Pandora's Star

by Peter F. Hamilton

  ‘It probably looks better in the daytime,’ he decided.

  ‘This is the daytime,’ Paula told him primly. She started walking.

  Twice, Hoshe was convinced something big flew overhead, just above the walls. A subliminal rustle of air, maybe the light flickering ever so slightly. Of course, whenever he looked up, all he could see was the rigid strip of dome crystal above the walls.

  ‘Do you know where we’re going?’ he asked.

  ‘More or less. The city’s geometry changes slightly the whole time, its buildings and streets tend to move around, but they do it slowly. Don’t worry, the High Angel won’t let us go anywhere we shouldn’t.’ She paused at an intersection. This alley was a little wider, and had green lights glinting along its length. A Raiel was moving along it, heading towards them. In the dim light it was hard to see anything but a large dark bulk sliding closer, which made the huge alien even more intimidating. An adult Raiel was larger than a bull elephant, though that was where all comparison ended. From the angle Hoshe was seeing it, the alien’s forward body looked more like an octopus tipped on its side. A bulbous head was surrounded by a collar of tentacle-limbs ranging from a pair at the bottom which had evolved for heavy work, four metres long with paddle-like tips and a base thicker than a human torso, down to clumps of small slender manipulators like energetic nests of boa-constrictors.

  A bunch of five small hemispherical eyes on the side of its head swivelled in unison to focus on Hoshe as it reached the intersection. When he glanced down, he saw eight short stumpy legs on each side of its underbelly; they didn’t have any knees or ankles, they were just blunt cylinders of flesh that tilted up and forward in pairs to propel it along in what amounted to a continuous smooth waddle. As the main bulk of its body went past, Hoshe could just make out brown rings mottling the grizzled hide of short bristly fur. Behind the collar of tentacles a number of small protuberances were dangling down as if the flesh had been pulled into dreadlocks; by the way the bulbs at the end swung about ponderously they could have been solid lead, and they were definitely technological rather than any natural growth.

  ‘How about that,’ he mumbled once the giant alien was past. Its rear end tapered to a drooping point, there was no tail.

  ‘They are somewhat overwhelming,’ Paula said as she started off down the alley with green lights. ‘A lot of human residents here think they actually built the High Angel. Given their intelligence level it’s a strong possibility.’

  ‘What do you believe?’

  For the first time since they’d been on the case, Paula produced a small smile. ‘I don’t believe it really matters. But for the record: it’s unlikely.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they’re almost as indifferent to us as the Silfen. Mind you, it’s different in this instance, the Raiel really do look down on us from a great intellectual height. I don’t think any entity that aloof would build something with the High Angel’s mission. Qatux told me once that they study the physical dynamics of the universe, not the cultures it contains. To them, life really is an accident of chemistry; all life, including themselves. I think they only agreed to contact with the Commonwealth so that they could have access to our unisphere’s astrophysics database. They’ve made some substantial contributions to our sensor technology over the years.’

  They walked for another five minutes. Other than the colour of the low lights, which was different at each intersection, there was no change to the nature of the alleys or walls. He knew there were tall structures somewhere in the dome, but none of them were visible from the bottom of the alleys. It didn’t take much imagination for him to picture himself as some lab animal scuttling through a maze.

  Paula eventually stopped beside a section of wall no different to any other; the string of lights along the base were purple shading towards ultraviolet. After a moment, a section of the wall in front of her split open and parted. The gap was wide enough to admit a Raiel. Inside was a broad circular space, its floor glowing a pale emerald. The roof was invisible somewhere in the darkness above.

  A Raiel was waiting for them a few metres beyond the door. Paula stood before it, and gave a small bow. ‘Hello, Qatux; thank you for seeing me.’

  Qatux’s head lifted, revealing the crinkled, damp folds of pale skin that was its mouth zone. Several of them creased up, briefly exposing deep gullets and nasal passages. There was even a glimpse of sharp brown fangs. ‘Paula.’ The voice was a mellow whisper, accompanied by the soft sighing of air escaping through the big alien’s loose muscles. ‘Have you brought it?’

  ‘Yes.’ She opened her bag and brought out a fist-sized cylinder of memory crystal.

  The big Raiel quivered at the sight of it. Now his eyes were acclimatizing to the murky light, Hoshe could see Qatux didn’t appear to be in very good physical shape. The hide around its main torso was tight, outlining the platelets of its skeletal structure. One of its large tentacle-limbs was trembling, which it kept coiled up, though the splayed tip kept falling out. All its eyes were rheumy, blinking out of sequence.

  ‘How long is it?’ Qatux asked.

  ‘Tara Jennifer Shaheef is over a hundred years old. Can you handle that much memory?’

  One of the medium-sized tentacles slithered out towards Paula, its tip poised above the memory crystal. ‘Yes. Most certainly. I can do that.’

  ‘I’m serious.’ Paula slapped at the tentacle tip which hurriedly withdrew. ‘I need to know if it’s actually possible. You’ve never taken more than twenty years before.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. It will take longer for me to absorb that much information, that’s all.’

  ‘All right then. I’m looking for anyone who could carry a grudge. Anyone who features prominently and then vanishes from her life. They might have been edited out, so check for missing segments, you know, sequences that don’t connect to anything else. I want you to consider professional clashes as well as personal ones. It might even be a quick meeting, a particularly savage argument. I don’t know, but some trigger, okay?’

  The tentacle crept out again, a sheepish motion. ‘These events and people I will find for you.’

  ‘I hope so.’ Her hand moved up and down, as if physically weighing the cylinder, demonstrating her reluctance. Then she brought it up and slapped it into the hooked end of the tentacle. Qatux hurriedly pulled it back. ‘Don’t take too long,’ she admonished.

  ‘A week. No more. I will call you. I promise.’

  The wall parted again to let them out.

  ‘That’s it?’ Hoshe asked. ‘We just leave her memory with Qatux?’

  ‘You heard. Qatux will call when he’s finished.’

  ‘Hell, I thought . . .’ Hoshe lowered his voice. ‘I thought we were taking it to some Raiel authority, a forensic lab. Some-thing official!’

  ‘What do you want? A mayor or a president with a signature certificate on a court warrant? The High Angel lets us in, the Raiel city gives us access; it doesn’t get any more official than this.’

  Hoshe took a long breath, he really didn’t want to get on the wrong side of the Chief Investigator. But he was police, too; maybe not like her, but he had a sense of right and wrong, of justice. ‘All I’m saying is, it took the Oaktier supreme national court three days to grant us copy authority to Shaheef’s secure store memory. And if it had been anybody else but you applying, we probably wouldn’t have got that. Isn’t that an indicator of how highly we value a secure store? This is a person’s life we’re dealing with here, her whole life. And now you just hand it over to some sick alien.’

  ‘Yes it’s her life. But that life was entrusted to us when she was murdered.’

  ‘Alleged murder.’

  ‘It is time you learned that passing your own judgement and acting upon it is essential to our profession. Have some confidence in yourself and your ability, Detective.’

  Hoshe scowled, though he knew his cheeks were reddening. He walked through the bizarrely lit alleys next to the Chief Investigator
, both of them keeping silent.

  The lift door was still open when they arrived back at it.

  ‘They pity him, you know,’ Paula said as they started their descent back down the stalk.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The other Raiel. They pity Qatux. You understand what he is, don’t you?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘They’re an old race. They have dignity and grace in abundance, their minds are far superior to ours. We’re only a few generations away from our hunter-gatherer ancestors; while the Raiel are so far past that rung on their evolutionary ladder they’re almost a different species to the creatures they left behind. It leaves them vulnerable to certain things. I’m not making excuses for what Qatux is, but I understand his fall. We can cope with raw emotion because we’re still close to the animal origin. I can’t imagine what it’s like for an entity who has never experienced love or hate or anger or joy to be exposed to such feelings. Shock, I guess. For the majority of them, anyway. Most Raiel are mentally strong enough to dismiss it. But the weaker ones, they can become addicted. That’s what happened to Qatux; he’s a human junkie. He loves us. And I think it’s the saddest thing in the universe.’

  ‘So he’s reliving Shaheef’s memories?’

  ‘Not reliving, he’s becoming her. Every experience, every sight, every sound, he knows them. You heard him, it’ll take a week to absorb a hundred years of her life. When it’s done, we’ll be able to ask him anything about any day, hour, or minute of her life, and get a coherent answer.’

  ‘All right, but I don’t see the need. We can do that, we don’t need a Raiel.’

  ‘Have you ever reviewed someone’s memory, Hoshe?’

  ‘No,’ he admitted.

  ‘It’s not like a TSI recording; similar, I grant you, but not the same. TSI is the polished version, directed and focused. They’re made for a reason, to push your attention onto something. Ninety per cent of the market has a sexual content, but there are the pure dramas, and action adventures, and tourist trips as well. It actually takes a very skilled performer, backed up by an equally skilful nerve impulse editor, to receive and filter out the impressions that the director wants and the script calls for. You access a TSI and the story is laid out for you, easy and simple, you sit back and zip through it. True memory is different, it’s whatever has caught your attention at the moment. There can be a dozen important – critical – things going on around you, and because of your prejudices, the way your personality is put together, you’re only looking at one, most likely the least important. It doesn’t even have to be visual; a sound, a smell, that could be the only recollection you have of a room, not who was in it or what they said. And try finding that room amid all the years you can recall . . . We can date the sections of memories which were recorded by an insert memorycell. But indexing, that’s completely different. Unless you know the exact time, you’re forced to review the whole day, or if you’re unlucky, week. And that’s where Qatux comes in. Humans have to review memory in real time. We can’t accept it running faster than it happened. So if I wanted to look through the century which is Shaheef’s life, I would have to spend a century doing it. But Qatux with his larger brain and excellent mind, he can take the whole load in almost at once.’

  ‘You were worried about him.’

  ‘Yes. A hundred years is a long time. Even his brain will have a limit. And I know he’s soaked up dozens of human lives already.’

  ‘Doesn’t that bother you, being his pusher?’

  ‘Human ethics,’ she murmured. ‘You can’t judge the Raiel by our standards. They don’t police their own kind the way we do. Raiel are supposed to police themselves. Qatux has made his choice, which in his society he has a perfect right to do. He’s going to get those memories anyway. If I didn’t supply them, other people will; it’s not just commercial TSI recordings you can buy within the unisphere, there are memories to be had as well. A small specialist market. This way Qatux helps us solve the crime, everybody benefits. If we stopped him from getting them, it would be us committing the transgression as far as the Raiel are concerned.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Hoshe said. The lift was slowing again, delivering them into freefall. ‘I still believe this is wrong.’

  ‘Do you want to leave the case? I won’t stop you, and it won’t read against you on your record.’

  ‘No, thank you, Chief Investigator. We’ve come this far; I’m going to see it through.’

  *

  From the moment it began, Rob Tannie regretted taking this job. It was all down to money of course, and his perennial shortage of it. In his current chosen profession of ‘field security operative’, ordinary jobs were hard to find, and well-paid jobs were merely the stuff of legend. So when his agent called to offer him the contract with its fantastic payment, he should have known better. And if that wasn’t enough, the contract also had a re-life clause: he was to load his memories into a private clinic’s secure store and his anonymous employer would provide a five-year bond. If Rob didn’t reappear within five years in person to cancel it, then the clinic would go ahead with the procedure.

  That told him, even if intuition and simple common sense didn’t, that, sure as shit, five years from now he’d be waking up in some freaky infant-teenage body with no recollection of the last few months of this existence. He should have walked. But it was those damn finances: some bad investments in horses and certain sporting fixtures, as well as poker and other games of chance, had left a rather large shortfall in his credit balance. He couldn’t afford not to agree, not with creditors like his, and his agent knew that. So he said yes, and expected to wind up helping some radical ethnic group strike a blow for greater cultural autonomy against their planetary government; or take part in a corporate black ops strike, or if things were really bad he could even be involved in some criminal syndicate power struggle. Naturally, with his luck, it was even worse than any of those.

  Two weeks settling into his newly arranged job as a security guard at CST’s Anshun starship complex. Two boring weeks staying in character while he learnt the layout, the schedules, the hardware which CST used. Getting on nodding terms with the technical teams putting the starship together. Sharing a laugh with his new colleagues about the hundreds of over-eager hopefuls who arrived every day for their final stage crew interviews and assessments. Actually catching a glimpse of Nigel Sheldon himself, surrounded by his entourage of aides.

  Two weeks and he still had no idea why he was here. He couldn’t work out who was opposed to CST, unless it was some kind of Earth Grand Family conflict – who knew what those rich weirdoes would do to each other to gain an advantage.

  Then this morning just before breakfast he received an encrypted message from his agent. Rob used the key he’d been given, and slim green text opened up across his virtual vision. His mug of breakfast coffee grew cold as he read and re-read the briefing with its precise instructions and timings. Finally, he looked up at the apartment’s ceiling and groaned: ‘Oh bloody hell.’ That was it, he really wasn’t likely to survive the day, despite the last text section which detailed extraction routes.

  He stuck to the routine he’d established, and took a city metro out to the CST planetary station. From there he caught one of the staff buses that spent the day trundling back and forth over the wasteland of the station yard to the starship complex. Along with the other security guards he arrived at the locker room twenty minutes before shift started so he could change into his uniform. This time, he took longer than usual, waiting until the room was nearly empty. When there were only two others left, he went over to the locker specified in the briefing. The code pattern in his thumb OCtattoo opened it. A simple utility belt was inside, identical to the one he was wearing. He swapped the pair of them round, and closed the locker before leaving.

  His shift began at eight thirty, and he was at the main gatehouse on time, one of three guards to be stationed there. The first person through was Wilson Kime. Rob saluted as the gate opened for th
e captain’s car. It was about the most physical part of his duty. The three guards in the gatehouse were responsible for monitoring the perimeter with its six-metre fence and patrolling guardbots. Hundreds of sensors were strung out along the fence, along with dozens more scattered across the surrounding land. Nothing could get close without security knowing. All the guards had to do was run random second-level verification scans on personnel and check visitor vehicles.

  At ten thirty, Rob said, ‘I’m going for a break, back in twenty.’ He left the gatehouse, and walked back to the main complex buildings over the newly mown grass. The air was as humid as ever, making him wipe perspiration from his brow.

  Once he was inside, he made straight for the gateway section. The control room was on the lower of the building’s three sub-levels. Another security guard and a building maintenance tech were waiting in the lift. His e-butler swapped IFF codes with them, confirming they were all part of the mission. They gave each other tense looks, judging what they saw, wondering if one of them didn’t have what it took.

  A timer in Rob’s virtual vision counted down the seconds until ten forty-seven. ‘Right,’ he said, and touched the button for the lower level. ‘Anyone want out, you’re too late.’ The lift doors slid shut, and they began their descent to sub-level three. Rob opened his holster and took out the ion pistol, checking its charge level. It looked the same as the one he’d been issued with, but the difference was that the security network couldn’t disable it as it could all the others, a precaution in case a guard ever went ‘rogue’.

  ‘Put it away,’ the maintenance tech said. His eyes gave a warning flick towards the lift’s sensor.