by Neal Asher
They crowded forward, Lanier beside Olmy and Yates, with the odd U-shaped beast on the opposite side of the flaw passage, still surrounded by its quarantine field. The two Frants relaxed behind them all, curled up with only necks and heads extended.
Ahead, the black and gold became a wanner orange and brown. The flaw pulsed faintly pink, disturbed by their acceleration.
"Just a few seconds," Olmy said.
The Way appeared to balloon outward in all directions. Lanier felt his hands tingle, and his eyes grow warm. The flaw
vibrated and glowed to searing blue. The transparent bow grew darker and darker to compensate. The flaw passage through the middle of the ship vibrated and groaned.
Just a few seconds of life—less—
Lanier felt as if he were exploding. He yelled in pain and surprise and flung out his arms and legs.
Then it was over. He drifted against a net of traction lines, blinking. The Way was black and gold again. The flaw glowed faintly pink.
"There's no damage," Olmy said.
"Correction," Yates said, holding a hand over his eye. Lanier had struck him with an elbow. He apologized.
"Nothing to be upset over," Yates said. "All the more excuse for some Talsit. Quite exciting, actually."
Behind them, accelerating at four hundred g's, the linked Axis Nader and Central City met the plasma front with their building shock wave of space-time, beginning the process of convening the Way into an elongated nova.
The radiation level outside the flawship increased sharply.
The charges around the perimeter of the seventh chamber were set. Engineers had gone throughout the Thistledown, making final structural checks and testing the sixth chamber machinery. When the asteroid was blown from the beginning of the Way, the sixth chamber machinery would face an enormous strain—the end of its duties as stabilizer of the Way, and a sudden and violent increase in its policing of destructive forces inside the chambers.
The precincts of Axes Thoreau and Euclid had been moved north a hundred thousand kilometers from the seventh chamber. Within the twin cylinders, the confusion was enormous. Most of the Axis citizens—the Naderites, orthodox and otherwise, and a surprising number of homorph Geshels—had been reassigned to new quarters; few were completely familiar with their new precincts. There was a sense of holiday, of triumph, and also a heavy air of anxiety.
By the hundreds, the Earth people filled the processing halls, tended by Geshel doctors and watched over by advocates.
A male homorph—Hoffman noted the word and added it to her rapidly growing vocabulary—took skin samples from his group of twenty Earth people. She was seventh in line. For each he had a smile and a few well-chosen words of encouragement. He was handsome, but not to her taste—a little too finely honed, his characteristics not noticeably
different from those of a dozen other homorphs. Or perhaps her senses weren't sophisticated; she was used to the broad varieties of physiognomy from her time, when unavoidable defects—misshapen noses, corpulence, dental misalignments—produced a medieval carnival of features.
When the samples had been stored, he produced a face-shaped cup from his floating toolbox. "This performs a number of medical analyses," he told them. "These tests are also voluntary—but your cooperation will be most helpful."
They all cooperated, peering into the cup and watching a series of complex patterns for several seconds.
Throughout the proceedings, she felt a sense not of coming misery or servitude, but of camaraderie. So many of the attendants proudly flew projected flags over their left shoulders. Flags of India, Australia, China, the United States, Japan, the USSR, and other nations. All were willing—eager, even—to speak to their charges in native tongues.
When the medical exams were completed, they were led off to a series of elevators opening on one side of the hall. Ann Blakely, Lanier's secretary and now Hoffman's, crossed over from another group. With her was Doreen Cunningham, former head of security in the science compound.
"Everybody's so tense," Cunningham whispered to Hoffman.
"Not me," Hoffman said. "I feel like I'm on some kind of holiday. The big folks are taking over now. Oh, Lord." She had just peered into their elevator. It didn't have any floor. Even with explanations and a demonstration from the attendants, it took some coaxing to get them to move forward.
They hung on to each other as a group of sixty ascended. Cunningham kept her eyes closed. Most of the Russians were resigned to the worst, she told Hoffman; their gloomy pessimism kept them pretty much to themselves.
"Somebody told me a few of our people have defected," Hoffman said, keeping her eyes resolutely on the back of the person in front of her. The elevator walls were too uniform to show motion, and there was no sensation, unpleasant or otherwise, but she still wasn't enjoying the trip.
"Four—two Russians and two Americans; that's what I've heard," Ann said.
"Anybody know who?"
"Rimskaya," Cunningham said. "And Beryl Wallace."
"Beryl..." She raised her eyebrows and shook her head. "I wouldn't expect that from her ... or Rimskaya." Did she feel
they had betrayed her? That was ridiculous. "What about the Russians?"
"One of them is Mirsky," ann said. "I didn't recognize the second name."
Mirsky didn't surprise her at all. She could read strangers clearly but not the people in her own command. So much for the instincts of a master administrator.
Their quarters were spread through the precincts. More homorphs met them as the groups were further divided and escorted to apartments on different levels.
"You'll be sharing quarters in parties of three," their escort told them. "Space is at a premium now."
"Roomies?" Cunningham asked Hoffman and Blakely.
"Roomies," Hoffman said. Blakely nodded.
Their group of twelve dwindled rapidly as attendants shunted them into vacant quarters. They were the last three, escorted by a single female homorph, who picted a Russian flag over her shoulder. Their apartment was at the very end of a long, gently curved cylindrical hallway. Green numbers beneath the door glowed brightly as they approached.
The rooms were small and very blank. The homorph remained to give them basic instructions on use of the data services. She then wished them well and departed.
"Such a hurry," Blakely said, shaking her head.
"Since we're out of the action," Hoffman said, "or along for the ride, whatever, we might as well settle in."
Within minutes, they were eagerly discussing the possibilities of decor with an assigned ghost from the library. They had several hours before the Breakout, as it was being called; Hoffman used that time to contact others in the precinct who had been assigned quarters.
Blakely and Cunningham decided on an interim decor which gave some color and shape—and considerably more apparent living space—to the apartment. Hoffman joined them to examine the facilities, and to sample the food provided by an automatic kitchen tucked in one corner.
Citizens and Earth people alike, the assigned ghost informed them, would be able to witness the breakout, almost in its entirety. Monitors placed throughout the Thistledown would transmit detailed views of the events and their results; everyone had a ringside seat, if they desired one.
No longer hungry, or very interested in playing with the quarters, the three women sat before a continuous documentary of what was happening in the asteroid and the precincts.
The images were almost too real. After a few minutes, Cunningham turned away from the display and began giggling uncontrollably. "This is ridiculous," she said, clutching her cheeks and rolling back on the apparent Oriental-pattern carpet. "It's terrifying." Blakely caught the bug next.
"We're hysterical," she said, and that sent them both into fresh paroxysms. "We don't have any idea what's going on."
"Oh, I do," Hoffman said solemnly, feeling left out.
"What?" Cunningham asked, trying to be serious.
Hoffman rolled o
ne hand into a near-cylinder. She peered through it at them. "Blow one end off—the end no one ever tried to drill through. The north pole."
"Jesus,' Cunningham said, her giggles gone as quickly as they had started. "What would have happened it we had tried to drill through it? Where would the drillers have ended up?"
"Blow the north pole off," Hoffman resumed, ignoring the unanswerable question, "and knock the Stone off the corridor.
And after that—"
"What?" Ann asked, owlish now and also very serious.
"This half of the city leaves the corridor. We become a space station."
"And the Stone?" Cunningham asked.
"Another moon."
"And we go back to Earth?" Blakely asked.
Hoffman nodded.
"Damn," Blakely said. "It's a ... I don't know what it is. A fairy tale. Maybe it's the day of resurrection. What did they call it? Rapture. Dead people flying up through the freeways. People leaving their cars right through the roofs." Embarrassed, Blakely turned back to the projected display. "That doesn't make any sense, does it? No freeways, no cars. Only angels coming from the sky."
Hoffman made a deep, shuddering sigh. "You're right," she said. "it's a fairy tale." Then, abruptly, she broke into laughter, and couldn't stop until her lungs ached and her face was wet with tears.
An hour before the scheduled breakout, Corprep Rosen Gardner picted a personal message to Hoffman requesting that he be allowed to visit. A few minutes later, he arrived at the apartment door in person—"incarnate," Hoffman reminded herself. She invited him in. By that time, they had all regained some semblance of control.
Gardner's political work on behalf of the divided Hexamon and the Naderites was no longer necessary, he explained; he had volunteered to act as Corprep in the New Nexus for the Earth people, and chose Hoffman as the most logical person to speak with. He offered to keep her informed by linking her with his private memory and information service.
Her vacation was over, she thought, not without some regrets. She was on call again.
"I also bring news," he said, standing before her with his hands behind his back. She was beginning to get a sense of the orthodox Naderite: dedicated, almost chivalric, not unlike some of the political conservatives she had dealt with on Earth. "We have word of Patricia Luisa Vasquez, and the four who were sent to find her."
"Yes?"
"Three of the four have returned to our precincts. They are Lawrence Heineman, Karen Farley and Lenore Carrolson. They were kept as captives for a time, I am ashamed to say, by the Geshels in Axis Nader and Central City. They were released just before the Geshel precincts began acceleration. They will join your people shortly."
"And the others?"
"Patricia Luisa Vasquez was given an opportunity to find her way home," Ser Gardner continued. "What that means, precisely, I am not sure; the details are sketchy. She and Garry Lanier were detained and sent with the gate opener and his party to one point three ex nine; many in that party, including Lanier, are now on their way back, and have passed through the accelerating precincts safely. They will not return to our sector in time to join with us, however."
She had no idea what a "gate opener" was and didn't feel it was appropriate to ask. She could look it up later. "Are they going to leave the corridor?"
"I do not know," Gardner said. "Their leader, Ser Olmy, has been informed of the timetable. He believes they can escape the sealing of the Way. They have been delayed by stopping at several reopened gates to drop off nonhuman clients."
Hoffman absorbed the news quietly, slapping her left hand lightly against her thigh. She had assumed the four searchers and Vasquez had died or been irretrievably lost in the shuffle. For the time being, she had managed to forget about them. Now she once again had something to worry about, with little knowledge of the perils involved, or their chances for success..
"Our zero hour will be in forty-three minutes," Corprep Gardner said. "By the way, I thought I would inform you that numbers of Hexamon citizens have been solicited by a small group of your people. There is a 'wild party' going on in the quarters of Axis Thoreau. Some of your female personnel are bartering sexual favors, for what commodities I don't know. I have placed that party off limits to my people."
Hoffman looked at him, startled, not sure how to respond. "That's wise," she finally managed. "I don't know who would corrupt whom the most."
In the Stone:
From end to end of the seven chambers: darkness and quiet. In the first chamber, clouds had built up since the re-rotation; rain threatened in the darkness.
In the bore holes, the absolute silence of vacuum, and no activity but the occasional flight of a tiny monitor.
In the second chamber, a faint whistle of wind as the atmosphere regained its equilibrium. More windows had broken out, and some buildings—including a mega—had collapsed despite the efforts of the engineers.
In the third chamber, much the same, though no buildings had collapsed. The scattered glows of still-active illusart windows in Thistledown City resembled a swarm of fireflies.
In the fourth chamber, the washed-out forests and unleashed waters had finally made their peace with each other. The compounds formerly occupied by Eastern and Western bloc personnel had been washed away, their debris carried down to the lakes or jammed up against trees near the shorelines.
Those who had died to invade or defend the Stone—the Potato—the Thistledown—still lay in their graves, unseeing, their patterns flown, personalities vanished, Mysteries made even more mysterious.
The fifth chamber: as dark and hollow as a vast cavern in the Earth, with only the eternal sound of waterfalls and rivers.
The sixth chamber, vigilant, the only chamber besides the seventh still illuminated by a plasma tube, although that was uncertain and unreliable.
The plasma tube flickered and was extinguished. No matter. All the preparations had been made, and now only monitors patrolled the Thistledown's vastness.
The seventh chamber. A wind blew gently down from the cap, rustling the copses of scrub forest; it lazed through the abandoned tent with a faint whistle, flapping the canvas. A section of the tent sagged where a pole had drifted loose during the de-rotation. Surprisingly little else had been disturbed.
The detonators waited patiently beside their charges.
The joined precincts of Axes Thoreau and Euclid were too far down the Way to be visible from this point without the aid of a high-powered telescope. The Way seemed empty, infinite, eternal and serene: the greatest thing ever created by human beings.
Outside the Thistledown, black space and stars and Moon and poor battered, burned, winter-besieged Earth, where few if any were even thinking of the asteroid or the possibility of rescue. How could there be rescue from such total misery and death? History had passed them by.
The asteroid's overhauled Beckmann drive engines prepared for their part in the drama, stockpiling reaction mass to be slung out and dematerialized in the combined beams. They would reduce the kick of the separation, and the combined kick and counter-thrust would maneuver the Thistledown into a circular orbit around the Earth, at an altitude of some ten thousand kilometers.
The precincts of Axes Thoreau and Euclid began their acceleration, in an apparent suicide run to smash themselves against the seventh chamber cap. Within, twenty-nine million human beings—corporeal and otherwise—did the various things humans do while waiting to see if they will live or die.
Behind the precincts, half a million kilometers down the Way, a tiny defense flawship was decelerating drastically, the flaw ahead of it brightening to violet and blue. It had to slow to Earth orbital velocity by the time it followed the linked precincts out the end of the Way—if it managed that feat at all.
The charges buried in the walls of the seventh chamber synchronized.
The grips of Axes Thoreau and Euclid were withdrawn, and the huge cylinders coasted south toward the seventh chamber cap at just a little over forty thousand k
ilometers per hour, or eleven kilometers per second.
The detonators reached their appointed microsecond.
Within the seventh chamber, there was a noise beyond human description. Billions of tons of rock and metal rushed
in toward the axis from the seven charge points, and immense fissures shot outward to the vacuum of space.
Around the northern pole of the asteroid, dust and debris spread out in a wide circular fan, followed by a white glow more brilliant than the sun. The glow faded to red and purple. A seventy-kilometer-wide monk's cap of rock was propelled away from the asteroid. The asteroid withdrew much more slowly from its severed end, and for the briefest moment, between them, there was a hole in space, filled with the light of the plasma tube, showing an infinite
