by John Meaney
The Zajinet pulls itself tighter, and responds:
<< . . .danger . . .>>
<< . . .yes . . .>>
<< . . .yes . . .>>
<< . . .it comes . . .>>
A metal door crumples, torn down by a blocky, three-fingered hand. A slender female Pilot draws back – a young-looking Ro McNamara, cursing: ‘Jesus.’
The other woman, Zoë, draws a handheld weapon [metatext weapon.desc = ‘pocket lineac derringer’; narrative.significance = ‘abandoning pretence of being a civilian’] and snaps on its laser sight, aiming at the squat, brown, cuboid invader tearing its way inside: one of the Veralik delegation.
‘THE FEMALE,’ emanates from a device on the Veralik’s chest as it waves a stubby pseudoarm in Ro’s direction: ‘HOLD HER.’
Zoë says, ‘Why are you—?’
A man’s voice sounds from the corridor outside.
[metatext person.id = ‘Piotr Yavorski, senior xenobiologist’]
‘The centrifuge hab . . . fail . . . Energy drain . . .’
‘HOLD THE FEMALE,’ says the Veralik. ‘IT WILL ATTEMPT TO TAKE HER.’
Ro circles away from the Veralik [metatext biography.threads. concepts = ‘aikido footwork; tai sabaki; mind-body integration; combat skills’], avoiding it.
‘ZAJINET, THE RENEGADE. IT STOPPED ROTATION. ENERGY—’
Ro swivels away once more, then halts. Strange energies whirl and flicker, an electric sapphire blue predominating, surrounding her.
‘STOP HER.’
‘Ro!’ shouts Zoë, her friend. ‘What’s happening?’
The air is curling, twisting, folding up around Ro McNamara, enveloping her. Zoë, hand covering her eyes for protection, tries to reach inside the disturbance.
‘Ro, take my hand!’
But Ro is no longer there.
*
It was a very different kind of unexpected disappearance. Roger had read about Ro being kidnapped by Zajinets from a xeno facility on twenty-second-century Earth; but most of this was new to him.
He resumed the narrative.
When Ro wakes up, her disorientation is immediate and obvious. She is in a tubular, bluish glass-like corridor, and a woman with cropped blue hair [metatext person.id = ‘Lila O’Brien, assigned to Beta Draconis III research station’] is kneeling beside her. A man stands behind Lila.
‘You’re awake,’ says Lila. ‘Jared, call Lee. Our visitor’s waking up.’
‘Ugh—’ Ro’s face clenches with pain as she sits up.
‘You’ll be all right, I think.’
‘Where—?’
From around a bend, two men hurry into view.
‘She needs the doc.’
‘No way, Lila.’ One of the men stops. ‘Not till we— Just where the devil have you been hiding, young woman?’
‘I don’t—’
‘For God’s sake, Josef. Look at the state of her.’
‘Until we find out what’s going—’
A large hand grabs her wrist, and Ro reacts: rising to her knees and twisting, as the big man whips head over heels, smacking heavily onto the floor.
Then Ro is on her feet and backing away.
‘Who the hell are you people? How did I get here?’
Roger paused the narrative once more. The metatext had already revealed that Ro was on Beta Draconis III: a strange planet with a tiny human settlement, half diplomatic consulate, half xenoanthropological research station, initially considered the Zajinet homeworld, but actually no more than a colony that was later evacuated, leaving humanity ignorant of the Zajinets’ origins.
He skipped to the next chapter.
After trekking beneath purple-with-turquoise skies, twenty two humans find themselves at a Zajinet event that might be a criminal trial, a political debate, or some form of interaction without a human analogue. Flickering, overlapping occurrences of glowing Zajinets fill the dome-shaped hall.
Watching from a stable dais where reality is not shifting, the humans witness two Zajinets (one scarlet, one blue) in their fiery trace form, while the audience/witnesses/congregation are clothed in sculpture forms, using everything from naked rock to decorated ceramic spheres.
<< . . .preserve . . .>>
<< . . .in finding, hold onto . . .>>
<< . . .converse manifests . . .>>
<< . . .obliterate . . .>>
<< . . .a focus . . .>>
The first Zajinet’s legal adversary – or whatever it is – blasts a reply:
<< . . .single thread! . . .>>
<< . . .single thread! . . .>>
<< . . .saved softly in confusing dark . . .>>
<< . . .their only hope . . .>>
Lila, her hair a shining violet today, examines a small disc embedded in her glove.
‘One of them’ – Lila points – ‘we’ve dealt with before. The other Zajinet’s a stranger.’
A wave pattern shimmers in the air between the Zajinets, linking the scarlet and the blue; then it fades. Each Zajinet twists, shrinks to a point, and is gone.
As the other Zajinets flicker out, the humans wonder what the hell they have just witnessed.
Aware that he had to return to Tangleknot, Roger transferred to the narrative outline level and jumped far ahead, to an UNSA base in Arizona, Earth, on the day that Ro’s twin sons, Dirk and Kian, were to attempt their first flights into mu-space, knowing nothing of the bombs planted in their ships.
Three viewpoints were tagged with high priorities. Roger opened them all.
Up in the control tower, Deirdre Dullaghan, the twins’ closest friend, stands next to Chief Controller Bratko. From here, through blue-tinted windows, the poised ship appears to be dark metal banded with black, though her true colours are bronze and dark turquoise.
‘—clearing you to go,’ says one of the controllers.
Pale flames expand into brightness at the rear. The vessel rocks, straining against the brakes.
‘My God,’ says Deirdre. ‘Will you look at that.’
‘Makes my heart thud,’ says Bratko. ‘Every single time.’
Then he is leaning forward. Two of the controllers rise from their seats.
A lone man is sprinting towards the runway.
‘Who the hell is—?’
‘Dirk.’ Deirdre is unnaturally calm. ‘Something’s wrong.’
‘Shut down,’ commands Bratko. ‘Immediate shut down.’
The controllers work the system, their movements frantic.
‘No response. Main thruster’s still burning.’
‘Shit.’
In the Pilot’s control couch, Kian closes his eyes.
‘Pulse engines are go.’
Here the engine roar is muted. Status displays brighten. His ship is straining against the leash. But even with all that happening, his inductive senses can reach beyond the hull, because he is a twin, and he knows when his brother is near.
Dirk is running hard and scared.
‘Control? Come in, control,’ says Kian, then switches his focus to the ship. ‘On-board command: shutdown-shutdown-shutdown.’
Nothing. No comms response, no reaction from his ship.
Some processes, once started, cannot be stopped.
*
Dirk’s legs are pumping as he runs, filled with adrenaline, red-lining the anaerobic systems of his body because the bomb is concealed within the starboard delta-wing, and there can be only seconds left before – no! – a percussive blast slams him to the ground – Kian! – but it is the engines, kicking up to a new level of thrust, and the bastard thing has not exploded yet. He is on hands and knees, blood dripping everywhere, and whatever he does he will have to do from here.
It begins as a pulse inside his head, the build-up of energy from the satanin-satanase reaction. An onlooker would see glimmering sparks of gold inside his obsidian eyes, brightening further, vision inoperative as both eyes shine, yellow and lupine; and then he lets rip – careful – but keeping control as he senses the device’s counter-
measures – there – and fights them down because detonation is the last thing he wants – got it – and the detonator circuits die, but the bastard thing is dangerous still. The next priority is to get it off the ship.
A dorsal hatch opens, and Kian looks out, sees Dirk and senses the situation, and uses his inductive senses to work the ship’s systems directly, causing an access hatch to pop open beneath the starboard wing. Working with him, Dirk disables the bomb’s electromagnets as he runs forward once more, and is in time to catch the deadly white box as it drops from its hiding place.
Heavy as a bastard.
Up in the control tower, they must have seen something was wrong, because emergency TDVs are hurtling across the runway, strobing orange. Within seconds, the lead vehicle has screeched to a halt.
‘Hey pal, you OK?’
‘Get away!’ Dirk swings the heavy bomb – and himself – on board the vehicle’s flat bed. ‘Get us the hell away from here!’
‘Bozhe moi, you got it!’
The driver spins his TDV on the spot, then accelerates away from the runway, heading for the airbase boundary and the red Mars-like desert beyond.
*
But this was no single-pronged attack. Up in the sky, two shapes are growing larger; and everyone knows that the airspace should be clear when there are UNSA launches scheduled.
Kian slides back into the control seat.
‘Oh, God.’
The brakes come free and his ship begins to roll.
At the boundary the TDV brakes, its thermoacoustic motor whining. The driver calls: ‘You all right up there, pal? If you want, I could—’
But Dirk has already flung the bomb away.
‘Take us back,’ he yells. ‘Don’t hang around.’
‘Bozhe moi!’
After the explosion, a black twisting column of smoke crawls up into the sky . . . where two vessels are growing much larger, their target clear.
Kian’s ship is still on the runway, accelerating.
The first intruder ship lets rip with an energy beam, missing Kian’s ship but ploughing a trench in the runway before it, causing Kian to brake. His ship howls as it pulls off to the side, coming to a halt.
As the enemy ship banks, ready to curve back on a strafing run, the second intruder flies diagonally behind it: two sets of weapon systems on the brink of cutting loose.
Seconds remain, no more.
Then a new vessel bursts out of the sun, shining silver and delta-winged, its graser-gatlings splitting the air, and the paired intruders have no chance.
Both Zajinet ships explode.
Standing beside the TDV, the driver wipes grease from his forehead.
‘And what the Devil was that silver ship?’
Dirk’s laugh is shaky but proud.
‘That was my mother.’
Roger switched back to overview. The main narrative thread proceeded with the twins’ friend Deirdre delivering a massive kick in the groin to one of the controllers, Solly, who had planted bombs in both ships. A military team disarmed the second bomb. Roger really had to go, but he could not take this crystal with him – no personal possessions were allowed in Tangleknot, plus any item was subject to long examination before being brought inside. He tried to work out the minimum he must experience in order to understand the point.
The theme strongly pointed to one more scene in which a disaffected UNSA intelligence officer called Paula – soon to become Deirdre’s long-term lover – related what happened to the captive Solly during interrogation.
Roger jumped into the middle of the scene.
‘They pushed the questioning further than the usual “What’s your contact’s name?”, “How do you meet up?”, that sort of thing,’ Paula tells Deirdre.
The setting is an airfield beneath a grey German sky, and they are standing outside in the rain, having attended a memorial service officially for Ro McNamara, unofficially for her missing son Dirk as well.
Roger paused, realising he had gone too fast. The scene needed background to make sense.
He checked the context summary. Dirk, Kian and Deirdre, some time after the Zajinet attack on the first day of flight, were attacked during an anti-xeno demonstration in Arizona. The mob had thrown petrol-bombs, burning Kian badly, leaving him disfigured and initially close to death. A raging Dirk had let rip with a single, coherent biolaser pulse from both eyes, burning out the eyeballs of the mob, killing dozens, blinding the rest.
Under arrest, he had escaped and fled to mu-space in his ship, exiting directly from inside a hangar: a feat hard enough for modern, latest generation vessels.
As for Ro, she was missing, last seen departing an orbital called Vachss Station, thought to have flown into a Zajinet ambush.
He resumed the scene featuring the soon-to-be lovers, Paula and Deirdre, mourning for Dirk and Ro, and discussing the interrogation of Solly, the Zajinet agent who had planted bombs aboard the twins’ ships.
‘They asked the question’ – Paula means the interrogators – ‘that no one’s been able to answer: Why do the Zajinets hate humans? Why have they targeted Pilots, specific Pilots?’
‘So why? What’s the answer?’
‘Solly said: “They’ll allow the darkness to be born. It will spread across the galaxy, and they won’t fight back until billions have perished. I’ve seen it.” That’s what he said. “The Zajinets showed me the future, and I’ve seen it.” It may sound insane, but Solly believed.’ Paula looked bleak. ‘He was in no fit state for joking by that time.’
‘You’re using the past tense,’ said Deirdre.
‘He did not survive the interrogation. A pre-existing medical condition, they said.’
And that, of course, was the section Ro McNamara had wanted Roger to know about.
They’ll allow the darkness to be born.
It provided one hell of a motivation for Zajinets to prevent human expansion into space. Whether it also implied a basis for negotiation, or simply made them enemies for ever, he could not tell.
Why show me this?
You might say that he was the first Pilot who could appreciate the Zajinets’ viewpoint. But he thought it might be a little late for such understanding.
En route back to Tangleknot, he stole time for one more cup of daistral, and found that Dirk McNamara no longer occupied top position in the news. Settlements on Deighton, Berkivan deux and Göthewelt were burning after Zajinet raids, in each case centred on a Sanctuary location.
Whatever Roger’s future turned out to be, peacemaker was no longer an option.
SEVENTEEN
EARTH, 1956 AD
Walking back from lunch along Kensington Gore, with Hyde Park stretching away to their right on the other side of the road, the three of them slowed down for a minute – Gavriela and her friends Jane and Keith from Imperial – so that Keith could break off pieces of a Bournville bar. He handed them round, still a treat, two years after rationing had ended.
In the park, mounted officers of the Household Cavalry were taking their horses through drills. The three scientists watched, then walked on.
‘Add this’ – Jane waved her chocolate – ‘to travelling by bus instead of walking, and people are going to start getting fat.’
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ said Keith. ‘Do you still feed sugar sandwiches to your son, Gabby?’
‘Not any more.’
‘See?’ said Jane. ‘It’s starting already.’
‘And smallpox will disappear,’ said Keith, ‘communism will fall apart sua sponte, and look, is that a pig flying among the clouds?’
Jane touched Gavriela’s sleeve.
‘Gabrielle? It looks as if he knows you. That chap on the corner.’
Pinstripe suit and spotlessly brushed black bowler: it was Rupert Forrester, his hair showing grey, his taut patrician face lined like porcelain.
‘I’ll see you two later,’ Gavriela told her colleagues.
Rupert looked grave as she crossed the street.
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br /> ‘Gabrielle, how lovely.’ He might call her Gavriela at times, but never outdoors or in unsecured premises. ‘Shall we walk? And perhaps a spot of tea. Or coffee, if we’re being cosmopolitan.’
‘Why not?’ she said.
They found a milk bar close to South Kensington Tube, and took a seat inside near the back. It was mostly empty, and from the way the man behind the counter ignored them after fetching coffee, he was an SIS asset, and never mind that domestic operations were the province of Five. Every service needs local safe houses.
When no other customers remained, Rupert picked up his cup and Gavriela’s – ‘This way, old girl’ – and led the way out back, up creaking stairs (good for warning of night-time intruders) to a musty-smelling room overlooking an unkempt yard.
She sat on an overstuffed couch, while he took one of the mismatched armchairs.
‘What’s happening, Rupert?’
‘The world’s falling apart, didn’t you know? Ten years ago, we knew who the enemy was. Now there’s civil unrest right here.’
‘You mean Teddy Boys ripping up cinema seats.’ Showings of Rock Around the Clock had erupted in trouble all over the country, causing Gavriela to forbid Carl from going to see the film. ‘I should have thought the real threat to Empire was the state of the pound.’
‘The PM received a confidential briefing from Macmillan,’ said Rupert, ‘concluding that there are two root causes to inflation: the commitment to full employment, and our massive defence spending. While Europe’s in a golden age.’
‘I took Carl to Paris last year.’
‘So you did.’ That was Rupert letting her know that leaving the service did not mean dropping out of sight. ‘And you’ll have seen it, Continental cities booming while we have bomb craters still, and prefab houses for the squalid classes.’
‘Oh, Rupert.’
‘French success stemming partly, I should say, from creating technical institutions along the lines of Imperial.’
‘How remarkably enlightened for a classicist.’
‘I didn’t say I approve of the necessity.’ Rupert crossed his elegant legs. ‘Nor the extinction of Empire, but it’s a fact, even if to the PM we’re still a great power.’
