Cat's Whirld

CAT’S WHIRLD

Rodolfo Martínez

Copyright © 2015, Sportula for this edition

© 1995, 2012 Rodolfo Martínez

English translation: © 2015 Steve Redwood

Cover illustration: © 2015 Maciej Garbacz

Cover design: Sportula

First Edition: August, 2015

First Spanish edition: September, 1995 as La sonrisa del gato by Miraguano Ediciones

SPORTULA

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CONTENTS

The interrogation

The Baker Street Irregulars

The interrogation

Woe betide you if you fail!

The interrogation

What kind of romantic fool was I to do something like that?

The interrogation

Alice’s nemesis

A break in the interrogation

Getting out will be the tricky thing

The interrogation

Nothing less than abolishing cosmic censorship

The interrogation

A lonesome rider far away from home

The interrogation

A universe that seems unaware of his existence

A guest at the interrogation

Flesh from the operating theatre

The interrogation

Right up to the last empty space

The interrogation

Only a question of time

The interrogation

The pieces have to go back in their boxes

The interrogation

And then the last loose ends would be tied up

Glossary

Author’s Note

About the author

CAT’S WHIRLD

(Ignotus Award for Best Novel 1996)

This is for you.

You know very well who you are.

And you know even better why.

It all began during one of their few, and rather tense, diplomatic meetings. The Drímar Confederacy and the Sovier Mandate agreed on the joint construction of a series of space stations in the region known as the Convergence: some ten cubic parsecs on the border between Confederacy and Mandate, where there was nothing more than a huge dark nebula (possibly a star or a group of them in the process of formation) and several pulsars that might once have been normal stars that had gone supernova.

The Convergence had a blurred rather ambiguous legal status. It didn’t belong entirely to either Confederacy or Mandate, and any incidents that might happen there had, by tacit agreement, no consequence whatsoever in their diplomatic relations. Until they began to build the first station, the only humans who went there had been fortune hunters collecting precious metals from the protostellar nebula. A few scientific expeditions had been sent, from both sides, but these had gradually been abandoned: there were still thousands of years to go before the nebula would collapse into a stellar mass, and the scientists wanted rather more immediate results. Now only a couple of automatic stations in front of the Nebula still survived, visited by maintenance personnel twice a year.

In fifteen years, Convergence Station Number One was built and almost at once nicknamed the Whirld.

Because it seemed just like a huge spinning top or whirligig in the middle of nothing, orbiting a neutron star. Its wider top part was oriented towards the pulsar, from which it obtained energy in the form of X-rays, and its tapered bottom end served as a heat sink and antenna. A special statute was created not only for the station but for the whole Convergence, by which it came under the joint jurisdiction of both Confederacy and Mandate, but also enjoyed a certain autonomy. This arrangement attracted settlers almost immediately, and despite immigration restrictions, numerous questionable elements managed to get in. A large part of the original settlers were scientists trying to escape the moral restrictions and limitations of the Confederacy, and especially of the Mandate, on their research. Geneticists and Computer Engineers worked on the Whirld with a freedom they would not have dared to even dream of where they came from, and were able to create things that, in other places, would have landed them in prison for the rest of their lives… or worse.

Meanwhile, Confederacy and Mandate halted construction of the other stations. The cost of the Whirld had exceeded the most pessimistic expectations, and politicians from both sides vetoed the continuation of the project, claiming that very little profit could be expected from it.

Time soon showed just how short-sighted they had been. In less than fifteen years, the Whirld had already begun to export the more innocuous products of its technology to both Confederacy and Mandate, and become indispensable to the two of them. They had unintentionally brought together many of the most brilliant minds alive — but also a few of the most unstable…

And the result was as unpredictable as it was unstoppable.

As the years went by, the Whirld became, not only the chief exporter of advanced technology, but also a sanctuary for nonconformists, and not a few criminals, from both blocs. Its original governing status, which had never been revoked, gave it more autonomy than its signatories had foreseen, but now it was too late to turn the clock back. The entire Galaxy had come to depend on the Whirld , and the populations, avid for new toys, would not permit their rulers to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.

Both Confederacy and Mandate tried in vain to control the Whirld, and the information services of the two powers competed, in an old and endless game, to be the first to get hold of a new technological toy or a key piece of information. It was ultimately a futile game, because nothing could be kept secret for long here, but sometimes just a few days’ advantage could be, or could seem to be, important. In some ways, the Whirld had become the safety valve of the Galaxy: a place where Confederacy and Mandate could play their dangerous power games without restrictions or too much worrying about the consequences. After all, the original tacit agreement was still valid: nothing that happened inside the Convergence should affect what happened in the rest of the Galaxy.

But nothing lasts forever.

Tonedeaf, aboard the Bifrost

THE INTERROGATION

So you screwed up.

I confirm. I stuck to the wrong greenie, but anyone in my position would have made the same mistake. He seemed to arrive in the right ship, had the right air about him, and there was nobody else around like him. It had to be him. It’s not my fault that two ships arrived almost at the same time, or that in both of them there was a greenie who wasn’t really what he appeared to be. And anyway it wasn’t exactly a case of division by zero: I wasn’t the only Irregular assigned to follow the Sovier, and the others stuck to him like cable pins to a slot.

But you still followed the wrong man.

And you ought to be grateful for that. If I hadn’t, things would’ve been much worse, peri. So stop keying me. I’ll print the code my way or there’ll be no code to print. And don’t even dream of trying to force me to speak, you know very well you can’t.

All right. Go on.

Much better, peri. No errors, no warnings, perfect. Maybe the greenie wasn’t a Sovier but he wasn’t from the Confederacy either. No doubt about that, a hundred per cent bug free, do you confirm? He seemed just another worm, a clueless tourist used to walking on the surface of a well. His codecard identified him as a trader of personality chips. A good cover: we make the best ones here, after all, so where else would a trader go to look for them? And he fitted his cover well: he chattered away like any other visitor, wandered around looking confused, and didn’t do anything unusual for a worm on his first visit to the Whirld.

But these memory filaments of mine were designed precisely for catching even the slightest detail. There was something about him that just didn’t gel with the image of the successful trader from Castleganda he claimed to be. Of course you wouldn’t have noticed, you could’ve been tailing him the entire rotation only to end up apologizing for having followed the wrong man. But the moment I saw him my alerts clicked in. He was my greenie, the worm I had to follow, there was no doubt about it. Behind his cover there was that contemptuous glow in his eyes, that condescending sense of superiority typical of a Sovier. How could I have known that my man would come ten minutes later in another ship?

As soon as he passed through Plague Control, I stuck to him so close that if he’d seen me he would’ve thought I was a part of his own body. I recorded his every gesture, every tiny movement, even the words he subvocalized without being aware of it. He certainly wasn’t who he said he was, but little by little I began to realize he wasn’t a Sovier either. Yes, he fitted the mold partially, I’ve told you before: the contempt, the condescending looks, all typical Sovier behavior. But there was something in his eyes that I’d never seen before in any of them: curiosity. Are you processing, peri? It’s normal for greenies to spend the first few minutes staring around open-mouthed, even those who’ve come from the Mandate, but this doesn’t last long, they soon lose interest, and look around with their usual disdain. But mine wasn’t like that. He seemed stunned by everything he saw. Oh yes, he hid it very well: a person with untrained eyes wouldn’t have noticed a thing. But for someone like me…

So while I was tailing him, and watching everything very carefully, I also examined everything he had done after leaving the ship. The first time I did something like that I ended up vomiting. It makes you sick and dizzy until you get used to it, as if you had double vision. But you get the hang of it sooner or later, and you teach yourself to distinguish between what’s happening in real time and the images you have saved in your memory filaments. Yes, it takes time, but in the end you can handle two sets of images simultaneously without any problem.

Your expression is betraying an intense interest in what I’m telling you, eh peri? OK, yes, I admit I do tend to babble on a bit, but as I told you before: either I tell things my way or I don’t tell them at all, so it really would be better for you to at least fake an interest in what I’m saying. No need to make too much of an effort, just an expression of polite expectation will be enough. There, that’s better! Now I can go back to what is really interesting you.

The greenie spent all morning consolidating his cover. He contacted several manufacturers and haggled with them without committing himself to anything definite, but he did show an interest in some of the chips and arranged a new meeting for the next rotation to discuss prices. At midrot he went back to his hotel and stayed in his room the rest of the rotation. I called one of the boys to relieve me and went off to see Con to give him my report. It was then that I learned that I had — how did you put it, peri? Ah yes — I learned that I had well and truly screwed up.

THE BAKER STREET IRREGULARS

Arthur Conan Chandler had been living on the Whirld for ten years. Officially, he earned his living running a singles bar called Baker Street, but the police knew very well (though they had never been able to prove it) that most of his income came through somewhat more indirect and tortuous ways. He defined himself as a trader in information, which wasn’t that far from the truth. The peris had never been able to catch him doing anything openly illegal, among other reasons because he himself seldom risked going out and collecting the information he sold to his various clients. Instead, over time he had managed to recruit a veritable battalion of teenies (whom he liked to call, when he was in a good mood, the Baker Street Irregulars) who roamed the Whirld under his orders, sticking their noses where no one else would dare, and obtaining whatever Chandler needed. Memorandum, as he called himself — no one remembered his real name — had always been the most efficient and reliable of them, so it wasn’t surprising that Chandler was pretty furious when he realized that this time his best teeny had well and truly blundered, following a newcomer who had nothing to do with the business in hand.

But Con, the boy said. It was him. It had to be him.

Memo, answered Chandler, trying to calm himself, the guy you stuck to had nothing to do with us. Talk with Fingers, he’ll tell you. The real deal came fifteen minutes later, and Fingers and his group have been following him all morning.

I don’t get it.

You don’t have to get anything, said Chandler, now a bit more relaxed. It doesn’t matter. And maybe we can salvage something from this disaster. Show me your worm.

Memo took a holoprojector and plugged the connection pin into the slot behind his ear. Intrigued, Chandler watched the 3D image the boy was projecting in front of him. On the surface, there was nothing out of the ordinary about the guy. He wore a long brown robe, a mode of dressing quite common in several Confederacy worlds, and his black hair was shaved right down almost to the skull. But his disturbing blue eyes never seemed to blink, and this had caused many of the people he had spoken to that morning to become rather nervous. Chandler didn’t have Memo’s incredible mnemonic abilities, but he was a keen observer: in his business he had to be. He gradually began to understand that the boy’s mistake had been almost unavoidable. To a trained eyes, the man had all the hallmarks of a Sovier acting undercover.

All right, Memo, I see your point. I myself would have made the same mistake. And maybe we can get something from him.

Memo nodded, pleased. He worked for half a dozen men apart from Chandler, but he felt more comfortable with him than with the others. Con never yelled at him or reproached him for unavoidable mistakes. Right then, Memo was feeling so depressed by his failure, and so relieved by Chandler’s understanding reaction, that he suddenly felt impelled to give him some information for free, something he would