“Here you go.” He put the mannequin on the earth next to the alien, which jiggled perhaps in excitement, perhaps disappointment. With aliens, who knew? There was an audible click as one of the boxes was released from the metallic belt to fall on the ground. He picked it up. Five centimetres a side, some sort of grey metal, the edges rounded and slippery to the touch, light in his hand. “Good doing business with you,” he said and walked away, looking back just before the path took him out of sight. The alien was spraying some sort of translucent film over the mannequin. He could almost swear it looked happy. A Free Spacer – a pirate, according to the newly formed Earth Central’s Galactic Division – had talked about a far distant planet that aliens used as a sort of trading post, or could be a museum. There were warehouses crammed with human artefacts of every possible kind. It made no sense, the Free Spacer had said, these were things that had been exchanged for tech like anti-gravity and AI technology, and were now laid out on shelves like the galaxy’s biggest second-hand market. Then again, the Free Spacer had said, nothing about aliens or even the galaxy made sense, and believing it might was the quickest way to madness and an early death.
He’d once wanted to be a Free Spacer. Meeting Sara had changed everything. And now nothing mattered except the need for revenge.
The alien artefact was safe in his pocket. A man might get seriously rich, but for the most part no one ever figured out what the artefacts did and the aliens weren’t saying. Or if they were, no one understood them. That was another reason why Wilders looked down on the new city states: so much effort to make sense of things that belonged to another race. He remembered reading in school something said a hundred years ago. Any country could learn how to manufacture a transistor radio. The trick is to develop the science that enables you to invent it. And have a society that needs it.
Trees thinned, shortened. The grass got thicker, lusher, scattered with spring flowers. The air seemed lighter, softer. He could see the Protected Territory’s fifty-kilometre-wide agricultural strip that penned Seattle City State against the Pacific. Maglev train tracks, raised ten metres above the ground, spread out from the city hub like spokes in a wheel. The local terminus was a mere three kilometres away.
An hour later he stood waiting in the warm sunshine on a hundred-metre-long platform of polished concrete with a waist-high wall and surrounded by fields. There was one other passenger, standing by the access stairs: a rugged-looking man in his fifties in work clothes and with a farmer’s quiet watchfulness, always ready for disaster. The man nodded a greeting then walked over, light on his feet as an athlete.
“You’ll be a Wilder,” the farmer said. “See by your clothes.”
He nodded.
“Interesting cloth you people use. Seems like man-made but I seen some growing wild one time. Like no goddamn plant I ever knew. Had to spray twice before it went. Business in the City?”
“Business,” he agreed. The plant that produced Wilder cloth had come from an alien trade, as the farmer had obviously guessed. Still, wise not to confirm it. City states were nervous about alien and Earth plants cross-breeding ever since a carnivorous black rose with poison thorns had been found with sucker roots penetrating the dead body of a municipal gardener. Galactic Division, or GalDiv, had just announced that in future it had to be informed of all alien trades. All but a few city states had agreed. The video of the black rose screaming as it was dragged from the earth probably helped.
“Some city states don’t allow Wilder people, not casual like. Guards, fences.” The farmer spat onto the single metal rail. “Hear that Erie City’s gonna make everyone wear those 'lectronic chips, you know? Gonna make communication easier. Yeah, right, like we all forgot how to talk. Sounds more like a way to control. Damn stupid.” He held out a powerful hand. “Name’s Doug Barnes. Farm five thousand hectares, mostly potatoes and beans, some dairy and beef.”
The farmer had pale blue eyes and a strong grip. The other man glanced down, sensing something out of place, not sure what, the thought vanishing as Barnes gave an extra squeeze that lingered a few seconds too long, accompanied by a searching look.
“Anson,” he said, relieved to be no longer holding hands with a stranger, “Anson Greenaway.” He paused, then decided it would be suspicious to stop there. “I’m a cop in my part of the Wild.” For the most part this meant keeping tourists from the city in line. Any Wilder who committed a serious crime, from large-scale theft to murder or rape, did not hang around. The Wild extended worldwide and without any overall bureaucracy a person could reinvent themselves many times over in a lifetime. Aside from tourist wrangling, Anson’s main duties were taking care of drunks, domestic violence and scrappy teenagers.
An old-fashioned train whistle, broadcast from hidden loudspeakers, warned of the maglev’s imminent arrival. A disembodied voice said ten minutes. Anson glanced down the track and saw a distant blur. The whistle sounded again.
“Cute, right?” Barnes spat on the rail. “Like it’s all traditional. 'Cept everyone knows this maglev came from an alien trade. All we did was the concrete.”
Anson found himself defending a city state. “Humans had been working on maglev for years. The aliens only improved it.” Something he couldn’t identify still nagged at him, something strange about Doug Barnes.
“You think?” Barnes shook his head. “That’s like saying the rifle only improved the spear.” He stared at Anson for
