Hence the laminar nations.
Local Customs
One morning I was awakened by thumping and vibrations which, transmitted through the meshwork of my sleeping nest, put me in mind of the approach of a gigantic predator. Alarmed, I connected my pocket retina to the shipboard net, to see a storm of arcane instructions and communications among the navigation crew. Branch Office Five Zero was maneuvering under power, popping thrusters and spinning up gyros at a rate I’d never seen before. It reminded me of the maneuvering when Dennett’s chapel departed from Taj Beacon.
While I hadn’t been formally ordered not to inquire as to our precise arrival time, any questions I’d put to the flight-deck crew had been met with polite evasions. (And indeed, this was not totally unreasonable; Branch Office Five Zero might well be planning to divert on the way into orbit to rendezvous with some miscreant suspected of smuggling or insurance fraud, in which case my awareness of this could constitute a security breach.) But 286 sleeping periods had passed since I was carried on board, and so it was no great stretch of imagination to conclude that either we were maneuvering toward rendezvous with one or another of the orbital republics, or that we were preparing for a final orbital insertion burn using the vehicle’s high-impulse motor.
I crawled out of my nest and looked around the inside of my room. It was cramped and sparsely furnished, but I’d spent most of a year living in it. It had taken on some of the emotional resonance we call home: a more spartan, but somewhat less stressful way of life than the institution of my childhood. I was going to miss it, I realized. I shook my head, then pulled on my shipboard outfit (a vest-of-pockets, knee and elbow pads, and split-toed socks) and stuffed everything else into my go bag. There was no guarantee that I would be debarking in the next day or two . . . but it would be imprudent not to be prepared to depart at a moment’s notice.
I’d known this day was coming for the best part of a year, but it still swept me up in a fit of excitement and enthusiasm. A new planet lay at my feet! Rudi would have to let me descend to the surface, for if nothing else he’d need my collusion to help find Ana. And then, and then . . . well. I’d spent many a twilight rest shift considering my options in the privacy of my own head: Once free of Rudi and his minions for even a few hours, I could cut and run to Shin-Kyoto. Or, if Ana was indeed in trouble, I could help find and extricate her, maybe find a way to clone her soul chip under Rudi’s nose and smuggle it out-system. Or—but these speculations were the wild figments of imagination of a much younger version of me, much less aware of my own mortal shortcomings. Worse, they all dead-ended in the roiling fogbank of the uncertain future: For if I had become the object of my lineage mater’s enmity, what future was there for me? It was all quite dismaying. However, returning my focus to the immediate future, it seemed to me that my first job was to extricate myself—and Ana, if she was still alive—from Rudi’s proprietorial interest as cleanly as possible, then take stock of the situation. Which might be possible if I were to request asylum from the Kingdom of Argos, where Ana had lived—
“Krina. Please report to Conference Room D on Level Two for briefing. Acknowledge.”
I swore quietly at the public-address system that had so rudely interrupted my situational analysis. “Acknowledged,” I said. Then I sealed my go bag, stuck my head out of my cell, and went where I was told.
The grandly named Conference Room D was actually an empty bubble hanging off the side of one of the main throughways, walled only to provide a modicum of security against being casually overheard by passersby. I stuck my head in the hatch to find Rudi already there, along with two others. “Ah, Krina! Come in, come in. You’re just in time. This is Dent”—he gestured at one of his companions, a lugubrious-looking bat-banker with a spreadsheet tattooed on his left wing in smart ink, so that he could pivot his tables with a flap of the wrist—“and this is Marigold. Marigold is a debt termination officer,” he added as an afterthought.
I swallowed as I looked at her. Marigold was one of the few orthohuman people I’d glimpsed on the vehicle but not been formally introduced to. She could have been dropped into one of the seething cities of preextinction Fragile Earth, and nobody would have noticed anything unusual about her, as long as she replaced her snaking orange locks and angular antibiometric facial camouflage with something more traditional. But: a debt termination officer! Banks and their offshoots (such as this very hive of villainy) are about risk management and avoidance—matters should never reach the stage where they need to terminate a bad debt! Far better to stir it up with a bunch of lumpen credit properties and shuffle it off to a long-term investment trust for toxic assets, there to depress the bottom line’s growth by a fractional percentage point. Debt termination is not a practice I have ever had much to do with. So I stared, slightly appalled, until Marigold winked at me, and I dropped my gaze to hide my expression.
“Her job will be to watch your back,” Rudi explained. “Assuming you are still hoping to find your missing sib?” I nodded. “We will travel to Nova Ploetsk in Argos together. You will need to examine your sib’s apartment and take custody of her personal effects.” He smiled, baring his teeth. “Meanwhile, we will accompany you to provide assistance. Mari as your bodyguard, and Dent . . . Dent is a forensic accountant, with credentials recognized by the Eyes of Argos: He is at your disposal. Oh, and you’ll all be needing a change of skin.”
“Hey, wait a moment—” I began.
“Or don’t you want to find your sister?” Rudi asked, dangerously reasonable.
“What kind of skin?” Marigold’s diction was precise, but emotionally barren: She might have been a machine, like the stalker that Dennett had been playing games with.
“Skin with scales and flukes,” Rudi hissed. “Nova Ploetsk is two hundred meters down, and if your sib has gone any deeper, we’ll all need to adapt ourselves. I have made arrangements with a body shop on the surface port above it. Time to go.”
Rudi led us to the main air lock into the forward cargo hold; then through a twisty little maze of tunnels and claustrophobic tubes that terminated in a tiny room with six acceleration couches bolted to one wall. “Strap yourselves in,” he said. “It’s going to be a bumpy ride.” I worked my way into the nest of straps (gently twisting in the airflow like a bed of kelp in an ocean current). It resembled the Soyuz sarcophagus back aboard the chapel, if somewhat larger and less classically proportioned. Marigold took it upon herself to pull the hatch shut and lock it closed, then lay down beside me: We were packed so close in the can that our shoulders and knees were almost touching, and the ceiling was barely a meter above the back of my head. A minute later, the sound of the air circulation changed.
“Take deep breaths,” Marigold said tonelessly. “Inhale deeply. If any air is left in your pleural chamber, you may be injured when we impact.”
“Impact?” I asked: “What do you—”
Pale blue liquid, very cold and runny, began to gush into the sarcophagus. I struggled against my straps, straining to hold up my head, until I saw Rudi duck his muzzle into a large globule of the liquid and blow a stream of bubbles out through his nose. I’d heard about this stuff but never seen it myself. “Is this really necessary?” I asked, trying not to panic.