Bitter Angels

by C. L. Anderson

  Too soon, I chided myself, and turned into the dining hall at my left hand.

  The place was mostly empty of diners. Liang had hired a lot of local cooks and other helpers, though, and they moved back and forth, cleaning up from breakfast and setting up for lunch. Liang himself sat at a surprisingly beautiful table made of reworked plastic and stone, carved and polished as smooth as a shell. The table was covered with platters bearing hot food. Heaven smells like this when you arrive.

  “Good morning,” said Liang. “Sit. Eat.”

  “Thank you.”

  The food was impressively good, and there was plenty of it. Congee flavored with strawberries and raspberries, soft-boiled eggs, toasted potato bread, stewed tomatoes, and smoked fish and, for a real treat, ham steak. There weren’t many dry colonies that managed to raise pigs successfully. Chickens and ducks were much more the norm.

  Liang nibbled a little toast to keep me company and listened while, in between bites, I told him what had happened out in the black sky.

  When I finished he sighed. “Well, that didn’t take long.”

  I squinted up, trying to look at his face and keep an eye on the tea I was pouring at the same time. “What didn’t?”

  “Bring back the Guardians, and we get escalation.”

  “You said there’d been violence, and a kidnapping.” And then there was Bianca…

  “One kidnapping, and that was a while ago. We’ve been able to keep things at least equitable with the local gangs. Something Captain Jireu has helped with, by the way.”

  I nodded, and set down the teapot. “That’s good to know.” I took a sip from my mug. “Wow, this is…really terrible.”

  “Get used to it,” said Liang, sighing again. “It’s how the locals drink it. And you’re right, we’ve had some problems, but this is a whole different scale. The water smugglers are big business and high-level corruption. They’re well above quarreling over a few boxes of supplies that we’d’ve let them have anyway.”

  “I see.” I pushed the stoneware tea mug away. “And that gives us something fresh to worry about.”

  “The fact that someone is trying to kill you?”

  “The fact that they aren’t. Whoever was paying this Kapa wanted us alive and under their control. Why?”

  “I will assume that’s rhetorical.”

  “I’m afraid it’s going to have to be for now.” I looked down at my empty plate, as if I was surprised to find my appetite had disappeared. “What can you tell me about what happened with Bianca Fayette?”

  Liang’s eyes narrowed. He took a long, deliberate drink of midnight-black tea. I wondered briefly if he was just trying to prove he could do it.

  “Bianca Fayette was probably a very good listener,” he said. “But she was a hazard to my operation here, and whatever happened to her was more than likely her own fault.”

  He waited, not dropping his gaze, daring me to take offense. If I hadn’t already talked to Bern, I would have. “Do you really think she was killed in a robbery?”

  He shrugged, irritated. “It could have been. You saw outside.” He nodded toward the courtyard. “Poverty breeds violence, and there’s a real problem between the OBs and the Baby Ds, and…”

  Liang let the sentence trail off and studied the dregs in his cup.

  “Why didn’t you complain?” I asked. “About Bianca?”

  He set the mug down with a loud thump. “Everybody keeps asking me that. Do you have any idea how hard it is to complain about the Guardians?”

  I took a deep breath to keep from snapping at him. Liang had been here for years, trying to help stabilize this place. This was a home to him. Those ragged people in the yard waiting for water were people he knew.

  I focused on the important part of his statement. “Everybody’s been asking about your complaining to the Guardians?”

  “All right, not everybody, but you and Captain Jireu.”

  I frowned. “He investigated Bianca’s death?”

  “Not as such, but he was the one asking me about her before you came.”

  “Asking how?”

  Liang told me about his conversation with Amerand Jireu. I found I did not like it that Amerand had been asking questions about Bianca. I did not like it that he knew both Emiliya Varus and the pirate Kapa. I did not like the feeling of being down at the center of a vortex with him.

  I thought again about the hope in his eyes and found myself having to wonder just what he was hoping for. I thought about how he hadn’t had a Clerk standing beside him when he got back from being abducted by a pirate both he and Emiliya Varus knew.

  I rubbed my eyes. I’d been in this thoroughly-screwed-up system for barely seventy-two hours and already I was having trouble seeing straight.

  Liang eyed me narrowly. “So, you’ve had a chance to talk with Ambassador Bern?”

  “Yes, and he’s resigning.”

  Liang froze in place. He blinked. “Okay,” he said, slowly.

  “You need to know, I’m not here just because of Bianca Fayette. Erasmus has been classified as an extremely active hot spot. Whatever Field Coordinator Fayette was doing…it may or may not have made it worse. It’s one of the things I’ve got to find out.” I got to my feet. “I need to meet with my people, then I need someone to show me where her body was found.”

  “Okay,” Liang said again, and I left him there trying to wrap his mind around our conversation. Something in me did not want to make this easy for him, and even though I knew I wasn’t being fair, I just walked away.

  When I got to Room 356, the door opened to my touch and I stepped inside. Siri sat at her listening station, her hands on her knees. Her glasses covered her eyes, and a gold clip capped off her right ear. Both had black wires snaking down to a thin silver rectangle.

  For several centuries, computer encryption had made interception of electronically transmitted data next to useless. Codes could be based on randomly generated, one-time-use keys 2 million characters long, and every transmission device could encrypt right at the source. The improved technology had returned spying to its basics.

  Miniaturization was our ally on this one. Last time Siri had been here, she’d canvassed the city with her toolkit and her fixit skills, generally making herself useful to people who didn’t have the resources to make basic repairs. Everywhere she went, she’d laid down a network of near-invisible microcables like cobwebs, connecting them up as she could, turning patchwork into a listening network.

  Officially, we were allowed exactly one transmission terminal, and one hour a day to use it, and then only to call our ships out at the habitat. Other than that, we couldn’t transmit anything wirelessly. The Clerks might not be able to understand what we were sending, but they could tell a transmission was happening, and, given enough time, pinpoint the originating device. They’d warned us about this. But they hadn’t realized—and hopefully still didn’t—that it was still possible to wire a city for sound, if you were patient. If you were good.

  Siri was both. She’d learned from Bianca, and however far wrong she had gone, Bianca had still been the best.

  As I crossed the threshold, Siri lifted her glasses.

  “First job.” I gestured toward the windows. The illumination outside flickered as if a lightning storm were passing through. “You are doing something about the light.”

  “On it.” Siri tapped a note onto her glove. “But I’ll probably have to get some kind of permission from the city authorities and all that.”

  “How are you feeling?” I stepped around the tables and the junk to stand next to her. A green-and-yellow bruise made a bright blot for her cheek, but she looked alert. More, she actually looked cheerful.

  “I’ve got a headache, but I’m all right.”

  “I take it the network’s still there.”

  “Amazingly enough, yes. In fact, fixing the lights will let me lay down some new cable.”

  I nodded. “Hear anything good this morning?”

  “Not y
et.” She frowned. “There is something going on. It’s right beneath the surface, but I can’t get hold of it yet.”

  Her fingers brushed the comm-node box, almost as if petting a cat.

  I frowned. “What kind of something?”

  Siri just shook her head. “I wish I knew. It’s more a feeling than anything else right now. But something’s changed since last time.”

  “And not for the better?” I finished for her.

  Siri grimaced. “ ’Fraid not. Sorry.”

  “Well, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?” I said casually. “We want to focus on movement, especially for any shifts in or around the habitats and the gates.”

  “Already on it. And you’ll want this.” Siri handed me a sliver drive. “Reports.”

  “Thanks.” I tucked it into my belt pocket.

  “And we had a visitor this morning.”

  As I raised my eyebrows, she told me of her encounter with the Master of Dazzle.

  “So, it’s not just a gut feeling.” I ran my hand through my hair. “Move as fast as you can with him. We do not have time for a slow dance.” If Bianca had a chance to set something in motion, it might still be in motion. If it can be traced back to her, to us…

  “Understood,” Siri was saying. “But if Bloom really does have anything, he probably won’t be giving it away for free.”

  “We’ve got a budget. Use your discretion. If he wants out of here, we’ll arrange it.”

  “Yes’m.” Siri dropped her glasses back down over her eyes and settled back, listening, following the gossip lines, the power lines. I had already ceased to exist for her.

  The sliver of reports burned in my pocket while I made my rounds. I had the rest of my people to check in on. Everybody, admirably, had thrown themselves into their work, getting things set up for when we got back, or for whoever would be sent after us. Jasmina and Dosh were already deep into it with Liang’s accountants, setting up the funds-distribution systems, deciding what to track and what to discreetly overlook. Dr. Gwin looked ready to expire from old-fashioned apoplexy because the Erasmans were giving her so much grief about getting supplies down from the ships parked at the habitats. I recommended she go to Jasmina and get an “incidentals disbursement.” Liang would know which wheels to grease, or Amerand might.

  It was 11:00 local time, and Amerand had not shown up yet. I made myself put off worrying about him. I had one more of my people to check on.

  I went back to my room. It was stifling hot in there, and there was a smell I didn’t want to think about, but I didn’t open the window. I shoved the bed up against the threshold. It was a lousy barricade, but it was all I had.

  I sat on the floor and rested my back against the wall. I pulled my glasses out of my pocket and slotted the drive into place on the earpiece.

  On a normal mission, Vijay would have just sent me a coded message, but he couldn’t in the Erasmus System. The Clerks would be too likely to spot and trace the unauthorized signal. Probably Siri and Vijay had not even met to hand off this sliver. Probably they had made use of their local knowledge and arranged a drop site so as not to be seen together too often, or to have Vijay risk blowing his cover completely by being seen with me. But perhaps they had met, just long enough to exchange a glance, a swift touch of hands. Just a moment to see each other and to know that all was right.

  This obsession with your subordinates’ love life is unhealthy, Terese.

  I tapped twice on the earpiece to activate the sliver. The world in front of my eyes went dark. Then, slowly, light and color unfurled until I was standing under Dazzle’s uncertain lights. Here they were too bright and too yellow. I was too tall, my arms were too big, too masculine, and covered in crude red tattoos that bunched and swirled on my skin.

  I was Vijay Kochinski and I was setting out to announce my reputation as a bad guy among a group of people known locally as “saints” as quickly as possible.

  What followed was more or less a highlights version of Vijay’s time on Dazzle. They were short clips, just setting the scene, giving me some faces, a few names, letting me know whom he was making contact with and how. I watched through Vijay’s eyes as he stood watch over pallets of supplies. I stood sullenly through a chewing-out by the aid foreman on the first shift of the first day. That night, I cruised through the city on my off-shift, scoping out the bars and the dives, mostly on the base streets. I avoided one fight and failed to avoid another and was rattled and shaken and knocked to the ground while the man I’d been drinking with just a minute before watched with a slick grin on his face.

  Then the scene shifted again. I lounged against a wall, or maybe a stack of crates (there were plenty of those around), watching two men approach. Both of them were well dressed in ways that spoke of pride in their wealth rather than comfort with it. Their stride was purposeful and Vijay straightened up slowly.

  “Pardon-pardon,” Vijay said as they stopped in front of him. “I can’t let you past here unless you’ve got a business warrant.”

  The first man was well into his fourth hard decade. He had pale brown skin and hair that fell in corkscrew curls held back by a band of woven copper wire. Silver scales covered his scarlet coat, turning it into an extremely fashionable piece of armor. He shook his head at Vijay.

  “And here we were such friends just a day ago,” he said, his face becoming a picture of regret.

  Vijay squinted at him. “Is that you, Meek? Sorry, didn’t recognize you in the good light.”

  “Meek’s” smile was not amused. “It’s me. And this is my patri, Papa Dare. You remember we talked about him?”

  “That I do remember.” Vijay’s eyes flickered up and down, sizing up Papa Dare carefully. Dare was not an imposing man. He was on the small side, and he was fat. The heat brought out perspiration on his pale, slab-cheeked, full-bearded face. He wore a rich purple coat, sewn over with silver scales, that was probably hot as the very hinges, but would turn a knife like the pair he wore openly on his gold chain-link belt, and might at least slow down a projectile from a weapon similar to the handgun holstered over his shoulder.

  “And what has you gentlemen out to our transit depot so late?” Vijay asked warily.

  There are some things that do not change. Where there are valuable goods, there will be thieves. Where there are thieves, there will be people who organize them—and take most of the profits.

  Sometimes, if you’re careful, you can make good use of this facet of human nature. But you must be exceedingly careful.

  Papa Dare’s smile was even less amused than Meek’s had been. “I think we need to talk, you and me, Edison.”

  “What would I need to talk to you about?” Vijay dropped his arms and shifted his stance ever so slightly.

  Getting ready to fight.

  “Now, now,” chided Meek. “I’d be very polite if I were you. Not a lot of places to run away to in our city.”

  Vijay considered this, especially the emphasis on “our.” “And I’m going to need to run, why?”

  “Because maybe you’re not very smart.”

  “Uh-huh.” Vijay’s eyes narrowed. “I’m smart enough to know I don’t like the way this is going.”

  “Ah. Good.” Meek flashed a wide white smile. “I told you we could talk to Edison, didn’t I, Papa Dare? Maybe he just doesn’t know. He’s a visitor after all. Maybe nobody told him that if he wants to do business here, it’s our family he talks to.”

  “Your family?”

  Dare’s smile grew sharp. “You don’t think the Blood is the only family in the Vault? You do not even know how many I got in my particular family.”

  As threats went, it was not subtle, nor was it original. But it was one of those things that had stayed around because it tended to work.

  You’d certainly have thought it did this time from the loud swallow Vijay gave, and the weak-water sound to his voice. “Silly me.”

  “That’s right.” Dare reached out and patted Vijay on the arm. “That’s v
ery good, Eddy. Silly you. And what are you going to do about being so silly?”

  Vijay sighed. “I’d say I’m going to give you this.” He reached inside his shirt and brought out a flex screen. He unfolded it, an odd gesture, but it was to give me, or whoever experienced this XP, a look at it.

  It was a manifest, with pallet numbers, and the access codes to go with them. If they showed it to Liang’s people, these two could take possession of one of the charity shipments. The codes told me they’d get medical supplies mostly, but also several cases of perma-ice, which I was willing to bet sold for quite the price on the local black market.

  Dare received the manifest with a nod and handed it to Meek. Meek looked it over carefully before slipping it into his own jacket pocket. “There. Didn’t I say, Papa? Reasonable, civilized people, the Solarans. Positively refreshing to deal with.”

  Papa Dare nodded. “You keep yourself clean, Eddy,” he said to Vijay. “I don’t like having to make second trips.”

  “I will,” said Vijay. “Unless.”

  Meek went very still. “Unless?” he repeated.

  “Unless you and I can maybe do a deal.”

  Dare looked down his pug nose at Vijay, which, considering the height difference was a good trick. “What kind of deal would a reasonable, civilized Solaran want to do with us?”

  Vijay shrugged. “So, I’m this reasonable, civilized Solaran, and I’m stuck in this shit job working off my time for unsociable behavior because I don’t like my own face or anybody else’s very much. Maybe I’d like to find a way out of it, except jumping ship without any exchange is a really dumb idea.”

  Dare’s eyebrows lifted, creating deep wrinkles in his brow. “You surprise me, Edison. I thought your kind all got your balls cut off at birth.”

  Vijay snickered. I had never heard him produce such a nasty sound. “A lot of us do, yeah.”

  “Well.” Dare nodded to Vijay. “Well.” He nodded to Meek, who nodded back, and I could practically see the thought of profit shining in his eyes. There was shakedown potential here, and he could smell it. “I’ll have to think about this. As it happens, there are some new markets opening up, and we might need some new hands.” Dare patted Vijay’s arm again. “You sit nice and quiet, and if a job comes along I think would be right for you, Meek will let you know.”