Sol was next through, then I spotted an opening and barged past an orphid that had been distracted by Divine’s move.
I found my mark, the third of the refugee indigenes. I stopped before her and for a moment I thought she was going to run. Her brown eyes widened, her mouth opened and closed, her whole body flinched, and then she was in my embrace, hanging on tight as our bodies pressed and where skin touched skin – hands, arms, neck, face – there was a fizz of contact, exchange.
Then my body rocked back, as if a blast-wave had struck me. One of the craniate grunts had butted me in the ribs, knocking me down. It landed on top of me in a mad scrambling of scaly limbs. The wind had been driven from my lungs by the impact, and now the craniate’s web was binding me so tight I could barely breathe in again.
We had all been caught.
Then I sensed the change in the sounds coming from the square. I managed to twist and see the grunts fending off a larger crowd that had materialised from the rush-hour mass.
Suddenly the grunts were ignoring us as they fought back the crowd. I struggled with the webbing, and then the woman I had embraced was on her knees, peeling me free.
I stood, and the crowd broke through.
I locked hands briefly with the woman who had released me, then let go, and we both melted into the chaos.
T
HEY ROUNDED US
up, of course.
The grunts may be protocol-bound, but they can be ruthlessly efficient, too. A short time later they had separated out the human protestors and had them all corralled in one corner of the square, contained behind a loop of twitching, impatient jagwire.
Not one of us had escaped: Sol, Divine, Ruth and the four refugee humans were all captive within the crowd of thirty or so. That was a blow: we had hoped that at least some would get away in the melee.
Just then, I spotted someone else who had been caught in the round-up. The girl.
She stood slightly alone, as if the crowd had parted a little around her. Her head was tilted to one side, and those eerily vivid blue eyes were striking in their blankness.
On the steps of the transit station, one of the grunts’ superiors, a fiery-skinned chlick with decorative plastic studs and hooks pushed through holes in its face, stood flanked by two orphid grunts. She spoke in a language I recognised but could not follow, and the first of the human captives was hauled forward, his arm pulled upright and his wrist scanned.
“!¡
identity
¡! Stine Pastor 37, authorised all indigene and mixed zones,” announced one of the grunts.
“!¡
frustration
¡!” clicked the chlick. Then: “!¡
regret
¡! Formal apologies for improper detention, Stine Pastor 37.”
The grunts released the man and he brushed himself down. “I guess,” he said. “!¡
indignation
¡! I was just going about my business when I got caught up in all this.”
His name wasn’t Stine Pastor at all. This man was a street cook I knew as Skinny Beans. I’d visited him earlier that day and subbed his pids for him with a new personal identity. He’d joked that he wanted the pids of a chef he knew who worked at a travel house at the skystation, but he’d had to take what we had available and he knew it.
The grunts stepped aside to let Skinny out through a gap in the jagwire corral, and another human was brought forward.
It was the woman I had targeted; the refugee.
I watched as they scanned her, my heart thumping.
“!¡
identity
¡!” clicked the grunt with the scanner. “West Strider 46, authorised all indigene and mixed zones.”
“!¡
frustration | agitation
¡!” clicked the chlick commander, irritation showing as the first two detainees had credentials that gave them protection from punishment. Then, forcing propriety to reassert itself, the commander said, “!¡
regret
¡! Formal apologies for improper detention, West Strider 46.”
My target walked free, and I was happy. All she had to do now was get to the meeting place and join up with those of us who escaped detention.
I allowed my attention to wander back to the strange girl. She was more alert now, but she still looked confused. Her eyes flitted from the chlick commander to the jagwire, to the people all around her, as if she might bolt for freedom at any moment. It was as if she had just woken up from a bad dream only to find that the dream was continuing around her.
That was when I was struck by a strong feeling that she could be in more trouble than any of us, caught up in a mass arrest that was nothing to do with her. We were all prepared for this, but she wasn’t.
I edged through the crowd until I was within an arm’s reach of her. Those eyes were a blue I’d never seen before, the whites the purest of white.
What happened next only took an instant, but it was one of those moments where time froze. One of those moments where everything changed, the world shifted, futures were determined.
I reached out and touched her bare arm.
I expected her to flinch, but she stayed calm, just her eyes flitting to fix on mine.
Her skin was cool, smooth, her flesh firm, the muscles hard in spite of how thin she was.
My scanner found nothing. Taped to my chest, it turned my skin into one continuous reading device. We touched, it read, it found nothing.
She had no pids. She was nobody.
Everyone had pids.
Was she wild, from beyond the Ipps? But if so, what was she doing here? Who was she?
What
was she?
She was nothing.
And if they found her, I had no idea what they would do.
All this in the briefest of instants.
At some level, I was in control of what happened next, but it was not a conscious thing. Earlier, I had met my target, we had touched, exchanged; where skin touched skin I had shunted stolen pids and she had taken on a new identity: West Strider 46. But now: I was empty, had been emptied. I had nothing to give. Except...
I’m not sure I even understood what was happening at that point, but I shunted, pushed, and there was a buzz, a fizz of contact, exchange.
Now she reacted. She gasped, blinked, looked away, withdrew her arm from my touch.
I felt dizzy, wasn’t sure what had just taken place. The crowd shifted, and I returned my attention to the pierced commander, visibly antsy now, as she was forced to release another innocent human whose faked identity protected him from detention. The chlick knew there should not be so many of us with this status here in Precept Square, but was bound by protocol to abide by the rules.
A short time later, we were down to a dozen or so detainees. A grunt stepped down into the corral and I thought it was going to seize me, but instead it reached past and took the girl by the arm. I hadn’t realised she had been so close behind me.
It led her to the station steps. When she didn’t raise her arm to be scanned, the grunt grabbed her hand and jerked it skywards so sharply she winced. For an instant she struggled and then she slumped, surrendered, passively waiting for whatever fate she had in store.
Another grunt scanned her wrist, then turned to the commander and said, “!¡
identity
¡! Reed Trader 12, authorised all indigene and mixed zones.”
That flash, that fizz of exchange... Reed Trader was the identity I had assumed for the day: I’d shunted some of my own borrowed pids into the strange girl’s bloodstream.
She looked around, and those blue eyes found me briefly.
I thought she was going to say something, do something, but instead she just stood there.
“!¡
regret
¡! Formal apologies for improper detention, Reed Trader 12.”
The chlick was getting really pissy now. Its cheek pads were flushed red, its eyes swollen. When the girl remained standing there, the chlick flapped an arm, and shrieked, “!¡
anger | frustration | confusion
¡! Improper detention!”
“Move!” hissed Sol, from the front of the group of detainees.
The girl went. She shuffled away through the gap in the jagwire corral and disappeared into the thinning pre-curfew crowd.
They freed Sol and a woman I didn’t know next, and then it was my turn.
The touch of the grunt’s hand on my shoulder made me suddenly panic. I don’t know if it was some kind of phreak transmitted in the touch, something in the air as the grunt came close, or simply that it felt wrong to have a powerful clawed grip on my shoulder.
I let the thing guide me forward through the crowd, up one step, then another, until I stood before the commander.
Close up, she was a daunting sight. Her skin was ribbed and deeply indented, its hue shading from vivid orange to dark umbers and browns. Some of the studs and hooks on her face barely pierced the rough skin, but others were buried deep. Her eyes were black, glassy, so that you could not tell where she looked, except that they flitted constantly, the skin around the sockets pulling and twitching as the eyes moved. She smelled of sulphur and old urine, so potently that I had to struggle not to gag.
I held my left arm up, exposing the inner wrist, and let one of the grunts scan me.
The grunt with the scanner twitched twice, clicking, “!¡
confusion error... confusion error
¡!” over and over. At a prompt from the chlick commander, the grunt calmed and said, “!¡
identity
¡! Reed Trader 12, authorised all indigene and mixed zones.”
I stood quietly.
The commander leaned towards me, and it was all I could do not to let its aura of phreak-stink reduce me to a quivering, terrified wreck.
“!¡
suspicion | frustration
¡! This one does not look like Reed Trader 12,” she said. She stabbed a scaly paw at my chest, striking me so hard that I staggered. “Reed Trader 12 was female.”
I met the chlick’s look.
Softly, I said, “I am Reed Trader 12. I was just going about my business when–”
The same scaly paw flashed across my vision and I staggered again, my face numb, my ears ringing, the metal taste of blood in my mouth.
The chlick commander barked an order and the grunt seized my arm and scanned my wrist again.
Just then, I remembered the first time I had been caught, that night at the checkpoint: the confusion in the grunt’s face when my pids had contradicted its own recognition of me.
I looked at the chlick commander, its colour shifting to a more fiery pattern.
Protocol won. There was a flash of her arm again and I expected another blow, but instead she was gesturing, dismissing me.
A grunt pushed me roughly, and I almost staggered into the jagwire. That would have been a quick end for me and perhaps somehow an end that would have been acceptable in the aliens’ strict moral framework: an accident, a twist of fate, not a deliberate act at all.
I caught myself, straightened, glanced back at the commander only to see her glassy black eyes fixed on me, turned away again. Calmly, I stepped through the gap in the corral and was free.
Chapter Three
I
DIDN’T HEAD
straight back to Cragside Ipp. I knew better than that.
I didn’t head for Sol’s meeting point, either; I’d done my bit already. I didn’t even know where they were to meet, although I could guess: our nest-mother could be a bit predictable in her planning.
Instead, I went to the Swayne and walked along its embankment, choosing my route carefully to avoid the proscribed main streets. The river was wide here, as it twisted like a snake through the city. This stretch of bank had been raised and cut straight, though, no doubt by some alien settler for long-forgotten reasons that must have made sense at the time.
Chantran market stalls lined the embankment, and out in the water, families of tilelias skipped and played, flashing silver and black and filling the air with their wailing.
The sixth would strike soon, and then it would be a race to get back before curfew, but for now I was good to catch my breath.
Across the river, I could see a marina, all sleek speedboats and cruisers of alien design; the river was not human territory. Beyond that, a sprawl of buildings clung to the hills of the northern districts.
I had never been far above of the Swayne, had only once even been as far north as the skystation we normally only saw as occasional jet-streaks in the night sky. My world then was a small place consisting of Cragside Ipp, the neighbouring mixed zones and Ipps, and some of the commercial districts where stolen pids allowed us to move outside curfew.
Again, I felt like that fox prowling his territory, marking the boundaries.
Cragside was Sol’s domain for now, and I hoped it would be for a long time. But maybe one day, when Sol stepped down... maybe when that came to pass, the Ipp would be mine. Maybe.
I came to a green area, where trees had been allowed to grow. Silvery lianas were draped across the branches, home to a million tiny silk nests alive with finger-thick dragonflies.
I thought of the girl.
Maybe I’d been thinking of her all along, just fooling myself that I was not. I don’t think I yet understood how deeply she had insinuated herself.
She had no pids.
I’d never come across anyone without an identity before, and it was my business to deal in identities. We stole them, we faked them, we traded them. Each of us had unique pids added to our bloodstream at birth; if that didn’t happen, for any reason, we had them added later. Every time we passed through a checkpoint we were scanned, and anyone without pids would be found out. The oldest child I had known without pids was caught out before her fifth birthday, and she had only lasted that long because her mother was simple and rarely ventured out beyond her clan nest.
I wondered where she could be from, this girl of about my age with the bluest of blue eyes.
I was intrigued. If she could get by this long without being caught, there must be some lessons to learn from her. It was a professional interest. A technical thing.
No more than that.