Sarah Zettel: Reclamation

Eric stepped around the drones. Over their whirring brushes, he could hear the staccato bursts of voices, the arrhythmic tread of booted feet, and all the other miscellaneous noises created by too many people in an enclosed space.

The safety doors at the end of the corridor pulled aside as he reached them. All at once, the still, station air filled with the smells of sweat, perfume, soap, and disinfectant and the babble of half-translated voices. People from a thousand light-years’ worth of climates and cultures crowded the warrenlike hallways, intent on accomplishing the business of their lives. There was even a gaggle of snake-bodied, long-limbed Shessel in seamless, vermilion atmosphere suits forcing a wriggling path between the humans.

Eric stayed in the threshold to give the Shessel a few extra centimeters to get past him. He folded his arms respectfully as they threaded their way by and received a slow nod in return.

It never ceased to amaze Eric how much easier it had been to make himself learn the Shessel’s courtesies than it had been to learn the ways of the other humans around him. The Shessel looked so different, it was easy to accept that their manners would be unlike anything he knew, but the other humans…in spite of the spectrum of colors and shapes they wore, they had looked so much like the People, he had expected them to act, in most ways, like the People.

Actually, he had expected them to be a bit more barbaric, having never lived under the laws of the Nameless Powers.

Eric felt his mouth bend into a small smile as he remembered his own naivete. He’d never even considered they might have separate names for themselves. In the Realm, they had just been “the Skymen.”

“Coming through!” Eric called, and the shifting crowd gave ground reluctantly. He shouldered his way between a pair of cold climate women in jumpsuits and a gowned and veiled man who was at least ten centimeters taller than he was. At last, he reached the transport track.

A thick crowd milled around a cylindrical kiosk that supported a screen posting the transport schedule. The snatches of conversation that Eric made out did not sound happy. He soon saw why. One of the four-seater “mini-boxes” waited near the kiosk, blocking the track. The screen on its door read RESERVED. Until the box moved, no public transport could use the track.

Eric ignored the scowls as he pressed forward to type his station account number on the board below the screen. The mini-box’s door lifted open. He folded himself into the seat and let the holding arms swing into place. The door closed and beneath his feet, the track cranked into life. The box trundled forward a few yards and, with a sharp lurch, began the long, slow descent into the main body of the station.

Haron was an old facility that had been not so much designed as thrown together over a series of decades, which made for narrow corridors, rich histories, and easily crowded facilities. One of the few things the engineers had done correctly from the start, as far as Eric was concerned, was separate the automated traffic from the foot traffic. The box shafts snaking through Karon’s piecemeal construction provided bone-rattling transportation, but it was better than trying to fight the pedestrian crowds in the maze of corridors.

Besides, the transit boxes carried comm terminals. Eric slid the board onto his lap and propped the screen back. He keyed open a line to the mail banks. If Dorias’s message was important, he might have left an extra copy in coded storage. No matter how skilled the sender, communications across light-years were tricky and there were lots of opportunities for scrambled data.

Entering his ID produced the heading MESSAGES WAITING with nothing under it. Eric called up the account log. Except for the two messages relayed to the U-Kenai, it showed no activity since his last trip in. Eric pursed his lips and requested the original receipt time for the message for Dorias.

NO MESSAGE RECEIVED FROM THE ENTERED ADDRESS

What? The box jostled him as it settled onto the level track and started backing up. Eric keyed the request in again, more slowly this time.

NO MESSAGE RECEIVED FROM THE ENTERED ADDRESS

Eric drummed his ringers on the edge of the board. Only two things could have happened. One, Dorias had erased his own tracks. Dorias had a lot to hide, but he wasn’t given to unwarranted panic. If he thought there was a chance that either he or Eric was being watched, he’d bounce the message around the net, drop it in the account, and wipe the trail. But he’d also check to see that it had arrived intact. In fact, he’d take precautions to make sure it had.

The other possibility was that somebody had tapped Eric’s account and erased the message.

But if that was what had happened, why had they left anything for him to read at all?

What if they were wiping the file right when it got sent to U-Kenai? The thought left a chill in the back of his mind.

Eric mentally replayed the partial message. As soon as you can, get a line open to the Unifiers. “ To the Unifiers,” not “to me.” Which was really strange. The Alliance for the Re-Unification of the Human Family normally did not want anything to do with anyone who worked for the Rhudolant Vitae. They held up the Vitae as the main stumbling block to their ideal of an “indivisible family of all those who trace their lines back to the Evolution Point.” Eric had never gotten around to asking why Dorias had taken up with them. Dorias was a lot of things, but he was only human when he chose to project that image from his home behind the terminals.

“Arrival in three minutes,” said the comm board. Eric pushed the board back into place. No time to check on any of this. All he could do was get through whatever the Vitae had for him as fast as possible and get back to the U-Kenai. From there, he could get a line to the Unifiers, and to Dorias, in relative safety. If necessary, he could crack Haron’s system open and find out who was playing games with him.

He had to work to keep that grim thought from showing in his expression as the mini-box opened and let him out in Data Exchange One.

The exchange was a relatively open courtyard. Circular work terminals, each big enough for five or six people to sit around comfortably, sprouted out of the deck plates. Curtains of blurred light shrouded eight of the tables, allowing whoever had rented them to work in privacy.

Eric searched the edges of the court until a flash of scarlet caught his eye. Ambassador Basq of the Rhudolant Vitae sat stiffly at the terminal farthest from all three pedestrian entrances to the exchange.

“Good Morning and also Good Day, Ambassador Basq.” Eric gave the full greeting before he moved to sit down at the terminal.

“Good Morning and also Good Day, Sar Eric Born,” Basq replied. “I trust you have freed yourself for our project.”

Eric studied Basq’s smooth face, trying to find something new in it, a hint of anxiety or eagerness. “It took some doing. At least two of our clients are going to be filing complaints about their deadlines.”

Basq didn’t even blink. “That was expected. Their contracts will be reassigned. All deadlines will be met. Are you ready to come with me?”

“Of course,” Eric said. “Which lines should I open?” He touched his fingertips to the power key for the terminal. The closest work pad and screen lit up, ready for his identification. From here, he could reserve intersystem network space for up to twenty-seven hours. It was an expensive maneuver, but it did guarantee his ID instant access to major data cores.

“This assignment will not require the networks.” Basq stood. “When you are ready, Sar Born.” His robes brushed Eric’s shoulder as he strode past.