by Ian Whates
"What did you do?"
"Took him in and reported his claims. Next thing I knew I was jumped by a squad of shimmer suited, very professional goons. I woke up in a cell on Sheol."
"Why?" Kethi interjected. "Surely they could simply have told you the assassin was lying and sent you off on the next assignment."
"Because they know me better than that, knew that I wouldn't have let the matter rest, but would have done some digging on my own. Presumably, they were afraid of what I might have found."
"How did these goons jump you?" Nyles wanted to know. "You're an eyegee. Surely your gun would have warned you."
Mya took her time in answering. "The gun stayed quiet," she said finally, mumbling a little, as if she could hardly believe the words herself.
Kethi's attention switched briefly to Leyton, but he showed no sign of reaction. That didn't really matter. She was just glad he'd been there to hear Mya talk of her gun's complicity. It might help him accept the unpalatable truth of where his own weapon's loyalties lay.
"Who did you actually deliver the assassin to?"
"Pavel Benson, my boss, the head of the eyegee unit."
Now there was a name Kethi had heard before. "Wasn't he also the man they put in charge of operations at New Paris?" The man who had been responsible for ULAW's liaison with the Byrzaeans.
Mya merely looked puzzled, possibly she'd been out of the loop by then, but Leyton answered on her behalf, speaking for the first time. "Yes, he was."
Coincidence? An explanation Kethi tended to accept only once every other possibility had been eliminated. She determined to take a closer look at this Pavel Benson.
Mya said nothing else of interest and Nyles soon excused her, with a smile, an apology, and the advice to get some rest and rebuild her strength.
She left trailed by Leyton. Once they were out of the room, Nyles turned to Kethi. "Well?"
"She's holding something back."
"So she's giving us the truth but not necessarily the whole truth." He nodded. "Hardly surprising after all she's been through, I suppose. In her shoes I'd probably do the same, not wanting to reveal my whole hand straight away."
Maybe, but Kethi wasn't convinced it was that simple.
"We'll have to win her trust," Nyles concluded, closing the subject as far as he was concerned. "What do you make of her reaction to Leyton?"
"Interesting. She cares about him deeply."
"But she doesn't love him."
Kethi considered that for a heartbeat before replying, "No."
"That was my impression too. Do you think the rescue was worth it, given the likely cost once ULAW identifies who was responsible?"
"Yes." She answered without hesitation, determined that Nyles should hear no trace of doubt in her voice. She still remembered how crushed and defeated he'd been when they arrived at New Paris too late to influence events. Seeing him like that had been a tremendous shock. The habitat needed this man to be strong. "Planning for the attack on Sheol gave everyone a new impetus," she said. "Pulling off the snatch and grab without any casualties has boosted morale still further, and now Mya has provided us with a lead on a possible split within ULAW. That gives us renewed purpose, and she even provided a name for me to follow up on."
"Pavel Benson."
"Exactly. So, all in all, I'd say the mission was a roaring success."
"I hope you're right. I hope we both still think that when ULAW come knocking." Then he met her gaze and smiled. "Thank you, Kethi. That will be all."
Her thoughts as she left him were troubled. It was the first time she'd analysed the chemistry between Mya and Leyton. She didn't doubt for one minute the truth of what she'd said on the subject, but wasn't yet sure of her own reaction to that particular revelation.
After the interview with Nyles, which Leyton had to admit was one of the more congenial debriefings he'd ever witnessed, he escorted Mya back to her quarters. She didn't invite him in, claiming weariness - something he could hardly argue with, given all that she'd been through. There were a hundred things he wanted to say to her, though perhaps they were merely a hundred different ways of saying the same thing. Either way, he felt he'd barely scratched the surface of what he needed to tell her. Mya had always been perceptive. The worry that gnawed at him deep down was that she probably didn't need him to say any of them, yet she hadn't responded as he'd hoped. Oh, there was closeness, they'd always had that, but he didn't sense in Mya anything to mirror what he still felt for her.
The Rebellion boasted a small but well-equipped gym - a sensible provision for any ship with a sizeable crew that was likely to be out of port for an extended period - and it was here that Leyton headed to work out his frustrations. For once, though, exercise wasn't enough, no matter how aggressively he threw himself into it, so he cut his routine short and headed for the rec room in search of more effective distraction.
Here was where the off-duty crew tended to congregate before, after, or instead of sleep. The place was busy without being crowded. Two faces stood out, both because he recognised them and because, well, they were different. Joss and Wicks were spacers recruited at some stage to the habitat's cause, their skin weathered and tanned from exposure to a score of different suns. They lacked the porcelain paleness of those native to the habitat, an environment without any sun.
Wicks beckoned him over, which was all the invitation Leyton needed. He took the empty seat next to Joss.
"Not often we see you in here," she commented.
True enough; he tended to prefer his own company, spending much of his downtime either in the gym or in his own quarters, but not today.
"He's had a busy day, Joss," Wicks suggested, "so feels the need to come and unwind with us commoners."
"You wonder why I don't come in here more often with a greeting like that?"
"Ignore Wicksy," Joss advised. "He's only happy when he's making someone else's life miserable. I hear the raid went well."
"Yes, it did." So much for his attempt to escape the day's events and relax for a while.
"Good, I'm glad. I just hope everyone realises that ULAW aren't going to take this lying down."
Leyton was quite sure that everyone fully appreciated as much. The government were bound to respond. In fact, he had the impression that a desire to be noticed was part of the reason Nyles had sanctioned the rescue in the first place, as if to deliberately tweak ULAW's collective nose. The habitat seemed desperate to be taken seriously. After this, they probably would be - assuming the authorities worked out who was behind the raid, and he was sure they would, eventually. There wouldn't be any half measures; the response would be swift and forceful. Leyton trusted Nyles and Kethi realised what they'd started here. Quite what ULAW would do in the face of such provocation remained to be seen, but he had a feeling his newfound allies' resolve was going to be tested to the limit. Not that this greatly bothered him at that particular moment, nothing did. After all, he had Mya back.
Almost as if she'd heard his thoughts, Kethi appeared, munching on a high energy ration bar and clutching a bulb of chilled water in her free hand. "Mind if I join you?" No one did, though Joss and Wicksy left soon after, leaving him alone with the enigmatic girl who had recruited him to the habitat's cause.
Never one to waste an opportunity, he asked about the men and women who'd founded the habitat, keen to learn more of his newly adopted home.
There was a brief pause while she squeezed some water into her mouth to wash down the ration bar, and then she replied. "William Anderson, the habitat's founder, was a genius and a visionary." Leyton made no comment. This sounded like something learned by rote rather than her own take on things, which didn't preclude its being true. "He attracted men and women of similar capabilities, and it's they and their descendents who form the core of our community."
He decided to change tack and hope for a less formal answer. "What about The Rebellion? Is this the habitat's only significant ship?"
"No, not at all. Four capi
tal ships were built, powered by engines based upon the knowledge gleaned from the derelict alien vessel. Three were, in effect, mothballed - powered down and kept in orbit around the habitat, capable of being brought to full operational status within a matter of days, if not hours. This one, The Rebellion, has always been maintained at constant readiness with a skeleton crew on board, prepared to launch as soon as we received any news that hinted of alien incursion. Everyone in the habitat is trained as crew and between them the four ships have the capacity to carry almost all the habitat's population. Each of the four ships has a specific function. The Rebellion is the vanguard, our rapid response. The Renegade would have been next, brought online as soon as we left. Her job is to carry key personnel including senior scientists to a more secure secondary location..."
"Presumably the site of the alien derelict," Leyton guessed.
Kethi made no comment, but continued. "After that, The Retribution, tasked with providing support for The Rebellion, and finally The Renaissance, which by now would have replaced The Rebellion as the ship at constant readiness, prepared to defend the habitat or evacuate our remaining people, whichever seems the most appropriate."
Leyton was impressed. "Your whole society has been geared towards this, hasn't it?"
"It's why we exist," Kethi confirmed with evident pride. "And this is our time, the day William Anderson always knew would come and which we've been preparing for ever since the habitat was founded."
Leyton nodded. He knew full well that preparing for an event and confronting the reality were two entirely different things. He had to admit, however, from all that he'd seen so far, the habitat's personnel were coping pretty well despite their inexperience. He just hoped that continued to be the case once ULAW had noticed them.
Chapter Seven
This didn't look like anywhere in the real world Philip was familiar with, and he wondered whether it represented a part of the world he'd never visited or if this stark chunk of industrial urbanity had sprung complete from the imagination of some programmer. If the latter, he could only assume the imagination in question was limited. The buildings here were functional oblong blocks - soulless and ugly, with sharp corners and edges - arranged in repetitive rows of identical windows and tight-lipped doorways, while the roads were wide and straight, dividing lines burned in asphalt.
The high-pitched wail of a guitar clawed at the night, shredding the tranquillity into harried tatters, and the world resounded to the rhythm of a hundred drums.
They stood at the very edge of the developed area, with the boxlike buildings stretching away to their left and what looked to be open ground to their right, though Philip could only see a little way into the darkness. No streetlights were in evidence. A score of fires held the night at bay, some of them in braziers, others more haphazard - bonfires built of heaped-up rubbish and foraged sticks and undergrowth - while the largest of all had clearly been a car, now set ablaze. The fires dotted the pavements and side streets, and the fringe of the gently sloping wasteland beyond. People clustered around them, drinking, talking, laughing, and some even dancing to the all-pervading beat of the drums.
In front of one of the bonfires, a little way from where the road ended, strutted a long-haired youth, wearing tight black leather trousers and a black t-shirt emblazoned with a demon's smile. The eyes of the demon motif followed Philip as he moved, clearly designed to stare straight at the observer. The youth's fluid hands wielded the guitar - a slender instrument consisting of little more than a pole of polished ebony, one side flattened to support the frets while a slight bulge was all that suggested the body. There were no apparent tuning pegs, the strings simply disappeared over the abruptly truncated neck. The kid played with all the flair and arrogance of some rock god from a bygone era. Around him in a wide and irregular circle sat his disciples: the drummers. One or two huddled on stools behind small kits boasting bass, snares, tom-toms and high-hats, but most simply sat on the ground, playing a bewildering array of instruments. At a quick glance Philip saw several bodhráns, a couple of djembe, bongos, a few pairs of tabla, a number of synth-pads and several of the smaller finger-pad sets, even the odd unadulterated wooden box. All were being played with vigour, the skins, pads and boards beaten with stick, palm, fingers and tipper to produce a pulsating roar of rhythmic thunder over which the sweet notes of the guitar skipped and danced, one moment dipping beneath the rhythm, the next bursting through it to take flight.
Mankind had produced symphonies utilising such diverse elements as birdsong, the haunting sounds of ocean-roaming leviathans, the play of cosmic motes on far-flung gossamer receptors and the wind rushing through geographical formations from a dozen different worlds. Every type of noise imaginable had been synthesised, sampled, phased and blended to be labelled music, but to Philip's ear nothing had ever sounded sweeter than this simple lone electric guitar soaring above its accompanying orchestra of percussion. The very ground itself reverberated in time, as if determined to jog the idle feet of those listening into dance.
"So," he said to Malcolm as the two stood a little removed from the revelries, "this is a street meet."
"Indeed."
In many ways the scene before him was a long way removed from the nightclub, Bubbles, yet Philip couldn't help but draw a few comparisons - the energy, the vibrancy, the sense of something going on that was beyond normal constraint, these all struck him as similar.
They walked forward, coming closer to the fires, and he noticed one thing that was markedly different from the previous evening. At Bubbles, everyone, even the redhead who had flickered constantly between male and female, had been recognisably human - spectacularly so for the most part. Here, humanity wasn't always so obvious. As they reached the first fire a woman turned towards him, and he realised that the hood he had taken to be part of her costume - an extension of the sweeping emerald cloak she wore - was actually part of her head. Her face was covered in green scales. Seeing him stare, she opened her mouth and flicked out a long, thin tongue at him. Philip shied away. The snake woman's voluptuous companion opened her mouth to reveal well developed canines and laughed. She had the head of a tabby cat.
"Don't stare," Malcolm said, "or you're liable to offend somebody."
"I wouldn't have stared in the first place if you'd warned me."
As they walked past, Philip heard the two women exchange quick-fire comments in a language he recognised but couldn't speak - Sawal, a derivative of ancient Swahili, a minority language spoken in a few regions of Home. It was a timely reminder that Virtuality was a worldwide phenomenon, accessible to people from around the globe. He might not have understood the meaning of individual words, but the laughter that punctuated their comments left him in little doubt that the two women were enjoying themselves at his expense.
The further he and Malcolm went, the more bizarre and random the appearance of those around them became. Not everyone was outlandish; there were still some who had opted to appear completely human, but they were in the minority.
Philip saw werewolves, dragon ladies, a man whose face was invisible apart from his eyes, which hovered disconcertingly above a vacant collar, an ape-man, a figure of mist, a rubber-jointed woman who showed off by bending over backwards to bring her shoulders and head between her own splayed legs before turning to lick her own navel, a fully mobile statue cut from multi-faceted diamond, an iron man, a bronze woman, a trio of lizard people, a pair of centaurs, and a variety of imaginative and exotically realised bug-eyed alien caricatures. In some ways the scene reminded him of his visit to the Death Wish, but the more he thought about it the less the comparison satisfied. There the patrons had worn outlandish faces as a disguise, whereas here he sensed that people had designed theirs as a release, as if seeking to let an element of their inner selves out to breathe.
On the whole he was surrounded by unique avatars - individuals or, at most, pairs - but here and there knots of similarly styled folk had gathered together, forming gangs or small tribes. A
round the burning car, for example, cavorted a group of cloven-hoofed fauns and human-toed satyrs. On the wall of the building behind them someone had daubed 'Faunication 4 Ever!' in stark black lettering. Philip wondered if this graffiti was set to be erased once the night's revelries came to an end or whether it would remain permanently as a rallying cry, something to mark the regular meeting point for these Pan-like avatars.
His attention was caught by a man who wandered past, between him and the frolicking fauns. He was juggling six balls in an intricate pattern with consummate ease, no doubt aided by the fact he had two sets of arms, one pair immediately beneath the other. Seeing this made Philip wonder why more people didn't choose to equip their avatars with additional limbs.
The answer occurred to him almost immediately, tripping over the heels of the question. It would be too much like hard work. Avatars were animated by the fully human brain of their corporeal self, and that brain was accustomed to doing things with just one pair of arms. Throw in an additional pair and you had a whole new set of skills to be learnt in the coordination department. Of course, there were always going to be those determined to master such skills simply because the challenge was there, but for the majority life was too short. Why bother going to all that trouble when you could do things the traditional way? It struck Philip that here was an endorsement of Malcolm's philosophy of experience over download. Without a person training their mind to coordinate four arms instead of two, he doubted a simple info-dump of juggling skills would be of much use.
A little further along from the fauns, a man stood with legs apart and right arm raised, in a pose that suggested he was challenging the wall to mortal combat. He sported the head and impressive mane of a male lion and was bare-chested, his torso and arms rippling with muscles and glistening as if oiled. As Philip watched, he roared and took a mighty swipe at the brickwork, utilising the raking claws that sprouted from the ends of his human-looking fingers. The attack left deep gouges in the wall. Presumably this was an attempt to impress the two women standing to one side and looking on. The nearest, who wore only the skimpiest of chocolate brown bikinis, had the head of a leopard, her slim body mottled in an intricate pattern of dark spots over tan-yellow, while the tip of a tail swished behind her heels - the whole ensemble was surprisingly sexy. The other, though fully human in body, boasted a head of flickering flame within which the shadowy suggestion of eyes and a mouth could vaguely be discerned.
