The Neutronium Alchemist

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Maybe there’s no need,” she said, “but there’s certainly plenty of want.”

  “You know what, Kiera, you really are a complete asshole.”

  “That so?” She flung a bolt of white fire at him.

  Waitresses and customers alike shouted in alarm and dived for cover.

  Dariat just managed to deflect the bolt, thumping it aside with a fist he imagined as a fat table tennis bat. The white fire bounced about enthusiastically, careering off tables and chairs. But not before the strike gave him a vicious electric shock, jangling all the nerves in his arm.

  “Give the lectures a rest, Dariat,” Kiera said. “We do what we’re driven to do.”

  “Nobody drove you to do that. It hurt.”

  “Oh, get real, you warped slob. You’d enjoy yourself a lot more if you didn’t have that morals bug stuffed so far up your arse.”

  Klaus Schiller and Matkin sniggered at his discomfort.

  “You’re screwing up everything with this childishness,” Dariat said. “If we are to acquire the blackhawks we cannot afford your indiscipline. The Lord Tarrug is making you dance to his tune. Contain yourself, listen to your inner music.”

  She shouldered the shotgun and levelled an annoyed finger at him. “One more word of that New Age bullshit, and I swear I’ll take your head clean off. We brought you along so that you could deal with the habitat personality, that’s all. I’m the one who lays down our goals. I have concrete bloody policies; policies which are going to help us come up trumps. Policies with attitude. What the fuck have you got to offer us, slob? Chop away at the habitat’s floor for a century until we find this Rubra’s brain, then stamp on it. Is that it? Is that your big, useful plan?”

  “No,” he said with wooden calm. “I keep telling you, Rubra cannot be defeated by physical means. This policy you have for taking over the habitat population isn’t going to work until we’ve dealt with him. I think we’re making a mistake with the blackhawks; not even their physical power can help us beat him. And if we start taking them over, we risk drawing attention to ourselves.”

  “As Allah wills,” Matkin muttered.

  “But don’t you see?” Dariat appealed to him. “If we concentrate on annihilating Rubra and possessing the neural strata, then we can achieve anything. We’ll be like gods.”

  “That is close to blasphemy, son,” Abraham Canaan said. “You should have a little more care in what you say.”

  “Shit. Look, godlike, okay? The point is—”

  “The point, Dariat,” Kiera said, aligning the shotgun on him for emphasis, “is that you are steaming for vengeance. Don’t try and plead otherwise, because you are even insane enough to kill yourself in order to achieve it. We know what we are doing, we are multiplying our numbers to protect ourselves. If you don’t wish to do that, then perhaps you need a little more time in the beyond to set your mind straight.”

  Even as he gathered himself to argue, he realized he’d lost. He could see the blank expressions hardening around the other possessed, while his mind simultaneously perceived their emotions chilling. Weak fools. They really didn’t care about anything other than the now. They were animals.

  But animals whose help he would ultimately need.

  Kiera had won again, just as she had when she insisted on him proving his loyalty through self-sacrifice. The possessed looked to her for leadership, not him.

  “All right,” Dariat said. “Have it your way.” For now.

  “Thank you,” Kiera said with heavy irony. She grinned, and sauntered over to the first blackhawk captain.

  During the altercation, the patrons of the Tacoul Tavern had been as quiet as people invariably become when total strangers are discussing your fate two metres in front of you. Now the discussion was over. Fate decided.

  The waitresses squealed, huddling together at the bar. Seven of the starship personnel made a break for the closed muscle-membrane door. Five actually launched themselves at the possessed, wielding whatever came to hand: fission blades (which malfunctioned), broken bottles, nervejam sticks (also useless), and bare fists.

  White fire flared in retaliation: globes aimed at knees and ankles, disabling and maiming; whip tendrils which coiled around legs like scalding manacles.

  With their victims thrashing about on the floor, and the stink of burnt flesh in the air, the possessed closed in.

  Rocio Condra had been trapped in the beyond for five centuries when the time of miracles came. An existence of madness, which he could only liken to the last moment of smothering being drawn out and out and out …

  And always in total darkness, silence, numbness. His life had replayed itself a million times, but that wasn’t nearly enough.

  Then came the miracles, sensations leaking in from the universe outside.

  Cracks in the nothingness of the beyond which would open and shut in fractions of a second, akin to storm clouds of soot parting to let through the delicious golden sunlight of dawn. And every time, a single lost soul would fly into the blinding, deafening deluge of reality, out into freedom and beauty. Along with all the others left behind, Rocio would howl his frustration into the void. Then they would redouble their pleas and prayers and pledges to the obdurate, indifferent living, offering them salvation and ennoblement if they would just help.

  Perhaps such promises actually worked. More and more of the cracks were appearing, so many that they had become a torment in their own right. To know there was a route out, and yet always denied.

  Except now. This time … This time the glory arose all around Rocio Condra so loud and bright it nearly overwhelmed him. Furled with the torrent was someone crying for help, for the agony to stop.

  “I’ll help,” Rocio lied perilously. “I’ll stop it happening.”

  Pain flooded into him as the frantic thoughts clung to his false words.

  It was far, far more than the usual meshing of souls in search of bitter sustenance. He could feel himself gaining weight and strength as their thoughts entwined. And the pain surged towards ecstasy. Rocio could actually feel legs and arms jerking as agonizing heat played over skin, a throat which had been stung raw from screaming. It was all quite delicious, the kind of high a masochist would relish.

  The man’s thoughts were becoming weaker, smaller, as Rocio pushed and wriggled himself deeper into the brain’s neural pathways. As he did so, more of the old human experiences made their eminently welcome return, the air rushing into his lungs, thud of a heart. And all the while his new host was diminishing. The way Rocio pushed him down, confining his soul, was almost instinctive, and becoming easier by the second.

  He could hear the other lost souls of the beyond shrieking their outrage that he was the one to gain salvation. The bitter threats, the accusations of unworthiness.

  Then there was just his host’s feeble protests, and a second oddly distant voice begging to know what was happening to its beloved. He squeezed the host’s soul away, expanding his own mind to fill the entire brain.

  “That’s enough,” a woman’s voice said. “We need you for something more important.”

  “Leave me!” he coughed. “I’m almost in, almost—” His strength was growing, the captive body starting to respond. Tear-drowned eyes revealed the wavery outline of three figures bending over him. Figures which must surely be angels. A gloriously pretty girl clad only in a resplendent white corona.

  “No,” she said. “Get into the blackhawk. Now.”

  There must have been some terrible mistake. Didn’t they understand? This was the miracle. The redemption. “I’m in,” Rocio told them. “Look, see? I’m in now. I’ve done it.” He made one of his new hands rise, seeing blisters like big translucent fungi hanging from every finger.

  “Then get out.”

  The hand disintegrated. Blood splattered across his face, obliterating his sight. He wanted to scream, but his vocal cords were too coarsened to obey.

  “Get into the blackhawk, you little pillock, or we’ll send you right bac
k into the beyond again. And this time we’ll never let you return.”

  Another burst of quite astonishing pain, followed by equally frightening numbness, told him his right foot had been destroyed. They were gnawing away at his beautiful new flesh, leaving him nothing. He raged barrenly at the unfairness of it all. Then strange echoey sensations blossomed into his mind.

  <> Dariat asked. <>

  He did, and affinity opened, joining him with the Mindor.

  <> the frantic blackhawk asked.

  Rocio’s entire left leg was obliterated. White fire engulfed his groin and the stumpy remnant of his right leg.

  <> the blackhawk called.

  Rocio superimposed the captain’s mind tone over his own thoughts. <>

  <>

  <>

  <>

  He felt the affinity link broaden, and the blackhawk was there waiting for its captain, its mind full of love and sympathy; a gentle and trusting creature for all its size and indomitable power. Kiera Salter exerted still more of her own particular brand of pressure.

  With a last curse at the devils who left him no choice, Rocio abandoned that cherished human body, sliding himself along the affinity link. This transfer was different from the one which had brought him back from beyond. That had been a forced entry, this was a welcome embrace from an unsophisticated lover, drawing him in to secure him from harm.

  The energistic nexus which his soul engendered established itself within the waiting neural cells at the core of the blackhawk, and the linkage which connected him to the captain’s body snapped as the skull was smashed apart by Kiera’s triumphant fist.

  The Mindor sat on its pedestal on the second of Valisk’s three docking ledges, patiently sucking nutrient fluid into its storage bladders.

  Beyond the eclipse of the habitat’s non-rotating spaceport, the gas giant Opuntia was a pale cross-hatching of lime-green storm bands. The sight was a comforting one to the blackhawk. It had been birthed in Opuntia’s rings, taking eighteen years to grow into the lengthy hundred-and-twenty-five-metre cone of its mature form. Even among blackhawks, whose profiles varied considerably from the standard voidhawk disk shape, it was an oddity. Its polyp hull was a dusky green speckled with purple rings; three fat finlike protuberances angled up out of its rear quarter. Given its squashed-missile appearance, the only option for the life support module was a swept-back teardrop, which sat like a metallic saddle over the midsection of its upper hull.

  Like all blackhawks and voidhawks its distortion field was folded around the hull, barely operative while it was docked. A condition which ended as soon as Rocio Condra’s soul invaded its neural cells. The number of neurones he now possessed was considerably larger than a human brain, increasing the amount of energistic power produced by the transdimensional twist. He extended himself out from the storage cluster Mindor had designated, breaking straight through the sub-routines designed to support him.

  The startled blackhawk managed to ask: <> before he vanquished its mind. But he couldn’t assume control of a blackhawk’s enormously complex functions as easily as he could a human body. There was no instinct to guide him, no old familiar nerve impulse sequences to follow. This was an alien territory, there hadn’t been any starships at all during his life, let alone living ones.

  The autonomic routines, those regulating the Mindor’s organs, were fine, he just left them operating. However, the distortion field was controlled by direct conscious thought.

  A couple of seconds after he gained possession it was billowing outwards uncontrollably. The blackhawk tipped back, pulling the pedestal feed tubes from their orifices. Nutrient fluid fountained out, flooding across the ledge until the habitat hurriedly closed the muscle valves.

  Mindor rocked forwards, then rose three metres above the mushroom-shaped pedestal as Rocio frantically tried to contain the oscillating fluxes running wild through his patterning cells. Unfortunately he couldn’t quite coordinate the process. Mass detection, the blackhawk’s primary sense, came from a sophisticated secondary manipulation of the distortion field. Rocio couldn’t work out where he was, let alone how to return to where he’d been.

  <> an irate Rubra asked.

  Mindor’s stern swept around in a fast arc, lower fins almost scraping the ledge surface. The driver of a service vehicle slammed on the brakes, and reversed fast as the huge bitek starship swished past less than five metres in front of her cabin’s bubble windscreen.

  <> Rocio said, frenziedly searching through the blackhawk’s confined memories for some kind of command routine. <>

  Two more blackhawks had started similar gyrations as returned souls invaded their neurones. Rubra shot them vexed questions as well.

  Rocio managed to regulate the field somewhat more effectively, and tie in the mass forms he was sensing to the images from the sensor blisters. His hull was slithering dangerously close to the rim of the docking ledge.

  He reconfigured the distortion field to impel him in the other direction.

  Which was fine, until he realized exactly how fast he was heading for the shell wall. And another (non-possessed) blackhawk was sitting in the way.

  <> he blurted at it.

  It rose smooth and fast, shooting sixty metres straight up, protesting most indignantly. The Mindor skidded underneath, and just managed to halt before its rear fins struck Valisk’s shell.

  The remaining two blackhawk captains in the Tacoul Tavern were finally sacrificed to Kiera’s strategy; and their ships shot off their respective pedestals like overpowered fireworks. Rubra and the other blackhawks fired alarmed queries after them. Three of the unpossessed blackhawks, thoroughly unnerved by their cousins’ behaviour, also launched themselves from the ledge. A collision appeared imminent as the giant ships cavorted in the kilometre gap between the two ledges. Rubra began broadcasting flight vectors at them to try to steer them apart, demanding instant obedience.

  By now, Rocio had mastered the basics of distortion field dynamics. He manoeuvred his prodigious bulk back towards the original pedestal. After five attempts, edging around in jerky spirals, he managed to settle.

  <> Rubra said as the agitated flock of blackhawks settled nervously.

  Rocio sheepishly acquiesced to the admonishment. He and the other four possessed blackhawks exchanged private acknowledgements, swapping snippets of information on how to control their new bodies.

  After experimenting for half an hour Rocio was pleasantly surprised with what he could see and feel. The gas giant environ was bloated with energy of many types, and a great deal of loose mass. There were overlapping tides of magnetic, electromagnetic, and particle energy. Twenty moons, hundreds of small asteroids. They all traced delicate lines across his consciousness, registering in a multitude of fashions: harmonics, colours, scents. He had far more sensations available than those produced by a human sensorium. And any sense at all was better than the beyond.

  The affinity band fell into a subdued silence as they waited to see what would happen next.

  Chapter 07

  The overloaded spaceplane ascended cleanly enough through Lalonde’s stratosphere, racing away from Amarisk’s mountainous eastern coastline.

  It wasn’t until the craft reached an altitude of a hundred kilometres, where the ions had thinned out to little more than a static-congested vacuum, that Ashly Hanson had to switch from the induction rams to the reaction drive. That was when their problems began. He had to redline the twin rocket engines in the tail, shunting up the voltage from the power cells, boosting the plasma temperature to dangerous heights. Coolant
shunts emitted caution warnings, which he balanced against the craft’s performance, heeding some, ignoring others. The job was his personal milieu: true piloting, knowing just how far he could push the systems, when to take calculated risks.

  Power reserves, fuel levels, and safety margins formed fabulously elaborate interacting multitextural graphics inside Ashly’s mind as he continued the magic juggling act. The factors were slowly coming together, enabling him to decide on his best case option: escape velocity at a hundred and twenty kilometres altitude. In theory that would leave seven kilos of reaction mass in the tanks. “But not a nice height,” he muttered to himself. Never mind, it gave them the ability to rendezvous with Lady Mac.

  The reasons for the spaceplane’s overstressed loading parameters, all twenty-nine of them, were chattering and whooping happily behind him, impervious to the efforts of Father Elwes and Kelly Tirrel to shush them.

  It wouldn’t last, Ashly thought with an air of inevitable gloom, kids always threw up in zero-gee, especially the ones as young as these.

  He datavised the flight computer for a channel to Lady Mac. It took a while for the communications processor to lock on to Lalonde’s satellite, and even then the bandwidth was reduced. Sore evidence of the malicious forces swirling invisibly around the doomed planet.

  “Joshua?”

  “Tracking you, Ashly.”

  “You’re going to have to manoeuvre to make rendezvous. I’m even having to expend my RC thruster reaction mass to achieve orbit. This is the vector.” Ashly datavised over the file from the spaceplane’s flight computer.

  “Jesus, that’s cutting it fine.”

  “I know. Sorry, but the kids weigh too much. And you’re going to have to replace the reaction engines altogether when we reach port. I had to pump them over the safeties. A full structural stress test probably wouldn’t hurt, either.”