The Laymil electronics stack had finally been powered down. Technicians were gathered around its transparent environment sphere, checking and disconnecting it from the conditioning units.
“What are you going to do with it?” Ione asked.
“Zero-tau,” Oski Katsura said. “Unfortunately, it is really too venerable to be put on exhibition. That is, unless you want it displayed to the public for a little while first?”
“No. This is your field, that’s why I appointed you as division chief.”
Ione saw the members of the Confederation Navy science bureau mingling with the ordinary project staff at the various research stations in the hall. It was a sign of the times that she drew no more than a few idly curious glances.
Parker Higgens, Kempster Getchell, and Lieria were standing together to watch the technicians prepare the stack for zero-tau.
“End of an era,” Kempster said as Ione joined them. He appeared oblivious to any connotations in the statement. “We can’t go on depending on stolen knowledge anymore. Much to the distress of the navy people, of course, no giant ray guns for them to play with. Looks like we’ll have to start thinking for ourselves again. Good news, eh?”
“Unless you happen to have a possessed knocking on your door,” Parker Higgens said coldly.
“My dear Parker, I do access the news studios occasionally, you know.”
“How is the search for Unimeron going?” Ione asked.
“From a technical point of view, very well,” Kempster said enthusiastically. “We’ve finished the revised design for the sensor satellite we want to use. Young Renato has taken a blackhawk down to the orbital band we intend to cover to test fly a prototype. If all goes well, the industrial stations will begin mass production next week. We can saturate the band by the end of the month. If there are any unusual energy resonances there, we ought to find them.”
It wasn’t going to be as quick as Ione had hoped for. “Excellent work,” she told the old astronomer. “Oski tells me you have found a memory of the spaceholm suicide.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Parker Higgens said.
“Did they have a weapon to use against the possessed?”
“Not a physical one, I’m happy to say. They seemed inordinately complacent about the suicide.”
“What do the navy people think?”
“They were disappointed, but they concur the spaceholm culture made no attempt to physically defeat the possessed Laymil approaching from Unimeron.”
Ione sat at an empty research station. “Very well.” Show me.
She never could get used to the illusive sensorium squeeze of emerging into a Laymil body. This time, her appropriated frame was one of the two male varieties, an egg producer. He was standing amid a group of Laymil, his current family and co-habitees, on the edge of their third marriage community. His clarion heads bugled softly, a keening joined by hundreds of throats around him. The melody was a slow one, rising and falling across the gentle grassy slope. Its echo sounded in his mind, gathered by the mother entity from every community in the spaceholm. Together they sang their lament, a plainsong in unison with the life spirit of the forests and meadows, the shoalminds of the animals, the mother entity. A chant taken up by every spaceholm as the cozened dead approached their constellation.
The aether was resonant with sadness, its weight impressing every organic cell within the spaceholm. Sunspires were dipping to their early and final dusk, draining away the joyful colours he had lived with all his life. Flowers relaxed into closure, their curling petals sighing for the loss of light, while their spirits wept for the greater loss which was to follow.
He linked arms with his mates and children, ready to share death as they shared life: together. The families linked arms. Drinking strength from the greater concord. They had become a single triangle on the valley floor. Component segments of three adults. Inside them, the children, protected, cherished. The whole, a symbol of strength and defiance. As with minds, so with bodies; as with thoughts, so with deeds.
“Join into rapture,” he instructed his children.
Their necks wove around, heads bobbing with enchanting immaturity. “Sorrow. Fear failure. Death essence triumphant.”
“Recall essencemaster teaching,” he instructed. “Laymil species must end. Knowledge brings birthright fulfillment. Eternal exaltation awaits strong. Recall knowledge. Believe knowledge.”
“Concur.”
Beyond the rim of the spaceholm constellation, the ships from Unimeron slid out of the darkness. Stars gleaming red with the terrible power of the death essence, riding bright prongs of fusion flame.
“Know truth,” the massed choir of spaceholms sang at them. “Accept knowledge gift. Embrace freedom.”
They would not. The pernicious light grew as the ships advanced, silent and deadly.
The Laymil in the spaceholms raised their heads to the vertical and bellowed a single last triumphant note. Air rippled at the sound. The sunspires went out, allowing total darkness to seize the interior.
“Recall strength,” he pleaded with his children. “Strength achievement final amity.”
“Confirm essencemaster victory.”
The spaceholm mother entity cried into the void. A pulse of love which penetrated to the core of every mind. Deep within its shell, cells ruptured and spasmed, propagating fractures clean through the polyp.
Sensation ended, but the darkness remained for a long time. Then Ione opened her eyes.
“Oh, my God. That was their only escape. They were so content about it. Every Laymil rushed into death. They never tried to outrun them; they never tried to fight them. They willfully condemned themselves to the beyond to avoid being possessed.”
“Not quite, ma’am,” Parker Higgens said. “There are some very interesting implications in those last moments. The Laymil didn’t consider they had lost. Far from it. They showed enormous resolution. We know full well how much they worship life; they would never sacrifice themselves and their children simply to inconvenience the possessed Laymil, for that is all suicide is. There are any number of options they could have explored before resorting to such an extreme measure. Yet the one whose sensorium we accessed made constant references to knowledge and truth derived from the essencemasters. That knowledge was the key to their ‘eternal exaltation.’ I suspect the essencemasters solved the nature of the beyond. Am I right, Lieria?”
“An astute deduction, Director Higgens,” the Kiint said through her processor block. “And one which confirms the statement Ambassador Roulor made to your Assembly. For each race, the solution is unique. Surely you do not anticipate suicide as the answer for the problems facing humankind?”
Parker Higgens faced the big xenoc, his anger visible. “It was more than suicide. It was a victory. They won. Whatever the knowledge was they carried with them, it meant they were no longer afraid of the beyond.”
“Yes.”
“And you know what it was.”
“You have our sympathy, and whatever support we can provide.”
“Damn it! How dare you study us like this. We are not laboratory creatures. We are sentient entities, we have feelings, we have fears. Have you no ethics?”
Ione stood behind the trembling director and laid a cautionary hand on his shoulder.
“I am well aware of what you are, Director Higgens,” Lieria said. “And I am empathic to your distress. But I must repeat, the answer to your problem lies within you, not us.”
“Thank you, Parker,” Ione said. “I think we’re all quite clear now on where we stand.”
The director gave a furious wave of his hand and walked away.
I apologize for his temper, Ione told the Kiint. But as I’m sure you know, this terrifies us all. It is frustrating for us to know you have a solution, even though it cannot apply to us.
Justly so, Ione Saldana. And I do understand. History records our race was in turmoil when we first discovered the beyond.
You give me hope, Lieria.
Your existence is proof that satisfactory solutions can be found for a sentient race, something other than genocidal suicide. That inspires me to keep searching for our own answer.
If it is of any comfort, the Kiint are praying humans succeed.
Why, thank you.
* * *
Erick was woken by his neural nanonics. He had routinely set up programs to monitor his immediate environment, physical and electronic, alert for anything which fell outside nominal parameters.
As he sat up in the darkened office, his neural nanonics reported an outbreak of abnormal fluctuations in Ethenthia’s power supply systems. When he datavised a query at the supervisor programs, it turned out that no one in the asteroid’s civil engineering service was even examining the problem. A further review showed that fifteen per cent of the habitation section’s lifts appeared to be inoperative. The number of datavises into the net was also reducing.
“Oh, dear God. Not here, too!” He swung his legs off the settee. A wave of nausea twisted along his spine. Medical programs sent out several caution warnings; the team Emonn Verona promised hadn’t been to see him yet.
When he datavised the lieutenant commander’s eddress to the office’s net processor there was no response. “Bloody hell.” Erick pulled on his ship-suit, easing it over his medical packages. There were two ratings standing guard outside the office; both armed with TIP carbines. They came to attention as soon as the door opened.
“Where’s the lieutenant commander?” Erick asked.
“Sir, he said he was going to the hospital, sir.”
“Bugger. Right, you two come with me. We’re getting off this asteroid, right away.”
“Sir?”
“That was an order, mister. But in case you need an incentive, the possessed are here.”
The two of them swapped a worried glance. “Aye, sir.”
Erick started accessing schematics of the asteroid as they went through the Navy Bureau and out into the public hall. He followed that up by requesting a list of starships currently docked at the spaceport. There were only five; one of which was the Villeneuve’s Revenge, which cut his options down to four.
His neural nanonics designed a route to the axial chamber which didn’t use any form of powered transportation. Seven hundred metres, two hundred of which were stairs. But at least the gravity would be falling off.
They went in single file, with Erick in the centre. He ordered both ratings to put their combat programs into primary mode. People turned to stare as they marched down the middle of the public hall.
Six hundred metres to go. And the first stairwell was directly ahead. The hall’s light panels started dimming.
“Run,” Erick said.
* * *
Kingsley Pryor’s cell measured five metres by five. It had one bunk, one toilet, and one washbasin; there was a small AV lens on the wall opposite the bed, accessing one local media company. Every surface—fittings, floor, walls—was the same blue-grey lofriction composite. It was fully screened, preventing any datavises.
For the last hour the light panel on the ceiling had been flickering. At first, Kingsley had thought the police were doing it to irritate him. They had been almost fearful as they escorted him from the Villeneuve’s Revenge with a Confederation Navy officer. A member of the Capone Organization. It was only to be expected that they would try to re-establish their superiority with such sad psychology, demonstrating who was in control. But the shifts of illumination had been too fitful for any determined effort. The AV images were also fragmenting, but not at the same time as the light. Then he found the call button produced no response.
Kingsley realized what was happening, and sat patiently on his bunk. Quarter of an hour later the humming sound from the conditioning grille fan faded away. Nothing he could do about it. Twice in the next thirty minutes the fan started up again briefly, once to blow in air which stank of sewage. Then the light panel went out permanently. Still Kingsley sat quietly.
When the door did finally open, it shone a fan of light directly across him, highlighting his almost prim posture. A werewolf crouched in the doorway, blood dripping from its fangs.
“Very original,” Kingsley said.
There was a confused puppylike yap from the creature.
“I really must insist you don’t come any closer. Both of us will wind up in the beyond if you do. And you’ve only just got here, haven’t you?”
The werewolf outline shimmered away to reveal a man wearing a police uniform. Kingsley recognized him as one of his escorts. There was a nasty pink scar on his forehead which hadn’t been there before.
“What are you talking about?” the possessed man asked.
“I am going to explain our situation to you, and I want you to observe my thoughts so that you know I’m telling the truth. And after that, you and your new friends are going to let me go. In fact, you’re going to give me every assistance I require.”
* * *
A hundred and fifty metres to the axial chamber. They were almost at the top of the last flight of stairs when the well’s lights went out. Erick’s enhanced retinas automatically switched to infrared. “They’re close,” he shouted in warning.
A narrow flare of white fire fountained up the centre of the stairwell, arching around to burst over the rating behind him. He grunted in pain and swung around, firing his TIP carbine at the base of the streamer. Purple sparks bounced out of the impact point.
“Help me,” he cried. A smear of white fire was cloaking his entire shoulder. Terror and panic were negating all the suppression programs which his neural nanonics had doused his brain with. He stopped firing to flail at the fire with his free hand.
The other rating slithered past Erick to fire back down the stairs. A flat circle of brilliant emerald light sprang over the floor of the stairwell, then started to rise as if it were a fluid. The flare of white fire withdrew below its surface. Shadows were just visible beneath it, darting about sinuously.
The burned rating had collapsed onto the stairs. His partner was still shooting wildly down into the advancing cascade of light. The TIP pulses were turning to silver spears as they penetrated the surface, trailing bubbles of darkness.
The next door was eight metres above Erick. The ratings would never last against the possessed, he knew, a few seconds at best. That few seconds might enable him to escape. The information he had was vital, it had to get to Trafalgar. Millions of innocents depended on it, on him. Millions. Against two.
Erick turned and flung himself up the last few steps. In his ears he could hear a voice shouting: “. . . two of my crew are dead. Fried! Tina was fifteen years old!”
He barged through the door, ten per cent gravity projecting him in a long flat arc above the corridor floor, threatening to crack his head against the ceiling. The persecuting noises and fog of green light shut off as the door slid shut behind him. He touched down, and powered himself in another long leap forwards along the corridor. Neural nanonics outlined his route for him as if it were a starship vector plot; a tube of orange neon triangles that flashed past. Turning right. Right again. Left.
Gravity had become negligible when he heard the scream ahead of him. Fifteen metres to the axial chamber. That was all; fifteen bloody metres! And the possessed were ahead of him. Erick snatched at a grab hoop to halt his forwards flight. He didn’t have any weapons. He didn’t have any backup. He didn’t even have Madeleine and Desmond to call on, not anymore.
More screams and pleas were trickling down the corridor from the axial chamber as the possessed chased down their victims. It wouldn’t be long before one of them checked this corridor.
I have to get past. Have to!
He called up the schematic again, studying the area around the axial chamber. Twenty seconds later, and he was at the airlock hatch.
It was a big airlock, used to service the spaceport spindle. The prep room which led to it had dozens of lockers, all the equipment and support systems required to maintain space
hardware, even five deactivated free-flying mechanoids.
Erick put his decryption program into primary mode and set it to work cracking the first locker’s code. He stripped off his ship-suit as the lockers popped open one after the other. Physiological monitor programs confirmed everything he saw as the fabric parted. Pale fluid tinged with blood was leaking out of his medical nanonic packages where the edges were peeling from his flesh; a number of red LEDs on the ancillary modules were flashing to indicate system malfunctions. His new arm was only moving because of the reinforced impulses controlling the muscles.
But he still functioned. That was all that mattered.
It was the fifth locker which contained ten SII spacesuits. As soon as his body was sealed against the vacuum he hurried into the airlock, carrying a manoeuvring pack. He didn’t bother with the normal cycle, instead he tripped the emergency vent. Air rushed out. The outer hatch irised apart as he secured himself into the manoeuvring pack. Then the punchy gas jets fired, sending him wobbling past the hatch rim and out into space.
* * *
André hated the idea of Shane Brandes even being inside the Villeneuve’s Revenge. And as for the man actually helping repair and reassemble the starship’s systems . . . merde. But as with most events in André’s life these days, he didn’t have a lot of choice. Since the showdown with Erick, Madeleine had retreated into her cabin and refused to respond to any entreaties. Desmond, at least, performed the tasks requested of him, though not with any obvious enthusiasm. And, insultingly, he would only work alone.
That just left Shane Brandes to help André with the jobs that needed more than one pair of hands. The Dechal’s ex-fusion engineer was anxious to please. He swore he had no allegiance to his previous captain, and harboured no grudges or ill will towards the crew of the Villeneuve’s Revenge. He was also prepared to work for little more than beer money, and he was a grade two technician. One could not afford to overlook gift horses.
The Night's Dawn Trilogy Page 207
