Edge of Infinity (34 page)

“Saw what?”

“The head of David. With my own eyes, just before it hit.”

“You were there?

All of a sudden, Ingvar looks tremendously old and weary, as if this is the end of some enormous and taxing enterprise, something that has swallowed decades of her life.

“I was Authority. Pilot of one of the quick reaction ships we sent up to deflect the impactor, as soon as we saw it coming in. I got close enough to see your handiwork, Loti. Too close, as it happens. We were hitting the rock with weapons, trying to adjust its vector or shatter it to rubble. There was an impact, near David’s right eye. My ship was caught in the blast. I lost control; nearly died.” She takes a breath. “My ship was badly damaged. So was I.”

“What happened to you?”

“Oh, they patched me up well enough after my ship was recovered. More than they could do for my partner. Still, lucky as I’d been, I was never much good to Authority after that. Hence the change of profession.”

“But you always knew about the head.”

“So did everyone involved. That couldn’t come out, though. No one could know that people had died on Naiad, because that made us look bad. And no one could know that the impactor had been sculpted, because that made it a crime, not an accident – and if that had come out, it wouldn’t have been long before the rest of it was public as well. Our multiple screw-ups.”

“Skanda never meant for people to die. He just wanted to do something outrageous.”

“He succeeded. But as of now, only two people are aware of that. You and me. The question is, what do we do with our knowledge?”

I wonder if there’s a trap I’m missing. “You’ve spent years putting this together, haven’t you? Tracking down the truth. Finding me, and establishing my involvement. Well, congratulations. You’re right; I was his accomplice. So what if I didn’t know what I was getting into? Authority won’t care about that. Especially as there isn’t anyone else left to blame. You could hand me over now.”

“I could. But would that necessarily be the right thing to do?” Ingvar studies her boots. “My second career... it’s not as if it’s anything I need to be ashamed of. I’ve worked hard, had my share of successes. Minor cases, in the scheme of things. But I’ve not failed. So what if I’ve done nothing anyone will ever remember me for?”

“Until now. Turn me in... it could make your reputation.”

“And yours,” Ingvar nods. “Think of it, Loti. Everything you’ve done, every rock you’ve cut, the entirety of your art, it’s as nothing against the head of David. And the head of David is as nothing against the rings of Neptune. You created something marvellous, a thing of wonder. Beyond Yinning and Tarabulus or anyone else. It was the one time that your life was touched by greatness.” A sudden reverence enters Ingvar’s voice. “But you can’t tell anyone. All you’ll have is the rest of your art, in all its middling obscurity, until the day you die. No fame, no notoriety. And all I’ll have is a limp and the dog days of my second career. The question is: could either of us live with that?”

“What if I chose not to?”

“I’d make your name.”

“As a convicted criminal, locked away in some Authority cell?”

Ingvar’s shrug suggests that this is no more than a trifle. “Some would make the trade in an instant. Artists have killed themselves for a stab at immortality. No one’s asking that much of you.”

“And you?”

“I’d have solved the mystery of the Naiad event. Brought its last living perpetrator to justice. There’d be a measure of acclaim in it for me.”

“Just a measure?”

“Some trouble as well. As I said, not everyone would welcome the truth getting out.”

I shake my head, almost disappointed with Ingvar, that she should give in now. “So you’re saying I have a choice?”

“I’m saying we both have one. But we’d have to agree on it, I think. No good one of us pulling one way, the other resisting.”

I look at Neptune again. The rings, the storms, the brooding blue vastness of it all. And think of that temporary star, shining for a few seconds in the constellation Fornax. The light of a voidship, dying in a soundless eruption of subatomic energy. They say they were pushing the engines, trying to outrun the other voidships. Trying to be the first to stake a claim in the Oort clouds. Going for victory.

They also say no living thing saw that flash; that it was only machines that witnessed it, but that if anyone
had
been looking toward Fornax, at the right time...

“It would be something, to be known for that,” I tell Ingvar.

“It would.”

“My name would ring down the ages. Like Michelangelo.”

“That’s true,” she agrees. “But Michelangelo’s dead, and I doubt that it makes much difference to him now.” Ingvar claps her hands against her body. “I’m getting cold. I know a good bar near here, and there are no rock cutters. Let’s go inside and talk it over, shall we?”

WATER RIGHTS

An Owomoyela

I
T WAS A
beautiful explosion, and in a way Jordan was lucky to have such a good seat. She’d been watching the Earth swell up to fill and exceed her porthole, ignoring the thin strand of the space elevator and the wide modules of its ascender until one of them flashed and spilled its guts in a spray of diamonds.

The guy next to her, asleep since they crossed inside the moon’s orbit, jerked awake as the skiff fired its slowdown thrusters to stop them, still a kilometre from the elevator station. He leaned over against his straps, gaping at the rainbows glittering beside the ascender. “My god, that’s beautiful. What is that?”

Jordan’s mouth was dry, her heart going tripletime.

“Water,” she said. “That’s all our water.”

B
Y THE TIME
the station took a damage assessment and rousted every security guard posted there, the skiff had gone into an uproar and the complimentary drinks cabinet was locked. By the time the skiff emptied onto the station, the starfield was peppered with emergency vehicles and private Help & Rescue, and guards with nonlethals bristled at the passengers flooding the concourse.

The queue at the transmission station was long enough that Jordan just pushed off toward the light skiff to Lagrange One, cornering around a couple Earthers who started, all nerves, as she boosted off their shoulders.
Poor bastards.
If they’d planned on taking the ascender down, acclimating to touch-friendly micrograv was the least of their problems.

Due to the accident on the ascender, all hydrogen- and oxygen-thrust vehicles out of Hyperion Station have been suspended,
announced the PA.
Repeat, due to the accident on the ascender...

Jordan showed her identification to a cluster of guards at the terminal, went up to the kiosk, and sprang the extra expense to board a private module with a transmitter. The module was a closet, compared with the cabins on the ascender; even the micrograv straps seemed superfluous, as there were barely ten centimetres of space left between Jordan’s elbows and the module walls.

She keyed in the transmission codes for her rig, and a few seconds later Marcus’s face popped onto the screen, dark skin flushed in the rig’s full-spectrum lights.

“Oh, thank god,”
he said.
“Are you all right?”

“I’m pretty well shaken
and
stirred, Marc,” Jordan said. “Listen – put the rig onto emergency water rationing. Stop all the new planting, and restrict personal use as far down as it’ll go.”

Seconds passed, and she watched Marcus’s expression as he waited for the transmission to reach him.
“Already done, Ms. Owole,”
he responded.
“Soon as we heard the news. Have you heard the latest?”

“I know they’re suspending H and O ships out of Earth orbit. I’m just glad we do enough business to have photonic corridors from L1 out there.”

“Yeah, saved by big business,”
Marcus said.
“L1 is putting a discouragement tax on H-O thrusters. Oh, and Etienne is coming after you.”

He had the grace to look sheepish, at least. Jordan groaned.

“Between us and the refuelling stations Galot and Bardroy run, that’s sixty per cent of the water in the near-Earth colonies,”
he said.
“The next reserve is on Mars, and the next after that is Europa. They’re no help. Didn’t take long for Etienne to come to that conclusion.”

“And did Etienne’s observation come with demands?”

Marcus laughed uneasily.
“You know it would’ve. Fortunately they’re still crunching numbers on how long we can stretch what we have. Heard anything from Ouranos-Hyperion on repair times?”

“You know Earthside procedure,” Jordan said. “It’ll be security promises and pointing fingers for a while. Marcus, I haven’t even got a message to Harper yet. She was going to meet me Earthside; god knows what she thinks.”

She waited a few seconds.

Then, without waiting for the response, said “They’re calling it an accident. I know they want to keep us from rioting, but do they think we’re stupid?”

“Jordan.”
Marcus pressed his fingers to the camera.
“I’m sure she heard that the ascender exploded; she can put two and two together.”

A pause, as the second half of the message caught him.

“If I were them I wouldn’t know what to think,”
he said.
“Listen, I’ll meet you on Lagrange One, okay? Raxel’s got things in hand here, and you could use an escort in. And a stiff drink, and I’m thinking the bars will be crowded.”

Jordan quirked a dry smile. “You’re an angel, Marcus. Feel free to call me on the flight. I’ll see you there.”

Marcus gave a little wave after the lag, and the transmission cut.

Jordan closed her eyes, listened to see whether more people were boarding or whether the crew was gearing up to fire the photonic thrusters, couldn’t tell, and typed another transcode in. The screen flashed red.

TRANSMISSION TO EARTH IS TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED: EARTH SECURITY DIRECTIVE 515.05.81 03:07 UTC, it read.

“Great,” Jordan muttered. “Just great.”

L
AGRANGE
O
NE WASN’T
as large as the Ouranos-Hyperion station at the Elevator, but it was large enough to have a photonic-thrust lane there and back. And it was large enough that as soon as Jordan disembarked from the skiff, she was assaulted from all sides by the low roar of spacers arguing, the tense tones of the news broadcasts, the smell of too many frightened people. Jordan wrinkled her nose. Hygiene was going to go to shit.

The terminals along the walls displayed the same news accounts she’d been subjected to for eight hours on the skiff, although they were intercut with station-wide announcements warning everyone to stay calm.

No one was staying calm.

Barely three metres from the debarkation line someone called “Hey! You Jordan Owole?” and she turned just in time for a man to sail into her, grab her arm, and link their momentum. A moment later they were against the wall. The man wore the charcoal security armour that denoted system-wide jurisdiction, with a tag reading LISTER on his chest. He was short and strong and looked like he’d had a lot of elective surgery, which meant that no way was he a native in micrograv. New guy in space, maybe, and not happy about it today.

“Something wrong?” Jordan asked.

“Got a flag from the skiff,” Lister said. “You were trying to contact someone Earthside?”

“Yeah – I was scheduled to go down and meet my sister,” Jordan said. “Is that all right?”

“Your sister is Harper Owole?” Lister asked, and a mass settled in Jordan’s throat.

“Is that all right?” she said again, colder this time.

“She wrote those editorials,” Lister said. “Earth shouldn’t be shipping its water away, it’s not renewable if we ship it up there –”

“Yeah, I know what she thinks; we talk from time to time,” Jordan interrupted. “What –”

“Why’d you try to call her?”

“I was going down to visit her!” Jordan said. “We were going to look at roses.”

That seemed to throw him, for a moment. “Hell’s that supposed to mean? Roses?”

“
Jordan
!”

God bless Marcus,
Jordan thought, and looked past Lister into the crowds. Marcus was boosting his way through, systemwide security be damned. She looked back to Lister as Marcus arrived.

“Am I under arrest? Sir?”

Lister let go of her arm, releasing it like it was something disgusting. “We’ve got a flag out on you,” he said, jabbing a finger at her before he shoved off.

“
Putain de merde
,” Marcus muttered. “What was that?”

“He’s scared,” Jordan said, watching him go. “Everyone is scared, and that’s not a good place to be. Let’s get off this floating hunk of scrap.”

Marcus turned to her and palmed over a foil packet – alcohol, probably. Judging by the size, Jordan guessed straight ethanol. “Don’t flash it,” he said, and clapped her on the shoulder. “People will think it’s water. Let’s get home.”

That was easier said.

This close to her rig, people recognised her. Before they made it to the terminal, someone intercepted her, caught her arm. “Ms. Owole? Jordan Owole?”

“I didn’t do it,” Jordan said, and only realised belatedly that she’d probably pay for that joke.

“You’re selling, aren’t you?” the man asked. “It’s been on the news; it’s up to private holders now –”

Oh, no.
“Stop right there. Just stop.”

“I’ll pay any price. There are fifteen families on my station. Eight of them have children.”

“It’s not –” she said, and didn’t have anything to follow that with except for the urge to roundhouse-kick this guy down the hall and escape.

“Pull the E card,” Marcus muttered.

Jordan wished for some choice French profanity of her own. “I’ve got a call waiting with Etienne.”

And, for once in her life, she thought
God bless Etienne
, too. The man didn’t back off, but he looked like he was weighing the benefits of pressing.