Context (101 page)

There
was an overweight biologist called Bruce, who led a group of co-workers through
daily t’ai-chi, at whom Ro privately laughed till the day he slapped her
lightly and sent her spinning across the room. Then she buckled down, learning
the hidden complexities of the art with a rapidity which dismayed—patience
being a virtue—her new teacher.

In her room, she rigged punchbags
and horizontal bars, practised kickboxing and Irish kempo, aikido footwork and
pentjak silat tactics: analysing, comparing, modifying.

Synthesizing.

She did not know why.

But she knew it was something she
had to do.

‘I’m
going to retire,’ said Fluffy Matheson over the usual drinks, ‘when we get back
to Earth.’

‘Terra.’ Ro smiled.

‘I’ve got something to show you.’

For once, there was a tremble in
his voice, and Ro made no joke.

‘What is it?’

Later,
she minimized her display and said:

‘You made me cry, you bastard.’

Matheson swallowed, all facades
slipping away. ‘Is it good enough?’

‘I’m no writer.’ She killed the
display. ‘But I think it’s wonderful.’ She could see, in the story, where some
of the characters had come from. But his
Settlements & Separations: An
Embassy Tale
was all his own, and it was funny as well as sad. ‘Go for it.’

He made no reply as she left the
room, quietly.

Copper
arc.

Matheson’s finding himself.

Stab, advance, retreat.

But what about me?

Circle, redirect, and strike.

Who is Ro McNamara ?

Shining thrust.

Who am I, really?

‘Three
weeks left.’ Lila practically sang the words, as they stepped into the communal
shower. ‘I can’t wait to see a real sky again.’

Ro almost slipped, but caught her
balance.

‘What do you mean?’ She raised
her voice above the hissing, the clouds of steam.

‘Relief,’ said Lila, but she was
not talking about the shower. “The ship arrives in twenty-one days and
seventeen hours. Not that I’m counting.’

‘Oh, right.’ And Ro laughed, but
not wholeheartedly.

Three weeks to go.

Nervous
as kittens on moving day, the humans moved about their settlement, checking
crates in the corridors, keeping watch (lest they disappear) on the most
valuable items, and making handover preparations for their replacements.

No-one was staying for a second
tour.

It was the final night, and Ro’s
final chance, when the metallic tubular tunnels dimmed. She had thought it
would be hard to slip out, but in fact the muddle of crates and unpacked
belongings made it all the easier to sneak through the protective membrane.

Easier, too, to follow the two
figures moving through the glaring whiteness outside. Between them, they held a
case which was not big, but too heavy for them to carry easily.

A leaving present for your xeno
friends ?

There was bio-research, including
Brace’s analysis of samples he had taken from Ro, which had been held in a case
like that; Ro had seen Brace’s assistants put it at the centre of their team’s
pile of crates.

This better not be anything to do
with me.

But she was the one who had been
brought here, yet not killed. Whose roommate had been murdered. And Luís -even
if his death had been unintentional, if it were anti-xeno terrorists and not
the Zajinet who had attacked the UNSA airbase, still it had been the renegade
who sparked off the most recent wave of anti-xeno sentiment.

Patterns, falling into place.

Even as she followed through the
blazing city, shadow buildings flicking into existence and disappearing,
momentary flashes of green—solid sheets of it—decorating the sky, she saw the
influence of opposing forces back on Terra. More than individuals? Two factions
of Zajinets, or something more complex?

Yes:
two factions
among
the Zajinets.

For every individual in this
alien place was perpetually in two minds—if not two hundred minds—on any matter
you could think of.

Why me?

The question burned through her
mind, a counterpoint to the surreal slipping and sliding of artefacts and sky,
of Zajinets’ bulky external forms gliding through the chaos, the half-glimpsed
images of other worlds or times or dreams, whichever they might be.

Flowers
of blood, ribbons of ink.

That was the sky which flowed
overhead. Her footsteps, sounding back from the vermilion metal path running
through the confusion, occasionally clanged, sometimes faded to disconcerting
silence.

Her membrane-thin env-suit served
only to detoxify the atmosphere; it could not hold back the madness of this
place.

But, however much reality
flickered, she kept Anita and Oron in sight. They were beginning to struggle
with the case’s weight.

Walking amid waist-high steel
grass, being careful, Ro stopped suddenly. Crystal mosaics, with tessellae of a
thousand hues, sang in the warm/cold pulsing air.

What if they want to remove the
proof ?

The mu-space ship was due—but if
they faked a natural disaster, killing everybody, they could remove all traces
of Ro’s presence. And that would keep the Zajinets’ mu-space travel abilities a
secret.

Surely not. Surely no-one could
be that insane.

Cobalt spheres, which might have
been floating liquid, coagulated in the now-darkening air like frozen
raindrops.

Ro shifted her long copper rod
from her right hand to her left, and narrowed the distance to Anita and Oron.
Then the disk in her glove’s palm pulsed.

Found you.

Luís’s killer was at hand.