Transformation Space (23 page)

Sirens were blaring now, alerting the town to an emergency. Inside the houses com-soles would be ’casting images of Thales
and Fariss to the occupants.

An ’esque appeared in the doorway through which the children had disappeared. He carried a weapon.

‘Get on yer way!’ he bellowed.

Fariss squared her shoulders, and Thales felt her tension escalate. Her body became taut, ready to fight.

Thales straightened and limped forward. ‘We’re looking for a woman named Linnea. A Swestr. A woman – friend of hers – told
us she would help.’

The man glanced back into the shadows in the doorway. He inclined his head towards Fariss and Thales. ‘Inside. Quick.’

Fariss stepped in front of Thales, her hands loose at her sides, fingers flexing. As they crowded into the small entrance,
a woman spoke to them from the shadows of the hall. ‘I’ll take you to a safe place until Linnea comes. She’ll decide.’

Fariss didn’t like it, Thales could tell. He placed his hand in the small of her back and stepped round her bulk so he could
see the woman. The man shut the door behind them.

‘Thank you. The Robes are searching for us. We don’t wish to bring you trouble.’

The woman was round and dark, and her Scolar accent was clipped, less cultured than his. She wore soft boots, loose pants
and a collared shirt as if she’d just got off work.

‘You already did,’ she said without preamble. ‘Come.’

They followed her through the dully pigmented corridor, straight to the back of the house and into a neatly paved yard. The
automated gate swung open at her request, and she hurried along an equally tidy paved laneway.

They could hear the Robes clearly. They were broadcasting a warning message along the streets and banging
on doors. Thales glimpsed two of them between houses. They had their weapons raised and were engaged in animated conversation.

The woman began to jog.

Thales tried to keep up with her, but his body was close to collapse. Fariss fell back and linked her arm with his.

‘Just a little further,’ she whispered. ‘Then we can rest.’

He thought of Mira Fedor – how she’d escaped the Post-Species world and the Saqr invasion. From somewhere he dragged up determination.
Mira had no one and nothing, and yet she’d survived. He was blessed with Fariss. He would not let her down. He pulled his
arm from her support and quickened his pace again.

The dark was upon them when the woman stopped abruptly. She leaned forward, panting into a comm. The gates to another yard
opened, and she hurried them through before they closed again.

From what Thales could see they were in an almost identical yard. Soft garden light lit their way towards the house, but the
woman deviated from the path and squatted down among some well-pruned bushes. ‘Quiet as you can,’ she said. ‘Don’t want those
inside knowing you’re here.’

Thales opened his mouth to ask where they were going, but he shut it again. The woman was nothing if not decisive. Like Fariss.

‘Hold hands,’ she ordered. She grasped Thales’s fingers, her own cool and dry against his. He reached out for Fariss, and
she engulfed his hand with her huge
grip. The woman inched into the dark shrubbery along the side of the house.

They stopped and started a few times, bumping into each other. Branches brushed their legs, and the ground became uneven.

Finally, she stopped and let go of Thales’s hand to kneel down in front of a large shadowy object.

Thales could hear rather than see her push the bushes aside from it: the soft crack of the breaking twigs, her even softer
cursing. And then faint scraping noises as she turned some type of pump handle.

Fariss was still holding his hand. Her grip tightened when lights flooded the yard. She pulled Thales down into the cover
of the bushes in the time it took him to comprehend what had happened.

Voices drifted around the side to them, clear and curt. ‘We’ve not seen your runaways here, Politic.’ The voice sounded honest
and anxious – an older man.

The woman had done the right thing by not taking them into the house.

‘Stand aside while we inspect your yard,’ said the robe in reply.

‘Mind the garden,’ said the homeowner. ‘We supply the Sophos offices with lilies. Wouldn’t do to damage them.’

‘Where’s your wife?’ asked the robe, ignoring the man’s warning.

‘She’s at work. Won’t be home till the dinner’s cleaned up.’

‘Work?’

‘The Mount Clement clinic.’

‘Scrubber?’

The man didn’t answer immediately. ‘Galley supervisor,’ he said eventually.

Thales felt a tug on his arm, then the woman’s mouth close to his ear. ‘Get … down … in here.’ Her words were so faint he
barely heard them.

He pulled his hand from Fariss’s and reached forward. The soil crumbled away and he felt a smooth edge of catoplasma.

‘Hurry,’ she whispered again.

Thales contorted his body round and slipped his legs over the edge as the Robes left the veranda. His feet dangled for a moment
before connecting with a ledge, and beneath it another ledge – a rough stairway of some kind built into the catoplasma, leading
to an underground chamber.

He climbed down as quickly as he could, not wanting Fariss to be left in the open. Within moments, her large feet were following
him. As soon as her head was below the catoplasma lip, the opening closed, and they lost all light.

They both landed in a tumble on the dry floor. Neither of them spoke as they disentangled their limbs from each other and
listened.

Silence from above.

‘OK, hon?’ whispered Fariss eventually.

Her concern had its usual anaesthetising effect. Somehow, it meant more to him than any of Rene’s slightly patronising attentions
ever had.

‘What is this?’ she asked.

‘Underground water tank, I think,’ he said. ‘All the houses had them in my hometown as well. They pipe the catoplasma into
the ground and blow it out so it
forms a bubble. It sets hard, and then they siphon rainwater in.’

‘They safe?’

‘I’ve never been inside one before.’ He thought about it for a moment; remembered his father making him wait a distance from
the house when theirs had been installed. ‘I suppose so. The problem is the displacement. When they expand the catoplasma
they run other pipes to suck the soil out. Usually the catoplasma moulds to the terrain. But sometimes there’s a fault or
a subsidence, and the whole thing shifts. I’ve heard of them cracking under significant uneven pressure.’

‘Significant pressure, eh? Let’s hope we don’t get none of that.’

‘What do we do now?’

Fariss reached for him and pulled him against her. ‘Wait, I’d say. At least for a while.’

He moved closer and relaxed against her hard body. She smelled sweaty and stale, and wonderful.

Her hands slipped inside his robe, stroking his skin. He lay passively in her arms. Fear and exhaustion and claustrophobia
seeped away.

They were taken to a cabin high in the ship’s structure. Despite the residual head and body ache from imperfect shift, Balbao
took in as much of the surroundings as he could. This was a battleship, fully serviceable and worn from recent business, not
something dragged from retirement because of the invasion. He noticed little signs – the well-lubed hatches and the working
shelf locks.

Because of his observations, he had less of a surprise than the tyros when the captain turned out to be Lasper Farr, Commander
of the Stain Wars.

Not all the tyros
. He amended that thought. Ra of Lostol showed little reaction, and Labile Connit looked unhappy rather than shocked.

Lasper Farr, like all infamous ’esques, was less impressive in person than in myth. Balbao took in the lean, almost gaunt
figure. Though he looked unimposing, something about him made Balbao entirely uncomfortable. It would be wrong, he thought,
to underestimate him.

Farr looked along the line of them and offered Miranda a seat. His greeting cabin was sparse and functional: a table and attached
seats. He did not ask the rest of them to sit.

‘Let me guess,’ he said. ‘Dicter Seeward and Lawmon Jise. But who are you?’

Balbao shifted under the penetrating gaze. ‘Belle-Monde’s Chief Astronomien. Balbao.’

‘Ahh, of course. So pleased you didn’t disintegrate with your world, Balbao. Would be a shame to lose such an excellent scientist.’

The Balol didn’t believe for a moment that he meant what he said. Commander Farr, he’d already decided, cared little for strangers.

But Balbao would not be intimidated. ‘This is Ra of Lostol and Labile—’

‘Connit,’ finished Farr quietly. ‘I know my own son, Chief Balbao. And Ra and I … have worked together on projects before.’

Many glances were exchanged in the shocked silence that followed his statement – two revelations that almost made Balbao wish
that he’d perished on Belle-Monde. Had he been harbouring a member of Consilience? What mischief had Labile wrought? And Ra?
Why had he been conspiring with Farr? His thoughts swirled in a way that made it difficult to extract answers.

Ra spoke first. ‘Where is the device, Lasper? We must locate Sole.’

Farr’s face grew pinched with irritation. ‘No thank you, Ra? No heartfelt gratitude for the risk taken by me and my ship to
keep you alive?’

Ra stared at him steadily, his multicoloured insect eyes shining in the cabin light. ‘It was not me you came to save, Lasper.
It was your son.’

‘Don’t underestimate your value to me,’ replied Farr, letting his lips curl into a small unreadable smile.

Ra relaxed a little.

Labile Connit, on the other hand, looked as Balbao felt: sick and tense, but not about to be trodden on. ‘You are not my father,’
he insisted.

Farr regarded him steadily. ‘You may not like it, Labile, but it’s the truth.’

‘Good Sole!’ exclaimed Miranda. ‘What a pretty state of affairs. I’m sure there is much to be caught up on, but firstly …
thank you, Commander Farr. Can you tell us, are we quite safe now? Where are we?’

Her brash interruption diverted Farr’s attention.

‘We managed to evade the Post-Species by using imperfect shift. We have taken casualties because of it. Not all the buffers
withstood the untested vibration.’

‘A bold but necessary move, Commander,’ said Ra.

Farr was unimpressed by Ra’s declaration. ‘Our
only
choice. The Post-Species have obliterated the systems they have reached. Those who heeded the alarms have closed their spheres.
But I must thank
you
, Dicter Seeward. The virus you created was quite a success on Scolar, I believe. And because of that, their shift sphere
is still open. We are on our way there now.’

Every exposed piece of Miranda’s flesh turned pink. ‘We are going to Scolar?’

All heads turned to her.

‘Miranda?’ said Jise. ‘What does the Commander mean?’

Grim satisfaction settled on Lasper Farr’s face. What did he know about Miranda Seeward, Balbao wondered, that even her colleague
and lover Lawmon Jise did not?

‘I would give you time to discuss your issues privately.’ Farr nodded at the guards.

They moved forward to escort Jise, Seeward, Ra and Balbao out of the room, leaving Connit.

Connit baulked, not wanting to be left with his father.

Ra, on the other hand, had no wish to leave the Commander’s presence, and jerked from their grasp. ‘Where is the device, Lasper?’

Farr’s lips pinched tight. ‘It’s gone. But you will make another for me soon.’

‘Gone? But I’d need equipment, and—’

Two simple arm movements from Farr decreed they all leave his presence, and Ra was unable to finish.

Balbao marched between the guards, grateful to be away from Farr, but his relief faded quickly when he saw where they were
to be left.

‘We are not criminals,’ said Lawmon Jise to the guards. ‘We are refugees whom your Commander chose to take aboard. How dare
you treat us like this?’ The tyro was so outraged that he let go of Miranda’s arm to push the guard.

A cuff from the soldier sent him sprawling into the containment cell. The rest of the refugees entered in shocked quiet, at
gunpoint. Even Miranda was silent as she hurried over to Jise.

The containment field engaged, and they found themselves in a sparse space furnished with narrow fold-down bunks and a fold-down
module that served as both washroom and san. There was no privacy, and the cell was already inhabited.

Two of the oldest ’esques Balbao had ever seen sat together on a single bunk. One, a woman with an impossibly
lined face and an oddly toned physique, stared openly at them. The other, a man almost as aged, gazed after the guards.

The woman got up and came over, hand outstretched. ‘Call me Samuelle. This is Jeremiah Hob. Whatever you’ve all done to piss
Lasper off, I’m real grateful.’

Balbao and the others stared at her.

‘See, he’s plannin’ to kill us. Then he had to go off dodging Extros to catch up with you all. We’re bettin’ he’s had too
much else on his mind to think about us,’ she explained.

The male ’esque, Hob, slid off his bunk and began unfolding the others. ‘Too much tellin’, Sammy. Let ’em catch their breath.’

He hobbled over to Jise and offered him a hand. ‘Let’s get you up on a bed.’

OLOSS’s most vaunted lawmon accepted the gnarled hand, and was helped to a bunk. ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Jise in a shaky voice.
‘Please excuse our disarray; we’ve had rather a rough time of it.’

‘When you’re ready,’ said Hob, ‘we’d like to hear about it, and about what’s happening out there. Could be our stories might
interest you too. Could be we can help each other.’

Balbao was taken with the old fellow’s dignified manner, as, he could tell, was Jise.

‘Take a bunk,’ Balbao suggested to the others.

Everyone did so, except Ra, who paced the length of the containment. The old woman, Sammy, watched him, clearly fascinated
by the Godhead’s strange appearance.

‘Where in the name of Crux did you get those eyes? Thought I’d seen everythin’, but I ain’t seen nothing like them,’ she said.