Neutronium Alchemist - Consolidation nd-3

by Peter F. Hamilton

  That was when the patrol car started to glitch, picking up speed. The sensors showed him frightened citizens in front, racing to escape; one of the assault mechanoids wobbled past, shooting wildly. He fired shutdown orders into the drive processor. Not that it made much difference.

  Then the Retro started shooting at the patrol cars. Whatever the gun was, it ripped straight through the armour shielding, smashing the axles and wheel hubs. Metal bearings screeched in that unique, and instantly recognizable, tone which heralded imminent destruction. Loemer thumped the manual safety cut out, killing power instantly.

  The patrol car slewed around and bounced off the road barrier to smack straight into one of the Regree trees planted along the sidewalk. The internal crash alarm went off, half deafening an already dazed Loemer, and the emergency side hatch jettisoned. Loemer’s bubble seat slid out along its telescoping rails. The translucent bubble’s thick safety-restraint segments peeled back, allowing him to drop, wailing, to his knees as the air around him spewed out a terrible volley of sense overload impulses. His neural nanonics were unable to datavise a shutdown code into the crazed assault mechanoids. The last thing he saw as he fell onto the ground was the ruined Regree tree starting to keel over directly above him.

  Even Al was bruised by the wild strafing of the sense-overload ordnance. The manic glee as he watched the patrol cars skid and smash was swiftly curtailed by the onslaught of light, sound, and smell. His energistic ability could ward off the worst of it, but he turned and began a stumbling run towards the arcade’s entrance. Behind him the assault mechanoids continued to deluge the street with their errant firepower, lumbering about like drunks. Two ran into each other, and rebounded, falling over. Legs thrashed about in chaos, beetles flipped on their backs.

  The sidewalk was littered with prone bodies. Not dead, Al thought, just terribly battered. Je-zus but those mechanical soldier contraptions were nasty pieces of work. And unlike real police, you wouldn’t be able to buy them.

  Maybe New California wasn’t quite paradise after all.

  Al staggered his way along the arcade, caught up in the flow of people desperate to escape the havoc. His suit faded away, the sharp colour and cut reverting to Lovegrove’s original drab overall.

  He picked up a little girl whose eyes were streaming tears and carried her. It felt good to help. Those goddamn brainless pigs should have made sure she was out of the way before they came at him with guns blazing. It would never have happened back in Chicago.

  Two hundred yards from the arcade entrance he stopped among a group of anxious, exhausted people. They’d come far enough from the sense-overload ordnance to be free of its effects. Families clung together, others were calling out for friends and loved ones.

  Al put the little girl down, still crying, which he thought was due to the Kaiser gas rather than any kind of injury. Then her mother came rushing up and hugged her frantically. Al was given profuse thanks. A nice dame. Cared about her children and family. That was good, proper. He was sorry he wasn’t wearing his fedora so he could tip it to her.

  Just how did people express that kind of formal courtesy on this world anyhow? Lovegrove was puzzled by the question.

  He carried on down the arcade. Cops would be swarming all over the joint in a few minutes. Another hundred and fifty yards, and he was out on the street again. He started walking. Direction didn’t matter, just away. This time he kept Lovegrove’s overalls on. No one paid him any attention.

  Al wasn’t entirely sure what to do next. Everything was so strange. This world, his situation. Mind, strange wasn’t the word for it, more like overwhelming. Or just plain creepy. Bad to think that the priests had been right about the afterworld, heaven and hell. He never went to church much, much to his momma’s distress.

  I wonder if I’ve been redeemed, paid my celestial dues. Is that why I’m back? But if you got reincarnated didn’t you start off as a baby?

  They weren’t the kind of thoughts he was used to.

  A hotel, he told Lovegrove, I need to rest up and think about what to do.

  Most of the skyscrapers had some sort of rentable accommodation, apparently. But it would have to be paid for.

  Al’s hand automatically went to a leg pocket. He drew out a Jovian Bank credit disk, a thick, oversize coin, sparkly silver on one side, magenta on the other. Lovegrove obediently explained how it worked, and Al put his thumb on the centre. A hash of green lines wobbled over the silver side.

  “Goddamn!” He tried again, concentrating, wishing. Doing the magic.

  The green lines began to form figures, crude at first, then sharp and regular. You could store an entire planet’s treasury in one of these disks, Lovegrove told him. Al’s ears pricked up at that. Then he was aware of something being not quite right. A presence, close by.

  He hadn’t really thought about the others. Those who had been there when he came into Lovegrove’s body. The same ones who had deserted him in the disused shop. But if he closed his eyes, and shut out the sounds of the city, he could hear the distant babelesque clamour. It came from the nightmare domain, the pleas and promises to be brought forth, to live and breathe again.

  That same perception gave him a most peculiar vision of the city. Walls of thick black shadow amid a universal greyness. People moved through it all, distorted whispers echoing all around, audible ghosts. Some different from others. Louder, clearer. Not many of them among the multitude.

  Al opened his eyes and looked down the road. A section of the barrier was folding down neatly. One of the bullet cars drew to a halt beside it. The gull-wing door slid up, and inside was a proper car, a genuine American convertible wearing the streamlined image of the New California vehicle like a piece of clothing. It was low-slung, with a broad hood and lots of chrome trim. Al didn’t recognize the model, it was more modern than anything in the twenties, and his memory of the thirties and forties wasn’t so hot.

  The man in the red leather driving seat nodded amicably. “You’d better get in,” he said. “The cops are going to catch you if you stay out on the street. They’re a mite worked up about us.”

  Al glanced up and down the sidewalk, then shrugged and climbed in.

  Inside, the image of the bullet car tinted the air like a stained soap bubble.

  “The name’s Bernhard Allsop,” the man behind the steering column said. He swung the car out into the road. Behind them the barrier rose up smoothly. “I always wanted me an Oldsmobile like this beauty, never could afford it back when I was living in Tennessee.”

  “And this is real now?”

  “Who knows, boy? But it sure feels real. And I’m mighty grateful for the opportunity to ride one. You might say I thought it had passed me by.”

  “Yeah. I know what you mean.”

  “Caused a bit of commotion back there, boy. Them pigs is riled good and proper. We were monitoring what passes for their radio band these days.”

  “I just wanted a cab, that’s all. Someone tried to get smart.”

  “There’s a trick to riding around this town without the police knowing. Be happy to show you how sometime.”

  “Appreciate it. Where are we going?”

  Bernhard Allsop grinned and winked. “Gonna take you to meet the rest of the group. Always need volunteers, they’re kinda hard to come by.” He laughed, a high-pitched stuttering yodel reminding Al of a piglet.

  “They left me behind, Bernhard. I don’t have anything to say to them.”

  “Yeah, well. You know how it was. You weren’t altogether there, boy. I said we should have taken you along with us. Kin is kin, even though it ain’t exactly family here, know what I mean? Glad to see you came through in the end, though.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So what’s your name, boy?”

  “Al Capone.”

  The Oldsmobile swerved as Bernhard flinched. His knuckles whitened as he tightened his grip on the wheel; then he risked an anxious sideways glance at his passenger. Where before there had been
a twenty-year-old man dressed in a set of dark red overalls, there was now a debonair Latin-ethnic character in a double-breasted blue suit and pigeon-grey fedora.

  “You shitting me?”

  Al Capone reached into his suit and produced a miniature baseball bat. A now highly apprehensive Bernhard Allsop watched it grow to full size. It didn’t take much imagination to figure out what the black stains around the end were.

  “No,” Al said politely. “I’m not shitting you.”

  “Holy Christ.” He tried to laugh. “Al Capone.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Holy Christ. Al Capone in my car! Ain’t that something?”

  “That’s certainly something, yeah.”

  “It’s a pleasure, Al. Christ, I mean that. A real pleasure. Hell, you were the best, Al, the top man. Everybody knew that. Run a bit of moonshine in my day. Nothing much, a few slugs, is all. But you, you ran it for a whole city. Christ! Al Capone.” He slapped the steering wheel with both hands, chortling. “Damn, but I can’t wait to see their faces when I bring you in.”

  “Bring me in to what, Bernhard?”

  “The group, Al, the group. Hey, you don’t mind if I call you Al, do you? I don’t want to give no offence, or nothing. Not to you.”

  “That’s okay, Bernhard, all my friends call me Al.”

  “Your friends. Yes siree!”

  “What does this group of yours do, exactly, Bernhard?”

  “Why, get larger, of course. That’s all we can do for now. Unity is strength.”

  “You a Communist, Bernhard?”

  “Hey! No way, Al. I’m an American. I hate the filthy Reds.”

  “Sounds like you are to me.”

  “No, you got it all wrong. The more of us there are, the better chance we stand, the stronger we are. Like an army; a whole load of people together, they got the strength to make themselves felt. That’s what I meant, Al. Honest.”

  “So what does the group have in mind for when they get big and powerful?”

  Bernhard gave Al another sideways glance, puzzled this time. “To get out of here, Al. What else?”

  “To get out of the city?”

  “No. To take the planet away.” He jabbed a thumb straight up. “From that. From the sky.”

  Al cast a sceptical eye upwards. The skyscrapers were flashing past on either side. Their size didn’t bother him so much now. Starship drives still speckled the azure sky, streaked flashbulbs taking a long time to pop. He couldn’t see the odd little moon anymore. “Why?” he asked reasonably.

  “Damn it, Al. Can’t you feel it? The emptiness. Man, it’s horrible. All that huge nothing trying to suck you up and swallow you whole.” He gulped, his voice lowering. “The sky is like there. It’s the beyond all over again. We gotta hide. Someplace where we ain’t never going to die again, somewhere that don’t go on for ever. Where there’s no empty night.”

  “Now you’re sounding like a preacher man, Bernhard.”

  “Well maybe I am a little bit. It’s a smart man who knows when he’s beat. I don’t mind saying it to you, Al. I’m frightened of the beyond. I ain’t never going back there. No siree.”

  “So you’re going to move the world away?”

  “Damn right.”

  “That’s one fucking big ambition you’ve got there, Bernhard. I wish you a lot of luck. Now just drop me off at this intersection coming up here. I’ll find my own way about town now.”

  “You mean you ain’t going to pitch in and help us?” an incredulous Bernhard asked.

  “Nope.”

  “But you gotta feel it, too, Al. Even you. We all can. They never stop begging you, all those other lost souls. Ain’t you afraid of going back there?”

  “Can’t say as I am. It never really bothered me any while I was there first time around.”

  “Never bothered . . . ! Holy Christ, you are one tough sonofabitch, Al.” He put his head back and gave a rebel yell. “Listen, you mothers, being dead don’t bother Al Capone none! Goddamn!”

  “Where is this safe place you’re taking the planet to, anyhow?”

  “Dunno, Al. Just follow Judy Garland over the rainbow, I guess. Anywhere where there ain’t no sky.”

  “You ain’t got no plans, you ain’t got no idea where you’re going. And you wanted me to be a part of that?”

  “But it’ll happen, Al. I swear. When there’s enough of us, we can do it. You know what you can do by yourself now, one man. Think what a million can do, two million. Ten million. Ain’t nothing going to be able to stop us then.”

  “You’re going to possess a million people?”

  “We surely are.”

  The Oldsmobile dipped down a long ramp which took it into a tunnel. Bernhard let out a happy sigh as they passed into its harsh orange-tinged lighting.

  “You won’t possess a million people,” Al said. “The cops will stop you. They’ll find a way. We’re strong, but we ain’t no bulletproof superheroes. That stuff the assault mechanoids shoot nearly got me back there. If I’d been any closer I’d be dead again.”

  “Damn it, that’s what I been trying to tell you, Al,” Bernhard complained. “We gotta build up our numbers. Then they can’t never hurt us.”

  Al fell silent. Part of what Bernhard said made sense. The more possessed there were, the harder it would be for the cops to stop them spreading. But they’d fight, those cops. Like wild bears once they realized how big the problem was, how dangerous the possessed were. Cops, whatever passed for the federal agents on this world, the army; all clubbing together. Government rats always did gang up. They’d have the starship weapons, too; Lovegrove burbled about how powerful they were, capable of turning whole countries to deserts of hot glass within seconds.

  And what would Al Capone do on a world where such a war was being fought? Come to that, what would Al Capone do on any modern world?

  “How are you snatching people?” he asked abruptly.

  Bernhard must have sensed the change in tone, in purpose. He suddenly got antsy, shifting his ass around on the seat’s shiny red leather, but keeping his eyes firmly on the road ahead. “Well gee, Al, we just take them off the street. At night, when it’s nice and quiet. Nothing heavy.”

  “But you’ve been seen, haven’t you? That cop called me a Retro. They even got a name for you. They know you’re doing it.”

  “Well, yeah, sure. It’s kinda difficult with the numbers we’re working, you know. Like I say, we need a lot of people. Sometimes we get seen. Bound to happen. But they haven’t caught us.”

  “Not yet.” Al grinned expansively. He put his arm around Bernhard’s shoulder. “You know, Bernhard, I think I will come and meet this group of yours after all. It sounds to me that you ain’t organized yourselves too good. No offence, I doubt you people have much experience in this field. But me now . . .” A fat Havana appeared in his hand. He took a long blissful drag, the first for six hundred years. “Me, I had a lifetime’s experience of going to the bad. And I’m gonna give you all the benefit of that.”

  • • •

  Gerald Skibbow shuffled into the warm, white-walled room, one arm holding on tightly to the male orderly. His loose powder-blue institute gown revealed several small medical nanonic packages as it shifted about. He moved as would a very old man in a high-gravity environment, with careful dignity. Needing help, needing guidance.

  Unlike any normal person, he didn’t even flick his eyes from side to side to take in his newest surroundings. The thickly cushioned bed in the centre of the room, with its surrounding formation of bulky, vaguely medical apparatus didn’t seem to register on his consciousness.

  “Okay, now then, Gerald,” the orderly said cordially. “Let’s get you comfortable on here, shall we?”

  He gingerly positioned Gerald’s buttocks on the side of the bed, then lifted his legs up and around until his charge was lying prone on the cushioning. Always cautious. He’d prepared a dozen candidates for personality debrief here in Guyana’s grade-one restricted na
vy facility. None of them had exactly been volunteers. Skibbow might just realize what he was being prepped for. It could be the spark to bring him out of his trauma-trance.

  But no. Gerald allowed the orderly to secure him with the webbing which moulded itself to his body contours. There was no sound from his throat, no blink as it tightened its grip.

  The relieved orderly gave a thumbs-up to the two men sitting behind the long glass panel in the wall. Totally immobilized, Gerald stared beyond the outsized plastic helmet that lowered itself over his head. The inside was fuzzy, a lining of silk fur which had been stiffened somehow. Then his face was covered completely, and the light vanished.

  Chemical infusions insured there was no pain, no discomfort as the nanonic filaments wormed their way around his dermal cells and penetrated the bone of the skull. Positioning their tips into the requisite synapses took nearly two hours, a delicate operation similar to the implanting of neural nanonics. However these infiltrations went deeper than ordinary augmentation circuitry, seeking out the memory centres to mate with neurofibrillae inside their clustered cells. And the incursion was massive, millions of filaments burrowing along capillaries, active superstring molecules with preprogrammed functions, knowing where to go, what to do. In many respects they resembled the dendritic formation of living tissue in which they were building a parallel information network. The cells obeyed their DNA pattern, the filaments’ structure was formatted by AIs. One process designed by studying the other, but never complementary.

  Impulses began to flow back down the filaments as the hypersensitive tips registered synaptic discharges. A horribly jumbled montage of random thoughtsnaps, memories without order. The facility’s AI came on-line, running comparisons, defining characteristics, recognizing themes, and weaving them into coherent sensorium environs.

  Gerald Skibbow’s thoughts were focused on his apartment in the Greater Brussels arcology: three respectably sized rooms on the sixty-fifth floor of the Delores pyramid. From the triple glazed windows you could see a landscape of austere geometries. Domes, pyramids, and towers, all squashed together and wrapped up within the intestinal tangle of the elevated bhan tubes. Every surface he could see was grey, even the dome glass, coated with decades of grime.