This Virtual Night Read online

  He stared into space for a microsecond as his headset accessed the necessary records. There were blue stalks rising from his head, but she couldn’t tell if they were natural or part of his headset. “Welcome back, Outrider Gaya.” His brow furrowed slightly. “You are . . . later than expected.”

  “Seventeen years, yeah, I know.” She shrugged. The motion irritated her stasis bruises and made her wince. “Sorry about that. Is my suite available?”

  Another microsecond of unfocused staring. “Currently yes, but it’s assigned to Outrider Pasador and his partner beginning on the tenth. . . .”

  “I’ll be gone by then. Or I’ll work something out with him.”

  “Good enough, then.” He ran a gangly bird finger across a screen in front of him. “Please relax in the lobby while I have bots prepare the suite.” He cocked his head slightly, which set his blue stalks quivering. “Next time, if you call when you dock, I can have your apartment ready by the time you get here.”

  “I know,” she said shortly. “Stuff came up.”

  She went to find a chair that suited her Terran-style physique. The only one available was next to a bunch of young girls who were giggling and whispering and pointing at an empty spot in the middle of the room as if there were something there. They were probably hooked up to a shared universe game. No doubt in their heads the lobby looked like a tropical beach, or a magical palace with dancing cutlery, or something else suitably silly. Role-playing virts had been prohibited in public spaces last time Ru was here, but if gamers were subtle enough they could usually go undetected. These girls weren’t being subtle, though, and the opulent headset that one of them was wearing, adorned with crystalline butterflies on wires that tinkled each time a movement of her head set them bouncing, was hardly inconspicuous. Maybe the laws had changed in the last twenty years. Overdecorated headsets seemed to be the fashion of the moment, and as Ru looked about the room she saw many that were—to her eyes at least—excessive. One woman had a stylized golden vulture perched on her head, its wings sweeping down around her ears; another wore a scale model of a waystation, its inner ring fitted around her head and two others magnetically suspended above it; yet another wore a crown of graduated spikes that splayed out from her head like sunbeams. Ru vaguely remembered having seen something like that in a picture of an ancient Earth statue. Yet all those headsets—large and small, modest and decadent, tasteful and bizarre—did the same thing in the end, serving as interface between the brainware inside a person’s head and the ocean of data outside it.

  Hers still wasn’t turned on.

  The girls had become quite loud, and one of them suddenly got up and ran toward the door, barreling into a woman in a glossy pink jumpsuit. Immersed in her game, the girl hadn’t even seen her. A seven-foot tall Frisian in a security uniform approached, spoke to her harshly, then addressed the other girls. Ru couldn’t hear what he was saying, but his intent was clear. They argued with him for a few minutes, but in the end he sternly ushered them out. They should be glad he’s not reporting them, she thought, as the sound of tinkling butterflies faded in the distance.

  “Outrider Gaya.” It was the receptionist. “Your suite is ready.”

  She nodded her appreciation and headed toward the tube at the back of the lobby. From there it was a short trip to the front door of her timeshare, which opened of its own accord at her approach. A new feature.

  The apartment looked exactly like it had the day she’d left for her last assignment. Her furniture was positioned normally, the art monitors were displaying her favorite paintings, and even the robe she’d left thrown across the sofa was in exactly the same position that it had been when she left. Never mind that an hour ago all her possessions had been packed in a storage crate and tucked away somewhere in the depths of the station; the staging bots had arranged everything to perfection, making it seem like she just left the suite yesterday. It was an illusion, to be sure, but a comforting illusion, and she stood in the doorway for a minute, letting the familiarity of the place seep into her, soothing her spirit. All other things might change—had changed—but this, her territory, remained constant.

  She adjusted the wall color to a soothing blue and walked over to the shelf unit where her colonial artifacts were displayed. A statue of a six-armed god from Hadrian Four, a fertility carving from Acer Six, a scarf of New Tuscan silk that changed color in response to her emotion . . . there was an item from every Variant race she had helped rescue from Isolation, given to her by grateful peoples. What she had no mementos from were the colonies that had failed to adapt when Earth first cut off contact with them, or—far worse—had destroyed themselves when their Hausman mutations began to surface. The only living colonies the outriders ever found were those whose inhabitants had made their peace with the concept of mass mutation, and whose gene pool had stabilized to reflect a few dominant traits. Everywhere else there was only emptiness, alien landscapes that had long since swallowed up the bones of Earth’s abandoned children.

  Reaching into her bag, Ru took out the one keepsake of Tully’s that she had claimed as a memento. It was an opulent glass phallus with a rainbow of colors swirling in its depths and a series of hash-marks etched around the base. She knew that each mark represented an intimate encounter between her partner and some newly discovered class of Variant. Xenophilia was his secret pleasure and his weakness, and ultimately it had cost him his life.

  I will never forget you, she promised his spirit.

  In the washroom she took a good look at herself for the first time. There was a small purple bruise marking each place where a stim suit contact had been attached, but otherwise she looked much the same as she had before stasis. Her color was healthy, her olive skin smooth and taut, her muscles weak but not atrophied. Apparently the stim suit had done its job maintaining her physical state. Her copper-brown hair was a disheveled mess, the short bob crusted with bits of dried gel from the suit, but that was only to be expected. Rebirth was messy.

  She took a hot shower, reveling in the wasted water—a luxury one didn’t have on small ships—then headed into the bedroom unit that the bots had connected to the suite and stretched out on the bed, wearing nothing but her headset. Soothing smells wafted into the room, triggered by her weight on the mattress. Post-stasis weariness enveloped her like a warm cocoon.

  Home.

  She reached up a hand to her headset, hesitated a moment, then turned it on. Might as well get this over with. Shutting her eyes, she imagined she could feel her brainware detecting the headset’s presence, checking its credentials, and establishing the necessary protocols. That, too, was an illusion. The processor that perched spider-like inside her brain was no more detectable to her conscious senses than her natural brain matter was.

  A field of twinkling stars appeared as the headset tested its visual programming. Then those disappeared, and bright white letters on a field of midnight blue took their place.

  WELCOME BACK, RU GAYA.

  THERE ARE 102,345 UPDATES AWAITING DOWNLOAD.

  YOU HAVE 1,395,092 UNREAD MESSAGES.

  ACTION?

  With a groan she turned over on her side, and she was asleep before the headset asked again.

  Any act intended to compromise the integrity of a space station should be considered not only an assault upon that station, but an offense against humanity itself. The perpetrator should find in us no leniency, no sympathy, and no refuge. In this all the outworlds are united, Common Law and Independent alike, for humanity cannot colonize deep space unless the structures that protect human life are considered sacrosanct.

  ELIMANI SINJARA

  Beyond Barriers: Ten Principles of Governance That Transcend Political Boundaries

  HARMONY NODE

  TRIDAC STATION

  MICAH WAS drawing with pencil and paper. It would have been more efficient to use a stylus and screen, but he took pleasure in the exotic sens
ations that the ancient tools engendered. The subtle vibrations in his fingers as the tip of his pencil rubbed across the paper, leaving behind a trail of microscopic grit. The heady sense of waste as he destroyed what had once been part of a living tree, for nothing more than a momentary indulgence. Primitive, perverse pleasure. He could imagine his distant human ancestors sitting around a fire on the plains of Terran Africa, writing just the same way.

  Never mind that the ‘paper’ was really plastic and he’d had to pay an arm and a leg to have it textured properly. Or that he’d positioned a graphics screen underneath the paper to record the pattern of his pencil strokes, so if he erased a detail—itself a messy process that drove the cleaning bots crazy—a copy of the original would remain in storage. It was the illusion that mattered.

  He was deep into his work when a monster suddenly appeared. It was an ugly, ill-proportioned creature with the wings of a dragon, the legs of a horse, and three reptilian heads that spurted fire as they writhed against the lighting panels in the ceiling. The flesh was translucent, so Micah could still see his work schedule displayed on the screen behind it. That only added to its ugliness.

  He calmly took note of the monster, then returned to his work. “What do you want, Ron?” He visualized the icon that would transmit the sound of his words to the person who had sent him the image. “I’m busy.”

  The monster resolved into a human shape, flat and cartoon-like but recognizable. “How did you know it was me?”

  “Because you’re the only one who sends me visuals without getting permission first. What’s up?”

  “I was checking to see if you were in. I’ll stop by.”

  Micah opened his mouth to respond, but before he could make a sound the image disappeared.

  That was odd.

  Ron Demeter normally preferred to stay in his studio, relying upon netted images to communicate. If he was willing to actually leave his room and walk down three whole corridors and a staircase just to talk to Micah, something important must be up. Curious, Micah put his pencil aside in its velvet-lined collector-edition case and waited. It did feel good to take a break; his hand was getting cramped from having to control the pressure on the ancient writing instrument. Did early Terran writers have some kind of special exercise regimen for their hands to prevent such discomfort? He would have to research it.

  A short time later the portal pinged. Micah gestured it open and Ron entered. He was Terran, of course—as was nearly everyone on this station other than Micah—and his impossibly blond hair brushed the top of the doorway as he entered. “You alone?”

  Micah spread his hands melodramatically. “As you see.”

  “I mean, really alone?”

  So we’re going to act like we’re running a spy game. Okay. He directed his headset to sever all connections to outside systems. Ron waited in silence, one foot tapping impatiently on the floor. Such an overt sign of anxiety was unlike him. “All right,” Micah said at last. “We’re isolated. Now can I ask what all this melodrama is about?”

  Ron looked around the room suspiciously, as if checking it for hidden eavesdroppers. At last he seemed satisfied. “Dragonslayer was your baby, wasn’t it?”

  “If you mean, was I part of the twenty-person project team that developed that game—my primary job being to keep everyone else from wandering off on tangents? Yes, I suppose you could say it was mine. Why?”

  “You heard about the explosion on Harmony Station?”

  He shrugged. “Just the basics. I haven’t been following offstation news much these days. Some kind of accident, yes?”

  “Actually, they’re thinking it was sabotage. A deliberate attempt to damage the life support systems.”

  “Shit. Seriously? No, I hadn’t heard that.” Given that everyone in the outworlds was dependent on artificial life support systems for survival, there was no worse crime in the eyes of the Guerans than to attack one. And no limit to the punishment that might be meted out to someone who tried. “Is everyone okay?”

  “Yeah. Air quality in that ring will be affected for at least another hundred hours, and I hear it’s cold as hell in some sectors, but the backup systems got online fast enough to prevent any casualties. Other than the two who were responsible for the whole mess. There was barely enough left of them to identify.” He drew in a deep breath. “Micah . . . the guys who did it were playing Dragonslayer.”

  He exhaled sharply. “That’s not possible.”

  “Whether they were actually role-playing at the time is anyone’s guess. But they were at least streaming the game. That’s been verified.”

  “Dragonslayer has locational restrictions built in. It would have directed them away from that part of the station, and if they insisted on going into restricted space the game would have shut down. I should know. I coded that failsafe myself.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess it didn’t work very well, because I’m telling you, investigators checked the guys’ activity logs, and it looks like they were running the game when they died.”

  He exhaled sharply. “Ron, it’s just not possible—”

  “Just listen to me, okay?” He glanced back nervously at the door. “They’re going to be inspecting the Dragonslayer code. Your code. They want to find out how the game might be tied to all this.” His expression tightened. “Did you put a back door in that program, Micah? Some way that you could sneak in new code after the game was inspected and released? I’m told all designers do that. They hate to give up control of their work. If so—” He held up a hand quickly. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I just came to warn you. Tridac’s going through that code line by line, right now. And if they find anything suspicious—anything at all—they’re going to start asking you questions, and you’d better have answers ready.”

  A chill ran through Micah. “Tridac is doing the investigating?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Not Dobson?”

  Ron shook his head.

  “You sure?”

  “Would I have come here if I wasn’t?”

  Shit. Tridac was a Terran corporation, a monstrous company whose influence stretched across the outworlds like an unholy web. Normally it relied upon local subsidiaries such as Dobson Games to oversee its day to day business, but if the mothercorp was pulling rank this time and handling the investigation itself, that suggested they didn’t trust Dobson’s people. And Micah was one of those people.

  This is terrorism we’re talking about, he reminded himself. If Guera decided that Tridac was responsible for the explosion on Harmony, it would cut off the company’s transit rights. Oh, Tridac’s people would still be able to travel to neighboring stations, but transportation between nodes—the intersections of the ainniq which defined deep space territories—required a Gueran pilot. No company as vast as Tridac Enterprises could function properly if the Guerans refused to transport its goods and people from one node to another. Micah could just imagine the other megacorps descending upon Tridac’s stranded holdings like vultures on a corpse. No, the megacorp would be desperate to find out what had happened on Harmony before the Guild did, and woe betide any virt designer who bore even a faint scent of guilt.

  “They won’t find anything that leads to me.” He was trying to sound more confident than he felt. Yeah, he’d inserted a few special surprises into the game—all designers did that—but nothing that should cause him trouble if they found them. Nothing that he could remember, anyway.

  Even if I did do something Tridac would have issue with, there’s no way to fix it now. The game is active on too many worlds. It would take an army of sniffers to find every copy.

  Suddenly the room felt very warm. PULSE INCREASING, his wellseeker observed. ACTION? He hesitated, then flashed the icon for NOT NOW.

  “Look,” Ron said. “You didn’t have anything to do with the explosion. Right?”

  He muttere
d, “Right.”

  “So there’s nothing to worry about. Just think about what kinds of questions they might ask, and be ready.”

  Yeah, Micah thought, on a regular Guild station that might be enough. But as long as we’re on this station we’re subject to Earth Corporate Law, which isn’t known for either justice or compassion. And Earth has no love for Variants.

  Seeing the look on his face, Ron sighed. “I’m sorry to have to bring you such lousy news. I just thought you should know.”

  Micah forced himself to nod. “Hey, I appreciate the warning. Really.”

  “Let’s talk about something else, okay? What are you working on?” Ron walked over to the desk and looked down at Micah’s drawing. He frowned. “Looks like a pile of shit.”

  With a sigh, Micah turned the drawing toward him. Be grateful for the distraction, he told himself. “It is a pile of shit. I’m trying to decide what insects to add to it, to increase the revulsion factor.” He picked up a game chip and offered it to Ron. “Here, try this.”

  Ron raised an eyebrow as he inserted the chip into his headset. Micah triggered the connection that would allow him to share its feed, and a moment later the translucent image of a dead animal appeared. Its flesh was so decayed that one couldn’t tell what species it had originally belonged to, and the stink of putrefaction that arose from it was so powerful, so nauseating, that Ron instinctively put his hand over his mouth to keep from gagging. After a moment he turned away from the image, and though he didn’t actually vomit, he looked like he was about to.

  Then the virtual image disappeared, and with it the noxious smell. When Ron turned back, his face was two shades paler than before.

  Ron shook his head. “Jesus, man. You could have warned me.”

  Micah grinned. “Pfft. No fun in that.”

  “I thought you couldn’t code smells into a virt?”

  “You can. It’s just hellishly difficult. Smells don’t map neatly onto the cortex or resolve into a simple wave form, so they’re harder to manipulate. Most designers just don’t bother with them. But I’ve got a theory . . .” He hesitated. “Tell me, what did you feel when you saw that?”