by Paul McAuley
‘I have a set of files I need to open. Would she be able to break their encryption?’
‘She could certainly try. The head doctors in Fei Shen draw on centuries of tradition, and Rong Che is the best of them all.’
Hari thanked the young proctor, asked if he had enough credit to pay for data searches.
‘The city’s databases are open access,’ Gabriel Daza said. ‘After you get yourself fixed up at the Pit, you’ll be able to ask anything you like.’
‘But I’ll have to pay the surcharge.’
‘That’s true.’
‘So it would be cheaper to have you do it for me.’
‘I see that you are a quick study.’
Hari explained that he was searching for one of his relatives, Tamonash Pilot. ‘I believe he traded with the Free People, or had some other business with them. And he may be living in Ophir.’ Aakash had been born in Ophir, had refurbished Pabuji’s Gift in its docks.
‘I would also want to send messages to Ophir, Chavez Labyrinth, and Greater Brazil,’ Hari said. He wanted to find out if Dr Gagarian’s colleagues, Salx Minnot Flores, Ivanova Galchan and Ioni Robles Nguini, were still alive. He wanted to ask them for help.
‘Sending a message to anyone on Earth is a problem,’ Gabriel Daza said. ‘The cost of negotiating its security would exceed your credit. Also, the Free People have a long-running dispute with several nations, including Greater Brazil. You would have to contact your friend via back channels. More expense.’
‘But you can send messages to Ophir and Chavez Labyrinth,’ Hari said.
‘Of course. I can do everything for the special price of eight hours fifty minutes.’
‘How much do I already owe you?’
‘For accessing your ship’s credit record? One hour ten. It’s the standard fee.’
‘Take the hour and ten minutes. I’ll do the other things myself.’
‘It will cost you far more.’
‘Or I could ask your colleagues for a better deal.’
‘You won’t find a better deal, but rather than waste your time I’m prepared to reduce the price further. Let’s say six hours thirty.’
‘Let’s say a round six hours.’
‘For the query and the message?’
‘For the query and the message, and for access to my credit.’
‘I have already put myself out,’ Gabriel Daza said.
‘I don’t think so, since you charged me the standard fee.’
‘Six hours it is, all in. And I’m giving my time away.’
Because the proctor had agreed so readily Hari suspected that it wasn’t much of a bargain, but he didn’t intend to stay in the city long enough to exhaust his credit. He had places to go and people to see.
Gabriel Daza’s attention went away for a few moments; then he told Hari that Tamonash Pilot, a trader from Ophir, had purchased samples of rare vacuum organisms from a scavenger more than three years ago. Before that, he’d been involved in a transaction with the Free People of Fei Shen and their cousins in Tivoli Wrecks, a reef that orbited between Earth and Mars.
‘Does the scavenger live here?’ Hari said.
‘She is away on business. I won’t charge you for that information, by the way,’ Gabriel Daza said. ‘Do you want to contact this long-lost relative?’
‘I’d like to confirm that he is still living in Ophir. And send those messages.’
Gabriel Daza called up three djinns, gave one a query about Tamonash Pilot, gave the others Hari’s messages to Salx Minnot Flores and Ivanova Galchan.
‘It might take a little while,’ the proctor said. ‘Signal lag and security protocols and so on. Especially security protocols. Business would be so much easier if cities and settlements trusted each other. Best come back tomorrow.’
Hari asked where transients stayed, in Fei Shen; Gabriel Daza told him that there were caravanserais in the parkland at the city’s edge.
‘Any that have room will take you in. Fees are fixed, so don’t waste your time trying to muscle anyone into accepting less.’
‘Would I find ships’ crews there?’
‘Of course. But if you are hoping to work your passage you’ll find thin pickings. The city is no longer the hub it once was.’
‘I am thinking of reivers.’
‘You want to become one?’
‘I want to hire one.’
‘Good luck with that.’
‘ “Hire” is the wrong word for the arrangement I have in mind, perhaps. “Go into partnership” might be better.’
‘Again, good luck with that. The city doesn’t allow reivers to dock here.’
‘Reivers have been known to become traders when it suits them. And vice versa. If you know of anyone who sometimes works on the dark side, it will be worth your while to introduce me.’
‘I doubt that,’ Gabriel Daza said. ‘But perhaps I can ask around.’
‘I have one more question,’ Hari said. ‘Is there anyone in the city who deals in salvage?’
‘If this is about your lifepod, I believe the city has claimed it. You landed on Vesta without permission. Not the best idea.’
‘I was forced to land because I was attacked,’ Hari said. ‘The lifepod is my family’s property, and I need to sell it as soon as possible. Can I contest the city’s appropriation of my property?’
‘You could. If you don’t mind risking your refugee status.’
‘Perhaps someone else would like to try, then. I’ll be happy to sell my claim to them.’
‘I think you have a better chance of finding a reiver.’
‘Is the city’s government bound by the same laws as its citizens?’
Gabriel Daza said that it was.
‘And are those laws and their interpretation ever disputed?’
Gabriel Daza allowed that the city’s codex was neither infallible nor static.
Hari smiled. ‘Find me someone willing to buy my claim on the lifepod, and I’ll give you five per cent of the price.’
‘Fifteen would be more realistic.’ Gabriel Daza was smiling too. They were both having fun. ‘Given the difficulty of finding someone who loves unusual and high-risk ventures.’
After some equitable to and fro they settled on eight per cent.
‘You are no innocent in this game,’ Gabriel Daza said.
‘I had good teachers,’ Hari said, and felt the familiar ache of loss and loneliness.
When they parted, Gabriel Daza reminded Hari to pay a visit to the Almond Pit, but it was late in the day and Hari was tired, and decided that he could manage without access to the commons for one night. He had managed for far longer on Themba, after all, and believed that he was beginning to make sense of the city. He was making progress. He felt, for the first time since the hijack, an unqualified happiness.
The caravanserais were scattered through a belt of parkland that girdled the edge of the city. Some were defined by posts or lines of black stones; others were enclosed by flowering hedges or low walls. Hari chose one whose wall was decorated with fierce faces with red and gold skin, staring eyes, and elaborate headdresses: representations of the gods of his distant ancestors. He hoped that he might have something in common with the people who lodged there.
The place was run by three androgyne neuters, sometimes known as the painted men or the weird women. Altered by surgery and genetic and cosmetic therapy, their traditions stretched back to an early posthumanist sect. Once upon a time, they had ruled half a hundred gardens and rocks in the Belt but, like so many others, their principality had fallen to the True Empire. Now the last remnants of their clade recruited children from refugees and poor or fallen families, and ran hostels and caravanserais for transients, or scratched a parlous existence by using an ancient school of stochastic mathematics to make predictions about the future.
Hari took a bath, standing under a shower and scrubbing himself with a long-handled brush before climbing into the hot black water inside the big tub. He sat on a wooden le
dge, submerged to his chin, and gossiped with the old man who shared the bath with him, a free trader from Porto Jeffre. The old man asked all kinds of impertinent questions, as did the other guests during the communal meal. Hari was famous, it seemed, in the city’s small compass. He showed them Kinson Ib Kana’s book, explained what it was and how it had fallen into his hands, asked if anyone knew how he could find the family and friends of the dead man who had saved his life.
One of the guests told Hari about a group of ascetics she’d met on Ceres; another said that she’d once traded with Nabhomani and was sorry to hear of his death; a third declared that dacoits had been getting too bold lately, and something should be done about them.
A big man sitting back in the shadows, wrapped in some kind of cloak like a warrior out of some saga of the long ago, said, ‘How do you know these hijackers were dacoits?’
‘They behaved like dacoits. I don’t know if that’s what they really are or where they came from,’ Hari said. ‘Not yet.’
The old man from Porto Jeffre said dacoits were getting bolder because cities and settlements and gardens lacked the resources or inclination to deal with them, and the focus of the conversation moved away from Hari as people argued about which city was the most powerful and which the most permissive, discussed rumours about the resurgence of the black fleets and distant gardens and settlements that had fallen under the control of dacoits, or were secretly encouraging them to attack rivals, or told anecdotes about run-ins with over-zealous security and customs officials.
By now, the dimming chandelier lights had guttered out. It was night outside the city, too. Beyond the dome’s shadow-web of diamond composite panes, Vesta’s lopsided crescent gleamed amongst shoals of stars that washed across the black sky. Later, lying on a hard pallet on the hard ground, his head pillowed on the cryoflask, all alone amongst strangers in a strange land, Hari comforted himself with the small hope that he had taken the first step on the long road to his revenge, and fell asleep in the middle of a fantasy of leading a small fleet of reivers against a nest of dacoits and capturing their leader and putting him to the question, and discovering who was behind the hijack, and making a great and good crusade against them.
5
When Hari returned to the bourse the next morning Gabriel Daza told him that he hadn’t yet found anyone interested in salvage rights for the lifepod and gig. ‘But give me a little time. These are delicate matters.’
‘What about our other business?’
‘You haven’t been to the Almond Pit.’
‘It’s next on my list. What do you have for me?’
Gabriel Daza looked at something to one side of Hari and said, ‘There’s good news and bad. Which would you like to hear first?’
‘Tell me about Salx Minnot Flores and Ivanova Galchan. Have they replied to my messages?’
‘That’s the bad news. I haven’t heard anything from Ivanova Galchan, and the message to Salx Minnot Flores attracted the attention of the police in Ophir. After I established my credentials, I had a brief exchange with one of them. According to her, Salx Minnot Flores was murdered.’
The shock was slighter than that Hari had felt at the news of Rember Wole’s death and his partner’s disappearance. Hari supposed that he had been expecting the worst.
He said, ‘The police officer, did she say who killed Salx Minnot Flores, or when it happened?’
‘No. But she did ask to speak to you. I hope I haven’t got you into trouble,’ Gabriel Daza said.
‘I’ve been in trouble for some time,’ Hari said. ‘What about my query?’
‘That’s the good news. Your relative is still resident in Ophir. A trader in biologics, widowed, with two daughters. Alive, as far as I know.’
Hari thanked Gabriel Daza for his help; the young proctor reminded Hari to mention his name when he visited the Almond Pit, said that he hoped they would meet again soon.
Outside, a column of men and women were marching in solemn procession along the road that circled the big building, watched by a handful of spectators. They were all more or less baseline, the marchers, all stripped to the waist. Heads shaven, wearing only sandals and baggy white trousers. Their arms held out before them, a bouquet of drooping wires clasped in each hand, their backs striped with slick red threads and the waistbands of their trousers soaked in red, they shuffled behind a pair of clerics in sun-yellow robes and a single drummer who beat a slow and simple heartbeat rhythm on the kettle drum hung at his belly. Boom-boom. Boom-boom. Boom-boom.
As Hari watched, the procession halted, the drum fell silent, the two clerics sang a brief prayer and shook their hands above their heads, and the marchers crossed their arms smartly over their chests so that the handles of their flails smacked against their shoulders and wires tipped with razor taglets struck their backs, raking flesh and drawing fresh blood. The clerics pressed their hands together and touched their foreheads with their fingertips, the drum started beating again, and the marchers moved forward, blank faces glazed with sweat, eyes fixed on infinity. Small children in white tunics followed them, brushing the avenue’s half-life grass with strips of cloth, mopping up spatters of holy blood.
‘You won’t find what you’re looking for there,’ someone said.
Hari turned, saw a man twice his height smiling down at him: the man who had asked him about dacoits last night, in the caravanserai. The leathery folds that fell around him weren’t a cloak, Hari realised, but wings that stretched from shoulders to hips. Within a second, the catalogue in his bios had matched the man to a posthuman clade that lived in the Republic of Arden, a garden in the main belt’s outer edge.
The Ardenist told Hari that the marchers were a sect particular to Fei Shen.
‘Exculpationists who believe that shedding blood will help to bring about the birth of a new age. They process through the city every seventh day, and after they’ve flayed themselves raw their clerics sing about the end times. The usual stuff: a great and holy war, the righteous inheriting the universe, everyone else damned to eternal torment. They’re castrated, the clerics. Very pure voices. And their songs are very lovely. Very lovely, and so very wrong. I’m Rav,’ the Ardenist said, placing his right hand on a bare, broad chest slashed with the pale ridges of old scars. ‘It isn’t my real name, but you wouldn’t be able to begin to pronounce that. You of course need no introduction. The youngblood who wants to track down the people who hijacked his family’s ship. Well, I’m the man who can help you.’
‘Are you a reiver?’
Rav spread his arms and wings wide. ‘Do I look like a reiver?’
‘As a matter of fact—’
‘I’m no more than a humble artisan who travels the Belt in search of honest work. Exactly like you and your family. And we have something else in common. Something that you’ll definitely be interested in. There’s a tearoom close by. Let’s talk there. I’ll explain our connection, and tell you how I can help you get your ship back.’
‘I have business elsewhere. But we can talk along the way, if you like.’
‘Those charlatans in the Avenue of the Elevation of the Mind can just about manage to implant mundane traits and recover childhood memories, but they won’t be able to get inside Dr Gagarian’s head.’
Rav’s smile displayed a pair of impressive incisors capped with silver. Hari didn’t like that smile. It was altogether too knowing.
‘You’re thinking, how did he do that?’ the Ardenist said. ‘Is he a magician? Can he read my mind? Well, I can, just a little. You baseliners broadcast reactions and intentions through posture and pupil dilation, blood flow in skin capillaries . . . You have some training in guarding your thoughts, youngblood, and it might work with other baseliners, but as far as I’m concerned you’re so leaky that I can’t help picking up tells. But how I know about the head, that’s nothing but basic physics and a little deduction. If you don’t want people to know what’s inside that cryoflask, you should use better shielding. A basic pair of X-ray spex w
as all I needed to see that you are carrying the head of a tick-tock person. And according to the story you told last night, the people who hijacked your family’s ship murdered its only passenger. Dr Gagarian, a tick-tock philosopher. The hijackers wanted something hidden in his files, they killed him, they cut off his head . . . And you managed to escape with it, and ever since you’ve been wondering what it contains. Why those hijackers want it so badly. How you can exchange it for your family, your ship. You see? Nothing to it.’
‘Several people have already tried to take it from me,’ Hari said. ‘And at least two of them are dead.’
Rav’s smile widened a notch. His grass-green eyes had the slit pupils of a predator. His mop of golden curls was bushed up by a white rag knotted over one ear. ‘I can see that we’re going to have fun together. And I also see that you don’t have access to the city’s commons yet – otherwise you would have checked my status. I can fix that for you, free of charge.’
‘That’s why I need to see a head doctor,’ Hari said
But he knew it sounded weak. He was fairly certain that the Ardenist was going to try to sell him something he didn’t want or need, but what harm could talking do? And he might learn something. He didn’t know enough. He knew almost nothing, really. He didn’t even know what he needed to know.
Rav told him that there was no need to pay a head doctor to get his bios tweaked. ‘It’s a little scam to bleed the city’s visitors. Easy enough to bypass if you have the ways and means. I’ll introduce you to someone who’ll fix you up free of charge, and then we’ll talk about our common interests, and how we can help each other.’
She was a small, slight woman not much older than Hari, the sleeves of her oversized quilted jacket cuffed back to her elbows. She yawned when Rav started to explain who Hari was and how he had ended up in Fei Shen, said every transient had some kind of bad-luck story and none of them were very interesting.