“But if you were able to figure this out,” protested the news mech, “why hasn’t anyone else? The keepers at the System Lareum, for example?”
“Oh, I guarantee you that some of them know. There’s no way they don’t. But either they refuse to believe it, or they’re keeping quiet. If they say anything they’ll surely lose their jobs, and likely many of their friends and associates. And after all, it’s the words that matter, the fact that the Rejection was sent and accepted and the Assemblies established, and just by being on display in the System Lareum that copy has become important. It’s a real vestige now, even if it’s not the one everyone thinks it is. So why should it matter if it’s really a forgery?”
“Why should it matter?” The news mech’s voice was outraged. “Of course it matters! How can you even say that?”
“Look into it, District Voice,” said Garal. “Treat it like your most serious investigative story. Publish it, and then come ask me why the curators at the System Lareum might keep quiet and tell themselves it doesn’t really matter.”
“I won’t be able to ask you,” observed the District Voice. “You’ll be well away from all of it, off gallivanting with aliens. You don’t have anything to lose here.”
“Nothing that matters more than everyone knowing what Ethiat Budrakim did to me, no.” All this time Garal’s voice had been calm and even, but Ingray thought she heard, for the first time, an undercurrent of anger. “I don’t really care about anything else. But once you start looking at the evidence, once you really look at those Garseddai vestiges, there will be questions about other vestiges, and if you’re afraid to ask those, District Voice, you might as well just stop now.”
“And I’m back to wondering if you really did me a favor asking me along like this,” said the news mech ruefully.
The spider mech spoke up from the floor of the groundcar. “Mech from the District Voice news service, you are very stupid.”
“Be nice, Ambassador,” said Ingray. “Aren’t you a diplomat?”
“And the District Voice has a point,” said Garal. “I’ve put her in a difficult position, while I myself, as she’s just said, have nothing to lose. But I’m telling the truth.”
“Diplomat does not mean nice,” muttered the spider mech. “Diplomat means tell the aliens to leave us alone.”
“Let me give you some names,” said Garal to the news mech, as though the spider mech hadn’t spoken, “and some places to start looking, and you can do whatever you want with them.”
The car that ringed the massive, multistranded elevator cable was huge, with several decks, luxury cabins for those who could afford them, and shops and restaurants. And, of course, kiosks where one could buy a vestige of the trip.
Extra-Hwae Relations had lost the debate over what sort of quarters Garal—and not incidentally the Geck ambassador, traveling with em—was due. Surely an alien diplomat, who was getting her way largely because everyone was afraid to break the treaty she represented, ought to have as comfortable a trip as could be provided. Planetary Safety had pointed out that the ambassador was a mech, the comfort of which wasn’t much of an issue; Garal Ket, Geck citizen or not, was a convicted criminal; and besides, Extra-Hwae Relations wasn’t intending to actually pay for any of it. So they had a tiny private compartment with a single bunk the three humans sat on, with the spider mech crouching on the floor.
They were more than halfway up the elevator before Ingray could muster the courage to confess to Taucris that they had all lied to her, even Ingray, and the Geck did not in fact want custody of Garal Ket. The elevator had passed its midpoint several hours before, and gravity had begun to return—or, Ingray knew it wasn’t exactly gravity, just felt like it, but it was close enough. Enough for them all to sit on what had previously been the underside of the bunk, the spider mech sitting now on what had hours before been the ceiling but was now the floor.
Was there any point in delaying it? They could tell Taucris what was really happening at the last possible moment, when they got off the shuttle from Zenith Platform to Hwae Station. That would be wisest. That would be safest.
Ingray didn’t want to do that to Taucris, didn’t want to see Taucris’s face at that moment. But if she confessed now, what would Taucris do?
Ingray took a breath. Opened her mouth. “Taucris,” she began.
“Oh, shit,” said Taucris, sitting straighter. She stood quickly, or tried to, shoved too hard off the bunk in the slowly increasing gravity and hit the opposite wall. “Oh, shit,” she said again. “We’ve got a problem. I mean, not just us. But we do. Ingray, turn your messages back on. And look at a station news service.”
Ingray did, and her vision was flooded with urgent messages, and even more urgently worded news items. And once she saw what those were about, she couldn’t even bring herself to swear.
A week before Ingray, Garal, and Tic Uisine had come out of the Tyr gate, two freighters had come out of the Enthen gate and docked at Hwae Station. They had declared the sort of cargo large freighters carried—a miscellaneous assortment of things that for whatever reason couldn’t be produced at their destination: arrack, medical supplies, replacement parts for interstellar gates, even tea, not all of it from Radchaai space. They unloaded some but not nearly all of their cargo at Hwae, and while they waited for cargo they were scheduled to take on, their crews did the sort of things that freighter crews did on stations. None of it unusual, none of it alarming. None of it illegal, which in retrospect might have been suspicious in itself.
Enthen was one gate away from Hwae. It was also one gate away from Omkem. The freighters were not, in fact, carrying arrack or gate parts or Radchaai tea. Or not much of those things. They had actually been packed full with Omkem military mechs. And an hour ago those mechs had marched out of their freighters and blasted their way out of the docks.
“What is it?” asked Garal, who had not been reconnected to Hwae’s communications network when e had left Arsamol Planetary Safety.
“Very bad, is what,” whispered the spider mech. “I should have been watching the news from the station, but I wasn’t.”
Taucris was too involved in her own various sources of information to notice how differently the spider mech had just spoken, far more like Tic than like the Geck ambassador. “Shuttle service between Zenith Platform and the station is suspended,” she said. “Everyone on the station has been ordered to seek shelter.”
“What’s happened?” insisted Garal.
“It looks like the Omkem Federacy has happened,” said Ingray. “They’ve managed to get armed mechs onto the station and there’s fighting. I don’t think anyone knows what their goal is, or why they’re doing this.”
Garal frowned. “It can’t be about Excellency Zat. They couldn’t possibly have gotten here so quickly.”
“No,” said the spider mech, “it looks like the ships they came on have been here for a week or more. It can’t be about Zat. Or if it is, they knew about it before it happened. And now we have a problem.”
“Did they know?” asked Taucris, no doubt, like Ingray, having reached the point where all the chaotic, fragmented reports from the station had ceased to give her any useful or accurate information. “Was Excellency Zat’s murder all about giving the Federacy a pretext for invading?”
“It’s possible,” observed the spider mech, very obviously Tic Uisine now. “They probably told Hevom they’d get him out, but he’s a poor cousin; I imagine no one will try too terribly hard to rescue him just now.”
“Ambassador?” Taucris had finally noticed the change in the spider mech’s personality.
“No,” whispered the spider mech, curtly. “We don’t really have time for long introductions or explanations, so I’ll keep it short. I’m Captain Tic Uisine. I really did steal my ship, and a number of bio mechs along with it. Not coincidentally, they look very much like any Geck ship mechs. The ambassador really has been harassing Ingray in an attempt to find me. She has not, however, demanded custody
of Garal Ket. That was me. The Geck ambassador almost certainly knows I’ve done it, and has done nothing to stop me. She’s very possibly on this elevator somewhere and I imagine she’s waiting for more specific information on where I actually am.”
“I …” Taucris looked at Ingray.
“I’m sorry,” Ingray said. “But the Omkem were talking about trying Garal for murder, when it’s obvious e didn’t do it, and besides, the murder happened here on Hwae and we know Hevom did it! They obviously just wanted someone to pin it on, and they’d decided that was Garal. And even if e wasn’t turned over to them, e was probably going to end up back in Compassionate Removal. For something e didn’t even do!”
Taucris stared at her, and then looked at the spider mech, and then at Garal.
“The plan,” said Tic, “was to get to the station, and then for Garal—and Ingray if she wanted—to get into vacuum suits and go out on the station hull. I was going to have mechs pick em up and bring em to my ship. It’s a long trip in a vacuum suit, but worth it if I could get em away. Worst case, the Geck would intercept em. I don’t think they would hurt em.”
Still speechless, Taucris looked at Ingray.
“I’m sorry,” said Ingray again. “I couldn’t just leave Garal there.”
“This conversation was probably going to happen at some point anyway,” said the spider mech. “The problem right now is that my mechs are already on their way to the station. It’ll take a while for them to change course for the platform. I’m calculating that right now. It’ll be a near thing, but I’m fairly sure I can do it. The question is, who’s coming with me? Garal, of course, and I don’t think Ingray was planning to but for various reasons—the most urgent being the fact that her family is in the middle of what would seem to be the Omkem’s supposed motivation for sending armed mechs onto Hwae Station—for that and for other reasons, I suspect and hope she will change her mind. But you, Officer, we will be leaving in a difficult position. You were supposed to deliver Garal to the station, and ultimately to the Geck, under the assumption the Geck had demanded custody of em.”
Taucris stared at the spider mech for a long, tense moment. Then she said, “That situation still applies, doesn’t it? The treaty still says Garal is Geck if e declares emself Geck.”
“Well,” admitted the spider mech in its whistling whisper, “the Geck also have to accept em. Which they haven’t actually had a chance to do.”
“But they might,” Taucris said. “And you, Captain Uisine, is it? We can’t get Garal to the station or to the Geck, as things stand. But you could. You’ll take Mx Ket to the Geck, right?”
The spider mech hesitated. “No.”
Taucris frowned and folded her arms. “That wasn’t how you were supposed to answer.”
“I’m trying to be honest with you,” said the spider mech testily. “As I said, we’re potentially putting you in a very difficult position.” Taucris made a disgusted sound. “Look,” the spider mech insisted, “Ingray is going to be really unhappy if I get you in trouble, and you’re going to be really unhappy with Ingray if you find out we lied to you any more than we have already. What else am I supposed to do?”
“You’d take me to the Geck if I wanted to go, though, right?” asked Garal, eir voice mild.
“Of course,” replied the spider mech. “I just don’t see why you’d want to.”
“Last I heard,” suggested Ingray, “the Geck ambassador was still insisting Tic was Geck. And Taucris is supposed to deliver Garal to the Geck.”
“Well,” admitted Taucris, arms still folded, “I’m supposed to deliver em to Extra-Hwae Relations, so they can deliver em to the Geck. But I can’t do either one now.”
“Right,” agreed Ingray. And then her nausea flooded back. Not from microgravity this time. She swallowed, and breathed very carefully through her mouth.
Taucris unfolded her arms and sat down again in the space between Ingray and Garal. She sighed. “You’d probably better go with them, Ingray. The … Captain Uisine is right, it might be safer for you to be away for a while.”
The spider mech patted Taucris’s knee with one claw. “Don’t worry, Officer. We’ll get her back to you as soon as we can. Or, you know, you could come with us.”
“Not without losing my job,” Taucris said. “And I might anyway, as it is. Besides, people are going to be panicking up on the platform, and Safety might need my help. Have you finished calculating?”
“I have,” whispered the spider mech. “And I have a plan.”
14
By the time the elevator had nearly reached Zenith Platform, the news of events on the station had been out for hours and elevator staff had informed passengers that while the elevator would finish its trip—it had to—no passengers would be allowed onto the platform, let alone onto a shuttle bound for the station.
“That ought to work to our advantage,” Taucris said. “We have Extra-Hwae Relations and Planetary Safety behind us, we should be able to convince them to let us through, and we won’t have lots of people around us so you three will have an easier time getting right out on the platform hull without anyone noticing what you’re up to.”
But by the time they left their small cabin, a good hour before docking at Zenith, announcements had changed from No passengers will be allowed to exit the elevator at this time to Please keep the corridors clear and do not approach the exits, not just over communications but by loudspeaker. Repeated, over and over every few minutes. Usually at this point in the trip people were packing things up, looking for lost items, rounding up traveling companions, or forming an almost last-minute line at the vestige kiosks and the sanitary facilities. But despite announced orders, all of the many people they saw in the wide, shop-lined main corridor were headed single-mindedly for the lifts and even the stairs to the exit level, bags in hand.
And having reached the bare, brown-tiled exit level, they couldn’t reach the first exit they headed for. Frustrated, complaining passengers and their luggage filled the corridor. “Why are they here so early?” asked Taucris, her voice exasperated. “Why do they want to go onto the platform?”
“Why do we?” asked Garal.
“It’s hardly the same,” said Ingray, but there they were, and as she watched, one woman turned to a neman beside her and complained that it was ridiculous, she had important business to attend to on the station.
“I have family there,” agreed the neman. “And I’m supposed to just turn around and leave them?” E turned and caught sight of Taucris’s green Planetary Safety uniform. Opened eir mouth to complain but some disturbance in the crowd pushed the person ahead of em back. E stepped hastily out of the way and tripped over the bulky bag at eir feet.
Taucris and Ingray caught eir arms before e could fall headlong, but Taucris had to shout at the people ahead who had backed into the neman, to get them to clear room to put the neman safely on eir feet again. “This isn’t good,” said Taucris, with a perfunctory gesture at the neman’s flustered thanks. More people had come up behind and were pushing to find a path through the crowd.
“Change of plan,” said Tic, and the people nearest the spider mech flinched and stepped back, having apparently just realized that it wasn’t just a strangely shaped package, starting a new wave of collisions and potentially dangerous falls behind them. And more people were arriving, filling the corridor behind, groaning in dismay to see the crowd already there.
“I have to stay here,” said Taucris, and then, pointing at the newest arrivals and raising her voice, “You! Clear the exit corridor! This is an official warning!” Though she was, technically speaking, out of her jurisdiction.
“What about them?” cried a man, gesturing to the crowd ahead.
“They can’t go anywhere with you in the way!” Taucris replied, loud and authoritative. “You have been officially warned! Ten more seconds and I start giving out fines!” A few people turned to go. Taucris said, more quietly, “I have to stay here. This could get bad, a crowd like thi
s, even if everyone means well. I need to stay here until Elevator Safety can get here, and I need to help them.”
“Yes,” agreed Garal.
Ingray, seeing the few who had turned to go, and so many still there and clearly dubious of Taucris’s authority, said, “You can’t stay all by yourself.”
“Go,” said Taucris. “I’ll be fine. I’ve already called Elevator Safety, and they’re sending someone but it will be a few minutes.” She leaned forward and kissed Ingray on the mouth, firmly. “I’ll see you when you get back.”
Garal took Ingray’s arm. “The officer said to clear the corridor,” e said in a carrying voice, pulling Ingray along as e followed the spider mech scurrying away. “Let’s do as she says.” And then, more quietly, “Don’t look back, you’ll trip. And anyway she’s fine.”
“You’re right,” Ingray agreed, sounding more confident than she felt. But she did look back, for just an instant, and saw Taucris frowning, speaking sternly to the people who were standing there. “She’ll be fine.”
It was easy to get a lift to the top level—everyone else was going down, and only a few people had taken Taucris’s orders seriously enough to move to another level. “This might actually be better,” Tic said when the doors closed and they were alone for a few moments. “I’ll pick you up from the elevator; it’ll be docked with the platform soon enough and I’m already headed there. And in all this, no one will be paying attention to us. There’ll be airlocks up top that will let us get out on the hull, it’s just a matter of walking the circuit until we find one. I don’t imagine there’ll be anyone there to see us; everyone’s trying to get to the exits.”
The top level was the upside-down mirror image of the bottom. It had been the entrance down on Hwae, and there were no shops or restaurants or cabins along the brown-tiled curving corridor, just bare brown walls punctuated by doors marked EMERGENCY EXIT or ALARM WILL SOUND or AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Ingray had always assumed that it was empty once an ascent began.