The Night's Dawn Trilogy (37 page)

“I’m Dr Alkad Mzu,” she said.

“Good evening, Doctor.”

“I understand you have a ship you’re fitting out?”

“That’s right, the
Lady Macbeth
. Finest independent trader this side of the Kulu Kingdom. Are you interested in chartering her?”

“I may be.”

Joshua skipped a beat. He took another look at the small woman. Alkad Mzu was dressed in a suit of grey fabric, a slim collar
turned up around her neck. She seemed very serious, her features composed in a permanent expression of resignation. And right
at the back of his mind there was a faint tingle of warning.

You’re being oversensitive, he told himself, just because she doesn’t smile doesn’t mean she’s a threat. Nothing is a threat
in Tranquillity, that’s the beauty of this place.

“Medicine must pay very well these days,” he said.

“It’s a physics doctorate.”

“Oh, sorry. Physics must pay very well.”

“Not really. I’m a member of the team researching Laymil artefacts.”

“Yeah? You must have heard of me, then, I found the electronics stack.”

“Yes, I heard, although memory crystals aren’t my field. I mainly study their fusion drives.”

“Really? Can I get you a drink?”

Alkad Mzu blinked, then slowly looked about. “Yes, this is a bar, isn’t it. I’ll just have a white wine, then, thank you.”

Joshua signalled to Helen Vanham for a wine. Receiving a very friendly smile in return.

“What exactly was the charter?” he asked.

“I need to visit a star system.”

Definitely weird, Joshua thought. “That’s what
Lady Mac
does best. Which star system?”

“Garissa.”

Joshua frowned, he thought he knew most star systems. He consulted his neural nanonics cosmology file. That was when his humour
really started to deflate. “Garissa was abandoned thirty years ago.”

Alkad Mzu received her slim glass from the barmaid, and tasted the wine. “It wasn’t abandoned, Captain. It was annihilated.
Ninety-five million people were slaughtered by the Omutan government. The Confederation Navy managed to get some off after
the planet-buster strike, about seven hundred thousand. They used marine transports and colonist-carrier ships.” Her eyes
clouded over. “They abandoned the rescue effort after a month. There wasn’t a lot of point. The radiation fallout had reached
everyone who survived the blasts and tsunamis and earthquakes and superstorms. Seven hundred thousand out of ninety-five million.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

Her lips twitched around the rim of the glass. “Why should you? An obscure little planet that died before you were born; for
politics that never made any sense even then. Why should anybody remember?”

Joshua shot the fuseodollars from his Jovian Bank credit card into the bar’s accounts block as the barmaid delivered his tray
of champagne bottles. There was an oriental man at the far end of the bar who was keeping an unobtrusive watch on himself
and Dr Mzu over his beer mug. Joshua forced himself not to stare in return. He smiled at Helen Vanham and added a generous
tip. “Dr Mzu, I have to be honest. I can take you to the Garissan system, but a landing given those circumstances is out of
the question.”

“I understand, Captain. And I appreciate your honesty. I don’t wish to land, simply to visit.”

“Ah, er, good. Garissa was your homeworld?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s the third time you’ve said that to me.”

“One of those evenings, I guess.”

“How much would it cost me?”

“For a single passenger, there and back; you’re looking at about five hundred thousand fuseodollars. I know it’s a lot, but
the fuel expenditure will be the same for one person as a full cargo hold. And the crew time is the same as well, they all
need paying.”

“I doubt I can raise your full charter fee in advance. My research position is a comfortable one, but not that comfortable.
However, I can assure you that once we reach our destination adequate funds will be available. Does that interest you?”

Joshua gripped the tray tighter, interested despite himself. “It may be possible to come to an arrangement, subject to a suitable
deposit. And my rates are quite reasonable, you won’t find any cheaper.”

“Thank you, Captain. Can I have a copy of your ship’s handling parameters and cargo capacity? I need to know whether the
Lady Macbeth
can fulfil my requirements, they are rather specialized.”

Jesus, if she needs to know how big the cargo hold is, just what is she planning on bringing back? Whatever it is, it must
have been hidden for thirty years.

His neural nanonics reported she had opened a channel. “Sure.” He datavised over the
Lady Mac
’s performance tables.

“I’ll be in touch, Captain. Thank you for the drink.”

“My pleasure.”

At the other end of the bar, Onku Noi, First Lieutenant serving in the Oshanko Imperial Navy, and assigned to the C5 Intelligence
arm (Foreign Observation Division), finished his beer and paid the bill. The audio discrimination program in his neural nanonics
had filtered out the bar’s chatter and background music, allowing him to record the conversation between Alkad Mzu and the
handsome young starship captain. He stood up and opened a channel into Tranquillity’s communication net, requesting access
to the spaceport’s standard commercial reference memory core. The file on the
Lady Macbeth
and Joshua Calvert was datavised into his neural nanonics. What he accessed caused an involuntary twitch in his jaw muscle.
Lady Macbeth
was a combat-capable starship, complete with antimatter drive and combat-wasp launch-rails, and she was being capaciously
refurbished. Pausing only to confirm Joshua Calvert’s visual profile was filed correctly in his neural nanonics memory cell,
he followed Dr Mzu out of Harkey’s Bar, keeping an unobtrusive thirty seconds behind her.

Joshua, interested before, was now outright fascinated as he surreptitiously watched the three men trailing after the diminutive
Dr Mzu almost collide in the doorway. His intuition had been right again.

Jesus, who is she?

Tranquillity would know. But then Tranquillity would know she was being tailed as well, and who the tails were. Which meant
that Ione would know.

He still hadn’t resolved his feelings about Ione. There couldn’t be anyone in the universe who was better at sex, but knowing
that Tranquillity was looking at him out of those enchanting sea-blue eyes, that all those fluffy girlish mannerisms were
wrapped around thought processes cooler than solid helium, was more than a little disconcerting. Though never inhibiting.
She had been quite right about that, he simply couldn’t say no. Not to her.

He returned to her every day, as instinctively as a migrating bird to an equatorial continent. It was exciting screwing the
Lord of Ruin, a Saldana. And the feel of her body pressed against his was supremely erotic.

The male ego, he often reflected these days, was a puppet master with a very black sense of humour.

Joshua didn’t have any time to ponder the puzzle of Dr Mzu before someone else hailed him. He turned with a slightly pained
expression on his face.

A thirty-year-old man in a slightly worn navy-blue ship’s one-piece was pushing through the throng, waving hopefully. He was
just a few centimetres shorter than Joshua with the kind of regular features below short black hair that suggested a good
deal of geneering. There was a smile on his face, apprehensive and keen at the same time.

“Yes?” Joshua asked wearily, he was only halfway back to his table.

“Captain Calvert? I’m Erick Thakrar, a ship’s general systems engineer, grade five.”

“Ah,” Joshua said.

Warlow’s thousand-decibel laugh blasted out, silencing the bar for an instant.

“Grade ratings are mostly down to logged flight hours,” Erick said. “I did a lot of time in port maintenance. I’m up to grade
three level in practice, if not more.”

“And you’re looking for a berth?”

“That’s right.”

Joshua hesitated, He still had a couple of berths to fill, and one of them was for a systems generalist. But that itchy sensation
of discomfort had returned, much stronger than it had been with Dr Mzu.

Jesus, what’s this one, a serial killer?

“I see,” he said.

“I would be a bargain, I’m only asking grade five pay.”

“I prefer to make flight pay a percentage of the charter fee, or a percentage of profits if we trade our own cargo.”

“Sounds pretty good to me.”

Joshua couldn’t fault his attitude. Youthful, enthusiastic, no doubt a good worker, obviously willing to accept the rule bending
necessary to keep independent ships flying. Ordinarily, a man you’d want at your back. But that intimation of
wrongness
wouldn’t leave.

“OK, let me have your CV file, and I’ll look it over,” he said. “But not tonight, I’m in no fit state to make command judgements
tonight.”

In the end he invited Erick Thakrar back to the table to see how he got on with the other three crew members. He shared their
sense of humour, had some good stories of his own, drank a lot, but not excessively.

Joshua watched it happen through the increasingly rosy glow fostered by the champagne, occasionally having to push Kelly to
one side for a proper view of the table. War-low liked him, Ashly Hanson liked him, Melvyn Ducharme, the
Lady Mac
’s fusion specialist, liked him, even Meyer and the
Udat
crew liked him. He was one of them.

And that, Joshua decided, was the problem. Erick fitted into his role a little too perfectly.

At quarter past two in the morning, feeling very smug, Joshua managed to give Kelly the slip, and sneaked out of Harkey’s
Bar with Helen Vanham. She lived by herself in an apartment a couple of floors below Harkey’s. It was sparsely furnished,
the walls of the lounge were bare white polyp; big brightly coloured cushions had been scattered around on a topaz moss floor,
several aluminium cargo-pods served as tables with bottles and glasses, a giant AV projector pillar occupied one corner. The
archways into different rooms all had folding silk screens for doors. Someone had been painting outlines of animals on them,
there were paint pots and brushes lying on one of the pods. Joshua saw new tumours of polyp pushing up through the moss like
rock mushrooms: furniture buds starting the slow growth into the form Helen wanted.

There was a food secretion panel on the wall opposite the window; a row of teats, like small yellow-brown rubber sacks, were
standing proud, indicating regular use. It had been a long time since Joshua had used a panel for food, though a few years
ago when money was tight they had been a godsend.

Every apartment in Tranquillity had one. The teats secreted edible pastes and fruit juices synthesized by a series of glands
in the wall behind. There was nothing wrong with the taste, the pastes were indistinguishable from real chicken, and beef,
and pork, and lamb, even the colours were reasonable. It was the constituency, like viscid grease, which always put Joshua
off.

The glands ingested a nutrient fluid from a habitatwide network of veins which were fed from Tranquillity’s mineral digestion
organs in the southern endcap. There was also a degree of recycling, human wastes and organic scraps being broken down in
specialist organs at the bottom of each starscraper. Porous sections of the shell vented toxic chemicals, preventing any dangerous
build-up in the habitat’s closed biosphere.

There was no such thing as starvation in bitek habitats, though both Edenists and Tranquillity’s residents imported vast quantities
of delicacies and wines from across the Confederation. They could afford it. But Helen obviously couldn’t. Despite its size,
the full teats and absence of materialism marked the apartment down as student digs.

“Help yourself to a drink,” Helen said. “I’m getting out of this customer-friendly dress.” She walked through an archway into
the bedroom, leaving the screen folded back.

“What else do you do apart from serve bar at Harkey’s?” he asked.

“I’m studying art,” she called back. “Harkey’s is just for funtime money.”

Joshua broke off from examining the bottles and gave the screens with their animals a more appraising look. “Are you any good?”

“I might be eventually. My tutor says I have a good feel for form. But it’s a five-year course, we’re still on basic sketching
and painting. We don’t even get to AV technology until next year, and mood synthesis is another year after that. It’s a drag,
but you need to know the fundamentals.”

“So how long have you been at Harkey’s?”

“A couple of months. It’s not bad work, you space industry people tip well, and you’re not a pain like the finance mob. I
worked at a bar over in the StPelham for a week. Crapoodle!”

“Have you ever seen Erick Thakrar before? He was sitting at my table, thirtyish, in a blue ship-suit.”

“Yes. He’s been in most nights for a fortnight or so. He’s another good tipper.”

“Do you know where he’s been working?”

“Out in the dock; the Lowndes company, I think. He started a couple of days after he arrived.”

“Which ship did he arrive on?”

“The
Shah of Kai
.”

Joshua opened a channel into Tranquillity’s communication net, and datavised a search request into the Lloyd’s office. The
Shah of Kai
was a cargo vessel registered to a holding company in the New Californian system. It was an ex-navy transport ship, with
a six-gee fusion drive; one hold was equipped with zero-tau pods for a company of marines, and it had proximity-range defence
lasers. An asteroid assault craft.

Gotcha, Joshua thought.

“Did you ever meet any of the crew?” he asked.

Helen reappeared in the bedroom archway. She was wearing a long-sleeved net body-stocking, and white suede boots which came
halfway up her thighs.

“Tell you later,” she said.

Joshua gave his lips an involuntary lick. “I’ve got a great location file to match that costume, if you want to try it.”