Alameche looked at the little machine for a while. ‘Well, it must be pretty secure,’ he said, ‘if you don’t know where it is yet.’
The machine laughed. ‘Well said. At this moment, I don’t know. But I know you know.’ It floated closer to Alameche. ‘How long do you think you could keep that from me?’
‘You are our allies, I believe.’ Alameche managed to speak calmly. He desperately wanted to swallow.
‘Yes, well, we are, in a manner of speaking. I represent a group of commercial and financial interests who would rather remain anonymous but who have, let us say, quite a stakeholding in this area and who really won’t go away even if you should wish them to.’ Eskjog began to move away, and then stopped. ‘What do you call it, in your society, when a man demands sexual congress with his unwilling wife?’
Alameche shrugged. ‘Marriage,’ he said. ‘So what?’
‘Indeed. Most societies call it rape, of course, but at least you know your own minds. Perhaps it would help if you thought of this relationship as a marriage. And it would certainly help if you moved your artefact.’ It paused, and then as if it had just thought of it, added: ‘We could set up somewhere secure for you, if you like?’
Alameche frowned. ‘It has to stay within our jurisdiction.’
‘Why?’
‘Because if I let it go I’ll die. Obviously.’ Alameche glared at the machine. ‘And as you pointed out, I’m the reasonable one. You need me.’
‘So you are. So we do.’ To Alameche’s surprise, Eskjog performed a slow sideways roll. When it had returned to vertical it added: ‘All right, I agree. We’ll set up a secure study area, within your jurisdiction. Under your nominal control, even, if that makes you feel better.’
‘Thank you.’ Alameche was tempted to quibble about the ‘nominal’, but restrained himself. Just to stay in some sort of control was good enough, for now. ‘Where will it be?’
‘To be confirmed. The main thing now is to make a clean break with its recent past. And now, if you don’t mind, I need to be somewhere else. Thank you for your hospitality.’ It added: ‘Do I need to define the meaning of clean break?’
Alameche shook his head. ‘No. No, you don’t.’
The charabanc bumped down the last slope, knocking Alameche from side to side in his seat and rousing him from his reverie. He peered out of the forward screens, tilting his head back, and then back some more, trying to take in the truly massive bulk and height of the building they were approaching. The design was simple – a central, near-featureless grey cuboid, surrounded by sloping conveyors, each one ending in a different-coloured heap of slag. It reminded Alameche of a parody of an insect, squatting in piles of its own excrement.
It also had the merit of being a very unpopular destination, and therefore a very private one. The refinery plant itself was completely automated, so Haavis and her team had the place to themselves, and the circle of knowledge had been kept small: just they, Alameche and the Lictrix, his bodyguard who was following them, knew what was happening here.
Well, they and presumably Eskjog.
The charabanc crunched off the slope, skidding slightly on the loose, charred scree, and stopped by the low blockhouse that was the only human-scale entrance to the plant. It edged forward and the flexible coupling nosed out and sealed against the blockhouse. There was a hiss, and a sudden smell of ash. It dried Alameche’s throat.
The Lictrix was there to meet them. She must have come in a fast skimmer. That would have been a nasty business in this wind, but necessary. She saluted as he passed, and fell in behind him.
They walked quickly through the blockhouse and down a long corridor. One side was clear, looking out over the vast internal spaces of the refinery. It was an inferno: a row of blue-hot crucibles in the middle distance gave off gouts of dirty flame, and bizarrely shaped machines flicked through the heat haze, their flanks crusted and distorted with spatter and soot. There were no biological beings in there. Alameche assumed death would be immediate, although as far as he knew that had never been tested. He made a mental note to try, one day.
To his relief the conference room, when they reached it, was comfortable, which was more than he could say for the occupants. Haavis and her team of seven sat in an edgy U-shape along three sides of a conference table. Alameche was shown to a seat opposite them. The Lictrix took up a position behind his left shoulder.
Alameche gave the room a smile. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘do tell me about success.’ And leaned back and listened, for what seemed a long time.
Eventually the scientists fell silent and he leaned forward again. ‘In summary, you have got nowhere. Is that right?’
Haavis opened her mouth, and then closed it again. She exchanged a glance with the man who sat on her right, who had so far only spoken to greet Alameche rather tersely at the beginning. He was thin and looked old, with overgrown grey eyebrows above milky blue eyes. He nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The artefact remains inert. Unresponsive.’
‘Thank you! A straight answer.’ Alameche looked at the rest of the team. ‘It would have been much quicker if you had all just said that to start with.’
‘But we have not finished. Not at all!’ Haavis was leaning forward, her face white. ‘There are many other lines of investigation—’
Alameche waved her into silence. ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘Otherwise you would have tried them. No, I think we need to think again. Does your colleague agree?’
The old man nodded. ‘I’m afraid so. We have neither the knowledge nor the facilities to do more.’ Haavis gave him a stricken look, but he shook his head. ‘I am sorry, Madam, but you know I am right. The artefact either cannot – or will not – respond, and we cannot make it.’
‘Good. Sir, I appreciate your directness.’ Alameche stood up, half turned towards the Lictrix and gave her a nod. Then he turned back to the table. ‘Research will continue, but not here. I am closing the facility immediately. On behalf of the Patriarch, I express thanks for your efforts.’ He snapped his fingers.
There was a pop and a soft hiss behind him, and a white fog billowed forward. There was a scrape of chairs as the group leapt to its feet, but the fog had reached the nearest people already; they simply sighed and collapsed. Alameche watched, keeping his mouth clamped shut and breathing through his nose, as the fog rolled over the table. The last people to be reached were Haavis and the old man. Just as the fog touched them Alameche saw the old man take the pudgy woman’s hand.
He was distracted by a crash from behind him. He turned round and peered through the white clouds. They were clearing already, boiling away into nothing as he watched, to reveal the Lictrix, slumped on the floor. Her eyes were wide open in a look of surprise that was almost comical, and she was clawing at her nose as if she was looking for something.
Alameche crouched down next to her. ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘I think your filters must have been faulty. How unfortunate. Mine seem to have worked perfectly.’ He watched the woman die, took hold of the ID tag on her uniform and roughly tore it off. Then he stood up, and wrinkled his nose. The nostril filters had kept out the biocide all right, but they weren’t effective against smells. The second, rapid decomposition phase of the fog was kicking in, and some of the bodies were already beginning to bloat. In a few minutes the first skin ruptures should be under way.
A clean break. At least, metaphorically.
Thale Port
THE FERN-SHAPED PONTOONS of Thale Outward Dock grew from a fat central globe, pointing out in all directions so that from a distance the whole thing looked a bit like a fronded sea creature. The globe was two kilometres across; the pontoons stretched out another three. It was all about people; anything either much bigger or much less delicate than an organic life-form belonged outside, in the cloud of moving cargo that surrounded the place like a sort of seasonal mini-nebula. Local gravity generators kept the cloud in place; at the moment their focus was shifting in preparation for Line-Up, so that a tendril extended from the
cloud towards the gravity field of Camfi.
Muz’s prediction had been right; Fleare had passed through several stages of what felt like rather cursory security without incident. Now she stood in the middle of an area that called itself ‘Arrivals Onward’, which looked like the completest capitalist free-for-all she had ever seen. It was a wide low hall within a perimeter of arches, most of which were occupied by someone selling something. Or selling someone, she noticed. Or maybe just hiring them out. She shrugged.
Muz had provided a carisak with a couple of changes of clothes. She shifted it from one shoulder to the other and wrinkled her nose. If the outside of the Dock was about the inert, the inside was definitely biological. ‘I can smell something dead,’ she muttered.
‘I doubt it. I think you have to be alive to stink that badly.’
‘Whatever.’ She looked around, trying to work out why she felt so uncomfortable. It took her a moment before she realized. It wasn’t just the smell, which seemed to be coming from one of the food outlets. It was the crowds. She had spent the last three years mainly in her own company. The only thing that had spent any time in her personal space was that ovoid device the Strecki had set on her, and since that had always been there she had mainly blanked it. Now, the Arrivals area was full to the point of jostling, and she wasn’t dealing with it. She bit her lip. ‘Muz?’
‘Shh. I know. You need to get out of here.’
‘Yeah. How’d you guess?’
‘It’s not a guess. Your heart’s racing, and every time someone knocks into you you tense your muscles. You’re going into fight or flight mode. Look a little to your left. See the orange lights on the other side of the concourse?’
She looked, and saw a cluster of glowing orbs about the size of human heads, floating a metre above the crowd. Most of them were bright, but as she watched one of them dimmed, dropped a little and bobbed off towards one of the exits. She realized someone was following it. ‘Are they guides? Neat.’
‘Yes. That’s a meeting point. Jez said she’d wait.’
‘She’s there?’
‘Well, she should be.’
Fleare felt a flutter in her stomach. She suppressed it. ‘Okay. Let’s see if she is.’
It took her several minutes to shoulder her way through the crowd, which got thicker as she neared the meeting point. Most of the people were humanoid, as long as you were applying the word loosely; she pushed past, or excused herself politely to, everything from a two-and-a-half-metre cadaver to a stocky, roughly pyramidal creature that just came up to her breastbone.
Then she was through the crowd and standing in a small clear patch directly beneath the globes that reminded her of something she’d heard of called the eye of a storm. And on the other side of the clear patch stood Jezerey, wearing a thick floor-length cloak and an uncertain expression, but still with her arms outstretched.
It was natural to run into the arms. The hug lasted a long time.
Eventually Fleare unhooked herself and stood back. ‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Hi.’ Jezerey looked her up and down. ‘So, starvation chic? On you it looks – thin.’
‘Yeah. Three years.’ Fleare blinked eyes that were suddenly prickling. ‘It’s good to see you.’
‘And you. Look, let’s go somewhere else.’ She hesitated. ‘Can I assume there’s more than one of you?’
‘What? Oh.’ Fleare took the central bead of the necklace in her fingers. ‘Yes. He’s—’
Jez placed a finger on Fleare’s lips. ‘Ssh. Later. Come on.’
Jezerey’s combined office and apartment was on the inside of the inner sphere. She had chosen an antiquarian district; most of the buildings were faceted geodesic domes that looked like something out of the dawn of space exploration. They were set apart by strips of themed ecological planting. Her building was formed of four of the domes, squashed together as if there had been a nasty crash, and the local vegetation was mostly sinister bluish-green cactus things with partly prehensile spikes. Fleare tried to keep her arms close to her sides as she walked up to the entrance.
Inside, Jezerey rolled the cloak off her shoulders and threw it aside. She turned to Fleare and smiled. ‘Welcome to Thale, Fleare. And Muz, of course.’
The necklace lifted from Fleare’s neck and dissolved into an upward funnel of dust like a tornado. ‘Good to see you, Jez.’
‘Likewise.’ Jezerey smiled, and then looked at Fleare. ‘So. Food?’
It had been a while since her meal on the Orbiter. Fleare felt her mouth moisten. ‘Yes, please,’ she said. Then she added, ‘This shape isn’t through choice.’
‘I didn’t think so. You’ll have to tell me about it. I’ll send out for food.’ She looked at Fleare and grinned. ‘Come on, Fle, when did I ever cook? Besides, listening to you is more important.’ She waved towards the far end of the room. ‘Over there. Make yourself comfortable.’
Over there was a rectangular fire pit surrounded on three sides by low couches draped in what looked like animal skins, complete with variegated hair. Fleare leaned down and sniffed one of them. They smelled like animal skins, too. She looked at Jezerey. ‘Are these real?’
‘Sure.’ Jezerey pointed. ‘The reddish ones are Golgotha Plains Trampers. The blue-and-green ones are Heskilm’s Calf.’
‘Really?’ Fleare brushed her fingers over the shiny hairs. ‘I thought they were protected?’
‘Well, it didn’t work for these.’ Jezerey looked serious for a moment. Then her mouth twitched and she laughed. ‘Come on, Fle, I wouldn’t do that. These are antiques, long before protection. Lie down on them. They won’t mind.’
Fleare wanted to lie down. She chose the couch at the narrow end of the fire pit. It occurred to her that although she could smell animal skins, she couldn’t smell smoke, although the pit was full of glowing embers and she could see a grey haze rising from them. She pointed. ‘How does that work?’
‘Boundary fields. Just strong enough to direct the smoke, mind. Don’t get pissed and fall into them; you’ll go straight through and into the pit.’
‘Is getting pissed an option?’
Jezerey dropped on to the couch next to Fleare. ‘After what you’ve been through? It’s probably compulsory. I expect it wasn’t available, the last few years?’
Fleare shook her head.
‘Okay, well, it is now.’ Jezerey bounced off the couch, opened a low cabinet and pulled out a squat bottle and three glasses. She waved the bottle. ‘This is antique, too, but even worse protected than the hides. Want some?’
‘What is it?’
‘Local stuff. Called Strant. It just means Spirit, I think, although the word can have other meanings. Best stick to Spirit.’ She blew on the bottle, and a cloud of dust rose. ‘Did I say it was antique?’
The bottle had a complicated closure which involved coils of wire under tension. Fleare watched while Jezerey opened it, and then held out her hand and accepted a glass. She sipped, and pulled a face. ‘Fuck!’
Jezerey grinned. ‘Yeah, lots of people say that.’ She poured another glass and set it down on the cabinet. Muz drifted over and dipped a tendril of dust into the liquid.
‘No wonder it isn’t protected. It’s got its own defence mechanism.’ Fleare sipped again. ‘It tastes like fermented sweat glands, or something.’
‘You’re not far off.’ Jezerey studied the faded label. ‘I don’t think they were sweat glands, though.’ She shrugged, and raised her own glass. ‘Cheers!’
‘Cheers.’ Fleare looked at the glass on the cabinet. ‘Muz, are you actually drinking?’
The tendril lifted from the glass. ‘Just being sociable. Anyway, fuel is fuel.’
‘I guess.’ Fleare lay back on the couch. ‘It’s good to see you, Jez.’
‘And you.’ Jezerey sat on the edge of her couch, leaned towards Fleare, and raised her eyebrows. ‘So, tell me about the Monastery.’
Three hours later the squat bottle was empty, and so was a second one that had somehow tasted
a bit better. Muz had drifted off somewhere saying he was taking himself offline, and Fleare was gazing into the dying embers in the fire pit. She might have dozed off, she wasn’t sure, but it felt as if Jezerey’s voice woke her.
‘Fleare?’
She raised herself on one elbow. ‘Mm?’
‘What are you going to do?’
It was less than a day since she had answered the same question for Muz. Then, she had known the answer. Now she felt less sure. She shook her head slowly. ‘Don’t know. You got any ideas?’
‘Muz said you wanted to find Kelk.’
‘Well, yes.’ Fleare pushed herself upright. ‘Muz told me he was bumming around. Do you know where?’
‘Sort of.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I’ve got some ideas. Um, he’s sort of hiding.’
Fleare sat up straight. ‘Hiding?’
‘Yeah. Or keeping out of the way.’
‘Keeping out of whose way? The Heg’?’
‘No.’ Jezerey stood up. ‘It’s me, really. We sort of fell out.’
‘What are you talking about? Look, it’s late. Tell me tomorrow.’ Then she shook her head. ‘No, fuck it. Tell me now.’
‘Not much to tell. After the amnesty, Kelk couldn’t let go, you know? He stayed angry. I didn’t. I wanted,’ she waved round at the room, ‘this stuff, something to do. A life. He got pissed off.’
‘And left?’
‘Yeah, and left.’ Jezerey sighed. ‘I’ve still got a contact, I don’t know if it’s live or not.’
‘Where is he then?’
‘Nowhere good. Sorry about this, Fle.’ She took a deep breath. ‘The contact tags to the Catastrophe Curve.’
Fleare looked at her for a long time. ‘Well,’ she said slowly, ‘isn’t that going to be fun.’
Old City, Catastrophe, Catastrophe Curve
Creation Machine Page 11