Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

by Neal Asher

  The polished aluminium spikes specially commissioned for this site were erected on hinged brackets attached to a concrete dais – the medical monitoring equipment inside them constantly checked until the arrival of those who would require monitoring. The nine had been well fed, all their medical needs had been attended too, and they were probably the healthiest they had ever been throughout their miserable lives. As the doctors attached further monitoring devices, injected them and attached fluid and plasma feeds, they remained subdued and compliant. But when they finally saw the nine spikes tilted over on their hinges, ready to receive them, their reaction was not unexpected.

  With a hard-faced expression, Serene watched the whole process through to its completion, watched the spikes raised with the nine writhing and screaming in inescapable agony, silhouetted horrifically against a dull iron sky. It soon began to snow, big flat flakes of it tumbling down. She cut the sound of screaming when, after the ETV compère of the show had finished his narrative, her own lecture began.

  I did not enjoy that, she told herself, but it was necessary.

  She flicked to other cam images and now watched the dozers at work some kilometres from the scene, pushing over buildings and exposing long-hidden earth. Here was something really necessary that she enjoyed so much more. Elsewhere on Earth the scene was being repeated now that surviving populations were being moved to population centres. Whole swathes of sprawl were being cleared. New rock-grinding machines were turning concrete and carbocrete to sand and the contents of now-redundant digesters were being spread. Satellite pictures showed a steadily climbing percentage of greenery all across the five continents, and further massive algae blooms had appeared in the oceans.

  She had done so much but was aware that her achievements were fragile. With the new resources that had become available after the Scour – the plentiful food and energy – Earth’s population was again rising. Even after the hard lessons of the last century, it seemed that people refused to learn. This was why Serene now returned her attention to the work she had paused while watching the execution of sentence on the nine.

  The Safe Departure clinics needed to be reopened, for clearly she had been premature in her closure of them. However, new rules needed to be enforced. In the past, safe departure had been a voluntary exercise, though there had been a great deal of social and state pressure on those whose working life had ended to take that route. It must now be made compulsory. She would not be so foolish as to set some arbitrary limit as, generally, with modern medical technology, the working life of a citizen could be extended into a second century. It would all have to be based on a finer status system than the old ZA/SA system. This would grade how useful a person was to the state, and in that respect it would encourage people to try to become as useful as possible. The non-productive could no longer be tolerated. She would set up a focus group to look into the details.

  Then there was the birth rate. During the last twenty years the Committee had brought in the one-child-per-couple rule in an attempt to reduce the population, but many had flouted it, especially those who worked for the state. This could no longer be tolerated. Previously, those who had more than one child were demoted to ZA status, sterilized and had their children taken into care. But this was not sufficiently harsh to overcome the human breeding instinct. The one-child rule would remain in force until the human population sank below her ideal target of five billion. Compulsory sterilization would be introduced for parents who already had one child. Anyone who found a way round this, no matter their status, would face summary execution, with no exception. Also any extra children they had produced would be disposed of, too.

  Was this enough?

  Serene sat back with her hands folded behind her head and gazed at the screen. She felt a tightness in her stomach, a frustration and impatience. Surely there were more measures she could take? Surely there must be some way to bring the population quickly down to a properly sustainable level? She could use the Scour again, of course, but recently she had learned that its reoccurrence tended to undermine her authority; tended to leave populations with the impression that she wasn’t quite in control. Then, again, did anyone have to know?

  Madagascar.

  For a moment she wasn’t quite sure why the name of that island popped into her head, but then remembered a report she had seen, a few weeks back, of lemurs being spotted there. Now she immediately began to think about bones scattered around a campfire . . .

  Nature reserves . . .

  Yes. Serene began her research, soon finding that, apart from fish farms and palm-oil plantations, the island produced very little that was of value. Since the Scour the population had dropped to thirty million and some jungle was re-establishing itself in sprawl clearances. How difficult would it be to shut this entire island nation out of worldwide communication? The answer was quite simple: the same safety protocols that shut down Govnet during Alan Saul’s attack on Earth were still in place, and they could be applied regionally. Any communications outside of Govnet could be safely ignored, since there were no longer any free media organizations to pick them up.

  Even as she considered how this could be done, Serene set the process in motion. She also began issuing orders to all shipping and all air transport in the area, diverting away any of those that were heading towards the island.

  What else?

  Expert programs were available to her and she used them. She closed out the island, isolated it, made it remote from the world. Of course, administration staff on the island would have access to their own means of transport, but it was a small matter to relay the coordinates of each of the one hundred and three airports, rotobus ports and private airfields to East Africa Region Tactical Excision, to specify chemical explosive warheads rather than atomic ones, and a smaller matter still to palm in her approval and allow her retina to be read.

  It was happening. It was happening now.

  She felt like a god.

  Light touches on a few more controls selected a list of all the ID implant numbers on that island, whereupon she added the code to initiate the Scour. Her finger hovered over send, then stabbed down.

  Done.

  Serene realized she was sweating and full of mad excitement. She tried to call up cam images from the island, but found that wasn’t possible while Govnet was shut down. She felt foolish, searched for other images and got them by satellite. No missile hits yet, but they were certainly on their way. But satellite images meant that others would be able to see what was happening there. Was there some way she could shut that down?

  Ridiculous. I am not a naughty schoolgirl.

  What did it matter who found out what? She was the absolute ruler of Earth and there was no one who was out of her reach . . . no one on Earth. She was what dictators of the past could only dream about being.

  The excitement began to wane, like the effects of a drug, leaving her empty and drained. In about a century from now, when all was done, when the buildings were all down and their ruins ground to sand and the corpses rotted away, she would have created Earth’s first nature reserve. It just needed more wildlife to occupy it and so, inevitably, Serene’s thoughts turned outwards. Soon enough the Scourge would reach Argus Station, and she would see the results of that venture. Meanwhile? She returned to watching the nine criminals writhing and groaning on their polished aluminium spikes. She didn’t really enjoy the show, but felt it her duty to witness it.

  Scourge

  The interruption from Alan Saul had made no difference. Scotonis still wanted to go ahead with the removal of his collar, and now they were back in Clay’s cabin.

  ‘There’s a ten per cent chance of failure and a five per cent chance of the collar activating,’ warned Clay.

  ‘Just do it,’ Scotonis replied.

  Clay pressed the EM radiation pulse device against the captain’s collar motor and fired it off. A crackling sound ensued, along with a brief flash, and Scotonis yelled and threw him back, pulling the smoking coll
ar motor away from his neck. He hit the wall and slid down it, his body shuddering. After a moment the shuddering stopped, and Scotonis let out a sharp breath.

  ‘Battery,’ he said. ‘It discharged into my neck.’

  ‘That didn’t happen with mine,’ Clay said, suddenly feeling very worried. Maybe this was what should happen when a collar was properly and permanently disabled, therefore maybe his own hadn’t been? He set the EM radiation device to charging again, but the red LED was blinking, indicating that its battery didn’t hold enough energy to charge up the capacitor. No problem, he walked round to a multipurpose induction charger sitting on a shelf by his bed, and inserted it. When he turned round from doing that, Scotonis was on his feet again.

  ‘So who next?’ Clay asked.

  ‘Cookson and Trove,’ Scotonis replied, watching him carefully.

  ‘I hope Trove will not continue to resent me,’ said Clay. ‘I felt I had to behave perfectly in keeping with my role until now.’

  ‘So what’s changed now?’

  ‘The communications delay,’ Clay replied. ‘Galahad has almost a sixth sense for liars, but she’s becoming impatient with the com delay so she’s talking to me less, and with that delay she’s finding it more difficult to read me.’

  Scotonis acknowledged that explanation with a brief nod, then asked, ‘What about the ID implants?’

  Clay opened the desk drawer and took out the device he had used to remove his own implant. ‘I’m told these were made to turn a profit, so aren’t made to last and can take out only about ten implants before they fail. I think the next person on your list should be your crew medic, Dr Myers.’ He handed the device over.

  Scotonis took the thing warily, glanced at his own forearm, then returned his gaze to Clay. ‘Then what?’

  ‘We could have done nothing – kept our collars and our implants and hoped for success. But you agreed that it wasn’t worth risking.’

  ‘No,’ Scotonis shook his head, ‘I wanted to be free of Galahad – simple as that.’

  Clay paused for a moment, tried to order his thoughts. ‘We’re not transmitting the Gene Bank data back to Earth,’ he said. ‘And we will attack Argus to grab the physical samples, prisoners if we can, and the station. These will be our bargaining chips. Maybe we can then—’

  ‘You haven’t thought this out at all,’ said the Captain. ‘You only looked as far as ensuring your own survival.’

  Clay tried to keep his expression calm, but in truth Scotonis was absolutely right. Clay had removed the immediate threats to his own life – the collar and his implant – then moved on to the next threat, which was Galahad discovering that he had done so; then to the further danger to himself, which was that he could not survive out here alone.

  ‘This is not an easy situation,’ he said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what bargains we strike with Galahad,’ said Scotonis. ‘If we fail and she finds out we’ve disabled our collars and removed our implants, she’ll still kill us once we set foot on Earth. So, unless you’ve already planned to spend the rest of your existence aboard this spaceship, we need another option.’

  ‘You have a suggestion?’

  ‘I do,’ he said. ‘We carry on through with our mission, and what we then do depends on whether or not we succeed. We have the capability aboard this ship to rig up some way of storing ID implants so they don’t deactivate. We should even be able to find a way of removing those biochips from them. If we succeed in taking Argus Station, we’ll head on to our next objective: Mars. As we head back to Earth, we can put our implants back.’

  ‘And if we don’t succeed?’

  ‘Galahad will quickly learn what we’ve done, so we still head back to Earth. Almost certainly she’ll be in the process of upgrading orbital defences right now – they’d started on them before we left – so we buy ourselves safe passage into orbit with the Gene Bank data we already have aboard. Once we get there, we make Earth safe for us.’

  ‘How?’

  Scotonis shrugged. ‘You know what armaments we have aboard. It’ll just be a case of locating her. Even if she goes to ground in one of the deep Committee bunkers, a number of nuclear strikes should cut her off from the rest of Earth and seal her inside it.’

  ‘I see,’ said Clay. And he did. He saw that, by telling Scotonis the truth about what had happened on Earth, he had set events in motion he could no longer control. He saw that, even if they did succeed out here and take Argus Station, retrieve the Gene Bank samples and capture the rebels, Scotonis still aimed to carry through his proposal in the event of failure. No matter what the outcome, Scotonis intended to kill Chairman Serene Galahad.

  Searching his conscience, Clay could see no reason why this might present a problem for himself.

  Argus

  The proctor awaited Saul in the docking pillar, some distance away from the cylinder airlock leading into the Imperator. As he stepped out on the walkway beside the dock railway, Saul probed this proctor in the virtual world, but found some barrier in his way. It wasn’t something that could bar him – he could break through it in an instant, for it was more like a curtain put up for privacy, which relied on the good manners of anyone approaching it. Saul decided then to respect it, focusing his attention elsewhere.

  The robots had finished cutting away and grinding down the welds on the docking clamps holding the Imperator in place, and began obediently trooping away to rejoin the bulk of the station robots which were now hard at work on completing the station weapons. Other robots were also routing optic controls from those same weapons to Tech Central, while yet others were completing the alterations to the station’s EM radiation shield projector.

  At the moment this last task entailed adding separate linkages to each section all around the station rim, and further controls in the transformer room so the shield would possess more states than just ‘on’ and ‘off’. When they had finished, the shield strength would be variable as a whole and also in sections; its frequency could then be changed, as could its shape – all to interact with the ‘tensioning’ of space-time caused by the vortex ring, and further interact with eddy currents within it. It should be possible then to set the course of the station, though some calibration would be required.

  Now focusing through cams set inside the Imperator, Saul saw that the crew consisted of the six EVA workers he had requested and also the pilot – which role Langstrom had assumed. At present they were going through some unnecessary system checks or stowing away the gear Saul had instructed them to bring along. After ensuring that everything inside the craft was as he wanted, he propelled himself down towards where the proctor still stood on that docking face. He landed perfectly in front of it, but he still felt annoyed at the weakness of his muscles.

  The proctor Paul was clad in a survival suit, with extra material added to encompass the humanoid’s huge frame. Saul focused on its face, behind the mask, studying it intently with his new depth of vision, enough even to pick out the excretory pores and optics in its skin. But still there was nothing human there for him to read.

  ‘So why the suit?’ Saul asked, addressing the humanoid directly by radio.

  ‘It offers me protection against hard vacuum, of course,’ Paul replied.

  ‘Which you don’t need.’

  ‘It is more comfortable, and on my body’s stocks of oxygen I would not be able to survive in vacuum for longer than a few days.’

  ‘And by wearing it you demonstrate a vulnerability you do not actually have, and thus appear less threatening to the humans aboard this station.’

  ‘Very true.’

  ‘So what is there for us to discuss?’ Saul asked.

  ‘We are agreed,’ said Paul. ‘You allowed us to emerge into existence but we feel this is no more than the debt any human owes to its parents, which means none at all, because in either case there was no altruism involved. However, our position aboard this station is essentially the same as that of the humans here: we serve you in order to survive.
But, in the end, we feel more comfortable in supposing that we have a debt to pay.’

  ‘There are ten of you,’ said Saul. ‘If you so wished, you could kill me, take control of this station and do precisely what you wish with it.’

  ‘This is true.’

  ‘Why not, then?’

  ‘Such an act would be immoral. Also the future bears down on us with the weight of its ages. You are a being in transition, hardly out of your chrysalis, and you are a key opening probabilities and possibilities that extend into the future. We will serve you.’

  ‘Cannot every being open the same? Cannot you and your fellows do so?’

  ‘It is not the same – as Judd has seen.’

  ‘So the vortex generator will work.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Judd, working close to it, is already peering through the wounds in causality.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But there is no such thing as destiny or fate?’

  ‘Only probability.’

  ‘How long?’ Saul asked.

  ‘We will serve you either until you die, which could be at any moment from now on, or in ten thousand years.’

  Even in his enhanced state, and understanding so much beyond this quite opaque exchange of words, Saul felt appalled.

  ‘One of the penalties of power,’ he remarked, turning away.

  Paul’s next words ghosted after him: ‘But only if you have a conscience.’

  Alex devoured the tomato, relishing every bite, carefully ensuring that not one drop of its juice escaped him. Next he began eating a handful of beans. He would have liked to see them grow bigger but had been unable to resist the temptation, having already picked them before it even occurred to him to leave them till later. It was worrying how slow his thought processes seemed to have become. It was a fact that sometimes three or four days passed without him remembering much about them. And when he did surface out of his fugue to consider his position, to remember that Messina lay beyond his reach, and that in any case affecting events unfolding beyond this hydroponics unit was impossible for him, the sudden guilt he felt made him once again close down his own thinking.