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  I pushed off the tree.

  Something hit the back of my head.

  Black spots flashed in my eyes, something else tripped me, and I fell face-first toward the packed dirt.

  CHAPTER 18

  Jon Moore

  I managed to break my fall somewhat with my arms, but my head still smacked the ground hard. My right elbow popped oddly as I hit. Pain shot from it. The impact of the fall knocked most of the air from me. I couldn’t focus enough to tell the nanomachines to block the pain.

  Hands rolled me over. A large man and a smallish woman stared at me. The woman kneeled near my head. The man squatted next to my torso. Both were between the crowd and me.

  “Are you okay, buddy?” the man said loudly. “That was a hell of a fall. You gotta watch those roots.”

  Much more softly, the woman said, “You yell for help or move, and I’ll cut you.” She showed me a knife with a blade as long as my palm and almost as wide as two of my fingers. “Nod if you understand me.”

  I did nothing. My head was clearing more with each passing second. I slightly flexed my right arm. The elbow worked, so if it had popped out of joint, it hadn’t stayed out. My breath still came rough. I blinked my eyes a few times as if trying to focus.

  She pushed the knife against my neck.

  “I don’t buy it,” she whispered to her partner.

  “Give him a second,” the man said to her. “He hit hard.” He slapped my face lightly. “You with us?”

  My breathing was slowing. My vision was clear and, aside from the pain, so was my head. I instructed the nanomachines to block the pain, and it stopped instantly. They’d take care of my elbow automatically.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  The woman held up the knife for an instant, then put it back against my throat. “You feel that?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “You yell, move, or do anything else we don’t like,” she said, “and I’ll cut you deep. If you’re lucky, I won’t hit anything they can’t patch. If you’re not lucky or I’m sloppy, then you’ll die right here—and you’ll do it fast.” She leaned over my head. “You understand?”

  “Yes.”

  If they’d wanted to kill me, they would have already done so. Neither of them had pinned my arms or tried in any way other than the knife to immobilize me; sloppy. Whoever had sent them should have hired better help.

  I made a choking sound. “Gonna throw up.” I retched again.

  Most people hate vomit, and they really hate the thought of someone getting it on them. These two were not exceptions. They pulled back a little. As they did, I rolled toward them fast, as if I were about to do it, then shot my right fist into the side of the woman’s head and my right knee into the man’s side.

  Her head snapped to the side, and she fell backward, already out.

  I hadn’t hit him hard enough to do any real damage. He started to fall toward her but steadied himself with his right arm. I reversed my right arm’s direction and back-fisted his face.

  He yelped and punched me weakly in the stomach with his left hand.

  I grabbed his neck and pulled him across my body. I rolled with him so I ended up on top of him and punched him hard in the side of his neck.

  He grabbed his throat and made choking, gasping noises.

  I punched him in the stomach three more times before I realized he wasn’t a threat any longer.

  He gagged, turned his head to the side, and threw up on the ground.

  I picked up the woman’s knife. She was still out.

  I kneeled in front of the man. I spoke loudly, both so anyone walking by would hear and so I could hear myself over the blood pounding in my ears. “You okay, buddy?”

  I glanced toward the market. A man and a woman had stopped and were staring at us. I waved at them. “My brother,” I said. “Too much to drink. He’ll be fine.”

  They moved on.

  I wouldn’t have much time before more people would notice, and eventually someone would call the police.

  I pulled the man’s hand away from his throat and bent back his thumb until his eyes widened. “No noise,” I said, “or I break it.” I showed him the knife. “Or worse.”

  “Okay,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.

  “Who sent you?”

  He looked around in panic. “What?”

  I wrenched his thumb further back. As I did, I checked the woman. She was moaning but not doing anything else.

  “Who sent you?” I said again.

  “What?” he said. “Nobody. I don’t understand.”

  Had Kang already found us? Had Omani learned I was on the planet and somehow tracked me?

  I let go of the man’s thumb, punched him in the stomach again, and grabbed the thumb once more. My breath was coming fast as I fought both the effects of the adrenaline from the unexpected attack and my anger at being so sloppy as to let them surprise me.

  “This only gets worse,” I said. “Who sent you?”

  “No one!” the man hissed. “Don’t hit me again.”

  “So tell me what’s going on.”

  “We set up at the café down the street from the information pedestal you used.” He spoke fast. “We keep an eye on it. We figure anyone who’s there for a long time is either stupid or doing some serious shopping—or both. Either way, they’re good targets. You looked like one. We followed you and waited until you were alone. We let you eat because people are usually slower after they’ve eaten. That’s it.” He gagged again. “I swear: That’s it.”

  “So you were planning to rob me?”

  “What else would we be doing?” the man said. “What did you think?”

  I glanced at the woman. Her eyes were open, but she wasn’t moving much, and she didn’t seem to be able to focus.

  “Get out your comm,” I said, “and call for medtechs. Tell them you were horsing around, and you both tripped and fell. Tell them you’re worried about her having a concussion. Then stay here and let them treat you.”

  I stood.

  “You got that?”

  He nodded.

  I walked over to the recycling bin. “More trash,” I said.

  “Why, thank you, sir.” It opened.

  I tossed in the knife.

  “Thank you, sir,” it said. “Enjoy your time in York.”

  I went back to the man and stood over him. I stepped on his left hand with my right foot. “Make the call. Audio only. Say anything wrong, and I’ll hurt you. Do you understand?”

  He nodded.

  “Do it,” I said.

  He did, his eyes on me the whole time.

  I lifted my foot from his hand. “If I see you again,” I said, “I will kill you. Do you believe me?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s smart,” I said. “If you see me again, turn and run the other way, and hope I didn’t see you. Got it?”

  He nodded again.

  I stared at him for a moment longer. The anger still clawed at my insides. The very safest path was to kill them both on the small chance that he was lying. Part of me very much wanted to do that, but I shook my head at the thought. I needed to stay under control.

  I turned and walked away. In a few steps, I joined the crowd. A few seconds later, I was invisible in it.

  The day was wearing on, and I still needed all those supplies.

  Time to find the right exoskeleton.

  123 years ago

  York City

  Planet Haven

  CHAPTER 19

  Jon Moore

  The day I first made love with Omani Pimlani, I was looking for a new job.

  The landscaping project on the Pimlani estate had ended the day before. I was in my apartment, studying the available job options on my reader. Haven was a boom planet, and York was its commercial center. Finding a job as a laborer was not a challenge. What made the task slightly more complex was that I wanted to be sure that nothing I did involved any company that Omani’s father controlled. I noted a few p
romising jobs but decided I wouldn’t even try to start anything new for a couple of days. The time off would be nice, and spending it with Omani would be even nicer. We weren’t living together—I couldn’t imagine her living in my apartment, I couldn’t afford a tenth of any place she would like, and I sure wasn’t going to take any help from her father—but we had been dating now for more than half a year and saw each other almost every day.

  She walked in. I’d keyed the apartment to allow her to enter at any time. For some reason, she liked trying to surprise me and so never knocked. I hated that habit, but I’d grown to tolerate it because she enjoyed it so much. I’d arranged the furniture in the front room so the table faced the door. I was sitting behind it when she arrived.

  She came in quietly, smiling. The smile vanished when she saw me watching her.

  “Why can I never surprise you?” she said.

  “Sometimes you do.”

  “Hardly ever.”

  I shrugged.

  “I know, I know,” she said. “You don’t like surprises. I just thought you might learn to enjoy them if I was giving them.”

  “I’m sure there are some surprises I can learn to like,” I said. “I don’t expect, though, that being surprised by anyone entering my apartment will ever be one of them. If someone’s entry surprises me, I’ve been sloppy.”

  “Why are you so guarded? It’s not like anyone is trying to steal your vast treasures.”

  I said nothing. I couldn’t tell her about my past. I couldn’t even explain why I couldn’t. She knew I wouldn’t talk about it; we’d been over this ground many times.

  She joined me at the table. “I remember. Rule number one for dealing with Jon Moore: Don’t ask about anything that happened before we met.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “I’ve told you about lots of things in my past.”

  She laughed. “Yes, provided by ‘lots of things’ you mean the other jobs you’ve held, and by ‘past’ you mean the time since you arrived on Haven.” Her expression turned serious. She took my left hand in her right. “My father told me that he’s looked into you.”

  I nodded. Omani and I had been together too long for him not to have done that.

  “You knew he would?”

  “Sure,” I said. “He loves you very much, and he wants to protect you. It’s only logical that he would check out anyone you spend time with.”

  “You may be as paranoid as he is.”

  Almost certainly more, I thought but did not say. Instead, I shrugged. “We’re both careful people.”

  “He found nothing,” she said, “which bothers him almost as much as if he’d learned some horrible facts about you.” She released my hand and leaned away from me. She focused intently on my face. “He’s come to believe you were some kind of Coalition operative, because no one could wipe out their entire past on their own.”

  I stared back at her and worked to keep my face neutral. In a way, her father’s theory was true. The scientists who’d experimented on me on Aggro had wiped out all the records of all their test subjects. No one could allege inhumane treatment or try them for using people as lab animals if the people in question did not technically exist. I was sort of working for the government then, though not voluntarily.

  When I’d escaped from Aggro fifteen years ago, I’d jumped out of the Pinkelponker system and never looked back. Almost immediately after I’d left, the Central Coalition had quarantined Pinkelponker. I feared that the nanomachines Benny had instructed to disassemble Aggro had kept going and destroyed my entire home planet, but I had no way to determine if that fear was justified.

  “Say something, Jon.” Frustration played across her face, but so did concern. Omani was the first person since Benny to both know me—at least part of me—and genuinely care about me.

  “I could make up stories about my past,” I said, “but I don’t want to do that. You deserve better than that.” I took a deep breath. “I need you to trust that I’m not being secretive for no reason, that instead there are very good reasons why I can’t talk more about my past.”

  Her eyes grew moist.

  It was obvious that she wanted to trust me but couldn’t, that she needed enough from me that she didn’t have to wonder if I was hiding something awful. I couldn’t tell her all the truth without putting myself at risk and possibly endangering her. I didn’t want to lie.

  But I did.

  More precisely, I used her own expectations and small bits of the truth to mislead her. I wasn’t exactly lying; I was giving her what she needed while not hurting either of us.

  Or so I told myself. Technically, it was even true. I just hated doing it.

  I took her hands in mine. “Here is what I can say. I’m not a wanted criminal.” That was true as far as I knew, though if any of the Aggro scientists had survived, they most certainly would have been searching for me. “If I was, the government would know, and your dad would have been able to find out.” Mostly true, but only because to the best of my knowledge nothing of Aggro remained, and Benny had destroyed it before it could ask for help. “I didn’t wipe out the records of my past. I wouldn’t know how to do that. I don’t think any one person even could do that.” All true. I paused, trying to figure out how best to say the next part. “Can you think of anything other than a government that could do make a person’s past disappear?”

  Omani had lived her entire life as one of the privileged rich for whom the government, however she might feel about a particular set of its leaders, was there to help people. My own experience was rather different, but hers would guide her beliefs.

  “And,” I said, “if a government did choose to erase the past of a person, wouldn’t it have to have a very good reason, say to protect that person, for doing so? Wouldn’t any such person have to remain quiet, both to fulfill his obligation and to protect those around him?”

  I released her hands and sat back.

  “That’s as much as I can tell you,” I said, “and you have to know by now that I need you not to ask for more. I’m being as honest as I can.” That was definitely true, but not for the reasons I was implying. It was also the moment in the conversation when I felt worst about myself.

  I stared into her eyes. I was holding my breath as I waited for her to respond. I realized then how very much I cared about her. Fast on the heels of that realization came the sad knowledge that no matter how much I cared about anyone, I would never be able to tell them the whole truth about myself. If any part of me, though, believed I could have done so, I would have done it then and there with Omani.

  I had never before felt that way about anyone.

  Still she said nothing.

  I let out my breath slowly. A sadness crushed me. Was this what loving someone felt like? What it meant for me? That my heart would ache with my love of them but still I would always have to deceive them, always have to protect them from me even as I wanted to hug them to me?

  For many years afterward, I wondered what would have happened if she had stayed silent a minute longer. Would I have decided to chance everything and tell her the truth? Would I have taken that ultimate risk so that I could with one person, with her, be completely and totally myself?

  In the end, I decided that no, I would not have done that. I would have stayed the course I was on.

  The speculation didn’t matter, though, because she stared at me for a few seconds longer, nodded her head, and said, “Thank you, Jon. I appreciate you trusting me. I really do. It means more than you know. I won’t betray your trust.”

  She stood. “Give me a moment, okay?”

  I nodded. “Sure.”

  She walked into the bedroom and through it to the small bathroom; I heard its door shut.

  She was in there what seemed like a long time.

  I used the time to try to regain my bearings. I’d done what I needed to do, and that was over. I’d protected Omani as much as myself. If anyone from Aggro ever did come for me, she could easily get caught i
n the conflict or, worse, be a target herself in the mistaken belief that I had told her something I shouldn’t have.

  The bathroom door opened, the sound loud in the still apartment.

  “Jon,” she said, “would you come here?”

  I walked into the bedroom.

  She met me just inside the door.

  She was naked, her hair loose down her back, her eyes focused on mine. Some people are shy when they’re undressed; I’m one of them. She was not. She was spectacular, and she knew it, but not in any way that felt narcissistic. She grabbed the back of my neck and kissed me. She held the kiss a long time. When she released me, she stepped back and quietly said, “It’s time, Jon, past time. One of us had to make it happen and, well,” she smiled, “I’m not sure when you would have done it.”

  I felt heat in my face as I said, unable to hold her eyes as I spoke, “I, I don’t know how this works.” I shook my head as she smiled. “No, I don’t mean I don’t know how sex works.” I forced myself to look directly into her eyes. “I mean I don’t know how we work, when it’s right and when it’s not, when we should and when we shouldn’t.” I shook my head again. “I, I—”

  She put her right hand against my mouth and stepped closer to me. “I do know,” she said, “and that makes you a very lucky man, don’t you think?”

  She kissed me again, longer this time.

  My doubts and turmoil vanished in the feel of her, in her scent, in the way her body felt against mine, in all that she showed me. For that time, she was the whole world.

  She did indeed know, and I very much was.

  24 days from the end

  York City

  Planet Haven

  CHAPTER 20

  Jon Moore

  I followed the route in my wallet to a store, Exo, whose burnished silver metallic front filled most of a block. I took a winding path and paused at several points to see if anyone was following me, but I spotted no one. The two who’d ambushed me almost certainly weren’t in any condition to tail me, and if they had told the police, the police would have come straight at me.