"Neutronium Alchemist - Conflict" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F.)Chapter 07Like most enterprises mounted by governments and institutions on Nyvan, the Jesup asteroid was chronically short of finance, engineering resources, and qualified personnel. The rock’s major ore reserves had been mined out a long time ago. Ordinarily, the revenue would have been invested in the development of the asteroid’s astroengineering industry. But the New Georgia government had diverted the initial windfall income to pay for more immediate and voter-friendly projects on the ground. After the ore was exhausted, Jesup spent the next decades limping along both economically and industrially. Fledgling manufacturing companies shrank back to service subsidiaries and small indigenous armament corporations. Its aging infrastructure was maintained one degree from breakdown. Of the three planned biosphere caverns only one had ever been completed, leaving a vast number of huge empty cavities spaced strategically throughout the rock which would have been the kernels of fresh mining activity. It was when Quinn was striding along one of the interminable bare-rock tunnels linking the discarded cavities that he sensed the first elusive presence. He stopped so abruptly that Lawrence almost bumped into him. “What was that?” “What?” Lawrence asked. Quinn turned full circle, slowly scanning the dust-encrusted rock of the wide tunnel. Dribbles of condensation ran along the curving walls and roof, cutting small forked channels through the ebony dust as they generated fragile miniature stalactites. It was as if the tunnel were growing a fur of cactus spikes. But there was no place for anyone to hide, only the waves of shadow between the widely spaced lighting panels. His entourage of disciples waited with nervous patience. After two days of slickly brutal initiation ceremonies the asteroid now belonged to him. However, Quinn remained disappointed with the number of true converts among the possessed. He had assumed that they of all people would despise Jesus and Allah and Buddha and the other false Gods for condemning them to an agonizing limbo. Showing them the path to the Light Bringer ought to have been easy. But they continued to demonstrate a bewildering resistance to his teachings. Some even interpreted their return to be a form of redemption. Quinn could find nothing in the tunnel. He was sure he had caught a wisp of thought which didn’t belong to any of the entourage; it had been accompanied by a tiny flicker of motion, grey on black. First reaction was that someone was sneaking along behind them. Irritated by the distraction, he strode off again, his robe rising to glide above the filthy rock floor. It was cold in the tunnel, his breath turning to snowy vapour before his eyes. His feet began to crunch on particles of ice. A frigid gust of air swept against him, making an audible He stopped again, angry this time. “What the fuck is going on here? There’s no environmental ducts in this tunnel.” He held up a hand to feel the air, which was now perfectly still. Someone laughed. He whirled around. But the disciples were looking at each other in confusion. None of them had dared mock his bewilderment. For a moment he thought of the unknown figure at the spaceport on Norfolk, the powerful swirl of flames he had unleashed. But that was light-years away, and no one else had escaped the planet except the Kavanagh girl. “These tunnels are always acting erratically, Quinn,” Bonham said. Bonham was one of the new converts, possessing Lucky Vin’s body, which he was twisting into a ghoul-form, bleaching the skin, sharpening the teeth, and swelling the eyes. Thick animal hair was sprouting out of his silver skull. He said he had been born into a family of Venetian aristocrats in the late nineteenth century, killed before his twenty-seventh birthday in the First World War, but only after having tasted both the decadence and blind cruelty of the era. A taste which had become a voracious appetite. He had needed no persuading to embrace Quinn’s doctrines. “I asked one of the maintenance chappies, and he said it’s because there aren’t any ducts in the tunnels to regulate them properly. There are all sorts of weird surges.” Quinn wasn’t satisfied. He was sure he’d sensed someone sneaking about. A dissatisfied grunt, and he was on his way once more. No further oddities waylaid him before he reached the cavity where one of the teams was working. It was an almost spherical chamber, with a small flat floor, acting as a junction to seven of the large tunnels. A single fat metal tube hung downwards from the apex, rattling loudly as it blew out a wind of warm dry air. Quinn scowled up at it, then went over to the knot of five men working to secure the fusion bomb to the floor. The device’s casing was a blunt cone, seventy centimetres high. Several processor blocks had been plugged into its base with optical cables. The men stopped working and stood up respectfully as Quinn approached. “Did anyone come through here earlier?” They assured him no one had. One of them was non-possessed, a technician from the New Georgia defence force. He was sweating profusely, his thoughts a mixture of dread and outrage. Quinn addressed him directly. “Is everything going okay?” “Yes,” the technician murmured meekly. He kept glancing at Twelve-T. The gang lord was in a sorry state. Tiny jets of steam spluttered out of his mechanical body parts. Rheumy crusts were building up around the rim of bone in which his brain was resting, as though candle wax were leaking out. The membrane that clothed his brain had thickened (as Quinn wished) but was now acquiring an unhealthy green tint. He was blinking and squinting constantly as he fought the pain. Quinn followed the man’s gaze with pointed slowness. “Oh, yeah. The most feared gangster on the planet. Real hard-arsed mother who isn’t gonna believe in God’s Brother no matter what I do to him. Pretty dumb, really. But the thing is, he’s useful to me. So I let him live. As long as he doesn’t stray too far from me, he keeps on living. It’s sort of like a metaphor, see? Now, you going to be a hard-arse?” “No, sir, Mr Quinn.” “That’s fucking smart.” Quinn’s head came forward slightly from the umbra of the hood to allow a faint light to strike his ashen skin. The technician closed his eyes to hide from the sight, lips mumbling a prayer. “Now is this bomb going to work?” “Yes, sir. It’s a hundred megaton warhead, they all are. Once they’re linked into the asteroid’s net we can detonate them in sequence. As long as there are no possessed near them, they’ll function properly.” “Don’t worry about that. My disciples won’t be here when Night dawns in the sky.” He turned back to the tunnel, giving it a suspicious look. Again he had the intimation of motion, a flicker no larger than the flap of a bird’s wing, and twice as fast. He was sure that someone had been watching the incident. A spoor of trepidation hung in the air like the scent of a summer flower. When he stood at the entrance he could see the line of light panels shrink into distance before a curve took them from sight. The gentle sound of pattering water was all that emerged. He was half expecting to see that same blank human silhouette which had appeared at the hangar on Norfolk. “If you are hiding, then you are weaker than me,” he told the apparently empty shaft. “That means you will be found and brought before me for judgement. Best you come out now.” There was no response. “Have it your way, shithead. You’ve seen what happens to people I don’t like.” The rest of Quinn’s day was spent issuing the instructions that would cause Night to fall on the innocent planet below. He commanded New Georgia’s SD network now. It would be a simple matter for the platforms to interfere with Nyvan’s two other functional networks, and various national sensor satellites. Under cover of this electronic warfare barrage, spaceplanes would slide down undetected to the surface. Every nation would be seeded by a group of possessed from Jesup. And Nyvan’s curse of national antagonism would prevent a unified planetary response to the problem, which was the only response that could ever stand a chance of working. The possessed would conquer here, probably with greater ease than anywhere in the Confederation. They were a single force, knowing nothing of borders and limits. As for those who would actually be sent down, Quinn chose carefully. A couple of the devout for every spaceplane to make sure they followed their flight vectors and landed at the designated zone, but the rest were ones for whom only fear and his own proximity kept in line: unbelievers. It was quite deliberate. Free of his thrall, they would do what they always did, and seek to possess as many people as they could. He didn’t care that he would not be there to move among them and bring the word of God’s Brother. Norfolk had shown him that mistake. Conversion on an individual basis was totally impractical when dealing with planetary populations. Quinn’s duty, and that of the disciples, was the same as all priests; they were simply to prepare the ground for God’s Brother to walk upon, to build the temples and prepare the sacrament. It was He who would bring the final message, showing all the light. The spaceplanes were only half of the scheme. Quinn was preparing to dispatch inter-orbit ships to the three derelict asteroids under the command of his most trusted followers. Those worthless rocks had now become a cornerstone in his plans to advance the Night. It was after midnight when Quinn returned to the tunnel. This time he was by himself. He stood motionless under the arching entrance for a full minute, allowing whoever was there to notice him. Then he raised a hand and fired a single bolt of white fire at the electrical cable which ran along the crest of the tunnel. All the light panels went out. “Now we will know which of us is the master of darkness,” he shouted into the black air. He searched with his mind alone as he walked forwards, aware of the rock as an insubstantial pale grey tube around him. It was all that existed in a blank universe. Feeble zephyrs of cold air rustled his robe. While out on the very cusp of perception, a tiny buzz increased; similar to the Babel of the beyond, but so much weaker. He experienced no fright, nor even curiosity at confirming such an alien phenomenon existed. The Lords who battled for the heart of the universe and its denizens worked in ways he could never understand. All he had was his strength, and the knowledge that he knew himself. He would never quail, no matter what. “I got you now, fuckers,” Quinn whispered back at the tremulous voices. As if in response, the air grew colder, its churning stronger. He concentrated hard, trying to focus his eldritch sight on the air currents themselves. Elusive, twisting strands; they were hard for his mind to grasp. But he persisted, seeking out the points where heat was draining out of the gas molecules. As he delved further and further into the convoluted tides of energy a tide of light began to thicken in the air around him, sending faint streaks of colour dancing across the tunnel. It was as if the atmosphere’s atoms had expanded into vast vacuous blobs, rushing around each other in frantic motion. When he slashed at one of the gliding luminescent baubles, his hand was a matt-black shape that passed clean through the hazy apparition. His fingers closed, snatching at nothing. The misty glowing ball changed direction, ploughing through the others of its kind, rushing away from Quinn. “Come back!” Quinn bellowed in fury, and let loose a blast of white fire in the direction it had gone. The aerial swell of colour shrank back from the bolt of energy. Quinn saw them then, people huddled together in the darkness of the tunnel. Illuminated by the energistic discharge, they had dour, frightened faces. All of them were staring at him. The energy bolt vanished, and with it the vision. Quinn gaped at the nebulous shoal which bobbled in agitation. They were flowing away from him steadily, picking up speed. He thought he knew what they were, then. A whole group of possessed who had discovered how to make themselves invisible. His own energistic power began to boil through his body, mimicking the patterns inside the effervescent air. It was inordinately difficult, requiring almost his entire strength. As the energy crackled around him in the novel formation he realized what was happening. This was an effect similar to the one sought by the wild possessed on their quest to escape this universe, forcing open one of the innumerable chinks in quantum reality. Quinn persevered, exerting himself fully, clawing at the elusive opening. After all, if they could do it, he, the chosen one, could achieve the same state. He hurried after the fleeing spectres, down the tunnel to the cavity where the bomb had been placed. The very last thing he could allow was a whole group of souls out of his control or sight. His emergence into the new realm was gradual. The shadowy outlines of matter which his mind perceived began to take on more substance, becoming less translucent. His skin tingled, as if he were passing through a membrane of static. Then he was there. Weight was different, his body felt as if it were lighter than a drop of rain. He realized he wasn’t breathing. His heart had stopped, too. Though, somehow, his body still functioned. Sheer willpower, he supposed. He walked into the cavity to find them all, maybe a couple of hundred people; men, women and children. A large knot were gathered around the fusion bomb; if it wasn’t for their blatant dismay they could have been praying to it. They were turning to face him; a collective fearful gasp went up. Children were clutched to their parents. Several held up shaking hands to ward him off. “Peekaboo,” Quinn said. “I see you, arseholes.” There was something wrong, something different between him and them. His own body glowed from the energistic power he was exerting, an image of vigour. They, by contrast, were uniformly pallid, almost monochrome. Wasted. “Nice try,” he told them. “But there’s nowhere you can hide from God’s Brother. Now I want you to all come back to reality with me. I won’t be too hard; I’ve learned a useful trick tonight.” He fixed his eyes on a teenage lad with flowing hair and smiled. The lad shook his head. “We can’t return,” he stammered. Quinn took five fast steps forwards and made a grab for the lad’s arm. His fingers didn’t exactly connect, but they did slow down as they passed through the sleeve. The lad’s arm suddenly flared with brilliant colour, and he screeched in shock, stumbling backwards. “Don’t,” he pleaded. “Please, Quinn. It hurts.” Quinn studied his pain-furrowed face, rather enjoying the sight. “So you know my name, then.” “Yes. We saw you arrive. Please leave us alone. We can’t harm you.” Quinn prowled along the front rank of the cowed group, looking at each of them as they pressed together. All of them shared the same dejection, few could meet his gaze. “You mean you were like this when I came here?” “Yes,” the lad replied. “How? I was the first to bring the possessed here. What the fuck are you?” “We’re . . .” He glanced around at his peers for permission. “We’re ghosts.” #149; #149; #149; The hotel suite was two stories from the ground, which gave it a gravity field roughly a fifth of that which Louise was used to on Norfolk. She found it even more awkward than free fall. Every movement had to be well thought out in advance. Genevieve and Fletcher didn’t much care for it either. And then there was the air, or rather the lack of it. Both of Phobos’s biosphere caverns were maintained at a low pressure. It was an intermediate stage, double that of Mars to help people en route to the planet to acclimatize themselves. Louise was glad she wasn’t going down to the surface; each breath was a real effort to suck enough oxygen down into her lungs. But the asteroid was a visual thrill—once she got used to the ground curving up over her head. The balcony gave them an excellent view across the parkland and fields. She would have loved to walk through the forests; many of the trees were centuries old. Their dignity reassured her, making the worldlet seem less artificial. From where she stood on the balcony she could see several cedars, their distinctive layered grey-green boughs standing out against the more verdant foliage. There had been no time for such leisurely activities, though. As soon as they’d left the Equipped and appearing like any normal visiting Confederation citizen, Louise had then accompanied Endron to the hostelries frequented by spaceship crews. It was a rerun of her attempts to buy passage off Norfolk, but this time she had some experience in the matter, and Endron knew his way around Phobos. Between them they took a mere two hours to find the That just left the passports. Louise dressed herself in a tartan skirt (with stiffened fabric to stop it dancing up in the low gravity), black leggings, and a green polo-neck top. Clothes were the same as computers, she thought. After using the She went out into the lounge. Genevieve was in her bedroom, the thin sounds of music and muffled dialogue leaking through the closed door as yet another game was run through her processor block. Louise didn’t strictly approve, but objecting now would seem churlish, and it did keep her out of mischief. Fletcher was sitting on one of the three powder-blue leather settees which made up the lounge’s conversation area. He was sitting with his back to the glass window. Louise glanced at him, then the view which he was ignoring. “I know, my lady,” he said quietly. “You believe me foolish. After all, I have undertaken a voyage between the stars themselves, in a ship where I swam through the air with the grace of a fish in the ocean.” “There are stranger things in the universe than asteroid settlements,” she said sympathetically. “As ever, you are right. I wish I could understand why the ground above us doesn’t fall down to bury us. It is ungodly, a defiance of the natural order.” “It’s only centrifugal force. Do you want to access the educational text again?” He gave her an ironic smile. “The one which the teachers of this age have prepared for ten-year-old children? I think I will spare myself repeated humiliation, my lady Louise.” She glanced at her gold watch, which was almost the last surviving personal item from Norfolk. “Endron should be here in a minute. We’ll be able to leave Phobos in a few hours.” “I do not relish our parting, lady.” It was the one topic which she had never mentioned since the day when they had flown up to the “Aye, I am. Though in my heart I fear what awaits me there, I will not shirk from the task I have found for my new body. Quinn must be thwarted.” “He’s probably there already. Goodness, by the time we reach the O’Neill Halo all of Earth could be possessed.” “Even if I knew that beyond all doubt, I would still not allow myself to turn back. I am truly sorry, Lady Louise, but my course is set. But do not worry yourself unduly, I will stay with you until you have found passage to Tranquillity. And I will make sure that there are no possessed on your vessel before it casts off.” “I wasn’t trying to stop you, Fletcher. I think I’m a little fearful of your integrity. People in this age always seem to put themselves first. I do.” “You put your baby first, dearest Louise. Of that resolution, I am in awe. It is my one regret that by embarking on my own reckless venture that I will in all likelihood never now meet your beau, this Joshua of whom you speak. I would dearly like to see the man worthy of your love, he must be a prince among men.” “Joshua isn’t a prince. I know now he is nowhere near perfect. But . . . he does have a few good points.” Her hands touched her belly. “He’ll be a good father.” Their eyes met. Louise didn’t think she had ever seen so much loneliness before. In all the history texts they’d reviewed, he had always taken care to avoid any which might have told him what became of the family he’d left behind on Pitcairn Island. It would have been so very easy for her to sit beside him and put her arms around him. Surely a person so alone deserved some comfort? What made her emotions worse was that she knew he could see her uncertainty. The door processor announced that Endron was waiting. Louise made light of the moment with a chirpy smile and went to fetch Genevieve from her room. “Do we all have to go?” a reticent Genevieve asked Endron. “I’d reached the third strata in Skycastles. The winged horses were coming to rescue the princess.” “She’ll still be there when we get back,” Louise said. “You can play it on the ship.” “He needs you there for a full image scan,” Endron said. “No way out of it, I’m afraid.” Genevieve looked thoroughly disgusted. “All right.” Endron led them along one of the public halls. Louise was slowly mastering the art of walking in the asteroid’s effete gravity field. Nothing you could do to stop yourself leaving the ground at each step; so push strongly with your toes, angling them to project you along a flat trajectory. She knew she’d never be as fluid as the Martians no matter how much practise she had. “I wanted to ask you,” Louise said as they slid into a lift. “If you’re all Communists, how can the “Why shouldn’t we? It’s one of the perks of being a crew member. The only thing we don’t like about bringing it in is paying import duty. And so far we haven’t actually done that.” “But doesn’t everybody own everything anyway? Why should they pay for it?” “You’re thinking of super-orthodox communism. People here retain their own property and money. No society could survive without that concept; you have to have something to show for your work at the end of the day. That’s human nature.” “So you have landowners on Mars as well?” Endron chuckled. “I don’t mean that sort of property. We only retain personal items. Things like apartments are the property of the state; after all, the state pays for them. Farming collectives are allocated their land.” “And you accept that?” “Yes. Because it works. The state has enormous power and wealth, but we vote on how it’s used. We’re dependent on it, and control it at the same time. We’re also very proud of it. No other culture or ideology would ever have been able to terraform a planet. Mars has absorbed our nation’s total wealth for five centuries. Offworlders have no idea of the level of commitment that requires.” “That’s because I don’t understand why you did it.” “We were trapped by history. Our ancestors modified their bodies to live in a Lunar gravity field before the ZTT drive was built. They could have sent their children to settle countless terracompatible worlds, but then those children would have needed geneering to adapt them back to the human ‘norm.’ Parent and child would have been parted at birth; they wouldn’t have been descendants, just fosterlings in an alien environment. So we decided to make ourselves a world of our own.” “If I have followed this discourse correctly,” Fletcher said. “You have spent five centuries turning Mars from a desert to a garden?” “That’s right.” “Are you really so powerful that you can rival Our Lord’s handiwork?” “I believe He only took seven days. We’ve got a long way to go yet before we equal that. Not that we’ll ever do it again.” “Is the whole Lunar nation emigrating here now?” Louise asked, anxious to halt Fletcher’s queries. She had caught Endron giving him puzzled glances at odd times during the voyage. It was something to watch out for; she was used to his naivete, thinking little of it. Others were not so generous. “That was the idea. But now it’s happened, the majority of those living in the Lunar cities are reluctant to leave. Those who do come here to settle are mostly the younger generation. So the shift is very gradual.” “Will you live on Mars once you’ve finished flying starships?” “I was born in Phobos; I find skies unnatural. Two of my children live in Thoth city. I visit when I can, but I don’t think I would fit in down there anyway. After all this time, our nation is finally beginning to change. Not very swiftly, but it’s there, it’s happening.” “How? How can communism change?” “Money, of course. Now the terraforming project no longer absorbs every single fuseodollar earned by our state industries, there is more cash starting to seep into the economy. The younger generation adore their imported AV blocks and MF albums and clothes, they are placing so much value on these status symbols, ignoring our own nation’s products purely for the sake of difference, which they see as originality. And they have a whole planet to range over; some of us actually worry that they might walk off into the countryside and reject us totally. Who knows? Not that I’d mind if they do discard our tenets. After all, it is their world. We built it so they could know its freedom. Trying to impose the old restrictions on them would be the purest folly. Social evolution is vital if any ethnic-nationhood is to survive; and five centuries is a long time to remain static.” “So if people did claim land for themselves, you wouldn’t try to confiscate it back?” “Confiscate? You say that with some malice. Is that what the Communists on your world say they’re going to do?” “Yes, they want to redistribute Norfolk’s wealth fairly.” “Well, tell them from me, it won’t work. All they’ll ever do is cause more strife if they try and change things now. You cannot impose ideologies on people who do not embrace it wholeheartedly. The Lunar nation functions because it was planned that way from the moment the cities gained independence from the companies. It’s the same concept as Norfolk, the difference being your founders chose to write a pastoral constitution. Communism works here because everybody supports it, and the net allowed us to eliminate most forms of corruption within the civil service and local governing councils that plagued most earlier attempts. If people don’t like it, they leave rather than try and wreck it for everyone else. Isn’t that what happens on Norfolk?” Louise thought back to what Carmitha had said. “It’s difficult for the Land Union people. Starflight is expensive.” “I suppose so. We’re lucky here, the O’Neill Halo takes all our malcontents, some asteroids have entire low-gee levels populated by Lunar émigrés. Our government will even pay your ticket for you. Perhaps you should try that on Norfolk. The whole point of the Confederation’s diversity is that it provides every kind of ethnic culture possible. There’s no real need for internal conflict.” “That’s a nice idea. I ought to mention it to Daddy when I get back. I’m sure a one-way starship ticket would be cheaper than keeping someone at the arctic work camps.” “Why tell your father? Why not campaign for it yourself?” “Nobody would listen to me.” “You won’t be your age forever.” “I meant, because I’m a girl.” Endron gave her a mystified frown. “I see. Perhaps that would be a better issue to campaign about. You’d have half of the population on your side from day one.” Louise managed an uncomfortable smile. She didn’t like having to defend her homeworld from sarcasm, people should show more courtesy. The trouble was, she found it hard to defend some of Norfolk’s customs. Endron took them to one of the lowest habitation levels, a broad service corridor which led away from the biosphere cavern, deep into the asteroid’s interior. It was bare rock, with one wall made up from stacked layers of cable and piping. The floor was slightly concave, and very smooth. Louise wondered how old it must be for people’s feet to have worn it down. They reached a wide olive-green metal door, and Endron datavised a code at its processor. Nothing happened. He had to datavise the code another two times before it opened. Louise didn’t dare risk a glance at Fletcher. Inside was a cathedral-sized hall filled with three rows of high voltage electrical transformers. Great loops of thick black cabling emerged from holes high up in the walls, stretching over the aisles in a complicated weave that linked them to the fat grey ribbed cylinders. There was a strong tang of ozone in the air. A flight of metal stairs pinned against the rear wall led up to a small maintenance manager’s office cut into the rock. Two narrow windows looked down on the central aisle as they walked towards it, the outline of a man just visible inside. Fletcher’s alarm at the power humming savagely all around them was clear in the sweat on his forehead and hands, his small, precisely controlled steps. The office had a large desk with a computer terminal nearly as primitive as the models Louise used on Norfolk. A large screen took up most of the back wall, its lucidly coloured symbols displaying the settlement’s power grid. There was a Martian waiting for them inside; a man with very long snow-white hair brushed back neatly and a bright orange silk suit worn in conjunction with a midnight-black shirt. He carried a slim, featureless grey case in his left hand. Faurax didn’t know what to make of his three new clients at all; if they hadn’t been with Endron he wouldn’t even have let them into the office. These were not the times to dabble in his usual sidelines. Thanks to the current Confederation crisis, the Phobos police were becoming quite unreasonable about security procedures. “If you don’t mind me asking,” he said after Endron had introduced everybody. “Why haven’t you got your own passports?” “We had to leave Norfolk very quickly,” Louise said. “The possessed were sweeping through the city. There was no time to apply to the Foreign Office for passports. Although there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have been issued with them, we don’t have criminal records or anything like that.” It even sounded reasonable. And Faurax could guess the kind of financial package which the “You must understand,” he said, “I had to undertake a considerable amount of research to obtain the Norfolk government’s authentication codes.” “How much?” Louise asked. “Five thousand fuseodollars. Each.” “Very well.” She didn’t even sound surprised, let alone shocked. Which tweaked Faurax’s curiosity; he would have dearly liked to ask Endron who she was. The call he’d got from Tilia setting up the meeting had been very sparse on detail. “Good,” he said, and put his case on the desk, datavising a code at it. The upper surface flowed apart, revealing a couple of processor blocks and several fleks. He picked up one of the fleks, which was embossed with a gold lion: Norfolk’s national symbol. “Here we are. I loaded in all the information Tilia gave me; name, where you live, age, that kind of thing. All we need now is an image and a full body biolectric scan.” “What do we have to do?” Louise asked. “First, I’m afraid, is the money.” She gave a hollow laugh and took a Jovian Bank credit disk from her small shoulder bag. Once the money had been shunted over to Faurax’s disk, he said: “Remember not to wear these clothes when you go through the Halo’s immigration. These images were supposedly taken on Norfolk before you left, and the clothes are new. In fact, I’d advise dumping them altogether.” “We’ll do that,” Louise said. “Okay.” He slotted the first flek into his processor block and read the screen. “Genevieve Kavanagh?” The little girl smiled brightly. “Stand over there, dear, away from the door.” She did as he asked, giving the sensor lens a solemn stare. After he’d got the visual image filed, he used the second processor block to sweep her so he could record her biolectric pattern. Both files were loaded into her passport, encrypted with Norfolk’s authentication code. “Don’t lose it,” he said and dropped the flek into her hand. Louise was next. Faurax found himself wishing she were a Martian girl. She had a beautiful face, it was just her body which was so alien. Fletcher’s image went straight into his passport flek. Then Faurax ran the biolectric sensor over him. Frowned at the display. Ran a second scan. It took a long time for his chilly disquiet to give way into full blown consternation. He gagged, head jerking up from the block to stare at Fletcher. “You’re a—” His neural nanonics crashed, preventing him from datavising any alarm. The air solidified in front of his eyes; he actually saw it flowing like a dense heat shiver, contracting into a ten centimetre sphere. It hit him full in the face. He heard the bone in his nose break before he lost consciousness. Genevieve squealed in shock as Faurax went crashing to the floor, blood flowing swiftly from his nose. Endron looked at Fletcher in total shock, too numb to move. His neural nanonics had shut down, and the office light panel was flickering in an epileptic rhythm. “Oh, my God. No! Not you.” He glanced at the door, gauging his chances. “Do not try to run, sir,” Fletcher said sternly. “I will do whatever I must to protect these ladies.” “Oh, Fletcher,” Louise groaned in dismay. “We were almost there.” “His device exposed my nature, my lady. I could do naught else.” Genevieve ran over to Fletcher and hugged him tightly around his waist. He patted her head lightly. “Now what are we going to do?” Louise asked. “Not you as well?” Endron bewailed. “I’m not possessed,” she said with indignant heat. “Then what . . . ?” “Fletcher has been “But, he’s one of them.” “One of whom, sir? Many men are murderers and brigands, does that make all of us so?” “You can’t apply that argument. You’re a possessed. You’re the enemy.” “Yet, sir, I do not consider myself to be your enemy. My only crime, so it sounds, is that I have died.” “And come back! You have stolen that man’s body. Your kind want to do the same to mine and everyone else’s.” “What would you have us do? I am not so valiant that I can resist this release from the torture of the beyond. Perhaps, sir, you see such weakness as my true crime. If so, I plead guilty to that ignominy. Yet, know you this, I would grasp at such an escape every time it is offered, though I know it to be the most immoral of thefts.” “He saved us,” Genevieve protested hotly. “Quinn Dexter was going to do truly beastly things to me and Louise. Fletcher stopped him. No one else could. He’s not a bad man; you shouldn’t say he is. And I won’t let you do anything horrid to him. I don’t want him to have to go back there into the beyond.” She hugged Fletcher tighter. “All right,” Endron said. “Maybe you’re not like the Capone Organization, or the ones on Lalonde. But I can’t let you walk around here. This is my home, damn it. Maybe it is unfair, and unkind that you suffered in the beyond. You’re still a possessor, nothing changes that. We are opposed, it’s fundamental to what we are.” “Then you, sir, have a very pressing problem. For I am sworn to see these ladies to their destination in safety.” “Wait,” Louise said. She turned to Endron. “Nothing has changed. We still wish to leave Phobos, and you know Fletcher is not a danger to you or your people. You said so.” Endron gestured at the crumpled form of Faurax. “I can’t,” he said desperately. “If Fletcher opens your bodies to the souls in the beyond, who knows what the people who come through will be like,” Louise said. “I don’t think they will be as restrained as Fletcher, not if the ones I’ve encountered are anything to judge by. You would be the cause of Phobos falling to the possessed. Is that what you want?” “What the hell do you think? You’ve backed me into a corner.” “No we haven’t, there’s an easy way out of this, for all of us.” “Help us, of course. You can finish recording Fletcher’s passport for us, you can find a zero-tau pod for Faurax and keep him in it until this is all over. And you’ll know for certain that we’ve gone and that your asteroid is safe.” “This is insane. I don’t trust you, and you’d be bloody stupid to trust me.” “Not really,” she said. “If you tell us you’ll do it, Fletcher will know if you’re telling us the truth. And once we’re gone you still won’t change your mind, because you could never explain away what you’ve done to the police.” “You can read minds?” Endron’s consternation had deepened. “I will indeed know of any treachery which blackens your heart.” “What do you intend to do once you reach Tranquillity?” “Find my fiancé. Apart from that, we have no plans.” Endron gave Faurax another fast appraisal. “I don’t think I have a lot of choice, do I? If you stop this electronic warfare effect, I’ll get a freight mechanoid to take Faurax to the “You’re saving your world,” Louise said. “You’ll be a hero.” “Somehow, I doubt that.” #149; #149; #149; The cave went a long way back into the polyp cliff, which allowed Dariat to light a fire without having to worry about it being spotted. He’d chosen the beach at the foot of the endcap as today’s refuge. Surely here at least he and Tatiana would be safe? There were no bridges over the circumfluous reservoir. If Bonney came for them she’d have to use either a boat or one of the tube carriages (however unlikely that was). Which meant that for once they’d have a decent warning. The hunter’s ability to get close before either he or Rubra located her was unnerving. Even Rubra seemed genuinely concerned by it. Dariat never could understand how she ever located them in the first place. But locate them she did. There hadn’t been a day since he met Tatiana when Bonney hadn’t come after them. His one guess was that her perception ability was far greater than anyone else’s, allowing her to see the minds of everybody in the habitat. If so, the distance was extraordinary; he couldn’t feel anything beyond a kilometre at the most, and ten metres of solid polyp blocked him completely. Tatiana finished gutting the pair of trout she’d caught, and wrapped them in foil. Both were slipped into the shallow hole below the fire. “They ought to be done in about half an hour,” she said. He smiled blankly, remembering the fires he and Anastasia had made, the meals she had prepared for him. Campfire cooking was an outlandish concept to him then. Used to regulated, heat inducted sachets, he was always impressed by the cuisine she produced from such primitive arrangements. “Did she ever say anything about me?” he asked. “Not much. I didn’t see much of her after she set herself up as a mistress of Thoale. Besides which, I was discovering boys myself about then.” She gave a raucous laugh. Apart from the physical resemblance, it was difficult to accept any other connection between Tatiana and Anastasia. It was inconceivable that his beautiful love would have ever grown into anything resembling this cheery, easygoing woman, with an overloud voice. Anastasia would have kept her quiet dignity, her sly humour, her generous spirit. It was hard for him to feel much sympathy for Tatiana, and harder still to tolerate her behaviour, especially given their circumstances. He persisted, though, knowing that to desert her now would make him unworthy, a betrayal of his own one love. Damn Rubra for knowing that. “Whatever she did say, I’d appreciate you telling me.” “Okay. I suppose I owe you that at least.” She settled herself more comfortably into the thin sand, her bracelets tinkling softly. “She said her new boy—that’s you—was very different. She said you’d been hurt by Anstid since the day you were born, but that she could see the real person buried underneath all the pain and loneliness. She thought she could free you from his thrall. Strange, she really believed it; as if you were some sort of injured bird she’d rescued. I don’t think she realized what a mistake she’d made. Not until the end. That was why she did it.” “I am true to her. I always have been.” “So I see. Thirty years planning.” She whistled a long single note. “I’m going to kill Anstid. I have the power now.” Tatiana began to laugh, a big belly rumble that shook her loose cotton dress about. “Ho yes, I can see why she’d fall for you. All that sincerity and retention. Cupid tipped his arrows with a strong potion that day you two met.” “Don’t mock.” Her laughter vanished in an instant. Then he could see the resemblance to Anastasia, the passion in her eyes. “I would never mock my sister, Dariat. I pity her for the trick Tarrug played on her. She was too young to meet you, too damn young. If she’d had a few more years to gather wisdom, she would have seen you are beyond any possible salvation. But she was young, and stupid the way we all are at that age. She couldn’t refuse the challenge to do good, to bring a little light into your prison. When you get to my age, you give lost causes a wide passage.” “I am not lost, not to Chi-ri, not to Thoale. I will slay Anstid. And that is thanks to Anastasia, she broke that Lord’s spell over me.” “Oh, dear, oh, dear, listen to him. Stop reading the words, Dariat, learn with your heart. Just because she told you the names of our Lords and Ladies, doesn’t mean you know them. You won’t kill Anstid. Rubra is not a realm Lord, he’s a screwed-up old memory pattern. Sure, his bananas mind makes him bitter and vindictive, which is an aspect of Anstid, but he’s not the real thing. Hatred isn’t going to vanish from the universe just because you nuke a habitat. You can see that, can’t you?” Yes, go on, boy, answer the question. I’m interested. Fuck off! Pity you never went to university; the old school of hard knocks is never quite enough when you need to stand up for yourself in the intellectual debating arena. Dariat made an effort to calm himself, aware of the little worms of light scurrying over his clothing. A sheepish grin unfurled on his lips. “Yes, I can see that. Besides, without hatred you could never know how sweet love is. We need hatred.” “That’s more like it.” She started applauding. “We’ll make a Starbridge of you yet.” “Too late for that. And I’m still going to nuke Rubra.” “Not before I’m out of here, I hope.” “I’ll get you out.” Yeah, and whose help are you going to need for that? “How?” Tatiana asked. “I’ll be honest. I don’t know. But I’ll find a way. I owe you and Anastasia that much.” Bravo, Sir Galahad. In the meantime, three ships have arrived. So? So they’re from New California, a frigate and two combat-capable traders. I think our current status quo might be changing. The voidhawks on observation duty perceived the three Adamist starships emerge from their ZTT jump twelve thousand kilometres out from Valisk. As their thermo-dump panels, sensor clusters, and communications arrays deployed, the voidhawks started to pick up high-bandwidth microwave transmissions. The ships were beaming out news reports all over the Srinagar system, telling everyone who was interested how well the Organization was doing, and how New California was prospering. There were several long items on the possessed curing injuries and broken bones in the non-possessed. The one thing the voidhawks couldn’t intercept was the signal between the ships and Valisk. Whatever was said, it resulted in eight hellhawks arriving to escort the New California starships to the habitat’s spaceport. Alarmed by the implication of Capone extending his influence into the Srinagar system, Consensus requested Rubra monitor developments closely. For once, he wasn’t inclined to argue. Kiera waited for Patricia Mangano at the end of the passageway which led up to the axial chamber three kilometres above her. Without the tube carriages, every ascent and descent had to be on foot. Starting at the axial chamber, the passageway contained a ladder for the first kilometre, then gave way to a staircase for the final two as the curvature became more pronounced. It ended two kilometres above the base of the endcap, emerging from the polyp shell onto a shelflike plateau which was reached by a switchback road. Thankfully, similar plateaus around the endcap gave them admission to the docking ledge lounges. Which meant they’d all but stopped using the counter-rotating spaceport. If Patricia was annoyed by the time and physical effort it took her to descend, it was hidden deeper than Kiera’s perception was able to discern. Instead, when Capone’s envoy emerged into the light, she smiled with a simple delight as she looked around. Kiera had to admit, the little plateau was an excellent vantage point. The distinct bands of colour which comprised Valisk’s interior shone lucidly in the light tube’s relentless emission. Patricia shielded her eyes with one hand as she gazed about the worldlet. “Nothing anybody says can prepare you for this.” “Didn’t you have habitats in your time?” Kiera asked. “Absolutely not. I’m strictly a twentieth-century gal. Al prefers us as his lieutenants, that way we understand each other better. Some modern types, I can only comprehend about one word in ten.” “I’m from the twenty-fourth century myself. Never set foot on Earth.” “Lucky you.” Kiera gestured at the open-top truck parked at the end of the road. Bonney was sitting in the backseat, ever vigilant. Kiera switched on the motor and began the drive down the road. “I’ll warn you from the start, anything you say in the open is overheard by Rubra. We think he tells the Edenists just about everything that goes on in here.” “What I have to say is private,” Patricia said. “I thought so. Don’t worry, we have some clean rooms.” It wasn’t too difficult for Rubra to infiltrate the circular tower at the base of the northern endcap. He just needed to be careful. The possessed could always detect small animals like mice and bats, which were simply blasted by a bolt of white fire. So he had to resort to more unusual servitors. Deep in the birthing caverns of the southern endcap, incubators were used to nurture insects whose DNA templates had been stored unused since the time when Valisk was germinated. Centipedes and bees began to emerge, each one affinity-controlled by a sub-routine. The bees flew straight out into the main cavern, where they hovered and loitered among all the temporary camps set up around the starscraper lobbies. Coverage wasn’t perfect, but they provided him with a great deal of information about what went on inside the tents and cottages, where his usual perception was blocked. The centipedes were carried aloft by birds, to be deposited on the roof of the tower and other substantial buildings. Like the spiders which the Edenist intelligence agency used to infiltrate their observation targets, they scuttled along conditioning ducts and cable conduits, hiding just behind grilles and sockets where they could scrutinize the interior. Their deployment allowed Rubra and the Kohistan Consensus to watch as Kiera led Patricia Mangano into Magellanic Itg’s boardroom. Patricia had one assistant with her, while Kiera was accompanied by Bonney and Stanyon. No one else from Valisk’s new ruling council had been invited. “What happened?” Patricia asked after she had claimed a chair at the big table. “In what respect?” Kiera replied cautiously. “Come on. You’ve got your hellhawks flitting about the Confederation with impunity to bring back warm bodies. And when they get here, the habitat looks like it’s a Third World refugee camp left over from my own century. You’re living in the iron age, here. It doesn’t make any sense. Bitek is the one technology that keeps working around us. You should be lording it up in the starscraper apartments.” “Rubra happened,” Kiera said bitterly. “He’s still in the neural strata. The one expert we had on affinity who could possibly remove him has . . . failed. It means we’ve got to go through the starscrapers a centimetre at a time to make them safe. We’re getting there. It’ll take time, but we’ve got eternity, after all.” “You could leave.” “I don’t think so.” Patricia lounged back, grinning. “Ah, right. That would mean evacuating to a planet. How would you keep your position and authority there?” “The same way Capone does. People need governments, they need organizing. We’re a very socially oriented race.” “So why didn’t you?” “We’re doing all right here. Have you really come all this way just to take cheap shots?” “Not at all. I’m here to offer you a deal.” “Yes?” “Antimatter in return for your hellhawks.” Kiera glanced at Bonney and Stanyon; the latter’s face was alive with interest. “What exactly do you think we can do with antimatter?” “The same as us,” Patricia said. “Blow Srinagar’s SD network clean to hell. “But not perfect.” “You have your problems, we have ours. The Edenist voidhawks are causing a lot of disruption to our fleet activities. We need the hellhawks to deal with them. Their distortion fields can locate the stealth bombs being flung at us.” “Interesting proposition.” “Don’t try and bargain, please. That would be insulting. We have an irritant; you have a potential disaster looming.” “If you don’t take too much offence at the question, I’d like to know how much antimatter you’ll deliver.” “As much as it takes, and the ships to deploy them, providing you can keep your end. How many hellhawks can you offer?” “We have several out collecting Deadnight kids. But I can probably let you have seventy.” “And you can keep them under control, make them follow orders?” “Oh, yes.” “How?” Kiera gloated. “It’s not something you’ll ever be able to duplicate. We can return the souls possessing the hellhawks directly into human bodies. That’s what they all want eventually, and that’s what we’ll give them, providing they obey.” “Smart. So do we have a deal?” “Not with you. I’ll travel to New California myself and talk to Capone. That way we’ll both know how much we can trust the other.” Kiera hung back after Patricia left the boardroom. “This changes everything,” she said to Bonney. “Even if we don’t get enough antimatter to knock over Srinagar, it’ll give us the deterrence to prevent another voidhawk attack.” “It looks like it. Do you think Capone is on the level?” “I’m not sure. He must need the hellhawks pretty badly, or he wouldn’t have offered us the antimatter. Even if he’s got a production station, it won’t exactly be plentiful.” “You want me to come with you?” “No.” The tip of her tongue licked over her lips, a fast movement by a lash of forked flesh. “We’re either going to be leaving here for Srinagar, or I’ll deal with Capone to provide us with enough bodies to fill the habitat. Either way, we won’t be needing that shit Dariat anymore. See to it.” “You bet.” Can you stop the hellhawks from leaving?rubra asked. No,the kohistan consensus said. Not seventy of them. They are still armed with a considerable number of conventional combat wasps. Bugger. If Kiera does acquire antimatter combat wasps from Capone, we don’t think we will be able to provide an adequate level of reinforcement to Srinagar’s Strategic Defence network. The planet may fall to her. Then call in the Confederation Navy. Srinagar’s been paying its taxes, hasn’t it? Yes. But there is no guarantee the navy will respond. Its resources are being deployed over a wide area. Then call Jupiter. They’re bound to have spare squadrons. We will see what can be done. Do that. In the meantime, there are some important decisions to be taken. By me and Dariat both. And I don’t think Bonney Lewin is going to give us much more time. #149; #149; #149; Erick was sure that the explosion, followed by the capsule’s equally violent stabilization manoeuvre, had torn loose some of his medical nanonic packages. He could feel peculiar lines of pressure building up under the SII suit, and convinced himself it was fluid leakage. Blood or artificial tissue nutrient from the packages and their supplements, he wasn’t sure which. Over half of them no longer responded to his datavises. At least it meant they couldn’t contribute to the medical program’s dire pronouncements of his current physiological state. His right arm wouldn’t respond to any nerve impulses at all, nor was he receiving any sensation from it. The only positive factor was a confirmation that blood was still circulating inside the new muscles and artificial tissue. There wasn’t much he could do to rectify the situation. The capsule’s reserve electron matrices didn’t have enough power to activate the internal life-support system. The thin atmosphere was already ten degrees below zero, and falling rapidly. Which meant he was unable to take the suit off and replace the nanonic packages. And just to twist the knife, an emergency survival gear locker containing fresh medical nanonic packages had popped open in the ceiling above him. Backup lighting had come on, casting a weak pale blue glow across the compartment. Frost was forming on most of the surfaces, gradually obscuring the few remaining active holoscreen displays. Various pieces of refuse had been jolted loose from their nesting places to twirl whimsically through the air, throwing avian-style shadows across the acceleration couches. Potentially the most troubling problem was the intermittent dropouts from which the flight computer’s datavises were suffering. Erick wasn’t entirely sure he could trust its status display. It still responded to simple commands, though. With his personal situation stable for a moment, he instructed the capsule’s sensors to deploy. Three of the five responded, pistonlike tubes sliding up out of the nultherm foam coating. They began to scan around. Astrogration programs slowly correlated the surrounding starfield. If they were working correctly, then the He wasn’t sure if they would pick up the capsule’s distress beacon. Stage one colonies did not have the most sophisticated communications satellites. When he instructed the capsule’s phased array antenna to focus on the distant planet, it didn’t acknowledge. He repeated the instruction, and there was still no activity. The flight computer ran a diagnostic, which gave him a System Inviable code. Without actually going outside to examine it, there was no way of telling what was wrong. Alone. Cut off. Fifty million kilometres from possible rescue. Light-years from where he desperately needed to be. All that was left for him now was to wait. He began switching off every piece of equipment apart from the attitude rockets, the guidance system which drove them, and the computer itself. Judging by the frequency of the thruster firings, the capsule was venting something. The last diagnostic sweep before he shut down the internal sensors couldn’t pinpoint what it was. After he’d reduced the power drain to a minimum, he pressed the deactivation switch for his restraint webbing. Even that seemed reluctant to work, taking a long time to fold back below the side of the cushioning. At this movement, levering himself up from the couch, fluid stirred across his abdomen. He found that by moving very slowly, the effect (and perhaps the harm) was moderated. Training took over, and he began to index the emergency gear which had deployed from the ceiling. That was when the emotional shock hammered him. He suddenly found himself shaking badly as he clung to a four person programmable silicon dinghy. Indexing his position! Like a good little first-year cadet. A broken laugh bubbled around the SII suit’s respirator tube. The glossy black silicon covering his eyes turned permeable to vent the salty fluid burning his squeezed up eyelids. Never in his life had he felt so utterly helpless. Even when the possessed were boarding the Now he was humiliatingly aware of his mind crumbling away in mimicry of his tattered old body. Fear had risen to consume him, flowing swiftly out of the dark corners of the bridge. It produced a pain in his head far worse than any physical injury ever could. Those muscles which still functioned disobeyed any lingering wishes he might have, leaving him ignominiously barnacled to the dinghy. Every last reserve of determination and resolve had been exhausted. Not even the ubiquitous programs could shore up his mentality anymore. Too weak to continue living, too frightened to die: Erick Thakrar had come to the end of the line. #149; #149; #149; Eight kilometres west of Stonygate, Cochrane tooted the horn on the Karmic Crusader bus and turned off the road. The other three vehicles in the convoy jounced over the grass verge and came to a halt behind it. “Yo, dudettes,” Cochrane yelled back to the juvenile rioters clambering over the seats. “Time out for like the big darkness.” He pressed the red button on the dash, and the doors hissed open. Kids poured out like a dam burst. Cochrane put his purple glasses back on and climbed down out of the cab. Stephanie and Moyo walked over to him, arm in arm. “Good place,” she said. The convoy had halted at the head of a gentle valley which was completely roofed over by the rumbling blanket of crimson cloud, rendering the mountain peaks invisible. “This whole righteous road trip is one major groove.” “Right.” He materialized a fat reefer. “Hit?” “No thanks. I’d better see about cooking them some supper.” “That’s cool. I can’t psyche out any hostile vibes in this locale. I’ll like keep watch, make sure the nazgul aren’t circling overhead.” “You do that.” Stephanie smiled fondly at him and went to the back of the bus, where the big luggage hold was. Moyo started pulling out the cooking gear. “We should manage to reach Chainbridge by tomorrow evening,” he said. “Yes. This isn’t quite what I expected when we started out, you know.” “Predictability is boring.” He put a big electric camping grille on the ground, adjusting the aluminum legs to make it level. “Besides, I think it’s worked out for the best.” Stephanie glanced around the improvised campsite, nodding approval; nearly sixty children were scampering around the parked vehicles. What had started off as a private mission to help a handful of lost children had rapidly snowballed. Four times during the first day they had been stopped by residents who had told them where non-possessed children were lurking. On the second day there were over twenty children packed on board; that was when Tina Sudol had volunteered to come with them. Rana and McPhee joined up on the third day, adding another bus. Now there were four vehicles, and eight possessed adults. They were no longer making a straight dash for the border at the top of Mortonridge. It was more of a zigzag route, visiting as many towns as they could to pick up children. Ekelund’s people, who had evolved into the closest thing to a government on Mortonridge, maintained the communications net between the larger towns, albeit with a considerably reduced bit capacity than previously. News of Stephanie’s progress had spread widely. Children were already waiting for the buses when they reached some towns; on a couple of occasions dressed smartly and given packed lunches by the possessed who had taken care of them. They had borne witness to some very tearful partings. After the children had eaten and washed and been settled in their tents, Cochrane and Franklin Quigley sliced branches off a tree and piled them up to form a proper campfire. The adults came to sit around it, enjoying the yellow light flaring out to repel the clouds’ incessant claret illumination. “I think we should forget going back to a town when we’re done with the kids,” McPhee said. “All of us get along okay, we should try a farm. The towns are starting to run out of food, now. We could grow some and sell it to them. That would give us something to do.” “He’s been back a whole week, and he’s already bored,” Franklin Quigley grunted. “Bore- The giant Scot made a pass of his hand, and the smoke wilted, turning to tar and splattering on the ground. “I’m not bored, but we have to do something. It makes sense to think ahead.” “You might be right,” Stephanie said. “I don’t think I’d like to live in any of the towns we’ve passed through so far.” “The way I see it,” said Moyo, “is that the possessed are developing into two groups.” “ “What word?” Moyo asked. “Possession. I find it offensive and prejudicial.” “That’s right, babe,” Cochrane chortled. “We’re not possessors, we’re just like dimensionally disadvantaged.” “Call our cross-continuum placement situation whatever you wish,” she snapped back. “You cannot alter the fact that the term is wholly derogatory. The Confederation’s military-industrial complex is using it to demonize us so they can justify increased spending on their armaments programs.” Stephanie pressed her face into Moyo’s arm to smother her giggles. “Come on, we’re not exactly on the side of the saints,” Franklin observed. “The perception of common morality is enforced entirely by the circumstances of male-dominated society. Our new and unique circumstances require us to re-evaluate that original morality. As there are clearly not enough living bodies to go around the human race, sensory ownership should be distributed on an equitable basis. It’s no good the living protesting about us. We have as much right to sensory input as they do.” Cochrane took the reefer from his mouth and gave it a sad stare. “Man, I wish I could manifest your trips.” “You ignore him, darling,” Tina Sudol said to Rana. “He’s a perfect example of male brutality.” “I suppose a fuck is out of the question tonight, then?” Tina sucked in her cheeks theatrically as she glowered at the unrepentant hippie. “I’m only interested in men.” “And always have been,” McPhee said, in an unsubtle whisper. Tina flounced her glossy, highlighted hair back with a manicured hand. “You men are animals, all of you, simply “ “You think that’s what it’s going to be like from now on?” McPhee asked. “Yes. That’s what we’ll settle down into.” “But for how long? Wanting to see and feel is just a reaction from the beyond. Once we’ve had our fill, human nature will come back. People want to settle down, have a family. Procreation is our biological imperative. And that’s one thing we never can do. We will always be frustrated.” “I’ll like give it a try,” Cochrane said. “Me and Tina can make babies in my tepee anytime.” Tina gave him a single disgusted look, and shuddered. “But they wouldn’t be yours,” McPhee said. “That isn’t your body, and it certainly isn’t your DNA. You will never have a child again, not one of your own. That phase of our lives is over, it cannot be regained no matter how much of our energistic ability we expend.” “You’re also forgetting the third type walking among us,” Franklin said. “The Ekelund type. And I do know her. I signed up with her for the first couple of days. She seemed to know what she was doing. We had ‘objectives’ and ‘target assignments,’ and ‘command structures’—and God help anyone who disobeyed those fascists. She’s a straight power nut with a Napoleonic complex. She’s got her little army of wannabe toughs running around in combat fatigues thinking they’re reborn special forces brigades. And they’re going to keep sniping away at the Royal Marines over the border until the Princess gets so pissed with us she nukes Mortonridge down to the bedrock.” “That situation won’t last,” McPhee said. “Give it a month, or a year, and the Confederation will fall. Don’t you listen to the whispers in the beyond? Capone is getting his act together out there. It won’t be long before the Organization fleet jumps to Ombey. Then there will be nobody left for Ekelund to fight, and her command structure will simply fade away. Nobody is going to do what she tells them for the rest of time.” “I don’t want to live for the rest of time,” Stephanie said. “I really don’t. That’s almost as frightening as being trapped in the beyond. We’re not made to live forever, we can’t handle it.” “Lighten up, babe,” Cochrane said. “I don’t mind giving eternity a try; it’s the flipside which is the real bummer.” “We’ve been back a week, and Mortonridge is already falling apart. There’s hardly any food left, nothing works properly.” “Give it a chance,” Moyo said. “We’re all badly shocked, we don’t know how to control this new power we’ve got, and the non-possessed want to hunt us down and fling us back. You can hardly expect instant civilization under those circumstances. We’ll find a way to adjust. As soon as the rest of Ombey is possessed we’ll take it out of this universe altogether. Once that happens, things will be different. You’ll see; this is just an interim stage.” He put his arm around her as she leaned into him. She kissed him lightly, mind shining with appreciation. “Yo, love machines,” Cochrane said. “So while you two screw like hot bunnies for the rest of the night, who’s going into town to track down some food?” #149; #149; #149; Got a beacon,edwin announced. his mind was hot with triumph. Around And there had been nothing. No ships in orbit. No response from the small development company advance camp on the planet. It’s very weak, some kind of capsule emergency signal. Definitely the Lock on to it, please,syrinx said. she was aware of the astrogration data from the sensors flooding into the bitek processor array. From that, she and Go. The voidhawk swallowed through a wormhole that barely had any internal length at all. Starlight blue-shifted slightly as it twisted into a tight rosette, kissing the hull, then expanding. A life-support capsule was spinning idly ten kilometres in front of the terminus as There’s no response from the capsule,edwin said. I’m registering some power circuits active in there, but they’re very weak. And it’s been venting its atmosphere. Oxley, Serina, take the MSV over there,syrinx ordered. Bring him back. At least he got into a suit,oxley said. Is there any infrared emission? Check the electronic warfare block first,syrinx said. Negative electronic warfare emission. He’s not possessed. But he is alive. The suit’s a couple of degrees above ambient. Are you sure it’s not just natural body heat residue? Those suits are a good insulator. If he’s alive, then he hasn’t moved since the frost formed on him. That must have been hours ago. Serina’s bitek processor block converted her affinity voice into a straight datavise. “Captain Thakrar? Are you receiving this, sir? We’re Edenists from Golomo; we received your message.” The ice-encrusted figure didn’t move. She waited a moment, then made her way towards him. I’ve just datavised his suit processor for a status update. He’s still breathing. Oh, damn. They all saw it at the same time: ancillary medical modules anchored to Thakrar by small plastic tubes which burrowed through the SII suit material. Two of the modules had red LEDs shining under their coating of frost, the others were completely dark. The tubes had all frozen solid. Get him back here,syrinx instructed. Fast as you can, Serina. Caucus was waiting with a stretcher right outside the MSV’s airlock. Deactivate the suit, please,caucus told serina as the stretcher was wheeled under the diagnostic scanner. She issued the order to the suit’s control processor, which examined the external environment before obeying. The black silicon retreated from Thakrar’s skin, sliding from his extremities to glide smoothly toward his throat. Dark fluids began to stain the stretcher. Syrinx wrinkled her nose up at the smell, putting a hand over her nose. Is he all right? I don’t know yet. Please, Syrinx, it is him who is hurt, not you. Please don’t remember like this. I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was being so obvious. To the others, perhaps not. It does make me remember, I won’t deny that. But his injuries are very different. Pain is pain. My pain is only a memory,she recited; in her mind it was wing-tsit Chong’s voice which spoke the phrase. Memories do not hurt, they only influence. Caucus winced at the sight which was unveiled. Thakrar’s lower right arm was new, that much was obvious. The medical packages wrapped around it had shifted, opening large gashes in the translucent immature skin. AT muscles lay exposed, their drying membranes acquiring a nasty septic tint. Scars and skin grafts on the legs and torso were a livid red against the snowy skin. The remainder of his packages appeared to have withered, green surfaces crinkling up like aging rubber, pulling the edges back from the flesh they were supposed to heal. Sour nutrient fluids dripped out of torn inlet plugs. For a moment, all Caucus could do was stare in a kind of revolted dismay. He simply didn’t know where to start. Erick Thakrar’s bruised eyelids slowly opened. What alarmed Syrinx the most was the lack of confusion they showed. “Can you hear me, Erick?” Caucus said in an overloud voice. “You’re perfectly safe now. We’re Edenists, we rescued you. Now please don’t try and move.” Erick opened his mouth, lips quivering. “We’re going to treat you in just a moment. Are your axon blocks functional?” “No!” It was very clear, very determined. Caucus picked up an anaesthetic spray from the bench. “Is the program faulty, or have your neural nanonics been damaged?” Erick brought his good arm around and pressed his knuckles into Caucus’s back. “No, you will not touch me,” he datavised. “I have a nerve burst implant. I will kill him.” The spray fell from Caucus’s hand to clatter on the deck. Syrinx could barely credit what was happening. Her mind instinctively opened to Caucus, offering support to his own frightened thoughts. All the crew were doing the same. “Captain Thakrar, I am Captain Syrinx, this is my voidhawk Erick laughed, an unsteady gulp which shook his whole body. “I know that. I don’t want to be treated. I’m not going back, not out there. Not again.” “Nobody is going to send you anywhere.” “They will. They always do. You do, you navy people. Always one final mission, one little bit of vital information to collect, then it will all be over. It never is, though. Never.” “I understand.” “Liar.” She gestured to the outlines of the medical packages visible through her ship-tunic. “I do have some knowledge of what you have been through. The possessed had me for a brief time.” Erick gave her a scared glance. “They’ll win. If you saw what they can do, you’ll know that. There’s nothing we can do.” “I think there is. I think there must be a solution.” “We’ll die. We’ll become them. They’re us, all of us.” Captain? I’ve got a clean shot at him. Syrinx was aware of Edwin, out in the central corridor, a maser carbine raised. The blank muzzle was pointing at Erick Thakrar’s back. A feed from the weapon’s targeting processor showed it was aimed precisely on Thakrar’s spinal column. The coherent microwaves would sever his nerves before he could use the implant. No,she said. Not yet. He deserves our efforts to talk him out of this.for the first time in a long time, she was angry at an Adamist for being just that, an Adamist. Closed mind, locked up tight in its skull. No way of knowing what others were thinking, never really knowing love, kindness, or sympathy. She couldn’t take the simple truth to him directly. Not the easy way. “What do you want us to do?” she asked. “I have information,” Erick datavised. “Strategic information.” “We know. Your message to Golomo said it was important.” “I will sell it to you.” There was a collective burst of surprise from the crew. “Okay,” Syrinx said. “If I have the price on board, you will have it.” “Zero-tau.” Erick’s face became pleading. “Tell me you have a pod on board. For God’s sake.” “We have several.” “Good. I want to be put inside. They can’t get to you in there.” “All right, Erick. We’ll put you in zero-tau.” “Forever.” “What?” “Forever. I want to stay in zero-tau forever.” “Erick . . .” “I thought about this; I thought about it a lot, it can work. Really it can. Your habitats can resist the possessed. Adamist starships don’t work for them, not properly. Capone is the only one who has any military ships, and he won’t be able to keep them going for long. They’ll need maintenance, spares. He’ll run out eventually. Then there won’t be any more invasions, only infiltrations. And you won’t let your guard down. We will, Adamists will. But not you. In a hundred years from now there will be nothing left of our race, except for you. Your culture will live forever. You can keep me in zero-tau forever.” “There’s no need for this, Erick. We can beat them.” “No,” he brayed. “Can’t can’t can’t.” The effort of speaking made him cough painfully. His breathing was very heavy now. “I’m not going to die,” he datavised. “I’m not going to be one of them; not like little Tina. Dear little Tina. God, she was only fifteen. Now she’s dead. But you don’t die in zero-tau. You’re safe. It’s the only way. No life, but no beyond, either. That’s the answer.” Very slowly, he took his hand away from Caucus. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have hurt you. Please, you have to do this for me. I can tell you where Capone is going to invade next. I can give you the coordinate of an antimatter station. Just give me your word, as an Edenist, as a voidhawk captain; your word that you will take my pod to a habitat, and that your culture will always keep me in zero-tau. Your word, please, it’s so little to ask.” What do I do?she asked her crew. Their minds merged, awash with compassion and distress. The answer, she felt, was inevitable. Syrinx walked over and took Erick’s cold, damp hand in hers. “All right, Erick,” she said softly. Wishing once more for a single second of genuine communication. “We’ll put you in zero-tau. But I want you to promise me something in return.” Erick’s eyes had closed. His breathing was very shallow now as he datavised several files into the toroid’s net. Caucus was exuding concern at the read-out from the diagnostic scanner. Hurry, he urged. “What?” Erick asked. “I want your permission to take you out of zero-tau if we find a proper solution to all this.” “You won’t.” “But if we do!” “This is stupid.” “No it isn’t. Edenism was founded on hope, hope for the future, the belief that life can get better. If you have faith in our culture to preserve you for eternity, you must believe in that. Jesus, Erick, you have to believe in something.” “You are a very strange Edenist.” “I am a very typical Edenist. The rest just don’t know it yet.” “Very well, deal.” “I’ll talk to you soon, Erick. I’ll be the one who wakes you up and tells you.” “At the end of the universe, perhaps. Until then . . .” |
||
|