by Alex Lamb
‘On the same ship?’ said Nada. She gripped his head and looked deep into his eyes.
‘That is what was reported,’ said the communications officer.
‘But why?’ said Nada. ‘That is hardly an efficient use of their talents. Was this information made public? Is this a failed bluff?’
‘The information was not public. The names on the official crew manifest are different. The true occupants are only known because our contact operates at a high level in Galatean Flight Control. There was a software accident during shuttle boarding caused by Ludik’s natural production of unregistered proteins. Human overseers were alerted.’
Nada’s skin crawled. What could Galatea possibly gain by putting so many of their false heroes on a single ship? Ludik had been in charge of the human extraction from the beginning. Clearly, whatever she was doing now was still related to that effort.
The prospect of simply chasing down Ludik and destroying her held enormous appeal, but Nada knew she couldn’t afford to be rash. The Galateans were slippery.
‘This new spy,’ she said. ‘Is he alone? How large is his network? Is there any evidence that he is being manipulated?’
Sometimes the Galateans left spies in place and fed them carefully tailored lies so that bad intelligence would leak out. Such arrangements never lasted for long. The humans couldn’t tolerate the implied reinfection risk.
‘The spy is aware of one other remaining convert,’ said Ekkert. ‘The one responsible for his infection. All others have been the victim of flash raids and are dead. The spy anticipates that he has at most a week of continued operation. Random testing now occurs daily at his workplace.’
‘Zilch,’ she said, turning to her harvesting specialist, ‘are the Galateans making any other moves?’
‘There has been one recent attack on our survey ships,’ he said. ‘The force was too light to be effective.’
‘Was it co-located with the vector for either of these missions?’
‘Not obviously. However, it was closer to the carrier mission than the route for the unidentified ship.’
Nada let go of Ekkert to claw at her own cheeks. All the feints and counter-feints. If she didn’t love humanity so much, she’d have despised them.
‘Leng, the carrier that arrived at Galatea was the one that departed from Sol with the human population enclosed, was it not?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘But when it arrived, that cargo was missing.’
‘That is what our observer drones reported.’
‘So a switch was made,’ she said. ‘Another carrier is not required to relocate the population.’
‘That is true.’
‘And the colony-building equipment this new carrier is transporting – is it large or delicate enough to warrant the use of an embership?’
‘The spy’s report is not clear on that,’ said Leng, ‘but it appears unlikely.’
‘In that case, I suspect that the carrier is the feint.’
Leng pivoted in the air to observe her. He was a small male unit with close-set features and staring eyes. He grimaced, baring his teeth.
‘That is the most logical conclusion,’ he said, ‘but we cannot discount the fact that the spy may be leaking bad data. He is a seeded conversion and a mutant. He has not been trained.’
‘Understood. What strategy do you recommend?’
‘I believe both missions must be tracked,’ he said. ‘I do not believe we should act until more data has been collected.’
‘So we remain here?’ she offered.
‘Until more clarity is obtained, yes,’ said Leng.
‘Despite the risk of losing contact with both ships?’
‘Yes. It is possible that both missions may be feints for one that comes after.’
She examined his weird little face and wished she didn’t need him so badly. Leng was her science specialist, optimised for cognition and constantly in danger of merging himself too deeply with the ship. She had already dragged his emotions back from the ache of union five times since they began the survey of Galatea.
Leng, in her opinion, was the sort likely to make rational decisions all the way to giving up. She hadn’t been able to see that about him before the Yunus’s adjustment. Her old brain had always perceived him as attentive and obedient. When she’d chosen the name Nada to symbolise her willing emptiness, he’d been the first to follow suit and had encouraged the others. His zeal had appeared unblemished.
After Noether, though, Leng’s endless cogitating had started to rankle. She’d come to wonder if he was partly responsible for their continued failures. It was Leng who’d advocated such a long, careful injection of mutants into the Earth population, after all. And that waiting had come to naught.
She glanced at her harvesting specialist. ‘Zilch, what do you recommend?’
‘Immediate action,’ he replied.
‘Of what sort?’
‘Whatever you advocate,’ he said. ‘Your will is law. Should I ready the fleet for departure?’
‘Zilch always advocates immediate action,’ Leng pointed out. ‘He is incapable of reasoning otherwise.’
Nada considered them both. To her mind, the pair of them represented the two main ways that the Saved slid into Fatigue. One took comfort in knee-jerk responses to everything while maintaining an unwavering sense of self-justification. The other craved the kind of reasoned peace that left little room for action. Neither, in her opinion, were particularly good at operating as independent agents.
‘We will follow the second ship,’ she said. ‘All routes ahead of it will be tightly monitored using our fastest scouts.’
‘At the cost of the other relays?’ said Leng.
‘Necessarily,’ said Nada. ‘We will still monitor the carrier and the Galatean colony, but with reduced coverage.’
‘Those ships are already strained,’ Leng pointed out.
‘Understood,’ said Nada. ‘However, the ship carrying the Abomination cannot be allowed to escape. The Abomination has been in charge of the relocation effort from its outset. There is no evidence that this has changed. The Yunus has also explicitly requested that the Abomination be destroyed. Therefore we cannot act wrongly by tracking it down.’
Leng pulled faces. ‘This tactic is imperfectly optimised,’ he said. ‘We lack data about what the humans are doing.’
Nada grabbed his body and hurled him at the wall. He bounced.
‘Waiting is concluded. The Yunus has instructed me to innovate if necessary. Innovation incurs risk. Therefore there will be risk!’ Her voice rose to a shriek, joyful with purpose.
Leng grabbed Ekkert to steady himself. The two of them spun slowly.
‘I am surprised by your response,’ he said. ‘Your reasoning pattern has changed.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The Yunus altered me.’
‘I am not sure that the Yunus has made the right choice.’
Nada blinked at him. ‘You cannot doubt the Yunus, even if you do not understand him. That is not okay.’
She reached into the temple, slid her mental-focus through to Leng’s cavern and changed him. Leng’s eyes rolled up in his head. He mewled like a baby and twitched while she made her edits.
When she was done, he smiled sickly and regarded her with fresh awe.
‘I no longer doubt him,’ he said. ‘I love you.’
‘Are there other doubters?’ said Nada.
‘I cannot doubt the Yunus,’ said Zilch, still staring into the wall-mucus.
‘It has not occurred to me to do so,’ said Ekkert. ‘It is not my function.’
‘Then we are aligned,’ said Nada. ‘Commence urgent activity.’
All three officers rushed for the door sphincter at once.
4: PURSUIT
4.1: WILL
Will got out of the gravesite to find himself in a crude, wooden approximation of the virtual station he’d just left, but with a few notable differences. This station featured a floor lined wit
h pits where transiting bodies pulsed and mutated under filmy membranes. Also, it had a breeze.
Cold, fresh air of the sort Will associated with open-sky biospheres blew in through the station entrance at the far end of the hall, carrying with it a curious seaside tang. Mettaburg, apparently, had been built above the tunnels.
He brushed down his ersatz ship-suit and walked straight for the exit as rapidly as he dared. He knew he needed to get out into the city, fast. The Balance agents had been on the brink of catching him. The god-Will’s forces, whatever they looked like in the physical world, were surely closing in already.
He struggled not to stare as he strode for the doors. Some of the pedestrians around him were still changing, even outside the pits. Clothing crawled across their bodies while their faces oozed like slow putty to finalise their new forms. He tried to ignore it. Meanwhile, his head still swam from the overload of terrible new memories.
The significance of Elsa’s advice had become unavoidably clear. He had to keep his disgust in check or it would give him away. But how could he when in every direction he was surrounded by the joke the Transcended had made out of him? They’d tricked him here to open Pandora’s box and then butchered his mind for parts to manufacture this psychotic pastiche.
It made him shake. The sense of violation was beyond his mind’s ability to encompass. But he needed to focus. Just in time, he noticed a stack of paper visitor maps situated near the exit. He took one in a trembling hand and stepped out into the chill surface air where he stopped to gape yet again.
At Mettaburg, the habitat-tubes had been convinced to grow upwards. Clusters of two or more grew around each other in helical spires a dozen storeys high, shrinking as they ascended into a deep blue sky laced with icy cloud. The result was a city of twisting black, corrugated spires randomly pockmarked with windows. It looked as if someone had tried to remake a Surplus Age Manhattan out of giant, soot-coloured spaghetti.
Through this distorted tubescape ran simple wooden causeways that functioned as streets. Large, asymmetrical openings in the tunnel walls formed doorways and the frontings of what looked like old-fashioned shops. Dozens of clones strode this way and that or clattered along on bone-coloured bicycles. Many of them wore sweaters or coats that he envied.
Will realised that he’d made another mistake. Not a single other clone was dressed in anything like his ship-suit. They all wore dark, simple garments like characters out of a costume drama.
No doubt the station had some means of altering clothing, but to reach it, he’d have to walk straight back into the building where Balance would be arriving. He hurriedly scanned the shopfronts, looking for anything that might help. A brown and white sign offering Localwear caught his eye. He made straight for it.
Ceramic chimes tinkled as Will pushed open the door. Inside lay a cramped retail space smelling powerfully of organic fabrics and some kind of spice. Two dapper clones, one male, one female, examined suits while a shopkeeper chatted with them.
Will grabbed a long, black coat from a rack labelled ‘Size: Normal’ and tried it on. It fitted perfectly. He parked himself behind a display and watched carefully through a mirror as the couple hemmed and hawed over their selection.
Will knew that shoplifting would only create more risk but what choice did he have? He had no local credit. He chose his moment when all three had their backs turned and walked quickly towards the exit.
‘Are you going to pay for that?’ said the clerk as Will pulled open the door.
Will froze. Through the opening, he could make out two huge clones in masks and tiger-striped police uniforms striding purposefully down the street in his direction. Will’s heart hammered in his chest. He shut the door and turned back to face the clerk.
‘I forgot,’ he said awkwardly.
The clerk walked over to him. He had Will’s face aged to his subjective sixties, with grey, oiled-back hair. He did not look happy.
‘Bullshit,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘You were trying to steal it, weren’t you?’
Will struggled for words. Before dying, he’d been the most powerful man in human space – able to kill with a thought and enough firepower at his back to burn worlds. He was not used to accusations of petty theft – particularly from himself.
‘I’ve told you people,’ said the shopkeeper before Will could speak, ‘I don’t care what you’re trying to do. You’re ruining my thread! There’s plenty of goddamn money in the street. Why can’t you just take some like everybody else?’
He pointed through the window to a small stand Will hadn’t noticed. People were pulling sheaves of paper from a slot as they walked past. Will stared at it in dawning comprehension. The only times he’d had to pay with physical money were as a youth on Galatea visiting the annual history festival. They’d had stands just like it.
‘What’s your nick?’ said the shopkeeper. ‘We’re calling Balance right now.’
‘Please,’ said Will. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. We can solve this amicably.’
The shopkeeper sneered at him.
‘Look,’ said the female clone standing behind him, ‘he can have some of mine. That solves this, doesn’t it?’
She pressed a wad of bills into Will’s unsuspecting hand and smiled at him. The shopkeeper rounded on her, outrage vying with disappointment on his face.
‘That’s not the point!’ he snapped. ‘It’s hard enough making this thread work as it is, without these bastards breaking the game all the goddamn time. How am I supposed to build acumen under these conditions?’
‘Theft can be a part of running a business,’ the male customer pointed out. ‘In some places it used to be quite common.’
‘Not at this level! They walk straight out of the station, into my goddamn shop and back to the station again! My merchandise is defabbed before I can even get my hands on them. And then I have to buy back more. You telling me shit like that used to happen? I mean, look – this one’s not even trying. He’s wearing baseline, for crying out loud!’
‘So move your business,’ said the male customer.
‘Are you crazy? With these rents?’
‘You’re either pushing acumen or you’re not,’ the female pointed out. ‘You can’t have it both ways.’
The shopkeeper scowled and managed to look sheepish at the same time. Will’s gaze darted between the three of them as he tried to catch up with the local norms.
‘I’m not cultivating theft,’ Will said cautiously. ‘Someone put me up to this and it felt like a bad idea from the start. I’d prefer it if we could just settle the whole episode between us. You won’t be seeing me again.’
‘How would I even know with that face?’ the shopkeeper snarled.
‘Look, how much do you want?’ said Will, scanning the bills. Each bore a portrait of his likeness.
‘Fifty!’ said the shopkeeper.
‘Fine,’ said Will, counting out the money.
‘What?’ said the shopkeeper. ‘Now you’re not even going to haggle?’
Will stared at him in confusion. Apparently, the clone was entirely in earnest.
‘Ten?’ he offered.
‘Fifteen,’ snapped the shopkeeper. ‘I’m done with this bullshit.’ He snatched the notes from Will’s grasp. ‘This game stinks,’ he growled. ‘Another day like this and I’m going back to cage-fighting.’ He stomped off into the rear of the shop.
Will turned to the two customers.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
The male customer nodded. ‘This was novel,’ he said. ‘Look us up online. We’ll share perspectives.’
He pulled a stack of business cards from his jacket and handed one to Will.
Jack Bystander, Customer, it read. Discernment. Taste. Poise. Perspectives welcome.
Underneath was a row of alien-looking glyphs that made Will’s mind swim. He quickly pocketed the card as well as the rest of the money.
‘Great,’ he said.
The Bystanders smiled at him and walked out.<
br />
Will hovered in the shop after they’d left, not trusting his good fortune. His clones inhabited a planet with technology so advanced that it could spit warp-enabled drones into space grown from its own flesh. Yet, despite that, they’d chosen to live in this distorted approximation of the past. Why?
He checked through the window. The Balance agents appeared to have passed on down the street and Will knew he wasn’t going to get a better opportunity. He stepped through the door and rejoined the flow of pedestrians as inconspicuously as possible.
Will rubbed his hands in the cold air as he walked. He didn’t get it: why had these people even bothered making a city when Snakepit’s tunnel biome didn’t need such things to support either organic life or virtual existence? Certainly the air was richer down in the tunnels. Out here it felt like he was hiking mountaintops.
As he framed the question to himself, he passed a shop selling nothing but physical books – hundreds of them. He hesitated again. As a boy, he’d had been fascinated by the concept of tangible information. Scrolls, cassette tapes, casino chips – growing up as a young roboteer on Galatea, they’d all struck him as equally exotic. The technocratic society he’d been born into had no use for such things. Consequently, Will had used those charming props extensively in the visualisation metaphors he’d built in his early career and spent his spare time delving into the colony’s archives to find more. Here, apparently, his clones had indulged that fancy to hyperbolic extent.
Will began to understand. This place looked like a toy Manhattan because that was exactly what it was aiming for. It was an expression of humanity – an attempt to create something familiar out of the alien. Mettaburg offered his variants an opportunity to inhabit roles and personas that left room for differentiation. Hence the shopkeepers, customers and everyone else. He’d taken the movies of his childhood and rendered them into something his instances could live in.
That realisation afforded him a little peace until he turned the corner and encountered a carriage pulled by distorted replicas of himself fused into approximations of horses. A clone in a top hat and black jacket sat in front, clutching reins and a whip.
