The trouble was, Joshua found after a straight two-hour stint of surfing the tables, they didn’t know the one piece of information
he needed. The name of Alkad Mzu had not left a heavy impression on the citizens of Ayacucho.
At the end he gave up and went to sit with Ashly and Melvyn at a raised corner table. It gave him a good view over the dance
floor, where some nice girls were moving in trim movements. He rolled his beer bottle between his palms, not much interested
in the contents.
“It was only a long shot, Captain,” Melvyn said. “We ought to start sniffing around the astroengineering companies. Right
now they’re so desperate for business that even the legitimate ones would happily consider selling her a frigate.”
“If she wants to disappear, she has to do it at the bottom of the heap,” Joshua said. “You’d think the dealers would have
heard something.”
“Maybe not,” Ashly said. “There’s definitely some kind of underground league here. It can’t be the same as the usual asteroid
independence movements; the Dorados are already sovereign. I got a few hints when they thought I was offering
Lady Mac
’s services, plenty of talk about revenge against Omuta. Mzu could have turned to them, after all they’re her people. Unfortunately,
the likes of you and I can hardly pass ourselves off as long-lost cousins of the cause.” He held up his hand, studying it
dispassionately.
Joshua looked at his own skin. “Yeah, you’ve got a point. We’re not exactly obvious Kenyan-ethnic stock are we?”
“Dahybi might make the grade.”
“I doubt it.” His eyes narrowed. “Jesus, will you look at how many of those kids are wearing red handkerchiefs around their
ankles.” Six or seven times that evening while he’d been scouting around teenagers had asked him to take them to Valisk.
“We could do worse than the Deadnights,” Melvyn said broodingly. “At least there aren’t any possessed here.”
“Don’t count on it.” Ashly leaned over the table, lowering his voice. “My neural nanonics suffered a couple of program load
errors this evening. Not full glitches, but the diagnostics couldn’t pinpoint the cause.”
“Humm.” Joshua looked at Melvyn. “You?”
“My communications block had a five-second dropout.”
“Some of my memory cells went off-line earlier, too. I should have paid more attention. Shit. We’ve been here barely three
hours, and we’ve each been close enough to one to be affected. What does that come to in percentages of the population?”
“Paranoia can be worse than real dangers,” Melvyn said.
“Sure. If they are here, they’re obviously not strong enough to mount an all-out takeover campaign. Yet. That gives us a little
time.”
“So what’s out next move?” Melvyn asked.
“Other end of the spectrum, I suppose,” Joshua said. “Contact someone in government who can run discreet checks for us. Or
maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to let slip the
Lady Mac
is for hire. If Mzu is here to get help, the only place it’ll come from is the nationalist community. They might even wind
up trying to charter us to deploy the damn thing.”
“Too late now,” Ashly said. “We’re officially here to buy defence components for Tranquillity. And we’ve been asking too many
questions.”
“Yeah. Jesus, I’m not used to thinking along these lines. I wonder if any of my fellow captains have been approached for a
combat charter?”
“Only if she’s actually in this asteroid,” Ashly said. “Nothing to stop the
Samaku
docking at one of the others when it arrived. That’s even if she came here in the first place. We ought to be checking that.”
“I’m not an idiot,” Joshua moaned. “Sarha’s working on it.”
• • •
Sarha’s smile appeared a little frayed after the third time Mabaki bumped against her. The crowd in the Bar KF-T weren’t that
excitable. She could certainly thread her way through without jostling anyone.
Mabaki waggled his eyebrows when she glanced back. “Sorry.” He grinned.
It wasn’t so much that he bumped her, as where. And how the touch tarried. She told herself a pathetic middle-aged letch was
probably going to be one of the smaller tribulations they would encounter on this crazy course Joshua had set.
Just before she gave in and tried a datavise, she located Joshua standing over by the bar (where else, she asked herself).
“That’s him,” she told Mabaki.
Sarha tapped Joshua on the shoulder as he was accepting a beer bottle from the barmaid. “Joshua, I found someone I think can…”
She trailed off in confusion. It wasn’t Joshua. That she of all people could be mistaken was astonishing. But he did look
remarkably similar, especially in the treacherously shimmering light thrown out by the dance floor’s holographic spray. Same
broad chest to accommodate a metabolism geneered for free fall, identical prominent jaw folding back into flat cheeks. But
this man’s skin was darker, though nothing like the ebony of most Dorado Kenyan-ethnics, and his glossy hair was jet-black
rather than Joshua’s nondescript brown.
“I’m sorry,” she stammered.
“I’m not.” He could certainly manage the Joshua charmgrin, too. Possibly even better than Joshua.
“I was looking for someone else.”
“I hate him already.”
“Goodbye.”
“Oh, please, I’m too young for my life to end. And it will when you leave. At least have a drink with me first. He can wait.”
“No he can’t.” She began to move away. Some erratic impulse made her look back in perplexity. Damn, the likeness was extraordinary.
His smile widened. “That’s it. You’re making the right choice.”
“No. No, I’m not.”
“At least let me give you my eddress.”
“Thank you, but we’re not staying.” Sarha forced her legs to work. She just knew her face would be red. How stupidly embarrassing.
“I’m Liol,” he called out after her. “Just ask for Liol. Everybody knows me.”
I’ll bet they do, she thought, especially the girls. The crowd closed around her again, Mabaki tagging along faithfully.
• • •
Second time lucky. Joshua was sitting at a table in a shadowy corner, and he was with Ashly and Melvyn, so there was no mistake
this time.
“Officer Mabaki works for the Dorados Immigration Service,” Sarha explained as she pulled up a chair.
“Excellent,” Joshua said. “I’d like to purchase some of your files.”
It cost him fifteen thousand fuseodollars to learn that the
Samaku
had definitely docked at Ayacucho. One passenger had disembarked.
“That’s her,” Mabaki confirmed after Joshua datavised a visual file to him. “Daphine Kigano. You don’t forget women like that.”
“Daphine Kigano, really? Bit of a viper was she?”
“You’re telling me.” Mabaki savoured another sip of the Tennessee Malt Joshua had bought him. “She was some friend or other
of Ikela’s. You don’t mess with those sort of connections.”
Joshua datavised the club’s net processor for a civil information core, and accessed a file on Ikela. It was mostly public
relations spin released by T’Opingtu, but it gave him an idea of what he was dealing with. “So I see,” he muttered. “Can you
tell us what starships have left since Daphine Kigano arrived?”
“That’s simple. None. Well, not unless you count the Edenist delegation, but they’re from this system’s gas giant anyway.
There are still some inter-orbit ships flying, but no Adamist starships. The
Lady Macbeth
is the first starship to arrive since the
Samaku
departed.”
After Mabaki left a grin spread over Joshua’s face. It was the first in a long time which didn’t have to be printed there
by neural nanonics. “She’s still here,” he said to the others. “We’ve got her.”
“We’ve got a lead on her,” Melvyn cautioned. “That’s all.”
“Optimist. Now we know who to ask for, we can start focusing our efforts. I think this Ikela character would be a good place
to start. Hell, we can even get a legitimate appointment. T’Opingtu is the kind of company we ought to approach for Tranquillity’s
SD spares, anyway.” He drained his beer bottle and put it back on the table. A flash of movement caught his eye, and he slapped
his hand down on the spider which was scuttling clear of the soggy mat.
• • •
“Oh, well,” Samuel said. “At least we know why he’s here. I suppose Ione Saldana must have commissioned him to track Mzu.”
“That stupid little cow,” Monica complained. “Doesn’t she have any idea what kind of issues she’s fooling with? And sending
some bloody mercenary on the chase!”
“Lagrange Calvert,” Samuel mused. “I suppose she could have done worse. He’s certainly got the balls for a mission like this.”
“But not the style. God, if he starts blundering around asking questions everyone in the Dorados is going to know Mzu is running
loose. Here of all places! I ought to terminate him; it’d save us a nasty headache in the long term.”
“I do wish you wouldn’t keep on about how much easier life would be if we killed everyone who poses the slightest inconvenience.
Calvert is an amateur, he’s not going to bother us. Besides, he won’t be the one who stirs up the public.” Samuel indicated
the row of AV pillars set up along one side of the rented office. Edenist agents were busy monitoring the output of every
Ayacucho-based media company.
News of Ikela’s death was already breaking, tying it in with reports of a “disturbance” at the offices of Laxa and Ahmad.
Police were treating the death as suspicious, refusing to comment to the rovers gathered outside the doors of the legal firm.
Although they’d already let slip that they would like to question Kaliua Lamu about the death.
Monica winced at that. She shouldn’t have blown him, but they had been desperate for the information. The financier had demanded
that Monica protect him from his erstwhile comrades: a request she could hardly refuse. He and his family were already on
board one of the Edenist delegation’s voidhawks, waiting to be spirited away to safety. “Don’t I know it. That Cabral is going
to make our life hell,” she grumbled. “I don’t know why you let him and the other two go.”
“You know perfectly well why. What else could we do? For goodness’ sake, Feira Ile is Ayacucho’s SD chief; and Malindi is
president of the Merchant’s Association; and both of them sit on the Dorados governing council. I could hardly authorize their
abduction.”
“I suppose not,” she sighed.
“It’s not as if they can tell people what they were doing, or even that they were there.”
“Don’t count on it. They’re certainly above the law here; and if any word of Mzu does leak out it’ll inflame the nationalist
sympathy.”
“I think we had better assume it will do. Cabral will make sure of it. After all, he voted to help her retrieve the Alchemist.”
“Yes.” She let out an exasperated groan. “God, we walked right past her!”
“Ran past,” Samuel corrected.
Monica glared at him. “Any sightings?”
“None at all. However we are losing an unusual number of spiders.”
“Oh?”
“Children are going around killing them. It’s some kind of organized game. Several day clubs are running competitions to see
who can find the most. There are cash prizes. Clever,” he acknowledged.
“Somebody’s well organized.”
“Yes and no. Children are a most peculiar method of attack, the numbers they can eliminate will inconvenience us rather than
block us. If it was another agency that discovered we were infiltrating the asteroid, they would release a tailored virus
to kill the spiders.” He cast an inquiring glance. “No?”
She puckered her lips in an ironic smile. “I would imagine that could well be standard operating procedure for some people.”
“So… it isn’t an agency, but it is someone who has connections that reach down into local day clubs. And quickly.”
“Not the partizans. They were never that well organized, and their membership is mostly aging reticents. The group that has
Mzu?”
“By process of elimination, it must be.”
“Yes, but so far we only know one member, this Voi girl. If there is an inner core of partizans I find it hard to believe
the ESA didn’t know about them.”
“And us.” He looked over to the agents monitoring the news, his face flickering through a range of expressions as he exchanged
a barrage of questions and answers across the general affinity band. “Interesting.”
“What?” she asked patiently.
“Given Ikela’s mysterious death and his wealth, there’s been no mention of his daughter by any media company. That’s normally
the first thing reporters focus on: who’s going to inherit.”
“Cabral’s shielding her.”
“Looks like it.”
“Do you think he could be involved with this new group?”
“Very unlikely. From what we know about him, his partizan involvement was minimal, he was part of it for form’s
sake.”
“So what the hell group is Voi mixed up with?”
• • •
Much later, when he had the time to sit down and think about it, Liol gave Lalonde as the reason for being so slow off the
mark. He would never have been so sluggish under normal circumstances. But after accessing Kelly Tirrel’s report he hit Ayacucho’s
clubs and bars, drinking and stimming out with methodical determination. A lot of people were doing exactly the same thing,
but for a different reason. They merely feared the possessed, while Liol had watched his life’s dream crumple in less than
a second.
It had always been a dangerous dream. A single hope which has lasted from the earliest days of childhood is not a sound foundation
on which to build a life. But Liol had done it. His mother had always told him his father would come back one day; an assurance
she kept on repeating through another three husbands and countless boyfriends. He will return, and he’ll take us away with
him; somewhere where the sun shines dazzling white and the land is flat and endless. A universe away from the Dorados, worldlets
haunted by the momentous horror and tragedy of the past.
The dream—the sure knowledge—of his destiny gave Liol attitude, setting him apart from his peers. His was among the first
generation of Garissans born after the genocide. While others suffered from their parents’ nightmares, a young Liol flourished
in the expanding caverns and corridors of Mapire. He was the champion of his day club; idolized as reckless by his teeny friends,
the first of all of them to get drunk, the first to have sex, the first to try soft drugs, and then not so soft, the first
to run a black stimulant program through newly implanted neural nanonics. A genuine been-there-done-that kid, as much as you
could go and do within the limited scope for experience permitted in orbit around Tunja.