Mary Rosenblum - Horizons

“You take it easy,” Dane told him sternly. “I let you out early. Get wild and those bones might crack again.”

“I’m not going to get wild,” Koi said loftily.

“Noah’s going to need your help,” Dane told him. “Somebody bought an expensive aqua culture farm Earthside. They did it with credit registered to Laif. It’s a frame, but we need to know who did it and how, and Noah’s stuck downside for a few days.”

“No problem.” Koi spun effortlessly, his trajectory wobbling not at all. “That why you woke me up early?” He smirked at Dane as he shot ahead of him.

“I woke you up so you wouldn’t be a gift-wrapped prize for someone walking through Security,” Dane snapped after him.

“Sorry, Dane.” Koi slowed his momentum with a complex shiver of limbs. “If somebody made that downside buy so easy, I bet I can track ’em back, if Noah’s busy. He says I’m almost as good as he is, now.”

“I hope so.” Dane killed his momentum on a tube planted to Asian eggplant, placing his hand carefully between the narrow, black fruits. What had Noah said of Koi? A pain to teach, but really creative . A shred of blossom drifted away from the tube and one of his frog-flies darted out to seize it, ricocheted off the next tube, vannished back into its sheltered niche on the eggplant tube. The small creatures he had created had adapted so effortlessly to microG. Within a single generation, many of them — phenotypes shifting radically, genes expressing in surprising ways.

Like Koi and his family.

The elevator doors opened and Laif drifted out, squinting in the brilliant light. He looked… battered.

Dane pushed off. “Here.” He shoved the spare set of goggles into Laif’s hand. “Sorry I had to cut out. I had an intruder down here, and not an accidental one either.”

“That’s all we need.” Laif pulled the goggles into place, his voice weary. “A legal fuss about Koi’s folk would be the last straw right now.”

“I sort of thought of that,” Dane drawled.

“You know, you and your family are a great big pain, kid.” Laif had drifted clear of the tubes, stalled now, out of reach of anything to push off of. “Damn, I’m bad at this. Koi, gimme a hand.” He, eld out one of his long-fingered hands. It engulfed Koi’s but instead of pulling Laif in closer to a tube, Koi pushed off, gave Laif’s arm a sharp downward jerk and spun the tall Administrator into an ungainly somersault.

Laif yelled.

Doing a neat somersault turn off another tube… without bruising a leaf… Koi snagged Laif by one wrist and stilled his spin with impressive precision, then shoved the Admin face first into a rube planted with tomato vines–just hard enough to squash the fruit–and arrowed away into the green light.

“Damn!” Laif sputtered, wiping red tomato juice from his face. A cloud of frog-flies darted about him, scooping up the drifting droplets and fragments of pulp. “Double damn.” Laif waived at them. “Good thing you didn’t make them bite. Everything up here is better than I am in microG. What did I say to piss him off?” Laif wiped his face on his arm.”You got a towel somewhere? I need you to find out who planted that fake purchase. I had hell’s own time getting up here without anyone seeing. Everybody wants to ask me personally about that. If I ever get hold of the SOB who did it, he’s airlocked.”

”You called Koi’s family a pain in the butt, Laif. And whoever that was down there today, he sure stuck it to us.” Dane regarded the Administrator thoughtfully. “Come along and clean up. Tell me how bad it got after I left. I did manage to seed some questions about that ‘sale’ into the Con. Dunno if it did any good. Haven’t had time to drop in again. Noah’ll tell me.”

“I guess it worked. Last time I sampled — on the way down here — people were wondering just when I got so stupid. Something I wonder almost daily, but we won’t tell anyone.” Laif’s laugh sounded loud, even down here in the vastness of the garden.

Dane smiled. “Only you could laugh right now.”

“Beats screaming and crying and tearing my hair… which I don’t have. Slow down will you?” Panting he caught up to Dane, leaving a trail of damage behind him about as bad as Ahni had done. “So where did that asshole come from? Is he one of your crowd?”

”No, he’s not a member of NOW. Not yet.” Dane slowed as they approached his home, waited for Laif to catch up to him. “I think I’ll invite him though. If I can find him. He’s an outsider. New to me. Makes me wonder.”

Laif grunted, made his way through the twined tubes that made up the shell of Dane’s living space. “We need to know who holds his leash. According to his entry data, he’s an NAA citizen, recently employed as a contract code writer for some little manufacturing. That’s crap. Made up story.”

“I thought so, too.” Dane pushed across the spherical space, reetrieved a towel from a storage hammock, sailed it toward Laif. “I think he’s a pro, doing a job. Did you get my forward of Noah’s report?”

“Yes.” Laif snagged the towel, scrubbed his face. “Two percent is bad. We can’t go to the Council yet.

That pricey synthesist we hired downside tells me it’s a ninety-two percent certainty that an autonomy motion on behalf of the platforms would go down. I don’t get it. People up here have been getting increasingly unhappy with NAA control, but it’s been a steady curve. How come it’s heatting up now?”

He wadded the stained towel into a ball. “It’s the edge of violence that bothers me. Where the hell did this come from?” he growled. “We’re not a violent folk up here! Except on the Scrum field.”

“Dragon Home.” Dane said.

“What about it?”

“I’m not sure,” Dane said thoughtfully. “Li Zhen was prowling around here recently. Unofficially. Noah says the hot threads in the Con are starting out with people he hasn’t seen before. I doubt Noah is the only person capable of hacking up a fake persona that can pass Security.”

”What in nine hells is Zhen up to? He’s ambitious and has his own agenda, everybody knows that. And China is a power-hungry loner, up here, and downside on the World Council. Why us?”

“I don’t know.” Dane frowned at the orchids blooming along thecurve of the inside wall, touched one perfect petal. “I ran into a wildcard up here. Private war from downside, I gather, but Zhen is involved.”

“Who?” Laif snapped, his emerald earring glinting.

“Name is Xai Huang. Taiwan Families.” No need to mention Ahni. He wondered if she had checked the DNA sequence he had done for her. “I don’t know what Huang’s agenda is.”

“I’ll get an image of him, plug it into Security. I hate wildcards.” Laif scrubbed his face again, glowered at the stained towel in his hands. “We’re so damn close,” he said softly. “If we increase the resident population just a little… within the current livingspace limits we’ll tip the balance. We’ll have a stable economy. Producers and consumers. It’ll be tough, but then we can start expanding for real. And we won’t need Earth. We can run our own show, make our own rules. Put our interests first.”

“Ifwe can start dropping rocks down here.” Dane shook his head.”We can’t do it if we have to depend on the asteroid miners refining up in the belt. Darkside figures they own the moon and they’re willing to fight for resources. Rocks make Earth nervouss– as you so aptly pointed out this evening. I think you’re underestimating downside opposition to that. They’ve got the weaponry to shoot at us and hit us, Laif.”

”Hey, you’re the leader of the secession group, what’s with this pessimism?” Laif stilled his sudden drift with a grab at a nearby vine. “The Council can be swayed. We’re spending every spare credit we can scrape up to sway them and we all know better than to talk rocks at this stage. Meanwhile, a wildcard war is not what we need up here right now. They’re messy.”