The Starry Rift Part 28

Then he spotted someone standing by the bus. He couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. He, or she, raised a hand in greeting. Ali waved back, then let the stone fly. It fell short, but the distant figure ran forward and retrieved it from the sand.

Daniel collapsed beneath him, and the guards moved in with batons and tear gas. Ali covered his eyes with his forearm, weeping, alive again with hope.

GREG EGAN was born in Perth, Western Australia, in 1961 and earned a bachelor of science in mathematics from the University of Western Australia before attending the National Film and Television School. He gave up a career in filmmaking, which inspired his surreal early novel An Unusual Angle, for science fiction, and has supported himself as a computer programmer when not writing full-time.

While Egan began publishing short fiction in the pages of Inter-zone and Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in the 1980s, his most impressive work is the extensive body of short fiction published during the 1990s, which includes "Reasons To Be Cheerful," "Learning To Be Me," "Coc.o.o.n," "Luminous," and Hugo Award-winning story "Oceanic"-and has established him as one of the world's most important writers of science fiction. He is a frequent contributor to Interzone and Asimov's; has made sales to Pulphouse, a.n.a.log, Aurealis, Eidolon, and New Legends; and has been represented in every volume of the U.S.-based Year's Best Science Fiction since 1991. Egan's short fiction has been collected in Axiomatic and Luminous.

Egan's first major novel-the first of his "Nature of Consciousness" novels-was Quarantine, and it was followed by John W. Campbell Memorial Award winner Permutation City, Distress, Diaspora, Teranesia, and the radical s.p.a.ce opera Schild's Ladder. After a lengthy break from writing, when he focused on political issues related to refugees in Australia, he has recently published a new novel, Incandescence.

His Web site is www.gregegan.net.

INCOMERS.

Paul McAuley.

If the three friends had seen the man in one of the malls or plazas of the new city, they wouldn't have spared him a second glance, but in the old part of Xamba, the largest city on Saturn's second-largest moon, where the weird was commonplace and the commonplace weird, he was as exotic as a tiger strolling down Broadway in old New York. People born and raised in the weak or nonexistent gravity of the various moons, orbital habitats, and ships of the outer reaches of the solar system-Outers-were generally taller than basketball stars and skinny as rails, and most citizens of old Xamba were of pale-skinned, blond, blue-eyed Nordic stock. This man, with a compact build, a shaven head, a neatly pointed black beard, and skin the color of old teak, was definitely no Outer. So why was he sitting at a tiny stall near the bottom of the produce market's spiral walkway, a place where most incomers never ventured, selling bundles of fresh herbs and various blends of herb tea?

Jack Miyata said that he was probably a harmless eccentric; Mark Griffin was convinced that he was some kind of exiled pervert or criminal; Sky Bolofo, who had filled the quantum processor of his large, red-framed spex with all kinds of talents and tricks, used a face-recognition program to identify the fellow, then pulled up his public page.

"His name is Algren Rees. He lives right here in the old city. He sells herbs and he also fixes up pets."

Jack said, "Is that it? No links to family or friends or favorites?"

Sky shrugged.

"He has to be hiding something," Mark said. "What about his private files?"

"No problem," Sky said complacently, but ran into heavy security as soon as he tried to hack into Algren Rees's pa.s.sword-protected files, and had to back out in a hurry.

Jack suggested that he could be a retired spy-just before the Quiet War kicked off, all of the Outer Colonies had been lousy with spies masquerading as diplomats and businesspeople-and Mark jumped all over the idea.

"Maybe he's still active," he said. "Selling herbs is his cover. What he's actually doing is gathering information. Keeping watch for terrorists and so-called freedom fighters."

Sky, his fingers pecking at the air in front of his face, using his spex's virtual keyboard to erase his electronic trail in case Algren Rees's security followed it, said that if the fellow wanted real cover, he should have made himself taller and skinnier, which cracked up the other two.

They were all the same age, fourteen, and went to the same school and lived in the same apartment complex in the new part of Xamba. They were also Quiet War buffs who restaged campaigns, sieges, and invasions on a war-gaming network, which was how Jack had hooked up with the other two. Jack Miyata had moved to Xamba, Rhea, just two months ago. Unlike most city-states in the Saturn system, Xamba had remained neutral during the Quiet War. After the war had ended in defeat for every one of the rebellious Outer Colonies, Earth's Three Powers Alliance had settled the bulk of its administration there, building a new city of towers and domes above Xamba's underground chambers. Seven years later, New Xamba was still growing-Jack's engineer parents were involved in the construction of a thermal-exchange plant that would tap the residual heat of the little moon's rocky core and provide power for a brand-new sector.

Very few incomers from Earth ever ventured beyond their apartment complexes, malls, and leisure parks, but Jack had caught the exploration bug from his parents. He'd roamed through much of the old and new parts of Xamba, and after pa.s.sing a pressure-suit training course had taken several long hikes through the untouched wilderness in the southern half of the big crater in which the city was located and from which it took its name, had climbed to the observatory at the top of the crater's central peak, and had visited the memorial at the crash site of a s.p.a.ceship that had attempted to break the blockade during the war. It had been Jack's idea to take his two new friends to his latest discovery, the produce market in the oldest chamber of old Xamba. As far as Jack was concerned, the market was a treasure house of marvels, but as they'd wandered between stalls and displays of strange flowers and fruits and vegetables, streamers of dried waterweed, tanks of fish and shrimp, caged birds and rats, and bottle vivariums in which stag beetles lumbered like miniature rhinoceroses through jungles of moss and fern, Mark and Sky quickly made it clear that they thought it was smelly, horribly crowded with strangely dressed, alarmingly skinny giants, and, quite frankly, revoltingly primitive. When food makers could spin anything from yeast and algae, why would anyone want to eat the meat of real live animals, especially as they would have to kill them first? Kill and gut them and G.o.d knew what else. But all three agreed that there was definitely something intriguing about the herb seller, Algren Rees.

"Maybe he's a double agent," Jack said. "He's in the pay of the Three Powers, but he's gone over to the Outers, and they're using him to feed our side false information."

Mark nodded. "There's plenty of people who want to sabotage the reconstruction. Look at that blowout at the s.p.a.ceport last month."

"The newsfeeds said it was an accident," Sky said. "Someone fitted some kind of widget upside down or the wrong way round."

"Of course they said it was an accident," Mark said scornfully. "It's the official line. But it doesn't mean it really was an accident."

He was a stocky boy who, with his pale skin, jet-black hair, and perpetual scowl, looked a lot like his policeman father. His mother was in the police too, in charge of security at the s.p.a.ceport. He had a vivid imagination and an opinion about everything.

Jack wanted to know if Mark had inside information about the accident, and Mark smiled and said that maybe he didn't and maybe he did. "I had a feeling there was something wrong with Mr. Algren Rees as soon as I saw him. All good police have what they call gut instinct, and my gut very definitely told me that this fellow is a wrong one, and Sky's run-in with his over-the-top security confirmed it. It's up to all of us to find out exactly who he is, and why he's living here. It's our duty."

Jack and Mark quickly decided that they would follow Algren Rees-or "Algren Rees" as Mark called him, drawing quotation marks in the air with his little finger-and made Sky promise that he would use his data miners to ferret out anything and everything about the man. They were fourteen years old, secret masters of all they surveyed, possessed by restless energies and impulses that war gaming was no longer enough to satisfy, and hungry for adventure, for anything that would fill up the desert of the school holidays. Following Algren Rees and uncovering his secrets was just the beginning.

Algren Rees had no fixed routine. He spent only an hour or so at his stall in the produce market (which explained why Jack hadn't seen him there before); he tended the little garden where he grew his herbs; he sat outside the door of his apartment, a one-room efficiency on a terrace directly above the market, drinking tea or homemade lemonade and watching people go by; he took long, rambling walks through the old city. Jack saw more of the place in the three days he spent following the man, sometimes with Mark, sometimes on his own, than he had in the past two months.

The cylindrical chambers of old Xamba were buried inside the rock-hard water ice of the crater's eastern rimwall like so many bottles in a s...o...b..nk, and most had transparent endwalls facing what was generally reckoned to be one of the most cla.s.sically beautiful views on all of Saturn's family of moons, across slumped terraces and flat, dusty plains toward the crater's central peak, which stood right at the edge of the close, curved horizon. In the little moon's microgravity, just 3 percent of Earth's, there was little difference between horizontal and vertical. Inside the old city's chambers, apartments, shops, cafes, workshops, and gardens were piled on top of each other in steep, terraced cliffs, rising up on either side of skinny, landscaped parks and ca.n.a.ls in steep-sided troughs. Apart from the boats in the ca.n.a.ls that linked the chambers, traffic was entirely pedestrian. Jack had no problem blending into the crowds as he trailed Algren Rees through markets and malls, parks and plazas, up and down ropeways, chutes, and chairlifts.

Although Mark insisted on teaching him some basic tradecraft (he claimed to have learnt it from his parents, but more likely had gotten it from some text), Jack figured out most of his moves for himself. Staying well behind his quarry and trying to antic.i.p.ate his every move, walking straight past him or dodging up a ropeway or down a chute if he stopped to talk to someone, lurking inconspicuously when he lingered over a bulb of coffee at a cafe or a tube of beer at a bar. It was a lot more exciting than any war game, and a lot scarier, too. There was no wizard to ask for a clue or hint about what to do next, every decision was unconditionally permanent, and any mistake would be his last, game over. But Algren Rees seemed quite unaware that he was being followed, and by the third day Jack plucked up the courage to chat with the woman behind the counter of the cafe where the man ate his lunch and breakfast, learning that he had moved to Rhea two years ago and that he was originally from Greater Brazil, where he'd worked in the emergency relief services as a paramedic and helicopter pilot. He seemed well liked. He always stopped to talk to his neighbors when he met them as he went about his errands, and had long conversations with people who bought herbs or herb tea at his stall. He was a regular at the cafe and several bars in various parts of the city, trading fresh herbs for food and drink, and apart from eating out, his life seemed as austere as any monk's. Still, Jack didn't see how he could stretch the minuscule income from his market stall and fixing broken pets to cover the rent on his apartment, and his power and water and air taxes.

"I guess he must have some kind of private income," Jack said to Mark.

"He has secrets, is what he has," Mark said. "We don't even know if 'Algren Rees'"-he did the thing with his little fingers-"is his real name, no thanks to Sky for bailing on us. Some hacker he turned out to be, when it came down to it."

"He was majorly spooked when he ran up against our friend's electronic watchdogs," Jack said.

"Which also proves our friend has something to hide, or why else would he be using military-grade security?"

It was late in the evening. The city's sky lighting was beginning to dim. The two boys were sitting in a little park near the top of the east side of the chamber, taking turns with a pair of binoculars to keep watch on Algren Rees's apartment, which was near the top of the west side. Across the wide gulf of air, the man was sitting on the little raised porch outside his front door, wearing shorts and nothing else and reading a book. Books printed on paper were a quirky tradition in old Xamba. Algren Rees read slowly, licking the top of his thumb before turning each page. Yellow light from inside the apartment spilled around him. Pretty soon, judging by the last three days, Algren Rees would turn in. He wasn't a night owl.

"What we need to do," Mark said, "is take this to the next level."

Jack felt a tingling rush of antic.i.p.atory excitement. "What do you mean?"

"I mean we have to get into his apartment."

"You're kidding."

Mark had a determined look, a jut of his heavy jaw like a dog gripping a bone it isn't willing to let go of. "It's what real spies would do. I bet he has all kinds of stuff stashed away in there. Stuff that would crack this case wide open."

"He probably has all kinds of security, too," Jack said.

"Oh, I can handle that."

"Right."

"It's simply a matter of police tradecraft," Mark said.

"Right."

"I'd like to tell you more, but if I did, I'd have to kill you afterward," Mark said. Like his father, he never smiled when he made a joke.

They decided to do it the very next day, even though it was a Monday, the one day in the week when the produce market was closed, when Algren Rees wouldn't be safely occupied at his stall for an hour or so. Jack would find some way of keeping the man at the cafe where he ate breakfast; meanwhile, Mark would break into the apartment, to see what he could see.

It wasn't much of a plan, but Jack couldn't think of anything better. He was pretty sure that Algren Rees wasn't any kind of spy, but he'd developed a curious feeling of kinship with the man during the time he'd spent trailing him around the chambers of old Xamba. Yet although he'd spent a couple dozen hours in his company, he still knew almost nothing about him. It had become a matter of pride to find out who Algren Rees really was, and why he had chosen to come here, and live amongst the Outers.

When they met up early the next morning, Mark wanted to know what was in the box Jack was clutching to his chest. Jack told him that it was a foolproof way of keeping the man busy.

"I'll tell you what it is if you'll tell me how you're going to break into his apartment."

"I'm not going to break in," Mark said with a sly smile. "Are you sure you can keep him busy for half an hour?"

"Absolutely," Jack said, tapping the top of the plastic box, feeling what was inside stir, a slow, heavy movement that subsided after a moment.

Actually, he wasn't sure at all. He'd slept badly, his mind spinning, tracing and retracing every part of a plan that seemed increasingly silly and flimsy. Two hours later, when Algren Rees finally left his apartment and he followed him to the cafe, the muscles of Jack's legs felt watery and his stomach was doing somersaults. But it was too late to back out. As Jack skimmed up a short ropeway to the cafe, he knew that Mark would be breaking into the apartment.

The cafe was little more than a bamboo counter in the shade of a huge fig tree, with half a dozen stools, a hot plate, and a hissing coffee machine that the owner, a very tall, incredibly skinny woman with long snow-white hair, had built herself, using a design centuries old. The food was prepared from whatever was in season in the garden spread on either side of the fig tree, and whatever came in trade-the citizens of old Xamba had a complicated economy based on barter of goods and services.

It was the middle of the morning. Algren Rees and Jack were the only customers. Jack set the plastic box on the counter and asked the owner for an orange juice, then turned to the man and said as casually as he could manage that he'd heard that he treated sick pets.

"Who told you that?"

Algren Rees, hunched over a bowl of porridge flecked with nuts and seeds, didn't look up when he spoke. He had a husky voice and a thick accent: the voice of a villain from some cheap virtuality.

"She did," Jack said, nodding to the owner of the cafe, who was filling a blender with orange segments and a handful of strawberries.

"I guess I did," the woman said with cheerful carelessness, and switched on the blender. She'd braided her hair into a pigtail that twitched down her back as she moved about in the narrow s.p.a.ce behind the counter.

"Stop by my apartment when you've had your breakfast," Algren Rees told Jack. "It's just around the corner, down the ropeway, past a clump of black bamboo. The one with the red door."

He was eating his porridge slowly but steadily. In a few minutes he would be finished. He'd walk back to his apartment, find that red door open . . .

Jack pushed the box an inch along the counter and said, "I have it right here."

"So I see," Algren Rees said, although he still hadn't looked up. "And I have my breakfast right here, too."

"It belongs to my little sister," Jack said, the little lie sliding out with surprising ease. He added, "She loves it to bits, but we're scared that it's dying."

"Why don't you take a look, Al," the woman said as she placed the bulb of orange juice in front of Jack. "The worst that can happen is that it'll improve your karma."

"It will need much more than fixing a pet to do that," Algren Rees said, smiling at her.

The woman smiled, too, and Jack was reminded of the way his parents shared a private joke.

"All right, kid," Algren Rees said. "Show me what you got."

It was a mock turtle, a halflife creature that produced no waste or unpleasant odors and needed only a couple of hours of trickle charge and a cupful of water a day. It had large, dark, soulful eyes, a soft yellow beak, a sh.e.l.l covered in pink fur, and a fifty-word vocabulary. Although it didn't belong to Jack's wholly imaginary little sister but to the youngest daughter of Jack's neighbors, it really was sick. It had grown slow and sluggish, its fur was matted and threadbare, its eyes were filmed with white matter, and its breath was foully metallic.

Algren Rees studied it for a moment, then took a diagnostic pen from one of the many pockets of his brocade waistcoat, lifted the mock turtle from the box and turned it upside down, and plugged the instrument into the socket behind its front leg.

"Tickles," the turtle complained, working its stubby legs feebly.

"It's for your own good," Algren Rees told it. "Be still."

He had small, strong hands and neatly trimmed fingernails. There were oval scars on the insides of his wrists; he'd had neural sockets once upon a time, the kind that interface with smart machinery. He squinted at the holographic readout that blossomed above the shaft of the diagnostic pen, then asked Jack, "Do you know what a prion is?"

Jack's mind went horribly blank for a moment; then a fragment of a biology lesson surfaced, and he grabbed at it gratefully. "Proteins have to fold up the right way to work properly. Prions are proteins that fold up wrongly."

Algren Rees nodded. "The gene wizard who designed these things used a lot of freeware, and one of the myoelectric proteins has a tendency to turn prions. That's what's wrong with your sister's pet. It's a self-catalyzing reaction-do you know what that means?"

"It spreads like a fire. Prions turn ordinary proteins into more prions."

Algren Rees unplugged the diagnostic pen and settled the mock turtle in the box. "The myoelectric proteins are what powers it. When they fold the wrong way they can no longer hold a charge, and when enough have folded wrongly, it will die."

"Can you fix it?"

Algren Rees shook his head. "The best thing would be to put it to sleep."

He looked genuinely sorry, and Jack felt a wave of guilt pa.s.s through him. Right now, Mark was breaking into the man's apartment, rifling through his possessions . . .

"If you like, I can do it right now," Algren Rees said.

"I'll have to tell my sister first."

Algren Rees shrugged and started to push away from the counter, saying, "I'm sorry I couldn't help you, kid."

"Wait," Jack said desperately, knowing that Mark must still be in the apartment. Adding, when Algren Rees looked at him, "I mean, I want to ask you, why is someone like you living here?"

"Why does who I am have anything to do with where I live?"

There was a sudden sharpness in the man's voice.

"Well, I mean, you're an incomer. From Earth," Jack said, feeling the heat of a blush rise in his face. "And incomers, they all live in the new city, don't they? But you live here, you sell herbs . . ."

"You seem to know an awful lot about me, kid. Why the interest?"

"I saw you at the produce market," Jack said, blushing harder, certain that he'd been caught out.

Algren Rees studied him for a moment, pinching the point of his neat black beard between finger and thumb. Then he smiled and said, "I had the feeling I'd seen you before. You like the market, huh?"

"It's one of my favorite places in the old city."

"And you like the old city?"

Jack nodded.

"Most incomers don't much care for it."

Jack nodded again.

"So maybe we have something in common, you and I. Think about it, kid," Algren Rees said. "If you can figure it out, stop by my stall sometime. But right now I have an appointment to keep."

The woman behind the counter asked him to have a good thought on her behalf, and then he was skimming away. Not toward his apartment, but in the opposite direction, toward the chute that dropped to the floor of the chamber.