Acadie
Page 7
I stared at him.
“She brought out some footage, which is what made Bellerophon contact the Bureau. And this is it. Here it comes now.”
It was hard to watch, for lots of reasons.
It was the Colony. Or a colony like the Colony, anyway, and yet completely different. The first sequence was an approach to a hab, except that where the Colony’s habs were huge green-tinted Christmas tree bubbles this one was tiny and a mucky brownish colour, the tough outer skin almost opaque. It looked diseased.
The next sequence was inside the hab. There was obviously something wrong with the life support system; the air was thick and soupy and full of condensation. Instead of kudzu, the structural members were construction coral, and they were dripping with algae or mould or something, as if the polyp itself was sick. But that wasn’t the worst thing.
People drifted past the camera’s viewpoint. Painfully thin, etiolated people. Most of them were naked or just wearing scraps of clothing. They looked grey and listless, their skin covered with sores. They were obviously suffering from a bunch of deficiency diseases.
The scene cut to a poorly lit rocky cavern. I couldn’t make out how large it was, but it faded away into a dim distance. The floor of the cavern was littered with makeshift huts and benders constructed from bits and pieces of equipment—plastic sheeting, sections of panelling. More sick people drifted by.
“This is the ship Potter and her friends stole,” Simeon said. “Their very own slum in the sky.”
The scene cut again, and this time I had to stifle a shriek.
The creature in the image looked barely human. Its head was three or four times too large for its matchstick body and it was writhing weakly against the straps that held it down in a heavily customised control couch. Wires and tubes led from its body to various pieces of cobbled-together-looking machinery on the floor around the couch.
“According to the dissident, this is one of Potter’s superbrights,” Simeon said. “Looks like she still hasn’t quite got the hang of this genetic modification thing, eh?”
Someone moved into the shot, and the camera pulled back to accommodate her. She was small and dreadfully obese and wearing what might once have been a lab coat over a tattered pair of coveralls. Her skull was misshapen and a few bits of white hair still adhered to it. Her face was deeply lined, her eyes rheumy, and she moved, even in the microgravity, with all the difficulty of a terminal arthritis sufferer. She did something to one of the machines—her knuckles were like handfuls of walnuts—and then stepped aside again, and the creature on the couch began to babble strings of numbers.
“Potter herself,” Simeon said. “She’s obviously found a way to extend the human lifespan, but equally obviously it’s not a hundred percent effective. We think she’s using the superbrights as computing engines on some kind of project; they appear to have made some breakthroughs, down the years. None of them particularly good.”
The camera pulled back further to show the old woman standing beside the couch. With her was a group of figures from a nightmare. Some of them had horns. Some had prehensile tails. Others had hands instead of feet, or pebbly lizard skin. In the dim, uncertain lighting, they looked like something out of a Bosch painting.
“This is the truth,” Simeon said. “This is the reality. We know you believe this place was some kind of hippie paradise, but that’s what you’ve been programmed to believe. What Potter has done—what she’s still doing—is monstrous.”
“None of this means anything,” I told him. “You’re a simulation, this is a bunch of faked footage.”
The footage ended and Simeon reappeared, a stern look on his face. “Duke,” he said sadly. “Think about it. What’s the point of me coming all this way just to spin you some bullshit?”
“It’s in character for the Bureau.”
“With respect, Duke, you have no idea what’s in character for the Bureau.” He looked thoughtful. “You know, we’ve done this fifty times in the past three hundred years or so. We always lose contact with our ships, but sometimes we lose contact sooner rather than later, so we think sometimes you just shoot first and ask questions later. But they’ve always managed to get some word out. I’m guessing the thing you did to wreck my comms is new.”
It wasn’t new at all; the Punch was at least two hundred years old. I looked around One Potato’s flight deck and wondered what I was going to do.
“We’ve picked up quite a lot of data, down the years,” he went on. “Tell me, do you hear voices?”
“What?”
He glanced at a display. “Is Karl Ross there? Ernestine Bury? Conjugación Lang?” He was watching my face as he said the names. “Sure, I could have hacked your comms, but how could I know who you were talking to?”
I leaned forward, closer to the display, the headache really starting to thump behind my eyes. “This is all bullshit,” I told him. “You’re an AI.”
“They’re Potter’s students,” he went on. “They all died busting her out of house arrest or stealing the colony carrier. The Bury girl was a psychopath; she killed fourteen people to get Potter aboard that carrier. They’re dead, Duke. You’re all dead. John Wayne Faraday committed suicide shortly after he quit the Bureau; Potter probably thought it would be funny to base you on him. There are no ships in this system but me. The other pilots are subroutines. Voices in your head, little bits of expertise and personality that you’ve externalised. The rock in that picture I showed you is a relay, a telefactor robot so you can talk to me in realtime. It’s the size of a basketball. And you have to hold on, Duke. You have to calm down.”
“What . . . ?” I felt confused. Everyone was trying to talk at once, the other pilots a rising tide of chatter.
“What you’re thinking of doing. Every encounter we’ve had, the dewline has self-destructed. Potter’s superbrights have come up with some kind of sub-quantum disruption effect—the explosion’s visible from thousands of light-years away. It takes out the entire system, Duke. Sun and all. You have to calm down. You have to stop. You don’t owe Potter anything; she left you behind like a guard dog.”
“I’m not thinking of doing anything,” I told him, but the headache was getting worse, a great pressure growing against my temples. Suddenly, Simeon being an AI made perfect sense. Why send people into a system that was about to go bang?
“This has to stop, Duke,” he was saying. “Millions of people have died already in the ships you’ve destroyed in other systems. You can help us. You can help make sure no one else dies. We need to find Potter and stop her, stop this madness, and you have to calm down and not do anything silly.”
I had a sudden, disorienting sensation that I was huge, all-encompassing, looking down on the system like a woozy god. I could see Gregor Samsa and a tiny ball of rock floating nearby, and knew it was One Potato, Two Potato. Knew it was me.
“I am calm,” I said, and concentrated.
* * *
It was the morning after the morning after my hundred and fiftieth birthday, and a terrible noise was trying to wake me up.
About the Author
DAVE HUTCHINSON was born in Sheffield in 1960 and read American Studies at the University of Nottingham before becoming a journalist. He’s the author of five collections of short stories and four novels. His novella The Push was nominated for the BSFA Award in 2010, and his novels Europe in Autumn and Europe at Midnight were nominated for the BSFA, Arthur C. Clarke, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards in 2015 and 2016 respectively. Europe at Midnight was also short-listed for a Kitschie Award in 2016. He now writes full-time, and lives in North London.
You can sign up for email updates here.
Also by Dave Hutchinson
Europe in Autumn
Europe at Midnight
Europe in Winter
The Villages
COLLECTIONS
Thumbprints
Fool’s Gold
Torn Air
The Paradise Equation
As
the Crow Flies
Sleeps With Angels
Thank you for buying this Tor.com ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and other great reads, sign up for our newsletters.
For email updates on the author, click here.
TOR•COM
Science fiction. Fantasy. The universe. And related subjects.
*
More than just a publisher's website, Tor.com is a venue for original fiction, comics, and discussion of the entire field of SF and fantasy, in all media and from all sources. Visit our site today—and join the conversation yourself.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
1
About the Author
Also by Dave Hutchinson
Copyright Page
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ACADIE
Copyright © 2017 by Dave Hutchinson
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Stephen Youll
Cover design by Christine Foltzer
Edited by Lee Harris
A Tor.com Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark ofMacmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
ISBN 978-0-7653-9825-3 (ebook)
ISBN 978-0-7653-9826-0 (trade paperback)
First Edition: September 2017
Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, ext. 5442, or by e-mail at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.