'Where are my friends?'
'Mr Iifilde, Mr Resiptiss, Ms Cargin and Ms Hohuel?'
Fassin just stared at him. Shit, in all the last few months he'd been staying here he'd only known them by their first names. He supposed those were Thay, Sonj and Mome's last names, but really he'd no idea. And there had been four, hadn't there? Did that mean they were counting K as well? But she hadn't been to the protest.
'They're being held elsewhere, or they've been processed and released, or we're still looking for them.' The little man smiled.
Fassin looked down at his arms, held within metal hoops. He tried to move his legs, then leaned over and looked down. His legs were shackled too. Or manacled or whatever. His mouth felt very odd. He ran his tongue round where his teeth had been, checking again. He supposed he'd have to get false ones until the new ones grew back. Or sport a piratical grin. 'Why am I being treated like this?' he asked.
The little man looked incredulous. He appeared to be about to hurt Fassin again, then shook his head in exasperation. 'Because you took part in a violent demonstration against the Diegesian, that's why!' he said.
'But I wasn't violent,' Fassin said.
'You personally may not have been. The demonstration you took part in most certainly was.'
Fassin would have scratched his head. 'Is that all it takes?'
'Of course!'
'Who started the violence?' he asked.
The little man jerked his arms out to each side. His voice went very high. 'Does it matter?'
Fassin had meant which side, but he could tell the little man thought he'd meant which demonstrator. He sighed. 'Look, I just want to get back to my friends, to my nest. Can I go? I didn't do anything, I got my teeth knocked out, I can't tell you anything, or ... anything . . .' he said. He sighed again.
'You can go when you sign this.' The little man swivelled the screen around so Fassin could see. He looked at what he was supposed to sign, and at the fingerprint pad and camera patches on the screen which would record that it had really been him signing (or, more to the point, make a fake document take up a fraction more storage space).
'I can't sign this,' he said. 'It basically says my friends are all Beyonder agents and deserve death.'
The little man rolled his eyes. 'Read it carefully, will you? It just says you have suspicions in that regard. You don't seriously think your word would be enough to convict anybody of anything, do you?'
'Well then, why get me to—?'
'We want you to betray them!' the little man shouted, as though it was the most obvious thing ever. 'We want you to turn your back on them and become a productive member of society. That's all.'
'But they're my friends.' Fassin coughed, swallowed. 'Look, could I get a drink of water?'
'No. You can't. And they're not your friends. They're just people you know. They're barely acquaintances. You got drunk with them, got stoned with them, talked a bit with them and slept with some of them. You'll all go your separate ways soon enough anyway and probably never keep in touch. They are not your friends. Accept that.'
Fassin thought better of debating what being a friend meant, in the circumstances. 'Well, I'm still not betraying them.' 'They've betrayed you!'
The little interrogator swung the screen round, clicked on a few patches and swung it back. Fassin watched Thay, Sonj and Mome - all stuck in seats like the one he was secured in, and Sonj looking pretty beaten-up - say they thought that Fassin held Beyonder sympathies and was a danger to society who needed watching. They each mumbled something to that effect, signed the screen and pressed a thumb against the print patch (Sonj's left a smear of blood).
The screenage shook him. It had probably been faked, but all the same. He sat back. 'You faked that,' he said, unsteadily. The little man laughed. 'Are you mad? Why would we bother?'
'I don't know,' Fass admitted. 'But I know my friends. They wouldn't—'
The little man sat forward. 'So just sign this and in the highly unlikely event that it ever crops up, just say yours has been faked.'
'So why not fake it anyway?' Fassin shouted.
'Because then you won't have betrayed them!' the little man yelled back. 'Come on! Sign and you can go. I've got better things to do.'
'But why do any of this?' Fassin said, wanting to cry. 'Why make anybody betray anybody?'
The little man looked at him for a moment. 'Mr Taak,' he said, sitting back, sounding patient. 'I've inspected your profile. You are not stupid. Misguided, idealistic, naive, certainly, but not stupid. You must know how societies work. You must at least have an inkling. They work on force, power and coercion. People don't behave themselves because they're nice. That's the liberal fallacy. People behave themselves because if they don't they'll be punished. All this is known. It isn't even debatable. Civilisation after civilisation, society after society, species after species, all show the same pattern. Society is control: control is reward and punishment. Reward is being allowed to partake of the fruits of that society and, as a general but not unbreakable rule, not being punished without cause.'
'But—'
'Be quiet. The idiotic issue you chose to complain about -ownership of a habitat - really has nothing to do with you. It's a legal matter, an ownership thing. You weren't even born here and you wouldn't have stayed beyond a few more months anyway, admit it. You should have kept out of it. You chose not to, you put yourself in harm's way and now you're paying the price. Part of that price is letting us know that you have made an effort to dissociate yourself from the people you were complicit with. Once you do that, you can go. Home, I would suggest. I mean to 'glantine.'
'And if I say no?'
'You mean not sign?'
'Yes.'
'Seriously?'
'Seriously.'
'Then it's taken out of my hands. You'll go to meet people who enjoy doing this sort of thing.'
This time, when the little man moved his hand over the desk, Fassin screamed with the pain. He must have bitten his tongue. There was a taste of iron and his mouth filled with fresh blood and hot saliva.
'Because I,' the little man said wearily, 'don't.'
In the end Fassin signed. He'd kind of known he would.
The little man looked happy, and a couple of big female guards came in and helped Fassin from the chair, his bonds unfastened.
'Thank you, Mr Taak,' the little man said, and grasped his hand and shook it before they took him out of the room. 'I hate all that unpleasantness, and it is always so good to see somebody being sensible. Try not to think too badly of me. Good luck to you.'
They got him showered down and fixed up and he left after a medical and a cup of soup, dressed in paper-thin overalls. He looked around when they ushered him through the doorways into what passed for outside in a hab. He'd been somewhere inside the Diegesian's palace.
Back at the nest, turmoil. The place had been raided, trashed, everything in it broken or sprayed with stinking, vomit-inducing crowd-control goo. They went to a bar instead and didn't really talk about anything after the protest and the crackdown. They talked instead of rumours of people being killed and others disappearing.
K wasn't there. She'd been beaten up when the troopers came to turn the nest over. She was in a prison hospital ship for three weeks, then killed herself with a broken glass the day she was released.
It was months before Fassin learned the truth. K had been sent into a nightmare tream. Somebody who'd come with the law officers - maybe just one of them who happened to know how to handle tream gear - had found her still floating, not yet out of the delving tream, and altered the settings on the traumalyser and the subsal while some others had held her down and worked her over. Whoever did the thing with the traumalyser must have carried that sort of template chip around with them, just for such eventualities. Then they'd left her, bloody and bound, to some speeded-up nightmare of horror, rape and torture.
They were all split up, doing other, mostly more responsible things when they piece
d all this together. They talked about a complaint, an investigation, a protest.
Fassin went back to 'glantine and booked a place on the Seer induction course for the term after next. Then he returned to the habs, and then to Sepekte's Boogeytown, to the roaring life, the drink and drugs and fucking and fun, and - after a while, gradually, carefully - made a few inquiries, hung out in the right places, and met certain people. Apparently he passed a few tests without realising he'd been taking them, and then one night he was introduced to a girl who called herself Aun Liss.
*
'Fassin!'
His name jolted him awake. Third Fury; cabin. Still night-dark. Clanging noise. The screen showed hour Four. The screen was red and flashing. Had somebody spoken?
'What?' he said, tearing the restraints away and levering himself out of bed, floating towards the centre of the cabin.
'Herv Apsile,' said a voice. Sounded like Apsile. Sounded like Apsile in a state of some excitement or distress. 'We have a situation. Looks like an attack.'
Oh, shit. Fassin pulled on clothes, called up full lights. 'That fucking horrendous clanging noise the alarm?'
'That's right.'
'You in Facility Command?'
'Yes.'
'Who do we think?' A light flashed over a storage locker and it revolved, revealing an emergency esuit.
'Don't know. Two naval units vaporised already. Get suited and—'
The lights - all the lights - flickered. The screen did not come back on. A tremor made the cabin shake. Something broke in the bathroom with a sharp crack.
'You feel that? You still there?' Apsile said.
'Yes to both,' Fassin said. He was looking at the esuit.
'Suit up and take a drop shaft to the emergency shelter.' Apsile paused. 'You got that?' Another pause. 'Fass?'
'Here.' Fassin started pulling all his clothes off again. 'That what you're going to do, Herv?'
'That's what we're both supposed to do.'
Another tremble made the whole cabin rattle. The air seemed to quake like jelly.
The alarm shut off. Somehow, though, not in an encouraging way.
The screen flashed once, screeched.
Fassin hauled the esuit out of its locker. 'How's the main hangar?' he asked.
'Intact. Whatever's hitting us seems to be coming in from the Nasq spin-side, slightly retro.'
'So heading into the centre's going to be putting us closer,' Fassin said. Was that a draught? He could hear a hissing sound. He clipped the esuit collar round his neck and let the gel helmet deploy. It turned everything hazy and quiet for a moment, then decided the situation wasn't too dire yet, and opened slits for him to breathe, talk and hear through. The face-mask section thinned to near-perfect transparency.
'For now,' Apsile agreed. ‘If the direction of the hostile fire stays constant we'll be coming round to face it full on in two hours.'
Fassin stepped into the esuit and pulled it up, letting it connect with the collar, adjusting to his body, huffing and settling. Very comfortable, really. 'That what you want to do, Herv? Sit in a huddle with everybody else like mice in a hole hoping the cat goes away?'
'Standing orders.'
'I know. Want to guess what I want to do?' There was a pause. Another more violent tremor shook the cabin. The main door popped open, wobbling inwards, revealing the companionway outside. The pause went on. 'Herv?' he asked. He looked round for anything he might want to take with him. Nothing. 'Herv?'
'I'll see you there.'
Something blazed hard and blue-white against Nasqueron's side-lit face, turning the hangar into a harsh jagged jumble of fiercely shining surfaces and intensely black shadows. Fassin flinched. The light faded quickly, turning to yellow and orange; a small fading sun shone between the moon and Nasqueron.
Herv Apsile had got there ahead of him. He gave a quick wave and easily jumped the eight metres to the open nose-blister of the carrier craft, disappearing inside. The nose-blister closed.
'Herv?' Fassin said, trying the suit's emergency comms. No answer. He made slow bounds for the open hold. Colonel Hatherence was already there, the tall discus of her esuit floating a fraction above the floor directly beneath the place she'd filled earlier.
'Seer Taak! I rather thought you might adopt this course!' she shouted.
Shit, Fassin thought. He'd kind of hoped the colonel would have made her way to the emergency shelter in the moon's core, ten kilometres down, along with everybody else, like they'd all been told to. There was one drop shaft big enough, wasn't there? Oh well. He came to a stop beneath the little arrowhead gascraft hanging in its cradle directly above. 'Colonel,' he said, nodding.
Would she try to stop him? No idea. Could she? No doubt about that.
'Not sure whether to be relieved or terrified,' the colonel yelled. A manipulator arm creased out from the side of the oerileithe esuit, unfolding towards Fassin. Oh, fuck, he thought. Here we go.
'After you!' the colonel said, her arm indicating the space above.
Fassin smiled and jumped. She rose with a whirr beside him. Stopped and then braced by the ceiling of the hold, he flipped open the cockpit of the little gascraft, revealing a vaguely coffin-shaped space. He shucked the suit and unclipped the helmet.
'Out of uniform, major,' the colonel said jovially, voice echoing in the enclosed space of the upper hold. Fassin let the suit fall slowly to the floor beneath and stepped into the foot of the little arrowhead's cockpit. 'Gracious!' Hatherence said. 'Are all human males of this form?'
'Just the handsome ones, colonel,' he assured her. He lowered himself carefully into the cool gel. The cockpit cover closed over him. He wriggled in the darkness, getting his neck positioned over the scanner collar. A soft light and a gentle chime confirmed all was well. He reached for the double nozzle of the gillfluid root, took a deep breath, let it out, then placed the nozzles at his nostrils.
Fassin lay back, zoning out as best he could, fighting the urge to panic, the gag response of fear as the gillfluid poured into his nose, throat and lungs like the coldest drink anybody had ever taken.
A moment of confusion, disorientation. Then the collar nestling closer against his neck and the warming gel closing over his body, tendrils seeking out ears, mouth, penis and anus. Twin stings of pain on his forearms, then another pair, one under each ear, as the blood slides went in.
'Set?' said the voice of Herv Apsile, gurgling through the still calibrating gel in his ears.
- Thoroughly, he sent back just by thinking. - And the colonel?
'I am set, also!' Even over comms, it seemed, Colonel Hatherence tended to shout.
Fassin had been wondering if they could leave her behind somehow. Probably not, then.
'Hold doors closing. Ready to go,' Apsile said.
Fassin started to become his little gascraft. It covered him, embraced him, multiply penetrated him, and in those acts offered itself up to him completely. The light from below disappeared as the hold doors closed. He could see Colonel Hatherence's esuit hanging beside him, sense its cold and read
its electromagnetic signature, just as he could feel the systems of the drop ship readying, flexing, preparing, changing as the ship nudged itself off the floor. Other senses registered an unusual wash of radiations, a faint gravity well set in a much greater, deeper one, a slather of meaningless comms shards, confused transmissions and EM signals from the Shared Facility base itself - and a sudden jolt, a transmitted faint but massive thud followed by a strange sideways, upwards-sucking movement.
He waited for Apsile to talk to them, meanwhile trying to work it out himself. Distant whirr and hiss of the carrier tanking the air in its hold.
'Sorry about that,' Apsile said mildly. 'Back in control. Unconventional method of opening the hangar to vacuum there. No idea who to thank.'
- We okay? Fassin asked.
'NSD,' Apsile said, sounding mildly distracted. 'No Significant Damage.'
- Let you get on with it, Fassin sent.
'Thanks.'
'Cancel relief, emphasise terror,' the colonel said.
Fassin hoped she was talking only to him. He checked through all the little gascraft's settings and systems, settling into it as its life-support tendrils settled into him. Something like a wide array of lights seen from the bottom corner of the eye swung into focus in front of him. He called up a few read-outs and started a couple of subroutines to check that everything was working. Seemed to be.
He felt the carrier accelerate away from the moon. Patch-through to the larger ship's senses suddenly appeared as an option on his controls and he took it.
Now he could experience pretty much what Apsile could.
Nasqueron filling the sky ahead and up, the grey-brown surface of Third Fury disappearing fast below and behind. Debris clouds. Comms shards. More than there ought to be in a properly organised fleetlet like the one that had brought them here and that had been guarding the moon. No sign of illuminating radar or other targeting give-away. Not that a civilian ship like the carrier would be able to spot any but the most glaringly obvious. No current damage flags, just records of a few small hull impacts, little more than pitting. Ship drive traces.
A sudden flare of radiation as a ship turned hard a couple of hundred klicks away, dying away. Outgoing signal loop, broadcasting their unarmed condition, claiming lifeboat status. Flash! From right behind. A near-semicircular debris cloud rising glittering from a new glowing crater maybe half a klick across on the surface of Third Fury. Three smaller craters coming into view, recent but cooled down to orange and red heat. The view twisted, overlays of lines and grids and drive symbols flickering into being.
Apsile pointed the carrier's nose straight at Nasqueron and started a long, purposefully irregular corkscrew towards the gas-giant, accelerating the drop ship as hard as its engines would allow.
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