The Galaxy Game (16 page)

It was as if the old Tinman had been replaced with an elder version, more sober, more critical and much less inclined to tolerate nonsense, far less instigate it. Now, in the light of the biodome’s artificial morning, he looked tired and preoccupied. Rafi examined his features and noted the small crease of worry between his eyebrows.

‘Why are you so miserable?’ Rafi complained.

Ntenman looked at him, glared at him in fact, and said nothing for a while, but eventually he snapped, ‘What are you going to do while you’re here? How long do you plan to stay on Punartam?’

At first Rafi began to laugh because those were the two questions he had heard on Stage One as Ntenman organised their passage on a mindship. He heard them again when the ship docked with the Equatorial Ring and they were awakened with the rest of the human cargo to face a thorough examination by the Punartam Planetary Guard. Down the spaceline and into a second quarantine, and again the staff asked the same two questions – politely, almost conversationally, but they asked. He thought Ntenman was making sport, but no – he was dead serious. Rafi felt his scalp prickle and his hands go cold.

‘I don’t know.’

He truly did not, and it frightened him to acknowledge how much he had been ignoring reality. Unopened messages still sat in his comm’s memory, messages that he could not answer until he breached the Cygnian atmosphere once more. He had a datacharm (still locked) and a datachip (not yet accessed) and an audioplug provided by the biodome staff which had all but drowned him in information, much of it not immediately useful. So much stuff – he had no idea where to start. It had been easier to let Ntenman do the steering and tell him what to do, where to go, what to expect.

‘Good. As long as you realise that. As long as you realise you don’t have room to be . . .
frivolous
about all this.’

Rafi gaped for a moment then burst out laughing as Ntenman’s anxiety suddenly made sense. ‘That’s not me you’re talking about. You’re scared.
You’re
scared. Why?’

Ntenman slid the media lens carefully from his brow and rested it gently on the table. Suspicious of such studied calmness, Rafi eased out of range, but he received nothing more than another sharp glare. ‘We need to build some credit,’ Ntenman stated. ‘Too long at too low a level and they’ll ship you back to Cygnus Beta.’

‘You know where we can find work?’

‘Work?’ Ntenman said, bemused and scornful. ‘We want credit, not pay.’

‘Well, how will we eat if we don’t have pay?’ Rafi asked, irritated.

‘Moo, do us both a favour and put back in the audioplug. Learn to love the voice of the Academes because I will not be explaining everything to you at every step. Pay is for survival; credit is for living. I’m here, and I want to live.’

‘You’ve been here before?’ Rafi said, curiosity and accusation making it a question.

‘Yes.’ His reply sounded hesitant. ‘Yes,’ he said again, more firmly. ‘I’ve survived here. I even gained some credit. It was almost a year before my padr got them to send me back.’

Rafi noticed a slight difference in the timbre of his voice that suggested Ntenman was not referring to the usual authorities. ‘Them?’

‘My other parentals . . . or they would be if they acknowledged me. “Mother” and “stepfathers” are not quite correct, but they’re titles you’ll understand until you can recite that Punartam guide in your sleep.’

Rafi’s heart skipped painfully. Many of the Lyceum’s students were half-orphaned or abandoned outright, but Ntenman spoke so often of his padr and was so obviously spoiled by the same that it had never crossed Rafi’s mind to ask about a mother. ‘Your mother . . . doesn’t call you her son?’

‘She tried,’ Ntenman said, his face pinched with discomfort. ‘Now is not the time, Moo. Listen to the wise voices from our towers of knowledge. After that you may be ready to hear my sordid family history.’

‘Well, at least tell me what your plan is so I know what topics to look up,’ Rafi said.

Ntenman picked up his media lens and smiled enigmatically, but Rafi knew he was being baited and merely sat patiently. ‘So, you want to go Wallrunning?’ Ntenman said casually. ‘There’s a lot of that where I’m planning to take you.’

*

My first attempt at a Punartam Year went foolishly wrong. I was young, so young! I was the kind of fourteen that Rafi’s never been. I got as far as Stage One on bluff and bribery before they shipped me back.

My second attempt came soon after and it brought a kind of success. I made a deal with one of my padr’s competitors to travel with his next batch of cargo. I didn’t even get off the homestead before my padr found out. He was proud at the cargo idea but vexed that I had embarrassed him by going to an outsider, so he compromised by giving me reward and punishment bundled together. He let me go to Punartam on a ‘family visit’. Getting there was indeed a gift; meeting my relatives was the punishment. It was supposed to be for three weeks, but I disappeared after two and it took my so-called family months before they deigned to involve themselves in a proper search-and-seize. In that time I learned many things, such things that the Academes would never teach an off-worlder. But it wasn’t a Year.

My padr was hard to read. His feelings were definitely mixed. He voiced some pride at my commitment and a significant amount of exasperation at my stubbornness. I tried to point out to him that they were the same thing and that went badly. He sent me to the Lyceum ‘to catch up on my Cygnian certification’. Liar. What good was I to the Lyceum, and what good were they to me? He wanted me watched. I behaved until I could be sure he trusted me again, then I behaved for a little while longer. I met Rafi, and then Serendipity, and I dragged out my classes and delayed my departure, playing the idiot to my advantage. I knew the opportunity would come, though for a while I thought Serendipity would be the first to wing her way out of the Cygnian gravity well and taste the air of another world. But Rafi – ha! Long periods of quietness then sudden explosive action.
Decisive
action, nothing like Serendipity’s directionless yearning.

I faced my padr like a man. I was honest. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I have an obligation to help this boy, but I won’t lie – if it takes me a year on Punartam to do it, that suits me, too. Let me have your blessing this time.’

Years of good behaviour meant maturity in my padr’s mind, and that swayed him to give consent – with conditions. He entreated me with all formal, fervid zeal not to bring any shame to my family on Punartam or Cygnus Beta. He insisted that I return after a year, or whenever Rafi could fend for himself. And then, because he is a practical and canny businessman, he gave me a list of tasks and contacts that would smooth the way to improved credit and increased trade for his company. I agreed, especially to the last condition. I didn’t want to take over my padr’s business, but I did want to see him succeed because no one needs a Zhinuvian trade monopoly, not now, not ever.

I had my padr’s blessing. I had experience of living on Punartam. I knew people, and I was known. No one could say that I had no idea what I was doing. My actions, given the information at the time, made perfect sense, but somewhere between the commitment of an adult and the recklessness of a child, I found a new thing – fear of failure. Rafi saw it, and if he could see it, so would everyone else. That wasn’t good. The usual cheery mask wouldn’t do, either; any hint of artificiality would brand me forever a foreigner. I had to get back into the game with seriousness, focus and intent. Fear comes before a fall, and they don’t bother with bodycatchers in the Punartam pro leagues.

*

At last it was time to leave the biodome. Five Terran days had passed, each one hours shorter than a Cygnian day and minutes shorter than a Standard day, but all five days together could not match the shortest Punartam day when both suns set at the same time.

‘You are now on a twelve-siesta planet; have a nice day,’ said a member of the biodome staff after he finished processing the details of their departure into his tiny microphone, a silvery etching that curved along his jaw and punctuated his lower lip with a highly decorative bracket. He sounded sincere, but there was something about his absent-mindedness that hinted this was his standard farewell, a joke he had repeated so often that it no longer registered in his brain.

Rafi bounced nervously. His clothes felt strange. Punartam fashion started with the familiar beige tunic, but after that it got complicated. Ntenman had trussed him up with two thin sashes and a broad belt with a pouch, clasped a metal band over the looped lanyard on his arm that carried his datacharm, and tied up his hair with a hasp-and-pin contraption made of some material that was as smooth as copper but as warm as wood.

Ntenman’s tunic was covered with a simple brown tabard – no strings, bands or belts for him. Rafi eyed him with suspicion, but he forgot to feel silly when they crossed the biodome’s threshold and he gasped at his first few lungfuls of thin, cool Punartam air.

‘Yes, let’s see you bounce now,’ Ntenman said, laughing at his struggle. ‘I still say Punartam has the edge for Wallrunning training. Gravity may vary from Wall to Wall and world to world, but a good, efficient oxygen intake is a gift for all occasions.’

Rafi touched the oxygen breather at his belt but let his hand fall away. Ntenman shook his head. ‘It takes you without warning. Better sneak a few nips here and there than wait for a full collapse.’

‘How far are we . . . going?’ Rafi snatched a quick breath mid-sentence.

‘Thought you’d like to see the sights,’ came the indirect response.

Rafi let it pass because he was indeed caught up in seeing the sights. In Tlaxce City, as in so many Terran megacities and most Zhinuvian warrens and domains, the sky would be almost blocked out by several centuries’ and storeys’ worth of architecture. Punartam’s Metropolis was an inversion; the architecture was deep below the surface, hidden from the sun. Above-ground was open sky save for the towering Academes which locals called the Range, all the more majestic for having no competition, but slender, delicate, as if the spiky vertebrae of a saildragon had been stripped of meat and left to dry under the two suns.

The rest of the landscape consisted of parks and single-storey buildings with rooftop gardens. They gave the Metropolis its dominant colours – dark green, hazy purple and faint silver. Some of the gardens were under domes and those showed a wider variety of plants. Rafi thought he saw heliconias, their vivid orange and red striking him with a pang of homesickness, but they were too far away for him to be sure. There were no trains or cars, at least none visible, only a few small aerolights gliding from tower to tower. People stood and sat and walked in the parks, gardens and pathways, but there were not enough people, never enough people for such an important city. He knew why.

‘Roughly one-third,’ said Ntenman. ‘Two-thirds below, working or sleeping. It’s a maze down there. You’re better off staying topside until you learn not to get lost.’

Rafi held up a hand in a silent plea, leaned over for several seconds, then reluctantly straightened. He dragged a few deep breaths through the oxygen breather and tucked it back into his belt. ‘Ready,’ he said.

He thought he could see where they were going, and it looked
far
. The base of the Academe was set within the concentric ripples of a terraced garden, a pretty effect that made the tower resemble a spear rising up from the depths of a green lake.

‘Isn’t there a pedestrian path nearby? One that . . . moves?’ he asked.

‘There’s that soft Terran constitution coming through. Try to hide it better, Moo. You don’t
look
overly alien. Use that to your advantage. And put in your audioplug. I’ll point out what’s interesting as we walk.’

After fifteen minutes and another stop to breathe, Rafi gave in and strapped the breather to his face. It cleared his head and his vision sufficiently that he was able to take interest once more in what was going on around him. Excitement slowly built, fizzing in his blood like a fast-acting stimulant and almost sending him from the thrill of newness to the thrill of fear. He was no novice to alien life. Cygnus Beta collected every aspect of the galaxy, Tlaxce was a proper galactic-class metropolis, and even if he had managed to stay blinkered and cloistered with only Terran influences, there was plenty in both homestead and Lyceum education to ensure that he had no reason to gawk. But, but, but . . . the
difference
, the sheer unsettling
difference
of the place was overwhelming to the point that he could not figure out whether to be gleeful or petrified.

Two people walked side by side behind the low wall of a nearby terrace, half-obscured by the fall of green vines and purple flowers that pushed over the wall and down the steep slant of the buttressing earth. There was nothing familiar by which Rafi could measure size, but one of the figures was twice the height of the other, and their arms swung with a jerky arc that hinted at unusual jointedness. A man (at least, he
looked
like a man) passed them on the path with a creature at his heel. The animal (
at least
, thought Rafi, beginning to panic,
it
looked
like an animal
) was covered with something too mobile to be fur and too fuzzy to be feathers, and it moved with a hopping, bipedal gait that bounced its narrow, bird-like head between elbow and shoulder height. Rafi searched for a reference, could not determine what it was and settled for thinking of it as a miniature ostrich, though without the long neck and the round body. The odd pair were in a hurry, too distracted for even a brief greeting-gesture, but when Rafi’s heart skipped at the nearness of the unknown, the man gave him a blinked side-look and a tiny wry smile as if he had heard the muffled thump from within Rafi’s chest.

Ntenman missed the exchange. ‘It used to be a lot busier above-ground. Some of the old vids and holos we get on Cygnus Beta still give the wrong impression, but Punartam culture goes through these phases. Once it was the Academes that influenced everything. You had working and residential communities pooled like ink around the base of the towers, and you could tell just by looking at the landscape who the biggies were. Now it’s all subtle and discreet and below the surface. You see neat little gardens around the towers and—’