Resolution (72 page)

It was not just outside the ship. Amber pervaded the control cabin. If you let your concentration go, you could drift into fractal vastness for ever.

‘The pod,’ he said, ‘is safely aboard,
mon amiral.’

‘Merci,
Claude. Vachss Station, here we come.’

It was 4 p.m. when Dirk, Kian, Deirdre and Paula walked to the flight officers’ mess, crossing the tarmac towards the black glass recreation dome. Around the base of the control tower was a small fleet of armoured TDVs, while overhead slow-moving flyers kept watch.

On foot outside every entrance, mirrorvisored guards held lineac rifles at the ready.

Inside the mess, the bar was open but quiet: it was an hour before the first officers would come off duty and look to relieve the tension by socializing and drinking. Paula marched up to the bar, and ordered four beers from the corporal in charge.

‘Here you are.’ She carried the round to the booth Deirdre and the twins had picked. ‘Bottoms up. Isn’t that what they say in Old Blighty, Dirk?’

‘Sure. Here’s mud in your eye.’

‘Kampai,’
said Deirdre.

Dirk raised his glass.
‘Sláinte.’

They downed the first beers in one.

‘I’ve a feeling,’ said Paula, ‘this will be a long evening.’

She was right.

But even at her merriest and most abandoned, Paula kept her back to the wall and the increasingly crowded bar in full sight, covering all vectors so she could never be surprised. It was a behaviour pattern the twins noticed and approved of.

Deirdre and Paula went their separate ways at the night’s end, but they both cast backward glances as they left.

‘Just the kind of person—’ Dirk murmured from his bed later on.

‘—Deirdre needs to keep her safe.’ In the other bed, Kian rolled over.

‘Right.’

Kian was the first to begin snoring, followed three seconds later by Dirk.

Next day they went shopping in Flagstaff.

Chief Controller Bratko granted the twins special leave for two, maybe three days - all reasonable expenses paid - while investigations proceeded and their ship was serviced and triple-checked. There was no sign of Paula.

An airtaxi coloured pale pink, emblazoned with a flamingo and the words
Fiona’s Flying Cabs,
came in to land.

‘You kids go play,’ Deirdre muttered as she boarded with the twins, ‘while the grown-ups take charge.’

Kian and Dirk remained silent. Perhaps the headaches were part of that.

Their faces whitened as the taxi’s nose pointed upwards and the engines kicked in.

The taxi banked right, taking them down.

‘You know that turning
right,’
said Deirdre, ‘and having a legal
right -
say, to demonstrate - are obviously homonyms.’

There was a crowd below, despite the Arizona heat, outside the mall. They held placards, and might have been chanting: in the airtaxi it was impossible to tell.

‘So what’s the word in Français?’ she asked. ‘You two are linguists.’

‘What?’ Dirk pinched the bridge of his nose.

‘I beg your pardon, dear?’ said Kian.

‘What’s the Français for
right?’

‘Droit.’

‘For which meaning of “right”?’

‘Um...’

‘Both, OK? Isn’t that weird? You’d expect two different words. See, there’s a very tangled history between Anglic and Français, complex linking, with different core vocabulary but centuries of parallel—’

‘Darling?’

‘Is that a polite way of saying shut up?’

‘Or
ferme la
—’

The taxi touched down, and the gull-door swung open. The crowd’s noise swelled inside the cab.

‘Shit,’ said Deirdre. ‘Boys, I’m not sure we ought to be here.’

The bobbing signs read
Keep Arizona Human,
along with
Kill All Aliens, Let God Sort ‘Em Out.

‘We’ll just circle around them.’

‘Yeah, they’re not inside the mall, looks like.’

‘All right.’ Deirdre slid out. ‘Come on, what are you waiting for?’

But as they took the walkway towards the polished glass entrance, the parking lot with its noisy demonstrators to their right, Deirdre pointed to the left.

‘Interesting cloud forms.
Look at them.’

‘Um...’

‘Right.’

There were faint wisps of white vapour in an otherwise limpid sky. It was true that the clouds were tugged into shapes one would not see elsewhere; but the only reason for looking in that direction was to avoid the demonstrators’ seeing the twins’ faces.

When they drew close to the mall entrance, and the chanting crowd -
’Xenos out!’ -
was some two hundred metres behind them, the twins stopped.

‘What,’ said Kian, ‘was all that about?’

‘You two have forgotten something. I should’ve noticed earlier.’

Dirk shook his head. ‘Deirdre, you’ve got to stop— Oh, bugger.’

‘Exactly right.’

The twins looked at each other, each seeing the other’s obsidian eyes, sparkling jet in the sunlight.

‘We forgot our contact lenses.’

‘But we’re not aliens.’

Deirdre gestured with her chin towards the noisy crowd. Two police flyers were coming in to land.

‘I’m not sure they’ve the brains to tell the difference.’

Sensibly inside the air-conditioned mall was a quiet counter-demonstration, formed of four glum-looking people at a picnic table. Two signs were propped against the wall:
Teachers for Rationality
and
Xenos Are Our Friends.

Dirk looked back to the parking lot, where police officers were descending from the flyers. Only one did not wear a helmet; he had cropped grey hair and looked to be in charge. He kept his officers well back from the demonstrators. As a white cargo flyer descended, he made no attempt to stop the crowd from surging forward, thumping at the hull when the flyer had landed.

‘Look,’ said Kian.

Several doorways along inside the mall was Offworld Delights, a curio and educational store, with a steel barrier across its entrance.

‘They’re picketing a delivery,’ guessed Dirk. ‘That’s why they’re demonstrating here and not city hall.’

‘And the cops,’ said Kian, listening hard, ‘are standing by and doing nothing.’

‘Come on.’ Deirdre took his sleeve. ‘I’ll see if I can buy some old-fashioned sunglasses for the two of you.
Très
retro. Then we’ll go find some—’

But that was the moment when low comedy intervened in a way that neither Dirk nor Kian would ever laugh at. A huge woman came out of a doorway marked Ladies Restroom, tucking her shirt into too-tight pants, a placard saying
Kill Zeno‘s
tucked under her arm.