The Sentients of Orion Page 16

  And then?

  Fresh sweat broke out over her body. Calm, Mira told herself. Calm.

  * * *

  Maybe she dozed, or maybe her thoughts were tangled like dreams, nightmares of Djeserit and the korm being torn apart by a pack of animals. Gradually, though, the light of dawn came.

  The cane had been whistled inside a while before. Whoever had been arguing outside the bistro had finished their business and gone.

  Mira moved her limbs, rubbing circulation back into them. Should she wait? Should she move on? Where should she go? Thinking had become harder. Pangs of hunger and thirst sent her mind into a spiral of misery. She sipped her water bladder and drank one of the lattes but it curdled in her tense gut. By first light she was on her knees, vomiting.

  Inside, the cane bayed as if it sensed her distress.

  She rested back against the wall.

  Then a hand touched her shoulder. ‘Baronessa?’

  She clutched Djeserit with overwhelming relief. ‘Where were you?’

  Djeserit pointed to the casa behind the wall. ‘The ‘esques who live there heard the ‘bino cry. They came outside to see who it was—said we could come in. Then the shooting started. Don Pellegrini said I should stay inside. He said you would be all right until daytime.’

  Mira gave her a weak nod. ‘What about the ‘bino?’

  ‘He is sleeping. The woman gives him food.’

  ‘I wish to see him.’ Mira got to her feet, swaying.

  She followed Djeserit along a narrow path that ran between two casas. The korm waited there. It chittered at her and dipped its crest for a scratch. Mira’s hand trembled; she had never exchanged affection with an alien before.

  They walked together along the narrow back viuzza until Djeserit stopped. An ‘esque stepped from behind the rear gateposts. He was short and wiry, his crimson skin creased like folds in iron rock. The rifle he held was the projectile kind that miners favoured.

  ‘This her?’

  ‘Baronessa Fedor,’ Mira said, tiredly. ‘I went to look for food for the ‘bino and we became separated.’

  ‘Fedor?’ He stared suspiciously at her. ‘From the Pilot familia?’

  ‘Si.’ She waited. If the man refused to let her in, she might never see Istelle’s ‘bino again.

  He chewed his lip for a minute, then waved the rifle towards the back door. ‘Git inside. Sun’s spoilin’ to be fierce today.’

  Relief again. Mira stumbled after Djeserit and the korm.

  Djeserit stopped and waited for her, held her arm. ‘Baronessa?’

  Mira nodded reassurance. ‘I-I am well. What about you?’

  Djeserit looked away without answering.

  The cane strained towards them from a tether on the portico. Its nostrils streamed with saliva that ran down its horns. The spit sprayed over her as it bayed its hostility.

  Mira shrank away from it. Nothing could convince her that the animals made good pets. They were too clever and too savage.

  The korm’s crest bristled and it fluffed its fur in agitation.

  Mira shuddered to think what might happen between them if the cane was freed.

  Trin Pellegrini met them at the coldlock. Accusations rose to Mira’s lips—he’d left her again—but this was not the time to speak them. As he stepped aside to let her in she saw no remorse in his face.

  The casa was dark inside with the windows covered and barred. Mira loosed her clothing, soaking in the coolness as she followed the ‘esque through the cucina to a sitting room where a woman rocked the ‘bino. A little ragazza with cropped hair perched on the arm of her chair.

  The woman glanced up and gave a tired smile. Her likeness to Istelle gave Mira a pang of sadness. She wanted to weep at the kindness of the woman’s look. Instead she slipped her hand inside her fellala and removed the latte packets. ‘For the ‘bino,’ she said.

  ‘Sit down,’ said the woman. She had her finger in the ‘bino’s mouth. He suckled it for comfort. ‘Baronessa, you must be exhausted. I am called Loris. This is Jessa and you’ve met my husband Con.’

  ‘Call me Mira.’ ‘Baronessa’ suddenly seemed vague, unrelated to who she was.

  ‘I’ve been nursing the ‘bino best I can, but he’s no great suckler. I have only a little left, from Jessa.’ Loris removed her finger from the ‘bino’s mouth and patted her breast.

  Mira glanced away. Such things were not spoken of so plainly among her class.

  Trin entered the room. Con followed but stayed near the door, his rifle cradled in his arms.

  Mira sank into the chair opposite, suppressing her impulse to take the ‘bino from Loris’s arms. Instead she turned her attention to the little ragazza. ‘Ciao, Jessa.’

  The ragazza scowled and moved closer to her father.

  ‘Don’t mind her,’ said Loris. ‘These last few days have taught her not to trust anyone much except her own.’

  ‘Nothin’ wrong with that,’ said Con, He held on to his rifle with one hand and pulled the ragazza close to his side with the other. He did not trust anyone either.

  Mira wanted him to tell him to put his weapon away, that it was dangerous, and that they would be no threat, but she knew it would be breath wasted. Her word meant nothing to this man—not now. She lifted her gaze to Trin. ‘Have you learned anything?’

  Trinder shrugged. He looked refreshed as if he’d had a comfortable sleep, Mira thought bitterly.

  ‘The shortcast is still out. No one knows why. Water is still running but food is disappearing,’ he answered. ‘Most familia have left the city for Pell or the other towns.’ He grasped the back of the chair that she was sitting on. ‘If they had just stayed, help would have come.’

  Mira thought his words through. No food was produced near Loisa—land barges brought it in weekly from the biospheres in the Pell Basin. Only pane was made locally. ‘If the Carabinere have really deserted, then aid may not come. How long can we survive here with no food? It makes sense that they would leave,’ she said.

  Trin made an impatient noise, irritated that she had challenged him in front of the ‘esques.

  Mira no longer cared what he thought. In a few days the whole of the city would be on the road to somewhere else. The thought of it made her tremble. She turned back to Loris. ‘Thank you for taking us in.’

  Con spoke for his wife. ‘Heard you out there so I used my night ‘scope. Recognised that you was familia.’

  ‘How close are we to the Carabinere office?’ Trin asked.

  ‘Bout a few hours’ walk,’ said Con.

  ‘I must rest before I can go further.’ Mira ached to lie down; her tongue felt swollen in her mouth.

  Outside the sound of weapon-fire started up again.

  Trinder glanced at Con. ‘May we stay with you today, signor?’

  ‘Si, Don Pellegrini. Of course.’ The miner’s chest swelled with pride. He was seemingly pleased to be helping someone so important. ‘Come and rest in my room.’

  The men left the room together.

  Trin was adept at getting what he wanted. Mira felt simultaneously irritated and gratified: anything to sleep for a few hours.

  ‘Jessa has a bed you can lie on,’ said Loris. ‘I’ll watch the ‘bino. It’s at the end of the hall, on the right.’

  Mira nodded her thanks.

  ‘What is his name?’ Loris asked.

  Mira had not even thought to name the child. Doing that would make him closer, more hers. She was not sure she wanted that but the other woman was waiting expectantly for an answer.

  ‘Vito,’ she said at last, choosing her father’s name.

  Loris seemed satisfied with that.

  Mira dragged herself down the short corridor of the casa. In her exhaustion she opened the wrong door. Behind it was a storage cupboard—only it was filled with food: dried, canned and powdered, shelves of it, too much for a small familia’s pantry.

  Too fatigued to fathom the reason, she shut the door quietly and stumbled to the next room.
/>   * * *

  Mira awoke to a ‘bino’s cry. Outside it was getting dark, which meant that she had slept long. Faja, mia sorella. Gone. She sat up shivering, tears rolling down her face. In the quiet of little Jessa’s room, she surrendered to them.

  Loris appeared at the door unannounced, cradling Vito in her arms.

  Embarrassed, Mira wiped her face with quick finger movements.

  But Loris made no comment as she passed Vito over to her. He was clothed in a tiny envirosuit of the type that ‘esques favoured and which showed the tell-tale bulge of a fresh dryfilm. His solemn expression tugged at her heart. He gave a tiny cry of recognition and she slipped a finger in his mouth for comfort, the way Loris had done.

  ‘They are waiting for you to wake.’ The woman closed the door and sat stiffly near Mira on the bed. Her jaw was swollen with a fresh bruise. ‘I have left some things for you in the thorngrass outside the gatepost. Your ‘bino’s underliner is clean and there is some food, and more dryfilm. The proper kind,’ she whispered.

  Mira was confused by the nervousness with which Loris had spoken of her kind gesture. She laid her hand on the woman’s arm. ‘What is wrong, Loris?’

  The woman bit her bottom lip. ‘My husband knows more than he’s saying. He wants you to think that we’ve helped you but he hates the Pellegrinis. I’m not much for them myself. They’ve done nothing for us but this little one deserves no harm. There’s a pistol as well. Can you use one?’

  Mira shook her head, dumbfounded. ‘At the Studium they instructed the men only.’

  ‘Not much charge left in it. Enough for maybe a few shots: it’s all I can do.’ Loris stood up, trembling, and cracked open the window shutter.

  ‘‘What does your husband know?’ Mira whispered.

  ‘A man came here, wanted to pay us to keep these... things for him. Never seen the like of them before. Big, rough and ugly, round like an agate, but sticky.’

  A suspicion began to grow in Mira’s mind. ‘What colour?’

  The woman stared at her.

  Mira gripped her arm. ‘What colour where they?’

  ‘They was—’

  The door opened. Con stood there, his rifle hitched under his arm, mistrust clear in his stance.

  Loris’s hands trembled but her face remained bland. Practised.

  ‘You ready?’ he asked Mira curtly.

  Mira clasped Vito and stood up. ‘Yes. And thank you, signor—few are prepared to take in strangers at this moment,’ she said in formal tones.

  Con’s shoulders relaxed but not his tone. ‘Don’t you let Pellegrini forget it!’ He spat the name out like poison and waved the barrel of the rifle at her. ‘Let’s go.’

  * * *

  Con ushered them out to the gate in the wall.

  Mira passed Vito to Djeserit as they passed through the coldlock. When they reached the clump of thorn- grass, Mira dropped back behind the korm’s bulk.

  ‘Still, korm,’ she breathed while Trin and Con made empty gestures of farewell.

  It looked over its shoulder at her with curiosity.

  She put her fingers to her lips and knelt down, feeling among the thorns. Spines pricked her through her gloves as she lifted a pack free and its weight tripped her forward. The korm caught her with one strong arm.

  Con spun around. ‘What is it?’

  Mira hung the pack on the korm’s armlet and stepped in front. She concealed her bloodstained glove. ‘I tripped,’ she said. Nothing more. Too much explanation would make it worse.

  Con squinted in the fading light to see her. With little Jessa clinging to his legs, he pushed the gate open. He watched Mira with hard eyes as she went to pass by him. Suddenly he reached out to tug her arm. With quick movements he searched her, ignoring the others. Before she could utter any protest, he pushed her out of the gate.

  Trin had already walked on but the korm was waiting for her with the pack hidden from Con’s view. It whistled softly.

  ‘Grazi,’ Mira answered.

  They moved on a way before Mira dared look back to the casa. Loris would be there, watching, she was sure.

  She raised her hand in farewell.

  TEKTON

  Tekton had not experienced such a sense of jubilation since the Chancellor’s daughter, Doris Mulek, had agreed to conjoin bodies—and that, of course, had not been because of love or some such blighted theory but because of the sheer pleasure of having set out to climb a rung on the ladder to exponential success and succeeding.

  An abundance of shaped metal alloy on a virtually unknown rock on the edge of the Orion system—what a delectable coup!

  Well, that was what his free-mind thought, anyway. And for some reason or other it seemed to get louder and more bombastic by the day. His logic-mind was also quite intrigued but busied itself planning ways to investigate this far-off planet without alerting the rest of the nosy snitches on Belle-Monde. It concocted an elaborate ruse of dejection and failure (Tekton’s) and pondered ways to obtain a feed from the Scolar hub. It considered and discarded several options: seduce an astronomein to gain use of their coded farcast; bribe an astronomein; hold an astronomein hostage, etc, etc... none of which rated greater than a thirty-six per cent chance of success.

  The seduction of course got his free-mind’s attention and his logic-mind shuddering (all those flooding neurochemicals positively drowned out any sensible cognitive process).

  It had been some time since Tekton had lain with Doris and the titillation of Dieter Miranda’s thighs had been a teasing spray of water to his parched libido. When oh when, bleated his free-mind, will I get some agreeable intercourse?

  When you’ve done the work you should, you tosser.

  Tekton’s free-mind subsided in a bit of a stink after that and his logic-mind gleefully took over planning. It began with a general, innocuous enough data rummage around Orion’s inhabited planets.

  While pretending to be comet hunting, Tekton scooped off a holo-atlas of the micro section of space that Jo-Jo Rasterovich had identified. It contained over fifty stars and three times as many planets. More detailed mapping could be, the overview said, accessed from the Scolar hub archives.

  So who do I have to murder to earn a research trip to Scolar? Tekton asked his moud.

  Murder? it replied, confused. I’m not sure that would be apposite.

  For Sole’s sake, order some wit to be instated at your next service, Tekton grumbled.

  The moud flashed an extensive menu up onto his workfilm. Certainly, Godhead. Please choose from the list.

  Tekton gave an irritable sigh. There was no Lostolian humour option so he checked some random squares. ‘Now locate me an application for research leave.’

  * * *

  Approval for the trip took a toe-tapping, ménage-bar- quaffing month to come through. Not to mention the expense of several farcasts to Doris Mulek to ensure that his application received priority when it pinged across the chancellor’s film. Unfortunately, Doris then decreed that she needed a holiday and would meet him there, at Scolar.

  Tekton had only visited the famous centre for Orion’s philosophers on one occasion and had found them audibly hostile to graduates from other Studiums—though, of course, based on the OLOSS advancement charter, archival information was free. The Vreal Studium had an equally extensive repository but Tekton found the transhumanists there so dreary that there seemed no option but to put up with the snubs and visit Scolar. He agreed to rendezvous with Doris on condition that she absorbed the expense of their suite. ‘The Sternberg,’ he told her. ‘Nothing less.’

  With arrangements well in hand, Tekton took a lotion bath and then made his daily pilgrimage to the ménage bar. Dieter Miranda was well in her cups, bosoms quivering in hyperbeat with her chins as she claimed him for conversation. ‘What are you up to, Tekton?’

  ‘Indeed, I might ask you the same, Miranda. You seem unusually jovial.’

  ‘Cut the dishembling. I’m pished and misherable,’ she slurred.

&nb
sp; Tekton’s logic-mind charged into making lists of possible information that it might be able to prise from her. His free-mind was still sulking, though Tekton got a whiff of its disdain at Miranda’s mien. ‘Problems with Jise?’ he asked politely.

  ‘That heterotroph!’ she cried, with a majestic heave of flesh. ‘He’s taken his wife to a Teranu beach reshort. Said he needed shome time away. His wife, no lesh.’

  Two fat tears appeared at the edge of Miranda’s tear ducts. Tekton followed their journey as they parted from the neurotic glint in her black eyes to travel across the cosmetically concealed dermatitis around her nostrils and into the rivulets of pucker lines above her top lip.

  ‘Miranda,’ he said, surprised enough to be honest. ‘This is not like you to be so self-pitying. Let’s talk about work. How is your project going?’

  She opened her mouth and then closed it again and gave a gluggy laugh. ‘Clever Tekton, knowsh how to take advantage of a girl. I’ve alwaysh admired that about you.’

  Tekton experienced a fleeting moment of embarrassment. Was he so utterly transparent?

  Miranda gave him a playful slap on the rump. ‘Now tell me about you, you tight-shkinned devil.’

  Tekton squashed his indignation at being treated like priced meat and wondered how best to distract her. Coffee and stimulants, please, bar. ‘I... er... am also planning a break. A small research trip to Scolar.’

  ‘Scolar,’ she shrieked, losing all traces of inebriation. ‘I insist that you take me with you!’

  ‘I... er...’ For the first time in Tekton’s conscious memory, words deserted him.

  ‘When are you going?’

  ‘I am awaiting travel approval,’ he hedged. ‘Of course, I may not—’

  ‘Bollocks,’ Miranda roared. ‘Of course you’ll get approval. Now, what’s the weather like there at this time of year?’ Her expression glazed as she accessed her moud.

  Meanwhile Tekton floundered around for some way to divert her from her intent. But Miranda was not the type of woman to be put off.