The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 22nd Annual Collection (26 page)

“Whatever you say, Mister Tayang.”

“The
BK
has cameras, pointed into the direction of flight. They detect changes in the tunnel geometry and feed that data to the servo-motors driving the stabilising vanes and yaw dampers, so that they can make adjustments to smooth out the turbulence. They’re also there as an emergency measure in case we encounter another ship coming the other way, one that isn’t on schedule or hasn’t got an active transponder. The cameras give us just enough warning to swerve the
BK
to one side, to give passing clearance. It’s bumpy for the passengers when that happens, but a lot better than a head-on collision at tunnel speeds.”

“I take it the cameras saw something,” I said.

Tayang nodded. “This was a couple of trips ago, about half way between Gansu and Kuchlug. They only got eight clear frames. Whatever it was was moving fast, much quicker than one of our ships. The fourth, fifth, and sixth frames are the sharpest.”

“Show me.”

He tapped keys. A picture sprang onto the display, all fuzzy green hues, overlaid with date stamps and other information. It took a moment before I was sure what I was looking at. There was some kind of pale green smudge filling half the frame, a random-looking shape like the blindspot one sees after looking at the sun for too long, and beyond that, a suggestion of the curving squiggles of the tunnel’s
khorkoi
patterning, reaching away to infinity.

I pressed a finger against the smudge. “That’s the phantom?”

“This is frame three. It becomes clearer on the next one.” He advanced to the next image and I saw what he meant. The smudge had enlarged, but also become sharper, with details beginning to emerge. Edges and surfaces, a hint of organised structure, even if the overall shape was still elusive.

“Next frame,” Tayang mouthed.

Now there could be no doubt that the phantom was some kind of ship, even if it conformed to the pattern of no vessel I had ever seen. It was sleek and organic looking, more like a darting squid than the clunky lines of the
BK
.

He advanced to the next frame, but – while the image did not become substantially clearer – the angle changed, so that the three-dimensional structure of the phantom became more apparent. At the same time, hints of patterning had begun to emerge: darker green symbols on the side of the hull, or fusalage, or body, of whatever the thing was.

“That’s about as good as it gets,” Tayang said.

“I’m impressed.”

“You see these arm-like appendages?” he asked, pointing to part of the image. “I’m guessing, of course, but I can’t help wondering if they don’t serve the same function as our stabilization vanes, only in a more elegant fashion.”

“I think you could be right.”

“One thing I’m sure of, though.
We
didn’t build that ship. I’m no expert, Miss Bocheng, but I know what counts as cutting-edge ship design, and that thing is way beyond it.”

“I don’t think anyone would argue with that.”

“It wasn’t built by the government, or some mysterious splinter group of Islamist separatists. In fact, I don’t think it was built by humans at all. We’re looking at alien technology, and they’re using our Infrastructure system as if they own it. More than that: every now and then you hear about entire ships and message packets going missing. They’re not just trespassing in our network, they’re stealing from it as well.”

“I can see Blue Heaven would rather this didn’t get out.”

Tayang closed the display. “I’m sorry, but that’s all I can show you. It’s enough, though, isn’t it?”

“More than enough,” I said.

Of course, I had my doubts. Tayang could have easily faked those images, or been the unwitting victim of someone else’s fakery. But I did not think that was the case. I had been looking at genuine data, not something cooked up to scare the tourists.

I was just beginning to plot my next move – how I would get a copy of the data, and smuggle it back to NHK while I continued with my investigations in Kuchlug space – when I became aware of a presence behind me. Tayang must have sensed it too, for he turned around as I did. Standing in the doorway to the library was one of the other stewards, an older man whose name I had yet to learn. I noticed that the sleeves of his uniform were too short for him.

Wordlessly, he raised a hand. In it glinted the smooth alloy form of a small, precise weapon: the kind often carried by government spies such as myself. He shot me; I had a moment to stare at the barb embedded in my thigh, and then I passed out.

I came around in my cabin, gripped by a vile nausea, a headache like a slowly closing iron vice, and no conception of how much time had passed since Tayang and I had been disturbed in the library. Getting out of bed – I had been placed on top of the sheets – I searched the adjoining annex for the eunuch, before I remembered that he was still in the sickbay. I tried my door and found that it had been locked from the outside; there was no way for me to leave my room.

Understand, I did not accept my imprisonment lightly, but understand also that all my attempts at escape proved futile. I could not even squeeze through the conduit I had mentioned to the eunuch: such methods succeed in adventure stories, but not in real life.

Of course, it was desired that I be kept alive. The man who had shot me could have administered a fatal dose simply by twisting a dial in the grip of his weapon. He had chosen not to, and it was no accident that food and water appeared in the room’s serving hatch at regular intervals. But as to who had chosen to detain me, I was uninformed.

I could guess, though.

He was the first to see me when the ship docked in Kuchlug space. He came to my room, accompanied by guards. He was as squat and muscled as a wrestler, his bare arms fully as thick as my thighs. He wore a leather jerkin, criss-crossed by thick black belts to which were fastened various ceremonial weapons and symbols of martial authority. A carefully tended moustache, curled down on either side of his mouth, with a tiny but deliberate tuft of hair preserved under his lower lip. A stiff leather helmet, long at the sides and back, covered the rest of his head. The only visible part of his hair was a blunt, wedge-shaped fringe terminating just above his eyebrows, which were at once finely drawn, expressive, and deeply quizzical.

Of course, I knew the face.

“Commander Qilian,” I said.

“Yes, I get about.” His hands were impressively hairy, scarred and knotted like the roots of a very old tree. He snapped his fingers at the guards. “Have her brought to the debriefing facility on the Qing Shui moon. Bring the pony as well.” Then he poked one of those fingers under my chin, lifting it up so that our eyes met. “Give some thought to the particulars of your story, Miss Bocheng. It may make all the difference.”

They took me down to the moon. We landed somewhere and I was carried through dark, rusting corridors to a windowless holding cell. The floor rocked with a slow, sickening motion, as if I was on a ship at sea in a high swell – even though there were no oceans on the Qing Shui moon. They stripped me, took away my belongings, and gave me prison clothing to wear: a simple one-piece affair in orange silk. I pretended to be shocked and disorientated, but I was already summoning my training, recollecting those stratagems I had been taught to withstand prolonged detention and interrogation. As the guards were shutting the door on me, I contrived to slip a finger into the crack between the door and its frame. When the door closed, I yelped in pain and withdrew my hand with the fingertip squashed and red from the pressure.

I sucked it in my mouth until the pain abated.

“Stupid bitch,” someone said.

There was a bunk, a spigot in the wall that dribbled tepid, piss-coloured water, and a hole in the floor, with chipped ceramic sides stained an unspeakable brown. Light seeped in through a grille in the door. Neither willing nor able to sleep, I lay on the bunk and shivered. Presently – no more than two or three hours after my arrival – men came to take me down the corridor, to an interrogation room.

It is not necessary to document all that happened; the many weeks that it took for me to permit them to peel back the layers of identity I had wrapped around myself, each time thinking that the victory was theirs.

Suffice to say that most of what they did to me involved electricity and chemicals in varying combinations. They did break two fingers on my left hand, including the one I had trapped in the door, but when they pulled out one of my fingernails, it was from the other hand, not the one I had hurt. They beat me around, broke my teeth, extinguished
Yesugei
brand cigarettes on my skin, but only cut me superficially, to demonstrate that they could and would. Then they had other men come in to sterilize and dress the wounds. Once in a while, a gowned doctor with a Slavic face came to the cell and gave me a thorough, probing medical examination.

It was during one of the doctor’s examinations that I elected to reveal myself as a government spy. As the doctor was examining me, I allowed my hair – stiff and greasy with dirt – to fall away from the nape of my neck. I knew instantly that he had taken the bait. I felt his fingers press into the area around the subcutaneous device, feeling for the hard-edged component lodged under the skin.

“What is this?”

“What is what?” I asked, all innocence.

“There’s something under your skin.”

They took me back to the interrogation room. My hair was shaved and my neck swabbed. The Slavic doctor dithered over the medical tools on the shelves, until he found the bundle he wanted. He brought the instruments onto the table, unrolling the towel so that I could see what lay in store for me. When he was done, the implant was placed on a piece of clean towel in front of me. It was bloodied, with bits of whitish flesh still attached to its feeler-like input probes.

“Looks like government,” someone said.

I did not admit to it immediately; that would have made them rightfully suspicious. It was a matter of judging the moment, making my confession appear natural, rather than a scripted event.

In hindsight, I wish that I had arranged my confession sooner.

I was brought to a different room. There was a window in the wall, before which I was encouraged to sit. A clamp was fitted around my eyes so that I could not look away. The doctor dripped some agent into my eyes which had the effect of paralysing the lids, preventing me from blinking. When the lights came on in the room on the other side of the window, I found myself looking at Goyo.

He was upside down, suspended in a sling, rotated on his back in the manner that horses are prepared for veterinary work. The sling was supported from a heavy white framework mounted on trolley wheels. Goyo’s legs had been bound together in pairs using thick adhesive material. Even his head and neck had been braced into position using cushioned supports and clamps. A leathery girth strap enclosed his waist, preventing him from thrashing around. His abdominal region, between fore and hind limbs, had been shaved to the skin. A white sheet, not much larger than a towel, had been draped over part of that shaven area. There was a red stain in the middle of the sheet, where it formed a depression.

Goyo’s eye, the one that I could see, was white and wild and brimming with fear.

Qilian walked into the room. He was dressed as I remembered him from our encounter on the
BK
, except that his hands and forearms were now gloved. The gloves had a heavy, martial look to them, with curved steel talons on the ends of the fingers. He stopped next to Goyo, one hand resting on the frame, the other stroking my pony’s neck, as if he sought to placate him. When he spoke, his voice came through a microphone.

“We think we know who you are, but some corroboration would be welcome. What is your operational codename? To which section are you assigned? Are you one of the Thirteen?”

My mouth had turned dry. I said nothing.

“Very well,” Qilian continued, as if he had expected as much. He reached over and whisked the white sheet away from Goyo’s abdomen. There was a wound there, a red sucking hole wide enough to plunge a fist through.

“No,” I said, trying to break free of the straps that bound me to the chair.

“Before you arrived,” Qilian said, “certain surgical preparations were made. A number of ribs have already been removed. They can be put back, of course, but their absence now means that there is an unobstructed path through to your pony’s heart.”

With his right hand, he reached into the wound. He frowned, concentrating on the task. He delved in slowly, cautiously. Goyo responded by thrashing against his restraints, but it was to more avail than my own efforts. In a short while, Qilian’s entire fist was hidden. He pushed deeper, encountering resistance. Now the fist and fully half of his forearm was gone. He adjusted his posture, leaning in so that his chest was braced against Goyo’s shoulder. He pushed deeper, until only the top extremity of the glove remained visible.

“I am touching his beating heart now,” Qilian said, looking directly at me. “He’s a strong one, no doubt about that. A fine pony, from good Mongol stock. But I am stronger, at least when I have my hand on his heart. You don’t think I can stop it beating? I assure you I can. Would you like to see?” The expression on his face altered to one of concentrated effort, little veins bulging at the side of his temple. Goyo thrashed with renewed energy. “Yes, he feels it now. He doesn’t know what’s happening, but a billion years of dumb evolution tells him something’s not right. I don’t doubt that the pain is excruciating, at least in animal terms. Would you like me to stop?”

The words spilled out, feeling like a genuine confession. “I am Yellow Dog. I am a government operative, one of the Thirteen.”

“Yes, we thought you were Yellow Dog. We have the non-official cover list for all of the Thirteen, and we know that Ariunaa Bocheng is a name you’ve used before, when posing as a journalist.” He broke off, took a deep breath, and seemed to redouble his efforts. “But it’s good to get it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.”