The Algebraist

“Yes,” Sal said, “well, my contacts are a few levels above the boot locker.”

Fassin gulped. “I thought they all got smeared in this thing, anyway,” he said quickly, before Taince could reply. “Just paste, gas and stuff.”

“They were,” Taince said through her teeth, looking at Sal, not him.

“Indeed they were,” Sal agreed. “But Voehn are real toughies, aren’t they, Tain?”

“Shit, yeah,” Taince said quietly, levelly. “Real fucking toughies.”

“Takes a lot to kill one, takes even more to paste it,” Sal said, seemingly oblivious to Taince’s signals.

“Notoriously resistant to fate and the enemy’s various unpleasantnesses,” Taince said coldly. Fassin had the feeling she was quoting. The gossip was that she and Sal were some sort of couple, or at least fucked now and again. But Fassin thought that, given the look in her eyes right now, that particular side of their relationship, if it had ever existed, might be in some danger of being pasted itself. He looked for Ilen, to catch her expression.

She wasn’t where she’d been, on the far side of the flier. He looked around some more. She wasn’t anywhere he could see. “Ilen?” he said. He glanced at the other two. “Where’s Ilen?” Sal tapped his ear stud. “Ilen?” he said. “Hey, Len?” Fassin peered into the shadows. He had night vision as good as most people, but with barely any starlight and only the soft conserve-level lights of the flier resting in its declivity, there wasn’t much to work with. Infrared showed next to nothing too, not even fading footstep-traces on whatever this strange material was.

“Ilen?” Sal said again. He looked at Taince, who was also sca

Taince shook her head. “Get those eyes in fourth year.” Shit, thought Fassin. He wondered if anybody had a torch. Probably not. Few people did these days. He checked his own earphone, but it was dead too; not even local reception. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. When did the archetype of this storyline date from? Four kids getting the use of dad’s chariot and losing a wheel just before nightfall near the old deserted Neanderthal cave? Something like that. Just wander off into the dark and get killed horribly, one by one.

“I’ll turn up the flier lights,” Sal said, reaching for the interior. “If ness, we can lift off and—”

“ILEN!” Taince shouted at the top of her lungs. Fassin jumped. He hoped the others hadn’t noticed.

“…Over here.” lien’s voice came, very distantly, from further inside the wreck.

“Wandering off!” Sal shouted in the general direction Ilen’s voice had come from. “Not good idea! In fact, very bad idea! Suggest return immediately!”

“Peeing in front of peers problem,” the reply drifted back. “Bashful bladder syndrome. Relieved, returning. Speak normal now, or Len get Tain poke Sal eye out.”

Taince gri

Sal laughed. A vaguely Hen-shaped blob appeared in IR sense fifty metres away, head first over a fold in the rippled floor like a shallow hill. “There. She’s fine,” Sal a

Ilen rejoined them, smiling and blinking in the soft lights of the flier, her white-gold hair shining. She nodded. “Evening,” she said, and gri

“Welcome back,” Sal told her, and hauled a pack out of one of the flier’s storage lockers. He swung the bag onto his back.

Taince glared at the pack, then at Sal’s face. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Sal looked i

“Like fuck you are.”

“Tain, child,” he laughed. “I don’t need your permission.”

“I’m not a fucking child and yes, you fucking do.”

“And will you please stop swearing quite so much? There’s really no need to flaunt your newly acquired gruff military ma

“We stay here,” she told him, using the cold voice again. “Close to the flier. We don’t go wandering off into a prohibited alien shipwreck in the middle of the night with an enemy craft cruising overhead.”

“Why not?” Sal protested. “For one thing it’s probably on the other side of the planet by now or maybe even destroyed. And anyway, if this Beyonder ship, or battlesat, or drone, or whatever it is can see inside here, which I seriously doubt, it’s going to target the flier, not a few human warm-bods, so we’re safer away from the thing.”

“You stay with the craft, always,” Taince said, her jaw set.

“For how long?” Sal asked. “How long do these nuisance raids, these attacklets, usually last?” Taince just glared at him. “Half a day, average,” Sal told her. “Overnight, probably, in this case. Meantime we’re somewhere it’s not normally possible to be, through no fault of our own, with time to kill… why the hell not take a look round?”

“Because it’s Prohibited,” Taince said. “That’s why.” Fassin and Ilen exchanged looks, concerned but still amused. “Taince!” Sal said, waving his arms. “Life is risk. That’s business. Come on!”

“You stay with the craft,” Taince repeated grimly. “Will you step out of your programming just for a second?” Sal asked her, sounding genuinely a

“Maybe they know stuff we don’t,” Taince said.

“Oh, come on!’ Sal protested. “They always claim that!”

“Listen,” Taince said levelly. “Your point is taken regarding the likelihood of the flier’s systems being targeted by hostiles, and therefore I volunteer to walk out, every hour on the hour, to near the gap in the hull where a phone might work once the jamming sub-sats have been neutralised, to check for the all-clear.”

“Fine,” Sal said, digging into another of the flier’s lockers. “You do that. I’m seizing the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take a look round an intrinsically fascinating alien artefact. If you hear me screaming horribly it’ll just be me falling into the claws, suckers or… beaks of some unspeakable space-alien monster every single wreck-clearing team missed and which has chosen just this evening out of the last seven mille

Taince took a deep breath, stepped back from the flier and said, “Okay, seems this must qualify as an emergency.” She dug into her black fatigues and when her hand reappeared it held a small dark grey device.

Sal stared at her, incredulous. “What the hell is that? A gun? You’re not pla

She shook her head and thumbed something on the side of the device. There was a pause, then Taince frowned and looked closely at the thing in her hand. “Actually,” she said, “at the moment I’m not even threatening to report you to the local Guard, not in real-time, anyway.” Sal relaxed a little, but didn’t pull whatever it was he’d been looking for out of the locker. Taince shook her head and looked up into the black spaces of the cavernous craft around them. She held the little grey device up to show the others. “This baby,” she said, “should be able to punch me through to a kid’s disposable on the far side of the planet, but it’s still searching for cosmic background.” She sounded more puzzled than embarrassed or angry, Fassin thought. (In similar circumstances, he’d have been mortified, and it would have shown.) Taince nodded, still staring upwards. “Impressive.” She put the hand-held away again.