The Naked God

by Peter F. Hamilton

  The underground trax jammers had set up their ageing speaker stacks as twilight fell. When the sun left the sky, out came the pounding rhythm to rattle the windows and sneer an utterly worthless defiance at the arcology’s new overlords. Everyone had dressed for it. That’s what Andy loved. Disco divas in their sequinned micro dresses, hot funk dancers in leather and infra-white shirts, jive masters in sharp suits. All grooving and swaying in one huge dense mass of hot bodies, doing the stupid moves to stupid old songs.

  Andy wriggled his hips, and waved his hands, and generally boogied on down like he’d never done before. No need to be self-conscious now, there wouldn’t be a tomorrow morning for people to laugh at him and his coordination. He swigged from the bottles passed round. He snogged a couple of girls. He sang along at the top of his voice. He made up his own cool moves. He cheered and laughed and wanted to know why the hell he’d wasted his life.

  And then there she was. Louise, standing in front of him. Clothes wet and dishevelled. Her beautiful face deathly serious.

  She’d generated her own space among the exuberant dancers. People instinctively avoided her, knowing that whatever private hell she was in they didn’t want any part of it.

  Her lips parted, shouting something at him.

  “What?” he yelled back. The music was incredibly loud.

  She mouthed: Help.

  He took her hand and led her across the yard. Through the ring of elderly people around the edge of the dancing throng, happily clapping along and doing a small shuffle. Into the brick-wall lobby, and up the stone stairs to his flat.

  When the door shut behind them, Andy thought he was dreaming, because Louise was in his flat. Louise! On the last night of existence, they were together.

  His window looked out over the street not the yard, so the music was muted down to a constant bass drumming. He reached for a lightstick; the grid power supply had failed early that morning.

  “Don’t,” Louise said.

  Without air conditioning, condensation had settled thickly on the glass panes, but there was enough coloured light from the disco creeping in to reveal the outline of the small room. A bed at one end, sheets unwashed for a while now. Apart from one vinyl-top table littered with electronic tools, the furniture was cardboard boxes. The kitchen fitted into an arched alcove with a plastic curtain drawn across it.

  Andy hoped she wouldn’t look at it all too closely. Even in this light it was seedy. His delight at seeing her was fading as his real life began to seep back to claim him.

  “Is this the bathroom?” she asked, indicating the one other door. “I got drenched. I’m still cold.”

  “Um, sorry, it’s supposed to be the bedroom. I just use it to keep stuff in. Bathroom’s down the hall. I’ll show you.”

  “No.” Louise stepped up to him and put her arms round him, nestling her head against his. He was so startled he didn’t respond for a couple of seconds, then he gingerly returned the hug.

  “There’s been so much horror in my life today,” she said. “So many vile things. I’ve been so frightened. I came here to you because I have to. There’s no one else left for me now. But I want to be with you as well.

  Do you understand that?”

  “Not really. What’s happened to you?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m still me. For now.” She kissed him, urgency arousing her in a way she hadn’t experienced before. The desperate need to be held, and adored, to be promised that the whole world was a fine and good place after all.

  She demanded all that from Andy on his small disorderly bed. Spending the night being worshiped, listening to his ecstatic cries twist away into the disco music while the hazy dapple of iridescent light played across the ceiling. Air in the small confined room grew stifling from the heat and sweat evaporating off their skin. It made them oblivious to the Westminster dome’s giant air circulation systems shutting down.

  By the time the first tendrils of thin mist were rising from the Thames to squat listlessly above the riverside buildings, their bursts of orgasmic pleasure had become close to pain as program abuse forced already overdriven flesh to continue. Finally, with the exquisite narcotic of desperation spent, they clung to each other, too senseless to know that a thin layer of cloud had started glowing red above the heart of the ancient city outside.

  Chapter 12

  Liol piloted Lady Mac right up to the big spacedock globe on the diskcity rim where the MSV was parked, locking position twenty metres outside the yawning hatch. Joshua was very insistent they didn’t come inside.

  Working out a procedure for bringing Quantook-LOU and five of his entourage inside the starship had taken up the entire trip from the transparent bubble to the rim airlock hatch. They eventually agreed that two of Joshua’s crew, Quantook-LOU, and another Mosdva would ride the MSV out to the starship first. There would be three shuttle flights in all, and Joshua would be the last over. That way the distributor of resources would be satisfied that the starship wouldn’t fly away as soon as its captain was on board, leaving him behind. The idea that Joshua, as commander, wouldn’t desert any crew was obviously foreign to him. An interesting outlook, the humans agreed, and a good marker for future behaviour.

  The xenocs were assigned the lower lounge in capsule D, which had its own bio-isolation environmental circuit. Sarha modified it to provide a mix of gas to match Tojolt-HI’s atmosphere, not that they carried a great deal of argon, and she had to omit the hydrocarbons altogether.

  Once Quantook-LOU was inside and Joshua was back on the bridge, the Mosdva would provide the coordinates of their destination.

  Mosdva spacesuits were made from a tight-fitting fabric and woven with heat regulator ducts. Only the upper two sets of limbs were given sleeves, the lower legs were tucked up next to the body, making the lower section look as if it was the end of a giant stocking. The helmet was chunky, with internal mechanisms bulging up like warts and a forward glass visor that had several protective slide-down shields. Their life-support backpack was a cone whose tip flared out into a fringe of small jet-black fins. A single, thick armoured cable linked it to the helmet. An oversuit web carried electronic modules and canisters the same way as their torso jackets.

  Beaulieu and Ashly watched the xenocs through a ceiling sensor as they came through the connecting airlock into the lounge. They didn’t move with quite the same ease as they did back in the diskcity, lacking the fronds to give them stability. But they were adapting fast to grab hoops and the inter-deck ladders.

  When the last one was inside, Ashly closed the hatch and let the new atmosphere in. Quantook-LOU waited in the middle of the lounge, while the others conducted a detailed examination. Most of the fittings had been stripped out for this flight anyway, leaving a spartan cabin. It didn’t leave them much technology to probe, and there was certainly nothing critical they could damage. The Mosdva satisfied themselves that the lounge wasn’t actively hostile, and confirmed the atmosphere was compatible before removing their suits. They quickly transferred the electronic modules from their oversuits to their usual jackets.

  Beaulieu had used a neutrino-scattering detector when they were in Lady Mac’s airlock to scan the hardware they’d brought with them. Alkad and Peter joined her in analysing the function of various components. They were carrying small cylinders of chemical explosive, lasers, spooled diamond wire, and a gadget which Alkad and Peter thought would give off a powerful EM pulse. The internal molecular binding force generators could maintain the lounge decking’s integrity against any of their weapons should they get hostile.

  More interesting were the number of implants each of them was loaded with. The central nervous column, running through the centre of the body, had a number of attachments spliced into it, artificial fibres spread out through the tissue to form a secondary nervous system. Biochemical devices were grafted on to glands and circulatory networks, supplementing organ functions. Compact weapons cylinders were buried in limb muscles.

  “The weapons I can
understand,” Ruben said when Beaulieu displayed the images over the general communication link. “But the rest seem redundant. Perhaps their organs still haven’t fully evolved to freefall conditions.”

  “I disagree,” Cacus said. “Quantook-LOU doesn’t have the same degree of enhancements as the other five. I’d say his escort are the Mosdva equivalent of our boosted mercenaries. They’ll be able to keep functioning even when they’re badly damaged.”

  “It’s probably significant that Quantook-LOU’s physiological condition is generally superior to the others’,” Parker said. “His bone structure is certainly thicker, and from what we can understand of his internal organs their biochemical functions have a higher degree of efficiency. That suggests to me that he was actually bred. Fifteen thousand years isn’t long enough for a full genetic evolutionary adaptation to freefall, there are just too many changes from a gravity environment to incorporate.”

  “If you’re right, that would confirm an aristocracy-based social structure,” Cacus said. “Their whole administration class would be an elite.”

  “He does have a large amount of processors hardwired into what passes for his cortex,” Oski said. “A lot more than the soldiers. They augment his memory and analytical abilities to a similar level as neural nanonics.”

  “Physical and mental superiority,” Liol said. “That’s very fascist.”

  “Only in human terms,” Ruben chided. “Imposing our values on xenocs and then going on to judge them is the height of conceit.”

  “Pardon me,” Liol mumbled. He checked round the bridge to find Ashly and Dahybi grinning at the Edenist’s snobbery; Sarha gave him a thumbs up.

  “An aristocracy is historically arrogant,” Syrinx said. “If all the dominions are structured the same way, it would explain why they are so quick to escalate their disagreements into war. The administration class would regard the soldiers as expendable. Like everything else here, they are resources to be exploited to the advantage of the dominion.”

  “Then where exactly do we fit into their neat little hierarchy?” Sarha asked.

  “What we have is valuable to them,” Parker said. “What we are, is not. They will deal with us on that level only.”

  Joshua slid through the lower deck hatch into the bridge, and settled onto his acceleration couch. He datavised the flight computer for a systems review, and took over the command functions from Liol. “We’re ready,” he told Quantook-LOU. “Please give us the location.”

  One of the Mosdva’s electronic modules transmitted a stream of data.

  “That’s one of the tangles in the web, nine hundred kilometres away,” Beaulieu said. She datavised a string of instructions to the ELINT satellites, using the closest one to give the section a close scan. “The knot itself is approximately four kilometres across, rising seventeen hundred metres above the disk’s median level. A lot of infrared seepage in the surrounding area. Most of the knot’s web tubes are dead. The thermal exchange mechanisms around it are still functioning, but with a reduced output.”

  “Somebody’s still alive there,” Sarha said.

  “Looks that way.”

  “We have the position,” Joshua told Quantook-LOU. “What kind of acceleration can you withstand?”

  There was a slight pause. “Thirty per cent of the acceleration you used when you approached Anthi-CL would be acceptable to us,” Quantook-LOU said.

  “Understood. Secure yourselves, please.” Joshua extended Lady Mac’s combat sensors and ordered the standard booms to retract. The crew went to combat alert status. A quick check of the lounge sensors showed the six Mosdva prone on the cushion padding which Beaulieu and Dahybi had laid out for them on the decking.

  It wasn’t worth igniting the fusion tubes. Joshua used the secondary drive to accelerate the starship at a tenth of a gee. The vector he’d plotted took them out a hundred kilometres from the sunside, then curved across towards the knot.

  “Gas plumes on this side as well,” Beaulieu warned. “They’re still fighting down there.”

  Joshua called Quantook-LOU. “We can see there’s still a lot of conflict on Tojolt-HI. It would help to know if we are likely to be attacked, and by what.”

  “No Tojolt-HI dominion will attack this ship unless it appears you are leaving. If I have not secured your drive technology, then our desperation will increase.”

  “What form will an attack against us take? Do you have ships that can intercept us?”

  “We have no ships other than the sunscoops which you have already seen. Energy-beam weapons will be used to damage you. I would speculate that many dominions will be constructing fast automated vehicles. The speed which the Lady Macbeth can travel at has been studied. They will be swifter.”

  Joshua looked round the bridge. “I’d say we don’t need to worry about missiles. It’s the lasers that trouble me. The dominions have the kind of power generation capacity which makes our SD platforms look feeble.”

  “But not on this side of the diskcity,” Beaulieu said. “Sensor scans have dropped considerably since we moved across the rim. Ninety per cent of their systems are mounted on the darkside.”

  “They can poke a laser through the foil quick enough,” Liol said.

  “We’ll be watching for it,” Sarha told him.

  “I’d still like to understand the circumstances,” Joshua said.

  “Quantook-LOU, can you tell me which dominions are allied with Anthi-CL?”

  “Outside our main alliance quartet, there is no longer any way of knowing. Your arrival has disrupted the dominions at every level. The rim dominions search for allies among the centre. The centre dominions struggle among themselves as the old alliances fall to be replaced by lies and unkeepable promises.”

  “And we did all that?”

  “For all our history, resources have been finite, and our society reflects this. Now you have come, and every resource has suddenly become infinite. There can only be one dominion now.”

  “How so?”

  “We are in balance. The central dominions have larger areas than those of the rim, but the rim is where the new mass gathered by the sunscoop ships is distributed from. Our value is therefore equal. Each rim dominion supplies its centrist allies with mass, and the amount of mass which can be delivered is obviously dependant on the number of sun-scoops. The number of sunscoop ships which can be built is dependant on the size of the alliance. Their construction absorbs a fearsome quantity of our resources. When a sun-scoop fails to return, the quantity of mass available to the alliance is reduced, causing shortages and hardship among the dominions. Then the alliance grows weak as dominions struggle against each other to obtain the level of mass they require. That is when the distributors in each dominion move to forge new alliances that will allow them to regain their old level of supply.”

  “I understand,” Joshua said. “With our technology allowing you to bring new mass in from other star systems, the sunscoops will not be able to compete. Every central Tojolt-HI dominion will turn to Anthi-CL to supply them with mass, becoming your allies. Without a market, the other rim dominions will fail, and also be incorporated into the alliance.”

  “And I will be the distributor of resources for all of Tojolt-HI.”

  “Then why are the other dominions fighting you?”

  Quantook-LOU raised his mid limbs a small distance against the gee force, slapping his torso feebly. “Because I do not yet have your drive technology. As always they search for advantage. By reducing Anthi-CL to ruin, they will deprive me of the resources to build starships. You will be forced to make the exchange with them.”

  “But you said the alliances between the central dominions are unstable.”

  “They are. The other distributors are greedy fools. They would destroy us all. The damage they have already caused to Tojolt-HI is on a scale we have never endured before. It will take decades to repair everything.”

  “So just tell them you have our drive. I’ll back you up. We can work out th
e details of the exchange later. That will stop the destruction.”

  “Anthi-CL’s allies know I have not yet acquired your starship drive. I maintain our primary alliance with the quartet by assuring them that this venture to acquire astronomical data will result in triumph. In turn, they barter this information to gain advantage should I fail. All of Tojolt-HI knows you have not yet exchanged the data with me. They watch to see the outcome of this flight. Once I can signal Anthi-CL that I have the data to build your drive, our quartet alliance will solidify once more. The other dominions will have no choice but to join with us.

  Faster-than-light travel has made our unification inevitable. All of us know this. All that remains is the question of who shall become distributor of resources for Tojolt-HI. If it is not me, then it will be another dominion’s distributor. That is why they will attack should you attempt to fly away.”

  Joshua switched off the link to the lounge. “Opinions?”

  “He’s very good,” Samuel said. “I think he’s realized you have a conscience, or at least some kind of ethical code. That’s why our arrival is blamed as the cause of the diskcity war. We’re also under threat not to try and leave, otherwise we’ll be shot. Everything he says is to his advantage.”

  “The economic structure of Tojolt-HI certainly made sense,” Parker said. “That lends credence to the rest of the situation.”

  “It’s certainly favourable for us,” Liol said. “Even if Quantook-LOU is exaggerating the political instability, everyone here wants to be the one who gets ZTT from us. They’re prepared to go to war in order to give us what we want.”

  “Pity we can’t use that to negotiate some kind of peace settlement,” Syrinx said. “I can’t help but feel very uncomfortable about this.”

  “We could simply beam the information across Tojolt-HI after we get a copy of the Tyrathca almanac,” Beaulieu suggested. “Even if Quantook-LOU does get us the almanac data, and we give him ZTT technology, the physical aspect of their conflict will probably continue as the consolidation into one dominion moves forward.”