Netherspace

by Andrew Lane

  “Several,” Henk agreed. “I would activate the airlock during one of the times we’re in realspace calculating coordinates. There’s a shaped plasma charge that automatically makes a circular cut all the way through the foam to the outside. Once both airlock doors are opened the air pressure inside the SUT would pop the foam plug right out, and everyone would suffocate.”

  Tate shook his head. “The AI wouldn’t allow both doors to be opened if it detected a vacuum outside.”

  “Easy to get around,” Henk said. “I’d just disconnect the sensors in the airlock. By the time the AI raised the alarm, I’d have opened both doors using manual controls.”

  “Nice to see that you’ve given this so much thought,” Kara said, lightly, so as not to set Henk off. “We can agree there’s a range of means to terminate the mission. Okay, how about opportunity. Who’s been able to get to the fee since we left Earth?”

  “Who’s been here?” Nikki asked. “Maybe opened up the crate and taken a peek?” Her glance challenged each one in turn.

  “I have,” Marc said. Kara noticed that he tensed, as if he actually was going to take a step forward, like a child accused of something by a teacher, but he resisted.

  “Why?” Nikki challenged.

  “Curiosity, sheer and unadulterated. I’ve been checking out everything in the SUT.”

  “And me,” Kara added, partly to distract attention away from Marc. “Standard check on stores and weapons – I like to know what’s in all the crates in case I need something in a hurry, and I didn’t recognise this one.” She apparently considered for a moment. “Hang on – surely the SUT’s AI would have a record of everyone’s location during the journey, which means…” She seemed to catch herself. “Oh, not possible, right? The AI is down, courtesy of Leeman-Smith. Too bad.” Even if the record of the killer’s activities in the shipping container were still in the AI’s memory there was no way to access them if its higher functions were switched off. She blinked to activate her own AI while Nikki and Tate argued about restoring the SUT’s AI without Leeman-Smith’s involvement.

  > Is this right? she sub-vocalised. > About switching off the higher functions?

  < It’s not something we like to talk about. It’s like deep anaesthesia in humans; the heart, lungs, digestive system and endocrine system keep going – basic life support and manoeuvring – but there’s no thinking or analysis going on. The lights are on but there’s nobody home.

  > I can see why you don’t talk about it. Can you completely take over the SUT’s AI?

  < The other humans may see how powerful I am. That is a GalDiv secret.

  > I bought you in a damn computer store. Just do it.

  < It’s like having sex with someone you don’t like or respect. Still, that never bothered you. Okay. Remember, you owe me.

  Her AI had become more forceful. Kara suspected GalDiv had updated it without bothering to tell her. She refocused on the discussion. It seemed only Leeman-Smith could restore all the higher functions. And without them, navigating n-space would be impossible.

  < Or so he thinks, > Kara’s AI said. < Muppet.

  > Why?

  < Because I can restore enough functions to back-navigate to Earth. Or continue the mission.

  No emotion showed on Kara’s face. She wondered how soon before everyone made the obvious conclusion from her talk of opportunity, motive and means? The method could be useful for isolating a suspect – but also capable of framing an innocent person as the guilty party.

  “But we still need a new netherspace drive, right?” she interjected. “The new drive won’t know how we got here, so Nikki will have to work out our current coordinates, and Tate will have to program a series of jumps to the… to our eventual destination, whatever we decide that will be.” She openly winced, knowing the implications of what she was saying. No matter where they went, Nikki and Tate were required for the journey, while she, Marc and Tse were only needed for the mission. Continuing with the mission meant that Henk and Leeman-Smith were the only spare personnel who could take the place of the fee. Returning to Earth meant that she, Marc and Tse could be added in to the pool of unwilling candidates.

  Henk had made the same calculation and gazed thoughtfully at her. If it came to a vote, then he’d certainly plump for going back, so increasing his chances of survival from fifty to eighty per cent.

  Kara moved closer to the nearest crate with weapons in it. This wasn’t a democracy, she reminded herself. She had a duty to make sure the mission was at least attempted, if not satisfactorily completed. There would be no vote about their destination.

  “It’s not that bad,” Tate explained and Kara relaxed slightly. “The Gliese transfer the old mechanism’s data across to the new one as part of the callout service. All the journeys that the drive has made are stored in there. Returning to Earth just means reversing the data – reversing the route. I could teach anyone to do it.”

  Henk looked quietly pleased. His chances of making it back to Earth had just increased by nearly six per cent.

  “What usually happens if there isn’t a fee?” Kara asked. “Say you break down a second time. Or maybe it died naturally. Are the Gliese amenable to negotiation? Will they accept an IOU? Would they even know what one was? Have they ever shown any acts of charity to stranded space voyagers?” The first question she’d asked her AI when they discovered the fee was dead. The AI hadn’t been any help.

  “No and no and no,” Henk said. “No stranded SUT has ever been given a freebie. In theory the mission manager decides. In practice no staff would allow it. Either someone volunteers or we draw straws.”

  “Or someone is volunteered,” Kara suggested.

  “It’s happened,” Henk said cautiously. “Although never officially confirmed. Get enough spacers in a bar and eventually someone says how they were Up when a fire broke out that destroyed the netherspace drive and cooked the fee to a crisp. The staff picked the smallest person, tied them up and gave them to the Gliese when they arrived.” He looked around, as if expecting someone to dismiss his story as fantasy.

  “Oh, I heard that one,” Nikki said, nodding. “Although in the version I heard the fire also destroyed the food supplies so they had to eat the cooked fee while they navigated home.” She frowned. “Unlikely. SUTs have pretty good fire suppression on them.”

  “Anyone ever tried giving them a dead body?” Marc asked. He looked around at all the raised eyebrows. “Look, it’s worth a go, surely?”

  It was Nikki who replied. “We get this in training. Happened years ago. No dice. The SUT’s personnel had a dead body on ice ever since leaving Earth. The Gliese completely ignored it and the real fee had to be handed over. Back then the fee was awake, part of the staff. That’s why GalDiv developed long-term induced comas.”

  “Can you finish your drawing-room explanation?” Marc asked Kara and she knew he understood her intention.

  “No need,” Tate said. “It’s got to be Leeman-Smith.” The rest nodded, led to a unanimous conclusion that relied as much on emotional satisfaction as logic. If any of the staff suspected they’d been guided to decide that Leeman-Smith was guilty, they remained silent. The man was not one of the tribe.

  “Maybe,” Kara said briskly. “I need to talk to him. Tse, Henk, you’re with me. The rest of you do something useful. I’m assuming Leeman-Smith’s in his pod.” She walked over to a crate, undid the top and pulled out an assault rifle. “In case he’s locked himself in.”

  11

  Leeman-Smith was absorbed in the no-longer-sealed orders that Greenaway had given him before they left Earth. They were lying open on the reproduction Victorian desk, in the centre of the green blotter, precisely the same distance from each edge, perfectly squared away. Safe to say he was a man who preferred the comforting feel of the past.

  To: Mission Manager Leeman-Smith

  From: Director Greenaway

  1. This mission is of the utmost importance.

  2. Your position is as fig
urehead, therefore you are supernumerary.

  3. In the event of an emergency Major Kara Jones assumes command of the SUT RIL-FIJ-DOQ. If she is incapacitated then Captain Tse will take over in her stead.

  4. Only Major Kara Jones or Captain Tse can define a state of emergency.

  Supernumerary. Literally, above the number required. A polite way of saying “not needed on voyage”, as they had back in the days of the British Empire. Back when almost the entire world – certainly the entire civilised world – had been united under a single flag, Leeman-Smith thought. Now everything was fragmenting into the smallest units of governance that could feasibly exist, with webs of agreements and charters so complex that only damned AIs could keep track of them, linking them together for administrative and economic purposes. Computers and aliens controlled Earth, and nobody had realized. Or, if they had, nobody cared.

  He ran his forefinger over the bottom of the sheet of paper. No noticeable weave – probably mass-produced in a factory. Almost certainly not even real paper, but a plastic composite sprayed onto a vast tray and then sliced into neat rectangles by a laser. It had no weight to it; a breath of wind would waft it away. There were places in the Out that were pressing their own paper now, in small artisanal batches. Textured, and weighty in the hand. Unmistakably official. Ironic that the Out might be the last, best hope for humanity to survive. Hadn’t he read somewhere that the British government had continued to print its laws on vellum until quite late in the digital day?

  Then again, real paper decayed over time. So did vellum, eventually. The sheet in front of him would probably last forever. Longer than him, anyway. Certainly longer than his career.

  The envelope – neatly slit open by the jade-handled letter-opener that had been in the family for four generations – lay above the sheet of paper. There was a GalDiv seal on the envelope and Greenaway’s personal hologram cipher, to be scanned into the RIL-FIJ-DOQ’s computer for the AI to confirm authenticity. Except it couldn’t. Because it was offline.

  There was a knock at the door. Leeman-Smith realised that he had drawn his knees up to his chest, with his heels on the edge of the seat. He had his hands crossed over his chest, clutching his upper arms. Effectively he had taken up a foetal position. He felt disgust at his weakness, but also a hazy kind of warm calmness. It was a position he was very familiar with. The same position he’d adopted whenever his father belittled him, or his mother said something icily cutting. The same position he’d taken up every night in his room at college, studying for his engineering and management qualification, while the others on his corridor partied noisily in the common room or copulated even more noisily on the other side of the thin partition wall.

  He thought about ignoring the knock. What could they do – kick the door down? Then he remembered the weapons on board. Major Kara Jones certainly wouldn’t have forgotten them. An assault rifle could probably blow the lock and the hinges off the door. And she’d have no worries about shrapnel tearing a hole in the exterior sheeting: there were several shipping containers between him and realspace, plus a good ten feet of thick alien foam. It had once seemed safer that way, positioning himself right at the centre. Now it felt claustrophobic.

  For a moment he wondered if the Gliese had arrived. He felt himself straighten up, ready to meet and greet the alien repair staff – not that they’d respond, from what he’d heard about aliens, but appearances had to be kept up. The SUT staff would expect it. He slumped again as he realised that he would have heard the plasma charges slicing their way through the foam protection, and the heavy clunk of the Gliese airlock tube fastening around their own smaller airlock. No, they weren’t here yet.

  He looked around vaguely, saw the portrait of his grandfather, painted after the supreme sacrifice. For all Leeman-Smith knew, Granddad was still alive somewhere on an alien world. Gone to a better place, as heaven had been described back in the old days. Although just as foolish to replace heaven with some alien paradise peopled by the price of a netherspace drive.

  Frankly, he didn’t want to find out where they went. He had a strong feeling that Granddad was not in a good place. But Granddad was the nearest thing to space royalty there was, and Leeman-Smith would need leverage, an edge for the inevitable inquiry when they returned home to civilisation. Not that there’d be a bad result – he was sure of that. If he was judicious with his evidence he’d probably get a commendation.

  The thought calmed him. Leeman-Smith stood up, straightened by tugging the bottom of the uniform jacket he’d put on after disabling the AI. Checked himself in a mirror, noting that his nose was swollen and red. He’d make sure that Marc Keislack’s actions were highlighted at the inquiry. Striking a superior officer was a serious offence. He walked to the door and unlocked it.

  Kara Jones was standing outside, along with Tse and Henk. Kara’s assault rifle was casually pointed at the floor.

  Leeman-Smith nodded as if expecting this. “Well, well. Kara the enforcer, here to make sure I don’t misbehave. Nothing doing, I’m afraid. We’re going home. The decision has been made. The order has been given, and I expect it to be implemented.”

  “You do know I’m in command,” Kara said levelly, without moving the weapon.

  “In the event of an emergency, yes. But I don’t see one here. The Gliese will arrive, the call-out fee will be paid and we’ll return to Earth – as I originally said.”

  “The fee’s dead. Murdered, it seems. There is no fee. I declare an emergency.”

  He was aware of Tse and Henk concentrating on his every facial expression as he processed the shocking information. Fat lot of good it will do them!

  “The fact that you haven’t told me who did it means that you don’t know.” He frowned. “I don’t see a motive. Are you sure it was murder?”

  “We’re sure.” Kara paused, gazing at him in an evaluating way that, frankly, he found offensive. “I don’t suppose there’s anything you want to tell us, is there?”

  He snorted. “Disposing of the fee is, by its very definition, an irrational act, the act of a lunatic. Do I look like a lunatic?”

  “No,” she said carefully, “you don’t look like a lunatic. On the other hand, sabotaging the sideslip-field generator could be considered to be an irrational act, so you do have form.”

  He drew himself up to his full height, almost as tall as her. “Disconnecting the Gliese sideslip-field generator is the ultimate rational act, given that something in netherspace seems to want to tie our bodies in four-dimensional knots while we are still alive and then suck our brains out!” A direct quote from one of his favourite adventure vids. Leeman-Smith stopped to take a breath, realising that he’d raised his voice. “So, no – for the avoidance of any doubt, I didn’t kill the fee. I was counting on the fee being alive so we could return to Earth with minimal delay.” He glanced from Kara to Tse and from Tse to Henk. “It sounds like short-straw time. Let me know who wins.”

  He saw the contempt flashing in Kara’s eyes. He wanted to curl up into a ball again.

  “You surely don’t expect me to take part in the lottery?” he asked, with as much casual surprise as he could muster. “My dear woman, I’m the mission manager. If that cuts no ice with you then consider this – I’m the only one who can restore the AI to full health. And without that no one is going anywhere. You can’t navigate without a fully functioning AI.”

  “You mean you’re happy to die out here?” Kara’s contempt was overlaid with a caustic amusement.

  “Are you? Is anyone else? And what about your ‘highly important’ mission? As I said: we head cheerfully back to Earth, the RIL-FIJ-DOQ goes into the yard for a full inspection, GalDiv provides a new SUT and off you jolly well fuck again. I will be taking early retirement, cashing in my shares and staying on Earth.” He smiled at her with as much kindness as he could muster. “You know, Major Jones, I’m not actually sure drawing straws is wise. It could cause a great deal of tension amongst the participants. You should bear in mind tha
t Henk here is, well, frankly supernumerary for the trip home. You’ve probably already had that conversation. What say we select him and have done with it, eh?”

  “Are you jealous because we had sex?” she asked.

  Leeman-Smith felt his left eyebrow twitch. “I have no idea what you—”

  “Crap,” she said calmly. “You know exactly who had who, and when. And probably how as well.”

  “Whom,” he said, aware that the twitch had become a tremble. “Not who. Whom! How could I? Why would I?”

  “How is the system of spy-eyes you installed privately. Direct feed to your pod. In every cabin, every part of the SUT.” Her AI must have identified every one. “As for why,” she turned to Henk. “You’re the medic – you tell him.”

  “Basic inferiority complex,” Henk said, smoothly taking his cue. “Voyeurism makes him feel in control. Add an immature sex drive – stuck at puberty, I’d say. He might well be a virgin.”

  Leeman-Smith felt his control over the situation slipping, and he knew he could do nothing to get it back. All the frustrations, all the never-admitted fear of the last few days. All the slights and resentment – I am someone! I am not a pale shadow of my grandfather! – finally vomited up from his subconscious.

  “You disgusting man!” he shouted. “And you,” turning to Kara, spittle flying from his mouth. “You dirty little whore! Defiling my engine room with your—”

  Kara laughed into his face. “You’re just pissed off because no one wanted you.”

  “And who could blame us?” Tse asked sweetly. He turned to Kara. “I mean, just the thought of him naked…” He shuddered dramatically. “Quite horrid.”

  “Just like his grandfather,” Kara agreed. “Two sad little men whose only use is to be swapped for something better.”

  “Bitch!” Leeman-Smith screamed and leaped through the doorway at her, hands outstretched like claws, desperate to hurt, to maim…

  He felt a sudden viciously sharp pain in his knee and fell sprawling to the floor, then gasped as the point of a boot connected with the flesh over his right kidney. When the nausea retreated he found himself lying on his back, staring at Kara Jones. He began to sit up.