The storm hit her face like shattering glass. She hesitated a step beyond the doors and pulled her hood tighter, watched Razorface hunker down into his collar as he moved up the street, almost invisible until he passed through a puddle of light. Now it was Indigo's moment to hesitate. See where he's going or see where he's been?
He turned sideways — still going the way they'd come — and that decided her. Indigo jaywalked across the empty street with inchworm steps, careful to lift each foot up and set it down vertically so it wouldn't slip on the ice, muffling her face against stinging precipitation. She closed her eyes in relief when she stepped through the doors into the warm exhalation of the rust-carpeted foyer, then smiled with irony. Maybe I should just get a room here for the night.
She had no way to tell what room Razorface might have visited. So she tugged off her girly little hat, unzipped her parka, and picked a hesitant path across the carpet and the tile toward a tastefully appointed front desk. No potted evergreens here, thank God. She rang the bell to bring the duty clerk out of the back.
A young man appeared, handsomely Eurasian. Decades of troubles in the Far East had brought Indigo's family to North America, along with thousands of others.
The clerk smiled at Indigo, and she smiled back. “Can I help you, miss?”
Indigo slid a well-practiced mask of hope and shyness over her features and smiled prettily. “I… Um.” She studied her shoes for a minute and stuffed her right hand into her pocket. “Did a guy come in here? Big, black guy. Leather jacket—”
“The teeth? Are you supposed to meet him? He just left.”
“No, I wasn't supposed to meet him. Um.” She pulled her hand out and picked at the melting flakes of ice crusting her stocking cap. “He's my boyfriend, and I wondered…”
Comprehension dawned across the young man's face. “I can't tell you what room he went up to, if that's what you want.”
“Oh.”
“But I can tell you—” His expression grew appraising. “I don't think you have anything to worry about.”
“How do you know?”
“The voice of experience,” he said, and grinned. “It's probably—” He swallowed one set of words and substituted another. “—just a work thing. Look, the cafe is closed, but if you want to sit down here in the chair I'll get the kitchen to bring you some coffee out and you can wait till the ice stops. I won't make you go back out in the storm.”
Indigo glanced at the door. She didn't have what she'd come for, and this was a good excuse. She nodded. “Can I have cocoa instead?”
“You can have anything you want. Sit down. I'll take care of you.”
He got her a blanket, too, and she curled on a love seat and read world news and watched the late-night holofeed until she drifted almost into sleep. She half dreamed of a slender, wild-haired man she barely remembered giving her piggyback rides and telling her stories about another man — her father — that she didn't remember at all. Tell it again, Uncle Bernie.
Tell it again.
0555 Hours
Tuesday 5 December, 2062
Marriott Inn
Toronto, Ontario
It's not like I actually got drunk. But mixing stimulants, alcohol, and military-issue reflex and concentration-enhancement aids might not be the wisest course of action. Which is why you should hate me for waking up bright eyed, bushy tailed, and four minutes before my alarm goes off, Boris purring on my chest. Plenty of time for a long, hot shower. As if in my ear, I hear someone clear his throat.
Richard?
“You need to cope better than that, Jenny.”
I know. Water like standing under a sluiceway, but steaming. It almost feels thick where it drums against my skin, driving the chill out. Would you feel happier if I had one hell of a hangover? When was the last time I was sloppy, self-indulgent, and maudlin?
“Do you want a list?” Immaterial hands beat at virtual air. “All right. I know. I know you're worried, and you're right to be. Look, I'm learning how to run some basic programming on the nanotech. I'm making good progress with one of the Chinese pilots, but I'm concerned their government may try something drastic to put an end to the Canadian program, because I've come to understand where you're going and what the stakes are.”
To hell in a handbasket?
“If I thought it existed, I'd be worried. Can you actually imagine a supreme being that petty and erratic?”
I let that slide, and wait. Richard, I sometimes think, is happy to hear himself talk. I taste hot water and soap, close my eyes, draw a valentine's heart in the steam on the rippled glass door.
“HD 210277,” he says. “A G7V main sequence star very similar to the Sun but a little less bright, and about sixty-nine light-years away. As long ago as the turn of the century, we knew it had a planetary system — a gas giant with an erratic orbit, but it more or less sits in the habitable zone. That's where the generation ships that the Chinese launched ten years ago are going. And it's where you'll be going, too.”
“Why?” I put a hand over my mouth. Oops. What do they want with it?
“More recent data indicate that one of that gas giant's moons has a very good shot at being earthlike.”
Oh. They are colony ships. What about whoever lives there now?
“If there is anybody… Jenny, you of all people ought to know how it works.”
Yes. Yes I do. Richard — the Montreal can leapfrog those generation ships. We could have a colony long established before they ever arrive. Assuming we beat the Huang Di out there. The Chinese regime was crazy enough to send ships out there with no guarantee they had anyplace to land, and no way home? Why would anybody do something like that?
“Have you looked around this planet lately?”
How drastic an action might they take to prevent our getting there first?
“It was never proven that the terrorist nuclear attack on Kyoto in 2040 was linked to the Chinese.”
It was never proven that Israel had anything to do with the Cairo attacks either, but — oh. I see your point. It's a good thing I'm in a hotel shower, or the hot water would have run cold while I was chewing that over. I dress by rote, forgetting to dry my hair so water spots the collar of my sweater. I fell asleep with the curtains open, and when I glance out the window the world looks etched on the back of a crystal paperweight as far as the eye can see, a misting ice still drifting from the gray overhead. Icicles dangle like arm-long fangs from the ledges and awning of the hotel across the street: I see them through the wavy sheen of ice that makes my window look like watered glass. Like the shower door, come to think of it.
Colony ships.
“Jenny, by the way — you should know. I think your friend Koske is being courted by an interesting individual aboard ship, the programmer I've mentioned to you. Chris Ramirez. I have a suspicion that Ramirez isn't exactly what he appears. If there's any way you can get Colonel Valens to rerun the background check on him—”