The Neutronium Alchemist

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Someone knocked on the front door before he got to it. Pat Staite, their neighbour, was standing outside dressed in elaborate blue and grey striped baseball gear.

  “We’re looking for people to help make up the teams,” he said hopefully.

  “It’s a little early in the day for me.”

  “Absolutely. Terribly sorry. If you’re free this afternoon … ?”

  “Then I’ll come along, certainly.”

  Pat was one of Exnall’s growing band of sports enthusiasts who seemed intent on playing every ball game ever devised by the human race. They had already taken over two of the town’s parks.

  “Thanks,” Staite said, not registering the irony in Moyo’s voice or thoughts. “There’s an ex-Brit living in the street now. He said he’d teach us how to play cricket.”

  “Fabulous.”

  “Is there anything you used to play?”

  “Strip poker. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and catch some chickens for my breakfast.”

  The chickens had broken out of their coop, but they were still pecking and scratching around the garden. They were a geneered variety, plump, with rusty yellow feathers. They were also remarkably quick.

  Moyo’s first couple of attempts at catching one ended with him falling flat on his stomach. When he climbed to his feet the second time, the whole flock was squawking in alarm and vanishing fast into the shrubbery.

  He glared at them, banishing the mud caking his trousers and shirt, and pointed a finger. The tiny bolt of white fire caught the chicken at the base of its neck, sending out a cloud of singed feathers and quite a lot of blood. It must have looked ludicrous, he knew, using his power for this. But, if it got the job done …

  When he’d finished blasting every chicken he could see, he walked over to the nearest corpse. And it started running away from him, head flopping down its chest on the end of a flaccid strip of skin. He stared at it disbelievingly; he’d always thought that was an urban myth. Then another of the corpses sprinted for freedom. Moyo pushed his sleeves up and summoned a larger bolt of white fire.

  There were voices drifting through the open kitchen door when he returned to the bungalow. He didn’t even have to use his perception to know who was in there with her.

  Under Stephanie’s control the range cooker was radiating waves of heat.

  Several children were warming themselves around it, holding big mugs of tea. They all stopped talking as he walked in.

  Stephanie’s bashful welcoming smile was transformed to an astonished blink as she saw the smoking remnants of chicken he was carrying. A couple of the children started giggling.

  “Into the lounge everyone,” Stephanie ordered the kids. “Go on, I’ll see what I can salvage.”

  Once they had left he asked: “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Looking after them, of course. Shannon says she hasn’t had a meal ever since the possessed arrived.”

  “But you can’t. Suppose—”

  “Suppose what? The police come?”

  He dropped the burnt carcasses onto the tile worktop next to the range cooker. “Sorry.”

  “We’re responsible only to ourselves now. There are no laws, no courts, no rights and wrongs. Only what feels good. That’s what this new life is for, isn’t it? Indulgence.”

  “I don’t know. It might be.”

  She leaned against him, arms encircling his waist. “Look at it selfishly. What else have you got to do today?”

  “And there I was thinking I was the one who’d adjusted best to this.”

  “You did, at first. I just needed time to catch up.”

  He peered through the door at the children. There were eight of them bouncing around on the lounge furniture, none over twelve or thirteen.

  “I’m not used to children.”

  “Nor chickens by the look of things. But you managed to bring them back in the end, didn’t you?”

  “Are you sure you want to do this? I mean, how long do you want to look after them for? What’s going to happen when they grow up? Do they hit sixteen and get possessed? That’s an awful prospect.”

  “That won’t happen. We’ll take this world out of the reach of the beyond. We’re the first and the last possessed. This kind of situation won’t arise again. And in any case, I wasn’t proposing to bring them up in Exnall.”

  “Where then?”

  “We’ll take them up to the end of Mortonridge and turn them over to their own kind.”

  “You’re kidding me.” A pointless statement; he could sense the determination in her thoughts.

  “Don’t tell me you want to stay in Exnall for all of eternity?”

  “No. But the first few weeks would be fine.”

  “To travel is to experience. I won’t force you, Moyo, if you want to stay here and learn how to play cricket, that’s okay by me.”

  “I surrender.” He laughed, and kissed her firmly. “They won’t be able to walk, not all that way. We’ll need some sort of bus or truck. I’d better scout around and see what Ekelund left us.”

  ***

  It was the eighth time Syrinx had walked to Wing-Tsit Chong’s odd house on the side of the lake. For some of these meetings it would be just the two of them sitting and talking, on other occasions they would be joined by therapists and Athene and Sinon and Ruben for what amounted to a joint session. But today it was only the pair of them.

  As ever, Wing-Tsit Chong was waiting in his wheelchair on the veranda, a tartan rug tucked around his legs. <>

  She bowed slightly in the Oriental tradition, a mannerism she had taken up after the second session. <>

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  She sat on the wickerwork chair opposite him, deeply troubled. <>

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  Syrinx groaned in understanding. <>

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  An amused light twinkled in the deeply recessed eyes. <>

  Syrinx closed her eyes, then looked up at the vaguely puzzled face of the chief therapist. She realized her lips were parted in a wide smile.

  <> he asked politely.

  <> Taking a cautious breath, she eased her legs off the side of the bed. The hospital room was as comfortable and pleasant as only their culture could make it. But it would be nice to have a complete change.

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  ***

  It had not been an easy week for Ikela. The Dorados were starting to suffer from the civil and commercial starflight quarantine. All exports had halted, and the asteroids had only a minuscule internal economy, which could hardly support the hundreds of industrial stations that refined the plentiful ore. Pretty soon he was going to have to start laying off staff in all seventeen of the T’Opingtu company’s foundry stations.

  It was the first setback the Dorados had ever suffered in all of their thirty-year history. They had been tough years, but rewarding for those who had believed in their own future and worked hard to attain it. People like Ikela. He had come here after the death of Garissa, like so many others tragically disinherited from that world. There had been more than enough money to start his business in those days, and it had grown in tandem with the system’s flourishing economy. In three decades he had changed from bitter refugee to a leading industrialist, with a position of responsibility in the Dorados’ governing council.

  Now this. It wasn’t financial ruin, not by any means, but the social cost was starting to mount up at an alarming rate. The Dorados were used only to expansion and growth. Unemployment was not an issue in any of the seven settled asteroids. People who found themselves suddenly without a job and regular earnings were unlikely to react favourably to the council washing their hands of the problem.

  Yesterday, I
kela had sat in on a session to discuss the idea of making companies pay non-salaried employees a retainer fee to tide them through the troubles; which had seemed the easy solution until the chief magistrate started explaining how difficult that would be to implement legally. As always the council had dithered. Nothing had been decided.

  Today Ikela had to start making his own decisions along those same lines.

  He knew he ought to set an example and pay some kind of reduced wage to his workforce. It wasn’t the kind of decision he was used to making.

  He strode into the executive floor’s anteroom with little enthusiasm for the coming day. His personal secretary, Lomie, was standing up behind her desk, a harassed expression on her face. Ikela was mildly surprised to see a small red handkerchief tied around her ankle. He would never have thought a levelheaded girl like Lomie would pay any attention to that Deadnight nonsense which seemed to be sweeping through the Dorados’ younger generation.

  “I couldn’t stonewall her,” Lomie datavised. “I’m sorry, sir, she was so forceful, and she did say she was an old friend.”

  Ikela followed her gaze across the room. A smallish woman was rising from one of the settees, putting her cup of coffee down on the side table. She clung to a small backpack which was hanging at her side from a shoulder strap. Few Dorados residents had skin as dark as hers, though it was extensively wrinkled now. Ikela guessed she was in her sixties. Her features were almost familiar, something about them agitating his subconscious. He ran a visual comparison program through his neural nanonics personnel record files.

  “Hello, Captain,” she said. “It’s been a while.”

  Whether the program placed her first, or the use of his old title triggered the memory, he never knew. “Mzu,” he choked. “Dr Mzu. Oh, Mother Mary, what are you doing here?”

  “You know exactly what I’m doing here, Captain.”

  “Captain?” Lomie inquired. She looked from one to the other. “I never knew …”

  Keeping his eyes fixed on Mzu as if he expected her to leap for his throat, Ikela waved Lomie to be silent. “I’m taking no appointments, no files, no calls, nothing. We’re not to be interrupted.” He datavised a code at his office door. “Come through, Doctor, please.”

  The office had a single window, a long band of glass which looked down on Ayacucho’s biosphere cavern. Alkad gave the farms and parks an appreciative glance. “Not a bad view, considering you’ve only had thirty years to build it. The Garissans seem to have done well for themselves here. I’m glad to see it.”