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  Major Qi Raoshu was tall, he noted, as tall as himself but much thinner. He studied the major intently, and because of his limited view, he didn’t see a chunk of metal jutting up right in front of him—until he tripped and nearly fell. With a clumsy skip, he caught himself and cursed under his breath, damning the surfsuit to the nether regions of hell. He hated to appear awkward in front of this unknown major. By the time they met, he was sweating from his struggle through the sandy muck. Perspiration dripped in his eyes, and he couldn’t wipe them. He ground his teeth.

  Major Qi wore no insignia. Dominic noted the scarred helmet, the darkened faceplate, the belt bristling with gear. A spook all right. Salt brine marbled the stranger’s form-fitting surfsuit, and an L-shaped rip at the shoulder was patched with tape. Yes, the major was wiry thin, but in the skintight suit, Dominic could see the bulge of biceps, the muscular thighs, the narrow waist, and the—breasts. He looked again. In the dim light, he couldn’t see well. Yes, they were small, high and quite distinct. A pair of breasts.

  “ ’Morning, Nick-O!” The woman clapped him on the shoulder so hard he almost lost his balance. “I’m Qi. How they hangin’? You ready for some fun?”

  Dominic chinned his helmet controls for short-range radio. “You’re Major Qi Raoshu?”

  She laughed like a teenaged boy. “Hoo-hoo! Megasweet suit, Nick!” Then she gripped his wrist and hauled him toward the ocean. She’d already splashed in thigh deep before he pulled back and dug his boots into the sand.

  “Identify yourself. I demand an explanation.”

  “Aw, c’mon, Nick. Surf’s up. It’s a preter-fine day for a swim.” The woman danced and kicked at the water, as lanky and loose-limbed as an adolescent. To Dominic’s astonishment, she scooped up a double gloveful of the lathery gray fluid and tossed it at him. Oily drops splattered his faceplate. She said, “That surfsuit’ll keep you nice and fresh, I promise.”

  Dominic couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “We’re going to swim to the Benthica?” His nostrils curled as he glanced at the waves. He preferred water in ornamental fountains.

  With another friendly hoot, she yanked him farther in. He tried to get a firm stand, but his boots slipped in the mucky foam.

  “It’s not far, Nick. Twenty meters at most.”

  Suddenly, he went under. The shore dropped off sharply, and his feet lost touch with the ground. He hugged his briefcase to his chest. The water buoyed him up and jostled him back and forth, but he couldn’t see. He gulped for breath and fought the panic. He couldn’t tell up from down. He’d never been submerged in water before.

  “You all right, son?” the NP buzzed in his ear.

  He coughed the words out. “Oh yes, splendid.”

  With an effort of will, he gathered his wits and tried to sense direction. It was then he realized that Major Qi still held firmly to his wrist. His radio crackled.

  “Sorry I didn’t brief you, Nick, but we couldn’t stand around on the beach yakking. Even the newscasters have satellite scans.”

  “Where are you taking my son!” The NP routed its voice through the radio. “My scans show nothing in this vicinity.”

  “Aw, do we have to listen to that old bit-brain, Nick? I get enough of that stuff already. My boss, Gig, he’s a preter-heinous nag. Are you listening, Gig?”

  “Is the Benthica nearby?” Dominic asked.

  In the roiling murk, he bumped into Major Qi’s body. She gripped his upper arm, and all at once, they shot through the water. Turbulence nearly tore the briefcase from his arms. The major was using some kind of handheld propulsion device. Dominic clutched the briefcase handle in one hand, and with his other hand, he felt along the major’s back and got a firm hold of her gear belt.

  The NP sounded annoyed. “You might take two seconds to tell us your plan, Major Qi.”

  “The best thing about Gig is, he listens more than he talks,” the major answered. “Hear this, Neural Profile. Your noise might give away our location. Button it up.”

  “I’m cloaked!” the NP shot back.

  “Not good enough. Gig, can you reason with this old coot?” Her voice was deep for a woman, deep but still feminine, Dominic noted. He felt her body bumping against his flank.

  Abruptly, the water resistance ceased, and he did a slow forward somersault. They had stopped. “Take hold, Nick.” The major guided his gloved hand to a rail. Then he sensed a pressure change and saw bubbles rushing against his faceplate. There was no time for surprise. Major Qi grabbed his upper arm and shoved him through a circular opening barely wider than his shoulders. When he felt her hand push his butt, he held the briefcase to his chest and cursed silently.

  Once through the opening, his helmet immediately bashed against a wall. The major kept pushing, and he tried to move sideways, but there was no space. All he could do was fold himself up, because now she was climbing in beside him. They scrunched together like two embryos sharing the same egg sack, and his breath roared inside his helmet. He heard a thump and a clank. Another slow pressure change. And the major’s boyish laugh.

  “Guess your honored ancestor decided to shut up.”

  “He’s not my ancestor.” Dominic heard the shake in his voice and took a few slow breaths to calm down. “Is this the Benthica?” he asked with taut control.

  Light scattered through the murky fluid, and he could see again. Slowly, the water level inside their egg-shaped coffin started dropping, and he heard air blowing in. This was an airlock. He’d used airlocks before, on his rare excursions outside the city dome. But he’d never used one underwater. Of course, a swimmer would need an airlock to enter a submarine. Dominic just hadn’t given the matter any thought before now.

  “Welcome to the Devi,” Major Qi announced. “My personal ride. She’s a fast sneaky little bitch. Stealth clad.” The major kneed Dominic in the stomach as she shifted position. “Sorry ’bout the underwater parking space. I just wanted to be extra sure no one saw us. C’mon in.”

  A narrow overhead port slid open, and she squirmed up into the cabin, planting her boot on Dominic’s thigh. He ground his teeth and kept silent.

  “Give me your hand,” she said, but Dominic pushed himself up without her help.

  He couldn’t stand. The Devi’s cockpit was another egg-shaped coffin not much bigger than the airlock. Two small seats faced a console, and a ribbed overhead light tube ran the length of the low ceiling like a glowing spinal cord.

  Qi took off her helmet, and the first thing Dominic noticed was her smile—wide and merry and full of square white teeth. The next thing he saw was her skin. She was dark—as dark as burnt caffie. Her features were Asian, finely drawn, and her sweaty blue-black hair stuck out at wild angles. Smirking back at him, her Far Eastern eyes were as black and glossy as two drops of ink.

  He watched her strip off her gloves. She was watching him, too. Dominic rarely dealt with dark people. ZahlenBank employed Euro execs almost exclusively, and most of his big Com clients were of Euro descent. Sure, there were plenty of non-Euros around Trondheim, even some execs. Asians, Malays, Ethiopes, Americans. He’d seen all the variations. He’d seen them working in tech labs, med clinics, airports. He’d just never looked at them. There had never been any reason.

  “Let me help you with that. You’ve got it cockeyed.” Qi tugged his helmet release with a teasing grin. She lifted the helmet off and used the back of her hand to wipe his damp forehead. “Lose the gloves, but keep the suit on. No room to change anyway.”

  Then she threw her leg over the back of the pilot’s seat, scrambled into place and started humming. As Dominic took his gloves off, he noticed how closely she watched him. He was used to women making eyes at him, but this was different. He climbed into the other seat, and since mere was no place to stash the briefcase, he held it in his lap. His shoulders were too broad and his feet too large for the space. He felt like canned meat.

  The major placed a thin black band around her forehead and curled a. hairline wire down in front of her
left eye. The apparatus was almost invisible, but Dominic recognized it as an AR wear-about. Augmented Reality. The tiny wire beamed an optical display directly onto her retina. She slipped a full ten-finger set of cybernails on, then wiggled her fingers to loosen up. The cybernails gleamed like silver claws. She flicked one through the air to activate the console’s light matrix, and her fingertips flashed through the grid of tiny holographic icons, readying the craft for takeoff.

  After a moment, she giggled and leaned against Dominic. She put her hand on his chest and whispered, “You can be yourself. Your honored ancestor can’t get in here.”

  Dominic drew away and bumped his head on the ceiling. He wasn’t used to someone invading his personal space uninvited.

  She drummed her sharp cybernails on his chest and grinned. “Your dear old Da is locked out. This is private Org technology. Yep, there are some things even ZahlenBank doesn’t know.”

  Her smile was so disarming, Dominic wasn’t sure how to react. “Where’s the Benthica?” he demanded.

  “They call her Pressure of Light now.”

  Qi turned back to the controls and started humming again. What was this woman up to? Dominic still didn’t understand the Orgs’ motives, and his misgivings increased every moment. He felt his seat shudder, and the Devi rose out of the sea with a frothy crash of waves.

  “Want a view?” she asked. “Try this.”

  She handed him a headband similar to her own, only wider and heavier. He put it on and adjusted the eye-piece. In a blink, a 360-degree vista of the outside world superimposed itself over his real view of the cockpit. At first, the effect made him queasy. His brain wasn’t used to seeing in all directions at once. He tried closing his right eye to block out the cockpit, and that helped.

  The Arctic sun glowed higher in the sky, but clouds blocked much of its visible light. His eyepiece beamed images in the artificial ambers, golds and violets of metavision, the adaptive optics humans had invented to see through smog. Metavision could penetrate total darkness and the murk of oceans, but all Dominic could see were endless violet waves rolling toward a flat-line horizon. The Devi skimmed along the crests at tremendous speed, throwing up wings of salt mist in its wake.

  “What’s in the briefcase?” the major asked.

  Dominic squinted and tried to see her through the overlay of purple waves. When he opened his right eye, the cockpit sprang into the foreground, and he noticed her silver fingertips dancing through the light matrix. She was grinning.

  He said, “You lied. That was more than twenty meters.”

  “Huh?” The major stared ahead, evidently reading data through her eyepiece.

  “You said we’d only have to swim twenty meters. It was more than that.”

  “Oops!” She wrinkled her nose. “I never was a good judge of distance. So, Nick, what’s in the briefcase?”

  “Where’s the Benthica?” he returned.

  She flashed a smile and kept stroking the light matrix with her cybernails and staring into infinity. He studied her profile, the high, dusky cheekbones, the delicate flat curve of the nose, so different from what he was used to.

  “Freaker,” she huffed. “Your honored ancestor’s throwing a tantrum. Wants to talk to his boy. He’s worried about you, Nick. Gig says we have to put him through.”

  “He’s not my—Who’s Gig? You mean Gig the Org?” Boyhood stories flooded back to Dominic. He remembered the mighty Gig, the WTO’s secret service chief.

  “Yep, my sweet old boss. Hand me that earplug you’re wearing, Nick. I’ll link you through my console. Your NP’s about to blow a fusion capacitor.”

  How did she know about his earplug? She didn’t wait for his response. She reached across his chest and plucked the thing out with her cybernails.

  “Careful!” Dominic would have pulled back, but there was no room. “You might’ve cut me with those things.”

  She hummed a tune and prodded the earplug with her silver claws. When a white spark burst out, she frowned. “Freaker, I think it’s fried. Let’s try your wrist node.”

  “Leave my gear alone.” Dominic clamped a hand over his wrist node and worked his lower jaw from side to side.

  “I won’t hurt it. That was an accident. C’mon, Nicky.”

  Dominic hated to be called Nick or Nicky or any other diminutive, but he wouldn’t condescend to tell her so. She laughed and started wrestling with him, tickling him in the ribs through his silky Kevlax suit. He banged his elbow against the armrest trying to evade her.

  “You—will—not—” He struggled, but she had him cornered. The woman was much stronger than she looked. Before he could stop her, she slipped one cybernail under his wristband, and a blue-white spark shot out. He jerked back and yanked the wrist node off his arm. She’d burned him. A blister was already forming.

  “Aw, see what happens when you play too rough,” she said.

  Dominic lost control. He gripped her wrists and shook her, and the Devi promptly rolled over and dove into the ocean.

  “Let me go! We’re gonna crash!” she shouted.

  Dominic had neglected to fasten his seat belt. When the craft inverted, he banged his head on the ceiling. He also let go of the major’s wrists. Her cybernails flashed into action in the light matrix controls, and she started putting the craft through underwater spins and cartwheels, pretending she had to fight for control. But as she slung him around the cockpit like a rag doll, Dominic suspected it was all show. Finally, the craft leveled out and rose into the air, and he sank gingerly into his seat. Somehow he’d managed to bruise his hip. It felt like he’d been shot.

  “Don’t do that again,” she said.

  He glowered at her. He was furious, but with himself. He’d stooped to violence, the resort of weak minds. That was not his style. His headband had gotten twisted around backward, and he put it right. In a carefully restrained tone, he asked, “Why did you cut me off from the Net?”

  “Cut you off? Nick, I’m trying to link you on. So you can speak to your dear old Dada.”

  He let the reflex of anger pass over him. The woman was watching him again, appraising him, he realized. He needed a cool head to figure out her game. Major Qi had seized an advantage by luring him into her own space. Now she’d increased her lead by cutting off his communications. She was trying simultaneously to deceive him, undermine his confidence and steal his information. Standard negotiation tactics. But what did she want? He needed to learn that before he could respond.

  From years of practice, Dominic knew how to temper his voice with manly sincerity. “Major, I believe we’ve gotten off to a bad start. I’m here to help the Orgs settle this trouble. Say what you want me to do, and I’ll do it. I know how to follow orders.”

  The major gulped and burst out laughing. “You’re good. Gig warned me. Yeah, you’re good.”

  “Honestly, Major—”

  “Cut the crap, Nick. Just call me Qi.”

  “As for that, I prefer Dominic.”

  Qi’s Asian eyes twinkled with mischief. “What’s in the briefcase?”

  Dominic opened the clasps. He assumed she already knew what the case contained. “This is my last Net node. Before you fry this one, may I ask a question?”

  She rested her hand on the case, and Dominic watched her cybernails prod the leather. “Yep, ask.”

  “I’m here at your request. Presumably, you need my cooperation. Correct?”

  She seemed to think about this. Or perhaps she was listening to Gig through an earplug of her own.

  “Because if you do,” he went on, “there are a few things I expect in return. Fair trade, you understand?”

  Qi grinned and thumped his shoulder with her fist. “Sure, Nick-O. I never meant to damage your gear. You can infralink your node through my console. C’mon. See what Dada has to say.”

  She opened his case and spoke a command for infrared linkage, and his Net node came alive.

  “Son! Answer me! Are you awright?”

  The NP�
�s talking head bulged out from the screen in holographic 3-D, and its eyes roved around, recording every detail of the Devi’s cockpit. The head looked exactly like Richter. Dominic was repulsed.

  “Where are you, son? Our scans lost you in the ocean. That craft is plain invisible.” The Richteresque eyes reeled around to peer at him. “They blindsided me, boy. The deal was, you and I would stay in contact. Now I don’t even know where you are. If things weren’t so sensitive, I’d sue the buggers. You hear me, Gig? Lurking bastard, say something.”

  Qi laid her hand on the briefcase and slowly pushed it closed. “So, Nick. Excuse me. Dominic. Do you really want to stay in touch with this bit-brain?”

  Dominic massaged a knot in his neck. He wanted to answer No. He despised the NP. He half despised his father for creating it. Most of all, he was angry with his father for dying. He missed the old man more than he could say.

  At last, he forced himself to smile. “Two bit-brains are better than one. You have your Gig, so let me have my NP.”

  She gazed at him for a long thoughtful moment, but Dominic didn’t flinch. He knew how to hold his sea-colored eyes as steady as those of a painted porcelain doll. Qi turned back to her controls without comment. Reluctantly, Dominic reopened the briefcase. He was about to speak to the NP again when Qi grabbed his arm.

  “Look! Something in the water,” she said.

  Dominic covered his right eye and concentrated on the 360-degree image beaming through his eyepiece. He still had trouble focusing on the panoramic view. As he squinted and strained, gradually a mound of rubbish emerged among the dingy waves. Barrels. In the distance, it looked like a jumble of rusting barrels lashed together with cord. Some barrels had come loose and were floating free. Billowing sheets of white plastic trailed in the water, and all manner of debris had collected around them. Dominic blinked and looked closer. For a moment, he thought he saw an old woman lift her hand and point.

  CHAPTER 4

  * * *

  MARGIN REQUIREMENT