by Gary Gibson
‘You’re not human,’ Luc gasped, the words rasping in his throat. ‘Not any more.’
‘We in the Coalition prefer to think we are more human,’ the Ambassador observed. ‘But perhaps you now more clearly understand the threat we all face, and the reason for our actions.’
‘I could be talking to anyone right now,’ said Luc. ‘There is no one, single Ambassador, is there?’
He’d seen how the Coalition’s citizens leapt from body to body at will, instantaneously, across continents and even light-years, using instantaneous communications technology, a constant shunting of encoded consciousnesses in and out of the lattices filling their skulls. Notions of privacy, as they were understood within the Tian Di, simply did not, could not exist for them. Bodies were there to be shared, rather than owned. A single mind might find itself in a dozen different bodies in the space of a week, a day, or an hour; a constant flow of conscious, living data across a civilization that now itself encompassed dozens of star systems.
In that brief moment of contact with the Ambassador, Luc had seen how a single mind could split itself into a dozen copies, each occupying a separate body simultaneously, before later reintegrating itself into a single consciousness. It was wonderful and terrifying in equal measure, and Luc wasn’t sure he could experience it all again without going insane.
‘We understand how all this must frighten you,’ said the Ambassador. ‘You think you would lose your individuality if you came to live amongst us. That’s not the case: the Coalition embraces change, since to become static is to stagnate and die. By contrast, very little in the Tian Di has changed in centuries. Your ruling Council live artificially extended lives, but they do not live well. You’ve seen how they have sunk into a mire of depredation and excess, down on that miserable sandpit of a world they call home. They keep life- and intelligence-boosting technology from the rest of you and have the audacity to claim it’s for your own good. Tell us honestly,’ Sachs continued, ‘after everything you’ve seen, who, may we ask, is more human? Men and women like Cripps and de Almeida, or what you’ve seen of the Coalition?’
Luc blinked sweat out of his eyes. ‘Was it you I spoke to when I last came here? Or was there someone else using that body?’
‘There are up to thirty agents using this body at different times,’ the Ambassador replied. ‘But the individual mind you are addressing just now is the same one that you spoke with then.’
‘So who exactly am I talking to right now? Is your name really Horst Sachs?’
‘That is the name of the individual occupying this body at this moment, yes,’ Sachs replied. ‘Of all of us, we – or rather, I – spend the most time in this body, but whatever you and I say to each other is heard by all.’
‘And where are you the rest of the time?’
The Ambassador shrugged. ‘In other places, other bodies – even other times, if duty calls me into the Founder Network. Now do you understand why Antonov did to you what he did? He was saving your life – and his own.’
‘No.’ Luc shook his head. ‘That’s not what you said to me before. You said I was just one life measured against billions.’
‘Much has changed since then, Mr Gabion. We did not yet fully understand your role in current events. Look.’
The Ambassador reached into a pocket and pulled out something metallic that squirmed in the open palm of his hand. Luc stared at the writhing thing with horrible fascination.
‘So why did Antonov put one of those things in me, instead of using it on himself?’
‘Because he was already equipped with the more primitive form of lattice still used by the Council,’ the Ambassador explained. ‘It cannot be removed, even by surgery. The only way to ensure his survival, or that of any member of the Temur Council, would be to acquire a clone body pre-equipped with its own lattice, then place backups of his preserved mind-state into that new body. Since such means were not available to him while he was trapped on Aeschere, the only option left to him under the circumstances was to imprint a number of his memories and some fragment of his personality onto a device such as this one, and implant it within you.’
‘Except that it’s killing me.’
‘Killing the body you currently occupy, yes,’ the Ambassador agreed, ‘but the same cannot be said for your mind. With the aid of your lattice, everything that defines you – every thought, memory, and learned skill, along with the manifold and near-infinite interrelationships between those thoughts and memories – can be stored, shuffled, or copied indefinitely, so long as there is Coalition instantiation technology to receive it all.’
Luc stared at the Ambassador’s single gloved hand. ‘That’s why you wear those gloves, isn’t it? Even shaking someone’s hand . . .’
‘Has considerably deeper meaning in our culture than in yours, yes,’ the Ambassador agreed. ‘It can allow the sharing of the most intimate gestures and thoughts, or it can reveal the very essence of one’s soul. When everything and everyone around you is capable of either imbuing you with its own thoughts and memories, or of absorbing your own, one must be careful in the extreme. Come.’
The Ambassador stood and pulled his glove back on, then reached down, helping Luc upright. Luc found himself wondering what kind of pronoun you used for more than one person taking turns sharing a single body – or was it safer just to refer to Ambassador Sachs as ‘they’?
The airlock door finally opened, letting them pass through into the now re-pressurized dock. The air inside was filled with the stink of burning plastic, and a pile of half-melted metal in one corner, still radiating heat, was only just recognizable as the remains of a Sandoz mechant. Luc saw that a lone flier sat in a launching cradle at the centre of the bay, watched over by one of the Ambassador’s own mechants. The flier’s hatch hissed open as they approached.
‘It’s best you leave immediately,’ said the Ambassador. ‘But first I have some more information for you. Within the past few days, an attack took place on an orbital facility above Darwin. The raid was both unexpected and unexpectedly sophisticated, and it appears an artefact originating from the Founder Network, in storage aboard that orbital facility, may indeed have been removed from it. Our consensus, given what you’ve already told us, is that the raid must have been carried out by agents working on behalf of Father Cheng.’
‘But can you stop them from bringing the artefact, whatever it is, back to Temur?’
‘Unfortunately, it may already be too late,’ the Ambassador replied with a pained expression. ‘Not long after the raid, there was an unexpected breach of security at the Darwin–Temur gate.’
Luc felt his insides turn hollow. ‘What kind of breach?’
‘Special Envoys originating from the Tian Di passed back through the Darwin–Temur gate less than half a day ago. On further investigation, it seems one of the Envoys did not precisely match our records. Our conclusion is that one of the Envoys was replaced, presumably by whichever agent acquired the artefact for Cheng.’
‘The last time I spoke to Zelia, she said the Council’s effectively gone to war with itself.’
‘We can corroborate that,’ said the Ambassador. ‘We have observed fighting in the vicinity of Liebenau and the Red Palace.’
‘Can’t you hold off your invading forces for a little while longer?’ Luc pleaded. ‘I have all the proof I need to discredit Cheng in the eyes of all but his most loyal supporters. I just need an opportunity to show it to them.’
‘We can perhaps delay for a few hours,’ the Ambassador admitted. ‘But Cheng appears to be winning the battle for control of Vanaheim. That will leave us no choice but to subjugate his forces, and Vanaheim, with utmost prejudice.’
‘I’ll talk to Zelia de Almeida, tell her everything you’ve told me. She can take it to the rest of the Council and make them understand just how bad things have become.’
The Ambassador thought for a moment. ‘Twelve hours,’ he said. ‘Is that enough?’
‘Not nearly enough.’
/>
Sachs smiled gently. ‘But enough for now.’
The station emitted a series of howling, metallic shrieks, and Luc reached out to grab hold of the flier’s hatch as the station shuddered around them. An automated voice sounded, announcing in calm tones that anyone remaining on board the Sequoia should evacuate immediately.
‘What about you?’ Luc shouted over the din. ‘Why the hell won’t you come with me?’
‘We told you, the flier only has room for one. Besides, your chances are considerably improved if we don’t join you.’
‘Why?’
‘We intend to destroy the Sequoia immediately following your departure.’
‘What?’
‘At the very least, the detonation should disguise your departure, otherwise you would likely be blown out of the sky long before you reached the surface. And please remember, Mr Gabion, this is hardly an act of sacrifice. In fact, I – or rather, Horst Sachs – fully intend to speak to you again, regardless of what happens to either this body or yours.’
The station shook again. ‘Then I should go,’ said Luc, his throat tight.
‘You should be aware,’ the Ambassador added, ‘that we took the opportunity to make some necessary adjustments to your lattice when we made physical contact.’
Luc’s eyes narrowed. ‘What kind of adjustments?’
‘Your lattice required optimization. The crude surgery performed on you was insufficient to allow the full use of its potential.’
‘What potential?’
‘The ability to control mechants in the way you saw us do, to subvert attack-systems, or even boost physical response times. We have also given you the means to track down the stolen artefact, which we strongly urge you to do.’
Luc nodded wordlessly as the hatch hissed into place before him. He pulled himself into his seat restraints, then watched as the doors at the far end of the dock swung open to reveal a vista of stars.
With any luck, his departure wouldn’t be anywhere near as bad as his arrival.
TWENTY-ONE
Almost as soon as the flier lifted up from its cradle, something slammed into the station with tremendous force. Clearly the Ambassador wasn’t wasting time following through on his promise. The stars wheeled past the open bay doors, and the flier was sent crashing into a bulkhead.
Luc’s head snapped sideways, his teeth clicking together. Blood began to fill his mouth and he swallowed hard, grimacing at the taste. Emergency alerts flowered in the air all around him.
Tubes dropped down from immediately overhead, reaching towards him and forming a seal over his nose and mouth at the same time that a thick, glutinous liquid began pouring out from hidden nozzles, filling the interior of the flier in seconds.
Luc breathed in the high-oxygen mix coming through the tubes and felt suddenly calmer, so much so that he found himself wondering if there might be some form of narcotic in the air mix. The flier meanwhile pumped visual data to him directly, via his lattice, and he saw a Sandoz mechant had entered through the open bay doors, its carapace bristling with weaponry.
The mechant launched itself immediately towards the flier. Luc flinched, hearing it land on the hull, a soft thud that reverberated through the impact gel surrounding and cushioning him. He watched with horror as the mechant extended manipulators, using them to secure itself to the flier’s hull. It then applied a tightly focused blue flame to a spot on the hull, which brightened to a dull orange almost immediately.
Go away, thought Luc.
The mechant jerked suddenly, and the flame switched off. It let go of the flier, its manipulators undulating around it, as if in confusion. Drifting across the bay, it rebounded from a bulkhead, now apparently lifeless.
Luc stared at it in stupefaction as the stars wheeled by beyond the bay doors.
The flier carefully manoeuvred its way out through the bay doors before quickly boosting far away enough from the Sequoia that Luc could see the station’s long hub had been shattered in several places. Pieces of the Sequioa were drifting apart from each other, some spinning as they went.
What came next happened so fast that Luc only had time to think about it clearly a few minutes after the fact.
First, his flier flashed a warning that it was being targeted by multiple energy and kinetic weapon systems. Then it accelerated hard enough to break every bone in his body, if not for the impact gel surrounding and supporting him.
He blacked out. The next time he became aware of his surroundings, the Sequoia was twenty kilometres distant and receding fast. The flier’s onboard AI outlined each and every one of the thousands of pieces of spinning and flying wreckage with bright green circles and associated impact probability estimates.
Luc called up a view of the Sandoz platform, and saw a heavily shielded framework supporting multiple weapons systems. Red circles marked dart-sized missiles hurtling across the intervening space towards him. Clearly Ambassador Sachs’ pre-emptive tactic of destroying the Sequoia, however drastic, hadn’t worked as well as he’d hoped.
Luc imagined the missiles detonating, and then watched as incandescent points of light suddenly bloomed amongst the stars.
I did that, Luc realized with a thrill of shock that ran up his spine like electricity.
He glanced towards the Sandoz platform. Light bloomed at half a dozen points across its framework, as its remaining stocks of missiles also spontaneously detonated.
The resulting explosions tore the platform apart like soft candy under a blowtorch.
Luc found himself wondering just how much chaos and death one man could bring about with that much power. He felt numb, as if he were no more substantial than a ghost drifting high above Vanaheim’s upper atmosphere.
The flier informed him it was receiving a transmission coded for the Sequoia. On investigation, it proved to be from Zelia.
He thought for a moment about everything Sachs had shown to him.
she sent, then added:
Luc gasped as rough hands yanked the breathing mask from his face. The impact gel had congealed into a thick translucent sludge around his feet shortly after the flier had landed safely by Zelia’s domed laboratory.
Harsh sunlight cut through the flier’s open hatch. He felt hands take hold of him, pulling him out from his seat restraints. He collapsed onto grass, half-blinded by the light, and heard the distant hiss of the sea.
Looking up, he discovered he was surrounded by several of Zelia’s machine-men. For one terrible moment he thought perhaps Zelia had sent them to kill him, but they kept their distance as he staggered to his feet, gel still dripping from his clothes.
One of the creatures gestured towards Zelia’s laboratory, a short walk away, a faint buzzing emerging from the grille where its mouth should have been. Luc nodded warily, then watched the creatures shuffle out of his way as he stepped forward.
Part of the building housing Zelia’s laboratory had caved in, while the twisted wreckage of a Sandoz mechant lay nearby. Burned, ragged shapes scattered around the surrounding land were recognizable as fallen soldiers in Zelia’s army of machine-men. Dark smoke rose from the mansion next door, the wind carrying an acrid smell of ashes down to the sea.
He found Zelia inside the laboratory, wearing a bloodied smock and perched on the edge of a chunk of masonry that had smashed a work table, having fallen from the ceiling, wrecking the room’s carefully-wrought astronomical mural.
She was not alone
. At least a dozen other men and women stood or sat where they could amidst the scattered laboratory equipment, all turning to stare at Luc with varying degrees of suspicion as he entered from the greenhouse. A few of them looked as if they had been through their own trials: one had a heavily bandaged arm, while another appeared to have suffered serious burns to one side of her face. He ignored them all, focusing his attention on Zelia as he stepped over to her.
‘Who is he?’ one of the others shouted. ‘He’s not a member of the Council!’
‘Mr Gabion is working for me,’ said Zelia, without looking around. ‘He found the evidence that Cheng is responsible not only for Sevgeny Vasili’s assassination, but that of Ariadna Placet before him.’
‘That doesn’t mean he should be here,’ said another voice. ‘Send him away, Zelia.’
She glanced around them all with an irritated expression. ‘I brought you all here so we’d have some chance at salvaging something from this mess,’ Zelia shouted, ‘not so you could dictate terms to me. Gabion being here is my choice, not yours.’
‘Who are all these people?’ Luc asked her quietly.
She slid down from the chunk of masonry. ‘Members of the Council who’ve made the mistake of opposing Cheng in any number of ways. He’s accused us all of being Black Lotus sympathizers and ordered our arrests.’
‘But why bring them here?’ he demanded. ‘Surely you’re making it easy for Cheng to kill or capture you all at once?’
‘There is strength in numbers, Mr Gabion.’ She nodded towards the steps leading down to the basement. ‘There’s something I need you to see.’
‘What you did to Cripps was wrong, Zelia,’ said another voice from the crowd. ‘You should have waited to speak to the rest of us before electing yourself judge and jury.’
Luc gazed around until he saw who had spoken: a dignified-looking man wearing a dark suit, his steely-grey hair cut close to the scalp. A few other heads nodded or muttered their agreement.
