by Jim Graham
Scat and Terrance crouched down and ran through the opening. 10 meters down the corridor, there was another door. They burst through. Thomas hit every button along the back wall. Lights brightened, cooking rings began to glow.
‘Inside the bread oven. Quickly!’
Scat was a little unsure of what he was being told, but recognised the urgency of the situation. Nettles had not even questioned the order. He was climbing into an overlarge, two meters tall oven without a “by your leave”, pulling the trays off their runners to clatter onto the floor. Scat skipped over the trays and followed him inside. Thomas dived in and pulled the doors shut, leaving a dishcloth in the door well where the catch was meant to lock the door in place.
‘Jeeze!’ Thomas said, panting. ‘That came from nowhere!’
‘A super-snap?’ Nettles asked over the noise of air circulating through vents all around them.
‘Must have been. There’s no telling how cold it’ll get, or even if the oven will be warm enough. How’s your fuel cell situation, Terrance?’
Nettles looked down at his waist.
‘24 minutes.’
‘And you, Scat?’
‘Uh, 20 minutes.’
‘OK. I’ve no idea how long this oven’s is fuelled for, but if it’s coming off the main supply, we’ve got maybe three or four hours,’ Thomas said, not sure what would happen if the temperature dropped below -110ºC. ‘Much depends on how much power the others are drawing. Wherever they are.’
It then occurred to them that no one else had made it into the kitchens.
‘Where else could they be, Thomas?’ Scat asked.
‘Maybe the cellars—’
A series of loud cracking sounds interrupted his reply, as metal and glass began to contract and grind against each other.
‘Well, it’s bloody fast cooling, Thomas,’ Nettles remarked. ‘Do you think the others made it to the cellars?’
41
The humans had done the Harvester a favour by taking it to Prebos, and then releasing it into space a light year away. The extra power it had collected while in captivity was augmenting the energy it had acquired from its unexpected harvest. Now it was free, the Harvester’s mission controller could ramp up his AI’s revision rate, and dramatically increase its capacity to think along several lines at once.
A further bonus: now the Harvester was in space again, it no longer needed to pass energy through its proximity defences. Instead, it channelled it all into evaluating and refining the last set of equations, something the humans had unwittingly interrupted. In a matter of minutes, perhaps hours at the most, the controller would be home again, free to plot his return to an organic existence.
The AI began re-evaluating the information from its previous attempts to pass through. It then eliminated 30,000 possible lines of enquiry and settled on the 4,300 remaining options. All were potential solutions. It then ordered the slave routine to initiate each, starting with the ones marked with the highest probability of success.
The slave sent second-long pulses through the dimension-drive, every pulse causing a disturbance in the space surrounding it, and for the first 230 pulses, nothing happened.
Aboard the Executive starflyer, there was total silence. Everyone stared at the main cabin screen, counting the flick-ons and flick-offs across a narrower span of space than the initial void.
Bradbury pulled himself from one end of the main console to the other in the zero-G, occasionally stopping to confirm that the sensors were still receiving data from the area surrounding the craft.
N’Bomal and Makindra shared the observer coach at the back of the semi-circular cabin.
Williams sat off to one side, strapped into a wall-mounted drop down seat, wondering why the craft should have changed its void properties the way it had.
‘It’s smaller than just a moment ago, sir,’ he said.
‘Yes. The signals, or emissions, are tighter, too,’ Bradbury responded, loud enough for everyone to hear. ‘It isn’t ranging anymore; there’s very little spread. It’s drilling down, focusing on whatever it is trying to do.’
‘Does the buoy have a lock?’ Makindra Asked.
‘Yes, it does, sir,’ a console operator replied, pushing his hands into the hologram to tweak its grip. ‘We should get a full reading of its internal circuitry in a couple of minutes. We’re already picking up the pulse through the craft—it appears to terminate centrally. Electrical systems in the craft are ramping up real quick, sir: there’s much more of it than we observed, pre-capture.’
The console operator stopped providing a commentary for a moment, and then:
‘Sir, the whole thing’s just lit up!’
Bradbury pulled himself over the back of the operator’s seat to take a closer look at the stats flowing down the screen.
‘Are you getting feedback from its circuitry?’ he asked.
‘Loads, sir. Between the buoy and us, we should have 3-D of the hardware within a minute—and details of its composition! We’re already getting flow-back from the radscan.’
‘Good,’ Bradbury replied, his face beaming. ‘It means we will be able to replicate it.’ For N’Bomal and William’s benefit, he explained how. ‘The electrical surges in the craft are giving us a view of the interior. The amount of absorption from the radscan is giving us the material composition. All we’re missing is the software that runs the thing, and we’ll get that when we crack the thing open.’
‘It all hangs on the last pulse, Todd, let’s not forget that,’ N’Bomal reminded him. ‘We’ve got to know the one—and before it disappears.’
‘It won’t be an issue,’ Bradbury replied, sounding confident. ‘We’ve 200 independent sensors floating in space within 500 kilometres of this thing, though I suspect we won’t need them. It’s not hiding anything from us.’
‘Perhaps,’ replied N’Bomal, sounding not so convinced.
‘Throw out the light-tug!’ Bradbury ordered.
‘Aye, sir,’ the pioneer sergeant answered. ‘Light-tug deployed.’ A stream of dark light ran over the craft at a wavelength just a shade lower than was required to latch onto it. ‘Ready to lock, sir.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Are you sure it will work?’ Williams asked.
‘Yes, Williams, I am. If it is tearing into the fabric of space, it certainly won’t want anything else to follow it through. Same goes if it’s drilling a hole through a membrane or creating a wormhole along it. Once our dark light locks onto the craft, it’ll abandon any attempt to pass through, just in case we go in with it.’
‘Hence the dark light, no other type?’ Williams asked.
‘Yes,’ Bradbury answered. He went on to explain. ‘By manipulating the dark light just as the hole comes into view, we can “pinch” it, just as we do when we bring other vessels in tow. The light-tug creates the direct link between us. If that craft should so much as wobble, or disturb the space around it in the slightest, we’ll pinch it at the speed of light. I doubt the craft could find the right emission, and know it was suitable for a pass through, faster than that. In fact, I’m surprised Petroff didn’t use the light-tug when he scooped it up. He was taking an enormous risk, flying into the void as he did.’
‘And you’re sure you can reproduce the whole thing once we bust it open and haul out its software?’
‘Yes.’
‘Unless it self-destructs.’ Williams had wondered about that.
‘It won’t. Not if we’ve zapped it. By that, I mean overloaded its circuitry—as we’ve agreed we will when we identify the hole. As we now have a complete schematic of the circuitry, we can afford to sacrifice—’
The SG sat bolt upright in his seat. It was just as well he was strapped in.
‘Wooh! ‘Did you see that?’
Everyone had. In an instant, the void had shrunk to an area that barely surrounded the craft, leaving the backdrop of space around it—the area the void had once filled—to ripple outwards like a stone dropped in
a pool. The smaller void then disappeared.
‘Is the light-tug working?’ asked Bradbury.
‘Yes, sir, it is!’
‘Have we overpowered its electronics?’
‘Umm, yes sir. It’s dead.’
The screen changed to a close-up view of a craft surrounded by nothing. It was still intact. Gradually the screen panned out, and stars began to emerge from behind the craft.
‘And the hole?’
‘Gone, sir. There’s nothing left of it.’
‘Replay it, SG,’ Bradbury ordered. ‘Let’s see it on the screen. ¼-speed. Williams, the craft is all yours again. Let’s get it back on board.’
As Williams retired to the rear flight deck, the starflyer crew sat glued to the ¼-speed rerun. There was some whooping and whistling, and no wonder. Bradbury had just achieved a remarkable first. He had just disabled an alien spaceship, and gotten its internal specifications, all in one straightforward, if risky, experiment. As Bradbury hung there in the zero-G, all puffed-out and smiling, N’Bomal gently squeezed the arms of his observation coach at the back of the room, watching the screen in silence, wondering if they had just upset anyone, or anything—and whether it mattered, even if they had.
42
It was intensely cold but bearable. Occasionally Thomas pushed the door ajar to check the surroundings.
Around the 20-minute mark, Scat realised he was getting warmer, or, more truthfully, less cold, so mentioned it to Thomas. Nettles confirmed he was also. Thomas decided it was time to take a walk outside.
‘It’s OK. The snap has subsided: at least in here.’
‘Thank goodness for that, Thomas,’ Nettles said. ‘But let’s be careful of what we touch and where we go for a short while, eh?’
Scat dropped his hood. It was still bitterly cold outside the oven, and everyone’s breath was still creating clouds of crystals but Thomas was right; the snap had subsided. He then remembered there were probably 15 or so others somewhere in the building. He pulled at the kitchen door and checked the corridor.
A body lay pressed up against the corridor wall as though frozen in mid-crawl. He recognised the body to be that of a waiter. Beside him were the remains of a dog, curled up in a frozen lump.
Nettles nudged the dog’s frozen body with the toe of his boot.
‘It’s solid,’ he said.
Thomas looked away, terrified of what he might find further on, or down in the cellars. Scat pushed past and led the way out into the reception room. It was empty.
‘Which way to the cellars, Thomas?’ he asked.
Thomas didn’t answer right away. He looked a little shocked. Perhaps he was unaccustomed to death in the raw. After a second or two, he looked up from the floor, as though he had just heard the question.
‘It’s that way,’ he said, pointing. ‘Along the corridor then down the steps. There’s a door at the bottom.’
Scat removed his goggles so he could see better in the gloom. He breathed more slowly, listening for sounds from any direction, but heard nothing. Steeling himself, he strode towards the steps leading to the cellar.
He pushed the cellar door inwards a fraction, but that was all he could manage without help. Nettles obliged, offering a shoulder and a few pounds of added muscle. Eventually, the door gave way a little more, giving Scat a view of the room behind it. Lights blazed, and a couple of electric fires pushed out a red glow, but it was obvious the room had been an icy prison, not a few minutes before.
Behind the door lay a body. Across the floor were three or four more, huddled together. None of them resembled Reggie or Paul. Scat pulled the door shut again.
‘Where else could they have gone, Thomas?’ he asked.
‘Not sure. I rarely use the place. The kitchen, the cellar and the main reception area are the only places I’ve used. Oh, wait a minute! The garage!’
He sped off, struggling to run up the steps. Scat and Nettles followed.
The garage had been locked-down only minutes before the super-snap descended upon them so the vehicles were still warm from their run up the slope to the bunker. Reggie, as old and as slow as he was, had decided to take his chances in the plains cruiser, rather than not be quick enough to get himself to the kitchens or the cellar. Paul had stayed with him, to make sure he was OK. Others had followed them in.
Reggie was climbing out of the cruiser when Thomas burst through the garage’s inner door. Paul was helping him down the step onto the concrete.
‘Where did you go off to, young man?’ Reggie asked.
‘The ovens, father—with Nettles and Scat.’
‘Well, that was a beggar of a snap. What’s the damage?’
‘We haven’t checked, but maybe six to eight dead that we’ve seen so far.’ Thomas replied, relieved.
Scat was more exact:
‘There are five, Reggie; a waiter in the kitchen hallway and four guests in the cellar. Perhaps we ought to count ourselves off and work out who else we’re missing.’
‘Yes, Scat. Let’s,’ Reggie agreed.
The bunker wasn’t large, so it didn’t take long to confirm that there were only five dead, but to that number they probably needed to add another ten: the Spencer party was unlikely to have made it to the greenhouse in time.
They agreed the outer doors were to stay closed and that no one should go outside until they could confirm the situation with the met office in Go Down. For that to happen, the comms link needed to be working, which it was not. When it worked, that would be a sign that the atmospheric conditions were returning to normal. As for the bodies, well, they would leave them where they were until they could call in the emergency services—in any case, in their current state they could not lay them out.
Scat returned to the reception room and sat by the electric fire. The temperature in the room was rapidly returning to local normal: a nippy -20°C. He unzipped his survival suit and ran his hands back through a mess of hair. It was in need of a trim.
Nettles sat next to him again, as he had before the super-snap. For a man who had just spent half an hour in an oven, he looked remarkably well composed, quiet relaxed.
‘One of the hazards of New World living, Terrance?’ Scat asked.
‘Yes. One of several. The Outlanders don’t get enough credit for what they put up with, Scat. Lynthax makes light of it. Their contribution is largely ignored.’
‘Were they friends?’
‘You mean the guys in the cellar? No. They might have been voters of mine, but not friends.’
Scat broke into a grin. They shared a similar sense of humour.
‘What got you involved in politics, then?’
‘A love of my fellow man, my patriotic duty, and a sense of service.’ It was a deadpan delivery spoiled by a white tooth smile: ‘Or it could have been because I hate the farking corporations. I can’t recall.’
‘Really?’
‘Of course not. I own a corporation. It might be a small company in the grand scale of things, but it is still a corporation. Only I don’t think it should decide the will of the people.’
‘But they’ve been influencing things for centuries,’ Scat pointed out.
‘From outside, they have,’ Nettles conceded, ‘but at least we could shut them out when we’re dealing with the really important issues: like when we were taking a vote.’
‘For half a term, you mean. Until it’s time to go back to the voters,’ Scat reminded him.
Nettles chuckled.
‘You’re more of a cynic than I am, Scat. Maybe I’m more optimistic, but listen, my opinion on their place in a democracy is a fairly straightforward one: They don’t let me vote at their AGMs, so we shouldn’t let them vote in the House, except as individuals—and then at the ballot box, like the rest of us.’
Nettles leaned forward.
‘Look, Lynthax has more heads than a Hydra: it’s got one for every New World and another for Earth—it’s everywhere—and because it’s everywhere, its viewpoint is
universal; it’s not Trevon-centric. And because it’s a corporation and its motive is profit, it serves its shareholders, not society as a whole. But Trevon’s viewpoint is local and not-so-for-profit. Our view point is longer-term, more balanced and aimed at being productive for everyone who lives here, including for future generations.’
‘But the New Worlds were established by the corporations. They’re corporate assets,’ Scat noted, digging deeper, ‘not sovereign states. The mandates were part of the deal, right?’
‘I don’t agree, Scat. Trevon’s no longer just a corporate asset. It might have been a century or so ago, but we’ve moved on since then. Millions of people live here now, for crickey’s sake, and a majority of them aren’t even Lynthax employees. And they all have needs. Needs that a government is supposed to respond to: social needs, financial needs, even immigration needs. And Earth needs to see that.’
‘Is that likely?
‘Not as it stands right now, no, but the Constitutional Conference is a good place to make a start. What we’ve got to do is get Earth to see how things actually are—and see why things have got to change.’
‘What things?’
‘Where to do you want me to start, Scat? It’s a long list.’
Scat looked around him. There was no TV, and his graf was still off-line.
‘Anywhere you like. We aren’t going anywhere for a while.’
‘OK. Let’s start with the economy.’
‘Really? It’s not my strong point.’
Nettles ignored him.
‘What happens when you ration land for building?’
That wasn’t a tough one:
‘People compete for it: its value goes up.’
‘And the land they’ve already built on?’
‘It goes up as well, I guess.’
Nettles nodded.
‘Correct. Property prices go up. So do the rents, and then the price of everything else. What then happens when you then make the same place a tax haven?’
Scat was not sure.
‘It attracts the rich?’
‘Which does what?’
‘It adds to the demand for property.’
‘Keep going.’
Scat connected the dots.
‘Prices go up, again.’
‘Again, correct.’
Yet something was not right.
‘But Trevon’s huge—it’s got land to spare.’