Julian May - Rampart Worlds 2 - Orion Arm

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ORION ARM

The Rampart Worlds: Book 2

Julian May

v3.0 - Fixed broken paragraphs, garbled text, formatting; by peragwinn 2004-Oct-11

A Del Rey® Book

THE BALLANTINE PUBLISHING GROUP

NEW YORK

By Julian May

Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group:

The Saga of Pliocene Exile

Volume I: The Many-Colored Land

Volume II: The Golden Tore

Volume III: TheNonborn King

Volume IV: The Adversary

Intervention

Volume I: The Surveillance

Volume II: The Metaconcert

The Galactic Milieu Trilogy

Volume I: Jack the Bodiless

Volume II: Diamond Mask

Volume III: Magnificat

The Rampart Worlds

Volume I: Perseus Spur

Volume II: Orion Arm

Sky Trillium

Books published by The Ballantine Publishing Group are available at quantity discounts on bulk purchases for

premium, educational, fund-raising, and special sales use. For details, please call 1-800-733-3000.

Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the

publisher as "unsold or destroyed" and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.

A Del Rey® Book

Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group

The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by

Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in Great Britain by Voyager, an imprint of

HarperCollins Publishers, London, in 1999.

Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

www.randomhouse.com/delrey/

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-91747

ISBN 0-345-39519-0

Manufactured in the United States of America

First American Edition: April 1999

10 987654321

Prologue

His Daimler-Tori hoppercraft hurtles down from the ionosphere on its programmed

course. The time is 0247 hours and the appointment with Alistair Drummond is at 0330.

Below, the land is hidden by a thick layer of clouds, but the ship's ground display shows

the enormous expanse of the capital conurbation and its satellite residential communities,

spread along the entire northern shore of Lake Ontario.

The hopper joins a sparse swarm of other light aircraft hovering within a holding

pattern at nine thousand meters. The ship's navigation unit says: "Now arriving Toronto

Conurb ATZ. Please supply next routing."

He has dozed fitfully most of the way from the Sky Ranch in Arizona, exhausted by

the stress of the general board meeting and fearful of the challenge that lies ahead.

Rousing with a muttered curse, he removes the templets of the dream machine and says:

"Wait."

The navigator acknowledges.

He leaves the flight deck and enters the Daimler's tiny lavatory. After relieving

himself, he fumbles at the convenience console and calls up shave-gel, mouth rinse, an

astringent towel, and a mild stimulant. As he completes the grooming ritual and the drug

takes hold, his reflection in the mirror changes. The features lose the blotched puffiness

of fatigue, becoming keen and judicial, and the sunken, haunted eyes take on a

counterfeit sparkle. He combs his hair low on his forehead and to the side, concealing the

prominent widow's peak that characterizes so many members of his famous family.

Returning to the flight deck, he opens a locker, removes a hooded featherweight soft-

armor jacket with a one-way visor and puts it on over the tropical business suit he had

worn to the board meeting. The personal weaponry can wait until he's on the ground.

He addresses the ship's navigator again. "Go to Blue Disenfranchised Persons

Reserve. Prep for manual touchdown at junction of Mamertine and Borstal streets."

"Warning. This area is outside the jurisdiction of Toronto Conurb Public Safety-"

"Cancel advisory."

"Warning: Touchdown in a DPR is at your own risk. No aid units will respond to

emergency summons—"

"Cancel."

"Warning. Touchdown in a DPR will render all vehicle insurance coverage null and

void. The following precautions are— "

"Cancel all advisories and go."

"Air access to Blue DPR visitor landing sites requires barrier override code. Please

enter code."

His fingers tremble only slightly as he plugs in the data-dime furnished by

Galapharma's Arizona covert op. The navigator blinks in approval.

"Confirmed. En route."

The hoppercraft drops through the cloud deck to an altitude of less than five hundred

meters. It comes in from the south, over the dead-black lake. Rain is falling heavily,

blurring the pinpricks of colored light delineating the cityscape below. Only the Toronto

core and its adjacent maze of islands to the east are clearly visible, shielded in the

tenuous golden glitter of a Class One force-umbrella nearly forty kilometers in diameter.

Protected from the weather, handsome government buildings and the proud bright

crystalline towers of the Hundred Concerns defy the stormy summer night.

The panorama is gorgeous, but he is in no mood to appreciate it. He calls up a triple-

shot espresso with a tot of cognac and sips it, speaking the magic words aloud: "Calm.

Competence. Courage."

He possesses all three qualities in abundance, and they will carry him through the

upcoming ordeal. However, since he is the bearer of disappointing news, he rehearses the

spin angle he has calculated will be most effective with Alistair Drum-mond.

Galapharma's CEO will probably be furious at the setback, but Drummond is no fool, and

he'll have to concede that the Rampart takeover can be leveraged only with inside

assistance.

His assistance.

There is really nothing for him to be afraid of.

Coventry Blue is finally gone, along with the other wretched excesses that were

tolerated by a compliant CHW government under the corrupt thumb of galactic Big

Business. Nowadays, white-collar criminals—like him—get their comeuppance in a more

humane, if less colorful, manner.

Too bad.

He deserved Coventry Blue if anyone did, the treacherous bastard. But I suppose I'm

prejudiced...

Before the Haluk War, the penal institution that combined the worst aspects of an

ancient Soviet gulag with anything-goes 2050-vintage Las Vegas was situated on the

western outskirts of Toronto. It was the largest and most flagrantly mismanaged

Disenfranchised Persons Reserve in the Commonwealth. Nobody seems to know how the

dark carnival aspect first invaded this particular Coventry, but it undoubtedly persisted

because the Hundred Concerns found it useful as a tangible deterrent to corporate

disloyalty. Among other things.

The DPRs were originally designed as walled, self-contained penitentiary villages,

providing their lifer inmates with an environment that was supposed to allow them a

limited amount of independence and dignity. Self-government by the highly educated

felons was one of the prime organizing principles, and in most of the Coventries the

system worked well enough. Guards kept order, but under the original charter, they

operated more like a small-town police force than like jailers. The convict population

lived in apartments instead of cells. They didn't have to wear uniforms. There was no

onerous regimentation. The prisoners had ample opportunity for gainful employment and

recreation, and according to regulations, they were allowed visitors once a week. Life in a

conventional Disenfranchised Persons Reserve wasn't all peaches and cream, but it wasn't

a lunatic jamboree of Neronian depravity, either.

The same couldn't be said about Coventry Blue.

Most of the luckless felons sentenced to permanent residence there (some having

been apprehended by me, when 1 was an enforcement agent for the Interstellar

Commerce Secretariat) would have sold their souls to be elsewhere. At the same time,

naughty-minded free citizens on the Outside were paying good money to get into the

damned place!

Blue's transient clientele came from all over the home world and from adjacent

planets of the Orion Arm. The goal: to party down and dirty. Libertine tourists romping

along the notorious Blue Strip could count on rubbing elbows— if nothing else—with

distinguished local citizens, many of them members of the capital's political and

corporate upper-crust who might deplore the place's wickedness in the public forum but

didn't hesitate to indulge illicit Blue itches when the need arose. To the more vicious

variety of well-heeled thrillseeker, the sort who could afford the stiff bribe for the night

entry code and the outrageous fees charged for the unique attractions, Coventry Blue was

the carnal cruise destination of choice: zero-K cool, the ultimate hoot, where vile

amusements weren't bloodless virtual reality, but shockingly, deliciously, perilously

actual.

And legal, within the walls. After all, the inmate purveyors were Thrown Away,

stripped of citizenship, nonpersons. In law, not even the probationary disenfranchised—

such as I was, in those days—had any civil rights. Throwaways condemned to Coventry

Blue were the lowest of the low, officers and middle management employees who had

violated important statutes of their Interstellar Corporation or Amalgamated Concern,

threatening the very economic foundation of the Commonwealth of Human Worlds.

A certain percentage of Blue inmate newcomers— especially naifs who had

disbelieved the dire rumors they'd heard about the place—committed suicide when they

realized that the prison was under the absolute control of exploitative convict gangs; but

the majority just caved in to the inevitable and decided to go with the flow, accepting

employment in the illegal enterprises operated by inmate kingpins. If life became too

unbearable, oblivion was available in the form of cheap drugs, buzzheadmg, or old-

fashioned alcohol that could be purchased with the monthly dole if one skimped on

frivolities such as food and clothing.

Religious leaders, left-wing media pundits, Reversionists, and other powerless moral

guardians of the time called Coventry Blue a pervert's playground, a stinking sore on the

backside of the capital conurbation, the epitome of everything that was rotten in the

Commonwealth of Human Worlds during those bad old days of yesteryear. Right-

thinking citizens were gratified when Blue was finally shut down during the sweeping

reforms that followed the war and the downfall of the Hundred Concerns.

Lots of wrong-thinkers were relieved, too. Including him.

But I still get a smidgen of wicked satisfaction imagining how it must have been on

that night of January 18, 2233, when he visited the infamous den of iniquity—under

strong protest, of course.

He prided himself in knowing almost nothing about Coventry Blue. Its sordid

activities went unreported by the legitimate media, and he would never have dreamed of

entering its restricted-access smutsite on the PlaNet. He wasn't interested in that sort of

thing.

The quest for power was his besetting sin, and in pursuit of it he had conspired to

betray his own family's Starcorp to a predatory business rival, allying himself with a

megalomaniac who might or might not decide to feed him to the wolves when his

usefulness was over.

Corruptor and corruptee had conferred face-to-face only once before, at the very

beginning of Galapharma's bid to take over Rampart Starcorp. Since then the two men

had communicated via intermediaries, covert ops belonging to the big Concern's security

organization who would mysteriously appear to request progress reports or deliver

instructions. He had no idea why Gala's capricious CEO had elected to set up this

meeting in Coventry Blue instead of in a more seemly venue.

Unless he'd done it for educational purposes.

So here goes our corporate antihero, an upright, uptight respected executive of

Rampart, on a quickie tour of hell. His perilous game is approaching its climax. If he

wins, he'll get everything he's ever wanted. If he loses, he could come to Coventry Blue

to stay... for the rest of his life.

The hoppercraft flies slowly at a low altitude, reined in by the computers of Traffic

Control. Even in the wee hours the Shore Freeway and Queen Elizabeth Way are

crowded with cars and transit vehicles flowing in orderly streams to and from the radiant

central umbrella. Luminosity reflects from low-hanging clouds, revealing the residential

districts and industrial parks of Mississauga and Etobicoke, their wet streets gleaming

beneath neatly spaced streetlamps.

To the north is a less tidy enclave of about nine thousand acres. Its irregular perimeter

is outlined by bright sapphire lights that surmount a ten-meter-high wall topped by razor-

wire and Kagi guns on pivoting stanchions. At the eastern side of the complex is a

gatehouse and security checkpoint. A single garishly illuminated thoroughfare—Peel

Road, a.k.a. the Blue Strip—leads from the gate into Coventry's interior.

The main drag of the prison village is solidly packed with upscale cars. The byways,

almost deserted, have meager streetlighting or none at all. There are no trees or other

ornamental vegetation anywhere. Except for the bizarre come-hither architecture of the

clip joints, pusher palaces, and bordellos along the Strip, the structures of Coventry are

built of drab plascrete—dismal apartment blocks and jerry-built flops for the more

peaceable Throwaways, lockups and warehouse facilities for the wig-outs and immobile

sickies, un-sanctioned fortified town houses inhabited by the convict elite who exploit

their lesser fellows, and a guard barracks near the prison entrance. Smaller boxy units

accommodate inmate services, tacky small shops and take-out food joints, storefront

churches and charitable institutions, and the innumerable enterprises of Blue's illegal

economy. Windows of the off-Strip buildings are mostly dark, in obedience to the

selectively enforced midnight curfew regulations. In a few, oleum-flame lanterns and

even candles cast a wan yellowish glow. Burnt-out ruins and heaps of rubble occupy

some of the weedy open areas. Others serve as parking accommodation for visiting

hoppercraft or cars and have bonfires burning to signal available space.

His Daimler reaches its destination and hovers until he takes over the controls.

Borstal Street runs parallel to the Blue Strip. Its intersection with Mamertine is at the

western end of the penal complex, nearly five kilometers from the gate. He descends

toward the parking lot designated by Alis-tair Drummond.

The Daimler's terrain-scan monitor shows a level area crowded with at least sixty

expensive hoppers, incongruous amidst the squalid surroundings. Their security shields

throb faintly crimson in the rain, warning that intruders will be shocked into insensibility.

Only a handful of the private aircraft show visible registration alphanumerics on the roof.

The rest have ID illegally obscured for the duration of their stay in Coventry.

For a brief moment he hesitates. (Calm! Competence! Courage!) Then he lands in a

space as near to the lot's bonfire as possible. A parking attendant comes out of a shanty

and slowly approaches over the muddy ground. The figure waits at a safe distance for

him to emerge.

He buckles on twin holsters, checks the load in his Ivanov stun-gun and the charge

indicator on the Kagi photon pistol. He programs the remote control gorget for the hopper

and locks it around his neck, zips the armor jacket and pulls down the visor. He stuffs his

wrist wallet with cash and a single blind draft credit card, then pulls on zapper gloves.

The Throwaway attendant stands motionless as he climbs out and touches his gorget

to lock the aircraft and engage the security system. He can hear the noise of the Strip a

block away: high-db rock music with yelping electronic toms and seismic bass, obbligato

horn honks from the traffic jam, a volley of mystifying animalian howls. Underlying it all

is the roar of carousing humans.

"Morning, guv," says the attendant. "That'll be two hundred fifty."

He can't help being outraged. "So much!"

The convict shrugs. "Take it or leave it, citizen. That's the fee. You have a complaint,

file it with King Kwadena Akosu. The lot belongs to him. You'll find him at Casino

Royale."

"Hmph. I suppose you want a tip as well."

"Your gratuity would be deeply appreciated. And bless you, guv."

A barely legible name badge identifies the Throwaway as GAVIN D. He is gaunt,

scraggily bearded, and his grin reveals two chipped front teeth. Between his glazed red-

rimmed eyes is a metallic button identifying him as a buzzhead, addicted to electronic

stimulation of the pleasure centers of the brain. His rainsuit is old and ill-fitting, patched

with duct tape, smudged in soot, stained repugnantly about the crotch. Only his voice,

hoarse but still retaining the inflection of an expensive education, reveals that Gavin D.

was once more than human debris.

Who was he when he lived Outside? A too clever corporate lawyer? A financial

officer caught with his hand in the till? A data thief? Another faithless executive who

sold company secrets to the opposition?

Gavin D. waits patiently, holding out a filthy hand with broken black fingernails.

"Cash or plastic. Your first visit to Coventry Blue?"

"Yes," he growls. Sort out the money, fork it over. A grudging twenty for the tip. The

man's stink penetrates the closed visor. He backs away in distaste but Gavin D. follows,

rummaging in the side pocket of his rainsuit.

Is he going for a weapon? Panic! Drag the Ivanov out of its holster. "Stand back,

damn you!"

"Easy—easy does it, guv." A contemptuous snicker. "No one here will hurt you."

Wink. Grin. "Unless you pay them to." The convict pulls a cheap e-book from his pocket

and proffers it. "Complimentary guide to the local scene. What sort of action are you

looking for? Sex? Dope? Gladiators? Gaming?"

He waves away the book. "Which way to a place called the Silver Scybalum?" This is

the rendezvous specified by Alis-tair Drummond.

Silenced in mid-spiel, the attendant's eyes show a spark of revulsion before reverting

to practiced blankness. "So you're one of those ... Well, different strokes for different

folks. I hope you brought your niobium Visa card. You're looking at ultra-pricey show

biz at the SS."

"Never mind. Just tell me how to find it. And what's a scy-balum, anyhow?"

"Look in the display window when you get there." The Throwaway hesitates and then

the grin returns, sly and vindictive. "I wouldn't want to spoil your fun, but you ought to

know that the performers there are genengineered humans, not the real thing. Neither are

the baby ho's in the shorteye joints. Genen adult inmates, every last one. No real kids in

Coventry. The female cons—"

"Which way, goddammit?"

"Don't get your twat in a twist. Go down to the Strip, hang a left, go two blocks. You

can't miss it." Gavin D. turns away and shuffles back to his hovel to await the next

customer.

He sets off, moving cautiously on the broken pavement and repeating his soothing

mantra over and over. Calm, competence, courage! This is a test He'll ace it, and to hell

with Drummond's mindfucking control games.

He passes a row of dark, ramshackle flophouses. The only illuminated place is a

Catholic mission with a holosign that says FREE MEALS 24 MRS. The projection depicts a

smiling Jesus sketching a blessing with one hand and offering a steaming-hot burger plate

with the other. A vagrant slouches in the mission doorway, chugalugging the last of a

bottle of fortified plonk. Inside, a brother in a white karategi with a black belt waits to

unlock and admit him, sans booze.

Farther along the street are shuttered storefronts: a day-labor exchange, a noodle

shop, a minimart with an iron grille across the door and windows. Ragbaggy forms

huddle in some of the doorways, wrapped in foil blankets against the pelting downpour.

One calls out to him as he hurries by, an elderly woman whose face is barely visible.

"Spare some small change, citizen? Brings good luck to feed the animals at the Blue Zoo,

you know."

He is superstitious enough to stop and toss her a small-denomination bill, which she

deftly snatches out of midair. He asks, "Why in the world are you sleeping outside on a

night like this?"

"Safer here than in the dormitory blocks," she tells him. "No lushrollers, no pussy

bandits or bugnuts crawling in bed with you, no screaming meemies, no psychoid icemen

looking to waste you for the fun of it—" He shuts his ears to the catalog of horrors and

hurries away, finally reaching the blazing clamor of the Strip.

Here the sidewalks are thronged with roisterers wearing costly rain gear. Many of the

pedestrians are anonymously hooded and visored, as he is, but fair numbers of the most

youthful men and women go bareheaded in spite of the bad weather. Flashily dressed,

shrieking with sycophantic laughter as they cling to the arms of their incognito escorts,

these can only be professional whores imported from Outside. Coventry Blue's

population of upper-echelon corporate felons probably has a perennial shortage of

inmates who are young, attractive, and reasonably priced.

The funhouses stand cheek by jowl, tricked out with giant holograms, flashing

strobes, laser pattern generators, neon constructs, even blinking incandescent-bulb

marquees. He cannot help gaping at the outrageous displays and the signs that shriek and

blare the Blue Strip's extravagances:

LIVE YOUR WILDEST WET DREAM GORGEOUS GALS FAB

FAGS KLASSY KIDDIES LOVERLY LIVESTOCK

PSYCHODELICADO BOUTIQUE LE POT DE CHAMBRE CORRECTIVE

WHIPPERSNAPPERS ORGY PORGY HELGA'S HOUSE OF PAIN ROCKET FUEL

DEPOT NARC NOOKY CESSPOOL FOLLIES PETER PUFFER'S POOFTAH

PALACE BLOOD GLADIATORS OF ANCIENT ROME CASINO ROYALE—

LOWEST ODDS ON EARTH BOOGIE BOMBITA BANDITA RUSSIAN ROULETTE

VAMPIRB PLANET ELECTRIC BREATHING LESSONS SALADIN'S

SNUFFBOX—100% REAL DEATH DRUGS DRUGS DRUGS SEX SEX SEX XXX

. . .

Grimly, he shoulders his way through the mob, fending off the stoned and the

importunate. Barkers and strong-arm touts aggressively seek his custom, but a warning

gesture with his zapper glove sends them off with a cheery "Fuck you, guv!" flung after

him. The teaser spectacles in the show windows startle him, nauseate him, even arouse

him—to his shame and consternation, for he is a cultural snob who had thought himself

to be above such vulgar titillation.

Calm. Competence. Courage.

And God damn Alistair Drummond.

At last he sees his goal, a surprising oasis of conservatism amidst the crashing

hullaballoo. The large building's facade is slick black, with a bas-relief frieze that appears

to wriggle and contort, as though trapped living things are attempting to escape a river of

tar. A modest sign above the sheltering portico says SILVER SCYBALUM. The entrance is

flanked by two gargantuan doormen in imitation spacesuits of glolame with reflective

helmets. On either side of the doorway are large windows. The one on the left is

curtained with silvery drapes. The other, artfully spotlighted, features a curious grotto of

pitted white rock thickly mottled and veined by black and red minerals. Some of the

cavities are lined with beautiful ruby-colored crystals.

He approaches and joins a group of idlers who stare at the xeno creature behind the

glass. It has the general shape and bulk of a sea lion. The body is roughly pear-shaped,

clad in a greenish pebbled hide, possessing only two front limbs armed with oversized

claws with which the thing has anchored itself to the irregular sidewall of the artificial

cave.

The hideous wrinkled head is oversized, naked, leathery, with tiny red eyes.

Wormlike feelers surround its open beak and apparently guide interior mouth parts that

work like reciprocating drills, pecking industriously at the rock. A larger appendage, like

a warty tongue, laps up mineral dust as fast as it is produced. The hole the creature has

gouged sparkles with minute raw metal surfaces and freshly broken crystals that look like

scarlet flecks of pepper.

He reads the descriptive sign at the front of the exhibit.

The sapient denizens of Gwalior [Sector 8], requiring arsenic and sulfur in their

unique metabolism, consume native rock containing the red mineral proustite (silver

arsenic sulfide) together with free silver. The latter is egested as a waste product.

After a few minutes the Gwaliorite detaches itself from the wall and flops down with

comical abandon, inspiring considerable mirth among the observers. It slithers clumsily

to a pool of steaming liquid and drinks daintily. Then it rears back and begins to shiver.

"Yes!" cries one of the crowd. "Do it, sweetheart!" Others contribute encouraging

shouts.

The trembling intensifies and the Gwaliorite utters a series of prolonged screams,

broadcast electronically to the world at large. He recognizes the exotic ululation he had

heard earlier, in the hopper park.

After a final tortured cry the alien wriggles backward to a depressed area of the floor

where there is an in-spiraling gutter. At its center is a sensor knob that suddenly starts to

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ORIONARMTheRampartWorlds:Book2JulianMayv3.0-Fixedbrokenparagraphs,garbledtext,formatting;byperagwinn2004-Oct-11ADelRey®BookTHEBALLANTINEPUBLISHINGGROUPNEWYORKByJulianMayPublishedbyTheBallantinePublishingGroup:TheSagaofPlioceneExileVolumeI:TheMany-ColoredLandVolumeII:TheGoldenToreVolumeIII:TheNonborn...

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