The Chemical Mage: Supernatural Hard Science Fiction (The Tegression Trilogy Book 1)

by Felix R. Savage

  She could smell his cologne, not too strong, foresty. She laid her cheek lightly against his chest. To her astonishment, she realized that there was something she needed, and it was right here.

  “I’ll let you know,” she said.

  “I’m not hitting on you,” he said.

  She laughed. It felt strange and good. “Yes, you are. But I don’t mind.”

  His lips tasted of maple syrup. Later, he asked her to call him Axel.

  CHAPTER 24

  SPRAWLED ON A CHAISE longue in the dark atrium of the Bests’ duplex, swimming in a borrowed bathrobe, Meg phoned Tan.

  “Do you know what time it is?” were his first words.

  “Don’t try and tell me you were asleep,” Meg said. Her infocals said it was a little after 3 AM. The witching hour, the hour for ghosts to appear. But on a rogue planet with no sun, 3 AM was merely a social convention. And she knew Tan was just as FTL-lagged as she was. Just as haunted. No need for imaginary ghosts. They had real Ghosts lodged in their heads, gaunt-faced, dead-eyed, speaking in the language of bullets. She fidgeted with the cuff of her bathrobe. She had left Axel snoring in his emperor-size bed.

  “Fine,” Tan said. “I wasn’t asleep. What’s up?”

  “Have you heard from Colm?”

  “No. Have you?”

  “Obviously not.”

  “He was going to go report to Crasibo Lovelace.”

  “Yeah. Well, let me know if you hear from him.”

  Tan let out a sigh. “Will do. Goodnight, Meg.”

  She broke the connection. The waterfall trickled musically. She rose and tiptoed between the trees to the window.

  Last time she was here, this window had displayed a soothing view of Vilnius Bay. Now, it displayed the flashing, sparkling towers of the Uzzizellan embassy, which had parked itself right in front of Regnar. What a tawdry pile. Worse than those consciously anachronistic castles people were plopping down all over Earth. The embassy was sui generis: medieval pagoda meets cruise ship, with bonus neon.

  She whirled at the sound of rustling leaves.

  Best—Axel, she reminded herself—stumbled between the trees. “Wondered where you were,” he said, draping his arms over her shoulders from behind.

  “Just admiring the view,” she said.

  “It’s outrageous. We paid good money for this elevation. Now we get to admire queazel architecture 24-7.”

  “You could point the window somewhere else. It doesn’t have to be a feed of what’s actually outside.”

  “It’s the principle of the thing.”

  “Right. No, I agree with that.” She paused. “Do you think they’re on the level?”

  “The Uzzizellans?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Of course they’re not on the goddamn level,” Axel said with startling intensity. “They’re screwing us, just like the sentrienza, just like every other intelligent species that’s decided Homo sapiens is the problem child of the galaxy. We just haven’t figured out the details yet.” His arms tightened around her. “It almost makes you appreciate the Ghosts,” he said with bitter sarcasm. “At least they’re honest about wanting us all dead.”

  Meg, who saw herself as a person in need of tenderness and careful handling, slipped into the opposite role with surprising ease. She turned in his arms and hugged him. “You’re so tense.”

  He laughed weakly. “I disabled my esthesia implant. Without it, I get a bit ... tense sometimes.”

  Meg recalled that Colm’s implant was defective. If only he could just disable it. But his came from Crasibo Lovelace, whereas Axel’s presumably came from Best Industries. The tech was on a whole different level. “Why’d you disable it?” she asked.

  “I don’t do much flying these days.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “I’ve got a ship. I just don’t have the time. You know how it is.”

  “You work too hard,” she diagnosed. “Maybe I can help you decompress.” Feeling daring and generous, she slid her hand inside his pyjama bottoms.

  They staggered back into his bedroom. Meg pushed him down on the silky, forest-scented sheets and rode him.

  “I love you,” he gasped, fingers digging into her hips.

  That seemed a bit premature, but it was still nice to hear. She leaned down and nipped his lips with her teeth. She did not think about Colm again until morning.

  *

  COLM WOKE UP ON A FILTHY carpet with the smell of ash in his nostrils. The first thing he saw was a discarded syringe lying six inches from his face. He rolled onto his back and saw graffiti on the underside of a table. In Space, the Downside is the Upside. Profound.

  He hauled himself up onto a banquette cushioned with memory foam that thousands of bottoms had compressed into a thin pad. Morning light—that is, artificial morning light: low-intensity, diffuse—filtered through a nearby doorway. He put together the pieces, figured out where he was.

  Slapping his pockets, he found his computer, his Void Eagle, and his cigarettes. He hadn’t been robbed. That was something.

  But where was Gil?

  “Your friend left,” said the boy sitting by the door. A runner, the kid went to fetch the drugs people ordered. Even down here, you couldn’t keep restricted medications on the premises of a bar. “Never saw an alien drink like that. He was doping, too, wasn’t he?”

  “Yeah. He left?”

  “What I said. Walked out of here on his own two, uh, eight feet. Been me, I’d’ve been under the table. You were.”

  Colm laughed with the kid. He’d once been a Navy pilot. How had he gone from that, to waking up on the floor of a drug den on Gna?

  Agony stabbed his side. He saw the Crasibo Lovelace ground techs hammering away at a cluster of shiny new patches on the fuselage of the crewship. That’s why, of course. That’s how he’d ended up like this.

  He suddenly remembered that he had an appointment. Shit. Running late!

  He stumbled to the toilet and pissed, then dunked his head under the cold tap. He came up spluttering, dried his face on his t-shirt, and rushed out of the bar.

  *

  “PLEASE,” MEG SAID. “Axel, you’ve got to help.”

  “What are you worried about?” They were having their second breakfast in twelve hours. This time it was fruit, croissants, yogurt, and espresso, on the patio, a feature of the duplex Meg had not discovered before. The paved rectangle was surrounded on three sides by remote-feed views of Regnar’s main drag, so it seemed like they were looking down at the busy street. Meg appreciated the seamless integration of technology and reality: it was neither crude nor trying too hard to be cutting-edge. She also appreciated the espresso. But she was now seriously concerned about Colm.

  “He’s been out of touch for almost twenty-four hours.”

  “So?” Axel peeled a dragonfruit.

  “You must have access to every camera in the city. You could run a search for him.”

  Axel cut the fruit into sections. “Why did you come home with me, anyway?”

  “Huh?”

  “Was it a pity fuck? I don’t need that crap.”

  Meg flinched. The blood rose to her face. “Listen up, buddy. I’ve had pity fucks. They don’t stay for breakfast. Also, if that’s your idea of morning-after conversation, it’s no wonder you’re on your own.”

  His mouth tightened. Then he forced a smile. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Damn right you shouldn’t have.” Meg sat back and sipped her espresso. The apology didn’t make her feel any better. His cynicism cheapened the moment, poisoned the tenderness she had begun to feel for him. She began to mentally extricate herself, planning her route back to the spaceport. Maybe Colm was back on board the ship, busy with the repairs.

  Axel said in a conciliatory tone, “But seriously, why are you in such a hurry to find him?”

  She weighed the truth against the secret Zhanna had confided in her. Her bad mood produced a kind of vengefulness, with Colm as its targe
t. Screw keeping his secrets for him. “His esthesia implant is malfunctioning. He’s gotten hooked on tropodolfin, maybe other shit as well, I don’t know. He might be in trouble.”

  Axel sat forward. It startled her how fast he went from barely interested to fully engaged. “Where’d he get his implant?”

  “It’s pro ware, not some cheap consumer knockoff.”

  “I know, but where’d he get it?”

  “Crasibo Lovelace, of course.”

  Axel pushed away his uneaten fruit and stood up. “Let’s go find him.”

  *

  AS MEG HAD GUESSED, Best Industries had insider access. A few minutes on the computer got Axel the information they needed. Before they set out, he had the servants bring new clothes for Meg—well, new to her, but they looked old: a ratty blue coverall and work boots. Stepping into a similar coverall, Best explained, “Where we’re going, you don’t want to look like a middle-class citizen with a good job.”

  “This is the shit they give out for free to refugees,” Meg complained.

  “Yeah, exactly.”

  “What’s wrong with my own clothes?” Sighing, she put the coverall on.

  Axel smiled. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look sexy as hell in that thing.” He held up a thin, glittering necklace. It was a chain, every link a microscopic pair of interlocking hands. “How about a finishing touch?”

  “That doesn’t look like something a refugee would have.”

  “I ordered it for you. Pure platinum.”

  “Oh, no way. I can’t accept that ...” She shivered involuntarily as he fastened it around her neck.

  The necklace and the coverall actually added up to the perfect disguise. When they got to Loftar 46, it thronged with refugees incongruously wearing their wealth in the form of jewellery. The fall of the Gliese system—Earth’s oldest and richest colony—had inundated Gna with a superior class of evacuee. They queued by the hundred at the chop shops and telework registries, trying to sell their implants, or if they were more optimistic about the future, their labor.

  Loftar 46 was an industrial dome, recently pressurized to house the incoming millions. The air tasted like burnt plastic, and the noise of machinery shivered the high metal walls. The place they were heading for was on the fifth floor. The queue snaked up a smelly flight of stairs. Meg and Axel squeezed up past the refugees, earning dirty looks. They passed a pair of uniformed Marine Corps recruiters working the queue.

  “That’s where most of them’ll end up,” Axel said in a low voice.

  “Is that our new strategy? Throw cannon fodder at the enemy?”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  “The Ghosts copy us, you know. I hope we’re not going to start copying them.”

  “We should be so lucky,” Axel said. “If we could copy the way they travel about, we wouldn’t be losing.”

  At the top of the stairs, the queue stretched across a warehouse-sized room. Meg heard the whine of medical drills and bonesaws. Staffers moved around with computers, confirming appointments. The peculiar thing about this clinic was that the staff were all queazels. They stood vertically on their rearmost feet to put their faces on a level with the humans’. They wore cute little smocks that said Crasibo Lovelace Bioware.

  Meg spotted Colm standing in line, only a couple of people from the front. She wordlessly nudged Axel, who brushed past her.

  “Looks like we got here in time,” he greeted Colm.

  Colm looked like shit. Leathers rolled down to his waist, joke t-shirt: If You Lived on Majriti IV, You’d Be Dead Now. He smelled like he’d showered in booze. He scowled in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

  “Are you having work done?” Meg said.

  “No.”

  Axel cast a glance at the other people in line, moved closer to Colm, and spoke rapidly. “That queazel junk in your head. They told you it’s betaware, right? It isn’t.”

  Meg stared. How did Axel know this?

  “It’s doing exactly what it was designed to.”

  CHAPTER 25

  “YOUR IMPLANT’S NOT MALFUNCTIONING,” Best said. “I’ll prove it to you. Get them to remove it. Give it to me. I’ll have our labs analyze it.”

  Colm ignored him, gazing at Meg, trying to figure out how she was involved. She must have found out somehow about his implant’s buggy feedback function, and told Axel Best, of all people. What had she been thinking? And what was she doing with Best, anyway? ... Wasn’t she standing a bit too close to him?

  Oh, no way. No way could she be sleeping with this ... this handsome young billionaire, Colm acknowledged sourly to himself.

  Colm’s younger sister, Bridget, was married with two kids, but when she was in uni she’d briefly dated a political princeling who drove a Porsche. Every time Colm saw the guy he’d wanted to punch him in the nose. That was how he felt now.

  A queazel staffer teetered up to them. “Colm Mackenzie? Appointment at 9:45?”

  “That’s me,” Colm said in relief.

  “Follow me, please,” the queazel said, tapping on its computer.

  “Wait,” Best said. “Hear me out.”

  “Go on, then.”

  “I can’t explain here!” Best glared at the queazel. “Just get them to remove the implant.”

  “I need it to do my job,” Colm said. “Meg, I’ll catch up with you later.” He followed the queazel. Glanced back. Best looked exasperated. Had he actually thought Colm would change his plans on his say-so? Perhaps he had. Hundreds of Best Industries employees probably did that all the time.

  The queazel showed him into a treatment room. Still smarting from Best’s unwanted intervention, Colm settled onto a couch sheathed in crackly white disposable silk. Another queazel, in a medic’s coat, bustled in. “How are you today, Mr. Mackenzie? Would you prefer general anesthetic, or local?”

  “Local, please,” Colm said. The cleanliness of the clinic, and the high-end medical robot poised over the couch, put him at ease. The place might look scuzzy from the outside, but it was professionally run. They’d install the upgrade Gil had offered. It would restore the implant’s mute function. Colm would be able to live a normal life again.

  “Please relax.” The queazel medic inserted an IV into his neck. Liquid cold spread from the site, through Colm’s neck and up the side of his head. “While we wait for the anesthetic to take effect, I’ll review the procedure I will be performing today.”

  “Great.”

  “I’ll be updating the hardware settings of your esthesia implant to support the newest version of the Crasibo Lovelace software.”

  “Brilliant.”

  “It’s a relatively simple operation. However, this is brain surgery, so our standard precautions and disclaimers apply.”

  The queazel handed Colm a computer. He scanned a standard-looking list of terms and conditions. The best bit came at the end: Amount Due: $0.00. Gil had covered the cost of the operation, as promised. Colm signed his name and handed the computer back.

  “Thank you,” the clinician said.

  “Wait a minute.” Colm hesitated. “I have a question. If, hypothetically, I wanted to have the implant removed. Could you do that?”

  The queazel swayed back. “That would not be an easy operation. The implant is fully integrated with your neurotransmitter receptors.”

  “The Fleet removed my previous implant—”

  “That would have been a rather primitive piece of technology. This one is more advanced. Removing it would carry serious health risks. The operation would have to be performed at a major hospital, and would be likely to cost a great deal.”

  “I see. Well, I was just asking.”

  “This operation ought to resolve any issues you have been experiencing.”

  “It’s fine. Carry on.”

  Clamps extruded from the couch and closed gently on Colm’s head, immobilizing it.

  The medical robot descended.

  There was no pain, but Colm did not care for the se
nsations of grinding and probing inside his skull. He distracted himself with thoughts of his great-grandfather’s house on Skye.

  It was called the Free Church Manse. Great-Grandpa, also named Colm Mackenzie, had been a Lutheran pastor. Colm had first seen the place when he was in his early twenties, before he joined the Navy, when he flew a group of energy executives to Skye for some wind power conference. With the day to kill, he’d driven out from Portree to check out the ancestral dump, as his father always referred to it.

  Skye’s austere scenery appealed to him. The brown winter hills looked pickled, like corpses preserved in a bog. But flowering gorse and sea-pinks enlivened the treeless coast, and the far-apart houses had cheery pastel paint jobs. The people who lived here liked living here, that was clear. They had Volvos, kayaks overturned on racks, tricycles in their driveways.

  The Free Church Manse broke the pattern.

  It was a ruin glowering through a windbreak of neglected pines.

  The church next door had vanished, but for a few foundation stones. Bushwhacking through the bracken, Colm found traces of a drystone wall that had once ringed both buildings. The manse stood in a superb defensive position, on a rise with views down to the sea. It had clearly once been a fortress, and could be again.

  There were castles going up all over Scotland, all over the British Isles and all over Europe for that matter. The Americans had started the trend but when the Old World got in on the act, there was no stopping them. This, after all, was the historical home of castle architecture, and the ancient crafts lived on, revived in the 24th century by one of those swings of the pendulum away from modern technology, back towards the past. Masonry, glaziery, thatching, cabinetry, smithing ...thousands of people in Scotland could match their medieval forebears’ expertise, and now there was a booming market for their skills. Even Colm’s father had paid a joiner to build a play castle that he hauled around to events. He had no time for the actual castle-builders—numpties, he called them. Do they think their walls will save them when the aliens invade? Jesus.

  In his cynical way, Lloyd Mackenzie had put his finger on it. The Ghosts may only have been bad news from distant colonies at that time, but something already told humanity to beware, prepare, hunker down, hide their loved ones behind stout walls.