Evening's Empires (Quiet War 3) (53 page)

‘When did you find out?’ Ioni Robles Nguini said.

‘Generally when a group of people die and you want to know who was responsible, you look for the last person standing.’

‘I am not the last.’

‘I suppose not. But someone told Sri Hong-Owen’s daughters about Dr Gagarian’s work. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t anyone in my family, and I know it wasn’t
me.’

‘It wasn’t my idea,’ Ioni Robles Nguini said.

‘I rather thought it wasn’t. Was it your family, then? Or the government of Greater Brazil?’

‘Did you know that I am related to Sri Hong-Owen? She had two children. I don’t mean the clade she created, her daughters, but the two sons born here, on Earth. One died without
issue. The other, Alder Hong-Owen, was part of the revolution in Greater Brazil, at the end of the Quiet War. He helped to bring down the old regime, and to revive the idea of government for the
people by the people.’

‘How did that work out?’

‘It lasted until the True Empire. A long time. My family took a strong interest in the Bright Moment when it became clear that Sri Hong-Owen was responsible. They felt that in some way it
belonged to them. At first, they were happy that I was collaborating with Dr Gagarian and the others. They thought I would learn something useful. Something they could profit from. But then I was
cut off. Dr Gagarian would no longer communicate with me, or with the others who were working with him. My family was afraid that he had solved the problem and wanted to keep the solution to
himself. They were eager to find out what he had discovered, and also wanted to make sure that no one else knew about it, but they had no influence or presence in the Belt. You have lived on Earth
for more than twenty years. You know how things are here.’

‘I think I know a little.’

‘A hundred years ago, all this was under ice. The ice was retreating then, and it is still retreating, but the thaw is slow. The damage was enormous. To Earth, to its peoples. We can
scarcely reach low Earth orbit. We don’t even have a presence on the Moon. But my family was trading with the Belt. It had certain contacts there. Including your uncle.’

‘Tamonash.’

‘I see this is new to you.’

‘Yes. But not unexpected.’

‘I can show you documents, files . . .’

‘There’s no need. Just tell me what you think he did.’

‘It wasn’t much. My family paid him to hire reivers who would kidnap Dr Gagarian when your family’s ship next reached port. Instead, he reached out to what was left of Sri
Hong-Owen’s clade, on Enceladus.’

‘I don’t think it was Tamonash,’ Hari said. ‘I think it was his friend, Mr D.V. Mussa. Or rather, Mr Mussa’s daughter. Another free trader. My uncle had extensive
dealings with her. I think he paid her to recruit reivers and dacoits who could help your family, and she decided instead to look for other people who might be interested in Dr Gagarian. And she
found Sri Hong-Owen’s daughters, or they found her, and they offered a better price. Or perhaps Mr Mussa’s daughter thought that she could be paid twice.’

‘However it fell out, my family believed that your uncle was helping them,’ said Ioni Robles Nguini. ‘Then your ship was hijacked. Your uncle denied that it was anything to do
with him. My family threatened him, and threatened his daughter, but he stuck to his story.’

‘I don’t want to know if his daughter had anything to do with it.’

‘I can assure you that she didn’t,’ Ioni Robles Nguini said. ‘My family dealt with your uncle directly.’

‘All right.’

‘My family was in no position to carry out the threats, of course. They were afraid that their contract with your uncle would be uncovered, and cause a serious diplomatic incident. There
was some wild talk about kidnap, assassination, but it came to nothing. There was a truce. A stalemate. And then you released Dr Gagarian’s files, and the deal with your uncle no longer
mattered.’

Hari thanked the philosopher for his candour; Ioni Robles Nguini said he hoped that the truth wasn’t hurtful.

‘It is what it is,’ Hari said. ‘One thing I know about the truth, it’s hard to destroy it. And it’s hard to hide it, too. The only secrets people are able to keep
secret aren’t worth keeping, usually because they aren’t true.’

‘My family decided to keep
me
hidden,’ Ioni Robles Nguini said. ‘They were afraid that Sri Hong-Owen’s daughters would find me. They were afraid you would find
me. I lived inside the boundary of my mother’s estate for many years. I had a partner, but it did not work out. Because my way of life was not natural. Because I was obsessed with my work. It
was a shock when he left me. I decided that I could not live as I had been living, and eventually persuaded my mother to allow me to come here. I adopted a new identity. My family own this
territory, and I supervise a very large and very successful reclamation and rewilding project. As the ice retreats, we plant out meadows and forests, introduce birds and animals. We recently
introduced salmon to the river. We recreated them from gene libraries, and they follow the old patterns of migration. They mature out in the ocean and swim back to the place where they were
spawned, fighting their way against the currents to find calm pools where they can spawn a new generation. I was so very proud, so very happy, when they first returned. It was one of the best days
of my life.’

Hari thought he understood. ‘Sri Hong-Owen and the seraphs gave up on this world. It wasn’t good enough for them, or for what they wanted to become, so they went somewhere else. But
this world is all we have.’

‘If we want to make a difference, we have to work with what we have,’ Ioni Robles Nguini said. ‘I set aside my work on the Bright Moment because I thought it had no practical
value. But now things have changed. Is it the same with you?’

‘I gave it up a long time ago,’ Hari said.

‘You set it free. And by doing so, you set yourself free.’

‘Yet here I am.’

‘I am glad you came,’ Ioni Robles Nguini said. ‘Glad that you could hear my confession. Such as it was.’

‘We were both used, weren’t we?’ Hari said. ‘Both caught up in family business that reached back through a thousand years of history. Two thousand years.’

‘I allowed myself to be used, so that I could pursue knowledge.’

‘So did I.’

‘And I will continue my work,’ Ioni Robles Nguini said. ‘But there will be no more secrets. I learned that from you, and I want to thank you.’

‘It wasn’t my idea,’ Hari said, thinking of Riyya. Riyya Lo Minnot. Wondering what she and Rav’s son were doing right now, in the garden in the rings of Saturn.

‘I’m a trader, from a family of traders,’ he told Ioni Robles Nguini. ‘I don’t know much about philosophy – I can’t help you with that. But I think I
should introduce you to some people I know.’

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have the great good luck to be able to thank a whole village of people who saved my life: Mr Austin O’Bichere, his surgical team, and the doctors, nurses and staff of
the chemotherapy unit of University College Hospital. My profound gratitude to all of them, and to my partner, Georgina Hawtrey-Woore. If it hadn’t been for their treatment, care and support
I would not have survived to write this novel.

My thanks also to Simon Spanton and Marcus Gipps for editing suggestions, Nick Austin for his thorough and lucid copy-editing, and Simon Kavanagh at the Mic Cheetham Literary
Agency for his help, support, and coffee hit points.

I first read about the epic of Pabuji, and the Story of the She-Camels, in William Dalrymple’s
Nine Lives.
The poem ‘I shall not coil my tangled hair . .
.’ is adapted from a traditional song of the Baul minstrels of Bengal. ‘On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances’ is a line from Rabindranath
Tagore’s poem ‘On The Seashore’.

Also by Paul McAuley from Gollancz:

400 Billion Stars

Cowboy Angels

Eternal Light

Fairyland

Pasquale’s Angel

Red Dust

The Quiet War

Gardens of the Sun

In the Mouth of the Whale

Copyright

A Gollancz eBook

Copyright © Paul McAuley 2013
All rights reserved

The right of Paul McAuley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company

This eBook first published in 2013 by Gollancz.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 575 10082 4

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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