The Quantum Magician by Derek Kunsken

Author:Derek Kunsken [Kunsken, Derek]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781781085707
Amazon: 1781085706
Publisher: Solaris
Published: 2018-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Two

THE PUPPET FREE City was precious to the Puppets because it housed thousands of the divine humans. The Free City was a rare haven to unscrupulous visitors because it had few rules. Under both the Numenarchy and the Puppets, the ownership of conscious beings was legal, attitudes to violence, narcotics, and genetic engineering were flexible, and privacy was taken seriously. The wealthy who had tastes that could not be fulfilled elsewhere ran the embargo and came to play in the Free City.

So when Marie and Del Casal, using forged identity documents and a mountain of Congregate francs, rented the deepest six penthouse levels of the Grand Creston Hotel and landed their yacht, the visa procedures with the Grand Creston Constabulary were perfunctory. Rented robotic servitors with wipeable memories loaded tons of Marie’s cargo into the expensive private elevators and began the twenty-five minute descent.

“Holy crap!” Marie exclaimed at the opening of the elevators onto the deepest rooms in the hotel. A wide reception hall sprawled under a vaulted ceiling hung with chandeliers. A honeycomb of thick windows looking into the deep darkness of Blackmore Bay filled the entire outer wall. Lacy stairways led up each wall to a second floor balcony cutting across the windows, to more private sitting and dining areas. Doorways off the sides of the balcony led to the bedrooms. “This place is bigger than my last prison.”

Del Casal frowned. “We have four more of these, so enjoy them.”

Marie checked a display on her wrist. Nitrogen-depleted air. Four atmospheres of pressure. That was as low as they could pressurize the hotel at this depth. The pressure outside the hotel topped out at a cool thousand atmospheres. The rich came to these deepest of penthouses to brag about throwing parties twenty-three kilometers below the surface.

“C’mon, people,” she said, clapping to the servitors.

Four robots followed her out of the elevator, carrying Stills’ chamber. To their left, the earlier baggage the servitors had brought down sat neatly in a row. Twelve metal crates, each a meter cube, full of tools and explosives, as well as a large clinic’s worth of surgical equipment, from bandages and braces and sutures, to casts and anesthetics. Either Bel thought she really was going to blow her fingers off, or Stills’ job was more dangerous than she’d been thinking.

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