Horizons

TWO

AHNI CURBED HER URGE TO SPRINT. THEY COULD CATCH her in a second. She pushed off from the planted columns gently, figuring out how to twist her body and change her trajectory. She wasn’t sure why she still lived and had no idea where the nearest elevator down to the Level One might be. The kid-thing, Koi, was following her, of course. His bright, puppy-enthusiasm burned like an old fashioned incandescent bulb in her wake. The man wouldn’t be far behind.

Moving randomly through the tubes, one eye on the trailing Koi, she searched for an elevator. Slowly, she became aware of the small hum of lives around her. It reminded her of a summer forest’s life-song.

That sense of… a living ecosystem… surprised her. The orbital seemed so artificial.

Ahead, she saw things moving, many things. Wary, she caught a tube coated with spirals of small green ovate leaves, holding herself still, to watch. It was too bright to see clearly, and she squinted.

Many-legged robots like gray plastic spiders minced along the tubes, a slowly expanding bladder trailing behind each one. She caught a glimpse of red and shaded her eyes. More beets, she decided at last. The robots were plucking the huge round balls from the surface of the tubes. Only a single tail of root penetrated the polymer and the harvester-spiders plucked them with apparent ease. The tube healed instantly. They didn’t take all, but apparently picked and chose, col-ecting just the right ones. Behind them, smaller robot spiders crept in the harvest-spiders’ wake, four jointed front legs busy, dancing up and down as they moved slowly forward. Curious in spite of her need for hurry, she drifted nearer, because they were only robots. Planting, she realized. Each small spider left a tiny tuft of green in place where the beet had been harvested. Ahni nudged herself gantly forward, drifted over to the newly planted tube. The beet seedling sat in the center of the space vacated by the harvested beet, a tiny thread of root embedded in the translucent tube. She touched the tube, found it resilient with a sluggish give that made her think of a gel. She poked it with her fingernail and her finger penetrated it easily. Cool. Wet. She pulled her finger out and the surface healed behind her, but not before a silvery drop of water escaped.

Something small and green zipped out from the leaves, scooped up the water in trailing legs and vanished into the shadows.

The intricacy of this place stunned her. Programs would do most of it, she thought. Balance harvest with planting, start adequate seeds in culture somewhere here, so that the planting-spiders could follow the harvesters. You could chart the eating habits of a million or so people, predict the trends, supply the restaurants and food shops, and clean the water while you were at it. Energy flooded in from the sun, free, ready to be turned into sugar, carbo-hydrates, and proteins.

This was not a hydroponics farm. This was a… garden. Ahni shook her head, which sent her drifting up against a tube planted with small leafy plants studded with green, unripe mangos like the one she had eaten.

“Don’t get in their way. There’s not supposed to be anyone down here but Dane.”

She turned at the sound of Koi’s voice.”You mean the spiders?” she asked.

He looked blank, but nodded when she gestured toward the slow steady scuttle of the robots. “Them,”

he agreed. “They’ve got a video link and nobody probably ever looks at it, but somebody might.” He shrugged. “It’s a Security link, so Dane can’t fix it. Here.” Koi thrust something at her. “Dane told me to give you this. He said to use them.”

Goggles. The small, thick lenses were what Dane had worn out here in the perpetual flood of photons.

She slipped them on, her squint relaxing as the glare dimmed, leaving headache in its wake.

Koi drifted gently closer, his curiosity pricking at her. He had pupils after all, she realized. The cloudy lenses of his eyes obscured them. “You don’t need goggles?” she asked him.

“No.” He blinked at her. “Dane says my eyes filter the light so that it won’t damage the inside, you know? He says we’re changing to fit up here. Like he does with the plants and things, only it just happens on its own in us and really fast. He called it a genetic shift, and he said that’s why so many babies die–our genes keep trying new stuff and it doesn’t always work.” He looked away from her, gently grieving. “Like my baby sister. Why did that man kill your half-twin?” He twisted idly, upside down to her now, his long toes wrapped around one of the little mango shrubs. “And what is a half-twin? I don’t understand.”

Genetic shift? Ahni eyed his long limbs realizing that she hadn’t been dreaming, that there was a hint of flexibility in his long bones. A pretty extreme genetic shift, even accounting for radiation-induced mutation up here. She still didn’t believe it. “It’s a long story,” she said. Family politics didn’t make for a five-minute summary. “I don’t really know why Krator Family killed Xai.” Already, economic levers were being applied, nudging small pebbles that would in turn dislodge stones, that would in turn, send economic boulders crashhing down on Krator business interests. Individuals would suffer in this silent war as a vegetable business lost its loan here, a metals immporter had her downporting license revoked there, an info-service lost its creative talent. Why? She shook her head, thinking that Xai could have told her. He thrived on the three dimensional chess game of power. “He’s my half-twin,” she said slowly, “because we have the same father and were born together. Are there a lot of you?”

“There’s my fanllly.” Koi’s shiver of worry sent him drifting. “Dane’s really worried. I was really bad.”

“I’m not going to tell anyone, Koi,” Ahni said softly. “I don’t care how you came to be.” She smiled at him. “This is a… beautiful world. And you fit it.”

Suddenly, Koi’s ‘family’ appeared all around her, as if he had called them. They darted like dragonflies and looked as fragile as dragonflies, too. She caught flashing glimpses of slender limbs, those strange, milkey, blind-looking eyes. Their curiosity tidded her. One tiny female hovered in front of Ahni. She held out a hand and cool, slender fingertips brushed hers. Then the girl darted away and they all vanished.

Ahni drew a slow breath. “Can you show me a way out, Koi?”

“It’s nice up here,” he said wistfully. “You can stay.”

He had a crush on her. She smiled and he smiled back, hopefully. “I have to go home,” Ahni said. “If you show me the elevator, I’ll come back one day, okay?”

“I’ll have to ask Dane.” Koi pushed himself gently off with his toe.

“He’s afraid I’ll tell people about you. But I won’t.” She stretched, took Koi’s hand. “I promise. It’s okay to let me leave. In fact… it’s dangerous for me to stay here. The people who want to hurt me will come back and they may find out about you.”

“Dane’ll be mad.” Koi sighed, gave her one more yearning-puppy look, then pushed off with his long toes, gliding forward in a perfect trajectory between the thickly planted tubes. She followed, clumsy, but managing to keep up with him, although she left drifting leaves and bruised fruit and vegetables in her wake. “What do you know about the world outside of here?” she asked as he paused, pretending to consider the route. Waiting for her to catch up. “Do you have any… stories about where you came from?”

“Dane said we came up from down below. Where you come from. We can’t ever go back. Dane says we’d die.”

“Aren’t you curious?”

“About what?” His surprise was genuine.

Ahni shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “How much farther is the elevator?”

“Not far.” He grinned. “Real close now.”

And she felt them. Coming fast. She didn’t know what they had, some kind of scanner, but they knew she was there. One was the man who had darted her before. She recognized his bright hunter’s certainty.

The other’s icy determination made her guess he was the man who had been waiting for her at the elevator. That determination tasted coppery with vengeance.

“Run,” she snapped at Koi, pointing away from their pursuers. “They’ve spotted us.” She grabbed a tube thick with ripening strawberries, spun herself around and pushed off with her foot, heedless of the crushed berries and shredded leaves. She shot forward, at the edge of control, guiding herself crudely with her hands, ricocheting off tube after tube, leaving a visible trail of damage behind her. They wouldn’t need anything technical to track her. A tube thick with something round and green like guavas appeared in front of her. She pushed off with one hand, spiraled off at a tangent, utterly out of control now. Felt twin cold novas of triumph behind her, managed to grab a tube, plant her feet, and shoot away from that ‘gotcha’ gloating behind her. Intent on the narrow spaces between the leaves, she lucked out, arrowing between thickly leafed tubes into relatively clear space where the tiny plantlets must have been newly inserted. She soared through the narrow clearing and into the leaves on the other side, leaving no trace of her passage. Let herself slow. “Koi?” She twisted cautiously, expecting to find him on her heels. “I need another way down.”

He wasn’t there, and then she felt him. His terror and pain, flared like lightning in the quiet of the axle garden, with that ‘gotcha’ triumph.

They had been after Koi, not her.

Best choice; find the nearest alternative elevator and get out.

Not her problem.

Ahni pushed off, caught a tube planted to tomatoes, kicked gently off, and headed back along her trail of damage, trying to move cautiously.

She fixed on the silver knife blade of Koi’s terror. Over there. It was faint, getting fainter.

Way too fast.

She kicked off of a tube and launched herself recklessly, but it was too late. She burst from the leafy shadows of the tubes and into him into wash of light that made her squint in spite of her goggles. An elevator. The wide, matte gray portal looked odd and out of place in the lush greenery. She hurtled into the wall of the enormous tube, tucking head and shoulder, rolling, and killing her momentum with her feet and knees, bruising herself but maintaining control.

They had taken Koi down with them.

As she clung to the alloy frame around the portal, something metalic and blue caught her eye. It hung in the air in the clear space around the elevator portal, turning slowly in the harsh light. Gently, Ahni pushed off and drifted closer. A bracelet. A hotel key, she realzed. The new fad. A pretty bracelet to match your business singlet, but inside, the chip to open your door, turn on the lights and the enviro controls…

They had left the key behind.

For her.

It tumbled very slowly end over end, moving in a slow steady trajectory toward the first of the leaf-covered tubes. Ahni stretched out a hand for the bracelet as she crossed its trajectory, hesitated, thinking of all the things that could be hidden in that twisted circlet cheap plastic. Touched it.

Nothing happened.

She pluckedit lightly from the air, as ifit was a poisoned fruit. An invitation? An offer? A bright puzzle-piece to toss with all the other tiny pieces that had showered around her since that hours ago trip through the Arrival Hall, like how had Krator had known her moves seemingly as soon as she did? And how had her pursuers folwed her so unerringly? Why had they taken Koi?

Like bright fragments of glass, they tumbled, razor-edged in her mind, swirling microG slowly… to form an impossible pattern.

She knew who must have left this key.

Gently, Ahni’s fingers closed over it. She slippedit into a pocket in her singlesuit, sealedit carefully closed.

Dane erupted from the leaves a moment later, halted effortlessly in front of her, didn’t touch her. “Koi?”

She met his pewter eyes. “They took him.”

“You and your damned war,” Dane growled.

“Who’s at fault here?” Rage seized her. “You created him. You made him into something that they’ll treat like an animal. Don’t blame me for this. This is your doing!”

He stretched out a hand, damped his drift to utter stillness, face shadowed by leaves. “I thought you were getting it,” he said in a soft, flat tone. “When you saw his family. I thought maybe, one downsider could figure it out. That this is not Earth. Your rules don’t work up here, don’t you get it? We keep track of everybody now, but there have been some rough periods since the first space station got bolted together up here. Some people must have… slipped through the cracks as the orbital platforms grew.

That’s what I guess anyway. And they started living up here, maybe in storage space at first, stealing food from the primitive hydroponics we had up here back then. Must have been pretty grim.” His pewter eyes bored into hers. “You got to wonder what it was they were hiding from, down below. But that’s all I can figure out. Oh, I thought someone made them, too. Then I did a gene-scan. They’re as Homo sapience as you and I are. Your brothers and sisters, downsider. I don’t know what’s driving the changes and oh yes, they’re still changing.” His eyes gleamed. “Our siblings, downsider? Or maybe… our successors?”

Successors. A chill walked Ahni’s spine. Because he believed it. “So then you’re safe,” she said softly.

“Why hide them?”

“You threw history at me a little while ago.” Anger flashed in his eyes. “We have a history of hating anyone with a different face or hair. How many millions have we killed for the crime of being different?

What about someone like Koi? He doesn’t look different, he is different.”

“That’s in the past,” Ahni snapped.

“Is it?” Dane said softly. “Rats.”

She blinked at him, uncomprehending.

“That’s how the last supervisor listed them in the database.”

Dane drifted close, so close that she could feel his breath on her face. “Temperature, humidity, crop mass, ripeness percentages, rats exterminated. It took me awhile to figure out what he meant, when I took over.”

He had to be lying.

“He was probably afraid somebody would think he’d created them.” Dane’s tone was coldly reflective.

“Or maybe they just scared him. Because they were… different. He killed quite a few. I found a young boy in one of his traps, my first day here. Neurotoxins on a pretty toy. Very creative. There weren’t many left. They don’t reproduduce well. I think a lot of pregnancies get reabsorbed, and some infants-like Koi’s sister-simply die. It wouldn’t take much to eliminate them all. Why do they exist?” His voice dropped to a whisper.”What are they? What do they mean, downsider? That’s our question to answer, not yours. This isn’t your world. I thought you understood, so I let him take you to the elevator.”

Ahni took a breath of the heavy air. It smelled… wrong. Not like the Amazon, not like the lush tropical greenery of New Taipei. Not like Earth. “I can get him back,” she said, her words leaden. You must have a gene sequencer… an official model? With a time/date labeler? Uncompromisable?” No one was allowed to play with genes, unrecorded.

He was nodding. “Standard agribusiness model,” he said, his eyes on her face. “Licensed and tamper proof.”

She unsealed her pocket and took out the blue bracelet key. “I don’t know how many traces are on this.

Use my DNA as reference. I need the original hard copy. Signed, sealed, and presentable to the World Council if need be.” She held it out.

He took it, closed up and unreadable again. Looked from it to her “Do you want to give me a clue whose DNA you’re looking for?”

”The DNA that isn’t mine.”

“I’ll need a sample from you.”

She held out an arm and he pulled a sampler capsule from a pocket of his singlesuit, popped it open and scraped the inside of her forearm lightly. Pocketing it, he turned, gently prodding his body around with one bare foot. “Signed, sealed, and delivered, comming up.” And he arrowed away.

She followed, barely keeping him in sight. He wasn’t really trying to lose her, wasn’t trying not to lose her, either. She thought about Koi’s delicate bones and organs that had never known even moon’s gentle gravity, much less the 0.8 Earthnormal at the Level One. Tried to ignore her estimates on his survival.

When Dane vanished into an alloy-gray cluster of cylindrical pods nested among tubes and leaves?it would be the gene lab and probably the control center of the garden?she waited outside, drifting in the fierce flood of energy from Sol, nearly able to hear the growth of the thick, oversized spinach leaves that brushed her arms and legs lightly. Tiny lives hunted and feared and satisfied hunger all around her.

Xai waited for her on the other side of that hotel door. That’s how they had known her every move?she and Xai knew each other that well. I cried for you. I meant to kill for you.

Why, Little Brother? Ahni watched a crystal bead of salt water drift from her face. A tiny creature like a dragonfly soared from the leaf shadows to snag the droplet in trailing legs, then vanished.

IT DIDN’T TAKE him long to sequence the sample.

“I found one major trace and a lot of contamination. Whose is it?” He tilted his head.

She was surprised he hadn’t guessed. “Our father’s clone.”

When you didn’t wear a chip, you could do a lot. Cloning a child wasn’t exactly legal, but… it happened. “I was an accident.” She shrugged. “My mother was pregnant when he was implanted.”

“But?” He broke off. Shrugged. “I sent a copy to your email,” he said.”You should check it. This is the half-twin you said was dead?”

“Yes.” She bit off the word. “His… body was destroyed in an accident. We identified him by… DNA traces at the scene.” Blood. His blood. “You have the documentation?”

“The original, legally encrypted and sealed file. Suitable as evidence in front of the World Council.” He held out a small data sphere and the hotel key.

She slipped the sphere into a secure pocket in her singlesuit, slipped the bracelet over her wrist. “Thank you,” she said formally. “I will go get Koi now.”

“I’m coming with you.”

She shook her head. “The trained dogs who took Koi will let me by,” she said. “Not you.”

“Downsider, this is my world,” he said quietly. “You need me.” She didn’t have time to argue, simply hoped he didn’t get hurt as he followed her to the elevator. It read the bracelet and stopped at Two. The doors whispered open and a purple arrow glowed to life in the matte blue carpet of the elevator lobby, fine as a brushstroke. She followed the arrow and as she stepped across it, another one lighted a few meters ahead. The corridor was busy but not crowded. The murmur of emotions filled the air like whispering as Ahni followed the beckoning arrows. A vendor in a wide stretch of hallway lined with shops sold skewers of baby vegetables from a cart. She caught the scent of curry as she strode past.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Dane pause to buy one, obviously not interested in her or her path.

He did it well. She felt a small relief, because the dogs would be ruthless.

A North American-style coffee shop bustled, the patrons here mostly business travelers. A pair of young Asian men in cheap business singlesuits played virtual mahjong above a tiny game projector, their faces identically intent. But the smaller one with the Guangzhou face couldn’t mask his reaction as she passed.

Dragon Home dogs? That surprised her. Wheels within wheels here.

Beneath her feet, the arrows beckoned her left, down a side corridor lined with mid-range hotel rooms.

An elegant pot of ferns decorated one entry. The purple arrow winked out as she stopped in front of it.

She sensed the Mahjong players behind her in the hallway, not attacking, just watchful. No sign of Dane.

Good. This was not a game for amateurs.

She didn’t bother to touch the door pad. The Dragon Home dogs would have let him know.

She could feel him on the other side of the door.

It slid open and the physical reality of his round tawny face with pure Taiwanese features?unlike her own face shaped by her mother’s mixed geneset?shocked her. His hair was slightly mussed, as if she had interrupted him in a moment of relaxation. She met his eyes, closing up her emotions, her control so tight that it was nearly Pause. “You look very healthy.” She said it in Taiwanese, made it an insult with her tone, watched the skin tighten over his broad cheekbones. He said nothing, simply stood aside, ushering her into the hotel room.

Banishing a twinge of unreality, she noted the basic no-frills carpeting and furnishings. Roughing it. She swallowed a sudden desire to laugh, felt the flicker of her half-twin’s anger.

“I did not expect you.” He turned aside to a basic kitchen wall.

“Tea?”

She nodded, so polite. He should have come. Their father. It was his duty to restore the balance, to personally exact the vengeance for his more-than-son’s death. Xai spooned tea into a small clay colored pot, touched a wall-set spigot to fill it with steaming water. From the garden, filtered by mangos, mei qing choi, and spinach? She accepted a steaming cup and it came to her suddenly — why the man in the elevator lobby had fumbled his attack. He had expected The Huang.

“You would have killed our father?”

He concentrated on his tea, lips tight, but he could never hide from her. Ahni set her tea down, untasted.

“There was no other way!” Xai spun away from her, flung his cup at the wall. It didn’t shatter, bounced off. “He’s never going to let me do anything. He just sees me as a younger, more energetic body that can run around doing what he orders it to do. I’ll never be anything but a vehicle, a body he can use. I’m not even human to him. At least you get to be a person, my mongrel little sister.”

His words stung like a slap. “You’re wrong,” Ahni said.

“Don’t give me that empath stuff. You don’t know.” He turned away from her. “What am I, little sister? A spare part.”

“Xai.” She stared at him. “What are you saying? Our family is grieving.”

“Join me.” He faced her. “We can take it all away from him. We can be bigger than he will ever be.”

“What about Krator Family? What about the small people who get hurt because our father thinks Krator Family killed you? You have gone to war with our father.”

Xai shrugged. “Make up your mind, little sister.”

The interview was at an end. Ahni could feel the Dragon Home dogs beyond the door. Once we played together, she thought. “I came to offer you a trade, elder brother.” Her voice seemed a stranger’s. “You give me the deformed child you took from the axle and I’ll cancel the automatic send to our parents of the sealed, time-dated, and legal-encrypted DNA analysis from that hotel key. Surely you realized that a NYUp employee who was manipulating plant genes would have licensed equipment for genetic documentation in place? You touched the key, little brother.”

He hadn’t thought of this scenario. Perhaps he had been too sure of her answer to his invitation. His surprise that she would be that clever was revelatory and humiliating in the same instant. “It won’t change anything if you send it,” he said finally.

“Don’t underestimate our father.” She smiled, without mirth. “He is you, remember?”

Xai was thinking hard behind a slight sneer. There was no way out. She’d worked out all possible actions. Even if he killed her the file would go to their father.

“You can have the cripple.” Her half-twin shrugged. “I take it that this is your ‘no’ to my offer?” He tried to mask his icy rage with a smile. “You are a fool. I don’t need you.”

“Perhaps.” She met his stare, closed off, letting his anger beat against her.

“Ugly, that cripple.” He shivered with distaste. “I won’t even ask how you came to assume that debt, little sister, but it’s an expensive one.” He smiled, sure that he had won now, gestured with his chin.

“Your creature is in there.”

The suite had a second bedroom. Inside, Koi lay on the smart-foam mattress, his eyes glassy, wrists and ankles bound with wide plastic strips. His ribs jutted against his skin with each labored breath and his skin was too cool, clammy to the touch. Shock?

“What happened to him, anyway?” Her brother looked over her shoulder, his distaste dank in the room.

“Radiation? Disease?” ‘

“Yes.” Ahni bent over Koi, touching his face, wondering about brain damage, spontaneous hemorrhage.

She released the restraints, wrapped the light thermal sheet around him and scooped him into arms. He weighed little, like an infant, as if his long bones were hollow, filled with air.

“Li Zhen will not be happy with me. I think he wants it for a pet.”

She shrugged and started for the door.

“The file?”

She reached into her pocket, handed him the data sphere.

”You are a fool.” Xai pocketed it.

The door slid open and she walked out into the corridor. The dogs were back at the mahjong board.

They looked up as she walked by, stood and paid their bill.

Dane fell in beside her. “Take him.” She thrust Koi’s body at him. “They’re after me, not you.” They’d try a dart or a needle.

“Stay close to me.” Dane took Koi’s fragile body from her. “Don’t try to run.” People passed them: service staff, mostly local residents judging by their slender musculature. A small group of natives burst from a doorway, laughing and talking. Someone shouted angrily. A voice rose. Ahni glanced over her shoulder to find the group faced off with the Dragon Home dogs, voices raised accusingly.

“This way,” Dane snapped, and she followed him into a side corridor. He slapped a lock plate awkwardly, and the door to a small, private elevator opened.

“How did you do that?” Ahni gasped as the elevator shot upward.

“I do favors for people,” Dane said absently, his fingers probing Koi’s unconscious form gently. “They do me favors in return.” As they reached the bright, stunning heart of the orbital, Koi stirred and whimpered.

“I couldn’t breathe,” he panted. “They hurt me.” A trace of blood gleamed at the corner of his mouth, and Dane rocketed away with him. Ahni followed, barely able to keep up. Koi’s family flanked them on all sides, darting shadows among the greenery. She counted fifteen, maybe sixteen, sensed curiosity. No worry, no fear, just… curiosity. A breeding population, enough, but not too many. Changing. Shifting into… what?

Dane took Koi into the control center. She followed, found a bright visitor access with padded chairs with microG straps, gleaming surfaces, machines, screens, data storage tanks. A small med-center took up one end of the space. Koi whimpered as Dane closed the unit around him, and Dane hovered over him, murmuring soothingly. She kept well back, watching him as he touched control screens, frowned, touched others. Koi whimpered again, and Dane drifted above him, his hands on the boy’s face until he finally quieted.

At last Dane pushed himself away from the matte gray, coffin shape of the med unit. Koi’s eyes were slitted, glassy with drugs.

“Is he going to be okay?” Ahni prodded herself closer.

“Some broken bones, minor internal damage. They weren’t gentle.” He touched Koi’s cheek lightly.

“He’s in enhanced healing now. He should recover.” Relief gleamed quicksilver behind his reserve. “You gave him that data sphere?”

“Yes.”

“That was your ticket downside.”

Ahni met his eyes, hesitated, not sure she could put it into words. “I… brought our war up here,” she said at last. “Thinking this was just another high rise. But you’re right. This is not Earth. Our war does not belong here. And I… believe you about Koi and his family.” She bowed her head fractionally. “Li Zhen, Chairman of Dragon Home saw Koi and wanted him. My brother only saw a crippled child.”

“Li Zhen?” Dane said slowly. “What was he doing here?”

“I don’t know.” She looked away. “I need to go back to Earth.”

“I can give you a ride to one of the Elevators — a backdoor ride that your brother can’t track.”

Which just might get her downside in one piece. “Thank you,” she said.

-“If you ever need a place to go, this place is… more protected than it seems.” He smiled.”You’re welcome to come back.”

It had the feel of a royal invitation and she thought of the crowd that had so neatly intercepted the Dragon Home dogs. “I would like to return,” she said. “I would like to visit Koi again.” And you, she thought. I would like to know who you really are.

For a moment, he merely looked at her, then his eyes lightened slightly, and Ahni realized that she was feeling his smile. “Any time,” he said. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here in one piece, before I have to deal with your brother.”

Ahni followed him from the control center. This man was no low-level gene splicer. Realized he was offering her his hand. Took it. He didn’t quite tow her, but his unerring trajectories made it a whole lot easier to get around without leaving a trail of destruction in her wake. They traveled for nearly a half hour and the physical immensity of the axle began to oppress her. But it fed a small world.

“There’s a microG park at this end,” Dane said. “We’re almost there.”

“There” turned out to be a small lock, heavy and functional looking. Dane’s palm and retinal scan got them into a cramped cubicle with several flaccid suits like the shed skins of caterpillars hanging on the smooth walls. Air lock? She didn’t see any exit port. He touched a small flat-panel screen and a few moments later, she sucked in her breath as the wall shimmered and… melted.

“Smart alloy.” He glanced at her, a hint of a smile in his manner.

“I know.” She shook her head. “I’ve never seen it, that’s all.”

Molecules that migrated around made her nervous and she nudged herself gingerly through the opening after him, one eye on the silvery rim of the oval gap. Found herself in a small ship.

About time we took a run, a female voice said. The ship?

“Meet Miriam, my ship-core,” Dane said. “Miriam, be polite.”

He propelled Ahni gently into a maze of webbing that turned rather surprisingly from tangle into a hammock. Slid into a second hammock. “Head for the Pan-Malay backdoor, Miriam.”

Sneaky or open?

“Sneaky.”

The curved eggshell of the ship’s hull… melted… closed and a fine hum seeped through the webbing into her bones. Suddenly she had… weight. Up and down struggled briefly, but there were no right angles, no straight lines to help her out.

Dane’s hands moving among a three dimensional shimmer of holographic control icons. “We’re heading over to the Pan Malay Elevator. New Singapore is feuding with Dragon Home over a smuggling matter, so that may slow down Li Zhen’s dogs. And I’m licensed to use one of the private docks.”

Ahni clung to her stomach, retreating into Pause to damp down the biochemical upheaval in her bloodstream.

Your passenger is about to urp, Dane. You clean it up.

“Enough, Miriam.” Dane gave Ahni a sympathetic glance. “We’re almost there. Hang on.”

Like to see you get off the Elevator at sea level and walk, Ahni thought, as they finally docked. She swallowed sourness and released herself clumsily from the hammock as the wall melted open… in different place this time… to reveal another lock much like the one she had just left.

“I’m assuming you can handle whatever security you run into?” Dane clung to the webbing, looking down into her face. “You can get down okay?”

“Yes.” She drew a breath, suddenly reluctant to propel herself into that lock. “I… Taiwan Families have no quarrel with the Pan Malaysia Compact. I’ll be fine. I… Thanks,” she said. “For showing me your world.”

“Thank you for Koi.” He touched her cheek lightly, his eyes dark as a cloudy sky on Earth. “One day… I hope you come back up. I think you’d fit.”

“I’ll try.” And she meant it. She pushed off, suddenly reluctant to leave, sailed through the oval emptiness that had been a wall, too fast, hit the far wall of another cramped lock with the same caterpillar skins of suits hanging on the wall. Grabbed one as she rebounded. “Goodbye,” she said, but the wall had already gone solid. A tiny chlange in pressure told her that the lock had sealed and a green light filled the chamber.

Good to go. She blinked briefly into Pause, summoned the specs for this Elevator, found a route from the service corridor beyond the lock door to the main tourist plaza. Laid her palm against the plate in the lock.

She stifled a sudden pang of regret as the door opened. Straightened her singlesuit. Time to go home and face their father with Xai’s betrayal. Grimly she headed down the corridor.