“I’m just facing ghosts,” Aras said calmly. “Not for the first time. But perhaps they appear more vivid here because memories are triggered by smells, sounds…places.”
He stared back into Ade’s face for a few long seconds. For once, Ade didn’t feel uncomfortable. Then Aras stood up slowly, making Ade break his grip, and simply hugged him so hard that it hurt his ribs.
“I’m not going to fall apart, Ade,” Aras said. “I can’t be in a state of ecstasy all the time, much as you want to shield me from realities. But the fact that you do makes me glad to have you as a house-brother.”
Aras gave a quick urrrr, a burst of that weird purring that he did when he was happy, and walked past Ade. Shan reached out to stop him going after Aras.
“’S’okay, Ade.” She gripped his arm. “We were just talking. He’s trying to make sense of it. Let him go for a walk. When he needs to talk, he knows where we are.”
“Poor sod.” He pulled her to him but she kept a tight grip on the passionflowers. She tasted of fruit juice. “He’s not feeling guilty about Mjat, is he?”
“I don’t get any sense of that, no.”
“Did I make it worse by going on about the Skavu exterminating them? Shit. I mean, I felt what he felt bombing them at the same time that I was trying stop that Skavu fucker shooting them. But it wasn’t rational. I just couldn’t live with knowing I didn’t try to stop it. I don’t even like isenj. I put one down myself. But this was different.”
“It’s what I’d expect of you. No explanation needed.”
“I don’t pick up your memories and thoughts now, remember.”
“Then I’ll have to keep telling you.”
“I bloody well love you, woman.”
“Love you too. Vaut le détour, as they say.”
“They might…I don’t.”
“Sorry. Worth the detour. Worth making a diversion in your journey. Restaurants, usually.” She put her hand against his cheek and ran her thumb gently over his lips. “I actually like this life. I wondered why I couldn’t just say fuck it and leave the isenj and bezeri to make whatever fate they want, and just sit on my terrace in F’nar and do matriarch stuff and get shagged senseless every day. Christ, how much more is there to want? The point is that I can’t leave it alone here because this is home, and what affects F’nar affects us.”
Ade had a nagging need both to find a cup of water for the flowers, and to shove her up against the wall and just have her before anyone came to interrupt. “The isenj are sorted, one way or the other. Nothing you can do about it.”
“I still have Rayat…undead bezeri…and your detachment’s acquittal to resolve before I’m done.”
“No more contact from Spook HQ, then. And it’s not an acquittal.”
“If I call them, I’ll look desperate. They’ve got years to come to their senses.”
“You’re going to kill him anyway, aren’t you?”
“If Shapakti can’t extract c’naatat from him, I’ve got to put him out of circulation somehow.”
“Have you really still got a hate on for him, though?” He took her hand and slid it between his legs. It was nice to have a missus who was no more subtle than he was. “What is it? Punishment?”
“He’s a problem as long as he’s a carrier, because I don’t trust him, because he’s a lying, conniving fucktard.”
“You don’t trust most people.”
“And he’s done a shitty thing to a range of wildlife, but mainly to bezeri.”
“Who are nazi squid.”
“Whose forebears were nazi squid. There might even have been bezeri dissidents who wanted to see the birzula live. Which would be like shooting Kris Hugel just because she’s from the German Federal Union.”
“Shan, Rayat’s a total bastard. One down from the Skavu. Actually, at least the Skavu are honest.”
“Ade, I fucked up.”
“How?”
“I had loads of chances to kill him. I get rid of my own kid but I let that twat carry on breathing. I’ll have a real job getting at him now.” She fondled him through his pants. “Sorry. I made Sergeant Todger forget why he woke up, didn’t I?”
Ade couldn’t keep an erection while talking about executions. Funny, they always said death and violence turned people on, but it bloody well didn’t do the job for him, not at all. He envied wess’har for being able to consciously control their genitals. Maybe he’d develop that with a bit of help from c’naatat.
He held her hand on his crotch and leaned in for another kiss. “Sergeant Todger can always be persuaded.”
“Now that’s more like it.”
“Up against the wall, Mrs. Bennett…”
“How very vulgar, Mr. Darcy. Okay.”
“Sorry…”
“Joke. Go on, put me in a better mood for meeting the Skavu.”
Ade fumbled. Flowers were temporarily forgotten, and he suddenly realized what a practical garment a dhren might be, able to part and reform a hundred different ways, instead of tackling pants and closures.
“See, that smartgel’s easy to use, isn’t it?”
“Oh yeah…”
“Uhuh…”
“I miss your memory upgrade, Boss.”
“You got the highlights.”
“I know.”
“Now, if I don’t regrow certain components…”
“No pressure. Ahhh…”
“Is it like a fridge?”
“What?”
“The dick-lights.” The bioluminescence had migrated to his tattoos, even the one he’d had done in a really stupid place for a bet. Shan found a luminous dick hilarious. “Do they stay on when you stick it in?”
Ade burst into helpless giggles. Shan had never shown that kind of humor before, just a withering tongue that could be funny if you weren’t on the receiving end. This was just silly fun, crazy teenage fumbling sex up against a bulkhead, running the risk of getting caught, and not caring. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that sober. Shan never had, he knew. She was born responsible: she’d never been daft, rarely been drunk, never missed a shift. Raw sensation blurred his thoughts but for a moment he could shut out a horrifically complicated world, and just be Ade, a bloke with a girl called Shan, who was always up for it and thought the sun shone out of his arse, regardless of how often he screwed up.
For a few minutes, that was more than enough to put the recent past in perspective.
Umeh Station: ground level
“You did ask, Eddie.”
It was a bloody clever time to line up Helen Marchant for an interview without warning. Eddie tried to find a quieter corner to argue with News Desk and headed for the lower level.
“They’re dismantling the place, Mick. Can you hear? They’re evacuating to Wess’ej, because Umeh might be a ball of charcoal this time next week.”
“I know, Eddie. You want me to drive out there with soundproofing? You’re the one who’s talking tough about showing Marchant how it’s done. She’s waiting.”
“Okay, okay.” He waited by the freight elevator with his handheld almost up to his face, but the platform wasn’t moving. “Hang on, I’m taking the stairs.”
He ran, and over the years he’d perfected the art of talking, running, handling kit, and listening simultaneously. He should have been able to do a balls-to-the-wall interview at a second’s notice; he’d done it all his life, every day, the seat-of-the-pants, adrenaline-fueled stuff that he actually craved. Helen Marchant was just another politician—or wannabe, to be precise—to be asked why she was such a pile of lying crap, because that was all that interviews with her kind ever boiled down to.
But Marchant wasn’t just any old candidate for FEU regional office. She was Shan Frankland’s terrorist buddy, and he knew it, and nobody else had the story. The heady combination of king-breaking, the painful and very real ethical dilemma, and sheer terrier obsession had thrown him, because what he did next would have an impact on Shan.
Shan would
have said it didn’t matter a toss now, and made him do his job without fear or favor. It was never that simple, though. Maybe for her: not for him, not now.
He slammed the fire doors open and strode through the passages, now clear of storage bins and plants. It was lousy for sound, echoing and boomy, and his sound kit never quite ironed all that out, whatever the software manufacturer claimed.
“Okay, I’m clear.” Eddie slapped the smartfabric screen on the nearest wall with decent light and smoothed it flat so that it stuck there at head height. Linked to the handheld and his bee cam, it was an OB unit. The system adjusted the color and light levels, and he checked the icon from the inset cam that stared back at him to see what looked like a scruffy middle-aged man standing in a nice daylit room. It was all bloody lies, even the light. “What’s my window?”
“Ten minutes.” Mick’s hands were out of sight below the cutoff, moving over a console. Staffing levels had deteriorated since Eddie’s day: ’Desk staff had to double up on technical ops. “I might as well take this live.”
“Is she up for that?”
“Let’s find out.”
“She knows I’m calling from Umeh, doesn’t she? Y’know, outer fucking space?”
“I did tell her, Eddie. I’ll stand you by when we’ve got her back online and give you a cue to thaw her before I count you in.”
“Add the extra seconds ’delay.”
“Okay…I can still cue you.”
Live. Eddie adjusted his shirt and smoothed his hair out of perfunctory habit. Chahal had given him a modified buzz cut that was frighteningly short but didn’t make him look like someone who’d been kicked out of boot camp for failing to paint coal white. Live still mattered. It didn’t mean quite what it used to, but it still had cachet—a swashbuckling hairy-arsedness for the journalist, and a guarantee of raw confrontation for the audience. First transmission unedited—that was the jargon now: FTU. Mick activated the system that placed a garish lime green FTU icon on the TX, the output channel, so that anyone watching knew this was raw footage. The audience could view this any time, and by a dozen different delivery systems from screen to implant to ether display hanging in midair, but whenever they did, they knew it was a slice of real action and not a slick package.
“She knows Shan Frankland’s here.”
“What?”
“She knows that I probably know what she did before they put her on ice. Because of Frankland.”
“Frankland’s here?”
“Yeah.” Helen knew: Mick didn’t. It was better to drop it on him when he couldn’t do anything about it, like monstering Eddie for not mentioning it before. But he was still too far away to ever make his anger matter. “She’s alive.”
“I’m going to frigging well slay you when this slot ends. I ought to dock your bloody pay. Don’t you ever hold back—”
“Piss off, Mick. I’m in a war. You’re going to have pump up the scary a bit to make yourself heard.”
“I suppose I’m lucky you’ve not flogged this story to UnoNet.”
“I’m loyal. When I die, you’ll find BBChan written upon my arse.” Eddie hoped his guilt-flushed face didn’t make him look like a drunk. “Come on, Marchant.”
“Here she is. I’ll patch her through now.”
The smartfabric split into screens: Mick and Eddie’s reverse shot as small icons, Marchant as the major screen, and an output panel. All Eddie had to do was concentrate on Marchant. He had the luxury of Mick’s assistance to cut between shots. It beat having to cut for himself and lose his concentration for a microsecond.
A sixty-year-old woman with light brown bobbed hair looked out at him from an office whose window backdrop gave him a tantalizing glimpse of Leeds. He could see Earth any time on the BBChan feed, but this was…live. A city he knew from its skyline, still recognizable nearly eighty years after he’d last seen it.
“Thirty seconds, more or less,” said Mick.
“Hi. Can I call you Eddie? I’m Helen.”
“Helen,” Eddie oozed, camaraderie on automatic. He liked formality better. “Thank you for your time. Are you okay to talk FTU?”
A breath. “Yes. I might as well get used to it, eh? If I’m elected it’s going to become routine. I must say it’s remarkably exciting to talk to someone who’s really on another planet”
Eddie saw Mick put his hand to mouth to suppress laughter as he killed the ’Desk sound for a second.
“It’s…er…been routine for me for a long time,” said Eddie. “Seems like all my working life, in fact.”
Mick cut in. “Okay, I give up, roll when ready.”
Nearly three seconds uplink…nearly three seconds downlink.
Eddie switched on his other voice, the one that wasn’t him, the one that Ade called his posh-arse voice.
“Helen,” he said. “You’ve been in cryo-suspension for more than sixty years. Did you expect to wake up to a world that had learned its lessons on environmental management?”
“I’d hoped,” she said. “But I wasn’t surprised to find it hadn’t. Disappointed—yes. Motivated—very much so.”
So much for the golly-gosh excited novice; she was rent-a-soundbite. It’s live, doll, you don’t have to worry about sneaky edits. He hadn’t seen her manifesto.
“So what do you now regard as your priority? You’re fielding candidates in every North European constituency next year, none of them with any experience above municipal level. Even if you get the votes, how can you form a credible government?”
He was aware of Mick staring pointedly at him, signaling ten minutes and mouthing been there, asked that, get on with it.
“With credible policies and targets that we’re serious about,” said Marchant. “Clear vision doesn’t require experience. We’ve seen what experience gets us. More of the same. We don’t need more of the same.”
Yes, yes, yes. Tether the goat and watch her go for it. Eddie loaded mentally: a high-velocity round marked Op Green Rage. “You’re committed to unorthodoxy in governance, then. You think the electorate will risk radical change in a volatile world?”
“I think they will, if they focus on inevitability in their own lifetimes, and certainly in their children’s.”
“Climate change didn’t focus us in our day, though did it? We’re from the same era, the 2290s. It was never going to happen to us either. Or the generations before. We ignored it every time.”
“I don’t mean climate change. I mean the Eqbas Vorhi, and they’ll be here in a few decades. In our lifetimes. That requires radical changes in political thinking, because they won’t accept our pitiful excuses for mismanaging this world. They’re our second chance, one we won’t deserve if we don’t resolve to do things differently. I’ve been talking to the Eqbas. Like it or not, they decide our future, and European government simply doesn’t have anyone credible in dialogue with them.”
Bitch. I live with the wess’har. Don’t lecture me on wess’har. Shit, she’s using Esganikan as an election platform, and she’s sidestepped my sodding goat.
He moved the goat into her path again. She had to take it this time. “Are you willing to prosecute FEU politicians and members of the security services who were responsible for the decision to bomb Ouzhari?”
“If elected, yes.”
“You would pursue a war-crimes case against them?”
“Yes. I’ve promised that to the Eqbas. That was their original reason for coming to Earth, and the FEU has to acknowledge its actions on Bezer’ej.”
“So…you see your role as mediator, a special pleader with the Eqbas to spare Europe. What gives you the edge with them?”
“They recognize our commitment to the planet. It’s really not that hard, but I agree it is different.”
Click. Eddie sighted up and the cross wires rested between her eyes. “I’ve just watched Eqbas forces annihilate an entire country of two hundred million people in a matter of days, with gene-targeted biological weapons and a few thousand ground troops—jus
t to embark on an environmental restructuring program.” Shame about the FTU: he had such stunning footage of the rout of the Maritime Fringe armored division that Mick could have dropped in. Maybe a second package was called for. “Now, can you do business with a culture like that? Do you feel you can understand a mindset that alien?”
She never even blinked. “Somebody has to try.”
“Are the Eqbas aware of your previous career? Do you think there’s some common ground there?”
Marchant paused longer than the ITX delay. “That I was a computer technician?”
“You were head of IT at LifeInd, I believe. Life sciences research, gen-eng, genome rights protection, all kinds of things that the Eqbas find repellent. I must ask you again if they’re aware of this.”
Eddie hadn’t had the time to check what she was claiming in her biographical notes, let alone what she’d told Esganikan. She’d probably told her the truth.
“It was precisely my background in that company that finally made me a committed environmentalist,” she said.
Good recovery, but not good enough. “Were you investigated at any time for membership of an illegal organization, arson, murder, and conspiracy to cause explosions? An eco-terrorist group that was the subject of a police antiterror operation called Green Rage?”
“No, I was not.” No indignant outrage: she actually looked baffled. And she wasn’t lying, of course: Shan had seen to it that she never got charged. “But I did know officers involved in it, because LifeInd was targeted.”
Okay, muddy the waters—good tactic. Eddie dithered over a question that he would have posed in a heartbeat. Was it going to serve any purpose? He didn’t know. He asked it anyway. She’d been a terrorist, and voters needed to know who they were dealing with.
“Miss Marchant,” said Eddie. He didn’t have detail, but he could fish. “Have you ever carried out acts of terrorism? Arson, assault, murder, intimidation? That weren’t investigated?”
Helen Marchant was every bit as frozen as a wess’har caught in an alarm reaction. He wondered if she had even heard the question, because she didn’t look fazed at all.
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