A woman in a temperature-protection suit called out, “1876-336 for Barresh?”
I recognised the code that identified me with the Exchange.
“Positive,” one of the guards called. He didn’t even breathe heavily after the run. “Go in, Delegate.”
A siren hooted. From a level somewhere below, an explosive roar made the air vibrate. A silver shape shot across the hall. It flew into the tunnel, while a warning siren honked and the lower gallery jolted into movement, rotating slowly to position the next craft opposite the tunnel exit.
“Come, Delegate.”
One guard on each side, I climbed the steps, to be greeted by the two staff.
“Delegate, mashara.”
The air inside the cabin prickled my nose with that familiar metallic scent that characterised gamra technology.
A hush accompanied me down the aisle. Turning heads, raised eyebrows, curious glances.
By far the majority of passengers were Coldi. Some had dyed their peacock hair black, but most had not. About two hundred, I guessed, in neat rows of seats, four to each side.
There was a row of three empty seats about halfway down. I sank down between my guards, sweating and puffing. Various items of clothing spilled out the luggage compartment under the seat, so I stacked my bag and reader at my feet. Staff rushed to take the items and secure them in the nets above.
Someone thudded the door shut. Air cyclers hissed humidity out of vents in the walls and ceiling, making my ears pop.
Two flight personnel strode to the front of the passenger compartment and clipped retractable metal wires to each other’s harnesses. Both wore dark Pilot’s Guild suits.
The engines started up, making the floor hum.
A light flashed on the far side of the departure hall. I peered at the window, but the reflection of the inside of the cabin stopped me from seeing much.
The pitch of the floor hum increased.
The lights inside the cabin went off. A child wailed.
Now I could see a door open and a group of five or six figures burst out onto the gallery outside. One of them stopped to speak into an earpiece, while the others ran forward, shouting, at us, it seemed. I craned my neck, trying to see what went on. An attendant tried to wave them away; one of the men was pointing. Agitated talk, with lots of hand signals.
The other passengers had seen them, too, and were gaping out the window.
A warning siren trumpeted sharp blasts of sound.
Then, with a sudden jump, the shuttle jerked into action. The lights in the hall flashed by. Several passengers had undone their seat belts and fell on top of one another. Shouts, scrambling. A child crying for its mother.
I was pressed in my seat.
Darkness, then bright daylight. The backrest of the chair became the floor. Wall panels vibrated with power.
I concentrated only on breathing. In. Out. In. Out. With this pressure on my chest, it was easy to forget.
One of the crew abseiled down from the front of the aisle to help stranded people back into their seats. Admonishing words were spoken. Passengers were to keep their seatbelts on at all times.
“But those men . . .” a woman protested.
“Nothing to do with us,” the crewmember said, his face impassive. He handed the child back to its mother, then let himself down further towards the back of the craft, checking seat belts and luggage. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead.
The departure had been sudden, even for them. Almost as if the pilot got an order to get out immediately.
Next to me, the guard fiddled with the receiver on his belt. I tried to catch his attention, but he seemed absorbed in whatever he was hearing.
Gradually, the craft levelled out, while remaining in a steady climb. I could lift my head now and risked a glance out the window. The tapestry of Mediterranean islands stretched out below in patterns of blue, ochre and green. The horizon didn’t curve. Yet.
To the right and slightly above us, I spotted the slight wave of air that indicated that another craft flew there. Below us was yet another. But below that, a few dark spots moved over the tapestry of hills, bays and islands.
I squinted, and the more I looked, the more black spots I discovered. At least fifty of them, flying in neat formation. “Mashara, am I mistaken or are those aircraft?”
“They are, Delegate.” The guard lowered his earpiece, and met my eyes. “Nations of Earth. Military hoverjets.”
8
HOVERJETS—FROM the aircraft carrier that had come into the harbour last night. I could hear Amarru’s voice by all available means . . .
A military blockade. I breathed in and out deeply, trying not to think of Nicha and all those others, trapped down there.
And yet I didn’t understand. Yesterday, Danziger had wished me luck, reluctantly, but he had done it. A few hours later, he had authorised nothing less than war. Based on what?
I took my reader on my lap, but besides what I already knew, none of the news services offered answers. All had large headlines on Sirkonen’s death, with pictures and obituaries. Few elaborated on the police investigation.
Danziger couldn’t gag the media unless Nations of Earth declared a true state of emergency. Had they done that? A cold feeling crept over my skin while below me the planet that was my home receded. A feeling that the gates had closed, with me on the wrong side of the fence.
A wave of panic. I wanted to scream, wait, and Eva. I wanted to be down there, to at least bash some sense into Danziger’s dim-witted brain. What in hell’s name did the man think he was doing?
Breathe in, breathe out.
There was nothing I could do.
And meanwhile, around me, life went on incredibly normal. There were relieved voices, some laughter even. I imagined people clapping each other on the shoulder. Hey Dad, good that we moved when you said we should. We got out. We’re going home.
Not me, not me.
The crewmembers moved about on their normal leads: those attached to rails along the ceiling. They carried baskets with meal packs, colour-coded and sealed, as well as covered containers with hot drinks, each with a bright red satchel that contained the straw.
Serving refreshments was something the Pilot’s Guild had learned from observing human flights. No doubt local merchants and Traders had a hand in it, as they were always active when there was something to be sold. No doubt, too, there was a Coldi-owned business somewhere in Athens that made these food packs.
Apparently, selling something in midair created a problem, seeing one was not within the territory of one of the entities, so where did Trading levies need to be paid?
I was glad to leave that nasty bureaucratic problem to the authorities and simply gave my gamra account to pay for my bag of nuts and a container of a hot drink the Coldi persistently called coffee, but had nothing to do with it.
For starters, it was dark green. It was made from one of the thousands of species of mushrooms native to the aquifers of Asto. It came in powder form and went into a filter like coffee. The Coldi word for it was manazhu. It was also very, very bitter, but did not contain acid or excessive levels of fluorides, as much Coldi food did, so was classified as a green-code. Strangely, and much to Eva’s disgust, I had taken a liking to it. She said it made my breath stink. It tasted even better with a good dollop of rum, which probably made my breath stink even more.
I sipped, letting the liquid glide down my throat in small hot gulps that brought a sense of comfort back to my rattled mind.
You have one shot at proving your worth, Mr Wilson.
One opportunity to come up with the goods, whatever form it would take. A truce, a solution, or merely a tempering of anger. If I could stop gamra turning the clock back to the Kershaw days, if I could keep Nicha’s father and his massive air fleet and their weapons firmly in Asto’s air space, if I could shed some light on who could have attacked Sirkonen’s office, how and why.
The sky was already quite dark. White clouds swir
led in a pattern no one but an off-world traveller would ever see.
We must be almost at prescribed height.
I turned off and packed away my reader. The transfer would soon be upon us.
As if in answer, a voice came over the intercom. “The pilot has just requested transfer. Please make sure that any loose items are safely stowed.”
In that moment of total nothingness, when the shuttle jumped through the network, when the Exchange cores down in Athens and the one in Barresh connected with each other and we were flung about like a pebble in a bucket, not once, but four times, the smallest piece of paper became a projectile.
I leaned back in my seat, feeling sick, wishing I hadn’t eaten those nuts. This was the part I really, really hated. And I tried to reason away that irrational fear.
The light started flashing over the passengers’ heads.
Eleven . . . ten . . . nine . . .
I grabbed the armrests, wishing I were somewhere else.
Eight . . . seven . . . six . . .
Passengers went oddly quiet, as if most were equally ill-impressed with the process.
Five . . . four . . . three . . .
Then to think that the Traders did this for a living, sometimes a few times a day. Jumping through the network like jellybeans, following daylight wherever people were awake enough to talk business.
Two . . . one . . .
Everything went white.
I floated in thin air; didn’t feel the seat at my back or the seatbelt biting in my shoulders. I was flying in space without anything to support me. There was no noise, no movement, just utter stillness.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see. I was aware but wasn’t, as such, alive. I had just ceased to be.
A flash of light. A rush of air.
Sensation returned. My heart went thud, and thud and thud. Life sped up. Everything around me—the backs of chairs, walls, the ceiling—took shape in rainbow-coloured hues which bled into each other until all colours overlapped. My ears echoed with a boom I had never heard.
And we still flew. I checked the clock on my comm unit. An hour and sixteen minutes had just disappeared.
Outside the window was nothing but darkness.
That was one transfer. Three more to go, with periods of waiting in between.
All of a sudden, a blanket of exhaustion fell over me. My destiny was no longer in my hands. I was beyond worry.
I leaned back in my seat, and did something I would not have thought possible: I fell asleep.
“Delegate.” Someone shook my arm.
I jerked upright, squinting against a glare of sunlight which illuminated the face of one of the flight crew. “Please tighten your harness, Delegate. We’re about to land.”
I groaned, fishing on the seat for the straps which had loosened with my weight.
Sunlight.
Did that mean I’d slept through the three other transfers? I checked my watch. It was about ten minutes behind the time we’d left Athens. Yup. That always happened. People argued over whether time had actually gone backwards or whether an entire day had gone, but when you jumped through the anpar lines, time was irrelevant, except that when you went back to your place of origin, time had progressed by roughly as much as you had travelled, never mind that time-keeping devices you took with you refused to measure travelling time.
The guard to my left leaned back in his seat, his open mouth emitting small sighs with every breath. I felt guilty—they would have been just as exhausted as I was. The other guard was digging under the seat for something that must have fallen. I was still shivery from being so rudely woken up. The uncomfortable position in which I had slept—my head bent back against the headrest—hurt my neck, but at least I felt a bit more refreshed. A tiny bit. Ready to handle whatever was thrown at me next.
The craft banked. The window to my left showed an expanse of water interspersed with reeds. The double shadow of the craft glided over the glittery surface, one side with a bluish rim and one with a yellow one, from the system’s twin suns, the larger white F class Beniz and the smaller and yellow G class Yaza, two dots smaller than our sun close together, because we were further from them than the sun was from Mars. Not much of a chance to let me forget where I was.
Barresh. A powerful city-state on the world of Ceren.
Barresh, City of Islands.
Some of those islands were sliding into view. Each scrap of land overflowed with houses, little cubes of ochre stone. No two houses were the same, no street was straight, no market place rectangular. As much as the Coldi hated asymmetry, the Barresh locals felt uneasy about uniformity and sameness, or straight lines. Silver tracks of the railway linked the larger islands like threads in a spider web.
Lower, the craft went, and lower. Passengers in front of me were getting restless, collecting items from the nets, admonishing children.
We passed over water, interspersed with fields of green, boats and harvesters with agricultural produce, jetties and storage sheds, then ochre-tiled roofs, some with coiling patterns in grey.
The craft turned sharply and braked in midair. Hover engines came on and with its nose pointed slightly up, the shuttle floated down. The floor vibrated, until the landing gear hit the ground with a faint bump.
The engine hissed and whined in an ever-lower pitch.
As the crew unclipped their safety lines, passengers rose. I pushed myself out of my seat, still feeling dizzy. My reader almost fell from the ceiling net when I undid the fastening. A door was opened at the front of the craft. I joined the line of people shuffling forward.
When I stepped onto the covered ramp, tropical heat fell over me like a suffocating blanket. Sweat trickled down my stomach before I even reached the building, not that reaching shelter brought much relief.
The building had no glass and no walls, just wide eaves to stop seasonal rain. In the wide-open terminal hall, a crowd waited, mostly Coldi, held back by black-clad Barresh city guards. There were cries and shouts, both amongst the passengers and in the hall. People surged against a barrier. A woman crawled underneath. A guard tried to hold her back, but, being Coldi, she shoved him back so hard he fell against his colleagues.
The woman ran down the ramp, shoved past me and all the other passengers, ignoring indignant shouts, to throw her arms around a girl of about six. “You came. I was so worried about you.”
She was crying; the mother was crying. She lifted the girl into her arms, still looking around. “Azisha, where is Azisha?” The girl shrugged and the mother addressed passengers walking past. “Excuse me, have you seen a young boy on the flight?”
People looked away, and continued walking. I was pushed along by the flood of people, into the building.
I swallowed hard, staring at the guard’s armour-clad back.
The mother’s voice still rose over the murmur, a desperate shriek. “Where is Azisha?”
Damn. I saw Nicha as I’d left him in the president’s office. Alone. No chance of joining me.
“Where is Azisha?”
An event where I had been present had changed the lives of these ordinary people.
Damn. I wiped my face.
Then we were in the terminal building. Local news reporters with their head-mounted recording gear rushed forward. Not to me, but to one of the few other non-Coldi who had been on the flight.
The entire hall beyond was full of people. All Coldi, most with haggard, emotionless faces lining up for counters. They might need to get another flight to Asto, or, if they had no permit to live there, as I knew many didn’t, they were truly lost. As far as I knew, the Exchange node at Athens had been spewing forth a tide of refugees for at least ten hours. A few thousand of them were in this hall.
“Delegate, this way.”
The two guards made a path for me through the crowd. I caught some stares, furtive glances from gold-flecked Coldi eyes.
“Where are all these people going, mashara?” No way would there be enough ro
om in the city’s guesthouses.
The man shrugged, averted his eyes. His mouth twitched in an unusual way. I looked at him more intensely, and pieces of the puzzle fell together.
Refugees.
His native Indrahui, a world torn apart with internal conflict. Gamra had let the situation blow up; isolationist politics did that. Everyone to themselves, sort out your own problems; we won’t interfere for the sake of keeping the interstellar peace, never mind what happened on the planet. Seriously, Danziger could teach gamra a thing or two about refugee crises if he cared to try and they cared to listen.
And my guard, maybe both of them, had once been refugees themselves.
They’d dressed in combat gear, they’d cautioned me about going to Eva’s house, they’d stopped me making calls to Eva, they’d dragged me through the Exchange building in Athens . . . while desperate to get out themselves.
They would have been through hell the past few hours. My face glowed with embarrassment. I should have realised this much sooner.
“Mashara, let us go to the island. We will be safe there.” Inclusive-we, the word the meant specifically all of us present here. It was a rare enough form that I hoped they didn’t think I was making a mess of my pronouns.
Out of the terminal, to the station.
People queued at the ticket reader to get onto the train platform. The train waited, a sleek shape like a bullet, doors yawning open.
The first guard slipped into a window seat, I sat next to him, and the second guard remained standing in the aisle, handing me a cloth. The air felt sticky on my tongue and smelled like tea-tree oil.
I wiped my face. “Thanks, mashara.” I had an audience: everyone in the carriage stared at me, a thin, pale-skinned, profusely sweating excuse for a human. My stink probably offended their sensitive noses.
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