Nimbus Read online

  But if they’d come to the right place, and if she wasn’t powered down, or dead, the proximity should help. Cara hoped she hadn’t been taken by the authorities and had her implant decommissioned, in which case she was probably half-mad with shock.

  *Ready, Carlinni?*

  *Now?*

  *Have you anything better to do?*

  *Yes. There’s a Lifer gang at the gate, or hadn’t you noticed?*

  *Get your arse into gear.*

  *My arse is at your disposal, metaphorically speaking.*

  He didn’t waste any time. He connected mentally and Cara lent him her considerable psionic energy. Jussaro was the most powerful Telepath she knew, and he had the advantage of knowing Zandra Hartwell personally, or he had known her when they both guided runaway psi-techs to Sanctuary.

  He took Cara’s power, wrapped it in his own, and sent out a searching call for Hartwell. If she was alive and sane and still had an implant, she should be able to pick up that call from the other side of the galaxy. Theoretically, there was no limit to the distance a class one Telepath could cover, and two class ones in tandem should be unstoppable.

  But they stopped.

  They’d bounced off something solid.

  *Shit! Are you all right?* Cara asked.

  Jussaro gave her the mental equivalent of a giggle. *I’m fine. Success!*

  *You call that success?*

  *We hit a shield. That means she’s here, somewhere, and she’s still a functioning Telepath. Nothing else could have generated that kind of shield.*

  *Here, as in here in this town or as in somewhere on this planet?*

  *She’s close.*

  *How close?*

  Jussaro simply smirked.

  “Our last day in temporary accommodation.” Garrick sat back from his desk screen and glanced around. They’d sent most of their things to the Mansion House already, only keeping one small bag each—enough luggage for one last night. “It doesn’t look like we’ve lived here for more than a year, does it?”

  “You’re not going to miss it, are you?” Mona asked. “You sound almost mournful.”

  “I’ve become used to it. Habituated, you might say. The Mansion House is going to feel very grand after this. I’ve had times in my life when accommodation was much less grand than a couple of well-protected rooms. I don’t need grand—though I won’t say I don’t like it.”

  “Grand works for me. I get why you didn’t want to be seen living the high life in the Mansion House while people were still struggling with the aftermath of the battle, but I think you’ve made your point. No need to wear a hair shirt any longer.”

  “I still feel guilty. We as good as invited the megacorps to attack.”

  “They were looking for an excuse.”

  “Did we do the right thing?”

  “What is wrong with you, Garrick? I think I liked you better when you were a crook.” Mona crossed over and put her arms around him, leaned forward, and flipped off his screen. “Come to bed.”

  Was that an invitation to do more than sleep? He patted the slim hand resting on his shoulder and sighed.

  She touched the waist seam of his buddysuit which separated the top from the trousers and deactivated the medical readout and the temperature stabilizing circuits. He let her undress him like a child, his mind still dwelling on the dead and missing. He would never know the numbers. Finally, he stood before her, not only unclothed, but naked, the tiny pinprick bruises on his stomach from the detanine shots exposed. He saw her notice them, but she made no comment.

  “Come on.” She drew him down to the bed and snuggled with him, covering them both with an airquilt. Did she want sex? If so, she was out of luck. He was limp and cool. Detanine did that to a man. He could have a few hours of dreamless sleep or sex, but not both.

  When she touched his prick, it wasn’t demanding. She covered his soft flesh with her warm hand. “Some people can take it when they need it and stop when they like.”

  “What?”

  “Detanine. It is detanine, isn’t it? You’re not one of them, Garrick. It’ll get its hooks into you if it hasn’t already.”

  “It hasn’t.”

  “As long as you’re sure.”

  “Sure, I’m sure.”

  He would have touched her shoulder in reassurance, but his hand was trembling.

  Mona corkscrewed round and rested her back against his chest and her delightful arse against his useless junk. He couldn’t help but put his arm over her then. “I love you, Ramona Delgath.”

  Even with his prick in sleep-mode, he could appreciate her lean rib cage topped by the sudden bounty of her generous breasts. He rubbed the nub of her nipple with the exact center of his palm.

  “Quite right, too.” She snuggled closer in, her voice heavy with sleep. “Hmm, I’ll give you just four hours to stop doing that.”

  He felt himself drifting off. The detanine was working, thank goodness. He let it take him. The station whirled inside his head. He saw it whole, as it had been, and then broken as the combined fleet left it.

  He must have slept because he dreamed there was a conversation—something about electrical supply lines. He wasn’t even sure who he was supposed to be talking to. He almost knew it was a dream, but he tried to hang onto it as he passed into wakefulness.

  “Don’t try and tell me it wasn’t bad,” he mumbled into the quilt. He blinked. It might have been a few seconds, or maybe minutes, or even hours.

  “I won’t.” Mona was obviously still awake and answered his random dream-comment. “But we’re coming out of it now, mostly thanks to you.”

  He took a couple of breaths, drawing his thoughts into the waking world and hanging on to the conversation with his fingernails. “Kennedy and Benjamin between them saved all of our asses. I’m surprised Crossways held together. She’s been living on borrowed time for the last century. Systems jury-rigged. Incompatible components made to fit by persuasive engineering or simple brute force. Patches like that are tenuously serviceable under stable conditions, but fitting a jump drive to the station and flying it through the Folds . . . Reckless in the extreme. Impossible.”

  “Impossible problems demand impossible solutions,” Mona said. “You gave them the opening they needed to do it. Turn over.” He did, relinquishing his hold on her breast reluctantly, and this time Mona curled herself around him, her own hand over his heart. She had his back in more ways than one. “And now we’re building something here.”

  He clutched the hand that snaked around his chest and held it close. “Did I tell you I love you?”

  “More than once.”

  “I love that you’re an optimist.”

  He lay in Mona’s arms, willing his last detanine shot to kick in, longing to feel it forming the buffer between him and his memories. At last he realized he didn’t have to hold his chest so tightly. He sighed, relaxed, and patted Mona’s hand.

  He sank into a black pit of exhausted sleep . . .

  And woke again, screaming.

  “Hush, love, you’re safe. Safe.”

  Mona held him, her voice reassuring in his ear.

  He wrenched himself away and sat up, sweat running down his forehead and between his shoulder blades.

  Safe. He wasn’t safe. None of them were safe while that thing lurked in the Folds.

  “Nightmares?” Mona asked.

  “Yes. Maybe. I think so. I don’t know.” Whatever had troubled him had slipped away, detail dissolving like mist, but the terror remained. There was something dark and powerful out there: ineffable, numinous.

  “The station?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Not this time.”

  “Foldspace.”

  He nodded. “You didn’t see it. It was . . .” What? Big? Black? Cloudlike? Alien? Sentient? He couldn’t begin to describe it
.

  He’d been closer to it than anyone except Kitty Keely. Closer even than Ben and Cara. He’d felt it alive with purpose. For a moment, it had sucked all the life from his body and then returned it, somehow jumbled. He’d heard it sing.

  If the Nimbus ever found its way into realspace, everything else was for nothing.

  Chapter Seven

  CROWDER

  CROWDER WAS DUE UPSTAIRS FOR A MEETING with Malusi Duma. The outgoing Pan-African president might not wield the power he had before stepping down at the last election, but until Samuel Ajibola took over on the first of January, he was still the president, and even after that he would retain massive influence.

  The Trust needed African platinum, and the present agreement was in its final year. Alphacorp would be trying to muscle in, so Crowder had to keep Mr. Duma sweet. Yolanda Chang had almost ruined the negotiations. She’d been so puppy-dog eager that she’d come close to giving away their negotiating advantage. Crowder had been able to step in and reverse the damage, but Duma was a wily old fox, a worthy opponent at the negotiating table.

  Stefan entered the office quietly and placed a blast pack of painkiller, a blister pack of his daily meds, a glass of water, and two dataslides on his desk. “Is there anything else I can get you, sir?” he asked.

  Crowder waved him away without making eye contact, and then thought better of it. “I have everything I need, Stefan, thank you.”

  The young man’s half smile didn’t reach his eyes. Crowder made a mental note to be nicer to him. The neural conditioning would hold, but winning goodwill with kind words was a cheap option. He’d make sure Stefan was rewarded with a substantial end-of-year bonus as well.

  “How are you settling in, Stefan? Feeling more comfortable on Earth? It’s a bit different from Chenon.”

  “I like it, sir, though twenty-four-hour days take a bit of getting used to. I thought, since it’s the homeworld, that my body would adjust naturally, but darkness comes so fast, and so often.”

  Crowder chuckled. People making the move in the opposite direction often had a hard time getting used to Chenon’s fifty-hour day. “Did you manage to shop for local clothes?”

  “I did. A very nice young lady in reception took pity on me and took me to the mall. I even have clothes for the beach. Though they were extraordinarily expensive for something so small. We’re going on Sunday; that’s if you don’t need me here.”

  “Take Sunday off. I believe that’s the local custom.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Crowder slapped the blast pack to the side of his neck, popped the pills, then levered himself up out of his float chair and reached for his cane. “I’ll be in a meeting for the rest of the afternoon.”

  “Yes, sir. Do you want me to hold calls or put them through?”

  “Hold them—unless it’s one of my daughters.”

  It wouldn’t be, of course. He’d tried to tell the girls that there had never been any danger to their mother on Norro. Benjamin wouldn’t hesitate to kill Crowder or any one of his phalanx of bodyguards, but he was too principled to let any harm come to innocent bystanders, and that included Agnetha.

  Principled. That was Ben Benjamin all over.

  Crowder could barely stop his mouth turning down at the thought. If Benjamin had been less principled and more flexible, then the Trust would have had Olyanda, lock, stock, and platinum. His last assassins had failed spectacularly and had ceased all communication, which was a bad sign, but this time he’d sent an expert. Swanson—his best hope—had found himself a place with the station militia.

  Crowder click-clacked along the corridor to the elevator, a bit of an oddity at this sublevel, but it came into its own once it rose into the light. It was completely invisible, made of transparent glass-steel so clear that you couldn’t see the walls even when you were standing inside it. They’d had to place a mat on the floor so people would travel in it. Stepping onto an invisible floor was against most people’s instincts for self-preservation. Even so, Crowder tapped the glass floor with his cane before stepping in. For luck, he told himself.

  By the time Crowder’s elevator reached the eighteenth floor, he’d fixed a smile on his face.

  “President Duma, how good to see you again.”

  “Just mister will do, Mr. Crowder. I’ll be out of office soon, and my successor is already growing into the title. It’s a time of transition, and I plan to slide gracefully into obscurity once we’ve concluded our negotiations. You’re looking well. Are you fully recovered?” Duma glanced at the cane.

  “Almost. The cane is a minor irritant but no great inconvenience.”

  “Excellent. I brought you a gift of wine, one of our excellent Cape reds. There’s a case being delivered to your suite right now.”

  “Thank you. It’s only a little something, but I brought you a terrarium of Chenon plants, some of our most exotic. My secretary is having it delivered to your office.”

  “How lovely. My late wife used to scold me for my plant collection, but I have nothing from Chenon. It will take pride of place. I only traveled there once, to visit family, but I thought it a lovely planet.”

  “You have family on Chenon?”

  “I had, but not anymore.”

  The way he said it made Crowder think he’d probably outlived his family—one of the problems of the rejuv treatments. He didn’t want to inquire too deeply. Duma’s personal life held no interest. He knew from the company file that there had been several wives, a gaggle of children, and an army of grandchildren. He changed the subject.

  “I thought we could have our meeting on the terrace where it’s comfortable.”

  “A lovely idea. After you.”

  Crowder led the way to the terrace which overlooked sculpted gardens. Duma put both hands on the balcony rail and looked over. “Did you know my ancestors used to live here?”

  “South Africa?”

  “I’m a Zulu, Mr. Crowder, so I mean here in KwaZulu Natal. In fact, right here on this very spot. The Trust Tower stands on the site of Umlazi Township where my not-so-well-off ancestors scratched out a living. That was before the meteorites, of course, and before the Trust moved its headquarters from the ruins of New York to an O’Neill colony in space and then finally here when they saw Africa’s potential.”

  “Long before my time, of course, but my ancestor, Anne DiDoren, was chair of the board for fifty years through the difficult time of reconstruction. My family has always been deeply involved with the Trust.”

  “And mine has always produced rabble-rousing troublemakers and politicians. Sometimes both in one package.”

  “So which are you?” Crowder asked.

  Duma cracked out laughing. “I like to think I’m a little of both, though at my age I leave most of the rabble-rousing to my grandchildren. Do you have children, Mr. Crowder?”

  “Two daughters and two grandchildren here on Earth, in Europe.”

  “You must miss them.”

  “More than you know.”

  “I have twenty-eight grandchildren, and I love them all though two of them are long-distance ones. I confess I’ve never met them as adults, though I saw them both as very small children. I get news regularly, though, from their grandmother. We never married, but we’ve always shared a fondness for each other. Family is so important, don’t you think?”

  Crowder agreed with him in an effort to move the conversation along. He wondered if Duma knew his own family situation and was using it to needle him.

  Pleasantries over, they moved on to discussing the platinum trade deal in general terms, Crowder trying to find out if Alphacorp was in the running for approval to negotiate, and Duma trying to ascertain what side benefits might accrue from renewal of contracts. It was all very amicable on the surface, but they were like two contestants in a boxing ring, using fancy footwork to keep out of the reach of the ot
her and keeping their guard up at all times until they could make a sudden jab at vulnerable flesh.

  At the end of this round, the score was pretty much even, but Crowder sensed they were heading for a renewal of contracts even though they hadn’t been able to resolve certain taxation issues which Crowder thought he’d skirted quite nicely for the moment. It would doubtless crop up again in future negotiations.

  Feeling fairly confident, he slid sideways into a question about the Five Power Alliance, which Pan-Africa supported wholeheartedly. Essentially, it was a whole-Earth government, and though Earth’s economy had diminished compared to the megacorporations, its influence was still disproportionately high. Plus, they had a top-class space fleet, untouched by the Crossways debacle, and massive influence with the Monitors who largely adopted the London Accord on human rights.

  “I will, of course, be giving up my seat on the FPA as a voting member,” Duma said. “That’s for Mr. Ajibola to claim. I will still have my seat in an advisory capacity for the next two years, however.”

  “I wondered about your thoughts on the breakaway colonies and colony independence.”

  “Ha! As an African, I thoroughly recommend it! Self-government is good, Mr. Crowder. It allows creativity and innovation to flourish alongside ambition and self-determination. You may, of course, get a completely different answer from the Europeans in the FPA. Their history of colonialism takes a somewhat diametrically opposed view.”

  Crowder knew when to retreat gracefully. There would be other days, other discussions.

  *We’ve reached Wonnick,* Cara told Ben. *Jussaro is convinced we’ll find Hartwell this time. It’s not a very big town.*

  *I hope he’s right. I miss you.*

  *Miss you, too. Anything interesting happening?*

  Ben told her about the way Garrick had played Roxburgh.