The Temporal Void (ARC)

by Peter F. Hamilton

  However, the base had never been legally decommissioned, so technically it remained Commonwealth territory. It was a reserve station in case the Commonwealth was ever threatened again; its array of emergency communication systems maintained by a smartcore and an ageing regiment of bots. There were no humans there any more.

  The sensors showed Paula a cluster of long crumbling concrete blockhouses at the centre of strangely straight lines that stretched out into the desert. After a thousand years exposure to Kerensk's ferocious sun by day and freezing air each night even the strongest construction materials crumbled away. The desert was slowly constricting around it. Only the blockhouses remained intact, switching on a small force field once every couple of years or so when the desert finally summoned up enough energy to spin up another sandstorm.

  Kingsville reminded Paula of Centurion Station.

  The Alexis Denken touched down on a dedicated landing zone that was simply a flattish area of sand and loose rock. She floated down out of the main airlock, with a trolley-sledge hovering behind her. The air was as hot as she'd expected. She put on a pair of silver sunshades against the violet-tinged sun.

  A dull metal door on the nearest blockhouse slid open with a grating sound of small stone particles being crunched somewhere in the actuators. She gave it a glance as she went inside, wondering why they didn't use malmetal. It closed behind her and the trolley-sledge. Inside, there was less evidence of decay, though it had obviously been decades since the air conditioning had been on. Fans were now making odd groaning sounds behind their grilles as power was fed into their motors. Light panels came on in the ceiling, revealing an empty rectangular room with a single lift door ahead of her.

  Paula's u-shadow gave the Kingsville smartcore her authority code, and the lift doors flowed open. The base itself was buried three hundred metres below the desert. Thankfully, the lift ride down was a smooth one.

  The transdimensional communication systems were housed in eight caverns that radiated out from a central engineering hub. Paula walked past the big silver-cased machines in cavern5, followed by the trolley-sledge. The chamber was completely silent. She couldn't even hear a mild power hum despite the huge energy flows her field scan revealed to her behind the silver casings.

  Tucked away at the end of an ancillary chamber was another lift. It took her down another hundred metres to the oldest section of the base, comprising a single fortified compartment. This deep shelter had been designed to survive a nuclear strike by the Primes; it had force fields and molecular binding generators reinforcing the superstrength carbon walls. None of them had been switched on for over five hundred years; the smartcore didn't have the resources to maintain them at combat readiness. It didn't really matter, all they protected was an ancient secure storage vault dating back to the Starflyer War.

  The Navy command at the time had estimated loss rates among the insurgency forces would be at least eighty per cent. Because of that the last thing every soldier did before being shipped out to their combat zone was to make a copy of their memories so they could be re-lifed if they didn't return. Kingsville's vault still retained the memories of those thirty thousand soldiers.

  Paula's integral force field was on when the lift doors opened. She stood perfectly still scanning round with her biononic field functions. The air down here was foul; life support had broken down seven hundred years ago, and hadn't been repaired. There was no need, only bots moved through the ancient compartment. Two light panels out of thirty came on in the ceiling; it was as if the patches of floor they illuminated were suspended in deep space.

  Paula's field scan function couldn't detect any evidence that the environment had been disturbed by a human for centuries, but having the scan pick up any proof was remote at best. Eight sensor bots deployed from the trolley-sledge, little globes that glowed with a weak violet light as they drifted forward through the air, sprouting long gossamer strands woven with sensitive molecular chains. The strands floated about like hair in water, probing the air.

  Her u-shadow inserted itself into the chamber's ancient network and began to interrogate the management routines. Even with time-resistant fail-soft components and multiple redundancy there was little left functioning. Just enough to maintain viability. At the present rate of decline even that would be lost in another hundred years, and the Navy would have a decision to make.

  A batch of forensic remotes darted out of the trolley-sledge. They zipped about through the darkness like cybernetic moths, settling on the physical sections of the network designated by Paula's u-shadow. They extruded active-molecule tendrils that wormed through the fragile casing to meld with the inert components below and began a very detailed analysis.

  The network database gave Paula the location of the secure store she was here to investigate. Twelve hundred years ago, the Cat had sweated away her training sessions in the hot desert sun above before being deployed to Elan. Like everyone else, before she left she'd downloaded her memories in case she didn't come back.

  Paula walked through the darkness, trepidation stirring her heart. The compartment was filled with row upon row of sealed shelving, containing thirty-thousand small armoured boxes. She stopped in front of the one holding the Cat's memorycell. Two forensic remotes were attached to it, their tendrils examining the twenty-centimetre door and its lock. The tendrils withdrew, and the remotes glided away to hover beside Paula.

  'Open it,' she told her u-shadow.

  It took such a long time she wasn't sure the mechanism still worked - in fact she was quite impressed the network was still connected to the majority of the stores. Eventually the box buzzed as if there was a wasp trapped inside; then the little door hinged open and pink-tinged light shone out. The memorycell was sitting on a crystal pedestal, a neat grey ovoid three centimetres long.

  Paula sent one of the forensic remotes in. It sat on the rim of the box, and extended its tendrils around the memorycell. Then the fragile strands were infiltrating the casing to probe the crystal lattice beneath. For something so old, the memorycell had endured surprisingly well. The company which had manufactured it twelve hundred years ago could finally justify their eternity survival marketing boast, Paula thought as her u-shadow displayed the results in her exovision.

  DNA encrypted data confirmed the memories contained in the memorycell belonged to Catherine 'the Cat' Stewart, assigned to squad ERT03. Paula waited for twenty minutes while her forensic bots completed their analysis of the vault before calling ANA: Governance.

  'I was right,' she said. 'Somebody made a copy.'

  'Oh dear,' ANA:Governance said.

  'Quite. They were very good. There's almost no trace. I had to analyse dead network components for clues. A file search was conducted a hundred years ago in the network. And a quantum atomic review of the memorycell confirms a complete read with a corresponding timeframe.'

  'So it is her.'

  'The Accelerators must be very desperate indeed.'

  'We already know that.'

  'This isn't the Cat that went on to found the Knights Guardian; that was an older smarter personality. This is an early one.'

  'Do you believe the difference is relevant?'

  'I'm not sure. I expect this one to be… raw. Sholapur was confirmation of that.'

  'Are you sure? Remember why you finally arrested the Cat.'

  'Good point.'

  'What's next?'

  'I'm not sure. I think we need to concentrate on Chatfield. He's the only link we have between the Accelerators and the Prime, and the Conservatives are clearly interested in him. I shouldn't have allowed myself to get distracted by this.'

  'Very well. Good luck.' The link closed.

  Paula stood in front of the open box for a long time, staring at the grey memorycell. Eventually she put her hand in and took it off the pedestal, holding it in front of her face. 'This isn't going to end well,' she told it, and let go. The little memorycell hit the ancient enzyme-bonded concrete floor and skittered a few centimet
res before coming to a halt.

  Paula stomped down hard, enjoying the crunch it made under her heel as it burst into minute fragments. Guilty enjoyment, admittedly, but then: 'Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing in order to do what's right,' she told the dead vault.

  * * * *

  Retracing her path through the Kingsville base, Paula considered ANA's claim about the Cat's personality. Perhaps it was right. Perhaps the Cat was utterly changeless. She'd learned to justify herself with the founding of the Knights Guardian, developing into an astute political leader. But was that just another form of manipulation. There had never been any need for her to adapt and evolve, she was always bending the universe to her will.

  Paula always kept the memories of Narrogin with her, not particularly wanting to remember but knowing she should not forget. Narrogin was the 'contract' which had finally made the Senate issue an unlimited warrant for the Cat, and to hell with the political consequences. There was a huge sectarian struggle going on to determine the planet's ideological future, and one side brought in a team of Knights Guardian to help their cause.

  The Cat had chosen to lead it. Her final act to prove the strength of her employer's cause was the Pantar Cathedral crisis, where she took twenty-seven opposition councillors hostage along with their families. She'd promised to execute the families unless political concessions were made, then she started slaughtering them anyway. Even some of her own team rebelled at that. A disastrous firefight erupted as three Knights Guardian attempted to protect the children against her and the loyalists.

  Paula had walked through the cathedral five hours later. Despite every crime she'd witnessed, every evil she'd seen, nothing prepared her for the atrocity performed under the cathedral's elegant domed ceiling with its crystalline ribbing. She knew there and then that the Cat had to be stopped, no matter the immunity granted her by Far Away's government and the physical protection afforded her by the Knights Guardian. Standing amid the pools of blood and burned out pews, Paula had been prepared to go against a great many Commonwealth laws to bring about fundamental justice. She didn't have to, of course, the Senate gave her a perfectly legal validation for tracking down the Cat and bringing her to the specially convened court in Paris.

  It was during her next rejuvenation that Paula had undergone her most radical genetic reconfiguration, removing some of the deepest psychoneural profiling to obtain that degree of freedom she'd acknowledged was necessary in the cathedral. An irony Paula always took a wry pleasure from; that it was the Cat's intractability which had goaded her into the greatest evolutionary step necessary for personal survival in a constantly changing universe.

  Alexis Denken rose from the crumbling ruins of Kingsville, accelerating at thirty gees into the hot pellucid sky. Paula watched the old base dwindle away with mixed feelings. It was good to finally confirm she was up against the Cat, but that knowledge might just have been bought at the expense of time she didn't have.

  The planet's curvature slid into the visual sensor image as sin-raced away. Paula was tempted to head over to Kaluga on the southern ocean. Morton still lived there, part emperor part industrialist and by now only a very small part human. The massive company he'd built up made him the nearest thing Kerensk had to a chief executive. She could ask him what he knew about Kingsville and any quiet visitors there. After all, his own memories were down there in the vault. He'd keep a subtle watch, she was sure.

  Tempting… but again it was personal. The trail was a hundred years old. Cold even by her standards.

  She opened a link to Digby. 'Where is Chatfield?'

  'Still in deep space,' Digby replied. 'But the course is holding constant. We're heading for an unregistered system just inside the Commonwealth boundary.'

  'I'm on my way.'

  * * * *

  Purlap spaceport was a small plateau on the eastern side of the capital city. As the planet had only been open to settlement for a hundred and fifty years, it was as neat and level as any development on a new External world could be. Civil engineering crews had cut the last few rocky peaks down flush, then trimmed the edges, leaving a perfectly circular surface two kilometres in diameter. The winners of the terminal building architecture competition had designed a shocking-pink cluster of bubbles arranged like some neon-Gothic molecular structure. One of the lumpy limbs sticking out at a strange angle from the crown of tripod legs had a studio cafe that occupied the entire last bubble. A panoramic strip window gave a near-360 degree view of the sheer rock circle. It was an excellent observation point for starship enthusiasts. Some spent half a day sitting at a table watching the different shapes arrive and depart.

  Marius had been there for five hours before the images of the battle over Bodant park overwhelmed every Unisphere news show. He had a thirty second advance warning from his own agents on Viotia that Living Dream had got a fix on Araminta through the gaiafield. They flew their capsule to the exact location at mach three - quite dangerous within a weather dome force field. Unfortunately, speed and determination didn't count for much in the occupied city these days. They weren't even the second team to reach the park. And when they did, their communications dropped out as the dogfight began and three of them jumped into the hysterical crowd of fleeing rioters.

  He accessed in amazement as various agents went head to head. It was a domino effect, once the first clash erupted in a blaze of disruptor fire and atom laser shots everyone started to activate their biononics and weapons enrichments. Stealth was abandoned within seconds. Agents went for each other like frenzied animals, desperate that no one else should collect the prize. None of Major Honilar's welcome team even made it past the first three minutes.

  Out of the five people he had on the ground, only one survived the clashes to report back. 'She's gone. A team covered for her while she ran off. There are no embedded sensors left anywhere round here, someone took them out. I don't know where she went. Neither do the Ellezelin troops. They're going crazy.'

  'I see that,' Marius murmured, sipping his foamed chocoletto. Exovision was showing him images from reporters on the edge of the park. It resembled some kind of historical war zone with smoking craters, smashed trees, ruined buildings blazing, and people. Injured people. Weeping people. People limping along. Shocked walking-comatose people being shouted at by Ellezelin paramilitaries. Bodies lying on the ground untended. Parts of bodies. Medic zones being established. Capsules circled low overhead, holoprojectors flooding the devastated park with monochromatic light and strobing lasers. Still Cleric Phelim wouldn't allow ambulance capsules to fly.

  That, along with the casualty figures and violence, was going to bring a colossal amount of political pressure on Cleric Conservator Ethan. Possibly an irresistible amount.

  'She did remarkably well for a complete novice without a single enrichment,' he commented.

  'I have a scan of the team that helped her.'

  Marius examined the file images that arrived in his storage lacuna. Eight figures surrounded by flares of energy, battling it out with appalling savagery. Three of them - two men and a woman - had exceptionally powerful biononics he noted. His u-shadow began to run identification checks through Accelerator files - which produced some very interesting results.

  'Thank you,' Marius said. 'I'll send some replacements to reinforce you. They should be there in a day. Meanwhile, please don't forget your objective. Just because she escaped this time doesn't mean we give up the hunt. You have an advantage now, the welcome team is out of the picture, along with most of our serious opponents.'

  'Yes sir.'

  Marius's u-shadow opened a secure link to the Cat's ship. 'I have a new assignment for you.'

  'Is this before or after I eliminate Troblum for you, and find Inigo?'

  'Troblum is beginning to look irrelevant. And I'm waiting to see if Inigo survived.'

  'Aren't you the capable one, darling?'

  A flicker of annoyance crossed Marius's features. He disliked the way she irritated him, and that it was
all deliberate. 'Did you access the tussle on Viotia?'

  'Yes. Hardly the clash of Titans.'

  'Actually, it was rather interesting. Living Dream found Araminta. She got away. She was helped by a team of Knights Guardian.'

  'Really? I trust they won the fight.'

  He smiled down at the ultradrive starship he was watching. The Cat was remarkably easy to influence. 'Better yet, it looked like they're working for an old friend of yours, Oscar Monroe.'

  'Oscar the Martyr? I didn't even know he'd been re-lifed.'

  'Some time ago, actually. And living the quiet life ever since. Interesting psychology. Who would suspect him of getting involved in events again?'

  'Which makes him ideal for low-visibility operations.'

  'Quite. And there's a very small number of people he'd do that for. After all, he would only sign on for a worthy cause.'

  'Brilliant deduction, my dear. No one would expect him to be working for Paula.'

  'Please remember our prime concern is to deliver Araminta to Living Dream.'

  'Was that a pun?'

  'Not intentional.'

  'I'm on my way.'

  After the link closed, Marius regarded the starship which the Delivery Man had parked on the seamless rock for several minutes. He decided he was wasting his time. The ship was probably a contingency - the Conservatives didn't know if Aaron and Inigo had survived any more than he did. In which case there were passive sensors he could deploy to watch the ship remotely. He used a coin card to pay his tab, and glided away from the table.

  * * * *

  Troblum backed out of the compartment, bending as low as he could, yet still managing to knock the back of his head on the malmetal rim as he went through.