Guardians of Paradise

by Jaine Fenn

  They bought bread and various exotic fruits, two silver-scaled fish and a bunch of floppy green leaves that the stallholder assured them could be fried together to produce a tasty meal. With food sorted, they headed further in to explore the stalls hidden away down alleys formed by piles of half-empty boxes and stall-backs. One of these sold the brightly coloured wraps that everyone wore, and they bought a couple each, along with dark glasses to shade their eyes from the sun’s glare. Behind a stall selling fist-sized hairy fruits that might well have been a local delicacy, but which Taro thought looked and smelled vile, they found a place doing cut-price tech. Some of the stuff on sale was the scavenged cast-offs Taro knew from life in the Undertow, but there was some good gear too. Nual bought him a com, to help him find his way around, and so he could stay in contact when they were apart. Taro wasn’t sure whether to be upset she was assuming they wouldn’t be hanging around together, or glad that she was buying him a gift. It was just a basic slap-com, worn on the back of the hand. He’d seen a few of the locals with implanted coms, like a lot of the Angels and other high-status types had in Khesh; he fancied the idea of getting one of those some time, though Nual had never bothered.

  As they came out of the market a group of youths beckoned them over with friendly waves. The boys had set up a variation of a game Taro knew well, with three containers - in this case shells - and a small ball - in this case some sort of round red-brown seed. Only the most gullible tourists usually fell for this one, so Taro was stunned when Nual wandered up to the boys. He trailed after her while the main shyster started his patter.

  ‘Guess which shell the ball’s under, Medame! Double your money!’

  Nual entered into the spirit of the game; perhaps she was thinking her talents would let her win? Taro didn’t try to stop her; hell, it was her choice . . . but he did watch her back, so when the smallest member of the gang edged up from behind with an eye on the bag slung over Nual’s shoulder, he was ready. The light-fingered little fucker darted away when Taro turned on him, slinking off empty-handed. After that the gang exchanged wary glances with Taro, then let the frontman do the business.

  Nual came out evens. As they walked away Taro said, ‘You didn’t honestly expect to make money out of them, did you?’

  ‘No, but I wanted to read those boys to get a feel for the street-life here.’

  Taro snorted a laugh. ‘So you knew all about the littlest lag, the one creeping up behind you?’

  Nual frowned. ‘I was concentrating on the boys running the game. I sensed a stranger come close to me at one point, but I didn’t pick up any desire to hurt me, so I ignored them. No one there meant us any harm.’

  ‘Other than trying to lift my new com from where you’d left it in the top of your bag, you mean? Shit, Nual, you might be able take people’s heads apart with a nasty look, but you know fuck-all about how things work on the street!’

  He’d never spoken to her like that before and for a moment he wondered if she’d take offence, maybe even lose her temper. But she just nodded and said, ‘I’m afraid you may be right.’ Then she added, ‘Thank you for watching my back.’

  Taro half-wished she’d got angry with him so he’d finally have something to kick back against.

  Neither of them said anything for the rest of the walk back to the hostel.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The place Mo took them to that night was rough and ready. Taro got the impression he was trying to impress them - or rather, Nual - with his local knowledge. The regulars treated them with amused tolerance. Though the bar sold beer, served so cold it was almost tasteless, Mo insisted they also tried the local liquor, kava, served in something Mo called a coco-nut shell. The drink looked and tasted like muddy water to Taro, but it gave a gentle buzz with a nice sense of chill underneath, and made his tongue go numb.

  As they sat on wooden stools next to the well-worn bar, Mo told them about his family, who owned a shitload of land on a world Taro’d never heard of. One day he’d inherit some of that land and have to settle down, but until then he was seeing as much of human-space as he could. He wanted to know all about life on Vellern, and Taro shared enough to keep him happy while discouraging the more personal questions.

  Taro talked ten words to every one of Nual’s, and he was still up for staying out when she was ready to head back. ‘Will you be all right by yourself?’ he said, remembering the street-kids earlier.

  ‘I will be careful.’ Her tone said she appreciated his concern, but she didn’t want his company.

  It might’ve just been coincidence that she chose to leave while Mo was off having a piss, but he looked mildly annoyed when he found she’d left early.

  Later, as they walked through the hot, dark streets back to the hostel, Mo said, ‘Ela’s quite something, isn’t she?’

  ‘She certainly is,’ said Taro.

  ‘I can’t work her out, though,’ continued Mo. ‘I mean the signals she’s giving off: I reckon she’s paying attention to me, like she’s interested, but then I’m not sure, and I think maybe she hasn’t even noticed me. You know her better than me; d’you think she fancies me at all?’

  ‘Unlikely,’ said Taro, who’d just thought of a way to put Mo off.

  ‘Why not?’

  Just about managing to keep a straight face he said, ‘You don’t have breasts.’

  ‘Oh, right. I didn’t realise.’

  When they rounded the next corner they found the street ahead cordoned off. People in dark brown uniforms were standing on this side of the grav-batons while others in lighter uniforms took measurements and holo-pix in the empty street beyond. One of the shop windows had been broken, and there were long impact marks on the road, along with some suspicious dark stains and some unidentified debris.

  Taro’s experience of the Khesh City militia made him inclined to turn around before anyone noticed him, but before he could leave Mo had sauntered up to one of the guards. ‘Kioruna!’ he said. ‘What’s up?’

  The guard responded with a reassuring smile and said, ‘We’ve just had to close this street for a while. Would you like alternative directions back to your hotel?’

  ‘No, I’m sure we can find our way. Thank you.’

  Once they were out of earshot Taro asked, ‘What was all that about?’

  ‘Ngai business, I reckon.’

  ‘Ung-what?’ said Taro.

  ‘Ngai. You know, the big companies?’ Despite the amount of kava they’d consumed, Mo didn’t stumble over the odd word. ‘Might be a botched dataswap, or possibly even personnel, though that’s rarer. Or maybe someone was muscling in on a deal.’

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re on about.’

  Mo said conspiratorially, ‘There’s stuff goes on here that the brochures don’t mention.’

  Taro tried to will himself sober, or at least focused. This sounded important. ‘What sort of stuff?’

  ‘Well, the ngai all make a big thing about how traditional and primitive they are, but that’s just on the surface. They don’t want to mess up the tourist scene so everything goes on in the background, but they’re always trading knowledge, prototypes, even staff. Sometimes it’s amic—friendly, sometimes not. Often it’s on neutral territory, here in Stonetown. Something like we saw back there, where there’s obviously been trouble but the authorities are making like it’s nothing, that’s a sure sign at least one of the ngai was involved.’

  ‘How d’you know all this?’

  ‘Hang around long enough, you pick stuff up.’

  Trouble in paradise. Just what they were looking for.

  Jarek felt a certain guilty relief when he’d dropped Taro and Nual off. He’d gone straight from Serenein to warn Elarn, only to discover she was dead, and he was still in shock when he’d recruited his two unlooked-for allies. He hadn’t thought it through. He needed breathing space, time to consider the course he was committing himself to. And he needed to try and reclaim his old life.

  Although Xantier wasn’t the close
st hubpoint to Kama Nui, it was the best place in this sector to sell his current cargo. As well as trying to drum up interest in his box of antique artefacts, he hooked up with less formal contacts, spending time with the people who ran the local Alliance offices, and any passing traders. Over a drink or two those who knew him asked why he’d dropped out of sight for several months; he brushed off their curiosity with casual camaraderie and vague evasions. But the very ease with which he deflected their interest started to get to him. Though freetraders saw themselves as a breed apart, at the back of their minds they always knew that tonight’s best buddy could be tomorrow’s business rival. They asked because they wanted to know what his angle was; when it became obvious he wasn’t going to let them in, they lost interest. Most of them didn’t give a shit about his welfare; they just wanted to know whether he’d got himself into something lucrative that they might be able to get a piece of.

  Arguably, by finding a lost world, he had - except that while he’d started on this mad errand to Serenein with the idea of making his fortune at the back of his mind, he now found that what had happened to him there had driven thoughts of personal profit right out of his head.

  He and Elarn may have lost their Salvatine faith, but they had both been looking for something to replace it. His sister had filled her life with music while he’d gone off into the wide black yonder. He was dirtborn, and he’d had a lot to learn about the world outside of gravity wells. He might have dumped the Salvatine precepts, but his upbringing had left him with a stubbornly moral streak and a distrust of invasive technologies, both unhelpful traits in a freetrader. Even with these disadvantages, he’d quickly taken to the lifestyle, but freetrading didn’t feed his soul. He’d joked about his support of a hopeless cause, and the Sidhe scared the crap out of him, but perhaps fighting to free humanity from their not-so-ex overlords was - though he winced at the word - his destiny.

  He soon found himself not only turning down offers to meet up with acquaintances, but actually losing enthusiasm for securing the best deal for his cargo. Instead, he took to checking out agents, brokers and potential buyers against the pilot’s list of Sidhe contacts; he didn’t expect, or get, any matches, but paranoia was becoming second nature.

  So much for getting back to his old life. Time to turn his attention to his mission.

  Any Sidhe ships abroad in human-space had to be operating autonomously, and whilst that meant that an individual human working with them would only know what he (and it would usually be a he) needed to know, the Sidhe would need instant access to a lot more information, which they’d obviously store in their ship’s comp. His initial attempts to access the memory-core from the Setting Sun had proved fruitless, but he was no expert. He decided to start with some off-the-shelf decryption routines, testing them on limited memory segments copied to discrete storage, which turned out to be a wise move, as the routines either had no effect, or else scrambled the data.

  It was beginning to look like he needed to enlist a human databreaker. The problem was, he didn’t know what the files contained, and the kind of people who dealt in decryption tended to take an excessive interest in the data they were cracking. Information stolen from the Sidhe would be hot stuff. He might pay the extra premium for discretion, but such individuals operated in a legal grey area, so he’d never be sure they wouldn’t take a peek. The one databreaker who was most likely to be able to decrypt the files, and who wouldn’t be shocked at the data they contained - quite the contrary, in fact - came with their own complications.

  He decided to try locally first, picking a Xantier-based operator who was listed in the Alliance’s archives and personally recommended by some of his contacts. Even so, he provided only a subset of copied data.

  He also made some tentative enquiries about false IDs, implying that this was for a third party, a practice not unknown amongst freetraders, who occasionally took large risks (and large fees) to run individuals who’d fallen foul of the law on their homeworld to a new system to start a new life. What he really needed was a new ship ID, but changing that was all but impossible. As soon as a ship came into service it was registered on the unhackable data-fortress that was ConTraD - the Consolidated Traffic Database - and there the ID stayed for the duration of the ship’s life, inviolate and unalterable.

  Nine days after arriving on Xantier, his finances went into the red. He devoted most of that day to trying to shift his cargo profitably, and took the decision to make use of the services his Alliance subs paid for by speaking to the financial reps about an extended line of credit, something he’d not had to resort to since he’d bought his old partner out.

  He also wanted to use the Alliance’s archive to do some research. There was one question he needed answered before he went any further; he’d spotted a potential problem with his idealistic decision to bring Serenein into the fold of human-space and he needed to confirm his suspicions.

  Shiftships were rare: his ship’s comp listed just over 700 freetrader outfits operating in human-space, and there were perhaps the same number again of other shiftships, mainly starliners, run by and for the super-rich. Each transit-kernel lasted between one and two thousand years before it became unstable. Every freetrader knew this, even if they rarely thought about it: a thousand years was a long time, as long as humanity had been free of the Sidhe. That meant that a lot of the transit-kernels had actually been created during the Protectorate. It took only very basic maths to realise that very few new ships were being produced. Jarek needed to confirm just how few.

  That information proved surprisingly hard to track down; the handful of companies involved in commissioning new vessels were reticent about making their doings public - hardly surprising, considering what lay at the heart of every shiftship.

  He ended up inferring the data by looking at the detailed histories of various freetrader ships. When he extrapolated that to include other types of ship, the conclusion was inescapable: only one or two new shiftships a year were commissioned - barely enough to replace those going out of service or lost in accidents.

  In the twenty-five years since the Sidhe had last visited Serenein, thirty-seven - no, thirty—eight—boys had been found with the unique talent they required. Assuming not all of these young minds survived the transition into transit-kernels, that gave an average of just over one per year.

  Serenein really was the only source for the minds that powered shiftships. If Jarek succeeded in his crusade to save that one world, he might ultimately bring about the end of human interstellar civilisation.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Finding out about hidden trouble on Kama Nui turned out to be easier said than done. Nual did most of the research using the public com services; Taro helped by scanning the newsnets. He also volunteered to listen out for rumours. It wasn’t his fault if the best place to pick up loose talk was in bars.

  The ngai Mo had referred to were a cross between big businesses and large family troupes. They were mainly run by women, and their leaders met in the House of Ariki, Kama Nui’s equivalent of the Assembly back in Khesh. Though there was plenty of gossip about the inter-house rivalries, there was nothing firm to link them to the occasional unexplained unpleasant incidents - an executive poisoned by bad fish in a bar, an accountant robbed of his data but not his valuables, a kidnapping on a main street in the middle of the day with no apparent witnesses - and there wasn’t a whiff of the ngai being into anything more hi-tech than making sure visitors to their islands had a good time. Nual’s research suggested the tensions between the ngais went in cycles, with incidents building to a head over a few years then dying off. Taro got the impression they were about to head into a hot phase.

  Despite concerns over their mission and the continuing tension with Nual, Taro started to enjoy life in Stonetown; it was a large and interesting city, but chill and friendly too. Life happened at its own pace, and you didn’t feel like you had to watch your back all the time.

  Despite Mo’s assurance that most peopl
e at the hostel were on working holidays, a lot of them spent their days down at the harbour doing nothing in particular. Mo was happy for Taro to join them, and he taught him to fish - or rather, to laze in the shade on the dockside dangling a line in the water. The sea was clear enough to see the brightly coloured creatures scuttling along the seabed or gliding around in shoals, but nothing down there showed much interest in being caught. When the day got too hot, they all stripped off and jumped into the water. Taro joined them cautiously, claiming he wasn’t a good swimmer. He used his implants to keep himself afloat and copied the others’ actions, managing to avoid anyone spotting that he was using gravitics while he learned to swim. He reckoned that was good; he didn’t want any of them sussing that he was an Angel. It was way too hot to wear anything with sleeves, so he was glad of the peace-bonding job customs had done on his wrists. Right now his implants looked like faint matching scars and he wasn’t sure anyone had even noticed them - certainly no one commented on them.