A Night Without Stars

by Peter F. Hamilton

  ‘Find me useful intelligence, and I’ll give you a bigger team,’ Director Yaki had said simply when he’d gone up to her office to complain.

  So he and Lurvri had spent the morning setting up a field office over a hardware shop in Old Milton Street that was opposite the Mother Laura Hostel. The family who held the shop’s state enterprise licence cleared some space in their store room for the PSR officers, who sat on fold-up chairs by the grimy window, watching the hostel’s entrance.

  Noriah’s photo was pinned up on the window frame, next to the camera with a long telephoto lens they’d aimed at the hostel’s door. She was a slight girl who claimed she was fifteen, though Chaing had his doubts she was that old. Her thin face was almost lost in the centre of a massive frizzy ball of ebony hair.

  According to Jenifa, her routine was a simple one. Noriah slept at the hostel until midday, then took a tram into town, sometimes with another girl from work; a couple of times it had been Jenifa. She had lunch at a cheap cafe, then took a look round stores before going back to the hostel to change for work. Another tram to the Gates, and she’d be in the Cannes Club by six. Her shift finished at four in the morning, when she took a tram back to Old Milton Street.

  ‘Not much of a life, is it?’ Lurvri said as they lugged their equipment cases up the stairs to the store room. ‘What the hell did her parents do to her that she’d want this instead of the farm?’

  Chaing shrugged. ‘It’s boring on a co-op farm. Kids want action and excitement. Always have.’

  ‘I’d never let any of mine sink to this.’

  Chaing suppressed any idea of commenting on Lurvri’s parenting skills, or even on his relationships in general. Lurvri was an Opole local, fifty-seven years old, tall, with wiry limbs and a bald head – shaved meticulously twice a day. He was now on his third marriage, and had to support five children from the first two. His current wife had just given birth to their second, a boy. To be stuck at lieutenant at his age marked him as a by-the-book time server. Chaing had no problem with that; Lurvri wasn’t particularly dynamic in his role, but he knew the city, knew everyone in the PSR office. He could even push things through its Uracus-begat bureaucracy. Best of all, he was never going to question Chaing’s decisions or complain.

  Just before midday a van drew up outside the squat brick edifice of the Mother Laura Hostel, its diesel engine growling. For a private individual to own a van on Bienvenido they needed to have a licensed enterprise that legitimately required one – something that involved hauling around a large quantity of goods. Even then, getting a purchase authorization from the county transport office was difficult, and normally involved an envelope stuffed with cash changing hands.

  Chaing read the side of the van. ‘Devora Fruit Nursery. Odd, there’s no greengrocer on this street.’

  ‘Never heard of them,’ Lurvri said, writing it down in his notebook. ‘I’ll check it out.’

  ‘Well, well, look who it’s delivered,’ Chaing said happily. The passenger door opened and Roscoe Caden got out. He was a sturdy man, wearing a brown jacket, his curly greying hair kept in place by a black leather cap. He looked both ways along Old Milton Street and went into the hostel.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Chaing said, and snatched up the camera.

  It was Lurvri who’d found them their transport in the PSR’s garage: a small van similar to the one Caden was using, but older, a drab grey body with rusting edges. The city’s water utility logo was painted on the doors. Chaing was more than satisfied – there were always dozens of them scuttling round the city’s roads.

  Lurvri drove; he knew the streets a lot better than Chaing. He had to adjust the choke as he kept turning the ignition key. The engine fired at the fifth go, then something made a terrible grinding sound.

  ‘Crudding clutch,’ Lurvri grunted, and pumped the pedal twice before shoving the gear lever forwards. The van crawled out of the alley and paused at the junction with Old Milton Street. They didn’t have to wait long. Caden emerged from the hostel, his hand clamped round Noriah’s arm. She didn’t look scared; more like defeated, Chaing thought.

  Caden opened the doors on the rear of the van, and got inside with Noriah. The doors were closed, and the Devora Fruit Nursery van drove off.

  After another fight with the clutch, Lurvri started after them. The first few hundred metres were difficult. Apart from cyclists and a couple of tuk-tuks loaded up with boxes, there was no traffic on Old Milton Street. Then they were out into the wider, busier streets of the city centre, and more vans were driving, along with lorries and a river of tuk-tuks caught up in their eternal fist-shaking battle with cyclists, both of whom knew the right of way was theirs and theirs alone. Trams rattled along the centre of the wider streets, sparks flashing from their spindly pantographs overhead.

  Lurvri kept back about fifty metres, surging forwards or dropping back depending on how many vehicles got between them.

  Chaing searched the dashboard. ‘Do we have a radio? We could do with some backup.’

  ‘You’re kidding, right? The transport manager got this van from the impound park. The sheriffs nabbed the utility guys using it to carry narnik wads around the city. It’s not an official PSR vehicle.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  ‘Better for us. The gangs know all the official vans and cars in Opole, even the unmarked ones. They also monitor the sheriff radio bands.’

  Chaing wanted to dispute that, but held his tongue. If Noriah was being taken to a nest, then it was likely Caden was a Faller. Having the PSR assault squad on call would be comforting.

  ‘I don’t think they know we’re following,’ Lurvri said. ‘He’s not trying any manoeuvres.’

  They were heading north along Dunton Road, a duel carriageway lined with ulcca trees that would take them to the Yokon Bridge over the river Crisp. There were fewer bicycles here, and a lot more commercial vehicles – larger lorries hauling freight in and out of the warehouse district. The Devora Fruit Nursery van slotted in behind an empty coal lorry, and Lurvri stayed in the outer lane, keeping its tail lights in sight. Dunton Road curved round to run parallel with the railway tracks. Chaing could see the big marshalling yard up ahead, merging into the docks, whose tall iron cranes stood guard over the wharfs that extended for over three kilometres along the river.

  Five hundred metres from the long stone arch bridge across the Crisp, the Devora Fruit Nursery van started indicating, and turned off onto a slip road. Lurvri followed it, receiving a series of sharp blasts from the lorry he swerved in front of.

  They drove for another fifteen minutes along Fontaine Avenue, which ran parallel to the river, heading out of town. At first it led through an industrial district of big factories and long warehouses, even passing the fenced-off Opole Rocketry Plant where they manufactured vernier rocket engines for Silver Swords. It was a residential area next – acres of flat ground where the old buildings had been demolished, allowing the city council to build citizen tenement blocks. They were depressing concrete and brick cubes, fifteen storeys tall, marked by narrow balconies which wrapped round the whole structure. A dozen had already been built, with scaffolding for another five rising out of the dusty, rubble-strewn ground, but now abandoned and swamped by vegetation. Trees struggled to survive in the regimented parkland laid out between the aloof buildings.

  As they entered the outskirts of Opole the houses grew larger. Walls began to line the road to shelter them from curious eyes, with gateways opening onto long driveways; none had gates any more. This was where the pre-Transition aristocrats and merchants used to live. Some families had managed to hang on to their ancestral homes providing they weren’t too ostentatious, but the larger ones were deemed inappropriate for a single family and nationalized. They’d been divided up into apartments. Chaing caught glimpses of allotment strips covering the extensive gardens that surrounded the old houses.

  ‘They’re turning off,’ Lurvri warned as they drove along Plamondon Avenue.

  Up ahead, the Devora
Fruit Nursery van was turning through a gateway.

  ‘Keep going,’ Chaing instructed.

  They passed the entrance, which showed them a big old stone lodge. It looked dilapidated, with wisteria and roses swamping the walls and covering a good fraction of the roof. Windows, too, had been overgrown. The grounds were a wilderness of vines and lawns turned to meadow. A slate plaque on the stone gatepost read: Xander Manor.

  ‘Okay, pull in to the next house,’ Chaing said.

  Lurvri turned up the next driveway. The villa facing them was small enough for the original family to retain ownership. A couple of children peered out of the sagging porch as the van pulled up in front of it.

  ‘Right,’ Chaing announced as he got out of the van. ‘Let’s find out what in Uracus is going on here.’

  *

  The seven-storey Opole PSR office was poised between an old bank and the County Guilds headquarters at the northern end of Broadstreet. It had an impressive stone facade that had blackened with city grime over the decades. Chaing considered that to be the most pleasant aspect of it. The windows were slim horizontal slits, protected by iron bars. While the front was stone, everything else was built from a drab grey-brown brick – floors, internal walls, arching ceilings, all of it, as if it was a building comprised entirely of cellars. Those thick solid walls soaked up sound, leaving it oddly quiet as you walked along the corridors with their caged electrical bulbs. That aspect was an architectural triumph considering the interrogations that went on in some of the specially equipped basement rooms.

  However, Director Yaki’s office on the seventh floor defied the general bleakness. The furniture was old-aristocrat style, with comfy leather wingback chairs, and a huge carved miroak desk that dated back centuries. Even her windows seemed to be wider than the others in the building.

  Chaing stood in front of the desk, trying not to let himself be intimidated. Director Yaki herself was a tall woman, with her once-blonde hair now a lush silver-grey, and swept back from her forehead. The dark-pink scar on her face went from her right ear to the corner of her eye, then down to the mouth – a legacy of hand-to-hand combat with a Faller, so Lurvri had told Chaing, which she wore with more pride than any medal. When he arrived at Opole, Chaing had hoped her front-line experience would make her sympathetic to field operations – a hope that was rapidly dying.

  ‘So a brothel owner moves his whores around?’ Yaki said tonelessly. ‘That’s not PSR business.’

  ‘Noriah isn’t a whore. She’s a waitress.’

  ‘She’s a waitress that they’re pressuring to be a whore. So? It’s not unique, sadly.’

  ‘But this whole set-up, it’s wrong.’

  ‘Wrong how?’

  ‘I talked to the Geale family – they live in the house next door to Xander Manor. They told me it’s owned by the Elsdon family, who were wool mill owners pre-Transition. Slvasta’s citizen-equity law changed all that. The state took possession of the mill and left them as managers. It didn’t exactly incentivize the next generation, and most of them left. By the time the third generation came along, only the youngest daughter, Elyse, was interested in wool. She ran the old mill for a hundred and twenty years, until the Opole city council finally knocked it down twenty-eight years ago. The whole place was falling apart, and the looms were completely obsolete. Elyse was heartbroken. She became a classic recluse; she’s barely left Xander Manor since. The Geales used to see her walking about on the grounds occasionally, but that’s all. She’s a hundred and ninety-seven now – if she’s still alive.’ Which he had his doubts about. Officially, the average lifespan for Bienvenido was around two hundred. Some lived longer, of course, though they tended to be Eliters. The Elsdon family wasn’t on the PSR list of Eliter families.

  Yaki nodded slowly. ‘Infiltration?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure of it. Three years ago, the Elsdon family started to come back. Two supposed cousins, in their twenties, turned up to help look after the old matriarch and keep Xander Manor’s title in the family. Or that’s what they told the Geales.’

  ‘Have the Geales seen Elyse in the last three years?’

  ‘No, they have not. It’s a classic nest set-up.’

  ‘Uracus! All right, captain, what’s your play?’

  ‘We followed Caden back to the Cannes Club. Noriah wasn’t in the van. So either Caden is being naive and thinks he’s supplying young girls to the cousins for sex, or he’s a Faller himself.’

  ‘Nobody in that business is that naive,’ Yaki said. ‘Especially if the girls are never seen again.’

  ‘Those are my thoughts as well, director.’

  ‘Do you want to use the assault squad on Xander Manor?’

  ‘Eventually, yes. But we need to know how big this is, how many there are in the nest. I want a proper team watching Caden, and another on Xander Manor. The Geales seemed to think one of the cousins, Valentin Murin, goes to Opole University.’ The one word he wasn’t going to mention in the director’s office was apocalypse – which was just Eliter propaganda. That the government and PSR were actually useless at their job, and the Faller nests were expanding across Bienvenido, ready for the final genocidal assault. Every time the PSR uncovered a long-established nest, Chaing found himself disloyally wondering just how true it was.

  ‘Crud! Are they snatching students as well?’ Yaki asked.

  ‘I don’t know, but the university would make a good source of bodies. Kids drop out all the time and never tell their parents. The dean is supposed to monitor anyone leaving, just like all institutions, but I don’t know vigilant they’re being.’

  ‘Same as the rest of Bienvenido,’ Yaki said bitterly. ‘They never think it’s going to happen to them, and when it does they shout loud enough to be heard in the Ring, swearing it isn’t their fault.’

  ‘Typical.’

  Yaki smiled, stretching her scar to a darker pink. ‘I’ll assign you two watcher teams. You’ll have them by mid-morning tomorrow.’

  ‘Thank you. Caden is my priority. The first team can follow him and report directly to Lurvri.’

  ‘A duty that entails spending all night in a club. We shouldn’t have any shortage of volunteers.’

  ‘Yes. When the rest are allocated to me, they can watch Xander Manor. The Geales will cooperate.’

  ‘Which team are you going to run?’

  ‘The one watching Caden. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to command it from here. I’ve got Lurvri and two of my team down in the basement, going through the Rolodexes to track down this Elsdon family, and find out if there actually are any cousins. And I want to talk to one of Major Gorlan’s informants at the university, see if anyone there knows anything. When we send in the assault squad, they need to know how many and who the targets are.’

  ‘What about Noriah?’

  ‘I’m sorry. She’s been in Xander Manor for four hours now. They’ve either eaten her or she’s been eggsumed.’

  Yaki gave him a sorrowful look and swung her chair round until it was facing the window. She had an excellent view along Broadstreet down to Ghalby Park, where tall weeping wanno trees encircled the central lake. ‘Tough call.’

  ‘Yes. But we have to look at the overall picture here.’ It was the delicate way of saying it. If a nest had infiltrated Opole three years ago, that was a serious lapse of vigilance – one that was going to reflect badly on the PSR office when it came out – especially its director.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Keep me informed.’

  *

  Chaing took a tram around the Gates district to Opole’s university. The campus sprawled across several acres in the middle of the city, a village in itself, composed of enormous ornate stone colleges accumulated over a millennium and a half, with turrets and halls and libraries and lecture theatres and residences donated by alumni keen to show off their wealth and charity. The grounds enclosing them resembled an exclusive parkland, with avenues of trees, and ponds, and statues.

  Walking through it, Chaing
thought how different it was to the rest of Opole. Here there was a sense of optimism, of looking to the future; even the colours and noises were enhanced somehow. It was the students, of course, all of them seeming ridiculously young to his jaded gaze. They either smiled or looked intent as they milled around, inevitably laden with books and folders, or carrying elaborate shoulder bags. Groups sat on steps having earnest conversations, while others gathered around people reading out loud. Several impromptu ball games were underway, never lasting long before they were chased off by fierce college wardens in their scarlet and black uniforms.

  Chaing headed for McKie College. At five hundred years old, the stone edifice was relatively new compared to the other buildings. There was a large paved area at the foot of one gable wall, below the central library’s massive stained-glass window. Holat trees were planted around it, the long crimson and amber leaves spreading from their overhanging boughs creating a pleasant dapple over the wooden tables and benches set out on the slabs. Tea and coffee and cakes were served from a small wooden hut, invisible under a froth of climbing roses.

  He spotted Corilla straight away. She was supposed to wait at the outdoor cafe for thirty minutes every day, and sure enough there she was by herself at one of the long tables, wearing a cheap baggy green sweater, with a hole in one elbow, scuffed black boots, and purple tights. Her jet-black hair was gathered into a side clump, which sprouted blue and red feathers. The informant was supposed to be wearing a hat with a red ribbon in it so a PSR control officer could identify her. None of the other girls in the cafe even had a hat. So it must be her.

  ‘I can recommend Pinborough,’ he said as he sat next to her. ‘She’s one of the best novelists Bienvenido has ever produced.’

  Corilla looked up from her biology textbook, and flashed him a sullen expression – instantly reminding him of Jenifa’s greeting. What is it about covert meetings that makes everyone so grumpy?