Then, there was the waiting. She seemed to have spent her whole life waiting – waiting for Sol, waiting for Chayka, waiting for Josh – she was cursed with it. She checked the time for the tenth time in as many minutes and knew she had to get out of the house and do something if she wasn’t to go completely mad. A visit to Chayka seemed the obvious solution, and the time difference meant it would be about 15.00 in Cambridge, England. A good time to go.
Before setting off, she changed into her agent’s uniform. For some reason, Chayka always made her feel uncomfortable, and she felt more confident dealing with him in full uniform. How pathetic was that? She automatically ran through a pre-mission check, then formed a portal and stepped through to her usual folding destination near Juliette’s workstation. She was disappointed to find Juliette wasn’t there, but continued to Chayka’s office and, after a perfunctory knock, let herself in.
Chayka was sitting in his usual place, gazing intently at his terminal. He was completely engrossed with whatever was on his screen, and didn’t look up, though he obviously recognised that someone had come in because he waved rather vaguely at the chair near his desk. Deira took the offered seat and waited patiently – more waiting, she observed wryly – but on this occasion, she could see it was going to be longer than usual. He appeared transfixed by whatever was on his screen. She coughed gently, and he visibly started and glanced up.
‘Agent MacMahon! My apologies. I’m afraid I was quite engrossed.’
‘I can see that. Sorry to disturb you.’
‘No, no. I’m glad you’re here. I’ve just been reviewing the two sets of data pertaining to the disturbance in the universal constants. Fascinating. Fascinating.’
‘And, have you found anything?’
‘Indeed, I have. Though it’s still early days, there’s very little doubt about which set of data is correct.’
He paused in his usual irritating way, gazing into space and appearing not to want to share his revelation with Deira. She had no patience for this now. If there was an answer, she wanted it.
‘So, which set is it?’ she asked.
’Hmmm?’ Chayka seemed to have forgotten what he’d been saying, his eyes only gradually coming back into focus.
‘Which set of data is correct?’
‘Ah. Yes. Undoubtedly, the second set.
‘Which is that? The data from the Founders?’
‘Absolutely. The effect of the consciousness waveform is conclusive. It’s the Founders’ presence in sub-quantal space that’s disturbing the cosmic constants. They must be freed quickly. There’s very little time to lose.’
‘We were told we had about two years.’
‘Far less than that, I’m afraid. I would say no more than six months, and possibly as little as five.’
‘Oh shit.’
A two-year time-frame had been felt to be tight, but just about manageable. Five to six months sounded impossible. Yes, there were now more agents who could help with the evacuation of the Founders, but they were all on the El ship – and there was no news about their situation. The sub-quantal weapon appeared to be critical in all this.
‘Sama’s planning to sterilise sub-quantal space,’ she said. ‘What’s your take on that?’
‘No, that won’t do at all.’ Chayka shook his head vigorously. ‘All trace of these entities must be removed. Simply killing them won’t work.’
That was it then. Deira had no way of knowing if the weapon had been destroyed or not. If it hadn’t and Sama deployed it … well, it’d all be over. She stared grimly at Chayka.
‘That’s bad news. It also dictates my next move. I need to get my son out of sub-quantal space. I know he’ll be able to help.’
‘Ah yes. The mentalic body construction. Have you made any progress with that?’
‘Quite a lot – but none of it good.’
Deira explained about their efforts at body construction and how Adam’s had been perfect but couldn’t be used and Josh’s came complete with a mind.
‘But that’s quite remarkable,’ Chayka said, appearing more animated than ever. Indeed, remarkable work. I commend you.’
‘That’s all well and good,’ Deira said, ‘but it doesn’t help Adam, and it’s left us with a continuing moral dilemma regarding Josh 2.’ She had a sudden thought. ‘What about Adam in all this? We know now we need to get the Founders out of sub-quantal space, but will it cause any problems if he’s left behind?
Chayka stroked his goatee absentmindedly, a mannerism that had become quite familiar to Deira.
‘I’m not sure about that. It would appear to be the Founders who are important in all this. They are the ones who originally set the constants, so it’s probably they alone who are undermining them. I don’t think a single human would cause a problem, but I’ll need to do some further work to confirm that.’
‘Okay. I’ll leave you in peace then.’ Deira got up to leave. ‘Thanks for your help, Professor. May I call on you again in a couple of days to check how you’re getting on?’
‘Indeed. I’ll try to have an answer to your question about Adam by then.’
That was it. No goodbyes. His attention returned once more to his terminal. Deira smiled and let herself out, then wandered back to Juliette’s workstation, where she found her daughter was still nowhere to be seen. There didn’t seem to be anything further to do so she folded back home.
Back to the waiting game again.
Chapter 37
Sol walked slowly down the corridor, conscious of many eyes following him. He imagined them boring into his back and accusing him of not being a team player. No, that wasn’t true. That was pure fantasy. The young agents would never think any such thing about him. Yet, in many ways it was what he thought of himself. He’d always been a loner. He was fine with Deira by this side, but he’d never been much of a team person. Other people cramped his style and, if he was being entirely honest, he didn’t like being told what to do. Tao was good, no doubt about it, but she was still young and relatively inexperienced – and experience still counted for something.
The thing was, he didn’t think it sensible to have all your eggs in one basket. Okay, separating the agents into four teams hadn’t exactly worked out as intended either, but he didn’t think that was a reason to go to the opposite extreme and have everyone in one place. Sama had already shown himself to be an extremely clever tactician, and it would be just like him to manipulate the situation to get the agents exactly where he wanted them. Sol was determined there’d be at least one agent on the loose if everything went pear-shaped. And if it didn’t, well he could join up with the others later. No harm done. He rounded the first bend and felt a weight lift from his shoulders now he was hidden from the sight of the others.
‘Well, that was interesting,’ Chard said. ‘Can I ask what prompted you to do that?’
‘If I was Deira, I’d say it was a hunch.’
‘But, as you’re not?’
‘I’d still say it was a hunch.’
‘Tao is taking all the necessary precautions.’
‘I know. But this is Sama’s ship. We don’t know what else he might have at his disposal. We need a wild card.’
‘And that’s you?’
‘That’s me, buddy. You know about my tendency to screw up the opposition.’
‘That’s one way of putting it, I suppose. What do you intend doing now?’
Sol hadn’t a clue what he was going to do and considered the matter as he wondered round the spookily empty corridors. From the AIs’ report, it seemed that the weapon had been destroyed, though the other missions had failed. Therefore, the obvious next thing was to take down the mentalic blocker – assuming he could find it, of course.
‘We need to find that blocker,’ he said, ‘but Sama’s played with the map. Any idea where it might be?’
‘It’s quite interesting, actually,’ Chard said. ‘Although I can sense electronic activity from many parts of the ship, large sections appear to be elec
tronically void. There are pockets of high density, such as the bridge, engine room, data repository and stasis chambers. Then there are areas with very low-level electronics that I assume are cabins and such-like. Finally, there are those vast volumes with no electronics at all. Some of those are the flight paths that we’ve seen in action, but I have no idea what the rest are. Storage possibly.’
‘Well at least that means we don’t need to search the entire ship.’ He thought for a moment, trying to reduce the possibilities. ‘Dominique and Alesandro managed to take out the weapon in the engine room. That’d suggest the blocker isn’t there, wouldn’t it?’
‘That may not be true. Sama might have anticipated that reaction and deliberately included the blocking field generator in there too. Or, he could have sited it in the stasis room, knowing that our attention would be focused on freeing Micha.’
‘A double bluff? Could be, but I think the Bridge is most likely. That’s where most of the rebels are, so they’ve got a built-in guard for the thing if it’s up there.’
‘If you’re right, we have a problem because we can hardly assault the bridge on our own. Why not return to the stasis room and engine room first? If nothing else, Sama won’t expect any further visits to those facilities, so they should be relatively safe.’
‘And if we don’t find the generator?’
‘Then we’ll have no option but to try the bridge.’
‘Fine by me.’
Sol did an about turn and started back to the stasis room. Truth be told, he was disappointed not to find any El roaming the corridors. He’d told Tao he was going to start a guerrilla war, and that implied at least a little combat. Now, here he was wondering around as if he owned the ship, and nobody seemed to care.
He went around the final bend and saw the door to the stasis room just ahead. He slowed and approached cautiously, alert to the sound of wings and glancing up regularly at the ceiling. When he finally opened the door, it was to find the room exactly as they’d left it, including the heap of El bodies. It made the place look untidy and he was a little surprised that a clean-up squad hadn’t been dispatched down here by now.
‘Okay, buddy, any suggestions?’
‘Scanning now,’ Chard replied. ‘I’m taking the output from each chamber in turn and eliminating it from the total. A residual signature might then represent the blocker generator. It would appear … no, there’s no sign of the generator here.’
‘Okay. Next stop’s the engine room.’
The journey to the engine room was once again uneventful and didn’t take long. There was no sign of the blocker generator.
‘We’ll stop off at the data repository just to be certain,’ Sol said. ‘I wonder if one of those low-level signatures you mentioned could be the generator. Sama might even have it in his cabin.’
‘I’ll commence a scan of those areas while we’re on our way to the data repository. We might get lucky.’
‘Copy that. You know, it’s almost like walking around a ghost ship, it’s so quiet. I …’
‘Sol, sorry to interrupt, but Tao and the other agents have been captured.’
‘Aw, shit! What happened?’
Chard explained the relatively simple trap Sama had arranged for the young agents.
‘Also,’ he said, ‘Micha and his crew are being returned to stasis, even as I speak.’
‘Goddamn it! All that work for nothing.’
‘And there’s something else,’ Chard had been listening to Sama’s message to Tao. ‘The weapon is still intact. What was destroyed was a decoy.’
‘What! You mean we’ve achieved nothing? Well shit, we’re sure as hell going to change that. Damnation! I knew it’d be a trap. I just knew it.’
‘Yes, you obviously did. I don’t think I’ll ever argue with your hunches again. The question is, where’s the weapon and the mentalic blocker? We’ve covered the two most likely areas and found nothing, so I’m forced to come to the same conclusion as you. They’re probably on the bridge. Do you wish to try the data repository first, or work out a strategy for getting to the bridge?’
Sol was mad as all hell and was tempted to just knock on the door of the bridge and go in there all guns blazing. Luckily, he’d long since recognised his tendency to lose his logic in the face of emotion, and he was having none of that today.
‘First, can you tweak my endocrine glands a little, buddy? I’m having trouble making rational decisions.’ He paused while Chard adjusted his glandular secretions, and gradually felt himself coming down from his anger-induced adrenaline-high. ‘That’s better. Now, I guess we should proceed with caution. First, we’ll carry on to the data repository and eliminate that from our list. You never know, we might strike lucky. If not, we’ll think about the bridge. Any news of that scan you were doing?’
‘All the low-level electronic emissions can be accounted for by door mechanisms, food synthesisers, etc. There is nothing unusual that might indicate a mentalic blocker or a sub-quantal weapon. If the data-repository throws up a negative, I would think both the things we are after will be on the bridge. 98% probability.’
‘Not surprised to hear that. Right, data repository coming up. Combat mode on and facilities active.’
‘Copy that.’
Glowing in his orange force field, Sol opened the door a fraction and peered inside. Like everywhere else he’d been so far, it was empty, so he hurried inside.
‘Please terminate combat mode and all facilities to enable me to carry out an effective scan,’ Chard said.
‘Copy that. All off.’
‘Thank you. Scan indicates no evidence of what we seek, either mentalic blocker or weapon. It looks like your original hunch was correct. I should have known better than to question it.’
‘It makes sense,’ Sol said. ‘And it creates a huge problem because the bridge will certainly be heavily defended.’
‘Perhaps not. Sama thinks he’s won – that he has all his adversaries trapped. He’ll almost certainly relax his security.’
‘Possibly, but he’s a wily old buzzard and I’d bet he’ll keep a good guard on the corridor leading to the bridge. Any chance of approaching it via the crawl space?’
‘It’s possible, but the distance is considerable, and we now have a time-constraint. What about the flight paths?’
‘Don’t have my Titan wings, more’s the pity.’
‘But they’re only voids. You could walk on the inner surface easily enough.’
Sol’s face lit up. ‘Let’s do it.’ He looked suddenly doubtful. ‘Suppose we meet some El on the way?’
‘I’m sure you’ll think of something.’
With Chard’s help, Sol found one of the ceiling hatches that led to the enormous void that acted as an El flight path. The next problem was getting up there. He looked around for a ladder of some description, but there was nothing. Okay, so he was going to have to construct something.
He hunted around and found one or two empty boxes that were quite sturdy, then chopped out a few of the least important consoles from their housings and piled them up into a tower. He glared at the final product doubtfully. It was very wobbly and the last thing he needed was for it to come crashing down while he was climbing it. He didn’t think Sama knew he was on the loose at present, but he sure as hell would be if this little lot fell over. He got onto the first console and slowly made his way upwards. There was a good deal of swaying and, on a couple of occasions, there was such bad wobbling he felt sure he was going to fall, but he finally made it the top. The next bit was even more tricky.
He crouched on the topmost box, then slowly stood upright, his arms out like a tightrope-walker as he tried to keep his balance on the gently swaying pile. Once fully erect, he reached upwards, stretching to the hatch-release mechanism and trying not to look down. He found the mechanism of the hatch easily enough. It was a simple mechanical contraption that was simple to spring. A quick flick, and the hatch opened, and he had his first sight of the flight paths.
>
They were quite simply enormous – colossal spaces that disappeared into the darkness separating the inner hull from the first layer of the outer hull. They were cold as well as dark, and Sol imagined the El would spend as little time as possible in them. He activated his suit heater and heaved himself over the lip and onto the surface of the inner hull. Because of the size of the ship, the slight curvature didn’t present any problems to walking and, after a few steps, he found he could move freely, even being able to run if the need arose. He pulled the hatch back into place behind him and set out in the direction Chard indicated on his visor.
Strangely, it didn’t seem so far walking on the hull than it would have had he been wandering round the endless corridors, and Sol soon reached a position directly over the bridge. There were a couple of hatches to choose from, one at each end, and he tried to remember what the place looked like the first time he’d been here.
‘What about the weapon and mentalic blocker?’ he asked Chard. ‘Can you pick out any likely candidates from their electronic signatures?’
‘It’s difficult to separate out individual items,’ Chard replied. ‘That’s another good reason for hiding the items we seek here.’
‘Yeah, needle in a haystack. So, now I’m in a quandary. As soon as I drop through one or other of these hatches, I’m going to come under attack. It’s going to be next to impossible to concentrate on looking for something that doesn’t belong there, even if I had some idea how to do that.’
‘Don’t forget, you’ve been here before,’ Chard said.
‘Yes, but I only saw the place briefly. There’s no way I can remember what should be here and what shouldn’t.’
‘You don’t need to. Among other things, I was monitoring your optic nerves at the time, so I will have seen everything you saw. I don’t forget.’
‘Shit, Chard, you mean you’ve got an eidetic memory?’
‘I’m not sure that term can strictly be applied to an AI, but I can certainly remember everything about the bridge from our previous exposure. If you can get another look at it now, I’ll be able to compare the two views and tell you what’s new.’
Gods of Titan- The Cosmic Constants Page 31
