The Sentients of Orion

by Marianne de Pierres

  The man from the lift jumped him before he reached it, and they both fell to the floor. Thales knew at once who it was, without seeing his face or even the colour of his overalls.

  A heavy object pressed against his throat; he smelt food-sweet breath in his face. The man had just eaten, and then come to kill him.

  ‘Reckoned you might put up more of a fight,’ whispered the man.

  Thales bucked against him but it was a miserable attempt against the man’s superior strength. He opened his mouth to shout, but the man forced a soft, round object between his lips that expanded as soon as it contacted his saliva. Suddenly his mouth was so full he could barely breathe. With his hands trapped underneath him, he could only writhe and twist his head from side to side.

  ‘Might as well enjoy it then,’ the man muttered to himself. He dropped the weapon and clamped his hand around Thales’s neck. The suffocation came quickly, intensified by the putty filling his mouth and throat.

  He attempted to knee the man in the back but his legs wouldn’t work, flopping uselessly. Oblivion came quickly.

  Even when the man’s fingers were yanked abruptly from him, Thales barely knew consciousness. Only loud cracking sounds and a short, cut-off yelp kept him connected to the world.

  The slow return of oxygen helped his brain to realise his hands were free, and he began to frantically gouge the putty from his mouth. Sitting up, he coughed and spat the material out onto the ground.

  As the tears cleared from his eyes, the darkest clump of shadows on the dock became two figures: his assailant and another, his rescuer. His rescuer had the assailant trussed up by something attached to a long handle, a whip of some kind. The rescuer took what Thales thought was a spray tube from his pocket and sprayed the assailant’s neck. Then he wrapped his fingers around the assailant’s throat.

  ‘You liking that?’ A woman’s voice. Low and soft.

  A woman?

  The assailant fell slack almost immediately and she kicked the man’s torso over so that the whip could unravel.

  ‘We need to hurry up before someone gets curious about the noise. Can you walk?’ she asked.

  Thales got onto his knees and pushed himself erect. His throat was on fire still, and his mouth felt like it was bruised and coated with dirt. ‘Who—are—you?’

  She curled the whip into neat loops and hooked it onto her belt. She was taller than him by more than a head, and dressed in the plain station overalls favoured by most workers. He couldn’t make out the details of her face.

  ‘Friend of a friend said you’d needed a hand,’ was all she said.

  Thales massaged his throat to help him speak. ‘Th- thank you. B-but I don’t—’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ she cut him off. ‘But you’ll be dead soon if you don’t come with me. This one here is the softest of Lasper’s men. He’ll send one of the good ones after you next and that will be that. I don’t plan to hang ‘round here while you think about it.’

  She gave a little salute and walked past him towards the container wall.

  It was her pragmatism that frightened him most; the dry, flat nature of a voice that didn’t bother with lies. Like the mercenary Rast Randall, but without the hint of malice in it.

  ‘Wait,’ said Thales.

  She stopped, but didn’t turn around.

  He snatched up the small sack containing his aspect

  cube and tied it to his waist. Then he hastened over to her.

  ‘Pull your collar up and lean against me. Pretend we’ve been down here looking for a quiet place to shag.’ She draped her arm across him and pulled him into the crook of her shoulder. Then she leaned her head down against his and led him out into the light.

  Thales’s heart beat as hard and quick as it had in the moments he’d been set upon. Yet they barely drew a glance from those busy loading or prepping ships.

  Somewhere, around Dock 8, a balol in a lift cab called out to her. ‘Hey, Fariss! Come over here and try a man your own size for a change.’

  She made a rude gesture over her shoulder and steered Thales on.

  When they entered the main-shaft lift she pressed the button for the level above them and pushed him up against the back wall. Then she splayed her body across his, head bent into his neck as though they were kissing or speaking intimately.

  Her breath glanced hotly off his cheek. ‘Relax,’ she whispered. ‘You’re too stiff.’

  He tried to do as she asked, but shock had taken over his body and he was shaking uncontrollably. Maybe it was also her proximity making him feel that way.

  She grasped his arm and gave it a commanding squeeze. ‘Deal with it!’

  ‘C-cannot,’ he whispered. He sagged against her, overcome by weakened muscles, unable to get his fear reaction under control; terrified that his bowels would loosen and empty where he stood. They’d left the man dead; neck broken.

  She pulled Thales closer and stroked his back. Her hands were surprisingly gentle and soothing.

  He opened his eyes and looked over her shoulder at those near them. Curious stares greeted him. Not just idle ones either. They knew her. Thales saw envy in some glances, and suspicion in others.

  He closed his eyes again and let himself be supported by her, shivering against her body warmth until the lift announced their level.

  As the doors opened, he tried valiantly to straighten but she clamped him against her side like a mother with a sickly child and manoeuvred him out of the crowded lift.

  They walked in that fashion for longer than he thought the habitat could possibly stretch; through thick foil tubes and over endless adaptor couplings that joined mismatched modules. The distance and speed of their movement returned blood to his limbs and the trembling began to settle.

  He began to notice that nothing they passed through seemed stable or purpose-built. On the lower public levels near the main recreation chamber, everything seemed durable enough, but here...

  Fariss didn’t speak until they veered off through the narrowest section of a tri-coupling and came to an old-style iris hatch.

  She let go of him then, waiting while he steadied himself. The light in the tube, though dim, enabled him to see her face square-on for the first time. Her cheeks and forehead were broad and her nose straighter than any he’d ever seen. Beneath it, her large mouth was shaped by thick, sensual lips.

  She stared back at him with equal intensity. ‘What the frig happened to your face?’ she said straight-up.

  Thales suddenly realised his mask had been lost in the scuffle. He automatically touched his skin. It felt rough and scaly, but not wet with infection or blood. ‘I... it...’

  Fariss saw him struggling to find the words. ‘Beth said Lasper had given you a rough time. He do that to you too?’

  Beth? Thales cleared his throat. ‘The Commander was responsible, indirectly.’

  Her broad face coloured at the sound of his voice. ‘That’s a pretty sweet little accent you got. Where’re you from?’

  ‘Scolar,’ said Thales automatically.

  Fariss smiled. ‘Well, we better get you out of harm’s way until we can teach you a few survival tricks.’

  ‘We?’ he enquired politely.

  She reached up to the wall and peeled off a lightweight breather mask with oxygen sacs from a large dispenser and threw it to him. ‘The air’s a little thin if you’re not used to it. Come and meet the family.’ She leaned forward then and blew into a tiny hole below the hatch’s icon-pad.

  The iris spiralled open.

  This time she stepped through alone and waited for him to follow, as if it was somehow important that he did it without her help. She watched to see if he’d follow.

  He fitted the mask, which sent a little blast of oxygen into his nose. Squaring his shoulders, he managed the step-over without tripping. The hatch shut immediately behind him, sending a rush of air against his back. The cool blast on his hot skin prickled his hair. He blinked a few times, not able to make exact sense of what he saw.
/>   He and Fariss stood on a small platform that jutted directly into a vast hollow of space. The space wasn’t empty, though. A huge building spun sluggishly inside it as though suspended from invisible cables. From the narrow tubular section of its spiralling structure to the larger, honeycombed end, it was almost an exact replica of an uncoiled seashell.

  ‘Welcome to Ampere,’ she said.

  ‘What is it?’ Thales could barely understand his own voice through the mask.

  Fariss was smiling, though, and seemed to know what he asked. ‘It was an island resort once built up straight from the sea onto limestone. But the owner got sick of the design and wanted somethin’ new, so they plucked it off its anchorage and dumped it on land. Planetary regs said it was too large to leave there, so the owner paid to have it picked up by Savoir Hauling—Lasper Farr incorporated—and brought to Edo. I’ll tell you the rest while we commute.’

  She waved at the small tug that was rapidly approaching them, a flat-backed vehicle with railings around the seating like a sightseeing boat. The operator waved at Fariss and swung the tug neatly against the platform so they could step on board.

  Once seated, Fariss took up her narration. She spread her large body across two seats, legs crooked up on the armrest, torso turned towards Thales. She was quite magnificent, he thought, and frightening with it.

  Rast Randall, the mercenary, had been a strong, capable woman, but something about Randall’s narrow, lean physique and callous laugh repelled him. The woman next to him was exuberant and commanding. His newly awakened submissive soul stirred and he had a ridiculous desire to sit at her feet.

  He tried to concentrate on her narrative but his thoughts rebounded between Aleta and Bethany and her, and the man who’d just tried to kill him—how his legs had gone into spasm when Fariss strangled him. She was a murderer. The kind of person his beliefs and upbringing would have prevented him from knowing in the past.

  Fariss tapped his arm. ‘You listening to me? I don’t do the tourist guide thing for everyone.’ Then she grinned. ‘Hey, I don’t even know your name.’

  ‘Thales,’ he mumbled through the breather mask.

  ‘Well, Thales, I’m called Fariss O’Dea. Now, listen and learn. Ampere isn’t officially independent from the rest of Edo but we might as well be. We run our own rules here and Lasper Farr doesn’t interfere.’ She lifted her jaw. ‘He doesn’t dare. Sam provides him with all his little rust-eaters. Edo would disintegrate without them and he knows it. So you’ll be safe enough while you’re here with us.’

  ‘How can you breathe without assistance?’

  ‘Oxygen’s lighter on Ampere but it’s enough. I’m used to it. Better in the city than out here though. I find it hardest going down to Edo proper now. I get dizzy from the extra.’

  ‘But how does your city do this?’ He rotated a finger.

  ‘You mean float out here? The outer levels of Edo aren’t as compacted as the lower levels. Gravity’s doing its thing but not enough to jam us up against something. We’re like a satellite kept in place by all the other stuff around us. Farr lives even further out than Ampere; right on Edo’s rim where the atmosphere’s zero and the detrivores rove.’ She sang the last few words to a tune he didn’t recognise.

  Thales raised his eyebrows above the mask.

  She laughed.

  Randall used to laugh a lot, but with a hard edge that seemed like it was meant to cut you. Rene and Bethany, the women Thales’d known intimately, hadn’t laughed readily. And then there was Mira Fedor. The tragedy that dogged the Baronessa had insinuated itself into her face. She seldom smiled.

  Thales felt himself further drawn to Fariss as if she gave off the vigour and light that he desperately lacked.

  ‘I’ll take you to meet Samuelle and then get cleaned up. We’ll sort out something for you.’

  Thales wasn’t sure that was what he wanted to do at all but Fariss had just saved his life and he still felt too shaken to object. He leaned back into the hard bench seat and watched as the tug hovered down onto its matching berth; a much wider platform than the one they’d left behind. This one jutted out from the large end of Ampere’s honeycomb of windows. They could, Thales thought, be arriving at an exotic and luxurious hotel if not for the plethora of ugly, twisted stanchions, broken satellite towers and discarded metal structures that sufficed as Ampere’s horizon on all sides.

  It was unnerving to feel like you were floating free in space and yet be hemmed in by a circumference of rubbish.

  Fariss didn’t speak to him again, save to tell him to remove his mask as they walked through the corridors. She did, however, shorten her stride and speed to accommodate his flagging energy, and occasionally took his elbow to guide him into a different passageway. Her every touch seemed to make his body feel better.

  They received the same curious glances from other pedestrians as in the central lift, but here the faces seemed friendlier, less guarded.

  Thales opened his mouth to tell her he couldn’t walk any further without rest or food when she halted abruptly before a door and turned to look down at him. ‘Don’t lie to Sammy. It’s the one thing she won’t stand.’

  She wanted him to make a good impression. The idea warmed Thales.

  She opened the door and pushed him inside.

  The room appeared to him as a once-grand suite that had been transformed into a bizarre kind of laboratory. It was brilliantly lit and dominated by a huge oval-shaped bed on a raised dais. Objects that could have been in any medi-lab, even the biozoon’s, surrounded the bed. Thales recognised some of them: basic diagnostic stations, blood analysis units and a wall of freezer capacity. But a lot of the other equipment was as foreign to him as this entire man-made micro-world Fariss called Ampere.

  ‘Sammy!’ bellowed Fariss.

  ‘Keep it down, girl,’ said a voice. ‘I can see you well enough.’

  Fariss frowned into the bright light, swivelling her head. ‘Well, I can’t see you.’

  ‘Is it him?’

  ‘Judging from the way someone was trying to strangle him when I turned up, I’d guess so. His name is Thales.’

  ‘Lasper’s man?’

  Fariss clasped her hands together like a child. ‘I had to, Sammy. Didn’t want him tellin’ no one it was me.’

  ‘Did you spray him?’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘Good girl. As long as there’s no DNA residue.’

  Thales heard a noise; a hiss similar to the one their hover-tug had made as it landed on the Ampere platform. A woman walked out from behind two banks of coolers and stood between them. She had the oldest face he’d ever seen.

  On Scolar rejuvenation was compulsory, along with HealthWatch. While rejuve worked with variable success on individuals, it never, ever, allowed such obvious ageing. People tended to die from accidents or violent acts—but mostly they still looked young.

  Samuelle’s old body was encased in a grey nano-suit that quietly pumped and deflated over her skin as movement was required. She grinned, flashing a set of perfect teeth at him that looked incongruous against her lined, age-spotted skin. There were some things Samuelle chose to keep upgraded.

  ‘Welcome to Ampere, Thales. Bethany tells me you’re a learned type. Could always do with a few more of them around here. Fariss wouldn’t know Villon’s philosophies from a dirty ditty.’

  Thales cleared his throat, forming his response in his mind. ‘While I’m indebted to Fariss... and y-you... for your assistance, I have no plans to become part of your community. Bethany and I had a brief... relationship which has ended. It was her idea that I should come here. Not mine. Indeed if Fariss had not found me I would likely be dead and perhaps better for it. Despite my misgivings about still being alive I would like to say thank you and be on my way.’

  Samuelle’s sunken eyes half-closed for a moment as if she were accessing a moud. When they opened, Thales saw a hint of something grim. ‘You wish to leave?’ she asked.

  He glanced at Fariss a
pologetically and nodded. ‘I want to make it on my own.’

  ‘Then let me lay it out for you, young Thales. You would most certainly be dead without our intervention, and you will be shortly, if you return. Lasper wishes any trace of you removed from Edo. It is not often that I directly oppose his wishes, but the fact that you are a danger to him is valuable to me. I also owe a great debt to Bethany. She wants you alive and so you shall stay that way.’

  Anger rushed through Thales, causing him to tremble again. ‘You can not choose whether I live or die.’

  Samuelle and Fariss exchanged looks.

  ‘You’re right in that, to a point.’ Samuelle nodded.

  ‘You’re better off here, Thales. I can teach you some survival skills. Make it easier for you when you’re on your own again,’ offered Fariss.

  Thales grappled with a deep, surging instinct to obey Fariss, and shook his head stubbornly.

  ‘Fariss,’ said the old woman in a sharp voice. ‘Wait outside.’

  Fariss nodded and walked to the door. When she had closed herself outside, Samuelle took a step closer. Thales wasn’t sure if it was the lightweight hydraulics at her knees and elbows or the nano-suit that made the hiss, but the sound unnerved him.

  ‘I take a risk giving you this information, and you should know I will disclaim it and you should you turn out to be untrustworthy. Bethany told me what Lasper did to you, how he blackmailed you to retrieve the DNA sample from Rho Junction, and how the virus he administered nearly killed you. She said that you were desperate to find out the nature of the thing you transported here because you fear it is being used to cause problems on your homeworld. She guessed that you would try to find those answers in Lasper’s laboratory and wind up stiff and vacced.’

  Thales licked his lips. Black spots flickered before his eyes. He was having trouble standing now, and this was not helped by the brutal way she had cut to the chase. ‘B-Bethany knows me t-too well, perhaps.’

  ‘Sit down,’ she ordered, and pointed to a bench by the blood analyser.

  Thales stumbled over to it. He hadn’t slept since Aleta, nor barely eaten. And then the attack... He sank onto the hard, cold surface with relief: