by Patty Jansen
Thayu flicked me a warning glance. . . . listening in . . . careful . . .
What?
The high-pitched noise whined in my brain.
She shook her head, probably trying to tell me not to use the feeder.
I raked my hand through my hair and pulled the feeder’s legs to lift it ever so slightly from my skin. The noise stopped. But the feeder wouldn’t stay detached like this, programmed as it was to connect with the patch in my brain. Already, the legs moved to reattach itself. I resisted an urge to scratch the spot. When it sent a warm burst through my head, I blocked it.
The guide searched Thayu, and found nothing. Then it was my turn. He found the timer and turned it over in his hands. My heart thudded in my throat, but he handed it back to me. I slipped it into the safety of my pocket. Phew.
Finally, he asked the two of us to follow.
The two guards took up their usual positions, one on either side of the door, their hands behind their backs. Already, I longed for their comforting obsidian presence. I’d left them behind when I went to see Sirkonen, and look what had happened. This venue was much less safe. Into the lion’s den indeed.
A short passageway led to a glass-covered courtyard, full of people.
Some sort of cafeteria, or canteen, with rows of tables, where many people sat sharing drinks and talking. A serving robot trundled between tables, avoiding wayward chairs and planter boxes overflowing with greenery.
The knot of muscles in my neck relaxed. I checked my tracker—there were now two lights—one flashing quickly for Thayu next to me, the other flashing more slowly for the two guards.
The guide led us across the courtyard, zigzagging between tables. Many of the cafe’s patrons turned. Eyebrows rose, whispers travelled amongst the varied crowd. In fact, I didn’t think I had ever seen so many different kinds of people outside zhamata. Without exception, these people glared at Thayu.
The guide stopped at a table where a man sat in the shade of a potted tree. The guide bowed and the man returned his greeting, but I didn’t recognise what language they spoke.
Dressed in a khaki kaftan, he looked to be a local, but there was something familiar about him. I wracked my brains trying to think where in the past few days I had met this olive-skinned man with curly greying hair. Any of the keihu locals? A Barresh councillor? Mr Renkati? When the guide beckoned me closer, I saw the whiteness covering the man’s irises, which accounted for his emotionless stare. A tilt of the head—he was listening, but not meeting my eyes, because he couldn’t.
I also realised he was not local. He shaved. And that narrowed the possibilities as to who he was to exactly one person.
My heart racing, I sat down. Folded my hands on the table, studying him. I had met him before, after all, a long time ago, when I was young and he could still see.
“Seymour Kershaw?”
He smiled and inclined his head.
“Mr Wilson, I presume?” In an odd kind of Isla with a trace of an American twang.
Seymour Kershaw indeed.
A recovering breath, and another one, and then a chilling thought: had Sirkonen known?
“Do you know that everyone on Earth thinks you’re dead?”
He chuckled. “Have you been asked to look for my body?”
“I don’t think it’s funny.” I fought to keep my voice even. On Earth people fought in this man’s name, and he sat here without a care in the world—laughing about it even.
Kershaw’s face sobered. “You’re right, of course. And I can assure you, there is nothing funny about the situation.”
“Are you kept here against your will?”
“No, no. Not at all.”
“What then? Why let your family suffer? Do you know that . . .” Heck, the movie. A feeling of cold went through me, and then another thought. “You’re Amoro Renkati?” The trick of the century: sponsor a movie which portrays your own death.
“Me? No.” He spread his hands. “This is Amoro Renkati.”
The truth sank in. “Amoro Renkati isn’t a person. It’s an organisation.”
“That’s correct. In case you’re wondering, it means Enlightened Path.”
“In Aghyrian.” And wasn’t there once a terrorist organisation on Earth with a name very much like it?
“Yes,” Kershaw confirmed my guess.
And that was probably where Marin Federza fitted in. We will support you he had said, we being this organisation, or the Aghyrians. The enemy were the Coldi, who had made some very blatant attempts to annex certain powers on Earth, and who were still the most likely candidates to have killed Sirkonen.
I glanced at all those faces in the courtyard. Kedrasi, Indrahui, Damarcian, and people from many other races, at least two hundred of them, all in local khaki dress. Many still glared openly at Thayu.
There were not just a few dissenting voices. It was a political movement, and likely their invitation of me to the complex, heck, even their offering of their apartment for my use, was a calculated gesture. I had wondered when I would be called upon to honour the unspoken agreement I had entered by accepting the accommodation. It seemed that time was now.
It also seemed that Chief Delegate Akhtari was fully aware of the situation. She had supplied me with a zhayma who had obvious loyalties to Asto, and put me into the hands of an organisation which was against Asto. What was that gesture supposed to mean?
She wanted me to take a stance.
She wanted me to evaluate matters as an outsider.
She wanted me to be a referee.
My position had been bumped up at least ten notches in importance. And that was typical gamra politics, too. At Nations of Earth, I would have received briefings; here, I was thrown into the situation unprepared. Sometimes I believed that innocent blundering was part of their way to test novices in the political game, a tactic they’d applied to me ever since I arrived.
And that annoyed me, because, damn it, there was far too much at stake to risk stupid mistakes through ignorance.
I needed space to think.
“Tell me, how did you become involved with these people?”
Kershaw leaned forward on the table. “Well, like you, I arrived in Barresh full of ideals and plans, but almost immediately things happened to me that had not been planned. Before I left, I had an agreement that I would have a small office with two staff. The people in question, two Indrahui, I had met before. But when I arrived, the two weren’t here. I was informed that they had been caught up in the civil unrest at Indrahui and couldn’t join me for the foreseeable future. Instead, someone in the upper hierarchy appointed a single person, a Coldi woman, to replace them. This woman knew nothing about my situation or about Earth, and within a few days of starting, she had made it clear that she expected favours of me. She expected to share my apartment and my bed, for chrissakes.”
It was fairly well-known in diplomatic circles that Kershaw’s long-time partner, who had died in an accident, had been male.
“More than that. When I started prying into who she was, I found that she counted a number of Asto spies amongst her friends. She was passing information back to them. Personal information.”
I couldn’t help but feel chilled. I might have reconciled with Thayu, but this sounded horribly similar to my situation. “Did you find out what they did with this information? Who wanted it, and why?”
“I went and asked, didn’t I?” There was a tone of belligerence in his voice.
“Did anyone tell you?” I imagined him barging into Delegate Akhtari’s office, and demanding why there was listening equipment in his living quarters—
“They said it was nothing unusual. I demanded that everything be taken out and dismantled. I dema
nded to have my original staff returned to me.”
Perfectly reasonable demands, by Earth standards, but—
“They wouldn’t comply, so I ripped all the cables out myself, and I told the lady that she could leave my employment, unless she was willing to take orders only from me. She left.”
“That would have made some people happy.” I let sarcasm into my voice.
“How did you guess?” Equally sarcastic.
“They would have viewed that as a fracture in imayu, the loyalty network.”
“Damn the network. She just couldn’t stand it that I’d outsmarted her. So she went on a rampage and deleted all my accounts and connections, and so I looked her up and confronted her. She wouldn’t see me, but next thing, there was this piece of paper—”
“A writ.”
He turned his head to me, lifting one eyebrow. “You know all about this, do you?”
I wasn’t sure if he was sarcastic. “I know enough to see that these misunderstandings could have led to led to a writ. What was it for?”
He snorted. “Would you believe it? Her clothes, her personal items and her reader. But you know, there was spy stuff on that reader. Material I needed to prove that someone was passing my correspondence with Earth to some higher authority in Asto.”
Damn, this got worse and worse.
I wanted to tell him that this was supposed to happen, that every delegate was under constant scrutiny. At the same time, my anger grew. None of this was Kershaw’s fault. He was untrained, and not the right type of character for this job.
“I know what you’re thinking, Mr Wilson. You’re thinking poor Kershaw, back then we knew nothing. We know a lot more these days”?
“We do know a lot more. These people don’t react the same way we do. You can’t apply our values to their deeds. The woman appointed to replace your assistants thought she was doing what the job required. They don’t distinguish between family and work spheres of their lives. They need to work with an equal, and need to fit into their part of society. It’s pathological.”
“That may be, but don’t tell me that you, too, are not experiencing invasion of your private domain by Coldi people with connections you are not entirely sure about.”
Damn. After meeting Ezhya Palayi, I’d wallpapered over my concerns in that direction. Because I didn’t even completely understand Nicha’s connections, because I’d given up hope of ever fully understanding them. Thayu had volunteered her connection with the spy division easily enough, but what else was there?
My heart was thudding against my ribs. I glanced over my shoulder at Thayu, who wouldn’t understand a word of this conversation. I found it hard to believe that she might be part of a bigger plot, but then again, what did I know? What did any of us really understand about these people?
“I can tell it concerns you,” Kershaw concluded. “So let me tell you our view. This is all official, by the way; that’s why I haven’t asked your minder to leave you. She already knows this.”
How did he know that Thayu was Coldi and that she was with me and that she was female? He was blind.
“You believe that if we understand the differences between the many peoples of gamra, we can work out a workable agreement.”
“I do, but—”
“Good, then we agree. With one exception. Have you noticed, in your case, as it was in mine, who has been doing all the adapting? That would be you, right? Or us. All of us in this room. Have you noticed who has not been doing any adapting?”
Yes, this was about the Coldi.
“I guess I don’t have to tell you that either. When more than half the votes in gamra are yours, do you need to adapt? When you can claim that your social structure, your instinct, whatever, justifies your repression of other people, justifies the bullying, the invasions, do you truly respect everyone else in the neighbourhood? It is our belief that this isn’t the case. They are happy to play by all the rules, as long as they can be chief. This is not something we can change. The need to dominate is endemic in the Coldi. It’s part of their genetic makeup. Meanwhile, they will invade Earth. Not by force, but by stealth. They give us their technology as they already have for such a long time, and eventually, they’ll demand something in return.”
All my worries returned. Kershaw had much more experience than I. I couldn’t prove that he was wrong; in fact, there were some signs that he might be right.
There was a Coldi proverb: lend the neighbours mushrooms and harvest bread—a deed done for another put the receiving party in debt. Asto had shared with Earth a lot of its technology. It wasn’t obvious, and had gone on for a long time, but what if, just if, Asto wanted something in return, such as was Coldi custom? If all those little bugs in computer chips amounted to something coherent? Some paranoid people on Earth were arguing just this in ever-louder voices. Could they be right?
No—no. The first Coldi settlers on Earth, the ones to settle very quietly on the Greek islands in the 1960’s were refugees from Misha’s totalitarian regime. They weren’t inclined to be organised. Besides, if such a coordinated master plan existed, wouldn’t it have been activated in time of stress, such as—?
Now.
And damn it, I didn’t know what was happening on Earth. Danziger was playing hard to get, because he didn’t trust me.
I swallowed. Keep your options open, Mr Wilson.
I didn’t trust Danziger. I didn’t trust Ezhya Palayi either.
“So, if, for a moment I believed you were right, what is it that Amoro Renkati wishes to do to fight it?”
“Not fight it, Mr Wilson. You cannot fight Asto and win. After your experience with the bully today, you will know that. But we can simply ignore them. Break away.”
“Break away?”
“Start again, away from Asto. Start our own group of entities who will not be overwhelmed by the juggernaut.”
“Away from gamra?”
“Precisely.”
“Who is we?” But a glance around the hall provided me with that answer. Sections of the Kedrasi, Indrahui and Damarcian population. No Coldi. Hence the vicious looks at Thayu. “All these people? Their governments?”
Kershaw held up his hands. “Not yet; no authorities as yet. We’re working on it. In fact, President Sirkonen was the first leader who said he’d join.”
Oh holy shit. I saw where this was going. “You’re saying Asto has killed him for that reason?”
“You’re moving a little fast, Mr Wilson. No one except the murderer knows who has killed President Sirkonen.”
I had heard better-veiled accusations. “Nations of Earth know about this, too?”
“No, and that is where we could use your help. When Sirkonen was killed, the negotiations broke down. We need to initiate talks with President Danziger and whoever takes over from him after the elections. We’d like to offer Nations of Earth an alternative to submitting to the tyranny of Asto. We’ll have our own trade, our own rules, and real democracy. All of it very attractive to Nations of Earth.”
And you’ll have war. I was sure of that. Coldi interests would hold no loyalties to these groups; there was a break in the network and nothing would hold them back from violent action. And on top of that . . .
“You can form an independent group, but aren’t you forgetting that gamra controls the Exchange? You’ll be denied access and can’t travel.”
Kershaw smiled. “That’s true, but let’s just say that we’ve found some technology to overcome that problem.”
“You have?” Aghyrian technology, I was sure. “It would have to be a pretty major operation.” In the early days of its operation, just the auxiliary equipment of the Athens Exchange would consume so much power as to leave the city in the dark. No one knew ab
out it until gamra came clean and legalised the illegal network node. Exchange technology was incredibly powerful and expensive, and needed more than a backyard operation to run.
“There have been some major technological breakthroughs,” Kershaw said. “The prototypes we have are both much smaller and more efficient in energy. If we use this technology to set up an alternative network, prices of transport would fall considerably.”
Exactly in line with Danziger’s objections to the current operation of the Exchange.
“I would be interested in seeing that technology.”
He hesitated.
“I’m a diplomat. I keep secrets for a living. If I’m to understand and argue your point, and I will be seeing President Danziger soon, I want to see what you’ve got.” Oh yes, I could play the bluff card, too.
“All right. Come with me, Mr Wilson.”
Chapter 19
* * *
FOR A MAN whose eyes were white with cataracts, Kershaw rose in a manner much more fluid than I expected. He didn’t bash into the table either, or hit his head on an overhanging branch. Familiarity with the environment?
Thayu rose, tigerlike, but waited until the others had started moving. First Kershaw, greeting a few people in the hall—how could he see them?—then me, with her close behind.
Many in the crowd eyed us all the way to the door. When we left the courtyard, I found myself walking next to Kershaw. His eyes stared straight ahead and didn’t move.
We went from the hall into a passage that faded into darkness, with the occasional pinprick of light, and any number of doors and passages on either side. We turned left, and then right in dark stone corridors. This place was like a warren.
Thayu?
The feeder remained silent.
A couple of others had joined us, no more than dark shapes slithering out of doorways and falling into step behind me. I checked the tracker on my arm. The light that indicated the two guards flickered slower than before. The other light, indicating Thayu, also blinked more slowly.