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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Christopher Brookmyre
Excerpt from Six Wakes copyright © 2017 by Mary Lafferty
Excerpt from Tracer copyright © 2015 by Rob Boffard
Author photograph by Chris Close
Cover image by Steve Stone
Cover copyright © 2017 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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Simultaneously published in Great Britain and in the U.S. by Orbit in 2017
First Edition: November 2017
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017952961
ISBNs: 978-0-316-43526-0 (trade paperback), 978-0-316-43525-3 (ebook)
E3-20171004-JV-PC
Contents
COVER
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
PROLOGUE: SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
PART ONE AWAKENING (I)
AWAKENING (II)
FUTURE INVESTMENT
CHAOS AND ETERNAL NIGHT
THE SELF DELUSION
IMPORT DUTY
OPEN SPACE
MARKET FORCES
WARNINGS FROM ON HIGH
MOONLIGHTING
CONTAINMENT
MURDER ONE
THE HUMAN SHIELD
PART TWO UNDER SURVEILLANCE
OPPOSITION RESEARCH
SEEDEE CONFIDENTIAL
INFORMED CONSENT
WHAT LIES BENEATH
THE DEPARTED
DAMAGED GOODS
HOSTILE TERRITORY
A FEARSOME PROSPECT
FROM THE VINE TO THE BOTTLE
THE INTEREST OF CONFLICT
FULL MOON SATURDAY NIGHT
EMERGENCY SERVICES
FIRST DO NO HARM
FAKE EMPIRES
EMERGING TRUST ISSUES
CONTAMINATION (I)
CONTAMINATION (II)
DEAD ON ARRIVAL
HUMAN INTEREST
IN PLAIN SIGHT
HONEYTRAP
PREMIUM CHANNELS
ENHANCED INTERROGATION
AFTER-EFFECTS
GHOSTS
DAMAGE CONTROL
THE DISAPPEARED
COMMAND PROMPT
HAIL MARY CALL
STRINGS
DEBTS
LOOK THE DEVIL IN THE EYE
PART THREE WASTE DISPOSAL
MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS
END OF DAYS
SELF DETERMINATION
INTERVENTION FROM ABOVE
IN THE FRAME
TRUE NATURE
CONTROL
HIDDEN SCARS
THE KICKER
SAFEGUARDS
ROGUE
ELEMENTS
FRAGILE BEINGS
WHEN SHE WAS BAD
THE GIFTED ONES
SENTINELS
THE END OF PAIN
WOKE
FAMILY TIES
READ-ONLY MEMORY
LOYALTIES
S. E. P.
CHOICES
PRECIOUS CARGO
AWAKENING (III)
EXTRAS
MEET THE AUTHOR
A PREVIEW OF SIX WAKES
A PREVIEW OF THE OUTER EARTH TRILOGY
BY CHRIS BROOKMYRE
ORBIT NEWSLETTER
For Keva
PROLOGUE:
SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
“Consciousness Does Not Exist,” says Mehmet.
Jenna has just caught up to her lab partner as they glide along the main level-two conduit inside the Axle, his eyes betraying that his focus is not entirely fixed on his immediate environment. He is reading something on his lens.
“That sounds deep for this time of the day,” Jenna replies, by way of bidding him good morning.
“No, it’s the name of the lecture Maria Gonçalves is giving today. Really wish I could have seen that.”
“You’ll see it after you finish work. And you’ve seen a hundred. What’s special about this one?”
“I mean seen it live. She’s giving it in person.”
Okay, now she gets it.
“Seriously? Wow. When did that last happen?”
“When I was in diapers, probably.”
“Damn. Couldn’t you have swapped your shift?”
Mehmet fixes her with a withering look.
“Yeah, like that’s why I won’t be there.”
“Only the great and the good able to get tickets,” Jenna suggests.
“Tickets? You jest. Invite only. But on the plus side, they sent me my date for getting the new Gen-4 mesh. Four weeks today.”
“Way to go. I’m not even on the formal waiting list. I’m on the waiting list for the waiting list.”
“How come?”
“My own stupid fault. Dragged my heels because I wasn’t convinced it would make much of a difference, but that’s not what I’m hearing from the people who have got it.”
“No kidding,” Mehmet says, warming to the subject. “I was talking to Javier last week. He’s had his a month. He says the data retrieval is night and day’s difference. It’s like you just instantly know the information.”
“Yeah, I hear there’s far less of a watermarking effect. You don’t get that feeling like you’re peering over somebody’s shoulder at their worksheet. Guess I’m going to have to wait a while to experience it, though.”
They reach a six-way junction, both of them changing axis with a practised light tug on a handhold. Official protocol states that personnel are supposed to come to a complete stop before proceeding, but right now there’s nobody else around to bump into. That’s what she loves about working in the Axle. There never is. Compared to the wheels, it’s always practically deserted.
“Lateness appears to be a consistent theme for you at the moment,” Mehmet says. “I thought I was going to end up on my own here today.”
“Sorry. There was a problem on the static. They had a car out of commission, meaning a knock-on delay, and then the car I got from Faris was rammed.”
“Little flavour of home. When the static is busy like that, close your eyes and you could be on the subway train in New York City. Just need somebody to piss on the floor a few hours before, give it that authentic smell to recreate the full effect.”
Jenna yawns and stretches as they drift along the shaft.
“La
te night?” Mehmet enquires.
“No, just feels like it’s been a long week. Late night tonight though. Gonna tear it up.”
“Got a date?”
“Only with one of those famous Sin Garden mojitos over on Mullane. Then maybe five more.”
Mehmet shakes his head, a wry smile on his face.
“What? You still think I’m crazy paying those prices?” she asks.
“No. I think it’s funny that somebody is getting a backhander purely for growing mint to supply those things.”
“Unauthorised botanical cultivation. Can’t imagine that’s what the Seguridad call a jump-seat offence.”
“No, but I’m sure some prick at the FNG would be able to tell you the exact expected yield in zucchini, or whatever, that they would otherwise be growing in that square footage of soil.”
“And what about your social life?” she asks. “I hear you’re switching phase on us.”
Mehmet looks bashful.
“Yeah, this guy I’ve been seeing. It’s getting serious. He’s on Meridian.”
“And you’re leaving all us sweet people on Atlantic for him? It really must be love.”
“I already got a lot of friends who are on Meridian phase. Been thinking of making a change for a while. This was just the final nudge, you scope me?”
Jenna fixes him with a look. He withers.
“Okay, it is love,” he admits.
“Knew it.”
“So what tests we running today?” he asks, conspicuously changing the subject.
Jenna smiles by way of acknowledgement. It will be a shame when he switches. She likes working with him.
The test chamber is now only a few metres ahead. The entrance is a bladed aperture at the end of the shaft, but inside it’s like a giant buckyball. She and Mehmet are both in synthetic pharmacology research, based out of Wheel Two. The firm they work for has a block booking on this chamber, studying the sustained effects of microgravity on certain artificial compounds.
“That’s weird,” she says, reading the security status on her lens. “The chamber is open.”
“It looks unambiguously closed to me,” Mehmet responds, confused.
“I mean it’s not locked. The team using it last can’t have closed up properly. See, these are the losers and wasters you’re about to throw your lot in with when you shift to Meridian.”
Without the security interface requesting an access code, they don’t have to stop outside. The aperture dilates in response to their proximity, so they can let their momentum carry them inside uninterrupted. Jenna executes a somersault to emphasise this fact, but as she spins upright again, she is tugged to a stop. Mehmet has grabbed the rim for purchase with one hand and taken hold of her shoulder with the other.
She looks at him by way of demanding an explanation.
Mehmet is staring into the vastness of the chamber, eyes wide: speechless, shivering, scared.
In zero-g, the gentle ballet of objects in motion can make anything look elegant.
Not this.
Glistening organs dance gently around each other in the bright expanse, like motes of dust in a shaft of sunlight. Intestines curl and twist between sections of limbs denuded of skin, muscle exposed like illustrations in an anatomy textbook. She sees an empty skull, the top sheared off. The brain has been removed, floating free amidst this carnal constellation.
Jenna is almost as much a geek as Mehmet for the work of the Neurosophy Foundation, but the one thing she never got is why they are pioneering memory erasure. She couldn’t understand why anyone would want that.
She does now.
PART ONE
AWAKENING (I)
“There will be no children.”
It is the first thought that flashes into Alice’s mind as she slowly approaches consciousness, like a diver rising towards the surface. The words are prompted by a sound: that of children’s voices, laughing and shrieking with delight. At first she thinks she is imagining them, but though her eyes are closed she knows the voices are coming from outside her head.
There will be no children. It is one of the things she remembers being told to expect about her first trip to Ciudad de Cielo—CdC—and yet she can hear them, clear as day. Is it a recording?
She opens her eyes. She can only see directly in front, the beige wall of the passenger capsule’s interior. Her head is restrained for safety inside a protective cradle, but the brace is not there purely to hold her in position. It also houses sensors monitoring her vital signs, which it streams to her lens, superimposing the data upon her field of vision.
The standard lens system comprises one contact for each eye, transferring data to and from a circular processing unit attached to the wrist. This disc also accommodates a sensor that interprets finger gestures by way of a primary control interface. The rig is completed by a sub-vocal audio relay that integrates so seamlessly with one’s hearing that Alice sometimes forgets it’s an auxiliary source. It is from this that the children’s laughter briefly issues once more before being cut off.
She has been asleep. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say she must have passed out. She does not know for how long. Alice has never felt so disoriented, so brain-scrambled. This must be what it feels like to have a hangover, she thinks, never having experienced one personally. She has consumed alcohol, but only in moderation, strictly within the recommended lower- and upper-limit parameters prescribed for maximum health benefit.
“Dr. Blake?” says a voice, close by this time, not originating from the speakers.
A male face moves into view, the motion strangely fluid, as though gliding. It is further evidence of her wooziness. He seems to float into her field of vision like a figment from a dream. His hand is resting on the outer guard rail around her passenger cradle.
His features are Chinese, but less diluted than hers. He is about her age, either side of thirty. He is smiling, his tone gentle, his accent American.
“You lost consciousness. It sometimes happens during the ascent.”
Alice searches for her voice, feeling relief when it comes online.
“How long was I out?”
He smiles in a manner she interprets as intended to be reassuring.
“Precisely two hours, seventeen minutes and twenty-two seconds, but you’ve been monitored the whole time.”
“What caused it?” she asks. She knows that a precipitate loss of consciousness sits on a spectrum bookended by simple fainting and hypoxic brain injury.
Again the patient smile.
“I’m not qualified to interpret the data, but in my experience, most of the time it’s a result of cumulative exhaustion brought on by tension and anxiety over the prospect of the ascent, exacerbated if you had a long trip to reach Ocean Terminal. Don’t think of it as anything more significant than that you were tired and you fell asleep.”
It feels like more than that though, like coming around from anaesthetic or something. Some parts of her mind seem accessible, others clouded. She knows that the platform is one hundred and sixty thousand kilometres above the base. She knows that the ascent takes five hours and fifty-three minutes. She knows all manner of technical data regarding the elevator and its operations, but she has an altogether less crisp recollection of her trip prior to entering this capsule.
“How much longer is the climb?” Alice asks. She can see the current time on her lens, but the formerly animated trip data field is now blank.
“The climb ended twenty minutes ago,” he replies, amusement now taking over from reassurance in his tone. “Welcome to Heinlein Halfway Station.”
He loosens his grip on the guard rail, which is when she understands that he was not resting on it, but holding it to prevent himself from floating away.
“The other passengers have already disembarked from the capsule. The protocol states that we leave you to come around on your own. Nobody stays out for very long once we hit the top, though you were nudging at the upper end of the scale.”
&nb
sp; He brushes his fingers against the rail, the action providing enough purchase for him to rise and drift away from her with dreamlike fluidity. It is no dream, though.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space,” he says.
She wonders why he makes this statement of the obvious, confused further by the absence of passengers who might be the other addressees. She detects a certain self-consciousness to it too.
She searches her memory for secondary levels of significance to the words and he reads her confusion in the blankness of her response.
“It’s just something we say, a stupid tradition. Don’t know how it started, but it kinda stuck.”
Of course. The minute self-consciousness denoted that he was quoting. Like many such frivolous and pointless customs, it was observed for no greater reason than that it has been observed many times before, though its current observers could not explain its origin.
“Don’t worry if you’re feeling a little disoriented,” he assures her. “Again, it’s perfectly normal.”
Alice stares at his features. She doesn’t remember ever seeing this man before, though he must have been with her in the capsule.
No, she recalls. He wasn’t. Nobody occupies a passenger position unnecessarily. An escort leaves you at the bottom and another meets you at the top. Every inch of storage space, every gram of weight is carefully accounted for to a precisely budgeted dollar value. The elevator massively reduced the cost of reaching geostationary orbit. Cars run constantly, as many as four simultaneously at different stages of ascent and descent, totalling twenty trips per day. The weight and volume of materials being transported over any given twenty-four-hour period exceeds the cumulative payload weight and volume the human race sent into orbit in its first five decades of space exploration. But nonetheless, nobody is assigned a passenger cradle unless their travel has a demonstrable value—which is what truly confuses her as once again laughter and high-pitched squeals of delight ring through her ears.
“I can hear children.”
“Yeah, that’s a common-access feed from elsewhere on the platform. You’ll be sharing a shuttle with them to CdC. The family came up on an earlier car but they have been taking a tour of the platform before moving on.”
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