by Gary Gibson
Kendrick could see the boy-creature, wings flapping lazily to carry it above the long untended grass.
He looked up, studying the walls encompassing his world, wondering why he would dream of this place of all places . . .
And then he was back in Edinburgh, the breath ragged in his throat, staring up into Caroline’s face, realizing in an instant that she must have dragged him inside from the vestibule to where he now lay at the bottom of the stairs. Worry and anger warred with each other across her face as he closed his eyes, waiting for the pain to go away.
13 October 2096
Caroline Vincenzo’s flat, Edinburgh
Kendrick pulled the T-shirt over his head and studied his bare chest in Caroline’s bathroom mirror, noting the lines that traversed his hips, curving across his ribcage, continuing under his left arm and around his back, and culminating near the base of his skull before burrowing even deeper into his flesh. They had been there since his days in the Maze but, now that his augments had turned against him, there would soon be more – it was only a matter of time. The lines felt hard under his fingertips, as if steel cables criss-crossed beneath his skin.
Next he touched two fingers to his wrist and found a pulse but, instead of the familiar rhythm he had known all his life, there was a steady throb more like that of a machine.
He leant closer to the mirror, studying the fine flush of red in his cheeks – he could see with far greater detail than any unaugmented human. Something was keeping his body going, keeping the blood pumping through his arteries. But it wasn’t his heart. Not any more.
“Kendrick?” Caroline’s voice from outside the bathroom door. “Are you okay in there?”
“I’m fine.”
He pulled his T-shirt back on and walked into her living room. Not so long ago, it had been their living room, but that had all ended several months before. He watched as she rolled a cigarette, an act of folly since her augs would sweep the active agent from her bloodstream before it got anywhere near her cortex. But for Caroline it was a carefully crafted eccentricity. She told people she liked the taste.
Thick dark hair spilled in heavy curls down the back of her shirt. Kendrick noticed that she was still wearing a suit, and the eepsheets and papers scattered around the floor in wild abandon suggested that she’d only just returned from meeting clients, and had been busy in locating suddenly necessary notes and reference materials.
“Thanks for letting me in,” he said.
Caroline shrugged lightly, an expression of cool distance on her face. She reached out with one foot that was still clad in an expensive low-heeled shoe, and hooked an ashtray lying near her on the floor. Then she tapped ash into it. The cigarette was still her shield, its smoke a mask over her thoughts.
“I could have left you there, Kendrick, but you know how my neighbours are.” She sighed heavily. “What happened to you tonight?”
“I had another seizure.”
She shook her head. “So you came to me? What am I supposed to do?”
“It’s not that.” He then told her about the earlier events in the Armoured Saint.
“Christ,” Caroline muttered once he’d finished. “Did you have to speak to the police?”
“I left before they arrived.”
Kendrick sat down across from her and smiled halfheartedly. “The seizure only hit once I actually got here. It was the second one today, and the first hit a couple of hours ago.”
“Two seizures in one day?”
He nodded.
“I’m sorry, Kendrick.” She looked confused. “I had no idea. I . . .” She trailed off, her features wreathed in blue smoke. He studied the faint, raised lines in her flesh just barely visible where the top buttons of her shirt had been left undone. When she was out in public, habit made her keep the shirt buttoned up. Behind her, he could see the city’s rooftops under a moonlit sky.
He could almost read Caroline’s thoughts. They were both of them Labrats, and what was happening to him could happen to her too, any time. She was probably scared because there was every chance she would end up the same.
Going to a regular hospital for medical treatment was out of the question, and they both knew it. What they carried within their bodies was, by definition, unpredictable. That was a good enough reason for many of the Labrats to be locked away without trial for the rest of their short lives, as soon as their augs showed signs of turning rogue. If you went to the wrong country and they found out you were a Labrat, they just shot you and burned your corpse.
Caroline appeared to make up her mind about something. She stubbed out the remains of her cigarette and stood. “You can stay here tonight on the couch,” she said briskly. “I’ll get some stuff for you.” She disappeared into the bedroom and returned with a couple of blankets and a pillow.
As she went back into the bedroom, Kendrick stared morosely after her. Then he turned to the window, not wanting to get absorbed in some maudlin reflection about something that was long finished. He stared out over the slate rooftops of the city. Beyond them the vague bulk of the Castle loomed high over everything else. The tarmac far below was grey and shiny in the freezing rain that had begun to slant down.
Tomorrow he would have to go back to Hardenbrooke’s Clinic. He had no choice, really, as Hardenbrooke was the only one who might help him.
Kendrick spoke quietly into the air to find if Caroline had changed the voice-access code on her window-screen software. Then he stepped back as the sheet of glass became opaque, the Edinburgh skyline disappearing behind a corporate logo that rushed towards him on a swell of electronic music.
He heard her step back into the room behind him.
“That logo . . .”
“The TransAfrica Corporation,” she replied. “I’m sure you remember.”
“So you’ve been doing all right?”
She arched one eyebrow, reading between the lines: Without you, you mean? “Better than okay. You know how much time I spent on this stuff.” Kendrick switched his attention back to the screen, where an image of a spinning globe had now replaced the logo.
Caroline had won the design contract for the TransAfrica project only a few months before she had abruptly ended their relationship, without explanation, a few months after his seizures had first manifested. Feeling abruptly uncomfortable, Kendrick sat down on the couch. So she was doing better than okay? He watched the show, glad for the distraction from everything that had happened so far in a single evening.
The animated globe resolved itself into a recognizable image of the Earth as seen from near-orbit space, this viewpoint spinning rapidly downwards, through dense clouds until the continent of Africa became visible below. As this viewpoint now shifted, the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula became visible above the North African coast. Then a thin, glistening line connecting both continents appeared, zooming in yet closer until this line resolved itself into a huge bridge.
The main part of its span consisted of four great pylons, the middle two bedded in the watery depths of the Straits of Gibraltar. The sea around the pylons became suddenly transparent, like blue-tinted glass, and a voice-over began to explain the engineering difficulties of trying to construct something so huge. All that was impossible, of course, without the lessons learned from the construction of the Archimedes Orbital.
He turned to Caroline.
“What do you think?” she asked him.
“I’m impressed. You’ve done good work. I’m really impressed.” He turned back to the images unfolding on the screen.
The Archimedes Orbital – Max Draeger’s great white elephant, his downfall – still up there somewhere, far above the Earth. Kendrick stared at the images, his thoughts far away.
Caroline left Kendrick alone to make up his bed on her couch. He was trying to ignore the misery washing over him now that he was back in a place he’d never thought he’d see again. He hadn’t even told her about Peter McCowan, or his meeting with Whitsett.
She had a right t
o know, but in some way he wasn’t ready to talk. He still couldn’t quite believe he was in any kind of real danger. Perhaps Whitsett was just some lone crank who had constructed this fable on the spur of the moment, inspired by the events in the Saint an hour or so before.
Kendrick switched off the light, but sleep wouldn’t come easily. There was just too much to think about. It wasn’t only that he’d spoken to a ghost, but that this ghost, this hallucination, had told him something that he would never have found out otherwise.
That was too much to think about. He spoke quietly into the air again, reactivating the windowscreen, but kept the sound off this time, aware of Caroline sleeping in the next room.
The presentation she had long worked on doubled as an interactive environment so that, once the logo had faded away, he was able to cause the viewpoint to zoom away from Earth and out into space. It didn’t take long for him to locate the Archimedes. It had been there all the time, but now, seeing the enormous space station there on the screen, Kendrick remembered something.
As the great cylinder of the Archimedes hove into view, studded with lights that twinkled in a touch that had more to do with artistic flourish than reality, a half-formed idea began tingling in the back of his mind.
He directed the windowscreen to zoom in closer to the computer-generated image, and recalled all the stories, all the speculation. A lot had happened up there.
Although it was only reasonable to assume that Caroline would have spent some time on programming the Archimedes into its environment, Kendrick could not fail to notice the remarkable attention to detail. Perhaps this was purely down to her professionalism, but Kendrick found himself wondering. After all, although undoubtedly Draeger’s greatest engineering achievement, it was far better known as a catastrophic failure. And although it clearly contributed to the project Caroline was now peripherally involved in, why would she spend so much time getting the Archimedes so correct in every detail?
Exhaustion began to overcome curiosity, however, and Kendrick felt sleep finally overtaking him. As he lay in the dark, he grew aware that he was frightened to close his eyes; frightened he might wake up to find his body changed in some less-than-subtle manner – thick ropes of half-sentient machinery, with its own unfathomable desires, burrowing under his flesh like eels.
Anything was possible, and Kendrick had long since discovered that there was nothing so terrifying as the unknown, the unpredictable.
10 October 2096
Angkor Wat
The heat seemed even more unforgiving than usual as Marlin Smeby ascended a short flight of ancient stone steps before stepping, with considerable gratitude, into the air-conditioned reception area. He stopped to savour the chill before moving on. After a nod to the security guard sitting at the main desk, he continued onwards to Max Draeger’s private elevator.
Less than a minute later he entered Draeger’s office, registering the vast stone-built mural that took up most of one wall. His gaze then moved on to the teeming jungle visible through the panoramic windows that formed the wall opposite. Draeger was standing there, hands in his pockets, staring out across the jungle and beyond. With his bleached hair and leathery copper skin, he looked the perfect image of the tanned Californian billionaire.
An air projector displayed an image above the smooth expanse of Draeger’s desk, and Marlin recognized it instantly as the Archimedes, a dull grey tube that belied the reality of the space habitat’s enormous size.
“Marlin, welcome. I hope your journey was comfortable.” Draeger followed Smeby’s gaze to the image of the Archimedes.
“The journey was fine, sir.” Smeby took a seat by the long obsidian desk, removing an eepsheet from his jacket pocket and placing it on the polished surface between them.
“This is everything I’ve been able to find out about the inmates of Ward Seventeen.” Draeger removed one hand from a pocket and placed it, fingertips down, on the desk. As Smeby scooted the eepsheet across the slick desktop, Draeger halted its progress. His fingers danced briefly across the document and reams of information scrolled rapidly under his hand.
Draeger nodded as if satisfied, and tapped at a coloured panel. The edges of the sheet strobed red in response, indicating that its contents were currently being uploaded to a data bank contained within the databand bracelet that Draeger wore.
“Very interesting, this. Los Muertos have clearly established the link between the surviving Labrats and the Archimedes.” Smeby waited in silence as Draeger’s fingers thoughtfully tapped out a light rhythm on the desk. “Interesting, but not quite as satisfying as I had hoped.”
“There have been difficulties.”
“I’m already aware of those.” Draeger took his seat across from Smeby and studied him, one hand half-covering his mouth. “How are your treatments progressing?”
That could have been an innocuous question but, in the several months since he had entered Draeger’s employ – or, rather, since Draeger had paid the bribes necessary to extricate Smeby from the Chinese jail in which he had been languishing – Smeby had learned to sense the inherent threat in every such discussion they had. Smeby nodded carefully, keeping his features deliberately neutral as he framed his reply.
“The spurts of growth in my augmentations appear to have been stopped, but it may be too early to decide if this is permanent.” He swallowed. “I’ll need further treatments, further observation, and Dr Xian thinks it’ll be a while before they’ll know for sure if I’m in the clear.”
Draeger nodded. Smeby had fully expected to die in that Chinese jail. He’d had his augmentations surgically implanted only a few years before, in a Bangkok clinic that took only cash – anything but US dollars. For some reason it had felt like a good idea at the time. It had been getting harder, a lot harder, to find mercenary work without possessing that extra edge. And if you didn’t take that one vital step further, maybe you’d find yourself caught in a mountain pass while some guy who could see in the dark, and with reflexes three times as fast as your own, crept up behind you with a knife. With odds like that, the surgery had seemed a reasonable gamble – for a while.
Draeger nodded towards the Archimedes image, still hanging in the air. “Tell me, Marlin, what you know about the station.”
“Only what I’ve read up on it over the past several days, sir.”
Draeger waved a hand. “So tell me what you’ve found out.”
“The original project was handled by three of your subsidiary orbital development firms, working in tandem with the United States government – while there still was a United States.” Smeby shrugged briefly. “The work on it started in the early 2080s, and it was intended to demonstrate the scientific superiority of the United States at a time when it was coming under almost constant attack by unknown forces utilizing biological or genetic weapons. This was at the same time that President Wilber instituted the Emergency Government, suspending the Constitution. And discontinuing the electoral process.”
“But there were other reasons too for building the station, Marlin?”
Smeby cast him an appraising look before continuing. “Yes, there were. I am a religious man, Mr Draeger, and I think Wilber was wrong. He believed that he could reach out to God by using the Archimedes – a sin of pride. God sundered the United States and scattered its people with plagues and fire. That was our punishment for our hubris. Now the Archimedes itself is inaccessible.”
Draeger’s expression remained serene. While Smeby was speaking, he had been staring again out over the treetops rising beyond the ancient temples. “You were there, weren’t you, Marlin? At the end?”
“Excuse me, sir?”
Draeger turned back to him. “During Wilber’s flight, you were one of his . . . they called you the God Squad, didn’t they?” Smeby could feel his face redden. The term that Draeger had used was uncomplimentary at best. “You were there, trying to smuggle him out of the White House before the Senate could have him arrested.” Draeger touched his data bra
celet and the edges of the eepsheet flashed again. Smeby could see new information displayed there now, and didn’t need to look too close to know what it would be.
Draeger turned the eepsheet around and slid it back over to Smeby, who ignored it. “Don’t you remember your old name?” asked Draeger. “Or does that stir up too many bad memories?”
“Lots of bad memories, sir. But what’s the point of this? You’ve already got me working for you.”
“I want you to understand how much is at stake here . . . your plastic surgery is excellent, by the way. What I’m about to tell you is intended for only a few people’s ears, so you should feel privileged that I’ve decided to share it with you. I’m sure you’ll appreciate the risks otherwise.”
Oh, I do, Smeby thought to himself sourly.
Draeger continued: “Much of the research carried out on board the Archimedes primarily involved molecular engineering. The station itself is partly a result of nanotech, using materials farmed from robot lunar mining operations. Some of that research, particularly into developing bio-organic technologies that could fuse with living bodies, was later developed still further through covert military experimentation.” Draeger smiled, but Smeby could see no humour in the other man’s eyes. “Research which included experimenting on members of the American public.”
Smeby shrugged. “Dissidents, enemies of the state – the kind of people who welcomed our worst enemies inside our borders with open arms.”
Draeger cocked his head to one side. “You approve, then?”
“That’s beside the point. What’s the purpose of all this, sir?”
“What if I told you that Wilber was right to think that he could find God through the Archimedes?”
Smeby was silent for several seconds as he sought an appropriate reply.
Instead, Draeger pre-empted him. “Let me fill in the rest of the details, then. There was a containment breach on board the Archimedes before it was even half completed. Self-organizing molecular machinery invaded the substance of the station, and the Archimedes was subsequently abandoned, under World Court jurisdiction.” Draeger smiled, crookedly. “Do you know precisely what went wrong?”
