by Karen Lord
The door opened before we reached it, revealing a sour-faced Syanrimwenil. He (can you really call a discredited nexus she?) glared at me. We had never met, strangely enough, but I figured he had heard plenty about me via his channel from Ixiaralhaneki and he’d very likely filled in the gaps with bits and pieces about my failed Year. My mother’s father’s brother was linked by kin contract to a Mwenil; they were close enough to my line to have too much information on me, distant enough to owe me no favours.
‘In and close the door,’ he said abruptly, without greeting or welcome.
The bad temper was for Ixiaralhaneki as well, not only me, so I kept my courteous, accommodating mask in place, walked in and was immediately lost in curiosity. The hall beyond rivalled the previous one for size, but it was filled with more than one exhibit in mid-assembly, or disassembly – I didn’t know which. They looked like variations on a template, and from the shape of them, the tiers of shallow recesses like strings of half-pearls, I guessed it was another kind of passenger module, but for what manner of ship I could not tell. What fascinated me was that unlike the replica on the other side of the door, this one, like a real mindship module, was being grown. Curators and caretakers tended to vats of nutrient liquid and recycling filters set on scaffolding surrounding the specimens. I thought it resembled the apparatus that kept our tower wall flora verdant and captive.
‘You don’t know what you’re looking at,’ Syanrimwenil scoffed at my interest. ‘But you’ll remember this day because in the future these will be as familiar as aerolights.’
‘This is where the majority of the credit goes, Ntenman,’ said Ixiaral. ‘This and improved duplication technology. Soon you will be able to tell your Zhinuvian tradesmen that you no longer have any need for their commodities.’
‘I look forward to that!’ I said, surprising even myself with my intensity.
‘Then perhaps you would like to help?’ Syanrimwenil suggested with a hint, just a hint, of slyness.
I opened my mouth to say yes, but then I froze, frowned and pondered. ‘My padr would have to approve. I have duties to him, as you know.’
It was the correct thing to say. Syanrimwenil looked less dyspeptic and Ixiaralhaneki appeared almost relieved.
‘Prepare a message for him,’ Ixiaral said. ‘I can have it delivered as soon as possible, and we can hope for his reply before the next long night.’
‘I do have a question,’ I said, still taking in the sight of the module and trying to discern its workings. ‘How do you send a live person via the Haneki–Mwenil transit?’
Syanrimwenil laughed in disbelief. ‘I assumed you knew. Did you not try to bribe your way through some years ago?’
‘I know it can be done, but I want to know how. Transit isn’t kind to the human brain.’
Ixiaralhaneki and Syanrimwenil looked at each other, a significant look. ‘It is not easy. Someone has to take you,’ Ixiaral said, still looking at Syanrimwenil. The expression on her face . . . there was a bad memory underneath that, and Syanrimwenil replied with a gaze full of very mixed emotions: sympathy, regret and a little defensiveness.
‘Prepare your message,’ Ixiaralhaneki repeated, shaking off the shade of the past. ‘Ask your father whether he is willing to work with us.’
‘We need allies and backers,’ Syanrimwenil added. ‘We are stretched beyond our resources.’
The admission scared me, and it brought me to the question which, for all my speculating, I had not wanted to ask. ‘Who is all this for? Is it the Academes, or something greater?’
Another look passed between them.
‘Let us hear from your father first,’ said Ixiaralhaneki.
I nodded, accepting that the conversation was over, and went back to my quarters at my own Academe to figure out how to explain this to my padr.
*
Rafi fell slowly.
He was falling along the Wall in the recreational section of Academe Maenevastraya. The old Wallrunners and coaches kept shifting the levels, never satisfied with the standard gravitational topography of a League Wall, and the constant unfamiliarity made boobies of even the most seasoned players. At least the pilots kept the edges standardised as a safety net. But Rafi liked it. It was play by instinct rather than rote, and even if he did not learn the standard runs in this way, he did learn how to adapt and react quickly. He often wished he could run that Wall always and drop the harsh and increasingly unfriendly training under Baranngaithe, but he knew that was impossible.
Old players tended to think like coaches, coordinating team plays rather than indulging in personal gimmickry. Pilots, interestingly enough, were similarly collective, moving in mutual awareness and mimicry like birds, or fish, or a fleet of ships in silent communication. That was why, even though he was falling, and even though this small and not-very-perilous wall had no bodycatcher, he did not feel worried.
‘There you go!’ A strong grip caught him by the ankle and swung him out of the light grav-field to crash into a ledge with four times the pull.
‘Thanks, Oestengeryok,’ Rafi croaked.
The stringy, bald man, once a slinger in his pro-running days, waved cheerily as he leapt past. On this Wall, falls were never at dangerous speeds, and there was always someone willing to catch you.
Teruyai, a Sadiri pilot, stopped for a moment on the ledge. ‘You’re getting shaky, Rafidelarua. When last did you eat?’ she teased him. ‘Come, Oesten! Gather up your team and let us go to the dining hall before the boy faints.’
Rafi smiled at her. Beyond the covered hair and hands typical of pilots, she looked just a little bit like Freyda, enough to make him pleasantly homesick, and she always had a joke and a kind word for him. He remembered asking her once whether she had been to Cygnus Beta. Her answer had been instant and strongly in the negative.
‘I preferred the Ntshune–Punartam routes,’ she replied. ‘That’s what saved my life back then, and that’s what saves my sanity now.’
She looked nothing like Commander Nasiha, but when she said that, her face set and her eyes grew cold in a way that reminded him of the Commander’s implacable determination in situations that would have made most people surrender. According to Second Lieutenant Lian, she was one of the pilots who helped women escape from New Sadira, but Rafi never dared to ask her if she could confirm the rumours of abuse and captivity.
She stepped through and out of the varying grav-fields until she reached the edge of the Wall, beckoning to Rafi to follow. ‘Let’s go eat.’
The panorama from the dining hall was especially fine. One sun had dipped halfway below the horizon and the other lingered so close by that the molten gold of the rim appeared to feather-kiss the edge of the world. Thin streaks of cloud painted the dimming sky with twilight hues, and all of it was beautifully fractured and distorted through the honeycomb, near-transparent outer shell of the tower, a collaboration in stained glass between nature and architecture. Teruyai rushed to choose a seat in a far corner where all was glass – two walls, floor and ceiling. Oesten laughed at her, but he took in the view with an appreciative eye as he settled himself. Everyone sat facing the sunset and backing the rest of the dining hall. Everyone saw what happened.
Afterwards, people claimed to have felt a little shudder run through the tower, like a minor tremor from an ancient fault-line. If so, it was so slight that no one moved or took particular notice. Seconds later, a bright ribbon blazed and faded across the sky, too sharp to be an illuminated cloud and the wrong shape for a comet or a meteor trail. That was noticed. By then the first warnings and reports had begun to arrive via channel and people started to look thoughtful, perturbed, then alarmed.
Finally, there was a loud crack like lightning and a massive chunk of some burning matter smashed into the overhang of the dining hall. All Ntshune born and bred reacted immediately, running for the exits and projecting urgency for any who could sense it to do the same. The Sadiri were a split second behind them, but the Cygnians and Zhinuvians paused in
confusion and shock as reinforced glass gave way under the heat and pressure of what appeared to be the tailpiece of an orbital shuttle. Oesten seized Rafi’s arm and hauled him to a safer spot near the centre of the hall beside a main structural beam. As they moved, Rafi saw the hanging remnants of the glass gallery buckle, break upwards into shards and pieces and fall back, down and down the side of the tower to join the rest of the debris.
‘The orbital spire is gone,’ Oesten said. ‘Cut. Sabotaged.’ A cold, dry wind was howling through the gap in the tower wall and it muted his words and stole his breath.
‘We must get below,’ Teruyai shouted.
They ran to the emergency chutes. Rafi plunged down without hesitation, his only thought to get to Ntenman and find the safest part of Academe Surinastraya to cower in until whatever was chopping down orbital spires went away. He bounced out of the bodycatcher and found his feet with practised ease, but when he made for the main exit, Oesten held him back. ‘No. Further down. We’re needed on the lower levels.’
Teruyai and Rafi followed him without question as he spoke open another door and led them down another emergency chute.
‘Who would dare?’ Oesten said angrily, talking as much to his channel as to his companions. ‘Who would dare!’
‘Definitely not an accident, then?’ Teruyai said with bitter, unbelieving hope.
Oesten listened for a while to the other voices in his head. ‘Zhinuvians. They’re almost sure.’
‘This is an Academe of Punartam, not a low-tech town on a backwater colony planet! What are they thinking?’
‘They’re thinking they can get away with it,’ Oesten replied, ‘and I’m thinking we’ve been too slow to realise what’s possible without the Sadiri to keep us all peaceful and polite.’
Amid his panic, Rafi found a moment to wonder what was further down than the sun rooms of the Academe. He tried to remember, made a fumbling attempt to access his guides and his channel, but with Oesten and Teruyai shouting over his head it was a disaster in mental coordination, like trying to run, hold a handheld and read an article at the same time.
‘The tower is structurally safe,’ Oesten reassured him. ‘The dining hall was probably the most vulnerable area, and they’re sealing it off now.’
‘Then where are we going?’ Rafi demanded. ‘Why are we running?’
‘The tower is safe but the Academe is not,’ Teruyai said.
‘Is it an attack? Are we at war?’ Rafi asked, voice high-pitched with nerves.
Teruyai gave him a shocked look. ‘War? Why imagine such a primitive—?’
‘Hard to tell,’ Oesten interrupted, and Teruyai turned to him. They communicated with a single, swift look. His expression was sober; hers went from blank disbelief to a frown of deep thought. ‘If it’s really the cartels doing this,’ Oesten continued, ‘then it’s mere negotiation, but with a heavier hand than we expected.’
If that was meant as an explanation, it only left Rafi more confused. He shut his mouth and focused on extricating himself from the last bodycatcher. Beyond the door there was deep, cold darkness and deeper silence.
‘What is it?’ he whispered.
A faint glow outlined the border of . . . something, something that surged and retreated with little sucking, slapping sounds. Water. They were standing on the edge of a reservoir. Rafi heard a rustling noise to his right and realised that Teruyai was taking off her clothes.
‘I can take both of you,’ she said. ‘Hurry.’
Rafi felt suddenly sick. He heard Oesten stripping on the other side of him, but his attention was caught by the sight of the brightening glow resolving into the flexible lines of filaments unfolding and extending. ‘My data,’ he said, struggling weakly for an excuse.
‘Bare as much of your skin’s surface as you can manage. Little things don’t matter.’ Teruyai dived in smoothly with a soft splash.
Oesten went next, feet first, and bobbed for a while, a dark form surrounded by a halo of pale golden light. ‘Hurry, Rafi!’
Rafi quickly undressed, touched his audioplug and datacharm twice with a quick, almost superstitious gesture and tumbled into the water before he could overthink it.
*
I knew immediately it was one of those things that, years and years later, would be a pivot point in history. You would be able to start up a good conversation by asking, ‘Do you remember where you were when you first heard that the Zhinuvian cartels had severed the Academe Maenevastraya orbital spire?’ Well, I was below-ground. I caught the warnings on my channel and rushed to the surface, but I was too late to catch the descending whip of fire that was the lower portion of the spire burning through the atmosphere. I did see the damage done by the lowest of the shuttles on the line as they crashed through the outer shell. Bad design, that honeycomb structure. I had always wondered how it would stand up to serious impact, and the answer was clear.
The first thing I did, even as I gawked with the rest of the crowd in the Academe’s gardens, was to send a Where in all the plaguelands are you? message to Rafi’s channel. Then I picked up an unexpected warning from Damal, advising me that I might want to clear out of Academe property for a while and come and stay with him. I looked at the sad, frayed tuft that had once been the Maenevastraya spire and felt immense gratitude at the suggestion.
Next my channel blew up. I took messages from Baranngaithe (training cancelled, how surprising), from Haviranthiya (official reminders of the evacuation protocols for Academe Surinastraya and personal exhortations to stay safe), Lian (where is Rafi?), a general appeal for calm from Hanekitshalo (that poxy panjandrum – who put him in charge?) and an announcement from the Aerolight Airspace Authority (all flights along the Metropolitan Range cancelled, all access and permissions withdrawn, updates to follow). When the message from Ixiaralhaneki came through I dropped all the rest, stepped out of the crowd and found a quiet spot on the edge of the gardens.
It was as I guessed. My padr had responded by asking for a face-to-face meeting at the Haneki–Mwenil transit point. To that, Ixiaral had appended a note telling me to come to the Academe Surinastraya sun rooms immediately because ‘the situation was volatile’. I rolled my eyes; of course it was. I went to my quarters, packed up my small amount of necessaries and descended to our sun rooms. They were bigger and busier than the Maenevastraya rooms both day and night due to their very innovative light displays and therapeutic treatments. I knew a lot of semi-pro Wallrunners who worked there as attendants – another way to catch the eye of a team owner. But not today, not with a damaged spire and a cracked tower wall on display aboveground. Today was fewer people and more chatter, with staff and clients talking anxiously about what it all meant.
When I found Ixiaralhaneki, she was huddling – yes, huddling – in a small private room, hunched over a desk screen and gabbling messages or memos. I was unkindly pleased to see her usual self-possession completely shattered. She blinked rapidly at me and started speaking immediately, her occasional abrupt pauses proving that she was still half-listening to her channel.
‘How soon can we see your father?’ she asked.
I raised my hands, entreating her to slow down. ‘How soon? Were you thinking about going through the transit? Because I’m not sure I’d like that option based on what I’ve heard from you.’
‘Our options are becoming increasingly limited,’ she said. ‘Can you go now?’
‘I need to find Rafi first—’
She cut me off. ‘Rafi is already on his way to Cygnus Beta.’
I gaped at her.
‘Don’t you understand? This is the start of an evacuation. Don’t your Zhinuvian friends below-ground tell you anything?’
Damal and his invitation . . . I shook my head. ‘Let me hear it from you.’
‘The cartels are taking over. They need to control the transportation technology or they’ll lose their monopoly.’
I felt my own composure cracking. ‘I have to go see someone.’
‘When can we lea
ve to meet with your father?’ she insisted.
I tallied silently before answering. ‘Five hours. Where should I meet you?’
‘Academe Bhumniastraya, upper levels. Let us use the spires while we can.’
I fled and grabbed the nearest transit bubble, sending out message after urgent message to Damal. He was at a warehouse by the lower levels of Academe Nkhaleëngomi, far from his usual haunts. It was an odd relief to find him looking worried as he shouted orders to minions, scribbled on a handheld and skated up and down the aisles of inventory on a cheap grav-board.
‘Damal, what’s going on?’
He beckoned to me to keep up. ‘Changes, my friend. Will you ride this one out, or will you go back home? You’ve got enough cred with us shadow-marketers, and the cartels will tolerate us for a while if all we’re doing is strict mini-cargo.’
‘Damal, there’s a shattered tower above and my friends are disappearing! I need to know what’s going on!’
He stopped dead. ‘Your friends are disappearing?’
My big mouth. My uncontrollable tongue. My slow, stupid brain.
‘What an interesting thing,’ he mused. ‘Is this the big one? I have to assess the risk carefully, consult with some colleagues. But I think I can guess what will happen. No one will claim responsibility. The cartels will step in and offer credit and protection in exchange for control over and profit from Academe research. The Academes may hesitate, but after a while, with a little encouragement, they will say yes. Don’t look so upset, Ntenman. My offer still stands. You can do business in other places besides Punartam and Cygnus Beta, you know. Come with us. We can find niches where the cartels will never notice us.’
In other circumstances that would have been tempting, but for now I could only say weakly, ‘I have to speak to my padr.’
