Shadow Man (Paragons of Queer Speculative Fiction) (14 page)

Mairaiche
: (Hara)
farm; source of cultivated crops rather than harvest.

The spirits: (Hara)
celestial beings that occupy an intermediate position between God
(defined as ineffable, unknowable, and not terribly interested
inhuman beings) and Man. The spirits intercede for and interact with
human beings, and grant favors more willingly, and, as a result,
their worship, through services and offerings, is far more important
to most Harans than the distant God. Harans generally believe that a
man or woman can take on some of the characteristics of a spirit,
either through dance, concentration, or sheer serendipity, and when
in that state, his or her acts are seen as the actions of the spirit.

Mhyre Tatian

Reiss was late, as usual.
Tatian peered over the edge of the heavy display glasses--his
implants were worse than usual this morning, making it almost
impossible to work on line--and out into the bright morning
sun-and-shadow that filled the courtyard, wondering irritably if the
younger man was ever going to show up for work. Data from
Derebought's preliminary analysis of the hungry-jack he'd bought
from the market woman danced just below his line of sight, the green
and gold symbols forming a twisted, familiar pattern. There were a
few variants, helpfully highlighted in a brighter yellow, but not
many: interesting, but it was hard to tell if it would be worth
pursuing the analysis. He sighed and slipped the glasses back into
place, focusing on the globular shape that swam in the sudden
darkness. The outer cords were mostly inert, but they seemed to bind
to the same receptors used by the psychoactive harrodine that was the
drug's most active compound. That might help moderate or control
hungry-jack's some-what unpredictable effects--if, of course,
Derebought had added, her note flashing tart orange below the visual
analysis, the inert whatever-it-was was picked up preferentially over
harrodine. Further analysis would be needed to determine any possible
utility, and she wasn't prepared to make a guess either way.

Tatian sighed. This
morning in particular he resented having the decision handed to him,
when he couldn't switch easily from system to system, but reached
for the shadowscreen to bring up the financial system. Its icon was
cold and hard as ice to the touch, a bit of whimsy from a previous
user; he flicked it into the center of the screen, activating it, and
its cold spread as the numbers spilled across his vision, overriding
the chemical shapes. The controls rearranged themselves under his
fingers, new spots of warmth and cold and the fugitive suggestions of
shape. He adjusted them, searching for the latest budget files, then
made his query. The numbers swam dizzily for a moment, then presented
him with his answer. There was still money in the budget to buy time
on one of the larger systems at the starport, and to buy more of the
uncleaned pods, if needed. NAPD could afford to have Derebought run
the more detailed analysis, which put the question squarely back on
his desk: was it worth the trouble? Probably not, he admitted
silently--it was unlikely to come to anything really usable--but
NAPD couldn't afford to pass up the chance at something new.

He sighed again and
flattened his hand against the shadow-screen, shutting down both
programs, and set the glasses aside before the cascade of codes had
properly begun. "Derry?" he said, to the general pickup.

"Æ?" A moment
later, the botanist stuck her head around the edge of the doorway.

"Got a minute?"

"Sure." Derebought
wiped her hands on the skirts of her thin jacket, and came into the
office. The scent of musk and mint clung to her, to her unbound hair,
and she looked tired: it was closing on Midsummer, barely a local
week, six planetary days, until the holiday, and even the most
assimilated indigenes had obligations to fulfill. Those obligations
would culminate in the Stane
baanket
on the second day of Midsummer, when her branch of the clan, or as
much of it as could possibly afford to, returned to the
gran'mesnie
at Gedesrede to feed and be fed by their patriarch. With her
off-world training and a job that paid in concord dollars, Derebought
was easily the richest member of her
mesnie
;
it was her particular responsibility to stand in for the rest at
Midsummer. Tatian glanced down at his desktop, reading the schedule
displayed there. She and Mats were scheduled to fly to Gedesrede on
Fives and come back three days later: not, Tatian thought, the sort
of holiday schedule I'd want.

"What's up?" she
said, and lowered herself into the client's chair.

"I want your advice,"
Tatian said.

"If it's the
analysis," Derebought answered, "I already gave you my best
guess."

"Which is, you don't
know whether it's worth it."

Derebought nodded.
"That's the shape of it. I ran--well, you saw the results. I
honestly can't say if it'll go any further."

"I think it's worth
one more round," Tatian said.

Derebought sighed, and
shrugged, turning both palms to the light. Both her palms and the
backs of her hands were streaked with faint lines and symbols--marks
of the spirits, Tatian knew, but he had forgotten which ones. "I'm
inclined to do another set, yes, but if that doesn't get results, I
wouldn't pursue it. Always assuming, of course, there's money
left in the budget."

"I checked. There's
enough--go to Buram-Hattrich or Seals, they owe us a favor."

Derebought nodded, and
in the same moment, a shadow crossed the courtyard window. She looked
up sharply, and Tatian was startled by the relief he glimpsed in her
eyes. The main door opened and closed again with a thud. She pushed
herself out of her chair and went to the office doorway. "Reiss? Is
that you?"

"Yeah, sorry."
Reiss peered around the door frame, doing his best to look contrite.
His dark hair stood up in tufts, uncombed, and he was wearing a Haran
tunic Tatian had never seen before. "I--there was some trouble at
the Harbor Market last night, and I had to help some friends with
bail. Then I overslept. I'm sorry, Tatian."

"What kind of
trouble?" Tatian asked, and didn't bother to hide his skepticism.
He had seen the news that morning--the local narrowcasts as well as
the main feed from the port--and there had been no mention of any
trouble. There had been talk about the harvest, and contract
speculations, and how much the Stillers were spending on their
baanket
, which
would be held in Bonemarche as usual.... "It didn't make the
news."

"I'm not
surprised," Reiss said sourly. "It wasn't anything serious,
just some rana bands, but the
mosstaas
cracked down. And a bunch of people got arrested."

"And one of them
called you to post bail," Derebought said.

Reiss gave her a wary
smile, half embarrassed, half ingratiating. "Actually, a friend of
a friend called, to see if I'd contribute to the bail, and maybe
help get people home from the iron house. It was more of a bribe,
anyway, and I had the car last night. But the judge let most of them
off without charges."

"Did you have to give
your name?" Tatian asked.

Reiss shook his head.
"Renai knows a bondsman, 3e
handled it."

"Good."

"What was it all
about, anyway?" Derebought asked. "I heard at the ceremony that
there'd been something at the Souk, but nothing about the harbor."

Reiss shrugged. "Some
ultra-Modernists were dancing for the Meeting--to bring local law
into line with the Concord--and some of the Traditionalists got
pissy. The
mosstaas
stepped in, arrested the ranas before a fight started."

Which meant, Tatian
translated, that the issue was gender law again. The Centennial
Meeting would open after the new year, its ceremonies marking the
five-hundredth anniversary of Hara's settlement. It was as close to
a universal forum as Hara had, the only possible counterbalance to
Temelathe's control of the traditional mechanisms of
mesnie
,
clan, and Watch. It didn't seem like much of an adversary, not when
one looked at the power Temelathe held, but the Most Important Man
was taking it very seriously indeed. And maybe he was right to do so:
with the Meeting due to open in about eight local months, about six
thousand hours by the more conventional reckoning, every political
group on Hara was doing its best to get its issues put before the
Meeting. And right now, the question of gender law--of whether or
not Haran law would acknowledge the existence of mems, fems, and
herms--was becoming a major issue. Temelathe Stane was doing his
best to keep it from reaching the agenda, or so rumor said, not least
because of the various ways he profited from trade. Tatian wasn't
fully sure he believed the talk--after all, there were five sexes,
no matter what local law said about it; he couldn't help thinking
that Tendlathe's well-publicized opposition to off-world influence
and trade was just another way to raise prices--but he wasn't
surprised that Temelathe would prefer to see the debate center on
gender rather than on his own domination of Haran politics. The
Meeting would be an acrimonious one, whatever happened. He said, "Do
you still have your meeting on Kittree Row?"

"Yeah, I called. It
wasn't until noon anyway."

"I suppose it was too
much trouble to call here?"

"I only had local
access," Reiss said. "I am sorry."

Tatian glanced down at
the desktop, tacitly accepting both the apology and the excuse.
Still, it was half an hour to noon, which left only half an hour to
negotiate the worst traffic in Bonemarche.

"That's why I came
straight in," Reiss said. "We'll make it."

Tatian looked at him
warily. Now that it actually came to dealing with an unlicensed
indigene, he was nervous, which was not entirely unreasonable,
either. But then, her rates had to be better than the prices the port
technicians could charge. And if he didn't get the system fixed
before the Midsummer bargaining began, he would be worse than
useless. "Right. Let's go." He touched the shadowscreen as he
spoke, securing the desktop and telling the system when he would be
back.

"I'll get that
analysis started," Derebought said, and Tatian nodded.

"Great."

Reiss had left his
battered jigg outside the office's back entrance, as usual. Tatian
followed him out into the rutted alley, wrinkling his nose at the
smell of rotting seaweed, and lowered himself into the open passenger
seat. Reiss kicked the motor to life and brought the jigg out into
the main street at a relatively decorous pace. Traffic was heavy, as
always, heavier as they reached the warren of alleys and narrow lanes
that led into the Souk, until the jigg was barely moving as fast as a
person could walk. He could feel Reiss's weight tipping the jigg
from side to side as he scanned the passing shays, and he braced
himself against the edge of the car as the jigg accelerated suddenly,
darting through the gap between a three-up and a shay piled high with
bales of fonori. Reiss steadied the machine almost absently--he was,
Tatian reminded himself, a very good driver--and swung out and
around a slow-moving caleche before the driver could do more than
open his mouth to shout. And then they had made the turn onto Kittree
Row, the traffic vanishing almost magically.

The buildings were low
and long, like most of the buildings in Bonemarche, but instead of
the usual open bay at street level, most of them showed blank faces,
closed off from the street by gray-painted doors. They looked almost
metallic, but Tatian knew they would be wood or cast clay. Each one
was marked with a house mark like a sign--a wave, a crudely drawn
crescent moon, a top-hatted skeleton--and most had a bar of black
paint running horizontally across the door. Stiller was a Black Watch
clan, and most of Bonemarche's population were at least nominally
Stillers.

The jigg slowed, pulled
sideways into the shadow of a building distinguished by a painted
star and a wide band of green paint. Massingberd was a Green Watch
clan, Tatian remembered, and loosely allied with Stiller against
Stane. The door was propped upon a balk of wood, raised maybe a meter
to let the breeze in, and Reiss leaned out of the jigg to touch a
button on the wall beside the doorway. For a long moment, nothing
happened, and then the door began to rise, jerking along its tracks.
Reiss ducked forward slightly and brought the jigg into the bay. The
engine was very loud in the confined space.

"Æ," he called,
and flicked the engine off completely. "Starli, are you there?"

There was a little
silence. As Tatian's eyes adjusted to the light--the bay was well
lit, but seemed dim after the brilliance of the street--he could
make out a knot of mostly men, gathered around a stand-alone
diagnostic unit. They said nothing, watching the jigg, and then a
woman pushed her way through the group, wiping her hands on a bright
blue rag. One of the men switched off the diagnostic unit, and
another reached halfheartedly for a tool kit that stood open beside a
disassembled jet-car frame.

"So what's up,
Reiss?" The woman--Starli, she must be--came fully into the
light, stopped perhaps three meters away, her arms folded across her
breasts. She was tall, even by Haran standards, her long hair tied up
in a square of blue-and-green-and-pink print fabric, and Tatian
caught himself looking again to see if she was really a fem.

Reiss said, "You
remember the other day I asked if you still did work on off-world
implants? My boss is having problems with a connection, and I
wondered if you could help." He nodded side-ways. "Ser Mhyre
Tatian." The off-world names sounded harsh amid the flow of
franca
.