by Alex Oliver
The door had opened while he spoke, and Najafi had come in, apparently fresh from the showers and no longer bloodstained. She looked fresh and comfortable in a fluffy white jumpsuit that made her look more like a rabbit than a killer. Maybe it was the softness that moved him to turn to her and plead. "Please. They are all depending on me. I don't even have money for a room tonight. How can I leave Nori like this?"
With his eyes closed, Nori might have been sleeping, if he had not been breathing hard, like somewhere in the depths of his head he was lifting boulders.
"How can I leave him like this in some public place and go to work at the docks? Even if I did, how long would it take me to earn enough to buy a single fusion cube? You are sending us out to starve, and you are condemning a whole planet in the process."
Najafi looked weary and a little embarrassed - a woman who had heard too many sob stories in her life and grown angry about having to care, but when Goldstein reached out and touched the inner side of her elbow she gave a small annoyed huff and said, "What I can let you do is call your people on the police pinholenet. You can tell them what's happened, see if they can arrange some kind of credit."
"They're going to have problems arranging any kind of credit line that Alder 52 doesn't have his feelers in." Goldstein said.
Najafi sighed and gave her partner a tip of the head that said 'I hear what you're saying and I agree.' "But what more can we do?"
So that was how Felix found himself in a different spherical snow room - the diameter was smaller, and it had a green ribbon of paint on a northern meridian. A sun lamp in the center of the room, on a pillar of ice, gave out a welcome yellow light, and a faint wash of heat. Najafi folded out a console from the wall and let him punch in the coordinates of Cygnus 5, not even sure whether the tiny artificial wormhole which allowed instant communication across the light-years would still be there, or whether the Kingdom would have demanded that it be shut down.
Pinholenet was managed from within the Source, though. From a laboratory on Tierce, if the rumors he'd heard were true. On Tierce - the world that used to be called Europa - floating somewhere beneath its methane seas. He didn't think the creatures that lived there - one could hardly call them human, they'd adapted themselves so radically to their world - would bow to the edict of the Kingdom. However currently successful it was, even borderline worlds like Nori's called it 'dumb space' and mocked it, much to the Synod's rage.
However little it surprised him when the console lit up and he found himself looking out at the governor's throne room on Cygnus 5, it still re-inflated his lungs. He took a deep breath that he hadn't been able to take for days, given the weight of responsibility and failure that had been crushing his chest.
Dr. Atallah sat in the gold-painted chair, and Felix saw with deeper grief how deep were the shadows beneath her cheekbones, where her face sunk in towards her teeth. "Mboge," she said quietly, as though she could tell from his face it was bad news. "Problems?"
Her careful weariness, her skeletal face, and the neatness of her hijab gave an impression of huge dignity, of serenity. Even though he wanted to cry, he was proud at that moment that she was the face of Cygnus 5 for the watching police. "Nakano Nori and I have arrived at Snow City," he started. Someone back there had probably deduced that Nori had gone with him, but now they knew for sure. "The artifacts created more interest than we expected and have been stolen."
She gave a tiny jerk at that, as though she would have jumped but didn't have the energy. "Go on."
"During the theft, we were both attacked. Nori was injured. We have no money to pay for his treatment, or for fuel to get back, or for the food we were sent to bring."
Atallah covered her eyes with her right hand for a moment, then swept her fingers inward and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Bismillah," she said, straightening up.
It brought a weak smile to Felix's face - the bravery and the faith of it. "In God's name," he agreed. God who could do everything could surely turn even this situation around. The reminder was timely.
"What are the locals doing to get our artifacts back?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?!" This time she peered behind him, narrowing her eyes at the watchers, and a stern life came back to her eyes. "Felix Mboge, I know you are an obliging man, but you are not a beggar. You are the representative of a sovereign planet. Because we are weak now does not mean we will not be strong later. They should remember this. And you should remember that you are our ambassador."
Felix's pride raised its bowed head at the words. He still didn't know what he should do, but he felt a little more as though he was capable of doing it. The captain would know. "Is Captain Campos there?"
"She's..." Lina's expression combined elements of dazzle and of anxiety that Felix interpreted as 'she's doing something impressive but dangerous,' "Not here right now."
"Then can you get Bryant? He might know what to do to help Nori, and who to talk to about credit."
Lina rubbed at her nose again, looking even more worried. "He's not doing great either, but I'll pass you over. You may catch him in a lucid moment."
Felix didn't like the sound of that. He liked the sight of it even less. Bryant came stumbling into view, frowning, as though he could not see properly, or as though he could not quite believe what he saw. He was the thinnest of all, and along the highlights of his brow and nose and cheekbones the skin looked almost iridescent, like the carapaces of the imps they had reclaimed. He tested the seat's reality, mapping it out with his hands before he eased himself gingerly down into it. He held his head as though it was heavy, as though he had to keep it poised and balanced or it would fall and he would follow it.
Bryant's frown deepened, as he peered through the intervening light-years to see Felix pitying him across the other side of the universe.
"My God, what happened to you?" Felix asked.
"What is happening?" Bryant said, the timbre of his voice gone woodwind and eerie. "I don't know yet. Interesting though, isn't it?"
Interesting was not the word Felix would have used, but he pulled himself back from that precipice with a gasp. The captain was in charge of whatever was happening with Bryant. She could deal with it. His own attention needed only to be on his own problem.
"If you say so," he conceded, aware that someone important had come into the room and both Najafi and Goldstein were fidgeting under their regard, as if they regretted their generosity. Time to speed things up. "Bryant, the artifacts have been stolen by Alder 52 and Freedom, who are claiming they own them, and are trying to get the location of where we found them out of our severed heads. We desperately need credit for medical treatment and to buy ourselves recognition and status, but--"
"Alder 52 and Freedom control half the moneylending on the comet."
He remembered that at least. "Yes."
"And the others are their colleagues and friends."
"Yes."
Bryant lowered his face into his hand, and then had to laboriously peel it away, as though the hand contained suckers. "We shouldn't have sent you. That was my idea and it was a bad one. Like most of my ideas recently."
On closer examination, the important person's age or sex still could not be told, but their lavender hair was buzz cut in the police style, and their white jumpsuit had five green bands on the sleeve. They sighed audibly behind Felix as they propped a knee next to Nori's sleeping head.
"Bryant, we don't have time for recriminations. Is there anything you can do?"
Bryant grinned like a skull, "I... ah. Well, I probably wasn't ever going to use this anyway. Especially now. What need for a last-ditch, desperate chance on Snow City when I'm probably never leaving here again. You can have it."
He jumped, startled by some stimulus Felix couldn't see at all, looked wildly to the left of the pick up and extended a hand out to a patch of empty air. What Felix had taken for grime on his palm expanded outwards into something like the feelers on Freedom's table, and then retracted again.
"How long has this call been going on?" Said the person, looking at their bracer for the time.
"Please," Felix prodded, sensing that they were about to be cut off. "Bryant. What desperate chance?"
Bryant blinked his way back into focusing on the call. "When I was last on Snow City I did a favor for Sehk Heongu. She'll remember me. You can call that in. I don't think I'm going to have need of it again in this life."
"And she's not going to carve out our brains and steal whatever information we have left?"
Bryant laughed. "I can't guarantee--"
The official person made a cutting gesture visible in the corner of Felix's eye, and the connection cut out mid sentence. He looked up into a gray gaze as cold as the walls.
"I recommend for your own safety you do not follow that advice. Whatever trouble you're in at the moment you will look back on and laugh at, if you find yourself in her clutches."
Yes, Felix thought, with the weight of Lina's starved face and Bryant's illness filling his stomach until he thought it would rip. We trusted Freedom on his word, and look where that got us. "I am unwilling to dive any further into your underworld."
"Good," said the person. "Now clear my interrogation room."
Thankfully, the gravity of Snow City was light - about one quarter Earth normal. Felix didn't have to struggle when he carried Nori's limp body into the closest park and set him down on a mossy shelf to carry on sleeping it off.
It was a pleasant enough place. The large light lantern in the middle of the sphere was warm enough to melt the inner layer of the cavern, and in that moist slush lichens and mosses had been anchored. Tiny harebells and eidelweiss quivered as the air recirculators pumped a breeze from one chamber to the next. The water, falling down the walls, seeped into a russet tiled moat around the outside of the room and was pumped down a channel separating the room into halves, sliding past the lantern and then out again to the surface where it would re-freeze.
Felix sat down, hauled Nori into his lap, where they could keep each other warm, and ate the pink remainder of this morning's breakfast which he found crushed to crumbs in his pocket.
Be a proud ambassador. Go do this thing even reckless Bryant had never felt safe enough to do. He sighed, hauling Nori up closer, so that he could get both arms around his chest and feel the heartbeat, calm now and steady. He looked down at Nori's closed eyes with a tenderness that hurt less than everything else, savoring this one moment of peace.
"But we can't stay here forever either."
"Mm?" Nori's eye opened, a little hazy, a little unfocused. "What?"
In the uprush of joy, Felix leaned forward and kissed him, he thought sexlessly, with the kiss of peace on the lips. Then he waited for Nori either to make it weird or to recoil, unsure which he feared the most.
Nori’s brief smile in return flinched into worry. “I… Uh.” He raised an uncoordinated hand and covered his mouth and nose with it, half as though he was trying to create a barrier between their mouths, half as though his head hurt and he had to hold it still. No kissing, Felix thought, sad for a moment until he registered that Nori had not tried to move out of his embrace. They still lay resting against one another, sharing warmth.
Very daringly, Felix lowered his face again and pressed his cheek to Nori’s ear. Nori sighed in return, and leaned bonelessly into Felix’s arms. And that was neither rejection - neither pushing it into something sexual nor drawing away. He began to think that perhaps his luck had changed after all.
Nori looked up at him lazily, galaxies of gold and amber specks in the darkness of his eyes.
"Are you all right?" Felix murmured.
"Fuzzy," Nori said, touching a delicate fingertip to the edge of Felix's eyebrow, "but it'll get better. What happened?"
"We'll show you," came a familiar voice, followed by the familiar sound of hydraulics, and the scent of oil and burned dog. "If you're done hugging. Very touching, I thought."
It was the walrus lady. She had sheathed her tusks in steel, and beneath her jaw they sharpened into razor tips. She had only one dog with her, and she did not look happy.
Felix tried to scramble to his feet, but he was all tangled up with Nori, who was still finding it hard to move, uncoordinated and heavy. He found himself in the familiar position of lying flat on his back with a dog's metal claw scoring his chest. He looked for their guardian angels of the police force. No sign of them. He looked for the exits, but on the north he saw the swelled body of an enhanced soldier, like the man who had lorded it over Cygnus 5 before Aurora. The guy had just moved aside to allow the last bystander and witness to leave.
From the south exit came one of the lab-coated men, his face mild, both hands locked around the handle of a large cool box. An organ carrier.
The dog on Felix's chest snarled, displaying carbon steel razor teeth.
"We're just going to bite you into pieces from the feet up," said the walrus woman with a level of cheerfulness that Felix found offensive under the circumstances. "And no one's coming to the rescue this time. We've settled things with the police."
If this was not the time for a desperate gamble, Felix knew nothing. "I hope you've also settled things with Sekh Heongu," he said, gritting it out between teeth that wanted to clatter.
"What?" Her tone sharpened up, incredulous.
"We're under her protection," Felix lied, vaguely thankful for the mortal peril. He was not good at lying under normal circumstances, but the teeth by his groin excused a little awkwardness.
The medic rammed his cool box into the soft ground hard enough to make rain fall from the walls. He and walrus woman exchanged a glance, their eyes wide. Walrus lady had an ashen cast around the mouth and the medic had gone as white as his coat. "You're lying."
Their fear swept through Felix as if he wicked it up. Did he really want to know what could make these people look like that?
"If you're lying. If she catches you taking her name in vain," walrus lady shuddered, her mouth set so hard around her tusks it almost closed. "You are in so much trouble. You gonna look back on this and think you had it good."
Judging from the way this mission had gone so far, she was probably right about that. But what else could he do? "Call her," he said firmly. "Let's find out."
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
A Casualty of War
"Well, look at that, you are not Priya Kumara," the Innocent said in a faintly mocking tone. He had taken a DNA swab with the kind of no-nonsense practicality that said he would not resort to violence for fun, but would have no hesitation in using it if it became necessary. Lali had found herself reassured by the soldierliness of that.
"I never said I was."
He frowned at the screen, on which the computer was now running her information through the database of known criminals. He might have found her more easily by actually checking the Zyanya Lakes records, but she wasn't going to tell him that.
She stood straight backed where she had been put and concentrated on breathing slow and steady to the point where she could think again. They were now in the office of the Mother Superior, on her insistence, and Lali felt temporarily safe while that formidable, knife faced woman stood beside her, watching the Innocent make free with her desk.
"The child is obviously from this world," she suggested, in a voice that combined authority with a certain deference - one did not easily argue with those who are already dead. "Why not try matching her to the Zyanya Lakes records? You may find that she's speaking the truth."
Curse the intelligence of well meaning women, Lali watched the Innocent's shoulders twitch. He was not used to people daring to make suggestions to him. No law touched him - he had already been absolved of all sin and taken out of the categories of the living. He could do anything he pleased here and still be justified.
It tended over time to produce dangerous men. They were always men, since the Synod did not believe that even in death women could be cleansed of original sin.
But I'm de
ad too, Lali thought, tending her nerve carefully. Maybe that makes me as innocent as he is. Maybe that means that anything I do now will not be counted against me in Heaven. She suspected it didn't truly work that way, but it was a nice thought.
The Innocent made a startled noise. Over his shoulder, Lali could see the bubble of green on the screen that proclaimed a match, and her options shrank along with her courage. "It seems you were right, prioress. Here she is - a woman of the Zyanya Lakes and a traitor. One of the crew of the Froward. That's easily dealt with."
He pulled a handgun from beneath his elbow. Good stance, good grip. No indication of weakness in any of his limbs, nor indecision in his eyes as he aimed between Lali's brows. She was not going to be ducking away from this one, not taking him on in single combat. Abruptly her mouth went dry and stinging, and her sense of herself flew out of the body to float somewhere above her head.
She reined it all in and said "Don't you want to know what this is all about? Who else is coming, and why?"
The Innocent's smile quirked up at one side, as if he'd heard variations on this speech so often he was making a collection. "No. I don't care."
The hammer flicked back.
"I do." Her skirts rustling against the floor like the rustle of a snake's scales, the mother superior touched him on the elbow. A burst of hope lit like lightning across Lali's mind. Was she trying to spoil the man's aim? Did Lali have an ally here?
"Admiral Keene directed us both to keep his child safe, and I consider that a sacred obligation. The more we know, the better we can fulfill that charge. We should talk to her."
"I will kill her," the Innocent's smile had become an expression of ennui - as though he had already done as much talking as he could stomach. "And I will kill anyone else who comes after."