Ballistic (The Palladium Wars), стр. 76
The diner was an oasis of shade and quiet in the bustle of the district. It was fully automated, with a host console at the entrance and softly lit pathways on the floor to provide directions. He tapped the location for capsule forty-seven, and an orange arrow appeared on the floor in front of the console, pointing into the diner and waiting for him to follow.
It was strange to be in a restaurant with no conversational din in the background. A few people on their way out passed him as he followed the orange arrow, and they passed each other by without acknowledgment. The dining capsules had doors that could be closed, and most guests had chosen to do so, ensconcing themselves in silence for the duration of their meals and shutting out the world completely. It made sense to him that in a city as densely populated as this one, where the hotel rooms were not much bigger than his living compartment on Zephyr, quiet privacy was a precious commodity, a premium item on the services menu.
When he reached capsule forty-seven, the door was only slightly ajar. Aden took a deep breath and knocked on the capsule right next to the opening.
“Come in,” Solveig’s voice answered from the inside. He knew what her adult self sounded like because they had met in holographic form in the Mnemosyne three months ago. But those had been digital avatars, cleaned up and adjusted by the AI to remove commonly perceived flaws and imperfections, ideal versions of themselves smoothed out by a million social and cultural algorithms. This was reality, and there was no easy disconnect option if things got uncomfortable.
Aden looked over his shoulder, almost convinced he’d find a detachment of Ragnar corporate security people walking toward him and blocking his way out, but there was nobody else in the place except for the two Acheroni guests on their way out who just now passed the host station without looking back. Everything about this place was right out of the intelligence textbook in the chapter “Meeting Places to Avoid.” It was out of public sight, had no obvious secondary exits, and could have been prepared for the meeting days in advance. But he knew that Solveig had picked the place in a hurry out of necessity, and that her biggest concern was to stay out of their father’s field of view, not to avoid enemy spy services. In any case, she was taking a far greater risk with this than he was.
He opened the door all the way before he could give his doubts any more time to muddle things.
Solveig sat at the table inside, hands folded in her lap, and she looked up at him as he entered the capsule. They stared at each other for a moment that seemed to stretch in his perception.
“Hey, shorty,” he finally said, and she got out of her chair and rushed over to where he stood. Then she hugged him with a firmness that bordered on ferocity, and kissed him on the cheek. Aden was momentarily taken aback by the sudden display of unanticipated affection, but then he returned the hug with equal firmness.
“Ow,” she said. “The beard scratches.” Then she pulled away and looked at him in appraisal. “But it suits your face. I kind of like it.”
“You think so?” he said with a smile.
“Yeah. You look like a proper spacer. You smell like one, too.”
Aden chuckled. “I’m not sure how to take that. How do spacers smell?”
“They all smell the same. Like the inside of a spaceship. It’s faint, but it’s there. Maybe it’s something about the filters or the recycled air. Or maybe you all use the same soap.”
Solveig relaxed her embrace, and he held her at arm’s length to look at her. She was wearing a dark-blue jumpsuit that appeared all business. Her long red hair was gathered up into a loose tail that reached all the way down to the spot between her shoulder blades. He had inherited their father’s height, but she had gotten most of his looks—the shape and color of her eyes, the defined jawline, the minuscule earlobes, just filtered and softened by the genetic card shuffle with their mother’s DNA. Everything was like the image she had presented in the Mnemosyne hologram three months ago, and yet this was completely different. It was like the mass of her body standing right next to his own had a gravitational pull on his heart that the hologram had lacked.
“Gods, I can’t believe that worked out,” she said. “What are the odds?”
She gestured toward the other seat at the table.
“Come, sit. We don’t have a lot of time to talk. I have to be back in my suite in fifty minutes, or even Cuthbert will figure it out.”
He followed her to the table and sat down. The seats were wide, low-slung benches with cushion pads tied to them, and he had to fold himself a bit to fit into the arrangement.
“Who’s Cuthbert?”
“One of Marten’s army of weasels. His new understudy.”
“Marten’s still around, then,” Aden said darkly.
“Oh, yes. Papa’s loyal company muscle. I think he’ll be there forever. He’s too grumpy to die.”
They smiled at each other across the table. He was studying her face, trying to reconcile it with its younger version just like he had done before in their Mnemosyne meeting, and he knew by the way she looked at him that she was doing the same.
“How did you slip your leash?”
“Slipping the leash,” Solveig said. “Funny, that’s what I always call it, too. Maybe I got it from you when I was young. When you showed me how to do the sensor hack so we could get into the kitchen at night.”
“I had almost forgotten about that,” he said with a smile.
“I made good use of that knowledge for years after you left,” she said.