Forge of Heaven

WOBBLE AND WOBBLE. Procyon knew he didn’t hew a straight line down the street. He stopped and rubbed his eyes, trying to drive the lights out of them.

Buzz. Buzz.

And voices. “Brazisss,”one said, and he tried to answer it.

“Sir?”

“Procyon!” Not from the tap, from behind him. He turned awkwardly, caught his balance, seeing a haze of blue and gold, a presence that reached out and held his arms.

“Brother…”

It was Ardath, Ardath, in public, on the street. “I’ve got troubles,” he began to say. “No. Don’t be here.”

But Ardath had help, one dark, and one gold, who took him each by an arm and told him come along, now, no argument.

Direction, from someone who could see clearly, someone he knew was on his side.

“He’s fevered,” one said, the darkness. “You can feel the heat in him.”

“It’s a mod.” A female voice, the gold. “No question it’s a mod taking hold.”

Light flash. The terrible pain in his head made his eyes water as he tried to walk with them. He couldn’t coordinate an objection. He just breathed, and walked, and hoped they would get him home.

They went through a doorway, into shadow, a relief, at least for his eyes. He could smell alcohol, old beer, not his sister’s ordinary level of establishment. He heard synth-wood chairs moving on a synth-wood floor, voices that echoed around and around. It was Auntie Murphy’s, he thought. He knew the older, rougher bars up and down the street. It smelled like Auntie Murphy’s.

“Hush,” Ardath said, and a chair scraped. “Sit down. Sit down, brother, and catch your breath. Your mods are having a war with this thing. Help them settle. I’ll get you something to drink.”

He fell into the chair he hoped was under him, finding a welcome table under his elbows. He was so tired. Sickness and fever buzzed in his veins. Mods, they said. And he didn’t have mods this fierce. Not what the government had ever given him. Panic beat in his veins, riding his pulse.

Commotion around him diminished. He heard his sister’s voice somewhere, giving directions.

A scrape of a chair. “Stupid brother.” She was back. She shoved a cold baggette into his hand, and pulled out the straw, bringing it to his lips. “Drink it all down.” Her hand was on his back.

He drank it. The stuff didn’t taste that bad. Tasted of salt, which he wanted, needed terribly, chased by the complex tang of other minerals.

He grew dizzy. Put his head down on his folded arms. Didn’t know how long he sat there, trying to keep down what he’d swallowed.

A little improvement in the nausea. But the flashes in his skull multiplied, blinded him. The buzzing began to make words in his ears, flat-sounding words, like a synthesized voice.

“Marak,”it said, or he imagined it said. “Brazis.”Over and over again.

Then a different voice: “No question he’s alive, sir. Procyon Stafford is the most notorious face on Grozny right now.”

“Procyon! Can you hear? Answer me!”

Tap. Brazis.

“Yes, sir.” He sat up and tried. He tried desperately, and saw and heard nothing but static bursts.

“Procyon,” Ardath said, right at his ear, hand on his arm; and he blinked through the illusory lights and saw his sister’s face inches from his, the blue and the gold cleared back, now, to show the Arden-mask. “Procyon.” Cool, anxious fingers brushed across his forehead. “Who did this?” Anguish. “Who’d have dared do this to you?”

Did he know that answer? Did he know anything, at all? But he remembered what he’d seen in the mirror, that mark, that horrid mark. He’d looked to her for help, and saw by the look on her face he’d brought her more problems than she remotely knew what to do with. Or should deal with. “I fell down. I think I fell down the rabbit hole.” Child’s story. “But it’s not fu

“I know.” A brush of her cool fingers across his wounded forehead. “I know it’s not.”

“Somebody shot the ambassador. But I couldn’t. I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.”

“Idiot,” she said. “I know that. But they’re looking for you all over.”

“Down the rabbit hole. Only not full of rabbits. Scary things. Like the old story. Jabberwocky.”

“What’s this mark?” She touched the wound on his forehead, which felt like a bad burn. “Who’s our enemy, Procyon? Who’s crazy enough to do this?”

“Bad mods.” It was all he could think of, the card that he’d been dealt in a quarrel he didn’t understand. And then did. “The Earther. Looking for illicits.” A sick feeling, his head aching with pressure and dizziness that seemed to center in that mark. “Found them, found them, haven’t I?”

“Algol,” Ardath said. “Damn him, damnhim.”

Algol was almost certainly in the middle of it. She was right in that. And if it was bad mods, if his body was trying to organize a defense, he was holding his own. Barely.

“There’re slinks out in force,” Spider said, a voice from the shadows of the room. “Station security’s grabbed a lot of Algol’s people. They got Capricorn.”

And Arden: “Whoever the slinks haven’t got, weget. Find Algol wherever he hides.”

“No.” It was a government quarrel. Not hers. It was an attack on the Project, nothing his sister could deal with. Procyon reached out and took hold of Arden’s hand. “No. It’s too dangerous.”

“That fool’s touched my brother,” Arden said. “He goes down.”

“No. Listen.” The stuff that she’d given him was the right thing, to supply the warring nanoceles trying to pull the chemicals they needed out of his bloodstream. Now the threat to his sister roused up his adrenaline, and he began to feel for two breaths as if he could think, as if, doing that, if he could just hold on to his focus, he might be able to function. “No, there’s more, Arden. There’s a lot more than that. Not street business. Not the Trend. You can’t settle Algol. He doesn’t care about us.”

“Trust me,” his sister said, his little sister, his naïve little sister, whose little wars were fought with cold looks and whispers and the turn of a shoulder.

“No, not with this!” He saw her turn away from him, and he seized her arm. “Listen to me. Listen,Arden: I work for the government.”

She laughed and patted his restraining hand. “Oh, brother, that’s old news.”

“Listen. There’s trouble you don’t want to know, I swear to you, you don’t want to know. The ambassador’s shot, there’s something going on with the government taps…”

“This ambassador person is alive, in hospital, sleeping off a not very major wound. He’s been exposed to Concord now, poor dear, so he has to stay, and he’s cursed all the doctors, but he’ll have to come around to our view of the universe, won’t he, or he’ll be very unhappy in his life.”

Her information was newer than his, clearly. It made her too confident. “Listen,” he pleaded with her. “Someone’s shot him. That’s the point, Ardath. Someone shot him. This is guns.”

“And we know who would bring guns, don’t we?”

“Algol’s holed up in the Michaelangelo,” Isis said, and others had gathered close, listening, a ring of shadows in the dim light of the bar.

“I’ve got to tell you.” He made up his mind to that, because she knew too much, and not enough. “I need to talk to you. You. I need to tell you things.”

“Back,”she said to those hovering about, moving them with a wave of her hand, until there was a clear space, and he had to go through with it. “So say, brother. What? What do I need to know?”

He took a breath, shaky, all over. “It’s notjust Earth. Marak’s in a fix out in the desert, the Ila’s breaking in on us, and these people, these people who shot the ambassador—we’re dealing with the Movement.”

Ardath’s flickering mask, gold and blue, actually retreated to her hairline and lost itself. “Honest truth?” Childish question.

“Hope to die,” he answered, childhood oath, making the old slight move across his heart. “I’m not lying. I’m a Project tap. I’ve got to get home, Ardath. I’ve got to call people to take care of this.”