They started walking cautiously, watching out for anything on the floor. The place was a mess; nobody had cleaned up in an age. Roderick checked the first few maidbots resting in their alcoves; none of them had any power in their batteries. He’d never been anywhere with so little electrical activity; it was like being in the stone age.
When they were halfway across the lounge, Roderick’s retinal insert failed, plunging him back into a world of ebony shadows. “Goddamn!”
“What is this?” Marlon complained.
Roderick realized his handheld array was dead. His e-butler was also offline. “Shit. Are your inserts down?”
“Yeah.”
The unease in Marlon’s voice added to Roderick’s growing anxiety; it wasn’t often the big man sounded uncertain. He squinted into the darkness. Two big arching windows were visible as gray sheets, casting the tiniest amount of illumination into the room. He could just make out the regular sable shapes of furniture.
“This is no accident; our electronics got hit.”
“What do we do?” Marlon asked. “I’ve got a flashlight. You want some light?”
“Maybe. He must know we’re here. What do you reckon?” Roderick caught a motion over by one of the windows. A patch of dark sliding up the wall. Which was crazy. Not to mention disturbing. Or was it just his adrenaline-pumped imagination? He brought the Eude606 up, pointing it in the direction the shape might have been if it was real. Sweat was pricking his brow.
“Well, what’s he going to do?” There was a kind of bravado in Marlon’s voice now. Neither of them were bothering to whisper.
Roderick steadied his pistol, holding it level and ready to turn to face whatever threat was revealed. “Okay then.” He waited while Marlon fumbled around in his jacket. Then the narrow beam stabbed out, amazingly bright in the gloomy lounge. It swept over the walls, with Roderick following the wide circle with his pistol. Marlon turned completely around, exposing the antique decor with its dusty coating. There was nobody in the lounge with them. More importantly from Roderick’s point of view, there was nothing on the wall by the window, nothing that could move about.
“Okay, old man,” Marlon said. “Out you come now, we ain’t gonna hurt you.” It was the kind of tone used to calm a panicked animal. “We just want the artwork, that’s all. There ain’t gonna be no trouble.”
They looked at each other. Roderick shrugged. “Bedroom,” he said. Something moved in his peripheral vision. Above him. “Huh?” Marlon must have caught it, too; the beam tilted up. Roderick looked at the ceiling, which was covered in broad patches of peculiar rust-colored fur.
The nostat directly above Roderick let go. It was like a soft blanket dropping on him, its edges falling below his elbows. Shock made him yell and thrash about, trying to tug the thing off. The nostat’s soft fur changed, strands twining together into needle-thin spikes. It tightened around its prey, a motion that slid over ten thousand of the slender barbs through Roderick’s clothing and into his flesh. His scream of utter agony was cut off as spikes penetrated into his throat, filling his gullet with blood. Reflex made him convulse, even though the pain had virtually rendered him unconscious. It was exactly the motion that the nostat had evolved to take advantage of. The barbs were slim and strong enough to remain extended as its prey’s muscles flexed, allowing them to rip through the tissue as if they were miniature scalpels. The entire outer layer of Roderick’s upper torso was shredded to the constituency of jelly. Blood erupted from his body as it collapsed onto the floor, which the nostat sucked down hungrily through the hollow core of each spike.
The first contraction didn’t quite have the strength to push the spikes through Roderick’s skull. Instead they penetrated the softer areas of flesh, ripping apart eyes, ears, nose, and tearing through his cheeks. The last thing he heard as he finally lost consciousness was a terrified roar coming from Marlon, and furniture exploding as both of them fired their ion pistols in random bursts.
The day after he went to Mars, Nigel woke up in bed with his wives Nuala and Astrid. Both of them were biologically in their mid-thirties, though chronologically more than a century old. They were what he tended to think of as the mother comfort personalities of his harem. He sought them out when he wanted an untroubled sleep; and last night he’d really needed one. It had been a bad week; dealing with the innumerable problems spinning out from the Lost23 refugees on top of the high politics of the War Cabinet. He’d thought Mars would be a distraction from the problems he had to deal with in the office. Typical mid-life-crisis response, get out from behind the desk and do something practical; but there had been far too many old memories lurking amid that desolate frozen landscape to ambush his emotions. The broken ancient spaceplane had kindled a totally unexpected pang of guilt. When they finally returned from that abandoned planet his mood had turned bleak.
He’d visited Paloma and Aurelie first, the newest members of his harem. First-lifers that hadn’t reached their twenty-first birthdays yet, the pair of them were beautiful, giggly, and utterly guileless girls. They came very firmly in the sex athlete category, with personal trainers keeping them fit and toned, an unlimited wardrobe budget, and stylists to confer the kind of elegance he enjoyed in all his women.
Every time he came out of rejuvenation, his harem was made up mostly of girls like them. It was only when he started advancing into his biological early thirties that the ratio began to swing back, and the more secure and stable types made up the majority as yet another generation of his children was born. As a single child himself, Nigel always enjoyed being surrounded by a large immediate family; that was something that no rejuvenation had ever altered. As always in his case, the human universe bent to accommodate him with the alacrity of a gravity field around a neutron star. There was never a problem in finding women who were happy with the harem arrangement; he was sent thousands of intimate requests every day. His main difficulty was sorting through them all.
Right now there were only five of the younger, sexy ones. He knew that none of them would hang around for more than a couple of years. Girls like that never did; they weren’t stupid, and eventually they’d grow weary of the household’s formality, the way everything was structured around his preferences. Unless he had children with them—unlikely now—they’d move on, just like thousands before them.
Until that happened, they were the best possible sex he could wish for. It was only after romping with Paloma and Aurelie for nearly two hours he left, almost sneaking out, to find Nuala and Astrid, who snuggled up cozily and gave him that welcome sense of comfort so essential for a deep dreamless sleep.
Breakfast, as always when the household was in residence at the New Costa mansion, was held on the terrace. He sat at the head of a long table sheltered from the sharp blue-white glare of Regulus by a canopy of lush grapevines, whose broad leaves filtered the exotic sunlight to a manageable lambency. The day’s first gusts of the dry El Iopi wind were already blowing across the grounds, rustling the foliage above him. Eleven of his wives joined him, bringing their children, who ranged from three-month-old Digby to Bethany, who was approaching her fifteenth birthday. Several senior family members who were staying in the mansion also arrived with their partners. It was a bustling lighthearted meal, which finished off the mood transformation that his serene sleep had begun. His thoughts had calmed considerably, which was a relief; he knew his judgment became impaired the more wound-up he got.
“Are you going to rehouse the refugees who’re being looked after by the Hive?” Astrid asked. She was poring over a paperscreen as she ate her fruit and honey yogurt. “I mean, they’re being made welcome, and all, but they aren’t gonna wanna stay there.”
“Long-term, they’ll certainly move on. We’re busy designating phase three and late stage-two planets that can absorb all the refugees. As to when a Commonwealth-endorsed settlement project gets under way, that depends on the Senate. For now, everyone’s just concentrating on providing relief for the survivors.”
/> “Half of them will be absorbed back into mainstream society without any government aid packages,” Campbell said. “The majority are skilled people who can integrate into any modern economy; it’ll just be a question of finding a planet with an ethnic base that suits them. Augusta companies have received a lot of employment inquiries already. So have the other Big15.”
“It says the insurance companies won’t compensate them,” Astrid said, her manicured finger tapping the news article on her paperscreen in accusation.
“All the local insurance companies were destroyed along with their planets,” Nigel said.
“They’re subdivisions of the major companies,” she said. “You know that.”
“Sure. But compensation is going to have to involve government. The Dow-Times index is still down eight thousand; the finance houses can’t afford to pay out trillions right now. We need to concentrate our taxes on the navy and strengthening planetary defenses.”
“That’s outrageous,” Paloma exclaimed. “They need our help. They suffered because of Doi’s stupid mistakes.”
Nigel tried not to smile at her righteous anger. She had the full indignation of youth, a fieriness that promoted her attractiveness. “I pushed for the Second Chance mission.”
“Well, yes.” Paloma reddened. “But the government knew the Primes were a threat. They should have taken it seriously.”
“That’s the benefit of hindsight talking. We prepared as well as any reasonably civilized culture could be expected.”
“Will they come back, Daddy?” little Troy asked, peering anxiously over his cereal bowl.
“They might. But I promise you, all of you,” Nigel said earnestly when he saw the other children looking at him for reassurance, “I will make sure you’re safe. All of you.” He exchanged a glance with Campbell, who pulled a face before returning to his eggs Benedict.
When Nigel finished breakfast, he was almost tempted to go back to Paloma’s bedroom. But there was a ton of work to be done, so he set off to the wing of the mansion where he maintained his personal offices. It was a long walk.
Several senior members joined him for the first review conference of the day: Campbell, who had done a magnificent job orchestrating the evacuation. Nelson, the Dynasty security chief, and Nigel’s twentieth child, born when he first started having more than one wife at a time. Perdita, their media director who tied in a lot of operations with Jessica, the Augusta Senator, a position she’d held for seventy years. As Nigel looked around it struck him how they were all from the first three generations. Maybe it’s time to let the fourths up to this level? There’s no complacency worse than the comfort of familiarity. In which case why make it the fourths? Why not the fifteens, or the twenties? It’s not as if they aren’t capable.
Benjamin Sheldon, Nigel’s first grandson and the Dynasty’s comptroller, was the last to arrive. Nigel always suspected the man was slightly autistic. His devotion to detail was excruciating, and his marriages never lasted long. He didn’t quite seem to live totally in this universe. Finance was his life; he’d taken over running CST’s accounts division on his twenty-eighth birthday, and regarded his periods in rejuvenation as a major inconvenience. His memory augmentation arrays were among the most comprehensive ever wet-wired into a human; the inserts had actually increased his skull size by ten percent. As he hadn’t remodeled his body, other than his neck, to maintain proportion, his appearance inevitably drew stares.
Daniel Alster took a chair slightly behind the three couches that the seniors settled in as the e-shield came on, sealing the office.
“Any new problems?” Nigel asked.
“We’re just busy containing the old ones, thanks,” Campbell said.
“In a steady state model extrapolated from our current position, we will have regained everything we lost in eleven years,” Benjamin said. “The growth vectors are positive once resettlement of the displaced is completed.”
“It won’t be steady state,” Nelson said. “The Primes will attack again to annex more of our worlds. The cost of resisting them will be phenomenal.”
“And that’s if we succeed,” Nigel muttered.
The other seniors regarded him in mild surprise, the priest who swore in church.
“It’s the one option I’ve taken seriously since we began this whole debacle,” Nigel said. “That’s why I began the lifeboat project.”
“Have you drawn up the parameters for use?” Jessica asked.
“I think we’ll recognize the moment when it arrives. Now our advanced weapons development is finally producing results, I’m hopeful the Primes can be defeated one way or another.”
“Didn’t the War Cabinet approve genocide?” Perdita asked. “Public opinion is certainly in favor right now.”
“We agreed in principle that such an action was a last resort.”
“Typical politicians.” Nelson grunted.
Jessica smiled sweetly. “Why thank you.”
“A death toll near forty million, and it’s an option? Hardly our finest hour, I feel.”
“There’s a moral dimension in that decision, obviously,” Nigel said. “But there’s also the possibility that the Seattle quantumbusters might not be sufficient for the job. For all they’re insanely antagonistic, the Primes are not stupid. They will have established themselves in other star systems by now. Total genocide will be difficult to achieve and verify.”
“You mean we’ll have to make our weapon available to the navy?” Nelson asked.
“I’m not in favor of that,” Nigel told him. “That really is a weapon I don’t want anyone else to know about, let alone possess. The damn thing even frightens me.”
“That’s a reasonable reaction,” Jessica said glumly. “I don’t like the fact it exists, but as it does I don’t want it in anyone else’s control.”
“Quantumbusters are horrendous enough,” Nelson said. “There’s only a question of scale involved with this situation. Having the Dynasty’s finger on the trigger is purely a psychological crutch. A doomsday weapon is a doomsday weapon, whether it destroys a planet or an entire star system is worrying about how many angels can dance on a pinhead.”
“Our weapon can destroy more than one star system,” Nigel said regretfully.
“If it can be built, it will be built,” Campbell said. “If not by us, then by someone else, and I include the Primes in that statement. It’s not as if we have to worry about the other Dynasties using it. We don’t have that kind of conflict anymore.”
“Not at the moment,” Jessica said. “But let’s face it, there are still enough megalomaniac politicians about, and I don’t just mean on the Isolated worlds. We have to be very careful about revealing the potential of what we have to the rest of the Commonwealth.”
“I don’t suppose the SI will be too pleased about this particular accomplishment, either,” Nelson said.
Nigel grinned. He didn’t really trust the SI, although he didn’t regard it as malevolent. Nelson’s suspicions verged on paranoia—like those of any good security operative. “It doesn’t know yet,” Nigel said. “And it might well be thankful to us if the Primes are as successful on their next incursion as they were with the Lost23.”
“So would you use it against them here?” Campbell asked. “Or is it exclusively to defend ourselves if we have to flee?”
“I will not abandon the Commonwealth without a fight,” Nigel said. “That would be inhuman. The human race has flaws in abundance, but we don’t deserve to die for them.”
“My species, right or wrong,” Jessica said.
Perdita gave her a vexed look. “We’re right. And we’re not alone thinking that. The barrier builders obviously thought the same way about the Primes.”
“Unfortunately they had a great deal more technological resources than us,” Campbell said. “It gave them much wider range of options. As far as I can see, we only have one. Nigel, are you really going to wait until they invade again before you believe we’re justified in usin
g our weapon against them?”
“I’m not nerving myself up,” Nigel said, piqued. “For a start, we’re still only at the design stage. Secondly, the navy will find Hell’s Gateway. If that can be wiped out with Douvoir missiles, or more likely Seattle Project quantumbusters, the whole problem will be put back, by years, most likely. That may well open up our options. We might even find the barrier builders, and persuade them to reestablish it.”
“You don’t believe that?” Jessica asked.
“No,” Nigel said dryly. “We created this problem, we have to solve it.”
As the meeting closed, Nigel asked Perdita and Nelson to stay behind. He sipped at a hot chocolate that a maidbot delivered to the study. There was just the right amount of whipped cream on top, complemented by a half-melted marshmallow. The taste was perfection. It had been prepared by his chef; he never did like bots cooking food.
“Couple of things,” he told them. “Perdita, what’s the general opinion of myself and the Dynasty? Are we being blamed? After all, we were the main supporters for the Second Chance mission.”
“Nothing too heavy in the media,” she said. “A few minor anchors and commentators have taken some cheap shots, but right now everyone’s too mad at the navy for not putting up a better fight. The way you personally dealt with the wormholes above Wessex was a huge positive factor. Your personal rating is quite high. You’ve got a lot more respect than Doi at the moment, although Kantil is being pretty astute in keeping antagonism directed at the navy.”
“Small mercies,” Nigel said as he chewed on the marshmallow. His neural programs were reviewing and refining data from the Dynasty arrays, pulling everything he could find on Ozzie. “You did a good job suppressing the Randtown story,” he told Perdita eventually. “Ozzie would be seriously pissed off if that became public knowledge.” For all his supposedly cuddly Bohemian personality, Ozzie could be very touchy about aspects of his private life.
“The other Dynasties were cooperative enough with the news shows,” she said modestly. “And the SI helped with a dataeater worm for the messages that did slip into the unisphere.”
The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle Page 144
