The Neutronium Alchemist

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “So where are all the pedestrians going?”

  “Some are taking the main link road to the M6, but it looks like the majority are heading for the town centre. I’d say they’re probably converging on the police station.”

  “Damn it, that’s all we need. If they congregate in a crowd there’s no way we’ll be able to stop the possession from spreading. It’ll be like a plague.”

  Frank Kitson was angry in a way he hadn’t been for years. Angry, and just a bit alarmed, too. First, woken up in the dead of night by a priority message from some O’Meara woman he’d never heard of. Which turned out to be a paranoid fantasy about xenoc takeovers and martial law. Then when he tried to datavise the police station about it he couldn’t get through to the duty officer. So he’d seen the lights on next door, and datavised old man Yardly to see if he knew what was going on. Yardly had received the same priority datavise, as had some of his family, and he couldn’t get through to the police either.

  Frank didn’t want to make a fool of himself by appearing panicky, but something odd was definitely going down. Then the communications net crashed. When he accessed the general household processor for an emergency channel to the police station there was an official message in the processor’s memory from Chief Inspector Latham announcing the curfew, setting out its rules, and assuring all the citizens they would be evacuated in the morning. Genuinely worried now, Frank told his little family to get ready, they were leaving right away.

  The car processor refused to acknowledge his datavise. When he switched the car to manual override, it still wouldn’t function. That was when he set off to find a police officer and demand to be told just what the hell was going on. It was a few minutes short of one o’clock when the curfew was officially due to start. And in any case, he was an upstanding subject of the King, he had every right to be on the street. The curfew couldn’t possibly apply to him.

  A lot of other people seemed to have the same idea. Quite a group of them marched down the wide road out of their tranquil residential suburb heading for the town centre, shoulders set squarely against the night air. Some people had brought their kids, the children sleepy, their voices piping and full of queries. Comments were shouted back and forth, but no one had any answers to what was actually going on.

  Frank heard someone call his name, and saw Hanly Nowell making his way towards him.

  “Hell of a thing,” he told Hanly. They worked for the same agrichemical company; different divisions, but they drank together some nights, and their two families went on joint outings occasionally.

  “Sure.” Hanly looked distracted. “Did your car pack up?”

  Frank nodded, puzzled by how low Hanly was keeping his voice, almost as if he didn’t want to be overheard. “Yes, some kind of official traffic division override in the processor. I didn’t even know they could do that.”

  “Me neither. But I’ve got my four-wheeler. I can bypass the processor in that, go straight to manual drive.”

  They both stopped walking. Frank threw cautious glances at the rest of the loose group as they passed by.

  “Room in it for you and the family,” Hanly said when the stragglers had moved away.

  “You serious?” Maybe it was the thick grey tree shadows which flapped across the street creating confusing movements of half-light, but Frank was sure Hanly’s face was different somehow. Hanly always smiled, or grinned, forever happy with life. Not tonight, though.

  Guess it’s getting to him, too.

  “Wouldn’t have offered otherwise,” Hanly said generously.

  “God, thanks, man. It’s not for me. I’m scared for the wife and Tom, you know?”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll go back and get them. We’ll come around to your place.”

  “No need.” And now Hanly was smiling. He put an arm around Frank’s shoulders. “I’m parked just around the corner. Come on, we’ll drive back to your house. Much quicker.”

  Hanly’s big off-road camper was sitting behind a thick clump of ancient harandrids in a small park. Invisible from the street.

  “You thought about where we can go to get clear?” Frank asked. He was keeping his own voice low now. There were still little groups of people walking about through the suburb, all making their way to the town centre. Most of them would probably appreciate a ride out, and wouldn’t be too fussy how they got it. He was bothered by how furtive and uncharitable he’d become. Focusing on survival must do that to a man.

  “Not really.” Hanly opened the rear door and gestured Frank forwards.

  “But I expect we’ll get there anyway.”

  Frank gave him a slightly stiff smile and climbed in. Then the door banged shut behind him, making him jump. It was pitch black inside. “Hey, Hanly.” No answer. He pushed at the door, pumping the handle, but it wouldn’t open. “Hanly, what the hell you doing, man?”

  Frank had the sudden, awful realization that he wasn’t alone inside the camper. He froze, spread-eagle against the door. “Who’s there?” he whispered.

  “Just us chickens, boss.”

  Frank whirled around as a fearsome green-white light bloomed inside the camper. Its intensity made him squeeze his eyes tight shut, fearing for his retinas. But not before he’d seen the sleek wolverine creatures launching themselves at him, their huge fangs dripping blood.

  From his seat in the situation management room, Neville Latham could hear the crowd outside the police station. They produced an unpleasant ebb and flow of sound which lapped at the building, its angry tone plain for all to hear.

  The final impossibility: a mob in Exnall! And while he was supposed to be enforcing a curfew. Dear Lord.

  “You must disperse them,” Landon McCullock datavised. “They cannot be allowed to group together for any length of time, it would be a disaster.”

  “Yes, sir.” How? he wanted to shout at his superior. I’ve only got five officers left in the station. “How long before the marines land?”

  “Approximately four minutes. But, Neville, I’m not allowing them in to the town itself. Their priority is to establish a secure perimeter. I have to think of the whole continent. What’s loose in Exnall cannot be allowed out.”

  “I understand.” He glanced at the desktop processor’s AV projector which was broadcasting Exnall’s status display. The SD sensor satellite wasn’t producing as many details as he would have liked, but the overall summary was accurate enough. Approximately six hundred people were milling along Maingreen outside the station, with dribs and drabs still arriving.

  Neville made his decision and datavised the communications block for a channel to each patrol car.

  It was all over now, anyway: career, retirement prospects, probably his friends, too. Ordering the police to open fire with sonics on his own townsfolk wouldn’t make the recriminations appreciably worse. And it would be helping them, even though they’d never appreciate the fact.

  ***

  Eben Pavitt had arrived at the police station ten minutes ago, and still hadn’t managed to get anywhere near the doors to make his complaint. Not that it would do him much good if he had got up there. He could see those at the front of the building hammering away at the thick glass doors to no avail. If that pompous dickbrain Latham was in there, he wasn’t doing his duty and talking to the crowd.

  It was beginning to look like his walk (two bloody kilometres, dressed in a thin T-shirt and shorts) had all been for nothing. How utterly bloody typical that Latham should bungle tonight. Ineffective warnings. Sloppy organization. Cutting people off from the net. The chief inspector was supposed to be helping the town, for crying out loud.

  By God, my MP is going to hear about this.

  If I get out in one piece.

  Eben Pavitt glanced uneasily at his fellow townsfolk. There was a constant derisory shouting now. Several stones had been thrown at the police station. Eben disapproved of that, but he could certainly understand the underlying frustration.

  Even Maingreen’
s overhead streetlights seemed to be sharing the town’s malaise, they weren’t as bright as usual. Away in the distance, above the fringes of the crowd, he could see several of them flickering.

  He wasn’t going to achieve anything here. Perhaps he should have hiked straight out of town? And it still wasn’t too late, if he started now.

  As he turned around and started to push his way through the press of aggrieved people, he thought he saw a large flyer curving through the sky above the western edge of town. Trees and the wayward streetlights swiftly cut it from his view, but there wasn’t much else that gold-haze blob could be. And the size could only mean a military transport of some kind.

  He grinned secretively. The government was doing something positive.

  Perhaps all was not lost after all.

  Then he heard the sirens. Patrol cars were racing along Maingreen, approaching the crowd from both ends. Those people around him were straining to catch a glimpse of the latest distraction.

  “LEAVE THE AREA,” an amplified voice bellowed from the police station.

  “THE TOWN IS NOW UNDER MARTIAL LAW. RETURN HOME AND REMAIN THERE UNTIL YOU RECEIVE FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.”

  Eben was sure the distorted voice belonged to Neville Latham.

  The first patrol cars braked dangerously close to people on the edge of the main crowd, as if their safety systems had somehow become uncoupled.

  Several jumped clear hurriedly, two or three lost their footing and fell over. One man was struck by a patrol car, sending him cannoning into a woman. They both went sprawling.

  A deluge of boos were directed at the patrol cars. Eben didn’t like the mood which was emerging among his fellow citizens. These weren’t the usual peaceable Exnall residents. And the police reaction was unbelievably provocative. A lifelong law abider, Eben was shocked by their actions.

  “LEAVE THE AREA NOW. THIS IS AN ILLEGAL ASSEMBLY.”

  A single lump of stone tumbled through the air above the bobbing heads of the crowd. Eben never did see the arm which flung it. One thing remained certain, though, it was thrown with incredible force. When it hit the patrol car it actually managed to fracture the bonded silicon windscreen.

  Several taunting cheers went up. Suddenly the air was thick with improvised missiles raining down on the patrol cars.

  The response was predictable, and immediate. A couple of assault mechanoids emerged from the rear of each patrol car. Sense-overload ordnance shot out, red flares slicing brilliant ephemeral archways across the stars.

  They should have been warning shots. The mechanoids had a direct-attack prohibition loaded into their processors which only Neville Latham could cancel.

  The ordnance activated two metres above the compressed bustle of bodies at the heart of the crowd. The effect was almost as bad as if live ammunition had been fired straight at them.

  Eben saw men and women keel over as though they’d been electrocuted. Then his eyes were streaming from intolerable light and wickedly acidic gas.

  Human screams vanished beneath a hyper-decibel whistle. His neural nanonics sensorium filter programs were unable to cope (as the ordnance designers intended), leaving him blind, deaf, and virtually insensate.

  Heavy bodies thudded into him, sending him spinning, stumbling for balance. Pinpricks of heat bloomed across his bare skin, turning to vicious stings. He felt his flesh ballooning, body swelling to twice, three times its normal size. Joints were seizing up.

  Eben thought he was screaming. But there was no way to tell. The solid sensations, when they started to return, were crude ones. His bare legs scraping over damp grass. Limp arms banging against his side. He was being dragged along the ground by his collar.

  When he’d regained enough rationality to look around, the scenes of suffering on Maingreen outside the police station made him want to weep with rage and helplessness. The crazed assault mechanoids were still pummelling people with their ordnance from point-blank range. A direct hit brought instant death, for those nearby the activation it was outright torture.

  “Bastards,” Eben rasped. “You bastards.”

  “Pigs are always the same.”

  He looked up at the man who was pulling him away from the melee. “Christ, thanks, Frank. I could have died if I’d stayed in there.”

  “Yeah, I suppose you could have,” Frank Kitson said. “Lucky I came along, really.”

  The police hypersonic landed next to the five big marine troop flyers.

  They were strung out along the link road which connected Exnall to the M6; a quintet of dark, menacingly obese arachnids whose landing struts had dinted the carbon concrete. The start of the town’s harandrid forest was two hundred metres away, a meticulous border where the aboriginal trees finished and the cultivated citrus groves began.

  As he came down the hypersonic’s airstairs, Ralph’s suit sensors showed him the marine squads fanning out along the edge of the trees. Some kind of barrier had already been thrown across the road itself. So far a perfect deployment.

  The marine colonel, Janne Palmer, was waiting for Ralph in the command cabin of her flyer. It was a compartment just aft of the cockpit with ten communications operatives, and three tactical interpretation officers.

  Even though it was inside and well protected, the colonel was wearing a lightweight armour suit like the rest of her brigade. Her shell helmet was off, showing Ralph a surprisingly feminine face. The only concession to military life appeared to be her hair, which was shaved down to a two-millimetre stubble of indeterminable colour. She gave him a fast nod of acknowledgement as he was escorted in by a young marine.

  “I accessed a recording of the operation at Moyce’s,” she said. “These are one tough set of people we’ve got here.”

  “I’m afraid so. And it looks like Exnall is the worst infestation out of all the four Mortonridge towns.”

  She glanced into an AV pillar’s projection. “Nice assignment. Let’s hope my brigade can handle it. At the moment I’m trying to establish a circular perimeter roughly fifteen hundred metres outside the town. We should have it solid in another twenty minutes.”

  “Excellent.”

  “That forest’s going to be a bitch to patrol. The SD sensor sats can’t see shit below the trees, and you’re telling me I can’t rely on our usual observation systems.”

  “ ‘Fraid not.”

  “Pity. Aerovettes would be exceptionally handy in this case.”

  “I must advise against using them. The possessed can really screw our electronics. You’re far better off without them. At least that way you know the information you’re receiving is accurate, even though there isn’t much of it.”

  “Interesting situation. Haven’t handled anything like this since tac school, if then.”

  “Diana Tiernan told me the AIs have got very few datalinks left into Exnall. We’ve definitely lost most of the town’s communications net. Even the police architecture has failed now. So the exact situation inside is unknown.”

  “There was some kind of fight outside the police station which finished a couple of minutes ago. But even if that crowd which gathered along Maingreen have all been possessed, that still leaves us with a lot of the population which have escaped so far. What do you want to do about them?”

  “Same as we originally planned. Wait until dawn, and send in teams to evacuate everyone. But I wish to Christ that curfew had held. It did in all the other towns.”

  “Wishes always wind up as regrets in this game, I find.”

  Ralph gave her a speculative look, but she was concentrating on another AV projection. “I think our main concern right now is to contain the possessed in Exnall,” he said. “When it’s light we can start worrying about getting the rest out.”

  “Absolutely.” Janne Palmer stared straight at the ESA operative, and gave him a regretful grin. “And come dawn I’m going to need the best information I can acquire. A lot of lives are going to depend on me getting it right. I don’t have any special forces types in my briga
de.

  This was a rush operation. But what I do have now is you and your G66 troops. I’d like you to go in and make that assessment for me. I believe you’re the best qualified, in all respects.”

  “You don’t happen to know Jannike Dermot, do you?”

  “Not personally, no. Will you go in for me? I can’t order you to; Admiral Farquar made it quite plain you’re here to advise, and I have to take that advice.”

  “Considerate of him.” Ralph didn’t even need any time to decide. I made that choice when I put the armour suit on again. “Okay, I’ll go and tell my people we’re on line again. But I’d like to take a squad of your marines in with us. We might need some heavy-calibre firepower support.”

  “There’s a platoon assembled and waiting for you in flyer four.”

  Finnuala O’Meara had passed simple frustration a long time ago. Over an hour, in fact. She had been sitting on a bunk in the police station’s holding cell for an age. Nothing she did brought the slightest response from anyone, not datavises into the station processor, nor shouting, or thumping on the door. Nobody came. It must have been that prick Latham’s orders. Let her cool off for a few hours. Jumped-up cretin.

  But she could nail him. Anytime she wanted, now. He must know that. Which was probably why he’d kept her in here while the rest of her story played out, denying her a complete victory. If only her coverage had been complete she would have been able to dictate her own terms to a major.

  She’d heard the noises from outside, the sound of a crowd gathering and protesting. A large crowd if she was any judge. Then the sirens of the patrol cars rushing along Maingreen. Speakers blaring a warning, pleas, and threats. Strange monotonous thumps. Screams, glass smashing.

  It was awful. She belonged outside, drinking down the sight.

  After the riot, or whatever, it had become strangely quiet. Finnuala had almost drifted off to sleep when the cell door did finally open.