Salvation Lost

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Is this how Lars sees the world, forever dim and bewildering?

  He put his head in his hands, closing his eyes tight. All this chaos was leaking from the dregs of zero-nark still in his blood, he knew that. Until sometime yesterday he and Adnan had managed it okay. The cut-down doses had worked, taking the edge off the torment of a world where the government was hunting him down in the brief time before they all got invaded by aliens. They’d coped well with the solnet and lownet feeds, using seriously bad-taste jokes to ride over the horror of it all. Then they got bored. The Deliverance ships had all but abandoned the habitats to fly off to the outer edge of the solar system and blow up the MHD asteroids. The crumbling lownet became as dull as watching shit dry. That was when it started to go wrong. Instead of harmony, the zero-nark had summoned up terrible nightmares from his subconscious—sick, perverted things that left him ashamed of having a brain that could think them up. He kept seeing people being mummified in their own flesh. Held in silent torment by their teratoid organs. Hacked apart or burnt by angry villagers with pitchforks and flaming torches who marched straight out of a Hong Kong Frankenstein virtual. Whole city populations consumed by hatred, screaming in anger and fright. He couldn’t tell if it was his throat or theirs that the yells had burst out of, just that he wanted the awful delusions to fuck the hell off.

  Looking around the squalor of the lounge, he saw the stage was filled with the numbing blue-green haze of a dead feed, its speakers hissing with static. “Switch it off,” he told Tye.

  The worthless haze blinked out of existence, and the unnerving silence of the slumbering house grew deeper. He was mildly surprised Tye could still do that. Seemingly every other chunk of technology had either shut down or glitched. At the end, they’d been struggling to find any kind of solnet access, let alone the lownet. Or was that more paranoia courtesy of the zero-nark?

  Without even the stage to watch, the rest of the room seemed to jump back at him, crying for attention. They really had made a complete mess; it looked like a stockpile of crap ready to be shoved through a rubbish portal to Haumea. Uneaten sandwich crusts lying between the cushions were moldy. Beer and wine bottles were scattered about, some only half empty. And the smell…

  “Oh, shit,” he groaned miserably.

  Adnan was nowhere to be seen.

  Has he left me?

  A lurch of panic set his heart racing. Skin, already cool, dropped toward freezing.

  “Adnan?”

  No answer.

  Louder: “Adnan? Where are you, mate?”

  Nothing.

  “Crap! Tye, get me a location on Adnan.”

  “Upstairs in the second bedroom’s en suite bathroom. House management network shows the shower is drawing power. The domestic water tank is down to thirty percent; the water utility supply failed thirty-nine hours ago.”

  “He’s upstairs?”

  “Yes.”

  Ollie flopped back down on the cushions and let out a pitiful sob as he kicked at the small pile of empty pads. I’ve got to stop taking this shit.

  It took a minute to get his breathing back to normal. His heart calmed. He wished that would return the rest of his body to normal, but he still felt awful. He didn’t know when he’d eaten last, nor what it was. And there was a big patch of skinaid on his hand. When he prodded it tentatively, it felt sore.

  He slowly got to his feet, sniffing suspiciously at his armpit. “Is there enough water in the tank for another shower?”

  “Assuming Adnan finishes in the next eight minutes, enough water will remain for you to shower,” Tye said.

  “Great.”

  Ollie started walking, expecting a hangover style headache and mildly relieved to find none. At least that was one advantage of zero-nark. “Lars? Hey, Lars, you awake? You want something to drink?” Not that he knew when either of them had last taken food and drink to the big oaf.

  He was very aware of the calendar icon in the corner of his tarsus lenses display. They’d been here too long. So that meant he needed a serious, sober discussion with Adnan, because just waiting around for things to get better clearly wasn’t an option anymore. They needed Tronde to make Claudette hand over her trust fund money. Honestly, he didn’t see any problem. She’d transformed into an even bigger narkhead than Tronde, which was saying something. Ollie was still perturbed by the way his friend had turned out.

  The conservatory door was wide open. He went through. It took a few seconds for the grotesque scene to register. Next thing he knew he was on all fours, puking his guts up between incoherent screams as the memory clot broke and yesterday came roaring back into his neurons with a terrible hammer blow.

  It hadn’t been a deranged zero-nark-fueled fantasy he’d lived through. After the house lost its lownet feed, they’d watched the ordinary news feeds as the story exploded across the world. People were melting, their muscles dissolving to bloat weird growths in the torso. Limbs shrank while ribs expanded and merged to form a hard, protective carapace around mutating organs. Then in the more advanced cases, eyes and ears were being sucked down into the skull, no longer required by whatever monster they were transforming into. It was happening everywhere, in every shielded city.

  Cocooning, the frightened news anchors called it. The victims’ bodies were self-modifying in preparation for eons in suspension on board the Salvation of Life as it flew off to the end of time. Tarsus lenses captured the images of people who had undergone dramatic changes overnight, now lying helpless in their beds as their legs and arms withered, unable to move as their consciousness slipped away. Distraught families gathered around, not knowing what to do other than cry. Rich people attended by top-grade paramedic teams, all with perplexed, fearful faces; the middle class with agency nurses administering sedatives and trying to arrange hospital admission; the truly poor with priests and prayers and garlands of flowers, some having acupuncture needles piercing the freakish tumors. They were the lucky ones.

  Fear had begun to rule the streets, inciting hundreds of riots. Ollie and Adnan had watched in sick dismay as the feed from Caracas showed paramilitaries standing by uneasily while newly formed anti-Olyix activists surrounded a clinic. Cocoons were dragged into the public square outside, some of them still conscious and shouting. A broad pyre had been set alight, with flames pumping out greasy smoke as the living cocoons were flung on by men who had to wear cloth over their faces to ward off the stench. Some cocoons had their relatives clustered around protectively, engaged in bloody tugs-of-war with the fearful crowd. They were always destined to lose.

  What happened in Caracas started to spread across the globe. People were afraid the cocoons were contagious, and government reassurances did nothing to damp down the primal panic. The smaller cities were hit worse. Too many refugees had poured in from the countryside, stretching resources. Initial resentment at the outsiders together with the fear of cocooning was an incendiary combination. The pyres rose relentlessly.

  Consensus on allcomments was that cocooning only happened to anyone who’d had a Kcell implant, which saw hospitals and clinics besieged with people desperate to have theirs removed. Paramilitaries and riot police had to be called in to public emergency centers as the frantic and fearful demanded the alien cells be extracted, no matter what consequence it would have on their health. Reports and images started to come in of grim attempts at DIY operations.

  Ollie closed his eyes in dismay, but the memories didn’t stop burning his brain. Then the real horror surfaced. Bik and his gran both had Kcells. It’s gonna happen to them! Unless…Those operations. People were having their Kcells extracted before the cocooning began in earnest. But you’d need a serious amount of wattdollars for that.

  Claudette’s got that kind of money.

  He opened his eyes, knowing what he had to do. Screw his friends, and screw Jade. The aliens had come for his family. Nothing else mattered now.
With his stomach completely empty, Ollie stared at the settee where Lars was lying. That is, what had been Lars once upon a time.

  The swelling that had begun around the man’s upper torso had now expanded so much it had split his t-shirt open, exposing pale skin that bulged with blue veins. His neck had been engulfed by the new growth, leaving his head as the apex of a body that was little more than a wedge of curving bone with four sticks protruding. Ollie realized they were all that remained of Lars’s limbs, the humerus and femur bones jutting out of him like some obscene nonhuman genitalia, shrink-wrapped in pasty skin, veins throbbing. And his dumb semi-Neanderthal face…Ollie started sobbing. The eye sockets were empty craters of blank skin above a nose that had now compressed more than any fist had ever flattened it, sealing over the nostrils as it withdrew, while his mouth had frozen open in a wide O of what must have been a last conscious gasp of surprise. But then anyone would have been shocked when their groin started sprouting thin tendrils that wormed over the settee and sank down to penetrate the carpet.

  Ollie turned and staggered out, wailing brokenly. In his mind he could see Bik and Gran, bodies distorted, roots anchoring them to the floor at home. But not yet. They didn’t have a lot of Kcells. There’s still time. Lots of time.

  Adnan was standing there at the foot of the stairs, still wet from the shower, towel wrapped around his hips, holding one of Claudette’s fancy leather handbags.

  “Lars!” Ollie sniveled.

  “I know, mate, I know.”

  “He’s…he’s…”

  “Yeah. I get it, all right. I’ve already seen him. Face it, the daft old sod had so many Kcell implants, especially muscle ones, the stuff made up half his bodyweight. It was bound to happen.”

  “Fuck!”

  “Nothing we can do, yeah? He’s gone. He belongs to the Olyix now. Understand?”

  “I can’t do this. I’ve got to go.”

  “Ollie!” Adnan gave him a shake. “Get a grip. We’ve got to sort this out. We’ve got to think of ourselves now. New identities, right?” He dangled the handbag in front of Ollie’s face. “Or maybe better.”

  “What?”

  “Claudette’s got cryptokens. I can break them. I’m not Gareth, but I’m good enough. You know that, right? So I’m going to get on with that right now. And you, my friend, need a shower. Get cleaned up, find yourself something to wear. Get normal; it’ll help. Then you and I will decide what we’re going to do.”

  Ollie stared at the cryptokens as if Adnan had just produced a miracle. Which he has. “Okay. Yeah, right.”

  “Good lad. I’ll stick something in the microwave, too. There’s still a bit of food left. I don’t know when we ate anything last.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Ollie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re all right.”

  “Thanks, Adnan.”

  Adnan lowered his voice. “We’re going to have to think if we ask Tronde to come with us.”

  Ollie gave his friend a solemn nod. “I know.” That’s never going to happen. I’ve got something much more important now.

  “Last of the Legion.” Adnan produced a bleak smile and clapped Ollie on the shoulder. “We’re going to make it, us. We’re never going to stop.”

  “Fuck, yeah!”

  * * *

  —

  The shower was a good idea. Ollie knew he’d washed the night they arrived at the Lichfield Road house but wasn’t entirely sure if he’d cleaned up since. He stayed under the jets for maybe longer than he should have, but he figured if they were leaving in a couple of hours then it didn’t matter. It was one of those Variclenz models that posh people had, with modes to inject soap and shampoo and dermal conditioner into the water. So he ran it for a couple of cycles before stepping out.

  With the last clean towel in the house shrouding his shoulders, Ollie went through the drawers and wardrobes in the guest bedroom. He guessed that Claudette hadn’t scissored her ex’s clothes in a psycho rage—odd, because that’s exactly what he would have expected her to do. But there was a ton of expensive men’s clothing, all neatly laundered. Varying sizes, too. So perhaps she was like that female spider that ate her male after they’d screwed, and these were the trophies. Smirking at that thought, he chose himself black silk underwear and socks. On top of that went dark-green leather trousers and a burgundy-toned Cruftan shirt with its small scarlet logo on the breast pocket, unbuttoned and knotted at the front to display his midriff. Midnight-black brogues, handmade by a Jermyn Street cordwainer—a bit tight, but he didn’t care because he knew how fabulously expensive they were. A dusting of makeup on the cheeks to deepen them, and a slick cherry-red lipstick. He decided against mascara.

  Ollie studied himself in the mirror. The assembly worked. Anyone who saw him would know he was a playa at the top of the world. I can do this. I can save them.

  Being dressed properly again didn’t bring the buzz back, but he strutted into the house’s master bedroom with the soundtrack from Sumiko’s latest virtual playing in his head. Funny smell in the air, and the curtains were open, not that the weak ochre twilight refracted by the London shield provided much illumination. The way it had been decorated wasn’t what he’d have chosen if he had Claudette’s money, but he could appreciate the 1930s Parisian decadence ideal she was aiming for.

  Tronde and Claudette were in bed together, her on top of him, arms around each other, nestled together like they were one creature, her stroking his face and pecs adoringly. An imperial purple silk sheet was drawn up over his groin, and Ollie had to concentrate hard on the memory of the news feeds about cocooning so he didn’t smirk at Tronde’s perma-erection tenting the fabric.

  “You okay, fella?” Tronde asked.

  “Sure. Just wanted to tell you, Adnan and I are thinking about splitting soon. There’s some bad shit going on out there, and we need to get to a terraformed system somehow.” Ollie gave Claudette a significant look. “Gonna need us some serious cash for that.”

  “Yeah.” Tronde sounded so disinterested Ollie knew he was tripping higher than clouds. “I see that.”

  “My baby’s not going anywhere,” Claudette said. She never even looked up at Ollie, just stared lovingly into Tronde’s dazed eyes. “He’s going to fuck me to the end, because he’s a bad boy.”

  “The baddest,” Tronde said.

  “Sorry, love,” Ollie said, “but that’s not up to you. Tronde, pal, we can’t stay here any longer.”

  “No!” Claudette yelled. “No, no, no. He’s mine! My bad boy! You just want him to fuck you, too. But he’s not going to, are you, babe?”

  “Oh, shit,” Ollie grumbled under his breath. Her brain had finally broken under the weight of neuroses from that weird hifli mix Jade had given them. “Not up to you,” he told her sternly, trying to channel that cold power Tronde had shown.

  Claudette sat up in a surprisingly fast motion, started pummeling the bed with her fists, disheveled hair flying. “Fuck you, fuck you. Fuck off. Go on, fuck off out of my house! You’re not real bad boys, not like my Tronde. Leave us alone. Go away. Away. Forever. I will not let him go. Not now. He’s perfect now. And he’s mine and I’m his. You’ll never have that. You’re already dead because you have no soul. All that’s left of you is money and dirt.”

  “Shut it,” Ollie sneered. “Tronde, mate, you need to come downstairs. We’ll be there.”

  But all Tronde did was smile dreamily at the ceiling. “You go. You have my blessing. I’m going to stay here. The end is coming, Ollie, and it’s going to be glorious for anyone who welcomes it properly.”

  Claudette started a demented laugh that made Ollie think of a witch’s cackle. That was when he knew he’d lost. Who’d have thought it, Tronde fallen into the hole he’d dug himself. “Your choice, mate,” he said and left—one backward glance because, well…even in th
is state, Claudette did have a great-looking arse.

  * * *

  —

  Adnan was waiting in the kitchen. All the empty food packets had been pushed to the end of the polished granite work surface. Real coffee was brewing in the cafetière, and the microwave was heating two packs of pappardelle with lamb ragu. Just smelling the food lifted Ollie up another level of sobriety, allowing him to think clearly.

  “Is Tronde coming down?” Adnan asked.

  “No. And we’re not going to get Claudette’s trust fund, either. The stupid bastard’s too narked out to— Oh, shit!”

  “What?”

  Clarity was a real bitch; it allowed Ollie to work out what was actually happening. “His dick.”

  “You talking about Tronde?”

  “Yes. Bollocks. When he went for his treatment, did he have printed stem cells or a Kcell implant?”

  Adnan’s humor vanished fast. Both of them shifted their gaze up to the ceiling.

  “Kcells,” Adnan said quietly. “That kind of printed stem is expensive.”

  “Jesus wept, it’s just not fair. How bad can our luck get?” And what the hell was underneath that sheet? Just thinking about that was making his hands shake.

  Adnan poured the coffee into two mugs and slid one carefully over the work surface. There was no expression on his face. “Just you and me, then.”

  “Yes.” And Ollie knew he wasn’t hiding the fear in his voice. If this was one of Sumiko’s virtuals, now would be the time one of us betrays the other.

  A cryptoken followed the coffee mug. “I cracked them.”

  “Hell, Adnan. That’s amazing! How much?”

  “Enough to live like a Zangari for a month. Or in our case, buy ourselves one step to the billionaire belt.”