Time Past (34 page)

I rubbed at the implant helplessly and swore under my breath. A curly-haired EarthFleet ensign coming the other way along the corridor raised her eyebrows in disapproval and turned her eyes away as she passed me. I didn’t recognize her face. Probably came with Stone. Things were changing on Jocasta and I wasn’t changing with them.

Twenty-five

O
utside on the throughway, I felt equally uncomfortable. The Boulevard, Gamma’s main throughway that ran straight through Sections One to Four, had always been crowded, but previously it had been noisy with the bustle of stall-keepers calling to customers, customers talking about purchases, and a new type of music every ten meters or so. There must have been new regulations set about the music, because all I could hear was a thin background jangle.

The crowd looked more prosperous, too, and I heard more Confederacy Standard than Earth Standard. Gamma’s residents had always been the most cosmopolitan on the station, but I noticed a lot more nonhuman Nine Worlds loiterers. Achelian, Dir, even a few H’digh and several groups of what appeared to be young artisan-caste Melot, dressed in bright, tight-fitting clothes. These latter were having fun—as I watched, one of them plucked a round fruit from a stall and carried it on his or her head for several paces, to the applause of the others.

Tourists? I must ask Veatch. The K’Cher trader Trillith had had a plan to begin a tourist run through the jump point from Central to Abelar. When I left in
Calypso II
the plans hadn’t been approved by Central. Everything was pending until the neutrality vote was heard.

I let the crowd carry me toward the spoke in the middle distance. The spoke’s bulk was less obvious here than in Alpha, because it was obscured more by the buildings that rose in closely staggered rows up the curve of the ring. The crowd meandered past stalls and stores offering every conceivable exchange, past the Middle Systems Trade Hall, past the small Security cabin in the middle of the section.

The mass of bodies trailed to a standstill to let past a group of Dir who were maglevving a huge trunk. In rowdy pre-blockade days this activity would have been greeted with yells of annoyance, catcalls, and a gathering of idlers, but today everyone in the crowd watched and waited politely.

I turned off the Boulevard and onto one of the throughways parallel to it. Shabbier stalls, less fashionable restaurants, the whole space narrower. Pedestrians here were either trying to avoid the traffic of the Boulevard, like myself, or wanted to enjoy a slower pace.

The side throughway reminded me of the out-town. Not the tent city, but the older streets behind; where red brick buildings that had once been factories and newer concrete blocks of three-story units squeezed the road between them. In the same way, the backs of low buildings that fronted onto the Boulevard rose straight on one side of the walkway and on the other residential units rose in staggered terraces to the upper limit of building permits.

If I wanted to be reminded of the tent city, I should go down to the Hill, I thought grimly. It had always been the darkest, most tiring—because of the higher gravity—and most crowded part of the station. I wonder if Stone continued the reforms we put in place after the blockade? Plans to repair the reflectors, reinforce weak structures, clear the throughways of unregistered buildings and add extra residences in Alpha to house illegal residents from Delta—the refugees and unregistered workers who’d stayed through the Seouras blockade and who were now official residents.

Being an illegal migrant myself in the out-town had changed my perspective somewhat. We’d always accepted refugees on Jocasta, in spite of the pressure they placed on our environmental systems, mainly because they had nowhere else to go in the Abelar system and couldn’t afford the trip to Central. And also, because Marlena Alvarez had always accepted refugees into Las Mujeres. But I’d never realized before what it must be like, to be adrift in a context-less existence, not knowing everything that others take for granted; having nobody to rely on; to be always on the alert.

Ah, but you don’t have time to go and look at the Hill, do you? You’re too busy with matters of galactic importance.

I can’t do everything.

No, you can’t.

Something flickered at the side of the walkway. In the entrance to a side alley that was little more than airspace between buildings, a knee-high duct alcove had been lined with metal. Round knobs of holo-emitters lined the edges and there was a small plaque at the base of the alcove. The emitters glowed red, then went dull again. The show must have just finished.

I knelt down to look closer. The plaque said:

NOVEMBER 4, 2121, REMEMBRANCE DISPLAY. SPONSORED BY THE GAMMA SMALL TRADERS ASSOCIATION.

The fourth of November, the date of the fire. Two months before the Seouras blockade ended, we had a major fire on the station. For three days it burned, and it took another week before the state of emergency was lifted. Most of the fire was in Delta ring, in the Hill, but flames spread through one of the uplift shafts and started a smaller blaze here in Gamma. Two EarthFleet officers, four volunteer firefighters and a family in their home were killed in this ring alone. Half the sections on both sides of the spoke were damaged.

INSERT APPENDAGE TO VIEW
, said smaller letters under the plaque. With a mixture of curiosity and sadness, I passed my hand inside the alcove to activate its sensors.

The holoimage flickered into life. I was looking at a view of Gamma ring—an overhead view of the Boulevard. But it wasn’t as light as now. This image must have been taken during the blockade, after auxiliary and reflecting mirrors had been damaged in the initial Seouras attack, giving the scene a curious twilight feel.

This is Underway Terrace in Gamma Two
...began a recorded commentary in Earth Standard, but it was in need of repair; it kept cutting out and I caught only isolated phrases, interrupted further by the voices and equipment noises around me.

People walked up and down the gloomy Boulevard in the holoimage. They looked shabbier than now, and there were more humans. In one corner of the screen a Security constable gestured at two Garokians who were trying to set up a stall in front of an Achelian merchant’s store to clear away.

The scene changed abruptly. Broken images of the same stretch of throughway, but this time dark with smoke and filled with running figures. This was what Security pickups must have recorded before they went offline.

.
.. terror as residents ran for their lives. The flames...

Spread out from the spoke, yes, I know. My palms were sweating and I wiped them on my trouser legs. My heart was beating faster. God, it’s as if it happened yesterday. Images of the out-town fire mixed up in my mind with the Hill. Screams in the darkness.

.
.. equipment better maintained than in the lower ring. The firefighters were able to contain the fire here in Gamma, thus saving the rest of the station.

Not exactly, but what did it matter now? The pickup had changed to a handcom recorder and was now moving past a desolate row of blackened buildings. Smoke had stained the upper part of the ring vault in this section and the “sky,” usually filled with reflected light and seemingly far away, loomed gray and close. It was like being in a dingy fishbowl. Humans with dirty faces stood, shocked and helpless, looking at the rubble. Two Achelians linked arms and rocked in distress.

If we’d had decent equipment and sufficient resources, we could have contained that fire immediately in the Hill. Nobody needed to die in Gamma. Familiar anger and frustration formed a tight ball in my stomach.

The holoimage was now cycling through the faces and names of the victims.

My stomach rose and I stood up quickly, ignoring the pins and needles in my knees and the brief dizziness. I don’t want to see this. It’s as bad as watching people in the out-town run from the fire.

You talk about the out-town as if it were terrible, I told myself, but the Hill is almost as bad. If you can’t help these people in your own time, don’t criticize people in that other time.

It shouldn’t be that bad. Here, I can do something about it. I can try to make sure we’re never in that situation again. I can’t help Will, but I can do something for all of us here and now.

At that moment the extinguisher system test began.

From what Sasaki had said to Murdoch, it was supposed to be a simple alarm test. We had distinct extinguisher systems for each section and again for each ring. Fire, as we’d found out to our cost, was too great an enemy to give it even the smallest chance of spreading. But the alarm could also be controlled station-wide, and Security wanted to make sure they could alert any- and everyone if need be.

The alarm activated as planned. First stage—the alert. The audio rose and fell in a three-beat whine, at least, to human ears. Lights flashed from the edges of the reflectors on the top of the ring, so nobody could block one with illegal construction.

Then the second-stage alarm sounded, a louder, higher tone. I couldn’t hear anything else.

But somebody hadn’t done their work of separating the alarm from the actual extinguishers for this exercise. There was a loud clicking sound above my head. A heavy mass of white retardant powder whooshed out of wall and ceiling outlets and covered everything.

Even in the alley. Most of it came from an outlet in the side of one wall of the alley, but hit the other wall and blew over me and the Remembrance Display. The holoimage, basically a series of light beams, disappeared immediately, disrupted by the particles.

“Ah, shit.” I tried to cover my face.

The trouble with retardant powder is that as soon as it settles, it changes into a slippery film that retards movement as well as flame. A bit like the slime I used to get covered in when I went to the Seouras ship during the blockade. Though the fire retardant is supposed to be easily shaken off when it dries, we’d always had hell’s own trouble getting it off modular building surfaces and recycled uniforms.

The retardant burst ceased, as did the alarm. Voices shouted and cursed from the throughway, loud in the silence. I scraped slime off my face. Why do I get the feeling the station is trying to tell me something?

Twenty-six

I
stopped off at one of the library stations in the Bubble after washing the crusts of dried retardant off my face and hands. Murdoch’s excerpt from the history files had reminded me of something I needed to look up. I didn’t know if the information had survived, but astronomical records might tell me something about
Calypso
’s departure. If they’d had instrumentation accurate enough to record the radiation from a jump point and if they’d been looking in that direction at the time.

The library station was a room lined with booths, with a storeroom on one side that held the limited amount of hardcopy records we had on the station—mainly books, scrolls, or data crystals abandoned when people left the station. I settled gratefully into a cushioned booth, laid my head back into the supporting headrest to look at the monitor on the opposite wall of the booth, and hoped I wouldn’t drop off to sleep.

“History, Earth, year 2023, date 14 May. Show edited visual record, ocular manipulation.” Short pause while the interface hummed softly. I stretched my toes uncomfortably in my new boots, which had given me blisters.

The monitor brightened and I blinked my way through subject headings. Normally using visual cues made me squint and I avoided the method, but it was certainly fast.

The history files for 14 May, the day we met the Invidi and left Earth, said nothing about a stolen Invidi ship. The file listed newspaper and visual media references to an explosion that most of the reports called an “accident,” some an attempt by an “unknown, deranged individual” to damage human-Invidi relations. After that, security had been further tightened around Invidi “embassies” all over the world.

Then again, the history files were incomplete. The facts on the screen had been collated and edited to read smoothly, but the original sources, ranging from media reports to private diaries, were scattered and limited. There may have been news reports that didn’t survive the century. Some of the security forces at the airport in Sydney must have seen two humans enter an Invidi ship, and more people would have seen that ship take off. Unless the Invidi asked the government of the day to suppress the information in the media. Or perhaps the history files had been tampered with during the century, not impossible seeing that the Invidi controlled most sources of information and barely understood Invidi technology was used to disseminate it. Like they’d kept all information about the Tor to themselves.

It was hardly surprising that the Invidi would want to keep it quiet that Murdoch and I had been able to use one of their ships. Our taking
Farseer
had probably, I reflected gloomily, been one of the reasons they decided to lock the Nine out of using jump technology in the first place.

I blinked my way to astronomical records. These were better preserved, and where there were gaps, it was obvious. Unfortunately, the year after
Calypso
’s departure from Earth, 2027, which was when the ship would have entered the jump point, was full of gaps. A bad year for infonet failures and data losses due to computer viruses. There was no reference anywhere in the last fifty years, either, to a jump point or even gravimetric disturbances at those coordinates. Until I went right back. I started searching in the relatively recent past because before the space program picked up in the 2050s, instrumentation on Earth wouldn’t have been precise enough to pinpoint such a disturbance. But then, as I scrolled back over reports of the Invidi arrival I noticed an astronomical report from 16 May 2023. It detailed a major gravitational radiation source that suddenly appeared close to the solar system. The astronomers became excited about this, but the radiation peaked immediately, then dispersed, and they could find no explanation. A follow-up probe found nothing a decade later. The position of the source seemed to fit the coordinates where Murdoch and I had appeared from Jocasta.