1

The trees were melting, dripping like candles under the incandescent sunlight, their branches twisting in the heat, bending down until they coalesced into molten pools at the roots. Their leaves vanished in sudden flashes of light and fire.

Midsummer noon on Eridu, the only inhabited world of the Sirius system; the reign of heat; the season of fire in a wilderness of barren stone. This was the time the people took shelter in their underground caverns, shut steel doors on the outside world and cooled off in subterranean lakes that had never felt the fiery wrath of their angry double star. This was the time the rocks glowed and the air became a white dazzle that seared the retina, when the scattered, miniscule oceans evaporated, leaving behind a parched, salty earth. This was the time the planet burned like a phoenix, became ashes that would eventually give rise to a new world when it had swung to the other end of its eccentric orbit around the uneasy giant-dwarf star combination of Utu and Anu.

The low range of hills on which the trees had been erected was yellow under the white-hot sky. Arranged along the flat plain below was a long line of cars, each a fat-tired, all-terrain vehicle. Their varied colours contrasted with the white/tan/ochre of the ground on which they stood.

In the third vehicle, Maddy Hawthorn looked through eye filters at the liquefying trees and wondered, for perhaps the twentieth time in as many minutes, how much longer she would have to watch this. The ceremony was a quaint custom, but it interested her Sirian hosts more than her. In fact, she could admit to herself, it was actually pretty stupid.

A trickle of sweat down her face prompted her to ask the car's AI to kick the air-conditioning up a notch.

There was no denying she had found the forest of plastic trees attractive during the last few months. They were pleasant enough to walk under, if a little too garish in colour for her liking. A stream of water, now long dried-up, had flowed through them. Picnic tables had been set up, and a playground for children. The forest was an enjoyable place to spend an afternoon, to escape the madness of the crowded city of Uruk. Now the stream and the tables and playground were gone, and the actual trees themselves were melting.

This is seriously weird, she thought.

'Having fun yet?' asked Dorac beside her. He seemed way too comfortable, apparently not affected by the heat at all, although he was sipping on a cold beer he had fished out of the car's refrigerator. He didn't wear filters: unlike Maddy, who was Homo sapiens, his small Homo sirius eyes were genetically designed for living on this planet.

Maddy glanced sideways at the enormous man. 'When we came here six months ago you said I would hate Eridu,' she grumbled. 'You were right.'

Dorac Landa Elsilunda chuckled and sucked the rest of his beer down. Even after she had known him so long, Maddy never ceased to be amazed at Dorac's size. His head brushed the roof of the car. The beer can was tiny in his dark brown, six-fingered hand; he only had five fingers on his left: the smallest one had been lost in a gunfight six months ago. It didn't seem to bother him much anymore.

'It's an old custom,' he explained. 'The trees are set up each autumn, up on that ridge. They're made of special thermoplastic that melts when the air temperature reaches seventy degrees Celsius. We know it's a warmish sort of day when they collapse.'

'Summer,' said Maddy.

'Yes. The triumph of Sirius over our pathetic attempt to live here. Or some shit like that. We're supposed to watch it and be reminded of our inadequacy.'

Maddy watched as the last tree turned into a pool of greenish-brown plastic and started to trickle down the slope of the hill. There was a sudden blare of horns from the other vehicles as the trees finished their liquid collapse, some sort of signal that the event was over, that the hottest moment of the year had arrived and now things would start to slowly cool until, in three months' time, it was possible to stand on the open surface again without being burned to a crisp.

'Hawthorn thinks our customs are strange,' said a voice from the back seat. It sounded remarkably close to Maddy's ear, although really it was just that the speaker had an over-loud voice, as dominant as everything else about her. Maddy twisted and looked at her: coal-black skin, long ears, black hair that fell in braids to her shoulders, a face pierced in five places with heavy jewellery. If Dorac was remarkable in size and appearance, his sister was truly astounding.

'She hasn't been here long enough, Rani,' said Dorac. 'Give her time.'

Dorac Hera Rani Elsibala tapped her fingers against one knee, a sign, Maddy had come to learn, of growing impatience. Maddy said nothing, since she was only a Sape and therefore, apparently, not worthy of speaking to a Sirian female unless invited. And not once in the six months Maddy had been on Eridu had Hera Rani ever invited her to do anything at all.

'That's the question, isn't it Landa?' said Hera Rani. 'How much longer will she be here?'

Maddy shut her ears to the discussion, and stared back out at the fiery landscape. Dorac and his sister spent most of their waking hours arguing. It was a sign, Dorac had once explained to her, of their ongoing affection for each other. Unfortunately, what Dorac and Hera argued over most was Maddy's presence. And Hera Rani seemed determined to argue in Inglish whenever she knew Maddy was listening, just so her points hit home.

Some of the cars had started up already and were moving away towards the underground city of Uruk. Dorac made no move towards starting their car, however, since he was now deep in a heated conversation—Sirians called it an itsu—with his sister.

'She's my guest,' said Dorac. 'My guest. I invited her.'

'From what you've said, she invited herself,' continued Hera Rani, her voice becoming even more strident. Maddy wished the huge Sirian female would at least acknowledge that she was only centimetres away. 'After you fled—fled, Landa—from Lizard, you said she asked to come here with you. And you've given her a dagger. A family dagger! Landa, have you no sense of decency about you at all?'

Maddy felt down the outside of her right thigh. Strapped there was the dagger Dorac had given her, the same one he had stabbed into Igil Hoo's back on Lizard on that horrible day of the raid. Dorac had managed to convince his mother, the matriarch of their clan, that he deserved a new one—now that had been an itsu to remember—and had made Maddy a gift of his old blade. Why, she still wasn't certain. Hera Rani was just making it harder.

'Could you please stop arguing?' she asked.

The two Sirians looked at her.

'Why?' said Hera Rani.

Dorac just chuckled. 'I'm sorry, Maddy.'

In the silence that followed Dorac started the car and joined the line of vehicles on the one road that led to the city.

'It's quiet so far,' Dorac said, pointing towards where Uruk lay. He reached into the refrigerator for another beer. 'I would have expected some excitement by now.'

A streak of light like a burning meteor passed across the pale sky behind the city. For a minute it blazed, then faded, leaving nothing more than a thin trail of ionised air.

'There you go,' chuckled Hera Rani. 'He's arrived right on schedule. I guess you'll have your wish for excitement after all.'

Maddy grew more nervous as she remembered the pending visit of the Nuncio, Xu Chan. There had been little other news recently. Some protests had already taken place, before the man even arrived. Special Sirian police forces had been mobilised to try and keep the peace, and that was dividing the people already, that Sirians should be enforcing rules against their own kind. Other forces, Elite ones, had also arrived over the past few days as a bodyguard to the Nuncio. But now the man himself was here. What had consisted of stand-offs and chest-beating might well degenerate into outright violence as the people chose whose side they were on.

'It's a complicated political situation,' was all Dorac had said. 'Our Chief has been a bit naughty in political terms, refusing to co-operate with Earth policy, playing clans off against each other. So the Elite are sending someone called a Nuncio to come and investigate the allegations. As if they have the right to come in and decide what should happen to him. I think we can do that for ourselves.'

What amused Maddy, if anything about the potentially violent situation could be classed as amusing, was the irony of Dorac's words. Only a short time ago, when he'd been an Acting-Lieutenant in the Syndicate Navy, he'd been sent on a mission to her Slowboat to interrogate three men who had gang-raped her. Now he objected to another representative of the Elites coming to judge his Chief. Of course, she didn't point out his hypocrisy to him.

'It'll be a wild night tonight, I think,' said Hera Rani, turning her head to follow the thread of light in the sky. Her long earrings jangled. 'I believe the clan Sithak is planning to occupy the Twisted Bridge. You'd better hurry and get across before they block it off completely. It'll be a long detour otherwise.' She leaned forwards and tapped her brother on the shoulder. 'Go on, stupid, jump the queue.'

Dorac muttered something under his breath but kept driving in line. Driving anywhere off-road on Eridu was perilous at this time of year: the baking rocks could give way to molten lava, or simply burn the tyres outright. One by one the cars descended the winding main access road to the city and started to disperse once inside. Dorac headed for the Twisted Bridge.

Maddy slipped off her eye filters and stared out at the passing city. Little of Uruk was above ground. Almost all that could be seen from outside was a large set of solar panels over a crater. Underneath the panels, several hundred metres down, lay a series of caverns and tunnels that had been hollowed out when the planet was colonised. Two centuries of occupation had allowed the inhabitants to extend the original Sape-devised plan for the planet and turn it into a truly Sirian one. Left to their own, Sirians could produce marvels. All her life, Maddy had been taught to regard them as a second-rate, in-between species to the Sapes and the slave Helots. She had come to respect Dorac, of course, but it was only when she was forced to live with Sirians on their home world that she truly saw them for the amazing race they were.

The Twisted Bridge was a good example. It was formed of three gigantic girders plaited around each other. Laid over them was a road, which was surmounted in turn by three more interleaved girders. It spanned an artificial canyon twenty metres deep and was the main thoroughfare connecting the two halves of the city. The canyon, which was also artificial, had been intended as a watercourse that would conveniently flow through the city, but that scheme had never eventuated. Water was brought in from deeper underground, since there was no surface water possible on the planet for most of the year.

A uniformed Sirian halted the car in the middle of the bridge. He leaned in the driver's window to gaze at them.

'It's the Sape,' he said when he saw Maddy, and drummed the fingers on his left hand on the window.

'She's quite a celebrity,' said Hera Rani. 'Check out her ID. It's weird.'

Dorac sighed. 'It's no weirder than yours. It's just got different numbers.'

'It says she's a colonist. But really she's not anyone.'

The officer frowned. 'I thought she was under your protection, Dorac Hera.'

'His, not mine.'

It had taken a while for the authorities to allow Maddy to live in Uruk, and not least because she was a Sape. But Dorac's family was large and influential and, as long as she was always accompanied outside their residence by Dorac or one of his family, she was free to live with them.

The cop scanned their IDs, even though he knew every Dorac by sight, and nodded them through.

'This Nuncio's pissing me off already,' said Dorac as they continued over the bridge. They were halted again just on the far side. A rally of blue-clad Sithak protesters were gathered around a Sirian who was addressing them. Police, both Sirian and Sape, were lined up on other side, ready to escort them across the bridge. A Sape officer directed Dorac's vehicle over to the side of the road.

'I haven't been told what to do by a Sape since I was in the Navy!' Dorac said, but not loud enough for the officer to hear. He pulled across several lanes to park beside other vehicles. The occupants stared at the rally; some had descended from their vehicles to watch. No one would be moving soon. Dorac sighed and took out a cigarette.

'It's going to take a while,' he said.

Beside him, Maddy reached into the refrigerator and extracted the last beer. She drank it slowly and stared out at the crowd.

Behind her, Hera Rani clucked her tongue. 'That was my beer,' she said.

'Not anymore,' laughed Dorac.