“What do you mean?”
“They were terminal cases. They didn’t know it, but their time was up.”
He waited. She couldn’t speak.
“You understand what I’m saying? They were due for blanking.”
She swayed in his arms. He held her upright.
“I’m telling you this to make you feel better. You’re not supposed to know.”
“Who were they?”
“Does it matter?”
“I want to know!” Even her anger sounded remote.
“They weren’t from our sector. Shipped in yesterday from Pele for the job. That’s about all I know.”
She was afraid to ask him what she was certain he did know. He led her through the snow to the trike.
“They didn’t expect any of us to come back, did they?”
“What makes you say that?”
“It was a full-grown beast. With an egg to protect. Somebody must have known that. We weren’t even properly armed.”
She was pretty sure Vargo had had no part in it himself. He was a con, like her, and had been on Io for six years, earning his position of responsibility by being tough but reliable.
“You may be right,” he conceded. “But you got through, didn’t you?”
“They didn’t though, did they? The dragon took them, decapitated one and incinerated the other. Did they deserve that?”
He gave an angry sigh. “What the hell did you do, anyway? It must have been more than just carving up your husbands.”
That was the official story, the public reason for her arrest. She tried to tell him what had really happened but began to splutter, as she always did. Some kind of block had been implanted after her arrest to prevent her from revealing anything. She couldn’t even mention anything connected with her arrest, not the womb, nothing. They’d come the same day of Yuri and Salih’s killing, taking her while she lay barely conscious in the ruins of the house. When she’d woken she was already in transit to Io.
Vargo helped her mount the trike. She slouched against him, holding on to his waist harness. He gunned the trike, and they headed off back towards Haemus.
Marea closed her eyes for a while, relaxing into the rhythm of the ride, the trike’s padded wheels cushioning them against the bumpy terrain. Her cloak was asleep, she felt pleasantly woozy and also a little randy, relishing Vargo’s bulk in front of her.
There were all sorts of rumours about Vargo. According to camp gossip, he had lost the sight in his eye at a fumarole explosion five years before and would have to live with it; biological refits were not part of the medical aid for criminal labour on Io, even those like Vargo who had achieved overseer status. It didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest, a fact which Marea found admirable. But there was much more to him than this. He was said to be a madman, a God-worshipper, a renegade politia commander.
“Tell me,” she said, “is it true you killed one of your brothers?”
The words were out before she knew it. Without the somalin, she would never have had the courage to ask him.
“Nope,” he said. “I killed my only brother.”
“It’s true?”
He murmured something to the trike. Then: “I chopped him up and fed him into the disposall.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I used the kitchen mincer. I planned it very carefully.”
He sounded perfectly serious. She didn’t have the wit to consider whether he was simply stringing her along.
“Why?” she asked.
“He was intimate with my wife.”
Intimate. It was an archaic way of expressing it.
“He was her lover?”
“Among us, that’s a great sin.”
“You’re a Deist?”
He gave a small laugh. “That’s what others call us.”
“You believe in a creator? A God?”
“How else did we get here?”
“You don’t believe in the Noosphere?”
She felt him shake his head. “It’s not a question of that. We have a stronger belief in something else. Something beyond death.”
“Heaven?”
“If you like.”
There were many different sects, she knew, most of them small in number and scattered throughout the Settled Worlds. They only used the shrines for public votes, holding to the view that ancestor communion was heresy.
“So what happens when you reach the end of your time?”
“We take proper death.”
So it was true. He was a madman, in a way. At least it seemed like insanity to her.
“And is that the end of it?” she said. “The end of everything?”
He turned his head. “What is this? An interrogation?”
“I’m interested. I’d like to know.”
“Death isn’t the end,” he said reluctantly. “The immortal soul lives on, at one with the Creative Spirit, for ever.” He sounded a little embarrassed, unused to expressing his creed. “It’s how I was brought up.”
She found it hard to imagine having such beliefs, taking death at your century without the certain knowledge of an afterlife. She must have asked something, because he said:
“We believe in serial marriages, in monogamy. Among us adultery is punishable by death.”
“Is that why you killed him?”
He was silent for a while, skirting the edge of a blood-black swamp of plastic sulphur.
“I did it out of revenge,” he said. “Because she wanted him, not me.”
It was difficult to muster her thoughts, but equally hard not to be garrulous. “You loved her? Your wife?”
Another mirthless laugh. “Why else would I have killed him?”
They rode on in silence for a while, crossing a flat expanse of sulphur flowers. A mineral meadow of golds and oranges and browns. Probably stank to high heaven.
“They also say you were a politia commander.”
He made no response to this; didn’t deny it.
“Based on Ceres?”
The trike began a cautionary burbling.
“I covered the whole belt,” Vargo told her. “Mars sometimes, too. Thirty-one years. Anything else you want to know?”
“Did you get the maximum sentence?”
“What do you think? It was premeditated.”
“They were going to blank you?”
“There’s nothing they’d have liked better. Me, too, in some ways. Then I thought about it. Decided to take the killer’s option instead.”
The maximum sentence for capital crimes was brain erasure, but murderers were sometimes given a choice: they could opt for a life sentence on Io instead.
The trike was burbling more loudly, and Vargo slowed it.
“Do you think you’ll ever get out?” Marea asked.
“Nope,” he replied, “I expect to die here.”
Ahead of them a small piebald geyser had erupted. Others joined it, filling the air with a peppered snow that slowly drifted down. Through the haze she could see the base perched on its plateau in the near distance.
They got off the trike and watched the eruptions run their course. The sight of Haemus had a sobering effect on Marea. She knew she could not put off any longer what she had to ask.
“What about me?” she said at last.
He turned to look at her. Both of his oculars were misted by the snow. “You?”
“You know what I mean, Vargo. My sentence has come through, hasn’t it?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Well?” she said. “It’s the same as the other two, isn’t it?”
“I heard this morning. There was no point in telling you until now.”
“Blanking?” She couldn’t believe she was saying the word.
Again he was silent.
“When?”
“There’ll be time to put your affairs in order. You’ll be given access to a shrine when we get back.”
“Damn the shrine!”
She s
talked off, but did not go far. She tried to imagine having her mind snuffed out for ever, having her body taken over by someone else or being dismembered for servo-organism parts. An end to everything. Truedeath.
Vargo came up beside her. “I’m really sorry, Marea.”
“No killer’s option?”
“Not this time.”
“Can I appeal?”
“Andreas told me it won’t even be considered.”
The womb had come unbidden into her hands. And they were going to kill her for possessing it. She would die without even knowing who wanted her dead, or why.
It was too much. She was numb with the deaths of the two men, and now she faced her own extinction. Both facts ran counter to everything she’d been taught to believe about the sanctity of human life.
“Do you know how they do it?” she asked him.
“It depends.”
“I’ve heard they incinerate you. Or bury you alive. Or—”
He grabbed hold of her. “It’s nothing like that. However they do it, it’ll be painless. Believe me, it’s better not to think about it.”
The effects of the drug had worn off, and she was awash with a cold panic.
“When?” she asked again.
“Six days,” he replied.
Seven
I woke to darkness. For a long time I was caught up in the imagery of the dream—it was almost as if I had experienced it myself. I was certain I had never before had such vivid dreams, dreams that carried sensations of smell, touch and taste as well as sights and sounds.
Someone was lying beside me.
Nina.
She appeared to be asleep, but when I stirred she said: “Nathan?”
I was silent.
“Are you awake?”
“I’m awake.”
She sat up on one elbow. She was clothed. “They let me stay. I asked. I hope you don’t mind.”
The blinds on the window were open, but it was dark outside. A lunar darkness.
“I can’t believe this,” I said.
“Until you recovered,” she said, “I thought I might be mad.”
“Do you dream?”
“All the time. I know we both do. They told me.”
“The same dreams?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Tell me what you’ve dreamt. Marea and the falling ship?”
She nodded.
“Tunde on Venus?”
“I never thought he’d make it.”
“The woman Bezile? And Shivaun?”
“Imrani, too. And now Marea again. On that hellhole.”
It was my turn to sit up. “You were with her?”
“I was inside her head. That’s how it seemed. Seeing everything through her eyes. And then I woke. You, too?”
I took hold of her wrist, because I needed extra confirmation that she was real. “I have to be sure about this. I need to know whether we’re both dreaming exactly the same thing.”
We talked for a long time, discussing each episode in great detail. There were no significant differences between our dreams, nothing Nina knew or had witnessed that I had not. We had both inhabited the same characters, lived through the same experiences as they.
It was clear that Nina was as relieved as I was to hear that our dreams tallied. I felt a sense of liberation, as if I had finally released myself from a burdensome secret. Yet many questions remained.
“Have they told you why we’re being fed this stuff?”
“Only that it’s part of the process of adjustment.”
“The stories are unfinished. There’s obviously more to come.”
“Next time we dream.”
We lay in silence for a while. There were no sounds from beyond the door. Nothing.
“It must be the middle of the night,” I remarked. “Assuming that means anything here.”
She stifled a yawn. “What do you think they’ll do with us?”
I thought about it. “We must be curiosities to them. Maybe they want to see how we react to the dreams. How we acclimatize.”
“What do you make of them?”
“Chloe and Lucian?”
“They talk like adults. It’s disconcerting.”
“They seem considerate enough, in their way. It’s a different world here.”
The dreams had given us some idea of that. But vivid though they were, they were by their nature second-hand. I felt a generalized frustration bubbling up.
“I hate this,” I said. “Not knowing anything.”
The anger had come again, though it was accompanied by a wave of weariness. “I hate being an invalid. Weak.”
She put her arm across my chest. “At least we’re alive. We’re in pretty good condition considering we’ve both been practically dead for hundreds of years or more.”
It was so ridiculous we both started laughing. I could just make out her face in the gloom: it was alive with animation, with sheer uncomplicated humanity. I reached over and kissed her on the cheek.
She seemed surprised. “What was that for?”
“I wanted to see how you tasted.”
We both lay back again. I was fighting my tiredness. I could feel myself drifting down.
After a while I said, “Nina?”
There was no answer. She was already asleep.
• • •
Tunde took breakfast out on the balcony. The morning air was ripe, a steady breeze blowing down from the Atlas Mountains. Adele’s mansion overlooked the great network of ravines, and Tunde watched a pair of juvenile fliers cavort in play, bright frilled creatures like giant fish that chased one another, riding the updraughts, dipping and diving and coiling around each other, scarlet and gold and sapphire blue. Overhead, a parent drifted by, keeping a watchful eye on them. Finally the smaller of the two juveniles darted down to take refuge in one of the hatcheries that pockmarked the cliffs. The jutting launchpads often held all manner of craft from great tentacled interplanetary vessels to tiny shuttles fashioned entirely from inorganics, but it was the young creatures Tunde liked best, the ones that engaged in uninhibited fun. Soon enough they would have to learn that most of their lives would be drudgery, not play.
Saturn was already half up over the horizon, a bronze blur in the atmospheric haze. Titan reminded him of Venus, its air rich with organics, its comforting murkiness shutting out the expanses beyond. The morning was warm, promising a hot day.
Tunde went downstairs and found Adele scanning the news reports on the kaleidoptic in the main living chamber. The Uranian moons were under quarantine because of the spread of the Dementia. Fresh batches of cases had been reported in Antaeus City itself, and there was to be a statutory vote on whether stabilized sufferers should be committed to the Noosphere before the disease progressed to total insanity.
“It’s looking serious,” Adele said.
She was dressed enticingly in blue. Tunde kissed the back of her neck. “I don’t think they know how to stop it.”
“Mmm. You can’t stop something until you know what’s causing it.”
No infective agent had yet been identified, and it was hard to see any pattern to how the illness was spread except that so far it was confined to the Outer Worlds and that young children seemed immune.
One of the optics showed a victim of the sickness on the rampage in a shopping mall on Oberon-Nine. He was puncturing window blisters with a hedge pruner, smashing through displays of crystalware, sending soft furnishings scurrying in fright as he flashed the terrified creature’s jaws open and shut, raving all the while. Then he noticed the optic that was recording him. The last thing they saw was a close-up of his smeared face and bulging eyes before the picture went blank.
“Not a pretty sight,” Adele remarked.
“Did you see his teeth?” Tunde said with patent distaste. “They were broken. There was blood all over his lips.”
Julius and Orela came on view. They were shown greeting a plagueship bringing more victims to their orbital Sanct
uary, then walking the wards with medicants, ministering to the patients. Most lay drugged and motionless on padded rockers, only their dishevelled state revealing what was wrong. Both Advocates touched hands and stroked brows as they went by, as if intent on countering the popular superstition that the sickness could only be spread by direct human contact. Orela even took a distressed woman in her arms and kissed her forehead before settling her gently back in her rocker.
“Well,” Tunde said, “at least they’re setting a proper example.”
The Advocates had boosted their popularity by establishing the Sanctuary, a derelict habitation now in distant Earth-orbit that had been reconstituted as an isolation centre for Dementia victims. The commentary informed them that the best biotecs had been assembled from throughout the Settled Worlds to study the victims; teams were working day and night to find a cure.
“It’s comforting,” Adele said, “but the people are very scared.”
“With good reason. Who wants to go mad?”
“We’ll find a cure.”
“You sound confident.”
“We’ve never failed in the past.”
Adele was a remote nurse, working mainly for the recuperatory in Antaeus. She had not actually had any direct dealings with Dementia victims but kept abreast of every development.
Julius and Orela were still captured on the optic. Both looked remarkably youthful considering that they were well beyond their centuries. They were reminding everyone of the need to act clear-headedly to help combat the crisis.
“Have you voted yet?” Adele asked.
Tunde paged a zeeball result: Nephthys had been seconded 20-35-12 in the three-way with Chryse and Paladin on Iapetus.
“Fowote?”
It was the name he had adopted. He blanked the score. “I’ll do it later.”
“Don’t forget. You missed the last compulsory. They’ll have you mucking out the city intestinals for default.”
“Don’t I know it.”
The console announced that there was a call for Adele from her first husband, Morgen.
Even though Morgen knew of him, Tunde instinctively moved out of the screen’s line of sight before Adele took the call. Lately he had grown nervous, feeling that the refuge he had found for the past year would not last.
Morgen was a dark-haired man in his sixties whom Adele had married fifteen years before. He was one of the directors of Transect, a corporation that specialized in the fabrication of interplanetary motherships. Titan, with its rich source of organics, was one of the prime centres of ship building in the Settled Worlds; its hatcheries were rivalled only by those of Aphrodite on Venus.
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