by Patty Jansen
It did.
We entered an old-fashioned kitchen with a wood fire stove. Around a rustic wooden table sat at least ten people, all of them Coldi and dressed in silver temperature retaining suits, wearing armour and carrying weapons on both arms as well as their waist belt. Inner Circle guards.
In the middle of the table stood a whole bunch of food containers and wrappers such as the Exchange kitchens used. A couple of old frying pans on the stove indicated that they had been heating up the meals, and the air smelled of mushrooms.
Great.
Red-coded food. Would there be anything I could eat?
A couple of the guards rose to make room for us at the table.
It was probably planned like this, but I ended up across the table from the only person in the room who did not wear a uniform. He had been sitting with his back to the door and talking to others when we came in, but now he studied me with an intense look.
For such a dusty and rural location, he was exceptionally well-groomed. He looked clean and fresh. His dark, security-guard type of clothing was remarkably free of smudges or wear. Not someone, I guessed, who regularly wore this type of attire, because, I made a further guess, he usually wore a uniform. He wore his hair, Coldi-style, pulled back from his face and tied into a tight ponytail at the back of his head.
Thayu and Nicha went around the table to greet him in the traditional subservient way: with their arms by their side and head bent. He touched both of them on the shoulder. There was a certain fondness in that gesture that made me think I knew who this was.
To me, he said, “Delegate, I see you come well prepared.”
Well prepared? What for? Did he mean Thayu and Nicha? Did he mean because I had Coldi people with me?
Coldi didn’t do introductions. You were meant to know the identities of the people you met, especially when they were highly ranked. With his Inner Circle guards, he would be very highly ranked. Unless I was mistaken, this was Asha Domiri, admiral of some part of the Asto army. He was also Thayu and Nicha’s father. If I was correct. I hadn’t seen him for a long time, and had only ever seen him from a distance or on a screen.
He turned around and asked the guards, “Do bring the Delegate’s food.”
One of the guards, a man with broad and muscular shoulders, brought a parcel on a plate. Thayu and Nicha were already at the table and eating.
For a while, the talk was all about the journey. A few of the guards appeared to be familiar with Amarru’s “field stations”. Amarru asked if there was anything wrong with them, and some jokes were being thrown across the table about heating and the quality of the beds.
I unwrapped the thin paper of my meal parcel. Inside I found one cardboard container with rice and another with some kind of sauce that contained little round things that looked like meatballs, but were probably a vegetarian thing. Not only did Coldi not eat the meat of higher animals, they thought it was dirty to cook it, too. The food was all right, if not really the right kind for breakfast, but it wasn’t as if I cared.
In the middle of that chatter the man across the table met my eyes squarely. “I understand that you’re the man who is signing a contract with my daughter.”
Asha Domiri indeed.
“I am indeed.” The man was technically my father-in-law, but Coldi didn’t care much for such things, since their partnership contracts were usually for short periods only. “You will be welcome at the official ceremony in Barresh.” We’d already had a partnership ceremony for my family in Auckland.
“Why?” He gave me a bemused look.
“Because I like her.”
“But you can sleep with her all you want and don’t need a contract for that. It’s not like you need to have a contract with her to get an heir.” Trust Coldi to be blunt.
Business talk tended to be off-limits during meals, but deeply personal talk was not. I’d run into this several times.
“We simply like each other,” I said.
“What about Taysha?” The man who had already arranged a contract with Thayu for a second child.
A couple of the guards had stopped their conversations and were looking at me.
“I’m going to buy him out.”
Asha took in an audible breath. “Do you know what you’re letting yourself in for?”
“I think so.”
“All just because you like her?”
“Yes.” Also because I didn’t want her to lose her last opportunity to have a child in a relationship where the child would be living with her.
“Well.” He shrugged and eyed his daughter. She returned his stare. “Well,” he said again. “It’s your choice.”
Clearly, he thought we were nuts.
By now most people had finished eating. A couple of the guards got up and left the kitchen through a door that led into a dark hallway. Amarru had also disappeared. I’d felt so flustered with the deeply personal questions that I hadn’t even noticed her leave. Thayu and Nicha had ended up at the far ends of the table, and it was clear that they were here only as observers.
Asha set his cup down with a kind of finality that made it clear that the time for banter was over.
“This building site is a problem,” he said. “It’s a problem for you, and a problem for us.”
I nodded. “Amarru explained.”
“No, I don’t think she has explained everything. I’m giving you some information that no one else has, not even Amarru. It’s not a simple problem.”
“I never thought it would be.”
He pulled out a reader, turned it on and brought a picture up on the screen. “This is Robert Kray.”
He turned the screen to face me.
The grainy image showed a man looking to be in late middle age, a photo taken at some function where he held a glass and was talking to another man. He was tall compared to the people standing next to him, and his white suit made his very dark skin stand out. He had a strangely flat forehead from which his nose jutted out at the same angle. He wore sunglasses, but they did not hide his heavy brow.
He was dark enough to pass as a full-blood African, but his nose was narrow and flat, not broad. His hair was curled in ringlets, not in an African frizz. He’d died it black, but I was guessing its natural colour would be bronze, and the sunglasses would hide moss-green eyes.
Robert Kray was Indrahui.
And that opened a whole host of nasty possibilities. Not only was Indrahui the most violent, war-torn of worlds, it also wasn’t a full gamra member for this reason.
“That is . . . interesting.” Were I not faced with this man I needed to impress, I might have said a few choice words. At the gamra assembly we had countless problems with the never-ending civil war at Indrahui.
“Interesting would not be my preferred word choice. This has potential to become a full-fledged crisis. I guess you don’t recognise him from the picture, but this man is Romi Tanaqan, one of the most wanted criminals of all the settled worlds.”
I had heard that name before. “Isn’t that the guy who was caught smuggling weapons into Indrahui?”
“Caught, but never convicted. Smuggling small arms, smuggling large arms, recruiting children, recruiting off-world, the list goes on. The scale of the business was astonishing. The rebel stronghold at Deverra collapsed when he could no longer supply them. This man was responsible for keeping that entire region on a war footing. He supplied to both sides of the conflict. Thousands died. He managed to give everyone the slip before we got to the stage of bringing him to court. Now he’s trying the same thing here, with a different supply source. Different conflicts. This situation is absolutely unacceptable. At the gamra assembly, Asto was blamed for ‘allowing’ him to escape, because they said that w
e would be afraid that an investigation into his dealings would uncover things about the Outer Circle and the zeyshi desert pirates that we wouldn’t want to be widely known.” He snorted. “As if there is any story from the Outer Circle that hasn’t been turned over three times already. We absolutely need to stop this, because, much as Asto is not supposed to interfere with this world, you will see that we will be the first to receive the blame if it gets out that a major criminal offworld figure has taken up residence. Mr Kray—Romi Tanaqan—is a warlord of the worst order. If we give him no resistance, he’ll work himself into a situation where far too many people are dependent on him and will support him either through dependence or fear. What is worse, there are no laws that allow us to take him to court, either locally or through gamra. He does not hold gamra citizenship. This is not a gamra world.”
“Then what do you want me to do?” This was much bigger than anything I could handle.
“We’re in the early stages of handling this crisis. We need information. I’m told that you are one of the few people who can freely travel in the region without arousing much suspicion.”
“I am?” Have you seen what Africans look like?
“Amarru has a cover identity for you that would explain your presence in the area.”
“This man will have scores of people on the lookout for visitors. I kind of . . . stick out.”
“Yes, but the cover is good. Sticking out is not bad. It stops you being killed easily.”
Gee, thanks.
“We need information about his activities. If you need to find out about a person, it’s no good trying to stay hidden from him, because in the desert, there is nowhere to hide.” Another proverb that was chillingly apt. “Because if you have to stay hidden, you will never get close. Better to walk up to him and start asking him questions that are so innocent that he would never think that you were dishonest about asking them. In the process, you can see if you can find anything that we can pin on him. If not, where to hit him hardest.”
I restrained a gasp. “You’re not going to take . . . military action, are you?”
“Of course not.” His voice was dry, almost bemused. “We have a treaty and all that.”
Why didn’t I believe him for one moment? Oh boy, the sweat was running down my back under my shirt.
“Gather information. Take your assistants. Look around. Report back.”
“If we’re undercover, we won’t be able to take much equipment.” Hell, I was never too fussed about the gun, but I wanted to take it if I went to a place like that.
“True, but I have something that will help you.” He dug in the pocket of his jacket and put a feeder on the table. Since it was not attached to someone’s skin, the thing looking like a daddy longlegs was inert. The legs activated through body heat.
“I already use one,” I said.
“Yes, but this one is different. Try it.”
I moved to take my regular feeder out of my hair, but he said, “You wear both.”
“Is that all right?” Ezhya was said to have three, but that would kill a mere mortal by freezing up the vital brain functions.
“I have two in addition to this one.”
But he would also be one of those exceptional Coldi with very high brain functionality.
He kept looking at me, and I figured that for a short period it probably wouldn’t do any harm, and if it did, Thayu was there to remove the thing; so I put the second device in my hair, where it sought out my skin. After the characteristic burst of heat, my vision blurred. I was about to say something about it when I realised that I was looking at a satellite image of the Earth as evidenced by the curve of the horizon. I was seeing part of the Atlantic Ocean and South America probably from about a thousand kilometres above the surface. The land was about to go into night, but I could see the outlines of the continent through a rim of city lights. Also, the dusky landscape underneath me moved, very slowly, but it did. “What’s this?”
“A live feed, from our ship. It bypasses the Exchange, so you don’t need to book a slot in advance. We’ll come a bit closer once you’re in position. You can see exactly what happens at the surface.”
From a military ship? Out there in orbit? Spying on Earth? And no one knew about it? It really shouldn’t surprise me, but surely Nations of Earth would know that this ship was this close? Surely?
“I’ll return up there to monitor the feed. We can zoom in quite a bit. Once we know where to look, we can even read people’s tags. You tell us what you want to see and we give you the image and then you can ask further. We can also deliver precise fire that targets exactly the building or person you want to hit.”
Hell, no! “I think it would be better if, when we discover illegal activities, we let Nations of Earth or a local government deal with it.”
“If the dealing is sufficient.” His eyebrows flicked up.
“It will be. Arms smuggling carries long jail terms in all countries.”
He gave me a look with the typical Coldi dead fish expression. Clearly he didn’t think that sort of dealing was anywhere near sufficient. He wasn’t even thinking writs and retaliatory action stemming from them. That was civilian law on Asto. He was thinking . . . however the Asto military dealt with problems. I had a feeling I didn’t want to know.
I was grasping at straws. “Asto or its representatives,” like, the armed forces, “should not get involved in this. That will make a bad situation worse.” Especially if they shot at settlements of Earth from a giant military ship in orbit.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
He still stared at me, and gave me a tiny nod. He repeated, “There is an exclusion zone, and a treaty. We won’t violate either. If the dealing is sufficient.”
And that was all the promise I was going to get. I would certainly mention my concerns about this ship’s presence so close to Earth to Amarru, but I had no illusion that either she could tell him to go away—he’d be much higher up in the Asto pecking order than she was—or that, in case someone else told him to go away, he would actually do it. And I didn’t really know how close those ships had ventured before. There was a minimum distance of five hundred kilometres—which was the distance that the Exchange core relay orbited at—but as far as I knew, Asto had not officially recognised that unilateral demarcation. I had a feeling they just laughed at it.
Asha Domiri got up from the table. “Keep the feeder on you when we take you there tonight. Have a look around. Report what you see. You’ll be hearing from me soon. Oh, and one more thing: don’t tell anyone that you know who Mr Kray is.”
“Not even Amarru?”
“Not even her. Even if she knows already—and she may—it’s best not mentioned again. One never knows who is listening.”
“I understand.”
“Then I’ll leave you to it.”
And then he was gone, without even saying goodbye to his children.
Well, crap. If she’d asked, I would have asked Amarru for a few people to accompany us with special security clearance so that they could keep track of where we were and whether any danger was approaching. I hadn’t asked for a full-scale nanny with a whopping great big gun.
A voice at the door said, “Are you free now?”
I said that I was, and Amarru came in, followed by two achingly familiar faces: my trusted guards Evi and Telaris.
I greeted them. “Mashara.”
“Delegate.”
I didn’t ask them how they had gotten here when they were supposed to have been in Barresh, and who had told them that they needed to return here and why, but they looked just as relieved to see me as I felt to see them.
CHAPTER 9
* * *
THE CRAFT I’D SEEN in the shed, of course
, was Asha Domiri’s, and he was bold enough to leave during the daytime. Even the regular Exchange wasn’t in operation then, because the entry point to the anpar lines lay just outside the atmosphere, and the intense vortices of energy that the Exchange core produced when it connected to the anpar network interfered with regular air traffic.
Also, Nations of Earth tolerated the Exchange under the condition that they knew who came in. This craft in the shed violated all the rules, which clearly didn’t apply to people high up in the hierarchy. Then again, he’d only be going up into orbit and wouldn’t be using the Exchange. Even that gave me the chills. Just where was this home ship of his and why, with all the monitoring of the sky, had no one on the ground noticed it?
We watched the shuttle leave while standing in front of the kitchen window. It was a plain Asto-produced model, without markings of ownership. Apparently this was typical of the Asto army. They wore no uniforms and did not advertise their presence.
One of the guards piloted the craft and it glided over the vineyards in plain daylight until without notice, it disappeared from view. The pilot had turned on the current that ran through the craft’s surface that rendered it virtually invisible.
As I looked up where I thought it would be, I wondered: should I tell someone at Nations of Earth that some sort of huge war ship was hanging around in orbit?
That was another uncomfortable thought. I could just about imagine the furore in the assembly if that bit of information made it into the hands of the media. And the fact that I had a direct link to it made me a traitor, no matter how many times I had to tell them, Look, people, we’re on the same side!
Then again, that ship or ships might have been there for a long time. Someone, somewhere would already know about it. Observing was not the same as fighting. I’d never seen any evidence that Asto’s military was trigger-happy.
And rest assured, if I had anything to do with it, the dealing with these warlords would be sufficient.
Since we were not going to leave until dark, Amarru told us to get some rest. My reader beeped. Before I could look at it, she said, “Your documentation for this project has now been made accessible for you.”
