Horizons

FIFTEEN

THE SAME NATIVE COURIER WITH THE CANTONESE FACE arrived at Ahni’s hotel room. He greeted her with a respectful bow and that quicksilver glimner of an internal smile that she rememmbered from her previous trip with him. They didn’t speak as the Courier led her to his ship, and in seemingly no time, the Courier docked his craft in the familiar bay and popped the winged hatch for her. “Thank you,”

she said as she climbed out of the craft. “I hope you can bring your family up here.” She bowed to him.

He returned it with a smile.

The antechamber beyond, with its eggshell colored walls and emmbroidered silk hanging was empty.

Ahni slipped off her shoes, her feet caressed by the woven carpets. The room gave her no message as she crossed the room to the inner door. She wondered if something had detained Li Zhen or if this was some sort of interesting test. The door opened for her, admitting her to the garden beyond. Today, the sky was streaked with thin white clouds and a flower-scented breeze kissed her cheeks. A gold and crimson dragon kite danced on the wind and she admired the reality of the holo for a moment, before she reallized that it was real, that she was seeing a small kite up there beeneath the artificial sky. It must have some kind of propulsion system, although the delicate construct of silk and light wood might have been one of the kites she had flown as a child. She followed the barely visible line of the string down to the other end of the small garden.

A woman sat lotus-legged on a mat of woven bamboo, laughing up at the boy who held the kite string.

About five, maybe, he watched the kite, rapt. Chinese, she noted absently, and felt a tiny shock of recognition as he followed the kite’s dance with milky, blind-looking eyes that seemed to shine in his too-long, tawny face. A cap of embroidered crimson silk covered his hairless scalp, and his arms and legs seemed a little too long for his body, too thin and dellicate to be human. They… curved. Just slightly.

Another Koi. Not just in New York Up, then.

As if she had spoken out loud, the child turned to look at her. He smiled, and she felt the pressure of his curiosity. She smiled back, summoning a vision of Koi shooting through the NYUp garden, wondering if he would catch it.

The woman spied her and leaped to her feet, full of alarm and dismay. She grabbed the boy’s arm and started to pull him away, the kite abandoned now, dancing erratically beneath the sky that was really a ceiling. But he twisted free and ran to Ahni, awkward and coltish on his too long, too fragile, bendable legs.

“Where?” His Mandarin was whispery, raspy, a bit like the sound of wind through grass. “Can I play with him? Is he here?”

”We have to go. I am sorry.” The young woman… a native by her looks, but not nearly as extreme as the child… tugged at his arm, a metallic tinge of fear edging her words. “I apologize. I did not know that Li Zhen expected company, please excuse us.” She had a grip on the boy’s arm now, but he resisted and she seemed reeluctant to use force.

“It’s all right.” Ahni smiled reassuringly. “I don’t mind. I am pleased to meet you. Your kite is very wonderful,” she said to the boy.

He shrugged. “Where does he fly like that?” he asked in his papery, grass-wind voice. “I want to do that.”

“I am so sorry.” The woman’s resolve hardened. “He is… as you see… a tragedy.” Her expression challenged Ahni to disagree, but near panic still surged beneath her apparent calm. “Come now,” she said to the boy, “And I will take you fiying.”

That got his attention although it was tinged with skepticism, and the woman hustled him away, vanishing through a small door hidden by a pair of miniature cypress trees. Ahni stared thoughttfully at the kite bumping along the ‘sky’ and the woven mat where the woman had sat. She reached for the dangling kite string, gave it a sharp, short tug. It tumbled instantly to her feet, the red and yelllow silk tails fluttering like broken wings, to land in a puddle of bright silk at her feet. She picked it up, noticing the carved bones of real wood that formed it. Someone had made this, carefully and well. The propulsion system was small enough not to be visible to casual inspection. Electromagnetic, she guessed, interacting with hardware in the ceiling/sky.

“I apologize. My garden is messy for your visit.”

She turned to face Li Zhen. He must have come in from some other hidden doorway and he was flustered. “How surprising to find a kite up here.” She smiled at him. “Very ingenious.”

“A touch of home.”

A tiny spike of pain/anger with that word ‘home’? Ahni put on her sweetest and most unaware expression. “How can one live here and not be homesick for all the things we so take for granted on Earth?”

“Please.” He managed a smile. “Some tea? Huang Ahni, you are far more than a mere delicate blossom meant to beautify some man’s garden. Shall we talk clearly?” He offered her his arm.

She masked her uneasiness with a smile. “Clear talk is always the straightest path,” she said and allowed him to usher her from the garden and the crumpled kite. They entered his private chamber again, with its mother-of-pearl inlaid furniture and the bamboo growing in its celadon pot.

“I was charmed to find a child playing in your garden,” she said as Li Zhen bent to pour from the pot that steamed gently on the low table.

The tiny jerk of his hand was almost unnoticeable. Anger? Fear? Love? A little bit of all of that? Anhi kept her expression unaware as he handed her an eggshell fragile cup of golden tea.

“Ah, the child,” he said at last, as he filled a cup for himself. “Such a tragedy for the parents at his birth.

He is the child of a friend, badly deformed and retarded, but simple things delight him.”

Lie. An interesting one.

“So I allow her to bring him to the garden. Why should I keep something just for myself?” He smiled at her, more confident now, sipped his tea.

Anhi smiled, too, her face expressing her admiration for someeone who was able to share with those beneath him, the flowery taste of the tea filling her mouth.

A young woman, her long hair braided into a tight knot at her neck, brought in a tray of sliced bamboo shoots and cooked green soybean pods along with two pairs of lacquered chopsticks. This was the woman, the native, who had been playing with the child in the garden. Ahni glanced at her and turned back to Li Zhen, but she kept her attention focused on the woman. She set the tray on the table, her eyes downcast, bowed stiffly and nervously, and withhdrew, carefully not looking at Ahni.

Ahni weighed the value of asking him outright if the boy in the garden was the reason he had tried to kidnap Koi. But she would only have one question to slip past his guard. After that, his armor would be in place and they would merely fence. He was as good a fencer as she was. Even though she had the advantage of her E ratting. “So you grow bamboo here, too?” She picked up the choppsticks and selected a fat, chambered slice. It crunched between her teeth, thick and crisp, as succulent as the best grown in Taiwan. “Very nice,” she said. “I am impressed.”

“It is a strain developed for shoot production.” Li Zhen waved a hand, but her praise warmed him.

“Bamboo in particular seems to thrive in a micro gravity environment. A taste of home.” He lifted his cup.

Question there, not a statement. Ahni lifted her own cup. “Perhaps,” she said, and the word caught her by surprise. But this was not the time to look too deeply into her unconscious responses. She picked up a soybean pod in her chopsticks, deftly sucking the fat beans from the pod. “China gains power against the NAA,” She said. “What is it that you gain from the arrival of CSF on New York Up?”

He felt a moment of triumph, but gave her a face of innocence, his eyebrows arching. “I am sorry.” He spoke in careful and precise Mandarin. “I had not heard that the World Council intended to occcupy our sister platform.”

Ha. “My brother is your agent there, creating friction there between native residents and tourists.” She let her Taiwan accent dominate. No formality here, just truth. “But his presence has been detected, so the usefulness of that approach has been blunted.” She smiled. “The spear in the dark has the sharpest edge.

Especially when it comes from behind.”

“There is truth in that old saying.” Li Zhen smiled, his face still fixed in an expression of innocent surprise.

“Why would I wish your brother to evoke violence?”

“Because you can then go before the World Council and offer to stabilize the platforms. The history of Dragon Home supports your claim, and of course, China will muster its votes to back the proposal in the Council. I suspect you will work for the World Council, in name only.” She smiled gently. “You will have two platforms to rule. Will this be your empire?”

He had himself under control by the time she asked her quesstion, but he had not been able to hide his response to her words at the outset, and he knew he had given himself away. Irony tinged his smile and he bowed. “Your father has underestimated you,” he said softly, his dark eyes on her face. “He has forgotten that performance can be as important as the pedigree of the race horse.”

“Thank you.” Ahmi gave him a crooked smile. “I will not take that as an insult.”

“It’s praise. I know you feel that.” He rose to his feet, supple and lithe. Half a head taller than her with his Northern genes, he looked down at her, his expression enigmatic, reflecting the complex shift and flow of his emotions.”You’re right. I should not play word games with you.” He grinned, his confidence bright as sunnlight. “It will happen just so. We are separate up here. We need to rule ourselves.”

” You need to rule,” she murmured. He was not going to meet with Dane.

“I’m the best one to do it.” He shrugged and touched her cheek with one fingertip. “Our child would have enormous potential,” he said softly. “With our intelligence and your ability. It’s not just my own power I want. I want dynasty, too. Why not? This world is mine. I would share it with you.”

Now that was a forthright proposition, Ahni thought. Li Zhen’s desire prickled across her skin and tickled between her legs.

“Why not?” His eyes fixed on hers, bright with desire and his vision of tomorrow. “I offer more than you will ever have on Taiwan, even as heir to your father.”

“That is my mother’s dream for me. She traded her life for it.” Ahni shook her head. “I cannot walk away from that obligation, honored cousin.” She stood behind the carved screen. The native woman, her pain sharp as a knife. Ahni met Li Zhen’s eyes. “I do not think our paths lie together,” she said softly.

For an instant anger boiled behind his eyes, then he banished it. Shrugged. “One cannot see beyond the curve of the road,” he said lightly. “Paths diverge and then meet again.” He turned away to pour more tea.

“From what you say, the North American Alliance’s platform will be a dangerous place, especially for a visitor.” He offfered her the full cup.”You will be safer as my guest.”

“That is thoughtful of you.” She made no move to take the cup. “But I will be responsible for my own safety.”

He shrugged, a wealth of meaning in the lift of both shoulders. “I will have Jin An show you to a room. I look forward to showing you the gardens here, with our bamboo that grows so luxuriously and our fish pools. Waterfalls in minimal gravity are quite lovely.”

Ahni stifled her anger, kept her face smooth.

“How intimate.”

The words, knife-edged with fury, made them both start. Xai!

Ahni turned to face him as he strode into the room.

“We had words over this before esteemed brother.” He faced Li Zhen, fists clenched at his sides. “I assume you have forgotten them?”

“I have not, but perhaps you did not listen the first time.” Li Zhen faced the younger man, the ice of his own anger pitted against Xai’s heat.”You seem to have made your involvement visible. That was clumsy.”

“It wasn’t my doing.” Xai sent Ahni a cold, venomous look. “But perhaps you know all about that. I doubt you, esteemed brother. I doubted you before, but you were so smooth that I listened to you. I made a mistake. I do not make the same mistake twice.” Turning on his heel, he strode through the door.

Li Zhen looked after him, anger and distress hidden beneath the mask of his neutral face. He looked swiftly at Ahni. “We can talk more later.”

Ahni hurried after him as he followed Xai but at the door to the chamber, the same slender, native-looking boy appeared to block her path. She seized his hand quickly, lightly, prepared to twist him out of her way, use his surprise and mass against him. But he reacted with lightning speed to pull her just a hair out of balance. Beefore she could recover, he had spun her backward, so that she fell heavily against the wall inside. The door whispered closed.

Ahni rubbed her shoulder where she had hit the wall. She had let herself believe that the elongated native phenotype meant a lack of strength. Angry at herself, because she had walked knowingly into this trap, she paced the chamber. Spacious by platform standards, it offered only two routes out-the door by which Xai and Li Zhen had exited, and the small service door behind the screen. She tried her access, but the room requested a password in polite Mandarin. Her link did not work, either. A security shell. Of course.

Li Zhen’s words suggested that Xai was working on his own, allied only loosely with Li Zhen’s cause.

Ahni thought about the careful planning of the riot that had killed the tourist. Xai tended to think and act like a loose dragon. The orchestration, the careful cooordination that had gone into the planning of the infiltration of the Con, the careful agitation to create violent eruptions at just the right time and place…

this demonstrated a subtlety of thought that her brother utterly lacked.

If not Li Zhen, who was behind this? And why?

She had to get these new pieces to Dane. Ahni closed her eyes, despair nipping at her, feeling as if she had taken two steps forward and now, three back. “Jin An.” She drew a slow breath, making her tone conversational, relaxed. “It’s up to you to let me out the service door.”

No response. No sign that anyone was listening and why would she be?

“I am not going to become Li Zhen’s wife, or lover, or breeding female. I have business in NYUp that will make that quite clear.”

Still no sign of listening, but Ahni wouldn’t feel her response unless Jin An was pressed to the door, as she had been while she and Li Zhen had talked. The room would certainly be wired for listening. Ahni drew another slow breath and dropped briefly into Pause, summoning the image of the boy and the woman from short term memmory. She called up an image of Li Zhen and ran a quick comparison.

Ahni opened her eyes and threw the dice.

“He’s Li Zhen’s son. And yours. Children like him are being born all over the platforms. It’s not deformity. Not mutation. He has… adapted. Li Zhen will see this if he only looks. I will show him. If you let me out now, I will make Li Zhen look at the other children… see them for what they are. If the CSF arrive on New York Up and I am not there, I may not ever be able to do that. And your child will always remain… deformed. And hidden.” She loaded the words with truth.

No response except the soft breath of air moving into and out of the room.

Then… the door behind the screen whispered open. Ahni crossed the room in a few brisk steps, moving fast before the woman could change her mind.

She stood just beyond the doorway.

Ahni met the woman’s dark, bitter gaze. “Have you taken him to play in the hub garden?”

She shook her head.

“You should do that. He’ll discover that he is much better in microG than you or I will ever be. He’s better,” she said softly. “Don’t you see? It’s evolution. It just isn’t happening the way it has always happened on Earth.” She shrugged. “Why should it?”

Jin An looked away, some of the bitterness muted into thoughtfulness, the darkness unmitigated.

“Li Zhen has already glimpsed the truth,” Ahni said. “He already knows. Why his son is as he is. He’s just afraid to let himself acknowledge that. I’ll make him do that.” A promise. The woman heard it, lifting her eyes to meet Ahni’s, a tiny spark in their depths. She nodded, gestured with her chin.

Ahni approached the door she had indicated. It opened and Ahni stepped through, adrenaline pumping now, heart beating fast. How long before Li Zhen finished with Xai and came back? Dropping momentarily into Pause, she summoned up the path from dock to private chamber. She needed a corridor to take her to the right. Doors lined the carpeted corridor, without traffic, private space, she guessed.

One door was painted a soft blue rather than the creamy tan of the others. She touched it and opened to reveal a corridor. Lucky guess. Now if it led to the main corridor she could find her way back to the dock. She didn’t run, because Security might notice a running person. She reached the end of the connecting corridor. Main corridor? Maybe. She had nothing but direction to guide her no landmarks at all to tell her where she was in the maze of linking corridors. Turned right.

And her luck ran out. Around the curve in the of the corridor in the distance, a figure appeared, feet visible first as he descended the ‘slope’ of the skin level corridor. Frantically, Ahni touched the doors on either side of the corridor. Access? Access? She had no password. Too late now. She straightened, adopted a casually purposeful posture. The clothes weren’t Li Zhen’s and didn’t seem to be a uniform either.

The figure appeared fully, halted briefly, then waved and hurrried toward her.

Kyros!

”Need a lift?” He reached her, his weathered and aged-ugly face crinkled into a thousand folds of laughter.

“How did you get here?”

“I saw you leave your hotel.” He winked. “I know that Courier. Dragon Home’s head dragon owns him.

I figured it might just be easier to get in here than to leave. So I called in a few favors. Quite a few.”

Kyros had her by the elbow and was steering her down the corridor. “Good timing. We have about…”

He glanced at a tiny screen inset into his forearm. “Seven minutes and thirty five seconds.”

“Before what?”

“Before Security finds the problem in their system, fixes it, and sees us.”

Somebody owed him some very large favors.

Kyros paused in front of a door which opened, admitting them to the garden where she had first seen the boy. The abandoned kite lay where Li Zhen had dropped it.

The boy knelt beside it. Waiting.

“Damn,” Kyros muttered.

The boy smiled at Ahni — you are slow. Rose awkwardly on those too-long feet.

“Ignore him,” Kyros murmured. “We don’t want him yelling for help.”

“He’s coming with us.” She swept her arm around him at the same instant he leaped, so awkward in gravity, up onto her hip. She didn’t stagger at all, remembered the fragile, too-light feel of Koi’s body in her arms. “Don’t ask, we do this. Trust me, okay?’

“Who the hell are you to trust?” But Kyros was already striding on, urgency a sharp stink in his wake, heading for the door that led to the vestibule and the dock. She followed, leaning to balance the boy’s weight, counting down the time he’d given her. One minute and twenty seconds left, as the lock cycled behind them.

The ship waiting was ugly, matte black, battered, and scarred. Bigger than the Courier’s little shuttle, but not huge, squat and nothing sleek about it. A hole appeared in the side as if the metal melted away. She ducked through, slinging the boy onto the curved inside hull, looking around for seats or webbing.

“Sit. Over there.” Kyros jerked his head, flung himself into a webbing sling like the one she had seen in Dane’s ship.

She sat, pulled the boy against her as the ship quivered beneath them. Sudden acceleration shoved them forward and Ahni clutched the boy as he started to tumble, hung on as the direction of the accceleration changed suddenly. Now a hand flattened them to the hull and she felt the ship leap beneath them, like a horse leaping into full gallop. The boy gasped for breath and for a few moments, even Ahni struggled with the feel of suffocation. Then the hand let go.

Without webbing to anchor them, they drifted, Ahni still clutching the boy by the hand, struggling briefly with up and down. The boy gasped, but this was the sound of delight, not struggle. “Flying,” he said, and his smile was like a small sun in the ship.

“Okay, we’re hiding in a nice little shadow where nobody can see us.” Kyros twisted around in his hammock, his face cold as a winter desert. “Explain to me why this is a good thing.” His chin pointed a the boy who had pushed himself off from the hull and was drifting across the small space, radiating delight. “I can take you back and probably earn a fat payoff.” His eyes narrowed as he regarded Ahni.

“This is Li Zhen’s son.” Almi spoke in English. No, the boy didn’t understand the language. “He’s a lever.

Dane needs it.”

For a moment, Kyros merely stared at her, but his reaction made her wince. “He looks like Dane’s pets.” A shadow of doubt colored his tone. “He’s right, then? About… them?”

“I think so.” Almi shrugged. “Got another explanation?”

“You sure act like you know what you’re doing.” Kyros regarded her thoughtfully, coldly. “Out in the Belt, there’s a sort of natural selection about that. If you do know what you’re doing, you’re alive. If you don’t, you’re not.” His eyes narrowed. “I think I’d feel a lot better right now if you were a Belter.”

Ahni shrugged and didn’t look away, although the cold of the void beyond that hull chilled her spine. He had options. Sell her back to Li Zhen. Toss her out of the ship and sell the boy back to Li Zhen. Or take them to Dane. She relaxed her muscles to readiness, drew a single calming breath and… waited.

Kyros finally looked away. “You might have made it in the Belt. Maybe.” He turned his back on her, ignoring the boy who zipped past his head, surprised and delighted with the result of his sudden push-off.

Ahmi snagged him, spilled his momentum with a rebound off the hull and held on as acceleration’s hand gently added weight. “Relax, Little Brother,” she said to the sharp bloom of his disappointment.”You’ll get to fly all you want pretty soon.”

Kyros made a short, sharp sound of disapproval. “Nobody’ looking for us yet anyway. I’m dumping you into Dane’s lap and then I’m heading back out to the Belt. Politics down here are too damn complicated.

And I don’t want to be around when Zhen disscovers his kid is missing and starts looking.”

“The boy’s not missing.” Ahni braced herself and the boy as the ship maneuvered. “He already knows where to look for him.”

“I hope for Dane’s sake you’re really as right as you think you are. You scare me.”

Ahni shrugged and didn’t tell him that she hoped she was, too. They were docking. A gentle impact vibrated through the hull and they were drifting again. A few moments later, the hull melted open and Ahni found herself in Dane’s private dock, the one from which he had ferried her to the Elevator.

Years, ago, she thought. In another life.

“Come on.” She took the boy firmly by the hand and towed him from the ship. “Just let me do it for now,” she said as he tried to swim, thrashing ineffectively. “You’ll figure all this out really fast. I have a good teacher for you.”

“Show me.” He was quivering with excitement, his Mandarin sloppy with hurry. “He is waiting?”

Was Koi waiting? If so, Li’s son was a whole lot more sensitive than Ahni was.

But no, when the lock cycled and opened to the green-white glare of light and plants no Koi drifted, grinning.

No reason he should be, but it bothered her. The boy was pulling off his embroidered slippers, his cap aleady lost, stripping out of his jacket to leave him naked from the waist up, skinny, his toes, yes, as long and prehensile as Koi’s. He pushed off, clumsy, arrowed away to crash into a tube planted to something leafy and green. Shreds of plant tissue drifted away and a couple of the small frog-things skimmed away in upset. The boy squealed a high, thin note of pure delight. Undisturbed by his collision he caught the tube as he rebounded and pushed again, rocketing off in a new direction.

“Wait up, kid. You’ll trash the whole place.” Kyros zoomed after him, grabbed one of the boy’s ankles and spilled momentum on another tube, managing not to do too much damage in the process. “Go slow,”

he said sternly and let go of the wriggling, protesting boy. “Easy!”

“He doesn’t speak English.” Ahni laughed. “Slow,” she said in Mandarin. “Careful!”

Chastened, he pushed off almost timidly and drifted on a wobbling course between tubes, experimenting with hands and feet. He’d get the hang of it quickly, Ahni guessed. Already his toes wer spreading, grasping as he pushed off from the tubes.

“Zhen’s son, huh?” Absently, Kyros snagged the drifting shoes and the cap. “God help ’em all. Especially Dane.”

“Thanks,” she said. “For coming after me. I’m not sure how I would have gotten off Dragon Home.”

“Me neither.” Kyros gave her a crooked smile. “Zhen keeps a really tight hold on things over there.

Good Security. If you don’t have a membership card.”

“I’m glad you do,” Ahni said, and meant it. “I owe you.”

“Oh, yeah, you do. Don’t worry.” His face folded into a grin. “I’ll remind you.”

“Kyros—” Ahni caught a nearby tube to halt her drift. It had been newly planted and she couldn’t identify the tiny green sprouts. “Is Koi Dane’s son?”

“Not by blood, if that’s what you mean.” Kyros let himself drift, his expression thoughtful. “But yeah, Koi is his kid. That’ why I haven’t been able to pry him loose and get him back out to the Belt.” He shrugged.

“Although he could take the kid. Koi would love it out there, bet you. Nah.” Kyros wrinkled his grin at her. “I figured he liked men, then I figured sex just wasn’t much interest to him at all. Guess I was wrong.”

He leered at her.

She didn’t blush and tried Dane’s link. No response. “Contact me,” she messaged. “Kyros, can you go look for him? It’s critical.” She pushed off, following Li Zhen’s son, intensely aware of the time that had passed while she was on Dragon Home. Aware o£ Koi’s continued absence. Where was he? “Maybe he can use this litttle lever of ours before the CSF get here.”

“It’s a big can.” Kyros sounded doubtful. “I’ll try.”

“Kyros?” Ahni spilled momentum on a tube planted to tomatoes, waited for the Belter to turn.”You said nobody was looking for us, on the way over. If they had been… would they have found us?”

“Depends on how good the looker was. I was shadow skipping. I’m pretty good at it… but if someone’s looking…” He shrugged.”You gotta cross the light once in awhile.”

“Shadow skipping?”

“You got spots where the sensor net can’t look.” He moved impatiently, ready to push off.”You got a lot of junk in this orbit now. Real mess. Lots of shadow, but most of it too small to really hide in if someone’s looking for you. But you can make it tough for ’em.”

“What about rocks?” She tilted her head. “Could you drop a small asteroid down to this level?”

Kyros looked away.”You know what happens if you do that up here?” he asked softly.”You fall out of your ship. If Earth got to thinking Belters were riding rocks down, Earth would get real upset. So we sort of have our own little system for dealing with it up here. If you’re clumsy enough to get caught. Natural selection, reemember?” He still wasn’t looking at her. “You could sure make a hot profit, bringing the whole dirty iceball down here. Bringing it down as refined ice or metal is like hauling the ocean in a bucket.”

Well, now she knew why Dane couldn’t square Kyros with Laif.

“Don’t get caught,” Ahni said as she kicked off.

“Oh, I don’t do it anymore,” Kyros said with a laugh. “Dane tells me I’m too important to risk my butt. I haul… other stuff.”

She didn’t entirely believe him, but it wasn’t important right now.

If the CSF hadn’t landed yet… there might still be a chance to stop this. Once Li Zhen came looking for his son.