Solaris Rising (18 page)

He staggers out into the street. Something shiny and as large as a child flies towards him. He stops.

He has never seen anything like it. Though it is silver metal, reflective as a new mirror, it is shaped like an insect. It hovers a few metres away from him, its wings creating pseudo-patterns from reflected light. There is a chittering noise. Then it strikes.

The insect’s face clamps to his own and tries to mould itself to that form. Blood spurts out from the wounds created. The man tries to scream, but the insect is suffocating him in its effort to replicate the form of his face, and his cries cannot be heard. He falls to the ground. His eyes burst. Still the insect tries to copy. But now it is confused. This is not how it is supposed to be. This is something
other,
something with a face that is mobile, plastic, weak.

It flies off. Perplexed, it tries to locate its resting branch. It cannot. There is something inside its head that is stopping it from thinking straight. An itch that it cannot scratch. So it finds an emergency shelter beneath a series of stone blocks. It must wait. It must become calm. It must decide what to do.

The man is dead, his face crushed and bloody. He lies in a red pool.

Freosanrai realised that something had gone wrong with the pollination. There would be no xmech mining ship. Frightened of what her father would say, she considered her options.

The obvious thing to do was to ask for help. But she could not; it was essential that she display her skills whenever possible. Besides, she was not naturally inclined to ask for assistance. That left the option of a private investigation.

It was easy for her to check the overnight monitors, and soon she spotted something unusual, a multifigur that had missed its trajectory and departed Eluna. She sat alone by a chemtree and considered the implications of this. Eluna and the multifigur were a symbiotic system, so there was nothing for a multifigur outside the starport. Why, then, had this happened?

In moments she was adjusting the motion track record so that the multifigur error was lost to the Artisan system: a simple deception. Then she grabbed the exnoo and headed for the gateway.

“Where are we going?” came a plaintive voice from the rucksack on her back.

“Returning to Ministrator. You’ll like that.”

“Yes! Luna. Interesting people and no horrid trees.”

“I told you before, they’re not trees.”

“You’ll tell me again, you will!” chanted the exnoo.

“
Quiet.
I’ll need your help out there on the streets. Away from Eluna I’m like an oyster out of its shell.”

“I know. I’ve seen you. But you said you are allowed out.”

“I’m allowed out… but the Artisans don’t like it. We’re supposed to live apart from the populace.”

“I will be quiet now, you’re approaching the gateway.”

The gateway was a solid mass of rock with a tunnel through it. Realising that technological fixes would generate technological opponents, the Artisans had decided to use the most rudimentary force possible to keep Eluna secure: brute force. This plan had worked for over a millennium. Freosanrai ducked as she entered the tunnel, the sound of her soft boots echoing in a series of reverberated thuds.

A dozen green-clad women sat beside a plastic table at the outer end of the tunnel. One stood up and said, “Where are you going?”

“Into Ministrator.”

“For what reason?”

“Private business.”

The woman hesitated for just long enough to indicate that she thought Freosanrai was lying, then let her pass. Freosanrai did not care. Records were kept of Artisan movements but they were almost never checked, an advantage to living in so exclusive a hierarchy.

She found herself in a dark street. Though it was day, the height of the buildings to either side of her blocked out what little sunlight penetrated the outer sphere, today as white as snow. She was in Show, the administrative heart of Ministrator. She hurried on.

“Where should I go?” she asked the exnoo.

“Don’t run,” came the reply. “You will stand out if you appear anxious. Walk slowly. Don’t stare at people and buildings like an outsider. Now, what exactly needs to be done?”

“We need to find traces of the multifigur. I can’t imagine what it was doing out here. What was it thinking?”

“What type of trace are we looking for?”

“Anything unusual that happened last night.”

“That will be a wide search,” said the exnoo. “Ministrator is well over a thousand square kilometres. Please narrow it down.”

Freosanrai began to feel frustration creeping over her. “How can I? No multifigur has ever escaped before, how should I know what to look for?”

The exnoo said nothing. Freosanrai sat in a shadowed doorway and took it out of her rucksack, placing it on her lap as if it were a babe. The creased, leathery face peered up at her: saucer eyes, hairy mouth, black external gills like whiskers.

“Haven’t you got any ideas?” she asked. “You were human imprinted, you must have
some
idea where to begin.”

“I’m thinking,” said the exnoo.

It shut its eyes and began whimpering to itself. Freosanrai waited.

“The chemtree that you hoped would create the xmech vehicle fruit, that was on the Mercantile Sector side of Eluna, wasn’t it?”

Freosanrai shrugged. “Closer to the Olive Sector, I think.”

“We should go there. The border between the two sectors is insecure. We could check the overnight records of the Mercantile cameras.”

“Cameras?”

“Merchants don’t like drunkards and junkies spoiling their territory,” said the exnoo. “You’ve got detectors that will locate the multifigur metal?”

“A kit, yes.”

“Then we need transport. An airship, an airship!”

Freosanrai muttered, “Just tell me where to go.”

Guided by the exnoo’s memorised map Freosanrai walked two kilometres deeper into Show, until she arrived at an airfield, where sat a number of indigo-coloured airships. Downloading timetables into her handset, she chose the ship that would soonest reach the Olivean border, a journey of fifteen kilometres. From her pocket she took her faked docu-card. She paid, then walked into the airfield.

The airship rose fifteen minutes later. Freosanrai sat in the extended basket beneath the dirigible, relaxing in a window-seat. As the airship rose she saw the Xiix Sector, which lay beneath her like a vast pincushion; then she was floating over Mount Black and the Marshy Sector. The sky shimmered as the two-mol boundary containing Ministrator’s air split asunder, grew and reformed under the pressure of external weather.

At the border of the Mercantile and Olive Sectors the exnoo directed Freosanrai to a camera battery. It was easy to use her docu-card to access overnight records.

Six merchants group together to form anti-muzik society. Muzik users form opposing society. Talks to broker peace expected by nightfall.

Nooling threads choke stream, cause floods. Automechs brought in to redirect stream – nooling threads all safe.

Raids made on Olivean choke-dens. Six kilogrammes of choke confiscated.

Man killed by having face ground off. Unknown assailant thought to be hiding nearby. Investigators reviewing local information.

Miles Fayne nominated leader of mercantile forum currency group. Says, “Major change to occur.”

Freosanrai shrugged. “Is this of any use?” she asked the exnoo.

The exnoo remained silent for a few moments before saying, “We can discount the first, third and fifth reports, as they’re about ongoing events. Expand the fourth report.”

Freosanrai did as she was told.

A man was last night killed by an unknown assailant in Point Zero Street –

“Where’s that?” Freosanrai asked.

“Close to the Elunan border.”

“Ah!”

– when during an apparently motiveless attack his face was ground off by an unknown device. Found dead at the scene, he has been taken to the Reusing Sector, where his family have said goodbye. Investigators from the Mercantile Lobby are analysing local infos in the hope that a picture of the assailant can be created. An investigator said, “There was a faint blood trail, but it was impossible to follow further than Zil Square. We are preparing noses, which we hope will be able to detect blood molecules further afield.”

“Would the multifigur have killed a man?” asked the exnoo.

“It’s as likely to do that as it is to write poetry,” Freosanrai grumbled. “Can we get along to Zil Square?”

Soon Freosanrai was studying Zil Square, a paved area surrounded by low buildings. Mercantile investigators, distinguished by their grey hats, walked around the further reaches of the square.

“We had better wait until they leave,” said the exnoo. “If they suspect you are from the Artisans they might get suspicious.”

“Why should they? I’ve got my docu-card. They’ve no reason to suspect me.”

“Experienced investigators make intuitive guesses. You are foolish to think you cannot be touched! A man may guess where you come from by your speech.”

“Be quiet. People might hear you. Besides, I’ve had an idea.”

The exnoo did not ask what the idea was. Two hours passed. Freosanrai sat outside a vin-shop and waited for the investigators to depart. The square was quiet, more of an administrative centre than a place of mercantilism, with the hum of computers audible amidst the chatter of distant children. At length the investigators departed and Freosanrai was free to act.

First, she walked around the square. With no idea what had happened during the night she let her mind remain open to any clue, however subtle, however strange. After a few minutes she noticed a new crack in a paving slab.

“What is it?” said the exnoo.

Freosanrai said nothing as from her rucksack she pulled out a detection kit. From it she extracted a box of magnetic ants. Opening the lid, she stood back, then dispersed the ants in a sweeping arc, so that they were strewn over the slabs in their thousands. She leaped back, defocusing her eyes a little so that she could see patterns of movement as the ants went into defence mode and tried to locate their home. But they had no home here, their motion was random, and because of that she could see a shape emerging as a multitude of ant lanes were guided by metal beneath the slabs.

A winged shape. Her guess had been correct.

“It’s hiding, or inactive,” she said. She glanced around the square. A few people had seen her throw the ants, but nobody approached her. This was as good a time as any to perform the recapture. In seconds she had grabbed the broken corner of the slab nearest the concealed multifigur and lifted it, to see a single silver leg. She grabbed it and pulled. Like mirrored cellophane the defunct multifigur emerged, and Freosanrai was able to drop it into a bag, then into her rucksack.

“Will it hurt me?” asked the exnoo.

“No. It’s not dead, but it isn’t going to move until it’s reactivated.”

“What next?”

“Strange… there’s bamboo here, beneath the slabs. Fresh bamboo. I wonder…”

From her podium Suzan Cnasis gazed out over the rustling greenery of Bambooine. Far to the north she saw the grey silhouette of the Siggurat, stepped and pyramidic in form, with pale blue mist floating around its flat summit. Its base was lost in a billowing mass of bamboo.

She turned back to the archaeological dig that lay around her. The dig team had removed two hundred square metres of bamboo, revealing chocolate brown topsoil peppered with stones. She checked her fingerwatch. Lackshmi Devatasive, her colleague, was late for work. Again.

Suzan sighed.

An hour later she heard a familiar belch, then voices amidst the rustle of the bamboo, then the sound of metal shod boots clacking on a board path. Moments later Lackshmi stood beside her on the podium.

Lackshmi smiled. “You’re early, Su!”

Suzan ignored the remark.

Lackshmi stretched like a cat emerging from deep sleep. “Weather’s looking bad. The forecast was for storms.”

Suzan glanced at the sky, pale with
faux
-cirrus. “Perhaps,” she said. Glancing at Lackshmi’s long white hair she said, “What’s that stuck in your...?”

Lackshmi pulled what appeared to be a lump of toffee from her hair. “Oh, just some stuff. We were at Moosha’s place in Olivea last night, drinking muzik.”

“Drinking... what?”

“Muzik. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of it. A new drug synthesized by kids in Vin. It leaves your sight alone but gives you
amazing
sonic hallucinations.” She laughed, then stretched again. “I could get addicted to it, easy!”

Suzan turned away. She had heard enough.

“To work,” said Lackshmi. She glanced over the revealed earth, then pointed to the northern corner. “What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

Lackshmi pointed again. “That dark patch in the corner.”

Suzan was annoyed to discover Lackshmi had spotted a feature that she had missed. “I don’t know,” she said. But before she could tell her colleague about the pre-dig survey Lackshmi had jumped off the podium and was running over the earth.