“Woensdag is on the way to Acaanal to check with Cerex about how close you got to the way the theft was worked, but I don’t see any reason to make more trouble for the poor schlup. He’s not important enough to bother with. I’ll send a drone your way with a report on the interview. It should reach you before you make Ambela.
“The little one is the convincer. She’s got impressive reasons for needing that disruptor.”
In the screen a planet swam against a star ground while Digby’s image sank to Thumbelina size. The turning world was mostly water with polar icecaps, two largish continents, one with a tapering tail of islands that came close to joining it with the third continent which was about half the size of the other two. A single moon drifted past in the stately gravity dance of satellites.
Icon Digby set fingertip to fingertip, tilted his head so the fez tassel brushed along his jaw. “What the original state of Ambela was no one knows, but sometime after it developed rudimentary flora and maybe fauna, the folk generically called Impix arrived-even they don’t know where they came from. They settled in and mauled the world in the usual way, had some wars, lost hold on the tech that brought them there, began slowly building it back. They’d reached steam power and rudimentary electrical services, rediscovered radio, when the Ptak arrived as part of the outpouring when the Ptakkan Empire broke up. Ptaks are not a bloody lot, but they have their peculiar ways. They don’t like being overlooked by strangers or having outsiders controlling any of their space. As an aside, that’s one of the reasons their neat little empire broke up-too many non-Ptakkan species kept resolutely away from any touch of power.
With that in mind, they uprooted every Impix they could catch, hauled them to the continent they called Impixol, and set up a satellite-controlled force field around the continent to make sure none of the Impix got loose to bother them.” The Digby icon tapped finger against finger. “Unlike the Impix, they kept contact with the outside, and with a low birthrate and the resources of a basically untapped world behind them, particularly the drajjul opals, they were a comfortable if not a wealthy society for their first millennium on-planet. When the drajjul mines began to play out and the shipping companies started dropping away, they opened casinos and used the third continent as a hunting preserve, pulling in hunters and gamblers. Fads and fashions being what they are, revenue from this started big, but tapered off considerably until two factions of Impix began fighting each other and the Ptaks found they had a new tourist attraction.
They set up flights of cameras to track the battles and keep the action crackling for their War Viewing tours.”
The image on the screen changed, and Shadith found herself watching hand-to-hand fighting on the banks of a river with a burning boat in the background. The fighters were a good match with her favorite in the ghost stakes, though somewhat larger and more muscular. Males, perhaps.
The scene changed-a city being bombarded-changed again, fighters overrunning a nomad camp-changed a third time-a group of seven males roasting bits from a smaller, darker version of themselves over an open fire.
“By arming and supplying both sides, some judicious prodding, and sending assassins after those arguing for peace, the Ptaks have kept the war going for more than a decade and have prospered from it enormously.” The Icon wagged a finger. “I put this in just for you, Shadow. If the Ptaks suspect you want to interfere with that war, they’ll slide you down a black hole, so mind yourself. And when you get to Impixol, do your best not to get yourself photted by one of those cameras, hm?”
The image on the screen shifted again, swept down to water level and hovered around wavetop, focusing on a series of flickers moving horizontally along an invisible surface.
“The Fence.” Digby’s voice was prim and disapproving. “An essentially simple force field that kills whatever comes near it. Near being approximately two meters. Easy maintenance, almost no moving parts. By using the disruptor, your little ghost-candidate could punch a hole-in the Fence without starting up all kinds of alarms, a hole big enough to let a boat through, if that happens to be what she wants. Not that it will do her much good, the power differential between Ptak and Impix is just too great. What she should do is go after the ground controls of those satellites. When you locate her, Shadow, you might mention that little notion-as long as you’re sure no one else is listening.
“Rose, tact not being one of our Shadow’s gifts, I strongly suggest you provide cover and maintain the link to the ship. Their orbital facilities are crude at best and definitely not secure, so you had better groundside the ship and secure it against ordinary probes. You’ll have to let Ptak security probes find their way through, but give them a tale to play with, hm?
“I’ve encoded into a zipfile all we know of Ambela, the Ptak and the Impix war, so this lecture is essentially unnecessary, but it pleased me to make it.” The world image vanished and Digby was floating before them again, a mischievous grin on his, simulacrum’s face, a sparkle in his bright green eyes. “Happy hunting, my dears. And be ready to tell me all when you get back.”
2. Ambela
Autum Rose took the hand of the driver and stepped with stately elegance into the hotel shuttle. She wore a lace-edged privacy mask; her hair was dyed black and swept into a braided knot atop her head, her earlobes were stretched into long flesh loops with a black pearl set in silver at the apex of each loop, her face paint was a stark white, widow’s mark for the Suvvojan femme she was supposed to be.
Shadith stood scowling on the metacrete, using the toe of a worn boot to herd luggage that kept trying to ramble off until the driver could lose sight of his tip long enough to open the back doors of the shuttle.
The driver was a Ptak male in premating molt, the soft curly feathers on his head detaching themselves at intervals to go floating off on the acrid, eye-biting breeze that swept across the landing field. Once Rose was seated, he came rushing back, his toe claws scratching irritably at the ‘crete. He slapped his hand against the palmlock and stood twitching with impatience as Shadith chased the bags up the ramp and crowded into the servant’s bay after them.
Digby’s notes said the Ptak are roaring snobs, she thought, stroking her fingers over the faux skin that covered the hawk etched into her cheek. I’d say he underestimated it. Useful. Now that the sorting’s begun and they’ve got my place in the hierarchy settled, they’ll ignare me nicely.
Disdain in the lift of her chin and the set of her shoulders, Autumn Rose inspected the suite. “Adequate, but not what I’m accustomed to. Ah-ay-mi, Mar Tana, what a widow must endure.” She patted a yawn. “I am tired. I’ll sleep a while. Set the shield so I’m not overlooked, then see what there is in this tedious place that might possibly prove amusing.”
Inconspicuous in her dull gray-brown tunic and trousers, her hair hidden in an intricately folded kerchief, Shadith stepped from the service tube, ambled through the busy traffic of flesh servitors and ‘hots and emerged onto The Strip.
Lala Gemali was the largest city on Ambela and the only place where off-worlders moved about with any freedom. It was a mix of Ptakkan towers and generic star-street architecture, of brilliant primary colors and muted browns and grays. Holoas swarmed like confetti, brushing through the visitors riding the chain chairs and the mover mats, turning the air into a kaleidoscope of color and ghostly shapes, whispering the glories of the viewing palaces, joy houses and casinos.
Songbirds flew everywhere, alone and in flocks of hundreds, blipping unconcerned through the holoas, flitting from tower to tower, tiny patches of jewel-bright color.
The Ptakkan towers were airy open structures, more glass than wall because of Ptak claustrophobia, with great play of arches and flying buttresses as if the Ptaks sought to recreate the tree forms of their natal world. And every surface was painted a different color or a different shade of one of the colors already used. There was no place for the eye to land and linger; the din of the colors as noisy and persistent as the twitter of Ptak voices that overrode all other sounds.