Dariat closed his eyes and took a step forwards, directly into the carriage. The door slid shut behind him, and there was a faint vibration as it started accelerating along the track. He opened his eyes.
See?rubra taunted. Not such a bogey man after all.
Dariat sat down and took some deep breaths to calm his racing heart. He used the sensitive cells to watch an apoplectic Bonney Lewin jump down from the empty platform to fire her Enfield along the dark tunnel. She was screaming obscenities. The accompanying hunters were standing well back. One of her boots was treading on the magnetic guide rail.
Fry her,dariat said. Now!
Oh, no. This is much more fun. This way I get to find out if the dead can have heart attacks.
You are a complete bastard.
That’s right. And to prove it, I’m going to show you Anastasia’s secret now. The one thing she never showed you.
Dariat was instantly wary. More lies.
Not this time. Don’t tell me you don’t want to find out. I know you, Dariat. Fully. I’ve always known. I know what she means to you. I know how much she means to you. Your memory of her was strong enough to power a grudge over thirty years. That’s almost inhuman, Dariat. I respect it enormously. But it leaves you wide open to me. Because you want to know, don’t you? There’s something I’ve got, or heard, or saw, that you didn’t. A little segment of Anastasia Rigel you don’t have. You won’t be able to live with that knowledge.
I’ll be able to ask her soon. Her soul is waiting for me in the beyond. When I’ve dealt with you, I’ll go to her, and we’ll be together again.
Soon will be too late.
You’re unbelievable, you know that?
Good. I’ll take you there.
Whatever you like.dariat pushed his weariness behind the thought, showing just how unconcerned he was. Behind that, clutched away from the bravado and outward confidence, his teenage self huddled in worry. That same self which so idolized her. Now there was the chance, the remotest possibility that the image was flawed, less than honest. The doubt cut into him, weakening the core of resolution which had supported him for so terribly long.
Anastasia would never keep anything from him. Would she? She loved him, she said so. The last thing she ever said, ever wrote.
Rubra guided the tube carriage to a starscraper lobby station and opened the door. It’s waiting on the thirty-second floor.
Dariat glanced cautiously out onto the little station and the wide passage which led to the lobby itself. His mind could sense the thoughts of the possessed camped outside the lobby. No one showed any interest in him. He hurried across the floor to the bank of lifts in the centre, reaching them unnoticed.
The lift deposited him at the thirty-second-floor vestibule. A completely normal residential section; twenty-four mechanical doors leading to apartments, and three muscle membranes for the stairwells. One of the mechanical doors slid open to show a darkened living room.
Dariat could sense someone inside, a dozing mind, its thought currents placid. When he tried to use the observation sub-routines for the bedroom he found he couldn’t, Rubra had wiped them.
Oh, no, my boy, you go right in there and face your fate like a man.
Dariat flinched. But . . . one unaware non-possessed. How bad could it be? He walked into the apartment, ordering the electrophorescent cells to full intensity. Thankfully, they responded.
It was a woman who lay on the big bed, a duvet had worked downwards to reveal her shoulders. Her skin was very black, with the minute crinkles which spelt out the onset of middle age and the start of weight problems for anyone without much geneering in their ancestry. A tangle of finely braided jet-black hair was fanned out over the pillows, every strand tipped with a moondust-white bead.
She groaned sleepily as the light came on, and turned over. Despite a face which cellulite was busy inflating, she had a petit nose.
NO! For one moment horror claimed his senses. She was similar to Anastasia. Features, colour, even the age was almost right. If a medical team had gone out to the tepee, they might have reanimated the body, a hospital might conceivably have used extensive gene therapy to regenerate the dead brain cells. It could be done, for the President of Govcentral or Kulu’s heir apparent, the effort would be made. But not a Starbridge girl regarded as vermin by the personality of the habitat in which she dwelt. The cold shock subsided.
Whoever she was, as soon as she saw him, she screamed.
“It’s all right,” Dariat said. He couldn’t even hear his own voice above her distraught wails.
“Rubra! One of them’s here. Rubra, help me.”
“No,” Dariat said. “I’m not. Well . . .”
“Rubra! RUBRA.”
“Please,” Dariat implored.
That silenced her.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I’m running from them myself.”
“Uh huh?” Her gaze darted to the door.
“Really. Rubra brought me here, too.”
The duvet was readjusted. Slim bronze and silver bracelets tinkled as she moved.
Dariat’s chill returned. They were exactly the same kind of bracelets Anastasia wore. “Are you a Starbridge?”
She nodded, wide-eyed.
Wrong question,rubra said. Ask her what her name is.
He hated himself. For giving in, for playing to Rubra’s rules. “Who are you?”
“Tatiana,” she gulped. “Tatiana Rigel.”
Rubra’s mocking, triumphant laughter shook his skull from the inside. Got it now, boy? Meet Anastasia’s little sister.
Another day, another press conference. At least this new technology had progressed beyond flashbulbs; Al had always hated them back in Chicago. More than once he had been photographed raising a hand to ward off the brilliant bursts of light; photos which the papers always ran, because it looked as if he were trying to hide, confirming his guilt.
He had held the press conference in the Monterey Hilton’s big ballroom, sitting at a long table with his back to the window. The idea was that the reporters would see the formation of victorious fleet ships which had just returned from Arnstadt, and were holding station five kilometres off the asteroid. Leroy Octavius said it should make an impressive backdrop for the dramatic news announcement.
Except the starships weren’t quite in the right coordinate, so they were only just visible when rotation did bring them into view; the reporters had to look around the side of the table to see them. And everybody knew the Organization had conquered Arnstadt and Kursk, it wasn’t new even though this made it sort of official.
Drama and impact, that was the sole purpose. So Al sat at the long table with its inappropriate vases of flowers; Luigi Balsmao on one side, and a couple of other ship captains on the other. He told the reporters how easy it had been to break open Arnstadt’s SD network, the eagerness of the population to accept the Organization as a government after a “minimum number” of key administrative people had been possessed. How the star system’s economy was turning around.
“Did you use antimatter, Al?” Gus Remar asked. A weary veteran of these affairs now, he reckoned he knew what liberties he could take. Capone did have a weird sense of honour operating; nobody got blasted for trying to work an angle, only outright opposition earned his disapprobation.
“That’s a dumb kinda question, pal,” Al replied, keeping the scowl from his face. “What do you want to ask that for? We got plenty of interesting dope on how the Organization is curing all sorts of medical problems which the non-possessed bring to our lieutenants. You people, you always look for the bad side. It’s like a goddamn obsession with you.”
“Antimatter is the biggest horror the Confederation knows, Al. People are bound to be interested in the rumours. Some of the ships’ crews say they fired antimatter powered combat wasps. And the industrial stations here are producing antimatter confinement systems. Have you got a production station, Al?”