by Barry Kirwan
"Victim, Pierre, not subject – victim."
He nodded, knowing such academic insensitivity fuelled people’s distrust of science. But this wasn’t going right. He been speaking like he was in an exam, or worse, lecturing. Blake looked disinterested, as if he was about to turn back to the screen.
"So, Sir, what I’m wondering, specifically, is why you think there is an implant that wouldn’t have already been triggered?"
Blake gave him a sideways glance. "That is the question, isn’t it?"
Blake’s eyes sharpened. Pierre realized he’d been missing, no, needing the Captain back in control.
"Let’s review the facts, Pierre. The ghoster was meant to activate the detonator without us ever detecting it. The Trojan was there as a back-up in case we did. So, whatever happened, the Alicians wanted it to be another mystery, another "failure". That way a fourth mission would never get funded.
Pierre nodded. So far it made sense, and they were communicating, at least. He began to wonder if the whole "team problem" was in his own head. "The Heracles didn’t have a comms position. I always wondered about that. Is that why we have one, to have more redundancy onboard?"
Blake leant back in the chair. "Heracles sent a distress message just before it went dead."
Pierre wanted to say, No, you’re mistaken, I’ve seen the logs. But he knew Blake wouldn’t make such an obvious error. "But, Sir –"
"I know what you’re thinking. But the Code Red operates on two wavelengths, one much lower register – fractally encoded – appears to be stellar radiation noise, unless you have the right sequence decoder. Doesn’t show up on the logs. Almost no one knows about it, but it’s there." Blake’s eyes roamed the largely dark console, where the central panel fluttered many red indications and a few Spartan greens, and then he continued. "Except the Alicians obviously found out about it, and made sure that it couldn’t be transmitted this time. If indeed the logs themselves haven’t been altered for the entire mission."
Pierre sat up. "You mean they’re inside the Eden Mission itself? That’s pretty hard to believe."
Blake laughed, "You mean pretty hard to accept! I’m surprised at you, Pierre, aren’t you scientists meant to have open minds?"
Pierre reddened. "Do you have any evidence? Scientists try not to indulge in wanton paranoia."
Blake almost grinned. "A little defensive today? You’re beginning to sound like your father."
Pierre wondered: had Blake known his father?
"Well, unfortunately," he continued, "I do have some evidence, albeit circumstantial. You see, Kat’s quite a wizard at carrier signals."
Pierre glanced briefly over to her empty chair.
"And she has a ‘friend’, a member of staff in the Eden Mission. They were sending each other coded messages disguised as background radiation. Harmless messages. Of course Eden security knew about it. But guess what?"
Pierre parked the info about Kat having a "friend" for later; he wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to redeem himself with Blake. "They let it happen because it was another way of knowing that things were working properly."
Blake raised an appreciative eyebrow. "Exactly. Only, a week ago, something happened."
"It stopped?"
Blake shook his head.
Pierre’s brow furrowed, and then smoothed. "It started repeating!"
Blake nodded, "Kat realized something was odd a couple of days before the ghoster attack, as she hadn’t heard from her friend for some time, and had been running some tests to check the telemetry output. She told me afterwards, a bit sheepishly mind you, as far as Kat can be sheepish, that is."
Pierre analyzed it. So Eden Mission personnel should have spotted it. "Did security try and warn you?" he asked.
Blake shook his head. The mood shifted, the game part of this little exchange was over, Pierre realized. "So you believe they’ve infiltrated security?"
"Probably just as well we’re not in communication. I’m not sure I’d trust any orders right now."
Pierre frowned; the implications were enormous. But in particular, it meant they were truly on their own.
Blake stood. "So, the ghoster was initiated, we defeated it, but lost our comms. That left a third approach."
"Have you figured out the trigger?"
"Maybe. Something very unique. Only seen once in a lifetime."
Pierre started to look around the cockpit. But that would make no sense – nothing much ever changed in the cockpit, especially after the virus struck.
"Eden?" he said.
"Alicians don’t want any human footprints on the planet. In any case, too few distinctive landmarks we know of, nothing to act as an implant trigger."
Pierre had known it was wrong as soon as he’d said it. And then it hit him. "The nebula! Of course. It’s the last unique phenomenon between here and Eden. But it would have to have been seen from an unusual perspective. We could have seen a holo of it before. I mean, I have, for example."
"Me too," Blake said. "But not like this," he said, leaning outward and tapping the viewscreen. Pierre stared without comprehension. And then he understood. They could have seen pictures of the nebula. But here they saw something else as well – their own reflection. And it fit perfectly with the psychogenic implant theory.
"There. You have your father’s genes after all." Blake said.
Pierre side-stepped the barb, and followed the logic to where they were today.
"But now two crew members are in stasis. So, you had to gamble which two, including yourself."
Blake stretched his back, and looked through the plazglass to the nebula. "It doesn’t do anything for me." He moved aside.
Pierre hesitated. He hadn’t yet inspected the nebula, hadn’t had time since they arrived in its vicinity several hours ago. He crossed over to Zack’s seat, and took a good look. After all, if anything was to happen, he had better make sure it was now, while Blake was prepared. He took in not just the nebula, but his own reflection superimposed over the image.
"Well?" Blake said.
Pierre’s vision embraced the violent clash of silky blues and reds, frozen waves of color expanding outwards to solid gas edges. In his mind he mapped the equations defining the sheer brutal energy behind this phenomenon. He registered his own awe-struck face superimposed on it. He waited for what should come next if he had an implant, within seconds. But he was simply swept away by this fantastic vista, gliding past them like a giant, hallucinogenic butterfly.
"It’s more impressive than any of the pictures. It’s… I could study it for years!" He turned smiling to Blake, but froze as he saw Blake aiming a pulse pistol at his chest.
"Pierre. What’s Kat’s nightmare?"
He tried to swallow. "Captain, Sir, it’s okay, it’s me, there’s been no reaction."
"Answer the damned question, Pierre. Recent memories!"
His heart pounded. For an instant, he was tongue-tied, unused to having a gun aimed at him point-blank.
"Now, Pierre!"
"S-she’s running, running from something on Eden. We don’t know what, but it scares her to death." He caught his breath. "We fought the ghoster four days ago. You had quorn rashers for breakfast today, and you skipped most of it. You decided to put Zack, and not me, in stasis. And two minutes ago you accused me of sounding like my father." As if you had actually known him.
Blake lowered the weapon, placed it on the console, sat down in his own chair, and dragged his palms over his face and head.
"Sorry, had to be sure."
"Right," Pierre replied, his immobility masking the raw emotions cascading helter-skelter through him. He tried to focus on the implant threat. At least he could see now why Blake had been so tense, so distant – he’d been concerned Pierre had the implant. But then why had he put Zack in stasis?
"Sir, if you thought it was me, then why –"
Blake looked at Pierre square. "Now you’re not being scientific."
He glanced from Blake, to th
e console in front of him. He hadn’t until this moment seen what Blake was studying at his console. Blake tapped refresh. It was a personnel file, but it wasn’t Pierre’s.
"You think it’s Zack?" Pierre’s eyebrows rose.
Blake stared at the file.
Pierre tried to reason it out. "It’s logical; he would have been the pilot, the first to see the nebula. The one most likely to survive, if anyone did, if the ghoster attack had not quite gone to plan." He saw Blake’s lips were tightly pressed together. He clearly didn’t like this. Of course, it feels like betrayal, especially having this conversation with me – of all people.
Blake spoke up. "Initially I assumed it wasn’t him. Nor Kat – too young and inexperienced, and always under surveillance, being Beornwulf’s daughter. But as Captain I had to consider all the possibilities. The more I thought about it as an Alician strategy, the more I thought it could be Zack. He was missing in action for ten days in Thailand during the War – the only survivor from his platoon that time – long enough to carry out the trauma conditioning phase of the implant procedure. And shortly after we were selected for this flight, he went missing one night – said he got drunk and ended up with another – well, it doesn’t matter, but he could have been kidnapped, and the final trigger implanted then, a holo-image of the nebula as sent back from the Prometheus. And Zack of course none the wiser, and feeling guilty over something he didn’t do."
"But what if it triggered?"
Blake’s eyes flared. "Mission before men, Pierre. I’d do what I’d have to do. Zack knows that and would expect nothing less."
Pierre thought about it. The pieces slotted together. "You haven’t talked to him about it, have you, Sir?"
Blake shut the pistol back in the weapons locker. "I’ll be honest, Pierre, I was hoping I wouldn’t have to." He shrugged and smiled. "But I will, when he wakes up."
"There’s no treatment for implants, Sir. You know that. And if we come back, we’ll have to put him in stasis for the return, just to be sure."
"Maybe I’m wrong about the trigger. Maybe there is no third plot, and I’m just being – what was that phrase – wantonly paranoid?"
Pierre, for the first time, detected a morsel of trust. He still wanted to say so much, to ask if Blake had known his father. But he decided to quit while he was ahead. "You look tired, Sir. Really."
"You’ve no idea. I’m going to hit the sack. You have the Con, Dr. Bertrand." He left the cockpit.
Pierre sat down. He looked over to Blake’s chair. When he’d said "You have the con", it meant he, Pierre, was in command. He could sit in that chair. He could try it for size. He’d never once sat in it, not even for a moment, in the past three months onboard.
He stayed where he was.
He remained in the cockpit another three hours, trying to salvage more from the computer systems, peeking occasionally at the nebula, then gave up. With Blake sound asleep, he went aft and dug deep under his cot mattress to pull out a small phial and old-style syringe. He injected it into his left elbow crease carefully, and then discarded both phial and syringe in the usual manner. He waited. After a few minutes, an ugly grey-black bruise like spilt ink flushed around the needle entry point for thirty seconds, accompanied by a razor-like slash of pain, and then vanished beneath his skin. He regained his breath. Satisfied, he headed for the shower.
As he passed Kat’s cot, he thought he noticed movement inside. He tried to see through the condensation. Kat was fast asleep, but was clearly dreaming – he could see her eyes darting about beneath her eyelids. He was surprised. You weren’t supposed to dream in stasis. He laid his hand, with a tenderness he could never show if she’d been awake, on the top of the glass covering of the stasis tube. "I hope for your sake, Kat, it’s not the nightmare – because you’re not going to wake up for another two days."
Chapter 15
Rudi’s World
With one last shove the naked body tumbled down inside the furnace chute, seven floors underneath the Eden Mission. Gabriel heard no sound, no crashing or explosion, no cry or scream; he knew his job. Closing the vent, he wiped his hands on the dead janitor’s greasy faded brown overalls he now wore. There had been no blood: a snapped vertebra at the base of the neck, and a hand clamped over the mouth and nose.
He listened, hearing nothing but the dull whirr of air circ pumps. Satisfied, he picked up his rucksack and pulled out a syringe, inserting the auto-anaesthetizing needle into his neck. With a measured motion of his right thumb, he coerced the algae-colored contents inside him. He began consuming water from the six liter-size bottles he’d taken from the supply cupboard. He barely had time to lift the vent, toss in the two first empty bottles and syringe, and throw the rucksack on top of the furnace housing, before he started to convulse. But he made no noise, not even clenching his jaw. It will pass. In his head he recited the Ashkram Elat. Its rhythm helped him control his breathing, taking his mind off the tearing pain.
Shaking on the floor, he drank another liter at the end of each stanza. By the time he reached the last one, the burning sensation ebbed. He opened his eyes, and got to his feet, leaning against the hot metal of the furnace shield. Standing unaided, he uttered the final two lines aloud, to see how his voice had changed.
Gabriel looked down at his body: heavier, like the man he had just released from life’s strains. The water content around his waist took on a less fluid quality and behaved like fat. He tested the puffiness of his face with podgy hands, and inserted the contact lenses rendering his black irises a dull blue. The sim-skin mask, which minutes earlier had been placed over the janitor’s limp face, took a while before it moved synchronously over Gabriel’s own features. He checked his reflection in one of the panels: no line visible between skin and mask; the chameleon pigment-blend worked.
Stooping, he attached his janitor’s name-badge, and shuffled towards the service elevator. As he entered it, his tongue flicked to the false wisdom tooth at the back of his mouth. He flexed his forearms to confirm the retractable blades were in place. He didn’t glance at his watch – he knew the exact time. He pressed level one-eighty-five.
***
Micah hunched over his console computer data, some flat on flimsies, some in 3D holos: digital cylinders rotating and twinkling, mathematical contours of rainbow hues like the hallucinogenic ski-slopes you could surf on the vidnet. The air tasted of high-end fluidic computers hard at work – a metallic taste like coins. He’d been nagged by his mother to try plants to add some relief, but even the cactus had wilted.
Rudi had been called away fifteen minutes ago, none too happy about it. Micah had shrugged, offering insults about the jerks upstairs.
"You know what they’re like, assholes one and all, and as for the Chorazin…" He’d ranted for a while and Rudi seemed to swallow it. Micah didn’t need to put up much of an act in any case. He didn’t trust the Chorazin a micron.
With Rudi gone, he focused on his Optron session; he needed to find out what had happened to the missing lighthouse markers he’d installed in the Ulysses’ matrix. But he was plagued by a menagerie of images: Antonia slapping him, Louise writhing on top of him, and Sandy coming out from behind the mirror. Sandy had gone into the main office to retrieve some spare underwear from a drawer in her desk, used the toilet, and had stolen back inside the hideaway, squirreling water and snacks from Kane’s drinks cabinet. There was nowhere else for her to go.
Micah couldn’t believe she’d been there for two nights, though she’d emerged once or twice in the small hours. There was no way out past the internal cameras. Clearly she knew who had killed Kane, and it scared the hell out of her. She wasn’t about to tell Micah, though he’d guessed Security were involved. She’d made Micah swear not to tell anybody she was there – reminding him of what she’d just witnessed between him and Louise – she would pick the right time to emerge.
He’d tried to persuade her to talk to Louise, and then suggested Vince. She said the Chorazin weren’t safe – Kane
had called them, too. Micah had promised to come back later to help her leave the building.
To calm down his mind, he used an old Japanese breathing technique from Optron School – breathe in five seconds, hold twenty, breathe out ten, then hold "empty" for a further ten, then repeat twice more. His mind settled, and he climbed into the Optron chair. This moment always reminded him of boarding a roller-coaster sled with his sister when he was a kid. He hooked in. As it powered up, there was a brief sensation of falling, as if the chair had dropped through the floor, then he was weightless, floating above a kaleidoscopic topography of metallic-hued geometric shapes and symbols. This was the Foundation, the rudimentary building blocks for Optronic landscaping. He fast-forwarded past it.
Skimming over multi-colored data landscapes, he sent mental commands to organize the flow, using shape imagery. Ninety-seven basic types of data were slip-streamed back from the Ulysses, and he and Rudi and others had long ago developed complex patterning techniques to enable all but a few data parameters to stay in the background, and then focus on a select few to look for irregularities. The program adapted to each individual, so even though they used the same technique, he and Rudi would see different landscapes. Micah soared over rolling fields, islands of dense trees, grazing animals, flocks of birds, rye and barley, rivers and streams, nostalgic structures such as farm houses, tractors, roads, and a steam railroad. An archaic and long-gone English landscape his mother used to show him in vids and even some actual printed books from her childhood in rural England.
He had no idea what Rudi saw in his own landscape. They never discussed it, because to do so could subconsciously interfere with the program, and in any case the whole point of having two analysts was to look for the same things in different ways.