The Neutronium Alchemist

by Peter F. Hamilton

  She attempted to pull herself free, but he was too strong.

  “Valisk? Going to shag Kiera? We not good enough for you here? You got something against your own kind?”

  “Let go!” Beth started to struggle. More hands grabbed her. She lashed out with her free arm, but it was no good. They were bigger, older, stronger.

  “Little cow.”

  “She’s got some fight in her.”

  “Hold the bitch. Take that arm.”

  Her arms were forced behind her back, holding her still. The man in front of her grinned slowly as she twisted about. He grabbed her hair suddenly and pushed her head back. Beth flinched, very near to losing it. His face was centimetres from hers, triumphant eyes gloating.

  “Gonna take you home with us,” he breathed. “We’ll straighten you out good and proper, doll; you won’t want girls again, not after we’ve finished with you.”

  “Fuck off!” Beth screamed. She kicked out. But he caught her leg and shoved it high into the air.

  “Dumb slut.” He tugged at the knot which held the red handkerchief around her ankle. “Reckon this might come in useful, guys. She’s got a mouth on her.”

  “You … you just bloody well leave her alone.”

  All four of them stared at the speaker.

  Gerald stood in the corridor’s junction, his grey ship-suit wrinkled and dirty, hair ruffled, three days of beard shading his face. Even more alarming than the nervejam stick he was pointing at them in a two-handed grip was the way it shook. He was blinking as if he were having great difficulty focusing.

  “Whoa there, fella,” the man holding Beth’s leg said. “Let’s not get excited here.”

  “Get away from her!” The nervejam stick juddered violently.

  Beth’s leg was hurriedly dropped. The hands let go of her arms. Her three would-be rapists began to back off down the corridor. “We’re going, okay? You got this all wrong, fella.”

  “Leave! I know what you are. You’re part of it. You’re part of them. You’re helping them.”

  The three men were retreating fast. Beth looked at the unstable nervejam stick and the persecuted face behind it, and almost felt like joining them. She tried to get her breathing back under control.

  “Thanks, mate,” she said.

  Gerald sucked on his lower lip and gradually slid down the wall until he was squatting on his heels. The nervejam stick dropped from his fingers.

  “Hey, you okay?” Beth hurried forwards.

  Gerald looked up at her with a pathetically placid face and started whimpering.

  “Jeeze—” She looked around to make certain her assailants had gone, then hunkered down beside him. Something made her hold back from making a grab for the nervejam. She was desperately uncertain what he’d do. “Listen, they’ll probably come back in a minute. Where do you live?”

  Tears started streaming down from his eyes. “I thought you were Marie.”

  “No such luck mate, I’m Beth. Is this your corridor?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, do you live near here?”

  “Help me please, I have to get to her, and Loren’s left me here all alone. I don’t know what to do next. I really don’t.”

  “You’re not the only one,” Beth grunted.

  “Well who is he?” Jed asked.

  Gerald was sitting at the dining-room table in Beth’s apartment, staring at the mug of tea he was holding. It was a pose he’d maintained for the last ten minutes.

  “Says his name’s Gerald Skibbow,” Beth said. “Reckon he’s telling the truth.”

  “Okay. How about you? You all right now?”

  “Yeah. Those manky bastards got a real fright. Don’t reckon we’ll be seeing them again.”

  “Good. You know, we might be better off if we stop wearing our handkerchiefs. People are getting real uptight about it.”

  “What? No way! Not now. It says what I am: a Deadnight. If they can’t stomach that, it ain’t my problem.”

  “It nearly was.”

  “It won’t happen again.” She held up the nervejam and gave a brutish smirk.

  “Jeeze. Is that his?”

  “Yep. Said I could borrow it.”

  Jed regarded Gerald in dismayed confusion. “Blimey. Bloke must be pretty far gone.”

  “Hey.” She tapped his belly with the tip of the nervejam. “Watch what you’re saying. Maybe he’s a little cranky, but he’s my mate.”

  “A little cranky? Look at him, Beth, the guy’s a walking dunny.” He saw the way she tensed up. “Okay. He’s your mate. What are you going to do with him?”

  “He’ll have a room somewhere.”

  “Yeah, a nice quiet one with lots of padding on the walls.”

  “Quit that, will you. How much you’ve changed, huh? We’re supposed to be wanting a life where people don’t jump down each other’s throats the whole time. Least, that’s what I thought. Am I wrong?”

  “No,” he grumbled. Beth these days was hard to understand. Jed had thought she’d appreciate the fact he wasn’t making moves on her anymore.

  If anything that had made her even more intractable. “Hey, look don’t worry. My head’ll get straightened when we reach Valisk.”

  Gerald slewed around in his chair. “What did you say?”

  “Hey, mate, thought you’d gone switch-off on us there,” Beth said. “How you feeling?”

  “What did you say about Valisk?”

  “We want to go there,” Jed said. “We’re Deadnights, see. We believe in Kiera. We want to be part of the new universe.”

  Gerald stared at him, then gave a twisted giggle. “Believe her? She’s not even Kiera.”

  “You’re just like all the others. You don’t want us to have a chance just because you blew yours. That stinks, man!”

  “Wait wait.” Gerald held up his arms in placation. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were a Deadnight. I don’t know what Deadnights are.”

  “It’s what she said, that Kiera: Those of us who have emerged from the dead of night can break the restrictions of this corrupt society.”

  “Oh, right, that bit.”

  “She’s going to take us away from all this,” Beth said. “Where arseholes like those three blokes don’t do what they did. Not anymore. There won’t be any of that in Valisk.”

  “I know,” Gerald said solemnly.

  “What? You taking the piss?”

  “No. Honestly. I’ve been searching for a way to Valisk ever since I saw the recording. I came here all the way from Ombey on the one hope that I’d find a way. I thought one of the starships might take me.”

  “No way, mate,” Jed said. “Not the starships. We tried. The captains have all got closed minds. I told you, they hate us.”

  “Yes.”

  Jed glanced at Beth, trying to judge what she thought, if he should risk it. “You must have quite a bit of money, you come here from Ombey,” he said.

  “More than enough to charter a starship,” Gerald said bitterly. “But they just won’t listen to me.”

  “You don’t need a starship.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll tell you how to get to Valisk if you take us with you. It’s ten times cheaper than the way you were planning, but we still can’t put that much together ourselves. As you’ve got to charter a whole ship for the flight anyway, it won’t cost you any more for us to be on board.”

  “All right.”

  “You’ll take us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Promise?” Beth asked, her voice betraying a multitude of vulnerabilities.

  “I promise, Beth. I know what it’s like to be let down, to be abandoned. I wouldn’t do that to anyone, least of all you.”

  She shifted around uncomfortably, rather pleased by what he’d said, the fatherly way he’d said it. Nobody on Koblat ever spoke to her like that.

  “Okay,” Jed said. “Here it is: I’ve got a pickup coordinate timetable for this system.” He took a
flek from his pocket and slotted it in the desktop block. The block’s holoscreen flashed up a complex graphic. “This shows where and when a starship from Valisk will be waiting to take on anyone who wants to go there. All you have to do is charter an inter-orbit craft to get us to it.”

  ***

  As always, Syrinx found Athene’s house relaxing. No doubt Wing-Tsit Chong and the psychological team would call it a return to the womb. And if she found that amusing, she told herself, she must be virtually recovered.

  She had returned from Jobis two days earlier. After relating everything she had learned from Malva to Wing-Tsit Chong, Oenone had flown to Romulus and a berth in an industrial station.

  <> Athene said. <>

  <> Syrinx was walking with her mother across the garden which seemed to grow shaggier with each passing year.

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  Syrinx grinned, somehow cheered by the uncanny perception. <>

  <> Oenone insisted. <>

  For a moment, mother and daughter were aware of the gridwork surrounding Oenone. Technicians were busy working on the lower hull, installing combat wasp launch cradles, maser cannons, and military-grade sensor pods.

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  <> Syrinx could feel the blush rising to her cheeks—only Mother could do that! <>

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  Syrinx listened with growing incredulity as Athene explained the events which had occurred in orbit around Murora. <>

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  Athene laughed in delight at being able to needle her daughter so successfully. They’d come to the first of the big lily ponds which verged one side of the garden. It was heavily shaded now; the rank of golden yews behind it had swelled considerably in the last thirty years, their boughs reaching right across the water. She looked into the black water.

  Bronze-coloured fish streaked for the cover of the lily pads.

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  Syrinx smiled briefly at the reprimand, then gazed at the pink water lilies, trying to make herself remember Pernik. Something she still shied away from. <>

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  <> Athene turned from the pool and slipped her arm through her
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  <> She pulled Syrinx a little closer, allowing the worry and concern in her mind to flow freely through affinity. <>

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  When Syrinx had left to supervise the last stages of Oenone’s refit, Athene sat in her favourite chair on the patio and attempted to involve herself in the household routine again. There were plenty of children to supervise at the moment, the adults were all away working long hours, mainly in support of the defence force. Jupiter and Saturn were both gearing up for the Mortonridge Liberation.

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  <> He laughed.

  She watched the shadows deepen under the trees as the light tube enacted a rose-gold dusk. “There can’t be a God, can there? Not really.”

  ***

  <> Tranquillity said as Prince Noton stepped into one of the ten tube stations which served the hub.