She frowned. ‘Shields? What do you mean? Shields against what?’
‘Why, against further attacks, from space, from the ground.’ He eyed her. ‘Sometimes, dear sister-in-law, you seem so naive. That’s one reason the Qax built these facilities in the cities. To give the ragamuffins pause . . .’
Ragamuffins. That was a word she’d heard too often recently. It referred to those Earthbound who had always lived out of sight of the Qax and their Occupation, out of sight of their law and control. Earth was a big and complex planet and there was room for a few to hide – and, it seemed, to fight back. The Engineers had turned out to be just one faction of a wider resistance.
She hadn’t imagined she was still capable of being shocked. ‘People used as a shield. Why, that’s monstrous.’
‘There are limits even to Jasoft Parz’s powers of persuasion. And Parz may be compromised himself.’ He leaned closer. ‘I don’t think we’re being monitored in here . . . Did you know that Jasoft has a daughter?’
Again she was shocked. ‘A daughter? But – I’ve known him for a quarter of a century, since Pell and I started to work for the Corps. I never met a wife, a lover, let alone heard of a child.’
‘That’s because he doesn’t know himself. It’s one of the Qax’s more cunning ploys. They don’t breed as we do, you know; there seem to be only a few thousand of them, and they are effectively immortal. But they are capable of observing our mammalian breeding practices, and of manipulating them to get what they want of us – or at least of the most senior people, those whose betrayal they fear. Serve them and, if you have a child, they’ll take her from you, lodge her in some special school somewhere.’
‘A hostage.’
‘Exactly. And if like Jasoft you don’t have a child – and, though we never discussed this, I suspect he chose not to have children for this very reason – they make sure you have one anyway. It’s not difficult, after all. They have tame human geneticists, obstetricians—’
‘That’s monstrous.’
‘That’s the Qax. I’m told that Jasoft’s daughter is around twenty-five years old, and lives in North Amerik.’
She stared at him. ‘How do you know all this?’
‘I try to know everything. I figure it’s my best chance of surviving. I talk to everybody, even those on the wrong side of the Qax’s laws. Mostly, though, I just listen. You’d be surprised how much you can discover that way.’
‘And you haven’t told Jasoft?’
‘Would you? Maybe I will, some day. For now I don’t want to compromise him. He is too effective where he is.’
‘You’re a cold one.’
‘No. Just a survivor.’ The flitter began a slow, cautious descent towards the heavily armoured compound that surrounded the Took facility. ‘And I need you to be cold too, Mara, as we go through this day. Cold in the face of what you’re going to see.
‘Look down. This plant is typical of its kind. There is the torus, the heart of the exotic-matter facility itself. That rather ugly fenced-off area to the north is the workers’ compound. There are barrack blocks, refectories, stores, crude hospitals. A mortuary. You can see that the local supply canals have been hastily widened . . .
‘You must be prepared, Mara. You’ll be kept safe. But you asked about the use of criminals in such facilities. Mara, the Qax – or their human agents – use criminals as a police force, in the camps. You may imagine the quality of the resulting regime. You could argue we brought this on ourselves, with those foolish strikes from space. And there is another issue you must be prepared to deal with.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Juq. Your son, my nephew. In this region at least he has continued to serve as a public front for the project.’
‘I haven’t seen him for some days, but I do see his smiling face in news Virtuals.’
‘Smiling, yes. I think to the Qax and the Corps he serves as a symbol of authority over the workers. Look how your human superiors smile while you work yourselves to death in these hazardous places. You have no hope of help from them, or anybody else – no hope at all. That’s what Juq’s handsome smile has become: a symbol of the repression. You can imagine how the workers feel about that. He has to be heavily guarded.’
‘I can imagine. Though I don’t suppose Juq himself understands.’
‘He does not,’ Chael said heavily. ‘There was an incident last week, at the Wills plant. A clumsy worker, lining up for inspection, spilled a lubricant on the shoes of Juq’s friend, Tiel. Just an accident. Juq slapped her, and then laughed.’
‘He slapped her . . .’ Mara sighed. ‘That’s Juq. He was always that way with the servants. He never injured them, but—’
‘It is himself he has injured. You can imagine how the Virtual image of that act has permeated that facility, and others. He is becoming – hated. And, as you say, I’m quite sure he has no idea.’
Mara closed her eyes. ‘He’s not a fool, you know. He isn’t evil. Just flawed.’
‘Well, he’s your son. And he may need your protection . . . Almost down.’
The flitter descended to a crude concrete apron, hastily laid. Beyond security fences, before the backdrop of the giant torus, Mara glimpsed people, men, women and children dressed in identical green coveralls, gaunt and cowed. Most wouldn’t even meet her gaze.
She braced herself as she prepared to get out of the flitter.
6
As with every significant event in the human world – every event approved of by the Qax, at least – the Interface completion ceremony in Jovian orbit was saturated with coverage, with multiple sound feeds and images taken from every conceivable angle.
And so the assassination was covered in fine detail.
Mara, sitting in her home in Mellborn, forced herself to watch the sequence of events over and over, from as many angles as she could find. In the end, she discovered a feed from one observer who had been right on the shoulder of the anonymous Friend of Wigner, as she turned killer.
The ceremony, coming a mere month after the start-up of the new city-centre plants, had taken place aboard the lifedome of the Endurance itself. A small stage had been set up at the centre of the domed chamber, on which stood a number of senior officials from the project, both technical and from the Diplomatic Corps. But, to Mara’s eyes at least, the group was dominated by the unmistakable figure of her own son, Juq, tall, smiling as always, that blond hair blazing bright. His friend Tiel stood beside him, as he had since the beginning of this strange project, ever present, yet somehow as inconspicuous as a shadow.
Beyond the glimmering near-transparency of the dome over all their heads, Jupiter swam, an arc of that huge planet visible, a smear of golden brown. And, before the planet, rising into view like an angular dawn, the Interface portal – yet to be attached for the voyage – drifted towards the GUTship. Mara stared at the dazzling sky-blue of the portal’s exotic-matter icosahedral frame, letting her gaze linger on the cool edges, the geometrically perfect vertices that joined them. The faces were like semi-transparent panes of silvered glass, through which Mara could make out the watercolour clouds of Jupiter overlaid with a patina of silver-gold. And every few seconds a face would abruptly clear, just for a dazzling moment, and afford Mara a glimpse of another space, unfamiliar stars. Like a hole cut into the sky.
As the Interface passed over the dome, applause, apparently spontaneous, rippled. It was magnificent. It was beautiful. And humans had built this. Every time she gazed on this sequence of images it made Mara want to weep, and wonder if Chael had been right all along, if this monumental human achievement was worth whatever price would be exacted by the future.