Queen of Nowhere

by Jaine Fenn

  Jarek chuckled but Bez couldn’t help thinking about the young man’s original, darker vocation.

  She didn’t watch the final approach to Port Viridian.

  Taro would have patched the bridge visuals through to her overlays if she’d asked, and she had been tempted. Not for nostalgia’s sake: quite the opposite, she wanted to get any emotional responses to her childhood home out of the way before they could impede the mission. If that meant watching the city of crystal towers gain definition across the calm orange ocean, she would have done so, and worked through any feelings the view stirred in her. But she had something more important to watch: trash. Now they were in range of Tethisyn-Alpha’s comnet, she was sorting through the thousands of channels looking for the sort of lifestyle shows her mother had so adored; vapid programming that devoured and regurgitated titbits of the lives of the rich and famous. And, sometimes, the rich and secretive. She had data-agents trawling the morass of trivia for keywords such as the relevant name and job title. Unfortunately, her own intellect was the final arbiter, so she had to watch a certain amount of dross in order to extract the few relevant facts.

  J arek was sharing the burden of viewing the mind-numbing ‘entertainment’, possibly to stop himself worrying about his junior partner, who was currently speaking to local officials. He had assured her, with a somewhat unconvincing grin, that Taro was quite capable of acting like a grown-up when he put his mind to it.

  When Taro called Jarek up to the bridge, Bez paused the play-back. Had the authorities identified the Heart of Glass? She was sure the ruse she had used to rename his ship had worked, but that had been over a year ago and he could have been careless since then, and revealed himself …

  Jarek came back down a few minutes later and she asked him if there was a problem.

  ‘Nothing a bit more freetrading experience won’t teach the boy,’ he said wryly. ‘We’ve put out preliminary feelers to sell the cargo - anything else would be suspicious - but Taro learned his bargaining skills in a rather different environment. He needed a bit of guidance.’

  ‘How about the authorities? Any trouble?’

  ‘Christos, no. We’ve already landed, in fact.’

  As though on cue, one of the two cabin doors opened and Nual came out. Taking a moment to consider it, Bez realised it probably was on cue.

  A few seconds later Taro floated down from the bridge. The boy used his flight implants casually; she doubted he even knew how they worked. Then again, neither did she.

  ‘So,’ said Jarek, ‘everyone set?’

  ‘I’ll get my bag.’ Bez fished out an inconspicuous carryall from her curtained-off space. Unlike the Angels’ luggage, hers was exactly what it appeared: clothes and personal effects, suitable for the paying passenger she was impersonating.

  They had already agreed she would disembark first, so she headed for the airlock. Jarek called out, ‘Good luck,’ and she raised a hand in acknowledgement.

  Immigration took their time with her. She had been concerned they might. Port Viridian floated on a fertile, weed-locked ocean, and parts of the outer perimeter were indeed oceanic ports, but even in this busy planetary system, interstellar traffic amounted to no more than a dozen ships a week. Port Viridian might have only needed a single starport if not for the complicated logistics of disseminating different cargoes throughout the massive complex of floating hexagonal tiles. The Heart of Glass, with its mixed load, could have made planetfall at any of the city’s three starport tiles. Jarek had wisely chosen one of the two not being used by the Lambent Spire - or by anyone else. As a result, the bored staff gave Bez their full attention. She was glad she had allowed herself a dose of medication before disembarking; the artificial calm helped her keep her cool.

  The salty, algal tang of ‘the riches of the sea’, so familiar from her childhood, hit her as soon as she emerged on to the open concourse. The rapid development of the Tethisyn system in the post-Protectorate era had been largely down to its main habitable planet being one big, wet repository of aquatic protein. The world’s two permanent settlements were located in stretches of becalmed deep water on opposite hemispheres, where the orange tangle of brine weed extended from horizon to horizon, further dampening the ocean swell and providing a basic foodstuff, supplemented by the myriad of animal life in the planetary ocean. The weed-and-seafood diet was one of the many things Bez did not miss about Port Viridian. Although she had expected the smell, it still set off the ghost of memory. At least the reek no longer held associations of , home’ in the way it had whenever she’d returned to Alpha during the first few years after moving out to the Tethisyn-Delta hab.

  Here on the edge of the city, decadent architecture and conspicuous decoration took second place to the utilitarian functions of the twin ports, stellar and oceanic. She looked up past offices and warehouses to the clouded lavender-grey sky, pleased that she had managed to quash any uncalled-for bouts of nostalgia.

  In a public convenience she changed her colouring and clothes to match the local norm. She would have liked to change to a new persona too, but this was not an option. She wondered in passing if her original, legal identity was still on record. It might be, given she had simply disappeared twenty years ago, but trying to find out would be foolish in the extreme.

  She dumped her bag in a charity bin then consulted the local com net to find the nearest tube way station. The entrance had the archway she remembered so well, twinned green fronds coming together to form the double-T logo of Tethisyn Transport, one of a handful of nominally independent companies ThreeCs suffered to exist in their system. She selected the day-pass option and boarded the train, then settled back in her seat to tune into the local infoscape. As her consciousness rose through the glamorous virtual representation of the city’s bright towers and glowing walkways, she felt a twinge of foreboding, an illogical conviction that she should never have returned.

  Non-confidential schematics of the central tiles of Port Viridian were freely available; however the lack of detail and the large swathes of the map marked ‘private’ made this intel insufficient for their purposes. But it was a start, and the alternative, to hack directly into more sensitive datastores, was too risky at this point.

  A pop-up in her overlays informed her that the train was approaching its first interchange. By now the two Angels should have disembarked from the Heart of Glass and be making their way to the rendezvous point. Assuming all had gone to plan with customs. She had a sudden thought, something she didn’t remember anyone discussing. Too late now. Unless she wanted to break com silence she had to assume the others had thought their plan through fully. After all, despite the impression the pair gave, they were professional assassins.

  She changed trains at the next interchange, blinking her overlays transparent as she crossed the central hall. The holo-ads were as intense as she remembered: husky voices whispered enticingly in her ears and the hall’s six exits were all but hidden amid the welter of imagery, much of it from the latest beevee soaps or blockbuster holodramas out of Seaview City. (That name had always irritated her: of course you could see the sea from Port Viridian’s sister city: it wasjloating on it!)

  Jarek had timed their arrival for early evening, and the hall was crowded with workers travelling back to their homes from the port and light industry tiles at the city’s edge. Bez followed the discreet arrow in the corner of her visual cortex to the correct exit and waited for the next train. She recognised one of the ads playing over the tunnel wall: the Aqua Zoo had been her favourite tile as a child; she had forever been bothering her mother to take her there, to let her swim through the enclosures containing some of Tethisyn’s more manageable sealife. She had missed the Zoo desperately when they moved out-system, missed the comfort of being among incurious beings who accepted her, yet demanded nothing of her-She jumped as the ad was eclipsed by the smooth arrival of a train. Stepping aboard, she told herself to stop dwelling on the past.

  No need to change for the next three tile
s, so she could start amalgamating the city plans she had downloaded with the data she and Jarek had extrapolated from the ents feeds during the flight in.

  ‘Bezea?’

  Bez’s attention snapped back to the real. As she stared at the man standing in front of her, everything stopped: she was fifteen again, screwed up, hormonal and confused. ‘Doctor Maht?’

  ‘It is you! I wasn’t sure; you’ve certainly changed, though your eyes are still the same, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

  Once, such a comment would have sustained her for a week. At the time her mother had first sent her to see Doctor Maht, to deal with her ‘behavioural issues’, Bez had been disdainful and angry, obstreperous as only a lonely genius teenager could be. But he had listened to her, and he was kind and good-looking. Naturally, she had developed an infatuation for him. For the first few months after she moved away, she had pined pathetically for her ex-shrink.

  Right now he was the last person she wanted to see.

  She swallowed and said tightly, ‘You’ve mistaken me for someone else.’

  ‘Uh, no, I don’t think so.’ He was smiling that smile, that trustworthy, I’m-on-your-side smile, and looking straight into her eyes. ‘I never forget a client.’

  Bez turned her head, looking for escape. She shouldered her way past the woman standing next to her, earning a sharp look.

  ‘Bezea? Come back. I’d love to catch up…’

  She carried on, pushing through the complaining commuters, her heart tripping. When she reached the end of the carriage she paused, expecting him to come after her, but he was hidden in the crowd. The next time the train stopped, she hurried off.

  JEWELLED WONDERLAND

  She had an irrational desire to run. Instead she paused and glanced over her shoulder. Doctor Maht was still on the train, looking out through the crowd at her, his expression perplexed. She turned away, taking the stairs up to the central hall two at a time.

  At the top she paused, pressing herself into a corner out of the main flow, and called up her overlays. What was the man’s first name? Jio, that was it. Jio Maht was a relatively common Tethisyn name, and it took a few moments to locate the right directory entry. He was still working as a mental health professional; his office and residential address were listed, both of them on respectable inner tiles. According to his profile, he spent a couple of days a week helping out at less well-funded health centres on poorer tiles on the edge of the city. One of the clinics was nearby. So, he had been travelling home after a bit of charity work and she just happened to be on th~ same train. Given she used to live here, there was always a small risk of meeting someone who recognised her despite her changed appearance. It should not be an issue, unless he mentioned their meeting to someone. But then, why would he?

  She decided, on balance, that this disturbing coincidence did not warrant calling off the mission. If the chance encounter hadn’t been with someone she had such an awkward history with, she wouldn’t have let it disturb her so.

  The train with Doctor Maht on would be long gone now. She turned around and returned to the platform she had come up from.

  She called up the data she needed, but kept her overlays shallow. When she made her next change she paid careful attention to the people around her. No one gave her a second glance.

  The intel she was preparing still required work but her encounter with Doctor Maht had left her running late, so she banished her overlays as she came out of the tube way station at her destination.

  This tile was one of the central cluster of seven at the heart of Port Viridian, a fairy-tale world of high, bright towers linked by delicate-looking bridges; more commercial than the heart of Seaview City, but still a place where dreams were peddled: dreams, and power. The people were perfectly groomed, the streets wide and airy and paved with possibilities; even the ads were subtle enough to be more decoration than exhortation. Bez had dressed appropriately in a low-level exec’s smart day suit, albeit not in the latest fashion.

  She slotted herself into the polite crush of foot traffic, taking the opportunity to work on her data when she found herself on a moving walkway.

  She peeled off at the appropriate side street, walking past bars providing early evening relaxation and appropriate settings for casual business deals. Between two of these establishments she paused for a momentary look around, and then, when she was sure no one was watching, she slipped down a narrow alleyway.

  She came to an intersection: to the left was the back entrance of a bar where her mother, in one of her rare periods of gainful employment, had waited tables. She turned right. Twilight was falling and she jumped when she saw two figures at the far end of the alley, silhouetted against the glow of the central tile beyond.

  She caught herself even as the taller one of the pair straightened and said, ‘We were beginning to worry.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I got, uh, distracted.’

  ‘Distracted?’ This was from Nual, who had paused in the act of swinging a slender black case off her shoulder. ‘By what, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  Bez did, but she knew better than to dissemble. ‘Someone recognised me. Someone from my past.’

  ‘That gonna be a problem?’ asked Taro.

  ‘I don’t believe so.’

  ‘Good,’ said Nual. Someone else might have asked if Bez was sure.

  ‘You didn’t have any trouble with customs, thenr’ Bez addressed the question to the air between the two assassins.

  ‘Nope,’ said Taro laconically. ‘The cove operating the scanner got a bit freaked at his readouts, but then Nual had a quiet word with him ‘n’ he calmed down real quick.’

  ‘Won’t there be a record? In the scanner, I mean.’ That was what had been worrying her earlier: the Sidhe’s powers of persuasion might influence a human official to forget the Angels’

  implants and the contents of Nual’s case, but the incriminating scans were still in the system.

  Nual had crouched down with the case on the ground in front of her. She looked up and said, ‘He decided to delete the records then forget he had done so. There might be a problem at the next audit but we will be long gone before then.’

  Bez had to admit that having a Sidhe on your side had its advantages.

  Nual continued, ‘I’ll need a couple of minutes to assemble the gun.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Bez, not looking at the case. ‘I’m still collating my data.’

  ‘Right,’ said Taro, ‘I’ll keep watch.’ He strode past Bez and up to the corner.

  Bez retreated into her head. By the time she returned to the real, Nual was standing up again. The slender, black long-arm slung across her back looked too delicate to cause the kind of damage x-lasers were reputed to be capable of.

  Taro padded back; he moved pretty quietly for someone of his stature. ‘You got some plans for me, then?’ he said.

  ‘I have, but bear in mind that I’ve had to employ a degree of extrapolation.’

  ‘Did you want more timer’ asked Nual. ‘We can wait.’

  Bez wished Nual wasn’t being so considerate. It was disconcerting. She debated taking a last look through the ad hoc database she had constructed from the lifestyle programmes combined with the legitimately downloaded city plans, but she was confident she had got all she could. ‘No, I’m ready.’

  ‘Is it like you remember?’

  She looked up at Taro’s question. ‘Port Viridian, you mean?’

  ‘Yeah. Yer home city.’

  ‘Yes. It is.’

  ‘Ain’t it odd to be back? I mean, you moved away when you were, what, fifteen?’

  ‘Fifteen, yes.’ Despite some emotional issues, that had been a good year, the year she became the youngest person ever to gain a place on ThreeCs’ prestigious ‘R&D FastTrack’ programme. The necessary move to Tethisyn-Delta - or ‘Cryptoball’, as some of her peers disparagingly referred to the home of ThreeCs’ Secure Communications Division - had not been one her mother had welcomed, though s
he had been happy enough to live off her daughter’s generous grant. Was her mother still on Delta? Was she even still alive? Bez decided, on balance, that she didn’t want to know.

  ‘Bez?’ She focused on Taro again. He gave an awkward smile.

  ‘Lost in the past, eh?’

  Bez cleared her throat. ‘I’m ready.’

  ‘Let’s do it.’ He came to stand in front of her. Bez had to crane her neck up to meet his eyes. It had been years since she had practised such open datasharing, and it made her feel exposed. Taro’s inexperience - it took four attempts to blink their overlays into sync - didn’t help. Finally she managed to transfer the annotated plans of the city’s central tile to the boy’s headware.

  Looking over at Nual she was momentarily confounded to find that the Sidhe had partly disappeared. Then she registered what she was seeing: Nual had donned her mimetic cloak, another item in the Angels’ arsenal. Taro began shaking out his own cloak.

  ‘There’s no air traffic out there right now,’ said Nual. ‘Shall we go?’

  Bez looked across the water at the jewelled wonderland of Port Viridian’s central tile, known simply as Central by the city’s inhabitants, most of whom would never set foot on it. She walked up to stand next to Nual, and said again, ‘I’m ready.’

  She flinched at Nual’s touch but didn’t pull away. A moment later, Taro took her other arm. She hugged herself to give the pair a stable hold, trying not to think about the close contact and whom it was with. Had there been any other way, she would have taken it, but the tubeways and airbuses into ThreeCs’ corporate heart employed stringent ID and weapons checks, and the few private aircars in the city were strictly for the elite. At least no one was going to expect them to arrive this way.

  ‘Here we go,’ murmured Nual.

  The Angels lifted off slowly, taking Bez with them. They had already practised carrying her in a short flight around the Heart of Glass’s rec room but she still froze, animal terror getting the better of her as they rose the three metres over the plexiglass wall edging the tile. The drop down to the shadowed water on the far side was higher because the tiles rose proud of the sea by a dozen metres. The dark line of a tubeway floated half out of the weedy surface; in the fading light, the caging that kept the tube from getting tangled in the brineweed was invisible.