The squad around the entrance raised their plasma rifles.
“Oh, yes it is. Open it.”
Hoshe gave him a pleasant smile. “No.”
“We are taking you into custody. Sergeant, get a team to scan the box.”
Hoshe stood his ground, smiling in what he hoped was a natural fashion, while praying he wasn’t sweating too obviously. The squad started to advance, their rifles still raised. Some were covering the trolleybot and its large oblong shell.
Captain Turvill suddenly became very still. The squad halted. Their rifles were lowered. The captain saluted. “Sorry, sir. There has been a misunderstanding. Please go through. Your shuttle is waiting. Can my men be of any assistance?”
“No. Thank you,” Hoshe said. “I’ll just, er…” His hand waved at the entrance to the civilian transit station. He felt like tiptoeing past the squad. A schoolboy smirk was trying to break out on his face; it was hard not to laugh.
Poor Captain Turvill would never know what happened, but Paula had spoken with the High Angel, who called Toniea Gall and rather pointedly asked that a prearranged shipment to the Raiel should not be subject to interruption or examination. The alien starship had never been so blunt with her before. A furious, and frankly worried, Toniea Gall immediately called Admiral Columbia, who told the captain to back off. Now.
Hoshe was the only passenger on the shuttle. The stewards helped him float the suspension shell along the connecting tube, then strapped it securely to some seats for the duration of the flight. They docked at the base of the New Glasgow stalk, where all the airlocks were compatible to human ships. When they were inside, Hoshe’s e-butler connected him to the High Angel’s internal information net. His virtual vision filled up with strange fluid graphics in dusky colors. He thought it was a guidance display of some kind. Fuseto patches on his cuffs secured him to the wall, and he looked around the corridor. The tapering ribbons of light in his virtual vision undulated into new patterns as his head moved.
“What is this, exactly?” he asked.
“Detective Finn, welcome back,” the High Angel said. “I am showing you which direction to take.”
The ribbons undulated again, ushering him along a small corridor. Hoshe beckoned the stewards, who tugged the suspension shell along for him. A door opened to show a small elevator capsule, and Hoshe drifted in along with his cargo. He used the fusetos on his soles to keep his feet on the floor as the elevator began to move.
Several minutes later the elevator rose up the stalk into the Raiel dome. “Can you send whatever the equivalent of a trolleybot is for me, please?” Hoshe asked. The dome’s gravity was eighty percent Earth standard; there was no way he could lift the suspension shell, let alone drag it through the streets.
“That will not be necessary,” the High Angel said. “Your cargo will accompany you.”
“Right. Thanks.” The elevator doors opened. Hoshe looked out onto the Raiel city—if that’s what it was. The light was the same gloomy gray he remembered from his earlier visit. Ahead of him was a street made from walls of unbroken matte-black metal. Lines of tiny red lights glimmered along the base of each building.
The ribbons in his virtual vision waved about like seaweed fronds, aligning themselves onto the street. He took a breath and walked out. The oblong shell that contained Isabella Halgarth slid out after him, its base half a meter off the floor.
“Oh, neat,” he muttered. It wasn’t particularly impressive, even though such a feat was currently beyond human technology. But then every High Angel dome had artificial gravity; if you could generate it you could certainly manipulate it.
With the virtual vision display guiding him, Hoshe Finn walked along the dim alien streets. There were more curves, this time, he thought, and the junctions weren’t all right angles. Other than that it was the same interminable featureless metropolis, illuminated by row after row of small colored lights set along the bottom of the walls.
He wound up facing a sheer cliff of metal, identical to all the others. The lights along the foundation were purple, as before. A vertical line split open in front of him, widening to allow him through. Inside was the same circular space with a glowing emerald floor, and a ceiling lost in the overhead shadows.
It was Qatux waiting for him, of that there was no mistake. The Raiel’s health hadn’t improved since they last met. Several of its medium-sized tentacles were coiled up tight; the large pair at the bottom of its neck rested on the floor, as if they were helping to prop it up. Given the way the big body was sagging on its eight stumpy legs, Hoshe thought that might be a correct assessment. Not that it should have any trouble holding its own weight; judging by how tight the brown hide was stretched over the skeleton platelets it was suffering from the Raiel equivalent of anorexia. One of the five eyes was permanently shut, with a blue rheum leaking from the clenched eyelid; the remaining four eyes were twisting around independently.
Hoshe bowed to the creature, feeling enormously sorry for it. You poor desperate thing, if you had to get addicted to anything, it should never be humans, we’re not worth it. “Hello, Qatux, thank you for seeing me,” he said formally.
Qatux raised its head. “Hoshe Finn,” it sighed as air gusted through the pale wrinkles of flesh that made up its mouth region. “Thank you for returning.” Two of its eyes turned in sequence to gaze at the shell. “Is this her?”
“Yes.” Hoshe’s e-butler sent a code to the shell’s array, and the top dilated. Isabella was floating in a clear gel, eyes closed, slim tubes reaching in through her nostrils. Hundreds of fiber-optic strands had been inserted into her shaven skull, forming a white gossamer crown. Long incisions on her arms, legs, and torso were covered with strips of healskin that were even paler than her Nordic skin. She looked so peaceful she was almost angelic. A vicious contrast to when she’d last been conscious.
“Her power cells have been removed,” Hoshe said, “and the weapons neutralized. She’s perfectly harmless now.”
“I understand.”
“The suspension shell array can raise her consciousness to whatever level you want. If you need her to be awake, nerve blocks can prevent her from moving.” Somehow, he felt as if he were betraying the human girl by surrendering her to the alien in such a helpless state.
“That will not be necessary. A neural cycle approximating deep sleep is all I require.”
“Very well. We need to know what is in her brain, why she did what she did. Paula suspects there is some kind of alien presence, or conditioning.”
“A valuable thing to learn. I have never tasted the memories of a living human brain before. I thank you for this gift.”
“It’s not a gift,” Hoshe said sternly, marveling that he found the courage to be so forthright. “This is a service we ask you to provide, which benefits you in kind. Even so, we need complete reliability from you in this case.”
“And you shall have it, Hoshe,” the soft voice wheezed.
“How long do you think it will take?”
“That cannot be answered accurately until I have begun my examination. From what Paula has told me, the method of subornation does not appear to be a subtle one.”
“Is there…” Hoshe scratched at the back of his neck, embarrassed to ask. “Any danger it could take you over?”
“A mental virus? Moving from host to host, replicating and spreading. No, Hoshe, you need not worry. We Raiel have faced such incorporeal entities before. Our mentalities are not susceptible to such assaults. Even so, I will take care.”
“Thank you.” Hoshe bowed again, suddenly desperate to ask when and where the Raiel had encountered such things. The wall behind him parted to let him out into the funereal street. And that was it. He just wished he had more faith in the alien junkie.
***
It was dawn at the Tulip Mansion. Justine sat in the big octagonal conservatory in a mauve sweatshirt and baggy jeans, curled up on her battered leather couch as if it were a child’s comfort toy. She couldn’t stop her hands from stroking her belly, giving reassurance. To herself or her child, she wasn’t sure which.
Gore walked in, dressed in a simple white shirt and dark brown pants. He leaned over the couch and gave Justine a light kiss. She gripped his forearm. “Thanks, Dad.”
He gave a shrug, as close to embarrassment as she’d seen him in the last two hundred years. “Nothing to it. His wetwiring was all cheap black market shit. You could have beaten him off with a wet towel.”
“I was in a wet towel,” she said sardonically.
“Well, there you go then, you didn’t even need me.”
There was a small cough, and Justine looked up to see Paula standing at the entrance. “Senator, I’m glad to see you’re all right.”
“No thanks to your bunch of asshole incompetents,” Gore snapped. “What kind of piss-poor operation are you running? I’m not surprised Columbia kicked you out of the navy if this is an example of your results.”
“Dad,” Justine scolded.
“Your father is correct,” Paula said. “The lapse in security is completely unacceptable. It appears that the Starflyer agent was waiting in your fridge; most of the food inside had been consumed. He must have been in there when the Senate Security team installed the upgrade. They will be suspended pending a disciplinary hearing.”
“And that will help how, exactly?”
“Dad, just drop it.”
“Ha.” Gore waved a hand in disgust. “Thanks to the Investigator’s screwup I’ve got to put up with every news show on the unisphere showing the recording of me walking around Park Avenue with my dick hanging out.”
“And executing the assassin,” Paula said.
Justine gave the mansion’s array an order, and the octagonal room’s glass walls vanished behind a gray haze.
“That motherfucker was trying to kill my daughter; he’s already killed my son, and countless others. You think I’m upset about killing him?”
“No. But the NYPD must show due process.”
“I talked to the detectives on the scene. If they want to know anything else they’ve got my lawyer’s unisphere address.”
“Enough,” Justine snapped. “Both of you. I’m shaky enough without you two shouting at each other in front of me. The big question is if we now have enough evidence to force the Senate to take notice of the Starflyer.”
“The proof is certainly building,” Paula said. “We’ve exposed Tarlo, which will help convince the Halgarths that this is not some personal power struggle. And people will be curious who sent the assassin against you, Senator.”
