The Telemass Quartet

by Eric Brown

  “Please, gentlemen, let me past.”

  “I am arresting you,” Miller began, “for the murder of Karl Gustave Jurgens.”

  Kat smiled, almost dreamily. All around them, Acolytes were finding their allotted columns and giving themselves to eternity. With eerie silence a garden of bloody flowers bloomed, a spreading tide of crimson petals.

  “Kat,” Hendrick said. “It doesn’t have to be like this. Come with me, back to Earth.”

  “My destiny is here, Matt. I have no desire to suffer anymore. Can’t you realise that? Can’t you? Do you have any conception of what I’ve suffered over the years?”

  “Kat,” he pleaded.

  She shook her head, murmured, “And I want that suffering to end, Matt.”

  She looked from Hendrick to Miller, then reached into her smock and withdrew a small, black laser pistol. “I thought you might be here, come to stop me,” she said. “If you don’t move away from the column, then I will fire at you.”

  “Katerina,” Miller said, “let’s be sensible now.”

  “I said move away and allow me to die, damn you! Can’t you even let me meet my end with dignity?”

  “Put down the weapon, Katerina, and come with me,” Miller coaxed, stepping from the column towards her.

  She shook her head, her movements almost narcoleptic as the intense cold invaded her system. “Oh, how appropriate,” she murmured. “The last barrier to my eternal rest, a male authority figure.” She smiled, then laughed through a sudden burst of tears. “How fitting, how satisfying a . . .”

  Miller stepped forward. “Give me the pistol!”

  Kat raised the weapon and aimed at Miller. Hendrick saw the expression on her face—pure, unalloyed hatred—and he moved to intercept, but too late.

  She fired, the laser bolt striking Miller centrally in the chest and throwing him backwards across the ice. Hendrick scrambled over to the detective, fell to his knees and cradled Miller in his arms. He stared down at the great hole punched through the detective’s chest where his heart should have been.

  Crying aloud, he looked up as Kat stepped towards the silver column. Its flank slid open to receive her, and without so much as a glance at him she stepped inside. A second later, her flower bloomed above the ice, stark and beautiful and terrible.

  • • •

  Hendrick sat in the hotel bar and nursed a drink.

  It was three days since the events on the ice south of New Stockholm, and the penultimate Telemass transmission to Earth would take place in less than an hour. He had his passage already booked and he would use it—when he arrived at the station—if he found that Maatje and her lover were taking the transmission to Earth. If they failed to turn up, then he would be present for the very last shot to Earth six days after that. And if they had elected to evade him by remaining on Kallithea for the five year duration of winter? Then he would bide his time for that long, track them down and eventually take possession of his daughter.

  Three days ago, Miller’s two-man team had come down to New Stockholm to collect the detective’s body, the case against Katerina Nordstrom officially closed.

  He finished his drink, checked the time on his wrist-com, and left the hotel. He took a taxi to the Telemass Station and sat back, staring through the window at the grey buildings behind a flurry of snow, at the dark sky of the long, long night. He shivered. He would be glad to be away from the world which held so many bad memories.

  He considered the Acolytes of the Ice, and the cult’s founder Cavendish Sagar, and wondered what twisted psyche could conceive of such a nihilistic belief system.

  He thought of Ed Miller, a good man he would never see again . . .

  The taxi slowed, then stopped. Hendrick looked out expecting to see the rising tripod of the Telemass Station. They were in a narrow sidestreet, a canyon between two blocky buildings. He was about to ask the driver why they had stopped when he saw that someone had flagged down the taxi. The doors to either side of him opened and two figures slipped in, effectively making escape impossible.

  He stared at the man to his right and realised that his face was familiar. “What . . . ?” he began.

  The man raised an incapacitator and smiled. The woman to his left told the driver to continue, and Hendrick knew where he’d seen the couple before: in the hotel bar six days ago, watching him.

  And he understood, even before the man said, “You’re going nowhere, Mr Hendrick. But don’t worry. There are worse places to be than Kallithea during winter.”

  His last thought was that Maatje had outwitted him once again.

  Then the man hit him with the neural incapacitator, and for the second time in a matter of days he suffered a synaptic firestorm quickly followed by blessed oblivion.

  TEN

  HENDRICK OPENED HIS EYES.

  The first thing he registered was the absence of pain. He should have felt wiped out after the neural blitz, his senses scrambled and his coordination shot. Instead he felt calm, rested. He looked around and was surprised to find himself in a hospital room, hooked up to an array of monitors. He turned his head, stared through the window, and moaned.

  He saw darkness outside, relieved by a pointillism of blown snow. A wind moaned relentlessly.

  He recalled the words of his assailant in the back of the taxi: There are worse places to be than Kallithea during winter.

  So Maatje had hired the couple to apprehend him, to stop him following her and her lover on their onward journey.

  He wondered how long had passed since his abduction. The couple would have kept him secure, sedated, until after the last transmission to Earth, and only then admitted him to hospital.

  He felt overwhelmed by despair. Everything he had worked for over the course of the last few years, his dream of being reunited with his dead daughter, of one day being present when she was revived and cured . . .

  He wept.

  The prospect of five years underground on Kallithea was unbearable. The idea was so vast he could not contemplate how he might survive. He felt a suffocating weight like claustrophobia pressing down on him. But worse than the pain of imprisonment, far worse, was the fact that for five years his quest to find his daughter would be halted.

  A nurse entered the room, consulted a monitor, and smiled at him. “You’re awake,” he said. “Would you care for something to eat, Mr Hendrick?”

  He realised that he was hungry. He nodded. “Yes.”

  “I’ll arrange that,” the nurse said. “You must take it easy. You took the neural shot badly, but there seems to be no lasting damage.”

  The nurse slipped from the room, and minutes later another nurse brought in a tray of food.

  He ate hungrily, and as he was finishing the meal the nurse returned and said, “You have a visitor, Mr Hendrick. Are you up to seeing someone?”

  A visitor? The only person he knew on Kallithea was Magda Kallanova.

  He nodded. “Of course. Yes.”

  She slipped from the room and a minute later the door swung open and his visitor entered. He stared at the bulky man as he pulled up a chair, sat down, reached out and gripped Hendrick’s hand.

  “Matt, it’s good to see you.”

  He stared, disbelieving. “But . . . but you’re dead. Out on the ice. I saw her shoot you. I held you. You were dead!”

  Ed Miller smiled down at him, still gripping his hand. “I was dead, Matt. But then I was never really alive.”

  Hendrick shook his head. “What the hell’s going on?”

  Miller sighed, squeezed Hendrick’s hand and explained. “That terrorist bombing. The blast killed me, Matt. Killed me dead. But they scraped me up and experimented, the boys and girls in the Omni-Science lab. There was just enough left in here,” he reached up and touched his greying temple, “for them to copy, upload, and cache some of my memories in the latest cortical-gelware. Then they put my body back together and a year later I was as good as new.” He smiled. “Well, not quite.”

  “Jesus, E
d.”

  “So, call me a cyborg,” Miller said.

  “What you told me about retiring to Ghana, Marcus . . . ?”

  Miller sighed. “A cover story, Matt. Marcus didn’t want me to retire, and to be honest I couldn’t blame him. For all I looked like the man he’d loved, and for all I thought I was the man I’d been, I wasn’t.” He tapped his temple again. “For all the geniuses at Omni-science could recreate my thoughts, even some memories, they couldn’t imbue me with . . . with emotion, Matt. Oh, I can simulate an emotional response, but that’s all it is, a simulation.”

  “Christ, Ed. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be, Matt. I’m not complaining. What I am beats being dead, believe me.”

  “So when Kat lasered you out there . . .”

  “She took out the pump that was my heart, but the gelware up here just went into closedown till my team reached me.”

  Hendrick shook his head, gripping his friend’s hand and staring into Miller’s old, lined face.

  He considered what the cop had told him, then stared through the window at the snowstorm. “I don’t understand. Why did you stay on Kallithea?” He stopped. “The last transmission,” he gasped, sitting up. “We haven’t missed it, have we?”

  Miller said, “The last transmission left Kallithea three days ago, Matt.”

  He fell back onto the bed, despair pole-axing him for a second time. Five years underground on Kallithea as a terrible winter gripped the world. What would he do for the duration? How would he survive?

  Miller smiled. “And we were on that last transmission.”

  Hendrick stared at his friend. “What?” he whispered, hardly daring to believe.

  “The taxi driver thought you’d had a heart attack. He was suspicious when your abductors refused to take you to hospital. They were probably planning to hole up somewhere until after the last transmission. Anyway, the driver made straight for the nearest medical centre and the couple legged it. When my team patched me up, I wondered where the hell you were and made enquiries.” He shook his head. “We nearly didn’t make it, Matt. I discharged you from hospital against medical advice and we made the last shot with minutes to spare. You were unconscious for the duration of the transmission and for a while afterwards.”

  Hendrick laughed and gestured to the snow outside. “But this isn’t Paris,” he began.

  “Observant, Matt. They were having more technical problems at Élysées, so the transmission was rerouted to Toronto.”

  Relief washed through him. He was no longer on Kallithea, sentenced to five years underground; he was home, on Earth. He felt like weeping.

  “Your wife, her lover, and the suspension pod containing Samantha,” Miller said, “took the penultimate transmission from Kallithea and arrived on Earth nine days ago. They didn’t hang about but made arrangements for their onward travel.”

  Hendrick sat up. “I’ve got to follow them, Ed!”

  “Hey, calm down, calm down.” Miller’s strong hands eased him back onto the bed. “I’ve got it all under control. I made enquiries, pulled a few strings. Maatje and Hovarth travelled on to Tourmaline,” he said. “And according to the Telemass schedules there isn’t an onward transmission from Tourmaline for another ten days.”

  Hendrick tried to sit up again. “Ed, I’ve got to get out of here, arrange for—”

  “Like I said, Matt, it’s all under control. I booked you on a Telemass shot from Paris to Tourmaline two days from now.”

  “Ed, my friend . . .”

  Miller shrugged. “Look, I’d love to come with you, help out. But . . . fact is I’m property. I work for Homicide back in Amsterdam, and I do what Behrens says. I’m sorry, Matt.”

  Hendrick reached out and squeezed his friend’s shoulder. “You’ve helped me more than I can say,” he said. “And speaking of Behrens . . .”

  Miller anticipated his question. “Do I really think Katerina was telling the truth, and Behrens did frame her?” He shrugged. “Katerina was one twisted woman, Matt. You heard what she said before she lasered me. She had it in for the male of the species, thanks to the bastard who was her father. So I don’t know, she might have butchered Jurgens. But one thing is sure, Matt, I’m going to look into her claims that Behrens framed her, and if he did, then by God I’ll nail him.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  Miller glanced at his wrist-com. “It’s time I was out of here. Keep in touch, okay? Contact me when you get back from Tourmaline and tell me how it went, yeah?”

  “I’ll do that, Ed. And thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. I’ll see you around.”

  Hendrick watched the big man as he stood and left the room, with a last mock salute at the door.

  He lay back and considered the next few days. Tourmaline . . . He knew nothing about the colony world. He’d book a suborbital shuttle to Paris, spend a day researching the colony, and then take the outward transmission.

  The search went on.

  He raised his right hand instinctively, meaning to get through to the shuttle company and book a flight out of Toronto. The medics had removed his wrist-com, and his left arm felt naked, oddly exposed. He leaned out of bed and found the device in the bedside locker.

  He was about to search for booking agencies when he noticed he had three missed calls.

  He summoned them up and saw that they were all from the same person. He accessed the last call.

  Magda Kallanova’s face appeared on the tiny screen, staring out at him. She looked stunned with grief. “Matt, I’ve tried contacting you a few times but couldn’t get through, so I left this. I . . . I suppose Kat told you what she intended. I’ve just received a message from her, telling me. She asked me to forward you this, an attachment. It . . .” She stared from the screen at him, tears streaming down her face. “It explains a lot, I suppose.” She smiled, took a breath, and said, “Goodbye, Matt.”

  Hendrick tapped the touchpad, opening the attachment and wondering what Kat might have possibly wanted to say to him before she killed herself.

  He felt his throat tighten as Katerina’s face filled the screen. She smiled out at him, and he found the sight of her, so vital and alive, hard to bear. “Hello, Matt. I don’t know when you’ll get this, so . . . I just wanted to apologise for using the neural gun on you. But I had to do what I’m going to do. I said that at some time you might understand why . . . why I’ve got to go through with this.” She paused. “You see, when I found out about Kallithea, and the Acolytes of the Ice and their history . . . Well, my destiny became obvious. I hope you see the perfection of it, the circularity, and the beauty. By the time you get this, Matt, I’ll be dead, but don’t mourn me, okay? Give thanks that at last I’ve found some form of . . . redemption, of closure. And this is why . . .” And she swung her wrist-com so that her face no longer showed; in its place was another face.

  She went on. “So you see . . . At last I have found my father. He’d changed his name, of course, assumed a new identity. Goodbye, Matt . . .”

  Hendrick stared at the image, shocked, and then lowered his wrist-com.

  He gazed through the window at the snowstorm raging outside and considered the tortured soul who had been Katerina Nordstrom, her traumatic past and the lengths to which she had gone to seek redemption.

  He raised his wrist-com and stared at the face on the screen.

  Katerina’s father was Cavendish Sagar.

  • • •

  It was high summer in Paris and Hendrick sat in the bar overlooking the translation pad of the Élysées Telemass Station, waiting for the transmission to the colony world of Tourmaline.

  He activated his wrist-com and scrolled through the pages of information he’d gathered about the colony. It was a vast water world covered by a hundred thousand islands, and the thought of locating Maatje and his daughter there was daunting. He would start in the capital city, make enquiries . . . As Miller had said, there was no onward transmission from Tourmaline for another ten days.
He had that long to track them down. He was a good detective, and he was determined, and if luck was on his side . . .

  He thought of Katerina Nordstrom and her death, and he considered what he’d said to her back in the hotel room on Kallithea. At the time he’d meant it: he would gladly have returned to Earth with her, fought to clear her name . . . And then? He’d fantasized a life with the woman, taking up from where they had left off all those years ago.

  Only now did he understand that that would have been impossible, that Katerina had been too damaged by past experience to bring herself to feel anything like love towards anyone, even him.

  And Katerina had understood that, and had embraced her fate.

  She had sought her father, torn between resuming their incestuous relationship and wanting to murder the man who had made her life hell. But, denied either option by his own sacrifice out on the ice, Katerina had succumbed to his posthumous lure.

  His thoughts were interrupted by an announcement over the tannoy. “Will all travellers to Tourmaline make their way . . .”

  Sighing, Hendrick drained his beer, shouldered his pack, and took the escalator down to the translation pad.

  ERIC BROWN began writing when he was fifteen while living in Australia and sold his first short story to Interzone in 1986. He has won the British Science Fiction Award twice for his short stories, has published over fifty books, and his work has been translated into sixteen languages. His latest books include the SF novel Jani and the Greater Game, the collection Rites of Passage, and the crime novel Murder at the Chase. He writes a regular science fiction review column for the Guardian newspaper and lives near Dunbar, East Lothian. His website can be found at: www.ericbrown.co.uk.

  Part Three

  Reunion on Alfa Reticuli II

  ONE

  TOURMALINE WAS A DAYLIGHT WORLD.

  For the second time in a matter of days, Hendrick found himself on a planet orbiting a binary star. Tourmaline was a popular holiday destination, with millions of citizens from across the Expansion arriving every month to enjoy the eternal sunlight that bathed the archipelagos strung out across the planet’s vast equator.