A ring of cryogenic storage tanks around the rim of the bay finally detonated under the unceasing blast of the starship’s exhausts. It was a chain reaction, sending out vast plumes of white vapour and spinning chunks of debris. The entire docking bay structure began to crumple under the force of the multiple explosions. Momentum damping mechanisms in the spaceport spindle bearings veered towards overload as the impulse juddered its way through the framework.
The wave front from the tank explosions struck the Villeneuve’s Revenge, fragments of wreckage puncturing the dark silicon hull in a dozen places. The starship was buffeted violently. An event horizon sealed over the hull, then shrank to nothing.
* * *
It was Gerald Skibbow’s third trip to the lounge: a spacious semicircular room cut into Guyana’s rock, with wide sliding-glass doors leading out onto a veranda that gave an excellent view down the interior of the asteroid’s second habitation cavern. Despite the apparent easygoing nature, the lounge was at the centre of the navy’s secure medical sanatorium, although the security measures were deliberately unobtrusive. Staff and patient-inmates mingled openly, producing what the doctors hoped was a casual atmosphere. It was intended to redevelop the social interactivity skills of the inmates who had been bruised by traumas, stress, and, in several cases, stringent interrogation. Anyone was free to come and go as they pleased; sit in the big spongy chairs and contemplate the view, have a drink and a snack, or play the simple games provided.
Gerald Skibbow didn’t like the lounge at all. The artificial asteroid cavern was too removed from his experience. Its cyclorama landscape unsettled him, and the lounge’s expensive modern setting reminded him of the arcology he’d yearned to escape from. He didn’t want memories. His family dwelt in memories, the only place they did live now.
For the first few days after his personality debrief he had begged and pleaded with his captors to end those memories with their clever devices (that or death). The nanonics were still entombed within his skull, it would take so little effort on their part to cleanse him, a purge of fiery impulses and his past would be gone. But Dr Dobbs had smiled kindly and shaken his head, saying they wanted to cure him, not persecute him further.
Gerald had come to despise that mild smile, the utter intransigence it fronted. It condemned him to live amid a swirl of wondrously awful images: those of the savannah, the shared laughter, the tired happiness which had come at the end of each day, the days themselves, filled with simple achievement. In short, happiness. And in knowing it, he knew all he had lost, and was never to regain. He convinced himself the Kulu military people were deliberately submerging him in his own recollections as a punishment for his involvement in Lalonde and the outbreak of possession. There was no other reason for them to refuse him help. They blamed him, and wanted him to remember that. Memories emphasised that he had nothing, that he was worth nothing, that he had failed the only people he’d ever loved. Memories which kept him permanently looped in his failure.
His other wounds, physical ones from the encounter with Jenny Harris’s team, had been treated efficiently and effectively by medical packages. His face and head sported fresh scars from the time a few days ago when he’d tried to claw the lovely smiling faces from within his brain; fingernails tearing at the skin to let him get at the bone of the skull and prise it open so that his darling family could escape and unfetter him. But the strong medical orderlies had jumped on him, and Dr Dobbs’s smile had become sad. There had been fresh batches of chemicals to make him drowsy, and extra sessions when he had to lie on the psychiatrist’s comfy couch and tell everyone how he felt. It hadn’t done any good. How could it?
Gerald sat on one of the tall stools at the lounge’s bar and asked for a cup of tea. The steward smiled and said: “Yessir. I’ll get you some biscuits, too.”
His tea and biscuits arrived on a tray. He poured, concentrating hard. These days his reactions weren’t too sharp and his vision seemed to lack any real depth perception. Flat and unresponsive; so perhaps it was the world at fault, not him.
He rested his elbows on the polished wood of the bar, and cradled the cup in his hands, sipping slowly. His eyes scanned the ornamental plates and cups and vases in the showcase behind the bar. Not interested, but at least it kept him from looking out of the veranda windows and receiving the wickedly vertiginous view of the cavern. The first time they’d brought him into the lounge he’d tried to jump over the veranda. It was a hundred and fifty metres above the ground, after all. Two of the other inmates had actually cheered and laughed as he hurdled over the metal railing. But there was a net to snag him. Dr Dobbs had smiled tolerantly after it had stopped bouncing and winched him in.
At the far end of the bar, a holoscreen was switched to a news show (presumably censored—they wouldn’t give inmates anything too contentious). Gerald shifted along a couple of stools so he could hear the commentary. The presenter was a handsome, silver-haired man speaking in level, measured tones. And smiling—naturally. The image changed to a low-orbit shot of Ombey, focusing on the Xingu continent. A curious appendicular finger glowed crimson amid the dour browns and greens of the earth, prodding out from the bottom of the main land mass. It was, Gerald heard, the latest anomaly to engulf Mortonridge. Unfortunately it meant that no one was able to see what was happening beneath. Royal Kulu Navy sources confirmed it matched the reality dysfunction effect observed on the Laymil homeworld; but emphasised that whatever mischief the possessed were cooking up below it there was no possibility of them removing Ombey from the universe. There simply weren’t enough of them; they didn’t have the strength. And the red cloud had been halted at the firebreak. After two laser shots from a low-orbit SD platform the cloud’s leading edge had recoiled, yielding to the negotiated boundary.
The disconcerting image of cloud was replaced by a sequence of fast pictures of big government buildings and uniformed officials with grim faces bustling through their doors and ignoring shouted questions. Gerald found the report hard to follow, although it seemed to be hinting that the Mortonridge situation was going to be “resolved,” that “certain” plans were being “initiated.”
Fools. They didn’t realize. Not even sucking out every piece of knowledge in his brain had brought them understanding.
He sipped some more of his tea, thoughts calming to a more contemplative mood. Perhaps if he was lucky the possessed would begin another offensive; that way his misery would be extinguished for good as he was crushed back into the numbing darkness.
Then came the report about yesterday’s hellhawk incursion. Five of them had emerged into the Ombey system; two of their number skipping high above the planet, three jumping about between the system’s handful of settled asteroids. Always maintaining their distance, keeping well outside the range of SD platforms, and sliding back into wormholes as soon as Royal Navy ships were dispatched to interdict. Apparently their missions were to datavise a sensorium recording coded for open access into every communications net they could establish a channel with.
Leonard DeVille appeared to say how unfortunate the recording was, and that he hoped people would be sensible enough to see it for the crude propaganda it represented. In any case, he added contemptuously, with the civil starflight proscription in force, anyone sad enough to succumb would be safe from Kiera Salter’s clutches. They would simply be unable to reach Valisk.
“There now follows,” said the handsome anchorman, “a brief extract of the recording; though we are voluntarily complying with government wishes and not playing it in full.”
The holoscreen showed a beautiful teenage girl whose flimsy clothes were virtually falling off her.
Gerald blinked. His vision was deluged by a dizzy rush of memories, the pictures more vivid than anything his eyes provided. Past and present wrestled for dominance.
“You know, they’re going to tell you that you shouldn’t be accessing this recording,” the girl said. “In fact, they’re going to get quite serious about that—”
/> Her voice: a harmony which threaded through every memory. Gerald’s teacup hit the top of the bar and spun away, flinging the hot liquid over his shirt and trousers.
“—your mum and dad, your big brother, the authorities in charge of wherever you live. Can’t think why. Except, of course, I’m one of the possessed—”
“Marie?” His throat was so clogged he could barely whisper. Two of the inmate supervision staff sitting at a table behind him exchanged a troubled look.
“—one of the demons—”
“Marie.” Tears brimmed up in Gerald’s eyes. “Oh, my God. Darling!”
The two supervision staff rose to their feet, one of them datavising an alert code into the sanatorium’s net. Other inmates in the lounge had begun to notice Gerald’s behaviour. Grins zipped around: the loony’s at it again.
“You’re alive!” He shoved both hands palm-down on the top of the bar and tried to vault over. “Marie!” The steward ran towards him, an arm outstretched. “Marie! Darling, baby.” With his wobbly senses, Gerald completely misjudged his leap and went crashing onto the floor behind the bar. The steward had time for a fast yelp of shock as his flying feet tangled with Gerald’s sprawled body and sent him tumbling to smack painfully into the base of the bar. A flailing arm sent a cascade of glasses smashing down on the hard tiles.
Gerald shook the glass splinters from his hair and jerked his head back. Marie was still there above him, still smiling coyly and invitingly. At him. She wanted Daddy back.
“MARIE.” He surged up at the same time the two supervisors arrived at the bar. The first snatched hold of Gerald’s shirt, tugging him away from the holoscreen. Gerald spun around to face this new impediment, roared in rage, and swung a violent punch. The supervisor’s unarmed combat program could barely cope with the suddenness of the attack. Muscles bunched under the orders of abrupt override impulses, twisting him away from the fist. The response wasn’t quite good enough. Gerald caught him a glancing blow on the side of his head. Behind that strike was the force of a body hardened by months of tough physical labour. The supervisor stumbled back into his partner, the two of them swaying desperately for balance.
Cheers and raucous whoops of encouragement were hurled from all across the lounge. Someone picked up one of the big potted plants and threw it at a distracted nurse. An alarm shrilled. The staff began to draw their nervejam sticks.
“Marie! Baby, I’m here.” Gerald had finally reached the holoscreen, thrusting his face against the cool plastic. His nose was squashed almost flat. She grinned and flirted mere centimetres away, her figure composed from a compact cellular array of small glowing spheres. “Marie! Let me in, Marie.” He started to thump on the screen. “Marie!”
She vanished. The handsome anchorman smiled out. Gerald shrieked in anguish, and started pummelling the holoscreen with all his strength. “Marie. Come back. Come back to me.” Smears of blood from torn knuckles dribbled down the anchorman’s tanned features.
“Oh, Christ,” the first supervisor grunted. He aimed a nervejam stick at Gerald’s back and fired. Gerald froze, then his limbs started to quake fiercely. A long wretched wail fluted out of his lips as he crumpled onto the floor. He managed to gasp one last piteous “Marie” before unconsciousness claimed him.
14
Given the propensity for mild paranoia among Tranquillity’s plutocrats, medical facilities were always one aspect of the habitat never short of investment and generous charitable donations. Consequentially, and in this case fortuitously, there was always a degree of overcapacity. After twenty years of what amounted to chronic underuse, the Prince Michael Memorial Hospital’s pediatric ward was now chock full. A situation which produced a permanent riot along its broad central aisle during the day.
When Ione called in, half of the kids from Lalonde were chasing each other over beds and around tables, yelling ferociously. The game was possessed and mercenaries, and mercenaries always won. The two rampaging teams charged past Ione, neither knowing nor caring who she was (her usual escort of serjeants had been left outside). A harassed Dr Giddings, the head of the pediatric department, caught sight of his prestigious visitor and hurried over. He was in his late twenties, effusiveness and a lanky frame marrying to produce a set of hectic, rushed mannerisms whenever he spoke. His face inclined towards chubby, which gave him an engagingly boyish appearance. Ione wondered if he’d undergone cosmetic tailoring; that face would be so instantly trustworthy to children, a big brother you could always confide in.
“Ma’am, I’m so sorry,” he blurted. “We had no idea you were coming.” He tried to reseal the front of his white house tunic, glancing around fretfully at the ward. Cushions and bedclothes were scattered everywhere, colourful animatic dolls waddled around, either laughing or repeating their catch phrases. (Probably wasted, Ione thought, none of these children would recognize the idols from this season’s AV shows.)
“I don’t think I’d be very popular if you made them clean up just for me,” Ione said with a smile. “Besides, I’ve been watching them for the last few days. I’m really only here to confirm they’re adapting properly.”
Dr Giddings gave her a careful glance, using his fingers to comb back some of his floppy ginger hair. “Oh, yes, they’re adapting all right. But then children are always easy to bribe. Food, toys, clothes, trips into the parkland, every kind of outdoor game they can play. Never fails. This is Heaven’s holiday camp as far as they’re concerned.”
“Aren’t they homesick?”
“Not really. I’d describe them as parent-sick more than anything. Separation causes some psychological problems, naturally.” He gestured around. “But as you can see, we’re doing our best to keep them busy, that way they don’t have time to think about Lalonde. It’s easier with the younger ones. Some of the older ones are proving recalcitrant; they can be prone to moodiness. But again, I don’t think it’s anything serious. Not in the short term.”
“And in the long term?”
“Long term, the only real cure is to get them back to Lalonde and their parents.”
“That’s going to have to wait, I’m afraid. But you’ve certainly done a wonderful job with them.”
“Thank you,” Dr Giddings murmured.
“Is there anything else you need?” Ione asked.
Dr Giddings pulled a face. “Well, medically they’re all fine now apart from Freya and Shona; and the nanonic packages are taking good care of those two. They should be healed within a week. So, as I said, what the rest could really do with right now is a strong, supportive family environment. If you were to appeal for foster families, I’m sure we’d have enough volunteers.”
“I’ll have Tranquillity put out an announcement, and make sure the news studios mention it.”
Dr Giddings grinned in relief. “That’s very kind, thank you. We were worried people might not come forwards, but I’m sure that if you back the appeal personally . . .”
“Do my best,” she said lightly. “Do you mind if I wander around?”
“Please.” He half bowed, half stumbled.
Ione walked on down the aisle, stepping around a thrilled three-year-old girl who was dancing with, and cuddling, a fat animatic frog in a bright yellow waistcoat.
The twin rows of beds had channelled an avalanche of toys along the main aisle. Holomorph stickers were colonizing the walls and even some of the furniture, their cartoon images swelling up from the surface to run through their cycle, making it appear as if the polyp were flexing with rainbow diffraction patterns. A blue-skinned imp appeared to be the favourite; picking its nose, then flicking disgusting tacky yellow bogies at anyone passing by. No medical equipment was actually visible, it was all built unobtrusively into the walls and bedside cabinets.
The far end opened up into a lounge section, with a big table where they all sat around for meals. Its curving wall had two large oval windows which provided a panoramic view out past the curving habitat shell. Right now Tranquillity was above Mirchusko’s nig
htside, but the rings glinted as if they were arches of frosted glass, and the smooth beryl orb of Falsia shone with a steady aquamarine hue. The stars continued their eternal orbit around the habitat.
A girl had made a broad nest of cushions in front of a window, snuggling down in them to watch the astronomical marvels roll past her. According to the neural strata’s local memory, she’d been there for a couple of hours—a ritual practised every day since Lady Mac had arrived.
Ione hunched down beside her. She looked about twelve, with short-cropped hair so blond it was almost silver.
What’s her name? Ione asked.
Jay Hilton. She’s the oldest of the group, and their leader. She is one of the moody ones Dr Giddings mentioned.
“Hello, Jay.”
“I know you.” Jay managed an aslant frown. “You’re the Lord of Ruin.”
“Oh, dear, you’ve found me out.”
“Thought so. Everyone said my hair is the same as yours.”
“Hum, they’re almost right; I’m growing mine a bit longer these days.”
“Father Horst cut mine.”
“He did a good job.”
“Of course he did.”
“Cutting hair isn’t the only thing he did right by all accounts.”
“Yes.”
“You’re not joining in with the games much, are you?”
Jay wrinkled her nose up contemptuously. “They’re just kids’ games.”
“Ah. You prefer the view then?”
“Sort of. I’ve never seen space before. Not real space, like this. I thought it was just empty, but this is always different. It’s so pretty with the rings and everything. So’s the parkland, too. Tranquillity’s nice all over.”
“Thank you. But wouldn’t you be better off in the parkland? It’s healthier than sitting here all day long.”
The Night's Dawn Trilogy Page 176
