4

Marc Keislack sat at the circular table by the window, fiddling with his napkin while glancing around – and underneath – the restaurant. It was suspended above the centre of Berlin, held up by a slim tower built from fullerene in the shape of a sweeping number 7. The restaurant – an elegant oval structure like a flattened Christmas bauble – hung underneath the far end of the upper bar of the 7. It was an impossible structure – the centre of gravity was in completely the wrong place and the fullerene, incredibly strong though it was, couldn’t possibly take the weight of the restaurant bubble without snapping in several places. The whole thing should have come crashing down on the envious Berlin restaurant district below. The only thing keeping it up was the same thing that was keeping the Arc de Triomphe suspended a few metres above the Parisian traffic – alien updown-field generator technology. Alternatively, if you believed the adverts, it was the genius of the chef.

The restaurant’s floor was transparent, as were the tables. Sitting at one was like taking part in a majestic magic trick. Sparse wisps of cloud floated past underneath and sometimes, when Berlin was bound in fog, the restaurant seemed to float on a milky sea. Whatever the weather outside, a trip to the restrooms could be a trial of nerves. There was no elevator up to the restaurant – that would have ruined the exclusivity – as the fullerene tower was too slim and curved to take a shaft. Instead jitneys transported customers up and down, like diaphanous dandelion seeds floating on the breeze.

The restaurant had no name. Most Berliners just called it ‘7’. It was the first time Marc had been. Despite his success, he’d never been able to afford it – and his agent had never taken him there. It didn’t do, Darla said, for artists to mingle with their potential patrons. Respectful distance had to be kept. In other words, he shouldn’t tout for sales behind her back.

He tore his gaze away from the glowing lights of the traffic so very far below and looked down at his napkin. Without thinking he had folded it into a fair representation of the tower and the restaurant. He tried standing it upright, but it wasn’t stable and kept falling over, which only made the tension in his stomach worse.

A waiter drifted up beside him. “Another drink, sir?”

“Please.”

“Saffron gin, rare phenotype, with high-quinine tonic, Sicilian lemon and Svalbard ice?” Not his own memory, but that of the waiter’s avatar.

“Yes. Thank you.”

The waiter left. Before Marc could disassemble his cotton sculpture and start on something else, a voice from behind him said: “Very nice. Do you also do unicorns?”

He turned his head. A woman was standing over him. She was tall, with the kind of rangy body that belonged on an athletics track. Her dark hair was long, pulled back from her forehead. Her green eyes stared at him appraisingly. She didn’t seem to be having a problem walking on what for all practical purposes was thin air.

Anson Greenaway stood beside her, the man’s double-lapelled suit as immaculate as the last time Marc had seen him. The faintly exasperated expression on his face suggested that he’d wanted to get to the table first, but the woman had beaten him to it. That, and her mocking comment, suggested to Marc that she was competitive. It matched her body shape very well, as did the business suit she wore. It was obviously bespoke, Marc noted, and Milan cut. So she had both money and taste, whoever she was. Not really his type. “Napkin origami is just a hobby,” he said, staring back at her. “If I was doing a unicorn I’d take genetic material from an Arab thoroughbred, adjust the genes controlling skull shape, inject it into a cell nucleus and get the cell to reproduce.”

She smiled, tightly. “You’re Keislack, then. The artist.” The words “and arrogant bastard” were possibly not far from her lips.

“And this is Kara Jones, the soldier,” Greenaway said, pulling out a chair for her. Kara walked around the table and sat down in a different seat. Greenaway slid a chair back and sat down. A waiter appeared at his elbow. Marc had a fleeting sense of having walked into a well-rehearsed play.

“Mr Greenaway – a pleasure to see you again,” the waiter said. “Your usual?”

Greenaway nodded. “And a Cairngorm Sparkle for the lady.”

“Actually,” she said, smiling sweetly, “I’ll have a glass of Bombino nero rose, if you have any.” It was imported, Marc knew, from an early settled planet in the Pleiades and exorbitantly expensive.

“Of course we do.” The waiter sounded offended.

Greenaway glanced from Marc to Kara and back again. His lips twisted slightly. He seemed to be finding the contrast between the two of them amusing. “Thank you for turning up,” he said to Marc. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

“Yes you were,” Marc said, feeling a slight burn of irritation. “You told me half a story and left it hanging.” He glanced at Kara. “Artists,” he said, shrugging. “We can’t see a stone without looking under it. Besides, he bought me a ticket. First class.”

Marc wondered if Greenaway had told her the real reason he’d been unable to refuse the job, but he decided he hadn’t. Greenaway would never share a hold he had over someone.

“An Eridani followed Marc for three weeks,” Greenaway told Kara. She looked impressed, but Marc wasn’t sure whether it was real or simulated for his benefit. “The alien left Earth with five Keislack works, thus making Marc the latest best thing in the art world. Since then the Cancri have also bought Marc’s work, providing Earth with technology that’s still being evaluated but looks incredibly valuable.” Greenaway placed a small metal box on the table; Marc recognised it from his time in the Out: a device that would shield them from electronic surveillance. “And Kara here has killed a Gliese,” he said without changing his tone of voice, “which means that you’ve both stiffed an alien.” He smiled without humour. “That’s all you need to know about each other. For the moment.”

Marc sipped his gin and tonic. Part of him wanted to get up and leave, suspecting the man was toying with them and enjoying it. But what Marc had said to Kara was true: he desperately needed to discover the end of the story. Leave now, and he never would. And while Kara was attractive, there was also a sense that she was very dangerous. Marc was intrigued.

“So what are the Eridani like?” Kara asked him. “They don’t seem to make it onto the news very much. I’ve never seen one.”

“They’re long, like snakes,” Marc explained, “but their bodies are segmented rather than smooth. A bit like really thick bamboo. Each segment has a tentacle halfway down, and each tentacle ends in a three-fingered claw-thing. If you look at them head-on you see that the tentacles are in a spiral pattern, each segment offset from the one before and the one after.” He made a face. “Of course, you don’t want to look at them head-on, because their heads are like open wounds full of white worms, but you can get used to them surprisingly quickly. They prefer forests and woods to buildings – those tentacles are optimised for grasping branches and hanging on, while the bodies are optimised for slipping through gaps in vegetation. That’s my theory, by the way – not the official one. They smell like bolognese sauce for some reason.”

“Everything smells of something else,” Kara said. Her gaze dropped to the table in front of him, and Marc realised that he had been fiddling with his napkin again, twisting it into new shapes. He glanced down, expecting to see that he had made something approximating an Eridani, but instead he had unconsciously fashioned the napkin into the shape of her face: high brow, angular cheeks, hollows for the eyes. He smoothed it out quickly, embarrassed. He was relieved when Kara asked, “Did it show any interest in you? Personally?”

“Just my work. It wouldn’t get all that close to me,” Marc said. “And I wasn’t fussed.”

Greenaway sipped at his drink, a vintage rye whisky with Antarctic ice. He placed the glass down on the table, making an audible clunk, either trying to attract their attention or misjudging the transparent table. “Listen. You’ve both been given enough of the story to pique your interest,” he said briskly. “That will now change. What I am about to tell you is only known to fifty other people. If either of you repeat this – and we will find out if you do – both of you will be encased in transparent plastic cubes, exactly one metre on each side. You’ll need to be folded up, of course. Each cube will have two shafts – one for breathing and feeding and one for shitting and pissing, and you’ll be filed away on a shelf until we can trade you to an alien.” His tone was the same one he might have used to discuss the weather. “Therefore you both have an interest in seeing that the other behaves. This is not a threat. It is a prediction and a warning. Please heed it.”

Marc felt a chill run through his body. He saw that Kara’s mouth was set in a stony half-smile and realised it wasn’t the first time she’d been threatened. “I’m still in.”

Greenaway nodded slightly. No value in reminding Marc he’d long passed the point of no return. “You obviously know there are three types of the Gliese netherspace drive – small, medium and large. “We’ve discovered a fourth size – micro, fitted inside the larger drives. So if someone manages to take a netherspace drive apart, it’s empty – the micro-unit inside slips away into warp space, taking the guts of the drive plus the updown-field generator with it.” He shrugged. “That’s probably how the Gliese know when a drive has broken – the micro-drive heads back to what I laughingly think of as Gliese Head Office. We have no idea how they then find the SUT.”

“And how do we know this?” Kara asked, her expression guarded.

“That’s need to know. Suffice to say, we do.”

“And who is ‘we’?” Marc said, doubting he’d get an honest answer.

“‘We’ is ‘us’. To be precise, GalDiv, on behalf of humanity.” Greenaway paused. “And one day the rest of humanity might even know about it too.”

“So the Gliese don’t trade micro-units.” Kara frowned. “Holding them back until the marketplace is ready, maybe…” She nodded. “Yes, of course.”

Marc glanced from her to Greenaway and back. “I’m missing something. Don’t treat me like the village idiot. Explain.”

“It’s all about communications,” Kara said. “It’s a cliché that whoever controls them controls society. Same applies to empires, so why not off-world colonies? Small netherspace drives can be used to send messages back and forth between planets, like carrier pigeons. Conversations can be had – clumsily, perhaps, but still conversations.” She glanced sharply at Greenaway. “I assume the micro n-drives are a lot faster than the larger ones, and don’t need to keep popping in and out of netherspace to correct their errors.”

He nodded. “Point and shoot,” he said. “We assume.”

“Okay – the Gliese or whoever don’t want us to have easy communications. Why? Because this way, if we get a bit too belligerent, if we look like we’re posing a threat to whatever galactic society is out there, then they can run rings around us. They’re holding back their advantage.”

“That’s certainly our reading of the situation.” Greenaway swirled his drink thoughtfully. “Of course, when we say ‘galactic society’ there’s probably no such thing – perhaps only a group of different aliens in a great conference chamber on a neutral world somewhere, staring at each other. There’s no reason to believe they can communicate with each other any better than with us. And when we say ‘threat’, we don’t know what they would consider threatening. Or what would provoke them. The bottom line is they seem to be deliberately holding back the one thing we need to communicate effectively between worlds. We don’t even know if they possess a version of our military systems or weapons, although we have to assume they do.”

“There’s another thing,” Marc said as the thought struck him. “It’s also about empires.” Kara glanced at him with interest. “You can’t build an empire if it takes weeks to get a message back and forth. What you get is individual fiefdoms, self-governing, like the old British Empire. They may pay lip-service to a central authority, but in reality they’re pretty much on their own. Every colony world ends up with its own government, laws and ethical framework. Humanity is scattered and that has to suit the Gliese – and the others.” He paused in thought and then, “And this micro-drive would make the galactic economy easier too, right?”

Every city state, every colony world had its own currency. Some colony worlds were absurdly rich in commodities – gold, platinum, precious jewels, rare earths – that on others could be used instead of money. It was a formula for chaos and war, solved when GalDiv developed virtscrip. The virt stood for “virtual”, as in not physically real, similar to the bitcoins that had caused so much trouble fifty years before. Although some happy souls believed that ‘virt’ stood for virtuous, as in a currency that you could really trust. All galactic trade was conducted in virtscrip, and GalDiv’s massive AIs decided the rate of exchange between virtscrip and all other currencies three times a year. GalDiv also acted as the bank of last resort and policed every other bank in human space, something only an AI with imagination could achieve. The result was fewer, if any, major banking scandals. Many bankers complained bitterly about this denial of their right to become obscenely rich, but virtscrip was here to stay.

Greenaway shook his head. “Not necessarily. Too much information instantly available caused many of the financial disasters before the aliens came and the system fell apart. Your comparison with the British Empire is a good one. No colony world is more than three weeks from Earth. So the most they are is six weeks from each other. That’s close enough to trade and feel part of something. But far enough away to prevent them conspiring… which they do, but it’s relatively simple for GalDiv to monitor and control. Otherwise, I agree that the Gliese want us fragmented throughout space. Although that’s assuming Gliese and humans ever think the same way, which can’t be proven. It’s more practical to ignore their motives and simply react to their actions.”

“You told me you’d lost something,” Marc prompted, moving thoughts of his distant family to the back of his mind. “What’s that got to do with the micro n-drives?”

“Good question,” Greenaway said.

NINETEEN DAYS EARLIER

Two elderly Pilgrims had died, gone to sleep and never woken up, their bodies put into the waste disposal tubs. An hour later they’d vanished. There were now one hundred and forty-six surviving Pilgrims plus three staff. Tatia wondered if the two had died because they had no reason to go on living. Their dream of dwelling in harmony with their gods shown to be fantasy. She said nothing, however, even when the SUT’s staff talked of escape. One, an assistant mechanic, suggested jumping a Cancri to get hold of its weapon. Except no one knew how the weapon worked, only that it did… and the Cancri killed anyone who came within two metres of them, even a man who’d wanted to greet his gods.

No one wanted to talk to Tatia except a black-haired, twelve-year-old boy called Pablo. His father had died on the SUT, the Pilgrim killed with Juan when the Cancri boarded. The other Pilgrims, consumed by their own misery, had little time for him. He had no one other than the Consort of Juan, Understander of the Gods.

Thirty-eight hours later one of the walls began to slide upwards, accompanied by the terrified screams of people convinced they were about to be expelled into space. Instead of an inky blackness the hold was flooded with the fierce light of a blue-white sun and a dusty and spicy-smelling heat. The SUT had landed on a stony desert that stretched away to the horizon. Two lines of Cancri, maybe fifty in all, formed a corridor between the SUT and a series of low rounded buildings a hundred or so metres away. It was obvious what was expected of them but several prisoners had to be forcibly persuaded to go outside. The more resourceful Pilgrims carried the rest of the water and vegetables because you never knew.

Tatia stepped onto alien soil, even more convinced the true gods would soon release them. Pablo held her hand as they walked past the Cancri guards towards the low, curved buildings.

“Don’t worry,” she reassured him, “no one else is going to die.”

Her robe turned black.

* * *

Greenaway paused, marshalling his thoughts. “A migration space utility transport left Earth twenty-one days ago. One of those ‘aliens-are-gods religions’ – the Pilgrims of the Divine Order.” There was contempt in his voice. “They headed for a planet in the Upsilon Andromedae binary system, which had been surveyed and prepared with the usual self-inflating buildings, cold-fusion generators, food synthesisers and a couple of hundred crates of seeds genetically modified to survive local conditions. An entire planet for a church, uncorrupted by non-believers so that more and more aliens would come to walk – or slither or crawl – amongst them. They were going to call the planet ‘Truth’. Even so, it was a serious migration and they had weapons.”

“They didn’t survive?” Kara asked. “What happened? The colony vanished – wiped out by something unidentified on the planet?”

“They never reached the planet. Details are sketchy, but their SUT – its trifecta code was LUX-WEM-YIB – popped out of netherspace to check its location and recalibrate its drive, as normal. Seconds later an alien craft came alongside and latched on with a universal airlock. The exterior was burned through and the SUT invaded. Some of the Pilgrims were taken onto the alien SUT. The LUX-WEM-YIB was left drifting between star systems.”

“You had someone on board,” Kara guessed.

“We have a couple of people on each migration SUT that leaves Earth, and on most of the SUTs that leave established colonies to set up new ones. They keep us informed about what’s going on. We’re not being paranoid but—”

“As if,” Kara said.

“— but we like to keep tabs. We don’t really care about ideological purity any more. We just want to know about any interesting alien trades.”

“You recovered the LUX-WEM-YIB, of course,” Kara said.

Greenaway nodded. “Empty except for a few dead bodies. The SUT’s AI was traumatised so we barely know what happened.”

“Traumatised?” Kara queried.

“Which aliens did it?” Marc asked at the same time.

“The Cancri. The LUX-WEM-YIB’s AI tried to link to the Cancri computer system. Now all it shows is a chaos of flashing colours or scenes of the attack. It went mad. We’ve seen Cancri on Earth, but not as many as the Gliese and the Eridani.”

“Small,” Marc recalled, frowning. “There are two different creatures, always seen together. Nobody is quite sure which one is the Cancri – maybe they both are. One is about the size of a baby but with hook-like grippers. No obvious eyes. Pale white, and soft.” His voice held the slightest tremor. Kara wondered why the sudden tension. “They ride around on things like greyhounds with very long, thin legs and a pair of arms growing out of their necks. The two of them are supposed to be an example of a symbiotic relationship – two creatures working together, each providing a benefit to the other. The small white things get mobility. Nobody has been able to work out what the greyhound creatures get. Nobody knows how they communicate between themselves, either. Telepathy has been suggested, as has pheromones and thin nerve fibres growing out of the rider’s grippers. The jury is out.” He saw Kara looking at him curiously. “Aliens intrigue me.”

She half nodded then turned to Greenaway. “The migrants didn’t fight back? You said they had weapons.”

“They did. Locked away in the SUT’s hold. The staff didn’t manage to reach them in time.” Greenaway appeared to respond to the disdain in her eyes. “They weren’t explorers, Kara. Glorified bus drivers, really.”

“So the Cancri have kidnapped all these migrants and staff,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact. “You don’t know why or where they are but you expect us to find out.”

“There’s more,” Greenaway said calmly. “Nine days ago a Cancri space vehicle arrived on Earth. Most of the occupants went off in various directions, but one of them went up to the escorting guards and handed over a sheet of plastic. An image was printed on the plastic – ten captured migrants looking very scared. Behind them a group of Cancri pointed some sort of weapon at their heads.”

“Weapon?” Kara said. “Are you sure?”

Greenaway frowned at the interruption. “When the guard took the plastic, the heat of his hand activated a few seconds of moving image. Two Cancri pull one of the migrants out of line, force him to kneel, and point the weapon – a gun-like object – at him. His head explodes. He looks to be about twelve years old.” Greenaway glanced at Kara, then at Marc, and his face was suddenly sombre. “What we appear to have is a hostage situation, and a ransom demand, but we have no idea what the Cancri want. We can’t ask them, and they can’t tell us. How can we negotiate when communication is impossible?”

“But they are communicating,” Marc said, surprising himself. “And they’re showing an awareness of our culture.”

Kara got it. “You mean the violence?”

He nodded. “An accepted part of human interaction. Even good guys kill. Death as part of a trade.” He looked at Greenaway. “I suppose there’s a plan?”

“First, remember what I said about security. It’s aliens that keep GalDiv influential. No GalDiv, no EarthCent, and the world descends into a mess of warring city states. No more netherspace drives, so the off-Earth settlements would be on their own.”

“Correction,” Marc interjected. “There’s nothing to stop the colonies dealing with aliens direct. I’m sure they already do. You’re only worried about Earth and its influence?”

Greenaway didn’t bother to deny it. “Earth is also what keeps the colony worlds together. But you missed something. Earth’s economy depends on aliens. The public only see the half of it. Most recent advances in electronics, plastics, even manufacturing and chemical engineering have come from an alien trade. We don’t do our own research any more. Without external stimuli the Earth goes stale. Do you understand?”

Marc nodded. Even if people believed aliens were infantilising humanity, life without them would be chaos.

“You asked about a plan,” Greenaway said. “That’s why you’re here. Congratulations – you are now GalDiv’s official alien hostage negotiation team. You’ll go to the Cancri homeworld – if that’s where the hostages have been taken – and find out what the hell they want.”

Marc glanced at Kara’s expressionless face. She was clearly good at hiding her emotions. “Otherwise it’s the shelf?”

“If you’re lucky you might be near a window,” Greenaway agreed. “But I forgot to mention,” – it was obvious that he hadn’t – “on the reverse of the Cancri’s plastic sheet was an image of one of your artworks, Marc. Could be the Cancri equivalent of a postcard, but we’re assuming they want you involved.”

Kara obviously couldn’t resist it. “They could be asking for their money back. Or the death of the artist.”

“Ha fucking ha,” Marc said sourly. “Which artwork?”

“The one with those colour-changing organisms moving in the shape of a Klein bottle,” Greenaway replied. “Kara might be right.”

Marc bit back an angry retort. This had to be military-style humour; his biggest mistake would be to overreact. “Yeah, right, blame the poor bloody artist,” he said sarcastically. “But it’s a strange way to recruit someone. As in me.”

“You’re right,” Greenaway agreed. “Please, Mr Keislack, will you help Earth in this time of our need? You will? Good.”

Kara smiled sweetly. “We’re both press-ganged.”

“So what’s your special skill?” Marc suspected he already knew. Kara was obviously the soldier in the mission.

“Kara has a unique ability to empathise with aliens,” Greenaway said. “She’s also a highly skilled sniper. If anyone can keep you alive, Kara can.” He paused and smiled. “It’s why she’s in charge.”

Greenaway looked out at Berlin. “We leave in forty minutes. I suggest you have something to eat.”

“Where are we going?” Marc asked. He felt comfortable with the idea of Kara being in charge – as long as she didn’t tell him what to do all the time.

“You need to be integrated as a team.”

“Team?”

Kara touched his arm. “We get told only what we need to know at this stage. Get used to it. It’s how high-security operations work.” She seemed amused.

“I am not a damn soldier,” Marc said angrily.

“Actually, you are,” Greenaway said. “You signed citizenship papers with Bristol, correct? You patent or copyright your artworks there. You bank there. In an emergency you can be called upon to help defend the city, correct?”

“That last is so much—”

“But still legal,” Greenaway rode over him. “And GalDiv has a legal agreement with the City of Bristol – as we do with all other city states, worldwide. Kara said you’ve been press-ganged. In fact, you’ve been drafted.”

Marc heard himself echo the cry of the drafted throughout the ages. “Why me?” It was more of a protest than a question because he knew why. He saw Kara and Greenaway exchange the briefest of glances and realised they belonged to the same exclusive military club; he’d always be the civilian outsider. “So, sensitive trained killer and insensitive artist. Aren’t we a pair?”

“Not yet,” Kara said. “But soon. I can’t wait.”

Marc wondered what she meant but wasn’t going to ask. Besides he was confused by two unfamiliar emotions: a sense of being useful, above and beyond making his agent rich; and the hope that perhaps, one day, his long-gone family would be proud of him. Assuming they were still alive. He looked at Greenaway. “So how do we know where to go? Did the Cancri leave a map?”

Greenaway signalled the waiter to bring menus. “Later. Now eat.”

“I’ve got one more question,” Marc said. “You’ll probably think it’s stupid.”

“Probably,” Greenaway said. “But don’t let that stop you.”

“Okay. You say ‘netherspace’. I’ve heard it called ‘subspace’ and ‘underspace’. Even just ‘below’. Why can’t you make up your minds?”

Greenaway looked at him for a moment. “Because no one knows what it is. We didn’t discover it.”

Kara obviously understood. “Making out like we don’t care?”

“No,” Marc said, “it’s more than that. It’s saying nether-under-sub whatever isn’t really important, that it’s an alien thing. But deep down we know we’re second-rate. So, what’s it like?”

Greenaway was silent for a moment. “It’s like being surrounded by every colour in the world and thousands more you never saw before,” he said eventually. “And they’re all moving and changing, vanishing and reappearing. You want to look at them forever – but if you do look for more than five minutes, you can lose your mind. It’s why SUTs fly blind. No one gets to look outside.”

“Changing the subject,” Kara said, “what about the GalDiv agents on board the SUT?”

Greenaway shook his head. “Both were killed.”

“If the migrants still regard the Cancri as gods,” Marc mused, “or at least as vastly superior beings, they might even oppose us trying to rescue them.”

“No one said this was going to be easy,” Greenaway said, smiling.