Jeffrey Carver - Eternity's End

“I overrode the lock.” Tracy-Ace squinted at him. “You don’t look like you slept very well.” She got him a glass of water. “Should I come back later?”

He took a few sips, choking, as he tried to process her question. He thought of his dream and wondered: Are you the one who orders the tortures here?

// Hold, please. We’re working to compile relevant information for you… //

His head reeled. But indeed, some of the information he’d gained was starting to swarm into focus. This outpost was different; they used different methods of persuasion here. He knew more about Outpost Ivan than he’d have guessed possible in such a short time. In the midst of all that dreaming chaos, his implants had been processing the info-dumps that the flicker-tube and the study programs had given him, half a lifetime ago.

// We’ve been comparing past and present… //

(Wait a minute,) he thought with sudden bitterness, (are you saying that I dreamed all that stuff just so you could analyze it?)

// It helped us to establish a perspective, yes. //

Perspective, he thought, shaking his head. Christ.

Tracy-Ace was frowning. “Does that mean yes or no?”

He blinked. “Huh? What did you ask? Give me a minute here, I, uh—”

Tracy-Ace cocked her head. “Are you having a flicker-tube hangover, or do you always wake up this way?”

“Flicker-tube… hangover,” he mumbled. “That must be it.” He squinted, looking around for the time. “How long was I asleep?”

“About fourteen hours. Look, I’ll give you a few minutes to get showered. Then I think we’d better go get some breakfast into you.”

He nodded, rubbing his eyes. He suddenly realized that she’d changed clothes since he’d last seen her. She looked more than a little sexy, dressed in a short gold skirt over black tights, and a patchwork black-and-gold blouse. Her temple implants were flickering, drawing his eye. Now why did he think that made her look good? He drew a sharp breath, thinking of… Greta. This is the face of the enemy. Remember that.

“Great,” he said huskily. “Thanks.”

After she was gone, he tossed off the thin blanket and stepped into the mist-shower, aware of his nakedness as he wondered vaguely: what was one supposed to wear while touring a raider compound with a lady pirate, anyway?

Walking with Tracy-Ace, later, he discovered that the implants had done a pretty thorough job of organizing his headful of new information. He found himself with a silent guide in his head, producing tiny captions for him as they passed through the station.

// …To your nine o’clock, note the flicker-tubes leading to the new docking port construction site. Just under a thousand workers there… //

He glanced left. (New docking port? You mean they’re expanding this place?)

// And further to your left, a departure portal to the location of Outpost Ivan’s contribution to the Free Kyber colonizing fleet… //

Legroeder staggered a little, his heart pounding. He turned to peer back at the flicker-tube portal they had just passed. The colonizing fleet. He had managed to put that out of his mind.

“Something wrong?” Tracy-Ace asked, pausing. She’d been talking all this time, he had no idea about what.

He drew a slow breath. “No,” he said, forcing himself to rejoin her. “Nothing wrong.”

They continued walking.

Colonizing fleet. He was dying to ask her about it. Terrified of what she might say.

He hardly noticed as Tracy-Ace tugged him faster along the promenade, while he contemplated the thought of the Kyber worlds moving out of Golen Space, colonizing… the Centrist Worlds? No, that didn’t make sense.

It must be something else…

He only gradually became aware of the tingling in his arm, mostly after Tracy-Ace took her hand away to gesture toward a food-plaza. “Breakfast,” she said.

Breakfast. Legroeder tried to think what he had been feeling a moment ago. She’d been touching his arm—but as a polite gesture, or a personal touch—or was she making a data connection? He cocked his head at her. “Were you reading my mind a moment ago?”

Was that a twinkle in her eye? “And if I was?”

That startled him; he’d been expecting a denial. “Usually people ask first.”

She gazed appraisingly at him. “What if I said I was letting you read my mind?”

“Uh?”

Tracy-Ace raised her chin slightly. The gems around her eyes glittered with reflected light from the ceiling. “I thought it might be helpful,” she said. “During the download yesterday, I caught a few things about you—”

He drew back.

“Nothing profound. But I sensed you didn’t quite trust me. And if we’re going to—” she paused “—work together… I thought it might help if you knew more about me.”

Legroeder felt flattered and puzzled at the same time. Why, he started to ask, would you care if I trusted you?

Before he could voice the thought, he was startled by the appearance, inside his head, of two converging arcs of ruby light signifying new information about Tracy-Ace. She was twenty-seven years old, Free Kyber standard calendar. No immediate family, but a couple of cousins who might have been real biological relatives. Parents, from one of the old Kyber worlds: came to join the Free Kyber alliance, and died in a border dispute when she was four. (Oh.) Raised by the local childcare collective. Adept in the system; rose to the ranks of node administration before most of her contemporaries had even finished school. For three years, Node Alfa.

She was peering at him, emotions unknown.

Liked the challenge and the responsibility—and the proximity to power. Socially unattached, but willing to consider unusual liaisons. Had a fondness for rebels.

He felt his blood rise, wondering if he qualified as an “unusual liaison.” Or a rebel.

// That part of the analysis is ambiguous. Shall we probe further? //

(No, thank you.) He cleared his throat. But Tracy-Ace was talking—about him —and he’d missed the first part of it. Something about his being useful to the outpost.

“…have skills we need, and knowledge. Possibly for special operations. I believe my boss will want to talk to you, soon.” Tracy-Ace was studying him again. “I see you wondering. But part of my job is to evaluate people and situations, to look for the unexpected. To make judgments for the benefit of the outpost. And the Republic.” And the colonizing fleet? At the outer corner of her left eye, a tiny red bead glowed for a moment, as though she were photographing him for a security check. A smile flashed across her face. “Besides—I rather like you.”

He felt a moment of lightheadedness. Was it the implants, fracturing away all of the normal inhibitions? Everything seemed accelerated here. A momentary vision of Greta the Enforcer flickered across his mind, giving him a shiver.

If she noticed or understood his shiver, she didn’t show it. He was still trying to think of a response to her statement that she liked him. The face of the enemy .

“Let’s get some food,” she said. “Then there’s something I want you to see.”

He followed her through the food-plaza. The choices were some kind of bread, some kind of curd, and some kind of soft cereal. He took a small serving of each, plus a cup of murk. Tracy-Ace led him to a line of tables looking out over a huge balcony. No, not a balcony—a holo.

Legroeder stared out at an enormous view of the Flux. In the foreground were sprawling structures that he hardly noticed, because behind them were swirling gas clouds that seemed vast, almost galactic in scope. They might have been a bright emission nebula, a star-birthing grounds. But this was something different. His rigger’s intuition told him: this was a boundary layer. Not the boundary between normal-space and the Flux, which would have been impressive enough for structures to be anchored against. No, this—he felt with absolute certainty—was the transition zone between the familiar layers of the Flux where starships flew, and another place deeper and more mysterious, and far more perilous.