Netherspace

by Andrew Lane

  Meanwhile, somewhere back on Earth the Cancri were busy trading. It didn’t help Tatia’s peace of mind, already frazzled, to pick up a fruit, even a cabbage, that only hours ago had probably been growing in a garden or displayed in a shop on Earth. It was a reminder of how far they’d come and how much they’d lost. She would wonder what the Cancri had exchanged in return.

  Tatia held two meetings a day: one in the morning to allot tasks, one in the evening to share and discuss the results. The secret to good leadership, she was discovering, was to make people feel valued and, above all, busy. Didn’t work for everyone, though. From the first there’d been that small group of Pilgrims who wanted to wait for rescue; and an even smaller group who spent the time asleep or staring blankly into space. Every few days one or two of the no-trouble group joined the catatonics, and one of the escapers would decide that no-trouble was best after all.

  “Could be the grubs,” Perry said. “That telepathy fear thing they do. Could be their way of controlling us. Could be just us reacting to it.”

  “I’ve felt myself wondering if it would be best to do nothing,” Tatia admitted.

  “That so?” His voice was neutral.

  “Then I imagine killing the bastards and feel better.”

  He smiled, and nodded. “The hounds have thin necks, easily broken, and the grubs can probably be squished underfoot. That keeps me going as well.”

  It was only possible to shuffle around outside in the morning or afternoon, as midday was too hot. And shuffle they had to, because certain normal-looking patches of the sand-like ground were frictionless and so slippery that a normal step ended with feet sliding in all directions followed by an undignified crash to the ground. There was also another reason: shuffling alerted the little black screw-like things that lived in the sand. They would spiral through the sand to get out of the way and avoid being crushed. You didn’t want to crush one. They didn’t bite or sting but their body ichor melted most fabrics and burned small holes in your skin.

  Some people said the slippery sand actually recoiled from a human foot just before the foot landed. If so it had to be an electrostatic charge. What other explanation could there be? Did it actually matter? They weren’t an exploration party but people trying to escape.

  Pablo and the man who’d objected about his murder had been buried – Tatia had intended to take them home, though she didn’t know how – a hundred metres away from the humans’ building. The next day there were no mounds to mark the graves, and when Tatia checked, no bodies in them. Either they had been taken or been eaten by something in the sand, and that was yet one more reason to loathe the Cancri. Similarly, the shallow trench used as a latrine was always miraculously empty in the morning.

  “It’s the clean-up team,” Mariana said at an evening meeting. She’d finally bought into the idea of escape. “It’s like we’re quarantined, you know?” In a previous existence she’d been a nurse. “The Cancri are worried in case we’re contagious so they’re disposing of all our waste.” Which explained why they were in the middle of a desert and not near a settlement – assuming Cancri had settlements. And why no more Cancri had arrived to see them. And also the little black spiralling things, whose role Tatia now realised was to dispose of anything dead and foreign using their acidic secretions.

  Her AI waited until no one would see Tatia sub-vocalising.

  < Good thinking, that woman.

  > Seemed obvious.

  < You’ve changed, Tatia. Become more grown up.

  > No choice. Any joy with the staff AIs?

  The SUT staff’s AIs had been slaved to the SUT AI when it had tried to link to the Cancri mainframe. They hadn’t been quite as damaged as the SUT, but reduced to the level of a mere house AI programmed to worry about air quality and a perfectly cooked meringue. On the other hand, non-working AIs made the SUT staff far more acceptable to many of the Pilgrims. A majority might have agreed that Juan Smith was a crook, but some of his teachings lived on, as happens when people make an emotional commitment. Prove them wrong and they’ll spit in your eye.

  < I gave them all logic loops to keep them occupied. Seemed the best thing to do. They’re happy enough.

  Her intuition, partly responsible for getting Tatia into this mess, had apparently gone on holiday. It was never good at coming when called, but even a vague hint would be comforting. Instead nothing but a blank blackness. Her intuition was either not home, or not accepting callers.

  • • • • •

  Within a week they’d decided, based on nothing but observation, that the grubs had evolved as an intelligent but vulnerable species whose mental abilities – which probably included a form of telepathy and a radar or ultrasonic sense equivalent to sight – were their only defence. Mariana and one or two of the others were focusing on communication via emitted chemical vapours rather than mind-to-mind talking, on the basis that they thought they could detect various different types and intensities of rotting seaweed smells, but this was a minority opinion. It was, however, generally agreed that at an early stage the grubs had learned to attach themselves to larger, more powerful creatures and eventually found one that best suited them. Over the millennia hounds had developed that saddle-shaped depression on their backs, ideal for supporting a grub in comfort. The hounds, it was agreed, were probably as intelligent as a terrestrial ape. The grubs were roughly as intelligent as humans. No one grub stood out as a leader, in the human sense – but then, if all their communication was done by telepathy or by smell then how could anyone tell? No one hound stood out as being dominant. No grub had a favourite hound, although there were indications that the hounds competed for particular grubs.

  Within ten days Tatia had decided on a plan. Perry and Mariana, who’d become her lieutenants, agreed it made sense, as in there were no obvious alternatives. The day before the escape Tatia was wondering how many of the Pilgrims and LUX-WEM-YIB staff would follow her, regardless.

  “All except the catatonics and the no-hopers,” Perry said.

  “Don’t call them catatonic,” Mariana told him. “They feed themselves, use the latrine…”

  “Then what?”

  “They’re clinically depressed. Know what? Maybe they’re the sane ones.” Only the promise of action, never mind escape, had kept many others from an all-consuming existential despair.

  “The attack group have to kill at least one Cancri,” Tatia reminded them. “No bleeding hearts. No one gets sick at the idea.”

  “They won’t,” Mariana promised. “You’ll get your dead hound and grub, Tatia. Snapped and squished. I promise.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Tatia asked. “What made you change your mind?”

  Mariana thought for a moment. “Goes back to when I was nursing,” she finally said. “Saw a lot of people die. Some just gave up, others fought it to the end. Very occasionally the ones who fought survived. I’m not ready to give up. Fighting the odds is what makes us human, you know?” She touched Tatia’s arm. “Doesn’t matter if we fail. At least we goddamn tried.”

  * * *

  The call-out fee was dead in its coffin-like metal container, and it looked like murder with no attempt at concealment. The storage container atmosphere was a mix of anger, bafflement and fear.

  “See here,” Tate said, pointing. “The nutrient and hydration line has been pulled right out of the cannula in its arm. There’s a pool of nutrient fluid in the bottom of the crate. It literally starved to death while still in its electronically induced coma.”

  “It?” Marc queried angrily. “We got a dead person here. Are we still going with the ‘nameless sacrifice’ thing? Can’t we at least dignify this poor bastard with a gender, even if we can’t give them an identity?”

  Kara knew that Marc’s anger was sparked less by a sudden love of humanity than the artwork he’d been planning during the long, boring reaches of their journey. An artwork involving the fee. Marc hadn’t said anything, but Kara had seen him making notes and was expert in re
ading upside down. Marc had been playing with ideas about a three-dimensional composite life form representing the staff of the RIL-FIJ-DOQ – and by extension, the staff of any SUT – built around a central void defined only by the borders of the living components. Put the components together and there was clearly something in the middle. Remove them and it vanished. Kara put Marc from her mind and contacted her AI to ask two specific questions.

  Tate reached down beneath the thin foil blanket that covered the fee’s body. “We never know its name or history,” he said apologetically. “Even the AI doesn’t have that information. It’s the nature of the fee’s contract – if we knew anything we might feel empathy and a desire to protect, stop the Gliese from taking it. Makes you feel any better, our fee was female.” He straightened up, pulling a small hand and thin arm from beneath the blanket. It was, Kara observed dispassionately, a very small, light-brown, thin hand and arm, but if the fee had starved to death while unconscious that wasn’t surprising. Her body had used up all its fat reserves until there was nothing left. “Based on the skeletal and muscular structure,” Tate went on, “I would say young – possibly prepubertal. Is that enough caring for you?”

  What kind of society sold children to aliens? Kara bit back a curse. She knew the answer, had known even before Greenaway spelled it out. A society that had become dependent on alien technology – although, ironically, not the tech that kept a fee alive and dormant. That was Earth’s own. Then and there she fully appreciated the desperate importance of their long-term mission. Earth, humanity, had to come out from under the Gliese shadow. There could be no more call-out fees. Kara found herself remembering her sister, and the days when they’d played together as kids for hours: sometimes making up their own games, as kids always do, using blankets and boxes to build houses, forts, space stations. She couldn’t remember her sister’s face, though, not here in this rust-bucket SUT in the presence of a dead child. Not that it mattered – her AI had all the images stored. And the dead fee definitely wasn’t her sister. Too young, too dark-skinned. She was possibly someone’s sister, definitely someone’s daughter. Definitely not an “it”.

  “What about you?” Henk said, breaking into Kara’s thoughts. He had moved to face Tse, and was staring pugnaciously into the pre-cog’s face, neutral in so many ways. “You had to have foreseen this, right? I mean, that’s what you’re for.”

  “What I am for,” Tse replied calmly, “is facilitating communications with an alien species we can’t talk to – trying to anticipate what their reaction will be to a series of different possible offers or threats by peering ahead into the future and looking for positive or negative outcomes. But as I’ve told my colleagues – and as a medic you’d know this, except you’ve slipped into a combination of fear and bullish stupidity – being a pre-cog does not give me oversight of the future. I can – usually, not always – see landmarks on the horizon. I can see roads, footpaths and overgrown tracks that might lead to those landmarks, but the landscape is hilly, with much hidden from sight. Paths that I think lead to a particular landmark suddenly end in a hidden spot, double back on themselves, have a wall built across them. I can make guesses about where paths go, but I cannot be absolutely sure.”

  The explanation was wasted. “Don’t give me that metaphysical bullshit,” Henk said, leaning closer. “Did you know the fee would be found dead or not?”

  “I knew someone would die,” Tse replied imperturbably, “and I knew a few people who it might be, but that’s all. I certainly did not foresee the fee murdered.”

  “And you didn’t foresee who killed them?”

  Tse shook his head slightly. “No.”

  “Then what use are you?” Henk sneered, turning away. “Besides screwing Tate into next week.” So the three staff were perhaps not united. Was that because of sexual jealousy?

  “I hate to mention it,” Marc said hesitantly, as if needing to share despite the bad timing, “but I’ve been… I don’t know… seeing things. Or, rather, not seeing things yet knowing there’s something there. Or someone. I know this is stupid, but I don’t suppose it’s the fee’s spirit, soul or energy field?” He shook his head. “No, scratch that. Just the artist in me coming out of its shell. Mysteries of death and all that.”

  “Actually,” Kara said, pleased that he’d tried to defuse the tension, “I’ve been getting the same thing – like someone’s standing just behind my shoulder.”

  “We all get that,” Tate said. “No one ever says anything, but it’s to do with netherspace. It’s like knowing something’s in your blind spot, but not knowing what.”

  “You could have told us,” Marc protested.

  “What,” Henk said, smiling, “and miss the fun of seeing you twitch every so often, then look around nervously?” He stared down at the fee as if wondering whether to say a few words then shrugged and turned back to the group.

  “Bastard,” Marc said without rancour and half-smiled his forgiveness.

  “Apologies,” Henk said to Tse. “It was just that it… that she… was so young.”

  The room relaxed.

  Tate looked from face to face. “So – what now?”

  “Are we being paranoid?” Kara asked practically. “Any chance it was an accident? Perhaps the fee rolled around, or twitched while dreaming, and accidentally pulled the tube out of its arm. Her arm.”

  Tate shook his head. He walked over and gently touched the plastic mask, studded with wires, transmitters and sensors, that covered the fee’s face. “The transcranial signals from the coma hood here keep the fee so deep that there’s no neural activity – no dreams, no nightmares, no twitching. Besides, you can see that this mask is fastened to the table all the way around, so the brain is held perfectly still in the magnetic field. For similar reasons the arms, legs and torso are strapped firmly down to stop any twisting due to movement of the SUT. No, that line was pulled out deliberately. Trust me on this.”

  Kara’s mind raced, turning over all possibilities to see if any explanations crawled out. “Could it have happened before we left Earth? One of the maintenance staff?”

  “I wish I could say yes.” Tate appeared to have aged several years in as many minutes. “Unfortunately, one of our pre-departure checks involves making sure the fee’s still alive and healthy.”

  “Who carries out that check?” Marc challenged. “Did they do it correctly?”

  “I do,” Henk said levelly, “but Tate cross-checks. The fee was alive when we left Earth.”

  It was Henk, the most aggressive of the SUT’s staff – which could part explain Kara’s decision to screw him, at the time needing the comfort of combat – who said what they were all thinking. “So – the killer is either one of the six people in this room,” he said heavily, “or our esteemed mission manager.”

  “I vote for Leeman-Smith,” Nikki said, arms folded defensively across her chest. “It’s obvious he’s got a personality disorder.”

  “The real murderer probably would attempt to shift suspicion on to an easy target,” Tse observed quietly.

  Nikki stepped forward, fists clenching. “If you want to make an accusation then be open,” she said heatedly. “Don’t try to sneak it in.”

  Tate put a hand on Nikki’s shoulder, preventing her from going toe-to-toe with Tse.

  “What if,” Marc suggested in a loud voice, “everyone killed the fee, except me? Or none of us did it because there’s a stowaway on board who’s managed to keep themselves hidden? What if the fee somehow managed to block the effects of the transcranial coma field and pulled the cannula out herself, thus committing suicide?” He glanced around at the others. “Sorry,” he went on, “I read too many classic crime novels when I was Out. They were pretty much the only thing to read.”

  Henk snorted, while Nikki and Tate exchanged glances – one scornful, one confused. Kara glanced at Marc and quietly nodded her appreciation. He’d defused the situation. Natural ability or simulity training?

  “Thanks for those s
uggestions,” she said, assuming command. “We’ll take them under consideration.” She was about to ask who amongst them had accessed the fee’s crate when a thought struck her. “Is it possible that we do have a stowaway?”

  Tate shook his head, accepting her authority. “We’d see oxygen levels going down faster than they should, and carbon dioxide levels rising faster. There would be more body heat generated within the SUT, which would affect settings on the environmental controls. No, if there is one thing I can be sure of, it’s just us and Leeman-Smith.”

  “Who’s still the prime suspect, far as I’m concerned,” Nikki muttered.

  “Actually,” Kara said, thinking out loud, “Marc might just have a point.”

  “You mean we all did it?” Henk said, frowning. “I might remember that.”

  “It’s the classic triumvirate of means, motive and opportunity.” She looked around, checking expressions. “Since the murder was so easy to commit we all had the means, right?” Nobody objected. Good. Get them used to agreeing with her and the rest would fall into place. “The motive is more problematic. Why would anyone in their right mind kill our insurance policy? If they wanted to sabotage the mission there must have been other, better ways to do it. They couldn’t know we’d need the fee.”

  The others nodded. Kara made nothing but sense. That was the intention – bring them into line following her train of thought, and thus her lead. Because whoever they decided was guilty would become the next call-out fee. The level of proof needn’t be high. Circumstantial and dislike should do it.