The Neutronium Alchemist

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Like a sunbather misses birdcrap.”

  “That’s not what you said at the time.”

  “Who cares?”

  “I do. We were good together, Voi.”

  “History.”

  “Then why have you come running back?”

  “I need something of yours.”

  “Mother Mary, that detox procedure was a big mistake. I preferred you as you were before.”

  “I’m really interested in everything you say, P.L.”

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I want you to flight prep the Tekas, and take me and some friends outsystem.”

  “Oh, sure, no problem.” He collapsed into the living room’s leather settee, and favoured her with a pitying gaze. “Any particular destination? New California? Norfolk? Hey, why don’t we go for the big one and see if we can break through Earth’s SD network?”

  “It’s important. It’s for Garissa.”

  “Oh, Mary. Your poxy revolution.”

  “It isn’t revolution, it’s called honour. Access your dictionary file.”

  “Haven’t got one. And for your information, there’s a civil starflight quarantine in operation. I couldn’t fly the Tekas away if I wanted to.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. All right, one nil. If I’d known about this quarantine in advance I would have left. The Dorados might be home, but I don’t think they’re the best place to live while the possessed are roaming around. You’ve got the right idea, Voi, you’re just too late.”

  She held up a flek. “The Dorados governing council flight authorization: it’ll be an official voyage.”

  “How the hell …”

  “Daddy was on the council. I have his access codes.”

  Temptation haunted him like a curse. “Is it still valid?”

  “Yes. Myself and three others. Deal?”

  “There’s a few people I’d like to bring along.”

  “No. You can operate that yacht by yourself, that’s why I chose it. This isn’t a bloody pleasure cruise, P.L. I need you to fly some complex manoeuvres for me.”

  “Tekas isn’t combat-capable, you know. Who are these others?”

  “Need-to-know only. And you don’t. Do we have a deal?”

  “Do we get to try out free-fall sex?”

  “If fucking me means you’ll fly the yacht for me, fuck away.”

  “Mother Mary, you are a complete bitch!”

  “Deal?”

  “All right. Give me a day to wind things up here.”

  “We leave in three hours.”

  “No way, Voi. I doubt I could even fill the cryogenic tanks by then.”

  “Try.” She waved the flek. “If you don’t; no authorization.”

  “Bitch.”

  The girl was extravagantly attractive; early twenties with lustrous ebony skin and dry chestnut hair that fell just below her bottom. Her dress was a shimmering metallic grey-blue with a skirt hem higher than the dangling ends of her hair.

  Melvyn suspected she was a typical insecure rich kid. Though Joshua didn’t seem to mind, the two of them were busy French-kissing on the Bar KF-T’s dance floor.

  “He’s a devil for it,” Melvyn said peevishly. He felt he should explain to Beaulieu, who was sitting at the table with him. “Never works for me. I mean, fusion specialist is a tough job. And I’m crew, that’s glamorous enough, isn’t it? But they just bloody stampede at him when we dock. I think he got his pheromones geneered along with everything else.” He started searching through the cluster of beer bottles on the table for one that had something left inside. There were rather a lot of them.

  “You don’t think it’s anything to do with the fact he’s thirty years younger than you?” the cosmonik asked.

  “Twenty-five!” Melvyn corrected indignantly.

  “Twenty-five.”

  “Certainly not.”

  The cosmonik gave the Bar KF-T another automatic scan. Joshua’s direction of investigation was obviously puzzling the intelligence agents who were on observation duty. Melvyn and Beaulieu had identified five of them in the club, making a game of it as they sat drinking beer and waiting for Joshua to score. It wasn’t that the agents didn’t mix; they drank, they danced, they chatted to people, the betraying factor was the way they maintained a rigid distance from the Lady Mac’s crew.

  Joshua waved a sunny farewell to the girl and sat down at Melvyn’s table with a satisfied sigh. “Her name’s Kole, and she’s invited me to a party this evening.”

  “I’m surprised she can hold back that long,” Melvyn muttered.

  “I’m meeting her and her friends at tonight’s benefit gig, then they’re going on to a private bash at someone’s apartment.”

  “A benefit gig?” Beaulieu questioned.

  “Some local MF bands are getting together so they can raise money for Alkad Mzu’s legal costs, should she ever need to fight Confederation extradition warrants.”

  “She’s becoming a bloody religion,” Melvyn said.

  “Looks that way.” Joshua started counting the bottles on the table. “Come on, we need to get back to Lady Mac.” He slipped his arm under Melvyn’s shoulder and signalled Beaulieu to help. Between them, they got the drunk fusion specialist to his feet. Ashly and Sarha walked over from the bar.

  All four serjeants rose from their seats.

  None of the agents moved. That would have been too blatant.

  A pair of possessed walked into Bar KF-T. A man and woman, dressed in clothes which almost matched current fashions.

  Joshua’s electronic warfare block datavised an alarm.

  “Get down!” the four serjeants shouted in unison.

  The threat-response program which had gone primary as soon as the alarm came on sent Joshua diving for cover amid the tables and chairs. He hit the floor, rolling expertly to absorb the impact. A couple of empty chairs went flying as his legs struck them. His crew was following him down; even Melvyn, though his alcohol-polluted nerves made him slower.

  Screams broke out across the club as the serjeants drew their stubby machine guns. The agents were also moving, boosted muscles turning their actions into a blur.

  Both the possessed gasped at the near-instantaneous reaction to their appearance. An unnerving number of weapons were lining up on them amid the chaos of a terrified and bewildered clientele.

  “Freeze,” a quadriphonic voice ordered them.

  They didn’t have functional neural nanonics to run combat programs, but instinct was almost as fast. Both of them started to raise their arms, white fire bursting from their fingertips.

  Six machine guns, three semi-automatic pistols, and a carbine opened fire.

  Joshua had never heard a chemical projectile weapon before. Ten of them shooting at once was louder than a fusion rocket exhaust. He slammed his hands over his ears. The fusillade couldn’t have lasted more than a couple of seconds. He risked raising his head.

  Only the agents (there were actually six—Melvyn had missed one) and the serjeants were standing. Everyone else was on the floor, sprawled flat or curled up in fetal balls. Tables and chairs rolled and spun. The music and dance-floor holograms were still playing.

  He heard several peculiar mechanical snicking sounds as fresh magazines were slammed into the guns.

  Bullets had shredded the wall behind the possessed, chewing apart the composite panelling. Large splatters of blood covered the tattered splinters of composite. The two bodies—

  Joshua squirmed at the sight. There wasn’t much left to identify as human. A nausea suppression program switched smoothly into primary mode, though that only stopped the physical symptoms.

  Moans and cries rose over the music. Several people had been hit by ricochets.

  “Joshua!”

  It was Sarha. She had her hand clamped around Ashly’s left thigh. Blood was staining her fingers scarlet. “He’s been hit.”

  The pilot was staring with a calm morbid interest at his wound. “Dam
n stupid thing.” He blinked in confusion.

  “Ione,” Joshua shouted. “Medical nanonic.”

  One of the serjeants took a package from its equipment belt. Beaulieu was slitting Ashly’s trouser fabric with a small metal blade that had slid out of her left wrist attachments. A dribble of grey-green fluid was leaking from a bullet hole in her brass breastplate.

  “I say, do be careful,” Ashly murmured.

  When the wound had been fully exposed, Sarha slapped the package over it.

  “Let’s go,” Joshua said. “Beaulieu, take Melvyn. Sarha and I will handle Ashly. Ione, cover us.”

  “Now wait a minute,” one of the agents said. Joshua recognized him as one of the heavyweights accompanying Pauline Webb. “You’re staying right here until the police arrive.”

  It was a barman who had recovered fast enough to think of the financial possibilities that started recording the scene in a memory cell. Later that day and all through the night the news companies repeated it almost constantly. Six armed men in a shouting match with a young starship captain (later everyone realized it was Lagrange Calvert himself) and his crew. The captain saying that no one was going to prevent him from taking his injured friend to get proper treatment. And what authority have you got anyway? Four identical and disturbingly menacing cosmoniks stood between Calvert and the armed men. There was a short pause, then everyone’s guns seemed to disappear. The starship crew left the club, carrying their wounded with them.

  Anchormen speculated long and loud on the possibility that the six armed men were in fact foreign intelligence agents. Rover reporters tried desperately to hunt them down, with no success.

  The police officially confirmed that the two people shot dead by the agents had been possessed (though no details about how they knew for sure were forthcoming). Ayacucho’s governing council issued a statement urging everyone to remain calm. Total priority was given to search and identification procedures which were being put into operation to locate any further possessed in the asteroid. All citizens and residents were asked to cooperate fully.

  There was no physical expression of panic, no angry mobs gathering in the biosphere cavern, or marches on the council chamber. People were too fearful of what might be lying in wait outside their apartment doors.

  Those companies and offices which had remained open started to wind down or conduct their businesses purely over the communications net; anything as long as personal contact was reduced. Parents took their children out of day clubs. Emergency services were brought up to full alert status.

  Company security staff were seconded to the police to help with the search.

  By late afternoon several starships had been given official flight authorization by the council. Most of them were taking councillors, their families, and close aides away for conferences or defence negotiations with allies.

  “And we can’t stop them,” Monica complained bitterly. She was sitting at the back of the office which the Edenists were using, sipping a mug of instant tea. There was little else for her to do now, which aggravated her intensely. All the ESA’s assets had been activated. None of them had any idea where Mzu was; few had even heard of Voi let alone any underground group the girl was connected with.

  Locating Mzu was all down to the Edenist observation operation now, and the slender hope they would get a lucky break.

  “She has not embarked on any starship,” Samuel said. “We are sure of that. Both axial chambers have been under constant observation, and not just by us. Nobody who comes within twenty-five per cent of Mzu’s height and mass has passed into the spaceports without being positively identified.”

  “Yes yes,” Monica said irritably.

  “If we don’t find her in another four hours we are going to withdraw from Ayacucho.”

  She’d known it was coming, but that didn’t make it any easier. “That bad?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid so.” He had just finished watching another possession through a spider in one of the residential sections. It was the apartment of an ordinary family of five, doing as they’d been advised, staying at home and not allowing anyone else in. Until the police arrived. All three officers were possessed; and after seven minutes so were the family. “We estimate eight per cent of the population has been possessed now. With everyone isolated and sitting tight, it is becoming easier for them to spread. They have taken over the police force in its entirety.”

  “Bastards. They’ve gone for officialdom every time since Capone used the police and civil service to take over New California.”

  “A remarkably perceptive man, Mr. Capone.”

  “I don’t suppose it would do any good broadcasting a general warning, now?”

  “We think not. There are few weapons available to the general populace; and most of those are energy weapons, which are worse than useless. We would be adding to the suffering.”

  “And since that bloody media campaign, nobody would trust us.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What do we do if Mzu doesn’t escape?”

  “That depends on what happens here. If the possessed take Ayacucho out of this universe, the problem is solved, albeit not very satisfactorily. If they remain here, then the voidhawks will enforce a permanent blockade.”

  She gritted her teeth, hating the mounting feeling of frustration. “We could try broadcasting a message to her, offer to take her off.”

  “I’ve considered it; and I might well use it as a last resort before we evacuate.”

  “Great. So now we just sit and pray she walks in front of a spider.”

  “You have an alternative?”

  “No. I don’t think any of us do.”

  “Perhaps not, though I remain intrigued by what Joshua Calvert and his crew were doing in that club.”

  “Trying to get laid by the look of it.”

  “No. Calvert is shrewd. If you want my guess he is attempting to approach Voi through her friends.”

  “He can’t know who her friends are, he doesn’t have the resources. We’ve only got three of her friends on our list, and that took five hours to acquire.”

  “Possibly. But he’s already inserted himself in her social strata with that invitation to a party. And it’s a small asteroid.”

  “If Voi is hiding Mzu, she’s not going to reveal herself.”

  “True.” His grin was childlike in its mischievousness.

  “What?” Monica asked in annoyance.

  “The irony. From being an amateur irritant, Calvert is now our only lead.”

  Ashly had said very little during the trip back to the spaceport. Joshua guessed the pilot’s neural nanonic programs were busy suppressing the shock. But Sarha didn’t seem unduly worried, and she was monitoring the medical package around his thigh.

  Melvyn was doing his best to sober up fast. One of the serjeants had given him a medical nanonic package which was now wrapped around his neck to form a thick collar. It was busy filtering all traces of alcohol out of the blood entering his brain.

  Joshua’s only concern was the fluid which was still trickling out of the bullet hole in Beaulieu’s breastplate. Medical nanonics would be of no value at all in treating the cosmonik. None of them had standardized internal systems; each was unique, and proud of it. He wasn’t even sure if she was mostly mechanical or biological underneath her brass carapace.

  “How are you doing?” he asked her.

  “The bullet damaged some of my nutrient synthesis glands. It’s not critical.”

  “Do you have any … er, spares?”

  “No. That function has multiple redundancy backup. It looks worse than it is.”

  “Don’t tell me, just a flesh wound,” Ashly grunted.

  “Correct.”

  The commuter lift’s doors opened. Two serjeants slid out into the corridor first, checking for any possessed between them and the docking bay’s airlock tube. “Joshua,” one of them called.

  His electronic warfare detector block wasn’t acting up. “What?
”

  “Someone here for you.”

  He learned nothing from the tone, so he pushed off with his feet and glided out into the corridor. “Oh, Jesus wept.”

  Mrs Nateghi and her two fellow goons from Tayari, Usoro and Wang were waiting outside the airlock tube. Another man was floating just behind them.

  The crew followed Joshua out of the lift.

  “Captain Calvert.” Mrs. Nateghi’s voice was indecently happy.

  “Can’t get enough of me, can you? So what is it this time? A million-fuseodollar fine for littering? Ten years hard labour for not returning my empties to the bar? Penal colony exile for farting in public?”

  “Humour is an excellent defence mechanism, Captain Calvert. But I would advise you to have something stronger in court.”

  “I’ve just saved your asteroid from being taken over by the possessed. Will that do?”

  “I’ve accessed the NewsGalactic recording. You were lying on the floor with your hands over your head the whole time. Captain Calvert, I have a summons for you to be present at a preliminary hearing to establish proceedings which will determine the ownership of the starship Lady Macbeth, pursuant to the claim my client has filed upon said ship.”

  Joshua stared at her, too incredulous to speak.

  “Ownership?” Sarha asked. “But it’s Joshua’s ship; it always has been.”

  “That is incorrect,” Mrs. Nateghi said. “It was Marcus Calvert’s ship. I have a sensorium recording of Captain Calvert admitting that.”

  “He was never trying to deny it. His father is dead. Lady Mac’s registration is filed with the CAB. You can’t challenge that.”

  “Yes I can.” The man who had been keeping himself behind the other two lawyers slowly edged forwards.

  “You!” Sarha exclaimed.

  “Me.”

  Joshua stared at him, a very unpleasant chill sluicing into his thoughts.

  The angular, ebony face was … Jesus, I know him. But where from? “So who the hell are you?”

  “My name is Liol. Liol Calvert, actually. I’m your big half brother, Joshua.”

  The last place Joshua wanted to bring this … this fraud was the captain’s cabin. It was his father’s cabin, for Christ’s sake, even though most of the old fittings and personal mementos had been removed during the last refit. This was the closest Joshua had ever come to knowing a home.