Haze and the Hammer of Darkness (10 page)

“Where are we headed, specifically?” he finally asked, blotting his forehead.

“Eventually to the MEC—the Ministry of Education and Culture. That will be tomorrow. Immediately, I'm taking you to a guesthouse near the main square in Skeptos. I assume you'd like to clean up, get a good meal, and a good night's sleep. After you clean up, I thought we could take a short walk to dinner, depending on your preference in cuisine. That would give you a feel for the city. Compared to Federation cities, I'm certain Skeptos is quite modest.”

“You're not afraid I'll vanish?” He raised his eyebrows.

“You can try if you want. Your shipsuit isn't that outlandish, and you don't look that different from anyone here, although you're a trace taller than most men. But you have no link into anything, and the only way you can get food or anything else would be by some form of criminal activity. We don't use currency or coins. We do punish criminals, especially those who use weapons or threaten with them.”

“More public service?”

“Some of it can be back-breaking hard labor. Since criminals have proved untrustworthy, they're also limited either personally or by locale.”

“Prison camps?”

“Restricted hamlets is far more accurate.”

Roget had doubts about the accuracy of that description. “So I should behave? Or else?”

“You can do as you wish. We're quite willing to provide you with much of the information you were dropped to obtain. At the proper time, you'll even be able to return to your ship with it.”

Roget doubted that as well, even more strongly, but she was right about the necessity of his playing along. For the moment. “Tell me more about Dubiety.”

“Not until you've seen more.”

“You've said that before.”

“Verbal descriptions of places you haven't seen create the possibility of false and lasting preconceptions. In your case especially, we'd prefer not to create anything like that.”

“Is everyone here a philosopher?”

“Hardly. Just those who are good at what they do.”

Shortly, the subtrans slowed, coming to a stop. According to Roget's internals, they'd been traveling just over six minutes. Lyvia did not move.

“Where are we?”

“Avespoir. It's where the peninsula joins the mainland.”

“How far from here to Skeptos?”

She frowned, as if mentally calculating. “A little over four hundred klicks.”

Roget resigned himself to a good hour or more on the subtrans, perhaps several, then shifted his weight on the seat as three men entered the car. The tallest man wore shimmering dark blue trousers that were too loose to be tights, and far narrower than anything Roget had ever seen, despite the knife-edge front creases. His shirt was long-sleeved, pale blue, and equally tight-fitting with broad pointed collars that spread over a looser white vest.

The man in the middle wore something akin to a standard Federation singlesuit, but the fabric changed from a deep black toward vermilion as Roget watched. So did the man's boots. The third man wore a collarless, black tight shirt under a tailored burgundy jacket, fastened closed by a set of silver links, rather than by buttons. His high-heeled platform shoes were silver.

The three took the set of four seats behind Roget and continued talking animatedly. He listened intently. For several minutes, he understood nothing except a few stray words. Then more words made sense, including a phrase that sounded like “range of plasma-bounded energy opacity.”

The subtrans decelerated for a minute before halting. The doors opened, and the three men left the subtrans, but two women got on. Both wore singlesuits of the kind that shifted color, except the lower legs of the taller woman's also turned transparent. The two talked so quickly that Roget understood not a single word. At the next stop, no one got off, but a rush of people boarded. Nine or ten, Roget thought.

Lyvia moved to sit beside Roget, and an older couple took the seat across from them. Both were fit and trim, and their skin was firm, their hair color apparently a natural brown for the man and an equally natural sandy-blond for the woman. Their age was obvious only in the fineness of their features and in the experience in their eyes. Both wore singlesuits, his silvered brown, and hers a silvered blue.

The couple exchanged several words, then addressed Roget and Lyvia.

“A very long trip and hike,” Lyvia replied.

That was what Roget thought she said. He just nodded and smiled politely.

A few minutes later, the subtrans slowed, then stopped. The doors opened, and Lyvia stood. So did Roget. He lifted his pack and slung it over one shoulder, then followed Lyvia from the subtrans onto a larger concourse close to a hundred meters in length and toward one of two tunnels leading further upward. Lyvia was moving to the left tunnel, and Roget stayed close behind her.

A slender man in a black jacket and trousers glanced hard at Roget as the agent hurried to stay with Lyvia.

Roget checked the time. The trip from Avespoir to Skeptos had taken twenty minutes, but nine minutes had been for stops. Add another six minutes for acceleration and deceleration, although those were estimates, and the subtrans had covered the four hundred klicks in the equivalent of roughly fourteen minutes—figuring three additional minutes for speed changes. Something was wrong with his figures or the numbers Lyvia had provided. Seventeen hundred klicks an hour? Underground?

Roget drew abreast of his guide just before they started up the tunnel ramp, a good ten meters wide. “Four hundred klicks from Avespoir to Skeptos?”

“It's more like four hundred fifteen, actually.”

“And a klick here is still a thousand meters?”

“So far as I know, it's never been anything else.”

She could have been lying. Roget doubted it, and that had serious implications. Then, he had no illusions. He was supposed to reach those conclusions.

After some twenty meters, the tunnel joined another one, close to filled with men and women heading upward. Despite the number of people leaving the subtrans station, no one crowded anyone else. Still, Roget could sense the man in black not all that far behind him.

The air was markedly cooler than it had been in the tunnel when they emerged, and did not hold the semiperfumed scent of the forest … but it was still humid.

“This is the central square of Skeptos,” Lyvia said, stepping to one side of the walkway and stopping to offer a sweeping gesture that took in the open space, as well as the buildings surrounding it, although none looked to be more than thirty meters tall.

Roget let his eyes range over the square, merely an expanse of deep green grass surrounded by four stone walks twenty meters wide. They stood close to one corner, the southwestern one, he judged, hoping he wasn't too disoriented by the lack of a distinct sky and no sun for direction. A single stone monument rose from the center, a round column some thirty-three meters high. Atop the column was a sphere of shifting silver gray haze. Narrower walkways led from each corner of the square to the circular raised stone platform around the column.

“The column?” he asked. “Some sort of memorial?”

“A representation of Dubiety.”

Roget glanced around the square again. Beyond the perimeter walks were low buildings on all sides, low especially in comparison to those of Taiyuan, between which were the stone pedestrian ways that radiated from the corners of the square and from the middle of each side of the square. There was no provision for vehicular traffic or for airlifters of any sort.

“We need to get you settled. This way.” Lyvia turned south and strode quickly along the wide walk, past what looked to be an eating establishment on the right.

“A restaurant?” asked Roget.

“Dorinique. It's very fashionable now. It's also good … and expensive.”

“The more expensive restaurants and other establishments are the ones closer to the square, then?”

“Or to other subtrans stations. Not always, but usually.”

“Isn't there any transport that's more … local?”

“Local transit is below the regional subtrans. Those were the people coming from the other tunnels.”

Local transit was lower than the regional links? That definitely seemed odd to Roget, but he didn't ask, not yet.

They passed several other restaurants and a boutique that looked to cater to women. Overhead, the silver gray of the sky began to dim, just a touch, although there were no clouds below the haze. Roget noted that from outside of the shops on the street level there were no exterior indications of what might be housed in the upper levels of the buildings, but then, that was true in Federation cities as well.

The next shop caught his eye. “Finessa? A man's boutique?”

“Why not? In most species, the males are the ones who strive the most to display.” Lyvia smiled. “Be careful with preconceptions here. My cousin Khevan—my mother's cousin, really—is the marketing manager for the twenty-odd shops of the group. He's also a former cliff ranger.”

“Cliff ranger?”

“They deal with poachers and collectors in the mountain wilds. Very stressful and physical occupation.”

“I got the impression you didn't have that sort of unruliness.”

“All societies do. How one handles it is a fair measure of a civilization.” Lyvia kept walking.

Roget's feet were getting sore, but he said nothing.

Six very long blocks later, Lyvia stopped before a two-story structure some thirty meters wide. The stone archway framing the door was trapezoidal. “This is the guesthouse. You might want to fix it in your mind.” She turned and pushed open the door.

Roget followed her into a small antechamber. The door on the far side was closed. A single eye-level keypad was mounted on the wall. Above the keypad was a screen. She took the small tube attached to her belt and pointed it at the screen.

For a moment Roget sensed the faintest of energy emissions or emission reflections.

“The keypad is for the use of residents who are not linked or are unable to access services. You're one of them. The code is written down in your rooms.”

The door hummed, then slid into a recess, revealing a small reception area where several chairs were grouped around a low table. The chairs were wooden armchairs but looked to have deep blue permanent cushioned seats similar to the yielding composite of the seats on the subtrans. All of the chairs were empty, and the top of the polished wooden table was bare as well.

“Are you coming?” asked Lyvia.

Roget responded by stepping through the door, which closed behind him. Except for the fleeting emissions involving the door screen, Roget had sensed no others, and still didn't, even inside the guesthouse.

Beyond the reception area was an open but railed circular ramp leading upward.

“You're on the second level.” Lyvia started up.

Roget once more followed.

Halfway down the bare corridor off the ramp, illuminated by an amber light from the ceiling strips, similar to the sunlight filtering through the orbital shield arrays, she halted before the second door, again using the belt-linked tube to open it.

She stepped into a room some eight meters by four, with a window looking westward at another building. The view was clear, but Roget had observed the heavy tinting on the outside of all the windows they had passed and had no doubts he'd only see the tint from outside if he looked up from the wide walkway below. The chamber was sparsely furnished with a single couch flanked by two armchairs, all three pieces set around a low wooden table. On the left wall, less than a meter from the window that stretched almost from wall to wall, was a wooden desk set against the wall, with a chair of matching wood.

Lyvia walked to the desk, then turned. “There's a sitting room, a bed chamber and fresher, and a small kitchen with a standard replicator. Directions for the replicator and other systems and the code for your rooms and the guesthouse itself are here.” She pointed to two sheets of paper on the desk. “The holojector controls are in the left desk drawer and the comm unit is in the right.”

“Just like that?”

“I'm certain you can figure them out, and you'll learn more of what you came to find.” She paused. “Oh … there are two singlesuits that should fit you in the bedroom closet.”

“Should fit me?”

“They'll be close enough.” She smiled. “You have internals for time. I'll meet you down in the reception area in forty minutes, and we'll go to dinner.”

“Hours are the same here?”

“The hours are the same length, but there are only twenty-two.” She walked back to the door, which opened for her, and left Roget standing in the middle of the sitting room as the door closed behind her.

He walked toward the door. It didn't open. He headed back to the desk and picked up the single sheet with the word “Codes” at the top. There was a single alphanumeric line: RogetW976A. Roget looked at it for a long moment. She'd never been out of his sight, and he'd never sensed any emissions or transmissions.

He took a deep breath of the heavy air. He smelled more of himself than anything else. Lyvia was definitely right. He needed a shower or the equivalent … and a good meal, preferably not from the replicator. He also needed to read all the directions.

But first he went to the keypad by the door and punched in the code.

The door opened. He nodded, stepping back into his temporary quarters and letting it close.

 

10

18 LIANYU 6744
F. E.

Roget slept late on Saturday. For him, late was eight, even in St. George.

After he roused himself and finally made his way to the kitchen side of the main room, he checked the menu on the replicator. Nothing looked all that appetizing, but he selected hot tea and eggs romanov, which fell within his caloric and energy budget. They turned out to be a very poor replication of the original concept, but he forced himself to eat most of them before sliding the remnants into the recycler. He wouldn't have them again, not from a cheap replicator with a limited ingredient basis.