“Did they need permission?”
“Sure they did.”
The show went back to the studio. “Incredible,” Alessandra said, shaking her head in saddened bewilderment. “Just how backward are they in Randtown?”
“That was edited!” Mark protested to the bar at large. “I… That wasn’t what I meant. I said other stuff, too. I told her about the nuclear micropiles. Why isn’t that in there? She’s making this— Christ, I look ridiculous.” He felt Liz take his hand and squeeze reassuringly, and shot her a desperate glance.
“It’s okay,” she whispered.
“The kind of backward you get from three generations of marrying cousins,” Mellanie confided to Alessandra.
The Phoenix bar was totally silent now.
“So in his view, not only do we, the Commonwealth, not have the right to put vital defense equipment on an uninhabited mountain,” Mellanie said. “But wait for this next bit.”
“Oh, God,” Mark said. He wanted the program to end. Now. The universe to end, actually.
Earlier that day up at the blockade, Mellanie asked, “Surely if you oppose that then you’re taking an antihuman stance?” in a fully reasonable tone.
Mark’s giant face smiled goofishly. “If this is being antihuman, then bring it on and give me more.”
Back in the studio Mellanie gave a what-can-you-do shrug to Alessandra.
“Bitch!” Mark yelled furiously. He jumped to his feet, his wineglass tumbling to the stone flag floor. “You fucking bitch. This is not the way it happened.”
Everyone in the bar had stopped drinking and talking to look at him. Alessandra Baron’s show vanished from the portal to be replaced by the New Oxford invitation open golf tournament. “Enough of those smartmouth whores,” China growled, several OCtattoo curlicues glowing scarlet on his bald head. “You sit yourself back down there, Mark. We can all see it was a stitch-up job. I’ll get you a refill for that glass, on the house.”
Liz put her hand around his wrist and tugged him back down. “That can’t be legal,” he said. “Surely?” Anger was giving way to shock.
“Depends what you can prove,” Yuri said earnestly. “If your memory of the event is replayed to a court, then you can demonstrate they produced a detrimental edit.” He trailed off under Olga’s sharp stare.
“Don’t worry about it,” Liz said soothingly. “Everyone here knows you, they can see that the interview is a phony. It’s the navy’s response to the blockade. They’re putting the pressure on Simon to let the convoy through. Newton’s law of politics.”
Mark put his head in his hands. His e-butler was telling him Carys Panther was calling again. So was Simon Rand. Messages were coming in from the unisphere at the rate of several thousand a second, directed at his public code. It seemed that everyone who had accessed Alessandra and Mellanie wanted to tell him what they thought of him. They weren’t being kind.
…
The heat seemed to be increasing with every step, along with the humidity. Ozzie was surprised by that. He’d walked enough Silfen paths between worlds now to know when the tracks were taking him over the threshold. The signs were subtle and very gradual. Not this time.
They’d been walking through a deciduous forest on the second world since the ghost planet; it was midsummer, with wildflowers providing a gentle carpet of pastel colors across the forest floor. Palm trees and giant ferns began to intermingle with the doughty trunks of the forest. There was a strengthening scent, too, which took Ozzie a while to place. The sea. It had been a long time since he’d seen the sea. No Silfen path had ever led close to one.
It was growing brighter as well; strong sunlight tinged with a hint of indigo. He fished in his top pocket for his sunglasses.
“We’re somewhere else, aren’t we?” Orion asked eagerly. He was looking around with an entranced expression at the thick fronds crowning all the trees. Even the undergrowth had become thicker, with grass growing higher and turning a darker green. Creeping vines rose up to wrap themselves around the trees, sprouting white and lemon-yellow flowers.
“Looks that way,” he said reassuringly. When he turned to look at the boy he could see that the path curved sharply behind them. He’d been walking in a more-or-less straight line for hours. Orion hadn’t noticed; he was holding up his friendship pendant, studying it intently. Since the ghost world he’d reclaimed it from Ozzie. The experience there had changed the boy’s opinion of the Silfen once again. They’d never be unquestioned idols again, but he was starting to accept them as true aliens. Ozzie supposed it was a sign of maturity.
“Are there any of them nearby?” he asked.
“I dunno,” Orion said, troubled. “I’ve never seen it like this before. It’s turned green.” He held it up to show Ozzie. The small exotic gem was shining a bright emerald as it dangled on the end of its chain. “Do you think it means something else is here?”
“I’ve no idea what it means,” Ozzie said truthfully.
The palm trees were thinning out, the thick grass coming up to their knees. Tochee was having to produce large powerful ripples along its locomotion ridges to shove its wide body through the clingy blades. Ozzie slowed in confusion, there was no path anymore, only the grass they’d trodden down behind them. Without the floppy fronds above his head, he could feel the star’s heat on his bare skin. Below his booted feet the ground was sloping downward. There were a lot of undulations ahead of them as the slope dipped away, but several kilometers in the distance was the unmistakable blue sparkle of the sea.
NOW WHERE? Tochee’s eye patterns queried.
Ozzie faced their alien friend and shrugged—a gesture that Tochee knew only too well by now.
“We never walked through that,” Orion said abruptly. He was facing back the way they’d just come. Behind them was the rounded top of a modest mountain, its crown roughly covered by a jungle of palms and big ferns with a few spindly gray trees that might result if pines were crossed with eucalyptus. The whole patch couldn’t have been more than a kilometer across.
Ozzie was working out what to say when an electronic bleep emerged from deep inside his backpack. The sound, so integral to Commonwealth society, was profoundly shocking here. He and Orion looked at each other in surprise.
“Link to my wrist array,” Ozzie told his e-butler. There were function icons appearing in his virtual vision that hadn’t been there since the day he rode out of Lyddington. His inserts were regaining their full capacity. He shrugged off the backpack as if it had caught fire. His e-butler confirmed that his inserts were receiving a signal from his wrist array. He shook the contents of his backpack onto the ground, heedless of the mess. A tiny red power LED was shining on the side of his burnished wrist array. He slipped it around his hand and the malmetal contracted snugly. The OCtattoo on his forearm made contact with the unit’s i-spot. Lying amid the pile of clothes and packets he’d tipped out was a handheld array. He picked it up and switched it on. Its icons appeared immediately in his virtual vision. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered. His e-butler started to back up insert files in both arrays. He let it do that while his virtual hands rearranged icons for the handheld array. Its screen unfurled to its full extent, measuring half a meter wide. “Please,” he prayed, and translucent amber fingers plucked symbols out of the linguistic files he’d painstakingly built up over the last few months.
On the screen, the spiky flower patterns that Tochee used were displayed in the deepest purple that the screen’s resolution could manage.
Tochee became very still. HELLO, its forward eye segment projected.
“Our electronic systems are working again,” Ozzie said out loud. The handheld array translated into a series of patterns that it flashed up.
I UNDERSTAND.
“Are those Tochee’s speaking pictures?” a fascinated Orion asked, peering at the screen.
The array translated, and Tochee produced an answer.
“That is correct, small human one,” the array said. “They sit in an incorrect visual spectrum. However I can read them.”
Orion whooped exuberantly and gave a massive victory jump, punching the air. “It’s me, it’s me, Tochee. I’m talking to you!” He gave Ozzie a radiant smile, and they high-fived.
“I am aware of the communication,” the array translated for Tochee. “I have wished for this moment for a long time. My first true speech is to thank you, large human one, and small human one, for the companionship you have given me. Without you I would remain at the cold house. I would not like that.”
Ozzie gave a small bow. “Our pleasure, Tochee. But this isn’t one way, man. We would have had difficulty leaving the Ice Citadel without you.”
Orion rushed over to Tochee, who extended a tentacle of manipulator flesh that the boy squeezed happily. “This is great, it’s wonderful, Tochee. There’s so much I want to tell you. And ask, as well.”
“You are kind, small human one. Large humans two, three, five, fifteen, twenty-three, and thirty also showed some consideration for my situation, as did other species at the cold house. I hope they are well.”
“Which ones are those, Ozzie?”
“I don’t know, man. I guess Sara is large human two, and George must be in there somewhere.” His virtual hand pulled the translation routines down out of stasis, slotting them into the large processing power of the handheld array. “Tochee, we need to improve our translation ability. I’d like you to talk to my machine, here.”
“I agree. I have my own electronic units that I want to switch on.”
“Okay, let’s go for it.”