by Paul McAuley
Those colonies were what had brought Tony Okoye and the crew of wizards here, in a three-way partnership with the broker on Dry Salvages who had purchased the old survey team’s report. Unprepossessing mounds like melted candle stumps, built from layers of sediments and bacterial filaments and slime, the stromatolites contained nodes of archival genetic material and communicated with each other via a wide-bandwidth transmission system constructed from arrays of microscopic magnetic crystals. The chief wizard, Fred Firat, believed that they were the remnants of a planetary intelligence, a noosphere woven from algorithms that were the common ancestors of the various species found in active artefacts left by the Elder Cultures. A root kit or Rosetta stone that would unlock all kinds of secrets, including the causes of sleepy sickness, Smythe’s Syndrome, counting disorder, and other meme plagues.
Fred Firat had the grandstanding rhetoric and unblinking gaze of someone who carried the fire of true crazed genius, and like all the best salesmen, prophets and charlatans he was his first and best convert to his cause. He was convinced that the scant data buried in the records of that old expedition pointed towards something of fundamental importance, had sold the idea to Ayo and Aunty Jael during a virtuoso performance via q-phone. Which was how Tony had found himself embarked on what might be the biggest score of his freebooter career.
But extracting data from the stromatolites’ archival genetic material had been more difficult than anticipated. Tony had to park his ship fifty kilometres inland because Abalunam’s Pride leaked a variety of electromagnetic emissions that interfered with the stromatolites’ transmission system, the wizards had to isolate experiments on individual specimens inside Faraday cages to prevent feedback, and they and Aunty Jael had spent more than two weeks developing new tools and probes before getting down to the real work. But although they had sequenced the archival genetics, they had yet to discover how to read the data those sequences contained, or how to hack into the transmission system. And now a fully loaded G-class frigate had driven through the mirror, come to hijack their work or worse. There was no doubt about it. It was time to pack up. Time to boot.
The first glint of the sea had just appeared at the horizon when the ship’s q-phone lit up. It was Tony’s uncle, Opeyemi, saying with his usual brusqueness, ‘I hear you’re in trouble.’
‘I can handle it,’ Tony said, doing his best to hide his dismay. ‘And while I would love to talk, uncle, I am rather busy. What with having to get the wizards stowed away and so forth.’
He had always known that Lancelot Askai was his uncle’s man, seconded to the mission to the slime planet from his usual work of suppressing anti-family sentiment, but had not realised until now that the rat was equipped with a q-phone. Opeyemi had been monitoring everything, Tony thought with a throb of anger. Waiting to pounce on any mistake.
‘Am I right in thinking,’ his uncle said, ‘that you believe this so-called intruder is a Red Brigade ship?’
‘It is heavily armed, it is displaying a false flag, and it has been aimed at this remote and insignificant planet when we are in the middle of our work. Its crew must have found out about the stromatolites, and want to steal what is rightfully ours. And of all the pirate gangs, the Red Brigade is the only one that has tangled with our family before, and everyone knows that it covets ancient knowledge above all else.’
‘But you have no actual proof that these are no more than ordinary criminals,’ Opeyemi said. ‘Your desire for revenge is understandable, nephew. But do not let it cloud your judgement.’
‘Tell me, uncle,’ Tony said, trying to keep his tone light, ‘does Ayo know about this call?’
‘It is four in the morning here. The alert came straight to me, and I see no need to disturb your sister.’
Tony pictured Opeyemi in his bare room up in the west tower of the Great House, some four thousand light years away. A slender unsmiling man with a shaven skull and deep-set eyes and a steady gaze. He would be sitting at the edge of his military cot, or perhaps he was standing at a narrow window, looking out at the tumbled roofs of the town stretching away in darkness to the cold dark iceberg-flecked sea. After the great betrayal and the deaths of Tony’s parents, Opeyemi, a lieutenant colonel in the Commons police, had resigned his commission and taken charge of his brother’s orphaned children, serving as acting head of the family until Ayo had reached the age of majority. Tony had often rebelled against his uncle’s exacting discipline, still resented the influence he wielded, and flinched now from the admonitory sting in his voice. It was exactly like all those times when he had been called to account for some minor transgression. The hot flush of shame and impotence. Trembling anticipation of his uncle’s minatory gaze.
He tried to assert himself, saying, ‘Perhaps you should disturb her anyway, uncle. After all, she signed off this deal. She deserves to know that it has gone bad.’
‘You did not think to trouble her yourself.’
‘I was planning to tell her as soon as I had the situation in hand.’
‘You like to think you are an independent operator,’ Opeyemi said. ‘You are not.’
‘You have made that abundantly clear.’
‘And you will not risk the ship, a valuable family asset, by making a stand against these claim jumpers. If that is what they are.’
‘The idea never crossed my mind,’ Tony said.
He had played endless games of Police v. Red Brigade when he was a kid, setting up ambushes in the courtyards and corridors of the Great House, staging skirmishes in the fields and plantations, but the frigate effortlessly outgunned Abalunam’s Pride, and he wasn’t as crazy foolish as some of his family believed. Reckless freebooters did not last long.
‘We will get our revenge when we’re good and ready,’ his uncle said. ‘You are neither the arm nor the instrument. Round up the wizards and make a straight run for the mirror. If these claim jumpers see that you are abandoning the prize, they will not waste their time trying to stop you.’
‘Absolutely.’
Tony had his own idea about how to evade the claim jumpers but he was not about to run that past his uncle. The crusty old fucker would probably forbid it.
‘Bring the ship home,’ Opeyemi said. ‘The wizards too.’
‘I thought I should head back to Dry Salvages first.’ Hopefully without the G-class frigate on his tail, but he would deal with that if and when. ‘I want to have a hard conversation with Raqle Thornhilde about how this claim jumper found me.’
‘You will do no such thing,’ Opeyemi said. ‘You have no proof that the broker is to blame. And if she is, she will be expecting you to come after her, and you would be meeting her on her territory, on her terms. No, it is too dangerous, and I will not allow you to endanger the family’s reputation out of some reckless notion about revenge. What you will do instead is bring the wizards to Skadi, where they will complete their work with the help of Aunty Jael, as already agreed.’
‘An agreement that Raqle Thornhilde will have invalidated if she told someone else about the stromatolites.’
‘We will make enquiries about that. Meanwhile, we will keep to our side of the bargain.’
‘This is something I must discuss with Ayo,’ Tony said.
‘She will tell you the same thing. Good luck and Godspeed. We will talk again very soon,’ Opeyemi said, and cut the connection before Tony could think of a riposte.
That was only the beginning of his humiliation.
The broken latticework spire of the Ghajar landing tower appeared off to the west; Tony saw a huddle of blue tents and the glinting pyramid of the Faraday cage at the edge of the shallow bay as the ship swung around and dropped lower, hovering on a warp in the planet’s gravity above a calm sweep of ochre water and the pavements and clumps of the stromatolites. Fred Firat and his six acolytes, dressed in uniform blue pressure suits, gathered in a mutinous clot as Tony rode a gyro platform from the ship’s cargo hatch to a slant of black rock at the water’s edge. As soon as he landed, the wiz
ards’ leader stepped smartly forward, Junot Johnson and Lancelot Askai falling in on either side. Their pressure suits were white, like Tony’s, with the red and black triangle of the family’s flag on their shoulders.
‘You have compromised the local transmission system with this stupid manoeuvre,’ Fred Firat said. ‘You may have damaged the entire noosphere.’
Tony ignored him, looked at Junot. ‘Why aren’t these people packing up, as I ordered?’
He was fizzing with anger. Anger at his uncle’s intervention; anger at his failure to assert himself; anger at the wizards’ insubordination.
‘We need more time,’ Fred Firat said, before Junot could answer. ‘We’ve made a good start, but a start is all it is. And now you’ve set us back by bringing the ship here. I realise you are upset by these so-called claim jumpers, Mister Okoye, but you should have known better. You should have thought things through.’
Tony met Fred Firat’s bright bold gaze. ‘You have isolated some specimens in the Faraday cages, haven’t you?’
‘Of course, but that isn’t the point.’
‘Didn’t you tell me once that their memory is holographic? Which means, I think, that a small portion will contain everything in the whole.’
‘We hadn’t done enough work to prove that it was. And anyway, that’s not really how holograms work,’ Fred Firat said. He was an old man, eighty or ninety, with the squat build of someone born and raised on a heavy planet. He stood foursquare in front of Tony, arms crossed over the chestplate of his pressure suit, the faceted oval of his ancillary eye, socketed in the middle of his forehead, glinting behind his visor like a gunsight.
‘Nevertheless, you are done here,’ Tony said. ‘Load those specimens and whatever else you have as quickly as possible. The window for escape is closing fast.’
‘You aren’t listening,’ Fred Firat said. ‘I have a plan.’
‘It’s you who are not listening,’ Tony said, thrusting his face so close to the wizard’s that their helmets almost kissed. ‘Another ship is coming here. A big ship, well armed, ready to take us prisoner and steal what is rightly ours. We have to boot as quickly as possible. You and your people should be packing up your equipment and your specimens, not quibbling about my orders.’
‘I have a better idea,’ Fred Firat said. ‘You can take the specimens and most of my crew. I’ll stay behind with a couple of volunteers. We can hide in the Ghajar ruins – we have mapped a network of voids beneath them. We’ll wait out the claim jumpers, and after they leave we’ll start work again, and you can bring back the rest of my crew.’
Tony couldn’t believe it. No, he could. Wizards were clever but naive, put their faith in friction-free models of messy reality, and lacked any kind of common sense.
He said, ‘That isn’t going to happen.’
‘If you force me aboard at gunpoint, I’ll sue you and your family for breach of contract,’ Fred Firat said. ‘But if you leave me here to finish my work, I promise that I’ll make all of us rich.’
‘It isn’t going to happen because there won’t be any stromatolites left for you or the claim jumpers to exploit,’ Tony said, and ordered the ship’s bridle to implement Plan B.
A hatch opened amongst the jags and points of the ship’s base and a black cylinder tumbled out, splashing into the shallow water.
‘That is a pop-up high-impulse thermobaric bomb packed with powdered aluminium and nanoparticles of isopropyl nitrate and RDX,’ Tony said. ‘Powerful enough to sterilise this bay and the surrounding area.’
Fred Firat and the other wizards cried out in shock and fury; a tall skinny young man broke away from the group and ran head down and howling at Tony, who stood his ground and took a half-step sideways at the last moment, blocking his attacker with his hip and using the man’s momentum to pivot him off his feet and smash him onto his back. The man stared up through the curve of his faceplate, wide-eyed with shock, as Lancelot Askia stepped forward and aimed his pistol at him.
‘Don’t,’ Tony said, and felt a wash of relief when the enforcer shrugged and lowered his weapon and turned back to the other wizards.
‘There are other colonies,’ Fred Firat said. ‘We will work on them.’
‘No, you won’t,’ Tony said. ‘Because I have planted bombs in every colony along this shore. They will be triggered when we boot. The only stromatolites left will be those we take with us.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Too bad. Get your crew moving. We boot in two hours. Anything that isn’t on the ship by then will be left behind.’
‘And if I refuse? What will you do? Kill me?’
‘Why not?’ Lancelot Askia said and raised his pistol and shot Fred Firat through his helmet visor.
The wizard collapsed. Blood splashed the inner surface of the crazed visor: the round had nailed him through his ancillary eye.
In the moment of shocked silence, Tony told Lancelot Askia, ‘I needed that man. You had no right.’
‘Orders,’ the enforcer said calmly. ‘I was told that anyone who suggested staying behind could be the one who betrayed us.’
‘And now we will never know if he did.’
‘Of course he did. That’s why I shot him,’ Lancelot Askia said, and turned away and ordered the wizards to shape up and get moving. ‘You can pack your shit and get on board the ship or you can join your dead boss. Your choice.’
3. The Geek Police
After the Bad Trip, after she’d been discharged from hospital, after she’d broken up with Willie because he wanted to go right back out there and find the thing that had fucked up their heads, Lisa tried to forget everything by self-medicating with booze and shine. She lost her apartment and let her business slide away, was living in a rented room in Felony Flats, doing zero-hours piecework for corporate code farms, when an intervention by Bria and several other friends made her realise that she needed to make some changes in her life. So she sobered up and scraped together enough money to buy a trailer home and a pioneer licence for a patch of scrub in the tableland north of Port of Plenty, where she hired a local guy with a bulldozer to cut a track to the nearest paved road, sank a well and capped it with a wind pump and a filter to remove the gypsum from the groundwater, and fenced off a hectare of caliche and grew catch crops of tweaked clover and soybean and ploughed them in with kelp hauled from the coast until the soil was rich enough to support a vegetable garden.
Looking back, Lisa couldn’t believe her energy, her single-minded focus. A cold determination to prove that, by taming this little patch of First Foot’s strangeness, she could reclaim her life from the accident that had derailed it.
She built a little house with the help of friends and her new neighbours. Rammed-earth and tyre walls faced with lime render, solar paint on the corrugated-iron roof. Bria gave her a tweaked Labrador puppy as a housewarming present, and Lisa soon learned to understand Pete’s rough speech. Amazing what you could convey with just a couple of hundred words. Supposedly a guard dog, he was better company than protection, although he was pretty good at running down the rabbits that were multiplying everywhere in the tableland after some misguided settler had released half a dozen into the wild.
Lisa tried to raise goats at first, but when her little herd was cut down by a wildfire pulmonary infection she turned to hurklin ranching instead. She and Pete survived sandstorms, lightning storms, biblical hailstorms, a plague of hoppers that stripped crops, scrub and the insulation from power cables, two years of drought, and a hundred smaller difficulties and hardships. And after five years, by the terms of her pioneer licence, she owned the place free and clear.
By then, she had made a slight return to the Elder Culture biz. Rebuilding her client list, testing and evaluating their finds, advising an academic who was trying to map the taxonomic relationships between different kinds of Elder Culture code. She and Willie were still married, technically. He stopped by now and then, and sometimes they’d sort of accidentally fall into bed. There’d bee
n a few casual relationships too, and one semi-serious – a biologist surveying the flora and fauna of the high desert who turned out to have a wife and three kids in the city – but she mostly lived on her own now, a cantankerous forty-something desert broad scraping by like her neighbours, watching the city creep over the hills and edge into the tableland. Strip malls and motels and big box stores along Highway One; tracts on the western edge of the tableland pegged out for future suburban subdivisions; settlements and developers entangled in lawsuits over water rights. Every thirty-three days the shuttle returned from Earth and disgorged five thousand new settlers; many more were arriving on Ghajar ships reclaimed from orbital sargassos. Human civilisation spreading out in a grand and futile project to ‘normalise’ First Foot and the other worlds gifted by the Jackaroo more than thirty years ago.
Willie liked to quote a kōan he claimed to have learned from a Buddhist monk he’d met just before he’d come up and out: a man climbing a remote mountain finds a pocket of smooth unmarked summer snow in a shaded hollow, and jumps into it with his big boots. Later, Lisa discovered that the bit about the Buddhist monk was more of Willie’s bullshit, and his so-called kōan had actually been written by this canny old Scottish guy years before the Jackaroo came with their gifts and their offer to help. And although it was a neat image of humanity’s irrepressible urge to despoil pristine nature, it didn’t quite fit the brave new age of expansion. The fifteen gift worlds and the worlds of the new frontier weren’t like unmarked snow, or blank pages waiting to be inscribed with human history. Everywhere people went, they found the footprints of previous clients of the Jackaroo. Elder Culture ruins, scraps of Elder Culture technology, Elder Culture eidolons, fetches and ghosts. Remnants of unknown, unknowable alien histories bleeding into human culture and human history.
Lisa knew all about that. She and Willie had been indelibly marked by the Bad Trip. It had changed them, changed their lives, and they still didn’t know exactly what it was, what had happened to them.
