Shooting the Rift - eARC (7 page)

“Looks like you needed that,” the pie-seller said, distinctly more well-disposed since my evident enthusiasm for his wares had attracted a few more potential customers towards his stall. “Anyone in partic’lar you was keepin’ an eye out for? Or just groundsiders in gen’ral?”

“My aunt,” I said. “Middle-aged, stocky, brown hair, going grey. Floral print jacket.”

“Seen her about,” he said, after a moment’s thought. “Not today, though. If it’s the one I’m thinking of.”

“Thanks anyway,” I said, wiping the remains of the second pie from my fingers, and accepting my dessert. (Which was sweeter than I’d expected, but still remarkably palatable.) I started to turn away, already scanning the crowds, with a distinct lack of hope.

“You could try down there,” the stallholder said, indicating a gap between two nearby pipes, each with the girth of a mature redwood. “She gen’rally comes and goes from that direction.”

“Thanks,” I said again, with greater warmth, and set off the way he’d indicated.

CHAPTER SEVEN

In which I entertain two offers of employment.

To my relief, the area beyond turned out to be far smaller than the cavernous marketplace, being no larger than the sort of square you might find in a quiet market town; an analogy which struck me as soon as I’d rounded the nearer of the two vast metal cylinders. Every gap and crevice between the excrescences of infrastructure large enough to hold a home or business had been enclosed, using whatever materials had come to hand, to create pockets of living space: sheets of scrap metal, sections of cargo containers, even the odd piece of lumber, which seemed stridently out of place in this defiantly man-made environment. As I tilted my head back, scanning the rising and erratic terraces, I was reminded of the apartment buildings surrounding a central courtyard I’d seen on visits to the cities on the surface.

Most of the buildings, for want of a better word, seemed to be residential; even this far from the more salubrious quarter I was familiar with, plants and banners provided welcome splashes of color in a bewildering variety of hues. The people living here seemed quieter, more domestic, than the ones I’d seen in the streets and market, chatting easily among themselves instead of rushing about on mysterious business of their own. At least the adults were; for the first time since leaving Aunt Jenny’s apartment I noticed children, running across the central space or clambering on struts and buttresses, chattering happily under the watchful eyes of their parents and neighbors.

A handful of public spaces were scattered among the living quarters; from the door of one music spilled, the plangent notes of a harp, trailing away in a spatter of applause before resuming after a brief interlude. Others seemed to be selling food, of a far higher quality than the pies I’d guzzled a few moments before, and I felt a pang of regret at having quelled my appetite so comprehensively, before coming to the conclusion that my time would be better spent searching for my aunt in any case.

Feeling uncomfortably conspicuous, I glanced at the nearest shops and taverns, looking for some other clue as to her whereabouts. Given her reason for going out in the first place, bars seemed the most likely place to try, so I concentrated on those, trying to narrow down the possibilities. Not the one with the music; traditional tunes and instruments were decidedly not to her taste. The closest one was crowded enough for its customers to be spilling outside, and I knew she preferred to drink quietly—besides which, nearly half the people milling around the doorway were transgeners, and however blasé Aunt Jenny was about such things, I still found myself a little unnerved by their outlandish appearance.

That left an unassuming frontage, little more than a large banner bearing a cheerful abstract design, which curtained off a shadowy area between a couple of storage tanks. Signs outside promised drinks, food, drinks, which accorded well with my current priorities, so I strolled over to it, twitched the corner aside, and slipped through the gap I’d created.

I’m not sure quite what I expected to find on the other side; probably a whole bunch of people who’d stop what they were doing and stare at me, in the way far more common in fiction than in real life, but no one seemed even to notice my arrival.

No one, that is, except for Aunt Jenny, who glanced up from a booth at the back, where she had a good view of the billowing pseudo-wall behind me, and nodded an affable greeting. Her companion was less visible from where I was standing, all but a shoulder and upper arm obscured by the corner of the booth, but I got the impression of a large man in the kind of utility garb common among artisans; an impression rapidly confirmed, as he turned in response to the shift in my aunt’s posture, and glanced in my direction. His beard was more or less neatly trimmed, and his jacket bore the universally recognized sigil of the Commerce Guild on the left breast pocket: a stylized hand cupping the swirl of the galaxy, symbolizing either the Guild’s reach across the entire Human Sphere, or its perpetual readiness to squeeze a profit out of it, depending on your level of cynicism. (Or, quite possibly, given the miniscule fragment of the galaxy humanity actually occupied, the Guild’s staggering level of hubris.)

As I made my way between the tables, which had apparently been scattered arbitrarily around the floor, I noticed a number of other Guild sigils, adorning shirts, coats, caps, and at least one evening gown half the hostesses on Avalon would cheerfully have committed murder for. I hesitated a moment, to allow a serving drone to hum past my head and land on an intermediate table with its cargo of drinks, before finally arriving at my aunt’s booth.

“That was quick,” she greeted me, adding
what do you want to drink?
as our ‘spheres interpenetrated.

“Ale,” I said verbally, and she kicked the order over to the drone, which had delivered its cargo, and was now aimlessly orbiting the room with its fellows, waiting for another set of instructions. The drink seemed appropriate in this kind of setting, and I wanted something I could make last without seeming to.

Aunt Jenny nodded, and glanced at her guest. “John?”

“Same again.” He drained something amber-colored from the bottom of a tumbler, and replaced the glass on the table, as I slid onto the arm of the U-shaped bench directly across from him. He looked at me the way Guilders look at everything, which is to say with a kind of guarded neutrality—at least until they’ve determined whether you’re harmless, dangerous, or likely to be useful to them in some way. “John Remington, of the
Stacked Deck
.”

“Simon Forrester,” I said, “of nowhere any more.” That kind of slipped out, and I mentally bit my tongue, conscious of having revealed some vulnerability he’d certainly exploit if he could. But it seemed to have been the right thing to say: Remington’s expression softened, and Aunt Jenny positively beamed.

“Told you he was forthright,” she said.

“That you did,” Remington agreed, ducking his head as the drone came back, bearing two tumblers of whisky and my tankard of ale, which had been chilled to the point where the last lingering vestige of flavor had been completely expunged—a Skyhaven foible I immediately regretted having forgotten about. The Guilder turned to me. “Jen’s just been filling me in on your university career. That doesn’t sound like the kind of thing an Avalonian gentleman normally gets up to.”

I felt a hot flush of embarrassment rise up my neck.

“That’s because most of them haven’t got a thought in their heads beyond how they look in tight trousers,” I snapped, and took a gulp of the over-cooled beer that made my teeth ache.

“True enough,” my aunt agreed. “Though most of them occasionally consider how their actions will affect their reputations and their families.”

I must admit that blindsided me; after all her support in the face of familial disapproval, I’d hardly expected her to start expressing the same kind of sentiments.

“I didn’t consider it, because I didn’t plan on getting caught,” I said, feeling I might as well be honest about the affair now she’d brought the whole thing up, even if her motives for doing so baffled me. Clearly she’d been hoping Remington would help to find me a place on a merchant ship, although calling my integrity into question seemed a strange way of going about it. “And even if I was, I knew it would be hushed up,” I added, bending the truth a little, though not by much. I had panicked for about five minutes after getting the first summons to the Dean’s office, before realizing that my clients’ social connections—not to mention their families’ financial contributions to the university—would render me pretty much untouchable. Apart from being rusticated, of course, which had brought me back into the orbit of Mother’s ire.

Remington smiled. “Sounds like you know how to work an angle,” he said, in surprisingly friendly tones. He took a sip of his drink.
And you’ve a definite talent for sneakware.
Our ‘spheres intersected, and I found a copy of the datanomes I’d given my aunt floating in the shared space between us.
You really put this together yourself?

I shrugged. “Everyone needs a hobby.”

Remington laughed. “That they do. Just don’t practice on any of the nodes aboard the
Deck
, unless you want to try walking back to Avalon.” He spoke so casually, it took a moment for the full import of his words to sink in.

“You’re taking me on?” I asked, not quite able to believe my good fortune. “Just like that?”

“I’ll give it some thought,” he said, although he seemed to be addressing my aunt more than me. “If the deal’s right.”

“You’ve got your contract, John.” Her tone was casual, but I’d attended enough of my mother’s soirees to spot the steel beneath the pleasantries, a knack Remington clearly shared. “It’s not up for renegotiation.”

“And it doesn’t cover babysitting either,” the guilder replied, in equally casual tones.

“You won’t have to hold his hand, I can assure you.” Aunt Jenny took another sip of her whisky.

Remington looked thoughtful for a moment. “Tell you what I’ll do,” he said, as though it wasn’t precisely what he’d been willing to offer all along, “I’ll give him one run, out to Numarkut, see how he does. If it all works out, and he’s as good as you say, I’ll take him on, full Guild apprenticeship. If not, he’s on his own. Plenty of opportunities for a smart lad in a system like Numarkut.” Abruptly, he turned to me. “What do you say?”

“You’re on,” I heard my mouth reply, before my brain could catch up with it. If this went wrong, I’d be stranded beyond the borders of the Commonwealth, with only my wits to rely on, and no way home. If I even wanted to return: there certainly wasn’t much to come back to, beyond, possibly, Aunt Jenny’s guest room, and I wasn’t sure even she’d be that happy to see me again.

Remington nodded, appraisingly. “Outer docks, arm seven, bay three, twenty-two hundred tomorrow. Don’t hang around, because I won’t.” He rose, with a courteous inclination of his head to my seated aunt. “Smart lad you’ve got there, Jen. Not slow to grab an opportunity. One of us is doing well out of this.”

“We all are, John. It’s just a question of who’s doing best.”

Remington smiled, with what looked like genuine amusement. “I’m under no illusions on that score. I’ve known you too long.” Then he was gone, weaving his way casually through the slalom of tables.

“What did he mean by that?” I asked.

My aunt smiled, draining her glass and depositing it on the tabletop in front of her with a satisfied clunk. “He’s worked for me before. Contract haulage, that kind of thing.”

“Right.” I took a sip of my forgotten ale, finding that it had warmed up enough in the interim to be almost palatable. “And he’s so keen to be shifting dried rations for the Fleet Auxiliary, he’ll take on a new apprentice just because you ask.”

“Of course he won’t.” Aunt Jenny signaled for another drink. “He’s a Guilder. It’s all about what’s in it for him.”

“Which is?” I asked.

“Initially, just another hand. If he’s lucky, which he is in this case, an apprentice who’ll learn enough quickly enough to become a real asset. But the main thing is, he’ll think I owe him a favor.”

“And will you?” I asked.

Pity and amusement mingled on her face. “Of course not. But every time he gets a contract from the Auxiliary that pays a little over the odds from now on, he’ll think that’s the reason. Which means I can trim the margins a little more on the others without him noticing.” She thought for a moment. “For a while, at least.”

“Isn’t that a bit dishonest?” I asked, trying to sound less shocked and disapproving than I actually felt.

“Of course not.” The serving drone arrived again, and my aunt snagged her drink from its back before it had time to settle on the table between us. “It’s business. That’s just how things work.” She took a sip, and regarded me thoughtfully for a moment. “My real job’s where the ethically flexible stuff comes in.” She looked at me with a faint air of expectation.

"Your real job?" I asked, totally failing to grasp whatever it was she was driving at. Operational logistics seemed enough of a full-time job for anyone.

Aunt Jenny sighed, as though I'd somehow disappointed her. "For Naval Intelligence," she said.

I’d seen and read enough thrillers to have all the usual ideas about what secret agents were like, and my aunt definitely didn’t fit the mould. They were supposed to be debonair sophisticates living in luxurious apartments in the most glamorous of locales, not middle-aged middle-rankers in cramped maisonettes with dodgy gravitation, on the fringes of a dormitory suburb. I said as much, in appropriate tones of incredulity, and Aunt Jenny laughed so loudly that several heads turned in our direction.

“I’m afraid the reality’s a lot duller than the virts,” she said, sipping her drink to recover her composure. “I haven’t had a fight on a train roof in years.” I must still have been bearing a remarkable resemblance to one of the stuffed fish in Dad’s study, because she added, “kidding, Simon,” and kicked my ankle under the table.

Which didn’t really hurt; but somehow the very banality of the gesture made the whole thing suddenly real to me. Shrugging off my natural surprise I took another mouthful of ale, which was actually beginning to taste like a proper drink at last as it began to approach room temperature, and tried to get my head around the fact that everything I thought I knew about my aunt was completely wrong.

“Of course it isn’t,” she rejoined briskly, when I spoke the thought aloud. “I’m the same person you always knew. The only thing that’s different is my job.” She thought for a moment. “One of them, anyway.”

“But you don’t really work for the Fleet Auxiliary,” I persisted, “do you? That was a lie.”

“Who says?” She was enjoying this, I could tell, a faint half smile hovering over her face like mist rising from a dew-soaked lawn. “I’m one of the best logisticians we’ve got. Ask anyone.”

“But that’s just your cover story, right?” I asked. That was one of the commonest elements of espionage stories. Spies had identities and professions they assumed in order to gain access to the information they wanted. But surely the Commonwealth’s intelligence services would have no reason to infiltrate their own Navy’s logistics division—they were all on the same side. Or at least they were supposed to be.