Belt Three

by John Ayliff

  He wondered whether the lights would dim at night-time. Probably not. The day-night cycle was part of Keldra’s obsession. Lance Cooper was a creature of relentless Belt Three sun.

  Jonas shut his eyes against the glare and tried to sleep.

  A buzzing sound woke him. The walls were still glowing white, and he didn’t know how long he’d managed to sleep. He had a headache.

  There was another buzz, and a moment later the door hissed open. A pair of Iron Dragon crewmen stood in the corridor, nerve guns trained on him. ‘Captain wants to see you,’ one of them said.

  Jonas slouched out of the cell, trying to look nervous and defeated. One of the crewmen cuffed him, and they led him at gunpoint through the Iron Dragon’s corridors. He fought back the headache and tried to both memorize the ship’s layout and see what its interior could tell him about its captain. Neat, efficient, spotlessly clean. Most surfaces either glowed from within like the walls of the prison cell, or else were polished to a mirror shine. The crew members they passed were all dressed as if for an inspection, their black uniforms spotless.

  The guards led Jonas to a transit module that took them downwards. On a large ship, as on a city, high gravity meant high status, so it was natural that officer country would be close to the hull. The guards’ posture straightened as they emerged from the elevator, as if they could feel their captain watching them. They marched Jonas along a deserted corridor, through two security doors, and into a cold, dark room that smelled of antiseptic.

  The only furniture was a tall metal chair with an electrode-studded helmet built into its back, like a bulkier version of Emily’s memduction helmet. Jonas sat down and kept still as one of the guards fastened the wrist and ankle straps and then brought the helmet down over his head. His scalp prickled as the helmet’s tiny electrodes made contact, and he desperately wanted to scratch. The guards left without a word, but one of them shot him a pitying look.

  The wall in front of Jonas flicked to transparency. Lance Hussein Cooper sat facing him on the other side of a desk in a brightly lit room. On the wall next to him was a holo-screen showing the Solar Authority logo.

  ‘Jonas 2477-Athens-20219,’ Cooper said, with cold formality.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I wasn’t asking. I’ve already confirmed your identity. What were you doing on the Thousand Names, Jonas?’

  ‘The Remembrance of Clouds,’ Jonas corrected automatically.

  ‘The Thousand Names,’ Cooper snapped. ‘The ship is still rightfully owned by Wendell Taylor Glass, and the last name under which it was legitimately registered is the Thousand Names.’

  Jonas bowed his head. ‘Whatever you like.’

  ‘Say it, Jonas.’

  ‘The Thousand Names.’

  Cooper smiled. ‘Good. Do you know the origin of the ship’s name, Jonas? The story behind it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It’s the number of true-born family names.’

  ‘Yes.’ Cooper stood and paced around his desk as he talked. The floor level of his brightly lit room was higher than that of the interrogation cell, giving Jonas the impression of being trapped at the bottom of a pit. ‘The number is approximate, of course. There were close to twelve hundred family groups among the original survivors. There are now around nine hundred names, and many of those families are so watered-down with tank-born blood that I can barely consider them legitimate. Even so, the phrase is a reminder of the human race’s heritage. By choosing it as the name of his ship, Wendell Taylor Glass was celebrating that heritage: an unbroken genetic line that connects us with the origins of the human race.’ Jonas doubted that Glass had put that much thought into picking a common ship name, but he didn’t try to interrupt Cooper’s monologue. ‘Whereas you and Keldra choose to celebrate…what? Some side effect of the Earth’s atmospheric mechanics. Why did you think that was more worthy of celebration than the heritage of the human race?’

  ‘Keldra picked the name. Why don’t you ask her?’

  ‘Keldra? Perhaps you’d like to see her now.’

  Cooper touched a control in his hand and the holo-screen behind him lit up. The cell was identical to Jonas’s, but in chaos. The bedding was strewn across the floor, torn to pieces, revealing the metal surface of the bunk. Two dark red stains stood out on one of the glowing walls. Keldra sat against the bunk, hugging her knees in a foetal ball. Her hands were bloodstained, her clothing torn, and her hair in disarray. Her face was blank, staring at distant nothing.

  ‘What have you done to her?’

  Cooper laughed. ‘What have we done? Nothing. She’s been alone in her cell since we put her there. She threw a tantrum for a while, but now it looks like she’s calmed down.’ He shut off the feed and leaned forward on his desk, staring at Jonas. ‘Keldra couldn’t pass for a true-born. She barely passes for human. I’ll interview her later, but I find you far more interesting. We have plenty of time before we reach Fides.’

  Jonas looked up at Cooper and suppressed a smile. If he was right, they would take a bit longer to reach Fides, because Cooper was making a detour first.

  ‘You didn’t answer my question,’ Cooper said. ‘What were you doing on the Thousand Names?’

  ‘Keldra kidnapped me. She put a hacked admin implant in my head.’

  ‘So you claim no responsibility for what you’ve done since you joined the Thousand Names?’ Cooper said mockingly. ‘Keldra made you do it all?’

  Jonas looked at Cooper and didn’t blink. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You might be able to convince the court of that. I did detect the hacked implant and it was installed recently.’ Cooper sat down and put his hands together in front of him, as if about to commence business. ‘No matter. The events I’m really interested in took place long before you gained that implant. Do you know what the device you’re sitting in is?’

  ‘It looks like a memduction helmet,’ Jonas said.

  ‘It’s not a memduction helmet. Do you know what it is?’

  ‘No.’

  Cooper glanced at a screen on his desk and nodded subtly, as if putting a tick into a mental checkbox. Jonas guessed that the helmet he was wearing functioned as a lie detector, but he doubted that was the full story.

  Cooper clicked his control and a face appeared, huge, on the screen. It was Jonas’s face, complete with the odd sense of being mirrored left to right that he always had from photographs of himself, and younger, with bright eyes and a smile. He recognized it as an ID picture he’d had taken about six years ago, when he had been Gabriel Reinhardt’s personal assistant. He hadn’t been sure of it at the time, but now that he looked at the picture from the distance of six years and a dark interrogation cell, he knew it had been the happiest time of his life.

  ‘This is the last picture of Jonas ’77-Athens that we have on file,’ Cooper said. ‘You disappear from all city and corporate records in 2504, just less than six years ago. Last seen on Oberon, working for the Belt Three branch of the Reinhardt family mining and heavy industry business.’

  Cooper clicked his control and Jonas’s face was replaced by a different one. About the same age, shorter hair, and more rounded features, but similar light brown skin and the same youthful, bright-eyed smile. Jonas wasn’t sure he recognized the photograph, but the face was heartbreakingly familiar.

  ‘Gabriel Dominic Ellis Reinhardt,’ Cooper said. ‘Heir to the Reinhardt family business, and president of the Belt Three branch of their operations. Eldest of three children, but his siblings were both sisters and have both married out of the family. Gabriel therefore is… was…the only name-carrier in his branch of the family. Reinhardt is one of the less common names, so Gabriel’s failure to produce a son significantly increases the name’s risk of extinction. Look, Jonas.’

  Jonas hadn’t realized that he had looked away. His eyes snapped back to the picture of Gabriel, responding instinctively to the tone of Cooper’s words.

  ‘This brings back memories for
you, doesn’t it?’ There was a hint of cruel pleasure in Cooper’s voice.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied.

  ‘Good.’ Cooper turned to his controls, for a moment, but Jonas didn’t see any change. ‘According to city and corporate records, Gabriel Reinhardt is still the president of the Belt Three branch of Reinhardt Industries. He has not married, despite being well into his thirties. He made his branch of the business almost completely independent of his family in Belt Four, and has not visited any other family member in the last six years.’ Cooper straightened himself up and looked imperiously down at him. ‘Look at the picture, Jonas. You killed Gabriel Reinhardt and assumed his identity. I have not brought you here to extract a confession: I already have enough to convict you of this. What I want to know is how you got away with it for so long.’

  Jonas didn’t look at the picture but stared straight at Cooper. ‘I didn’t kill him.’

  ‘A denial will get you nowhere. The device into which you are strapped is a memory probe. It’s Earth technology. Only a few hundred exist, and mine is one of the few to be installed on a beltship. I had it installed at great personal expense because truth is important to me, and this device allows me to see it. It works on the same principle as a memduction helmet, but it can go deeper, into long-term memory, as well as short-term, even if those memories weren’t recorded in an implant. It can be an unpleasant and time-consuming process, but it always reveals what I want to know.’

  Jonas could feel his heart-rate quicken. He had been aware that such technology existed, but he’d never expected to encounter it. He looked straight at Cooper and didn’t let his nervousness show. ‘I didn’t kill him,’ he repeated.

  ‘We’ll see.’ Cooper touched a control, and then the lighted rectangle in which he sat drifted away.

  Chapter Twelve

  An egg-shaped chrome incense burner sat on a table in the middle of the apartment. White smoke curled from holes in its sides, filling the room with a scent of sandalwood.

  Jonas pushed away…

  An egg-shaped white ship nestled amid the tangled gantries that made up Oberon’s docking spindle. White vapour spurted momentarily from its sides as its poorly sealed umbilicals were detached. The spindle rotated along with the stars, from Jonas’s point of view, and the docked ships processed past like items for sale on a carousel. In the dark gaps between them he could see the reflection of his face, hanging in space like a ghost. He looked six years younger, but he wasn’t smiling. He looked as if he would never smile again.

  The egg-shaped ship disappeared from view as the spindle turned. Jonas stared at the opposite side of the spindle and waited, heart pounding, for it to reappear. It was suddenly, perversely, very important to him to see the ship as it departed. He couldn’t stop it from leaving: all he had left was to hope he’d see it go.

  The docking clamps scissored open and the ovoid ship edged into space. Jonas felt a wave of sick relief: at least he’d seen it. The ship spiralled outwards until its tiny thrusters fired and it pushed itself onto a new course. He stared at it until it was lost against the stars.

  ‘Mr Reinhardt?’

  Jonas didn’t know how long he had stood at the window. It sounded as if the speaker had repeated the name a few times before Jonas had even registered it, but she still sounded polite and nervously patient. Slowly, wearily, Jonas turned around…

  ‘You’re resisting the probe.’ Cooper was back in his yellow window, looking at one of his screens. ‘Don’t. It’ll only make the process more unpleasant.’

  ‘I wasn’t resisting,’ Jonas said, but as he said it he wasn’t sure it was true. He hadn’t been consciously trying to resist, but that hadn’t been a memory he’d wanted to go back to. Right now he wanted to be back in his plain white cell, safe and unexamined.

  Cooper frowned, as if unable to tell from his screen whether he was telling the truth. ‘Don’t resist again,’ he said.

  An egg-shaped chrome incense burner sat on a table in the middle of the apartment…

  An egg-shaped white ship sat snugly in its cradle on the docking spindle. Vacuum-suited servitors swarmed around it making the final preflight adjustments.

  ‘Jonas.’

  A hand rested on Jonas’s shoulder, very lightly. Gabriel had always been nervous with physical signs of affection.

  ‘So this is it,’ Jonas said. He didn’t turn around, but he didn’t move away.

  ‘This is it.’

  He stared at the white ship. He could see Gabriel’s face in reflection, hovering in space, behind his. He looked sad, but there was a sense of peace there that Jonas had only seen hints of before. Jonas turned around and hugged the other man close. Gabriel was wearing a plain white robe, coarse to his touch, wafting around Gabriel’s ankles in the low gravity.

  ‘You’re not going to try to talk me out of it?’ Gabriel asked.

  ‘I know I can’t.’ Jonas felt sick, as if a knot of despair was settling into his chest. ‘This is our last moment. I don’t want to spoil it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Gabriel said. ‘Remember what I said about you. Promise me you’ll remember.’

  ‘I promise.’

  A chime sounded.

  ‘They’re boarding,’ Gabriel said. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Jonas held Gabriel for a few more seconds, then let go. Gabriel slipped away silently to a transit module.

  The interrogation room seemed to float around Jonas; Cooper in his lighted window distant and disconnected from anything else. Jonas’s headache was back. He wondered if the procedure could cause permanent brain damage.

  ‘You’re still resisting the probe,’ Cooper said sternly.

  ‘Well, you’ve got what you needed now. Gabriel joined the Scribers and then Immolated.’

  Cooper looked down stonily. ‘Manipulating someone into suicide is still murder.’

  ‘What? That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘You played a long game, didn’t you? You worked your way into his confidence and manipulated him into joining the Scriber cult.’

  ‘I tried to talk him out of it!’

  ‘Not in the memory we just saw. You put on a sad face, but you stood there and let him do it.’

  ‘It was the last time we would ever see one another. I knew I couldn’t talk him out of it, and I wanted to say a proper goodbye.’

  ‘You could have talked him out of it if you’d tried.’

  Jonas looked away, eyes stinging.

  ‘You manipulated Gabriel Reinhardt to suicide, and you’re trying to manipulate me now,’ Cooper said. ‘You’re trying to mislead the memory probe. You can’t falsify a memory but you’ve been deflecting the probe from the most relevant ones. You’re remembering selectively in order to tell your story.’

  ‘I’m not resisting,’ Jonas said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m increasing the power. The device will overcome any resistance you put up.’

  An egg-shaped chrome incense burner sat on a table in the middle of the apartment. White smoke curled from holes in its sides, filling the room with a scent of sandalwood. The smoke moved quickly in the high gravity and coriolized towards one wall as it rose.

  Gabriel sat shrouded in smoke on the other side of the burner, but he jumped up as Jonas entered. He was wearing the coarse grey Scriber robes that he had been wearing increasingly in private. He looked energetic, full of life, more so than Jonas had ever seen him before.

  ‘You said you had something to tell me,’ Jonas said.

  Gabriel clapped his hand on his shoulder, eyes gleaming. ‘Yes. I’m ready. I’ve finally booked passage.’

  ‘Booked passage?’

  ‘On an Immolation ship.’

  Jonas pulled away sharply. ‘You’ve what?’

  ‘I’ve been a Scriber for years. You know that.’

  ‘I didn’t think you were serious!’

  Gabriel shrank back, looking hurt. ‘You didn’t think I was serious?’

  ‘I didn’t think you were that seriou
s. Most people who join the Scribers don’t go through with it. I thought it was just, I don’t know—’

  ‘A fad? A fashion statement?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘What, then?’

  Jonas sat down on one of Gabriel’s black faux-leather sofas, and gestured around the apartment. It took up half the floor of the starscraper, with a picture window looking out onto the water sculpture in the atrium. The furnishings were sparse but well-thought-out, displaying the kind of tasteful austerity only available to the rich. ‘You’re not a Worker-caste tank-born with no other way out,’ he said. ‘You’re a successful business owner. Why do this?’

  Gabriel remained standing, as if suddenly unwilling to touch any of the furniture. ‘Material success isn’t important,’ he said. ‘It’s a distraction from spiritual matters.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean you should throw it all away and kill yourself!’ Jonas found himself shouting, losing control. He felt numb: the reality of what Gabriel was telling him was only just beginning to impinge on his consciousness, but it had already found its way into his voice.

  ‘Maybe a thousand years ago, on Earth…’ Gabriel’s eyes moved to the wall opposite the picture window, as if trying to look out into space, but the apartment had no external windows. ‘We’re living in the end times, Jonas.’

  ‘Bullshit.’ Jonas hadn’t used such strong language about Gabriel’s religion before, but he was in no mood to be polite about it.

  Gabriel continued undeterred. ‘We’ve been given this chance, this few hundred years before the angels finish dismantling the universe. Anything we acquire in this world will be gone soon. It should be obvious that it doesn’t matter. We need to purify our spirits and then let the angels take us.’

  ‘The Worldbreakers aren’t angels.’

  Gabriel sat down opposite Jonas, leaning forward, hands clasped together, making intense eye contact: his arguing-about-religion pose. ‘What else could they be?’

  ‘I don’t know! They could be natural. They could be alien.’

  ‘They can be natural and still be angels. God worked through natural processes when He created the world, and now He’s working through the Worldbreakers in order to end it. We can shut our eyes to that, pretend it’s not happening, or we can let go of the material world and purify our spirits.’