SoliS

Buddy nods gently. "I'm on a mission. I'm supposed to deliver this man to here-to these camps."
Munk scans the miserable clutter of storm-battered tents. "He may die here."
"He may well," Buddy accedes. "Or he may flourish as our view of his future indicates. But the timelines are closed for him in Terra Tharsis."
"Why?"
With a comradely smile, Buddy rises and approaches the androne. "You like this person I am inhabiting, don't you?"
"He is a human. My C-P program-"
"For whatever reason," Buddy says kindly, a gloved hand touching the androne's alloy arm. "You like him. So you will not interfere with his development. When I leave him here, you will not muddle with his life. You will go your own way. As I must."
Overhead, the repair andrones' gondola floats by, the silver balloon trawling into the morning breeze. Munk does not budge his attention from the forlorn man before him. "My sensors do not detect any foreign organism in this man. If you are what you say, where are you?"
"I'm here as an energy pattern in his brain," Buddy replies. "When he attempted to kill himself with the night wings, I came into his body to save him."
"Why?"
Buddy barks a laugh. "Your C-P program is insatiable." He walks to the crumbly edge of the precipice where a vague track wends past the balesome camp and downward among vermilion boulders toward the sunny buildings. "Walk with me, Munk, and we will talk about freedom and destiny."
Mei Nili sways gently in a pressure sling strung between two lux stanchions. While the pressure bags cocooning her left arm and thigh perfuse electrolytic fluid into her blood flow to remedy her dehydration, she gazes across the flagstone colonnade to where Charles Outis is being examined by several utilitarian scanner drones. She has yet to see a human being.
The colonnade where the andrones have hung her is lushly green as any dream den, and she thinks it may actually be biotectured. Apart from the lux fixtures and maroon flagstones, the area looks genetically designed: The buttress roots of huge trees partition the colonnade into separate chambers. Fern curtains and moss veils hang from the high galleries, where flame-bright birds click and fret and occasionally screech. If she peers upward through the green levels and rocks her head, she believes she can see the texture of the filter dome she knows must be there.
Mei turns her attention back to Charles, in the nave across from her. The scanner andrones have attached him to an elaborate weave of psyonic hardware. She wonders if this is the same equipment the caravan lugged. A camera array has been erected above the plasteel capsule in its chromatic mesh of filament bundles, and Mei takes this as a sign that Charles is okay and these will be his eyes.
So intently does she watch the andrones' ministrations, she does not notice the figure who has stepped to the foot of her sling until he speaks: "Solis welcomes you."
Mei startles and sits up on an elbow to see the effeminate face of the Commonality agent she had encountered at the Moot. "You're-"
"Sitor Ananta." A corner of his mouth smiles, but his caramel eyes study her mirthlessly. "I arrived from our mother planet days ago. I've been waiting for you."
"We're outside the Commonality and the Pashalik," Mei reminds him. "You have no authority here."
"I need no authority here." His smile sharpens. "Solis makes much of being a free state. I am here as an individual, Jumper Nili, as are you. And we will both act as individuals, won't we?"
Mei forces herself to calmness by subvocalizing a panic-management chant. She must get free of the sling to defend herself, but when her hand moves to unstrap the pressure bags, Sitor Ananta lays a moist hand on hers.
"That won't be necessary," he informs her, wetting his lips with his tongue, tasting the air around her. The avidity in his tawny eyes chills the pith of her. "I cannot stay long. The reception agents want to meet you-not andrones this time, but the free and simple people of Soils, free of olfacts and simpletons of the olfactual science that is my art."
Mei unstraps her arm and leg and wipes the back of her hand on the sling.
"You can't wipe it off," he says, shaking his head and pinching his chin ruefully. "It's already entered your blood."
She rolls out of the sling and pushes pugnaciously close, ready to block or punch. "What've you put in me?" she asks hotly.
His creamy smile does not flinch. "A mild euphoric– this time." He points a finger at her nose, and she hops backward.
In midstep, the haptic drug swells into her brain, and the edge of her anger dulls. She hears the plash of rivulets and small waterfalls from somewhere among the giant trees, and the cedary cinnamon of the tree smoke expands her sinuses. This eases the thumping of her heart, and she regards the Commonality agent with calmness and dignity.
He doesn't appear as threatening now that she is standing. He's slender, almost frail, a shimmery wraith in silken, flouncy green chemise and white baggy
slacks cut at midshin to display crimson-trimmed black socks and slippers. When he moves, his terrene body drifts with balletic ease in the lighter gravity, and he seems nearly insubstantial.
"What do you want from me?" she asks.
"I want you to sit down." Sitor Ananta closes his eyes sleepily, and she does not retreat when he slides closer, his blue fragrance cool, bitingly sweet, the frosty spice of a rocky snowfield. The scent jumps through her blood, reminding her whole body of the last time she sensed this precise olfaction, among the runout rubble of the avalanche that buried her family. The stabbing exactitude of the scent punctures the strength in her knees, and she sags, almost falling backward. He steadies her arm, and she sits down on the mossy flagstone, her face jarred loose of all emotion.
Sitor Ananta squats beside her, his pug profile close to her ear. "Softcopy has refused to forward the credits for Shau Bandar's revival," he whispers.
"That's a lie." She leans away from him but cannot quite find the strength to stand. "I was with him when he spoke with Bo Rabana. Softcopy agreed to fund him."
"Think back." Sitor Ananta allows himself a gloating grin. "You left without any formal agreement. Bo Rabana has been overriden by executives who don't want to pay steep unauthorized expenses. Shau Bandar will be treated now like any other corpse in Soils. They will cremate him. Do you know what that is? It's the archaic practice of incinerating the body at temperatures hot enough to reduce the bones to powder."
Mei struggles to her feet and staggers backward from the agent, nearly tripping on a root coil. "Stay away from me," she mumbles, a numbing weariness soaking her. "I know what you're doing. You're poisoning me."
"Nonsense." He leans against a lux stanchion and crosses his arms. "I'm acquainting you with me. With my ways. I am very persuasive. I was created to be. With my skills I can pretty much have my way with the rubes of Solis. But I don't underestimate their rote stubbornness at defying the Commonality. Even with my olfacts, I cannot hope to just walk out of here with Mr. Charlie."
"Why do you want him so badly?" She draws a deep breath of the floral air, trying to flush her lungs.
"Perhaps I will tell you sometime." He shoots her a cunning look. "For now it is enough for you to know I want him, and you must do nothing to obstruct me from having him. If you help me, I will provide the credits for Shau Bandar's revival."
"Get away from me," Mei says, raising her voice. "I don't want to talk to you anymore."
"Fine." Sitor Ananta stands erect and shows his palms with mocking formality. "I'm sure we will find each other again in the courts and lanes. Soils is a small place."
Mei watches him retreat among the piers of buttress roots, and as his sapphire scent fades in the green, birdloud air, the helpless weariness she feels passes and anger thrums into place.