Queen of Nowhere

by Jaine Fenn

  Bez wasn’t sure if this was a trick question - or even a question at all. She decided to stick with honesty. ‘I came here because she had uncovered something important.’

  ‘Important to the fight.’

  Bez decided to interpret that as a question. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘something that could help our cause.’

  ‘Khea said thou nurtures deep hatred for them.’

  Bez relaxed a fraction; as she had hoped, Cusa shared her wife’s worldview. Of course, them in Cusa’s mind was not the Enemy themselves, but the Ascensionists who worshipped them; and the hatred was not between races but between religions. The net result was close enough for Bez to say in all honesty, ‘I’d give my life to bring them down.’

  Cusa inclined her head in what might have been a nod of approval. ‘I have heard it said that there are worlds that actually permit Ascensionist Chantries.’

  ‘Yes, though not many.’

  ‘The Sidhe worshippers have embraced evil. Each and every one will burn in hell.’

  Bez was stunned by the woman’s quiet, matter-of-fact fanaticism. Destroying the Enemy was one thing; presuming to know what happened to them after they died was another. It was ironic that one of the reasons Ascensionism was almost universally reviled was due to its ‘ridiculous’ insistence that the Sidhe were not, in fact, dead.

  ‘And what of the hub-points?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Bez in return.

  ‘Do those who rule the hubs tolerate Ascensionists?’

  ‘No. Absolutely not.’

  ‘Yet thou hailst from the hubs.’ Cusa frowned.

  ‘I do. And it’s because of people like me that the hubs remain free of Ascensionists.’ Bez hoped Cusa was as willing to swallow that explanation as Khea had been.

  The other woman pursed her lips; the tip of the gun sagged slightly. Then Cusa asked, ‘What use have Ascensionist heretics for false identities?’

  Apparently, Khea had confided extensively in her wife. ‘Like I told Khea, they insinuate themselves into positions of influence.’

  ‘Aye, but ‘tis a considerable effort. Surely one skilled in data manipulation could achieve the same without recourse to such complex deception. Thou art the possessor of such skills thyself.’

  Bez did not like where this line of enquiry was going. ‘I am, yes.

  And that means I know the limitations of hacked IDs. They’re fine if you move around a lot. If you want to stay in one place, maintaining a consistent identity while you amass power and influence, you need something solid, something that will stand up to detailed background checks. An arrangement like the one here, where someone is re-activating the identities of children who died young, provides that.’

  ‘But would those perpetrating the deception not require biometric information for the individual they are creating the identity for?’

  Khea had been more fiery in her fanaticism, and less rigorous in her logic, than her wife. Cusa appeared to be the brains behind the outfit. ‘You’re right. It does require a lot of organisation. What I believe happens is that the g-young person who will be assuming the new ID travels to this system but doesn’t make planetfall. The necessary samples are smuggled down, then shortly afterwards the new ID is smuggled offworld and the person it refers to is listed as having emigrated.’

  ‘So our records would show these individuals as godless children who opted out of their creche to request fostering with offworld heathens?’

  ‘Yes.’ That was one way of putting it.

  ‘Such an arrangement requires the collusion of corrupt officials.’

  Cusa did not sound surprised at the possibility.

  ‘I imagine so.’

  ‘It would also require access to considerable resources, that these children may enter and leave our space undetected.’

  ‘Yes, it would.’ Of course, it helped if your resources included freetraders who could bypass normal transit-paths.

  Cusa shook her head in dismay. ‘Would Khea had never encountered thee, and been dragged into this.’ She looked straight at Bez, eyes narrow and glistening. ‘Do ye have mourning leave in the hubs?’

  Bez had no idea what she was talking about. ‘No, we don’t.’

  ‘No, ye would not. Here, when someone close to us goes to the Lord of All, we are given time to adjust. During that period we are under no obligation to work, nor to receive visitors. We pray and grieve in our own way.’

  ‘She is dead, then?’ asked Bez quietly.

  Cusa’s tears spilled over, and her face twisted. ‘I wish I knew,’ she whispered.

  ‘Oh.’ This was getting more complicated by the moment.

  ‘Listen, maybe I can find out. If you tell me everything you know, I can try to track down the truth - and finish what Khea started.’

  As Cusa opened her mouth to reply, a weird sound filled the room. Bez looked around in panic: the pained, high-pitched squeal was coming from nearby. Cusa jumped, but there was something about her expression, not afraid, but concerned-Bez realised what the noise was. ‘Limitless void, you’ve got a child!’

  ‘That is my son,’ said Cusa, her voice barely audible over the breathless infant screams. She started to turn towards the door then appeared to remember herself. ‘Thou must leave us now.’

  ‘Cusa, I can help you, help you find out what Khea-‘

  ‘Go!’

  Bez saw her last chance slipping away, and against all her instincts, said, ‘I’ll give you my ID, in case you want to get in touch.’

  ‘I have thy details. The house system harvested them when thou tried to hack my lock. Thou art not alone in having some skill with data, Medame Shiqua - or whatever thy true name may be.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Go. I must tend my child.’ She pointed the gun at the door.

  Bez took a deep breath and went out. The front door opened automatically, and closed behind her.

  Back in the building’s lobby, Bez tried to make sense of the encounter. It alarmed her that Cusa had subverted her hack so easily.

  How competent a databreaker was she? Not an expert, presumably, or Khea would have utilised her skills. Unless she didn’t want to endanger her spouse. Then again, maybe Bez’s failure with the house system was merely due to lack of experience with the unfamiliar infoscape.

  Perhaps a more important question was: how much did Cusa know? More than she was telling, obviously. And she had apparently gone to extreme lengths to get hold of a weapon. Who, or what, was she so frightened of? Presumably the traitor that Khea had found … and who had found, and possibly killed, her. But who was that? What resources did he or she have?

  When her taxi picked her up, Bez considered hacking it to delete any record of the trip, but her experience with Cusa warned her off, at least until she was more at home in Gracen’s infoscape.

  She did take a physical precaution, ordering the cab to drop her at a women’s gym she had looked up earlier. The lobby was light and airy and smelled faintly of labouring bodies. Bez expected the building’s reliquary to be a holy drop of sweat or a running shoe, but it was another bone, albeit from a saint’s foot.

  A woman came in just after Bez, heading for the lifts; she gave Bez a curious glance in passing but didn’t say anything. Once she was gone, Bez took the building’s secondary exit, which led to a different road, where she picked up a new taxi. She had no idea if such a move was adequate, or even necessary, but it helped re-assert her sense of control over the situation.

  By the time she got back to her hotel, it was dark; the heat of the day had disappeared with the light, and Bez shivered as she walked up the path. Once inside, she called the starport. There was still space on tomorrow morning’s starliner. She thought long and hard, but in the end held off booking a place. There were not enough risk factors to force her to abort just when she was finally getting somewhere.

  She ate with the other women then returned to her room. It took her a while to get to sleep, though when she did her rest was mercifully u
ndisturbed by dreams.

  The next thing she knew something was buzzing insistently.

  Not her com, although she had set an alarm to wake her so she didn’t miss breakfast again; this was an unfamiliar external sound.

  She opened her eyes. A light was flashing, next to the recessed handset. Bez stumbled out of bed and snatched up the device.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There is a message for thee,’ said Dena, over the crackly line.

  Bez was instantly alert, her mind flooded with unpleasant possibilities: Cusa had shopped her; the authorities were on to her; the Enemy had finally tracked her down. She made herself reply, ‘Who is the message from?’

  “Tis from thy husband.’

  TAGS TO USE

  Although the attached files contain the unpalatable truth about transit-kernels, you won’t find much on beacons. That’s because there isn’t much: I don’t know what beacons really are; I wish I did. One thing I do know: the Sidhe don’t need them to shift, so Sidhe ships can do things human ships can’t, and that’s a worrying thought.

 

  Bez shook her head, as though that would make the impossible news go away. ‘My husband?’

  ‘Aye. Thou never mentioned being in wedlock.’

  Bez’s mind worked furiously. ‘Are you sure this man’s got the righ t person?’

  ‘He called from the star port and asked for thee by name.’

  Or rather by the name she was currently using. Surely this was a case of mistaken identity? That was the only plausible explanation. ‘Right. And what is the message? ‘

  ‘He has takena room in the Hotel Fiviel and wishes thee to go there in order to meet him.’

  ‘Right. Er. Sorry, I’ve only just woken up. I need to…’ Run!

  Escape! ‘ … get washed and dressed.’

  ‘Thy bill will await thee when thy ablutions are complete.’

  ‘I wasn’t planning to leave- ‘

  ‘This is a tanyen hotel, a place for unmarried women.’ Her host’s sniff was audible over the primitive com. ‘Had I been aware of thy status, I would never have opened my house to thee.’ She cut the call.

  Bez showered, her mind racing. Best-case scenario, this was a mistake. Worst-case, it was a trap. She slung her bag over her shoulder and walked into the central atrium. Her com pinged immediately, with her bill. Ignoring it for now she called the starport. As she feared and expected, this morning’s liner was already boarding and she was too late to get a ticket. She booked herself onto the next flight out. She could try moving to another hotel, but he had found her here, so he could find her there. Whoever he was. She ran through the men she knew, male agents she had long-standing relationships with. None of them had either reason or means to follow her here.

  She considered leaving the city, picking a place and heading out, returning just in time to catch her flight. But the guidebooks had stressed the inadvisability of travelling too far from the starport. Meneske itself, for all its foibles and potential problems for the unwary traveller, was at least used to dealing with outsiders.

  Besides, without a local persona in place, the only way to disappear effectively would be to get offplanet without going through the starport, and that was not an option now she no longer had access to a free trader who owed her favours.

  She looked up the Hotel Fiviel, a name she remembered from her initial research; it was one of the more upmarket tourist hotels.

  She accessed their public records. The hotel didn’t reveal who had which room, but it did list everyone currently staying there.

  Bez scanned the names; most of them meant nothing to her, but then why should they? Names were tags to use. Then she saw it: Imbarin Tierce. Any remaining hope that this was an unfortunate coincidence vanished.

  Her only choice, insane as it seemed, was to go and meet him.

  After all, the first time they had met he had been friendly enough; possibly too friendly. She could always run afterwards, once she had some idea what he was up to.

  She commed his hotel and asked them to pass on a message, hastily declining the offer to be put through to Sirrah Tierce.

  Instead, she asked the receptionist to tell him to meet her in one of the hotel bars in two hours’ time.

  She checked out of her current hotel then called a taxi. She changed taxis once, VIa the lobby of the local equivalent of a mall, one of the few secular mixed-sex spaces in the city.

  All the time she kept expecting a call from Tierce. The uncertainty gnawed at her and she found herself unable to come up with a coherent plan.

  She arrived at the Fiviel early. This hotel was as gaudy as the tanyen hotel was restrained. The lobby had the mandatory reliquary (the thumb of Saint Parsevus, famous for starving himself to death in order to achieve holy visions), but the item was tucked into a hidden niche, and Bez only spotted it because she knew to look.

  Reception was at the bottom of an atrium several times bigger than her last hotel’s. The various in-house entertainments - bars, restaurants, casino - gave off the atrium, and in the case of some structures, intruded into it via walkways or balconies. The cantilevered clear-sided swimming pool on the upper levels was particularly impressive; from ground level, the naked swimmers showed merely as brownish blobs in the green-lit water. Although about half the tourists, and all the staff, were wearing standard robes, a number of visitors had dressed to show off their physical attributes. She had the unpleasant impression that she was in a minority by not expecting to have sex in the near future.

  She went to the quietest bar and took a table near the door.

  She was trying to decide whether to order a drink when Tierce walked in, five minutes early. She was relieved to see he was fully dressed, in a robe whose semiotics, if Bez read them correctly, said he was mainly heterosexual but open to suggestions. He waved and came straight over.

  She had rehearsed possible ways of greeting him, but in the end her apprehension snapped into sudden and unexpected fury.

  ‘What in the void’s name are you doing here?’ she hissed.

  ‘And it’s lovely to see you again too.’ He made to sit down next to her.

  ‘Over there, please.’ She nodded at the seat opposite.

  ‘Would you prefer to talk somewhere quieter?’

  ‘If you think I’m going to your room-‘

  ‘Our room.’

  ‘Your room. Just answer my question: what are you doing here?’

  ‘For a start, I’d like to buy you that drink.’ He sat, and tapped the table to bring up the menu. ‘Caf? Or something stronger?’

  Apparently, they did have caf here, presumably for the tourists.

  ‘How did you find me?’ she asked. Her nervous anger was burning off in the face of his insouciance.

  ‘With great difficulty.’

  ‘Right.’ It would be too much to hope that he would just tell her. ‘And you followed me halfway across the sector to buy me a drink?’

  ‘For starters, yes. We can talk over a caf; what could be more civilised?’

  ‘Talk about what? I don’t even know who you are.’

  ‘Really? You’re normally so assiduous in your research, Orzabet.’

  ‘What did you just call me?’

  He leaned forward, and Bez flinched back, concerned he might try to touch her. ‘Much as I like games, denying what we both know qualifies as fucking about, and that I don’t tolerate.’

  Bez caught her breath. ‘All right, let’s assume for the moment I am who you say I am. And who precisely are you, Sirrah Imbarin Tierce?’

  He beamed. ‘How long did it take you to find out my name?

  Not long, I’d guess, given you’re the greatest databreaker in human-space!’

  She ignored that. ‘So far, all I know for sure is that you work for Tarset station. Aren’t you a bit out of your jurisdiction?’

  ‘Interesting point. Yes, and no. But to get back to your original question, I’m here to help.’


  ‘To help? In what way is turning up out of the blue and claiming to be my husband helpful?’

  ‘Pretending you were my wife seemed like the obvious solution to the sexual segregation problem. The local customs are a bit quaint.’

  ‘You got me thrown out of my hotel.’

  ‘My point exactly.’

  ‘Well, I’m not married to you. I don’t even know you.’

  ‘I realise that. But I’m here if you need me.’

  ‘To do what?’ She paused then decided she had nothing to lose by asking, ‘Why do you think I’m here, Sirrah Tierce?’

  He didn’t hesitate. ‘You’ve had a tip-off important enough to your fight against the Sidhe that you’re following it up in person.’

  Bez struggled not to let her shock know. Finally, she managed, ‘The Sidhe are dead.’

  Tierce dropped his voice. ‘Remember what I said about not fucking about? We both know those bitches are still around. Don’t pretend otherwise.’

  ‘Even if you believe th-they aren’t all dead, what’s your interest?’

  ‘I’m fighting the Sidhe, just like you.’

  ‘How? You’re some sort of enforcer on a hub station.’

  ‘I’m also part of a larger organisation devoted to opposing the Sidhe.’

  ‘An organisation I’ve never heard of? Impossible.’

  ‘We’re very careful.’

  ‘And you know about me?’

  ‘Indeed we do. We have been following your activities with interest for some time.’

  Their drinks arrived, brought by a robed waiter. They both shut up. Bez tried to use the pause to think, but it was too much to take in. She sipped her caf, and for a moment lost herself in that simple pleasure. Unfortunately, when she looked over the rim of her mug, Imbarin Tierce was still sitting opposite her.

  ‘Has anyone ever told you you’re beautiful?’

  ‘What? Of course not!’ She had paid well to have her face re-sculpted, leaving it carefully average, as forgettable as possible. ‘I would appreciate it if you refrained from these ridiculous court-ship games, Sirrah Tierce.’

  ‘I was just expressing an opinion.’