by Patty Jansen
“Hmmm,” Thayu said. “I’d have expected there to be a station here. Or some taxis.”
Clearly, there weren’t any.
“Where are we?”
She pulled out her reader and showed me on the screen. “There is a station over here.” She pointed. “It’s a bit of a walk, unfortunately.”
I was going to say that I didn’t mind but remembered how busy we were. I thought of Nicha, and the feeling of dread, which had evaporated during the boat ride, came back. Maybe we could do something else useful before returning home. “How far are we from this place where this reply signal to the Aghyrian ship was meant to have come from?”
She went back to her reader and zoomed out on the screen. “Not too far from here. There is another station in that direction, too. It’s a better station, too. More frequent trains.”
“Let’s walk that way then. Let’s see what’s there.”
We took the street that ran along the very edge of the island. It ran between houses with walled yards. In most places you couldn’t tell that the water was close, because the walls on both sides of the street were too high. The trees were not as big here, because the houses were much closer together. Strangely enough, the increased density of buildings brought out their magnificent constructions, because the houses were closer to the street where the streetlights illuminated their centuries-old façades. Sometimes I would read bits on the history of Barresh, and it never failed to surprise me with its depth and colour. While it was easy to stick labels like “lazy”, “fat” and “corrupt” on the heads of the keihu families in the council, they possessed a resilience that would be an inspiration to many other small entities, and, despite gamra trying to change the city, they stubbornly kept doing things the way they had done them for centuries.
I followed Thayu along the street and admired the houses, their cornices, columns and metalwork, their mosaic garden paths and coloured glass windows.
Sometimes there would be a little walkway between the houses to the left, showing us glimpses of the silver moonlit expanse of water. Once, I spotted a train zooming low over the water, giving me a clearer picture where we were. The gamra island was to the south of the main island. We were to the east of the main commercial district.
The road dipped down to a tiny harbour and jetty area. Besides pleasure craft, a number of fishing boats bobbed on the pylons of the jetty. Nets lay drying at the quay, big fuzzy-looking shapes hanging over posts or racks. The air smelled of fish.
The train line offshore was only visible as a line of tiny lights. It curved back to shore to the right of where we stood, but the station was around the point that jutted into the marshland.
“The location is over there.” Thayu pointed at the peninsula ahead.
The street again plunged between houses. When we’d gone a little distance, Thayu stopped, looking at the screen on her reader.
“Here. This is where the reply signal came from.”
The street here was quite narrow and sloped ever so slightly down to the tip of the peninsula. There were walls on both sides and houses behind those walls. Very ordinary and plain houses. There were no sounds, or signs of anything unusual.
“Well. That’s . . . odd,” I said. Although Yetaris Damaru had said it was just a normal part of town.
“Let’s have a look over here,” Thayu said.
She led me past the nearest house. A narrow alley ran between two walls. The surface was uneven and there were steps, invisible in the pitch darkness. If this was possible, Thayu, walking in front of me, saw even less than I did. She carried a tiny violet light that showed up blue through my spectrum-reducing contact lenses. The glow hardly reached the ground, but it made the moss on the walls glow pink. This confused me rather than helping me put my feet in safe places. I slipped and almost fell twice.
At the end, the alley opened up onto a sandy beach that sloped down to a moonlit reed field. The beach ran along the back walls and fences of houses.
“This is where that signal came from?”
“Yes, around here somewhere.”
There was nothing here. Just a rocky knoll, some grass and bushes, and a few straggly wild megon nut trees. Those trees were now in flower and spread their heavy, fire-retardant scent in the air.
That smell typified Barresh. Even when I travelled, it seeped out of my luggage in hotel rooms and if I stayed long enough, it spread its fire-retardant mist over the room’s contents. If there was a candle or oil light in the room, accommodation staff would be baffled that they couldn’t light it anymore.
Ceren’s moons were tiny, and didn’t produce much light, but both of them were in the sky, with the broad ribbon of the Milky Way in the background. The ringgit made their usual racket in the reeds, almost drowning out the whoosh of the train that was just coming into the station. On the other side of the bay, the domes and towers of the old city protruded from the canopy of trees.
We picked our way to the tip of the peninsula, following the line of walled yards. The sand still radiated heat and the occasional breeze brought sounds of people talking from the houses.
“It’s nice here,” I said, but at the same time, Thayu said, “Shhh.”
I listened. The train had gone and its whoosh over the rails was fast fading into the background noise. Closer by in the reeds, the ringgit were trying to outdo each other in their rattling mating calls. I picked up some humming sounds. “Am I hearing people talking?”
Shhh.
Then rustling of vegetation.
“Over there somewhere,” Thayu said in a low voice.
I peered into the darkness and I noticed movement in the reed bed. Two people waded through the vegetation, silhouetted against the reflection of moonlight. One of them was holding some kind of equipment that let out little blips of yellow light. Sometimes it would produce a glow that illuminated a man’s face. There might be a third person further down, I couldn’t be sure.
“Any idea what they’re doing?” I asked Thayu.
She was peering into the darkness.
Then there came the rustling sound of footsteps, much closer.
Careful, I sent through the feeder.
We ducked behind a bush. Thayu sank into a crouch. The moonlight glinted off the gleaming barrel of her gun. Her night vision was really poor, as with most Coldi people, and she would be at distinct disadvantage if it came to a fight.
A man’s voice said, “Hello? Who’s there?” He spoke keihu, his voice clipped and heavily accented.
A light flicked on.
The man in question wore a long-sleeved shirt that had seen better days, with the council symbol on the chest, and trousers that fishermen usually wore against the leeches that lived in the water.
Thayu came out from behind the bush. Be careful, she said.
He’s a council worker.
Maybe. If he is, I don’t really trust those, either.
The man’s face was all angles: a strong chin, a straight nose, deep-set eyes and strong cheekbones. Not keihu. Not Aghyrian either. His eyes met mine. His irises were brown.
“Oh, good evening, Delegate.” He gave a small bow. His Coldi was much better than his keihu. “It’s a nice evening,” he said.
“Are you looking for the origin of that signal that the Exchange picked up?” I asked, trying to sound as innocent as I could. The state of his shirt—all washed-out and worn at the collar—was really odd. “Finding anything?”
I could feel Thayu cringe through the feeder. She hated it when I did this.
“No. Is gone. Just once send signal, then gone.”
A second person came behind him. This person was also in black overalls with the council insignia, but wore a full-face veil with a gauze panel over the eyes, probably against stinging insects. I couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman. This person carried a piece of equipment on a strap slung over the shoulder.
“Is that for measuring radio waves?” I asked. I deliberately didn’t use jargon.
/> Crap, at times I really can’t believe you, Thayu said.
The man replied. “Yes. Nothing here at the moment.” His companion pushed up the strap of the device that was in danger of sliding off his shoulder. The light from the screen flashed briefly. Its light glowed over the reed bed and the back walls of the houses that were behind us. The brief flash was enough to see that one of the walls immediately behind us had been reduced to a pile of rubble.
“Whoa, what happened there at that house?”
“Was a very strong sound. Walls are very old.”
A chill crept over my back. When I heard that strong pulsating sound, I’d been afraid that the vibrations would break something, or cause someone to have a heart attack.
“Anyway, must keep working.” He gave another respectful nod and continued into the reed bed with his colleague.
Thayu and I made our way to the pile of rubble. If this wall had broken, that would mean that the device that had sent the responding shriek was somewhere in the vicinity, right?
She flicked on her little light and directed its glow over the fallen stones. The inhabitants of the house had erected a temporary fence of poles with wire strung between them. All windows at the back of the house were dark.
“Why are these guys out here in the dark?” I asked Thayu in a low voice.
They’ve probably been here all the time, but I’m not sure if I like it either. They don’t look like the regular council workers.
She was right. Their uniforms were much more scruffy than I would think acceptable for council workers. Maybe they were contractors. I didn’t know. It didn’t sit well with me.
“There are two possibilities about the origin of the sound.” She crouched at the rubble. “One: the sound came from a person operating a portable device from here. When he was done, this person took his equipment and simply went home.”
“That’s not very likely. I wouldn’t think you could carry equipment that produces strong waves like that in your back pocket.”
“I agree.”
I added the second possibility. “Two: whatever is communicating with the ship is hidden, for example inside one of the houses.”
“Yeah.” She shifted a block of stone. A bit of grit trickled off the jagged remains of the wall. “At any rate, it did a very good job at destroying the mortar. And our best chance to find out what it was and where it is has vanished unless it comes to life again.” She looked over her shoulder, where the three council people had returned to the reed bed. They stood gathered around their equipment, talking in low voices. The hooded person had pushed up the hood, and it was clear now that all three were men. Dark-haired, sharp-nosed but otherwise rather nondescript.
“You know what I don’t like,” she said softly. “Those men are Tamerians. Why would the council hire Tamerians?”
Shit.
Somewhere in the mountain ranges of the non-gamra world of Tamer, someone was sending out a lot of mercenaries and spies. They were strong, well-trained and had the ability to blend in well enough to evade notice.
Many rumours circulated about Tamerians: that they were an artificial race, combining the strong points of all gamra peoples, and that they were “owned” by some kind of rich disenfranchised person who was following a political agenda.
Tamerians first started appearing—mainly as dead bodies in conflicts—a few years ago. We didn’t yet know who the owners of these mercenaries were or whether their motivations were political or criminal. The issue was too new for an organisation as sluggish as the gamra assembly to get a grasp of the situation.
The most worrying thing was that they appeared to be resistant to Asto’s heat and, now that I had officially visited Asto, and the official requirement that visitors were Coldi was dropped, people in power at Asto expected Tamerians to turn up and create trouble there.
Because of this, Asto had existed in a state of alertness and, for the first time ever, security checks had been put in place for flights bound for Athyl. They had never bothered previously, because any non-Coldi person would die pretty quickly on Asto, or at least without extensive protection.
And now we had Tamerians in Barresh. Hired by the council? Well, I expected the Barresh council to jump sideways at any time, but hiring Tamerians would be a highly controversial move. Yet here they were.
We walked around the site of the collapsed wall, using Thayu’s light to study the ground. Thayu pointed out places where the young, probably Pengali, had met and sat around a hot water vent boiling illegally-caught fish—she could tell by the bones which fish they’d caught.
There were no obvious signs of technology.
“Could you scan for electronics under the ground?” Although I didn’t imagine that there could be much. The water table was too high. The water was high in various salts and anything that came into contact with it would rust.
“I could, but I’d need to bring more powerful equipment.”
I looked over the reed bed. “Like they have?” The three Tamerians walked through the reeds in single file, each carrying a tiny light.
“I don’t know what that equipment is. I’ve never seen it before.”
“Let’s go home then and come back some other time when these guys are not here. They might find something and report it to the council anyway.”
“I don’t have high hopes that if they find anything, they’ll report it.”
“They should.”
She nodded. “Yes, they should.”
Which meant that they might not. I really didn’t like this.
Should I mention to someone at gamra that the Barresh council was using Tamerians? Was it even important? Gamra had absolutely no say over what happened off the island. It was easy to forget that the organisation governed everything to do with the Exchange and wasn’t a political body. If Barresh wanted to hire Tamerians, then that was their business.
But damn it, that still didn’t mean that I had to like it. For one, there was no need for Barresh to hire Tamerians. They had plenty of people. Some really good people even. This smelled like someone’s private project.
Federza? Looking for some transponder thing under the ground or in someone’s back yard?
There was a jetty at the point, an extension of the main street that ran through the middle of the peninsula. From there, we walked back to the main part of the island, and then along the water until we came to the station.
We didn’t say much. I was still mulling over the situation that got stranger and stranger by the minute.
The train took a while in coming—we were on the less-busy southern line—and we had to wait on the platform. The light here was much too strong to see if the three men still searched the reed bed.
I said, “I think I’ll contact Yetaris Damaru tomorrow to see what those Tamerians are looking for and if they’ve found anything.”
“Framed as an innocent question, right?” Thayu grinned.
“Because ‘Why do you have Tamerians searching our town at night?’ would be too confronting a question, don’t you think?”
“I see you are learning.”
“You can joke about it, but it concerns me.”
“Yeah, me, too, but it’s not our place to investigate. And it’s not as if we haven’t got enough worries of our own.”
That was definitely true.
The train arrived and we took the short ride to the main station without saying much. Then we changed for the more crowded train out to the gamra island. The carriage was about half full, mostly with gamra delegates and their personnel returning from dinners and other trips into town. A bunch of young men and women, most likely domestic workers, were showing off purchases from the markets. One of them had bought a set of baby clothes, either for herself or a sister, and all the others remarked on how cute they were.
I glanced at Thayu as we unavoidably listened to this conversation, but she was doing something on her reader and ignored the subject of babies, although I knew her well enough to know
that she would definitely notice it. Notice and say nothing.
I stared at my own reflection in the window, wishing I knew what to do about Nicha, about Reida, about Menor and Thayu’s unwillingness to even discuss the matter further, about this general feeling of unease that crept up on me in the quiet moments, a feeling that some giant predator was watching all of us, be it the Asto army, the Tamerians, or something to do with that Aghyrian ship, or even all of those things. I wished I knew what it was so that I could do something about it. But I could only wait and pretend everything was fine.
The train stopped at the gamra island’s station, the final stop before it would turn back to the city. Thayu and I got out with the other passengers and walked home through the tree-lined avenues and the courtyards.
We entered our building through the humidity-filled atrium, with its tinkling waterfall, and up the stairs to the gallery.
Evi had made his way back long before us, and he and Telaris sat in the little cubicle outside the door.
“Good evening, mashara. Everything all right?”
“Mashara is afraid that there may be a spot of trouble inside the apartment.”
Damn it, what now? “Reida? More trouble between Xinanu and Eirani?”
“The Delegate has a visitor that mashara is quite certain the Delegate is not fond of.” While he said this, Telaris’ face came as close as I had ever seen to displaying a smile.
“Mashara is making fun of me.”
“No, no, not at all.”
Well, drat. “Let’s go and see this unpopular visitor.” As I walked past him, I whirled around at him. “But I bet it’s Marin Federza.”
“Mashara will not be betting with you, because mashara might lose.”
I went into the apartment stifling laughter. It had taken me a long time, but I thought I was finally beginning to understand the subtle Indrahui humour.
Chapter 7
* * *
WHEN I STEPPED into the hall, Eirani came in from the other side. “Oh, there you are, Muri. We were worried about you when the others came back and—”
