by John Meaney
High
Energy
Interstellar
Meson
Detection,
Amplification &
Lensing
Lattice
It seemed like a joke; and if the handwriting had not been hers, it would have been funny.
When she went downstairs, Mrs Wilson was in the kitchen, frying bread in lard, while Rupert Forrester was in the front room, talking to a one-armed man called Brian, who it appeared was also a lodger.
‘We’re in luck this morning,’ Brian said. ‘Old Rupert is our bus driver for the day.’
‘Don’t expect it as a matter of course.’ Rupert went to the door and checked that the hall was clear. ‘But I’ll take you both back again tonight. It’s nice to visit here when I can.’
‘He went to school with Mrs Wilson’s son,’ said Brian.
‘Oh.’
‘Now Gabby’ - Rupert gave a microsecond smile - ‘you’re going to be in Hut 27, but there’s something you need to know about that.’
Brian’s head tilted, revealing scars on his neck.
‘There is no Hut 27.’
‘That,’ Rupert told Gavriela, ‘is the thing you need to know.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘We’re codes and ciphers.’ Brian shrugged his intact shoulder. ‘It’s not just hush-hush, it’s more important than anybody knows.’
‘Even more than you know,’ said Rupert.
‘But where are we working?’ asked Gavriela.
‘You’ll see.’
Then Mrs Wilson called them in to eat, and for a short period it was like an ordinary peacetime breakfast, except that there was no butter, only lard; the tea was made from ground-up acorns; and the curtains that stood open were blackout drapes, to avoid light spilling out at night, assisting Luftwaffe bomber crews to navigate.
And Gavriela wondered, as she ate, how far her night-time writing could creep from rational reality before becoming signs of psychotic delusion, a mind finally cracked in a world grown mad and horrible.
FORTY-EIGHT
FULGOR, 2603 AD
Sunadomari stalked through the splendour of the Via Lucis Institute, scarcely seeing the shining kaleidoscope of holos and Skein projections, an avalanche of visual stimuli that would overwhelm an ordinary human. One holovolume that kept pace with him showed the face of Hsiu Li-Cheng, whom he would see in person within seconds; another showed Helen Eisberg with her tac team troopers, inside a flyer en route to Ebony Tower.
‘Why’s this Alisha Spalding important?’ Eisberg was asking. ‘I understand she’s a victim, but what’s it got to do with your case?’
‘It wasn’t the slimeball perverts who raped her. It was Luculenta Rafaella Stargonier who tore out her mind.’
‘Oh. I was under the impression the murder victims were Luculenti.’
‘Spalding is pre-upraise. She has interface nodes without true processors. Maybe that’s the difference.’
‘And you want me to take her straight there?’
‘Yes. Please.’
They stopped talking but kept the hololink open.
‘As soon as she’s inside the flyer,’ said Li-Cheng in the other holovolume, ‘I can pass through the emergency med-nodes and start my analysis.’
‘Do you think it will help?’
‘Maybe. I’m curious about these other people, Helsen and Ranulph. What are they, some kind of pure-humanity terrorists? Setting a rogue Luculenta loose among her own kind, and serve us right?’
‘I’ll be very curious myself,’ said Sunadomari, ‘just as soon as we find them.’
A third holo opened: Roger Blackstone.
‘Your people are here, Superintendent. A Lieutenant Eisberg?’
‘That’s her.’
In Eisberg’s holo, the viewpoint shifted, showing her officers carrying the girl on board. Immediately, the medscanners whirled into action, new displays blossoming red and orange all around Sunadomari as he reached the end of one shining corridor, passed beneath a razor-edged archway, and came to a halt. A silver wall rippled open, revealing an immense workspace filled with holo glory - phase spaces and rippling manifolds, network graphs that glimmered and equations that shone, tabular data in swirling ribbons, and a million realtime images floating all around.
Beneath the glory, twelve Skein designers were working, deep in the flow, while at their centre stood Hsiu Li-Cheng, the golden studs gleaming on his forehead, smiling when he saw Sunadomari.
‘We should have results in about—Ah. There.’
He was staring at a holospace.
‘What is it?’ asked Sunadomari.
‘Throw her out now!’
‘What?’
In the comms holo, Lieutenant Eisberg said: ‘Sir, can you repeat that?’
‘Put her out of the flyer.’ Sunadomari was staring at his friend, Li-Cheng. ‘Do what he said, Helen.’
‘All right. Doing it now.’
On Li-Cheng’s skin, dots of sweat expanded, while the muscles around his mouth hardened.
‘Vampire . . . code. Remnants.’
‘Can you fight it? Hey.’ Sunadomari turned to the twelve designers. ‘Help him.’
But they remained in their seats, locked into whatever they were working on Skein.
‘Doing. It.’ Li-Cheng was wheezing. ‘My. Self.’
Sunadomari’s fists were tight. Being this helpless, especially with Skein involved, was new to him. But this was happening at such a level that he had neither the expertise nor the authorization that would allow him to follow the processes, much less render help.
Helen Eisberg was asking for further instructions, but he ignored her.
Finally, Li-Cheng shuddered and dropped to one knee.
‘Ah . . .’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Hurt my knee, maybe the anterior cruciate ligament, otherwise’ - he smiled at Sunadomari - ‘my mind is clear. Finally.’
‘The vampire code has evolved, I take it?’ Sunadomari helped him up.
‘Yes, and I think it might have a different . . . intent. It’s hard to tell in Alisha Spalding’s case, because she did not have a true plexweb. Probably why she was abandoned.’
‘Not to act as an amusing boobytrap for any Luculentus who tried to investigate?’
‘Ah, Keinosuke. You have a twisty, paranoid mind.’
‘Thank you,’ said Sunadomari. ‘So how is the code different?’
‘I’m not sure it’s designed to kill—What’s this?’
Li-Cheng stared at the twelve designers, all of them deep in Skein.
‘They wouldn’t answer me,’ began Sunadomari, ‘when I tried to—’
‘Hush,’ said Li-Cheng. ‘Let me think.’
That was not something you heard a Luculentus say every day - one’s ability to think powerfully and fast was taken for granted. Sunadomari could not understand the multidimensional phantasmagoria of holos; but he could read Li-Cheng’s expression as he tried to make sense of the displays.
Then Li-Cheng strode forward and placed one hand on a designer’s shoulder.
‘Cataleptic,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen a person work so hard, do so much at one time. His effort is incredible, over two thousand simultaneous sessions and each one non-trivial.’
‘What is he doing?’ said Sunadomari. ‘What are they all doing?’
‘They’re—’
One of the designers screamed, sat upright with sinews tight, toppled back in her chair, and slid to the floor.
‘It’s Skein,’ said Li-Cheng.
‘What about Skein?’
‘It’s attacking through Skein.’ His face turned a luminous ash-grey. ‘I think we’re finished.’
On the edge of the city stood a natural stone house in its own grounds. The property was surrounded by a high wall, and a tall gateway of black iron separated it from the long trail that led to the nearest residential area. But neither its isolation nor its design was the reason for its safety
- that rested on reputation, and the very real capabilities of those who sojourned here.
Currently, three Pilots were resident in Sanctuary. The eldest was Jed Goran, the youngest Al Morgan, while Angus Cho was a psychologist and military intelligence specialist, normally based in Labyrinth, who did not have a ship. It was Angus who was deep in holo displays on the patio, while the other two were drinking daistral and talking about the news from the Admiralty Council.
‘They can’t possibly select Arrowsmith,’ Al was saying. ‘He’s no replacement for Admiral Kaltberg.’
‘Never underestimate our superiors’ ability,’ answered Jed, ‘to perpetrate total, utter—’
‘Guys,’ said Angus. ‘Look at this.’
A spiky network of golden lines hung in front of him - a network glistening here and there with a redness that appeared to be spreading.
‘Tell me that’s not an infiltration,’ said Jed.
‘It’s not.’
‘But it looks like—’
‘It’s going to be genocide.’
Last Lupus, the final day of Festival.
Now trompe-l’oeil holoillusions marched across the sky, ‘Fanfare for All’ resounded from quickglass buildings used as musical instruments, and everywhere were streamers and cloudflakes, sparklemist and twirlywhispers, while vendors dispensed sweetbeer and plasmaberry wine, roast cicaderm and gyle nuts, jantrasta-coated fruit and daistral whips.
Merrymakers laughed or embraced, watched amused or wistful, meeting new lovers or losing old, or staying with their long-term lover, the ongoing growth and renewal of family, or they simply joked with friends, sang stupid, surreal songs, composed poems, played 7-D killchess, drank, belched, ate, pissed, burped, stood on someone’s toes, made friends, caused arguments, held hands, smiled, cried, farted, picked their noses, said sorry, drank some more and put the world to rights.
Yet in the midst of swirling, interacting, splendid-yet-mundane humanity, something was changing.
It started with a trio of Luculenti, walking together, tracking the patterns in the aerial displays. The silver dragons were just one more attraction among the smartkites and dirigibles and holoillusions; but now the nearest dragon was catching their attention.
Within the next two seconds, another fifty-nine Luculenti looked up at one or other of the dragons and wondered what was different about it.
Then they all screamed.
Tightbeams rained down from the dragons, pinning the Luculenti in place, broadcasting their locations to the one who waited deep below the city. Now they were hooked and landed fish, awaiting the terminal blow - but the hooks came through the hyperdimensions, and so did the vampire code.
It was the opening salvo of the Skein War.
Deep in The Marrows beneath the city, the body that had been Rafaella Stargonier floated amid translucent green splendour, tiny in her quickglass sea, surrounded by the organic vastness and geometric lattices that were the city’s true body, the towers above mere epidermis, the visible exterior of the true marvel that grew and provided everything from food to sanitation, enfolding civilization.
Now she and it could be so much more.
On the surface, her Luculenti still lived, components of herself, while her first body flung out its arms, drifting cruciform in its living, subterranean surroundings. Perhaps her head tilted back and smiled; or perhaps it was a random motion, caught in quickglass current.
Each of her remote Luculenti entered Skein, eyes blazing, searching for prey.
It took no more than seconds for each to subsume another, then another. Geometrically, vampire code spread, as Luculentus minds speared others of their kind, cascading through Skein, all remaining physically alive, their neural topology routed through the Calabi-Yau dimensions, the realspace axes that humans cannot see, hundreds then thousands of bodies and plexwebs forming one continuous substrate for a unitary net of cognition and predation.
The once-Rafaella had transcended.
On the rooftop of Ebony Tower, Roger stood beside Alisha’s stretcher - the tac team did not carry med-drones - not understanding why the officers had taken her back out of the flyer. But his tu-ring flared, and a strange Luculentus appeared in holo.
‘I’m Hsiu Li-Cheng,’ he said. ‘Download this code, broadcast through tightbeam at her.’
‘What will it do?’
‘Disinfect her. Destroy the lingering code.’
‘Code?’
Behind him, the tac team commander, Lieutenant Eisberg said: ‘Something to do with her being pre-upraise, right?’
Roger did as Li-Cheng said.
‘Will we able to use this on Luculenti?’ Eisberg asked.
In the holo, Li-Cheng’s face was a mask of emptiness.
‘No,’ he said. ‘We’re trying to build another Skein, but we’ll never manage—’
The holo snapped out of existence.
‘Another Skein?’ said Roger.
‘I don’t know.’ Eisberg shrugged her muscular shoulders. ‘This is bad. And Keino-Superintendent Sunadomari is off Skein.’
‘Maybe Luculenti need to disconnect for safety. You’re saying there’s infectious code in Skein?’
‘That wasn’t what I—You know, that wasn’t how this started, but I think you might be right. One moment.’ Her jaw muscles moved, uttering tense subvocalizations. ‘I can’t reach HQ. The connection pool on every channel is full. Shit.’
If the peacekeepers were flooded with calls, from civilians and officers alike, then whatever was happening, it was widespread.
‘Lieutenant?’ One of the troopers was pointing into the cityscape. ‘You see that?’
In her stretcher, Alisha twitched, but nothing more. Roger looked back up, seeing that all of the tac team were staring in the same direction.
‘Holy fuck.’
‘That’s not possible.’
But Eisberg said: ‘Clearly it is.’
With the stress of the day, Roger’s vision had blurred or tunnelled to a pinpoint several times over, and for a moment he thought it had recurred, a symptom of adrenal overload. But then he realized that it was no artefact of trauma, but reality that he saw.
The sky was still filled with festive smartkites and illusory holos, dirigibles and dragons; while below still lay an elegant expanse of shining quickglass towers, linked by skyways and viaducts, amid streets and plazas and piazzas filled with city-dwellers out to celebrate Last Lupus; but the city was altering.
With a twitch here and a twist there, quickglass towers began to shrug and shift, to compress and expand, and then to flow. Everything began to move. Suddenly, one skywalk flailed like a tendril, spilling tiny humans to the ground below.
The city was coming to life. Viaducts buckled, tore free. Buildings writhed into motion.
It’s impossible.
But still the towers walked.
It began in The Marrows. By the time it reached the surface, affecting the quickglass towers that humans lived in without appreciating the marvel of what surrounded them - nor how small a portion of the true city they inhabited - the process was more than eighty per cent complete, the metamorphosis unstoppable.
While underneath, the subterranean quickglass sea pulsed with complex growth, organs and systems combining to expand and move, to grow new surface structures, to reach out and live.
Even as their old homes buckled - luxurious apartments in city towers, quieter mansions in the outer districts, extravagances shaped like ziggurats or giant sculptures - their Luculenti owners did not care. Ordinary Fulgidi, whether employees or friends, backed away from those who had changed; some perished as the floors twisted apart or walls expanded to envelope them, while others ran outside to chaos.
All Luculenti were becoming one - but more than that. For they were the nervous system, while the quickglass city formed the body they were embedded in. This was beyond transcendence.
A new form of life was being born.
In the Via Lucis Institute, LuxPrime’s finest
Skein designers were fighting back. The global Skein environment was centuries old, its lineage tracing back to Earth; now, those designers were creating a new version in minutes. In the growing SkeinTwo, as they brought it into being framework by framework, ecology by ecology, emergent configurations - force-grown at a speed no one would have thought possible - bore parallels to the structures they mirrored in the corrupted, dangerous, original Skein . . . but they were rooted in different protocols and codes at the very lowest level. Meanwhile, a specialist team was working on a single service: the gateway that would allow a Luculentus to switch his mind into the new environment, plunge into SkeinTwo while cleansing himself of the old, losing any traces of the vampire code that was destroying everything.