It feels hot up here on Yoram’s rooftop. It always does. Nikki wonders whether he bribed somebody to adjust the localised temperature settings so that it’s more like his native Beirut, or maybe the temperature up here is supposed to be warmer for the benefit of the crops. Almost all of the roofspace on Seedee is used for growing, as these are the only areas that are sufficiently expansive and exposed enough to catch much sunlight. There is a soil bed a metre deep, lined with irrigation channels and programmed sprinklers. Yoram’s rooftop is at such a height that there is just about enough gravity to hold the soil in place, but there is the standard breathable membrane on top anyway, to prevent it all floating away if there’s an all-stop. On Seedee, every square metre of soil is accounted for and its yield carefully audited: botanists monitoring conditions, rotating crops and adjusting what gets planted according to constantly shifting supply and consumption data.
Nonetheless, cross the right palm with a lot of silver and you can carve a little slice for yourself. Yoram treats this place as his personal oasis, though there’s only one small corner that he actually tends. He’s got a decent-sized pad by Seedee standards, but when he’s home he’s usually to be found up here, tending his vines or just sitting out feeling the sun through the canopy.
Nikki is reminded of jetlag any time she’s up here. It’s that sensation of being out in daylight when your brain is telling you it’s night. It’s a result of her usually having come from Mullane, where it always seems dark, even outside on the street. The buildings are close together, keeping the ground level permanently in shade, whereas if she’s up here with Yoram, it’s always daytime.
Back in Lebanon, Yoram ran a wine export business. He wasn’t a crook, but he was, by his own description, a slippery operator who played every angle to get the best deal. He was a family man too: a wife and two daughters.
Then he lost all of them in a heartbeat when a truck driver had a seizure and crashed into the café where they were eating.
He came to Seedee because there was nothing left below. His business collapsed after he couldn’t bring himself to work there any more, couldn’t live in the wreckage of the life he had built. He got a job here on Wheel One in import logistics. Officially he still has it, but he needed other ways to occupy himself. He needed something new to build.
Nikki slept with him once. They don’t talk about it. He cried, showed her a ruined side of himself he didn’t intend her to see and that Nikki didn’t have it in her to deal with. She just had too much wreckage of her own to shore up.
Yoram is crouched at the trellis, secateurs in his hand, a safety line clipped to his belt. The gravity is light up here, and it’s easy to forget, especially if you just came from below. Move too fast or trip over your own feet and you could accidentally hurl yourself over the barrier.
He normally seems more relaxed when she visits him in this, his sanctuary. Instead he is agitated and irritable.
“I don’t get what is going on, Nikki. It’s a mess, but I thought there was a sense to it, you know?”
Nikki doesn’t follow, but she knows better than to say as much. She lets him talk. It’s better that way.
“These people on the dock. Felicia told me. I get it. High-level operatives, confiscating our stuff. They’re shutting us down, I figure. Shutting everybody down. There’s a load of new-broom bullshit coming down from FNG. New people in oversight positions, trying to make a name for themselves. We’ve all seen this before. I can ride it out, I figure. Everybody’s in the same boat.”
He turns and looks up at her, restless frustration in his expression.
“But now I’m seeing my goods showing up all over Seedee. And I’ve no doubt it’s my goods, because you could walk down Mullane and play bingo with the manifest. Talisker, check. Craigellachie, check. Glenfarclas, check. What the fuck, Nikki? What the fuck?”
She stands there and takes it, being scolded like a schoolgirl. She doesn’t have a comeback anyway, but she’s primarily interested in watching Yoram, listening to him vent, so she can sniff out what he knows. He hasn’t mentioned Omega, or even asked why she’s here, and that’s worrying her.
She knows she shouldn’t let Sol’s smack-talking get into her head, but there is a part of her that still can’t help thinking like a cop, and that part knows Yoram is the obvious first suspect. Whatever other bullshit Sol threw into their conversation, he clearly believed Yoram was responsible. What she’s having to ponder is whether she believes Yoram would do something as crazy and reckless as this, never mind as brutal. Surely he’d know the firestorm it would bring down?
But what if Sol wasn’t talking smack about this play Julio hasn’t made yet? Yoram’s just lost a major shipment, leaving him without product and therefore without presence. What is he capable of if he’s pushed into a corner?
“Used to be nothing happened around here without you had the skinny. That’s what I paid you for. Now I’m starting to wonder whether your eye is still on the ball.”
This last bothers her, recalling what Sol said about her being the last to know. Is it possible he wasn’t just yanking her chain? The last to know what?
“I mean, what do you think is going on, Nikki? Felicia says Omega paid off this pen-pusher to divert our shipment. So these new guys who took our stuff: are they in with Julio? Because the word I’m hearing is that Julio’s up to something and he thinks it’s going to make him cock of the walk.”
“I’m hearing something similar, but no details.”
“Sounds like I’m getting caught in a pincer movement. Who are his new friends? Somebody high up in the Quadriga? I want to know what connections he has, because this thing at the dock happened as a knock-on effect of the all-stop on Wheel Two, and it wasn’t the only thing that went down around that time.”
“Yeah, I heard somebody took a shot at Maria Gonçalves. Who the hell would do that?” she asks idly.
“Oh, that’s what you heard?”
His tone is oddly aggressive, challenging. She doesn’t get why, but she knows she has annoyed him in a way that has exacerbated how pissed at her he was already.
“What?”
“So you haven’t seen the playback?”
“I’ve been kinda busy,” she replies, then hopes the sarcasm in her tone doesn’t tip him off that she’s dealing with something major.
“Take a moment,” he says. “Have a look.”
He sends her a list of time-stamped grabs, the top of which she begins to play in her lens. She never likes doing this, as it always makes her feel vulnerable. It’s not like she’s worried Yoram is going to cold-cock her while she’s distracted, but it’s too instinctive for reason to override it. The only time she would be comfortable standing up and surrendering that much of her field of view to a recording is alone in her apartment, but then if she were there she wouldn’t need to be watching it on her lens.
The grab shows the terrace in front of the Ver Eterna hotel, taken from somewhere up high on the opposite side of Central Plaza. The terrace looks crowded, another of those corporate receptions with waiting staff carrying champagne and canapés, each tray worth more than they earn in a month. At this distance and running as much lens opacity as she dares, she can’t make out anybody’s face clear enough to ID them. She’s pretty sure one tubby bitch close to the front is Hoffman, and because she knows what’s about to happen, she figures the bird-like woman near the wall at the back for Gonçalves.
They’re all standing around, chatting, being rich and important. Suddenly everybody moves, as though the music just started at a dance. Prof G’s entourage go into action, surrounding their boss, getting her down out of sight. Then the all-stop happens. This throws Nikki because she had assumed it happened first, that the all-stop was part of the plan to take a shot at the prof: people floating in zero-g make easier targets, though it was never likely the professor or her people would fail to get her anchored quick-style.
There were some very high-level people on that terrace, one of whom presumably had the authority to call an all-stop in response to what he or she perceived as an attempt on the professor’s life. It was a panicky response though, because if the prof was injured, it wasn’t going to help anybody’s med-evac and first-aid efforts if there was no gravity.
She watches the ensuing familiar ballet: items gracefully floating away while people drift horizontally for a few moments before finding something to clip on to.
She has learned pretty much nothing. She looks at another feed, one showing the same thing from an angle roughly opposite. It shows the view over the heads of the people on the terrace, probably a camera sited on the Ver Eterna surveilling the plaza. It’s as busy as always, people traversing the square in all directions. Nikki sees someone in a mask. She has to play it twice to pick out the figure in the crowd, to know whereabouts in the square she should be looking.
The assailant raises a weapon, fires silently, turns away and blends in again. There’s maybe two people even notice the incident, and they’re not about to give chase. Most of the folks walking Central Plaza are good, respectable and well-paid W2 residents, who have only heard of flechette-toting bad guys in news reports and tales about the older wheel’s underworld.
“Okay,” she says to Yoram. “Here’s my professional analysis. Some asshole lets loose a flechette at Prof G, it hits a bystander instead and there’s an all-stop. It’s not a serious attempt on the prof’s life. Nobody expects a kill shot from a single plastic dart, especially from distance, so it’s gotta be some kind of statement. What am I missing?”
Yoram frowns, like he can’t believe she’s not getting whatever it is.
“What you’re missing is that the shooter did not. The target was not Gonçalves. It was Alice Blake.”
“Who’s that?” she asks, damn sure the answer is not going to make her look good.
“She’s the incoming Principal of the Security Oversight Executive. Whatever the intention, both dart and statement were aimed at her.”
Nikki is reeling.
“How come you know this?” she asks.
“How come you don’t?”
“We hadn’t been told the identity of Hoffman’s successor. Only that they would be taking over soon.”
This sounds pitiful as it tumbles from her lips.
Freitas and Yoram are both right. She used to be the first to know, and now she’s the last. Paying attention to the wrong things, taking her eye off the ball, letting contacts slide. Getting sloppy. Getting old.
“Someone lensed her on the way here. Shared a capsule and a shuttle with her, put two and two together.”
Yoram delicately handles some of his so caringly cultivated fruit.
“The picture was on certain grapevines,” he adds damningly. “But there’s better footage of her taken during the all-stop.”
Nikki starts the first grabación again. The victim is too far away to get a decent look at.
“Not from what I’ve seen so far,” she observes.
“Have patience. Keep watching. She becomes quite conspicuous.”
Nikki lets it run past the point where she previously switched feeds. The ballet begins, the crowd on the terrace reacting to the loss of gravity with practised calm. Then she sees a female figure, the one who was shot, drift helplessly into the air, her back to the camera. It figures that it would be a recent arrival. There’s always a noob left floating after an all-stop.
The figure slowly turns to face the camera. With a jolt Nikki recognises that it’s Jessica.
She experiences a moment of glorious relief at Yoram’s misapprehension, and is about to tell him he’s got his wires crossed because this is nobody. But the feeling evaporates as she realises she’s been played.
How can a kid like that be in charge of the SOE, she asks herself, then realises that her stoolpigeon could be ten years older than she estimated.
Jesus, can this get any worse?
Nikki flashes on “Jessica” tugging her sleeve back down over the bandage she asked about.
Burned it on the stove.
Fuck.
She remembers noting that when she told Jessica about Gonçalves getting shot at, she didn’t ask if the professor was okay. At the time, Nikki simply thought this was indicative of a typical bloodless FNG autocrat. But now she can see that the reason Jessica didn’t ask was because she already knew. She was right there. She was the one who got hit.
And then, in answer to her question, it does get worse.
The grab shows Blake being rescued by none other than Helen fucking Petitjean, one of the most hawkish moral crusaders on Seedee. If she and her fellow zealots had their way, the Seguridad would become a latter-day equivalent to the religious police that cracked the whip in Arabia before the oil ran out and civil war engulfed the region.
“You got one thing right,” Yoram states wearily. “It wasn’t a serious attempt on her life. She is yet to put her feet under her new desk and somebody’s taking a shot at her. Why would anyone do that when she hasn’t even had time to make any enemies? I mean, in Central Plaza, broad daylight, with a non-lethal weapon? It’s pure theatre.”
Yoram’s been thinking about this, she can tell. He looks like he hasn’t slept in a while.
“You reckon it was staged?”
“I don’t know, but I think its purpose was to create a ready-made excuse to heighten security and close down activities such as ours. ‘Look at these people, they’re out of control. We need to clean up this town.’ That’s what they’ll be saying.”
“Nobody’s made a huge deal of it so far,” Nikki counters.
The authorities have a bigger matter to deal with right now, but she isn’t going to bring that up. She’s still waiting for Yoram to mention it, and it’s getting suspicious that he hasn’t. He knows Alice Blake is the new SOE chief but he doesn’t know about Omega?
“It’s early,” Yoram responds. “Think about these private security types at the dock. They steal our shipment and it ends up in Julio’s hands. This must be the secret weapon he’s been dropping hints about.”
Nikki recalls Sol Freitas and his smug threat, talking about straws in the wind.
Julio got a play he ain’t made yet.
“Don’t you see? A crackdown would be the perfect cover for some secret Quadriga outfit to take over our operations. It would make sense for them to team up with a useful idiot like Julio, initially at least. Then they’ll quietly get rid of him too once he’s fulfilled his function. Julio’s dumb and egotistical enough not to see that.”
Nikki has to concede it wouldn’t be the first time the authorities effectively licensed a gangster to practise as a means of getting a handle on the whole trade. However, down in the mortuary right now there are about forty different pieces that don’t fit the picture Yoram is putting together.
Unless killing Omega was Yoram’s idea of a pre-emptive strike.
There is an intensity about his face as he finally stands up, a stolid determination in his stance as he steps away from his cherished grapes. He gazes out across the rooftops, through the canopy at the Earth, which is a blue globe in the distance.
“You know, it was a bottle of wine,” he says, looking down at his hands as though he is holding the object he’s talking about. “That’s why I’m here. I was walking past a store in Mar Mikhael. I saw this wine in the window, this rare wine. I don’t mean some expensive exclusive vintage, but a regional wine that we drank on honeymoon, and that I had seldom seen after that. I went into the store and bought a bottle. I was on my way to meet Yosephina and the girls for lunch.
“If I hadn’t stopped to buy the wine, I’d have been sitting at that table too. Or maybe I wouldn’t. I can be fussy that way. Maybe I’d have said the sun’s going to be in someone’s eyes at this table by the window, and we’d have sat someplace else. Maybe it would have made no difference.”
He glances briefly at the Earth again, so small and far away. A place out of reach. A place to which he can never return.
“I didn’t think I could go on. I watched my business fall apart because I didn’t have it in me to work any more. I barely had it in me to eat, to sleep, to function. I came close to killing myself; nobody will ever know how close. Instead I came here. Took a job I could do in my sleep, an insult to the man I once was. That’s why I built something else. It’s all that keeps me going. I built something here and nobody is taking it away from me.”
He turns and looks Nikki in the eye.
“I don’t care who they are. If they want a battle, then I will teach them what a man is capable of when he’s been through what I have and come out the other side.”