Judas Unchained cs-2

by Peter F. Hamilton

  The ribbons in his virtual vision waved about like seaweed fronds, aligning themselves onto the street. He took a breath and walked out. The oblong shell that contained Isabella Halgarth slid out after him, its base half a meter off the floor.

  “Oh, neat,” he muttered. It wasn’t particularly impressive, even though such a feat was currently beyond human technology. But then every High Angel dome had artificial gravity; if you could generate it you could certainly manipulate it.

  With the virtual vision display guiding him, Hoshe Finn walked along the dim alien streets. There were more curves, this time, he thought, and the junctions weren’t all right angles. Other than that it was the same interminable featureless metropolis, illuminated by row after row of small colored lights set along the bottom of the walls.

  He wound up facing a sheer cliff of metal, identical to all the others. The lights along the foundation were purple, as before. A vertical line split open in front of him, widening to allow him through. Inside was the same circular space with a glowing emerald floor, and a ceiling lost in the overhead shadows.

  It was Qatux waiting for him, of that there was no mistake. The Raiel’s health hadn’t improved since they last met. Several of its medium-sized tentacles were coiled up tight; the large pair at the bottom of its neck rested on the floor, as if they were helping to prop it up. Given the way the big body was sagging on its eight stumpy legs, Hoshe thought that might be a correct assessment. Not that it should have any trouble holding its own weight; judging by how tight the brown hide was stretched over the skeleton platelets it was suffering from the Raiel equivalent of anorexia. One of the five eyes was permanently shut, with a blue rheum leaking from the clenched eyelid; the remaining four eyes were twisting around independently.

  Hoshe bowed to the creature, feeling enormously sorry for it. You poor desperate thing, if you had to get addicted to anything, it should never be humans, we’re not worth it. “Hello, Qatux, thank you for seeing me,” he said formally.

  Qatux raised its head. “Hoshe Finn,” it sighed as air gusted through the pale wrinkles of flesh that made up its mouth region. “Thank you for returning.” Two of its eyes turned in sequence to gaze at the shell. “Is this her?”

  “Yes.” Hoshe’s e-butler sent a code to the shell’s array, and the top dilated. Isabella was floating in a clear gel, eyes closed, slim tubes reaching in through her nostrils. Hundreds of fiber-optic strands had been inserted into her shaven skull, forming a white gossamer crown. Long incisions on her arms, legs, and torso were covered with strips of healskin that were even paler than her Nordic skin. She looked so peaceful she was almost angelic. A vicious contrast to when she’d last been conscious.

  “Her power cells have been removed,” Hoshe said, “and the weapons neutralized. She’s perfectly harmless now.”

  “I understand.”

  “The suspension shell array can raise her consciousness to whatever level you want. If you need her to be awake, nerve blocks can prevent her from moving.” Somehow, he felt as if he were betraying the human girl by surrendering her to the alien in such a helpless state.

  “That will not be necessary. A neural cycle approximating deep sleep is all I require.”

  “Very well. We need to know what is in her brain, why she did what she did. Paula suspects there is some kind of alien presence, or conditioning.”

  “A valuable thing to learn. I have never tasted the memories of a living human brain before. I thank you for this gift.”

  “It’s not a gift,” Hoshe said sternly, marveling that he found the courage to be so forthright. “This is a service we ask you to provide, which benefits you in kind. Even so, we need complete reliability from you in this case.”

  “And you shall have it, Hoshe,” the soft voice wheezed.

  “How long do you think it will take?”

  “That cannot be answered accurately until I have begun my examination. From what Paula has told me, the method of subornation does not appear to be a subtle one.”

  “Is there…” Hoshe scratched at the back of his neck, embarrassed to ask. “Any danger it could take you over?”

  “A mental virus? Moving from host to host, replicating and spreading. No, Hoshe, you need not worry. We Raiel have faced such incorporeal entities before. Our mentalities are not susceptible to such assaults. Even so, I will take care.”

  “Thank you.” Hoshe bowed again, suddenly desperate to ask when and where the Raiel had encountered such things. The wall behind him parted to let him out into the funereal street. And that was it. He just wished he had more faith in the alien junkie.

  ***

  It was dawn at the Tulip Mansion. Justine sat in the big octagonal conservatory in a mauve sweatshirt and baggy jeans, curled up on her battered leather couch as if it were a child’s comfort toy. She couldn’t stop her hands from stroking her belly, giving reassurance. To herself or her child, she wasn’t sure which.

  Gore walked in, dressed in a simple white shirt and dark brown pants. He leaned over the couch and gave Justine a light kiss. She gripped his forearm. “Thanks, Dad.”

  He gave a shrug, as close to embarrassment as she’d seen him in the last two hundred years. “Nothing to it. His wetwiring was all cheap black market shit. You could have beaten him off with a wet towel.”

  “I was in a wet towel,” she said sardonically.

  “Well, there you go then, you didn’t even need me.”

  There was a small cough, and Justine looked up to see Paula standing at the entrance. “Senator, I’m glad to see you’re all right.”

  “No thanks to your bunch of asshole incompetents,” Gore snapped. “What kind of piss-poor operation are you running? I’m not surprised Columbia kicked you out of the navy if this is an example of your results.”

  “Dad,” Justine scolded.

  “Your father is correct,” Paula said. “The lapse in security is completely unacceptable. It appears that the Starflyer agent was waiting in your fridge; most of the food inside had been consumed. He must have been in there when the Senate Security team installed the upgrade. They will be suspended pending a disciplinary hearing.”

  “And that will help how, exactly?”

  “Dad, just drop it.”

  “Ha.” Gore waved a hand in disgust. “Thanks to the Investigator’s screwup I’ve got to put up with every news show on the unisphere showing the recording of me walking around Park Avenue with my dick hanging out.”

  “And executing the assassin,” Paula said.

  Justine gave the mansion’s array an order, and the octagonal room’s glass walls vanished behind a gray haze.

  “That motherfucker was trying to kill my daughter; he’s already killed my son, and countless others. You think I’m upset about killing him?”

  “No. But the NYPD must show due process.”

  “I talked to the detectives on the scene. If they want to know anything else they’ve got my lawyer’s unisphere address.”

  “Enough,” Justine snapped. “Both of you. I’m shaky enough without you two shouting at each other in front of me. The big question is if we now have enough evidence to force the Senate to take notice of the Starflyer.”

  “The proof is certainly building,” Paula said. “We’ve exposed Tarlo, which will help convince the Halgarths that this is not some personal power struggle. And people will be curious who sent the assassin against you, Senator.”

  “Damn right,” Justine said. She’d already had several calls from her fellow senators, and one from Patricia Kantil, who’d expressed the President’s concern at the incident. “They’ll expect a report from Senate Security.”

  “So what are you going to say?” Gore asked.

  “It still depends on Nigel Sheldon,” Paula said. She peered in at the crescent-shaped aquarium, watching the fish gliding around. “If we announce the Starflyer’s existence based on the evidence we have, we have to have at least one Dynasty supporting us. If the Sheldon Dynasty goes against us, we’ll h
ave lost every advantage we have. I know Admiral Kime believes it is real, but he has his hands tied by corrupted evidence.”

  “Wilson knows it’s real?” Gore asked. “That’s got to be a big bonus.”

  “But I don’t understand Sheldon’s position,” Paula said. “Everything he has done points to him being concerned for the Commonwealth. Yet Thompson was convinced it was his office that had blocked the Far Away cargo inspections I’d been pressing for.”

  “I’m sorry,” Justine said. “But I still can’t lock that down.”

  “Confront him,” Gore said. “Put him in a position where he has to make a hard choice. That should tell us who he’s playing for.”

  “That seems reasonable,” Paula said. “We still don’t know exactly how the Starflyer controls humans. I’m expecting an answer to that shortly.”

  “I hope you’re not relying on Senate Security to supply it,” Gore said.

  Justine gave him a fierce look.

  “No. We secured Isabella Halgarth. Her mind is being examined by the Raiel for me.”

  “Oh,” Gore said, slightly taken aback. “Okay, that’s a decent pedigree.”

  “Do you have any ideas how we can approach Sheldon?” Paula asked.

  Gore gave Justine a hard look.

  “Me?” she asked.

  “Yeah, you. Nobody in the Commonwealth is going to say no to meeting you right now.”

  “I’m not sure we should be exposing the Senator to any further possible confrontation with Starflyer agents,” Paula said.

  “Hear hear,” Justine muttered.

  “Campbell,” Gore said quickly. “Use him. He’s senior enough to get a direct line to Nigel.”

  “All right,” Justine said. “I can probably arrange that.”

  “Have you got any idea what the Starflyer’s next move will be?” Gore asked.

  “Not specifically,” Paula said. “I can only go by earlier Guardian releases. If they are correct it will return to Far Away. I already have a Senate Security covert observation team in place on Boongate watching for just such an attempt.”

  “I’ll reinforce it with our own people,” Gore said. “If we don’t gather enough open political support to force Doi into acknowledging the threat we may have to shut the wormhole down by ourselves to prevent it going through.”

  “That’s risky,” Justine said.

  “Better than being dead, girl.”

  “Where is Mellanie right now?” Justine asked.

  “She went to LA with a Senate Security escort,” Paula said. “She said she had to collect Dudley Bose. She was worried about him.”

  “The reporter whore has got her claws into Bose?” Gore said. “Christ!”

  “I think she should be brought in,” Justine said. “Investigator, if you’re finally satisfied she’s not working for the Starflyer, she could be helpful to us. She obviously has connections of her own. We need information as much as we need allies, however unlikely they are.”

  “I’ll certainly suggest that to her,” Paula said.

  “And I’ll call Campbell,” Justine said.

  ***

  Stig rolled out of bed just before dawn. His e-shielded room at the top of the rental house was almost empty; whitewashed plaster walls, bare carbon floor panels, a crude dresser with a big china bowl and a jug of water on top. Shuttered doors opened onto a tiny Juliet balcony that gave him a view over the red tile rooftops of Armstrong City’s Scottish district. Grime-laden solar-charged globes rested in a series of alcoves at shoulder height around the walls, their glow diminished to a moonlight spark after eight hours of darkness. As he always left the balcony doors closed during the day, there was never enough light to fully recharge them.

  He crossed the room and swung the thick burgundy curtain away from the arch that led to the tiny bathroom. A couple of polyphoto bulbs came on as he stepped in, filling the room with green-tinted light. Because of the city’s lack of basic infrastructure, the toilet was a self-contained unit, an algaereactor made by an EcoGreen company on Earth over a century ago. Whatever biological processes went on in the compostor chamber behind the wall, the algae and bacteria certainly needed refreshing. The smell that drifted up made Stig’s eyes water every morning. He peered at himself in the mirror, not liking the face he saw. It had been reprofiled after the Oaktier to LA run, giving him small flat ears, a squashed nose, and skin that was a couple of shades darker than his original tone. The thick stubble was now ebony, while his close-cut hair remained mouse-brown. His own mother really hadn’t recognized him when he returned.

  The rental house got its water from big semiorganic precipitator leaves that hung from the eves, which was heated by a row of solar panels up on the flat roof. Half of the hot tank had been emptied by his fellow residents last night, but Stig was always among the first to rise in the morning, so the water that squirted out of the shower nozzle was reasonably warm.

  He stood under the spray and started to wash himself down. Water on Earth had always fascinated him, the speed it fell, the hard strike of droplets on skin. Here on Far Away water was a much gentler substance.

  Olwen McOnna squeezed into the small cubical. She was only a few centimeters shorter than he was, with a lean slim body that made her heavy breasts even more prominent. Red star OCtattoos glowed on her round cheeks sending trailers coiling down her neck, which made her gaunt face even more hawkish. She pressed up against him, and he felt the rough scar tissue on her belly where the healskin had recently come off the burn she’d received when her force field skeleton was overloaded by a plasma shot. There were other scars he knew of on her body, acquired over the last few weeks. He had his own personal reminders of the increasing violence in Armstrong City; his left arm was still difficult to move.

  “The morning,” Olwen said, “the one and only time men can always be relied on.” Her hand slid down to his erection, guiding the tip of his cock between her legs. He gripped her buttocks, lifting her feet off the shower floor, pushing her back into the tiled wall as he impaled her. She snarled in rough delight; her arms twined around his neck to hold herself in place as he thrust repeatedly.

  They clung to each other for a while after the climax, water splashing over both of them as tingling nerves returned to normality.

  “Do you think that finally got me pregnant?” she mumbled, lowering her feet. “It certainly felt good.”

  “Well, thank the dreaming heavens for that.”

  “If I was pregnant, you’d have to take me off active duty.”

  “Is that why you’re fucking me?”

  She grinned. “You got a better reason?”

  Actually, he didn’t, but he could hardly say that. They’d started sleeping together weeks ago. The constant danger, the adrenaline buzz, the fear, it all kicked the primal urges into high gear. And he knew damn well she didn’t want to quit active duty.

  Olwen turned around, letting the spray wash down her back. Stig finished soaping himself down, and stepped out. She joined him a minute later when he was almost finished toweling himself dry.

  A long list of messages had arrived in his hold file overnight. He started working through them, building up a summary of events. The Institute had attacked another two clan villages in the Dessault Mountains, with thankfully few casualties. The clans were watching the movements of the Institute troops closely now; they’d been caught out too many times when the raids started, suffering awful fatalities. Surprise ambushes were becoming rare, although combating the Institute forays was using up a lot of clan members, members who should be helping to prepare for the planet’s revenge right now. Stig didn’t have as many people working in his teams as he would have liked.

  There had been a couple of disturbances in the city during the night, not quite large enough to qualify as riots, but news about the navy ships had stirred up the general level of anxiety. Shops had been looted, some fires started, cars stolen and used as barricades. Sparky residents flung missiles at police and Institute troops
.

  The teams that Stig had on duty during the night had been busy tracking Institute troop movements. On the map in his virtual vision it was clear what they were doing, consolidating their hold along a broad passage between First Foot Fall Plaza and the start of Highway One outside the city.

  An Institute-assisted police team had raided a warehouse in the docks. Stig recognized it as one he’d been using to store equipment in right up until three days ago. The Institute was definitely picking up its intelligence-gathering operation.

  There had also been arrests in the Chinese district on various warrants. Three of those taken into custody worked for the Barsoomian residence. The Institute wasn’t yet challenging the Barsoomians directly, but they were definitely chipping around the edges.

  The Governor had certified another three police precinct assistance contracts with the Institute.

  “Shit.”

  “What’s the matter?” Olwen asked.

  “The Governor signed over 3F Plaza.”

  “To the Institute? Fuck it!”

  “Yeah.” He pulled a fresh set of shorts and a T-shirt from his small bag, then put his force field skeleton suit over them and covered that with a checked shirt and baggy jeans. The long leather biker jacket he’d bought in StPetersburg on Earth went on top. He slipped a slim harmonic blade into the top of his hiker boots. His ion pistols and high-velocity machine carbines slotted into their holsters to be covered by the zipped-up jacket. Grenades clipped into his belt. His arrays with their sophisticated sensors went into his chest pockets. Steel sunglasses with enhanced display functions hung on a purple surfer band around his neck.

  Olwen finished dressing for the day in a similar fashion, with baggy sulphur-yellow pants and a green rainjacket with North Sea Power Surfers printed across it.

  They left the apartment block together. The streets were virtually deserted, with shopfronts still covered in fine carbon grilles. Ancient civicbots rolled slowly along the pavements, gathering up rubbish and washing away yesterday’s grime. A few early delivery vans raced along the empty roads. Buses with the first shift workers slumped into their seats rumbled past in clouds of diesel fumes.