Reality Dysfunction - Expansion nd-2

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “I have no record of it ever having been done. Although I can see no reason why not; the process would take longer, however, datavising is not as efficient as affinity.”

  “I want to become an Edenist. I want you to accept my memories.”

  “Warlow, why?”

  “I am eighty-six, and I am not geneered. My shipmates do not know, but all that is left of my real body is the brain and a few nerve cords. The rest of me perished long ago. I spent far too much time in free fall, you see.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It has been a full life. But now my neurons are dying at a rate which is beyond even Confederation gene therapy’s ability to replace. So, understandably, I have come to think a lot about death recently. I had even considered downloading my memories into a processor array, but that would simply be an echo of myself. You on the other hand are a living entity, within you I too could continue to live.”

  “I would be happy and honoured to accept your memories. But, Warlow, the transference must take place at death, only that way can continuity be achieved. Anything less would be that echo of self which you spoke of. Your personality would know it was not complete because its conclusion was missing.”

  He flew along a cliff of charcoal-textured rock. A virtual mountain of a particle, worn and abraded by aeons of murmuring dust, the lethal knife-blade spires unsheathed by its fractured formation now a moorland landscape of undulations, barrows of its youthful virility. “I know.”

  “Are you worried then that Captain Calvert will not be able to escape through the Lagrange point?”

  “No. Joshua will be able to fly that manoeuvre with ease. My concern is that he is given the chance to fly it.”

  “You mean eliminating the Gramine ?”

  “I do. This mission to mine the rings is the weakest link in Joshua’s plan to escape. It assumes the Gramine will not deviate its orbit by more than five hundred metres in the next two hours. It assumes too much. I propose to position the warhead accurately on Gramine ’s orbital track, and detonate it while it passes. That way I can be sure.”

  “Warlow, neither Gramine nor Maranta have deviated their track by more than a hundred metres since the search began. I urge you to reconsider this action.”

  “Why? I have only a few years to live at best. Most of those would be spent with my memories and rationality slipping away. Our medical science has achieved too much in that direction. My synthetic body can keep pumping blood through my comatose brain for decades yet. Would you wish that on me when you know you yourself can provide me with a worthwhile continuance?”

  “That is, I believe, a loaded question.”

  “Correct. My mind is made up. This way I have two chances of cheating death. There are few who can say that.”

  “Two? How so?”

  “Possession implies an afterlife, somewhere a soul can return from.”

  “You believe that is the fate which has befallen Lalonde?”

  “Do you know what a Catholic is?” A solid glacier wall of ice appeared out of the dust. The cold-gas nozzles of his manoeuvring pack fired heavily. For a moment he saw the splay of waxen vapour shiver as it was siphoned away into the blue and emerald phosphenes of dust.

  “Catholicism is one of the root religions which made up the Unified Christian Church,” Aethra said.

  “Almost. Officially, by decree of the Pope, Catholicism was absorbed. But it was a strong faith. You cannot modify and dilute such an intense devotion simply by compromising prayers and services to achieve unity with other Christian denominations. My home asteroid was Forli, an ethnic-Italian settlement. It kept the faith, unofficially, unobtrusively. Try as I might, I cannot throw away the teachings of my childhood. Divine justice is something I think all living things will have to face.”

  “Even me?”

  “Even you. And Lalonde looks to confirm my belief.”

  “You think Kelly Tirrel was telling the truth?”

  Warlow’s manoeuvring pack was nudging him gingerly round the rimed iceberg, loyally following the ins and outs of its gentle contours. Its surface was true crystal, but eventually it sank into total blackness, as though a wormhole interstice had frozen open at its core. When his armour-suit sensors scanned round they showed him the constellations returning to their full majesty through the attenuating dust. “I do. I am convinced of it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Joshua believes her.”

  “A strange rationale.”

  “Joshua is more than a superlative captain. In all my years I have never come across anyone quite like him. He behaves execrably with women and money, and even his friends on occasion. But, if you will excuse my clumsy poetry, he is in tune with the universe. He knows truth. I put my faith in Joshua, I have done so ever since I signed on with the Lady Macbeth , and I will continue to do so.”

  “Then there is an afterlife.”

  “If not, I will live on as part of your multiplicity. But Kelly Tirrel has been convinced that there is. She is a tough, cynical person, she would take a lot of convincing such a thing could be. And, as now appears likely, if there is an afterlife, I have an immortal soul and death is not to be feared.”

  “And do you fear death?”

  He rose out of the iceberg’s umbra cloak. It was similar to emerging from a dark layer of rain-cloud into clear evening sky, there was only a remote diaphanous shimmer of dust left above him. Gramine shone like a second-magnitude star, forty kilometres away and drifting towards him. “Very much.”

  The hovercraft slewed and bucked on the river, tossed about by white-water waves swelling over semi-submerged stones. Theo was concentrating hard on keeping them straight and level, but it was tough going. Kelly didn’t remember yesterday’s journey up this same river as being so difficult. She and Shaun Wallace were sitting on the rear bench, clinging on grimly as they were slung about. The propeller droned behind her.

  “Already I feel wearied by the journey, daunted by what we are attempting. This is not even snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, although it might be termed a last vain attempt to salvage the team’s dignity. We came to this planet with such confidence and high ideals; we were going to vanquish the evil invader and restore order and stability to twenty million people, give them their lives back. Now all we dare hope for is to escape with thirty children. And even that will tax us to the limit.”

  “Such a worrier, Miss Kelly.” Shaun smiled congenially.

  The hovercraft swerved, pushing her against him—for the briefest second the channel to her sensorium flek recorder block dropped out—and he smiled politely as they righted themselves. “You mean I shouldn’t be worrying?”

  “Now I never said that. But worry is the Devil’s disciple, it rots the soul.”

  “Well, you’d certainly be the one to know all about souls.”

  Shaun chuckled softly.

  Kelly glanced up at the red cloud. They had been under it for half an hour now. It was thicker than it had been yesterday, its constituent tresses twirling sluggishly. Somehow she was aware of its weight, a heaviness necessary to blot out not just the sight of space but the physical laws governing existence. A complex intertwining of associated emotions defeated her, as though she was sensevising some obscure xenoc ceremony. “That cloud means a lot to you, doesn’t it?” she asked.

  “Not the cloud itself, Miss Kelly, that’s nothing, but what it represents, yes. That’s like seeing your aspirations take form. To me, to all of us damned souls, it means freedom. A precious commodity when you’ve been denied it for seven hundred years.”

  Kelly switched her attention to the second hovercraft, with Horst Elwes and Russ sitting on the bench behind Ariadne, faces ploughed up against the biting slipstream wind. Cannonades of thunder thrashed overhead, as if the cloud was the taut skin of some gigantic drum. She saw Russ push himself closer against the priest. The simple act of trust was immensely poignant.

  The privation dropped upon Shaun Wallace with
out the slightest warning. He experienced the dreadful exodus, the flight of souls expelled from the universe exerting a tidal force on his own precarious possession. Their lamentations and enmity spilled back from the beyond in that eerily pervasive chorus, and then came venomous anger of those who accompanied them on their expulsion, those they had possessed. All of them, preying on each other, hating each other. The conflict permeated his skull, wrenching at his thoughts. He gagged, eyes widening in shock. His face betrayed an emotion of uttermost despair, then he flung his head back and howled.

  Reza never wanted to hear a cry like it again. The outpouring of anguish compressed into that one cataclysmic bawl spoke for an entire planet. Grief paralysed him, and loss, loss so profound he wanted the universe to end so he could be spared.

  It finished as Shaun ran out of breath. Unsteadily, Reza twisted round on the front bench. Tears were streaming down the possessed man’s cheeks. He drew breath and howled again.

  Kelly’s hands were clasped against her puckered lips. “What?” she wailed. “What is it?” Her eyes shut instinctively at the next outburst.

  Reza tried to block it all out and project some comfort to Fenton and Ryall. “Pat?” he datavised. “Can Octan see anything happening?”

  “Not a thing,” the second-in-command answered from the other hovercraft. “What’s going on? Wallace frightened the shit out of us.”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  Kelly shook Shaun’s arm imploringly. “What’s wrong? What is it? Speak to me!” Panic was giving her voice a shrill edge. “Shaun!”

  Shaun gulped down a breath, his shoulders shivering. He lowered his head until he was staring at Reza. “You,” he hissed. “You killed them.”

  Reza looked at him through a cross-grid of yellow target graphics, his forearm gaussrifle was aimed directly at the possessed man’s temple. “Killed who?”

  “The city, the whole city. I felt them go, thousands upon thousands blown back to the beyond like so much ash. Your devil bomb, it went off. No, it was set off. What kind of creatures are you to slaughter so indiscriminately?”

  Reza felt a grin reflex coming on, which his restructured face portrayed as a moderate widening of his mouth slit. “Someone got through, didn’t they? Someone hit back.”

  Shaun’s head sagged brokenly. “One man. That’s all, one bloody man.”

  “So you’re not so invincible, after all. I hope it pains you, Mr. Wallace, I hope it pains all your kind. That way you may begin to know something of the horror we felt when we found out what you did to this planet’s children.”

  The flash of guilt on the man’s face proved the barb had hit home.

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Wallace, we know. Even if Kelly here is too tactful to mention it. We know the barbarism we are dealing with.”

  “What bomb?” Kelly asked. “What are you two talking about?”

  “Ask him,” Shaun said, and sneered at Reza. “Ask him how he was intending to help the poor people of this planet he was hired to save.”

  “Reza?”

  The mercenary leader swayed as the hovercraft banked around a boulder. “Terrance Smith was concerned we might not get all the fire support we needed from the starships. He gave each team leader a nuke.”

  “Oh, Christ.” Kelly looked from one man to the other. “Do you mean you’ve got one as well?”

  “You should know, Kelly,” Reza said. “You’re sitting on it.”

  She tried to jump to her feet, only to have Shaun grab her arm and keep her sitting.

  “Have you learned nothing of him yet, Miss Kelly? There’s no human part left in that mockery of a body.”

  “Point to your body, Mr. Wallace, the one you were born with,” Reza said. “After that I’ll talk morality and ethics with you all day long.”

  They stared at each other.

  Darkness began to fall. Kelly looked up to see the red light bleeding from the cloud, leaving behind a swollen slate-grey mantle massing sinisterly low overhead. A blade of purple-white lightning screwed down on the savannah to the east.

  “What’s happening?” Kelly shouted as thunder crashed over the hovercraft.

  “You are happening, Miss Kelly. They sense you. They fear and hate you now your true nature and power has been exposed. This is the last mercenary team left, you see. None of the others survived.”

  “So what will they do?”

  “Hunt you down, whatever the cost below the muzzles of your weapons.”

  Two hours after Warlow had left Lady Mac Joshua was accessing the flight computer’s memory cores, looking for records of starships jumping from inside a Lagrange point. He and Dahybi had gone through the small amount of available data on Murora VII, using it to refine their computations of the Lagrange point’s size and position, locking the figures into the trajectory plot. He could pilot Lady Mac right into its heart—no doubt about that: now he wanted to know what would happen when the energy patterning nodes were activated. There was a lot of theory in the physics files about how it should be possible, but no actual verified ZTT jump.

  Who’s going to be stupid enough to take part in an experiment like that? he asked himself. But he was lying on his acceleration couch, and Dahybi, Ashly, and Sarha were on the bridge with him, so he kept any qualms to himself. He was just wondering if there would be a reference in a history file, surely the ZTT pioneers would want to know the limits of their craft, when Aethra datavised him.

  “Warlow wants to talk with you,” the habitat said.

  He cancelled the link to the memory cores. “Hello, Warlow. How’s it going?”

  “Superbly,” Warlow said.

  “Where are you?” The cosmonik ought to be back on board in another twenty minutes if everything was running on schedule. Joshua had helped draw up the flight vector through the ring.

  “Twenty kilometres from Gramine .”

  “What?”

  “I can see it.”

  “Jesus shit, Warlow. What the fuck are you playing at? The schedule doesn’t have any margin for error.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m here. I’m going to make certain that Gramine is destroyed by the blast. I shall detonate it when the ship is in an optimum position.”

  “Oh, Jesus, Warlow, get your iron arse back here now!”

  “Sorry, Captain. Maranta will only be seven thousand three hundred kilometres away when Gramine is eliminated. But that will still give you an eighteen-second lead on the combat wasps. That’s easily enough time.”

  “Warlow, stop this. We can wait until the end of the next sweep and position the bomb again. That’s only another five hours. We’ll still be at Lalonde before Amarisk’s evening.”

  “Joshua, you have six minutes before I detonate. Make sure everyone is strapped down, please.”

  “Don’t do it. Jesus, Warlow, I’m begging you.”

  “You know this has to be done properly. And I can ensure it is.”

  “Not like this. Please, come back.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Joshua. I’ve thought it out, I will be quite all right.”

  “Warlow!” Joshua’s face was crushed into a mask of anger and desperation. He jerked round to look at Ashly. The pilot was moving his lips silently, eyelashes sticky with tears. “Say something,” Joshua commanded. “Get him back.”

  “Warlow, for Heaven’s sake come back,” Ashly datavised. “Just because you can’t navigate properly there’s no need for this. I’ll do it next time, and do it right.”

  “I would like you to do me a favour, Ashly.”

  “What?”

  “Next time you come out of zero-tau, in fifty years or so, I want you to come back here and visit me.”

  “Visit you?”

  “Yes. I am transferring my memories to Aethra. I’m going to become one of the multiplicity. I won’t die.”

  “You crazy old bastard.”

  “Gaura!” Joshua shouted. “Can he do that? He’s not an Edenist.”

  “The datavise has already begun,” Gau
ra replied. “He is doing it.”

  “Oh, Jesus wept.”

  “Is everyone in their acceleration couches?” Warlow asked. “I’m giving you the chance you really need to escape the rings. You’re not going to waste that, are you, Joshua?”

  “Shit.” A hot steel band was constricting Joshua’s chest, far worse than any gee force. “They’re getting onto the couches, Warlow.” He datavised the flight computer for an image from the cabin cameras, watching Edenists tighten the webbing around themselves. Melvyn was swimming about, checking they had done it properly.

  “And what about the thermo-dump panels, have you retracted them? There’s only five minutes left.”

  Joshua datavised the flight computer to retract the thermo-dump panels. Systems schematics appeared as he prepped the generators and drive tubes; mostly green, some amber. The old girl was in good shape. Sarha started to help him with the checklist.

  “Please, Warlow?”

  “Fly the bastards into the ground, Joshua. You can do it.”

  “Jesus, I don’t know what to say.”

  “Promise me something.”

  “Yes.”

  “Gotcha. You should have asked me what it was first.”

  Joshua coughed. Laughed painfully. It made his vision all blurred for some unfathomable reason. “What is it?”

  “Hard luck, you committed. I want you to be more considerate to your girls. You never see the effect you have on them. Some of them get hurt, Joshua.”

  “Jesus, cosmonik and social worker.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “You were a good captain, Joshua. Lady Macbeth was a great way to finish. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

  Sarha was sobbing on her acceleration couch. Ashly was clenching and unclenching his fists.

  “I would,” Joshua said silently.

  Aethra showed them Gramine . The starship was traversing the ring surface with the suavity of a maglev train, straight and sure. Three thermo-dump panels were extended to the full, shining a dull vermilion. A long, narrow flame of blue ions flickered for an instant.