*
Opole had come as something of a revelation to Ry. Cape Ingmar and Port Jamenk were completely devoid of Eliters. Here in a much older city, where the Eliter community was large and well established, their pings and links were thick in the air. Ry had never sent out a ping in his life. The closest he’d ever come to embracing his heritage was accepting basic management routines from the general communication bands, which allowed him to organize his memory in a more orderly fashion. After that, he’d closed himself off to all electromagnetic communication.
Once he was in Opole, practical considerations overcame his lifelong refusal to involve himself with the Eliter community. He still wasn’t going to link with anyone, but he did search through the general communication bands for upgrades to the routines he already had. To his delight, he discovered a whole section given over to the free distribution of files containing education bundles and upgrades for secondary thought routines. Intriguingly, every file’s identity icon had the visual image of the legendary Warrior Angel. She was still a huge idol for the Eliters.
With some of those new routines operating in his macrocellular clusters, he began to filter the news and gossip that were flung about so gleefully by the city’s maligned and abused underdogs.
The first thing he learned was that none of them believed the nest alert was actually about a nest. There had been a regiment deployment among the Sansone foothills the previous week, but oddly no corresponding Fall warning had been issued.
That’s my alien spacecraft landing, it has to be.
The main focus of the nest alert was an Eliter called Florian, who according to the few Opole residents who remembered him was a harmless nonentity. Florian had been a forest warden in the valley where the regiment had been deployed. Speculation as to whether he had now Fallen reached a fever. Some pointed out there was no evidence; they were countered by others who suggested the PSR simply wouldn’t mount an operation of this scale for anything other than a nest.
Florian’s the key, then, Ry decided. He must have encountered the alien spaceship. It must have given him something – information or a piece of technology the PSR are desperate to recover, to make sure nothing on Bienvenido changes.
News leaked that it was Captain Chaing himself who’d been appointed to lead the hunt. Chaing: the one who’d recently faced down a whole nest of Fallers at Xander Manor. So the threat was real and serious. Then it came out that Florian was Lurji’s younger brother. Okay, so maybe he hasn’t Fallen, but he’s certainly pissed off someone high up in government. Typical of that family; no thought as to how the rest of us will suffer. To Uracus with that defeatism; go, Florian.
At the time that argument broke out, Ry had just moved into his rented flat on Broadstreet and was settling down to watch the PSR. The general band was alive with stories about a car chase in the city. Visual files showed some kind of ancient, battered saloon moving at dangerous speed along narrow streets, being chased by sheriff patrol cars. It ended in a spectacular pile-up.
Nothing much happened after that. But early the next morning, joint PSR and sheriff teams started to systematically arrest Florian’s old friends, hauling them from their homes without any valid charge or even a warrant. Then Florian’s mother was arrested. Almost immediately a crowd appeared in Broadstreet below Ry’s flat, their chants growing louder. Within an hour, their numbers had expanded dramatically. Traffic was blocked. Even the trams had to slow to a crawl. The sheriffs hung back, unwilling to intervene and make it worse. It was perfect for Ry; their presence put him next to the heart of Eliter gossip about the whole nest alert. And they didn’t hold back what they were broadcasting across the general band.
Sometime around midday, Castillito was released to a huge outbreak of cheering as she emerged from the front entrance. After that, the crowd thinned out considerably.
Fresh gossip had it that the PSR was shifting their attention to gang members, specifically Billop’s crews. Ry sat patiently by his window, meticulously organizing and indexing all the information accumulating in his storage lacuna, noting who was wanted, what their position and relevance was. Watching, waiting.
It was evening, with an erubescent twilight claiming Broadstreet, when the man came down the short steps out of the PSR office. He hunched his shoulders, as if frightened by the hard core of protesters who were still stubbornly clustered on the opposite side of the road, and immediately slunk off along the pavement away from the big domineering building.
Ry was interested; that was certainly no PSR officer coming out at the end of his shift; the furtive behaviour simply didn’t match. His eyes strained against the dim illumination, filter and magnification routines sharpening the image. Then a couple of men got out of a van parked further along Broadstreet. The man stopped and looked round at them. Ry finally got a reasonable look at his face. His new visual-recognition routines kicked in, zipping through files and general-band streams to find a match. Perrick: one of Billop’s senior lieutenants, arrested earlier for questioning.
The two men from the van now stood on either side of Perrick, who was severely discomforted. Ry could see that in his body language.
Crudding Uracus, they’re snatching him! In the middle of the street, outside the PSR headquarters!
It was so incongruous, so wrong, that Ry knew it was important. Without thinking, he ran out of the flat and down the rear stairs to the alley at the back. Renting the tuk-tuk had taken over half of his cash, but as soon as he climbed into it at Opole station, he’d known it was the perfect way to get around the city unnoticed. They were everywhere all of the time, yet completely unseen.
The little three-wheeled vehicle trundled out of the alley spluttering oily smoke as all its kind did. Nobody paid him any attention at all. He was just in time to see the van doors shut. He turned towards it as it pulled out from the kerb.
A street map of Opole was another gift from the general band. He tracked his own position as the van drove steadily out of the city centre and headed north towards the river Crisp. After twenty minutes they turned into Midville Avenue, which ran parallel to the old Hawley Docks along the waterfront. Back in the Void days, those docks had been a source of great wealth for the district’s merchants, who had spent their money lavishly along Midville Avenue, creating an extravagant mix of high-rise tenements, plush homes, fancy offices, and commercial properties. After the Great Transition, the nature of trade and commerce changed drastically as the economic equality laws were brought in, and Hawley Docks was designated as part of the state rationalization plan. Fewer ships used them, wealth and jobs drained away to the city’s central docks, and the neighbourhood declined in every sense.
Ry stared up at the once-elegant facades as he followed the van. Judging by the number of windows that were lit, nearly half of the tenement flats were unoccupied. Several of the commercial buildings were boarded up; offices had heavy iron bars over their grimy windows, doors protected by equally sturdy metal gates. The huge old walwallow trees that lined the avenue hadn’t been pruned in decades, allowing their thick boughs to spread over the street to create an intermittent roof of furry ginger leaves. Trunks and roots were now so thick they were lifting the pavement slabs and cobbles, making the ride bumpy.
The van pulled up outside a five-storey townhouse of dark red brick. Ry rode past, taking in as much as he could. The upper levels of the townhouse were invisible behind the walwallow, while the big bay windows on the ground floor shone with light. There was a discreet scarlet and violet neon sign curving over the broad door: Cameron’s. A couple of beefy men in smart black suits stood outside.
The van doors opened, and Perrick was escorted to a narrow set of iron stairs at the corner of the house that led down into a narrow sunken courtyard running along the side of the building. Then Ry had to stop looking back before it became obvious.
He studied the street map in his exovision and turned off down Yenkoy Street, seventy metres further along from the club on the other side. Half of
the alleys and service lanes behind Midville Avenue were so narrow and decrepit they didn’t even feature on his street map. Weeds and creepers were colonizing every wall and mound of refuse, producing a decaying arena for bussalores and feral cats to fight over. The tuk-tuk puttered along the confined maze of dank passages until Ry was behind one of the larger tenements. He wheeled the tuk-tuk into one of its many deserted outbuildings, and made his way cautiously to the rear door.
A second-floor tenement had no door; the rooms inside looked like a domestic battlefield of broken furniture and mouldy carpets. Something smelt really bad, and Ry had no desire to investigate the source. The lounge was down a short corridor, which shielded it from any view from the tenement’s central stairwell. Several panes in the tall window were empty. He peered up over the rim and had a perfect view of Cameron’s. Even better, he could see right down the iron stairs that led to the sunken courtyard. The van which had delivered Perrick had gone.
Ry had visited clubs like Cameron’s many times during his interminable astronaut tours. Civic dignitaries and Democratic Unity party officials would invite him and his fellow astronauts along after the formal functions were concluded, their glamour adding to the establishment’s prestige. A lot of clubs and pubs on Bienvenido had connections with gangs, mainly because they were perfect for money laundering, supplying drugs, and human trafficking. High-end establishments, like Cameron’s, tended to have friends in the local party, so their patrons weren’t blatantly shaken down. Nonetheless, they remained the business of choice for gangs, so Ry was sure that whoever Perrick had been taken downstairs to meet was well placed in the Opole underworld.
All the files he’d acquired while he waited on Broadstreet said the same thing – Roxwolf was Opole’s major player. No one else would have the audacity to have a man snatched from outside the PSR office – or a reason. So it looked like the gang chief himself was taking an interest in Florian’s whereabouts.
That gave Ry two possible routes to Florian: Chaing and Roxwolf. He gathered some torn cushions into a pile and settled down to wait.
3
Florian gave up on making dresses on the third day in the mod stable. Essie was now growing so quickly there was no point. Anything he made in the morning was too small by midnight. So instead of dresses he fashioned the cloth into a kind of toga robe which she could button together down the side. That ought to last two or three days.
There was a change to Essie’s daily pattern now. She used to eat and sleep with short times between spent playing; she’d never been much of a talker. Now, though, there was no more play. She just cried or whimpered, complaining about the pain. It was more than ordinary growing pains. Every joint was sore, so even the slightest movement made her wince, and her legs cramped constantly.
That afternoon, Florian had spent two hours trying to massage the cramp away, with little effect. Exhausted as she guzzled some paste from the processor, tears trickled down his own cheeks in sympathy for her suffering. He felt utterly useless, and worse, completely to blame. He was such a monumental failure. The space machine should have entrusted her to the Vatni; they would have done a much better job caring for her. She deserved better than him.
‘Don’t cry, Dada,’ Essie said mournfully.
He pressed his lips together in shame as he looked at her. That delightful, pretty little face was smeared with gooey paste, her jet-black hair had become matted, and she looked so tired, exhausted by her fight against the pain. Even the weird memory organ fused to her skull was flushed a dark purple, as if it was bruised.
‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ he croaked. ‘I don’t like it when you hurt, that’s all.’
‘Do grown-ups hurt?’
‘Not like this, no.’
‘Then it will stop when I’m old.’
‘Yes, sweetheart. Yes, it will.’ He was probably lying, because how could anybody know what her strange body was going to do? But his guilt didn’t matter, because the lie offered her some hope. Anything he suffered was inconsequential, and probably well deserved.
‘Is it time for pill?’ she asked hopefully.
‘Yes,’ he said. It wasn’t, not for another hour, but he couldn’t take much more of her woe. He’d been alternating types of painkillers produced by the Commonwealth medical kit, so she could gain some relief. But of course he was fearful what a constant supply of drugs would do to her, if they’d damage her in the long term. The files said no, but still it was against his nature. At least he wasn’t so panicky about the salves he rubbed into her joints and muscles, which did give some relief, albeit temporary. The trouble was, there wasn’t an infinite amount; he’d already used up sixty per cent of the kit’s chemical supplies, and he was worried how much longer she’d be suffering.
His u-shadow instructed the kit to produce some basic karacetami – a lower dose than before because of the shorter time. She’d taken some ibuprofen less than two hours ago.
‘Thank you, Dada,’ she said as she gulped down some water to swallow the little green capsules. Then she put her arms round him and hugged him until she began to grow drowsy. Florian stroked her gently as her eyes slowly closed.
‘I never knew anyone who was a bigger pain than Dudley Bose,’ Essie said softly.
Florian gave her a startled look, but her eyelids were shut. ‘What’s that, sweetheart?’ he murmured.
‘Ozzie took his motile down the Silfen paths. I wonder what became of him.’
‘What?’ But the girl was finally sleeping, and he wasn’t going to do anything that might wake her up and plunge her back into her own private world of torment.
Matthieu arrived ninety minutes later. That was unusual enough to kick off a whole new plague of worry in Florian. It was late in the afternoon, with a single yalseed lamp replacing the fading sunlight with a meagre yellow glow. The rule was nobody visited him once the club’s staff started to arrive.
‘What is it?’ Florian asked anxiously.
‘They just arrested Terannia.’
‘Oh Uracus.’ He stared down at the sleeping girl, close to tears again. ‘Okay. If I go to the PSR, can you take Essie away from here? I don’t want to know where. Just somewhere safe.’
‘Florian, just calm down a moment. First off, they are gathering in a whole load of people; there’s forty so far. Most of them are Eliters, but we can’t work out what the connection is, other than quite a few of them are musicians.’
‘They know; they must. Why else would they take her?’
‘Because they’re desperate. The first group they took in were the ones you knew, or went to school with. Now they’re going for an even more tenuous association. This is people who might know people who knew you. Maybe. They won’t even know what questions to ask her. You don’t know forty people in Opole, do you?’
‘No.’ He shook his head miserably.
‘Then we’re probably in the clear. They’ll try and intimidate her for a day, and when that fails they’ll let her go. Because fail it will.’ He gripped Florian’s knee, and gave him a little shake. ‘It won’t be the first time they’ve tried to pin something on her, lad. She’ll be all right. This time.’
‘This time?’ Florian asked in a panic.
‘I told you, nobody’s ever seen a hunt like this before. They pulled in Billop last night.’
‘But . . . He doesn’t know Aunt Terannia. Does he?’
‘No, but he probably told them about Rasschaert. That might be the connection. The point is, they aren’t going to stop.’
‘What do I do, Matthieu? I don’t know what to do.’
Matthieu was gazing at Essie, his expression uneasy. ‘She must be over a metre tall now.’
‘I guess, yes.’
‘Florian, what is going on? Who is she?’
‘I don’t know. I swear to Mother Laura, I don’t know.’
‘What happened in Albina valley, Florian?’
‘Please, don’t ask.’
‘We want to help, Florian. We’re not going to
turn you over to the PSR.’
‘You can’t help. I just have to stay ahead of the PSR for a month – well, it’s only about three weeks now.’
‘You keep saying that. What happens at the end of that month?’
‘I’m not sure. I’m guessing that’s when she’ll be old enough to take care of herself.’
‘Florian. Lad, you do get how strange she is, don’t you? The way she’s growing: it’s just not natural. What is she?’
Florian gave Essie a guilty glance. ‘I don’t know. But she was given to me. I have to look after her, I promised I would. She’s going to help us all. Really, she is.’
‘She’s not from this world, is she?’ Matthieu asked gently.
Florian shook his head.
‘All right. Is she human, Florian?’
‘Yes! Just different.’
‘And the music. Where did the music come from, Florian? Don’t tell me you created that. There are notes played on those tunes that have come from instruments that I’ve never even heard before. They are instruments that don’t exist. Not here.’
Florian buried his head in his hands, furious with himself for being so stupid. Of course Matthieu would know the songs were different to anything Bienvenido had produced. ‘Don’t know,’ he grunted sullenly.
‘Are they here, Florian? Has the Commonwealth found us?’
‘No. It was one machine, that’s all. I think it was left behind by Nigel. The PSR took it away.’
Matthieu rocked back on his heels. ‘But it gave you the girl before they took it?’ he whispered.
‘Yes.’
‘Crud!’ He ran a hand over his forehead. His fingers were shaking badly. ‘Uracus, Florian, do you even realize what’s at stake here? This is too big for us. This is . . . This is going to change all of Bienvenido. You must know that.’
‘I’m frightened, Matthieu. What if they find me? What if they take her? She can save us. The machine said she can. She’s not done anything wrong.’