Read Palace for Free Online Page B

je!’ The ghostly hologram flickered and turned dim. After a few seconds, he returned to full power. ‘I have assimilated current lingua-bases. Building Gen heuristic. Complete. Beginning identity search. Search complete. Searching for gene-base. Gene-base found. Cross-checking gene-base for verification.’ There was a moment’s pause. ‘Greetings, User. Your genotype is a recognized priority access deen. Enter meta.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Enter meta.’
    ‘What’s a meta?’
    ‘A meta is an unambiguous data string for unique access and development of coordinated routines for action.’
    ‘Huh?’
    ‘Wait. Heuristic counter-program activated. Adjusting levels. Lexicons active. A meta is a password, a means for individual encrypted interaction with an artificial intelligence. I require a meta to create your account.’
    ‘A password?’
    ‘Yes,’ said the rev. ‘Enter meta.’
    Vida’s wrist-tel was flashing red and fast now. The fake Lifegiver must be closing in, probably at the bottom of the tower. ‘I don’t know the password.’
    ‘No, no, Veelivar, you give me the password! I record it, you use it. The password becomes my name to you.’
    ‘Oh, well, then.’ She thought, remembered Brother Lennos and the Eye. ‘The password is Calios.’
    ‘Done. I am Calios. Veelivar account active. All stations unlocked.’
    ‘That won’t help!’
    ‘Help? Enter your request.’
    ‘I’m being chased, so I don’t suppose you know a way out of here?’
    ‘Explain.’
    Vida raised her left wrist and showed the rev her flashing wrist-tel.
    ‘Someone wants to hurt me, and they’re using this to find me.’
    ‘Interesting.’ The rev’s expression blanked for less than a heartbeat. Abruptly, the wrist-tel ceased flashing. ‘I have re-directed this matrix. Please confirm with visual input.’
    Vida crawled to the tower window and flattened herself against the wall so that she could look out sideways. She saw the figure in Lifegiver’s robes at the base of the tower, but he wasn’t looking up. Instead, he was staring at his wrist-tel. When he shook his hand, as if trying to shake some life back into a suddenly dead tel, his sleeve slid back. His wrist was covered with scales in a pattern of red and green swirls. So, it was a Lep, and that pattern would identify his family line. He also held a weapon, judging from the slender barrel and the power pack clipped to the handle. Weapons were forbidden on Palace, punishable by death. Why would a Lep risk so much to chase an unMarked girl? It didn’t make any sense. All at once, the Lep’s wrist-tel began flashing again. Cursing, he ran back across the garden with amazing speed and grace. She watched him hurry across the bridge, climb over to the gantry, and whip himself into the longtube.
    She turned around. ‘That worked. Thank you.’
    The rev was paying her no attention.
    ‘Warning, trackers activated. End meta.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘End meta. Speak your password, Veelivar.’
    ‘Uh ... Calios?’
    The rev grinned one last time, nodded, and vanished before Vida could ask what a veelivar was. She had no time to mess around here, anyway, when her pursuer might return at any moment. And she had a hunch that the rev had been running from someone or something, too.
    * * *
    Uncle Hi had long legs and used them, striding so fast through the lestival that Rico Hernanes y Jons was hard pressed to keep up. I hanks to the crowds, though, every now and then Hi had to pause, muttering under his breath about wasted time, and Rico would sneak a fast look around. Once, he saw the Countess of Motta in her silver litter, marked with the stylized sigil of her family’s Gene-glyph, bobbing through the crowd behind saccule footmen sashed in silver over a red shift. A little later they paused at a blocked intersection, where, hanging from the side of a building, a two-storey high vidscreen showed a collage of images from the festival. Out in the street sapients stood looking up,