TWENTY-SEVEN

 
 

"The fuck is going on, man?" Valdes exclaimed. "Rash, what the fuck are you doing, man?"

  "Take his weapons," Rash said, his PAP still covering Falk squarely. He allowed Falk to turn around to face him.

  "It's fucking Bloom, man, are you crazy?"

  "Disarm him right now!" Rash snapped. "Preben, help me! Come on, there are three Bloc national females in that store closet, and our buddy Bloom was talking to them in Russian. In Russian! He doesn't get to touch a weapon until we get an explanation! Okay? Okay?"

  Preben faltered, then came forward, leaving Valdes wide-eyed, with Bigmouse at the head of the stairs.

  "This is wrong," said Bigmouse. "This isn't right at all." He sounded drunk, vague, disorientated. His skin colour wasn't good. He was holding on to the top post of the grand staircase for support.

  "S'okay, Mouse," Valdes said, "It's okay. We'll deal with it, man."

  Preben came up to Falk and Rash. There was a caught in the headlights look on his too-young face.

  "Take his weapon off him, Preben," said Rash.

  "There's no need for this," Falk said. "Come on."

  "Take his weapon, and his side arm too," Rash ordered.

  "What are you doing? What is happening?" the blonde girl cried out from the closet behind them.

  "It's okay!" Falk called out to her over his shoulder. "It's all okay!"

  He stopped, saw Preben's look, Rash's expression. He heard the sound of his own voice, the words he had just spoken. Not English. Not English at all. A fluent, effortless something that could have been anything for all he knew but sounded Russian.

  "You fuck," said Preben, and wrenched the Koba out of Falk's hand.

  "No, you don't understand," Falk protested.

  "Not another word from you, Bloom," said Rash. "Not a word, until we're ready. Okay? Okay?"

  Falk nodded.

  Preben slung the Koba over his left shoulder by its strap, then pulled Falk's PDW from his holster. He also took Falk's utility knife.

  "Cover the women," Rash told Preben. "Just keep them covered. Watch the blonde bitch, she's got a blade."

  "Okay," said Preben. The women in the closet had gone quiet.

  Rash gestured with his weapon and indicated that Falk should cross into one of the crudely furnished bedrooms. He did as he was told. It was the room without the en suite. There was no other exit, and the window was a sealed unit.

  "Stay in here," Rash said.

  Falk stared at him.

  "I'll be back in a minute," said Rash.

  He backed away, the PAP 20 unwavering, and then shut the door. Alone, Falk lowered his hands. He waited for a second. He heard voices rise in protest, the women gabbling in fear as Preben took the kitchen knife and checked them for other concealeds. He could hear Rash and Preben giving them instructions, slow and overloud, in English, the women replying in terrified Russian. The blonde girl was the most strident. None of them had any real English, just a few swear words and the phrase "please do not hurt". Rash kept telling them to be quiet and to sit down. He told Preben he was going to use the closet as a holding cell for them as soon as they were certain the women weren't hiding anything more dangerous than a carving knife.

  Falk sat on the bed, listening to the two overlaid, conflicting conversations outside, two languages colliding. He understood both of them.

  He lay back on the thin, worn bedspread and closed his eyes.

  "Cleesh? Please be there. Cleesh?"

  He was fully expecting no reply when she said, "We thought you'd lost us for good."

  Her voice was skeletal and far away, but in his eyes-shut darkness, it came with the soft swell of enclosing warm water.

  "What happened?" he asked.

  "I don't know. We could hear you, but you clearly couldn't hear us. Ayoob says there was some kind of delay on the sensory reposition. Maybe a side effect of whatever the Bloc is using to scramble signals in that zone."

  "Aren't they just jamming our comms?" he asked, enjoying the serenity of the warm darkness for a moment, the sensation of his limp body and limbs supported and swaying in the lightless womb.

  "If they were jamming, how would they coordinate their own responses?" Cleesh replied. "It's a scrambling effect. Very specific, very new. Our sources say the SOMD is busting a vessel trying to find the key for it."

  "What else do the sources say, Cleesh?"

  "Not much. Big storm brewing. Lot of activity at Lasky and Thompson Ten and Broadknot Fields, several other depots. Stuff going on at the Cape too. Commercial drivers are clearing out of parking orbit. A friend of a friend says that would only happen if something freek^® ass big was inbound on an intersystem transit."

  "Something big?"

  "You know, Falk. Something US Fleet Arm spinrad big. A main battledriver."

  "There goes the neighbourhood."

  "And centuries of peace, let's not forget that."

  "What happened, Cleesh? With the language?"

  A tiny, embarrassed laugh.

  "We could hear you, Falk. Once you'd got the glares. We could hear what you were saying about the translation. We ran one for you, sent it back, but you clearly couldn't hear it. So, I figured, we could at least allow you to translate it for yourself. Anyway, I got you ling patched. Russian language. Just basic level. I thought I was helping."

  "That kind of backfired."

  "I'm sorry," she said. Invisible water lapped.

  "There is–" she said. Whatever the last word was, it turned sideways and became an unintelligible sound. A beetle click, a toad rattle.

  "What?" he asked. "What?"

  "There is good news," she said, coming back stronger and clearer.

  "Yeah?"

  "Oh yes. Ayoob thinks he can pull you out."

  "Out of the tank?" Falk asked.

  "Out of the tank, out of that guy."

  "Bloom."

  "Right. Bloom. Of course. Ayoob thinks he's worked out a, well I don't understand any of it, to be honest. Some kind of neural damper. It'll basically cushion and absorb any trauma you might suffer at disconnect. Basically, we can pull you out alive. Hooray, right?"

  "You can get me out of here?"

  "Yes, Falk. Were you not listening?"

  "What about Bloom?" Falk asked. "Will he be cushioned by the damper too? If he isn't, the trauma's likely to fuck him up completely."

  She didn't answer.

  "Cleesh? Can you still hear me?"

  "Yeah. Yes, Falk. I'm here."

  "What's the answer, Cleesh? Will Bloom be cushioned or not?"

  "We have to get you out of there, Falk. Bari knows it. The GEO lawyers accept it. We can't risk you any longer."

  "So what? Bloom gets screwed?"

  "Listen, Falk. It's not pretty. It's not ideal. We both know that. We also both knew this gig came with unassessed risks attached to it. Bloom knew it too."

  Falk sighed. "But the bottom line is if you save me and pull me out, Bloom dies of the resulting bioshock."

  "The bottom line," said Cleesh, "is that Bloom is dead anyway. I'm sorry. He's only still ticking because you're there. There's nothing left. Even if we could slide you out with zero trauma, he would fade and die without you keeping his autonomics working."

  Falk lay in silence. He opened his eyes, and stared up at the pale grey ceiling of the bedroom, the running shadow blur of the rain streaming down the window. He closed his eyes again, re-entered the darkness and the salty warm suspension of the Jung tank.

  "If I quit this life," he said quietly, "this body dies. Without me onboard to run it, Bloom is gone."

  "Falk–"

  "I'm keeping him alive. Theoretically, I could keep him alive until I find a medical station to treat him and support him, and you find a painless way to disconnect me."

  "Neither of those things is especially likely, Falk," said Cleesh, "particularly in the time frame available to us. Yes, hypothetically, if Bloom was on full and systemic life support, and we figured out how to unplug you without traumatic feedback, then he might stand a chance. But that's a gigantic might. We have to play the odds, Falk. We have to exit you."

  "No," he said.

  "Falk?"

  "You do not disconnect me unless you have my specific instruction, do you hear me, Cleesh?"

  "Don't do this, Falk–"

  "Do not fucking unplug me unless I tell you to! Okay? Okay? I'm counting on you, Cleesh! I am counting on you! Do not let them do it, not Ayoob, not Bari fucking Apfel! Do you understand?"

  "Please, Falk–"

  "Do you fucking understand me?"

  "I'll talk to them, Falk."

  "Do better than that. Do what I tell you to do."

  The bedroom door thumped open. Falk opened his eyes and sat up fast. Preben was standing in the doorway, Rash beside him.

  "Who were you talking to?" Preben asked.

  "No one."

  "Then start talking to us," said Rash, stepping past Preben into the cold bedroom. "And make it good. Really good."

  "There's been an unfortunate misunderstanding," said Falk.

  "Yeah, how's that?" asked Rash.

  "I got ling patched."

  Rash shrugged.

  "So?"

  "He did," said Preben quietly. "He got one of those language censorship things. We all took the piss because of it."

  Rash kept staring.

  "He's cussing pretty good as far as I see," he said.

  "Head shot," said Falk. "I think it fucked the patching up."

  "You're going to keep playing that card, huh?" asked Rash.

  "Only when it's true," replied Falk.

  "Fine. Explain the Russian."

  "Seriously, Rash, I understand why that did a number on you. It came as a surprise to me too."

  "Yeah, right."

  Falk rose to his feet.

  "In the wind-up to this, we all heard the gossip. We all heard the talk that the Bloc might be involved. No shit this time. So I went and got patched because I figured there would be a lot of media coverage, and I didn't want to shame my mother by turning up on a newsfeed, potty mouth. Our brave boys at war. SOMD covered the patching fee. You all saw the notices. Free patching."

  "Most of us can mind our own language," said Rash.

  "The guy who patched me," said Falk. "He said if I stuck my hand in my pocket, he could patch anything I wanted. Said I could get a basic Russian and Chinese language starter. For the price of a few beer-effects. So I took the Russian. Thought it might be useful. Hoped it wouldn't have to be. Swear to God, you guys, I'd forgotten it was even there. I'd never used it. No one had ever spoken Russian at me. I just answered. I didn't even realise what was happening until I saw your reaction."

  Preben shot a look at Rash.

  "Sounds pretty convincing," he said.

  Rash scowled.

  "Yeah. And it sounds exactly what some Bloc spy would say too," Rash replied. "We know they were deep inside us before this shit went down. We know they were in place and ready to move. Stands to reason they would've been in amongst us too."

  "Oh, come on, Rash," said Falk. "Think about it."

  "You're looking me in the eye and telling me you're not a Bloc insert?"

  "Yes, Rash. That's what I'm doing."

  "You're not a spy?"

  Harder to answer. Much harder. No way to control affect.

  "I'm not a spy," said Falk.

  "You can't even lie to me properly," said Rash. "You bastard, I can see it in you. You can't even lie."

  "Rash, don't be a dumb fuck about this," said Falk. "If I'm what you say, why would I have done any of the shit I've done this last day or so?"

  Rash didn't answer.

  "Would I have brought Kilo in shooting at the hortiplex? Would I have gone for Masry's whole insane hopter plan to get us out? If I was a Bloc insert, I'd have walked you into a hot pocket trap, or just sat on you and brought trouble your way."

  Rash stared at him, then walked out of the room. Falk looked at Preben.

  "What do you think?" Falk asked. "Is he just stepping out to get a long run up?"

  Preben grinned. He dropped the Koba onto the end of the bed. The weight of it wobbled the mattress. Then he handed Falk his PDW and utility knife.

  "You scared genuine crap out of me talking Bloc like that," he said quietly.

  "Scared the crap out of me," Falk smiled. "What did you do with those girls?"

 

They were in the walk-in closet, hunched in the far corner.

  "Come on," Falk said. "Come on out. We'll talk."

  They looked at him, sullen and unwilling.

  "It's okay," he nodded.

  They got up.

  "It's okay," he said again.

  "That's fucking freaky," Preben whispered to him. "The way you're saying that stuff."

  "I know," Falk whispered back.

  "Where do you want to take them?" asked Rash.

  "Where are Valdes and Mouse?"

  "In the main room. The lounge."

  "Let's take them back down to the annexe," said Falk. "That's where they were living. Let's offer them some food, something to drink, and make some for ourselves too. Maybe they'll talk more if they're more comfortable."

  Rash nodded. They led the three women down the hall and descended by the back staircase. The blonde was clearly the boss. She was keeping the others together, one strong lean arm locked around the shoulders of the smallest, a redhead, like she was a baby sister. The other girl, a tall, too-thin brunette, was about the same age as the blonde, and kept in her shadow, head down. The redhead still carried a little adolescent weight in her face and body. The brunette would have been a catwalk waif if she only stepped out and put her head back. The blonde just had a dense power, like a fighter.

  "What are your names?" Falk asked. There was a little fusion ring in the kitchen space of the annexe, and Preben boiled some water in a glass jug. On the counter, there was an open catering drum of coffee-effect. The girls sat on a little bench seat under the window and stared at him.

  "Names?" he repeated.

  "Ask them if they have any papers," said Rash. "IDs, brooches, documents, anything like that."

  Falk repeated the question in Russian.

  "They took them," the blonde answered, tilting her chin up to release the words, like her mouth had recoil.

  "Who did? Who took them?"

  "Popa," she said, more quietly. "Popa and the men."

  "So you had papers, but they were taken from you? And these papers showed you all to be citizens of the Central Bloc?"

  A nod.

  "With travel permits to Eighty-Six via where? One of the polar fiefs?"

  Another nod.

  "But no visa, I'm guessing, or entry waiver for the US Northern Territories? The places where the good work and the real money is?"

  She shook her head.

  "What's your name?" he asked.

  "Tal," she said.

  "Hello, Tal. Someone, this Popa maybe? They promised they could get you into US territory, didn't they? They said they could get you and your friends over the border, line you up with some work, cash in hand. In return, you had to give them your IDs."

  "Yes."

  "How much?"

  "Six hundred each. Well, four and half for Lenka, because she's younger." She indicated the redhead.

  "They said we'd make twenty times that back in a couple of months."

  "What kind of work did they describe?" asked Falk.

  "Bar work. Waitressing in a small town. ProFood, you know. Maybe farm working."

  "And what did it actually turn out to be?"

  "You know what it turned out to be," she said.

  Preben was pouring the hot water into mugs, stirring in the powder. The clink-clink of the spoon was somehow prosaic and irritating. Falk looked at Rash.

  "They were trafficked," he said. "Brought in over the border in the north, maybe down through Antrim on the highway run. A promise of summer work. But it was forced sex labour."

  Rash thought about it.

  "Here?" he asked.

  "This happen here?" Falk asked the blonde.

  "We were at another place first for a few weeks, down in the valley by the highway, a farm. Then they brought us here."

  "How long ago?"

  "Four months."

  "Why didn't they leave?" asked Rash. "Ask them that."

  "Why didn't you leave?"

  "We had no papers," said the blonde. "They didn't give us no money. We had no clothes for outdoors. We didn't know where we were. They also threaten us and beat us. Popa or one of his men were here all the time."

  "Is Popa Russian?"

  She shook her head.

  "No, he is US, like you."

  "Where is the guard now? Why are you here alone?"

  "Four days ago, the man who was here got a celf message. He left in a hurry. He said he would be back in three hours, he said we had to stay here and there would be big trouble if we didn't stay here. He said Popa would find us, and cut our faces. But he never came back, and no one ever came back. And we didn't know what to do."

  "So you hid?"

  She nodded.

  Falk told Preben and Rash what she'd said.

  "I've seen this kind of thing before," said Rash. "On Eighty. Migrants looking for work, trying to stay off the grid. No one misses them. I haven't seen it with Bloc nationals before, but it doesn't surprise me. They answer an ad, talk to some guy in a bar, next thing they know, they're a prisoner somewhere."

  "Come on, they could just walk out. Run away," said Preben.

  "Out here?" asked Rash. "This kind of edge is perfect. No one around for miles. Through traffic, mostly men. No questions. The drivers who come to the depot, the seasonal field workers? They want a beer-effect, a bed and a fuck. It's economics. Supply and demand."

  "That old frontier spirit," said Falk. "Sweat and toil and rough justice. Good old-fashioned values."

  "You don't think this is about girls, do you?" asked Preben.

  "Think what is about girls?" asked Falk.

  "This war," he replied. "You don't think the Bloc has come in mob-handed because a bunch of settlementeer farmers have got hold of some girls?"

  "You're a fucktard sometimes, Preben," said Falk. "This is just normal shit that happens. The Bloc doesn't care about these women any more than the US does. They're victim statistics."

  "There is a connection, though," said Rash. "The frontier between us and the fief is clearly pretty porous, at least in terms of the black market. It suggests pipeline routes that could be used to get other people over the line. The inserts. The Bloc forces were embedded in the region, waiting to go live. It's probably how they got in."

  Falk nodded.

  They established that the girls were called Milla, Lenka and Tal. Milla was the tall brunette. Lenka, the baby sister, didn't seem to want to do anything except cry without making a sound.

  Falk took a coffee-effect and sat talking to Tal in the kitchenette for a while.

  "Do you know what this place is?"

  "Popa said it was going to be a house for an important man. This man, he had put a claim in for the whole area, for the land, and had gone ahead and started building. But the claim had been turned down, or something. So the building was left. The man was very cross."

  "Do you know the man's name?"

  She shook her head.

  "I was never told, but we saw some documents when we first came here, and they had a name on that was Seberg."

  "They used the house because it was empty?"

  "Because it was empty, and it had some class. Popa said he could get more money bringing men to a better venue. I think the man who owned this house, he had been in business with Popa, and with the men on our side who had sold us over. They all worked in mining, and in shipping."

  "So the men who came here, they were drivers? From the highway? Farmers?"

  "Some, but most were miners. Mining engineers. You know? Prospectors. They were working in the area. They came in for a month or two at a time."

  "Bloc citizens?"

  "Yes, and also US. From both sides."

  Falk listened to the rain on the skylights.

  "They bring in other girls with you?"

  "I've seen some," she said. "Some brought in at other times. They didn't keep us all together."

  Falk took out his glares, zipped through the playback, froze on a decent frame and handed them to her to put on.

  "Do you recognise her?" he asked.

  She looked strange with her head up and the glares on, as if staring at something invisible in front of her face.

  "I don't know her," she said.

  "Okay."

  "But I recognise the man with her."

  "You do?" he asked.

  Tal nodded and handed the glares back.

  "He came here sometimes. He was a customer."

  Falk put the glares on and looked at the frozen image he'd shown her. A moment from Smitts's clip. The girl who had shot him and a big dark-haired man, crouching together in the open hatch of Pika-don, backlit by fierce white light. A second later, they would get up and come towards the camera.

  "Definitely him?"

  "Yes."

  "Know his name?"

  "No."

  "Was he Bloc or US?"

  "He was Bloc," said Tal, "but he pretend to be US. His accent was good, but I did not think it was that good. It was like yours. I could tell it was fake."

  "He was ling patched."

  "What is that?" she asked.

  He shook his head as though it didn't matter. "So he was made to sound US."

  "I heard Popa call him a business associate. I heard someone else say he worked on local farm. His hands smelled of plant food. Not nice."

  "What was it Popa did? Do you know? Apart from running girls, I mean?"

  "Popa said he worked at fuel depot. He work for RP."

  She looked at him.

  "You asked me about the girl first," she said. "Why?"

  "She shot me."

  "She shot you?" Her voice was tinged with disbelief.

  "This is a bullet hole," he said, pointing at his face.

  She leaned towards him, squinting, staring at the wound.

  "A bullet went in there?"

  "Yeah."

  "How are you living still?"

  "Beats the hell out of me."

  She peered even closer, fascinated. "It hurts you?"

  "Yes," he said. "Don't touch it."

  She pulled back sharply.

  "I wasn't going to," she said. "I don't touch a man again."

  She got up and walked towards the counter.

  "Do you want another drink?" she asked. "I want another drink."

  "I'm fine," said Falk.

  "What is happening here?" she asked. "We heard bombs earlier. And then this hopter came in very close."

  "There's a war," said Falk. "And it's started for real."

 

Falk went out into the spacious living room. Valdes was napping on one of the plastic-wrapped couches. Bigmouse was sitting back on another. He looked asleep too, but he was stiff and awkward, and his skin was waxy. Falk knelt beside him, trying not to disturb him. His breathing was shallow and laboured, and when Falk listened close, he could hear an unpleasant crackling sound deep in his chest.

  It was beginning to get dark outside, and the rain cover was steeping the advancing gloom. Outside, in the twilight, he could see Rash and Preben walking the edge of the house perimeter, looking down the valley at the highway area.

  In the kitchenette of the annexe, Milla had lit a candle in a cup.

  "Keep it away from the windows," he told her. Tal was asleep on the bench, with Lenka curled up on the seat beside her, her head in Tal's lap. Falk walked through into the small, scruffy bedroom they shared, and pulled the door closed behind him.

  "Cleesh?" he said, quietly.

  There was no reply.

  "Cleesh?"

  This time, there were a few sideways sounds, beetle clicks, amphibious burblings.

  "Cleesh?"

  He sat down on the unmade bed. The girls had presumably shared the bed for warmth. Things had accumulated around and under it: candle stubs, food wrappers, a few dirty clothes. There were books too, colourful picture books taken, he presumed, from the child's bedroom upstairs. He picked one of them up. He hadn't seen any other books in the house, but he presumed the girls had chosen it because it didn't have the impenetrable slabs of English-language text a novel might contain. Simple bold captions in block type ran across attractive and arresting photographs.

  Our Great Adventure it said on the cover. The words were superimposed on an image of a man in a First Era space suit, performing an EVA, free-floating beside a capsule in near-Earth orbit. The Earth was partly reflected in the oversized, gold-tinted dome of his helmet. He looked helpless, adrift, like a bloated dead man floating in a rip tide. The red acronym of his launch agency was embossed across the chest plate of his obese, snow-white suit. The shadows were hard, the light was hard, there was a lack of diffusion, a kind of purity.

  Inside, the words and pictures told a simple version of the first milestones of post-terrestrial expansion. The Space Race. Falk had forgotten it had ever been called that. Such a glib thing to call it, so cheerful and optimistic. As he understood it, there had been no gentlemanly fair play. Just three global superpowers locked in a ruthless, often reckless, competition to establish domains beyond the terrestrial limits. Two of them, the US and the Bloc, had essentially used the First Era to pursue and expand their Cold War rivalry through technological superiority and brash endeavour.

  There were the great moments he remembered from his own childhood picture books, the building blocks that had led to the real acceleration into the First Expansion. Vostok and Gemini. Glenn and Leonov. Shepherd and Gagarin. The Soyuz, Apollo and Long March programmes. The launches. The orbits. The spacewalks and the launch pad fires. The most memorable shot of all, the indelible image of the first man on the moon. Virgil Grissom, June 1967.

  "Falk?"

  He started, dropped the book.

  "Cleesh? Where did you go?"

  "Same problem as before, sorry," she said.

  He closed his eyes, slipped into the darkness to make listening easier.

  "I've got a little info for you," she said. "I've been listening. Sorry. Hard not to. I've located you on the SO land registry. Pretty sure I have, anyway. There was a Grayson Seberg working for Resource Provision here on Eighty-Six. He was an operations director. When the coast sections and Gunbelt Highway range opened up for development, he lodged about four hundred private purchase bids for land parcels in the area."

  "That's a lot."

  "It is, though it's not unusual for a senior exec who's close to retirement and wants to invest heavily in a developing settlement. Seberg was part of a little cartel, in fact. Private speculators, several of them with backgrounds in mineralogy and earth science. I think those thirty years spent working for RP in a developing market like this showed him the smart investments were mineral rights and mining infrastructure. He took his retirement fund from RP, and chose the Gunbelt Range. Set up a little company called Ocean Exploratory."

  "This house?"

  "A retirement place. A family estate close to the bulk of his investments."

  Falk sighed. Water lapped.

  "And then?"

  "Until about two years ago, things were clearly going well for Ocean Exploratory. They were developing relationships with several large corporate entities, both US and Bloc, probably looking for the right tender to set up a coventure and start to exploit the land Seberg and his partners had secured."

  "So playing both sides?"

  "Nothing unusual there, either. Seberg was feeling out Bloc and US mining companies alike, surveyors, extraction engineering firms. His company was also talking to two Chinese processing consortia. They were auditioning for the best partners to get into business with."

  Falk lay back on the dirty bed, listening to her voice.

  "Two years ago," Cleesh said, "the trouble started. Small stuff at first. Several pieces in the Shaverton newsfeeds claiming Seberg had used propriatorial data acquired during his years at RP to inform his choice of territories. RP and two of the big US mining companies up at Marblehead were going to sue him for abuse of privileged information. Seberg went on record and said it was hard to stick a pin in a map of Eighty-Six and not strike something worth mining, and he was simply embodying the settlementeer ideal of entrepreneurial yadda yadda. But then it all gets weird."

  "By which you mean…?"

  "It all goes quiet. Ocean Exploratory shuts shop. Seberg disappears from the picture, and all the development in that area comes to a halt. If you lift the lid and inspect the records, like I just did, you can see why. The SO stepped in. First they accused Seberg and Ocean of developing parcels before formal approval and permissions had been granted or ownership formally transferred. Then they slapped a Strategic Development Order on the whole lot."

  "Harsh. What do we read from that?"

  "What would you read, Falk?" she asked.

  He shrugged.

  "The US bias on Eighty-Six is particularly obvious. Maybe Seberg was getting too friendly with a Bloc partner and various US rivals didn't like it."

  "That sounds credible, right?"

  "Well, there would be a lot at stake," he replied. "Trillions, perhaps, long term, from extraction? Depends what he had here. A couple of big US corps think they're going to lose out, apply a little pressure to the SO, which then comes down on Seberg. I suppose if Seberg and his partners hadn't filed their claims impeccably, the SO might have found some technicality to exploit, and turned that into grounds to formally disallow all of Seberg's pending bids."

  "Which, on top of everything else, would leave a bunch of very disgruntled Central Bloc partners north of the border, grieving over their ruined deal and failed investment."

  "Indeed it would," he said.

  "It's a serious story," said Cleesh.

  "It's a major, major story," Falk replied. "Are you kidding? The SO displaying blatant bias and using its powers and influence to favour US interests, and in so doing light off the first ever post-global war? Our names will look very good on the awards."

  "They will. Bari says–"

  "Listen, Cleesh. I think we have to tread very carefully here. Bari is GEO, and GEO is not without a vested interest. Can he hear me saying this?"

  "No."

  "It's true. GEO is very much a US corporation."

  "Agreed, except that GEO is a principal investor in the Eighty-Six settlement, and has been since the early days, and has no particular interest in a mining remit. Even if the SO's bias was pro-US, a war on Eighty-Six is going to hurt GEO in fundamental ways. Bari wants this out there as much as we do. If it can do anything to break the deadlock and bring this conflict back from the brink, we have his full support."

  There was a distant thump, a hollow sound. Someone had knocked against the outside of the Jung tank, and the kettle drum echo had rolled through the water to him.

  "It would be very useful to get some hard evidence this end," he said.

  "What are you thinking?" she asked. "I'm filling some pretty fat files here. Seberg. Ocean Exploratory. The parcel bids. The business courtships. The Strategic Significance Order."

  "Yeah, but that'll be official record. The SO and the favoured corps will have covered anything untoward very carefully. We'd need contract lawyers to comb the evidence, and even if we did find an irregularity, it would probably be some very subtle thing that lacked any newsweight."

  "I can get a team on it," she replied. "Bari can bring in some specialists."

  "Hold off for now. It will sell better if we retain an independent firm to do the searches. GEO's thumbprint would not be helpful."

  "Well, gee, Falk, I don't know what a hotshot like you has got in the bank," she said, "but I can't afford that kind of retainer. We need Bari for this."

  "No, we need an outlet. We need to decide how we're going to break this story and handle it. That means a really respectable agency or network. Give it some thought. Between us, we've got plenty of links."

  Someone gently banged against the metal tube of his tank again.

  "So the evidence your end?" she asked.

  "I don't know. It would be useful to know if a specific or unusual deposit was at the root of the dispute. It would be good to find Seberg or any of his partners."

  "Oh, about that," she said. "It may not be much, but the employment records for the Eyeburn depot listed an asset manager called Reed Popper. That's double-pee-ee-are. He'd been there two years and was still listed at the time the place went silent."

  "He was RP?"

  "No, he was a contractor, but he was paid through RP. I was wondering if he was your 'Popa'. Right place, right time, probably knew Seberg."

  "Probably."

  "I tracked him back, and let's just say his identity record is not great. It's not entirely clear who Reed Popper is, where he came from, or when he arrived on Eighty-Six."

  "See what you can do to track down Seberg or any of his key associates," said Falk. "The real prize, I suppose, would be proof that a US corp is exploiting any of the resources that Seberg claimed in this area."

  "Because they shouldn't be?"

  "Exactly because they shouldn't be. The SO snatched all the land rights away from Ocean. Do we know the grounds of the Strategic Significance Order?"

  "They're not obliged to disclose the terms," Cleesh replied. "I'll go through it closely to see if there are any hints. It's usually either to protect the security of a sovereign state, or it's about protecting an area of singular scientific interest or an exceptional natural environment."

  "Right, so technically, all the parcels should have reverted to SO protection. Like they did with the western veldt on Seventy-Seven? The habitat of those herding grazers?"

  "Yeah. And like that bulk refinery the Chinese tried to build on that island off the Bloc settlement on Twenty-Six. That whole fuss, Falk, remember?"

  "I do. So, if there's a commercial US operator or operators at work anywhere on what used to be Ocean holdings, even in a preliminary fashion, it's smoking-gun evidence that the SO strong-armed commercial competitors out of the way, cleared the region and let US national interests in through a back door. It would be primary evidence of prejudicial misconduct."

  "In that case I lay real money it's connected to the Heligo thing," said Cleesh.

  "The thing on the clip?"

  "Yeah. You've run the clip since I patched you, right?"

  "No, I–"

  "Freek^®, Falk! Get in the game! The translation I got off your sound-for-sound version pretty much makes it clear that Heligo is the thing. Whatever Heligo is."

  "Shit. Okay. I'm going to play it back now and–"

  The booming came again. Somebody kicking the outside of the tank.

  "Nes! Nestor!"

  Falk scrambled up, eyes open. Valdes blundered into the bedroom, urgent.

  "You gotta come, man! You gotta see!"