‘Can we not just go to their office?’ Kris asked. Solace thought back and realized she might not have explained everything.
‘They’re on a dig,’ she said. ‘I told you that.’
‘I thought you meant . . . you know, some project . . .’ Waving a hand vaguely at the city around them, a gesture that slowed as Kris realized her mistake. ‘They’re out in the wilds?’
‘That’s where the ruins are. We’ll need to arrange passage. And I need to call Trine somehow and tell them we’re coming.’
‘Is that even possible?’ Idris asked. He had a crinkle of discomfort about his eyes. Solace wondered if the planet’s EM chatter was impinging on his Int senses somehow.
‘They use the mother of all transmitter stations,’ Kris recalled from her research. ‘They cut through the background buzz via main force. I guess we go pay to put a call out.’
There was a transmitter office close enough to the anchor, beside a handful of seedy-looking shacks that claimed they could arrange expeditions into the wilds for you – though Solace assumed game-hunting and smuggling eclipsed sorties for scientific research.
Solace had kept in touch with Trine after the war, across the decades, when she wasn’t in the freezer herself. Each time she’d woken assuming that the Hiver would have re-instanced, that the intelligence she contacted wouldn’t be her old correspondent. Each time she discovered that Trine had clung on, still the same. And now they were going to meet, and she had one hell of a surprise for the old academic.
The transmitter station managed to establish a link on the third try, then lost connection twice while she was waiting for someone to find Trine.
‘Can’t you just lay cable or something?’ she asked the acned operator, who shrugged.
‘They eat it. Anything in the ground gets et,’ he said.
‘This planet . . .’
‘Oh, tell me about it.’
And then they had the line again and a crisp, slightly fuzzy-sounding voice was saying, ‘Gold City Dig to Anchortown, are you receiving me, over?’
‘Gold City this is Anchortown,’ Solace said obediently. ‘Communication for Asset Trine, over.’
‘Delegate Trine is speaking, Anchortown,’ the voice said, notably frosty. And she knew it was her old acquaintance, for all the voice was unfamiliar. A Hiver voice was a matter of what software they plugged in, after all.
‘Delegate Trine, this is Myrmidon Executor Solace, over.’ She found herself smiling.
‘Well, then we’ve both had a promotion,’ came that precise voice. ‘Congratulations to everyone. You can’t see me right now, but I’ve put on a tiny festive hat and am blowing on a little streamer.’ Then static fuzzed up and she lost the connection for a handful of frustrating seconds until their voice faded back in: ‘Repeat, over?’
‘Repeat yourself, over,’ she pressed.
Fuzz, hiss, buzz, ‘。 . . saying you didn’t come all this way for a party. Can it be the Parthenon has remembered me after all this time?’
‘Trine, I’ve a matter befitting your expertise, something special. Face-to-face discussion only. Can I come to you, over?’
‘Can you fly in?’
‘I’m told it’s not advisable?’
‘But you have a ship? Repeating: you have a ship, yes?’
Solace frowned uneasily. ‘I do, over.’
‘Better than nothing. Base of the elevator . . .’ Fuzz, buzz, hiss, ‘。 . . Don’t leave it longer, est-ce compris?’
‘Compris, Delegate.’
‘Then done, over, out, whatever,’ and then the static rose like a tide and ended the connection for good.
Solace stepped back from the transmitter, frowning, because there was obviously something else going on. You couldn’t sift a Hiver’s tone for emotional cues, but either something was worrying Trine or the Hiver was having long-term instantiation issues.
I don’t want to bring yet more trouble to the others, she thought. Yet as she stepped out of the transmitter station, she saw they could find their own trouble. Kris and Idris had been cornered by none other than the Boyarin Piter Tchever Uskaro and a couple of his bottle-green Voyenni.
As Solace strode over, she heard the Boyarin say, ‘What else is a man to think, finding the Int here, but that he’s had a change of heart? That he wants to do best by his species after all?’
‘Step away, please,’ Solace grated out, not quite pointing Mr Punch his way.