Soldier's Duty

by Patty Jansen

  Izramith said nothing. She could decide that for herself. Also, her father had just given away that his brother was still alive. In the abandoned second level corridor probably. Hence his earlier remarks about it.

  "Don't be stupid. I can see what you're thinking by that look on your face. Listen to me, for once. Of all the times I've told you to do things, I've never been more serious. He can't help you. I don't want you to be harmed."

  "I can look after myself. I've been into that place many times."

  "Izramith, please. He can't do anything for a baby. He can't even look after himself." His eyes were wide and pleading.

  "I have to try. I want to talk to him, because if there is anything that I can do to help that little boy, only another zhadya-born would know. Do you think anything could be worse than never interacting with normal people? Being labelled a potential criminal from the moment you're old enough to understand it? Being told every day that you're undesirable, useless and a threat to safety?"

  Her father sighed and let his shoulders sag. He spread his hands, started to say something and let his hands drop by his sides.

  Guess not.

  Chapter 5

  Izramith hadn't been to the second level corridor since the early days of her service with the guards. Before she was sent to Indrahui as part of Hedron's effort for the peace process, she used to be on the Yellow shift, but before that, she worked in Internal Security, and those were the guards that went into that place. It was where she had learned not to be disturbed by blood and guts.

  This old part of the settlement had been derelict ever since Izramith could remember. Mother would sometimes talk of having lived in the crowded corridors when she was young, but she had moved out with the others when the Mines Board shut the section because of outdated infrastructure.

  Izramith now found herself in that corridor, having walked past the broken seals and the warning signs about leaving the company-controlled area. Right now, the corridor was empty. Intermittent lights burned along the walls, showing ages of dirt and grime on the floor and walls. Grit and sand crunched under her feet. She walked slowly, trying not to make any noise, while feeling exposed without her veil and guard uniform. Her only protection was a comms device and a small gun.

  She tried to listen out for sounds of approaching trouble, but the air vents in the ceiling clicked and hummed and made all sorts of rushing noises. The ducts were clogged from poor maintenance and the air flow swelled and ebbed when it started backing up and resonating. The air was stale with a faint tang of human waste and sweat.

  Things scurried inside the air supply tubes. Once, she spotted a desiccated carcass of a small creature, most likely one of the eye-less rats that found their food purely by scent and that would start nibbling at anyone who remained still for long enough.

  Years of neglect had stained the walls, which, since her last visit here, ingenious residents had attempted to cover up by painting murals in rust water.

  It looked pretty, with delicate designs of abstract curls. In her mind, she saw a little boy with a paintbrush. He looked just like a normal child save for his dull black hair and pale skin, except when he put his brush in the rust-stained paint and started working, he was the most amazing and precise artist.

  While she walked past decorated and scuffed walls, she remembered the times she'd come here as guard. A man had killed himself in that service alcove over there. There had been blood all over the walls and the floor. So much that passersby had walked through it and made a multitude of tracks on the floor. Nobody, apparently, had cared about the victim, because none of the footsteps showed that anyone had stopped to check the man.

  And she remembered that one of those apartments to the right housed a couple of men who used to regularly have big screaming fights. Izramith remembered one time in particular when she was on night shift and one of them had welded the door shut from the inside, locking himself and his mates in the apartment.

  The other two men wanted out, but the apartment's main inhabitant wouldn't let them go. He was screaming at them, and they were screaming back, all the other inhabitants of the corridor gathered around the door, hurling abuse at the guards for failing to turn up earlier, failing to keep these freaks out of their area.

  Izramith and her colleague had bashed down the door and dragged the men off to the guard station. After that, she had lost track of what had happened to them. Presumably, they'd been freed and returned to this corridor and resumed their behaviour. That was what usually happened.

  She started when a door opened to her right. A man came out, frowned at Izramith and walked the other way. He was not zhadya-born, but wore a very non-standard colourful outfit of a bright yellow tunic and multi-hued cape that looked like it was made from insulation fibres from the mines' huge power cables.

  A woman—also not zhadya-born— came out of another door and looked down both sides of the passage as if she was expecting someone. Her eyes met Izramith's and she retreated inside and closed the door—which had been painted with a decorative pattern of swirls.

  The sound of children's voices drifted into the passage.

  Two young men walked past her. These were both zhadya-born and they wore long robes in pale blue. They went into a doorway further down the passage, taking no notice of her.

  Talking to any of these people would not be easy. They distrusted people from the main settlement, and with good reason.

  She came to that part of the corridor where she remembered some of the zhadya-born living.

  The layout of the corridor was old-style, with a straight passage and plain doors on both sides. At some point in the past, ideas about what made a good artificial living environment had changed, which had been one of the reasons that this section had been abandoned. New sections no longer had straight passages, but were a string of communal living spaces, a maze with parks, playgrounds and eating houses.

  It looked like the old corridor's illegal inhabitants had attempted to break the dull monotony of the straight corridor by knocking out the wall to the front entrance of an apartment to make a kind of porch. A carved stone arch held up the ceiling of what used to be the apartment's hallway.

  The arch was made from saltplains sandstone with its typical yellow hue and white bands. This stone couldn't be found locally—the settlement was in basalt territory—and had to have been brought in from the saltmine basin. Someone had put planning and thought into this modification.

  Izramith stopped to study the stonework, which displayed carvings of leaves and flowers of plants she recognised as being native to Asto.

  The Mines Board had long ago decreed that all official displays of flora or fauna should be only of native wildlife—mycelioids, the many types of eye-less rats and the typical hairy fish of Hedron.

  This artwork was in defiance of that policy. Was that because it was old or did it mean something? Her time at Indrahui had made her sensitive to this sort of thing. The display of a single flower could mean the difference between a fight or a welcome.

  The door under the porch was made from polished stone and must weigh an incredible amount. It stood slightly ajar.

  She knocked—it made a hollow echoing sound—but nobody answered. She pushed it open a fraction and peeked inside, but it was extremely dark, and she didn't trust herself to go in alone. Whoever lived in here might have seen her coming and it might be a trap. Being alone, she had no way to deal with traps other than not to walk into them.

  So she walked back down the corridor into the intersection. A man dressed in bright orange came out of a doorway at the far end, but he disappeared into another door before Izramith could get close enough to speak to him.

  A bit further down that passage, a young Coldi man came out of a door in front of her. Not zhadya-born, but perfectly normal, just like any young man who worked in the mines.

  "Excuse me, I'm looking for someone called Reyar."

  He turned. His eyes met Izramith's and a wave of irrational anger wel
led up inside her. Oh shit.

  His expression reflected what she felt. In a flash, he lunged for her.

  She didn't think, but instinctively grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed back. He tripped and hit the wall, expelling air from his lungs in a loud oof. He kicked her knee, but she shoved her leg against his so he couldn't find purchase.

  "What the fuck!" she yelled in his face. "What did you do that for?"

  "Hey, hey, I've done nothing!" His eyes were wide.

  "Nothing? You attacked me."

  "I… only wanted to know...."

  "Know what? Whether I'll bash your face in if you attack me? Well, guess what?"

  "Sorry, sorry, sorry."

  "Don't play with me." She blew out a snorting breath, exhaling tension.

  She let go of him, wiping her hands on her overalls as if to wipe away that uncomfortable wave of anger that had taken possession of her.

  He backed away, looking down, avoiding her eyes. He held his head bowed and his arms by his sides.

  That was a submissive pose, like they did on Asto. He'd attacked her; she'd won, and now he wanted to serve her? That's what they did in Asto's associations.

  "Stop doing that." She wasn't having any of that crap.

  "Doing what?"

  "Act like I'm going to hit you or something. I'm not a bully." Because that was the truth behind the Asto associations. The people at the top of the loyalty pyramids had to treat the ones below them like slaves to get them to obey.

  That was why Xiya and his fellow Outer Circle poor people had come to Hedron in the first place. Because they wanted freedom from this system, and they didn't want to be treated as slaves by those in the higher circles.

  He looked up, uncertain, flighty. He took a step back. "Sorry. I don't want trouble."

  She shook her head. She didn't want trouble either, but this just proved how jumpy she was, and it had all started with that damn Trader during her shift. Even her father could tell that she was tense.

  "I'm looking for Reyar. Does he live here?"

  "I don't know. I said I don't want trouble." He backed away another step.

  "Please. I need him."

  A door opened nearby and a woman came out. "What's happening here?"

  She glanced from the man to Izramith. "Xashya, you're getting into fights again?"

  He cowered visibly.

  Izramith felt like dragging him forward, telling him to straighten his back, speak up when spoken to.

  "What's going on?" the woman yelled at him.

  The man shook his head and darted into the open doorway.

  The woman eyed Izramith with a curious expression.

  "I did nothing," Izramith said into the silence.

  The woman shrugged. "Never mind my brother. He's really odd, this is normal for him."

  But it wasn't, Izramith knew that. Her brother might be odd, but something had clicked when he'd looked at her. The same thing that happened when she looked at Thimayu, only worse.

  She swallowed hard. Fortunately, she had no reaction to the woman at all.

  She said to the woman, her heart still pounding, "I'm looking for someone called Reyar. I've been told that this is the place where he lives."

  "Not anymore, it is."

  The panic again clamped Izramith's heart. "Then where is he now?"

  "They left, the whole lot of 'em."

  "What do you mean?"

  "All the freaks. Used to live over there on the other side." She flapped her hand in the direction of the corridor where Izramith had just looked around. "They hollowed out and joined up all the old apartments. The guy you mention was their leader. But they're gone now."

  "When?"

  "Could be yesterday, could be a while ago. I don't know, I didn't see them go." She gave Izramith a why do you care? look.

  "Where did they go?"

  "I don't know." The woman shrugged. "Like they'd ever tell me. Likely, it's a secret and we'll never hear from them again. I hope so. Good riddance with the lot of them. Creeps."

  Izramith stood as frozen. She wanted to grab the woman by the front of the shirt and slam her into the wall, but that was not going to get her an answer.

  "Is there any way I could find out?"

  "Maybe. Why do you want to know? You don't look the type." Her expression said that she suspected Izramith was a guard.

  "It's… for retrieving a debt." It was rubbish, because no one lent zhadya-born any money, but the woman seemed to buy it anyway.

  The woman turned around and yelled inside, "Hey, where did Asha say that Reyar and his bunch of loons went?"

  A man's voice replied inside, but Izramith couldn't make out his words.

  The woman turned back to her. "He says Ceren. There you have it. Mind you, I don't know if Asha is right. He tells stories every now and then. More now than then." She laughed.

  "Ceren?"

  "That's what he said."

  Izramith didn't understand. "What would they want on Ceren?" Ceren was the second world in the Beniz-Yaza system. The other world was Asto, where it was too hot for the zhadya-born.

  "I don't know. They would never tell anyone like me. But those people came here sometimes."

  "People?"

  "Yeah, the golden-haired ones. Pretty boys." Yes, the main entity on Ceren was Miran.

  Her heart thudded. "Traders?"

  The woman laughed. "I don't know. They didn't tell me."

  She turned around and went back into her apartment, leaving Izramith to scratch her head in the corridor.

  Ceren? Was that why so many Mirani visited here?

  Apart from land at the north pole covered in ice and useless for pretty much anything, Ceren consisted mainly of ocean. A few islands, and one large continent that consisted mainly of inhospitable highlands. Almost all of this continent belonged to the nation of Miran, stodgy, traditional, old-fashioned, and even less likely to let in people from outside than Hedron.

  Miran was mentioned a fair bit in the news right now. Izramith understood that for many years they had been playing a game with import restrictions for all non-local produce. For some reason which she had forgotten—some sort of conflict—the issue had come to a head, and the gamra assembly had instated boycotts. No entity was to buy Mirani goods and no one could import anything into Miran. The Mirani council had no money, no support from outside, and they hated anyone who was not pure-blood Mirani. From memory, the nation had suffered a silent coup from some crazy military general who was slowly bleeding off and driving out his councillors so that he could rule alone. No way a group of zhadya-born men would go there.

  Then where?

  There were a few other entities on Ceren, the most important one of which was Barresh—where that damn Mirani Trader had been from.

  But Barresh was at war with Miran. And there were rumours that Barresh, which was very small, got direct support from Asto, which probably wanted to secure its food imports from Barresh. A war between Asto and Miran would get very ugly. Asto had the technology, Miran the stubbornness. Why would anyone go there voluntarily?

  Izramith returned to the abandoned corridor. Stopped at the arched porch with the stone door that mocked her by being ajar. In the narrow strip between door and door frame, there was only darkness. If the group had left this apartment, she could probably enter safely. She pushed. The door moved slowly, with a great creak that echoed in the space beyond, a space that sounded much bigger than a regular apartment.

  She stepped into the darkness.

  The floor was dusty and grit crunched under her boots. Her footsteps sounded hollow in the large space. She flicked on the light from her comm and it produced fitful glow that didn't even reach the walls of the place. The floor was covered in coarse tiles made from a type of stone she didn't recognise.

  She directed the light at the ceiling and found it surprisingly high up, also with carved arches of yellow sandstone. The walls were adorned with paintings of green scenery and flowers. Not Asto, because i
t wasn't green at all save for the land in the aquifers, and it didn't look anything like this at all.

  What then? Ceren?

  She studied one of the paintings, but didn't recognise any of the vegetation. She knew about mycelioids, not plants with leaves. At Indrahui, the bushes had been grey and featureless with small, needle-like leaves. Those bushes provided places to hide, since there were no rocky outcrops or anything taller than waist height near the camp.

  From the large foyer, a hallway led further into the apartment. The air smelled stale here, and only one vent—modified to sit in a side wall rather than the ceiling—thrust out infrequent blasts of air.

  Doors into rooms off the passage stood mostly open.

  The place was huge. She had never seen pictures of any apartment like this, didn't know apartments like this existed, and she presumed that the inhabitants must have built this by joining up a number of old apartments.

  A thought went through her mind like a flash. This is not the work of madmen. The craft was beautiful, well-designed. The workmanship immaculate.

  The corridor even had pots with green plants, those that the Hedron Mines Board no longer wanted in the corridors. Sadly, these particular specimens been standing in the dark for some time, and most looked sad, with drooping blackened leaves.

  She went from the passage into another room constructed by joining smaller rooms together. The ceiling here was low, supported by carved pillars.

  A few old couches stood in the middle, and shelves along the wall held glasses, plates—all neatly organised—and some books. Nothing of value, or nothing that told her where the men might have gone or why. She wandered through one abandoned room after another. There were dormitories still with the beds made, dormitories where all bedding had been removed. The place was tidy but covered in a layer of dust that felt greasy to the touch.

  How long had these men been gone?

  Had no one noticed or cared that they were missing? The thought made her feel sick. These people were someone's brother, someone's son, and because they were zhadya-born, no one had missed them. No one had checked up on them, not even the people who lived in the same corridor.