The Naked God - Flight nd-5

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Observing this, Tranquillity began to consider itself the equivalent of some ageing uncle overseeing a brood of unruly young cousins. Its own decorum generated a mild feeling of alienation from its contemporaries (which Ione also found amusing). Only when the full Jovian Consensus, with all its solemn nobility, arose from the gabbling minds, was there a notion of kinship.

  By the time Tranquillity did arrive at Jupiter, there were literally millions of sub-groups convening within the habitat personalities to consider every possible aspect of the possession problem (essentially, Gilmore’s committee to the Nth degree). Eager to participate in the search for a solution, Tranquillity contributed its memories and conclusions of the crisis to date; information which was eagerly disseminated and deliberated over. Among the groupings who surveyed all matters religious, the most interesting development was the Kiint’s curiosity in the Tyrathca’s Sleeping God. The question of what the Sleeping God might actually be was passed to the cosmology groupings. They didn’t have much of an idea, so they queried the xenopsychology field. In turn, they wondered if the enigma would be better served by the xenocultural historians . . .

  At which point, two very distinct (and in their different ways, very important) mentalities among the collective personalities became aware of the Sleeping God problem. The sub-Consensus for security and Wing-Tsit Chong together decided the matter was best dealt with by themselves and a few of their own specialists. In collaberation with Ione, of course.

  Joshua had a bad feeling about Ione calling him to a conference without being told the reason. There were resonances of being asked to go after Mzu coming into play. It got worse when she told him it was to be convened in De Bouvoir Palace. That meant it was going to be formal, official.

  When he arrived at the small tube station which served visitors to the Palace, Mzu was climbing the steps ahead of him. He wanted to turn round and go back to supervising Lady Mac ’s refit. But at least this was as bad as it could possibly get. They made laboured small talk as they walked along the dark-yellow stone path to the classical building. Mzu didn’t know why she’d been invited, either.

  A horde of servitor chimps were scurrying about on either side of the path, along with specialist agronomy servitors. All of them were busy repairing the once immaculate parkland. Grass had been trampled into mud by thousands of dancing feet, topiary bushes were knocked into odd shapes, with bottles sticking out of unusual crevices. But it was the tomis shrubs which had taken the worst battering; with their blue and gold trumpet-shaped flowers torn from broken branches to form a brown, slippery mat across the path. The servitors were optimistically trying to repair them with adroit pruning and staking; though the smaller ones were simply being replaced. Vandalism on such a scale was unheard of in Tranquillity. Though Joshua did have to smile at the pile of clothes which the chimps had gathered up. It was mostly underwear.

  A pair of serjeants were on guard duty outside the basilica’s archway entrance. “The Lord of Ruin is expecting you,” one intoned. It led them along the nave to the audience chamber.

  Ione sat in her accustomed place behind the crescent table in the centre. Long, flat streamers of light from the towering windows intersected around her, giving her an almost saintly portrayal. Joshua was hard pressed not to comment on the theatre of the moment when she smiled a welcome, but he played the game and bowed solemnly. Mzu was given a more punctilious nod of recognition. There were six high-backed chairs set up along the convex side of the table, four of them already occupied. Joshua knew Parker Higgens; Samuel was there as well; but he had to run a search through his neural nanonics to name the Laymil project’s chief astronomer, Kempster Getchell. The fourth turned to face him . . .

  “You!”

  “Hello, Joshua,” Syrinx said. The possibility of a smile teased her lips.

  “Oh,” Ione murmured in a suspiciously sweet tone. “Do you two know each other?”

  Joshua gave Ione a punitive look, then went over to Syrinx and gave her a light kiss on the cheek. “I heard what happened on Pernik. I’m glad you came through it all right.”

  She touched the medical nanonic on his hand. “I’m not the only one who’s come through, apparently.”

  Joshua returned the smile, and sat next to her.

  “There’s a file I want you and Dr Mzu to review before we start,” Ione told him.

  The miserable scene of Coastuc-RT swamped Joshua’s mind; with Waboto-YAU arguing through its translator, and the two menacing soldier-caste Tyrathca standing close to Reza Malin. He’d avoided accessing most of Kelly’s recordings when Collins released them. Lalonde was one planet he didn’t want to return to by any method. The close presence of the mercenary leader was a shortcut to emotions he’d rather leave dormant.

  When the recording ended, he looked up to see one of the long glass windows behind Ione had darkened. Instead of emitting strong golden light, it now contained the image of an ancient Oriental man sitting in an antique wheelchair.

  “Wing-Tsit Chong will speak for the Jovian Consensus today,” Ione announced.

  “Right,” Joshua said. He loaded that name into a search program, ready to run it through his memory files.

  Syrinx leant across. “The founder of Edenism,” she said softly. “Quite a major historical figure, in fact.”

  “Name the inventor of the ZTT drive,” Joshua retorted.

  “Julian Wan normally gets the credit. Although technically he was only the head of the New Kong asteroid’s stardrive research team; a bureaucrat, basically.”

  Joshua frowned in pique.

  “Possibly the present would provide us with a more suitable topic for discussion,” Wing-Tsit Chong chided gently.

  “The Sleeping God throws up a number of questions,” Ione said. “Very relevant questions, given the Tyrathca’s psychology. They believed it would be able to help them against possessed humans. And they don’t lie.”

  “So far this entity or object has made no appreciable impact upon our situation,” Wing-Tsit Chong said. “Implying three options. It is a myth, and the Tyrathca were either fooled or mistaken by their encounter with it. It is not capable of assisting them. Or it does exist, it is capable, and it has simply restrained itself, so far.”

  “That third implication is the most interesting,” Kempster said. “It’s an assumption that the Sleeping God is sentient, or at lest self-aware; which rules out a celestial event.”

  “I always concurred with the artefact possibility myself,” Parker Higgens said. “The arkship Tyrathca would surely recognize a celestial event for what it was. And celestial events don’t keep watch. Waboto-YAU was quite insistent about that. The Sleeping God dreams of the universe, it knows everything.”

  “I concur,” Wing-Tsit Chong said. “This entity has been assigned extraordinary perceptive powers by the Tyrathca. Although we can assume the memories of Sireth-AFL’s family would become open to degradation down the centuries, the major elements must retain their integrity. Something very unusual is out there.”

  “Have you asked the Kiint direct what it is, and what their interest is?” Joshua asked.

  “Yes. They claim a total lack of knowledge on the subject. Ambassador Armira simply repeats Lieria’s claim that they are interested in the full record of Kelly Tirrel’s sojourn on Lalonde so they might understand the nature of human possession.”

  “They might be telling the truth.”

  “No,” Parker Higgens said forcefully. “Not them. They’ve been lying to us since first contact. This is more than coincidence. The Kiint are desperately interested. And I’d love to beat them to it.”

  “A race that can teleport?” Joshua said light heartedly. The old director’s vehemence was out of character here.

  “Even if the Kiint aren’t interested,” Ione said swiftly, “we certainly are. The Tyrathca believe it to be real and able to assist them. That alone justifies sending a mission to it.”

  “Wait—” Joshua said. He couldn’t believe he’d been
so slow. “You want me to go after it, don’t you?”

  “That’s why you’re here,” Ione answered calmly. “I believe you said you wanted to make a contribution?”

  “Yes, I did.” There was a residue of reluctance in the acknowledgement. Some of the old bravado. I want to originate the solution. Claim all the glory. Shades of the good old days.

  He grinned at Ione, wondering if she’d guessed what he was thinking. More than likely. But if there was a chance this xenoc God might have an answer, he wanted in. He owed a lot of people the effort. His dead crew. His unborn child. Louise and the rest of Norfolk. Even himself, now he refused to avoid thinking of death and the mysteries that inaugurated. Facing up to fate in such a fashion might be frightening, but it made living a hell of a lot easier. And, to be honest with himself, so did the prospect of flying again.

  “And so, I believe, did Syrinx,” Ione said. The voidhawk captain nodded admission.

  “The Kiint stonewalled you, huh?” Joshua asked.

  “Malva was very polite about it, but essentially, yes.”

  Joshua settled back, gazing up at the domed ceiling. “Let me see. If a Tyrathca arkship encountered this God, then it has to be a long way off, a very long way. Not too much problem for a voidhawk, but . . . ah, now I get it. The antimatter.” Lady Mac ’s inclusion was obvious now. Her delta-V reserve was currently five or six times greater than most Adamist warships, making her an obvious candidate to surmount the problem of galactic orbital mechanics. For starships, there’s a lot more than just distance to the gulf between stars. Ultimately, it is velocity which governs their design and finances.

  Earth’s sun orbits the galactic centre roughly once every two hundred and thirty million years, giving it an approximate velocity of two hundred and twenty kilometres per second relative to the core. Other stars, of course, have different orbital velocities, depending on their distance from the core, so their velocities relative to each other are also different. Voidhawks can cope with the variance by tailoring their wormhole terminus to match a local star’s vector. It’s a manoeuvre which uses up an inconvenient amount of energy from the patterning cells; however, because they obtain their energy for free it doesn’t affect their commercial performance except in terms of recharging time. But for Adamist starship captains, that variance isn’t merely inconvenient, it’s a positive bane. The ZTT jump might provide a short cut across the interstellar gulf, but it cannot magically change inertia. A starship emerging from a jump has precisely the same vector it had when it started. In order to rendezvous with the planet or asteroid at its destination, its delta-V has to be altered to match. It’s a tedious process which uses up plenty of fuel; in other words, it costs money. And the further the stars are away from each other, the greater the velocity difference. For most Adamist starships, a flight right across the longest axis of Confederation space, a distance approaching nine hundred light-years, would use up over ninety per cent of their reaction drive fuel. Several marques would be incapable of the feat anyway. The limit is imposed because they all used fusion drives.

  Antimatter, of course, provided a vastly superior delta-V. And the antimatter Lady Mac had taken on board from the Beezling was still in her confinement chambers. The First Admiral had given Samuel instructions for the secure military facilities at Jupiter to dispose of it. One of the five specialist ships qualified to handle the substance was still en route to Tranquillity.

  “There is a high possibility that a long flight will be required to bring this task to a fruitful conclusion,” Wing-Tsit Chong said. “I congratulate you on your clarity of thought, young Joshua.”

  Syrinx and Ione swapped a glance. “You’re going to let him use antimatter?” Mzu asked in surprise.

  “A voidhawk and Adamist starship are a good pairing for this kind of assignment,” Syrinx said. “Both of us have strengths and weaknesses which complement the other. Providing the Adamist ship can manage to keep up with a voidhawk, of course.”

  “Outperform, or outsmart?” Joshua asked civilly.

  “All right,” Mzu said. “So why am I here?”

  “We believed you might be able to help us analyse the nature of the Sleeping God,” Kempster Getchell said. “Especially if it turns out to be a high-technology weapon rather than a natural phenomenon, which is my field.”

  Alkad glanced round at their faces, depressed when she knew she should have been flattered. “I had one idea,” she said. “Once. Thirty years ago.”

  “One original insight,” Wing-Tsit Chong said. “Which is one more than most people have had, or ever will have. You have a mind which is capable of it. An ability which can innovate on such a level is an asset we cannot overlook.”

  “What about Foulkes?” Alkad asked Samuel.

  “If you agree to participate, I’ll speak with her. The non-contact prohibition placed upon you does not apply in this situation. You will be permitted to fly on this mission. However, I will accompany you along with Monica.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “Don’t be. And please don’t interpret our continued presence as approval for what you did. It so happens, that there are sections of this mission which require the kind of ability which Monica and I specialise in.”

  “How very enigmatic. Very well, if you think I’m the right person for the job, I’d be honoured to take part.”

  “Good,” Ione said.

  “But I’ll need Peter with me.”

  “This isn’t a honeymoon cruise,” Samuel told her, reproachfully.

  “We worked as a team putting the Alchemist together. It’s a synergistic relationship.”

  “Somehow, I doubt that,” Ione said. “But for argument’s sake, I’ll permit you to ask him if he wants to accompany you.”

  “So where were you thinking of sending us?” Joshua asked.

  “Regretfully, you will have to go directly to the source,” Wing-Tsit Chong said. “Which is one of the reasons this mission is being assembled under the auspices of the Jovian security sub-Consensus. A thorough search of xenology records both at Jupiter and Earth have revealed absolutely no reference to the Sleeping God. The Tyrathca have never mentioned it to us before.”

  “The source? Oh Jesus, you mean Hesperi-LN, the Tyrathca home planet?”

  “Initially, yes. Waboto-YAU told us that it was another arkship which encountered the Sleeping God, not Tanjuntic-RI. Therefore, that arkship must have lasered the information to all the other Tyrathca arkships in the exodus fleet. We must hope that a recording of that message is still aboard Tanjuntic-RI. If you can find it, you may be able to establish the approximate location of the encounter.”

  “That could be a long way off,” Joshua said. His neural nanonics started to access almanac and Tyrathca history files from memory cells, running them through a navigation program. The result rising into his mind in the form of gold and scarlet icons was both fascinating and alarming. “Hesperi-LN isn’t their genuine home planet, remember. It’s just the last colony world Tanjuntic-RI founded. Look, the original Tyrathca star, Mastrit-PJ, the one they escaped from is on the other side of the Orion Nebula. That puts it at least 1,600 light-years away. Now if we get real unlucky, and the arkship which found the Sleeping God was going in the opposite direction to Tanjuntic-RI, you’re talking twice as far.”

  “We are aware of that,” Wing-Tsit Chong said.

  Joshua sighed with indubitable regret. To take Lady Mac on such a voyage would have been awesome. “I’m sorry, there isn’t that much antimatter left. I can’t take the old girl that far.”

  “We are aware of your starship’s performance capabilities,” Wing-Tsit Chong said. “However there is a supply of antimatter which you will be able to use.”

  “You keep some here at Jupiter?” Joshua asked in what he figured was a casual voice.

  “No,” Syrinx said. “A CNIS agent called Erick Thakara located a production station which may be supplying Capone.”

  “Thakara—” Joshua’s search program l
ocated the appropriate file; he locked eyes with Ione. “Really? That’s . . . helpful.”

  “With the 1st fleet somewhat overstretched, the First Admiral’s staff have asked for Jupiter’s voidhawks to tackle it,” Samuel said.

  “Which they are preparing to do,” Wing-Tsit Chong said. “However, before the station is finally annihilated, you will be able to take on board as much antimatter as the Lady Macbeth ’s confinement systems can handle.”

  “Three thousand light-years,” Joshua murmured. “Jesus.”

  “Meredith Saldana’s task force has a large contingent of Confederation Navy marines assigned to it,” Ione said. “They’ll secure the station for you once the personnel surrender to the voidhawk squadron.”

  “What if the station operatives just suicide?” Joshua said. “They usually do when the Navy confronts them.”

  “And take as many of us with them as they can,” Syrinx whispered.

  “They will be offered a penal planet sentence instead of the usual death penalty,” Samuel said. “We can only hope that proves attractive enough to them.”

  “All right, but even if we load Lady Mac with enough antimatter, the Tyrathca have ended communications with the Confederation,” Joshua said. “Do you really think they’ll allow us to search through Tanjuntic-RI’s electronic systems?”

  “Probably not,” Samuel said. “But as we don’t intend to ask their permission, it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

  Chapter 07

  You didn’t have to be attuned to the land like a possessed to know it was about to happen. Most of Ombey’s population was aware the time had come.