Hiding Place: also includes Among the Tchi and Down, Please

By Adam-Troy Castro

Andrea Cort. Genius. War Criminal. Crime-Solver.

An emergency summons brings Andrea and her partners, Oscin and Skye Porrinyard, to an isolated research station, where a brilliant scientist lies brutally murdered. Who committed the crime is no mystery. But it may be impossible to prosecute, because the culprit has arranged a strange transformation for himself, and may no longer be the same person who committed the crime.

For Andrea, who has recently begun planning the next stage in her own personal evolution, the issue cuts straight to the atrocities of her own past…and the question that might destroy her: can she escape the guilt that has always pursued her?

This collection is set in the award-winning Andrea Cort series, featuring the titular novella "Hiding Place," as well as the short stories “Among the Tchi” and “Down, Please: The Only Recorded Adventure of Lars Fouton, Captain’s Lift Operator on the Starship Magnificent.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 25, 2024
• ISBN: 9781625676962

Adam-Troy Castro

Adam-Troy Castro's fiction has won the Seiun and Philip K. Dick Awards, and received two nominations for the Hugo, three for the Stoker, and eight for the Nebula.

Book preview

Hiding Place

Copyright © 2024 by Adam-Troy Castro

All rights reserved.

Published as an ebook in 2024 by JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.

Original publications:

Hiding Place, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, April 2011.

Among the Tchi, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, May 2009.

"Down, Please: The Only Recorded Adventure of Ensign Lars Fouton, Captain’s Lift Operator on the Starship Magnificent," Analog Science Fiction and Fact, April 2015.

Cover design by John Fisk

ISBN 978-1-625676-9-62 (ebook)

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.

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New York, NY 10036

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Hiding Place

Among the Tchi

Down, Please: The Only Recorded Adventure of Ensign Lars Fouton, Captain’s Lift Operator on the Starship Magnificent

Appendix: Andrea Cort Chronology

Also by Adam-Troy Castro

About the Author

Introduction

Is Hiding Place the final adventure of Andrea Cort?

It is not the last written. There have been several since, including one set in her late teens. But Hiding Place takes place after the third novel, War of the Marionettes, and places her at a crossroads, at a point when she will either become literally a different person, or sink deeper into despair. Everything is at stake now, including her life-saving relationship with the linked pair known as the Porrinyards.

There is also the factor, recently revealed at this point in the series, that her universe is now at the brink of an apocalyptic war, poised to annihilate most of humanity. Having said so, I cannot pretend that I didn’t, or that Andrea will not be at the center of it. I have written and published a couple of stories, including To Fight the Colossus, that take place after the war is over, and hint at her involvement, but I have not depicted just what she does, who she becomes, or how humanity comes out the other side, even though, an established fact, her home base New London does not. That story is not for novelettes or novellas. It is for novels, perhaps several, and at this point, while I publish regularly, the hunger for more Andrea at novel length has not manifested.

The story also ends with a decision having to be made. I know what the decision is, but I will not consign it to short fiction. So in the meantime, I content my Andrea (and Porrinyard) jones to stories set in her past.

(I have started a story set at the very end of her life, that includes her death and that might provide some clues, but it is currently moribund. You may see it someday. Or you might not. As a celebrated friend often said, I am dancing as fast as I can here. My only advice is stay tuned.)

And what of these two other stories, that round out this e-book?

They are like Blu-Ray extras, provided here because, why not?

Among the Tchi is set in the milieu’s AIsource Infection universe and features the titular alien race, a group of arrogant snots despised by our heroine, as seen in the novella Unseen Demons and the novel War of the Marionettes. They are, for various reasons, hard to get along with. Here, they are again. You may discern that this is the writer, scratching an itch.

Down, Please: The Only Recorded Adventure of Lars Fouton, Captain’s Lift Operator on the Starship MAGNIFICENT is not set in the AIsource Infection universe, but perhaps in the territory one universe over. It’s a fable about pointless jobs and how, in the end, even they can provide satisfaction. I giggled while writing it. You do not need to know more than that. I once considered writing another Lars Fouton story but eventually came to think that such a thing would be an abomination, perhaps even more of one than the first. I hope this one makes you giggle too.

And that’s it. Enjoy!

Adam-Troy Castro

17 February 2024

HIDING PLACE

The only prisoner in the interrogation room consisted of two women and one man.

The women, Mi and Zi Diyamen, appeared to be identical twins of either the natural or cloned variety. White-haired despite their apparent youth, wispier in form and more delicate in appearance than any of the handful of cylinked people I’d met (who, starting with my lovers the Porrinyards and continuing through the various others I’d encountered in the last few years, had always tended toward the physically robust), they seemed to exist only as pale echoes of the man who sat between them. Their skin was so pale that it was possible to follow the thin trace of veins at their temples, and their eyes were a shade of blue transparent enough to disappear against their irises.

Ernest Harriman, who sat between them, was a bear: round shouldered, ruddy faced, massive without crossing the border into fat, either old enough or sufficiently well-removed from his most recent rejuvenation to look like he could have been father to the two women beside him. His impressive physical presence and the defiant cast of his smile belied the features of an otherwise weak man: watery eyes, flabby cheeks, and a chin that receded from his lower lip as if eager to join the thick curve of his neck.

The Diyamens bracketed Harriman at the table where all three sat, resting their delicate hands on his thicker wrists.

It was impossible to behold this cozy triptych without considering the women nothing more than Harriman’s personal accessories, but I knew enough about the nature of the acquired condition the three shared to know that this was no more than an illusion, one that they might well have been cultivating for psychological advantage over their jailers.

In truth, the three were not only equals but parts of the same person: closer than lovers, closer than siblings, less like separate people than limbs of the same composite organism.

They were three. And they were one.

* * *

Oscin and Skye Porrinyard spoke in unison. They’re not faking.

The pair, who bracketed me the way the wispy women on the other side of the one-way transparent field bracketed the bear-shaped man, were like the three prisoners, a single cylinked mind sharing one combined personality. When the male Oscin and the female Skye spoke together, as they did much of the time, they balanced the tones of their respective individual voices to create a shared one that didn’t seem to originate from either mouth but rather from some compromise location between them.

This was not something I’d ever gotten used to, years after their entrance into my life. I was no longer thrown by the vocal gymnastics, but they had never lost their delicious ability to jolt.

Unlike the Diyamens, who seemed to court insubstantiality, the Porrinyards were physical paragons: enhanced athletes who upon our first meeting had been employed as high-altitude workers. Nor were they identical like the Diyamens; Oscin was taller and bulkier than the slim, athletically built Skye, and her facial features were elfin whereas his were blocky, almost square. Even so, they still favored each other in many ways, from their preference for clothing that exposed far more skin than it covered, and the close-shaved silvery stubble of their hair, to the fierce shared intelligence in both sets of eyes.

I asked them a stupid question. Are you certain?

It was a stupid question because the Porrinyards had never offered me a conclusion unless they were certain.

They said, Yes, Andrea. I’ve been watching their respiration, their eye movements, even the pulse rates visible in their respective wrists.

I glanced at both Oscin and Skye in turn—redundant, I know, but I still feel I’m neglecting one if the other gets all the eye contact. Industrious of you.

They nodded in unison. Yes, well. You’ve come to expect it.

And?

As far as I can tell, they’re in perfect synch. This would of course vary in circumstances where one body was more or less healthy than the others, or engaged in more or less physical activity, but the autonomic functions of cylinked component bodies do tend to approach equilibrium when all other factors are rendered equal. I say they’re what they claim to be: a unit. Not just Mi and Zi Diyamen, who look the part, but this Harriman as well.

Behind us, Prosecutor Lyra Bengid tapped the tapered green fingernails of her right hand against the bejeweled silver bracelet on her opposite wrist. That’s pretty much the way we figured it, Andrea, though it took us several days of medical testing to confirm what your friends here were able to discern in minutes.

I’m surprised it took you days, the Porrinyards remarked. True cylinkage is an almost impossible condition to fake. Most unrehearsed single-minds attempting to synch actions make a serious mistake of some kind within minutes.

Bengid’s brow knit in annoyance. "Is that what your kind call us? Single-minds?"

They chuckled. The individual who became Skye and the individual who became Oscin were both single-minds, not so many years ago. The phrase is not intended as a slur, Counselor; just a descriptive.

Bengid didn’t roll her eyes, not exactly, but she did hold the moment long enough to convey her healthy skepticism. Right. In any event, confirming their condition wasn’t quite so easy in their case. They haven’t attempted that chorus-speak of yours. For some reason, they’ll only speak through Harriman.

That’s unusual, the Porrinyards said. For the most part, cylinked people don’t favor one body unless the other is incapacitated for some reason.

Nevertheless, Bengid said. "Any questions asked of any one of them, even if we place them in separate rooms, are answered through Harriman’s mouth, or