Alastair Reynolds - Beyond the Aquila Rift - The Best of Alastair Reynolds

You can’t understate the value of that, here in the refugee camp. Not that they call it that. This is a “Resource and Relocation Assistance Facility”. I have been here six years now. My daughter is twelve; she barely remembers the outside world. Eunice is a good and studious girl, but that will only get you so far. Both of us need something more. Prakash tells me that if I can accrue enough proficiency credits, we might be relocated.

I believe Prakash. Why wouldn’t I?

I SQUAT DOWN on my mattress. The shipping container has had its doors removed and holes cut in the sides. Windchimes hang from one corner of the roof, cut from buckled aluminium tent-poles. On this airless afternoon they are as silent as stalagtites.

My virching rig isn’t much. I have the eye, my lenses, my earphones and my t-shirt. All cheap, second-hand. I position the eye, balancing it on a shoebox until its purple pupil blinks readiness. I slip in the earphones. The t-shirt is ultramarine, with a Chinese slogan and some happy splashing dolphins. Too tight for a grown woman but the accelerometers and postural sensors still function.

I initiate the virching link. The lenses rinse me out of reality, into global workspace.

“Good afternoon, Prakash,” I say.

His voice is near and far at the same time. “You’re late, Soya. Had some nice jobs lined up for you.”

I bite back my excuse. I have no interest in justifying myself to this man. This morning I had to walk twice as far to get clean water, because someone from a neighboring compound broke into our area. They damaged our pump as they tried to steal from it.

“I’m sure you still have something in the queue,” I tell him.

“Yes…” Prakash says absently. “Let me see.”

If God was a fly, this would be the inside of his head. Wrapping around me are a thousand constantly changing facets. Each represents a possible task assignment. The facets swell and contract as Prakash offers me options. There’s a description of the job, the remuneration, the required skillset and earnable proficiency credits. The numbers swoop and tumble, like roosting birds.

“Road repair,” Prakash declares grandly, as if this is meant to stir the soul. “Central Lagos. You’ve done that kind of thing before.”

“No thanks. Pay is shit and a monkey could do it.”

“Window cleaning. Private art museum, Cairo. They have some gala opening coming up, but their usual ’bot has broken.”

“It’s years since I cleaned windows.”

“Always a tricky customer, Soya. People should be less choosy in life.” He emits a long nasal exhalation like the air being let out of a tyre. “Well, what else have we. Bioremediation, Black Sea. Maintenance of algae bloom control and containment systems.”

Cleaning slime from pumps, in other words. I scoff at the paltry remuneration. “Next.”

“Underwater inspection, Gibraltar bridge. Estimated duration eight hours, reasonable pay, at the upper end of your skills envelope.”

“And I must fetch my daughter from school in three hours. Find me something shorter.”

Prakash’s sigh is long suffering. “Seawall repair, Adriatic coastline. Overnight storm breach. Four hours, high remuneration. They need this done quickly.”

Typical of Prakash, always the job he knows I will not refuse until last.

“I’ll need to make a call,” I say, hoping that someone can collect Eunice from the school.

“Don’t dilly-dally.”

Prakash puts a hold on the assignment, and I get back to him just in time to claim it for myself. Not that I’m the only one on the task: the Adriatic breach is a local emergency. Hundreds of robots, civilian and military, are already working to rebuild shattered defenses. Mostly it is work a child could do, if a child had the strength of a hundred men—moving stone blocks, spraying rapid-setting concrete.

Later I learn that fifteen people drowned in that wall failure. Of course I am sad for these people—who wouldn’t be? But if they had not died, I would not have had the assignment.

IT IS LATE when I finish. A breeze has picked up, sufficient to stir the chimes. The air is still oven-warm. I am thirsty and my back aches from lugging water.

From across the compound, diesel generators commence their nightly drone. I listen to the chimes, snatching a moment to myself. Their random tinkling makes me think of neurones, firing in the brain. I was always fascinated by the mind, by neuroscience. Back in Dar es Salaam I had ambitions be a doctor.

I rise from the mattress and stretch away stiffness. I am on my way to collect Eunice when I hear a commotion, coming from somewhere near one of the big community tents. Trouble, of one kind or another. There is always something. Mostly it doesn’t concern me, but I like to keep informed.

“Soya,” a voice calls. It is Busuke, a friend of mine with two sons. “Eunice is fine,” she tells me. “Fanta had to go, but she passed her onto Ramatou. You look tired.”

Of course I look tired. What does she expect?

“Something going on?”

“Oh, didn’t you hear?” Busuke lowers her voice conspiratorially. “They got that thief. She hadn’t got very far—been stung by the electrified fence, was hiding out nearby, waiting to make a dash for the gap at sundown, when they apprehended her.” Busuke says “apprehended” as if there were quote marks around the word.

I did not know whether this thief was a man or a woman, but at least now I can pin my hate onto something. “I would not want to be in her shoes.”

“They say she took a bit of a beating, before the peacekeepers came. Now there is a big argument about whether or not to keep giving her medicine.”

“One woman won’t make any difference.”

“It’s the principle,” Busuke tells me. “Why should we waste a drop of water or antibiotics on a thief?”

“I don’t know.” I wish we could settle on a topic of conversation other than water. “I should go and find Ramatou.”

“You work too hard,” Busuke says, as if I have a choice.

The camp used to confuse me, but now I could walk its maze of prefabs and tents blindfolded. Tonight the stars are out. Plump and yellow, two thirds full, the Moon swims over the tents, rippling in heat. A fat Moon brings out the worst in people, my mother used to say. But I’m not superstitious. It’s just a rock with people on it.

My lenses tint it, tracing geopolitical boundaries. America, Russia, China and India have the biggest claims, but there is a little swatch of Africa up there, and it gladdens me. I often show it to my daughter, as if to say, we can be more than this. This camp does not have to define you. You could do great things. Walk on the Moon, one day.

I catch the rise of a swift bright star. It turns out to be a Japanese orbital power satellite, under assembly. I have heard about these stations. When they are built, when they are boosted to higher orbits, the satellites’ mirrors will cup the Sun’s light and pour it down to Earth. The energy will be used to do useful things like the supplying of power to coastal desalination plants. Then we will be drowning in water.

It bothers me that I never seen the power station before.

I collect my daughter from Ramatou. Eunice is in a bad mood, hungry and restless. I show her the Moon but she is beyond distraction. There is no food at the nearest dispensary, but we catch a shred of a rumour about food in green sector. We are not meant to cross into that part of the camp, but we have done it before and no one has questioned us. Along the way Eunice can tell me how her day in school went, and I will tell her something of mine, of the poor people on the Adriatic coast.

LATER, WHEN SHE is asleep, I drift to the community tent. The mob has simmered down since earlier, but the place is still busier than usual.