by Roger Levy
The weave shivered and grew. I spent my days watching it, and my nights thinking of it, trying to avoid sleep and the dreams that came. When a few strands of the weave broke, I thought only of how to mend, or cross-connect.
I no longer dwelt on how my suggestions might be implemented. If I ever started to consider the hard consequences, the coercion and the extortion, I imagined Ligate killing my father and my mother. Everything I suspected Ethan Drame might be doing to anyone, I visualised happening simply to Ligate.
It wasn’t hard for me to shift my gaze in this way. Without Solaman around, I could, to a great degree, subdue the empathy that my mother had bequeathed me.
I was alone, and it didn’t seem to matter. The friendship I had with Pellonhorc was replaced by my relationship with the weave. I thought of Pellonhorc occasionally, but his absence didn’t matter. That strange conversation we’d had in the Drinkery stayed in my mind, though. I walked there now and then, late at night, as he’d suggested, and sat in the corner and sipped a drink and left. There was never a message for me, and the talk we’d had became an odd, inexplicable but warm memory. The first few times I sat there, bargirls and boys flirted with me, but I waved them away and the attention stopped. I tried not to think of Solaman.
The periphery of the weave interested me more than its core. This was its unsteadiest section. These strands frequently snapped, and with consequences that I found hardest to fix. I’d sometimes make recommendations that Drame would tell me were not viable, and it was rare for Ethan Drame to say this.
But at the same time, new outer anchors would suddenly appear without my consultation, and I’d be told to incorporate them into my plans. These new anchors were often on the outer, minor planets and moons.
I began to notice, however, an increase in the frequency of anchor-establishment in the Eden String, on the Vegaschrist cluster. I extended the business generally in that direction, and since it was an entirely new area of the web, and of uncertain stability, I proposed that when we brought new businesses into the organisation, we give them a limited degree of autonomy, and allow them access to a limited range of the markets we also controlled. In that way we allowed them to build their own businesses, and both they and we profited. Despite arguing that it exhibited weakness, Ethan Drame agreed to it. Now and then one of these businesses took advantage, or tried to, and we closed them down. It didn’t happen often.
It all seemed to be going very well.
* * *
SigEv 22 Pireve
There was one person on The Floor to whom I spoke more than anyone else. She had arrived there a few months after me, and her name was Pireve. She, like me, was interested in expanding the weave more than in its general stability and fabric. We exchanged ideas and smiles. I found myself searching her out. In some odd way, I felt comfortable with her. Others on The Floor began to glance at the two of us.
Once a week I had a meeting with Ethan Drame. Generally there were three of us: myself, Drame and Madelene, who just stood at Drame’s shoulder looking bored. Occasionally, one of the specialists from The Floor joined us, but Solaman was no longer there. Mostly we discussed minor issues and their solutions, though occasionally there were real problems. One of these surfaced while we were working on the Eden String. Pireve brought it to my attention, wondering if it was a simple anomaly. It took me ten minutes to realise it was not. I messaged Drame from The Floor to ask for an emergency meeting.
‘How much of an emergency is it?’ he said.
‘I don’t know yet,’ I said. ‘Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe it’s a big one. I don’t want to make that choice.’
He leaned forward sharply, the screen already greying as he said, ‘I’m waiting.’
I told Pireve to come with me.
Drame said, ‘Who is this?’ The light from the window fell in such a way across his head that the scar tissue glittered.
‘Her name’s Pireve. She spotted it first. I want her to stay.’
There was a heavy silence, and I realised I’d overstepped. ‘Please,’ I said.
Drame said nothing, and I took it for assent. His gaze slid over my shoulder and I heard the door slide open. I turned as Solaman came in. He was in a chair and he looked awful. He was wearing some kind of plastic mask on the right side of his face, and his left was deeply puckered towards the mask’s edge. He tried to smile at me, but the smile didn’t work at all. His chair was a full medical unit with overhead monitors and tubes feeding into the heavy base. Everyone could see the monitors except Solaman. It was clear that Solaman wouldn’t outride his death much longer. For some reason, what most upset me was that his black hair was almost gone. His skull looked as pale and soft as cheese.
His chair came to rest at Drame’s side.
‘Go on,’ Drame said.
‘We have a problem on a small site in the Eden String. A few of our partner businesses there have been having problems we’ve been unable to make sense of.’
Drame sat back. ‘This is your red call?’
‘What problems?’
It took me a moment to realise that this was Solaman speaking, his slurred voice leaking from the edge of the mask.
‘Profits are reduced. I won’t go into detail, unless you want me to.’
‘No. Get on.’ Drame never wanted detail. Just solutions.
‘What we observed is illogical.’
Pireve said, ‘Yes,’ and I felt the touch of her fingers on my arm.
Drame ignored her and carried on looking at me, still without obvious interest.
I said, ‘We checked the figures to make sure there was no mistake. There could have been reasons we hadn’t considered.’
Drame said, ‘And were there? Are you wasting my time?’
‘There were none.’
‘Have you approached the businesses? How many are we talking about?’
‘At present, twenty. There may be more. It’s complex.’
Solaman cleared his throat – it began as a human sound, but ended as the suck of a machine – and said, weakly, ‘When Alef says it’s complex, he means –’
‘Shut up, Solaman. I know what he means. Alef. Have you asked any of these businesses for an explanation?’
‘No,’ I said.
Solaman tried to break in. ‘It’s –’
‘I’m talking to Alef. Go on.’
Solaman was trying to protect me, but it wasn’t necessary. He was dying and he couldn’t let go of his sense of responsibility to me. I wanted him to know it was okay, but I couldn’t say anything here. And maybe it wasn’t okay. The touch of Pireve’s hand felt electric.
I said, ‘It’s a pattern. It’s a long way from Peco. I’m sorry, but you need a little detail. The businesses we’re talking about are all within a few days’ travel from Vegaschrist.’
Drame sat back against the chair and laughed. That surprised me. Vegaschrist was Ligate’s stronghold, just as Peco was Drame’s.
I said, ‘Someone is taking our business, and they’re doing it in an extremely subtle and structured way.’
Drame nodded. ‘And no one has come to us.’
‘That’s right.’
He leaned fractionally forward and said, ‘How exactly is that?’
He wasn’t stupid. He didn’t ask who was doing it, but how. It was obviously Ligate. No one else was as powerful, and it was too close to Ligate’s home. But the businesses were linked to each other – it was the nature of Drame’s empire that every business he controlled had to feed and be fed by others – and these links simultaneously maximised profit and made treachery harder. For this to have happened without it being immediately obvious meant that another huge organisation was involved, with its own infrastructure and means of coercion. This could only be Ligate.
I said, ‘Either they’re more scared of him than they are of you, or they see more security with him. Probably both.’
Solaman whispered, ‘Alef doesn’t mean that, Ethan.’
‘Be quiet, Solaman. Of cours
e he means it.’ Drame stared at the window, where it was late evening or nearly dawn, the sky purple-streaked black and quite starless. Twenty-five sleepdays away was Spetkin Ligate. Drame said, ‘Get me Belleger.’
Solaman twitched a finger and his chair jerked forward and headed for the door. From his desk, Drame delayed opening it so that Solaman almost crashed into it. After he had left, Drame gave Pireve an odd look that I failed entirely to understand, and said, ‘You, woman, get out.’
Pireve ran to the still-open door and was gone.
‘It’s not her fault,’ I said. ‘It’s not Solaman’s, either.’
Drame dropped his voice and said, ‘Do you want the blame, Alef? You’re asking me for that?’
I was suddenly aware of the full force of his character. I remembered Pellonhorc with the stick pricking my palm, offering to push it through. I couldn’t speak.
Once again, I was reminded that Ethan Drame’s empire had been created out of this extraordinary power to intimidate, this power to promise death, and if necessary – or even if it wasn’t necessary – to carry it out without consideration of risk or consequence.
But this was only part of his strength, because as soon as he had shown me this side of him, he said mildly, ‘You did exactly the right thing, not contacting the renegades. From you, it’s good. I expect it of you. But the woman wouldn’t have known that. Why didn’t she contact anyone herself before telling you? Is she witless? Should I dispose of her?’
‘No. She’s good.’ It was true. The only reason she hadn’t alerted the suspect businesses was because she hadn’t been sure enough. It was lucky she’d come to me first, but spotting the signs had shown a perception and intelligence I’d never suspected in her. I might not even have noticed it myself so swiftly, had she not alerted me.
‘She’s very good,’ I said. ‘Keep her.’
Solaman would have said to dispose of her, simply to protect me, but he was out of the room.
Madelene smirked.
I realised that Drame had deliberately asked me the question while Solaman was gone.
As I was thinking of Pireve in this new light, and for some reason also remembering the shine of her blonde hair as she moved, Belleger came in.
Seventeen
BALE
Bale pulled on his flysuit after balling up his clothes and stuffing them into a wallbox. He still felt sore. It was good to be here at the Chute for the first time since leaving hospital. He could always think best when he was here, and he needed to sort out in his head what had happened down in the sewers.
Only eight other boxes were taken. It wasn’t surprising, given the conditions today. Even here in the changing room, fifty metres from the go gate, the buffeting was coming through. He pulled down the visor and drew a clean breath, then checked the readouts of airspeeds along the main curves. He checked the fins on his forearms and pulled the gauntlets on. Rolling his arms, he stepped into the lightshower to check for rips in the suit and found one at a knuckle, the tiny fault picked out as a black spike. It took ten minutes to have the rip sealed to his satisfaction and then he showered again. This time the suit pressure held.
He walked down the corridor. Air was thudding now, and the turbulence warning was up.
Maybe he should have brought Razer. He’d promised her a ride in the Chute. But since he’d come out of the hospital a week ago, she hadn’t contacted him. Maybe she hadn’t known he was out. Maybe he should have called her.
At the entry gate, he felt his adrenaline pumping hot. He glanced briefly into the dizzying void, slipped across the lip and dropped into a dive, letting out the hip-to-ankle fins as the airdrive pre-accelerated him into a long soft glide, first down and then slowly up towards the go gate and the free wind.
He finned steady, checked left and right and visored the track beyond the go gate. The few other riders today were black tears in the wind. No onetimers today. No slowdowns or look-at-mes to cloud the ride. This was going to be good.
In the last few moments of the entry glide he warmed up, slaloming smoothly and tucking himself into a few easy rolls. The visor read the windspeed for him, hi-lit its currents, its eddies and fluxes. His eyescreenery was set to give him only the relatives. It didn’t matter to him that the low was three hundred kph, the high adding an upfactor of twenty-eight. It was only the spread that mattered to Bale, and today was almost the best he’d ever ridden.
It struck him that he might not have been here. Might have died. For an instant he wobbled.
A message hung in the air in letters of light. LAST CHANCE TO ABORT AHEAD.
Bale steadied, put his head neatly through the O of TO, rolled again, straightened out of the hoop. He finned past the abort tube and was through the go gate’s glittering ring.
A muscle pulled in his left thigh and he flexed it without thinking, and pitched too sharply into the open pipe. He was in the main Chute.
The entry turbulence was heavy and he took the first few kils slow, swinging dreamily from side to side, easing the sore muscle and settling into the ride. This was the best time, when the whole ride was ahead of him with its currents never the same, the track of hundreds of kils with its forks and turns and careening winds.
Another rider swung past, more impatient for speed, and Bale recognised him by the distinctive yaw, the slight undercontrol of a hipfin. Ghraith, Bale thought the guy’s name was. He watched Ghraith bullseye down the pipe, fast enough but taking no real risks.
There was no one coming up behind Bale, so he let the wind carry him a while, then made some hard fin-turns and a few twists and screws until he was sure his leg wasn’t a problem.
The visor’s blood detector had registered spatter beyond the K. Cli-cli-clik. Tallen’s blood? But Tallen had been found down the sidepipe, and the source was down the main outflow. Maybe the visor had malfed. It wouldn’t be the first time. But that wasn’t the only odd thing.
His leg seemed fine now. The manoeuvres lost him some speed, and another rider screamed past him, faster than Ghraith. Very fast. Curious, Bale switched the visor to actual and noted the green racing fins and the gold NTG soles of the rider’s boots.
Bale hadn’t seen anyone wearing NTGs for a long time. He relaxed again, slaloming smoothly. The Chute was a good place to think.
Something about Tallen’s story hadn’t made sense. Bale would probably have let it go if it hadn’t been for Delta warning him off. And she’d been holding something back too, he was sure. Tallen had said his attacker had been in front, but then behind. And the pattern of attacks was odd, too. Tallen was an anomaly in the spree. The others were clean kill/runs. From what Bale had managed to get out of hospital records before they’d checked his authority and blocked him, the K had been playing with Tallen for a while down there before heading out of the sewers and starting his spree. If the K hadn’t decided to return to Tallen, with Bale tracking him, Tallen would have bled to death down there, or been eaten by vermin or outflow acids and all trace of him gone.
Either way, Tallen was a lucky man.
Bale screwed into a shelf of slow air, intending to ride it until he found an interference wave to jump, but the slush eddying there must have held some magnetic rubbish, and by the time he found a good wave and thumped off the shelf he didn’t have the velocity to clear the turbulence cleanly. He tumbled a few times and threw out the wrong fin and went into a tightening spin.
Pipe vermin. Of course. That would explain the perverse cliklik.
He shuffled fins and reset himself. He wasn’t Chute-fit. And the visor was showing him an error, which looked like a rider at his side except that the rider didn’t shift relative to Bale as Bale shifted. Nothing magnetic, then. He checked everything else, but the eyetech was intact otherwise. As Bale waggled, the error, a black tear, waggled.
Bale went sharply towards the wall and rolled. The tear did the same. Only this time it was a fraction late. Some fool.
‘I don’t want to play,’ Bale said.
‘I d
o,’ came back, distorted.
The rider was good. Maybe it was the NTG guy again. He slowed back along the wall until Bale had passed him. He had to be using mimic settings to copy Bale’s ride and to try and confuse Bale, or else goad him into a smear, and Bale knew how to deal with that. He made some simple moves to keep the guy busy. There was an upcoming fifty-k straightline ending in a two-way fork.
As soon as they hit the straightline Bale finned away from the shadow rider and towards the wall. The shadow held steady with him. Bale accelerated at the wall and held close to it, fighting the drag, holding straight and fast in the thudding air. The visor threw him a proximity warning, then added an alarm for the failing integrity of his fins at excessive pressure. He counted a few seconds and then finned sharply away from the wall, firing himself directly at his shadow, at the same time slowing at max with all his spoilers out, arms and legs and hips. The other rider did the same thing and for an instant managed to hold position with Bale, but Bale was using the wall’s drag as well as his fins, and he was closer to the wall.
He felt a surge of nausea at the deceleration. The visor darkened and cleared as the suit pumped hard and gave him a surge of blood and gravity, bringing him back from the near-faint. He straightened into a cruise position and checked the eyescreen.
The other rider was way ahead, down the left channel of the fork Bale had marked for his move. Yes, it was the NTG guy, gold heels glittering. Idiot.
Bale finned right.
He tried to think back to Tallen, but his concentration was gone. Maybe Bale himself was the problem after all.
The rest of the ride was uneventful. Bale half-expected the NTG rider to be waiting for him at dismount, but the only one there was Ghraith. They shared the long trip on the shuttle back to Lookout in silence except when Bale said, ‘Hey, Ghraith. You see anyone else at the Chute today?’
‘A few. Why?’
‘Anyone wearing NTGs? Gold ones?’
‘No. Why?’
Bale watched as Bleak shot past. He could see the docks and their cranes rising and falling, bringing in the chosen sarcs. ‘Tried to tumble me,’ Bale said.