Parallax View (16 page)

“Who is this Giordano, Leila?” Jiang asks above the din. “Why is he so determined to beat you?”

Leila slips a foot from her sandal, reaches out and presses it against Jiang’s belly. “It’s a long story, darling.”

Jiang indicates the slowness of their descent. “We have a long time,” she says.

“Giordano needs the girl dead,” says Leila. “She used to be his partner...”

In response to Jiang’s blank look, Leila continues. “You see, I wasn’t telling the entire truth when I said Giordano is no good. Unaided, that’s true: he has to rely on the more traditional skills of the corporate assassin and spy, and I’ll concede that he’s fairly good in that respect.”

“‘Unaided’, you said.”

Leila nods. “Have you ever heard of telepathic resonance, Jiang? Some telepaths work best in pairs: a conventional, usually mediocre, snoop and a mental amplifier. A finder and a tuner. The tuner is usually young, an innocent abroad, unaware of their talent. These pairs are more effective than any solo snoop.

“That’s what Giordano did, you see. He lured the girl away, and then used her in his work: she was his mind’s eye, if you like. Last year the two of them snooped the defence codes of Buildup Security, put them up for sale to the highest bidder.

“Giordano was smart: he arranged to have their heads wiped clean of the information once he’d sold it, but Hannah ran away from him before he could have her wiped. He was mistreating her, you see, abusing her. Using her for more than just her brain.”

As Leila speaks, Jiang can’t help but flash back to the plaza, Giordano’s powerful grip on her arm. She shudders, tries to blot the memory out.

“And that’s his problem,” Leila continues. “Because the girl fled before she could be wiped she still has that information in her head. Giordano bluffed it out, at first, he just kept quiet about her disappearance. But word leaked, and now his bosses have told him: kill the girl, or they’ll kill him
and
the girl.”

“But you’ve found her first,” Jiang says.

“Only just,” says Leila grimly. “And having got this close, Giordano won’t be far behind.”

“Where’s is she?”

“She’s not stupid,” says Leila. “She headed for the underground as fast as her little legs would carry her. She’s bought herself some time. About twenty years’ worth, to be precise. She’s a sleeper, Jiang.”

“A... what?”

“Never heard of sleepers? Thought you said you worked on starships?”

“I built them, that’s all.”

“The lines use sleepers on all the longest hauls: the big exploration vessels. They fit the crews with metabolic stasis units: shut down their metabolisms to a gentle tick-over. Twenty years in a metastatic and the body only ages about a month. There’s a trade in the things, they were fashionable for a time as a means of enlightenment: meditative trance at the flick of a switch.

“Our little friend has bought time in one of these units and that’s why she’s so hard to find: there are ways round ordinary shields, but wind the body down to tick-over and there’s no way the mind can be read. It protects her secrets, makes direct tracing impossible for snoops like me – we have to rely on less direct means.”

Outside the cage, a large number 3 appears in the gloom and Jiang feels a sudden pang of nostalgia, soon gone.

They jump the cage as soon as it clangs to a halt, before the drones can do them any damage in their mindless task of removing the starship junk. Now they’re working their way along a dark corridor, the only light coming from the vicinity of the cage they’ve left behind, sending their shadows sprawling out in front.

Leila has a tight grip on Jiang’s hand, her long stride setting the pace so that the girl has to trot to keep up.

“It’s along here, I
know
it is,” Leila mutters.

“What is?” Jiang asks. “What are we looking for.”

Leila ignores her, plunges on in the growing darkness.

Then she pulls up suddenly, and Jiang careers into her back. They’ve come to a wall, and Leila is searching its surface, and now she’s tugging at a handle.

A door swings open to reveal a dim glow, a steep metal staircase.

They head down to Level Zero.

“What’s down here?” Jiang asks.

“The underground,” says Leila. “People on the fringe. Religious crackpots. Call them what you will. We’re looking for a guy called the Mandarin, something of a religious guru from what I’ve heard.”

Level Zero looks little different to Level One: dimly lit corridors, junk and debris all over the floors, water running down the walls so that over the years it’s left a succession of eerily pearlescent trails.

Finally, they come to a big wooden door, carved with dragons and Chinese ideograms. Jiang recognises some of them from early schooling: something about truth found only in the void.

Leila swings the door open and leads the way inside. Immediately they’re challenged by a burly guard, his impassive face decorated by a long, waxed moustache.

“My name is Leila Kundera. The Mandarin expects me.”

The man turns without a word and leads them deeper into the underground.

It’s lighter now, as they emerge in a big chamber. Candles burn in a glowing constellation, redoubled in the surfaces of countless gold and polished wood ornaments and furnishings. The air is heavy with the smell of burning wax and something sweet, narcotic. Carpets of ancient design cover the floor, even more sumptuous than the ones in the hotel up on Sundeck. It makes Jiang want to kick off her new boots and bury her feet in the deep pile.

A small, round figure sits cross-legged on the floor, amidst a heap of tasselled cushions. The man looks ancient, his head bald and liver-spotted, his face deeply etched with the passage of time. White, archetype moustachios droop, coming to rest on a blue silk gown, embroidered with dragons and more ideograms.

He indicates the floor before him, and Leila and Jiang sit, still holding hands like expectant schoolchildren.

“You seek someone,” the Mandarin says, in clear tones.

He’s addressing me, Jiang thinks.

“A girl,” Leila says. “She came here two days ago, with money for a metastatic unit. You offered her protection.”

“We offer only enlightenment,” the old man says.

“Okay,” Leila snaps, “let’s not quibble about terminology. She bought enlightenment from you. I want her back, do you hear? I want to buy her back.”

The Mandarin stares at Jiang. “Your friend judges us harshly,” he says. “Hannah was a thousand credits short, yet we still granted her use of the unit. We do not withhold enlightenment from those who seek it.

“You see,” he continues, “in metastatic suspension one is elevated into the glorious
Ch’an
state. Thoughts move without leaving any trace. I know this from my own period of enlightenment: I was captain of
The Forlorn Hope
for thirty years. In that time I – ”

“How much?”

“You cannot buy a person back from the realm of
wu-hsin
,” he rejoins, as if explaining manners to the simplest of children. Still, he is staring intently at Jiang.

Sudden understanding hits her with a jolt. She recalls what Leila told her: A finder and a tuner. The tuner is usually young, an innocent abroad, unaware of her talent...

She turns on Leila. “You’re using me!” she cries.

All the times Leila has dragged Jiang around with her, mixing shopping trips and fancy meals with interviews with her leads. All the time Jiang had thought she only wanted her company, yet now she understands the truth: Leila is just like Giordano – she needs her tuner, her mind’s eye, so that she can function at the peak of her ability.

“Trust me,” Leila says now. “We’ll talk later. We’re a good team, you and me, in more ways than one.”

Jiang feels cold inside, the same hollow aching grief as when she heard about her father’s death all those years ago...

An aide enters the room and whispers something in the old man’s ear. When he looks up, Leila says, “You’re stalling, aren’t you? What are you hiding?”

She closes her eyes in concentration, and Jiang feels a warm sensation, an alien presence in her mind, as Leila uses her to probe the Mandarin.

Leila opens her eyes in triumph. “She’s here!” she cries. “She hasn’t gone under yet. Let me talk to her – that’s all I ask. Let me see her.”

“There is a matter more pressing than that,” the old man says. “You have been followed here. It must be dealt with before negotiations are resumed.”

“He’s a snoop,” Leila says. “His name is Giordano. He’s here to kill Hannah. I have to get to her first.”

Jiang feels the warmth in her head again, as Leila uses her. The Mandarin grimaces, unable to keep Hannah’s whereabouts from the snoop.

His guard is unhappy, confused. He doesn’t understand what is being exchanged between his master and Leila, doesn’t know whether to –
how
to – intervene.

Leila jumps to her feet and the guard makes as if to block her way, but a command from the Mandarin stops him. Instead, he heads across the chamber for the entrance hall – to stop Giordano, Jiang realises. She hesitates, then stumbles after Leila, past some screens and along a dark corridor.

At the far end there is a door. Leila runs towards it, ignoring the shouts from the Mandarin and his aide.

From the main chamber there’s a sharp cry, then another, and then silence. Jiang has seen enough action flix to picture the scene: the Mandarin and his aide slumped on the floor. Giordano must be there and he must be armed.

Now, Leila pulls a small handgun from her jacket as she runs.

Jiang follows, sick with fear now that Giordano is close.

Leila pushes the door open and enters, Jiang close behind her.

The room is blurred with candled twilight, and it is a second before Jiang’s eyes adjust. She sees that what she had thought was a bed is in fact a sarcophagal casing raised on trestles. The metastatic unit.

It’s empty – and then she sees the girl in the corner. She’s about twelve, with a swarthy Mediterranean cast to her skin and dark curls tumbling around her shoulders.

The child stares at Leila, terror in her eyes.

“No, Ms Kundera,” she screams. “Please,
no
!”

Leila hesitates, her handgun levelled at the girl’s chest. “I’m sorry, Jiang,” she says. “I didn’t want you to see this part.”

Jiang takes in the scene, the words. She doesn’t want to admit to understanding. She wants to scream, to deny herself the knowledge of what is happening here...

Then the child’s gaze travels past Leila to the doorway, where Giordano now stands. Her eyes bug wide, her mouth moves uncertainly. In a small voice, she says, “Papa?”

She looks at Leila and then at Giordano again. “Papa? But... she... Ms Kundera said they had killed you!”

And now Jiang understands everything: swap the names in Leila’s story and it’s all clear. Leila is the corporate spy; Leila is the one who used and abused Hannah, the one who has to kill the girl to save her own skin...

Leila is momentarily distracted, uncertain who to shoot first.

She swings her gun towards Giordano – and Jiang, impelled by sudden rage, throws herself across the room. She hits Leila with a sickening thud, knocking her off balance. A blue bolt from the gun burns harmlessly into the ceiling.

Then Giordano is standing over Leila, aiming.

Jiang closes her eyes and screams, and when she opens them again the Italian is backing away from Leila’s body. He turns to the girl and she is rushing into his arms. “Papa!” she cries, showing a love Jiang will never know again.

She sits there, numb. She recalls one of the lessons Leila has taught her, one she’s learnt well. You gotta be tough, kiddo – ’cos nobody else is gonna be tough on your account...

Jiang pushes herself to her feet and rushes into the corridor. She runs blindly, afraid to stop, arrives breathless at an upchute entrance and dives aboard.

She lifts her hand to the press-select panel. For a second she almost presses Level 3. Then she stabs the button that will take her back, all the way up to Sundeck.

Under Antares

Mackendrick stepped from the patio of his villa and took the zigzag path down the hillside. He paused at the first bend to rest and admire the view. For almost thirty standard years – half his lifetime – he had lived on Shannon’s Break, the second planet of Antares; for ten of those years he had served as Planetary Overseer, but all the responsibilities and politics of that post were far behind him now.

He lodged a boot on a twisted, upthrust root and stared down the mountainside. A thousand tributaries tipped perfect waterfalls from the continental plateau onto the rainforested delta far below. Mackendrick never failed to feel a visceral thrill at the view. The great crimson hemisphere of Antares hung majestically over the oceanic horizon, its swollen mass giving off geysering gouts of fire in slow motion whorls and curlicues.

Mackendrick took this walk every afternoon, a bag of scraps clipped to his belt to feed to the flying fish which congregated in the lagoon at the foot of the path. He had settled into such routines very early in his retirement: the habit-bound structure he imposed on his days helped him keep going, and helped him to forget.

One such habit was that he still wore his commset on his wrist, even though his self-imposed exile was only rarely broken these days.

Today, however, was one of those rare occasions. A shrill double note interrupted his absorption in the alien landscape.

His heart raced. He had been half-expecting a call. Half-dreading it. His son, Philip, had been back on Shannon’s Break for two standard months – it was only a matter of time before he made contact, Mackendrick felt sure.

“Okay, commset,” he said. “I’ll take the call.”

The tenuous figure of a man took form a short distance before Mackendrick on the path. He was short and dark, with beak-like nose and a hunched posture.

Mackendrick relaxed. “Bron,” he said. “It’s been too long.” Serge Bronowski had been Mackendrick’s personal assistant for the last four years of his tenure as Overseer. He was a quiet and conscientious man, the type who had inevitably been overlooked when it came to appointing Mackendrick’s replacement.

“Ah ... sorry to bother you, Mr Mackendrick.” Even after all this time, Bron refused to use his first name.

“What is it, Bron?” asked Mackendrick. Bron looked troubled. This clearly wasn’t just some errand for Meg Bailey, the new Overseer.

“There’s been an incident, Mr Mackendrick. Twenty kays inland.”

Beyond the human reservation, then. Mackendrick fought the irresistible tug of his memories, the physical sickness he felt at any mention of such ‘incidents’.

He shook his head. “I’m not the Overseer any more,” he said. “It’s not my responsibility. Why aren’t you telling Meg Bailey all this?”

Bron stared studiously at the ground as he replied. “The incident is a serious one, Mr Mackendrick,” he said. “It involves the Xenobiological Survey. It – ”

“Philip? It’s Philip, isn’t it?” Philip had been staying with the Survey since he had come back to Shannon’s Break to work on a post-doctoral research project.

Bronowski looked up. “I can pick you up in fifteen minutes,” he said. “I think we should go as soon as possible.”

They were five or six kays beyond the southern perimeter of the human reservation when Mackendrick saw the first of the fliers.

Bronowski piloted the aircar in studious silence and Mackendrick stared out of his side screen as they flew over the scrubby savannah of the plateau. Scattered herds of landcrabs grazed amongst the sparse trees, looking like clusters of boulders with twitching, periscopic antennae.

To the east, the ruddy hemisphere of the sun seemed to fill the sky. At this time of year it was a constant feature – save for a few hours around the middle of the nominal night – and he felt he should be accustomed to the sight of it. But Antares was like his guilt: though it might rise and fall to varying degrees, it was never far from the surface.

After a time, his attention was drawn to a number of small, dark flecks against the crimson canvas of the sun. At first he was unsure whether they were real or merely a visual trick caused by staring at the sun. Then he thought they must be birds – perhaps nighthawks, although he knew they rarely strayed this far north.

Then he saw, with a sudden shock of recognition, first one creature close by, and then dozens, and thereafter perhaps a hundred or more of the intelligent, winged beings. Within seconds, they had closed in around the aircar, an aerial escort for the last few kays of the journey into the interior.

Mackendrick had not seen a Shandikar in the six years since he had retired as Overseer. He had not wanted to – they stirred too many bitter memories, revived too much pain.

The Shands were an ancient race. According to xeno-archaeologists they had been an advanced technological civilisation long before humankind had come down from the trees. But that phase was far behind them now: for many thousands of years they had lived as hunter-gatherers, bound into a sustainable and peaceful existence by primitive spiritual beliefs based on ancestor worship. The apparent simplicity of their existence had, in the early days of human settlement on Shannon’s Break, led to many misunderstandings. Shandikar society was governed by a complex code of rites and laws which humans interfered with at their own – very substantial – risk.

Such misunderstandings had become less frequent over the years but, as Overseer, Mackendrick had been involved in arbitration over numerous transgressions. Human law applied to incidents within the reservation, but elsewhere the settlers were subject to Shandikar law. One of the earliest cases he had overseen had involved a drunken miner who had strayed out of the reservation and crashed his aircar, killing a young Shand. The miner had been sentenced to be set free in the savannah, hunted down and killed with poisoned darts.

Mackendrick had been involved with several similar cases – a biologist similarly executed for trapping a sacred species of flying lizard, a teenager blinded for getting lost and wandering through a burial ground – and that was why he had been so angry with Belinda, nearly seven years ago.

He had only wanted to protect her. He had only been trying to avoid losing her altogether.

Belinda. Eight years his junior, the mother of his son, Philip. Dynamic, curious, given over to frequent moods and whims. Where he had been a tree, planted firmly in the ground, Belinda had been a kite, lofted up on the slightest breeze. He would have done anything to avoid letting her go.

Back then, the Shands had taken a sudden interest in human affairs. They flew regularly over the main settlement at Lieutenant’s Creek; they had even set up camp just beyond the perimeter of the reservation and encouraged curious humans to visit.

As Overseer, Mackendrick had gone out to the encampment, wary of the sudden change in the relationship with the aboriginals, sure that it would end in another grim ‘incident’. What he had found was like something out of an old movie: a religious retreat, an alien ashram.

A young Shand had shown him around, explaining as best it could in its breathy, aspirated English. Taller and leaner than most of its kind, the top of the Shand’s head was level with Mackendrick’s eyes. The dignity of the creature’s look – the way it stood, the smooth grey face with large eyes and broad mouth – had been starkly at odds with the animal physicality of its body: a heavy pelt covering broad chest and shoulders, a heavy web of skin connecting its long arms to its flanks.

“Your people are learning the way of the – ” What it said next was a guttural phrase Mackendrick had heard before. Some humans pronounced it as
hethetherah
, and translated it as
voice
or
communication
, but clearly the young Shand was unhappy with such a literal translation. Mackendrick knew the Shands used the phrase in a more religious sense, a form of communication for which there was no English equivalent: something between prayer and some kind of empathic resonance.

Even though it was technically illegal for humans to leave the reservation without an official pass, Mackendrick learned that, over the past week or two, dozens of colonists had visited the Shandikar encampment. His dilemma was to decide whether he should have the police enforce the rules and prevent this mixing, or allow it to continue as a kind of informal experiment in liberalising the regime of human settlement on Shannon’s Break.

It had been easy to just leave things as they were, as if putting it out of his mind would somehow prevent an incident from occurring.

But Belinda had brought the encampment back to his attention a few weeks later. He had come back to their apartment late one evening to find her arguing with Philip. The bitter silence when he walked in had not fooled him for a second. “What’s going on?” he had demanded. “Why the atmosphere?”

Philip snorted, as only an angry eighteen year-old can. “Ask
her
,” he muttered.

Mackendrick had raised his eyebrows at his wife, and was relieved to see a smile in response. “Poor Phil’s just like you, dear,” she told him. “A rationalist through and through. I was merely trying to explain to him the principles of
hethetherahism
.”

“Principles?” asked Mackendrick. The human drifters who had congregated at the Shand encampment had developed a kind of cult around what they understood of the aboriginals’ spiritual beliefs. As soon as he heard the phrase on Belinda’s lips, he had recognised the awful inevitability of her attraction to such a sect.

He had felt a sudden anger, then. “What have principles got to do with a bunch of losers like that?”

His anger had hurt her, and he had turned to Philip in the belief that in his son, at least, he would find support. But Philip turned away from them both in disgust, approving of neither.

That had been the crisis point, Mackendrick saw in retrospect: the moment when all the tensions had risen to the surface, when the lines of defence had been set out and carved in stone. That had been when he started to lose them both.

They flew south to where the trees became denser – more open forest than savannah – and then the host of flying Shands guided them in to land in the centre of a great oval clearing. Something about the silence which prevailed, and the ribbed architecture of the overhanging foliage of the high, surrounding trees brought to mind the interior of a cathedral.

Five Shands landed at the far end of the clearing, while the others swooped and glided overhead like observing angels.

By the time Mackendrick had climbed out of the aircar, a dozen members of the Xenobiological Survey had emerged from the forest to greet them. He stared at Sal Lawrence, the head of the team. “Perhaps you can tell me what’s going on, Sal?” he demanded, with some of his old authority.

“Philip set out at five this morning,” she said, eyes flitting form Mackendrick to Bronowski and back. “Our camp is a kilometre south-west of here, not far from the ruins at Kazkah. Philip’s been studying the inscriptions on the Kazkah Stones. He was always going off on his own like that.”

Sal was being cagey. It was against the terms of the Survey’s licence for individuals to go off on their own and she knew her job was at stake. But then Phil wasn’t really a member of her team; he was an archaeologist. She wasn’t responsible for him.

Mackendrick sighed. “I’m not the Overseer any more, Sal,” he said. “You can relax. I just want to know what happened – what kind of hole my son has dug for himself. Okay?”

“Over the last two years we’ve established communications with the local community of Shands,” she said. “Some of the youngsters have been designated as kind of spokespeople. A few hours ago one of them came looking for me. He said Philip had been detained. He asked if Philip had what they call a ‘blood-tied-speaker’ – loosely speaking that’s a cross between a legal representative and a kinsman. I thought of you immediately.”

Mackendrick, with Bronowski hurrying along at his side, left the Survey people and headed across the clearing towards the waiting chevron of five aliens. Antares burned in a diffuse haze through the tree-tops, filling the clearing with a rich burgundy light. Mackendrick was intensely aware of the hundreds of aliens still circling above the clearing, or gathered in the upper branches of the surrounding trees.

One of the Shands, a tall figure with a thick, sable pelt, was clearly the leader of the group. It stared at Mackendrick, unblinking, as he came to stand before them.

Mackendrick dipped his head. “I am the father ... the blood-tied-speaker ... of the man you are detaining,” he said.

The alien sketched a lateral gesture in the air and then spoke in a sliding sequence of gasps and sighs.

Bronowski listened intently and as soon as the Shand paused he replied in similar tones.

“What did it say?” asked Mackendrick when he had finished. “What did you tell them, Bron?”

“They told us that there is to be a hearing immediately. I replied that you assert your right as Philip’s blood-tied-speaker to attend. They assented.”

“What has Philip done, Bron? What sort of hearing is it going to be?”

Bronowski spoke again in the alien tongue, then listened intently as the leader of the Shands replied.

There was a silence.

“Well? What is it, Bron? What’s going on?”

Bronowski looked uneasy. “He... trespassed. That much is clear. I think he must have transgressed in some way religious, something to do with their ancestors. I’m sorry I can’t be more definite – his tone of voice implies the context, and I find that tone ambiguous.”

Mackendrick nodded. Bronowski was a good man – Mackendrick could wish for no-one better to be by his side in such a situation. “What now, then?” he asked.

“They request that we follow them.”

As the two spoke, the Shands had retreated to the edge of the clearing, where a track led into the interior.

“They would normally fly, of course,” said Bronowski. “But they make allowances for what they call our physical inadequacies. There is a trail and they have made it safe, by which they mean that they have temporarily unconsecrated the ground we will walk across so that we can follow them without fear of penalty.”