Manson had darted away at Serafina's first burst. The man ran quickly to Warren's left and Warren followed, feet heavy, hands automatically adding rounds to the 0.22 clip. In the dim light beyond the screams and shots Warren tracked the lurching form, framed against the distant city glow. Some around the circle had pistols, too, and they scattered, trying to direct fire against Serafina's quick, short bursts.
Warren trotted into the darkness, feet unsteady, keeping Manson's silhouette in view. He stumbled over outcroppings, but kept going despite the sudden lances of agony creeping down into his legs.
Warren knew he had to save energy, that Manson could outrun him easily. So he stopped at the crest of a rise, settled in against a rock and held the puny 0.22 in his right hand, bracing it with his left. He could see Manson maybe twenty meters away, trotting along, angling toward the ranch's barn. He squeezed off a shot. The pop was small against the furious gunfire behind him, but the figure fell. Warren got up and calculated each step as he trudged down the slope. A shadow rose. Manson was getting up. Warren aimed again and fired and knew he had missed. Manson turned and Warren heard a barking explosion - as a sharp slap knocked him backward, tumbling into sharp gravel.
Gasping, he got up against a massive weight. On his feet, rocky, he slogged forward. Pock pock gunfire from behind was a few sporadic shots, followed immediately by furious automatic bursts, hammering on and on into the chill night.
Manson was trying to get up. He lurched on one leg, tried to bring his own gun up again, turned - and Warren fired three times into him at a few meters range. The man groaned, crazed eyes looking at Warren and he wheezed out, "Why?" - then toppled.
Warren blinked at the stars straight overhead and realized he must have fallen. The stars were quite beautiful in their crystal majesty.
Serafina loomed above him. He tried to talk but had no breath.
Serafina said softly, "They're all gone. Done. Your triumph."
Acid came up in his throat as he wheezed out, "What...next..."
Serafina smiled, shook her head. "No next. You were the first, the innovator. We followed you. There have been many others, shadowing you closely on nearby space-time lines, arriving at the murder sites - to savour the reflected glory."
He managed, "Others. Glory?"
Serafina grimaced. "We could tell where you went - we all detected entangled correlations, to track your ethical joggs. Some just followed, witnessed. Some imitated you. They went after lesser serial killers. Used your same simple, elegant methods - minimum tools and weapons, quick and seamless."
Warren blinked. "I thought I was alone - "
"You were alone. The first. But the idea spread, later. I come from more than a century after you."
He had never thought of imitators. Cultures changed, one era thinking the death penalty was obscene, another embracing it as a solution. "I tried to get as many -"
"As you could, of course." She stroked his arm, soothing the disquiet that flickered across his face, pinching his mouth. "The number of timelines is only a few hundred - Gupta showed that in my century - so it's not a pointless infinity."
"Back there in Oklahoma -"
"That was Clyde, another jogger. He made a dumb mistake, got there before you. Clyde was going to study the aftermath of that. He backed out as soon as he could. He left Clifford for you."
Warren felt the world lift from him and now he had no weight. Light, airy. "He nearly got me killed, too."
Serafina shrugged. "I know; I've been tagging along behind you, with better transflux gear. I come from further up our shared timestream, see? Still, the continuing drop in the homicide rate comes at least partly from the work of jogg people, like me."
He eyed her suspiciously. "Why did you come here?"
Serafina simply leaned over and hugged him. "You failed here. I wanted to change that. Now you've accomplished your goal here - quick mercy for the unknowing victims."
This puzzled him but of course it didn't matter anymore, none of it. Except -
"Manson..."
"He killed you here. But now, in a different timestream - caused by me appearing - you got him." Her voice rose happily, eyes bright, teeth flashing in a broad smile.
He tried to take this all in. "Still..."
"It's all quantum logic, see?" she said brightly. "So uncertainty applies to time travel. The side-jogg time traveller affects the time stream he goes to. So then later side-slipping people, they have to correct for that."
He shook his head, not really following.
She said softly, "Thing is, we think the irony of all this is delicious. In my time, we're more self conscious, I guess."
"What...?"
"An ironic chain, we call it. To jogg is to act, and be acted upon." She touched him sympathetically. "You did kill so many. Justice is still the same."
She cocked his own gun, holding it up in the dull sky glow, making sure there was a round in the chamber. She snapped it closed. "Think of it as a mercy." She lowered the muzzle at him and gave him a wonderful smile.
The Ki-anna
Gwyneth Jones
Gwyneth Jones was born in Manchester, England and is the author of more than twenty novels for teenagers, mostly under the name Ann Halam, and several highly regarded SF novels for adults. She has won two World Fantasy awards, the Arthur C. Clarke award, the British Science Fiction Association short story award, the Dracula Society's Children of the Night award, the Philip K. Dick award, and shared the first Tiptree award, in 1992, with Eleanor Arnason. Her most recent books are novel Spirit and essay collection Imagination/Space. Upcoming is new story collection The Universe of Things. She lives in Brighton, UK, with her husband and son; a Tonkinese cat called Ginger and her young friend Milo.
If he'd been at home, he'd have thought, Dump Plant Injuries. In the socially unbalanced, pioneer cities of the Equatorial Ring, little scavengers tangled with the recycling machinery. They needed premium, Earth-atmosphere-and-pressure nursing or the flesh would not regenerate - which they didn't get. The gouges and dents would be permanent: skinned over, like the scars on her forearms. Visible through thin clothing, like the depressions in her thighs. But this wasn't Mars, and she wasn't human, she was a Ki. He guessed, uneasily, at a more horrifying childhood poverty.
She seemed very young for her post: hardly more than a girl. She could almost have been a human girl with gene-mods. Could have chosen to adopt that fine pelt of silky bronze, glimmering against the bare skin of her palms, her throat and face. Chosen those eyes, like drops of black dew; the hint of a mischievous animal muzzle. Her name was Ki-anna, she represented the KiAn authorities. Her partner, a Shet called Roaaat Bhvaaan, his heavy uniform making no concession to the warmth of the space-habitat, was from Interplanetary Affairs, and represented Speranza. The Shet looked far more alien: a head like a grey boulder, naked wrinkled hide hooding his eyes.
Patrice didn't expect them to be on his side, this odd couple, polite and sympathetic as they seemed. He must be careful, he must remember that his mind and body were reeling from the Buonarotti Transit - two instantaneous interstellar transits in two days, the first in his life. He'd never even seen a non-human sentient biped, in person, this time last week: and here he was in a stark police interview room with two of them.
"You learned of your sister's death a Martian year ago?"
"Her disappearance. Yes."
Ki-anna watched, Bhvaaan questioned: he wished it were the other way round. Patrice dreaded the Speranza mindset. Anyone who lives on a planet is a lesser form of life, of course we're going to ignore your appeals, but it's more fun to ignore them slowly, very, very slowly -
"We can agree she disappeared," muttered the Shet, what looked like mordant humour tugging the lipless trap of his mouth. "Yet, aah, you didn't voice your concerns at once?"
"Lione is, was, my twin. We were close, however far... When the notification of death came it was very brief, I didn't take it in. A few days later I collapsed at work, I had to tak
e compassionate leave."
At first he'd accepted the official story. She's dead, Lione is dead. She went into danger, it shouldn't have happened but it did, on a suffering war-torn planet unimaginably far away...
The Shet rolled his neckless head, possibly in sympathy.
"You're, aah, a Social Knowledge Officer. Thap must be a demanding job. No blame if a loss to your family caused you to crash-out."
"I recovered. I examined the material that had arrived while I was ill: everything about my sister's last expedition, and the 'investigation.' I knew there was something wrong. I couldn't achieve anything at a distance. I had to get to Speranza, I had to get myself here -"
"Quite right, child. Can't do anything at long distance, aah."
"I had to apply for financial support, the system is slow. The Buonarotti Transit network isn't for people like me -" He wished he'd bitten that back. "I mean, it's for officials, diplomats, not civilian planet-dwellers."
"Unless they're idle super-rich," rumbled the Shet. "Or refugees getting shipped out of a hellhole, maybe. Well, you persisted. Your sister was Martian too. What was she doing here?"
Patrice looked at the very slim file on the table. No way of telling whether that tablet held a ton of documents or a single page.
"Don't you know?"
"Explain it to us," said Ki-anna. Her voice was sibilant, a hint of a lisp.
"Lione was a troposphere engineer. She was working on the KiAn Atmosphere Recovery Project. But you must know..." They waited, silently. "All right. The KiAn war practically flayed this planet. The atmosphere's being repaired, it's a major Speranza project. Out here it's macro-engineering. They've created a - a membrane, like a casting mould, of magnetically charged particles. They're shepherding small water ice asteroids, other debris with useful constituents, through it. Controlled annihilation releases the gases, bonding and venting propagates the right mix. We pioneered the technique. We've enriched the Martian atmosphere the same way... nothing like the scale of this. The job also has to be done from the bottom up. The troposphere, the lowest level of the inner atmosphere, is alive. It's a saturated fluid full of viruses, fragments of DNA and RNA, amino acids, metabolising mineral traces, pre-biotic chemistry. The configuration is unique to a living planet, and it's like the mycorrhizal systems in the soil, back on Earth. If it isn't there, or it's not right, nothing will thrive."
He couldn't tell if they knew it all, or didn't understand a word.
"Lione knew the tropo reconstruction wasn't going well. She found out there was an area of the surface, under the An-lalhar Lakes, where the living layer might be undamaged. This - where we are now - is the Orbital Refuge Habitat for that region. She came here, determined to get permission from the Ruling An to collect samples -"
Ki-anna interrupted softly. "Isn't the surviving troposphere remotely sampled by the Project automats, all over the planet?"
"Yes, but that obviously wasn't good enough. That was Lione. If it was her responsibility, she had to do everything in her power to get the job done."
"Aah. Raarpht... Your sister befriended the Ruling An, she gained permission, she went down, and she stepped on a landmine. You understand that there was no body to be recovered? That she was vaporised?"
"So I was told."
Ki-anna rubbed her scarred forearms, the Shet studied Patrice. The interview room was haunted by meaning, shadowy with intent -
"Aap. You need to make a 'pilgrimage.' A memorial journey?"
"No, it's not like that. There's something wrong."
The shadows tightened, but were they for him or against him?
"Lione disappeared. I don't speak any KiAn language, I didn't have to, the reports were in English: when I hunted for more detail there are translator bots. I haven't missed anything. A vaporised body doesn't vanish. All that tissue, blood, and bone leaves forensic traces. None. No samples recovered. She was there to collect samples, don't tell me it was forbidden... She didn't come back, that's all. Something happened to her, something other than a warzone accident -"
"Are you saying your sister was murdered, Patrice?"
"I need to go down there."
"I can see you'd feel thap way. You realise KiAn is uninhabitable?"
"A lot of places on Mars are called 'uninhabitable.' My work takes me to the worst-off regions. I can handle myself."
"Aap. How do you feel about the KiAn issue, Messer Ferringhi?"
Patrice opened his mouth, and shut it. He didn't have a prepared answer for that one. "I don't know enough."
The Shet and the Ki looked at each other, for the first time. He felt they'd been through the motions, and they were agreeing to quit.
"As you know," rumbled Bhvaaan, "The Ruling An must give permission. The An-he will see you?"
"I have an appointment."
"Then thap's all for now. Enjoy your transit hangover in peace."
Patrice Ferringhi took a moment, looking puzzled, before he realised he could go. He stood, hesitated, gave an odd little bow and left the room.
The Shet and the Ki relaxed somewhat.
"Collapsed at work," said Roaaat Bhvaaan. "Thap's not good."
"We can't all be made of stone, Shet."
"Aaah well. Cross fingers, Chief."
They were resigned to strange English figures of speech. The language of Speranza, of diplomacy, was also the language of interplanetary policing. You became fluent, or you relied on unreliable transaid: and you screwed up.
"And all my toes," said the Ki.
On his way to his cabin, Patrice found an ob-bay. He stared into a hollow sphere, permeated by the star-pricked darkness of KiAn system space: the limb of the planet obscured, the mainstar and the blue "daystar" out of sight. Knurled objects flew around, suddenly making endless field-beams visible. One lump rushed straight at him, growing huge: seemed to miss the ob-bay by centimetres, with a roar like monstrous thunder. The big impacts could be close enough to make this Refuge shake. He'd felt that, already. Like the Gods throwing giant furniture about -
He could not get over the fact that nothing was real. Everything had been translated here by the Buonarotti Torus, as pure data. This habitat, this shipboard jumper he wore, this body. All made over again, out of local elements, as if in a 3D scanner... The scarred Ki woman fascinated him, he hardly knew why. The portent he felt in their meeting (had he really met her?) was what they call a "transit hangover." He must sleep it off.
The Ki-anna was rated Chief of Police, but she walked the beat most days. All her officers above nightstick grade were seconded from the Ruling An's Household Guard: she didn't like to impose on them. The Ki - natural street-dwellers, if ever life was natural again - melted indoors as she approached. Her uniform, backed by Speranza, should have made the refugees feel safe: but none of them trusted her. The only people she could talk to were the habitual criminals. They appreciated the Ruling An's strange appointment.
She made her rounds, visiting the nests where law-abiding people better stay away. The gangsters knew a human had "joined the station."
They were very curious. She sniffed the wind and lounged with the idlers, giving up Patrice Ferringhi in scraps, a resource to be conserved. The pressure of the human's strange eyes was still with her -
No one ought to look at her scars like that, it was indecent.
But he was an alien, he didn't know how to behave.
She didn't remember being chosen for the treatment that would render her flesh delectable, while ensuring that what happened wouldn't kill her. She only knew she'd been sold (tradition called it an honour) so that her littermates could live. She would always wonder, why me? What was wrong with me? We were very poor, I understand that, but why me? It had all been for nothing, anyway. Her parents and her littermates were dead, along with everyone else. So few survivors! A handful of die-hards on the surface. A token number of Ki taken away to Speranza, in the staggeringly distant Blue System. Would they ever return? The Ki-anna thought not... Six Refuge Habi
tats in orbit. And of course some of the Heaven-born, who'd seen what was coming before the war, and escaped to Balas or to Shet.
At curfew she filed a routine report, and retired to her quarters in the Curtain Wall. Roaaat, who was sharing her living space, was already at home. It was fortunate that Shet didn't normally like to sit in Speranza-style "chairs": he'd have broken a hole in her ceiling. His bulk, as he lay at ease, dwarfed her largest room. They compared notes.
"All the Refuges have problems," said the Ki-anna. "But I get the feeling I have more than my share. Extortion, intimidation, theft and violence -"
"We can grease the wheels," said Roaat. "Strictly off the record, we can pay your villains off. It's distasteful, not the way to do police work."
"But expedient."
"Aap... He seemed very taken with you," said Roaaat.
"The human? I don't know how you make that out."
"Thap handsome Blue, yaas. I could smell pheromones."
"He isn't a 'Blue'" said the Ki-anna. "The almighty Blues rule Speranza. The humans left behind on Earth, or 'Mars' - What is 'Mars'? Is it a moon?"
"Noope. A smaller planet in the Blue system."
"Well, they aren't Blues, they're just ordinary aliens."
"I shall give up matchmaking. You don't appreciate my help... Let's hope the An-he finds your ordinary alien more attractive."
The Ki-anna shivered. "I think he will. He's a simple soul."
Roaaat was an undemanding guest, despite his size. They shared a meal, based on "culturally neutral" Speranza Food Aid. The Shet spread his bedding. The Ki-anna groomed herself, crouched by a screen that showed views of the Warrens. Nothing untoward stirred, in the simulated night. She pressed knuckle-fur to her mouth. Sometimes the pain of living, haunted by the uncounted dead, became very hard to bear. Waking from every sleep to remember afresh that there was nothing left.
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