Swallow the Sky: A Space Opera (35 page)

“But everything is okay,
you’re not physically compromised?”

“No damage, all my
systems, the cargo – everything is fine – just this weird gap”

Tallis was still onboard
in the Conservatory; she seemed reluctant to discuss the events before the
blackout.

“The pupa has hatched”
was all she
would say.

He wanted to talk more but
it would have to wait until there was no security officer hovering a few meters
away.

“Return to the ship” he
told the buggy. “I’ll be in contact.”

He grabbed the flight
suits and leapt into Asima’s hovering craft. The Security vessel lifted off and
arced towards the distant island. Even from afar they could see the impact of
the radical weather shift. The people of Kaimana were discovering the pleasures
of seaside living and the beaches were dotted with picnickers, children playing,
and sunbathers stretched out on the black sand.

“The biggest problem has
been fresh water supplies” said Asima. “Until last month all the water we’d
ever need just dropped out the sky. Now we’re scrambling to build desalination
plants.”

“Is it permanent – the
change to the sun I mean?” Aiyana asked.

“Who knows? We have a
horde of astrophysicists trying to work out what happened, but so far Mita
appears completely stable.”

They flew into the
interior through a circular gap in the shield that covered the crater.

“We had to open it up to
prevent overheating. I suppose eventually we will remove it.”

Asima called ahead and
reserved a suite at the Caldera View, the hotel where they had stayed what
seemed a thousand years ago.

“Let’s meet in the
Commissioner’s Office in the morning.”

Carson and Aiyana
exchanged glances. Seeing their expressions, Asima laughed.

“Relax, Zhou is in
detention along with half her senior command. I’m Acting Commissioner.”

“That’s a hell of a
promotion!”

“Not really – I’m sorry
but I have not been completely honest with you. In truth I am an agent with the
Commonwealth Security Special Investigations Unit. Ten years ago we were asked by
the Mitan government to check into allegations of corruption in their security
force. I’ve been working undercover ever since.”

Carson leaned forward. “So
if you knew Zhou was a crook why the hell did you tell her where we were really
going?”

“We had to flush out the
conspirators, and we did try to rescue you! You escaped from the Clan Aniko
mansion just hours before we were due to raid it. We tried to locate you at the
other systems but you always seemed to be one step ahead of us.”

“Thanks! We nearly got
killed!”

But Carson could not stay
mad; he had a vision of the security agent chasing them like a worried mother
following a pair of unruly children. And in the end what did it matter? He,
Tallis, and Aiyana were alive and safe with a ship full of treasure.

Zhou’s adjudication had
not taken place Asima told them, but she would probably end up with a new
personality – she was a key figure in the plot to take over Mita. Their plan
was to precipitate a crisis as an excuse for declaring martial law. That would
open a path for the creation of an emergency government with Juro at its head.

“What about Shin?”

Asima laughed.

“He hasn’t stopped
talking since we arrested him; it was his testimony that enabled us to roll up
the conspiracy so quickly. Juro kept him out of the really dirty stuff – that’s
what Tabarak was for – so he’ll get away with therapy and a few decades of community
service.”

The security vessel
landed in front of the hotel.

“There’s one question I
have to ask before tomorrow” Asima said as they got up to leave. “Did you have
another encounter with Juro after you left New Earth? He’s disappeared.”

“Juro’s dead, Tabarak
shot him” Carson replied using his best deadpan face.
Well technically it
was true.

Asima grimaced. “I wondered
how long it would take those two to fall out. And Tabarak?”

“Dead too” said Carson,
adding in a moment of inspiration: “it was quite a fight.”

“Tell me all about it
tomorrow” Asima shouted as they climbed out her vehicle.

Just as soon as I
finish making it up.

“So what are we going to
tell…” Aiyana started saying as they walked into their suite.

“Not now darling!” Carson
practically shouted. He rolled his eyes around the room. Mitan Security had
done a thorough job of bugging them once and he was not sure if the new regime
had any more scruples.

Following a long
afternoon of love-making and napping they treated themselves to an extravagant
dinner in one of the hotel restaurants. After all, they reasoned, Asima was
picking up the tab and weren’t they owed something? The sun had set by the time
they stepped out to the sidewalk to enjoy the fresh air.

“Can you take us to the
outside of the crater?” Carson asked a waiting taxi.

“No problem” the vehicle
said. “You’re the sixth fare today who’s wanted to go to the beach.”

“You from out of town?”
it asked as they ascended into the night.

Carson grinned; like most
Mitan tourists they were still wearing clothes. Without the camouflage of a
birthday suit even Aiyana was reluctant to walk around naked.

“Thought so, I expect
we’ll be getting a lot more visitors with the new weather.”

The taxi was right. Kaimana
had done pretty well as a tourist destination with just diamond coral as an
attraction. Now it was an island paradise. Carson stared down at the glowing
city ringing the caldera. Within a few years parks, resorts, and vacation villas
would cover the outer flanks. With a shudder he pictured Mita if Juro’s coup
had succeeded, its people crushed by a dictatorship hell-bent on declaring war with
the rest of the galaxy.

“We want to find
somewhere very private” he told the taxi.

“So did the last five”
the machine said with a leer in its voice; beach sex was obviously the latest
craze. It dropped them at an isolated cove on the western side of the island. Carson
told it to return in an hour.

“I get it, just a
quickie” the taxi said and shot upwards.

“Good choice.” Aiyana
said looking around – black cliffs surrounded them on three sides. “I can’t
imagine being spied on here.”

“So what
are
we
going to tell Asima?”

Carson had already plotted
a believable story: Juro and Tabarak had hijacked them in cometary orbit around
Orpheus where they found the Repository. Aiyana was tied and blindfolded when
the fight broke out and had no idea what happened.

“Trust me – it’s far
safer if there is just one witness – no awkward contradictions. Let me do the
lying, God knows I’ve had the practice.”

“That will work, but what
about the clan Aniko ship, wouldn’t it still be in the Orpheus system?”

“It disappeared
afterwards, presumably its crew decided to run.”

“Say, you
are
good
at this!”

Creating an alibi for Juro’s
disappearance was the easy part. The real puzzle was what had
really
happened.

“I would say it was all a
hallucination if we weren’t here on Kaimana. Somehow we travelled across
thirteen light years more or less instantaneously. That’s just not possible.”

“And even more
impossible” Carson added with a laugh “is the Angel entering the ship and
reversing the Melt. We were moving at seven hundred times the speed of light in
an enclosed space-time continuum and yet something got in. I mean…” He gave up
with a shrug.

One of Kaimana’s
miniature moons was setting over the ocean, painting a line of silver across
the water to the darkened beach. Aiyana tilted up her face to the glittering
arch of the Milky Way. The atmosphere, washed by endless rain, was as
translucent as quartz glass.

“Impossible for us, but
what about something else?”

“Aliens?”

She shook her head. “I
can’t imagine aliens being that interested in the human race’s squabbles, but
someone else might.”

A sea breeze raised lines
of goose bumps across Carson’s flesh.

“The Techs?”

What would human beings
be like after eight thousand years of uninhibited technological evolution;
would they be human at all? Neither of them could imagine.

“Now we’ve seen them
once, perhaps they’ll visit again” Aiyana said with a small laugh.

Perhaps the Techs had
been there all along, Carson thought, choosing only to intervene when the Melt
threated to escape. Looking up at the sky he felt like a small boy in a very
large universe.

“
So many worlds…
”
he murmured.

On the ride to the hotel
they talked about the reception they would receive on New Earth. They agreed
that the Repository should be released into the data commons where it could be
freely accessed by everyone, but the artifacts were a different matter.

“I’m going to ask the
Archives for a finder’s fee of six hundred million but I’ll settle for three. That’s
a hundred million each for you, me, and Tallis.”

“Oh good gracious!”
Aiyana cried, trying to imagine so much money.

But that was just the start
Carson said.

“We have another asset,
one that is undisputedly our own. When this story breaks you and I will become
very famous indeed, so the moment we hit New Earth we should hire the best
agent we can find. The media distribution fees for our story will be colossal.”

As the taxi dropped them
outside the Caldera View Aiyana announced that she was spending the night with
her old friend Papina.

“Huh? You’re not coming
back to the hotel?”

She looked at him
askance.

“You never thought about
me having friends, did you?”

Carson smiled. “I guess
not, we didn’t exactly meet socially. Anyhow, you will be coming back in the
morning?”

“Of course, we have to
meet with Asima.”

He did a slow shuffle on
the sidewalk.

“I mean, I’d hate to lose
you after all we’ve been through” he said, taking a sudden interest in his
shoes. “I was hoping that you and I could, well…”

She took his face in her
hands.

“Look at me Carson.”

Still his eyes eluded
her.

“
Look at me!
”

Carson stared into the wide
almond eyes.

“You, yes
you
Mister Mailman saved my life. My soul was dying out there in the asteroid belt
chasing rocks for a living. Do you really think I would abandon you now?”

“We saved each other.”

Aiyana laughed.

“True enough! We damn
near got killed a dozen times.”

She stepped forward and gave
him a long kiss. For a moment she stood holding his hands and smiling, then
spun away and walked off down the boulevard. Carson stood watching to see
whether she would glance back. Finally he sighed and headed into the hotel.

A small package was
waiting on the coffee table in the suite. It was an envelope, just like the
ones used to distribute mail on Falk, except this one bore no address. Puzzled,
he pulled it open; inside was a white piece of paper with a green circle
outlined at its center. He turned it over but the other side was blank. The
function seemed obvious, although he had no idea how anyone could put a genome
decoder into something so insubstantial.

He put the paper on the
table and placed the tip of his right index finger in the center. Immediately
the words
‘One last journey’
formed and vanished again. Oh dear, was
this some kind of hotel promotion?

There was no time for
speculation. The outline transformed itself into a solid black spot that spread
to the edges of the paper and kept on growing. In an instant it filled half the
room. Carson yelped and leapt back. It was too late; the circle rushed forward
and engulfed him.