Gardens of the Sun (7 page)

Every day brought rumours of some act of sabotage, or harassment of the occupying force. Squads searching remote refuges were ambushed; explosive devices were buried beside roadways; once, several civilian advisers in the Green Zone were killed by a remote-controlled bomb. The explosion was close to the building where the spy was working. The hard thunderclap knocked him out of his seat; when he picked himself up, he saw a column of black smoke unpacking in the air towards the roof of the city’s tent. Within an hour, soldiers swept through the offices and like every Outer working in the zone the spy was arrested, beaten, and briefly interrogated. His assumed identity held, and two days later he and the others were allowed back to work, although it now took more than an hour to navigate the increased security at checkpoints, and all workers inside the Green Zone were subjected to random stops and searches.

At first, the spy’s cautious inquiries about the resistance met only with dead ends and denial. A few men and women seemed sympathetic and told him that they would try their best to find out about Zi Lei, but no one ever got back to him. One day, on his way home from work, he was cornered by two men. Both wore fabric sleeves over their heads, with slits for their eyes and mouths. One held a knife at his throat while the other, much older, told him that he was making too much noise about things that were not his concern. He could have disabled or killed both of them inside thirty seconds, but he pretended to be shocked and frightened. He told the older man that he was desperate to find the woman he loved, that he had a position in the Green Zone and could be of help. He had access to useful information, he would do any kind of favour. All they had to do was ask.

The man shook his head. ‘That’s why we can’t trust you - because you work for them. Stay out of our business. Find your woman without involving us.’

The spy let the two men walk away, marking their gait. That was how he recognised the younger man a few days later. He followed him to where he lived and learned his name. He was still keeping track of the young man, hoping he would lead him to other members of the resistance, when the Brazilians arrested three women and claimed that they had planted the bomb in the Green Zone. There was a show trial, the accused were found guilty, and the next day every member of the general labour pool was assembled on the dead lawn of the city’s largest park to witness the execution.

The spy stood near the back of the crowd, watching the young man he’d been following, planning to follow him afterwards. The three condemned prisoners, barefoot and dressed in new blue coveralls, were led out onto a stage by Brazilian guards who moved with the delicate clumsiness of those unused to Dione’s low gravity. An officer read out a brief statement, warning that any further acts of treason or sabotage that threatened the reconstruction of the city and the restoration of order would be met with extreme force. The spy wasn’t listening. He didn’t even react when the three women were shot in the back of the head, one after the other. He had seen, on the far side of the great crowd, someone he knew. Keiko Sasaki, the woman who had been a friend and caretaker of Zi Lei before the war.

It was impossible. He’d mined the Brazilian records for information about everyone Zi Lei had known: Keiko Sasaki’s name was in the lists of the dead. And yet there she was.

As the shock of recognition faded, the spy realised that there could be only one reason why she was registered as dead and was living in the city under another name: she was a member of the resistance. Despite the risk, he decided there and then that he must talk to her as soon as possible.

It took him less than twenty-four hours to establish that Keiko Sasaki worked in the city’s hospital and lived in the same apartment block as the girlfriend of the man he’d been following. The spy doubted that it was a coincidence, and decided that it would be too dangerous to confront her there. Instead, three days after he’d seen her at the execution, he walked up to her in the hospital and slapped a narcotic patch on her neck and caught her when she collapsed and dragged her into a storeroom.

When she came around she struggled briefly against the plastic ties he’d used to bind her wrists and ankles to shelving, crucifixion style. Making noises behind the halflife bandage clamped over her mouth.

He showed her the knife he’d fashioned from a shard of fullerene, told her who he was, told her that he’d kill her if she screamed when he removed the gag.

‘I won’t tell the Brazilians that you are all part of the resistance. I don’t care. I only care about Zi Lei. Nod if you are willing to talk.’

Keiko Sasaki bobbed her head up and down. She was a slender woman who seemed to have aged ten years since the spy had last seen her. Her face was gaunt and her eyes were bruised and sunken, but her gaze was angry and bright, and she didn’t wince when the spy ripped off the halflife bandage.

‘I heard you’d died, Ken.’

‘And I heard that you had died. Yet here we are. Where is she?’

‘What have you done to your face?’

‘Where is she?’

Keiko Sasaki flinched when he dented the skin under her left eye with the point of his makeshift blade, said quickly, ‘I don’t know where she is, but she has family on Iapetus. I heard that after she escaped from prison she tried to get on one of the ships leaving Dione. Whether the ship reached Iapetus, or whether it was one of the unlucky ones, I don’t know. I do know that if she managed to reach Iapetus, if she’s still alive, she will be safe from you.’

‘She didn’t tell me that she’d come here from Iapetus.’

‘You didn’t know very much about her at all, did you? You didn’t even know that she was suffering from schizophrenia until I told you,’ Keiko Sasaki said. ‘You weren’t interested in her as a person. You were interested in her as an object of your obsession. You believed that you were her friend, that you were in love. But in truth you were two lonely and confused people who were thrown together in the middle of a crisis when emotions were heightened.’

‘You are trying to hurt me. It won’t work.’

‘I’m trying to tell you the truth.’

‘I want to help her.’

‘Wherever she is, alive or dead, she’s beyond your help. But listen. You can help us. You can join us. You obviously have the skill to create a false identity, and you obviously needed to do it because you’re on the Brazilians’ shit list. That means you can be useful to us. We need people like you, Ken. Resourceful people. Survivors.’

‘Ken died in the war. I’m Felice Gottschalk now. And when I walk out of this room I will be someone else, and you and your friends will never find me.’

‘If you help us, then in time it might be possible to find Zi Lei. You help us; we help you.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you. I killed a man once, and I never want to do it again,’ the spy said, and quick as thought slapped a second patch on Keiko Sasaki’s forehead and caught her as she slumped sideways.

He walked out of the storeroom as a Brazilian marine, Ari Hunter. Trooper Hunter was a skin, a few entries in the files of the Brazilian military, but he wore the spy’s face and fingerprints and retinal and metabolic patterns, and he possessed the spy’s DNA. He also looked like an Outer, but that didn’t matter. He only had to deal with the AIs and robots that controlled the security gates and the garages. They believed that Ari Hunter required a rolligon because he was on a mission to investigate an anomalous signal near the northern end of Latium Chasma.

This time the spy could drive across the surface of the little moon without worrying about being targeted by the Brazilians. His mission was logged and approved - although he would not be making the return part of the journey, of course. He planned to retrieve and refuel the dropshell and quit Dione. It wasn’t an ideal craft, but he couldn’t risk stealing anything else. It had just enough thrust to reach escape velocity, and then he could spiral out to Iapetus in a long, lazy orbit that would take more than a hundred days. That was all right. He had plenty of air and water and food, and would spend most of the time drowsing in hibernation. And when he woke, he would set out again to find the woman he loved. It was a holy mission. Nothing could stop him.

Loc Ifrahim deserved a world of his own. Instead, they gave him a junkyard full of dead ships.

When the war had kicked off, most of the Outer ships in the Saturn System had been killed by encounters with singleships or drones or mines. Now, robot tugs were locating and intercepting these hulks, modifying the long and erratic paths they traced around Saturn, and nudging them towards Dione, where they were parked in equatorial orbit to await the attentions of the salvage gangs.

A dozen agencies commissioned and loosely controlled by the Three Powers Authority were attempting to reconstruct damaged infrastructure in the Saturn System, find gainful employment for tens of thousands of displaced Outers, set up Quisling administrations and police forces, harness the skills of Outer gene wizards, engineers, scientists, and mathematicians, and reboot the economy using a centralised command-and-control model. All this required a robust transport network, and because it was too expensive to build ships from scratch, repair and refurbishment of those damaged in the war was an essential part of post-war reconstruction planning. Loc Ifrahim was responsible for civilian oversight of the salvage operation, reporting directly to the TPA Economic Commission. A key role in work that was crucial to the success of the occupation. Nevertheless, he felt short-changed and slighted.

Before the war, as a member of the Brazilian diplomatic service, Loc had worked in most of the cities on the major moons of both Jupiter and Saturn. He’d been part of the commission that had drawn up tactics used in the war; he’d helped to lay the groundwork for the deal that had kept Camelot, Mimas, neutral. And in addition to his official duties, he had been carrying out clandestine work for General Arvam Peixoto. He’d not only fed the general useful information, but had also gotten his hands dirty on several occasions. And he was a genuine war hero, too. He’d been kidnapped by Outers and held hostage in a prison outside Paris, Dione, but had managed to escape at the outbreak of war, reach the Brazilian flagship, and disclose important information about the whereabouts of the gene wizard Avernus. It was not his fault that Avernus and her daughter and members of her crew had managed to escape, and yet he was certain that he was being punished for it.

When the war ended, Loc could have chosen to return to Earth, either accepting a modest promotion within the diplomatic service or resigning and becoming a consultant for one of the companies bidding for construction or security work in the Outer System. Instead, he’d made a riskier but potentially highly lucrative move: taking up Arvam Peixoto’s offer of a job as special adviser. It paid well enough, but Loc soon realised that the general had no real plans for him and simply wanted to keep him close. Because he knew too much. Because he was an asset that might be useful at some point in the future. Loc spent some time on advisory and intelligence-assessment committees, but his main duty - oversight of the salvage operation - amounted to no more than pushing files to and fro, participating in exhaustive debates about insignificant matters, and spending far too much time in orbit around Dione in a cramped little facility staffed by Outers and controlled by the Brazilian Air Defence Force. He should have been governing a major city, or running one of the relief or reconstruction agencies. Instead, he spent most of his time harassing Outers and Air Defence officers about repair and refurbishment schedules, and taking the flak for slippage in schedules, slow delivery times, and slipshod workmanship.

In short, his work was tedious and onerous but gave him little power or influence, effectively excluded him from the main action, and didn’t offer any opportunities to make any real money. The ships had been packed with people fleeing the war, but their personal possessions had little value. The original Outer economy had been based on utility rather than scarcity, and the Outers prized above everything else non-transferable knowledge and experience, and what they called kudos - personal ratings in a bartering system based on favours, good works, and small kindnesses. The only things of value on board the dead ships were works of art, but these were mostly sold off cheaply, as souvenirs. Loc, who knew enough about Outer art to know that he knew very little, had snagged a few nice pieces but couldn’t sell them for what they were worth: people from Earth were largely ignorant of Outer traditions and aesthetics, so there was as yet no established market for their art.

Meanwhile, young blades from the great families, with little or no experience or knowledge of the Jupiter and Saturn systems, were being parachuted into positions that were rightfully Loc’s. The only way for ordinary people to get ahead of the game was by marriage or adoption, but Loc, who had been born in the slums of Caracas and had worked his way up the ladder of the diplomatic service by skill and cunning and ruthless ambition, had spent far too much time in the Outer System instead of on the cocktail circuit in Brasília. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to woo and win a woman with even a minor degree of consanguinity unless he gave up his ambition to make his fortune from the spoils of war and returned to Earth. And he wasn’t prepared to do that, not after enduring years of hard work, hazards and humiliation. So he had to suck up the insult of his present position, and hope that in time he would be properly rewarded for the favours he’d done for Arvam Peixoto, or that he’d discover some rich opportunity and mine it for all that it was worth.

‘We’ll all come good in the end,’ his friend and colleague Yota McDonald said, after Loc had vented at great length and with fine passion about his latest humiliation at the hands of the Economic Commission.

‘I don’t want early retirement on a government pension. I want the preferment and promotion I’ve earned,’ Loc said.