Against A Dark Background (10 page)

She closed her eyes with a look of despair. ‘The Log-Jam, with Miz,’ she said.

‘Ah, of course.’ He turned to go, facing the giant open-cast mine on the dark hillside. Then he stopped and turned back, the rain blowing about him. He nodded behind him at the mine. ‘See that, Sharrow? The open-cast? Mining an ancient spoil heap; sifting the already discarded, looking for treasure in what was rubbish . . . maybe not even for the first time, either. We live in the dust of our forebears; insects crawling in their dung. Splendid, isn’t it?’

He turned and walked away along the bank of an old tailings pond. He’d gone another few paces when he turned once more and called out, ‘By the way; you were very convincing about one thing . . . until you took the radiation scar off.’

He laughed and strode off towards the half-consumed spoil heap.

Like a lot of Golterian oddities, the Log-Jam was basically a tax dodge.

Jonolrey, Golter’s second largest continent, lay across Phirar from Caltasp. The same root word in a long-lost language that had provided the name for the ocean of Phirar had also given the region of Piphram its name. Once Piphram had been a powerful state, the greatest trading nation on the planet, practically running the world’s entire merchant marine. But that had been long ago; now it was just another entangledly autonomous patchwork Free Area, no less prosperous or gaudy than any other part of the world.

The administrative capital of Piphram, which by sheer coincidence happened actually to lie within the area its contract covered, was the Log-Jam.

Sunlit land slid under the small jet, flowing green and brown beneath its forward-weed wings as it throttled back and adjusted its position in the centre of the conical glide-path.

Sharrow watched Dloan at the plane’s controls; he sat in the pilot’s seat of the hired aircraft, studying its instrument screens. He’d flown the plane manually for take-off and ascent from Regioner, and had wanted to land it too, but the Log-Jam had had too many bad experiences with people trying to land on Carrier Field, and insisted on autolandings. Dloan was going to make sure it went all right.

Zefla, in a seat across from Sharrow, was fiddling with the small cabin’s screen controls; channel-hopping to produce a confused succession of images and background sound bursts.

Sharrow looked out of the window at the cloud-dappled land moving smoothly underneath.

‘-alked to Doctor Fretis Braäst, moderator of the Huhsz college at Yadayeypon Ecclesiastical School.’

Well, yes,’ Zefla said, turning up the sound. Sharrow glanced up at the screen to see a well-groomed male presenter talking to camera; behind him, on the studio wall, was a gigantic, slightly grainy hologram of her own face.
You’re a star, kid,’ Zefla said, smiling dazzlingly. Dloan turned round to watch.

Sharrow scowled at the screen. `Is that the best photo they could get? Must be ten years old; look at my hair. Ugh.’

The blow-up of Sharrow’s face was replaced by a live holo of a trimlooking elderly man with white hair and a white beard. He had twinkly eyes and an understanding smile. He was dressed in a light-grey academic gown with discreet but numerous qualification ribbons decorating one side of the collar.

Doctor Braäst,’ said the presenter.
This is a terrible thing, isn’t it? Here we are, about to start the second decamillenium, and your faith wants to hunt down and kill - preferably put to death ceremonially, in fact - a woman who has never been convicted of anything and whose only crime appears to be having been born, and being born female.’

Doctor Braäst smiled briefly. `Well, Keldon, I think you’ll find that the Lady Sharrow does have a string of convictions for a variety of crimes in Malishu, Miykenns, dating-’

Doctor Braäst,’ the presenter gave a pained smile and glanced down at a screenboard balanced on his knee.
Those were minor public order offences; I don’t think you can use fifteen-year-old fines for brawling and insulting a police officer as an excuse for-’

I beg your pardon, Keldon,’ the white-haired man smiled.
I was just trying to keep things totally accurate.’

`Well, fine, but to return to-’

‘And I’d remind you that the whole issue of the use of such Passports is not a Huhsz tenet; this is a civil process with a pedigree over two millennia old; what we are told - and what we have to accept - is that this is a civilised response to the problem of assassination and the potential for disruption it implies.’

`Well, I believe a lot of people would say that all assassination ought to be illegal-’

Perhaps so, but it was found that its codification caused less disruption than extra-legal actions.’

`Well, well; we aren’t here to discuss the history of legal . . . legal history, Doctor; we’re talking about the fate of one woman you seem determined to persecute and hound to death with all the influence and resources your-extremely wealthy-faith can muster.’

`Well, I agree that on the face of it this might seem terribly unfortunate for the lady-’

`I suspect most people would put it rather stronger than that-’

‘Although this is a lady associated with the Incident in Lip City eight years-’

`This is all rumour, though, isn’t it, Doctor Braäst? Smear tactics. She hasn’t been convicted of anything . . . In fact, she successfully sued two screen services which implicated her in the Lip City Incident-’

‘I can understand you’re frightened of her doing the same to you . . .’

`But none of this alters the fact that you want this woman dead, Doctor Braäst. Why?’

(’That’s more like it,’ Zefla said, nodding.)

Keldon, this is an unfortunate matter going back many generations, to an act of desecration, violence and rape carried out by one of the .lady’s ancestors-’

`A version of events which has always been vigorously denied by-’

Of course it’s been denied, Keldon,’ the small doctor said, looking exasperated.
If you’ll just let me finish . . .’

`I beg your pardon; go on.’

‘In which a young temple virgin was abducted, several of our order were seriously injured and numerous acts of violently destructive desecration, some of them of an obscene and depraved nature I can’t repeat here, were committed by troops of the Dascen clan-’

‘Again, this is all denied-’

`Please let me finish; this unfortunate child was then raped, despoiled by Duke Chlea, forced to marry him and to bear children. When this poor, defiled and frightened creature attempted to return herself and her twins to the safety and security of the temple she had known since she was an infant-’

‘Now, really, Doctor Braäst; history is quite clear on this; the Huhsz . . . Huhsz supporters, I should say, simply attacked-’

‘History is people and records and the human memory and therefore not infallible, Keldon; we have divine guidance in this, which is.’

`But, Doctor Braäst, surely no matter whose version of this tragic story you believe, there is no reason to carry this blood-feud on into the present.’

But we did not,’ the white-haired man said reasonably.
This confused and unfortunate woman swore eternal antipathy to our faith; swore, indeed, that she would murder the next Prophet Incarnate, should He appear in her lifetime, and furthermore bound all her line to the same oath; that she had been raped, and then indoctrinated by the Dascen tribe in an atmosphere of hatred and atheist lies might help to explain such an abomination, but it cannot excuse it.

`Our Patriarch was at first determined to ignore this outrage, but God himself, in a visitation of a kind that occurs less than once in a generation, spoke to him and told the blessed Patriarch that he had but one course of action; blood had to be met with blood. By all means meet tolerance with tolerance, but equally one must meet intolerance with intolerance.

`The Messiah can not be born until the threat has been lifted or the desecration ameliorated. The oath has been made, the vendetta instituted, and all by the Dascen female line. They might think that they can rescind their rash and sacrilegious curse -indeed I perfectly understand that they want to do so now-but I’m afraid God’s word is not to be so trifled with. What must be done must be done. Even if we don’t get the Passports - though I am confident we shall - this is not a matter for compromise.’

‘Of course, Doctor Braist, cynics might say that the real object of all this is to secure the return of what is now the very last Lazy Gun, which was the chief treasure taken from-’

`he exact nature of the treasure is irrelevant, Keldon, but it was as an act of mercy that God, through the Patriarch, allowed that the return of this device - never at any time used by the Huhsz, I might point out, and of purely ceremonial value would signal an end to this tragic feud, from our side at least.’

`But, Doctor, what it all boils down to is this; can any amount of this sort of reasoning, historical or otherwise, really justify this sort of barbaric practice in this day and age? Briefly, please.’

`Barbarism is always with us, Keldon. Lip City suffered an act of unparalleled barbarity eight years ago. What we have been forced to do is not barbaric; it is the will and the mercy of God. We can no more ignore this duty than we can neglect the adoration of Him. The Lady Sharrow - though we may feel sorry for her on a human level - represents a living insult for all those of the True and Blessed Belief. Her fate is not a matter for debate. She is the last of her line; a sad, barren and disabled figure whose misery has gone on too long. Her spirit, when it is finally released, will sing for joy that we were the ones who rescued her from her torment. I look forward to the eternal instant when her voice joins those of the Blessed whose conversion occurs after death; hers will be a muted exaltation, but it will be exaltation nevertheless, and eternal. Surely we should all wish her that.’

`Doctor Braäst, we’re out of time. Thank you for those words.’

‘Thank you, Keldon.’

`Well,’ the presenter said, turning to face the camera again with his eyebrows raised and just the suggestion of a shake of his head. ‘The war in Imthaid, now-’

Zefla switched the screen off. Dloan turned back to the jet’s controls. The Log-jam was a vast metallic ice crystal, glittering in the distance at the margin of the land and sea.

Zefla turned to Sharrow, slinging one long leg over her seat. ‘Buncha religious fuckwits.’ She shook her head, blonde hair swinging. ‘You’re going to be a fucking heroine at the end of this, Shar, and they’re going to look like the humourless hysterical dickshits they are.’

Sharrow looked disconsolately at the darkened screen, nodding. ‘Only if they don’t get me,’ she said, turning away and looking out of the window, where the outlying sections of the Log-jam rose towards the dropping plane like a set of enormous, gleaming fingers.

The plane landed without incident on Carrier Field.

When the state of Piphram had been on the way downhill after its era of grandeur and wealth, centuries earlier, many of the seaships that had comprised its merchant fleet had been sold, many more had been scrapped, and hundreds had been mothballed. The mothballed ships - everything from megatonne bulk carriers to the most delicate and exquisite repossessed private yacht - had mostly been brought home, to lie in a broad lagoon on the coast of Piphram’s Phirarian province and await better trading conditions.

Subsequently a modest land boom on the nearby coastal strip, between the Snowy Mountains and the lagoon-dotted coast pushed property prices up and Piphram’s historically punitive realestate taxes exaggerated the effect. Then somebody - spotting a loophole in the tax status of the lagoons - thought of using a couple of old car ferries as temporary floating dormitories.

The two down-at-stern ferries, or rather their marginal situation, had proved to be a seed-point; within the chaos of Goltei s furiously complicated economic ecology, finance - along with its relevant material manifestations - tended to concentrate and crystallise almost instantaneously around any region where the conditions for profitmaking were even one shade more promising than elsewhere.

Thus, the Log-jam had grown from a few rusty hulks to a fully-fledged city in less than a hundred years; at first the ships were moored together in clumps and people moved between them on small craft, then later the vessels were joined together. Some were welded to each other and some had secondary housing, office and factory units built upon and between them until the individual identity of the majority of the ships began to disappear in the emerging topology of the conglomerative city.

The Log-jam now comprised many thousands of ships and a new one was added every few weeks; it had spread to the limits of the first lagoon, then spread out to sea and taken over three other lagoons along the coast, to become home to over two million people. Its main airport - which could be moved as one unit so that it was always on the outskirts of the city - was composed of forty old oil tankers joined side by side, their decks stripped, smoothed and strengthened to take the strats and transport aircraft. Its largely mothballed space port was a collection of ancient oil production platforms, towering at the southernmost end of the city; its docks were a few dozen dry docks, crane-carrying bulk carriers and militarily obsolete fleet auxiliary vessels.

Eight old aircraft carriers, remnants of a commercial navy, jointly made up Carrier Field, where the V-winged executive jet landed.

The little plane was quickly towed away and down-lifted to be stored in the bowels of one of the adjoining ex-supertankers which now served as supplementary hangars to the antique carriers.

Sharrow, Zefla and Dloan looked around the deck of the old ship while a tall, stooped steward with a full beard loaded their baggage onto a whining trolley. The weather was warm and humid and the sun high in a slightly hazy sky.

‘Mornin t’yez,’ wheezed the steward, nodding to them. ‘This your first time t’the jam, hm?’

‘No,’ said Sharrow, scowling.

‘It is mine,’ Zefla said brightly.

‘Almost a crime, lovely lady like yerself not visitin the jam till now, if ye don’t mind me sayin so, ma’am,’ the steward told Zefla. He took the control stick at the front of the cart and started to walk away, the cart whining behind him. ‘Been a good few years an more since we ad the priv’lege of welcomin two such beautiful ladies such as yourselves to the old jam. Makes the day a better one just seein two such enchantin zamples of the fair sex, it do, an it were a pretty fine day t’begin with. But made the better now with your presence, lovely ladies, like I says. An no mistake.’