The Coalition Man

by Alec Saracen

  “One Liberator for all of Macard,” Grey Hawk said hesitantly.

  “I can back you up if needed.” Red Wolf glanced at her and shrugged. “There's four of us for an entire planet. We were made to operate independently. If you're worthy of being a Liberator, you can handle Macard.”

  The sentence came with a barb, an unnecessary emphasis on you're, and Grey Hawk forced herself to ignore it. If Red Wolf wanted to goad her, Grey Hawk wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of getting to her. Determined not to waste it, she imagined that flash of anger trickling down into a mental bottle and being stored away on a shelf. There were better uses for it.

  Blue Wasp arrived an hour later. He had barely closed the door before Red Wolf called a strategy meeting. To escape the grimness of their surroundings, they met in a sim, standing on top of a rocky mountain overlooking an enormous lake. Grey Hawk recognised it as Plenty's untouched northeastern continent, Aiopa, which tourists were only permitted to visit wearing sterilised full-body suits.

  “Are we all agreed on the best way to advance the cause?” Red Wolf asked. “Tor's independence under as democratic a government as possible?”

  Nobody disagreed.

  “Good.” A dozen images popped into existence in a circle around them, like levitating oil portraits. Red Wolf pointed to one official-looking image depicting an obese, bearded Qienchuan man with a silver ponytail and dark, guarded eyes. “Gumeigo Zhai, the Coalition ambassador. He hit orbit earlier today – or at least a Coalition ship did. We haven't confirmed it's him, but our sources on Armenaiakon reported that he got the posting.”

  “Now, that's interesting,” Blue Wasp said. He turned to Grey Hawk. “He's–”

  “Consolidationist,” Grey Hawk said. As if she didn’t know Zhai.You think I don't know Zhai? “I know.”

  Red Wolf nodded. “One of their leadership cabal, in fact. We don't think he's defected to the Developists or Revanchists, not after the career he's had. Our intel suggests that some kind of deal was struck to put him here. Pretty much every other new ambassador they've appointed have been from the expansionist wing that caused this whole mess.”

  “So why him?” Blue Bull said, more to himself than to anyone else. “Why Tor?”

  “That, we don't know,” Red Wolf said. “Could be a personal favour. Could be something more.”

  “But this is good for us,” Grey Hawk said. “Right? The Consolidationists don't want to expand the Coalition, so Zhai will push for Torian independence.”

  “Zhai will do whatever it takes to help his faction,” Red Wolf said, a little contempt leaking into her voice. “Naro proved that. If Tor's independence benefits the Consolidationists, he'll angle for that – but we don't know enough about their internal politics to be sure that's what he's after.”

  “It's a fair guess, though,” Blue Wasp said.

  “It is,” Red Wolf conceded. She turned to Grey Hawk. “He'll be operating in Macard. There won't be much we can do, but try to keep him alive, unpleasant as that may seem. As long as he's acting in our interests, it's our duty to collude with him. Do you agree?”

  Ah. So this was why Grey Hawk was being sent to Macard: to do Red Wolf's dirty work for her. Yes, Macard was Tor's political core, but it was so completely under the government's thumb that she barely had anything to do – except keep Gumeigo Zhai alive, while the Grade Sevens did the real work in Landing. The trap had been set, and she'd walked right into it by agreeing to go to Macard alone.

  “Yes,” Grey Hawk said. Fuck you, she thought. “I agree.”

  The rest of the meeting rumbled on without much input from her. Blue Bull and Blue Wasp excitedly discussed the myriad political opportunities in Landing, plotting surgical strikes on government facilities and acts of conspicuous, population-rousing defiance, and Grey Hawk choked back her envy. That was what she wanted to do, to take real action that advanced the cause – not protect yet another amoral politician just because their interests happened to line up. Her belief in the Third Primary Principle was unshakeable, but that made it no easier to swallow.

  She would do it. She would prove herself as a Liberator, no matter how dirty the job. And if Tor achieved its independence and Ambassador Zhai happened to meet an untimely end once he had served his purpose – well, it would be no more than what he deserved.

  9

  Zhai hadn't held out much hope for the embassy, but he had at least expected a floor.

  The Coalition embassy on Tor turned out to be a handful of connected, unfinished apartments in a tall apartment block close to the centre of Macard. The building was apparently sparsely populated, with most of its units unoccupied. Bare concrete dominated throughout, both underfoot and overhead. Umbiba had slapped emergency sticky lights onto the ceiling while waiting for the power to be hooked up. They cast the whole place in a sickly white light that did nothing for Zhai's mood.

  “At least the view is nice,” Harod offered, as he and Zhai stood side by side by the plate windows – hastily reinforced with bulletproof plastic sheets – looking out over Macard at dusk. The sun was skulking low on the horizon, sketching glowing gold outlines around bruise-coloured clouds.

  Zhai thought of a dozen acerbic remarks, but he held his tongue. “It is,” he said grudgingly. Macard in the gloom was far more appealing than Macard in the unflattering light of day. An intricate, motile carpet of light was laid out before them, pulsing and glimmering along its right-angle arteries. It was a beautiful sight, one which went some way towards making up for the lack of an actual carpet.

  In the absence of hot water for a bath and the lack of electricity or gas for a hot meal, Zhai had resorted to drinking. He was staring moodily at the inch of gold in his glass when the real lights suddenly flickered into life overhead. A muted cheer went up around the embassy.

  Walking back to the main communal space, they saw Ceq and Fleischer emerging triumphantly from an access vent, caked in dust and filth.

  Zhai raised his glass to them. “Well done.”

  Ceq grinned through a grey mask of dirt. “Still no water or gas, though.”

  “At least we've got power,” Fleischer said. She let loose her ponytail and vigorously shook her head, dislodging a huge cloud of dust. “Who the fuck looked at this place and thought 'great, let's put an embassy here'?”

  “Our agents,” Zhai said. “Which, frankly, doesn't fill me with confidence.”

  Umbiba looked around, the tip of his tongue visible between his lips as he thought. “It's defensible,” he said. “No ground-level infiltration is possible, and we can seal off all access if we need to. Too many windows, though.”

  “And we're close to the roof,” Ceq added. “We're vulnerable to aerial attack, but we can escape that way.”

  “Hear that?” Harod said, nudging Zhai with a bony shoulder. “We can jump off the roof if we need to. Luxury.”

  In the end, they sent Ceq and Fleischer back into the walls to hook up water and gas rather than wait for professionals. Wandering the cold boxes of his embassy, Zhai drained his glass and filled another. They hadn't even been left beds, and they hadn't brought any with them. Sam put in an emergency order from a local goods service for bedrolls and sleeping bags, but the earliest possible delivery would be just after midnight.

  In the central corridor on the second floor, Zhai paused, his nose twitching. He could have sworn that he could smell Lho Pangleng's cooking. He was ready to chalk it up to wishful fatigue delusions when he heard the sizzling of fat.

  He found Lho sitting cross-legged on the bare concrete in one room, poking at a pan.

  “Lho?” Zhai said softly. The old woman stiffened and turned to scowl at him. “What are you doing?”

  “I'm surprised they gave you such a cushy job if you're that stupid,” Lho said in staccato Xoma. Zhai strained to understand her, and Lho's face softened a little. “I'm cooking.”

  Zhai ambled over and sat down opposite her. The pan was full of what looked – and smelled – like beef and mu
shroom kegu-do, redolent with an intensely complex spice blend. A dozen little jars were neatly lined up next to Lho, chaperoned by a parallel line of unlabelled bottles. As Zhai watched, Lho lifted the pan, revealing the incandescent heating pad below it, and poured in half a bottle of a brownish liquid, producing a cloud of steam.

  “You brought all this in your personal luggage?” Zhai said wonderingly. His mouth was watering. “Why?”

  Lho shrugged. “I trust this. It works.”

  “What if we'd had a working kitchen?”

  “Never cook in a kitchen you don't know.” Lho scraped the bottom of the pan vigorously with her wooden spoon for a moment, then returned it to the heat. “Timing is everything.”

  Zhai gazed at Lho for a long moment. “Yes,” he said eventually. “It is, isn't it?”

  Lho indicated the pile of opened vacuum packs on the floor. “This food comes from plastic. It was all dry. You give me fresh food, I give you better dishes. But give fresh food to someone else and tell them to cook kegu-do, and theirs still won't be as good as this.”

  She said it matter-of-factly, not bragging. It was true. Lho was just about the best cook Zhai knew. Not the best chef – in Lho's opinion, innovation and novelty had no place in food, and everything she made was stolidly, unquestionably traditional. They were dishes that hadn't changed in eight hundred years. And, just as she claimed, Lho made them better than anyone else even with second-rate ingredients.

  The water had almost boiled down. Lho licked her spoon, considered the flavour, and smiled. She fished around in her bag and dug out two bowls and two sets of chopsticks, then served up with practised efficiency.

  “Eat,” she said, thrusting a steaming bowl into Zhai's hands. Zhai obeyed. It was rich and spicy, and in that moment it seemed like food could taste no better.

  Lho watched him savour it. She enjoyed watching him eat her cooking as much as he enjoyed eating it, but today she looked concerned.

  “You look tired,” she said, after a few minutes.

  Zhai swallowed a mouthful of beef and laid down his bowl, enjoying the lingering heat of the peppers on his tongue. “I am tired.” He nudged the bowl with his shoe and smiled. “This helps, though. Thank you.”

  Lho waved a dismissive hand, though she looked quietly pleased. “This slop is nothing. Wait until I get hold of real food.”

  “I'm looking forward to it,” Zhai said. “Anything to brighten up this ruin.”

  Lho looked around the desolate room. “How long are we here?”

  “I don't know. More than a month, less than a year. Until the job's done, or until they decide I'm causing too much damage and call me home.” Or until he got himself killed, was the other possibility, but Zhai didn’t voice that one.

  “And then?”

  “Then? Retirement, probably. This is the last one, Lho. After Tor, I'm finished. They won't send me out again.”

  “Would you want to go?”

  Zhai laughed. “I might as well ask you if you want to cook. I live for this. I was put in this universe to lie to governments.”

  “I was born for this fight,” Lho said, using an arcane Xoma grammatical construction which signified quotation. Zhai took a few seconds to unpick it, then frowned.

  “Who said that?”

  Lho's dark little eyes left his, and she started storing things away. “Your mother,” she said, after a moment.

  Zhai didn't reply. He remembered a handful of images, a few sharp fragments of a faded whole half a century old. He thought of hot winters and blazing summers, of wind chimes whispering in the breeze, of his father's steady hand on his shoulder. More than anything, he remembered the hot tears in his eyes that had blurred the stunning sight of Xanang's blue-green curve as the space elevator inched its way towards the cold indifference of the stars.

  “Maybe she was born for that fight,” he said at last.

  Lho shook her head. “There's always another path to walk. It's there for you too.”

  “You're wrong,” Zhai said, with a sudden harshness that surprised both of them. “About me. About her.”

  Lho peered closely at him. Her eyes, dark slits in a sea of wrinkles, were oddly penetrating. She gave up and gave a thoughtful little shrug. “I might be,” she said. “It was so long ago.”

  They lapsed into a comfortable, familiar silence.

  After a time, Zhai stood up, his tired legs protesting under the weight of the rest of him, and gave a formal bow of gratitude in the Xoma style. “Thank you, Lho,” he said. “I don't know what I'd do without you. Starve, probably.”

  Lho nodded, and started clearing up, which had always been Zhai's signal to leave. “Don't chase seagulls,” she called after him as he left the room.

  Zhai knew the idiom. The Xoma people had traditionally lived on the jagged northern shore of Qienchua, their villages clinging to sheer clifftops. Xoma youths, eager to prove their accuracy with a bow and arrow, had hunted seagulls. Some had followed them so intently that they lost track of where the cliffs fell steeply away to the ruthless rocks below.

  'Don't chase seagulls,’ the Xoma told their children. It never stopped them.

  Just as the delivery of sleeping bags arrived, Ceq and Fleischer finished jury-rigging the water and gas. Sam had ordered pizza too, and in the glow of celebration, a small party broke out. Zhai had been hoping to fit in a briefing on the latest developments on Tor, but before long he gave up on the idea and went with the flow.

  The cold expanse of the embassy was rapidly warming up both in terms of temperature and atmosphere. Tetaine and Fleischer had hooked up their watches to a stick-on screen slapped onto a wall and were playing a colourful racing game, whooping and groaning as cars exploded into digital fireworks. Harod tried playing once, and steadfastly refused to turn, smashing his car to pieces on track walls. Umbiba and Ceq were playing a strange game of their own devising. The captain prowled around the room, throwing a knuckle-sized piece of concrete at Ceq's head whenever she looked away. Every time, Ceq would swivel, pluck it out of the air before it hit her, and toss it back to him.

  “I can't tell if he's impressed or pissed off,” Harod said to Zhai. The two of them were sat against a wall, watching the show and steadily drinking their way through the rest of Zhai's whisky. An empty pizza box lay between them. It could have been a late night at Alleker.

  Zhai raised an eyebrow as Ceq blocked yet another bullet of a throw. Umbiba howled at the ceiling in what could have been either mock or genuine frustration. At least the captain seemed to be loosening up. “Both, evidently.”

  “Two people,” Harod said. He vaguely indicated Umbiba's androids, which stood to attention along a wall. “And some robots. That's our entire protection detail.”

  Zhai shrugged. “In fairness, that's more of them than there are of us.”

  “I don't like it.” Harod almost drained his glass and held the last few drops up to the light, gazing at them meditatively. “Not with that Peck woman around. She's going to try something, I know it.”

  “They could be here for anything,” Zhai said, though he was just playing devil's advocate on autopilot. He knew damn well that whatever Peck's orders were, they weren't good for him.

  “Hope you packed your bulletproof vest,” Harod said darkly.

  “I did,” Zhai said. “Well, Ceq did. It does awful things to the shape of my suit, though.”

  “So will a fucking sniper round.”

  “Well, if I'm shot,” Zhai reasoned, “then my suit's ruined even if the vest stops the bullet.”

  “Ah,” Harod said, nodding wisely. “This is true.”

  “And what is life without tailored suits?”

  Harod struck a mock-theatrical pose. “‘How lightless seems this hollow world, when all man’s pleasures wilt and fade.’”

  “‘Fail,’” Zhai corrected him. “‘Wilt and fail.’”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I know my Townsend.”

  Harod shrugged elaborately. “Well,
the point remains. No point living if you’re not well dressed.”

  For decades, Harod and Zhai had frequented the same New Toth tailor, Urddan & Saddler. Zhai had a new suit made for his birthday every year, partly to keep his wardrobe fresh and partly because he had gained weight every year since 144.

  Across the room, Fleischer punched the air as her car was catapulted across the finish line in a shower of sparks and smoke. Tetaine flopped back in defeat, and Sam took over to challenge the champion. Zhai watched in amusement as his assistant demonstrated hidden depths, winning by a country mile in his first race.

  “Seriously, Zhai,” Harod said, after a while. “Stay safe. I've got a bad feeling about this one.”

  “So do I,” Zhai admitted. “But we've got a job to do.”

  Harod laughed out loud. “Oh, don't pretend you're doing this because it's your duty. Because it's right.” He wagged his glass at Zhai in mock admonishment. “You, Gumeigo Zhai, are an addict. Some people get hooked on drugs, or drink, or gambling, whatever. You've gone one worse. You're addicted to politics, and that's a hundred times worse than other vice in the universe.”

  Zhai snorted. “That's rich coming from you.”

  “That's how I know,” Harod retorted. “The difference is, my fix is domestic. The circus of the Circles is enough for me. I could live out my days on Megereth Station and I'd be happy. You're the one who has to go gallivanting all over the galaxy, sticking your nose into other planets' problems and getting shot at for your trouble.”

  “This is the last time.”

  “One way or another,” Harod said, “it will be.”

  The embassy's entire inventory finally arrived two hours later in a huge rented hauler. By three, with both the building's freight elevators working overtime, they had managed to unload everything into the main living space of one of the interconnected apartments. It at least had the effect of making it feel less empty. In fact, it now felt crowded. Zhai could hardly move for heavy pieces of equipment, refrigerators and treadmills and material printers and desks and Fleischer's endless array of mysterious gadgetry. By the time the last few items had been hauled into the embassy, he was barely awake.