The Recollection

by Gareth L. Powell

  > Are you okay? the ship asked.

  She put a hand to her brow. “I think so.”

  On the couch beside hers, Victor lay with his eyes still closed. He looked older with his face slack and grimy, and lacking the 1950s sunglasses he’d worn in the simulation: old enough to be her father, maybe even her grandfather. For a dizzying moment, she realised how defenceless he was. She could reach over and use her metal hand to crush his larynx before he regained consciousness. Even if he did wake, he wouldn’t have the strength to break her grip.

  The Kilimanjaro flashed into her mind. The Abdulov ship that never arrived, whose sabotage had set in motion this whole sorry chain of events. Had he really been involved in its destruction? Lying there on the co-pilot’s couch, he looked so spent and helpless that, for the first time, she entertained the thought that the explosion on board the missing ship might have been an accident after all, and her subsequent encounters with Victor an unfortunate twist of fate. Granted, his exit from Strauli Quay, jumping from within a sealed bay, had been a risky, reckless and illegal maneuver—but no-one had been hurt. Similarly, the bomb blast on the Ticonderoga—the one that killed Enid—had been the work of Seth Murphy, Victor’s First Mate, and he had received a bullet in the head for his efforts.

  That killing was the only one she could definitely attribute to Victor, the man now lying here beside her, and it had seemingly been enacted in punishment for the bomb. She had nothing but supposition to link Victor to either that explosion or the one on the Kilimanjaro; and that wasn’t enough for her to pass a death sentence on a sleeping man.

  She looked into the face of the man she’d once loved hard enough to abandon her family for, the father of her unborn child, and realised she’d lost the rage that had sustained her from Tiers Cross. It had gone. With the appearance of The Recollection, things had changed. The universe had become a darker and more terrifying place, and her bruised pride had ceased to seem all that important. Not even her family honour mattered anymore, because down on the surface of Djatt, people were dying in their millions. There was no-one left to trade with, only an unimaginable horror to be avoided; a contamination to be stopped. She knew that theoretically she could kill Victor here and now—against the holocaust outside, what would one more death matter?—and yet deep inside, she also knew she lacked the will to go through with it. Instead, she gave his shoulder a gentle shake. After a moment, he coughed. She helped him sit up, and he looked around the bridge, blinking and rubbing his eyes, obviously disorientated.

  “What happened?”

  “Something went wrong with the simulation,” she said, feeling awkward. “The Recollection took control. I think it tried to hack our brains.”

  Victor’s eyes widened. Kat put what she hoped was a reassuring hand on his forearm.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, “we’re okay. The ship pulled the plug.”

  At that moment, as if on cue, the Ameline chipped in.

  > Memory core isolated and flushed. Whatever it was trying to do, I stopped it.

  Kat said, “Can you eject the core?”

  > Already done and dusted. And just to make certain, I fired it through our main engine exhaust. Crisped it up nicely.

  “And what of the infected ships?”

  The Ameline connected to her implant, superimposing over her vision a tactical view of the surrounding volume. The two infected ships were marked in red. One she recognised as Victor’s ship, the Tristero. The other was a freighter from the planet Icefall: an old rust bucket travelling under the given name Hesperus. Both were under thrust, moving away from the planet on divergent trajectories, and neither were answering the Ameline’s hails. As she watched, the Tristero flashed white and disappeared. Seconds later, the other ship did likewise.

  > Both ships have jumped.

  “And they’re definitely heading for Strauli?”

  > Only the Tristero. As far as I can tell, the other’s going for Inakpa.

  Kat looked at the roiling blood-red cloud now enveloping most of the planet beneath her. Lightning flashed in the atmosphere. She thought again of her home, and the carnage that would ensue should this horror fall upon it.

  “We have to stop them,” she said.

  Victor sat forward. “And how do we do that?”

  “Thanks to you, I came prepared for trouble. I have six nuclear-tipped missiles in the hold.”

  She enjoyed his whistle of surprise. His eyebrows went up and he gave a nod of appreciation.

  “Very nice. But we can’t chase both. Which do we choose?”

  Kat drew herself up in the pilot’s chair. “We’re going after the Tristero. We have to stop The Recollection spreading to Strauli.”

  “What about the people on Inakpa? Can’t we warn them?”

  Kat felt something harden inside. Perhaps it was her heart. She said, “Inakpa will have to take care of itself.”

  She brought up navigational data files on both planets.

  “There are only six million people on Inakpa. There are over ten times as many on Strauli. And besides, the Quay’s a major hub. If this infection gets loose there, it’ll have access to dozens of ships, and it’ll spread faster than we can stop it.”

  She glared at Victor, daring him to disagree. He looked unhappy, but nodded all the same.

  “Okay,” he said. “But the Tristero’s engines are bigger than yours. It can reach Strauli in a single jump. Can you?”

  Kat closed her eyes, running calculations. She thought of Napoleon Jones and the different ways he’d taught her to push the envelope.

  “If we run them at maximum tolerance, they’ll make it,” she said, with as much confidence as she could muster.

  Through her implant, she felt the ship’s mind stir uneasily.

  “Of course, they’ll need an overhaul and refit afterwards.”

  > If they don’t explode first.

  “They won’t explode.”

  She called up the navigation systems and selected Strauli Quay.

  Victor still looked unhappy.

  “Are you sure about this?” he said.

  Kat didn’t look round. When she spoke, there was an edge in her voice.

  “This is my ship. If you don’t like what I’m doing, you can always get off.” She gestured at the planet below. “Just say the word.”

  Victor shook his head.

  “It’s not that.”

  Kat pulled up the menu of options that controlled the ship’s engines, and fed in the necessary safety overrides.

  “Then what is it?”

  Victor swung his legs off the co-pilot’s chair, face red. He leaned towards her, his hands reaching for hers.

  “The baby, Kat. Where’s our baby?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  ALL YOU GET TO KEEP

  In the dormitory of the William Pilgrim Hostel for Displaced Time Travellers, Ed opened his eyes and looked up at the slats on the underside of the bunk above. He’d been asleep, drifting restlessly from one confused, frightening dream to the next. He’d dreamed of ravenous beasts with claws and teeth; of bullets slamming into Kristin’s stomach and chest, over and over again; and of splashes of blood, red and bright in the hot savannah sunlight. His shoulders were stiff and the blanket itched. The sheets beneath him were coarse and smelled of bleach. Like old hotel sheets, they’d been boiled and re-boiled to within an inch of their lives, leaving them thin and as rough as flannel. Trying to get comfortable on them, he thought of his own bed, of his little two-room flat, and of London itself, that glorious sprawling metropolis, his home.

  “Jesus,” he said. “How did I get so far away from everything?”

  Seeing him move, the French nurses brought him black coffee in a chipped tin mug.

  “Where’s Alice?” he asked them.

  The women looked at each other uncertainly.

  “Alice?”

  “The auburn-haired woman, the one I came in with.”

  “Ah.” Then the tall one smoothed down the
front of her green scrubs and smiled, showing the gaps in her teeth. She pointed to a doorway at the far end of the aisle of bunks.

  “She is through there. There’s a Grid link in there, with a screen and keyboard. You can use it until you get an implant.”

  Ed rubbed his face. He felt grimy and secondhand after sleeping in his clothes.

  “Grid?”

  “It is like the Internet. Every planet has one.”

  “What’s she doing?”

  The women exchanged another glance. Then the short one said, “She’s trying to find her husband.”

  She helped Ed out of bed and pushed him toward the door. Ed took his coffee with him. He walked down the rows of bunks. Most were empty. The few people that were there didn’t look up as he passed. Most lay on their backs, staring up at the ceiling, eyes stripped of hope and emotion. They were lost, unwilling refugees, having travelled through the arches from Earth. They were mourning their past lives. They didn’t belong anywhere anymore, and some of them had been laying that way for hours. What horrors had they suffered on their way through the network? What had they endured, what worlds had they seen, and what had they lost? How many people had they been forced to leave behind?

  At least Ed knew why he was here.

  He pushed open the door. The room beyond looked like a hospital waiting room. Chairs lined the walls. Old sofas formed a square in the centre, around a low table groaning beneath a pile of tattered magazines and used coffee cups. In the corner, Alice sat at a plastic desk, hunched over a keyboard, her face pressed close to the glow of a flat screen.

  “He’s alive,” she said, not turning around.

  Ed looked over her shoulder. She was scanning through old news reports, using simple search routines to pull up promising stories.

  “I found this.” She shoved a printout at him. It was a public profile comprising two columns of personal information and an accompanying photograph. As soon as Ed saw the face in the picture, his mouth went dry. The paper started to shake in his hand. Verne looked older and craggier and wasn’t wearing his glasses, but it was definitely him. After everything they’d done, everything they’d sacrificed, they’d finally found him. Ed didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He lowered the paper. Sometimes all you got to keep was your word.

  He said, “It’s Verne all right.”

  Alice turned around in her chair. She brushed a lock of auburn hair behind her ear.

  “He’s using a different name,” she said.

  Ed looked at the profile again. The name at the top was unfamiliar. He read it aloud, trying it for size.

  “Victor Luciano. Victor Luciano. Vic-tor Lu-ci-ano.” He frowned. “Why would he call himself that?”

  Alice looked down at her hands.

  “Maybe he doesn’t want to be found.”

  Ed shook his head. “That’s nonsense. He doesn’t even know we’re looking for him.”

  “Yeah, I know. But after what we did, and they way he left like that, angry—”

  “I don’t think so. There’s probably some other explanation.”

  He scoured the personal details listed in the profile: age, date of birth, home world.

  “Hang on a minute.”

  Alice glanced up. “What?”

  Ed flicked the paper. “What’s the date today?”

  She checked the screen. “I think they reckon months slightly differently here, but it’s the first of June.”

  “What year?”

  “Oh. 2464.”

  “Really? Jesus.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  Ed turned the paper to face her. “According to this, he first arrived here in 2310. That’s a hundred and fifty-four years ago!”

  Alice leaped to her feet. She snatched the printout from his hand and read the date for herself.

  “Oh, my god.”

  “I know.”

  “We must have taken a detour somewhere. One of the arches we took. We thought we were only ten years behind him, but really—” She broke off.

  “Well,” she said turning away, “I guess that’s that, then.”

  Ed took the paper back and checked it again, in case they’d made a mistake. He scanned down the columns, looking for a date of death. Instead, he found something else.

  “Hang on,” he said. “There are other dates listed here. Dates of subsequent visits.” He ran his finger down the list. “2356. 2389. 2407. 2422...”

  He showed Alice the list.

  “Look, the last one’s only twenty-three years ago.”

  “How can that be?”

  “His profession’s listed as ‘Trader Captain’. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Alice turned back to the screen. She tapped a query into the search engine.

  “He’s a space merchant,” she said, the tremble in her voice betraying her disbelief. Her eyes widened. “And he’s got his own starship.”

  “Well, that would explain the dates.”

  “So he might still be alive?”

  Ed took a look at the note printed next to the date of his brother’s most recent departure. “Yes, but it looks as if there was some trouble on his last visit. Something about the way he busted out of docks. If he comes back, there’s a warrant out for his arrest.”

  “If he comes back? Do we know where he went?”

  “Check the screen.”

  Alice tapped another query into the Grid. “His flight plan lists his destination as Djatt. I assume that’s the name of a planet.”

  “Can we go after him?”

  She shook her head. “Do you remember what Kristin told us? It’s twelve light years to Djatt. He left twenty-three years ago. If he is coming back, it’ll be sometime next year, as it says on his schedule. If we try to follow him now, we’ll miss him in transit. Besides, tickets cost an arm and a leg, and we don’t have any money.”

  “So, what do we do?”

  Alice looked around the waiting room at the worn sofas and abandoned coffee mugs. “Well, I don’t want to stay in this dump for a moment longer than we have to.”

  Ed reached down and took her hand.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “You saw the city out there. It didn’t look too bad. We’ll find somewhere. We’ll hustle up some cash and hunker down to wait, and we’ll keep an eye on the Grid. His ship’s called the Tristero. As soon as it docks, we’ll be there to meet him.”

  STRAULI GRID

  NEWS HEADLINES

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  SCIENTISTS PREDICT IMMINENT COLLAPSE OF ARCH NETWORK

  Signs of instability increasing.

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  TRUE IMMORTALITY MAY BE CLOSER THAN WE THINK

  Medical advances point the way to ‘wonder drugs.’

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  THOUSANDS EXPECTED FOR QUAY BICENTENNIAL CELEBRATIONS

  Orbital dock anniversary party expected to be ‘biggest yet.’

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  SHEEP LOOK UP

  New wool shipment arrives from Nuevo Zanzibar.

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  UNFAVOURABLE WINDS DELAY SECOND LEG OF ROUND THE WORLD YACHT RACE

  Conditions expected to remain unchanged until after midnight.

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  PEP HARVEST EXPECTED TO FETCH RECORD SELLING PRICE

  First shipments due to arrive on the Quay in twelve months.

  Stock market already buoyant.

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  FELIKS ABDULOV TO ANNOUNCE RETIREMENT

  Shippin
g magnate plans to spend more time with his family.

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CARDS ON THE TABLE

  The Ameline raced for clear space. Hooked into its systems, Kat experienced the burn of its fusion motors as a fire in her gut. She lived for moments like these. She savoured the gunpowder tang of the vacuum, shivered at every stray molecule of hydrogen that brushed the hull, and gloried in the prickling caress of starlight on her skin. Her eyes blazed with calculations. Deep in her ribcage, she sensed the building quantum energies in the purple coils of the jump engines. They fluttered like adrenalin. They felt like freedom. Only the urgency of their mission dampened her wild exhilaration. Beside her, the ship’s mind capered like an eager hunting dog. Twelve light years ahead, their home star blazed like a target.

  From the bridge, she heard Victor say, “Come on, let’s go.”

  For a moment, she didn’t reply. Then she reluctantly disengaged from the ship and reeled her perceptions back into the confines of her skull.

  “I’m not jumping until we reach the JZ,” she said with a dry mouth. “We’re going to be asking a lot from these engines, and I don’t want to put them under any more strain that absolutely necessary.”

  Victor looked frustrated. “But we’re losing time.”

  “We’re losing a couple of hours. With luck, we’ll still catch the Tristero before it docks.”

  She glanced at the screens. Behind them, grasping fingers of red cloud reached to smother Djatt’s stricken face. The planet looked like an orange caught in a tremendous fist. Lightning crackled in its tormented troposphere, visible as pink flashes beneath the cloud. The scale was hard to grasp. From here, the planet looked about the size of a football, the enveloping cloud a red blanket. She couldn’t see where the edges of The Recollection ended; they just became fuzzier and more diffuse, until they melted into the background blackness of space.

  > No pursuit, the ship informed her. She hadn’t expected any.

  > Fifty minutes until we reach safe jump distance.