by Richard Dee
They saluted me as they departed. I would have thought they would search the ship, maybe their scanners were that much better that they didn’t have to.
“Myra,” I asked, after they had detached. I wasn’t going anywhere until I got the full picture.
“Yes, Dave,” she replied, this time the voice sounded shocked.
“What did they ask you?”
There was a pause. “Ah, they were straight into my data banks, a search that I wasn’t expecting. They got around my defences, almost before I realised. It was horrible, like an invasion. I feel violated.”
If she had been human I could have imagined her red-faced and shuddering from the affront.
“Did they find out everything?” I asked. “About Qister, Paoul and Prairie?” I could have added Rixon or Griff to the list as well.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I don’t think they got at anything too critical. I managed to get the firewall back up, but they may have got an inkling that there was something worth hiding.”
Had what they found influenced their decision?
“They’ve gone,” she announced. “Shall I get us moving again, I heard them say that we could carry on to Rosskine.”
“Yes please, Myra.”
“Can we go back to sleep now?” said Irin.
I wasn’t tired, we needed to talk. We still hadn’t decided how we were going to do this; we could hardly go into every bar on the planet and ask for Rixon. For one thing, we didn’t know if that was the name he used, and for another, how he was viewed. Was he respectable or a criminal? What if we found one of his rivals?
“We can sleep later, we need to talk,” I suggested.
“Talk to Myra,” said Irin. “I’m going back to bed.” She marched off and I heard a cabin door open and shut.
I got myself coffee, Irin had been spooked by something. She must be worried that she had a record here, it was all very well in theory, ‘just go to the IW and find Rixon, get him to tell us he’s not involved in Sanja’s disappearance’. It didn’t allow for the fact that last time she was here, she was a criminal on Rixon’s ship. Perhaps she worried that she would be of interest to the authorities.
I slept in a different cabin. Next morning, I tried to talk to Irin, who was red-eyed from crying and lack of sleep. “I’m sorry, it must have been hard to face the law last night.”
“It’s not that, we were never searched, never boarded. As far as I know I’m not wanted over here.”
“Then what? Is it facing Rixon?”
She came and hugged me, I could feel her tremble. “Dave,” she whispered, “the closer we get to finding out about my family, the worse it gets. First, I think they’re safe, the evidence points to it, then it all changes. What if I never find them, just keep being led on and on, getting clues but never getting any closer?”
“We’ll find them, I promise, and they’ll be alright. They’ll probably wonder why you were worrying.”
I said it to try and cheer her up. I wasn’t sure myself but I didn’t want her to know that.
“Thank you,” she said, pulling me closer. “Don’t ever leave me alone again, like you did last night.”
Chapter Fourteen
Rosskine was a metal world, the ground obscured by factories and mines, the skies black with polluted air. From orbit it looked weird, the clouds were black for one thing, and the night side was lit by a sheet of white and red lights.
“Looks like a nice place,” I remarked, as we waited for the customs post to interrogate us.
“Home from home,” she said.
I wasn’t sure if she was being serious. “And where’s that then?” From what she had said, I had assumed that she was from Jintao or some other agricultural planet.
“Basilan, originally,” she replied. “We moved away when I was little.”
I remembered the place only too well and could see the similarity. Except that Basilan was a lot busier. I remembered the arrival spiral and that I had missed seeing it for myself, being hidden in a medivac pod at the time.
The customs were satisfied with our story, that we were looking for an old friend, maybe the border patrol had passed word of us to them because they never mentioned our non-IW status. It looked like Griff was right, the border patrol had already confirmed it. They asked what my normal business was. I said that I was a trader, they accepted that as nothing unusual, even though I wouldn’t be able to buy anything to trade here. I could take nothing back without risking my freedom in the Federation, and possibly a look into my past.
“Can you remember anything about where Rixon had his base?” I asked Irin as we broke through the thick layer of black cloud that hovered over the land. Now that we were closer to the ground, we could see the ravages that heavy industry had wreaked on the surface. There were factories everywhere, surrounded by grey blocks of housing. Huge mining scars dominated every piece of land that wasn’t built on, the seas were dirty brown. It wasn’t a nice place at all. I wondered what this place would smell of; it wouldn’t be nice like New Devon or Caluga, that was for certain. She was silent.
“Where do you want to land, Dave?” Myra broke the silence as we both gazed at the devastation, the ultimate subjugation of a world.
“Well?” I looked at Irin, she shrugged.
“It was on the coast,” she said. “I remember the water but it wasn’t this dirty. There were cliffs as well and the air had a funny tang, that acrid smell, burning cable insulation, you know the one.”
I did; sort of hot metal and burnt plastic combined. It wasn’t the best smell to suddenly notice on a spaceship filled with plastic coated wires. There was only one place on the ground that smelled like that.
“Myra, is there a big scrapyard or recycling plant on the coast somewhere, maybe away from habitation or in a part of the planet that’s not so polluted?”
We suddenly banked and headed away across the water. “There is one place,” Myra said, “on the other side of the world; it’s a bit less polluted and quieter, away from the main population.” That was the sort of place that people like Rixon would appreciate.
We flashed across the ocean, as we got further away from the land the colour of the sea changed back to a more usual blue-green, although the clouds were still a lot darker than they should have been.
After a few more minutes, a line of land appeared, tall red cliffs sprung from the sea. There was a plume of thick red smoke rising from a point ahead of us, blowing sideways in the breeze.
“That’s it,” said Irin. “I remember the smoke, it carries a trail of floss. We landed near here.”
“Myra, find us somewhere to land,” I said, wondering what floss was. I supposed that I would find out soon enough. We flashed over the shore, there was a small town and a large factory, surrounded by the remains of metal objects, it was a breakers yard, a place where old ships came to die and be recycled. It would be a great place to hide criminal activity, a place where you could disguise your intentions, have an excuse for loads of cash and all sorts of people and equipment.
We landed in a quiet port, from above the town looked no different from any of those that I had visited in the Federation. The port captain gave us permission without asking what we were doing, or even too much about who we were. I told him I was a trader and that seemed to be enough. Perhaps the stories were true. All the propaganda of the Federation said that the people in the IW were evil and that our system was so much better than theirs. So far, life in the IW seemed to be not that much different to ours.
There were a few other ships on the ground, the word port made it sound better than it was, really it was just a field, right outside town. A bit like Coopers Post and a whole load of other places on our side of the line. The other ships were a typical collection; old and new, battered and clean.
As the ramp opened, I caught the smell from the yard, just like Irin had said. It burned in my throat. We drove Elana’s car down the ramp onto the hard-packed earth. There were small pieces o
f metal and plastic strewn everywhere. Shards of plastic and dust were hanging in the air, like windblown snow.
“This is what the locals call floss,” Irin said. “It’s all the little bits of rubbish that escape from the yard, through the exhausts or out of the backs of the lorries. The breeze blows it around. Children scavenge it and take the good bits back to the yard; it makes them a few coins. Not only that, I recognised the cliffs as we swung around. Rixon had his base near here.”
Irin pulled a cap from her pocket and tucked her hair under it. “The floss has some sort of soot or grease on it,” she said. “If it gets into your hair it’s a nightmare to wash out.” A few tendrils of hair escaped from the cap and blew around her face in the breeze. She pushed buttons on the car’s control panel and the roof unfolded from its stowage and sealed us in. There goes the fresh water, I thought as I contemplated her spending even more of her time in the shower. The filters would need changing again soon. I would have to top up the water before we left.
I stopped the car and stepped out to shut the ramp. The larger pieces of floss crunched under my feet.
A boy approached us. “Is this a Sprite from the Federation?” he muttered, rubbing his hand on the hull. He carried a small plastic bag, half-filled with pieces of floss. I noticed that as he spoke, he constantly scanned the ground.
“Sure is,” said Irin, leaning out of the window, “all the way from New Devon.”
“Never heard of that one,” he replied. “Is it pretty there?”
“Yes, it is,” I added, I almost said prettier than here but I didn’t want to offend him. “Are you here to guard the ship?”
He gave me a strange look. “Why would I want to do that?” he asked.
“It’s what happens on my world,” I explained. “I pay you and you guard the ship until I come back, stop anyone getting on.”
He must have thought I was mad. “Is that what they do in the Federation?” he said. “We don’t do that here. Nobody will try and get on your ship, how would I stop them anyway, wouldn’t they just shoot me?” He pointed to the docking hatch, on the side of the ship. “You have a sensor-pak on your hull by the hatch, it makes you official. That’s enough to deter anyone from messing with you.”
I followed his gaze. I didn’t know what he was talking about. I could see a square box, by the docking port. It was lighter in colour than the hull. It must have been put there by the border patrol when they had docked.
I shut the ramp and locked it. So, they were keeping an eye on where we went. The boy stood by the ship and kicked at the ground as we drove away.
Already we were finding out that the IW was nothing like the place that we had been told it was.
We joined the road just outside the port, there was a steady stream of traffic, ground cars and lorries, and I had to squeeze my way into the flow. They drove on the other side of the road from New Devon, which didn’t help. I had to cut across one lane to get into the queue heading for town. Most of the lorries in both directions had wheels or tracks and looked like they were heavily loaded. It was like just about every place that relied on a dirty factory for its existence. As the lorries and trailers bounced over the potholes in the road, pieces of floss fell from them or were stirred up by their passing. There were more children, and some adults too, kicking at the ground and grabbing pieces of floss. The road skirted the town; we followed a stained sign and turned off towards the centre.
There were shabby shop fronts and offices. The buildings were made from red bricks and were several stories tall. Gangs of children ran in between the traffic every time it stopped, selling news sheets, hunting for anything worth grabbing and offering to wash windscreens. In the end, we saw a bar, with a sign for parking and an arrow pointing down a side road. I turned off, heading along a narrow track, the tall buildings on each side meant that we were in shadow. Eventually, we found a small open space behind the bar, with a few cars parked. We left ours at the end of the line.
“We’ll just see how the land lies,” I suggested. “If anyone seems friendly we can ask for Rixon, but let’s not give too much away.” Irin nodded.
“OK, but when can we start looking for my mother?”
“This is the first part of doing just that. Once we know that Rixon and Dolmen aren’t involved, that they’re not here, you can relax and we can do it properly.”
There was a rear entrance and we headed in. The place was a copy of Ma Esters on Nara, only more modern and less damaged. It had the same dirty floor, the same clientele and the same seedy atmosphere.
The barman looked at us suspiciously. Irin might have hidden her blonde curls under a dark cap, but it had the logo of a fruit exporter on it, a Federation one, perhaps that hadn’t been such a good idea.
“You folks lost?” he said as he passed us both bottled beers. The contents tasted pretty good. I noticed that all conversation had stopped; everyone was waiting, poised for our answer.
“Perhaps you can help us, we’re looking for someone,” Irin said.
The barman laughed, it sounded loud in the absence of any other noise. “You come in here asking questions, I don’t know who you are. You could be the police.”
“Not if they’ve got any sense,” shouted a man at the other end of the bar. “Maybe they’re bounty hunters, after one of you lot.” There was uproar, everyone shouted at once and a fight broke out.
The sudden sound of the gunshot shut everyone up. The fight stopped. I looked around to see who had fired.
“Ever thought that you might be in the wrong place?” said a man sitting in the corner, holding a smoking pistol. He got up and came out of the shadows, a tall man, with one of those plain, forgettable faces. There was a boy at his side; I recognised him from the port. He still carried the bag of floss. How had he got here before us?
My mind went back to Ma Esters, scene of so many of the events in my recent life. Perhaps the places were even more similar than I had realised. There was the same undercurrent of barely suppressed violence, the same broken and repaired furniture.
“You’re out of your depth,” he said. He looked me over. “You’re not police and you’re not from around here.” He turned to Irin. “I recognise you, even though you’ve tried to hide your hair. The cap doesn’t really work. People around here used to talk about your hair, right up to when you went missing. And that was the start of all the trouble. You both arrived in the Federation Sprite that my boy saw land in the port. The border patrol has it tagged. I’ve got a pretty good idea of who you are and who you want to find, come with me.”
“It’s OK,” I said, “we can manage; just tell us where we need to go.”
There was the sound of chairs scraping. “Oh, but I insist,” he said as four or five other men got up, two moved to block the doorway. We were frisked quickly and not very well; they didn’t find the knife in the sheath in my boot. I didn’t know if Irin was carrying anything, if she was they didn’t find that either. We were escorted out to our ground car; I was pushed into the back of mine, Irin was put in another with three men.
The boy drove our ground car through the chaotic traffic in the town and back onto the wide road from the port. It followed the coast, leading towards the smoke coming from the scrapyard. My captor turned to talk to me. “It’s a good wide road this,” he said, “we used to get the big loads through the town until we built this road.”
I saw what he meant as we came up behind one of the biggest rigs I had ever seen. It was colossal, nestled on its multi-wheel trailer was a good-sized piece of a ship. There were wires and pieces of plastic insulation hanging off of it; it had been roughly hacked so that it was the same width as the trailer. It would have blocked the town completely; it was bad enough out here, the traffic in the other direction already had to move over to keep clear.
He was clearly proud of his home planet. He pointed out things to me as we followed the rig. It turned off, passing through open gates into the scrapyard we had seen from the air. Inside, it seeme
d even bigger. The boy drove past intact ships, half ships and piles of girders from ships. A huge crane, mounted on tracks prowled around, plucking at the wrecks. Men swarmed, carrying cutting gear and driving trolleys piled with scrap. The air was heavy with smoke and the acrid smell was more concentrated.
We drove past the furnaces and streams of molten metal into a tunnel in the side of the cliffs. After a few moments we broke out into fresh air, a huge valley, surrounded on all side by hills. There were several ships lined up under camouflage netting and over to one side there was a large house. A man stood in front of the door, watching.
We stopped outside. “In you go,” said our driver. “If you come out again, I’ll take you back to the port. If not, thanks for the car… and the ship.”
I got out of the ground car and went across to Irin; she had got out and was surveying the valley.
“Are you OK?” I asked. She nodded, but I could see that she was shaking.
“This is the place, Dave. This is Rixon’s base. I’ve got the feeling that we shouldn’t have come here.”
So did I, we might be going to get answers, we might not live to get out with them. It felt like we were in serious trouble. I took Irin’s hand and together we walked towards the house. The man at the door opened it and stood aside, he glanced at me dismissively. He grabbed Irin’s cap and pulled it off, her curls cascaded around her face. He took a long, appreciative look at her. She held my hand tighter as we went inside.
We were in a hallway; it was old-fashioned, all dark wooden floorboards and panelled walls. The front door slammed shut behind us. Wherever we had ended up, I had the feeling that we were not leaving again. I could hear the slow click, click, click of a machine in one of the side rooms. Like a clock ticking. Together we walked towards it. The sound got louder as we walked down the hallway. There was an open door; the noise was coming from the room beyond. Cautiously, I peered around the frame.