‘It is an honour to be here,’ Geof said.
‘I have been impressed with your data handling so far. I look forward to what you can bring to the project. Come, let me give you a tour.’
The campus, which was a term of endearment used for such refineries of science, was made up of a row of ten hexagonal, vertically extendable hangars — ‘hexes’ — that were spaced along the top of the ridge in a fenced-off enclosure. Around each hex was a second fence, and gates manned by security who verified their identity to let them inside.
‘Kronos is in hex two. If, for any reason, we need to escape, meet me in hex one.’
‘What’s in hex one?’
‘The new squib we are working on. It’s suborbital.’ Egon winked. ‘I must say it is good to have you here, Geof. There is something invigorating about working with a person in person.’
‘That is kind of you to say, though I am used to working in a room by myself.’
‘I always feel I’m talking to no one that way. Even if someone’s avatar is standing right before me. Here we go.’ They passed through multiple doors and screening points before reaching the dressing room before the main lab.
‘We have every person scanned regularly for brain pattern deviations. If any of my staff show signs of change, we will know it and they will be confined. You don’t need to worry.’
‘You’ve found psis before?’
‘Not necessarily. I have no method for crosschecking the results so I don’t take any chances. You’re not in this business long if you don’t think other people are using every trick you can think of.’
‘You mean, people use psionics for spying?’
‘Of course they do. And it turns out it was probably Morritz all along. Thank you for exposing him. I am forever in your debt.’ Geof hadn’t heard what had happened to Morritz Kay since they’d found out he was manufacturing baubles for the psis. He was no longer a part of the study and his resources had been subsumed by Shelley.
‘You know what he was making then?’ Geof asked.
‘I do. Another one of Shen Li’s toys if your account is to be believed. We have run a thorough sweep of the plant, nothing has been found. We are studying the relays at another campus.’
‘You’re doing what?’
‘All under orders. From the Prime.’
‘Pinter or Shima?’
‘Shima, but the order hasn’t been countermanded. We are to find detection and disablement options. Same as the Kronos task. You look surprised.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I had just hoped to still be part of the hunt.’
‘Geof, do not be offended. I’ve spent my life taking apart Shen’s symbiots and making something useful out of them. I’m familiar with this particular challenge. Kronos on the other hand … this is the biggest challenge Shen ever set for me.’
‘Kronos doesn’t act much like a symbiot,’ Geof said.
‘Physically it doesn’t, but Shen’s first symbiot experiments were anachronistic too — there was a long period of trial and error before Shen got that one right. The formula that seeded Mexica included many symbiot materials so it’s a firm line of enquiry.’
‘Do you think its behaviour could be intentional?’ Geof asked.
‘More likely a side effect. Mechalogistics is not one of those sciences where you can understand it by its parts. And nor can you always predict the end creation from the ingredients you use. Every combination, like our own DNA, can produce remarkably different results. Besides,’ Egon continued as he changed his jacket for a lab coat and indicated a locker where Geof could stow his bag, ‘Shen didn’t always have end goals when he worked. He was more of a chaotic experimenter. He tested the very nature of possibility. A man probing the cage of reality, looking for weaknesses.’
‘What if Kronos is meant to be a closed system?’
‘To what end?’
‘Digitalis.’
‘Geofff …’ Egon’s flash of annoyance turned quickly back to a warm smile. ‘I’m sorry. You have the right to say what you think. Go on.’
‘Shen said he was working on it. And if you were going to create an artificial life form that could hold a human mind, it would have to be a closed system. If it could be controlled, it could never be independent.’
‘You think Kronos is one giant digitalis?’
‘Perhaps. But it went wrong and instead ended up as a rabid symbiotic animal. You said yourself new symbiot designs are unpredictable.’
Egon just stared at him. ‘You have absolutely nothing to base this on.’
Geof didn’t reply. It was just an extrapolation without substance. He could recognise that.
‘And if that were the case,’ Egon said, ‘it is more reason to find a way to stop it. It has killed millions and who knows how many of its seeds are floating around, or have run into a whale and are now growing in the ocean?’
‘You’re right. I have no basis for it. But when I spoke to it … there was a mind there.’
‘What you spoke to was not — It was just a program.’
‘If it was just a program, let me try again. I have more information now. I have a new starting point.’
‘What would you do differently?’
‘I would show it what it looks like to us. Perhaps if it can see itself, it might learn to recognise us?’
‘Ah, you would try to make it self-aware. Dangerous and verboten. You remember what happened last time you tried connecting, don’t you? What if it moves again? At the moment, the three wild Kronoses are sliding into the water, heading towards your last known location. You’re not bringing them here. I’ve got too much invested in this place.’
‘Then I’ll go back to Seaboard and do it. Then they won’t change course.’
‘You would have to get permission from the Prime for that.’
‘Okay. Have you come up with anything else?’
‘Actually, we have.’ Egon grinned and finally slid open the last door, revealing a brightly lumened room with five pallets, a wall-wrap screen showing the Kronos containment chamber, and specialist scopes and processing units Geof would have to find explanations for later: spectral-auraliser, freon accelerators, a molecular teleporter (code name: Disturber).
There were three other people inside the lab, plugged into scopes, or operating servitors who were on the other side of the transparent wall. Through the window Geof could see the vacuum sphere which contained the Kronos sample. A sphere within a sphere insulated by an electromagnetic ring.
‘Everyone,’ Egon said loudly, ‘I’d like to introduce Geof Ozenbach.’ Each member of the team lined up to shake his hand and say what their speciality was. Juanita Baker, mechalogistics; Aaron Medforth, sub-cellular physics; Benita Higson, symbiotic programming. Each team worked independently to enable crosschecking of results. The team leaders had to integrate the research requirements and workflows, using whatever systems they preferred, and bring any pertinent results to the attention of the other teams and the project leader, Egon Shelley.
‘An interesting mix of studies. How did you select them?’ Geof asked.
‘This is not the entire group. You can meet the two other shifts later. But I have a person for each of the key fields I believe Shen would have utilised in creating Kronos.’
‘I see. So we are sure it was him?’
‘It is most probable and,’ Egon picked up a papier from nearby and handed it to Geof, ‘input this. You can see it started when Higson had a theory and we figured out a way to test it. Doctor Higson, why don’t you tell him?’
‘Certainly — though all I did was come up with the idea. The aftershift did the work.’ She smiled and Geof instantly liked looking at her face, but tried not to be distracted. ‘Tell me if I get too basic for you, hon. When we make symbiots, we instil behaviours in them. For the sake of convenience let’s call that programming, though it is actually nothing like that; it just has the effect of programming. Each sort of subroutine we put in takes up space, and the more
complex the symbiot, the more minimum volume we need. In real-world terms, the kind of symbiot you wear can only be so small before it ceases to function, when the program doesn’t have enough room to operate. Of course, there is a symmetrical effect if complexity continues to increase and we run into all sorts of amplification distortion — but that’s not important right now. Are you still with me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, my idea was that if Kronos is a symbiot, it must have this kind of programming as well, even to do what it is doing. Therefore, it must have a minimum operational size.’
‘And then, Geof,’ Egon patted his shoulder excitedly, ‘we put this to the test in the next shift, starting with a tiny sample, one millilitre, and then seeing if it activated when touched by a sylus. One millilitre did nothing. Ten millilitres did nothing. It was at fourteen that it became active.’
The papier showed the recordings from the test. Four hundred per cent zoom field. The black droplet remained nonreactive to symbiotic or animal contact. Until the fourteenth clip, which showed the drop latching onto the bait … and another mouse was lost for the sake of science.
‘So you think if we can divide Kronos into drops of thirteen millilitres, it will be rendered useless?’
‘No, I hadn’t thought that … though it is an interesting idea … no, it wouldn’t work. We could never spread it out enough. It would cover the planet, see.’ Egon nudged his rough calculations into Geof’s queue. He was right, Kronos had too much mass.
‘Unless we can get it into space,’ Geof said.
‘There isn’t enough fuel in the world to lift one of them. Besides, didn’t you see what happened to the Lagrange lab?’
‘No,’ Geof answered. ‘Nothing since the Weave went down.’
‘Well, Control put their sample into an isolated lab, but it stopped responding. We presume Kronos must have got loose. Then the spacies sent a shuttle to find out what happened and the recordings only came in a few hours before the satellites stopped answering. Here.’ He flicked files into Geof’s symb, which immediately opened in a sub-screen of his overlay.
The footage was of a small ship that looked like a tailless mouse, gliding through space. It was rounded at the rear by the engines and tapered at the front. It had two large portholes for eyes and long whiskers coming out from its nose — the whiskers were actually antennas built of cameras and other sensors.
‘We have the lab on radar,’ the pilot’s voice came into his ears. Henry Jones, a young guy, twenty-five, with eight years in space already under his belt. His piloting record was steadily filling, a clear trajectory towards advancement.
‘Good. What are you reading from it?’ asked Hank Naylor, the comms officer who was monitoring Gargarin City.
‘Very little. It’s just background noise.’
‘There is something there. We can see it on the spectro. Approximately same size and mass as the lab should be.’
‘Well, it doesn’t look promising,’ the pilot said.
‘You’re sure you can’t see anything?’
‘You can see through the cameras too, Hank. There’s nothing to see.’
‘Negative, Henry. I think we are just seeing black on black. The sun will be on you in ten more minutes. Hold your position,’ Hank said.
They waited for the solar system to spin and the lab to move out of Earth’s shadow. Egon sped the footage forward to when it happened.
As the light touched the lab, Geof, and the pilot, saw only a lopsided lump of smooth black, like many other slowly spinning asteroids in the solar system. Except when this one felt the light, it swelled as if something were swimming beneath its surface. Its skin rippled and then tentacles started growing outwards. Like a black flower uncurling and straightening out its stamen and petals.
A space flower, Geof thought, reaching out to capture every scrap of light that it can.
The footage continued, but it was just more of the same: Kronos spinning and twisting, soaking up the light and unable to move from its position.
‘It is certainly plant-like,’ Geof said and closed the video out of his overlay.
‘Now it is in the void, starving for energy. Let’s just hope they clear everything from its path.’
‘You’ve heard nothing else?’
‘Nothing. The Weave isn’t the only thing down, Geof. Something else is happening we don’t know about.’
Egon looked skywards and integrated what his eyes saw into the view from a low-orbit sensor balloon that floated high above them. He shared the feed with Geof and they watched the rocky road of satellites and shipping lines continuing their choreography as if nothing had changed below.
‘Why don’t they answer?’ Egon asked.
‘Perhaps the cut-off has affected them too?’ Geof replied.
‘I have people up there who should have contacted me. They would have found a way.’ They paused, each letting the other think quietly for a moment.
‘So, what do I tell the Prime? I have to report every hour.’
‘Tell him what we always tell the ups. That we have a number of new directions to follow, but we are still far from any practical recommendations.’
Mornings were often cold in the Cape, no matter the season.
The cavernous basement below seemed to store up the shadows of the night and let them seep slowly out through the day. Only by noon would it be warm — if the sun managed to defeat the clouds that day.
Every morning, representatives of the three groups met near the entrance of Bendertown. The non-psis were represented by the usual bosses. Tamsin sent Salvator. The benders drove up in three large empty trucks, each with an armed guard to accompany Chiggy’s speaker, Rocks.
Each day was the same. Doctor Salvator stood to one side as the benders’ trucks were loaded with food, clothes and luxuriant gifts. Each boss tried to outdo each other, to gain more goodwill. After Chiggy had shown his full powers — or maybe not even full — all of Atlantic had been cowed and subject to his wishes and whims; even the tappers. The tributes made sure everyone knew who was in charge.
The doctor felt partly responsible, even though he had been following orders. The rebellion needed Chiggy’s help; it was he who had gone into Bendertown and pleaded with him. The daily tributes were only one of the conditions of protection. They had also promised to keep tappers out of bender territory and to send any bender they found to his arena.
Sal remembered the day he had gone. After leaving the tappers, he had walked alone down the main avenue, rubbish and wrecks pushed against the walls and into side streets, until he reached a barricade that ran across the road. Stone, concrete, metal, all beaten together into a five-metre-high fortification.
He could see a small group on top of the wall. He called out that he wanted to be let in and they made him wait until Rocks came to peer over the wall. She watched him silently before eventually making a series of hand signals. Then the wall opened, a large metal panel raising itself to reveal a hole large enough to drive through.
Rocks met him on the other side and nudged him along before her, saying nothing. She was muscled and wore bunched, out-of-date military fatigues, with her hair shorn down for convenience.
In another life she would have been a Services grunt. Here she was Chiggy’s soldier and second-in-charge. Before he arose from underground, or wherever he had been, Rocks had spoken for Chiggy. Nobody had seen him until the rebellion brought him out of hiding. Chiggy could just as easily have been a shade made up by Rocks to cover that she was the real leader of the benders. If only that had been so.
The way to the arena wasn’t marked, but he could hear the roars as they got closer. Each cheer guided them on. Sal couldn’t tell if the cheers were of dismay or celebration, only that something had happened.
‘Wait here,’ Rocks said and walked off. She left him in one of the tunnels under the stadium, one end leading back the way they had come, the other to the inner walls of the arena. Only a damaged gate between daylight on san
d and the tidal roar of the crowd.
Sal crept forward to watch what was happening.
On the floor of the arena were the beaten hulls of squibs and trucks, rocks and boulders. These were the weapons the combatants had to choose from and he watched them thrown from side to side, crunching together in mid-air.
What had been a court for WarBall, with platforms and video pedestals that rose and dropped with the fortunes of the players, was now just broken blocks that provided cover for the combatants.
The pedestals no longer functioned, nor did the video floor, which had been made of a tessellation of small screens that flared with light and images to enhance the spectacle.
The walls themselves had never been built to withstand such damage. The metal bones were exposed and suffering from the impact of fighters throwing objects, or their opponents, at them. The holed roof let the sun through in a score of miniature spotlights.
Two fighters, one marked red, the other blue, were pounding as hard and fast as they could at each other. The crowd shrieked and winced, leapt to their feet and screamed at the big hits.
As a bender, Sal could feel, or sense, the invisible fists the fighters beat each other with. It was force against force as one lifted the hull of a junked hover and threw it across the court. The other knocked it off its trajectory and it hit the sand with a shower of grist.
This seemed to give one of the fighters an idea and she swiped at the ground in front of the fighter in red, distracting him with a blast of sand to the eyes and knocking him to his knees. She seized the opening and punched directly at him, smashing him down.
The crowd waited. After a few moments, the red fighter held up a shaking hand, croaked once, then gasped feebly. The cheers vibrated through the stadium and the blue fighter raised her arms into the air, turning in circles to receive the crowd’s accolade.
Sal couldn’t bear it. He ran forward to the fallen man and bent over him. He pulled off the armour plating with his hands while his mind burrowed underneath, pushing broken ribs back into place and massaging the heart to keep it pumping. He moved air into the man’s mouth and opened up the oesophagus so the air could reach the lungs, cleared blood and sand from the fighter’s throat and dropped it on the ground.
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