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Mechanoids were already busy digging out vast new utility grids ready for more buildings, giving an indication of just how big Fort Forward would be when it was completed. Long convoys of lorries were using the M6 to deliver matériel from the nearest city spaceport, fifty kilometres away. Though that arrangement would soon be cancelled as Fort Forward’s own spaceport became operational. Marine engineers were levelling long strips of land in preparation for three prefabricated runways. The spaceport’s hangars and control tower had been activated two days ago so that technical crews could fit and integrate their systems.
When Ralph’s battleship emerged above Ombey he had seen nine Royal Navy Aquilae-class bulk transport starships in parking formation around a low-orbit port station along with their escort of fifteen front-line frigates. There were only twenty-five of the huge transporters left on active service; capable of carrying seventeen thousand tonnes of cargo they were the largest starships ever built, and hugely expensive to fly and maintain. Kulu was gradually phasing them out in favour of smaller models based on commercial designs.
They were being supported by big old delta-wing CK500-090 Thunderbird spaceplanes, the only atmospheric craft capable of handling the four-hundred-tonne cargo pods carried by the Aquilae transporters. Again, a fleet on the verge of retirement; they had been the first consignment ferried to Ombey by the transports. Most of the Thunderbirds had spent the last fifteen years in mothball status at the Royal Navy’s desert storage facility on Kulu. Now they were being reactivated as fast as the maintenance crews could fit new components from badly depleted war stocks.
Even more portentous than the buildup of navy ships were the voidhawks. Nearly eighty had arrived so far, with new ones swallowing in every hour, their lower hull cargo cradles full of pods (which could be handled by conventional civil flyers). Never before had so many of the bitek starships been seen orbiting a Kingdom world.
Ralph had experienced the same kind of uncomfortable awe he’d known at Azara as he observed them flitting around the docking stations. He was the one who had started this, creating a momentum which had engulfed entire star systems. It was unstoppable now. All he could do was ride it to a conclusion.
The ion field flyer landed at Colonel Palmer’s camp. The colonel herself was waiting for him at the base of the airstairs, Dean Folan and Will Danza prominent in the small reception committee behind her, both grinning broadly.
Colonel Palmer shook his hand, giving his new uniform a more than casual inspection. “Welcome back, Ralph, or should I say sir?”
He wasn’t completely used to the uniform himself yet, a smart dark blue tunic with three ruby pips glinting on his shoulder. “I don’t know, exactly. I’m a general in the official Liberation campaign army now, its very first officer. Apart from the King, of course. The formation was made official three days ago, announced in the court of the Apollo Palace. I’ve been appointed chief strategic coordination officer.”
“You mean you’re the Liberation’s numero uno?”
“Yeah,” he said with quiet surprise. “I guess I am at this end.”
“Rather you than me.” She gestured northwards. “Talk about coming back with reinforcements.”
“It’s going to get wonderfully worse. One million bitek serjeants are on their way, and God alone knows how many human troops to back them up. We’ve even had mercenaries volunteering.”
“You accepted them?”
“I’ve no idea. But I’ll use whatever I’m given.”
“All right, so what are your orders, sir?”
He laughed. “Just keep up the good work. Have any of them tried to break out?”
She turned her head to face the wall of angry cloud, her expression stern. “No. They stick to their side of the firebreak. There have been plenty of sightings. We think they’re keeping an eye on us. But it’s only my patrols who are visible to them.” A thumb jabbed back over her shoulder. “They don’t know anything about all this.”
“Good. We can’t keep it secret forever, of course; but the longer the better.”
“Some kids came out last week. It was the first interesting thing to happen since you left.”
“Kids?”
“A woman called Stephanie Ash bused seventy-three non-possessed children right up to the firebreak. Gave the roadblock guard a hell of a fright, I can tell you. Apparently she’d collected them from all over the peninsula. We evacuated them to a holding camp. I think your friend Jannike Dermot has got her experts debriefing them on conditions over there.”
“Now that’s a report I’d like to access.” He squinted at the red cloud. That elusive knot of shadow seemed to have returned. It was elliptical this time, hanging over the M6. It didn’t take much imagination to suspect it of staring at him. “I think I’ll take a closer look before I set up my command at Fort Forward,” he announced.
Will and Dean rode shotgun on the Marine Corps runabout which took him up to the orange roadblock. It was good to talk with them again. They’d been attached to Palmer’s brigade as combat liaison for the agency, supporting the various technical teams Roche Skark had dispatched to the firebreak. Both of them wanted to know every detail of his meetings with the King. They were annoyed he wouldn’t datavise his visual files of Prince Edward playing at the Apollo Palace, but they were confidential. And so grows the mystique, Ralph thought, amused that he should be contributing to it.
The marines at the roadblock saluted smartly as Ralph and the Colonel arrived. Ralph chatted to them as cordially as he could manage. They didn’t seem to mind the red cloud; he found it intimidating in the extreme. It loomed barely three hundred metres above him, vigorous thrashing streamers packed so close together there was no gap between them, layer upon layer stacked up to what seemed like the edge of space. The sonorous reverberations from its internal brawling was diabolically attuned to the harmonic of human bones. Millions of tonnes of contaminated water hanging suspended in the air by witchcraft, ready to crash down like the waterfall at the end of the world. He wondered how little effort on behalf of the possessed it would take to do just that. Could it be he really had underestimated their power? It wasn’t the scale of the cloud which perturbed him so much as the intent.
“Sir,” one of the barrier guards shouted in alarm. “Visible hostile, on foot, three hundred metres.”
Dean and Will were abruptly standing in front of Ralph, their gaussguns pointing across the firebreak.
“I think this is enough front-line inspection for today,” Colonel Palmer said. “Let’s get you back to the runabout, please, Ralph.”
“Wait.” Ralph looked between the two G66 troopers to see a single figure walking up the M6. A woman dressed in a neatly cut leather uniform, her face stained warrior-scarlet by the nimbus of the seething clouds. He knew exactly who it was, in fact he would almost have been disappointed if she hadn’t appeared. “She’s not a threat. Not yet, anyway.”
He slipped between Will and Dean to stand full square in the middle of the road, facing her down.
Annette Ekelund stopped at the forwards barrier on her side of the firebreak. She took a slim mobile phone from her pocket, extended its ten-centimetre aerial, then tapped in a number.
Ralph’s communications block announced a channel opening. He switched it to audio function.
“Hello, Ralph. I thought you would come back, you’re the kind that does. And I see you’ve brought some friends with you.”
“That’s right.”
“Why don’t you bring them on over and join the party?”
“We’ll pick our own time.”
“I have to say I’m disappointed; that’s not quite what we agreed to back in Exnall, now is it? And with a Saldana Princess, too. Dear me, you can’t trust anyone these days.”
“A promise made under duress is not legally binding. I’m sure you’ll have enough lawyers on your side to confirm that.”
“I thought I explained all this to you, Ralph. We can’t lose, not against the living.”
“I don’t believe you. No matter what the cost, we must defeat you. The human race will end if you are allowed to win. I believe we deserve to keep on going.”
“You and your ideals, the original Mr Focused. No wonder you found a profession which allowed you to give loyal service. It suits you perfectly. Congratulations, Ralph, you have found yourself, not everyone can say that. In another universe, one that isn’t so warped as this, I’d envy you.”
“Thank you.”
“There was a nasty little phrase coined in my era, Ralph; but it’s still appropriate today, because it too came from a dogmatic soldier in a pointless war. We had to destroy the village in order to save it. What do you think you’re going to do to Mortonridge and its people with this crusade of yours?”
“Whatever I have to.”
“But we’ll still be here afterwards, Ralph, we’ll always be here. The finest minds in the galaxy have been working on this problem. Scientists and priests scurrying for hard answers and bland philosophies. Millions—billions of manhours have already been spent on the quandary of what to do with us poor returned souls. And they’ve come up with nothing. Nothing! All you can do is mount this pathetic, vindictive campaign of violence in the hope that some of us will be caught and thrown into zero-tau.”
“There isn’t an overall solution yet. But there will be.”
“There can’t be. We outnumber you. It’s simple arithmetic, Ralph.”
“Laton said it can be done.”
She chuckled. “And you believe him?”
“The Edenists think he was telling the truth.”
“Oh, yes, the newest and most interesting of all your friends. You realize, don’t you, that they could well survive this while you Adamists fall. It’s in their interest for this monstrous diversion to work. Adamist planets will topple one by one while your Confederation is engrossed here.”
“And what about the Kiint?”
There was a slight pause. “What about them?”
“They survived their encounter with the beyond. They say there is a solution.”
“Which is?”
He gripped the communications block tighter. “It doesn’t apply to us. Each race must find its own way. Ours exists, somewhere. It will be found. I have a lot of faith in human ingenuity.”
“I don’t, Ralph. I have faith in our sick nature to hate and envy, to be greedy and selfish, to lie. You forget, for six centuries I couldn’t hide from the naked emotions which drive all of us. I was condemned to them, Ralph. I know exactly what we are in our true hearts, and it’s not nice, not nice at all.”
“Tell that to Stephanie Ash. You don’t speak for all the possessed, not even a majority.”
Her stance changed. She no longer leaned casually on the barrier but stood up straight, her head thrust forwards challengingly. “You’ll lose, Ralph, one way or the other. You, personally, will lose. You cannot fight entropy.”
“I wish your faith wasn’t so misdirected. Think what you could achieve if you tried to help us instead.”
“Stay away from us, Ralph. That’s what I really came here to tell you. One simple message: Stay away.”
“You know I can’t.”
Annette Ekelund nodded sharply. She pushed the phone’s aerial back in and closed the little unit up.
Ralph watched her walk back down the M6 with a degree of sorrow he hadn’t expected. Shadows cavorted around her, hoaxing with her silhouette before swallowing her altogether.
“Ye gods,” Colonel Palmer muttered.
“That’s what we’re up against,” Ralph said.
“Are you sure a million serjeants is going to be enough?”
Ralph didn’t get to answer. The discordant bellows of thunder merged together into a continuous roar.
Everyone looked up to see the edge of the red cloud descending. It was as if the strength of the possessed had finally waned, allowing the colossal weight of water to crash down. Torrents of gaudy vapour plunged out of the main bank, hurtling earthwards faster than mere gravity could account for.
Along with the others, Ralph sprinted away from the roadblock, neural nanonics compelled a huge energy release from his muscle tissue, increasing his speed. Animal fear was pounding on his consciousness to turn and fire his TIP pistol at the virulent cascade.
His neural nanonics received a plethora of datavises from SD Command on Guyana. Low-orbit observation satellites were tracking them. Reports from patrols and sensors positioned along the firebreak: the whole front of cloud was moving.
“SD platforms are now at Ready One status,” Admiral Farquar datavised. “Do you want us to counterstrike? We can slice that bastard apart.”
“It’s stopping,” Will yelled.
Ralph risked a glance over his shoulder. “Wait,” he datavised to the admiral. A hundred and fifty metres behind him, the base of the cloud had reached the ground, waves rebounding in all directions to furrow the surface. But the bulk of it was holding steady, not advancing. Even the thunder was muffled.
“They are not aggressing, repeat, not aggressing,” Ralph datavised. “It looks like . . . hell, it looks as though they’ve slammed the door shut. Can you confirm the situation along the rest of the firebreak?”
When he looked from side to side, the cloud was clinging to the scorched soil as far as his enhanced retinas could see. A single, simple barrier that curved back gently until it reached an apex at about three kilometres high. In a way it was worse than before; without the gap this was so uncompromisingly final.
“Confirm that,” Admiral Farquar datavised. “It’s closed up all the way along the firebreak. The coastline edges are lowering, too.”
“Great,” Colonel Palmer swore. “Now what?”
“It’s a psychological barrier, that’s all,” Ralph said quietly. “After all, it’s only water. This changes nothing.”
Colonel Palmer slowly tilted her head back, scanning the height of the quivering fluorescent precipice. She shivered. “Some psychology.”
Ione.
A chaotic moan fluttered out between her lips. She was sprawled on her bed, sliding quietly into sleep. In her drowsy state, the pillow she was cuddling could so easily have been Joshua. Oh, now what, for Heaven’s sake? Can’t I even dream my fantasies anymore?
I am sorry to disturb you, but there is an interesting situation developing concerning the Kiint.
She sat up slowly, feeling stubbornly grumpy despite Tranquillity’s best efforts to emphasise its tender concern. It had been a long day, with Meredith’s squadron to deal with on top of all her normal duties. And the loneliness was starting to get to her, too. It’s all right.she scratched irritably at her hair. Being pregnant is making me feel dreadfully randy. You’re just going to have to put up with me being like this for another eight months. Then you’ll have postnatal depression to cope with.
You have many lovers to choose from. Go to one. I want you to feel better. I do not like it when you are so troubled.
That’s a very cold solution. If getting physical was all it took, I’d just swallow an antidote pill instead.
From what I observe, most human sex is a cold activity. There is an awful lot of selfishness involved.
Ninety per cent of it is. But we put up with that because we’re always looking for the other ten per cent.
And you believe Joshua is your ten per cent?
Joshua is floating somewhere between the ninety and the ten. I just want him right now because my hormones are completely out of control.
Hormonal production does not usually peak until the later months of a pregnancy.
I always was an early developer.a swift thought directed at the opaqued window allowed a dappled aquamarine light into the bedroom. She reached lethargically for her robe. All right, self-pity hour over. Let’s see what our mysterious Kiint are up to. And God help you if it isn’t important.
Lieria has taken a tube carriage to the StClément starscraper.
So bloody what?
It is not an action which any Kiint has performed before. I have to consider it significant, especially at this time.
Kelly Tirrel hated being interrupted while she was running her Present Time Reality programs. It was an activity she was indulging more often these days.
Some of the black programs she had bought were selective memory blockers, modified from medical trauma erasure programs, slithering deep into her natural brain tissue to cauterize her subconscious. They should have been used under supervision, and it certainly wasn’t healthy to suppress the amount of memory she was targeting, nor for as long. Others amplified her emotional response to perceptual stimuli, making the real world slow and mundane in comparison.
One of the pushers she’d met while she was making a documentary last year had shown her how to interface black programs with standard commercial sensenvirons to produce PTRs. Such integrations were supposedly the most addictive stim you could run. Compulsive because they were the zenith of denial. Escape to an alternative personality living in an alternative reality, where your past with all its inhibitions had been completely divorced, allowing only the present to prevail. Living for the now, yet stretching that now out for hours.
In the realms through which Kelly moved, possession and the beyond were concepts which did not nor could ever exist. When she did emerge, to eat, or pee, or sleep, the real world was the one which seemed unreal; terribly harsh by comparison to the hedonistic existence she had on the other side of the electronic divide.
This time when she exited the PTR she couldn’t even recognize the signal her neural nanonics was receiving. Memories of such things were submerged deep in her brain, rising to conscious levels with the greatest of reluctance (and taking longer each time). It was a few moments before she even understood where she was, that this wasn’t Hell but simply her apartment. The lights off, the window opaqued, the sheet on which she was lying disgustingly damp, and stinking of urine, the floor littered with disposable bowls.
Kelly wanted to plunge straight back into her electronic refuge. She was losing her grip on her old personality, and didn’t give a fuck. The only thing she did monitor was her own decay; overriding fear saw to that.
I will not allow myself to die.
No matter how badly the black stimulant programs screwed up her neurones, she wouldn’t permit herself to go completely over the edge, not physically. Before that would be zero-tau. The wonderful simplicity of eternal oblivion.
And until then, her brain would live a charmed life, providing pleasure and excitement, and not even knowing it was artificial. Life was to be enjoyed, was it not? Now she knew the truth about death, how did it matter how that enjoyment was achieved?
Her brain finally identified the signal from the apartment’s net processor. Someone was at the door, requesting admission. Confusion replaced her dazed resentful stupor. Collins hadn’t called on her to present a show for a week (or possibly longer); not since her interview with Tranquillity’s bishop when she shouted at him, angry about how cruel his God was to inflict the beyond upon unsuspecting souls.
The signal repeated. Kelly sat up, and promptly vomited down the side of the bed. Nausea swirled inside her brain, shaking her thoughts and memories into a collage which was the exact opposite of the PTR: Lalonde in all its infernal glory. She coughed as her pale limbs trembled and the scar along her ribs flamed. There was a glass on the bedside table, half full of a clear liquid which she fervently hoped was water. Her shaking hand grabbed at it, spilling a quantity before she managed to jam it to her lips and swallow. At least she didn’t throw it all back up.
Almost suffocating in misery she struggled off the bed and pulled a blanket around her shoulders. Her neural nanonics medical program cautioned her that her blood sugar level was badly depleted and she was on the verge of dehydration. She cancelled it. The admission request was repeated again.
“Piss off,” she mumbled. Light seemed to be shining straight through her eye sockets to scorch her fragile brain. Sucking down air, she tried to work out why her neural nanonics had stopped running the PTR program. It shouldn’t happen just because someone datavised her apartment’s net processor. Perhaps the slender filaments meshed with her synaptic clefts were getting screwed by her disturbed body chemistry?
“Who is it?” she datavised as she tottered unsteadily through into the main living room.
“Lieria.”
Kelly didn’t know any Lieria; at least not without running a memory cell check. She slumped down into one of her deep recliners, pulled the blanket over her legs, and datavised the door processor to unlock.
An adult Kiint was standing in the vestibule. Kelly blinked against the light which poured in around its snow-white body, gawped, then started laughing. She’d done it, she’d totally fucked her brain with the PTR.
Lieria lowered herself slightly and moved into the living room, taking care not to knock any of the furniture. She had to wriggle to fit the major section of her body through the door, but she managed it. An intensely curious group of residents peered in behind her.
The door slid shut. Kelly hadn’t ordered it to do that. Her laughter had stopped, and her shakes were threatening to return. This was actually happening. She wanted to go back into the PTR real bad now.
Lieria took up nearly a fifth of the living room, both tractamorphic arms were withdrawn into large bulbs of flesh, her triangular head was swinging slightly from side to side as her huge eyes examined the room. No housechimp had been in for weeks to clean up; dust was accumulating; the door to the kitchen was open, showing worktops overflowing with empty food sachets; a loose pile of underwear decorated one corner; her desk was scattered with fleks and processor blocks. The Kiint returned her gaze to Kelly, who curled her limbs up tighter in the recliner.
“H-how did you get down here?” was all Kelly could ask.
“I took the service elevator,” Lieria datavised back. “It was very cramped.”
Kelly started. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
“Use an elevator?”
“Datavise.”
“We have some command of technology.”
“Oh. Yes. It’s just . . . skip it.” Her reporter’s training began to assert itself. A private visit from a Kiint was unheard of. “Is this confidential?”
Lieria’s breathing vents whistled heavily. “You decide, Kelly Tirrel. Do you wish your public to know what has become of you?”
Kelly stiffened her facial muscles, whether to combat tears or shame she wasn’t sure. “No.”
“I understand. Knowledge of the beyond can be disturbing.”
“How did you beat it? Tell me, please. For pity’s sake. I can’t be trapped there. I couldn’t stand it!”
“I am sorry. I cannot discuss this with you.”
Kelly’s cough had come back. She used the back of her hand to wipe her eyes dry. “What do you want, then?”
“I wish to purchase information. Your sensevises of Lalonde.”
“My . . . why?”
“They are of interest to us.”
“Sure. I’ll sell them. The price is knowing how to avoid the beyond.”
“Kelly Tirrel, you cannot buy that, the answer is inside you.”
“Stop being so fucking obtuse!” she shouted, fury surmounting her consternation of the big xenoc.
“It is the profound wish of my race that one day you will understand. I had intended that by purchasing the data directly from you the money would bring or buy you some peace of mind. If I go directly to the Collins corporation, it will become lost in their accounts. You see, we do not mean you harm. It is not our way.”
Kelly stared at the xenoc, depressed by her own incomprehension. Okay, girl, she thought, let’s try and work this one out logically. She put her medical monitor program into primary mode, and used the results to bring appropriate suppressor and stimulant programs on-line to try to stabilize body and brain. There wasn’t a great deal they could do, but at least she felt calmer and her breathing steadied. “Why do you want to buy them?”
“We have little data on humans who are possessed by returned souls. We are interested. Your visit to Lalonde is an excellent firsthand account.”
Kelly felt the first stirrings of excitement; reporter’s instinct inciting her interest. “Bullshit. That’s not what I meant. If all you wanted was information on possessed humans, you could have recorded my reports directly from Collins as soon as they were released. God knows, they’ve been repeated often enough.”
“They are not complete. Collins has edited them to provide a series of highlights. We understand their commercial reasons for doing so, but this is of no use to us. I require access to the entire recording.”
“Right,” she said with apparent gravity, as if she was giving the proposition appropriately weighty thought. An analysis program had gone primary, refining possible questions in an attempt to narrow the focus. “I can give you full access to the times I came up against the possessed, and my observations of Shaun Wallace. That’s no problem at all.”
“We require a full record from the time you arrived in the Lalonde star system until you departed. All details are of interest to us.”
“All details? I mean, this is a human sensevise, I kept the flek recording the whole time. Standard company procedure. Unfortunately, that includes time when I was visiting the little girls’ room, if you catch on.”
“Human excretion functions do not embarrass us.”
“Shall I cut the time in Lady Macbeth for you?”
“Observations and crew impressions of the reality dysfunction from orbit are an integral part of the record.”
“So, how much were you thinking of offering me for this?”
“Please name your price, Kelly Tirrel.”
“One million fuseodollars.”
“That is expensive.”
“It’s a lot of hours you’re asking for. But the offer to edit it down still stands.”
“I will pay you the required amount for a complete recording only.”
Kelly pressed her teeth together in annoyance; it wasn’t going to work, the Kiint was far too smart for verbal traps. Don’t push, she told herself, get what you can and work out the why later on. “Fair enough. Agreed.”
Lieria’s tractamorphic flesh extended out into an arm, a Jovian Bank credit disk held between white pincers.
Kelly gave it an interested glance, and rose stiffly from the recliner. Her own credit disk was somewhere on her desk. She walked over to it, all three paces, then plonked herself down in the grey office chair a little too quickly.
“I would suggest you eat something and rest properly before you return to your sensenviron,” Lieria datavised.
“Good idea. I was going to.” She froze in the act of shoving the fleks and their empty storage cases around. How the hell had the Kiint known what she’d been running? We have some command of technology. She gripped the blanket harder with one hand as the other fished her disk from under a recorder block. “Found it,” she said with forced lightness.
Lieria shunted the full amount across. The soft flesh of the pincers engulfed the Jovian Bank disk, then parted again to reveal a small dark blue processor block. It was like a conjuring trick which Kelly was in no state to unravel.
“Please insert your fleks in the block,” Lieria datavised. “It will copy the recordings.”
Kelly did as she was told.
“I thank you, Kelly Tirrel. You have contributed valuable information to our race’s store of knowledge.”
“Make the most of it,” she said grumpily. “The way you’re treating us we probably won’t be around to contribute for much longer.”
The living-room door slid open, scattering a startled crowd of StClément residents. Lieria backed out with surprising ease. When the door closed again Kelly was left by herself with the disconcerting impression that it could all very easily have been a dream. She picked up her credit disk, looking at it in wonder. One million fuseodollars.
It was the key to permanent zero-tau. Her lawyer had been negotiating with Collins to transfer her pension fund into an Edenist trust account, just like Ashly Hanson. Except she wouldn’t be coming out to take a look around every few centuries. Collins’s accountants had been reluctant.
Another problem which had sent her into the sham escape of PTR. Now all she needed to do was get to an Edenist habitat. Only their culture had a chance of holding her safe through eternity.
Although . . . that stubborn old part of her mind was asking a thousand questions. What the hell did the Kiint really want?
“Think,” she ordered herself fiercely. “Come on, damn it. Think!” Something happened on Lalonde. Something so important that a Kiint walks into my apartment and pays me a million fuseodollars for a record of it. Something we didn’t think was important or interesting, because it wasn’t released by Collins. So if it wasn’t released, how the hell did the Kiint know about it?
Logically, someone must have told them—presumably today or very recently. Someone who has reviewed the whole recording themselves, or at least more of it than Collins released.
Kelly smiled happily, an unfamiliar expression of late. And someone who must have a lot of contact with the Kiint.
Review every single conversation which the Kiint were involved in over the last week,ione said. Anything that anyone mentioned about Lalonde, anything at all, however trivial. And if you can’t find it, start going through your earlier memories.
I am already reviewing the relevant scenes. There may be a problem with going back further than four days. My short-term memory capacity is only a hundred hours; after that the details are discarded so I may retain salient information. Without this procedure even my memory would be unable to cope with events inside me.
I know that! But it has to be recent for Lieria to go visiting in the middle of the night. I don’t suppose the Kiint said anything among themselves? Grandfather’s non-intrusion agreement can hardly apply in this case.
I concur that it cannot be considered. However, I have never been able to intercept detailed affinity conversations between the adult Kiint. At best I can sometimes distinguish what I would define as a murmur.
Damn! If you can’t remember, we’ll have to haul all the Laymil project staff in and question them individually.
Not necessary. I have found it.
“Brilliant!” Show me.
The memory burst open around her. Bright light was shining down on the beach while glassy ripples lapped quietly against the shoreline. A huge sand castle stood directly in front of her. Oh, bloody hell.
Jay was woken by a hand shaking her shoulder with gentle insistence. “Mummy,” she cried fearfully. Wherever she was, it was dark, and even darker shadows loomed over her.
“Sorry, poppet,” Kelly stage-whispered. “It’s not your mum, it’s only me.”
Horror fled from the little girl’s face, and she hitched herself up in the bed, wrapping her arms around her legs. “Kelly?”
“Yep. And I am really sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you like that.”
Jay sniffed the air, highly curious now. “What’s that smell? And what time is it?”
“It’s very late. Nurse Andrews is going to kill me if I stay for more than a couple of minutes. She only let me in because she knows you and I spent all that time together on Lady Mac .”
“You haven’t visited for ages.”
“I know.” Kelly was almost crushed by the surge of emotion the girl triggered, the accusation in her tone. “I haven’t been terribly well lately. I didn’t want you to see me the way I was.”
“Are you all right now?”
“Sure. I’m on the way back.”
“Good. You promised you’d show me around the studios you work in.”
“And I’ll keep it, too. Listen, Jay, I’ve got some really important questions. They’re about you and Haile.”
“What?” she asked suspiciously.
“I need to know if you told Haile anything about Lalonde, especially in the last couple of days. It’s vital, Jay, honest. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t.”
“I know.” She screwed up her lips, thinking hard. “There was some stuff about religion this morning. Haile doesn’t understand it very well, and I’m not very good at explaining it.”
“What about religion, exactly?”
“It was how many gods there are. I’d told her about the Tyrathca’s Sleeping God temple, you know, the one you showed me, and she wanted to know if that was the same thing as Jesus.”
“Of course,” Kelly hissed. “It wasn’t human possession, it was the Tyrathca section, we never released any of that.” She leaned over and kissed Jay. “Thank you, poppet. You’ve just performed a miracle.”
“Was that all ?”
“Yeah. That was all.”
“Oh.”
“You snuggle down and get some sleep now. I’ll come visit tomorrow.” She helped pull Jay’s duvet back up and gave the girl another kiss. Jay sniffed inquisitively again, but didn’t comment.
“So?” Kelly asked softly as she walked away from the bed. “You’ve been watching, you know this must be serious. I want to talk to the Lord of Ruin.”
The pediatric ward’s net processor opened a channel to Kelly’s neural nanonics. “Ione Saldana will see you now,” Tranquillity datavised. “Please bring the relevant recordings.”
Despite being on what he considered excellent terms with the Lord of Ruin, Parker Higgens could still be chilled to the marrow when she gave him one of her expectant looks.
“But I don’t know anything about the Tyrathca, ma’am,” he complained. Being dragged out of bed straight into a highly irregular crisis conference was playing havoc with his thought processes. Accessing the sensevise recording of Coastuc-RT and seeing the strange silvery structure which the builder-caste Tyrathca had constructed in the middle of the village didn’t contribute much to his composure, either.
When he glanced at Kempster Getchell for support he saw the astronomer’s eyes were closed as he accessed the recording a second time.
“You’re the only xenoc specialists I’ve got, Parker.”
“Laymil specialists.”
“Don’t quibble. I need advice, and I need it fast. How important is this?”
“Well . . . I don’t think we knew the Tyrathca had a religion before this,” he ventured.
“We didn’t,” Kelly said. “I ran a full search program through the Collins office encyclopedia. It’s as good as any university library. There’s no reference to this Sleeping God at all.”
“And neither did the Kiint, so it would seem,” Parker said. “They actually came and woke you to ask for the recording?”
“That’s right.”
Parker was somewhat put out by the reporter’s dishevelled appearance. She sat wedged into one corner of the sofa in Ione’s private study, a thick cardigan tugged around her shoulders as if it were midwinter. For the last five minutes she had been snatching up salmon sandwiches from a large plate balanced on the sofa’s arm, pushing them forcefully into her mouth.
“Well I have to say, ma’am, that it’s a relief to find out they don’t know everything.” A housechimp silently handed him a cup of coffee.
“But is it relevant?” Ione asked. “Were they just so surprised they didn’t know about the Sleeping God myth that Lieria simply rushed over to Kelly to confirm it? Or does it have some bearing on our current situation?”
“It’s not a myth,” Kelly said around another sandwich. “That’s exactly what I said to Waboto-YAU; and it nearly set the soldiers on me for that remark. The Tyrathca believe absolutely in their Sleeping God. Crazy race.”
Parker stirred his coffee mechanically. “I’ve never known the Kiint to be excited about anything. But then I’ve never known them to be in a rush either, which they obviously were tonight. I think we should examine this Sleeping God in context. You are aware, ma’am, that the Tyrathca do not have fiction? They simply do not lie, and they have a great deal of trouble understanding human falsehoods. The nearest they ever come to lying is withholding information.”
“You mean there really is a Sleeping God?” Kelly asked.
“There has to be a core of truth behind the story,” Parker said. “They are a highly formalized clan species. Individual families maintain professions and responsibilities for generations. Sireth-AFL’s family was obviously entrusted with the knowledge of the Sleeping God. At a guess, I’d say that Sireth-AFL is a descendant of the family which used to deal with electronics while they were on their arkship.”
“Then why not just store the memory electronically?” Kelly asked.
“It probably is stored, somewhere. But Coastuc-RT is a very primitive settlement, and the Tyrathca only ever use appropriate technology. There will be Tyrathca families in that village who know exactly how to build fusion generators and computers, but they don’t actually need them yet, therefore the information isn’t used. They employ water wheels and mental arithmetic instead.”
“Weird,” Kelly said.
“No,” Parker corrected. “Merely logical. The product of a mind that is intelligent without being particularly imaginative.”
“Yet they were praying,” Ione said. “They believe in a God. That requires a leap of imagination, or at least faith.”
“I don’t think so,” Kempster Getchell said. He grinned around, clearly enjoying himself. “We’re messing about with semantics here, and an electronic translator, which is never terribly helpful, it’s too literal. Consider when this God appeared in their history. Human gods are derived from our pre-science era. There are no new religions, there haven’t been for thousands of years. Modern society is far too sceptical to allow for prophets who have personal conversations with God. We have the answer for everything these days, and if it isn’t recorded on a flek it’s a lie.
“Yet here we have the Tyrathca, who not only don’t lie, but encounter a God while they’re in a starship. They have the same intellectual analytical tools as we do, and they still call it a God. And they found it. That’s what excites me, that’s what is so important to this story. It isn’t indegenous to their planet, it isn’t ancient. One of their arkships encountered something so fearfully powerful that a race with the technology to travel between the stars calls it a God.”
“That would also mean it isn’t exclusive to them,” Parker said.
“Yes. Although, whatever it is, it was benign, or even helpful to the arkship in question. They wouldn’t consider it to be their Sleeping God otherwise.”
“Powerful enough to defend the Tyrathca from possessed humans,” Ione said. “That’s what they claimed.”
“Yes indeed. A defence mounted from several hundred light-years distant, at least.”
“What the fuck could do that?” Kelly asked.
“Kempster?” Ione prompted as the old astronomer stared away at the ceiling.
“I have absolutely no idea. Although ‘sleeping’ does imply an inert status, which can be reversed.”
“By prayer?” Parker said sceptically.
“They thought it would be able to hear them,” Kempster said. “Stronger than all living things was what that breeder said. Interesting. And that mirror-spire shape was supposed to be what it looked like. I’d like to say some kind of celestial event or object, that would fit in finding it in deep space. Unfortunately, there is no natural astronomical object which resembles that.”
“Take a guess,” Ione said icily.
“Powerful, and in space.” The astronomer’s face wrinkled up with effort. “Humm. Trouble is, we have no idea of the scale. Some kind of small nebula around a binary neutron star; or a white hole emission jet—which might account for the shape. But none of those are exactly inert.”
“Nor would they be much use against the possessed,” Parker said.
“But its existence is enough to fluster the Kiint,” Ione said. “And they can manufacture moons, plural.”
“Do you think it could help us?” Kelly asked the astronomer.
“Good point,” Kempster said. “A highly literal race thinks it can help them against the possessed. QED, it would be able to do the same thing for us. Although the actual encounter must have taken place thousands of years ago. Who knows how much the account had been distorted in that time, even by the Tyrathca? And if it was an event rather than an object, it would presumably be finished by now. After all, Confederation astronomers have catalogued our galaxy pretty thoroughly; and certainly anything odd within ten thousand light-years would be listed. Which is why I’m inclined to go for the inert object hypothesis. I must say, this is a delightful puzzle you’ve brought to us, young lady; I’d love to know what they did actually find.”
Kelly made an impatiently dismissive gesture and leaned forward. “See?” she said to Ione. “This is critical, just like I said. I’ve provided you with enough to go on. Haven’t I?”
“Yes,” Ione said with considerable asperity.
“Do I get my flight authorization?”
“What is this? What flight?” Parker asked.
“Kelly wishes to visit Jupiter,” Ione said. “To do that she needs my official authorization.”
“Do I get it?” Kelly was almost shouting.
Ione’s nose crinkled with distaste. “Yes. Now please be silent unless you have a cogent point to make.”
Kelly flung herself back into the sofa, a fearsome grin on her face.
Parker studied her for a moment, not at all liking what he found, but forwent any comment. “The evidence we have so far is depressingly small, but to my mind it does seem to indicate that the Sleeping God is something other than a natural object. Perhaps it is a functional Von Neumann machine, that would certainly have godlike abilities ascribed to it by any culture with inferior technology. Or, I regret to say, some kind of ancient weapon.”
“A manufactured artefact which can attack the possessed over interstellar space. Now that really is an unpleasant thought,” Kempster said. “Although the sleeping qualifier would admittedly be more pertinent in such a case.”
“As you say,” Ione said. “We don’t have nearly enough information to make anything other than wild guesses at this time. That must be rectified. Our real problem is that the Tyrathca have severed all contact with us. And I really don’t think we have any alternative but to ask them.”
“I would certainly advise we pursue that avenue, ma’am. The very possibility that the Sleeping God is real, and may even be able to defeat the possessed on some level, warrants further investigation. If we could . . .” His voice died away as Ione gripped the arms of her chair, blue eyes widening to express something Parker had never thought he would see there: horror.
Meredith Saldana drifted into the Arikara ’s bridge; every one of the acceleration couches in the C&C section of the bridge was occupied as his staff officers dedicated themselves to scanning and securing space around Mirchusko.
When Ralph’s battleship emerged above Ombey he had seen nine Royal Navy Aquilae-class bulk transport starships in parking formation around a low-orbit port station along with their escort of fifteen front-line frigates. There were only twenty-five of the huge transporters left on active service; capable of carrying seventeen thousand tonnes of cargo they were the largest starships ever built, and hugely expensive to fly and maintain. Kulu was gradually phasing them out in favour of smaller models based on commercial designs.
They were being supported by big old delta-wing CK500-090 Thunderbird spaceplanes, the only atmospheric craft capable of handling the four-hundred-tonne cargo pods carried by the Aquilae transporters. Again, a fleet on the verge of retirement; they had been the first consignment ferried to Ombey by the transports. Most of the Thunderbirds had spent the last fifteen years in mothball status at the Royal Navy’s desert storage facility on Kulu. Now they were being reactivated as fast as the maintenance crews could fit new components from badly depleted war stocks.
Even more portentous than the buildup of navy ships were the voidhawks. Nearly eighty had arrived so far, with new ones swallowing in every hour, their lower hull cargo cradles full of pods (which could be handled by conventional civil flyers). Never before had so many of the bitek starships been seen orbiting a Kingdom world.
Ralph had experienced the same kind of uncomfortable awe he’d known at Azara as he observed them flitting around the docking stations. He was the one who had started this, creating a momentum which had engulfed entire star systems. It was unstoppable now. All he could do was ride it to a conclusion.
The ion field flyer landed at Colonel Palmer’s camp. The colonel herself was waiting for him at the base of the airstairs, Dean Folan and Will Danza prominent in the small reception committee behind her, both grinning broadly.
Colonel Palmer shook his hand, giving his new uniform a more than casual inspection. “Welcome back, Ralph, or should I say sir?”
He wasn’t completely used to the uniform himself yet, a smart dark blue tunic with three ruby pips glinting on his shoulder. “I don’t know, exactly. I’m a general in the official Liberation campaign army now, its very first officer. Apart from the King, of course. The formation was made official three days ago, announced in the court of the Apollo Palace. I’ve been appointed chief strategic coordination officer.”
“You mean you’re the Liberation’s numero uno?”
“Yeah,” he said with quiet surprise. “I guess I am at this end.”
“Rather you than me.” She gestured northwards. “Talk about coming back with reinforcements.”
“It’s going to get wonderfully worse. One million bitek serjeants are on their way, and God alone knows how many human troops to back them up. We’ve even had mercenaries volunteering.”
“You accepted them?”
“I’ve no idea. But I’ll use whatever I’m given.”
“All right, so what are your orders, sir?”
He laughed. “Just keep up the good work. Have any of them tried to break out?”
She turned her head to face the wall of angry cloud, her expression stern. “No. They stick to their side of the firebreak. There have been plenty of sightings. We think they’re keeping an eye on us. But it’s only my patrols who are visible to them.” A thumb jabbed back over her shoulder. “They don’t know anything about all this.”
“Good. We can’t keep it secret forever, of course; but the longer the better.”
“Some kids came out last week. It was the first interesting thing to happen since you left.”
“Kids?”
“A woman called Stephanie Ash bused seventy-three non-possessed children right up to the firebreak. Gave the roadblock guard a hell of a fright, I can tell you. Apparently she’d collected them from all over the peninsula. We evacuated them to a holding camp. I think your friend Jannike Dermot has got her experts debriefing them on conditions over there.”
“Now that’s a report I’d like to access.” He squinted at the red cloud. That elusive knot of shadow seemed to have returned. It was elliptical this time, hanging over the M6. It didn’t take much imagination to suspect it of staring at him. “I think I’ll take a closer look before I set up my command at Fort Forward,” he announced.
Will and Dean rode shotgun on the Marine Corps runabout which took him up to the orange roadblock. It was good to talk with them again. They’d been attached to Palmer’s brigade as combat liaison for the agency, supporting the various technical teams Roche Skark had dispatched to the firebreak. Both of them wanted to know every detail of his meetings with the King. They were annoyed he wouldn’t datavise his visual files of Prince Edward playing at the Apollo Palace, but they were confidential. And so grows the mystique, Ralph thought, amused that he should be contributing to it.
The marines at the roadblock saluted smartly as Ralph and the Colonel arrived. Ralph chatted to them as cordially as he could manage. They didn’t seem to mind the red cloud; he found it intimidating in the extreme. It loomed barely three hundred metres above him, vigorous thrashing streamers packed so close together there was no gap between them, layer upon layer stacked up to what seemed like the edge of space. The sonorous reverberations from its internal brawling was diabolically attuned to the harmonic of human bones. Millions of tonnes of contaminated water hanging suspended in the air by witchcraft, ready to crash down like the waterfall at the end of the world. He wondered how little effort on behalf of the possessed it would take to do just that. Could it be he really had underestimated their power? It wasn’t the scale of the cloud which perturbed him so much as the intent.
“Sir,” one of the barrier guards shouted in alarm. “Visible hostile, on foot, three hundred metres.”
Dean and Will were abruptly standing in front of Ralph, their gaussguns pointing across the firebreak.
“I think this is enough front-line inspection for today,” Colonel Palmer said. “Let’s get you back to the runabout, please, Ralph.”
“Wait.” Ralph looked between the two G66 troopers to see a single figure walking up the M6. A woman dressed in a neatly cut leather uniform, her face stained warrior-scarlet by the nimbus of the seething clouds. He knew exactly who it was, in fact he would almost have been disappointed if she hadn’t appeared. “She’s not a threat. Not yet, anyway.”
He slipped between Will and Dean to stand full square in the middle of the road, facing her down.
Annette Ekelund stopped at the forwards barrier on her side of the firebreak. She took a slim mobile phone from her pocket, extended its ten-centimetre aerial, then tapped in a number.
Ralph’s communications block announced a channel opening. He switched it to audio function.
“Hello, Ralph. I thought you would come back, you’re the kind that does. And I see you’ve brought some friends with you.”
“That’s right.”
“Why don’t you bring them on over and join the party?”
“We’ll pick our own time.”
“I have to say I’m disappointed; that’s not quite what we agreed to back in Exnall, now is it? And with a Saldana Princess, too. Dear me, you can’t trust anyone these days.”
“A promise made under duress is not legally binding. I’m sure you’ll have enough lawyers on your side to confirm that.”
“I thought I explained all this to you, Ralph. We can’t lose, not against the living.”
“I don’t believe you. No matter what the cost, we must defeat you. The human race will end if you are allowed to win. I believe we deserve to keep on going.”
“You and your ideals, the original Mr Focused. No wonder you found a profession which allowed you to give loyal service. It suits you perfectly. Congratulations, Ralph, you have found yourself, not everyone can say that. In another universe, one that isn’t so warped as this, I’d envy you.”
“Thank you.”
“There was a nasty little phrase coined in my era, Ralph; but it’s still appropriate today, because it too came from a dogmatic soldier in a pointless war. We had to destroy the village in order to save it. What do you think you’re going to do to Mortonridge and its people with this crusade of yours?”
“Whatever I have to.”
“But we’ll still be here afterwards, Ralph, we’ll always be here. The finest minds in the galaxy have been working on this problem. Scientists and priests scurrying for hard answers and bland philosophies. Millions—billions of manhours have already been spent on the quandary of what to do with us poor returned souls. And they’ve come up with nothing. Nothing! All you can do is mount this pathetic, vindictive campaign of violence in the hope that some of us will be caught and thrown into zero-tau.”
“There isn’t an overall solution yet. But there will be.”
“There can’t be. We outnumber you. It’s simple arithmetic, Ralph.”
“Laton said it can be done.”
She chuckled. “And you believe him?”
“The Edenists think he was telling the truth.”
“Oh, yes, the newest and most interesting of all your friends. You realize, don’t you, that they could well survive this while you Adamists fall. It’s in their interest for this monstrous diversion to work. Adamist planets will topple one by one while your Confederation is engrossed here.”
“And what about the Kiint?”
There was a slight pause. “What about them?”
“They survived their encounter with the beyond. They say there is a solution.”
“Which is?”
He gripped the communications block tighter. “It doesn’t apply to us. Each race must find its own way. Ours exists, somewhere. It will be found. I have a lot of faith in human ingenuity.”
“I don’t, Ralph. I have faith in our sick nature to hate and envy, to be greedy and selfish, to lie. You forget, for six centuries I couldn’t hide from the naked emotions which drive all of us. I was condemned to them, Ralph. I know exactly what we are in our true hearts, and it’s not nice, not nice at all.”
“Tell that to Stephanie Ash. You don’t speak for all the possessed, not even a majority.”
Her stance changed. She no longer leaned casually on the barrier but stood up straight, her head thrust forwards challengingly. “You’ll lose, Ralph, one way or the other. You, personally, will lose. You cannot fight entropy.”
“I wish your faith wasn’t so misdirected. Think what you could achieve if you tried to help us instead.”
“Stay away from us, Ralph. That’s what I really came here to tell you. One simple message: Stay away.”
“You know I can’t.”
Annette Ekelund nodded sharply. She pushed the phone’s aerial back in and closed the little unit up.
Ralph watched her walk back down the M6 with a degree of sorrow he hadn’t expected. Shadows cavorted around her, hoaxing with her silhouette before swallowing her altogether.
“Ye gods,” Colonel Palmer muttered.
“That’s what we’re up against,” Ralph said.
“Are you sure a million serjeants is going to be enough?”
Ralph didn’t get to answer. The discordant bellows of thunder merged together into a continuous roar.
Everyone looked up to see the edge of the red cloud descending. It was as if the strength of the possessed had finally waned, allowing the colossal weight of water to crash down. Torrents of gaudy vapour plunged out of the main bank, hurtling earthwards faster than mere gravity could account for.
Along with the others, Ralph sprinted away from the roadblock, neural nanonics compelled a huge energy release from his muscle tissue, increasing his speed. Animal fear was pounding on his consciousness to turn and fire his TIP pistol at the virulent cascade.
His neural nanonics received a plethora of datavises from SD Command on Guyana. Low-orbit observation satellites were tracking them. Reports from patrols and sensors positioned along the firebreak: the whole front of cloud was moving.
“SD platforms are now at Ready One status,” Admiral Farquar datavised. “Do you want us to counterstrike? We can slice that bastard apart.”
“It’s stopping,” Will yelled.
Ralph risked a glance over his shoulder. “Wait,” he datavised to the admiral. A hundred and fifty metres behind him, the base of the cloud had reached the ground, waves rebounding in all directions to furrow the surface. But the bulk of it was holding steady, not advancing. Even the thunder was muffled.
“They are not aggressing, repeat, not aggressing,” Ralph datavised. “It looks like . . . hell, it looks as though they’ve slammed the door shut. Can you confirm the situation along the rest of the firebreak?”
When he looked from side to side, the cloud was clinging to the scorched soil as far as his enhanced retinas could see. A single, simple barrier that curved back gently until it reached an apex at about three kilometres high. In a way it was worse than before; without the gap this was so uncompromisingly final.
“Confirm that,” Admiral Farquar datavised. “It’s closed up all the way along the firebreak. The coastline edges are lowering, too.”
“Great,” Colonel Palmer swore. “Now what?”
“It’s a psychological barrier, that’s all,” Ralph said quietly. “After all, it’s only water. This changes nothing.”
Colonel Palmer slowly tilted her head back, scanning the height of the quivering fluorescent precipice. She shivered. “Some psychology.”
Ione.
A chaotic moan fluttered out between her lips. She was sprawled on her bed, sliding quietly into sleep. In her drowsy state, the pillow she was cuddling could so easily have been Joshua. Oh, now what, for Heaven’s sake? Can’t I even dream my fantasies anymore?
I am sorry to disturb you, but there is an interesting situation developing concerning the Kiint.
She sat up slowly, feeling stubbornly grumpy despite Tranquillity’s best efforts to emphasise its tender concern. It had been a long day, with Meredith’s squadron to deal with on top of all her normal duties. And the loneliness was starting to get to her, too. It’s all right.she scratched irritably at her hair. Being pregnant is making me feel dreadfully randy. You’re just going to have to put up with me being like this for another eight months. Then you’ll have postnatal depression to cope with.
You have many lovers to choose from. Go to one. I want you to feel better. I do not like it when you are so troubled.
That’s a very cold solution. If getting physical was all it took, I’d just swallow an antidote pill instead.
From what I observe, most human sex is a cold activity. There is an awful lot of selfishness involved.
Ninety per cent of it is. But we put up with that because we’re always looking for the other ten per cent.
And you believe Joshua is your ten per cent?
Joshua is floating somewhere between the ninety and the ten. I just want him right now because my hormones are completely out of control.
Hormonal production does not usually peak until the later months of a pregnancy.
I always was an early developer.a swift thought directed at the opaqued window allowed a dappled aquamarine light into the bedroom. She reached lethargically for her robe. All right, self-pity hour over. Let’s see what our mysterious Kiint are up to. And God help you if it isn’t important.
Lieria has taken a tube carriage to the StClément starscraper.
So bloody what?
It is not an action which any Kiint has performed before. I have to consider it significant, especially at this time.
Kelly Tirrel hated being interrupted while she was running her Present Time Reality programs. It was an activity she was indulging more often these days.
Some of the black programs she had bought were selective memory blockers, modified from medical trauma erasure programs, slithering deep into her natural brain tissue to cauterize her subconscious. They should have been used under supervision, and it certainly wasn’t healthy to suppress the amount of memory she was targeting, nor for as long. Others amplified her emotional response to perceptual stimuli, making the real world slow and mundane in comparison.
One of the pushers she’d met while she was making a documentary last year had shown her how to interface black programs with standard commercial sensenvirons to produce PTRs. Such integrations were supposedly the most addictive stim you could run. Compulsive because they were the zenith of denial. Escape to an alternative personality living in an alternative reality, where your past with all its inhibitions had been completely divorced, allowing only the present to prevail. Living for the now, yet stretching that now out for hours.
In the realms through which Kelly moved, possession and the beyond were concepts which did not nor could ever exist. When she did emerge, to eat, or pee, or sleep, the real world was the one which seemed unreal; terribly harsh by comparison to the hedonistic existence she had on the other side of the electronic divide.
This time when she exited the PTR she couldn’t even recognize the signal her neural nanonics was receiving. Memories of such things were submerged deep in her brain, rising to conscious levels with the greatest of reluctance (and taking longer each time). It was a few moments before she even understood where she was, that this wasn’t Hell but simply her apartment. The lights off, the window opaqued, the sheet on which she was lying disgustingly damp, and stinking of urine, the floor littered with disposable bowls.
Kelly wanted to plunge straight back into her electronic refuge. She was losing her grip on her old personality, and didn’t give a fuck. The only thing she did monitor was her own decay; overriding fear saw to that.
I will not allow myself to die.
No matter how badly the black stimulant programs screwed up her neurones, she wouldn’t permit herself to go completely over the edge, not physically. Before that would be zero-tau. The wonderful simplicity of eternal oblivion.
And until then, her brain would live a charmed life, providing pleasure and excitement, and not even knowing it was artificial. Life was to be enjoyed, was it not? Now she knew the truth about death, how did it matter how that enjoyment was achieved?
Her brain finally identified the signal from the apartment’s net processor. Someone was at the door, requesting admission. Confusion replaced her dazed resentful stupor. Collins hadn’t called on her to present a show for a week (or possibly longer); not since her interview with Tranquillity’s bishop when she shouted at him, angry about how cruel his God was to inflict the beyond upon unsuspecting souls.
The signal repeated. Kelly sat up, and promptly vomited down the side of the bed. Nausea swirled inside her brain, shaking her thoughts and memories into a collage which was the exact opposite of the PTR: Lalonde in all its infernal glory. She coughed as her pale limbs trembled and the scar along her ribs flamed. There was a glass on the bedside table, half full of a clear liquid which she fervently hoped was water. Her shaking hand grabbed at it, spilling a quantity before she managed to jam it to her lips and swallow. At least she didn’t throw it all back up.
Almost suffocating in misery she struggled off the bed and pulled a blanket around her shoulders. Her neural nanonics medical program cautioned her that her blood sugar level was badly depleted and she was on the verge of dehydration. She cancelled it. The admission request was repeated again.
“Piss off,” she mumbled. Light seemed to be shining straight through her eye sockets to scorch her fragile brain. Sucking down air, she tried to work out why her neural nanonics had stopped running the PTR program. It shouldn’t happen just because someone datavised her apartment’s net processor. Perhaps the slender filaments meshed with her synaptic clefts were getting screwed by her disturbed body chemistry?
“Who is it?” she datavised as she tottered unsteadily through into the main living room.
“Lieria.”
Kelly didn’t know any Lieria; at least not without running a memory cell check. She slumped down into one of her deep recliners, pulled the blanket over her legs, and datavised the door processor to unlock.
An adult Kiint was standing in the vestibule. Kelly blinked against the light which poured in around its snow-white body, gawped, then started laughing. She’d done it, she’d totally fucked her brain with the PTR.
Lieria lowered herself slightly and moved into the living room, taking care not to knock any of the furniture. She had to wriggle to fit the major section of her body through the door, but she managed it. An intensely curious group of residents peered in behind her.
The door slid shut. Kelly hadn’t ordered it to do that. Her laughter had stopped, and her shakes were threatening to return. This was actually happening. She wanted to go back into the PTR real bad now.
Lieria took up nearly a fifth of the living room, both tractamorphic arms were withdrawn into large bulbs of flesh, her triangular head was swinging slightly from side to side as her huge eyes examined the room. No housechimp had been in for weeks to clean up; dust was accumulating; the door to the kitchen was open, showing worktops overflowing with empty food sachets; a loose pile of underwear decorated one corner; her desk was scattered with fleks and processor blocks. The Kiint returned her gaze to Kelly, who curled her limbs up tighter in the recliner.
“H-how did you get down here?” was all Kelly could ask.
“I took the service elevator,” Lieria datavised back. “It was very cramped.”
Kelly started. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
“Use an elevator?”
“Datavise.”
“We have some command of technology.”
“Oh. Yes. It’s just . . . skip it.” Her reporter’s training began to assert itself. A private visit from a Kiint was unheard of. “Is this confidential?”
Lieria’s breathing vents whistled heavily. “You decide, Kelly Tirrel. Do you wish your public to know what has become of you?”
Kelly stiffened her facial muscles, whether to combat tears or shame she wasn’t sure. “No.”
“I understand. Knowledge of the beyond can be disturbing.”
“How did you beat it? Tell me, please. For pity’s sake. I can’t be trapped there. I couldn’t stand it!”
“I am sorry. I cannot discuss this with you.”
Kelly’s cough had come back. She used the back of her hand to wipe her eyes dry. “What do you want, then?”
“I wish to purchase information. Your sensevises of Lalonde.”
“My . . . why?”
“They are of interest to us.”
“Sure. I’ll sell them. The price is knowing how to avoid the beyond.”
“Kelly Tirrel, you cannot buy that, the answer is inside you.”
“Stop being so fucking obtuse!” she shouted, fury surmounting her consternation of the big xenoc.
“It is the profound wish of my race that one day you will understand. I had intended that by purchasing the data directly from you the money would bring or buy you some peace of mind. If I go directly to the Collins corporation, it will become lost in their accounts. You see, we do not mean you harm. It is not our way.”
Kelly stared at the xenoc, depressed by her own incomprehension. Okay, girl, she thought, let’s try and work this one out logically. She put her medical monitor program into primary mode, and used the results to bring appropriate suppressor and stimulant programs on-line to try to stabilize body and brain. There wasn’t a great deal they could do, but at least she felt calmer and her breathing steadied. “Why do you want to buy them?”
“We have little data on humans who are possessed by returned souls. We are interested. Your visit to Lalonde is an excellent firsthand account.”
Kelly felt the first stirrings of excitement; reporter’s instinct inciting her interest. “Bullshit. That’s not what I meant. If all you wanted was information on possessed humans, you could have recorded my reports directly from Collins as soon as they were released. God knows, they’ve been repeated often enough.”
“They are not complete. Collins has edited them to provide a series of highlights. We understand their commercial reasons for doing so, but this is of no use to us. I require access to the entire recording.”
“Right,” she said with apparent gravity, as if she was giving the proposition appropriately weighty thought. An analysis program had gone primary, refining possible questions in an attempt to narrow the focus. “I can give you full access to the times I came up against the possessed, and my observations of Shaun Wallace. That’s no problem at all.”
“We require a full record from the time you arrived in the Lalonde star system until you departed. All details are of interest to us.”
“All details? I mean, this is a human sensevise, I kept the flek recording the whole time. Standard company procedure. Unfortunately, that includes time when I was visiting the little girls’ room, if you catch on.”
“Human excretion functions do not embarrass us.”
“Shall I cut the time in Lady Macbeth for you?”
“Observations and crew impressions of the reality dysfunction from orbit are an integral part of the record.”
“So, how much were you thinking of offering me for this?”
“Please name your price, Kelly Tirrel.”
“One million fuseodollars.”
“That is expensive.”
“It’s a lot of hours you’re asking for. But the offer to edit it down still stands.”
“I will pay you the required amount for a complete recording only.”
Kelly pressed her teeth together in annoyance; it wasn’t going to work, the Kiint was far too smart for verbal traps. Don’t push, she told herself, get what you can and work out the why later on. “Fair enough. Agreed.”
Lieria’s tractamorphic flesh extended out into an arm, a Jovian Bank credit disk held between white pincers.
Kelly gave it an interested glance, and rose stiffly from the recliner. Her own credit disk was somewhere on her desk. She walked over to it, all three paces, then plonked herself down in the grey office chair a little too quickly.
“I would suggest you eat something and rest properly before you return to your sensenviron,” Lieria datavised.
“Good idea. I was going to.” She froze in the act of shoving the fleks and their empty storage cases around. How the hell had the Kiint known what she’d been running? We have some command of technology. She gripped the blanket harder with one hand as the other fished her disk from under a recorder block. “Found it,” she said with forced lightness.
Lieria shunted the full amount across. The soft flesh of the pincers engulfed the Jovian Bank disk, then parted again to reveal a small dark blue processor block. It was like a conjuring trick which Kelly was in no state to unravel.
“Please insert your fleks in the block,” Lieria datavised. “It will copy the recordings.”
Kelly did as she was told.
“I thank you, Kelly Tirrel. You have contributed valuable information to our race’s store of knowledge.”
“Make the most of it,” she said grumpily. “The way you’re treating us we probably won’t be around to contribute for much longer.”
The living-room door slid open, scattering a startled crowd of StClément residents. Lieria backed out with surprising ease. When the door closed again Kelly was left by herself with the disconcerting impression that it could all very easily have been a dream. She picked up her credit disk, looking at it in wonder. One million fuseodollars.
It was the key to permanent zero-tau. Her lawyer had been negotiating with Collins to transfer her pension fund into an Edenist trust account, just like Ashly Hanson. Except she wouldn’t be coming out to take a look around every few centuries. Collins’s accountants had been reluctant.
Another problem which had sent her into the sham escape of PTR. Now all she needed to do was get to an Edenist habitat. Only their culture had a chance of holding her safe through eternity.
Although . . . that stubborn old part of her mind was asking a thousand questions. What the hell did the Kiint really want?
“Think,” she ordered herself fiercely. “Come on, damn it. Think!” Something happened on Lalonde. Something so important that a Kiint walks into my apartment and pays me a million fuseodollars for a record of it. Something we didn’t think was important or interesting, because it wasn’t released by Collins. So if it wasn’t released, how the hell did the Kiint know about it?
Logically, someone must have told them—presumably today or very recently. Someone who has reviewed the whole recording themselves, or at least more of it than Collins released.
Kelly smiled happily, an unfamiliar expression of late. And someone who must have a lot of contact with the Kiint.
Review every single conversation which the Kiint were involved in over the last week,ione said. Anything that anyone mentioned about Lalonde, anything at all, however trivial. And if you can’t find it, start going through your earlier memories.
I am already reviewing the relevant scenes. There may be a problem with going back further than four days. My short-term memory capacity is only a hundred hours; after that the details are discarded so I may retain salient information. Without this procedure even my memory would be unable to cope with events inside me.
I know that! But it has to be recent for Lieria to go visiting in the middle of the night. I don’t suppose the Kiint said anything among themselves? Grandfather’s non-intrusion agreement can hardly apply in this case.
I concur that it cannot be considered. However, I have never been able to intercept detailed affinity conversations between the adult Kiint. At best I can sometimes distinguish what I would define as a murmur.
Damn! If you can’t remember, we’ll have to haul all the Laymil project staff in and question them individually.
Not necessary. I have found it.
“Brilliant!” Show me.
The memory burst open around her. Bright light was shining down on the beach while glassy ripples lapped quietly against the shoreline. A huge sand castle stood directly in front of her. Oh, bloody hell.
Jay was woken by a hand shaking her shoulder with gentle insistence. “Mummy,” she cried fearfully. Wherever she was, it was dark, and even darker shadows loomed over her.
“Sorry, poppet,” Kelly stage-whispered. “It’s not your mum, it’s only me.”
Horror fled from the little girl’s face, and she hitched herself up in the bed, wrapping her arms around her legs. “Kelly?”
“Yep. And I am really sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you like that.”
Jay sniffed the air, highly curious now. “What’s that smell? And what time is it?”
“It’s very late. Nurse Andrews is going to kill me if I stay for more than a couple of minutes. She only let me in because she knows you and I spent all that time together on Lady Mac .”
“You haven’t visited for ages.”
“I know.” Kelly was almost crushed by the surge of emotion the girl triggered, the accusation in her tone. “I haven’t been terribly well lately. I didn’t want you to see me the way I was.”
“Are you all right now?”
“Sure. I’m on the way back.”
“Good. You promised you’d show me around the studios you work in.”
“And I’ll keep it, too. Listen, Jay, I’ve got some really important questions. They’re about you and Haile.”
“What?” she asked suspiciously.
“I need to know if you told Haile anything about Lalonde, especially in the last couple of days. It’s vital, Jay, honest. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t.”
“I know.” She screwed up her lips, thinking hard. “There was some stuff about religion this morning. Haile doesn’t understand it very well, and I’m not very good at explaining it.”
“What about religion, exactly?”
“It was how many gods there are. I’d told her about the Tyrathca’s Sleeping God temple, you know, the one you showed me, and she wanted to know if that was the same thing as Jesus.”
“Of course,” Kelly hissed. “It wasn’t human possession, it was the Tyrathca section, we never released any of that.” She leaned over and kissed Jay. “Thank you, poppet. You’ve just performed a miracle.”
“Was that all ?”
“Yeah. That was all.”
“Oh.”
“You snuggle down and get some sleep now. I’ll come visit tomorrow.” She helped pull Jay’s duvet back up and gave the girl another kiss. Jay sniffed inquisitively again, but didn’t comment.
“So?” Kelly asked softly as she walked away from the bed. “You’ve been watching, you know this must be serious. I want to talk to the Lord of Ruin.”
The pediatric ward’s net processor opened a channel to Kelly’s neural nanonics. “Ione Saldana will see you now,” Tranquillity datavised. “Please bring the relevant recordings.”
Despite being on what he considered excellent terms with the Lord of Ruin, Parker Higgens could still be chilled to the marrow when she gave him one of her expectant looks.
“But I don’t know anything about the Tyrathca, ma’am,” he complained. Being dragged out of bed straight into a highly irregular crisis conference was playing havoc with his thought processes. Accessing the sensevise recording of Coastuc-RT and seeing the strange silvery structure which the builder-caste Tyrathca had constructed in the middle of the village didn’t contribute much to his composure, either.
When he glanced at Kempster Getchell for support he saw the astronomer’s eyes were closed as he accessed the recording a second time.
“You’re the only xenoc specialists I’ve got, Parker.”
“Laymil specialists.”
“Don’t quibble. I need advice, and I need it fast. How important is this?”
“Well . . . I don’t think we knew the Tyrathca had a religion before this,” he ventured.
“We didn’t,” Kelly said. “I ran a full search program through the Collins office encyclopedia. It’s as good as any university library. There’s no reference to this Sleeping God at all.”
“And neither did the Kiint, so it would seem,” Parker said. “They actually came and woke you to ask for the recording?”
“That’s right.”
Parker was somewhat put out by the reporter’s dishevelled appearance. She sat wedged into one corner of the sofa in Ione’s private study, a thick cardigan tugged around her shoulders as if it were midwinter. For the last five minutes she had been snatching up salmon sandwiches from a large plate balanced on the sofa’s arm, pushing them forcefully into her mouth.
“Well I have to say, ma’am, that it’s a relief to find out they don’t know everything.” A housechimp silently handed him a cup of coffee.
“But is it relevant?” Ione asked. “Were they just so surprised they didn’t know about the Sleeping God myth that Lieria simply rushed over to Kelly to confirm it? Or does it have some bearing on our current situation?”
“It’s not a myth,” Kelly said around another sandwich. “That’s exactly what I said to Waboto-YAU; and it nearly set the soldiers on me for that remark. The Tyrathca believe absolutely in their Sleeping God. Crazy race.”
Parker stirred his coffee mechanically. “I’ve never known the Kiint to be excited about anything. But then I’ve never known them to be in a rush either, which they obviously were tonight. I think we should examine this Sleeping God in context. You are aware, ma’am, that the Tyrathca do not have fiction? They simply do not lie, and they have a great deal of trouble understanding human falsehoods. The nearest they ever come to lying is withholding information.”
“You mean there really is a Sleeping God?” Kelly asked.
“There has to be a core of truth behind the story,” Parker said. “They are a highly formalized clan species. Individual families maintain professions and responsibilities for generations. Sireth-AFL’s family was obviously entrusted with the knowledge of the Sleeping God. At a guess, I’d say that Sireth-AFL is a descendant of the family which used to deal with electronics while they were on their arkship.”
“Then why not just store the memory electronically?” Kelly asked.
“It probably is stored, somewhere. But Coastuc-RT is a very primitive settlement, and the Tyrathca only ever use appropriate technology. There will be Tyrathca families in that village who know exactly how to build fusion generators and computers, but they don’t actually need them yet, therefore the information isn’t used. They employ water wheels and mental arithmetic instead.”
“Weird,” Kelly said.
“No,” Parker corrected. “Merely logical. The product of a mind that is intelligent without being particularly imaginative.”
“Yet they were praying,” Ione said. “They believe in a God. That requires a leap of imagination, or at least faith.”
“I don’t think so,” Kempster Getchell said. He grinned around, clearly enjoying himself. “We’re messing about with semantics here, and an electronic translator, which is never terribly helpful, it’s too literal. Consider when this God appeared in their history. Human gods are derived from our pre-science era. There are no new religions, there haven’t been for thousands of years. Modern society is far too sceptical to allow for prophets who have personal conversations with God. We have the answer for everything these days, and if it isn’t recorded on a flek it’s a lie.
“Yet here we have the Tyrathca, who not only don’t lie, but encounter a God while they’re in a starship. They have the same intellectual analytical tools as we do, and they still call it a God. And they found it. That’s what excites me, that’s what is so important to this story. It isn’t indegenous to their planet, it isn’t ancient. One of their arkships encountered something so fearfully powerful that a race with the technology to travel between the stars calls it a God.”
“That would also mean it isn’t exclusive to them,” Parker said.
“Yes. Although, whatever it is, it was benign, or even helpful to the arkship in question. They wouldn’t consider it to be their Sleeping God otherwise.”
“Powerful enough to defend the Tyrathca from possessed humans,” Ione said. “That’s what they claimed.”
“Yes indeed. A defence mounted from several hundred light-years distant, at least.”
“What the fuck could do that?” Kelly asked.
“Kempster?” Ione prompted as the old astronomer stared away at the ceiling.
“I have absolutely no idea. Although ‘sleeping’ does imply an inert status, which can be reversed.”
“By prayer?” Parker said sceptically.
“They thought it would be able to hear them,” Kempster said. “Stronger than all living things was what that breeder said. Interesting. And that mirror-spire shape was supposed to be what it looked like. I’d like to say some kind of celestial event or object, that would fit in finding it in deep space. Unfortunately, there is no natural astronomical object which resembles that.”
“Take a guess,” Ione said icily.
“Powerful, and in space.” The astronomer’s face wrinkled up with effort. “Humm. Trouble is, we have no idea of the scale. Some kind of small nebula around a binary neutron star; or a white hole emission jet—which might account for the shape. But none of those are exactly inert.”
“Nor would they be much use against the possessed,” Parker said.
“But its existence is enough to fluster the Kiint,” Ione said. “And they can manufacture moons, plural.”
“Do you think it could help us?” Kelly asked the astronomer.
“Good point,” Kempster said. “A highly literal race thinks it can help them against the possessed. QED, it would be able to do the same thing for us. Although the actual encounter must have taken place thousands of years ago. Who knows how much the account had been distorted in that time, even by the Tyrathca? And if it was an event rather than an object, it would presumably be finished by now. After all, Confederation astronomers have catalogued our galaxy pretty thoroughly; and certainly anything odd within ten thousand light-years would be listed. Which is why I’m inclined to go for the inert object hypothesis. I must say, this is a delightful puzzle you’ve brought to us, young lady; I’d love to know what they did actually find.”
Kelly made an impatiently dismissive gesture and leaned forward. “See?” she said to Ione. “This is critical, just like I said. I’ve provided you with enough to go on. Haven’t I?”
“Yes,” Ione said with considerable asperity.
“Do I get my flight authorization?”
“What is this? What flight?” Parker asked.
“Kelly wishes to visit Jupiter,” Ione said. “To do that she needs my official authorization.”
“Do I get it?” Kelly was almost shouting.
Ione’s nose crinkled with distaste. “Yes. Now please be silent unless you have a cogent point to make.”
Kelly flung herself back into the sofa, a fearsome grin on her face.
Parker studied her for a moment, not at all liking what he found, but forwent any comment. “The evidence we have so far is depressingly small, but to my mind it does seem to indicate that the Sleeping God is something other than a natural object. Perhaps it is a functional Von Neumann machine, that would certainly have godlike abilities ascribed to it by any culture with inferior technology. Or, I regret to say, some kind of ancient weapon.”
“A manufactured artefact which can attack the possessed over interstellar space. Now that really is an unpleasant thought,” Kempster said. “Although the sleeping qualifier would admittedly be more pertinent in such a case.”
“As you say,” Ione said. “We don’t have nearly enough information to make anything other than wild guesses at this time. That must be rectified. Our real problem is that the Tyrathca have severed all contact with us. And I really don’t think we have any alternative but to ask them.”
“I would certainly advise we pursue that avenue, ma’am. The very possibility that the Sleeping God is real, and may even be able to defeat the possessed on some level, warrants further investigation. If we could . . .” His voice died away as Ione gripped the arms of her chair, blue eyes widening to express something Parker had never thought he would see there: horror.
Meredith Saldana drifted into the Arikara ’s bridge; every one of the acceleration couches in the C&C section of the bridge was occupied as his staff officers dedicated themselves to scanning and securing space around Mirchusko.