Bringer of Light (9 page)

‘Not exactly. Aleph was never ruled by the females. And it is in another galaxy.’

‘You’re shitting me!’ Now he’d signed over his beloved ship to the Minister, Jarek appeared less in awe of him.

‘No – well, to be completely accurate, the Aleph system is in one of the smaller satellite galaxies that orbit our own. When the conflict between the male and female Sidhe was at its height, a large number of males fled there. It turned out to be a one-way trip for them, though shiftships can travel to and from the system.’

‘That’s where the rebellion was coordinated from, wasn’t it?’

‘Aleph was a major centre of operations, though those of us who remained behind did our part too.’

‘And how will these males at Aleph feel about us turning up out of the blue and asking for a beacon?’

‘You won’t be turning up out of the blue. I have been in contact with Aleph; they are willing to provide a beacon to help you in your fight against the females. However, you must bear in mind that we males have a rather different outlook than our sisters. We are less interventionist – and less unified. The females like nothing more than to band together in dark corners and plot how to manipulate human destiny. We tend to keep our distance, both from humanity and from each other.’

‘You’re saying there may be factions at Aleph who won’t be too pleased to see us?’ asked Jarek.

‘I would say there is a high risk of that, yes. But given what I know about you, Captain Reen, I suspect that is a risk you would be willing to take to win your beacon.’ He turned to Taro and Nual. ‘And you two as well, apparently.’

‘I already saved your invisible arse,’ said Taro. ‘Reckon it’s time to get really ambitious now.’

Nual just smiled.

‘One thing you should probably know about Aleph: the males there are similar to me and my two brothers. Like us, they live through their machines, and interact through their avatars. Right—’ The Minister made a show of looking at his com, like he actually needed to check the time. ‘I still need to thrash out a few details with my distant brothers, so I will have to leave you for a while. I recommend you take some time to see the sights, Captain Reen. I am confident there will not be any further unpleasantness – though I would still advise against going out alone.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

As part of the deal, the Minister had taken their cargo from Hetarey off their hands. Taro suspected he’d only done it to indulge them, but whatever the reason, they now had spare credit to their names. Jarek wanted to use some of their new-found wealth to take the Minister’s advice. Taro let Nual act as guide, and they took him to a decent restaurant, then on to an ‘exotic cabaret’ complete with glitter and grav manipulation. Nual elected to stay sober, so Taro and Jarek kicked back and relaxed – in fact, Jarek acted like a man who didn’t know where the next party was coming from. Taro could sympathise: Jarek’d had his head taken apart by the Sidhe, spent months on a lo-tech mud-ball where he’d nearly died, then when he’d finally got away, he’d found that his sister, his one surviving family member, had been murdered. Since then the three of them had been running to keep one step ahead of both creditors and enemies. They sure as shit deserved a bit of fun. The cabaret was heavy on man-on-man action – Jarek was taking advantage of being somewhere without stupid sex-laws – but though he was obviously getting off on the show, he stopped short of taking advantage of the additional services on offer.

The next day Taro and Nual took Jarek to the Gardens, an area of topside that Taro had always loved; they watched an outdoor play, which Taro found pretty boring, and Jarek had a go at tree-walking, which Taro found pretty funny. When the Minister still hadn’t called that evening, they ate out again. Thinking he might be in touch later that night, they spent a boring evening in the hotel bar. He didn’t call.

The day after, they went for a sightseeing pedicab ride in the morning. Taro had spent his youth not being allowed in
anywhere
; now he had ID that allowed him in everywhere, he insisted they visited the State Quarter, even though there wasn’t much to see. Jarek enjoyed the museums, and Taro did a bit of shopping in the kind of boutiques that wouldn’t let ordinary downsiders within sniffing distance but were only too happy to serve Angels.

It was late afternoon by the time they got back to the hotel, and Jarek announced he needed some downtime, by himself. Nual, with a smile, agreed to handle any calls that might come in; it didn’t take her abilities or Taro’s experience to know what his plans for the evening were. Taro was curious, and hung around the hotel lobby until he spotted the cove – he was between Jarek and Taro, age-wise, handsome rather than pretty, and well fed and well-dressed. If he hadn’t been in the profession himself once, Taro might not have clocked him as a joyboy at all. Taro smiled to himself.

When Nual returned from checking the local newsnets he was about to suggest they get an early night too – but then he thought about it, and discovered, somewhat to his shock, that sex wasn’t what he wanted right now.

Nual said gently, ‘You should go. If you don’t, you’ll always wish you had.’

‘To the Undertow, you mean?’ he said aloud.

She nodded. ‘Did you want me to come with you?’

‘I . . . No. I just need to see, for myself.’

‘I’ll be here when you get back.’

He kicked off as soon as he left the hotel, flying low and slow, enjoying the awed upturned faces and pointing fingers that marked his progress.

The pale disc of the sun was almost level with the rim of the City, and when Taro dropped below the edge, the upside-down shantytown of the Undertow was bathed in orange light. Even the romance of sunset didn’t stop him seeing it for the desperate, squalid place it was. A chaotic expanse of tangled nets hung below the maze of hanging vanes, many of which had been cut and pinned over generations to form the narrow ledges of mazeways and boxy, shambolic homespaces. Here and there he could see the damage done by the ‘cityquake’ – a torn net, an empty loop of rope, a section where a whole mazeway had come free and fallen to the ground, far below.

Well, he was here now. This was unfamiliar territory, and none of the colours fluttering from the dangling ropes of the watertraps meant anything to him. He chose a route close to the edge and began to fly. When he looked upwards he glimpsed the occasional figure, but they were too busy not taking the fall to pay him much attention. Unless you had to cross a net or check for ’trap colours to help you navigate, you kept to the mazeways.

He wondered how the water-trader Fenya was doing – and her lazy, crazy Remembrancer husband; or Arel, who’d been trying to make a new life for herself after Limnel fucked her over: that was a point, who was even in charge of Limnel’s troupe now? Of course, there was almost no chance of finding any of them, and even if he did, they knew him as a lineage-less runner, not as an Angel who travelled the stars. It would be too weird, seeing them now. He could probably find the
Exquisite Corpse
, if he put his mind to it; the Undertow’s one and only bar was run for the Angels, after all, and it advertised itself with banners meant to be seen from below. But his only friend there was Solo, the place’s alien barkeep, and whilst he thought of the gawky winged empath with affection, he/she/it was likely to be too busy to chat at this time of the evening.

He reached the far side of the disc and headed straight back up, without looking back.

The Minister finally called Jarek the next evening, as they were finishing dinner at the hotel – they’d done more tourist stuff in the day, including a visit to the Zoo, but their credit was dwindling, and another restaurant felt like an unnecessary indulgence when the City was picking up the tab at the Cracked Emerald.

‘Everything is in place,’ said the Minister. ‘You are booked on the midnight-twenty shuttle flight. We will rendezvous in the transit hall in two hours.’

Taro packed his few possessions with mixed feelings. When he’d arrived, he’d suspected he’d never call Khesh City home again. Now he knew it. And that felt weird.

They reached the transit hall early, and found a relatively quiet corner while they waited for the elevator queues for the earlier shuttle to subside. The Minister emerged from the crowd a few minutes later. He had a kid of about twelve in tow.

Taro tried not to stare. Children were rare in Khesh City – Vellern wasn’t a family destination, and a lot of the citizens who lived and worked here left their youngsters on safer Tri-Confed worlds or habitats.

The boy looked local. He was handsome, in a bland, slightly dazed sort of way. His gaze, openly curious, flicked between the three of them as he approached.

‘And who’s this, then?’ asked Jarek.

‘Well, according to his ID, he is the child of a minor Kheshi noble house who you are transporting to a nearby hub-point to complete his out-of-system education.’

‘And who is he really?’

‘Vy, though that is less a name than a designation. He will get you to Aleph.’

‘He’ll
what
?’ said Jarek. ‘I’m not sure I—’

‘He’s an avatar, ain’t he?’ Taro interrupted. ‘Like you?’

‘Not exactly like him, no.’ Despite the boy’s high, childish voice he sounded serious and grown-up. ‘The body you see was created to replace an avatar destroyed in the cityquake; it was still undergoing development. This consciousness is not the one that was originally intended to inhabit it.’

‘Not meaning to be rude,’ said Jarek, looking a bit queasy, ‘but before I let you on my s— before I travel with you, I want to know
exactly
what you are.’

‘Precisely what I said: an avatar of Khesh, modified to operate with greater autonomy. And I have within me the beacon address of Aleph, which I will programme into your ship’s navigational comp. Then, when we reach Aleph, I will remove it again.’

‘My brothers in the Magellanic Cloud are somewhat paranoid,’ the Minister said. ‘They would never allow a ship with the coordinates of their beacon in its comp to remain at large in human-space, for fear the females might get their hands on it.’

Nual said tightly, ‘And how do they feel about a female Sidhe visiting them?’

‘They have no choice. Although Vy will provide the coordinates, your abilities will be required to persuade the transit-kernel to undertake the journey.’ The Minister beamed at her. ‘You are hardly the first female to rebel against your race, you know.’

‘So you need a female Sidhe to get to or from Aleph?’ asked Jarek.

‘You do now, yes.’ The Minister’s smile didn’t falter. ‘Right then: before you get your shuttle, there are a few things I should tell you.’

As soon as the
Heart of Glass
was safely en route for the Tri-Confed beacon, Jarek gave Vy access to the bridge. The boy – like the Minister, it was better to give him a human designation, Jarek decided – didn’t so much programme the comp as
commune
with it. Jarek had already witnessed something similar on Serenein, but it was disconcerting to see a mind like that at work on
his
ship – and it was still
his
ship, whatever the legal documents said. He asked Taro to make him a strong caf so he could keep an eye on Vy while the boy worked. After a couple of hours at the console Vy wandered off, muttering that he was done now. Jarek locked down the ship’s controls to stop further tampering, then went to get some rest. He’d got his body-clock in step with Vellern just in time to leave.

He awoke to someone shaking him and for a moment he panicked, until he focused enough to make out Vy. He slapped at the hands on his shoulders and the boy backed off, looking offended.

‘What’s the goddamn problem?’ he rasped at the boy.

‘I’m bored,’ Vy said, accusingly. ‘I want something interesting to do.’

‘And I’m trying to sleep,’ said Jarek. ‘Go bother the others.’

‘Taro shouted at me when I went into their cabin.’

I’ll bet he did.
Jarek was tempted to do the same, but he didn’t much like the idea of a bored, immature male Sidhe avatar looking for diversion on his ship. At least the boy had let him sleep for – he glanced at his com – an hour and a quarter.
Great.
‘Fuck’s sake!’ he groaned. ‘All right, I’ll sort you a game to play.’

‘Yes, do that,’ said Vy.

‘We humans have a word we use at times like this,’ said Jarek, trying to keep his temper. ‘It’s “please”. We also have doors for a reason, which is to allow us some privacy. Have you ever come across either of these concepts?’

‘Plea-se,’ Vy said, like he was trying the word out.

Jarek sighed and got up.

Vy turned out to be predictably talented at gaming, and voracious in his appetite for new challenges. Good job Jarek had a comprehensive games library, he thought. He had never wanted children – which was fortunate, all things considered – but if he had, then a couple of days trapped on a ship with Khesh’s youngest avatar would have been enough to make him seriously reconsider.

Vy ate twice as much as anyone else, and slept half as long. He listened to other people’s conversations with a disconcerting intensity before interrupting to ask a question or (as he saw it) correct an error. He also enjoyed juvenile pranks, a particularly dangerous trait in someone so technically accomplished. If Taro hadn’t asked about the gurgling sound in the head they might not have discovered Vy’s attempts to reverse the settings on the excreta recovery unit until it was too late. In the confined space of the ship the results wouldn’t have been at all funny – not to adults, at any rate.