Neutronium Alchemist - Consolidation nd-3

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “I know, but I have to consider the majority. If the possessed are outside the marine cordons, then we’ve already lost Mortonridge. I cannot lose Xingu, too.”

  “There are two million people living on Mortonridge!”

  “I am aware of that. But at least if they’re possessed they will still be alive. I think that Ekelund woman is right; the overall problem of possession isn’t going to be solved here.” There was a moment’s pause. “We’re cutting our losses, Ralph. Tell her she can have Mortonridge. For now.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he whispered.

  Annette Ekelund smiled. “She agreed, didn’t she?”

  “You may have Mortonridge,” Ralph relayed imperturbably as the Princess started to outline the conditions. “We will instigate an immediate evacuation procedure for people from areas you have not yet reached; any attempt to sabotage vehicles will result in SD strikes against areas where we know you are concentrated. If any of you try to pass the cordon we establish between Mortonridge and the main body of the continent you will be put into zero-tau. If any of you are found outside the cordon you will be put into zero-tau. If there is any terrorist assault against any Ombey citizen or building we will send in a punitive expedition and throw several hundred of you into zero-tau. If you attempt to communicate with other offplanet possessed forces, you will again be punished.”

  “Of course,” Ekelund said mockingly. “I agree to your terms.”

  “And the girl comes with me,” Ralph declared.

  “Come come, Ralph, I don’t believe the authorities actually said that.”

  “Try me,” he challenged.

  Ekelund glanced at the sobbing girl, then back to Ralph. “Would you have bothered if she was a wizened old grandmother?” she asked sarcastically.

  “But you didn’t choose a wizened old grandmother, did you? You chose her because you knew how protective we are towards the young. Your error.”

  Ekelund said nothing, but made a sharp irritated gesture to the mummy. It let the girl go. She floundered, trembling so badly she could hardly stand. Ralph caught her before she fell. He winced at the weight that put on his injured leg.

  “I’ll look forward to the day you join us, Ralph,” Ekelund said. “However long it takes. You’ll be quite an asset. Come and see me when your soul finally obtains a new body to live in.”

  “Fuck you.” Ralph scooped the girl up and started to walk down the road. He ignored the hundreds of people standing in front of the prim buildings, the indifferent possessed and their wailing distraught victims, the ones he’d failed so completely. Staring resolutely ahead, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. He knew if he took it all in, acknowledged the magnitude of the disaster he’d wrought, he’d never be able to carry on.

  “Enjoy your magnificent victory with the girl,” Annette Ekelund called after him.

  “This one is only the beginning,” he promised grimly.

  Chapter 05

  At a point in space four light-years distant from the star around which Mirchusko orbited, the gravity density suddenly leapt upwards. The area affected was smaller than a quark, at first. But once established, the warp rapidly grew both in size and in strength. Faint strands of starlight curved around the fringes, only to be sucked in towards the centre as the gravity intensified further.

  Ten picoseconds after its creation, the shape of the warp twisted from a spherical zone to a two-dimensional disk. By this time it was over a hundred metres in diameter. At the centre of one side, gravity fluctuated again, placing an enormous strain on local space. A perfectly circular rupture appeared, rapidly irising open.

  A long grey-white fountain of gas spewed out from the epicentre of the wormhole terminus. The water vapour it contained immediately turned to minute ice crystals, spinning away from the central plume, twinkling weakly in the sparse starlight. Lumps of solid matter began to shoot out along the gas jet, tumbling off into the void. It was a curious collection of objects: sculpted clouds of sand, tufts of reed grass with their roots wriggling like spider legs, small fractured dendrites of white and blue coral, broken palm tree fronds, oscillating globules of saltwater, a shoal of frantic fish, their spectacularly coloured bodies bursting apart as they underwent explosive decompression, several seagulls squirting blood from beaks and rectums.

  Then the crazy outpouring reduced drastically, blocked by a larger body which was surging along the wormhole. Udat slipped out into normal space, a flattened teardrop over a hundred and thirty metres long, its blue polyp hull enlivened with a tortuous purple web. Straightaway the blackhawk changed the flow of energy through the vast honeycomb of patterning cells which made up the bulk of its body, modifying its gravitonic distortion field. The wormhole terminus began to close behind it.

  Almost the last object to emerge from the transdimensional opening was a small human figure. A woman: difficult to see because of the black SII spacesuit she wore, her limbs scrabbling futilely, almost as though she were clawing at the structure of space-time in order to pursue the big blackhawk as it drew away from her. Her movements slowly calmed as the suit’s sensor collar revealed stars and distant nebulas again, replacing the menacingly insubstantial pseudofabric of the wormhole.

  Dr Alkad Mzu felt herself shudder uncontrollably, the relief was so intoxicating. Free from the grip of equations become energy.

  I understand the configuration of reality too well to endure such direct exposure. The wormhole has too many flaws, too many hidden traps. A quasi-continuum where time’s arrow has to be directed by an artificial energy flow; the possible fates lurking within such a non-place would make you welcome death as the most beautiful of consorts.

  The collar sensors showed her she had picked up a considerable tumble since losing her grip on the rope ladder. Her neural nanonics had automatically blocked the impulses from her inner ears as a precaution against nausea. There were also a number of analgesic blocks erected across the nerve paths from her forearms. A physiological status display showed her the damage inflicted on tendons and muscles as she’d forced herself to hang on as the Udat dived for safety. Nothing drastic, thankfully. Medical packages would be able to cope once she got the suit off.

  “Can you retrieve me?” she datavised to the Udat ’s flight computer. “I can’t stop spinning.” As if they couldn’t see that. But the bitek starship was already seven hundred metres away, and still retreating from her. She wanted an answer, wanted someone to talk to her. Proof she wasn’t alone. This predicament was triggering way too many thirty-year-old memories. Dear Mary, I’ll be calling it déjà vu next. “Calling Udat , can you retrieve me?” Come on, answer.

  On the Udat ’s bridge Haltam was busy programming the medical packages which were knitting to the base of Meyer’s skull. Haltam was the Udat ’s fusion specialist, but doubled as ship’s medical officer.

  The captain was lying prone on his acceleration couch, unconscious. His fingers were still digging into the cushioning, frozen in a claw-like posture, nails broken by the strength he’d used to maul the fabric. Blood dribbling out of his nose made sticky blotches on his cheeks. Haltam didn’t like to think of the whimpers coming from Meyer’s mouth just before the blackhawk had swallowed out of Tranquillity, snatching Alkad Mzu away from the intelligence agents imprisoning her within the habitat. Nor did he like the physiological display he was accessing from Meyer’s neural nanonics.

  “How is he?” asked Aziz, the Udat ’s spaceplane pilot.

  “None too good, I think. He’s suffered a lot of cerebral stress, which pushed him into shock. If I’m interpreting this display right, his neural symbionts were subjected to a massive trauma. Some of the bitek synapses are dead, and there’s minor hemorrhaging where they interface with his medulla oblongata.”

  “Christ.”

  “Yeah. And we don’t have a medical package on board which can reach that deep. Not that it would do us a lot of good if we had. You need to be a specialist to operate one.”

  “I cann
ot feel his dreams,” Udat datavised. “I always feel his dreams. Always.”

  Haltam and Aziz exchanged a heavy glance. The bitek starship rarely used its link with the flight computer to communicate with any of the crew.

  “I don’t believe the damage is permanent,” Haltam told the blackhawk. “Any decent hospital can repair these injuries.”

  “He will waken?”

  “Absolutely. His neural nanonics are keeping him under for the moment. I don’t want him conscious again until the packages have knitted. They ought to be able to help stabilize him, and alleviate most of the shock.”

  “Thank you, Haltam.”

  “Least I can do. And what about you? Are you all right?”

  “Tranquillity was very harsh. My mind hurts. I have never known that before.”

  “What about your physical structure?”

  “Intact. I remain functional.”

  A whistle of breath emerged from Haltam’s mouth. Then the flight computer informed him that Alkad Mzu was datavising for help. “Oh, hell,” he muttered. The coverage provided by the electronic sensor suite mounted around the outside of the starship’s life support horseshoe was limited. Normally, Udat ’s own sensor blisters provided Meyer with all the information he needed. But when Haltam accessed the suite, the infrared sweep found Mzu easily, spinning amid the thin cloud of dispersing debris which had been sucked into the wormhole with them.

  “We’ve got you located,” he datavised. “Stand by.”

  “Udat ?” Aziz asked. “Can you take us over to her, please?”

  “I will do so.”

  Haltam managed a nervous, relieved smile. At least the blackhawk was cooperating. The real big test would come when they wanted a swallow manoeuvre.

  Udat manoeuvred itself to within fifty metres of Mzu, and matched her gentle trajectory. After that, Cherri Barnes strapped on a cold gas manoeuvring pack and hauled her in.

  “We have to leave,” Alkad datavised as soon as she was inside the airlock. “Immediately.”

  “You didn’t warn us about your friends on the beach,” Cherri answered reproachfully.

  “You were told about the observation agents. I apologize if you weren’t aware of how anxious they were to prevent me from escaping, but I thought that was implicit in my message. Now, please, we must perform a swallow manoeuvre away from here.”

  The airlock chamber pressurized as soon as the outer hatch closed, filling with a slightly chilled air. Cherri watched Mzu touch the seal catches on her worn old backpack with awkward movements. The small incongruous pack fell to the floor. Mzu’s SII suit began flowing off her skin, its oil-like substance accumulating in the form of a globe hanging from the base of her collar. Cherri eyed their passenger curiously as her own suit reverted to neutral storage mode. The short black woman was shivering slightly, sweat coating her skin. Both hands were bent inward as though crippled with arthritis; twisted, swollen fingers unmoving.

  “Our captain is incapacitated,” Cherri said. “And I’m none too certain about Udat either.”

  Alkad grimaced, shaking her head. Oh, what an irony. Depending on the Udat ’s goodwill, it of all starships. “Ships will be sent after us,” she said. “If we remain in this location I will be captured, and you will probably be exterminated.”

  “Look, just what the hell did you do to get the Kingdom so pissed at you?”

  “Better you don’t know.”

  “Better I do, then I’ll know what we’re likely to be facing.”

  “Trouble enough.”

  “Try to be a little more specific.”

  “Very well: every ESA asset they can activate throughout the Confederation will be used to find me, if that makes you feel any happier. You really don’t want to be around me for any length of time. If you are, you will die. Clear enough?”

  Cherri didn’t know how to answer. True, they’d known Mzu was some kind of dissident on the run, but not that she would attract this kind of attention. And why would Tranquillity, presumably in conjunction with the Lord of Ruin, help the Kulu Kingdom try to restrain her? Mzu was adding up to real bad news.

  Alkad datavised the flight computer, requesting a direct link to the blackhawk itself. “Udat ?”

  “Yes, Dr Mzu.”

  “You must leave here.”

  “My captain is hurt. His mind has darkened and withered. I am in pain when I try to think.”

  “I’m sorry about Meyer, but we cannot stay here. The blackhawks at Tranquillity know where you swallowed to. The Lord of Ruin will send them after me. They’ll take us all back.”

  “I do not wish to return. Tranquillity frightens me. I thought it was my friend.”

  “One swallow manoeuvre, that’s all. A small one. Just a light-year will suffice, the direction is not important. No blackhawk will be able to follow us then. After that we can see what’s to be done next.”

  “Very well. A light-year.”

  Cherri had already unfastened her spacesuit collar when she felt the familiar minute perturbation in apparent gravity which meant Udat ’s distortion field was altering to open a wormhole interstice. “Very clever,” she said sardonically to Mzu. “I hope to hell you know what you’re doing. Bitek starships don’t usually make swallows without their captain providing some supervision.”

  “That’s a conceit you really ought to abandon,” Alkad said tiredly. “Voidhawks and blackhawks are considerably more intelligent than humans.”

  “But their personalities are completely different.”

  “It’s done now. And it would appear we are still alive. Were there any more complaints?”

  Cherri ignored her and started to pull on a one-piece shipsuit.

  “Could you sling my backpack over my shoulder, please?” Alkad asked. “I don’t have the use of my hands at this moment. Our exit from Tranquillity was more precipitous than I imagined. And I’ll need some medical packages.”

  “Fine. Haltam can apply the packages for you; he’ll be on the bridge tending to Meyer. I’ll take the backpack for you.”

  “No. Put it over my shoulder. I will carry it.”

  Cherri sighed through clenched teeth. She urgently wanted to see for herself how bad Meyer was. She was worried about the way Udat would react if the captain was unconscious for too long. She was coming down off the adrenaline high of the escape, which was like a hit of pure depression. And this small woman was about as safe as her own weight in naked plutonium.

  “What have you got in it?”

  “Do not concern yourself about that.”

  Cherri grabbed the backpack by its straps and held it up in front of Mzu’s impassive face. There couldn’t have been much in it, judging by the weight. “Now look—!”

  “A great deal of money. And an even larger amount of information; none of which you would have the faintest comprehension of. Now, you are already harbouring me on board which in itself is enough to get you killed if I’m discovered. And if the agency knew you had physically held up the backpack containing the items it does, they would throw you straight into personality debrief just to find out how much those items weigh. Do you really want to compound matters by taking a look inside?”

  What Cherri wanted to do was swing the backpack at Mzu’s head. Meyer had made the worst error of judgement in his life agreeing to this absurd rescue mission. All she could do now was pray it turned out not to be a terminal mistake.

  “As you wish,” Cherri said with fragile calm.

  • • •

  San Angeles spaceport was situated on the southern rim of the metropolis. A square ten kilometres to a side, a miniature city chiselled from machinery. Vast barren swathes of carbon concrete had been poured over the levelled earth and then divided up into roads, taxi aprons, and landing pads. Hundreds of line company hangars and cargo terminals hosted a business which accounted for a fifth of the entire planet’s ground-to-orbit traffic movements.

  Among the numbingly constant lines of standardized composite-walled hangars and off
ice block cubes, only the main passenger terminal had been permitted a flight of fancy architecture. It resembled the kind of starship which might have been built if the practicalities of the ZTT drive hadn’t forced a uniform spherical hull on the astroengineering companies. A soft-contoured meld between an industrial microgee refinery station and a hypersonic biplane, it dominated the skyline with its imperious technogothic silhouette. On the long autoway ride out from the city it gave approaching drivers the impression it was ready to pounce jealously on the tiny delta-planform spaceplanes which scuttled underneath its sweeping wings to embark passengers.

  Jezzibella didn’t bother looking at it. She sat in the car with her eyes closed for the whole of the early morning journey, not asleep, but brain definitely in neutral. Those kids from the concert—whatever their names were—had proved worthless last night, their awe of her interfering with their emotions. Now she just wanted out. Out of this world. Out of this galaxy. Out of this universe. Forever living on the hope that the waiting starship would take her to a place where something new was happening. That the next stop would be different.

  Leroy and Libby shared the car with her, silent and motionless. They knew the mood. Always the same when she was leaving a planet, and a fraction more intense every time.

  Leroy was pretty sure the unspoken yearning was one reason she appealed to the kids; they identified with that integral sense of bewildered desperation and loss. Of course, it would have to be watched. Right now it was just an artist’s essential suffering, a perverted muse. But eventually it could develop into full depression if he wasn’t careful.

  Another item to take care of. More stress. Not that he’d have it any other way.

  The eleven cars which made up the Jezzibella tour convoy slid into the VIP parking slots below one of the terminal’s flamboyant wings. Leroy had chosen such an early hour for the flight because it was the terminal’s slackest time. They ought to be able to clear the official procedures without any problems.

  Maybe that was the reason why none of the bodyguards sensed anything wrong. Always scanning for trouble with augmented senses, the absence of people was a relief rather than a concern.