Kachmarain City, Kachmar Sodality, The Karassian Homogeny
Chidi would never tell a single soul, ever, about his sunset secret.
Karassia loved him. His life was an open book. The lens surrounded him day in and day out, as nearly a billion fans hung on to his every word, accepting whatever he said without question.
He could bring down governments, if he put his mind to it.
The adoration was addictive. The attention was the reward for the years he had fought to become as known as he was, for his feeds to grow into the massive entertainment industry they now were.
He was set for life. Money. Fame. Millions of Karassians aspired to have his life.
That was why no one would ever find out that at sunset every day, he escaped the lens for a brief hour, while pre-made footage ran to hide the gap in his life. That single hour spent alone, in the still silence of an apartment empty of people, was the most precious part of his day. He sometimes yearned for that time to come. The lens and the attention built up a pressure that was like an itchy coat against his skin, driving him mad, until all he wanted to do was tear it off and stomp on it, smear it into the ground until it was beyond paste.
His sunset hour stopped him from doing that. It was his secret, that no fan, no employees, could ever be allowed to learn.
With the fuss over the Xenia clips pushing his feeds to the top of every list, life had become a blur. Merchandise deals, drugs, sex, clothes, money and yet more money rained down upon him daily. Surya had been replaced by Pepper, who had been replaced by Marie and Marty, Abel and Hans, sometimes all at once. The more the sensational highs piled up the bigger his feeds became. Everyone loved watching his success and poured more of it on him. It was a crazy roundabout.
Chidi unsealed the apartment door and looked over his shoulder. The check was automatic. He had long ago worked out how to duck out of sight and escape back to his apartment to greet the sunset from the big picture window covering the width of it. No one was following him.
He pushed the door open, stepped inside and shut it with a sigh of relief. With his back against the door, he worked at the edge of the mask until he got a fingernail under it, then tore it off and dropped it to the floor. The wig and the stained clothes followed.
Naked, he padded through to the big front room, where the picture window was waiting for him.
A man was sitting in his favorite chair. A man in a brown military uniform.
Chidi came to a halt. He could think of nothing to say. There were no words that would encompass his shock at finding someone sitting in his apartment, clearly waiting for him to arrive at this hour.
“We know all about your life, you see,” came another voice. A second voice.
Chidi whirled, his bare feet squeaking on the cool tiles.
The second man was in the square armchair by the picture window, ruining the view. The setting sun was behind him, dazzling Chidi and making the man a mere silhouette.
“Who are you?” Chidi demanded. His voice came out high and weak. Thankfully, there were no lenses on him right now. He pushed his hand against his chest. His heart was hurling itself against his ribcage. It had been a long time since he had been this scared.
The man stayed where he was. “You can call me Woodrow,” he said conversationally.
The military man came up alongside Chidi and held out the dirty coat he had used to get home. “Here,” he said shortly.
Chidi didn’t take the coat. “You don’t know me as well as you say you do, if you think I’m going to cover up to make you feel more comfortable. My fans know and love me, just like this.” He got messages praising his sexual prowess and the size of his genitals. Oh yes, they adored every aspect of his life.
“Your fans are not watching you right now, though, are they?” Woodrow said. His jerked his head at the officer.
The uniform turned away, taking the coat with him.
Chidi swallowed, aware at last that no one was watching. He had worked to make sure of that, every day at this time. He had worked just as hard to keep it a complete secret. Now, with no lens trained on him, the protection the public gaze extended him was gone. “What do you want?” he demanded, pushing as much power into his voice as he could. It emerged with strength—not a lot, although he no longer sounded as if he was about to cry. Good. He lifted his chin. “I’m waiting,” he added.
Woodrow didn’t move. It was creepy the way he just sat there. It bothered Chidi that he couldn’t see his face or any details about him.
“You’ve been telling a lot of people that the Xenia videos are forgeries,” Woodrow said.
“They are fake,” Chidi said stoutly. He had argued this line of reasoning so often that he had come to believe it. “They didn’t turn up for a whole year after Shavistran was supposed to have been destroyed. It took them that long to make the digital images. I mean, look at the woman who was supposed to have been Xenia. She doesn’t even look like her.”
“It’s interesting that you should think so,” Woodrow said smoothly. “Your opinion carries a lot of influence on Karassian worlds and we have taken note of that.”
Chidi swallowed again. Woodrow’s quiet lack of emphasis, the neutral blandness, was making him nervous. People always got excited around Chidi. They shouted. They cheered. Sometimes they raged. They were never emotionless.
“The woman who claims she is Xenia has been putting out her own footage,” Woodrow continued. “Have you seen it?”
“A blonde wig and white paint doesn’t make her Xenia,” Chidi countered automatically. He had said that exact phrase hundreds of times in the last few weeks, whenever someone mentioned the Xenia feeds. “Some of the latest videos are created, not taken. It shows. They’re rank amateurs.”
Woodrow got to his feet. The sun was setting right behind him, blazing white hot and blue against the polarized windows, hiding every detail about the man. “The average Karassian doesn’t have your degree of experience with feeds,” he said. “They might believe that the digital manipulations are the real thing.”
“I tell them they aren’t,” Chidi pointed out.
Woodrow crossed the tiles to where Chidi was standing. He was a short man. Overweight. And balding. Now Chidi could see him properly. He might have dismissed the man as past his prime if he had seen him before he had spoken. Everything about the man was completely forgettable.
Perhaps that blandness is intentional, Chidi thought and shivered at the idea and at Woodrow’s nearness. He couldn’t say why he felt the man was dangerous. Instinct told him to back off. Because of that primitive urge, Chidi stayed where he was, defying it and the man studying him. He wished he had taken the coat when it had been offered to him. His nakedness was making him oddly vulnerable and he didn’t like it.
Woodrow looked up at him with properly brown Karassian eyes. “We want you to go on telling everyone the Xenia tapes are forgeries,” he said quietly. “Even when every competing feed is trying to shout you down, you would have my gratitude if you stick to your theories.”
“That they’re fake,” Chidi finished. His throat was dry again.
Woodrow patted his shoulder. The man’s hand was hot and damp. Chidi shivered.
“I’ll be in touch,” Woodrow murmured and moved around him.
Chidi whirled. “In touch? Why?”
Woodrow looked back at him. The officer studied him, too. Then Woodrow smiled. “You’re our guy, Chidi,” he said, sounding happy. “Later, we’ll have other messages for you to give to your eager fans.”
Chidi shivered again. “I don’t work for anyone!” he shouted. Fear grabbed at his throat and belly. “Not even for you!”
The pair had gone.
Chidi raced to the apartment door. It was closed. He sealed it. Checked the seal. Then he went back to watch the sunset.
Halfway across the tiles, he froze. “Theories?” he said aloud, as he would do if a lens was on him. It was pure habit.
Moving more slowly, he walked over to the upright chair next to the servery. He didn’t want to sit in his favorite armchair now, nor the square one by the window. Instead, he perched on the upright chair and gripped his knees, digging his fingers in.
Theories. Woodrow had called his claims about the Xenia feeds theories.
“If the feeds are fakes, he would have called my claims facts,” Chidi said, still speaking aloud by habit. His heart was hurting again. He massaged his chest absently, thinking it through.
Theories were suppositions that might be wrong. Did that mean he was wrong, calling the Xenia tapes fakes?
And if he was right, if they were fake, then why the heavy-handed insistence that he go on calling them fakes?
Chidi was good with people. He understood how to please them. He knew how to read them. People like Woodrow only applied pressure in that way when they were on the back foot. When they were fixing things.
Woodrow had implied that a whole lot of people were going to start shouting that the feeds were real. That Shavistran was real. That Xenia wasn’t an android, but a real woman—an Eriuman—who had been held against her will, mind-fucked into submission and made to fight for Karassia.
He let out a shaky breath. “It’s all true…” he breathed, sick horror closing down his throat.
The last of the sun disappeared behind the city towers, unnoticed.
* * * * *
Demosthenes, Alkeides System
Thecla called out to Bellona as she was traversing the main corridor, heading back to her quarters. She beckoned Bellona back. She was standing in the open door of one of the big workrooms that lined the corridor leading up to the bridge.
Bellona was surprised to see her there. As far as she had been aware, everyone worked on the deck level, or congregated in the dining hall. “You work here?” Bellona asked her.
“Temporarily. I found some stuff…well, come and see for yourself,” Thecla said, waving toward the room she was standing by.
Bellona back-tracked.
“Hayes all calmed down?” Thecla asked.
“I’ve never see him speed talk like that before,” Bellona said. “He so rarely talks at all. Usually one or two words.”
“Did you let him have the decking space to extend the garden?” Thecla asked.
“Of course. We’re not using it.” Bellona looked at her. “You knew he was going to ask me?”
“He’s been talking about nothing else for a week.”
“Not in front of me.”
“When you turn up he shuts up and moons over you.” Thecla grinned. “Do you know how often he talks about Xenia helping him plant fresias?”
Bellona cleared her throat awkwardly. “You have something to show me?”
Thecla moved into the room. There was a big counter in the middle of it. Cupboards and lockers lined the walls. The counter was littered with cylindrical objects, about half a meter in length. She picked up one of them and rested it across her hands.
“I found these a few days ago, stuffed in a cupboard. No documentation, no manuals. They’re not on the supply inventory, either.”
“What are they?” Bellona asked. There was nothing on the cylinders that hinted at their purpose.
“It took me a while to figure that out. I think they were shoved deep into a cupboard because they were an experiment that didn’t pan out.”
“Shouldn’t you be helping with the second bridge forge?” Bellona asked.
“I’m on my downtime shift,” Thecla said. “Fontana almost pushed me out the door and told me to go get some rest.”
“And this is how you rest?” Bellona reached out. “Can I touch it?”
“It’s harmless right now.” Thecla held the cylinder out to her. “It’s a micro satellite.”
“It’s not a very small one, for a micro-anything,” Bellona said, turning the cylinder over and over in her hands. There was a hairline split in the middle of it, where it would open to give access to the interior, and that was all.
“When you consider that some satellites are the size of space stations, this is pretty small. Thing is, I think I could make it smaller still.”
“And make it work, too?” Bellona suggested.
“Oh, I got that one working inside an hour,” Thecla said dismissively.
Bellona handed the cylinder back to her. “How small?”
“Ten centimeters.”
Bellona looked at her, startled. “What would be the range on it?”
“With one of Sang’s miniature communications links in it, the leash could be as long as you want.”
Bellona suppressed her growing excitement. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“That ten centimeters is smaller than the most sensitive security scanner can detect?” Thecla nodded. “These things, at that size…we could print them, once we’ve set up the file. Hundreds, even thousands of them, a half year and a light year out, five years out, even farther if you want. It would be an untraceable early warning system.”
“And not just for us,” Bellona said. “Do you know how many free worlds would pay their gross annual profit for a system like this, one that enemies can’t find and knock out before they sneak up on them?”
“You want to go into business, boss?” Thecla asked, startled.
Bellona shook her head. “Something like this, given freely, would generate a lot of good will.” She patted the cylinder. “Make a miniature. Show me it can be done.”
Thecla pursed her lips together. “Before or after I finish the forge?”
“In your spare time, of course,” Bellona said, as she turned to go. “You have enough of it to dig around in cupboards, it seems.”
“That’s not fair!” Thecla yelled after her.
Bellona was still smiling when she reached her quarters. Her gaze fell on the empty bed visible through the interconnecting door to the bedroom.
She didn’t feel like smiling anymore. “Connie?” she whispered and waited.
In the last few weeks, Connie had spoken to her five times. Each time, it was a simple statement, pared down to essentials.
“Khalil is well. He eats. He sleeps. His work does not go well,” had been her first statement. She had not responded when Bellona tried to talk to her. Later messages were similar. Connie’s lack of response could mean they had jumped to null-space, or she had chosen to severe the connection with Bellona, perhaps so she could concentrate on ship functions. Except AIs and androids could multi-task until their buffers were full—which rarely happened.
When she received the fourth message, Bellona had said quickly; “Do you fare well, Connie?”
“I…yes,” Connie replied. Then the connection had terminated. Bellona heard it cut out.
Connie’s fifth message had been slightly longer. “I am well. Khalil is well. The work continues. He talks to Arany’s people.”
That had been two days ago.
Bellona tried one more time, her gaze still on her bed. “Connie, please let me know you are well. I am worried.”
The silence stretched for a heartbeat or two. In computer time, it was a small ice-age for Connie to think it through and make up her mind to talk…or not.
Disappointed, Bellona went through to the bedroom. It was time to try to sleep.
“We are well,” Connie whispered in her ear.
It was enough. Bellona was content.
* * * * *
Cerce City, Cerce Prime, Cerce
Natasa Garza was an ornery woman and always had been. Khalil wasn’t sure why Ben had liked her so much as his exo, although her demanding ways did contribute to an efficient ship. Perhaps that was why. In all other situations, her personality grated, like iron against stone.
After a fast circuit tour of the top players in the free worlds and weeks of steady rejections and refusals to consider working with Bellona or—stars in their heavens!—working with other free states, Khalil had returned to Cerce to look up old contacts, including Natasa. Ben’s former crews and ships were still kicking around the free worlds. They were mostly toothless, without Ben for cohesion, although Natasa was trying hard to fill his shoes.
Cerce and Cora were the two places where most of those people hung out. Khalil did the rounds of the spacer bars in the city, looking for familiar faces. Freeships kept their own schedules. It might be weeks before they popped back into normal space over Cerce. Sooner or later, though, they would be back. Moving from place to place was how they made their money. A cheap commodity on one planet was worth rubies on another, while that planet’s weed was another free world’s luxury meal. Knowing the needs and wants of a dozen different worlds and staying on top of current fads was how the freeships turned a steady income into bonanza pay days.
Stopping by to drink at the local bars where other freeshippers hung out was how such information was passed along, especially when the Republic or the Homogeny was on the warpath and communications feeds couldn’t be trusted.
In Cerce City, there were five drinking holes the shippers preferred, on the lower levels of the villages and out in the fringes, where the vertical villages had not yet taken over. Khalil spent an hour a day in each of them, nursing a drink and talking to anyone even vaguely interesting.
He was a known man, here. His association with Bellona was known, too, although most people remembered him for being Benjamin Arany’s strange brother. Far fewer knew of his former association with the Bureau. All his statuses, though, opened up conversations that might otherwise have been stilted and unproductive.
While he was chatting, he let slip that he was looking for Arany’s people. Freeshippers were nomads with friendships across the free worlds. If any of those he spoke to had connections or even secondary connections to Natasa and her crew, word would reach her.
He didn’t bother with a direct communication to Natasa’s ship, the Yoxall. That would make it official business and he wanted to avoid the formal restrictions a business discussion set up. By reaching out to her the old way, he would be sending a message along with it: I’m one of you. I understand your world.
Natasa would not parse the distinction, although Khalil was betting most of her crew would appreciate the subtlety.
On the fourth day and in the third bar for the day—a beer hall on the outskirts of the city where the hot, yeasty smell of fresh bread lingered because of the bakery next door—Khalil was contacted.
The tug on his sleeve drew Khalil’s attention downward. The girl standing next to his stool looked around five years old. She was breathtakingly beautiful, with clear skin, very large gray eyes and hair that curled and tumbled about her face. Her mouth was a perfect bow. She did not smile.
Her clothes were ordinary, her pants torn at the knee and the hems were too short by a centimeter or two.
“Hello,” Khalil told her. He glanced up at the mirror behind the bar as chuckles sounded. After four days he had learned who was transitory and who was a regular. The regulars were not the ones laughing. The server wasn’t smiling either. Neither was she telling the girl to leave.
The girl tugged on Khalil’s sleeve once more.
He considered her. “You want me to come with you?”
She nodded.
Khalil looked up at the server. She shrugged. She wasn’t going to help him.
He turned on the stool and glanced around the rest of the bar, at the tables and the booths at the back. The place was filling up already, for this was a popular bar.
No one was watching him with any particular interest.
Khalil mentally shrugged. He would let this play out and see where it took him. He had already paid for his drink, so he drained the cup and got to his feet.
The girl walked out of the bar. Khalil followed, shortening his steps so he didn’t out-run her. She struggled to open the heavy swing door so he pulled it open for her. With an air of self-possession, she stepped out onto the graveled path. Khalil let the door swing shut behind him and blinked at the late afternoon sun overhead.
The girl held up her arms, asking to be picked up.
“It’s really me you want?” Khalil asked.
She nodded.
He bent and hoisted her up and settled her on his hip. “Where now?”
She pointed along the lane, toward the river and the old original village site.
There were people using the trail. Just on the other side of the trail, more people zipped by in transit pods. No one screamed at Khalil that he was absconding with their child, even though he had braced himself for it.
Moving at the same speed as the other pedestrians, he headed in the direction the girl had pointed. With her in his arm, he could move faster than he would have if he had been forced to follow her short pace.
When the trail forked, she pointed to the right, which would continue to follow the transit line toward the old village.
At each intersection or fork, the girl pointed without hesitation. She was leading Khalil steadily south, toward the old village, which reassured him that she wasn’t simply playing a game. He kept an eye out for blind alleys and dark niches where muggers might possibly be waiting for her to bring Khalil to them. There were plenty of them, for this was the old section of the city, with abandoned buildings, derelict warehouses and more.
He could smell salt in the air and the caw of the carrion gulls as they got closer. At the next junction of trails, the girl pointed west, away from the fishing wharf and old town to the east, where the tidal estuary ran freely. Farther east, it stagnated, which added to the aroma in the air.
“You’re sure?” Khalil asked. It was the first time he had spoken since leaving the bar. She was a remarkably silent child, although if she was mixed up in…whatever this was, then she was probably only a child in stature. Children tended to grow up fast when they were involved in adult scams.
The trail grew more overgrown as they continued and Khalil worried about the lack of people and the quietness around them. Anything could happen here. The sun was getting lower, too. This was not an area of the city he wanted to be in after dark.
The dark, fragmented roof of an old clay brick building was ahead, peeping over the abundant verdure. Khalil’s wariness grew.
The girl tugged on his shoulder, getting his attention. She pointed to a dark doorway between overgrown bushes. There was no door. He couldn’t see anything beyond the door but shadows. “In there?” he asked.
She nodded and wriggled.
Khalil put her down and straightened. She instantly ran off down the narrow path, leaving him.
He shook his arm and dug his fingers into his forearm, to get the feeling back. Even a five year old grew heavy on the arm after a while. As he kneaded his arm, he studied the yawning dark space beyond the door, weighing up how smart it would be to go in there versus the need to find out what this was about.
The lack of an actual door was the deciding factor. They couldn’t close the door behind him, locking him in. That would give him options.
He walked into the warehouse ruins, blinking to make his sight adjust to the lower light as quickly as possible.
The building was just a shell. There was nothing inside, not even a decent floor. The homeless, kids or gangs had built fires on the weedy ground. There were nearly a dozen blackened pits.
Through the partial roof that remained, the last of the daylight was turning Cerce’s sky a stained pink.
Khalil halted, looking around. He would wait three minutes, he decided. Then he would go back to lights and environmental controls and Connie’s incessant chatter. He wished for a moment that he’d had the foresight to grab one of Aideen’s earworms before he had left Demosthenes. It would be good to be able to talk to Connie right now, even if it was just to hear her complain about how dumb the other ships on the landing field were.
The silhouette of a tall, slender figure slipped through a hole in the wall of the warehouse at the far end. It blended with the growing shadows there and for a moment, Khalil wondered if he was imagining the shape.
Then she strolled out in the middle of the empty shell, watching him.
“Natasa,” Khalil acknowledged, hiding his relief. His message had reached her. “Why all the cloak and knife fuss?”
“I wanted to talk where no one would witness the conversation,” Natasa said. “You’ve been meeting interesting people, Khalil Ready. The Alignment, Laurasia, New Veles…you’re doing the rounds.”
Khalil shrugged. “I can meet who I want. They’re all free worlds.”
“Yes, they are.”
“You wanted to talk?”
“You really think your Eriuman pretender could ever hold the free worlds together, Khalil?” she asked softly.
“She doesn’t want to hold the worlds together. She wants the worlds to work with her to hold the Eriumans and the Homogeny back. To stop them gobbling up free states.”
“No one asked her to do that.”
“They didn’t have to. Don’t you want the Republic to go away?”
“Of course I do. Only, the one thing I learned from your brother is that no one can win, going up against them.”
“You’re going to run away and let the two war machines stomp all over whatever they want?”
“Heroic gestures won’t win against our enemies. I’m going to play it smart.”
“How?” he demanded.
As if they had been waiting for that question, seven man-sized shapes stepped out into the middle of the ruins. Crunching steps behind him made Khalil whirl. There were four more there. They were dressed in black from head to foot. Black headgear masked all but their faces.
“Eleven people, just for me?” he asked. “You’re that afraid of me, Natasa?”
“This is not my doing,” Natasa said. In the rising dark, the only thing visible about her was her white face and the bobbed red hair, which glowed. Her eyes were dark pits. “My part of the deal was to get you here without stirring interest in your movements.”
“So. The girl. All innocent and simple. No one would look twice.” Khalil studied the dark figures. “I would tell you that I appreciate the compliment, except you haven’t brought enough people.”
“Oh, but they’re not people.” It was a man’s voice. “We did compliment you, Riva. We brought only the best to escort you back home.”
Riva. Cold figures walked up Khalil’s back, prickling hard. He hadn’t heard that name for a very long time.
“Natasa,” he said quickly. “Whatever your deal with the Bureau, cut your losses. Leave now.”
“You don’t understand, Khalil. They don’t want your hero girlfriend anymore,” Natasa said. “She’s tainted. Useless. Hiding away and licking her wounds. They want me, instead.”
Six of the seven figures in front of Khalil moved toward him. The other four—making a standard set of ten—would be closing in, too. He risked a fast glance over his shoulder to confirm his guess.
The last figure, the speaker, was standing by one of the mold-lined walls, orchestrating.
“Whatever they told you, they’re lying,” Khalil said loudly.
“They’re partners,” Natasa snapped, irritated. “You should have stuck by your brother, Khalil.”
It was too late to break for the doorway. Too late to do anything. Natasa was outside the Hjalmar’s deadly ring, though. “Run,” Khalil told her. “While you can. These…things…they don’t leave witnesses. They never leave witnesses. Go, Natasa!”
From her aborted movement, her silence, Khalil knew she was hesitating. Questioning, finally. Had she remembered now his peculiar background? His long association with the Bureau?
Khalil forced himself to stand still as the Hjalmar grew closer, even though the instinct to defend himself was almost overwhelming. If he fought, they would kill him. “The Bureau don’t want you at all,” he told Natasa. “You’re just a conduit to me. Try to leave. Prove it to yourself. If you are allowed to leave, you know you’re needed.”
Natasa didn’t argue. Perhaps the fear in his voice convinced her. She turned and dashed across the uneven ground, her heavy spacer boots thudding quickly.
“Take her,” the controller said shortly.
The two Hjalmar nearest Natasa swiveled and moved after her. They didn’t run, yet they covered the ground swiftly.
The other eight circled Khalil. This close he could see their faces. The blank, unlined flesh, the lifeless eyes, the unmoving lack of expression. These were the true warrior apps, bred in the android tanks for a single purpose.
Beyond the broken walls of the building, Khalil heard Natasa cry out. The cry was cut off abruptly. Then silence.
He closed his eyes, regret spearing him.
When he opened them again, the controller was standing on the other side of the motionless Hjalmar, studying him. The man’s face was more human than his set. He tilted his head curiously. “You are not what I expected, Riva. They assigned a whole set for you. For one man. A brother. It made me curious to know what manner of man you were. Now I can see their caution was unjustified.” He laughed. “They were so afraid of you!”
Khalil gave him a hard smile. “They should be.”
“I just don’t see it,” the controller replied. He lifted his hand. “All I have to do is raise my finger and I will have beaten you.”
Khalil locked gazes with him. “You might overcome this body with your apps, but I’m a long way from beaten.”
The controller raised his finger. The Hjalmar moved in.