Mary Rosenblum - Horizons

He did not speak to her as another CSF, a woman this time, removed Ahni’s collar and had her thumbprint a release form.

As they left the office, Ahni turned to her father, bowed once more. “Thank you,” she said, meaning it.

He didn’t answer her, pushed past her into the corridor and halted.

“There. There she is!”

“Hey!”

”Nice catch! Not bad for a downsider!” People, dozens of them, milled in the main corridor watched by four or five nervous CSF. A vendor sold skewers of fruit and filled mugs with juice, as if it was a party.

As Ahni stepped through the door they closed in, leaving her a wide ring of respect but reaching into it to flip fingers at her, grinning, or pump fists.

“Downsiders thought they could play games with us.”

“Thought we were blind up here, huh?”

”You want to move up here, you do it, girl. You’re no downsider, not really.”

Laif appeared at the edge of the crowd, head and shoulders above the grinning men and women. They parted for him, swepping aside into a formal path that led straight to Ahni. Her father actually flinched as the tall, dark man strode up to them, an impossible lapse that revealed his fear of this alien place.

“You’re quite the hero, you know.” Laif swept her into a bear hug that squeezed the breath from her lungs. The small crowd cheered and waved food and mugs of juice. “Your friend Noah hacked Li Zhen’s link downside and dumped it straight into the Con.” Laif was grinning. “Nothing like hacking the hacker.

Talk about setting everybody straight all at once. You, Dane, and that crazy miner are everybody’s heroes right now. You want it, you got it. Everybody heard on the Con that you were getting out. The CSF got a few leaks inside and they can’t shut the Con down for more than a few hours at a time. Hi.”

He turned to her father, nodding down at him. “Pleased to meet you.”

Wen Huang stiffened. “What is this?” He stepped forward, chin out, insult in his posture to cover fear.

“We must hurry to catch the shuttle.”

”There are many shuttles, Father. Laif, this is Wen Huang, my father.”

The people in the corridor called greetings and compliments some of which Ahni hoped her father wasn’t able to translate. Someone pushed a mug of juice at Ahni. She took it, drank and acccepted the skewer of strawberries someone handed her. Dane’s fruit. She swallowed a pang, ate one of the sweet, luscious berries. Her father shook jerked his head in a sharp no as food and juice were offered to him. He took a brisk step forward, clearly expecting the crowd–which was increasing to the unease of the CSF

guards–to move aside. They didn’t.

This was not turning into a good day for Wen Huang, Ahni thought wryly.

“Everybody heard you’d been kicked out.” Laif spoke casually, but he had tensed up. “A lot of folk here feel you got the right to stay if you want to. Just so you know.”

And he didn’t want her to, and if she chose to, it would mean a new confrontation between CSF and upsiders. “I need to go downnside.” Ahni pitched her voice for the crowd, felt Laif’s relief. What did you think I was going to do? she thought crossly. Start a riot? “Dane Nilsson — most of you probably know of him — he’s been falsely accused by the World Council.” The crowd’s reaction told her she was right, and she lifted her hands before the mood darkened any more. “I mean to appear before the World Council on his behalf. He has done nothing wrong, and I’m a witness to that. The situation is critical.” She raised her voice a hair as silence settled over the crowd. “The Council will judge him as a resident of New York Up. They’ll judge him, in part, by your behavior up here.”

“Oh, don’t worry.” A young man with a dark red celtic cross lightfibered into his naked scalp grinned at her, winked one green eye.”We’re gonna be model citizens up here. We know we just won ourselves the jackpot of brownie points. We’re not gonna screw it up.” A chorus of affirmations followed his words.

“Get Nilsson back up here and we’ll sort out our own affairs.”

“Just let us know what you need.”

“Quite the Joan of Arc, aren’t you?” Laif put one arm around her waist, one around her father’s. “Bless you,” he whispered.

“Don’t push him away,” she said sharply to her father in Old Taiwanese.

He did not. Which said a lot about his fear of this place.

“I hope not Joan of Arc.” She looked up and sideways at Laif as he strolled them toward the Arrival Hall. “I’ve read my history.”

“I didn’t mean that part of the story.” Beneath his smile he was grim. “By the way, it’s still dicey downside. Some folk still want us shut down and they’re using Dane as a reason. I really hope you can help him. I hope that wasn’t just for the crowd.”

“They sent him downside already?”

Laif nodded. “Koi and his family are on Dragon Home. With Zhen’s kid. Dane’ll want to know. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but something. Some of the smaller Council members are all of a sudden calling for debate on orbital independence. There’s a media feeding frenzy over that live link Li Zhen opened. Every seccond of your time on the tug is bouncing all over the place, upside and downside, and nobody has been able to shut it down for long. Everybody downside got the shit scared out of them and I kind of get the feeling a bunch of folk would be shooting at us… if the pilot of that tug hadn’t been a downsider. Thank all the gods for that.”

“We must leave.” The Huang stepped firmly from beneath Laif’s arm, finally recovering his downside presence as Head of the Taiwan Families as they reached the bustle of the Arrival Hall. “You may go.”

He spoke English, his tone putting Laif neatly in his place as something equal to a dog’s accident.

It was the most insulting tone she had ever heard her father use. “Yeah, I know. In a minute.” The insult went right past Laif. “I’m almost done.”

Ahni winced at her father’s reaction and stifled a smile. Nobody had ever talked to him like that.

Laif’s gaze shifted to a spot behind her, down the corridor. “I think you’re about to get an escort to the shuttle,” he murmured “Guess they think you might want to stay. Skedaddle, will you? Beefore the crowd gets protective.”

“We are going,” her father snapped in Old Taiwanese. “Now.”

“Of course, Honored Father.” She let him propel her forward. “So what’s going to happen if the Council makes you independent?” she called back over her shoulder. “What then?”

“I’ll get myself elected to run things.” Laif didn’t follow them.

“I’ll grant you the first immigration visa when it happens. Get Dane back up here, will you? I need him.”

I’ll try, she thought. But as her father propelled her through the corridor and into the Arrival Hall, his anger buzzing though his grip on her arm like electricity, her confidence ebbed.

It was an old pattern in global politics. If you had to cede a batttle, find a scapegoat. Memories of the ugly human engineering years still lingered like nightmares in the global subconscious. Dane had scapegoat written all over him.

THE ELEVATOR TRIP seemed to take a month. Her father believed that Tania had been the would-be assassin, that she had brainwashed and destroyed Xai. He could understand a woman betraying her lover. It made sense to him, and he also believed that Ahni had attempted his rescue.

Her mother’s doing, Ahni realized, although her father’s approval of his daughter’s actions was tempered with anger that she had brought this family disgrace to world attention. Her mother’s spin on events and her father’s willing belief disturbed her enormously, but Ahni remained silent in the face of his misinformation. Let her mother believe that she had given in to the temptation of heir. When the enemy holds the knife and you are weaponless, it is not time to fight.