Secret Harmonies

by Paul J McAuley

  “Yes, really.” Lena’s gaze was level. “All this nonsense Savory’s been asking you to find out for him, it’s just a beginning. Next he’ll have you searching out disloyal elements. He’s already started a purge in the automats, you know, and a couple of workers were arrested at the fusion plant last week.”

  “Where did you hear all this stuff about Savory?”

  “Around,” she said, shrugging.

  “From Web, maybe? And your other friends that I’m not supposed to know about?”

  “I haven’t seen Web since you threw him out of your room.”

  But Lena looked away, and Rick knew that he had guessed right. It was exciting to be playing this close to the edge, even if only vicariously.

  After a moment, she said, “If you’re not careful, you’ll end up like all the other null-cees in the city. Most people here gave up asking questions long ago, too uncomfortable. They just accepted the riches that poured down from the sky into their laps, a sign of their natural superiority. That’s why Savory and the rest of that gang were able to get on top.”

  “Hey. I was asking questions, in my own way. Not about politics maybe, I wasn’t interested to be frank, but about the world, the way it works. About how long we have here before the climate overturns again. Of course, that was before this war started, now there isn’t anything else, right?”

  His reproach made Lena blush. After all, although he wasn’t so very much older than she, he had already made his own place in the world. She said, “Well, you can’t work at the University, but maybe you should be doing something else.”

  “Helping Web out? Undermining the City Board? Come on, Lena.” But at the same time Rick again felt that undeniable frisson: she could help him break out of the trap he’d found himself in. The inscrutable tasks. Savory’s naked satisfaction at the destruction of Lake Fonda.

  “I still think you should drop this with Savory, go back to your old job.”

  “It isn’t like that. He can drop me, not me him. Let’s just hope that your friends are wrong about him.”

  Lena drained her wineglass. “I ought to be getting back,” she said, and looked around for the waiter, who immediately came hurrying over. She was well known in most of the places they went to, a cosmopolitan touch Rick greatly admired.

  Outside, a cold wind cut along the narrow street. It brought the briny reek of the ocean, and Lena lifted her head to breathe it in, the wings of her leather jacket swinging wide, and said that it smelled of freedom.

  Rick laughed. “You do look as though you’re trying to fly away.”

  “Over the sea, to lands no one has ever seen before.”

  “Well, except for that one guy, Eljar Price.”

  “Oh, you’re so damned prosaic sometimes.” She was smiling. “A real scientist.”

  “But that’s what I am. Or was.”

  “One day I’m going to write a piece, bigger than a symphony, that will have everything in the world in it, this wind and the sea it blows over, the Outback and the abos and the Trackless Mountains, and the rest of this continent and all the lands that nobody but Eljar Price has seen. Everything.”

  “I’d like to hear it.”

  She punched her fists into the pockets of her leather jacket, drew it closed. “Really?”

  “Sure. I’d like to hear the pieces you’ve already written, too. If you’ll let me.”

  “Oh, those are just apprentice pieces. Doodles. I don’t have the time for serious stuff, yet. But one day…”

  “Yeah, and one day I’ll know all about chaotic climatic overturns.”

  “Two dreamers,” Lena said.

  They passed a humming automat. The lights of its high windows painted yellow stripes on the warehouses opposite. When they reached the tree-lined square, Lena said, “I go off that way.”

  “All right.” He wanted to sweep her up and carry her back to his room. But that was not yet an option. In that respect at least, Lena was like someone from a settlement. Rick wondered if she would have to ask for the approval of her ancestors first, wondered if she was still not over Jon, whom she never talked about. He said, “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  A cyclist spun across the square, a solid citizen on his way home. All around them the formless roar of the city.

  “Of course,” Lena said, and made the single step needed to close the gap between them and kissed him. “Silly man. It’s our rest day tomorrow, don’t forget. I’ll see you at the Inn when you finish, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said, and went on to the rooming house.

  “Of course,” Web said, “the first priority is to find out if there is radio noise coming from the Solar System. Then I can begin to worry about sorting out intelligible signals. It might not be as difficult as you said, specially if they are beaming something at us to explain about the missing colonyboat. I’ve done the calculations.”

  “I’m sure,” Rick said, trying to keep his temper. Web had ambushed him while he was waiting to meet Lena. It was early in the evening, the Inn was almost empty. The pachedu machinery hung silent and still in the glare of the houselights above the counter’s irregular perimeter, a vertical half dozen metres of struts, sounding heads, steel sheets, tubes, and cantilevered percussion arms.

  “The thing is to try, right? You’ve got to try,” Web said insistently. His eyebrows knitted over his snub nose. His dark truculent glare was slightly out of focus: he was drunk, or drugged. “Everyone is too damn into this war to think about its cause anymore. At least it gives us cover.”

  “Us? Oh yes, your electronics wizard. And he better have magical powers, because otherwise I can’t see how you’re going to succeed.”

  “Yeah? We’ll see about that, Dr Florey. Anyway, we’re just waiting for the insurgents to make their first move. We’ll use the confusion to get past the defences. Steal an overlander, you won’t see our dust.”

  “That sounds even less likely than using the radio telescope. But good luck.”

  “See that guy?” Web pointed with his chin, and Rick turned to look. “The one with the shaved head.”

  It was not clean-shaven. A golden stubble remained; in the bright, blurred light, it was like the ghost of a halo around the man’s naked head. He wore wire-rimmed glasses which he kept pushing at with his forefinger while he listened with serious attentiveness to whatever the pretty girl in dirty VDF coveralls was telling him.

  “He says that he can organise my escape through the defences, in exchange for the overlander when we get back.”

  “You’re coming back? I thought you’d be more at home with the insurgents.”

  “You’re kidding.” Web barked his brief laugh. “They are so down on stuff like the radio telescope. They wouldn’t care if they never heard from Earth again. Shit, they’d be glad.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that.”

  “It’s true,” Web insisted.

  Rick shrugged, and saw someone who was not Lena push through the doors. Suppose she didn’t come? He asked Web, “Why are you telling me all this? You want me to turn him in?” He gestured toward the shaven-headed man.

  “You’re working for Savory, and you say you’re not some kind of cop?”

  “I’m in the VDF. Like you. That’s all.”

  “Yeah? Well, I guess you wouldn’t turn him in, at that. I guess maybe I trust you. Anyway, he isn’t the main contact for getting out. He just knows people who are into that sort of thing. A friend of Lena’s, see?”

  “Not exactly.” From the initial pinprick of surprise, a bubble began to swell in Rick’s chest. He set his empty wineglass on the bar. Suddenly everything seemed to be circles.

  Web was smiling. “It’s a small city, everyone knows everyone else.”

  “Well, Jesus, let’s hope the cops don’t. If just one of you is caught, the whole thing unravels.”

  “We’re small stuff. They’re after the guys who actually work for the insurgents. Settlers who’ve avoided internment and gone underground. You’d be
surprised at the number. Of course, I’ve never met one of them.”

  “Perhaps because they don’t exist.”

  Web laughed again, showing small stained teeth.

  “Well, it sounds like you’re playing both ends at once. Watch one of them doesn’t snap back at you.” Across the crowded room the door opened and Lena came through, her long scarlet scarf trailing like a banner. Rick’s blood leaped within him, rising toward her as the sea rises toward the moon.

  Web had seen her too. “Got to talk with that guy,” he told Rick, and stalked off toward the shaven-head man and his pretty girl.

  “What did Web want?” Lena was breathless. “He wasn’t trying to get you to help out again?” She took one of Rick’s hands in her own. They were cold, and he could feel the ridges on the tips of the fingers of her left hand, calluses from the strings of her violin.

  He said, “I don’t think so.” His happiness was qualified by Web’s insinuations. “Let’s get out of here, okay?”

  Outside Rick raised the collar of his woollen overjacket against the biting wind. “I feel like I just escaped,” he said.

  “Web really annoys you, doesn’t he?”

  “Did you know that guy he was talking to?”

  “Oh. Web told you about that.”

  “As well as all his plans. I suppose he feels safe, because if I give him away I give you away too.”

  “And would you,” Lena asked, “turn him in?”

  “I guess I really don’t give a shit about it either way. A neutral.”

  “There aren’t any neutrals,” Lena said. “Let me tell you. What I’m involved in…” They had reached the square at the end of the street. Her face was white in the lights there, her eyes shadows in that whiteness.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Rick said. But he wanted to know, all the same.

  “It really isn’t anything. Just helping a few students from the settlements who are evading the cops. We pass them on to people who get them out of the city when they can. There aren’t many of them, Rick. The main problem is feeding them, now that rationing is beginning to bite. I know people who can get stuff from the hydroponic farms. They’re my friends.”

  “I see.” Rick was thinking of Jon. What was he to Lena, now? And if he was still something, what was Rick? He asked, “Can I do anything?”

  “That’s sweet, but it’s already getting so that there are more helping than being helped. You see why I’m doing it? Nothing to do with city versus settlements or any of that shit. It’s just…a human thing.”

  “Well, we’re all human, I hope.”

  “Except your Colonel Savory.”

  “Him I try not to think about. Lena, thank you. For telling me. For trusting me.”

  “Oh, I thought that if you wouldn’t turn Web in, maybe you wouldn’t turn me in either.” And she stopped and kissed him, right there in the street.

  17. The Gates of Wrath

  “We shall come down upon them like wolves upon a fold. We shall open the gates of wrath and smite them a blow they will not forget. Believe it, my people.” Sigurd Lovine’s breath rose up like smoke. Lying among frozen tufts of grass at the crest of the slope, he passed the fieldglasses to Jonas, who put them to his eyes and studied the little encampment down in the valley by the slow, muddy river.

  “The silly fuckers don’t even have a guard posted.”

  “They have other means of keeping watch,” Lovine said.

  “Won’t do them any good, we must outnumber them ten to one. You can only carry so many people in one overlander.”

  Crouching behind the two men, Miguel felt the rush of Jonas’s eager bloodlust and shivered. He had led the insurgents to the valley (or rather, the blue brother had—the distinction was becoming blurred), but he hadn’t known about the cops until he had seen the overlander and the glistening dome of a tent. The blue brother was planning something bad.

  With his hand it had been clutching the compsim inside the pocket of his filthy overjacket. Now it told him:

  —Soon, Miguel. Soon. I have talked with my original self. All I need is down there.

  The cops would be in contact with the city, of course. Miguel wondered if this was at last the trap he had been expecting, set to catch the insurgents.

  —No, Miguel. It is much simpler than that. The cops, although they do not know it, carry something that you will need. That we will need. You will see, soon enough.

  Miguel knew by now that it was no use asking the blue brother to tell him about its plans. After it had led the insurgents to the ravine, the voice in Miguel’s head had been mostly silent, biding its time. More than a week had passed, and although there had been regular patrols (regular, that is, by the lights of the insurgents), no contact had been made with the city forces. Meanwhile, the insurgents under the command of Theodora Cziller, a force several orders of magnitude greater than the little ragged groups like that led by Sigurd Lovine, had begun to advance toward the coast, spreading through the Hampshire Hills and the forests beyond. This news came from sporadic coded radio messages which Lovine’s people continually listened for—and since it was probable that the cops listened to them too, the information was as basic as that.

  Whether or not the advance heralded the long-awaited assault on the city was a matter of constant debate in Lovine’s group, and made their leader want a victory of his own all the more urgently. But although Lovine sent his patrols in every direction across the grassland, even a little way into the forests, the only trace of the cops they had found had been a ransacked aborigine village.

  Miguel had been with the patrol which had chanced upon the village. He dismounted and wandered among charred circles, all that was left of the huts, while the half-dozen insurgents, Jonas among them, watched him.

  To judge from the state of the bodies, the massacre must have happened weeks ago, perhaps at the beginning of the war. Many had been ravaged by wild animals, little left but splintered bones and rags of dried flesh; the rest were like withered mummies. They still gave off a faint whiff of corruption, like rotten meat soaked in acetone. All had been shot in the head. Miguel suddenly had a flash of a cop in white coveralls walking among aborigines paralysed by his presence. The man taking slow, teasing aim with his rifle. The sudden report. The aborigine pitched over by the shot, its dark blood soaking into dry earth. Over and over again, the last aborigine to be killed as resolutely unmoving as the first.

  Miguel’s stomach clenched suddenly. He bent over and threw up.

  Jonas’s voice came to him across the cold air. “Seen enough, abo lover?”

  Miguel turned, wiping his mouth. Jonas jogged his horse into a slow trot, and the other insurgents followed him through the ruins. When they reached him, Miguel said, “The children. There aren’t any children.”

  Leaning on the pommel of his saddle, Jonas said, “So what? Maybe the little buggers ran off; they’ve more sense than their parents.” He pointed to one of the sprawled skeletal corpses. “Just look at that fucker, they had to shoot his legs off to make him sit down. Now who would want to waste bullets on these critters, huh?”

  “The cops,” Miguel said. After a moment’s search, he came up with a brass cartridge case, showed it to Jonas.

  Jonas squinted through his long stringy hair. “Don’t mean anything, we use the same rifles. But the cops are dumb enough to do something like this, all right. Think they did it in the Source Cave as well?”

  Miguel shook his head. “The adults would be going to the Source Cave about now, not weeks ago, which is when this happened.”

  “No point hanging around then, huh?” Jonas took up the reins, but Miguel caught at the horse’s bridle.

  “The children,” he said urgently. “We should look for the children. Maybe in the Source Cave, Jonas. We’ve got to find out why this was done, don’t you see?”

  Jonas flicked the reins, and the horse jerked its head from Miguel’s staying hand. “This isn’t anything to do with us,” Jonas said, sne
ering. “I’ve seen enough abos. What I want to see is dead cops.”

  He urged his horse into a trot, the other insurgents following him out through the other side of the village, past the last of the huts, now no more than a roughly circular heap of charred earth. Miguel had to run to catch up with them, his breath bitter in his throat.

  Days later, Miguel was still brooding over the mystery of why anyone would want to kill abos. This was no more their war than it was his. For once he was glad for the silence of his blue brother, for he secretly feared that in some way the massacre was linked with its mysterious plan. He had wanted to go back there again, but Lovine hadn’t allowed him out with patrols for a while—perhaps Jonas had complained—and then he insisted that Miguel ride with him, quartering the wide shallow valleys which ran down toward the scrubby beginnings of the forest. That was when the voice had woken inside Miguel’s head, implacably telling him to lead the patrol north of its path. Lovine, amused by Miguel’s sudden urgency, had played along. They had ridden about a kilometre before topping the rise: and there was the camp below them, the overlander and the tent beside the river.

  Now, Miguel followed Lovine and Jonas back to where Mari held the horses. He rode behind the others, only half-listening as Lovine expounded his plan. A night attack, a feint on the other side of the river to distract the cops, a two-pronged charge down the slope.

  Jonas turned in his saddle and told Miguel, “You and me together, man. I want to see how you fight.” Jonas had been making that kind of taunt ever since the incident in the cave. As always, Miguel ignored the remark, which provoked Jonas further.