A figure made its way along the tunnel, stepping over the others’ legs, speaking harsh apologies, until it stopped, hunched over before Trin.
It was a woman with a babe in her arms. He knew this one and the child she carried: Mira Fedor’s ally carrying the Pagoin infant that Fedor called her own.
‘Si, Signora Mulravey? What do you want?’
‘Your men are all wearing suits or fellalos. Some of my women have nothing. They will not survive in the nightwinds.’
‘They made it to here.’
Trin heard the intake of her breath, as if she had held in a sharp retort and replaced it with something else. ‘They did, but I can tell you one thing for certain, Principe Trinder Pellegrini. They will make it no further.’ She leaned towards him then. ‘And what will your men survivors do with no women?’ The last she spoke in a broken whisper.
Next to him Djeserit stiffened. Trin wanted to stroke her arm, to reassure her, but not while this bold woman was their witness.
‘The Carabinere are your protectors. It is only logical that they should remain suited. If they need to fight...’
‘Fight?’ The woman raised her voice a little and it carried too far. ‘What need is there for that? You have given the word that the way is clear.’
Trin lowered his own voice. ‘We cannot know such a thing absolutely. You must understand that, after what you have been through.’
‘The women must have protection.’
‘I will consider it.’
‘You will do better than that.’ Mulravey lowered her own voice and her breath laboured with emotion. ‘What—did—you—do—to—Mira—Fedor?’
‘Mira Fedor stole an AiV. She deserted you. All of us.’
Mulravey shuffled closer until her stale breath was hot on Trin’s face. ‘By all the useless gods in this universe I do not believe that. And if you do not give my women suits to wear I will make sure that everyone else does not believe it either. Then we will see what respect you garner, Principe.’
Trin pressed one hand against the rock wall, resisting an urge to thrust the woman away. Djeserit’s hand slipped into his other, and squeezed. He understood her message. She wanted him to listen.
Mulravey had influence among her own, and not only with the females. A contingent of non-Latino males listened to her. Better that she should remain an ally for as long as possible. Mira Fedor must not become admired.
‘I do not like threats, Signora Mulravey, but I do understand compassion. Bring the worst ones forward and I will see what I can do,’ said Trin.
The woman rocked back on her feet, suddenly drained of energy. What had it cost her, he wondered, to challenge the Principe?
The reminder of his authority brought a warm flow to his veins. He could afford some benevolence. It was a lesson that Franco had never learned. He squeezed Djeserit’s hand and then let go.
They had to move on.
* * *
The last stretch was a steep uphill crouched walk, very different to the wide road and gentle gradient at the beginning of the Pablo mine maze. They had travelled several hundred mesurs underground and the hardest section was the last.
Juno Genarro and Seb Malocchi had gone above ground to clear away the rocky plug, allowing the waning sunlight into the vertical shaft. The final climb was by ladder and cut-in steps. Some would be too weak to make it unassisted.
Trin stood at the bottom, blinking up into the light. He could barely contain his relief. Near him some of the Carabinere were shedding their fellalos at his order. Cass Mulravey stood by, making sure that the weakest of her women received the protection. For some inexplicable reason it angered Trin to know that his men were close to naked.
‘It is the right thing to do,’ whispered Djeserit as if she knew his thoughts. ‘It will draw them to you.’
He stared at her in the shaft of sunlight. Her papery Lostolian skin was dry and cracked, and grime coated the ridges of her neck gills. He noticed the slight breathiness in her voice.
‘What is wrong with your breath?’
Djeserit turned her head away in the way unique to the young; a way that told Trin that she did not want to answer his question. For the first time he saw the child in her and guilt surged through him. Had Mira Fedor been right? Was his relationship with the half-breed Miolaquan a corruption? He thought of Luna il Longa and all his father’s paramours. It was expected for a Principe to take many women.
Had beautiful Luna died at his father’s side? Had Franco seen her as he drew his last breath? Or had his wife been with him?
Trin did not want to think of his mother. It filled him with uncomfortable twisting emotions. In the way of most sons, he knew that something solid had been lost to him.
‘Principe!’ Juno Genarro called to him from the top of the shaft. ‘The sun fades.’
‘Vada!’ Trin instructed his Carabinere. Then he sealed his fellalo and began the difficult climb.
JO-JO RASTEROVICH
Jo-Jo Rasterovich was pissed off for a couple of reasons.
Being stuck in a Dowl confinement cell with a raging case of claustrophobia was forcing him to use up his HealthWatch’s narcotic allowance to stay calm.
His ship Salacious had been stolen by a man he knew only as Jud. And he couldn’t get at his Gal Bank account while he was officially a criminal, which meant that bribing his way out of this craphole wasn’t feasible.
So, with narcotic-assisted patience, Jo-Jo began teasing out means for blackmail. He had learned within the first month that his humanesque gaolers were either wine-sopped young Latinos who couldn’t cut it in the local Carabinere police outfit or discontented tourists stuck on Dowl for one reason or another and forced to work.
His fellow inmates were an uninspiring string of petty offenders and addicts who changed on a daily basis. Only two appeared to be in there for the long haul: a teranu called Petalu Mau who’d been busted with a container of space borers that he’d been grinding into a fine powder and selling as exotic spices to the Dowl Kafe, and a sallow-skinned female with stringy hair who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, stop crying.
Their triangular cells touched each other at one central point. If they so wished, the inmates could sit in a circle to talk like a group of friends around a campfire. Only in this case the ‘campfire’ was the intersection of a containment module and gave out a mild electrical charge if you got too close to it.
Some days Jo-Jo found that a pleasant antidote to his regular narcotic stupor. Mostly, though, he brooded at the wide end of his cell, which he kept darkened and sound-damped. He could still see into the other cells if they didn’t have their privacy filters on.
The woman had it rough. When the guards were feeling narky or pervy they took the privacy controls away. Then you couldn’t do your business without an audience. Seemed they liked to prey on her most.
Soon Jo-Jo knew the contours of her sagging thin arse and tiny odd-shaped breasts better than the back of his own hand. He reckoned that she was about the same age as him, or older and though she was permanently naked, she didn’t attract him in the slightest.
Maybe that was why he asked the question. In a tiny space of emotional clarity that he managed to keep separate from his fugged and angry mind, he felt sorry for her.
‘What’s wrong, then?’ Jo-Jo asked one day when he couldn’t stand another moment of her sniffling misery.
Mercifully, she stopped her crying and crawled to the campfire. ‘Do you even care?’ she whispered.
Jo-Jo lightened his privacy filter so she could see him and crawled up to meet her. ‘Care is a strong word...’
The woman gave him a watery smile. ‘I’m Bethany.’
‘Well, Bethany, let’s just settle for mild interest.’
From the darkness of his cell filter, he heard Petalu Mau snort and laugh.
‘Ignore him,’ said Jo-Jo. ‘So what’s the score?’
‘I made a mistake,’ she whispered.
Jo-Jo gave a belly laugh, the fir
st one in a long time.
Bethany raised her hand to protest. ‘No... not just any mistake. Not a mistake you can be punished for and then forget. A moral mistake. A b-bad life choice. I had a man and a child—a daughter. He was different to me, a Mioloaquan.’
Jo-Jo pulled a face. ‘You were flipping a scaly? How the hell did that happen?’
The woman shrugged. ‘The way things do... I took work on a Mio explorer studying embryonic water fauna—not the Mios themselves, but more primitive species. Well... anyway, he was the pathologist on board. We conceived a child together... went to the amalgam clinic on Prospect... paid to have the genetic alterations so she would survive.’ Some of the sadness dropped from her face. ‘Ten years of a happy enough life. Work brought us here just a while ago. I noticed on our last trip that he was spending a lot of time with the Mios, less with me. Then I found him lying with one.’ She trembled and the tears brimmed again. ‘He told me that my humanesque habits had begun to repulse him. If I wanted to keep him our child must leave. He said she was an embarrassment to him now.’ She gave Jo-Jo a swollen-eyed stare. ‘Mios don’t raise their children in family units. By the spawning age (we call it puberty) they are ready for mating. He told me it was unhealthy to have a spawn still under our care. To me, though, she is still a child.’
Jo-Jo stifled a yawn. Family hardships were only one step removed from politics on his personal measure of extreme boredom and avoidance. In his darkened cell even Petalu-Mau was snoring.
But Bethany’s misery continued to tumble out. ‘When we got here I booked a passage planetside. I put my child on it. I told her we were having a holiday but they had made a mistake with the seats and that I would be on the next shuttle down. I went to find Mio to tell him what I had done but the ship shifted. He left me. And I left my child.’
‘Why didn’t you just forget the fish-man and go after your kid?’ Jo-Jo was quite proud of himself for having stayed with the story thus far.
‘I had no lucre. It’s impossible to get work on Dowl... if you’re a woman. The Latinos don’t have any regard for them... for us.’
‘Oh, they have regard for women, all right,’ said Jo-Jo. ‘They like ‘em plenty as long as they lie on their backs and kick their feet up in their air when they’re told.’ Come to think of it, why have I never picked up a Latino woman? He dismissed that idle thought with a shiver. Friggin’ aristos.
But Bethany wasn’t listening to him. Her eyes were brimming again. ‘They put me in here rather than let me starve.’
‘Then you’ve committed no crime?’
‘Not exactly. Some places they would just call it vagrancy. But there isn’t room on a res-shift station for people with no lucre. And Araldis won’t have me. I tried that...’
Jo-Jo snorted. ‘This place is the crud under the little toenail of the galaxy. Even the judges are in and out of here quicker than an uuli’s flange.’
‘Flange?’
‘Prick.’
Her watery eyes focused in on him. ‘They say the judge had a personal vendetta against you.’
‘You heard that?’ He was surprised.
Bethany flushed a little. It gave her sallow skin an odd tinge. ‘I know the court witness. He brings me extras sometimes.’
‘In return for...?’
She stiffened. ‘I’m not a whore.’
Jo-Jo liked her primness. Stiff and proper seemed ridiculous in her naked state but she bore it like a shield.
‘And I’m not a criminal.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I met an ‘esque who called himself Jud, and a Balol soldier—a woman. The Balol distracted me and Jud planted an uuli on my ship. They got me for illegal importation. While I was in custody they stole my ship.’ It felt good to talk to someone about it after months of stewing.
‘How long is your sentence?’
‘Three spins. Done most of one already.’
Bethany sighed. ‘I’m sorry for you.’
‘Don’t be,’ Jo-Jo said with infinite narcotic calm. ‘I’ll find them.’
* * *
They talked often after that and Jo-jo turned his back out of respect when she had to piss. Petalu-Mau grudgingly joined in their tête-à-têtes, and they pretended not to hear him moan with hunger pains at night. Not that their Latino jailers didn’t feed them but Petalu weighed more than Jo-Jo, Bethany and the three guards who rotated duty put together. He had an appetite that matched accordingly.
‘Did they really slam you for selling aphrodisiacs?’ Jo-Jo asked him.
‘Mos’ places want Petalu to sell stiff-makers. Here they lock you up. Can’t figure them Latinos. What my woman gonna say when Petalu come home looking like this?’ He slapped his loose skin folds like they were a musical instrument.
‘You have a woman?’ Bethany’s eyes widened.
Jo-Jo could see her comparing her height and weight to his and wondering what she must be like.
‘Mama Petalu Mau. That woman’s strong like a Bangar buffalo. Mau has bred twenty-three ‘uns from that girl.’
Jo-Jo’s jaw dropped. ‘You’re shitting me. You have twenty-three children?’
Mau’s eyes flicked upward while he thought. ‘Last count ‘em.’
‘What are you doing out here, then?’
‘Mama like it that way. Just cook up another ‘un when Petalu home too long. She already wore out one womb.’
Jo-Jo and Bethany laughed.
‘Bethany Ionil?’ A guard’s voice interrupted them. ‘You have a visitor. Collect your clothes from the waiting cell.’
‘A visitor, Beth?’ said Jo-Jo, scowling. Protective feelings towards Beth had crept up on him over the weeks. He blamed it on boredom. She wasn’t his kind of woman
but she didn’t annoy him either. Some people paid harder for their mistakes than others. ‘Tell him I said to watch his hands.’
She gave Jo-Jo a mock-irritated look. ‘How many times have I told you?’
‘Yeah, yeah, you’re not that sort.’ Jo-Jo grinned.
Beth grinned back.
Her door scraped open and he watched her disappear from her cell.
‘You want to make ‘uns with Beth, maybe?’ remarked Petalu.
Jo-Jo stared at him in shock. ‘Never in a million, mate. Never met a woman yet who made me think in that direction and I can tell you right now, I never will.’’
Petalu shook his head sadly. “Uns are what gets a man to heaven. Petalu fear for your soul.’
‘My soul is bright and shiny, mate.’
* * *
While Bethany was gone Jo-Jo drowsed on his bunk, enjoying some extreme revenge fantasies and contemplating jerking off. The fantasies flowered like fractals in his mind, fuelling his anger to such a pitch that he instructed his HealthWatch to increase his narcotic levels.
Instead of the expected wash of calm throughout his body, a message blinked up in front of his retina. Your HealthWatch subscription will expire in six hours. Renewal may be made through a Gal Bank outlet or by farcast to any of the following relay stations...
Crap! Jo-Jo let go of his balls and sat upright, heart pounding. Without HealthWatch he couldn’t imagine how many past sins might catch up with him. Not to mention the claustrophobia of his cell. He had to get out of here.
He began to pace. Four steps before he hit the wall. He put his hands against it and hung his head, trying to swallow back the nausea that his panic had kick-started.
‘Josef! Petalu!’ Bethany’s alarmed and excited tone got his attention. She was standing at the campfire, banging on the screen.
Jo-Jo switched off his privacy shade. ‘What’s wrong?’
Petalu was slower to respond, suggesting that his drowsing fantasies were more advanced than Jo-Jo’s.
Bethany was sweating and panting as if she’d been running. ‘Something’s happening on the station. Lofario and I were talking in the visitors’ room. Big Nose was watching us on screen. I heard a noise... like weapons. Big Nose ran out of the booth.’
‘And?’ urged
Jo-Jo.
‘Well, he never came back. The noise got louder and we could hear shouts. Lofario wanted me to come to his room for safety. I-I said no. I went to the observation booth and tried to work out the sequence for the containment release.’
Jo-Jo found that he was holding his breath. In the next cell, though, Petalu was breathing up a storm. ‘And?’ Jo-Jo repeated.
Bethany looked upwards. ‘I think—’
The lights began to flicker and a faint fizzing sound followed, Jo-Jo suddenly realised he could not only hear Petalu but he could smell him: a heavy musk odour spiced with salt. He reached one hand towards Bethany and touched her. He held out the other to Petalu.
The giant man slapped it away and broke into a huge grin. ‘Free,’ he pronounced precisely.
Jo-Jo hugged Bethany tight. ‘Lady Bethany,’ he said in the most refined tone he could muster. ‘You have impeccable timing.’
TEKTON
Godhead Ra has requested that you breakfast with him this morning, and Dicter Miranda has called seventeen times, Tekton’s moud informed him when he awoke.
Both messages gave him immense satisfaction.
Tell my cousin that I should be delighted to dine with him.
Do you wish to reply to Dieter Miranda?
Tekton stretched in his lotion sack. His repair nanites had begun gobbling the excess moisturiser away when he awoke. In a few more seconds he would be left with just the luxurious sense of softened skin. Send her a message to say that I will attend her presently. After my breakfast with Ra.
Yes, Godhead.
Tekton allowed himself a small smile. That should make her hop.
He gave his free-mind full rein to enjoy the moment.. His small smile expanded into a chuckle and then a rather vigorous erection as he pictured a maddened Miranda bobbling up and down in a synchronicity of excessively undulating skin. There was nothing that put Tekton in a good mood like flopping flesh—except, perhaps, envy.
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