Shards of Earth

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  “That would be perfect.”

  “There’s the small matter of—”

  “Our factor will liaise on the fee, both yours and this minister’s.”

  “You’re fine with coming down the line for the meeting? They like their face-to-face contact here…”

  “I know,” she confirmed. “It’ll be good to see you again, Liv.”

  After that, the crew had a near-ludicrous argument about who was going to the surface. Kris said it would be just her and Kit, but Rollo said if he didn’t get to save his own ship, no one was going. Then Rollo wanted Solace along in case it was a trap. Olli said that she wasn’t going to just wait around with Idris. Even Idris was riled by then, and said he’d just been alone in unspace and wouldn’t repeat the experience in orbit. Kris brought the whole business full circle, saying that if they appeared on Thrennikos’s doorstep mob-handed he’d probably call the authorities. And given this was Tarekuma, those would basically be trigger-happy criminals. So Kris decreed that she, Rollo and Kit would go, and everyone else could loiter in the neighbourhood.

  Thrennikos’s offices were a quarter of the way across the planet in Coaster City, so they all piled back into the ship. Kittering took over the comms and fielded what must have been twenty different demands for ID and tolls, from whichever groups controlled individual slices of sky. Some were paid and some weren’t, based on what Kit could glean about their relative status.

  Thrennikos had recommended a planetside dock where they could be relatively sure the ship would still be there on their return. On arrival, Solace activated all the security the Dark Joan had, though Kris reckoned that Tarekuma’s best ship-thieves could outplay the order-loving Parthenon’s locking systems. Kit grudgingly pledged some Largesse to the dock owner for added surveillance, and Olli left a camera remote on watch. Other than that, they’d just have to hope that Thrennikos was as good as his word.

  On Tarekuma, the poorest districts were closest to the inhospitable surface. High-speed elevators conducted the better class of criminal into the chasm, where radiation was less of a threat and the air actually filled the lungs. So it was, in that first trip, they didn’t see much of Coaster City’s worst side. In fact, the law and order of the docks and the glitzy retail outlets they passed were as civilized as anything Kris had seen.

  With Thrennikos vouching for them, they got to use the scenic elevator. The clear-walled car rushed them down an inertially dampened rail, on the outside of Coaster City, with a view of the local flora and fauna. Tarekuma’s macro-biology flourished within the chasms, simultaneously reaching for and shrinking from the solar radiation above. What they saw looked like something from a children’s story, where a gem merchant had planted his stock and found it growing in the morning. Vines crawled up the chasms’ sides in a riotous profusion, budding and fruiting with faceted nodules. Leaf-like plates spread to sieve the distant sunlight, which fell in increasingly impoverished rainbows to the tiers below. Kris saw mobile life there, too—jewelled beetle-forms and lurching baubles with a spidery legspan of ten metres or more. Nothing looked familiar or even organic.

  Here and there were cages, half hidden in creeping foliage that writhed visibly. Many of the governing gangs and cartels liked to make a public show of their displeasure. Most of the human body couldn’t be metabolized by the native life, but salt and water were potent lures. It wasn’t the animals that got you, she understood, but the diamond-sharp tips of the questing vines.

  What lovely places we end up visiting.

  Within Livvo Thrennikos’s reception rooms there was a good span of armoured glass looking onto exactly the same vista, but he was low enough down the chasm that noon outside looked like twilight, and the whole serpentine jungle glowed and glinted with a constellation of gleaming bioluminescence. It really was very pretty, if you could forget its lethal potential.

  The remaining crew had found a fairly genteel eatery where they could wait. They departed grumbling that they couldn’t afford to eat there, but Kris’s waspish thought was that it had been their choice to come in the first place.

  The life of a Tarekuman Prosecutor agreed with Livvo, Kris had to admit. He was wearing a suit cut in the Berlenhof style, with plenty of pleating and wide sleeves. Tarekumans valued show, though, so instead of drab-yet-expensive greys, Thrennikos wore russet, with lines of gems set into lapels and cuffs. Kris would have preferred to dress up as well, but her wardrobe had gone with the rest of the Vulture God.

  Livvo met her with a fond smile and a wrist-clasp that became a brief slapping match as each went to tug the collar of the other. An old student habit from Scintilla, where your honours grade was worn as a coloured flash at the throat. Despite his years of easy living, he actually beat her to it but paused, hand on her scarf. He was one of the few people who knew why she wore it.

  She stretched up on her toes and lightly kissed his cheek. Then he ushered the three of them into his office, making sure everyone got a good gawk at another glimmering view.

  A table had been set with finger-food for three humans and two Hanni. The minister they’d come to meet was already seated, one of Kit’s conspecifics rolling a few nuts around the tabletop with his smaller mandibles. Kris had to stop herself staring, because this was a rich Hannilambra, and she hadn’t seen many of those on the spacer circuit. His shell was encrusted with organic gems in complex, spiralling patterns. A half-dozen bejewelled critters, the size and shape of human thumbs, were tethered to his shield arms with gold chains. They were in constant motion across these armoured surfaces, scattering the light with their faceted backs.

  “Advocate Almier,” Livvo introduced Kris. “And Captain Rostand, Factor Kittering, this is Minister Shreem.” And with that he had earned his payment, save for a little light hosting and pouring the wine. Kris considered that although he’d been kicked out of the Scintilla law schools, while she’d left with her dignity intact, Thrennikos had certainly landed on his feet.

  Minister Shreem’s legs chirped and rattled against each other, and a translator bobbing on the swag of his soft belly said, “I am, of course, delighted to make your acquaintance. I wish you all prosperous endeavours.” The voice was an old man’s, rich and husky with a slow, assured cadence. Kris wondered how much he’d paid for it. “Now I understand that you’re desirous of an introduction.”

  “To Broken Harvest,” Rollo broke in. “A matter of some urgency, my friend.”

  Shreem settled lower on his stool by a delicate rearrangement of his six legs. His quintet of eyes gazed calmly at Rollo, the spikes above them capped by a jewelled diadem. Minister Shreem, it seemed, did not wish to be hurried.

  Then Kit chirped something, and the minister shifted again, leaning forwards. There was a staccato exchange, mostly shorn of any context Kris could follow. Kittering seemed to be bragging about something, or at least he was raising his shield arms. This generally meant a Hanni was establishing his credentials in some way. Then the two of them just left the table and went to play Landstep on a virtual board projected by the minister from one of his gem clusters.

  Rollo and Livvo seemed equally wrong-footed by this, but the Hanni were a competitive species amongst their own kind. Kris had seen business deals concluded over wrestling matches, impenetrable puzzles and even dance-offs. The Hanni didn’t wage war, funnelling all their disagreements into a myriad of contests.

  That left the three humans to make small talk for an hour, as the Hanni became more and more absorbed in their tournament. Kris kept casting a worried eye over, in case Kit was wagering anything they couldn’t do without. But his screens were cagily blank as he placed his tiles with rapid assurance.

  Livvo dropped more than one hint that Kris could leave the spacer life for a while. Perhaps come and do business with him—or partner up in other ways… He was in a stable relationship with two other men and a woman, with three children between them, but there was always room for more. It was the sort of communal arrangement that had become common Afte
r Earth, when families had been shattered and people clung to and nurtured whoever they could find. To her surprise, Kris found the idea of settling down not quite the anathema she’d have thought. But she wasn’t ready to quit spacefaring just yet.

  “You’ve got a good thing going on here, Liv,” she said, surprised at the envy in her voice.

  “There’s always a better thing.” And he rested two fingers on her hand, just lightly.

  Rollo coughed loudly and Kris shot him a testy look. Thankfully, at that point the game broke up. Kit’s screens showed a cascade of bright colours and images that looked triumphant. Kris glanced worriedly at Shreem, in case Kittering had caused offence. The minister seemed entirely satisfied by the clash.

  “A price has been agreed,” Shreem’s old man voice announced, and Kris assumed Kit’s Landstep prowess had earned a discount. “Captain Rostand, given your urgency, is it convenient for contact to be made with the Harvest’s factor immediately?”

  Rollo nodded vigorously.

  “You must understand that there are many layers of hierarchy within the Harvest, as with the Essiel,” Shreem went on pedantically. “Navigation through lower ranks will be required before meeting some mid-grade overseer. Who might or might not have sufficient authority to make a contract. You may find the process aggravatingly drawn out.” All said with grinding slowness and no apparent irony.

  “All the more reason to get started,” Rollo replied through clenched teeth.

  Kris checked in with the others while she waited, and Rollo started to pace.

  Then Minister Shreem made a surprised sound, like a string section thrown into disarray, and scuttled in a backwards circle. It was a display of discombobulation she’d never seen in a Hanni before.

  “Hold on,” she told Idris over the comms. “Something’s happened.”

  “Well?” Rollo demanded of the minister. “What, then? Some flunky will see us at his own damn leisure?”

  “The matter has developed in an entirely different direction.” Shreem’s artificial voice sounded calm but his limbs were flurrying with agitation. “Invitation is made to the court of Aklu himself—Aklu being the title of the Harvest’s undisputed ruler. You are going straight to the top.”

  12.

  Kris

  This is not going to get weird.

  The word from Aklu’s minions was that Rollo should bring someone to speak for him. The Hegemony firmly believed that leaders had menials to do the talking for them. Kris volunteered for the honour. It was, after all, her job. Kit handled the money, she handled the people.

  There is no reason this has to be weird.

  She’d sat with urbane killers in tailored shirts with ruffled fronts, who had sipped from tiny glasses and talked theatre and ballet engagements while ordering the deaths of faithless minions and minor civic functionaries. They’d liked her, overall. She knew the line they wanted women to tread.

  She’d gone before a broken-nosed man whose huge frame was fifty per cent augmented artificial muscle. He’d conducted business at an arena, so he could watch his stable of gladiators tearing apart robots and sometimes each other. That had gone okay too. She knew a thing or two about the fighters’ form, and that had endeared her to the man.

  She’d been granted an audience by a Castigar don, Warrior caste—a segmented worm five metres long, each ring of its annular body bristling with spines. Its tentacled head had been painted with jagged symbols, suggesting violence to human eyes as eloquently as to its own kind. Each squirming arm of its crown had been capped with a chattering set of mechanized blades, mounted below the reddish bead of the eye. She had faced up to that horrifying cutlery drawer and outlined the drop-off the Vulture God wanted to make. She’d offered a cut of their pay cheque, and they’d made a deal. There was always a deal. Some criminals were sadists or psychopaths, but most weren’t. Even the ones who were generally preferred Largesse to killing potential contacts. And she’d never caught any of them on a bad enough day. It had never turned weird. Yet.

  The Broken Harvest was holed up in a crumbling dormitory, in the wretched upper levels of the same city where Thrennikos lived in such luxury. It was a sprawling, heavily rad-shielded eyesore of a building, erected for the first constructor crews back Before. The blocks around it were slums, filled with those who couldn’t afford anywhere else. No hulking mercenaries patrolled these streets, and a thousand little gangs and fraternities formed and died there nightly. The Harvest itself was no major player on Tarekuma as far as Kris could tell. It was based within the Hegemony, a thorn in the shelly ass of the Essiel. Probably this “Aklu” was not the actual leader of the gang—or sect or suicide cult or whatever they actually were. Aklu might just be their word for a branch manager. But even if Tarekuma hosted only a fraction of their power, she soon realized that still meant something on these streets.

  When she and Rollo left their taxi shuttle, one of this Aklu’s people had turned up to meet them. She wore an unimpressive old tunic, bulked out with some sort of armour coating, but Kris stiffened when she looked closer. The woman’s armour was slashed down the centre of her back, revealing the articulated lobster thing rooted to her spine. Another Tothiat, like the murderous son of a bitch who’d stolen their ship. And weren’t they supposed to be rare? And this Tothiat carried an actual standard, a pole with an honest-to-god flag hanging from it. It boasted a crooked black sunburst on grey or else it was a figure with many arms poised in some manner of dance. Whatever its meaning, people crossed the street or dived into alleys when they saw that flag coming. This might just be the Broken Harvest’s fingertip, here on Tarekuma, but these streets were under the Society’s shadow.

  Their guide was Heremon, she said, and Kris recalled that their hijacker, of unfond memory, had been Mesmon. There was no other family resemblance beyond the lobster. Still doesn’t have to get weird, she thought, as Heremon led them to that hideous concrete eyesore. Then they were inside, past a dozen humans and a couple of Hanni crowding out the atrium. They descended rough steps, still uneven and whorled where they’d been inexpertly printed, and came out into a big chamber, ranks of pillars propping up the ceiling. One wall was lined with desks of humans and Hanni at work, probably doing nothing more sinister than double-entry bookkeeping. Another wall was lined with armed guards: humans, and Castigar moulted into oddly proportioned humanoid bodies. At the far end of the room, however…

  Kris blinked. It had got weird. At her side, Rollo swore softly.

  Heremon stepped forward and her voice rang from the bare concrete walls, “The Unspeakable Aklu, the Razor and the Hook.”

  There were actually two… entities coming forward. One was a Hiver frame like no other Kris had ever seen. Their torso was open as a birdcage, revealing the seething knot of biomechanical roaches that made up their composite being. Their head was a golden human mask, set into a contemptuous laughing expression. They walked on long digitigrade legs like a bird, waving six slender arms. The whole looked like a surrealist’s take on an ancient god. None of this was what had caught Kris and Rollo’s attention.

  Behind the Hiver was The Unspeakable Aklu, without a doubt. It was gliding forwards on a great mechanized couch that curved in silvery wings either side of its occupant, held a half-metre off the floor by its own a-grav engine. Aklu was one of the Essiel—god-rulers of the Hegemonic cultists, lords of the Hegemony itself. And, apparently, a gangster.

  Kris remembered the august Essiel diplomat sent to Huei-Cavor. It had possessed a string of titles too: revered this and wonderful that. They were human labels, she knew, but they were supposed to reflect some deep Essiel truths. So what did it mean for an Essiel to be Unspeakable, a Razor and a Hook?

  Aklu was primarily shell, the two curved halves hinged at the base and overlapping for most of their three-metre height. They divided towards the top, cupping the motile parts of the creature. Its hard exterior seemed to be inscribed with complex, geometric runes, picked out in what looked like channels of mercury, co
nstantly flowing in defiance of any native gravity A wrinkled holdfast projected from its base to wind around the couch’s projections and hold the creature in place. From the top of the shell a multitude of thin arms opened like a fan, bristling with hairs and pincers. Three eyes, like red pearls, moved at the end of jointed stalks, viewing Aklu’s visitors from all sides.

  Kris was very afraid now and not entirely sure why. If it was a gangster, and the Broken Harvest a gang, this should be like any other negotiation. Except she’d never dealt with an Essiel before. Nobody she knew had. Human representatives of the Hegemony like Sathiel were the closest anybody ever came. Essiel were not supposed to be squatting in concrete bunkers, surrounded by desperados.

  At the same time some screaming part of her was telling her—It’s a giant clam. What’s the worst it could do? Except… She’d always dismissed those cultists who fervently attributed divinity to their shelly masters. Standing in the presence of this creature now… there was something about it.

  The Unspeakable Aklu’s arms flurried through a complex sequence of postures and Kris felt a rumble through the soles of her feet, resounding back from the walls to her body without ever reaching her ears. Only in retrospect did she realize that Aklu was being conversational.

  The Hiver started into motion, making an elaborate leg like a dancer, then straightening up. Kris noticed that they had two faces—one smiling gold mask facing them, and one with a downturned mouth facing away, a mask of tragedy. Then their half-dozen golden arms adopted a series of elegant poses and their bell-like voice rang out:

  “So step the sanctified within our halls, who walked with eyeless tread the hidden glade. Peruse them. Linger on each page of theirs—and verdict give on how they have transgressed.”

  The only operative word in all of that was transgressed as far as Kris was concerned. She froze, ready to fight, as Heremon came forward with some kind of device pointed right at them. For a wild moment she considered the ultimate sacrilege—leaping up on that couch with her knife, threatening oyster suppers for everyone, unless they let her and Rollo out. But what Heremon was holding didn’t look like a gun. The symbiont woman shook her head slightly in her direction, a cue for her to be silent? Then the Hiver adopted a new posture with their many arms—briefly mirrored by their floating master—before gesticulating again.