Shifting Reality (ISF-Allion Book 1)

by Patty Jansen

  All benches of the auditorium were packed. All through the audience I identified Allionist scientists. They were the dark ones, with the beards. Or dark-coloured women, without beards—duh. Allion was said to have more women than men. Guess they got their men to do the dirty work.

  ISF soldiers stood around the perimeters. This audience was a perfect mix of air and methane. All I needed to do was provide the spark.

  The ISF clowns along the walls were staring at me. I saw that stare sometimes in the docks at New Jakarta, and I tell you, I wasn’t keen on it. Made a fellow confess to whatever they thought you were doing just so that they’d move on and stare at someone else. Man, ISF thought we were stupid, arrogant bastards that they were.

  I stepped up to the dais, and indeed text scrolled into my vision.

  “Good morning colleagues and delegates of the council of Ganymede University. My name is Paul Ormerod of the Luminati Institute. I have been invited by the University’s chancellor to present our recent findings on long-distance space travel.”

  A holo-projector sprang into life. Some nifty programming here.

  “Traditionally, we have made progress in long-distance space travel by pushing at the boundaries of speed. In the first half of the last century, scientists discovered that a vehicle travelling at a high enough speed distorts space ahead of its trajectory and in this ‘wave’ of space, it can make small jumps, commonly known as warp-surfing. Scientists also found that increasing the mass of the vehicle, and pushing its speed to a higher fraction of the speed of light, we could increase the size of the jumps. For the past hundred years, mankind has attempted to increase jump distance by pushing vehicles to ever-increasing speeds. We are all familiar with the costs associated with that process.”

  Nicely-written, this speech. Even I could understand it. I was under the illusion that scientists would talk in indigestible formulas. Or maybe only the wannabe engineers who sometimes came on my harvester shunt did, just to impress me.

  “The discovery we have made has the potential to put all this expensive technology behind us. Rather than trying to get closer to the speed of light before we make our jumps, we need to look at methods that bring the speed of light closer to us. Think of it: if we were to halve the speed at which a ship can jump, we would shorten the travelling time by at least half.”

  Two men in the audience a couple of rows from the front were whispering to each other, both dressed in bright green.

  “We have discovered such a mechanism. With our technology, the distortion may not reach as far, but the field is much stronger. I am talking, colleagues, about an order of magnitude stronger.”

  I stopped, staring at the next sentence.

  As I will show in this lecture, our field caster generates a dark energy field ahead of a travelling ship, which results in a marked slowing of the speed of light in that location. When the ship’s wake passes that section of space, it briefly turns matter into antimatter.

  I might not be a scientist, but I wasn’t stupid. He was saying they had technology to create antimatter weapons. I swallowed, sweat breaking out on my upper lip.

  OK, I got it.

  This was not a lecture; it was a message to the universe.

  The talk was generic, all of it in popular language everyone could understand. There were no details, no formulas. It was very much What can we do? not How do we do it? No doubt Paul Ormerod, the real Paul Ormerod, had the knowledge in his head, and these people thought that I had it and everyone was here to snag me afterwards. If ISF got the knowledge, they would use it against the Allionists. If the Allionists got it, they would use it against ISF. I was not too keen on ISF—man, they bullied us at the station—but Allion, crap, that was just a whole ’nother kettle of fish. They were evil.

  Either way, the conflict between them was going to get a whole lot worse. This was going to cost more than a lot of lives. Ships, sections of space, habitable planets.

  If you want to render information useless, make sure as many people as possible have it. One of my Taurus Army tutors used to say that.

  I read out the lecture in complete silence. I showed the diagrams, explained the implications.

  I could see the faces in the crowd, the journalists reporting it, and ISF who had perhaps tried to stop this lecture from going ahead. The two Allionist scientists who sat staring at me three rows from the front, men who had come here to offer Paul a deal in exchange for the information.

  When I finished, a roar of protest broke loose in the audience. People were getting up from their seats and, in the chaos, a couple of ISF soldiers crossed the floor to the dais. One grabbed my arm. “Let’s take you to safety.”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  He didn’t answer. There were too many of them to fight, and behind their backs, too many Allionists, probably also armed. You wouldn’t see their weapons. My brothers often spoke of how Allionists used weapons much deadlier than a gun. Nanobots that entered your body and ate your brains.

  Do something.

  Something. Anything.

  I slumped over the dais. I couldn’t think of anything else. Andro Markevic rushed over.

  “Paul, what’s wrong?”

  I raised my head and stared him in the face as groggily as I could and said the first thing that came into my mind, “Who are you?”

  He looked into my eyes and for a moment I feared he could see the real me in there, in the scientist’s body. Did anyone ever have mindswaps in Ganymede?

  People were gathering and gibbering around me.

  “Good heavens he’s lost his memory.”

  “We need to call the medics.”

  A number of white-clad figures pushed through the crowd. I tried to run, but there were people in the way, and then Andro held me back. “Stay here. We’ll look after you.”

  “That’s right. We’ll take him to the hospital, if you wish,” said an ISF guard. He grabbed my arm.

  Oh yeah, so they could keep an eye on me. And then what? Extract the knowledge they thought I had? How long would they torture me if I couldn’t give them what they wanted? I’d been a newsreader and I’d read the stories to a detached and largely uninterested audience at the Sarasvati harvesting stations. That didn’t mean I didn’t recoil reading them. ISF used torture. Allionists used torture. When they wanted something badly enough, all military forces were the same. We, the Taurus Army, were probably the same.

  “Be careful,” said the man holding me. His gaze roamed the hall. “There are plenty of undesirables about.”

  Allionists.

  I noticed figures move through the auditorium, most of them coming down the steps, at least twenty, if not more.

  Hands went to belts. One soldier pulled his gun and held it under his jacket.

  I was screwed. I was totally screwed. Paul had this carefully planned; he had deliberately put himself up on the mindbase exchange, because he wanted to escape. But with the patch, Troy had handed me a way out. If something happens to your sorry arse . . . I still had a body, on New Jakarta.

  I reached for the guard’s belt.

  “Hey, what are you. . . ?”

  I grabbed his gun, pointed it at my head and fired. Once.

  * * *

  The world explodes in a spray of colour. Fragments shoot past, forming long streams of luminous thread. Cords consisting of memories. Flashes of scenes. Tall buildings, vehicles with lights, sky, people sitting at long tables in a hall. There are trees in a park, and groups of people—are they even people?—sitting in the grass underneath the hood of a giant mushroom.

  Long pink stalks wave in the wind against an orange sky. A huge arch that consists of buildings spans a gorge, with blinking lights along its side. A group of beings made of metal armour sit in a round room; one of them stands up and points at a three-dimensional schema or building plan. Hundreds of them gather in a square. One climbs on top of another, and sort of seals himself into place. The scales of the armour fuse onto each other. At the fro
nt of the crowd, a being is making clicking and skittering noises and its fellows raise their hands—paws?—in reply.

  More of them climb onto each other, forming huge struts, then a tower that reaches ever higher into the orange atmosphere. Still the beings climb and fuse together. They form a framework floating in the air, then an internal structure of chambers and passages. Two huge cylinders—exhaust vents? God, they’re building a space ship out of living parts.

  Gradually, the rush of images slows, and the memories intertwine into two thick cords like a rope. Little dots of light move along their length as if carried by a stream. Microseconds tick by. A woolly blackness closes in.

  A single thought remains: I have no body.

  And later, with no reference of how much time has passed, another thought, I have to get back. The thought is blue.

  Later still, Where is the bastard?

  —For a moment Melati, popped free of Jas. A boy said that, in a classroom not so long ago.

  —But her vision turned red. He knew this would kill me and he could take off with my body.

  Later again. I have to make sure he doesn’t leave the station.

  Elko in space traffic control had spoken to him of alert levels. Maybe a level 1 alert would shut down all traffic out of the station.

  Can I give such an alert?

  The question hung there while more microseconds ticked over. Filaments of light twirled and danced in the darkness. A strand split off and reached for the horizon. It probed and pushed at boundaries it encountered. It broke through.

  Yes, I probably could.

  A picture on a screen and two people watching it in the semidarkness of a crowded room. It smelled like food in this place.

  The “New Hyderabad smuggler” looked up and met his eyes across the dining room of Uncle’s rumak. A dark skin, a neat beard. Hey, this criminal looked suspiciously like Dr Prem Aniyanda. It had to be someone else because no one could have travelled that distance in . . .

  How many microseconds since I’ve been dead?

  Jas pondered that for a few more microseconds.

  Well, who cares, I’ll put a warning on him. That would keep them busy.

  Wanted over embezzlement and fraud. Level 1 alert. Send. Let them stew over that for a while.

  Now to get back.

  Microseconds ticked by. How to get back?

  How, how? The thought was yellow.

  Consciousness faded.

  Out of the blackness the rope of light materialised again, but the threads were fraying, with shoots of light going off in all directions.

  Melati reached up mentally and touched a wispy filament. It wrapped around her, enfolding her in a shard of memory. She was sitting on a bed in the CAU, and Dr Chee was at his computer. He looked up.

  “You can get dressed,” he said.

  So she jumped off the bed. There was a pair of overalls at the foot of the bed, the same ones she’d remembered having seen on the eight strange boys who’d stood around her the previous day.

  She remembered the young teacher who had been with them, her liquid dark eyes. Sad eyes.

  Melati broke through again: was that how she looked to other people? A sad face?

  Then the scene faded and she sat in another hospital bed. There was a window to the left, showing a view over stone buildings in a settlement. Ganymede again. The sky was dark with a number of very bright stars. A man stood at the bed.

  She asked, “What’s my name?”

  The man said, “Paul Ormerod.”

  And she walked into a stately hall where rows and rows of tiered seating were filled with people. Also, soldiers in uniform were stationed around the perimeter. She walked up to the dais and looked into the audience, into the eyes of a dark-skinned, bearded man—

  —and she was in Uncle’s rumak and saw a similar-looking man sitting at the table—

  —the man rose and came towards her, while everyone in the hall was clapping, and the soldiers drew closer. She saw pictures in her head of diagrams and formulae—

  —And images of thousands of alien beings building a spaceship out of their own bodies.

  —Knowledge. Alien knowledge—

  —and a hand holding a gun—

  —something yanked her away, back into the maelstrom of thoughts and the white wisps which linked up to each other.

  A hand shook her shoulder and someone called, “Melati?” but the voice sounded distant and her mouth wouldn’t work.

  She walked into a room and saw Troy standing there.

  Troy said, “I dunno about that, mate, but take this, just in case.” He held out his hand, on which lay a piece of thin see-through foil.

  She asked, “What is it?” I’ve seen this film before. She didn’t remember where.

  Troy stuck it to the back of her head. A burst of warmth went through her.

  “Anywhere, mate,” Troy said. “Just any computer will back you up. That way we can reconstruct you if something happens to your sorry arse.”

  Then she was in the hall again, and all the people were listening to her words. About fast-probe technology, and space waves. The dark man with the beard got up.

  No, she decided, she didn’t want to go with him, although he’d offered her sanctuary.

  Sanctuary, from what?

  Luminati.

  Tall buildings in a crowded compound.

  Screens everywhere.

  Doors. Lots of doors.

  There were cameras on the ceilings.

  We pay for the research, the man said. It is ours.

  Another man said, You will misuse it. His name was Thomas Newton, and he’d disappeared not much later.

  She was yanked from the memory.

  The maelstrom of images exploded. Huge alien ships flying off to the stars. A man screamed. Streams of white flew past her. She reached out and they wrapped around her arms. The heat of them burnt her. The pain was incredible. It was red, it was orange, it was yellow.

  A kaleidoscope of stars burst into different colours.

  “Melati!”

  The shout was more insistent, a child’s voice. Someone shook her arm. There was a flash and her vision went dark as if someone had turned a light switch.

  Her head was silent except for the roaring of blood in her ears. Melati grasped at her head, and her hands met the VR headgear.

  What the . . .

  She slowly lifted it off and looked into Simo’s scared face. Behind him were Zax, Esse and Tyro, and also Dr Chee, looking into the room over the boys’ shoulders.

  Melati’s heart was still thudding against her ribs.

  “What are you all doing here?” Weren’t they supposed to be in bed in the dormitory on the next floor?

  “We heard you shout,” Simo said.

  Shout?

  Her mouth felt dry. God, how long had she been inside Jas’ memories?

  “The boys wanted to come for their first update,” Louise said, at the door. A few of the boys hung back with her. Tika held her hand.

  Melati’s blurred eyes found the clock. It said in green letters B6:05. Almost three hours.

  And then she looked back at Dr Chee. Seriously, did the man have a life?

  Melati pushed herself off the bed, wobbled on her feet and grabbed the edge of the bench on the opposite side of the narrow sick bay room.

  “I’m fine.” She met Dr Chee’s eyes, which said, You don’t look fine to me. “I was looking at the memory files.”

  His face took on an and? expression.

  “He definitely came through the exchange,” she said. “We couldn’t find Paul Ormerod because he is one of the Luminati. He’s the same person who disappeared at Titan and has been living at the Luminati complex since then. I don’t yet understand how he can be that old, but it seems they can copy mindbases across different bodies without losing any personality traits or memory. Their identities are kept secret. As for how he came here . . . it’s to do with the see-through film that communicates with everything. I
t’s come into the station via Allion. Everyone is treating it as a kind of novelty. My cousin, the hypertechs, the tier 1 people, they’re all playing around with it to see what it can do.”

  Dr Chee stared at her. “I’m sorry, you’re not making a lot of sense—”

  Another thought. “Your computer problems. Jas used the film when he went to Ganymede. It read his mindbase straight into the computer when he shot himself, and then he made his own way back here. The stuff is sentient, or turns mindbases sentient, or something like that. It’s like a virus, but it’s not human. It’s been reading all information in our database to feed it . . . I don’t know, into this alien network of knowledge. If Jas managed to come here, the system has been infected since he came. That’s why the computers have been so slow. Go talk to Rosalie. She’s got to shut it down before the whole system is affected and all our cohort mindbases are copied to who-knows-where.”

  Dr Chee started to say, “I don’t know that it’s necessary to shut down everything. What damage can a mindbase do—” His eyes widened.

  Unspoken horror passed between them.

  The question was: what couldn’t a sentient mindbase do? And there was probably not much in that category. Shut down the base reactors, fire weapons at will, launch ships without their crew.

  He pushed himself from his chair, and said simply, “Yes. I’ll do that immediately. I’ll warn Cocaro, too.”

  Chapter 24

  * * *

  DR CHEE, WIDE-EYED, went to wake up Rosalie, Louise continued to the dorm with the boys, but Melati called Desi and Jao—she had something else to do, and she didn’t want to do it alone. Desi had an hour of guard duty left, but she managed to find a replacement.

  “Can you wear something other than uniform?” Melati asked.

  She expected protest, but both guards left without comment. When they returned a little while later, Melati had to make an effort not to burst out laughing.

  Jao wore a red istel uniform. It fitted him well and he looked at least halfway genuine, although his face was too much like that of a construct, for those who knew such things. Desi was dressed in purple overalls that were too short so that her regulation boots stood out like a Buddha at a rave party. Melati had no idea where she’d found the monstrosity of a garment. She didn’t know ISF had a theatre company. The outfit would have been half-acceptable had her hair been pink and spiked-up and her neck and cheeks tattooed, but like this, she looked like someone trying to dress up like a Taurus Army sister out on the town with her girlfriend, and only making it halfway.