Expatria: The Box Set (37 page)

CHAPTER 13

She guided herself down onto the surface of Station Yellow and waited for the air-lock to let her in. Stopp knew all the warnings about travelling by suit but she didn't care. Carriers and shuttles were hassle, they weren't necessary. Fans went from station to station all the time with only a thermo suit and a jet pack. No deal, no fuss.

Behind her, she could see the great ring of the
Third Testament
. Fifteen kilometres distant but she felt like she could reach out and run a hand around its perfect curves. Ferries and freighters crawled across the black void, tiny specks, stars that moved. Orbit had never been so busy.

The hatch slid across and she swung inside, peeling off her mask before there was even enough air to breathe.

The inner door opened and she drifted in.

The tunnel opened out into a space that was clear for fifty metres or more. On the far side she saw Decker, drifting with Dippso and Mordecai and Grady Cesar, his legs tied up behind his shoulders. She drifted across to join them. 'Hi,' she said. 'Anything new?'

Mordecai stopped himself from speaking. Probably some crack about playing screen—but he was outnumbered here, Decker and Dippso wouldn't take his bullying and Grady was too old for any of that. She saw that Mordecai's nose was puffed up even more than usual and his eyes were watering. Lots of the orbitals had suffered allergies and illnesses since the arrival of the
Third Testament
. Stopp thought of her own recurring throat infection. She could understand why the actives had protected themselves with breathing masks for their first days in orbit.

'Hi, Stopp,' said Decker. He was OK for his age. He had been born a year too early to be a real Fan—even if he had wanted—but sometimes he seemed even older than that. 'They landed yesterday, near to Newest Delhi—guess they must have listened to something I've said. I told them they wouldn't stand a chance with Salvo Andric. I told them he's too wired up but I didn't think they'd really pay any attention. Who knows? Maybe they ignored me and landed at Newest Delhi for their own reasons.'

'Yeah, I knew they'd landed, but—'

'Anyhow. No news from the Holy Cee but we've been talking to the Pageant. All the fighting seemed to stop as soon as GenGen hit dirt—I guess they kind of clubbed together against the devil they didn't, that kind of thing. They're talking in Newest Delhi, now, but we don't have coverage of any of it. We have a couple of links with people in the crowds, at the Deadacre and in the city, but they're not getting much. Nobody has any control on the streets. The Black-Handers caused a lot of the trouble but they seem to have holed up. Now there's Krishnas and Charities and all sorts; there's looting in places. No one seems to know what's going on. See what I mean?' He smiled, shrugged, stopped himself against a branch of a yellow-gage tree.

Stopp liked to listen to Decker. He always forgot who he was talking to and ended up like he was talking to anybody—he didn't talk down like Mordecai or some of the others.

'Where have you been?' said Dippso, hitching her shawl up across her shoulders. Her throat was rough and her voice sounded faint; Stopp knew how she felt. 'It's like you've been hiding.'

Stopp shrugged and let her hands dance a little. 'Guess I've been a bit nervous,' she said. 'But I've been with a guy called EpheHermann, doing scriptures and stuff. Have you seen the mission house on Red? It's like
nothing
else ... really.'

Dippso smiled and said, 'You should get out more. I've seen visuals of the Red mission house, but really it's like that all over. Look around Yellow: you've never seen so much bare plastic. They've been getting us in order like never ever.'

Stopp smiled and glanced at Grady Cesar. He looked like he wanted to speak but his stuttering always made him hold back; she nodded to show she was listening.

'We're seeing a guy called Turkut Bar'hat,' he said. 'Roman, active. He's pretty high up. Says he wants to get to know the natives.' Grady spat out into the open space. 'Pah. He wants to know native, I'll
tell
him. I'll say, "You can stop building all over an' start
asking
," is what I'll say. I'll t-t-tell him, that he c-c-c—'

'Sorry,' said Stopp, cutting him off. 'But I have things to do.' She didn't know what but she knew she didn't want to listen to Grady Cesar laying into the Holy Cee like that.

She pushed off along a tunnel, looking for a console bay. Maybe she could find someone to share it all with. She didn't know, she just had this terrible urge to
do
.

~

A view of a room, light slanting in from one small window, slid up onto the screen. A thin mattress was pushed against one wall, a blanket spread out over it, its top neatly folded down. Books stood in orderly piles next to heavy-duty power-cells, strings of beads hung from hooks, candles were stuck on spiked holders, charts curled away from the walls.

Stopp's trifax phased up out of thin air and ArcNet made the image look around.

'Hi, Stopp,' said Lui Tsang, moving into view. She'd never seen him out of his padded southern jacket and leggings before. In his shorts he looked incredibly thin, his skin stretched tight over an ill-fitting framework of ribs and joints. His neck angled forward, making his head bob about like that of a terrapin or a puppet. He had a wide mouth with a tongue that was constantly flicking across his lips, betraying an insecurity Stopp had never noticed before. He squatted on the mattress and pulled a shirt over his head, then spat on his hands and smoothed the few strands of moustache down on either side of his mouth.

'They've landed,' she said. 'Near to Newest Delhi.' She told him what she could and as he listened his eyes narrowed.

When she had finished he paused and then said, 'If Matt and Sukui-san are there, it might be OK. Matt's a stone-head but he means good. Sukui's what he is...

'What are they like? How do they talk? What do they want?'

'They claim some kind of rights over Expatria, as far as I can tell. But they're not going to do anything about it. They just want to convert us all to their gospel.'

Lui laughed uneasily.

'I think they mean it,' Stopp continued. '
The Third Testament
is more important to them than anything else. I've read some of it and it says all about how God's market-place of the soul is where all our good points are weighed up in a kind of a cost-benefit model. In a thousand years' time we'll all be—'

'Amen,' said Lui, slicing his hands through the air. 'Leave it to the professionals, Stopp. You're getting confused.' He smiled to show he didn't really mean anything by it, then said, 'Salvo is getting twitchier and twitchier. You heard him about the rockets, didn't you? You were with me in the Capitol. He's put Mags Sender on it and she's sharp, even if she hasn't got herself any conscience. They're building up defences all around the docks. She says she can blow any boat off the water if it comes within a kilometre and I can see she's just waiting to try. Salvo's planning to put up barricades on all the roads, too, in case they come over land. He says he's not going to shoot them before they get a chance to speak but I don't believe him. If they come here they'll have to come by trifax first, at least until the Prime runs out of bullets.'

Lui just sat there shaking his head. Stopp pointed at her console's roller and moved her trifax to sit down next to him. Before Sukui had left, Lui had only been a technician. Now Salvo seemed to be trying to squeeze him into the old scientist's imprint.

'Do you want to come up here in trifax and see what they're like?' asked Stopp. 'You have the equipment at Dixie Hill, haven't you? You've been here before with Decker and Sun-Ray Sidhu. Come on. It's all been one-way, 'til now. If you could see them here you might be able to prepare Salvo Andric.' She shrugged, waved her hands. 'It might help.'

She smiled as Lui's face lit up. 'Sure,' he said. 'Let's do it!' He stood and hurried off view. 'We don't need to go to Dixie, either. I moved some of the equipment out of there when Siggy Axelmeyer was trying to start a revolution, figured I'd save what I could. I've got it all right here. My room's on Camembert, it's just two blocks from the Capitol so there's street lights with power I can steal from the Prime's generators.'

Within minutes Lui was standing in a false space where Stopp's screen should have been. Straight away, ArcNet moved him out into the open, cast him up to the right size, animated his movements so that he floated freely instead of standing under the strain of gravity.

Stopp freed herself from the restrainer and took the projector ArcNet indicated for her in a recess above the consoles. The projector was a small disc, about ten centimetres in diameter. She licked its back, pressed it onto her chest, and moved out, Lui Tsang's ghost following her in perfectly measured movements.

She keyed the first hatch they came to and passed into an air-duct; Lui might be too conspicuous out in the open.

Shortly, they came to a fork, chose the larger pipe and continued on their way. They stopped at the next hatch and Stopp decided it was worth taking a look outside. Often these routes through the old arks would follow no logic—tunnels that came to a dead end, airlocks between air-space and air-space; Stopp had given up trying to understand them long ago. She keyed in a maintenance number and peered through the opening gap. There was a wide passageway, doors opening off it on all five sides. 'Looks like accommodation,' she said into her mike. 'Do you want a look?'

'Shit, I'll see anything,' said Lui. 'Your drainage pipes were making me sick.'

They pushed out into the corridor and closed the hatch. Voices approached, but their accents were orbital so she didn't cut the projection.

She opened a door and showed Lui a sleep-net, little else. 'Well, where are all the Terrans?' he wanted to know.

'You want Terrans, we'll get you some Terrans,' said Stopp. She pushed back out into the corridor, past a woman with no arms and a man with no hair.
Mutants stick together
, she thought, but all she said was, 'Thumbelina and David. They were born during a solar peak, forty-three years ago.'

After a few minutes they heard the lazy drawl of a Terran. 'We're getting Kay's information,' it said, a man with an accent Stopp hadn't heard before. 'We must reserve the option, I say. Send them down so they're ready if they're needed. I know Kay, I was with her in Aix: her perceptions are near-top. Remember Prague.'

Stopp came to a junction and paused. She didn't like the tone of the man's voice. A gage tree was tangled up at the end of her wall and she crept through it until she could just peer around the corner.

The corridor opened out, after a few metres, making a small bay. There were evangelicals there, Romans, Stopp thought. A few Thessalonians, too, although she still hadn't perfected her identification of the holy orders. They were looking nervously at each other, pretending that they weren't listening in on this disagreement.

Director Roux was occupying the centre of the bay, his half-body strapped into one of his autonomic floaters, cables passing under his skin, an in-built mask across his mouth and nose.

The other man was broad and strong-looking. As he spoke he thrust his hands through the air and he kept his balance by the use of a foot, judiciously hooked around a grab-bar. His head was coated in a thin ginger stubble and his skin was unnaturally darkened. Stopp wondered if he had a skin disease, but then Terrans didn't appear to have any kinds of diseases themselves, they only carried them here for the orbitals to suffer, or so it seemed.

She had never seen this man before, but he must fit well in the hierarchy if he could stand up to a director like that.

'I have consulted with the MetaPlex,' said Roux. 'The special units will land tomorrow as you suggest. But they will not be activated.'

The other man gave a satisfied smile.

A kick in the back sent Stopp tumbling out through the splintering branches of the yellow-gage tree.

She cried out—she couldn't help herself—and then they had seen her.

She hit a wall and stopped, still metres from Director Roux and this other man and the evangelicals beyond.

She looked back, past Lui's trifax, and saw another evangelical staring at her. His eyes looked like they were peering through clear plastic. His hair was cut short and as he glanced across at his director, Stopp followed his look and saw the startled expression on the faces of Roux and the others. The dark-skinned man wasn't looking at Stopp, he was staring at the trifacsimile of Lui Tsang, studying his body, clearly the product of gravity.

'Well get her then!' barked Roux, raising a finger towards Stopp.

Lui's trifax twitched and then sprang back along the passage. The nearest evangelical—the one who had found Stopp—lunged at him and lost his orientation, striking the wall and yelling with rage. Others stirred and pushed off towards Stopp. ArcNet had used a simple trick with Lui's image but it had won Stopp some precious time.

She sprang away from the wall as the first evangelical brushed by, mistiming his grab. Bulleting under his arched back, Stopp sped along the corridor, bounced around a curve and into an open tunnel end.

With less space in the tunnel, Stopp was in her element. She made ground, heard the sounds of confusion and frustration falling away behind her.

She came to an air-lock, guessed how much time she could spare, and dived inside. As the air cycled out, she let the air escape from her lungs to avoid the bends. She saw stars through the panel, pushed the door open. They would be at the inner door by now. If she let air back in then they would have her.

She swung out of the exit and looked around. Twenty metres across open space there was another extension of the Station, a lock. She would be OK. The cold here in the ark's shadow was unbelievable as her gloved feet gripped the ark's outer surface. She pushed off and hoped her aim was good.

She hit the wall about a metre from the lock, almost bouncing back into space.

She had lost all sense of feeling.

Her head was pounding. She thought she might lose consciousness and drift off into the void. Suddenly it seemed like the easiest thing to do.