‘Do we ever get what we really want? How about you, Mr Ifrahim? After all you’ve done, do you think you’ve been properly rewarded?’
‘After this, I’m going to retire. Captain Neves and I will go back to Earth. We’ll marry, and set up a consultation business in Brasília. Have you ever been to Brasília, Miz Minnot? Some people don’t like the climate - they say it’s too hot, too dry. Others say that it is too crowded. But if you have enough money, it is a fine place to live.’
‘I’m sure you’ll be very happy.’
‘I haven’t been back to Earth since the war. I look forward to returning very much.’
‘Why don’t you tell me what you want from me, Mr Ifrahim? Or did you come to simply to gloat?’
‘You think I have some kind of nefarious plan.’
‘I’m going by past experience.’
Loc smiled at this sally, feeling something akin to affection. Sri Hong-Owen had once asked him if he’d believed in fate. He certainly believed that you couldn’t choose where and when you were born; perhaps that was fate or perhaps it was nothing more than chance, but after that, your life was what you made of it. Still, it was hard not to imagine that fate, or something like it, had twisted his life and the life of Macy Minnot around each other. A spiral like DNA’s double helix. Complementary pairs. She his dark half. The shadow to his light.
He said, ‘I didn’t want to come here. I was ordered to accompany the diplomatic team because Euclides Peixoto, who I am sure you remember, wanted someone to observe their work, and also wanted to punish me. So here I am. An observer. I have no part in the negotiations. No influence on Miz Póvoas, or the people to whom she reports. But that doesn’t mean that I want these talks to come to nothing. Let me share something with you, if I may. Officially, the TPA does not differentiate between you and the Ghosts. Unofficially, there are some people who appreciate your difficult and delicate relationship with neighbours who are more numerous, better equipped, and highly aggressive.’
‘And they care why?’
‘You have every reason to mistrust the TPA, of course. But times change. The attack on the Uranus System was the initiative of an egomaniac who suffered the ultimate punishment for his intemperate action. And there are some of us who believe that it isn’t in our interests to go to war against the Ghosts, let alone you. If we can take one thing away from this meeting, it’s the opportunity to continue a conversation.’
‘Go back to Earth, Mr Ifrahim. Have a nice life there - why not? But stop trying to play God.’
‘I’m sharing a few observations with you, Miz Minnot. I mean no harm by them.’
They stared at each other like lovers seeing each other naked for the first time. Then Macy Minnot shrugged. ‘Talk doesn’t mean anything anyway,’ she said. ‘We talked to Tommy Tabagee, and it got us nowhere.’
‘Oh, I don’t think that’s true. You invested considerable time and effort setting up this habitat so that you could talk with the TPA.’
‘We want to find a way of making peace with the TPA. That means something more than just talking about it.’
‘If you don’t talk, you’ll never reach any kind of agreement,’ Loc said, and pushed off from the platform and sculled away down a long spar, heading towards the pod he shared with Captain Neves.
Halfway there, Sada Selene stooped down on him. Falling out of thin air, checking her momentum by catching hold of one of the nylon loops strung along the spar, swinging around in a somersault and landing on her feet in front of him like a pirate boarding a captive vessel. Tall and slim and imperious in her clean white suit-liner, her smile knife-thin.
‘I really wouldn’t count on Macy Minnot, if I were you,’ she said. ‘I don’t think she’s forgiven you for what happened at Rainbow Bridge.’
‘And has she forgiven you for kidnapping her?’
‘She’s learned to live with it. All the Free Outers have had to learn to live with us. We’re all there is out here.’
‘Yet they are equal partners in these talks.’
‘They have their uses. You talk more readily with them than with us, for one thing. And you probably wouldn’t have come all the way out here to meet only with us.’
‘If who we can and cannot meet was ever up to you, I’m sure you’d be right.’
‘You told Idriss Barr that there was nothing inevitable about the future,’ she said. ‘Yes, of course we were listening to your conversation. We listen to everything.’
‘I had never thought otherwise.’
‘You’re wrong about the future. It is what it is. And we will do whatever we have to do to make it come out right. Remember that,’ Sada Selene said, and kicked away, arrowing past Loc towards the spherical black tangle of the tree at the heart of the little world, where the Ghosts had made their camp.
Loc thought that it was only an idle threat. One of many such that Sada Selene had made. He should have known better.
Loc was woken by Captain Neves in the small hours of the night. She told him that the Ghosts were gone. They’d disabled the spyware sown by the diplomats, stuck portable airlocks to the wall of the habitat, and bailed. Most had crossed to their ship; two had tried to sneak aboard the Brazilian freighter and they’d blown themselves up when marines intercepted them, damaging the hull. Part of the life system was in vacuum. Emergency repairs were being made and the ship was preparing to get under way.
‘We’re leaving right now, before anything else happens,’ Captain Neves said. Her face, set in a grim expression, looked ashen in the greenish light of the little pod. The spike of a short-range radio was jammed in her right ear.
‘Something has already happened to the ship. Shouldn’t we stay here until it’s fixed?’
‘It’s an order, not a suggestion,’ Captain Neves said, and pushed Loc through the slit in the pod’s wall.
The habitat’s constellations of wandering lights had been switched off; the volume of airy darkness was defined by the faint pastel glow of the pods scattered along the spars and pools of bright light playing across the outer skin as maintenance drones searched for evidence of sabotage. Captain Neves kicked away from the pod, towing Loc towards the big net strung in front of the main airlock, where a squad of marines suited up in battle armour were watching the Free Outers pull on their pressure suits.
Loc grabbed a line at the edge of the net, hauled himself along it to the marine captain, and asked him what was going on.
The captain stared at Loc through the gold-tinted faceplate of his helmet and said through the suit’s external speaker, ‘We’re keeping them for your protection, sir.’
‘As hostages? That’s not a good idea, Captain. They had nothing to do with this incredibly stupid action of the Ghosts,’ Loc said, speaking loudly so that the Free Outers could hear him. ‘What’s more, the Ghosts care as much for these people as they care for us. Or for themselves, for that matter. Which is to say, they care not one whit if they live or die.’
‘Get your suit, sir. We’re evacuating the habitat now.’
‘Let them go, Captain. We don’t need hostages, but we may need their goodwill.’
‘Get inside with the other civilians. We’re about to evacuate all of you.’
Loc barged through the people crowded into the bubble of the airlock’s antechamber and confronted Sara Póvoas, asked her if she approved of taking the Free Outers prisoner.
‘I might have known you’d take their side,’ she said.
‘I’m trying to make sure we do the right thing,’ Loc said.
‘You’re trying to salvage some kind of deal with them, so that you can line your pockets,’ Sara Póvoas said. ‘Don’t think I haven’t seen what you’ve been up to, Mr Ifrahim.’
‘Perhaps I can succeed where you have failed, Miz Póvoas.’
Loc would have said more, but Captain Neves grabbed hold of him, spun him around and shoved him towards the rack where his pressure suit hung, forked open down the chest by its big double zip like a man split by an axe, and told him to put it on.
‘They’re making a bad mistake,’ Loc said.
‘No need to make it worse,’ Captain Neves said.
Braced against each other, they stripped down to their suit-liners, fastened up their pressure suits and checked their lifepacks. Marines started to call out names and escorted the diplomats through the airlock one by one. Loc and Captain Neves were being left to last - deliberately, in Loc’s opinion. Dread congealed in his belly, thick and heavy as nausea.
Through the transparent wall of the antechamber, the Free Outers in their variously coloured pressure suits were balancing like acrobats on the rippling net, while marines turtled up in heavy black battle armour clutched lines and tried to keep their pulse rifles trained on them. Loc thought to switch on the common band, heard Idriss Barr explaining to the marine captain that his people would not leave except in their own ship.
The captain cut him off, told him his people were all prisoners of war, and said that if they didn’t line up now and obey orders he’d shoot one of them as an example to the rest.
‘I cannot permit that,’ Idriss Barr said.
‘You have no choice,’ the captain said.
Idriss Barr laughed. ‘Of course I do.’
All around, above and below and around its equator, panels blew away from the habitat’s skin. The spiderweb framework flexed and shuddered and the spherical volume was filled with whirlpools of mist that spun and thinned and vanished, sucked through the open panels into the vacuum of space. The powerful lights of the drones tumbled away, leaving only the dim glow of the pods, dabs of pink and orange in a vast black volume.
Inside the airlock’s antechamber, Loc clung to Captain Neves, his breath rattling inside his helmet, watching with stark disbelief as the marines shone lights wildly all around, catching glimpses of the Free Outers as they flew through empty space, moving fast and straight as arrows, flashing into existence as light caught them for a moment, vanishing into the general darkness. Some of the marines chased after the Outers; others braced against spars or lines and took aim with their pulse rifles. An Outer caught in two overlapping pools of light plunged through a black gap and vanished a moment before a bolt struck the lip of the hole and that part of the wall exploded outwards like a flower, long rips extending away in every direction.
Then one of the marines in the antechamber grabbed Captain Neves and Loc, hauled them through the open inner hatch of the airlock, and slammed it shut behind them. The airlock decompressed with a sharp crack, the outer door swung open, and the marine waiting outside helped them one after the other into the rigid triangle of a sling and clipped the utility belts of their suits to tethers and triggered the sling’s motor.
‘Don’t worry,’ Captain Neves said, as the sling pulled away from the airlock. ‘We’re going to be all right.’
The dark curve of the habitat receded as the sling hauled them along a line stretched towards the freighter, which hung small and sharply detailed in faint sunlight - a little over three kilometres away according to the radar package of Loc’s suit’s, and growing closer at a steady eighteen k.p.h. All around, vast black emptiness spangled with stars. Loc clung to the sling’s frame, his fingers cramping inside heavy gloves. The surf of his breathing was loud inside his helmet; cold dry air feathered across his face. For several minutes, nothing happened apart from the slow expansion of the freighter. He began to believe that they would make it. Then something flashed at the edge of his vision and he turned, clumsy and stiff inside his suit, and saw a second flash light up the habitat from inside. A frozen glimpse of ragged flaps of the habitat’s skin peeling away, the web of internal spars etched in stark shadow against a fading red blossom, and then darkness again.
‘They blew up the habitat,’ Loc said. ‘Someone blew up the habitat.’
‘Ghosts. It’s on the military band. They launched a bunch of drones,’ Captain Neves said, and the sling jolted to a stop and the stars began to wheel around them.
Loc cried out. He couldn’t help it. Beside him, Captain Neves unclipped her tether from the sling’s frame and attached the end to his utility belt. She was reaching past him, trying to unclip his tether, when the line they were travelling along snapped outwards in a great curve, as fast and sudden as a cracked whip. Captain Neves swore and Loc was flung against her so hard that his head jarred inside the padding of his helmet. Everything revolved around him. He glimpsed a blindingly bright star - the freighter, its fusion motor lit, moving through a shoal of red flashes that blinked and faded in random patterns. And then there was another tremendous jolt and he and Captain Neves went spinning away from the sling. His tether had broken loose and Captain Neves’s tether was stretched between them. Stars wheeled all around. Loc felt his gorge rise and sweat pop all over his skin. He closed his eyes, scared that he’d throw up and futz his suit or choke on his own vomit . . .
He felt the tether slacken, and a moment later Captain Neves slammed into him and he grabbed hold of her and a series of short, sharp jolts buffeted him in different directions. Captain Neves was using her reaction pistol to counter their spin.
‘All right,’ she said, and wrapped one arm around his waist. ‘That’s the best I can do . . .’
Loc risked opening his eyes. The stars were still revolving, but at a slow and regular pace now. A stately waltz. Captain Neves was talking, asking for help over and over. Trying different channels, Loc realised. He pulled up his suit’s comms package, began to ask for help too. No reply. Maybe the freighter had moved out of range . . . He looked all around, searching for its star of fusion light, and Captain Neves pulled him close and told him to quit moving about or he’d start them tumbling again.
‘They killed the ship,’ Loc said. He felt that he was at the centre of a great ringing calm.
‘I don’t know. Maybe. Or maybe it shut down its comms when it was attacked,’ Captain Neves said.