It had gone quiet. Fleare’s shoulder hurt and she felt hot and sleepy. She lifted her head carefully and tried to open her eyes. For a moment she couldn’t, just like when they had stuck shut after she’d had a bad fever. Then they opened.
The inside of the car was splattered red. Fahri’s neck still stuck out of his chauffeur suit, but there was a purple hole in the back of his head and he wasn’t moving. Her father was pulling himself upright. His face was white, and he was breathing very fast.
Fleare felt the hand slip off her shoulder. She turned in time to see her mother slump sideways. The front of her jacket was soaked with red stuff, and her eyes were closed.
Fleare buried her face in her mother’s lap, which felt very still. She could hear her father’s breathing.
The red stuff smelled of salt and rust.
Startlingly, there had been another visit to the same planet. At the beginning of it she thought it was the worst thing her father could possibly have done.
She had yawned pointedly, applying the full weight of her newly fifteen-year-old disdain, and did her best to slump down into her seat. It wasn’t easy; she was sitting on a crude plank, and the g-forces kept trying to tear her out of it. Plus, it was noisy. People kept screaming.
‘Aahhhh! Oh! Oh . . . Is that it?’
‘Nope. Here we go!’
She gripped the guard rail, feeling the flaking paint tickle her hand. The rail shifted a little as she used it to brace herself. She hoped it was meant to.
The wind hissed in her ears, and her stomach did a quick upward kick of protest. She clenched her muscles as the train of little cars wobbled and creaked its way up the rails to the top of yet another ludicrous drop, paused like a senile bird of prey trying to remember what to do, and then hurtled down the slope leaving a trail of wails and curses and a faint smell of vomit and urine. Fleare suspected that some of the smells, and almost all of the creaks, were artificial. The owners of the longest, tallest, fastest and oldest roller-coaster in the Spin wouldn’t leave things like that to chance.
Whatever. There was no way she was going to react. Being her age had its responsibilities. Besides, it was her birthday and the ride had been her idea. It was exceeding her expectations. She stole a glance to her left. Her father’s face was set in the stony expression he wore when living through something unpleasant but temporary. Whereas – she flicked her eyes to the right – Seren looked terrified. For a second Fleare felt a bit guilty about that, but only for a second.
The cars hurtled down the last, near-vertical slope, swooped round a steep banked curve with a grinding screech of rails and braked to a halt by a rustic-looking concrete platform. Fleare noticed that the braking was distinctly quieter and more efficient than the rest of the ride. She waited until her father had helped a bleached-looking Seren out of the car and then followed them, trying hard to make a quick sideways stagger as her legs took up the load appear intentional.
Her father managed a smile, probably out of pure relief. ‘Well, that was something. Huh, darling?’
Fleare was about to reply when she remembered that he wasn’t talking to her. Over the last few months, ‘darling’ had come to mean someone else. So had lots of other terms of endearment. She compressed her lips.
‘It certainly was.’ Seren smiled weakly at Fleare. ‘You’re braver than me. I think I need something to help me get over it. Vik, can we get something to eat?’
It was a quick recovery for someone who looked as shaky as that. Fleare revised her opinion up several notches. Seren was made of tough stuff.
The restaurant was crowded, but that never bothered Fleare’s father. A table appeared, like it always did. Reservations happened to other people. Fleare had only noticed this quite recently, after she had been away to school and had seen other ways of doing things. Even more recently it had occurred to her that every time Viklun Haas didn’t worry about a reservation, someone else must have lost their table. If any arguments resulted, she never saw them. Her father had people to have his arguments for him.
But it was a good table if you didn’t mind the noise of the machine guns.
The restaurant was themed, like everything else in the park. The theme changed sporadically. For the last three years (an unusually long period of stability) it had been Musical Theatre. It had been Musical Theatre two weeks ago, when Viklun Haas had made the booking. It had been Musical Theatre yesterday, when she had signed herself out of school on a three-day birthday pass.
Today it was Prehistoric Battles. Apparently even the name Haas couldn’t do anything about that.
Their table was next to a wide window looking out over a rainy vista of mud that seemed to stretch for several kilometres, although it was probably smaller. It was scarred across by deep grooves and wandering lines of some coiled stuff that Fleare couldn’t identify at first. She blinked down a search and came up with the name ‘barbed wire’, which sounded suitably nasty. Every now and then a voice shouted something inarticulate and a lot of men dressed in mud-coloured clothes would climb out of the nearest groove and start swarming over the ground towards the wire stuff. Similarly dressed men on the other side of the wire would start firing machine guns – she could identify those without blinking. Some of the advancing army would deactivate, falling to the ground in disjointed poses. The rest would retreat quickly to the groove.
Now she came to look, there were a lot of deactivated soldiers on the ground. They looked very realistic.
Food came, a sort of stew served in square metal tins with a handle on one end. A card on the table said they were called mess tins, which seemed about right to Fleare, but the taste was better than she had expected. Her father seemed to agree with her; he had taken a spoonful – spoons were the only utensil – and raised his eyebrows approvingly. ‘So,’ he said, through his mouthful, ‘are you having a good time, Fle?’
‘Sure.’ She felt something more was needed, and added: ‘It’s okay.’
He nodded vigorously, like someone who had been given glowing approval. ‘Good. I’m glad. We’re glad.’ His hand sought Seren’s. She took it, at the same time giving Fleare an unreadable look. ‘It’s good we’ve been able to do this together.’ He paused, and then added: ‘As a family.’
Fleare focused intently on her food. It seemed safer than shouting in protest at the word her father had just used. One corner of her mess tin was actually a bit rusty, a tiny dark brown counterpoint to the light brown stew with its pinkish lumps of meat. She poked at the place with her spoon; it rasped a little over the corroded surface.
She became aware of silence, and looked up. Her father was looking at her with an expression somewhere between pleading and impatience. She raised her eyebrows. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘have I missed something?’
He took the deep breath that meant she was being tolerated. ‘No, but there is something I want to tell you.’ She saw him squeeze Seren’s hand. ‘We want to tell you. About being a family. Seren and I have decided to sign a contract. A permanent one. We really are going to be a family.’
It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was still a shock. Fleare looked back down at the rust, and realized that she had managed to scrub most of it off. The surface of her food in that corner was speckled with brown flakes. Not real rust, then. She put down her spoon, looked up at her father and smiled. ‘I’m really happy for you,’ she said. ‘I hope it helps your political ambitions.’ Then, looking at Seren, she added: ‘And what a perfect day to tell me.’
Once again she was impressed. Seren’s face barely flickered before settling into polite enquiry. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘What do you mean?’
Fleare raised her eyebrows. ‘Didn’t he say? It’s my birthday, right? My mother was killed on my birthday. She was assassinated on this planet. I was five. It was a mistake,’ she added, nodding at her father. ‘They were aiming for him. So, thanks for lunch. I’ll be on the ride.’ She stood up, turned her back and walked out of the restaurant, leaving silence behind her. S
ilence if you didn’t count the machine guns. They were still going.
The anger didn’t really hit her until she was back on the roller-coaster. When it did she didn’t fight. Here, of all places, it was okay to scream, and she put her head back and howled her anger and loss at the sky while the shuddering cars plunged and climbed and people screamed around her.
By the time the ride closed she had just about screamed herself out. She sat on the cool concrete of the platform and caught her breath. Other people dotted the platform. They were mostly around her age, sitting cross-legged and breathing deeply. Some of them exchanged smiles, or shrugs. A couple of them were trying to catch her eye. One was quite cute, with a lankily compact frame and dark brown hair in an unfashionably ragged crop. The brown looked natural. She ignored him, blinked a message service and pinged the transport office of her school with a ‘come and get me’.
The response would take a while. She stood up, wrapping her arms around herself. It was getting dark and the air had chilled quickly. All about her, people were rising from the platform and forming and re-forming into social knots as they headed for the exit of the theme park and the transit stations that lay just outside it. Fleare could have followed them, but she preferred to stay where she was, forcing the school to make a solo pick-up. She was quite happy to add another item to her father’s bill.
A juddering noise made her look up. It came from the battlefield. There was something . . . She stood up and squinted into the dusk. Some sort of machine, it looked a bit like a big insect, was stalking over the ground. There was a kind of arm at the front that repeatedly plunged downwards and then reared up.
Then her eyes adjusted to the darkness. The arm was picking up the soldiers that had stayed on the ground and flicking them into a container on the back of the insect. The container looked full.
So, not deactivated, then. She felt a bit sick. She looked away from the battlefield and met the eyes of the cute guy. She pointed at the machine. ‘What the fuck?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah. It’s gross. I’d never choose that.’
‘Neither would I.’ Then her brain caught up with the words. ‘What do you mean, choose?’
He looked surprised. ‘Don’t you know? They’re criminals. Life sentences, you know? There’s a kind of lottery. The winners get to try out here. If they make it through the day they’re free. If not . . .’ He shrugged.
‘You’re kidding.’ Fleare gulped. ‘Who came up with that idea?’
‘The company that runs the prisons, of course.’ He looked distracted, then clicked his fingers. ‘Haas Protection, it’s called. Run by either an inventive genius or a twisted fuck. You choose.’ He shook his head, and then frowned at her. ‘Are you okay?’
The sickness was getting stronger. Fleare clenched her teeth. She knew which of the two she would choose. Had chosen, in fact. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. Then she threw up.
The cute guy was still trying to help clean her up when the school transport dropped out of the sky. She fell into it with a sense of relief, leaving him with her sincerest thanks and a false ID.
As the transport sprang into the air she squeezed her eyes shut. She wasn’t trying to blot out the view in front of her; she was trying to blot out the view in her mind’s eye. It was an image of the machine, picking up bodies, and suddenly her imagination added a detail: a driving seat, with Viklun Haas sitting in it, waving and smiling.
She opened her eyes long enough to blink him a message. ‘Going back to school. Don’t contact me.’ And, after a moment’s thought: ‘Ever.’ Then, aided by turbulence, she threw up again. She hoped there was a charge for cleaning.
Silthx, Fortunate Protectorate (disputed), Cordern
IT WAS STILL the same day, and it was showing no sign of ending. Alameche was uncomfortable, and he had made a promise to himself that as soon as he had the chance he was going to spread some of that discomfort pretty widely.
But the chance wasn’t there yet. The cabin lights blinked from the muted yellow that was standard for dark-side running to a harsh blue-white, and the little shuttle banked sharply and began the juddering descent through what was left of the upper atmosphere of Silthx. Alameche braced himself against the worst of the turbulence, and reflected that they really must find a way of destroying the ecosystem of a planet without making it so fucking uncomfortable to land on.
The shuttle swayed downwards through the screaming winds, crabbed through a cloud layer that had the radiation alarms whimpering, and burst into the stiller air of late evening above the new spaceport. There had already been a perfectly good spaceport on Silthx, but only if your definition of ‘perfectly good’ included ‘too small to allow forcible export of the entire natural resources of the planet within ten years’. It had been levelled and replaced. The new complex was officially called the Greater Portal, but the remaining locals used a word which, allowing for major cultural differences, translated roughly as ‘Cunt’. Apparently this was in recognition of the role of the place in the violation of their planet.
The Project Controller was waiting for him at Embarkation, an area which he had heard even his own people refer to – quite without his influence, but much to his satisfaction – as Cervix. She was short and stout and grey-haired, which was an affectation for someone of her seniority, and she looked worried – which was probably not affected at all. Alameche didn’t blame her. He gave her a half bow. ‘Madam Controller Haavis. I hope you are well?’
‘Counsellor! Of course. Such a pleasure. We were so pleased to hear that you were coming.’ Even her voice was short and stout, with a fluting wheeziness that sounded unhealthy.
Alameche raised an eyebrow. ‘Why? Do you have good news for me?’
‘Yes! Well, that is to say, we are following the programme of investigation that was agreed when – it – arrived. Our work is on schedule.’
‘I expect nothing less.’ Her face flushed with relief. He waited for a second, and then added: ‘But that’s just the day job. I’m still waiting for your good news.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Her eyes fell and she clasped one pudgy hand in the other, almost as if she was giving herself an encouraging handshake. ‘Well, my colleagues are looking forward to explaining their progress.’ The hands unclasped, and she waved towards the exit. ‘If you would follow me?’
She trotted off without waiting for a reply. There were guards at the exit from Cunt – he definitely liked that word – but they parted like grass in the wind at a peremptory gesture from Haavis. He followed, nodding to the guards as he passed. Guards were useful. And so were colleagues, apparently, if you wanted someone to hide behind.
The exit from the terminal led to a broad plaza. It had been carried over from the earlier spaceport, and five years ago it had been lined with specimen trees, gifted to Silthx by grateful, aspiring or just plain friendly administrations across the Inner Spin. Most had turned out to be poorly tolerant of radiation, and had died in some grotesque states which Alameche found quite interesting. A couple had soldiered on more or less unchanged, and these had been poisoned by various chemical or biological means because they were boring.
Only one was still alive, in a manner of speaking. Shortly after the nuke release it had erupted in such a spectacular set of warts and woody cancers that Alameche had awarded it protected scientific status. A few years later he had located the original curator of the tree collection, pulled him out of his forced labour camp and taken him to the plaza to see how the last tree was doing. The man hadn’t said anything, but Alameche had thought his tears quite eloquent. He had instructed the camp to put a live video feed of the tree on the wall of the man’s sleeping quarters. And to put him on suicide watch.
You wouldn’t have wanted to stand outside the terminal now. A series of forest fires, fanned by post-nuclear winds, had carried rich plumes of fission products into the atmosphere, to the point where even the Last Tree was beginning to look a bit shaky. Alameche was thinking of having some sort of protective shelte
r built for it.
He waited while a shielded charabanc pulled up outside. A flexible coupling nosed out from the vehicle, fumbled a couple of times at the terminal and then docked with a wet-sounding hiss. The terminal doors opened, and Haavis gestured him forward like a commissionaire. He smiled, and walked into the passenger compartment. Haavis followed. ‘Our journey will take an hour,’ she said. ‘Will you require entertainment?’
‘No, thank you.’ The charabanc could seat twenty; he selected a seat in the front row, settled back and shut his eyes, hoping that the message was pointed enough. He had no intention of sleeping, but he did need to think. Eskjog had given him a lot to think about.
‘So, what do we do?’ he had asked the little machine, after the Patriarch was safely out of the way.
‘Well, to put it plainly, you have two challenges, one of which amplifies the other. The first is the artefact, obviously. The second is, ah . . .’ Eskjog tailed off, and Alameche nodded.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘His Excellency.’
‘Quite. I hesitate to make any suggestions about that for the moment. I assume you know what you are doing. But I have some thoughts about the artefact, if you are interested?’
Alameche leaned back in his chair in what he hoped was a relaxed position. ‘Go on,’ he said.
Eskjog floated over to the chair next to Alameche and settled down in it. The chair creaked and leaned back against its springs, and Alameche raised an eyebrow. The little machine was obviously heavier than it had any right to be. ‘Putting it baldly,’ it said, ‘we could force you to hand the thing over, but that would look a bit obvious and to be honest the people I represent prefer to keep their hands free from blood.’
Alameche smiled. ‘I assume blood on other people’s hands is acceptable?’
‘Oh, entirely. Inevitable, even.’ Eskjog swivelled a little in its seat. ‘But that’s the problem, you see. If we don’t involve ourselves in this find of yours other people will, and things might get very messy, very quickly.’ It rose from the chair and turned one of its sides towards Alameche. ‘Tell me something. How secure is the artefact, right now?’
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