The Neutronium Alchemist

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Our major problem derives from the projected victory being almost totally illusory. We have already concluded that physical confrontation is not the answer to possession. Mortonridge simply confirms this. If it takes the combined strength of the two most powerful cultures in the Confederation to liberate a mere two million people on a single small peninsula, then freeing an entire planet by such a method clearly verges on the impossible.

  Hopes across the Confederation would be raised to unreasonable heights by success at Mortonridge. Such hopes would be dangerous, for they would unleash demands local politicians will be unable to refuse and equally unable to satisfy. However, for us to refuse the Kingdom’s request would cast us in the role of villain. Lord Kelman Mountjoy has been ingenious in placing us in this position.

  “I would disagree,” Astor told the Consensus. “The Saldanas know as well as us that military intervention is not the final answer. They too are presented with an enormously difficult dilemma by Mortonridge. As they are more susceptible to political pressures, they are responding in the only way possible.

  “I would also say this: By sending the King’s natural son with their delegation they are signalling the importance they attach to our decision, and an acknowledgement of what must inevitably come to be should our answer favour them. If both of us commit ourselves to the liberation there can be no return to the policies of yesterday. We will have established a strong bond of trust with one of the most powerful cultures in the Confederation currently contrary to us. That is a factor we cannot afford to ignore.”

  Thank you Astor, Consensus replied, as always you speak well. In tribute of this, we acknowledge that the future must be safeguarded in conjunction with the present. We are presented with an opportunity to engender a more peaceful and tolerant universe when the present crisis is terminated.

  Such a raison d’être is not a wholly logical one to place ourselves on a war footing. Nor is the kindling of false hope which will be the inevitable outcome.

  However, there are times when people do need such a hope.

  And to err is human. We embrace our humanity, complete with all those flaws. We will tell the Saldana Prince that until such time that we can provide a permanent solution to possession he may have our support for this foolhardy venture.

  ***

  After a five-day voyage, Oenone slipped out of its wormhole terminus seventy thousand kilometres above Jobis, the Kiint homeworld. As soon as they had identified themselves to the local traffic control (a franchise run by humans) and received permission to orbit, Syrinx and the voidhawk immediately started to examine the triad moons.

  The three moons orbited the planet’s Lagrange One point, four million kilometres in towards the F2 star. Equally sized at just under eighteen hundred kilometres in diameter, they were also equally spaced seventy thousand kilometres apart, taking a hundred and fifty hours to rotate about their common centre.

  They were the anomaly which had attracted the attention of the first scoutship in 2356. The triad was an impossible formation, too regular for nature to produce. Worse, the three moons massed exactly the same (give or take half a billion tonnes—a discrepancy probably due to asteroid impacts). In other words, someone had built them.

  It was to the scoutship captain’s credit she didn’t flee. But then fleeing was probably a null term when dealing with a race powerful enough to construct artefacts on such a scale. Instead, she beamed a signal at the planet, asking permission to approach. The Kiint said yes.

  It was about the most forthcoming thing they ever did say. The Kiint had perfected reticence to an art form. They never discussed their history, their language, or their culture.

  As to the triad moons, they were an “old experiment,” whose nature was unspecified. No human ship had ever been permitted to land on them, or even launch probes.

  Voidhawks, however, with their mass perception ability, had added to the sparse data over the centuries. Using Oenone’s senses, Syrinx could feel the moons’ uniformity; globes of a solid aluminum silicon ore right down to the core, free of any blemishes or incongruities. Their gravity fields pressed into space-time, causing a uniquely smooth three-dimensional stretch within the local fabric of reality. Again, all three fields were precisely the same, and perfectly balanced, ensuring the triad’s orbital alignment would hold true for billions of years.

  A pale silver-grey in colour, they each had a small scattering of craters. There were no other features; perhaps the strongest indicator to their artificial origin. Nor could centuries of discreet probing by the voidhawks find any mechanical structures or instruments left anywhere.

  The triad moons were totally inert. Presumably, whatever the “experiment” was, it had finished long ago.

  Syrinx couldn’t help but wonder if the triad had something to do with the beyond and the Kiint’s understanding of their own nature. No human astrophysicist had ever come up with any halfway convincing explanation as to what the experiment could be.

  <> Ruben said. <>

  <> she countered.

  <>

  <> She felt his hand tighten around hers, offering comfort in return for the brief hint of intimidation she had leaked into the affinity band.

  <> he said, <>

  <>

  The question over the true extent of the Kiint’s abilities nagged at her as Oenone swept into a six-hundred-kilometre parking orbit. From space Jobis resembled an ordinary terracompatible world; although at fifteen thousand kilometres in diameter it was appreciably larger, with a gravity of one point two Earth standard. It had seven continents, and four principal oceans; axial tilt was less than one per cent, which when coupled with a suspiciously circular orbit around the star produced only mild climate variations, no real seasons.

  For a world housing a race which could build the triads there was astonishingly little in the way of a technological civilization visible.

  Conventional wisdom had it that as Kiint technology was so advanced it could never resemble anything like human machinery and industrial stations, so nobody knew what to look for; either that or it was all neatly folded away in hyperspace. Even so, they must have gone through a stage of conventional engineering, an industrial age with hydrocarbon combustion and factory farming, pollution and exploitation of natural planetary resources. If so, there was no sign of it ever existing. No old motorways crumbling under the grasslands, no commercial concrete cities abandoned to be swallowed by avaricious jungles. Either the Kiint had done a magnificent job of restoration, or they had achieved their technological maturity a frighteningly long time ago.

  Today, Jobis supported a society comprised of villages and small towns, municipalities perched in the centre of land only marginally less wild than the rest of the countryside. Population was impossible to judge, though the best guesstimate put it at slightly less than a billion. Their domes, which were the only kinds of buildings, varied in size too much for anyone to produce a reliable figure.

  Syrinx and Ruben took the flyer down, landing at Jobis’s only spaceport.

  It was situated beside a coastal town whose buildings were all human-built. White stone apartment blocks and a web of small narrow streets branching out from a central marina made it resemble a holiday destination rather than the sole Confederation outpost on this placid, yet most eerily alien of worlds.

  The residents were employed either by embassies or companies. The Kiint did not encourage casual visits. Quite
why they participated in the Confederation at all was something of a mystery, though one of the lesser ones. Their only interest and commercial activity was in trading information. They bought data on almost any subject from anyone who wanted to sell, with xenobiology research papers and scoutship logs fetching the highest prices. In exchange, they sold technological data.

  Never anything new or revolutionary, you couldn’t ask for anti-gravity machines or a supralight radio; but if a company wanted its product improving, the Kiint would deliver a design showing a better material to use in construction or a way of reconfiguring the components so they used less power. Again, a huge hint to their technological heritage. Somewhere on Jobis there must be a colossal memory bank full of templates for all the old machines they’d developed and then discarded God-alone-knew how long ago.

  Syrinx never got a chance to explore the town. She had contacted the Edenist embassy (the largest diplomatic mission on Jobis), explaining her mission, while Oenone flew into parking orbit. The embassy staff had immediately requested a meeting with a Kiint called Malva, who had agreed.

  <> Ambassador Pyrus explained as they walked down the flyer’s airstairs. <>

  <> Syrinx admitted. The landing field reminded her of Norfolk, just a patch of grass designated to accommodate inconvenient visitors. Although it was warmer, subtropical, it had the same temporary feel. Few formalities, and fewer facilities. Barely twenty flyers and spaceplanes were parked outside the one service hangar. The difference to Norfolk came from the other craft sharing the field, lined up opposite the ground-to-orbit machines. Kiint-fabricated, they resembled smaller versions of human ion field flyers, ovoid but less streamlined.

  <> Pyrus asked, diffusing a polite puzzlement into the thought.

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  Pyrus waved an empty hand around at the scenery. <>

  <> Syrinx patted the top pocket of her ship-tunic, feeling the outline of her credit disk. Eden had loaded it with five billion fuseodollars before she left, just in case. <>

  Pyrus gestured at the Kiint transport craft, and a hatch opened, the fuselage material flowing apart. It was close enough to the ground not to need airstairs. Syrinx couldn’t quite judge if its belly was resting on the ground, or if it was actually floating.

  <> Pyrus said. <>

  Syrinx stepped into the craft. The interior was a lounge, with four fat chairs as the only fittings. She and Ruben sat down gingerly, and the hatch flowed shut.

  <> an anxious Oenone asked straightaway.

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  <> Even as she thought it, she was sharing Oenone’s mind, perceiving herself streaking across a tall mountain range eight hundred kilometres inland from the town at an awesome velocity for atmospheric travel. <>

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  According to Oenone, the craft decelerated at seventy gees as well, landing some six thousand kilometres from the spaceport field. When she and Ruben stepped out a balmy breeze plucked at her silky ship-tunic. The craft had come to rest in a broad valley, just short of a long lake with a shingle beach. Cooler air was breathing down from the snowcapped peaks guarding the skyline, ruffling the surface of the water. Avocado-green grass-analogue threw thin coiling blades up to her knees. Trees with startlingly blue bark grew in the shape of melting lollipops, colonizing the valley all the way up to the top of the foothills. Birds were circling in the distance; they looked too fat to be flying in the heavy gravity.

  A Kiint dome was situated at the head of the lake, just above the beach.

  Despite the fresh mountain air, Syrinx was perspiring inside her ship-tunic by the time they had walked over to it.

  It must have been very old; it was made from huge blocks of a yellow-white stone that had almost blurred together. The weathering had given it a grainy surface texture, which local ivy-analogues put to good use. Broad clusters of tiny flowers dripped out of the dark leaves, raising their pink and violet petals to the sun.

  The entrance was a wide arch, its border blocks carved with worn crestlike symbols. A pair of the blue-bark trees stood outside, gnarled from extreme age, half of their branches dead, but nonetheless casting a respectable shadow over the dome. Malva stood just inside, a tractamorphic arm extended, its tip formshifting to the shape of a human hand. Breathing vents issued a mildly spicy breath as Syrinx touched her palm to impossibly white fingers.

  <> the Kiint broadcast warmly. <>

  <> Syrinx and Ruben followed the Kiint along the passage inside, down to what must have been the dome’s central chamber. The floor was a sheet of wood with a grain close to red and white marble, dipping down to a pool in the middle which steamed and bubbled gently. She was sure the floor was alive, in fact the whole chamber’s decor was organic-based. Benches big enough to hold an adult Kiint were like topiary bushes without leaves. Smaller ones had been grown to accommodate the human form. Interlocked patches of amber and jade moss with crystalline stems matted the curving walls, threaded with naked veins of what looked to be mercury. Syrinx was sure she could see them pulsing, the silver liquid oozing slowly upwards. An aura of soft iridescent light bounced and ricocheted off the glittery surface in playfully soothing patterns.

  Above her, the dome’s blocks capped the chamber. Except from inside they were transparent; she could see the geometric reticulation quite plainly.

  All in all, Malva’s home was interesting rather than revelational.

  Nothing here human technology and bitek couldn’t reproduce with a bit of effort and plenty of money. Presumably it had been selected to put Confederation visitors at ease, or damp down their greed for high-technology gadgets.

  Malva eased herself down on one of the benches. <>

  Syrinx selected a seat opposite her host. It allowed her to see some small grey patches on Malva’s snowy hide, so pale they could have been a trick of the light. Did grey indicate aging in all creatures? <>

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  <sts transferred into the neural strata of our habitats along with their memories?>>

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  <> Oenone said. <>

  A smile rose to her face, buoyed by the euphoria of the voidhawk’s thoughts. <>

  <> it replied adoringly.

  <> Syrinx told Malva. <>

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  <> she said, contrite at the gentle chide.

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