Attanasio, AA - Solis

"The scootball's on a fast run," Bo says, pivoting on the balls of her bare

feet. "We'll talk later."

"We need a go now, right now," Shau Bandar insists, sliding closer. "Moot security is looking for the androne the jumper came in with. Remember?"

"Right, right. The Chiliad Man. Great clip. It had a strong run. We can replay when they catch him."

"Wait, Bo. Listen. The androne's going to take the Chiliad Man to Soils with the jumper. They're falling out now, as outlaws. I want to cover it. It'll be a hot series. Give me the go." Bo Rabana settles onto her heels, her cherubic face looking suddenly heavier. "Bandar, are you serious?"

"I know it's high risk-"

"You can die in the wilds!" Bo Rabana's pale shatterglass eyes grow wide. "I

don't want that on me. Do the interview."

"It's not on you, Bo. It's me. I need the credits-"

"Get a Pashalik job and triple your credits," the editor says, backing off. "Don't throw your life away."

"Bo," he says with a dark change of voice, "if Softcopy won't back me, I'll plug in to Erato. They'll snap up a trek story."

Rabana's shoulders sag and she steps closer, a stem crease between her startling eyes. "You don't know what you're asking." She turns her fierce gaze

on Mei. "You look like a hard-knuckler to me. Have you tried to tell this pastry puff what it's really like outside the bakery?"

"I don't give a damn what he does," Mei says in chilled, flat tones. "He has the link to the androne I came in with. Make him give me that, and I'm gone."

"I'm going on this trek," Shau Bandar insists. "It's a big story. It'll have a long run, and I want those credits. Do I get your go or not?"

"Once you leave Terra Tharsis," Rabana reminds him with a taut stare, "you can't come back."

"Sure, I can, Bo, if you give me a journalist's pass."

Bo Rabana lifts her dimpled chin defiantly. "I can't give you a pass, wise guy, until I file your assignment-and once we file, Moot security will be on to your plan to help the rogue androne. You'll never get out. The only way you can take this trek is cold-no pass."

The reporter gives a hapless shrug. "You can file after I leave."

"There's no guarantee that will be accepted," Bo retorts sourly. "You may never be able to come back-even if you survive the wilds, which I doubt, pastry puff. Do the interview. We'll hash out other assignments for you. You'll make your house payments." She turns away and bobs off, calling behind, "Stay sweet as you are, Jumper Nili. I've got a hot run going on the scootball. We'll touch up later."

"I'm doing the trek, Rabana'" Shau Bandar shouts, though inside he's trembling. "Do I get the go from you, or do I plug into Erato?"

"It's your scrawny ass, Bandar," the editor yells without looking back.

"Top credit? Full series?" he calls through a triumphant laugh that carries off his initial fright.

"If you live to collect," she shoots back. From the prospect of the knoll where he crashed, Buddy stares at the dark towers. Wide and mingled as mountains, with sunny windswept pieces of sky squeezed between them, they fill

space majestically. In their vitreous black depths, laser lines streak the paths of droplifts. Silver-spun threads of skim paths tangle around their bases, and flyers star-glint in the pellucid air of their heights.

Of course, he is thinking that those are the heights from which he has

fallen-and within those vitreous black depths are the spaces where he has lived with the deathless ones alone together. Closer, Munk is telling of The Laughing Life and the viperous Aparecida, and how Jumper Nili gambled her life on his C-P program. And though Buddy is listening, he is listening deeper to the freedom of his nightmare, the fright dream that strapped him in to night wings for a day glide and that sent him plummeting into the incalculable abyss.

Buddy looks up at Munk and nods at the courage that it took for this androne to be here in the trees' quiet drizzle of sunlight, telling his story so

matter-of-factly, his silicon mind wrapped around memories of near-death and madness as if oblivion and chaos shared a neutral equality with life and reason.

He nods. Overhead, in the lordly blue distances, flyers spin on rings of wind, milling the emptiness.

4

The Avenue of Limits

WHEN MUNK FINISHES HIS STORY, BUDDY STANDS AND CASTS A long, sweeping look at the parkland with its willow manes, hackled reeds, glassy pond, and, all around them, wheels of sunlight riding among the trees. "After a lifetime in space, this must all seem very strange to you."

"Not at all. My C-P program is packed with terrene images I downloaded from the archives." He listens for the crystal atonalities of the city's silicon

mind, and satisfied that the andrones he detects are not near, he tastes the air with his sensors. The wind-woven and complex organic chemistries of heather,

leaf rot, pond mulch, and lawn dew mingle the stoichiometry of their busy atoms in his mind's eye. But he ignores that and focuses instead on the bird raptures in the ferny holts, the cygnets gliding shyly across the pond, the solitary and strung-out clusters of people strolling along the mown fields. "It is beautiful," he declares, feeling a soft elation at actually being here in the leafy, loamy moment.

"Take this beauty with you," Buddy advises. "This is the Maat's jewel, cut and polished by them. It doesn't get any better."

"Where are we going?"

Buddy juts his jaw to the side as he ponders this. "Now that I know about Jumper Nili, it's clear you can't just take Mr. Charlie and march across the wilds to Solis." He sinks his mind into the spangled sunlight on the pond and makes a decision. "I'll take you to the exurbs of Terra Tharsis. From there, you can contact Jumper Nili when she leaves the city. Come on."

Munk follows Buddy up the chine of the hill, past the last chrome wisps of the dissolving night wings lacing the shrubs, and they enter a thick grove, where daylight dims to dusk. The cushiony leaf duff beneath their feet silences their passage, and Munk looks through the gloom of hawthorn and oak moss for the park. Heraldic sun shafts gleam like spectral crowns high in the forest canopy, but

the radiant threads that pierce the dense undergrowth reveal only confounding reaches of bracken, vetch, and dodder vines among the pillared trees.

Ahead, the cold, crystal chimes of the silicon mind grow louder. "Buddy, there's an androne ahead."

"Yes," Buddy confirms, not looking back as he shoulders among the clatter and scarves of dried branches and vines. "There's security at every droplift that exits the city."

"Security?" Munk stops in the gray light pooling among the trees. "I don't dare confront security andrones. They will try to take Mr. Charlie."

"Yes." Buddy turns around in the burdock and nettles and holds out his arms. "Give him to me."

"Why?"

"The plasteel capsule is disputed property," Buddy says, leaning through the weeds. "You removed it from the Moot, and security will apprehend you if they find you with it. But, since it's not stolen goods, there's no crime in my taking it out of the city. You follow after me."

"I don't understand." Munk scans Buddy for signs of prevarication, increased bloodrush, sweat scent, blink rate, and voice-pattern stress and detects none. "Won't I be arrested?"

"Security won't stop you if you don't have Mr. Charlie. You committed no crime."

"Obstructing a legal proceeding, threatening violence, absconding with evidence, destruction of property-" Munk's voice drones nervously in the blurred shadows of the estranged sun.

Buddy shakes his head. "The fault lies with the Moot for placing an androne of

your capability in the presence of property that the court took from you. I know the law. The court misjudged your C-P program and can't condemn you for being true to yourself."