a ninety-three-hour day, atmospheric churning and weather machines kept the climate from becoming too hot or cold for human life. I began my vigil before dawn and kept at it for hours. When boredom set in, I played Bulb Blaster, a game on my gauntlet that consisted of blowing up sky balloons with ludicrously creative guns. Mostly, though, I watched the palace.
No one used the main entrance, a great arched affair fronted by imposing columns. Two other entries were visible from my vantage point, a servants’ door around the back and a family entrance on the side facing me. Servants came and went all day, but none of them did much. Mostly they stood around and chatted in a garden just overgrown enough to look artistic. They probably didn’t have many duties, given that robots could do most tasks as well as humans.
Eventually I felt drowsy. Most of us on Raylicon slept three times a day, once at noon, once when night started and once toward its end. I fastened a cable from my belt to a ring I drilled into the cliff wall. The cable would judge my safety and reel me in if I rolled too close to the edge of the ledge. Next I set my gauntlet to alert me if anything interesting happened. And then I went to sleep.
When I awoke a few hours later, the sun had barely moved. I resumed my vigil. And finally someone came out of the family entrance: Colonel Lavinda Majda, the youngest sister. She and three people in black clothes walked down a driveway bordered by trees. The woman in front was Captain Krestone, who was also a pilot, and I recognized the man in civilian clothes as one of the colonel’s aides. The second man was Duane Ebersole, the ranking officer among Lavinda’s guards.
The driveway sloped away from the palace, and a flycar stood on the lawn at the base of the slope. Beyond that landing field, or landing meadow actually, mountains rose into the sky, including the one where I sat hiding.
I spoke into my gauntlet. “Max, get me a tracer on Colonel Majda.”
“Done,” a male voice said. It came from Max, the Evolving Intelligence in my gauntlet. Most people couldn’t afford a gauntlet EI, but in my line of work, he was invaluable. I could even “think” to him; he connected to the threads in my biomech web through sockets in my wrists, and those biothreads linked him to the node in my spine.
“Send the green bot to follow them,” I said. I had two beetle-bot tracers, one with green wings and the other with red, both small enough that they fit together in the palm of my hand. I could only afford those two, but they were well worth the investment.
“Dispatching,” Max told me.
“Good.” I started down the mountain then, headed for Cries.
* * *
“A message is waiting for you,” the EI at my penthouse announced as I walked in the door.
I stepped down into the sunken living room as the doors closed behind me. “Who’s it from?”
“I don’t know,” the EI said. “I can’t ID the message.”
I frowned. It should be easy to read the sender’s ID—unless they deliberately hid their information. “Did you scan for traps, viruses, or mesh plagues?”
“Yes,” the EI said. “The message is clean.”
As I crossed the living room, its window-wall polarized to cut down glare from the setting sun. I stood before the window and stared out at the Vanished Sea, a red desert streaked with blue mineral deposits left by the dried-up ocean. Whatever terraforming had made this world habitable before we humans arrived was slowly failing over the millennia. We could still live in this region, but eventually all of Raylicon would become hostile to human life. Someday we either had to heal this planet or leave.
“Shall I play the message?” the EI asked.
“Go ahead,” I said.
A familiar voice rose into the air. “Heya, Bhaaj. Got dinner.”
I went over and flopped down on the couch. I put my feet up on the glass table in front of the sofa. The table polarized to mute reflections of the sunset.
After a
No one used the main entrance, a great arched affair fronted by imposing columns. Two other entries were visible from my vantage point, a servants’ door around the back and a family entrance on the side facing me. Servants came and went all day, but none of them did much. Mostly they stood around and chatted in a garden just overgrown enough to look artistic. They probably didn’t have many duties, given that robots could do most tasks as well as humans.
Eventually I felt drowsy. Most of us on Raylicon slept three times a day, once at noon, once when night started and once toward its end. I fastened a cable from my belt to a ring I drilled into the cliff wall. The cable would judge my safety and reel me in if I rolled too close to the edge of the ledge. Next I set my gauntlet to alert me if anything interesting happened. And then I went to sleep.
When I awoke a few hours later, the sun had barely moved. I resumed my vigil. And finally someone came out of the family entrance: Colonel Lavinda Majda, the youngest sister. She and three people in black clothes walked down a driveway bordered by trees. The woman in front was Captain Krestone, who was also a pilot, and I recognized the man in civilian clothes as one of the colonel’s aides. The second man was Duane Ebersole, the ranking officer among Lavinda’s guards.
The driveway sloped away from the palace, and a flycar stood on the lawn at the base of the slope. Beyond that landing field, or landing meadow actually, mountains rose into the sky, including the one where I sat hiding.
I spoke into my gauntlet. “Max, get me a tracer on Colonel Majda.”
“Done,” a male voice said. It came from Max, the Evolving Intelligence in my gauntlet. Most people couldn’t afford a gauntlet EI, but in my line of work, he was invaluable. I could even “think” to him; he connected to the threads in my biomech web through sockets in my wrists, and those biothreads linked him to the node in my spine.
“Send the green bot to follow them,” I said. I had two beetle-bot tracers, one with green wings and the other with red, both small enough that they fit together in the palm of my hand. I could only afford those two, but they were well worth the investment.
“Dispatching,” Max told me.
“Good.” I started down the mountain then, headed for Cries.
* * *
“A message is waiting for you,” the EI at my penthouse announced as I walked in the door.
I stepped down into the sunken living room as the doors closed behind me. “Who’s it from?”
“I don’t know,” the EI said. “I can’t ID the message.”
I frowned. It should be easy to read the sender’s ID—unless they deliberately hid their information. “Did you scan for traps, viruses, or mesh plagues?”
“Yes,” the EI said. “The message is clean.”
As I crossed the living room, its window-wall polarized to cut down glare from the setting sun. I stood before the window and stared out at the Vanished Sea, a red desert streaked with blue mineral deposits left by the dried-up ocean. Whatever terraforming had made this world habitable before we humans arrived was slowly failing over the millennia. We could still live in this region, but eventually all of Raylicon would become hostile to human life. Someday we either had to heal this planet or leave.
“Shall I play the message?” the EI asked.
“Go ahead,” I said.
A familiar voice rose into the air. “Heya, Bhaaj. Got dinner.”
I went over and flopped down on the couch. I put my feet up on the glass table in front of the sofa. The table polarized to mute reflections of the sunset.
After a
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