Science Fiction: The Year's Best (2006 Edition). Аластер Рейнольдс

of Galawar, visuals of the encounter with Colonel Jina’s force, and a copy of the message from Kenzan Khan that had convinced Sabor he had to evacuate his primary apartment in Tale Harbor.

      There was no room in Kenzan Khan’s worldview for a simple clash of desires. The heart of his message was a long flood of denunciations. Possessor Dobryani wasn’t opposing him merely because she wanted the same thing he wanted. She was a malevolent spirit with a compulsion to control every patch of terrestrialized land on the planet.

      “We all know what she is, Sabor,” Kenzan had proclaimed. “I’ve been defending myself against her attacks since the year I succeeded my uncle. The days when you can wiggle and sidestep and make your little jokes are over. Give me what I need or I’ll take it. And everything else you have with it. Money isn’t the only form of power.”

      Kenzan had framed his message so his face would appear to be crowding against the person who received it—a juvenile trick, but it was Kenzan’s childishness that made him dangerous. Kenzan’s parents had apparently believed an imposing frame still had its advantages. Kenzan was over two heads taller than Sabor, with bone and muscle in proportion. Lately, he had been neglecting his physical maintenance. He had compensated by costuming himself in ornate belted robes that hid his paunch. A tangled black beard obscured his jowly cheeks.

      The robes were a convenient wrapping for a sexual impulsive. Sabor had witnessed the advantages of Kenzan’s turnout during a tediously elaborate lunch. Kenzan could simply grab the nearest concubine who appealed to him, untie his robe, and indulge himself without any bothersome need to undress.

      Kenzan’s uncle had been a methodical, patient man who drew his deepest satisfactions from the steady expansion of his wealth. If the uncle purchased the genome for a new type of fruit tree, he sold a hundred fruits for every bite he ate himself. He had been murdered by an heir who gorged according to his impulses, fed the leftovers to his animals and favorites, and borrowed to buy any novelty that caught his fancy. Kenzan’s banquet garden was bigger than most playing fields. His stables housed two hundred of the costliest riding animals the biodesigners had managed to generate.

      Kenzan’s feud with Possessor Dobryani had begun when Dobryani had stolen the genome of one of his prized meat animals. Kenzan had purchased exclusive rights to the genome from an immigrant who had stored it in his auxiliary intelligence when he had left the solar system. Kenzan had been the only possessor on the planet who served the animal on his table. He retaliated by deliberately mining titanium from a low-concentration site that ruined the view from one of Dobryani’s favorite villas.

      There was no central bank on Fernheim but the four leading bankers all tried to abide by the rules a central bank would have enforced. Sabor maintained reserves that equaled eighteen percent of his loans—a conservative choice that was based on his family’s most rigid traditions. The other three favored reserves of twelve to fifteen percent. Sabor’s money management program borrowed from the others when his reserves dropped below his minimum and loaned to them when they were short. Money bounced between the four banks in a continuous, unending balancing act, at short-term interest rates their programs negotiated in thousandths of a percentage point. At the present moment, Sabor owed Heinrich Dobble approximately eight million yuris, at an average interest rate of 2.116 percent. The other two bankers owed Sabor twelve million.

      His display presented him with Heinrich’s standard business image twelve minutes after he had dispatched his message. As usual, Heinrich was standing rigidly erect and wearing a black, high collared outfit that gave him a reassuringly formal air.

      “I’d already seen a report on the attack,” Heinrich said. “I would have thought your client was just ranting if I hadn’t seen that.”

      “I have to confess Kenzan took me by surprise, too. I vacated my quarters as a precaution—to give him some time to calm down.”

      “How long can he last if we institute a freeze?”

      Sabor dropped his social persona and slipped into his straight business mode. He and Heinrich never wasted words. “Two to four tendays with the freeze alone. But the freeze is only a first step. I’m hoping I can neutralize him in three or four days.”

      “Neutralize?”

      “Permanently. He’s a spendthrift. He won’t recover if I hit him hard enough.”

      “If he doesn’t get you under control first.”

      “I’m retreating to the wilderness. First he has to locate me. Then he has to catch me.”

      Heinrich frowned. “How much time have you spent in the wilderness, Sabor?”

      “I’ve been funding expeditions for twenty standard years. I probably understand the survival requirements better than some of the gadabouts I’ve bankrolled.”

      “You can’t hire fifty soldiers and surround yourself with a solid defense?”

      “And where would I place my temporary fortress? The Primary Coordinator has given me permission to disembark in Galawar. He hasn’t told me I can stay there. We’re dealing with a random force, Heinrich. Kenzan could attack me even if he knew I had him outnumbered five to one. He could turn a place like Galawar into a disaster.”

      “Kenzan’s irrationality is one of the factors I’m weighing. I could find myself in a very serious situation if I oppose him and he gets your resources under control.”

      “And you’ll find yourself in a worse position if I give in to his demands. He isn’t going to stop with one extortion. He doesn’t know how to stop.”

      “I intend to look after myself, Sabor. I reserve the right to reappraise my options. At any time.”

      They entered the wilderness five hours after they stepped onto the Galawar docks. A twelve-meter electric hedge separated the terrestrialized land from the native ecosystem. On the terrestrial side of the barrier, they were surrounded by rose bushes, vegetable gardens, and fields covered with high yield fuel vines. On the wilderness side, thick tree trunks towered over the hedge. Cold autumn sunlight spread across leaves that had become white and translucent as the season had advanced. The trees on Fernheim produced leaves that tended to be smaller and paler than the leaves of terrestrial trees—a response, presumably, to the dizzying pace of the planet’s year. Every organism on Fernheim had to speed through seasons that were only half as long as the seasons on Earth.

      The gate in the bottom of the hedge had been designed with a grudgingly narrow aperture. Their widemounts passed through it in single file, with their carriers scraping the leaves. Choy led the way, with Sabor in the second position.

      Widemounts had been created by reducing the size of the terrestrial elephant and modifying the chemical foundations of its temperament. Sabor’s widemount barely reached the top of his head but its broad back and columnar legs could support a load that included Sabor and all the equipment that would keep a civilized human reasonably content with his lot. The fourth widemount carried an extra fabricator, extra prefabricated supplies, and twelve bottles of wine that Sabor had ordered from Galawar’s communal fabrication facility.

      Sabor had linked his display to Purvali’s. He could monitor her survey of Kenzan Khan’s financial situation while he concentrated his attention on the normal complexities of his business. Half his display tracked the ebb and flow of the planetary high-yield market. The other half presented him with Purvali’s attempts to untangle the web of loans and expenditures that dominated Kenzan’s economic life.

      “There are times when the speed of light limitation has its comforts,” Sabor said. “I can imagine what my mother would say if she knew I’d been loaning real money to someone with that kind of balance sheet.”

      A cloud of birds had surrounded Sabor’s widemount as soon as he had passed through the barrier hedge. Fluttering bodies banged against the transparent upper half of the carrier. Flocks of ground birds scurried away from the relentless plod of his animal’s legs. The pale leaves created a subtly alien atmosphere that many humans found disturbing.

      His auxiliary intelligence fed him data about