by Paul McAuley
Trailed by two different security detachments, his own and Opeyemi’s, Tony walked through the crowds towards the club where he had arranged to meet Danilo. His heart jumped when he saw a tall slim man in a white fur coat, hair braided in cornrows, at a stall selling bolinhos de peixe, but then the man turned and Tony saw he was not his lover.
He was numb with shock. The desolation of bereavement. The hammer finally had come down. He had come straight from the Great House and a brief meeting with Ayo, who had told him that a police ship would arrive in six days to collect the wizards and the stromatolites, and that the family council had decided to sell Abalunam’s Pride. Once a suitable buyer had been found Tony would climb aboard his ship for the last time and null the keys that linked him to the bridle. Meanwhile, he would begin shadowing Felicia’s work, and in the fullness of time would take her place.
Ayo had delivered the news with brisk sympathy. She had told him that it was best to get it over with now so that he could move on. He had tried to marshal a defence, protesting that he had been given no warning that the family wanted to get rid of the ship, that it would traduce half a century of tradition, that by giving in to Opeyemi and his allies Ayo was fatally weakening her position. No use. Ayo had told him that like everyone else he must put the interests of the family first, and had ended the meeting before he could say anything more.
Now he would have to find a way of breaking the news to Danilo. Tell him that he had lost his ship and would have to return to the Great House. He could see his future unrolling along a narrow path hedged by duty and tradition. Working as an assistant to his aunt before taking over her office. His formerly unbounded life shrinking to the curtilage of the Great House and the petty politics of the family; an arranged marriage and the occasional sop of an off-world business trip. He supposed that he would be allowed to keep Danilo as a lover, but knew how that would go. An apartment in the good part of the city. Visits that he would always have to arrange in advance; the high days and holidays Danilo would spend alone; coded gossip in the news that he owed his career to his association with Tony. No, it was impossible. It would be best for both of them if Tony set him free. And it would be best to do it as soon as he could. But not quite yet. He would not be as brutal as Ayo. He would find a way of disengaging that would cause Danilo the least pain. And tonight he would mourn the loss of his ship and forget all his tomorrows by getting gloriously, roaringly drunk.
He had just glimpsed the sign of the club above the heads of the crowd when Junot Johnson called.
‘Something’s come up,’ the sidesman said.
‘What have they done now?’
‘Not the wizards,’ Junot said, with a bluntness that meant he was seriously worried. ‘The police stationed here got a heads-up from their commander. A problem raised by traffic control. It looks like an intrusion. I had one of them give me a copy. Here.’
Tony opened a window: an image of white streaks across black sky, radiating from a single point. It reminded him of the diagram several of the wizards had begun to draw after they’d been infected with the eidolon. He had caught himself sketching it in the condensation on the glass mirror of the shared bathroom yesterday. He had tried to persuade himself that it was autosuggestion, but it had left him feeling unsettled for the rest of the day.
He said, ‘What am I looking at?’
‘Contrails,’ Junot said.
Tony stopped dead, scarcely noticing the passer-by who bumped into him.
He said, ‘Incoming ships? How many? When?’
‘Sixteen of them, about twenty-five minutes ago,’ Junot said. ‘They’re small. About the size of escape pods. Traffic control is looking for the ship that dropped them. The thinking is it snuck through the mirror after the freighter that touched down yesterday.’
‘Have they been tracked all the way down?’
‘Not quite. There’s a ninety-five per cent probability they landed here,’ Junot said, and sent a map.
The ellipse occupied a sizeable portion of the foothills. Its nearest edge was some eighty kilometres west of the city.
Tony said, ‘That’s if they didn’t adjust their course as they came in.’
‘Escape pods can’t do that. They fall, they don’t fly.’
‘If they are escape pods. What are the police doing?’
‘They’re locking down the lab.’
‘I mean about the pods,’ Tony said.
‘I think they’re sending people to investigate.’
‘Find out. And round up the wizards, find a place of safety. You could use one of the cold stores. Switch off the refrigeration and lock them in.’
‘At once, Master Tony. Would you be thinking these are friends of the G-class that gave us trouble?’
‘That’s what I’m going to find out,’ Tony said, and saw a commotion in the crowd and told Junot he would call back directly.
People were pressing back from a face-off between his security people and Opeyemi’s men. Both sides had drawn their weapons and were shouting at each other; then his people collapsed, all at once. Tony saw glints flickering in the black air above the crowd – drones – and turned and plunged through the crowds towards the club.
Danilo was sitting in a booth at the back with several of his friends. He jumped up when he saw Tony, a hand rising to his mouth. Tony was breathless and trembling. He pulled his lover close and said in his ear, ‘We have to leave. At once.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘The sky just fell in,’ Tony said, and the trio on the stage suddenly stopped playing and someone screamed.
He turned to face Opeyemi’s men as they barged through the tables. Their leader told him that he had to come with them now.
‘I’m bringing my friend,’ Tony said.
He was holding Danilo’s hand; Danilo was holding his.
The man, a sturdy ruffian with the badge of the family’s security service pinned to the collar of his black leather coat, did not so much as glance at the singer. ‘My orders are to bring you, sir. No one else.’
‘Either both of us go, or I stay here.’
Something floated down. A fist-sized drone floating under triple rotors, its sighting laser glittering blood-red in Tony’s eyes.
The man said, ‘You can walk out or we can carry you out.’
‘You will regret this,’ Tony said.
‘Yes, sir. But right now I have to take you to the Great House.’
‘I want you to assign one of your people to look after my friend. Do that, and I will forget about this unpleasantness.’
‘All right,’ the man said. ‘Alice, you take care of the kid.’
‘Thank you,’ Tony said, and turned to Danilo, told him he had to go. ‘I won’t be long.’
Danilo looked at the security man. ‘If you are arresting Mr Okoye, you can arrest me too.’
‘It isn’t like that,’ Tony said. ‘It’s family business. I want you to go to the apartment. I want you to wait there, with Alice. I will come find you as soon as I can.’
‘Are you in trouble?’
‘No more trouble than anyone else. Will you do as I ask?’
‘Family business?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Damn them. And you.’
‘Absolutely. But I want you to do that one thing for me.’
‘The apartment. Wait there until you find me.’
‘Don’t leave until I do. Alice will look after you.’
‘I can look after myself.’
‘This is just in case.’
‘Tell me that you aren’t about to do something stupid,’ Danilo said.
‘I will come back as soon as I can,’ Tony said, and kissed him.
Police drones hung above the crowded street, blue lights strobing across the canvas roofs of stalls. A stentorian voice was telling people to disperse. A spinner dropped out of the black air and the security people hustled Tony aboard. Pinned between two of them, he called Junot and got no reply. Aunty Jael: no
reply. Cho Wing-James: no reply.
The spinner was descending towards the Great House. The towers and snow-covered gardens inside the triangle of the great granite walls, the church at its prow gleaming white as snow in banks of spotlights. Then the spotlights went out; lights went out across the city. In the sudden darkness, Tony saw a distant flicker of flame. The refinery was on fire.
21. Ashes
The next day, Bria still wasn’t picking up her calls.
Lisa tidied the house, even did the damn washing-up, and went out on a supply run to the Shop’n’Save. She felt kind of queasy about the supermarket after her stupid fucking lapse, but she didn’t want the people at the country store asking her where Pete was. She bought tomatoes and potatoes, oranges and grapes, gallon jugs of spring water, cereal bars and pitta bread and Graham crackers. Canned beans, canned ravioli and canned beef stew, jars of peanut butter and strawberry jelly . . . And three new smartphones. She was damn sure Nevers had bugged the one that had been returned to her when she’d been let go, and dumped it in the recycling bin.
Back at the homestead she dug out her camping stuff from the barn and carried it into the yard and beat the dust from it. The frame of her pup tent had lost its memory of the shape it was supposed to assume, and her spider-silk sleeping bag was filthy, but otherwise everything was pretty much okay. She washed the sleeping bag by hand and was pegging it out in the sunshine when Sheriff Bird’s cruiser pulled up at the gate.
They sat in the kitchen, drinking coffee. The cardboard tube containing Pete’s ashes stood on the table between them, next to the sheriff’s Stetson. It was squat and green, the tube, sealed with yellow tape printed with Property of the UN Technology Control Unit.
Lisa said, ‘Did you find out why they killed him?’
‘I understand that he had the language tweak,’ Sheriff Bird said.
‘He had about a hundred words. Mostly he preferred to bark, the dumb mutt.’
‘It seems that the tweak makes animals susceptible to memes and such,’ Sheriff Bird said. ‘Which is why, well, what happened happened.’
‘Did they bother to test Pete first?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Did they test my dog before they killed him, or was it a summary execution?’
‘They told me that it was standard procedure.’
‘And killing my hurklins, that was standard procedure too?’
‘I don’t like what they did. But Mr Nevers had a warrant and I had to let him execute it.’ Sheriff Bird’s hair was slicked back; there was a dent in his forehead where the brim of his hat had rested. He said, ‘If you want to make an official complaint, I’ll be more than happy to explain the procedure.’
‘Is there any point? Nevers wanted to intimidate me, show me he can do what he likes. And it was “standard procedure”.’
‘He neglected to inform you. That could be grounds for complaint.’
‘He neglected to inform you, too. Was it because he has trust issues with his law-enforcement colleagues, or because he didn’t care that it would cause you trouble?’
‘I don’t know that I’d call him a colleague.’ Sheriff Bird took a sip of coffee, then said, ‘That other thing you asked me about. I’m afraid I don’t have much to tell. I’m sure you know that Nevers was involved with the discovery of those two spaceships on Mangala.’
‘That’s when he first went head to head with Ada Morange,’ Lisa said. ‘When her company found and flew the first Ghajar ships.’
‘He was serving in the London police force at the time,’ Sheriff Bird said. ‘He had to take early retirement, afterwards. But he was recruited by the UN straight away, and was fast-tracked. I guess they thought his experience counted for something. He worked in the UK and Europe, was sent out to Yanos and worked there for a while. And then he came here. That was four years ago. He’s been involved in some high-profile cases, but as far as I can tell he hasn’t stepped out of line the way he did on Mangala. Or if he has, the UN and our government have kept it quiet. The only other thing I can tell you, he definitely has something going with the Jackaroo. He liaises on cases they’re interested in.’
‘Like this one.’
‘It seems so.’
‘I suppose you can’t tell me why the Jackaroo are interested in me.’
‘I doubt even Nevers knows. Those avatars like to observe, like on a ride-along. But they don’t give away much.’ Sheriff Bird took out his phone and set it on the table and turned it towards Lisa. ‘There isn’t anything else I can tell you. Officially. But you might want to think of doing a bit more digging into that spaceship thing on Mangala. May I use your bathroom?’
As soon as he was gone, Lisa leaned forward to check the phone’s screen. A phone number and a name she recognised from her research into Nevers’s background. Chloe Millar. One of the people who had been involved in ‘that spaceship thing’. She had been helping the kid infected with the Ghajar eidolon, and Nevers had followed them to Mangala, where the whole thing had gone down. From the phone number’s code, it seemed that she was still there.
When Sheriff Bird returned, Lisa thanked him, said that she hoped this wouldn’t get him into trouble.
Sheriff Bird said that it wasn’t something he was going to lose sleep over. ‘The thing is? When I volunteered to bring you your dog’s ashes, wasn’t a person I talked to at the TCU thought it was necessary.’
22. ‘I just need your head.’
Tony found Ayo in the operations room under the Black Tower. It hadn’t been used since the food riots during the blockade, the air smelled faintly of mould and furniture was stacked along one wall and covered with drop cloths, but it was bustling with edgy purpose now. Aides, clerks and security flacks coming and going, studying windows, talking to each other or to the air. Tony saw images of flames roaring amongst the refinery’s pipework towers and a rolling gout of flame and black smoke as a tank ruptured, aerial views of city streets, infrared views of random patches of countryside, live maps, streams of data. Opeyemi and Julia were in conference with the house’s master at arms; Ayo was talking with her secretary and the city’s chief of police.
Tony darted in when the chief of police left, flung out his arms and said, ‘Ayo. Sister. This is all my fault.’
‘Not now, Tony,’ Ayo said, and started to turn away.
Tony got in her face. ‘The claim jumpers want the stromatolites. Or the wizards. Or both. They failed to seize them at the slime planet, and now they’re here.’
Ayo looked at him. ‘If you know anything that could be useful, tell me now. All of it.’
‘The claim jumpers came after the stromatolites on the slime planet, but I escaped with a few specimens and destroyed the rest. Then one of the wizards was feeding them information about our research, but we shut that down. And now the Commons police are about to take the wizards into custody, and the claim jumpers have come to snatch them.’
Ayo said, ‘If they came for the wizards, they missed their target by almost a hundred kilometres.’
‘Traffic control couldn’t track those pods all the way down. Some may have landed in the foothills to draw us away, but the rest landed closeby. They took out the refinery, and I think that they also raided Aunty Jael’s laboratory. If you don’t believe me, try calling Aunty Jael. She isn’t answering. Neither is my man, nor the wizards’ leader. If you don’t have any assets there, you should send some right now.’
‘The police are guarding it,’ Ayo said, but told her secretary to call Aunty Jael.
After a moment, the man said, ‘She is not picking up, ma’am. There seems to be a problem with the local network.’
‘Find out if the police know anything,’ Ayo said.
The secretary nodded and turned away.
Tony said, ‘Now would be a good time to give me back my ship. It has survey drones. They can reach the facility in a couple of minutes.’
‘We already have plenty of drones.’
‘They won’t be much use whe
n the claim jumpers head up and out. But I can give chase—’
‘Not another word about your ship,’ Ayo said. ‘This isn’t the time.’
Her secretary said that the police guards at the laboratory had reported that nothing was amiss.
‘You see?’ Ayo told Tony. ‘Everything is fine.’
‘The last I knew, there were only two guards.’
Ayo looked at her secretary. ‘Have the police sent any additional support?’
‘I have been told that all available personnel are either searching for the fallen escape pods or guarding the clinic, ma’am. The police believe that this may be an attempt to kidnap some of the patients. Many of them are children of important and powerful people.’
‘If the police are protecting them,’ Tony said, ‘no one is protecting the wizards or Aunty Jael.’
‘Send some people over there, just in case,’ Ayo told her secretary. ‘A single squad will suffice.’
‘I want to go with them,’ Tony said.
‘Everything is under control,’ Ayo said.
‘The wizards are my responsibility,’ Tony said. ‘If you won’t let me use my ship, I should ride with that squad. And if I cannot ride with them, I will find my own way there.’
Ayo studied him for a moment. ‘Tell me this isn’t about getting your ship back.’
‘Absolutely not,’ Tony said, hoping she would not catch the lie.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Go. But as an observer. You will do everything the squad commander tells you to do. If she tells you to stay in the flitter, you will stay in the flitter.’
‘Thank you, sister. I won’t let you down.’
‘Get upstairs. I will order them to pick you up from the plaza.’
Tony heard the flitter coming in to land as he hurried out of the Black Tower’s entrance. Its skids kissed the marble slabs of the plaza and he ran through the prop wash and climbed the steep ramp into its belly, fell into one of the bucket seats as the craft leapt into the air with a roar of turboprops, almost fell out of the seat as it made a steep turn.
