Chapter 15 #2
She was too nervous to be soothed. And too curious. “So, besides the fact that I’ll lose some memories either way, tell me the true price. The one you wouldn’t tell my contact.”
“You’ve already paid it. Are continuing to pay it. Exposing truths the Citizen Protection Service has hidden for decades. They have older, darker secrets. If you uncover them, you’ll need the shields.” The voice paused. “You are a red spark in transit.”
It took her a moment to get the reference. Which made the whole situation much more interesting. “The Ayorinn Legacy quatrain from a year ago. ‘Red sparks travel faster than light...’”
“‘...and swallow the dark flooded city.’ Yes. Are you ready to change your fate?” Another reference to that quatrain. The janitor had clearly taken the whole Legacy to heart.
“I can’t advocate for your agenda or anyone else’s. I may as well kill my career now.”
“I’m not asking you to. Do what you do best. Find and follow the patterns. Tell the galaxy the truths they need to hear.”
She would do that regardless. “We have a deal.”
“Then go into the next room, and we’ll start.”
An interconnecting door disguised by the wall decoration silently slid open. Arco stood and went into a larger, less dusty preview room.
An older-looking woman stood up from a wide bench as the connecting door closed.
“Hello, Ms. Charrascos. Feel free to remove your coat and veil if you’d like.” The perfect Standard English diction gave no hint of family origin.
Arco gratefully pulled off the veil and slid out of the coat as she considered the other woman. She looked somehow familiar.
Conservative clothes and cosmetics, braided charcoal and silver hair in a severe, old-fashioned style. The generic image of a boring bureaucrat, only belied by intelligent gray eyes.
Arco’s finder sense pinged and helpfully made the connection.
“I don’t want to warp this deal, but I know who you are.
Administrator Samara Akaramides, CPS Economic Research and Logistics.
Administrator Pennington-Smythe used your department as a baitball when she didn’t want to answer questions about the misleading economic studies she issued for her pet construction project.
We researched your whole staff, trying to get interviews.
” Another unexpected thread fell into place.
“You interviewed one of my Eclipse 8 Jumpers about six months ago, the day before I did. He mentioned your name.”
Her head bobbed in acknowledgment. “Please call me Samara. I know who you are, too, or at least your work. Charisma, Mabingion purge, Polaris-G, to name a few.” She smiled wryly. “Believe it or not, I was a fan before you landed in Ridderth. It’s part of why I agreed.”
“Thanks. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Nervousness roiled her stomach. “Can I be exceptionally rude and ask you to do this now? I don’t want to lose any more memories than I have to.”
“Certainly.” Samara sat on the padded bench, then touched a control that raised a back-support section. “Please sit. May I touch you? I need skin-to-skin contact.”
Arco sat and draped her coat and veil over her lap. She wiped her sweaty palm on her thigh, then held out her hand.
Samara took it and guided their joined hands to the bench. Words formed in Arco’s mind. “I see you’ve had temporary shields before, so this part will be fast. Are you ready?”
“Green go.” Arco liked that bit of Jumper jargon.
Temporary shields usually felt like ephemeral, gauzy flexin armor for her mind.
The ones Samara gave her felt like flexin made from incalloy, strong enough to protect interstellar ships from the corrosive effects of transit space.
These also lay dormant, rather than active.
Their potential felt heavy and palpable.
An odd, languorous whimsy flushed through her, making her thoughts both sluggish and flighty. Not good.
Marshaling her focus, she concentrated on a pre-flight list of named galaxies she’d memorized. She made herself sort them in reverse alphabetical order. Zengess, Yangbaijing, Whirlpool, Vizier’s Knot, Virgo, Umyeni Nomkakhe, Triangulum…
“Arco, stop fighting me.” Samara’s words in her head. “Think of something comforting. The sleepiness will go away soon.”
Rain on the roof was comforting. Maybe that’s why she’d stayed in Ridderth so long.
Certainly not because Ridderth was where Brenner lived.
Her townhouse was comforting. It needed more furniture to be comfortable.
Her bed was comforting. She suspected Brenner’s bed would be more comforting. Maybe they could find out together.
Samara’s words intruded on her dreamy fantasy. “How long ago was your immune system implant installed?”
Arco came back to reality. Calling up the number was harder than it should have been. “Twenty-nine standard years. Why?”
She’d compartmentalized the health metadata to dissociate it from the actual experience and the subsequent cascading clusterfuck of fallout. Which she shouldn’t be thinking about now, except Samara’s actions messed with her orderly mental catalog.
“I am sorry to tell you, but your network of micro-nodes is very old-style. It’ll make this next part hurt.”
Arco barely had time to take a breath before her throat, spine, and major joints erupted in fiery agony.
Retreating to her mind, she went after memories of cold.
Howling blizzard. Frozen river. Real-space zero point after a scary hull breach.
Icy sleet on her face and on her neck from Ridderth’s first storm of autumn.
After what seemed like hundreds of memories and hours of pain, it eased off abruptly, leaving a lingering ache. She opened her eyes and blinked a couple of times, then took a slow, measured breath.