Forsaken Skies (4 page)

The elder cleared her throat to quiet him. She drew herself up to her full height—a good head and a half shorter than Valk. But she got that look on her face, the one she used when Roan was being obstinate and refused to learn a lesson.

Roan lived in mortal terror of that look.

“Are you going to detain us, M. Valk? We have business here. Urgent business.”

“I don't have much authority in that,” Valk told her. “I can guarantee you'll be monitored until we clear this up. Your movements will be logged and you won't be allowed to leave the Hexus.”

“That's acceptable,” the elder said.

Valk nodded, his helmet bobbing forward, then back. It was like he was pantomiming human gestures. “Listen,” he said. “If you just tell me what's going on, if you give me enough to file a complete report, we can avoid—”

“If we aren't being detained, we'll be on our way,” the elder told him. Then she grabbed Roan's elbow and pushed her toward the slagged end of the cargo container and into the cavernous space beyond.

Up ahead a massive portal opened into light and noise and the unbearably enticing smell of cooked food. A four-meter-wide display hung in the arch, reading
WELCOME TO VAIRSIDE. CIVILIAN REGS APPLY.

Roan glanced back and saw Valk inside the cargo container, running one big finger across the soft plastic that lined its walls. Then the elder steered her through the portal and into the welter of sensations beyond, and she stopped thinking about anything else.

Clean.

Way too clean.

Valk squatted down on his haunches before the life support system the stowaways had left behind. The old, old agony in his knees flared up and he had to wait a second for the red haze of pain to recede from his vision. When it cleared he studied the little unit as if it were an archaeological find.

Valk couldn't remember the last time he'd seen a water recycler so crude—it ran on actual batteries, it looked like. And the air scrubber had weld marks and sticky bits of tape all over it, as if someone had built it from spare parts.

Yet when he opened it up the filter inside was immaculate, as if it had been scoured clean very recently.

Valk gave his suit a command. A grid of tiny holes opened in the flowglas of his helmet, just big enough to let a little air through. He inhaled sharply through his nose. The container stank. Well, two people had been living inside for twelve days. He had seen chemical toilets in better shape, too. There probably hadn't been much they could do about that—but everything inside the container that could be cleaned, had been. Assiduously.

He went over to the display that had been mounted on one wall and pinged its logs. Only a few entries popped up, just standard stuff. They had used the display to communicate with the freighter's autonomic pilot. Once to let it know they were alive and it needed to be careful with them. A couple of times during the journey, they'd logged in to check on their ETA.

There were no entertainment programs on the display. No games or videos or anything to help them pass the time.

They must have spent most of their twelve-day journey cleaning and fixing things. Keeping themselves alive. How had they not gone crazy in the dark and the lack of stimulation?

Niraya. The girl had said they came from Niraya. Valk had heard of the place in a vague sort of way. It was one of the planets the Hexus served, but not a lot of traffic went through there. He patched his suit's computer into the display and looked it up.

Lines of text scrolled across the screen, giving him way more information than he wanted—climate data, historical logs, financials. He went for the quick version instead. He saw right away why he'd barely heard of the place. It was about as far from Earth as you could get and still be in human space, hundreds of light-years away in the direction of galactic center. It had been settled during the Brushfire as a colony for the followers of some minor religion or other. Centrocor had taken on responsibility for its development, and nobody had ever challenged their authority. No other poly seemed to think the place was worth conquering. In exchange for their patronage, Centrocor had built a mining concern there—though the operation had never been very profitable. Nobody was paying big money for iridium or cobalt. Niraya was dirt poor, so broke it hadn't even finished terraforming operations. Even now, a hundreds years after it was settled, it was barely fit for human inhabitation.

Well, the place's poverty might explain why the two of them had to stow away in a cargo container rather than buying passage on an actual passenger ship. And if they were adherents of some strict religious order—judging by their clothes, they weren't miners—that might explain the fanatical cleanliness.

But what in damnation would people like that want on the Hexus?

He walked out of the container and over toward the arch that led to the dubious delights of Vairside. Whatever vice or kink you had, you could get it serviced in there. The crews of passing ships and Navy personnel on leave went there to blow off steam, to gamble away their pay, to generally raise hell. It was the last place in the galaxy Valk could imagine religious types wanting to go.

Valk didn't like any of this. He didn't like mysteries, never had.

Which meant it definitely wasn't his day. While he stood there, staring through the arch as if he could see the stowaways out there, his suit chimed at him. A blue pearl appeared in the corner of his vision, telling him he had a new message from the traffic control autonomics.

The FA.2, the fighter he'd seen racing down into Geryon's atmosphere, was back, requesting clearance to dock at the Hexus. There was no sign of the yacht the FA.2 had been chasing.

Mysteries on top of damned mysteries. And getting answers meant spending a lot more time on his feet.

As if sensing his frustration, the white pearl appeared in the corner of his eye again, offering painkillers. He blinked it away.

Lights.

So many lights!

The Hexus must have had power to burn, to squander. Lamps on high standards lined the narrow streets of Vairside, shedding a dusky glow on everything. Bulbs burned inside every shop and restaurant. Huge signs floated overhead, blasting out light, advertising products Roan could scarcely imagine. Drones zipped by overhead shining lights down on the crowds—

The crowds! So many people, throngs of them in every winding side street, floods of them spilling out of doorways, clustering in little parks hemmed in only by wrought-iron fences. Thunder roared overhead and then a train pulled into a station, spilling out more people, as if the street weren't crowded enough. Dressed in a hundred different kinds of clothes, jumpsuits and flight jackets and paper overalls, long coats that brushed the heels of their glossy black boots, some wearing nothing but shorts, some of them were almost naked, men and women both. So many people, babbling a dozen languages, adorned in so many bizarre ways. Some had metal pierced through their noses and cheeks. Some had patterns of scars up and down their arms. Many, so many had dyed their hair unnatural colors. From the back of the train a dozen more pushed past, all falling down, holding on to each other. They wore space suits with painted shoulders, Navy people, she thought—she'd heard their suits were their uniforms, and they never took them off. They laughed and stared at her and a few gave her looks that made her blush.

Elder McRae held her tight, which was good. After twelve days in the cargo container with no gravity, now she was walking on her own feet but still she felt like she would float away, be caught by a gust of wind or the random energy of the crowds and be carried along, swept off to some incredible new spectacle.

Her head throbbed with pain, like a ring of iron had been clamped around her temples. It was the noise. The noise! Voices sounded from every corner, asking for things, promising things, whispering snatches of overheard conversations she couldn't ever follow. Voices thick with accents until she couldn't understand their words. Voices uttering oaths and curses and absurd promises. Voices using obscenities that shocked her. Voices thick with culture and sophistication, dripping with sarcasm and feigned surprise.

The smells—the smells of food and perfume that came wafting from every building, the smells of sweat and people, the smells of metal and burning fuel and chemicals that wafted off the train as it hurried off to its next stop. Smells she'd never encountered before, smells she couldn't name.

There was so much she couldn't follow, so much she couldn't understand. They passed by a shop with lights in its windows, lights illuminating a dress made of interwoven gauze strips. Roan could never see anyone on Niraya wearing something like that—even if they could afford it. But it was so beautiful. Who was that dress made for? Before she could even get a good look at it Elder McRae dragged her onward.

Past a little pond, perfectly hexagonal in shape but with flowers growing on its mossy banks. A group of Navy people stood on the far side, squatting down and jeering at some frogs that leapt from hiding. One of them drew a pistol and fired a bullet into the still, dark water, right next to a frog, making it jump to the left. The others laughed and cheered, and exchanged sheaves of money.

Roan gasped in bewilderment but they were already moving on. Past, this time, a wide yard full of little paper houses, rice paper stretched over wooden frames, just big enough to sit inside. At the center of the yard lay a pile of what looked like emaciated mannequins. A man in a vest and a round hat took money from a man in a jumpsuit, then handed him one of the mannequins. The man in the jumpsuit carried it toward one of the little houses, and even as he stepped inside Roan saw the mannequin plump out, its hips widening, breasts budding from its chest.

The elder said something admonitory Roan barely heard. She looked away and followed as the elder pulled her along another little road. They had directions, Roan knew, a map of where to go, but she couldn't imagine how the elder could follow it, not in this chaos, this wild place.

They headed up an incline toward a platform built out over the crowds. Roan looked up and saw countless other platforms above them, stretching up into the air. Which earned her a whole new shock. If she looked all the way up, as far as she could see, past clouds of drones and drifting miniblimps—up farther, past banks of lights and speakers and ventilation fans—all the way up there was a whole other world, more streets, more lights, hanging upside down. She knew they were inside a rotating cylinder, she knew about centrifugal force, but still it was hard to believe that all the people up there weren't about to fall on her. She fought down the urge to cover her head.

So much. Way, way too much.

A thrumming twang sounded right next to her and she jumped, but it was just a man pushing a cart full of flavored ices, hawking his wares by striking a tuning fork and holding it over his head. She found it hard to look away, as if the eerie sound had pinned her to the spot.

But then the elder stopped walking and Roan came up short. She looked around, feeling very dizzy, and saw they'd reached their destination. A restaurant up on its own platform, at the top of a wide flight of steel stairs. Dark wood and hooded lanterns, everything painted in elegant floral designs. The waiters wore black vests and carried towels over their arms as they carried platters of steaming food to the well-dressed diners. Over the top of the stairs curved a wrought-iron arch inscribed
THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER
in flowing, ornate script.

A man with a little mustache and a blue monocle screwed into one of his eye sockets peered down at them over a thick paper book. “I'm afraid we're only seating those with reservations at the moment,” he told the elder. Roan had no idea what that meant, but she understood his questioning, sneering look.

“We're here to see Auster Maggs,” the elder said.

Instantly the man's demeanor changed. He bowed deeply and held out one arm, gesturing for them to step inside. “Of course. You're expected.”