Carnival

If he was lucky, his communication would reach Kaiwo Marubefore she dispatched a packet‑bot back to Earth to swap mail. It would still take six months to send a message and get an answer, assuming The Pride of Ithacaor one of the other inbound ships was close enough to relay the bot’s signal. But at least this way the message would be in the queue.

If anything happened.

He coded two reports. The first used a standard diplomatic cipher, and detailed a strictly factual, strictly accurate report of his and Vincent’s doings since landfall. The second, concealed in the first and still largely i

There was a third message, contained not in a discrete data stream, but in the interplay of the others. In the cracks between. Kusanagi‑Jones concealed an ironic smile.

This one, of necessity brief, must be sent when Vincent wasn’t present to record it. It was sealed eyes‑only, quantum coded. When Kusanagi‑Jones broke the seal on his own end of the code, a quantum entanglement triggered a wave‑state collapse on the other end of the system, alerting his principal that a message was en route. The only man in the universe who could read the message was the one who held the other half of the key.

That man was Siddhartha Deucalion Hunyadi Lawson‑Hrothgar. He was a senior member of the Earth Coalition Cabinet. And its contents, if they couldhave fallen into the wrong hands, would have meant surplusing and execution not only for Kusanagi‑Jones, but for Lawson‑Hrothgar as well.

Kusanagi‑Jones understood Vincent’s position. The great‑grandson of a Colonial Founder, the son of Captain Lexasdaughter–the most powerful head of state remaining under Coalition control–Vincent would work withinthe system, attempt to ease the Coalition’s stranglehold through diplomatic means.

Kusanagi‑Jones, with the assistance of a revolutionary patron, had chosen another path.

Which was the thing Vincent could never be permitted to learn about New Earth, and the destruction of the starship named Skidbladnir,and why they had been separated: that it had happened so because Michelangelo had pla

“When you report,” Miss Ouagadougou said, as they stepped out into brilliant sunlight, “I’ll have something to add.”

Kusanagi‑Jones wouldn’t show startlement. Instead, he stepped aside to give her a line of travel and fell into step behind. “Something about the plan I’d like to discuss. May I uplink the new version to your datacart?”

“Of course.” She pulled it out of her hip pack and flipped up the cover. “Password?”

He gave her one, and established a single‑photon co

Green letters flashed across his vision and vanished. The director of security is a radical,Miss Ouagadougou said. Get her to enlist.

Kyoto?he asked. That old dragon?

She’s inclined pro‑Coalition. A free‑maler. Claude’s a loss. Saide Austin holds her purse strings, and Saide Austin…He glanced at her as the text scroll hesitated. She shrugged, a slow rise of her shoulders, a quick tilt of her head. He recognized the name from the gallery. Saide Austin.

More than an artist, apparently. You’re a Coalition agent.

Since before the war.

He wondered what they’d given her to buy her loyalty–money, access to Coalition art treasures–or if hers was an ideological treachery.

She put her hand on his arm. I’ve imbedded an information packet in your copy of the plan. She transmitted a code key, which he saved. “I’m starving,” she said. “It’s been hours since lunch.”

“Miss Ouagadougou?”

Kusanagi‑Jones looked up. One of the agents had stepped forward. He might as well have been a shadow on the wall.

“Cathay.” Miss Ouagadougou smiled. “Problem?”

“Miss Pretoria requests you and Miss Kusanagi‑Jones join her at Pretoria house.” Cathay–Kusanagi‑Jones was uncertain if it was her first name or last–smiled. “A car is waiting.”

Miss Ouagadougou wet her lips, and Kusanagi‑Jones’s pulse accelerated. Problem.

“My uplink,” he said. He’d been hoping, frankly, to get another look around the galleries and see if he could find whatever passed for a power conduit. Wherever they had the power plant hidden, there had to be wiring. Electricity didn’t transmit itself, and he’d seen no signs of microwave receivers. Room temperature superconductors, he’d guess.

“Do it in the car,” she said, fingers closing on his wrist.

Problem. Yes, indeed.

Kii touches the cold illation machines that populateKaiwo Maru ’s core. They are intelligent, in their own way, but Kii is not of interest to them. They process Kii, and ignore.

Kii contemplates, and the Consent observes. There is no determination yet, as Kii analyzes the Governors’ decision trees. The Governors are aware. They are adaptive. They are goal driven, and they are improvisational.

But their entire purpose, Kii soon understands, is the maintenance of the encroaching bipeds. They are a predator. A constructed predator, a coolly designed one. They exist to assure the bipeds do not overburden their habitat. They are ruthless and implacable, and their disregard for Kii is not founded on a lack of intelligence or awareness. Rather, Kii is external to their parameters. Their only interest is the bipeds. They are created creatures, as Kii is a created creature, a program contained in a virtual shell. But unlike Kii, they are not alive.

They are notesthelich . They are not alive. In this fragment, Consent is reached with ease.

Vincent shouldn’t have been so relieved that it was Robert who took charge of him once they were inside. It was unprofessional. But for all his size, scars, and shaven head, the big man was a calming presence, revealing no threat‑registers. It was the easy kind of personality that deservedly confident, competent, unthreatened people projected, and Vincent really was not feeling well at all. He let Robert bring him into the cool depths of the house, under more of those swags of dead flowers, and show him into the fresher. Or…make one for him. Now that he was watching for it, he could see how it worked, the way the building anticipated and fulfilled requests. A limited teachable AI, at least, if not sentient.

The city was not so much haunted as programmed.

“Take off your shirt,” Robert said as the door irised shut behind them. He reached to grab cloth, and Vincent, who hadn’t dialed his wardrobe down, stepped back fast and tilted his chin up to look Robert in the eye. White teeth shone in contrast to Robert’s plum‑colored lips, and Vincent sighed.

“No,” Robert said. “That’s not a proposition.”

Vincent knew. There was no erotic interest at all, either predatory or friendly. “It doesn’t work like that.”

Robert backed off, and Vincent touched his wrist and made his wardrobe vanish, dialing down the protection, too. He turned, showing Robert his back, and bit his lip not to shiver away when Robert reached out, slowly, making sure Vincent could see him in the mirror as he paused his hand a centimeter from Vincent’s shoulder blade. The heat of his palm made Vincent flinch; when Robert drew his hand back, he scrubbed it against his vest as if to rub the radiant warmth away. “That’s going to blister. Have you ever had a sunburn?”

“No,” Vincent said.

“You’ll feel nauseated, achy, tired. You’ll experience chills. House, some burn cream, please? Miss Katherinessen, into the shower. Cold water will help. Essentially, you’re experiencing a mild radiation burn.”

“I’ve had those,” Vincent said. His watch would handle the worst of it: he could manage his chemistry to alleviate the flulike symptoms, and his licenses included both powerful painkillers and topical analgesics.