The screen displayed one of the less absurd mock-ups of a huge spider, a 3-D model allegedly derived from forensic reconstruction. The picture had a government label on it; they were now pretending to confirm their pretend leaks. At least this one didn’t have a half-naked woman struggling in its grasp.
Jandi was unperturbed.
Prudence shook her head in dismay. The old man was talking above his audience. All they would remember was the picture.
He was billed as Altair’s resident specialist on alienology, but there were no more public appearances on record. Mauree had described him as being retired years ago. Either he was too old and out of touch to be of concern to the League, or they had already silenced him. The news reports showed there were plenty of working scientists willing to endorse their arachnophobic vision.
With a little prodding, the console yielded a contact code. When she used it, an automated response filled the screen, a cartoon of a little green man in a plumed helmet.
In a squeaky voice, it said, “Oh drat these computers, they’re so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them!”
Then it waited patiently for her response.
“Dr. Jandi,” Prudence said, “I got your name from a mutual friend.” She stopped, wondering how much she should give away. “Mauree sends his … cordial greetings. If you have some time, I’d like to meet with you.”
The screen dissolved into Jandi’s lined face. “Time, my dear, is something I have remarkably little of remaining. But what better way to spend it than in the company of a lovely young woman?” The old rogue was still dangerously charming; Welsing would have melted with envy.
“Is today convenient for you?” she asked.
“If you are not opposed to vat-grown vegetable protein, then you may join me for lunch. This sad diet is a punishment from my doctors, and misery does love company.” He did something on his end, and an address appeared on the screen in front of her, spelled out underneath his chin. With an arched eyebrow he glanced past her. “Shall I cook enough for your massive young man lurking in the background, as well?”
Age had not dulled Jandi’s perceptual abilities. Poor Mauree must have been as transparent as glass.
“Yes, please.” Remarkable that he would invite two strangers into his home. Especially given that he knew she was an off-worlder. He would not have bothered to ask an Altairian if they objected to vat-grown food. Even the wealthy elite ate the stuff for breakfast.
“I’ll be expecting you at noon.” Jandi smiled what was probably meant to be a friendly smile, but came off as a college professor assigning a particularly wayward student a trip to his office after class. The screen went blank.
“You want to go for a ride?” she asked Jorgun.
“To see a cartoon?” Ever hopeful, he was.
Prudence hailed a cab, a ground car. Part of Altair’s fetish for growing out, not up. Grav vehicles were restricted to emergency and military use. Prudence didn’t particularly like ground cars. The sensation of speed was magnified when you were that close to the ground, and she always wondered how they avoided running into each other. On the tight, narrow strips of concrete the little cars were often less than a meter apart.
In the sky, there was plenty of room. Vehicles kept a safe buffer around themselves, never coming closer than a hundred meters for anything the size of a starship. That struck her as a much more sensible arrangement.
“Do you have a vid?” she asked the driver.
“Yes, lady.” He was an off-worlder too, with an accent from several hops away. The cab drivers were always foreigners. It made no sense to Prudence. Surely the locals knew their way around better. “The latest news on now. Alien spiders!” The cabbie grinned at her. An incongruous reaction, she thought.
Inside the cab, she gave the driver an address on the opposite side of the city from Jandi’s house. She had time to waste, and she wanted to see if she was being followed. Jorgun set himself to the vid controls and found a cartoon channel by the time the cab started moving.
“Aren’t you worried about the spiders?” She instantly regretted starting a conversation with the cabbie. He hardly seemed to be paying attention to the traffic as it was.
“Yes, of course, lady. But it is good news for me. Immigration is hard. I want to bring my cousins to Altair; the work is easy and the air does not stink. But that whoreson of a dog stopped the immigration. Now, with the aliens, they will have to start it again.”
She hazarded a guess. “You mean the prime minister?”
“Yes, yes,” he said, as if it were obvious. “The whoreson of a dog. That one. He is an immigrant himself, but does that matter? Not to a dog that eats his own vomit.”
She hadn’t known that about the prime minister. Or about dogs, either, but that part might just be color commentary.
“Why do you think the alien problem will restore immigration?”
The cabbie grinned at her in the mirror. “It already has. Fleet is recruiting. Anyone in Fleet can become a citizen. Many other foreigners are joining Fleet, to become citizens. And who will drive the cabs then? My cousins.”
A remarkably provincial view of the threat of alien invasion. The inability to credibly project the future was an intractable flaw in the human design.
But if the cabbie could project the future she remembered, he would be paralyzed by horror. Maybe it wasn’t a design flaw. Maybe ignorance was the only thing that kept people going.
An hour in the cab left her with motion sickness. It wasn’t the rapid changes in velocity that did it, but the constant rush of objects past the window. In space, the stars did not move. The background was always still.
She had wanted to close her eyes and ignore it all, but she had to watch for surveillance. After a handful of false destinations, she had directed the cabbie to Jandi’s house. Now they were parked outside, while she tried to decide if it was safe to go in.
“We were not followed.” The cabbie was grinning conspiratorially again. It seemed to be his only expression. He’d used it even when he was insulting the prime minister. “I drive like a madman. And the government, it cannot put secret cameras in the cab. It is not allowed.”
“Pretty girls are all the time taking long cab rides with young men. I won’t tell your rich husband, lady. If I were a rich man and my wife cheated on me, it would be my fault, for not making her feel like a queen.”
“Don’t they usually end up at hotels?”
“Yes, lady.” He grinned even wider. “That you come to such a fine house means your husband must be very rich indeed.”
She tipped him well. He deserved it. Then, gratefully, she put her feet on unmoving ground, and dragged Jorgun after her.
Jandi’s house was indeed “fine.” Not a mansion, but large enough to be stately, and on a private lot. The entire neighborhood was like that, the street lined with tall, majestic trees. On Kassa trees were cut down as a nuisance. On Altair, they smelled of age, stability, and money.
On the door screen, the same little green man glared silently at her, holding up a small box with a button in one hand. When she reached to push it, he moved it away.
She tapped on the center of the screen, ignoring the antics of the little figure. It squeaked at her in annoyance, but she could hear a door chime sounding inside the house.
“Come in, come in!” The door opened as Jandi hauled on it from the other side. The door was two meters tall and made out of a single piece of wood. Altair must pay their professors quite well.
“Do you like my door? It’s an import. Something I picked up on a field trip. All of my colleagues thought I was
