“But clearly someone did use it.”
“In which case it must have happened more than twenty-three years ago. Just before the armistice, there was a period when Mars and its moons were under Slasher authority. It didn’t last very long—about eighteen months, give or take.”
“You’re saying those war babies have been in Paris for twenty-three years?”
“It’s the only explanation I can think of. Any Slasher agents on E2 would have been stranded here once Mars was handed back to us. Actually, that would explain a lot. War babies were infertile, and they were never meant to grow old.”
“Aveling said something about a shelf life.”
“They were supposed to be ‘decommissioned’ before senescence set in. Gotta love those Slasher euphemisms. But these war babies have been left to grow old on their own. That’s why they look the way they do.”
“So what have they been doing all this time?”
“That’s a very good question.”
“Can you move again?” Auger asked. “I think we need to be on our way.”
Skellsgard grunted in agreement and resumed her hopping progress. “We lost control of Susan White,” she said, between ragged breaths. “One explanation is that she was working for the enemy. Having known Susan, I don’t think that’s very likely.”
“I don’t think it’s very likely either.”
“I’m more inclined to believe that she figured out part of what was going on here—that there was already a Slasher presence on E2.”
“Did she report this back to Caliskan?”
Skellsgard shook her head. “No. I think she must have been worried about blowing her own cover. She may not have been working for the enemy, but she might have had her doubts about someone else on the team.”
“I sort of arrived at the same conclusion,” Auger said cautiously.
“Really?”
“Yes,” Auger said. “Why bring me into the operation, unless she was unwilling to trust an insider to get the job done?”
“I think you could be right.”
“It means I have to make a decision about who to trust. With Aveling and Barton it’s not exactly an issue any more. That leaves you, Maurya.”
“And?”
“I don’t know what Susan thought about you. For better or for worse, I don’t think I have much choice but to trust you.”
“Well, that’s a resounding vote of confidence.”
“Sorry—I meant it to sound a bit more positive than that. Not that it makes much difference now that the papers are gone.”
“But you looked at them, right?”
“Glanced through them,” Auger said.
“Better than nothing. At least you have some idea about what was worth killing for. If we can get that news back to Caliskan, maybe he can put the pieces together.”
“And if Caliskan is the problem?”
“All Susan’s letters were addressed to him,” Skellsgard said. “Right until the end. That suggests she still trusted him, even if she had her doubts about everyone else.”
“Maybe.”
“We have to start somewhere.”
“Agreed, I suppose. But can we get a message through to him? Aveling told me there were problems with the link.”
“There are always problems,” Skellsgard replied. “It’s just got a lot worse since you arrived. Did you hear about the shit-storm brewing back home?”
“Aveling said that the Polities are stirring up trouble.”
“It’s worse than that. We’ve got a full-scale civil war in Polity space, between the moderates and the aggressors. No one’s putting any money on who’s going to win that particular catfight. Meanwhile, the aggressors are moving their assets deep into the inner system, into USNE space.”
“Doesn’t that constitute a declaration of war?”
“It would if the USNE wasn’t so afraid of fighting back. At the moment, our politicians are just making a lot of exasperated noises and hoping the moderates will rein in the aggressors.”
“And?”
“Be nice if it happens.”
“I’m worried about my kids, Maurya. I need to be back there, taking care of them. If the aggressors move on Tanglewood—”
“It’s all right. We heard from your ex just before the link went tits-up. He wanted you to know that he’ll make sure your kids are safe.”
“He’d better,” Auger replied.
“Jesus, kid, he’s only trying to reassure you. Cut the guy some slack.”
Auger ignored her. “Tell me about the link. What, exactly, is the problem?”
“Problem is our friends from the Polities are a little too close to Mars for comfort. They know about link technology, of course. They already have the sensors to detect and localise active portals. If they even have a whisper of intelligence about there being a link around Mars, they’ll be looking for it. Consequently we’re having to run the link as quietly as we can, and that’s why it keeps going down.”
“They must know about it already. How else could the children have got here?”
“But when we took Phobos off them, there was no sign that they’d ever discovered the portal.”
“Maybe,” Auger said, “that was just what they wanted you to think.”
They had reached the heavy iron door that led to the censor chamber. It was ajar, a bright, septic yellow light spilling through from beyond.
“It’s as I left it,” Skellsgard observed.
“Best not to take anything for granted, all the same. Wait here a moment.” Auger propped Skellsgard up against the wall and pulled the automatic from her waistband, praying that there was still at least one bullet inside it. She stepped over the metal lip of the door, squeezing through the gap into the room beyond, and whipped the gun from corner to corner as fast as she could.
No children: at least, none that she could see.
She helped Skellsgard into the room, then heaved shut the iron door. Together they spun the heavy-duty lock. The door could only be unlocked from the inside.
“How are you doing?” Auger asked.
“Not too good. I think I need to loosen this tourniquet.”
“Let’s get you through the censor first.”
The bright-yellow barrier of the censor was the only source of light in the room. It flickered in Auger’s peripheral vision, but when she looked at it directly, it remained completely unwavering. Fused into the rock around it, the framework machinery looked intact, as thoroughly ancient and alien as the last time she had seen it.
“I’m going to go ahead first and check,” Auger said. “I’ll be back in a few seconds.”
“Or not,” Skellsgard said.
“If I don’t come back—if there’s something waiting for me on the other side—then you’ll have to take your chances on E2.”
Skellsgard shivered. “I’d sooner take my chances in the Stone Age.”
“They’re not that bad. They do have anaesthetic, plus some rudimentary knowledge of sterilisation. If you can get yourself taken to a hospital, you’ll have a pretty good chance of being looked after.”
“And then? When they start asking awkward questions?”
“Then you’re on your own,” Auger said.
“I’d rather risk the censor. Let me go first, will you? I’m already hurt, and there’s no point two of us taking an unnecessary risk. If things are OK, I’ll poke my head back through to let you know.”
“Take this,” Auger said, offering her the automatic.
“You fired this thing?”
“Yes, and I can’t promise that there are any bullets left in it.”
She helped Skellsgard to the censor, then stood back as the injured woman supported her weight from the overhead rail and—with a grunt of effort and discomfort—succeeded in picking up sufficient momentum to swing herself over the threshold. The bright-yellow surface puckered inward, darkening to a bruised shade of golden brown, then swallowed her completely before twanging back to it
s intact state.
Auger waited, delving into her handbag for the weapon she had taken from the war baby. It was designed for a smaller hand than hers, but she could still grip it, even if it felt uncomfortable. It was made of metal and was very light compared with the automatic. But it was still a gun. There was a trigger and a trigger guard, and a sliding button that she figured was the safety catch. There was a perforated barrel with a hole in the end and a complex hinged loading mechanism that swung out from one side. The gun was machined from curved, sleekly interlocking parts, and she suspected that it could also be reconfigured for throwing or stabbing if circumstances demanded. It didn’t look like something she would have expected to find in an E2 gunsmith’s workshop, but neither was it twenty-third-century condensed-energy technology from the Slasher armament works in E1 space. As foreign as it looked, it was something that could conceivably have been made in E2 Paris, using local technology.
Something was pushing through the yellow surface: Skellsgard’s face emerged with a pop of breaking surface tension. “It’s safe,” she said.
Auger disabled the weapon’s safety catch and followed the other woman through the tingling barrier of the censor. Just before it swallowed her, she had time to remember Skellsgard’s story of the endless yellow limbo she had once experienced during the passage through the censor; that sense of being scrutinised by minds as ancient and huge as mountains. Auger braced herself, some part of her wanting that experience, another fearing it with every atom of her existence. But the moment of transition was as brief as the first time. As before, she felt a mild elastic resistance that suddenly abated, as if she had burst through the skin of a drum. There had been no audience with God, or whatever godlike entities had created the censor and the duplicate Earth. Nor had any part of her been refused passage. Her clothes and the gun she carried were still with her when she entered the portal chamber. The censor’s implacable logic had decided to allow those simple things through. Or perhaps it was much less concerned with artefacts escaping E2 than entering it.
“No one’s come through,” Skellsgard said. She was leaning against a console, her face a pallid mask of exhaustion and shock.
“No sign of any children?”
“I don’t think they made it this far. Fucking lucky that they didn’t, or they might have done something irreversible to the link, or turned the far end into a temporary white hole. Adios, Phobos, and anything near it.”
“Let’s take a look at your leg.”
“I’ve adjusted the tourniquet. It’ll be OK for a while.”
Auger snapped a first-aid kit from its wall mounting. She fumbled the plastic catches open and rummaged through the contents until she found a morphine jab. “Can you do this yourself?” she asked, passing the syringe to Skellsgard. “I’m not too good with needles.”
“I’ll manage.” Skellsgard bit the sterile wrapper from the syringe, then jammed the needle into her thigh, just above the wound but below the tourniquet. “I don’t know if this is the right thing to do,” she said. “Guess I’ll find out sooner or later.”
“We have to get the link up and running,” Auger said. “Can we do it together?”
“Give me a moment.” She nodded at one of the desks down on the machine floor. “In the meantime, go down to that console and throw all the switches on the top bank to their red settings. Then see if any of the dials stay in the green.”
“It’s that simple?”
“One step at a time, sister. We’re not cooking with gas here. We’re dealing with major alterations to the local space-time metric.”
“My will’s already up to date,” Auger said. She removed her shoes and made her way down the spiral access ladder as quickly as she could. She had never been down to the machine floor before, and the scale of the equipment looming around and over her was dauntingly impressive. Fortunately, it all looked intact. The transit craft was suspended overhead in the vacuum-filled recovery bubble, clutched in the bee-striped cradle, its blunt, stress-battered nose still aimed away from the mirror-lined shaft of the portal tunnel.
Once they’d turned it around, all they needed was a moment of stability from the link.
She made her way to the console Skellsgard had indicated and flipped the heavy-duty toggle switches one by one. The dials quivered, but although one or two needles continued to hover in the red for a few moments, they eventually sank back into the green.
“We’re looking good,” Auger said.
Skellsgard had dragged herself to the railed edge of the upper catwalk and was looking down on Auger. “All right. That’s better than I expected. Now see that second bank of switches, under the hinged plastic hood?”
“Got it.”
“Lift the hood and start flipping them as well, and keep an eye on the dials. If more than two of them twitch into the red and stay there, stop flipping.”
“Why do I have the impression that this is the tricky bit?”
“It’s all tricky,” Skellsgard said.
Auger began to flip the second set of toggles: slower this time, letting the dial above each switch twitch and settle before advancing to the next. Around her, with each switch that she threw, the machinery notched up its humming presence. Red and green status lights began to blink on items of equipment halfway across the floor, and even in the recovery bubble itself.
“I’m halfway there,” Auger said. “So far so good. Will the ship fly itself?”
“One step at a time. We’ll prep the ship once we’ve established throat curvature. Getting goose pimples yet?”
“Not yet.”
“You should be.”
Auger threw another switch. “Whoah, wait,” she said. “We’re holding in the red on the fifth dial.”
“That’s what I was worried about. All right. Reverse the last switch you flicked, see if that helps.”
Auger did as she was told. “Back in the green,” she said after a few seconds.
“Try it again.”
“Still in the red. Reversing and trying again.” Auger waited, biting her tongue. “Sorry. No joy. What does that mean?”
“It means we have a problem. All right. Leave that be and move to the second console, the one with the toolkit next to it.”
“Got it.”
“Throw the red switch on the right-hand side of the monitor and tell me what kind of numbers come up in the third column of the read-out.”
Auger scraped dust from the glass. “Fifteen point one seven three, thirteen point zero four—”
“Roughly, Auger. I don’t need decimal precision here.”
“They’re all between ten and twenty.”
“Shit. That’s not good. Stability’s still compromised.”
“Can we get home?”
“Not easily.”
Auger turned from the console and looked up at Skellsgard. “What if we wait? Will things get better?”
“They might do. Then again, they might get worse. And there’s no telling how long this instability will last. Could be hours. Could be tens of hours or even days.”
“We can’t wait that long, not when more of those kids might show up at any moment. When you say ‘not easily,’ what does that mean? That there is a way?”
“There’s a way,” Skellsgard said. “For one of us.”
“I don’t follow.”
“We’ll need to stabilise the throat geometry at this end, and that’s going to cost us more power than we can supply in the long term.”
Auger shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t care if the link folds once we’re out of here.”
Skellsgard shook her head. “Not that simple. Look, I don’t want to give you a lecture on hypervacuum theory—”
“Suits me fine.”
Skellsgard smiled. “The essential point is that the local throat has to stay open until we reach the far end. Things will get messy if it snaps shut, and they’ll get really, really messy if it snaps shut violently. We’ll run the risk of losing the link, for a sta
rt. And while the closure might be a relatively low-energy event as seen from the Paris end, all the energy released by the tunnel collapse will find its way to the Phobos end. It’s like stretching a big elastic band between your hands and then letting go of one end—you get the picture? And even if the collapse isn’t violent enough to bring down the link, we’d still be surfing a major stress wave in the transport. We’d have a soliton chasing us all the way home.”
“What’s a soliton?”
“Like a ruck in a carpet, only with a seriously pissed-off attitude.”
“That’s all I need to know. Now tell me what we can do about it. Can we stop the throat snapping shut?”
“Yes,” Skellsgard said. “Once the ship’s cleared the throat, the power can be ramped down to a level the generators can sustain until the ship gets home.”
“Doesn’t sound too complicated to me.”
“It isn’t. The problem is that it isn’t a procedure we ever got around to automating. It was always assumed that we’d have a team here, or that we could hang around indefinitely until stability improved.”
“I see,” Auger said quietly. “Well, you’d better show me what to do.”
“No way,” Skellsgard said. “No disrespect, Auger, but this isn’t exactly the kind of thing they teach you in history school. You’re getting in the ship. I’ll handle the throat.”
“What about the children?”
“They didn’t get in here before. I’m pretty sure I’ll be safe until a rescue party gets through.”
“But that will take days,” Auger said.
“About sixty hours if they can do an immediate turnaround on the ship, and if stability conditions are optimal. Longer if they’re not.”
“I’m not leaving you here.”
“I can hold out,” Skellsgard said. “You’re the one with the critical information, not me.”
“I lost almost all that information in the tunnel.”
“But you saw it. That has to be worth something.”
Auger left the console and sprinted back up the ladder to Skellsgard. “What exactly is involved in controlling the throat?”
“It’s a very technically demanding procedure.”
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