Few recognized the slim young woman who paced through the crowds, head down, hands jammed in the pockets of her tough workers' slacks. Anyone who thought they recognized the famous cycler captain from Erythrion probably decided they were mistaken. What would someone so wealthy and powerful be doing passing like a shabbily dressed ghost alone through the back alleys of the Night City?
She understood now that there were two states of being in the interstellar halo: in transit and stranded.
Rue was standing hipshot outside a dance club she sometimes came to, when she received a call. She hesitated before answering; it might be better tonight to lose herself in the crush of moving bodies and the pulse of the music inside. Sighing, she said, "Yes?"
"Rue, it's Laurent Herat. I know it's late, but I need to talk to you."
"Why? What's happened?" She stepped to one side of the club's door, allowing several other young people to enter. They were laughing carelessly and she watched them with envy.
"I received an extraordinary visitor earlier tonight," Herat went on. "One with an equally extraordinary message."
"Who?" Her thoughts flew to their various mutual acquaintances, but there was really only one person it could be. "Michael?"
"Apparently he's been making his own attempts to communicate with the autotrophs. Amazing! We've been unsuccessful, as you know, the green men won't let us visit them again, but… well, I believed Bequith when he said he had information about them. He says they know about what Crisler's intending, and they're leaving Colossus to warn their own people."
"Gods and kami." But it made sense— if Michael wasn't lying. Lying didn't seem to be in his nature.
"He brought some proof— several of the little remote AI bees that we spoke with once before. They're not very intelligent or knowledgeable, but they say the autotrophs are scared of the Chicxulub weapon, that they're pulling up their roots here."
Rue felt a terrible sense of helplessness. "That could mean war between humanity and the autotrophs."
"Yes," said Herat, his voice sounding old. "But Michael proposed a solution." He laughed humorlessly. "He's always been a good negotiator."
"What solution?"
"He's determined to warn the rebels about what Crisler's intending. He thinks he may have a way to communicate with the autotrophs, and he's willing to give it to us in return for passage to the nearest lit world for both him and Barendts."
"He's blackmailing us!" She was appalled, then infuriated. This was not the man she thought she knew.
As soon as she felt this, though, Rue reminded herself that Michael was, as far as he knew, abandoned in place here. What had she just been thinking about the halo herself? — that here, you were either in transit or stranded?
"He's desperate, and in no small part because of what we did to him," said Herat, as though reading her mind. "Anyway, I have no authority to give him what he wants."
"But I do," she said, her heart sinking. Yes, she could requisition two berths on the next cycler that came by. But if she did that, Rue would be letting Mike go without his ever finding out the reasons why she and Herat had become separated from him. The secret they were now party to was huge, as important in its own way as the existence of Jentry's Envy had become. She couldn't betray that secret, but was the price of her silence to be letting go of any chance of reconciling or explaining herself to Mike?
"In a way, I think this might be for the best," said Herat gently. "Bequith needs a calling, and maybe that calling was to be a rebel all along. Maybe his time with me was just a distraction."
Rue winced. Had she been a distraction as well? "If that's his price, we have to pay it," she heard herself say. "There's too much at stake. It would be… a shame to lose him, though. There's nowhere he'd be more useful than at the Twins, and I'm sure if he knew what we were planning, he'd drop this rebel foolishness in a second."
"If he knew, Rue. But there's no way to tell him. The law is very clear. Even if you and I know he would join us the instant he knew… we'd have committed treason to tell him."
"Treason…" Rue had a sudden idea. It wasn't pleasant, but she smiled grimly as she realized how perfect it was. "I think I know what to do, Professor. Let me handle it from here."
Michael was trying to meditate when his door announced a visitor. Concentration broken, he glared past the little telltale in his periphery, then remembered his visit with Herat yesterday. Maybe this was some messenger with a reply.
He unfolded himself from full lotus and stood. Barendts was out, probably at the gym exercising, as he did obsessively. The little flat was stark and bare, more a cell than an apartment, but Michael kept it neat. Just now as his mind had quieted toward a meditative state, he had been feeling, if not happy, at least as though he were doing something worthwhile for the first time in months.
Musing about this, he opened the door.
"Hello, Michael," said the woman on the other side.
He almost closed it on her, but after a moment's hesitation, Michael waved her in. Irina Case, NeoShintoist and general pain in the neck, stepped into his little room.
"I've been trying to contact you for months!" she said.
"And I've been avoiding you," he said. "Or hadn't you noticed?" But he waved her to a seat and said, "Would you like something to drink?"
She shook her head. Irina Case was about Michael's age, but blond and with pale, almost white eyes. She came from New Armstrong— had arrived, in fact, with that traitor Mallory. But she claimed not to have any involvement with the New Armstrong plotters.
"I know the Order sent you to try to bring me back into the fold," he said as he brought Case a cup of coffee. "I've dodged calls from the brothers here as well. But why they think you would be able to succeed where they failed is beyond me."
Irina quickly put down the cup. "Oh! I think there's been a misunderstanding." He stared at her; she looked uncomfortable. "I didn't come here to try to bring you back into the Order, Dr. Bequith, although we'd obviously prefer that."
He was puzzled. "Then why are you here? — to apologize for your countrymen?"
She took a sip of the coffee, unsuccessfully trying to disguise annoyance. "New Armstrong is a world, Dr. Bequith. Not a conspiracy. And not an evil empire.
"I suppose you haven't bothered to learn about us. Well. Our world orbits a gas giant only a little bigger than Jupiter. It's a halo world; if it didn't have a huge magnetic field for power, we wouldn't be able to live there at all. Our cities are built on the ice mares; I come from Mare Labrynthus."
Michael translated the name to himself: Sea of Mazes.
"New Armstrong is thriving," she said, "from an economic point of view. But in other ways…. For a long time we were staunch supporters of Permanence and the Compact. The Compact gives people direction, you know— many of our young people took the vows and became members of the Order. We built and launched our own cyclers. But since the fall of the lit worlds… well, people's faith has been shaken. A lot of the younger ones feel abandoned and alone and New A is such a hard place to live that… there's been violence. And suicide. People walking out onto the ice without a suit… and talk of joining the R.E."
He nodded. "And that talk reached the highest levels."
Case grimaced and nodded. "Of course. We would incur all the costs of such an association, and it would cripple us. Nonetheless, there's a powerful group aiming for just that. Mallory and his people are not the disease— just a symptom."