by Alex Lamb
‘Whoa,’ he said, taking it all in.
Sam laughed. ‘Gets everyone.’
‘Fecund transit tube,’ Keir explained with a dry smile. ‘Takes a lot of visitors by surprise. I generally don’t try starting any kind of meaningful conversation with visitors until we’re closer to the city, otherwise I just get interrupted by the sightseeing.’
‘You ran your transit system through Fecund tunnels?’ said Zoe.
‘Why not?’ said Keir. ‘The tunnels were already here and they go to all of the places we want to go. So it makes sense to save on engineering, even if it does raise our atmosphere costs.’
‘And the water?’ she asked.
‘That was already here,’ said Venetia. ‘These tunnels were full of ice when people showed up. The Fecund used water-tubes for almost everything – food, transport, communication, you name it. And given the amount of permafrost melt they have here now, the biggest problem most of the time is getting the tunnels to drain properly once they’ve been pumped back up to pressure.’
‘You’ve visited before, then?’ said Keir, eyeing her warily.
Venetia nodded. ‘Years ago. You want to know something crazy?’ she asked Zoe. ‘There’s evidence that some of these tunnels pre-date the Fecund by several million years, meaning they were second-hand when the beak-faces got here. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’
Keir frowned. ‘That’s never been conclusively proven,’ he said.
‘It would certainly mess up a lot of the paperwork around legal claims, that’s for sure,’ said Venetia with a wry smile. ‘Permits for stripping sites of undetermined heritage are much harder to acquire, as it turns out.’
The defence minister took a moment to re-appraise his passenger. ‘Fortunately, that hasn’t been an issue for years,’ he said quickly. ‘We have bigger problems on our plate these days.’
‘Don’t we all,’ said Sam.
But Venetia only warmed to her topic, her own advice about not baiting the locals apparently forgotten.
‘The Fecund cared less about planets than we do,’ she said. ‘Unlike us humans, they tended to prefer orbitals and only bothered setting down on worlds where there was something to exploit or learn from. Like old tunnels, for instance. But most people agree that the Fecund were primarily here for bioweapons.’
‘Either that, or simply biochemistry research,’ said Keir. ‘Opinions are mixed. Many don’t hold such a dim view of the species. We try to maintain a respectful attitude towards the prior owners.’
Mark refrained from commenting. If the Fecund had treated this place anything like humans had treated Davenport, Venetia was probably right. He moved over to the window to look at the view flashing past. On the far bank of the canyon stood rows of what looked like disused industrial buildings, enormous in scale and all in advanced states of decay. Given that ten million years had passed, it was astonishing they were standing at all. Those tectonics Venetia mentioned couldn’t have been too active in the meantime.
What had once been the bed of the river running down the canyon was now a flat swathe of gravel pocked with broken pieces of mechanised junk, the broad banks dotted with what looked like giant harvesting machines of some kind. They stood crumpled and forlorn like the skeletons of ancient monsters poking out of the dust.
The transit tunnel reached a vast block-shaped building jutting out from the side of the canyon wall. As they ran through it, the transit tube briefly became glass on both sides. Around them towered the interior of some kind of factory space where a row of dozen-metre-tall robots, filth-smeared, decrepit, older than humanity, stood waiting for new tasks that would never come.
‘They built to last, then,’ he observed.
‘Hell, yes,’ said Venetia. ‘You’ve seen the Ariel Two. These guys didn’t mess around. Mind you, this whole valley was clogged with dust when people first arrived here. It had been that way since the Transcended caused the biosphere shutdown. The colonists uncovered it all in the first years of habitation. The ruins won’t last nearly as long exposed to the atmosphere – just a few tens of thousands of years, by current estimates.’
As they travelled further down the valley, the landscape changed. They reached an area where the ruins had been cleared away from the gently sloping banks and replaced by private habitat domes. Each pocket of air held a single grand home surrounded by a circle of perfect green garden. Colonnades and porticos decorated the facades. The grounds tended towards a romantic Surplus Age style, all oak trees and tennis courts tended by armies of gardenerbots. They looked like scenes from a history vid brought to life. A transit rail snaked between them.
Apparently, a lot of people in New Luxor lived in hundred-room palaces. To Mark, the houses looked weirdly lonely despite their opulence. They didn’t even share an atmosphere. His sense of unease was reinforced when they passed one with a failed envelope. A dirty mansion with smashed windows stood in a patch of dead vegetation almost as brown as the gravel that lay around it.
Zoe came over and stood at the window next to him. ‘Looks like all those patents bought some classy pads,’ she observed.
‘Land isn’t in short supply here,’ said Keir. ‘Neither are building materials or robots.’
‘Unless you’re a Flag,’ said Venetia with a wink.
Keir’s lips thinned a little.
Beyond New Luxor’s isolationist suburbs, the ancient riverbed widened and the real settlement began. Carter had avoided supertowers, preferring a more traditional style of development. Eclectically decorated buildings huddled under domes of various sizes. The colony sported only a single macrostructure – Government Tower. A needle of blue glass built into the canyon wall rose a couple of hundred storeys up into the pale lemon sky.
The pod transferred through another set of air gates, this time into a Martian-style transit tube that ran straight through the heart of the small city. Mark caught sight of brightly painted cafes with no patrons and grand parks where lonely figures wandered. Streets slid by lined with open-fronted stores selling nothing at all. But for the odd pedestrian trailed by domestic machines of various kinds, the place felt like a ghost town. He saw more robots than people.
The pod joined a rail rising up the side of the tower and the city fell away beneath them, becoming a cluster of clear bubbles packed with brightly coloured toys. The view opened out, revealing the mouth of the river and an expanse of perfectly flat, dead desert beyond. It made the wasteland they’d originally landed in look varied and dramatic by comparison.
As the transit slowed, Mark got a view into the interior of the tower. Dozens of floors of unused office space slid past, where robots sat dormant or stacks of still-sealed furniture lay waiting. The human colony here, he thought, appeared to be rapidly turning itself into a copy of the dead one it had displaced. He wondered if this was how Bradbury must have looked during the first decades on Mars – a city at the edge of nowhere with too much space on its hands, not quite sure why it existed.
Only the top ten floors showed signs of life. Wind whistled around the pod’s edges when it arrived at the executive level at the peak. From there, Mark could make out the curve of the horizon, and dark smudges of human habitation far off in the hazy nothingness of the empty ocean.
‘This way, please,’ said Keir as the door opened.
He led them down an echoing hallway ten metres high with skylights that let in slanting rays of creamy light. The place smelled faintly and familiarly of cabbage.
Mark knew that smell. He looked up at the corners of the ceiling and saw dark blotches on the biofabric walls. The place had tower flu, then, just like his former home in New York. He wondered how long ago that had set in.
Keir led them to a meeting room with a massive table of vat-grown wood covered in a thin layer of dust. It sported thirty old-fashioned vat-leather chairs scattered in various random positions and an incredible, if uniforml
y bleak, view over the post-oceanic plain.
‘Where is everyone?’ said Mark.
‘I’ll fetch them now,’ said Keir. ‘Please wait here.’ He stepped out. The door shut behind him.
‘What do you think?’ said Venetia.
‘I think it’s a dump,’ said Zoe. ‘It’s even worse than my old home town on New Angeles. I always assumed the cities at the New Frontier would be like mini-Bryants, full of energy and verve.’
‘They were,’ said Sam. ‘That’s kind of gone on hold recently, which is one reason why New Panama is booming so much. People don’t want to spend any more time out on the angry edge of civilisation than they have to.’
‘We could always just change the law,’ said Venetia. ‘Give the sects a better deal.’
Sam snorted. We did,’ he said. ‘About eight times, I think. Look how well that turned out.’
‘What does it matter?’ said Zoe. ‘We’re wasting our time. If we don’t get out of here and do something, there won’t be a New Frontier, no matter how shitty it is.’
‘Agreed,’ said Mark. ‘All this is very enlightening, but we should just make our point and leave. We’ve got work to do.’
Keir Vorn, though, did not return. Fifteen minutes dragged by. Mark’s anxiety grew.
‘What’s keeping the guy?’ said Zoe.
Mark pinged the room’s security but found he couldn’t get past the pitifully slow-witted room SAP.
‘I could find him,’ he said, ‘but I’d have to hack them first.’
‘Not the best way to make a good impression,’ said Venetia.
Sam sighed. ‘Look, I’ll go and find out what’s happening. You guys wait here.’
Venetia shot Mark an urgent look as Sam headed for the door. Mark had a choice: to stop him or let him go. Ash’s words echoed in his head. Should he trust Sam?
He gestured to Venetia with a flattened hand while his guts roiled. Keep sitting. He dearly hoped he’d chosen right. As Sam strode out into the hall, the door clicked shut behind him.
‘What now?’ said Venetia.
‘Now we wait and hope,’ said Mark.
Another fifteen minutes slid by.
‘This is bullshit,’ said Zoe.
She marched up to the door, which refused to open. She tried the manual pad on the wall. Nothing happened.
‘Hey, room!’ she shouted. ‘Open up!’
When the room didn’t reply, Mark reached out for it directly. The moment he did so, the window-wall swapped to video and Sam’s face appeared.
‘Hello, everyone,’ he said. ‘You’ve just discovered that you’re locked in. My apologies for that. I regret the duplicity. Unfortunately, there have been too many unpleasant coincidences during this mission.’ He counted them off on his fingers. ‘The apparent attempted murder, Mark’s disruption of my override, Zoe’s inclusion of non-mission-approved tech.’
‘What?’ Zoe roared.
Sam continued indifferently. ‘It’s my duty to figure out what’s going on and to resolve these issues while I have the chance. It’s vital I make sure there’s no foul play at work here,’ he told them earnestly. ‘In case the human race is being set up to pay the price.’
‘What?’ said Mark. ‘Since when? And how exactly does all this shit you just made up fit with the mission profile?’
‘I’ll get back to you as soon as I can,’ said Sam. ‘Once again, my apologies. I recommend that you make yourselves comfortable.’
He shut the channel.
‘Bastard!’ yelled Zoe. She pounded on the door.
Venetia leaned her elbows on the table and massaged her temples. ‘I guess we have our answer,’ she said.
Mark checked the security. He grabbed the simple SAP running the room and rammed commands down its API. The SAP flailed into submission, revealing a data connection behind it that had been isolated and shut down from the other end. Digitally speaking, their room had been locked from the outside. Barring the chance of catching some wireless traffic from data nodes on the floors below, they were cut off.
Mark surged to his feet and kicked his chair across the room, where it smacked into the biofabric panelling and broke apart.
‘Fuck!’ He turned to face Venetia. ‘Does anything he said make any sense to you?’
Venetia shook her head. ‘The actions he just took were predicated on the notion that he himself was above suspicion – a proposition he avoided on board while it suited his purposes. In short, he was bullshitting, as you suspected. By the way, what made you decide to let him go?’
‘I spoke to Ash, like you suggested,’ he said, embarrassment choking his voice. ‘I asked him if I should come here, and if I could trust Sam. He told me to go along with it and that everything would be fine. I took him at his word.’ Mark hung his head and felt like a fool.
‘So it’s both of them, then?’ said Zoe.
‘I was so sure it was Citra,’ said Mark. ‘I was too freaked out to think about the alternatives. I feel ashamed. That poor woman.’
‘That override moment,’ said Zoe. ‘Sam wanted Ash in control of the ship, and now he is.’
‘And I don’t think there’s any doubt that Sam dumped the fuel on purpose,’ said Venetia. ‘He brought us to Carter to make this happen.’
Mark fell back into another chair as the strength drained out of his legs.
‘They never wanted me on that ship,’ he breathed as realisation dawned. ‘This has been planned since Earth. Which means they must have known something about Tiwanaku. They were planning for it.’
Silence fell as they all stared at each other.
‘Fuck,’ said Zoe in awe. ‘The whole mission’s a set-up.’ She leaned against the wall and slid down it to sit on the floor. ‘I can’t believe it took us this long to notice.’
Mark suddenly felt very, very stupid. He should have seen it. The pieces had been right in front of him all along. It had just never occurred to him that the entire mission was fabricated. No wonder they’d never met the other ships at the rendezvous. That had never been part of the story.
Their predicament still didn’t make sense, though. The drones they’d fought were absolutely real and their technology profoundly foreign. The whole of IPSO had been duped, but it was totally unclear how or why.
13: JUSTIFICATION
13.1: WILL
As the pod doors shut, Will took in his surroundings. He’d been delivered to a garden of sorts – a white-walled space filled with shrubs and trees lit by ceiling-lamps three storeys above. It appeared to be a cross between an experimental botanical garden and a recreation area. Rubberised pathways ran between the trees. Sofas and work tables sat at the intersections. The air smelled of rosemary and carried the soft hiss of air-scrubbers.
From out of the greenery stepped Parisa Voss.
‘Hello, Will,’ she said.
Will stared at her, sick astonishment welling up inside him.
‘You,’ he said.
Exactly what percentage of his life was a lie? he wondered. All of it? Pari had been the most consistent, benign feature of his political life for years. How had she found the time for shit like this?
‘Are you really so surprised?’ she said. ‘Who else would have the political muscle to bring all this together?’ She looked pleased with his reaction, and herself.
‘You …’ Will started. He struggled for adequate words. ‘You disgust me.’
‘I would expect nothing less,’ said Pari, apparently satisfied. ‘Anything else?’
Will could only stare. The man he’d been before his short flight on the Chiyome might have railed at her and shouted out his wrath. Now, he just felt ill.
‘No,’ he said.
She looked slightly disappointed. ‘I imagine you’re probably upset,’ she said, ‘but the only reason you’re here is because you didn
’t do your job.’
Will’s anger rumbled back into life. ‘What?’
‘You think we found a weapon to use against Flags,’ she said, ‘but that’s the smallest part of what we found. Before you judge us, look.’
She tapped the jewelled bracelet on her left wrist and a link invitation appeared in Will’s sensorium. Will struggled briefly with the urge to subvert the room’s network, take Pari hostage and bend the entire station to his will. There’d be time for that later, though. He accepted the link.
An image bloomed in his mind of the world situated below them. It looked … odd. It wasn’t just the black continents or mauve seas. The entire world had a curious texture. He zoomed in for a closer look and found a landscape covered with weird linear features tangled across each other, as if the planet had been coated with monstrous spaghetti.
Barring the curious starfish structures, the linear shapes appeared to cover every inch of landmass on the planet, dipping beneath the waves at the coasts. Nowhere could he see the familiar hallmarks of geology, except perhaps in the overall features of the continents themselves.
‘It’s a self-sustaining biosphere,’ she said. ‘Artificial, we believe, and incredibly advanced. It’s unlike any other biosphere world we’ve ever seen. This one tolerates humans without issue.’
Will shot her a look of unalloyed disbelief. She smiled, apparently misinterpreting his scorn for some gentler variety of scepticism.
‘The environment on Snakepit is robust, self-correcting and incredibly stable,’ she said. ‘Every one of those linear formations you can see is a self-contained, self-extending habitat system. A living root, if you like, with usable space inside.’
The display in his sensorium updated to show him schematics and cross sections.
‘This entire world is covered with them, about ten layers deep. Snakepit could house and feed the Earth’s fifteen billion tomorrow, while using only about ten per cent of its available resources. It’s also an example of functional terraforming of a sort we’ve never achieved. That oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere is the result of ambient air-bleed from the self-contained habitats, much as you see above Bradbury, which means that this system is even proofed against the Galatea Effect. When the atmosphere here started to reorganise, all the biomass remained safe below.’ She smiled knowingly. ‘Amazing, isn’t it? It’s a dream come true.’
