by Thorne Moore
‘End of concert. And Miss Gwynne is upright. Must be sober. Come for another deep massage?’
‘I came for an answer. Don’t worry, I think I’ve found it for myself.’
‘At least tell me the question.’
‘What’s happening? The screen went blank, we heard mysterious clanking. Merrit thought we must be suffering mechanical failure. Selden thought we might be taking on cargo. I came to see. Judging by that lip-licking tiger look, I assume Selden was right and we made an unscheduled pick-up.’
Tod rose with a contented smile ‘So we did. Which calls for a celebration. Are you sure you wouldn’t like that massage? Unscheduled pick-ups always leave me feeling highly feral.’ He pushed his door shut.
Yasmin ignored the invitation. ‘What have you done with the other ship?’
‘The Sampan? She’s hobbling on with the remainder of her cargo and counting her blessings.’
‘You don’t take it all, then?’
‘Doesn’t pay in the long run. They get desperate, we finish up destroying their ship. Which is the standard operating method out here, but I find a simple reciprocal analysis of both parties’ strengths and weaknesses more energy-efficient and productive.’
Yasmin regarded him with scornful incredulity, then turned away, exasperated, to examine the contents of his shelves. ‘Reciprocal analysis.’
‘Too soft for Ragnox’s head of Info-Prom?’ he suggested. ‘You’d go for the kill?’
She ignored the jibe, continuing to peruse his books. Genuine printed books. She cocked her head to one side to read, running a finger along the spines. ‘The Metaphysical poets, Dante, Elliot, Heaney, Hopkins. Anyone would think...’ She stopped, pulled out a thin volume. ‘Unconverging Lines, by Yasmin Gwynne. What’s this? A malicious attempt to rub it in? I suppose you picked it up on Ganymede.’
‘I’ve had it for years. I told you I’d retained an image of you.’
She turned it over to look at the picture of herself, eighteen years younger. ‘I can’t believe you have time for mere reading.’
‘I make time. I’m a very organised person in case you hadn’t noticed.’
‘You must be. So much to do. So much human cargo to deliver. So many roles to play. Pimp, poisoner, slaver.’
Tod caught her wrist and prised the book from her fingers. ‘Hardly a slaver. I deliver volunteers. Each one of you signed that contract willingly. You sign; I deliver. That’s all.’
‘But it isn’t all, is it? You poisoned Abigail; you nearly killed her. And you’ve set Nessy up for seven years of prostitution. What have you got planned for the rest of us, Dr Foxe of Abelard College?’
Tod rested a hand on her shoulder, as if to reassure her, then seized a handful of her hair and jerked her towards him. ‘Are you the one to lecture me on corruption, my dear?’ he whispered. ‘I’m not the poet who sold her soul to Pascal.’
‘No.’ She refused even to gasp. ‘I am.’
He released his grip, and replaced the book on its shelf, studying the titles to either side. ‘So I ask myself why, having been selling her soul for years without a qualm, she chooses Triton now?’ He turned back to her. ‘What happened to tip you finally into the abyss?’
‘What would you like the reason to be? You choose. I’m your scapegoat, aren’t I? A shadow from your golden past who’s fallen even further than you. Someone so soiled you can feel almost pure again.’
‘Very good. Diversionary tactics. But they haven’t worked. What happened?’
She leaned back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling, and shrugged in defeat. ‘Lanyer happened. Paul Lanyer. Deputy director of Financial Services. He thought Pascal was a loose cannon who’d destroy our credibility in IC business. Pascal thought he was a fly who needed swatting. He ordered me to swat him, so I did. I took him apart, released a trove of filthy, libellous insinuations, rumours, hints. Totally unfounded, of course. He was ruined, facing annihilating investigation, his wife left him. He committed suicide.’
Tod stepped back and lit a cigarette, handed it to her, lit another one as he studied her. ‘I don’t imagine that in your long poisonous career, he was the first victim you sent over the edge.’
‘No. I don’t think he was. But he was the first one I knew. Properly knew. The first one I liked. I liked him, I liked his wife, I liked his children, and they all liked me. I was their friend. And I destroyed them. Because that’s what I’m good at.’
‘Ah.’
‘When I heard he was dead, I went to H.Q to… I don’t know what I was going to do. I interrupted a video conference. They were drinking champagne. Pascal was proposing that they optimise an excellent outcome by speeding through – I don’t know, I don’t care what they were planning. I turned and walked out. I couldn’t be a part of it anymore. But then I couldn’t just repent and be absolved. I was beyond that.’
‘Hence Triton.’
‘You say that as if it makes sense. Does it? I don’t know from one day to the next why I’m doing anything, so if you can tell me why I chose Triton, I’d love to know.’
‘Expiation? No court has condemned you so you’ve sentenced yourself to the nastiest penitentiary in the System.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, that could be it.’
‘Or perhaps you intend to wash yourself clean in the blood of the Pascal lamb.’
‘Again...’
‘You know, don’t you, that you wouldn’t have a hope of assassinating Pascal. You’d be dead before you got within a kilometre of him, and he wouldn’t even know you’d attempted it.’
‘Maybe. Any other explanations?’
‘Suicide.’
‘Quicker to stay at home and use a bullet.’
‘But lacking the same degree of self-negation. Triton is beyond everything. Beyond humanity, beyond life and death, beyond light and warmth. It trembles on the brink of nothingness. A truly symbolic theatre for self-obliteration.’
‘I can see it would answer a desire to be utterly expunged. Well, three options.’ She inhaled wearily. ‘Damned if I know which one is driving me. Take your pick. Assuming you care.’
‘Not in the least. I am emotionally detached. Isn’t that reassuring?’
‘Very reassuring. No profit in emotional attachment.’
‘None whatsoever. Avoid it like the plague.’
She smiled. ‘You’d recommend feral lust as a more satisfying alternative?’
He stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Altogether more profitable.’
Negotiation and cargo exchange. David knew what had been going on. That is to say, he knew exactly how the ship had performed, what manoeuvres had been executed, what cargo had come aboard, even if motives and the accompanying sense of triumph eluded him. For David the functioning of the ship was sufficient, his kingdom and now, since Ganymede, he had freedom to range and to claim his own.
Even the dark cold deserts of A and C-Decks were lovingly toured and inspected by him, but D-Deck was always his ultimate goal, where the intestines of the ship were laid bare. Gone were the fripperies of automatic guidance and Ragnox Travel. Now the ship was functioning as she was intended to function, heart, nerves, muscles in co-ordinated action, giving her life and meaning and movement.
David ignored the people, except to note there were far fewer of them. The big man, an obstacle of rippling muscle and grinning teeth, was an irritation, given to singing loudly and out of tune at its work or jogging round the deck. Once the Tucker spotted David and boomed at him with a roar of laughter, but mostly David succeeded in avoiding it. It required effort because the big man wasn’t lazy like the old engineers. It was always busy. David studied its routine, so that he could predict and avoid.
The little man was a hindrance too. It muttered and mumbled a lot and scampered around the deck in unpredictable bursts of frenzy. Twice it ran into David. The first time it continued to babble, unaware. The second time it was violent, mistaking David for some sort of monster. David had vanished rapidly, to examine with anal
ytical interest the ripped and oozing tissue of the slash on his forearm. The Mich’s deranged behaviour didn’t strike him as odd. Or at least, no odder than any other. It was satisfying that, for the most part, these were the only two trespassers in his world. Occasionally others appeared – like the Smith, rifling like an inquisitive ferret, but they never stayed long and they never saw David.
If he could, David would have stayed on D-Deck, but Paradise was still just beyond his reach. Strands of time, invisible filaments, chained him to the human race. Once a day he had to allow Tod to look at him, check his pulse, give him his pills and ask meaningless questions. Twice a day he was under orders to present himself at the dining salon and eat.
David couldn’t disobey Tod’s instructions. There was a compulsion he could do nothing about, dragging him repeatedly back to B-Deck, but in the intervals he could devote himself to hearing and touching and understanding the ship. He knew that the lights in the analysis laboratory were working at only eighty-five percent efficiency because of a loose connection, that the kettle in D-Deck mess had blown a fuse, and that the anchor point securing the port-side lateral thruster, vital for speedy manoeuvring of the ship, had developed a hairline crack.
Yasmin let Tod’s finger trace delicately down from her mouth, over her chin, her neck, tracing each breast in turn, and on down. ‘What is it that you’re doing, Tod Foxe?’
He looked up. ‘You want a running commentary?’
She removed his hand. ‘I mean, what are you doing here, on this ship, frightening children with your pantomime pirate act?’
‘It’s not an act. It’s a vocation.’
‘No, it isn’t. It’s a cover.’ She sat up, plumping the pillows behind her head. ‘A cover for what you’re really up to.’
‘I make money, lots of it. That’s what I’m up to.’
‘Bullshit. This room, it’s a professor’s library. So somewhere, deep inside, you must still be the same person I met in Abelard College.’
‘You think you know who I really was, eighteen years ago?’
‘You didn’t poison your students. You didn’t run a brothel. Is there a purpose to all this? Beyond making us fear and loathe you?’
‘It wasn’t fear or loathing I was detecting a few minutes ago.’
‘No.’ She pushed his hand away again. ‘It was just sordid animal passion. Have you got a cabaret costume for me too?’
‘You wouldn’t carry it off as well as Nessy.’
‘What have you turned her into?’
He laughed. ‘I’m not that talented a fairy godmother. She’s back to what she was. Clytemnestra the Whip Lady. It might not be a divine calling, but it will give her a very good chance of survival on Triton. Whereas Maggy Jole had none.’
‘And we are all whores, after all. What about Abigail?’
‘I’ve made her want to cut my throat. Which is good. We can’t have her replacing one Daddy lover with another. Where she goes from here, we shall see.’
‘Wherever she goes, does it have to be Triton? She doesn’t have a chance there. Why couldn’t you just let her go on Ganymede?’
’25,000,’ Tod reminded her.
‘That’s nothing to you.’
‘It’s something. It all adds up. Come on, you know I couldn’t let her go. Her, or any of you. Escape is not an option. You all have to learn that. Some, I appreciate, will be more resistant than others.’
‘Like Smith? He has no intention of going anywhere near Triton.’
‘Always amusing. He didn’t quite manage to persuade the rest of you to steal the Heloise for him, so I predict he’ll change tack quite soon and try to jump ship instead.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Oh.’ Tod sighed. ‘These skittish kittens, they’re all the same. They venture outside without realising what the big bad world is really like. Of course he’ll try to jump. He still thinks his contract is a passing ploy in his grand scheme to return to civilisation incognito and scoop up the 19.73 million he’s cleverly laundered round the inter-corporate banking system.’
‘19.73? That’s very precise.’
‘Prestain Murphy Investments registered an unexplained loss when we were passing through the A-belt. They’d delayed a month, hoping that it would turn out to be an accounting error or some insider shenanigans that they could cover up. Eventually, they had to report it as a theft. I’m making an inspired guess that Smith was the culprit.’
‘A bit much, even for him, isn’t it?’
‘I doubt if anything is too much for our Jo Jo. He just had to be that little bit too clever and go for the absolute anonymity of a Triton contract as his escape route. He still thinks he can mislay the contract now he’s safely Out, and slip quietly back to retrieve his millions. He can’t.’
‘Because you won’t let him.’
‘That’s right,’ said Tod. ‘You are going to Triton, every one of you, screaming all the way if necessary.’
‘Because you want to make money.’
‘Yes.’ He slithered over her, off the bed, and began to pull his clothes on. ‘I want to make money.’
‘And you spend it on what?’ She glanced round. Apart from the books and the saxophone, the cabin was as devoid of character as any other on the ship. ‘Not on this luxurious lifestyle, that’s for sure. Tell me, really, why you moved from literature don and faculty saxophonist to this.’
‘Still faculty saxophonist, I hope.’ He tied his silk bandana and picked up his saxophone from the chair. ‘One good thing about life in the Outer Circles. It gives you plenty of time to practise.’ He sat down, caressing the keys fondly, then raised the saxophone to his lips.
She let him play, indulging him. When he finally paused, she repeated, ‘So why?’
He played a few more idle notes before replying. ‘I told you before. I lost my job. Abelard College was bought out. I was surplus to requirements.’
Yasmin put her hands behind her head, considering him thoughtfully. ‘Abelard College was an independent. Faculty owned. I researched it. You must have thought you were safe from any prospective buy-out.’
‘We owned just fifty-one percent. Enough, in theory, to ensure our intellectual purity.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘It made our financial situation interesting sometimes. Creative accountancy. We got by.’
‘Until Pascal made an offer the Physics department couldn’t refuse. Attracting the attention of the head of Ragnox OC operations; that must have been an honour you felt keenly.’
‘Oh, keenly. Through and through. It was quite unnerving, realising that he was watching our little domestic concerns. I always imagined he didn’t know where Earth was. I’m sure, at that stage, I didn’t know where Triton was.’
‘It must have been unnerving to him too, discovering that he had to negotiate politely, instead of sending in a hit squad and taking. Or is that what he did?’
‘Negotiation was in the form of a large payment. Politeness didn’t come into it. The offer was huge. Eve’s apple to us and peanuts to Ragnox. We were set to turn it down, but alas, frailty, thy name is Physics. It only took one vote to tip the balance, and the rest of us were out. No loss to Pascal. He only wanted the one research project.’
Yasmin reached for her own clothes and sorted them absently. ‘You could have found another job in academia. No need to run away to sea.’
Tod stood up, stretched. ‘Maybe I was just ripe for a change. I had to get to Ganymede and I was—’
‘Why Ganymede?’
‘Why not? Why anything? Anyway, I’d rashly tried to fight Pascal over the college. It cleaned me out, left me homeless, penniless, unemployed, so I worked my passage on a liner – book-keeping, playing in the band. A couple of the other musicians had a scam planned, to run supplies to Titan IV. They invited me to join them and I went because I needed time to think things through. One week over the Line, and I realised my companions didn’t have the first idea how to manage things out here.’
‘Whereas you
did.’
‘Yes,’ said Tod cheerfully. ‘I could see exactly how to go about it. We parted company a few days before they had a very messy run-in with a pack of Ragnox gunships.’
‘And you’ve been out here ever since.’
‘More or less.’
‘Your ninth sortie.’
‘Ninth in the Heloise. Eleventh overall.’
‘That’s even worse. Way over the odds.’
‘I know. I’m surely tempting fate, aren’t I?’
‘You must have had your time to think by now.’ Languidly, Yasmin started pulling her clothes on. ‘And your fortune. Why do you stay?’
He concentrated on putting his saxophone away in its case. Putting the case away in a closet. ‘Home is where the heart is?’
Yasmin studied his back as she pushed her hair straight. ‘Is that supposed to be trite or cryptic?’
Tod laughed. ‘You’ll just have to work that—’
He was interrupted abruptly by a strident alarm bell. Addo’s voice, controlled but urgent, said, ‘Weasels.’
‘Weasels?’ asked Yasmin, but Tod was already out of the door, heading for Flight Control. She followed out of curiosity.
Flight Control. This was not as she had remembered it from the pre-Ganymede days of cluttered games consoles and calculated confusion. Now it was clean, logical, carefully integrated. It had the feel of an operating theatre.
Tod joined Addo at the command module. ‘Where? Yes. I see.’
Siegfried was at one of the subsidiary stations, looking tense, waiting impatiently to catch Tod’s attention. ‘I figure our run-in with the Sampan must have attracted interest.’
Yasmin looked over his shoulder at a monitor on which coloured lights were displayed, moving in chaotic irregular jerks, occasionally shooting forward like chameleon tongues and retracting just as suddenly.
‘It would,’ said Tod. ‘Time for a slippery hitch, Major?’
‘I’ve got the ends,’ said Addo, without looking up.
‘Right.’ Tod strode to the alcove with the Ultima, sat down and began to adjust settings as Tim came galloping in.