Void All The Way Down: The Sliding Void Omnibus

by Stephen Hunt

  Lana watched her navigator peel off towards church, while Zeno left for whatever passed as shore leave for the reclusive android. ‘Come on,’ she sighed. ‘Let’s go and visit DSD.’ And let’s see if we can get away without burning up on re-entry this time.

  ***

  Polter was approaching the temple of the Unified Church when a gang of young humans stepped out from a break between two living units, blocking his path. Polter was the only one walking along the pavement at the moment. A few automated transport pods moved up and down the street, but their windows were mirrored, no doubt displaying entertainment feeds so the inhabitants wouldn’t have to notice the low rent neighbourhood they were passing through; insulated from guilty pangs at the poverty of the station’s lowest level. But this is where mother church so often does her business, amidst those that need succouring most. The kaggen navigator could see that the gangsters were dirt-poor even as he took in their feral pinched faces – chests a riot of competing animated adverts, clothes handed out free from a sponsorship store. These braves had hacked their clothes’ broadcast fibres, though, muting the sound – breeching the terms under which the dole shops passed them the shirts, jackets and trousers. It would take a brave store enforcer to call such scruffs to account, though. They would no doubt take one look at the illegally amped shock sticks clutched in their fists and decide that discretion was the better part of valour. Polter whistled in disgust as their leader stepped out of the crowd. He wore a home weaved monk’s habit, having shaved his head into a brutal tonsure. So, what Polter had heard on the ship was true then. Shocking, but true. Blasphemy in its rawest form.

  ‘Da mihi pecuniam tuam, spumae,’ snarled the gang leader.

  ‘I might forgive you your crude mangling of Latin,’ said Polter. ‘But your mockery of a churchman is something I find reprehensible.’

  The young thug lifted up his phone, a tiny black ceramic stick tied to his belt as though it was a bible. He abandoned his attempts at Pig Latin and indicated that his device was set to receive a transfer of funds from Polter’s device. ‘You walk our streets, you pay our toll.’

  Polter lifted up a manipulator hand and indicated the temple entrance less than a hundred feet away. ‘These streets belong to our Lord, young miscreant. You must present your hearts to the Holiest of Holies if you are to prosper. Offer me not violence but your penance.’

  ‘This is what I have for you,’ said the gang leader, jabbing the shock stick an inch short of Polter’s face, little sparks of energy flashing against his heavy carapace above. ‘What are you, some kind of snail-head? You’re carrying your house around on those mutant legs of yours? How many dollars you got on your phone for me?’

  ‘If you weren’t truanting quite so effectively, young human, you might have learnt that I am a Kaggen,’ said Polter. He seized the gang leader’s hand and pulled the weapon down onto the surface of his shell, a lightning flash of blue electricity coursing across his elaborately tattooed carapace as the weapon discharged in a couple of seconds. Jabbing down with a bony finger, Polter paralyzed the faux monk’s hand, removed the spent shock stick and tossed it aside in less time than it took the ruffian to scream in surprise. ‘I have felt the agony of the Holy of Holies as I have trespassed across his realm, I have broken the folds of hyperspace and been rewarded with infinite bliss. You think this mean spark you carry can touch me? It is less even than the marks of pollution spotting your soul.’

  The others charged in and had at the navigator with their sticks, a sulphurous stink filling the street as his shell danced with weapons discharge. Polter gave them long enough to realize that ten of their illegally amplified anti-mugging devices simultaneously striking his body were only going to yield the same result as their leader’s weapon. Then he unfurled his two vestigial fighting claws, filling the entire width of the pavement with the clacking of his razored pincers. ‘We are no longer a violent species, but I am sorely tempted to chastise your flesh!’

  Driven into a murderous rage through his loss of face, the gang leader ran at Polter screaming a string of incoherent blasphemies. The navigator gave him the blunt end of his right claw, lifting the chief off his feet and sending him sprawling against the wall of the nearest building. There the thug lay, moaning, while his pack of young bandits fled as Polter’s six legs pincered his bulk towards them. They were no longer facing an alien stranger begging to be liberated of his purse. They were fleeing an advancing organic tank, a species that had once battered and clawed its way to the top of its ecosystem’s food chain, on land and underwater.

  Scooping up the semiconscious thug, Polter walked unaccosted the rest of the way to church. Climbing the steps, double doors opened automatically in front of him. There was already a congregation at worship in the pews, mainly humans, a few representatives of other species who had embraced the unified church. Linking their destinies to the universal spirit. Hidden speakers in the eaves of the church began blaring out a hymn of welcome, recognising the identity of a lay preacher signalled by Polter’s presence. The vicar was a human female, sitting on the altar under the joined cross and crescent of humanity’s original church, the centre of the cross bisected by the lightning flash of the skirl’s religion. She beat passionately on the holy water drum of the kaggens, almost as well as one of his own species. A choir stood on her left, singing and wildly drubbing on their own instruments.

  ‘I have come,’ cried Polter. He tossed the miserable gang leader down on the aisle and drove him towards the altar with a few spear-like prods from his jabbing feet. ‘I share the miracle of transiting heaven, and I bring one who needs to repent. Forward, you wicked little tree monkey. Forward to find the Holiest of Holies within your foul heart.’

  ‘Brother!’ yelled the vicar, leaping down. She pulled the gang leader to his feet and was passed a drum which she forced into the thug’s hands. ‘Play, boy, play! Drum the evil out of your soul.’

  He stumbled and swayed, awed by the subliminal majesty of the hymn, and began drumming as the rapture swept him up, a deep sonic beat possessing his limbs. It was doubtless the first time the miscreant had been to church . . . but the addictive chemicals on the skin of the drum would ensure it wouldn’t be his last.

  Polter turned to face the congregation, their faces earnest and mesmerized. He battered on his tattooed shell with his two weapon claws; appendages of war remade into one the holiest tools of worship. Swords into ploughshares and pincers into drum sticks.

  ‘I have remade the universe to reach the lowest halls of heaven and the universe had remade me!’ cried Polter.

  Hallelujah, returned the congregation. Hallelujah! Polter was home.

  ***

  The part of Calder not yet inculcated to the wonders of the future by Zeno’s sim entertainments found the idea of so many people living in a metal ring circling a world quite bizarre. On a mental level, Calder knew the advantages of living in orbit rather than dirt-side were legion. Never too hot. Never too cold. Immune from pollution, tsunamis, hurricanes, ice ages, global warming, volcanic eruptions, landslides, rising sea levels, acid rain and harsh seasons. But the born-and-raised on Hesperus native in him found the concept just a little claustrophobic. On the Gravity Rose you were always aware you were on a ship – but her passages that stretched for miles and hydroponic gardens giving out to the void had never felt quite so out of place as this. On Transference Station it was as though the noises and smells of the most crowded city in Hesperus had been packed into decks crammed with houses and shops and factories and commercial concerns. The idea of living here, well, it just felt wrong in a way that serving on board the Gravity Rose hadn’t. Maybe because with just the six of them rattling around the Gravity Rose’s cavernous spaces, life on board the massive ship had never seemed as congested or busy as this. The habitat’s transportation tube brought Calder, Lana and Skrat to a fancy commercial district. Glass-fronted office buildings interspaced with boutique stores and hand-milled coffee shops, workers in dark sober business
suits. An area that seemed at odds with the bent nature of the commission Lana expected to negotiate. These corporate drones put Calder in mind of the priests back home, the same dead faces and intentness of purpose. The manner in which they burnt people here might involve articles of law rather than tar baths and petrol-filled cauldrons, but Calder suspected the results were frequently the same. It was all very Lives of the Planet Kings, albeit a slightly lower rent version of the lifestyles enjoyed by the sim show’s planetary plutocrats. Not an advert to be seen on any shirt or jacket here. Calder guessed that the executives of this neighbourhood didn’t source their clothes free from sponsorship stores and dole shops. Are the locals even exposed to marketing here? Perhaps this level’s inhabitants knew as a matter of instinct which little ceramic fingernail of a device displayed on a black cushion in a shop display was the current season’s must-have object of desire. Up until a month ago, Calder would have said that a brand was a burning hot length of iron used to mark your family’s slaves. But the royal-in-exile was learning fast.

  Lana led them to a rise of crystal-fronted offices, a marble-floored atrium with a wall of brass plaques mounted behind a curved desk. The organisations’ names looked exotic to Calder. They gave away little indication of purpose or function. The prince studied them, as if staring could decipher the firms’ line of business. Old Star Associates, TZL Analysis and Masterworld Group. Much like the boutiques outside, cryptic signalling only enhanced their status. If you had to ask, you had already failed to appreciate their value. To the rear of the reception sat a robot, a pretty woman’s face swimming pixelated inside its glass-screened head, octopus arms on the body flickering across of a bank of concealed instruments.

  ‘Trans-space Situations,’ announced Lana. ‘Three expected.’

  ‘Welcome Captain Fiveworlds,’ said the robot, the photo-realistic animation tilting inside the domed head, dazzling white teeth smiling at the three of them as if they were diplomats turning up at a foreign court. ‘Take the elevator to the top floor, please.’

  The lift was designed with retro-historic styling; wrought iron doors and ancient polished wood on walls and floor. Of course, to Calder even an antique lift was a future that had never arrived at his primitive world. What it took the party to might have been considered retro-historic too. Calder gawped in amazement at what lay beyond. An entrance hall, gleaming spotless white, dotted with hundreds of coin-size holographic projectors. This rig wasn’t being used for remote teleconference calls, though. It was being run to fill the chamber beyond with a cartoon landscape – trees with human faces in the bark swaying while impossibly cute animals gambolled across the grass – squirrels, rabbits and chipmunks. Wooden faces gurned at Calder, and through the passage of oaks, he could just make out a city beyond a set of hills, little puffs of smoke emerging from factors stacks. Fumes coiled up towards a golden sun hanging high in a cloudless sky; the sun glaring irately at the pollution and blowing it away whenever it drifted too close. Filled with this faux animated landscape, it was impossible to tell how big the room beyond really was. Calder could be standing in the entrance to something office-sized; or the space might be on the same scale as one of the cavernous cargo cambers back on board the Gravity Rose.

  A chime behind the prince announced that the lift doors had opened again, bringing someone else to the hallway. As he turned, a small metal device floated out of the elevator – a steel globe with a segmented trunk hanging off the sphere; shiny lenses for eyes on either side of the proboscis. Its burnished metal exterior was engraved with a series of currency signs, including the alliance T-bill. Another robot or a mobile holo-projector? Perhaps they weren’t going to meet Dollar-sign Dillard in person after all?

  Lana nodded towards the sphere. ‘DSD. It’s been a while.’

  ‘Captain Fiveworlds,’ hummed the sphere, dipping in the air, its proboscis waving from side-to-side to take in Calder and the first mate. There was something vaguely unsettling about the way the trunk moved, as if the organ was alive. An erection in metal saluting them. ‘Zeno isn’t here with you?’

  ‘Other business, apparently.’

  ‘A pity. I was hoping to ask him what he thought about the recent Oscar nominations.’

  ‘What, you haven’t got enough fanboys in the local data sphere to gossip with? What’s the system’s population up to these days? Twenty billion?’

  ‘Twenty billion freshly minted turds-for-brains, perhaps, each blogging as if their fatuous gushings are original and unique. Not a one able to bring Zeno’s vast experience to a discussion on cultural matters.’

  Calder gazed in confusion at the skipper talking to the sphere. ‘Are we to meet virtually? Is this a teleconference suite?’

  ‘Calder Durk, meet Dollar-sign Dillard. Calder here is trying out for the newbie’s position on the Rose.’

  Calder didn’t like the way Lana said that. It sounded a little too much like cabin boy, rather than the respect due the ex-ruler of an entire kingdom. But you’re not heir apparent anymore, used to having everyone from farmers to generals sucking up to you.

  ‘Interesting,’ came the voice from the sphere. ‘The boy’s accent is archaic, older than I am, even.’

  ‘We recently extracted the dear chap from a failed colony world,’ said Skrat. ‘An Iron Age level of technology and minimal contact with offworlders for the last thousand years or so.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the globe. ‘Linguistic drift, Mister Skeratt, of course. And no doubt suffering from the afterburn of a few nasty training viruses to bring him up to speed.’

  ‘I think I need to be injected with a few extra ones,’ said Calder, suspiciously eyeing the machine. ‘Are we not to meet face-to-face?’

  ‘Oh, but you are,’ bobbed the sphere, the metal trunk weaving excitedly about. The voice sounded amused. ‘What is left of my face is inside the pod you see before you.’

  ‘DSD is a cybernetic,’ said Lana. ‘Life extension treatments currently only take you to your seven hundredth birthday. If you want to go further, then…’ she encompassed the sphere hovering above the floor, ‘this is what’s required.’

  Calder recoiled in disgust. There are the remains of a human inside that thing? How can anyone consider inhabiting a floating urn, living?

  ‘Why not use the prevailing term for what I am,’ said Dollar-sign Dillard, ‘which is to say, pickled.’ He bobbed forward, arrowing towards the colourful hologram landscape of the chamber beyond. As he passed the projection system’s threshold, the cartoon form of a male humanoid cat replaced the steel globe . . . a tall feline sporting a red-banded hat titled at a jaunty angle and a cane swinging in his brown-furred hand. ‘That’s better. Come on in, let’s talk business.’

  ‘Why haven’t I seen anything like him in my sims?’ Calder whispered across to the skipper as they approached the animated landscape.

  ‘Because the shows you’ve been fed by Zeno are produced and set in alliance space,’ said Lana. ‘And getting pickled isn’t legal in the core worlds.’ They crossed the projection line and Lana’s body shimmered and changed, a cartoon analogue replacing her body. It was accurate enough – long blonde hair tied at the back, a full chest heaving out of her green ship overalls. The skipper’s eyes were exaggerated and oversized, though, long lashes blinking in a seductive manner sadly absent from the real Lana. The artificial intelligence controlling the animation had taken extra liberties with Skrat’s body, the proud lizard decked out with a dark top hat and a monocle fixed across his left eye. Calder’s own body was overlaid with a barbarian’s muscled form – furry trousers and a comically large axe. He would have frozen to death in ten minutes back home if he had tried to cross the land dressed so poorly.

  ‘Oh, it’s legal enough,’ said DSD, overhearing their conversation. Calder would have to be careful around this bizarre creature. The globe’s cybernetic hearing could probably eavesdrop on conversations on the opposite side of the station. ‘You’re just not allowed to hang onto your property or remain an
alliance citizen with full rights. Your thieving little excuses for grandchildren can throw you off the board of your own company and grab all your money.’

  ‘Only if you don’t loot the company first before fleeing over the border to the Edge,’ said Lana.

  ‘They deserved it,’ said the cartoon cat, poking an apple on a tree branch with his cane. A worm emerged from the apple’s side and angrily shook a miniature fist at them. DSD encompassed the surreal landscape with a munificent wave of his gloved paw. ‘This is my world. Inside here, I can be anything I want to be.’

  Calder got the feeling he was talking about the holo-chamber and Transference Station.

  ‘Then try being honest with me,’ said Lana. ‘What have you got to transport that’s so hot you’re willing to stake my docking fees up front merely for a little tête-à-tête?’

  ‘Really, Captain Fiveworlds, must you impugn my intentions every time I arrange a meeting with you? You come across as churlish.’