Year's Best SF 17

you persisted. Your sister was Martian too. What was she doing here?”

Patrice looked at the very slim file on the table. No way of telling if that tablet held a ton of documents or a single page.

“Don’t you know?”

“Explain it to us,” said Ki-anna. Her voice was sibilant, a hint of a lisp.

“Lione was a troposphere engineer. She was working on the KiAn Atmosphere Recovery Project. But you must know …” They waited, silently. “All right. The KiAn war practically flayed this planet. The atmosphere’s being repaired, it’s a major Speranza project. Out here it’s macro-engineering. They’ve created a—a membrane, like a casting mould, of magnetically charged particles. They’re shepherding small water ice asteroids, other debris with useful constituents, through it. Controlled annihilation releases the gases, bonding and venting propagates the right mix. We pioneered the technique. We’ve enriched the Martian atmosphere the same way … nothing like the scale of this. The job also has to be done from the bottom up. The troposphere, the lowest level of the inner atmosphere, is alive. It’s a saturated fluid full of viruses, fragments of DNA and RNA, amino acids, metabolising mineral traces, pre-biotic chemistry. The configuration is unique to a living planet, and it’s like the mycorrhizal systems in the soil, back on Earth. If it isn’t there, or it’s not right, nothing will thrive.”

He couldn’t tell if they knew it all, or didn’t understand a word.

“Lione knew the tropo reconstruction wasn’t going well. She found out there was an area of the surface, under the An-lalhar Lakes, where the living layer might be undamaged. This—where we are now—is the Orbital Refuge Habitat for that region. She came here, determined to get permission from the Ruling An to collect samples—”

Ki-anna interrupted softly. “Isn’t the surviving troposphere remotely sampled by the Project automats, all over the planet?”

“Yes, but that obviously wasn’t good enough. That was Lione. If it was her responsibility, she had to do everything in her power to get the job done.”

“Aah. Raarpht … Your sister befriended the Ruling An, she gained permission, she went down, and she stepped on a landmine. You understand that there was no body to be recovered? That she was vaporised?”

“So I was told.”

Ki-anna rubbed her scarred forearms, the Shet studied Patrice. The interview room was haunted by meaning, shadowy with intent—

“Aap. You need to make a ‘pilgrimage.’ A memorial journey?”

“No, it’s not like that. There’s something wrong.”

The shadows tightened, but were they for him or against him?

“Lione disappeared. I don’t speak any KiAn language, I didn’t have to, the reports were in English: when I hunted for more detail there are translator bots. I haven’t missed anything. A vaporised body doesn’t vanish. All that tissue, blood, and bone leaves forensic traces. None. No samples recovered. She was there to collect samples, don’t tell me it was forbidden … She didn’t come back, that’s all. Something happened to her, something other than a warzone accident—”

“Are you saying your sister was murdered, Patrice?”

“I need to go down there.”

“I can see you’d feel thap way. You realise KiAn is uninhabitable?”

“A lot of places on Mars are called ‘uninhabitable.’ My work takes me to the worst-off regions. I can handle myself.”

“Aap. How do you feel about the KiAn issue, Messer Ferringhi?”

Patrice opened his mouth, and shut it. He didn’t have a prepared answer for that one. “I don’t know enough.”

The Shet and the Ki looked at each other, for the first time. He felt they’d been through the motions, and they were agreeing to quit.

“As you know,” rumbled Bhvaaan, “the Ruling An must give permission. The An-he will see you?”

“I have an appointment.”

“Then thap’s all for now. Enjoy your transit hangover in peace.”

Patrice Ferringhi took a moment, looking puzzled, before he realised he could go. He stood, hesitated, gave an odd little bow and left the room.

The Shet and the Ki relaxed somewhat.

“Collapsed at work,” said Roaaat Bhvaaan. “Thap’s not good.”

“We can’t all be made of stone, Shet.”

“Aaah well. Cross fingers, Chief.”

They were resigned to strange English figures of speech. The language of Speranza, of diplomacy, was also the language of interplanetary policing. You became fluent, or you relied on unreliable transaid: and you screwed up.

“And all my toes,” said the Ki.

On his way to his cabin, Patrice found an ob-bay. He stared into a hollow sphere, permeated by the star-pricked darkness of KiAn system space: the limb of the planet obscured, the mainstar and the blue “daystar” out of sight. Knurled objects flew around, suddenly making endless field-beams visible. One lump rushed straight at him, growing huge: seemed to miss the ob-bay by centimetres, with a roar like monstrous thunder. The big impacts could be close enough to make this Refuge shake. He’d felt that, already. Like the Gods throwing giant furniture about—

He could not get over the fact that nothing was real. Everything had been translated here by the Buonarotti Torus, as pure data. This habitat, this shipboard jumper he wore, this body. All made over again, out of local elements, as if in a 3D scanner … The scarred Ki woman fascinated him, he hardly knew why. The portent he felt in their meeting (had he really met her?) was what they call a “transit hangover.” He must sleep it off.

The Ki-anna was rated Chief of Police, but she walked the beat most days. All her officers above nightstick grade were seconded from the Ruling An’s Household Guard: she didn’t like to impose on them. The Ki—natural street-dwellers, if ever life was natural again—melted indoors as she approached. Her uniform, backed by Speranza, should have made the refugees feel safe: but none of them trusted her. The only people she could talk to were the habitual criminals. They appreciated the Ruling An’s strange appointment.

She made her rounds, visiting the nests where law-abiding people better stay away. The gangsters knew a human had “joined the station.”

They were very curious. She sniffed the wind and lounged with the idlers, giving up Patrice Ferringhi in scraps, a resource to be conserved. The pressure of the human’s strange eyes was still with her—

No one ought to look at her scars like that, it was indecent.

But he was an alien, he didn’t know how to behave.

She didn’t remember being chosen for the treatment that would render her flesh delectable, while ensuring that what happened wouldn’t kill her. She only knew she’d been sold (tradition called it an honour) so that her littermates could live. She would always wonder, why me? What was wrong with me? We were very poor, I understand that, but why me? It had all been for nothing, anyway. Her parents and her littermates were dead, along with everyone else. So few survivors! A handful of die-hards on the surface. A token number of Ki taken away to Speranza, in the staggeringly distant Blue System. Would they ever return? The Ki-anna thought not … Six Refuge Habitats in orbit. And of course some of the Heaven-born, who’d seen what was coming before the war, and escaped to Balas or to Shet.

At curfew she filed a routine report, and retired to her quarters in the Curtain Wall. Roaaat, who was sharing her living space, was already at home. It was fortunate that Shet didn’t normally like to sit in Speranza-style “chairs”: he’d have broken a hole in her ceiling. His bulk, as he lay at ease, dwarfed her largest room. They compared notes.

“All the Refuges have problems,” said the Ki-anna. “But I get the feeling I have more than my share. Extortion, intimidation, theft and violence—”

“We can grease the wheels,” said Roaat. “Strictly off the record, we can pay your villains off. It’s distasteful, not the way to do police work.”

“But expedient.”

“Aap … He seemed very taken with you,” said Roaaat.