Shadows of Hyperion: Chapter 8

Oasis and Wu get an assignment!

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Chapter 8.

"Oh, that's just perfect," Ariane said, and Wu Kung thought he could see the sarcasm dripping from the last word. "Maria-Susanna's a Shadeweaver, or on her way to being one, Byto might have been killed over Hyperion, and Fairchild's disappeared in a way that indicates he's already got allies."

 

"Yeah, it's just a cornucopia of great news," DuQuesne said, grinning blackly. "What about on your end, Captain? Got anything to take the edge off?"

 

She shot a glance at Wu. "I'm afraid not. Well, some good news; we're making progress in populating and fortifying our Spheres Tellus and Gaia. Pretty soon we'll be at the point where we can start checking where their Sky Gates go, which will give us a lot more options for travel." She grimaced. "As long as it doesn't turn out they all go to the Molothos or something, anyway."

 

"But?..." Simon prompted.

 

"But we haven't got a sniff of our other enemy in the Solar System. Mentor isn't even much help; he says that while he can deduce some general characteristics of the adversary, it fits a broad array of Hyperion villains, and there's not enough information to narrow it down yet."

 

"And by the time we do narrow it down, it'll have cost us something," Oasis muttered.

 

DuQuesne shook his head and looked around. Laila Canning and Carl Edlund were also there, but hadn't spoken yet; at the big Hyperion's glance, though, Laila sighed and sat forward.

 

"I can confirm that there has been one new Initiate Guide ascended very recently, who I believe has been assigned as Advocate to the Genasi," she said, in her usual precise tones, "and there are at least two other such rituals being discussed for the near future. So, I believe we can consider our theory confirmed."

 

"So it's possible that Maria-Susanna could be a Shadeweaver at almost any time," Ariane said. Her scent was more resigned than angry or worried.

 

"Afraid so, Cap," Carl said. "Not much we can do about it, though."

 

"No. We have to focus on what we can do. Marc, I presume you don't have any firm leads yet on Byto?"

 

"Not yet. Some vague indications – a couple of people who saw someone who doesn't fit the description of any of the people yet questioned – but there's at least three different descriptions, so we don't know if we're missing one person or three or more."

 

She nodded. "All right. Well, for most of us, it's going to be business as usual. Any of these things could be a major problem, but at the moment we don't have an emergency as far as I can see.

 

"So. Marc, you keep up your investigation. Simon, Laila, Carl…" She gave a wry smile. "I'm afraid you're going to spend the next week with me playing catch-up on all the routine stuff. A lot of it piled up while we were out in the Deeps and I've got to go out and be The Leader of the Faction of Humanity for a lot of people, as soon as I've caught up on everything here."

 

She turned to Wu. "Which means, Wu, that I'm going to be stuck here in the Embassy for at least a few days. So, I am putting you and Oasis on another assignment: find Fairchild."

 

Sun Wu Kung felt a thrill of excitement go through him. Dr. Fairchild would be a formidable adversary, and finding out what DuQuesne's old nemesis was up to? That would be invaluable. And as long as the Captain stayed here, she should be safe. "Yes, Captain!"

 

Oasis did not smell quite so eager, but the grimness of her scent was overlaid with real pleasure. "I was hoping you'd say that. That jerk's got to be found."

 

And the original Oasis has a real account to settle with Fairchild, Wu remembered. The Hyperion AI villain had tried to literally download himself into Oasis Abrams, and only K's arrival had saved her; even then, Oasis had been too badly hurt to survive on her own, so K had done the only thing she could; accepted a full download of Oasis into her own Hyperion body. The two of them were now, very nearly, one – and both of them had a personal grudge against Dr. Alexander Fairchild.

 

"Then let's go!" Wu said, leaping up. "There is so much to search!"

 

He heard muffled chuckles around the room, which made him smile too. If I am not needed for the fighting, I am needed to help people laugh. Laughter is a weapon on its own.

 

Smiling, Oasis joined him. "Do you even have any idea where we are going? Even if he's on Nexus Arena, that's still huge – and there's plenty of places we can't go."

 

He skipped out the door into the false but convincing sunshine of Nexus Arena's streets. "Not the faintest!" he said, and did a tumble around her as she walked. "But I don't believe there's no one who has seen him or heard him, and I don't believe Fairchild would just hide away in a room, either. Do you?"

 

Oasis pursed her lips, then shook her head. "You know, no, I don't. He liked being seen. He liked being out-and-about, as DuQuesne put it. When he wasn't in his lab, he went to fine restaurants, saw plays, attended scientific conferences, traveled the world. He wouldn't just disappear indoors for very long."

 

"Good! We agree! So that means…?" he raised a brow at her, grinning with his slightly-sharper teeth.

 

She paused, then returned the smile. "The Grand Arcade."

 

"The Grand Arcade!" he agreed. "We can search and enjoy ourselves there!"

 

"Focus, Wu! We're not going to just hunt for him around your favorite food stalls."

 

"Not just there, no," he agreed. "But he needs to eat. Not the stalls, but the restaurants."

 

She snapped her fingers. "Mairakag Achan!"

 

"Yes!"

 

Oasis quickened her steps. "That's good thinking, Wu. He doesn't just run the best restaurant in Nexus Arena, he's taught the top chefs of most of the other good ones. If Fairchild hasn't changed his habits, he's got to have shown up in one of those."

 

"Even if he is hiding away," Wu went on with the thought, "he'll be getting food from somewhere – and probably from those restaurants that have good human-compatible food."

 

"His clothes, too," Oasis said, tossing back her four red ponytails as she hailed one of the automated floating transports. "He has that whole 'white suit' thing going, and according to DuQuesne he pretty much never changed it, even when he was out in space working with aliens. He's almost certainly sticking with that now – I caught sight of him twice before and it sure looked like the same outfit."

 

"Hm. Yes, so he had to either bring many suits with him, or he had someone here make them. And there are not many humans having their clothes made here yet. He would have to have them properly washed, too, yes?"

 

Oasis took one of the front seats on the floating transport; Wu Kung continued standing. "I… guess so, yes. Medical nanos keep working in the Arena but not cleaning and repair ones, so his clothes have to be maintained the old-fashioned way. Though if he's in someone's Embassy, I'm sure they could do that inside the Embassy."

 

"So, what else? There must be other possible places to look!" Wu Kung was definitely excited now. They had leads, and ones that he could follow, not ones that would require tiresome computer searches or laboratory analyses or any of the other things that the Monkey King did not do. This involved running and smelling and asking questions and maybe following people, maybe even getting in a fight if he asked the right questions!

 

Oasis twirled one ponytail absently. "Well, if he's not in an Embassy, he has to be staying in one of the various hotels, rent-a-rooms, places like that. He'd have to have gotten himself money from somewhere, so he traded something – probably unique human artifacts."

 

"Or information. Would he trade information about us?"

 

The deceptively young face frowned in thought. "He… might. But he'd be really, really careful about it, because he wouldn't want to reveal anything that might be useful to him later. Certainly isn't going to tell anyone about Hyperion unless he can really make a profit from it, and the profit would have to be huge."

 

"Good! So, we can also check the merchants interested in that kind of thing!"

 

She shook her head with a smile. "And all of this could take us months!"

 

"I was imprisoned for five hundred years inside a rock, I can take months!" I do not want to take months, but I could. It would be very boring, though.

 

Oasis laughed. "I used to have a hard time waiting for summer vacation, so maybe I'm not so patient."

 

The Grand Arcade was the central business area of Nexus Arena, and covered a huge, generally circular region between the arc of the regular Embassies and the plaza of the Five Great Factions. A cross between an open-air market, several shopping malls, casinos, theme parks, and major commercial warehousing and shipping operations, the Grand Arcade was a place you could find almost anyone or anything. It murmured and sparkled and glowed and moved, carrying sound and vibration and brilliance and scents evocative and mouthwatering and vile all at once.

 

While Wu's long-term preference was wilderness, there were times he enjoyed the incredible bustle of a city, and the Grand Arcade distilled that into an intense whirl of confusing sights, smells, songs, and shouts. Wu laughed, and the two of them plunged into the crowds thronging the Arcade.

 

Some hours later, he had to admit that even being in a place where you could find anything didn't guarantee you would find the particular thing you were looking for. Mairakag Achan had seen a white-suited man, but the last time he had visited had been quite some time ago. The other obvious restaurant choices also had not offered much in the way of success.

 

"No luck here, either," Oasis said, as they left one of the rooming establishments. "Proprietor thinks he saw someone like that, but it was weeks ago."

 

Wu Kung shrugged, optimism undaunted. "But we've barely started! We'll find something – I know it!"

 

Oasis grinned back. "You know… I think you're right. He's been somewhere around here, and someone's definitely going to know something!"

 

They cut through one of the enclosed semi-malls, stopping to ask a few questions at each location that seemed likely to interest Fairchild. Then a stop at three food stalls, which allowed Wu to fill himself up, at least for the moment.

 

"I really like that alavime dish," he said, bouncing along cheerfully. "All the vegetables are new, but very tasty!"

 

"It wasn't bad, but I prefer the –" Oasis broke off, staring to one side.

 

Wu Kung caught a flash of white on an upright figure, just disappearing through a doorway. "Is that –"

 

"I think so!"

 

They threaded their way through the crowd as fast as they could, but by the time they reached the location, there was no sign of the white figure.

 

"Wu? Can't you… sense him?"

 

"Still don't want to try much with my powers. But…"

 

He sniffed, slowly, deeply. Not that, that's a Chiroflekir. Not that one either – Dujuin. Sort out my scent and Oasis', too.

 

Wait… there is another human smell here!

 

The smell was vaguely familiar, but mixed in with so many others he couldn't be certain of what he thought he recognized. But there was a trail, and he could follow it!

 

He started striding forward, testing the air every few steps, then running, jumping over people too slow to move when he needed them to. Whoops, ran past it – that exit, there!

 

He burst back out into sunshine, Oasis trailing him by a short distance, and looked around, sniffing again. Ugh, one of those smokesticks! But yes, he passed here, went, went…

 

Just at the edge of the crowd, another flash of white in the sunshine, passing under an awning into shadow.

 

Oh, no, you're not getting away!

 

Wu leapt into the air and bounced from support pillar to nearby awning to roof, sprinting over anything and everything that could support him in the dash towards the elusive white something. Behind, he heard a curse, a laugh, and then echoes of his own progress as Oasis followed. There were gasps and an occasional angry shout, but he paid no attention.

 

The distant figure disappeared into another doorway, a small building that Wu knew had two other exits. "I'll take the far one, you go around the other side!" he shouted to Oasis.

 

He caught a guy wire for a big tent, spun around it and catapulted himself high and wide, hurtling through the air above startled Arena citizens, came down atop a floating taxi, momentarily surprising its passengers, and then dove to catch a nearby banner and fling himself onward.

 

He hit the ground, rolled to his feet, and dashed into the entrance he remembered, eyes searching the interior of the small group of shops.

 

And there it was, the white hat, just going out the other exit!

 

He sprinted after it, hoping Oasis had gotten there ahead of their quarry.

 

He zipped past two stolid Dujuin who glared at him with futile annoyance, and slammed his way out of the door, just in time to see Oasis dropping down from another awning, directly in front of the figure.

 

From this distance, Sun Wu Kung saw that it was indeed a human being, wearing an immaculate white suit, complete with a white hat with a black hatband. At Oasis' appearance, the man spun around – and then froze as he saw Wu standing not four meters away.

 

The man took off the hat and nodded, smiling a familiar, friendly and open smile that stunned Wu into momentary immobility. "Hey there, Wu!"

 

Oasis had reached them and she, too, froze, astounded. "J… Jonny?" she breathed after a moment. "But… but you… you're supposed to be dead!"

 

Then Wu caught an undertone of scent – not the happiness of a reunion, but a cruel pleasure, the smell of a cat toying with its prey. "You. You're not Jonny at all!"

 

The friendly smile transmuted with horrifying ease into a cold and mocking grin. "Oh, well, I did rather fear you could sniff your way to the truth, Sun Wu Kung," said the mouth of his old friend, with an accent and cadence chillingly familiar, yet alien to that mouth.

 

"Oh my God," Oasis whispered. "You soul-violating son of a bitch!"

 

"Tsk, tsk, such language, my dear Kimberly. I can't imagine you'd have used that in front of your mother."

 

Wu Kung heard himself growling deep in his throat. "Fairchild," he snarled.

 

The blond-haired man bowed. "Doctor Alexander Fairchild… at your service."