Perfect Gravity Read online

  A person with Angela’s ambitions did not decline such an invitation. Also, the president had specifically asked her to attend. She had not argued. Coming here with mech-Daniel at her side worked into her own plans seamlessly.

  Even if having to show up physically terrified the shit out of her.

  Her team of stylists and brand managers had done comprehensive research, girded her for battle: she wore a square-necked couture gown glued to her skin and shimmering in low-contrast poppy pink and fuchsia stripes, avoiding both blue and green, so nobody could accuse her of choosing sides in the current UNAN flag-design brouhaha. The ruby choker at her throat could have traded for a small island nation, pre–climate change, and her elbow-length gloves were not just smartfabric and bio-deterrent, they also contained fingertip sensors that interfaced with her choker com and enabled her to message through mech-Daniel. Just in case the president wanted to check up on her. He didn’t get out much anymore but liked to listen in to her play-by-play of events like these.

  She wore a sleek turban with a real-hair fringe over her implanted psych-emitter net. She was going to live-emote this evening, but unlike the almost-disastrous interview with Rafa two days ago, she would not be surprised. Not by anything. Angela was in control of the narrative now.

  “May I say you look ravishing tonight?” Resplendent in almost-matching magenta with waterfall-lace cuffs, mech-Daniel reached across the space between their wide bench seats and brushed her bare knee. Just long enough to scan her bios. Then he retreated respectfully to his end of the autocar.

  “I’d better,” she replied, careful not to lick the iridescent polish off her lips. “One final check on my hook?”

  Mech-Daniel ticked his head to the side and fixed his gaze up and to the left, accessing his networks.

  She had told herself not to think of Kellen, not to contact him until she needed to call in her favor. Which would be never. But in a moment of weakness, she’d done it anyhow. She’d loosed a message on the darknet, a Wordsworth quote from a poem she and her classmates had been forced to memorize in classics/brain training: “The thought of our past years in me doth breed perpetual benediction.”

  He wouldn’t respond. Hell, this was Kellen; he probably didn’t even know the darknet existed, and he had never particularly liked Wordsworth. He’d probably been totally confused by her stupid smartglove message, or else he had gotten angry or disgusted and pretended that it meant nothing. What had she been thinking? That they were thirteen years old and making up spy stories in the libraries of Mustaqbal?

  Grow up. He won’t reply. But she still looked expectantly at her robot.

  The machine’s eyes refocused just as the heavy car rolled to a stop. “Nothing yet, Mistress. I am sorry.”

  Of course not. Stupid. Angela viciously tamped her disappointment, centered herself, and tapped her molars together, engaging the psych-emitter. The door opened, and a valet gestured for her to leave the car. The net burned behind her ear, clamping her head in heat and baring her, inside and out, but she was ready for it. Vid light tracers lit her up. Professional gossips bleated questions from both sides of the scarlet line leading to the hotel entrance.

  She flashed a practiced smile. She was on.

  The Expo Guadalajara had undergone extensive retrofitting just a couple of years before and was now linked to the underground pods system. The real power players would be arriving at a transit point inside the building. Only persons of middling importance, like Angela, would be walking the carpet into the big glass doors at street level. Since so many public figures eschewed actual physical interaction with their fawning hordes, the professional gossips didn’t do these red-carpet moshes as often as they used to.

  Apparently, however, Angela was of some interest on the newsvid channels, because from the moment she stepped onto the carpet, she was completely swarmed. She kept her smile and emotional throughput steady, but the mass of humanity and noise was…overwhelming. Pressing in on her from all sides. Loud. Smelled like spray self-cleanse, stale breath, and new clothes. Panic gurgled in her chest, made her nauseous. Too many people, too much noise/press/heat/filth/life.

  And then someone was cradling her elbow in his cool, smooth hand, speaking to her in a voice programmed to be unflinchingly familiar. “Darling, shall we?”

  Daniel had been almost a foot taller than her, and his mech-clone imposter was similarly proportioned. Their height differential was somewhat lessened tonight, due to her glass-printed platform slippers, and instead of looming over her, he simply steadied her amid the onslaught. Thankful for his support, she smiled up at him.

  She didn’t expect what happened next, and it took every sliver of control not to cringe away when mech-Daniel swayed toward her, bent, and pressed a cool kiss against her mouth. Oh God. It was like kissing a corpse, kissing a machine. A robot. A robot that looked exactly like someone she loathed. She closed her eyes and reached for the nearest comfort thought, the warmest, dearest thing she could snag on short notice. A thing she had imprinted on her memory, saved and hoarded against moments like this. A memory of another kiss.

  Kellen’s. Of course, his kiss.

  Not the Kellen who’d been on the other end of that holoconference the other night; the real Kellen. The one etched in her soul, wrapped tight around the root of her. His steady hands cupping a wingless butterfly, his warm, blue eyes smiling. The safety of his hand clasping hers under water, pulling her to breathe. His mouth. She imagined the mouth kissing her right now belonged to him. To the golden boy she’d never fallen out of love with. Angela leaned into the kiss on a sigh.

  “Apologies for invading your personal space, but we have a reply,” the robot murmured against her ear, too low for the crowd to hear. “It says, ‘Got your message. Shall we fit our tongues to dialogues of business, love, or strife?’”

  A reply. Something deep and hot licked down her spine. And what a reply. Whoa. Fit our tongues? That was the line he pulled from the poem? She didn’t need to fake the surge of elation for the psych-emitter’s benefit. She pulled back and bloomed a look of such warmth and joy and naughty at mech-Daniel that he was probably really confused, poor thing. She dictated a response: “Tell him, ‘The fullness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.’”

  The crowd around them rumbled, and she could’ve sworn some of the more romantically minded gossips sighed. Good.

  She snaked her arm through mech-Daniel’s grasp and blazed a genuine and gamine smile for the vid feeds.

  It held through the receiving line, a revived ritual she usually found harrowing, even though no actual bodies came into contact. No hugging, no shaking hands. Just acknowledgment of the ruling class by those who didn’t quite measure up but were allowed to exist within their sphere.

  She endured La Mars Madrid’s air kisses and breath, which cleverly had been infused with a chemist’s version of rose petals but really just smelled like brand-new teeth and tonsil-spray implants. People like the trillionaires went to extremes to hold onto their youth and vigor and perceived beauty, but more often than not, they failed, sadly and publicly. Gossips loved to jump all over those meltdowns when they happened. Angela gave this one a year, maybe two. When La Mars Madrid finally kicked it, the news storm was going to be spectacular.

  And on to the next receiving-line torment.

  She looked away from the gaze of famed designer Limontour, who’d also been one of Daniel’s cronies and someone she could have gone through the whole rest of forever without encountering again. He had seen parts of her life she refused to discuss and instinctively blocked from her mind lest her psych-emitter snag them for encoding.

  In a low voice as she passed him, he had the brass ones to insinuate he’d like to chat after the party and maybe in private. To talk about Daniel’s demise? Not on your already overlong life, asshole.

  “Just ignore Limontour,” Zeke said into her com privately. “That’s
not the real him anyway, just a mech-clone. N series, like yours. Just keep moving, kid. He won’t follow. La Mars Madrid keeps him on a tight leash.”

  She could have smacked herself for not noticing. Wasn’t she supposed to see things, make connections? But she hadn’t noticed that Limontour was controlling a mech-clone, that he wasn’t here in the (repulsive) flesh.

  She made a mental note to have mech-Daniel scan for imposters at all in-person events in the future and give her a heads-up.

  But even that lapse in perception failed to dull her pervasive sense of joy. Nothing was bothering her tonight. She expended relatively little energy tamping her brain and making it project only emotions she wanted others to see. She sparkled in conversation, shone in luminous sincerity. She even danced, once with the ambassador from Basque—a modern, touchless tarantella during which he agreed to entertain her government’s proposal for a pact of mutual defense—and several times with her own husband. Or at least with the mech-clone pretending to be Daniel.

  For his part, mech-Daniel’s performance was spot-on. He gave her updates of the newsfeeds and gossip snippets each time they danced. Over the last few days, her team had seeded the notion that Daniel Neko still lived, and tonight was the crowning confirmation of that truth.

  “The vid god and the senator, still very much in love, danced the night away at the Expo Guadalajara. Sooooo romantic,” trilled the Ursula Dioda chatbot, who was commenting in-line with Angela’s live emote.

  On their third turn on the dance floor, toward the end of the evening and long after Angela’s feet had gone numb from the pain of her could-sub-as-a-torture-device shoes, a reply came in, filtered through mech-Daniel but apparently from the same darknet contact as before: “I see that bliss fullness on the vids, and it is quite lovely.”

  To which she said, “Did you tremble like a guilty thing surprised?”

  And on the next turn, a reply: “Every time.”

  Angela glowed from the inside out.

  No one would be hunting Mari Vallejo for murder, not after tonight. How could they, when the man she’d supposedly killed was so obviously here? Just log into his wife’s live-emote feed, feel her joy.

  That night was the best performance of Angela Neko’s career.

  It was also the last.

  • • •

  She didn’t have time to rest or soak her achy feet. She barely had time to change clothes before she needed to get moving again. No rest for the weary, no succor for the damned.

  She had a town hall scheduled for tomorrow evening and quite a bit of prep work yet to do. Her bag was packed and next to the elevator, her coat folded on top of it—the weather would be cooler in her home state of California. A government transport would be arriving to fetch her in a matter of minutes, and she’d sleep in transit. Mech-Daniel would keep her on schedule, would get her to her stage marks on cue. No thinking necessary.

  Guadalajara had been grand, but her bubble was shifting north for a while.

  Rebranded in a sturdy old-wool skirt, wrinkle-free poly blouse, fresh hairdo hooked on, and pillow shoes that no one would have to see but that felt like heaven on her sore feet, she sagged into a chaise longue in the hotel suite. While awaiting the transport, she replayed the events of the evening in her mind and planned out her next steps.

  She had put the rumors of Daniel’s demise to bed tonight. A private message informed her that her people had retrieved the body and wiped the records of it at the county morgue. They were taking it to a private crematorium, where she could observe its destruction personally.

  She was so close to freedom she could taste it.

  Zeke was still looking good in the polls, even though Daniel’s fake death story had knocked him off the number one rank for news items. No worries, though; she could get him back up there. Angela was flush with confidence.

  And maybe something else. I see that bliss fullness on the vids, and it is quite lovely. That so didn’t sound like Kellen, not even a little bit. But it was Wordsworth and on his secret darknet channel, and every cell in her body wanted it to be true. She wanted to, needed to believe he thought her lovely, even after all this time.

  Even after all she’d done.

  She wondered if he would be watching her town hall tomorrow. She’d build in a private subtext just in case. Something from “Desideria,” so he wouldn’t think she was completely heartless, flirting secret messages at him so soon after Daniel’s death. Kellen would comprehend. He’d always had a gift for absorbing subtlety.

  Surprised by joy—impatient as the wind. Yeah, that summed up tonight, not to mention the pulse of ache in her chest.

  The cloying scent of whiskey wafted by her head, followed by a proffered bulb of amber liquid. She waved it aside. “Thanks, Dan-Dan, but I have to leave soon. Can’t get too comfortable.”

  “I have been in contact with our transport, and it is still some minutes away. After what must have been a taxing performance tonight, you deserve something of a private celebration.” Mech-Daniel stretched the glass toward her again.

  True. She did. Oh, fuck it. Angela accepted the drink and took a long, throat-singeing gulp as mech-Daniel, now in his usual uniform of poly-printed loose pants and shirt, rounded the end of the chaise longue and stood before her.

  He looked ridiculously pleased with himself, but that’s kind of how he always looked in private. No one who had spent any significant time with Daniel when he was alive would confuse the real man with this sweet, puppy-eyed machine.

  Too bad for him Angela had always been more of a cat person.

  “There is a corporate microclime for citrus just south of here,” mech-Daniel said. “So the sour is fresh.” He nodded toward the drink she was downing.

  No shit. So fresh it made her want to pucker, but she didn’t. She took it down to half and made an appreciative hum in the back of her throat. The sound wasn’t quite a good-boy but close enough. He grinned adorably.

  “I have logged only six messages this evening. Would you like to hear them?”

  Angela didn’t reply, just took another pull on her drink. Warm languor infused her body, and she blinked back sleep.

  The first message was from Zeke. He needed her to do a rally online party tomorrow. Man, she hated these things. The day-to-day of governing, she was fine with that. But getting elected and staying elected and everything associated with electedness curdled her joy. She tapped a “sure, I’ll be there” and moved on.

  The next reminder was for a floor vote on Thursday. They’d pass around a biometric vote board, so she couldn’t telepresence in. Damn it. Confirmation of a new cabinet member. Not her. Not the war ministry. That appointment—her appointment—was on hold, presumably pending any war-worthy threat.

  She thought of something Vallejo had said a while back: “You want a war? Bomb the hell out of something.”

  But you didn’t start a war after all, Vallejo, you bag of dicks. You failed.

  A giggle rose up in her throat, so inappropriate. She washed it down with more cocktail. It crossed her mind that she wasn’t a giggler, generally, and no way the alcohol could be affecting her behavior so quickly.

  Message three: the colonel in charge of the Texas-Oklahoma border reported no new drone attacks. The pause in conflict wasn’t speeding her toward her cabinet post, plus this silence had a stink of Texas on it. Like they were planning something bigger. She was still waiting for the other boot to fall. And it would, she had zero doubts.

  Message item four: a nuncio from the Holy See, the person who used to be her Vatican counterpart when she was in the foreign service, would be visiting the Inland East Coast Territory next week and wanted to hook up. Well, not in that sense. In the papal one. Probably he wanted to pray over the victims of Mother Nature’s latest violence, or pray for the future of humanity, or some such bullshit.

  “Query the security situ
ation on that one and have housekeeping at the Eastern Command prep for guests, just in case,” she told mech-Daniel. “It might be good for a vid op if nothing else. If I can’t get there in person, you can paste me in.”

  “Query sent,” the machine said pleasantly. “Rafael Castrejon messaged on your personal channel. He says ratings for your ‘Daniel Lives’ episode were, quote, big-sexy, and would you and your husband—that would be me, I suppose—be interested in giving a tour of your shared home and marital bliss?”

  Um, she’d need to get back to him on that one. Next.

  “And finally,” said mech-Daniel in a slightly different tone, “you have a response from your earlier conversation.”

  Excitement sliced through her body.

  “Yes, that. Give me that one.” Stupid blood, racing. Stupid brain, calling up memories like a sweaty panorama.

  Mech-Daniel blinked several times, and his eyes tracked upward and to the left. He had facial tells for various programmatic routines, but this expression was something he seemed to have devised on his own. As far as Angela could discern, it meant he disliked what he was about to do, but he was a machine, so he did it anyway.

  “‘And O, ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves, forebode not any severing of our loves,’” he intoned.

  Angela paused with the now down-to-the-dregs drink halfway to her mouth. “Come again?”

  He repeated the message. It clanged into her brain space, dissonant in a way that meant…something. She just couldn’t hold onto the thought noodle long enough to inspect it.

  The rim of the whiskey bulb wobbled in and out of focus.

  “Reply,” she murmured, raising one hand to knuckle the blur out of her eyes. “Tell him, ‘But those first affections, be they what they may, have the power to make our noisy years seem moments in the being, the eternal silence. Truths that perish…never.’”

  No, that wasn’t right. The quote. It wasn’t right, which was wrong, because she was always right. Or maybe everything was wrong.