A biological historian in the Home Cluster. His restorations of ancient medical mechanisms from the old Karik Colony had reconstructed the DNA sequences of the founder population. As stochastic analyses had long suggested, most of the founders were Unfit, possessed of genes for myopia, baldness, ovarian cancer. This revelation would ensure a bloodbath between the Karik Faithful and the Heretics. Perhaps the findings could be released in a generation or two, might even ameliorate the colony's fanaticism at some distant point in the future; but not now. A suicide was called for. As always, fooling the HC cops required special care. Fortunately, this historian's wife had just left him for a younger man. Mira had gone in with a pica-band shockwand, a nerve-override collar (they go both ways), even a box of plain old Terran cockroaches; all the classic instruments of torture. But the man had just jotted off the suicide note like he'd been writing it in his head. Put his neck in the noose with a silently mouthed "thank you." Some kind of Helsinki Syndrome madness or perhaps just a long time overdue.
And of course the good doctor Torvalli. There hadn't been any time to waste. With the big discovery in his hands, he might have told anyone. She'd touched his temple with the barest of caresses from a neural glove, the kind brain surgeons use. He stroked in less than a second. An excitable guy.
It was all still there in memory. Mira was no Oscar Vale. But the exercise didn't do much to lift her depression. A trail of murders wasn't much on which to hang your selfhood.
She snorted at her self-indulgence. Smiled thinly. At least she'd had her Darling for a while. At least it was a very big universe, perhaps with other darlings in it. At least she was headed to a bar.
The evening might not be a total loss.
When the elevator doors opened, the view was spectacular: four-meter windows alive with the searchlighted passage of a thousand birds, the swirling turrets of Malvir City arranged like a painting, a teak and ivory bar with twelve tiers of imports and a ready, linen-suited staff.
And sitting in the middle of it, altogether unexpected, his broad back as motionless as stone, her darling Darling.
The Planetary Tourism AI composed its missive to the Queen Favorwith a delicious sense of triumph.
The vessel was an old acquaintance, even a friend, the Tourism AI liked to think. Certainly, the Favor brought only the best sort of people to Malvir. The sort with deep pockets full of desperately needed hard currency. In the last decade, Malvir's lack of heavy elements had begun to undermine its standard of living, and its balance of trade was growing critical, listing entirely too far in the direction of imports. Tourism was the only counterbalance to the unstoppable drain of credit.
So when the Favor had requested a favor, the Tourism AI was only too happy to oblige.
The missive included a host of data: images of the new polar hiking complex, optimistic projections of desertification trends, comments on the Favor's essay-in-progress. And a short cover note:
With very little effort, your lovebirds have been «unexpectedly» reunited. I'm sure they'll have a marvelous time here on Malvir, where the air has wings and the sands are a blanket on the world. As always, a pleasure.
— MALVIR PLANETARY TOURISM
Chapter 12
THE SECOND DREAM
Exactly twenty-four hours before, in the observation bubble that crested the dorsal spine of the Queen Favor, Mira had wondered if Darling knew it was their last night together. He'd been quiet at dinner, forgoing his usual intense scrutiny of the overwrought cuisine. Perhaps his artificial intuition had warned him that she was leaving soon. Perhaps he was merely tired of her.
He stared at the warped stars mutely.
"Doing the math?" she asked him.
Darling smiled. Mira knew that he'd begun his existence as an astrogational AI. The wild vistas of metaspace must actually seem like home to him.
He did not answer, lost in some memory.
Mira curled into a corner of the huge couch they shared, smelling the warm, animal scent of its leather. They were alone in the observation bubble. She had co-opted the entire deck, using her god-given alchemical powers to turn it into her legal residence, temporary. The Queen Favor had not even perfunctorily objected.
Soft currents from the couch stilled Mira's mind. One shoulder rested against Darling's stony heat, a dull pain in its muscles soothed a little in that warmth. She remembered that the shoulder had been dislocated the night before in some impossible game testing her strength against his. The Favor's medical minions had treated the shoulder, but certain kinds of injuries lingered in the mind even after nanos and microwaves had healed the body.
Mira wondered if Darling carried old wounds the same way. If phantom limbs haunted the spaces where he'd replaced a shattered tendril, an outdated sensory device, or a cock with whose configuration he'd grown bored. Perhaps Darling was ghosted still by the starship that had once been his body, severed in its entirety when he'd transmigrated to a humanoid body. That might explain his silence here in the observation bubble, the whorls of metaspace storming all around them.
Mira settled into the warm leather, watching echoes of the tempest play inside her eyelids. Against her shoulder and through the medium of the couch, she felt the purr of Darling's metabolism. It surrounded her, dulling the pains of their lovemaking. Perhaps it would be their last night together, she thought again, drifting into sleep.
The oceans of this world are freshwater, but near the shore a translucent silt rich with zooplankton buoys the body like salinity.
She slips into the water's warmth just as the wind turns cold. The storm ahead looks like a children's picture book black cloud, puffy and exaggerated against the still-blue sky. She travels toward it, alone against the tide of swimmers returning to shore.
Mira swims away.
The water starts to chop, the steady breathing of her butterfly stroke interrupted. The waves force her to dog paddle. She turns around. Back on shore, the last of the pink kites has been reeled in. The life guards are busy cowling the creatures; none of them has seen her alone in the waves, so she swims a little farther out.
The sun is finally blotted by the black cloud.
She will wait out the storm. These summer storms are shortlived, passing like bad dreams. And swimming back toward shore would only tire her. It's hard enough staying afloat, struck from random directions by the hard, short waves. And the layer of planktonous silt seems to have been dispersed by the chop; she feels heavier now.
Less buoyant.
The backhanded slap of a wave catches Mira in the face, a tendril of water reaching down her throat. She coughs and sputters; flailing hands move instinctively to her face. Another wave buries her, but her eyes stay open, recording the momentary blackness underwater.
With a few hard kicks, she gains the surface and shakes her head, desperate to clear her vision. She has oriented herself, having spotted the receeding shore, when yet another wave comes crashing up at her, pushing into her nostrils. The water's fingers plunge cold and demanding into her chest, trying to pry open the sphincters that protect her lungs.
She coughs, sudden mucus welling up to seal her nose, shaking her head no, no, no…