by Neal Asher
‘Very cosy. So you would be well defended should a stray asteroid head in this direction,’ said Cormac sarcastically.
Dreyden dropped the butt of his cigarette and ground it out on the platform. After taking a swallow of his drink he glared at Cormac. ‘You know, we don’t even use the tightest focus to melt asteroids. If we tried that on an asteroid it would vaporize and obliterate the furnace satellite it was lodged in. On the tightest focus we can get heat levels – if the conditions are just right – high enough to start a fusion reaction. There’s no known substance that can endure that for long, and no field technology that can withstand it.’
Cormac wandered over to the glass wall and gazed down at the Occam Razor. Dreyden’s message was quite clear, but utterly irrelevant considering what he knew of ECS policy concerning this place.
‘Last count as I recollect,’ said Cormac without turning from the glass, ‘there were two hundred million people living here.’ He turned now to face Dreyden. ‘ECS just isn’t interested . . . you want the figures? AIs have calculated that with the people here living in such fragile circumstances the losses during a takeover would be something in the region of twenty per cent. And to gain what?’ He gestured to the nearest giant smelting complex. ‘The whole infrastructure would probably be destroyed as well, and the Polity would basically end up with a refugee population in the tens of millions. Probably the smelters and mirrors would be destroyed too, so there would be nothing to gain, and anyway most of what is made here is sold to the Polity, and most of the money used to buy it is spent on Polity goods. I’m not here for this, Dreyden.’
Dreyden continued to glare and Cormac realized that the man would just never believe what he was being told – he had too much invested here and was evidently too frightened of Earth Central Security to trust any of its agents. In reality his attitude was perfectly understandable: the Polity had without compunction absorbed worlds into itself when that best served the interests of its entire population, and for the same reasons empires like Dreyden’s had been undermined, or obliterated.
‘I’ve no time for this,’ said Cormac, heading for the hatch.
‘What do you want with this Asselis Mika, the Life-Coven woman?’ Dreyden asked suddenly.
Cormac turned as he began to climb down. ‘Her expertise. And we will leave with her – understand that.’
‘So long as you do leave.’ Dreyden gulped the rest of his drink. ‘Perhaps, after you are gone, you can pass on the message that Polity battleships are no longer welcome here.’
‘Oh, I’ll pass that on,’ said Cormac, departing.
Jarvellis was probably the most smoulderingly sexy woman Thorn had ever met. She had long straight black hair, a face that seemed perpetually cheeky, as if she was just about to say something quite shocking, and a figure that was well emphasized by the ersatz acceleration suit she wore. Thorn also understood, even on such very brief acquaintance, that she was completely and utterly in love with John Stanton. She did not give a swooning display in his presence, nor did she simper; it was just a sense of connection between the two of them. He had caught it in that one glance exchanged between the two when he and Stanton had entered the bridge sphere of this trispherical ship. It was a personal connection that completely cut anyone else out of the circuit.
After strapping himself in, Stanton gestured back the way they had entered. ‘That’s cargo, as you saw, and the other sphere is the living quarters. We’ve got a small galley and a machine shop just behind here as well.’
As he too strapped himself into one of the two acceleration chairs immediately behind Stanton and Jarvellis, Thorn considered the hold he had just seen. He’d noted the four cryopods fixed upright to one wall and been unable to miss seeing the racked cargo of weapons crates and other less easily identifiable items.
‘What I could do with is an autodoc,’ he said, delicately probing his broken teeth.
‘We’ve got one, but you’ll have to wait. All consoles are DNA-keyed to me and Jarv. Also, Lyric II is run by an AI, and she tends to trust people even less than I do.’
That figured.
Thorn turned his attention to Jarvellis as she piloted Lyric II up and away from the planet. The rumbling of acceleration through atmosphere was growing less now, and the middle one of the three screens showed whitish sky diffusing away over starlit space. The right screen displayed a view of the rapidly receding world.
‘Ooh, those ECS boys know some dirty words,’ said Jarvellis, her head tilted towards her earplug.
‘And what words are they saying?’ asked Stanton.
‘Well,’ said Jarvellis, turning to give Thorn an estimating look, ‘the gist is “Stay where you are and wait to be boarded,” but the language is much more colourful.’
‘They’ll think you’re escaping Separatists,’ said Thorn. ‘Which of course you are not.’
Stanton glanced back at him. ‘No, we are not.’ He returned his attention to Jarvellis. ‘What about the ’ware?’
She shook her head. ‘The runcible AI will be on us now and we’ll not hide the AG signature from it.’
‘Can we outrun them?’ Stanton asked.
‘Oh, pleeaase,’ spoke a voice from the console in front of Jarvellis.
Jarvellis patted the console. ‘I think Lyric can handle a couple of rusty old ECS attack boats – can’t you, dear?’
‘I should think so,’ replied the voice of Lyric II’s AI.
Just then there came a deep roar from within the ship, and subscreens displaying outside views of the ship whited out. Thorn surmised, by this sound, that a powerful engine had just been put online.
‘The language just gets worse and worse,’ said Jarvellis. ‘Here we go.’ She touched a control and the view on one of the main screens changed to show Cheyne III’s only moon, Cereb, and two much closer objects – identifiable only as being vaguely wedge-shaped – quickly receding. Jarvellis ran her fingers expertly over some more controls, then pulled her earplug. She turned and again looked back at Thorn. ‘Now, what do we do with your friend here?’ she asked.
Before Stanton could say anything, Thorn asked, ‘You’re going after this Deacon character, I take it?’
‘Yes,’ said Stanton, his face assuming the same hardness that Thorn had earlier seen at any mention of the Deacon.
‘Then let me come with you. That barge back there will soon become a reef, if it isn’t already, and any mission I had there is over.’
‘Why would you want to come with us?’ asked Jarvellis.
‘Because whoever that guy was, he was supplying the Cheyne Separatists and I’d like very much to find out more about that.’
‘We don’t work for ECS,’ said Jarvellis.
‘It is also worth bearing in mind,’ added Stanton, ‘that ECS has a reward out for our capture.’
‘I’ve no intention of trying to claim it,’ said Thorn. ‘You saved my life and that might not count for much on a policy level, but it sure as hell means a lot to me.’
‘Academic, really,’ said Stanton. ‘If we try to stop off at any Polity-controlled world or station we’ll have ECS over us like worms on a turd – one of Brom’s charming expressions, that – so there’s no way we’ll be dropping you anywhere.’
‘What about this Deacon – will you be able to track him?’ Thorn asked.
‘No need,’ Stanton replied. ‘He’ll head for his rat hole at Masada. That’s where we intended to go next anyway, and that’s where I’ll kill him.’
‘Masada?’ Thorn queried.
‘Yes,’ said Stanton. ‘Let me tell you about my home world.’
The grapes were hard and green and, being a long way from ripeness, only the size of eyeballs. As she chewed on another of the sour fruit, Eldene tried not to think about nut-potatoes and bread and the occasional luxury of meat.
‘Do you ever need food?’ she asked, after lowering her mask and spitting out a mouthful of green goo.
‘Small amounts of nutrients sometimes,’
replied Fethan, ‘otherwise my source of energy is somewhat hotter.’
Eldene hinged her mask back up into place and spoke through it, having earlier discovered that some device in the collar prevented the muffling of her voice. ‘Why were you . . . a worker? How did you become a worker?’
‘I came here about four solstan years ago at the behest of Earth Central Security, to bring certain devices and make an assessment of the situation down here. Infiltrating the city was not difficult, as to the Theocracy even the citizens are not individuals – just people to be used up. I completed my assessment in two years, by which time I’d found out about the Underground and made contacts there. I’ve since been working for one Lellan Stanton – the leader of the rebellion – gathering intelligence on the worker situation, and gathering opinions.’ Fethan shrugged. ‘It is easy to get defectors from the city, especially from the processing plants, but not so easy out here, and she wanted to find out how best it might be done.’
‘And have you succeeded?’
Fethan reached into the pocket of his coverall and removed a short plastic tube of pills that Eldene immediately recognized as those used to prevent a scole rejecting and dying.
‘Once we’ve had these analysed,’ he said, ‘we have an opening. It seems the only way now. We’ll distribute these through those agents we have placed, and when the time is right have a mass breakout.’
‘Then what?’ asked Eldene, looking pointedly up into the lurid sky.
Fethan put away the pills. ‘You have to understand, girl, I was not sent here by ECS on a purposeless assignment. When the time is right this world will become part of the Human Polity, whether the Theocracy likes it or not.’
‘When is the time right? Why is this injustice allowed to continue?’
‘It continues because of politics. The Polity takes control of Line worlds, subsumes them, by consent of eighty per cent of the planetary population – or in cases when there has been a complete breakdown of control and they have been asked for help. If ECS came in here with a shitload of warships and blew the Theocracy to hell, that would cause fear on many other Out-Polity worlds, and that fear might prove a uniting force. Last time ECS got that heavy-handed, it upset the balance on a world that had joined the Polity only a few months before. That world then seceded from what was described there as “the rule of AI autocrats”, its government was subverted by Separatists, and the entire planetary population forced into a war they did not want, against their nearest Polity neighbour. So you see; we have to be very careful.’
‘What happened . . . to the two worlds at war?’ Eldene asked.
‘Well, ECS had to defend the Polity world. That’s the charter.’
‘The other world?’
‘It’s still habitable at the poles.’
Eldene chewed that over: there had always been a deep streak of cynicism in her – probably induced by her early reading – which was perhaps why Fethan had shown such interest in her. She’d never really believed his stories about the Human Polity, precisely because she wanted so badly for them to be true. Even so, she had taken in much of what he had told her and it was her understanding that the Polity would only have to learn of the injustice here for it to unleash ECS on the Theocracy.
‘When will ECS come?’ she asked eventually.
‘When eighty per cent of the population has voted for such or when there has been a complete breakdown of political control and help is asked for,’ Fethan replied obdurately.
‘How in the name of God are we supposed to vote?’ Eldene asked.
Fethan glanced at her. ‘Do you want the Polity in control here? Would you pledge allegiance to the AIs that run the Human Polity?’
‘Damned right I would. Anything has to be better than the Theocracy!’
Fethan halted and turned, gripping her by the shoulder. ‘Say to me your name and tell me what you want.’
Eldene stared back at the man and tried to figure out what he meant. ‘I’m . . . I’m Eldene and I want the . . . Human Polity running this world. I want to be free. I want . . .’
Fethan released her. ‘You have just made your deposition. You’ve just voted for Polity control here.’ He tilted his head slightly, as if listening to something. ‘So far that’s just over sixty-eight per cent of the population.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘The ballots run a limited physiological probe, to make sure the ballotee is not under duress. But because I am what I am, I can collect depositions without it.’ He gestured behind with his thumb. ‘Back there I collected fifty-three depositions, which you may be glad to know include Dent’s and Cathol’s. You were next on my list before circumstances . . . changed.’
‘Ballots?’
‘The Polity has had machines here collecting votes for thirty-eight years, but never managed to get that eighty per cent vote. Your vote, because of your age, has a life of fifty years calculated from average spans here. It’s the only way it can work.’
‘But Dent and Cathol are dead.’
‘I didn’t say the system was perfect, girl.’
‘I’ve never seen these ballots,’ said Eldene, still confused.
‘They’re machines – they’ll be in a ring, an amulet, the button on someone’s shirt. Even so, you understand how difficult it would be to get someone to say what you have just said, with proctors and Theocracy cameras watching them at every turn. Most of that sixty-eight per cent is the Underground vote.’
Fethan moved on.
‘Then how much longer?’ Eldene asked.
Fethan was silent for a moment before replying. ‘I don’t think it’s gonna be done by vote, girl. I think that the Theocracy will be destabilized. Sometime soon, Earth Central will send certain individuals here, and things will change very quickly.’
‘Tell me more,’ said Eldene, excitement twisting her stomach. And Fethan told her much more.
6
‘And thus it was that with God’s guidance Brother Goodman came at last to the land of the gabbleduck. Hereabouts were trails worn through the grass and the scatterings of the bones of those who had failed the test,’ the woman told her boy, raising an eyebrow at the picture displayed in the book showing a veritable charnel house.
‘The babbleguck, the babbleguck,’ said the boy impatiently – she had given up trying to get him to pronounce the name correctly and assumed this story would become part of his own personal mythology when he grew up. Scrolling the text down moved the scene along to soon reveal the creature itself: it squatted in the grasses like some monstrously insectile hybrid of Buddha and Kali, with a definite splash of Argus in the ocular region.
‘Gabbleduck,’ said the boy, and the woman looked at him with suspicion before continuing.
‘In his right hand Brother Goodman carried the word of God and in his left hand he carried the wisdom of Zelda Smythe. He brought no weapons to the abode of the monster other than these and his Faith. “Ask me a riddle!” he cried, holding up both books.’
At this point, the gabbleduck, with its multiple arms folded on its triple-keeled chest, turned its array of green eyes upon the pious brother.
‘“Scubble leather bobble fuck,” said the duck, and in reply Brother Goodman smote the creature with the word, “Ung?”’
The woman started giggling as the picture book now showed the enormous creature stooping down and opening its large bill to expose an interior lined with something like white holly leaves.
‘Then guess . . . what . . . happened?’ she managed.
Giggling as well, though not sure why, the boy did not manage a reply. The book showed them both anyway.
The Occam Razor was a dark and disturbing ship, made more so because despite its large crew and resident population, it always seemed empty – any crew member possibly being, at any one time, as much as a couple of kilometres away, and that was a disturbing thought. His cabin was large, comfortable, had all the facilities of a plush hotel, and was like a room in an empty house. Standin
g at the wide screen that served as a window, Cormac sipped a whisky with cubes of normal ice in it, unlike the one he had been poured by Dreyden – whisky with cips ice was a lethal combination – and watched Elysium, and the huge sun it orbited, dwindle into invisibility. He felt the need now to be about his business, but there were months yet of ship time to get through before the Occam Razor reached its destination. Unable to contain his impatience any longer he swallowed the last of his drink, placed the glass back in the wall dispenser and headed for the door.
The ship was not quiet, yet it had an air of quietude. The sounds Cormac could hear in the corridor were distant and echoey, and as of someone working on things far off: the crackle of a welder, the clang of something dropped, the stutter of a laser drill. He checked the time and, seeing that only an hour had passed since their departure from Elysium, he decided not to bother Mika yet – she would hardly have had time to settle in her cabin, let alone establish herself in the ship’s forensic laboratory in Medical. He decided he needed to think, and he always thought best while he was walking. There was plenty of room to walk here, so he chose a direction and set off.
In a few minutes it was evident he had left the accommodation area. The walkway soon lost its carpeting – bare gravity plates exposed – then its partition walls, exposing the inner structure of the ship. All around him was an ordered forest of wires and optic cables, ducts and foamed metal beams, and plasma tubes, often intersecting at some bulky wasps’ nest of a machine. For a couple of minutes he had a view of something far below him that looked like the Sydney Opera House, but it was soon obscured as some huge deck slid slowly over it. He had been walking for ten minutes when a drone flew waveringly towards him. This particular machine had the smooth shape of an arrowhead with no visible manipulators, and he wondered just what purpose it could possibly serve.
‘What’s the quickest way to the hull?’ he asked quickly, when it became evident the drone was not going to stop. The drone jerked to a halt in midair, turned two ruby eyes towards him, then turned again so it was pointing down the way he was heading.
