“You want to go
Trevor Gray drew himself up straighter. He was wearing his Navy dress black uniform, and hoped it was suitably impressive to the local civilian Authority.
“I’m…visiting friends in the Ruins,” he told the disbelieving peaceforcer captain. “That’s not illegal, is it?”
“Illegal?” The man scratched his bald head behind one extravagant ear. He’d taken on a genetic prosthesis that had let him grow pointed elfin ears and golden eyes with the slit pupils of a cat. The overall effect, together with the man’s hairless scalp, gave him a faintly demonic look. “Not that I know of, no. But why in hell would
Gray wondered what the man would say if he told him he’d been a denizen of the Ruins just five years before. That fact, he decided, would not help his case.
“Let’s just say I have business there. With some friends in the TriBeCa Tower.”
“What friends?”
Gray smiled. “Would their names really mean anything to you?”
“No.” He grinned. “No they wouldn’t. To tell the truth, we don’t have the faintest idea
Which was the attitude Gray had long since come to expect of the Authority. Of course, the idea of one side not bothering the other only applied to the squatties staying out of the New City megalopolis. There were the hassles and the raids by Authority personnel, the periodic attempts to clear out sections of the Ruins-why, Gray had never been sure. Simple abuse of power, a flexing of Authority muscles just because they had the power to use them? Or a misguided attempt to help people who didn’t want to be helped?
It didn’t matter. The “decent folks” didn’t
“Then there should be no problem letting me go see my friends,” Gray said.
His internal time read just past 2130 hours shipboard time, about 1630 local. It hadn’t taken him long to process through SupraQuito and take the high-velocity elevator straight down-cable to Quito. When the space elevator was first built in the early twenty-second century, that trip would have been a two-day journey; with grav thrusters the 36,000 kilometer drop from synchorbit only took a couple of hours now.
Quito had been much the same as he remembered it from his first trip up-cable after joining the Navy-big, sprawling, crowded, and impossibly busy, one of the three major port megalopoli, the Equatorial Jewels, the biggest and richest cities on Earth.
From Quito’s elaborately decorated
The passage, in any case, only lasted forty-five minutes. He’d arrived in Morningside Heights at 1320 local, 1820 ship time. Three hours he’d been here, waiting in waiting areas, talking to bored bureaucrats and minor officials, being sent down brightly lit passageways to see
“Look, Lieutenant,” the Authority captain told him, shaking his head. “I’d like to help you. I really would. But I gotta put down a reason for your visit. Who the hell do you need to see in the
A good question.
What, he wondered,
Oh, he knew why
He decided to risk telling the man the truth.
“My family.”
The man’s eyes widened slightly, then he nodded. “Oh. Sorry.” Gray couldn’t tell if he was apologizing for forcing the admission, or showing sympathy at Gray’s origins.
“Family…business…” the peaceforcer said, making an entry. “Palm me.”
“Pardon?”
“Give me your hand.”
He pressed the network of circuitry exposed against the heel of Gray’s right palm against a data feed. Gray felt the inner flag go up that told him he’d just received new data.
“What was that?”
“Your pass. If a monitor or an Authority ship or anybody else pings you, that’ll flash back your ID and my personal seal of approval on you bein’ there. You won’t be bothered.”
“Then I can go?”
“You got transport?”
“I’ve already lined up a broom.” There’d been a gravcycle rental shop outside the Authority Center.
“Then you can go.”
“Thanks.”
“Just one thing, though, Lieutenant.”
“Yeah?”
“You’ll be on your own in there. There’s no Net-Cloud in there, so you won’t be able to call for help. And things can get rough in the Ruins, know what I mean?”
“I lived there for most of my life, Captain. Remember?”
“Well, there’ve been some changes. They’ve been killing each other a lot more enthusiastically lately. Migrations. Political fighting. That sort of thing.”
“I think I can handle myself, Captain.”
“On your own head be it, then.” The peaceforcer went back to his console, effectively dismissing Gray.
But as he walked out, he distinctly heard the man mutter, “Damned squatties.”
Koenig came to what passed for attention in his office chair as the inner commconnect came through. He’d been working on a request for two new fighter squadrons-replacements for the fighters and pilots lost at Eta Bootis-when his personal AI had announced a call from the Senate Military Directorate.
He’d half been expecting it.
“Sir.”
“Relax, Alex,” Rear Admiral Karyn Mendelson said, her image appearing on a newly opened in-head display window. “It’s just me.”
