Solace exchanged a glance with Idris. ‘It . . . isn’t. The EM interference, they said we couldn’t fly because of it . . .’
‘You said you had a ship,’ Trine pressed, their ghostly face tight-lipped and disapproving. ‘I specifically enquired as to whether you had a ship. You equally specifically confirmed that, yes, a ship was what you had.’
‘We do have a ship. In orbit,’ Idris put in.
‘I am not sure why you imagine that would be of any immediate use, Menheer Telemmier,’ Trine told him sharply. ‘Solace, my dear, my love, friend of my youth, et cetera. Did you not consider that, when I was asking about your ship, I meant that I might have need of one?’
‘Trine,’ Solace said, with obvious patience, ‘what’s going on?’ Idris could almost read her mind: Have they gone crazy? After all, nobody knew how long a Hiver could stay separate and instanced, without rejoining the whole.
‘I have had two attempts on my life, these being the specific circumstances to which I am alluding,’ Trine said shortly. The holographic face made a big show of looking suspiciously left and right. ‘I don’t know what you saw in Anchortown, but the politics there have taken a very marked downturn in the last year.’
‘Nativist recruiting drive,’ Solace agreed. ‘We saw some of it.’
Trine made a dismissive sound. ‘Oh, it has always been thus, my good, dear friend of my heart. But Nativists are an empty hand, all they can do is a little light slapping. I refer to those hands that carry a knife. You know the ones, dear heart?’
‘The Betrayed?’ Idris asked. ‘I mean, they’ve got enough people to hate without bringing archaeology into it, haven’t they?’
‘You’d think, but no,’ Trine insisted. ‘According to them, of course regular humans could have won the war. But then Ints came along and made contact with the Architects – and made some nefarious deal with them, plus a bunch of aliens and the Partheni . . . the usual suspects.’ Trine’s chest-arms waved about in mockery. ‘But even the Betrayed can’t get round the fact that alien artefacts saved millions, because Architects won’t touch Originator sites with a long pole from orbit. As a result, the Betrayed are starting to claim that Originators were the ur-humans – mankind’s mystical space-parents or some such ridiculous supposition. They also claim that various “traitor factions” are even now pillaging Originator sites, and selling everything to the aliens, the Hegemony or whoever. There’s no Originator site bigger than this one, so the Betrayed have been trickling into Jericho for a year at least. They hold the sincere belief that we at the dig are all traitors in need of a good knifing. And I, my dear, am both the sole non-human academic here and the highest-profile Originator expert. Or, as we call it here, I’m “a target”。 We found a bomb in a crate of instruments I’d ordered. Someone spotted the tampering, thankfully. And a few months ago, someone came to our camp and shot my leg off. Which was inconvenient.’
‘Why are you still here then?’ Solace demanded.
‘Because my good old former boon companion Myrmidon Executor Solace didn’t bring her ship with her,’ Trine hissed. ‘Look you, my dear. I can’t just leave. I’m not going to walk through the streets of Anchortown alone or jump into an elevator car with who knows what company. Which was why, my old comrade-in-arms, I rather hoped you were bringing your ship.’
‘They said you couldn’t fly out here!’ Solace almost shouted at them.
‘Well you almost can’t!’ Trine snapped right back. ‘But if you time it right, you just about can – if you have a very good pilot.’
‘We have a very good pilot,’ Solace insisted, then grimaced. ‘Who’s here with me and not on our ship.’
‘Well,’ Trine said, ‘with all apologies to your doubtless excellent piloting skills, Menheer Telemmier, that’s not a great deal of use, is it?’
‘Can we raise Olli?’ Idris put in. ‘What are your comms here?’
‘As of now, zero. They’ve put the night screen up to keep out the gropplers,’ Trine explained. ‘Once the sun’s up, we can negotiate for a gap in the EM noise to try and get a signal out. We’ll have to route it to the transmitter station at Anchortown. They can send it up the cable to your vessel. It’s an inexact science.’
‘You’d think they’d just put in a focused beam signaller or something,’ Solace said. ‘Blink tight-light from Anchortown to here. I mean, it doesn’t have to be radio.’