Aaron reached the end of his run, and an eight-gee acceleration vector lifted the Lindau vertical. Seconds later he was out of the clouds and curving sharply at ten gees through the ionosphere to bring the nose down again. The starship’s on-board compensators managed to relieve four gees, leaving him exposed to a full six gee force. Biononics braced his body again as he was shoved back into the pilot’s acceleration couch. The Lindau plunged back into the lower atmosphere. It immediately began to vibrate with a frequency and intensity that threatened to shake the whole structure apart. Even with biononic protection, Aaron could feel his bones and organs quiver as his flesh was squeezed. Alarms filled the cabin with a panicked howl. Red strobes drowned out the ordinary illumination, immersing him in hell’s own lighting scheme. He heard overstressed metal tearing. Somewhere behind him high pressure gas roared out of a fracture. Toxic alarms added their unique note to the clamour. Aaron strengthened his integral force field.
Solar-bright lightning overwhelmed the hull’s visual sensors as the starship began its new run five hundred metres from the ground. The vibration grew progressively more violent. Aaron ignored it all, scrutinizing every byte of data from the external sensors. Within the chaos of the terminal blizzard, the ship’s instruments could only scan a few hundred metres with any accuracy. His search area was a huge zone that stretched from the Asiatic glacier back to the Olhava camp, which he was forced to cover in strips eight hundred metres wide – with a fifty-metre overlap to be certain of complete coverage.
The Lindau completed its manic run, and punched upwards. A fuselage stress strut snapped, tearing through cables and pipes. Sparks sprayed into the cabin as half the polyphoto light panels failed. Smartcore schematics revealed a deeper problem of primary power loss to several drive support systems. Aaron shunted the display into a peripheral icon, and powerdived the starship back into the clouds at eleven gees.
*
The Delivery Man teleported directly into the hallway to hear Elsie and Tilly squabbling over who could play with the grav-ball. Elsie had it, and was running round the front lounge victoriously, holding the toy aloft and shouting: ‘My turn, my turn.’
Tilly was chasing after her sister trying to grab the ball back. ‘Is not!’ she yelled in frustration. The paediatric housebot was floating after the two of them, maintaining the safety-regulated one point seven metres away, chiding melodiously: ‘Children to stop climbing on furniture. There is danger in this activity. Please calm down. Share your toys. It is rewarding.’
‘Ratbag,’ Elsie shouted at the bot. She threw the grav-ball. It hit the upper surface of the bot, and rebounded in a cloud of blue holographic light to hit the ceiling, where it flattened out for five seconds, quivering, before launching itself at the wall amid another photonic fizz. Tilly and Elsie sprinted for it, little faces grim with determination. Both missed as it shot upwards again, making a ridiculous boiiing noise. Another bounce off the ceiling and it was heading straight for Lizzie’s favourite vase, a fifteen-hundred-year-old Rebecca Lewis from her Bryn-Bella period.
The Delivery Man hated the flowery monstrosity, but managed to snatch the grav-ball from the air just before it hit.
‘Daddy!’ Both girls immediately forgot their squabble and ran over for hugs.
‘I’ve told you a hundred times you’re not to play with this in the adult rooms,’ he scolded.
‘Yes, yes!’ They wrapped their arms around him, tugging as they jumped up and down in happy excitement.
‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Did you bring presents?’
He handed the grav-ball to the housebot. ‘All over, and no.’
‘Awwww!’
‘I was too busy, sorry.’ Staying alive.
The three of them walked into the kitchen where Lizzie and a general housebot were preparing supper on the iron range cooker. Various pans were bubbling away, producing a melange of scents. It was dark outside, turning the windows into sheets of blackness coated in condensation.
Lizzie smiled and gave him a quick kiss. ‘Glad you’re back,’ she whispered.
‘Me too.’
Rosa tottered in from the conservatory, dressed in a red and black skirt with green stockings. ‘Daa da.’
‘Hello, poppet.’ He scooped her up, and tidied some of her dark red curls.
‘She said bot today,’ Lizzie said.
‘Did you?’ the Delivery Man asked. Rosa smiled back, saying nothing.
‘It could have been boot,’ Lizzie admitted. ‘Can you three do something useful and lay the table, please?’
The Delivery Man put Rosa down, and helped Tilly and Elsie arrange the knives and forks in the right places.
‘I think I might cut down on investigations,’ the Delivery Man said as he found some wine glasses for himself and Lizzie.
‘That’s good,’ she said.
‘At least the cases furthest away from the Central worlds. That should cut down on my away time considerably.’
She rewarded the decision with a kiss. ‘Thank you.’
They all sat down together for supper. The housebot put a big casserole pot in the middle of the table, and lifted the lid off.
The Delivery Man poked the serving spoon in, and lifted out some steaming— ‘What is this?’ he asked dubiously.
‘Sausage stew,’ Tilly announced proudly. ‘I made the sausages at school. We programmed the culinary cabinet down to level three for the ingredients.’
‘I made the tomatoes,’ Elsie said.
‘It all looks lovely,’ the Delivery Man assured them. He tipped the stew on to the plate, and added some vegetables and potatoes. Lizzie sipped at the wine, and grinned at him over the rim of the glass.
When they finally got the children to bed, the Delivery Man lit the fire in the lounge. The Georgian townhouse was perfectly insulated against the wintry night, but as Lizzie had educated him, a real fire gave them a reassuring warmth inside. They snuggled up together on the big settee with the rest of the wine.
‘I heard a rumour today,’ Lizzie said. ‘You know what Jen’s husband does?’
‘Er, not sure, really.’ For the first time in a long time he was actually relaxing rather than putting on a show of tranquillity.
‘Something to do with the Navy. Anyway, she was telling me the Ocisen fleet might be more powerful than anyone is owning up to.’
‘Really?’ He knew it was only ever a matter of time before news of the Yenisey got out.
‘Did you hear anything?’
‘No.’ But he did remember Marius’s reaction to the news of Hanko. It was odd, as though the Accelerator Faction representative didn’t know about the Hawking m-sink being used. Why would he try to bluff on that?
‘And the news from Viotia was horrible. The unisphere showed some poor woman being grabbed by the paramilitaries. They’d attacked her in the street for no reason.’
‘Terrible.’ Unless he genuinely didn’t know. And if that’s the case, who else would be able to get hold of one?
‘I can see you’re really bothered by it.’
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s okay.’ She wiggled up closer. ‘I am glad you’re cutting back. You don’t mind?’
‘I can pick it up again in twenty years. I just don’t want to miss out on the kids growing up. It’s a unique time.’
Lizzie patted his leg as she tipped back some more wine. ‘Good man.’
While the Delivery Man was getting ready for bed that night the Conservative Faction called. ‘We need you to deliver a starship to Pulap tomorrow.’
‘No,’ he told them. A quick guilty glance through the bathroom door showed Lizzie moving round in the bedroom. He shut the door. ‘Not any more.’
‘This will be an entirely passive role for you, exactly as we originally promised. To the best of our knowledge there are no agents of any Faction on Pulap.’
‘If he catches me, you’ll need to re-life me. I don’t want that.’
‘There is someone else we wil
l be using to monitor Marius from now on. An operative who takes a more active role than you.’
‘Oh.’
‘To reassure you further, Marius has just arrived on Ganthia.’
‘What’s on Ganthia?’ He immediately cursed himself for asking.
‘We’re not sure. However, it is over two hundred lightyears from Pulap. We would not ask you to make this delivery unless it was urgent.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It will take us time to replace you. There was bound to be some overlap before your successor can be fully initiated.’
‘I didn’t say I was going to stop helping you.’ He gave his image in the mirror an angry stare, then broke away and stuffed his clothes into the laundry basket. ‘All right, I’ll deliver the starship; but after this I want at least three days’ notice of any assignment.’
‘Thank you.’
*
Araminta didn’t sleep much. The bed which the couch expanded into was fine, its ageing mattress accommodating and the duvet warm. The twins next door made no noise to bother her. It was all due to worry. Worry that any second the door would come crashing down and the Ellezelin paramilitaries would rampage through the little house to grab her, hurting Tandra and the children in the process.
I had no right to come here and put them in danger.
Worry, also, about what to do next. She knew who she wanted to talk to, but the how of it was difficult. In the hours she wasn’t actively fretting she went through all the communication technology files stored in her lacuna. There were more than she realized; accumulated so she could hardwire her properties for unisphere access and integrate domestic systems with the house net. They gave her quite a good base of practical knowledge. All she had to do then was work out how to apply it.
She kept examining the whole problem like some particularly stupid program. If A doesn’t work, try B, then C. She was on Z for about the eighth time when morning light finally started to glow through the cheap paper blinds over the window. But that eighth Z was certainly possible, maybe even quite clever. It also had the big advantage that no one would be able to predict it. That was the crucial part. She wasn’t under any illusions now about how desperate Living Dream was to catch her. Every aspect of her life would be analysed for clues. And every one would be pursued.
Araminta sat up as Tandra tried to tiptoe through the living room to the galley kitchen.
‘Sorry,’ Tandra said. ‘Did I wake you?’
‘No.’
Tandra pulled the blinds up. ‘Wow, you look terrible.’
‘Didn’t sleep much,’ Araminta admitted.
Martyn emerged from the bathroom, dressed in a worn t-shirt and blue shorts. ‘Morning,’ he mumbled, scratching his hair then moving on to his armpit.
‘Still glad you came?’ Tandra asked lightly. She and Araminta started giggling as Martyn frowned at the pair of them. He walked through the archway to the kitchen.
‘Can I steal some of your makeup?’ Araminta asked when she heard him banging cups and bowls about.
‘Hell yes, honey,’ Tandra said. ‘Half the membrane scales are way past their expiry date, but that’s all a big con anyway. You use them, I sure don’t get much chance to doll up.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You going to see a guy?’
‘Not quite, no.’
‘Okay. You want some coffee?’
Araminta smiled. The coffee Martyn had produced from the galley kitchen last night had been terrible. ‘Lovely, thank you.’
Breakfast was a messy affair, with the five of them squeezed round the little table in the living room. The twins were playing up, taking forever to scoop down their cereal. Araminta munched on her toast, trying not to laugh as an increasingly exasperated Tandra threatened and pleaded with the children.
Afterwards, she sat on the bed in Tandra’s room, and started applying the makeup scales. Tandra had a surprising number of cosmetic cases from various companies; some had been heavily used, while others were still untouched. Over half an hour Araminta managed to change the appearance of her features, disguising her rounded cheeks in favour of a more angular quality, careful shadowing under her jaw made it appear more prominent and square. Simple lenses changed her eye colour to a deep blue. She sprayed her hair, darkening it to near-raven; then plaited it in a way she hadn’t done since high school.
Tandra bought her clothes in. ‘Clean, and fixed as best as our poor old bot can manage. I must find a better stitching program.’ She dropped them on the mattress next to Araminta. ‘Now that’s different. I barely recognize you.’
Araminta flashed her friend a grateful smile. ‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t want to worry you,’ Tandra said closing the door. ‘But Matthew just called. There have been people in Nik’s this morning asking after you. Three lots of people.’
‘Oh, Ozzie.’ All the fear and panic from yesterday came storming back into her mind.
Tandra sat beside her. ‘Is it bad?’
‘About as bad as it can get. I’m going to leave right now. I should never have come.’
‘That’s all right, honey, I could do with my life shaking up a bit.’
Araminta shook off her borrowed robe, and began pulling her patched trousers on. ‘Not like this. Listen, if anyone comes asking for me, you tell them the complete truth. All of it.’
‘What’s to tell?’
‘That I was here. Don’t deny anything. Don’t hold back.’
‘Gee, if you’re sure?’
She pulled on her blouse, marvelling that Tandra’s cleaner had managed to get the grass stains out of the elbows. ‘Never more so.’
With the toolbelt round her waist again, and the fleece covering it up she was ready to leave.
‘Thank you again,’ she said at the door. Martyn’s uncertain grin only made her feel more ashamed.
‘You take care now,’ Tandra said, and kissed her goodbye.
Araminta walked fast for the first twenty minutes, close to a jog, putting as much distance as she could between her and Tandra’s family. After that, with sweat soaking into her blouse she slowed a little, puffing away, hoping her flushed cheeks wouldn’t dislodge the cosmetic membranes. She couldn’t open the fleece to cool off, that would expose her toolbelt.
It was a long way to her destination, an office over in the Salisbury district, which was on the other side of town from Tandra’s place. Quickest route would be straight through the centre, but she avoided that, anxious not to encounter too many people. Besides, there were more street sensors in the centre. So she walked in a long curve away from the river, then back down the slope to the north of the docks.
Three hours after she started she was in Salisbury. The buildings here were nearly all commercial, interspaced with a few estates of cheaper housing that had been shipped in from the Suvorov continent, prefab aluminium brick rooms locked together into bungalows in whatever configuration suited the landlord. Their gardens were marked off with chain link fencing, containing straggly lawns or big areas of gravel chip, with several parked ground vehicles and the odd broken capsule.
The metro line cut through the centre of the district, with a small number of branch lines splitting off. A few cabs hummed past. Trike pods were the preferred transport, though there weren’t many zipping about today. Bicycles outnumbered them nearly two to one. There were enough pedestrians that she didn’t feel too conspicuous. Even the Ellezelin capsules didn’t use the skies above Salisbury.
Araminta had never been to the district before, so it took her another hour walking down the main roads checking the signs before she found Harrogate Street. A deserted stub of concrete ending five hundred metres from the intersection in a big field of rubble from some stalled redevelopment project. Amazingly, a metro line ran all the way up to the barrier round the waste ground. The buildings on either side were a mix of offices and industrial units and storage barns.
Now she was conspicuous, the only person on the pavement where wee
ds had started to lift the cracked concrete, and compacted rubbish clogged the gutters. A third of the way towards the redevelopment site she found the building she wanted, a medium-sized warehouse of composite panels and cheap solar roofing. The front had a single storey lean-to built on, housing the company offices. The company in question being Genuine Spanish Crêpes, as advertised by a small orange sign on the security-caged front door. The windows were all boarded up with sheets of armoured carbotanium, and the side walls covered in graffiti scrawls so old their glow had decayed to near invisibility.
Araminta walked down the side of the warehouse. Right at the end of the wall there was a small door. She pulled her cutter out, and removed the lock with a neat incision.
Inside the big enclosed space, light shone in through a row of misted glass along the roof’s apex. There were five loosely piled pyramids of boxes on the bare concrete floor, all with the Spanish Crêpes logo on the side. She ignored them and hurried back to the offices at the front. Getting inside was easy enough. The door was locked but not alarmed. Laril was too cheap for that.
There were three offices, with budget furniture and fittings, looking as if the staff had just left for the day. Araminta hurriedly pulled down the blinds and began to search the offices one by one.
Spanish Crêpes had been another of Laril’s rotten companies. It was supposed to be a franchise supplying Colwyn City’s larger entertainment venues; with dozens of stalls and swarms of eager staff supplying quality food at reasonable prices, and paying Laril for the privilege. As always, it had limped along as he battled with licensing authorities, while buying stock from the cheapest suppliers he could find. Then there were subsidiaries dealing in the stalls and culinary units themselves; financed with a buyback scheme based offworld. More interlinked yet unregistered companies provided uniforms and transport. None of it had been declared to the Revenue Service.
Araminta knew about it all because he’d left a file open one day on their apartment’s network. She’d never told him she knew about it; she’d even kept it from Cressida. It was to be her very last bargaining point if all legal means failed.