Chapter 1: Your Sneak Peek at Trust!
March 2, 2119
It's all OK, Philippe Trang said to himself. Everything is OK. I just need to get my hands to stop shaking.
He stared at his trembling fingers, willing them to stop. They wouldn't.
He tried again.
They shook harder, beating a frantic rhythm against his thighs.
Philippe took a long breath in and let it out slowly.
How's my suit? he wondered.
He stood hunched over his hands. His back rested against the wall of the white corridor that led to his ship. His upper body was bent almost double, like a sudden wave of nausea had overtaken him in the hallway.
Standing like this isn't going to keep this suit neat!
He straightened his body.
He ran his hands over his navy-blue dress jacket. (Were they shaking now? He could feel a slight quiver where they pressed against him.) He bent down and smoothed out his pants. Then he realized that by bending over, he had necessitated another check of his jacket.
It was hard to look disheveled or tortured in a DiploCorps custom-tailored suit, but it wasn't impossible, so Philippe shook out the jacket again. Everything seemed to be lying properly.
After his interrogation, Philippe had carefully smoothed his black hair and eyebrows, and he gave them another check now with his steadying hands. He rubbed his face to bring a little color into it again—his complexion was perhaps too olive for him to become believably rosy-cheeked, but he was willing to try anything to look healthy. And Kelly Pax had complimented his looks earlier, so encouraging the circulation to his face had clearly done something.
He gave his hands a last, deliberate shake from the wrists. There, he thought, all better now.
He turned and walked to the ship. The hallway was white and sparse, exactly like every other hallway the Union's Space Authority had ever designed. It attached to the side of the spaceship just like a jetway on Earth would attach to the side of an airplane. Aside from the substantial looking seal where the hallway met the ship, and the lightness of Philippe's step, there was nothing to indicate that he was on Titan, a moon of Saturn, and not back on Earth.
He saw the open doorway to the ship and paused. The ship was small and laid out somewhat like an airplane, with an open cockpit for its two pilots in front of several rows of seats, divided by a center aisle, for the soldiers. His traveling companion would most likely be in the row directly behind the pilots.
The doorway was located between that row and the pilots' seats, meaning that Philippe was going to have all eyes on him the moment he entered. He smiled slightly before stepping in—hopefully not so much as to make him look manic, but just enough to make him look content. A quiet joy.
And then he blew it by tripping over the threshold of the ship and falling flat on his face.
"Fuck, Trang!"
That would be Shanti.
"Jesus fucking Christ, what did they do to you?"
He looked up, smiling. The massive mission commander loomed over him already—he had learned from nine months of living with the Union's Special Forces that large did not always equal slow.
This particular SFer was bristling with outrage and protectiveness and lethal training—no doubt primed to race back onto Titan station and crack a few skulls. Even the pilots, Cheep and Pinky, were out of their chairs.
That was bad. He needed them to sit back down. He needed—no, they needed—to stop wasting time. They all needed to go back through the portal, back to the station, back to the aliens. They needed to get to their jobs.
"I'm fine, really. I am fine," Philippe said, standing up quickly in what he hoped was the jaunty and energetic fashion of a man in the absolute bloom of health. "I just tripped."
Cheep and Pinky immediately sat back down, returning their attention to the panel filled with readouts in front of them. Philippe smiled, more genuinely now, as the door shut and sealed behind him. Shanti glared at him, her dark eyes in dubious slits, but when he gestured to the seats behind Pinky, who was the farthest from the door, she sat.
He sat down next to her, on the aisle. Philippe hoped that his presence between her and the door would act as a barrier—if only a psychological one—to her leaving.
"So, how was your stay?" he asked, buckling up.
"Not bad," Shanti replied, following his lead and buckling up herself. "I took apart the desk this time."
Philippe laughed—perhaps a little more than he should. Distraction was necessary, but it couldn't be obvious. He had to keep things light and pleasant. Then, even if the conversation went to the topic he wanted to avoid, everyone would stay relaxed and would remain reasonable.
If he did this right, no one would get upset—and he didn't want to upset his friends. They should be happy and calm. Everyone should be calm and reasonable.
Philippe took another look around the ship. The momentum was there now—Shanti and the pilots were all buckled up. They were going, traveling back to the aliens, not staying on Titan station to kick up some sort of unnecessary fuss.
"Did you find anything interesting?" he asked Shanti. "In the desk?"
"No, it was boring," she said. "No bugs or secret drawers or anything."
"Did you put it back together afterward?"
She smiled (good sign) and shook her head. He laughed again.
The ship tilted back, and they took off. Philippe exhaled, releasing tension in his shoulders he hadn't fully realized was there. They were on their way. The farther they got, the less likely it was that Shanti would return to Titan station.
Of course, she'd probably yell at Philippe instead, but there was no getting around that. Shanti Pax was forceful, as Philippe supposed was required of a Special Forces mission commander. You didn't rise to a command position in the Union's only lethal combat force without being the sort to charge ahead.
But charging ahead left your sides vulnerable, and Philippe Trang was a master at coming in sideways. Shanti might rant and rail to him whenever she wanted, but she already was too late.
She was too late, and she didn't even know it. Philippe smiled again. The DiploCorps had been right to make him Earth's first diplomat to the aliens: He was good at his job.
But not so good at space travel, he realized as they shed Titan's yellow atmosphere and the moon's gravity loosened its hold. Philippe hadn't remembered a sick patch, so he just swallowed hard and hoped for the best as he watched Saturn splay its rings out across the dark.
Shanti, demonstrating what was for her a remarkable level of restraint, waited until his struggle with nausea had been resolved in his favor before commencing her interrogation.
"Did you see Kali?" she asked.
"You mean Kelly? Yes," he replied. "You didn't call her Kali did you? I think conversations in quarantine are monitored."
Shanti shrugged. "She called me Syrup."
Philippe laughed. It was rude to call the Paxes clones—after all, no one else was expected to identify themselves by their method of conception—but that didn't change the fact that Shanti and Kelly were two of 52 genetically identical sisters, created illegally and raised as fighting machines as part of a madman's apocalyptic plot. Their rehabilitation had, as far as Philippe could tell, been a complete success. But others in the Union remained skeptical, and minor slipups like using the old war-goddess names could have ramifications.
Syrup had not been one of those names, however.
"That's what they called you? That's not very intimidating," he teased her.
She shrugged. "Neither is Surpanakha."
"It must have been nice to see your sister," Philippe remarked, deliberately pushing the conversation on to the subject.
But Shanti's reaction was not what he expected: She looked apprehensive. Before he was assigned to the alien station, Philippe had gotten to know Kelly Pax on Earth—she worked for a human-rights group, which sometimes brought her into contact with the DiploCorps. While he viewed Kelly more as
a colleague than as a friend, he knew that the exact nature of his relationship with her was somewhat of a mystery to Shanti.
"Or, maybe it wasn't," he continued.
"No, no—it was . . . sort of," she stammered. "I just wasn't expecting her. She said that the girls were worried that maybe I wasn't being treated too well after, you know, everything that happened. They thought maybe the Union was mad at us for our role in all that."
All that. That's how they referred to it now. All that, or everything that happened.
Philippe nodded, returning his attention to managing the conversation. Bringing up Kelly had been a good move—even though the Paxes had hardly been a traditional family, Shanti could talk about her sisters for days, which would keep her off more-unpleasant topics.
He looked out the only windows, which were in front of the pilots, and saw the pulsing lights of the nuclear mines—they'd be deep into the defenses that littered the Earth side of the portal soon, which was good. Every meter forward made it less likely that they would turn back.
"Do you think Kelly could be UI?" Shanti asked.
"Kelly?" Philippe turned his attention away from the window, surprised out of his game. "Union Intelligence?"
He shook his head, disbelieving. "I'd be shocked. The organization she works for has been pretty aggressive in exposing some of the sleazier deals the Union has struck with poorer countries. I can think of at least two or three instances when they probably embarrassed Union Intelligence very badly. Why do you think she's UI?"
"Oh, I dunno," said Shanti, relaxing. "Just paranoid, I guess. I only knew her as a kid. And Kelly was—well, I know she's your friend, but when we were little, she was always kind of an ass-licker. She wouldn't have any part in taking out the Old Man. She abstained."
Philippe shook his head again. "I just can't see it," he said. "Kelly's the type of person who gets bitterly disappointed when the Union fails to live up to its ideals, and that's not the type of person who joins the UI. Maybe she'd do it if she was convinced that Earth's very existence was at stake—maybe. As for not taking part in the execution of your father, she may just have a genuine distaste for violence." Philippe looked slyly at Shanti. "Some people do."
"Hey, I do, too," she replied.
Cheep and Pinky started to laugh.
"I do!" she said. "Shut up!"
They shut up, but whether because their mission commander had issued an order or because they had begun navigating the minefield, Philippe couldn't say. The Special Forces were indeed special, with much looser command structure than the Union Police whom Philippe had worked with before. According to his research into the topic, this had to do with the SF's history: It was an outgrowth of what were once called commando units, which were small groups of highly trained soldiers who performed very dangerous raids. These special soldiers operated with a great deal more individual autonomy than the run-of-the-mill members of the armed forces.
"Well, I really enjoyed seeing Kelly," he said.
He truly had, although to be perfectly honest, his first thought on seeing her was, Wow, she's bloated. Being clones, both Paxes had started out with the same build and bone structure, but years at a desk job had made Kelly round-faced and soft where Shanti was angular and hard. Kelly's long hair had been braided into an updo that had seemed perfectly innocuous before but now struck Philippe as extravagant and overdone when compared to Shanti's short SF crop. Even their mahogany skin was subtly different in tone—Kelly seemed to have a slight undertone of gray, which Philippe hoped wasn't indicative of some sort of creeping cardiovascular disorder.
"She ask you about the patch-and-probe?" Shanti asked.
"She took a somewhat professional interest in my situation," he replied carefully.
"And did you tell her it was none of her fucking business, like you did me?"
Philippe sat for a moment in silence. So, here they were, on the topic at last. At least now they were well into the minefield, although he was going to have to tread lightly with Shanti, anyway—it would be difficult to turn the ship around, but it wouldn't be impossible, and she still might do it.
"I'm sorry I said that the patch-and-probe wasn't any of your business," he said. "I was being childish and repeating back to you what you had said to me, which I admit was inappropriate. Your situation is different from mine."
Shanti nodded, and Philippe knew the apology had been accepted. She was quick to anger, but equally quick to forgive.
"I am sorry you found out about the roster thing the way you did, though," she said.
Philippe gave a nervous laugh.
The roster was one of those traditions among the Special Forces that brought home to Philippe exactly why he had never joined it. When SFers were away on a mission, they drew up a list of those in the unit who were available for sex with everybody else also on the list.
It wasn't like Philippe had never had a casual sexual liaison, but the bloodlessness of the roster, the lack of any sort of romance or passion involved in the drawing up of a list, the idea of having sex with people as some sort of professional courtesy—well, that was beyond him.
In addition, the vast majority of the SFers were men—there were only two women among Philippe's military guard. While the SFers unquestionably had a very open attitude toward male homosexual encounters, and the SF had stringent regulations designed to prevent people from being forced onto the roster, it was obvious to Philippe that there was pressure on the female SFers to sign on. He himself had seen an SFer ask Shanti to put herself on it, and the same fellow (Five-Eighths who, granted, was considered a shameless dog even by SF standards) had kicked a hole into one of the virtual entertainment booths after the unit's other woman, Baby, had taken herself off the roster to enter into an exclusive relationship with George, the unit's doctor.
Just before they left for Titan, Shanti had signed on to the roster. Philippe was willing to admit that if one looked at that decision dispassionately, it was probably a good sign, indicating she was healing emotionally from her recent divorce.
But it had been hard to look at the situation dispassionately when, on the morning before Philippe left to undergo a particularly intrusive form of interrogation, Five-Eighths had run into the mess hall and loudly announced that there was now a woman—or rather, a particular part of a woman's anatomy—on the roster. And it got even harder to be dispassionate when Five-Eighths had jumped on a table and, using the most vulgar language and gestures imaginable, had explained in explicit detail just how he planned to exercise his considerable libido on Shanti's various orifices.
So despite the fact that it was considered extremely rude for even an outsider to criticize someone's roster status, Philippe had dashed out of the mess hall, found Shanti in her office, and expressed his sincere disapproval of the entire situation. As luck would have it, he had arrived in Shanti's office just after she had discovered that he had agreed to undergo a patch-and-probe, a decision that she had considered remarkably ill-advised. The result had been an epic shouting match, followed by a silent and sullen ride to the Titan station.
And now they were riding back.
"You won't see Five when you get back, not for a couple of days, anyway," Shanti said.
Philippe blinked. The space the humans lived in on the Host station was not very large, so it was hard to avoid seeing anyone for any length of time. "Is he on leave?"
Shanti shook her head forcefully. "I fucking wish! You know they haven't given us back our leave. No, he got real sleepy after that display, and he went to take a nap in his cubicle."
She stared at Philippe for a moment, an eyebrow cocked.
"You know how unreliable his sleep cubby can be," she said. "It gets stuck shut all the time."
Philippe put his hand to his mouth. He had been told that you could fit two SFers into one sleep cubicle, but he wasn't sure how. "How long are you going to keep him in there?"
"It so happens that he's not on any kind of essential duty for the next coup
le of days," said Shanti. "So, I guess no one's going to miss him or figure out he's trapped in there for a while. It's a real shame, but accidents happen."
"Especially—" Philippe began.
"Especially when you fuck with me, yeah. Accidents happen a lot then." She smiled.
Philippe took a deep breath. He tried, hard, not to criticize the SF's ways, but sometimes. . . .
"Does he have water?" he asked.
"Oh, yes!" Shanti exclaimed. "He has lots and lots of water—he packed his cubicle full of water before he shut it up to nap. And he has lots and lots of ration bars. Unfortunately, he chose to pick up those ration bars from the infirmary and not the mess hall, so they're the kind you eat if you're constipated."
Philippe buried his face in his hands.
"His lonjons are going to get quite the workout," Shanti said, still smiling jovially. "George is really excited to see what's going to happen."
Philippe looked up. "And after all this is done, you're going to clean him up, and then you're going to have sex with him," he said in what he hoped was a lighthearted tone.
"That's our way!" she said, fortunately amused. "But quit changing the topic. You've got to tell me about that patch-and-probe."
Damn it, thought Philippe.
"Oh, yes," he said. "Well, as I told Kelly, there was an observer there, a retired civilian judge."
"Good."
"And the whole thing was really not that big a deal. The drugs are delivered by patch, and they made me feel a little slow, but it wasn't unpleasant in the least. There's no actual probe, of course—they use a normal brain scanner, you know, a headrest with a hood over the face. You lie down; it's very comfortable. Between the hood and the drugs, it's a wonder I didn't fall asleep. They should really just call it a 'patch-and-scan.' Patch-and-probe sounds so intrusive."
Shanti gave him a dirty look.
"What?" Philippe asked.
She shook her head. "Nothing."
"Of course, they just asked me the same questions as always."
"See, that's what I don't understand," Shanti said. "They keep asking you what happened—George and I gave them good surveillance, they know what happened. Do they not believe it? Is it because you tried to go to the Host planet without getting permission first? Because I went with you, and they quit asking me about it a while back."
Philippe sighed. "Well, I think for them the issue is that I didn't tell anyone about my nightmares and visions of the Host messiah."
Shanti snorted dismissively. "They're upset that you didn't tell them you were hallucinating Creepy? You thought you were insane—they have to realize that you wouldn't want to tell anybody that."
Philippe suppressed a smile. Shanti had been considerably less understanding about that decision when she had first found out about it.
"What bothers them was that—OK, you know that at first, I was on the Host station, and I was seeing Kre-Pi-Twa-Ki-Tik-Nao in my dreams and then when I was awake. And that's when I thought I was losing my mind," he explained. "But when I took my vacation on Earth, I stopped seeing him. And then when I got back to the station, I started to see him again, but by then, I knew that your second in command had seen him, too."
"Yeah, so?"
"Well, when I started seeing Kre-Pi-Twa-Ki-Tik-Nao again, I knew I wasn't insane. I wasn't stressed out, I was sleeping, and Patch had seen him. At that point, I knew he was something real. And I didn't tell anyone then—and that's what bothers the Union. I knew that I and at least one SFer—an SFer with command responsibilities, no less—were being influenced by an alien in some telepathic sort of way, and I didn't say anything about it. And you know, upon reflection, I probably should have."
Shanti thought for a moment. "Why didn't you?"
"Well, that's what this interrogation was about. And you know, apparently the reason I didn't tell anyone was the mission."
"The mission?"
"I didn't want anything to interfere with the mission—establishing good relations with the aliens. I didn't want anything to be wrong with me, because then I couldn't do my part."
She nodded.
"It was interesting to find that out. Really, you know, the patch-and-probe is more like a therapy session than anything else—it gives you a lot of insight. I think it really could be good for people."
Shanti snorted. "Good for people? Trang, if you were SF, they couldn't do a patch-and-probe on you. Not under these circumstances. Same if you were in any Union country. And most of the non-Union countries."
"I know," Philippe said.
"And I hope that Kelly explained to you why her group thinks no one should ever undergo a patch-and-probe. Never ever."
"She did," he said, "rather at length. And you know, I, of all people, appreciate that technology can be abused."
"Especially the patch-and-probe," said Shanti. "You basically get ass-raped in the brain."
She looked perfectly serious, so Philippe tried not to laugh. She just needs reassurance.
"That's not what it was like," he said. "I wasn't emotionally brutalized by some sadist, and no one was placing false memories to incriminate me—it just wasn't that big a deal."
"How would you fucking know?" Shanti exclaimed. "If they planted false memories, how would you know?"
Philippe sighed. She could be so dramatic. "What memories would they plant? It's not like I got a patch-and-probe and now I'm suddenly confessing to molesting children or something horrible like that. And if that happened, you and the other SFers would say something, right? Plus they'd have to get around all the surveillance, including whatever alien surveillance there is on the station that we don't even know about. They can't get too creative. I'm safe."
Shanti shook her head. "Promise me you'll never agree to one again," she said.
"Don't worry," Philippe replied, sincerely hoping that she wouldn't.
He smiled at her for a moment, wondering when he could change the topic again.
He looked away, out the front window. The mines were gone; Saturn was gone. Instead they faced true darkness, the empty space between the Milky Way and the Small Magellanic Cloud. With his unaugmented vision, Philippe could barely make out the lights that marked the many Earth and alien reconnaissance satellites surrounding the Host station, as well as the occasional ring of lights surrounding the almost two dozen other portals that led here. The station itself was looming out there, somewhere, like a gigantic bicycle wheel with no rim, but it wasn't well-lit on the outside, and at the moment Philippe couldn't distinguish it.
"Oh, hey, we're through," he said. At this point, the lack of drama involved in traveling through the portals no longer unnerved him. You just went from here—a point near Saturn's moon Titan—to there—a point outside your own galaxy. It only took an instant, it didn't feel weird, and you didn't see a thing—you were just here, and then you were there.
But an instant contained an opportunity.
"So what did you do on Titan?" he asked Shanti. "They didn't bring you there just to dismantle their furniture, did they?"
She laughed, once again unthinkingly accepting his change of topic. "Well, it felt that way. But I had some business with the SF that you should know about: We're getting reinforcements."
Philippe blinked.
"Really?" he asked.
Shanti nodded. "We'll get about a dozen new SFers, probably in just a few hours."
Philippe felt an odd sensation, like he was slipping.
"How many?" he asked.
"Um." She thought for a moment. "Fourteen, exactly, including the new second."
Philippe felt the slipping sensation again. "Is that—did you feel something? Like turbulence?"
Shanti shook her head. "We're in space, Trang."
"What does—is the ship OK?"
"We no have problem here," said Pinky.
Philippe shook his head and blinked his eyes several times.
"Did you say that we were, um, getting a new second?" he asked.
/> "Yeah, her name's Princess," said Shanti. "This is her first time being a second, but I've known her a long time, and she's good."
Philippe stared at her for a moment, trying to follow the implications of what she was saying. With effort, he latched on to one.
"Patch isn't going to be your second anymore?"
"He will be," said Shanti. "I'll have two seconds. With a bigger unit, you need more supervisors to, you know, supervise."
"Patch and Princess—sounds like the names of a couple of cats," said Philippe.
"I guess."
"I'm glad Patch is staying," Philippe said. "I like Patch. He's good at heart."
"He's a nice guy," agreed Shanti.
"I like Patch. It's too bad that he named the aliens, though."
Shanti smiled. "Yeah, the Cyclopes. . . . "
"Cyclopes!" Philippe exclaimed, throwing his hands to his forehead.
"What is that, Cyclopes?" asked Pinky. "I have wondered."
"Like, magic creatures," Cheep replied.
Philippe stared at the back of Pinky's head for a moment. Pinky was that rare thing—rarest among those who worked for the Union: He had not grown up speaking Union English.
"Die Zyklopen," Philippe said. "Tsiklopy."
"Kiklopi?" Pinky asked, disbelieving. "Their eyes are four!"
"I know!" Philippe exclaimed.
"Patch is an—" Cheep's eye wandered back to Shanti, which interested Philippe. As casual as the Special Forces seemed, there were, as he had discovered to his chagrin, some lines that were not to be crossed.
And this appeared to be one of them. "—not very well-educated person," Cheep finished.
"Patch meant to call them centaurs," said Philippe. "Kentavry. He got confused."
Pinky nodded. "They look like that. Why you no fix?"
Philippe sighed. "The Hosts won't let us. They say it makes too much work for the Swimmers."
"It doesn't matter," said Shanti, a touch defensively. "With the translators, they don't know what the hell we're calling them."
"That good," said Pinky.
Philippe smiled. "It is good."
Shanti shrugged. "Patch did his best. He isn't a diplomat."
"No," Philippe cheerfully agreed. "I don't think he'd have much success in the DiploCorps."
They jostled against something firm.
"OK, that wasn't me," Philippe said.
"We here!" exclaimed Pinky.
Philippe sat for a moment, uncomprehending. Shanti unfastened her safety harness and stood up.
"Oh," said Philippe, "we're here." Here, he thought. The alien station, built by the Hosts centuries before in the hopes that other aliens would someday find it. His newest home.
He quickly released himself from his seat and stood up. The ship reeled around him for a moment. Did that too quickly, he thought.
He grabbed the seat back to steady himself, which turned him toward Shanti. "Did you say fourteen new SFers will be coming onto the station?" he asked her.
"Yeah, fourteen." She gestured. He turned in the direction she was pointing and realized that the door of the ship was open to a white corridor.
Another clean, white, featureless corridor. The Union's Space Authority was not blessed with an overabundance of creative interior designers.
Philippe turned back to Shanti. "And one of them's a new second."
She raised an eyebrow at him.
He turned and walked to the corridor.
He stopped again. "When are all these new people coming?" he asked.
"Like I said, as soon as possible," Shanti replied from behind him. "Probably later today."
Philippe tripped over the threshold to the corridor, but he caught his hand on the wall and didn't fall this time. "A new second," he said.
"It's not a demotion for Patch," said Shanti.
"I like Patch," said Philippe.
"Trang, are you feeling OK?" she asked.
Philippe stopped and turned to face her. "So we have fourteen new SFers, including a new second, arriving on this station, most likely later today."
Shanti nodded slowly. "Yes," she said equally slowly.
Philippe turned around and started walking again, not entirely sure where he was headed. He tripped.
"Stupid doorsill," he muttered.
"Trang," Shanti's voice was tense, "the doorsill is two meters behind you."
"Everything's fine," he said, continuing to walk. "We just have fourteen new lethally trained Special Forces soldiers, including a new command staffer, arriving on this station, very shortly. On an alien station. On a diplomatic mission. So right now, or in just a little bit, they're on Titan—"
He spun around to tell Shanti something important, but he was surprised by how close the smooth, white floor had gotten. He was even more surprised when it hit him.