The Palisades, Ashakiran planet
Utterly content, Michael sat alone on the deck of the Palisades, the family’s weekender high in the western foothills of the Tien Shan Mountains. The house provided the perfect place to sit and pretend-for a few precious minutes-that the rest of humanspace with all its cruel stupidities did not exist. Beer in hand, Michael gazed out across the valley of the Clearwater River, the ground far below invisible through a gray murk below the clouds scudding overhead. It was a wet, blustery day. He did not care. The weather might be crap, but it was still perfection. He knew it was all a chimera, but he was grateful for it, though it would have been better if Anna had been there in person. How good would it be to have her-
The insistent chiming of his neuronics smashed his daydreams to dust. “What now?” Michael muttered aloud while he accepted the incoming com.
It was his agent, Mitesh, the face of the artificial intelligence that of an older, wiser Michael. A Michael with wrinkles and a bad haircut, the family always said, teasingly. The AI’s computer-generated avatar had the good grace to look apologetic. “I know you said no callers, Michael, but I’m pretty sure you will want to take this pinchcomm.”
“Goddamn it, Mitesh, Anna is the only person I want to hear from, so …” His voice trailed off. “Ah, yeah, right,” he said after a moment.
A smug grin split Mitesh’s face. “Precisely, not that you ever told me that. Quite the opposite, in fact. What you actually told me was-”
“Okay, okay, I know what I said.” It was Michael’s turn to look apologetic. “Sorry about that.”
Mitesh smiled. “Don’t worry about it. So may I tell Miss Anna that you’ll take her call?”
“Miss Anna! Jeez, she’d love that.” Michael laughed, shaking his head. “You’re a real smart-ass! Makes her sound like some sort of feudal grande dame. Put her on.”
“Patching her through.”
After a short pause, Anna’s face blossomed in Michael’s neuronics, her avatar the most faithful of faithful renditions, thanks in large part to an indulgent father’s extravagant gift of the best avatar software in all of humanspace. In Michael’s view, it was money well spent. Anna seemed real; she might have been standing there right in front of him. She was stunning, her beauty a testament to the Chinese, Asian, African, and European gene pools of Old Earth, not to mention a great deal of expensive geneering spanning many generations.
The breath caught in his throat at the sight of her. Anna’s face was a dark honey-gold set under fine black hair that dropped to frame sharply defined cheekbones dusted with pink, a firm nose fractionally too large-geneering was still far from an exact science-above a generous mouth quick to smile. But it was the eyes that always grabbed him: large and set wide, infinitely deep green pools that dragged him in and down.
Anna groaned in mock despair. The ability of her eyes to mesmerize Michael was a long-running private joke. “Michael, for chrissakes, pay attention,” she said in no-nonsense tones. “There’s been a change of plan.”
“Change of plan?” Michael’s focus snapped back to the here and now. He sat up. This sounded promising. Had the fates delivered for once?
“Yup, change of plan,” Anna said with a smile of pure happiness. “You’re in luck, sailor boy. Good old Damishqui is cactus. One of our primary fusion plants has dropped offline, and nobody seems to know why. We’ve been diverted to Suleiman to get the problem fixed. The engineers say we’ll be in the yard for at least a week, and after much groveling, my boss has given me leave. So, let me see … yes, I’ll see you tomorrow morning your time, so make sure you’re at Bachou to pick me up. I can’t stand here talking. This call is costing me a fortune, and I’ve got a flight to catch. I’ve commed you my itinerary. ’Bye.”
Euphoric, Michael stared open-mouthed while Anna’s avatar disappeared. Well, he said to himself, sometimes things went his way, an all too rare occurrence for a Fleet officer.
He commed Mitesh.
“Yes, Michael?” “You followed all that?”
“I did. I’ll keep an eye on things and let you know when to leave to pick her up.”
“Thanks, Mitesh.”
“But while you’re on the line”-Mitesh winced at Michael’s exaggerated groan-“I’ve been swamped with requests for interviews.”
“Let me guess,” Michael said, his voice twisted with resentment, the euphoria blown away in an instant. “All provoked by the latest trashvid documentary?”
“That’s exactly why. You watch it?”
“No way, Mitesh,” Michael snarled. “That’s the fourth doco on the Ishaq business, and if this one was anything like its predecessors, why would I?” He stopped to recover his mental balance. “I suppose you did.”
“It’s in my job description, Michael,” Mitesh replied primly, lips stiffening into a thin line.
“So it is. And?”
“Well, let me see. How best to put it? Yes … it was sensationalist drivel based loosely on what actually happened, sprinkled with interviews from people who weren’t there, seasoned with opinions from so-called experts who could not find their ass with both hands, the whole tawdry brew spiced with exaggeration, innuendo, more than a few outright lies, and-”
“Enough, Mitesh, enough!” Michael said, laughing despite himself, “I get it, I get it. It was garbage.”
“Garbage? You can say that, though I’d prefer to call it two hours of brain-numbing pap. There were some good things about it, though.”
“Oh, yeah?” Michael shook his head in despair. “Do tell, Mitesh.”
“The Hammers received a good kicking, and you came out well. Man of the moment and all that. Nice shot of you in your dress blacks. Mmmm, all those medals, command hash marks, unit citations, wound stripes. I do so love gold on black. The girls will be-”
Michael’s laughter stopped Mitesh’s increasingly camp account in its tracks. “Stop, Mitesh, stop!”
“Well, you asked,” Mitesh protested.
“I did,” Michael said with a heartfelt sigh. He hated the scrutiny; for as long as he could remember, he had avoided the spotlight-public speaking scared the crap out of him-yet here he was, getting it in spades. “Jeez, Mitesh. Why the hell won’t they just leave me alone?”
“You know why, Michael. The average Fed needs heroes just like everybody else, and you’re the poor sap who just happens to be the man of the hour. So live with it. It will pass. Just do your duty and let the trashpress get on and do their thing. They’ll get bored eventually and start looking for someone else, someone new.”
Michael sighed again. Easy for Mitesh to say but hard for Michael to endure. Exhausted by the relentless attention, he had given up going out in public. Hell! The trashpress even turned that simple decision against him. “The Hermit Hero-What Is He Hiding?” had been one of their headlines, followed by hundreds of words before providing the answer: nothing!
“All right, Mitesh. Enough on those scum. No to the interviews, of course.”
Mitesh’s face tightened in disapproval. “That’s a bad call, Michael. Ignoring the trashpress means letting them tell your story the way they want to. You need to tell your own story. They’re beginning to get cranky. You should talk to them before they turn on you.”
“No,” Michael said, “no, I can’t.”
“Can’t? Not a word I associate with you, Michael,” Mitesh said tartly. “But it’s your life.”
“Yes, it is. Anything else?”
“No. I’m working through the vid, and if there are any errors of fact, I’ll lodge a formal complaint with the Mass Communications Tribunal. I’ll com you if I do that; otherwise I’ll leave you be.”
“Thanks, Mitesh,” Michael said, grateful for Mitesh’s unflagging support. Mitesh might be nothing more than the product of some fancy AI engineering, but he was a true friend.