Forge of Heaven

On a station riddled with surveillance, Brazis had the physical lines he needed.

“Ms. Jewel.”

“Jewel.”

“Of course.” Outsider names. No Ms. He copied the computer file, Kekellen’s letter, and gave it to her. He wondered where the bugs in his office did reside. But the kind he had to fear now were the kind that could focus their pickup through several walls, the highly professional and elaborate kind that Dortland commanded. “It’s important the Chairman understands my official position. Extremely.”

“Yes, sir,” Jewel said, and took the item into her keeping, in a button-purse she wore at her waist, clearly understanding where that was supposed to go.

“I’m sending Ernst to walk you home. With thanks to Brazis for your help. I hope you’ll convey that, personally. Take care.”

“Yes, sir.” Jewel’s eyes flicked left and right, as if a threat might be evident in the walls, resident with the ages-sealed lizards—or she might be aware of electronics he couldn’t detect. She might be amped. The ability of some of these couriers was legend. “Thank you, sir. I will thank him for you.”

“Good,” he said, and relayed the order to Ernst to go with her. Ernst gave him a look—Ernst hadn’t gotten such a request since Kathy’s last rebellion, in far safer times for the governor to be sitting in his office absolutely undefended.

“Shall I ask Mr. Dortland to send someone to my office for the interim?” Ernst asked.

“No,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll be fine. That’s a firm order, Ernst. Go. Use the lift key. I want you back here as soon as possible.”

“Yes, sir.”

Dubious, clearly worried, Ernst left with Jewel, who was physically carrying a message for the ondat.

He’d done it. And he had to sit and wait, and rethink his course of action, now that it was, positing Ernst’s reliability and Brazis’s agreement, sliding toward irrevocability.

THE CLIENTELE AT MICHAELANGELO ’S was glamorous, even if the place was gray and aged. Glorious creatures enjoyed drinks, and Algol, their rescuer, secured their lodgings, showed them up to a trendy room, then took them back down where the Fashionables gathered, set them at a table and asked them what they would have.

“Blanc,” Mignette said, “Couredin.” It was what her father always had when he took them out, and she knew it was pricey.

“Beer,” Noble said. “A lager.”

“Just a lager, modest fellow?” Algol ran a light finger along Noble’s stiff shoulder and waved a circular gesture toward the bar. “Couredin for the daring Mignette. A good common lager for this unassuming boy, who makes no greater demands of life.”

A ripple of laughter. Several people got up to stand near and stare at them. Mignette stared back at the most extraordinary faces she’d ever seen—green eyes, lavender lips, tattoos that glowed and changed constantly in serpentine patterns. Noble, slouched in his chair, looked miserable.

A hand brushed her shoulders. A white face loomed near. “What are you doing tonight, petite?”

“I’m with Noble,” she said. Not Algol. It was scary to be asked by a grown-up stranger. Noble was safe. She’d thought once he was a handsome boy, but Noble lost all his luster among these people, and she saw the sulk that made a hard line of his mouth. She was scared he would blow up at someone and get hurt.

“Well,” Algol said, winding down into the next chair. He brushed her cheek, lifted her chin on a finger. “Loyalty. So much loyalty and virtue in such an appealing little package. Let us educate this novice gentleman. Let us provide him critique, and improve him.”

“He’s all right,” she said desperately, but someone else had moved up on Noble, a young man who ran fingers through Noble’s hair.

“Thisneeds changing.”

Another: “The skin needs improvement.”

Noble jerked free of the fingers and reached for her hand, pulling at her. “Come on, Mignette. We can find somewhere better than this.”

“Oh, I don’t think so, little flower.” Algol leaned close to her, pi

“Mignette,” Noble said, sounding desperate.

“I want to leave now,” she said, and tried to get up, but Algol was stronger than he looked. He imposed a grip like iron, Noble was pulling her other hand, and they were surrounded by these inhabitants of the place, these glamorous, these suddenly threatening presences.

She fought to get free of Algol’s grip. And couldn’t. “Noble,” she cried, “run!”

Noble tried. They caught him in a net of interlaced arms, harmlessly, laughing at him, and Algol effortlessly held her hand so she couldn’t get up to help him. “No, no, no,” Algol said, patting her arm above that painful grip. “Little Mignette, stay put. Don’t be so silly. You’re among kindred souls. Perfectly safe. He had it coming.”

A waiter, someone, set the wine and the beer on the table.

She suddenly remembered you should never eat or drink on the street, if you couldn’t guarantee the bottle. And the wine and the beer were in glasses, moisture like jewels on the outside of liquid lightest and darkest gold, on a scarred tabletop in a dingy bar, surrounded by beautiful faces.

“Your wine,” Algol said, and, releasing her wrist, edged the glass toward her with an elegant fingertip. He smiled engagingly, half red, half black, with patterns twisting across his skin. The eyes flickered from dark to fire. “Dear Mignette. Trust me. It’s quite safe.”

She conceived a plan to get to the door. She relaxed. She looked in Algol’s eyes—one dark, one fire—and let her hand under his go limp. He slid the wine toward her.

She reached out and took the stem in her fingers.

And threw the contents at his eyes, and lunged for her feet.

Noble shoved at the people holding him. She ducked past that struggling knot and grabbed the door latch—latches always had to open from the inside. The law said so.

It was locked.

PLACE TO SIT. Procyon wanted that, just a dark little nook between facades. He found a grimy green molding to sit on, a plastic continuation of a store windowsill around the corner into a false window. His knees were shaky. His forehead hurt. He was fevered. It felt like nanos kicking in, that overheated, overflushed condition, blushing right down to the scratches on his fingers. The blood flaked off. Skin there was pink, scrapes, not scratches, where Gide’s nails had raked him.

Flash of Gide, lying there, Gide wanting not to be touched.

Then dark, the bots and the chute. He smelled ammonia, still clinging to him, and a green glow grew in memory. His heart raced, fear flooding his system with chemicals that only made the nano-feeling worse. Maybe the Project nanocele had some hidden tricks. Repair capability outside its ordinary sites. At least that was how he rationalized the sick, fevered feeling in his stomach. He hoped so.

Flashes of that dark kept intruding, trying to surface. He saw a shadow. He didn’t know what he’d seen, what had happened to him. He felt rubbery, wet touches on his face, soft and clinging.

His fingers were shaking. He clenched one hand in the other, trying to stop it. He couldn’t figure how, step by step, he’d gotten into this mess.

Dark place. And something like shredded cloth. Cloth that moved. He’d seen dim photos of ondat. That was what his brain kept insisting. He felt that touch. Smelled ammonia.

He didn’t know why the headache became blindingly severe every time he thought of it.

A dark place. A lancing pain.

He sat somewhere else, on the tiles in a service nook, facing one of the service accesses. A cleaner bot darted out, right in his face. He lurched to his feet, back to the wall, avoiding it, and turned and ran.

A shadow blocked his path, an envelopment of cloth, a hard, opposing body and an iron grip on his arm between him and the neon light outside the service nook.