of his idol's true nature.”

“Are you—”

“Sure? Yes, I'm sure.”

“That's remarkable. There's no record of it; that's a hell of an achievement these days.”

“Like I said, he kept it quiet. No one would have paid any attention to a Higher showing them his dreams, not out here on the External worlds. He needed to appear as ordinary as possible. To be accepted as one of us.”

Aaron gave an amused grunt. “Highers are people, too.”

“Some of them.” She gave him a meaningful glance.

“Was Yves the other cleric who knew about Inigo?”

“No.” She drew a short gasp and glanced back. “Oh, Ozzie, Yves! He was unconscious when the fane collapsed.”

“He'll be all right.”

“All right?” she yelled, finally becoming animated. “All right? He's dead!”

“Well, he'll probably need re-lifing, yeah. But that's only a couple of months of downtime these days.”

She gave him an incredulous snort and leaned against the capsule's transparent fuselage to gaze down on the city.

Shock, anger, and fright, he decided. Mostly fright. “You need to decide what to do next,” he told her as sympathetically as he could. “Team up with me or …” He shrugged. “I can give you some untraceable funds; that should help keep you hidden.”

“Bastard.” She wiped at her eyes, then looked down at herself. Her red sweater had large damp patches, and the lower half of her trousers were caked in blue foam. Her knees were grazed and filthy from the inside of the utility tunnel. Her shoulders slumped in resignation. “He used to go somewhere,” she said in a quiet emotionless voice.

“Inigo?”

“Yes. This isn't the first time he took off on a sabbatical and left Living Dream covering up for his absence. But none of the other times were for so long. A year at most.”

“I see. Where did he go?”

“Anagaska.”

“That's his birthworld.”

“Yes.”

“An External world. One of the first. Advancer through and through,” he said significantly.

“I'm not arguing with you.”

“Did he ever take you?”

“No. He said he was visiting family. I don't know how true that was.”

Aaron reviewed the files on Inigo's family. There was very little information; they did not seek publicity, especially after he founded Living Dream. “His mother migrated inward a long time ago. She downloaded into ANA in 3440, after first becoming …”

“Higher. Yes, I know.”

He didn't follow the point, but for someone to convert to Higher without leaving any record was essentially impossible. Corrie-Lyn must have been mistaken. “There's no record of any brothers or sisters,” he said.

Corrie-Lyn closed her eyes and let out a long breath. “His mother had a sister, a twin. There was something … I don't know what, but some incident long ago. Inigo hinted at it; the sisters went through this big trauma together. Whatever it was drove them apart; they never really reconciled.”

“There's nothing in the records about that. I didn't even know he had an aunt.”

“Well, now you do. So what next?”

“Go to Anagaska. Try to find the aunt or her children.”

“How do we get there? I imagine the police will be watching the spaceports and wormholes.”

“They will eventually. But I have my own starship.” He stopped in surprise as knowledge of the starship emerged into his mind from some deep memory.

Corrie-Lyn's eyes opened in curiosity. “You do?”

“I think so.”

“Sweet Ozzie, you are so strange.”

Seventeen minutes later the capsule slid down to land beside a pad in Riasi's spaceport. Aaron and Corrie-Lyn climbed out and looked up at the chrome-purple ovoid that stood on five bulbous legs.

She whistled in admiration. “That looks deliciously expensive. Is it really yours?”

“Yeah.”

“Odd name,” she said as she walked under the curving underbelly of the fuselage. “What's the reference?”

“I've no idea.” His u-shadow opened a link to the
Artful Dodger
's smartcore, confirming his identity with a DNA verification along with a code he abruptly remembered. The smartcore acknowledged his command authority.

“Hang on,” Aaron told Corrie-Lyn, and grabbed her hand. The base of the starship bulged inward, stretching into a dark tube. Gravity altered around them, and they slid up inside the opening.