Neutronium Alchemist - Consolidation nd-3

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Neat,” Lawrence said in admiration.

  “It was quiet,” Quinn said with modest pride. He started up the spaceplane’s airstairs.

  Lawrence examined the armour suit closely. Tiny beads of pale hoarfrost were already forming over the dark leathery fabric. He whistled appreciatively and bounded up the airstairs after Quinn.

  William Elphinstone rose up out of the diabolical cage of darkness at the center of his own brain into a riot of heat, light, sound, and almost intolerable sensation. His gasp of anguish at the traumatic rebirth was deafening to his sensitive ears. Air seemed to rasp over his skin, every molecule a saw tooth.

  So long! So long without a single sense. Held captive inside himself.

  His possessor had gone now. A departure which had freed his body. William whimpered in relief and fear.

  There were fragments of memory left behind from the time he’d been reduced to a puppet. Of a seething hatred. Of a demonic fire let loose. Of satisfaction at confounding the enemy. Of Louise Kavanagh.

  Louise?

  William understood so very little. He was propped up against a chain-link fence, his legs folded awkwardly below him. In front of him were hundreds of planes lined up across a broad aerodrome. It wasn’t a place he’d ever seen before.

  The sound of sirens rose and fell noisily. When he looked around he saw a hangar which had been gutted by fire. Flames and smoke were still rising out of the blackened ruins. Silver-suited firemen were surrounding the building, spraying it with foam from their hoses. An awful lot of militia troops were milling around the area.

  “Here,” William cried to his comrades. “I’m over here.” But his voice was a feeble croak.

  A Confederation Navy spaceplane flew low over the field, wobbling slightly as if it wasn’t completely under control. He blinked at it in confusion. There was another memory associated with the craft. Strong yet elusive: a dead boy hanging upside down from a tree.

  “And what do you think you’re doing here?” The voice came from one of the two patrolling soldiers who were standing three yards away. One of them was pointing his rifle at William. The second was holding back a pair of growling Alsatians.

  “I . . . I was captured,” William Elphinstone said. “Captured by the rebels. But they’re not rebels. Please, you must listen. They’re devils.”

  Both soldiers exchanged a glance. The one with the rifle slung it over his shoulder and raised a compact communications block.

  “You must listen,” William said desperately. “I was taken over. Possessed. I’m a serving officer from the Stoke County militia. I order you to listen.”

  “Really, sir? Lost your uniform, did you?”

  William looked at what he was wearing. It was his old uniform, but you had to look close to know. The shirt’s original khaki colour had been superseded by a blue and red check pattern. From the thighs down his regulation trousers were now tough blue denim jeans. Then he caught sight of his hands. The backs of both were covered in black hair—and everyone always teased him about having delicate woman’s hands.

  He let out a little moan of dismay. “I’m telling you the truth. As God is my witness.” Their blank, impersonal faces told him how useless it all was.

  William Elphinstone remained slumped against the fence until the MPs came and took him off to Bennett Field’s tiny police station. The detectives who arrived from Norwich’s Special Branch division to interrogate him didn’t believe his story either. Not until it was far too late.

  • • •

  The Nyiru asteroid orbited ninety thousand kilometres above Narok, one of the earliest Kenya-ethnic colony worlds. After it was knocked into position two centuries ago the construction company had sliced out a five-hundred-metre-diameter ledge for visiting bitek starships. Eager for the commerce they would bring, the asteroid council equipped the ledge with a comprehensive infrastructure; even a small chemical plant to provide the nutrient fluid the starships digested.

  Udat complained it didn’t taste right. Meyer wasn’t up to arguing. With Haltam’s best ministrations, it had taken him seven hours to recover consciousness after their escape from Tranquillity. Waking to find himself in interstellar space, with a worried, hurting blackhawk and an equally unsettled crew to placate did not help his frail mental state. They had flown directly to Narok, needing eleven swallows to cover the eighty light-years, where normally they would only use five.

  In all that time he had seen Dr Alkad Mzu precisely twice. She kept to herself in her cabin for most of the trip. Despite analgesic blocks and the medical nanonic packages wrapped around her legs and arms, her injuries were causing some discomfort. Most curious of all she refused to let Haltam program the leg packages to repair an old knee injury. Neither of them had been in the mood to give ground. A few tersely formal words were exchanged; she apologised for his injuries and the vigour of the opposition, he filled her in on the flight parameters. And that was all.

  After they arrived at Nyiru she paid the agreed sum without any quibble, added a five per cent bonus, and departed. Cherri Barnes did ask where she was headed, but the slight woman replied with one of her dead-eye smiles and said it was best nobody knew.

  She vanished from their lives as much a mystery as when she entered it so dramatically.

  Meyer spent thirty-six hours in the asteroid’s hospital undergoing cranial deep-invasion procedures to repair the damage around his neurone symbionts. Another two days of recuperation and extensive checks saw him cleared to leave.

  Cherri Barnes kissed him when he walked back onto the Udat ’s bridge. “Nice to see you.”

  He winked. “Thanks. I was worried there for a while.”

  “You were worried?”

  I was frightened, Udat said.

  I know. But it’s all over now. And by the way, I think you behaved commendably while I was out of it. I’m proud of you.

  Thank you. I do not want to have to do that again, though.

  You won’t have to. I think we’re finally through with trying to prove ourselves.

  Yes!

  He glanced inquiringly around at his three crew. “Anybody got any idea what happened to our weirdo passenger?”

  “ ’Fraid not,” Aziz said. “I asked around the port, and all I could find out was that she’s hired herself a charter agent. After that—not a byte.”

  Meyer eased himself down into his command couch. A small headache was still pulsing away behind his eyes. He was beginning to wonder if it was going to be permanent. The doctor had said most probably not. “No bad thing. I think Mzu was right when she said we’d be better off not knowing about her.”

  “Fine in theory,” Cherri said irritably. “Unfortunately all those agency people saw it was us who lifted her from Tranquillity. If she’s right about how dangerous she is, then we’re in some sticky shit right now. They’re going to want to ask us questions.”

  “I know,” Meyer said. “God, targeted by the ESA at my age.”

  “We could just go straight to them,” Haltam said. “Because, let’s be real here, they’re going to catch us if they want to. If we go to them, it ought to show we aren’t at the heart of whatever it is she’s involved in.”

  Cherri snorted in disgust. “Yeah, but running to the King’s secret police . . . It ain’t right. I’ve heard the stories, we all have.”

  “Too right,” Haltam said. “They make bad enemies.”

  “What do you think, Meyer?” Aziz asked.

  It wasn’t something he wanted to think about. His nutrient levels had been balanced perfectly by the hospital while he was in recuperation therapy, but he still felt shockingly tired. Oh, for someone else to lift the burden from him, which of course was the answer, or at least a passable fudge.

  Good idea, Udat commented. She was nice.

  “There is somebody who might be able to help us,” Meyer told them. “If she’s still alive. I haven’t seen her for nearly twenty years, and she was quite old then.”

  Cherri gave him a s
uspicious look. “Her?”

  Meyer grinned. “Yeah. Her. A lady called Athene, she’s an Edenist.”

  “They’re worse than the bloody ESA,” Haltam protested.

  “Stop being so prejudiced. They have one quality above all else, they’re honest. Which is a damn sight more than you can say for the ESA. Besides, Edenism is one culture the ESA can never subvert.”

  “Are you sure she’ll help?” Cherri asked.

  “No promises. All I can tell you is if she can, she will.” He looked at each of them in turn. “Does anyone have an alternative?”

  They didn’t.

  “Okay, Cherri, file a departure notice with the port, please. We’ve been here quite long enough.”

  “Aye, sir.

  And, you, let’s have a swallow sequence for the Sol system.

  Of course, Udat said, then added rather wistfully: I wonder if the Oenone will be at Saturn when we arrive?

  Who knows? But it would be nice to see how it developed.

  Yes. As you say, it has been a long time.

  The first swallow manoeuvre took them twelve light-years from Narok’s star. The second added another fifteen light-years. Confident the blackhawk had recovered from its ordeal, Meyer told it to go ahead with the third swallow.

  Empty space twisted apart under the immense distortion which the patterning cells exerted. Udat moved cleanly into the interstice it had opened, shifting the energy which chased through its cells in smaller, more subtle patterns to sustain the continuity of the pseudofabric that closed around the hull. Distance without physical length flowed past the polyp.

  Meyer! Something is wrong!

  The alarmed mental shout struck like a physical blow. What do you mean?

  The terminus is retreating, I cannot match the distortion pattern to its coordinate.

  Linked with the blackhawk’s mentality he could actually feel the pseudofabric changing, twisting and flexing around the hull as if it were a tunnel of agitated smoke. Udat was unable to impose the stability necessary to maintain the wormhole’s uniformity.

  What’s happening?he asked, equally panicked.

  I don’t understand. There is another force acting on the wormhole. It is interfering with my own distortion field.

  Override it. Come on, get us out of here.he felt a burst of power surge through the blackhawk’s cells, amplifying the distortion field. It simply made the interference worse. Udat could actually sense waves forming in the wormhole’s pseudofabric. The blackhawk juddered as two of them rolled against its hull.

  It doesn’t work. I cannot support this energy output.

  Keep calm,meyer implored. It might just be a temporary episode.in his own mind he could feel the energy drain reach exorbitant levels. There was barely ninety seconds reserve left at this expenditure rate.

  Udat reduced the strength of the distortion field, desperate to conserve its energy. A huge ripple ran down the wormhole, slapping across the hull. Loose items jumped and spun over the bridge. Meyer instinctively grabbed the couch arms even as the restraint webbing folded over him.

  The flight computer datavised that a recorded message was coming on line. Meyer and the crew could only stare at the offending console in amazement as Dr Mzu’s image invaded their neural nanonics. There was no background, she simply stood in the middle of a grey universe.

  “Hello, Captain Meyer,” she said. “If everything has gone according to plan you should be accessing this recording a few seconds before you die. This is just a slightly melodramatic gesture on my part to explain the how and why of your situation. The how is simple enough, you are now experiencing distortion feedback resonance. It’s a spin-off discovery from my work thirty years ago. I left a little gadget in the life-support section which has set up an oscillation within the Udat ’s distortion field. Once established, it is quite impossible to damp down; the wormhole itself acts as an amplifier. The resonance will not end while the distortion field exists, and without the field the wormhole will collapse back into its quantum state. A neat logic box you cannot escape from. You can now only survive as long as Udat ’s patterning cells have energy, and that is depleting at quite a rate, I imagine.

  “As to the why; I specifically chose you to extract me from Tranquillity because I always knew Udat was capable of pulling off such a difficult feat. I know because I’ve witnessed this blackhawk in action once before. Thirty years ago, to be precise. Do you remember, Captain Meyer? Thirty years ago, almost to the month, you were part of an Omuta mercenary squadron assigned to intercept three Garissan navy ships, the Chengho , the Gombari , and the Beezling . I was on the Beezling , Captain, and I know it was you in the Omuta squadron because after it was over I accessed the sensor recordings we made of the attack. The Udat is a most distinctive ship, both in shape, colouring, and agility. You are good, and because of that you won the battle. And don’t we all know exactly what happened to my home planet after that.”

  The datavise ended.

  Cherri Barnes looked over to Meyer, strangely placid. “Is she right? Was it you?”

  All he could do was give her a broken smile. “Yes.” I’m sorry, my friend.

  I love you.

  Three seconds later, the energy stored in the Udat ’s patterning cells was exhausted. The wormhole, which was held open purely by the artificial input of the distortion field, closed up. A straight two-dimensional fissure, fifteen light-years in length, appeared in interstellar space. For an instant it spat out a quantity of hard radiation equal to the mass of the blackhawk. Then, with the universe returned to equilibrium, it vanished.

  Chapter 09

  Nicolai Penovich tried not to show how outright shit-scared he was when the stern-faced gangsters ushered him into the Nixon suite. Not that the macho-routine facade would do a hell of a lot of good, they’d already let slip that the possessed could pretty much tell what was going on in your mind. But not read it direct, not pull out exact memories. And that was his ace. One memory, and a prayer.

  As prayers went it was a goddamn feeble one to be gambling not just his life but also his life after death.

  He was shown into a giant living room with a fluffy white shag carpet and pale pink furniture which resembled fragile glass balloons. There were several doors leading off to the rest of the suite, plain gold slabs three metres high. The far wall was a window looking down on New California. The view as the terracompatible planet slowly drifted past was magnificent.

  One of the gangsters used his Thompson machine gun to prod Nicolai into the middle of the room. “Stand there. Wait,” he grunted.

  About a minute later one of the tall doors opened silently. A young girl walked out. Despite his predicament, Nicolai couldn’t help staring. She was ravishing, a mid-teens face with every feature highlighted by the purest avian bones. All she wore was a long gossamer robe revealing an equally sublime physique.

  When he thought about it, she was obscurely familiar. He couldn’t imagine meeting her and not remembering, though.

  She walked straight past him to a pile of travelling cases on the other side of the living room. “Libby, where’s my red leather playsuit? The one with the silver chain collar. Libby!” Her foot stomped on the carpet.

  “Coming, poppet.” A harried woman shuffled into the lounge. “It’s in the brown case, the one with your after-party informal collection.”

  “Which one’s that?” the girl complained.

  “This one, poppet. Honestly, you’re worse now than when we were touring.” She bent over to open the case.

  Nicolai gave the nymphet a more intense scrutiny. It couldn’t be . . .

  Al Capone hurried in, followed by a number of cronies. And there was no doubt at all of his identity. A handsome man in his early twenties, with jet-black hair, slightly chubby cheeks which emphasised his near-permanent soft smile. His clothes were as antique (and as ridiculous to Nicolai’s eyes) as the other gangsters’, but he wore them with such panache it really didn’t matter.

  He took
one glance at Jezzibella and grimaced. “Jez, I told you before, will you stop goddamn prancing around in front of the guys like this. You ain’t wearing diddly.”

  She looked back over her shoulder, pouted, and twirled a lock of hair around one finger. “Oh, come on, Al baby, it gives you a kick. The boys can all see what it is you’ve got, and they can never have. Living proof you’re top doggy.”

  “Jez-us.” He raised his eyes heavenwards.

  Jezzibella sauntered over to him and pecked him lightly on the cheek. “Don’t be long, precious. I’ve got parts of me that need a serious seeing to.” She beckoned Libby to follow, and made for the door. The woman walked after her, a garment made up from about five slender red leather straps draped over her arm.

  Jezzibella treated Nicolai to a cutely bashful smile from the middle of a cloud of gold-blond curls. Then she was gone.

  Al Capone was staring at him. “You got something on your mind, fella?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “I’ve got some information for you, Mr Capone. Something that could be very useful to your Organization.”

  Al nodded curtly. “Okay, you got through the door, that proves you got balls enough. Believe me not many get this far. So now you’re here, make your pitch.”

  “I want to join your Organization. I hear you make room for non-possessed people with special talents.”

  Al pointed a thumb at Avram Harwood III who was standing among the little cluster of lieutenants. “Sure do. If savvy Avvy here says what you got is good news, then you’re in.”

  “Is antimatter good news?” Nicolai asked. He caught the shudder of horror on the broken mayor’s face.

  Al rubbed a finger thoughtfully over his chin. “Could be. You got some?”

  “I know where you can get it. And I can assist your starship fleet when it comes to handling the stuff. It’s a tricky substance, but I’ve had the training.”

  “How come? You’re a fed, or close to it; a G-man for sure. I thought it was illegal.”

  “It is. But Idria is a small asteroid sharing a star system with some powerful institutions. A lot of groundside politicos talk about strengthening our general assembly into a systemwide administration or union. Some of Idria’s council and SD officers don’t appreciate that kind of talk. It took us a long time to gain our independence from the founding company, and it wasn’t easy. So we made preparations. Just in case. Several of our companies make components that can be used to build antimatter confinement systems and drives. Strategic Defence Command also established a link with a production station.”