Read Principles of Angels Online
Authors: Jaine Fenn
Principles of Angels (3 page)
‘No, sirrah.’ He should tell him now, tell him what had happened to Malia.
‘Then go. I am a very busy man.’ The Minister nodded in dismissal and stepped back to let Taro pass.
Taro had betrayed his line-mother. He had betrayed his City. He must confess.
But he found himself already walking away from the Minister into an uncertain future.
CHAPTER TWO
Elarn woke to silence. No, not quite silence; there was the near-subliminal hum of the life-support systems, a constant reminder that she was in space, a long way from home. Back on Khathryn she would wake to sea and wind, natural sounds, louder, more chaotic, but real, and comforting.
She has been dreaming again, the ever-present nightmare at the edge of consciousness. In the dream, she is in her house, her lovely safe spacious house. But she is not alone. Her visitors have disabled her security and let themselves in, and now they are coming for her. She is hiding, crouched in a wardrobe like a naughty child, but she can’t hide from them forever. For years she thought she could, but they have finally caught up with her.
She had always managed to wake herself before the sinister visitors found her, thank God, but she suspected that might not always be the case. Though she had risked spending the interstellar transits in stasis, rather than dealing with the reality-twisting horrors of shiftspace with drugs, the dreams had been getting worse ever since.
She got up and dressed slowly, paying attention to the details: fair hair piled artistically, clothes smart and formal, cosmetics applied with caution to flatter the stern lines of her face. Must present a good impression. Confident, competent, but not to be approached too closely. Today, for the first time in her life, she would be walking on a new world - or rather, on a massive construct floating above an uninhabitable planet.
As she got herself ready, she had the com-unit play back news-casts from Vellern. She had requested downloads as soon as the starliner emerged into Tri-Confed space three days ago, hoping to learn something more about her destination. Initially she’d had trouble finding anything useful among the welter of adverts, local scandals and unregulated mass entertainment, but digging revealed some in-depth political analyses, sufficiently sophisticated that she had trouble picking up the nuances, ignorant as she was of the background of the situations being discussed. The level of detail should not have been much of a surprise, given the bizarre and brutal process of government in the Confederacy of Three. When a mistake by those in power could lead to them getting their heads blown off, political analysis became strangely popular.
The Tri-Confed system was ancient, one of mankind’s oldest territories. The originally settled planet, referred to simply as the homeworld and not even graced with a capital letter any more, was barely habitable, scarred by environmental mismanagement and centuries of warfare between the three main continental nations. The three power-blocs had extended their conflicts, alliances and uneasy truces into the rest of the system thousands of years ago. By this point, their different homeworld environments had already impacted on their genetic make-up. Kheshi tended to be sallow-skinned and dark-haired, Yazilers were pale and Luornai were darker-skinned, with red or dark hair. Or perhaps, Elarn had thought when she had first read this, they had come from original Old Earth stock, back when skin shades were associated with political or cultural groups.
Some time during the dark days of the Sidhe Protectorate, the three sides had reached a compromise. Vellern, a mid-system rock too small for terraforming and long since stripped of any resources worth fighting over, was chosen as the site of a new unifying government. So they had built the Three Cities, expending massive resources to out-do each other in scale and grandeur, and had begun sharing power according to a complex process codified down the centuries and referred to as the Concord.
A soft chime announced that breakfast had now finished, but a light brunch was available in the day lounge. As though it was anyone’s business when she ate! That was another thing she hated about space travel: you were always on a schedule. It wasn’t as though anyone needed to go anywhere in person these days; beamed virtuals were as good as being there in the flesh. They had certainly been enough to let her have a profitable and fulfilling career without having to leave the world she had been born on. She could transmit a concert via beevee direct from the studio in her house, her producer adding acoustic tweaks and whatever backdrop he felt suitable for the particular market: space scenes for non-planetary nations, natural beauty for the urban fan-base, ecclesiastical architecture for the devout . . .
Still, whatever she felt about being told when to do it, as she had no idea what the arrangements would be once she was down on Vellern, she should eat soon. She made her way down the corridor to one of the luxury ship’s three lounges, where a selection of light mid-morning snacks were laid out, just in case any passenger experienced hunger pangs in the three hours between breakfast and lunch. There were perishable delicacies including fruit, a sweet-leaf salad and a tray of semi-crystallised flower-petals among the usual cornucopia of dried meats, cheeses, pastries and cakes. Presumably they had picked up fresh supplies when the ship made a brief stopover on the Confederacy homeworld yesterday morning; ecological wreck or not, homeworld would want to make sure an élite interstellar liner had everything its occupants might possibly want. Vellern was a popular tourist destination, not just for those from the three Confederacy nations, but from everywhere in human space, with all the attendant wealth that brought in. There were plenty of affluent people who found the idea of a place where everything was available and nothing - allegedly - forbidden very appealing, even if Elarn did not share this view.
She began to browse along the buffet, picking out a couple of pastries and a savoury roll. She still needed to pack, which would give her an excuse not to take lunch with her fellow travellers. The only thing worse than being enclosed in an artificial environment for two weeks was being forced to share it with strangers.
‘Will you be visiting Khesh City, Medame Reen?’
Elarn jumped, almost dropping her plate. The speaker lounged on a comfortable couch under a currently blank screen, one of several dozen people she had been introduced to and promptly forgotten. When the ever-changing seating plan had brought them together for dinner, he had flirted with her in a desultory manner; her and every other woman at the table not physically holding on to a partner.
‘I mean, obviously I’ll be taking trips to Luorna and Yazil too,’ he continued, as though she had already replied, ‘but with Khesh coming into Grand Assembly, removals will be at the highest level for years. That’s where the real action will be.’
‘I’m sure,’ she said, turning her attention back to the buffet.
‘I ask because I wondered if you had any plans for your stay.’
So he hadn’t had any luck with the other unattached women. Good.
‘Actually I do,’ she said, hoping that would be the end of it.
He sniffed, and raised an eyebrow. ‘Concerts, you mean.’
At dinner on the second day out of Khathryn, one of the other passengers had asked Elarn outright if she was
that un-augmented singer of ancient religious chants who did all those charming plainsong recordings
. She had resented the woman’s patronising tone, and would have liked to have denied her identity, but she was a lousy liar.
that un-augmented singer of ancient religious chants who did all those charming plainsong recordings
. She had resented the woman’s patronising tone, and would have liked to have denied her identity, but she was a lousy liar.
As a result she had found herself reluctantly agreeing to give an impromptu concert, which she treated as practice for Khesh City, where she would be performing live in front of paying audiences. The evening had gone fairly well, despite her nerves. This man had not, as far as she could remember, been in the audience.
‘That’s right,’ she said brightly, ‘concerts.’
He frowned. ‘I must admit, I would have thought singing religious songs to audiences used to unrestricted pleasure and legal murder might be a case of—well, how does that ancient proverb go? Pearls before swine?’
‘Possibly,’ she conceded, wishing there was some polite way she could end the conversation.
He gave a nasal laugh. ‘Oh Medame Reen, please don’t take offence. It’s just that you’re so, well, unusual. Not the kind of person one normally meets in one’s travels.’
To hell with polite. She had had enough of these people. ‘You mean I’m not a more-money-than-sense thrill-seeker who thinks they’re better than the rest of humanity just because they can afford the unnecessary luxury of interstellar travel?’
He sat up straighter. ‘My, my, that sounds like a nasty case of parochialism. Not everyone is content to live their lives at the bottom of a gravity well, only ever seeing the universe via beevee, you know.’
‘Most people don’t have the money to do anything else.’ Elarn knew she shouldn’t argue, shouldn’t risk making enemies, but anachronistic snobs like him annoyed her and before she could stop herself she added, ‘Or would you rather we were still under the dominion of the Sidhe? Plenty more shiftships around back then, and no beevee to mesmerise all us planet-bound hicks.’
That got him. He looked shocked. ‘Of course not! Goodness, woman, I’m not saying we should go back to living under the rule of those despotic bitches - I’m as grateful as you that they’re all long dead!’
Elarn’s brief triumph dissolved into dismay. Rather than continue the conversation, she snatched up her plate and walked off, not trusting herself to reply to the wretched man.
Two words echoed round her head as she fled back to her cabin.
If only.
CHAPTER THREE
So this was how the other half lived. So far, Taro wasn’t feeling that impressed. Mainly he was feeling sick, ’cause the circle-car changed speed so smooth-and-easy that his guts reckoned he was hardly moving while the rooftops whizzed past scary-fast. It was bad enough being topside where there was no ceiling; up here on the circle-car rails there were no walls either. Though he was sitting down, he kept thinking he was about to fall over.
At least he hadn’t had any trouble getting a seat. When he boarded at the end of Amnesia Street, the carriage’s other occupants had stared at him with a mixture of fascination, fear and, in the case of the coves, disgust. For the rollers, the romance and danger of the Angels rubbed off on all downsiders, but locals thought everyone who lived in the Undertow must be filthy thieving scum. Several rollers had stood up to give Taro a place to sit. When he took his seat, those near him had edged away, leaving him plenty of space. He probably didn’t smell too good to their delicate topside noses, but that wasn’t the only reason they were wary of him. He knew what they must be thinking: you need ID to get on the circle-car, but downsiders aren’t citizens. They don’t get ID unless they are agents of the Concord; if not an Angel, then at least someone with official standing with the Minister.
Taro had always expected that he would work for the Minister one day. He knew he would have to start small, just one of the many downsiders who ran errands and gathered info for the leader of the Kheshi League of Concord. He would have to work hard to get noticed, as his sex was against him, but one day the Minister would see his potential and make him an Angel. Angels never went hungry, or homeless. They never had to worry about waking up to find they were being robbed or raped. People didn’t mess with Angels . . .
Except that someone had messed with Malia - and not just anyone, an agent from another City. And Taro hadn’t had the balls to admit that to the Minister. This wasn’t how he’d imagined his career in the Concord starting. The circle-car had already passed the ends of several Streets - Chow, Elsewhere, Slice, Freak - and now it was at Groove Street, the last before the wall that divided the Leisure and State Quarters. He had been tempted to go the long way round, to see the Guest and Merchant Quarters too, but given how the ride was messing with his belly and head, he was glad he’d decided against it. Before boarding the circle-car he’d taken the time to visit a Soft Street fast-food joint, one that would serve downsiders, and used some of the funds on the cred-bracelet to get an over-sweetened drink and a something-like-meat roll but much longer in here and he’d be wasting his money all over the floor. He closed his eyes, turning down the chance to look over the unknown Streets of the State Quarter in favour of not throwing up. When the mellow-voiced announcement said they were approaching Confederacy Square he opened his eyes, eager to get in among the buildings again, but as the carriage pulled up at the end of the Street he found himself gawping down on an open space as wide as eight or ten Streets put next to each other. It was full of people, the most Taro had ever seen in one place: hundreds, maybe thousands of milling rollers, and the coves guiding, guarding or fleecing them. The tourists were taking holo-pix, reading their guidebooks, hanging round the clusters of sales and betting booths and generally making like they happened to find themselves there in that very place this morning almost by accident. Only the sinwards end of the square was empty. That section was dominated by a building twelve storeys high, fronted by a massive balcony supported by a row of huge black pillars.
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