My terminal chimed so I glanced down at Aggie’s screen.
Zanzibar Black: Beninzay, female, born Benin, 2068; father Benin, mother Beninzay. Ranks/designations: current—Captain, HomeWorld Security; previous—Medical Officer-Surgeon, Benin MedCentre, Battalion Field Hospitals on Western Front, Sydney and Auckland, North Border.
Bloody hell. Captain Black. Dr Black. North Border Field Hospital. I checked the date of her deployment there.
2116. Eleven years ago.
The year I lost my legs in the northern trenches. No evac for three months from that stinking on-border field hospital. Stranded, in a mostly drug-induced fog, dancing a beguine with the imaginary love of my life. Or so I thought.
I headed out of my office to find out if Chief Bascome had thought to pin the usual visitor’s trackerbot on our mysterious bloody HomeWorld spook, so I could track her down and…
My plasma-phone vibrated with my mother’s urgent ID again. I’d put her off too many times, so I forced a smile and raised my wrist so we could see each other. I also took the lift to the next floor.
“Finally! I’ve been calling for hours.”
“I’m kinda busy, Mum.”
“I know, Jane. You’re investigating your Uncle’s murder.”
“He’s not my uncle.”
“He most surely is today, Jane. He was helping your Aunt.”
“You knew about this?” I snapped.
“No. I just knew he was helping.” My mother—the queen of deniability. “Not that his endeavours actually helped. She’s been kidnapped.”
“What?” I hovered out of the lift and headed for the Chiefs’ wing.
“Juno—my sister, your aunt—has been kidnapped.”
“Why didn’t you call the cops, Mum?”
“I did. You didn’t answer,” she snapped, scowling like all of this was my fault.
“There are other cops… Forget it. How do you know? Is there a ransom demand?”
“I was with her when they snatched her from the Daimaru Flywalk. Three men in masks pushed me over, dragged her into a scootercab and made off with her.”
“Okay, Mum. I’m on it, now.” I waved the call off and opened the Chief’s door without knocking. He and Chief Jayla Ellen were sharing a meal.
“Sorry, Chiefs, but I hope you pinned Captain Black. I need to know her current location; now.”
Chief Bascome knew when urgent meant yesterday. He turned to his terminal. “Sending you the cords,” he said.
“Have you found the missing men, Agent Capra?”
“Almost, Chief Jayla. I think they’re being… Actually I’m not sure what you’d call it. I suspect they’re being held captive, probably together, while as avatars they’re regularly taken to a hardcore porn suite in Downside for the purposes of arousal. So they can be milked.”
The Chiefs blinked at me and then stared at each other.
“I’ll leave you to think about that then, shall I?” I reverse-hovered to the door. “Oh, yes. One other thing: the President has been kidnapped.”
I was already in the lift by the time both Chiefs rushed in the hall demanding more info.
“Later,” I waved. Aggie was screening the results of my analysis requests. It seemed 37.48 144.57 libr was the latitude and longitude of Melbourne’s old, very old, Library; which explained why Zan Black’s trackerbot placed her on Swanston Canal heading north.
I emerged from SIP HQ, zipped onto the nearest police airboat and asked the pilot to take Russell Canal to La Trobe. The only part of the Victorian Library building that was still above water at high tide was its massive copper-green dome and one upper level; which constituted nearly half its original above-street-level height.
It was 6.20 pm, Melbourne’s nightlights were on, a storm was brewing south-west of the city, and the tide was about to come back in. I knew this coz, as the airboat approached one of our few almost-remaining truly historic city landmarks, I could see the extra floor that was exposed every low tide.
I directed my pilot to the pedestrian Skywalk that ran around the dome and off in several directions to connect with the others that spider-webbed the city. The statuesque Beninzay who stood at the apex seemed to be waiting for me.
I joined Captain Zanzibar Black on the high deck that overlooked the dome’s oculus. The five-metre wide skylight provided an eerie glimpse into the partially-illuminated interior: thirty-five metres down to the dry top-most gallery level that ran around the octagonal space.
“It’s quite incredible,” Zan noted.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “When the tide returns that second level down will be back under water though. At the moment it’s a good thirty metres deep over the dome room’s floor; which is another level above the old street.”
“Bloody weather,” Zan said then turned to me. “What took you so long?”
“You left me on my arse on the office floor. Then I had to report to the Chiefs.”
“Right,” Zan noted, as if we always talked this way. “Do you think my boys are in there?”
“Probably; and I think whoever’s got them also kidnapped my Aunt Juno today.”
“The President? Damn. What is her connection to all this?”
“Something to do with DaerinCorp’s future projects I think. I hope she’ll be able to tell us. Shall we suss this joint?
“After you, Capra Jane.”
Call me Jane.
Okay, my love.
There was no time to sort our history out now. I pointed Zan to the ladder and hovered beside her as we descended to the concealed service entrance at the base of the dome. My SIP universal passcode gave us immediate access and we slipped into the upper gallery.
There were arguing voices echoing across the thirty-five-metre diameter which made it hard to pinpoint their exact location but, as one, Zan and I pointed to the same spot.
“Why did you camouflage, if that’s the right word, yourself as Milo Decker?” I whispered.
“So you would give a damn about what happened to him.”
“What made you think I wouldn’t care about these Spacers?”
And, yes, I am offended.
Zan smiled at me. “You haven’t cared about anything much for a decade, Jane.” She headed clockwise through the annulus, the walkway between the concentric walls of the gallery levels, with me right behind her.
“That’s not true,” I said.
She turned and raised an eyebrow.
“Okay. So what? You’re right. I don’t give a shit about anything much.”
“Are you worried about Milo now?”
I squinted at her. “Maybe. It depends how much of that performance you gave was even him.”
“Oh, it was him,” Zan said. “That’s the gift of the Beninzay. With basic information, we can camouflage as anyone. If we’ve met them, it’s even easier. I was as much Milo Decker as he is. It’s not sustainable, of course; and it is only a superficial personality reproduction.”
The argument we’d been approaching stopped suddenly—as if the two men had perhaps heard us. It was a momentary hiatus, followed by the sound of smashing furniture.
Captain Black and I drew our weapons and covered the remaining distance at speed; she ran the eighty metres or so around the annulus, I dropped over the nearest balcony and hovered across the gap. We entered what turned out to be the scene of the crime at the same moment.
Two men were having a full-on fist fight; pushing, shoving and smacking each other senseless. Another bloke was watching them go at it. No one paid us any attention.
The man spectating is Belbo Armitage.
To the right was a row of maybe forty hospital beds, each with people hooked up to the most basic life-support equipment. To the left, tied by the waist to a chair but drinking a beer, was Aunt Juno.
One of the fighters sent the other sliding face-first across the floor. He came to an unconscious stop at Zan’s feet.
“Shit, where’d you two come from?” Armitage fumbled around the
table next to him.
“Move again and I will shoot you,” I said.
Zan crossed the room, grabbed and threw his semi-auto against the wall and punched him in face.
“Jane darling, how nice of you to come rescue me.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t know I even had to do that until half an hour ago, Juno.” I hovered over, took a laserknife from Aggie’s toolkit and cut her free.
“Jimmy tried once, because he believed Belbo would assassinate me if he didn’t, but realised it was beyond him. So he came to me and we set about finding out exactly what Belbo was up to. It’s just terrible that it got Jimmy killed.”
I squeezed Juno’s hand, but the wash of sorrow that suddenly flooded my senses came not from her, but from Zan at the far end of the room. I went straight to her.
Milo Decker, or what was left of him, was holding Zan’s hand. She wiped at the tears trickling down his sunken cheeks, and he opened his eyes.
When I turned back Zan was going patient to patient, looking for her Spacers. No, it was more than that: she was looking for a certain Spacer.
“Juno, what the hell is this really about? I mean apart from the produce collection that’s going on.”
Aunt Juno held my hand as we walked the line of hospital beds. “All of these men number among the four thousand,” she said.
“That much we figured.”
“Judging by their ages, most are original Earthers resistant to the Mj21 Virus;” Juno said.
That made sense. The first twenty beds, according to info scrawled on the wall behind, held men aged from sixty-two to eighty. They were all so emaciated, though, it was hard to tell. None looked half as good as Bruce May and the comatose Dreamers I’d seen at the Liebestraum; only thirteen of whom were resistant.
“They’re not gonna survive this, whatever it is, are they Juno?” I said.
“No, my dear. Maintaining their lives was unimportant to that villainous-excuse for a scientist over there,” she pointed at the bleeding Belbo Armitage. “Not even the younger ones further down the room will recover enough for their lives to have meaning. This procedure is killing, has, effectively killed them.”
“But…why?” I asked.
“DaerinCorp have been trying for decades to find a cure for the Mantaray retrovirus. Armitage, who I may well execute before we leave this room, worked in our labs until six months ago. He thought he could get Jimmy to break into the Daerin banks to steal the latest breakthroughs to use in his own cloning research
Again I felt an anguish and heartache that—this time—also brought to mind a day long gone. The day, now real to me, that Zan left me in that field hospital. Left me to the care of others; to return home to the troubles brewing on her own world.
I knew she wouldn’t leave this young man. But I also knew he was not going to live to know that.
Are you sure?
The question my mind heard, was for Decker. He blinked, licked his lips and blinked again.
Zan glanced at me. “Yes, that’s her,” she said aloud.
Decker smiled, barely.
Zan leant forward, kissed his forehead and—before I could do anything to stop her—put her gun to Decker’s head and pulled the trigger.
“What the frak?” I dragged her away from the bedside. She let me do it and then crumpled to the floor.
For the second time today I set Aggie down on the floor and threw myself out.
Zan allowed me to hold her and we sat rocking for a moment.
“I really don’t understand,” I whispered. “Why camouflage as him and then do that?”
Zan held me at arm’s length as her blue-green-blue eyes searched mine. “Do you care that he’s dead?”
Stupid question! “Yes, Zan. I liked him; you, him a lot. I really do care.”
“I needed to reach you. Make you care again.” She smiled wanly. “He was my grandfather.”
“Oh dear,” said Juno.
Zan glanced at her then back at me. “It was three years ago, for him, on that Probe Ship; fifty-eight years ago for my grandmother. Milo Decker and Zanzi Aru were famous in the history of everything as the first Benin-Human coupling.
“I came back to Earth for him. And for you,” she said.
Zan got to her feet, then bent and lifted me back into Aggie. And I let her; which was something I’d never allowed anyone else to do.
•
To Follow the Waves
Amal El-Mohtar
Hessa’s legs ached. She knew she ought to stand, stretch them, but only gritted her teeth and glared at the clear lump of quartz on the table before her. To rise now would be to concede defeat—but to lean back, lift her goggles and rub her eyes was, she reasoned, an adequate compromise.
Her braids weighed on her, and she scratched the back of her head, where they pulled tightest above her nape. To receive a commission from Sitt Warda Al-Attrash was a great honour, one that would secure her reputation as a fixed star among Dimashq’s dreamcrafters. She could not afford to fail. Worse, the dream Sitt Warda desired was simple, as dreams went: to be a young woman again, bathing her limbs by moonlight in the Mediterranean with a young man who, judging by her half-spoken, half-murmured description, was not precisely her husband.
But Hessa had never been to the sea.
She had heard it spoken of, naturally, and read hundreds of lines of poetry extolling its many virtues. Yet it held little wonder for her; what pleasure could be found in stinging salt, scratching sand, burning sun reflected from the water’s mirror-surface? Nor did swimming hold any appeal; she had heard pearl divers boast of their exploits, speak of how the blood beat between their eyes until they felt their heads might burst like over-ripe tomatoes, how their lungs ached with the effort for hours afterwards, how sometimes they would feel as if thousands of ants were marching along their skin, and though they scratched until blood bloomed beneath their fingernails, could never reach them.
None of this did anything to endear the idea of the sea to her. And yet, to carve the dream out of the quartz, she had to find its beauty. Sighing, she picked up the dopstick again, tapped the quartz to make sure it was securely fastened, lowered her goggles, and tried again.
•
Hessa’s mother was a mathematician, renowned well beyond the gates of Dimashq for her theorems. Her father was a poet, better-known for his abilities as an artisanal cook than for his verse, though as the latter was full of the scents and flavours of the former, much appreciated all the same. Hessa’s father taught her to contemplate what was pleasing to the senses, while her mother taught her geometry and algebra. She loved both as she loved them, with her whole heart.
Salma Najjar had knocked at the door of the Ghaflan family in the spring of Hessa’s seventh year. She was a small woman, wrinkled as a wasp’s nest, with eyes hard and bright as chips of tourmaline. Her greying hair was knotted and bound in the intricate patterns of a jeweler or gem-cutter—perhaps some combination of the two. Hessa’s parents welcomed her into their home, led her to a divan and offered her tea, but she refused to drink or eat until she had told them her errand.
“I need a child of numbers and letters to learn my trade,” she had said, in the gruff, clipped accent of the Northern cities. “It is a good trade, one that will demand the use of all her abilities. I have heard that your daughter is such a child.”
“And what is your trade?” Hessa’s father asked, intrigued, but wary.
“To sculpt fantasies in the stone of the mind and the mind of the stone. To grant wishes.”
“You propose to raise our daughter as djinn?” Hessa’s mother raised an eyebrow.
Salma smiled, showing a row of perfect teeth. “Far better. Djinn do not get paid.”
•
Building a dream was as complex as building a temple, and required knowledge of almost as many trades—a fact reflected in the complexity of the braid-pattern in which Hessa wore her hair. Each pull and plait showed an intersection of gem-crafting, metal-working, ar
chitecture and storytelling, to say nothing of the thousand twisting strands representing the many kinds of knowledge necessary to a story’s success. As a child, Hessa had spent hours with the archivists in Al-Zahiriyya Library, learning from them the art of constructing memory palaces within her mind, layering the marble, glass, and mosaics of her imagination with reams of poetry, important historical dates, dozens of musical maqaamat, names of stars and ancestors. Hessa bint Aliyah bint Qamar bint Widad…
She learned to carry each name, note, number like a jewel to tuck into a drawer here, hang above a mirror there, for ease of finding later on. She knew whole geographies, scriptures, story cycles, as intimately as she knew her mother’s house, and drew on them whenever she received a commission. Though the only saleable part of her craft was the device she built with her hands, its true value lay in using the materials of her mind: she could not grind quartz to the shape and tune of her dream, could not set it into the copper coronet studded with amber, until she had fixed it into her thoughts as firmly as she fixed the stone to her amber dopstick.
•
“Every stone,” Salma said, tossing her a piece of rough quartz, “knows how to sing. Can you hear it?”
Frowning, Hessa held it up to her ear, but Salma laughed. “No, no. It is not a shell from the sea, singing the absence of its creature. You cannot hear the stone’s song with the ear alone. Look at it; feel it under your hand; you must learn its song, its language, before you can teach it your own. You must learn, too, to tell the stones apart; those that sing loudest do not always have the best memories, and it is memory that is most important. Easier to teach it to sing one song beautifully than to teach it to remember; some stones can sing nothing but their own tunes.”
Dream-crafting was still a new art then; Salma was among its pioneers. But she knew that she did not have within herself what it would take to excel at it. Having discovered a new instrument, she found it unsuited to her fingers, awkward to rest against her heart; she could produce sound, but not music.
For that, she had to teach others to play.
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