Creation Machine

by Andrew Bannister

  ‘It was real.’ She stared at nothing for a moment. Then she shook herself. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Yes, Captain.’

  ‘Don’t be sarcastic.’ She paused. ‘Anyway, you used to be senior to me when we first met.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. Three years.’

  ‘I’ve been here for three years. It’s nearly four years since I joined up.’ She set off down the stair, with her mind ranging back to the start of those years, whether she wanted it to or not.

  So, nearly four years ago: it had been sixteen days since she had joined the rapidly growing militias of Society Otherwise, which she had done exactly at the moment she passed the age threshold meaning her family couldn’t prevent her; eight days since she had arrived at the training centre; and most of a day since they had decided the best way to use their last free time before immersive training was to get very, very chemical.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What about the mods?’

  They were in the smoke bar of the Dog’s Dick. Fleare wasn’t sure how they had got there. They had been there for a long time.

  ‘Sorry. Can’t hear. Too fucking noisy!’

  Fleare sighed, and leaned over so that her mouth was next to Kelk’s ear. ‘I said, what about the modifications?’

  Kelk grinned, and put his drink down. ‘I want a fucking enormous knob!’

  She slapped him gently. ‘Be serious.’

  ‘I can’t, I’m pissed.’ He looked at her worriedly. ‘So are you. How come you can do serious when you’re clattered?’

  She raised her hand again and he drew back in pretended terror, knocking his drink over. ‘Bollocks!’ He patted clumsily at the pool of spirit then looked up again, his eyes unfocused. ‘I still want an enormous knob.’

  Fleare sighed again and sat back. She was pissed, definitely, but Kelk had left her well behind. So had most of the others. She squinted up through the smoke haze at the old-fashioned timepiece above the bar, and winced. Four hours. It had seemed like a good idea when they started.

  She turned to the man on her other side and thumped his shoulder. ‘Hey!’

  His eyes wandered, and then focused. ‘Oh, hi, Fle. Great night, huh?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘These guys – and you as well – it feels like we’re really bonding, you know?’ He waved a hand. ‘Like we’ve been around for, like, years or something. Not just a few days.’

  ‘Sure.’ She nodded, carefully, and then leaned in closer to him. ‘Listen, Muz, did you think about getting modifications?’

  He pursed his lips. ‘What, that nano-y gene-y kinda stuff?’

  ‘Yeah, that.’ She searched his face. ‘So, did you?’

  He picked up his glass, examined it, and held it upside down over the table. ‘Empty. See? Empty!’ He raised the glass, still upside down, and roared towards the bar. ‘Oi! Some assistance here. Thirsty soldiers in major need, thankyouverymuch.’ He put the glass down, turned back towards Fleare, studied her face and then said: ‘What?’

  She suppressed a grin. ‘You aren’t thirsty, you’re drunk.’ He nodded gravely, and she went on. ‘And you aren’t a soldier – yet. You’re a cadet. You could still get busted straight out of here.’

  ‘Nah, I wouldn’t do that. Coz if I did I know I would break your heart. Ow!’ He flinched, and removed Fleare’s elbow from his ribs. ‘Besides, there’s always another way to stay.’ He looked directly at her with eyes that suddenly seemed more sober. ‘Get modified and you’re in for life. You realize that?’

  She held his gaze for a while, and then looked at her drink. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  The floor shivered. Muz swivelled his head so he was looking at the old clock. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Steam’s up. Only happens every ten years or so. Some coincidence we should have our last day off today. You want to watch?’

  She nodded gratefully. ‘Sure,’ she said. She stood up, and then grabbed at the table as another stronger tremor shook the room. ‘Let’s go.’ She slapped Kelk on the shoulder. ‘C’mon, piss-head. It’s showtime. We’re going to watch. Coming?’

  Kelk’s head was on the table. He raised it just as the barman thumped a full glass down in front of him. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Decision. Watch steamy thing, or drink.’ He laid a finger on the rim of the full glass, and wagged it towards the door. ‘Drink-watch. Watch-drink. Drin-wash . . .’ He frowned and his voice tailed away.

  Fleare looked at Muz and shrugged. She picked up the full glass and held it up to Kelk’s bewildered face. ‘Drink,’ she suggested, and he brightened and took the glass from her. Then she turned and followed Muz out of the bar. The floor shook again. Behind her there was a crash, about the right size to be someone falling off a chair. She didn’t look round.

  The balconies outside the bar were crowded. Muz elbowed roughly through. Fleare followed, resisting the urge to apologize, and nodding at a few people she recognized from the shuttle trip. Muz didn’t stop until he had forced his way to the gnarled timber rail that formed the edge of the balcony. Fleare caught up with him and took hold of the rail.

  Wisps of steam curled up from below and wrapped around the massive Pump Trees. The smooth water-engorged trunks formed a close, dense circle around the outside of the bar. Fleare looked up through the warm mist to the canopy of Shower Buds a hundred metres above her head. Even at that distance the reddish-brown buds looked swollen.

  The balcony shook, strongly enough to knock a few of the least steady to their knees. Most of them stayed there. Muz nodded. ‘It’s coming,’ he said. He held out his hands. ‘You wanna hold on to me?’

  She shook her head and tightened her grip on the rail as the first drops of rain hit her.

  When she had first seen this place from space, only eight days before, Fleare had thought it looked like a storm – or a pimple or a target – a distinct, raised, rust-coloured disc on a small, dull, tawny planet. It might have ended up with any of several names. In the end, most people had settled on Nipple, which was one of the politer ones.

  ‘Weird, huh?’

  She had pushed herself away from the obs screen and turned to look at the speaker. He was tall and skinny, dressed in brigade kit like hers, but faded, and with shoulder pips that said he had been in for a year. She drew herself upright but he smiled and held out his hands, palms down. ‘No salutes,’ he said. ‘I’m only cadet-plus, not full officer. Besides, I’m shit at hierarchy.’ He held out a hand. ‘Muzimir fos Gelent. Muz.’

  She took the hand. ‘Fleare Haas. Fleare.’ His fingers felt dry and muscular.

  He gestured towards the planet. ‘Definitely weird, in a slightly horny sort of way. Happened at the end of the Second Machine Wars.’

  ‘Happened?’ Fleare looked back to the little planet, which was filling more of the screen as the shuttle dropped into orbit. ‘Didn’t it start out like that, then?’

  ‘Nah.’ He shoved himself away from the rail. ‘Look, we won’t be hooked up to transfer for at least an hour. Buy you a drink?’

  She studied him for a moment. ‘Is this a pick-up?’

  He grinned. ‘Ha. Busted! Very inappropriate. Abuse of position.’ He turned back to the screen, and then gave her a stagey sideways glance. ‘But anyway – buy you a drink?’

  It had been a long journey, Fleare told herself, and the air on board the creaking little military shuttle was oily and acrid. Of course she was thirsty. The fingers and the grin had nothing to do with it. Obviously.

  ‘Okay,’ she said.

  The shuttle had no bar, only vending slots that served nothing stronger than fruit juices and herbal infusions. Muz fetched up in front of one, swiped a credit chip through the reader and raised his eyes to the display. ‘What do you know. It thinks I’ve got some credit left. Suckers!’ He turned to Fleare. ‘What are you having?’

  She chose a sour chai and Muz dialled two. They took their drinks back through the mostly humanoid crowds to the obs screen. Fleare sipped, and pulled a f
ace at the astringent taste. ‘Yuk.’ She turned to Muz. ‘So, tell me about Nipple. It might take my mind off this stuff.’

  ‘Ha!’ He sipped, and looked at the glass in horror. ‘Something of a challenge there.’ He shrugged, and screwed up his face as if it helped his memory. ‘Actually there’s not that much to tell. It was a boring little planet with a bit of underground water and just enough atmosphere to support a few misfits who wanted a quiet life. No native fauna. Millions of years of sweet fuck all. Then things got interesting.’

  He was a good story-teller. Fleare liked that in a man. She listened.

  The story he told her began two thousand years earlier. In those days Nipple had the more prosaic name of Salamis 1. Salamis was a smallish yellowish star in the third shell of the Spin, a long way from anything useful or interesting. The total population of its only planet peaked, so it was said, at five hundred stinking hermits in five hundred stinking huts. Total exports equalled total imports, at zero. Limited plant life allowed the dedicated to grow food, as long as your definition of food began and ended at a primitive maize and a couple of tough starchy roots.

  The small wars that were endemic to the sector at the time somehow swirled round the little planet without touching it; as well as lacking every other useful attribute, Salamis didn’t even offer a strategically valuable position.

  Which made it all but impossible to understand why anyone should try to destroy it.

  Fleare wrinkled her forehead. ‘Destroy?’

  Muz waggled a hand in front of him. ‘Well, that’s what it looked like, although it was probably an accident.’ He drained his glass and put it down with a look of relief. ‘Ever heard of a race called the Zeft?’

  She frowned. ‘Maybe. Remind me. Can’t remember.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. It wasn’t exactly their finest hour. More like their last, actually.’ He shrugged. ‘Bit players. Or so everyone thought.’

  Fleare nodded. Her own memory began to supplement the story Muz was telling, as fragments of the expensive education she had done her best to ignore began to assemble themselves. Shit, she thought to herself. I wasn’t wasting Daddy’s money as badly as I thought. Must try harder.

  The Zeft had been humanoid, and aggressive in a limited, pointless sort of way. They had assembled a small but nasty five-system, ten-planet empire based mainly on crude technological theft, a rigid caste system and a bit of slave trading, and had hung on to it for several hundred years by keeping out of the way of the real grown-ups in the sector. At any one time the Spin contained two or three Zefts, and the best way to deal with them was to hold your nose and move on.

  Then, without any warning, a battle fleet that no one knew the Zeft possessed had turned up in one of the last battles of the Second Machine Wars, announced their intention of joining what everyone could already see was the winning side, issued a garbled warning to the inhabitants of Salamis 1 – and fired something.

  They probably intended it to be a surprise, and the effect had presumably surprised the Zeft very much indeed, although not for long. Whatever it was produced a hundred-thousand-kilometre ball of plasma, centred on their fleet. When it had cleared, the Zeft were simply gone.

  Fleare stared at him. ‘Just gone? Nothing left?’

  ‘Nothing. Not even dust. Just a heap of hot atoms.’

  ‘Shit.’ She thought for a moment. ‘So what the hell was it?’

  ‘The weapon? No one knows. People are still studying the area, of course. Best guess is that the Zeft somehow managed to pinch an artefact left over either from the First Machine Wars or, more likely, from the original Construction Phase. Decided it offered a path to immortality and proved themselves right in the worst way.’

  Fleare nodded. Artefacts popped up occasionally. These days they were supposed to be handed in to the Hegemony, on pain of alarming sanctions. Mostly they were either useless or incomprehensible, but there was always the risk that something seriously potent would turn up.

  She turned to the obs screen. ‘So what did that have to do with this?’ She waved at the reddish-brown aureole and frowned. It really did look like a nipple.

  ‘Ah. That.’ Muz leaned low over the obs rail as if he was studying the little planet. ‘I said there was nothing left after the fireball. Not quite accurate. Something shot out of it. Something small and very fast and very hot, piece of Zeft debris most likely. Whatever it was, it was going at a hell of a clip. It drilled a hole straight through the crust. Connected a lot of hot magmatic water to the outside world, and created, well, that.’ His hands described a rough circle in front of him. ‘A whole new ecosystem, five thousand klicks across, based on warm water. Pump Trees, hot springs, Rain Sharks. There’s a pub in the middle of it. It’s pretty cool. I’ll show you when we get there. If you like?’

  She looked at the planet and then at Muz. ‘I like,’ she said.

  And now, eight days later, they were in the middle of the nipple itself. The rain became heavier, and the ground shook continually as hundreds of geysers sent steaming, mineral-rich water shooting up. The spouting water splashed against the underside of the platform, and little jets found their way through the gaps between the planks. The warm moist air smelled of minerals and leaf mould and damp timber.

  Fleare felt Muz nudge her. He was pointing upwards. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘That one’s ready to blow. See?’

  She squinted through the mist towards the Pump Tree he was pointing at, and nodded. The spray buds that crowned the tree were trembling. A pod of Bud Chimps, invisible in their camouflage until they moved, screeched all at once as if they were one animal and threw themselves away from the tree.

  The distended buds swelled visibly. Then they burst.

  The concussion shook the platform. Around Fleare and Muz, dozens of people were knocked off their feet and lay sprawled on the rough planks. Most of them stayed there, holding on to railings or each other as the sheets of sweet, sap-tainted water fell around them.

  It was like a chain reaction. One tree set off another, until it seemed that the whole spinney was roaring water into the air.

  Fleare kept her feet somehow. She screwed up her eyes against the hammering curtains of water. With blurred vision she watched as shoals of Optimist Fish began their desperate climb up the falling rain. Not one in a thousand would get high enough to plant their fertilized eggs in the depleting buds. For those that did, it would take a whole year for the eggs to sink through the Pump Trees’ draining systems to ground level, and another nine for the fish to grow to maturity in time for the next Spray Season.

  She turned to Muz, and laughed. He had his hands braced on the railing and his head tipped back, eyes closed and mouth open. Rivulets of sap and water ran over his lips, and his throat rippled as he swallowed.

  She nudged him. ‘Hey!’

  His eyes snapped open, and he turned to her, licking his lips. ‘What?’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What does it look like? Taking a drink.’ He grinned at her. ‘You’re going to ask why.’

  She considered. ‘I might slap you instead. Smug bastard.’

  He shook his head. ‘Nah, you won’t do that. Nice girls don’t hit drunks. Anyway, you want to know the answer.’

  She studied her fingernails.

  ‘Okay!’ Muz was still shaking his head. ‘Three reasons. First, I’m thirsty. Second, it’s supposed to be good for you. Full of natural thingies and stuff. And third,’ and he lowered his voice, ‘it’s a guaranteed aphrodisiac.’

  ‘The hell you say.’ She kept her own voice level.

  ‘Nah, I made that bit up.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She turned back to the obs rail. ‘I’d have walked off if I thought you were really that tacky.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Much later, she let a lazy finger trail down the short, damp hairs on his chest. He stirred, but didn’t wake from his sated sleep. She frowned, and pressed harder. As his eyes flut
tered open she swung herself astride him. He groaned. ‘Oh, no. Again?’

  She put a finger to his lips. ‘Oh, yes,’ she told him. ‘Remember, I could have walked off.’

  ‘Ah. That’s true. Ahh . . .’

  Fleare woke slowly, and lay as still as possible while she grew into her hangover. It was an impressive one. She seemed to remember earning it.

  After a few minutes she trusted herself to move. She rolled over and found herself pushing against something warm. She pushed harder and it moaned. She pulled back the cover and saw Muz, face slack. Fleare grinned to herself and rolled over to the other side of the bed.

  She achieved upright on the second attempt and stood, swaying, until her stomach and her inner ears settled down. Then she took stock. She was not in her own quarters. The room was cadet standard, just big enough for a bed, a table and a wash cabinet, and it smelled of last night’s alcohol and slightly more recent bodies. She stood as still as possible and concentrated on breathing through her mouth.

  When she was fairly sure she was not going to be sick she walked over to the wash cabinet, shrugged off a T-shirt she didn’t remember either owning or putting on and stepped into the shower. The water was cold. You’re a Soc O soldier, she told herself. You can do this.

  Society Otherwise was what happened when an idea became a movement and then, somehow, got organized without destroying itself. It had begun with groups of students unpicking the encryption of commercial news conduits and watching with their mouths hanging open as they realized just how mendacious their parents’ generation could be. It had gained weight from the remnants of left-wing groups, washed up and marginalized by the swelling oligarchical tide of the Hegemony as it rolled through minor societies across the Inner Spin, leaving them sweating and indebted in its wake. It liaised with a couple of private militias and found itself suddenly able to project real power – and therefore suddenly of close interest to the Hegemony. From there on, Society Otherwise had run out of choices. It had to fight.

  Fleare let herself turn under the spray for a few minutes, feeling her body beginning to forgive her. Then she shut off the water, stepped out of the cabinet and collided with a naked Muz.