by Patty Jansen
True, and we only had one bus. In fact, I’d much rather use the train. We’d just dump our stuff, get on the train and go.
We all piled into the bus, and the bus started moving. Instead of right, to the island which had the main Nations of Earth buildings, it turned left.
Damn, that meant we were going to be staying somewhere close to the court. Veyada was right, we couldn’t turn up at Margarethe’s office with this entire entourage, but damn. How could I tell the driverless bus to stop and let us off?
The panel at the front said job in progress and not even when I leaned over would it show me information.
I could of course make enough of a fuss to make to bus stop, but then we’d be in more trouble, because they’d know that I was up to something, and my visit to Margarethe was supposed to be a secret.
There was nothing I could do.
I sank into my seat, looking out the window with an increasing feeling of unease in the back of my mind.
On the other side of the aisle Veyada was keeping an eye on the map, logging where we were. I guessed he was sending this to his mother. I wondered whether he had heard anything from that group.
There was green land with cows on one side. It was spring, and yellow flowers bloomed in the grass.
On the other side of the raised road was a channel full of reeds and another field behind it, this one with precision-straight rows of green plants and furrows in between. An agricultural robot of some kind crawled across the field. Not a building to be seen.
Mereeni and Reya were talking about some legal thing; Thayu stared absent-mindedly out the window; Nicha had fallen asleep with Ayshada, awake but very quiet, on his lap; the Pengali, including the little ratbag, had also curled up and the only thing I saw from the bench where they sat were dangling tails.
Amarru’s security guards were reading.
Eirani and Karana were talking animatedly, probably about something related to clothing or cooking.
Devlin sat next to Evi, and they were both fiddling with devices.
Veyada looked up from his map. “We appear to be headed over there.” He pointed at the horizon, where, through a pale haze that hung over the water, I could just make out a bundle of surreal tall buildings that rose from the field.
Amarru’s nameless, faceless Indrahui guard spoke up. “Mashara advises that the Nations of Earth court is not at the compound. It is in a city called The Hague.”
“I know that, but it’s not far from where we normally stay.” Jemiro was sitting at the very back of the bus, looking straight at me with his vacant, hollow expression. Listening? Recording everything that happened?
Don’t be silly, Mr Wilson.
The guard continued, “The court wants the Delegate in the vicinity. They booked the accommodation.”
“Why not the Exchange?”
“There was an agreement. The court is fickle and does not like surprises.”
“But they spring extra requirements on us about interpreters?” I was thinking that someone from the court was getting way too controlling.
“Mashara does not know about that.”
No, it was their job to protect me, not to ask probing questions.
Nevertheless, I asked a few more questions, but the guards didn’t appear to know any more about where we were going than I did. They assumed we’d be staying somewhere close to the Nations of Earth court building, which, according to information I found, was only a few years old and only a block away from the famous Peace Palace, the home of the International Court. A lot of legal services had their offices in that area.
Not long after, the green paddocks along the side of the road were replaced by suburbs. In places, walls blocked the view on both sides of the road. These were really old constructions designed to shield the suburbs from the noise of motorised vehicles when those vehicles still ran on petrol. And one such wall had been turned into a monument, inscribed in huge letters with the text We will survive.
Visiting only the Nations of Earth compound shielded me from a lot of the painful history of this area. The text on the wall went back to the terrible flooding disasters that had killed more people than the much-publicised conflicts that were fought last century. I remembered watching the vids when I was a student at the Nations of Earth compound school. I’d been seven or eight, and the grainy images of cities, farms and factories being ground to bits by pounding waves had made for harrowing viewing. At night in our safe little townhouse in the compound, I’d asked my father to assure me that we were safe, because all of Rotterdam was below sea level, with only walls of earth and grass and pumps protecting the city. He had told me we were safe, and I still had nightmares about walls of water washing through the streets.
It was odd that it had frightened me more than travel in a long-haul space ship ever had.
We now entered the city proper, where canals and quaint old houses alternated with glass and concrete towers.
Something was familiar about the broad street with glass-and-steel buildings on one side and quaint old houses and a canal on the other. I must have been here before, but a lifetime spent in many different places had buried the memory. There was an old, old tram, I remembered, a red one with a bell that went ding-ding-ding, and it went to a place where a wide boulevard looked out over a grey and featureless beach. It was windy there, and seagulls had been very keen on my chips. I remembered sitting at a table at a cafe or a picnic table, protecting my plate with my arms. My father had to chase the seagulls off.
Gosh. Disturbing how one could be hit in the face with long-forgotten memories like this.
Chapter 7
* * *
THE BUS TURNED OFF the main road and crossed a canal where a white swan paddled across mirror-like water.
When we turned the corner into the street that ran along the other side of the canal and the display on the bus said, Arrival in three minutes, the ever-present sounds in my head winked out. Thayu noticed it, too, and Veyada and Evi both stirred at the same time. We all looked at each other.
I raked my hand through my hair. My feeder’s legs pulled loose from the skin and resettled when I dropped them again. It made no difference. The transmission was dead.
“It’s a dead zone,” Veyada said. “All communication is blocked.”
“Whose dead zone and why?”
“The court’s, I presume. They really don’t want us to talk to anyone while we’re here.”
“They told us we couldn’t speak to Melissa or anyone else involved, but isn’t this a bit ridiculous?”
He shrugged. “It’s their rules.”
I remembered talking to Conrad Martens about the practicalities of the hearing. He had told me, “Various kinds of technology may be used.” I just hadn’t expected anything so drastic. I bet there was going to be surveillance, too.
There went my plan to easily contact Margarethe.
The bus stopped in front of a stately white building. The entrance was directly on the street, by way of a glass door through which I could see a foyer where water burbled in a fountain with a bench on one side and plants on the other.
Several of the hotel staff came out of the entrance in their prim uniforms with grey jackets. If they were perturbed by our alien group members, they didn’t show it. Except they were all, “Yes, Mr Wilson, we’ll do that, Mr Wilson.”
They didn’t attempt to speak to any others on my team, even if some of my people spoke to the staff in Isla. It was a bit disturbing to see this attitude survive for so long and it made me doubly annoyed that we couldn’t stay at my regular hotel. At least the staff there were used to people from off Earth.
The porters took our luggage out of the bus and loaded the mountains of bags and cases on trolleys. They were baffled by the hollowed out tree trunks that were components of the irrka drum.
The porters wheeled the tottering piles through the entrance, to be taken to our rooms. We filed in after them and, while the others sank on the couches, I went to the rece
ption counter for room numbers and other details.
Veyada and Thayu wandered casually through the foyer, looking at the fountain and the artwork on the walls, but I didn’t miss the fact that the scanner on Veyada’s belt was on.
I had almost forgotten that people had the strange habit of tossing coins in ponds. Idda spotted the glitter and she lay on her stomach next to the water, sticking her arm in to fish the coins out. She soon figured out that those coins were not edible, but there were also a couple of lazy, fat goldfish in the pond, congregated in the part of the pond where Idda wasn’t.
Ynggi also watched the fish. They were quite large, and maybe he was wondering what they tasted like.
Were these fish supposed to be alive by the time we left?
I insisted that the Pengali were allocated a room first. “Just out of curiosity, there are no aquariums in the room?” I asked the receptionist.
She raised her eyebrows.
“The little one is fascinated with fish.”
“Oh.” She eyed Idda on her stomach at the edge of the pond, her tail in the air. “They are very pretty, right?”
More like, They look like good eating.
“Don’t worry about the little one. There is no water in the room other than in the bathroom.” She smiled. The badge on her chest said Odette. “That little kid is so cute.”
I wondered if she’d still be saying this after we left. But I had to admit that the little yellow romper suit looked good on Idda, even if she was now getting it wet—
“Enough. Leave the fish alone, Idda.” I scooped her up. She felt soft, flexible, like a bag of loosely-connected bones in my hands. I gave her to Ynggi. “Those fish are not for eating.”
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” he said, but Kita gave me a look that said What else are fish for if not for eating?
Finally, the Pengali were directed off to the relative safety of their room—a big apartment at the end of the hallway on the first floor.
Getting out of the bus had woken Ayshada. He was cranky and keen to let everyone know. Nicha took him from Karana. I made sure that I allocated his room next so that he could put his son to bed. Thayu and I were to get a room next to his.
The hotel was not very big and didn’t seem to be busy at all.
Most of us ended up on the first floor and some on the second floor. Most people shared rooms between two, except the Pengali.
Thayu and I got a suite above the entrance with a view over the street, the tramline and the canal—so that I could see any wayward Pengali youngsters. There was a dedicated driverless bus lane on the other side of the canal and a kind of park, beyond it, of the type I suspected to once have been a median strip in a busy road. Now, it was full of trees and a shed with a solar roof—which was probably a waste-processing station—a couple of windmills and a water-purifying tower. A row of glass-and-steel constructions rose from the other side of the park.
Veyada had the room opposite us, and he would share it with Sheydu when she turned up, and of course Evi and Amarru’s guards had the first rooms at the top of the stairs, next to a small conference room suitable for use as a security station.
The rest of the people were on the top floor.
Ayshada had completely crashed, so Nicha left him in his room and came to share tea with Thayu, me and Veyada.
“You haven’t heard from Sheydu yet?” Nicha asked Thayu.
“Not a thing.”
That might not mean anything. They were probably on the train. They might be doing a little side project, although I had no idea what that could be.
Neither Nicha nor Thayu seemed to be terribly concerned and so I resolved not to be either.
“We missed making our contact.” I kept it deliberately vague. “I’m not sure what we should do about it. This place is likely to be bugged.”
Nods. Yes, that went without question. Within the next day or so, we’d get a much better idea of who was listening in and where they were.
“Have you found anything yet?”
“We’ve not located any devices in the rooms yet. The dead zone covers this street up to the corner, the canal, the other side of the canal and the entire block at the back of the hotel. The court building is in that block. There are likely to be transmission-cancelling devices in the courthouse and on the roof of the hotel or the building behind it. They’ve probably got a surveillance post in one of those towers over there.” He pointed out the window, where I could see the glass towers behind the park.
It never ceased to amaze me how quickly he could establish things like this. “Is there anything we can still do to make our contact?”
“Yes, but not without drawing attention to the fact that we’re doing it. The transmission block is nonspecific and untargeted. We would need some brute force to break it. Unless we repurpose our visit, I see no reason to do this and upset a lot of people. We came here to get Robert Davidson convicted. This block is unlikely to be about us or pose any threat to us. I guess it is standard court procedure.”
As usual, Veyada was the voice of reason. I just didn’t like being in a communication-restricted area. And I still needed to establish contact with Margarethe.
He continued, “I have to admit, I’m used to a greater degree of directness in trials and legal matters, but this is not my system. It is not our system. They don’t want us to talk to anyone in relation to the trial, so they house us here, where we can’t communicate. I don’t think that is an unreasonable request.”
Ultimately, that was the crux of the matter: it was not our system. Even if I had grown up on Earth, its systems and governments were no longer mine. Veyada was right, and Conrad Martens had warned me that the court might use technology.
I said, “I guess we can leave the dead zone and establish contact from there?”
“We could do that once we get a chance, and when we know the details of our meetings and we know why and how we are or are not permitted communication with others.”
“But I’d really like to get in contact—” What about Margarethe?
“There is little we can do about it without using blunt force and risking disturbing the legal process.”
It was getting late and everyone was tired. I couldn’t blame them for not caring much about our missed appointment. I just wished to hell I knew what Margarethe wanted to talk to me about. But I had to accept that I’d missed the opportunity to see her, that I’d failed and that there was little I could do about it, especially since offices were about to close. The best thing we could do was to start fresh tomorrow.
Only one thing still bothered me.
I had expected that someone from Nations of Earth would meet us here and give us our schedule, and no one had contacted us.
I went to the hotel’s reception, where the receptionist sat alone. She smiled when she saw me. “Dinner will be ready soon.”
“Thank you.” I didn’t think many people would come, but that aside. “Do you have any messages for us about what is going to happen tomorrow? I’m a bit worried that no one from the court has contacted us yet.”
“They said they’d give you a day to recover. I’ve been told Mrs Trnkova will be here first thing in the morning to explain everything to you.”
I hadn’t heard that name before, but she was probably one of Conrad Martens’ assistants.
“What would I need to do if I wanted to talk to someone now?”
“Someone in an official role within Nations of Earth?”
“Yes.” I guessed Margarethe qualified as such. “But it’s not about details covered in the court case.”
I didn’t know what Margarethe wanted to talk about, but she wouldn’t be so stupid as to risk Robert getting off on a technicality because she spoke to me beforehand. Certainly she wouldn’t have funded my trip here only to thwart it. Maybe she was going to tell me what the point of this extravagance was.
“If you want to talk to someone about matters unrelated to the trial, you will have to do it from outsi
de the hotel. Be aware that when you leave the building, you are likely to be monitored.”
“I am aware of that.”
“Also beware that a horde of activists and journalists are permanently camped at the steps to the courthouse. I would strongly advise you to avoid that area.”
“Activists?”
“Yes, the trial has attracted a lot of attention locally. The court has even had to draw a lottery for people to get tickets to the public gallery.”
Activists, well, I began to see reasons for the dead zone and the strange arrangements for our arrival. “Why are those people there? What’s the interest for them?”
“It started because there has been a bit of fuss about Robert Davidson’s company Execo and the way they treated their workers. The board is reclusive and has been avoiding questions about it for years, and when Robert Davidson went on trial and actually had to appear in court, a lot of people lined up to question him publicly about the company’s dealings. The journalists were attracted to this drama like flies.” Then she grinned. “And I guess a lot of people are curious about the tailed monkeys.”
What the actual fuck . . .
I put both my hands on the desk and leaned forward. The receptionist leaned back in her chair, her eyes wide. “I suggest, if you want to avoid nasty situations, you stop calling them that.”
She laughed, uneasily. “They don’t speak Isla, anyway.”
“You assume.”
“Well, yes.”
“Don’t.”
I glared at her. Her cheeks had gone red.
“Don’t—ever—assume anything when it comes to Pengali. Don’t even assume that they won’t be using their diamond knives to stick in your ribs. Because they are not dumb, they are not backward. And they’re armed and can harm you in hundreds of other ways besides.”
“Whoa, I didn’t mean it like that. It was just a joke. Light-hearted, you know.”
“It’s not funny.”
“All right, I’m sorry.”
I held up my finger. “No more ‘monkeys’.”
“No, no. I understand.”
