Engineman (15 page)

Max said, "But only in the early days?"

Ella stared at a forkful of rice, smeared with egg yolk. "Later, he claimed he didn't need the Church. So he stopped going."

"There comes a time when all the ritual is no longer a replacement for what we've lost, just a painful, nagging reminder." Max smiled at her, then asked gently, as if he knew, "What happened to him, Ella?"

She looked up from her food. "A couple of days ago... he just left in his flier and drove straight smack bang into the fucking interface at Orly. There was nothing I could do."

"He's in a better place now, Ella," Max murmured.

"
Yeah
," Ella wanted to say, "
but look where I am
." Instead she shrugged. "Like I was saying, I started going to services with him, and they kind of made sense... Perhaps I needed something to believe in at that time. They had counsellors, welfare workers."

Jerassi looked up. "Paris, you say? The converted smallship, Montparnasse?"

Ella stared at him, to show that she knew what he was doing. "Yeah, the one on the Rue Renoir - all night services, all day counselling sessions. Guy called D'Alamassi runs it. You been there?"

Jerassi smiled. "About twelve years ago, when it was just starting up. D'Alamassi was in charge then, too."

Ella pushed her empty plate away, feeling as though she'd scored a point.

Max rocked his chair back so that it rested against the wall. He regarded Ella. "So, Eddie unites with the ultimate and you decide to come to the Reach. But why here? Hadn't you heard the rumours about the Organisation persecuting E-men and Disciples?"

She shook her head. "There's nothing on the news on Earth. I didn't hear any rumours. When I got to A-Long-Way-From-Home, someone there said the Danzig planets were restricting the movement of E-women, E-men and Disciples, but that's all."

"Why did you want to come here in the first place?" Max asked.

Ella had hoped they might have forgotten that question. "I lived on the Reach for a few years when I was younger. When Eddie died... it just seemed the right thing to do." She stared from one Disciple to the next, defying them to disbelieve her. Rodriguez was bent low over a second helping of rice, watching Max. Jerassi, the quiet, shy one, stared at his plate without meeting her gaze.

"I take it you were with your parents when you lived here?" Max asked.

"My father. My mother died when I was two. Father worked for a Terran engineering company," she went on, staring at Max, challenging him to call her a liar. "We moved around a lot when I was young. I liked the Reach. I always wanted to come back."

Max stared at her, as if considering his next line of interrogation. "For the past few months," he began, "every E-man and -woman, every Disciple, trying to enter Danzig territory, has either been turned back or arrested. Those suspected of supporting insurrection in the past have been 'arrested and placed in military custody' - a euphemism, I assure you, for executed. For two months, Hennessy's Reach has been, effectively, a closed planet. Only Danzig Officials can come and go as they wish. Then yesterday you suddenly turn up. You sail through all the checks and enter the Reach as if it were a fun park... You must admit that it does look more than a little suspicious."

Ella thought back to Carey's Sanctuary, and the interest the official had taken on finding out the name of her father.

She shrugged. "They put someone on my trail when I left the 'port," she reminded them. "Perhaps they assumed I was meeting fellow Disciples and they wanted to round them up?" She spread her hands in a frustrated gesture. "I don't know. Shit, I have no idea what's going on here. I came for a quiet holiday, and the next thing I know I'm followed, rescued, drugged, then given the fifth degree."

She stared at Max. "Can you tell me what the hell's going on here, Mr Klien?"

Before he could answer, Conchita entered the room and hurriedly swept the used plates and utensils into a bowl on her hip. The little girl padded up to Rodriguez. "Dada-"

"Not now, Maria. Okay?" He patted her bottom and sent her running off into the kitchen.

Max brought his chair forward to rest on all four legs, clasped his hands together and regarded Ella. "Eleven, twelve years ago we - the Enginemen and Disciples of the Reach - formed ourselves into underground cells and began a campaign of armed resistance to the rule of the Danzig Organisation. We hit strategic command structures across the Reach, military depots, ports and airports. We singled out influential members of the Danzig hierarchy to be assassinated, and in a number of cases we were successful. In the past year we have become such a threat that the Organisation have taken retaliatory action."

As Max spoke, Ella glanced at Rodriguez and Jerassi, seeing them no longer as representatives of a harassed and victimised religious minority, but as ruthless guerrilla fighters.

She recalled the convoy she'd seen leave Carey's Sanctuary for the Reach, the tanks and the nuclear rocket launchers.

"But the military build-up I saw...? Against a guerrilla network?"

Max said, "The Organisation's offensive is not directed at us, Ella."

She looked from Max to Rodriguez and Jerassi. They remained impassive, staring at the table-top.

"I don't understand."

"Why do you think suddenly, twelve years ago, we took up arms and declared war on the Danzig Organisation?"

Ella shrugged. "Because they were - still are - a totalitarian regime that keeps the people of the Reach oppressed and economically disabled."

Max smiled. "Oh, we have far more than the mere liberation of the planet in mind."

Ella had to laugh. "But what can be more important that the liberation of the Reach?"

"We took up the fight against the Organisation because of their treatment of the Lho-Dharvo."

She shook her head. "What do you mean?"

"Eleven years ago they designed and released the Lho-specific virus that in three years wiped out the majority of the Lho-Dharvo on the four continents of the Reach."

Ella was aware of a sudden and dizzying rush of blood to her head, and the amplified thud of her heartbeat pounding around her body. In the silence that followed she heard the sound of birdsong from beyond the open door.

"We had contacts within the Organisation, and our own medical experts," Max went on. "We tried to get our findings to the United Colonies forum on Earth, but our delegation was arrested before it reached Earth, and murdered. The Organisation covered their tracks, responding to rumours by inviting UC representatives to the Reach to investigate the plague. But they were very clever. The infection had all the appearances of being the result of a naturally mutating virus, and of course the Organisation was never incriminated. Would you believe that they were actually praised by the investigation team for their work in identifying and isolating the virus?"

"But
why
? Why would they...?"

"The Lho were - are - on our side, actively fighting for the liberation of the Reach. Because of their knowledge of the planet, they were extremely effective in certain offensive situations. The Organisation took exception."

She recalled something Max had said earlier. "You mentioned that the plague wiped out the
majority
of the Lho - does that mean...?"

"A few hundred resisted the plague and are in hiding in the northern mountains."

Ella felt tears stinging her eyes. "But I thought they'd all died, every last one."

"The Organisation circulated that rumour to scotch any further investigations. But the Lho still survive."

Ella made the connection. "In the northern mountains? That's where the convoy was heading yesterday."

"The Lho are hiding in a massive underground temple complex in the heart of the mountain range," Max said. "For some reason the Organisation are desperate to eradicate the last of the Lho, hence the build-up in the past two months. Don't ask me why, or why they feel they need to use nuclear weapons against a few helpless Lho - but something's happening up there which we can't even begin to guess at. We can only do our paltry best down here to help them."

Max looked from Rodriguez to Jerassi, then back to Ella. "What are your immediate plans?"

The question took her by surprise. Would they allow her to go that easily, just walk away after all they'd told her? She shrugged, suspicious. "I don't know."

Which was, she considered, more or less the truth. She wanted to find her father, but what chance had she of accomplishing this if the Organisation was out to arrest every Disciple?

Max said, "We need your help."

Ella almost laughed. "Mine?"

"Do you think you can manage a long cross-country ride with a passenger?"

She stared at him. "Do I have a choice?"

Max glanced at his compatriots. "We'd like to have you along of your own free will."

"What do you want me to do?"

Max looked at his watch. "You and I will be heading out in just under three hours. You'll take me to our destination and wait under cover for me to get back. Emilio and Dave are setting out before then, to meet me later."

"And if I don't agree to your little plan?"

Max smiled at her. "I think you will, Ella. What other options do you have left?"

Ella considered his words. Indeed, what were her options now? Better she helped the Disciples than go her own way in a hostile land. After all, Max and his cell were fighting for a worthy cause. She could always go along with the Disciples, and later attempt to locate her father.

She considered what Max had told her about the Organisation's responsibility for the plague, but she shut her mind to the thought that her father had had anything to do with the genocide of the Lho.

She said, "Very well, then. Okay"

One hour later, Ella and Max were putting the finishing touches to the trail bike when Rodriguez and Jerassi appeared from the house. They were wearing the light blue uniforms of 'port maintenance staff. Conchita followed them, holding her daughter. Ella wiped her hands on a rag, watching as Rodriguez took his daughter from Conchita, swung her through the air and hugged her to him. The little girl giggled, the sound fluctuating through the warm air. Then he kissed his wife in a silence more eloquent than any farewell.

The two Disciples waved across at Ella and Max, then set off along the path that wound down the hillside through the jungle. Conchita picked up her daughter and walked to the top of the track, stood and watched them go.

Ella threw down the rag and joined them.

The woman smiled shyly. "It is more difficult for those who stay behind. The constant worry..."

"Have faith," Ella said. She glanced at the woman's arm, expecting to see an infinity symbol tattoo.

Conchita said, "No, I'm not a Disciple." She looked from Ella's tattoo to her shoulders. "You were never an Enginewoman, and yet you believe?

Ella shrugged. "I have faith," she began, but left it at that. She looked up at Conchita and said, "You must have some belief? Are you Catholic?"

Conchita laughed. "I have no belief - or rather I believe in my husband, in my daughter." She bounced Maria on her hip and kissed the little girl. "The love I have for Emilio and Maria is enough. And you? Besides your faith, do you have special people?"

Ella smiled. "I had. Eddie was an Engineman. He gave himself to the interface. And my father... I haven't seen him for ten years." She shrugged. "We didn't get on..."

To her surprise, Conchita hugged her with her free arm. "You seem so lost, Ella. I hope you find your way."

She smiled at Ella and then carried her daughter into the house.

Ella returned to her room, to change from her silversuit into jeans, a t-shirt and the jacket the courier had given her. She stepped outside, sat in an old armchair on the porch and stared down the hillside towards the coast.

One of the factors that had made Ella decide to leave her father when she was fifteen - indeed, the
main
factor - was the simple fact of his lack of affection. There were many other reasons, a catalogue of specific incidents, acts of thoughtlessness or deliberate instances of cruelty - one in particular involving L'Endo which she could not bring herself to dwell on - but she understood that these acts of unkindness were merely the result of her father being unable to feel towards her the simple love and affection that should unite father and daughter. For instance, Ella could not once recall her father picking her up and hugging her when she was a child. Her upbringing had been left to the care of a series of nannies and minders. Her father had been a stern, saturnine figure who lived a separate life in his own suite of rooms during her early years. From the age of five until twelve, she'd attended a boarding school on the Rim world of Jet, and in that time her father had turned up just twice to take her on holiday, and on each occasion she had spent most of the vacation with her minder. At twelve, on her father's posting to the Reach, he had installed her in a day school in Zambique, within commuting distance of their villa in the Falls. Her father stayed at the villa perhaps one week in six, but by that time years of separation had taken their toll, and they had acted towards each other as strangers.