Dark Space (Sentients of Orion) Page 16

  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 o
n 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.

  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.

  ‘Summer. How fabulous. I shall pack my bikini,’ she trilled.

  ‘But Miranda,’ said Tekton in desperation. ‘I am meeting my... paramour. She is unlikely to approve of—’

  ‘Nonsense, Tekton! Don’t be such a prude. We could have a scholarly ménage. Ho, ho! That will get Jise snapping his jaws. He rather envies you, you know. Something about being unfettered by the constraints of evidence. Besides, I am sure I can find some research to attend to there.’

  Snap! bawled Tekton’s logic-mind. The woman is playing you again. What does she want to access directly from the archives?

  But Tekton was having a hard time concentrating. His free-mind had surfaced and was painting lurid images of Miranda and Doris locked in a vigorous bout of bikini-clad amour.

  MIRA

  No one on the viuzzas stopped to speak, though some shouted words of warning about packs of cane. Mira strapped Vito into a sling around the korm’s neck. The alien’s night vision was keener than hers and she was exhausted already. She could have asked Trin but she didn’t trust him.

  They walked, aided by Tiesha’s light, until Mira begged for a rest. Semantic would rise earlier tonight and for those few minutes when both moons were present in the sky it would seem like daylight.

  ‘Here.’ Trin herded them behind the wreckage of an overturned TerV. Its axle had broken and the canopy had ripped open.

  Mira took Vito from the korm and sank to the ground. She searched Loris’s pack for latte and slipped a proper cleated teat into his mouth.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ Trin demanded.

  ‘From the ‘esque, Loris. She believes that her husband is somehow involved in this.’

  ‘Why did you not tell me before?’

  ‘You might have acted... rashly,’ Mira said.

  ‘I would have found out more.’

  ‘How so, Don? Beat it out of him. And his cane?’

  Trin took some food from her without answering.

  They ate in silence. Mira gave the korm some piol nuts and offered the water bladder to Djeserit. The ragazza had not complained but her epidermis looked pinched and dry in the moonlight. Her tightly pored skin was less efficient at cooling than that of the others.

  She nodded gratefully and took the water.

  Mira stared into the night. She recognised the Duca’s chamber from the bank of solar arrays along its flat top. The Carabinere office must be close. ‘How far now?’

  ‘Another hour. Perhaps less.’

&
nbsp; She pinched oily cheese from a wedge and sucked it slowly. A pungent sweetness permeated her breather. It was not the cheese, she thought, for the scent had lingered on the edge of her consciousness since leaving Loris’s casa. Now, suddenly, it had intensified and she sensed its danger. Perhaps she should share her fear with Trinder?

  What fear? What would she say to him? That she had hidden in a biozoon carrying ginko artefacts? That she had bargained for her freedom with a smuggler?

  ‘That smell? What is it?’ Trin asked.

  ‘Trinder, I—’ Mira began with a rush. But the korm screeched, silencing her.

  Something moved behind them under the TerV’s damaged canopy. Trin shone his light onto it. A large, rough-surfaced globe lay nestled between two damaged crates, fluid dripping onto it from a ruptured water tank. The water formed no puddle around it—the moisture was evaporating in moments.

  Figures came from the shadows to stare at the object, attracted by the korm’s screech.

  Mira wanted to speak to them, ask them what they knew. But the globe began to judder and distort. Its movement jolted Mira’s memory into a shocked realisation. ‘Crux,’ she whispered. ‘No!’

  ‘Che, Mira? Che?’ Trin said, urgently.

  ‘I know. I remember,’ she cried. ‘Cryptobiosis. I only touched on it at the Studium. Even before when I saw the globe in—’

  ‘Before? Cryptobiosis? What in Crux’s name...’

  ‘It’s a dormant state in which living things hibernate.’

  ‘What is hibernating, Baronessa?’ Fear lent Trin’s voice an imperious edge.

  ‘Saqr.’ As she spoke the name, the globe warped and split. A feeler of dark tubular flesh crowned by a bulbous maw uncurled. The maw trembled as if tasting the air and another rush of sickly-sweetness flowed from it. The globe split even wider, and a glistening, carapaced creature, as large as the korm, with six foreclaws and two hind claws unfolded from within it. Though it had no discernible head, mouth lobes protruded from the tube at one end of its body. Tiny eye-spots glittered in the light, in a semicircle behind the lobes.