The Galaxy Game (31 page)

‘This has been an era of change. Improvements in bioforming technology, emigration to Punartam, even the Great Galactic War – it all came from this ice age. The Ntshune know what it means for a civilisation to lose what we most take for granted: a stable and favourable planetary atmosphere.’

It was fine diplomatic language, but Rafi was only paying partial attention to their guide. He had arrived mere weeks earlier, the city was busy and there was a lot to see. Janojya boasted a more homogeneous population with the expected traits: curly hair, dark long-lashed eyes and average frames. There were no broad-boned Sadiri, and none of the long-limbed giants Punartam sometimes produced, although he did catch a glimpse of something that could have been a distant cousin of the ostrich-like creature he had seen once on his first day in the Metropolis and never again. He wondered if they were bioengineered, and if they were pets, companions or more.

The architecture was interesting, but logical considering the protection of the dome. Most buildings were U-shaped, cradling small gardens within their curves. There were no roofs, and walls and floors were often translucent and sometimes transparent. People moved like tiny shadow-puppets within their lit honeycombs, and each glowing cell added to the ambient brightness.

Ixiaral abruptly veered from the path, apologising hastily to their guide as she grabbed Rafi’s arm. ‘You must see this,’ she said, almost childlike in her eagerness.

This
was a huge grassy mount almost at the centre of the city’s dome, whether natural or artificial, Rafi could not tell. It took time to ascend the steps cut spiral around its sides, but Rafi saw no other option and Ixiaral did not offer any. When they reached the top, she tumbled onto her back and raised an arm to point at the apex of the biodome.

‘Do you see that? Where the ice is transparent?’

He lay down beside her and squinted along her pointing finger. The biodome surface was faintly purple and the ice showed mainly blue, but there was a faint pattern like water rings pushing out from the lightest patch of blue.

‘That’s the thinnest point of ice,’ she said as proudly as if she had made it herself. ‘It appeared twenty Standard years ago. The ice is melting.’

His gaze flashed from the pale blue window to her excited face. ‘How many more years?’

‘Less than five hundred. We could make it sooner, I suppose. Most biotechs don’t like to tamper too much with crafted worlds. They’d rather experiment somewhere else, just in case.’

Rafi looked again at the translucent spot. Serendipity had said something about Ntshune positioning itself for a rise in galactic importance. Five hundred years sounded like a good stretch of time to plan and carry out a long-term domination so gentle and gradual that it would be nearly undetectable, and thus unstoppable. He could imagine the expansion and strengthening when Ntshune finally regained their land surface. And yet . . . they were so quiet. Their way of living was unusually simple, with all major technology saved for the maintenance of the city and for research. Essential needs were taken care of, but there were no open expressions of personal luxury or extravagance.

He sat up and glanced down at the city. Their guide, temporarily abandoned at the foot of the mount, walked back and forth and looked up occasionally, but he was waiting, patiently and courteously, until they returned and needed his services once more, or until they gave him a proper farewell. He could have been an ordinary citizen whose most significant work was to flip the switches on the sewage treatment plant, or a retired scientist of great renown who felt like strolling through the city and decided to take along some newcomers as a gesture of kindness. It was difficult to tell. In some respects, the concept of hierarchy was so absent in the society that it was considered rude to introduce yourself with the accomplishments of your line and your name. In other ways, hierarchy was part of everything, unconscious and automatic. The social credit was there, but it was never discussed, like any gross but necessary function of human existence not to be mentioned in polite company. Rafi wondered if the Ntshune were secretly ashamed of not having yet achieved a fully egalitarian and currency-free civilisation.

Farther out, the view told more tales about the society. Buildings encircled gardens, but clusters of buildings were themselves encircled by parks, thin stretches of wilderness where the Ntshune fought to preserve the original flora of pre-ice days. Each cluster was a domain dedicated to a particular dynastic or industry, and sometimes both. Their own cluster, the new site for the survivors of Sadira’s mindship fleet and Punartam’s seized Academes, stood far from the centre, but still auspiciously placed as a matter of courtesy and an expression of hope for the success of the Transit Project.

Ixiaral shot up suddenly, her face serious. ‘The Patrona needs us. Let’s go.’

Rafi regarded her jealously. Punartam audioplugs were as useless here as Cygnian comms, but Ixiaral still had some kind of connection via the tracing on her skin. They hastened down the mount and took time to thank their guide and bid him farewell before rushing to the nearest canal transport. Janojya was compact enough to travel by foot, but going cluster to cluster was easiest via the waterways in the wilds.

The Patrona had chosen a huge workroom with clear walls and floor. It was too large to feel like a glass cage, but it did give most people a sense of vertigo, something Rafi suspected the Patrona secretly liked and used to her advantage. At the moment, she was sitting on the large, thick mat of the central dais, surrounded by hanging screens and a chatter of disembodied voices speaking schedules and logistics into the air. She looked far calmer than he would have expected.

‘Rafi, Ixiaral, take a seat,’ she said, waving at the floor.

He looked around, grabbed a large cushion and sat on a smaller dais in front of her. Ixiaral found a small mat and sat cross-legged beside her mentor and boss.

‘I am completing the list of Punarthai for the Recorder of the Ntshune dynasties. Are you from Punartam, or are you from Cygnus Beta?’

Rafi could not hide his confusion. ‘I am originally from Cygnus Beta, as you know, Esteemed Patrona.’

‘Yes, Rafi, we do know, but you must choose a single place of origin while you are here,’ Ixiaral explained.

Rafi sat and pondered. On Cygnus Beta he had the benefit of adult status, but on Punartam he had the benefit of not being on the government’s wanted list. ‘Punartam,’ he said firmly. ‘That makes sense. Ixiaral’s still my nexus, isn’t she?’

‘Things are different here,’ Ixiaral said. ‘I no longer have my old networks, and I need to see where they will place me in the new structure.’

‘In other words,’ the Patrona said, ‘Ixiaral’s speciality is spotting opportunities to make money off the Game to fund our research, and that skill isn’t needed now. The dynasty has work for her in another area, if she is prepared to take it up.’

Ixiaral tensed, as if bracing for either good news or bad. The Patrona simply smiled at her, a small but proud smile, and Ixiaral glowed, apparently understanding the unspoken message and finding it very much to her liking.

‘But you, Rafi, have a skill that makes you a valuable part of the Transit Project research team,’ the Patrona continued. ‘It is to our credit to claim you as ours.’

‘Claim me. Would that entail a kin contract?’

The Patrona looked a little amused and a little surprised. Ixiaral laughed and said, ‘What do you know about kin contracts?’

‘Not much,’ Rafi admitted. ‘I had some very basic guides and a not very helpful friend explain them to me, and I thought at first they were the same as marriages. But I’ve done more research since then and I realise they can be adoptions, or business partnerships, or diplomatic allegiance.’

The Patrona nodded cautiously. ‘And to whom do you wish to be contracted?’

‘Well, you, I suppose. Is that all right?’

Ixiaral cast down her eyes and folded her lips, whether in contemplation or suppressed laughter, he could not tell. The Patrona merely stared at him for a while before picking up a stylus and tapping something into a screen.

‘Let us put you down as “under consideration for full kin contract to the Haneki dynasty, on limited kin contract for five years”. You still have a lot to learn, Rafi. When you have learned it, you may begin the process of application to the Haneki dynasty.’

*

Of
course
I had to tease Rafi about his new status . . . after I stopped gaping and choking and flailing about in disbelief. I was relieved to discover that he now knew enough about kin contracts not to embarrass himself, but completely discombobulated when he told me he’d offered himself to be contracted to the Patrona. ‘
You?
’ I said, then thrashed about on the floor of his studio in an extended seizure of near-death dramatics. He picked up a cushion and hit me a few times, but half-heartedly.

‘For how long? Five minutes? For what purpose? To tidy her workroom?’ I laughed loudly until he thumped me with more vigour.

I tried to get hold of myself. ‘But seriously, Moo, the Hanekis are big on Punartam because they’re big on Ntshune. Don’t be the callow Terran homesteader about this. You’ve been useful to them in the past and if you can be useful to them now – well, good. Make sure it’s all to your credit, but be sensible and don’t overreach yourself.’

He gave me a sceptical frown. ‘You’re one to talk. Why do they want you to go to Zhinu A?’

I smiled proudly. ‘I, too, can be useful, my dear Moo. All my below-ground shadow-market shenanigans are bearing fruit with the Zhinuvians – who, by the way, are less keen about doing business in the shadow of cartel-occupied Academes. Some of my old colleagues have relocated to Zhinu A, and so our little galactic enterprise continues to expand.’

I saw he looked uninterested, so I made it clearer. ‘Trade, Moo. There are always commercial aspects to transits, especially when speed matters far more than quantity. You might say my padr and his rivals pioneered what could become the standard for micro-merchandise logistics. The Patrona is going to negotiate some kind of agreement with the planetary authority while I and my colleagues will be allowed to feel out the microtech magnates.’

We did a little mutual congratulatory chest-slapping and arm-clasping: he patted my new partnership pin that symbolised my padr’s faith in me, and I gripped the skin-filigree vambraces that were his accoutrements for his new status.

‘You’ll be back soon?’ he asked abruptly.

He looked a little lost, and I recalled that we had been together on three planets for almost three Standard years. It
would
be strange to be going somewhere without him. ‘I hope so,’ I said slowly. ‘It depends. I’ll probably be travelling a lot. In and out and about.’

He nodded. I tried to cheer him up.

‘Don’t worry, Moo. I’ll hand over to Serendipity. If she’s not too busy with the mindships, I’m sure she’ll keep an eye on you.’

He tried a half-smile. ‘And vice versa.’

I said farewell soon after, leaving him to his quarters in the Transit Project domain. Although I saw him frequently as one or the other of us passed through Ntshune or Cygnus Beta, it would be several years before we were once more settled in the same place at the same time, years in which we would have plenty of opportunities to build up our accoutrements, our credit and our reputations.

*

Their first morning of real work was a preliminary briefing in the large central hall of the project’s domain. The project coordinator, who was younger than Rafi had expected, was a Punarthai academic called Isahenalaatye. He looked at the mixed group of Wallrunners, coaches and nexuses representing various degrees of the telepathic, the empathic and the academic. He smiled at them all bravely and unfurled his map into the space above their heads. They gazed upwards in wonderment, watching the sparkle and spin of a new view of their corner of the galaxy.

‘These are the old transit points. Some are known to be operational. Others may be a risk.’

Heads turned, stern stares regarded him.

‘Not to worry,’ he said cheerfully. ‘We’re going on established runs first. Sadira. Ain. Zhinu A hasn’t authorised the reopening of their surface transit just yet. In the meantime, we’re working on creating new transits using one of their moons. That’s a challenge. We’ve practised biodome set-up on Sadira, but that’s easy because their transit’s old and very stable. Setting up biodomes with a fresh new transit – that’s a risk.’

‘If I hear this word
risk
one more time,’ Oestengeryok murmured to Rafi.

‘He said Ain. Are we really going to Ain? Isn’t Ain cut off?’ Rafi whispered back, distracted from worry by excitement.

‘Why does that holo look so strange,’ Serendipity asked, tilting her head from side to side as she tried to assess the angles.

‘It’s a three-dimensional projection of a four-dimensional space,’ Oesten said, also tilting his head. ‘Pay no attention to the topography. The only thing that concerns us is the network of lines that connect transit to transit. And yes, Rafi, we can go to Ain. We’re not approaching their orbit; we’ll be arriving on the surface. The navigational issues won’t affect us.’

‘If I could have your full attention?’ Isahenalaatye entreated. ‘Continuing the established runs – Cygnus Beta, Terra, Punartam . . .’

Rafi leaned in to Oesten. ‘Did he say Terra?’ The quiet question was both drowned and echoed in a murmur that filled the room.

Someone near the back spoke up at last. ‘Who authorised Terra?’ she asked directly.

Isahena smiled a sunny little smile which deepened slightly at the corners with sarcasm. ‘Everyone. Almost everyone. Zhinu A abstained.’

‘But why? Why break the embargo now?’

Nervous laughter swept through the room, but Isahena’s face sobered. ‘The Terran embargo is a myth, I’m afraid. Research from the Punarthai Academes has been confirmed by our colleagues from Zhinu A. A group of minor Zhinuvian cartels have been operating on Terra for over two centuries.’

Dead silence. Everyone assumed Zhinuvian interference in Terran affairs; no one had guessed it was of such long duration. Isahena lowered his gaze slightly. ‘In fact, to be truthful, none of us can claim to have been entirely innocent of breaking the embargo. However, it has become clear that these Zhinuvians have crossed the boundary and interfered to a degree that cannot be overlooked. We must have an open transit on Terra or consider it ceded to Zhinu.’