Colin Greenland - Take Back Plenty

Contents

To the women behind the wheel

Part One
Encounters at the Moebius Strip

Nabe? said the port inspector.

Jute, she told him.

Givd nabe?

Tabitha.

Status?

Owner operator.

Shib?

The Alice Liddell, said Tabitha.

He lifted his close-shaven muzzle and looked at her hard over the monitor of his reader. Tybe and registratiod ob shib, he said.

Oh, right, said Tabitha. Bergen Kobold. BGK zero

She shot her cuff and checked her wrist monitor. She could never remember the Alices registration number without looking it up, though she saw it twenty times a day. Zero-nine-zero-five-nine.

Burbose ob bisit?

Ive got to see a man about a job, she said. Look, could you hurry it up, do you think?

But he was an Eladeldi, he was entering everything with his paw stylus and checking her record. His tongue was hanging out.

Tabitha sighed in annoyance and drummed her fingers on the desktop.

She looked around the hall. All the other queues were moving right along. Locals simply had to slot a tag and step through the gate. Just her luck to get an Eladeldi.

She knew what he was going to say next as soon as he opened his little purple mouth.

Records show registratiod ob debectib axis lock crystal, he said. Two budths ago.

Yes, said Tabitha.

Not yet reblaced, he observed.

No, she said. Thats why Ive got to see a man about a job.

But he still had to print out yet another copy of the Capellan regulations about acceptable levels of degradation on axis lock crystals before he let her through the gate.

She stuffed the printout into her bag, where somewhere three other copies were already lurking, and looked at the time.

Shit, she said.

The commercial terminal was closed for some kind of police operation. Tabitha found herself being diverted down a long underground tunnel to the civil concourse. It was swarming with people. Spacers in livery jostled with porters, human and drone. Eager evangelists pressed prophecies of the imminent Total Merge into the paws, fans and hands of glazed-looking tourists. Holos for local businesses, net stations and archaeological attractions competed for attention, whooping and gyrating on their daises. The hubbub was even more deafening than usual.

Of course: it was carnival.

Tabithas headset suddenly locked into an ambient channel and began to tinkle with tinny salsa. Irritated, she snatched out the earpiece and let the set dangle round her neck. She had to get a move on if she was going to make it to the city before noon. Hoisting her bag, she sidestepped a cargo float, waded through a crowd of squabbling Perks and elbowed between two Alteceans and a city guide they were trying to haggle. Stepping high in the light gravity and brandishing the bag before her, she ploughed her way out into the open air.

Outside, it was dusty and cold. Grit whirled in the biting desert winds. Half-naked children with slit eyes and matchstick limbs worked the emerging crowd with grim efficiency. Tabitha Jute pulled up the collar of her old foil jacket and strode off past the concession stalls, looking for transport.

The queues for air taxis would be impossible. She took the slidewalk to the canal. The queues there were just as bad. Fortunately most of the tourists were after a robot hover, which she couldnt afford anyway. Then - a stroke of luck - she cut in front of a white family still cooing over the colour of the water, and managed to sling her bag into an arriving boat.

The Moebius Strip, she called.

The cries of the annoyed sightseers dying away behind them, they left the wharf and slid off downstream. Tabitha sat in the stern and watched the olive groves and sponge gardens on either bank swiftly give way to shipyards, silica refineries and air plants. In the distance for a moment the complicated towers of Schiaparelli rose. Then coral pink walls of rock closed about them as they took the deep cut into Wells.

Here for carnival? the driver asked Tabitha, in tones of boredom and resentment which didnt lessen when Tabitha said no. She was a Vespan, brooding with hostile humility, like all of them. The atmosphere had mottled her long cheeks with brown blotches. She complained about the cold.

It was better before they knock the dome down, she said. Was you ever here when we had the dome?

Before my time, said Tabitha.

We had good warm then, said the driver. Then they knock the dome down. They say they gone put up solar. Her mobile features squeezed themselves around sulkily. They never. They still argue, argue, who gone pay.

She lifted her elbows. She looked like a bundle of spoiled green peppers in a brown felt overcoat. Her glossy lobes were withered and shrunken, the soft pouches of her face sagging in permanent despair. Tabitha wondered how long the woman had been scratching a living on the waterways, complaining to uncaring passengers, never quite summoning up the cash or the strength to take the long haul home.

They swept along the crimson canal into the purlieus of the new city. There the cries of the watersellers and the buzz of taxis came wafting on the wind, strident and echoing across the dirty water. A team of Palernian prostitutes, their wool in frizzy perms, sat smoking and dangling their legs in the sunlight on the steps below the Malibu Arcade. They hooted and waved at the boats as they whizzed by. Tabithas driver started to complain about them. Tabitha shifted forward along the cracked red bench.

Ive got some calls to make, she said.

She ducked into the phone hood, unreeled the plug from her headset and plugged in. The scratched little screen played her a little tune and showed a phone company logo. Then there were ads, more than ever for the sake of the season. In a window in the bottom left hand corner of the screen Tabitha watched her credit flickering merrily away.

She tried the Moebius Strip, but all she got was an answering routine. She tried another number. She waited.

They passed a sulphur felucca with a crew of children. They were towing a desert manta on a long black line. It dipped and fluttered in the chilly air, its wings drab and flaky.

At last Tabitha got through. On the phone an oily face cracked a smile as she identified herself. In for the carnival?

No, business, she said. Carlos, how much is an axis lock crystal these days?

What you got?

A Kobold.

Still driving that old thing? Shes gonna fall apart on you one of these days.

Thats what she keeps telling me, said Tabitha. Come on, Carlos, Im in a hurry, how much?

He told her. She swore.

He shrugged.

Thats what you get for flying antiques, he said unsympathetically. Cant get me parts. He scratched his ear. I could do you a great deal on a Navajo Scorpion.

Piss off, Carlos.

She thought of the Alteceans, back at the port, snuffling over their bags and parcels. Look, have you seen Captain Frank lately?

A crystal for a Kobold, yeah, thats about ol Franks speed, he grinned. Try the flea market.

Thanks very much, Carlos.

Cheer up, Tabitha, he bade her. Its carnival!

Carnival in Schiaparelli. The canals are thronged with tour buses, the bridges festooned with banners. Balloons escape and fireworks fly. The city seethes in the smoky red light. Though officers of the Eladeldi can be seen patrolling everywhere, pleasure is the only master. Shall we go to the Ruby Pool? To watch the glider duels over the al-Kazara? Or to the old city, where the cavernous ancient silos throb with the latest raga, and the wine of Astarte quickens the veins of the young and beautiful? A thousand smells, of sausages and sweat, phosphorus and patchouli, mingle promiscuously in the arcades. Glasses clash and cutlery clatters in the all-night cantinas where drunken revellers confuse the robot waiters and flee along the colonnades, their bills unpaid, their breath steaming in the thin and wintry air.