Planesrunner (Everness Book One)

by Ian McDonald

  “This is what I've been saying,” Sharkey said. “Give it to her! Give it to Charlotte Villiers. That way, everyone wins.”

  “Silence, Mr. Sharkey,” Captain Anastasia said. “No, everyone does not win. Everett does not win. We've seen once before what Charlotte Villiers would do when she has the jumpgun and the Infundibulum. She is stronger now because she believes Mr. Singh has no choice but to surrender to her. I do not believe in no-win scenarios. Mr. Singh: this weapon, it's designed to be programmed?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can make it work?”

  “Yes. I think so. Yes, I know it. It'll take a bit of time.”

  “I can give you time. Jump us out of here.”

  Sharkey was on his feet.

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “Jump us out of here, Mr. Singh,” Captain Anastasia said. “All of us.” The fighters raked Everness again, tail to nose, and turned out in the breaking dawn. The two snipships moved apart from each other. And in the heart of the sun-glow lay a black flaw, the carrier Royal Oak and her escorts.

  “Ma?” Sen said in a very small voice.

  “Mr. Singh?”

  Everett rolled the click-wheel all the way to maximum aperture.

  “I think it should get the whole ship in.”

  “Oh, that's reassuring,” Mchynlyth said.

  Everett offered the jumpgun to Captain Anastasia. She shook her head.

  “No, Mr. Singh. The decision must stand with you.”

  “They're coming,” Mchynlyth said.

  Everett turned the jumpgun on himself. He closed his eyes. No. He had to see it, see the Heisenberg Gate open before him. Where would they go? No one could know. He opened his eyes and looked into the black metal concavity of the jumpgun muzzle.

  “Snipship contact in three, two…” Mchynlyth said.

  Everett pulled the trigger. The world went white. Then it went away.

  The world came back. And it was white.

  It still didn't hurt a bit.

  “We're still here!” Mchynlyth said.

  “That, I rather think, is a moot point, sir,” Sharkey said.

  “Radar and radio, Mr. Sharkey,” Captain Anastasia said. “I want to know where we are. Mr. Mchynlyth, status report at your earliest convenience. I want to know if everything made it through. I was expecting something a little more…dramatic. Mr. Singh, is you all right?”

  The jumpgun fell from Everett's fingers. It clattered on the decking and lay dead and cold as ice.

  “Nothing on radar, nothing on radio,” Sharkey said. “We are alone.”

  “And intact,” Mchynlyth said, clicking through the closed-circuit cameras, internal and external. “Pretty much.”

  “All engines stop,” Captain Anastasia ordered. Sen slapped all the levers back to their zero position. The gentle but constant vibration of the impellers stopped. “Now, where the hell are we?”

  The crew of Everness lined up in front of the great window.

  “That's what I call a white Christmas,” Mchynlyth said.

  “'By the breath of God frost is given: and the breadth of the waters is straitened,'” Sharkey said.

  Dawn was spilling over a world of ice. Horizon to horizon the sea-ice extended, pressure ridges and cracks and faults casting long purple shadows in the low light. Even from altitude Everett could see snow-devils and storms of glittering ice-dust swirl across the frozen sea and drift in the lee of the pressure ridge. Ice, endless ice. He could feel the bottomless cold through the tough glass.

  Everett felt Sen's hand slip into his. Her fingers were warm; they were life and contact and people. He'd looked into the blank muzzle of the jumpgun and seen cold and destruction and randomness.

  “We have work to do,” Captain Anastasia said. “But first, Mr. Singh, I believe we have well-hung pheasants and Ridley Road's finest manjarry in the galley. In your best time; rattle us up a fantabulosa Christmas dinner. We're going to celebrate.”

  “Aye, ma'am.”

  “Only when you're ready, Everett.”

  The fingers of Everett's free hand traced the outline of the Everness tarot Sen had made for him. He slipped the card out and turned it faceup. Like many of Sen's trumps, it was a collage, pieces snipped from a bizarre mix of magazines and newspaper carefully arranged and pasted. A male figure in a military-style jacket and baggy shorts stepped from a blank white doorway. The figure's arms were stretched out on either side: in one upturned hand he held a globe, in the other a spiral galaxy. In the background, low on the hand-drawn horizon, was a tiny cut-out airship. In the blank space at the bottom Sen had written the card's name in her clumsy, loopy handwriting.

  Planesrunner.

  Palari (polari, parlare) is a real secret language that has grown up in parallel with English. Its roots go back to seventeenth-century Thieves Cant in London—a secret thieves' language. It's passed through market traders and barrow-mongers, fairground showmen, the theatre, the Punch and Judy Show, and gay subculture. Palari (“the chat”—from the Italian parlare, “to talk”) contains words from many sources and languages: Italian, French, lingua franca (an old common trading language spoken across the Mediterranean), Yiddish, Romani, and even some Gaelic. It's taken in words from Cockney rhyming slang—“plates” for feet, from “plates of meat” = “feet”; and London back-slang—“eek” is short for “ecaf,” which is “face” backwards.

  Many words from palari/polari have entered London English.

  In Earth 3, palari is the private language of the Airish. In our world, polari still survives as a secret gay language.

  GLOSSARY OF PALARI:

  ajax: nearby (from adjacent?)

  alamo: hot for her/him

  amriya: a personal vow, promise, or restriction that cannot be broken (from Romani)

  aunt nell: listen, hear

  aunt nells: ears

  barney: a fight

  batts: shoes

  bijou: small/little (means “jewel” in French)

  blag: pick up/beg as a favour/get without paying

  bod: body

  bona: good

  bona nochy: goodnight (from Italian—buona notte)

  bonaroo: wonderful, excellent

  buvare: a drink (from Italian bere or old-fashioned Italian bevere or Lingua Franca bevire)

  capello: hat (from Italian cappello)

  carsey/khazi: toilet.

  charper: to search (from Italian chiappare, to catch)

  chavvie: child

  chicken: young male/boy

  clobber: clothes

  cod: naff, vile

  cove: friend

  dally/dolly: sweet, kind.

  Dinari: money (perhaps from Italian denaro)

  dish: ass, bum, arse

  dona: woman (from Italian donna or Lingua Franca dona) a term of respect

  dorcas: term of endearment, “one who cares.” The Dorcas Society was a ladies' church association of the nineteenth century, which made clothes for the poor.

  doss: bed

  drag: clothes, especially women's clothes (from Romani indraka, a skirt)

  ecaf/eek: face (back-slang). Eek is an abbreviation of ecaf.

  fantabulosa: fabulous/wonderful

  feely: child/young/girl

  fruit/fruity: in Hackney Great Port, a term of mild abuse

  gelt: money (Yiddish)

  kris: an Airish duel of honour (from Romani)

  lacoddy: body

  lallies: legs

  latty: room or cabin on an airship

  lilly: police (Lilly Law)

  luppers: fingers (Yiddish lapa, a paw)

  manjarry: food (from Italian mangiare or Lingua Franca mangiaria)

  measures: money

  meese: plain, ugly, despicable (from Yiddish meeiskeit: loathsome, despicable, abominable)

  meshigener: nutty, crazy, mental (from Yiddish)

  metzas: money (Italian mezzi: means, wherewithal)

  naff: awful, dull, tasteless


  nante: not, no, none (Italian: niente)

  ogle: look, admire

  omi: man/guy

  omi-palone: effeminate man or homosexual

  onk: nose

  palare pipe: telephone (“talk pipe”)

  palliass: mattress or place to sleep.

  polone: woman/girl

  riah: hair (back-slang)

  scarper: to run off (from Italian scappare, to escape or run away)

  sharpy: policeman (from “charpering omi”)

  sharpy palone: policewoman

  shush: steal

  shush-bag: hold-all/backpack

  slap: makeup

  so: to be part of the in-crowd/Airish (e.g. “Is he so?”)

  strides: trousers

  tober: road

  todd: alone (from rhyming slang Todd Sloanne—alone)

  troll: to walk about looking for business or some kind of opportunity

  varda: to see/look at (from Italian dialect vardare = guardare—look at)

  yews: eyes (from French yeux)

  zhoosh: style, make a show of, mince (Romani: zhouzho—clean, neat)

  zhooshy: flashy, showy

  IAN MCDONALD has written thirteen science fiction novels and has lost count of the number of stories. He's been nominated for every major science fiction award, and even won some. Ian also works in television, in programme development—all those reality shows have to come from somewhere—and has written for screen as well as print. He lives in Northern Ireland, just outside Belfast, and loves to travel. Planesrunner is the first part of the Everness series.