Mary Rosenblum - Horizons

Xai was thinking hard behind a slight sneer. There was no way out. She’d worked out all possible actions. Even if he killed her the file would go to their father.

“You can have the cripple.” Her half-twin shrugged. “I take it that this is your ‘no’ to my offer?” He tried to mask his icy rage with a smile. “You are a fool. I don’t need you.”

“Perhaps.” She met his stare, closed off, letting his anger beat against her.

“Ugly, that cripple.” He shivered with distaste. “I won’t even ask how you came to assume that debt, little sister, but it’s an expensive one.” He smiled, sure that he had won now, gestured with his chin.

“Your creature is in there.”

The suite had a second bedroom. Inside, Koi lay on the smart-foam mattress, his eyes glassy, wrists and ankles bound with wide plastic strips. His ribs jutted against his skin with each labored breath and his skin was too cool, clammy to the touch. Shock?

“What happened to him, anyway?” Her brother looked over her shoulder, his distaste dank in the room.

“Radiation? Disease?” ‘

“Yes.” Ahni bent over Koi, touching his face, wondering about brain damage, spontaneous hemorrhage.

She released the restraints, wrapped the light thermal sheet around him and scooped him into arms. He weighed little, like an infant, as if his long bones were hollow, filled with air.

“Li Zhen will not be happy with me. I think he wants it for a pet.”

She shrugged and started for the door.

“The file?”

She reached into her pocket, handed him the data sphere.

”You are a fool.” Xai pocketed it.

The door slid open and she walked out into the corridor. The dogs were back at the mahjong board.

They looked up as she walked by, stood and paid their bill.

Dane fell in beside her. “Take him.” She thrust Koi’s body at him. “They’re after me, not you.” They’d try a dart or a needle.

“Stay close to me.” Dane took Koi’s fragile body from her. “Don’t try to run.” People passed them: service staff, mostly local residents judging by their slender musculature. A small group of natives burst from a doorway, laughing and talking. Someone shouted angrily. A voice rose. Ahni glanced over her shoulder to find the group faced off with the Dragon Home dogs, voices raised accusingly.

“This way,” Dane snapped, and she followed him into a side corridor. He slapped a lock plate awkwardly, and the door to a small, private elevator opened.

“How did you do that?” Ahni gasped as the elevator shot upward.

“I do favors for people,” Dane said absently, his fingers probing Koi’s unconscious form gently. “They do me favors in return.” As they reached the bright, stunning heart of the orbital, Koi stirred and whimpered.

“I couldn’t breathe,” he panted. “They hurt me.” A trace of blood gleamed at the corner of his mouth, and Dane rocketed away with him. Ahni followed, barely able to keep up. Koi’s family flanked them on all sides, darting shadows among the greenery. She counted fifteen, maybe sixteen, sensed curiosity. No worry, no fear, just… curiosity. A breeding population, enough, but not too many. Changing. Shifting into… what?

Dane took Koi into the control center. She followed, found a bright visitor access with padded chairs with microG straps, gleaming surfaces, machines, screens, data storage tanks. A small med-center took up one end of the space. Koi whimpered as Dane closed the unit around him, and Dane hovered over him, murmuring soothingly. She kept well back, watching him as he touched control screens, frowned, touched others. Koi whimpered again, and Dane drifted above him, his hands on the boy’s face until he finally quieted.

At last Dane pushed himself away from the matte gray, coffin shape of the med unit. Koi’s eyes were slitted, glassy with drugs.

“Is he going to be okay?” Ahni prodded herself closer.

“Some broken bones, minor internal damage. They weren’t gentle.” He touched Koi’s cheek lightly.

“He’s in enhanced healing now. He should recover.” Relief gleamed quicksilver behind his reserve. “You gave him that data sphere?”

“Yes.”

“That was your ticket downside.”

Ahni met his eyes, hesitated, not sure she could put it into words. “I… brought our war up here,” she said at last. “Thinking this was just another high rise. But you’re right. This is not Earth. Our war does not belong here. And I… believe you about Koi and his family.” She bowed her head fractionally. “Li Zhen, Chairman of Dragon Home saw Koi and wanted him. My brother only saw a crippled child.”

“Li Zhen?” Dane said slowly. “What was he doing here?”

“I don’t know.” She looked away. “I need to go back to Earth.”

“I can give you a ride to one of the Elevators — a backdoor ride that your brother can’t track.”

Which just might get her downside in one piece. “Thank you,” she said.

-“If you ever need a place to go, this place is… more protected than it seems.” He smiled.”You’re welcome to come back.”

It had the feel of a royal invitation and she thought of the crowd that had so neatly intercepted the Dragon Home dogs. “I would like to return,” she said. “I would like to visit Koi again.” And you, she thought. I would like to know who you really are.

For a moment, he merely looked at her, then his eyes lightened slightly, and Ahni realized that she was feeling his smile. “Any time,” he said. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here in one piece, before I have to deal with your brother.”

Ahni followed him from the control center. This man was no low-level gene splicer. Realized he was offering her his hand. Took it. He didn’t quite tow her, but his unerring trajectories made it a whole lot easier to get around without leaving a trail of destruction in her wake. They traveled for nearly a half hour and the physical immensity of the axle began to oppress her. But it fed a small world.

“There’s a microG park at this end,” Dane said. “We’re almost there.”

“There” turned out to be a small lock, heavy and functional looking. Dane’s palm and retinal scan got them into a cramped cubicle with several flaccid suits like the shed skins of caterpillars hanging on the smooth walls. Air lock? She didn’t see any exit port. He touched a small flat-panel screen and a few moments later, she sucked in her breath as the wall shimmered and… melted.

“Smart alloy.” He glanced at her, a hint of a smile in his manner.

“I know.” She shook her head. “I’ve never seen it, that’s all.”

Molecules that migrated around made her nervous and she nudged herself gingerly through the opening after him, one eye on the silvery rim of the oval gap. Found herself in a small ship.

About time we took a run, a female voice said. The ship?

“Meet Miriam, my ship-core,” Dane said. “Miriam, be polite.”

He propelled Ahni gently into a maze of webbing that turned rather surprisingly from tangle into a hammock. Slid into a second hammock. “Head for the Pan-Malay backdoor, Miriam.”

Sneaky or open?

“Sneaky.”

The curved eggshell of the ship’s hull… melted … closed and a fine hum seeped through the webbing into her bones. Suddenly she had… weight. Up and down struggled briefly, but there were no right angles, no straight lines to help her out.

Dane’s hands moving among a three dimensional shimmer of holographic control icons. “We’re heading over to the Pan Malay Elevator. New Singapore is feuding with Dragon Home over a smuggling matter, so that may slow down Li Zhen’s dogs. And I’m licensed to use one of the private docks.”