Pushing Ice (65 page)

She could turn off ShipNet, Bella knew. It was unprecedented — ShipNet had not been interrupted since the flexy die-off — but it was within her administrative powers to order a blackout. But that would not stop the Musk Dog poison spreading further via word of mouth and the countless unregulated networks over which she had no control.

She could issue a counterstatement, but all she would be doing was restating what she had said before: that the Musk Dogs were not to be trusted, that they would go away if they were ignored, that spreading doubt and suspicion was precisely how they operated. It would be unlikely to make much difference now that the poison was out.

She would do it anyway.

The anchordoll was wrapping up her transmission. “We know that the Fountainheads will have advised that you should not engage in any form of contact with us. That is to be expected — how else are they to maintain their parasitic relationship, unless they obstruct competitors? But please listen to what we have to offer. What the Fountainheads have given you in exchange for access to Janus is what we would have given you freely, as a sign of our good intentions. In thirty-five years, they have bestowed upon you a few crumbs of prior human knowledge. We would never have
sold
you what was already yours. We would have given it gladly, as a courtesy. And then we would have invited you to enter into trade for items of genuine value.” The anchordoll paused and gathered her papers, tapping them together into a neat stack. “But it isn’t too late to change all that. The Fountainheads probably told you that we wouldn’t force ourselves upon you. That’s true — absolutely. And if you so wish, we will leave. But in the meantime, you have only to contact us. One word is all that it would take. Then we can start doing business.” The anchordoll smiled. “We look forward to hearing from you. We are sure that we can enter into arrangements of great mutual benefit.”

THIRTY-FOUR

Bella took the maglev to Eddytown. There were many eddytowns on Janus now, but this was the original one, and by far the largest. One hundred and twenty people lived there, a number not much smaller than
Rockhopper’s
original manifest. It was a sprawl of varying sized domes and micro-arboreta glued to the side of Junction Box, like a mass of barnacles on the sheer metal hull of a tramp steamer. In recent years the Fountainheads had shown the humans how to increase the gravitational field under Crabtree, Underhole and the other icecap settlements, but by then the eddytowns were already well established.

The maglev rollercoasted through ninety vertical degrees, passing a vast farm of perpetual-motion wheels, turning slow and stately as the huge grey wind turbines Bella recalled from her childhood. Their ballasted rims were tilted partway into a region of high field strength, imparting a torque on the wheel that could be converted to electrical power.

The maglev slowed into a glass concourse. Bella disembarked from the train, followed by Liz Shen and the stealthy wisp of the haunt. To Bella’s left, the rest of Janus was a wall that reached a dizzying distance above her head, until its scrawl of bright details — symbols and weaving lava lines — were reduced to a foreshortened smear. The side of Junction Box felt like a flattopped ledge jutting out from that wall. To the right, two or three hundred metres away, the ledge ended abruptly. Beyond lay only the sucking, abject darkness of the Iron Sky. The effect was exactly as upsetting as Bella had feared: a disorientation calculated to put her at a disadvantage. No wonder Svetlana had declined her invitation to come to Crabtree.

Inside Eddytown, local agents escorted Bella, Shen and the haunt to a secure chamber where Svetlana was already waiting. The lavish room was panelled with deeply stained wangwood, enclosing lifelike holographic vistas from pre-Cutoff Mars. Save for the fact that the views represented locales from all over the planet, the room could easily have been a windowed belvedere situated high on a Martian promontory. The horizon lines and local lighting conditions had been carefully adjusted to assist the illusion of a seamless panorama. As Bella settled into her seat, dust devils lashed against the weather shields of some nameless surface colony, whose high turreted walls enclosed armoured minarets and mosques, glinting bronze and gold in the late afternoon of a Martian autumn.

Svetlana and Bella had both dressed formally, by their own standards: Bella in a black jacket over a plain black T-shirt and narrow black jeans, Svetlana in a high-collared navy-blue dress suit with black gloves. She had arrived with her own advisors and security: not a haunt, but a chrome BI that hung from the ceiling like an ugly light fitting, dangling a mass of bladed and beweaponed arms. The rumours that Svetlana had at least one working forge vat were obviously true. The table was set with glassware and a carafe of water.

“Thank you for agreeing to see me,” Bella said.

Svetlana opened her hands, then closed them again. “I don’t know quite what you’re expecting to hear from me.”

“Reassurance,” Bella said, “nothing more.”

“You’ve an odd sense of timing, in that case.” Svetlana tapped the flexy before her. Like Bella, she had a lingering attachment to the old ways. “I just saw the news from the Judicial Apparatus. They’ve set the terms. Parry’s going down for fifty years, following administrative rejuvenation.”

Bella fought to keep her reactions under control. The tribunal had not gone as well as she had hoped, but she had never expected that the punishment would be so severe. The sentence must have been announced while she was on the train. She glanced at Liz Shen, who returned her enquiring glance with a microscopic nod.

“I’m sorry,” Bella said. “That’s far longer than I was expecting. I did recommend clemency —”

“It’s more than you used to get for murder.” Svetlana stroked a gloved finger across the flexy. “They say sentencing policy’s been reviewed in light of the increased lifespan we all enjoy. Now that we live longer, murder means more. But he didn’t
murder
anyone, Bella.”

“I know. Again, I’m sorry.” She was flustered, disorientated. The news could not have come at a worse time. “I’ll put pressure on the Apparatus —”

“It’ll do no good. They’ve made up their minds to make an example of him. The last of the great crimes.”

“We all know he meant well,” Bella said. “Can’t that be some consolation?”

“I don’t know how you have the nerve to talk about consolation. He’s my husband, Bella. They’re taking him away from me for fifty years. We haven’t even
been
here that long.”

“They’ll review sentencing. They always do. Maybe not this year, but when the next set of appointments come through —”

“So they reduce it to forty years, thirty if he’s lucky. Do you honestly imagine that will make it any better? At one point you told me his punishment might not even be custodial!”

“I couldn’t be sure.”

“But you must have had a shrewd idea of how unlikely that was. You’ve enough contacts in the judiciary. I doubt you were entirely in the dark.”

Bella bit her lip and fought to speak calmly. “Do not accuse me of anything improper, Svetlana. The Judicial Apparatus was your invention, not mine.”

“I thought I’d left it in safer hands.”

“You left it in excellent hands. It’s a machine for dispensing justice, and that’s exactly what it does.”

Svetlana raised her voice. The ceiling-hanging robot stirred its vicious arms in response. “You call fifty years justice?”

“I call it fifty years. It’s a long time — I don’t deny that, but Parry won’t be any older at the end of it than he is now. That’s the point of administrative rejuvenation. If those years mean so much to you, you could always skip over them.” On a cruel impulse that she would later regret, Bella added, “I’d gladly fast-track the paperwork, Svieta.”

“That would suit you very well, wouldn’t it? Me out of your hair for half a century.”

“Now that you put it like that…” Next to her, the haunt flexed one of its paper-flat limbs. The ceiling robot crept forward. Bella shuddered to think what would happen if one of the security systems made an unanticipated move. The haunt would win, she thought, but not quickly enough to spare blood.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Svetlana said. “Not while I suspect it might be of the slightest convenience to you.” She rubbed her gloved fingers together, then looked up sharply. “Remind me: what was it you wanted to talk about?”

“Oh, I’m sure you know. Despite all that’s happened between us, I’m still going to make a personal plea. I know you have certain… qualities, Svetlana. I’ve told you as much. I don’t even particularly blame you for hating me now. If Parry were my husband, I probably wouldn’t be any more inclined to forgiveness than you are.”

“Where is this going, Bella?”

“I’d still see sense. I’d still know a dangerous and foolhardy gesture when it came along. Doubtless you’ve seen the transmissions from the Musk Dog vehicle.”

“They’re difficult to miss.”

“Yes, and they’re seductive. A long time ago, McKinley warned me that the Musk Dogs would do everything in their power to undermine our faith in the Fountainheads. Now we’ve both seen the evidence. McKinley was right.”

“Perhaps, but does that necessarily mean the Musk Dogs aren’t to be trusted?”

“McKinley told me how damaging they are.”

“But if what the Musk Dogs are telling us is true, wouldn’t he go out of his way to discredit them?”

Bella shook her head. “We have to trust someone here, Svieta. After thirty-five years, I’ve no reason not to place absolute faith in McKinley.”

“No reason at all, Bella?”

“No reason that matters.”

“Tell me, then: what is the function of the Structure? Who brought us here? Why are there other cultures here as well? What brought them here? What do the Fountainheads know that they aren’t telling us?”

“There are answers to all those questions,” Bella said, “and McKinley will reveal them in due course, when he judges that we’re ready to hear them.”

“Perhaps the Musk Dogs were right, in that case, and the Fountainheads are just a bunch of parasites, feeding on lesser cultures. No wonder McKinley’s so unwilling to open our minds.”

“They’ve given us wonderful gifts,” Bella said.

“The stream has been somewhat dry of late.”

“Look,” Bella said defensively, “even if you don’t trust McKinley, at least trust Jim Chisholm. You
do
trust him, don’t you?”

Through the nearest window, a wall of dust roared down a canyon like a piston, swallowing a lacy suspension bridge thrown from wall to wall.

“I trusted Jim,” Svetlana said. “I’m just not convinced we ever got all of him back.”

* * *

Chromis found Bella troubled, during her apparitions. Lately Bella had discovered that the dead politician was the only counsel whose advice she had no compelling reason to distrust.

Days and weeks had passed. The Musk Dogs had become cleverer, more inventive. Their messages continued to infiltrate ShipNet, but the tone had become more insidiously persuasive, the promises more concrete. In return for access to Janus, the Musk Dogs would gift humans with the door-opening passkey that they had acquired from the Whisperers. They would give humans the frameshift technology to which Chromis had already alluded.

“Fountainheads and now Musk Dogs,” Chromis mused. “And Whisperers and the Uncontained, while we’re at it. Doubtless there are many others.”

Bella had decided to tell Chromis everything she had gleaned concerning the other cultures in the Structure. “Thirty-five, McKinley said, including us.”

They were in the civic aquarium after closing time, following a winding, balustraded route around huge looming tanks.

When the larger fish — geneconstructed skates, rays and sharks — had outgrown the tanks in Bella’s office, she had gladly dedicated this public amenity to the people of Crabtree. It was built into the old tokamak chamber, under the remains of
Rockhopper
. The fish cruised through the disused magnets and mirrors of the plasma-confinement system, now as rusty and coral-bound as the timbers and cannon of some ancient wreck.

“You arrived on Janus,” Chromis said, “pulled here across space and time. It’s not inconceivable that the other cultures were lured here in a similar fashion.”

“Aboard their own versions of Janus?” Bella asked.

Chromis paused to study the luminous text under one of the tanks as an iridescent blue eel oozed through a crack in one of the magnet housings. “Why not? An icy moon, suddenly moving under its own motive power? That would be enough to attract the attention of most cultures, don’t you think?”

“Why, though?”

Chromis moved on. “I can think of several reasons, none of them especially reassuring. Let’s consider the simplest, and therefore the one most likely to be correct. Imagine that the Spicans — we’ll keep calling them that, for the sake of argument — were a very early galactic culture, one of the first to arise. I’m talking a very long time before humanity, obviously — more than just a few million years.”

“Someone had to be first, I suppose,” Bella said.

“If they weren’t the first, they were certainly amongst the very earliest. And they’d have done just what we did — looked out into the night sky and wondered where everyone else was. The Congress of the Lindblad Ring — and the other polities surrounding us — sent probes into the galaxy, but they’d only reached ten or eleven thousand light-years by the time I was encoded. Within that ever-expanding boundary, all our searches had failed to identify any other extant intelligences. And when we looked deeper — trained our instruments on stars beyond the Hard Data Frontier — we saw no signs of living intelligence. As far as we were concerned, we were expanding into an empty, dead galaxy.”

“You think it was the same for the Spicans.”

“If there had been other cultures out there, they hadn’t lasted long enough to survive into their era. The Spicans might have concluded that intelligence was both rare and unlikely to endure across cosmic timescales. Contact between intelligent cultures was therefore highly improbable. If it ever
did
happen — if by some chance two starfaring cultures happened to occupy the galaxy at the same time — they were unlikely to meet on equal terms. One of those cultures would have been around a lot longer than the other. There’d have been such a technological and intellectual disparity that dialogue — let alone something as banal as mutually beneficial trade — would have been unthinkable. What could a monkey offer you, Bella, that you don’t already have? Or a shrew, for that matter? That’s the kind of gap we’re talking about.”