North Wind (10 page)

“Are you all right?”

They had never investigated the contents of those bales. Sid thought it was probably toxic waste being moved illegally across moribund “national borders.”

A sack had split. It was full of cowpats: Aleutian discrete energy. It dawned on them without rancor that this explained somewhat the patriarch’s kindness. If soldiers found the alien goods, the two “halfcastes” could take the blame. Bella picked up a disk and held it beside her ear, like a local’s recording eye.

Sid considered. “Well, it’s the names. That’s my one complaint. In my culture a product’s name is critical. It’s supposed to be witty, relevant, possibly surreal—”

Her face in the light of the flame was bright with laughter.

He looked up at the cat-elf perched on her bale of contraband, giggling, and secretly smiled.

“A wish granted. I had wanted to see you laugh again.”

They made love with undiminished delight, agreeing that this staggering gift of pleasure, which he called
sex
and she called
lying down,
made you wonder why you’d ever doubted the existence of a good God. There were moments when it crossed Sid’s mind that they could stay with the Travelers forever. They were dead to the world. No one would know. But Bella didn’t ever say a word. She never collapsed the wave, she would not give a name to what was happening. And Sid never asked her why she didn’t.

The plantations ended. They came out of the wilderness into an industrial zone. The landscape burgeoned into fat welts and blisters of factory-shapes, connected by a maze of enclosed walkways and freight and passenger transport tubes. Huge exhausts pumped stale warm air, a permitted effluent, into heat-ex walls that stood glittering like giants’ mirrors. One morning Sid told Bella it was time to part company with the Travelers. They bundled up their things and left without goodbyes.

Sid had traded their stock of fuel and water chits for a part-spent megapolitan cashcard. He took her down to the metro station by a little-used outdoor entrance. The place was deserted. He had no fresh news, but he guessed the Protest and the threat of the armies was keeping people at home. The gate to the platforms was closed by a twinkling barrier of light.

He put Bella in front of it. “This here is a
gate,”
he told her. “When you come to one of these you have to feed it. A handprint, or a contact film of your handprint will do. Or you can feed it
cash
which is,” he translated, “a card like this, which carries an allocation of your Household’s resources. Don’t try to get through without feeding them: it will hurt, and you’ll be taken captive.”

He checked the card, the barrier dispersed and he gently pushed her ahead of him. It reformed behind them.

“Now we’re in livespace, which means camera eyes are watching us. Don’t be afraid. If you don’t wave a weapon, or try to jump on the line, or something similar, the monitoring doesn’t exactly see you. But you mustn’t take off the chador in a place like this.”

He knew that she must be terrified. All this stuff was the deadworld, evil nasty native rites. But he couldn’t comfort her. When they left the Travelers they had passed through a barrier as insubstantial and effective as the photochemical gate.

“Elefsis!” she said, suddenly.

The name of the station was displayed over the platform, in Greek and English lettering.

“I thought you said you couldn’t read?”

The curved walls held a succession of rich, three dimensional images, the universal decoration of Old Earth: cheaper than paint.

She “talked” in the chador in gestures that were massive, compared to the tiny flickering of Common Tongue. The name “Persephone,” spoken aloud, struck Sid uneasily. He didn’t know it but he felt he ought to.

“Don’t mug like that,” he told her. “It looks bad. I don’t know, maybe you’re right. I don’t know much about the war in Greece: but the Trads are winning down here, that’s true.”

On the platform lay three ears of wheat bound in a red cord:
There is no death.
It was a sign that European halfcastes used. Elefsis was an important place to them, Sid wasn’t sure why. He was glad to know that at least one Athenian gender-heretic had survived the violence. He stared at the token, feeling cruelly divided. What was he going to do with Bel in Athens? He had pounded to ecstasy in her arms, crying inside:
I would not change one measly virtual particle in the sum of things that made you!
It was Johnny Guglioli’s last declaration of love to Braemar, spoken on the execution floor: the height of romance in Sid’s halfcaste soul. But that couldn’t be right. He and Bel couldn’t be lovers. The attraction between two outsiders at the Trading Post should have been useful, making his job easier. It shouldn’t have gone any further, and he was sorry it had got out of hand.

But if she would only say the word….

She would not. The reserve that had risen between them had two sides.

They traveled a long way on the metro train. As it approached the city center a few Athenians joined them. No one showed interest in the glum young man and his veiled companion. He left her in an outdoor park, a few stations beyond the Plaki, on the way to the airport. It was a neglected spot, in a city where to brave the outdoors for any reason was eccentric. A booth meant to dispense snacks and information stood in a grove of withered pine trees. It was non-functional, but the doors had seized open. He told her to stay out of sight and he’d be back.

It was getting dark when he returned. She was outside the booth beside their bundle of camping kit. She’d taken off the chador. In the gloom she looked very human: a ragged, grubby homeless waif.

“It’s much as we’d expected,” he told her. “Your people have retreated, out to orbit. The Government of the World has joined in the general rejoicing. The truce is over; the armies are no longer a serious threat to us. But anti-Aleutian feeling’s very strong.” He paused. “I’ve bought us some air tickets. I’m going to take you to Trivandrum with me. It seems like the best option. I know Triv, I can hide you there. And when things are calmer—”

“Ah.” He wasn’t sure what to make of this. “I bought the tickets on credit. I’m sure your folks will pay me back.”

He produced food: naturlait, a carton of squashy rice pudding, another of naturfromage. “I finished the cashcard in a mart near the travel office.” He fished out their metal spoon from the bundle, opened the pudding and stuck it in. “Try this. You’ll like it. This is Bella-friendly food.”

She took the carton, without a smile. Sid was overwhelmed by a wash of silent rejection. She’d been like this since he’d told her it was time to leave the Travelers. He couldn’t stand it.

“What’s the
matter
with you?”

She said something he didn’t quite catch.

“Are you trying to tell me the holiday romance is over? Well, fine. I knew that. I wasn’t expecting you to marry me.” Her face glimmered, sour-sweet. “What’s funny? Aleutians do it. We know you do. Rajath was married to Aditya the beauty. Maitri used to be married to a security-officer, I forget the name.”

The librarian drew herself up, in mock dignity.

Sid gathered that to Aleutians, “marriage” was a form of licensed prostitution. This addition to human knowledge made his cheeks burn. He was shocked at Maitri. She ate three spoonfuls of pudding and laid the carton aside

“What?”

“You can’t stay here!”

She was quietly confident.

Sid’s jaw dropped. She had seemed so rational. But how could she be rational, ripped from her living world? He must be seeming as cold and strange to her, as she did to him. A sweet interlude was over. They’d stepped out of the Travelers’ camp the way you leave a game: both of them disoriented and miserable in the real. But he was too much on edge to be gentle.

“Oh, I see. It’s the rescue shuttle again. It’s due here any moment, I suppose.”

She shrugged, oblivious to sarcasm, as if it was none of his business. she agreed distantly.

Sid gritted his teeth. “The Aleutians have gone. You’re alone. You have to come with me. I found out about the situation in the Enclaves. It was rough, but it’s quiet again. We know you can pass as a halfcaste. In my home town I can keep you safe. It won’t be forever. It might not be for very long—”

And the north wind will blow, thought Sid, with a surge of anger. He had no illusions. The aliens would return, and in at least as strong a position as before. He knew this. He didn’t need to be told, so casually, by the alien whose life he’d saved.

“Talk sense. You’re isolate. If there’s anyone, in the shipworld or lurking on earth, who doesn’t believe you died at Mykini, they couldn’t possibly find you. If you know different, tell me more. Who exactly is it you’re expecting?”

She gave him a reproachful look: but no answer.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he said, tired of this one-sided scrap. “Our cruiser leaves late tomorrow. If you’re here in the morning, you come with me.”

The fight had gone out of both of them. They retired inside the booth. It had been used by other vagrants. There were scraps of litter, and heaps of human turds in the corners. Bella settled where she could see out: presumably watching for her rescuers.

“Maitri’s library? They were all copies, surely?”

“You can make another tape.”

To his human senses she was silent and motionless. He understood, if he did, the way Aleutians understand each other: because he knew so much.

“I’m sorry.”

She sighed.

iii

Deep in the heart of the night two aircraft landed, one shortly after the other, in Sid and Bella’s park. The first was like a large bird. It tried to fold its wings, and made an awkward scrabble of the movement. The second resembled an insect. Two pairs of long transparent vanes lifted, rotated, and slotted neatly over its abdomen. An Aleutian emerged from each machine. One, gangling and loose-limbed, wore the eternal dun overalls. The other was dressed in a red Cossack tunic, with white ribbed-silk breeches tucked into high red boots. They stood, measuring each other.

“Nice bit of schmutter,” said the older of the pair.

When these two had last been on earth together, Rajath the trickster had been much older than Clavel. Worldly and bold, he had dominated the romantic young poet. In this life the balance was reversed. It was the first time they’d met, in person. Clavel, equipped with the bleak assurance of a middle-aged idealist, slowly smiled: enjoying Rajath’s disadvantage.

Rajath straightened his tunic.

“I’m sorry about Maitri,” he announced.

Clavel dismissed the conventional sympathy.

grumbled Rajath, accepting the brusque drop into informal speech.

suggested Rajath, brightening.

The presence of the other two Captains (if Kumbva was alive) was clandestine. The Aleutians knew that Clavel was on earth, but he’d kept the location of his retreat private.

Rajath’s splendid local clothes were, at a second glance, soiled and battered: