The Neutronium Alchemist

by Peter F. Hamilton

  He decided not to mention the prospect to the Kohistan Consensus. It was another small private advantage; no one else in the Confederation had such a unique and extensive vantage point of the possessed and their behaviour as him. He wasn’t sure if he could exploit the knowledge, but he wasn’t going to give it away until he was certain.

  A sub-routine of his principal personality was designated to observe the aberrant melanomata and carcinomas developing on the possessed inside the habitat. If the growths turned malignant the current situation would change drastically right across the Confederation.

  The crew bus had left the Socratous to trundle back across the ledge.

  Kiera and about forty of her cronies were flocking into a reception lounge. When the bus docked, it disgorged about thirty-five Deadnight kids. Eager besotted youngsters with red handkerchiefs worn proudly around their ankles and wonder in their eyes that they’d reached the promised land after so much difficulty.

  <> Rubra complained to the Kohistan Consensus. <>

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  Rubra dismissed the affinity link with his usual contempt. Circumstances might have forced him into an alliance with his old culture; but all the renewed contact had done was convince him how right he had been to reject them all those centuries ago.

  He switched his primary routine’s attention inward. The group of newly arrived Deadnights had been split up and taken away to be opened for possession. A temporary village had sprung up at the base of the northern endcap, extravagant tents and small cosy cottages for the possessed to dwell in. A smaller version of the camps which ringed the starscraper foyers halfway down the interior. The teams Kiera had working to make the starscrapers safe were finding progress difficult. And in any case, the possessed didn’t entirely trust the areas they claimed to have secured.

  Rubra had never stopped his continual harassment. Nearly ten per cent of the servitor population had been killed as he deployed them on sneak attacks, but he still managed to eliminate a couple of possessed every day.

  Separated from their companions, the Deadnights were easily overwhelmed.

  Piteous screams and pleas hung over the village like smog.

  One of Rubra’s newest monitor routines alerted him to a minuscule electrical discrepancy within the starscraper where Tolton was hiding. He had discovered electricity was the key to locating Bonney Lewin when she was using her energistic ability to fox his visual observation. A series of extremely sensitive routines which now monitored his own biolectric patterns could sometimes detect a possessed from the backwash of their energistic power. In effect, the entire polyp structure had become an electronic warfare detector. It was hardly reliable, but he was constantly refining the routines.

  He tracked down the wraithish presence to the twenty-seventh floor vestibule where it was moving towards the stairwell muscle membrane door.

  Visually, the vestibule was empty. At least, according to his local autonomic sub-routines it was. The current in one of the organic conductor cables buried behind the wall fluctuated subtly.

  Rubra reduced the power to the electrophorescent cells covering the polyp ceiling. The visual image remained the same for a couple of seconds, then the ceiling darkened. It should have been instantaneous. Whatever was causing the electrical disturbance stopped moving.

  He opened a channel to Tolton’s processor block. “Get going, boy. They’re coming for you.”

  Tolton rolled off the bed where he’d been dozing. He’d been staying in the apartment for five days. The original occupant’s wardrobes had been ransacked for a new ensemble. He’d accessed a good number of the MF and bluesense fleks in the lounge. And he’d sampled all of the imported delicacies in the kitchen, washing them down with fine wines and a lot of Norfolk Tears. For a suffering social poet, he’d adapted to hedonism with the greatest of ease. Small wonder there was a graceless scowl on his face as he snatched up his leather trousers and wriggled his bulk into them.

  “Where are they?”

  “Ten floors above you,” Rubra assured him. “Don’t worry, you’ve got plenty of time. I’ve got your exit route ready for you.”

  “I’ve been thinking, maybe you ought to steer me toward some weapons hardware. I could start evening up the score a little.”

  “Let’s just concentrate on the essentials, shall we? Besides, if you get close enough to a possessed to use a weapon, they’re close enough to turn it against you.”

  Tolton addressed the ceiling. “You think I can’t handle it?”

  “I thank you for the offer, son, but there are just too many of them. You staying free is my victory against all of them, don’t blow it for me.”

  Tolton clipped the processor block to his belt and fastened his straggly hair back in a ponytail. “Thanks, Rubra. We all got it way wrong about you. I know it don’t mean shit to you probably, but when this is over, I’m going to tell the whole wide Confederation what you done.”

  “That’s one MF album I’ll buy. First in a long time.”

  Tolton stood in front of the apartment’s door, breathed in like a yogamaster, flexed his shoulders like a sport pro warming up, nodded briskly, and said: “Okay, let’s hustle.”

  Rubra felt an obdurate burst of sympathy and, strangely enough, pride as the poet stepped out into the vestibule. When Kiera started her takeover he assumed Tolton would last a couple of days. Now he was one of only eighty non-possessed left. One of the reasons he’d survived was because he followed instructions to the letter; in short, he trusted Rubra. And Rubra was damned if Bonney would get him now.

  The invisible energistic swirl was on the move again, descending the stairwell. Rubr
a started to modify the output of the electrophorescent cells in the ceiling. HELLO, BONNEY, he printed. I HAVE A PROPOSITION FOR YOU.

  The swirl stopped again.

  COME ON, TALK TO ME. WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO LOSE?

  He waited. A column of air shimmered silver, as if a giant cocoon had sprung up out of the polyp. Rubra experienced it most as a slackening of pressure in the local sub-routines; a pressure he hadn’t even been aware of until then. Then the silver air lost its lustre, darkening to khaki.

  Bonney Lewin stood on the stairs, her Enfield searching for hazards.

  “What proposition?”

  ABANDON YOUR CURRENT VICTIM, I WILL GIVE YOU A BETTER ONE.

  “I doubt it.”

  DOESN’T KIERA WANT DARIAT ANYMORE?

  Bonney gave the glowing letters a thoughtful stare. “You’re trying to sucker me.”

  NO. THIS IS GENUINE.

  “You’re lying. Dariat hates you; he’s totally bonkers about beating seven bells out of you. If we help him, he’ll succeed.”

  SO WHY HASN’T HE COME TO YOU FOR HELP?

  “Because he’s … weird.”

  NO. IT IS BECAUSE USING YOU TO DEFEAT ME WOULD MEAN HAVING TO SHARE THE POWER WHICH WOULD RESULT FROM HIS DOMINATION OF THE NEURAL STRATA. HE WANTS IT ALL. HE HAS SPENT THIRTY YEARS WAITING FOR AN OPPORTUNITY LIKE THIS. DO YOU THINK HE WILL GIVE THAT AWAY? AND AFTER ME, KIERA IS GOING TO BE NEXT. THEN PROBABLY YOU.

  “So you hand him over to us. That still doesn’t make any sense; either way, we get to nail you.”

  DARIAT AND I ARE PLAYING OUR OWN GAME. I DO NOT EXPECT YOU TO UNDERSTAND. BUT I DO NOT INTEND TO LOSE TO HIM.

  She worried at a fingernail. “I don’t know.”

  EVEN WITH MY HELP, HE WILL BE DIFFICULT TO CATCH. DO YOU FEAR FAILURE?

  “Don’t try working that angle on me, it’s pathetic.”

  VERY WELL. SO DO YOU ACCEPT?

  “Difficult one. I really don’t trust you. But it would be a superb hunt, you’ve got me there. I haven’t had a single sniff of that tricky little boyo yet, and I’ve been trying for long enough.” She shouldered her rifle. “All right, we’ve got a deal. But just remember, if you are trying to get me to walk into some ten-thousand-volt power cable, I can still come back. Kiera’s recording is hauling in thousands of morons. I’ll return in one of them, and then you’ll wish all you had to worry about was Dariat.”

  UNDERSTOOD. FIND A PROCESSOR BLOCK AND SWITCH IT TO ITS BASIC ROUTINES, THAT SHOULD KEEP IT FUNCTIONING. I WILL UPDATE YOU ON HIS LOCATION.

  Dariat walked along the shoreline of the circumfluous saltwater reservoir as the light tube languished to a spectacular golden-orange. The cove was backed by a decaying earth bluff which tipped an avalanche of the pink Tallok-aboriginal grass onto the sand. Curving outgrowths of the xenoc plant resembled a meandering tideline, which gave him the impression of walking along a spit between two different coloured seas. The only sounds were of the water lapping against the sand, and the birds crying out as they flew back to land for the night.

  He had walked here many times as a child, an era when being alone meant happiness. Now he welcomed the solitude again; it gave him the mindspace to think, to formulate new subversion routines to insert into the neural strata; and he was free of Kiera and her greed and shallow ambitions.

  That second factor was becoming a dominant one. They had been looking for him ever since the Edenists destroyed the industrial stations. With both his knowledge of the habitat and energistically enhanced affinity it was absurdly easy to elude them. Few ever ventured down to the vast reservoir, preferring to cling to the camps around starscraper foyers.

  Without the tubes, it was a long journey across the grassland where malevolent servitor creatures lay in wait for the negligent.

  <> Rubra announced.

  Dariat ignored him. He could hide himself from the possessed easily enough. None of them knew enough about affinity to access the neural strata properly. As a consequence he no longer bothered hiding himself from Rubra anymore, nor did he bother with the linen-suited persona. It was all too stressful. The price of release came in the form of taunts and nerve games emanating from Rubra with unimaginative regularity.

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  Certain he’d regret it, Dariat asked: <>

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  Dariat opened his affinity link with the neural strata just wide enough to hitch onto the observational sub-routines. Sure enough, two of the rugged trucks which the rentcops used were arrowing across the rosy grassland. “Shit.” They were heading straight for the cove, with about five kilometres left to go. <>

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  Dariat stared straight up, following the line of the coast which looped behind the light tube. <>

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  He couldn’t see the trucks with his eyes yet, the tall grass hid them.

  And his mind couldn’t perceive their thoughts, they were too far away. So just how had they found him?

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  Dariat was still receiving the image of the trucks from the sensitive cells. They were rocking madly over the uneven ground as the drivers held them at their top speed.

  <> Dariat started jogging for the tube station. After a minute, the trucks swung around to intercept him. “Bloody hell.” Horgan’s body was reasonably fit, but he was only fifteen years old. Dariat’s imagination bestowed him with athlete’s legs, bulky slabs of muscle packed tight under oil-glossed skin. His speed picked up.

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  <> He could see the station ahead of him, a squat circular polyp structure bordering the bluff, like some kind of storage tank half-buried in the sand. The trucks were only a kilometre away. Bonney was standing up in the passenger seat of the lead vehicle, aiming her Enfield at him over the windscreen. Motes of white fire punched into the sand around him. He ducked down for the last fifty metres, using the bluff as cover as he scuttled for the station entrance.

  Inside, two broad escalators spiralled around each other, their steps moving sedately. A garishly coloured tubular hologram punctured the air up the centre of the shaft, adverts sliding along it. Dariat leapt onto the down escalator and sprinted recklessly, hands barely touching the rail.

  He made it to the bottom just as the trucks braked outside; Bonney charged towards the entrance. There was a carriage waiting on the station, a shiny white aluminum bullet. Dariat stopped, panting heavily, staring at the open door.

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  Rubra’s mental voice contained a strong intimation of alarm, which Dariat could hardly credit. <e back. I’ll promise myself to Anstid for that one wish to be granted.>>

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  Dariat closed his eyes and took a step forwards, directly into the carriage. The door slid shut behind him, and there was a faint vibration as it started accelerating along the track. He opened his eyes.

  <> Rubra taunted. <>

  Dariat sat down and took some deep breaths to calm his racing heart. He used the sensitive cells to watch an apoplectic Bonney Lewin jump down from the empty platform to fire her Enfield along the dark tunnel. She was screaming obscenities. The accompanying hunters were standing well back. One of her boots was treading on the magnetic guide rail.

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  Dariat was instantly wary. <>

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