She caught the globe, taking hold of it with the exquisite care she might have reserved for a rare bird’s egg.
Already the glass had the porous texture of pumice.
She held it up, for Weir to see.
“I won’t let you do this, Rafael.”
“I admire your concern.”
“It’s more than concern. My sister is here. She’s in the ocean. And I won’t let you take her away from me.”
Weir reached inside a pocket and removed another globe.
They sped away from the node in Naqi’s boat. The new globe rested in his hand like a gift. He had not yet dropped it in the sea, although the possibility was only ever an instant away. They were far from any node now, but the globe would be guaranteed to come into contact with Juggler matter sooner or later.
Naqi opened a watertight equipment locker, pushing aside the flare pistol and first-aid kit that lay within. Carefully she placed the globe within, and then watched in horror as the glass immediately cracked and dissolved, releasing its poison: little black irregularly shaped grains like burnt sugar. If the boat sank, the locker would eventually be consumed into the ocean, along with its fatal contents. She considered using the flare pistol to incinerate the remains, but there was too much danger of dispersing it at the same time. Perhaps the toxin had a restricted lifespan once it came into contact with air, but that was nothing she could count on.
But Weir had not thrown the third globe into the sea. Not yet. Something she had said had made him hesitate.
“Your sister?”
“You know the story,” Naqi said. “Mina was a conformal. The ocean assimilated her entirely, rather than just recording her neural patterns. It took her as a prize.”
“And you believe that she’s still present, in some sentient sense?”
“That’s what I choose to believe, yes. And there’s enough anecdotal evidence from other swimmers that conformals do persist, in a more coherent form than other stored patterns.”
“I can’t let anecdotal evidence sway me, Naqi. Have the other swimmers specifically reported encounters with Mina?”
“No . . .” Naqi said carefully. She was sure that he would see through any lie that she attempted. “But they wouldn’t necessarily recognise her if they did.”
“And you? Did you attempt to swim yourself?”
“The swimmer corps would never have allowed me.”
“Not my question. Did you ever swim?”
“Once,” Naqi said.
“And?”
“It didn’t count. It was the same time that Mina died.” She paused and then told him all that had happened. “We were seeing more sprite activity than we’d ever recorded. It looked like coincidence—”
“I don’t think it was.”
Naqi said nothing. She waited for Weir to collect his own thoughts, concentrating on the steering of the boat. Open sea lay ahead, but she knew that almost any direction would bring them to a cluster of nodes within a few hours.
“It began with Pelican of Impiety,” Weir said. “A century ago. There was a man from Zion on that ship. During the stopover he descended to the surface of Turquoise and swam in your ocean. He made contact with the Jugglers and then swam again. The second time the experience was even more affecting. On the third occasion, the sea swallowed him. He’d been a conformal, just like your sister. His name was Ormazd.”
“It means nothing to me.”
“I assure you that on his homeworld it means a great deal more. Ormazd was a failed tyrant, fleeing a political counterrevolution on Zion. He had murdered and cheated his way to power on Zion, burning his rivals in their houses while they slept. But there’d been a backlash. He got out just before the ring closed around him—him and a handful of his closest allies and devotees. They escaped aboard Pelican in Impiety.”
“And Ormazd died here?”
“Yes—but his followers didn’t. They made it to Haven, our world. And once there they began to proliferate, spreading their word, recruiting new followers. It didn’t matter that Ormazd was gone. Quite the opposite. He’d martyred himself: given them a saint figure to worship. It evolved from a political movement into a religious cult. The Vahishta Foundation’s just a front for the Ormazd sect.”
Naqi absorbed that, then asked, “Where does Amesha come into it?”
“Amesha was his daughter. She wants her father back.”
Something lit the horizon, a pink-edged flash. Another followed a minute later, in nearly the same position.
“She wants to commune with him?”
“More than that,” said Weir. “They all want to become him; to accept his neural patterns on their own. They want the Jugglers to imprint Ormazd’s personality on all his followers, to remake them in his own image. The aliens will do that, if the right gifts are offered. And that’s what I can’t allow.”
Naqi chose her words carefully, sensing that the tiniest thing could push Weir into releasing the globe. She had prevented his last attempt, but he would not allow her a second chance. All he would have to do would be to crush the globe in his fist before spilling the contents into the ocean. Then it would all be over. Everything she had ever known; everything she had ever lived for.
“But we’re only talking about nineteen people,” she said.
Weir laughed hollowly. “I’m afraid it’s a little more than that. Why don’t you turn on the radio and see what I mean?”
Naqi did as he suggested, using the boat’s general communications console. The small, scuffed screen received television pictures beamed down from the comsat network. Naqi flicked through channels, finding static on most of them. The Snowflake Council’s official news service was off the air and no personal messages were getting through. There were some suggestions that the comsat network itself was damaged. Yet finally Naqi found a few weak broadcast signals from the nearest snowflake cities. There was a sense of desperation in the transmissions, as if they expected to fall silent at any time.
Weir nodded with weary acceptance, as if he had expected this.
In the last six hours at least a dozen more shuttles had come down from Voice of Evening, packed with armed Vahishta disciples. The shuttles had attacked the planet’s major snowflake cities and atoll settlements, strafing them into submission. Three cities had fallen into the sea, their vacuum-bladders punctured by beam weapons. There could not have been any survivors. Others were still aloft, but had been set on fire. The pictures showed citizens leaping from the cities’ berthing arms, falling like sparks. More cities had been taken bloodlessly, and were now under control of the disciples.
None of those cities were transmitting now.
It was the end of the world. Naqi knew that she should be weeping, or at the very least feel some writhing sense of loss in her stomach. But all she got was a sense of denial; a refusal to accept that events could have escalated so quickly. This morning the only hint of wrongness had been a single absent disciple.
“There are tens of thousands of them up there,” Weir said. “All that you’ve seen so far is the advance guard.”
Naqi scratched her forearm. It was itching, as if she had caught a dose of sunburn.
“Moreau was in on this?”
“Captain Moreau’s a puppet. Literally. The body you saw was just being tele-operated by orbital disciples. They murdered the Ultras and commandeered the ship—”
“Rafael, why didn’t you tell us this before?”
“My position was too vulnerable. I was the only anti-Ormazd agent my movement managed to put aboard Voice of Evening. If I’d attempted to warn the Turquoise authorities . . . Well, work it out for yourself. Almost certainly I wouldn’t have been believed, and the disciples would have found a way to silence me before I became an embarrassment. And it wouldn’t have made a difference to their takeover plans. My only hope was to destroy the ocean, to remove its usefulness to them. They might still have destroyed your cities out of spite, but at least they’d have lost the final thread that
connected them to their martyr.” Weir leaned closer to her. “Don’t you understand? It wouldn’t have stopped with the disciples aboard the Voice. They’d have brought more ships from Haven. Your ocean would have become a production line for despots.”
“Why did they hesitate, if they had such a crushing advantage over us?”
“They didn’t know about me, so they lost nothing by dedicating a few weeks to intelligence-gathering. They wanted to know as much as possible about Turquoise and the Jugglers before they made their move. They’re brutal, but they’re not inefficient. They wanted their takeover to be as precise and surgical as possible.”
“And now?”
“They’ve accepted that things won’t be quite that neat and tidy.” He flipped the globe from one palm to another, with a casual playfulness that Naqi found alarming. “They’re serious, Naqi. Crane will stop at nothing now. You’ve seen those blast flashes. Pinpoint anti-matter devices. They’ve already sterilised the organic matter within the Moat, to stop the effect of my weapon from reaching further. If they know where we are, they’ll drop a bomb on us as well.”
“Human evil doesn’t give us the excuse to wipe out the ocean.”
“It’s not an excuse, Naqi. It’s an imperative.”
At that moment something glinted on the horizon, something that was moving slowly from east to west.
“The shuttle,” Weir said. “It’s looking for us.”
Naqi scratched her arm again. It was discoloured, itching.
Near local noon they reached the next node. The shuttle had continued to dog them, nosing to and fro along the hazy band where sea met sky. Sometimes it appeared closer, sometimes it appeared further away, but it never left them alone, and Naqi knew that it would be only a matter of time before it detected a positive homing trace, a chemical or physical note in the water that would lead it to its quarry. The shuttle would cover the remaining distance in seconds, a minute at the most, and then all that she and Weir would know would be a moment of cleansing whiteness, a fire of holy purity. Even if Weir released his toxin just before the shuttle arrived, it would not have time to dissipate into a wide enough volume of water to survive the fireball.
So why was he hesitating? It was Mina, of course. Naqi had given a name to the faceless library of stored minds he was prepared to erase. By naming her sister, Naqi had removed the one-sidedness of the moral equation, and now Weir had to accept that his own actions could never be entirely blameless. He was no longer purely objective.
“I should just do this,” he said. “By hesitating even for a second, I’m betraying the trust of the people who sent me here, people who have probably been tormented to extinction by Ormazd’s followers by now.”
Naqi shook her head. “If you didn’t show doubt, you’d be as bad as the disciples.”
“You almost sound as if you want me to do it.”
She groped for something resembling the truth, as painful as that might be. “Perhaps I do.”
“Even though it would mean killing whatever part of Mina survived?”
“I’ve lived in her shadow my entire life. Even after she died . . . I always felt she was still watching me, still observing my every mistake, still being faintly disappointed that I wasn’t living up to all she had imagined I could be.”
“You’re being harsh on yourself. Harsh on Mina too, by the sound of things.”
“I know,” Naqi said angrily. “I’m just telling you how I feel.”
The boat edged into a curving inlet that pushed deep into the node. Naqi felt less vulnerable now: there was a significant depth of organic matter to screen the boat from any sideways-looking sensors that the shuttle might have deployed, even though the evidence suggested that the shuttle’s sensors were mainly focused down from its hull. The disadvantage was that it was no longer possible to keep a constant vigil on the shuttle’s movements. It could be on its way already.
She brought the boat to a halt and stood up in her control seat.
“What’s happening?” Weir asked.
“I’ve come to a decision.”
“Isn’t that my job?”
Her anger—brief as it was, and directed less at Weir than at the hopelessness of the situation—had evaporated. “I mean about swimming. It’s the one thing we haven’t considered yet, Rafael. That there might be a third way: a choice between accepting the disciples and letting the ocean die.”
“I don’t see what that could be.”
“Nor do I. But the ocean might find a way. It just needs the knowledge of what’s at stake.” She stroked her forearm again, marvelling at the sudden eruption of fungal patterns. They must have been latent for many years, but now something had caused them to flare up.
Even in daylight, emeralds and blues shone against her skin. She suspected that the biochemical changes had been triggered when she entered the water to snatch the globe. Given that, she could not help but view it as a message. An invitation, perhaps. Or was it a warning, reminding her of the dangers of swimming?
She had no idea, but for her peace of mind, however—and given the lack of alternatives—she chose to view it as an invitation.
But she did not dare wonder who was inviting her.
“You think the ocean can understand external events?” Weir asked.
“You said it yourself, Rafael: the night they told us the ship was coming, somehow that information reached the sea—via a swimmer’s memories, perhaps. And the Jugglers knew then that this was something significant. Perhaps it was Ormazd’s personality, rising to the fore.”
Or maybe it was merely the vast, choral mind of the ocean, apprehending only that something was going to happen.
“Either way,” Naqi said. “It still makes me think that there might be a chance.”
“I only wish I shared your optimism.”
“Give me this chance, Rafael. That’s all I ask.”
Naqi removed her clothes, less concerned that Weir would see her naked now than that she should have something to wear when she emerged. But although Weir studied her with unconcealed fascination, there was nothing prurient about it. What commanded his attention, Naqi realised, were the elaborate and florid patterning of the fungal markings. They curled and twined about her chest and abdomen and thighs, shining with a hypnotic intensity.
“You’re changing,” he said.
“We all change,” Naqi answered.
Then she stepped from the side of the boat, into the water.
The process of descending into the ocean’s embrace was much as she remembered it that first time, with Mina beside her. She willed her body to submit to the biochemical invasion, forcing down her fear and apprehension, knowing that she had been through this once before and that it was something that she could survive again. She did her best not to think about what it would mean to survive beyond this day, when all else had been shattered, every certainty crumbled.
Mina came to her with merciful speed.
Naqi?
I’m here. Oh, Mina, I’m here. There was terror and there was joy, alloyed together. It’s been so long.
Naqi felt her sister’s presence edge in and out of proximity and focus. Sometimes she appeared to share the same physical space. At other times she was scarcely more than a vague feeling of attentiveness.
How long?
Two years, Mina.
Mina’s answer took an eternity to come. In that dreadful hiatus Naqi felt other minds crowd against her own, some of which were so far from human that she gasped at their oddity. Mina was only one of the conformal minds that had noticed her arrival, and not all were as benignly curious or glad.
It doesn’t feel like two years to me.
How long?
Days . . . hours . . . It changes.
What do you remember?
Mina’s presence danced around Naqi. I remember what I remember. That we swam, when we weren’t meant to. That something happened to me, and I never left the ocean.
You became part of it, Mina.
The triumphalism of her answer shocked Naqi to the marrow. Yes!
You wanted this?
You would want it, if you knew what it was like. You could have stayed, Naqi. You could have let it happen to you, the way it happened to me. We were so alike.
I was scared.
Yes, I remember.
Naqi knew that she had to get to the heart of things. Time was passing differently here—witness Mina’s confusion about how long she had been part of the ocean—and there was no telling how patient Weir would be. He might not wait until Naqi reemerged before deploying the Juggler killer.
There was another mind, Mina. We encountered it, and it scared me. Enough that I had to leave the ocean. Enough that I never wanted to go back.
You’ve come back now.
It’s because of that other mind. It belonged to a man called Ormazd. Something very bad is going to happen because of him. One way or the other.
There was a moment then that transcended anything Naqi had experienced before. She felt herself and Mina become inseparable. She could not only not say where one began and the other ended, but it was entirely pointless to even think in those terms. If only fleetingly, Mina had become her. Every thought, every memory, was open to equal scrutiny by both of them.
Naqi understood what it was like for Mina. Her sister’s memories were rapturous. She might only have sensed the passing of hours or days, but that belied the richness of her experience since merging with the ocean. She had exchanged experience with countless alien minds, drinking in entire histories beyond normal human comprehension. And in that moment of sharing, Naqi appreciated something of the reason for her sister having been taken in the first place. Conformals were the ocean’s way of managing itself. Now and then the maintenance of the vaster archive of static minds required stewardship—the drawing-in of independent intelligences. Mina had been selected and utilised, and given rewards beyond imagining for her efforts. The ocean had tapped the structure of her intelligence at a subconscious level. Only now and then had she ever felt that she was being directly petitioned on a matter of importance.
Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days Page 21
