Netherspace

by Andrew Lane

  “We don’t even know if the Eridani made them in the first place,” Marc said as the elevator doors slid open. “They’re traders, remember?”

  “True,” Kara said. They rode up to the penthouse floor in thoughtful silence. If the Eridani weren’t responsible for the yellow cubes, who was? An as-yet-unknown alien species with an understanding of the human mind, which meant they had to be very superior? Or perhaps an as-yet-unknown alien species that was similar to humans but chose to remain hidden? Neither possibility was comforting.

  Greenaway had laid on coffee, sandwiches and pastries. Marc paused to admire the view of Berlin for five long seconds, then sat down and reached for a plate. There was enough retained infantry grunt mentality from the simulity to ensure he ate whenever he could. Given half a chance Kara knew he’d take a quick nap later.

  Kara was more interested in the person watching from a corner, so quiet and still that Marc had missed her. Or was it a him? The observer was slim, a little shorter than Kara, with black hair in a retro urchin-cut, symmetrical, precise features dominated by huge, dark eyes that seemed to stare through Kara without blinking and a small, sensual cupid’s bow of a mouth that didn’t smile. The person looked like a manga character. He or she seemed to be early twenties and wore a loose white shirt, left untucked over grey trousers. The ensemble could easily disguise any female curves. Then Kara forgot about the stranger’s physical appearance and drew in her breath as a wave of – understanding? togetherness? – swept over her. This person saw the future like a path stretching across a landscape of time – some of it hidden by dips and folds, but the broad direction, and the occasional landmark encountered on the way, very clear. Kara half-smiled as she recognised an ability that came from the same psychic reservoir as her own empathy. For now she’d keep it to herself. Marc was happily munching on a locust-paste sandwich. He might become awkward if he knew what this stranger was.

  “You should smile more often.” The voice was low, melodious and again could belong to either sex. “It suits you.”

  Kara kept her face neutral and turned to Greenaway, who was sitting behind his desk.

  “Meet Tse Durrel,” Greenaway said and waited for Marc to register the stranger. “The third person on the team and representing GalDiv’s Diplomatic Service.”

  Marc was still in grunt mode. “A fucking diplomat?” he challenged.

  “Negotiator,” Tse said firmly but quietly. “I don’t do treaties.”

  “Tse is expert at alien trades,” Greenaway explained.

  “Understand the little bastards, do you?” Marc stood up. “My name’s Marc Keislack. Forgive me asking but is it Ms or Mr Durrel? Which is actually a compliment.”

  “That depends,” Tse said. “What sex would you like me to be?”

  Marc stared for a few seconds then burst out laughing. “It’s going to be an interesting trip.” He turned to Greenaway. “Talking of which – who’s in actual charge? You never made it clear.”

  “Kara en route and on-planet. But Tse runs the negotiations, if there are any.”

  “And me?”

  “You’re the only human that any alien has voluntarily spent more than a few minutes with. You are the only artist whose work they’ve bought. And they may have specifically asked for you.”

  “I’m the token celebrity?” He didn’t sound upset. “Maybe they won’t be as impressed as you hope when I turn up.”

  Greenaway shook his head. “More than that. Almost all alien trades have been one-offs. They’ll swap an updown-field generator for a bicycle tyre one day, ignore it the next. There are only two types of trade they’ve made repeatedly. Humans and your art.”

  “Oh,” Marc said bleakly. “Oh fuck.”

  Kara felt a flash of sympathy for him. “Marc thinks you mean he’s part of a hostage exchange: one artist for whoever’s left alive.”

  “No exchanges,” Greenaway said flatly. “It would set a bad precedent.” He took a breath. “Right. Time to meet one of the three staff who’ll be with you on this mission. Highly experienced, deep-space exploration, been together a long time. They lost their commander in the Up – stay away from the subject unless they mention it. Their new SUT has the trifecta RIL-FIJ-DOQ. Your mission manager is from the commercial side, mostly Sol-system runs. His grandfather made the first alien contact on the moon. The crew have been told that the LUX-WEM-YIB crash-landed on the Cancri homeworld and is being held there. They do not know that any Pilgrims have been killed. They’ve been told this is a highly classified mission and you will not tell them the truth unless it becomes necessary. They’re waiting next door.”

  “Hold on.” Kara thought it time to assert herself. “How exactly do we know where these hostages are? Did the Cancri leave a map?”

  Greenaway opened his mouth to reply but Tse interrupted.

  “No, that’s me,” Tse said. “I have a gift.”

  Ah-ha! Kara thought fiercely. Now we get the truth.

  “I just know things,” Tse said humbly. “Can’t explain it but…”

  Oh, that’s clever! I’m just a poor little psychic. Kara glanced at Marc, who seemed torn between laughter and outrage and decided that, all things considered, she liked him. That annoying self-awareness – me artist, you pleb – had gone, replaced by a growing screw-you attitude similar to her own.

  “Remote viewing?” Marc asked, intrigued. “If so, how in an infinite universe do you manage to target what you’re looking at?”

  It was Greenaway who replied blithely: “Tse is a precog – laboratory tested over thirty times. Been proved right ninety-eight per cent of the time. Anyway, we know where the planet is – around 230 light-years away.”

  “A pre-cog?” Marc seemed to be testing the word in his mouth as he said it. “You mean you can see the future?” He frowned, glancing from Tse to Greenaway and back uncertainly. “I’d heard rumours that there were people out there saying they have these powers, but I thought it was just exaggeration and wishful thinking.”

  “It’s real,” Greenaway said. Don’t ask me how it works, but Tse can see… not the future, but the direction of the future. Glimpses. It’s a trait a few people have displayed in every generation – an ability to see not just standard three dimensions but slightly into the fourth as well, but as I told you before, there’s something about the fact that people now have AI chips in their heads that means the talent, the capability, has started to grow. An unexpected and rather worrying side-effect.” He shrugged. “It worries us, but it doesn’t mean we can’t study and take advantage of it.”

  “But that’s crap,” Marc said, frowning. “Time isn’t the fourth or any dimension. It can’t be. We move easily in three dimensions, but we’re carried through time at a set rate. We can’t change that – can’t choose to go into the past or the future the way we can to go left or right, up or down.” It seemed to Kara that he had suddenly decided it was important to be taken seriously for more than his art. “As far as we know, that’s true of the Cancri, the Eridani and all the other alien species as well, which means it’s not just us poor humans limited to free movement in three dimensions. And even if we say that time is a dimension, but fundamentally different from the others, then where does that leave free will? I know there’s a chair there” – he pointed to one by the wall – “and a door over there” – he pointed in the opposite direction – “but time’s different. I know there was an embarrassing event at my fourteenth birthday party that means a girl named Sandra Wootten will never speak to me again, but I don’t know what’s going to happen on my fiftieth.”

  “Don’t even know if you’ll have a fiftieth birthday,” Kara pointed out.

  He nodded violently. “Exactly. We can see one way in time – backwards – but not the other way, and have no freedom of movement.”

  “Whatever the logic,” Greenaway said dismissively, “it’s possible that time’s only local, a subjective measurement of a specific rate of change. Maybe Tse sees the bigger, no-time picture. Or p
ossibilities and selects the most probable. We’re already using pre-cogs to make trading with the aliens easier – if a pre-cog can identify which of a hundred possible items an alien will accept, it streamlines the whole process and maximises the return.”

  “It’s still bollocks,” Marc said defensively. Kara knew this wasn’t him, really; he was still Marc from the simulity, Marc the infantryman. Except it was him and she quite liked this new, coarser side.

  Tse coughed gently. “Think of it this way,” the pre-cog said quietly. “Because I do. I can see the landscape of my future, but not the whole landscape. Some of it is hidden by folds and dips, and some of it is hidden by patches of mist. I can see the path we have to follow, the people who need to be involved, but I can’t see all of it, and sometimes there are several paths of varying degrees of difficulty.”

  “But what about free will?” Marc protested, no doubt painfully aware his life might well depend on Tse’s accuracy. “What if I choose to go cross-country rather than follow one of these preordained paths you can see?”

  Tse shrugged gently. “I’m not a philosopher, but exercising free will means you choose a path to follow. Looking back from a vantage point in the future, you see the path followed, the choice you made. I just happen to be able to see the alternatives before you make the final decision – and the consequences.” Tse smiled for the first time. “Sometimes.”

  Kara stared at the pre-cog’s genderless face, and wondered two things. Was Tse telling the truth about how much, or how little, of the future a pre-cog could see? And did the aliens have pre-cogs too?

  Instead she said: “The Cancri who brought the bad news – they didn’t say where this planet is, did they? So either they expected us to find out, meaning they might know about pre-cogs… or expect us to have them, which raises weird questions. Or they expect something else altogether.”

  “You’re going to have to trust Tse,” Greenaway said flatly. “And to confirm: do not tell the SUT staff, especially the mission manager, about the executed Pilgrim. It’s our little secret.”

  6

  Within five minutes of meeting the SUT’s mission manager, Marc decided that James Leeman-Smith was one of the most obnoxious men he’d ever met – and he’d been to cocktail parties with billionaires and awards ceremonies with art critics. The man was tall and golden-haired, like a Viking hero, and cultivated a searching stare and raised eyebrow meant to establish that he knew all of Marc’s hidden, pointless secrets. Apparently the SUT’s navigator and medic were already on board and waiting for them.

  Greenaway was deep in conversation with the mission’s saturnine mechanic, Tate Breckmann, while Tse stood silent when Leeman-Smith beckoned to Kara and Marc.

  “A word,” he said quietly, and led them to one side of the small, functional GalDiv office where the meeting was being held. “I know who you are.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Kara said sweetly, “that’s just a side-effect of being introduced.”

  Leeman-Smith’s eyes narrowed. “I mean your background. I don’t like having an assassin as a passenger. Frankly, I regard your profession” – his lips actually curled – “as perhaps necessary in this current world of ours, but always contemptible. You might be in nominal charge, but on my SUT, Up there, you’ll do what you’re told, when you’re told. You will give me a full mission briefing as soon as we’re off-Earth. I also expect daily situation reports once you’re on your mission. Is that clear?”

  Marc told himself that SUT mission managers were little more than maître d’s – making sure that everyone else was doing their job properly. The technical expertise was provided by the SUT’s mechanic – falling short of the alien-provided netherspace drive of course – and the navigator, while the mission manager fulfilled the “Keep Calm And Carry On” role, only useful if the drive needed replacing and they had to hang around in normal space for the Gliese call-out team, then explain gently to the call-out fee that his or her time had come. And while some space utility transports were given an open mission to explore the galaxy, meaning their mission managers needed to make regular life-and-death decisions, Marc decided that Leeman-Smith was probably confined to the regular colony runs. Exploration required a high degree of intelligence and only an idiot would insult an Official Assassin to her face.

  “We’ll keep to ourselves in space,” Kara said. “So I can’t see us getting under your feet. And when we’ve landed the SUT will act as a relay for all messages sent to GalDiv… Of course, they’ll be enciphered so you won’t understand them, but there’s no harm in you looking at them. GalDiv’s already told you all you need to know.”

  A spot on each of Leeman-Smith’s cheeks turned white. He opened his mouth to reply when a voice from behind Marc said:

  “Excuse me, Commander, I need Ms Jones and Mr Keislack for a moment.”

  Greenaway put his hand under Kara’s elbow and led her away. Marc followed as Leeman-Smith stared furiously after them.

  “Not very smart, making enemies this quickly,” Greenaway murmured.

  “You heard?” Kara said.

  “Every word.” He tapped briefly behind his right ear. “You leave in three hours’ time.”

  “Where’s the call-out fee?” Marc asked.

  “Already on board in a medically induced coma, hooked up to a life-support machine. Most of them prefer it that way. And it’s easier on the staff, in case they get too attached.”

  Marc glanced across at Kara. He’d picked up enough of her memories while they’d been linked to know she wasn’t sure if her sister was still locked safely away in a deep-sleep capsule while who knew what went on around her, was live in the hands of aliens, or dead. Had Greenaway forgotten? No. Greenaway would never forget an emotional trigger like that. It had been a reminder of their own personal reasons for ensuring this… this mission was a success.

  “Are there many pre-cogs like Tse?” Marc asked casually, trying to change the subject.

  “Difficult to tell – they keep themselves hidden. But not enough. Tse can explain it to you when you’re on board. You’ll still have to take regular bearings, of course, or rather the navigator will. Leeman-Smith will check the figures. It keeps him happy, and who knows – maybe one day he’ll spot a mistake.”

  “He’s such a prick.”

  “There’s a reason for that.”

  “Born that way then took lessons,” Kara said. Marc decided her contempt was a symptom of pre-mission nerves. “Can’t see him handling an emergency well.”

  “Second thoughts, Kara?” Greenaway asked.

  She shook her head. “Just giving a heads-up. You can bullshit Marc here and the others all you like but I know, Greenaway… boss… sir… you majestic exalted bloodyness,” Greenaway smiled as if enjoying her outburst, “that there’s a fuck sight more to this than rescuing a bunch of Pilgrims the Cancri want to trade. See, normally you – GalDiv – would just write them off, right?”

  “If this is about your sister…”

  Kara leaned in close and gripped his arm. “Do not play me for a fool. Do not. It’s what got me here and you know it.” She let go and gave him a sideways smile, an attractive young woman reminding an older man of his youth. She glanced at Marc. “Best we go join the others before they start thinking for themselves.”

  They found Leeman-Smith explaining to Tse that there was no need to worry because he was the best mission manager in GalDiv, and his grandfather had made the first contact. Judging by the look in his eye, Leeman-Smith intended to solve the he/she puzzle the first moment possible, and wasn’t too fussed how it turned out. Judging by Tse’s body language the only way Leeman-Smith would see him/her naked was by peeking through a keyhole – if they used keys on SUTs, otherwise it would have to be good old e-surveillance.

  “Time we left for Tegel Galactic,” Greenaway announced, “now we’re all getting on so well.”

  “Problem,” Kara said. “Clothes? My Merc?”

  “Uniforms, already on board. Your M
erc will be taken to long-term secure parking. Marc’s house will be protected by armed AI drones.”

  Marc nodded. “I expected a briefing.” He was disappointed.

  “You already had it,” Kara told him. “During the simulity.”

  “But that was…”

  She shook her head dismissively. “Your mind feels like an overstuffed suitcase, right?”

  Marc blinked defensively. He couldn’t help himself. “Well, I wouldn’t… yeah, a bit.”

  “That’s the briefing. What did you expect, a bloody stage with maps and some clown with a pointer?”

  Marc realised Kara was taking her annoyance at Leeman-Smith out on him. “I don’t—”

  “Everything you, we, need to know is in here.” She touched the side of his head. “It shows up when we need it. Triggered by events.”

  Marc was aware of Greenaway watching her cautiously. “But why?” he asked.

  “Because otherwise you’d spend all your time trying to make sense of it.” She glanced at Greenaway. “Come on – let’s go.”

  As they walked off Marc turned the unanswered question over and over in his brain: what information could be so sensitive that it had to be hidden until needed?

  * * *

  Most Germans liked to think the Gliese had chosen the near-defunct Tegel Airport as their first landing field because of Berlin’s importance, except that nobody knew why aliens did anything. But Tegel it had been and for the most part aliens continued to use it, which was why Earth Central’s Galactic Division was based in Berlin and Tegel International was now Tegel Galactic. The jitney dropped them at the far end of the area where a group of small SUTs were parked. With updown-field generators and sideslip-field generators there was no need for streamlined rockets. Even so, Marc thought, it was a shame that the area looked like a junkyard. Where was the mystery, where was the smooth design to send the imagination soaring? The SUTs looked like collections of metal shipping containers all strapped together without rhyme or reason, wrapped with pipes and cables and covered with spherical tanks, bulky and asymmetrical. Sensors and the nozzles of manoeuvring jets pointed in all directions, like prickles on a hedgehog.