by Gary Gibson
‘Anil is a delusional psychopath who threatened to burn Bash’s face and limbs off if I didn’t tell him exactly what he wanted to hear,’ she retorted sharply. ‘I’ll bet he didn’t mention that.’
Schelling’s face remained impassive, but she saw the fury in his gaze as he turned to look at Sifra, who struggled to remain silent.
‘Sir—’ said Sifra.
‘We’ll talk later,’ the General interrupted sharply. ‘For now, shut the hell up.’ He turned back to Megan. ‘Your job will be to negotiate with the Wanderer on our behalf, via Bashir.’
‘Go to hell,’ said Megan.
Schelling smiled thinly. ‘It’s not that we require your cooperation, Miss Jacinth. It’s just that it would make life easier.’
Megan stared off into a corner of the room, as if dismissing him.
Schelling shook his head and sighed as if washing his hands of her. ‘I think this is where you come in, Anil.’
‘With pleasure,’ said Sifra, pulling on his gloves and stepping towards her.
Megan jumped up from her chair, but Sifra caught her by the arm, drawing her in close as if embracing her. She tried to scream as the pain hit, but the sound stalled in her throat.
She blacked out for a few seconds. When she came to, she was slumped on the floor, dazed and sick, her heart pounding. Sifra stood over her, his heavy-lidded eyes full of anticipation.
‘Anil can keep this up indefinitely until you decide to cooperate,’ said Schelling, staring down at her. ‘There’s too much at stake here to waste on niceties. Do we have an understanding?’
‘Yes,’ she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
Schelling nodded. ‘The Three Star Alliance, Miss Jacinth, has been reduced to little more than a vassal state of the Accord – thanks largely to you. Conquered, with barely a shot fired. We could have turned things around if we’d succeeded in dealing with the Wanderer. This, then, is your opportunity to make up for your past crimes.’
The floor felt cold and hard beneath Megan’s splayed fingers. ‘The Wanderer attacked us,’ she said, twisting her head round to stare up at him. ‘It was never going to deal with us. All I did was take advantage of what was already inevitable. All it cared about was acquiring the Beauregard’s nova drive. Don’t you understand that?’
‘Indeed I do. Which is why the next time we go out there, things will be different. For one, we’re taking along one of those nova mines you mentioned a moment ago. The Wanderer might be able to survive an anti-matter detonation, but I suspect the same couldn’t be said as regards an exploding star.’
Schelling gave her a supercilious grin. ‘Not to mention,’ he continued, ‘that we have remote probes in place showing the Wanderer is still engaged in a process of self-repair that began immediately following your last encounter, making it especially vulnerable. I suppose it’s a sign of just how badly we hurt it that it’s still hiding in the same star system, instead of fleeing into interstellar space.’
‘What do you think the Accord is going to do to you and the Freehold,’ she asked, ‘once it figures out that you helped the Freehold commit genocide against the Demarchy? Do you really think it’s going to just stand by while you fly off on yet another expedition?’
‘We’ll make sure it doesn’t find out. And even if one day it does, with luck it’ll be long after the Alliance finally has the chance to achieve its full potential, without outside interference.’ He took a sip of his drink. ‘Recent findings on Alyeska make it clear that the Meridians advanced far more within a few generations of encountering the Wanderer than we previously suspected. With power like that, the Three Star Alliance can, under my command, become the Hundred Star Alliance – and perhaps, one day, the Thousand Star Alliance. The Accord will fade into memory, just like the Consortium before it.’
Megan pulled herself back into the chair with unsteady arms. None of the three men made a move to help her. ‘I saw the girl,’ she said. ‘I recognized her. She’s the Demarchy’s Speaker-Elect. What does she have to do with any of this? Or do you lot just kidnap religious leaders for the hell of it?’
‘Because,’ said Schelling, ‘we need to have something actually to offer the Wanderer, don’t we?’
‘Sir,’ said Tarrant, struggling to keep his voice level, ‘she does not need to know about—’
‘Shut up, Gregor,’ said Schelling. ‘If she’s going to negotiate with the Wanderer for us, she needs to know exactly what it is we have to offer. And we’ll negotiate those terms before we even depart Redstone, Miss Jacinth.’
Which means, thought Megan, that Bash is almost certainly somewhere close by. ‘Then tell me about the girl,’ she said.
‘We took her on the eve of Ascension Day,’ said Schelling. ‘I’m assuming, since you know who she is, that you’re aware of the significance of that day?’
‘It’s when the Speaker-Elect goes to the Magi ship in Dios,’ said Megan, struggling to control her deepest emotions. ‘The one the Demarchy likes to call the Ship of the Covenant.’
‘And then,’ said Schelling, his voice assuming a mocking tone, ‘if things had gone to plan, she would have ascended bodily to Heaven, in front of a select group of witnesses who would testify to that fact.’
Sifra snickered quietly from the other side of the room.
‘Or at least that’s the official explanation,’ Schelling continued. ‘Gregor posed undercover as the girl’s personal guard for some years, and thus uncovered the truth. It turns out that this process of “merging” with the ship in reality wipes the Speaker’s personality and replaces it with that of a woman called Dakota Merrick. Are you at all familiar with that name?’
‘She recovered the first Magi ship,’ Megan replied, in a monotone.
‘Somehow, sometime in the past, presumably before it crash-landed on Redstone, Merrick’s mind became absorbed into the Ship of the Covenant. All the Speakers – including the girl Gabrielle that you saw – are her genetic clones. They are identical except for their minds, which develop naturally, and their physical appearance, which is surgically altered from Speaker to Speaker to prevent anyone outside an inner circle within the Demarchy discovering the truth of what they really are. Are you following me so far?’
Megan made herself nod, despite her mounting sense of horror.
‘The girl is of no value as she is, so we ourselves are going to take her to Dios, and to the Ship of the Covenant. That would have been impossible for us if the Demarchy still existed, but now the ship is unguarded, we should have total control over the bonding process. Once it’s complete, and the girl’s mind has been replaced by that of Merrick, she’ll be able to act as a bridge via which the Wanderer will be able to access directly the vast quantity of data believed to reside within every Magi ship still in existence.’
‘So all this,’ said Megan, ‘wiping out the Demarchy, tricking me into coming after Bash, killing all those people – it was all just so you could kidnap that girl and “give” her to the Wanderer?’
‘Precisely.’ Schelling nodded. ‘Of course, by then she’ll have Merrick’s mind, but we plan to transport her there sleeping inside a medbox.’
‘You’re insane. Why the hell do you think the Wanderer gives a damn about the Magi ships?’
‘When you first communicated with the Wanderer,’ said Schelling, ‘you told Gregor about a war between the Makers and the Core Transcendence, the very civilization responsible for creating the Wanderer. Do I have the details right?’
‘So far,’ agreed Megan.
‘The Magi ships were created as weapons to be used specifically against the Makers, meaning that the Magi and the Core Transcendence shared the same adversary. Surely it’s reasonable, then, to think that the information contained within the Ship of the Covenant – or indeed any Magi ship – might prove to be of immense value to the Wanderer?’
Megan was entirely aware how much sense this all made. If not for the inhibitor Tarrant had once shot her with back on the Beauregard –
and which she had long since had removed – the Wanderer could easily have done the same with her, using her as a direct conduit to the memory banks of any of the surviving Magi ships. And now Schelling and his cronies were going to give that girl to the Wanderer for the exact same reason, precisely like ancient priests offering up a sacrifice to some volcano god.
‘All right, fine,’ she replied. ‘It makes sense. But why do you even need to take her all the way out there? Bash can be used as a bridge from anywhere, can’t he?’
‘Bash might be linked directly to the Wanderer,’ Schelling replied, ‘but Speaker-Elect Gabrielle is not. Therefore, before the Wanderer can make use of her as a conduit into the minds of the Magi ships, we have no choice but to physically transport her to it. After we’ve merged her with the Ship of the Covenant, of course.’
Megan laughed, the sound echoing faintly through the cave system. ‘You fucking idiots,’ she said, ‘haven’t you learned anything? As soon as you’re in range of it, it’s going to do its damnedest to steal your nova drive. I’ve seen directly into the mind of that thing, Schelling. It’s going to tear your ship apart and kill everyone on board the moment you show your faces.’
Schelling’s face coloured. ‘I’ve been as polite with you as I can, Miss Jacinth, but only because you’re useful to us. And not because I want your opinion, now or ever.’ He glanced at Sifra. ‘Is the bridge nearby?’
‘We have a specialist checking him over just now,’ Sifra replied. ‘He’s healthy enough, physically anyway, and his implants appear to be at optimum. There’s no reason not to start immediately.’
The bridge. Megan tasted something sour in the back of her throat. They couldn’t even allow Bash the decency of calling him by his own name. With just that single word, they had managed to remove his last trace of humanity.
‘Then we’ll do just that,’ said Schelling, turning towards the door.
TWENTY-FOUR
Megan
A couple of guards led Megan back out into the main cavern, then into one of the other prefab buildings it contained. She saw two men in the vestibule busily uncrating several medboxes that were clearly brand new. One had already been powered up, its interior glowing softly from within its semi-opaque lid.
These must, she realized, have come from General Schelling himself, as a gift for their Freeholder hosts. The same must also be true of the fabricator she had seen earlier.
They led her further into yet another room. Megan felt her heart skip a beat when she saw Bash seated in a high-backed chair, with virtual panels floating to either side of him.
A device had been fitted on his head that, like the one Tarrant and Sifra had used all those years before, looked like a tangle of black snakes. It was, she recalled, their way of controlling and monitoring Bash’s link with the Wanderer.
The elderly doctor who had treated her earlier was leaning over Bash, shining a light into first one eye and then the other. Bash stared blankly ahead during the whole procedure. The doctor nodded to Schelling as he, Tarrant and Sifra entered the room, before stepping past them and heading out of the door.
Tarrant moved up to one of the virtual panels and activated it.
‘Miss Jacinth,’ said Schelling, indicating a stool against the wall opposite where Bash sat, ‘if you will.’ He studied her for a moment. ‘You are going to cooperate, aren’t you?’
‘Do I have a choice?’ she asked.
Schelling studied her pointedly. She sighed and placed herself on the stool.
‘You must make it absolutely clear to the Wanderer that the girl is a bridge directly into the mind of a Magi ship,’ he told her, ‘and therefore to everything they know about the Makers. We’ll make an exchange: the girl, and remote access to the Magi ship at Dios, for whatever it gave to the Meridians. Oh, and, Miss Jacinth . . . ?’
Megan eyed him expectantly.
‘We have a specialized AI hooked up so as to monitor the data-flow,’ Schelling continued. ‘We’ll be recording everything you say to the Wanderer for future analysis. So if you had any plans to communicate with the Wanderer for your own reasons, don’t. Because, I promise you, we’ll know.’
‘We should start now,’ said Tarrant, making a final adjustment. ‘He’s all ready.’
Megan rested her elbows on her knees, letting her head fall into her hands and taking a couple of deep breaths.
‘Whenever you’re ready, Megan,’ said Tarrant.
She opened herself up, shifting her mental focus into her personal datascape – an artificial void, generated by her implants, that contained doors through which she could access data by whatever means it was made available to her. She pushed her mind towards the door beyond which lay Bash.
She didn’t have to wait long for something to happen. For, all of a sudden, she felt that very same sense of an alien presence she had first experienced years before on the Beauregard, when they had first jumped into the Wolf-Rayet system where the Wanderer hid. Schelling, the cavern, Redstone . . . all of that was gone.
She floated in silence and darkness, without any sense of her own body. The presence she had sensed changed . . . and became something more familiar.
Something that was not the Wanderer.
A whisper in the dark, which might have been her name.
No, she thought, it couldn’t be.
Bash?
Then that familiar presence was gone, replaced by something far more terrifying. There was a sound like moons grinding together, and in the next instant Megan found herself again confronted by the black-and-grey bulk of the Wanderer. Its multitudinous branches seemed to reach out to grasp for her, as if she had somehow crossed tens of thousands of light years in one single, cataclysmic leap.
She tried to scream as a barrage of alien thoughts and sensations flowed into her mind, but she no longer had a voice, or lungs, or even a body.
LOOK for the FOR THE move between MOVE BETWEEN STARS we WE search SEARCH FOR
The tide grew stronger, becoming a torrent of nonsensical data that threatened to overwhelm her.
THE magi MAGI star dwellers THE STAR DWELLERS FIRE that WASHES over OVER
It was like whispering into a tornado, but somehow, she knew, the Wanderer could hear her.
The barrage seemed to lessen somewhat. She steeled herself, then opened up wider, telling it about Gabrielle and the Ship of the Covenant.
There was no reaction, no response. It was like shouting into the wind. The Wanderer’s attention began to slip back into the abyss, and she fell, tumbling away.
She opened her eyes to find she had collapsed onto the floor, sweating and shaking and severely dehydrated. Her stool had tumbled on its side next to her.
‘Well?’ demanded Schelling, standing over her with a look of impatience. ‘Did you manage to get a reply?’
‘Not exactly. I thought you were recording everything?’
‘Yes, but—’
In that moment, she heard a sound like none she’d ever heard before, coming from the other side of the room.
From Bash.
She peered over at him. They all did. He was leaning forward in his seat, with eyes staring and mouth hanging open, a deep bass rumble emerging from somewhere in the depths of his throat like a protracted death rattle.
‘Mmm . . . magi.’ Bash’s mouth stretched itself wide, his tongue roving around the interior of his mouth as if unfamiliar with its contours. His eyes rolled in his head.
‘Mmm . . . machine. For. Move. Mmph. Moving between. Stars,’ he grunted, with apparently enormous effort, before falling back against his chair.
‘What the hell?’ said Schelling, turning to look questioningly at first Sifra, and then Tarrant. ‘You told me this man was brain-dead.’
‘That’s not him speaking,’ said Sifra, his eyes locked on Bash. ‘It’s the Wanderer.’
Bash started to shake, grinding his teeth together so vigorously that the sound made Megan�
�s own jaw ache.
‘There’s something wrong with him,’ declared Tarrant, with one eye still on the floating panels. ‘His brain’s all lit up as if he’s suffering a grand mal fit, and his heartbeat’s showing severe dysrhythmia. We need to stop this now, or he’s going to suffer a seizure, or a heart attack, or both.’
‘Not yet,’ said Schelling. ‘Maybe this is our best chance finally to talk to the Wanderer directly.’
Schelling stepped closer to Bash, who let out a piercing animal shriek that stopped him in his tracks.
‘Listen to me,’ Schelling addressed Bash. ‘We’ve got something we know you want – information about the Magi and also about the Makers. Tell me if you understand me.’
For the first time, Bash’s eyes actually focused on Schelling. Something about his expression sent a chill through Megan: it wasn’t human.
‘Mmmm-machine,’ said Bash. ‘For moving between. Stars.’
‘Do you understand what we’re offering you?’ said Schelling. ‘Information about the Magi and the Makers.’
Bash’s expression morphed rapidly from childish delight to terrible pain. ‘Magi,’ he grunted. ‘Yes.’
‘And in return, we want whatever it is you gave the Meridians.’
Megan covered her mouth. It was all too horrible to have to see Bash like this.
‘Mmm . . . ust come,’ said Bash. ‘Come. Here.’
‘It still hasn’t agreed to anything, General,’ Tarrant remarked quietly.
‘Yes, I’m aware of that,’ Schelling snapped, then he turned back to Bash. ‘We won’t come to you unless you agree to our terms first. And if you try and hurt us again, we’ll destroy you. Do you understand? We will destroy you utterly.’
‘Yes,’ Bash replied. ‘I understand.’
‘And our terms?’ said Schelling, almost shouting now. His skin was flushed, and damp with perspiration. ‘Will you give us what we ask for in return?’
Bash ducked his chin down almost to his chest. Ye . . . mmph . . . yes.’ He jerked upright, his eyes rolling upwards until only the whites were visible. All of a sudden his muscles unclenched and he slumped forward, sliding off the chair.
