A clown came striding toward her.
In the sea of bobbing, somber cloaks, the puffy white costume seemed to glow, as if lit from within. The pierrette smiled slightly as her eyes met Rebel’s. The crowds parted for her, like waters before a religious master, and she descended upon Rebel as calm and inevitable as an angel.
Rebel stopped, and the pierrette bowed and proffered a white envelope. She took it from the gloved hand and slid out a paper rectangle. It was a holographic advertising flat. Above it floated the same false ideal of Rebel Mudlark she had seen in downtown New High Kamden.
She looked questioningly at the pierrette, who dipped a short curtsey. She might as well try interrogating the floor.
Rebel turned the paper over, and on its back was written,
“Request that we talk.” She crumpled the paper in her hand. The image folded into itself and was gone.
She nodded to the clown.
The pierrette led her to a nearby bank. They went to the negotiating rooms, bypassing several that were discreetly equipped for sex, and found a walnut-paneled niche with a single bench and table. Rebel sat, and the pierrette flipped on privacy screen and sound baffles. She produced a holograph generator, placed it atop the table, and curtsied away.
After a moment to compose herself, Rebel reached out to switch on the generator.
She was looking into a small hollow—obviously part of an upscale business park. At first glance Rebel thought thehollow held a drift of snow. Then she saw that she was looking down on an oval of white tiles. The only spot of color in all that white was a red prayer rug at its center. A
lone figure knelt there, hood down, shaven head bowed.
“Snow!” Rebel exclaimed. The image panned downslope.
The figure raised its head, studied her with cold, reptilian eyes. Skin white as marble, face painted in the hexangular lines of ice crystals or starbursts. He cocked his head slightly, listening. “In a sense,” he said at last,
“perhaps I am. Snow and I are both part of the same thing.” His face was every bit as gaunt and fleshless as hers had been. “I have a message for you.”
“What are you?” she asked. “Just exactly what are you that you and Snow are part of the same thing?”
He made a small sideways jerk of his head, a gesture perhaps of annoyance. Or maybe he was just accessing data through some new channel. “Irrelevant. I am not required to give you any information other than the message. If you choose not to receive it…”He shrugged.
“All right. I’m listening.”
The man looked directly at her. “Deutsche Nakasone has licensed a team of dedicated assassins to your case.”
“No,” Rebel said. Without thinking about it, she clenched her fists so tight the nails dug into her hands.
The skin over her knuckles hurt. “That’s ridiculous.
Deutsche Nakasone wants my persona. They need me alive.”
“Not necessarily.” A bony hand slid from his cloak to stab the empty air, and an appliance with smooth, cherry-red finish appeared on insert. “The assassins are equipped with cryonic transport devices. They need only kill you, flash-freeze your brain, and let their technicians dig out the desired information using destructive techniques.” The hand disappeared into his cloak. “That’swhat they should have done originally. But they also wanted to salvage you as a petty officer of the corporation.
Now, however, you’ve been written off.”
The machine was slick and featureless on the outside, with a popup handle on the top. It was just the right size to hold Rebel’s head. She hunched her shoulders and brought up her hands. “Why are you telling me this?”
“You are not ready to deal yet.” The man stood suddenly, strode three paces to one side, stopped. “Very well. We wish to keep you alive until you are ready. You must take this threat seriously.” He paused to examine something Rebel could not see. “You’ve been careless. You should have realized there are few enough groups of dyson worlders in the Kluster that they all would be watched. If we hadn’t reached you first, you’d be dead now.”
The scene shifted, and she was looking down on Fanchurch Prospekt. From above, the jostling zombies blended together like a sluggish flow of mud. Bright circles appeared around three faces, and she saw that they were moving through the crowd in formation, searching among the faces for something. One by one, the image zoomed up on them: A heavy woman with fanatically set face and a black slash across her left eye. An unblinking sylph of a girl with a black slash across her left eye. And then a third with that same paint, a red-haired man with a face like a fox.
Jerzy Heisen.
“You know him?” the man asked. The assassins passed by the doors of the bank Rebel was in. Each carried a cherry-red cryogenic storage device in one hand. “Why did you start like that if you didn’t know him?”
“He used to work with Snow.”
“Ah.” The man made a small gesture, cocked his head.
“Interesting.” The crowd scene faded. “Of course. He’s clever, he’s serving time, and he’s actually met you. Of course he’d be one of your assassins.” Again he paused.
“No matter. We have generated a chart of those places in the System you can flee to, and with them the probabilities of your being assassinated by Deutsche Nakasone within a Greenwich month of arrival. I suggest you study if carefully.”
The chart scrolled up.
Location Probability of Assassination ( 1 percent)
Eros Kluster 97%
Pallas Kluster 95%
OTHER KLUSTERS (WITHIN BELTS) 91% (range
88-93%)
Trojan Klusters 90%
Lunar Holdings 90%
Mercury Science Preserve 90%
Neptune/Pluto Science Preserves 90%
Jovian System: 70%
nongalilean satellites 89%
Ganymede (Ported Cities) 65%
(wilderness) 44%
Callisto (Ported Cities) 65%
(wilderness) 41%
Io, Europa, Amalthea, Jupiter Orbital 65% (range
63-68%)
Mars Orbital, Deimos 63%
Mars Surface 59%
Saturnian system: 58%
Lesser Satellites 75% (range 74-75%)
Rings, Saturn Orbital 72%
Titan (Ported Cities) 30%
(wilderness) 23%
Earth Orbital 17%
Earth Surface 0%
“Very cute,” Rebel said. The list brought back some of the spirit the last half hour had kicked out of her. “I especially like that last bit. I guess I should hop the first transit to Earth, huh? Or maybe I should just walk out an airlock without a suit. Then I could swim there.”
Her sarcasm had no visible effect. “We won’t advise you what to do. We only reassure you that within the limits of game theory this chart is reliable.” The man knelt, raising his hood. The chart faded and the pierrette reappeared at Rebel’s side.
“One more thing. You have a new friend. The tetrad.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t trust him.”
The leash was waiting for her. Wyeth and Ginneh still had their heads together in conference, apparently oblivious to her absence this past hour. The same views of weapons platforms and of the Comprise assembling machinery hung in the air beyond the desk. The crescent fraction of the transit ring was a shade longer than it had been. Rebel sighed and slipped the leash back on her wrists.
There was no place she could go that was not dangerous, and no one she dared trust. She had to play hunches. And so far the only testimonial for any direction of action was that Snow’s whatever-he-was distrusted Wyeth.
“Well,” Ginneh said. “Will you take the position?”
Wyeth glanced over his shoulder at Rebel, and for a flicker she thought he looked surprised to see her. Then she was not sure. “Ginneh, you knew I’d take it when you first brought it up. Let’s not kid each other.”