Strings Read online

  “A little. Always I feel it a little. Not like you’re doing.”

  So much for inscrutability! Then she did throw herself at Kas, and he squeezed her tight, crushing all the air out of her, and that was wonderful, just what she had needed. For a time she sniveled mutely against his shoulder. And Kas had the sense to say nothing at all.

  “It’s never been this bad,” she said. “Never! It gets worse every time. When Omar went it was bad. Tal’s time was worse yet—but not like this.”

  “This one is your call. Your kismet. That’s why.”

  She had known that, really, but she wailed in horror when he put it into words. “No! No! I won’t leave you. I won’t go!”

  He steadied her head with a big, strong hand. “Alya, dear Alya! They all said that at first, every one of them. You’ve been squirming like an eel for days. Don’t fight it.”

  She mumbled stubborn refusals, but she could feel her resolution failing already.

  “I’ve talked to Nauc,” he said. “I called them on Tuesday.”

  “You—Tuesday?”

  “I feel it, too, remember. You were smiling like an idiot, but you’d turned such a pretty shade of green—”

  She pummeled him. “I did not!”

  “Turquoise, actually.”

  “Swine!”

  “Avocado in some lights. Anyway, they say yes.”

  “Yes what?” she demanded apprehensively, pulling back.

  “They’ve got a whole basketful of candidates. They want your help to—”

  “No!” She was aghast. “Suppose I make a mistake? Suppose I’m wrong?”

  He shook his head in reproof. “Been bothered by snakebites lately?”

  She twisted her face away from him.

  “When?” she whispered.

  “Alya…Little sister, why not go now?”

  “Now? Today? But packing…”

  “Leave right now,” he said. “You won’t sleep or eat until you start. Long farewells are sad farewells. You can just change and go.”

  Panic choked her, and she could only stare. He smiled cheerfully, but his eyes were glistening.

  “Moala’s finished your packing. The Air Force is standing by.” That was a family joke, the government’s only plane, an ancestral turbofan that had ferried tourists, back in the days when Banzarak had boasted one of the world’s great beaches.

  “By air across to Singapore,” Kas said. “Then super to Nauc. You’ll be there by dark—except it’ll be early morning their time.”

  “Oh, you have been busy!” Alya said, struggling to match his counterfeit smile. Her heart was pounding insanely, and her knees wanted to liquefy. “I can’t just rush off—”

  “There may not be much time. You know that. Even one day might make much difference—for many people.”

  She felt drowned in a sudden flood. “The old man? Is it fair—”

  Kas shook his head. “He’s not going.”

  “Oh!” Alya bit her lip. All her life Dr. Piridinar Chan had been prime minister of Banzarak. She had no idea how old he was—she suspected she would be shocked to find out. A dear, gentle old man, Pirie had always headed up the Banzarak delegations to Cainsville.

  “Dr. Jar Jathro,” Kas said cautiously. “You know him?”

  Alya pulled a face and nodded. “He just divorced his second wife, or was she his third?”

  “He’s a very acute politician, which is what matters. Piridinar took him along the last two or three times, so he knows how the negotiations are done. He’ll have a couple of backups with him.”

  She nodded. If that was what Kas thought best, then she would not argue; but she wished that Jar Jathro did not always make her think of lizards.

  When she said nothing, Kas added, “I didn’t tell you because…”

  Because he had not wanted to worry her? But it felt right. Oh, God! How right it felt!

  No. She saw that Kas had been testing, making sure, watching her agony grow until there could be no doubt, because this was hellishly important. His eyes were anxious now that she might resent the testing. She grabbed her brother’s beard in both hands and pulled his face down to kiss.

  Hard and long.

  “Allah and Krishna and Holy Etceteras!” he said afterward. “A sister is not supposed to kiss her brother like that!” But his eyes were gentled by relief that she was not mad at him. She tried to do it again, and he took hold of her wrists. “Wanton!” he said. “Pervert!”

  “Why not? You enjoy it, don’t you?”

  “Certainly not! I keep wondering what the cabinet would say if they saw us. Besides, I have to keep my eyes open in case I forget who you are.”

  “An old family tradition,” she said. Nauc tonight! Cainsville tomorrow, she supposed. What did she have to wear?

  “Don’t ever talk about that! You find a good strong pioneer type.”

  “Tall, dark, and handsome?” It only hurts when I laugh.

  “Well, pick one of the above.”

  “Tall, then…Oh, Kas!” Her voice broke in remorse. “Oh Kas, come with me?”

  He shook his head in silence. “Your kismet, Alya.”

  “Just come to help me choose. Not—” She felt a twist of nausea. “Not all the way. Just come and hold my hand.”

  He pulled a face. “And have to come away afterward?”

  He was suffering much more than he had admitted, then. Alya squeezed him once more.

  She was the last. Brothers, sisters, cousins—ten of them had gone, and now the buddhi was calling her, too. And then there would be only Kas, and Thalia. He was much more than a figure-head sultan, in spite of what the constitution said, but he would be the last of their generation.

  Thalia was a cousin and had the buddhi, also. What of their children? Alya wondered. Kani was ten. Who would next feel a satori? Kas himself? Or would it start in on the youngsters? She shivered.

  “I’ll make my choice—and then come back here.”

  He smiled sadly. “That might not work. Others might accept it, but what of our own people? They won’t go if you don’t.”

  She shivered again, fear of the future looming very big. “How many?”

  “As many as possible. You know that.”

  Cold, cold terror froze her bones. Thousands of lives! What if she chose wrong? What if they had all chosen wrong, all the others before her? Where could she find the courage to gamble so many human creatures?

  “The buddhi,” she whispered.

  Again he smiled his sad smile. “You were certainly born with it.”

  That was another family joke: “You were certainly born with it; you will certainly die with it; and you would certainly die sooner without it.”

  “I hate it!” she shouted. “The family curse.”

  “The family blessing,” Kas insisted.

  High above the royal residence a very faint breeze nudged the limp flag, the bloodred flag of Banzarak bearing the national emblem, a cobra entwined with a silken string.

  3

  Nauc, April 6—7

  HOW DID A caterpillar feel when it opened up in the butterfly business?

  Small, Cedric thought.

  Lonely.

  The hotel room was cramped and dingy, stinking worse than the streets outside. Fungus flourished around the shower pad. The wallpaper looked like beans fried in blood. The single chair was hard and unsteady, and the bed would be too short for him.

  For the third time he checked his credit. He had a clear choice: he could either call home to Madge at Meadowdale, or he could eat breakfast in the morning. That was not a hard decision. He pulled his chair closer to the com, but then he got distracted again by the action. God in Heaven! Were they going to…Yes, they were. Again! He squirmed with embarrassment. But he watched. Holo shows at Meadowdale had never been like this. And the quality of the image was so good! He could have sworn that he was looking through a window into the next room where a couple was—was doing certain things he had never seen done before. Doing,
in fact, some things he had not known were possible. Great Heavens! At Meadowdale the images had been fuzzier, and there had been long periods of fog, on one channel or another, with nothing visible at all.

  Everything was visible here.

  Suddenly he became disgusted at his own reactions. He barked an order, switching to com mode. In two minutes Madge was standing on the other side of the window, smiling at him. Before she even spoke he knew he had erred. He had forgotten the time difference and caught her in the middle of putting youngsters to bed. But she did not complain; she merely smiled and sat down.

  “I promised to call,” he said.

  “So you did. And you’ve survived your first day in the Big Wide World!” Rosy cheeks and white hair—no one could have looked more motherly than Madge. But when had she grown so small? She could hardly have shrunk since he had left that morning.

  “I didn’t buy Brooklyn Bridge, like Ben said I would.”

  “Ben didn’t mean that!”

  But Ben had meant the other things he had warned about. Cedric might think he owned nothing of value except the camera Gran had given him, Ben had said, but any healthy nineteen-year-old must look out for bodyshoppers, or he would soon discover he was a mindless zombie in one of the darker corners of the vice industry, with every prospect of eventual promotion to a freezerful of spare parts.

  “I hired a percy,” Cedric said. “Can you see it?” Madge leaned sideways and looked where he pointed. She said yes, she could. The big metal cylinder stood in a corner, dominating the room—a blank, blue, bullet-shaped pillar.

  “I buzzed around all over the place like a native,” Cedric said proudly. No one could get knocked off in a percy, which was why all city dwellers used them.

  Percy: Personal Survival Aid.

  “Doesn’t look big enough,” Madge said doubtfully.

  “It’s okay,” Cedric insisted. “I was lucky. It’s an XL, and they just happened to have it in stock.”

  In a percy, the occupant stayed upright, half sitting, half standing. It would have been quite comfortable, had his legs not been so damned long. His neck was still stiff.

  “Did you see all the sights?” Madge asked.

  He told her about his day, or most of it—his trip on the super, his sightseeing, and how he had tried to go to a ball game, but the new stadium was not complete yet and the old one had finally been abandoned after Hurricane Zelda last fall. He did not describe how he had gaped at the ads for surgical improvements to various body parts, nor did he detail the varieties of chemical and electronic stimulation he had declined, or the educational opportunities both erotic and exotic, some of them even promising real girls. He had not been tempted, and he had had no money anyway.

  Nor did he mention that he had gone window shopping, because he had been choosing gifts he was going to give Madge herself, and Ben, and all the others. Of course, he had not been able actually to buy anything, but as soon as he started earning money he was going to send gifts to everyone at Meadowdale. Well, not truly everyone, but all the adults, certainly. Maybe some of the older kids, although all his own group had gone long since. He had been the oldest for almost a year now.

  And then he asked if Gavin had used his fishing rod yet, and if Tess had had her pups, and stuff like that.

  “Did you eat properly?” Madge asked, mother instincts roused.

  “I had a pizza.”

  She pouted disapprovingly at the mention of pizza. “I’ll get Ben. He took some of the small fry out to watch a calving.”

  But Cedric had just realized that his credit was about to die. The call would end without warning and Madge would guess why, and then she would worry. “I’d better go,” he said. He sent his love to everyone and disconnected. He checked his credit and discovered that he had cut it very fine. He would not even be able to buy a Coke in the morning; but he had his ticket to HQ, and the percy was prepaid, so he was all right.

  It was nice to know that Meadowdale was still there. It was the only home he had ever known.

  He stayed where he was and watched the holo again for a while, seeming to jump from one bedroom to another—did the audiences never get tired of the same stuff? On an unfamiliar channel he found Dr. Eccles Pandora doing the news. Pandora had always been a Meadowdale favorite, being Garfield Glenda’s cousin. And Glenda had certainly been a Cedric favorite.

  Cedric abandoned the news halfway through the floodings—Neururb, now, and Thailand. That was after the food riots in Nipurb and before the usual update on the Mexican plague. He found an old Engels Brothers rerun and watched that instead.

  Later he stared out for a long time at the shining towers of the city and the streets far below, still quite busy. He had never seen all this, except in the holo, and he had expected it to look more real than it did. Apparently streets full of racing percies seemed much the same whether one saw them directly or in three-dee image. These streets had more garbage lying around, that was all.

  He set his watch alarm for 0800 and went to bed. The bed was not only too short, it was lumpy and it smelled wrong.

  He had trouble sleeping, and that was another new experience.

  He wondered about Madge.

  Madge had not wept when he said goodbye. And when he called on the com she had smiled. Madge always wept when someone left. Of course, he was older than the others had been. Of course, he had tried to leave on his own a few times in the past, but he did not think she resented those attempts. Strange that she had smiled and not cried. She had never hinted that she loved him any less than any of the others, so he could not help but be surprised that she had not cried, and surprised that he should care…and surprised that he should be surprised…

  He slept.

  When the lights came on he blinked at his watch; it registered 0316. Then he rolled over on his back and tried to focus on the gun lens at the end of his nose.

  It had to be a gun, although it was as thick as his arm. He could not read the label, but it might very well be a Mitsubishi Hardwave, and one flash from a thing like that would vaporize him and his bed and the people downstairs.

  He blinked a few times. He wanted to rub his eyes, but moving his hands might be risky. As his vision adjusted, he saw that the room was full of percies, at least five of them. His own was still standing in the corner—doing nothing, bloody nothing, two and a half meters of useless crysteel and whiskerfab.

  So much for survival. First time off the farm, and he had crashed already.

  On the safe end of the gun was a large, thick person, anonymous inside bulky combat gear that looked as if it were made of black leather. Just possibly it was a bull suit, in which case it would stop anything short of a fusion torch and the limbs would have full power assist. Or it might be only armor—not many could afford a real bull suit, and they took years of practice to manage. Its face was a shiny nothing, as noncommittal as the door of an icebox.

  “Got you at last!” the intruder said in a voice like the San Andreas. It was male.

  “M-M-Me?”

  “Harper Peter Olsen!”

  “No, sir! I’m Hubbard Cedric Dickson!”

  “What kind of sap do you take me for?” the faceless helmet demanded. Actually it was not faceless—its shiny blackness bore a faint reflection of Cedric’s own pale features, distorted into a wide-eyed omelet by the curve of the crysteel and by sheer witless terror. “Three years I’ve waited for this, Harper!”

  “I’m not Harper!” Cedric shouted. “I’m Hubbard! Hubbard Cedric Dickson. Check my thumb.” He had pulled his hand from under the covers before he remembered that sudden moves were supposed to be unwise.

  The intruder did not seem worried—if anything, he was merely more contemptuous. “Thumbprints can be altered.” The gun moved higher, blocking out Cedric’s view of almost everything else. He saw his eyes reflected in the lens.

  Cedric had rarely needed ID for anything, but on holo shows they used thumbs, or retinas. Or a sniffer. He had not known that thumbs could
be changed in the real world. He had no other ID at all.

  There was something completely unbelievable about all this.

  If the intruder was a thief, then he was going to be sadly disappointed—and therefore, likely, irked. Cedric had the square root of fresh air left in his balance, but theft by enforced credit transfer was a crime for morons anyway. That left ransom, or possibly bodyshopping—and that brought up the curious question of why he had ever been allowed to wake up. But…his first day out in the world and he had spilled the whole bucket.

  And yet, oddly, he felt no more scared than he had as a twelve-year-old when Greg and Dwayne had taken him behind the horse barns and explained what they were planning for him. That had been real terror, but although he had endured a nasty experience, he had suffered no real damage. Of course, this character was not in the same league as two muddled fifteen-year-olds.

  “I’ve got nothing here worth taking, but help yourself,” Cedric said, and was pleasantly surprised at how calm he sounded.

  “I don’t want your money, Harper. I want to watch you burn.”

  Breathe slow, he told himself. “Well I’m not Harper, whoever he is. So either shoot me in error, or go away and let me get back to sleep.”

  “Oh…big brave man!”

  Cedric attempted to shrug. It was tricky while lying flat. “What else can I say, sir? I’m not Harper. Check my thumb.”

  The faceless intruder seemed to hesitate. “Thumbs get faked. I’ll check your retinas, then.”

  Cedric felt relief in floods. “Go ahead.”

  The man barked an order, and one of the percies floated closer to the bed, while the others made way for it. He must have brought four of them with him. They looked very much the same as the one Cedric had hired at the station, and he could not tell if they were occupied. Bull Suit might be running them himself. The room was not large enough for all that equipment.

  “Retina scanner,” the man said, without moving his gun from the end of Cedric’s nose. Something whirred faintly, a small hatch opened, and a binocular device dropped out, hanging on a helical cord. That was no standard percy.

  Cedric had watched enough holodramas to know that he was supposed to put the gizmo to his eyes and focus on the center marks in the red glow, but he did not expect the sudden bright flash. Ouch!