CORDELIA PA
As the Gigolo Aunt powered away from the Plate, the harsh backsplash of white light from its twin fusion drives brightened the dismal streets and warrens of City Plate Two. For twenty minutes, the sturdy old ship burrowed upward, into the darkness. The walls and deck shook. At the twenty-one-minute mark, she passed through the invisible curtain of energy that kept the Plates in formation and their breathing air from drifting away into space, and her main drive cut out. Manoeuvring thrusters fired along her length, turning her hull to align its axis with her destination—wherever that might be—and she began to accelerate. When she reached the speed necessary to flip out of the universe and into higher dimensional travel, tremendous energies built in the nested fractal coils hidden deep in her clunking metal heart. Focused along vanes protruding from her prow, these energies ripped a circular rent in the cloth of space. Curdled starlight formed a rainbow around the circle’s edge. The centre of it revealed a glimpse into a misty, windswept void.
The Gigolo Aunt continued to power forward towards the lip of the wormhole she’d created, her blunt nose lit by the cold, distant stars. Then, as she approached the portal’s threshold, she unfurled her tapered mesh wings, black against the darkness of space, and stretched them forward, eager to gain traction from the barely tangible fabric of the hypervoid. Tendrils of mist played across her skin, and still she advanced, like a moth transfixed by the roar of a blowtorch. Her fusion motors flared again, and she tipped headlong into the abyss.
In the main passenger cabin, tucked behind the bridge at the front of the vessel, I clung to the armrests of my seat, face pale, eyes wide. Beside me, Lomax seemed unperturbed.
The air coming from the vents in the cabin’s ceiling tasted metallic and stale. During the ascent, the room shook like a box in the hands of a giant. The transition through the wormhole was rougher still, and worse than anything I could have anticipated; but once we were through and into the hypervoid, the ride smoothed out. The deck still juddered, but Lomax showed it was possible to unclip from the safety harness and stand upright without too much effort.
“Come on,” she said. “I want to show you the bridge.”
I unfastened my belt but remained where I was. “Why?”
“Because the ship’s your home now, so you may as well get to know her.”
I looked around at the seamed bulkheads and brought my hand up to touch my mother’s chain. “My home?”
“Yeah.” Lomax glanced toward a forward hatch. “Spider’s pretty unhappy about it, but it’s what the old man wants.”
“And by the ‘old man’, you mean my father?”
Lomax crossed her arms. “The Gigolo Aunt is his, as I said. And he wants you on board.”
“Is he here? Can I see him?”
“Not right now. We’re going to pick him up at our next stop. Meanwhile, there’s only Gant and Brof. Gant’s the pilot and Brof’s the engineer. It’s a Druff, of course. You’ll meet them both later.”
Spider slouched into the room.
“How are we doing?” Lomax asked.
“Not too bad.” He leaned a hip against the doorframe.
“So we’ll make it to Redloam on time?”
“In a couple of days.”
“Good.” Lomax tightened her arms over her chest. “Because I don’t want that thing on board a moment longer than absolutely necessary.”
Spider’s long fingers scratched the wisps of beard along his jawline. A smile mocked the corners of his mouth.
“It’s only an artefact, skip. How many hundreds of those have we hauled in our time?”
Lomax shook her head. “No, there’s something different about this one. I don’t like it. It gives me the creeps. The sooner it’s off this ship and delivered to Hagwood, the happier I’ll be.”
She turned to me. “You were raised on the Plates. Do you know anything about artefacts?”
“What kind?”
A shrug. “Any kind.”
I moistened my lips. “Mikey and I are scavengers.”
“So, you’ve found a few of them, then?”
“A few.” I scratched my cheek. “Nothing big. A handful of intact vases, the odd sculpture, that sort of thing. Nothing that brought in much money, anyway. Just enough to get by.”
“Really?” Lomax’s eyebrow twitched. “Because those things, especially the artworks, sell for a fortune. I guess you got ripped off?”
I looked down at my hands. I didn’t know what else to do. The older woman put a hand on my shoulder. “Hey, don’t take it personally. It’s supply and demand, and the same all over. The rich get rich living off the sweat of the poor. Same as it ever was.”
I scowled around at the walls of the ship.
“Rich people like you?”
A mirthless chuckle. “No, love. We’re not rich, not by a long shot. We don’t sell what we carry, we just ship it. We’re couriers.” Lomax sloshed her boot in one of the pools of condensation gathered on the deck. “If we were rich, would we be living like this?”
“And my father?”
“He’s always keen on the artefacts. I think he ships them just so he can spend time with them. He spends hours down in the hold, just looking at them.”
“When am I going to meet him?”
“Soon. We’re on our way to pick him up now.” Lomax pursed her narrow lips. “For the past two weeks, Nick’s been involved in some delicate negotiations on Redloam.”
“My father’s name is Nick?”
“You didn’t know?” Lomax scratched her lip with a clipped thumbnail. “Yes, Nick Moriarty.”
“Moriarty.” The name felt strange on my tongue. I rubbed my eyes. When I looked up, Lomax’s features had softened slightly.
“Don’t worry, kid. It’s a lot to take in. You’ll be okay.”
“But what does he want?”
“He wants you to come and live on the ship with him.”
“But why?”
Lomax’s smile tightened a notch. “To be his replacement.”
“Replacement for what?”
“As captain of this ship.”
I closed my eyes. “So what am I supposed to do now?”
“He left you a message.” Lomax scratched her lip again, clearly uncomfortable. “He recorded it before we dropped him off. It’s in his cabin.”
“Can I see it?”
“Come with me.”
Lomax reached out a hand and, without knowing why, I took it, and allowed myself to be pulled to my feet. Together we walked to the hatch that led forward, towards the ship’s bow. Our feet splashed on the wet deck.
As we left, Lomax paused on the threshold of the hatch and turned to her crewmate.
“Oh, and Spider?”
“Yes, Lomax?”
“See if you can find out where all this fucking water’s coming from, okay?”
A reluctant sigh. “Yes, chief.”
* * *
The captain’s cabin lay tucked beneath the cockpit, wadded into the lower half of the ship’s blunt nose. It was accessed via a hatch in the floor of the corridor linking the bridge to the rest of the ship.
“You can sleep here for now,” Lomax said. “We’ve got a separate cabin for you to use if you decide to stay, but it needs clearing out. We’ve been using it as a store cupboard, and you wouldn’t believe the crap that’s in there.”
I leaned over the open hatch and peered down into the room. All I could see was the ladder and a portion of bare metal deck.
“Play your father’s message, help yourself to food or drink from the printers in the lounge, then get some sleep. It must be nearly two in the morning your time.”
“But, Mikey—?”
“Your brother will be fine.”
“Half-brother,” I corrected, and then shrugged, unsure why I had made the distinction. “Same mother, different fathers.”
“Don’t worry about him, he’ll be okay.”
“And my uncle. He has to look after my uncle.”
“I’m sure he will.”
I rubbed my eyes. I knew she was trying to be kind, and I appreciated the obvious effort it took.
“I’m sorry,” I said politely, “but what should I call you?”
“My name’s Tessa, but as you’ll have seen, people call me Lomax.”
“Do you know my father well?”
“I know him as well as anyone, I suppose.” The corners of her mouth twitched. “Maybe a little better than some.”
“What’s he like?”
Lomax shook her head firmly. “It’s late. You’ll find your father’s message on the crystal reader by the bed, where he left it. Now, down you go.” She helped me swing my leg out over the hatchway and put a foot on the ladder. Then she watched as I clomped down the steel rungs. For my part, I had no fear of heights or enclosed spaces. Being a scavenger in the city had long cured me of both.
When I was down, Lomax slid the heavy metal hatch into place above me. “I’ll see you in the morning,” she called. I didn’t respond. Instead, I stood at the foot of the ladder and let my gaze slide around the dimly lit cabin.
My father’s cabin.
It was smaller than I’d expected, maybe four metres by two. Old-fashioned nautical charts decorated the walls, their corners curled and brown with age. A leather jacket hung on the back of a chair.
This must be his bunk, I thought. The covers were still untidy from the last time he’d used it, but there was a freshly printed sleeping bag folded up at the foot of the bed. The small, circular crystal reader sat beside it. The butt of a crystal poked from its data port, and the red ‘message waiting’ light blinked. Hesitantly, I picked up the machine. The casing had a thousand little scrapes and scratches that betrayed a lifetime of hard use.
All these years of wondering who I might be, where I came from, and why I looked so strange. And now I held the answers in my hand. But did I have the courage to hear them?
I might have been mostly self-educated, but even I’d heard of the Schrödinger’s cat experiment. Now, for the first time, I knew how the hypothetical experimenter felt the moment before they opened the box. I’d spent my whole life dreaming and speculating. I’d lain wrapped in a cold blanket at night, listening to Mikey snore, longing for the day my father would come to find me. My mother had taken his identity to her grave, but that hadn’t stopped me constructing a picture of him as dashing, rich and handsome. Now I was painfully aware that, as soon as I played this message, all that comforting speculation would end. All my fantasies, all those fondly imagined possibilities, would collapse down into a single, hard truth. He would stop existing as a waveform of possibility and become a single, defined person—and I would have taken a step into a far smaller world.
I sat on the edge of the bed. The sheets held a faint, slightly spicy smell: a mixture of male sweat and old, cheap cologne. With shaking hands, I balanced the player on my knees and took a deep breath.
There was no choice, not really. I had to hear what the message contained, good or bad. Spiders seemed to be scrabbling around in my stomach, making me queasy. I swallowed hard to stop them climbing my throat and, with every muscle tensed, hit the play button.
* * *
Twelve centimetres in height, Nick Moriarty’s holographic image shimmered into apparent solidity, feet braced astride the top of the player resting on my knees. At first, I was a little disappointed to see his hair wasn’t white, and that his eyes were both the same colour. In fact, he looked reassuringly normal, for a spacer. He wore a fur-lined leather jacket (the same one, I realised, that was now draped over the chair), with a set of overalls much like the ones Lomax had been wearing; he had a firm, unshaven jaw, and grey hair at his temples.
“Am I speaking to Cordelia Carmine Pandora Pa, daughter of Jasmine Pa of Alpha Plate?” His voice was deep and hoarse, with background traces of a lilting accent I didn’t recognise.
“Yes. Um. Hello?”
The tiny eyes seemed to focus on me. “Cordelia, my name’s Nick, Nick Moriarty, and, as I’m sure Tessa’s already explained, I am your father.”
To me, each word felt like a pebble dropped into a deep, dark well. They echoed in my head. Absently, I reached over to the chair to touch the jacket’s soft fur lining.
“Pleased to meet you,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
The little figure gave the barest hint of a formal bow: a quick downward jerk of the chin. “Likewise.”
I had been expecting a straightforward recording. I waved a hand in front of his face. “Can you see me?”
Nick spread his hands in regret. “This is only a projection,” he said. “I can’t really see anything at all. The crystal in this player holds my mind-map, and the software feeds me details of your face and voice, but it’s not the same as really seeing you.”
“Mind-map?”
“A recording of my brain. It’s like a simulation. The program lets me talk and respond, but it’s really just guesswork based on past behaviour.”
My heart felt like a stone in my chest. “So, I’m not really talking to you?”
The little figure shook its head. “No, child, I’m sorry. The real Nick is waiting elsewhere. As I said, I’m a recording. A simulation.”
“Do you feel alive?”
“I don’t think so.” Nick rubbed the stubble peppering his chin. “It’s hard to tell. I can act and feel the way Nick would act and feel but, at the end of the day, I’m not really him. I’m not self-aware. I’m just an echo, here to deliver his message.” He blew air through his cheeks. “Talking of which, how much has Tessa told you?”
I licked my lips. “That you want me to replace you on the ship.”
“That’s right.” For the first time, I thought I saw a touch of sadness in his eyes. “I’m not getting any younger, and one day I’ll want to pass on the family business.”
“But what will I do here?”
Nick’s hand dropped to his side. “You’ll learn to fly, of course! We’ll send you to flight school. Then you’ll come back and serve as first officer until I’m ready to retire. It’s a good ship, and it’ll take us anywhere we want to go.” He leaned forward, looming out of the projection. “And when you’ve got your own ship, you’re your own boss. As long as we can find enough cargoes to make it pay, you and I can live free and clear for the rest of our lives, with nobody telling us what to do or how to behave.”
“Is that what you do now?”
He smiled wolfishly. “You’re damned right I do.”
“But I don’t know anything about running a starship.” I rubbed my left eye with my right hand, suppressing a yawn. “I’m a scavenger. I’ve never even been into space.”
“Neither had I at your age. I was a country boy, born and raised in the Marches. I’d never even left the village where I grew up. But I learned, and I learned fast. You had to in those days.”
I gave his image a wary squint. Then I thought of the Gigolo Aunt, and panic bubbled up inside. “But it’s too much. I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“Tessa can help you get orientated, and you’ll be picking me up in a couple of days.”
I shook myself. Years of scavenging had hardened me to deals that sounded too good to be true.
I sucked my lower lip. “I’ll need to think about it.” I rubbed my forehead and yawned. “If I turn you off for a few hours, will you remember any of this when I turn you back on again?”
“As long as you don’t reset me.”
I reached for the switch. “Okay, then. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, my love.”
I tried to swallow but something seemed to be caught in my throat. “Please don’t call me that.”
Nick looked concerned. “Then what should I call you?”
I tugged at my earlobe. “Not that, not yet.” He didn’t have the right to act the doting father. He hadn’t earned it yet.
If he really was my father, of course. Part of me still suspected the whole thing to be some sort of ruse, some kind of cruel scam. Things like this just didn’t happen to orphans like me.
“If you have to call me something, call me Cordelia,” I said with a sniff. “It is my name, after all.”
Nick gave an understanding nod. “Okay, I’m sorry. Cordelia it is.” He put a palm to his chest. “And what are you going to call me?”
I placed a thumb on the off switch and inhaled through my nose.
“Later,” I said.
* * *
When I awoke in the sleeping bag, the crystal reader still sat inert on the pillow beside me, and the room seemed exactly as it had been when I fell asleep. Nothing had been touched. Lying on my back, I let my gaze roam, trying to think myself into my father’s head. This was his bed, after all. The handful of paperback books on the metal shelves, held in place by a strand of copper wire, were his, as were the dog-eared nautical charts taped to the bulkheads. I assumed the names on the charts were those of bays and coastlines on Earth. The one above the bed pictured a group of green islands surrounded by depth contours, and various symbols I didn’t recognise. The islands themselves were blank. This wasn’t like the detailed sketches I’d used as a scavenger, with every room and passage marked. This was a map for someone more interested in travelling than arriving; more concerned with currents and shoals than cities, towns and villages.
Through the bunk, I could feel the Gigolo Aunt shuddering as it pulled itself through the higher dimensions, magnetic black wings clawing at the firmament. How many mornings had my father lain here like this, listening to the hull creak and flex, the clang and gurgle of pipes, and the clomping footsteps of people moving around on the metal deck of the bridge above?
Despite the noise, everything felt curiously silent, and it took me a few minutes to realise why. The noise of the Plates—a hiss so gentle and familiar I sometimes forgot it was even there— had gone. They no longer whispered at the back of my mind. Their comforting murmurs had fallen silent. The realisation brought a surge of giddy homesickness. Suddenly, I felt very small and very young, and very far from home. I was the girl who’d lost everything, starting with my mother and continuing with my half-brother, my uncle, and now my entire world.
Or had I?
Lying there, I supposed it all depended on how you looked at things. I picked up the crystal reader and turned it over and over in my hands. After a night’s sleep, and with hunger gnawing at my insides, I felt alert and clear-headed for the first time in days. I was warm and safe and, if my father’s electronic ghost was to be believed, I now had a place on a starship. Tentatively, I reached out my fingertips to touch the rivets on the nearest bulkhead. The metal felt cold and smooth, with the slightest trace of vibration, and I shivered. A ship like this had to be worth several million, at least.
A door at the back of the cabin led into a cramped bathroom, where I showered, rinsing away the worst of the previous day’s grime and dust. When I came out, wrapped in a towel that smelled slightly of mould, I found freshly printed underwear and a neatly folded all-in-one ship suit at the bottom of the ladder. I dressed hurriedly. As I zipped up the front of the garment, my eyes caught the leather jacket on the bed. For a moment, I considered putting it on. Then I shook myself and climbed up, hoping to find something to eat.
Lomax was waiting, a plastic cup steaming in each hand.
“How are you feeling?”
I stifled a yawn. “A lot better for some sleep.”
“Did you play your father’s message?”
“Yes.”
Lomax handed me one of the cups. It had coffee in it. And it smelled so much better than the brown muck they served at the port.
“Have you decided what you’re going to do?”
I frowned. “How do you mean?” The cup was warm in my hands. The smell of the steam set my stomach rumbling.
“When you meet your father. What are you going to say to him?”
I inhaled from the cup, and then took a sip. “I don’t know yet.”
The Gigolo Aunt’s bridge was a low-ceilinged cockpit, housing two control couches and a plethora of screens, readouts and consoles. Projected points of light swam in the air, forming a three-dimensional map of nearby stars. As I watched, they moved like the restless ticking hands of a clock, gradually shifting position in a series of tiny jumps to take account of the Gigolo Aunt’s relative progress through the hypervoid.
Lomax reached out and touched one.
“This is Redloam,” she said. She moved her hand across to a tiny red arrow suspended between stars. “And we’re here.”
“How long will it take us to get there?”
“About another two days.” Lomax took a drink from her own cup, her movements precise and birdlike. “Which should give you plenty of time to get to know the ship.”
I put a hand on the back of one of the couches. It felt solid and reassuring, but the controls arrayed before it were a total mystery. How could I get to know a ship like this in two days? It was such a vast, incomprehensible slab of metal, with so many moving parts. Its engines were capable of tearing a hole in the dimensional fabric of reality itself; I couldn’t possibly hope to understand how they worked in so short a time.
My fingers squeezed the back of the chair. Little Cordelia with the white hair and the mismatched eyes—was I a scavenger, or first mate on a starship? Not even I knew the answer to that anymore; and, until I figured it out, everything else would just have to wait.
* * *
A klaxon sang through the Gigolo Aunt’s metal corridors. In the cockpit, Spider and Gant strapped themselves into the control couches. I perched behind them on a fold-down jump seat.
“Ten seconds.” Spider’s voice was sullen. I had hardly seen him over the past two days. He’d spent most of his time in his cabin, listening to punishingly loud music, emerging only for meals in the ship’s galley and speaking only when he had no choice.
Gant was something else altogether… I’d first met the cantankerous frog-like creature over breakfast yesterday, and he had barely stopped complaining since.
“Five.”
The ship shuddered as her wings stilled and her engines probed the bitter fabric of the hypervoid, causing it to swirl. A whirlpool formed in the roiling mist. Then the centre ripped and tore apart, revealing a circular patch of black, star-sprinkled space.
“Wings offline,” Gant reported. “Cutting full thrust.”
The Gigolo Aunt bucked, buffeted by the hypervoid tide, and I clung to my seat. I saw Gant pushing forward on a control and felt the vibration in the decks change, throttling back to a low roar that seemed to tremble my insides like fingers dancing across my diaphragm.
Slowly, the elderly ship pushed its nose into the eye of the wormhole. As it passed through, the shaking increased. Strange gravitational effects ripped at the hull, making my stomach lurch and go light. The shrouded void clung with imploring fingers, reluctant to release its prize.
And then, we were through.
For a while, nobody said anything. I sat and listened to the hull plates flex and squeak as they adjusted to the new physics in which they found themselves. Gant and Spider ran through a complete systems check, tapping away at the screens before them until they were satisfied the transition had been made without damage to any of the ship’s more delicate systems. When Lomax finally came to fetch me, her thin mouth held a rare smile. For the past two days she’d been giving me a guided tour of the old ship’s operational and environmental systems, from the docking clamps and cargo doors to the thermal management systems and bio-waste treatment plant. By unspoken consent, we hadn’t mentioned Nick Moriarty.
“Congratulations,” Lomax said. “You’ve successfully made your first hypervoid jump.” She gave me an awkward nod. “You’re one of us now.”
I blinked at her in confusion. One of whom, exactly? Only their loyalty to Nick held Lomax, Gant, Brof and Spider together. They were hardly my idea of a crew; they didn’t seem to have titles or distinct roles upon the ship, and as far as I could tell, they didn’t even like each other all that much. For now, they had a common purpose and nothing better to do; that was all. Who knew what would happen when my turn came to give them orders?
“Thanks, I guess.”
Still hunched over his instruments, Gant muttered something under his breath. Lomax ignored him. She pulled a screen towards her and angled it so that I could see the image it showed.
“Welcome to Redloam,” she said.
On the display, the planet hung like a ripe apple against the blackness of space. Three dry and ruddy continents blotched its world-wrapping ocean. I leaned closer, squinting.
“Where’s the spaceport?” For some reason, I’d been expecting to be able to see it from here, spread out across the land like a contagion.
Lomax shook her head. “We’re going to the space docks.” She tapped the screen, highlighting a structure in orbit. “That’s where your father is.”
“At the station?”
“Yes.”
* * *
A little while later, back in Nick’s cabin, I screwed up the courage to reactivate his recording.
“Hello,” he said, shimmering into apparent solidity on the surface of the crystal reader. “You look much better. Cleaner and less pale. How long has it been?”
“Two days.”
“Two days?”
“I’ve been busy.” The truth was I’d been avoiding him, scared of the turmoil he stirred in me and wary of being hurt again. Losing one parent had been tough enough and wasn’t something I wanted to go through again, especially now, with all my certainties kicked out from beneath me. “Lomax has been showing me the ship.”
As before, Nick’s recorded image wore the jacket that now lay on the bed. He put his hands in its pockets and raised a shaggy eyebrow.
“What do you think?”
The Gigolo Aunt was at least two hundred and seventy years old. She’d started out as a scout ship, built to explore the new worlds opened up by humanity’s introduction to the Multiplicity. Now, so many decades later, she was a private trader, ploughing the whistling void between the settled worlds around the Intrusion, carrying passengers and cargo from one star system to another. Every component in her had been replaced and patched a dozen times, but her hull remained sound, her frame sturdy. She might look battered and frayed at the edges but, over her long operational lifetime, she’d earned every one of those dents and scrapes.
“She’s rugged,” I said.
Nick’s eyes narrowed mischievously. “Are you talking about the ship, or Lomax?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. “Both.” For a second, we shared a grin. Then I turned away and scratched at the skin of my forearms. I hadn’t meant to let him get under my guard like that. It made me feel vulnerable and I didn’t like it.
“I want to know why you came for me now,” I said quietly. “You don’t contact me for my whole life, and then, out of the blue, you turn up and give me all this?”
For a moment, Nick held his posture. Then he let his shoulders slump.
“You’re a shrewd one.” He sounded almost proud. “And you’re right, there is something. Something very important.” His face became grave. “Cordelia, I feel really bad for abandoning you, and I want to try to make amends.”
“You do?”
“Scout’s honour.” He dropped his chin to his chest, as if trying to sink into the fur of his collar. “And besides, I don’t think it would ever have worked between your mother and me. We were such different people. We wanted such different things. She wanted to settle down and make a life, whereas I’ve always been on the move. I couldn’t stay put for more than a couple of months without climbing the walls. And she had a temper. You should have seen the way her eyes flashed when she was mad! If we’d tried to live as a couple… I think we might have killed each other.”
His words came across like the empty excuses they undoubtedly were. I squeezed my hands into fists. “But when she died, why didn’t you come and find me then?”
Nick shook his greying head. “By the time I found out she was dead, you were living with Caleb on a different Plate. I thought it best to leave you there. You’d already been through so much.” He looked up. “So, I stayed away.”
“But you could have made it better.”
Nick shrugged. “What can I say? I’m here now.”
“So, that’s it, is it?” Heat burned across my cheeks and down my neck. “That’s your way of making up for abandoning me my whole childhood?”
Nick looked down at his jumpsuit and brushed invisible specks from the chest. “I’m trying to give you a better life.” He sounded sullen.
I bridled. “You’re trying to give me your life.”
The skin of his face seemed to slacken. He stared down at his hands. “Don’t you want it?”
“I haven’t decided.”
He took a heavy breath. “Look, I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you were a kid, okay? I don’t know what else I can say. I can’t change the past. All I can do is try to apologise.”
“You didn’t even come to meet me yourself!” I knew I wasn’t really talking to him. When I met him in person, I might act differently. For now, this machine gave me the chance to vent my annoyance and rehearse what I was going to say to the real him.
“You’re the closest thing I have to family.” Nick coughed. “Come on, I want to help you. It’s all I want.”
My fists kept clenching and unclenching. I clasped them together. “And what about what I want?”
“You?” My question had derailed him. He hadn’t really thought about me. He rubbed his right earlobe and coughed again. “Cordelia, you’ll have a whole new life.”
* * *
Two hours later, as the Gigolo Aunt came in to dock at the orbital space station above Redloam, I stood beside Lomax at the ship’s inner airlock. Gant was at the helm, but the ship’s flight computer was doing most of the actual work. Not quite knowing why, I had decided to wear Nick’s leather jacket. Somehow, it seemed fitting. The jacket was lined with something called ‘sheepskin’. The white fur stuck out at the cuffs and collar and seemed to be keeping me comfortably warm. It was certainly more comfortable than my faithful old scavenger coat, which I’d left screwed up on the cabin floor. When Lomax first saw me in it, she cocked an eyebrow but said nothing.
Behind us, an automated cargo pallet held the artefact Lomax was so keen to unload from the ship.
“What’s it like?” I asked. “On a space station, I mean.”
Lomax looked down at me. “Security’s pretty tight here. All weapons stay on the ship, which doesn’t please Spider much. No plasma rifles. No knives. No sharp sticks.”
I tried to calm my breathing. For the past two days I’d been in a cocoon, confined to the Gigolo Aunt’s echoing corridors and cabins, but when the airlock opened, it would open on a whole new world. I’d no longer be able to kid myself I was somehow still on the Plates. Everything would have changed, forever. I fastened the zip at the front of the jacket, pulling it up to my throat and enjoying the comfortable smell of the leather. My stomach fluttered but I couldn’t tell whether it was from fear or excitement. I barely remembered my time on Alpha Plate. I’d spent most of my life exploring the fringes of one city, on one Plate. Now, I was about to step into another life altogether, light years from everything and everyone I’d previously known.
I followed Lomax through the Gigolo Aunt’s hatch. The ship was resting on its landing struts. As we left the ship and crossed the floor of the vast hangar, I goggled at it all. The bay extended several kilometres in every direction. It was a high-ceilinged vault filled with starships of every size and function, from small one-person scout ships to fat bulk carriers. I shaded my eyes from the bright white flare of welding torches; my ears rang with the clang and rattle of cargo containers and the shouts of mechanics and dockhands; and my nostrils twitched at the heady carbon reek of spilled fuel and liberally applied engine grease.
And the people!
As I trailed after Lomax, I couldn’t help staring at the fashions on display. Life on City Plate Two had been basic, with apparel chosen for practicality, warmth and durability rather than for any consideration of decoration or style. Even now, in my new overalls and leather jacket, I felt drab compared to some of the passengers alighting from the liners and yachts we passed. I saw men and women in tailored business attire, colourful, loose silk robes, and brightly painted spacesuits. I saw hair sculpted every which way, from multicoloured Mohicans to full-facial dreadlocks, and bodies cosmetically altered in ways I hadn’t known were even possible. Some of the people descending from the other ships were tall and ghostly pale, with attenuated arms and dreamy, thousand-yard stares; others were squat and practical, with six or more limbs and sockets for tools at every joint and knuckle.
Eventually, we arrived at a ramp that led down to a different level. Here we were processed and scanned by security guards, and then allowed through into the main body of the space station where we found ourselves standing on a wide balcony overlooking a multi-level market of shops and stalls.
I leant against the rail to catch my breath.
“How are you doing?” Lomax asked.
I gazed at the shoppers thronging the concourses below. I’d never seen so many people in one place before, and their clashing styles, body shapes and skin tones were more than I could process. “It’s so… busy.”
Lomax gripped the rail in both hands and glared down at the crowds.
“That’s Redloam for you. This place is what we call a ‘crossroads’. Because of the way the stars line up, ships stop here from all over. It’s a handy stepping stone, a place where several major routes intersect.” She glanced down at me. “And, of course, a lot of folks come here on their way to see the Intrusion.”
I felt in my pocket and closed my fist around the crystal containing my father’s stored personality. “Where is he?”
Lomax jerked her thumb at the cargo pallet. It was she who’d suggested I bring the crystal, but I had no idea why she’d done so. “We have some business to take care of first.”
We took an elevator down to the floor of the market. As the doors opened, the noise and clamour of it all hit me like a wave. Strange scents assailed me. I tasted flowers, sweat, frying meat and hot plastics. Jugglers and fire-breathers performed their acts. Holographic advertisements writhed in the air like beckoning phantasms. I saw stalls piled with colourful fruits and spices, bizarre clothing, and every conceivable variety of handheld electronic gadget—and above it all, the deafening, chattering cacophony of a thousand human and alien voices.
Somehow, Tessa Lomax knew her way through the pandemonium. She strode into the crowd with confidence and I hurried to stay close. I’d never had to push my way through such a mass of bodies and was worried that, if we got separated, I’d be lost forever. I had no money and no papers, and was thus entirely dependent on her.
After an eternity of jostling and sharp elbows, we came to an office with signs offering to buy and sell alien antiques.
“Here we are.” Lomax pushed open the door. A bell rang. Inside, we found a bare and utilitarian waiting area, lit by a single strip bulb and paved with the cheapest, most worn tiles of indoor grass. At the back of the room, a man watched from behind a glass panel set into the rear wall.
“What can I do for you, lovely ladies?” He had a thick, gloopy accent. His jowls hung slack and unshaven, but his deep-set eyes were narrow and calculating.
“Hello, Hagwood.”
The man blinked and rubbed his eyes in an exaggerated gesture. “Miss Lomax? Is that really you? I had given up hope…”
Lomax walked up to the glass and rapped a knuckle against it, hard enough to make him jump. “We’re here now.”
Hagwood squeezed his doughy hands together. He seemed to be having trouble keeping his tongue in his mouth.
“And have you got it?”
Lomax shrugged. “Sure, it’s in our hold.”
“Can I see it?”
She wagged a finger. “Not until you complete your side of the bargain.”
The man’s lips pressed together in distaste. “My bargain was with Moriarty.” His voice came out thin and wavering, like air blowing through an empty pipe. “Where’s Moriarty?”
“Nick’s busy. We’re going to pick him up as soon as we’ve finished here.” Lomax managed to keep her voice level, her face unreadable.
“Then I’m afraid the deal’s off.”
“No it’s not.” With a wave of her arm, she beckoned me closer. “This is Moriarty’s daughter.”
“So what?”
“She’s got Nick’s mind-map on a data crystal, and she’s got full authority to deal on his behalf.”
This was news to me. Nevertheless, I tried to look confident as I felt Hagwood’s gaze weighing and evaluating me. Finally, he gave a tight shake of his head. “No, I can’t.” His jowls wobbled. “The bargain was with Nick and nobody else.”
Lomax slapped a palm flat against the glass. “Do I have to go and get him so he can come back here and kick your ass?”
The man still wasn’t convinced. “I don’t like it.” With bitten nails, he fussed the strands of hair combed over his receding hairline. “How do I know I can trust you? People have tried to entrap me before, you know.”
Lomax reached into her pocket and pulled out a printout. She placed it against the glass so that he could squint at it. “This is a picture of the artefact.”
Hagwood leant close, his little piggy eyes gleaming.
“Interesting.” His tongue wobbled across his lips. “What does it do?”
Lomax took it down, folded it carefully, and slipped it into one of the pockets of her overalls. “I’m fucked if I know. But it’s there, and it’s yours. All you have to do is pay up.”
The man rubbed his chin. “I don’t know.”
Lomax slapped the glass again, making both Hagwood and me start.
“If you’re angling for something extra you’re wasting your time.” Her voice had all the warmth and softness of ice. “One way or another, I’m getting that thing off the ship. Either you take it or it gets dumped into the hypervoid when we leave. It’s your choice.” She crossed her arms. “Now, I know you’ve got a buyer lined up, so do you want it or not?”
For a few seconds the man gaped at her. His mouth opened and closed indignantly. Then he laughed, a big, flabby laugh. “Excellent, truly excellent.” He rubbed his hands. “You drive a hard bargain as always, my dear.”
Lomax sniffed, clearly unimpressed. “And you’re the same crook you always were, Hagwood. Now, are you going to take this off our hands or do we have to find somebody else?”
* * *
Business concluded, we wandered back out into the crowds to find my father. Hagwood had transferred more money into Lomax’s account than I’d ever seen in my life. A fortune by the standards of City Plate Two. For the first time, I began to appreciate the opportunities a ship like the Gigolo Aunt might represent.