by Paul McAuley
‘And it’s a good plan,’ Loc said. ‘It’ll set us up for life. But you’re not the kind of person who will be able to settle into retirement. Neither am I. We’ll want to do something else. This might be it.’
‘Is this something serious, or are you causing trouble because you’re bored?’
‘Machiavelli taught us long ago that if you want to control a territory, you support the weaker powers in it without increasing their strength, and crush the strongest.’
‘We studied Machiavelli in officer school,’ Captain Neves said. ‘He also said that you can’t avoid war; you can only postpone it.’
Loc shrugged inside her loose embrace. ‘It’s just an idea at the moment. A possibility. The Ghosts, there’s no point in talking to them. They’re fanatics with no interest in making a deal, as they’ve made plain from the outset. They only agreed to this meeting because they want to find out about us, and make vain threats and boasts. The talks will fail in a day or two, you wait and see. But Idriss Barr and his people aren’t Ghosts. They are something else.’
‘You’ve fallen in love,’ Captain Neves said, smiling.
Loc smiled too. ‘All I’m going to do is talk. What harm can it do?’
Over the next two days, as Loc had predicted, the negotiations began to stall. The Ghosts sat in frosty silence as the Brazilian and European diplomats set out their proposals, and then spent hours picking apart every detail and making outrageous demands until nothing was left. And while they continued to ignore Loc, they engaged the other diplomats in intense conversations about their lives and work, no doubt hoping to add the information to socio-economic and political models of Greater Brazil and the various cities on the various moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Of course, the Brazilians and Europeans were attempting to do exactly the same thing, but although the Ghosts boasted freely about the defensive and offensive capabilities of their cadres and ships, and their willingness to sacrifice everything to protect the future that their leader and guru had entrusted to them, they yielded only scant details about their city and the lives of their people.
Somehow, Sara Póvoas’s expertise and the energetic optimism of Idriss Barr and the Free Outers kept things together. Loc watched everything, analysing every player’s strengths and weaknesses and habits of thought, noting how everyone interacted with everyone else, feeling out the cross-currents of power and influence. He tried his best to explain some of it to Captain Neves, who was growing increasingly bored and impatient with talks that went around and around without any movement forward or back. She saw a hopeless knot; Loc saw a web taut with intrigue and alive with possibility.
The Free Outers were growing increasing frustrated with the Ghosts’ tactics, yet dared not challenge them openly. Partly out of solidarity, no doubt, Outers standing shoulder to shoulder with Outers. Partly because they were clearly intimidated by the Ghosts: because they were a small band of refugees living in the shadow of a kind of death cult. Yet it was clear that they hoped to persuade the Brazilians and Europeans of their legitimacy, and wanted to define some measure of common ground in which they could, at some later date, sink the foundations for a peace treaty. Loc was increasingly confident that he would be able to work on their hopes and fears, persuade them to open a clandestine back channel so that they could continue talks with the TPA without the knowledge or interference of the Ghosts. That he might gain some personal prestige from this farrago, and later, maybe, just maybe, be able to profit from it.
And anyway, it wasn’t as if he had anything better to do.
He couldn’t approach Idriss Barr, of course: both Sara Póvoas and the Ghosts would suspect he was up to something. But everyone knew that Macy Minnot disliked and distrusted him because he’d once tried to have her killed, so he believed that he could talk to her without arousing any suspicion or accusation of double-dealing. After the communal dinner on the third night, he found her sitting on a platform near one of the poles of the habitat, looking down at the gulf where the Free Outers flew about in the perpetual blue twilight. Shouting and laughing as they chased after a small ball and each other, rebounding from walls and swinging around spars and rocketing off in different directions.
‘I still don’t understand the rules of that game,’ he said.
‘The person with the ball has to pass it to someone else as quickly as possible,’ Macy Minnot said, without looking at him.
‘That’s it?’
‘That’s it.’
‘I notice that you don’t play.’
‘I’ve played. But I’m not quick enough. I slow the game down.’
‘As the Ghosts slow down the negotiations.’
‘That isn’t very subtle, Mr Ifrahim. You’re losing your touch.’
‘I think we’ve reached a stage where we can safely abandon subtlety and nuance.’
Macy Minnot looked at him, her face as usual clenched as a fist. ‘If you want to find out why the Ghosts are doing what they are doing you should ask them.’
‘It’s clear that they want only to advertise their strength and determination, and to make sure that your friends gain no advantage from these talks. It hurts, doesn’t it?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘To think that this will come to nothing. I understand. After all, you have more to lose than anyone else.’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘Your friends are here because they want to be here. Because they believe that they are the cutting edge of human evolution. The seed from which a thousand Utopias will flower. But you are here by accident. You managed to make a kind of life for yourself. And I’m impressed, I really am. You are tougher and more resourceful than I thought. But is it really what you want?’
‘Do we ever get what we really want? How about you, Mr Ifrahim? After all you’ve done, do you think you’ve been properly rewarded?’
‘After this, I’m going to retire. Captain Neves and I will go back to Earth. We’ll marry, and set up a consultation business in Brasília. Have you ever been to Brasília, Miz Minnot? Some people don’t like the climate - they say it’s too hot, too dry. Others say that it is too crowded. But if you have enough money, it is a fine place to live.’
‘I’m sure you’ll be very happy.’
‘I haven’t been back to Earth since the war. I look forward to returning very much.’
‘Why don’t you tell me what you want from me, Mr Ifrahim? Or did you come to simply to gloat?’
‘You think I have some kind of nefarious plan.’
‘I’m going by past experience.’
Loc smiled at this sally, feeling something akin to affection. Sri Hong-Owen had once asked him if he’d believed in fate. He certainly believed that you couldn’t choose where and when you were born; perhaps that was fate or perhaps it was nothing more than chance, but after that, your life was what you made of it. Still, it was hard not to imagine that fate, or something like it, had twisted his life and the life of Macy Minnot around each other. A spiral like DNA’s double helix. Complementary pairs. She his dark half. The shadow to his light.
He said, ‘I didn’t want to come here. I was ordered to accompany the diplomatic team because Euclides Peixoto, who I am sure you remember, wanted someone to observe their work, and also wanted to punish me. So here I am. An observer. I have no part in the negotiations. No influence on Miz Póvoas, or the people to whom she reports. But that doesn’t mean that I want these talks to come to nothing. Let me share something with you, if I may. Officially, the TPA does not differentiate between you and the Ghosts. Unofficially, there are some people who appreciate your difficult and delicate relationship with neighbours who are more numerous, better equipped, and highly aggressive.’
‘And they care why?’
‘You have every reason to mistrust the TPA, of course. But times change. The attack on the Uranus System was the initiative of an egomaniac who suffered the ultimate punishment for his intemperate action. And there are some of us who believe that it isn’t in o
ur interests to go to war against the Ghosts, let alone you. If we can take one thing away from this meeting, it’s the opportunity to continue a conversation.’
‘Go back to Earth, Mr Ifrahim. Have a nice life there - why not? But stop trying to play God.’
‘I’m sharing a few observations with you, Miz Minnot. I mean no harm by them.’
They stared at each other like lovers seeing each other naked for the first time. Then Macy Minnot shrugged. ‘Talk doesn’t mean anything anyway,’ she said. ‘We talked to Tommy Tabagee, and it got us nowhere.’
‘Oh, I don’t think that’s true. You invested considerable time and effort setting up this habitat so that you could talk with the TPA.’
‘We want to find a way of making peace with the TPA. That means something more than just talking about it.’
‘If you don’t talk, you’ll never reach any kind of agreement,’ Loc said, and pushed off from the platform and sculled away down a long spar, heading towards the pod he shared with Captain Neves.
Halfway there, Sada Selene stooped down on him. Falling out of thin air, checking her momentum by catching hold of one of the nylon loops strung along the spar, swinging around in a somersault and landing on her feet in front of him like a pirate boarding a captive vessel. Tall and slim and imperious in her clean white suit-liner, her smile knife-thin.
‘I really wouldn’t count on Macy Minnot, if I were you,’ she said. ‘I don’t think she’s forgiven you for what happened at Rainbow Bridge.’
‘And has she forgiven you for kidnapping her?’
‘She’s learned to live with it. All the Free Outers have had to learn to live with us. We’re all there is out here.’
‘Yet they are equal partners in these talks.’
‘They have their uses. You talk more readily with them than with us, for one thing. And you probably wouldn’t have come all the way out here to meet only with us.’
‘If who we can and cannot meet was ever up to you, I’m sure you’d be right.’
‘You told Idriss Barr that there was nothing inevitable about the future,’ she said. ‘Yes, of course we were listening to your conversation. We listen to everything.’
‘I had never thought otherwise.’
‘You’re wrong about the future. It is what it is. And we will do whatever we have to do to make it come out right. Remember that,’ Sada Selene said, and kicked away, arrowing past Loc towards the spherical black tangle of the tree at the heart of the little world, where the Ghosts had made their camp.
Loc thought that it was only an idle threat. One of many such that Sada Selene had made. He should have known better.
Loc was woken by Captain Neves in the small hours of the night. She told him that the Ghosts were gone. They’d disabled the spyware sown by the diplomats, stuck portable airlocks to the wall of the habitat, and bailed. Most had crossed to their ship; two had tried to sneak aboard the Brazilian freighter and they’d blown themselves up when marines intercepted them, damaging the hull. Part of the life system was in vacuum. Emergency repairs were being made and the ship was preparing to get under way.
‘We’re leaving right now, before anything else happens,’ Captain Neves said. Her face, set in a grim expression, looked ashen in the greenish light of the little pod. The spike of a short-range radio was jammed in her right ear.
‘Something has already happened to the ship. Shouldn’t we stay here until it’s fixed?’
‘It’s an order, not a suggestion,’ Captain Neves said, and pushed Loc through the slit in the pod’s wall.
The habitat’s constellations of wandering lights had been switched off; the volume of airy darkness was defined by the faint pastel glow of the pods scattered along the spars and pools of bright light playing across the outer skin as maintenance drones searched for evidence of sabotage. Captain Neves kicked away from the pod, towing Loc towards the big net strung in front of the main airlock, where a squad of marines suited up in battle armour were watching the Free Outers pull on their pressure suits.
Loc grabbed a line at the edge of the net, hauled himself along it to the marine captain, and asked him what was going on.
The captain stared at Loc through the gold-tinted faceplate of his helmet and said through the suit’s external speaker, ‘We’re keeping them for your protection, sir.’
‘As hostages? That’s not a good idea, Captain. They had nothing to do with this incredibly stupid action of the Ghosts,’ Loc said, speaking loudly so that the Free Outers could hear him. ‘What’s more, the Ghosts care as much for these people as they care for us. Or for themselves, for that matter. Which is to say, they care not one whit if they live or die.’
‘Get your suit, sir. We’re evacuating the habitat now.’
‘Let them go, Captain. We don’t need hostages, but we may need their goodwill.’
‘Get inside with the other civilians. We’re about to evacuate all of you.’
Loc barged through the people crowded into the bubble of the airlock’s antechamber and confronted Sara Póvoas, asked her if she approved of taking the Free Outers prisoner.
‘I might have known you’d take their side,’ she said.
‘I’m trying to make sure we do the right thing,’ Loc said.
‘You’re trying to salvage some kind of deal with them, so that you can line your pockets,’ Sara Póvoas said. ‘Don’t think I haven’t seen what you’ve been up to, Mr Ifrahim.’
‘Perhaps I can succeed where you have failed, Miz Póvoas.’
Loc would have said more, but Captain Neves grabbed hold of him, spun him around and shoved him towards the rack where his pressure suit hung, forked open down the chest by its big double zip like a man split by an axe, and told him to put it on.
‘They’re making a bad mistake,’ Loc said.
‘No need to make it worse,’ Captain Neves said.
Braced against each other, they stripped down to their suit-liners, fastened up their pressure suits and checked their lifepacks. Marines started to call out names and escorted the diplomats through the airlock one by one. Loc and Captain Neves were being left to last - deliberately, in Loc’s opinion. Dread congealed in his belly, thick and heavy as nausea.
Through the transparent wall of the antechamber, the Free Outers in their variously coloured pressure suits were balancing like acrobats on the rippling net, while marines turtled up in heavy black battle armour clutched lines and tried to keep their pulse rifles trained on them. Loc thought to switch on the common band, heard Idriss Barr explaining to the marine captain that his people would not leave except in their own ship.
The captain cut him off, told him his people were all prisoners of war, and said that if they didn’t line up now and obey orders he’d shoot one of them as an example to the rest.
‘I cannot permit that,’ Idriss Barr said.
‘You have no choice,’ the captain said.
Idriss Barr laughed. ‘Of course I do.’
All around, above and below and around its equator, panels blew away from the habitat’s skin. The spiderweb framework flexed and shuddered and the spherical volume was filled with whirlpools of mist that spun and thinned and vanished, sucked through the open panels into the vacuum of space. The powerful lights of the drones tumbled away, leaving only the dim glow of the pods, dabs of pink and orange in a vast black volume.
Inside the airlock’s antechamber, Loc clung to Captain Neves, his breath rattling inside his helmet, watching with stark disbelief as the marines shone lights wildly all around, catching glimpses of the Free Outers as they flew through empty space, moving fast and straight as arrows, flashing into existence as light caught them for a moment, vanishing into the general darkness. Some of the marines chased after the Outers; others braced against spars or lines and took aim with their pulse rifles. An Outer caught in two overlapping pools of light plunged through a black gap and vanished a moment before a bolt struck the lip of the hole and that part of the wall exploded outwards like a flower, lon
g rips extending away in every direction.
Then one of the marines in the antechamber grabbed Captain Neves and Loc, hauled them through the open inner hatch of the airlock, and slammed it shut behind them. The airlock decompressed with a sharp crack, the outer door swung open, and the marine waiting outside helped them one after the other into the rigid triangle of a sling and clipped the utility belts of their suits to tethers and triggered the sling’s motor.
‘Don’t worry,’ Captain Neves said, as the sling pulled away from the airlock. ‘We’re going to be all right.’
The dark curve of the habitat receded as the sling hauled them along a line stretched towards the freighter, which hung small and sharply detailed in faint sunlight - a little over three kilometres away according to the radar package of Loc’s suit’s, and growing closer at a steady eighteen k.p.h. All around, vast black emptiness spangled with stars. Loc clung to the sling’s frame, his fingers cramping inside heavy gloves. The surf of his breathing was loud inside his helmet; cold dry air feathered across his face. For several minutes, nothing happened apart from the slow expansion of the freighter. He began to believe that they would make it. Then something flashed at the edge of his vision and he turned, clumsy and stiff inside his suit, and saw a second flash light up the habitat from inside. A frozen glimpse of ragged flaps of the habitat’s skin peeling away, the web of internal spars etched in stark shadow against a fading red blossom, and then darkness again.
‘They blew up the habitat,’ Loc said. ‘Someone blew up the habitat.’
‘Ghosts. It’s on the military band. They launched a bunch of drones,’ Captain Neves said, and the sling jolted to a stop and the stars began to wheel around them.
Loc cried out. He couldn’t help it. Beside him, Captain Neves unclipped her tether from the sling’s frame and attached the end to his utility belt. She was reaching past him, trying to unclip his tether, when the line they were travelling along snapped outwards in a great curve, as fast and sudden as a cracked whip. Captain Neves swore and Loc was flung against her so hard that his head jarred inside the padding of his helmet. Everything revolved around him. He glimpsed a blindingly bright star - the freighter, its fusion motor lit, moving through a shoal of red flashes that blinked and faded in random patterns. And then there was another tremendous jolt and he and Captain Neves went spinning away from the sling. His tether had broken loose and Captain Neves’s tether was stretched between them. Stars wheeled all around. Loc felt his gorge rise and sweat pop all over his skin. He closed his eyes, scared that he’d throw up and futz his suit or choke on his own vomit . . .