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There was the odd time when she was aware of the age gulf, this afternoon being one of them. Aulie had wanted to visit one of the caverns in the habitat’s endcap which was full of late twenty-first century cybernetic machinery, kept working as a functional museum. Syrinx was hard put to think of anything more boring. Here they were in the first habitat ever grown, five hundred years old, the seat of their culture; and he wanted to take a look at antique robots?
So they’d parted company. Him to his steam engines, leaving her to explore the interior. Eden was much smaller than the other habitats, a cylinder eleven kilometres long, three in diameter; a prototype really. It didn’t have starscrapers, the inhabitants lived in a small town ringing the northern endcap. Again, leftovers from a bygone age; simple, quick-to-assemble bungalows of metal and composite, laboriously preserved by their present occupants. Each of them had spruce handkerchief-sized gardens boasting ancient pure genotype plant varieties. The vegetation might not have the size or sharpness of colour owned by their modern descendants, but their context made them a visual treat. Living history.
She picked her way along what she thought were paths, dodging gnarled roots which knitted together at ankle height, ducking under loops of sticky vine. Moss and fungi had colonized every square centimetre of bark, giving each tree its own micro-ecology. It was hot among the trunks, the motionless air cloyingly humid. Her dress with its short skirt and tight top was intended purely to emphasise her adolescent figure for Aulie’s benefit. In here it was totally impractical, damp fabric fighting every movement of her limbs. Her hair died within minutes, sodden strands flopping down to grease her shoulders. Green and brown smears multiplied over her arms and legs, nature’s tribal war paint.
Despite the inconveniences she kept going forwards. The sensation of expectancy growing all the while, and nothing to do with Aulie anymore. This was something more ambivalent, a notion of approaching divinity.
She emerged from the jumbled trees into a glade which accommodated a calm lake that was almost sealed over with pink and white water lilies. Black swans drifted slowly along the few remaining tracts of open water. A bungalow sat on the marshy shore, very different from those in the town; it was built from stone and wood, standing on stilts above the reeds. A high, steeply curved blue slate roof overhung the walls, providing an all-round veranda, and giving the building an acutely Eastern aspect.
Syrinx walked towards it, more curious than apprehensive. The building was completely incongruous, yet apposite at the same time. Copper wind chimes, completely blue from age and exposure to the elements, tinkled softly as she climbed the rickety steps to the veranda which faced out over the lake.
Someone was waiting for her there, an old Oriental man sitting in a wheelchair, dressed in a navy-blue silk jacket, with a tartan rug wrapped around his legs. His face had the porcelain delicacy of the very old. Almost all of his hair had gone, leaving a fringe of silver strands at the back of his head, long enough to come down over his collar. Even the wheelchair was antique, carved from wood, with big thin wheels that had chrome spokes; there was no motor. It looked as though the man hadn’t moved out of it for years; he blended into its contours perfectly.
An owl was perched on the veranda balcony, big eyes fixed on Syrinx.
The old man raised a hand with a thousand liver spots on its crinkled yellowing skin. He beckoned. Come closer.
Horribly aware of what a mess she looked, Syrinx took a hesitant couple of steps forwards. She glanced sideways, trying to see into the bungalow through its open windows. Empty blackness prowled behind the rectangles. Blackness which hid—
What is my name?the old man asked sharply.
Syrinx swallowed nervously. You are Wing-Tsit Chong, sir. You invented affinity, and Edenism.
Sloppy thinking, my dear girl. One does not invent a culture, one nurtures it.
I’m sorry. I can’t . . . It’s difficult to think.there were shapes flickering in the darkness, consolidating into outlines which she thought she recognized. The owl hooted softly. Guilty, Syrinx jerked her gaze back to Wing-Tsit Chong.
Why is it difficult for you to think?
She gestured to the window. In there. People. I remember them. I’m sure I do. What am I doing here? I don’t remember.
There is no one inside. Do not allow your imagination to fill the darkness, Syrinx. You are here for one reason only: to see me.
Why?
Because I have some very important questions to ask you.
Me?
Yes. What is the past, Syrinx?
The past is a summation of events which contribute to making the present everything which it is—
Stop. What is the past?
She shrugged her shoulders, mortified that here she was in front of the founder of Edenism, and couldn’t answer a simple question for him. The past is a measure of entropic decay—
Stop. When did I die, what year?
Oh. Two thousand and ninety.she twitched a smile of relief.
And what year were you born?
Two thousand five hundred and eighty.
How old are you now?
Seventeen.
What am I when you are seventeen?
Part of Eden’s multiplicity.
What components make up a multiplicity?
People.
No. Not physically, they don’t. What are the actual components, name the process involved at death.
Transfer. Oh, memories!
So what is the past?
Memories.she grinned broadly, straightening her shoulders to say formally: The past is a memory.
At last, we achieve progress. Where is the only place your personal past can take form?
In my mind?
Good. And what is the purpose of life?
To experience.
This is so, though from a personal view I would add that life should also be a progression towards truth and purity. But then I remain an intransigent old Buddhist at heart, even after so long. This is why I could not refuse the request from your therapists to talk to you. Apparently I am an icon you respect.humour quirked his lips for a moment. in such circumstances, for me to assist in your deliverance is an act of dana I could not possibly refuse.
Dana?
The Buddhist act of giving, a sacrifice which will allow the dayaka , the giver, a glimpse of a higher state, helping in transforming one’s own mind.
I see.
I would be surprised if you did, at least fully. Edenism seems to have shied away from religion, which I admit I did not anticipate. However, our current problem is more immediate. We have established that you live to experience, and that your past is only a memory.
Yes.
Can it harm you?
No,she said proudly, the logical answer.
You are incorrect. If that were so you would never learn from mistakes.
I learn from it, yes. But I can’t be hurt by it.
You can, however, be influenced by it. Very strongly. I believe we are debating how many angels dance on a pinhead, but influence can be harmful.
I suppose so.
Let me put it another way. You can be troubled by memories.
Yes.
Good. What effect does that have on your life?
If you are wise, it stops you from repeating mistakes, especially if they are painful ones.
This is so. We have established, then, that the past can control you, and you cannot control the past, yes?
Yes.
What about the future?
Sir?
Can the past control the future?
It can influence it,she said cautiously.
Through what medium?
People?
Good. This is karma. Or what Western civilization referred to as reaping the seeds you have sown. In simpler terms it is fate. Your actions in the present decide your future, and your actions are based on the interpretation of past experiences.
I see.
In that respect, what we have in your case is an unfortunate problem.
We do?
Yes. However, before we go any further, I would like you to answer a personal question for me. You are seventeen years old; do you now believe in God? Not some primitive concept as a Creator trumpeted by Adamist religions, but perhaps a higher force responsible for ordering the universe? Be honest with me, Syrinx. I will not be angry whatever the answer. Remember, I am probably the most spiritually inclined of all Edenists.
I believe . . . I think . . . No, I’m afraid that there might not be.
I will accept that for now. It is a common enough doubt among our kind.
It is?
Indeed. Now, I am going to tell you something about yourself in small stages, and I would like you to apply the most rigorous rational analysis to each statement.
I understand.
This is a perceptual reality, you have been brought here to help you overcome a problem.he smiled kindly, a gesture of his hand inviting her to continue.
If I am undergoing some form of treatment it can’t be for physical injuries, I wouldn’t need a perceptual reality for that. I must have had some kind of mental breakdown, and this is my therapy session.even as she said it she could feel her heart rate increase, but the blood quickening in her veins only seemed to make her skin colder.
Very good. But, Syrinx, you did not have a breakdown, your own thought routines are quite exemplary.
Then why am I here?
Why indeed?
Oh, an outside influence?
Yes. A most unpleasant experience.
I’ve been traumatized.
As I said, your thought routines are impressive. Those of us running your therapy have temporarily blocked your access to your adult memories, thus avoiding contamination of those routines by the trauma. You can, for the moment, think without interference, even though this state does not permit your intellect to function at full capacity.
Syrinx grinned. I’m actually smarter than this?
I prefer the term swifter, myself. But what we have is adequate for our purpose.
The purpose being my therapy. With my adult mind traumatized I wouldn’t listen. I was catatonic?
Partly; your withdrawal was within what the psychologist called a psychotic loop. Those responsible for hurting you were trying to force you to do something quite abhorrent. You refused, for love’s sake. Edenists everywhere are proud of you for your resistance, yet that obstinacy has led to your current state.
Syrinx gave a downcast smile, not entirely perturbed. Mother always said I had a stubborn streak.
She was entirely correct.
So what must I do now?
You must face the root of what was done to you. The trauma can be overcome; not instantly, but once you allow yourself to remember what happened without it overwhelming you as it has done until now, then the auxiliary memories and emotions can be dealt with one at a time.
That’s why you talked about the past, so I can learn to face my memories without the fear, because that’s all they are, memories. Harmless in themselves.
Excellent. I will now make them available to you.
She steeled herself, foolish that it was, clenching her stomach muscles and fisting her hands.
Look at the owl,wing-tsit chong instructed. Tell me its name.
The owl blinked at her, and half extended its wings. She stared at the flecked pattern of ochre and hazel feathers. They were running like liquid, becoming midnight-blue and purple. “Oenone !” she shouted. Pernik island rushed towards her at a speed which made her grasp the balcony rail in fright.
Please don’t, Syrinx,Oenone asked. The deluge of misery and longing entwined with that simple request made her eyes brim with tears. Don’t leave me again.
Never. Never ever ever ever, beloved.her whole body was trembling in reaction to the years of memory yawning open in her mind. And right at the end, the last before stinking darkness had grasped at her, most vivid of all, the dungeon and its torturers.
Syrinx?
I’m here,she reassured the voidhawk unsteadily. It’s okay, I’m fine.
You saved me from them.
How could I not?
I love you.
And I you.
I was right,wing-tsit chong said.
When Syrinx raised her head she saw the old man’s face smiling softly, the multiplying wrinkles aging him another decade. Sir?
To do what I did all those centuries ago. To allow people to see the love and the sourness which lives in all of us. Only then can we come to terms with what we are. You are living proof of that, young Syrinx. I thank you for that. Now open your eyes.
They are open.
He sighed theatrically. So pedantic. Then close them.
Syrinx opened her eyes to look up at a sky-blue ceiling. The dark blobs around the edges of her vision field resolved into three terribly anxious faces bending over her.
“Hello, Mother,” she said. It was very difficult to talk, and her body felt as though it were wrapped in a shrunken ship-tunic.
Athene started crying.
There were fifteen holoscreens in the editing suite, arranged in a long line along one wall. All of them were switched on, and the variety of images they displayed was enormous, ranging from a thousand-kilometre altitude view of Amarisk with the red cloud bands mirroring the Juliffe tributary network, to the terrifyingly violent starship battle in orbit above Lalonde; and from Reza Malin’s mercenaries flattening the village of Pamiers, to a flock of overexcited young children charging out of a homestead cabin to greet the arrival of the hovercraft.
Out of the five people sitting at the editing suite’s table, four of them stared at the screens with the kind of nervous enthusiasm invariably suffered by voyeurs of suffering on a grand scale, where the sheer spectacle of events overcame the agony of any individual casualty. In the middle of her colleagues, Kelly regarded her work with a detachment which was mainly derived from a suppressor program her neural nanonics were running.
“We can’t cut anything else,” Kate Elvin, the senior news editor, protested.
“I don’t like it,” said Antonio Whitelocke. He was the head of Collins’s Tranquillity office, a sixty-year career staffer who had plodded his way to the top from the Politics and Economics division. An excellent choice for Tranquillity, but hardly empathic with young rover reporters like Kelly Tirrel. Her Lalonde report scared him shitless. “You just can’t have a three hour news item.”
“Grow some bollocks,” Kelly snapped. “Three hours is just dip-in highlights.”
“Lowlights,” Antonio muttered, glaring at his turbulent new megastar. Her skinhead hairstyle was devastatingly intimidating, and he’d heard all about poor Garfield Lunde. Marketing always complained about the use of non-mainstream image anchors. When he thought of that pretty, feminine young woman who used to present the breakfast round-up just last month he could only worry that one of the possessed had sneaked back from Lalonde after all.
“The balance is perfect,” Kate said. “We’ve incorporated the fundamentals of the doomed mission, and even managed to end on an upbeat note with the rescue. That was a stroke of sheer brilliance, Kelly.”
“Well, gee, thanks. I would never have gone with Horst and the mercs back to the homestead unless it made a better report.”
Kate sailed on serenely through the sarcasm; unlike Antonio she’d been a rover once, which had included a fair share of combat assignments. “This edit will satisfy both our corporate objectives, Antonio. First off, the rumour circuit has been overheating ever since Lady Macbeth came back; Marketing hasn’t even needed to advertise our evening news slot. Everybody in Tranquillity is going to access us tonight—I’ve heard the opposition are just going to run soap repeats while Kelly’s on. And once our audience access they aren’t going to stop. We’re not just giving them sensenviron impressions of a war, we’ve got a whole story to tell them here. That always hooks them. Our advertising premium for this is going to be half a million fuseodollars for a thirty-second slot.”
“For one show,” Antonio grumbled.
“More than one, that’s the beauty. Sure, everyone is going to make a flek of tonight. But Kelly brought back over thirty-six hours of her own fleks, and then we’ve got the recordings taken from Lady Macbeth ’s sensors from the moment they emerged in the Lalonde system. We can milk this for a month with specialist angle interviews, documentaries, and current affairs analysis panels. We’ve won the ratings war for the whole goddamn year, and we did it on the cheap.”
“Cheap! Do you know what we paid that bloody Lagrange Calvert for those sensor recordings?”
“Cheap,” Kate insisted. “Tonight alone is going to pay for those. And with universal distribution rights we’ll quadruple Collins group profits.”
“If we can ever get it distributed,” Antonio said.
“Sure we can. Have you accessed the civil starflight prohibition order? It just prevents docking, not departure. Blackhawks can simply stay inside a planet’s emergence zone and datavise a copy to our local office. We’ll have to pay the captains a little more, but not much, because they’re losing revenue sitting on the endcap ledges. This can work. It’ll be head office seats for us after this.”
“What, after this?” Kelly said.
“Come on, Kelly.” Kate squeezed her shoulder. “We know it was rough, we felt it for ourselves. But the quarantine is going to stop the possessed from spreading, and now we’re alert to the problem the security forces can contain them if there is an outbreak. They won on Lalonde because it’s so damn backwards.”
“Oh, sure.” Kelly was operating on stimulant programs alone now, fatigue toxin antidote humming melodically in her head. “Saving the galaxy is a breeze now we know. Hell, it’s only the dead we’re up against after all.”
“If you’re not up to this, Kelly, then say so,” Antonio said, then played his mastercard. “We can use another anchor. Kirstie McShane?”
“That bitch!”
“So we can go ahead as scheduled, can we?”
“I want to put in more of Pamiers, and Shaun Wallace. Those are the kind of events which will make people more aware of the situation.”
“Wallace is depressing, he spent that entire interview telling you that the possessed couldn’t be beaten.”
“Damn right. Shaun’s vital, he tells us what we really need to know, to face up to the real problem.”
“Which is?”
“Death. Everyone’s going to die, Antonio, even you.”
“No, Kelly, I can’t sanction this sort of slant. It’s as bad as that Tyrathca Sleeping God ceremony you recorded.”
“I shouldn’t have let you cut that out. Nobody even knew the Tyrathca had a religion before.”
“Xenoc customs are hardly relevant at a time like this,” he said.
“Kelly, we can use that Tyrathca segment in a documentary at a later date,” Kate said. “Right now we need to finalize the edit. Christ, you’re on-line in another forty minutes.”
“You want to keep me sweet, then put in all of Shaun’s interview.”
“We’ve got half of it,” Antonio said. “All the salient points are covered.”
“Hardly. Look, we have got to bring home to people what possession is really all about, the meaning behind the act,” Kelly said. “So far all the majority of Confederation citizens have had is this poxy official warning from the Assembly. It’s an abstract, a problem on another planet. People have to learn it’s not that simple, that there’s more to this disaster than simple physical security. We have to deal with the philosophical issues as well.”
Antonio pressed the palm of his hand onto his brow, wincing.
“You don’t get it, do you?” Kelly asked hotly. Her arm waved at the holoscreens with their damning images. “Didn’t you access any of this? Don’t you understand? We have to get this across to people. I can do that for you. Not Kirstie blowbrain McShane. I was there, I can make it more real for anyone who accesses the report.”
Antonio looked at the holoscreen which showed Pat Halahan running through the smoky ruins of Pamiers, blasting his bizarre attackers to shreds of gore. “Great. Just what we need.”
This just wasn’t the way Ione had expected it to go. Joshua hadn’t even looked at her bedroom door when they arrived back at the apartment, let alone show any eagerness. There had been times with him when she hadn’t made it to the bed before her skirt was up around her waist.
Yet somehow she knew this wasn’t entirely due to the traumas of the mission. He was intent and troubled, not frightened. Very unfamiliar territory as far as Joshua was concerned.
He’d simply had a shower and a light supper, then settled down in her big settee. When she sat beside him she was too uncertain about the reaction to even rest her hand on his arm.
I wonder if it’s that girl on Norfolk?she asked dubiously.
He has endured some difficult times,tranquillity answered. You must expect his usual behaviour to be toned down.
Not like this. I can see he’s been shaken up, but this is more.
The human mind is constantly maturing. External events dictate the speed of the maturation. If he has begun to think harder for himself because of Lalonde, surely this is no bad thing?
Depends what you want from him. He was so perfect for me before. So very uncomplicated, the roguish charmer who would never try to claim me.
I believe you also mentioned something about sex on occasion.
Yeah, all right, that too. It was great, and completely guilt free. I picked him up, remember? What more could a girl with my kind of responsibilities want? He was someone who was never going to try and interfere with my duties as the Lord of Ruin. Politics simply didn’t interest him.
A husband would be preferable to a casual lover. Someone who is always there for you.
You’re my husband.
You love me, and I love you; it could never be anything else since I gave birth to you. But you are still human, you need a human companion. Look at voidhawk captains, the perfect example of mental symbiosis.
I know. Maybe I’m just feeling jealous.
Of the Norfolk girl? Why? You know how many lovers Joshua has had.
Not of her.ione looked at joshua’s profile as he stared out of the living room’s big window. Of me. Me a year ago. The old story, you never know what you have until it’s gone.
He is right next to you. Reach out. I am sure he needs comfort as much as you.
He’s not there, not anymore. Not my original Joshua. Did you see that flying he did? Gaura’s memory of the Lagrange stunt nearly gave me a heart attack. I never realized just how good a captain he is. How could I ever take that away from him? He lives for space, for flying Lady Mac and what that can give him. Remember that last argument we had before he left for Lalonde? I think he was right. He’s achieved his métier. Flying is sequenced into his genes the way dictatorship is in mine. I can’t take that away from him any more than he could take you away from me.
I think you may be stretching the metaphor slightly.
Maybe. We were young, and we had fun, and it was lovely. I’ve got the memories.
He had fun. You are pregnant. He has responsibilities to the child.
Does he? I don’t think mothers require a big tough hunter gatherer to support them nowadays. And monogamy becomes progressively more difficult the longer we live. Geneering has done more to change the old till death do us part concept than any social radicalism.
Doesn’t your child deserve a loving environment?
My baby will have a loving environment. How can you even question that?
I do not question your intentions. I am simply pointing out the practicalities of the situation. At the moment you are unable to provide the child with a complete family.
That’s very reactionary.
I admit I am arguing on the extreme. I am not a fundamentalist, I simply wish to concentrate your thoughts. Everything else in your life has been planned and accounted for, the child has not. Conception is something you have done all for yourself. I do not wish it to become a mistake. I love you too much for that.
Father had other children.
Who were given to the Edenists so that they would be brought up in the greatest possible family environment. A whole world of family.
She almost laughed out loud. Imagine that, Saldanas became Edenists. We made the transition in the end. Does King Alastair know about that?
You are ducking the issue, Ione. One child of the Lord of Ruin is brought up with me as a parental, the heir. The others are not. As a parent you have a responsibility to their future.
Are you saying I’ve been irresponsible conceiving this child?
Only you can answer that. Were you depending on Joshua to be a stay-at-home father? Even then you must have known how unlikely that was.
God, all this argument just because Joshua looks moody.
I am sorry. I have upset you.
No. You’ve done what you wanted to do, made me think. For some of us it’s painful, especially if you’re like me and hadn’t really considered the consequences of your actions. It gets me all resentful and defensive. But I’ll do the best for my child.
I know you will, Ione.
She blushed at the tenderness of the mental tone. Then she leaned against Joshua. “I was worried while you were gone,” she said.
He took a sip of his Norfolk Tears. “You were lucky. I was scared shitless most of the time.”
“Yes. Lagrange Calvert.”
“Jesus, don’t you start.”
“If you didn’t want the publicity, you shouldn’t have sold Lady Mac ’s sensor recordings to Collins.”
“It’s hard to say no to Kelly.”
Ione squinted at him. “So I gather.”
“I meant: it’s hard to refuse that kind of money. Especially given my situation. The fee I got from Terrance Smith isn’t going to cover Lady Mac ’s repairs. And I can’t see the Lalonde Development Company ever handing over the balance on our contract, given there isn’t a Lalonde left to develop anymore. But the money I got from Collins will cover everything, and leave me happily in the black.”
“Not forgetting the money you made on the Norfolk run.”
“Yeah, that too. But I didn’t want to break into that, it’s kind of like a reserve I’m holding back for when everything settles down again.”
“My hero optimist. Do you think the universe is going to settle down?”
Joshua didn’t like the way the conversation was progressing. He knew her well enough now; she was steering, hoping to angle obliquely into the subject she wanted to discuss. “Who knows? Are we going to finish up talking about Dominique?”
Ione raised her head from his shoulder to give him a puzzled glance. “No. What made you ask that?”
“Not sure. I thought you wanted to talk about us, and what happens after. Dominique and the Vasilkovsky line played a heavy part in my original plans from here on in.”
“There isn’t going to be an after, Joshua, not in the sense of returning to the kind of existence we had before. Knowing there’s an afterlife is going to tilt people’s perception on life for ever.”
“Yeah. It is pretty deep when you think about it.”
“That’s your considered in-depth analysis of the situation is it?” For a moment she thought she’d gone and wounded him. But he just gave a gaunt smile. Not angry.
“Yeah,” he said, quiet and serious. “It’s deep. I had three bloody narrow escapes inside two days on that Lalonde mission. If I’d made one mistake, Ione, just one, I’d be dead now. Only I wouldn’t, as we now know, I’d be trapped in the beyond. And if Shaun Wallace was telling the truth—and I suspect he was—then I’d be screaming silently to be let back in no matter what the cost or who had to pay it.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Yes. I sent Warlow to his death. I think I knew that even before he went out of the airlock. And now he’s out there, or in there—somewhere, with all the other souls. He might even be watching us now, begging to be given sensation. The trouble with that is, I do owe him.” Joshua put his head back on the silk cushions, staring up at the ceiling. “Do I owe him big enough for that, though? Jesus.”
“If he was your friend, he wouldn’t ask.”
“Maybe.”
Ione sat up and reached for the bottle to pour herself another measure of Norfolk Tears.
I’m going to ask him,she told tranquillity.
Surely you are not about to ask for my blessing?
No. But I’d welcome your opinion.
Very well. I believe he has the necessary resources to complete the task; but then he always has. Whether he is the most desirable candidate still presents me with something of a dilemma. I acknowledge he is maturing; and he would not knowingly betray you. Impetuosity does weigh against him, however.
Yes. Yet I value that trait above all.
I am aware of this. I even accept it, when it applies to your first child and my future. But do you have the right to make that gamble when it concerns the Alchemist?
Maybe not. Although there might be a way around it. And I have simply got to do something.“joshua?”
“Yeah. Sorry, didn’t mean to go all moody on you.”
“That’s all right. I have a little problem of my own right now.”
“You know I’ll help if I can.”
“That’s the first part, I was going to ask you anyway. I’m not sure I can trust anyone else with this. I’m not even sure I can trust you.”
“This sounds interesting.”
She took a breath, committed now, and began: “Do you remember, about a year ago, a woman called Dr Alkad Mzu contacted you about a possible charter?”
He ran a quick check through his neural nanonics memory cells. “I got her. She said she was interested in going to the Garissa system. Some kind of memorial flight. It was pretty weird, and she never followed it up.”
“No, thank God. She asked over sixty captains about a similar charter.”
“Sixty?”
“Yes, Tranquillity and I believe it was an attempt to confuse the intelligence agency teams who keep her under observation.”
“Ah.” Instinct kicked in almost immediately, riding a wave of regret. This was big-time, and major trouble. It almost made him happy they hadn’t leapt straight into bed, unlike the old days (a year ago, ha!). For him it was odd, but he was simply too ambivalent about his own feelings. And he could see how she’d been thrown by his just-old-friends approach, too.
Sex would have been so easy; he just couldn’t bring himself to do it with someone he genuinely liked when it didn’t mean what it used to. That would have been too much like betrayal. I can’t do that to her. Which was a first.
Ione was giving him a cautious, inquiring look. In itself an offer.
I can stop it now if I want.
It was sometimes easy for him to forget that this blond twenty-year-old was technically an entire government, the repository of state, and interstellar, secrets. Secrets it didn’t always pay to know about; invariably the most fascinating kind.
“Go on,” Joshua said.
She smiled faintly in acknowledgement. “There are eight separate agencies with stations here; they have been watching Dr Mzu for nearly twenty-five years now.”
“Why?”
“They believe that just before Garissa was destroyed she designed some kind of doomsday device called the Alchemist. Nobody knows what it is, or what it does, only that the Garissan Department of Defence was pouring billions into a crash-development project to get it built. The CNIS have been investigating the case for over thirty years now, ever since they first heard rumours that it was being built.”
“I saw three men following her when she left Harkey’s Bar that night,” Joshua said, running a search and retrieval program through his neural nanonics. “Oh, hell, of course. The Omuta sanctions have been lifted; they were the ones who committed the Garissa genocide. You don’t think she’d . . . ?”
“She already has. This is not for general release, but last week Alkad Mzu escaped from Tranquillity.”
“Escaped?”
“Yes. She turned up here twenty-six years ago and took a job at the Laymil project. My father promised the Confederation Navy she would neither be allowed to leave nor pass on any technical information relating to the Alchemist to other governments or astroengineering conglomerates. It was an almost ideal solution; everyone knows Tranquillity has no expansionist ambitions, and at the same time she could be observed continually by the habitat personality. The only other alternative was to execute her immediately. My father and the then First Admiral both agreed the Confederation should not have access to a new kind of doomsday device; antimatter is quite bad enough. I continued that policy.”
“Until last week.”
“Yes. Unfortunately, she made total fools out of all of us.”
“I thought Tranquillity’s observation of the interior was perfect. How could she possibly get out without you knowing?”
“Your friend Meyer lifted her away clean. The Udat actually swallowed inside the habitat and took her on board. There was nothing we could do to stop him.”
“Jesus! I thought my Lagrange point stunt was risky.”
“Quite. Like I said, her escape leaves me with one hell of a problem.”
“She’s gone to fetch the Alchemist?”
“Hard to think of any other reason, especially given the timing. The only real puzzle about this is, if it exists, why hasn’t it been used already?”
“The sanctions. No . . .” He started to concentrate on the problem. “There was only ever one navy squadron on blockade duties. A sneak raid would have a good chance of getting through. That’s if one ship was all it took to fire it at the planet.”
“Yes. The more we know about Dr Mzu, the less we understand the whole Alchemist situation. But I really don’t think her ultimate goal can be in any doubt.”
“Right. So she’s probably gone to collect it, and use it. The Udat has a fair payload capacity; and Meyer’s seen combat duty in his time, he can take a bit of heat.” Except . . . Joshua knew Meyer, a wily old sod, for sure, but there was one hell of a difference between the occasional mercenary contract, and annihilating an entire planet of unsuspecting innocents. Meyer wouldn’t do that, no matter how much money was offered. Offhand, Joshua couldn’t think of many (or even any) independent trader captains who would. That kind of atrocity was purely the province of governments and lunatic fanatics.
“The use of it is what concerns me the most,” Ione said. “Once it’s been activated, governments will finally be able to see what it can actually do. From that, they’ll deduce the principles. It’ll be mass-produced, Joshua. We have to try and stop that. The Confederation has enough problems with antimatter, and now possession. We cannot allow another terror factor to be introduced.”
“We? Oh, Jesus.” He let his head flop back onto the cushions—if only there was a stone wall to thump his temple against instead. “Let me guess. You want me to chase after her. Right? Go up against every intelligence agency in the Confederation, not to mention the navy. Find her, tap her on the shoulder, and say nicely: All is forgiven, and the Lord of Ruin would really like you to come home, oh, and by the way, whatever your thirty-year plan—your obsession —was to screw up Omuta we’d like you to forget it as well. Jesus fucking Christ, Ione!”
She gave him an unflustered sideways glance. “Do you want to live in a universe where a super-doomsday weapon is available to every nutcase with a grudge?”
“Try not to weight your questions so much, you might drown.”
“The only chance we have, Joshua, is to bring her back here. That or kill her. Now who are you going to trust to do that? More to the point, who can I trust? There’s nobody, Joshua. Except you.”
“Walk into Harkey’s Bar any night of the week, there’s a hundred veterans of covert operations who’ll take your money and do exactly what you ask without a single question.”
“No, it has to be you. One, because I trust you, and I mean really trust you. Especially after what you did back at Lalonde. Two, you’ve got what it takes to do the job, the ship and the contacts in the industry necessary to trace her. Three, you’ve got the motivation.”
“Oh, yeah? You haven’t said how much you’ll pay me yet.”
“As much as you want, I am the national treasurer after all. That is, until young Marcus takes over from me. Did you want to bequeath our son this problem, Joshua?”
“Shit, Ione, that’s really—”
“Below the belt even for me? Sorry, Joshua, but it isn’t. We all have responsibilities. You’ve managed to duck out of yours for quite a while now. All I’m doing is reminding you of that.”
“Oh, great, now this is all my problem.”
“No one else in the galaxy can make it your problem, Joshua, only you. Like I said, all I’m doing is making the data available to you.”
“Nice cop-out. It’s me that’s going to be in at the shit end, not you.” When Joshua looked over at her he expected to see her usual defiant expression, the one she used when she was powering up to out-stubborn him. Instead all he saw was worry and a tinge of sorrow. On a face that beautiful it was heartbreaking. “Look, anyway, there’s a Confederation-wide quarantine in effect, I can’t take Lady Mac off in pursuit even if I wanted to.”
“It only applies to civil starflight. Lady Macbeth would be re-registered as an official Tranquillity government starship.”
“Shit.” He smiled up at the ceiling, a very dry reflex. “Ah well, worth a try.”
“You’ll do it?”
“I’ll ask questions in the appropriate places, that’s all, Ione. I’m not into heroics.”
“You don’t need to be, I can help.”
“Sure.”
“I can,” she insisted, piqued. “For a start, I can issue you with some decent combat wasps.”
“Great, no heroics please, but take a thousand megatonnes’ worth of nukes with you just in case.”
“Joshua . . . I don’t want you to be vulnerable, that’s all. There will be a lot of people looking for Mzu, and none of them are the type to ask questions first.”
“Wonderful.”
“I can send some serjeants with you as well. They’ll be useful as bodyguards when you’re docked.”
He tried to think up an argument against that, but couldn’t. “Fine. Unsubtle, but fine.”
Ione grinned. She knew that tone.
“Everyone will just think they’re cosmoniks,” she said.
“Okay, that just leaves us with one minor concern.”
“Which is?”
“Where the hell do I start looking? I mean, Jesus; Mzu’s smart, she’s not going to fly straight to the Garissa system to pick up the Alchemist. She could be anywhere , Ione; there are over eight hundred and sixty inhabited star systems out there.”
“She went to the Narok system, I think. That’s where the Udat ’s wormhole was aligned, anyway. It makes sense, Narok is Kenyan-ethnic; she may be contacting sympathisers.”
“How the hell do you know that? I thought only blackhawks and voidhawks could sense each other’s wormholes.”
“Our SD satellites have some pretty good sensors.”
She was lying; he knew it right away. What was worse than the lie, he thought, was the reason behind it. Because he couldn’t think of one, certainly not one that had to be kept from him, the only person she trusted to send on this job. She must be protecting something, a something more important than the Alchemist. Jesus. “You were right, you know that? The night we met at Dominique’s party, you said something to me. And you were right.”
“What was it?”
“I can’t say no to you.”
Joshua left an hour later to supervise the Lady Mac ’s refit, and round up his crew. It meant he missed Kelly’s report, which put him in a very small minority. Kate Elvin’s earlier optimism had been well founded; the other news companies didn’t even try to compete. Ninety per cent of Tranquillity’s population accessed the sensevises Kelly had recorded on Lalonde. The impact was as devastating as predicted—though not at once. The editing was too good for that, binding segments together in a fast-paced assault on the sensorium. Only afterwards, when they could duck the all-out assault on their immediate attention, did the implications of possession begin to sink in.
The effect acted like a mild depressant program or a communal virus. Yes, there truly was life after corporeal death. But it seemed to be perpetual misery. Nor was there any sighting of God, any God, even the Creator’s numerous prophets went curiously unseen; no pearly gates, no brimstone lakes, no judgement, no Jahannam, no salvation. There was apparently no reward for having lived a virtuous life. The best anybody now had to hope for after death was to come back and possess the living.
Having to come to terms with the concept of a universe besieged by lost souls was a wounding process. People reacted in different ways. Getting smashed, or stoned, or stimmed out was popular. Some found religion in a big way. Some became fervently agnostic. Some turned to their shrinks for reassurance. Some (the richer and smarter) quietly focused their attention (and funding) to zero-tau mausoleums.
One thing the psychiatrists did notice, this was a depression which drove nobody to suicide. The other constants were the slow decline in efficiency at work, increased lethargy, a rise in use of tranquilizer and stimulant programs. Pop psychology commentators took to calling it the rise of the why-bother psychosis.
The rest of the Confederation was swift to follow, and almost identical in its response no matter what ethnic culture base was exposed to the news. No ideology or religion offered much in the way of resistance. Only Edenism proved resilient, though even that culture was far from immune.
Antonio Whitelocke chartered twenty-five blackhawks and Adamist independent trader starships to distribute Kelly’s fleks to Collins offices across the Confederation. Saturation took three weeks, longer than optimum, but the quarantine alert made national navies highly nervous. Some of the more authoritarian governments, fearful of the effect Kelly’s recording would have on public confidence, tried to ban Collins from releasing it; an action which simply pushed the fleks underground whilst simultaneously boosting their credibility. It was an unfortunate outcome, because in many cases it clashed and interacted with two other information ripples expanding across the Confederation. Firstly there was the rapidly spreading bad news about Al Capone’s takeover of New California, and secondly the more clandestine distribution of Kiera Salter’s seductive recording.
So they’d parted company. Him to his steam engines, leaving her to explore the interior. Eden was much smaller than the other habitats, a cylinder eleven kilometres long, three in diameter; a prototype really. It didn’t have starscrapers, the inhabitants lived in a small town ringing the northern endcap. Again, leftovers from a bygone age; simple, quick-to-assemble bungalows of metal and composite, laboriously preserved by their present occupants. Each of them had spruce handkerchief-sized gardens boasting ancient pure genotype plant varieties. The vegetation might not have the size or sharpness of colour owned by their modern descendants, but their context made them a visual treat. Living history.
She picked her way along what she thought were paths, dodging gnarled roots which knitted together at ankle height, ducking under loops of sticky vine. Moss and fungi had colonized every square centimetre of bark, giving each tree its own micro-ecology. It was hot among the trunks, the motionless air cloyingly humid. Her dress with its short skirt and tight top was intended purely to emphasise her adolescent figure for Aulie’s benefit. In here it was totally impractical, damp fabric fighting every movement of her limbs. Her hair died within minutes, sodden strands flopping down to grease her shoulders. Green and brown smears multiplied over her arms and legs, nature’s tribal war paint.
Despite the inconveniences she kept going forwards. The sensation of expectancy growing all the while, and nothing to do with Aulie anymore. This was something more ambivalent, a notion of approaching divinity.
She emerged from the jumbled trees into a glade which accommodated a calm lake that was almost sealed over with pink and white water lilies. Black swans drifted slowly along the few remaining tracts of open water. A bungalow sat on the marshy shore, very different from those in the town; it was built from stone and wood, standing on stilts above the reeds. A high, steeply curved blue slate roof overhung the walls, providing an all-round veranda, and giving the building an acutely Eastern aspect.
Syrinx walked towards it, more curious than apprehensive. The building was completely incongruous, yet apposite at the same time. Copper wind chimes, completely blue from age and exposure to the elements, tinkled softly as she climbed the rickety steps to the veranda which faced out over the lake.
Someone was waiting for her there, an old Oriental man sitting in a wheelchair, dressed in a navy-blue silk jacket, with a tartan rug wrapped around his legs. His face had the porcelain delicacy of the very old. Almost all of his hair had gone, leaving a fringe of silver strands at the back of his head, long enough to come down over his collar. Even the wheelchair was antique, carved from wood, with big thin wheels that had chrome spokes; there was no motor. It looked as though the man hadn’t moved out of it for years; he blended into its contours perfectly.
An owl was perched on the veranda balcony, big eyes fixed on Syrinx.
The old man raised a hand with a thousand liver spots on its crinkled yellowing skin. He beckoned. Come closer.
Horribly aware of what a mess she looked, Syrinx took a hesitant couple of steps forwards. She glanced sideways, trying to see into the bungalow through its open windows. Empty blackness prowled behind the rectangles. Blackness which hid—
What is my name?the old man asked sharply.
Syrinx swallowed nervously. You are Wing-Tsit Chong, sir. You invented affinity, and Edenism.
Sloppy thinking, my dear girl. One does not invent a culture, one nurtures it.
I’m sorry. I can’t . . . It’s difficult to think.there were shapes flickering in the darkness, consolidating into outlines which she thought she recognized. The owl hooted softly. Guilty, Syrinx jerked her gaze back to Wing-Tsit Chong.
Why is it difficult for you to think?
She gestured to the window. In there. People. I remember them. I’m sure I do. What am I doing here? I don’t remember.
There is no one inside. Do not allow your imagination to fill the darkness, Syrinx. You are here for one reason only: to see me.
Why?
Because I have some very important questions to ask you.
Me?
Yes. What is the past, Syrinx?
The past is a summation of events which contribute to making the present everything which it is—
Stop. What is the past?
She shrugged her shoulders, mortified that here she was in front of the founder of Edenism, and couldn’t answer a simple question for him. The past is a measure of entropic decay—
Stop. When did I die, what year?
Oh. Two thousand and ninety.she twitched a smile of relief.
And what year were you born?
Two thousand five hundred and eighty.
How old are you now?
Seventeen.
What am I when you are seventeen?
Part of Eden’s multiplicity.
What components make up a multiplicity?
People.
No. Not physically, they don’t. What are the actual components, name the process involved at death.
Transfer. Oh, memories!
So what is the past?
Memories.she grinned broadly, straightening her shoulders to say formally: The past is a memory.
At last, we achieve progress. Where is the only place your personal past can take form?
In my mind?
Good. And what is the purpose of life?
To experience.
This is so, though from a personal view I would add that life should also be a progression towards truth and purity. But then I remain an intransigent old Buddhist at heart, even after so long. This is why I could not refuse the request from your therapists to talk to you. Apparently I am an icon you respect.humour quirked his lips for a moment. in such circumstances, for me to assist in your deliverance is an act of dana I could not possibly refuse.
Dana?
The Buddhist act of giving, a sacrifice which will allow the dayaka , the giver, a glimpse of a higher state, helping in transforming one’s own mind.
I see.
I would be surprised if you did, at least fully. Edenism seems to have shied away from religion, which I admit I did not anticipate. However, our current problem is more immediate. We have established that you live to experience, and that your past is only a memory.
Yes.
Can it harm you?
No,she said proudly, the logical answer.
You are incorrect. If that were so you would never learn from mistakes.
I learn from it, yes. But I can’t be hurt by it.
You can, however, be influenced by it. Very strongly. I believe we are debating how many angels dance on a pinhead, but influence can be harmful.
I suppose so.
Let me put it another way. You can be troubled by memories.
Yes.
Good. What effect does that have on your life?
If you are wise, it stops you from repeating mistakes, especially if they are painful ones.
This is so. We have established, then, that the past can control you, and you cannot control the past, yes?
Yes.
What about the future?
Sir?
Can the past control the future?
It can influence it,she said cautiously.
Through what medium?
People?
Good. This is karma. Or what Western civilization referred to as reaping the seeds you have sown. In simpler terms it is fate. Your actions in the present decide your future, and your actions are based on the interpretation of past experiences.
I see.
In that respect, what we have in your case is an unfortunate problem.
We do?
Yes. However, before we go any further, I would like you to answer a personal question for me. You are seventeen years old; do you now believe in God? Not some primitive concept as a Creator trumpeted by Adamist religions, but perhaps a higher force responsible for ordering the universe? Be honest with me, Syrinx. I will not be angry whatever the answer. Remember, I am probably the most spiritually inclined of all Edenists.
I believe . . . I think . . . No, I’m afraid that there might not be.
I will accept that for now. It is a common enough doubt among our kind.
It is?
Indeed. Now, I am going to tell you something about yourself in small stages, and I would like you to apply the most rigorous rational analysis to each statement.
I understand.
This is a perceptual reality, you have been brought here to help you overcome a problem.he smiled kindly, a gesture of his hand inviting her to continue.
If I am undergoing some form of treatment it can’t be for physical injuries, I wouldn’t need a perceptual reality for that. I must have had some kind of mental breakdown, and this is my therapy session.even as she said it she could feel her heart rate increase, but the blood quickening in her veins only seemed to make her skin colder.
Very good. But, Syrinx, you did not have a breakdown, your own thought routines are quite exemplary.
Then why am I here?
Why indeed?
Oh, an outside influence?
Yes. A most unpleasant experience.
I’ve been traumatized.
As I said, your thought routines are impressive. Those of us running your therapy have temporarily blocked your access to your adult memories, thus avoiding contamination of those routines by the trauma. You can, for the moment, think without interference, even though this state does not permit your intellect to function at full capacity.
Syrinx grinned. I’m actually smarter than this?
I prefer the term swifter, myself. But what we have is adequate for our purpose.
The purpose being my therapy. With my adult mind traumatized I wouldn’t listen. I was catatonic?
Partly; your withdrawal was within what the psychologist called a psychotic loop. Those responsible for hurting you were trying to force you to do something quite abhorrent. You refused, for love’s sake. Edenists everywhere are proud of you for your resistance, yet that obstinacy has led to your current state.
Syrinx gave a downcast smile, not entirely perturbed. Mother always said I had a stubborn streak.
She was entirely correct.
So what must I do now?
You must face the root of what was done to you. The trauma can be overcome; not instantly, but once you allow yourself to remember what happened without it overwhelming you as it has done until now, then the auxiliary memories and emotions can be dealt with one at a time.
That’s why you talked about the past, so I can learn to face my memories without the fear, because that’s all they are, memories. Harmless in themselves.
Excellent. I will now make them available to you.
She steeled herself, foolish that it was, clenching her stomach muscles and fisting her hands.
Look at the owl,wing-tsit chong instructed. Tell me its name.
The owl blinked at her, and half extended its wings. She stared at the flecked pattern of ochre and hazel feathers. They were running like liquid, becoming midnight-blue and purple. “Oenone !” she shouted. Pernik island rushed towards her at a speed which made her grasp the balcony rail in fright.
Please don’t, Syrinx,Oenone asked. The deluge of misery and longing entwined with that simple request made her eyes brim with tears. Don’t leave me again.
Never. Never ever ever ever, beloved.her whole body was trembling in reaction to the years of memory yawning open in her mind. And right at the end, the last before stinking darkness had grasped at her, most vivid of all, the dungeon and its torturers.
Syrinx?
I’m here,she reassured the voidhawk unsteadily. It’s okay, I’m fine.
You saved me from them.
How could I not?
I love you.
And I you.
I was right,wing-tsit chong said.
When Syrinx raised her head she saw the old man’s face smiling softly, the multiplying wrinkles aging him another decade. Sir?
To do what I did all those centuries ago. To allow people to see the love and the sourness which lives in all of us. Only then can we come to terms with what we are. You are living proof of that, young Syrinx. I thank you for that. Now open your eyes.
They are open.
He sighed theatrically. So pedantic. Then close them.
Syrinx opened her eyes to look up at a sky-blue ceiling. The dark blobs around the edges of her vision field resolved into three terribly anxious faces bending over her.
“Hello, Mother,” she said. It was very difficult to talk, and her body felt as though it were wrapped in a shrunken ship-tunic.
Athene started crying.
There were fifteen holoscreens in the editing suite, arranged in a long line along one wall. All of them were switched on, and the variety of images they displayed was enormous, ranging from a thousand-kilometre altitude view of Amarisk with the red cloud bands mirroring the Juliffe tributary network, to the terrifyingly violent starship battle in orbit above Lalonde; and from Reza Malin’s mercenaries flattening the village of Pamiers, to a flock of overexcited young children charging out of a homestead cabin to greet the arrival of the hovercraft.
Out of the five people sitting at the editing suite’s table, four of them stared at the screens with the kind of nervous enthusiasm invariably suffered by voyeurs of suffering on a grand scale, where the sheer spectacle of events overcame the agony of any individual casualty. In the middle of her colleagues, Kelly regarded her work with a detachment which was mainly derived from a suppressor program her neural nanonics were running.
“We can’t cut anything else,” Kate Elvin, the senior news editor, protested.
“I don’t like it,” said Antonio Whitelocke. He was the head of Collins’s Tranquillity office, a sixty-year career staffer who had plodded his way to the top from the Politics and Economics division. An excellent choice for Tranquillity, but hardly empathic with young rover reporters like Kelly Tirrel. Her Lalonde report scared him shitless. “You just can’t have a three hour news item.”
“Grow some bollocks,” Kelly snapped. “Three hours is just dip-in highlights.”
“Lowlights,” Antonio muttered, glaring at his turbulent new megastar. Her skinhead hairstyle was devastatingly intimidating, and he’d heard all about poor Garfield Lunde. Marketing always complained about the use of non-mainstream image anchors. When he thought of that pretty, feminine young woman who used to present the breakfast round-up just last month he could only worry that one of the possessed had sneaked back from Lalonde after all.
“The balance is perfect,” Kate said. “We’ve incorporated the fundamentals of the doomed mission, and even managed to end on an upbeat note with the rescue. That was a stroke of sheer brilliance, Kelly.”
“Well, gee, thanks. I would never have gone with Horst and the mercs back to the homestead unless it made a better report.”
Kate sailed on serenely through the sarcasm; unlike Antonio she’d been a rover once, which had included a fair share of combat assignments. “This edit will satisfy both our corporate objectives, Antonio. First off, the rumour circuit has been overheating ever since Lady Macbeth came back; Marketing hasn’t even needed to advertise our evening news slot. Everybody in Tranquillity is going to access us tonight—I’ve heard the opposition are just going to run soap repeats while Kelly’s on. And once our audience access they aren’t going to stop. We’re not just giving them sensenviron impressions of a war, we’ve got a whole story to tell them here. That always hooks them. Our advertising premium for this is going to be half a million fuseodollars for a thirty-second slot.”
“For one show,” Antonio grumbled.
“More than one, that’s the beauty. Sure, everyone is going to make a flek of tonight. But Kelly brought back over thirty-six hours of her own fleks, and then we’ve got the recordings taken from Lady Macbeth ’s sensors from the moment they emerged in the Lalonde system. We can milk this for a month with specialist angle interviews, documentaries, and current affairs analysis panels. We’ve won the ratings war for the whole goddamn year, and we did it on the cheap.”
“Cheap! Do you know what we paid that bloody Lagrange Calvert for those sensor recordings?”
“Cheap,” Kate insisted. “Tonight alone is going to pay for those. And with universal distribution rights we’ll quadruple Collins group profits.”
“If we can ever get it distributed,” Antonio said.
“Sure we can. Have you accessed the civil starflight prohibition order? It just prevents docking, not departure. Blackhawks can simply stay inside a planet’s emergence zone and datavise a copy to our local office. We’ll have to pay the captains a little more, but not much, because they’re losing revenue sitting on the endcap ledges. This can work. It’ll be head office seats for us after this.”
“What, after this?” Kelly said.
“Come on, Kelly.” Kate squeezed her shoulder. “We know it was rough, we felt it for ourselves. But the quarantine is going to stop the possessed from spreading, and now we’re alert to the problem the security forces can contain them if there is an outbreak. They won on Lalonde because it’s so damn backwards.”
“Oh, sure.” Kelly was operating on stimulant programs alone now, fatigue toxin antidote humming melodically in her head. “Saving the galaxy is a breeze now we know. Hell, it’s only the dead we’re up against after all.”
“If you’re not up to this, Kelly, then say so,” Antonio said, then played his mastercard. “We can use another anchor. Kirstie McShane?”
“That bitch!”
“So we can go ahead as scheduled, can we?”
“I want to put in more of Pamiers, and Shaun Wallace. Those are the kind of events which will make people more aware of the situation.”
“Wallace is depressing, he spent that entire interview telling you that the possessed couldn’t be beaten.”
“Damn right. Shaun’s vital, he tells us what we really need to know, to face up to the real problem.”
“Which is?”
“Death. Everyone’s going to die, Antonio, even you.”
“No, Kelly, I can’t sanction this sort of slant. It’s as bad as that Tyrathca Sleeping God ceremony you recorded.”
“I shouldn’t have let you cut that out. Nobody even knew the Tyrathca had a religion before.”
“Xenoc customs are hardly relevant at a time like this,” he said.
“Kelly, we can use that Tyrathca segment in a documentary at a later date,” Kate said. “Right now we need to finalize the edit. Christ, you’re on-line in another forty minutes.”
“You want to keep me sweet, then put in all of Shaun’s interview.”
“We’ve got half of it,” Antonio said. “All the salient points are covered.”
“Hardly. Look, we have got to bring home to people what possession is really all about, the meaning behind the act,” Kelly said. “So far all the majority of Confederation citizens have had is this poxy official warning from the Assembly. It’s an abstract, a problem on another planet. People have to learn it’s not that simple, that there’s more to this disaster than simple physical security. We have to deal with the philosophical issues as well.”
Antonio pressed the palm of his hand onto his brow, wincing.
“You don’t get it, do you?” Kelly asked hotly. Her arm waved at the holoscreens with their damning images. “Didn’t you access any of this? Don’t you understand? We have to get this across to people. I can do that for you. Not Kirstie blowbrain McShane. I was there, I can make it more real for anyone who accesses the report.”
Antonio looked at the holoscreen which showed Pat Halahan running through the smoky ruins of Pamiers, blasting his bizarre attackers to shreds of gore. “Great. Just what we need.”
This just wasn’t the way Ione had expected it to go. Joshua hadn’t even looked at her bedroom door when they arrived back at the apartment, let alone show any eagerness. There had been times with him when she hadn’t made it to the bed before her skirt was up around her waist.
Yet somehow she knew this wasn’t entirely due to the traumas of the mission. He was intent and troubled, not frightened. Very unfamiliar territory as far as Joshua was concerned.
He’d simply had a shower and a light supper, then settled down in her big settee. When she sat beside him she was too uncertain about the reaction to even rest her hand on his arm.
I wonder if it’s that girl on Norfolk?she asked dubiously.
He has endured some difficult times,tranquillity answered. You must expect his usual behaviour to be toned down.
Not like this. I can see he’s been shaken up, but this is more.
The human mind is constantly maturing. External events dictate the speed of the maturation. If he has begun to think harder for himself because of Lalonde, surely this is no bad thing?
Depends what you want from him. He was so perfect for me before. So very uncomplicated, the roguish charmer who would never try to claim me.
I believe you also mentioned something about sex on occasion.
Yeah, all right, that too. It was great, and completely guilt free. I picked him up, remember? What more could a girl with my kind of responsibilities want? He was someone who was never going to try and interfere with my duties as the Lord of Ruin. Politics simply didn’t interest him.
A husband would be preferable to a casual lover. Someone who is always there for you.
You’re my husband.
You love me, and I love you; it could never be anything else since I gave birth to you. But you are still human, you need a human companion. Look at voidhawk captains, the perfect example of mental symbiosis.
I know. Maybe I’m just feeling jealous.
Of the Norfolk girl? Why? You know how many lovers Joshua has had.
Not of her.ione looked at joshua’s profile as he stared out of the living room’s big window. Of me. Me a year ago. The old story, you never know what you have until it’s gone.
He is right next to you. Reach out. I am sure he needs comfort as much as you.
He’s not there, not anymore. Not my original Joshua. Did you see that flying he did? Gaura’s memory of the Lagrange stunt nearly gave me a heart attack. I never realized just how good a captain he is. How could I ever take that away from him? He lives for space, for flying Lady Mac and what that can give him. Remember that last argument we had before he left for Lalonde? I think he was right. He’s achieved his métier. Flying is sequenced into his genes the way dictatorship is in mine. I can’t take that away from him any more than he could take you away from me.
I think you may be stretching the metaphor slightly.
Maybe. We were young, and we had fun, and it was lovely. I’ve got the memories.
He had fun. You are pregnant. He has responsibilities to the child.
Does he? I don’t think mothers require a big tough hunter gatherer to support them nowadays. And monogamy becomes progressively more difficult the longer we live. Geneering has done more to change the old till death do us part concept than any social radicalism.
Doesn’t your child deserve a loving environment?
My baby will have a loving environment. How can you even question that?
I do not question your intentions. I am simply pointing out the practicalities of the situation. At the moment you are unable to provide the child with a complete family.
That’s very reactionary.
I admit I am arguing on the extreme. I am not a fundamentalist, I simply wish to concentrate your thoughts. Everything else in your life has been planned and accounted for, the child has not. Conception is something you have done all for yourself. I do not wish it to become a mistake. I love you too much for that.
Father had other children.
Who were given to the Edenists so that they would be brought up in the greatest possible family environment. A whole world of family.
She almost laughed out loud. Imagine that, Saldanas became Edenists. We made the transition in the end. Does King Alastair know about that?
You are ducking the issue, Ione. One child of the Lord of Ruin is brought up with me as a parental, the heir. The others are not. As a parent you have a responsibility to their future.
Are you saying I’ve been irresponsible conceiving this child?
Only you can answer that. Were you depending on Joshua to be a stay-at-home father? Even then you must have known how unlikely that was.
God, all this argument just because Joshua looks moody.
I am sorry. I have upset you.
No. You’ve done what you wanted to do, made me think. For some of us it’s painful, especially if you’re like me and hadn’t really considered the consequences of your actions. It gets me all resentful and defensive. But I’ll do the best for my child.
I know you will, Ione.
She blushed at the tenderness of the mental tone. Then she leaned against Joshua. “I was worried while you were gone,” she said.
He took a sip of his Norfolk Tears. “You were lucky. I was scared shitless most of the time.”
“Yes. Lagrange Calvert.”
“Jesus, don’t you start.”
“If you didn’t want the publicity, you shouldn’t have sold Lady Mac ’s sensor recordings to Collins.”
“It’s hard to say no to Kelly.”
Ione squinted at him. “So I gather.”
“I meant: it’s hard to refuse that kind of money. Especially given my situation. The fee I got from Terrance Smith isn’t going to cover Lady Mac ’s repairs. And I can’t see the Lalonde Development Company ever handing over the balance on our contract, given there isn’t a Lalonde left to develop anymore. But the money I got from Collins will cover everything, and leave me happily in the black.”
“Not forgetting the money you made on the Norfolk run.”
“Yeah, that too. But I didn’t want to break into that, it’s kind of like a reserve I’m holding back for when everything settles down again.”
“My hero optimist. Do you think the universe is going to settle down?”
Joshua didn’t like the way the conversation was progressing. He knew her well enough now; she was steering, hoping to angle obliquely into the subject she wanted to discuss. “Who knows? Are we going to finish up talking about Dominique?”
Ione raised her head from his shoulder to give him a puzzled glance. “No. What made you ask that?”
“Not sure. I thought you wanted to talk about us, and what happens after. Dominique and the Vasilkovsky line played a heavy part in my original plans from here on in.”
“There isn’t going to be an after, Joshua, not in the sense of returning to the kind of existence we had before. Knowing there’s an afterlife is going to tilt people’s perception on life for ever.”
“Yeah. It is pretty deep when you think about it.”
“That’s your considered in-depth analysis of the situation is it?” For a moment she thought she’d gone and wounded him. But he just gave a gaunt smile. Not angry.
“Yeah,” he said, quiet and serious. “It’s deep. I had three bloody narrow escapes inside two days on that Lalonde mission. If I’d made one mistake, Ione, just one, I’d be dead now. Only I wouldn’t, as we now know, I’d be trapped in the beyond. And if Shaun Wallace was telling the truth—and I suspect he was—then I’d be screaming silently to be let back in no matter what the cost or who had to pay it.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Yes. I sent Warlow to his death. I think I knew that even before he went out of the airlock. And now he’s out there, or in there—somewhere, with all the other souls. He might even be watching us now, begging to be given sensation. The trouble with that is, I do owe him.” Joshua put his head back on the silk cushions, staring up at the ceiling. “Do I owe him big enough for that, though? Jesus.”
“If he was your friend, he wouldn’t ask.”
“Maybe.”
Ione sat up and reached for the bottle to pour herself another measure of Norfolk Tears.
I’m going to ask him,she told tranquillity.
Surely you are not about to ask for my blessing?
No. But I’d welcome your opinion.
Very well. I believe he has the necessary resources to complete the task; but then he always has. Whether he is the most desirable candidate still presents me with something of a dilemma. I acknowledge he is maturing; and he would not knowingly betray you. Impetuosity does weigh against him, however.
Yes. Yet I value that trait above all.
I am aware of this. I even accept it, when it applies to your first child and my future. But do you have the right to make that gamble when it concerns the Alchemist?
Maybe not. Although there might be a way around it. And I have simply got to do something.“joshua?”
“Yeah. Sorry, didn’t mean to go all moody on you.”
“That’s all right. I have a little problem of my own right now.”
“You know I’ll help if I can.”
“That’s the first part, I was going to ask you anyway. I’m not sure I can trust anyone else with this. I’m not even sure I can trust you.”
“This sounds interesting.”
She took a breath, committed now, and began: “Do you remember, about a year ago, a woman called Dr Alkad Mzu contacted you about a possible charter?”
He ran a quick check through his neural nanonics memory cells. “I got her. She said she was interested in going to the Garissa system. Some kind of memorial flight. It was pretty weird, and she never followed it up.”
“No, thank God. She asked over sixty captains about a similar charter.”
“Sixty?”
“Yes, Tranquillity and I believe it was an attempt to confuse the intelligence agency teams who keep her under observation.”
“Ah.” Instinct kicked in almost immediately, riding a wave of regret. This was big-time, and major trouble. It almost made him happy they hadn’t leapt straight into bed, unlike the old days (a year ago, ha!). For him it was odd, but he was simply too ambivalent about his own feelings. And he could see how she’d been thrown by his just-old-friends approach, too.
Sex would have been so easy; he just couldn’t bring himself to do it with someone he genuinely liked when it didn’t mean what it used to. That would have been too much like betrayal. I can’t do that to her. Which was a first.
Ione was giving him a cautious, inquiring look. In itself an offer.
I can stop it now if I want.
It was sometimes easy for him to forget that this blond twenty-year-old was technically an entire government, the repository of state, and interstellar, secrets. Secrets it didn’t always pay to know about; invariably the most fascinating kind.
“Go on,” Joshua said.
She smiled faintly in acknowledgement. “There are eight separate agencies with stations here; they have been watching Dr Mzu for nearly twenty-five years now.”
“Why?”
“They believe that just before Garissa was destroyed she designed some kind of doomsday device called the Alchemist. Nobody knows what it is, or what it does, only that the Garissan Department of Defence was pouring billions into a crash-development project to get it built. The CNIS have been investigating the case for over thirty years now, ever since they first heard rumours that it was being built.”
“I saw three men following her when she left Harkey’s Bar that night,” Joshua said, running a search and retrieval program through his neural nanonics. “Oh, hell, of course. The Omuta sanctions have been lifted; they were the ones who committed the Garissa genocide. You don’t think she’d . . . ?”
“She already has. This is not for general release, but last week Alkad Mzu escaped from Tranquillity.”
“Escaped?”
“Yes. She turned up here twenty-six years ago and took a job at the Laymil project. My father promised the Confederation Navy she would neither be allowed to leave nor pass on any technical information relating to the Alchemist to other governments or astroengineering conglomerates. It was an almost ideal solution; everyone knows Tranquillity has no expansionist ambitions, and at the same time she could be observed continually by the habitat personality. The only other alternative was to execute her immediately. My father and the then First Admiral both agreed the Confederation should not have access to a new kind of doomsday device; antimatter is quite bad enough. I continued that policy.”
“Until last week.”
“Yes. Unfortunately, she made total fools out of all of us.”
“I thought Tranquillity’s observation of the interior was perfect. How could she possibly get out without you knowing?”
“Your friend Meyer lifted her away clean. The Udat actually swallowed inside the habitat and took her on board. There was nothing we could do to stop him.”
“Jesus! I thought my Lagrange point stunt was risky.”
“Quite. Like I said, her escape leaves me with one hell of a problem.”
“She’s gone to fetch the Alchemist?”
“Hard to think of any other reason, especially given the timing. The only real puzzle about this is, if it exists, why hasn’t it been used already?”
“The sanctions. No . . .” He started to concentrate on the problem. “There was only ever one navy squadron on blockade duties. A sneak raid would have a good chance of getting through. That’s if one ship was all it took to fire it at the planet.”
“Yes. The more we know about Dr Mzu, the less we understand the whole Alchemist situation. But I really don’t think her ultimate goal can be in any doubt.”
“Right. So she’s probably gone to collect it, and use it. The Udat has a fair payload capacity; and Meyer’s seen combat duty in his time, he can take a bit of heat.” Except . . . Joshua knew Meyer, a wily old sod, for sure, but there was one hell of a difference between the occasional mercenary contract, and annihilating an entire planet of unsuspecting innocents. Meyer wouldn’t do that, no matter how much money was offered. Offhand, Joshua couldn’t think of many (or even any) independent trader captains who would. That kind of atrocity was purely the province of governments and lunatic fanatics.
“The use of it is what concerns me the most,” Ione said. “Once it’s been activated, governments will finally be able to see what it can actually do. From that, they’ll deduce the principles. It’ll be mass-produced, Joshua. We have to try and stop that. The Confederation has enough problems with antimatter, and now possession. We cannot allow another terror factor to be introduced.”
“We? Oh, Jesus.” He let his head flop back onto the cushions—if only there was a stone wall to thump his temple against instead. “Let me guess. You want me to chase after her. Right? Go up against every intelligence agency in the Confederation, not to mention the navy. Find her, tap her on the shoulder, and say nicely: All is forgiven, and the Lord of Ruin would really like you to come home, oh, and by the way, whatever your thirty-year plan—your obsession —was to screw up Omuta we’d like you to forget it as well. Jesus fucking Christ, Ione!”
She gave him an unflustered sideways glance. “Do you want to live in a universe where a super-doomsday weapon is available to every nutcase with a grudge?”
“Try not to weight your questions so much, you might drown.”
“The only chance we have, Joshua, is to bring her back here. That or kill her. Now who are you going to trust to do that? More to the point, who can I trust? There’s nobody, Joshua. Except you.”
“Walk into Harkey’s Bar any night of the week, there’s a hundred veterans of covert operations who’ll take your money and do exactly what you ask without a single question.”
“No, it has to be you. One, because I trust you, and I mean really trust you. Especially after what you did back at Lalonde. Two, you’ve got what it takes to do the job, the ship and the contacts in the industry necessary to trace her. Three, you’ve got the motivation.”
“Oh, yeah? You haven’t said how much you’ll pay me yet.”
“As much as you want, I am the national treasurer after all. That is, until young Marcus takes over from me. Did you want to bequeath our son this problem, Joshua?”
“Shit, Ione, that’s really—”
“Below the belt even for me? Sorry, Joshua, but it isn’t. We all have responsibilities. You’ve managed to duck out of yours for quite a while now. All I’m doing is reminding you of that.”
“Oh, great, now this is all my problem.”
“No one else in the galaxy can make it your problem, Joshua, only you. Like I said, all I’m doing is making the data available to you.”
“Nice cop-out. It’s me that’s going to be in at the shit end, not you.” When Joshua looked over at her he expected to see her usual defiant expression, the one she used when she was powering up to out-stubborn him. Instead all he saw was worry and a tinge of sorrow. On a face that beautiful it was heartbreaking. “Look, anyway, there’s a Confederation-wide quarantine in effect, I can’t take Lady Mac off in pursuit even if I wanted to.”
“It only applies to civil starflight. Lady Macbeth would be re-registered as an official Tranquillity government starship.”
“Shit.” He smiled up at the ceiling, a very dry reflex. “Ah well, worth a try.”
“You’ll do it?”
“I’ll ask questions in the appropriate places, that’s all, Ione. I’m not into heroics.”
“You don’t need to be, I can help.”
“Sure.”
“I can,” she insisted, piqued. “For a start, I can issue you with some decent combat wasps.”
“Great, no heroics please, but take a thousand megatonnes’ worth of nukes with you just in case.”
“Joshua . . . I don’t want you to be vulnerable, that’s all. There will be a lot of people looking for Mzu, and none of them are the type to ask questions first.”
“Wonderful.”
“I can send some serjeants with you as well. They’ll be useful as bodyguards when you’re docked.”
He tried to think up an argument against that, but couldn’t. “Fine. Unsubtle, but fine.”
Ione grinned. She knew that tone.
“Everyone will just think they’re cosmoniks,” she said.
“Okay, that just leaves us with one minor concern.”
“Which is?”
“Where the hell do I start looking? I mean, Jesus; Mzu’s smart, she’s not going to fly straight to the Garissa system to pick up the Alchemist. She could be anywhere , Ione; there are over eight hundred and sixty inhabited star systems out there.”
“She went to the Narok system, I think. That’s where the Udat ’s wormhole was aligned, anyway. It makes sense, Narok is Kenyan-ethnic; she may be contacting sympathisers.”
“How the hell do you know that? I thought only blackhawks and voidhawks could sense each other’s wormholes.”
“Our SD satellites have some pretty good sensors.”
She was lying; he knew it right away. What was worse than the lie, he thought, was the reason behind it. Because he couldn’t think of one, certainly not one that had to be kept from him, the only person she trusted to send on this job. She must be protecting something, a something more important than the Alchemist. Jesus. “You were right, you know that? The night we met at Dominique’s party, you said something to me. And you were right.”
“What was it?”
“I can’t say no to you.”
Joshua left an hour later to supervise the Lady Mac ’s refit, and round up his crew. It meant he missed Kelly’s report, which put him in a very small minority. Kate Elvin’s earlier optimism had been well founded; the other news companies didn’t even try to compete. Ninety per cent of Tranquillity’s population accessed the sensevises Kelly had recorded on Lalonde. The impact was as devastating as predicted—though not at once. The editing was too good for that, binding segments together in a fast-paced assault on the sensorium. Only afterwards, when they could duck the all-out assault on their immediate attention, did the implications of possession begin to sink in.
The effect acted like a mild depressant program or a communal virus. Yes, there truly was life after corporeal death. But it seemed to be perpetual misery. Nor was there any sighting of God, any God, even the Creator’s numerous prophets went curiously unseen; no pearly gates, no brimstone lakes, no judgement, no Jahannam, no salvation. There was apparently no reward for having lived a virtuous life. The best anybody now had to hope for after death was to come back and possess the living.
Having to come to terms with the concept of a universe besieged by lost souls was a wounding process. People reacted in different ways. Getting smashed, or stoned, or stimmed out was popular. Some found religion in a big way. Some became fervently agnostic. Some turned to their shrinks for reassurance. Some (the richer and smarter) quietly focused their attention (and funding) to zero-tau mausoleums.
One thing the psychiatrists did notice, this was a depression which drove nobody to suicide. The other constants were the slow decline in efficiency at work, increased lethargy, a rise in use of tranquilizer and stimulant programs. Pop psychology commentators took to calling it the rise of the why-bother psychosis.
The rest of the Confederation was swift to follow, and almost identical in its response no matter what ethnic culture base was exposed to the news. No ideology or religion offered much in the way of resistance. Only Edenism proved resilient, though even that culture was far from immune.
Antonio Whitelocke chartered twenty-five blackhawks and Adamist independent trader starships to distribute Kelly’s fleks to Collins offices across the Confederation. Saturation took three weeks, longer than optimum, but the quarantine alert made national navies highly nervous. Some of the more authoritarian governments, fearful of the effect Kelly’s recording would have on public confidence, tried to ban Collins from releasing it; an action which simply pushed the fleks underground whilst simultaneously boosting their credibility. It was an unfortunate outcome, because in many cases it clashed and interacted with two other information ripples expanding across the Confederation. Firstly there was the rapidly spreading bad news about Al Capone’s takeover of New California, and secondly the more clandestine distribution of Kiera Salter’s seductive recording.