Rand rapped on the hatch to signal that it was safe, and the others emerged. As nanobots scurried away with luggage, he tried to show Fat Humphrey where to insert the wafer that would install his AI in the Shimizu’s data crystals… and was startled and a little nonplussed to learn that Fat did not have one.
“How about you, Meiya?” he tried.
But she shook her head too. “I won’t be inboard long enough to bother. We’ll all use Reb’s to get around.”
“Well, okay,” he said. “But stick close to him. This place can be a rabbit warren if you don’t have an AI.”
“There are public terminals all over, left over from the old days,” she pointed out. “If I get lost, I can just ask for you.”
“Sure. I’m not listed, but my AI is: Antonio Salieri. How about if I go get my brother and meet you all at Fat’s new suite in about an hour? I’d like to grab a shower too; I’ve been in this p-suit all day.”
“Good with me,” Fat Humphrey said.
“We’ll meet you there in an hour,” Reb said, and installed his own AI. “Rild—direct us to Suite Prime 427, please.”
One of several exits began to blink softly. “This way, Tenshin.”
Rand jaunted to his own room, checked the time, and decided to phone Jay before showering. He would have just finished dinner by now.
“Hey, bro, what’s shapin’? When are you coming back?”
“About five minutes ago. Want to meet the happiest fat man in human space?”
Jay blinked. “ ‘… the happiest fat man…’ Hey, you mean Fat Humphrey? Is he here?”
“To stay. He’s just retired; it’s his centennial. I came along for the ride; I’m going back with Reb tomorrow. Little gathering at his new digs in about an hour: just him, you, me, Reb and Meiya, as far as I know. You know Meiya, right?”
“Sure. Hey, this is great! I’ve always wanted a chance to kick back and talk with Fat for a few hours. Where’s he at?”
“Prime 427. Meet me at the nearest corner at 20:25 and we’ll go in together.”
“See you there.”
Fifty minutes later he was waiting at the appointed spot. Almost at once, Jay arrived from another direction, grinning. They hugged, and pounded each other’s shoulder blades.
“How are you, bro?”
“Fine,” Rand said. “I’ve gotten a little work done—I’ll show you later.”
“The hell with that—how are you?”
“Okay,” he said. “Not well, yet, but I can see daylight, you know?”
“That’s good. I told you that place’d be good for you. Hey, Eva’s gonna be here too: Reb called her. Probably in the suite already, in fact; I spoke with her half an hour ago and she said she was leaving right away. I get the idea she and Fat are old friends.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me in the—”
The lights went out.
“What the fuck—” Jay said. “Diaghilev!”
No answer.
“Diaghilev, God dammit!”
“Salieri?” Rand tried.
Silence.
There was a public terminal nearby, but it was unlit, presumed dead. “Jesus,” Jay said softly, clearly controlling his voice with an obvious effort. “I think the whole fucking system is down. That’s never happened. I’d have bet a billion dollars it couldn’t possibly happen.”
They heard a scream somewhere in the far distance; no telling even the direction. The Shimizu corridors had some funny acoustics.
Rand’s heart hammered. “Oh my God…” If they had no lights, no AIs, no phones—how long before they had no air? He fought for calm in the claustrophobic darkness. “All right, what’s our move?”
Just then lights came on. Small red emergency lights, every hundred meters along the corridor, with larger blinking ones marking intersections. Rand found them an immense relief, a sign of recovery, but he saw Jay frowning. “They should have kicked on a lot sooner, even if this is a total system collapse,” Jay said. “Something really weird is going on.”
“Have we got air?”
Jay spotted the nearest grille, jaunted to it, and put his face near it. “Yeah. Reduced flow, but it’s air.”
“What do you think: is this just local, or is the whole damn hotel really dark right now?”
“Beats me. They’re supposed to be equally impossible. I pray to God it’s local.”
A suite door opened not far from them, and someone stuck his head out. “Hey, mate,” he called in an Aussie accent, “any idea what the bloody hell is goin’ on?”
“Look at it this way,” Jay called back. “You’re getting tonight’s rent free.”
“Too right,” he said, and closed his door again.
“God,” Rand said, “Fat and the others must be freaking out in there. If they had the window closed when the power failed, they’re in minimal emergency lighting: it could take them an hour to find the manual door release, let alone figure out how to use it.”
“Hell of a welcome to the Shimizu,” Jay agreed. “Come on, let’s go try and calm them down.”
They jaunted in the eerie pale red light to Suite 427. “We’ll never convince Fat the place is safe now,” Jay complained as they neared it. “Shit, I just don’t believe this. The only thing I can imagine taking out the Shimizu system is a comet right through the core crystals—and we didn’t feel any impact. It just doesn’t… oh, you asshole.” Automatically, he had stopped in front of the door and waited for an AI to ask his business. “Hit that release for me, will you, bro?” he said, pointing.
Rand pulled open the access hatch indicated and pulled the handle inside. It moved easily—but the door did not move. “Seems to be broken,” he reported.
Jay grimaced. “Naturally. Things never go wrong one at a time.” He put his hands on his hips. “Christ, the door’s soundproof—we can’t even bang out ‘Calm down’ in Morse code.”
“What’s Morse code?” Rand asked.
“Eva would know, but it doesn’t—wait a god damn minute! What do you mean, ‘broken’? That’s a mechanical latch: it can’t be broken.”
“Okay,” Rand said agreeably. “Then what does nonfunction and a blinking red light mean?”
“A blinking—”
In free-fall one almost never pales visibly; blood does not drain from the head as pressure drops. But even in the poor light, Rand could see his brother’s expression come apart. He jaunted quickly to Rand’s side and stared at the little flashing pilot bulb. After a few seconds, he began to shake his head slowly back and forth, the picture of denial.
Rand grabbed his shoulder, hard, and shook him. “What does it mean?” he cried.
Jay turned to him. There was horror in his eyes. He needed three tries to get the words out, and when he did, they were barely audible. “There is no pressure on the other side of that door.”
21
High Earth Orbit
25 February 2065
Sulke Drager had always hated it when everybody talked at once. Thirty years as a member of a telepathic community had taught her a great deal about handling multiple inputs—more than any human being had ever known—but never before in history had so much of the Starmind all been sending at the same time. And underlying it all, pervading the whole Solar System like a taste of metal in the back of the mouth, was the wordless shriek from Saturn.
And naturally, the “voices” she most needed to “hear” were the weakest. They were also the closest, but distance means nothing to a telepath; signal strength and bandwidth were all that counted.