Convergence

by David M Henley

  They looked around at one another.

  ‘Maybe we should all go,’ Esme suggested.

  ‘I don’t think he’s going anywhere.’ Juliet indicated the old pilot. He was slumped in his seat, head and arms on the dashboard.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Humbolt said.

  ‘But … what if you don’t come back?’ Juliet asked.

  ‘At least give me an hour. And you can watch me with oculars. It’s just up the hill, I can see them from here.’

  ‘Humbolt?’ Esme said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘Do we have any choice?’ he asked. ‘We need power if we’re going to go any further. Look, I’ll be quick. I’ll go up, see what the situation is, and then I’ll come right back.’

  ‘Be quick.’

  He nodded and started off. He took note of the time in his symb and set a recurring beep every ten minutes.

  He passed many other squibs sitting in the dark. Sometimes he saw pale faces of scared people looking out at him.

  The surge of the swarms in their containers grew quieter at the base of the hill, where the sound and the light were in shadow. As he climbed he could hear the silos as if he were approaching an ocean with slow and un-crashing waves.

  Ahead was a large ring of people standing at the crest. One or two thick in a circle of hundreds, all standing still as statues, looking at something on the other side.

  Humbolt couldn’t see through them. Whatever they were watching wasn’t very big. As he got closer, he tried peering through the gaps between the people’s heads, but still couldn’t see anything except the walls of the whispering insect silos.

  As he got to the top and looked down, as he took one last step to be side by side with the other watchers, he thought he saw a child.

  Everything is going to be alright, he heard.

  The submarine was shaped a little like a deep-diving whale, with a thick thrusting head gradually tapering to twin rotors at the ‘tail’. The vessel had two levels: the lower level containing the machinery, and the command level above. The bridge was open plan from command to engineering, with transparent screens between sections just to dampen sound. Lumens gave out ambient light from support struts and glowlines trailed the floor like old-fashioned power cords.

  General Zim sat in the captain’s chair. Under his dark eyebrows his eyes roamed around the cabin. The room was full of screens, the Servicemen operating them efficiently and communicating in murmurs. The blips from the sonar sounded like wind chimes, echoing and repeating. It was very quiet five thousand feet below.

  ‘Your transmission is connecting, sir.’

  ‘Are you certain they won’t be able to triangulate on us?’ Zim asked.

  ‘Yes, sir. The signal is being routed.’

  ‘Okay. Connect me,’ he said. The feed in his ears changed from the submarine’s close room of hard surfaces to a command room in Busan.

  ‘Greetings, comrade,’ he said, letting his deep voice resonate.

  ‘Zim?’ Pinter said. The General couldn’t tell if the other man was surprised to hear from him or not.

  ‘Yes, Colonel Pinter — or should I call you Prime now? You made it to the top at last, my old friend. I had given up on you.’

  ‘Why are you contacting me?’ Pinter asked.

  ‘Did you see my little demonstration?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The island. That was my warning to them.’

  ‘Are you claiming responsibility for the destruction of the psi island?’

  ‘Da. That was me. One shot. Problem solved. Does the mighty Scorpion not approve?’

  ‘Damn you, Zim, I have diplomatic efforts underway. You have committed an act of war.’

  ‘Istoria nas rusjudiet,’ Zim said. ‘History can be my judge, not you, Pinter.’

  ‘Zim, I beg you. Please don’t make the situation any worse. You must turn yourself in and stand public trial.’

  ‘Under what authority, Prime? Yours? You have no more authority than I do.’

  ‘And so you kill two hundred people before knowing if they were even hostile?’

  ‘I know what the enemy looks like, old friend. I, at least, have not forgotten.’

  ‘I can’t let you make this situation any worse!’ Pinter shouted.

  ‘But you cannot stop me either. Like you, I shed blood to create the World Union. I am not afraid to do so again.’

  ‘General, please. Turn yourself over to me.’

  ‘You are powerless to stop me.’

  ‘Don’t do this, Zim. We have peace talks underway.’

  ‘Then I would tell your peacemakers to come home.’

  ‘We can reach a sol—’

  ‘Stop. It is us or them. There can be no coexistence with the psis. If we lose this war, we won’t be people any more. We will be like puppets.’

  ‘I’m begging you to stop,’ Pinter pleaded.

  ‘Goodbye, Colonel.’

  ‘Zim, please —’

  ‘Urrah!’ the General shouted across the bridge.

  ‘Urrah!!’ his crew echoed back. Then he broke the transmission.

  With a smile Zim turned to his first officer. ‘Do we have it?’

  ‘Yes, sir. We will rendezvous with the transport tomorrow.’

  ‘Good. And what about observations?’

  ‘We have crawlers throughout the Cape.’

  ‘And they haven’t been detected?’

  ‘Their signal is so low they would have to be looking to find them. They don’t suspect a thing.’

  ‘What have you learnt?’

  ‘The psis were split between telepaths and kinetics, but now they seem to have united. The area is quickly building and modernising.’

  He presented the General with a series of still images showing the rapid construction that was taking place. Firm foundations now connected the two psi areas and buildings were under reconstruction following the new avenue between them.

  ‘In only two days they have created four apartment blocks and finished the road between them. We know there is more work going on beneath, but we haven’t been able to discover what they are doing.’

  ‘So now our enemy believes we are weak and that they are strong,’ Zim said to himself. ‘Very good. Set course.’

  PIERRE JNR IS TRUTH

  Nobody had contacted Charlotte since it happened. She was number two in the Primacy for five minutes before the world collapsed.

  Max ventured outside the apartment block and confirmed that all of Seaboard was similarly disconnected and that Services was trying to maintain some kind of order — which wasn’t aided, she thought, by the somewhat alarming emergency broadcast.

  Many people came to her door. All sorts of people, expecting her to have the answers. Most couldn’t believe she was in the same position as they. She could only recommend they follow Services instructions. Collect an emergency pack. Go home. Wait.

  She knew herself how hard that was to follow. Charlotte paced and drank tea, looked out the window and tried to ignore the humidity. Max was the only one with her. Amy hadn’t come in to work since the Weave went down and they hadn’t heard from her.

  For the most part, Charlotte and Max waited in their rooms and kept their thoughts to themselves. They were affectionate to each other in passing — a squeeze of a hand, a kiss on a cheek — but they only spoke when there was an event of some kind to remark on. And in this void of interaction many otherwise small things became events.

  Breakfast didn’t arrive on the first day and they ate the long-life foods in the small cupboard. Then lunch failed to be delivered and they ate the biscuits and other sugary gifts that had been sent to her from supporters.

  Max said out loud at one point, apropos of nothing, ‘The water still works, the energy is on and the toilet flushes.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m just saying.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said and returned to her own ruminations. What he
said stuck with her though. It seemed important.

  On the second morning, the rubbish Max had put out the night before was still on their doorstep, awaiting a servitor to collect it. He made her come and look down the corridor to see that it was the same for her neighbours.

  Later that day she found him packing clothes into holdalls and asked him what he was doing. ‘Just in case we have to go quickly,’ he answered.

  ‘Oh, Max,’ she had said and went to another room.

  He left the apartment at one point and returned with two large, square-edged backpacks. Together they spread the contents out on the large table. She mused on what scenario would need to unfold to force them to use the items.

  Every couple of hours one of them would turn on the radio and let the loop play through, listening for any change in the wording, then switch it back off.

  At one knock on the door, they greeted a group who invited her, and Max, to join them in a prayer vigil — waiting for Pierre Jnr to come and the age of the psis to begin. She politely declined, but accepted their printed literature to read later.

  ‘Well, they were odd,’ Max said.

  Charlotte didn’t comment. She turned the pieces of paper over in her hand and wondered if this was part of the world La Gréle was hoping to create.

  The next knock on the door was heavier and her instinctive alarm was quickly soothed at seeing an armoured ten squad filling the corridor.

  ‘Well, it’s about time,’ she said.

  It was night when she arrived in Den Haag. She was placed in a jet from Seaboard, then there was a short transfer by squib to the city centre. Evenly spaced omnipoles shed their pale blue light along the streets below.

  Charlotte Betts hurried through the standard security precautions of the Adjudicators Ministry: changing into the approved robes, her symbiot made passive, and patiently waiting while the internal scanners checked her body for implanted equipment.

  It was like moonlight as she passed through the silent circle and only a few crickets clicked time in the dark. The smell of the earth was rising in the colder air.

  The entrance to the sanctum beckoned her and she passed into the amber light of the waiting chamber. The door opened for her immediately.

  Inside the vault sat a young blond man in uniform, at ease in the front row of seats.

  ‘Thank you for coming so quickly,’ Pinter said, standing.

  ‘I am your servant, Prime.’

  ‘There’s no need for that, Charlotte. I want us to talk like people.’ Pinter indicated the seats. ‘Please.’

  Reluctantly, Charlotte sat and tried to calm herself. The room echoed every sound, even the rubbing of their clothing as they moved.

  ‘Why am I here?’ Charlotte asked.

  ‘I couldn’t risk any psis tapping your mind. I hope you understand.’

  ‘I understand,’ she said, but thought to herself: Where is Gretel? Is she close? Does Pinter know about Gretel?

  ‘Good,’ Pinter said. ‘I don’t want our allegiances to come between us.’

  ‘Our allegiances?’ she asked.

  ‘You champion the psis, and my role is to protect the World Union,’ he said simply.

  ‘You know I believe in peace. If this is a war council —’

  ‘No, Charlotte. Hear me out. You and I are in agreement.’

  ‘We are?’

  ‘Yes. We must have peace and we have to stop this conflict before it is completely out of control. Before it becomes all-out war.’

  ‘War is a failure of leadership.’

  ‘Well, you’re not in the back row any more, Charlotte. You’re one of those leaders and right now the psis are attacking Citizens across the globe.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘You will see for yourself. There are data packets ready for you. For now, you have to take my word for it.’

  Your word or Gretel’s? Who am I talking to here?

  ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘There are multiple violent uprisings of psi dissidents and I need you to go to Tamsin Grey and get the psis in Atlantic to help us stop it. They need to stop the spread of the relays and cease acts of aggression against the World Union.’

  ‘Prime — that isn’t fair. I didn’t get us into this position.’

  ‘Neither did I, Representative Betts. Neither did Ryu Shima, or anyone else you might care to blame.’

  ‘What do you expect me to do?’

  ‘I want you to talk to them. Reach a peace settlement.’

  ‘Me? Why me?’

  ‘Who else would they believe? For them to know we are serious we have to send someone who can speak for the World Union.’

  ‘And do I? You are Prime.’

  ‘Yes. But you are number two. And you have a record of pro-psi support. It has to be you. We have to stop the conflict. Only the psis can do that now.’

  ‘This is crazy.’

  ‘On that we agree. There is more you need to know. Until you can view the data, please just accept what I am telling you. Can you do that?’

  Charlotte nodded, although reluctantly.

  ‘Three days ago, in STOC Sector 261, we found a cloning lab breeding multiple copies of Pierre Jnr.’ Charlotte breathed in. No … ‘And this afternoon one of the psi islands was attacked. It seems General Zim has taken matters into his own hands.’

  ‘Oh. Why would he do that?’

  ‘He has determined the psis are our enemy. You and I both think differently on that matter.’

  ‘We do?’ she asked dumbly. Charlotte kept trying to understand if what the Prime said was influenced by Gretel or was rational. If Pierre Jnr is cloning himself … what? What does that mean?

  ‘Charlotte, peace might be impossible now. But we have to try everything before we give up.’

  ‘How can there not be peace? You are the Prime. If you wish peace with the psis, then that is the Will.’

  ‘Not exactly. The Prime merely represents the Will. And the Will that made me Prime did so to stop the psis taking control of the world. Now the situation is not so clear.’

  ‘Then shouldn’t we wait for the Weave to reconnect? In case the Will has changed?’

  ‘And if it has changed? How will we know it has done so freely? No, Representative. I wish there was another way, but you will have to go into the lion’s den.’

  ‘And do what?’

  ‘Ask them for help.’

  ‘Help? Help us?’

  ‘There is only one way to stop this war, Charlotte, and that is if someone can find a way to control the use of psionics. We need Tamsin Grey to agree to enforcement.’

  ‘Enforcement? You mean policing? Isn’t that what got us to this point in the first place?’

  ‘That’s why they have to do it. It has to come through them.’

  ‘Are you mad? How can they do that with Pierre Jnr clones running around out there?’

  ‘Just tell her the message and tell her who said it,’ Pinter said.

  I don’t even know who is saying it! She realised she was shouting in her head and took a breath to calm herself. ‘If we can’t reach an agreement, will you attack them?’

  ‘I don’t want to do that, but I will if I have to.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Now Pinter took his time. He sighed and slumped, casting his eyes around the stone room. ‘It is eerie to be talking about this again. Here.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘In the last wars, this was where a few of us came together to talk about how to stop the Örjians. These benches weren’t here, but everything else is still the same. Even me. In this same place, with an ally I don’t know well, facing the same realisation.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘That we are powerless. Powerless to stop what is already happening, but perhaps able to have an effect on what might happen next …’

  ‘But you won that war.’

  ‘Only by doing the inhuman.’

  C
harlotte had been doing her reading. She was only chapters away from the end of his three-volume memoir — the seeds of the Union were coming together, in a humble church built like a bunker. ‘Prime. I don’t know what you expect me to say. I don’t condone your acts of genocide, and I won’t be a part of any discussions of such a nature.’

  ‘Oh, put the manifesto away, Charlotte! Nobody is looking. Nobody will hear what you say in here. What would you have done? Don’t you understand? The war had to be stopped. The madness wasn’t ending.’

  ‘Millions died.’

  ‘Yes, millions. To save the rest of the world. They weren’t human, Charlotte.’

  ‘They had minds.’

  ‘It wasn’t war like it was before. There weren’t big enough sides to make it a war. There were just a thousand different groups, tens of thousands, fighting to get what they needed to survive. It’s almost impossible to imagine now. We think of Örj and his kind like monsters that came from nowhere. But they made perfect sense at the time. They were just acts of desperation.’

  ‘Prime, the psis aren’t like the Örjians.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Do you really think my meeting with them will achieve anything?’

  ‘“If you do not believe that history has any influence on the present, then you must also consider that our actions in the present will have no effect on the future.”’ Charlotte thought she had heard that quote before. ‘Of course, that idea is self-evidently ridiculous, if you accept the basic premise of causality. So, yes. What happens at that meeting will affect the course of the future.’

  ‘But … I don’t know how.’

  ‘This is your chance, Charlotte. Find a way. Find a balance. But there must be some sort of controls.’

  ‘Identification? Monitoring? That sort of thing?’ she asked.

  ‘If you can find an alternative, I would welcome it.’

  ‘And the Cape?’

  ‘I don’t care about the Cape. It can be theirs if they can provide some sort of guarantee that they aren’t controlling the Will,’ Pinter answered.

  Charlotte found the conversation very strange. She knew that Gretel, Pinter’s live-in, was La Gréle, who must be influencing the Prime, but to what extent she couldn’t be sure. Are these instructions in actuality a message from La Gréle to Tamsin Grey? And if so … should she agree to take it?