• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Jordan’s expression flipped from smug to serious.

‘Well…first, about Catherin…Cat. There was a queue of replies to your message when I logged on. Nobody’s seen her. One or two people have mentioned that Donovan’s got a call out for her as well.’

‘I bet he has,’ Moh said. ‘What about the ANR?’

Jordan sighed in exasperation. ‘I can’t raise them. All the messages bounced. At first I thought I was doing something incorrect, and I got the comrades to check. But by then it was all over the news. The ANR has gone off-line, left all their phones off the hook. Well, not exactly: you get an answer-fetch giving a standard spiel.’ He passed a hand across his eyes. ‘It gets irritating after the twentieth time.’

‘What’s it saying?’

‘Basically, a bit of rousing propaganda and then something to the effect that, if your message can’t wait until after the final offensive, they’ll know about it through other channels anyway.’

‘Modesty was never their strong point—’

‘Modesty!’ Jordan’s sudden grin was blocked by the fish-eye loom of his delighted air-punch or clenched-fist salute. ‘Yo! Never thought of that!’

‘What?’

‘The Black Planner yesterday, he ordered a load of silk through this Beulah City fashion company. I might be able to track the consignment, get a lead to the ANR that way.’

‘Nice one,’ Moh said. ‘But I doubt if they can be tracked that easily.’

‘I know, but Modesty can be! I saw a Modesty truck yesterday, might have been headed for Norlonto. I’m sure I could hack in, work backwards from there. Most of their deliveries are finished goods, right? Import fabric, export fancy frocks. So if I find any fabric exports…’

Moh shook his head. ‘Bills of lading are the easiest things to switch, and that’s assuming the Black Plan was actually pulling in silk in the first place. More likely that was a cover as well, and what they got from China was a cargo of knock-off Kalashnikovs.’

Jordan looked a bit discouraged, and Janis said quickly: ‘It’s worth a try anyway, Jordan. It’s all we’ve got to go on.’

‘Fair enough,’ Moh said. ‘OK, Jordan, you do that, and keep looking for Cat any way you can think of. Pass on any bit of news you find interesting.’

‘Hah! Getting back to that…you know about the space-traffic crackdown?’

‘Logan told me.’

‘Fine. OK, the other thing is Donovan’s citizen’s arrest thing. He’s posted the offer to lots of newsgroups.’

‘That figures.’

‘Anything I can do about it?’

‘Ask the comrades to toss out countercharges, challenges on my behalf and so on. Get our lawyers to issue a few nasty messages. Make it look like a real tangle. Might scare off any casual adventurers.’

‘OK, I got that. What are you going to do?’

Moh laughed. ‘Keep jumping borders,’ he said. ‘Like the libertarian comrades say: Norlonto ain’t the law of the jungle, it’s a jungle of laws.’

For the next two days they wandered through a tiny proportion of that jungle of laws, the disparate communities of Norlonto. Unlike the patchwork of the Kingdom, these were not separate fiefs but layered, interwoven properties and neighbourhoods. Some welcomed anyone passing through. Some had gates on the streets, or took a toll, or turned back anyone who hadn’t been invited by a resident. Carrying weapons on the street might be prohibited, permitted or required. It was a matter for the street-owners, like wearing ties in restaurants, smoking or non-smoking. There were sinister, seedy areas that had been all bought up by nazis and made most of their money from tourists and memorabilia. There were women-only territories. There was a whole district called Utopia University, which consisted of experimental communities being crawled over by sociologists (who were mostly funded by estate agents doing market research). One sharply delimited estate, the Singularity Sink, had no laws or morality at all: anyone who entered was deemed to have renounced any protection but their own. It had a certain appeal for suicides and psychopaths, and for adolescent macho adventurers. (There was of course nothing to