Liberty Read online

  ‘There’s not much water on Mars, as far as I know…’

  ‘No. Well, maybe there is, but there’s loads elsewhere. Ice in the asteroid belt. The moons of Saturn and Jupiter are thought to have… Europa, one of Saturn’s moons, is supposed to have an underground ocean with twice as much water on it as Earth does. Ganymede and Titan may have way more, and Titan has huge lakes of hydrocarbons sitting right on its surface. It makes Earth’s oil reserves look pitiful. We have no way of getting there now, but the asharem can.’

  ‘Cygnus watches a lot of astronomy programmes,’ Astraea said. ‘From what I’ve seen, the asharem will follow the lead of their Guardian, and she doesn’t want us to be enemies. She’s seen enough war already.’

  ‘So, you think I could trust her?’ Hart asked.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘The same,’ Cygnus confirmed. ‘She was… nice. She’s as bound up in protecting her people as I am with humans, but she’d prefer diplomacy to force.’

  ‘Do you think she’d be open to coming here for a summit of some kind?’

  ‘Probably.’ Cygnus gave a small shrug. ‘I could ask unofficially tomorrow, if you like.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m taking Quillant Vedro, the one who crashed near New Millennium, to Mars tomorrow. Aside from anything else, it eases one of Brightstar’s headaches. She was getting thoroughly annoyed with the UN’s refugee people. Everyone will be happier when he’s not on Earth.’

  Union of Ultrahumans HQ, Antarctica, 16th February.

  Quillant Vedro was rather emotional about leaving his temporary home in the medical wing of the UoU’s base. He thanked Doctor Ultimate and Brightstar profusely, and Polyglot even more profusely. He rather seemed to be delaying leaving as much as he could despite the fact that he was going somewhere with a rather more amicable environment as far as an asharem was concerned. Eventually, they got him outside into the sun.

  It was summer. The outside temperature was somewhere around thirty degrees Fahrenheit and the sun had not set for quite a while, though it would be going down for a few minutes in three days. Vedro was actually quite comfortable in this kind of weather: asharem were a cold-tolerant species. The air was still bothering him, but he was breathing shallow and putting up with it for the few minutes before they got up into space.

  He waved back toward the people watching from the base, and then Cygnus wrapped an arm around his waist, looked upward, and took off.

  Asharem Colony, Mars.

  ‘Just remember,’ Cygnus said as she dropped toward the Martian surface, ‘stay beside me until we’re inside the dome. They haven’t terraformed the atmosphere yet, so you’d be trying to breathe vacuum, more or less.’

  ‘I remember,’ Vedro replied. ‘I have not yet thanked you. Without you and Astraea, I would probably be dead. I hope I get the chance to see Astraea again, to thank her.’

  ‘I think she might be up here to visit once in a while.’ Cygnus set down on the dusty landscape, keeping a hand on Vedro’s shoulder as they started for the door to the habitation dome.

  Madvedant opened the door and stepped outside to meet them as they approached. She was smiling. ‘That’s your Guardian,’ Cygnus said. ‘Madvedant Mareko.’

  ‘The old one died?’ Vedro asked.

  ‘Fighting the invading Guardians. Madvedant decided to save those she could.’

  ‘Wise beyond her years.’

  They waited until they were inside the dome before Madvedant spoke. ‘Welcome to our new home, Quillant Vedro.’

  ‘Thank you, Guardian.’ Vedro smiled. ‘It is far easier to be here than on the other world. It is almost like being on Ashari Mastada again.’

  ‘It will be a new beginning for our people.’ Madvedant looked at Cygnus and her smile broadened. ‘I believe that this may be a new beginning for both our species, if we play it right.’

  ‘Well,’ Cygnus said, ‘we can certainly hope so.’

  Part Two: Undercurrents

  Los Angeles, CA, 3rd March 2017.

  Scott Bainbridge had decided that he liked Los Angeles. It was warmer than DC for one thing. The nightlife was better. As he sat in a club on Hollywood Boulevard, watching the nightlife wandering around in short skirts and minimal tops, he contemplated the idea that the nightlife was much more attractive than in DC.

  He slugged back his first drink of the night – a double whiskey – and immediately indicated to the bartender that he wanted another. Scott had a drinking problem. Not the kind of problem that raised flags with the UID higher-ups, but a problem nonetheless. No matter how much he drank, Scott could not forget what he had seen while on assignment at Andrews. He had requested a transfer after two months. It had cost him a pay grade to get out of the place, but it was worth it. He hoped that, with the application of sufficient alcohol, he might manage to submerge the memories. He just did not have a lot of hope.

  A woman stepped up to the bar beside him, waving at the bartender. Scott did his best not to stare. The analytical part of his brain said she was about five-nine and a hundred and twenty-five pounds. The purely male part suggested that a lot of that weight had to be in her breasts; she was stacked. She was wearing a dress made of some metallic fabric – the word pewter came to mind – which was short, more or less backless, and had a big cleavage window. She had a lot of cleavage to show off. A lot of her height seemed to be in long, long legs which led into full hips, then a narrow waist, and then up to those big boobs. He could not help coming back to her boobs. Her face was beautiful too: big blue eyes, a pert nose, high cheekbones, full lips, all capped off with short, platinum-blonde hair. She was… stunning.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  She turned and smiled at him. ‘Hi. New face? I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.’ She ran a small, pointy tongue over her gorgeous lips. There was a distinct smoulder in her eyes.

  Scott knew, right there and then, that he was getting lucky tonight.

  ~~~

  ‘This is your place? It’s nice.’ The girl from the club turned, looking around the lounge of Scott’s apartment. It was an okay place. He had not moved in that long ago and he still wanted more for it, but it was nice enough.

  ‘Thanks… I don’t even know your name.’

  ‘Ashley.’ She turned her blue eyes on him. There was something hot and needy in them. ‘Not that we really need names. Kiss me.’

  He almost lurched forward and a second later their tongues were fighting for dominance. At first it was just fantastic – she was a great kisser – but after a few seconds, just as Scott was deciding that he needed to come up for air, it changed. He felt dizzy. A wash of intense pleasure flooded through his body and his legs gave way, dumping him onto the new, plush carpet. She let him fall, standing back and looking down at him. He thought he heard her say something. ‘Sorry, but you know too much. No one leaves–’

  Pain lanced through his chest and down his left arm, wiping away the ecstasy. All the energy seemed to drain from his body and it was all he could do to keep his eyes open. He curled into a ball around his aching chest. So hard to breathe. He was going to black out. He…

  San Francisco, CA, 4th March.

  Wilson Cavanaugh had an hour for lunch, theoretically. Generally, his wife made lunch for him and he worked in his office. Today he had left her to sleep because she had had a tough week and the fact that he wanted to go in because he thought he had had a sudden breakthrough should not force her to get out of bed. Will was a specialist in quantum physics with particular emphasis on gauge bosons. He worked in the research department of Fullerton Technologies Inc. If he did say so himself, he was the best theoretical physicist they had. His ability to produce edible food was something entirely different, so when he wanted lunch, he went to a coffee shop not far from the office.

  Getting out of the office for an hour did something else too: it got him out of the office for an hour. His awesome breakthrough had turned into an awesome headache and he was determined to look away from
it for an hour. He often had brilliant intuitive leaps once he stopped staring at a problem for a while. Inspiration had not hit him as he walked into the shop and joined the queue. The queue was good: long enough to give him some time, but not too long. He looked around and his gaze fell upon a pair of blue eyes looking back at him from one of the small tables at the side of the room.

  His cheeks heated instantly, and he looked away. There had been something in her eyes. Will had only ever seen that look in his wife’s eyes before now. He was not an ugly man. His wife claimed he was handsome, but he suspected he was maybe a little above average, aside from being tall, quite heavily built, and a little ungainly. Tia looked at Will like that when she wanted him to do very non-theoretical physical things to her, and she wanted it right now.

  Trying hard to look like he was not looking, Will looked again. The blue eyes belonged to a platinum-blonde in a grey skirt suit. It was almost a demure outfit – the skirt was slim and stopped just above her knees – except that the grey jacket seemed to have nothing under it and the woman had a substantial bust. She was now staring at a newspaper, maybe at the crossword, her lips pursed around a pen she was holding. Something about the way she was mouthing that pen…

  A couple of minutes later, Will found himself holding a bag with some sandwiches in it and a coffee, and he was standing beside the woman’s table. ‘Uh, sorry to interrupt,’ he said, ‘but do I know you?’

  She looked up and smiled. ‘Oh no, Doctor Cavanaugh. I’m Ashley. I started working in materials sciences last week. I know you. I’ve read several of your papers. I’m a bit of a fan.’

  ‘Really? I… don’t think I’ve ever had a fan before.’

  She giggled. The sound seemed to go straight to Will’s crotch. ‘Would you like to get out of here? I’d love to… chat for a while.’

  ‘Sure,’ Will said. His tongue felt rather thick in his head. That pause before she said ‘chat’ seemed to have said so much more than the word did.

  ‘Great. Uh, I’m in a hotel for the moment. Haven’t got an apartment yet. We could… chat in my room.’

  ‘Sure,’ Will said. Right now, she could have asked him to do just about anything and his answer would have been the same. He was almost certain he was going to cheat on Tia with a woman he had only just met and, for some reason, that did not seem to bother him in the slightest.

  New Millennium City, MD, 5th March.

  ‘Is that coffee I smell? Oh, thank God. Gimme.’ Cygnus and June stared at Andrea as she bounced across from the door to her and Jacob’s apartment, snagging a mug as she went past toward the coffee machine. She poured life-giving fluid into the mug, lifted it to her nose, and savoured the smell for a second. Then she stared at her housemates over the rim of the mug. ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve changed,’ Cygnus said.

  ‘You have,’ June agreed. ‘You are certainly not the Andrea I got to know before China, and I don’t think you’re the same as you were before you got those eyes.’

  ‘Definitely less inhibited,’ Cygnus said, nodding.

  ‘What?’ Andrea asked, though this time it had more of a puzzled tone to it.

  ‘Old Andrea would not come bouncing out of her room in lacy boy shorts,’ June said. ‘You were dubious about the costumes I designed for you. It was Twilight that was happy to wear them.’

  ‘I… Oh.’

  ‘They’re right, you know?’ Jacob said, walking out in his lighter skinsuit. ‘Your personality shifted again. I think you’re more like you were when I first knew you, but a bit less inhibited. Maybe a lot less.’

  Andrea’s cheeks reddened. ‘Well, I’m not going to get dressed until I’ve drunk my coffee. It’s a matter of honour now.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ June replied, smirking. ‘Your new outfit should be turning up later today and it’s not like there’ll be that much less of you on show when you try it on. And in other news, I think I should point out, Jacob, that that suit doesn’t really hide any of your attributes either.’

  ‘So true,’ Cygnus agreed.

  Jacob blushed, rather more than his girlfriend had. ‘I thought you two were supposed to be into girls.’

  ‘Cygnus is bi,’ June replied, ‘and we’ve established that I’m capable of appreciating your aesthetic qualities.’ She pursed her lips thoughtfully. ‘We haven’t had a male model on the calendar yet. I think we could do it if we did a couple shoot. In a freezer, obviously.’

  It said something of Jacob’s skill as a detective and his knowledge of the women he lived with that he did not argue. He just turned to look at Andrea. ‘Help me,’ he pleaded.

  ‘Nuh-huh,’ Andrea replied. ‘I have to do them. I’m not letting you off the hook if June’s going to reel you in.’

  San Francisco, CA, 6th March.

  ‘Will Cavanaugh’s dead.’

  Bianca looked up from the report she was reading and peered across her office at the approaching form of Elaine Ellis. ‘Physicist? Tall, kind of gangly guy. Looked like Christopher Reeve’s Clarke Kent without the glasses.’

  ‘That’s him. He was found in a room at the Bayview Grand on Saturday afternoon. Heart failure.’

  ‘Damn! He was a brilliant physicist. He had a wife, right?’

  Elaine nodded. ‘Tia, short for Celestia. Who would saddle their kid with a name like Celestia?’

  Bianca shrugged. ‘My Little Pony fans? What was Cavanaugh doing in the Bayview Grand?’ She turned to her computer and did some tapping and clicking. ‘He was in the office from nine thirty until just before midday.’

  ‘He’d work on a Saturday if he had a burst of inspiration.’ Elaine shrugged this time. ‘I work weekends and evenings when the muse is upon me.’

  ‘You wouldn’t sleep if you could get away with it,’ Bianca half muttered. ‘Guy comes in to work on a problem, goes out to lunch, and then he’s found dead of a heart attack in a hotel room. He had his company medical last month. No sign of any problems.’

  ‘Why would someone kill a particle physicist?’ Elaine countered, because she could see where this was going.

  ‘I have no idea, but I’m not going to just let it go when it looks wrong.’ She picked up her phone and dialled. ‘Yes, this is Bianca Fullerton. Could I speak to Detective Damian Inman?’

  ~~~

  ‘Just so you know, I’m not counting this as a lunch date,’ Damian stated as he escorted Bianca through the medical examiner’s building.

  ‘I got you coffee,’ Bianca countered.

  ‘Still doesn’t count.’

  ‘You’re a hard taskmaster, Detective Inman.’

  Damian chuckled. ‘So, the American Federation is recognising Amazonia today. Plans?’

  ‘We’re looking into opening an office down there. I might have to fly down at some point, but it’s early days yet.’

  ‘Not worried about her…’ He trailed off, lifting a hand to wiggle his fingers in front of his forehead.

  ‘Worried about her doing head-squid impressions? It’s a potential problem, obviously.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  Bianca flashed him a grin. ‘Honestly? Less worried about it down there than I am about someone doing it here. Cygnus says the Amazon Queen can be trusted. There are one or two psionic Ultras in California for whom I do not have that assurance.’

  ‘Fair point. Okay, here we are.’

  Chief Medical Examiner Naomi Hilliard was waiting beside a cloth-draped autopsy bench. Hilliard was in her fifties, smoked to excess, and had the kind of dry wit really awesome MEs were supposed to have. Damian thought she was great. A lot of other people thought she was callous or even sociopathic. ‘The famous Bianca Fullerton,’ Hilliard drawled. ‘How the Hell did you fall for a jobbing detective and general nobody like Inman?’

  Bianca shrugged. ‘I saw him in his little running shorts and figured I had to give that ass a shot.’

  ‘Never come to see me in running shorts, Inman.’

  ‘They make us do those on-the-job sensitivit
y courses these days, Naomi. I wouldn’t want to be accused of sexual harassment.’

  ‘Huh.’ Hilliard reached for the sheet and paused. ‘She’s not going to throw up or anything, is she?’

  ‘I’ve seen dead bodies before,’ Bianca replied.

  ‘If you feel sick, the sink’s over there.’ Hilliard yanked the cloth aside to reveal the pale, dead body of Wilson Cavanaugh. There was a Y-incision in his chest which had been stitched up. He looked fairly peaceful, but also very dead. ‘Your man had a heart attack.’

  ‘He was fit. He had a medical a month ago which gave no indication of coronary issues.’

  Hilliard nodded. ‘He still had a heart attack. The interesting thing is why he had one.’

  ‘Well, why did–’

  ‘No idea. I didn’t do the autopsy, but I know who did and he’s thorough. I went over his report and he could find no actual cause for the damage he found in the heart muscles. Usually you’re going to see some sort of congestion in the coronary arteries, but not with Mister Cavanaugh. Could have been extreme vasoconstriction, but the blood tests came back with none of the usual markers for drug use. Guy didn’t even drink too much coffee.’

  Bianca frowned. ‘I don’t suppose I could get a blood sample before I go? I can get our labs to run a whole battery of tests I’m willing to guess aren’t in the standard set. I’m the boss, so I don’t have to justify the cost.’

  Hilliard peered at Bianca for a second. ‘Going to a lot of trouble for an employee who croaked, aren’t you? He wasn’t even on the job when he died.’

  ‘I don’t like mysteries. And I don’t like my best people dropping dead for no reason.’

  ‘I’ll draw the blood. You’ll let me know if your tests come up with anything?’

  ‘My civic duty.’

  ‘Right.’ She turned, wandering off to find something it seemed.

  Bianca turned to Damian and nodded at the body. ‘Do your thing before she comes back.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The… psychometry thing.’

  Grimacing, Damian reached out a hand. ‘You are going to owe me for this.’ He gently let his index finger touch Cavanaugh’s shoulder.