Greg Bear - [Eon Trilogy 1] - Eon (rescan) (v1.0)

by Neal Asher

  "Where are we going?" she asked.

  "We'll enter a dock in Axis Nader."

  "How large is the city?"

  "Do you mean, how extensive, or how many people?"

  "Both, I suppose."

  "It stretches forty kilometers down the Way, and it has a population of about ninety million—twenty million corporeal,

  embodied; seventy million stored in City Memory."

  "Oh." She turned back to the screen and watched in silence as the craft moved inward, past the doubled cubes and along the dark side of the rotating cylinder.

  "I suppose, in your time, you would have called Axis City a necropolis, a city of the dead," Olmy continued. "But the distinction isn't so precise for us. I, for example, have died twice performing my duty to the Nexus."

  "They revived you?" Patricia asked.

  "They made me over again," he replied.

  She did not turn away from the screen, even though her back prickled.

  The Presiding Minister had advised Olmy to report to Ser Oligand Toiler immediately upon his arrival. Toiler, advocate for Tees van Hamphuis, the President of the Hexamon Nexus, was a radical Geshel who had chosen to maintain a completely human appearance. That the appearance bore no relation to his natal design—it had been adapted for maximum leadership qualities—did not mitigate the unusual conservatism; most radical Geshels, including the President, had chosen neo-morph shapes, which bore little relation to natural human forms.

  What Olmy had to say, the P.M. judged, would be of extreme interest to the President. The President himself was unavailable, involved in a long-term conference on the problem of the impending Jart offensive; Toiler was a kind of unofficial replacement.

  This did not please the Naderites, or even the members of van Hamphuis's immediate staff. Toiler was not an easy man to deal with. Olmy had met the advocate once before, and had not liked him at all, though he had gained a healthy respect for his abilities.

  Toller kept his office in the most desirable professional wedge of Central City, no more than a few minutes tracting and just a few seconds shaft ascent from the Nexus Chambers in the precinct's core. Once Olmy had made arrangements for Patricia's quarters, but before he had had a chance to confer with his own advocate, he went to Toller's office.

  Toller had decorated the small rectangular space in the most simple and adaptable Geshel style. Decoration was spare; the major texture theme was platinum and steel, and the overall effect was harsh and unyielding.

  The President's advocate was not pleased with the news Olmy brought.

  "The P.M. had no suspicion of this when you alone were sent?" Toller picted. The symbols that flashed between the two men came from pictor torques around their necks, devices which generated and projected the graphicspeak that had developed over the centuries in the Thistledown and in the Axis City.

  "His information was highly equivocated," Olmy said. "All he knew was that the Thistledown had been reoccupied."

  Toller picted an unpleasant image of a roiling nest of snakelike creatures. "This is extraordinary news, Ser Olmy. Coming from anyone else, I would find it difficult to believe ... But then, you've brought one of them back with you, haven't you?"

  "Her name is Patricia Luisa Vasquez."

  "A genuine ... ancestor?"

  Olmy nodded.

  "Why did you bring her back? As evidence?"

  "I could not leave her; she was close to discovering how to modify sixth chamber machinery."

  Toller raised his eyebrows and picted four orange circles of surprise. "What is this woman?"

  "A young mathematician," Olmy said, "highly regarded by her superiors."

  "And you did nothing else to correct this situation you found on the Thistledown?"

  "The situation is highly unstable there; they will not be able to organize for some time, and I thought it best to consult with the President and the Nexus."

  "I'll inform the President, but you're aware we have our own major difficulties now. This conference ... it could determine the whole course of the Axis City. And there's been considerable unrest and speculation among the Naderites—especially the Korzenowski faction. If they learn of this..." The picted nest of serpent-like creatures glowed a furious orange-red. "Seclude this woman and keep your information to your immediate superiors."

  "She is secluded, and of course, I perform my duties as instructed," Olmy said. "She will have to have an advocate assigned to her, however."

  "If we can avoid that, we should." Toller regarded him with obvious suspicion and unease.

  "It is law. All noncitizens in the city, without defined legal status, must be assigned an advocate immediately."

  "There's no need for you to quote city law to me," Toller said. "I'll find an advocate and assign—"

  "I've already assigned one," Olmy interrupted.

  Toller's expression changed to deep distaste. "Who?"

  "Ser Suli Ram Kikura."

  "I'm not acquainted with her." By the time he had finished the statement, Toller had a complete file on Kikura on hand, ready to be picted and interpreted. He scanned the file rapidly, shifting to implant logic, and found nothing he could criticise. "She seems acceptable. She will be sworn to keep Hexamon secrets."

  "She has that clearance already."

  "We're sitting on political chaos as it is," Toller said. "What you've done is bring back a lit fuse for Axis City's bomb. All, of course, in the name of duty."

  "You will inform the President immediately?" Olmy asked, picting a sidebar request for permission to return to his work.

  "As soon as possible," Toller replied. "You'll prepare a full report for us, of course."

  "It is prepared," Olmy said. "I can transfer it now."

  Toller nodded, and Olmy touched his torque. High-speed transfer of the report was accomplished in less than three seconds. Toller touched his own torque in acknowledgment of receipt.

  Suli Ram Kikura lived in the outer layers of Central City, in one of three million tightly packed units reserved for single young corporeals of middle social and job standing. Her rooms were smaller than they appeared; the reality of spaciousness was far less important to her than it seemed to be to Olmy, who kept more primitive and larger quarters in Axis Nader. But part of what attracted her to Olmy was his age and differing attitudes, and his habit of, every now and then, giving her something truly interesting to work on.

  "This is the biggest challenge I've ever faced," Suli Ram Kikura picted at Olmy.

  "I couldn't think of anyone more capable," he replied. They floated facing each other in the subdued light of her quarters' central space, surrounded by picted spheres on which were projected various interesting and relaxing textures. They had just made love, as they almost always made love, without enhancement and using nothing more complicated than the quarters' traction fields.

  Olmy gestured at the spheres and made a face.

  "Simplicity?" Ram Kikura asked.

  "Simplicity, please," he affirmed. She dimmed the lights on everything but themselves and erased the spheres from the decor.

  They had first met when he had inquired into the licensing process for creating a child. He had been interested mostly in a personality meld between himself and someone unspecified. This had been thirty years ago, when Ram Kikura was just beginning her practice. She had advised him on the procedures. Permission was easy enough to obtain for a corporeal homorph of his standing. But he had not carried it to the point of making a formal request. She had gathered that Olmy was more interested in the theory than the practice.

  One thing had led to another. She had pursued him—with some elegance and no small persistence—and he had acquiesced, allowing himself to be seduced in a hidden corner of Central City's forested, zero-g Wald.

  Olmy's work often took him far afield for years at a time, and what they had together, to most observers, would have seemed transitory, an on-and-off thing. Indeed, she had had relationships since, none permanent, even though it was once
again the fashion to have relationships for ten years or longer.

  Whenever Olmy had returned, she had somehow managed to be free of commitments. They never pressured each other. What existed between them was a relaxed, but by no means trivial sensation of comfort and a high level of mutual interest. Each genuinely enjoyed hearing about the other's work and wondering where future tasks would take them. They were, after, all, corporeal and usefully employed; theirs was a position of considerable privilege. Of the ninety million citizens in the Axis City, corporeal or in City Memory, only fifteen million had important work to do, and of those, only three million worked more than a tenth of their living hours.

  "You seem to enjoy the task already," Olmy said.

  "It's my perverse nature. This is by far the oddest thing I've found you associated with ... It's positively momentous."

  "It could be of staggering importance," he said out loud, his tone mock-sepulchral.

  "No more picting?"

  "No, let's think and talk this through slowly."

  "Fine," she said. "You wish me to be her advocate. How much of an advocate do you think she'll need?"

  "You can imagine," Olmy said. "She's a complete innocent. She'll need complete social and psychological adjusting.

  She'll need protection. When her status is revealed—which is inevitable, I think, whatever the President and Presiding Minister wish—there will be a sensation."

  "You're putting it mildly," she said. She ordered wine brought to them, and three static-controlled liquid spheres drifted into their light. She handed Olmy a straw and they sipped. "You've seen Earth yourself?"

  He nodded. "I went down the bore hole with the Frant on my second day in the Thistledown. I didn't think remotes would convince me quite as much as seeing with my own eyes."

  "Old-fashioned Olmy," Ram Kikura said, smiling. "I'm afraid I would have done the same thing. And did you see the Death?"

  "Yes," he said, staring up into the darkness. He rubbed two fingers along the black fuzz dividing his three bands of hair. "Only by remote at first—there was a battle in the bore hole and I couldn't possibly have gotten through. But after the fighting stopped, I took the ship out and saw."

  Ram Kikura touched his hand. "How did you feel?"

  "Have you ever wanted to cry?"

  She looked at him carefully, trying to gauge how serious he was. "No," she said.

  "Well, I wanted to. And I've wanted to many times since, thinking about it. I tried to purge the feeling with Talsit on the way back—quite a few sessions. But Talsit couldn't cure all of it. I could feel our beginnings ... a smudged, dirty, dead and dying world." He told her about Patricia's grief. Ram Kikura turned away in distaste.

  "We cannot release as she did," he said. "It isn't in us anymore, and perhaps that's something else we've lost."

  "Grief is not productive. It simply represents an inefficiency in accepting change of status."

  "There are orthodox Naderites who still have the capacity," he said. "They find grief a noble sentiment. Sometimes I envy them."

  "You were organically conceived and born. You had the capacity at one time. You knew what it was like. Why did you give it up?"

  "To fit in," Olmy said.

  "You wished to conform?"

  "For higher motives, yes."

  Ram Kikura shuddered. "Our visitor is going to think us all very strange, you know."

  "It's her privilege," Olmy said.

  *35*

  The storm began as a series of accelerated risings and fallings of air, circular cells rubbing against each other and

  generating a thick, tortured layer of clouds throughout the first chamber. Western bloc scientists in the middle of the chamber along the zero road made quick measurements before retreating to their barracks. Dust and sand were kicked up in immense, slender twisters, which in turn uncoiled and gave way to thick curtains of dust. The dust clouds billowed and spread, bouncing from cap to cap like waves in a channel. Cameras at the bore hole recorded the phenomenon, but there was nothing that could be done to control it. Either the storm was a planned part of the chamber's weather system, or the chamber had no effective weather control. It had not, after all, been a steadily

  occupied part of the Stone. Weather control might not have been thought necessary.

  In the years of the Stone's reoccupation, nothing of this violence and strength had ever happened. The dust clouds covered the valley floor and slowly settled into a soupy, opaque layer a few kilometers thick. Above the dust, water clouds became darker and darker.

  By 1700 hours, 6 hours after the storm's first high winds, rain fell through the dust and landed as great drops of mud. In the first compounds, people huddled in the bungalows, both alarmed and thrilled by the sudden change.

  Hoffman watched from her mud-splattered window, chewing on a knuckle with eyebrows raised. The surcease from tubelight was welcome. This was the closest to night that anyone had experienced on the Stone, and it made her feel drowsy and content.

  Lightning crackled throughout the chamber and engineers and marines braved the wind and rain to fasten conducting rods to the buildings.

  In the Russian command bungalow, at the middle of the second compound, the storm and darkness were ignored. The argument over the political and command structure ran late into the sleeping period, with Belozersky and Yazykov most vehement, and Vielgorsky staying in the background.

  Mirsky insisted on a military organization and refused to reduce his power in any way, or to share it equally with (and he emphasized the point) junior officers.

  Belozersky proposed a true Soviet structure, with a central party committee, led by a general secretary—Vielgorsky was suggested—and a president and premier acting through a Supreme Soviet.

  Just the day before, Mirsky and Pogodin—the commanding officer in the first chamber—had supervised the beginning of construction on a Russian compound in the fourth chamber; permission had been granted to harvest wood from the thick forests. Tools were at a premium; everything was at a premium..

  Negotiations over the second chamber had grown heated when NATO archaeologists protested the potential desecration of what they regarded as their site. Mirsky had brusquely informed Hoffman that the Potato was no longer a monument; it was a refuge.

  That had worn him down. His long sessions in the third chamber library—often instead of sleeping—had added to his fatigue; and now, this.

  "We must situate our people before we decide the final political structure," Mirsky said. "All we have are makeshift tents and this compound, and Hoffman—"

  "That bitch," Belozersky commented dryly. "She's worse than the fool Lanier."

  Vielgorsky touched Belozersky's shoulder and the martinet sat down obediently. Vielgorsky's ascendancy among the political officers did not surprise Mirsky; neither did it please him. Mirsky was sure he could handle Belozersky, but with Vielgorsky's cunning, reserve and authoritative speaking voice—and Yazykov's razor-sharp legal mind—Mirsky felt a nasty challenge brewing.

  Was there some way he could "turn" Vielgorsky and Yazykov, with their talents to his own advantage?

  In his favor, he felt, was his continuing education. Or, perhaps more accurately phrased, his enlightenment. Never before had he been able to wander at will through such a huge and diverse source of information. Soviet libraries—military and otherwise—had always been severely restricted, with books available only to those with a demonstrable need to know. Simple curiosity was frowned upon.

  He had been unsure even about the geography of his own country. History had been a subject in which he had never felt much interest, other than the history of space travel; what he learned in the third chamber library was turning him around completely.

  To his colleagues he revealed none of this; he took pains to conceal the fact that he now spoke English, German, and French and was working on Japanese and Chinese.

  "On the contrary," Belozersky said, glancing at Vielgorsky, "political considerations must
always be foremost. We must abandon neither the revolution nor its ideals; we are the last fortress of—"

  "Yes, yes," Mirsky said impatiently. "Now we are all tired. Let us rest and start again tomorrow." He glanced over his shoulder at Garabedian, Pletnev and Sergei Pritikin, senior engineer from the science team. "Comrade Major Garabedian, will you escort these gentlemen to their tents and make sure our perimeters are secure?"

  "There is more to be discussed than we have time for," Vielgorsky said.

  Mirsky fixed his gaze on him and smiled. "True," he said. "But tired men become angry men, and frustrations make for bad thinking."