Netherspace

by Andrew Lane

  It took a moment for the significance to sink in. “GalDiv has done an autopsy?”

  “A Gliese got splatted by a rock. It insisted on going to a disused slate quarry in Wales, no idea why. A local alien-hater, some paranoid psycho who’d stopped taking his meds objected. Guards shot him, but too late. One Gliese doing a damn good impression of roadkill. Other Gliese never seemed to notice it was gone. There again, how the hell would we know if they did?” He shrugged. “Old news. Anyway, you’re going on an errand for us. You’re going Up.”

  “I am?” She raised a supercilious eyebrow.

  “I’ll tell you about your main mission later, but while we’re alone here I’m going to tell you something that I won’t be telling your partner.” He paused, apparently for effect. “When this mission is complete, I want you to go to the Gliese homeworld.”

  The floor seemed to tilt beneath her as the shock hit. “What!” And what partner?

  “You heard me.”

  “The Gliese homeworld?”

  “Free spacers found it a few years ago. They don’t know we know. There is a plan, Kara.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ll tell you more over lunch.”

  “I’ve never been Up.”

  “Nor has Marc Keislack. Your new partner.” He noticed the stubborn look in her eyes. “Those humans who get traded for sideslip-field generator engines – you ever wonder what happens to them?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Of course you do. Your own sister was a call-out fee.”

  “Don’t.” She was surprised at the softness in her voice. “Do not try to use that. Ever.” She held his gaze for a few seconds. “You said I had a natural ability, but you weren’t talking about my sniper skills. What did you mean?”

  “You’re a borderline empath, Kara. I’ve met a few in my time.” He paused, staring at her challengingly. Maybe he was expecting her to deny it. “You know it, we know it, and your experience with the Gliese proves it. Paramental powers are on the increase in the general population – running at around 0.5% at the moment. We’re suppressing the news outlets, but it’ll be revealed by someone soon enough.”

  “Is it—” She stopped, and swallowed. She’d never talked to anyone else about this before. “Is it alien influence?”

  Greenaway shook his head. “The scientists who are studying it – secretly, and under our control – are pretty sure it’s because of the AI implants. Somehow the initial surgery, the radiation given off by the chips and the way they snuggle themselves into the brain at a cellular level have a side-effect on the surrounding neural tissue. Epigenetic changes occur in the DNA, activating genes that have apparently been there for millennia but never used. We’re studying a handful of telepaths, a few telekinetics, and quite a few pre-cognitives: people who can see the future – at least, dimly. More on that later. You show a medium level of empathy, under certain circumstances. Interestingly, empathy seems to operate cross-species. You might not understand the Gliese or any other alien but you can sense them.” He shrugged. “Me: I’m not an empath. Nowhere close. I’m not a pre-cog either. But I know what you’re going to do now. You’re going to say yes. You’ll get more details over lunch, when you meet Keislack. Saves me an extra briefing.”

  “I don’t like being pressured.”

  “Kara.” He leaned forward, his expression kind. “It was okay to fix the hotel’s AI last night. You’d stayed there as part of an assignment. It was not okay to screw a pick-up in what was effectively a work environment. It was even less okay to adjust her AI using classified technology. You know there’s a movement to declare AIs sentient, with rights?”

  “I had no choice—”

  “You could have gone to her place. Or your Merc.” And then, answering the unspoken question. “You’ve been close-watched for the past ten days. You are the most maverick, independent and bloody-minded Official Assassin in the Bureau. You break rules whenever you like. Which is okay for now because this assignment is not for someone who goes by the book. But that independence also makes you vulnerable. Aside from the death of the Gliese – difficult to prove, I admit – we have enough to put you away. You’ll lose the Merc and that hideaway park-place on the River Dart. You like walking Out on Dartmoor. You could end up living there. Or we could just have you killed. Like to hear more?”

  “Fuck you!” she said, the anger tempered by resignation. Greenaway wasn’t a man to make empty threats.

  “Fuck you, boss,” he corrected. “And don’t fucking forget it.”

  They stared at each other for a few angry seconds.

  “Are you happy about the alien–Earth trade?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Even less with humans bartered for sideslip drives?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “We’ve known there were problems with netherspace for over thirty years. We still have no idea what. Know why? Because investigating the problem only highlights it. No one, certainly not EarthCent, wants to admit there’s anything wrong. And no one wants to ask why the Gliese trade humans for netherspace drives.” A note of bitterness had crept into his voice. “So we encourage the myths. They’re being taken to a paradise. To another galaxy. No one asks if there’s any connection with that and the call-out fee.” He saw the expression on Kara’s face. “I’m sorry,” his voice surprisingly gentle. “But you must have wondered yourself.”

  “I try not to,” was all she said, tight-lipped.

  “We, by which I mean the top echelon at GalDiv, believe the Gliese might trade humans for safety in netherspace. We have no idea what they want safety from, only that something’s out there. We don’t believe the Gliese are masters of space travel. They didn’t develop and don’t manufacture it. When you get to their homeworld you’ll discover why. We do believe that Earth must gain direct access to whoever, whatever does. It’s the only way we’ll stop the descent into slavery. And if we don’t act, the maniacs will. Len Grafe and his Human Primus in England. The Minutemen in America. Religious fanatics worldwide. Suppose they drive the aliens away? Or maybe the aliens fight back and take what they want, with no trade? Who knows what happens to the colony worlds. We want that trade, Kara. We want to be a galactic player, not some pet reliant on its master. You know how many people are retreating from the world, how many are going In full-time?” Another small-word euphemism so common it was harmless. Going “In” was when a person preferred a virtual world to the real one. Some died that way, leaving behind a grieving avatar and the suspicion – surely more faith than fact – that their consciousness still lived in their favourite existence. Until someone turned it off at the wall. Or the batteries ran out.

  “Just a fad,” Kara said, suspecting it wasn’t.

  “Got a hundred thousand in London City alone,” Greenaway said sombrely. “New York and Boston have double that. Increasing all the time. People are just giving up. So, you want to try do something about this? Or go back to your old life?” He left it unsaid that “do something about this” could mean discovering what had happened to her sister.

  Kara nodded. “Let’s see how it goes,” she said. “Question: were you Army?”

  He nodded. “Special Ops. Eastern Seaboard Military Union.”

  Which probably meant Intelligence. “Before that?”

  “I spent some formative years Out There.” He nodded again. “I was a bad boy. Got caught and given a choice: colony world or the New York City Army.”

  She’d heard the rumours about conscription in parts of America. “They say some Outers aren’t even given a choice. They just get sent Up.”

  Greenaway shrugged. “Some colony worlds are tougher than others. They need aggression and survival skills. That it?”

  “Who the hell is Marc Keislack?”

  “Think of him as a man for all seasons.” Greenaway smiled, confirming that he knew her avatar was obsessed with the classics. “As far as a military skill set’s concerned,” Greenaway continued, “he’s extremely observant with a strong drive for self-preservation at all costs. Just
like you.”

  4

  Marc Keislack sat at the circular table by the window, fiddling with his napkin while glancing around – and underneath – the restaurant. It was suspended above the centre of Berlin, held up by a slim tower built from fullerene in the shape of a sweeping number 7. The restaurant – an elegant oval structure like a flattened Christmas bauble – hung underneath the far end of the upper bar of the 7. It was an impossible structure – the centre of gravity was in completely the wrong place and the fullerene, incredibly strong though it was, couldn’t possibly take the weight of the restaurant bubble without snapping in several places. The whole thing should have come crashing down on the envious Berlin restaurant district below. The only thing keeping it up was the same thing that was keeping the Arc de Triomphe suspended a few metres above the Parisian traffic – alien updown-field generator technology. Alternatively, if you believed the adverts, it was the genius of the chef.

  The restaurant’s floor was transparent, as were the tables. Sitting at one was like taking part in a majestic magic trick. Sparse wisps of cloud floated past underneath and sometimes, when Berlin was bound in fog, the restaurant seemed to float on a milky sea. Whatever the weather outside, a trip to the restrooms could be a trial of nerves. There was no elevator up to the restaurant – that would have ruined the exclusivity – as the fullerene tower was too slim and curved to take a shaft. Instead jitneys transported customers up and down, like diaphanous dandelion seeds floating on the breeze.

  The restaurant had no name. Most Berliners just called it ‘7’. It was the first time Marc had been. Despite his success, he’d never been able to afford it – and his agent had never taken him there. It didn’t do, Darla said, for artists to mingle with their potential patrons. Respectful distance had to be kept. In other words, he shouldn’t tout for sales behind her back.

  He tore his gaze away from the glowing lights of the traffic so very far below and looked down at his napkin. Without thinking he had folded it into a fair representation of the tower and the restaurant. He tried standing it upright, but it wasn’t stable and kept falling over, which only made the tension in his stomach worse.

  A waiter drifted up beside him. “Another drink, sir?”

  “Please.”

  “Saffron gin, rare phenotype, with high-quinine tonic, Sicilian lemon and Svalbard ice?” Not his own memory, but that of the waiter’s avatar.

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  The waiter left. Before Marc could disassemble his cotton sculpture and start on something else, a voice from behind him said: “Very nice. Do you also do unicorns?”

  He turned his head. A woman was standing over him. She was tall, with the kind of rangy body that belonged on an athletics track. Her dark hair was long, pulled back from her forehead. Her green eyes stared at him appraisingly. She didn’t seem to be having a problem walking on what for all practical purposes was thin air.

  Anson Greenaway stood beside her, the man’s double-lapelled suit as immaculate as the last time Marc had seen him. The faintly exasperated expression on his face suggested that he’d wanted to get to the table first, but the woman had beaten him to it. That, and her mocking comment, suggested to Marc that she was competitive. It matched her body shape very well, as did the business suit she wore. It was obviously bespoke, Marc noted, and Milan cut. So she had both money and taste, whoever she was. Not really his type. “Napkin origami is just a hobby,” he said, staring back at her. “If I was doing a unicorn I’d take genetic material from an Arab thoroughbred, adjust the genes controlling skull shape, inject it into a cell nucleus and get the cell to reproduce.”

  She smiled, tightly. “You’re Keislack, then. The artist.” The words “and arrogant bastard” were possibly not far from her lips.

  “And this is Kara Jones, the soldier,” Greenaway said, pulling out a chair for her. Kara walked around the table and sat down in a different seat. Greenaway slid a chair back and sat down. A waiter appeared at his elbow. Marc had a fleeting sense of having walked into a well-rehearsed play.

  “Mr Greenaway – a pleasure to see you again,” the waiter said. “Your usual?”

  Greenaway nodded. “And a Cairngorm Sparkle for the lady.”

  “Actually,” she said, smiling sweetly, “I’ll have a glass of Bombino nero rose, if you have any.” It was imported, Marc knew, from an early settled planet in the Pleiades and exorbitantly expensive.

  “Of course we do.” The waiter sounded offended.

  Greenaway glanced from Marc to Kara and back again. His lips twisted slightly. He seemed to be finding the contrast between the two of them amusing. “Thank you for turning up,” he said to Marc. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

  “Yes you were,” Marc said, feeling a slight burn of irritation. “You told me half a story and left it hanging.” He glanced at Kara. “Artists,” he said, shrugging. “We can’t see a stone without looking under it. Besides, he bought me a ticket. First class.”

  Marc wondered if Greenaway had told her the real reason he’d been unable to refuse the job, but he decided he hadn’t. Greenaway would never share a hold he had over someone.

  “An Eridani followed Marc for three weeks,” Greenaway told Kara. She looked impressed, but Marc wasn’t sure whether it was real or simulated for his benefit. “The alien left Earth with five Keislack works, thus making Marc the latest best thing in the art world. Since then the Cancri have also bought Marc’s work, providing Earth with technology that’s still being evaluated but looks incredibly valuable.” Greenaway placed a small metal box on the table; Marc recognised it from his time in the Out: a device that would shield them from electronic surveillance. “And Kara here has killed a Gliese,” he said without changing his tone of voice, “which means that you’ve both stiffed an alien.” He smiled without humour. “That’s all you need to know about each other. For the moment.”

  Marc sipped his gin and tonic. Part of him wanted to get up and leave, suspecting the man was toying with them and enjoying it. But what Marc had said to Kara was true: he desperately needed to discover the end of the story. Leave now, and he never would. And while Kara was attractive, there was also a sense that she was very dangerous. Marc was intrigued.

  “So what are the Eridani like?” Kara asked him. “They don’t seem to make it onto the news very much. I’ve never seen one.”

  “They’re long, like snakes,” Marc explained, “but their bodies are segmented rather than smooth. A bit like really thick bamboo. Each segment has a tentacle halfway down, and each tentacle ends in a three-fingered claw-thing. If you look at them head-on you see that the tentacles are in a spiral pattern, each segment offset from the one before and the one after.” He made a face. “Of course, you don’t want to look at them head-on, because their heads are like open wounds full of white worms, but you can get used to them surprisingly quickly. They prefer forests and woods to buildings – those tentacles are optimised for grasping branches and hanging on, while the bodies are optimised for slipping through gaps in vegetation. That’s my theory, by the way – not the official one. They smell like bolognese sauce for some reason.”

  “Everything smells of something else,” Kara said. Her gaze dropped to the table in front of him, and Marc realised that he had been fiddling with his napkin again, twisting it into new shapes. He glanced down, expecting to see that he had made something approximating an Eridani, but instead he had unconsciously fashioned the napkin into the shape of her face: high brow, angular cheeks, hollows for the eyes. He smoothed it out quickly, embarrassed. He was relieved when Kara asked, “Did it show any interest in you? Personally?”

  “Just my work. It wouldn’t get all that close to me,” Marc said. “And I wasn’t fussed.”

  Greenaway sipped at his drink, a vintage rye whisky with Antarctic ice. He placed the glass down on the table, making an audible clunk, either trying to attract their attention or misjudging the transparent table. “Listen. You’ve both been given enough of the story to pique y
our interest,” he said briskly. “That will now change. What I am about to tell you is only known to fifty other people. If either of you repeat this – and we will find out if you do – both of you will be encased in transparent plastic cubes, exactly one metre on each side. You’ll need to be folded up, of course. Each cube will have two shafts – one for breathing and feeding and one for shitting and pissing, and you’ll be filed away on a shelf until we can trade you to an alien.” His tone was the same one he might have used to discuss the weather. “Therefore you both have an interest in seeing that the other behaves. This is not a threat. It is a prediction and a warning. Please heed it.”

  Marc felt a chill run through his body. He saw that Kara’s mouth was set in a stony half-smile and realised it wasn’t the first time she’d been threatened. “I’m still in.”

  Greenaway nodded slightly. No value in reminding Marc he’d long passed the point of no return. “You obviously know there are three types of the Gliese netherspace drive – small, medium and large. “We’ve discovered a fourth size – micro, fitted inside the larger drives. So if someone manages to take a netherspace drive apart, it’s empty – the micro-unit inside slips away into warp space, taking the guts of the drive plus the updown-field generator with it.” He shrugged. “That’s probably how the Gliese know when a drive has broken – the micro-drive heads back to what I laughingly think of as Gliese Head Office. We have no idea how they then find the SUT.”

  “And how do we know this?” Kara asked, her expression guarded.

  “That’s need to know. Suffice to say, we do.”

  “And who is ‘we’?” Marc said, doubting he’d get an honest answer.