They were people under siege.
The fabric above me shifted and bulged from the weight of human movement. A narrow slit appeared where there had been no visible seam, revealing the face of a man in his late thirties. He had close-cropped shiny brown hair, eyes of a blue so pale they vanished against the whites, thin pink lips, and a lantern jaw that made his tentative smile look like a fissure on the face of an edifice. “Hello there! Welcome to Hammocktown! I gather you’re the J.A. rep?”
I object to such snappy abbreviations on principle, but my complete title was Associate Legal Counsel for the Homo Sapiens Confederacy Diplomatic Corps Judge Advocate, hardly the kind of thing anybody could be reasonably expected to rattle off in a single breath. “Yes, I’m Counselor Andrea Cort. Are you the ambassador?”
His thin lip twisted. “That’s not a title our esteemed landlords allow me to use.”
“The AIsource object to the title Ambassador?”
“They object to it here.”
If the software intelligences were getting pissy about job titles now, it either meant a major shift in the nature of their relationship with our species, or something unprecedented about the rules of life on One One One. But that was largely what I’d been led to expect. “Have they given you a reason?”
His smile faltered. “You couldn’t have gotten much of a briefing on your way here.”
“I’m only seven hours out of Intersleep.” And still awaiting the energy crash that always struck like a club, within twenty-four hours of waking. “You haven’t answered my question.”
“I think I can answer your question inside. In the meantime, if you want to call me something, my name’s Gibb, Stuart Gibb. You can consider me the chief asshole in charge.” The slit opened wider, and he reached down with both arms. “Let’s get you up here so we can get you up to speed. Do you have anything you want to pass up?”
I had a soft cylindrical bag containing three changes of clothes, a few toiletries, and a significant amount of contraband. I’ve never had any qualms about handing it to anybody. The bag was of Tchi manufacture, and as such was designed to satisfy a people who spent their days and nights taking offense at imagined improper liberties. Gibb could have examined every centimeter of the bag for days without finding access to my goods.
Gibb disappeared with the bag and a few seconds later lowered a ladder. Loose as it came down, flapping in the high-altitude breeze, it solidified at full extension. I grabbed hold, testing its ability to hold my weight, wondering what it would be like to slip and tumble into that storm-tossed hell.
I took a deep breath, forced calm calm calm into my limbs, muttered my personal mantra,
As I pulled myself through the slit, entering warmer air and murkier light, Gibb grabbed my upper arm to steady me. His very touch was immediate annoyance. I let him guide me to a resting place about a meter away from the opening, and was not at all comforted by the way the soft rubbery canvas sagged beneath my added weight.
The interior of the hammock was a large round chamber, sagging at its center. A molded circular spine around its widest point, bearing a variety of tightly bound cloth bundles, allowed it to maintain a shape approximately like that of a teardrop, but the material below that spine was loose, settling into a shallow bowl beneath our weight.
Gibb was not the only man here. The other was a compact, grimacing figure with a shaved head, a prosthetic memory disk clinging to one temple, and eyes that glowered like lasers. Both men were dressed in loose-fitting gray pants and many-pocketed open vests that seemed designed to show off impressive gymnastic physiques. There was no way of telling whether those physiques had been earned the hard way via intensive training or installed by dealers in extreme physical enhancements.
The air inside the hammock was stale, redolent with liquor and body odor. But my relief at no longer needing to contemplate the long drop into One One One’s stormy atmosphere almost made the murk intoxicating.
On the other hand, Gibb was still holding my arm.
I tugged. “Let go.”
“You looked like you were having trouble—”
“I was.”
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of. As you can imagine, I’ve seen height-sensitivity before—”
“I can imagine. Let go.”
Still he didn’t. “I know the signs, Counselor. You’re about ten seconds away from hysterics.”
“You’re about five from losing your hand. Let go.”
An odd little look passed between Gibb and the grimacing man. I didn’t need psi enhancements to note that all the questions seemed to come from Gibb’s side of the hammock.
The self-proclaimed chief asshole in charge didn’t seem to be as much in charge as he liked to claim. That was okay. I was willing to believe the rest of the description accurate. In my personal experience, people who tell you how awful they are, the first time they meet you, are just trying to defang your own inevitable reaction by beating you to the punch.
I know this. It’s something I do myself.
Gibb released me and scrambled back half a meter up the canvas. “Forgive me, Andrea. Some of our newcomers have a major problem with vertigo. They’re so scared of falling that they make it happen. Whenever I see somebody in trouble, I tend to be extra careful until I know we won’t have a problem.”
“As long as you don’t call me Andrea again, we won’t have a problem.”
“Oh,” he said, “we’re generally informal here—”
“I’m not.”
Another shared glance. “There’s really no need to be so upset. We know this place isn’t easy for some people to deal with. Most people just take some time to adjust—”
“Understood. And I’ll appreciate anything you can do to help me adjust. But I’m still not interested in informality.”
“Come on. There’s no reason we shouldn’t at least pretend to be friendly—”
“There is if I’m not looking for friends.” I made this announcement without any special heat and without any special chill. “Counselor’s fine. And if I can’t call you Ambassador—”
Gibb stammered. “A-As I started to tell you, the AIsource don’t recognize this as an official embassy. They’ve promised to evict us if I give myself that title. So you can call me Stuart if you like. Or Stu.”
“No,” I said. “I believe I’ll call you Mr. Gibb.”
The grimacing man rolled his eyes in contempt. It was not contempt for me, which I’m used to. It was contempt for this man he worked with, contempt he wanted to share with me.
Interesting. I’d been here less than two minutes and I was already being made privy to a power struggle.
Gibb’s eyes broadcast waves of warmth and compassion but engaged my sincerity detector not one bit. “Have I done something to offend you, Counselor?”
“Not yet, Mr. Gibb. Are you hoping to?”
Gibb seemed taken aback yet again, displaying a most undiplomatic lack of skill at dealing with unpleasant people like myself. “All right, then, Counselor. If that’s the way you prefer to play it. We’ll keep this on a strictly professional level.” He gestured toward the grimacing man. “This is Mr. Peyrin Lastogne, our special consultant on- site. My second-in-command, if you prefer. He’ll be providing you with any help you need in your investigation.”
Lastogne’s nod was minimal. “Counselor.”
Even that single word was tinged with an anger he contained but made no attempt to hide. He’d been through hell, somewhere, sometime; maybe several hells.
