by Patty Jansen
What was it about this case that thwarted all my attempts at finding out what was going on? There was probably something in my face that I wasn’t seeing, but for now . . . I wasn’t seeing it.
“I think she knows more than she’s telling us,” Reida said.
“She told us virtually nothing, so that wouldn’t surprise me. But tell me why you think so.” He had much more contact with the Pengali than I had.
We were walking down Fountain Street in the direction of the main square and the airport.
It was fast starting to get dark and groups of families, shoppers and social diners ambled up and down the street. Meili squawked in the trees above us. You could see them now, winged silhouettes flying from branch to branch against the dark blue sky, because at the end of the wet season and with the storm, these trees lost a good number of their leaves.
“That woman was just fobbing us off because she figured that we don’t know anything and she could tell us bullshit. Not knowing where to find Thousand Islands people? Of course she knows where those people are. Not knowing who operates the other, non-Pengali boat services? Of course she knows. They are the Pengali’s main competitors.”
“Why didn’t you say anything while we were inside? The Barresh Council pays her to provide a service, not to lie to people.”
“Because . . .” He spread his hands and shrugged. He looked down.
Deyu touched his arm, a very subtle gesture. She looked down, too. We had almost come to a halt on the corner of Fountain Street and the main square.
People streamed past us on their way to the open-air markets and the many eateries, including Huang Le’s, with its floodlit glasshouse at the back.
I knew why he had never said anything.
Because whenever something happened, someone in my association would blame Reida. Sometimes, it would even be me. Usually, it was a joke, and never meant in any other way. Or we would joke about things that he used to do, but that he hadn’t done for a long time. And we would take him less seriously, and it led to the fact that he was usually the last person in my association to be offered training.
Of course.
Add that to the fact that he was one of the very few of the persecuted Ezmi clan left on Asto. Add that to the fact that he had zeyshi tattoos on his arms, and that he had probably narrowly escaped their stranglehold.
The world conspired to make him feel a lesser citizen.
And as usual, I was doing a pretty fucked-up job of managing this association, where everyone was supposed to feel useful and valued.
Look at the two of them, now standing hand in hand, like children being caught with their hand in the lolly jar. Two Coldi youngsters from the poorest of poor areas of Athyl, thrown well out of their familiar environment, and surviving, no, thriving on doing the things they had always known to do. For Reida, that was connect with as many people as possible. For Deyu, that was watching, learning and studying.
“I take your commitment very seriously,” I said in a low voice, and then when they didn’t reply, I continued, “I asked Nicha to find us some members who were not from the main ruling clans.” The Palayis, the Domiris, the Azimis, the Linguis, and, heaven forbid, the Vonayis. “Nicha did a good job.”
I continued, “Thayu . . .” I was going to say, I love her very much, but the concept of partnership for life didn’t appeal to most Coldi. “Thayu is from the Inner Circle. She chose Sheydu and Veyada as her seconds. They are much more like her than you two are like Nicha. That takes some adjusting. I’m doing my best.”
Both of them kept looking down.
So I had to do that thing I hated: to push Reida’s chin up with the tips of my fingers—apparently there was an intricate protocol involved with doing this properly, and I hadn’t progressed much further than using the fingertips, but I had seen long descriptions of how you held your hand and what it meant. I hoped Reida didn’t know about all those subtle signals either.
Reida’s eyes met mine. His irises were very sparse in the gold flecking that characterised Coldi eyes. I still cringed at the meek expression in them. I knew this was a physiological reaction, but it still annoyed me that people thought they were worth less than me.
“Reida, I value your presence. Don’t let anything tell you otherwise. Deyu, too.”
I pushed up her chin as well. Her eyes were more typical.
Damn, I loved both of them, with all their angles and rough sides.
And then I did another very Coldi thing: I hugged both of them, and we stood in this threesome hug for a while. When we released each other, some of the tension seemed to have gone from Reida’s face.
I resumed our conversation. “So, Reida, tell me: why do you think that this woman would hold back information? To keep from getting people in trouble?”
“That’s one part.” We started walking again now that some of the unease seemed to have been dispelled. “But more important is that boat ownership is a big thing for the Pengali. Most of them will never have a permanent house, because that’s the way they are: they don’t care about houses. But they will want to buy a boat, because having a boat means that they can earn money fishing or harvesting or transporting people or things. If they don’t have a boat, they’ll want to work and save up to buy one. They don’t like the big boating companies, but they need them until they have saved enough to buy their own boat. The companies make their drivers work long, hard days, and will ask them to compete against each other. Pengali don’t like competing. The drivers live in constant fear. They hate their employers and will never let an opportunity go by to make an underwater stab at these companies, if they can get away with it.”
“What sort of things are we talking about? Stealing boats?”
“Not so much that, because a boat is easy to track, but little things like flipping the on switch on a competitor’s boat so the charge drains overnight, or untying their boats when it rains so that they float away. For some of these people, it almost becomes a pastime.”
“That’s kind of petty.”
“Yes, but boat ownership in Barresh is a harsh world. The Pengali consider it their territory. That’s why some of the non-Pengali operators are real nervous about being singled out and to have it made publicly known what businesses are theirs. One fellow owns a whole slew of other businesses in the northwest. He gets hit a lot by his boating competitors. Another is a well-known councillor. This woman at the Pengali Office doesn’t know that either of these owners have anything to do with this missing man, so she doesn’t want to send you around to question them, because Pengali workers might well lose their jobs as a result and it will feed into this nasty boating war.”
“So the reason she didn’t name the non-Pengali boat owners had nothing to do with my question?”
“No. I dare say she couldn’t care less about this missing man.”
Deyu added. “You know, at the gamra island, people get carried away with the political consequences of something like this, but if every day is a struggle to survive, if you need to go out there and haul fish, and defend your fishing place against poachers and competitors and people from enemy tribes, then concerns about other worlds are . . .” She spread her hands. “Pffft, who cares?”
I nodded. Yes, I understood that sentiment well enough. What I hadn’t expected was to uncover this cesspool of politics and backstabbing in addition to tribal rivalry and goodness knew what other foul practices surrounded the simple subject of boats. I mean—they were just a vehicle, right? A way to get from A to B.
But it sounded like the simple act of hiring a water taxi could be construed as a political endorsement. Those companies that ran the taxi services, and the ferries—
Wait. Ferries!
Shit.
I just realised: Clovis Keneally was the owner of a ferry company. We had briefly discussed it when I visited. No, it was Juanita who’d mentioned the ferries washing over the top of the lock into the marshlands. Because a competitor had untied the boats? Clovis had been
a bit brusque about it. He had not wanted me to know that he owned that company?
Was it coincidence that Robert’s help note was written on a ferry timetable?
Holy crap. There was the clue, right in my face. I turned to Reida. “I . . . have an idea that may or may not bear fruit. I’ll have to check it out. Meanwhile, do you think you could try to find where these Thousand Islands tribe people are? We may need a guide later.”
“I can try. That’s all I can promise. Some of these people are a bit shady. I guess you want me to find one who’s not going to lead us into a trap, either.”
“That would be nice.”
“I may need to go into Far Atok, but if you want, I can come back home with you first and then go back later.”
“No. We’re not going home either. You can go now and meet us later.”
“Oh?” Deyu said, her eyes wide. “Where are we going?”
“We’re going to check something out. Is that a problem?”
“No . . .” She hesitated.
“But what?”
“What about checking the directories that I was doing with Devlin and that needed to be done before the next assembly?”
Damn, that wouldn’t be completed with all this going on. “We’ll deal with that when we face the problem.”
Which was not how I liked to do my job, not at all. I made a mental note to ask the office staff to look at it. They were not trained for this and wouldn’t do as good a job as I could, but it was better for there to be some glitches than for us to still not be online by the time everyone came back for the assembly session.
Why did this bullshit always happen at times I could least afford it?
Reida went off and Deyu and I walked towards the station.
I began to see Sheydu’s point. Of course I didn’t mind helping find Robert—even if he was out there through his own stupidity—because that’s what people did: they helped each other.
But at what point did I decide that these sidetracks were keeping me from doing the work for which Ezhya paid me, which had nothing to do with rescuing stupid humans out of difficult situations, in which, by the look of things, they had put themselves?
Why didn’t Amarru ask Melissa to do it?
Because it wasn’t Melissa’s job either, and she had far fewer resources than I did. If I sent Melissa out there, she might well need to take her Kedrasi partner and they could both end up being killed.
“Where are we going?” Deyu asked when the train set off along the northeastern line.
“I’ll explain to you when we get there.”
She sat next to me, silently, while the train rumbled along the track. Reida’s story had changed my mind about where I wanted to go. Initially, I had intended to visit Benton Leck after going to the Pengali Office, because he had returned from Miran, and maybe Clovis Keneally again because he’d seemed the most talkative of the Earth people, and show each of them the pictures of Robert. But certainly, if Clovis had seen Robert, he would have mentioned it before, because you didn’t just “forget” that someone from your world visited in a place where there were only a handful of those people. Unless he didn’t want me to know.
And I didn’t want to tell Deyu where we were going because we were getting some curious looks from other passengers in the carriage. I guessed we were a fairly unusual sight: a gamra delegate in blues and an impressive-looking Coldi female guard, both armed more heavily than customary for the average citizen. If we talked about where we were going, they might remember if some kind of trouble blew up. Because both myself and Reida were fully qualified trouble-magnets.
Deyu and I stayed on the train until the second-to-last station. The line ended at the giant footbridge that connected the main island with Far Atok. It was one of the great idiosyncrasies of Barresh that there was no train line across it. You had to get off, walk across and catch another train on the other side. The footbridge had been deemed too culturally significant to deface it with rails.
Councillors kept promising to build a railway bridge, but none of the proposals had ever progressed any further than the council arguing over who was going to pay for it.
At the station where we got off, you could see the footbridge to the right, a giant structure built from stones the early inhabitants of the two islands carted, stone by stone, in punts from the escarpment and hoisted into place. Out there along the escarpment was an old quarry where you could see where the stones had been cut, made to measure and heaved onto boats by hand. It would have been a huge job.
To our left was another bridge over one of the city’s drainage canals. This was a much lower and more modern construction of steel. On the other side of this bridge, a part of the canal split off into an inland harbour, with jetties and sheds: the ferry station.
A walkway led along the water to the main building, but the gate into the yard was closed.
A sign over the top of the entrance said, Barresh Ferry Services. I had seen it before, and it had always struck me as a bit odd. Barresh business people considered it crass to display one’s business name too prominently, although the time that businesses had no names seemed to have passed with the coming of gamra. Maybe, too, owners of businesses to do with boats were reluctant to display too clearly who they were for the reasons mentioned by Reida: sabotage and vandalism by competitors.
If my assessment of all the facts was correct, Clovis Keneally owned this business.
“Is this the place we’re going?” Deyu asked when we stopped at the gate. “It’s closed.”
“This is one of the boat companies owned by non-Pengali,” I said. “What’s more, the owner is from Earth. I don’t know if there is a connection, but if you were a guide from another world, and you brought a guest from that world and you needed to hire a vehicle, wouldn’t you choose an operator who was also from the same world?”
“I guess.”
“The note in the jar was written on the back of a ferry timetable.”
“There are two ferry companies in town.”
“I know, but my money is on this one.”
She grabbed the bars of the gate and pulled. “I can open this for you.”
Coldi people would have no trouble with the flimsy structure. “No, I don’t want to damage anything. We only do that if we’re sure that we’re going to find incriminating material. I just want to have a look.” On the off chance that I found something interesting.
I walked to the side of the gate. The fence extended about a metre over the water of the channel, but the channel itself was open, because ferries operated at night. They would come in here for the change of shift or stuff like that, whatever it was that ferries did in here.
I knew that the water in the channels wasn’t very deep, but I hated the thought of getting my shoes wet. Maybe I could . . .
I put my foot into the mesh of the fence that hung over the water, and then the other foot.
The fence was wobbly. Deyu held it in place while I shuffled to the end and then around and back to the shore on the other side. Then I did the same for her.
Well, that was easy. For a company afraid of sabotage from competitors, their security was unimpressive. Their loss, our gain.
Quickly and quietly, we walked along the edge of the water.
The canal went through a giant open-sided shed where at least ten boats lay moored. There was also a little office. I peeked in through the window by the glow of a few tiny pinpricks of light from the communication hub. The room contained two tidy desks, a workstation and a bay of shelves that contained wire baskets with various engine parts.
I tried the door—sturdy and possibly Coldi-proof—but predictably it was locked, and although I would love to poke around inside, we could not do that without going through the considerable effort of breaking the glass stone windows and we had no reason to do that.
We walked all over the yard and didn’t find much of importance. It looked like the business was well run, the yard free of incriminating rubbish.
We climbed back along the fence without incident—and even without getting wet—and walked back to the station. A few other people waited on the platform, likely workers from the nearby industries or warehouses. I contacted Reida to see where he was and where to meet.
Then the train came in, the doors opened and . . . Clovis Keneally got out. He didn’t see us, but made a beeline for the exit of the station in the direction of the boat yard. Well, that was interesting.
I held Deyu back when she was about to enter the train.
“What’s going on?”
“Shhh. That man over there is the owner.”
We let the train go, and followed Clovis at a distance. He stopped in front of the gate to the ferry yard to unlock it, and then went through, put the lock back on and relocked it.
“Do we climb around?” Deyu whispered when he had disappeared into one of the sheds.
“Better not do that, in case he only needs to pick up something quickly.”
We waited.
The light went on inside the office. Not much later, it turned off again. There was the sound of footsteps, followed by a big splash.
Deyu gasped. “He’s fallen in!” An involuntary dunking in ink black water was probably the stuff of Coldi nightmares.
“I don’t think the splash was that big.”
We waited, and indeed, Clovis came back from out of the shed. We retreated into the shadow of a neighbouring warehouse. He went out the gate, shut and locked it, and walked back in the direction of the station.
CHAPTER 9
* * *
WELL, THAT WAS certainly interesting.
I contacted Reida. “Change of plan. Do you think you could meet us at the ferry yard soon?”
“I’m just crossing the bridge right now,” he said. “If you’re at the ferry yard, I could almost see you. I can see the roof of that big shed that’s in the middle of the place.”