Liquid Crystal Nightingale

by EeLeen Lee

  “Why?”

  “It also concerns an event before your time. Come with me to the new monument.”

  “Let’s go,” said Dumortier. SeForTecs were privy to all sorts of information and his curiosity trumped his need for decompression.

  He talked to fill the silence as Nadira drove. “Cabuchon used to hold military parades every year during the Festival of Gachala. Troops, banners and vehicles streaming along the avenue. And then they stopped after the Downturn. Poor taste, they said. I say there was not enough uta.”

  “There’s enough uta these days,” Nadira said. “Just not from Cabuchon.”

  “Which annoys them to no end. I wonder if they’ll feel the need to restart the parades, to remind us that Cabuchon commands more than enough Tagmat regiments and firepower to handle the alien thugs who kidnapped and murdered forty miners.”

  Constabulary clearance got them nearer to the construction site of the monument than the other vehicles on the avenue. Nadira eased the Shirpen towards four looming shapes draped in swathes of heavy duty orange fabric, tied down with an intricate system of cables and pulleys. Under the cloth, they looked like a rock formation tamed by humans. The cloaked structure was illuminated by footlights, even though it was daytime.

  Dumortier had never seen the intended monument at ground level. In truth, without the grandeur granted by wide-angle hummingbird drone shots, it was underwhelming. Were they obelisks, needles or shafts piercing the clouds, or hulking monoliths? All would be revealed on the big day.

  He picked out a wide area beneath the shortest shape, covered by more orange fabric, and guessed it was marking out a new plaza on top of a subterranean mall. Nadira offered to show him the artist’s impression, but he declined, already seeing in his mind’s eye the plaza lined with meteorite terrazzo, victory cedars and geometric sculptures. The space could be put to better use.

  She circled the construction site and guided the Shirpen to a purring stop beneath the largest shape. A strong breeze made the draped fabrics flutter: the diamond of the Aront corporate logo was emblazoned on them.

  “This, right here, is the site of the first landing.”

  “But isn’t this the Monument To The Forty Miners?”

  Nadira shook her head. “It is—it’ll be dedicated to the Forty—but something else happened on this site.”

  “I didn’t know your ascendants go back that far.”

  “Farther back—and I’m not referring to the pacts signed by all systems.”

  “The Corundum’s establishment?”

  “No.”

  Much farther back? Dumortier tried to visualise a planetoid orbiting Gachala over seventy years ago. A threadbare atmosphere and desolate landscape before the terraformers and atmospheric processors did their work. A large ship, in his imagination, an old Terran System workhorse. And it had landed on a regolith-strewn planetary surface…

  Whistling in disbelief, he said the name of the ship very slowly. “The Thousand Echoes?”

  Dumortier had a detailed knowledge of Archer’s Ring history drummed into him during his time at the academy. Why had Chatoyance greenlit the private construction of a monument here?

  The site might be undergoing rehabilitation, but this did not mean that the event itself had been cancelled. Far from it. If tragedies arose from misfortune, how pernicious misfortune must be, and how capricious. Well beyond the power of Gachala to intervene. So the memory of such events, past and recent, must be combined, and their histories eternally commemorated but also warned against.

  “It’s surreal for me to hear you say that name,” said Nadira. “I’ve only ever said it to myself all this time. But… yes. The first ever landing on this rock was a crash landing, back when Chatoyance was still an exploratory outpost.”

  Dumortier replied, “I didn’t know—no one does, not even now—about how exactly The Thousand Echoes met its end.”

  “You could have. It was made known via the Open Information Act, a few years ago. It didn’t really make the headlines. But no, up till then, no one knew it was a crash landing.”

  “Chatoyance and Cabuchon were founded on an accident.” Dumortier nodded slowly at the monument in progress. “That makes perfect but unbelievable sense.”

  “Significant pieces of the original wreckage were salvaged at the time. Fuselage, and parts from the bridge. I believe it has already been commemorated in the monument.” She pointed at the largest draped installation. “I’m guessing in there. Maybe it’s going to be preserved in synthamber.”

  “And your descendants?” asked Dumortier. “Where are they? Do they know about the monument?”

  “I can’t speak for them, because I have none.”

  He waited for Nadira to elaborate further. When he realised she was not going to, he said, “I think I can understand how that came to be.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  Dumortier flinched in his seat: not at Nadira’s tone of voice, but from the emotion in it. “I’m sorry,” he began. “I shouldn’t have assumed things.”

  “Forget that. What difference does it make?” Nadira sighed. “I never wanted to be singled out as a poor child of Archer’s Ring history. I’ll leave my SeForTec work as my legacy.”

  “Memory is a very tricky beast. But you don’t need me to remind you of that.”

  “It traps you,” replied Nadira. “Or it releases you. The vital question for my colleagues—past and present—and me is, is it worse to be haunted by something you remember, or by something you don’t?”

  “Which one is it for you?”

  “Neither. I stay out of memory’s reach.”

  Nadira restarted the Shirpen and drove away at slightly over the speed limit. A warning light flashed orange on the windscreen. Dumortier wanted to ask whether SeForTec clearance extended to traffic regulations, but let the question die in his throat when he saw the intense look on her face.

  A glowing red dot replaced the orange onscreen, and this one was definitely not meant to be ignored.

  “SeForTec Morad LN/Gaspard here. Come in.”

  “Incident in Southwest Sector. Code 10.”

  Code 10: bomb detonated. Dumortier reached out to access relevant transmissions, but Nadira was quicker than him. With a few more saccades she accessed the satellite map of Southwest Sector, with a bright white dot marking the site.

  “Dry Market, how typical,” said Dumortier.

  “You two are the closest personnel we have. Dispatch over and out.”

  “What’s going on?” Dumortier asked as he put the Shirpen into autodrive. “Gia Aront dies, we go up to the Tiers and the city below starts falling apart.”

  The highlights would be going crazy with this. Dumortier wondered how the T-Car network would cope.

  “Connective tissue,” replied Nadira. “It’s inflamed and now demands our urgent attention.”

  “I hope you’re wrong—this time.”

  “Same here.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHARRED SUGAR, CHEAP oil, frying dough, and synthetic vanilla overpowering burnt coffee—thanks to this olfactory melange, Marsh had located the DryWare Market without much difficulty. He avoided Constabulary presence on the T-Cars by taking the footpath running alongside The Canal That Quenches All Thirst until his nanoapartment block had shrunk to obscurity. Ten minutes after crossing the canal lock, he entered the southwestern sector of Chatoyance where the streets were less of a network and more like clusters of knots, like obscure botanical structures.

  Faced with such organic disarray, he let his nose and ears guide him.

  The aromas wafting around the DryWare Market camouflaged its nature and purpose. The hungry would stop for a bite and not venture farther until Shineshift or the traders packed up and moved on; or the smells would induce nausea in the desperate who already lacked appetite.

  Marsh was neither hungry nor desperate, but tamping down on a rising anxiety. There was safety in the DryWare Market, but only to a degree. He was what m
arketspeak called “Devoid”—of implants and augmentations. Thus he was not worth the effort to extract or cut implants and tools out of him unless he wandered too far west, into the WetWare Market. The forcep was wrapped in a sheaf of sterile first-aid foam, strapped to his left forearm and covered by his sleeve. His push dagger was sheathed in his other sleeve. Despite the layers of concealment, he still felt like the forcep was giving off heat. He had to remind himself to walk like he was carrying nothing of value.

  The crowd retained their cohesion around him. It was mid-morning, and still possible to navigate the wide street without brushing against another person. A few people scurried around hoisting poles across their shoulders, setting up makeshift stalls. Traders kept to themselves and none of them looked directly at one another unless it was necessary. Marsh took this as a positive sign: Wet and DryWare vendors relied on networks of informants. No recent news or scrutiny from guards or Constabulary had tipped them off—yet.

  DryWare was well-adapted to the fluidity of demand and supply; with almost no organic detritus to clean up its activity was less fraught. The arrangement and layouts of WetWare and DryWare stalls changed at random after each Shineshift. If he missed a given vendor today, he could have to wait for another week or month.

  “You buying or selling?”

  “Looking for a friend,” lied Marsh.

  Chit-chat was more than a standard opening: it allowed both parties to size each other up. The trader chewed on his lower lip while he shoved a sleeved hand inside his jacket. The treated red leather garment was bartered or stolen—more likely stolen, as the fine tailoring was at least two sizes too big for him. Marsh saw the trader’s fingers pat an object under the fabric.

  “Hey, don’t you think it’s too early in the trading day for that?” Marsh protested, raising his hands.

  The trader scowled back at him and removed his closed hand from inside his jacket. Marsh saw the filament wiring of a small comms device poking out from between his fingers.

  Shouts erupted from the street up ahead, warning everyone to run away now. He started back the way he came, briefly considering selling one of his eyes at WetWare because it’d be less trouble.

  Double explosions, one after the other, almost festive in their brevity, as though the sound were cut off. As the screaming started and people scattered, Marsh threw himself to the ground between two stalls, covering his head with his jacket. Pyrotechnic flashes lit up the inside of his eyelids. He recalled an instruction from a security drill: When you suspect the use of an unconventional incendiary device and are unable to get to a safe distance or area, protect your eyes and ears and hold your breath.

  Someone must have followed him or knew he was coming. But it made little sense to create a disruption like this to get a hold of him. Maybe, this morning, he was just unlucky; getting caught in a flare-up of gang rivalry, a turf war spilling over. Minutes passed, until Marsh’s knees and elbows ached from lying facedown on the street, and voices started to rise around him. He uncovered his head and was relieved that his ears were not ringing. He sniffed the air and blinked; at least the perpetrators had not used toxic gas.

  “Urtic!” The word cut through the commotion, generating more outrage than fear. Cursing followed, soiling the air around him in multiple languages. “Two devices!”

  Trichome bombs modelled on plant seed distribution; that explained the short pops. Fine needles—urtic—or scales were expelled from a metal casing all around. Once, a trichome had been set off outside a school back on Cabuchon: Not as large scale as a conventional bomb, but definitely as nasty. There were some lines even the DryWare and WetWare gangs did not cross during their turf wars.

  Another voice asked, “Who did this?”

  “Scum who want to shut the Cat’s Eye for ever,” replied a woman’s voice muffled by an air filter. “It’s all falling apart as I speak. And it’s about time, if you ask me.”

  “No one’s asking you,” rejoined another woman, and Marsh heard her mutter, “Gachala’s teeth, these doomsayers are everywhere all of a sudden.”

  Encouraged by the commotion, he staggered upright and stumbled out of the alley, hesitating before he stepped back into the market. People hurled crates and containers onto transports, tents and stalls dismantled in anticipation of pacification and clean-up drones. They would fly in along with their Constabulary handlers, and seal off the area before the trading day was over

  Countless tiny pits had been blasted out of the street, scattering fragments of stone in a rough torus. Stink of burnt almonds and tar. Marsh saw sunlight glinting off urtic needles embedded in the wall behind him and in the discarded plastic sheets used to cover merchandise. Five bystanders sat on the ground tending to the injured, two of whom had lacerations across their faces.

  “—Should we move them?”

  “—Can you walk?”

  A rough hand grabbed his elbow and spun Marsh around. “You a medic?”

  The hand’s owner was a burly man in clothes dusted with pulverised street and sporting a bleeding nose. Marsh jerked away from his grip. “No, I’m actually—”

  “Out of the way, then! They need help, not an audience!”

  He made his way out of the range of the bomb and further into the market. The stalls were less densely packed at the end of the narrow lanes, and beggars, with their trademark silver scarves over their mouths, gathered in the cul-de-sacs beyond them. Men and women hawked assorted scraps of discarded technology and vehicle components arranged on mats. Marsh recognised prosthetics improvised from spare parts, broken handrails and stanchions from T-Cars bundled together and stacked like the gathering of a surreal harvest. The ibis head of a sentry turnstile, now retrofitted as an empty-eyed desk ornament, lay next to a set of brass measuring scales.

  He sensed that they were exaggerating their business-as-usual demeanours after the bombing.

  “Heard you’re looking for your friend?”

  A woman and a girl seated under a wall covered with cracked plate glass and disused signage.

  The question did not surprise Marsh: it really had been a comms device inside the trader’s jacket.

  “Looking for something for a friend.”

  “Nothing here catches your eye?” She waved her hand over the wares and sounded insulted at his indifference.

  Might as well be direct. He didn’t want to get corralled by arriving officers and cleanup crews. “My friend requires a valuation.”

  “Of what?”

  “A procured item.”

  “Procured by what means?”

  “It was an accident.” Marsh hoped the truth was sufficiently convincing for her.

  “Size?”

  Marsh held the tips of his thumb and forefinger ten centimetres apart.

  “Provenance?”

  “The serial number is embedded in the item.” It was the truth.

  “If it’s biological, you’re really in the wrong place.” She waved in the general direction of Wetware.

  “It’s not purely biological.”

  “Put the item in here.”

  With her curiosity sufficiently piqued, the woman held out her arm for Marsh to slip his hand inside the long grubby sleeve of her coat. Sensing a scam—or, worse, a trap for severing limbs—he backed away.

  The woman burst out laughing.

  “He thinks something will bite off his hand.” She nudged her neighbour in the side, a girl with a smudged face swathed in a cloak of faded red wool over a brown slacken vest, who was not listening in particular. “Relax, my dear, I don’t want it, you’re not in WetWare. Whatever you’re carrying, you need the Arcades.”

  Marsh swore and went back to the thoroughfare. He ducked behind a discarded water tanker, where he heard the squawking of headsets. Glimpsing a pair of Constabulary indigo uniforms up ahead, he remained crouched. The narrow streets and lanes did not permit access to Shirpens, but the uniforms were trickling in, precursors to the cleanup crew.

  An unexpected draft kicked
up and blew cool musty air from behind him. He turned around and found what he had mistaken for a doorway was in fact a parabolic archway sealed up by hoarding: the expensive camouflage kind used by Chatoyance Municipal that mimicked various types of walls. Red light glowed in the gap beneath the hoarding. He pushed on the edge of the weathered panel and peered through the gap. Daylight from the street skimmed over a row of arches, identical to the one outside, and a mosaic floor in a faded pink and black.

  It was old, and built to a still-older design, a nod to nostalgia. Marsh let the section of panel fall back into place, as if he was guarding a newfound secret.

  The woman and the girl had followed him out of the narrow lane and were edging towards him, more curious than suspicious. Marsh could feel them willing him to step inside, almost pressing on his back.

  The evaluators who worked in the Arcades were in there, behind the hoarding: it was the only explanation for their behaviour. For a moment he found himself wishing he was back behind the faulty crowning-shield of the display counter, picking at pomegranate seeds.

  His ticket off Chatoyance was not in Retail Sector 12. It might yet be found in the Arcades.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  HARD CURRENCY BLOCKS exist for only one reason.

  Pleo heard this reason through the walls—a group session in rowdy progress a few rooms away, while the ventilation system laboured to remove the olfactory evidence.

  In damp clothes still reeking of canal water, she stood in Gia’s rented room in the hard currency block, taking it in with a newly dispassionate eye, although she had been here before. Conditions were better than in her room in the Polyteknical accommodation node: the plumbing worked, and the sound insulation and carpet were replaced on a regular basis. Maintenance happened; the room was still registered under whatever alias Gia Aront had been using. Rent was directly debited until Gia’s trust fund ran out or was withdrawn, which meant not soon. Pleo could lie low here for now. In an unexpected turn of events, Gia’s patronage of this block vouched for Pleo’s refuge. But even now, Pleo was uneasy. The room had been unused for a fortnight—much too long for a hard currency block.