by Jaine Fenn
‘You were about to tell me whom you work for,’ she prompted.
‘We don’t have a name as such. We like to stay in the background.’
‘So how many of you are there in this nameless organisation?
How long have you been fighting the Sidhe? And why haven’t I come across you before?’ She tried to load as much scepticism as possible into the questions but deep down she was panicking. If Tierce was telling the truth, it could change everything.
‘To answer your first question: I can’t give you an exact number, because we’re … let’s call it a cell structure.’
‘You can at least give me some idea.’
‘Dozens … no, more like hundreds. Yes, let’s say a few hundred.’
Was he making this up? He appeared pretty casual and ill-informed. ‘Less than the number of Sidhe in human-space?’
‘Probably, yes.’
”‘Probably”? “A few hundred”? You can’t really expect me to believe you when you give such vague answers.’
‘Like I say, I know what is going on locally, but not elsewhere.’
She had to concede this made sense: any hypothetical human-space-wide resistance would have to operate as autonomous cells, given the Sidhe’s ability to prise information from unwilling minds.
‘And how long have you - your cell, anyway - been around?’
‘We’ve been around for a long time, but until recently our activities have been very low-key. Monitoring Sidhe influence, rather than confronting it.’
‘What changed?’
‘They made hostile moves against us.’
‘They know about you, then?’
‘Oh, yes. For much of recent history, a balance has existed. They have upset that balance, and we are responding.’
Which might be why he was making contact now. His explanations were beginning to look unpleasantly plausible. ‘What prompted them to move against you?’
‘A good question.’
But not one he was going to answer, apparently. ‘So the reason I haven’t come across you before is because you haven’t been actively pursuing the fight?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But now you are?’
‘Right again.’
‘Are you trying to recruit me, Sirrah Tierce?’
‘Not at all. Weare merely offering assistance. After all, we are fighting the same war: you in your way, we in ours.’
Bez received an interrupt from her comshades. When she checked the tag she saw that the call came from her previous hotel.
She looked through the display at Tierce. ‘I need to take this.’
He shrugged and sat back.
It was Dena. ‘A visitor arrived for thee.’
‘Who?’ Bez sub-vocced back.
‘She refused to leave a name. She had a babe with her.’
Cusa. ‘Where is she now?’
‘I told her of thy new hotel.’
Damn. ‘When did-?’ But Dena had already hung up.
‘1 have to go,’ said Bez out loud.
‘Must you? I thought we were getting on pretty well.’
‘Thanks for the caf.’
As she hurried away he called after her, ‘You’ll find me a very useful ally.’
She commed reception to check if anyone had been asking after her. No one had. Tierce’s bombshell had shaken her, and it took a few moments to decide on her next move; she kept walking anyway, just to get away. Then she instructed reception to tell her if any visitors arrived for her and took a lift further up the atrium, going into a space her overlays labelled as a ‘women’s bar’.
She realised her mistake at once. She was the only person wearing robes, or in fact much at all; this was a bar for tourist women to meet each other. But at least Tierce couldn’t follow her here. She found a quiet table, facing the door.
She kept replaying the conversation with Imbarin Tierce. All these years she had been sure she was passing undetected through human-space, and now she found she was being watched, monitored. It was unthinkable. Assuming he was telling the truth. But he had found her here. And why would he lie? What else could his agenda be? Not to stop her: he could have done that already.
She felt as though she had stepped out onto a tightrope; she was too terrified to turn back, and had no choice other than to keep gomg.
She did a comprehensive search for traces of Imbarin Tierce in the local infoscape, but found only what she expected: someone of that name had disembarked from this morning’s starliner and checked into the Hotel Fiviel. If there was further data on him, she couldn’t access it.
‘This seat taken?’
She started, expecting to see Cusa, but it was a slender woman whose cut-out bodysuit showed off some surprising piercings.
‘I’m, uh, waiting for someone.’
‘Suit yourself.’ The woman wandered off.
Her com made her jump, but it was only reception, informing her she had a visitor who would not give a name but had a child with her. Bez told the receptionist to send her up.
ESTRIS
(The Ice Coast, Tetrial Beta, Tetrial System)
Everyone has secrets.
It doesn’t matter whether you want them; they just arrive in your life, and mess it up.
Estris had been in Astren’s house for three weeks now, and she had developed a routine of sorts: a bracing run along the beach first thing, then a day divided between light reading, watching holodramas and browsing for jobs until the time when most folk finished work, at which point she spent a while chatting on the comnet to those of her friends who still wanted to talk to her; in the evening, there was the family dinner.
The fateful conversation happened over lunch; even with the children away at school and her husband working in his study, Astren insisted on a formal sit-down meal at midday. Estris, used to eating at her desk or on the streetcar, found this adjustment one of the hardest to deal with.
Astren was serving the samphire salad while Estris aired her grievances: how unfair the agreement was, how it made her feel so worthless, so frustrated, almost like a prisoner despite the nominal freedom afforded her by the accompanying pay-off. Astren put down the spoon and said, ‘So try beevee.’
Estris stared at her sister, confused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, your non-disclosure agreement has plenty to say about not passing information on to, urn, “any individual or organisation”, or discussing the matter on - what was it they said, exactly?’
“‘On any network, chatgroup or other means of disseminating defamatory accusations through the infoscape,’” finished Estris, reciting the infuriating terms a little impatiently.
‘What I’m saying is, while Dynosys have covered themselves thoroughly here on Tetrial, from what you said, there’s not one mention of other systems in the document you signed.’
‘I…’ Trust Astren to think of that. ‘I’d have to check.’ Before her sister could object, Estris got up and strode down the corridor to her room. Hail rattled against the window as she dug her slate out from under a pile of discarded clothes on the floor.
Returning to the table, she found Astren pointedly waiting to start eating. ‘You’re right,’ said Estris, smiling to emphasise the point and offset her rudeness, ‘there’s nothing specific about not using beevee. Just the local comnet.’
She sat down before murmuring a blessing over the meal. As she ate she thought through the implications of Astren’s offhand comment. She made herself wait until her sister offered seconds, which she accepted - Astren’s love of health foods meant Estris was perpetually hungry, even ifher figure was benefiting from the regime - then said, ‘Were you offering to let me use your uplink?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’d pay for my time on it.’
Astren shrugged. ‘If you wanted to make a small contribution towards the bill, that would be appreciated.’
‘Are you sure, though? I mean, I could take the sled into Hunterport.’
‘A public up
link would cost you ten times as much. Don’t waste your money.’
‘I don’t want to be any trouble.’
Astren gave her that smile, the one that said, You’re always trouble, little sister, but I love you anyway. ‘This thing is eating you up, Est; you need to let it out.’
‘Yes, but … over your uplink? What if my messages are traced?’
‘I’m not sure that’s even possible. Anyway, aren’t you being a bit paranoid? No, a lot paranoid.’
‘Y ou’ve read the agreement! If I mention anything about …
what I found, Dynosys will take back my severance payment and sue me!’
‘They don’t want anything that can come directly back at them over the nets. 1 doubt they’ll even know if you talk to people out-of-system. Unless you found evidence of Dynosys being part of some deep interstellar conspiracy when you came across the suppression notices?’
‘I … didn’t.’
‘Well, then, if you really need to speak out, do it where Dynosys won’t be listening. Although’ - Astren raised a cynical eyebrow - ‘I should warn you that the less tightly regulated beevee boards attract a certain type of person with too much time and money on their hands.’
‘Rich kooks like you, you mean?’ Estris grinned to show she meant it as a joke.
Astren mimed taking offence, frowning hard. ‘Those rich kooks help pay for all this, you know!’ She swept a fork around to indicate the glass-walled dining area, the low sofas and the glowing firewall.
‘So you research your books from the beevee boards, do you?’
Estris played along, happy to see her too-serious older sister light-elllng up.
Astren leaned forward and whispered, ‘Yes. Just don’t tell my editor.’
‘Don’t want her complaining the next time you ask for a dead-line extension, do we?’
Astren grunted. ‘As ifI ever did.’
‘You could, though, if you had to.’ Estris was considering taking up writing; it was a career her sister thrived on. She had the money to support herself while she retrained, and Astren had the contacts to sell whatever she came up with. ‘I mean, pan-human histories are selling like spiced cake right now.’
‘Yes, well, when a nation’s licking its wounds it likes to hear about mistakes and failures in faraway cultures.’
The sisters lapsed into bitter silence, remembering their nation’s recent defeat. Not that anyone close to them had been killed in the war; it had just knocked them back as a people. Estris finally blurted out, ‘That’s what really irks me. We could have won, with that sort of technology.’
‘The power source, you mean?’ Astren spoke cautiously; she was the only person Estris had trusted with the truths she was now legally bound not to reveal.
‘Unlimited free power would have given us a massive advantage! And it wasn’t just that. The files I saw … all those projects, vetoed. And I think I only found out part of it. What if there were weapons that could have beaten the Inensians swiftly and decisively, except their development was stifled?’
Astren grimaced: unlike her sister, she had moved on from the recent defeat and embraced the ensuing peace. ‘Those vetoes were on religious grounds, you said. Which is fair enough.’
‘That technology wasn’t blasphemous! All right, perhaps the new energy source, if you’ve got a very limited idea of how much of creation the Almighty is happy to let us access. Maybe even the improved neural interfacing, although if you grant that such things are allowed at all then why can’t people have a faster and more invasive version? It’s their choice. And that alternative comp paradigm? What’s wrong with that? As for a brainwave reader that detects a particular class of abnormal mental signature: in what way is that offensive to God? No, Astren, it looks to me like whenever Dynosys’s R&D came near certain breakthroughs, someone jumped on the project. As for who, how and why, I have no idea.’ Estris realised she was ranting. She took a deep breath.
‘I wish I could help you; her sister said. ‘Honest to God, I do.
But I don’t have any more idea of what was going on at Dynosys than you do.’
‘You’re sure it wasn’t Inensia, though?’ Apparently an Inensian had taken over Estris’s old job. Everyone was meant to be friends now, in this new era of peace.
‘If they had that sort of clout inside a company owned by their enemies, do you think the war would have dragged on for as long as it did?’
‘I guess not.’
Estris was wary at first, choosing an obscure pseudonym and carefully tailoring what she gave away about her background.
When there was no word from her ex-employers after a month of sporadic contact with the rest of human-space, she started visiting some of the more fringe sites. It was something to do while she tried to find a new job. Her experience was too broad, too vague: yes, she was an excellent administrator and researcher, but those were hardly vital skills for a nation rebuilding itself after a war.
She found herself looking forward to her daily beevee download of distant news, after the constant disappointment nearer home.
Astren was right about one thing: there were some odd people out there, airing some wacky views. At first Estris found the level of belief comforting: if she posted a comment about a conspiracy to suppress energy generation via multidimensional sources, then a dozen others would agree that, yes, such hidden manipulation was widespread. But she soon came to realise that most of these responses sprung from uncritical credulity; she could have claimed invisible aliens were tampering with the water supply on all the hubs, and someone would say they had seen evidence of that too.
Yes: a lot of kooks.
She also browsed the more respectable boards, the sorts of places her sister used to research her books, but they tended to go the other way, favouring conservative views of history and culture, expressed in technical terms and obscure references.
Her frustration grew. She had wanted to vent her fury with the company that had shafted her; to share her secret with people who would listen, not pander to idiots who would either believe everything she said, or conservatives who would believe nothing.
Then she found someone who, for all their interest in off-the-wall subjects, didn’t appear to believe wholesale in whatever anyone else dreamed up. Whoever ‘Orzabet’ was, he or she was no credulous kook. And they were genuinely interested in what Estris had to say.
Estris was intrigued. Dynosys hadn’t spotted what she was doing: or if they had, they didn’t care. She decided, after some thought, that she would share what she knew about her ex-employers with her new out-of-system contact.
THE DARKNESS BENEATH
Designation: Target399
Human alias: Nema Lastre
Position: Chief Research Officer of Oynosys
Technologies
Location: Tetrial
Vulnerabilities: Target399 is likely to have been involved in the suppression of technology within Dynosys, a corporation based on Tetrial who sell patents to out-of-system third parties. No concrete proof of her actions is available at this time.
Cusa looked distinctly out of place in the bar. She wore her hood up and carried her child in a sling across her chest.
When she paused at the end of the table, Bez gestured and said, ‘Have a seat. Did you want, er, anything? To drink or eat.’
‘This is a fast day for me.’
‘Right.’ Bez stared at the top of the baby’s head and wondered, irrelevantly, if it was a fast day for the baby too. Presumably not.
The other woman sat down opposite then reached past the baby into her robes. Bez tensed, remembering the gun, but Cusa merely brought out a pack of cigrenes, offering one to Bez first. Bez took it, mindful of social convention, and allowed Cusa to light the stick. Cusa took one too: presumably today’s abstinence did not extend to smoking.
After both of them had inhaled and exhaled a couple of times, Bez said, ‘So, do you want to carryon our conversation
now?’
‘Thou art not a great one for pleasantries,’ observed Cusa.
‘Not when something’s important, no.’
The baby squirmed, possibly disturbed by the smoke. It opened its mouth in an un feasibly wide yawn and punched blindly at the air with a tiny fist. Bez stared in fascination: she had minimal experience with children, but was suddenly struck by how odd it was that this defenceless, barely sentient creature would one day become an adult human being.
‘He is named Gion,’ said Cusa.
‘Hello, Gion,’ said Bez. It was a pointless greeting, given the baby’s level of cognitive development, but it appeared to please Cusa.
‘I carried him,’ said Cusa, her free hand resting lightly on the infant’s head. Gion had thrust his fist into his mouth and gone back to sleep. ‘But Khea was the primary. There were complications, and he was born a month early, only two days after we moved apartments.’ She took a long draw on her cigrene. ‘Three weeks later, Khea was gone.’
Bez said carefully, ‘Gone, as in … ?’
Cusa narrowed her eyes and started to speak in a low, even voice. ‘One day she did not return from work. Her com was offline. The next morning I called her office, as at times she would work late, though never without calling me first. Her colleagues said she had left at her usual time the previous evening.’
Through the smoke, Cusa’s expression became more distant.
The cigrene smouldered over the table, unregarded. Bez was about to prompt her to continue when she said, ‘I tried to report her disappearance to the monitors. They directed my call to a family liaison officer. She expressed concern for my loss, and asked if I wished for counselling. I was confused. This made no sense.
Eventually, the officer forwarded me Khea’s death certificate. I did not believe it.’ She flattened her lips in a grim smile. ‘I shouted at her. My call was cut. But I still had the certificate. And when I checked the infoscape, Khea had no presence there. It was as though she had been erased.’
‘Couldn’t you challenge this? Go to the authorities? You have an elected government, don’t you?’ The Graceni were a religious democracy, not a full theocracy.