‘Not exactly.’ Jacob pursed his lips in thought for a moment. ‘Well, more like an iceberg, really.’
‘The meeting is on an ice-pharm?’
‘A big one,’ Jacob nodded, ‘with a whole town carved into it.’
They found Lee Hsingyun in a dive bar near the docks, where the stars were far more easily visible than they were in the middle of New Kaiohsung. Saul had read through the names of some of the local constellations in a magazine article back at the hotel, but found he couldn’t recall a single one. Nonetheless, one of those far away speckles of light, hanging over the snow-sprinkled concrete like frozen diamonds, was Sol, all of fifty-five light-years distant.
Hsingyun was small and wiry, with fashionably streaked hair and calculating eyes, and something about his manner made Saul take an instant dislike to him. Hsingyun and Jacob clasped hands like old friends as soon as they arrived there, but Saul still couldn’t shake the feeling of unease that had been plaguing him since he’d first realized Jacob wasn’t going to show up at the hotel.
Hsingyun led them to a private booth at the rear of the bar. From where Saul now sat, he could see another TriView running what might be the same news feed. The sound was inaudible in the noisy bar, but the closed captions running underneath,n both Mandarin and English, followed a story about Galileo. A series of rapidly cut shots, taken more than a decade before, showed separatist graffiti decorating various Galilean settlements, followed by footage of attacks on the ASI forces that had been sent in to quell the unrest.
The captions gave a voice to the images: ‘Nearly a decade after separatist groups affiliated with the Tian Di Hui claimed responsibility for the destruction of Galileo’s CTC gate, Sphere representatives are meeting with leading Coalition member nations in advance of the link’s re-establishment.’
The scene changed to the UN building in Strasbourg. More than half the men and women mingling on a platform before an audience of journalists were from Pan-Asian Sphere nations, and of those the majority were probably representatives of the Chinese Confederacy. The rest came from affiliated nations like Malaysia and Indonesia, along with a smattering of black and brown faces drawn from Africa and the Indian subcontinent.
The commentary switched to cover an interview with a protester whose skin was even darker than Saul’s. ‘All we ask is for the same right to choose our destiny as enjoyed by citizens of the Western Coalition states, and that means full access to the wormhole technology. We should be able to set up our own network of wormhole gates, so that the colonies can link to one another directly, instead of forcing people to pass through the Lunar Array every single time they want to move from colony to colony.’
‘The Coalition States all say the Lunar Array is the only adequate means of providing support and protection to the colonies,’ replied an unseen interviewer.
The protester shook his head. ‘That’s a lie,’ he said angrily. ‘This way, they control access to the colonies, and make them dependent on the Coalition. Everyone knows that what happened to Galileo happened because they tried to push for independence.’
‘But separatist groups are believed to have been responsible for the collapse of the Galileo wormhole,’ suggested the interviewer.
This time the protester laughed out loud. ‘Well, I think it was a cover-up. The ASI did that deliberately, to stop the revolution spreading to the other colonies.’
‘Saul?’
He dropped his gaze back down, to meet Jacob’s. ‘What?’
‘Ignore that bullshit.’ Jacob’s hands tap-tapped on the edge of the table before him. ‘Did you hear what Lee was just telling us about?’ He gave Saul a meaningful look:
Saul shook his head. ‘It’s pykrete, not ice.’ He had to shout it over the pounding music filling the otherwise empty bar.
‘What the hell is pykrete?’ demanded Jacob.
Saul looked at him with an expression of infinite patience. ‘Ice water mixed with cellulose fibre,’ he replied. ‘The same stuff the ice-pharms are made from.’
Jacob looked surprised. ‘It’s just ice, isn’t it?’
‘Nope.’ Lee shook his head. ‘Pykrete’s hard as steel, makes the pharms extremely resistant to a direct assault. Now, the guns have cooled chambers that—’
Just then a waitress deposited a tall green bottle and three glasses on the table between them. Hsingyun quickly poured them each a shot.
‘A celebration,’ he said, pushing a glass each in front of Saul and Jacob. ‘Tonight we sleep as rich men.’
Saul recognized the brand as one containing a variety of powerful synthetic psycho-actives native to Kepler. He caught Jacob’s eye and nodded at him to come closer.
Jacob leaned over the table towards him and, for once, Saul was glad of the pounding music. ‘Why are we drinking this shit?’ he demanded.
‘It’s not that strong,’ Jacob yelled in his ear. ‘Read the label; it’s a mild derivative at best. You’ll get a bigger hit from the alcohol, I swear.’
‘Mr Lassen,’ Hsingyun raised his glass towards Saul with a smile that sent shivers down his back, ‘if you will.’
Saul picked up his glass, unable to resist a certain fascination at the way the sudden movement made the gene-engineered bioluminescent bacteria within the liquid glow more brightly. He knew the consequences if he failed to drink it.
He shot a quick, angry look at Jacob, when he was sure Hsingyun wouldn’t notice, and swallowed the contents in one go.
‘So this ice-pharm we’re going to,’ Saul asked a little while later, ‘what does it research?’
‘They collect samples of sea-life, mostly microbial,’ said Hsingyun. ‘As I’m sure you’re aware,’ he tapped the
