by Jaine Fenn
‘All right, all right, I will deal with it. Put me through to the young lady who placed the original comcall so I can explain the situation to her.’
Taro smiled to himself: he wouldn’t’ve minded listening in to that particular conversation.
Jarek’s grand plan was always going to entail a visit to Khesh City, but none of them had expected it to be this soon. When he wasn’t asleep, Taro spent most of the two full days it took to get there – Vellern was the system’s innermost planet – getting his feelings about his former homeworld sorted in his head.
The cabin he shared with Nual had been stripped down, and it was filled with the luggage of their late, unlamented almost-passenger, but both of them were too tired to care about being surrounded by a dead man’s gear. Once they’d slept off the excesses of their shift fatigue, they got their room straight, which took up most of the rest of the journey. That was fine by Taro; if he hadn’t been lugging boxes for Nual, he’d have been cleaning the rec-room as it was his turn. This was infinitely preferable.
Jarek kept an eye on local news and com traffic, but he didn’t report any problems. Now they were back in the heart of human-space beevee calls were cheaper, and Jarek took advantage of that to talk to media agents and lawyers about a part of their plan that wasn’t going to kick in until further down the line – if at all. Taro couldn’t see much point, himself, but he wasn’t worried about Jarek drawing unwelcome attention – no one who was looking for them could possibly expect them to have turned up in this system. Not that he said anything: it was Jarek’s look-out if he wanted to waste his time like that.
Once they were in orbit around Vellern Taro came up to the bridge. The holoplate showed a barren orange dust-ball; only two of the Three Cities were visible from here, tiny specks dotted around the otherwise featureless surface. Taro couldn’t tell which one was Khesh.
They would have to leave the ship docked at an orbital platform and take a tourist shuttle down; the Cities were set up to get the tourists in and out again quickly and efficiently, minus as much of their available credit as they could legally extract.
As they waited for final clearance, Nual gave Jarek a last chance to change his mind about coming dirtside. ‘It’s not a problem; we can ask on your behalf if you’d rather not come down,’ she said.
Jarek grinned. ‘No, I’m fine leaving Heart of Glass here. I went into freetrading to see exotic places, and they don’t get much more exotic than this.’
Taro wondered whether ‘exotic’ meant the crazy politics, or the secret hidden deep inside each of the Three Cities that citizens and visitors alike remained happily oblivious to. Possibly both.
Taro had spent some time preparing for his return to his birthplace. He wanted to make sure he looked the part. He plaited himself a choker of red and black, and wove the same colours into his remaining long dreadlocks. On the shuttle down, the tourists looked at him oddly; Taro was annoyed that more of them muttered about downsiders than Angels. Ignorant coves.
The shuttle took them to a huge domed hall, the only part of the City outside its protective force-bubble, where they queued for one of the dozens of elevators that carried the tourists down the City’s central spine onto the massive floating disc itself. It was early evening, and from their transparent car the Streets radiating out from the spine looked like rivers of multi-coloured light.
Taro couldn’t get enough of the view. There it was, his home, impressive as ever – just a lot smaller than he remembered it.
When they got to the bottom, they discovered Sirrah Krand had done as he’d promised. Customs didn’t give them any shit – though they couldn’t hide their amazement at finding Angels – who never normally left the City – coming back to it. The three of them emerged into the crowded transit hall, which was exactly how Taro remembered it, bright with adverts and loud with the cries of hustlers.
Taro led Nual and Jarek to the exit, feeling a strange mix of pride and anxiety. They came out onto a pleasant square overhung by trees decorated with gently glowing orange and golden light-globes strung through their branches. A queue of pedicabs, adorned with the usual lights and trinkets, waited along one side of the square. No one had been in touch with them, so they’d agreed Taro would lead them to a Street he knew and they would take it from there. They could get a cab, except they’d need two, and it was a nice evening – it was always a nice evening in the City – so there was no reason not to walk, or even fly—
Almost automatically, Taro found himself looking up at the heavily-built man strolling towards them. He wore a smart suit, and sported the usual stylish but unnecessary hat on his bald head.
‘Good evening,’ he said, and Taro felt a faint shiver – of what, he wasn’t quite sure – at the familiar sound of that deep, mellow voice.
‘Sirrah,’ he said. Old habits died hard.
Nual inclined her head a fraction.
Jarek, looking uncomfortable, said, ‘I take it you’re the Minister.’
‘I am.’ He gave Jarek a long, hard look, then smiled. People who didn’t know better might even call it a friendly, welcoming smile. ‘And you must be Elarn Reen’s brother, Jarek.’
CHAPTER FIVE
Jarek had met killers before, and he’d met aliens – hell, he travelled with one – but his experience with Heads of State was limited. The Minister was all three, and more. Despite his avuncular exterior, he – Jarek decided to think of the Minister as he, in the absence of any more suitable term – exuded an air of hidden menace. People really did live or die at his word.
After a moment, he realised the Minister actually expected an answer. ‘Er, yes. Pleased to meet you.’ He waited to see if the Minister offered his hand, and was relieved when he didn’t.
‘Your sister was a fool,’ said the Minister conversationally, as casually as if he was discussing the nonexistent weather, ‘but she didn’t deserve to die like that.’
Jarek started at Nual’s voice in his head; she used mindspeech sparingly with him as she knew he found it disconcerting. ‘Thanks,’ he said out loud.
‘We may as well talk here,’ continued the Minister. ‘We won’t be disturbed.’ He steered them to three benches made out of what looked like real wood, set around a planter overflowing with flowers, some of which glowed pallid blue in the dusk. He sat down on the bench at the back. Jarek took one of the side seats, Nual and Taro the other.
The Minister turned to the other two. ‘You both look well,’ he said. ‘Short hair suits you, Nual.’
When no one immediately responded to this unexpected comment, the Minister affected a sigh. ‘Small talk,’ he said drily. ‘I had understood it to be very popular amongst humans.’
‘Er—’ said Taro, looking between the Minister and Jarek.
‘Oh come on, boy!’ said the Minister sharply. ‘Obviously Captain Reen knows what I am – Nual would never have let him come down here otherwise, would she?’
No one had an answer for that, and the Minister continued, ‘To be honest, I am impressed they have already got themselves an ally. You must have loved your sister deeply if you are willing to go to such lengths to avenge her death, Captain Reen.’
‘Elarn is one of my reasons for fighting the Sidhe.’ He was pleased he managed to avoid tripping over that last word.
The Minister raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t ask for clarification, and Jarek reminded himself that whatever else he might be, the ‘man’ sitting across from him couldn’t read their minds.
‘So, what brings you back to our fair city in such a tearing hurry?’ The Minister addressed the question to Nual.
‘We need a beacon,’ she said bluntly.
‘A beacon? As in a shiftspace beacon?’
‘Yes.’
He sounded a little intrigued. ‘Now why would you suddenly want such a thing?’
Jarek took over the conversation. ‘We – or rather, I – found a lost world, one whe
re the inhabitants have no idea the rest of the universe exists. I can’t find any record of the place, not in the Freetrader Archives, nor in any of the public Salvatine datastores.’
‘Ah,’ said the Minister. ‘And you think the females kept the existence of this world from humanity?’ He pronounced the word ‘females’ like a curse.
‘I know they did.’ Jarek hoped the Minister wouldn’t ask why . . . Of course, he might already know—
‘And presumably this lost world has no beacon?’
‘That’s right.’ Jarek said shortly. It was bad enough knowing the Minister was the head of the City’s league of assassins. That he was also a representative – or more accurately, a fragment – of a thousand-year-old male Sidhe consciousness made Jarek feel faintly queasy. Whilst the Khesh City mind could be an incredibly useful ally in their fight, it – he – was not someone to be messed around with, or confided in.
‘So you wish to plant a beacon there to bring these people into the fold of human-space?’ said the Minister, sounding faintly curious.
‘Right again.’
‘How charmingly idealistic. And it would be massively annoying to the females, of course.’ His tone made it obvious which reason he preferred. ‘Just what makes you think I might be able to help with this noble mission of yours?’
Jarek swallowed, and said, ‘Zepgen.’
‘Zepgen. Ah yes, that. What about zepgen?’
Nual took over, and pointing to herself, said, ‘You put zepgen in us – in your Angels – to power our gravitics.’
‘Why yes, so I do. And how exactly did you come to find that out, then?’ Now he was definitely curious.
‘A corporation on another world had their suspicions and decided to experiment,’ she said.
‘On me,’ Taro chipped in.
The Minister looked Taro up and down, appraising him. ‘You appear to have survived the experience.’
‘Yeah, just about – thanks to Jarek,’ Taro said, sounding a bit grumpy.
The Minister ignored Taro’s little show of pique. ‘So, you know that I have access to a small, near-limitless power-source that can be implanted in humans. It also powers all this.’ He gestured proprietarily around him at the shadowy trees, the buildings beyond and the distant orange glow of the City’s forcedome. ‘But beacons . . . well, they’re a rather different proposition.’
‘But they are powered by zepgen.’ Jarek resisted the temptation to add, aren’t they? He was sure he was right, or near enough.
‘Well, not exactly. Zepgen is a system for drawing power from . . . elsewhere. It can only be initiated by a certain type of mind, one capable of reaching outside the universe.’ Jarek knew that male Sidhe could do that. ‘A beacon is more of a gateway, a door left permanently ajar. That’s a much more complex and dangerous artefact.’
‘But still something you – your people – do. Did. For humanity, to help fight the females.’
‘Yes, we did,’ the Minister agreed with a slight smile. ‘But that was a thousand years ago.’
‘Can you still do it?’
The Minister said nothing for several seconds. The trees around the square remained still as a picture. Jarek could hear a faint hum, presumably that of the crowded streets beyond. Finally the Minister said, ‘We need to consider this.’ Jarek noted the use of we, the first time the Minister had used the word. ‘I have taken the liberty of booking you into a hotel; just ask any of those burly individuals over there to take you to the Cracked Emerald on Memento Street. Please do not worry about paying for the hotel; as Taro so elegantly put it: “it’s only credit”.’
At that, Taro chimed in, ‘Yeah, actually, we did have another problem that could be solved with credit—’
‘I know.’ He stood up as he spoke, making it quite clear he had no interest in prolonging the conversation. ‘I will be in touch in due course.’ And with that, the Minister walked off into the gloom.
‘Is he always like that?’ asked Jarek.
‘Oh no,’ replied Taro lightly, ‘sometimes he can be pretty fucking irritating.’
‘Nual, I don’t suppose you—?’
‘I can’t read him, Jarek, not at all. He is— What we actually interact with is a flesh golem that holds part of Khesh’s distributed consciousness.’
‘Ah. When you put it like that—’ When she put it like that, it was damn creepy. ‘Thanks for trying to ask whether he’d loan us enough to stave off the bloody Veryan Syndicate, Taro.’
‘Worth a shot.’
‘We should probably get going; it’ll be dark soon.’
Jarek turned to the rank of cabs, but Taro said, ‘We can walk to Memento Street; it ain’t far from here.’
‘Is that a good idea?’ Jarek wasn’t sure; the Three Cities had a terrible rep for street crime.
Taro turned and gestured at himself with both hands, inviting Jarek to take in his clothes. ‘City colours,’ he said, ‘and who wears City colours?’
‘Ah yes – Angels.’
‘S’right. And around here, people know not to mess with us Angels.’
Taro led them along a gently curving street with parkland on one side and buildings on the other. Larger roads radiated off every hundred metres or so, some smart boulevards, gated to keep out the riff-raff, others hosting outdoor parties of varying degrees of wildness. Memento Street, when they found it, fell somewhere between the two extremes.
The crowd on the Street was largely made up of tourists; many of them looked like out-of-system types rich enough to afford to travel on a starliner. A lot had bodyguards with them. The locals were easy to spot; they tended to be compact and dark, though there were also representatives of the other two cultures of the Confederacy of Three. One ethnic group had jewels stuck on – no, embedded in – the skin of their hands, while others were pale– skinned, with light brown or blond hair.
Jarek didn’t see any other Angels, but he did spot a few downsiders. They were conspicuous, not just because of their height, but due to their dress; they wore ill-fitting, ragged clothes, obviously cast-offs, and they hung around the darker alleyways, begging, hustling or hassling. They moved with the shuffling, careful gait of people in heavier gravity than they were used to. Most of the tourists were avoiding them. He noticed how Taro was enjoying the double-takes as people moved from wary distrust at the first sight of his height and build to what Jarek interpreted as cautious awe at his easy walk and stylish clothes.
Though the full red-and-black of Khesh City was reserved for Angels, a lot of people wore tokens – broaches, armbands, hair ornaments and the like – showing the colours of ‘their’ City. The paler-skinned types, from Yazil, displayed gold and green, while the jewelled lot from Luorna sported blue and silver.
Nual had told them the other two cities were run in the same way as Khesh, and now Jarek asked if that was what the Minister had meant when he’d said we: the other two Cities.
She smiled grimly, and said, ‘No, the Concord is far more important than any one human’s request, however unexpected.’
‘So do the Yazil and Luorna City-minds even know their brother City let a renegade Sidhe hide here?’
‘I doubt it,’ she said quietly. ‘These three males have lived in a ritualised state of near-war for centuries – I don’t think they’d know how to begin to trust each other.’
So the we in question must have meant the other avatars of Khesh’s controlling mind, like the High Speaker, thought Jarek. Which was quite weird enough.
The buildings along Memento Street were low-rise but flashy, a mixture of hotels, restaurants, bars and clubs. Nual said this Street had a historical theme, which was why they were surrounded by unfamiliar cultural references, from the cartoon dogs in suits dancing holographic jigs above their heads to the projected images of women with curvaceous bodies and veiled faces.
Some buildings had damage to their façades, presumably as a result of the upheavals caused by the Sidhe weapon. Jarek suppressed a shudder: Elarn, under the inf
luence of the Sidhe’s mental programming, had nearly killed the City, and she had lost her own life in the process. If Taro hadn’t been in the right place at the right time, she would have succeeded in destroying Khesh completely.
Despite the name, the Cracked Emerald showed no visible damage. The hotel was all gaudy floral décor and green and red cut-glass, though the rooms were clean and relatively spacious. Jarek was happy to sacrifice taste for comfort, especially when someone else was picking up the tab. After confirming that they could bill the meal to their account, they had a leisurely dinner in the hotel restaurant. Though the food beat ship’s rations, Jarek felt it left something to be desired. Nual pointed out caustically that, like the Heart of Glass’s own mess, the City was a closed environment, where everything had to be recycled.
Jarek usually tried to sync his body-clock to local time before landing, but because this trip had been unplanned, they’d ended up out of kilter, and the three of them found themselves wide awake just when everyone else was calling it a night. Jarek had no doubt Nual and Taro had pleasant alternatives to sleep, but he was reduced to channel-surfing a wide variety of trash, all that was available on the local holonet. He ended up watching some political channel, which was full of ratings, gossip and predictions of which members of the Assembly might incur the people’s disapproval enough to get ‘removed’ by an Angel. The subtleties were lost on him, and he couldn’t help thinking how macabre this set-up was – especially knowing that the whole thing was overseen and quite possibly manipulated by an eccentric, effectively immortal, alien. He was beginning to get the impression the mind at the heart of Khesh City looked upon those living within its bounds as something between wayward pets and a gigantic social experiment.
Finally he gave up and decided to go for a walk. The hotel staff were happy to provide him with a guard – all part of the service, apparently – but he took his gun as well. Better safe than sorry.
The bodyguard, a jovial man of about Jarek’s age, asked if he wanted to go anywhere in particular, which Jarek took to mean he’d be happy to recommend bars, brothels and other diversions, but all he really wanted to do was to stretch his legs and get some fresh air, or what passed for fresh air around here. The guard took the hint and shut up, falling into place behind and to one side of his charge.