Of course, unknown to the Edenists, at the same time Laton was equally busy on Lalonde refining his process, and meeting with considerable success.
In its passive state, the updated proteanic virus masqueraded as inert organelles within his body cells—no matter what their nature, from liver to blood corpuscles, muscles to hair. When his last affinity command activated them, each organelle released a batch of plasmids (small, artificially synthesized DNA loops) and a considerable quantity of transcription factors, proteins capable of switching genes on or off. Once the plasmids had been inserted into the cell’s DNA, mitosis began, forcing the cells to reproduce by division. Transcription factors switched off the human DNA completely, as well as an entire series of the new plasmids, leaving them to be carried passively while just one type of plasmid was activated to designate the function of the new cell. It was a drastic mutation. Hundreds of thousands of Laton’s cells were already dying, millions more were killed by the induced mitosis; but over half fissioned successfully, turning into specialist diploid gametes.
They spilled out of the arms, legs, and collar of his one-piece ship-suit in a magenta sludge, draining away from stubborn clusters of dead cells that retained their original pattern—kernels of lumpy organs, slender ribs, a rubbery dendritic knot of veins. As they spread across the polyp they started to permeate the surface, slipping through microscopic gaps in the grainy texture, seeping down towards the neural stratum four metres below. Pernik’s nutrient capillaries and axon conduits speeded their passage.
Four hours later, when dawn was breaking over the condemned island, the majority of the gametes had reached the neural stratum. Stage two of the proteanic virus was different. A gamete would penetrate a neural cell’s membrane and release the mission-specific plasmid Laton had selected (he had four hundred to choose from). The plasmid was accompanied by a transcription factor which would activate it.
Mitosis produced a neuron cell almost identical to the original it replaced. Once begun, the reproduction cycle was unstoppable; new cells started to supplant old at an ever-increasing rate. A chain reaction of subtle modification began to ripple out from the rim of the island. It went on for a considerable time.
Admiral Kolhammer was almost correct about Time Universe beating the Edenists to inform the Confederation about Laton. Several dozen star systems heard the news from the company first. Governments were put in an embarrassing position of knowing less than Time Universe until the voidhawks carrying diplomatic fleks from Admiral Aleksandrovich and the Confederation Assembly President arrived, clarifying the situation.
Naturally enough, public perception was focused almost exclusively on Laton: the threat from the past risen like the devil’s own phoenix. They wanted to know what was being done to track him down and exterminate him. They were quite vociferous about it.
Presidents, kings, and dictators alike had to release statements assuring their anxious citizens that every resource was being deployed to locate him.
Considerably less attention was drawn to the apparent persona sequestration of Lalonde’s population. Graeme Nicholson hadn’t placed much emphasis on the effect, keeping it at the rumour level. It wasn’t until much later that news company science editors began to puzzle about the cost-effectiveness of sequestrating an entire backward colony world, and question exactly what had happened in the Quallheim Counties. Laton’s presence blinded them much as it did everyone else. He was on Lalonde, therefore Lalonde’s uprising problem was instigated by him. QED.
Privately, governments were extremely worried by the possibility of an undetectable energy virus that could strike at people without warning. Dr Gilmore’s brief preliminary report on Jacqueline Couteur was not released for general public access.
Naval reserve officers were called in, warships were placed on combat alert and brought up to full flight-readiness status. Laton gave governments the excuse to instigate rigorous screening procedures for visiting starships. Customs and Immigration officers were told to be especially vigilant for any electronic warfare nanonics.
There was also an unprecedented degree of cooperation between star systems’ national groupings to ensure that the warning reached everybody and was taken seriously. Within a day of a flek courier voidhawk arriving, even the smallest, most distant asteroid settlement was informed and urged to take precautions.
Within five days of Admiral Lalwani dispatching the voidhawks, the entire Confederation had been told, with just a few notable exceptions. Most prominent of these were starships in transit.
Oenone raced in towards Atlantis at three gees. There were only sixty cases of Norfolk Tears left clamped into its lower hull cargo bay. Since leaving Norfolk, Syrinx had flown to Auckland, a four-hundred-light-year trip. Norfolk Tears increased in price in direct proportion to the distance from Norfolk, and Auckland was one of the richer planets in its sector of the Confederation. She had sold sixty per cent of her cargo to a planetary retailer, and another thirty per cent to a family merchant enterprise in one of the system’s Edenist habitats. It was the first shipment the Auckland system had seen for fifteen months, and the price it raised had been appropriately phenomenal. They had already paid off the Jovian Bank loan and made a respectable profit. Now she was back to honour her deal with Eysk’s family.
She looked through Oenone’s sensor blisters at the planet as they descended into equatorial orbit. Cool blues and sharp whites jumbled together in random splash patterns. Memories played below her surface thoughts, kindled by the sight of the infinite ocean. Mosul’s smiling face.
We’re not going to stay very long, are we? Oenone asked plaintively.
Why?she teased. Don’t you like talking to the islands? They make a change from habitats.
You know why.
You stayed in Norfolk orbit for over a week.
I had lots of voidhawks to talk to. There are only fifteen here.
Don’t worry. We won’t stay long. Just enough time to unload the Norfolk Tears, and for me to see Mosul.
I like him.
Thank you for the vote of confidence. While we’re here, would you ask the islands to see if anyone has a cargo they need shipping outsystem.
I’ll start now.
Can you give me a link through to Mosul first, please.
It is midnight on Pernik. The personality says Mosul is unobtainable at the moment.
Oh dear. I wonder what her name is?
Syrinx.
Yes?
Pernik is wrong.
What do you mean? Mosul is available?
No, I mean the personality is different, altered. There is no joy in its thoughts.
Syrinx opened her eyes and stared round the contoured walls of her cabin. Familiar trinkets she had picked up on her voyages were lined up in glass-fronted alcoves. Her eyes found the fifteen-centimetre chunk of whalebone carved into a squatting Eskimo which Mosul had given her. But Oenone ’s unease was too unsettling for the crude statue to register the way it usually did, bringing forth a warm recollection intrinsic to both of them.
Perhaps there has been an accident on one of the fishing boats,she suggested.
Then the grief should be shared, as is proper.
Yes.
Pernik hides behind a facade of correctness.
Is Eysk available?
One moment.
Syrinx felt the voidhawk’s mind reach out, then Eysk was merging his thoughts with her. Still the same old kindhearted family elder, with that deeper layer of toughness that made him such a shrewd businessman.
Syrinx,he exclaimed happily, we were wondering where you had got to.
Did you think I’d skipped out on you?
Me?he projected mock horror. Not at all. The arrest warrant we had drawn up was a mere precaution.
She laughed. I’ve brought your cases of Norfolk Tears.
How many?
Sixty.
Ah well, my family will be through that lot before the week’s out. Are you coming down tonight?
Yes, if it’s not too late.
Not at all. I’ll have some servitors lined up to unload your flyer by the time you get down.
Fine. Is everything all right on the island?
There was a moment’s hesitation, a thought-flash of bemused incomprehension. Yes. Thank you for asking.
Is Mosul there?
Sex, that’s all you young people think of.
We learn by example. Is he there?
Yes. But I don’t think Clio will welcome an interruption right now.
Is she very pretty?
Yes.he generated an image of a girl’s grinning face, half hidden by long dark hair. She’s bright, too. They are on the point of formalizing the arrangement.
I’m happy for him, for both of them.
Thank you. Don’t tell Mosul I said so, but she’ll make a splendid addition to the family.
That’s nice. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.
I’ll look forward to it. Just remember, Mosul learnt everything he knows from me.
As if I could forget.she broke the contact.
Well? Oenone asked.
I don’t know. Nothing I could put my finger on, but he was definitely stilted.
Shall I ask the other islands?
Goodness, no. I’ll find out what’s troubling them once I’m down. Mosul will tell me, he owes me that much.
Hooked into the flyer’s sensors, Syrinx couldn’t be sure, but Pernik appeared aged somehow. Admittedly it was darkest night, but the towers had a shabby look, almost mouldered. They put her in mind of Earth’s Empire State Building, now carefully preserved in its own dome at the centre of the New York arcology. Structurally sound, but unable to throw off the greying weight of centuries.
Thirty-two years old, and you see everything in such jaded terms, she told herself wearily. Pity that Mosul had formed a permanent attachment, though. He would have made a good father.
She clucked her tongue in self-admonition. But then her mother had conceived two children by the time she was thirty.
There’s always Ruben, Oenone suggested.
It wouldn’t be fair to him, not even to ask. He’d feel obligated to say yes.
I would like you to have a child. You are feeling incomplete. It upsets you. I don’t like that.
I am not feeling incomplete!
You haven’t even prepared any zygotes for my children yet. You should think about these things.
Oh goodness. You’re starting to sound like Mother.
I don’t know how to lie.
Rubbish!
Not to you. And it was you who was thinking of Mosul in that light.
Yes.syrinx stopped trying to argue, it was stupidly blinkered. What would I do without you?
Oenone wrapped her thoughts with a loving embrace, and for a moment Syrinx imagined the flyer’s ion field had leaked inside the cabin, filling it with golden haze.
They landed on one of the pads in the commercial section. The electrophorescent-cell ridge around the metal grid shone with a strong pink radiance. Few of the accommodation tower windows were lit.
It looks like they’re in mourning,syrinx said to Oxley in singular engagement mode as she walked down the aluminium stair. They had flown down alone so that the little flyer could carry more cargo, but it was still going to take three trips to bring all sixty cases down.
Yes.he glanced about, frowning. There aren’t many fishing boats in dock, either.
Eysk and Mosul walked out of the shadows beyond the ridge.
Syrinx forgot everything else as Mosul sent out a burst of rapturous greeting, mingled with mischievously erotic subliminals.
She put her arms around him and enjoyed a long kiss.
I’d like to meet her,she told him. Lucky thing that she is.
You shall.
They stood about on the pad, chatting idly, as the island’s lizard-skinned housechimps unloaded the first batch of cases under Oxley’s careful direction and stacked them on a processor-controlled flat-top trolley. When all eighteen cases were on, the drone trundled off towards one of the low warehouse domes ringing the park.
Do you want me to bring the rest down tonight?oxley asked.
Please,eysk said. I have already organized sales with other families.
The pilot nodded, winked at Syrinx, who was still standing with Mosul’s arm around her shoulder, and went back into the flyer. Sitting in the command seat he linked his mind with the controlling processor array.
Something was affecting the coherent magnetic-field generation. It took a long time to form, and he had to bring compensator programs on-line. By the time he finally lifted from the pad the fusion generator was operating alarmingly close to maximum capacity.
He almost turned back there and then. But once he rose above a hundred metres the field stabilized rapidly. He had to cut the power levels back. Diagnostic programs reported the systems were all functioning flawlessly.
With a quick curse directed at all Kulu-produced machinery, he ordered the flight computer to design an orbital-injection trajectory that would bring him to a rendezvous with Oenone.
See you in three hours,syrinx called as the sparkling artificial comet performed a tight curve around the accommodation towers before soaring up into the night sky.
Three hours!oxley let his groan filter back down the affinity link.
You’re professionals. You can handle it.
He put the flyer into a steep climb. One thing about an oceanic world, there was no worry about supersonic-boom footprints stomping all over civic areas. He was doing Mach two by the time he was fifteen kilometres away.
Pernik vanished from his affinity perception. Ordinarily a contact would simply fade with distance until it was no more. But this was different, like steel shutters slamming into place. Oxley was over a hundred and fifty years old, in his time he’d visited almost ninety per cent of the Confederation, and he had never known an Edenist habitat to react in such a manner. It was alien to the whole creed of consensual unity.
He switched in the aft sensors. A luminous red pearl haunted the horizon, sending shimmer-spears of light dancing across the black water.
“What is . . .” The words dried up at the back of his throat.
Pernik?he demanded. Pernik, what is going on? What is that light?
The silence was total. There wasn’t the slightest trace of the personality’s thoughts left anywhere in the affinity band.
Syrinx?
Nothing.
Oenone, something’s happening on Pernik, can you reach Syrinx?
She is there,the worried voidhawk answered. But I cannot converse with her. Something is interfering.
Oh, heavens.he banked the flyer round, heading back for the island.
Affinity broadened out from the single tenuous thread to the orbiting voidhawk, offering him the support of innumerable minds combining into a homogenized entity, buoying him up on a tide of intellect. He wasn’t alone, and he wasn’t anxious any more. Doubts and personal fears bled away, exchanged for confidence and determination, a much-needed reinforcement of his embattled psyche. For a moment, flying over the gargantuan ocean in a tiny machine, he had been horribly lonely; now his kind had joined him, from the eager honoured enthusiasms of sixteen-year-olds up to the glacial thoughts of the islands themselves. He felt like a child again, comforted by the loving arms of an adult, wiser and stronger. It was a reconfirmation of Edenism which left him profoundly grateful for the mere privilege of belonging.
This is Thalia Island, Oxley, we are aware of Pernik’s withdrawal from affinity and we are summoning a planetary consensus to deal with the problem.
That red lighting effect has me worried,he replied. The flyer had dropped below subsonic again. Pernik gleamed a sickly vermilion eight kilometres away.
Around the planet, consensus finalized, bringing together every sentient entity in an affinity union orchestrated by the islands. Information, such as it had, was reviewed, opinions formed, discussed, discarded, or elaborat
ed. Two seconds after considering the problem the consensus said: We believe it to be Laton. A ship of the same class as the Yaku arrived last night and sent a spaceplane down to the island. From that time onward Pernik’s communication has declined by sixty per cent.
Laton?the appalled question came from Oenone and its crew.
Yes.the atlantean consensus summarized the information that had been delivered by a voidhawk two days earlier. As we have no orbital stations our checks on arriving ships were naturally less than ideal, depending solely on civil traffic control satellite-platform sensors. The ship has of course departed, but the spaceplane remained. Pernik and its population must have been sequestrated by the energy virus.
Oh no,oxley cried brokenly. Not him. Not again.
Ahead of him, Pernik issued a brilliant golden light, as though sunrise had come to the ocean. The flyer gave a violent lurch to starboard, and began to lose height.
Syrinx watched the little flyer disappear into the east. The night air was cooler than she remembered from her last visit, bringing up goosebumps below her ship-tunic. Mosul, who was dressed in a baggy sleeveless sweatshirt and shorts, seemed completely unaffected. She eyed him with a degree of annoyance. Macho outdoors type.
This Clio was a lucky woman.
Come along,eysk said. The family is dying to meet you again. You can tell the youngsters what Norfolk was like.
I’d love to.
Mosul’s arm tightened that bit extra round her shoulder as they headed for the nearest tower. Almost proprietary, she thought.
Mosul,she asked on singular engagement, what’s wrong down here? You all seem so tense.it was a struggle to convey the emotional weight she wanted.
Nothing is wrong.he smiled as they passed under the archway at the foot of the tower.
She stared at him, dumbfounded. He had answered on the general affinity band, an extraordinary breach of protocol.
Mosul caught her expression, and sent a wordless query.
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