The embankment was a solid wall of bitek polyp, a dull apricot in colour, preventing any more of the rich black soil from
being chewed away by the frighteningly large river. It was thrilling to see so much bitek being used; Jay had never met an
Edenist, although back at the arcology Father Varhoos had warned the congregation about them and their soulless technology
of perverted life. But using the polyphere was a good idea, the kernels were cheap, and the coral didn't need constant repairs
the way concrete would. She couldn't see the harm. The whole universe was being turned upside-down this week.
She slid right down the sloping wall to the water itself, and started walking, hoping to see a xenoc fish. The water here
was almost clear. Wavelets lapping on the polyp sent up sprays that showered her bare legs; she was still wearing the shorts
and blouse that her mother had made her carry in the zero-tau pod. A lot of the other colonists in Group Seven had spent the
morning chasing after their gear in one of the warehouses, trying to find more practical clothes.
Everyone had been envious and admiring of her and mother yesterday. That felt good. So much better than the way people back
in the arcology regarded them. She pushed that thought away hurriedly.
Her boots splashed through the shallows, the water droplets slithering off the shiny coating. There were a lot of big pipe
outlets venting into the river, along with the drainage gullies which were like medium-sized streams, so she had to be careful
as she dodged under the pipes not to get splattered by the discharges. Up ahead was one of the circular harbours, six hundred
metres in diameter, also made out of polyp; a refuge where the larger boats could dock in calmer waters. The harbours were
spaced every kilometre or so along the embankment, with clusters of warehouses and timber mills springing up on the ground
behind them. In between the harbours were rows of wooden jetties sticking out into the river, which the smaller traders and
fishing boats used.
The sky was growing darker again. But it wasn't rain, the sun was low in the west. And she was getting very tired, the day
here was awfully long.
She ducked under a jetty, hand stroking the black timber pillars. Mayope wood, her eidetic memory said, one of the hardest
woods found in the Confederation. The tree had big scarlet flowers. She rapped her knuckles against it experimentally. It
really was hard, like a metal, or stone.
Out on the river one of the big paddle-boats was sailing past, churning up a big wake of frothy water as its bows drove against
the current. Colonists were lined up along the rails, and they all seemed to be looking at her. She grinned and waved at them.
Group Seven was sailing tomorrow. The
real
adventure. She stared wistfully after the boat as it slipped away upriver.
That was when she saw the thing caught around a support pillar of the next jetty. A dirty yellow-pink lump, about a metre
long. There was more of it underwater, she could tell from the way it bobbed about. With a whoop, she raced forwards, feet
kicking up fans of water. It was a xenoc fish, or amphibian, or something. Trapped and waiting for her to inspect it. Names
and shapes whirled through her mind, the didactic memory on full recall, trying to match up with what she was seeing.
Maybe it's something new, she thought. Maybe they'll name it after me. I'll be famous!
She was five metres away, and still running as hard as she could, when she saw the head. It was someone in the water, someone
without any clothes on. Face down! The shock threw her rhythm, and her feet skidded from under her. She yelled as her knee
hit the rough, unyielding polyp. She felt a hot pain as she grazed the side of her leg. She finished up flat against the embankment,
legs half in the water, feeling numb all over and sick inside. Blood started to well up in the graze. She bit her lip, eyes
watering as she watched it, fighting not to cry.
A wave lifted the corpse in the river, knocking it against the support pillar again. Through sticky tears Jay saw that it
was a man, all swollen up. His head turned towards her. There was a long purple weal along one cheek. He had no eyes, only
empty holes where they should be. His flesh was rippling. Jay blinked. Long white worms with a million legs were feeding on
the battered flesh. One oozed out of his half-open mouth like a slender anaemic tongue, its tip waving around slowly as though
it was tasting the air.
She threw her head back and screamed.
The rain which came after the sun sank from the sky an hour later that evening was a big help to Quinn Dexter. Between them,
Lalonde's three moons conspired to cast a bright spectral phosphorescence on the night-time city: people could see their way
quite clearly down the slushy streets, but with the thick clouds scudding overhead the light level was drastically reduced.
Durringham didn't have street lighting; individual pubs would floodlight the street outside their entrance, and the bigger
cabins had porch lights, but outside their pools of radiance there was only a faint backscatter of photons. In amongst the
large industrial buildings of the port where Quinn lurked there wasn't even that, only gloom and impenetrable shadows.
He had slipped away from the transients' dormitory after the evening meal, finding himself a concealing gap between a couple
of single-storey outbuildings tacked on to the end of a long warehouse. Jackson Gael was crouched down behind some barrels
on the other side of the path. Behind him was the high blank wall of a mill, slatted wooden planks rearing up like a cliff
face.
There wouldn't be many people wandering around this part of the port at night, and those that did would probably be colonists
waiting for a boat upriver. There was another transients' dormitory two hundred metres to the north. Quinn had decided that
colonists would make the best targets.
The sheriffs would pay more attention to a city resident being mugged than some new arrival who nobody cared about. Colonists
were human cattle to the LDC; and if the dopey bastards hadn't worked that out for themselves, then more fool them. But Jackson
had been right about one thing, the colonists were better off than him. Ivets were the lowest of the low.
They had discovered that yesterday evening. When they finally arrived at the dormitory they were immediately detailed to unload
the lorries they had just loaded at the spaceport. After they finished stacking Group Seven's gear in a harbourside warehouse
a group of them had wandered off into town. They didn't have any money, but that didn't matter, they deserved a break. That
was when they found the grey Ivet jump suit with its scarlet letters acted like a flashing beacon:
Shit on me
. They hadn't got more than a few hundred metres out of the port before they turned tail and hurried back to the dormitory.
They'd been spat on, shouted at, jeered by children, had stones flung at them, and finally someone had let a xenoc animal
charge at them. That had frightened Quinn the most, though he didn't show it to the others. The creature was like a cat scaled
up to dog size; it had jet-black scales and a wedge-shaped head, with a lot of sharp needle teeth in its gaping mouth. The
mud didn't slow it down appreciably as it ran at them, and several Ivets had skidded onto their knees as the group panicked
and ran away.
Worst of all were the sounds the thing made, like a drawn-out whine; but there were words in the cry, strangely twisted by
the xenoc gullet, human words. “City scum,” and “Kid fuckers,” and others that were distorted beyond recognition, yet all
carrying the same message. The
thing
hated them, echoing its master who had laughed as its huge jaws snapped at their running legs.
Back in the dormitory, Quinn had sat down and started to think for the first time since the police stunned him back on Earth.
He had to get off this planet which even God's Brother would reject. To do that he needed information. He needed to know how
the local set-up worked, how to get himself an edge. All the other Ivets would dream about leaving, some must have made attempts
to escape in the past. The biggest mistake he could make would be rushing it. And dressed in his signpost jump-suit, he wouldn't
even be able to scout around.
He had caught Jackson Gael's eye, and flicked his head at the velvet walls of night encircling the dormitory. The two of them
slipped out unnoticed, and didn't return till dawn.
Now he waited crouched against the warehouse wall, stripped down to his shorts, nerves burning with excitement at the prospect
of repeating last night's spree. Rain was drumming on the rooftops and splashing into the puddles and mud of the path, kicking
up a loud din. More water was gurgling down the drainage gully at the side of the warehouse. His skin and hair were soaked.
At least the drops were warm.
The man in the canary-yellow cagoule was almost level with the little gap between the outhouses before Quinn heard him. He
was squelching through the mud, muttering and humming under his breath. Quinn peered out round the corner. His left eye had
been boosted by a nanonic cluster, giving him infrared vision. It was his first implant, and he'd used it for exactly the
same purpose back at the arcology: to give him an edge in the dark. One thing Banneth had taught him was never fight until
you've already won.
The retinal implant showed him a ghostly red figure weaving unsteadily from side to side. Rain showed as a gritty pale pink
mist, the buildings were claret-coloured crags.
Quinn waited until the man had passed the gap before he moved. He slid out onto the path, the length of wood gripped tightly
in his hand. And still the man was unaware of him, rain and blackness providing perfect cover. He took three paces, raised
the improvised club, then slammed it down at the base of the man's neck. The cagoule's fabric tore under the impact. Quinn
felt the blow reverberate all the way back up to his elbows, jarring his joints. God's Brother! He didn't want the man dead,
not yet.
His victim gave a single grunt of pain, and collapsed forwards into the mud.
“Jackson!” Quinn called. “God's Brother, where are you? I can't shift him by myself. Get a move on.”
“Quinn? Christ, I can't see a bloody thing.”
He looked round, seeing Jackson emerge from behind the barrels. His skin shone a strong burgundy in the infrared spectrum,
arteries and veins near the surface showing up as brighter scarlet lines.
“Over here. Walk forward three steps, then turn left.” He guided Jackson up to the body, enjoying the sense of power. Jackson
would follow his leadership, and the others would fall into line.
Together they dragged their victim into the outhouse—Quinn guessed it had been some kind of office, abandoned years ago now.
Four bare wooden slat walls and a roof that leaked. Tapers of slime ran down the walls, fungal growths blooming from the cracks.
There was a strong citric scent in the air. Overhead the clouds were drifting away inland. Be-riana, the second moon, came
out, shining a wan lemon light onto the city, and a few meagre beams filtered through the skylight. They were enough for Jackson
to see by.
Both of them went over to the pile of clothes they had left heaped on a broken composite cargo-pod. Quinn watched Jackson
towelling himself dry. The lad had a strong body, broad shoulders.
“Forget it, Quinn,” Jackson said in a neutral voice, but one that carried in the silence following the rain. “I don't turn
on to that. Strictly het, OK?” It came out like a challenge.
“Hey, don't lose cool,” Quinn said. “I got my eye on someone, and it ain't you.” He wasn't entirely sure he could whip the
lanky lad from a straight start. Besides he needed Jackson. For now.
He started to pull on the clothes which belonged to one of last night's victims, a green short-sleeved shirt and baggy blue
shorts, waterproof boots which were only fractionally too large. Three pairs of socks stopped them from rubbing blisters.
He was strongly tempted to take those boots up-river, he didn't like to think what would happen to his feet in the lightweight
Ivet-issue shoes.
“Right, let's see what we've got,” he said. They stripped the cagoule from the unconscious man. He groaned weakly. His shorts
were soiled, and a ribbon of piss ran out of the cagoule.
Definitely a new colonist, Quinn decided, as he wrinkled his nose up at the smell. The clothes were new, the boots were new,
he was clean shaven; and he had the slightly overweight appearance of an arcology dweller. Locals were nearly always lean,
and most sported longish hair and thick beards.
His belt carried a fission-blade knife, a miniature thermal inducer, and a personal MF flek-player block.
Quinn unclipped the knife and the inducer. “We'll take those with us upriver. They'll come in useful.”
“We'll be searched,” Jackson said. “Anything you like, we'll be searched.”
“So? We stash them in the colonists' gear. We'll be the ones that load it onto the boat, we'll be the ones that unload it
at the other end.”
“Right.”
Quinn thought he heard a grudging respect in the lad's voice. He started frisking the man's pockets, hoping the dampness in
the fabric wasn't piss. There was a citizenship card naming their victim as Jerry Baker, a credit disk of Lalonde francs,
then he hit the jackpot. “God's Brother!” He held up a Jovian Bank credit disk, holographic silver on one side, royal purple
on the other. “Will you look at this. Mr Pioneer here wasn't going to take any chances in the hinterlands. He must have been
planning on buying his way out of any trouble he hit upriver. Not so dumb after all. Just his bad luck he ran into us.”
“Can you use it?” Jackson asked urgently.
Quinn turned Jerry Baker's head over. A soft liquid moan emerged from his lips at the motion. His eyelids were fluttering,
a bead of blood ran out of his mouth; his breathing was erratic. “Shut up,” Quinn said absently. “Shit, I hit him too hard.
Let's see.” He pressed his right thumb against Jerry Baker's, and engaged his second implant. The danger was that with Jerry
Baker's nervous system fucked up from the blow, the biolectric pattern of his cells which activated the credit disk might
be scrambled.