Queen of Nowhere Read online

  J

  QUEEN OF

  NOWHERE

  JAINE FENN

  GOLLANCZ

  LONDON

  QUEEN OF NOWHERE

  JAINE FENN

  GOLLANCZ

  LONDON

  Copyright © Jaine Fenn 2013

  All rights reserved

  The right of Jaine Fenn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Gollancz An imprint of the Orion Publishing Group

  Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane,

  London WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9780575096998

  I 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Typeset by Deltatype Ltd, Birkenhead, Merseyside Printed by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CRO 4 yy The Orion Publishing Group’s policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to confotm to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  www.jainefenn.com

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  For the geeks, who may well inherit the Earth

  Intelligence errors are factual inaccuracies in analysis resulting from poor or missing data.

  Analytic Culture in the u.s. Intelligence Community, CIA website

  Eat freely with glad heart; fear here no dearth:

  But of the tree whose operation brings

  Knowledge of good and ill, which I have set

  The pledge of thy obedience and thy faith,

  Amid the garden by the Tree of Life,

  Remember what I warn thee, shun to taste,

  And shun the bitter consequence: for know,

  The day thou eat’st thereof, my sole command Transgressed, inevitably thou shalt die

  Paradise Lost, John Milton

  PART ONE

  A WILFUL GHOST

  If you're listening to this, I’m dead.

  You’ve had some with me; you might even the name ‘Orzabet’. That doesn’t matter. I don’t matter. What matters is the information you're getting now, and what you choose to do with it.

 

  After three weeks of luxurious indolence, Bez was ready to become someone else. She had, however, intended to make the change on her own terms. Not like this.

  The cops were waiting when she came out of customs, a man and a woman in silver-grey uniforms, looking faintly uncomfortable. The female officer said, ‘Are you Medame Oloria Estrante?’

  It was a doubly pointless question. For a start, the station authorities would not accost disembarking tourists randomly: they knew, or thought they knew, whom they were addressing.

  Secondly, Oloria Estrante did not exist. But the fact that the cops used the name, and sounded convinced by it, went some way to allay Bez’s initial alarm. ‘I am,’ she said, in the tone of perplexed irritation hub-law expected from the leisured classes. ‘What can I do for you, officers?’

  The starliner’s other passengers were filing past, some of them looking back curiously. Bez made herself ignore the unwanted attention, at the same time clamping down on the urge to start analysing possible causes of, and ways to deal with, this unexpected and unwelcome development. First priority: stay cool

  The female officer said, apologetically, ‘We’d like you to come with us.’

  Bez had fired up her basic head ware - the legal suite, as she thought of it - the moment she spotted the law. Her overlays confirmed the pair were what they appeared to be; or, at least, their uniforms had genuine tags. That reduced, but did not eliminate, the chance of this being Enemy action. Bez favoured the two officers with a put-upon frown. ‘Where to? I was hoping to get some shopping in during the stopover.’ She needed to keep conforming to their expectations.

  ‘Just to our offices, to answer a few questions.’

  She sniffed. ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Then you had best lead on.’ She kept her tone faintly incredulous, like someone with nothing to fear, but the moisture had left her mouth and breathing evenly took some effort. At times like this she wished she had mood-mods. Fortunately there weren’t many times like this.

  As the cops fell into step either side of her she asked, ‘Can you at least give me some idea what this is about? I’m assuming there’s some mistake, which I’m happy to help you clear up.’

  ‘I’m not sure it would be appropriate to say,’ said the male officer.

  The female cop said, ‘I believe Medame Estrante has a right to know what the matter pertains to.’ The woman was one of those people who treated the conspicuously rich with deference, regardless of how unpleasant they were in return. Bez had noticed such behaviour before when in this persona. ‘We’re investigating certain financial irregularities,’ the cop explained.

  Trying for an air of indignant confusion, Bez asked, ‘What sort of financial irregularities?’

  ‘The theft of a significant sum from a semi-dormant account.’

  ‘Theft?’ That kind of accusation warranted outright indigna-tion. In some ways interstellar tourists were the easiest cultural group to impersonate; their disdain for those without the excessive wealth required to travel the stars made them imperious and unreasonable, like holodrama caricatures of themselves. ‘Ridiculous.’

  ‘The account in question belongs to a Frer Yolson. Does that name mean anything to you?’

  Yolson? Ah, of course. Not the Enemy after all, thank the void.

  ‘Medame Estrante?’

  She started at the sudden interjection of the male cop, who had just laid a hand on her arm. She flinched, shaking him off.

  How long was it since anyone had deliberately touched her? ‘As I thought, a simple mistake,’ she said, fighting the colour rising to her cheeks.

  The female cop was staring at her. ‘Are you sure, medame?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said firmly. She needed more data, but she doubted these two knew much and she was far from confident of her ability to get info from them without arousing their suspicions. ‘Shall we carry on and get this foolishness sorted out?’

  ‘As you wish.’ The female cop started walking again. Bez fell back into step and concentrated on controlling her physical reactions.

  They came out on to the dockside proper.

  Tarset was the least glamorous hub-point in human-space, and for most tourists it was no more than a brief stopover between more interesting destinations. The station’s dockside district provided the usual services - bars, brothels and basic supplies - but the main concourse was a no-frills, three-storey strip-mall. The only concession to aesthetics was the faux starry sky projected across the ceiling, barely visible through the holo-ads.

  The irony was that she had not needed to disembark here at all.

  She could have checked her datadrop from her cabin on the starliner. But should anyone be taking an interest in her, they might wonder why, when most of the other passengers made at least a cursory visit to the station, Medame Estrante did not; and yet, at the same time, she accessed a secure messaging service. Besides, while genuine tourists were sniffy about the place, Bez had a certain fondness for Tarset. The station had originated as a mash-up of ancient colony ships, and the resulting state of constant renovation left it full of usefully untended spaces, physical and virtual.

  Should she access the drop now? It might contain intel indicating why the law were so eager to talk to her. No: her escort would notice if she tuned out, and Gloria Estrante was meant to be a good little
Salvatine, eschewing ungodly implants. Going virtual would blow her cover.

  It was early evening so the mall was moderately crowded. She weighed up her chances if she made a run for it. Given how cooperative she had been so far, the law might not expect that. If she could get into the service tunnels, it would just be a case of holing up for a while then re-emerging with a new identity. But first she would have to physically evade her escort, who outnumbered her, were combat-trained and carried weapons. Far better to think her way out.

  Their progress through the evening crowds was making heads turn. For someone who lived her life as a wilful ghost, such scrutiny was intensely uncomfortable. Bez read the current timestamp from the chrono display in the top left of her visual cortex, taking it as a single integer and computing its square root. When she had regained her equilibrium, she began to consider how the current predicament could have arisen.

  The good news was that whatever the problem was, it did not appear to be related to the Estrante persona itself, merely to the associated funding. The underlying cause would probably be human fallibility. It usually was.

  The rich and reclusive ‘Frer Yolson’ was maintained by the agent she designated as BetaI6, one of her oldest and most reliable financial agents. His databreaking skills were sound, and he had no reason to betray her. At least, not willingly …

  This situation could have been initiated by the Enemy after all.

  Why else would anyone in the hubs care about the financial affairs of a religious recluse in a distant spur-system? Even if these were genuine cops acting on genuine orders, there was still no guarantee this really was just about the funding of a single persona. And once she was in custody, she would no longer be in control of the situation. Should the real question be: from where did the orders to arrest her originate?

  No. Bez applied what she thought of as ‘best-case principle’ to kill that line of reasoning. When paranoia became a way oflife, the ability to selectively ignore negative outcomes became a vital skill.

  It was either that or constantly be paralysed by fear and indecision.

  Once she knew more, she would reassess.

  The two officers stopped, so Bez did too. They had arrived at a bank of elevators.

  The door opened to reveal a half-full car. At the very front, a young woman and young man were kissing passionately. Everyone paused, united in mild, indulgent embarrassment, waiting for the pair to register that they were causing an obstruction.

  If she had been by herself, Bez would have turned and strode off without looking back. But stuck between the two cops, she was no longer an observer but a participant, complicit in this minor emotional drama. The lovers were so rapturous in their oblivion.

  So very happy. Her heart started to race with an emotion more complex than the fear she was already suppressing, and moisture tickled the corners of her eyes.

  The girl noticed what was happening first and broke away from the boy with a shy giggle.

  Once upon a time, that was me. Then the Enemy forced my lover to walk into the sun, and everything fell apart.

  The boy blushed and looked at his feet. The pair shuffled back to let Bez and her escort enter.

  A barely audible sound whispered round the dozen others already in the car, somewhere between an approving sigh and stifled laughter. Events like this brightened a dull day for normal people. Not for Bez. Already tense from maintaining the façade of the Estrante persona under close inspection, the sight of people experiencing the ordinary joy she’d had torn from her opened up a hollow in her soul. She blinked hard but one stupid, weak tear still escaped down her cheek.

  She stared at her chrono again, eyes unfocused from her surroundings. She must take this incident as a reminder of her resolve. People would always love and hate and hurt each other but if - when - she succeeded in bringing down the Enemy, then such pain would occur on purely human terms.

  By the time they reached their stop she had her emotional responses locked down. If the cops had noticed the stray tear, they gave no sign.

  They exited the lift at one of the station’s admin floors. Tarset’s corridors ranged from the plain through the highly customised to the barely serviceable; in this section the decor was well maintained if utilitarian. Bez called up a public map on a soft overlay and used it to track their progress, confirming that they were heading for Tarset’s main Legal Enforcement offices.

  Any residual thoughts of finding out more from her escort had been blown away by the sight of the lovers, which had left the shell between appearance and true self worn dangerously thin. Instead she found herself recalling the two other times she’d had brushes with the law. The most recent, three years ago on Mercanth station, had been as a victim of crime: hers had been one of a dozen rooms in a mid-level hotel targeted by thieves who had (inexpertly, in her opinion) hacked the locks. The cops had been mildly perplexed by her lack of possessions. The earlier and more alarming occasion had been on Indri, when her illegal head ware was newly installed and she had yet to hone her databreaking skills. It was nineteen years ago, but the memory still made her uncomfortable. Her first ever attempt to ride a trickle-down, and she had screwed up. She got dumped and tagged trying to break through the firewall of a local banking node. Because the alert had been raised before she had penetrated the bank’s system, she had got away with a fine.

  As they rounded the final corner she shut down her headware.

  Police offices, like customs posts, had active scanners.

  She held her head high as she walked through the open door into the hub-law offices, but she could not shake the feeling that she was walking into a trap that was about to snap shut behind her.

  PURE PROGRESSIONS

  You’re receiving this databurst because I need you to act on what it contains. I’d say, ‘Don’t let me down’ but my feelings and expectations are of no relevance. You’ve almost certainly never even met me.

  Instead I’ll say this: Don’t let humanity down.

 

  The doorway gave into a public reception area with seating provided for those who had business with the law. It was currently empty, save for a surly-looking pair of youths who might equally well be victims or suspects. Beyond a half-frosted partition, police work was proceeding in an orderly fashion at desks and screens.

  Bez hesitated for a moment in the lobby but her escort carried on, sweeping her forward with them. The female officer explained, ‘We’ll take you straight through and get you booked in.’

  ‘Booked in?’ Although she had expected this, Bez did not have to fake her concern at the prospect.

  ‘It’s standard procedure. And if there is a misunderstanding, then the quicker we deal with it, the quicker you can get back to your ship.’

  Bez could only agree with that sentiment.

  Once on the far side of the partition, a man in a slightly different uniform approached them, carrying a slate. He addressed Bez with awkward deference. ‘Right, medame, if you would kindly read the text and acknowledge just here- ‘ He turned the slate around for Bez to see.

  Bez read the display carefully. It was a relatively straightforward statement of her rights and current status. She was being asked to agree to a short initial interview, after which hub-law could, at their discretion, hold her for another eight hours without charge. They could ask further questions during this time, aided by lie-detection technology, in which case she was entitled to a defence advocate. She remembered something similar from her first brush with the law, though in that case they had charged her at the first interview, then released her promptly once she paid the fine. Not seeing any other choice, she thumbed the base of the screen, tensing slightly as she did so, even though the Estrante ID itself was sound.

  When she handed back the slate, the booking officer murmured, ‘If you’ll follow me, someone will see you now,’ almost as though this was an appointment she had made for herself.

  They left the original escort behind and went up
a side corridor to a plain door, which opened automatically.

  Bez tried not to be dismayed at the grim-looking room beyond, which contained only a thick-topped desk and two chairs. The woman standing by the chair on the far side had a uniform featur-ing more silver than any Bez had seen so far today. However, she smiled and greeted Bez politely. ‘Come in, Medame Estrante.’

  Bez made herself walk over to the table. ‘Thank you,’ she said, with as much dignity as she could muster. ‘And you are?’

  ‘First Detective Hylam. Do sit down.’

  As Bez seated herself she saw one piece of silver that did not denote rank: the detective wore a discreet lapel pin in the shape of a loop-headed cross. That could explain what was happening here. The hub authorities got hundreds of requests from planetary law-enforcement agencies seeking fugitives who had fled their jurisdiction, but the hubs were only obliged to act on the most serious; other cases were at the discretion of the local ranking officers. If Hylam was a Horusi, this could be simple religious solidarity. Salvatines were the exception on the hubs, and this particular believer might be taking an interest because the alleged crime involved a follower of her own subsect. Plus, from the look of the office outside, the law was having a slow day. Bez tried not to let her relief show.

  Detective Hylam sat down. ‘I won’t waste any more of your time than absolutely necessary. Could you confirm that Frer Yolson of the Eagle’s Retreat Preceptory House on Sestine-Beta is your second cousin three times removed?’

  Bez smiled at the detective. ‘Actually, he’s my third cousin twice removed.’

  ‘Yet he sends you an allowance. Quite a big one.’

  Bez dropped her gaze, reminding herself that this woman thought they held shared religious beliefs. ‘I know, and I bless Mother Isis for his generosity.’

  ‘I’m sure you do. I’m still a little unclear on why Frer Yolson, who appears to have access to considerable funds, does this.’