Windswept Read online

  Then out into open space, watching my solar system’s four other planets and yellow sun shrink to tiny points as my mind travelled beyond the Red Line, where it was safe enough to jump between systems. And farther still, until I could see all of Occupied Space, the stars and planets where people had made their way, where the Big Three tried to buy and sell everything and everyone, where other Union people fought and worked and lived and died, and then all the way out and out and out to the vast, limitless reaches of the Universe in all its wonder, its glory, its beauty.

  I opened my eyes, then unscrewed the bottle. The cinnamon and pear scents from the Old Windswept washed over me, and I lifted the bottle to my lips, remembering Dr Ropata: just enough to taste, not enough to call a drink. It was a fine line, but I’d had enough practice. The rum sloshed as I tilted it back–

  The minaret speaker crackled to life with a spike of feedback so loud I jumped out of my chair. I also banged my teeth against the bottle as Louise Ellison, the muezzin, sang out in Old Arabic, Woe unto those eternal travelers; may they reach their destination with God! Even with everyone pai’d up and Public terminals on every corner, sometimes the fastest way to spread important news was from the rooftops. I’d have to check in, see what the deal was, what ship went down, but that could wait. I lifted the bottle again...

  And now the carillon at Our Lady of the Big Shoulders began to chime. What the hell? Vespers wasn’t for another hour, and, even then, this was a Wednesday. Louie Kwan, the organist, had the day off, and he only sat down to play if something big was going on. Something like–

  Then I recognized the music: “Eternal Father, Strong To Save.” Louie usually let the Emerald Masjid take care of the salvation business unless it was more than one ship. As he rolled around to the end of the first verse, and I knew there’d be people in the city taking off their hats and singing along: “Oh grant Thy mercy and Thy grace, to those who venture into space.”

  And then a shofar sounded off. Then a conch shell. Then a whole chorus of horns, bells, voices, all of them calling out to the sky, which meant that it had been one hell of a mess up in orbit. Still, there was nothing I could do on the ground, so I lifted the bottle–

  And then silence, except for one lone trumpet, sounding over the rooftops. For a brief moment, I hoped it was someone just adding a grace note to the proceedings, but then I recognized the tune – one that Big Lily and the rest of the old miners would play whenever one of their number died. I went to the window, pulled open the blinds, and looked a few blocks west to where Big Lily’s bar was.

  She stood on the roof, her skirts snapping in the evening breeze. She had a trumpet to her lips, and she was blowing a song from Dead Earth: “Gresford,” the Miners’ Hymn. We may have all been one big Union, but every trade mourned their own in their own way. The ships that had gone down must have been miners. I’d have to go back to Big Lily’s to pay my respects, but only after I’d taken this sip, and...

  Mining ships. Oh, shit.

  I blinked up a link to the Public and loaded the traffic queue. I scrolled until I saw them, the fifteen LiaoCon ore processors, now at the top of the lifter, waiting to off-load, and–

  One by one, the names blinked, then turned blood red. Within a minute, all fifteen ships were listed as lost in transit with all hands. Four hundred sixty-two souls. Oh, those poor fucking people.

  …and those twenty-seven you’d counted on… hissed The Fear before it laughed and laughed and laughed.

  I looked at the bottle of Old Windswept, then blew out the candle and got up. It wouldn’t do me a bit of good now, not with the sinking feeling in my gut over all those deaths combined with my rising anger at how they probably died. LiaoCon padded their bottom line by skimping on maintenance, by using cheap materials, by running ships twenty years past their hulls’ expiration dates. Four hundred and sixty-two people, all worked to death, just to make some fucking LiaoCon Shareholders a few extra yuan. Hell, even the ships’ potential destruction was probably part of some actuarial equation, a loss against future profits. My heart pounded as I got up.

  I pulled on my cargo trousers and boots, well-worn and almost ready for a resole, then my deck jacket, the one I’d borrowed from Wash eleven years ago and had forgotten to return. Through the window, I could hear the traffic sounds and background noise of the neighborhood had picked back up: the sizzle of tritip roasting on outdoor grills, the two-tone beep of tuk-tuk horns, the sounds of bar bands tuning up. Union people would always pause for a remembrance, but they sure as hell wouldn’t stop. The city was in the middle of a shift change, and that meant everyone was moving. It would be the perfect time to get in touch with someone inside Thronehill, one of those now-thawed fishsticks who’d realized how screwed they were and wanted to poke back at their corporate masters. Problem was, it would take days to get in touch with someone friendly, and that was just to put out feelers about possible Breaches. Getting hard data, that could take weeks. Hell, it had taken six months just to learn about the LiaoCon ships.

  Could I wait another six months? Seven? A year?

  My head buzzed with a text from Estella Tonggow, apologizing profusely about missing our meeting because of a mishap at the distillery and, if it wasn’t a problem, could we reschedule for tomorrow or until after she’d stopped the imploding piping?

  Why bother? hissed the voice from the back of my head. You’ll never be able to buy her place now with those ships lost. And what’ll you do if you can’t get your daily snort? My vision blurred for a brief moment, and it took a few breaths to bring the world back into focus.

  There was another text: and did I get her gift?

  I hopped downstairs. Mrs Karpinski, one of my neighbors, sat on the front stoop. In one hand, she held a smoldering pipe; in the other, a small package wrapped in orange paper. “Evening,” she said, the smoke circling around her head. She had a compass tattooed on her cheek, evidence of her long days as a ship’s navigator for LiaoCon. “Courier dropped this off for you. I was going to bring it up after I finished my evening constitutional.”

  “That stuff’s going to kill you, Mrs K,” I said.

  She snorted and handed me the package. “If all those cosmic rays haven’t done me in, a little tobacco sure as shit won’t do the job.”

  The paper was tucked into tight folds, and it looked too expensive to tear open. I undid the folds, and there was a coral steel flask. There was no inscription on it, but it didn’t one. I unscrewed the cap and took a whiff, and the smell of Old Windswept washed over me.

  Mrs Karpinski sighed, and I offered her the flask. She took a tiny sip and shuddered, her body melting against the building. “Oh, that is lovely. That from Tonggow?”

  “It is,” I said, pocketing the flask. “Her way of apologizing for canceling on me. It’s been happening more than I’d like.”

  She waved away the smoke from her pipe. “You worried she’s going to sell to someone else?”

  Yes, cackled The Fear. “Nah,” I said.

  Mrs Karpinski patted my arm. “I wouldn’t, either. We used to work together at the refinery at Beukes Point, you know?”

  “I didn’t.”

  She grinned. “Oh, yeah. Estella pissed off one supervisor after another because she insisted that her way of doing things was the best. Once she made up her mind, she wasn’t going to change it. I don’t think buying that distillery has altered her thinking. If she’s going to sell to you, she’s going to sell to you.” She took a puff from her pipe. “But I’d still make sure I sent her a thank you note pretty damn pronto.”

  I gave Mrs K a kiss on the head and walked down the steps. I started blinking in a text to Tonggow, making sure to use proper spelling and grammar. Ever since I first met her, Tonggow insisted on propriety, and I liked that about her. When I had first heard rumors about her retiring last year, I had barged my way into her distillery to demand she sell to me at bulk rates. She just smiled and offered me tea and cakes and made me feel welcome, despite the fact that
I had behaved like a complete ass. I had made up some story about how I appreciated her rum and wanted to make sure it didn’t change. OK, that wasn’t a complete fabrication. I just didn’t tell her why.

  Of course I could reschedule, I texted, maybe tomorrow at ten-thirty? I willed The Fear away, sending it deep into whatever pit it hid. This was no time to listen to The Fear. This was the time to make sure I could buy the distillery, even if that meant my only lead was (and it hurt like hell to admit this) Vytai Bloombeck. Even though I knew he was full of shit, it was better than nothing.

  I blinked up the time: quarter past six. The bars and cafes and strip joints would be full, which meant Bloombeck would be trolling, probably down at the shabbier end of Murdoch Street. I wasn’t in the mood to walk there, so I ducked through alleys until I was on Sway Street. I raised my hand to hail a tuk-tuk, and a bright green job ripped out of traffic and bumped over the curb in front of me.

  “Murdoch and Kadalie,” I said, climbing in. “And floor it.”

  “Meter’s busted,” said the tuk-tuk driver, a skinny girl with streaks of grease and a pair of wheels inked on her cheeks. “Trip’ll cost you two fifty.”

  “That’s a little cheap, but what the hell.” I got out three yuan and held them up to her.

  The driver looked at the bills like they were dead fish. “Two hundred fifty.”

  “Really?” Anger overwhelmed any last protests from The Fear as I blinked up her face on the Public. No hits, which was a neat trick for a Union hack. I didn’t get a handshake from her pai, either. I peered closer at her ink and saw it had been made with a pen, not with a needle. If she wasn’t a runaway from the kampong, I’d buy a hat just to eat it. “How do you figure?”

  She scratched her chin, leaving a little smudge. “Shifts have changed, so all the other drivers are doing the commuter thing. You’re on business, ’cause no who looks like you would go to that neighborhood for fun.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got me twigged for a rube,” I said, glancing at the empty caneplas envelope on the dash where her hack license should have been.

  “Nah,” she said, grinning. “Just desperate. I know my customers.”

  “Then you should know this.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out my Union card, the one with WARD CHAIR written on it in large, don’t-fuck-with-me letters.

  The driver’s eyes flickered from me to the card and back again. “No charge,” she said, kicking the tuk-tuk into gear. “Would you like me to wait while you conduct your business?”

  “That would be lovely,” I said, licking my thumb. “One more thing.” I reached over the seat and swiped her cheek clean. “You really ought to use permanent marker. Union hacks aren’t crazy about fakes.”

  “Right,” she said, her voice tiny. She stomped on the gas and shot us into traffic.

  Brushhead had been awake all day, but the place really came alive at night. As we zipped down the sloped streets, barkeeps opened their windows as merchants hosed off their sidewalks. The neon glow from the theaters blinked on with the sodium lamps, and the crushed coral pavement smelled wet and tangy. We drove along the Ivory Canal onto Clipner Road, past the swing-shift gangs heading for their gigs on the cable or at the cargo depot or any of the hundreds of places that Union people still had jobs. I leaned over the driver’s seat and said, “How long you been off the farm, kid?”

  “Six weeks,” she said, her voice barely carrying over the tuk-tuk’s motor.

  “Your family know you’re in the big, bad city?”

  She shrugged. “They’re too busy with crops. We got some kind of fungus, and I got sick of dealing with it.”

  “Intriguing,” I said. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll be home for harvest.”

  “You want to stay in Brushhead?”

  She nodded.

  “What’s your name?” I said, blinking a picture of her.

  “Jilly.”

  “Jilly what?”

  “Just Jilly.”

  I’ve never been a fan of the Freeborn way of single names. I attached a note to her photo: GET HER JOB, SURNAME.

  “OK, Just Jilly,” I said, as we slowed behind a convoy of lorries stacked high with cane. “If you can get me to where I want to go in the next five minutes, I might forget to log this whole conversation.”

  Jilly nodded. “You mind if I put on some music?”

  “As long as it’s got a good beat, fine.”

  She knocked on the dashboard, and the sounds of a banghorchestra thrummed from beneath the seats. Jilly stomped on the gas, and the tuk-tuk hopped onto the sidewalk. A few choice beeps of the horn cleared the way as we screeched around a corner and down into the dirtier part of Brushhead.

  Chapter 3

  Murdoch Street was half a block long and always felt like a cave. There was something about the way the buildings smashed together, the way the rooflines leaned out into the street, the way the sun never hit the sidewalk that made the whole place feel like it should have been a mushroom farm instead of a collection of run-down bars. It wasn’t scary so much as it was depressing as hell. Despite decades of the Union, the Co-Op, and even WalWa trying to fix the place up, it never changed. This was where the people who fell through the cracks got stuck. It was also one of the few places in the entire city where Vytai Bloombeck was allowed to loiter.

  “You sure about this, boss?” said Jilly as she pulled up the parking brake. The warm glow of early evening bathed Kadalie Boulevard in deep golden light, none of which crossed into Murdoch. Even the bare fluorescent bulbs in front of the bars couldn’t hold back the murk.

  “Relax, kid,” I said, climbing out of the tuk-tuk. “You had plenty of dark nights out in the kampong.”

  “At least there I could see the stars,” she said, pulling her arms inside her shirt.

  Normally when I wanted to find someone, I just grabbed the first person I knew and said as much. My request would fan out over the Public, and, in a matter of minutes, I’d be sitting down to tea and cakes with the object of my search. There was no way in hell I could do that with Bloombeck because a) I didn’t want anyone to know that I had anything to do with him on purpose and b) everyone would laugh and say, “This is a joke, right?” and nothing would happen. I was left with doing things the old-fashioned way: walking along Murdoch Street until my pai gave me a headache.

  It took six bars until I got a poke in the back of my eye. The place had two windows, one covered with a plywood sheet and the other in grime. It didn’t even have a name, just a hand-scrawled paper sign above the door that said DRINK. Figures Bloombeck would be in here. He wasn’t an alcoholic, but the people he bothered usually were. I nudged the door open with the toe of my boot then stepped into the dark.

  Three people looked up, their faces ghostly from the little bit of light that seeped in behind me. None of them had any ink; they were probably Freeborn people who’d left the kampong to look for work and wound up getting trampled. They all eyed me for a moment before huddling back over their drinks. The bartender, a man with an eclectic collection of facial scars, gave me a look, then nodded toward the back, where the darkness got even darker. I took a few breaths so my eyes could adjust, then plunged into the middle of a sea of tiny tables, half of them covered with empties, and the other with unconscious people. Crouched over one of drunks was Vytai Bloombeck.

  I put a hand on his shoulder, and he snapped upright. “I swear, he said it was his turn to pay!” he screeched, holding his hands over his head. A few ruined five-yuan bills quivered in his grip.

  “Sit,” I said, pointing to an empty table.

  He took a breath after hearing my voice, and all the tension seemed to leak out of him as he plopped into a chair. “So glad to see you, Padma, I–”

  “Stop,” I said, sitting across from him. “You are going to tell me everything you know about these Breaches, and you are going to do it with a minimum of bullshit or I call Captain Baghram to come down h
ere and arrest you for rolling drunks. Start.”

  “OK, OK,” said Bloombeck. “So, my guy–”

  “Who is he?”

  “Come on, Padma, you gotta give me something–”

  I tapped my temple, the universal sign for I’m-Making-a-Call-on-My-Pai.

  “Jimney Potts!” he blurted. “Jimney knows all about the ships with the Breaches, I swear!”

  I took my finger away from my head and laughed. “Bloody hell, Bloomie. Jimney owes me more than you do.”

  “You think he don’t know that?” said Bloombeck. “I seen his profile on the Public! He’s holed up tight in Thronehill, thinks you won’t go in there to get him.”

  “But he saw you,” I said, poking him in the chest and wishing I hadn’t; it felt like prodding a bag of gelatin. “If he’s so busy hiding, why’d he take the risk to talk with you?”

  Bloomie licked his lips and shrugged, which made him look even more pathetic. “We’re old pals, you know? We shared that flat in Partridge Hutong after you moved out–”

  “Don’t remind me,” I said, wiping my finger on the table. “The way you were always banging around at all hours. Whatever shift I worked, you were always awake.”

  “I had things to do,” he said.

  “So did I, and they usually involved getting a good night’s sleep,” I said. “What did Jimney tell you?”

  “He was between shifts in the burn room, and he overheard some security guys talking about beefing things up on the anchor ’cause they wouldn’t be able to catch the ship in transit. Even caught the name.”