‘I think you could be applying a false pattern to the situation,’ the Colonel said.
‘The psis are obviously led by Pierre Jnr and it is plausible that he caused the release of this Kronos.’
‘I can concede that it is possible, but please don’t let your suspicions create evidence from nothing.’
‘What would you have me do? Colonel Abercrombie Pinter — history’s greatest living commander. What would the Scorpion do?’
‘I have never been fond of that name.’
‘What would you do about the psis? What is your position?’
‘I believe they are people whose abilities make us question the foundations of our society. But, then again, suppression is only ever a stalling tactic.’
‘But the Will is strongly opposed to lowering the restrictions. Would you have me go against the Will?’
‘The people are afraid. Fear is a powerful motivator. Is the Will telling you that you must destroy their fear or meet it? The Will is often more emotion than clear instruction. As Prime you determine the Command.’
‘What would you have me do?’
‘The Cape is a big area. An olive branch may be your best weapon.’
‘An interesting approach. That still leaves the black mass.’
‘It hasn’t advanced any further.’
‘You propose to leave it there? Sacrifice a whole city?’
‘The city is gone, Prime. We may discover a way to get rid of Kronos, but for now the situation is stabilised.’
‘Find a way, and find it fast.’
‘The Command is the Command. What about Pierre Jnr?’ Pinter asked.
‘Colonel, I’m not sure what the larger problem is any more, and if I’m right then each problem could lead us to him.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You do not agree?’ the Prime asked.
‘I do not.’
‘Then tell me your perspective. Isn’t that why you demanded to meet?’
Pinter spread his hands, looking at his long fingers and counting out possibilities. ‘Even if Pierre let loose the black mass, it may only be a diversion.’
‘The lives of four million people is a diversion?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘And the rebellion?’
‘You yourself predicted the rebellion from a young age. The growing population of psis made it inevitable.’
‘Yes. That is true.’
‘Then I don’t see how you reach that conclusion. What is it, Ryu? Is there something you aren’t telling me?’
‘Take this. Watch it in private.’ Ryu held out a data dot, like the scale of a fish, on the tip of his finger. ‘Then destroy it. We have been erasing these from the Weave.’
‘What is it?’
‘It will remove your doubts and fill you with fear ...’ Ryu’s voice trailed off. His eyes were unfocused into memory.
‘I will look through it.’
‘Once you have watched the footage you will understand my position.’
‘Yes, Prime. And the command?’
‘Find a way to stop Kronos.’
‘Yes, sir.’
They parted with salutes, Ryu with the air-fist of Services and the Colonel accidentally slipping back to the regimental chop he’d been raised on.
The Colonel fed the dot to his symb as soon as it was activated and began watching the collected Pierre Jnr surveillance footage. It slowed down his dressing as he saw scenes of Pierre Jnr from around the world, walking amongst the people, never being seen, never being noticed, but always obeyed and served.
There was one clip where Pierre Jnr was sitting in a restaurant. He sat alone at a table. When the food came from the kitchen the waiter knelt and cut the food into forkfuls, raising each for Pierre to eat. The other people in the restaurant ate their meals normally; at least it looked normal at first, but they lifted their forks and knives in unison, and then every now and then they would get up from their seats and move to different tables, sitting down with different partners and resuming eating and talking as if nothing had happened.
In one of the Citizen mess halls, where those low on credits could get their food allotment, the boy sat at one of the long tables amongst the thousands. To either side a man and a woman were talking right through him.
In Santiago, confetti blew up into the air, marking the start of a race. One-man squibs jerked into motion and Pierre Jnr watched from the stands as the speedsters soared and looped through hoops and slaloms.
An old leather-skinned woman was in her home alone, shows playing in front of her settee as she knitted a blanket that was covering her knees. Beside her, Pierre Jnr sat watching the romance unfold on the screen.
Quintan was waiting for him outside, squatting on the runner of the squib.
‘You look like a man who could use a drink.’
Pinter looked at his pilot for a moment. ‘You’ve been reading that damn book, haven’t you?’
~ * ~
PIERRE JNR IS WAITING
~ * ~
The room was colourful. A thick rug of green and orange squares took up most of the floor space. It was littered with all sorts of toys. Pierre Jnr watched a child building a tower of blocks. As it got higher the child had to stand, but he stumbled into the blocks, knocking them to the floor. The child cried, face crushing inward and turning red.
‘Hush, little Derek,’ a feminine voice sounded. A bot with a cartoonish shape and face slid from the corner and hurried to the boy. Derek was picked up, put back on his feet and dusted off. ‘You are not hurt. Here. Let’s build another tower, bigger than the first one.’
The robot swivelled its head and tilted its eyes. ‘Would you like to play too?’ it asked, looking at Pierre.
Pierre watched it for a moment, his face bent into a scowl. The bot’s head fizzled, severed from its torso. It dropped to the ground, bounced on the rug and rolled to a stop at Derek’s feet.
The child screamed and cried.
~ * ~
Pinter and Quintan didn’t arrive back in Busan until dawn.
The Colonel sat looking down at the breakfast tray before him. It was the first Serviceman’s meal he’d had in forty years. Cheese, a pile of shaved protein constitute, his choice of sauce — in this instance, sweet green chilli — with bread. He stared at it, unable to start.
It wasn’t that the food was bad. The flavours could be excellent, but after a while it began to feel expected. Easy to make, easy to transport, easy to eat. This is what Servicemen ate day in, day out. There may have been over two hundred thousand combinations, but somehow every meal seemed the same.
He remembered when they came in. Like a gift from a god the supply lines opened and his men were saved from starvation. His little army had been bought off with the promise of food.
Pinter didn’t feel hungry any more and pushed the tray aside.
‘What’s wrong? You need something for your stomach?’ Quintan asked. He helped himself to the Colonel’s tray and ate as if he hadn’t just finished one of his own.
‘I’m fine, thank you. I just don’t feel like eating.’ He set his symbiot to begin flushing the alcohol from his system and dropped some stimulants into his morning caf so he could report for duty. He sat on the platform as the research teams tried to get a reaction from the black ugliness of Kronos.
As he sat, a small spider landed on the arm of his chair and he watched it closely. It drew his interest more than the sound and light show in the distance. It was a tiny thing, no bigger than the fingernail of his pinky. It turned around, facing each direction, then turning again and again. He couldn’t imagine what it was looking for or seeing. Did it see him? If it did, it showed no sign of fear, even though he could crush it easily. Maybe it didn’t know that.
The Colonel recorded the spider, looking closer in with his enhancements. The parallel was obvious to him. From his position he could never know what the spider wanted, what it thoug
ht, or what its intentions might be. Is it considering me as I am considering it? Is the way it lifts its mandibles up and down some sort of communication? If our positions were reversed and I was the tiny spider, how would I try to communicate with something my size?
The problem with Kronos, though, was that he couldn’t be sure if the thing knew they even existed. It may have consumed the city of Busan, but was it aware that it was doing so? Could this black beast be so alien as to not recognise people?
The Colonel transferred his thought stream to his logs and then brought up contact with the team leader.
‘I think it is time to try something else, Miz Caswell.’
‘What do you suggest?’ she asked, appearing in his overlay.
The firing commenced with pebbles, which bounced over the surface and rolled away. They then progressed to stones as big as fists, followed by boulders that were hurled across the divide by a marauder unit. It surprised no one that these also had no effect, but science being science they had to try everything. The rocks either rolled off Kronos’s back or remained on top of the black mass, rocking back and forth with its rolling skin.
Projectiles also failed to provoke any reaction. From rifles to howitzers, the shells penetrated the skin with a fleshy splat and disappeared. The surface healed over and the waving of the tentacles remained directionless. Some useful information was gained when one of the shells was implanted with a simple transmitter, so that when it was absorbed by Kronos its signal would fail, thus giving them a measure of the osmosis rate.
The Colonel had the area cleared and they watched for any signs of change. After an hour, with the signal still transmitting, he ordered the next tests to commence. ‘That’s the formalities over with, now let’s see if we can get its attention.’
‘Explosives?’ Miz Caswell asked.
‘No. I don’t want pieces of it flying through the air.’
‘Lasers?’
‘Yes. That’ll do. Put the shooter at three hundred metres. Just a shot first.’
A remote MU lumbered to the firing range and raised a narrow rifle towards the beast. The Colonel watched from his platform, vision zoomed in on the target of the beam. The first shot provoked no reaction. Similar to the bullets, the wound healed over and there was no noticeable change of behaviour from Kronos.
‘Fire again, sustained beam,’ he ordered.
‘For how long, sir?’
‘Until I say stop.’
The MU lifted the rifle and fired again, this time keeping the beam steady as the laser cut deeper into the black mass. Smoke or steam rose from the wound.
‘Get a spectral analysis on that.’
‘Of course, sir.’
After twenty seconds of firing the mass moved. Tentacles sprung out from near the wound and lashed out, sweeping in the direction of the attack. They grew and multiplied and when they passed through the beam they were cut through, their tips dropping to the ground.
‘Watch the bits. Record it closely,’ the Colonel ordered.
The beast managed to decipher the direction of the laser and the arms grew and swung in greater arcs, getting closer and closer to the MU.
‘Cease fire. Pull the MU back. Don’t let it find it.’
‘Sir, the drops are rejoining the mass.’ They watched as the severed globs moved, like miniatures of the larger mass, pulling themselves back towards the main mass. Tentacles grew out from the bulk and deftly retrieved them.
‘That is interesting, isn’t it?’ he mused.
‘What next?’ Miz Caswell asked.
‘Distortion. Same procedure but let’s come from another side. Make sure it knows it’s surrounded.’
Teledistortion was a most hideous weaponisation of the fledgling teleportation technology. Whereas teleportation required the accurate transfer and reconstruction of molecules, teledistortion did not. It had been used almost exclusively by the Örjian hordes with hand-held guns called ruisbuss, which translated as ‘scramble pipes’. It was said to be a most painful way to die, which was true if the expressions of the victims counted for anything.
It was a simultaneous detonation of a nuclear bomb in a distortion field that created the Siberian Terminus and put a stop to the Örjian advance. An attack orchestrated by the young Captain Abercrombie Pinter. That is probably why the Servicemen around him seemed to hesitate.
‘Get on with it,’ the Colonel said.
‘Yes, sir.’
The distortion test was almost an exact repeat of the laser firing. A short shot created little reaction, but the sustained beam managed to stir it. Though this time the black mass noticeably shrank back from the distortion field and its tentacles slashed further and faster to find its attacker.
‘It doesn’t like that,’ the Colonel said. ‘Alright, cease fire. Let’s leave it to think. While we do the same.’
~ * ~
Representative Betts fixed the bow around her waist and stepped out from behind the partition. She was in a green gown with scattered swoops of material and darts around the bodice, twisting the dress into a whirlpool. Charlotte looked at her assistant and chief advisor.
‘No,’ Amy said, and then clicked back to her queue.
‘Max?’ Max was also tuned into the Weave, looking for something for Charlotte to write about. ‘Max?’ she asked again.
‘Oh, uh ...’ He looked up, demersing quickly to glance at her outfit. ‘What Amy said.’
Charlotte growled and spun back into her changing room. ‘I don’t know why I’m bothering.’
‘It’s a big occasion, Charlotte. Don’t pout.’
‘I’m not pouting, I’ve just got nothing to wear.’
‘Don’t worry, Representative, I’ll have one of your sponsors send something over,’ Amy said calmly, trying to stop her complaining. Charlotte pulled off the dress, flung herself into a bed robe and gave up.
Of course, it wasn’t Amy or the dress that was bothering her. It was the event itself that occupied her mind, and had done for the past week. She was too nervous to write anything, and in her position writer’s block could prove to be dire.
Civic value can rise by happenstance, as it had for her, but to stay high on the rungs of the hierarchy took work and constant activity. A good Representative continually published motions for the Will to endorse and follow, which could be anything from thoughts on the weather to how the situation in Atlantic should be managed. The amount of support these motions received fed the influence of the person who put it forward.
As Amy had explained to her, if she wanted to keep being a part of the Primacy she had to keep giving the Will something to support, or her influence would simply fade away.
The Prime’s office — and others — had a dedicated staff to keep up this steady stream of ideas and proposals, not to mention the moguls that disseminated his opinions in more discreet entertainments. Hundreds of thoughts and draft directives were floated — most of which were supported simply because they came from the Prime — and those that got the strongest backing could guide the next day’s official motions. In this way, an efficient bureau could test the public reaction to a strategy before it was in place, to predict what would or wouldn’t be a popular suggestion — though this had never proven to be a successful long-term tactic for a Civic career. The Will wasn’t stupid.
At least, that’s what Charlotte thought. Some Representatives filed regularly, pushing out ideas they thought would be popular to stay afloat or creating motions they thought would genuinely improve society. She liked to assume that humanity was essentially rational and that people didn’t always act out of self-interest, which made it much harder to write for.
Much had changed for Charlotte Betts since she had become a part of the Primacy, she reflected. In point of fact, everything in the world seemed to have changed. Six months ago the psis were barely part of the global consciousness, and now every man, woman and child had to choose for themselves whether or not to wear
the psi symbol on their person. She wasn’t happy about that. The psis had done themselves no favours with their attacks and demands.
Charlotte sighed. These thoughts were just rehashings of things she’d said before and she needed something new. It was Saturday; time for her status report. Amy forced her to do them every week, to keep those who followed her stream up to date on what she had been doing and what she had achieved. There was very little to say this week!
A black ooze had swallowed a whole city. Four million lives were lost. What could Charlotte Betts,, possibly add to that? Were her deep-felt condolences enough? The problem, she felt, was that she didn’t even understand what had taken place. One minute Busan was there, the next it was not. It was horrifically simple and simply horrific.
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