Guardians of Paradise

by Jaine Fenn

  Nual generally stayed back at the hostel in the evenings, while Taro combined his rumour-gathering with drinking, dancing and flirting. He liked to dance, and soon picked up the local method of strutting your stuff, a combination of fast footwork, sexy hip and hand movements, and some frankly gappy face-pulling. After Mo went off with a hot native girl one night Taro wondered whether he should take up one of the offers that’d come his way. Though this culture wasn’t into sleeping with your own sex, that still left half the population. But while his body kept distracting him, his head and heart said no. To go with someone now would only make things worse with Nual.

  It did occur to him, during their second week, that his credit was going down fast and he might not have the choice soon. Nual had registered them with one of the agencies providing casual workers out on the resort islands, but there was competition for even the shittier jobs and it could be up to a month before anything came up for the two of them together. She said they should avoid being split up if possible, and he didn’t argue. He’d seen plenty of people practising his old trade; Mo had told him it was all legit and well-regulated, with no pimps to fuck you over. But leaving aside the practical problem that he was underage here, he just didn’t feel comfortable selling himself to strangers any more. Though he was still finding his place in the world, one thing he did know: he wasn’t anyone’s whore.

  On the tenth day a girl called Kise arrived at the hostel. Mo made his customary attempt to get into her pants; she turned him down politely but firmly. Commiserating with Taro the next evening Mo said, ‘I don’t reckon she’s after fun at all.’

  ‘What else would anyone come here for?’ asked Taro innocently.

  ‘Career progression. And I don’t mean waiting tables or cleaning bungalows. She’s a qualified geneticist, you know, with a special interest in anagathics. Told me all about it by way of a put-down. ’

  Taro made a mental note to ask Nual what anagathics was, then said, ‘But she’s still entitled to a holiday, right?’

  ‘No, I know that sort. Some of my father’s people are like that; not born into privilege but determined to work themselves to the top.’

  ‘So,’ said Taro, ‘you’re saying she’s here to get recruited by one of the ngai, to do this smoky stuff that’s meant to be going on out of sight?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying.’

  ‘So, which ngai does anagathics then?’

  ‘No idea. I think she only told me about it to put me off.’

  ‘But you think she might know?’

  ‘Why else go to the effort and expense of coming here? She must reckon she’s got a chance of getting in with these people.’

  Anagathics was the science of extending life, Nual said—a tricky area, given a lot of the religious worlds had laws against it, and those treatments that were around were expensive and risky. It definitely qualified as the kind of thing that would be carried out on the quiet.

  Taro chatted to Kise when Mo wasn’t around and found that he’d been right: she was polite enough, but not particularly friendly. But he and Nual had more than one way to find out what they needed to know.

  The next day was the Salvatine holyday, and a lot of the hostel’s residents went to church. Taro was still getting his head around religion. He’d grown up with a vague but pervasive view that his City watched over its residents, only to find this was both literally true and ultimately false, and as a result he no longer felt inclined to believe in a higher power. Apparently a lot of people did though, and followed some variation of Salvationism, the belief in a mysterious creator God who saw all from a distance, and a Son who sacrificed himself so humans could get back in with their divine Father. The Salvatine religion came in a number of flavours. On Kama Nui, it involved the worship of the Lord of the Sea, and their version of the Manifest Son was a character called Tongaroa. Mo followed the Mithrai sect, but that was no problem as there were churches and temples to all the major Salvatine sects here for the tourist market.

  Given her specialist area, Taro wasn’t surprised to find Kise didn’t attend church. They found her sitting alone in the common room, reading. Nual went over to her while Taro hung around in the kitchen area, keeping an eye out to make sure they weren’t disturbed. The two women had a short conversation that looked harmless enough from where Taro was lurking, after which Kise put down her reader and fell asleep.

  Nual got up and left; Taro followed her out to the men’s dormitory, which was empty.

  ‘Her family are small-time corporate,’ Nual reported quietly, ‘but they live on a theocracy, and their company is never going to be involved in the kind of cutting-edge work she’s interested in. She knows that Kama Nui has a hidden hi-tech culture, though she doesn’t know all the details. She’s been putting forward a tame version of her résumé - she’s also a qualified geriatrics nurse, and a lot of rich people retire here - with a hidden embedded file that a smart recruiter will spot, decrypt and open.’

  ‘Good for her,’ said Taro, trying not to think about Nual going into the girl’s mind. ‘Can’t see how that helps us, though.’

  ‘It narrows our search: she’s only applying to three of the five big ngai, because the other two aren’t biotech specialists. Whoever is taking these boys and turning them into transit-kernels would have to be with one of those three.’

  ‘I guess so.’ Taro thought that was the end of the conversation and turned to leave.

  Nual said quietly, ‘I’m sorry.’

  He moved back and looked at her. She was backlit in the harsh light from the window and he couldn’t make out her expression, but he felt a slight lessening of her shields, like a willingness to let him in a little. He tried not to react. She was the one in the wrong and he wasn’t going to let her just melt his pain away. ‘For what?’ he said stonily, though he knew full well.

  ‘I’m sorry for hurting you, Taro. That was never my intention. ’

  ‘So why’d you do it?’

  ‘Because there was no other way to find out what we needed to know.’

  After so long avoiding the subject Taro found himself suddenly furious. ‘Don’t give me that shit! Why didn’t you just make him think you were fucking him? You can do that sort of thing, can’t you?’ The killing’d had to be done for real of course, but as far as Taro was concerned the pilot’s death was no great loss, even if the way it’d happened still made him feel sick.

  ‘Even if I had had sufficient knowledge to create a convincing illusion of sex - which I did not - the pilot knew the ways of the Sidhe well. He would have realised he was being deceived.’

  Damn her and her logic. ‘All right, so I s’pose that’s all true.’ Taro decided to take a different tack. ‘But ever since you’ve been acting like nothing happened.’

  ‘I thought - incorrectly, I now know - that given the pain my actions have caused you, it would be better if I did not draw attention to them.’ He thought she was looking directly at him now, though her eyes were in shadow. ‘Would you prefer that I had lied to you and said I had not had sex with him? I could have easily made you believe that.’

  ‘I know you could! That’s not—’ He wouldn’t let her honesty deflect his anger. ‘I have to know one thing,’ he said slowly. ‘If you had the chance to go back, would you do it again, just the same?’

  ‘We can never go back, Taro. And I have told you: I regret the pain I’ve caused you.’

  ‘Meaning you would do it again!’

  ‘If I had to, but—’

  ‘You didn’t have to this time! You—’

  Taro stopped at the sound of a slamming door and voices in the corridor outside. He clenched and unclenched his fists, then turned and walked out of the dormitory, out of the hostel into the searing midday heat, and he kept walking and didn’t stop until the anger had drained away. He ended up at the harbour, where he stood for some time, staring at the sea.

  The next time they spoke, Nual was polite, distant, careful, just like she’d been bef
ore. He found himself remembering a comment she’d made when they first met, how most people would call her a monster. Well, she’d said she wouldn’t sleep with him for fear of hurting him, and he hadn’t wanted to believe her. Turned out she’d been right. Maybe she was a monster: if he could just make himself believe that, then perhaps the pain might go away.

  The day after the aborted row, Mo burst into the kitchen. ‘I’ve got a job! It hasn’t gone to the agencies yet, but I know a man who knows a man. This is a big one, a wedding out at one of the top-notch resorts, some big dynastic thing between Tawhira-ngai and Ruanuku-ngai. It’s gonna be hard work, but there’s a chance to stay on for free afterwards. Are you two up for it?’

  Nual looked up from the vegetables she was chopping. ‘I certainly am.’ Kise was interested in both Tawhira-ngai and Ruanuku-ngai . ‘I am not sure about Taro though,’ she said, looking over at him, sitting at a table practising his reading.

  She was giving him the chance to go his own way, just like he’d decided he should do for himself.

  As if it was that simple. ‘’Course I am,’ he said.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ‘It’s a fair offer, Sirrah Reen.’

  Jarek had hoped for better, but he was in no position to be choosy. And the man sitting opposite him in the pleasant if unprepossessing restaurant was an agent he’d had extensive dealings with before. Falk Lukas had no reason to lie to his client, not when his commission depended on finding the best deal.

  ‘All right, I accept.’ At least the credit from selling the Old Earth artefacts as a job lot would clear his immediate debts, even if it was less than half what he’d hoped to make by splitting the shipment.

  ‘Excellent. Shall we shake on it?’ Lukas leaned across the landscape of empty dishes to present his hand.

  Jarek shook it, then turned his own hand so Lukas could swipe his wrist-com—a charming whimsy, disguised as an antique chronometer - to seal the deal.

  ‘And can I just say,’ the agent added, with a look that was probably meant to be sympathetic but came out as lugubrious, ‘how sorry I was to hear about the death of your sister. I have all her recordings.’

  ‘Thanks. I . . . I appreciate that.’ That Elarn had died in an accident on Vellern had been public knowledge for more than a week now, and though he knew Lukas was a musical connoisseur his concern made Jarek uncomfortable. He glanced over the agent’s shoulder at the disconcerting view out of the fifth-floor window: buildings sloping up and away on the curved cylinder of Xantier’s inner surface. He looked back at Lukas. ‘You said something about more work?’ He’d been on Xantier for nearly two weeks, and though he’d accepted that he couldn’t fully embrace his old lifestyle, he still had to make a living.

  ‘Oh yes, I have just the thing.’ Lukas’s shoulders twitched, a habit Jarek always associated with him having come up with what he’d call a peach of a job. ‘You know the Krishnan run you did a few years back for me? Lotus petals for their Festival of Lights? If I remember rightly you took a rather unorthodox route away from the main lanes and got there early, with every one of their little blooms still in its prime. I’m tendering on the run again this year, and naturally I thought of you. Are you interested? It’s likely to be highly lucrative: we’re looking at a six per cent increase over the previous fee, with a very generous ten per cent bonus on top if you can manage zero spoilage on the cargo again.’

  Jarek hesitated. Krishna was in a different sector, down a spur. If he risked the rarely used route he’d taken last time he could cut down the number of transits to eight, but that would still leave him twelve transits from Kama Nui. Though Nual and Taro hadn’t made much progress yet, if they needed to contact him quickly while he was in a backwater system like Krishna it would cost them a small fortune in beevee fees, and if they needed his help it would take him a week to reach them.

  He sighed. ‘Normally I’d be more than delighted to take this on, but I do have a number of other possibilities on the horizon—’

  ‘I understand. Of course you do. And I would be willing to drop a full percentage point from my previous commission on that run, provided the zero-spoilage clause is fulfilled.’

  Damn the man. Six months ago that would’ve been exactly what Jarek wanted to hear. He considered demanding the agent drop by five per cent, but that would be unreasonable greed, which could seriously damage his rep. And there was a risk Lukas might call his bluff, in which case not taking the run would be career suicide, at least on this hub.

  If Lukas had come up with the job yesterday, Jarek might’ve taken it. He’d have told himself that Nual and Taro were probably having the time of their lives on Kama Nui and were unlikely to uncover anything of interest in the near future. But last night he’d dreamt about Serenein again: a jumble of mountain passes, lo-tech discomfort, homely people and haughty priests. But he’d also dreamt of Kerin, the ordinary woman who’d risen to an extraordinary challenge . . . no, whose challenge was just beginning, after he’d abandoned her to it. He knew he’d treated her badly - not least by marrying her - but he couldn’t change the past, and the only way he could ensure a secure, free future for her and her people was by exposing the Sidhe’s secret hold over humanity and bringing them down. It might mean that one day humans lost their access to the stars, but that day was a long way off; the Sidhe were exerting their vile influence now, and had been doing so unopposed for centuries.

  ‘All right,’ said Lukas when Jarek remained silent, ‘one point five. But that’s my final offer.’

  Jarek spread his hands. ‘I really wish I could take this job, but at the moment I simply can’t accept anything that long-haul. I’m sorry.’

  Lukas looked as though Jarek had mortally insulted him. ‘It’s your choice, of course. You know, you really aren’t acting yourself, Sirrah Reen. Is there something you’re not telling me?’

  Jarek experienced a sudden moment of paranoia. Of course Lukas’ name wasn’t on his list of possible Sidhe contacts, but it wasn’t a complete list, and those doing their bidding didn’t always know who they were really working for.

  Hell, if he started thinking like that he might as well sell his ship, find a nice quiet world and spend the rest of his life hiding under a rock.

  He responded as casually as he could, ‘Being totally honest? Yes and no. As you probably know, I’ve been out of the loop for a while. I’m currently investigating various avenues and options, as a result of which I can’t commit to a job that far outside the hub network. I’m sure you understand that I can’t say more than that without compromising another party’s trust.’

  Jarek could see by the agent’s eyes that he wasn’t buying it. But he just said, ‘Of course. What you do outside of our business arrangements is your own concern.’ He leaned back. ‘And I imagine that unexplained absence was just a well-earned rest with some pleasant company.’

  ‘Something like that,’ said Jarek, forcing a grin meant to be both sheepish and knowing. No one was fooled, but the immediate awkwardness had been defused. ‘If you have anything more local, I would definitely be interested. And I wouldn’t expect preferential treatment, given the inconvenience I’ve caused you by not being able to take the Krishnan job.’

  ‘I might have a few more local runs coming up soon,’ said the agent, less sniffily. ‘Low pay, but it’s all credit.’

  ‘I’m only a com-call away.’

  ‘Well then, I’ll try and keep you in mind.’ Lukas stood up. ‘Good day to you, Sirrah Reen.’

  Taro wasn’t sure about skim-boats. When they first left Stonetown, the craft glided over the surface of the sea, but then it sped up, rising up out of the water at a scary angle. According to Mo the vehicle had grav compensation, but it wasn’t allowed to actually fly, because aircars were strictly regulated outside Stonetown. Apparently they spoilt the view. As a result the skim-boat travelled close enough to the water for Taro to see just how fast they were going, throwing up twin plumes of spray in their wake. Occasionally a high wave
would make the whole craft shudder, causing an outbreak of nervous smiles among the passengers. Of course, it was very unlikely anything would go wrong - you need to keep the punters safe if you want to keep them coming - and if it did, well, he and Nual could just fly free. But that didn’t mean he was enjoying the ride. He took Mo’s advice and fixed his eyes on the horizon, where a small green dot, the only thing in sight besides the blue sky and bluer sea, was rapidly growing in size.

  Nual sat beside him in silence. They’d had another minor row about this job the evening after Mo told them about it. They were needed for two days’ work, with bed and board provided. The additional payment was a choice: money, or the opportunity to stay on the island for free for a further ten days. Taro had argued that they should go for the second option, because they’d found out all they were going to in Stonetown. He didn’t admit that he also fancied seeing some of the natural wonders he’d heard about, and if Nual had picked up his ulterior motive she hadn’t said anything. In the end, she’d backed down without a fight.