Deceit

by Peter Darvill-Evans

  I said I didn’t understand what he was talking about.

  ‘You will,’ he said. ‘You will. I have been asked to send you to Lacuna. This is an honour for you, I must say. You will go to her quarters this evening. And don’t be afraid.’

  Why did he have to say that? I’m getting nervous already, and I don’t know why.

  Everything was going just fine. It wasn’t impossible to intercept a ship in warp space, but nothing had disturbed the progress of the Admiral Raistrick. It was very nearly too late to stop them now.

  Defries had spent much of the last few weeks asleep, letting the ship’s medics prepare her for whatever she might have to be prepared for. She’d had a detox programme; she’d had a dietary supplement implant; she’d had three different kinds of nanosurgical virus. She felt about the same as she had before.

  Today, she had decided to start wearing combat gear instead of dress uniform: every little gesture helped to nudge the troops from warp boredom into battle readiness. In any case, black suited her. She pulled the webbing more tightly around her waist and smoothed the pleats of her non-reflective blast vest. The smell of the chemical treatments that permeated combat clothes always excited her. She smiled at herself, almost shyly, in the long mirror. You’re dressed to kill, Isabelle Defries.

  Natural adrenalin. There’s, nothing quite like it. She flexed her hand and her blaster jumped to meet it. Reluctantly; she reholstered the gun. A few more days to go, she told herself. A few more days of killing nothing but time.

  She called for a visual display of discipline violations and strode to her desk. Only two fights in the last twelve hours: the auxies weren’t getting too restless just yet. That still left the problem of the stowaway. Defries had been prevaricating about this one, she admitted it. The more data she gathered, the less sure she felt about the case. Returning the culprit to Commander Celescu’s jurisdiction was out of the question; that left only imprisonment for the duration of the mission, which would tie up human and systems resources, or ejection in a life-pod, j which would be a waste of a trooper.

  There was a knock on the door. Such old-fashioned courtesy. How were you supposed to respond?

  ‘Come in, please,’ Defries ventured.

  The door slid open and the stowaway walked in. She too was wearing combat blacks and had been, Defries knew, throughout the flight. She was grinning, as if pleased with herself. The door closed behind her. She was stationary but not motionless: she was poised on the balls of her feet, she tossed her head to throw back her long dark hair, her eyes scanned Defries’s office – and then came to rest on Defries. The two women studied each other.

  She’s not perfect, Defries thought. Never had cosmetic nanosurgery, let alone genetic beautifiers. So she’s sort of lopsided. But she looks fit. She looks good. She looks tough. And black suits her. No side gun. I suspect that makes her no less dangerous. This situation could become difficult. So much for old-fashioned door-opening protocol.

  The stowaway stepped forward and thrust out a hand. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m Ace.’

  Defries had suppressed the urged to step back. ‘I’m Agent Defries, trooper,’ she said, ignoring the hand. ‘You’ll salute when you see me, keep zipped unless you’re spoken to, and address me as Ma’am. You’re in big trouble.’

  Unbelievably, the stowaway laughed; the amusement was so genuine that Defries found herself almost smiling.

  ‘If you only knew, Agent Defries, how many times I’ve been told I’m in big trouble. What is it this time? Summary execution? Vivisection by cannibals? The death of a thousand military tribunals?’

  The stowaway had an attitude that was as unusual as her name and her accent. Defries was intrigued. ‘The other auxies have spent the last month in deep-sleep, or using up the booze and other substances I let them smuggle on board. You’ve been working out every day, you’ve been using the ship’s datanet, and most of the time you’ve been on the bridge getting friendly with Captain Toko and his crew.’

  ‘I like the stars.’

  ‘We’re in warp space, trooper.’

  ‘But I know they’re there. I like to know we’re moving.’

  Deffies realized that at some time during this brief meeting she had taken the decision not to invoke military discipline. ‘What’s that – that big stick?’ she said.

  In a fluid overarm movement, Ace pulled the weapon from the pack at her shoulder and brought it down in an arc of blue sparks. This time Defries did step back. The metal club hovered, crackling ominously, a centimetre above the desk.

  ‘Now that’s how to tell someone they’re in big trouble,’ Ace said, and laughed again. ‘Good, isn’t it? Back where I come from, folks call this a baseball bat. This one’s got added extra super pizzazz.’ The bat arced upwards and was replaced in the pack with less ease than it had been drawn out.

  ‘And where, exactly is back home?’ Having decided to keep this auxiliary in the mission squad, Defries applied herself to the matter of deploying her new resource.

  ‘Here and there,’ Ace said. ‘I was in Special Weapons.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ Defries said. She wasn’t unimpressed, either. ‘If we’re lucky we won’t need you, of course.’

  ‘But you’ll feel better knowing I’m around,’ Ace said. ‘Right.’ The interview seemed to have ended. Defries needed time to think before allocating her new explosives expert to a squad.

  Ace made no move to leave. ‘There’s a lot of talk,’ she said.

  ‘There always is.’

  ‘About your Special Weapon. The big secret. In the weapons hold.’

  ‘Not there. In the medical suite. Don’t even think of peeking. It’s secret. And it’s guarded.’

  ‘Doesn’t worry me, Agent Defries.’ Defries didn’t know whether this remark reassured her or worried her. ‘See you on the bridge when we come out of warp.’ Now Ace was backing towards the door.

  ‘I’ll be there,’ Defries said and raised her voice slightly. ‘But you’ll be in your quarters, trooper.’

  ‘Got an invitation from the Captain, haven’t I? And I wouldn’t miss it for anything.’ The door slid closed, and Ace had gone.

  I couldn’t move.

  If l could have moved...

  She was unhappy. I think she’d been crying.

  I should have said something. But I couldn’t move,

  I was frightened, in the dark.

  Frightened to come out, too. She was angry, and unhappy. My big sister.

  1 should have said something. But I was frightened.

  She lay on the bed. She hit the pillows, hard. She was definitely crying.

  Then she slept.

  She looked so beautiful.

  My big sister.

  Don’t wake up, Christina.

  Don’t wake up, and I’ll tiptoe away.

  Don’t wake up, there’s someone coming.

  Don’t wake up, something’s happening.

  Don’t wake up, oh no, don’t wake up, please, don’t wake up, don’t wake up, don’t wake up, don’t wake up, don’t wake up.

  ‘Great heavens, Clarissa, how long has she been like this? Like a demented rocking horse. Has she gone stark mad?’

  ‘I think it might be a good sign, Gerald. Perhaps the result of the hot and cold compresses. At least she’s moving. A sign of life.’

  ‘Too much life, I’d say. She’s said nothing, I suppose? No, of course not. She’s too far gone. As if I didn’t have enough to worry about.’

  ‘The archery practice?’

  ‘Waste of time. Three fellows with a good eye – the ones who hunt, of course. The rest couldn’t hit the castle if they were standing in it.’

  ‘Did Edward come?’

  ‘Edward? Yes, he was there. Encouraging his subjects. About as much use as a gelding at stud. Seems to think we’ll have no trouble finishing off these mysterious plague carriers of his. I think he’s off his head.’

  ‘Francis was here again. He’s a bit calmer now, poor
boy.’

  ‘He should have been training with us. He’s always been a shirker. Don’t know what Christina saw in him.’

  ‘He’s going to Landfall. He seemed very scared. It was as if he thought – well, you know, that it had something to do with him. As if he was in danger.’

  ‘Fanciful nonsense.’

  ‘But what if – what if it wasn’t accidental, Gerald?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. She’d had her time, that’s all. She wasn’t young.’

  Don’t wake, up, Christina. There’s something round the bed. Something like a golden cloud. All around.

  She woke up. She was shouting. Then she started screaming. I could see her. But there was no sound.

  Only the footsteps coming.

  He found a mirror in one of the rooms. He studied his reflection.

  He saw a short, slight figure, of indeterminate age. He thought he probably looked a little comical, with those tartan trousers, the paisley patterned scarf and tie, the battered straw hat and the dusty jacket. The eyes that stared back at him were brooding, troubled. And not surprisingly, he thought. Who was he? The question mark motif, endlessly repeated across his pullover and reiterated in the handle of his umbrella, seemed peculiarly appropriate.

  He sighed, and shook his head. He essayed a jaunty flourish with the brolly. The mirror reflected the half-hearted gesture. He left the room.

  Another corridor. He wandered along it. If only the structure of the place would give him a clue. Not all the corridors were of the same design, but most of them were similar: plain colours, often a muted white, set with circular recesses or protruberances, He felt that the place should be familiar. But it wasn’t. No signposts, of course, no labels on the doors.

  He had taken to looking into every room he passed. It was as if he were searching for something, but he couldn’t imagine what it might be. Sometimes he would find cupboards, sometimes domestic accommodation, occasionally a vast panorama of countryside. He was puzzled that none of it surprised him. But none of it seemed familiar. Nothing seemed significant.

  Most of the corridors were long and straight. Some were short, a few were curved. Some were dead ends, most ended at junctions.

  He was standing at a crossroads when the vision came again. If he was suffering from amnesia, this was his only memory. A young man, clean shaven, clearly ill, was barely conscious in a bath chair. A young woman – short, with elfin features, chestnut curls and soft brown clothes – was struggling to push the chair along a corridor very like these; another woman, taller, a little older, dressed in some sort of uniform, was a few steps further on, looking back and frowning.

  The image seemed important, but he had no idea why.

  He turned left. Another corridor, more doors. The man in, the bath chair remained in his mind’s eye. He felt something like a sense of purpose as he strode to the nearest door.

  But if I find what I’m looking for, whatever it is, he thought, how will I know I’ve found it?

  Brave heart, he told himself as the door opened.

  The android walked surprisingly quickly. It seemed to have something wrong with its legs, and it shuffled awkwardly, tilted forward as if it might fall over at any moment. Britta couldn’t see the structure of its lower limbs: the androids that worked in the interior sections of the station wore long, loose garments that covered them from neck to feet. In any case, she had to concentrate on keeping up with it. She was trekking through sections to which her security code allowed no access, but she scarcely had time to glance at the strange embellishments of the passages and rooms through which she passed.

  She hurried round yet another shadowy corner and found herself at one end of a long, straight, dimly-lit corridor. She couldn’t see the far end. The android had disappeared. She hesitated, waiting for instructions or the return of her guide. Silence. The corridor seemed to be watching her. She set off along it and, although there were no doors or side passages, the feeling grew that she was being observed. When at last she discerned the end of the corridor, she almost ran towards the sliding door that blocked her path.

  She pressed the door sensor, and recoiled suddenly: the sensor pad was soft and warm. And it was a face, she realized as her eyes adjusted to the gloom: soft plastic moulded into the shape of a small, human face. The door remained closed.

  Her heart was beating fast. She told herself that it was because of the long march through the station. She told herself that no-one could blame her if she turned back and tried to retrace her steps to the research station.

  The door moved. It split. It peeled open from the centre like a ripe fruit, like membranes of flesh. Beyond the doorway lay a deep darkness. And somewhere in it, Britta knew, Lacuna was, waiting for her.

  You’ll see. That was all that anyone would say in answer to her questions about the station’s controller. She suspected that most of her colleagues knew as little as she did. Lacuna – was it even a name? Or was it a title? Could Lacuna be an android, or an artificial intelligence? Britta knew only, that she was about to find out. She stepped forward.

  Britta had never been to Earth, and so she had never seen or been inside a real cathedral, a place of worship built in the pre-industrial, superstitious interlude between the stone, age and the stars. But she had seen pictures, as she had experienced travel holoshows. This was what it must have felt like: the chill, the convoluted columns and confusing aisles and galleries, the deep shadows in every corner that obscured height, depth, distance. The sense of entering a sacred place. The heavy silence.

  It didn’t occur to her to wonder at finding structures made of stone at the heart of a space station. Her concerns were only to avoid the areas of inky shadow and to reach the central source of the pale light that gleamed through inaccessible clerestory windows and was filtered through massive carved screens. When she noticed the stonework it was only to retreat from a leering caryatid or to peer through a sculpted aperture.

  She was trembling. She was cold, but her hands were clammy with sweat. This was fear of a sort that she had not experienced in her remembered lifetime. This was eons-old fear. Waiting for the results of her diploma examinations; daring to ask Dimitri for that first dance; her first warp trip – these were fears of a different, lesser order. Tiptoeing through the nighted architecture of Lacuna’s lair induced follicle-lifting, heart-racing terror: the fear of the dark, of the unknown, of the unseen, of the hungry predator; the fear that resides in the hypothalamus and is an inheritance from ancestors who swam in pre-Cambrian oceans.

  And then she entered a circular chamber, and found the source of the light. The fear changed, but did not diminish. Lacuna was waiting.

  Lacuna looked almost normal. That made it worse, somehow. Lacuna was a slim, tall woman, dressed in voile robes – but her head was hairless, huge and bulbously bivalved, the cranium shining like the wing-cases of a beetle. Inserted in the cleft was a metal implant. And worst of all, she was smiling: a vulpine rictus. Her eyes stared unwaveringly at Britta.

  ‘I can feel your fear.’

  The taut, grinning lips had not moved. It took several seconds for Btitta to realize she had heard no sound. The voice had been in her mind.

  ‘I have strengthened the Net,’ the soundless voice said. ‘I cast it ever more widely each day. Does my appearance alarm you?’

  Britta put her hand to her head, as if to touch the intruder. She managed to nod.

  ‘I no longer need the physical apparatus of the link.’ One of the woman’s slender arms snaked upward. Her hand caressed the metal cylinder lodged in her cloven scalp. ‘I wear it as a sign, a badge. I am Lacuna.’

  ‘Link?’ The fear was thawing. Britta found herself able to think, and to speak. ‘Link with what?’

  ‘I will tell you as much as you will understand,’ Lacuna said, the voice in Britta’s head now echoed by whispered syllables from the scarcely-moving mouth, ‘later. Now we must attend to this.’

  Britta felt the voice leave her mind. Lacuna’s ey
es closed. The walls of the circular chamber glowed, and suddenly the surface was covered with words.

  The handwriting writhed as it flowed across the wall, and Britta didn’t recognize it immediately. She turned, trying to catch a tail, a beginning or end somewhere in the script-filled cylinder.

  Well, I went to the edge to look at the planet anyway.

  The writing was hers. Her diary.

  ‘This must stop,’ Lacuna said. ‘The physical record has already been destroyed. The Corporation has an archive in which employees can store data. The maintenance of private recordings is not permitted.’

  The words whirled faster and faster. They curled inwards, a spinning vortex with Britta at its centre. She was surrounded by her diary, it formed a shrinking cylinder that enclosed her like a rotating prison. The words overlapped and intertwined, trapping her inside a lattice that solidified as it shrank.

  Britta could see nothing through the spinning wall of words. She was standing inside a tube. The turbulent air caught her hair and her clothes. She pulled in her shoulders, but still the cylinder contracted. It would crush her. It brushed against her arms, turning her, tearing the cloth of her jacket. Her legs twisted. Her legs were lifted from the floor. She began to spin. She screamed.

  The tube disappeared. Britta fell on her hands and knees.

  ‘A warning,’ Lacuna’s voice again, in Britta’s mind and in the chamber. ‘You have been chosen to help our work. The rewards are great. Beyond your comprehension. Disobedience will not be tolerated.’

  Britta looked up. Lacuna was staring at her, eyes bright with excitement, a smile of genuine pleasure on her face. Under the circumstances, Britta found the sight reassuring. ‘How,’ she said, pulling herself to her feet, ‘how did you do that?’

  ‘You misunderstand, my dear. The power is not mine, I am merely a maidservant. I am Lacuna. A sensory organ of the Corporation.’

  Something about the tone of Lacuna’s voice, or a slight inclination of the misshapen head, gave Britta the clue.

  ‘The Corporation,’ she said. ‘The Spinward Corporation is – here? On Arcadia station?’