“Lione disappeared. I don’t speak any KiAn language, I didn’t have to, the reports were in English: when I hunted for more detail there are translator bots. I haven’t missed anything. A vaporised body doesn’t vanish. All that tissue, blood, and bone leaves forensic traces. None. No samples recovered. She was there to collect samples, don’t tell me it was forbidden … She didn’t come back, that’s all. Something happened to her, something other than a warzone accident—”
“Are you saying your sister was murdered, Patrice?”
“I need to go down there.”
“I can see you’d feel thap way. You realise KiAn is uninhabitable?”
“A lot of places on Mars are called ‘uninhabitable.’ My work takes me to the worst-off regions. I can handle myself.”
“Aap. How do you feel about the KiAn issue, Messer Ferringhi?”
Patrice opened his mouth, and shut it. He didn’t have a prepared answer for that one. “I don’t know enough.”
The Shet and the Ki looked at each other, for the first time. He felt they’d been through the motions, and they were agreeing to quit.
“As you know,” rumbled Bhvaaan, “the Ruling An must give permission. The An-he will see you?”
“I have an appointment.”
“Then thap’s all for now. Enjoy your transit hangover in peace.”
Patrice Ferringhi took a moment, looking puzzled, before he realised he could go. He stood, hesitated, gave an odd little bow and left the room.
The Shet and the Ki relaxed somewhat.
“Collapsed at work,” said Roaaat Bhvaaan. “Thap’s not good.”
“We can’t all be made of stone, Shet.”
“Aaah well. Cross fingers, Chief.”
They were resigned to strange English figures of speech. The language of Speranza, of diplomacy, was also the language of interplanetary policing. You became fluent, or you relied on unreliable transaid: and you screwed up.
“And all my toes,” said the Ki.
On his way to his cabin, Patrice found an ob-bay. He stared into a hollow sphere, permeated by the star-pricked darkness of KiAn system space: the limb of the planet obscured, the mainstar and the blue “daystar” out of sight. Knurled objects flew around, suddenly making endless field-beams visible. One lump rushed straight at him, growing huge: seemed to miss the ob-bay by centimetres, with a roar like monstrous thunder. The big impacts could be close enough to make this Refuge shake. He’d felt that, already. Like the Gods throwing giant furniture about—
He could not get over the fact that nothing was real. Everything had been translated here by the Buonarotti Torus, as pure data. This habitat, this shipboard jumper he wore, this body. All made over again, out of local elements, as if in a 3D scanner … The scarred Ki woman fascinated him, he hardly knew why. The portent he felt in their meeting (had he really met her?) was what they call a “transit hangover.” He must sleep it off.
The Ki-anna was rated Chief of Police, but she walked the beat most days. All her officers above nightstick grade were seconded from the Ruling An’s Household Guard: she didn’t like to impose on them. The Ki—natural street-dwellers, if ever life was natural again—melted indoors as she approached. Her uniform, backed by Speranza, should have made the refugees feel safe: but none of them trusted her. The only people she could talk to were the habitual criminals. They appreciated the Ruling An’s strange appointment.
She made her rounds, visiting the nests where law-abiding people better stay away. The gangsters knew a human had “joined the station.”
They were very curious. She sniffed the wind and lounged with the idlers, giving up Patrice Ferringhi in scraps, a resource to be conserved. The pressure of the human’s strange eyes was still with her—
No one ought to look at her scars like that, it was indecent.
But he was an alien, he didn’t know how to behave.
She didn’t remember being chosen for the treatment that would render her flesh delectable, while ensuring that what happened wouldn’t kill her. She only knew she’d been sold (tradition called it an honour) so that her littermates could live. She would always wonder, why me? What was wrong with me? We were very poor, I understand that, but why me? It had all been for nothing, anyway. Her parents and her littermates were dead, along with everyone else. So few survivors! A handful of die-hards on the surface. A token number of Ki taken away to Speranza, in the staggeringly distant Blue System. Would they ever return? The Ki-anna thought not … Six Refuge Habitats in orbit. And of course some of the Heaven-born, who’d seen what was coming before the war, and escaped to Balas or to Shet.
At curfew she filed a routine report, and retired to her quarters in the Curtain Wall. Roaaat, who was sharing her living space, was already at home. It was fortunate that Shet didn’t normally like to sit in Speranza-style “chairs”: he’d have broken a hole in her ceiling. His bulk, as he lay at ease, dwarfed her largest room. They compared notes.
“All the Refuges have problems,” said the Ki-anna. “But I get the feeling I have more than my share. Extortion, intimidation, theft and violence—”
“We can grease the wheels,” said Roaat. “Strictly off the record, we can pay your villains off. It’s distasteful, not the way to do police work.”
“But expedient.”
“Aap … He seemed very taken with you,” said Roaaat.
“The human? I don’t know how you make that out.”
“Thap handsome Blue, yaas. I could smell pheromones.”
“He isn’t a ‘Blue,’ ” said the Ki-anna. “The almighty Blues rule Speranza. The humans left behind on Earth, or ‘Mars’—What is ‘Mars’? Is it a moon?”
“Noope. A smaller planet in the Blue system.”
“Well, they aren’t Blues, they’re just ordinary aliens.”
“I shall give up matchmaking. You don’t appreciate my help … Let’s hope the An-he finds your ordinary alien more attractive.”
The Ki-anna shivered. “I think he will. He’s a simple soul.”
Roaaat was an undemanding guest, despite his size. They shared a meal, based on “culturally neutral” Speranza Food Aid. The Shet spread his bedding. The Ki-anna groomed herself, crouched by a screen that showed views of the Warrens. Nothing untoward stirred, in the simulated night. She pressed knuckle-fur to her mouth. Sometimes the pain of living, haunted by the uncounted dead, became very hard to bear. Waking from every sleep to remember afresh that there was nothing left.
“I might yet back out, Officer Bhvaaan. What if we only succeed in feeding the monsters, and make bad worse?”
She unfolded her nest, and settled behind him.
He patted her side with his clubbed fist—it felt like being clobbered by a kindly rock. “See how it goes. You can back out later.”
The Ki-anna lay sleepless, the bulk of her unacknowledged bodyguard between her and the teeth of the An, wondering about Patrice Ferringhi.
When his appointment with alien royalty came around, Patrice was glad he’d had a breathing space. The world was solid again, he felt in control of himself. He donned his new transaid, settling the pickup against his skull, and set out for the high-security bulkhead gate that led to the Refuge Habitat itself.
Armoured guards, intimidatingly tall, were waiting on the other side. They bent their heads, exhaled breath loudly—and indicated that he was to get into a kind of floating palanquin. Probably they knew no English.
The guards jogged around him in a hollow square: between their bodies he glimpsed the approach to an actual castle, like something in a fantasy game. Like a recreation of Mediaeval Europe or Japan, rising from a mass of basic living modules. It was amazing. He’d never been inside a big space-station before, not counting a few hours in Speranza Transit Port. The false horizon, the lilac sky, arcing far above the castle’s bannered towers, would have fooled him completely, if he hadn’t known.