The Baba Yaga (9 page)

“I know.” Kit frowned into his handheld, and then looked down at his daughter. “Can you manage a little longer, sweetheart?”

The little girl clung to her mother’s leg and stared at the ground. Kit sighed, and lowered himself down to her height. “Hey, Jenny,” he said. “Think you can manage a while longer? For me?”

The little girl, bless her, smiled gamely and held out her small arms. “Carry, Daddy?”

Kit glanced down at the handheld.

“I can take that,” said Maria, softly.

He hesitated.

“Pick her up, love.”

Kit handed over the device and lifted his daughter into his arms, kissing her soft hair. “I’m following the directions I was given,” he told Maria.

“You don’t know where we’re heading?” Maria said. “We don’t have an address?”

He shook his head. Maria wondered, for a moment, whether it had crossed his mind that whoever was helping may well have decided that they were a liability, and was sending all three of them to an unpleasant fate. Then she decided that if it had occurred to someone as inexperienced as her, it had probably occurred to Kit too, and that it was a mark of their desperate situation that he was prepared to take the risk.

“Then I guess we’d better do what this thing tells us. Everything will be fine,” she said firmly. She nodded towards a passageway on the right, where a huge birdcage hung on the wall, with a great scarlet bird inside. Its eyes, bright and sharp, glittered like gold, or fire. “Down there, I think.”

A
HEAVY GLOOM
lay over Shard’s World: a thick industrial smog that settled on the lungs and made every breath laborious. Walker had only been planetside for a matter of hours, and was already eager to leave. She could not imagine living out her life in this murk.

They had landed mid-morning, local time, at the spaceport outside Roby, the main city on Shard’s World. They had had no trouble passing through customs and boarding a city-bound shuttle. Nobody checked documents; nobody asked for permits. The worlds that made up Satan’s Reach did not trouble themselves with the baroque bureaucracy and tight controls that typified the Expansion; indeed, they prided themselves on their freedoms. Walker rubbed her hand against the window of the shuttle and looked out across a grim, depleted landscape: grey sky, oily river, heavy machinery, cheap housing. The freedoms enjoyed by the inhabitants of the Reach included, it seemed, the freedom to smother themselves in thick smog and choke themselves to death. This would not have been allowed within the Expansion. For all the petty corruption of its senior officials, or the tendency of its police to shoot first and ask questions later, the Expansion did maintain a certain quality of life for its citizens. She looked at her hand where it had touched the window. It had come away black and damp.

“Fucking shithole,” said Yershov, and Walker was inclined to agree.

After a couple of changes, the shuttle dumped them in the centre of Roby, a small square built around a fountain (dry). Here an effort had been made, once upon a time, at civic pride: there were numerous red-brick building with ornate fronts and the proud names of their one-time benefactors emblazoned across grand doorways. Some were quite fanciful—turreted, even, or with ornate tilework. But the bricks and the tiles were all soiled and blackened, and the locals scurried around the place with eyes down and shoulders hunched.

Fredricks had given Walker an address here in the main square. Walker got her bearings, and then led Yershov over to one of the larger buildings, which, it seemed, had once been a public library. Walker doubted such a thing operated on Shard’s World now. They passed through high main doors (hinges rusty and the paint cracked) into a huge vestibule, whose size and ornate decoration gave it a faded glamour. Two big men waited there, smartly dressed and armed with lasers. One stepped forwards to meet them.

“Are you Walker?”

“Who’s asking?”

He rested his hand upon his weapon. “Don’t push it, lady.”

“I’m Walker,” she said. “Where’s Fredricks?”

The other man gestured behind him to a grand stairway. “He’s waiting upstairs.”

Walker made to follow, but found her way blocked. “I can’t go upstairs with you in the way, gentlemen.”

“We were only expecting one of you.”

Walker looked back over her shoulder at Yershov. “Don’t worry about him. He’s no trouble.”

“Not a chance, lady.”

Walker shrugged. It wasn’t like she was relying on Yershov. He’d surely be gone at the first whiff of trouble. “Yershov,” she said. “Wait here. I’ll buy you something nice on the way back to the ship.”

One of the men gestured Yershov towards a big sofa at the far end of the lobby, and stood guard by him, arms folded. The other man led Walker upstairs. Here any remains of the building’s former glory were not to be seen. The paint was cracked, the carpets worn and scarred. They stopped outside a closed door, and the man tapped gently against it. “Mr Fredricks, sir. Your guest has arrived.”

A voice called from beyond the door. “Bring her in! Bring her in!”

Walker’s guide pushed the door open, and she stepped inside the most hideous room she had ever seen. Fredricks had hardly been the classiest person of Walker’s acquaintance, but this place outdid even his standards of conspicuous consumption. The gilt candelabra was a low point, Walker thought, although the purple and silver brocade curtains were also particularly unpleasant. Behind a huge wooden desk, the man now known as Fredricks was sitting like a supervillain in his lair. Walker looked round the room, trying to think of something to say. She settled for, “Nice eagle,” nodding at the bird, stuffed and housed within a glass dome. It had a gold collar round its neck.

Fredricks beamed at the thing. “Cost a fortune to ship in.”

“I can imagine.”

“I’m after a panther.”

“When it comes down to it,” said Walker, “who isn’t?” She took a seat across from Fredricks. He was portlier than she remembered too (more conspicuous consumption, no doubt), but then the last time she had seen him, he had been sitting in a holding cell quivering in terror that his ex-employers might know where he was. He had, it seemed, thrived in exile.

“Have to say, Ms Walker”—he spread out the title:
Mzzzzz
—“you’re the last person I would have expected to see out here in the Reach. You were always so...”

“Sensible?”

“Respectable.”

Cheeky bastard. “Nobody in my business,” said Walker, softly, “is entirely respectable.”

Fredricks subsided. His brush with the Bureau had brought him briefly into contact with some of Walker’s less salubrious colleagues, the kind whose offices didn’t have windows but where the chairs had straps. Walker had always kept a... well, a
respectable
distance from the unpleasant but necessary parts of the Bureau’s work. But it never did any harm to remind people like Fredricks about them, and that they were at Walker’s disposal, should she need them. Or they had been, until recently. Not that there was any need to tell Fredricks that. Let him continue to think she was as well-connected as she had ever been.

Particularly given Fredricks’ current business. Walker had continued digging, and her hunch had proved correct. Fredricks brought in people to work in the mines. But the poor sods who arrived here thinking that they were going to get honest paying work found on arrival that the costs had somehow racked up while they were in transit: phase technology was expensive, after all, and accommodation was at a premium on Shard’s World these days, and of course Fredricks himself had to make a modest profit (those panthers didn’t buy themselves)... And then there was the interest and the administrative costs and the authorities (such as they were) on Shard’s World
would
charge so much for resettlement fees... Before you knew it, you were looking at a debt that would never be paid off, no matter how long you laboured underground. Fredricks called his business ‘providing unrivalled solutions for personnel problems.’ Walker called it people trafficking. No wonder there were bodyguards downstairs.

“I have to wonder,” said Fredricks, “what brings you out this far when there’s a crisis back home.”

So the news blackout about Braun’s World was over. It would be hell in the Bureau right now. “You know I can’t say anything about that.”

“No? So why are you here?”

“The Weird,” Walker said, after a moment. “I’m interested in the Weird.”

“We’re all interested in the Weird. Those who aren’t terrified want to work out how to make some money from them.”

“I doubt they’re interested in money.”

“No? I didn’t think we knew that much about them.” Fredricks eyed her thoughtfully. “You’ve come a long way, Walker, so I’m sorry to say that I don’t know anything,” he said. “Yes, I’ve heard about the Weird, and I’ve heard stories about what they can do. I never want to come any closer to them than I am now.” He frowned. “You’re not looking for a close encounter, are you?”

“I’ve heard,” said Walker, “that somewhere in the Reach there’s a world where humans are living in harmony with the Weird.”

“Living in slavery, more like, if the stories are true.”

“Yes, I know about that. Not that. Genuine co-operation.”

Fredricks thought about that. “Now that would be interesting... There might be opportunities in that.” He shook his head. “I doubt such a world can exist. Humans and the Weird...” He shuddered. “It couldn’t work. No way of living together. Either they’d devour us, or we’d destroy them before we are devoured.”

“That’s precisely what I’m hoping to prevent.”

“Is that idealism I hear?” He laughed. “I guess that would make sense. Other people did the finger-snapping and the kneecap-smashing, didn’t they? You were more fastidious.”

She was getting tired of this. “Have you heard anything that sounds like the place I’m looking for?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t help you.” He looked at her with something approaching pity. “You know, this isn’t a good place to be. Not for a person like you.”

“I suspect you have little conception of what kind of person I really am.”

“You know what I mean.” He smiled. “You’re not cut out for the Reach. Not cut out for how business is done here. You should go back where you belong. Back to Hennessy’s World.”

She looked around the horrible room, and out of the window at the bleak sky. “Well, nothing about this place appeals. Thank Christ I’m not stuck here.”

Fredricks leaned back comfortably in his chair. “You might be.”

Walker stopped in the act of standing up. “Is that a threat?”

“An observation.”

“Based on what?”

“Your pilot.”

“What about my pilot?”

Fredricks’ eyebrows shot up. “You don’t know? Good God, Walker, you really have changed. I can’t picture the woman I knew flying blind.”

“Tell me what the problem is with my pilot.”

“Drinks a lot, doesn’t he?”

“So does most of the Bureau. I didn’t see that alleviating any of your anxieties at the time—”

“The thing is,” said Fredricks, “I did a few background checks while you were travelling here. I’m surprised that ship is up in the air.”

“It’s remarkably sound for its age.”

“I’m sure it is. They built those things to last. The pilot, however...”

“What about him?” Walker said.

“It’s not just the drink. His head, you see...” Fredricks tapped his brow. “Full of junk. The pain must be constant. Take a little look around the ship. You’ll find the pills soon enough. He must be doped to the eyeballs.”

Walker ran her hand across her eyes. She should have guessed this. Should have thought of it...

“But I’m sure you know your own business,” Fredricks finished. “Good luck, Ms Walker. I’m sure you’ll be successful in your quest.”

A
T LAST THEY
reached what Maria supposed she should be thinking of as their ‘safe house.’ They gladly sealed the door behind them, and looked around the little room. A big bed. A battered old viewscreen on the wall. A cupboard that, when opened, revealed a place to cook. A tiny bathroom. “Well,” said Maria brightly, “let’s get washed and have something to eat.”

Jenny, when her hands and face were scrubbed, found a game to play on her father’s handheld: colourful fish with huge eyes swimming through bright blue waters filled with various perils, collecting treasure from the ocean floor. Whenever Jenny hooked a treasure, a cheerful little
whoosh!
filled the small room.

Kit was lying awake on the bed, his arm across his face.

“Hey,” Maria said, softly, to her husband and daughter. “Hungry?”

Jenny, with hardly a complaint, put down the game and scooted to sit on the edge of the bed. She dug into her supper with gusto. After a moment or two, Kit heaved himself up and took the bowl Maria offered with murmured, automatic thanks.

“When are we going home?” said Jenny suddenly.

Maria, seeing Kit’s stricken face, said brightly, “Not yet, darling.”

“I’m worried about Monkey. He’s all alone.”

“Monkey’s clever. He’ll do fine.”

“But he’s by himself. He’ll be lonely.”

“Not Mr Monkey. He makes friends wherever he is.”

“It was mean of us not to go back for him.”

“Maybe he’d like to hear about our adventure,” Maria tried. “We could write it down or send him a message...” She glanced over at Kit, who was shaking his head. “Or else save it all up for when we see him again.”

Jenny brightened visibly. “So we’ll definitely see Monkey again?”

Maria ate a few mouthfuls of soup before replying. She made it a rule not to tell even the whitest of lies to Jenny, but how could she tell a four-year-old girl that the world where they had been living last week no longer existed in any meaningful sense?

“Mummy, will we see Monkey again? Mummy?”

“That’s up to Monkey, really, isn’t it?” she said. “He knows where to find us.”

“How does he know where to find us? We didn’t tell him where we were going?”

“Monkeys know these things,” Maria said. “They know how to find their little girls. It might take him a while. And I think he might have some adventures on the way. Hey, I bet he’ll have some great stories to tell us when he finds us!”