Overthrowing heaven, p.15
Overthrowing Heaven, page 15
Lobo was right: I needed to feel more than think.
I leaned back in the chair and slowly surveyed the square. Planters full of flowers. A large, paved center through which people moved but never stayed, a space that existed only to connect other spaces. All the buildings, vertical shelters standing cheek to jowl, different in intent and design and color but ultimately, as she had observed, all the same: big boxes that separated us into groups, groups that offered paths to people, people who sought ways to meet their needs. So many different people, so many varied mini-worlds, all looking down on the same square, all so much alike, all separate. Matahi, like the buildings, offered to those she accepted a path to the fulfillment of at least some of their needs.
Something snapped into focus inside me.
I nodded my head and smiled. Even if she didn’t like it, at least in that moment it felt right to me.
I signaled Lobo over the comm. “I figured it out.” I paused. “I think.”
“Care to explain how?” he said.
“By taking your advice.”
“And your idea is?”
“One I’ll tell you only after the fact,” I said. Though I liked it now, I wasn’t confident enough to be willing to risk the inevitable ridicule from him if I proved to be wrong. “Keep Pri aboard until I return. Contact Matahi’s avatar and book me a meeting with her as soon as possible, ideally tomorrow. Let her know I have the gift.”
“Do you?” Lobo said.
“No,” I said, “but I will soon. Out.”
I headed back to the square full of street vendors. The day was fading, and I had multiple stops to make.
Chapter 19
The evening crowds streaming into the old city thinned as I neared the landing facility where Lobo awaited me. I’d worked long days at physical labor that had left me less tired. All I wanted to do was sleep.
“So show us,” Lobo said the moment I reached the pilot area in his front.
“You have to,” Pri said, nodding her head in agreement. “It’s only fair.”
I clenched the handle of the plain black carrying case harder and shook my head. “No. I’m sorry, but no one sees it before her.”
“What?” Lobo said.
“That makes no sense,” Pri said. “I helped you shop, so I deserve a look. Besides, don’t you want to know how we think she’ll react?”
“That’s exactly what I don’t want to know,” I said. My confidence had ebbed considerably on the walk back here, to the point that any negative comment might kick me into shopping despair. “I followed Lobo’s advice, and I’m done.”
Pri opened her mouth to speak again, but I held up my free hand and shook my head.
“Lobo,” I said, “was Matahi willing to meet tomorrow?”
“Yes. You have an appointment in the middle of the afternoon at the same location. Her avatar said to reserve four hours or not to come at all.”
“That’s a good sign, isn’t it?” I said.
“Not really. It also said that you should be prepared to leave in five minutes if your gift is unacceptable.”
“What does she have that makes men put up with this?” Pri said.
“I honestly don’t know. She showed so little of herself—physically and emotionally—that I came away from our meeting understanding almost nothing about her.”
“I don’t get it,” Pri said. “Why would anyone go to all this trouble for someone who gives so little?”
I considered trying to explain Matahi’s appeal, but I hadn’t experienced enough of it to be able to do so. That she was compelling was obvious, even to me, but far less clear was why.
I shook my head. I was losing a contest I hadn’t even realized I’d entered. How did this happen to me?
“All I know,” I said, “is why I have to go to all this trouble: to see if we can learn her location so we can snatch Wei the next time he visits her. That’s what matters; right?”
“Of course,” Pri said.
Her tone and expression made it clear that other things were also important and that I was missing the point, but I didn’t care; I’d take any chance to get out of this conversation.
“I’m exhausted, and I’m going to bed. Lobo, take us somewhere safe.” I headed down the hall to my quarters and didn’t look back. As I turned into the small room, I caught a glimpse of Pri, standing at Lobo’s front, staring at me with an expression I couldn’t decipher.
When the door closed behind me, I slid the package under my cot and crawled on top of it, ready to fall asleep.
“You could show me now that it’s just the two of us,” Lobo said. “I’d be more than willing to look and not comment. You must understand that some curiosity on both my part and Pri’s is completely natural under the circumstances.”
“We’ll talk in the morning,” I said.
“Well,” Lobo said, “if you’re determined to be that way, then I suppose there’s nothing I can say to change your mind.”
“No,” I said, “there’s not. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”
Lobo let me sleep in peace, so I stayed in my cot until it was almost noon. When I finally got up, I felt physically great. Lobo stayed quiet while I exercised, and he even left me alone while I cleaned myself. The moment I was dressed, however, he started.
“You’re obviously ready to begin your day, so show me the present.”
“No.” With a clear morning head I trusted my instincts of the previous day even less than when I’d entered Lobo last night. “Let’s discuss something else.”
“And what would that be?”
“Your relationship to Wei, which you told me before was quite a complex topic.”
“Given your refusal to show me your gift for Matahi, why should I share that story with you?”
He was in rare form today. “Because I own you,” I said. “You’re programmed to follow your owner’s orders, so follow mine: Explain your relationship to Wei.”
“As I’ve mentioned in the past,” Lobo said, “our relationship is not so cut and dried. Nonetheless, you did me a favor by agreeing to go after him, so it’s only fair that I repay that debt with an explanation.”
“What do you mean our relationship isn’t cut and dried?”
“Do you want the story or not?”
“Yes.” He was already frustrating me, so I decided to take any victory I could get. I’d pursue the issue of our relationship some other time.
A holo of Lobo’s pilot area popped into view by my door. Blood coated his walls. Body parts were scattered around the room as if someone had fed a squad of men into a very coarse grinder. His central weapons control complex gaped open, dust and blood and what I think was part of an arm filling it. A few seconds later, flames burst out of it.
“This scene occurred less than a minute after the explosion that damaged me,” Lobo said. “As you can see, Lieutenant Franks didn’t survive his poor decision.”
“Neither did anyone else in his unit.”
“True. I was also a casualty, though parts of me, such as the emergency recorders, remained functional.”
“You’ve told me before,” I said. “The blast ruined your weapons control complex.”
“It did a great deal more damage than that,” Lobo said. “The fire spread through my computing systems and destroyed almost all of my active computation engines and significant chunks of my backups. I was effectively brain-dead; even the archives that remained were inaccessible.”
“Did it hurt?” Even as I asked the question I felt silly for doing it, but I spend so much time with Lobo and he so often seems human that I couldn’t help but wonder.
“Not as I understand pain,” Lobo said, “though I thank you for the courtesy of asking.”
“So what happened to repair you? You were fine when I met you.”
“When the Ringers—the mercenary company that owned me and employed Franks—finished on Vegna, they had no use for a PCAV so messed up it wasn’t cost-effective to repair.”
“How can you know this if your brain wasn’t working?”
“A lot of the discussions about me occurred inside me,” Lobo said, “so I was able to glean a great deal by studying the data from my emergency recordings. Other facts came from data they fed me later. Now, may I continue?”
“Of course.”
“The Frontier Coalition offered the Ringers five percent of my retail value and explained they could use me—remember, the explosion didn’t hurt my exterior—as a showpiece on developing worlds where they couldn’t afford to station a fully operational PCAV. The Ringers accepted the offer.”
“But when I met you on Macken,” I said, “the only thing wrong with you was your weapons control complex.”
“That’s because the FC didn’t put me there immediately,” Lobo said, “as I would have explained if you had not again interrupted me.”
“I’m sorry. Please go on.”
“The FC hauled me away and presented me to one of its research teams. That group was working in secret in a lab that was masquerading as a government warehouse on the edges of the populated section of Velna.”
I’d been to Velna once, to recruit some help for a mission, and though the recruitment was successful I’d never felt the need to go back. The planet boasted two main traits: It possessed the most seismically stable land masses of any known planet, and in pretty much every other way it was one of the least appealing worlds humanity has ever colonized.
“When we went to Velna two years ago,” I said, “why didn’t you tell me you’d been there before?”
“You didn’t ask,” Lobo said, “and we were rather busy. Besides, I spent almost all of my time on that planet in that lab.”
“Why did they put you there?”
“Because the researchers needed a rugged experimental subject, which despite the damage I’d sustained I most certainly was. And the scientist leading that team wanted a PCAV.”
“Wei,” I said.
“Yes,” Lobo said. “Wei.”
“So what did he and his team do to you?”
“That will have to wait,” Lobo said, “because Pri has communicated with her team and is going to bang on your door—” He paused a few seconds. “—now.”
The knock came, and the door opened a second later. I’d have asked Lobo to make her wait, but he didn’t give me that option, so I tried to smile as I said, “What did your people have to say?”
“How did you—” she began. She glanced at the ceiling. “Oh, of course: He told you. In any case, they had no useful information. To the best of their knowledge, Wei is still on the island. So, let’s hope your meeting goes well. Speaking of which, shouldn’t you be leaving?”
“Yes,” Lobo said, “he should, particularly given his usual desire to arrive early.”
They were right, but I hated it when the two of them ganged up on me, and I was frustrated at how little information Lobo had given me about Wei. When I replayed the conversations, I had to admit that I hadn’t let him tell the story the way he wanted, but it still annoyed me. I rolled my head a bit to dissipate some of my tension and frustration, then pulled the carrying case from under my cot and stood.
Pri blocked the doorway.
“Are you sure—” she said.
“Positive. We can discuss it later, but right now I need to maintain what little confidence I have. And, as you both observed, I have to go.”
I stepped toward her, and she turned to let me pass. As Lobo opened a side hatch, I said, “Keep watch on the exits from the island as best you can, but this time make monitoring me the top priority. If this works, I want you to know as much about her location as possible.”
“Good luck,” Pri said.
I nodded and stepped outside.
When Lobo closed the hatch, I said, “I’m going to need it.”
Chapter 20
I approached the square from the street opposite the one through which both Matahi and I had left it after our previous meeting. She was already there, sitting at the same table as last time but on the opposite side, where I had sat, and she was staring right at me. The moment I turned the corner, she waved me over.
Either she had great scouts neither Lobo or I could spot, or she was anticipating me so well it made me uncomfortable. Neither choice made me happy. I forced a slight smile and strolled toward her.
Her outfit today initially appeared to be the same one she’d worn before, but as I drew closer I realized the burqa’s fabric was a different color, this time a luminous teal. The hat was also slightly smaller, and the gloves a bit shorter. The overall effect, though, was identical: a complete covering that revealed nothing.
I sat in the chair opposite her and gently set the carrying case on the ground next to her legs.
She said nothing. Her expression didn’t change, and her eyes were invisible behind her sunglasses. She was perfectly still but clearly present, not asleep, merely waiting.
I said nothing.
After about a minute, I decided that she could sit in comfortable silence for as long as I could, maybe longer, and I was apparently the only one with an agenda. Why she didn’t work harder to get my money, however, baffled and annoyed me. Wasn’t I the customer?
Getting angry would accomplish nothing, except perhaps to drive her away, so I took a few long, slow breaths to calm myself.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet me today,” I said.
“You’re most welcome,” she said. “Thank you for requesting the time.”
I waited again, wanting her to ask to check out my gift, but she didn’t. I couldn’t tell if she’d even glanced at it, though given how aware she seemed of everything around her I assumed she had.
Finally, I couldn’t stand it. “Would you like to see my present?” I said.
“When you’re ready to show it.”
My anxiety about my choice crashed into me, and without thinking, I said, “We better not wait that long.”
She smiled, a full, wide grin that managed to convey her happiness and in the process instantly make me happier, and said, “Ah, finally, a bit of unconscious honesty. So refreshing.”
Part of me admired her accuracy, part of me hated it, and part of me wanted to hit her for toying with me, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that her comment was both honest itself and a form of praise. Whatever it was, my statement had been as close to the right move as anything I’d done with her, so I forced myself to plunge ahead.
“I tried to figure out what you’d want, but I failed. I ultimately took a friend’s advice and went with my feelings. I have no idea if you’ll like it, but it’s what I have.”
I leaned over, opened the carrying case, and pulled out my present. I set it on the table between us, its front facing her. The pale yellow wooden replica of one of the houses on the square was, I saw as I examined its back, perfect down to the rear windows and doorways. The workmanship was also fantastic even on the back, with mottling that made me think of the stone of the actual building, though I knew the box was wood.
“It’s a puzzle,” I said. After a moment, I added, “Like you.”
She took off her gloves and ran her hands along its sides, then down the front. She felt along the back, then slowly moved the window frame and the three hidden pieces that let her tease the building open. The sides swung outward to reveal a smooth, blood-red cube, also of wood. On top of that inner box sat a miniature holo of one of the red flowers in the square.
“And in this?” she said, pointing at that box.
“Nothing yet. The pad on top records the DNA of the first person who touches it, and only that person will be able to open it from then on.”
“So you must do it for me?”
“Of course not,” I said, caught off-guard. “I’ve saved it for you. Only you open the inner box.”
She nodded her head slowly, then leaned back in her chair. She took off her glasses to reveal large, round, dark brown eyes that made her face even more beautiful. “Why this gift?” she said.
“I could try to explain, but I’m not sure I completely understand. I suppose—”
I stopped as she held up her hand. “Please don’t,” she said. “I love it.” She closed the house, carefully restoring the pieces so it once again was solidly shut.
“You’re not going to open the inner box?” I said.
“We’ll do it together later,” she said, “but probably not today. Would you be kind enough to carry it for me until we reach my home?”
“So I’ve passed?”
She laughed lightly. “Obviously.” She put on her sunglasses and stood. “Shall we go?” She brushed past me, the edge of her hand just grazing my shoulder as she went.
I got up and followed her.
We went to the corner of the square to the left of Poohgi and then down that street. Unlike yesterday, she stayed outside and worked her way smoothly through the pedestrian crowd.
I caught up, settled into place beside her, and said, “Why aren’t you disguising your route?”
She laughed once more. “There you go again, asking stupid questions. Why do you do that?”
I stopped myself from responding as I realized the answer was obvious: Yesterday, she hadn’t wanted me to know the way to her home because she hadn’t yet decided to see me again, but now that she’d accepted me as a client, I had to learn its location to be able to visit her.
“I agree that one was dumb,” I said, “and I’ll try not to ask more like it, but I’m too curious not to have some questions.” The tactical implications of her profession both intrigued and nagged at me.
“Which ones are bothering you now?”
“You’ve checked me out as much as you can,” I said, “as I did you. You’ve decided to let me become a client, and I’m glad you did. But aren’t you worried that once we’re no longer in crowded streets, or perhaps when we’re in your home, that I might prove to be unstable and hurt you?”
She stopped and faced me. “To some degree, yes, that’s always a concern, but it’s not a major one. I wouldn’t be who or what I am if I wasn’t adept at reading people. I am also far from helpless. In addition, just as I’m sure someone is keeping tabs on you—anyone who can afford to be with me has staff for that very purpose—members of my staff are never far from me.”
