Stories From The Quiet War

by Paul McAuley

  The barricade was in one of the service sectors near the perimeter of the dome, with diamond panes arching just above the rooftops of the offices and warehouses. It commanded a good view of a wide traffic circle, and on Bassi's orders men and women were cutting down stands of slim aspens to improve the fire lanes. Bassi was working with them, getting up a good sweat, when the tremor passed underneath. One of his young aides came running up, waving a TV strip like a handkerchief.

  "They got the lasers," she said breathlessly. She was fifteen or sixteen, almost twice Bassi's height, and trembled like a racehorse at the off. Like everyone else, she was wearing a pressure suit. The bowl of its helmet was hooked to her utility belt.

  "We expected that," Bassi said, staring up at her. He had shaved off his beard, cut his hair to within a millimetre of his scalp. His hands, grasping the shaft of his diamond-edged axe, tingled. He said, "What else?"

  "They're down," the girl said, "and coming along both ends of the ridge."

  "Any message from their command ship?"

  "No sir."

  "And we won't send one. Get back to headquarters. Tell them I'll be back in twenty minutes."

  "Sir, shouldn't you —"

  Bassi lifted the axe. "I've a job to finish here. Go!"

  They were mostly old men and women on that barricade, and knew that they would be among the first to engage the invaders. Why did Bassi stay with them? Perhaps he was exhausted. He had brought the whole city to this point by sheer force of will, and perhaps he saw nothing beyond the moment when the fighting started. Perhaps he knew then that defeat was inevitable, and wanted to make a last heroic gesture rather than face the ignominy of surrender.

  In any case, he stayed. Once the aspens had been cleared, he went back with the others to the barricade. It was no more than a ridge of roadway that had been turned up by a bulldozer and topped with tangles of razor wire. They closed up the wire and started checking their weapons – machine pistols and blazers stamped out by a rejigged factory, an ungainly machine that used compressed air to fire concrete-filled cans.

  Someone had a flask of brandy and they all took a sip, even Bassi's remaining aide. The flask was going around the second time when there was a brisk series of bangs in the distance, and a wind got up, swirling foliage broken from the aspens high into the air.

  The invaders broke into the main dome of the city at nine points, breaching the basalt skirt with shaped charges, driving their transports straight through, and then spraying sealant to close the holes. At that point, they thought they could take the city without inflicting much damage.

  While some of the people at the barricade latched up their helmets and checked their weapons, others were still looking at TV strips. Bassi ripped the TVs from their hands, told them roughly to watch the street. The motor of the compressor gun started up with a tremendous roar and at the same moment sleek shining man-sized machines appeared on the far side of the traffic circle.

  The killing things moved very quickly. It is doubtful that anyone got off a shot before the machines had crossed the traffic circle and leaped the razor wire. Bassi's aide ran, and a killing thing was on him in two strides, slicing and jabbing, throwing the corpse aside. The others were dispatched with the same quick ruthlessness, and then only Bassi was left, drenched in the blood of the men and women who had died around him, his arms and legs pinned by one of the killing things.

  Once the barricade had been cleared, a squad of human troopers in sealed pressure suits came forward. Their sergeant photographed Bassi, cuffed him, and ordered one of his men to take him back for what he called a debriefing. Bassi knew then that he had been selected by chance, not because he had been recognised; shaving off his trademark beard had saved him. He smiled and spat on the sergeant's visor. The squad and the killing things moved on; the trooper marched Bassi at gunpoint across the traffic circle towards the command post at the breached perimeter.

  No one knows how Bassi got free, only that he was captured at a barricade in the first minutes of fighting and then escaped. Certainly, he never reached the command post. Perhaps the trooper was killed by one of the snipers which infested the city, or perhaps Bassi got free on his own; after all, he was a very resourceful man. In any case, it is known that he reached the Bourse two hours after the barricade fell, because he made a brief, defiant television transmission there.

  I have watched this speech many times. It is the last sighting of him. He was wounded when he escaped, and the wound had been patched but the bullet was still inside him; he must have felt it, and felt the blood heavy and loose inside his belly as he spoke, but he showed no sign that he was in pain. He spoke for five minutes. He spoke clearly and defiantly, but it was a poor, rambling speech, full of allusions to freedom and idealism and martyrdom, and his steady gaze had a crazed, glittering quality.

  By then, most of the outlying tents and domes of the city had been captured by the invaders; even Bassi's headquarters had been taken. The citizens of Paris had fallen back to the central part of the main dome. Most of the barricades had been overrun by killing things. Thousands of citizens lay dead at their posts, while the invaders had incurred only half a dozen casualties, mostly from snipers. The battle for Paris was clearly over, but still its citizens fought on.

  "I warn the commander of the invaders," Marisa Bassi said, "that we will fight to the end. We will not let you take what we have built with our sweat and our blood. Paris will die, but Paris lives on. The war is not over."

  A few minutes later, the main buildings of the city were set on fire, filling the dome with smoke. A few minutes after that, the commander of the invasion force gave the order to breach the integrity of the main dome.

  By then, no doubt, Bassi was already at one of the last barricades, armed with the carbine he had taken from the dead trooper, his pressure suit sealed. A great wind sucked fire and smoke from the burning, broken wedding cake of the Bourse; smoke rushed along the ground in great billows that thinned and vanished, leaving the eerie clarity and silence of vacuum. And then a shout over the radio, doubling and redoubling. Killing things were running swiftly across the wide lawns towards the last barricades, puffs of earth jumping around them as people started to fire.

  Bassi drew himself up to face his enemy, no longer the leader of the free government of Paris, his fate no more significant now than any of the last of its citizens. He thought that he was only moments from death. He was wrong.

  9.

  Demi Lacombe had stapled a nylon rope to a basalt outcrop at the edge of the mossy, emerald-green meadow; its blue thread fell away to the trough of black water a hundred metres below. Dev Veeder squatted on his heels and ran a gloved finger around the knot doubled around the eye of the staple, then looked up at me and said, "I could loosen this so that she would fall as she climbed back up. Do you think the fall would kill her?"

  "I think not. Not in this low gravity."

  He stood. "No. I don't think so either. Well, she'll be here soon. We'd better keep out of sight."

  I dabbed sweat from my brow with the cuff of my shirt. I had been marched quickly through the parkland by Veeder's squad of troopers, as if I had been under arrest, with no chance until now of talking with him, of trying to change his mind. I said, "Are you enjoying yourself, Colonel?"

  "You want revenge too. Don't deny it. She used us both, Graves."

  "This seems so . . . melodramatic."

  "History is made with bold gestures. I want her arrested in the act of returning through a passageway which presents a clear and present danger to the security of the diplomatic community. I want you to be a witness."

  "No bold gesture can be based on so petty a motive as revenge."

  Dev Veeder moved closer to me, so close that when he spoke a spray of saliva fell on my cheek. "We're in this together, Graves. Don't pretend that you're just an observer like that thing, DeHon. Be a man. Face up to the consequences of your actions."

  "She was only trying to do her work, Colonel. Yo
ur crazy jealousy got in the way —"

  "We are both jealous men, Graves. But at least I did not betray her."

  Veeder shoved me away from him then, and I went sprawling on the soft, wet moss. By the time I had regained my feet, he was on the other side of the little meadow, showing the four troopers where to take cover. As they concealed themselves amongst the exuberant rose briars, the sergeant of the squad took me by the arm and pulled me into the shade of the ferns that cascaded down the basalt cliff.

  It was hot and close inside the curtain of fern fronds. Sweat dripped from my nose, my chin, ran down my chest inside my shirt. Tiny black flies danced about my face with dumb persistence. In the meadow, huge, sulphur-yellow butterflies circled each other above the bright green moss, their hand-sized wings flapping once a minute. The sergeant, a muscular, dark-eyed woman, hummed softly to herself, watching the screen she had spread on her knee. It showed a view of the lake below the meadow, transmitted from one of the tiny cameras the troopers had spiked here and there. Time passed. At last, the sergeant nudged me and pointed.

  Centred in the screen, Demi Lacombe's silvery figure suddenly stood up, waist-deep, in black water. She stripped off her airmask and hooked it to her belt, waded to the gravelly shore and grasped the rope and swarmed up it, moving so quickly, hand over hand, that it seemed she was swimming through the air.

  I looked up from the screen as she pulled herself over the edge of the meadow and rolled onto the vivid green moss. As she got to her feet, Dev Veeder stepped out of his hiding place, followed by his troopers; the sergeant shoved me roughly and I tumbled forward, landing on my hands and knees.

  Demi looked at Dev Veeder, at me. For a moment I thought she might jump into the chasm, but then Dev Veeder crossed the meadow in two bounds and caught her by the left wrist, the one she had broken soon after arriving in Paris. She turned pale, and would have dropped to her knees if Dev Veeder had not held her up.

  "All right," he growled. "All right."

  The brilliant light of the suspensor lamps hung high above dimmed. I felt a few fat rain drops on my face and hands, congealing rather than falling from the humid air.

  The pathetic fallacy made real by Demi Lacombe's implants, I thought, and Dev Veeder must have had the same idea, because he said, "Stop that, you bitch," and delivered a back-handed slap to her face while still holding on to her wrist.

  Demi's cry of pain was cut off by a roll of thunder; I think I must have shouted out then, too, for the sergeant grasped my arm and shook me and told me to shut the fuck up. Those were her words. A sheet of sickly light rippled overhead and the air darkened further as a wind got up, blowing clouds of raindrops as big as marbles. They hissed against the curtain of ferns above, and drenched me to the skin in an instant.

  Someone was standing at the edge of the rose thicket.

  It was one of the gardeners. I was sure that it was the one that Demi had summoned before – their shaven heads and blank expression effaced individuality, but he had the same stocky immigrant build and wary manner. At his side was a pair of tawny panthers; a huge bird perched on his upraised arms, its gripping claws digging rivulets of bright blood from his flesh.

  With a sudden snap, like playing cards dealt by a conjuror, the four troopers formed a half circle in front of Dev Veeder and Demi Lacombe. Their carbines were raised. The rain was very thick now, blown up and down and sideways by the gusting wind; water sheeted down the closed visors of the troopers' helmets, the slick resin of their chestplates.

  The gardener made no move, but the panthers and huge bird suddenly launched themselves across the meadow. Two wild shots turned every drop of rain blood red; the scream of air broken by their energy echoed off the ferny cliff. Dev Veeder was struggling with Demi Lacombe, a horrible, desperate waltz right at the edge of the cliff. One trooper was down, beating at the bird whose wings beat about his head; one of the panthers had bowled over two more troopers and the second took down a trooper as he fled. The trooper struggling with the bird took a step backwards, and fell from the edge of the meadow; a moment later, the bird rose up alone, wings spread wide as it rode the gust of wind that for a moment blew the rain clear of the meadow.

  The sergeant raised her carbine. I saw that she had the presence of mind to aim at the gardener, and threw myself at her legs. The shot went wild. She kicked me hard and in the light gravity her legs flew from beneath her and she sat down. I fell flat on sodden moss, and was trying to unholster my blazer, although I do not know who I would have shot at, when the sergeant hauled me half-around by one of my arms – fracturing a small bone in my wrist, I later discovered – and struck my head with the stock of her carbine.

  Then the bird fell upon her.

  10.

  I was dazed and bloodied and far from the meadow when Lavet Corso found me. I did not remember how I had gotten away from the troopers – perhaps the gardener had led me to my former guide – nor did I remember seeing Dev Veeder and Demi Lacombe fall, but their drowned bodies were found a day later, lying together on a spit of gravel at the far end of the dark little lake, like lovers at the end of a tale of doomed romance. Although, of course, they were never lovers. Of that, at least, I am certain.

  Corso told me that Demi Lacombe had been in the habit of using a pheromone-rich perfume to befuddle men from whom she wanted some favour or other.

  "A kind of hypnotic, Yagi Hakaiopulos said. It does exactly what other perfumes only claim to do. He recognised it at once, and confirmed his suspicion using the hospital's equipment. He was amused at her presumption, and rather admired her ambition."

  We were crouched under the billowing skirts of a cypress, while the gale blew itself out around us. The gardener sat on his haunches a little way off, staring out into the rainy dark.

  "Hakaiopulos wanted his gardens rebuilt," I said dully. My head and wrist ached abominably, and I felt very cold.

  Corso said, "He'll get his chance, but not here. You know, you're a lucky man. Lucky that Veeder didn't kill you when he had the chance; lucky that I don't kill you now."

  "You should get away, Mr. Corso. Go on: leave me. If Colonel Veeder finds you here —"

  I did not know then that he was dead.

  "I'm leaving Paris," Corso said. "I'm going to join my wife."

  For a moment, I thought he meant that he was going to kill himself. Perhaps he saw it in my face, because he added, "She's not dead. None of the people who left on the scow are dead."

  "It fell into Saturn."

  "The scow did, yes. But before it took its dive, it travelled most of the way around the planet within the ring system, long enough to drop off its passengers in escape pods. I can’t tell you where they went, but let’s say there are still a few ships cached here and there. Ships with enough range to escape into the outer dark beyond the Saturn System."

  "This is fantasy, Mr. Corso."

  "My wife and her friends used one of those ships. I'm going to take my daughter and a couple of other people to where another ship is hidden, and then we’ll head out. I would have gone sooner, but I had work to do here, and I couldn't justify the risk of stealing a shuttle until now."

  "You're saving Yagi Hakaiopulos."

  "Him too. We can always use a gene wizard. But there's someone else, someone more important to us than anyone else."

  I said, "It was you who painted those slogans, wasn't it? You could move freely about the city because you smell right to the killing machines. He lives. Another silly fantasy, Mr. Corso. He died with the fools he was leading."

  Corso shook his head. "After he escaped, he made his way back to the main dome and rallied the last of the barricades. We still thought then that if enough soldiers died while attempting to take Paris, we might carry the day. We were giving our lives for the city, after all, but the soldiers were dying for no more than the redemption of a loan. But you sent in killing machines, and then you blew the dome. Like most of the people at the barricades, Marisa Bassi was wearing a pressure suit, and he co
ntinued to fight until he ran out of air. In his last moments of consciousness he hid amongst the dead who lay all around him. The suit saved his life by chilling him down, but lack of oxygen had already caused brain damage. After one of the corpse details found him, he was carefully resuscitated, but his frontal lobes were badly damaged. The implants keep him functioning, and one day we'll be able to reconstruct him."

  You have to understand that although this was the most fantastic part of Corso's story, it is the part I believe without question, for I insisted on examining the gardener myself. His hands were strong and square, with blunt fingers, yes, but so are the hands of most labourers. But I also saw the wound in his side, just under his ribs, the wound he suffered when he escaped, a wound into which I could insert my smallest finger.

  Corso took me as far as the edge of the parkland, and I do not know what became of him – or of his daughter, or Yagi Hakaiopulos, or the gardener, Marisa Bassi. A shuttle was stolen during the confusion after Colonel Veeder's death, and was later found, abandoned and gutted, in an eccentric orbit that intersected the ring system.

  As for myself, I have decided not to return to Earth. There are several colonies which managed to remain neutral during the Quiet War, and I hope to find a place in one of them. The advance of my fee should be sufficient to buy citizenship. I once planned to endow a chair of history in my name, as a snub to my rivals, but using the credit to win a new life, if only for a few years, now seems a better use for it.

  I hope that they will be peaceful years. But before he left me to my grief and to my dead, Lavet Corso told me that his wife and her companions were not the only ones to have escaped into the outer dark, and his last words still give me a shiver of premonition.

  "The war's not over."

  Incomers

  Mark Griffin was convinced that there was something suspicious about the herbalist.

  "Tell me who he is, Sky. Some kind of pervert murderer, I bet."