Galactic North

  “They?”

  “Not just the Demarchist silencers: they were the least of your worries. Money and power could keep them at bay. What really worried you was us, the Denizens.”

  “If I made you, why would I fear you?”

  “You didn’t make us, Carl. I said you were part of the project, but you weren’t working to bring us to life. You were working to suppress us; to make us fail. Petty internal rivalry: you couldn’t allow another colleague’s work to succeed. So you did everything you could to hurt us, to make us imperfect. You brought suffering into our world. You brought pain and infirmity and death, and then left us alone in that ocean.”

  “Ridiculous.”

  “Really, Carl? I’ve seen how easily you turn to spite. Just ask that dead hamadryad.”

  “I had nothing to do with the Denizens.” But even as he says it, he can feel layers of false memory begin to peel back. What’s exposed has the raw candour of true experience. He remembers more of Europa than he has any right to: the bright plazas, the smells, the noises of Cadmus-Asterius. He remembers the reefer-sleep casket on the outbound ramliner, the casket that he thought was taking him to the safety of another system, another time. No wonder he’s slept easier since the Melding Plague. He must have imagined that the plague had severed the last of his ties with the past, making it impossible for anyone to catch up with him now.

  He’d been wrong about that.

  “You had to find a Denizen,” Goodglass says, “because then you’d know if any of them were still alive. Well, now you have your answer. How does it feel?”

  He always knew that the marks on her skull were evidence of surgery. But that surgery had nothing to do with the removal of implants, and everything to do with her transformation from a Denizen. It would have cost her nothing to hide those marks, and yet she made no secret of them. It was, he sees now, part of a game he hadn’t even realised he was playing.

  “Not the way I thought it would feel,” he says.

  Goodglass nods understandingly. “I’m going to punish you now, Carl. But I’m not going to kill you.”

  She’s playing with him, allowing him a glimmer of hope before crushing it for all eternity.

  “Why not?” he asks.

  “Because if you were dead, you wouldn’t make much of an exhibit. When we’re done here, I’m going to donate you to a suitable recipient.” Then she turns to the palanquin. “There’s something I should have told you. I lied about my husband. Edric was a good man: he cared for me, loved me, when he could have made his fortune from what I was. Unfortunately, he never got to see me like this. Edric died during the early months of the plague.”

  Grafenwalder says nothing. He’s out of words, out of questions.

  “You’re probably wondering who’s in the palanquin,” Goodglass says. “He’s going to come out now, for a little while. Not too long, because he can’t risk coming into contact with plague spores, not when so much of him is mechanical. But that won’t stop him doing his job. He’s always been a quick worker.”

  With a hiss of escaping pressure, the entire front of the palanquin lifts up on shining pistons. The first thing Grafenwalder sees, the last thing before he starts screaming, is a silver hand clutching a black Homburg hat.

  Then he sees the face.

  NIGHTINGALE

  I checked the address Tomas Martinez had given me, shielding the paper against the rain while I squinted at my scrawl. The number I’d written down didn’t correspond with any of the high-and-dry offices, but it was a dead ringer for one of the low-rent premises at street level. Here the walls of Threadfall Canyon had been cut and buttressed to the height of six or seven storeys, widening the available space at the bottom of the trench. Buildings covered most of the walls, piled on top of each other, supported by a haphazard arrangement of stilts and rickety, semipermanent bamboo scaffolding. Aerial walkways had been strung from one side of the street to the other, with stairs and ladders snaking their way through the dark fissures between the buildings. Now and then a wheeler sped through the water, sending a filthy brown wave in its wake. Very rarely, a sleek, claw-like volantor slid overhead. But volantors were off-world tech and not many people on Sky’s Edge could afford that kind of thing any more.

  It didn’t look right to me, but all the evidence said that this had to be the place.

  I stepped out of the water onto the wooden platform in front of the office and knocked on the glass-fronted door while rain curtained down through holes in the striped awning above me. I was pushing soaked hair out of my eyes when the door opened.

  I’d seen enough photographs of Martinez to know this wasn’t him. This was a big bull of a man, nearly as wide as the door. He stood there with his arms crossed in front of his chest, over which he wore only a sleeveless black vest that was zipped down to his midriff. His muscles were so tight it looked as if he was wearing some kind of body-hugging amplification suit. His head was very large and very bald, rooted to his body by a neck like a small mountain range. The skin around his right eye was paler than the rest of his face, in a neatly circular patch.

  He looked down at me as if I was something unpleasant the rain had washed in.

  “What?” he said, his voice like the distant rumble of artillery.

  “I’m here to see Martinez.”

  “Mister Martinez to you,” he said.

  “Whatever. But I’m still here to see him, and he should be expecting me. I’m—”

  “Dexia Scarrow,” called another voice—fractionally more welcoming, this one—and a smaller, older man bustled into view from behind the pillar of muscle blocking the door, snatching delicate pince-nez glasses from his nose. “Let her in, Norbert. She’s expected. Just a little late.”

  “I got held up around Armesto—my hired wheeler hit a pothole and tipped over. Couldn’t get the thing started again, so had to—”

  The smaller man waved aside my excuse. “You’re here now, which is all that matters. I’ll have Norbert dry your clothes, if you wish.”

  I peeled off my coat. “Maybe this.”

  “Norbert will attend to your galoshes as well. Would you care for something to drink? I have tea already prepared, but if you would rather something else . . .”

  “Tea will be fine, Mister Martinez,” I said.

  “Please, call me Tomas. It’s my sincere wish that we will work together as friends.”

  I stepped out of my galoshes and handed my dripping-wet coat to the big man. Martinez nodded once, the gesture precise and birdlike, and then beckoned me to follow him further into his rooms. He was slighter and older than I’d been expecting, although still recognisable as the man in the photographs. His hair was grey turning to white, thinning on his crown and shaved close to his scalp elsewhere on his head. He wore a grey waistcoat over a grey shirt, the ensemble lending him a drab, clerkish air.

  We navigated a twisting labyrinth formed by four layers of brown boxes, piled to head height. “Excuse the mess,” Martinez said, looking back at me over his shoulder. “I really should find a better solution to my filing problems, but there’s always something more pressing that needs doing instead.”

  “I’m surprised you have time to eat, let alone worry about filing problems.”

  “Well, things haven’t been quite as hectic lately, I must confess. If you’ve been following the news you’ll know that I’ve already caught most of my big fish. There’s some mopping up to do, but I’ve been nowhere near as busy as in . . .” Martinez stopped suddenly next to one of the piles of boxes, placed his glasses back on the bridge of his nose and scuffed dust from the paper label on the side of the box nearest his face. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Wrong place. Wrong damned place! Norbert!”

  Norbert trudged along behind us, my sodden coat still draped over one of his enormous, trunk-like arms. “Mister Martinez?”

  “This one is in the wrong place.” The smaller man turned around and indicated a spot between two other boxes, on the opposite side of th
e corridor. “It goes here. It needs to be properly filed. Kessler’s case is moving into court next month, and we don’t want any trouble with missing documentation. ”

  “Attend to it,” Norbert said, which sounded like an order but which I assumed was his way of saying he’d remember to move the box when he was done with my laundry.

  “Kessler?” I asked, when Norbert had left. “As in Till-man Kessler, the NC interrogator?”

  “One and the same, yes. Did you have experience with him?”

  “I wouldn’t be standing here if I did.”

  “True enough. But a small number of people were fortunate enough to survive their encounters with Kessler. Their testimonies will help bring him to justice.”

  “By which you mean crucifixion.”

  “I detect faint disapproval, Dexia,” Martinez said.

  “You’re right. It’s barbaric.”

  “It’s how we’ve always done things. The Haussmann way, if you like.”

  Sky Haussmann: the man who gave this world its name, and who sparked off the two-hundred-and-fifty-year war we’ve only just learned to stop fighting. When they cruci fied Sky they thought they were putting an early end to the violence. They couldn’t have been more wrong. Ever since, crucifixion has been the preferred method of execution.

  “Is Kessler the reason you asked me here, sir? Were you expecting me to add to the case file against him?”

  Martinez paused at a heavy wooden door. “Not Kessler, no. I’ve every expectation of seeing him nailed to Bridgetop by the end of the year. But it does concern the man for whom Kessler was an instrument.”

  I thought about that for a moment. “Kessler worked for Colonel Jax, didn’t he?”

  Martinez opened the door and ushered me through, into the windowless room beyond. By now we must have been back into the canyon wall. The air had the inert stillness of a crypt. “Yes, Kessler was Jax’s man,” Martinez said. “I’m glad you made the connection: it saves me explaining why Jax ought to be brought to justice.”

  “I agree completely. Half the population would agree with you. But I’m afraid you’re a bit late: Jax died years ago.”

  Two other people were already waiting in the room, sitting on settees either side of a low black table set with tea, coffee and pisco sours.

  “Jax didn’t die,” Martinez said. “He just disappeared, and now I know where he is. Have a seat, please.”

  He knew I was interested; knew I wouldn’t be able to walk out of that room until I’d heard the rest of the story about Colonel Brandon Jax. But there was more to it than that: there was something effortlessly commanding about his voice that made it very difficult not to obey him. During my time in the Southland Militia I’d learned that some people have that authority and some people don’t. It can’t be taught; can’t be learned; can’t be faked. You’re either born with it or you’re not.

  “Dexia Scarrow, allow me to introduce you to my other two guests,” Martinez said, when I’d taken my place at the table. “The gentleman opposite you is Salvatore Nicolosi, a veteran of one of the Northern Coalition’s freeze/thaw units. The woman on your right is Ingrid Sollis, a personal-security expert with a particular interest in counter-intrusion systems. Ingrid saw early combat experience with the Southland, but she soon left the military to pursue private interests.”

  I bit my tongue, then turned my attention away from the woman before I said something I might regret. The man— Nicolosi—looked more like an actor than a soldier. He didn’t have a scar on him. His beard was so neatly groomed, so sharp-edged, that it looked sprayed on through a stencil. Freeze/thaw operatives rubbed me up the wrong way, no matter which side they’d been on. They’d always seen themselves as superior to the common soldier, which is why they didn’t feel the need for the kind of excessive musculature Norbert carried around.

  “Allow me to introduce Dexia Scarrow,” Martinez continued, nodding at me. “Dexia was a distinguished soldier in the Southland Militia for fifteen years, until the armistice. Her service record is excellent. I believe she will be a valuable addition to the team.”

  “Maybe we should back up a step,” I said. “I haven’t agreed to be part of anyone’s team.”

  “We’re going after Jax,” Nicolosi said placidly. “Doesn’t that excite you?”

  “He was on your side,” I said. “What makes you so keen to see him crucified?”

  Nicolosi looked momentarily pained. “He was a war criminal, Dexia. I’m as anxious to see monsters like Jax brought to justice as I am to see the same fate visited on their scum-ridden Southland counterparts.”

  “Nicolosi’s right,” said Ingrid Sollis. “If we’re going to learn to live together on this planet, we have to put the law above all else, regardless of former allegiances.”

  “Easy coming from a deserter,” I said. “Allegiance clearly didn’t mean very much to you back then, so I’m not surprised it doesn’t mean much to you now.”

  Martinez, still standing at the head of the table, smiled tolerantly, as if he’d expected nothing less.

  “That’s an understandable misapprehension, Dexia, but Ingrid was no deserter. She was wounded in the line of duty: severely, I might add. After her recuperation, she was commended for bravery under fire and given the choice of an honourable discharge or a return to the front line. You cannot blame her for choosing the former, especially given all she had been through.”

  “Okay, my mistake,” I said. “It’s just that I never heard of many people making it out alive, before the war was over.”

  Sollis looked at me icily. “Some of us did.”

  “No one here has anything but an impeccable service record,” Martinez said. “I should know: I’ve been through your individual biographies with a fine-tooth comb. You’re just the people for the job.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, moving to stand up. “I’m just a retired soldier with a grudge against deserters. I wasn’t in some shit-hot freeze/thaw unit, and I didn’t do anything that resulted in any commendations for bravery. Sorry, folks, but I think—”

  “Remain seated.”

  I did what the man said.

  Martinez continued speaking, his voice as measured and patient as ever. “You participated in at least three high-risk extraction operations, Dexia: three dangerous forays behind enemy lines, to retrieve two deep-penetration Southland spies and one trump-card NC defector. Or do you deny this?”

  I shook my head, the reality of what he was proposing still not sinking in. “I can’t help you. I don’t know anything about Jax—”

  “You don’t need to. That’s my problem.”

  “How are you so sure he’s still alive, anyway?”

  “I’d like to know that, too,” Nicolosi said, stroking an elegant finger along the border of his beard.

  Martinez sat down on his own stool at the head of the table, so that he was higher than the three of us. He removed his glasses and fiddled with them in his lap. “It is necessary that you take a certain amount of what I am about to tell you on faith. I’ve been gathering intelligence on men like Jax for years, and in doing so I’ve come to rely on a web of contacts, many of whom have conveyed information to me at great personal risk. If I were to tell you the whole story, and if some of that story were to leak beyond this office, lives might well be endangered. And that is to say nothing of how my chances of bringing other fugitives to justice might be undermined.”

  “We understand,” Sollis said.

  I bridled at the way she presumed to speak for all of us. Perhaps she felt she owed Martinez for the way he’d just stood up for her.

  Again I bit my lip and said nothing.

  “For a long time, I’ve received titbits of intelligence concerning Colonel Jax: rumours that he did not, in fact, die at all, but is still at large.”

  “Where?” Sollis asked. “On Sky’s Edge?”

  “It would seem not. There were, of course, many rumours and false trails that suggested Jax had gone to ground somewhere o
n this planet. But one by one I discounted them all. Slowly the truth became apparent: Jax is still alive; still within this system.”

  I felt it was about time I made a positive contribution. “Wouldn’t a piece of dirt like Jax try to get out of the system at the first opportunity?”

  Martinez favoured my observation by pointing his glasses at me. “I had my fears that he might have, but as the evidence came in, a different truth presented itself.”

  He set about pouring himself some tea. The pisco sours were going unwanted. I doubted that any of us had the stomach for drink at that time of the day.

  “Where is he, then?” asked Nicolosi. “Plenty of criminal elements might have the means to shelter a man like Jax, but given the price on his head, the temptation to turn him in—”

  “He is not being sheltered,” Martinez said, sipping delicately at his tea before continuing, “He is alone, aboard a ship. The ship was believed lost, destroyed in the final stages of the war, when things escalated into space. But I have evidence that the ship is still essentially intact, with a functioning life-support system. There is every reason to believe that Jax is still being kept alive, aboard this vehicle, in this system.”

  “What’s he waiting for?” I asked.

  “For memories to grow dim,” Martinez answered. “Like many powerful men, Jax may have obtained longevity drugs—or at least undergone longevity treatment—during the latter stages of the war. Time is not a concern for him.”

  I leaned forward. “This ship—you think it’ll just be a matter of boarding it and taking him alive?”

  Martinez looked surprised at the directness of my question. He blinked once before answering.

  “In essence, yes.”

  “Won’t he put up a fight?”

  “I don’t think so. The Ultras that located the vessel for me reported that it appeared dormant, in power-conservation mode. Jax himself may be frozen, in reefer-sleep. The ship did not respond to the Ultras’ sensor sweeps, so there’s no reason to assume it will respond to our approach and docking.”

  “How close did the Ultras get?” Sollis asked.