Watcher's Web (19 page)

Jessica
chanced a question. “Why do they wear that unusual colour?”

“They’re
servant colours. It means they’re employed.”

“Who employs
them?”

“The ruling
class—the keihu people.”

He had talked
about the ruling class before. She suspected they were the short
and chubby people.

But what about
the tall people from the frieze? “Are there any other type of
people in the city?”

“There are no
other people from Earth—”

“What about
other kinds?”

He raised his
eyebrows. “The largest group are the Mirani army. Most of them look
like these soldiers here—”

“What about
others?”

Again, that
sharp glance. “Why are you asking? Did you see anyone in that
forest except Pengali?”

She
shook her head, then decided to plunge in. If she didn’t ask, she
would never find out anything. “No, I didn’t see anyone. It’s just
that the Pengali showed me this rock carving of these people
. . . tall . . . and . . .” She
gave a helpless gesture, not willing to say
like me,
“. . . arriving at the Pengali
settlement in some kind of spaceship, and . . .” She
shrugged, and tried to sound careless. “I just thought they might
still be here. Just wondering . . .” Hell, what a
lame argument.

His frown
deepened. “A rock carving?”

“Yeah—in the
cliffs over there.”

“In one of
their sacred caves?”

Jessica
cringed. Maybe it would have been better not to mention it. She
didn’t like his tone when he spoke of the Pengali activities.

He asked, “Did
it look old?”

She
nodded.

“How old?”

“I don’t
know.”

Then his face
closed again. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve never
heard of people on rock carvings. Not here in Barresh anyway. But
you should know that the Pengali are masters at craft. I mean—you
saw all the stuff in the merchant’s apartment unit. Individual
masterpieces. Their cloth, their glass-stone work. Sells very well.
I wouldn’t put it beyond them to produce some rock art.”

He laughed,
but it didn’t sound genuine.

“It’s not like
that.” Jessica shook her head, pushing down her irritation. “This
was old, really, really old. Thousands of years.”

He shrugged.
“Well—then I don’t know.”

And with that,
the conversation was over.

Jessica stared
at the uneven pavement passing under her feet. With every step, she
walked further away from the truth about these tall strangers. And
somewhere out there in the universe was a mother, or maybe a whole
family, who had lost a baby.

Somewhere out
there was a man called Daya who was looking for her, who wanted to
pick her up, but was in the wrong place, and whom she could almost
contact through the web, but not quite. She must try again as soon
as she could.

They came to a
bridge over a canal. Lazy water flowed between its straight sides,
reflecting the yellow morning sky. Pengali boys were jumping off
the railing into the water below, cascades of laughter following
them through the air.

Four soldiers
stood sentry on the other side of the bridge. Their blond heads
bobbed as they exchanged greetings with the guards who accompanied
Jessica and Iztho. Like cherubs in uniforms, they looked. Similar
to each other, deadly but silent like stone. Cobalt blue eyes
glanced in Jessica’s direction.

Away from the
canal, the scenery changed abruptly.

Large leafy
trees lined the street, interspersed with flower beds and benches.
Gone were the rubbish mounds, street stalls and compacted dirt
pavement. Two-metre walls lined both sides of the street.
Elaborate, albeit sometimes rusty, gates offered glimpses of the
houses beyond.

No more large
apartment blocks, but single blocky houses, two or three storeys
high, surrounded by gardens and high walls. Mosaic paths inlaid
with glittering stones, flowering bushes clipped to perfection,
fountains dribbling steaming water into ponds, porches supported by
carved columns, leading up to double front doors with metal
ornaments.

The people
changed, too. The short and squat ones were in the majority here.
They were olive-skinned with dark curly hair and deep-set eyes.
Many of the men had big double chins and wide spreading bellies;
women sported several layers of hips. Taller than the Pengali, they
still reached only to Jessica’s shoulders. Most of these people
were dressed in clothes from drab khaki material. They wore a lot
of adornments. Their short, sausage-like fingers were hidden under
jewellery. Multiple chains of beads glittered around men and
women’s necks. Their hair was braided into plaits interwoven with
beads.

The only
Pengali here were the turquoise-clad type, who moved like silent
ghosts, bustling, carrying things, wheeling trolleys.

Then houses
made way for larger buildings, two or three storeys high, external
stairs going up to higher levels, with galleries, and colourful
displays in open façades. Shirts and dresses hanging on racks.
Shawls or sarongs folded up on shelves. Cushions of all shapes and
sizes, rolls of fabric stacked up to the ceiling.

The smell of
food drifted from a shop where people sat at tables and chairs. It
could have been a café in an exotic place on Earth, until a Pengali
wove between the tables carrying a basket-like tray crammed with
bristly-skinned fruit that had been cut open, scooped out, and
filled with red and green spotted leaves.

Soldiers in
twos or threes guarded every corner. They stood rigid at their
posts; their eyes didn’t miss a single movement in the street. Most
citizens ignored them, walking past stone-faced. A Pengali,
carrying a sack on his shoulder, spat on the ground. Equally
stone-faced, one of the soldiers unslung his crossbow and slipped
it into the crook of his arm. His hand tensed and with a metallic
click that caused some women to gasp, an arrow unfolded from the
magazine. The soldier held the weapon aimed at the old man while he
shuffled down the street, ignoring the weapon. When he had gone,
the soldier made the arrow disappear into the magazine again.

The street
opened out into a large open square, a desolate and empty place
with cracked and uneven pavement. Directly opposite, behind a line
of bushes, the land fell away. Jessica spotted glimpses of
marshland. To the right were huge trees with market stalls
underneath their overhanging branches.

Behind them, a
two-storey building stood half-sheltered by giant pink-flowered
trees. A wall surrounded the complex, crumbling where the roots of
the trees had worked their way into the brickwork, bulging from
cracks like varicose veins.

An opening in
the wall led to the entrance, where a glass dome, many of the panes
missing, protruded above the building’s roof. On the first floor,
to the left of the entrance, a large window looked out over the
square.

Iztho
grumbled, “That’s the Barresh Exchange. See what a disgrace it
is?”

Yes, Jessica
saw that. The centre section with its large window was the only
part of the building that looked in any kind of habitable
condition. In the wings to the left and right, windows glared like
empty holes, the glass absent or broken. Walls were weather-eaten,
pock-marked with what looked suspiciously like bullet-holes.
Crowning the walls, exposed roof beams pointed up at the sky like
dead fingers.

“That place
made the mistake that brought us here?”

He nodded, his
face grim. “We don’t want to go in there, or anywhere near the
council until we’re convinced they are going to believe what we’re
telling them you are. They’re going to deny everything about their
mistake.”

“But how does
it work, if the building’s here and we crashed all the way in the
forest?”

“The craft are
transferred to a point above the city, supposedly outside the
atmosphere, but that clearly didn’t happen with us. The network
requires a three-point check: one each from the on-ground nodes,
like in this building; and one from the aircraft. If the Network
doesn’t get a legitimate response from both the receiving node and
the craft, it shouldn’t translocate. That’s the simple version of
the story. The fact that this has happened is an outrage. I’ll make
sure that the Barresh council won’t be allowed to cover it up, but
only once we’re out of here, when you’re safe. I wonder how many
other wrecks are in that forest.”

They crossed
the square to the line of bushes. There was a gate, where four
soldiers stood guard. One soldier opened it to let Jessica and
Iztho through.

They came to a
wide expanse of weed-dotted land on which stood a single aircraft,
velvet black, like a crouching panther. Two red lights blinked on
the wing tips, which nearly touched the ground. A line of oval
portholes ran from the front wraparound window to the tail section,
where broad flanges looked like exhaust outlets. The door was
open.

Chapter
16

J
ESSICA GULPED
and stopped. “Where are we going? Where are you taking
me?”

If he thought
she was coming in that thing, he would have to think again. She
would agree to nothing unless she fully understood it.

His blue eyes
met hers. “Do you have a single trusting bone in your body? I told
you we need to make you act the part of a lady.”

“Where are you
taking me?”

“Nowhere. Do
you think I’d risk my licence by going off without a permit?”

“I don’t know
about permits. You don’t tell me anything.”

“And you would
do well to accept what you’re given once in a while.” There was
that accusing finger again.

She was
going to say
You
don’t give me anything,
but that wasn’t true at all. He wasn’t giving her some
information she dearly wanted to know, but he had explained how he
wasn’t free to share everything. He could just as easily have left
her to fend for herself with the Pengali. He didn’t really need to
take any risks for her. He was right. She
wasn’t
a lady; she was a mangy dog expecting a kick.
Crawling under the table, but positioning her teeth so she could
inflict the most painful bite possible when the foot came
again.

She’d built a
shell for herself that looked like a tough cowgirl on the outside,
but the armour was close to breaking and inside she was a mess. If
she wasn’t human, then why did she feel so much pain?

He stopped at
the door of the craft. Sunlight made his hair glow like gold.

“It is a truly
poor place where you’ve grown up. I hope to show you that there are
places where someone’s word is just that: his word. I promised I
would help you, and no matter how stubbornly and stupidly you
behave, I will do just that.”

He opened a
panel next to the open door. At the press of a button, plates of
black metal unfolded from the recess and fashioned themselves into
steps.

A gust of wind
blew Iztho’s hair across his face. His rings glittered in the
sunlight as he raked it back and gestured for her to go inside.
Like a gentleman holding open the door to a lady. His expression,
though, said otherwise; he hated her, with good reason. She’d
behaved like a brat.

Jessica felt
dreadful.

She climbed
the steps and plunged into semidarkness of the aircraft’s cabin, a
single space the size of a small room. When her eyes had adjusted,
she saw control panels, blank screens, dials and other instruments
on a panel that looked like the craft’s controls. A red light
blinked every two seconds or so.

A table
surrounded by a semicircular bench and padded seats, bolted to the
floor, was directly opposite the entrance. Cupboards, made of what
looked like dark-coloured wood, lined the walls, their glass doors
showing stacks of documents, small boxes and instruments, all
individually strapped to the shelves with neat ties threaded
through golden eyelets and secured with gold clasps.

Iztho opened a
door, slid the cloak from his shoulders and hung it on a hook
inside.

“Is this all
yours?”

“Yes.” He
crossed to the table and set something down: a flat, tile-like
object. “And before you accuse me of having known that we would end
up here in advance: I had a member of my staff bring it here.”

He slid in the
seat opposite her.

“Now, firstly,
you’ll need to at least pretend you can speak to me in my own
language. That is Mirani. I don’t suppose you have ever heard of
it.”

“No.”

He slid the
tile-like object towards him, pressed the corner and pushed it back
to her.

It was a
screen of some sort, like a tablet, but much thinner and more
flexible.

Two
black characters, if the assembly of circles, lines and triangles
could be called that, occupied the centre of the light blue
background. He shook his finger, the Pengali signal for
no,
and he said
“Doi.”
Then he touched the screen,
where a single character appeared. He made the Pengali hand signal
for
yes,
the
downward movement of the hand, and said,
“Eni.”
A different character appeared on the
screen.

“Repeat this
until you remember.”

Geez, this guy
didn’t muck around.

*     *     *

Jessica had no
idea how much time had passed when she stretched and looked up from
the screen. The brightness of sunlight that fell in through the
window and hit the craft’s instrument panel made her squint. On the
other side of the window, the wind stirred clumps of weeds dotted
over the expanse of barren land that was the airport. God, she had
a headache.