Half an hour later the threesome was settling into a suite of three interconnecting rooms on the third floor. “So, what did you learn?” Norr inquired, as she joined her companions in the small but well-furnished sitting room. “When is the ship due?” The sensitive had dark eyes, high cheekbones, and a face that was a little too narrow to be classically beautiful. Not that Rebo cared. “What we heard back in CaCanth was true,” the runner replied. “Assuming the vessel is still in service, it should arrive three days from now.”
The others knew what he meant. In the aftermath of the revolution that destroyed most of the star gates, a fleet of sentient starships had been constructed and put into service to replace the then-controversial portals. But now, after thousands of years without proper maintenance, the vessels had begun to die. There were fewer of them with each passing year, and, given the fact that the surviving ships were living on borrowed time, it was extremely dangerous to board one.
Still, there was no choice other than the star gates, and the Techno Society controlled most of them. That hadn’t prevented the threesome from making use of the portals in the past, however, so it was Hoggles who voiced the obvious question. “What about our mechanical friend? Why take our chances aboard a ship? If he could point us toward a star gate?”
Rebo grinned as Norr opened her pack, removed the ratty-looking coat, and draped it over her shoulders. The response was immediate. “If you insist on attempting to classify my corporeal being, please refer to it as
electromechanical
,” the AI said waspishly. “I am not a winepress! And, as for the presence of a star gate, I can assure you that one exists.”
“That’s wonderful,” Norr put in enthusiastically. “They’re scary—but so are the ships.”
“Not so fast,” Logos interjected primly. “I indicated that a gate
exists
, but given the fact that the equipment is located approximately five hundred feet below this room, I doubt that you could access it.”
“We’ll check on that,” Rebo said thoughtfully. “But it wouldn’t surprise me. A lot of ancient cities sit atop their own ruins.”
The furniture wasn’t large enough for Hoggles, who was seated on the floor. “That’s too bad,” the heavy commented. “It sounds like we’d better lay in some supplies. There won’t be any on the ship.”
“Yeah,” Rebo agreed, and fingered his purse. He’d been paid in CaCanth and given more than half of that money to the receptionist, in exchange for a token that could be redeemed at any guildhall throughout known space. That, plus the funds saved up over the years, made the runner a moderately wealthy man. “We’ll need food, some sort of fuel to cook with, and new bedrolls. Not only that . . . but I’m low on ammo.”
“Then tomorrow we shop!” Norr said enthusiastically. “I need some things as well.”
“What about tonight?” the heavy wanted to know. “I’m hungry—and it’s too early for bed.”
“First we’ll go looking for a good dinner,” Rebo announced. “Then it’s off to the circus! I have three tickets— compliments of the guild.”
“But what about
me
?” Logos inquired. “It’s boring in Lonni’s pack.”
“That’s easy,” the sensitive replied. “Make yourself a little more presentable, and I’ll wear you.”
The coat had been laid across a chair. Suddenly it began to squirm, started to expand, and morphed into a beautiful evening gown. It was a pale blue, slightly diaphanous, and covered with sparkly things. “Nope,” Norr commented as she held the garment up for inspection. “That’s
too
fancy . . . Have you seen the sort of men that I hang out with? Bring it down a notch.”
The evening dress shimmered and morphed into a plain but well-cut knee-length dress. “That’s more like it,” the sensitive proclaimed, started toward her room, and paused to look back. “As for you two, it wouldn’t hurt to take a bath and put on some clean clothes.” Rebo ran a hand over his beard, Hoggles grumbled, and the matter was settled.
The city of Seros, on the Planet Anafa
Though of considerable importance now, the star gate that Shaz and his newly formed team were about to employ had been no more than a little-used maintenance portal, back when the system was new. The
real
network, meaning the one that the public had access to, ran parallel to the so-called B-Grid, and had been more complex. Just one of the reasons why 98 percent of the A-Grid was off-line while segments of the support system continued to function.
Metal rang on metal as four heavily burdened robots descended the spiral staircase. Arn Dyson followed them, and a female norm followed
him.
Her name was Du Phan, and she was an assassin. She had shiny black hair, wide-set brown eyes, and full, rather sensuous lips. Phan’s movements were graceful, like those of a finely trained dancer, and her perfectly sculpted body was festooned with weapons. Her black slippers made little more than a whisper as she flowed down the stairs, and Shaz could feel her pull. The air shimmered as a combination of highly specialized skin cells and hormones interacted to help the combat variant blend with the duracrete walls as he brought up the rear.
It was a small team, but that was a matter of choice rather than necessity, since Shaz could have hired a dozen assassins had he wanted to. But the mission called for the variant to capture Logos
and
learn where the control center called Socket was located, because one wasn’t much good without the other. That was a serious problem, because even if he and his team managed to capture the AI, there was no guarantee that Logos would cooperate with them. And while a bio bod could be tortured if necessary, it would be unwise to use such methods on a construct because one mistake could destroy the very knowledge they hoped to gain. All of which argued in favor of a small but lethal team. Which, with the possible exception of Dyson, it was.
The stairs twisted down through a pool of light and turned yet again. The radiation produced by the adjacent power core made Shaz feel queasy. Nobody knew what the long-term impact of such exposure might be—but the variant felt sure that it wouldn’t be good. If the other biologicals were experiencing similar sensations, they gave no sign of it as they left the stairs and followed the metal men into the decontamination lock. In spite of the fact that a tremendous amount of scientific knowledge had been lost over the millennia, the Techno Society’s scientists were well aware of what could happen if organisms from one planetary biosphere were allowed to colonize another, which was why Shaz ordered Phan and Dyson to strip off their clothes.
The sensitive was clearly nonplussed, and sought cover among the androids, but nakedness, or the possibility of nakedness, was a fact of life for any member of the assassin’s guild, and Phan was anything but a prude. Nor was the assassin a fool, which was why she placed one hand on her hip and smiled. “Sure . . . You first.”
Two rows of extremely white teeth appeared when the variant grinned. Then, rather than render himself partially invisible as he might have, Shaz did just the opposite. The truth was that he
wanted
the female to get a good look at his well-muscled physique. A desire that was apparent to Dyson, who took cover behind the blank-eyed robots as he began to remove his clothing.
Impressed by what she saw, and not to be outdone, Phan performed her own strip tease. But first she had to remove the combat harness and her weapons. With that out of the way, she pulled the top half of the two-piece bodysuit up over her head. Having given Shaz a moment to appreciate her firm breasts, the assassin skimmed the bottom half of her bodysuit down onto her lower legs and sat on the bench that ran along the wall. Then, with her eyes on the variant, Phan lifted her feet off the floor. “So,” she said provocatively. “Would you like to help?”
Shaz not only wanted to help, he wanted to take the norm right there, and would have except for the queasy feeling at the pit of his stomach. So he said, “Yes,” pulled the garment free, and turned to slap a saucer-sized button. There was a hiss followed by a roar as jets of hot water combined with a powerful antibacterial agent struck the entire party from every possible direction. The shower continued for three minutes and was followed by blasts of warm air.
Shaz was impressed by the fact that Phan hadn’t tried to conceal her body. Now, as the blowers turned themselves off, the assassin stood facing him. In addition to a pair of nicely shaped breasts, she had a flat stomach, and a tattoo that led down into the valley between her legs. The norm smiled knowingly and looked directly into his eyes. “Can we get dressed now?”
“No,” Shaz replied, as he shifted his gaze from her to a bedraggled Dyson. “Why bother? We’ll have to go through the same process all over again as we exit on Thara.”
Both the humans and the machines left a trail of wet footprints behind as they hauled their disinfectant-soaked luggage into the room beyond. The curvilinear walls were covered with hundreds of video tiles. Each square bore a picture with a name printed below. About half of them were lit, meaning it was still possible to travel there, and the rest were dark. The tile labeled THARA showed a butte, with hills in the distance, and blue sky beyond. “That’s where we’re going,” Shaz explained, as he pointed to the square. “Put the equipment at the center of the platform and step aboard.”
Phan did as instructed, and Dyson did likewise, leaving the robots to imitate them. Once the team was in place, Shaz touched the butte, felt it give, and hurried to join the rest on the well-worn platform. The room lights flashed on and off as a woman long dead spoke through the overhead speakers. “The transfer sequence is about to begin. Please take your place on the service platform. Once in place, check to ensure that no portion of your anatomy extends beyond the yellow line. Failure to do so will cause serious injury and could result in death.”
The steel disk was extremely crowded, and Phan had to edge inward in order to clear the yellow line. Her thigh came into contact with one of the androids, and his alloy skin felt cold. Dyson wished that he was somewhere else and closed his eyes. Life after death was a fact—so it was the
process
of dying that he feared.
Shaz knew that the public platforms had not only been a good deal larger but equipped with attendants, and chairs for those who chose to use them. Now, as he prepared to make the nearly instantaneous jump from one solar system to another, the operative wondered if the ancients experienced fear as they waited to cross the void, or were so confident of the technologies they employed that the outcome was taken for granted.
Before Shaz could complete his musings, there was a brilliant flash of light. One by one his atoms were disassembled and sent through hyperspace before being systematically reassembled within the receiving gate on Thara. The variant felt the usual bout of disorientation, followed by vertigo, and a moment of nausea. “Okay,” the operative said briskly. “Grab your gear and enter the decontamination lock. Once the shower is over, you can get dressed.”
It took the better part of twenty minutes for the team to clear the decontamination chamber, get dressed, and rearm themselves. Then Shaz led his subordinates into what had once been a standard passageway but had long since been transformed into a lateral tunnel, as the lower levels of Tryst were condemned and the citizenry migrated upward.
Though far from fancy, the interior of the access way was reasonably clean and showed signs of recent use. Shaz took this for granted since there were other Techno Society operatives, some of whom had reason to visit Tryst.
The tunnel terminated in front of a circular hatch. It consisted of a two-inch-thick slab of steel, was locked against unauthorized intruders, and controlled by a numeric keypad. Shaz tapped six digits into the controller and was rewarded by a loud whine as the barrier unscrewed itself from the wall. The combat variant looked back over his shoulder. “Okay, here comes the hard part. . . . The hatch opens into a vertical shaft. Turn to the right as you exit, grab on to the maintenance ladder, and climb. The exit is five hundred feet above us, so take your time and rest if you need to. I’ll lead the way. . . . Number Four will secure the hatch and bring up the rear.”
“And then?” Phan wanted to know.
“And then we head for the runner’s guild. . . . That’s where the runner, the sensitive, and the heavy are most likely to be. If not, we’ll check all of the hotels until we find them. Once that’s accomplished, the first objective is to confirm that they have Logos.”
Dyson “felt” a low-grade buzz as the thoughts generated by thousands of minds merged into something akin to static and drifted down through solid rock.
Phan hooked a thumb in her combat harness. “Works for me.”
“Good,” the operative replied, and turned to swing the hatch out of the way. Most of the shaft was filled by the huge pipes that carried water up to the surface, and a ladder claimed the rest. One careless move, one slip, and anyone attempting to reach the top would plummet to the bottom. With that sobering thought in mind, Shaz stepped up to the edge, forced himself to ignore the drop, and turned his eyes upward. The top of the well was open to the sky, and thanks to the fact that it was daytime, the variant could see a tiny pinhead-sized circle of light. A single stomach-turning step was sufficient to put the operative on the rusty ladder. The metal was cold beneath his fingers as Shaz began to climb. Somewhere, if only in his imagination, the ancients started to laugh.
TWO
The city of Tryst, on the Planet Thara
Would you trade your hammer for a rock? Of course not. Yet you listen when the priests call upon you to cast out technology. They fear science because it can dispel ignorance. And ignorance is the primary thing upon which they feed.
—Excerpt from street lecture 52.1 as written by Milos Lysander, founder of the Techno Society, and delivered by thousands of metal men each day