The Algebraist (20 page)

Even now, meeting up, there were whole aspects of their lives that somehow didn’t need to be gone into. How and what they had each been doing was a matter of public record and it would almost be an insult to inquire. Fassin had recognised Sal’s wife from news and social images, hadn’t really needed introducing. There hadn’t been a single person at the reception below, alien or otherwise - servants apart, obviously - about whom Fassin, who was no great social observer, couldn’t have written a short biography. Saluus probably didn’t know as much about Fassin as vice versa, but he’d already congratulated him on his engagement to Jaal Tonderon, so he knew that much (or, more likely perhaps, he just had an efficient social secretary with a good database).

‘So, what can you tell me, Fass?’ Sal asked casually. He wrinkled his nose.
‘Can
you say anything?’

‘About the Emergency?’

‘Well, about whatever’s causing all the fuss.’

There was more than a fuss; there was low-level war. Starting the day after martial law was declared there had been a sequence of attacks, mostly on isolated and system-edge craft and settlements, though with some worrying assaults further in-system, including one on a Navarchy dock-habitat in Sepekte’s own trailing Lagrange that had killed over a thousand. Nobody knew whether it was Beyonders behind this resurgence of violence, or the E-5 Discon advanced forces, or a mixture of both.

More oddly, but for Fassin far more disturbingly, somebody had nuked the High Summer house of Sept Litibiti, back on ‘glantine, just the day before; missiled it from space like it was a military facility. Bizarre and unprecedented. The place had been empty save for a handful of unlucky gardeners and cleaners, keeping the place ticking over until the appropriate season, but it made Seers throughout the system worried that they’d suddenly, for some reason, become targets. Fassin had sent a message to Slovius saying that maybe they should consider shifting the whole Sept elsewhere on ‘glantine. Head for an out-of-season hotel, perhaps. He’d yet to receive a reply, which might be Slovius ignoring his advice, or just the authorities’ new message-traffic checking and censoring software struggling to cope. Neither would surprise.

‘Tell me what you know,’ Fassin suggested. ‘I’ll fill in what I can.’

‘They want lots of warships, Fass.’ Sal gave a sad-looking smile. ‘Lots and lots of warships. We’re to turn out as many as we can for as long as we can, though they want them sooner rather than later, and any advanced projects that might take longer than a year, even existing ones, are being deprioritised. We’re to gas-line a whole bunch of stuff for--’ Sal paused, cleared his throat and waved one hand. ‘Hell, idiot stuff; we’re to rough-cut a whole load of civilian conversions: armed merchantmen, one-shot cloud-miners, tooled-up cruise liners and so on. We didn’t even do that in the last Emergency. So whatever it is, it’s serious, it’s presumably what our military friends would call credible, and it’s not very far away. Over to you.’

‘Lot I can’t tell you,’ Fassin said carefully. ‘Most of which I guess wouldn’t interest you anyway.’ He wondered how much he could say, how much he needed to say. ‘Supposedly to do with something called the Epiphany-Five Disconnect.’

Sal raised an eyebrow. ‘Hmm. Bit away. Wonder why they’d bother? Richer pickings inward of where they are.’

‘But a significant part of the Summed Fleet is on the way. We’re told.’ Fassin grinned.

‘Mm-hmm. I see. And what about you?’ Sal asked, dipping closer to Fassin, voice dropping. ‘What’s your part in all this?’

Fassin wondered how much the continual rush of noise produced by the waves below would mask their words, if anybody was listening from far away. Since he’d arrived he’d showered and put on a change of clothes he’d requested from the house - caught without the necessary means of attire due to an extended stay away from home, he’d explained, needlessly. He got the impression the servants were perfectly used to providing clothes of varying sizes and for whatever sex to house guests. Still, even without the proscribed horror of nanotech, it was possible to make bugs very small indeed these days. Had the Shrievalty or the Hierchon’s people put some sort of trace or mike on him? Had Sal? Did Sal put surveillance on his guests as a matter of course? His host was waiting for an answer.

Fassin looked into the drink. A few small bubbles of gas rose to the surface and broke, giving some tiny proportion of the substance of Earth to the atmosphere of a planet twenty thousand light years away. ‘I just did my job, Sal. Delved, talked, took away what the Dwellers would let me take away. Most of which was not momentous, not important, not going to change anything much at all, not something everybody would want or risk everything for.’ He looked Saluus Kehar in the eye. ‘Just stumbled my way through life, you know? Over whatever turned up. Never knowing what would lead to what.’

‘Whoever does?’ Sal asked, then nodded. ‘But I see.’

‘Sorry I can’t really tell you too much more.’

Sal smiled and looked out at the slope of artificial surf, the pandemonium of waves beyond and the sheer cliffs further away still, brown-black beneath a hazy azure sky.

‘Ah, your minder,’ he said. The esuit of Colonel Hatherence of the Shrievalty appeared to one side, low over the foam, floating out over the mad froth of waters like a great fat grey and gold wheel. Whirling vane-sets on either side of her esuit kept the Colonel from sinking into the maelstrom. For all its massive size when you were standing next to it, the esuit looked very small from up here.

‘She giving you any problems?’

‘No. She’s okay. Doesn’t insist I salute her or call her Ma’am all the time. Happy to keep things informal.’ All the same, he was hoping to get the Colonel out of the way somehow, either before or once he got down into Nasqueron.

Fassin watched the Colonel as she picked her way across the scape of waves. ‘But can you imagine trying to sneak into Boogeytown with that dogging your every move?’ he asked. ‘Even just for one last night?’

Sal snorted. ‘The dives and the ceilings are too low.’

Fassin laughed.
This is like sex,
he thought.
Well, like the seduction-scenario thing, like the whole stupid mating dance of will-you-won’t-you, do-you-don’t-you rigmarole.
Tempting Sal, leading him on…

He wondered if he’d seemed sufficiently mysterious yet hinted at maybe being available. He needed this man.

Dinner with Sal, his wife, their concubines and some business associates, including - amongst the latter - a whule, a Jajuejein and a quaup. The talk was of new attacks on distant outposts, martial law, delays in comms, restrictions in travel and who would gain and who would lose from the new Emergency (nobody on any of the couches seemed to anticipate losing more than a few trivial freedoms for a while). Colonel Hatherence sat silent in one corner, needing no external sustenance, thank you, but happy, indeed honoured, to be there while they consumed nourishment, communicated conversationally and intercoursed socially while she continued her studies (much-needed!), screening up on Nasqueron and its famous Dwellers.

Drinks, semi-narcotic foods, drug bowls. A human acrobat troupe entertained them, floodlit beyond the dining room’s balcony.

‘No, I’m serious!’ Sal shouted at his guests, gesturing at the acrobats, swinging through the air on ropes and trapezes. ‘If they fall they almost certainly die! So much air in the water you can’t float. Sink right down. Get caught up in the under-turbulence. No, idiot!’ Sal told his wife. ‘Not enough air to
breathe!’

Some people left. Drinks later, just the humans. To Sal’s trophy room, corridors and rooms too small, sorry, for Colonel Hatherence (not minding; so to sleeping; good nights!). Sal’s wife, going to bed, and the remaining few. Soon just the two of them, overlooked by the stuffed, lacquered, dry-shrunk or encased heads of beasts from dozens of planets.

‘You saw Taince? Just before the portal went?’

‘Dinner. Day or two before. Equatower.’ Fassin waved in what might have been the general direction of Borquille. You could see the lights of the Equatower from the house, a thin stipple of red climbing into the sky, sometimes perversely clearer above when the lower atmosphere was hazed and the higher beacons shone down at a steeper angle through less air.

‘She okay?’ Sal asked, then threw his head back and laughed too loudly. ‘As though it matters. It was two centuries ago. Still’

‘Anyway, she was fine.’

‘Good.’

They drank their drinks. Cognac. Also from Earth, long, long ago. Far, far away.

Fassin got swim.

‘Oh shit,’ he said, ‘I’ve got Swim.’

‘Swim?’ said Saluus.

‘Swim,’ Fassin said. ‘You know; when your head kind of seems to swim because you suddenly think, "Hey, I’m a human being but I’m twenty thousand light years from home and we’re all living in the midst of mad-shit aliens and super-weapons and the whole fucking bizarre insane swirl of galactic history and politics! That: isn’t it
weird?’

‘And that’s what? Swing? Swirl?’ Sal said, looking genuinely confused.

‘No,
Swim!’
Fassin shouted, not able to believe that Sal hadn’t heard of this concept. He thought everybody had. Some people - most people, come to think of it, or so he’d been told - never got Swim, but lots did. Not just humans, either. Though Dwellers, mind you, never. Wasn’t even in their vocabulary.

‘Never heard of it,’ Sal confessed.

‘Well, didn’t imagine you might have.’

‘Hey, you want to see something?’

‘Whatever it is, I cannot fucking wait.’

‘Come with me.’

‘Last time I heard that--’

‘We agreed no more of those.’

‘Fuck! So we did. Total retraction. Show me what you got to show me.’

‘Walk this way.’

‘Ah now, just fuck off.’

Fassin followed Sal through to the inner recess of his study. It was kind of what he might have expected if he’d given the matter any thought: lots of wood and softly glowing pools of light, framed stuff and a desk the size of a sunken room. Funny-looking twisted bits of large and gleaming metal or some other shiny substance sitting in one corner. Fassin guessed these were starship bits.

‘There.’

‘Where? What am I supposed to be looking at?’

‘This.’ Sal held up a very small twisted-looking bit of metal mounted on a wooden plinth.

Fassin tried very hard not to let his shiver show. He was nothing like as drunk as he was trying to appear to be.

‘Yeah? An whassat?’ (Overdoing it, but Sal didn’t seem to notice.)

Saluus held the piece of odd-looking metal up before Fassin’s eyes. ‘This is that thing I got out of that fucking downed ship, my man.’ Sal looked at it, swallowed and took a deep breath. Fassin saw Sal’s lip tremble. ‘This is what--’

The fucker’s going to break down, Fassin thought. He slapped one hand on Sal’s shoulder. ‘This is no good,’ he told him. ‘We need different, we need, I don’t know; something. We need not this, not what is before us here. We need something different. Elsewhen or elsestuff or elsewhere. This might be my last night of freedom, Sal.’ He gripped the other man hard by the shoulder of his perfectly tailored jacket. ‘I’m serious! You don’t know how bad things might get for me! Oh
fuck,
Sal, you don’t know how bad things might get for all of us, and I can’t fucking tell you, and this could be my last night of fun anywhere, and… and… and you’re showing me some fucking coat hook or something, and I don’t know…’ He swiped weakly at the twisted piece of metal, patting it away and still missing. Then he sniffed and drew himself up. ‘Sorry,’ he said, soberly. ‘Sorry, Sal.’ He patted the other man’s shoulder. ‘But this is maybe my last, ah, night of fun, and… look, I feel totally charged for anything - wish Boogeytown was right outside, really do, but on the other hand it’s been a long few days and maybe - no, not maybe. Maybe definitely. In fact, not that, just plain
definitely
the sensible thing to do is just go to bed and--’

‘You serious?’ Sal said, dropping the metal piece on its wooden plinth onto the desk behind him.

‘About sleep?’ Fassin said, gesturing wildly. ‘Well, it---’

‘No, you moron! About Boogeytown!’

‘What? Eh? I didn’t mention Boogeytown!’

‘Yes, you did!’ Sal said, laughing.

‘I did? Well, fuck!’

Sal had a flier. Automatic to the point of being nearly banned under the AI laws. Loaded with repair mechanisms that were not quite nanotech but only by such a tiny
-
tiny
-tiny
little bit. Deeply civilian but with total military clearance. If a Grand Fleet Admiral of the Summed Fucking Fleet stepped into this baby and toggled his authority it would only decrease the fucker’s all-areas, multi-volumes access profile. Down in the hangar deck. Walk this way, har har.

They left the top down part of the way, to clear their heads. It was very, very cold.

They set down somewhere where litter blew about under the fans of the flier. Fassin hadn’t thought there was still such a thing as litter.