Horizons

ELEVEN

THE ELEVATOR RIDE UP SEEMED TO TAKE FOREVER. ONLY a scattered handful of men and women got on and off the elevator as it rose. They didn’t look at her at all, their focus inward, or fixed on eyelid screens. The Con, she guessed. Buzzing. The last one exited as they reached the final “open” level.

From here on up you had to have access.

This time, she didn’t have to override the security.

The warning chimed, she donned the straps, and felt weight vanish from the universe. The door finally irised open and that familiar green wash of light flooded her. Almost before the door had completely opened, Koi shot through it, handed off into a pern backward somersault from the wall beside her, killed his momentum in a rebound off the ceiling and ended up perfectly still and upside down facing her, eye to eye, his grin so wide it threatened to split his face.

”You have lovely molars,” Ahni said, peering into his mouth and trying vainly to hide a smile. “Nice to see you, too, Koi.”

“I knew you’d come back, no matter what Dane said.” He shivered and drifted sideways, ushering her out the elevator door. Then, with a whoop, he kicked off from the side of the elevator and arrowed away, looping and rolling, deflecting his momentum with the merest stretch of a limb or touch to one of the tubes. The scrum players had seemed incredibly skillful, but now she realized that they weren’t a whole lot more skilled in microG than she was. Not compared to Koi.

His family joined him suddenly, perhaps a half dozen slender shapes, echoing his rolls, twists, and loops.

One of them shot down to spill her momentum precisely and without flourish, ending up eye to eye with Ahni.

“Hi,” Ahni said, regarding those strange milky eyes. Good adaptation for the light, she thought. “Do you talk?”

The girl, her face flower-delicate and feminine in spite of her hairless skull smiled at her.

And greeted her.

Ahni blinked, because that’s what it was… a welcome, a hello, glad to meet you. Only… no words.

None. Nothing that could be called a “word” by any stretch of the imagination. But a greeting, none the less. “You do talk,” Ahni said, her mind whirling. “Where’s Dane?” Thought of Dane, his dark hair, strong face.

The girl smiled again, turned and pushed off. Ahni followed, noticing how she matched her speed to Ahni’s. Koi zoomed past.

“Hey!” He somersaulted, twisted, looped around her, angry with a child’s “you ignored me” pique, arrowed straight at the girl.

She rolled instantly. Made a quick grabbing gesture that must have connected although Ahni couldn’t quite make it out. With a yelp, Koi shot off on a tangent, caught himself on a tube.

Ahni laughed, couldn’t help herself. “You are so good all of you.” She clutched her knees, somersaulting slowly, her stomach for once cooperative. “You make me feel like a dodo on precivilization Earth. I’m stuck.” She waved her arms, fingertips brushing the leaves on adjacent tubes, not moving at all. “I need a tow.”

Both Koi and the girl arrowed in, stalled neatly in front of her, offered simultaneous hands. “So you understand English?” Ahni asked, her eyes on the girl’s milky one.

Assent. Surprise?

“Sure.” Koi’s gaze tickled Ahni. “Dane uses words, so we do, too. I just say ’em out loud is all.”

“Oh.” Ahni seized his wrist, native style, so that he could propel her back into motion, concentrated briefly on straightening out her trajectory. “Can anybody else in your family… speak out loud?”

“We all can. Why?” Genuine puzzlement.

Why indeed? “Most of the people on the orbital probably aren’t… as good at hearing you as Dane and I are,” Ahni said.

Koi’s shrug was something Ahni felt rather than saw. So what?

What was it like to share… what? Images, feelings, sensations, needs? You really wouldn’t need words, Ahni thought. “So how did you learn to talk in words?”

For a few moments, Koi drifted silently beside her. “I guess my mother died… right after I was born.

Dane raised me,” he said at last. “He talks out loud.”

They really were his children, Ahni thought. The girl swooped off and as Ahni looked after her, it occurred to Ahni that the planted tubes looked familiar. Sure enough, there in the middle distance, the tubes curved to create the small sphere where Dane lived.

He emerged as she drifted close, pushing off to richochet off of the nearest tube, spinning back toward the spherical globe of grafted tubes, offering her a hand as he drifted by. She caught his wrist, native style, earned a silent chuckle, and let him tow her deftly to the bower.

“She’s better than she was last time,” Koi announced, flanking her.

”Noah taught me to play scrum.”

“I’ll forgive him for being an idiot and not telling me you were here.” Dane shook his head, smiling. “He said he met you on the Climber.” He ushered her into the familiar orchid-clad space. “Ahni—” His smile vanished. “Are you sure you did the right thing, coming back here? Your brother tried to kill you.”

“I know.” She caught one of the hammocks, hooked her leg through and caught the squeeze Dane sailed her way. “I think I’m under Li Zhen’s protection. Dane, what’s going on up here? Everyone is so angry.”

Dane frowned. “I’m pretty sure your brother and Li Zhen are trying to start a secessionist rebellion up here.”

“Ghosts!” Koi made a rude sound that set him drifting slowly. “All through the Con. Dane says it’s making people crazy.”

“Noah said something about that.” Ahni eyed Dane unhappily.”The World Conncil will just send CSF

troops up here.” And what would happen to you and Koi’s family then? She wondered. “Can you stop them?”

“So far.” Dane’s attention prodded her, dark with worry. “I wish I knew what their ultimate goal is. Do you?”

“Li Zhen is more your ally than you both realize, I think. He is,” she answered his skepticism. “I saw the same look in his eyes when he talked about the future up here. His father is very powerful and I doubt he’ll share that power with Li Zhen. I think… Li Zhen sees this unrest as a way to force secession on the Conncil and to gain personal power up here. China swings a lot of leverage in the Council.” She shook her head. “I don’t think they have enough votes to pass independence, but that has to be his goal. How this unrest comes in, I can’t quite see.” She sailed her empty squeeze across the space in frustration. “And I can’t figure out what Xai gets out of this. Li Zhen will want to run the show up here and Xai has never taken orders well.” She sighed. “There’s a piece missing here, Dane. And I can’t see its shape.”

”You’ve seen a lot.” Dane caught the squeeze, tucked it into a net. “Thanks. That insight about Li Zhen helps. I haven’t been quite sure about his interest in secession. It opens some possibilities.” A smile glimmered in his eyes. “Do you think you can get me a meeting with the Chairman? Before things blow up?”

“I can try,” Ahni said slowly. Li Zhen would never meet with a low level gene splicer. “Who are you really, Dane?”

“Head of NOW.”

“The secessionist movement? I wondered, but when I reesearched it, I couldn’t find your name associated with it.” A handful of her puzzle pieces clicked into place. “You run this platform from behind the scenes don’t you?”

“Well, not entirely on my own.” Dane’s amusement warmed her. “Let’s say I get things done for people.

And they are grateful.”

Ahni thought of the silk manufacturer’s complaints about lost talent. Nodded. “I’ll see what I can do about Li Zhen,” she said. “I suspect he already knows who you are.”

“Probably.” That amusement surfaced in Dane’s eyes. “A lot of people do. I want to talk to him. We might be able to work together — if you’re right about his goals. As to your brother,” Dane said softly,

“Ahni, we need to stop him.”

“He was at the riot today,” she said in a low voice. “Someone died. I saw the body on my way up here.”

Winced at Dane’s reaction. Drew a deep breath. “I came up here to help you stop him. However we do it.”

Dane reached for her hand, drifting toward her. “Thank. you,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.” He turned to activate a holofield.

Instantly an image formed, a handsome woman with a square serious face, and blonde hair speaking rapidly, unsmiling. “One of the Euro media links,” Dane said absently. The image faded into a man with a long mohawk threaded with green fiberlight threads, his mouth moving rapidly, then into a woman with a perfect face and athlete’s body. “North American Alliance media group,” Dane said.

“…killed in a violent riot on the tourist level of the New York Up orbital platform,” the woman said, her voice charged with excitement. “Turkish nationals, the newlywed pair were honeymooning on the platform, when the incident took place. According to bystanders, a pair of orbital residents assaulted the young woman and when her husband tried to intervene, they stabbed him. He died at the scene and the resuscitation team arrived too late to reverse the death.” Her wide eyes and arched eyebrows underlined the shock in her voice. “This is the worst outbreak of violence to date on the platform. Travel and tour agencies everywhere are cautioning vacationers that a low gravity outing may not be the best choice for the family right now, although Ralph Gearheart, Toronto native and spokesman for the Alliance refuses to admit that the situation has reached emergency status on the platform.” The image shimmered and resolved to a long faced man with the air of well-tended middle age, smiling wearily yet earnestly into the video eye.

“There is no cause for serious alarm or a change in travel planes.” He spoke in a reassuring voice.”This is a small incident that has been blown up out of proportion by the media. We are in touch with the Administrator of New York Up and extra security measures have been implemented in order to assure that this sort of tragedy never occurs again.”

The spokesman’s face faded to be replaced by a succession of images; the crowded corridor outside the restaurant, angry faces, a couple marked with blood, the gurney crew in an island of space, that sheeted body in full view.

“The camera eye sure made it look like a war. How fortunate that the vid-jockey just happened to be there at the right time,” Dane said dryly. He sighed and snapped his fingers, banishing the vidcast. “I wonder if Laif knows he’s being consulted?”

The tone in which Dane used the Administrator’s name spoke volumes. Ahni raised an eyebrow thoughtfully. “That’s not the way it happened. I saw it.”

“How did it happen?” Dane pulled himself closer.

“Some guy bumped into the man’s wife and grabbed her breast, and when her husband started to get angry, he said something that really set him off. The husband threw a punch and the agitator played victim.” Almi shrugged. “Then everybody started to get into it. At least a couple of people were part of the set-up. I don’t know how many people noticed the upsider touch the woman. It was pretty quiet until her husband started swinging.”

“Sounds like our pro.” Dane looked at Koi, who touched an icon in the holofield.

A narrow face shimmered to life in the glowing fog, mixedEuro genes with a fanatic’s eyes. “That’s him.”

Ahni nodded. “He’s the man who started the whole thing. I don’t know what he said to the husband but he sure got a reaction.”

“He’s very talented.” Dane scowled at the image. “I would really like to get an ID on him, but it’s like searching for a small moon in the center of the Milky Way. If we knew who he was, we could find a way to lever him out of here.”

Koi was getting restless. He somersaulted off the wall and slipped out of the bower.

“Dane, what are they?” Ahni looked after him. “A mutation?”

“No.” Dane crossed his arms behind his head, frowning. “That was my assumption, although the entire can is shielded and we’re smack in the center up here. “But I’ve scanned DNA from most of the members of tlle population. There are no more mutations on the alleles than the ordinary platform-born resident. What do you know about lateral transference?”

Ahni blinked briefly into Pause, summoned the word. “A dramatic shift in genetic expression causing an altered phenotype in single generation.” She opened her eyes. “Only references I can find were to low level organisms, though. No mammalian species at all.”

“What happens when you do that?” Dane was looking at her seriously. “You feel as if you’re asleep.”

Ha, a first. He hadn’t admitted to his high Erating before now. “It’s new technology,” she said. “New this generation, because you have to implant the original nanoware in the early stages of fetal development.

It’s like I have… an onboard AI. It uses cellular structures for storage, wireless technology. All nano stuff.” She shrugged. “Some of the more useful nanoware to come out of all the hype. So Koi and his family–just evolved? Is that what you’r saying?”

“I can’t find a better explanation.” Dane shrugged. “We still don’t completely understand what triggers some DNA to express while other segments seem to have no function. That’s why so many clone attempts fail. Look back in history to the Cambrian explosion.” He looked after the vanished Koi. “I think we’re seeing what happens when those unexpressed alleles express. Don’t forget we’re starting our second generation of kids born without any planetary influences–tidal forces, Earthnormal gravity, the planetar electromagnetic field, and probably factors we don’t even realize are important.”

“Non Darwinian evolution?” Ahni shook her head.

“Come up with a better theory. This is the best I can do.”

“But if it’s the environment–why aren’t kids like this showing up in the rest of the population?” Her eyes widened at his silence “They are,” she said softly. “I think I saw a couple.”

“They’re not as extreme as Koi’s family, for the most part. But by Darwinian standards… this generation shouldn’t be showing the skeletal, neuromuscular, and biochemical changes that they are.

Natural selection is a long slow process.”

“Let me guess,” she said softly. “The big push for secession’ mostly from the… native born?”

“Bingo.” Dane nudged himself away from the control panel with one toe, drifted slowly across the space.

“I’m not even sure that the majority are aware that they are different. They just know that you smell wrong, move wrong… don’t seem like them. Body language, facial expressions, body odor… you’re different. Not tribe. It’s tenuous in Noah’s generation of native born, seems to be stronger in their kids.

But they’re young, yet. I don’t think we’ve lost the tribe/not tribe hard wiring,” he said thoughtfully. “That will… cause problems. We’re going to turn into aliens.”

Aliens in our sky. She shivered.

“You get it.” Dane nodded. “That’s why we need to be sepaarate… and soon… but peacefully separate. Cooperative. Linked in some way that is greater than our ‘mutual humanity’. Friends and trading partners. Or we’re going to be at war.”

“Race…” She had started to say that race was no longer an issue to humanity, stopped herself. It didn’t cause bloodshed in big wars, like it had once. But it was still an issue. In a global economy, with access to business partners on every continent, her father mostly did business with… Chinese.

Sometimes Koreans or Cambodians. Rarely Europeans or Latinos. And he was not the exception. If anything, the vanishing barriers of distance and physical isolation had increased the racial divides rather than healing them.

You didn’t have to do business with your physical neighbor. You could do business with someone like you, a continent away. Her family mostly did business with other Asians. Casually, race no longer mattered. Deep down, it did.

“That’s where the anger is coming from.” She reached for a delicate white blossom, snapping its fleshy stem. “Natives are seeing the tourists as the ‘aliens’.”

“That’s only part of it.” Dane’s tone reflected his suddenly grim mood. “We need to shut those ghosts down.”

“I thought my brother might contact me.” She studied the flower, noting the tiny veins in each perfect petal, delicate, pale green, a symmetrical lacework that made the most expensive jewelry look coarse. “I don’t think he’s going to. I think Li Zhen needs to talk to you as soon as possible.” Although Dane had no lever to move him. He would be a supplicant, and she doubted Li Zhen would respect a supplicant. She looked at Dane. “If CSF troops come up here… they’ll find Koi.”

He was silent for nearly a full minute and the rippling palette of his emotion shifted and changed too rapidly for her to follow it. “I think Koi and his family are the blueprint for where humanity will go. I’d like to see them live rather than die. Koi’s mother was… killed by a hunter.” A hard darkness charged the air between them again. “The man here before me sold hunting rights. For the ‘rats’. It was a… private club. It’s pretty easy to dispose of a body down here.”

Ahni closed her eyes against the images that kept forming in her head, thought of the girl with the milky eyes and her wordles greeting.

“He was a newborn. The… hunter was going to dispose of him along with his mother’s body. I guess he thought nothing had changed when I took over. He found out.”

His tone sent a shiver of ice down Ahni’s spine. Dane didn’t run things through favors only, she thought.

“That was the last hunt.” Dane’s shrug sent him drifting this time. “I did some work on Security to make sure. But the others wouldn’t show themselves, and I didn’t know how many there were, or if any of them could nurse Koi. So I… kept him.” Dane expression didn’t change but a remembering smile warmed him.”We did okay… much to my amazement.” That warmth faded as he met her gaze. “They will be the casualties if we take Earth headon. It won’t stop what’s happening… but Koi and his family will be dead or in a lab the minute the downside media discovers them.”

And you will be dead, too, she thought. “You’re a zealot.”

“I am.” He met her eyes, smiled. “You sure you don’t want to take the next climber down?”

“No,” she said softly. “Sometimes… the universe needs zealots.”

He drifted closer, touched her arm, sending shivers through her. They hung motionless in the bower, face to face, a handspan apart. Ahni focused on the heat of his palm and fingers as his hand closed around her wrist. She closed her eyes and drew a breath that shuddered into her lungs as he pulled her gently toward him. Felt the pulse leaping in her throat.

His lips touched hers and he pulled her against him suddenly, fiercely, his arms around her, his mouth on hers, all sense of flesh boundaries, of you and me dissolving, vanishing. She ran her hands down the lean muscles of his back, over the flat curve of his flanks. He touched her face, fingertips tracing her cheekbones, sliding featherlight along her throat, burning hot and tingling like ice. His excitement matched her own and Ahni laughed deep in her throat, sucked in her breath as his lips moved down the groove of her neck. She shrugged her singlesuit over her shoulder, shivered as his lips followed the spare swell of her breast, her hands on his hips, now, reaching for him. “How do you do this?” she asked, her voice hoarse. Laughed. “This is what the tourists come up here for, right?”

“If you want to get pregnant you use straps. Elastic.” Dane touched one of her nipples with the tip of his tongue. “If you don’t want to get pregnant there are… other things that work better here.”

She didn’t need to ask for details as he left a burning trail of kisses down her flat belly, groaned as he slid his fingers inside her. She was content to follow the dance. She knew what she wanted and wanted to do, and it worked, she found, quite well in microG. There came an exquisite moment when sweetly scented blossoms brushed her face and shoulders as she cried aloud in pleasure. He groaned when he came, gasping out her name.

Mter, they drifted, arms and legs entwined, wrapped in a sweet lethargy. Absently, Ahni noticed the tiny frog things zipping out from the shelter of the leaf wall, snatching up the droplets that drifted like miniscule pearls in the air around them, before they vanished once more into the leaves. Dane’s body comforted her, warm against her naked flesh, rich with a sense of shelter that went beyond the physical. “What was it like?” she asked drowsily. “When you came here? Koi says you did all this.”

He was thoughtful for a moment. “The infrastructure was the same. Except for this.” A smile suffused his tone as he reached languidly to brush his fingertips across the wall of leaves and blossoms that surrounded them. “I needed a place to live and I was tired of small artificial spaces.”

“When did you come up here?” she asked, her head against his shoulder, watching the gray of his eyes change like a cloudy spring sky. “Where did you grow up?”

“I was born on Earth. I came up to the asteroid belt with my brother. I was about ten. I mined for awhile. Got tired of it after my brother died in an accident. Did some online education and applied for this job. You have to live here and not many like microG full time.” His shoulder, the one against her cheek, moved in a shrug. “I just stayed.”

He was silent for a moment. “We were born in the refugee camps left over from the Terror Wars. My brother was a lot older than me. He traded a lot to get up here to Darkside. I never saw much of a future for Earth. Just more of the same. Up here…” He touched her cheek lightly, tracing the curve of her jaw.

”Up here, we can leave the past behind. I think we need to do that.”

“Koi,” she said.

“They aren’t us. Maybe they won’t have to make the same mistakes.”

Ahni pulled him close, savoring the feel of him. The permanent camps still existed, housing the survivors of the wasteland that had been the Middle East, and their descendents. They have been forgotten, she thought. The camps were not kind places. She bit him lightly on the neck, then harder, felt his darkness fade, warming into passion. For awhile, they were too busy to talk about anything.

“HEY, YOU GUYS,” Koi’s bright energy intruded as they drowsed among the leaves and blossoms.

“You done yet?”

Ahni jerked awake.

“I guess we are now.” Dane was laughing in spite of his mocksevere tone.

“So are you going to visit Li Zhen?” Koi eyed them with the head tilted curiosity of a dog watching primate antics. “Righ now?”

“I have to get him to invite Dane, Koi,” Ahni looked around for her singlesuit, discovered it snagged among leaves a couple of meters away. She pushed off from Dane, collected it, and pulled it on with all the casual dignity she could muster. Her nakedness didn’t seem to attract any particular focus from Koi, never mind that he certainly did seem to have a crush on her. She thought of what Dane had said about the second generation upsiders. Smell and taste were a big part of sexuality. Maybe Koi’s ‘crush’ was something that had little to do with sex, unlike the Earthly version. Certainly he wasn’t reacting much to the obvious evidence of recent sex, she thought. Well, he was, but more the way he might react to a new game that hadn’t included him.

Interesting.

And a bit chilling, too.

“Are you really sure Li Zhen has your brother on a leash?” Dane — still naked — nudged himself over to drift beside her. “Would you like to stay here?” His pewter gaze held hers. “I’d be… happier. Security up here, I’m sure of.”

She wanted to. A lot. She shook her head, mildly annoyed when the gesture sent her drifting, clutched at Dane’s hand to still her drift. “I can’t. I need to contact Li Zhen through formal channels. And… I’m your only link to my brother,” Ahni said slowly. “He may still contact me.” Or try to kill her if she was wrong.

“Bait.” Dane twined his fingers through hers. Not happy.

“Yep.” She kissed him lightly, lingeringly. “Very wary bait.”

“She’ll be careful.” Koi somersaulted impatiently. “She’s not stupid, Dane.”

“Thank you for reminding me, Koi, I had forgotten,” Dane said dryly.

“I’ll go back to tl1e hotel.” She suppressed regret. “I’ll ask Li Zhen to see me, and I’ll try to arrange a meeting between you.”

“I can’t see a better alternative.” Dane sighed, still unhappy. He accompanied her as she left the bower.

“I’ll be okay,” she said as they reached the elevator. “You don’t need to do guard duty.” He merely shook his head, and to be honest, she was glad. The seething, suppressed anger of this place was really getting to her.

“I’ll set a shadow to watch you,” he told her as they rode down to the open levels. “You won’t see them, but they’ll be there.” Locals got on and got off. Some of them looked at her with anger or curiosity Some of them noticed Dane. Their eyes connected Ahni to Dane and they made a note of it. Interesting that only a few of them actually greeted him. The others pretended they didn’t know him. But they did. She could tell Li Zhen with truth that Dane ran this platform, not the NAA. Li Zhen would respect power, especially when it was self -created.

Nobody said a negative word to her. When they reached the skinside level, Dane exited with her, and walked beside her, his posture casual, although he was on the alert.

Her doorman was on duty. He knew Dane, too. Ahni caught his brief sharp sizzle of attention before his face went bland and bored, and he bowed them past with the unseeing smile of the welltrained servant.

”Your status shows,” she murmured as they crossed the inner courtyard together.

“Hush.” His lips barely moved. “They record all guests here. Focused mike.”

“That’s okay.” She twined her fingers through his. “Some of my embedded hardware takes care of that.

They will get visuals.” She gave him a sideways look. “Do you mind?”

“We should make it worth someone’s time.” He halted, arm sliding around her waist, swinging her around to face him. “Keep them awake.”

Their mouths met and she caught her breath, the oxygen insuffficient here suddenly. She twisted away from him, his arm still around her, led him to her door, which opened for them. “My world,” she said as they crossed the threshold. “Gravity.”

“My world once, too.” He smiled. “I don’t miss it.”

The door whispered closed behind her and automatically she scanned her small telltales to see if anyone had been in the room.

No one.

Good. She put serious thought aside and attended to what mattered here and now.