by Paul McAuley
Greater Brazil and the European Union had their own plans for the Outer System. They were constructing a facility on the Moon that would house their most important political prisoners, a trial run for a grand scheme to transport the inhabitants of every Outer city and settlement to lunar camps. The Outers would enjoy a certain degree of self-government, might even be allowed to trade their skills and knowledge for credit, but they would not be permitted to travel outside their camps and would be subjected to the zero-growth initiative. As for the Pacific Community, its ships were not only outnumbered, but they were also much slower. If it ever came to a confrontation, the Brazilians and Europeans were confident that they could easily shut down the PacCom presence in the Saturn System.
But then a PacCom freighter returned to Iapetus after a two-year round trip to Neptune, and the PacCom government told its allies in the Three Powers Authority that it had made contact with two communities of Outers in the Neptune System, the Ghosts and the Free Outers, and hoped to establish full diplomatic relations and negotiate trade agreements with both of them.
It was a shrewd and provocative move. The Ghosts had been troublesome allies of the city of Paris, Dione, before the Quiet War. Fierce opponents of the Brazilians and Europeans then, and no doubt equally fiercely opposed to the TPA’s occupation of the Jupiter and Saturn systems now. As for the Free Outers, when Arvam Peixoto had routed them from their nests around Uranus, they’d fled outwards in ships equipped with the fast-fusion drive; either they’d developed it independently or, more likely, they’d somehow stolen or acquired the schematics of the Brazilian model. The possibility that the Pacific Community might make an alliance with these factions and purchase information that would enable them to build their own version of the drive and eliminate at a stroke their major handicap when it came to defending their possessions in the Saturn System was a serious threat to the balance of power, and to the survival of the TPA. Many in the Brazilian military, especially the ambitious young blades from the great families, believed that war wasn’t far off. A real war this time. A good old-fashioned war with armies and navies squaring up to each other, bombing missions and air combat, battles in space. Give them a wing of singleships, they said, and they could clear the Pacific Community from the Saturn System inside a week.
Loc Ifrahim knew that it wouldn’t be as simple as that. Oh, there was no doubt that Greater Brazil outgunned the Pacific Community in the Saturn System, but her military forces on Earth were overstretched, and the government was distracted by serious domestic issues. The president had lost a lot of support after the OSS began to arrest members of the government, there was open warfare between factions in the Senate, and almost every territory was troubled by nationalist and pro-democracy rebels. Loc’s good friend Yota McDonald, recently returned from Earth, said that in the four weeks he’d spent in Brasília there had been more than two dozen car bombings and numerous acts of so-called nonviolent protest, including an attempt to contaminate the water supply of the Senate with a psychotropic drug. The rebels, once isolated pockets of malcontents at the borders of remote territories, were now a mainstream movement with considerable support amongst the general population. Clandestine videos and literature about democracy and human rights were circulating throughout every city in Greater Brazil. The OSS was making mass arrests and transporting trainloads of people to camps in the far south every day, but this was having little effect on rebel activity, and was providing all kinds of ammunition for the pro-democracy movement.
So Loc wasn’t surprised by the announcement that senior politicians from Greater Brazil, the European Union and the Pacific Community would be attending an extraordinary summit about the future of the Outer System, convened in the neutral territory of South Africa. Despite the sabre-rattling and dire rumours and black propaganda, it was clear that the government of Greater Brazil wanted to explore every alternative to war, if only to prolong the peace until they had crushed internal resistance and built up the strength of their armed forces. A couple of days after the announcement, Loc was summoned to a meeting with Euclides Peixoto. The man shuffling across his big office and grasping Loc’s hand in both of his, holding on after the official video shot, asking him about Berry Hong-Owen.
‘I hear he’s partying like there’s no tomorrow. Keeping up the troops’ morale with that bar of his. You did good, cleaning up his act and bringing him back to Paris,’ Euclides Peixoto said. ‘Yes, there’s no doubt that you have a talent for solving tricky problems, and that’s why I thought of you for this special assignment that’s just now come up.’
‘I am at your service, as ever,’ Loc said, feeling that his doom was looming at his back, a black wave about smash into him and carry him away. That was the downside of pandorph. It sharpened your perceptions, but it also amplified your emotional states. And Loc was suddenly feeling very paranoid. Euclides Peixoto clearly knew all about the murder that he and Captain Neves had covered up - why else would he have mentioned Berry? And if he knew about that, what else did he know?
‘I like to reward my best people,’ Euclides Peixoto said. His smile was warm and wide but his dark gaze was cold and flat. ‘Give them what’s coming to them. And when it comes to handling the Outers, there are few better than you, Mr Ifrahim. My secretary has all the details, but because it’s such a delicate and tricky matter I believe it’s only right I explain things to you. Man to man.’
They sat in sling chairs in front of a big window with a stunning view down the long slope of Paris’s tent. Trees fresh and green in bright chandelier light, water sparkling in the river’s rocky chute. Euclides explained that the Brazilian and European governments had decided to send a diplomatic mission to Neptune, to gather as much intelligence as possible about the strength and disposition of both communities, to discover whether or not the Free Outers had already sold the secrets of the fast-fusion motor, and to lay the groundwork for a peace treaty that would grant the Ghosts and Free Outers sovereignty of the Neptune System in exchange for a promise that they would acknowledge the TPA’s right to govern the Jupiter and Saturn systems, and keep the Uranus System neutral territory unoccupied by either side. A pragmatic strategy that would neutralise the Pacific Community’s unilateral plans for some kind of alliance. Containment and control instead of conciliation. Neptune was a long way from anywhere else. As long as the Outers didn’t attempt to interfere with the TPA’s affairs, they would be allowed to do what they wanted until the TPA - or at least, the Brazilians and Europeans - were in a position to mount an overwhelming attack.
‘The diplomatic service is in charge, needless to say, but I have the power to appoint an expert to their team,’ Euclides told Loc. ‘And I can think of no one better than you.’
Loc hadn’t taken the bullet he’d been expecting, but even though things could have been much worse, this - a dangerous and pointless foray to a nest of rebels at the edge of the Solar System which had no chance of any real success - was still pretty bad. He began to demur, saying that he was of course tremendously flattered, mentioning several investigations that needed his personal attention, suggesting one of his own staff who could take his place, but Euclides Peixoto cut him short.
‘You have more experience of the Outers than anyone else on my staff. As for your team, it’s time to see if they can manage without your immediate supervision. After all, you won’t be here for ever, will you? Also - here’s the capper - you have a personal connection with one of the Outers who will be taking part in the talks.’
Loc knew at once who Euclides Peixoto meant: Macy Minnot, the traitor who had defected to the Outer System before the Quiet War. Loc, who’d suffered several bruising encounters with her, had hoped that he would never see her again after she fled to Uranus with the Free Outers. But now she had reached up from the past like a drowning sailor grabbing hold of a shipmate, clinging to him, threatening to pull him under.
Euclides Peixoto was nailing him with his dark stare, waiting for an answer. Loc smiled and said
yes. Yes, of course he would go.
‘Of course you will,’ Euclides Peixoto said. ‘Step over here. We’ll get a few more shots for posterity. How about in front of this magnificent chestplate you gave me? Oh, and there’s one other thing. I have to appoint someone to look after the security of the team. I think, since you two work so well together, that Captain Neves would be ideal.’
‘Are you sure he’s doing it to punish us?’ Captain Neves said, the next day.
‘His mention of Berry - that was no accident. Putting us both on the team, that’s no accident either. He knows about that murder, my attempt to talk to Sri Hong-Owen, God knows what else.’
‘Then he’s going to look very stupid if we succeed, and come back heroes.’
‘There’s no chance that will happen,’ Loc said. They were in the pod that Captain Neves used for her special interrogation sessions. It was one of the few places in Camelot, Mimas, where they could talk without worrying about being overheard by spyware. Captain Neves sat by the black mirror of the window while Loc ankled up and down, possessed by a restless agitation no amount of pandorph could ease, saying, ‘The Outers will almost certainly guess that this isn’t really anything to do with negotiating a settlement. And they can’t be trusted to honour diplomatic immunity, either. The best we can hope is to get back from this alive.’
‘I know you don’t care what I think, but I’m going to tell you anyway,’ Captain Neves said. ‘If Euclides Peixoto wanted to get rid of you, he would have done it already. Sent you home in disgrace, or put you on trial right here.’
‘It isn’t just Euclides Peixoto. I have enemies. So many enemies.’
‘Come here,’ Captain Neves said, her voice sharp and crisp. Commanding him. She drew him to her when he sat down, pressing his head against her breasts, running her fingers through his beaded braids, telling them click by click like a clerk working an old-fashioned abacus. She said, ‘You’ve been overdoing the pandorph again.’
‘It helps me think.’
‘It makes you think too much. The wheels are spinning and throwing off plenty of sparks, but they aren’t gaining any traction. This trip will give you a chance to get clean. I’ll help you do it. We’ll survive this and we’ll go on together,’ Captain Neves said.
‘You and me against the world,’ Loc said.
‘Any world you care to mention,’ Captain Neves said, feeling her lover’s pulse slow and his trembling stop, listening as he told her how fine it would be when they returned to Earth, how they would live the high life together, on the far side of their crimes.
Two days later, Loc Ifrahim and Captain Neves were aboard a freighter heading out from the Saturn System towards Neptune. It was a long trip. Neptune was three times as far from the sun as Saturn, and the two planets were some forty degrees away from opposition, Saturn at half past eight to Neptune’s six o’clock. Separated by over four billion kilometres. Although Loc could send encrypted messages to his office via a tightly focused laser, he grew increasingly anxious as the time lag ticked up from seconds to minutes to hours, worrying that Euclides Peixoto was interfering with his people or, even worse, having his files forensically analysed. It didn’t help that the leader of the Peixoto family’s negotiators, Sara St Estabal Póvoas, had helmed the diplomatic crew back at Rainbow Bridge, Callisto, when Loc had been involved in a plot that had very nearly blown up in his face. She made it clear that as far as she was concerned he and Captain Neves were surplus to requirements, told him that she couldn’t stop him attending the briefing meetings and training sessions, but he must remember at all times that he was no more than an observer, and would not be allowed to have any input.
Loc didn’t care. He knew that everything important would be discussed and decided behind his back, and besides, for most of the voyage he was in no condition to make any kind of meaningful contribution. Despite Captain Neves’s help, coming off the pandorph was no walk in the park.
There were no physical symptoms of withdrawal, but psychologically it was like falling to the bottom of the ocean. His mind growing sluggish and cold. His thoughts moving through lightless depths under tremendous pressures. Everything around him leached of colour and significance. He slept much of the time, ate only when Captain Neves forced him to eat. If there had been any pandorph on the ship he would have raged and begged for a taste, but she had found the patches he’d tried to smuggle aboard and thrown them away. He cursed her, accused her of being a heartless bitch who wanted to hurt and humiliate him, and much more. She let him rant until his anger turned to remorse and self-disgust and shame, and he wept and begged forgiveness, told her that he knew that she was doing this for his own good, that she was strong and he was weak.
Loc confessed all his grievous sins, his thefts and betrayals and murders. How he’d arranged the death of Emmanuel Vargo, the designer of the Rainbow Bridge biome, by bribing a medical technician to give the man a drug that would kill him when he was revived from hibernation at the end of the voyage from Earth to Jupiter. How he’d conspired with Euclides Peixoto’s security chief to murder Emmanuel Vargo’s lover when she’d come dangerously close to the truth; how he’d conspired with dissident Outers to get rid of the security chief when things had begun to unravel. How he had fatally assaulted a Ghost who had insulted him at a meeting on Dione, and then had killed the Air Defence Force scientist he’d been escorting because the man had tried to prevent him from escaping. How he’d shot an Outer and a Brazilian marine during the battle for Paris.
And then there were the murders she already knew about, because she’d been a party to them. The assassination of Colonel Faustino Malarte. The deaths of the two Outers who had tried to swindle them in a business deal. The boy who had been executed for the murder committed by Berry Hong-Owen.
Captain Neves held him as he choked out his secrets, told him that none of it mattered.
‘So much blood,’ he said. He had a wretched, empty look. ‘Once you start killing, it’s hard to stop. Because it makes things so simple. It gets rid of the problem. It clears a path. I’ve waded in blood. Swum in it. And as long as I got what I wanted I didn’t care. But all of it, everything I have, is soaked in blood . . .’
‘Hush,’ Captain Neves said. She was cradling him in her lap, stroking his braids as he sobbed and snuffled. As she had held hurt and unhappy children when she had been no more than a child herself, in the dusty camps in the great desert of the American Midwest. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s all gone now. We’ll buy ourselves out after this, just like we agreed, and go to Earth, and start over. We’ll have such fine times together. You’ll see.’
Slowly, Loc began to recover, ascending day by day from the depths of his depression like a diver returning to the sunlit surface of the ocean. He and Captain Neves found an observation blister where they could avoid the rest of the people on the ship, play their little games, talk hour after hour. Stars scattered everywhere in the black sky wrapped around them: stars of every colour and brightness everywhere they looked. Captain Neves pointed out and named constellations, something she’d learned as a kid out on the ruined prairies. They made love after their fashion, and afterwards blotted floating droplets of blood from the air. They talked about everything they wanted to do when they returned to Earth. Loc said that they could be on their way almost as soon as they had returned to Saturn. He would find a way of getting her a posting in Greater Brazil. They wouldn’t be detained by debriefings or discussions about following up the negotiations with the Outers because the negotiations would come to nothing.
Captain Neves was happy to listen to his plans about the future, his fluent and cynical contempt for his superiors. He was healing.
Slowly, Neptune resolved from a bright star to a minute blue disc. The freighter fired up its motor and spent several hours decelerating at 0.5 g - after all the time they’d spent in the various microgravities of Saturn’s moons, this was a crushing force that more or less immobilised Loc and Captain Neves - slowing so that it could
be captured by Neptune’s gravity, entering into a wide orbit and creeping towards the outermost moon, Neso, where the Outers were waiting for them.
It was a dark, irregular rock just sixty kilometres across, a fragment of a moon that had been broken up by tidal forces when Triton had been captured: one face an undulating cratered plain that had once been part of the surface of its parent body, the rest cut by shear planes and deep fractures, like the broken roots of a rotten tooth. It traced a retrograde orbit that took twenty-five years to complete a single circuit around Neptune, with a semi-major axis of more than forty-eight million kilometres. A distance that the Ghosts and Free Outers considered to be a just and adequate quarantine for their contentious visitors.
