by Patty Jansen
Not me, not me.
The crewmembers moved about on their normal leads: those attached to rails along the ceiling. They carried baskets with meal packs, colour-coded and sealed, as well as covered containers with hot drinks, each with a bright red satchel that contained the straw.
Serving refreshments was something the Pilot’s Guild had learned from observing human flights. No doubt local merchants and Traders had a hand in it, as they were always active when there was something to be sold. No doubt, too, there was a Coldi-owned business somewhere in Athens that made these food packs.
Apparently, selling something in midair created a problem, seeing one was not within the territory of one of the entities, so where did Trading levies need to be paid?
I was glad to leave that nasty bureaucratic problem to the authorities and simply gave my gamra account to pay for my bag of nuts and a container of a hot drink the Coldi persistently called coffee, but had nothing to do with it.
For starters, it was dark green. It was made from one of the thousands of species of mushrooms native to the aquifers of Asto. It came in powder form and went into a filter like coffee. The Coldi word for it was manazhu. It was also very, very bitter, but did not contain acid or excessive levels of fluorides, as much Coldi food did, so was classified as a green-code. Strangely, and much to Eva’s disgust, I had taken a liking to it. She said it made my breath stink. It tasted even better with a good dollop of rum, which probably made my breath stink even more.
I sipped, letting the liquid glide down my throat in small hot gulps that brought a sense of comfort back to my rattled mind.
You have one shot at proving your worth, Mr Wilson.
One opportunity to come up with the goods, whatever form it would take. A truce, a solution, or merely a tempering of anger. If I could stop gamra turning the clock back to the Kershaw days, if I could keep Nicha’s father and his massive air fleet and their weapons firmly in Asto’s air space, if I could shed some light on who could have attacked Sirkonen’s office, how and why.
The sky was already quite dark. White clouds swirled in a pattern no one but an off-world traveller would ever see.
We must be almost at prescribed height.
I turned off and packed away my reader. The transfer would soon be upon us.
As if in answer, a voice came over the intercom. “The pilot has just requested transfer. Please make sure that any loose items are safely stowed.”
In that moment of total nothingness, when the shuttle jumped through the network, when the Exchange cores down in Athens and the one in Barresh connected with each other and we were flung about like a pebble in a bucket, not once, but four times, the smallest piece of paper became a projectile.
I leaned back in my seat, feeling sick, wishing I hadn’t eaten those nuts. This was the part I really, really hated. And I tried to reason away that irrational fear.
The light started flashing over the passengers’ heads.
Eleven . . . ten . . . nine . . .
I grabbed the armrests, wishing I were somewhere else.
Eight . . . seven . . . six . . .
Passengers went oddly quiet, as if most were equally ill-impressed with the process.
Five . . . four . . . three . . .
Then to think that the Traders did this for a living, sometimes a few times a day. Jumping through the network like jellybeans, following daylight wherever people were awake enough to talk business.
Two . . . one . . .
Everything went white.
I floated in thin air; didn’t feel the seat at my back or the seatbelt biting in my shoulders. I was flying in space without anything to support me. There was no noise, no movement, just utter stillness.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see. I was aware but wasn’t, as such, alive. I had just ceased to be.
A flash of light. A rush of air.
Sensation returned. My heart went thud, and thud and thud. Life sped up. Everything around me—the backs of chairs, walls, the ceiling—took shape in rainbow-coloured hues which bled into each other until all colours overlapped. My ears echoed with a boom I had never heard.
And we still flew. I checked the clock on my comm unit. An hour and sixteen minutes had just disappeared.
Outside the window was nothing but darkness.
That was one transfer. Three more to go, with periods of waiting in between.
All of a sudden, a blanket of exhaustion fell over me. My destiny was no longer in my hands. I was beyond worry.
I leaned back in my seat, and did something I would not have thought possible: I fell asleep.
“Delegate.” Someone shook my arm.
I jerked upright, squinting against a glare of sunlight which illuminated the face of one of the flight crew. “Please tighten your harness, Delegate. We’re about to land.”
I groaned, fishing on the seat for the straps which had loosened with my weight.
Sunlight.
Did that mean I’d slept through the three other transfers? I checked my watch. It was about ten minutes behind the time we’d left Athens. Yup. That always happened. People argued over whether time had actually gone backwards or whether an entire day had gone, but when you jumped through the anpar lines, time was irrelevant, except that when you went back to your place of origin, time had progressed by roughly as much as you had travelled, never mind that time-keeping devices you took with you refused to measure travelling time.
The guard to my left leaned back in his seat, his open mouth emitting small sighs with every breath. I felt guilty—they would have been just as exhausted as I was. The other guard was digging under the seat for something that must have fallen. I was still shivery from being so rudely woken up. The uncomfortable position in which I had slept—my head bent back against the headrest—hurt my neck, but at least I felt a bit more refreshed. A tiny bit. Ready to handle whatever was thrown at me next.
The craft banked. The window to my left showed an expanse of water interspersed with reeds. The double shadow of the craft glided over the glittery surface, one side with a bluish rim and one with a yellow one, from the system’s twin suns, the larger white F class Beniz and the smaller and yellow G class Yaza, two dots smaller than our sun close together, because we were further from them than the sun was from Mars. Not much of a chance to let me forget where I was.
Barresh. A powerful city-state on the world of Ceren.
Barresh, City of Islands.
Some of those islands were sliding into view. Each scrap of land overflowed with houses, little cubes of ochre stone. No two houses were the same, no street was straight, no market place rectangular. As much as the Coldi hated asymmetry, the Barresh locals felt uneasy about uniformity and sameness, or straight lines. Silver tracks of the railway linked the larger islands like threads in a spider web.
Lower, the craft went, and lower. Passengers in front of me were getting restless, collecting items from the nets, admonishing children.
We passed over water, interspersed with fields of green, boats and harvesters with agricultural produce, jetties and storage sheds, then ochre-tiled roofs, some with coiling patterns in grey.
The craft turned sharply and braked in midair. Hover engines came on and with its nose pointed slightly up, the shuttle floated down. The floor vibrated, until the landing gear hit the ground with a faint bump.
The engine hissed and whined in an ever-lower pitch.
As the crew unclipped their safety lines, passengers rose. I pushed myself out of my seat, still feeling dizzy. My reader almost fell from the ceiling net when I undid the fastening. A door was opened at the front of the craft. I joined the line of people shuffling forward.
When I stepped onto the covered ramp, tropical heat fell over me like a suffocating blanket. Sweat trickled down my stomach before I even reached the building, not that reaching shelter brought much relief.
The building had no glass and no walls, just wide eaves to stop seasonal rain. In the wi
de-open terminal hall, a crowd waited, mostly Coldi, held back by black-clad Barresh city guards. There were cries and shouts, both amongst the passengers and in the hall. People surged against a barrier. A woman crawled underneath. A guard tried to hold her back, but, being Coldi, she shoved him back so hard he fell against his colleagues.
The woman ran down the ramp, shoved past me and all the other passengers, ignoring indignant shouts, to throw her arms around a girl of about six. “You came. I was so worried about you.”
She was crying; the mother was crying. She lifted the girl into her arms, still looking around. “Azisha, where is Azisha?” The girl shrugged and the mother addressed passengers walking past. “Excuse me, have you seen a young boy on the flight?”
People looked away, and continued walking. I was pushed along by the flood of people, into the building.
I swallowed hard, staring at the guard’s armour-clad back.
The mother’s voice still rose over the murmur, a desperate shriek. “Where is Azisha?”
Damn. I saw Nicha as I’d left him in the president’s office. Alone. No chance of joining me.
“Where is Azisha?”
An event where I had been present had changed the lives of these ordinary people.
Damn. I wiped my face.
Then we were in the terminal building. Local news reporters with their head-mounted recording gear rushed forward. Not to me, but to one of the few other non-Coldi who had been on the flight.
The entire hall beyond was full of people. All Coldi, most with haggard, emotionless faces lining up for counters. They might need to get another flight to Asto, or, if they had no permit to live there, as I knew many didn’t, they were truly lost. As far as I knew, the Exchange node at Athens had been spewing forth a tide of refugees for at least ten hours. A few thousand of them were in this hall.
“Delegate, this way.”
The two guards made a path for me through the crowd. I caught some stares, furtive glances from gold-flecked Coldi eyes.
“Where are all these people going, mashara?” No way would there be enough room in the city’s guesthouses.
The man shrugged, averted his eyes. His mouth twitched in an unusual way. I looked at him more intensely, and pieces of the puzzle fell together.
Refugees.
His native Indrahui, a world torn apart with internal conflict. Gamra had let the situation blow up; isolationist politics did that. Everyone to themselves, sort out your own problems; we won’t interfere for the sake of keeping the interstellar peace, never mind what happened on the planet. Seriously, Danziger could teach gamra a thing or two about refugee crises if he cared to try and they cared to listen.
And my guard, maybe both of them, had once been refugees themselves.
They’d dressed in combat gear, they’d cautioned me about going to Eva’s house, they’d stopped me making calls to Eva, they’d dragged me through the Exchange building in Athens . . . while desperate to get out themselves.
They would have been through hell the past few hours. My face glowed with embarrassment. I should have realised this much sooner.
“Mashara, let us go to the island. We will be safe there.” Inclusive-we, the word the meant specifically all of us present here. It was a rare enough form that I hoped they didn’t think I was making a mess of my pronouns.
Out of the terminal, to the station.
People queued at the ticket reader to get onto the train platform. The train waited, a sleek shape like a bullet, doors yawning open.
The first guard slipped into a window seat, I sat next to him, and the second guard remained standing in the aisle, handing me a cloth. The air felt sticky on my tongue and smelled like tea-tree oil.
I wiped my face. “Thanks, mashara.” I had an audience: everyone in the carriage stared at me, a thin, pale-skinned, profusely sweating excuse for a human. My stink probably offended their sensitive noses.
At meeting my eyes, most nodded a polite greeting. Items of blue clothing identified other gamra delegates amongst them; none had security guards. Most were non-Coldi. We were all lucky and extremely privileged.
With a hiss of closing doors, the train jumped into motion. It whizzed over the rails, almost noiselessly, as if it flew over the water. Clumps of reeds and small islands whipped by. The two suns hung low over the horizon, casting their glow through a blue haze.
I turned my face into a cool stream of air that flowed from a ceiling vent. Breathing deep hyperventilating breaths. My heart was racing. Ceren’s air had a higher percentage of oxygen than Earth’s. It took a day and a few strong capsules of medication to become used to it. Medication that was somewhere in my luggage, which was goodness-knew-where, but hopefully on its way to my accommodation or I’d be in serious trouble.
The train shot into the shadow of the island that housed the gamra buildings, and then shortly after into the tunnel that sliced into the artificial structure. Whining of metal on metal reflected off stone walls. A few moments of darkness followed.
Then artificial light, greenish and bright. The train slowed. The station. Blue flashed into the windows. Security, checking the passengers’ badges. We squeezed into the aisle, one guard on either side of me. I was glad to have them close, because I was suffering dizziness.
Out of the train, onto a well-lit underground platform, where passengers’ footsteps scuffled on ice-smooth paving. People spoke in soft voices. All so civilised, compared to scenes at the Exchange.
The guards led me up a flight of stairs.
We emerged into the middle of the courtyard at the centre of the complex. Apart from the entrance to the train station, it housed numerous terraces, drinking stations and other socialising nooks towards its narrower end. Giant trees spread dappled shadows over people clad in dazzling arrays of blue sitting at tables, while waist-high serving robots whirred between them.
The buildings of the gamra complex rose around the perimeter of the courtyard. Ochre stone turned golden in the late afternoon light. Carved columns supported wide awnings; carved doors hid deep in shadows. Creepers and climbing plants trailed up trellises nailed to walls. Arched doorways, leaning pillars, mosaic paving, glassless windows, all according to the local style.
I was swaying on my feet, not in the mood to admire the architecture, or to study the faces of those on the terraces in the hope of finding someone familiar, and a chat, normality. The guards strode across the courtyard into an arched entranceway which led into a kind of Roman plaza where the air was cool and humid. I breathed relief.
The guards led me up a wide staircase, and another one, where we emerged at the top gallery level. A thick carpet muffled our footsteps. Couches stood against walls between apartment doors, and vases and flowering plants hung from the balcony railings. Across the cavity of the plaza, the far wall rippled with trickling water. Cool air, heavy with humidity, circulated under the domed ceiling. A central coloured glass window let through spots of sparkling colours, which twinkled and glittered in the pond at the bottom of the waterfall. The floor of the hall, two storeys down, bore an exquisite mosaic of a five-pointed star in blood-red and white stone.
The guards stopped at a plain door, made of metal, without a handle. One of the men slid the key card through the access slot. The lock clicked and the door rumbled open.
I stepped into the semidarkness of some sort of foyer, where my footsteps echoed.
There was a sharp metallic sound and lights flicked on.
The foyer was huge, for a private apartment at least, with a floor smooth as ice. Mosaic in yellows and browns formed curvy patterns near the walls, with, in the centre of the hall another five-pointed star, the symbol of Barresh.
Carved columns ran along the walls to meet high in the vaulted ceiling.
A cushioned couch stood against the left-hand wall with a low table before it. If this was a doctor’s waiting room, it would have had magazines. This table was empty, its polished surface reflecting light pearls set in brackets along the
walls.
Opposite the entrance, a corridor stretched into darkness; the slight angles of the walls gave it a zigzagging appearance. In true local fashion, there were no right angles in this apartment.
Apart from the corridor, at least four doors opened into the hall. Unlike the front door, which was of the sliding type, these were the local design that rolled up sideways, like a beach mat. Space-efficient, but not good for privacy. The doors consisted of slats bound together with wire and held closed by metal blade springs. Two of these doors were closed, showing massive gaps between the slats. An open door led to an airy sunroom, giving a glimpse of a couch and a chair, a balcony full of plants.
Inside the last door, a red light blinked in total darkness. Communications, I guessed. A really fancy apartment, with its own communications hub.
I’d seen plenty of pictures to know that I was now in the main residential building. The other residential wings housed small apartments, one to each delegate, each of which had a bedroom, a sitting room and an office. Most of these were on the lower floors of the buildings.
But now we’d come up two floors in the main building, where important gamra officials had their residences. Two-storey affairs with large balconies, separate offices and kitchens and accommodation for staff. Garden apartments. Of which this had to be one.
In other words: what was I doing here?
The two guards had remained by the door, one of them talking into his receiver. They looked not in the least interested in what I did, nor did they seem inclined to come in and introduce me to whoever I was to meet here. Calling them would be undignified.
I dropped my bag and reader on the couch and sat down, hoping this wasn’t going to take too long. My shirt clung to me with sweat.
There were footsteps in the sitting room and a tall figure glided to the door, clad in an elegant gown of solid cobalt blue with gold edging. Gossamer strands of silver hair hung over knobbly shoulders.
