Neutronium Alchemist - Consolidation nd-3

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Oh, dear,” he said after he cancelled the visualization.

  “They match,” Dr Gilmore said. “Absolutely, the same event.”

  “Admittedly Laton was in a hurry and under a great deal of stress,” Lalwani said. “But if we understand him correctly, once that red cloud envelops a world completely, the possessed can take it right out of the universe.”

  “Not outside, exactly,” Dr Gilmore said. “If you can manipulate space-time to the extent they apparently can, then you should be able to format a favourable micro-continuum around a world. The surface simply won’t be accessible through ordinary space-time. A wormhole might reach them, if we knew the correct quantum signature for its terminus.”

  “The Laymil homeworld wasn’t destroyed,” Parker said slowly. “Of that we are sure. We speculated that it could have been moved, but naturally we considered only physical movement through this universe.”

  “Then the possessed Laymil must have worked this vanishing trick,” Lalwani said. “It really is possible.”

  “Dear God,” the First Admiral murmured. “As if it wasn’t enough trying to find a method of reversing possession, we now have to to consider how to bring back entire planets from some demented version of Heaven.”

  “And the Laymil in the spaceholms committed suicide rather than submit,” Lalwani said bleakly. “The parallel between the Ruin Ring and Pernik island is one I find most disturbing. The possessed confront us with a single choice; surrender or die. And if we do die, we enhance their own numbers. Yet Laton chose death; indeed he seemed almost happy at the prospect. Right at the end he told Oxley he would begin what he named the great journey, though he never elaborated. But the intimation that he would not suffer in the beyond was a strong one.”

  “Unfortunately it’s hardly something you can turn into a firm policy,” Mae Ortlieb observed. “Nor one to reassure people with even if you did.”

  “I am aware of that,” Lalwani told the woman coolly. “What this information can do is point us towards areas which should be investigated. From the result of those investigations, policies can then be formulated.”

  “Enough,” the First Admiral said. “We are here to try and decide which is the most fruitful line of scientific inquiry. Given we now have a basic understanding of the problem confronting us I’d like some suggestions. Dr Gilmore?”

  “We’re continuing to examine Jacqueline Couteur to try and determine the nature of the energy which the possessing soul utilizes. So far we’ve had very little success. Our instruments either cannot read it, or suffer glitches produced by it. Either way, we cannot define its nature.” He gave the First Admiral a timorous glance. “I’d like your permission to move on to reactive tests.”

  Parker couldn’t help the disapproving snort which escaped from his lips. Again reinforcing the persona of crusty old academic; but he deplored Gilmore’s wholehearted right-wing militarism.

  No one would think of it to look at him now, but Parker Higgens had done his stint for radicalism and its various causes during his student days. He wondered if that was on the file Lalwani must invariably keep on him, aging bytes in an obsolete program language detailing his protests over military development work carried out on the university campus. Had she accessed that before he’d been allowed in here, the heart of the greatest military force the human race had ever assembled? Perhaps she judged him safe these days. Perhaps she was even right in doing so. But people like Gilmore reopened all the old contemptuous thoughts. Reactive tests, indeed.

  “You have a problem with that, Mr Director?” Dr Gilmore asked with formal neutrality.

  Parker let his gaze wander around the office’s big holoscreens, watching the starships shoaling over Avon. Readying themselves for combat. For conflict. “I agree with the First Admiral,” he said sorrowfully. “We must attempt to locate a scientific solution.”

  “Which is only going to happen if my research can proceed unhindered. I know what you’re thinking, Mr Director, and I regret the fact that we’re dealing with a live human here. But unless you can offer me a valid alternative we must use her to add to our knowledge base.”

  “I am aware of the argument about relative levels of suffering, Doctor. I just find it depressing that after seven centuries of adhering to the scientific method we haven’t come up with a more humane principle. I find the prospect of experimenting on people to be abhorrent.”

  “You should review the file Lieutenant Hewlett made when his marine squad were sent on their capture mission to obtain Jacqueline Couteur. You’d see exactly who really practises abhorrent behaviour.”

  “Excellent argument. They do it to us, so we’re fully justified doing it to them. We are all people.”

  “I’m sorry,” the First Admiral interjected. “But we really don’t have time for the pair of you to discuss ethics and morality. The Confederation is now officially in a state of emergency, Mr Director. If that turns us into what you regard as savages in order to defend ourselves, then so be it. We did not initiate this crisis, we are simply reacting to it the only way I know how. And I am going to use you as much as Dr Gilmore will use the Couteur woman.”

  Parker straightened his spine, sitting up to stare at the First Admiral. Somehow arguing with him as he had with the navy scientist wasn’t even an option. Lalwani was right, he acknowledged sorely. Student politics didn’t stand much chance against his adult survival instinct. We are what our genes made us. “I don’t think I would be much use to your endeavour, Admiral. I’ve made my contribution.”

  “Not so.” He gestured to Mae Ortlieb.

  “The Laymil must have tried to prevent possession from engulfing their spaceholms before they committed suicide,” she said. “I believe that is what the essencemasters were on board the ship for.”

  “Yes, but it couldn’t have worked.”

  “No.” She gave him a heavily ironic smile. “So I’d like to use the scientific method, Mr Director: eliminate the impossible and all you’re left with is the possible. It would be a lot of help to us if we knew what won’t work against the possessed. A great deal of time would be saved. And lives, too, I expect.”

  “Well yes, but our knowledge is extremely limited.”

  “I believe there are still many files in the Laymil electronics stack which have not been reformatted to human sense compatibility?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then that would be a good start. If you could return to Tranquillity and ask Ione Saldana to initiate a priority search for us, please.”

  “That was in hand when I left.”

  “Excellent. My office and the navy science bureau here in Trafalgar can provide fresh teams of specialists to assist in the analysis process. They’d probably be better qualified in helping to recognize any weapons.”

  Parker gave her an exasperated look. “The Laymil didn’t work like that; weapons are not part of their culture. Their countermeasures would consist principally of psychological inhibitors distributed through the spaceholms’ life-harmony gestalt. They would attempt to reason with their opponents.”

  “And when that failed, they might just have been desperate enough to try something else. The Laymil possessed weren’t above using violence, we saw that in the recording. Their reality dysfunction was incinerating large portions of land.”

  Parker surrendered, even though he knew it was all wrong. These people could so easily believe in the concept of superweapons hidden amid the fractured debris of the Ruin Ring, a deus ex machina waiting to liberate the human race. The military mind! “Anything is possible,” he said. “But I’d like to go on record as saying that in this case I strongly doubt it.”

  “Of course,” the First Admiral said. “However, we do need to look, I’m sure you can appreciate that. May we send our specialists back with you?”

  “Certainly.” Parker didn’t like to think what Ione Saldana would say about that. Her one principal limitation on the project was the right to embargo weapons technology. But these people
had outmanoeuvred him with astonishing ease. An acute lesson in the difference between political manoeuvring practised on the Confederation capital and one of its most harmless outpost worldlets.

  Samual Aleksandrovich watched the old director knuckle under, even feeling a slight sympathy. He really didn’t like to invade the world of such a blatantly decent man of peace. The Parker Higgenses of this universe were what the Confederation existed to defend. “Thank you, Mr Director. I don’t want to appear an ungracious host, but if you could be ready to leave within a couple of hours, please. Our people are already being assembled.” He carefully avoided Higgens’s sharp glance at that comment. “They can travel on navy voidhawks, which should provide you a suitable escort back to Tranquillity. I really can’t run the risk of your mission being intercepted. You’re too valuable to us.”

  “Is that likely?” Parker asked in concern. “An interception, I mean?”

  “I would certainly hope not,” the First Admiral said. “But the overall situation is certainly less favourable than I’d hoped. We didn’t get our warnings out quite fast enough. Several returning voidhawks have reported that the possessed have gained an enclave on various worlds, and there are seven asteroid settlements we know of that have been taken over completely. Most worrying is a report from the Srinagar system that they have taken over the Valisk habitat, which means they have a fleet of blackhawks at their disposal. That gives them the potential to mount a substantial military operation to assist others of their kind.”

  “I see. I didn’t realize the possessed had advanced so far. The Mortonridge recording is a distressing one.”

  “Precisely. So you can appreciate our hurry in acquiring what information we can from the Laymil recordings.”

  “I . . . I do yes.”

  “Don’t worry, Mr Director,” Lalwani said. “Our advantage at the moment is that the possessed are all small individual groups, they lack coordination. It is only if they become organized on a multistellar level that we will be in real trouble. The Assembly’s prohibition on commercial starflight should give us a few weeks grace. It will be difficult for them to spread themselves by stealth. Any interstellar movements they make from now on will have to be large scale, which gives us the ability to track them.”

  “That is where the navy will face its greatest challenge,” the First Admiral said. “Also our greatest defeat. In space warfare there is no such thing as a draw, you either win or you die. We will be shooting at complete innocents.”

  “I doubt it will come to that,” Mae Ortlieb said. “As you said, they are a disorganized rabble. We control interstellar communications, it should be enough to prevent them merging to form a genuine threat.”

  “Except . . .” Parker said, he caught himself, then gave a penitent sigh. “Some of our greatest generals and military leaders must be waiting in the beyond. They will understand just as much about tactics as we do. They’ll know what they have to do in order to succeed.”

  “We’ll be ready for them,” the First Admiral said. He tried not to show any disquiet at Parker’s suggestion. Would I really be able to compete against an alliance between Napoleon and Richard Saldana?

  • • •

  Dariat walked up the last flight of stairs into the foyer of the Sushe starscraper. None of the possessed used the lifts anymore—too dangerous, with Rubra still controlling the power circuits (and as for taking a tube carriage . . . forget it). The once-stylish circular foyer echoed a war zone, its glass walls cracked and tarnished with soot, furniture mashed and flung about, dripping with water and grubby grey foam from the ceiling fire sprinklers. Black soil from broken pot plants squelched messily underfoot.

  He refused to say it to the others picking their way through the wreckage: If you’d just listened to me. They’d heard it from him so many times they didn’t listen; besides, they followed Kiera slavishly now. He had to admit the council she’d put together was effective at maintaining control within the habitat. And precious little else. He found it a telling point that the possessed hadn’t bothered using their energistic power to return the lobby to its original state; it wasn’t as if they had to go around with a brush and sponge. Rubra’s continuing presence and war-of-nerves campaign was taking its toll on morale.

  He stepped through the twisted doors out onto the flagstones ringing the lobby building. The surrounding parkland had, at least, retained its bucolic appearance. Emerald grass, unblemished by a single weed, extended out to the rank of sagging ancient trees two hundred metres away, crisscrossed by hard-packed gravel paths leading off deeper into the habitat interior. Dense hemispherical bushes with dark violet leaves and tiny silver flowers were scattered about. Small reptilian birds that were little more than triangular wings of muscle, with scales coloured turquoise and amber, swooped playfully through the air overhead.

  The corpse spoilt the idyll; lying with its legs across one of the gravel paths, one ankle twisted at an awkward angle. There was no way of telling if it was male or female. Its head looked as if it had been shoved into a starship’s fusion exhaust jet.

  The remains of the perpetrators, a pair of servitor housechimps, were smouldering on the grass twenty metres away. One of them held a melted wand which Dariat recognized as a shockrod. A lot of the possessed had been caught unawares by the harmless-looking servitors. After a couple of days of unexpected, and unpredictable, attacks, most people simply exterminated them on sight now.

  He walked past, wrinkling his nose at the smell. When he reached the trees he saw one of the triangular birds had alighted on the topmost branch. They eyed each other warily. It was a xenoc, so he was reasonably sure it wasn’t affinity-bonded. But with Rubra, you could never be certain. Now Dariat thought about it, the servitors would be an excellent way of keeping everyone under observation, circumventing the disruption he’d been inflicting on the neural strata’s subroutines. He scowled up at the bird, which rippled its wings but didn’t take off.

  Dariat moved swiftly through the woods to a large glade which Kiera was using. Impressively tall trees with grey-green leaves formed a valley on either side of a wide stream, their black trunks host to a furry moss-analogue. Long grass fringed the water, littered with wild poppies.

  Two groups of people were occupying the glade. One was comprised entirely of youngsters, couples in their late teens and early twenties; boys all with bare chests, wearing shorts or swimming trunks; girls in light summer dresses or bikinis, emphasising their femininity. Both genders had been chosen for their beauty. Four or five children milled about looking completely bored; girls in party frocks and ribbons in their hair, boys in shorts and smart shirts. Two of the under sevens were smoking.

  At the other end of the glade four people in ordinary clothes stood in a group, talking in loud strained voices. Arms waved around as fingers jabbed for emphasis. Various electronic modules were scattered on the grass around their feet, the paraphernalia of a professional MF recording operation.

  Dariat saw Kiera Salter was standing among the recording team, and went over. She was wearing a white cotton camisole with tiny pearl buttons down the front, the top half undone to display her cleavage; and a thin white skirt showing tanned legs and bare feet. With her hair unbound over her shoulders the effect was awesomely sexy. It lasted right up until she turned her gaze on him. Marie Skibbow’s body might be a male fantasy made flesh, but the maleficent intelligence now residing in her skull was instantly chilling.

  “I hear you’re losing it, Dariat,” she said curtly. “I’ve been patient with you so far, because you’ve been very useful to us. But if there’s another incident like the one in the service tunnel, then I shall consider that usefulness at an end.”

  “If you don’t have me here to counter Rubra, then it’s going to be you who’ll wind up losing your temper. He’ll blast every possessed back into the beyond if you let your guard down for a second. He doesn’t care about the people whose bodies we’ve stolen.”

  “You are becoming a bore, Dariat.
And from what I hear that wasn’t a temper loss, more like a psychotic episode. You’re a paranoid schizophrenic, and people find that unsettling. Now concentrate on how to flush Rubra out of the neural strata by all means, but stop trying to spread dissension or it’s going to go hard on you. Clear?”

  “As crystal.”

  “Good. I do appreciate what you’re trying to do, Dariat. You’re just going to have to learn a softer approach, that’s all.” She gave him a factory-issue sympathetic smile.

  Dariat saw one of the xenoc triangle birds perched on a tree behind her, watching the scene in the glade. The smirk which rose on his real lips was hidden by the energistic mirage-form he cloaked himself with. “I expect you’re right. I’ll try.”

  “Good man. Look, I don’t want to be forced out of Valisk by him any more than you do. We’re both onto a good thing here, and we can both maintain our status providing we just keep calm. If this recording works we should have recruits flocking to join us. That way we can shift Valisk to a place where Rubra’s neutered. Permanently. Just keep him from causing too much trouble before then, and leave the rest to me, okay?”

  “Yeah, all right. I understand.”

  She nodded dismissal, then took a steadying breath and turned back to the recording team. “Are you ready yet?”

  Khaled Jaros glared at the recalcitrant sensor block in his hand. “I think so, yes. I’m sure it will work this time. Ramon has reprogrammed it so that only the primary functions are left; we won’t be able to get olfactory or thermal inputs, but the AV reception appears to be holding stable. With a bit of luck we can add some emotional activant patterns later.”

  “All right, we’ll try again,” she said loudly.

  Under Khaled’s directions the group of sybarite youths took up their positions once more. One couple started necking on the grass, another pair sported in the water. The little children stubbed their cigarettes out, then ran around in dizzy circles, giggling and shrieking. “Not so loud!” Khaled bellowed at them.