M. Harrison - LIGHT

These were less star systems than beacons, less beacons than laboratories, and less laboratories than experiments in themselves: enormous detectors designed to react to the unimaginable forces pouring out of the uncontained singularity hypothetically present at the centre of the Tract.

This object was massively energetic. It was surrounded by gas clouds heated to 50,000 degrees Kelvin. It was pumping out jets and spumes of stuff both baryonic and non-baryonic. Its gravitational effects could be detected, if faintly, at the Core. It was, as one commentator put it: 'A place that had already been old by the time the first great quasars began to burn across the early universe in the unimaginable dark.' Whatever it was, it had turned the Tract around it into a region of black holes, huge natural accelerators and junk matter-a broth of space, time, and heaving event horizons; an unpredictable ocean of radiant energy, of deep light. Anything could happen there, where natural law, if there had ever been such a thing, was held in suspension.

None of the ancient races managed to penetrate the Tract and bring back the news; but they all had their try. They had their try at finding out. By the time human beings arrived, there were objects and artifacts up to sixty-five million years old hanging off the edge, some clearly left by cultures many orders stranger or more intelligent than anything you saw around today. They all came prepared with a theory. They brought a new geometry, a new ship, a new method. Every day they launched themselves into the fire, and turned to cinders.

They launched themselves from places like Redline.

Whoever built Redline, whoever built its actinic, enraged-looking sun, wasn't even broadly human. Added to which a peculiar orbital motion, designed to keep the artefact at its south pole presented to a location deep inside the central area of the Kefahuchi Tract, gave it nauseous, undependable rhythms. On Redline, spring arrived twice in five years, then for a whole year in the next twenty; then every other day. When it came it was the colour and quality of cheap neon. Steaming radio-jungles and blue-lit, UV-scoured deserts precluded much in the way of direct dealing by human beings. (Though, in a broad metaphor of the exploration of the Bay itself, the brave, the unlucky and the morally dyslexic still despatched themselves on hasty half-planned entradas. In search of what? Who knew. They were quickly lost in the mists among the foetid ruins. Those that returned, having cracked their faceplates better to examine what they found, would brag around the Motel Splendido spaceport bars for a week or two on their return, then die in the tradition of the entrada, from indescribable diseases.)

Seria Mau consulted her fakebooks. 'The South Polar Artefact,' they informed her, 'resists analysis, though it appears to be a receiver rather than a transmitter.' And later: 'While "day" and "night" can be said to occur on Redline, their occurrence does not seem to be determined simply.' This was the place that lay below her, so pure and unambiguous it was a joy to behold. Also, her fate, at least in a sense. She opened a line.

'Billy Anker,' she said. 'I'm here to see you.'

After some time a voice replied, patched and faint, bracketed by static. 'You want to come down?' it said. Immediately she was nervous.

'I'll send a fetch,' she temporised.

Billy Anker had a thin stubbly face, from which the dark hair swept back into a brutal little ponytail freighted with grey. His age was uncertain, his skin darkened by the light of a thousand suns. His eyes were greeny-grey, set in deep sockets: if he liked you they considered you for some time, often becoming warmly amused; if he didn't, they slid away. They delivered nothing. Billy Anker had an enthusiasm to be out there in the Bay (some said he was born there, but what did they know? They were junkie entradistas and particle-jockeys whose soft voices, wrecked by Carmody bourbon laced with the ribosomes of local bats, told only their own romantic inner legend) always searching for something. He had no patience with anyone who didn't feel the same. Or who at least didn't feel something.

'We're here to look,' he'd say, 'and be amazed. We're not here long. Look at this. See that? Look!'

He was a thin, active, seeking little man, skin and tendons, who at all times wore the bottom half of an ancient air-pilot's G-suit, two leather coats, a red and green do-rag tied in a fanciful knot. He lost two fingers of one hand in a bad landing on Sigma End, on the edge of the accretion disc of the notorious black hole they called Radio RX-1 (nearby was the entrance to an artificial wormholewhich, he believed at the time, had its eye on the same target as the Redline South Polar Artefact). These he never had replaced.

When Seria Mau fetched up at his feet, he studied her a moment.

'What do you look like, the real you?' he asked.

'Nothing much,' said Seria Mau. 'I'm a K-ship.'

'So you are,' said Billy Anker, consulting his systems. 'I see that now. How has that worked out for you?'

'None of your business, Billy Anker.'

'You shouldn't be so defensive,' was how he replied. And then, after a moment or two: 'So what's new in the universe? What have you seen that I haven't?'

Seria Mau was amused. 'You ask me that when you stay in this piece-of-shit old heap,' she said, looking round the inside of Billy Anker's quarters, 'wearing a glove on one hand?' She laughed. 'Plenty of things, though I was never down in the Core.' She told him some of the things she had seen.

'I'm impressed,' he admitted

He rocked back in his chair. Then he said:

'That K-ship of yours. It'll go deep. You know what I mean, "go deep"? I heard one of those will go almost anywhere. You ever think of the Tract? You ever think of taking it there?'

'The day I get tired of this life.'

They both laughed, then Billy Anker said:

'We've got to leave the Beach some day. All of us. Grow up. Leave the Beach, dive in the sea-'

'-because why else be alive, right?' said Seria Mau. 'Isn't that what you're going to say? I heard a thousand men like you say that. And you know what, Billy Anker?'

'What?'

'They all had better coats than you.'

He stared at her.

'You aren't just a K-ship, you're the White Cat, ' he said. 'You're the girl who stole the White Cat. 'She was surprised he worked that out so fast. He smiled at her surprise. 'So what can I do for you?'

Seria Mau looked away from him. She didn't like to be worked out so quickly, on some junk planet in Radio Bay in the back passage of nowhere. Also, even in a fetch she couldn't manage those eyes of his. She knew bodies, whatever the shadow operators said. That was part of the problem. And when she saw Billy Anker's eyes she was glad she didn't have one now, which would find them irresistible.

'The tailor sent me here,' she said.

Billy Anker got a dawning expression on his thin face.

'You bought the Dr Haends package,' he said. 'I see that now. You're the one bought it, from Uncle Zip. Shit.'

Seria Mau cut the connection.

'Well, he's cute,' the clone said.

'That was a private transmission,' Seria Mau told her. 'Do you want to get put out into empty space again?'

'Did you see his hand? Wow.'

'Because I can do that if you want,' said Seria Mau. 'He's too quick, this Billy Anker guy,' she told herself, and then out loud added: 'Did you really like that hand? I thought it was overdone.'

The clone laughed sarcastically.

'What does someone who lives in a tank know?'

Since her change of mind on Perkins' Rent, the clone-whose name was Mona or Moehne or something similar-had fallen into a kind of short-swing bipolar disorder. When she was up, she felt her whole life was going to change. Her skirts got pinker and shorter. She sang to herself all day, saltwater dub like 'Ion Die' and 'Touch-out Hustle'; or the fantastic old outcaste beats which were chic in the Core. When she was down she hung about the human quarters biting her nails or watching hologram pornography and masturbating. The shadow operators, who adored her, took care of her in the exaggerated way Seria Mau had never allowed. She let them dress her in the kind of outfits Uncle Zip's daughters might wear to a wedding; or fit her quarters out with mirrors to optical-astronomy standard. Also, it was important to them to see she ate properly. She was sharp enough to understand their needs and play to them. When the mood compass pointed north, that was when she had them wrapped round her little finger. She had them make her Elvis food and lurex halter tops that showed off her nipples. She got them to change the width of her pelvis by quick fix cosmetic surgery. 'If that's what you want, dear,' they said. 'If you think it will help.' They would do anything to cheer her up. They would do anything to keep her out of the housecoat with the food stains on the front, including encourage her to smoke tobacco, which was even illegal in the FTZs since twenty-seven years ago.