Guardians of Paradise (13 page)

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Authors: Jaine Fenn

BOOK: Guardians of Paradise
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Nual closed her eyes and said, ‘I have his life.’
 
Taro grunted and said, ‘Enjoy it. I’m going back to bed.’ He turned and walked back into Jarek’s cabin.
 
Nual’s gaze lingered on the door after it closed. Then she said, ‘Did you wish me to . . . deal with the pilot?’
 
Jarek was tempted to say yes; he’d cleared up enough of other people’s messes back on the
Setting Sun
. But Nual barely looked capable of holding herself upright, let alone manhandling a dead body anywhere. And he had asked her to do this . . .
 
Jarek hadn’t wanted to look at the man’s face as they covered it, but he did; he wondered what it would be like to go out in such a state of ecstasy. They carried the body to the airlock, wrapped in the sheet on which he’d died. Before they opened the outer door Jarek said the spacer’s elegy, a utilitarian yet sentimental little prayer. He wasn’t a Salvatine - and he doubted very much that the pilot had been - but he felt he had to say something to make their actions less like disposing of the evidence after a murder and more like the aftermath of an unavoidable accident.
 
 
In the rec-room, Nual started passing on everything she had taken from the man they’d just flushed into space. She spoke quickly and quietly, almost as though she was exorcising herself of him. Perhaps she was: Jarek briefly wondered if she’d been in his mind at the moment of death. But whatever the means, they’d got the desired result. He asked if she minded him recording her recollections. After a moment’s hesitation, she agreed.
 
The pilot’s information was sketchy, of course. He knew of several corporations and worlds with Sidhe infiltrators, but though he might have been aware which companies harboured Sidhe agents, he’d had no idea of their names or positions. He’d heard of a dozen compromised freetrader ships like the
Setting Sun
, four of which were new to Jarek. And he had known where the real Sidhe power-base lay, even if he’d never seen it for himself: six Sidhe motherships hidden in the vastness of interstellar space.
 
Jarek asked, ‘A mothership - was that what I found you on?’
 
Nual started, jogged out of the stolen memories. ‘Yes,’ she said slowly, ‘mine was the seventh. The pilot knew it had been lost, but he had no idea how.’ She smiled mirthlessly. ‘We know rather more about that, of course.’
 
‘And was he right about the motherships? Are they where things are run from?’
 
‘I suppose that must be the case, though I saw almost nothing of the world outside our ship when I was growing up; until we come of age and adopt a role in the unity our lives are very insular. I knew only that our community was one amongst several, and that we sometimes met others like us.’
 
‘And do they have labs on board?’
 
‘Labs?’
 
‘Laboratories. The Sidhe on Serenein used a tailored retrovirus to control the population. I wonder if they made it on a mothership. ’
 
‘Possibly. There were places I was forbidden to enter, one of which was the . . . I suppose the concept would translate into words as “birthing area”. That was where most of my sisters started their lives.’
 
‘So the Sidhe really are clones?’ That was the accepted wisdom: the Sidhe were all female, the males were long dead. Legend had it that the last few males had helped humanity to bring down the Protectorate, but they had paid for it with their lives.
 
‘I believe most are clones, though as I never saw these places I cannot know for sure.’
 
‘Most - but not
everyone
? Are you a clone?’
 
‘No. Perhaps one in ten of us were . . . the term would be “natural born”, though we were all raised together.’
 
Jarek remembered the male mute he’d seen on the
Setting Sun
. So the Sidhe kept male slaves around for more than just heavy lifting. The mutes were believed to be humans, altered somehow by the Sidhe to make them more compliant, but with the close genetic relationship between human and Sidhe, interbreeding wouldn’t necessarily be a problem. ‘So they didn’t distinguish between the clones and the “natural born”?’
 
‘We were not meant to make such distinctions; but we did, as children do. We naturals thought we were superior, and in our mastery of our abilities, perhaps we were, though we also matured more slowly. And we were more prone to question the natural order.’
 
‘Like you did. That’s why you were in that cell, wasn’t it? Because you questioned the way things were on the mothership?’
 
Nual nodded slowly.
 
She was obviously uncomfortable, but Jarek needed to know as much as she was willing to tell him. ‘Can you explain?’
 
‘I had always been fascinated by shiftspace. During one transit I reached out to the transit-kernel at the heart of our ship. I did not know what it was, merely that there was this sleeping . . . other . . . who awoke during transits. Because I did this from within the unity, I was shielded from the worst excesses of the twisted mind within the kernel - unlike when I made contact with your transit-kernel later. But I sensed enough to know that it was a living sentience, related to us in some way, but tortured beyond endurance. I was appalled, and, because I was in the unity, I could not hide what I’d found, or my feelings about it—Iwas even proud of myself for taking such a stand, fool that I was. Such disobedience is not to be tolerated. I was punished - isolated physically and mentally - and I am sure my sisters expected a few weeks of such torture would cure me of my stubborn streak of morality.’
 
‘But that’s not how it worked out,’ said Jarek carefully.
 
‘No,’ said Nual, and looked away.
 
Jarek wondered if that was the end of it. Between her own memories and the pilot’s she’d given him plenty to think about.
 
Then she said, ‘There is something else you need to know, though it is not something I know much about. There is an élite faction that rules the Sidhe. I had no name for them, merely the concept. The pilot knew them as the Court. They have representatives on all the motherships and, according to the pilot, out in the wider universe as well.’
 
Jarek said, ‘Did the pilot ever meet any of this ruling class?’ When she shook her head, he pressed her further, asking, ‘How about you?’
 
The pain of recalling her past was beginning to tell; her voice sounded strained as she said, ‘The members of the Court on my ship judged me and determined my punishment. Before that I had had little to do with them. There really is nothing more I can tell you about the Court.’
 
Jarek changed the subject. ‘I don’t suppose the pilot had the access codes for the computers on his ship?’
 
Nual’s expression grew more distant as she rifled through memories that weren’t her own. ‘Only the functions he needed to do his job. The rest was gene-locked to the Sidhe.’ Then her gaze sharpened. ‘One thing he did know: the
Setting Sun
was heading to the place where the boys from Serenein are processed.’
 
‘Now that I’d like to hear about,’ said Jarek.
 
 
When Jarek went back to his room a little later, Taro was doing a bad job of pretending to be asleep. Jarek showered, went back to the galley and grabbed some food, then made his way to the bridge, where he sat and thought about what they should do next. The autopilot had put them in a wide parking orbit around Xantier Station; Jarek had yet to make a docking request.
 
When he came back down, Nual was sitting at the table. Taro was playing a game over at the ents unit, kitted out in interface headset and gloves. The atmosphere in the room was painfully tense. Jarek overrode the game from his com then waited while Taro’s arms dropped to his sides.
 
‘Sorry about that,’ he said when Taro took the headset off. He raised his voice to make it clear he was addressing them both. ‘We need to decide where we go from here.’
 
‘Yes,’ said Nual. ‘We do.’
 
Taro was looking anywhere but at Nual.
 
‘I meant generally,’ added Jarek, in case they expected him to sort out their relationship problems.
 
‘As did I,’ said Nual. ‘What do you suggest?’
 
‘I think we need to follow up on what happens to the boys from Serenein.’ Jarek turned to Taro. ‘We now know that they go to a world called Kama Nui. There’s only one shipment every two or three decades - that’s how often the Sidhe visit Serenein, because it takes that long to accumulate enough talented boys to make it worth their while. And this time the shipment won’t be turning up.’
 
He looked back at Nual, including them both again. ‘By now, the Sidhe’s contacts on Kama Nui must be wondering where the
Setting Sun
has got to. The other Sidhe are probably concerned that it hasn’t checked in too, so we need to act quickly, before they start acting on their suspicions. However, there’re a few complications.
 
‘The first is that if my ship
is
known to the Sidhe, then it would be unwise of me to start sniffing around one of their dirty little secrets. The second is this: I’ve got business I can only do at a hubpoint: if I don’t sell my cargo and raise some credit soon then we won’t have a ship with which to carry on the fight against the Sidhe. Also, I still need to get the files I took from the
Setting Sun
decrypted, and Kama Nui isn’t the place for that.’
 
‘So you want us to go to Kama Nui and follow up this lead?’ Nual didn’t sound averse to the idea.
 
‘You don’t have to - you’re free agents - but that would be ideal. I can drop you there, and I’ll only ever be a beevee call away.’
 
‘I am willing to do this,’ said Nual. She looked at Taro, who was still ignoring her.
 
‘Taro?’ prompted Jarek.
 
Taro shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ he said.
 
Jarek resisted the urge to go over and shake him; he’d probably been just as much of a jerk himself when he was seventeen. ‘It’ll take us a couple of days to get to Kama Nui: you’ve got that long to decide,’ he said, then added, ‘You might want to look the place up and see what you think. It’s a top destination for rich holiday-makers, and it’s meant to be very beautiful, though I’ve never got beyond the capital myself.’
 
‘It sounds like an odd place for the Sidhe to be . . .
altering
these boys,’ said Nual.
 
‘The last place anyone would look, perhaps. There’ve always been rumours about the place; I met a freetrader once who said she’d taken biotech supplies to Kama Nui in the same run as luxury foodstuffs - both legit, but an odd combination. Though I’ve not seen any direct evidence myself, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s stuff going on there that never sees the light of day.’
 
 
The atmosphere aboard the ship remained tense. Taro appeared to be dealing with what Nual had done by pretending she didn’t exist, while she was making a conspicuous effort to be considerate without crowding him.
 
Much as he’d enjoyed the boy’s company in bed, Jarek had no intention of being part of his little love-war with Nual, and he suggested he return to sleeping in the rec-room. Taro didn’t argue. He did ask if he could join Jarek on the bridge, and he reluctantly agreed. Though he suspected Taro was using it as an excuse to avoid Nual, he soon found that the boy had an insatiable - and refreshing - curiosity about everything from interstellar travel to Jarek’s tastes in music.
 
They were on their final approach to the Kama Nui homeworld when Taro asked Jarek to show him how to download a selection of music tracks onto a dataspike.
 
‘I take it you’re going with her then,’ said Jarek.
 
Taro nodded. ‘I have to. I still love her, even with . . . what happened. ’
 
‘Yeah, well, you haven’t exactly been faithful to her.’
 
Taro looked at his hands. ‘That’s true.’
 
When the time came to say goodbye he hugged them both, and made sure they knew how to contact him. He could only hope he wasn’t sending them into a situation they couldn’t handle.
 
CHAPTER TWELVE
 
For most of his life Taro had viewed tourists with a mixture of awe and avarice: awe because they came from outside his City - his world - and avarice because of the wealth they brought. Yet now here he was, a tourist himself - well, sort of. Their remaining credit wasn’t going to go far on Kama Nui if they went for the full luxury experience, so they took Jarek’s advice and entered on youth visas. The permits would allow them to live and work here for a limited time; it was popular with a lot of rich kids who got their families to stump up the price of a ticket, no small expense in itself, and then were able to see the place on the cheap - relatively speaking.

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