“Have you been there?” he asked stiffly.
“No. No, I haven’t. So you’re right, I can’t say for certain. Let’s just put it down to a healthy dose of cynicism; everybody catches it when they get older.” She turned back to her drink.
“Will you take me?”
“No. Look, son, even if I was crazy enough to fly to Valisk, do you have any idea how much it would cost you to charter a starship to take you?”
He shook his head mutely.
“From here, about a quarter of a million fuseodollars. Do you have that kind of money?”
“No.”
“Well, there you are then. Now stop wasting my time.”
“Do you know anyone who would take us, someone who believes in Kiera?”
“Goddamnit!” She screwed around in her chair to glare at him. “Can’t you inbred morons pick up a simple hint when it’s smacked you in the face?”
“Kiera said you’d hate us for listening to her.”
The captain let out an astonished snort of breath. “I don’t believe this. Don’t you see how gullible you are? I’m doing you a favour.”
“I didn’t ask you to. And why are you so blind to what she says?”
“Blind? Fuck you, you teeny shit.”
“Because you are. You’re scared it’s true, that she’s right.”
She stared at him for a long moment, the rest of the crew fixing him with hostile stares. They’d probably beat him up in a minute. Jed didn’t care anymore. He hated her as much as he did Digger and all the others with closed minds and dead hearts.
“All right,” the captain whispered. “In your case I’ll make an exception.”
“No,” one of the crew said, his hand going out to hold her arm. “You can’t, he’s only a kid with a hard-on for the girl.”
She shook off the restraining hand and brought out a processor block. “I was going to hand this over to the Confederation Navy, even though it would be difficult to explain away given our current flight schedule. But I think you can have it instead, now.” She took a flek from its slot in the block and slapped it into an astonished Jed’s hand. “Say hello to Kiera for me. If you aren’t too busy screaming while they possess you.”
Chairs were pushed back noisily. The crew of the Rameses X left their unfinished drinks on the table and marched out.
Jed stood at the centre of a now-silent pub, every eye locked on him. He didn’t even notice, he was staring raptly at the little black flek resting in his palm as if it were the key to the fountain of youth. Which in a way, he supposed, it was.
* * *
The Levêque was orbiting fifteen thousand kilometres above Norfolk, its complete sensor suite extended to sweep the planet. Despite the Confederation Navy’s hunger for information, little data was returning. Slow cyclonic swirls of red cloud had mushroomed from the islands, mating then smoothing out into a placid sheet, sealing the world behind a uniform twilight nimbus. Small ivory tufts of cirrocumulus swam above the polar zones for a few hours, the last defiant speckling of alien colour; but in time even they fell to melt into the veil.
The consolidation was five hours old when the change began. Levêque’s officers noticed the cloud’s light emission level was increasing. The frigate’s captain decided to play safe and ordered them to raise their orbit by another twenty thousand kilometres. By the time their main fusion drive ignited, the crimson canopy was blazing brighter than any firestorm. They ascended at five gees, badly worried by the glare expanding rapidly across the stars behind them. Gravitonic sensors reported discordant ripples within the planetary mass below. If the readings were truthful, then the world should be breaking apart. Heavily filtered optical-band sensors revealed the planet’s geometry remained unchanged.
Seven gees, and the cloud’s surface was kindling to the intensity of a nuclear furnace.
Luca Comar looked upwards in a dreamy daze. The red cloud guarding the sky above Cricklade manor’s steep roof was writhing violently, its gold and crimson underbelly caught by potent microburst vortices. Huge churning strips were being torn open, allowing a fierce white light to slam down. He flung his arms wide, howling a rapturous welcome.
Energy stormed through him at an almost painful rate, bursting from some non-point within to vanish into the raging sky. The woman beside him was performing the same act, her features straining with effort and incredulity. In his mind he could feel the possessed all across Norfolk uniting in this final supreme sacrament.
Boiling fragments of cloud plunged through the air at giddy velocities; corkscrew lightning bolts snapping between them. Their red tint was fading, sinking behind the flamboyant dawn irradiating the universe beyond the atmosphere.
A thick, heavy light poured over Luca. It penetrated straight through his body. Through the mossy grass. Through the soil. The whole world surrendered to it. Luca’s thoughts were trapped by the invasion, unable to think of anything but sustaining the moment. He hung suspended from reality as the last surge of energy unwound through his cells.
Silence.
Luca slowly let out his breath. He opened his eyes cautiously. The clouds had calmed, reverting to rumpled white smears. Warm mellow light was shining over the wolds. There was no sun, no single source point, it came from the boundary of the enclosed universe itself. Shining equally, everywhere.
And they’d gone. He could no longer hear the souls in the beyond. Those piercing pleas and promises had vanished. There was no way back, no treacherous chink in the folds of this fresh continuum. He was free inside his new body.
He looked at the woman, who was glancing around in stupefaction.
“We’ve done it,” he whispered. “We escaped.”
She smiled tentatively.
He held out his arms, and concentrated. Not the smoke-snorting knight again; the moment required something more dignified. Soft golden cloth settled around his skin, an imperial toga, befitting his mood.
“Oh, yes. Yes!”
The energistic ability was still there, the imposition of will upon matter. But now the cloth had a stronger, firmer texture to the artefacts he’d created before.
Before . . . Luca Comar laughed. In another universe. Another life.
This time it would be different. They could establish their nirvana here. And it would last forever.
* * *
The cluster of five survey satellites from the Levêque gradually spread apart as they glided through the section of space where Norfolk should be. Communications links beamed a huge flow of information back to the frigate. Every sensor they had was switched to maximum sensitivity. Two distinct spectrums of sunlight fell on them. Tremulous waves of solar ions dusted their receptors. Cosmic radiation bombardment was standard.
There was nothing else. No gravity field. No magnetosphere. No atmospheric gas. Space-time’s quantum signature was perfectly normal.
All that remained of Norfolk was the memory.
* * *
When it was discovered in 2125, Nyvan was immediately incorporated into the celebration of hope which was sweeping Earth in the wake of Felicity’s discovery. The second terracompatible planet to be found, a beautiful verdant virgin land, proof the first hadn’t been a fluke. Everybody on Earth wanted to escape out to the stars. And they wanted to go there now. That, ultimately, proved its downfall.
By then, people had finally realized the arcologies weren’t going to be a temporary shelter from the ruined climate, somewhere to stay while Govcentral cooled the atmosphere, cleaned up the pollution, and put the weather patterns back to rights. The tainted clouds and armada storms were here to stay. Anyone who wanted to live under an open sky would have to leave and find a new one.
In the interests of fairness and maintaining its own shaky command over individual state administrations, Govcentral agreed that everyone had the right to leave, without favouritism. It was that last worthy clause, included to pacify several vocal minorities, which in practice meant that colonists would have to be a multi-cultu
ral, multi-racial mix fully representative of the planet’s population. No limits were placed on the numbers buying starship tickets, they just had to be balanced. For those states too poor to fill up their quota, Govcentral provided assisted placement schemes so the richer states couldn’t complain they were being unfairly limited. A typical political compromise.
By and large, it worked for Nyvan and the other terracompatible planets being sought out by the new ZTT drive ships. The first decades of interstellar colonization were heady times, when common achievement easily outweighed the old ethnic enmities. Nyvan and its early siblings played host to a unity of purpose rarely seen before.
It didn’t last. After the frontier had been tamed and the pioneering spirit flickered into extinction the ancient rivalries lumbered to the fore once again. Earth’s colonial governance gave way to local administrations on a dozen planets, and politicians began to adopt the worst jingoistic aspects of late twentieth-century nationalism, leading the mob behind them with absurd ease. This time there were no safeguards of seas and geographical borders between the diverse populations. Religions, cultures, skins, ideologies, and languages were all squeezed up tight in the pinch chamber of urban conglomeration. Civil unrest was the inevitable result, ruining lives and crippling economies.
Overall, the problem was solved in 2156 by the Govcentral state of California, who sponsored New California, the first ethnic-streaming colony, open only to native Californians. Although initially controversial, the trend was swiftly taken up by the other states. This second wave of colonies suffered none of the strife so prevalent among the first, clearing the way for the mass immigration of the Great Dispersal.
While the new ethnic-streaming worlds successfully absorbed Earth’s surplus population and flourished accordingly, the earlier colonies slowly lost ground both culturally and economically: a false dawn shading to a perpetual twilight.
* * *
“What happened to the asteroids?” Lawrence Dillon asked.
Quinn was gazing thoughtfully at the images which the Tantu’s sensors were throwing onto the hemisphere of holoscreens at the foot of his acceleration couch. In total, eleven asteroids had been manoeuvred into orbit around Nyvan, their ores mined to provide raw material for the planet’s industries. Ordinarily, they would develop into healthy mercantile settlements with a flotilla of industrial stations.
The frigate’s sensors showed that eight of them were more-or-less standard knots of electromagnetic activity, giving off a strong infrared emission. The remaining three were cold and dark. Tantu’s high-resolution optical sensors focused on the closest of the defunct rocks, revealing wrecked machinery clinging to the crumpled grey surface. One of them even had a counter-rotating spaceport disk, though it no longer revolved; the spindle was bent, and the gloomy structure punctured with holes.
“They had a lot of national wars here,” Quinn said.
Lawrence frowned at him, thoughts cloudy with incomprehension.
“There’s a lot of different people live here,” Quinn explained. “They don’t get on too good, so they fight a lot.”
“If they hate each other, why don’t they all leave?”
“I don’t know. Ask them.”
“Who?”
“Shut the fuck up, Lawrence, I’m trying to think. Dwyer, has anyone seen us yet?”
“Yes, the detector satellites picked us up straightaway. We’ve had three separate transponder interrogations so far; they were from different defence network command centres. Everyone seemed satisfied with our identification code this time.”
“Good. Graper, I want you to be our communications officer.”
“Yes, Quinn.” Graper let the eagerness show in his voice, anxious to prove his worth.
“Stick with the cover we decided. Call each of those military centres and tell the bastards we’ve been assigned a monitor mission in this system by the Confederation Navy. We’ll be staying in high orbit until further notice, and if any of them want fire support against possessed targets we’ll be happy to provide it.”
“I’m on it, Quinn.” He began issuing orders to the flight computer.
“Dwyer,” Quinn said. “Get me a channel into Nyvan’s communications net.” He floated away from his velvet acceleration couch and used a stikpad to steady himself in front of his big command console.
“Er, Quinn, this is weird, the sensors are showing me like fifty communications platforms in geosync,” Dwyer said nervously. He was using grab hoops to hold himself in front of his flight station, his face centimetres from a glowing holoscreen, as though the closer he could get the more understanding of its data he would have. “The computer says they’ve got nineteen separate nets on this world, some of them don’t even hook together.”
“Yeah, so? I told you, dickbrain, they got a shitload of different nations here.”
“Which one do you want?”
Quinn thought back, picturing the man, his mannerisms, voice, accent. “Is there a North American-ethnic nation?”
Dwyer consulted the information on the holoscreen. “I got five. There’s Tonala, New Dominica, New Georgia, Quebec, and the Islamic Texas Republic.”
“Gimmie the New Georgia one.” Information began to scroll up on his own holoscreen. He studied it for a minute, then requested a directory function and loaded in a search program.
“Who is this guy, Quinn?” Lawrence asked.
“Name’s Twelve-T. He’s one mean fucker, a gang lord, runs a big operation down there. Any badass shit you want, you go to him for it.”
The search program finished its run. Quinn loaded the eddress it had found for him.
“Yeah?” a voice asked.
“I want to talk to Twelve-T.”
“Crazy ass mother, ain’t no fucker got that handle living here.”
“Listen, shitbrain, this is his public eddress. He’s there.”
“Yeah, so you know him, datavise him.”
“Not possible.”
“Yeah? Then he don’t know you. Any mother he need to rap with knows his private code.”
“Okay, the magic word is Banneth. And if you don’t think that’s magic, trace where this call is coming from. Now tell the man, because if I come calling, you’re going out hurting.”
Dwyer gave another myopic squint at his displays. “He’s tracing the call. Back to the satellite already. Hot program.”
“I expect they use it a lot,” Quinn muttered.
“You got a problem up there, motherfucker?” a new voice asked. It was almost as Quinn remembered it, a low purr, too damaged to be smooth. Quinn had seen the throat scar which made it that way.
“No problem at all. What I got up here is a proposition.”
“Where you at, man? What is this monk shit? You ain’t Banneth.”
“No.” Quinn swayed forwards slowly towards the camera lens in the centre of the console and pulled his hood right back. “Run your visual file search program.”
“Oh, yeah. You used to be Banneth’s little rat runner; her whore, too. I remember. So what you want here, ratty?”
“A deal.”
“What you got to trade?”
“You know what I’m riding in?”
“Sure. Lucky Vin ran a trace, he’s pissin’ liquid nitrogen right now.”
“It could be yours.”
“No shit?”
“That’s right.”
“What’ve I gotta do for it, hump you?”
“No, I just want to trade it in. That’s all.”
The whisper lost its cool. “You want to trade in a fucking Confederation Navy frigate? What the fuck for?”
“I need to talk to you about that. But there’s some good quality hardware on board. You’ll come out ahead.”
“Talk, motherfucker? If your hardware’s so shit-hot, how come you wanna dump it?”
“God’s Brother doesn’t always ride to war. There are other ways to bring His word to the faithless.”
“Cut that voodoo shit, man
. Damn, I hate that sect shit you arcology freaks use. Ain’t no God, so he sure as shit can’t have no Brother.”
“Try telling that to the possessed.”
“Motherfuck! Smartass motherfucker! That’s what you are, that’s all you are.”
“Do you want to deal or not?” Quinn knew he would; what gang lord could resist a frigate?
“I ain’t promising shit up front.”
“That’s cool. Now I need to know which asteroid to dock with. And it’s going to have to be one which doesn’t ask too many questions. Have you got any weight in orbit?”
“You know it, man, that’s why you come to me. You might talk like you the King of Kulu’s brother, but here it’s me who’s got the juice. And stink this, I don’t trust you, rat runner.”
“With this much firepower behind me, think how much I care. Start fixing things.”
“Fuck you. A strike like this is gonna take a few days to set up, man.”
“You have forty-eight hours; then I want a docking bay number flashing in front of me. If not, I will smite you from the face of the world.”
“Will you cut that freaky crap—”
Quinn cancelled the circuit and threw his head back laughing.
* * *
It had only taken a few hours for the screen of red cloud to engulf the sky above Exnall. The tenuous beginnings of the early morning had been supplanted by billowing masses of solid vapour sweeping up from the south. Thunder arrived in accompaniment, bass grumbles which seemed to circle and swoop around the town like jittery birds. There was no telling where the sun was now, but its light still seemed to slip through the covering to illuminate the streets in natural tones.
Moyo marched down Maingreen on his mission to find some kind of transport for Stephanie’s children. The more he thought about the prospect, the happier it made him. She was right, as always, it did give him something positive to do. And no, he didn’t want to spend eternity in Exnall.
The Night's Dawn Trilogy Page 193
