Ammonite Planets (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #1-3 (35 page)

“That’s telling them!” whispered Six approvingly. “How are you going to wriggle out of that one, Atheron?”

There was a moment’s hasty consultation in the Sellite corner. Then Mandalon himself took the floor.

“The origin of Valhai is unimportant; it now belongs to the system, and therefore all legitimate inhabitants of the system have a right to its exploitation.” A few cheers rose up out of the Sellite ranks. Mandalon acknowledged them with a wave of his hand and then continued speaking. “Since the contract between the Sellites and the system’s leaders is still in force, and this Arcan thing does not belong to this system there can be no doubt about who this planet belongs to.”

“Fools!” said Diva. “They are just asking for trouble!”

The shadowy figure that represented Arcan turned almost black and suddenly began to grow larger and larger until it towered over the rest of those present. “This must be a joke!” His voice seemed to boom in all their heads. The figure continued to increase in size, until Mandalon took two steps back, before coming up against the magmite wall. The man’s face showed a rapid transition from self-congratulatory to horrified.

“They certainly are!” muttered Six, taking Grace by the hand to stop her from breaking files and running over to Arcan. Diva was standing icily still, but her eyes promised action in the short-term future.

The towering figure maintained its menacing presence over Mandalon. “You have made this mistake before,” it said. “I begin to find you very irritating. I will allow you a fair period of time in which to deliberate over this matter, but these machinations must stop. Until such time I will supply you with air, water and food. If there is any question then of my not belonging to Valhai I will no longer operate the space elevator for your provisions, and I will remove all orthogel from any of your installations. You bore me, and I am no longer prepared to have contact with you until that further meeting. How long do you require for your deliberations?”

Mandalon looked desperately at Atheron, who made some sort of movement with his hands which the onlookers were unable to decipher. The leader of Sell gave a brief nod, and then spoke.

“We will need at least a year to look into all of the details of the case,” he said. “It may take us eighteen months. Are you prepared to grant us that time?”

The orthogel entity darkened again, a faint violet shimmer running through it. “Very well,” it said, “a year to eighteen months … but no longer.” There was a slight pause, and then Arcan spoke again. “I shall require the 256
^th
skyrise for my own use during that time. All except the 49
^th
level.”

Mandalon inclined his head. “Very well. We are all in agreement then?” He looked around the chamber to gauge the reactions of the other participants, and Arcan began to deflate, releasing the pressure which had held Mandalon against the wall, releasing the Sellite, who was trying unsuccessfully to look dignified.

The Sellites were extremely satisfied: they had procured another couple of years with no changes: it was more than they had hoped for. The rest of the participants clearly felt the same way – there was a general hum of assent and inclinations of various heads. Atheron, particularly, seemed to be very pleased with himself. Mandalon brought the meeting to a ceremonious close.

SIX WAS ADAMANT. “If it is going to take years to sort out all this Valhai thing I am going to Kwaide to get my sister right now. I have had a bad feeling about Eight for the last two weeks – I’m worried something may have happened to her.”

“And I am coming with you.” Diva straightened her shoulders and looked eager for confrontation.

Grace hesitated. “But what about Arcan?” she asked.

“He can come too, can’t he?” said Six. “Or is he going to sit around here for the next two years?”

Arcan’s voice sounded in all their heads. “I have to spend time researching the origin of Valhai.” There was a brief pause. “And I might need some help.”

“What! The great Arcan asking for help!” exclaimed Six. “Now how did that come about?”

“I have been able to develop a technique for projecting my voice without surrounding you with an orthogel bubble. This is—” The orthogel entity prepared to go into detailed explanations.

“—I meant,” said Six, “that how can such an omnipotent being as yourself need help from insignificant animals like ourselves?”

“Yes. I find it surprising too,” answered Arcan. “Unfortunately I still need someone to get into the Sellite archives and find the relevant files for me. That is something only one of you can do.”

The three friends looked at each other.

“I’ll stay,” said Grace. “I know all of the archive codes and I know my way around the library system here in Sell.”

Both Six and Diva found it hard to hide their relief. Researching ancient archives was not exactly their idea of a fun way to spend their time.

“If you insist.”

“If you are sure …”

Grace gave them a wide smile. “You would have hated to stay, admit it!” she teased. “No – I am the ideal candidate for this. It will be great to be of help to Arcan. And perhaps I need a little bit of time here. Such a lot of things have happened in the last few months, that I feel as if I haven’t quite assimilated it all yet. Maybe Arcan can float us both over to Kwaide from time to time to find out how you are getting on.”

“I don’t foresee any difficulty with that, Grace,” said Arcan.

“Then it’s settled.” Six looked across the table in the eating area of the 21
^st
floor of the 256
^th
skyrise, their temporary base.

“I shall come too.”

Everybody started at the voice which interrupted them. Cimma had come in unseen and had overheard the last comments.

A fleeting look of utter dismay crossed Six’s face, to be replaced almost instantly by a welcoming smile. “Cimma! I hadn’t realized you were there. Err … Are you sure you would be up to such a strenuous journey?”

“Strenuous?” Cimma echoed with a touch of sarcasm. “Standing inside a bubble of orthogel for ten seconds?”

“Not just that,” Six hastened to add. “We might have to camp out in the rough, march across the mountains … you know …”

“I am sure Arcan can maintain my orthosupport even at that distance, can’t you, Arcan?”

“That would be possible, Cimma. I do not think I would be in any danger from the atmosphere of Kwaide. It is Coriolis which is dangerous to me for any long exposures.”

Cimma gave a pleased look around all the table. “Then?”

Six recognized defeat. “Terrific,” he said lethargically. “Can’t wait.”

Diva kicked him under the table, ignored his resultant squawk of surprise, and stood up. “It will be a great honour to have you accompany us,” she told Grace’s mother. “It will make our trip memorable.”

Six was rubbing his shin. “I’ll say!” he agreed, with feeling. Under Diva’s magnetic glower, he found himself standing up too. “When do we leave?”

Cimma touched the scabbard of her famous Xianthan dagger. “I’m ready now,” she told them. “Just have to say goodbye to your father, Grace.”

Since Grace’s father had been dead for over two years now, and lived in a closed sarcophagus, the general feeling was that that would not take her very long to accomplish.

“No point hanging around then,” said Six. “We will go whenever Arcan is ready to take us.”

SIX, CIMMA AND DIVA gazed around them. They were back in front of the concrete slabs and wired fencing of the Rexel birth shelter on Kwaide. Diva thought that it was just as gloomy a place as it had been the previous time she had seen it, with Six. If anything, it had an even more abandoned look about it. Cimma looked with disfavor at the unprepossessing building, and then shivered as she became aware of the cold wind.

“This is nothing,” Six told her with some pride. “In the uninhabitable zone the winds can kill you!”

“How nice!” Cimma’s expression indicated just what she thought about that.

Diva led the way to the main gate, and rang the bell. It echoed somewhere inside the dank building and then fell silent. This time it was an imposingly stern woman who came out to speak to them. She examined her visitors through narrowed eyes. “Now why,” she said sharply, “would three outsiders be ringing the bell of the birth shelter?”

“I am no outsider, you old harpy!” shouted Six. “Call yourself a matron? Hah! I want my sister!”

Diva rolled her eyes. “Going for the subtle approach, I see, no-name!” she murmured.

The matron gave a satisfied smile. “So you
have
come at last,” she said. “Well you are too late.”

“What do you mean, too late?”

“Wasn’t she your twin? Can’t you feel it?” taunted the old woman.

Six fell silent for a second, and his eyes lost their focus. “She is not here,” he said at last. “Where have you taken her?” He made a lunge in the old woman’s direction, and had to be pulled back by Diva.

“Oh, she
is
here, all right …” The woman gave a cackle. “We kept her here. Now would we let a precious thing like your sister get away?”

“Even four years in this place must have seemed like an eternity,” said Diva.

“Tell me about it!” But Six struggled against Diva’s grip, still trying to get closer to the matron. “What have you done with her, you evil troll?”

“I? I have done nothing. We had orders from Benefice, didn’t we? Had to keep her locked up, didn’t we? Not
my
fault if she didn’t like the food, was it?”

Six gave a growl deep in his throat.

The matron turned to him and hissed. “You can’t feel her, can you? You don’t know if she is alive or dead. What if I told you she were
dead
?”

“LIAR!”

“Or not. It might have been something she ate – or didn’t. Yes, it definitely might have been something she ate. What a pity! So sorry. Nothing to be done.” And the matron gave a satisfied leer in Six’s direction, together with a mocking curtsey.

Six shook Diva’s arm free, but Cimma was before him. Her Xianthan dagger flashed at the neck of the old woman. “Tell us exactly what happened,” she snarled, “or I will cut your unworthy throat wide open!”

The matron squirmed at the touch of the knife, and tried to spit in Cimma’s face.

“I don’t like you.” Cimma tightened her grasp. “I didn’t like you on first acquaintance and things have gone downhill since then. So keep a civil tongue in your head, you hear?” She shook the woman.

“I have told you what happened. The Elders from Benefice were ‘interested’ in her. They requested ‘special’ measures. She was to be put in the dark room and kept apart from the rest. It’s not
my
fault if she didn’t eat properly. It isn’t
my
fault she got sick. It was the Elders and their ‘special’ measures.”

“What did you feed her?” Six´s face was stony.

“Oh, this and that. A little of this, and a little of that.”

“You starved her!”

A thin smile spread across the lips. “We believe in frugality here,” she said.

“You starved her to death!” Six’s voice failed.

Cimma tightened the knife, which nicked the woman’s throat, causing a heavy trickle of blood to fall to the ground.

The woman’s eyes followed the trail of her own blood, and she paled. “All right. All right!” She held up her hands. “If you must know, she isn’t dead. She didn’t die. She got sick, I tell you! Her stomach couldn’t take all the rich food, maybe?” She gave a cackle.

“And you didn’t get her a doctor?”

“A doctor? For a no-name? Do you think we are made of money?”

Cimma shook her again. “You hell-hag!” she snapped. “I shall lock you up in the same place and throw away the key!”

“The Elders heard she was ill,” muttered the matron, “and they sent one of their ‘sick wagons’ to take her to Benefice.”

Six closed his eyes. “Then I am too late,” he said numbly. “Too late.” He gave a sigh. “I let her down. Again.”

“At least she is still alive,” Diva said.

“We don’t know that.”

“Not knowing if she is alive is much better than knowing she is dead.”

“It doesn’t feel like much to me.”

Diva walked up to him but he shook her off again. “Let me be!” he said. “I wanted to do something, get her out of here. Now there is nothing I can do.”

Diva followed him, and walked around him so that he was forced to look into her face.

“Of course there is something you can do!” she said. “You can make sure nobody else is starved close to death in this … this misnamed ‘shelter’. We should raise it to the ground!”

The matron went white, and Cimma laughed. “Ah, that got to you, didn’t it? Don’t worry, we won’t kill you. But there is a nice dark room waiting to play host to you, madam!”

There was a long silence, while Six looked through Diva, his eyes unseeing. Then gradually refocused on his surroundings. Diva felt his gaze on her, sensed his return to the here and now, and felt the slow anger replacing his guilt. Heat began to sweep through the rest of his body, until it reached his face, which darkened with rage. A red haze took over his mind, boiling over into his thoughts and preventing any sort of rational planning.

Then he leapt for the gate and began to tear at it with his bare hands. Diva threw herself after him, and between them they half-pulled, half-lifted it off its hinges, and dragged it over to the nearby ditch.

As the rusted metal barrier fell end over end down the embankment Six turned, and caught Diva’s eye. “You’re right,” he cried, drawing his blade, “nobody else should have to exist in the misery of this cesspit. Let’s make sure they don’t!”

“Let’s!”

And the two of them entered the birth shelter at a run, brandishing their weapons above their heads. Cimma was left, still holding her own knife at the matron’s neck.

“I think you were about to show me this dark room of yours?” she said politely. “After you!”

IT WAS ALL over within an hour. They met little opposition from the shelter staff, all of whom were ex-orphans who had been allowed to stay on in exchange for their work. They had suffered more than even the young children.

Six asked them to line up outside the walls of the hated shelter.

“You are free, now,” he announced.

They looked around, disconcerted and still afraid by the sight of weapons and the upheaval in their mundane lives.

“But where will we go?” One of them wailed. “We have nowhere to go, no-one to help us.”

Six glared at the speaker, but noticed Diva’s eyes resting on him with a quizzical expression. At first, he felt exasperated with the inability of these people to take their lives into their own hands, and then, as the anger which had consumed him for all those minutes wore off, he realized that it would be unfair to demand independence from people who had been institutionalized since birth. He drew a deep breath, and found that he knew the answer, had known it all the time.

“All those of you who want to can come with us,” he said. “We are going to set up a camp in the uninhabitable zone, and all no-names are welcome.”

“But what shall we eat?” The same boy demanded.

“What – the food was so good here that you are going to miss it?” Six’s voice was sharp. “I don’t think it will be hard to better the meals you were given here!”

His listeners looked at the ground.

Six regarded them sadly. They were a sorry bunch. They certainly didn’t look like the start of a revolution. It seemed almost ludicrous to think he could change Kwaide with beaten inmates like this. “We will forage for food,” he told them, “but that will be supplemented by supplies from Coriolis, together with anything else we need.”

They looked up pretty quickly at that. “Coriolis,” they breathed, making an audible collective hum. “The planet Coriolis?”

Six nodded. “We have connections
and
transport from there.” He looked around the ragged band of children and adults. “Well? Are you coming or staying?”

It was their turn to look around at each other. Eventually one of the boys moved forward, came up to Six, and then walked to stand behind him.

“Nothing could be worse than that place,” he said. “I would rather die than go back.”

“So would I!” called a voice, its owner moving forward.

“And I!” One by one, the refugees began to take the first, great step towards a new life. The trickle became a chorus, and then a rush, until there were only five people still standing on the opposite side. One of them was the girl they had talked to the previous year, Fifteen.

“Will you not come with us?” Six asked, with a gentler tone.

Fifteen shook her head. “Stay with Matron,” she got out.

“But she’s a sycophant. She mistreats you.” Six couldn’t believe she would want to stay.

Fifteen shook her head stubbornly. “Stay with Matron.”

“Very well. I think you are making a mistake, but you can stay if you want to.”

Diva held up one hand in warning. “If they are going to stay then they should be locked up with her. Otherwise they will let her out as soon as we have gone and she will raise the alarm. These refugees can’t travel fast and it will take us at least four days to get to the uninhabitable zone.”

Six frowned. “Lock them up! But they have done nothing wrong. They are the victims here. It is one thing to lock Matron up – she’s a despicable sadist, and she deserves far worse than that – but these are no-names.”

“They choose to stay. They will let her out as soon as she asks them to. They are only used to following orders. You can’t expect them to do anything else.”

That was true. Six gave a heavy sigh. “Very well,” he said. “Put them in the dark room with Matron, then. But let’s leave them plenty of water and what food we can find. It may be a week before somebody comes to let them out.”

When Six signed for the five to lead the way to the dark room they fell meekly into step. “Tell anyone who wants to know,” he said, “that all untouchables are welcome to join us. Any no-name who wants to change his life should come to find us. We’ll be in the lower ranges of the mountains, up in the uninhabitable zone. Tell them to search just below the black peak, to the west of the scarred crag. There will be enough food for everyone.”

The five nodded their assent, and followed the cement-lined corridors of the shelter until they came to a heavy metal door set into one of the corridors. Six forced the rusty lock open with difficulty and signaled them to go in. The matron was already sitting on the one iron bedstead, looking thundery.

Six walked into the cell and looked around at the grimy walls. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for. He moved over to one particular wall and with one finger traced out the contour of a thin and shaky figure eight scratched faintly into the stone. Six bowed his head, speechless. She had nearly died here in this foul place!

The matron had been taking advantage of his momentary distraction by edging closer to the door when Cimma appeared from a mission to find and bring food and water to the voluntary captives and put an abrupt stop to any thoughts the manager of the birth shelter might have had of escape. Cimma gave a pleased nod. “Glad to see we understand each other, Matron.”

The matron gave her a look of acute dislike, but sat down again.

Cimma saw Six standing with his head bowed, and noticed the scratches on the wall. “Come away, Six, there is nothing for you here. I have checked the records, and asked the inmates, and they all confirm the matron’s story. Eight is long gone. Come away. Come on!”