Meridian Days (3 page)

A while later, I thought I detected something in the distance. It was a slight irregularity, growing line by line from the shimmering horizon like the build up of lateral graphics on a computer screen. As we approached, the image resolved itself: a building, a white-panelled, monolithic ziggurat out of place here in the middle of nowhere.

Abe slowed the flier and we idled alongside. Behind a high wire-mesh fence, the giant lettering on the facade of the building proclaimed: SOLAR RE... while the remainder of the sign: SEARCH STATION, hung at an angle across the entrance. Radio dishes and antennae on the building's roof were pointing at the sun like so many heliotropic blooms. The station had about it an air of terminal desolation; the very fact that the roof-top instruments were still directed at the subject of the research made the abandonment all the more forlorn.

"Shut down three months ago," Abe said, "when Earth turned off the funding."

We accelerated and the dead station receded in our wake, the flashing point on the screen before us indicating that we were leaving zone blue behind us.

~

Brightside, zone orange...

Abe cut the engine. The flier settled. For a second, the sand displaced by our landing masked the merciless glare of Beta Hydri. Then the cloud settled, and the white hot disc of the sun reappeared. A wall of fire reared on the horizon, a dancing curtain of golden light which errupted frequently in great incandecent gouts of flame. As we stared through the viewscreen, the silver paint on the hood of the flier began to flake. The thermometer read 180°.

We had come to rest on a baked plain of sand beside an outcropping of rocks and boulders — the habitat of the rabbit-analogue that Abe had ensnared. Ten metres in front of the flier was the cage, a small, furless shape within it.

Then, beyond it, I saw the cacti.

They spread for as far as the eye could see, a dense matt of green, spatulate vegetation dotted here and there with pink flowers. The sight filled me with joy.

All I had to do now was snatch them without Abe noticing...

I had no doubt that he knew the blooms were the source of the powerful mnemonic-hallucinogenic drug so popular with the colonists in the early days, before the expensive designer-pharmaceuticals hit the market. Abe had been too long on Meridian to be in ignorance of the fact. But there was no way he might know of my dependency, and I had no intention of letting him find out. He was solicitous enough about my welfare as it was, without attempting to save me from the one thing that made my life bearable.

"Gloves and hood," he was saying. "Don't forget the face mask, and don't look directly at the sun. We're going to spend as little time out there as possible. We'll stow the cage away, then it's back in here, okay?"

"Fine by me," I lied, my heart sinking. I pulled on the gloves, arranged the hood and the face mask.

"Okay," Abe said. "Let's go..."

He opened the hatches and we climbed out.

The heat of the sun hit me with the force of a physical blow. I felt myself bowing beneath it. The miniature refrigeration unit on my back began a laboured whirring as it fought to keep the circulating water cool.

We walked towards the cage, two silversuited figures in an alien, hostile land. To all sides, the ground only as far as the mid-distance was visible; further afield was the shimmering optical illusion of convection currents, giving the paradoxical impression that we were surrounded by large areas of water. My mind switched to thoughts of swimming pools and long, iced drinks.

The nearest cacti plant was some metres beyond the cage, and I was wondering how I might reach it unseen when Abe stopped me with an arm across my chest. "Bob! Back in the cab — there's a laser. Quick!"

I ran, ignorance of Abe's alarm lending panic to my flight. I reached the cab, exhausted, unclipped the laser from the door-rack.

Abe was running back to meet me.

"What the hell—?" I began.

He grabbed the rifle. "Look..."

Perhaps a hundred metres beyond the cage was the hulking, armoured shape of a sand lion, the size and weight of a dump truck. I had only ever seen them on vid-documentaries, great quadrupeds resembling a cross between a prehistoric triceratops and a rhino. Even at this distance the clashing of its mandibles rang loud in my ears.

"Christ, Bob..."

He passed a pair of binoculars to me, and only when I raised them and sighted the lion did I understand the reason for his distress.

The animal was devouring what once might have been a human being. Now the figure was stiff and lifeless, an oversized rag-doll in the fanged jaws of the lion. The carcass was parcelled in the remains of a familiar, light blue uniform.

I lowered the binoculars, and the intervening distance made the sight of the carnage almost bearable. The sound remained though, the clash of fangs and the eager, liquid sucking as it feasted. Within seconds, there was very little left of the corpse.

Abe and I were still staring like prize fools when the lion looked up and saw us. There was a second's hesitation before the animal decided that it was not yet sated. Then it charged.

Sand lions, I recalled from the vid-programme, were notoriously difficult to kill. High velocity bullets could penetrate the inch thick armour, but bullets were an antique ammunition no longer available on Meridian. Laser bolts could at best only stun the beasts. I recalled the deaths of three scientists on Brightside just six months ago, attacked and devoured by a pair of the man-eaters. I had thought, then, that it was a particularly horrible way to go.

The lion trundled towards us, gaining momentum as it came. It had lowered its great, hanging head, presenting a crest of horns and spikes. Its stench reached us in advance, the heady stink of putrescent carrion and an acid odour peculiar to the beast. I yelled out in fear.

Deliberately, Abe raised his rifle and fired. The electric blue bolt sizzled across the gap, actually connecting the hunter to the hunted for a fraction of a second. The bolt slammed into  the ridge of osseous armour plating above the animal's brow. It dropped a matter of metres from us with a great grunt of expelled air.

"Bob!" Abe cried.

But I had seen my opportunity and was was taking it.

I ran past the felled beast; a swarm of flies rose from it, and minute parasites swam in the film of oil that covered its chitinous exo-skeleton. I had no idea how long the lion might remain unconscious, and in retrospect I realised what a fool I was. But at the time I had thoughts for only one thing. When I reached the remains, a scattered collection of rags and bones, I knelt and snatched a fragment of blue uniform, along with as many small, pink flower-heads as I could manage without Abe's getting wise.

Then I sprinted back past the lion; it was still unconscious, but twitching spasmodically and growling as if gradually coming to its senses.

"Bob — that was a bloody fool trick!"

I thrust the scrap of blue uniform at him. He took it, looked up at me. "A Telemass tech..." Then he remembered himself. "Quick, let's get the cage aboard."

Between us, keeping one eye on the concussed lion, we lifted the cage and carried it back to the flier. The darkened, cooled interior of the cab was like an ice-box in comparison to the hell we had just escaped. Abe dogged the hatches and sat back in relief. I peeled off my gloves and removed my mask.

"That was a foolish thing to do, Bob."

"I had to get it..."

Abe unfolded the blood-stained material on his lap, revealing the Telemass logo — three scimitars, points touching.

"But what the hell was he doing out this far, Bob? He didn't stand a chance..."

He looked up, through the viewscreen, out to the scatter of bones in the desert. "If he came out here alone," he went on, "then where's his vehicle? And if he didn't, then someone knows something about this."

He drew a deep breath, folded the rag with reverence and tucked it into his pouch.

The sand lion was stirring, attempting to gain its feet. Abe fired the jets, swung the flier around on its axis and headed towards home.

We made the return trip without a word, our long shadow streaking ahead of us. Beside me, Abe seemed lost in thought; it came to me that what we had witnessed today served only to remind Abe of another death, this one much closer to him, that had occurred on Brightside over a year ago. I could think of nothing to say, so I kept quiet. It was a relief to come upon the cool blue ocean of the meridian again, and leave the nightmare of Brightside behind us.

Only when we reached Abe's island did he speak. "I'll get onto Steiner, tell him about it." He smiled wearily. "See you tonight, Bob."

I collected my launch and steered it back to my island. I climbed the path to the dome, entered the lounge and stood in silence for a long time, contemplating the empty half-shell. Normally, I would have set to work immediately and prepared the drug, but the thought of doing that now, while Abe remained alone with his memories, deterred me. I threw the desiccated flower-heads into a corner, showered and changed for the party.

TWO///FIRE AND FROST

The archipelago — the collection of two hundred islands inhabited by perhaps a hundred thousand citizens — straddled one of the many fault lines which circumnavigated the planet. Situated between the infernal pressures of Brightside and the contracting frigidity of Darkside, the islands suffered regular earthquakes. On an average of once a year, the quake-warning siren wailed its ugly double note and we prepared ourselves for the imminent upheaval. In the course of the colony's twenty-five years, no fewer than five new islands had emerged from the depths, and three had tumbled back into the ocean. Meridian was not the safest planet in the Expansion, but perhaps this was what attracted the community of artists to the archipelago, the desire to live a precarious existence balanced between sublime beauty and the constant threat of annihilation.

Tamara and Maximilian Trevellion had been even more daring than most: they had purchased one of the more recent additions to the island chain. According to Abe, the island had been nothing more than a lifeless nub of rock twenty years ago when Trevellion and her husband arrived on Meridian and saw, with the imagination and foresight of the artists they were, the potential of the barren rock. They had landscaped the island with a riot of local vegetation and supervised the construction of a luxurious living-dome on its highest point.

It was nine when we arrived. Abe steered his flier into a marina packed with the expensive yachts and power-boats of the rich and famous. I began to feel uneasy at the thought of socialising with the Altered and Augmented artists. They were renowned for their snobbery, their elitist disdain of those who were neither Altered or Augmented. I wished that I had made some excuse after all and remained at home.

One of a dozen uniformed attendants, supervising the mooring of the vessels, made the flier fast and we stepped onto the quayside.

The day was still light. The sun burned just above the horizon with the same unremitting ferocity as it had at midday. Trevellion's dome, high on the hilltop, was illuminated with interior neons in preparation for the swift fall of night, due in one hour with the arrival of the orbital shield. It could be seen on the horizon to the north, a dark, edge-on meniscus moving slowly towards the archipelago.

Other guests alighted from their boats and strolled along the marble quayside, men and women from all three social castes, dressed as if for some prestigious award ceremony. I noticed the number of guards stationed around the marina and standing sentry along the zig-zag path which led up to the dome. They wore black uniforms and carried laser rifles, and their presence at what was supposed to be an artistic event struck me as bizarre. I recalled the story that soon after her husband's death, a year ago, Tamara Trevellion had hired her own private army to police the island and protect the many works of art on open show.

A tall
maître d'
, in a scarlet uniform with chunky epaulettes, took Abe's invitation card, scanned us and indicated the escalator.

As we took our place on the moving stairway, Abe glanced across at me. He must have sensed my apprehension. "Hey, Bob. Don't worry. We have business here, after all. I couldn't get through to Steiner this afternoon, so I left a message. I did get through to Inspector Foulds, though. He said he'd talk to us tonight."

We arrived at the entrance to the dome. A doorman ushered us through the foyer and across a luxuriously furnished lounge, to a cupola'd exit which gave onto a vast, landscaped lawn thronged with guests. As we stepped outside, our names and professions — I was introduced as an ex-starship pilot — issued from a concealed speaker. Heads turned briefly, but the hubbub of conversation continued without pause.

The lawn was furnished with numerous works of art, striking laser sculptures and statues in bronze and platinum — the work of the late Maximilian Trevellion. Behind us, other guests were announced and made their entries — some evidently big names, if the lull in conversation was any indication. At one point a polite patter of applause greeted the arrival of an Augmented artist, who took a bow in acknowledgment. The guests were deployed across the lawn in groups according to their castes — at this early stage the consumption of alcohol or drugs had yet to dismantle the social barriers. Many cliques were gathered around burners on pedestals, inhaling the euphor-fumes. A live band pulsed out a selection of electro-classics from across the Expansion. In the saddle-shaped greensward adjacent to the lawn, I made out two large oval screens floating in the air; technicians on grav-sleds hovered beside them, hurriedly applying the finishing touches. I assumed that the illuminated meadow was the venue for tonight's event.

We stood at the edge of the lawn, and I stared with wonder at the gathering. This was the first time I had been among so many Altered and Augmenteds, and I felt an extreme reluctance to mix. On Main Island, the only sizable town on the archipelago, the majority of citizens on the streets were normals — or primitives, as we were known. The A's were too busy creating their masterpieces to be seen during the day, and anyway they had servants to do their errands. They came out at night, to be seen at the most expensive restaurants and exclusive parties.

The Augmenteds were relatively unspectacular. They were essentially primitives, wired with the latest cerebro-assist mechanisms, occipital auxiliaries and forearm key-pads. The technology had reached such a level of sophistication that many assists could have been miniaturised and worn unobtrusively — but that would have defeated the purpose of being seen as Augmented. The art these people produced had more in common with quantum physics and higher mathematics than any recognisable form of art a mere normal like myself might appreciate.

The Altereds, on the other hand, were
radically
different. Many had had themselves transformed totally, with only tell-tale, vestigial characteristics to indicate their original humanity — altered so that they exhibited the outward appearance of beasts both extinct and extant, Terran and alien. One woman had gone the whole hog, so to speak, and taken on the soma-form of an overweight sow, with only her beautiful face remaining, incongruously pert on so solid a neck. I heard her discussing three-dimensional cubism with an orang-utang-man. I saw many other guests so changed and, to my eyes, ugly, that I could only assume they had adopted extra-terrestrial forms.

There were a few normals to be seen here and there: one group stood around a euphor-burner, laughing among themselves. I saw a few Telemass techs, in the light blue uniform of the Organisation, and a number of business people from Main Island.

As Abe and I moved to the edge of the lawn and admired the view of a beach far below, with the ocean and the other islands beyond, one normal from a nearby group disengaged himself and walked over to us. He was laughing off the effects of the fumes.

"Abraham, Bob — good to see you both."

Douglas Foulds was a square, powerful man in his early fifties. He was from the colony planet of Baxter's Landfall, a world with a greater gravity than either Earth or Meridian, and in comparison to the other guests he seemed ridiculously squat and compacted. Doug was Meridian's Chief Inspector of police: with a couple of dozen men under him to do the leg-work, he was largely desk-bound. Not that this ever prevented him from attending all the big parties and social functions on the archipelago.

"Hell, Abe — why don't you two mix a little? Here, I'll introduce you to a few friends of mine."

Doug had called in on me soon after my arrival on Meridian, and during the course of the next few months we had become friends. We found we had the sport of power-gliding in common, and we had spent many a weekend exploring the meridian. A combination of his work, and my increased drug dependency, had meant that over the past six months I had hardly seen him. On the odd occasion that he had called me, suggesting that we hit the skies sometime, I had put him off with lame excuses.

Now he stood between us, hardly reaching our shoulders, gripped our elbows and escorted us across the lawn like a jailer.

A horde of Altereds stood around a euphor-pedestal by the entrance of the dome, high on a combination of the fumes and champagne. The air was thick with good-natured banter and the frequent explosion of laughter.

"Dougy!" someone — or rather
something
— roared, as we invaded the territory of the herd. "
Do
introduce us to your friends!" This sounded all the more threatening because the speaker had the magnificent head of a lion.

"Abe, Bob," Doug said, "meet the Tamara Trevellion fan club. Boys and girls, Abe and Bob." He indicated the lion-man. "Leo Realisto. Leo's perhaps the finest performance artist on the planet."

The Altered demurred, fingers to his pink cravat. I counted a dozen different animal types in the group, but these differed from the other Altereds I had seen tonight in that they had retained their upright postures — only their heads, and in some cases torsos, having undergone the transformation. Leo Realisto wore a white three-piece suit, and this sophistication of attire served to make incongruous and even startling his majestic, leonine head and golden mane.

We circulated. Doug introduced us to all types of Altered; from the domestic and mundane dog and cat, to the more exotic armadillo, mandrill and zebra. From the neck down, all were immaculately outfitted in the latest designer fashions, and I could almost convince myself that they were sporting ingenious headpieces, but for the verisimilitude of their slavering chops and facial mucous membranes.

"These people are admirers of Tamara Trevellion," Doug told us. "She was the first person to go in for full body transformation, and their partial alterations are in homage. After all, it would be
passé
to go all the way... Ah, Trixi!"

He stood on tip-toe and waved to a petite girl almost as short as himself. She waved frantically in return, rushed over and hugged him. She had the head of what I assumed was a bush-baby — large, dark eyes, a small pink snout and facial fur marked with chevrons of white. The rest of her body was that of an athletic eighteen year-old, and the total effect of the combination was, I thought, rather grotesque.

"A pilot!" she shrilled, when Doug introduced us. She clapped a hand over her huge eyes. "But, oh! Too
technical
!" She gave a shiver of delicious terror. "May I?"

Before I could stop her, she reached out and ran her fingers through the hair at the back of my head, her wet nose a matter of centimetres from my face. She located my occipital console. "Too much!" she squealed. "But, oh, how
can
you? All those little machiney bits in your head!"

"It's sealed," I said, and chastised myself for sounding so defensive.

"But
still
!" the bush-baby cried.

I think Doug sensed my unease. He grabbed a floating tray of drinks and offered them around. "Anyway, what brings you here tonight, Bob? Heard about Trevellion's event?"

"I was doing nothing better." I shrugged. "What is the event?"

"You don't know? Think about it. What's today?" Doug and Trixi stood with their arms about each other, smiling up at us.

I exchanged a mystified glance with Abe.

Doug laughed. "Tell them, Trixi."

The bush-baby, rocking her head from side to side with each word like a metronome, carolled, "It's exactly a year to the day since Tamara Trevellion lost her husband in the Telemass accident!"

"Those in the know are expecting something big to commemorate the tragedy," Doug said. "It should be quite a show."

Abe looked around. "Has Trevellion shown herself yet?"

Doug chuckled, his startlingly blue eyes wide under a full head of grey curls. He was high from the euphor-fumes which swirled around our heads. I was beginning to feel a little woozy myself — or perhaps it was the company. "She's probably rehearsing her triumphal entry. I presume you've heard the latest?"

"Some of us do have full-time occupations," Abe chided.

"Grossly unfair!" Doug said. "The gathering of intelligence is all in the line of duty, after all.

"So what's the latest?" Abe prompted.

Doug winked. "I've heard that Trevellion's taken Wolfe Steiner as her lover."

Trixi covered her mouth. "Coo, weird!" she giggled.

"Well, it is a year since she lost her husband," I began in Trevellion's defence.

"Oh, don't get me wrong — I have nothing against her seeing anyone," Doug said. "But Wolfe Steiner?"

Trixi wrinkled her nose. "Wolfe!" she cried. "Yech, the Ice-man!"

Abe frowned. "I don't understand your objection. I know he's Augmented, but..." It was a rare event for Altereds to consort with Augmenteds, and vice versa, but not unknown.

Doug was shaking his head. "Hear me out, Abe. Don't you think it a little odd, Trevellion's having an affair with the Director of the Telemass station, just a year after the accident?"

Abe shrugged. "I don't really see..."

"You don't know Trevellion," Doug said. "She's a cold fish — pun intentional. She was distraught last year, grief-stricken. She swore she'd never get over the loss of Max. If you recall, she even threatened to sue Steiner for negligence."

"But the enquiry cleared him," I began.

"That's beside the point. Whatever his involvement, Trevellion held him responsible. That makes their liaison now all the more suspicious."

I considered telling Doug that the lack of opportunity to play the real detective on Meridian was forcing him to imagine intrigue where none existed.

"Perhaps," Abe suggested, "Trevellion has seen the error of her ways, found Steiner to be a thoroughly decent guy, and fallen in love with him."

"Don't give me any of that romantic bullshit, Abe! I've been around long enough to know when something smells...
fishy
," and he chuckled again at his pun. Trixi joined in.

Abe took the opportunity to change the subject. "Talking about Steiner," he said, "I couldn't contact him today about what happened on Brightside. Is he likely to be here tonight?"

"He'll no doubt be dancing attendance to Trevellion," Doug said. He kissed Trixi on her pink snout and patted her bottom. "Run along, now. There's a good girl." He turned to us. "About those remains..." he said when Trixi had scampered away. He seemed reluctant to discuss work when there was a party to enjoy.