by Paul McAuley
She grew animated as she told Hari about the tricks of her trade, about treks across the snowy wilderness of the water-ice reservoirs at Ophir’s south pole, about supervising caches of ancient machinery in the world city’s outer skin, about duels in desert sectors involving dust devils and small lightning storms. She said that she’d miss weather wrangling, but wouldn’t miss the Corps. It was, she said, a little like the Commonwealth of Sugar Mountain. A bureaucracy that clung to obscure and pointless traditions, fixed by rules and procedures administered by inflexible hierarchy.
‘They teach you to love the Corps, but sooner or later you learn that it doesn’t love you back,’ she said.
Hari and Riyya spent much of their time in the passenger module of Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, a hemispherical array of small compartments set around a central commons. Riyya discovered and activated a nest of cleaning bots, programmed the maker in the commons to produce a variety of novel and tasty meals, generally kept busy and always appeared cheerful, but Hari twice heard small soft sounds of grief behind the stiff curtain drawn across the hatchway of her compartment, and felt a helpless embarrassment. Agrata would have known how to comfort her, would have known the right thing to say; Nabhomani would have kept her amused and distracted. But Hari felt as clumsy and awkward as Nabhoj, and besides, he didn’t want to get too close. He’d done the right thing when he’d helped her to escape the Climate Corps and Ophir, but anything else would complicate things. It would be an unwelcome and dangerous distraction. His duty to his family came first.
Sometimes he went outside, floating out on a tether until the ship could be eclipsed by the palm of his gloved hand, thinking about what he needed to do, calling up a view of Saturn’s ringed globe and trying and failing to pick up a signal from Pabuji’s Gift. He always went out on his own. Riyya, who had otherwise adapted to shipboard life, refused to go outside; Rav said that he didn’t see the point. Tannhauser Gate lay directly ahead, the brightest point in the dusty arch of gardens and rocks that swept across the black sky and the shoals and scatters of the fixed stars.
Six hours after Mr Mussa’s ship had arrived at Tannhauser Gate, Hari was outside, watching Tannhauser Gate and waiting for news from Khinda Wole, when Rav pinged his comms and told him that another message from the hijackers had arrived. A plain compressed file, free of any detectable djinns, apparently sent from Tannhauser Gate.
‘I haven’t opened it,’ Rav said, after Hari came inside. ‘Frankly, I don’t think there’s any need. We know what it means. Mr Mussa sold Dr Gagarian’s head to the Saints. Or tried to.’
‘And they found out that its files had been corrupted,’ Hari said. ‘And sent me some kind of threat or ultimatum.’
‘I wonder if Mr Mussa survived his clients’ disappointment.’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s slippery enough.’
‘We’ll have to see.’
‘Yes, we will.’
Hari knew that Rav was right. He knew that he shouldn’t look at the message. He looked anyway.
It was worse than he had expected. He told himself that it was not really Nabhoj. That it was a construct, an eidolon in a virtuality. It made no difference.
Afterwards, he pulled on his p-suit, numbly working through safety checks, switching off its eidolon when she came on line, going back outside and floating away from the ship, staring at the bright star dead ahead. Trying to contemplate the infinite. Trying to lose himself in thoughts about insignificance, mortality, the smallness of human affairs and the grandeur of the universe. Trying not to think of the thumb-sized maggot-things eating Nabhoj’s face while he screamed and screamed, and a woman’s voice explained what would happen if Hari didn’t agree to surrender when he reached Tannhauser Gate.
4
Built by one of Earth’s nation states several centuries before the rise of the True Empire, Tannhauser Gate was a long, blunt cylinder that had once sleeved a habitat rotating around its long axis to provide a centrifugal pull of around 0.1g. In its pomp, it had been one of the hubs for exchange of goods and services with the ten thousand gardens that orbited at the outer edge of the main belt. Later, it had become one of the True Empire’s most important military bases, and towards the end of the empire’s reign infiltrators had sabotaged the cylinder’s axial bearings and the sudden deceleration had destroyed everything and killed everyone on its inner surface. Its present owners lived on the exterior; the ruined interior housed the infamous semi-autonomous free zone, where dacoits, pirates, reivers, free traders, and political refugees met and mingled, stolen or looted goods were traded, and hostages were ransomed.
Mr Mussa’s ship was parked at one end of a rake of pylon docks. Brighter Than Creation’s Dark drifted in towards a neighbouring rake, in the shadow of a much larger ship, The White Brigades, an ancient design with a delta profile for atmospheric entry. According to Rav, it had fought against the True Empire but was now a so-called free-nation ship. Dacoits in all but name, like many visitors to Tannhauser Gate these days.
‘Pirates,’ Riyya said. ‘Pirates of the asteroids.’
‘Pirates, dacoits, reivers, marauders and common cut-purse criminals,’ Rav said. ‘You’ll find them all in the Gate, but don’t expect too much excitement. Successful pirates look like crew leaders and traders because that’s what they are, and only successful pirates can afford to trade here. I met the admiral-president of The White Brigades, once. She looked like a functionary in the government of a conservative and not especially wealthy settlement, but she commanded enough firepower to blow my ship to fundamental particles. And she’d have done it, too, if she thought it was necessary.’
‘You admire them,’ Riyya said.
‘They’re fellow predators. And they maintain an extensive network of informers and spies. If anyone has any news about the hijackers who took down Pabuji’s Gift, the admiral-president of The White Brigades will know about it. And she’ll share the information with you, for the right price. Something to think about,’ Rav told Hari, ‘if your game with your dead friend’s little sister doesn’t work out.’
But Hari wasn’t yet ready to put his trust in information purchased from dacoits. He had at last reached the place Agrata had aimed him at, in those last desperate moments aboard Pabuji’s Gift. Rember Wole and Worden Hanburanaman were dead, but he had found Rember’s sister and she was willing to do all she could to help. His mission was back on track at last.
Khinda Wole was a small, middle-aged woman, dressed in a pink jumpsuit with many pockets and loops. A cap of beaded braids splayed out from her shapely skull like so many exclamation points. Most of her family were traders from Ceres, and most of them were still there, she said, selling biologics to each other.
‘My mother brought back dogs. Do you remember dogs?’
‘One of our passengers owned one,’ Hari said. ‘A small animal he carried everywhere in a sling scarf.’
‘You could remove dogs from every biome they inhabit,’ Khinda Wole said, ‘and it wouldn’t change a thing. They are ornaments. Companion animals. But they made my mother rich.’
They were sitting at a small table with Rav and Riyya, sharing bulbs of water and tea, little bowls of gels and pastes, flatbreads tinted green or pink with tinctures of exotic herbs. It reminded Hari of the family conferences aboard Pabuji’s Gift. Sharing food, sharing the familiar squabbles and jibes, the familiar jokes, with Nabhomani and Nabhoj, Agrata, and a manikin ridden by his father. As he talked with his co-conspirators, he felt an echo of that old happiness, that harmonic mindset of blood on blood. For a little while, he could believe that he might not yet fail.
This was in the cluttered living space tacked onto a string of storage compartments that jutted out from the docks, with its own jetty. Like everywhere else in Tannhauser Gate, it was in microgravity. While Hari picked politely amongst the dishes and Rav ate with careless gusto, Riyya sat pale and still, suffering from a touch of free-fall sickness. She had managed to swim along the cordways of t
he docks without disgracing herself, but said that it felt like falling for ever through a place where basic directions like up and down kept switching around or vanishing entirely.
Khinda said that she didn’t have any fresh information about Mr Mussa. She had been updating Hari ever since the free trader’s ship had docked at Tannhauser Gate. So far, neither his avatar nor his daughter had left the ship, and no one had visited it, either.
‘That you know about,’ Rav said.
‘We’re keeping a close watch,’ Khinda said.
‘Visitors aside, he could be talking to any number of people right now,’ Rav said.
‘He could,’ Khinda admitted. ‘But he hasn’t contacted the bourse. He has an account, but it has not been activated. He hasn’t attempted to sell the item in question on the open market. And none of my friends and contacts have heard anything about a clandestine sale involving a tick-tock’s head.’
‘Which doesn’t mean he hasn’t tried to sell it,’ Rav said.
‘If he has, no one has come to collect the goods,’ Khinda said.
‘That you know of,’ Rav said again. He was bored, or was presenting a very good imitation of being bored. We’ll meet this broker, he’d told Hari while Brighter Than Creation’s Dark had been making its final approach. We’ll find out what she knows, which won’t take long, and then we’ll go into the free zone and talk to my friends and acquaintances, find out everything we need to know about the people who want what’s inside your neural net, and work out our next move. When Hari had said that it didn’t sound like much of a plan, Rav had said that the only alternative was to wait until the hijackers contacted Hari again and gave him instructions to surrender.
‘And I’m not about to let you do that. I’ve grown fond of you, youngblood. I’d hate to see you give up your life in some kind of noble but pointless sacrifice. Besides, we don’t yet know what’s in your neural net.’
‘I’m prepared to do anything that will get me close to the hijackers.’
‘The foolish hunter flies straight at the flock and scatters it across the sky. The wise hunter hangs back, shadows the flock, studies its behaviour and marks the weakest members before he screams and stoops. We’ll find out what this broker knows. Then we’ll find out what my friends know. And then we’ll be ready to stalk our prey, or set a trap. Trust me,’ Rav had said. ‘I was born to hunt. Postulates or people, it’s all the same. It’s my life.’
Now Hari told Khinda Wole, ‘I think Mr Mussa tried to sell Dr Gagarian’s head. Because why else would he come here? He tried to sell it, but the buyers discovered that it was damaged. That’s why they sent me that message. They know I’m coming here, and they want me to know that they know.’
Khinda said, ‘But have they sent any instructions or demands? Have they told you how to contact them?’
‘Not yet. But now that I’m here, I think they will,’ Hari said.
Rav yawned. ‘The free trader has been squatting inside his ship, he hasn’t seen anyone, he hasn’t talked to anyone that you know of. In fact, you don’t have any idea about what he may or may not have been doing. Is that it? Are we done here?’
‘I do have some information about the assassins,’ Khinda said. ‘One of my friends has a contact in the transit police. It seems that Deel Fertita and Angley Li arrived at Tannhauser Gate on the same ship. An itinerant freighter, The Heavenly Chrysanthemum. They boarded at Ritsurin-k[ō]en.’
‘I know it,’ Rav said. ‘One of the gardens along the outer edge of the main belt. A big place, but a backwater. The assassins may have boarded The Heavenly Chrysanthemum there, but they started out from somewhere else.’
‘They arrived there sixteen days earlier,’ Khinda said, ‘on a ship that came from the Saturn system.’
‘Oho,’ Rav said. ‘I have to admit that’s slightly interesting.’
An electric thrill plucked at Hari’s heart. The wheel habitat of the leader of the Saints, Levi, orbited Saturn. And that was where Pabuji’s Gift had been aimed, after its gravity-assist manoeuvre around Jupiter . . .
‘Specifically, from Paris, Dione,’ Khinda said. ‘I can see that it means something to you.’
‘It emits a definite odour of sanctity,’ Rav said. He was staring across the table at Hari. His silver-capped smile. His frank green gaze. His careless confidence.
‘There’s something else,’ Khinda said. ‘A third passenger boarded The Heavenly Chrysanthemum at Ritsurin-ko[ō]en. A woman named Ang Ap Zhang. Deel Fertita and Angley Li lodged together in a hostel for transients after they reached Tannhauser Gate, but Ang Ap Zhang vanished after she disembarked. And as far as I can tell, she is still here.’
Hari said, ‘Do you have an image of her?’
‘Alas, no.’
‘But we know what she looks like,’ Rav said. ‘Because she looks like her sisters. Angley Li. Deel Fertita. Ang Ap Zhang. Ang-ley Li. De-el Fertita. Ang Ap Zhang. It’s like found poetry, isn’t it?’
Riyya said, ‘They didn’t bother to change their appearance. They had similar names. They didn’t care if people knew that they were related. They’re either careless, or very confident.’
‘Or it didn’t occur to them that it mattered if people knew,’ Rav said, ‘because they were raised in a place where the identity of the individual is subsumed to the will of the whole. One of the eusocial clades, or a soldier clone-line. They needed names to travel under, outside their nest. War names. And because names don’t mean anything to them, they used a simple-minded algorithm to generate them.’
‘Then they aren’t Saints,’ Riyya said.
‘They may not be Saints,’ Rav said. ‘But they work for the Saints.’
Khinda said that it was likely that Ang Ap Zhang was hiding somewhere in the free zone; there was no trace of her in any of the topside hostels or caravanserais.
‘The Saints could be sheltering her,’ Rav said. ‘They have a big school here.’
‘We have been keeping watch on it,’ Khinda said. ‘And we have also been looking for her in the free zone. So far we haven’t had any luck, but it’s an easy place to disappear into.’
‘Now you’ll be able to see how a real hunter works,’ Rav said. ‘We’ll head for the free zone and flush out this so-called assassin, and we’ll ask her some hard questions about who she works for, and how we can talk to them. How you can talk to them, Hari. How you can negotiate the release of your family and their ship.’
‘First,’ Hari said, ‘we should deal with our good friend Mr D.V. Mussa.’
‘If he came here to sell the head to Ang Ap Zhang, she probably killed him when she discovered that its files were corrupted,’ Rav said. ‘Him and his daughter. Forget them. They’re dead meat.’
‘I would know if anyone entered or left his ship,’ Khinda said.
‘Give me ten minutes, and I’ll prove you wrong,’ Rav said.
‘Mr Mussa stole something from me,’ Hari said. ‘I want it back.’
‘It’s worthless,’ Rav said. ‘We hoped it would flush out the Saints, but it didn’t work. And now we have other quarry.’
‘Dr Gagarian was a passenger on my family’s ship,’ Hari said. ‘I owe him a duty of care. Before we do anything else, I want to talk to Mr Mussa. I want to work out a deal for the return of the head. My family has credit here. I’ll pay Mr Mussa for the head, if he still has it, and for the name of the person who wanted to buy it.’
And he wanted to have a serious conversation with the tanky about his uncle.
‘We know who wanted to buy it,’ Rav said. ‘The Saints. And Mr Mussa won’t be able to talk to you because he’s dead. Killed by their hired assassin after he tried to sell her a head full of futzed files. Forget about him. We need to find Ang Ap Zhang.’
‘We don’t know that he’s dead,’ Hari said. ‘And it won’t take long to find out.’
Riyya said to Khinda Wole, ‘This is usually where they get their dicks out, and start comparing length and heft.’
‘Not for t
he first time, you mistake me for someone who hasn’t evolved much beyond his ape heritage,’ Rav said.
Riyya said, ‘I may be second cousin to an ape, but I’ve thought of something you missed.’
Rav said, ‘I doubt it.’
Riyya said, ‘If this assassin, Ang Ap Zhang, did somehow get on board Mr Mussa’s ship, if she killed him and his daughter – well, don’t you think that she might be hiding there?’
Afterwards, after Hari had called Mr Mussa’s ship, after he had talked to the tanky, or to someone using the tanky’s avatar, after a long discussion about tactics, after everyone was finally talked out, Khinda Wole drew him aside.
‘I found out something else about Deel Fertita. Something I think I should tell you privately. You asked me how Rember found her, when he hired specialists to help your family at Jackson’s Reef.’
‘And you told me that his work files had been purged,’ Hari said.
‘His assistant kept a duplicate set,’ Khinda said. ‘According to her, Nabhomani chose Deel Fertita and the other specialists.’
Hari said, ‘Nabhomani hired them?’
Khinda said, ‘He asked Rember to hire them. Rember drew up their contracts and arranged for the bottle rocket that took them to your family’s ship, but your brother asked for them by name.’