The queue moved forward. The attendant took Heikki’s card, snapped it through the reader, and returned it to its owner in a single smooth gesture.
“Move to the front, please, dam-i-sers, move to the front.”
Heikki did as she was told, edging along the row of seats until she could go no further. She was in a good position, near the middle of the car, between two window braces and just opposite the floor window’s widest point, and she felt some of her impatience ease. It had been a long time since last she’d ridden the floats through Pod One.
The float lay steady in the platform’s arms as the last passengers filed aboard, and the attendant closed the heavy door. The seals sighed into place, and then the arms snapped back. The float lifted slowly, light as a bubble, falling upward into the open volume of the pod. There was an awed murmur from the ring of passengers, people shifting in their seats to try to see in all directions at once. Heikki smiled, suddenly overwhelmed by a strange, fierce happiness. If EP1 was all metallic grandeur, an architecture of massive columns and gleaming arches, and EP5 a severe marriage of form and function, EP7 was air and fire. The open center volume of Pod One—unique in the Loop—was broken here and there by the glittering, multicolor webs of filament and slag crystal, spun by an artist who called herself Spider. Beyond those sculptures, more lights, blue-white, pink, fire-red, acid-green, and eye-searing purple, glowed through the crystal walls that enclosed the Pod’s working levels. Above and below, at the spherical pod’s twin poles, the crystals of the light traps glared and sparked, running together into a single mass of color. The float rose faster now, the multicolored bands of metal that marked the different levels blurring into each other. There was another murmur, first time riders glancing nervously around them, and then the float swung neatly over into the down-drawing beam. Glancing back, Heikki could see the distant mouth of the projector, thought she saw the crystal glowing red-black in its depths.
The float fell gently toward the farside platform, slowing as it came closer to the attractor. The platform’s arms swung up and out, and the float glided between them, landing against the platform with a dull thud. The seals released with a hiss, and the passengers began to get to their feet, reaching for bags and carrycases as the hatch swung open. Heikki followed them out onto the farside concourse, blinking a little in the strong light of the pole crystals.
There were plenty of jitneys available on this side of the pod. Heikki lifted a hand to summon the nearest, and swung herself into the passenger compartment as soon as the door popped up. “Explorers’ Club,” she told the voicebox mounted on the forward wall, and ran her cash card through the sensor. The jitney’s computer beeped twice, and the door closed.
The jitney deposited her at the entrance to the Club in record time. The cast-glass panels, patterned with a stylized representation of Loop and Precincts and the uncharted stars beyond, opened at her touch, the Censor verifying her membership. Inside, she deposited her carryall on the conveyor that led to the checkroom, and headed for the main room. The corridor lights grew dimmer as she made her way past the print and film libraries, then brightened again, blued now by the reflected light of the pole crystals, as she turned the final corner.
Light blazed beyond the tinted glass wall, a pair of floats rising and falling through the central volume. The same light, softened only a little by its passage through the greenish glass, spilled across the dozens of tables, across faces and sober, rich suits. Heikki blinked, half blinded, and a voice at her elbow said, “Dam’ Heikki?”
Heikki glanced down at the grey-haired man in Club livery, nodded automatically. In the same moment, a familiar voice called, “Heikki!”
Grinning foolishly, Heikki said, “I see my party, thanks, maitre.” Still grinning, she made her way through the maze of tables toward the voice.
Marshallin Santerese rose from her seat, her smile belying the formal gesture. “Welcome home, Heikki.”
There was someone else at the table with her, but Heikki ignored that for the moment, reaching instead to take the smaller woman in her arms. They embraced, holding each other longer and more closely than was considered modest—but that was the
Precincts’ prejudice, not the Loop, Heikki thought, and rested her cheek against Santerese’s braids.
“Lord, doll, it’s good to see you.” That was Santerese’s private voice, too soft to carry beyond Heikki’s shoulder. More loudly, she said, “I got the information you wanted, the bid specs and all, and I brought Malachy down to draft us a contract.”
Reluctantly, Heikki released her, and nodded to the man still standing politely by the table, a rather amused half-smile curving his lips. The lawyer was wearing a severely cut evening suit, the short jacket molded to his still-slender form. The trousers, despite the dictates of this year’s fashion, were not full enough to disguise slim hips and elegant legs. The cord of a data lens stretched across his flat middle, and a plain gold fob marked the presence of a palmcorder in the jacket’s left-hand pocket: certainly he’d come for business.
“You’re looking good, Malachy,” Heikki said aloud, and lowered herself into the remaining chair. “So, what did you find out, Marshallin?”
Santerese looked up from the orderpad, then fumbled in a pocket of her own day suit. “Here are the specs,” she answered. “I don’t know if it tells you anything new.”
“Excuse me, Malachy?” Without waiting for his answer, Heikki reached for the viewboard that lay discarded on the table, and fitted the datasquare into the port. A moment later, the screen lit, but no letters appeared on the glowing surface.
“It’s protected,” Santerese said, unnecessarily.
Heikki nodded, already adjusting her data lens to their private setting. Within its circle, text sprang into existence. She scanned the formal paragraphs quickly, but it contained little more than what the Twins had already told her. The LTA had gone down in bad weather, all right, just as she’d suspected—it had been one of the worst storms of the winter season, in fact, bringing down several other craft. It had been flying from the main research station at Retego Bay to Lowlands, on a course that took it near the edges of the central massif. She stared down at the board, not really looking at the glowing letters in the circle of the lens, seeing instead a wall of clouds lurching up over the wall of greenery that marked the slope of the massif, moving faster than she had ever thought clouds could move outside of a viewtape. The Firsters with her had sworn, and scrambled, one turning the scanning radar groundward, looking for a clearing, the pilot swinging south, to lay the latac parallel to the prevailing winds, the engineer hurrying to bleed gases from the envelope, ready to collapse it as soon as they could land. They had found a place at the last possible minute, and the adolescents of the crew had scrambled outside, stakes and mallets in hand. They’d tied the latac down with double chains, the rising stormwind whipping dirt and bits of leaves about their bare legs, the envelope hissing as it folded down on top of the basket. They’d made it back inside just as the first rain fell, and huddled shivering together while the rising winds lashed the grounded ship, making it shudder and tremble against its moorings. At the height of the storm, thunder sounding almost instantaneously with the lightning, the latac had lifted a little from the ground, and she’d heard the pilot whispering, hold, damn you, hold…. over and over again. When the storm ended, and the engineer began to refill the envelope, they’d gone back outside to find that three of the starforged chains had snapped.
She looked up, shaking aside the memory, and Santerese said, “Where’d you hear about this one, anyway?”
“The Twins,” Heikki answered, and nodded when Santerese laughed.
“Are we bidding out of spite, doll, or is it a decent job?”
Heikki glanced sideways, and saw Malachy’s imperfectly concealed frown. She suppressed her own laughter—the lawyer was ‘pointer enough to be appalled by the thought of filing a bid for any but the most businesslike of reasons—and said, more seriously, “No, I know Iadara. The only thing I’m worried about is the chance of sabotage.”
“Does sound bad, doesn’t it?” Santerese leaned back with an abstracted smile as a waiter appeared with a platter of tapas. “I think we should build a risk factor into the contract.”
Heikki nodded, reaching for one of the little pastries.
Malachy said, a touch of disapproval in his voice, “That sort of clause is always tricky, to write and to enforce.”
“That’s what we pay you for, darling,” Santerese said.
Heikki suppressed a chuckle, said indistinctly, “I think it’s warranted.” She swallowed, and added, “And I’m sure you can draft something that will stand up in court—if it has to.”
“God forbid,” Santerese murmured, and grimaced as the table’s monitor flashed. The fine for invoking a
