The Algebraist (21 page)

Boogeytown was much as he remembered it. They hit the lows, looking for highs. They trawled the bowl-bars and narctail parlours, coming up with a brimming catch of buzz and girls, Fassin meanwhile trying to edge Sal in a certain bar’s direction, while Sal - vaguely recalling this wasn’t supposed to be just fun but also a way of getting his old pal Fass to open up with more potentially useful and lucrative details about whatever the fuck was going on - tried to get his old-new best buddy to move in a certain informational direction but without much success and anyway with decreasing amounts of concern and an increasing feeling of oh-who-gives-a-fuck?

Fassin too was getting frustrated, still angling for one more move and one particular streetlet, one particular bar, but they were here now in this diamond-walled emporium called the Narcateria where the sleaze was so coolly glitz it almost hurt, surrounded by people who hadn’t seen Sal in
so
long and just
had
to keep him where he was, don’t you
dare
go away, you wicked
man
you! And is this your
friend?
Where you been keeping
him?
Can I sit here, hmm? Me too me too! So eventually he had to stumble away and make a call in a private public booth and then head for the toilet where he threw up in a thin burning stream all the alcohol he’d drunk since the last time he’d been to the loo (over the hole, so it looked and sounded authentic), then wash his face and rejoin the drunken stoned-out fray of breath-catching loveliness, waiting for the right girl, the one all this had been about, all of it: asking to go to Sal’s in the first place, then getting him drunk and seeming to get drunk himself (which he was, but not
that
drunk) and then dropping hints about Boogeytown, all so that he could get away and get here and see this one particular girl…

… Who finally appeared nearly an hour later when he was just starting to despair but there she was, perfect and calm and quietly beautiful as ever, though looking quite different, again, with white-gold hair swinging heavy as the real 24-carat article about her near-triangular face, chin just made for holding, strawberry-bruise lips for kissing, tiny little nose for nuzzling, cheeks for stroking, eyes for gazing into (depths, ah, depths!) brows for licking, forehead for licking too, licking dry of
sex-sweat
after - oo! oo! oo! just too strenuous a session!

Aun Liss.

The one real love of his life, his controlling passion.

Older again but not as old as she should be. Looking different, living different, being different, called different. Called Ko now (and that was all), not Aun Liss, but she would always be Aun Liss to him. No need to say her real name. A lot of what passed between them wasn’t said anyway. Dressed in salarygirl clothes. Nothing special, revealing or provocative.

Nevertheless.

She held out her hand.

Nearby, surrounded by - actually, nearly drowning in - utter human female and super-stimulus hyper-pulchritude loveli-nessence, even Sal looked impressed.

‘Fass, you dog!’

Aun Liss was still holding out her hand.

Back in Sal’s flier. Sal was in the front, being grievously attended to by the infamous Segrette Twins, moaning.

Fassin and Aun in the back seat, utterly happy to appear so archetypical. They kissed for a long time, then - looking round, shrugging at the front-seat antics (the flier at this point not really going anywhere, circling in a holding pattern - a clinching pattern, Aun Liss suggested) - she rose up and straddled him, his hands up underneath the light dress she wore, fingers still kneading her back… as they continued to do once they were finally returned to the idiot Kehar house poised over the column of water just as, Aun pointed out, she was poised over his column. (This aloud, for the benefit of anybody listening. They both laughed, not too loudly, he hoped.) Meanwhile she kept the dress on still, even in the heat of it, with his fingers pressing, kneading, moving above her arched spine producing little half-pained gasps until later when they were finally just lying together under a thin sheet she shucked off the dress and he just held her.

And this is what, over the course of those several hours, their fingers said, drawing and tapping out the private, effectively unbuggable code they had used for hundreds of years, since she first became his control, his link:

U STILL MY CNNECTN?

They were in the private booth deep inside the Narcateria, just kissing. She slid her hands between his jacket and shirt, knuckled back, YS. WOT U GOT 4 I?

1ST, I MAJR IN OCULA NW. GOT 2NDD.

Y?

COS I FND SMTING IN THE FMOUS DLVE. BOUT THE DWLLR LIST. YOU HRD OF?

VGLY.

2ND SHIP THERY, he sent. SCRT ‘HOLE NTWRK.

WAIT, she sent back.
WORMHOLE
NTWRK?

YS. SCRT 1.

There was a pause. She kept on kissing him. Her fingers sent, YR CRZY.

Walking to the flier, hands up each other’s jackets:

OL AFTR WHTI FND. E-5 DISCONINVDS IN 6 MNTHS TO 1 YR. THEY THNK BYNDRS WITH THEM. TRU?

CMPLCTD. SUM R, SUM RNT.

MRGNCY COS OF THS.

U STRTD THE FKNG MRGNCY?

YS. SORY. SUMD FLT ON WAY. BIG BIT AHED OF ESHIP. HYR IN 2 YRS MAYB. USD A.I. TRNSMTD FRM SUMD FLT 2 TEL US OL THIS.

AN A.I.?

YS.

HYPCRTS.

Then, in the flier:

WOT NXT 4 U?

DLVE SOON AGEN. WITH CHF C-R GNSRL, OERL SHRVLTY CNL & C-R PGS YRNVIC. TRY FND RST OF WHTVR WS I FND IN 1ST PLACE.

Straddled-ridden like that, they could talk, too.

‘How’s that for you?’ she whispered.

‘Oh, that’s very good. And you?’

‘As above.’

WHT
DID
U FND?

DNT NO XCTLY. I NO RL2E AT TIME. OL CAME OUT MUCH L8TR WHN JELTCK DID ANLYS. SMTHNG ABT THIS 2ND SHIP & THNG CALLD A TRANSFORM, SPSD 2 MAK RST OF DWLR LIST MEAN SMTHNG. JLTCK SNT FLEET 2 TRY FIND. NO FIND. FLT WRKD.

She felt him pause, tense. She sent:

WOT?

ALGDLY THIS ALSO Y BYNDRS WRKD PORTL. TRU?

DNT NO. IJST A MSG GRL. She paused. SO U SAY NOT ONLY U START
THIS
MRGNCY, U COSD LAST 1 2 & GOT PRTL DSTRYD?

YS. GES I JST ACCDNT PRN.

FKNG HEL.

‘Very
good to see you again.’

‘Copy that.’

‘We should do this more often.’

‘Indeed we should. Now, shh.’

BUT IF SO & THIS KNWN, Y I NOT ASKD 2 DLV & FIND MOR INFO 4 GUD GYS ERLYR?

NO IDEA.

OL NONSNS ANYWY BUT THEY WNT I 2 LUK.

SO LUK.

& WHT U MYN SUM BYNDRS 4 E-5 DISCON, SUM NOT?

FACTNS.

FACTIONS? YR GVNG I FKNG
FACTIONS?
RLY BEST U CN DO?

KYP BING PASSYN8. CVR SLPNG.

He made passionate moves, uttered passionate sounds.

In his bed, his hands at the small of her back:

I GO 2 3RD FURY MOON 3 DAYS TYM.

… OH.

OH?

KND OF A RMR. I SHLDNT EVN NO. MAYB ATK ON NASQ MNS.

NASQ MOONS? NOT
‘GLNTN?

NO. LTL MNS.

CN U GET WRD, NO ATCK ON 3RD FURY MOON? NO ATK ON ANY SEERS?

WILL TRY.

TRY HRD.

PROMIS.

OK. IF I DO FIND ANYTHING ON NASQ WILL GET 2 U, NT MRCTRIA.

OK. GOOD. HOW?

STN A MICROSAT MIDWY BTWN OUR SATS EQ4
&
EQ5. I AIM BRST THER. MY OLD CODE & FREQ STL GOOD?

THNK SO. TAK TYM 2 SET UP.

TAK I MNTHS 2 FIND NYTHNG. PRBLY 0 TO FIND ANYWY. HAV MICROSAT ABL 2 RCV FRM B-LOW 2, IN CASE I IN NASQ.

WILL PASS ON.

A little later:

LUV U.

YR CRZY.

TRU.

B MOR PASSYN8.

He pulled the sheet further over his Beyonder girl. CVR SLPNG AGEN?

NO, JST B MOR PASSYN8…

THREE: NOWHERE LEFT TO FALL

Uncle Slovius took him up on his shoulders. They were going to watch the bad machine being killed. He put his hands over Uncle Slovius’s forehead and got him to crinkle it, which felt funny and made him squirm and wriggle and laugh and meant Uncle Slovius had to hold his ankles tight to stop him falling off.

‘Fass, stop wriggling.’

‘I fine, honest.’

He already knew you were supposed to say, ‘I’m fine,’ or, ‘I am fine,’ but saying things like ‘I fine’ was better because it made adults smile and sometimes hug. Sometimes it made them put a hand on your head and make a mess of your hair, but never mind.

They went through the port door. It was spring and so that was the house they were in. He was big. He’d lived in all the houses except the Summer House. That one came next. Then he would have lived in them all. Then you started again. That was how it worked. Uncle Slovius ducked as they went through the doorway so he didn’t bash his head.

‘Umm, mind your head,’ he heard his dad say quietly somewhere behind him.

His mum sighed. ‘Oh, stop fussing. Dear.’

He couldn’t see his mum and dad because they were behind him and Uncle Slovius but he could hear them.

‘Look, I wasn’t
fussing,
I was just--’

‘Yes, you--’

He got that funny feeling in his tummy he got when Mum and Dad talked like that. He did a slap-a-slap-slap on Uncle Slovius’s forehead and said, ‘More about history! More about history!’ as they walked down to the flier.

Uncle Slovius laughed. The shake came up through Uncle Slovius’s shoulders into his bottom and whole body. ‘My, we are a keen student.’

‘One word for it,’ his mother said.

‘Oh, come on,’ his dad said. ‘The boy’s just inquisitive.’

‘Yes, yes, you’re right,’ his mum said. You could hear her breath through her words. ‘My mistake. Pardon me for expressing an opinion.’

‘Oh, now, look, I didn’t mean--’

‘More about Voerin!’

‘Voehn,’ Uncle Slovius said.

‘I’ve got a Voerin! I’ve got a big one that talks and climbs and swims and jumps or can walk under the water too. It’s got a gun that shoots other toys. And I’ve got lots of little ones that just move. They’ve got guns too but they’re a bit small to see but they can make each other fall over. I’ve nearly a hundred. I watch
Attack Squad Voerin
all the time! My favourite is Captain Chunce cos he’s clever. I like Commander Saptpanuhr too and Corporal Qump cos he’s funny. Jun and Yoze both like Commander Saptpanuhr best. They’re my friends. Do you watch
Attack Squad Voerin,
Uncle Slovius?’

‘Can’t say I’ve ever caught it, Fass.’

Fassin frowned, thinking. He decided this probably meant ‘No’. Why didn’t adults just say no when they meant no?

They sat in the flier. He had to come down off Uncle Slovius’s shoulders but he got to sit beside him in the front. He didn’t even need to tell people he’d be sick if he sat in the back any more. A servant sat on the other side of him. Great-uncle Fimender was behind with two old ladies who were girlfriends. He was laughing and they were too. His mum and dad were further back, talking quiet. His mum and dad were old but Uncle Slovius was really old and Great-uncle Fimender was really,
really
old.

The flier went up into the air and went through the air making a noise like the Attack-ship
Avenger
did in
Attack Squad Voerin.
His model of the Attack-ship
Avenger
flew but only in Supervised Areas Outdoors and shot guns and missiles and made the same noise. He’d wanted to bring it with him, but not been allowed, even after he’d shouted. He hadn’t been allowed to bring any toys. No toys at all!

He pulled at Uncle Slovius’s sleeve. ‘Tell me about the Voerin!’ He tried to think what had made Uncle Slovius laugh. ‘More about history!’

Uncle Slovius smiled.

‘The Voehn are the Culmina’s bully boys, child,’ said Great-uncle Fimender from the seat behind. He was leaning over. His breath had that funny sweet smell like it usually did. Great-uncle Fimender was fond of a drink. His voice was funny also sometimes, like all the words were sort of one big word. ‘I wouldn’t fixate too enthusiastically on the scum that stole our species birthright.’

‘Steady, now, Fim,’ Uncle Slovius said. He looked round at Great-uncle Fimender but looked first at the servant except the servant didn’t move or look back or anything. ‘If the wrong person took you seriously you might find yourself joining this rogue AI. Hmm?’ He made a smile at Great-uncle Fimender, who sat back again in the seat between the old-lady girlfriends and took a glass with a drink in it from a picnic tray.

‘Be an honour,’ he said in a quiet voice.

Uncle Slovius smiled down at Fass. ‘The Voehn went to Earth a long, long time ago, Fassin. Before humans made spaceships - before they made sea ships, almost.’

‘How long ago?’

‘About eight thousand years ago.’

‘4051BCE,’ Great-uncle Fimender said, though only just loud enough to hear. Uncle Slovius didn’t seem to hear. Fassin wasn’t sure if Great-uncle Fimender was disagreeing with Uncle Slovius or not. Fassin stored 4051 BCE away as an Important Number anyway.

‘They met human people on Earth,’ Uncle Slovius said, ‘and took them away with them on their ship, to other stars and planets.’

‘Kidnapping the prims!’ Great-uncle Fimender said. ‘Sampling the barbs, with prejudice! Eh?’ He didn’t sound like he was talking to him and Uncle Slovius. Fass didn’t understand what Great-uncle Fimender was saying anyway. The old-lady girlfriends were laughing.

‘Well,’ Uncle Slovius said, with a small smile, ‘who’s to say whether humans were kidnapped or not? People in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and China were too primitive to know what was going on. They probably thought the Voehn were gods, so they might have gone with them without being kidnapped and we don’t even know that the Voehn took whole people. Maybe they just took their cells.’

‘Or babies, or foetuses, or excised a few thousand fertilised eggs,’ Great-uncle Fimender said. Then, ‘Oh, thank you, my dear. Oops! Steady, there.’

‘In any event,’ Uncle Slovius said, ‘the Voehn took some human people and put them down on planets far away from Earth and the human people grew up with other people, and the Culmina had the other people help the humans so that they became civilised quickly, and invented all the things humans back on Earth ever invented, but these human people on the other planets always knew they were part of a galactic community, hmm?’ Uncle Slovius looked at him with a question-look on his face. Fass nodded quickly. He knew what a galactic community meant: everybody else.

‘Anyway, people on Earth kept on inventing things, and eventually invented wormholes and portals--’

‘The Attack-ship
Avenger
goes through wormholes and portals,’ he told Uncle Slovius.

‘Of course,’ Uncle Slovius said. ‘And so when human people went out and met other alien people and joined their wormhole up with everybody else’s wormhole, they found out that they weren’t the first humans the alien people had met or had heard of, because the humans who had been taken away to the other planets by the Voehn were already quite well known.’

‘Remainder
humans,’ Great-uncle Fimender said from the seat behind. His voice sounded funny, like he might be going to burst out laughing or something.

Uncle Slovius looked round at him for a short bit. ‘Well, the terms don’t matter too much, even if they might sound a little harsh sometimes.’

‘Carefully chosen to keep us in our place, remind us we owe them, either way,’ Great-uncle Fimender said.

‘The Culmina tell us they had people look after Earth after the Voehn took the humans away to the other stars. They made sure that nothing bad happened to Earth, like it being hit by a big rock.’

Great-uncle Fimender made a sort of cough-laugh. ‘Easy to claim.’

Fass looked round at Great-uncle Fimender. He sort of wanted Great-uncle Fimender to be quiet so he could listen to Uncle Slovius but sort of didn’t because the things Great-uncle Fimender was saying, even if he didn’t always understand all of them, seemed to be saying things about the things Uncle Slovius was saying. It was like they sort of agreed and didn’t agree at the same time. Great-uncle Fimender winked at him and gestured towards Uncle Slovius with his glass. ‘No, no; listen!’

‘So, people from Earth got into the stars at last and found that there were aliens everywhere,’ Uncle Slovius told him. ‘And some of them were us!’ He smiled a broad smile.

‘And there were a lot more of the alien humans than there were of the ones who thought
they
were humanity,’ Great-uncle Fimender said. It sounded like he was sneering. Uncle Slovius sighed and looked ahead.

The flier was flying over mountains with snow on them. In front was a big bit of desert like a circle. Uncle Slovius shook his head and didn’t seem to want to say anything but Great-uncle Fimender did so Fass turned round in his seat and listened to him.

‘And they were more technically advanced, these so-called aHumans. Advanced but cowed. Servant species, just like everybody else. While all Earth’s dreams of wild expansion were made to look like so much belly-gas. The answer to "Where is everybody?" turned out to be, "Everywhere", but the stake at the galactic poker game is a wormhole and so we had to fund our own and bring that to the table. Then discover that Everywhere really meant Everywhere, and every damn thing you could see and every damn thing you couldn’t belonged to some bugger: every rock, every planet, moon and star, every comet, dust cloud and dwarf, even the bloody null-foam of space itself was somebody’s home. Land on some godforsaken cinder, pull out a shovel thinking you could dig something, build something or make something of it and next thing you know an alien with two heads was poking both of them out of a burrow and telling you to fuck off, or pointing a gun at you. Or a writ - ha! Worse still!’

He’d never heard Great-uncle Fimender talk so much. He wasn’t sure that Great-uncle Fimender was really talking to Uncle Slovius or to him or even to his two old-lady girlfriends because he wasn’t looking at any of them, he was looking at the picnic table hinged down from the seat in front, maybe looking at the glass and the decanter bottle on it, and looking sad. The two old-lady girlfriends patted him and one smoothed his hair which was very black indeed but still looked old.

‘Prepping, they call it,’ he said, maybe to himself or maybe to the picnic table. ‘Bloody kidnapping.’ He snorted. ‘Putting people in their place, holding them there. Letting us build our dreams then puncturing them.’ He shook his head, and drank from his shiny glass.

‘Prepping?’ Fass asked, to make sure he had the word right.

‘Hmm? Oh, yes.’

‘Well, it’s something that’s gone on for as long as anybody can remember,’ Uncle Slovius said. He sounded gentle, and Fass wasn’t sure if Uncle Slovius was talking to him or to Great-uncle Fimender. He sort of half-listened while he pulled out one of the flier’s screens. If he’d been allowed to bring any toys he’d definitely have brought his BotPal and just asked, but now these damn adults were making him use a screen. He stared at the letters and numbers and things (Uncle Slovius and Great-uncle Fimender were still talking).

He didn’t want to have to talk, he wanted to tap-in like adults did. He tried a few buttons. After a while he got a lots-of-books symbol with a big kid standing next to it and an ear symbol. The big kid looked scruffy and was holding a drug bowl and his head was surrounded with lines and little moving satellites and flying birds. Oh well.

‘Prepping,’ he said, but pressed
Text.
The screen said:

Prepping. A very long-established practice, used lately by the
Culmina
amongst others, is to take a few examples of a
pre-civilised species
from their
home world
(usually in
clonoclastic
or
embryonic
form) and make them
subject
species
\
slaves
\
mercenaries
\
mentored
. so that when the people from their home world finally assume the
Galactic
stage
, they are not the most
civilised
\
advanced
of their kind (often they’re not even the most numerous
grouping
of their kind). Species so treated are expected to feel an obligation to their so-called
mentors
(who will also generally claim to have diverted
comets
or otherwise prevented
catastrophes
in the interim, whether they have or not). This practice has been banned in the past when
pan-Galactic
laws
(see
Galactic Council
) have been upheld but tends to reappear in less civilised times. Practice variously referred to as Prepping,
Lifting
or
Aggressive Mentoring
. Local-relevant terminology:
aHuman
&
rHuman
(advanced and remainder
Human
).