Copyright 1992 by Jim Vassilakos
                      All Rights Reserved

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      and distribute this work such that no commercial or
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---------------------------------------------------------------



                           Twenty-Six



Starlight cut quietly through the carbon lattice half-dome, each
twinkling tentacle dancing a merry jaunt along her features as
though delighted that its long and aimless voyage had ended with
the touch of human skin. Huddling together under Tyber's young,
blue sun, the escort squadron resembled nothing so much as a
group of flies buzzing beneath an electric lantern. From the edge
of the space balcony, they seemed very small. Everything did, the
stars, the ships, people working behind sheets of polymer,
talking, sighing, laughing, perhaps even crying, and all of them,
perfectly extinguishable.
   It would take but a pinprick, she thought to herself,
imagining the ideal culprit as a mere speck of dust. In her
mind's eye, it floundered along at a lazy megameter per second.
Photons zoomed past like the hare passing the turtle, but it
continued unperturbed and blissfully unaware. At one moment the
half-dome stood intact, the space balcony protected from the
ever-inhaling depths of space. Then it would burst, shattering
into the thousand shards.
   Such events were, of course, incomprehensibly rare, however,
the possibility loomed during every moment of every day. That was
the reality of space. She held the vision in her mind, letting
the image lend anxiety to her voice and trepidation to her eyes,
as though the fear of uncertainty might reinforce her shadowy
tale.
   "What happened then, Doctor?"
   Captain Grant studied her distant expression, the way her
light brown eyes shifted out of focus for only a instant. He'd
seen the look before, mainly from veterans who'd been exposed to
more than their fair share of carnage. Then her mouth opened,
just a bit, the words forming as though she'd rehearsed them a
dozen times. In fact, she had.
   "It was like a replay of the Taganaka Maru. Everyone just went
crazy. Sickbay was stormed. What they didn't steal, they managed
to break."
   "They killed the Commodore?"
   "One of them gassed the entire bridge with hydrogen cyanide.
They must have been looking for the shuttle codes."
   Grant blinked, completely unable to believe his ears.
   "Security precautions weren't taken to..."
   "I have no idea, sir. It may have been a security person who
did it. When people are facing almost certain death, sir..."
   "I understand. Continue."
   "I knew the bio-toxin would eventually kill everyone aboard.
It was only a matter of time before it got all of us, however, I
also knew I had a chance. A good chance. We'd locked ourselves in
surgery. The entire place is sterile and airtight. I managed to
access the ship's computer from the medical console, found out
where they were taking the bodies of the bridge crew."
   Grant nodded, "And you made a run for it. Breaking
quarantine."
   She gulped down, "Sir, we wore sterile masks the whole time we
were out of surgery, right until we got spotted near the
shuttles. We threw them into the crowd and made a run for
safety."
   "You broke quarantine."
   "Sir, we were clean. Otherwise, we'd both be dead now."
   "But you broke quarantine. A ship's doctor."
   "Sir, Brooks was threatening to blow up the ship. I was
scared, and obviously, for good reason. I didn't want to die."
   "Me neither," Feso echoed.
   Grant drew a deep breath, "Okay, Doctor. I have the gist of
it. You understand that you may have to stand court-marshall."
   "Yes sir."
   "Is there any chance that any of those corpses are carrying
the toxin?"
   "Sir, like I stated before, if they were, I wouldn't be
talking to you."
   He nodded, "Okay. Administrator, have your people been inside
the shuttle?"
   Chorea nodded, her chin bobbing slightly as she spoke, "Yes.
We transported the bodies to a safe containment area and have
begun a diagnostic of injured systems."
   The Captain made a sour face as though he wasn't pleased about
the unsolicited help.
   "No offense, Administrator, but Royal Fleet would appreciate
it if your people would get off its property until the Navy can
conduct a thorough investigation."
   "Of course."
   "Doctor... Ensign. You're both dismissed for now, but don't
leave this station. Understood?"
   "Aye sir."
   "Thank you, sir."
   Mike was still waiting, silent and motionless beneath a
plastic cover, when he felt the tap on his chest.
   "How did it go?"
   "Sshhh."
   Feso acted as lookout while Hunter and Mike helped the blind
and the injured negotiate their way unseen through the small
antechamber and down a corridor. Half a minute later, they were
in a lift. It was a tight fit with all five of them, but the
source of Mike's discomfort had nothing to do with
claustrophobia.
   "Where are we going, Doc?"
   "Away from armageddon," she looked up, eyes as icy as any he'd
seen. "What are you worried about, Harrison? You still have a
career."
   "What did you tell them?"
   "What does it matter? Here. You may need these."
   Mike reached to accept the three tickets, but just as he was
about to touch them, her fingers wrapped shut.
   "There's just one thing. Give me the holocrystal."
   "Doctor..."
   "If you want these, hand it over."
   Mike shook his head, "Forget it."
   "I only want to destroy it, Harrison. You really think I'd
trust you with it?"
   "You're gonna have to."
   The lift's doors opened into a wide atrium. Hundreds of
people, most dressed in vacc cloth or mendwear business slickers,
wandered about, waiting impatiently for the next pod to arrive.
Mike remembered the place fairly well. Aside from some more
planters and a new coat of paint, hardly a thing had changed.
   Stepping off the lift, Mike kept a hand engaged to both Cecil
and Johanes. For a moment he felt like he was leading around two
small children. Then, as people noticed them and began to stare,
he realized how strange they looked together, Mike in a white,
loose-fitting robe, Cecil, stumbling about blindly, with rows of
jacks covering his skull, and Johanes, with a blood-soaked
shoulder, barely able to keep to his feet. Hunter and her nurse
followed them out, letting the lift slip away into the seamless
gravitic traffic flowing continuously overhead.
   "Harrison..."
   "Sshhh," Mike felt the stares grow in intensity. All he needed
now was an impromptu autograph session. She seemed vaguely aware
but not the least bit perturbed by his discomfort.
   "Look, I'm not joking. You want to cooperate, or should we
just duke it out?"
   "Go pick on somebody your own size."
   Mike felt himself getting yanked backward by the collar of his
robe. She almost had it clear of his body before the security
people arrived.
   "What's going on here?!"
   They just looked at each other, each waiting for the other to
come up with a plausible explanation. Meanwhile the pod pulled
into port. Mike watched the spherical structure coast silently up
its tube, passing the air locks, and lining up with the entry
corridors. People funneled out while others pushed their way
inside, very little organization about the whole thing. From a
distance, they looked like hamsters scuffling over the right to
occupy a moment's space, a thing Mike had never gotten entirely
used to, but then, it least it gave the security people something
to do.
   "I'm gonna ask you just one more time... what is going on
here?!"
   "This guy is attempting to abscond with my property."
   "What, you steal something from her?"
   Mike pulled one of the spare holocrystals from Jo's pocket,
presenting it with as much of a frown as he could muster.
   "You win, Doc."
   "You trusted it with him?"
   "He's not going anywhere, is he? You still got those tickets?"
   The ride down the beanstalk took some two hours. Considering
that the total distance covered was some thirty-six thousand
kilometers, Mike had no complaints. He remembered his first time,
how he got bored sick just looking at the stars. It was always
like that right up until the last few minutes. Then the pod,
plunging through a shaft of the purest vacuum, would cut straight
through Tyber's thick atmosphere. The layers of sickly brown and
orange clouds would pass by so quickly, you'd have to set up a
holo-recorder and then play your crystal back in slow motion just
to catch the speed rush.
   An hour after landfall they'd made an interim crash site at
the Senex, sort of a local guild hall for the cyber-cranially
inclined. Cecil had been awarded life-time membership some years
back after repeatedly breaking into their archives. The story
went that the only way to attain such an honor was to award it to
oneself, which in turn meant that every hacker on the planet had
the right to feel properly challenged. If they ever beat the
security, they'd join the inner circle of wizards who maintained
that security. The Senex, over time, had become a think-tank of
the brightest and more talented hackers in the entire region, a
virtual playground for those who never passed the test, and a
fertile recruiting pit for those who had.
   Mike remembered the old days when Cecil would gingerly seat
himself on the polished white marble underneath one of the
various gravitic aqua-sculptures. His favorite had always been
the dragon, wings outstretched, breathing orange colored vapor at
all who would dare approach. It was the pinnacle, a place for the
wizards alone. He'd assume a meditative posture as he shut
himself into the electronic void, often staying like that for
several hours at a stretch. Mike, meanwhile, would lay down on
one of the numerous couches beside the fire hearths and study or
read or just sleep. Then they'd grab a bite at the Morrowtyme
Cafe, which not only served some of the best zardocha this side
of Ares, but which also stocked enough old midterms and finals to
make most any student wet his pants in effigy.
   Mike soon found himself sipping a highbowl of clover-mocha,
wondering how soon his shoulder would stop hurting. Checking his
pocket for about the twentieth time since Cecil had handed back
the holo-player, he discovered it once more to his surprise,
crystal and all, and not a thing he could say about it. He
sighed, rubbing his shoulder and thinking that compared to the
mental state of most of the students, Johanes didn't look too
bad. Cecil, meanwhile, had picked up a cyclops lens that he'd
managed to glue to his forehead. It stuck out like a squat grey
knob, wires licking their way to his jacks.
   "Good to see you, Michael."
   "Good to be seen... oh god."
   "Eh?"
   "Niki's dead, Cecil. Bill too."
   "Been quite a trip."
   "I have to find someplace to look at this crystal."
   "All has been arranged. Just... hang tight... and keep Jo from
drooling over the table."
   Johanes just grunted, as though waking up from a bad dream.
   "Where am I?"
   "On Tyber. You want some zardocha?"
   "Maybe."
   The jolt of caffeine seemed to do the Draconian some good, and
Mike found himself wondering how much Jo would remember.
   "How d'ya feel?"
   "Um... tired."
   "You need to shave."
   "Look who's talking."
   Mike ordered up another round with some onion-crackles, and
they proceeded to make a mess, dropping little flakes of dried,
caramelized onion all over the table. One nice thing about the
place was that you never had to clean up. Nobody did. You could
just press a button on the side of the table and watch the
surface descend a few centimeters while all the crumbs would get
vaporized and sucked down little vacc-tubes along the sides. Then
the surface would rise again, brand spanking clean from its brush
with maser technology.
   Cecil finally spotted the person he was looking for. Mike
vaguely remembered her face but couldn't put a name to it until
Cecil spoke up.
   "Ami, over here."
   She glided over on a pair of grav-skates, halting her momentum
with the edge of the table. A tangle of curly hair fell across
her face with the impact, its color sandy-something, traces of
brown, blonde, and red all woven together like it couldn't decide
what color to be, so it just compromised. The thing that struck
Mike most was her youth. She looked almost like a girl he once
knew when he was studying journalism. Then it hit him. He had
known her some years past, when they were both students at Tyber.
He'd aged during the interim. She, however, had not. Except for
the skates and the curl job on her hair, she hadn't changed at
all.
   "Hi Mike, 'member me?"
   "Ami?"
   "Long time, no see, eh? Hey, love those threads. Cecil!"
   "Greetings. How have you been, child?"
   "Could be worse. What about you?"
   They seemed to exchange pleasantries well into the next
decade. Mike just sat there, recalling memories from what seemed
increasingly like a past life. She was the one who'd dragged him
into those undergraduate science classes which he'd squeaked
through only by the mercy of several major deities. The one good
thing that came of it was meeting Cecil, who TA'ed the one in
artificial sentience and seemed to know his stuff far better than
the doddering professor. He had a cocky edge about him back then.
In some ways, he still did.
   "We are all pretty clueless right now. You know how traveling
can be."
   "Not really. Hey... are you guys okay?"
   "Oh, fine. Very lucky, actually."
   Mike nodded, "Very."
   "Cecil, you look really... did you get fried crispy again?"
   "Ah... not precisely."
   "You got soaped."
   "Dregged, actually. Soaping is for wimps."
   During Mike's sophomore year, Cecil got fried within an inch
of his life, something to do with an irate super-computer and too
many long hours on a dysfunctional deck. The local regen
facilities literally saved his mind, but there were some glaring
gaps in his memory which couldn't be restored. He had to spend a
year in rehab, another relearning the material for some of those
courses he'd been teaching. It mellowed him out, to put things
mildly.
   "Would you like some crackles?"
   "I hate those things. Oh well... sure, why not? So what
happened to you?"
   "Ah... it's a long story."
   "Format brief?"
   "Have a seat, child."
   "I'm not a child, Cecil, and I'm definitely not having a
seat."
   She spun herself on a collision course with his lap. Mike had
to give her some room for the maneuver. He wasn't expecting it,
but he wasn't surprised either. Ami had gotten to know Cecil
during the rotten years of his life, hanging out with him more
than was natural. She used to tease him by saying things like
"lose a brain, gain a buddy." Somewhere along the line, he picked
up on her deranged sense of humor, and Mike began to figure they
were either closet lovers or just two very good friends who liked
to mentally torture each other in their spare time.
   "Cecil, you stink."
   "Ah... that would be Mike's fault."
   "What have you two perverts been up to?"
   Mike shrugged, trying to look innocent, "Can I help it if
Cecil sweats when he's horny?"
   "You sick little boy. You haven't changed at all, have you?"
   Mike shook his head, "If you mean matured, then no. I noticed
that you haven't changed much either."
   She laughed, "You're so observant, Mike."
   "Well, I try."
   "Didn't Cecil warn you? I'm immortal."
   "Really?"
   "I'm an angel disguised as a devil. Or perhaps vice-versa. I
haven't decided yet."
   Cecil smiled, "She hasn't changed a bit. Eh?"
   "Yes I have. I've gotten fabulously wealthy."
   "Oh, do tell."
   "Never. It's mine. All mine."
   Eventually, the three of them had gone their separate ways:
Mike to Tizar, Cecil to Calanna in hopes of finding employment
with the post-war reconstruction effort, and Ami stayed on Tyber,
working toward a doctorate in something or other. Mike never
found out whether or not she'd finished it. He'd never really
cared, but seeing her after all these years, still in pristine
condition, made him begin to wonder. Sensing his distraction, her
chestnut eyes seemed to laugh when they caught his stare, and
smirking as though with some hidden knowledge, she popped another
onion-crackle in her mouth. For somebody who hated them, she sure
was eating quite a few. Mike finally blinked, shaking off the
spell.
   "So what is it? Plastic surgery?"
   "Really, Michael."
   "I'm just curious."
   "Too bad. It's a state secret. I'd tell you, but they'd erase
your brain."
   Mike practically choked. His automatic response gave her the
sort of bewildered look that she so rarely showed the world, at
least not willingly. Her natural state, Mike figured.
   "What? Something I said?"
   Cecil interceded, "Gatherer's got a headache. OD'ed on RL,
poor boy. Goes ditto for long-face in the corner."
   "He looks pretty gross."
   Johanes smiled, winking at her in between the shivers. Cecil
swiveled her into her own seat, perhaps to get his mind back on
the so-called conversation.
   "So, Amicia, what stink-hole art thou infesting nowadays?
Still at the Iron Works?"
   "Hah! I bailed on that dump years ago."
   "So you're at another dump."
   "I'm at the Myriad Spires."
   "Really?"
   She shook her head,  "No, I'm just joking." She paused for the
drumbeat. "Actually, I'm glad you approve, Cecil. It reinforces
my ego. It's just so... you know... wonderful. That's the word."
   "A studio?"
   "Ixnay. Big-time ixnay."
   "A flat."
   "Keep goin'."
   "A condo."
   "You are one insulting son of a canker sore! He is, isn't
he?!"
   Mike nodded, figuring that she must have gotten that
doctorate. Either that or she mated rich, an unlikely proposition
considering her general attitude toward the male of the species,
or as Ami once liked to call them, "the weaker sex". They took a
lift up to the surface, catching a grav cart along the
Cylindrical Expressway. Mike leaned back as orange and black
clouds of toxic vapor pressed against the transparent, tubular
avenues, squinting his eyes with each brief flash of lightning as
they zipped along. The hose-like boulevards meshed along the
surface like a spider's web of spindly strands, some major
thoroughfares, others more like back roads, turning and twisting
at various eccentric angles.
   Her place turned out to be even more "wonderful" than she had
let on, a slim, four story abode with translucent walls tinted in
intermittent swirls of blue, green, and purple. The lightning
storms raging outside cut glimmering streaks of tranquil, soft-
hued light on the white tile floors while two open shafts
dominated the tower's interior. Each contained a field of low
gravity, one reversed against the other, so that a person could
simply fall like a feather from one floor to the next, going in
either direction. With the rooms themselves mostly deserted and
empty except for the occasional maintenance robot, the place was
a virtual mansion, lonely, depressing, and terribly quiet. A
prototypical hacker house, Mike figured, save for the lack of
technical hardware.
   "You live here, Ami?"
   "Sometimes. Can I get you guys something to drink? Some
Hydrogen monoxide, perhaps?"
   "Sure."
   She brought up a blue-tinted pitcher of ice-water a few
minutes later, while the three of them were still staking out
their favorite null-tubes. Mike helped Johanes stumble into the
closest, watching him drift into unconsciousness as it filled
with warm, scented air.
   "Sweet dreams, Draconian."
   Johanes mumbled something in response, but the air jets stole
the edges of his words, converting them into nothing so much as
rounded, incomprehensible noises. Mike turned around to accept a
highbowl, sipping down a gulp.
   "Thanks."
   "Doesn't your friend want some?"
   "He said no thanks."
   She nodded, filling Cecil a bowl.
   "So... why are you guys here? I tried contacting you a few
months ago Cecil. You never got my mail?"
   "Was temporarily indisposed."
   "Oh yes... got dregged in the cellars. How typical of you. Was
it much pain?"
   "It's a long story. If not for Michael here..."
   "I see."
   Mike imagined that she actually did. Like him, she
occasionally showed the strange ability to draw forth all sorts
of pertinent details from just a few obscure clues. But then she
knew Cecil well enough to understand what kind of trouble he
could get himself into. It didn't take a genius to guess what a
"long story" inevitably entailed.
   "So that's why you're here."
   Cecil smiled, "No... that's an even longer story."
   "We've got a long time."
   Mike winced, certain that he would have some choice words with
Cecil at the first opportunity. She turned, noticing the
expression before he could wipe it from his face.
   "Look, if you two are in some sorta trouble, I wanna know
about it. I mean, you guys show up with Mr. X here, obviously not
in the best of shape. Mike's wearing a robe. That's cool. I mean,
my ears are perking up, okay? I'm getting some vibes. Something
not quite kosher is definitely goin' down. Next thing, I'm
providing shelter for two guys who wouldn't go to a money-changer
to save their mothers' souls, and you won't even tell me what the
problem is. How's that for trust?"
   Mike kept wincing, thinking "same ol' Ami" during the tirade.
   "Ami, it's not like we don't trust you. We just... don't trust
you."
   Her jaw dropped at least two inches.
   "How rude."
   "But honest. You can always toss us out, y'know."
   She never did take him up on the offer, instead retiring to
the uppermost chamber to brood. Mike soon realized he was too
wired on zardocha to fall asleep. Cecil seemed to be suffering
from the same predicament, flipping over in his null-tube several
times before crawling out and laying himself on the tile floor.
It seemed to be his preference ever since the cellars.
   "It was good zardocha," Mike offered.
   "A bit mistimed."
   "Cecil, why didn't you warn me?"
   "About Ami? Figured you could use the surprise."
   "I had no idea you two kept in contact."
   He shrugged a bit, "On and off."
   "How's she afford the anagathics?"
   "Apparently has a friend in Bio-Dep. Synthesizes it right on
campus. Quite a perk, eh?"
   Mike smirked, "Yeah... well, she's gonna get a bad batch
someday, and whamo."
   "They're careful, Michael."
   "So did she get the doc, or is she just selling that stuff for
a living?"
   "Both, only I had no idea she was doing so well. She must have
been squirreling away some profits."
   Mike nodded. It explained the nice place, surface-side and
all. It even explained the lack of furnishings. She probably
moved around a bit, staying ahead of the competition, not to
mention the police.
   "She better be real careful, stealing business from Tyber,
Inc."
   "It's hardly stealing."
   "Oh, I know; it's free enterprise, right?"
   "Precisely."
   "It's outlawed, Cecil. It's stealing."
   "And what you do isn't?"
   "Look, I'm not saying it's wrong. I agree, the law is
protectionist slogshit, but that doesn't change the facts."
   "Everyone's doing it, Michael."
   "Everyone?"
   "Lots of people. There's too much money at stake not to."
   Mike watched Cecil rip the lens from his forehead,
disconnecting its wires and laying it carefully to his side. He
was right of course, at least insofar as his comprehension of the
underlying problem. The whole issue was just a vicious cycle
created by the corporation. They'd hiked the prices on their
anagathics right into the stratosphere. Heralded as a population
control measure, Mike guessed that profit maximization might also
have had something to do with it.
   As with any industry, however, monopoly was only sustainable
insofar as its ability to thwart the competition. When the
technology finally disseminated, competitors began to swarm the
market in droves. The Tyberian monopoly was broken, prices fell,
the consumer was happy, and for about a year, it began to look
just like any other industry.
   That's when the big-boys got scared. Nasty things started to
happen: lab bombings, assassinations, coerced mergers, all the
standard rituals of a corporate war. Prices flew back into the
stratosphere. Everything was hunky-dory again, but not for long.
   The disbanded casualties of war began to reform, this time
operating under a new strategy. Instead of forming with the
intention of remaining on-going concerns, they opted for the in-
and-out approach to profiteering. Get in, make your money, and
run like hell before you get squashed, or by another more widely
known definition, screw the customer as hard and fast as you can.
   Quality control went from being the rule to being the
exception almost overnight, and the change caught quite a few
customers unaware. For nearly a year, the fast-movers were
pushing nothing so remarkable as piss-water to a horde of
geraphobic yuppies, and those were lucky ones. The unlucky,
millions of them, found their way into body bags.
   The backlash in public opinion was appropriately severe if
entirely misdirected. Roxy, in a rare though popular edict,
banned unlicensed competition in the name of public safety.
Prices stayed high, underground competition actually increased,
there was ever more piss-water, more money went into law
enforcement, etcetera, etcetera, ad infinitum. It didn't take a
Ph.D. in macro-econ to figure out the consequences. The funny
thing was that very few bothered to admit it, or perhaps those
that did were censured.
   Mike didn't know. He didn't care. It wasn't his problem. He
just wanted to go to sleep. Closing his eyes, he tried to slip
unnoticed through the sandman's gate, but somehow, tired though
he was, sleep refused his summons. He finally crawled from the
tube, stepping softly to the cold, tile floor and over Cecil's
prone form. His old friend didn't seem to notice, baiting his own
sleepies ever closer with immaculate stillness and infinite
patience.
   Floating upward, Mike found Ami at the tower's apex. She sat
in a grav-recliner, gazing at her three-vee while sipping
something purple and bubbly from a straw-ball. The depth-box was
switched to one of the news-comedy channels, the sort where all
the gatherers had to double a professional humorists and vice-
versa. Mike remembered interviewing with one of them. Instead of
looking at his portfolio, the personnel director just asked him
to tell some jokes. It turned out to be a very short interview.
   "...and just in case you're still holding tickets for the
Crimson Queen, might as well cash those puppies in for a full
refund. Orbital Traffic Control reports that the Queen will not
be making it to space dock any time soon. Our own Rowe Dorran
with the details."
   "Thank you Murray. These images were captured at OTC just a
few centims ago. Here you can see the Crimson Queen, and here we
see it... gee, what's it doing? Looks like it's self-destructing.
Itchy owwy, that must have smarted! To all of you who had friends
or relatives aboard the Queen, our station's staff and management
would like to express our most sincere sympathies... not! Heck,
they knew space travel was dangerous when they bought their
tickets. And shame on them for flying Imperial. Hopefully,
they've learned a valuable lesson. We're still not too clear on
the details surrounding the incident, but fear not, folks. We'll
pass along any new information as soon as it becomes available...
and perhaps even sooner. Back to you, Murray."
   "Thanks Rowe."
   "Oh, it was my pleasure."
   "Really? Then go ahead and do it again."
   Mike settled his bare feet to the soft micro-shag, letting the
warm fibers curl between his toes as the two gatherers continued
to chew the air-time. They'd probably over-budgeted the segment,
their director waving the infamous "Improvise" sign back and
forth.
   "What's the matter, Mike? Couldn't sleep?"
   She'd caught his reflection in the glassy walls. Mike
approached around her left side, hunching down to his knees as
she turned her head to look at him. The flashes of lightning
outside painted a menagerie of flickering hues across her
forehead, cheeks, and chin.
   "Ya know something, Mike?"
   "What?"
   "You stink. There's a bath in the basement."
   If there was one thing he could say for Ami, it was that she
was true to her word. A large, green-hued, diaphanous sphere with
gravity inhibitors spaced evenly about, the bath reminded Mike of
a crystallization chamber he'd once seen at the Tizarian med-
center. He crawled hesitantly inside its miniature airlock,
closing the doors behind him. Water beads clouded the glass,
carrying the fusty fragrance of the scented soaps. Instead of
turning on the water, a fan, or even the gravity inhibitors, Mike
slowly withdrew the holo-player from his robe pocket, settling
himself into the shallow puddle which had collected along the
chamber's concave floor.
   It took less than a minute to test the device with one of Jo's
blank crystals. The player's scraped and dented exterior echoed a
very weary stare, however, despite its external appearance, it
didn't seem to have any technical troubles. Mike slapped "the
crystal" inside, pausing his finger over the play button for
several heartbeats while that little voice in the back of his
head told him to just chuck it out an airlock and let it rot in
Tyber's corrosive atmosphere. "So much for little voices," Mike
contemplated, pressing the button and sliding backward into as
comfortable a position as he could manage.


                          *     *     *


If there was one thing she hated, even more than being beaten, it
was being ignored. Nobody had ever gotten away with that, nobody
until Erestyl. So far he'd proved himself a tougher nut than
anyone could have guessed. Drugs, torture, even the mind scanner
had only reached so far. At first she though he merely possessed
a tremendous will, the ability to fight unrelentingly. It was a
rare trait in humans, but one which could be defeated with the
proper application of psychic trickery.
   This new ability, however, that of the subconscious mind to
wiggle free of a psychic suggestion, was far more confusing than
elucidating. Now, without any trouble whatsoever, he simply
disregarded her very presence. Against such an opponent, sheer
force would fall as short as an ice-clown chasing its mistral
wind.
   The predicament reminded her of the bull-fights on Ares, and
how with a furl of his cape, the matador would step to either
side. The bull, perplexed and enraged, would try again and again.
Each time it would fail, until rolling in the sweet dirt, a sword
wedged in its heart, it would hear the crowd's withering cheers
blowing through its severed ear. Such was the battle between
force and finesse. Lamentable for Sule that delicacy was rarely a
bio-synthe's attribute. More often, the clone banks designed for
the opposite. She was no ordinary skin-job, however, and Erestyl
no ordinary hard-shell.
   She'd pegged him from the moment she'd first laid eyes on him.
Supposed destroyer of insurgent civilizations, to her, he was
nothing more than a pawn, a toy, a crazy dreamer, so far beyond
mere insignificance that his death would not even contribute to a
statistic in the galactic almanac. He would be uncounted,
unremembered, and therefore unforgiven, this pacifist's only
lasting gift to the universe, a device for killing en masse. All
that was still true, except for just a few minor details. He was
beating her. He was ignoring her. He was winning.
   The situation was nothing short of infuriating. All that
remained was this interrogation, a fiasco of such embarrassing
proportions that it had served thus far to expose nothing more
than her wretched incompetence. Erestyl was a very tough nut,
indeed. He'd forced himself to assume the worst about Clio, and
in so doing, he'd severed his only weakness. He was right, of
course, more so than even he knew. The director had been very
hard on her, keeping her torture slow and satisfying. Erestyl,
with all his sub-quantum theories and the endless encyclopedias
of knowledge crammed into his skull, even he could scarcely
imagine how his colleague had suffered. Yet he knew enough about
ISIS to write her off. A wise move on his part. It dissolved a
weakness, though Sule promised herself she'd find another.
   A person without weaknesses was too beautiful to be, an
impossibility, pure and simple. Everyone needed at least one
blood-curdling defect to hold themselves together, everyone non-
synthetic, Sule clarified. Flaws seemed to be essential roots of
the human ego, the deepest mountains of the mind, perhaps even
more basic than the will to live, a will that in Erestyl had long
since dissipated.
   That would be his only consolation, that before the sun would
rise, his burnt remains would settle to the bottom of Arien's
moat, this festering ball of filth his eternal grave. Sule knew
that much, and if she guessed correctly, then somewhere in that
drugged, wounded, psi-touched mind, so did he.
   "Erestyl."
   He just sat there, the corner of the room his pedestal.
Several recently-inflicted welts accented his sallow complexion
while his watery eyes, devoid of emotion, stared through the
window and into the glimmering emptiness beyond.
   "Erestyl. Can you hear me?"
   His indifference to his own name seemed to her nothing short
of astounding. It was the basis of Arien's suggestion, and yet
here was her subject, rendering it conspicuously meaningless
against the dim, milky shades settling along his pasty features.
   "Erestyl?"
   She slapped him lightly on the cheek, causing his eyelids to
flutter up and down.
   "Don't ignore me."
   He looked at her momentarily, turning his eyes back toward the
window, toward the Siri cluster and the red giant, Oremar,
twinkling at its center. Why the star should strike him as worthy
of particular notice, she couldn't fathom. Then, somewhere in
that magic space of the intellect, a realization slowly dawned.
   "You've got more of Harrison's psychic in your head than I
thought. What was her name? Nikita? Is your name Nikita?"
   The word seemed to startle him, as though the sound of it fell
like the crack of a whip. Suddenly, his apparent ability to
wiggle free of Alister's suggestion made sense. Sule cursed
herself for not discovering it sooner.
   "Very interesting... and very stupid."
   She stepped to the wall, opening a channel over the mansion's
internal comm-net.
   "Get me the old man."
   Alister appeared at the door not a minute later, Sule opening
it and motioning him inside.
   "It appears that we have a slight problem."
   "We?"
   "Your suggestion on Erestyl is useless."
   "Useless?"
   From the corners of his mouth, Sule could sniff the
ingredients of a smirk. For all his years, he was a lousy liar.
   "Yes, Alister. Useless. Maybe you can explain it."
   He shrugged, "I performed just as we agreed. No more and no
less."
   "And you forgot to mention our visitor?"
   "Visitor?"
   "What sort of fool do you take me for, Alister?"
   "Well... the sort hardly matters," his smirk gave way to a
wide, cheshire grin. She considered physically slapping it from
his face.
   "There's no point in lying. I know about Nikita."
   "Ah," he dropped the grin. Words were so much more exquisite.
   "It comes as a great surprise, Alister? Perhaps you thought I
wouldn't figure it out?"
   "One can always hope."
   "Hope is dead. Now get her out of his mind, and then we'll
talk business."
   "I can't."
   "What do you mean, you can't?"
   Alister paced to the corner, running his fingers along
Erestyl's forehead.
   "Ms. Sen was a healer more so than anything. She had a great
deal of time with Erestyl."
   "So?"
   "So she had enough time to do her job, to heal his frayed mind
which had been so soundly thrashed by your scanners. In so doing,
she left behind fragments of herself, entire sections of her own
identity to fill the holes which you people tore. To even attempt
a removal would probably kill him."
   "Why didn't you tell me?"
   "You didn't ask."
   "Alister, we had an agreement. If you'd seen this potential
bridge in identities, then you should have told me outright.
Instead, you tied your suggestion to a name this subject could
just squirm free of."
   Arien shrugged, "It was worth a try, wasn't it?"
   "It was stupid. You only succeeded in wasting my time, nothing
more. Now if you can't get Nikita out of his head, I at least
want another suggestion put on him, one that he can't break free
of."
   "Sule, it is not easily done. He is between identities now.
You must wait for him to settle upon one or the other."
   "How long will that take?"
   "Days... perhaps weeks."
   "I don't have that kind of time."
   "Then I am sorry. There is nothing more I can do."
   She nodded, "And I suppose you're not going to let me out of
here."
   "When my mate is returned, safely, then you may leave... as we
agreed."
   "You broke our agreement."
   "I fulfilled all that was explicitly required. If you want to
live to see the sun rise, Sule, I would suggest that you do
likewise."
   With that he left, not the most dramatic exit she'd ever
witnessed, but for the likes of Alister Arien, it was as good as
they got. Erestyl, meanwhile, stared obliviously out the window,
scarcely conscious of a single word they spoke. Oremar seemed to
hold all his attention, absorbing him into its faint, distant
light.
   "You want to go there, Nikita. Don't you?"
   The name startled him again, and he nodded slightly.
   "Tell me what Erestyl did with those records. The designs. Of
the Prometheus device. Remember?"
   A confused look crossed his face. She could see him fighting
it.
   "Nikita... cooperate with me, and I promise that you'll return
from whence you came."
   "Ashes to ashes... dust to dust," the first words he'd spoken
in at least an hour. Sule crumpled her fingers into a tight fist,
then let the tension dissipate into thin air. Striking him would
solve nothing. She had to find the weakness.
   "I can always interrogate Harrison, if you prefer."
   "Michael..."
   "That's right. He's close by. Close enough to bite."
   Sule watched as the sudden jolt in Erestyl's eyes melted
slowly into the glimmering starlight.
   "You won't catch him, Sule."
   "You little fool, I'm quite certain that I won't have to."
   She returned to the wall, opening the same channel.
   "Get me Alister."
   "Not again, lady."
   "Yes, again."
   But the knock never came. Instead, Korina's voice broke over
the wall's speaker box.
   "Yes Sule, you are finished?"
   "Almost. I understand that you have another guest aside from
myself... a certain Tizarian gatherer."
   "He's hardly a guest."
   "Regardless, I'd like to see him... in the flesh, if you don't
mind."
   "For what purpose?"
   "To expedite my business."
   "To kill him?"
   "That all depends. You say he isn't a guest?"
   "He's a prisoner."
   "I see. I assume you have a camera monitoring the cells?"
   "Of course."
   "Pipe his image through to this channel. I wish to verify his
status."
   Harrison's image materialized on the wall communicator's
visual display. They'd focused in for a close-up, the camera
apparently hidden into a light fixture judging from the angle.
Erestyl's eyes grew wide, darting back and forth from the monitor
to Sule. She could only guess at what bizarre cacophony of
thoughts raced behind them, but a guess was all she needed.
   "There you go, Nikita. Just as I promised."
   "Alister won't hand him over."
   "Oh, I think we can do a trade."
   "Trade? You're bluffing."
   "Am I? Think of it, Nikita... or Erestyl or whatever name
you're going by. You'll be free for as long as you can hide from
ISIS, which won't be very long. During the interim, I'll be
erasing Harrison's brain bit by bit. Works for me."
   "He knows nothing."
   "I'll see to that personally unless you start cooperating."
   Erestyl or Niki or whoever was inside that mangled mind looked
back toward Oremar, as though the Siri star could provide some
measure of moral guidance.
   "He tight-beamed them into space."
   "What?"
   "Laser-comm, maximum focus. That's where Erestyl hid the
records, Sule. They're out there, between the stars."
   "What frequency?"
   Details began pouring from Erestyl's mouth: frequency and
direction of beam, decompression protocols, decryption
instructions. In less than a minute, Sule had everything she'd
come for. It was that simple.
   "Just promise me one thing, Sule."
   "I'm listening."
   "Don't hurt him."
   "Harrison?"
   "He knows nothing of this."
   "I don't care what he knows. He tried to nuke me. Us. He
almost succeeded. I don't have to put up with that. It's not in
my job description. Now if you don't mind... it's time for you to
die."
   Mike watched, through the injection, as Erestyl/Niki curled on
the floor and died. Then Sule switched off the player, and the
hologram deteriorated into the cold, moist air of the bath-
sphere. He wasn't sure how long he stayed like that, sitting in a
puddle, unblinking. He didn't care. All things considered, it was
as good a place as any.
   The caffeine had loosened its grip by the time he crawled back
out. Ami was still at the tower's apex, sleeping peacefully in
front of a blaring three-vee. Mike lowered the volume little by
little, finally switching the box off with a flick of his thumb.
Two floors down, Cecil was asleep as well, really asleep, not
like his usual haphazard slumber, intermixing dreams and databank
excursions. "The subliminal mind is the most pristine, the least
prone to err," he'd once explained. That was before the cellars.
Mike vaguely wondered if he would care to reiterate the
statement.
   Johanes, meanwhile, slept like the dead, or at least like the
very sleepy. With a bullet still lodged in his shoulder, he had a
right to. Mike opened the tube, reaching to the Draconian's
jacket pocket. He still had a few hundred credits on him, the
anonymous kind, worth less on Tyber than most other systems due
to the stingy exchange rates. Mike borrowed a fistful for the
Beanstalk and Cylindrical Expressway.
   The ride into orbit took an hour longer than the ride going
down. Mike continued past the OTC terminal and exited only when
his pod had reached Far-Point Harbor. A small, hollowed-out
asteroid was tethered there to the tail end of the stalk, making
a place where dozens of free merchants could anchor. Several
adjacent hulls, long since decommissioned, had been transformed
into a conglomeration of taverns, inns, window shops, and
warehouses. Mike found the first Tizar-bound ship, and
sacrificing his pilfered currency with the promise of more to
come, he was soon back in hyperspace, going home.


           _   /|
           \`o_O'          Jim Vassilakos
             ( )     <---  jimv@ucrmath.ucr.edu
              U            jimv@silver.lcs.mit.edu
           Aachk!

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