Total time spent in Jackeltown: nine days. Information traded: molecular design for improved monomagnetic field generators, molecular design for improved anti-cancer nanites, molecular design for improved photon conductivity in fibre-optic cable, upgraded general analytic AI routines, and one small phial of alien biochemical toxin that Consensus had no cure for. Number of collective board members slept with for trade advantage: five (two so weirdly body-adapted, she was really glad she was avatar-riding). Number of memory collars exchanged in trades: fifty-eight. Number of memory collars received back: thirty-one (out of sixty-two issued on the last visit—their host families hadn’t survived). One of the collars was from the LDR lineage; Zaro was the fourth member to wear the collar.
* * *
As soon as he stepped out of the lift, Zaro sent a legion of receptor drones to scout the corridors ahead. The airborne semi-bio bugs were flea-sized, equipped with multi-spectrum sensors; individually, they were almost insensate, unable to comprehend their environment, unresponsive to his commands. But together, the legion’s conjoined processor cells boosted their ability almost up to semisentient class. Dozens of them flittered silently along the rock floor and cautiously swept the bundles of cables pinned to the curving wall. Overhead amid the roof’s sculptured curves, they slithered up and down the ridges where the mining machines had cut their way through the original lava tube uncounted millennia before.
Colourful data swarmed through his optical inserts. Neat columns of numbers and symbols, flowing at the upper end of human comprehension. In Zaro’s case, he’d dosed up on respanix twenty minutes earlier when he left the Methradx dome, pushing his neurones to their biochemical limit. His hyped-up heart made the blood buzz through arteries, he was sure he could feel his brain heating up from the speed it was now working at. Analysis of the legion’s data showed him clear corridors all around. He hurried forward, a movement akin to skittering, courtesy of his biocyber modifications. Right after his fifteenth birthday, his family paid for an arachlimb body-adapt; baseline ankles were replaced with a second knee joint, and a second shin grafted on below them ending in a cybernetic foot augment. Arms also had two sets of elbows each—
—Amahle grimaced in her comfortable chair. She always had trouble with cybernetically enhanced bodies, the unnatural nerve impulses from the bizarre extensions were hard for her neural structure to interpret—
—so now Zaro possessed perfect mobility in the moon’s 40 per cent standard-gravity field, especially down in the rat-hive of tunnels and shafts that riddled the solitary mountain. Feet on the floor, hands on the ceiling, toes and fingers gripped the tiniest ridges, allowing him to move with ease, the drone legion barely managing to keep ahead of him.
The further he went, the more people he encountered; adepts like him and very unlike him, others who initially looked baseline—except when they came under scrutiny from the legion’s sensors. Cyhumans in their life-support spheres. Everyone busy, busy . . . But then, the mines below Jackeltown were vital to its survival. The shafts provided access to the minerals necessary for the domes to flourish. Even now, after thousands of years of extraction, the strata were still thick and rich.
It took Zaro over an hour, but eventually he arrived at Break House, a big natural cavern the tunnelling machines had reached eight hundred years ago. These days, it was the centre of the district’s life support systems, along with operations control, power station, maintenance shop, warehouse, hotels, bars, an arena, a couple of brothels, the clinic, commodities exchange, and several food marts. Lurking under the advertised commerce were suppliers of other goods, those that if you had to ask, your life expectancy shrank drastically. He made his way to the Nikoy bar, a cylindrical chamber made up of seven levels curving round a central fungus-jungle shaft bathed in violet light. The lower level, darker, noisier, and cheaper, was the one he’d been told to go to. As he arrived, he bumped some metü to amplify his muscle strength if a situation developed where the direct application of brute force would be needed. Somehow, its reaction with his biochemistry made his tongue go numb. His legion drones dispersed through the bar, tussling for position and bandwidth against a multitude of other legions and swarms and flocks and herds, comprising drones of varying sizes and ability. Down there, among the deals and the treachery, everyone was rightly paranoid.
He sat in a booth with the e-privacy screen open, waiting for the contact to make themselves known. A waitress with a marsupial pouch to keep bottles cold brought over a beer. Not her. Over on the stage, this hour’s act took to the floor. A singer with an unwieldy string instrument that needed three of her four hands to produce a decent sound. Zaro thought she was kind of cute, with an extended neck flexing in time to the music. Her sinuous throat obviously contained adapted vocal cords, because she was singing both bass and soprano for a seriously heavy rock track. Her act was novel, Zaro decided, but not necessarily good.
The legion warned him a man was approaching the booth at an angle that put him out of direct line of sight/shot. A professional approach. The feed made him antsy. This was where it could all get physically unpleasant. The contact was supposed to be from a rival collective, selling geophysical mining data in exchange for entry into the Methradx collective. But it could be false flag, or double switch, or long-con infiltration, or even a counter recruitment aimed at Zaro himself. It was his job to try to find out before the shit hit the aircon.
The man wore black trunks and black sprinter shoes, showing off a baseline physique maybe ten per cent larger than a pureblood human. He was in his twenties, handsome, with steroid toning, and thick golden hair growing from his scalp and spine, groomed to a silky plume. But his eyes were the alterations that really caught Zaro’s attention: perfect silver globes. Not even the drone legion scans could determine if they were bio or cytech.
“Hi,” Zaro said, as the metü kindled a hot zinging along his blood vessels. Legion scan data was still coming up blanks. So, either the man was weaponless, or his tech was amazingly sophisticated. The only blemish on his dark-olive skin was a tattoo, reading: 10-10-21-59
“Hi yourself.” Public dataflash provided an identity: Garvo DX. Which seemed to amuse him. “But you can call me Carloman. Pleased to meet you. Zaro, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re LDR family, currently under the umbrella of Methradx?” Carloman sat down opposite.
Zaro’s face tightened in suspicion. “Yes.”
“The collar’s the giveaway, in case you were wondering.”
“Okay.” By sheer force of will, he stopped his hand going to the memory collar. The adornment was the LDR family’s greatest honour, bestowing a prestige not dissimilar to a collective’s executive class. When the Light Chaser returned to Consensus, she would give preferential trading terms to the collar wearers. Zaro switched on the booth’s e-privacy shield, and then because he wasn’t so naive to think the bar’s management couldn’t access it, he activated his own blocker.
“Sorry.” Carloman grinned with an amusement verging on mockery. “I’m not your contact.”
“What?”
“But I do want to talk to you.”
“What?”
“We’ve probably got a few minutes until your actual contact shows up. So, what have you got to lose? You might even learn something.”
“Learn what?” Zaro started to think Carloman’s nonsense talk was a delay tactic while a bigger operation clicked into place subverting his goal. But the legion couldn’t detect anything unusual in the bar. Yet.
“Your vocabulary is kinda limited, isn’t it?” Carloman said.
“What?”
“Okay. One conversation. I’ll pay for your time.” Somehow, those tight trunks hid a pocket. A two-centimetre cube of pure platinum was produced and placed on the table next to Zaro’s beer.
“What the hell is this?” Zaro tried to guess if Carloman was some kind of hooker. If so, his pickup technique was the strangest. “Look, friend, I don’t know what you want,
but I’m not buying.”
“You think you’re not. But that’s a matter of perception.”
“Wha . . . Seriously, I’m waiting for someone.”
“I know. But that’s reality for you: perception. You perceive you’re waiting for someone. In this reality, I’m a stranger telling you a story. In another, I could be the contact or an assassin or a pusher, or maybe you’re the defector and I’m the contact.”
“That’s what you’re trying to tell me, you’re from an alternate universe? Were we friends there?”
“Appreciate your good humour. But no, there is no alternative universe, there is only this one. But how we perceive it, well, that’s the problem. Turns out reality isn’t as stable as you think. And by think, I mean hope.”
Zaro was starting to slide round to the possibility that Carloman was nothing more than someone tripping a little too high. Ordinarily, that would be interesting, fun, even, but not here and now. And not with the e-shield closed and the contact unable to see him. “I don’t have a problem with how I perceive things. Except maybe you. I’d like you to vanish from my perception altogether. Okay?”
“What do you think reality is for?”
“Wh . . . Excuse me?”
“Why are we here? Why does the universe exist?”
“I am not joining your religion.”
“We live for the experience life gives us. It enriches our soul, allowing us to grow and mature every time we reincarnate.”
“Reincarnate? Oh, come on—”
“Reincarnate,” Carloman said compellingly. “That, Zaro, is the purpose of this universe, to give our life a home. Which, as a wise man once said, is not only queerer than we suppose but queerer than we can suppose; and also: that it is immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter.”
Zaro wanted to tell Carloman to piss off, like Right Now, but he was trapped by being unable to cause a scene, something that would scare off the real contact. “If reality is all about perception, then why am I perceiving you? I don’t want to.”
“Because there are rules. They can’t be broken, but they can be played. I want you to remember that. And you know who I mean by you.”
“Sure. No problem.”
“Good. Because we’re being played. All of us. Right now. This reality, our reality, is not the original reality we encountered when our souls first emerged into it from our holm beyond. The physical universe remains a constant, of course. But our perception of it has been manipulated, our destiny has been taken from us. And we don’t know it.”
“You seem to know.”
“Yes.” Carloman stared at him with those unnatural silver orbs, a stare that cut right into Zaro—almost as if he were studying something lurking within. Judging. “Some of us do. And you can be one of them, if you can just remember. Or, at least, trust me.”
“Me?”
Carloman smiled enigmatically. “You know I’m talking to you. Again . . .”
“So, we’re all being manipulated?”
“Yes. I don’t know who they are. Call them The Exalted, if you like, because they have some kind of advantage over us. They found us somehow, found the time we exist in this universe, and they’re using their knowledge to block us.”
“Block us? From what?”
“From growing. They’re stunting our spiritual growth by manipulating the timeline to make sure it never deviates from this abomination of reality.”
“You’re crazy. The Domain is the pinnacle of our species. We’re interstellar! We live on so many planets, we don’t even know the true number. That makes our species practically immortal. We’re immune to Armageddon.”
“Yes. But only in this form. Every world”—again the forceful stare—“you fly to on your everlasting circuit is static. They don’t change. Every. Single. World. There is no progress anymore, not on any level: social, technological . . . Why?”
“That is bullshit. Look around you, we’re so far ahead of the medieval worlds, they’d think we’re gods if they ever came here.”
“Yeah. So, why hasn’t Jackeltown ever expanded? There are a dozen other moons orbiting Bacobia alone. Then there are three solid worlds in this star system. Why haven’t we terraformed them?”
“None of them are suitable.”
“Wrong. They are all suitable. They’re just difficult.”
“There! You said it. Terraforming is too difficult. We can’t afford it.”
“Yes, because somehow Jackeltown society is locked into this specific economic structure. Consensus never changes, no matter which collective is on the up. If one collective ever gets too big, big enough, say, to start investing in a project like terraforming another planet, the others become so worried about its power, they ally to bring it down.”
Zaro gave a bitter laugh. “The way of the world, pal.”
“The way of every world. Every inhabited planet in The Domain has a society designed for one thing: stability. Ask yourself, Why? Who does that benefit?”
“We had unstable societies back on pre-starflight Earth. All it brought was misery and wars. You want to go back to that era?”
“No. I want to advance past this one. I want us to grow again. The human spirit is capable of such wonder if only it is free to soar.”
“So, that’s it, you’re an anarchist?”
“No. I’m a liberator. I want to destroy The Exalted. It’s the only way to be sure.”
“You want a war? You’re not an anarchist, you’re worse: you’re a recidivist. We’ve left all that behind.”
“Tell that to the billion people a year who die needlessly on the medieval worlds, drowning in pain and shit. Their lives here have become pointless. I’m going to save them. With your help.”
“Me!”
“Amahle.”
“Oh, fuck, you think you’re talking to her.”
“You think I’m not?”
“You’re crazy.”
“Agreed: from your perception. And that’s what we need to change. Amahle, I swear to you we’ve met before, not just in previous incarnations among other realities but in this one, too. And we’re going to meet again, because that’s our destiny. You just have to remember me. I know it’s difficult, but I know you can do that. It’s part of your gift from the holm, like mine. Just . . . wake up. And find me.”
“What?” Zaro dropped out of his tolerance zone and started to worry. This maniac was effortlessly taking up too much time, endangering his actual meeting. He wondered if he should just use a weapons implant and blow Carloman straight to hell.
But Carloman’s grin was insultingly superior, as if he could divine those very thoughts. “Sorry, nothing personal. I’m being preachy for her, not you. Sweetheart, you have to remember me, that’s the way to remembering what you are, the gift we share. It’ll set you free. It’ll set everybody free.”
Zaro put on his tough-guy face. “Leave. Now. First and only warning.”
“Sure thing.”
And the weirdo was gone, shimmering through the screens and blockers, leaving Zaro to stare at the empty booth in bewilderment. It had to be some kind of play by another collective, they wanted to mess with his head. “No, you fucking don’t,” he grunted. He bumped another respanix, and to fuck with the dosage consequences. His mind locked into perfect focus. And in reward, that was the moment his contact arrived. The true game began. This shit was what he lived for.
* * *
Amahle removed the collar, her thoughts in a daze. What she’d just experienced wasn’t possible. The same person on a different world, centuries and light years from the other collar memory of him? Not physically the same, this Carloman was nothing like the boy child on Winterspite. Only the name was the same.
And the attitude. The charisma.
A charisma which she could not banish, because even the boy had held her attention. A charisma which was now becoming something of an obsession. There was no way Carloman could exist the way he said he did. Unless. . . . Unles
s he was telling the truth. But even if he was, how did he travel about like this? It was as if he’d become a ghost, flitting between worlds to haunt her.
A holm beyond the universe? Reincarnation?
“No way,” she whispered.
“I have prepared your evening meal for you,” the AI said. “Fillet steak medium rare, just as you like it. And skinny fries, of course.”
“Put it in a sandwich,” she told it. “I’m going to collar-binge.”
V
AFTER A YEAR OF smooth deceleration, the Mnemosyne eased its way into the Glisten system. Smaller craft buzzed around it: curious onlookers come to see the arrival of a Light Chaser at the end of its loop. Maybe even a news crew or two—although the millennial comings and goings of the various Light Chasers on their respective circuits had ceased to be strictly newsworthy aeons before. More of a curiosity these days, like the seasonal migration of birds or whales, or the long slow cycle of a comet.
That’s what I am, Amahle thought: a comet. A frozen wanderer sidling in from the darkness to briefly warm myself by the light of the sun, before being flung back out on the next lap of my long, solitary orbit . . .
She watched her screens as the Mnemosyne slid into a cavernous, four-kilometre-long maintenance bay in the orbital docks the size of a Mars moon. Then, securely held in place by invisible fields, the great old ship powered down its systems for the first time in a thousand years.
Amahle could have sworn she heard the ship’s AI sigh contentedly, like a man taking off his boots after a long hike, though the sound could equally have been caused by the air pressure in the cabin adjusting itself to match that of the station.
A docking tube extended out from the bay wall and clamped over the main airlock. Amahle had dressed for the occasion, in an outfit incorporating fashionable and traditional clothing from each of the worlds she’d visited. She had the shiny breastplate she’d worn on Winterspite, over which she’d slipped an ankle-length dark red greatcoat with epaulets and military brocade. She’d pulled her hair back and pinned it in place with chopsticks and eagle feathers, and a single jewelled braid hung from her left temple, brushing her cheek. Her synthetic squid-skin boots rippled with explosions of colour each time she took a step.
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