Rogue Stars

by C Gockel et al.

  I gather this is not a normal timer?

  Press the screen, hard. It fires, once only. Use it well, only in emergency.

  Thank you. Hating guns was only noble until you faced armed opposition.

  “If, for some reason we become separated, or the feeder won’t work, use the tracker.” She pressed a button on her listening device, and then did the same for me. A light flashed. “This connects to my comm unit. Press it if there is trouble. No need to speak.”

  I nodded, silently. Noticed how the skin of her fingers had gone white.

  “Aren’t you feeling the cold?”

  She shrugged, and looked away. Damn it. She was cold, I could feel it. I’d tell Eirani to make her some hot soup when we came back, and I would have a stern word with the kitchen to provide her with red-coded food. Poisons, as Eirani loved to call them. Thayu’s body needed them to stay healthy.

  We entered the alley, between the back gates of yards and gnarled trunks of huge trees, the foliage of which was thick and lush and drippy. The boy jumped off the wall and ran forward. At the end of the alley, we came to an oasis of leafy trees, cordoned off by high walls marking the yards of surrounding houses. Steam rose lazily from a pool in the centre; raindrops made little ring patterns on the surface. Gnarled trees grew on the sides, roots bulging over stone.

  The boy waited on the other side in the semidarkness, in the company of a broader figure, a keihu local, a thickset character with meaty arms and a groove down the middle of his nose. He wore a calf-length garment that was wide like a kaftan.

  “Are you Delegate Cory Wilson?” Heavily accented.

  “Yes. Who are you? Do you represent Renkati?” I didn’t bother with formal pronouns; they would be wasted on locals anyway.

  “We’ve been asked to meet you.”

  “Why all this secrecy?”

  “We will explain. The situation is delicate. Your support is appreciated.”

  Shit and shit. This excursion had been my idea, and there was no going back, not if I wanted to know what Renkati was about. But I really, really didn’t like this sneaking in alleys. And so far I hadn’t agreed to any kind of support.

  Thayu’s eyes met mine. Be alert.

  I could only feel guilt. I had brought her here, and trouble might follow.

  She was wise enough not to offer her opinion on the matter.

  I followed the man into another alley. He was shorter than me, about Thayu’s height, but three times as wide in the waist.

  No one spoke. Thayu walked with the agility of a panther ready to spring. Evi’s and Telaris’ green eyes took in every detail of the surrounding buildings. Their hands never strayed below their waists, ready to grab the guns from their arm brackets at the slightest provocation.

  Our guide plodded through a maze of back alleys, up and down quaint stone steps, under overhanging flowering bushes that dripped water on us. I tried to remember the way, but the usual landmarks for orientation—the suns and the golden rock wall of the escarpment—hid behind clouds. It was also getting dark. For a while I thought that the guide was deliberately confusing us by using only back alleys, but we never passed any wider streets. Houses, low and built from ochre stone, crowded together in a way that convinced me there was no main street. In Barresh, boats and trains between islands were the main traffic. And little trolleys on rails. There were plenty of those.

  Rain fell heavier. Thayu gave a single shiver. For a few seconds, her eyes lost that lion-like alertness.

  You’re freezing.

  She didn’t reply to that.

  I was just about to ask our guide if we were going to get some place soon when we reached an alley that ran past a continuous wall, a fortress of stone and mortar. I glanced up into the drizzle, and sensed Thayu doing the same.

  The building takes up an entire block.

  I didn’t know how she got this information so quickly, but I didn’t question it.

  Our guide led us to the only door in that solid wall, a thick wooden affair that opened noiselessly, although it looked like the type of door that would have creaked. Must be the wet.

  We entered the courtyard beyond, facing a featureless stone building. Black, soot-like moss covered the paving except for a well-worn path that led directly to an arched entrance.

  Our guide turned right into a room where light pearls cast their greenish glow over stone walls. A desk stood in the middle of the room, and cupboards lined the walls. Through the glass in the doors, the light reflected from the silky surfaces of more types of gun than I knew existed.

  “This is where we leave weapons.” The guide said.

  A local woman bustled in through a door. She eyed the guards, then Thayu, and shook her head. “Definitely not allowed inside.”

  Thayu?

  A harsh squeak. Garbled sound.

  Thayu?

  She squinted. I didn’t know if she heard the same noise, but the feeder’s signal was very weak.

  . . . interference. Don’t know what’s causing it.

  She’s not going to allow you in. What should we do?

  Leave it to me.

  I looked over my shoulder, where Evi and Telaris stood rigid. One did not ask Indrahui guards to leave their weapons behind. I suspected these men took their weapons to bed, if ever they slept.

  The guide said, “No one goes armed inside this building. We’re a peaceful community. If it worries you, you can stay here. We will take the Delegate to a room next to this one.”

  Evi and Telaris glanced at each other. They probably didn’t like it.

  “Mashara, I’m going to a meeting,” I said. My eyes met Evi’s. He knew just as well as I did that this was no ordinary meeting, but damn it, I did not want to bail out now.

  “I’ll come.” Taking a breath through flaring nostrils, Thayu unstrapped the gun from her arm and flung it into Evi’s hands. A show—I knew. She would have other weapons. Or so I hoped. Evi still scowled.

  Thayu flicked me a warning glance. . . . listening in . . . careful . . .

  What?

  The high-pitched noise whined in my brain.

  She shook her head, probably trying to tell me not to use the feeder.

  I raked my hand through my hair and pulled the feeder’s legs to lift it ever so slightly from my skin. The noise stopped. But the feeder wouldn’t stay detached like this, programmed as it was to connect with the patch in my brain. Already, the legs moved to reattach itself. I resisted an urge to scratch the spot. When it sent a warm burst through my head, I blocked it.

  The guide searched Thayu, and found nothing. Then it was my turn. He found the timer and turned it over in his hands. My heart thudded in my throat, but he handed it back to me. I slipped it into the safety of my pocket. Phew.

  Finally, he asked the two of us to follow.

  The two guards took up their usual positions, one on either side of the door, their hands behind their backs. Already, I longed for their comforting obsidian presence. I’d left them behind when I went to see Sirkonen, and look what had happened. This venue was much less safe. Into the lion’s den indeed.

  A short passageway led to a glass-covered courtyard, full of people.

  Some sort of cafeteria, or canteen, with rows of tables, where many people sat sharing drinks and talking. A serving robot trundled between tables, avoiding wayward chairs and planter boxes overflowing with greenery.

  The knot of muscles in my neck relaxed. I checked my tracker—there were now two lights—one flashing quickly for Thayu next to me, the other flashing more slowly for the two guards.

  The guide led us across the courtyard, zigzagging between tables. Many of the cafe’s patrons turned. Eyebrows rose, whispers travelled amongst the varied crowd. In fact, I didn’t think I had ever seen so many different kinds of people outside zhamata. Without exception, these people glared at Thayu.

  The guide stopped at a table where a man sat in the shade of a potted tree. The guide bowed and the man returned his greeting, but I didn�
�t recognise what language they spoke.

  Dressed in a khaki kaftan, he looked to be a local, but there was something familiar about him. I wracked my brains trying to think where in the past few days I had met this olive-skinned man with curly greying hair. Any of the keihu locals? A Barresh councillor? Mr Renkati? When the guide beckoned me closer, I saw the whiteness covering the man’s irises, which accounted for his emotionless stare. A tilt of the head—he was listening, but not meeting my eyes, because he couldn’t.

  I also realised he was not local. He shaved. And that narrowed the possibilities as to who he was to exactly one person.

  My heart racing, I sat down. Folded my hands on the table, studying him. I had met him before, after all, a long time ago, when I was young and he could still see.

  “Seymour Kershaw?”

  He smiled and inclined his head.

  “Mr Wilson, I presume?” In an odd kind of Isla with a trace of an American twang.

  Seymour Kershaw indeed.

  A recovering breath, and another one, and then a chilling thought: had Sirkonen known?

  “Do you know that everyone on Earth thinks you’re dead?”

  He chuckled. “Have you been asked to look for my body?”

  “I don’t think it’s funny.” I fought to keep my voice even. On Earth people fought in this man’s name, and he sat here without a care in the world—laughing about it even.

  Kershaw’s face sobered. “You’re right, of course. And I can assure you, there is nothing funny about the situation.”

  “Are you kept here against your will?”

  “No, no. Not at all.”

  “What then? Why let your family suffer? Do you know that . . .” Heck, the movie. A feeling of cold went through me, and then another thought. “You’re Amoro Renkati?” The trick of the century: sponsor a movie which portrays your own death.

  “Me? No.” He spread his hands. “This is Amoro Renkati.”

  The truth sank in. “Amoro Renkati isn’t a person. It’s an organisation.”

  “That’s correct. In case you’re wondering, it means Enlightened Path.”

  “In Aghyrian.” And wasn’t there once a terrorist organisation on Earth with a name very much like it?

  “Yes,” Kershaw confirmed my guess.

  And that was probably where Marin Federza fitted in. We will support you he had said, we being this organisation, or the Aghyrians. The enemy were the Coldi, who had made some very blatant attempts to annex certain powers on Earth, and who were still the most likely candidates to have killed Sirkonen.

  I glanced at all those faces in the courtyard. Kedrasi, Indrahui, Damarcian, and people from many other races, at least two hundred of them, all in local khaki dress. Many still glared openly at Thayu.

  There were not just a few dissenting voices. It was a political movement, and likely their invitation of me to the complex, heck, even their offering of their apartment for my use, was a calculated gesture. I had wondered when I would be called upon to honour the unspoken agreement I had entered by accepting the accommodation. It seemed that time was now.

  It also seemed that Chief Delegate Akhtari was fully aware of the situation. She had supplied me with a zhayma who had obvious loyalties to Asto, and put me into the hands of an organisation which was against Asto. What was that gesture supposed to mean?

  She wanted me to take a stance.

  She wanted me to evaluate matters as an outsider.

  She wanted me to be a referee.

  My position had been bumped up at least ten notches in importance. And that was typical gamra politics, too. At Nations of Earth, I would have received briefings; here, I was thrown into the situation unprepared. Sometimes I believed that innocent blundering was part of their way to test novices in the political game, a tactic they’d applied to me ever since I arrived.

  And that annoyed me, because, damn it, there was far too much at stake to risk stupid mistakes through ignorance.

  I needed space to think.

  “Tell me, how did you become involved with these people?”

  Kershaw leaned forward on the table. “Well, like you, I arrived in Barresh full of ideals and plans, but almost immediately things happened to me that had not been planned. Before I left, I had an agreement that I would have a small office with two staff. The people in question, two Indrahui, I had met before. But when I arrived, the two weren’t here. I was informed that they had been caught up in the civil unrest at Indrahui and couldn’t join me for the foreseeable future. Instead, someone in the upper hierarchy appointed a single person, a Coldi woman, to replace them. This woman knew nothing about my situation or about Earth, and within a few days of starting, she had made it clear that she expected favours of me. She expected to share my apartment and my bed, for chrissakes.”

  It was fairly well-known in diplomatic circles that Kershaw’s long-time partner, who had died in an accident, had been male.

  “More than that. When I started prying into who she was, I found that she counted a number of Asto spies amongst her friends. She was passing information back to them. Personal information.”

  I couldn’t help but feel chilled. I might have reconciled with Thayu, but this sounded horribly similar to my situation. “Did you find out what they did with this information? Who wanted it, and why?”

  “I went and asked, didn’t I?” There was a tone of belligerence in his voice.

  “Did anyone tell you?” I imagined him barging into Delegate Akhtari’s office, and demanding why there was listening equipment in his living quarters—

  “They said it was nothing unusual. I demanded that everything be taken out and dismantled. I demanded to have my original staff returned to me.”

  Perfectly reasonable demands, by Earth standards, but—

  “They wouldn’t comply, so I ripped all the cables out myself, and I told the lady that she could leave my employment, unless she was willing to take orders only from me. She left.”

  “That would have made some people happy.” I let sarcasm into my voice.

  “How did you guess?” Equally sarcastic.

  “They would have viewed that as a fracture in imayu, the loyalty network.”

  “Damn the network. She just couldn’t stand it that I’d outsmarted her. So she went on a rampage and deleted all my accounts and connections, and so I looked her up and confronted her. She wouldn’t see me, but next thing, there was this piece of paper—”

  “A writ.”

  He turned his head to me, lifting one eyebrow. “You know all about this, do you?”

  I wasn’t sure if he was sarcastic. “I know enough to see that these misunderstandings could have led to led to a writ. What was it for?”

  He snorted. “Would you believe it? Her clothes, her personal items and her reader. But you know, there was spy stuff on that reader. Material I needed to prove that someone was passing my correspondence with Earth to some higher authority in Asto.”

  Damn, this got worse and worse.

  I wanted to tell him that this was supposed to happen, that every delegate was under constant scrutiny. At the same time, my anger grew. None of this was Kershaw’s fault. He was untrained, and not the right type of character for this job.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Mr Wilson. You’re thinking poor Kershaw, back then we knew nothing. We know a lot more these days”?

  “We do know a lot more. These people don’t react the same way we do. You can’t apply our values to their deeds. The woman appointed to replace your assistants thought she was doing what the job required. They don’t distinguish between family and work spheres of their lives. They need to work with an equal, and need to fit into their part of society. It’s pathological.”

  “That may be, but don’t tell me that you, too, are not experiencing invasion of your private domain by Coldi people with connections you are not entirely sure about.”

  Damn. After meeting Ezhya Palayi, I’d wallpapered over my concerns in that direction. Beca
use I didn’t even completely understand Nicha’s connections, because I’d given up hope of ever fully understanding them. Thayu had volunteered her connection with the spy division easily enough, but what else was there?

  My heart was thudding against my ribs. I glanced over my shoulder at Thayu, who wouldn’t understand a word of this conversation. I found it hard to believe that she might be part of a bigger plot, but then again, what did I know? What did any of us really understand about these people?

  “I can tell it concerns you,” Kershaw concluded. “So let me tell you our view. This is all official, by the way; that’s why I haven’t asked your minder to leave you. She already knows this.”

  How did he know that Thayu was Coldi and that she was with me and that she was female? He was blind.

  “You believe that if we understand the differences between the many peoples of gamra, we can work out a workable agreement.”

  “I do, but—”

  “Good, then we agree. With one exception. Have you noticed, in your case, as it was in mine, who has been doing all the adapting? That would be you, right? Or us. All of us in this room. Have you noticed who has not been doing any adapting?”

  Yes, this was about the Coldi.

  “I guess I don’t have to tell you that either. When more than half the votes in gamra are yours, do you need to adapt? When you can claim that your social structure, your instinct, whatever, justifies your repression of other people, justifies the bullying, the invasions, do you truly respect everyone else in the neighbourhood? It is our belief that this isn’t the case. They are happy to play by all the rules, as long as they can be chief. This is not something we can change. The need to dominate is endemic in the Coldi. It’s part of their genetic makeup. Meanwhile, they will invade Earth. Not by force, but by stealth. They give us their technology as they already have for such a long time, and eventually, they’ll demand something in return.”

  All my worries returned. Kershaw had much more experience than I. I couldn’t prove that he was wrong; in fact, there were some signs that he might be right.

  There was a Coldi proverb: lend the neighbours mushrooms and harvest bread—a deed done for another put the receiving party in debt. Asto had shared with Earth a lot of its technology. It wasn’t obvious, and had gone on for a long time, but what if, just if, Asto wanted something in return, such as was Coldi custom? If all those little bugs in computer chips amounted to something coherent? Some paranoid people on Earth were arguing just this in ever-louder voices. Could they be right?