“’Bots? Like, android amahs?”
“Who do you think made your bed?” Svengali carried on down the passage.
“Human spaces and human furniture are built for roughly human-shaped people. They could put something like an industrial fab in each room, or even make everything out of structured matter, but many people get nervous when they’re too near smart stuff, and having mobile valet ’bots on trolleys is cheaper than providing one per room.”
“Uh-huh. So you’re telling me that everywhere in the ship is, like, connected to everywhere else? Using old-fashioned doors and passages and ducts?” She was so wide-eyed that he decided it could only be sarcasm.
“If you design so that it’ll only work with smart-matter utilities, something dumb will happen. That’s the fifteenth corollary of Murphy’s Law, or something. This ship is supposed to be able to get home with just a human crew, you know. That’s partly why people are willing to pay for it.” A side door opened onto a spiral staircase, cobwebby steps of nearly translucent aerogel ascending and descending into a dim blue mist in each direction. “Up or down, m’lady?”
“Up, first.”
“You realize we’re only able to do this because I’ve got a badge,” Svengali remarked, as they climbed. The kid had long legs and was in good shape. He had to push himself to keep ahead of her.
“I guessed.” She snuffled something that might have been a laugh. “It’s still cool. What are those guts for?”
He followed her finger to the peristaltic pipes in the recess that ran alongside the stairs. “Probably semisolid waste disposal. They can reconfigure this stairwell into a tunnel if there’s a major gravity outage, you know.”
“Isn’t that unlikely?”
“Probably.” He carried on climbing for a bit. “Doesn’t it worry you to be climbing a staircase inside what is basically a skyscraper sitting on top of a stasis chamber containing a twenty billion-ton extremal black hole?”
“I assume” — she paused for breath — “that if anything went wrong with it, it would all be over too fast to worry about.”
“Probably.” He paused. “That’s why most of the crew — not me, I’m with Entertainments and Diversions, I mean the black gang, engineering ops — are along. In case something goes wrong, and they have to improvise.”
“Well, isn’t that comforting to know.”
More sarcasm from Wednesday. It ran off him like water off a duck’s back. Here we are.
“Where?” She gawked past his shoulder at the boringly ordinary-looking door.
“Here.” He smirked. “The backstage entrance to the live action theater on C deck. Want to see a performance? Or maybe the theater bar?”
“Wow.” She grinned. “Send in the clowns!”
With a flourish, Svengali passed her a red nose. Then they went inside.
PREPARING FOR GHOSTS AND DOGS
Rachel Mansour, Commissioner, UN Standing Committee on Interstellar Disarmament (Investigative Branch), walked slowly down the intimidatingly wide steps in front of the building of the Ministry of Cosmic Harmony. Behind her, huge marble columns supported a massive mirror-finished geodesic hemisphere that loomed over the neighborhood like a giant cyborg turtle. A sea of people flooded around her across the Plaza of Public Affairs, office workers and bureaucrats going about their daily work between the offices in the ministry basements, and the scattered subdepartments and public malls at the other side of the open space. The Eastern Palace squatted to her right, a pink-and-white brick mansion that had been converted to a museum to the Hegemony and the people’s revolution that had overturned it more than a century earlier, here in Sarajevo, capital of the planetary empire.
She felt light-headed, an effect of coming out into the chilly open air after her claustrophobic interview with the subminister in charge of security arrangements for foreign embassies. After twenty-six days aboard the Gloriana, everything from the unprocessed air to the color of daylight seemed peculiar. There was perhaps just a small amount of gravitational adjustment, too — and a head-spinning load of mild culture shock.
She marched down the steps and out onto the plaza. Vendors selling spiced cocoa drinks, stir-fried octopi, and bootlegged recordings of old public executions tried to attract her attention. She ignored them. He didn’t say no, she thought, remembering the subminister frowning ear to ear behind his desk: he wasn’t very happy. “You are telling me that our security is inadequate?” he’d challenged her.
“No, I’m telling you that three other diplomatic security corps failed, in series, and two of them were forewarned. Your people might be better, but I hope you’ll forgive me for not taking it on trust.”
“Go ahead with your scheme, then, if the Muscovites agree. We will of course deny all knowledge if it goes wrong.”
It was a step up from what she’d have gotten a generation ago, but New Dresden wasn’t that bad. They had learned the enlightened self-interest meme here, and picked up the idea of a loyal opposition. They even elected their government officials, these days, although in this city the Party maintained its hereditary veto. All told, New Dresden was more civilized than many places she could have ended up. Less so than some others — but so what? As long as they follow their best interests. And don’t go haring off into the darkness again, like they did seventy years ago. Still, maybe it would be for the best if she kept Martin out of the frame. She’d have to text him via the embassy channel. She tugged her jacket tighter across her shoulders, trying to think her way into the mind of the bureaucratic herd in their dark, closely tailored uniforms. But she couldn’t fool herself about the subminister’s likely report to his bosses.
People didn’t always follow their best interests. Human beings were distressingly bad at risk analysis, lousy with hidden motivations and neuroses, anything but the clean rational actors that economists or diplomats wanted so desperately to believe in, and diplomats had to go by capabilities, not intentions. In dealing with the Muscovite diplomats in residence the Party officials must feel as if they were handling a hungry and aroused venomous snake, one that could turn on them and bite at any moment. They’d tolerate George Cho playing his little shell game with Ambassador Morrow for precisely as long as it increased the likelihood of Morrow’s issuing the recall code, and not a second longer.
Speaking of whom, the Ambassador — easily identifiable by the two bodyguards — was sitting at a table at the pavement restaurant. Rachel walked round to the kitchen side then marched up to the nearest bodyguard — who was focusing on the square, not on the waiters approaching from the restaurant entrance — and tapped him on the shoulder. “Rachel Mansour, to see the Honorable Elspeth Morrow.”
The bodyguard jumped. “Whoa!”
Morrow looked up, her face colorless and her expression bored. “You’re late. George Cho said I should talk to you. Strongly implied that I needed to talk to you. Who are you?”
Rachel pulled out a chair and sat down. “I work for the same people as George. Different department, though. Officially, I’m on protocol. Unofficially, I’ll deny everything.” She smiled faintly.
Morrow waved at the chair with poor grace. “Okay, spook. So, what does George want?”
Rachel leaned back, then glanced at the bodyguard. “You know about the, ah, problem that concerns us.” She studied Morrow intently, seeing a slim woman, evidently in her early forties. Moscow hadn’t been good at antiaging therapy, but she could easily have been twenty years older. She wore her chestnut hair shoulder-length, and her green eyes seemed haunted by … just haunted. There had to be hundreds of millions of ghosts already riding at her shoulder, and the knowledge that she could add to their ranks — What must that do to her? Rachel wondered. “Forgive me for asking, but did you know Maureen Davis, Simonette Black, or Maurice Pendelton well?” she asked.
Morrow nodded. “Maurice was an old friend,” she said slowly. “I didn’t know Black other than by repute. Maureen … we knew each other. But Maurice is the one I feel for.” She leaned forward. “What do you know about this?” she asked quietly. “Why did George bring you? You’re black ops, aren’t you?”