Resolution, p.33
Resolution,
p.33
TERRA & MU-SPACE
AD 2166
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[12]
‘Don’t you two ever fuckin’ scare me like that again.’
‘We’ll try—’
‘—not to.’
Kian looked at Deirdre. ‘After the way you kicked Solly’s nuts up into his throat, we wouldn’t dare.’
‘Yeah? Then just you remember that. Play with bombs again, and I’ll show you both an explosion you won’t... Ah, shit.’
‘We love you too, sweetheart.’
‘I’ve got something in my eye, that’s all.’
They were in the Pilots’ waiting lounge when Paula, who had introduced herself the previous day as an assistant controller, came to see them. She used a jargon filled with abbreviations and acronyms, but not the ones expected from a flight engineer.
‘BID’ - she pronounced it as a word: bid- ‘are talking to Solly. The bio-intel boys. We’ve already sussed out his rdv procedures and dead-letter drops. With a bit of luck, we’ll take out his whole cell before they know what’s happening.’
‘I thought,’ said Deirdre, ‘you were coming to apologize.’
‘No, I wouldn’t presume. I am sorry, but why should you accept that from me?’
‘Yeah, why would I? Don’t you have any fuckin’ vetting procedures in this place?’
‘It’s all right, Deirdre,’ said Dirk.
‘No it isn’t.’
Kian blew out a breath, and shrugged. ‘Perhaps not. But it will be all right.’
‘Maybe ...’ Paula hesitated. ‘Maybe you’d let me buy you all a beer. On me, not UNSA.’
‘Why would you want to do that?’
‘Well’ Paula was trying not to smile. ‘To celebrate the sweetest kick in the cojones I’ve ever seen, for one.’
‘I’m up for that,’ said Kian. ‘Provided you spill the beans a little. What kind of cell would this Solly belong to?’
‘The Zajinets have used humans before. Your mother would have told you that, surely.’
‘And who exactly’ - Dirk leaned forward, intent not just on her words but on heartbeat and skin tone - ‘did you say you work for, again?’
‘We’re all on the same side.’
Deirdre shook her head. ‘Hard to see evidence of that.’
‘Has anyone ever told you,’ said Paula, ‘you’re drop-dead gorgeous when you’re angry?’
‘I ...’ Deirdre stopped.
Dirk and Kian looked at each other.
‘I do believe—’
‘—she’s speechless.’
‘Screw you, boys.’
The twins did not attempt even subvocalized communication. If UN Intelligence was involved, their devices would be orders of magnitude more sensitive than any available to the space agency’s security branch. Or so they guessed.
Pride filled them at the thought of Mother’s swift, decisive counterattack on the alien ship. But they worried that she might have revealed her hand to those within UNSA who were already uneasy at the Pilots’ potential for unauthorized, independent action.
In mu-space, a drifting cargo-pod was broadcasting its distress signal. There was a general mayday and a more detailed log which any Pilot’s ship could read; but this pod came from Ro’s own vessel. She had left it here deliberately.
Abandoned it. With VIPs aboard, in coma.
‘Damn. I’ll bet it’s the senators who spend the next three days throwing up.’
As Ro’s ship slid through golden space, she browsed the pod’s transmissions. There were fifty-three passengers on board, most of them rich or politically prominent or both. And she had left them drifting here too long, while she had flown back to Terra to protect her sons.
I could’ve kept the passengers on board while I fought the Zajinet.
But Ro’s objective had been to save the twins, and if she had revealed her intelligence source - Zoë - then that was too bad. Her dumping the passengers, if it came to a tribunal, would be icing on the prosecution counsel’s cake.
Thin end of the wedge, though.
In many ways it was guilt that had made Zoë open to persuasion. Zoë’s intelligence team had used Ro as bait back in Moscow, and it resulted in Ro’s abduction. She had awoken on Beta Draconis III.
Fun times. Not.
‘Come on.’
Ro manoeuvred her vessel closer to the pod.
Any non-Pilot who woke up inside mu-space was liable to have their mind torn apart in a psychotic episode which would last until death. That was why passengers travelled inside delta-coma.
But Ro had left her passengers drifting here for so long that some had started to waken, fighting off the delta-band-induced sleep. The pod’s automatic systems had injected them with antipsychotic deep-narcosis drugs.
Which meant they would not come round naturally. Medics would have to revive her Very Important Passengers at their destination: Vachss Station, in orbit around the Haxigoji homeworld, Vijaya. And those passengers would be cursing her name for every vomit-filled hour it took their bodies to regain normal equilibrium.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Ro’s voice echoed, a snowstorm of fractal parasound inside the cabin. ‘So long as the matter compilers function OK, we’ll be all right.’
Bravado.
She was years from bringing her plans to fruition. For now, every Pilot was dependent on UNSA completely. Ro was the only true-born Pilot - meaning one who did not require viral rewiring and the eye-removal surgery - to have her own mu-space vessel.
‘Damn, damn, damn.’
Then the cabin’s rear door opened, and Claude Chalou entered. A blocky visor covered his metal eye sockets and enabled the ageing Pilot to interface with the ship’s systems. To see in mu-space. After years in Oxford, guided by sound and touch and his trained dog Sam, he was no longer a stumbling old man: he was in a sea of golden light once more.
It was not just outside the ship. Amber pervaded the control cabin. If you let your concentration go, you could drift into fractal vastness for ever.
‘The pod,’ he said, ‘is safely aboard, mon amiral.’
‘Merci, Claude. Vachss Station, here we come.’
It was 4 p.m. when Dirk, Kian, Deirdre and Paula walked to the flight officers’ mess, crossing the tarmac towards the black glass recreation dome. Around the base of the control tower was a small fleet of armoured TDVs, while overhead slow-moving flyers kept watch.
On foot outside every entrance, mirrorvisored guards held lineac rifles at the ready.
Inside the mess, the bar was open but quiet: it was an hour before the first officers would come off duty and look to relieve the tension by socializing and drinking. Paula marched up to the bar, and ordered four beers from the corporal in charge.
‘Here you are.’ She carried the round to the booth Deirdre and the twins had picked. ‘Bottoms up. Isn’t that what they say in Old Blighty, Dirk?’
‘Sure. Here’s mud in your eye.’
‘Kampai,’ said Deirdre.
Dirk raised his glass. ‘Sláinte.’
They downed the first beers in one.
‘I’ve a feeling,’ said Paula, ‘this will be a long evening.’
She was right.
But even at her merriest and most abandoned, Paula kept her back to the wall and the increasingly crowded bar in full sight, covering all vectors so she could never be surprised. It was a behaviour pattern the twins noticed and approved of.
Deirdre and Paula went their separate ways at the night’s end, but they both cast backward glances as they left.
‘Just the kind of person—’ Dirk murmured from his bed later on.
‘—Deirdre needs to keep her safe.’ In the other bed, Kian rolled over.
‘Right.’
Kian was the first to begin snoring, followed three seconds later by Dirk.
Next day they went shopping in Flagstaff.
Chief Controller Bratko granted the twins special leave for two, maybe three days - all reasonable expenses paid - while investigations proceeded and their ship was serviced and triple-checked. There was no sign of Paula.
An airtaxi coloured pale pink, emblazoned with a flamingo and the words Fiona’s Flying Cabs, came in to land.
‘You kids go play,’ Deirdre muttered as she boarded with the twins, ‘while the grown-ups take charge.’
Kian and Dirk remained silent. Perhaps the headaches were part of that.
Their faces whitened as the taxi’s nose pointed upwards and the engines kicked in.
The taxi banked right, taking them down.
‘You know that turning right,’ said Deirdre, ‘and having a legal right - say, to demonstrate - are obviously homonyms.’
There was a crowd below, despite the Arizona heat, outside the mall. They held placards, and might have been chanting: in the airtaxi it was impossible to tell.
‘So what’s the word in Français?’ she asked. ‘You two are linguists.’
‘What?’ Dirk pinched the bridge of his nose.
‘I beg your pardon, dear?’ said Kian.
‘What’s the Français for right?’
‘Droit.’
‘For which meaning of “right”?’
‘Um...’
‘Both, OK? Isn’t that weird? You’d expect two different words. See, there’s a very tangled history between Anglic and Français, complex linking, with different core vocabulary but centuries of parallel—’
‘Darling?’
‘Is that a polite way of saying shut up?’
‘Or ferme la—’
The taxi touched down, and the gull-door swung open. The crowd’s noise swelled inside the cab.
‘Shit,’ said Deirdre. ‘Boys, I’m not sure we ought to be here.’
The bobbing signs read Keep Arizona Human, along with Kill All Aliens, Let God Sort ‘Em Out.
‘We’ll just circle around them.’
‘Yeah, they’re not inside the mall, looks like.’
‘All right.’ Deirdre slid out. ‘Come on, what are you waiting for?’
But as they took the walkway towards the polished glass entrance, the parking lot with its noisy demonstrators to their right, Deirdre pointed to the left.
‘Interesting cloud forms. Look at them.’
‘Um...’
‘Right.’
There were faint wisps of white vapour in an otherwise limpid sky. It was true that the clouds were tugged into shapes one would not see elsewhere; but the only reason for looking in that direction was to avoid the demonstrators’ seeing the twins’ faces.
When they drew close to the mall entrance, and the chanting crowd -’Xenos out!’ - was some two hundred metres behind them, the twins stopped.
‘What,’ said Kian, ‘was all that about?’
‘You two have forgotten something. I should’ve noticed earlier.’
Dirk shook his head. ‘Deirdre, you’ve got to stop— Oh, bugger.’
‘Exactly right.’
The twins looked at each other, each seeing the other’s obsidian eyes, sparkling jet in the sunlight.
‘We forgot our contact lenses.’
‘But we’re not aliens.’
Deirdre gestured with her chin towards the noisy crowd. Two police flyers were coming in to land.
‘I’m not sure they’ve the brains to tell the difference.’
Sensibly inside the air-conditioned mall was a quiet counter-demonstration, formed of four glum-looking people at a picnic table. Two signs were propped against the wall: Teachers for Rationality and Xenos Are Our Friends.
Dirk looked back to the parking lot, where police officers were descending from the flyers. Only one did not wear a helmet; he had cropped grey hair and looked to be in charge. He kept his officers well back from the demonstrators. As a white cargo flyer descended, he made no attempt to stop the crowd from surging forward, thumping at the hull when the flyer had landed.
‘Look,’ said Kian.
Several doorways along inside the mall was Offworld Delights, a curio and educational store, with a steel barrier across its entrance.
‘They’re picketing a delivery,’ guessed Dirk. ‘That’s why they’re demonstrating here and not city hall.’
‘And the cops,’ said Kian, listening hard, ‘are standing by and doing nothing.’
‘Come on.’ Deirdre took his sleeve. ‘I’ll see if I can buy some old-fashioned sunglasses for the two of you. Très retro. Then we’ll go find some—’
But that was the moment when low comedy intervened in a way that neither Dirk nor Kian would ever laugh at. A huge woman came out of a doorway marked Ladies Restroom, tucking her shirt into too-tight pants, a placard saying Kill Zeno‘s tucked under her arm.
‘Ought to see those teachers,’ murmured Deirdre. ‘Get some hints on spelling.’
Then the woman raised one pudgy hand, pointed at the twins, jowls wobbling.
And screeched: ‘They’re here. The aliens are here!’
There was a thin-chested man with lank hair and a brown bag in his hand, standing near the entrance. He was the one who stumbled out into the open, and yelled to the crowd: ‘In here! Aliens!’
The teachers rose from their table, then stopped helplessly as the first of the angry mob reached the doors and burst inside.
‘Shit,’ said Deirdre. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’
They turned back into the mall.
Walk slowly, subvocalized Kian.
Got it, answered Dirk.
Had the place been more crowded, the tactic might have worked. But there was no crowd for them to blend into: this early on a weekday morning, the bright-lit space was mostly empty, soft muzak playing to a few older shoppers and lone parents with babies.
An old-fashioned glass bottle sailed over their heads. It burst into blue flame as it shattered on the floor.
‘Jesus Christ!’ said Deirdre. ‘An ethanol bomb.’
‘Run.’
But the crowd behind them was already metamorphosing into a mob. Up front, a second group was spilling into the main arcade from a different entrance, blocking their way.
‘Here.’
The twins ducked into the nearest store, dragging Deirdre with them.
‘Where the fuck,’ she muttered, ‘are those cops?’
Running along aisles that were a kaleidoscope of colour, ignoring the startled faces of shoppers, feeling the pursuers behind them, the twins and Deirdre ran to the store’s rear. Dirk’s eyes sparked as the doors clicked open and then they were through.
There was a store-room but as a hiding place it was a trap. They ran through, and Kian kicked open the fire-door. It banged back against the wall.
Then they were in the open, in the hot morning air. Angry voices shouted inside.
‘Round to the parking lot.’
Moving fast, Kian propelled Deirdre as Dirk tapped his infostrand, contacting Fiona’s Flying Cabs and hoping the airtaxi they had used was still free, ready to circle round and fetch them.
Cops still stood in the parking lot, but they had made no attempt to stop the insurgence of angry demonstrators. As the twins skidded round the corner with Deirdre, the police commander spun in place, startled.
‘Come on.’ One of the officers gestured to Deirdre. ‘Get away from them.’
From the demonstrators? Or from the twins?
Deirdre kept hold of Kian’s sleeve.
‘Protect us!’ she yelled.
Two of the officers started forward, but in that moment two things happened simultaneously: the commander held up his hand to stop his officers, and the first of the angry demonstrators came pelting around the corner. Stragglers in the parking lot, beer-bellied men who had not attempted to run into the mall, strode forward now with mob-courage and madness in their eyes.
‘Come on, xeno-lover.’ A big bald man grabbed Deirdre. ‘Better get you out of here.’
There was a kind of concern in his voice, and that just made it worse. Deirdre kicked out, connected with his shin, and his hands dropped away.
