Salvation Lost

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Off,” Gwendoline ordered Theano.

  “How long till they get here?” a dazed Horatio asked as the images vanished.

  “Twenty minutes. Come with me. Please.”

  “Everyone has seen what’s happening. The Olyix really do want to take us with them on their insane crusade to the end of time. People are scared, and alone. Not just the screwed-up kids I normally help—everyone on this planet. Someone has to help them.”

  “We will.”

  “I know. But you won’t be able to tell them, will you? You can’t give details of how we’re going to fight back. On top of everything else they’ll be in the dark, accessing nothing but propaganda and rumors. There will be nothing to do but fight one another for resources while we wait for the shield to fall.”

  “Then come with me.”

  “People deserve better than everyone who counts deserting them.”

  “I’m not going to desert them. I can help.”

  “Yes, you can. But I would be deserting them. I have to be true to what I am, to what I’ve given my life to. You know that, don’t you?”

  Gwendoline couldn’t speak, just nodded as the tears flowed.

  They didn’t use a visual feed after that, just the tactical display, showing them the relentless progress of the Deliverance ships’ advance across Europe. Cities fell shockingly, unexpectedly: Ankara, Bucharest, Valencia, Venice, Turin, Lublin, Stuttgart, Enghien, Lyon. Old, dependable names they’d felt sure in their hearts would have withstood the assaults, cities with thousands of years of history and culture that should have carried on through time. Gone. Erased beneath the blast of alien death rays.

  Then they came for London. Gwendoline and Horatio went out onto the balcony to watch. The thick barrier of air bound by the shield generators was an opaque copper-gold roof that blotted out the true sky. All they saw were giant ellipsoid shadows maneuvering overhead. They held hands, waiting—

  It happened in seconds. Bright purple blotches appeared overhead—stains that spread rapidly, wiping away the cozy hues they’d become used to over the last few days. Inside a minute the shield was a disturbed violet glow on the edge of eyeburn. With it came a pervasive thrumming sound, a bass organ note played by some demented godling.

  “It’s holding,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “It’s holding!”

  “Yes.” He gave her forehead a kiss. “And now it’s time for you to go.”

  “No. Come with me.”

  “I would be nothing, I could contribute nothing.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “We’ve talked. We’ve argued. We’ve drowned ourselves in angst. Now it’s over. You go help us the way only you can. And I will help maintain what order I can so the city is still here when you liberate us.”

  “I hate them!”

  “Good. Now use that.”

  They’d already threaded up the twenty-centimeter portal Loi had sent. A two-meter door now waited for her in the middle of the lounge, open to a typically corporate room, windowless and bland.

  “We will talk every day,” she told him. “More than once.”

  “We will.”

  Her hand refused to let go of him, so he pushed her gently toward the portal. One step beyond that was safety, a habitat forty light-years away.

  “Go.”

  She nodded quickly, then turned away so he wouldn’t see the new tears. She stepped through.

  Horatio watched her bagez trundle loyally through behind her. There was the start of a turn, an arm coming up to wave…then the big portal reverted to standby, becoming a blank rectangle with a hint of mauve scintillations within its non-surface.

  Thirty seconds later, the threader mechanism activated, aluminum struts and electromorphic muscle activators rotating and sliding with piston smoothness. Big door feeding into slimmer rectangle; that retreating into a square, which in turn vanished into the original twenty-centimeter portal.

  Loi’s icon splashed across his tarsus lenses. “You still with us, Dad?”

  “Sure. Is she safe?”

  “Already on Nashua.”

  “You look after her, understand? She’s not half as tough as she makes out.”

  “No, Dad, she’s twice as tough.”

  “I’ll see you soon, son.”

  “You can come through any time you want. You know that, right?”

  “I know. Thank you.”

  He put the twenty-centimeter portal back into its case and left the penthouse. For once, this part of London seemed deserted as people huddled in their homes, accessing feeds of their planet under siege. So he put his sunglasses on to ward off the shield’s dreadful mauve glow and walked east along the Chelsea Embankment until he reached the lovely old Albert Bridge. Halfway across he leaned over the rail. Without any water in the river, he was a lot higher up than he was used to. Below him the expanse of chocolate brown mud gave off the fetid smell of sewage and rotting fish. Over by the banks, it was already drying, while directly underneath him a broad trail of liquid sludge occupied the middle of the empty riverbed.

  There was someone walking along the semisolid mud, a kid in a green parka, his footsteps visible in the mud behind him stretching back to Battersea Bridge and beyond. Horatio wondered how far he’d walked along the river—and why.

  The kid stood still and looked up. His mirrorshades prevented Horatio from seeing his face. They stared at each other for a few seconds, then Horatio gave a brief nod, sharing the strangeness of the day, and carried on toward Bermondsey.

  Jade Urchall’s body lay on an operating table in Kruse Station’s stark medical department. From behind the curving glass wall, Alik regarded it with some distaste. There was plenty of damage: gashes, blood, burns—looking bad. But as a frequent late-night visitor to ER rooms, he knew it was mostly superficial.

  Jessika and Soćko, dressed in canary-yellow biohazard suits, were bending over the woman’s head. The surgical arms hanging down from the ceiling moved in small increments, like agitated spider legs. Soćko shifted aside, and Alik got a better look. Even he had to clamp his jaw together hard. The scalp had been removed, to be held half a meter above the table by a robot arm.

  “Bloody hell,” Callum murmured, “it’s like humans are just built out of modules you can take apart and replace, like fixing a drone.”

  “Not a bad analogy,” Yuri said. “Both of us have had enough replacement parts bolted in, eh?” He clapped his hand on Callum’s shoulder.

  The way the old Scotsman tried not to flinch was a welcome distraction for Alik.

  “Maybe a helpful extension?” Yuri went on.

  “How’s it going?” Callum asked, ignoring his persecutor.

  “Nearly there,” Jessika told them.

  Alik glanced over at Kandara. Unlike poor Callum, she didn’t seem the slightest bit squeamish at what was being done to the Olyix agent’s body. In fact, given how keenly she was watching the bizarre procedure, he got the impression that she’d probably like to finish the fight they’d had in London, preferably with her bare hands.

  One of the surgical arms lowered a hemispherical mesh, slipping it onto the exposed quint brain like a particularly tight cap. The two Neána had produced the thing in Jessika’s initiator while they were all waiting for news of an Olyix agent. The tip-off about Jade was the first break they’d had since returning from Nkya. But Jessika had promised they would be ready, they just needed a body, alive…

  “Contact,” Jessika said.

  The arm retracted, leaving the mesh in place.

  “Stable,” Soćko said. “Microfibers interfacing.”

  The surgical arms moved along Jade’s body and began connecting tubes into the ports that had been inserted into Jade’s limbs and neck. Clear syrupy fluids started to flow into her.

 
“What’s that for?” Alik asked.

  “Intravenous feeds,” Jessika said. “We need to keep the body alive. For the moment, anyway.”

  Callum leaned forward, frowning. “For the moment? I thought this was a long-term strategy?”

  “It is,” Jessika said. “Once we’ve confirmed the brain is still entangled with the other quint bodies, we’ll start fabricating a more reliable life support.”

  “Such as?” Alik said.

  “Basically, my initiators will grow Olyix organs, which will supply the brain with all the nutrients and oxygen it needs.”

  “You mean, we’ll cocoon it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I like it.”

  “And Jade Urchall’s body,” Callum asked. “What about that?”

  Alik could just make out Jessika’s head moving behind her helmet’s tinted visor, looking at each of them. “That is your decision, of course. Our biologics can sustain the original body for a considerable time. However, the prospects of recovering her brain from the enclave in that timeframe are slim. When we do have her brain back, I’d suggest it would be kinder to grow her a new body.”

  “When you say slim…?” Yuri inquired.

  “She means zero,” Soćko announced. “The Urchall body will age and die centuries before humans even get close to entering the enclave.”

  “Glad you’re the Neána diplomatic mission,” Kandara said. “Wouldn’t want to meet your abode cluster’s tell-it-how-it-is department.”

  The two Neána faced each other for a moment, then turned back to the brain mesh. “The nodule is intact and functional,” Soćko said. “We’ll be able to scrutinize the cortex impulses.”

  “We don’t have a Rosetta stone for Neánish,” Alik said. “So let’s have that in English, please.”

  Jessika went into the airlock. “No such thing as Neánish,” she said, as the decontamination cycle filled the glass cylinder with mist and ultraviolet light. “That I know of, anyway.”

  “Waiting…”

  “It goes like this: The five quint brains are all entangled, like a distributed network of processors. Essentially, as this one is unconscious, we’ve taken it offline. It’s not saying anything to the others. Now Soćko is about to insert the neurovirus. We can pacify it, so it will never share that joint consciousness with the others. However, although it won’t ‘transmit’ thoughts and senses, it can still receive them. We’ll know exactly what the other quint bodies are seeing and doing.”

  “Doing and seeing,” Callum said.

  Alik frowned at him. “What?”

  Callum shrugged. “Better grammar.”

  “Jesus, man; keep it relevant, here.”

  Jessika stepped out of the airlock chamber and began to wriggle out of the biohazard suit. Kandara went over to help her.

  “Having a quint intruder inside the Salvation of Life is useful,” Jessika said, “but the invasion of Earth is an operation that is interstellar in scope, and deploys tens of thousands of ships, and probably a million quint bodies. Even five sets of eyes can’t tell us everything we need. Fortunately, every quint brain contains a tiny nodule of cells that are entangled with the onemind neuralstrata. It’s how the onemind communicates with them. It can see what they see and order them accordingly.”

  “You can send the neurovirus into the onemind?” Yuri asked in surprise. “Will you be able to take control of the Salvation?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “She means no,” Soćko called from inside the treatment bay. “The onemind is vast and extremely smart. If we tried to subvert it with the neurovirus, its primary thought routines would detect the corruption before it could spread through the majority of the structure. But what we can do is sneak around inside its head and listen to the routines.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Alik murmured. “We’ll have a fantastic advantage. We’ll know all their sabotage mission plans before they even launch them. We can wipe out every Olyix agent on Earth. The city shields will be safe.”

  “Not quite,” Yuri said firmly. “What we have here is the Bletchley problem.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Bletchley Park was where the allied code breakers deciphered German military communications during World War II.”

  “Great, and?”

  “They had to be extremely careful how the information was used. If they outmaneuvered the Germans at every turn, then the Germans would know their codes had been broken. They’d switch their encryption.”

  “You’re saying we should let the Olyix sabotage teams continue? You’re fucking crazy!”

  “No, I’m saying we have to be careful how we use the intelligence.”

  “Yuri’s right,” Jessika said. “Once we initiate passive accumulation of onemind communications, we have to consider the endgame. This is what we discussed. Ultimately, to win, you will have to lose the start. Allowing ten cities to fall to maintain a strategic advantage is part of the policy. If you win, those humans will be liberated in the future.”

  “Have you accessed the feeds from cities without shields?” Alik spat back angrily. “Those spheres are hunting people down like rabid dogs. They spare no one. Kids…The motherfuckers even cocoon babies!”

  “That’s why we’ve come to Sol,” Jessika replied levelly. “That’s why we have knowledge about weapons and space drives and biologic initiators. To give it to you, so you can fight this.”

  “Why don’t you Neána use it, if you’re so fucking smart?”

  “I am the use.”

  “No, you’re using us.”

  “For now, and for a few brief remaining years, you’ll have free will, a choice. Exercise it. I can’t tell you how, because that’s the one thing I have never had. I was created for this purpose alone. So maybe Kandara was right all along, maybe I am just a machine with a single program. It doesn’t matter. Choose!”

  Alik’s clenched fists rose in helpless frustration. He knew she was right, that Yuri was right. They couldn’t give away their advantage. They had to fight the long game, no matter how painful. “Fuck!” He was mildly surprised to find Kandara’s hand on his shoulder. “Yeah,” she drawled. “Real freedom’s a bitch, huh?”

  He shook himself free, unable to trust himself to answer.

  “So we go ahead with the plan,” Callum said. “Get a Trojan ship into the Salvation of Life wormhole and from there into the enclave where it can spy on them. The exodus habitats build an army, or navy, or Ainsley’s killer robot legions over the next thousand years. They invade the enclave. Exterminate the Olyix. Rescue our species. Five-point plans don’t come much simpler.” His chuckle was bitter.

  Alik found he was looking to Yuri for a lead, and resented it enormously.

  “Yes, very simple,” Yuri replied with a harsh grin.

  “But we still need to get ourselves an Olyix ship to get this plan up and running,” Kandara said. “When the neurovirus takes over this quint, will it be able to steal one for us?”

  “Ah,” Jessika said, brightening. “Soćko and I have been considering that, and we have an idea that won’t risk exposing our tame quint to the onemind. Frankly, stealing a ship was always going to be risky. This way we just have to practice a little mental subterfuge instead—much less likely to get caught.”

  Alik followed the Neána woman out of the medical division, trying not to show resentment at how passive he was being. It didn’t come naturally. When he gave Kandara a sideways glance, he wasn’t entirely surprised to find her smirking at him. “What?”

  “Taking orders doesn’t come easy to you, does it?”

  “I’m in the FBI, for fuck’s sake. All I do is take orders.”

  Her smirk grew larger. “Sure. Just another grunt, you. One that visits the Oval Office for one-on-ones with POTUS.”

  Loi and Eldlund were waiting ou
tside the medical division. They fell in behind everyone else, and trooped along without asking any questions.

  Stepping through three portal doors brought them to a large hangar. Alik let out a soft breath of understanding as he looked at the Olyix ship sitting on a row of cradles. It was the one from Nkya.

  Jessika walked over to it and gestured up at the dusty fuselage. “This is a mid-level transport, remember. The Olyix use them a lot. Fleets of them are going to start coming out of the wormhole over the next couple of months. They’ll lift the cocoons from Earth and take them up to the Salvation of Life. We took another look at it. The damage isn’t as bad as we thought. It’s mostly the Olyix biological components that are dead, which the initiators can grow replacements for.”

  “So you can fix it?” Alik asked.

  “Hopefully, yes. If not, we’ll revert to plan B and steal one.”

  Alik joined her, giving the ship a close appraisal. “Now you’re talking. Something physical, at last. I hate goddamn abstracts.”

  The rest of the group came up to stand beside them.

  “So what are we going to call her?” Kandara asked. “A ship on a mission like this, she needs a name.”

  “Avenging Heretic,” Alik told them, and forced his stiff face to smile.

  “Works for me,” Kandara said.

  “She’s going to be carrying all of us a long way,” Jessika said. “Maybe even the other side of the galactic core. Imagine that.”

  “Er…” Callum said. “When you say: carry all of us…?”

  Ollie had laid up in Kew Gardens for a day. No staff had come in. There was no functional solnet anywhere inside the grounds. All the gardenez were inert.

  The first night, he’d broken into the ancient wrought iron palm house and curled up on a bench to sleep underneath the huge cycads. At least it was warm.

  Dawn woke him, such as it was under the shield—a murky ochre sky not much brighter than a full moon. His stealth suit was covered in dew from the sprinkler mist that maintained the palm house’s overbearing humidity.