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Syrinx listened with growing incredulity as Athene explained the events which had occurred in orbit around Murora. Oh, no, fancy Edenism having to be grateful to him. And what a stupid stunt jumping inside a Lagrange point at that velocity. He could have killed everybody on board. How thoughtless.
Dear me, it must be love.
Mother!
Athene laughed in delight at being able to needle her daughter so successfully. They’d come to the first of the big lily ponds which verged one side of the garden. It was heavily shaded now; the rank of golden yews behind it had swelled considerably in the last thirty years, their boughs reaching right across the water. She looked into the black water. Bronze-coloured fish streaked for the cover of the lily pads.
You ought to get the servitor chimps to prune the yews,syrinx said. They steal too much light. There are far fewer lilies than there used to be.
Why not see what happens naturally?
It’s untidy. And a habitat isn’t natural.
You never did like losing arguments, did you?
Not at all. I’m always willing to listen to alternative viewpoints.
A burst of good-humoured scepticism filled the affinity band. Is that why you’re turning to religion all of a sudden? I always thought you would be the most susceptible.
What do you mean?
Remember when Wing-Tsit Chong called you a tourist?
Yes.
It was a polite way of saying that you lack the confidence in yourself to find your own answers to life. You are always searching, Syrinx, though you never know what for. Religion was inevitably going to exert a fascination on you. The whole concept of salvation through belief offers strength to those who doubt themselves.
There’s a big difference between religion and spirituality. That is something the Edenist culture is going to have to come to terms with; us, the habitats, and the voidhawks.
Yes, you’re uncomfortably right there. I have to admit I was rather pleased to know that Iasius and I will be reunited again, no matter how terrible the circumstances. It does make life more tolerable.
That’s one aspect. I was thinking more about transferring our memories into the habitat when we die. It forms the basis of our entire society. We never feared death as much as Adamists, which always strengthened our rationality. Now we know we’re destined to the beyond, it rather makes a mockery of the whole process. Except—
Go on.
Laton, damn him. What did he mean? Him and his great journey, and telling us that we don’t have to worry about being trapped in the beyond. And then Malva as good as confirmed he was telling the truth.
You think that’s a bad thing?
No. If we’re interpreting this properly, there is more to the beyond than eternal purgatory. That would be wondrous.
I agree.
Then why didn’t he tell us exactly what awaits? And why would it only be us who escape the entrapment, and not the Adamists?
Perhaps Malva was being more helpful than you realized when she told you the answer lies within us. If you were told, you would not have found it for yourself. You wouldn’t have known it, you would simply have been taught.
It had to be Laton, didn’t it? The one person we can never truly trust.
Even you can’t trust him?
Not even I; despite the fact I owe him my life. He’s Laton, Mother.
Perhaps that’s why he didn’t tell us. He knew we wouldn’t trust him. He did urge us to research this thoroughly.
And so far we’ve failed thoroughly.
We’ve only just started, Syrinx. And he gave us one clue, the kind of souls that have returned. You encountered them, darling, you have the most experience of them. What type are they?
Bastards. All of them.
Calm down, and tell me what they were like.
Syrinx smiled briefly at the reprimand, then gazed at the pink water lilies, trying to make herself remember Pernik. Something she still shied away from. I was being truthful. They really were bastards. I didn’t see that many. But none of them cared about me, about how much they were hurting me. It didn’t bother them, as if they were emotionally dead. I suppose being in the beyond for so long does that to them.
Not quite. Kelly Tirrel recorded a series of interviews with a possessed called Shaun Wallace. He wasn’t callous, or indifferent. If anything he seemed a rather sad individual.
Sad bastards, then.
You’re being too flippant. But consider this. How many Edenists are sad bastards?
No, Mother, I can’t accept that. You’re saying that there’s some kind of selection process involved. That something is imprisoning sinners in the beyond and letting the righteous go on this final journey into the light. That cannot be right. You’re saying there is a God. One that takes an overwhelming interest in every human being, that cares how we behave.
I suppose I am. It would certainly explain what’s happened.
No it doesn’t. Why was Laton allowed to go on the great journey?
He wasn’t. Souls and memory separate at death, remember? It was Laton’s personality operating within Pernik’s neural strata that freed you and warned us, not his soul.
Do you really believe this?
I’m not sure. As you say, a God who takes this much interest in us as individuals would be awesome.athene turned from the pool and slipped her arm through her daughter’s. I think I’ll keep hoping for another explanation.
Good!
Let’s hope you find it for me.
Me?
You’re the one gallivanting around the galaxy again. It gives you a much better chance than me.
All we’re going to do is pick up routine reports from embassies and agents about possible infiltrations by the possessed, and how local governments are coping with the problem. Tactics and politics, that’s all, not philosophy.
How very dull-sounding.she pulled syrinx a little closer, allowing the worry and concern in her mind to flow freely through affinity. Are you sure you’re going to be all right?
Yes, Mother. Oenone and the crew will take good care of me. I don’t want you to worry anymore.
When Syrinx had left to supervise the last stages of Oenone ’s refit, Athene sat in her favourite chair on the patio and attempted to involve herself in the household routine again. There were plenty of children to supervise at the moment, the adults were all away working long hours, mainly in support of the defence force. Jupiter and Saturn were both gearing up for the Mortonridge Liberation.
You shouldn’t try to hold her so tight,sinon said. It doesn’t help her confidence seeing you have so little in her.
I have every confidence,she bridled.
Then show it. Let go.
I’m too frightened.
We all are. But we should be free to face it by ourselves.
How do you feel, then, knowing your soul has gone on?
Curious.
That’s all?
Yes. I already exist in tandem with the others of the multiplicity. The beyond is not too different from that.
You hope!
One day we will know.
Let’s pray it’s later rather than sooner.
Like daughter, like mother.
I don’t think I need a priest right now. More like a stiff drink.
Sinner.he laughed.
She watched the shadows deepen under the trees as the light tube enacted a rose-gold dusk. “There can’t be a God, can there? Not really.”
He doesn’t look terribly happy,tranquillity said as prince noton stepped into one of the ten tube stations which served the hub.
Ione pivoted her perceptual viewpoint through a complete circle, as if she were walking around the Prince. She was intrigued by his air of stubborn dignity, the kind of face and body posture that indicated he knew he was old and outdated but still insisted on interpreting the universe the way he wanted to. He wore the dress uniform of a Royal Kulu Navy admiral, with five small medal pins on his chest. When he removed his cap to climb into the tube carriage there was little hair left, and that grey; a telling sign for a Saldana.
I wonder how old he is?she mused.
A hundred and seventy. He is King David’s youngest exowomb sibling. He ran the Kulu Corporation for a hundred and three years until Prince Howard took over in 2608.
How strange.her attention flicked back to the royal kulu Navy battle cruiser docked in the spaceport (the first active duty ship from the Kingdom in a hundred and seventy-nine years). A diplomatic mission of the highest urgency, its captain had said when he requested permission to approach. And Prince Noton had an entourage of five Foreign Office personnel. He’s part of the old order. We’re hardly likely to have anything in common. If Alastair wants something from me, surely someone younger would have been a better bet? Maybe even a Princess.
Possibly. Though it would be hard not to respect Prince Noton. His seniority is part of the message the King is sending.
For a moment she felt a twist of worry. I wonder. If anyone knows your true capabilities, it is my royal cousins.
I doubt he will ask anything dishonourable.
Ione had to jog down the last twenty metres of the corridor, fumbling with the seal on the side of her skirt. She had chosen a formal business suit of green tropical weave cotton and a plain blouse; smart but not imperious. Trying to impress Prince Noton with power dressing, she suspected, would be a waste of time.
The tube carriage had already arrived at the station of De Beauvoir Palace, her official residence. Two serjeants were escorting the Prince and his entourage down the long nave. Ione raced across the audience chamber in her stockinged feet, sat behind the central desk, and jammed her shoes on.
How do I look?
Beautiful.
She growled at the lack of objectivity and combed her hair back with a hand. I knew I should have had this cut.she glanced around to check the arrangements. six high-backed chairs were positioned in front of the desk. Human caterers were preparing a buffet in one of the informal reception rooms (housechimps would have been a faux pas given the Kingdom’s attitude to bitek, she felt). Change the lighting.
Half of the floor-to-ceiling panes of glass darkened; the remainder altered their diffraction angle. Ten large planes of light converged on the desk, surrounding her in a warm astral glow. Too much—oh, hell.
The doors swung open. Ione rose to her feet as Prince Noton walked across the floor.
Go around the desk to greet him. Remember you are family, and technically there has never been any rift between us and the Kingdom.
Ione did as she was told, putting on a neutral smile: one she could turn to charm or ice. It was up to him.
When she put out her hand, there was only the slightest hesitation on Prince Noton’s part. He gave her a politely formal handshake. His eyes did linger on her signet ring, though.
“Welcome to Tranquillity, Prince Noton. I’m very flattered that Alastair should honour me with an emissary of your seniority. I only wish we were meeting in happier times.”
The staff from the Foreign Office were staring ahead rigidly. If she didn’t know better she would have said they were praying.
Prince Noton took an awkwardly long time to answer. “It is a privilege to serve my King by coming here.”
Ah!“touché, cousin,” she drawled.
They locked gazes while the Foreign Office staff watched nervously.
“You had to be female, didn’t you?”
“Naturally, though it was completely random. Daddy never had any exowomb children. Our family tradition of primogeniture doesn’t apply here.”
“You hate tradition so much?”
“No, I admire a lot of tradition. I uphold a lot of tradition. What I will not tolerate is tradition for tradition’s sake.”
“Then you must be in your element. Order is falling across the Confederation.”
“That, Noton, was below the belt.”
He nodded gruffly. “Sorry. I don’t know why the King chose me for this. Never was a bloody diplomat.”
“I don’t know, I think he chose rather well, actually. Sit down, please.” She went back to her own chair. Tranquillity showed her the Foreign Office personnel exchanging relieved expressions behind her back. “So what exactly does Alastair want?”
“These fellers.” Prince Noton clicked his finger in the direction of a serjeant. “I’m supposed to ask you if we can have their DNA sequence.”
“Whatever for?”
“Ombey.”
She listened with dawning unease as Prince Noton and the Foreign Office personnel related the details of the proposed Mortonridge Liberation. Do you think this will work?
I don’t have the kind of information available to the Royal Navy, so I cannot provide an absolute. But the Royal Navy would not undertake such an action unless they were confident of the outcome.
I can’t believe this is the right way to go about saving people who have been possessed. They’re going to destroy Mortonridge, and a lot of people will get killed in the process.
Nobody ever claimed war is clean.
Then why do it?
For the overall objective, which is usually political. Certainly it is in this case.
So I can halt it then? If I refuse to give Alastair the sequence.
You can be the voice of sanity, certainly. Who would thank you?
The people who wouldn’t get killed, for a start.
Who are the people currently possessed, and would endure any sacrifice to be freed. They do not have the luxury of your academic moral choices.
That’s not fair. You can’t condemn me for wanting to prevent bloodshed.
Unless you can offer an alternative, I would recommend handing over the sequence. Even if you prevaricated, you would not halt the liberation campaign. At the most you would delay it for a few weeks while the Edenists spliced together a suitable warrior servitor.
You know damn well I don’t have any alternative.
This is politics, Ione; you cannot prevent the liberation from going ahead. By helping, you will form valuable alliances. Do not overlook that. You are pledged to defend all those who live within me. We may need help to do this.
No we don’t. You alone of all the habitats are the final sanctuary against the possessed.
Even that is not definite. Prince Noton is correct: old orders, old certainties, are falling everywhere.
What must I do, then?
You are The Lord of Ruin. Decide.
When she looked at the old Prince, his immobile face, and his impassioned thoughts, she knew there was no choice, that there never had been. The Saldanas had sworn to defend their subjects. And in return their subjects believed in them to provide that defence. Over the Kingdom’s history, hundreds of thousands had died to maintain that mutual trust.
“Of course I will provide the DNA sequence for you,” Ione said. “I only wish there was more I could do.”
With an irony Ione found almost painful, two days after Prince Noton departed for Kulu with the DNA sequence, Parker Higgens and Oski Katsura told her they had located a Laymil memory of the spaceholm suicide.
Almost all other research work on the Laymil project campus had stopped to allow staff from every division to assist in reviewing the decrypted sensorium memories. However, despite being the prime focus of activity, the Electronics Division was no busier than the last time she had visited. The decryption operation had been finalized, allowing all of the information within the Laymil electronics stack to be reformatted into a human access standard.
“It’s only the review process itself which is causing a bottleneck now,” Oski Katsura said as she ushered Ione into the hall. “We have managed to copy all of the memories in the stack, so we now have permanent access. In the end, only twelve per cent of the files were scrambled, which leaves us with eight thousand two hundred and twenty hours of recordings available. Though of course we have a team working on the lost sequences.”
The Laymil electronics stack had finally been powered down. Technicians were gathered around its transparent environment sphere, checking and disconnecting it from the conditioning units.
“What are you going to do with it?” Ione asked.
“Zero-tau,” Oski Katsura said. “Unfortunately, it is really too venerable to be put on exhibition. That is, unless you want it displayed to the public for a little while first?”
“No. This is your field, that’s why I appointed you as division chief.”
Ione saw the members of the Confederation Navy science bureau mingling with the ordinary project staff at the various research stations in the hall. It was a sign of the times that she drew no more than a few idly curious glances.
Parker Higgens, Kempster Getchell, and Lieria were standing together to watch the technicians prepare the stack for zero-tau.
“End of an era,” Kempster said as Ione joined them. He appeared oblivious to any connotations in the statement. “We can’t go on depending on stolen knowledge anymore. Much to the distress of the navy people, of course, no giant ray guns for them to play with. Looks like we’ll have to start thinking for ourselves again. Good news, eh?”
“Unless you happen to have a possessed knocking on your door,” Parker Higgens said coldly.
“My dear Parker, I do access the news studios occasionally, you know.”
“How is the search for Unimeron going?” Ione asked.
“From a technical point of view, very well,” Kempster said enthusiastically. “We’ve finished the revised design for the sensor satellite we want to use. Young Renato has taken a blackhawk down to the orbital band we intend to cover to test fly a prototype. If all goes well, the industrial stations will begin mass production next week. We can saturate the band by the end of the month. If there are any unusual energy resonances there, we ought to find them.”
It wasn’t going to be as quick as Ione had hoped for. “Excellent work,” she told the old astronomer. “Oski tells me you have found a memory of the spaceholm suicide.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Parker Higgens said.
“Did they have a weapon to use against the possessed?”
“Not a physical one, I’m happy to say. They seemed inordinately complacent about the suicide.”
“What do the navy people think?”
“They were disappointed, but they concur the spaceholm culture made no attempt to physically defeat the possessed Laymil approaching from Unimeron.”
Ione sat at an empty research station. “Very well.” Show me.
She never could get used to the illusive sensorium squeeze of emerging into a Laymil body. This time, her appropriated frame was one of the two male varieties, an egg producer. He was standing amid a group of Laymil, his current family and co-habitees, on the edge of their third marriage community. His clarion heads bugled softly, a keening joined by hundreds of throats around him. The melody was a slow one, rising and falling across the gentle grassy slope. Its echo sounded in his mind, gathered by the mother entity from every community in the spaceholm. Together they sang their lament, a plainsong in unison with the life spirit of the forests and meadows, the shoalminds of the animals, the mother entity. A chant taken up by every spaceholm as the cozened dead approached their constellation.
The aether was resonant with sadness, its weight impressing every organic cell within the spaceholm. Sunspires were dipping to their early and final dusk, draining away the joyful colours he had lived with all his life. Flowers relaxed into closure, their curling petals sighing for the loss of light, while their spirits wept for the greater loss which was to follow.
He linked arms with his mates and children, ready to share death as they shared life: together. The families linked arms. Drinking strength from the greater concord. They had become a single triangle on the valley floor. Component segments of three adults. Inside them, the children, protected, cherished. The whole, a symbol of strength and defiance. As with minds, so with bodies; as with thoughts, so with deeds.
“Join into rapture,” he instructed his children.
Their necks wove around, heads bobbing with enchanting immaturity. “Sorrow. Fear failure. Death essence triumphant.”
“Recall essencemaster teaching,” he instructed. “Laymil species must end. Knowledge brings birthright fulfillment. Eternal exaltation awaits strong. Recall knowledge. Believe knowledge.”
“Concur.”
Beyond the rim of the spaceholm constellation, the ships from Unimeron slid out of the darkness. Stars gleaming red with the terrible power of the death essence, riding bright prongs of fusion flame.
“Know truth,” the massed choir of spaceholms sang at them. “Accept knowledge gift. Embrace freedom.”
They would not. The pernicious light grew as the ships advanced, silent and deadly.
The Laymil in the spaceholms raised their heads to the vertical and bellowed a single last triumphant note. Air rippled at the sound. The sunspires went out, allowing total darkness to seize the interior.
“Recall strength,” he pleaded with his children. “Strength achievement final amity.”
“Confirm essencemaster victory.”
The spaceholm mother entity cried into the void. A pulse of love which penetrated to the core of every mind. Deep within its shell, cells ruptured and spasmed, propagating fractures clean through the polyp.
Sensation ended, but the darkness remained for a long time. Then Ione opened her eyes.
“Oh, my God. That was their only escape. They were so content about it. Every Laymil rushed into death. They never tried to outrun them; they never tried to fight them. They willfully condemned themselves to the beyond to avoid being possessed.”
“Not quite, ma’am,” Parker Higgens said. “There are some very interesting implications in those last moments. The Laymil didn’t consider they had lost. Far from it. They showed enormous resolution. We know full well how much they worship life; they would never sacrifice themselves and their children simply to inconvenience the possessed Laymil, for that is all suicide is. There are any number of options they could have explored before resorting to such an extreme measure. Yet the one whose sensorium we accessed made constant references to knowledge and truth derived from the essencemasters. That knowledge was the key to their ‘eternal exaltation.’ I suspect the essencemasters solved the nature of the beyond. Am I right, Lieria?”
“An astute deduction, Director Higgens,” the Kiint said through her processor block. “And one which confirms the statement Ambassador Roulor made to your Assembly. For each race, the solution is unique. Surely you do not anticipate suicide as the answer for the problems facing humankind?”
Parker Higgens faced the big xenoc, his anger visible. “It was more than suicide. It was a victory. They won. Whatever the knowledge was they carried with them, it meant they were no longer afraid of the beyond.”
“Yes.”
“And you know what it was.”
“You have our sympathy, and whatever support we can provide.”
“Damn it! How dare you study us like this. We are not laboratory creatures. We are sentient entities, we have feelings, we have fears. Have you no ethics?”
Ione stood behind the trembling director and laid a cautionary hand on his shoulder.
“I am well aware of what you are, Director Higgens,” Lieria said. “And I am empathic to your distress. But I must repeat, the answer to your problem lies within you, not us.”
“Thank you, Parker,” Ione said. “I think we’re all quite clear now on where we stand.”
The director gave a furious wave of his hand and walked away.
I apologize for his temper,ione told the kiint. But as I’m sure you know, this terrifies us all. It is frustrating for us to know you have a solution, even though it cannot apply to us.
Justly so, Ione Saldana. And I do understand. History records our race was in turmoil when we first discovered the beyond.
You give me hope, Lieria. Your existence is proof that satisfactory solutions can be found for a sentient race, something other than genocidal suicide. That inspires me to keep searching for our own answer.
If it is of any comfort, the Kiint are praying humans succeed.
Why, thank you.
Erick was woken by his neural nanonics. He had routinely set up programs to monitor his immediate environment, physical and electronic, alert for anything which fell outside nominal parameters.
As he sat up in the darkened office, his neural nanonics reported an outbreak of abnormal fluctuations in Ethenthia’s power supply systems. When he datavised a query at the supervisor programs, it turned out that no one in the asteroid’s civil engineering service was even examining the problem. A further review showed that fifteen per cent of the habitation section’s lifts appeared to be inoperative. The number of datavises into the net was also reducing.
“Oh, dear God. Not here, too!” He swung his legs off the settee. A wave of nausea twisted along his spine. Medical programs sent out several caution warnings; the team Emonn Verona promised hadn’t been to see him yet.
When he datavised the lieutenant commander’s eddress to the office’s net processor there was no response. “Bloody hell.” Erick pulled on his ship-suit, easing it over his medical packages. There were two ratings standing guard outside the office; both armed with TIP carbines. They came to attention as soon as the door opened.
“Where’s the lieutenant commander?” Erick asked.
“Sir, he said he was going to the hospital, sir.”
“Bugger. Right, you two come with me. We’re getting off this asteroid, right away.”
“Sir?”
“That was an order, mister. But in case you need an incentive, the possessed are here.”
The two of them swapped a worried glance. “Aye, sir.”
Erick started accessing schematics of the asteroid as they went through the Navy Bureau and out into the public hall. He followed that up by requesting a list of starships currently docked at the spaceport. There were only five; one of which was the Villeneuve’s Revenge , which cut his options down to four.
His neural nanonics designed a route to the axial chamber which didn’t use any form of powered transportation. Seven hundred metres, two hundred of which were stairs. But at least the gravity would be falling off.
They went in single file, with Erick in the centre. He ordered both ratings to put their combat programs into primary mode. People turned to stare as they marched down the middle of the public hall.
Six hundred metres to go. And the first stairwell was directly ahead. The hall’s light panels started dimming.
“Run,” Erick said.
Kingsley Pryor’s cell measured five metres by five. It had one bunk, one toilet, and one washbasin; there was a small AV lens on the wall opposite the bed, accessing one local media company. Every surface—fittings, floor, walls—was the same blue-grey lofriction composite. It was fully screened, preventing any datavises.
For the last hour the light panel on the ceiling had been flickering. At first, Kingsley had thought the police were doing it to irritate him. They had been almost fearful as they escorted him from the Villeneuve’s Revenge with a Confederation Navy officer. A member of the Capone Organization. It was only to be expected that they would try to re-establish their superiority with such sad psychology, demonstrating who was in control. But the shifts of illumination had been too fitful for any determined effort. The AV images were also fragmenting, but not at the same time as the light. Then he found the call button produced no response.
Kingsley realized what was happening, and sat patiently on his bunk. Quarter of an hour later the humming sound from the conditioning grille fan faded away. Nothing he could do about it. Twice in the next thirty minutes the fan started up again briefly, once to blow in air which stank of sewage. Then the light panel went out permanently. Still Kingsley sat quietly.
When the door did finally open, it shone a fan of light directly across him, highlighting his almost prim posture. A werewolf crouched in the doorway, blood dripping from its fangs.
“Very original,” Kingsley said.
There was a confused puppylike yap from the creature.
“I really must insist you don’t come any closer. Both of us will wind up in the beyond if you do. And you’ve only just got here, haven’t you?”
The werewolf outline shimmered away to reveal a man wearing a police uniform. Kingsley recognized him as one of his escorts. There was a nasty pink scar on his forehead which hadn’t been there before.
“What are you talking about?” the possessed man asked.
“I am going to explain our situation to you, and I want you to observe my thoughts so that you know I’m telling the truth. And after that, you and your new friends are going to let me go. In fact, you’re going to give me every assistance I require.”
A hundred and fifty metres to the axial chamber. They were almost at the top of the last flight of stairs when the well’s lights went out. Erick’s enhanced retinas automatically switched to infrared. “They’re close,” he shouted in warning.
A narrow flare of white fire fountained up the centre of the stairwell, arching around to burst over the rating behind him. He grunted in pain and swung around, firing his TIP carbine at the base of the streamer. Purple sparks bounced out of the impact point.
“Help me,” he cried. A smear of white fire was cloaking his entire shoulder. Terror and panic were negating all the suppression programs which his neural nanonics had doused his brain with. He stopped firing to flail at the fire with his free hand.
The other rating slithered past Erick to fire back down the stairs. A flat circle of brilliant emerald light sprang over the floor of the stairwell, then started to rise as if it were a fluid. The flare of white fire withdrew below its surface. Shadows were just visible beneath it, darting about sinuously.
The burned rating had collapsed onto the stairs. His partner was still shooting wildly down into the advancing cascade of light. The TIP pulses were turning to silver spears as they penetrated the surface, trailing bubbles of darkness.
The next door was eight metres above Erick. The ratings would never last against the possessed, he knew, a few seconds at best. That few seconds might enable him to escape. The information he had was vital , it had to get to Trafalgar. Millions of innocents depended on it, on him. Millions. Against two.
Erick turned and flung himself up the last few steps. In his ears he could hear a voice shouting: “. . . two of my crew are dead. Fried! Tina was fifteen years old!”
He barged through the door, ten per cent gravity projecting him in a long flat arc above the corridor floor, threatening to crack his head against the ceiling. The persecuting noises and fog of green light shut off as the door slid shut behind him. He touched down, and powered himself in another long leap forwards along the corridor. Neural nanonics outlined his route for him as if it were a starship vector plot; a tube of orange neon triangles that flashed past. Turning right. Right again. Left.
Gravity had become negligible when he heard the scream ahead of him. Fifteen metres to the axial chamber. That was all; fifteen bloody metres! And the possessed were ahead of him. Erick snatched at a grab hoop to halt his forwards flight. He didn’t have any weapons. He didn’t have any backup. He didn’t even have Madeleine and Desmond to call on, not anymore.
More screams and pleas were trickling down the corridor from the axial chamber as the possessed chased down their victims. It wouldn’t be long before one of them checked this corridor.
I have to get past. Have to!
He called up the schematic again, studying the area around the axial chamber. Twenty seconds later, and he was at the airlock hatch.
It was a big airlock, used to service the spaceport spindle. The prep room which led to it had dozens of lockers, all the equipment and support systems required to maintain space hardware, even five deactivated free-flying mechanoids.
Erick put his decryption program into primary mode and set it to work cracking the first locker’s code. He stripped off his ship-suit as the lockers popped open one after the other. Physiological monitor programs confirmed everything he saw as the fabric parted. Pale fluid tinged with blood was leaking out of his medical nanonic packages where the edges were peeling from his flesh; a number of red LEDs on the ancillary modules were flashing to indicate system malfunctions. His new arm was only moving because of the reinforced impulses controlling the muscles.
But he still functioned. That was all that mattered.
It was the fifth locker which contained ten SII spacesuits. As soon as his body was sealed against the vacuum he hurried into the airlock, carrying a manoeuvring pack. He didn’t bother with the normal cycle, instead he tripped the emergency vent. Air rushed out. The outer hatch irised apart as he secured himself into the manoeuvring pack. Then the punchy gas jets fired, sending him wobbling past the hatch rim and out into space.
André hated the idea of Shane Brandes even being inside the Villeneuve’s Revenge . And as for the man actually helping repair and reassemble the starship’s systems . . . merde. But as with most events in André’s life these days, he didn’t have a lot of choice. Since the showdown with Erick, Madeleine had retreated into her cabin and refused to respond to any entreaties. Desmond, at least, performed the tasks requested of him, though not with any obvious enthusiasm. And, insultingly, he would only work alone.
That just left Shane Brandes to help André with the jobs that needed more than one pair of hands. The Dechal ’s ex-fusion engineer was anxious to please. He swore he had no allegiance to his previous captain, and harboured no grudges or ill will towards the crew of the Villeneuve’s Revenge . He was also prepared to work for little more than beer money, and he was a grade two technician. One could not afford to overlook gift horses.
André was re-installing the main power duct in the wall of the lower deck lounge, which required Shane to feed the cable to him when instructed. Someone glided silently through the ceiling hatch, blocking the beam from the bank of temporary lights André had rigged up. André couldn’t see what he was doing. “Desmond! Why must . . .” He gasped in shock. “You!”
“Hello again, Captain,” Kingsley Pryor said.
“What are you doing here? How did you get out of prison?”
“They set me free.”
“Who?”
“The possessed.”
“Non,” André whispered.
“Unfortunately so. Ethenthia has fallen.”
The anti-torque tool André was holding seemed such a pitiful weapon. “Are you one of them now? You will never have my ship. I will overload the fusion generators.”
“I’d really rather you didn’t,” Pryor datavised. “As you can see, I haven’t been possessed.”
“How? They take everybody, women, children.”
“I am one of Capone’s liaison officers. Even here, that carries enormous weight.”
“And they let you go?”
“Yes.”
A heavy dread settled in André’s brain. “Where are they? Are they coming?” He datavised the flight computer to review the internal sensors (those remaining—curse it). As yet no systems were glitching.
“No,” Pryor said. “They won’t come into the Villeneuve’s Revenge . Not unless I tell them to.”
“Why are you doing this?” As if I didn’t know.
“Because I want you to fly me away from here.”
“And they’ll let us all go, just like that?”
“As I said, Capone has a lot of influence.”
“What makes you think I will take you? You blackmailed me before. It will be simple to throw you out of the airlock once we are free of Ethenthia.”
Pryor smiled a dead man’s smile. “You’ve always done exactly as I wanted, Duchamp. You were always supposed to break away from Kursk.”
“Liar.”
“I have been given other, more important objectives than ensuring a third-rate ship with its fifth-rate crew stay loyal to the Organization. You have never had any free will since you arrived in the New California system. You still don’t. After all, you don’t really think there was only one bomb planted on board, do you?”
Erick watched the Villeneuve’s Revenge lift from its cradle. The starship’s thermo-dump panels extended, ion thrusters took over from the verniers. It rose unhurriedly from the spaceport. When he switched his collar sensors to high resolution he could see the black hexagon on the fuselage where plate 8-92-K was missing.
He didn’t understand it, Duchamp was making no attempt to flee. It was almost as if he was obeying traffic control, departing calmly along an assigned vector. Had the crew been possessed? Small loss to the Confederation.
His collar sensors refocused on the docking bay he was approaching, a dark circular recess in the spaceport’s gridiron exterior. It was a maintenance bay, twice as wide as an ordinary bay. The clipper-class starship, Tigara , which sat on the docking cradle seemed unusually small in such surroundings.
Erick fired his manoeuvring pack jets to take him down towards the Tigara. There were no lights on in the bay; all the gantries and multi-segment arms were folded back against the walls. Utility umbilicals were jacked in, and an airlock tube had mated with the starship’s fuselage; but apart from that there was no sign of any activity.
The silicon hull showed signs of long-term vacuum exposure—faded lettering, micrometeorite impact scuffs, surface layer ablation stains—all indicating hull plates long overdue for replacement. He drifted over the blurred hexagons until he was above the EVA airlock, and datavised the hatch control processor to cycle and open. If anyone was on board, they would know about him now. But there were no datavised questions, no active sensor sweeps.
The hatch slid open, and Erick glided inside.
Clipper-class starships were designed to provide a speedy service between star systems, carrying small high-value cargoes. Consequently, as much of their internal volume as possible was given over to cargo space. There was only one life-support capsule, which accommodated an optimum crew of three. That was the principal reason Erick had chosen the Tigara. In theory, he would be able to fly it solo.
Most of the starship systems were powered down. He kept his SII suit on as he moved through the two darkened lower decks to the bridge. As soon as he was secured in the captain’s acceleration couch he accessed the flight computer and ordered a full status review.
It could have been a lot better. Tigara was in the maintenance bay for a complete refit. One of the fusion generators was inoperative, two energy patterning nodes were dead, heat exchangers were operating dangerously short of required levels, innumerable failsoft components had been allowed to decay below their safety margins.
None of the maintenance work had even been started. The owners hadn’t been prepared to commit that much money while the quarantine was in force.
Dear Lord, Erick thought, the Villeneuve’s Revenge was in better condition than this.
He datavised the flight computer to disengage the bay’s airlock tube, then initiated a flight prep procedure. The Tigara took a long time to come on-line. At every stage he had to order backup sequences to take over, or override safety programs, or re-route power supplies. He didn’t even bother with the life-support functions, all he wanted was power in the energy patterning nodes and secondary drive tubes.
With a fusion generator active, he ordered some sensor clusters to deploy. An image of the bay filled his mind, overlaid with fragile status graphics. He scanned the electromagnetic spectrum for any traffic, but there was only the background hash of cosmic radiation. Nobody was saying anything to anybody. What he wanted was someone asking Ethenthia what was happening, why they’d gone off the air. A ship close by that could help.
Nothing.
Erick fired the emergency release pins which the docking cradle’s load clamps were gripping. Verniers sent out a hot deluge of gas which shimmered across the bay’s walls, shaking loose blankets of thermal insulation from the gantries. Tigara rose a metre off its cradle, straining at the nest of umbilical hoses jacked into its rear fuselage. The snapfree couplings began to break, sending the hoses writhing.
The starship was low on cryogenic fuel; he couldn’t afford to waste delta-V reserve aligning himself on an ideal vector. The astrogration program produced a series of options for him.
None of them were what he’d been hoping for. So what else was new?
The last of the umbilicals broke, and the Tigara lurched up out of the bay. Erick ordered the flight computer to extend the communications array and align it on Golmo and the Edenist habitats orbiting there. Sensor clusters began to sink down into their recesses as energy poured into the patterning nodes.
The flight computer alerted him that an SD platform was sweeping the ship with its radar. Then it relayed a signal from traffic control into his neural nanonics.
“Is that you, Erick? We think it’s you. Who else is this stupidly ballsy? This is Emonn Verona, Erick, and I’m asking you: Don’t do it. That ship is completely fucked; I’ve got the CAB logs in front of me. It can’t fly. You’re only going to hurt yourself, or worse.”
Erick transmitted a single message to Golmo, then retracted the communications array down into its jump configuration. The SD platform had locked on. Some of the patterning nodes were producing very strange readings in the prejump diagnostic run-through. CAB monitor programs flashed up jump proscription warnings. He switched them off.
“Game over, Erick. Either return to the docking bay or you join our comrades in the beyond. You don’t want that. Where there’s life, there’s hope. Right? Of all people, you must believe that.”
Erick ordered the flight computer to activate the jump sequence.
Chapter 06
Dear me, it must be love.
Mother!
Athene laughed in delight at being able to needle her daughter so successfully. They’d come to the first of the big lily ponds which verged one side of the garden. It was heavily shaded now; the rank of golden yews behind it had swelled considerably in the last thirty years, their boughs reaching right across the water. She looked into the black water. Bronze-coloured fish streaked for the cover of the lily pads.
You ought to get the servitor chimps to prune the yews,syrinx said. They steal too much light. There are far fewer lilies than there used to be.
Why not see what happens naturally?
It’s untidy. And a habitat isn’t natural.
You never did like losing arguments, did you?
Not at all. I’m always willing to listen to alternative viewpoints.
A burst of good-humoured scepticism filled the affinity band. Is that why you’re turning to religion all of a sudden? I always thought you would be the most susceptible.
What do you mean?
Remember when Wing-Tsit Chong called you a tourist?
Yes.
It was a polite way of saying that you lack the confidence in yourself to find your own answers to life. You are always searching, Syrinx, though you never know what for. Religion was inevitably going to exert a fascination on you. The whole concept of salvation through belief offers strength to those who doubt themselves.
There’s a big difference between religion and spirituality. That is something the Edenist culture is going to have to come to terms with; us, the habitats, and the voidhawks.
Yes, you’re uncomfortably right there. I have to admit I was rather pleased to know that Iasius and I will be reunited again, no matter how terrible the circumstances. It does make life more tolerable.
That’s one aspect. I was thinking more about transferring our memories into the habitat when we die. It forms the basis of our entire society. We never feared death as much as Adamists, which always strengthened our rationality. Now we know we’re destined to the beyond, it rather makes a mockery of the whole process. Except—
Go on.
Laton, damn him. What did he mean? Him and his great journey, and telling us that we don’t have to worry about being trapped in the beyond. And then Malva as good as confirmed he was telling the truth.
You think that’s a bad thing?
No. If we’re interpreting this properly, there is more to the beyond than eternal purgatory. That would be wondrous.
I agree.
Then why didn’t he tell us exactly what awaits? And why would it only be us who escape the entrapment, and not the Adamists?
Perhaps Malva was being more helpful than you realized when she told you the answer lies within us. If you were told, you would not have found it for yourself. You wouldn’t have known it, you would simply have been taught.
It had to be Laton, didn’t it? The one person we can never truly trust.
Even you can’t trust him?
Not even I; despite the fact I owe him my life. He’s Laton, Mother.
Perhaps that’s why he didn’t tell us. He knew we wouldn’t trust him. He did urge us to research this thoroughly.
And so far we’ve failed thoroughly.
We’ve only just started, Syrinx. And he gave us one clue, the kind of souls that have returned. You encountered them, darling, you have the most experience of them. What type are they?
Bastards. All of them.
Calm down, and tell me what they were like.
Syrinx smiled briefly at the reprimand, then gazed at the pink water lilies, trying to make herself remember Pernik. Something she still shied away from. I was being truthful. They really were bastards. I didn’t see that many. But none of them cared about me, about how much they were hurting me. It didn’t bother them, as if they were emotionally dead. I suppose being in the beyond for so long does that to them.
Not quite. Kelly Tirrel recorded a series of interviews with a possessed called Shaun Wallace. He wasn’t callous, or indifferent. If anything he seemed a rather sad individual.
Sad bastards, then.
You’re being too flippant. But consider this. How many Edenists are sad bastards?
No, Mother, I can’t accept that. You’re saying that there’s some kind of selection process involved. That something is imprisoning sinners in the beyond and letting the righteous go on this final journey into the light. That cannot be right. You’re saying there is a God. One that takes an overwhelming interest in every human being, that cares how we behave.
I suppose I am. It would certainly explain what’s happened.
No it doesn’t. Why was Laton allowed to go on the great journey?
He wasn’t. Souls and memory separate at death, remember? It was Laton’s personality operating within Pernik’s neural strata that freed you and warned us, not his soul.
Do you really believe this?
I’m not sure. As you say, a God who takes this much interest in us as individuals would be awesome.athene turned from the pool and slipped her arm through her daughter’s. I think I’ll keep hoping for another explanation.
Good!
Let’s hope you find it for me.
Me?
You’re the one gallivanting around the galaxy again. It gives you a much better chance than me.
All we’re going to do is pick up routine reports from embassies and agents about possible infiltrations by the possessed, and how local governments are coping with the problem. Tactics and politics, that’s all, not philosophy.
How very dull-sounding.she pulled syrinx a little closer, allowing the worry and concern in her mind to flow freely through affinity. Are you sure you’re going to be all right?
Yes, Mother. Oenone and the crew will take good care of me. I don’t want you to worry anymore.
When Syrinx had left to supervise the last stages of Oenone ’s refit, Athene sat in her favourite chair on the patio and attempted to involve herself in the household routine again. There were plenty of children to supervise at the moment, the adults were all away working long hours, mainly in support of the defence force. Jupiter and Saturn were both gearing up for the Mortonridge Liberation.
You shouldn’t try to hold her so tight,sinon said. It doesn’t help her confidence seeing you have so little in her.
I have every confidence,she bridled.
Then show it. Let go.
I’m too frightened.
We all are. But we should be free to face it by ourselves.
How do you feel, then, knowing your soul has gone on?
Curious.
That’s all?
Yes. I already exist in tandem with the others of the multiplicity. The beyond is not too different from that.
You hope!
One day we will know.
Let’s pray it’s later rather than sooner.
Like daughter, like mother.
I don’t think I need a priest right now. More like a stiff drink.
Sinner.he laughed.
She watched the shadows deepen under the trees as the light tube enacted a rose-gold dusk. “There can’t be a God, can there? Not really.”
He doesn’t look terribly happy,tranquillity said as prince noton stepped into one of the ten tube stations which served the hub.
Ione pivoted her perceptual viewpoint through a complete circle, as if she were walking around the Prince. She was intrigued by his air of stubborn dignity, the kind of face and body posture that indicated he knew he was old and outdated but still insisted on interpreting the universe the way he wanted to. He wore the dress uniform of a Royal Kulu Navy admiral, with five small medal pins on his chest. When he removed his cap to climb into the tube carriage there was little hair left, and that grey; a telling sign for a Saldana.
I wonder how old he is?she mused.
A hundred and seventy. He is King David’s youngest exowomb sibling. He ran the Kulu Corporation for a hundred and three years until Prince Howard took over in 2608.
How strange.her attention flicked back to the royal kulu Navy battle cruiser docked in the spaceport (the first active duty ship from the Kingdom in a hundred and seventy-nine years). A diplomatic mission of the highest urgency, its captain had said when he requested permission to approach. And Prince Noton had an entourage of five Foreign Office personnel. He’s part of the old order. We’re hardly likely to have anything in common. If Alastair wants something from me, surely someone younger would have been a better bet? Maybe even a Princess.
Possibly. Though it would be hard not to respect Prince Noton. His seniority is part of the message the King is sending.
For a moment she felt a twist of worry. I wonder. If anyone knows your true capabilities, it is my royal cousins.
I doubt he will ask anything dishonourable.
Ione had to jog down the last twenty metres of the corridor, fumbling with the seal on the side of her skirt. She had chosen a formal business suit of green tropical weave cotton and a plain blouse; smart but not imperious. Trying to impress Prince Noton with power dressing, she suspected, would be a waste of time.
The tube carriage had already arrived at the station of De Beauvoir Palace, her official residence. Two serjeants were escorting the Prince and his entourage down the long nave. Ione raced across the audience chamber in her stockinged feet, sat behind the central desk, and jammed her shoes on.
How do I look?
Beautiful.
She growled at the lack of objectivity and combed her hair back with a hand. I knew I should have had this cut.she glanced around to check the arrangements. six high-backed chairs were positioned in front of the desk. Human caterers were preparing a buffet in one of the informal reception rooms (housechimps would have been a faux pas given the Kingdom’s attitude to bitek, she felt). Change the lighting.
Half of the floor-to-ceiling panes of glass darkened; the remainder altered their diffraction angle. Ten large planes of light converged on the desk, surrounding her in a warm astral glow. Too much—oh, hell.
The doors swung open. Ione rose to her feet as Prince Noton walked across the floor.
Go around the desk to greet him. Remember you are family, and technically there has never been any rift between us and the Kingdom.
Ione did as she was told, putting on a neutral smile: one she could turn to charm or ice. It was up to him.
When she put out her hand, there was only the slightest hesitation on Prince Noton’s part. He gave her a politely formal handshake. His eyes did linger on her signet ring, though.
“Welcome to Tranquillity, Prince Noton. I’m very flattered that Alastair should honour me with an emissary of your seniority. I only wish we were meeting in happier times.”
The staff from the Foreign Office were staring ahead rigidly. If she didn’t know better she would have said they were praying.
Prince Noton took an awkwardly long time to answer. “It is a privilege to serve my King by coming here.”
Ah!“touché, cousin,” she drawled.
They locked gazes while the Foreign Office staff watched nervously.
“You had to be female, didn’t you?”
“Naturally, though it was completely random. Daddy never had any exowomb children. Our family tradition of primogeniture doesn’t apply here.”
“You hate tradition so much?”
“No, I admire a lot of tradition. I uphold a lot of tradition. What I will not tolerate is tradition for tradition’s sake.”
“Then you must be in your element. Order is falling across the Confederation.”
“That, Noton, was below the belt.”
He nodded gruffly. “Sorry. I don’t know why the King chose me for this. Never was a bloody diplomat.”
“I don’t know, I think he chose rather well, actually. Sit down, please.” She went back to her own chair. Tranquillity showed her the Foreign Office personnel exchanging relieved expressions behind her back. “So what exactly does Alastair want?”
“These fellers.” Prince Noton clicked his finger in the direction of a serjeant. “I’m supposed to ask you if we can have their DNA sequence.”
“Whatever for?”
“Ombey.”
She listened with dawning unease as Prince Noton and the Foreign Office personnel related the details of the proposed Mortonridge Liberation. Do you think this will work?
I don’t have the kind of information available to the Royal Navy, so I cannot provide an absolute. But the Royal Navy would not undertake such an action unless they were confident of the outcome.
I can’t believe this is the right way to go about saving people who have been possessed. They’re going to destroy Mortonridge, and a lot of people will get killed in the process.
Nobody ever claimed war is clean.
Then why do it?
For the overall objective, which is usually political. Certainly it is in this case.
So I can halt it then? If I refuse to give Alastair the sequence.
You can be the voice of sanity, certainly. Who would thank you?
The people who wouldn’t get killed, for a start.
Who are the people currently possessed, and would endure any sacrifice to be freed. They do not have the luxury of your academic moral choices.
That’s not fair. You can’t condemn me for wanting to prevent bloodshed.
Unless you can offer an alternative, I would recommend handing over the sequence. Even if you prevaricated, you would not halt the liberation campaign. At the most you would delay it for a few weeks while the Edenists spliced together a suitable warrior servitor.
You know damn well I don’t have any alternative.
This is politics, Ione; you cannot prevent the liberation from going ahead. By helping, you will form valuable alliances. Do not overlook that. You are pledged to defend all those who live within me. We may need help to do this.
No we don’t. You alone of all the habitats are the final sanctuary against the possessed.
Even that is not definite. Prince Noton is correct: old orders, old certainties, are falling everywhere.
What must I do, then?
You are The Lord of Ruin. Decide.
When she looked at the old Prince, his immobile face, and his impassioned thoughts, she knew there was no choice, that there never had been. The Saldanas had sworn to defend their subjects. And in return their subjects believed in them to provide that defence. Over the Kingdom’s history, hundreds of thousands had died to maintain that mutual trust.
“Of course I will provide the DNA sequence for you,” Ione said. “I only wish there was more I could do.”
With an irony Ione found almost painful, two days after Prince Noton departed for Kulu with the DNA sequence, Parker Higgens and Oski Katsura told her they had located a Laymil memory of the spaceholm suicide.
Almost all other research work on the Laymil project campus had stopped to allow staff from every division to assist in reviewing the decrypted sensorium memories. However, despite being the prime focus of activity, the Electronics Division was no busier than the last time she had visited. The decryption operation had been finalized, allowing all of the information within the Laymil electronics stack to be reformatted into a human access standard.
“It’s only the review process itself which is causing a bottleneck now,” Oski Katsura said as she ushered Ione into the hall. “We have managed to copy all of the memories in the stack, so we now have permanent access. In the end, only twelve per cent of the files were scrambled, which leaves us with eight thousand two hundred and twenty hours of recordings available. Though of course we have a team working on the lost sequences.”
The Laymil electronics stack had finally been powered down. Technicians were gathered around its transparent environment sphere, checking and disconnecting it from the conditioning units.
“What are you going to do with it?” Ione asked.
“Zero-tau,” Oski Katsura said. “Unfortunately, it is really too venerable to be put on exhibition. That is, unless you want it displayed to the public for a little while first?”
“No. This is your field, that’s why I appointed you as division chief.”
Ione saw the members of the Confederation Navy science bureau mingling with the ordinary project staff at the various research stations in the hall. It was a sign of the times that she drew no more than a few idly curious glances.
Parker Higgens, Kempster Getchell, and Lieria were standing together to watch the technicians prepare the stack for zero-tau.
“End of an era,” Kempster said as Ione joined them. He appeared oblivious to any connotations in the statement. “We can’t go on depending on stolen knowledge anymore. Much to the distress of the navy people, of course, no giant ray guns for them to play with. Looks like we’ll have to start thinking for ourselves again. Good news, eh?”
“Unless you happen to have a possessed knocking on your door,” Parker Higgens said coldly.
“My dear Parker, I do access the news studios occasionally, you know.”
“How is the search for Unimeron going?” Ione asked.
“From a technical point of view, very well,” Kempster said enthusiastically. “We’ve finished the revised design for the sensor satellite we want to use. Young Renato has taken a blackhawk down to the orbital band we intend to cover to test fly a prototype. If all goes well, the industrial stations will begin mass production next week. We can saturate the band by the end of the month. If there are any unusual energy resonances there, we ought to find them.”
It wasn’t going to be as quick as Ione had hoped for. “Excellent work,” she told the old astronomer. “Oski tells me you have found a memory of the spaceholm suicide.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Parker Higgens said.
“Did they have a weapon to use against the possessed?”
“Not a physical one, I’m happy to say. They seemed inordinately complacent about the suicide.”
“What do the navy people think?”
“They were disappointed, but they concur the spaceholm culture made no attempt to physically defeat the possessed Laymil approaching from Unimeron.”
Ione sat at an empty research station. “Very well.” Show me.
She never could get used to the illusive sensorium squeeze of emerging into a Laymil body. This time, her appropriated frame was one of the two male varieties, an egg producer. He was standing amid a group of Laymil, his current family and co-habitees, on the edge of their third marriage community. His clarion heads bugled softly, a keening joined by hundreds of throats around him. The melody was a slow one, rising and falling across the gentle grassy slope. Its echo sounded in his mind, gathered by the mother entity from every community in the spaceholm. Together they sang their lament, a plainsong in unison with the life spirit of the forests and meadows, the shoalminds of the animals, the mother entity. A chant taken up by every spaceholm as the cozened dead approached their constellation.
The aether was resonant with sadness, its weight impressing every organic cell within the spaceholm. Sunspires were dipping to their early and final dusk, draining away the joyful colours he had lived with all his life. Flowers relaxed into closure, their curling petals sighing for the loss of light, while their spirits wept for the greater loss which was to follow.
He linked arms with his mates and children, ready to share death as they shared life: together. The families linked arms. Drinking strength from the greater concord. They had become a single triangle on the valley floor. Component segments of three adults. Inside them, the children, protected, cherished. The whole, a symbol of strength and defiance. As with minds, so with bodies; as with thoughts, so with deeds.
“Join into rapture,” he instructed his children.
Their necks wove around, heads bobbing with enchanting immaturity. “Sorrow. Fear failure. Death essence triumphant.”
“Recall essencemaster teaching,” he instructed. “Laymil species must end. Knowledge brings birthright fulfillment. Eternal exaltation awaits strong. Recall knowledge. Believe knowledge.”
“Concur.”
Beyond the rim of the spaceholm constellation, the ships from Unimeron slid out of the darkness. Stars gleaming red with the terrible power of the death essence, riding bright prongs of fusion flame.
“Know truth,” the massed choir of spaceholms sang at them. “Accept knowledge gift. Embrace freedom.”
They would not. The pernicious light grew as the ships advanced, silent and deadly.
The Laymil in the spaceholms raised their heads to the vertical and bellowed a single last triumphant note. Air rippled at the sound. The sunspires went out, allowing total darkness to seize the interior.
“Recall strength,” he pleaded with his children. “Strength achievement final amity.”
“Confirm essencemaster victory.”
The spaceholm mother entity cried into the void. A pulse of love which penetrated to the core of every mind. Deep within its shell, cells ruptured and spasmed, propagating fractures clean through the polyp.
Sensation ended, but the darkness remained for a long time. Then Ione opened her eyes.
“Oh, my God. That was their only escape. They were so content about it. Every Laymil rushed into death. They never tried to outrun them; they never tried to fight them. They willfully condemned themselves to the beyond to avoid being possessed.”
“Not quite, ma’am,” Parker Higgens said. “There are some very interesting implications in those last moments. The Laymil didn’t consider they had lost. Far from it. They showed enormous resolution. We know full well how much they worship life; they would never sacrifice themselves and their children simply to inconvenience the possessed Laymil, for that is all suicide is. There are any number of options they could have explored before resorting to such an extreme measure. Yet the one whose sensorium we accessed made constant references to knowledge and truth derived from the essencemasters. That knowledge was the key to their ‘eternal exaltation.’ I suspect the essencemasters solved the nature of the beyond. Am I right, Lieria?”
“An astute deduction, Director Higgens,” the Kiint said through her processor block. “And one which confirms the statement Ambassador Roulor made to your Assembly. For each race, the solution is unique. Surely you do not anticipate suicide as the answer for the problems facing humankind?”
Parker Higgens faced the big xenoc, his anger visible. “It was more than suicide. It was a victory. They won. Whatever the knowledge was they carried with them, it meant they were no longer afraid of the beyond.”
“Yes.”
“And you know what it was.”
“You have our sympathy, and whatever support we can provide.”
“Damn it! How dare you study us like this. We are not laboratory creatures. We are sentient entities, we have feelings, we have fears. Have you no ethics?”
Ione stood behind the trembling director and laid a cautionary hand on his shoulder.
“I am well aware of what you are, Director Higgens,” Lieria said. “And I am empathic to your distress. But I must repeat, the answer to your problem lies within you, not us.”
“Thank you, Parker,” Ione said. “I think we’re all quite clear now on where we stand.”
The director gave a furious wave of his hand and walked away.
I apologize for his temper,ione told the kiint. But as I’m sure you know, this terrifies us all. It is frustrating for us to know you have a solution, even though it cannot apply to us.
Justly so, Ione Saldana. And I do understand. History records our race was in turmoil when we first discovered the beyond.
You give me hope, Lieria. Your existence is proof that satisfactory solutions can be found for a sentient race, something other than genocidal suicide. That inspires me to keep searching for our own answer.
If it is of any comfort, the Kiint are praying humans succeed.
Why, thank you.
Erick was woken by his neural nanonics. He had routinely set up programs to monitor his immediate environment, physical and electronic, alert for anything which fell outside nominal parameters.
As he sat up in the darkened office, his neural nanonics reported an outbreak of abnormal fluctuations in Ethenthia’s power supply systems. When he datavised a query at the supervisor programs, it turned out that no one in the asteroid’s civil engineering service was even examining the problem. A further review showed that fifteen per cent of the habitation section’s lifts appeared to be inoperative. The number of datavises into the net was also reducing.
“Oh, dear God. Not here, too!” He swung his legs off the settee. A wave of nausea twisted along his spine. Medical programs sent out several caution warnings; the team Emonn Verona promised hadn’t been to see him yet.
When he datavised the lieutenant commander’s eddress to the office’s net processor there was no response. “Bloody hell.” Erick pulled on his ship-suit, easing it over his medical packages. There were two ratings standing guard outside the office; both armed with TIP carbines. They came to attention as soon as the door opened.
“Where’s the lieutenant commander?” Erick asked.
“Sir, he said he was going to the hospital, sir.”
“Bugger. Right, you two come with me. We’re getting off this asteroid, right away.”
“Sir?”
“That was an order, mister. But in case you need an incentive, the possessed are here.”
The two of them swapped a worried glance. “Aye, sir.”
Erick started accessing schematics of the asteroid as they went through the Navy Bureau and out into the public hall. He followed that up by requesting a list of starships currently docked at the spaceport. There were only five; one of which was the Villeneuve’s Revenge , which cut his options down to four.
His neural nanonics designed a route to the axial chamber which didn’t use any form of powered transportation. Seven hundred metres, two hundred of which were stairs. But at least the gravity would be falling off.
They went in single file, with Erick in the centre. He ordered both ratings to put their combat programs into primary mode. People turned to stare as they marched down the middle of the public hall.
Six hundred metres to go. And the first stairwell was directly ahead. The hall’s light panels started dimming.
“Run,” Erick said.
Kingsley Pryor’s cell measured five metres by five. It had one bunk, one toilet, and one washbasin; there was a small AV lens on the wall opposite the bed, accessing one local media company. Every surface—fittings, floor, walls—was the same blue-grey lofriction composite. It was fully screened, preventing any datavises.
For the last hour the light panel on the ceiling had been flickering. At first, Kingsley had thought the police were doing it to irritate him. They had been almost fearful as they escorted him from the Villeneuve’s Revenge with a Confederation Navy officer. A member of the Capone Organization. It was only to be expected that they would try to re-establish their superiority with such sad psychology, demonstrating who was in control. But the shifts of illumination had been too fitful for any determined effort. The AV images were also fragmenting, but not at the same time as the light. Then he found the call button produced no response.
Kingsley realized what was happening, and sat patiently on his bunk. Quarter of an hour later the humming sound from the conditioning grille fan faded away. Nothing he could do about it. Twice in the next thirty minutes the fan started up again briefly, once to blow in air which stank of sewage. Then the light panel went out permanently. Still Kingsley sat quietly.
When the door did finally open, it shone a fan of light directly across him, highlighting his almost prim posture. A werewolf crouched in the doorway, blood dripping from its fangs.
“Very original,” Kingsley said.
There was a confused puppylike yap from the creature.
“I really must insist you don’t come any closer. Both of us will wind up in the beyond if you do. And you’ve only just got here, haven’t you?”
The werewolf outline shimmered away to reveal a man wearing a police uniform. Kingsley recognized him as one of his escorts. There was a nasty pink scar on his forehead which hadn’t been there before.
“What are you talking about?” the possessed man asked.
“I am going to explain our situation to you, and I want you to observe my thoughts so that you know I’m telling the truth. And after that, you and your new friends are going to let me go. In fact, you’re going to give me every assistance I require.”
A hundred and fifty metres to the axial chamber. They were almost at the top of the last flight of stairs when the well’s lights went out. Erick’s enhanced retinas automatically switched to infrared. “They’re close,” he shouted in warning.
A narrow flare of white fire fountained up the centre of the stairwell, arching around to burst over the rating behind him. He grunted in pain and swung around, firing his TIP carbine at the base of the streamer. Purple sparks bounced out of the impact point.
“Help me,” he cried. A smear of white fire was cloaking his entire shoulder. Terror and panic were negating all the suppression programs which his neural nanonics had doused his brain with. He stopped firing to flail at the fire with his free hand.
The other rating slithered past Erick to fire back down the stairs. A flat circle of brilliant emerald light sprang over the floor of the stairwell, then started to rise as if it were a fluid. The flare of white fire withdrew below its surface. Shadows were just visible beneath it, darting about sinuously.
The burned rating had collapsed onto the stairs. His partner was still shooting wildly down into the advancing cascade of light. The TIP pulses were turning to silver spears as they penetrated the surface, trailing bubbles of darkness.
The next door was eight metres above Erick. The ratings would never last against the possessed, he knew, a few seconds at best. That few seconds might enable him to escape. The information he had was vital , it had to get to Trafalgar. Millions of innocents depended on it, on him. Millions. Against two.
Erick turned and flung himself up the last few steps. In his ears he could hear a voice shouting: “. . . two of my crew are dead. Fried! Tina was fifteen years old!”
He barged through the door, ten per cent gravity projecting him in a long flat arc above the corridor floor, threatening to crack his head against the ceiling. The persecuting noises and fog of green light shut off as the door slid shut behind him. He touched down, and powered himself in another long leap forwards along the corridor. Neural nanonics outlined his route for him as if it were a starship vector plot; a tube of orange neon triangles that flashed past. Turning right. Right again. Left.
Gravity had become negligible when he heard the scream ahead of him. Fifteen metres to the axial chamber. That was all; fifteen bloody metres! And the possessed were ahead of him. Erick snatched at a grab hoop to halt his forwards flight. He didn’t have any weapons. He didn’t have any backup. He didn’t even have Madeleine and Desmond to call on, not anymore.
More screams and pleas were trickling down the corridor from the axial chamber as the possessed chased down their victims. It wouldn’t be long before one of them checked this corridor.
I have to get past. Have to!
He called up the schematic again, studying the area around the axial chamber. Twenty seconds later, and he was at the airlock hatch.
It was a big airlock, used to service the spaceport spindle. The prep room which led to it had dozens of lockers, all the equipment and support systems required to maintain space hardware, even five deactivated free-flying mechanoids.
Erick put his decryption program into primary mode and set it to work cracking the first locker’s code. He stripped off his ship-suit as the lockers popped open one after the other. Physiological monitor programs confirmed everything he saw as the fabric parted. Pale fluid tinged with blood was leaking out of his medical nanonic packages where the edges were peeling from his flesh; a number of red LEDs on the ancillary modules were flashing to indicate system malfunctions. His new arm was only moving because of the reinforced impulses controlling the muscles.
But he still functioned. That was all that mattered.
It was the fifth locker which contained ten SII spacesuits. As soon as his body was sealed against the vacuum he hurried into the airlock, carrying a manoeuvring pack. He didn’t bother with the normal cycle, instead he tripped the emergency vent. Air rushed out. The outer hatch irised apart as he secured himself into the manoeuvring pack. Then the punchy gas jets fired, sending him wobbling past the hatch rim and out into space.
André hated the idea of Shane Brandes even being inside the Villeneuve’s Revenge . And as for the man actually helping repair and reassemble the starship’s systems . . . merde. But as with most events in André’s life these days, he didn’t have a lot of choice. Since the showdown with Erick, Madeleine had retreated into her cabin and refused to respond to any entreaties. Desmond, at least, performed the tasks requested of him, though not with any obvious enthusiasm. And, insultingly, he would only work alone.
That just left Shane Brandes to help André with the jobs that needed more than one pair of hands. The Dechal ’s ex-fusion engineer was anxious to please. He swore he had no allegiance to his previous captain, and harboured no grudges or ill will towards the crew of the Villeneuve’s Revenge . He was also prepared to work for little more than beer money, and he was a grade two technician. One could not afford to overlook gift horses.
André was re-installing the main power duct in the wall of the lower deck lounge, which required Shane to feed the cable to him when instructed. Someone glided silently through the ceiling hatch, blocking the beam from the bank of temporary lights André had rigged up. André couldn’t see what he was doing. “Desmond! Why must . . .” He gasped in shock. “You!”
“Hello again, Captain,” Kingsley Pryor said.
“What are you doing here? How did you get out of prison?”
“They set me free.”
“Who?”
“The possessed.”
“Non,” André whispered.
“Unfortunately so. Ethenthia has fallen.”
The anti-torque tool André was holding seemed such a pitiful weapon. “Are you one of them now? You will never have my ship. I will overload the fusion generators.”
“I’d really rather you didn’t,” Pryor datavised. “As you can see, I haven’t been possessed.”
“How? They take everybody, women, children.”
“I am one of Capone’s liaison officers. Even here, that carries enormous weight.”
“And they let you go?”
“Yes.”
A heavy dread settled in André’s brain. “Where are they? Are they coming?” He datavised the flight computer to review the internal sensors (those remaining—curse it). As yet no systems were glitching.
“No,” Pryor said. “They won’t come into the Villeneuve’s Revenge . Not unless I tell them to.”
“Why are you doing this?” As if I didn’t know.
“Because I want you to fly me away from here.”
“And they’ll let us all go, just like that?”
“As I said, Capone has a lot of influence.”
“What makes you think I will take you? You blackmailed me before. It will be simple to throw you out of the airlock once we are free of Ethenthia.”
Pryor smiled a dead man’s smile. “You’ve always done exactly as I wanted, Duchamp. You were always supposed to break away from Kursk.”
“Liar.”
“I have been given other, more important objectives than ensuring a third-rate ship with its fifth-rate crew stay loyal to the Organization. You have never had any free will since you arrived in the New California system. You still don’t. After all, you don’t really think there was only one bomb planted on board, do you?”
Erick watched the Villeneuve’s Revenge lift from its cradle. The starship’s thermo-dump panels extended, ion thrusters took over from the verniers. It rose unhurriedly from the spaceport. When he switched his collar sensors to high resolution he could see the black hexagon on the fuselage where plate 8-92-K was missing.
He didn’t understand it, Duchamp was making no attempt to flee. It was almost as if he was obeying traffic control, departing calmly along an assigned vector. Had the crew been possessed? Small loss to the Confederation.
His collar sensors refocused on the docking bay he was approaching, a dark circular recess in the spaceport’s gridiron exterior. It was a maintenance bay, twice as wide as an ordinary bay. The clipper-class starship, Tigara , which sat on the docking cradle seemed unusually small in such surroundings.
Erick fired his manoeuvring pack jets to take him down towards the Tigara. There were no lights on in the bay; all the gantries and multi-segment arms were folded back against the walls. Utility umbilicals were jacked in, and an airlock tube had mated with the starship’s fuselage; but apart from that there was no sign of any activity.
The silicon hull showed signs of long-term vacuum exposure—faded lettering, micrometeorite impact scuffs, surface layer ablation stains—all indicating hull plates long overdue for replacement. He drifted over the blurred hexagons until he was above the EVA airlock, and datavised the hatch control processor to cycle and open. If anyone was on board, they would know about him now. But there were no datavised questions, no active sensor sweeps.
The hatch slid open, and Erick glided inside.
Clipper-class starships were designed to provide a speedy service between star systems, carrying small high-value cargoes. Consequently, as much of their internal volume as possible was given over to cargo space. There was only one life-support capsule, which accommodated an optimum crew of three. That was the principal reason Erick had chosen the Tigara. In theory, he would be able to fly it solo.
Most of the starship systems were powered down. He kept his SII suit on as he moved through the two darkened lower decks to the bridge. As soon as he was secured in the captain’s acceleration couch he accessed the flight computer and ordered a full status review.
It could have been a lot better. Tigara was in the maintenance bay for a complete refit. One of the fusion generators was inoperative, two energy patterning nodes were dead, heat exchangers were operating dangerously short of required levels, innumerable failsoft components had been allowed to decay below their safety margins.
None of the maintenance work had even been started. The owners hadn’t been prepared to commit that much money while the quarantine was in force.
Dear Lord, Erick thought, the Villeneuve’s Revenge was in better condition than this.
He datavised the flight computer to disengage the bay’s airlock tube, then initiated a flight prep procedure. The Tigara took a long time to come on-line. At every stage he had to order backup sequences to take over, or override safety programs, or re-route power supplies. He didn’t even bother with the life-support functions, all he wanted was power in the energy patterning nodes and secondary drive tubes.
With a fusion generator active, he ordered some sensor clusters to deploy. An image of the bay filled his mind, overlaid with fragile status graphics. He scanned the electromagnetic spectrum for any traffic, but there was only the background hash of cosmic radiation. Nobody was saying anything to anybody. What he wanted was someone asking Ethenthia what was happening, why they’d gone off the air. A ship close by that could help.
Nothing.
Erick fired the emergency release pins which the docking cradle’s load clamps were gripping. Verniers sent out a hot deluge of gas which shimmered across the bay’s walls, shaking loose blankets of thermal insulation from the gantries. Tigara rose a metre off its cradle, straining at the nest of umbilical hoses jacked into its rear fuselage. The snapfree couplings began to break, sending the hoses writhing.
The starship was low on cryogenic fuel; he couldn’t afford to waste delta-V reserve aligning himself on an ideal vector. The astrogration program produced a series of options for him.
None of them were what he’d been hoping for. So what else was new?
The last of the umbilicals broke, and the Tigara lurched up out of the bay. Erick ordered the flight computer to extend the communications array and align it on Golmo and the Edenist habitats orbiting there. Sensor clusters began to sink down into their recesses as energy poured into the patterning nodes.
The flight computer alerted him that an SD platform was sweeping the ship with its radar. Then it relayed a signal from traffic control into his neural nanonics.
“Is that you, Erick? We think it’s you. Who else is this stupidly ballsy? This is Emonn Verona, Erick, and I’m asking you: Don’t do it. That ship is completely fucked; I’ve got the CAB logs in front of me. It can’t fly. You’re only going to hurt yourself, or worse.”
Erick transmitted a single message to Golmo, then retracted the communications array down into its jump configuration. The SD platform had locked on. Some of the patterning nodes were producing very strange readings in the prejump diagnostic run-through. CAB monitor programs flashed up jump proscription warnings. He switched them off.
“Game over, Erick. Either return to the docking bay or you join our comrades in the beyond. You don’t want that. Where there’s life, there’s hope. Right? Of all people, you must believe that.”
Erick ordered the flight computer to activate the jump sequence.
Chapter 06
The hellhawk Socratous was a flat V-shaped mechanical spacecraft with a grey-white fuselage made up from hundreds of different component casings, a veritable jigsaw of mismatched equipment, not all of it astronautic. Two long engine nacelles were affixed to the stern, transparent tubes filled with a heavy opaque gas which fluoresced its way through the spectrum in a three-minute cycle.
It was an impressive sight as it slid down out of the starfield for a landing on Valisk’s docking ledge. Had it been real, it would be capable of taking on an entire squadron of Confederation Navy ships with its exotic weapons.
It was an impressive sight as it slid down out of the starfield for a landing on Valisk’s docking ledge. Had it been real, it would be capable of taking on an entire squadron of Confederation Navy ships with its exotic weapons.