Shadow Man (Paragons of Queer Speculative Fiction)

by Scott, Melissa

  "We don't do business on the Westland," Tatian answered, with perfect truth. "All I've heard is that the Donavie are going to file a protest."

  "Like it would do them any good," Shraga said.

  Tatian poured himself a second cup of wine, letting the gossip wash over him. He had gotten what he had come for--was willing to pay for the information with whatever he could contribute to the conversation. His heart wasn't really in it, however, his mind occupied with the upcoming conversation with the Old Dame. If Isabon said he should do what the IDCA wanted, he should probably listen to %er--but Warreven's opinion had to carry some weight, too, maybe more weight than oers. He would put both opinions to the Old Dame, he thought, let %er make the final decision, but he wanted this contract.

  By the time he left Voska's, it was late enough that he called a rover to drive him back to the office in the Estrange. He paid the driver, a skinny man in cheap flaxen gauze, fifteen grams in metal to wait in the parking alley behind NAPD's section of the building, and went inside, feeling slightly guilty. It was uncomfortable being this much richer than the general population; even on Antigone, his last station before Hara, he hadn't felt so out of sync with the rest of the world.

  Derebought had left the databutton on his desk, along with a print of her first-run results. Even allowing for error and misunderstanding, and the inevitable shifts in demand and price, the total was enormous. Tatian refolded the papers and set them aside as carefully as if they held the harvest itself. He had underestimated by almost two million. If they took the contract, NAPD would nearly double its profits. Or more.

  He flicked the external switch to restart his system, waiting in the silence of the empty building while the machines whirred to life. When the desktop screen lit, a bright orange message reminded him that it was less than an hour to his scheduled conference with Masani, and he fiddled with the shadowscreen to invoke the comm management program. He checked the parameters--all as they should be, just the same as they had been the last time--and flipped the program to standby while he went over Derebought's figures a final time. Even at their most conservative--improbably, impossibly conservative, he thought, though superstitiously he would never have said that aloud--the profits remained worth the risk. He would warn Masani of Valmy's and Jhirad's visit, of course, and their threat--and Isabon's warning, er suspicion that they might be right--but he couldn't imagine turning down this chance. And the Old Dame had never refused a challenge in er life.

  The system chimed then, signaling the preliminary signals from the port. Tatian recalled the communications program and waited while it matched channels and input/output checks. Finally, the screen cleared, displaying the familiar codes of a transsystem link, and the wallscreen opened. Masani looked out at him, expressionless, a tall fem, raw-boned, with harsh lines from the hard weather on a dozen different planets and dark, farsighted eyes. The visuals were only fair, static hazing the edges of the screen, haloing the central images with little rainbows, but the audio was much better, Masani's voice nearly as clear as on a transcontinental linkup. e listened to his summary, demanded a copy of the preliminary assessment and whatever else Derebought came up with on later runs, and then fixed him with er fierce stare.

  "So everything's wonderful, except that the new seraaliste wants Reiss to make a report, sorry, a court statement, that the IDCA has explicitly told you to kill."

  "Yes." Tatian watched the image warily, er face and moving hands haloed by rainbow static. He wanted this contract, he realized suddenly, wanted it more than was entirely reasonable--but enthusiasm was appropriate, he told himself, when there was this much money involved.

  "And the IDCA wants to kill Reiss's statement because Temelathe asked them to get involved, and Temelathe wants it killed-- why?"

  "I don't know for certain. My best guess--" Tatian spread his own hands, deliberately scaling the gesture to the limits of the comm package, repeated what he'd said before. "From what Valmy and Jhirad said, I think Warreven's partners want to use this case to force a general discussion of trade. And that means gender law as well, how many sexes there actually are. None of the mesnies are real comfortable with that, and Tendlathe, who's a bit of a nut case, as far as I can tell, is working on them to keep things just the way they are."

  Masani's mouth twisted. "And Tendlathe is confirmed as Temelathe's heir?"

  "Yes," Tatian said again.

  e snorted. "But Warreven thinks he doesn't really have the support." e looked away then, expression suddenly sad. "I remember when I first came to Hara, everyone assumed I'd do trade, because I'm a fem and I had my own company. Then the indigenes decided I was a woman, so I spent about ninety-seven kilohours, eight local years, having to explain myself to everyone." e shook er head, shook erself back to the matter at hand. "All right, I don't like trade, and I don't have a problem with NAPD being known to be involved in this case if it's meant to break trade. Temelathe knows where I stand on that. But I especially don't like the IDCA telling me what I can and can't do when I'm not breaking any laws. So. Does this Warreven really have this much to offer?"

  "The sea-harvest has been very, very good this year," Tatian answered. "There may be--hell, there will be some exaggeration, either in the grade or in the total quantity available, but we've already factored that into the estimates. The seraalistes don't dare play too fast and loose with the numbers, not if they expect to keep doing business with us."

  "Certainly," Masani agreed, with a slight, unpleasant smile, and Tatian remembered too late that e had traded on Hara for ten years. "But does your Warreven know this?"

  That could give me nightmares if I let it, Tatian thought. He said, "Yes. I think 3e's more knowledgeable than 3e lets on."

  "Not too much more, I hope," the Old Dame said, and Tatian smiled dutifully. e sighed, looked down at er own screen, er blunt-fingered hands sprawling across er desktop. Every movement sparked a rainbow, so that e moved in a cloud of refracted light. "So you think it's worth fighting the IDCA on this one."

  "I do," Tatian answered. "We're well within the law--hell, what they're asking is illegal, not anything we're doing. And I don't think we're going to see another surplus like this for another forty-three, forty-four kilohours."

  "All right," Masani said. "We'll do it. I'll warn the accountants to expect the buy. Get me the final figures as soon as you have them, and I'll sign the drafts. I assume 3e'll want a metal payment?"

  "Not decided yet," Tatian said, and e grunted.

  "There usually is. Remember, we need at least five hundred hours lead time for that, and seven fifty would be better."

  "I will."

  "Good. And, Tatian. Nice work."

  e cut the transmission, leaving the screen streaming with multicolored static, before he could respond to the unexpected praise. He touched the shadowscreen and watched the shutdown procedures flicker across his desktop, wincing at the charges that appeared in the accounting screen. Interplanetary communication was painfully expensive; at this rate, he thought, he had maybe three calls left for this budget year. He entered the codes that accepted the charges and authorized payment, then made a note in his private file to recheck the communications budget, just to see where the money had gone. There had been two calls when Derebought isolated the guafesi, and-- He deliberately shut off those thoughts. It was late, and he was tired; better to deal with that in the morning, he thought, and flattened his hand against the shadowscreen. The machine flashed a last quick series of queries, but he kept his hand flat until the last light had winked out. He flipped on the main security systems, with their seventy-second delay, and walked out the back door to the parking alley.

  The rover was still there, the driver curled in his compartment like a mouse in its nest. Tatian tapped gently on the window, and the thin man woke instantly. He came upright in the same moment, eyes focusing first on his board, and then on Tatian himself. Seeing him, the driver relaxed, and reached across to
open the passenger door.

  "All done, mir?"

  "All done," Tatian answered, and climbed into the passenger compartment.

  "Where to, then? Going dancing? I know some good places, even for an off-worlder." The driver looked at him in his mirror, his grin showing badly patched teeth.

  Tatian shook his head. "Not tonight. Just home--EHB Three."

  Everyone knew the compounds where the majority of the off-worlders lived. The driver nodded, and slipped the rover into gear. Tatian leaned back in his seat, aware for the first time of just how tired he was. Not that it was that late, really--barely past two--but it had been an active day. And, he admitted, with a quiet smile, an exhilarating one. If everything worked out, if he could keep the IDCA at arm's length and trade Reiss's statement for the surplus contract--well, at the least, he would certainly earn one of the Old Dame's generous bonuses, not to mention put himself well ahead in the promotions stakes.

  The rover slid out of the alley, turned onto the ring-road that carried traffic around the maze of linked courtyards that made up the Estrange. From the top of the slight hill, he could see between the buildings to the harbor; the lights seemed brighter than usual there, and he wondered if some of the harvest was in. Then he realized that the light wasn't steady and was much too orange for the usual working lights.

  "Fire?" he said, and the driver slowed.

  "I heard sirens earlier, mir," he volunteered. "They were heading toward the docks--toward Dock Row, the north end. Do you want to take a look?"

  Tatian shook his head, though he was tempted. "Just home," he said again, and thought the driver looked disappointed.

  "Right, mir, EHB Three it is."

  "Thanks."

  There was more traffic on Tredhard Street, most of it going away from the harbor. Tatian squinted through the doubled glass of passenger compartment and driver's screen and thought he saw barriers pulled across the road at the base of the hill, barring traffic from the Harbor Market. People in uniform were standing there, not firefighters in their silver, but the dull black of the mosstaas; he imagined he could smell smoke in spite of the rover's filter, but couldn't see the flames.

  "Something's burning for sure," the driver said. "In Dock Row, it looks like."

  Tatian nodded, still staring down the badly lit street. If it was in Dock Row proper, the off-world warehouses should be safe enough, since they stood at the north end of the street, clear of the Market. Dock Row itself was mostly bars and dance houses--the center of trade, he realized suddenly, and shivered in spite of the warm evening. If someone was striking back at trade, Dock Row and its bars were a good place to begin. He shoved the thought away. There was no point in speculating until he knew what had actually happened--for all he knew, someone had been careless with a stove, or lightning had struck, some natural disaster. In the mirror, he saw the driver shake his head.

  "I'm going to have to go the narrow way, mir, by the Soushill Road."

  "Fine," Tatian answered, and a moment later they were in shadow again as the rover turned onto the smaller street. Soushill Road was mostly small shops, chandlerys and hardware, and the occasional software broker or satellite tracker, all closed down against the night. Even the streetlights were out; only the occasional dot of an alarm system glowed in the corner of a doorway. The driver muttered something and switched his lights to high.

  Then, from nowhere, came the snarl of an engine. A massive shay shot from an alley and swung skidding into Soushill Road. The driver swore, jamming on his brakes, and Tatian caught himself stiff-armed against the partition separating him from the driver's compartment. Pain flared in his arm, along the lines of the faulty implant. He caught a glimpse of the shay's open body, of the dozen figures in it, black-robed, black-hooded, faces hidden by blank white masks like the faces of unfinished dolls. One of them lifted an empty ring, also white, white as bone, lifted a white feather-tipped stick and mimed striking the empty air, as though he--she? e? e? 3e?--beat an invisible drum. He was still drumming, white-gloved hands holding the empty drum frame overhead, as the shay skidded around another corner and vanished completely.

  "What the hell was that?" he demanded, and cradled his arm against his chest, trying not to jar the implant box.

  "I--don't know, mir. Never seen anything like it." The driver's voice was frightened, and the eyes that met his in the mirror were wide and staring. "Never at all."

  You're lying, Tatian thought, and could not have said what made him so sure of it. But whatever they were--he conjured the black-robed shapes again, the white masks and gloves and the invisible, frantic drum--whatever they were, whoever they were, you knew them. You knew what they meant. "Take me home," he said aloud, knowing better than to press the issue, and leaned back against the padding. Reiss would know, or Warreven; he would ask one of them in the morning.

  Odd-bodied: (Hara) colloquial generic term for herms, mems, and fems.

  8

  Mhyre Tatian

  The fire on Dock Row made the narrowcast news on both the port and the local channels. Tatian set the system to search-store-and-replay and watched the stories as he dressed, but there was no mention of the black-robed figures. The local channels displayed vivid pictures of silver-suited firefighters, bright against the flames, but said little about damage or causes, noting only that two bars had burned and no one had been reported killed. The port system named the bars--Tatian didn't recognize either of the names--and estimated that the damage would force them out of business. The newsreader, a plump, pretty woman with an expressive voice, carefully controlled, added that the mosstaas was looking into the cause of the fire. Which means, Tatian thought, that it was arson. He saw again the figures in the back of the shay, the white hands and the white drum, and wondered if they'd had anything to do with it. They had certainly looked menacing enough, but on Hara, who could tell?

  He rode the EHB shuttle into Bonemarche and got off at the Estrange with perhaps a dozen other people who worked for the companies there. The largest group, junior botanists and lab techs from NuGen, were talking loudly about some new plant they were working on--which couldn't be that promising, Tatian thought, or they'd be keeping it more of a secret--while a couple of hard-muscled secretaries were discussing the ranking system for the Nest's full-contact mattata tournament. Tatian had dated one of them, briefly, smiled as he drew even with her, and received a pleasant smile in response. It seemed suddenly strange that no one was talking about the destruction of the bars, and he said, on impulse, "Did you see the fire on the news this morning?"

  "Fire?" The woman looked blank, shook her head.

  "Oh, I saw that," the other secretary said. "The one by the harbor, right? It's a good thing it wasn't by the warehouses." He looked at the first woman. "Some bars burned down, on Dock Row. If it'd been a little farther north, it would've taken out the Starsys warehouse."

  "That would have been bad," the woman said, and stopped at the entrance to the arcade, where a gray-haired indigene in off-world clothes sold bread and local honey from a folding cart. "We were lucky."

  The bar owners weren't, Tatian thought, but their attention was already on the breads spread out for sale. Or the people who went there. He remembered the crowd at Shinbone: not what he'd expected, less trade, or less obviously trade, than what the indigenes called odd-bodied and the wry-abed, mems, fems, and herms, and anyone whose sexual tastes didn't match the indigenes' simple male/female model. It had been one of the few places on Hara not run by off-worlders where he'd felt things were--almost--normal, and he wondered suddenly if that was what the indigenes were looking for when they did trade. And the money was good, too, he reminded himself, striving for his usual detachment, and went through the arcade into Drapdevel Court.

  For once, Reiss was there before him, perched on the edge of the secretarial desk in the outer office, a chunk of spicebread in one hand and a stylus in the other. He looked up as Tatian entered and hastily blanked his screen. Tatian sighed, wondering what
he was doing this time--probably more work on his jet cars, using our design systems--but said only, "I need to talk to you, Reiss. When you've got a minute."

  "Any time," Reiss said, and used the stylus to flick virtual switches. "Now?"

  "That would be good," Tatian said, and the younger man followed him into the office.

  Tatian touched his wrist, then winced, hit the override a fraction of a second too late to stop the cascade of static. He touched the shadowscreen instead, lighting the desktop, and glanced quickly at the update screen. It showed nothing of immediate importance, and he looked back at Reiss. He hated having to reverse himself, the more so because he had known he was wrong, and said, "It's about that case you were involved in, Destany Casnot's."

  "So Raven came through," Reiss said.

  "You knew about this," Tatian said, and controlled his anger with an effort. "You work for NAPD, Reiss, whatever your clan affiliations are. I can't afford divided loyalties, especially right now."

  "No, it's not like that." Reiss shook his head. "I had to tell them, tell Raven and Haliday, and Destany, for that matter, and when we met to talk it over, Raven said something about offering part of the surplus. I didn't know if 3e could, much less whether it'd be worth it. That's all I knew."

  Tatian stared at him for a moment. It was plausible enough--if nothing else, Reiss wasn't the sort of person one trusted with a complicated plan--and he nodded slowly. "All right--"

  "One thing," Reiss said. "Okay, maybe I should've told you, even if I didn't know what Raven was going to be able to do, but what you were asking wasn't right. I owe Destany--more than that, 3e's got rights, even if 3e is an indigene."

  Tatian took a deep breath, biting back an instinctive, angry answer. Reiss was right, and more than that, he knew that NAPD was wrong. "You've lived on Hara all your life," he said, after a moment. "You know who has power--you know how much power the IDCA has, particularly if they can connect a company to trade. To fight that, you need solid backing, and for the Old Dame to give us that, well, we need a solid reason, something the Board and the shareholders can appreciate. Yeah, maybe I should've told you--like you maybe should have told me--when I got the offer. In retrospect, I'm sorry I didn't. But right now, we have Masani's support--you have Masani's support, to make this statement. Let's go from there."