But some glimmer of him had stumbled into the present. Some winged shred of experience had crossed the air between the twinned entities. She'd never even believed in artificial intuition, and this was positively occult.
The limo's AI politely transpared the roof as they neared the hotel. Its edifice loomed above them, gothic and forbidding.
Maybe she should tell the gods. One of their contract murders had been recorded, however mystically, by a living entity. They would scoff, but they were cagey old bastards. You didn't see your fourth century by taking any risks. They would order a hit. Probably a job for her. A little appetizer while she waited for the mad inventor who had started all this to be run to ground.
That poor bastard Vale. Copied as if he were some second-rate freeware, crippled in the head, unhinged from time. Visited by the woman who'd killed his double, and now possessed by the ghost of his dead twin.
Bad luck all around.
It wouldn't be fair to sick the gods on him as well. Just not fair.
A depression settled on her as the limo was swallowed by the maw of the hotel's garage, the mercury lights inside highlighting birdshit on the vehicle's windows. She wondered if she'd wind up like Vale. She was already damaged goods by any human standard, without a childhood, with voices in her head telling her where to go, whom to kill.
A pretty good definition of psychotic.
And now, on top of all that, she was in a bad mood. This was Darling's fault, she fumed. He had shaken up her neatly controlled world. Everything had been smooth as glass for her for as long as she could remember. The predictable, constant velvet of luxury travel in a post-scarcity universe always surrounded her like a comforting fog. Drifting between missions, the weeks became centuries of contemplation, as still as water in a glass. And just so things didn't get too boring, this heaven was punctuated by the truly awful deeds her masters made her perform. Assassinations and mutilations for some distant, high cause determined by intelligences cool and vast, Mira like an angel of history let loose among mortals. Who could ask for anything more?
Mira sometimes imagined that the universe had been made this way just for her, with its huge riches piled at her feet, its titanic conflicts of interest for her to settle in righteous violence. She had the best of both sides of Expansion's coin.
Whatever catastrophe had put her in that long-forgotten coma, had stolen her past and leveled her mind so that the gods could reshape her, had been a happy accident indeed.
But she'd lost her perfect balance the moment Darling had stuck that insane apple pie into her mouth. That terrific bite, and his bizarre love-making. She felt like an unfaithful concubine; Darling had given her experiences that rivalled those her gods provided. And most seductive of all were her brief ocean dreams of childhood. Those glimpses had reshaped her, just a little. She felt the dream expanding, insinuating itself into the spaces where her memories were hidden, pushing outward to break free. As if she, as Darling had two centuries before, could crack some unseen barrier and emerge, fully human, on the other side.
And in so doing, lose everything. Mira was an Expansion-class killing machine. She couldn't afford a childhood, even one barely glimpsed.
She should be glad that Darling was long gone with the departed Queen Favor. But she wasn't glad at all.
Gloom followed her up the elevator. She asked for her own floor, but the elevator must not have understood the accent. She scowled to see that the plush little room was rocketing up toward the Tower Bar. But it was a good enough destination, she supposed.
Mira took advantage of the little trip; tried to remember herself. Not the absent youth, just the last few hits, to reassure herself of her realness, her continuity.
An artificial on Beelzebub, a philosopher whose work in meta-space mathematics was bordering on revolutionary. The woman was closing in on theory that would lead, centuries hence, to instantaneous local transport, which the Freran Ruins showed to be a civilization-crippling Bad Idea, a destroyer of property laws and other social conventions on a massive scale. The Planetary Fiduciary Reserve mind on Terra (one of the oldest gods) had spent a year modeling the effects on the Expansion's economy and social structure: at the end of the ticker tape was a big zero. Mira had gimmicked an elevator much like this one to accelerate madly, crashing through the building's roof. It hadn't quite flown, just burst forth and rolled over a few times through a forest of microwave dishes. But the prof was history. The hackwork had been easy; an elevator's safety features are designed to keep it {romfalling.
A biological historian in the Home Cluster. His restorations of ancient medical mechanisms from the old Karik Colony had reconstructed the DNA sequences of the founder population. As stochastic analyses had long suggested, most of the founders were Unfit, possessed of genes for myopia, baldness, ovarian cancer. This revelation would ensure a bloodbath between the Karik Faithful and the Heretics. Perhaps the findings could be released in a generation or two, might even ameliorate the colony's fanaticism at some distant point in the future; but not now. A suicide was called for. As always, fooling the HC cops required special care. Fortunately, this historian's wife had just left him for a younger man. Mira had gone in with a pica-band shockwand, a nerve-override collar (they go both ways), even a box of plain old Terran cockroaches; all the classic instruments of torture. But the man had just jotted off the suicide note like he'd been writing it in his head. Put his neck in the noose with a silently mouthed "thank you." Some kind of Helsinki Syndrome madness or perhaps just a long time overdue.
And of course the good doctor Torvalli. There hadn't been any time to waste. With the big discovery in his hands, he might have told anyone. She'd touched his temple with the barest of caresses from a neural glove, the kind brain surgeons use. He stroked in less than a second. An excitable guy.
It was all still there in memory. Mira was no Oscar Vale. But the exercise didn't do much to lift her depression. A trail of murders wasn't much on which to hang your selfhood.
She snorted at her self-indulgence. Smiled thinly. At least she'd had her Darling for a while. At least it was a very big universe, perhaps with other darlings in it. At least she was headed to a bar.
The evening might not be a total loss.
When the elevator doors opened, the view was spectacular: four-meter windows alive with the searchlighted passage of a thousand birds, the swirling turrets of Malvir City arranged like a painting, a teak and ivory bar with twelve tiers of imports and a ready, linen-suited staff.
And sitting in the middle of it, altogether unexpected, his broad back as motionless as stone, her darling Darling.
The Planetary Tourism AI composed its missive to the Queen Favorwith a delicious sense of triumph.
The vessel was an old acquaintance, even a friend, the Tourism AI liked to think. Certainly, the Favor brought only the best sort of people to Malvir. The sort with deep pockets full of desperately needed hard currency. In the last decade, Malvir's lack of heavy elements had begun to undermine its standard of living, and its balance of trade was growing critical, listing entirely too far in the direction of imports. Tourism was the only counterbalance to the unstoppable drain of credit.
So when the Favor had requested a favor, the Tourism AI was only too happy to oblige.
The missive included a host of data: images of the new polar hiking complex, optimistic projections of desertification trends, comments on the Favor's essay-in-progress. And a short cover note:
With very little effort, your lovebirds have been «unexpectedly» reunited. I'm sure they'll have a marvelous time here on Malvir, where the air has wings and the sands are a blanket on the world. As always, a pleasure.