by Patty Jansen
Which was true, and, to be honest, what would Melati have done? Certainly not have run off to tell everyone at work, that’s for sure.
She sighed.
Jao had disappeared into a room ahead, where he must have found someone because there was a sound of voices. Melati went inside and found both Troy and Elko.
On a bed in the middle of that room sat a construct man with his arms looped around his folded legs. He wore red istel overalls with greasy stains. His hair had been shaved, and his scalp still bore scabs from what had obviously been a crude barber job.
His eyes widened briefly when he saw her, after which his shoulders slumped—he must have realised that she wasn’t Rina.
Melati went to the bed, trying to recall Jas’ face as she had seen it in the mirror, when she was Jas at Ganymede. His cheek was bruised, his skin pale and sallow, and without hair, he looked different.
“So they were with you,” he said to Ari. He frowned at Melati. “I thought the lass in the office was . . .”
Lass? What sort of word was that?
“This is Melati, my other cousin,” Ari said.
“Oh. Nice to meet you, Melati.” The man’s grey eyes met hers. Yes, she recognised him now.
There was something really odd about hearing this kind of language—and she only ever heard the cultured speech of the Ganymede elite in movies—coming from the mouth of someone who looked like a tier 1 construct after a heavy night out.
“You are Paul Ormerod?”
He nodded, glancing sideways at Troy, whose mouth twitched.
She said, “I’ve come to help you.”
“You can’t. It’s too late for that. You have to listen to me. Take that gun of yours and kill me.”
Troy snapped. “And leave the construct mind you swapped without a body? Not likely. Also, you’ll be wanted for breaking mindbase exchange laws.”
“Kill me, please. You don’t know what you’re dealing with. This issue is bigger than all of us.”
“Then enlighten us. All I can see now is some miscreant who has taken off with our brother’s body and I’m going to make sure that he gets it back.”
Melati sensed Jao coming up behind her. She looked over her shoulder, and indeed there he was, standing in a relaxed pose with his hands on the pockets of his uniform, where she was sure he held some sort of recording device. This conversation would be beamed straight to Cocaro.
Paul Ormerod in Jas Grimshaw’s body squinted up at Jao. “You’re ISF aren’t you?” He turned to Ari, who gave him an apologetic look.
“I couldn’t hide you any longer,” Ari said.
“Then kill me. Now.”
“I might,” Jao said, and he pushed past Melati to the bed, where Paul shrank back. “But first we’re going to take you to the base.”
“I’m not going.” Paul crossed his arms over his chest. Fine, he was going to play that game. “Do you even know what this is about?”
“We’ll knock you out and carry you.” Jao reached for his gun, but Melati shook her head. “I know. You’re from the Luminati,” she said.
Paul looked up, surprised, but said nothing, so she continued.
“You developed some sort of weapon, and that’s why everyone wants you.”
He shook his head. “It’s not only that. The weapon is the lesser problem. The Luminati are an alien presence. They provide us with knowledge. Their currency and lifeblood is information. They store it in networks that span the universe.”
Troy and Elko frowned at each other.
Melati thought of the strange images she’d seen while looking at Jas’ memories.
“This network tells us how to make those weapons that collapse part of space with everything in it. It tells us how to solve many problems that we have, but that other civilisations have overcome, like how to create mindbases independent of their bodies. Mindbases who are not restricted by the body in which they live. People who can access all knowledge of ages, who do not need to be taught, who know everything humanity has ever learned and more. These people would use the weapons we can create to their own aim. Their mindbases are immortal. They can move to a different body at will.”
“That doesn’t work. When transferred into another body, a mindbase forgets the previous personality. Also, the human brain only has ‘room’ for so much knowledge. You can make the mindbase a bit larger, but too much and most of it just doesn’t take.”
“I agree, it wouldn’t work normally, but this network is a continuous stream of knowledge. If we gave our constructs access to it, we would produce our own exterminators.”
This statement had extra poignancy, because he said it while in a construct body, surrounded by mostly constructs. Jao at least showed that he understood. Most constructs were acutely aware of their limitations. They weren’t immortal, and most of them, even when they continued living in the same body, died earlier than natural-born people did. Transferring to another body killed the personality, so this was akin to a form of death. People had long been looking for ways that mindbases could transcend the physical limitations of a body, but was this something people really wanted?
“You’d have alien humans, who could do terrible things, and would do terrible things because they lack the frame of reference to the real world and the people living in it,” he said. “And there is more. Do you know how a person becomes one of the Luminati?”
“Be really smart, I guess, and academic credentials,” Jao said.
Paul shook his head. “Nothing of the kind. The same network that holds the knowledge is responsible for perpetuating its own and recruiting from whatever creatures it encounters. This network found Earth some time in the nineteenth century and left seeds; they look like see-through marbles, about as big as a billiard ball.” He glanced around at the puzzled faces, then held out his thumb and forefinger about a palm-width apart. “This big. What? You’ve really never seen a billiard ball?”
Troy shook his head.
Melati had seen them in the ISF recreational rooms. Jao would have seen one. Space billiards was a popular game aboard warships during long trips.
“Anyway, any person who found a seed and touched it with their bare skin became instantly infected and became Luminati. All of Earth’s great scientists—I don’t need to tell you their names—were infected. Initially, the network was thought of as good, or at least harmless, but that changed when it began to show us . . .” His eyes went distant. “. . . I can see armoured and tentacled creatures who fly through an acid-laced atmosphere. They have huge warships that are made up out of hundreds of thousands of individuals clamping onto each other. They don’t breathe. They are not destroyed in fire. They are not friendly.”
Melati shivered, recalling the scenes she had seen as Jas.
“Through the network, these creatures would know about us, too. They could find us. We even deliver to them the way by which they could get to us.”
Melati said, her mouth feeling stiff, “But doesn’t that mean that we need more information about them and the knowledge to stop them?”
“No. Because the more we know, the more we feed into the network and the more they will learn. We need to destroy the network. Not many Luminati are left, because fewer and fewer seeds are found in our colonised space. You need to destroy all of them, whether the nodes are untouched or embodied in people. Kill and burn all of us.”
What good was that going to be when Allion was already using the knowledge for their autonomous mindbases and to communicate using see-through foil?
Melati felt dizzy with the implications. She hoped Cocaro was listening. She hoped Cocaro would give the right orders, whatever they were. Evacuate, abandon the base, use a clean ship that has not logged into the base’s system. If there was such a ship in dock.
Paul continued. “I was never born very smart. Oh, yes, smart enough to go to university, but nothing like this. I became infected with this condition when I found a seed on Titan.”
“The population hist
ory says that you disappeared there,” Melati said.
“That is the official line. The remaining Luminati protect their alien secret since it has become their life blood.” He shuddered. “My life blood. If they catch me, they’ll execute me for treason. Not only that, they’ll bribe whomever they’ll need in order to keep this information a secret. You see, you can sell knowledge and the products of it. The old Ganymede families need the money. The Tokyo consortium needs it even worse. Selling weapons makes people a lot of money. You sell one side of a conflict an improved weapon, after which the other side wants it, too. And when the enemy has the same weapons you have, you’ll have to upgrade. It’s never-ending. But the weapon is a smokescreen.”
“So this isn’t about Allion?”
“Yes and no. Yes, Allion is just another group trying to get their hands on this information, on me.”
Melati turned to Jao. “I need him in the CAU.”
Jao nodded. “Let Dixon and Cocaro decide what to do about the mindbase.”
Melati turned back to Paul and said, “We’ll take you to the base to return the body to its rightful owner.”
Paul slid off the bed, rolled to his feet and ran out the door, while Jao and Troy were still trying to set their guns to the stun setting.
Chapter 27
* * *
JAO AND TROY RAN out after Paul. There was a shout of a male voice in the corridor and the flashing discharge of a laser. Two thumps hit the metal floor. Then silence.
“What the . . .” Drawing his gun, Elko went to the door as well, where a small figure came running the other way and crashed into him. The force of the collision sent Elko reeling, but he managed to grab the teenager by the arm. The boy wore hypertech black, but not the facemask. He was a barang-barang boy, looking at Melati with eyes so wide that the whites showed on all sides. She thought the teenager was Budiman, and tried to remember what Harto’s youngest son looked like. She hadn’t seen his face since he joined the hypertechs two years ago.
“Please, Melati, help me.”
“Go and sit over there, out of our way,” Elko said.
Budiman went to the corner where Ari sat, and crouched on the floor behind the bed. He whimpered and pushed up the sleeve of his shirt. There was a large red burn mark on his forearm, with blisters already starting to form. Melati winced. That had to hurt.
She asked, “Were you hit anywhere else?”
He shook his head.
Melati was going to say something, but an explosion went off in the hall, and some people shouted. God, what was going on? She thought they had shot everyone. Also, was that Jao calling to her?
Melati sprang to her feet. “Hide in here. Stay safe with Ari. Hide behind the bed as much as you can. That’s the best I can do right now.”
At that moment Jao and Elko returned to the room at a run, each dragging an unconscious form across the floor. Jao’s charge was Paul Ormerod, and Elko’s a hypertech.
“Get all the gear off,” Jao said, while dumping his load on the floor. Paul’s head lolled to the side. A nasty bruise was spreading on his cheek.
Melati gave him a wide-eyed look. “Gear off?”
Jao gestured at Elko’s charge. “The hypertech gear. We’re going to put it on. That’s how we’re going to get out of here. No one will know who we are until they’re close enough for us to shoot them. This place is a warren and I don’t know what they did to make only eight show up on the heat scan, but there’s a lot more in here.”
“What about the backup you called?”
“They’ve been cancelled. Cocaro has issued a red alert. Return to base immediately.”
Melati nodded. She had feared that would happen once Dr Chee had spoken to her.
“We’ve got to get our backsides out of here as quickly as we can, before this turns really ugly.”
Jao rolled the hypertech on his back, while Elko dragged a second hypertech out of the corridor inside. “Come on, let’s get this gear off.”
He started undoing the hypertech’s facemask. The face underneath was blistered and red with heat damage to the point of no longer being recognisable. Was this a barang-barang man? He was small enough.
Melati felt sick.
Jao was very detached about it all. “We need another four suits. There’s a couple of these guys out there.”
Elko went to the door.
But the moment he stepped out, a bolt of light flashed.
“Fuck!” Elko jumped back into the room, pressed himself against the wall, then realised that the sleeve of his uniform was on fire, and banged his arm against the wall to put it out. A stench of burnt plastic filled the room.
Jao had taken up position next to the door, holding his gun on both hands. He gestured to Melati with his eyes for her to come to stand behind him.
Melati did, but her legs were trembling.
“I thought you killed all of them?” Elko said. The statement bristled with barbs.
Jao didn’t reply, and it was silent for a long time. Melati clutched the gun with both hands. The grip was getting sweaty.
Ari and Budiman sat huddled in the far corner of the room.
Melati wondered where Desi was. Picking these attackers off from the other side of the corridor?
There was a small sound from the corridor. Jao tensed. Melati held her breath. All she could see was Jao’s back. The sound had been too brief to figure out what it was. A footstep? A tick of expanding metal? Some other thing?
Jao gestured for Ari to drag Paul into the corner where he and Budiman sat.
Ari rose—
A blinding flash came in through the doorway. Where the light hit the doorframe,it dripped down to the floor where it formed a puddle of luminous liquid. Whatever was this weapon? Melati thought she could see a pair of legs beyond the light.
Jao yelled and fired. Troy fired, too. Both charges hit the person. He fell, dropping a weapon onto the floor before his body thudded down. Jao grabbed the gun with a gloved hand and slid it over the floor to Melati.
Melati turned over the gun in her hands, holding it gingerly by the grip because it was still hot. She’d never seen the type before: bulky, and heavier than the cheap New Hyderabad one.
The attacker was a hypertech. Not a barang-barang; he was tall and thickset like the other one Melati had shot. There was something eerily familiar about him.
“I think this gear will fit me.” Jao bent over the man to remove his mask—
—Melati recognised the coarse weave of his jacket. God, this was the same man—
—and one of his legs moved—
She shouted, “Watch out!”
—the victim jerked up and grabbed Jao by the throat.
Melati did not think. She aimed and fired at the man’s head while he still had his arms outstretched, away from Jao. The discharge vibrated through her hands and up her arms. White light blinded her. It spread as a pool of white gas over the floor, a furious whirling luminous cloud.
Her ears rang. The lights flickered. This had to be some sort of plasma weapon. Was it even safe to use it inside the station? It would upset all electronics.
When the smoke cleared, Jao was sitting on his knees, coughing and holding himself up with one hand. His attacker’s body . . . it was fair to say that it had disintegrated. Blackened bits of . . . something lay scattered on the burnt and warped floor.
The mask had burnt away. His hair was gone, his face a mess of blood and tissue. His arm, almost severed, hung onto the body with only an exposed a cord of metal and wiring.
Wiring? Plastic? Inside his body?
“What the hell is this?” Troy said behind her.
For a moment they all stood there staring, stunned.
Half-human, half-machine. Melati said, “He’s an Allion aggregate. A spy.”
A feeling of cold came over her. She’d heard so many stories about the Allion aggregates and what they’d done on Mars. The men in Uncle’s rumak, the “merchants” in the docks, the fake enforce
rs. Were they all robots?
Jao rolled to his knees, took his comm and called, in an urgent voice, “Desi, do you copy?” He coughed.
The comm remained silent.
Melati couldn’t stop staring at the mess of flesh and metal. The creature—because you couldn’t call this a man—had a metal and plastic skeleton covered with a layer of flesh that the blast had cooked and peeled away. The manufactured parts underneath blended into the biological material through tiny filaments of thread, see-through material that reminded Melati of the see-through film on the back of a gecko.
God, the implications.
The hypertechs vying for power through Harto and his sons. The hypertechs seeding technology that—just what did that see-through film do? Was it alien knowledge? Did it transfer any of the alien knowledge that Paul talked about?
Jao recovered enough to crawl to his feet. There was a dark smear on his face and angry red marks on his neck.
He looked at Melati. “Thanks, soldier. You saved my sorry arse there. When we get back, I’m going to sign you up as an honorary Pfitzinger.”
Melati wanted to say that it was all right, but it wasn’t. She’d shot this man, and he’d come back to life, like a many-headed monster that would have killed Jao. If these creatures didn’t show up on IR scans, there could be any number of them in this apartment. “Where is Desi?”
He shrugged. His expression said If she was able to come, she would have been back long ago. “First priority is to get Ormerod to the base. We’ll probably run into her on the way.” His face had gone pale. “Let’s get changed.”
“Are you sure you’re fine?”
“I have no choice but to be fine.”
True.
There were enough hypertech clothes and masks for everyone in the group to get one. Ari and Budiman helped undress the dead hypertechs, after Jao had made sure they were both human and dead, which in two cases involved him firing at the body at close range just to make sure. God, Jao was starting to scare her.
Budiman said nothing, his face was white as the walls and he followed Ari’s instructions wordlessly.
