“Can we trust these people?”
Koi nodded. He seemed relieved to bury himself in details. “The very large majority, yes. Pictures is Drava-built, most of the onboard shareholders are descendants of the original co-operative owners. The culture’s broadly Quellist-inclined, which means a tendency to look out for each other but mind their own business if no one’s needing help.”
“Yeah? Sounds a little Utopian to me. What about casual crew?”
Koi’s look sharpened to a stare. “Casual crew and newcomers know what they’re signing on for. Pictures has a reputation, like the rest of the rafts. The ones who don’t like it don’t stay. The culture filters down.”
Brasil cleared his throat. “How many of them know what’s going on?”
“Know that we’re here? About a dozen. Know why we’re here? Two, both ex-Black Brigade.” Koi looked up at the rayhunter, searchingly.
“They’ll both want to be there for Ascertainment. We’ve got a safe house set up in the stern lowers where we can do it.”
“Koi,” I slotted myself into his field of vision. “We need to talk first. There are a couple of things you should know.”
He regarded me for a long moment, lined face unreadable. But there was a hunger in his eyes that I knew I wasn’t going to get past.
“It’ll have to wait,” he told me. “Our primary concern here is to confirm her identity. I’d appreciate it if none of you call me by name until that’s done.”
“Ascertain,” I said sharply. The audible capitalisation of her was starting to piss me off. “You mean ascertain, right Koi?”
His gaze skipped off my shoulder and back to the rayhunter’s side.
“Yes, that’s what I mean,” he said.
A lot has been made of Quellism’s underclass roots, particularly over the centuries since its principal architect died and passed conveniently beyond the realm of political debate. The fact that Quellcrist Falconer chose to build a powerbase among the poorest of Harlan’s World’s labour force has led to a curious conviction among a lot of neoQuellists that the intention during the Unsettlement was to create a leadership drawn exclusively from this base. That Nadia Makita was herself the product of a relatively privileged middle class background goes carefully unremarked, and since she never rose to a position of political governance, the central issue of who’s going to run things after all this blows over never had to be faced. But the intrinsic contradiction at the heart of modern Quellist thought remains, and in neoQuellist company it’s not considered polite to draw attention to it.
So I didn’t remark on the fact that the safe house in the stern lowers of Pictures of the Floating World clearly didn’t belong to the elegantly spoken ex-Black Brigade man and woman who were waiting in it for us. Stern lowers is the cheapest, harshest neighbourhood on any urbraft or sea factory and no one who has a choice about it chooses to live there. I could feel the vibration from Floating World’s drives intensifying as we took a companionway down from the more desirable crew residences at superstructure levels over the stern, and by the time we got inside the apartment it was a constant background grind. Utilitarian furniture, scuffed and scraped walls and a minimum of decoration made it clear that whoever did quarter here didn’t spend much time at home.
“Forgive the surroundings,” said the woman urbanely, as she let us into the apartment. “It will only be for the night. And our proximity to the drives makes surveillance a near impossibility.”
Her partner ushered us to chairs set around a cheap plastic table laid with refreshments. Tea in a heated pot, assorted sushi. Very formal. He talked as he got us seated.
“Yeah, we’re also less than a hundred metres from the nearest hull maintenance hatch, which is where you’ll all be collected from tomorrow morning. They’ll drive the skimmer right in under the load-bearing girders between keels six and seven. You can climb straight down.” He gestured at Sierra Tres. “Even injured, you shouldn’t have too much trouble.”
There was a rehearsed competence to it all, but as he talked, his gaze kept creeping towards the woman in Sylvie Oshima’s body, then skidding abruptly away. Koi had been doing much the same thing since we brought her off the Angelfire Flirt. Only the female Brigade member seemed to have her eyes and hopes under real control.
“So,” she said smoothly. “I’m Sto Delia. This is Kiyoshi Tan. Shall we begin?”
Ascertainment.
In today’s society, it’s as common a ritual as parental acknowledgement parties to celebrate a birth, or reweddings to cement newly re-sleeved couples in their old relationship. Part stylised ceremony, part maudlin what about that time when session, Ascertainment varies in its form and formality from world to world and culture to culture. But on every planet I’ve ever been, it exists as a deeply respected underlying aspect of social relations. Outside of expensive hi-tech psychographic procedures, it’s the only way we have to prove to our friends and family that, regardless of what flesh we may be wearing, we are who we say we are. Ascertainment is the core social function that defines ongoing identity in the modern age, as vital to us now as primitive functions like signature and fingerprint databasing were to our pre-millennial ancestors.
And that’s where an ordinary citizen is concerned.
For semi-mythical heroic figures, back—perhaps—from the dead, it’s a hundred times more meaningful again. Soseki Koi was trembling visibly as he took his seat. His colleagues were both wearing younger sleeves and they showed it less, but if you looked with Envoy eyes, the same tension was there in unconfident, overdone gestures, laughter too readily coughed out, the occasional tremor in a voice as it started up again in a dried throat.
These men and this woman, who had once belonged to the most feared counter-insurgency force in planetary history, had suddenly been granted a glimpse of hope among the ashes of their past. They faced the woman who claimed to be Nadia Makita with everything that had ever mattered to them hanging clearly visible in the balance behind their eyes.
“It is an honour,” Koi began, and then stopped to clear his throat. “It is an honour to speak of these things …”
Across the table, the woman in Sylvie Oshima’s sleeve looked back at him steadily as he spoke. She answered one of his oblique questions with crisp assent, ignored another. The other two Brigade members weighed in, and she turned slightly in her seat towards each of them, offered an antique gesture of inclusion each time. I felt myself receding to the status of spectator as the initial round of pleasantries peeled away and the Ascertainment gathered momentum. The conversation picked up, moved rapidly from matters of the last few days across a long and sombre political retrospective, and then into talk of the Unsettlement and the years that preceded it. The language shifted just as rapidly, from contemporary Amanglic into an unfamiliar old-time Japanese dialect with occasional gusts of Stripjap. I glanced across at Brasil and shrugged as subject matter and syntax both accelerated away from us.
It went on for hours. The labouring motors of the urbraft made dim thunder in the walls around us. Pictures of the Floating World ploughed on its way. We sat and listened.
“…makes you think. A fall from any of those ledges and you’re offal splattered across »the outgoing tide?«. No recovery scheme, no re-sleeve policy, not even family death benefits. It’s a »rage?« that starts in your bones and …”
“…remember when you first realised that was the case?”
“…one of my father’s articles on colonial theory …”
“…playing »?????« on the streets of Danchi. We all did. I remember one time the »streetpolice?« tried to …”
“…reaction?”
“Family are like that—or at least my family were always »?????ing« in a slictopus »plague?« …”
“…even when you were young, right?”
“I wrote that stuff when I was barely out of my teens. Can’t believe they printed it. Can’t believe there were people who »paid good money for/devoted seriousness to?« so much »
?????«‘
“But—”
“Is it?” A shrug. “Didn’t feel that way when I »looked back/reconsidered?« from the »blood on my hands?« basis in the »?????«.”
From time to time Brasil or I would rise and make fresh tea in the kitchen. The Black Brigade veterans barely noticed. They were locked on, lost in the wash and detail of a past made suddenly real again just across the table.
“…recall whose decision that was?”
“Obviously not—you guys didn’t have a »chain of command/respect?« worth a fucking …”
Sudden, explosive laughter around the table. But you could see the tear sheen on their eyes.
“…and it was getting too cold for a stealth campaign up there. Infrared would have shown us up like …”
“Yes, it was almost …”
“…Millsport
“…better to lie to them that we had a good chance? I don’t think so.”
“Would have been a hundred fucking kilometres before …”
“…and supplies.”
“…Odisej, as far as I remember. He would have run a »?????« standoff right up to the …”
“…about Alabardos?”
Long pause.
“It’s not clear, it feels »?????«. I remember something about a helicopter? We were going to the helicopter?”
She was trembling slightly. Not for the first time, they sheared away from the subject matter like ripwings from a rifleshot.
“…something about …”
“…essentially a reactive theory …”
“No, probably not. If I examined other »models?« …”
“But isn’t it axiomatic that »the struggle?« for control of »?????« would cause …”
“Is it? Who says that?”
“Well.” An embarrassed hesitation, glances exchanged. “You did. At least, you »argued?/admitted?« that …”
“That’s crabshit! I never said convulsive policy shift was the »key?« to a better …”
“But, Spaventa claims you advocated—”
“Spaventa? That fucking fraud. Is he still breathing?”
“…and your writings on demodynamics show …”
“Look, I’m not a fucking ideologue, alright. We were faced with »a bottleback in the surf?« and we had to …”
“So you’re saying »?????« isn’t the solution to »?????« and reducing »poverty/ignorance?« would mean …”
“Of course it would. I never claimed anything different. What happened to Spaventa, anyway?”
“Umm, well—he teaches at Millsport university these—”
“Does he? The little fuck.”
“Ahem. Perhaps we could discuss a »version?/view?« of those events which pivots less on »?????« than »recoil?/slingshot?« theories of …”
“Very well, as far as it goes. But give me a single »binding example?« to support those claims.”
“Ahhhhhh …”
“Exactly. Demodynamics isn’t »blood in the water?«, it’s an attempt to …”
“But—”
And on and on, until, in a clatter of cheap furniture, Koi was suddenly on his feet.
“That’s enough,” he said gruffly.
Glances flickered back and forth between the rest of us. Koi came round the side of the table and his old face was taut with emotion as he looked down at the woman sitting there. She looked back up at him without expression.
He offered her his hands.
“I have,” he swallowed, “concealed my identity from you until now, for the sake of. Our cause. Our common cause. But I am Soseki Koi, ninth Black Brigade command, Saffron theatre.”
The mask on Sylvie Oshima’s face melted away. Something like a grin took its place.
“Koi? Shaky Koi?”
He nodded. His lips were clamped together.
She took his outstretched hands, and he lifted her to her feet beside him.
He faced the table and looked at each of us in turn. You could see the tears in his eyes, hear them in his voice when he spoke.
“This is Quellcrist Falconer,” he said tightly. “In my mind there is no longer room for doubt.”
Then he turned and flung his arms around her. Sudden tear-ribbons glistened on his cheeks. His voice was hoarse.
“We waited so long for you to come again,” he wept. “We waited so long.”
PART 5
THIS IS THE STORM TO COME
“No one heard Ebisu returning until it was too late and then what had been said could not be unsaid, deeds done could not be undone and all present must answer for themselves.”
Legends of the Seagod Trad.
“Unpredictable wind vectors and velocity … expect heavy weather.”
Kossuth Storm Management Net Extreme Conditions Alert
THIRTY-EIGHT
I woke to Kossuth-grade heat and low-angle sunlight, a mild hangover and the serrated sound of snarling. Out in the pens, someone was feeding the swamp panthers.
I glanced at my watch. It was very early.
I lay for a while in sheets tangled to my waist, listening to the animals and the harsh male whoops of the feeding crew on the gantries above them. Segesvar had taken me on a tour of the place two years previously, and I still remembered the awful power with which the panthers nailed up to catch chunks of fishsteak the size of a man’s torso. The feeding crew had yelled then as well, but the more you listened the more you realised that it was bravado to shore up courage against an instinctive terror. With the exception of one or two hardened swamp-game hunters, Segesvar recruited pretty exclusively from the wharf fronts and slums of Newpest, where the chances of any of the kids having seen a real panther were about even with them ever having been to Millsport.
A couple of centuries back, it was different—the Expanse was smaller then, not yet cleared all the way south to make way for the belaweed mono-cropping combines. In places, the swamp’s poisonously beautiful trees and float-foliage crept almost up to the city limits, and the inland harbour had to be redredged on a twice-yearly basis. It wasn’t unheard of for panthers to turn up basking on the loading ramps in the summer heat, the chameleon skin of mane and mantle shimmering to mimic the sun’s glare. Peculiar variations in the breeding cycles of their prey out on the Expanse sometimes drove them in to roam the streets closest to the swamplands, where they ripped open sealed refuse canisters with effortless savagery and occasionally, at night, took the homeless or the unwary drunk. Just as they would in their swamp environment, they sprawled prone in back alleys, body and limbs concealed beneath a mane and mantle that would camouflage to black in the darkness. To their victims, they would resemble nothing so much as a pool of deep shadow until it was too late, and they left nothing behind for the police but broad splashes of blood and the echo of screams in the night. By the time I was ten, I’d seen my share of the creatures in the flesh, had even myself once run screaming up a wharf-shed ladder with my friends when a sleepy panther rolled over at our step-freeze-step approach, flapped one corner of its sloppy, tendrilled mane at us and treated us to a gape-beaked yawn.
The terror, like much that you experience in childhood, was transient.
Swamp panthers were scary, they were lethally dangerous if you encountered them under the wrong circumstances, but in the end they were a part of our world.
The snarling outside seemed to reach a crescendo.
To Segesvar’s crew, swamp panthers were the bad guys of a hundred cheap hologames and maybe a school biology class they hadn’t cut, made suddenly real. Monsters from another planet.
This one.
And maybe, inside some of the young thugs who worked for Segesvar until the lower-echelon haiduci lifestyle inevitably took them down, maybe these monsters awoke the shivery existential understanding of exactly how far from home we all really were.
Then again, maybe not.
Someone shifted in the bed beside me and groaned.
“Don’t those fucking things ever shut up?”
/>
Recollection arrived at the same moment as the shock, and they cancelled each other out. I rolled my head sideways and saw Virginia Vidaura’s elfin features squashed up under a pillow she’d crushed to her own head. Her eyes were still closed.
“Feeding time,” I said, mouth sticky as I spoke.
“Yeah, well I can’t make up my mind what’s pissing me off more. Them or the fucking idiots feeding them.” She opened her eyes. “Good morning.”
“And to you.” Memory of her the night before, hunched forward astride me. Beneath the sheets, I was hardening with the thought. “I didn’t think this was ever going to happen in the real world.”
She looked back at me for a moment, then rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling.
“No. Nor did I.”
The events of the previous day floated sluggishly to the surface. My first sight of Vidaura, poised in the snout of Segesvar’s low-profile skimmer as it held station on the roiled waters beneath the urbraft’s massive load bearing supports. The dawn light from the opening at the stern had not reached this deep into the space between hulls and she was little more than a gun-handed, spike-haired silhouette as I came down through the maintenance hatch. There was a reassuring operational toughness to the figure she cut, but when torchglow fell briefly across her face as we boarded, I saw something else there that I couldn’t define. She met my eyes briefly, then looked away.
Nobody spoke much during the skimmer ride across the early morning waters of the Gulf. There was a solid wind out of the west and a cold gunmetal light across everything that didn’t encourage conversation. As we closed on the coast, Segesvar’s contraband driver called us all inside and a second hard-faced young haiduci swung himself up into the skimmer’s gun-turret. We sat in the cramped cabin in silence, listening to the engines change pitch as we slowed on approach to the beach. Vidaura took the seat beside Brasil, and down in the gloom where their thighs touched, I saw them clasp hands. I closed my eyes and leaned back in the comfortless metal and webbing seat, running the route behind my eyes for something to do.
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