The Neutronium Alchemist

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Great,” Colonel Palmer swore. “Now what?”

  “It’s a psychological barrier, that’s all,” Ralph said quietly. “After all, it’s only water. This changes nothing.”

  Colonel Palmer slowly tilted her head back, scanning the height of the quivering fluorescent precipice. She shivered. “Some psychology.”

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  A chaotic moan fluttered out between her lips. She was sprawled on her bed, sliding quietly into sleep. In her drowsy state, the pillow she was cuddling could so easily have been Joshua. <>

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  She sat up slowly, feeling stubbornly grumpy despite Tranquillity’s best efforts to emphasise its tender concern. It had been a long day, with Meredith’s squadron to deal with on top of all her normal duties. And the loneliness was starting to get to her, too. <> She scratched irritably at her hair. <>

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  <> A swift thought directed at the opaqued window allowed a dappled aquamarine light into the bedroom. She reached lethargically for her robe. <>

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  ***

  Kelly Tirrel hated being interrupted while she was running her Present Time Reality programs. It was an activity she was indulging more often these days.

  Some of the black programs she had bought were selective memory blockers, modified from medical trauma erasure programs, slithering deep into her natural brain tissue to cauterize her subconscious. They should have been used under supervision, and it certainly wasn’t healthy to suppress the amount of memory she was targeting, nor for as long. Others amplified her emotional response to perceptual stimuli, making the real world slow and mundane in comparison.

  One of the pushers she’d met while she was making a documentary last year had shown her how to interface black programs with standard commercial sensenvirons to produce PTRs. Such integrations were supposedly the most addictive stim you could run. Compulsive because they were the zenith of denial. Escape to an alternative personality living in an alternative reality, where your past with all its inhibitions had been completely divorced, allowing only the present to prevail. Living for the now, yet stretching that now out for hours.

  In the realms through which Kelly moved, possession and the beyond were concepts which did not nor could ever exist. When she did emerge, to eat, or pee, or sleep, the real world was the one which seemed unreal; terribly harsh by comparison to the hedonistic existence she had on the other side of the electronic divide.

  This time when she exited the PTR she couldn’t even recognize the signal her neural nanonics was receiving. Memories of such things were submerged deep in her brain, rising to conscious levels with the greatest of reluctance (and taking longer each time). It was a few moments before she even understood where she was, that this wasn’t Hell but simply her apartment. The lights off, the window opaqued, the sheet on which she was lying disgustingly damp, and stinking of urine, the floor littered with disposable bowls.

  Kelly wanted to plunge straight back into her electronic refuge. She was losing her grip on her old personality, and didn’t give a fuck. The only thing she did monitor was her own decay; overriding fear saw to that.

  I will not allow myself to die.

  No matter how badly the black stimulant programs screwed up her neurones, she wouldn’t permit herself to go completely over the edge, not physically. Before that would be zero-tau. The wonderful simplicity of eternal oblivion.

  And until then, her brain would live a charmed life, providing pleasure and excitement, and not even knowing it was artificial. Life was to be enjoyed, was it not? Now she knew the truth about death, how did it matter how that enjoyment was achieved?

  Her brain finally identified the signal from the apartment’s net processor. Someone was at the door, requesting admission. Confusion replaced her dazed resentful stupor. Collins hadn’t called on her to present a show for a week (or possibly longer); not since her interview with Tranquillity’s bishop when she shouted at him, angry about how cruel his God was to inflict the beyond upon unsuspecting souls.

  The signal repeated. Kelly sat up, and promptly vomited down the side of the bed. Nausea swirled inside her brain, shaking her thoughts and memories into a collage which was the exact opposite of the PTR: Lalonde in all its infernal glory. She coughed as her pale limbs trembled and the scar along her ribs flamed. There was a glass on the bedside table, half full of a clear liquid which she fervently hoped was water. Her shaking hand grabbed at it, spilling a quantity before she managed to jam it to her lips and swallow. At least she didn’t throw it all back up.

  Almost suffocating in misery she struggled off the bed and pulled a blanket around her shoulders. Her neural nanonics medical program cautioned her that her blood sugar level was badly depleted and she was on the verge of dehydration. She cancelled it. The admission request was repeated again.

  “Piss off,” she mumbled. Light seemed to be shining straight through her eye sockets to scorch her fragile brain. Sucking down air, she tried to work out why her neural nanonics had stopped running the PTR program. It shouldn’t happen just because someone datavised her apartment’s net processor. Perhaps the slender filaments meshed with her synaptic clefts were getting screwed by her disturbed body chemistry?

  “Who is it?” she datavised as she tottered unsteadily through into the main living room.

  “Lieria.”

  Kelly didn’t know any Lieria; at least not without running a memory cell check. She slumped down into one of her deep recliners, pulled the blanket over her legs, and datavised the door processor to unlock.

  An adult Kiint was standing in the vestibule. Kelly blinked against the light which poured in around its snow-white body, gawped, then started laughing. She’d done it, she’d totally fucked her brain with the PTR.

  Lieria lowered herself slightly and moved into the living room, taking care not to knock any of the furniture. She had to wriggle to fit the major section of her body through the door, but she managed it. An intensely curious group of residents peered in behind her.

  The door slid shut. Kelly hadn’t ordered it to do that. Her laughter had stopped, and her shakes were threatening to return. This was actually happening. She wanted to go back into the PTR real bad now.

  Lieria took up nearly a fifth of the living room, both tractamorphic arms were withdrawn into large bulbs of flesh, her triangular head was swinging slightly from side to side as her huge eyes examined the room.

  No housechimp had been in for weeks to clean up; dust was accumulating; the door to the ki
tchen was open, showing worktops overflowing with empty food sachets; a loose pile of underwear decorated one corner; her desk was scattered with fleks and processor blocks. The Kiint returned her gaze to Kelly, who curled her limbs up tighter in the recliner.

  “H-how did you get down here?” was all Kelly could ask.

  “I took the service elevator,” Lieria datavised back. “It was very cramped.”

  Kelly started. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “Use an elevator?”

  “Datavise.”

  “We have some command of technology.”

  “Oh. Yes. It’s just … skip it.” Her reporter’s training began to assert itself. A private visit from a Kiint was unheard of. “Is this confidential?”

  Lieria’s breathing vents whistled heavily. “You decide, Kelly Tirrel. Do you wish your public to know what has become of you?”

  Kelly stiffened her facial muscles, whether to combat tears or shame she wasn’t sure. “No.”

  “I understand. Knowledge of the beyond can be disturbing.”

  “How did you beat it? Tell me, please. For pity’s sake. I can’t be trapped there. I couldn’t stand it!”

  “I am sorry. I cannot discuss this with you.”

  Kelly’s cough had come back. She used the back of her hand to wipe her eyes dry. “What do you want, then?”

  “I wish to purchase information. Your sensevises of Lalonde.”

  “My … why?”

  “They are of interest to us.”

  “Sure. I’ll sell them. The price is knowing how to avoid the beyond.”

  “Kelly Tirrel, you cannot buy that, the answer is inside you.”

  “Stop being so fucking obtuse!” she shouted, fury surmounting her consternation of the big xenoc.

  “It is the profound wish of my race that one day you will understand. I had intended that by purchasing the data directly from you the money would bring or buy you some peace of mind. If I go directly to the Collins corporation, it will become lost in their accounts. You see, we do not mean you harm. It is not our way.”

  Kelly stared at the xenoc, depressed by her own incomprehension. Okay, girl, she thought, let’s try and work this one out logically. She put her medical monitor program into primary mode, and used the results to bring appropriate suppressor and stimulant programs on-line to try to stabilize body and brain. There wasn’t a great deal they could do, but at least she felt calmer and her breathing steadied. “Why do you want to buy them?”

  “We have little data on humans who are possessed by returned souls. We are interested. Your visit to Lalonde is an excellent firsthand account.”

  Kelly felt the first stirrings of excitement; reporter’s instinct inciting her interest. “Bullshit. That’s not what I meant. If all you wanted was information on possessed humans, you could have recorded my reports directly from Collins as soon as they were released. God knows, they’ve been repeated often enough.”

  “They are not complete. Collins has edited them to provide a series of highlights. We understand their commercial reasons for doing so, but this is of no use to us. I require access to the entire recording.”

  “Right,” she said with apparent gravity, as if she was giving the proposition appropriately weighty thought. An analysis program had gone primary, refining possible questions in an attempt to narrow the focus.

  “I can give you full access to the times I came up against the possessed, and my observations of Shaun Wallace. That’s no problem at all.”

  “We require a full record from the time you arrived in the Lalonde star system until you departed. All details are of interest to us.”

  “All details? I mean, this is a human sensevise, I kept the flek recording the whole time. Standard company procedure. Unfortunately, that includes time when I was visiting the little girls’ room, if you catch on.”

  “Human excretion functions do not embarrass us.”

  “Shall I cut the time in Lady Macbeth for you?”

  “Observations and crew impressions of the reality dysfunction from orbit are an integral part of the record.”

  “So, how much were you thinking of offering me for this?”

  “Please name your price, Kelly Tirrel.”

  “One million fuseodollars.”

  “That is expensive.”

  “It’s a lot of hours you’re asking for. But the offer to edit it down still stands.”

  “I will pay you the required amount for a complete recording only.”

  Kelly pressed her teeth together in annoyance; it wasn’t going to work, the Kiint was far too smart for verbal traps. Don’t push, she told herself, get what you can and work out the why later on. “Fair enough. Agreed.”

  Lieria’s tractamorphic flesh extended out into an arm, a Jovian Bank credit disk held between white pincers.

  Kelly gave it an interested glance, and rose stiffly from the recliner.

  Her own credit disk was somewhere on her desk. She walked over to it, all three paces, then plonked herself down in the grey office chair a little too quickly.

  “I would suggest you eat something and rest properly before you return to your sensenviron,” Lieria datavised.

  “Good idea. I was going to.” She froze in the act of shoving the fleks and their empty storage cases around. How the hell had the Kiint known what she’d been running? We have some command of technology. She gripped the blanket harder with one hand as the other fished her disk from under a recorder block. “Found it,” she said with forced lightness.

  Lieria shunted the full amount across. The soft flesh of the pincers engulfed the Jovian Bank disk, then parted again to reveal a small dark blue processor block. It was like a conjuring trick which Kelly was in no state to unravel.

  “Please insert your fleks in the block,” Lieria datavised. “It will copy the recordings.”

  Kelly did as she was told.

  “I thank you, Kelly Tirrel. You have contributed valuable information to our race’s store of knowledge.”

  “Make the most of it,” she said grumpily. “The way you’re treating us we probably won’t be around to contribute for much longer.”

  The living-room door slid open, scattering a startled crowd of StClément residents. Lieria backed out with surprising ease. When the door closed again Kelly was left by herself with the disconcerting impression that it could all very easily have been a dream. She picked up her credit disk, looking at it in wonder. One million fuseodollars.

  It was the key to permanent zero-tau. Her lawyer had been negotiating with Collins to transfer her pension fund into an Edenist trust account, just like Ashly Hanson. Except she wouldn’t be coming out to take a look around every few centuries. Collins’s accountants had been reluctant.

  Another problem which had sent her into the sham escape of PTR. Now all she needed to do was get to an Edenist habitat. Only their culture had a chance of holding her safe through eternity.

  Although … that stubborn old part of her mind was asking a thousand questions. What the hell did the Kiint really want?

  “Think,” she ordered herself fiercely. “Come on, damn it. Think!” Something happened on Lalonde. Something so important that a Kiint walks into my apartment and pays me a million fuseodollars for a record of it.

  Something we didn’t think was important or interesting, because it wasn’t released by Collins. So if it wasn’t released, how the hell did the Kiint know about it?

  Logically, someone must have told them—presumably today or very recently.

  Someone who has reviewed the whole recording themselves, or at least more of it than Collins released.

  Kelly smiled happily, an unfamiliar expression of late. And someone who must have a lot of contact with the Kiint.

  <> Ione said. <es.>>

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  “Brilliant!” <>

  The memory burst open around her. Bright light was shining down on the beach while glassy ripples lapped quietly against the shoreline. A huge sand castle stood directly in front of her. <>

  Jay was woken by a hand shaking her shoulder with gentle insistence.

  “Mummy,” she cried fearfully. Wherever she was, it was dark, and even darker shadows loomed over her.

  “Sorry, poppet,” Kelly stage-whispered. “It’s not your mum, it’s only me.”

  Horror fled from the little girl’s face, and she hitched herself up in the bed, wrapping her arms around her legs. “Kelly?”

  “Yep. And I am really sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you like that.”

  Jay sniffed the air, highly curious now. “What’s that smell? And what time is it?”

  “It’s very late. Nurse Andrews is going to kill me if I stay for more than a couple of minutes. She only let me in because she knows you and I spent all that time together on Lady Mac.”

  “You haven’t visited for ages.”

  “I know.” Kelly was almost crushed by the surge of emotion the girl triggered, the accusation in her tone. “I haven’t been terribly well lately. I didn’t want you to see me the way I was.”