The n-gun tugs my arm to assist the aim as years of simulations pay off. Somehow I’m able to balance these forms of violence; one immediate and the other strategic. I don’t have space for nerves but I am very aware of time running out. Soon one of those shots will hit me in the heart or the head. Even if that doesn’t take me then exhaustion and blood loss will.
The Basis completes the bomb. Between shots I detonate it via the Aer. There’s a dull crump. Hobb’s cannon fire stops and hard debris clatters to the floor in the distance. Immediately I realise my mistake as the Sons on the ground encircle us completely. They gif steps against the fort wall and run up them as their airborne brethren close in.
“Charity?” says the girl.
“It’s all right,” I say. “Kneel down.”
She kneels. I pull her close and grow a dome around us. Its two quarter spheres rise as the airborne Sons open fire and the first of the men on the ground jumps down inside the fort. I shoot through the closing gap and shove the girl against the concavity opposite. The dome begins to close over us as a second grenade is thrown. I shoot this one as well-
“Charity!” screams the girl.
I look up to see a third grenade caught between the closing sections and close my eyes. I hear a brief crunch as the growing walls crush the bomb and then silence from outside.
The space beneath the dome is tiny because the wall is so thick and our frightened breath sounds very loud. The dome pulses with blinding light as the Sons around us open fire.
I go in-Aer and find a missile whose complexity means it will take longer than usual to assemble. It costs 54,796 kilos. I definitely won’t get those back. The little girl whimpers. I gif a thick, dark viscous fluid that quickly rises in the small space.
“Hold your breath honey,” I say.
The fluid tickles over us until we are submerged and we float just off the floor. Gunfire pounds distantly. I go in-Aer again to find the missile nearly ready. I try to stay calm in the glutinous murk but tension saps my oxygen as impacts from outside increase in number and intensity.
Finally the Basis completes the missile. I enter coordinates, fire and detonate it at once. Even submerged in darkness the nuclear flash reaches our eyes. The girl panics and wriggles but I hold her tight. Heat, shockwaves and deafening sound are safely absorbed by the fluid. Soon the noise and light fade but I do not move.
My heart begins to thunder and my lungs ache. When it becomes unbearable I deposit the fluid and feel it slide down over me. My damaged jumpsuit struggles to get rid of the residue and the girl isn’t wearing smart-clothes so we lie panting and sticky in the semi-spherical space.
I gif a rec just outside the dome. The rec melts. I wait a few minutes and try again. The next rec lasts and through drifts of thick grey smoke I see the surrounding buildings cracked and streaked with sooty residue. Weird light flashes and pulses in the ground as the Basis tackles the radiation. There is no trace of the Sons of the Crystal Mind.
Presently, the smoke is sucked into the floor while around the periphery buildings begin to repair themselves. The rec lets me know there is no more radiation outside so I deposit it along with the dome and we lie there in the open. I smell something strange: part explosive, part scorched metal, part burned meat. Then it’s gone.
I read the auto-message from the Basis that appeared with Anton’s kilo notification:
ANTON JELKA CAUSE OF DEATH:
GUNSHOT TO CHEST
T-42 TASLA PULSE RIFLE
12 METRE DISTANCE
The Basis took Anton apart molecule by molecule so is best placed to establish how he died. At least the Sons of the Crystal Mind didn’t burn him.
“Thank you Anton,” I whisper.
I roll onto my knees, climb painfully to my feet and put out my hand. The girl takes it and pulls herself up. Smeared and shiny we limp towards the exit.
I get a message from Hobb:
WE WILL MAKE YOU SUFFER CHARITY FREESTONE.
I look around but there’s no sign of him.
Suddenly, the fearsome bulk of Wrath Umbilica eases into the huge room. I leave the n-gun at level 3 and keep walking. The girl laughs and waves at the warship. I look down at her.
“What’s your name?” I say.
“Ashel 6,” she says.
A hologram of Ashel 5 appears in front of us.
“Very slack,” I tell her.
29
I rise from the Basis to lie naked in a small chamber on Wrath Umbilica. Since the battle, three days have passed in a series of half-registered fragments. When I woke up in the floor on the first day I thought about Anton. His death is another layer of grief, another unresolved mystery. What did he mean when he said he loved me? Wasn’t there anyone else he could leave his kilos to? I will never know him properly now. I always fail to seize the moment, wrapped up in concerns that turn out to be pointless or trivial.
As I healed I spent the next forty-eight hours drifting in and out of consciousness. When awake I lay in the floor unwilling to move, my mind agreeably sluggish. I accessed one of Wrath Umbilica’s viewports and saw that we drifted peacefully through an unremarkable sector of MidZone. Community with the warship felt uncomfortably apt given the number of people I killed. I tried to think what advice Anton would give, or Mum, or Dad. No imagined words of reassurance came. Instead, I found myself thinking of Jaeger for some reason.
Ashel 6 called a few times and I told her I would see her soon. I sent Harlan a message to let him know I was all right and another to Keris telling her I was on my way. As the Basis did its work I began to fade thankfully out of consciousness again. This was going to be the last time I would sleep before Keris’s information changed everything…
I stand slowly and feel the ship’s gentle hum through the floor. The chamber is about three metres square by two high with a milky glow in the walls. The one on my left slopes to the floor, suggesting I’m near the hull. Another is inlaid with an equilateral triangle that points down. At first I thought it meant the warship but now realise the symbol represents a human torso unmarked by a navel. Wrath Umbilica indeed.
I grow a new red and yellow jumpsuit and relax into its now familiar shape. The viewport interface shows the side of a wide rectangular shaft as the ship rises up it, rotating slowly. I disengage from the viewport and step to the door, which opens into a short corridor.
Ashel 6 jumps up and wraps her arms around my waist. I take her little face in my hands and we rub noses like Mum and I used to. It feels good to have someone to care about again, however briefly.
She pulls away and looks at me. She’s in pink leggings and a t-shirt with a flower on it. Her dark hair is cropped to match the burned area so her elfin ears stick out, while residual marks on her arms show where the flames reached her. My confused guilt about the battle with the Sons of the Crystal Mind is overwhelmed by a surge of fury.
Ashel 6 sees it in my eyes and draws back slightly. I take her shoulders and kiss both her cheeks repeatedly until she giggles. Naturally pale despite the vitamin D beamed into her by the Basis, she appears to be constructed primarily of knees. Her wiry frame is the result of constant, bouncy energy, which delights but also makes me feel a bit old.
Ashel 5 enters and stops when she sees me. We have not spoken for the duration of the trip although we made uncomfortable eye contact when I first came on board.
“We’re at the train station near Centria,” she says.
“All right,” I say. “Good.”
Ashel 5 holds out her hand and Ashel 6 takes it. I follow them onto an observation deck at the front of the warship. Ten people sit or stand in the circular space. Four have their eyes closed as they guide the ship and the rest stare at me. I recognise a couple from New Runcton and meet their gaze. Some look down, a few don’t. It’s awkward.
The train terminal’s huge sphere reaches into blue distance beneath its curved ceiling. Train tubes spine out of the terminal at regular intervals with boarding platforms like shelves be
side them. Huge walls hold the great edifice in place and tubes pass through them like bright veins. Wrath Umbilica weaves gracefully between the structures as carriages fire through them almost too quick to see.
Finally, the warship descends and Ashel 5 turns to me. She exudes a strange nervousness at odds with the vengeful rage that possessed her in New Runcton. She tightens her grip on Ashel 6’s hand and clumsily indicates the door to an elevator. We enter and the elevator takes us down to a port, which opens straight onto the road. I can see Centria through an archway in the terminal.
Ashel 6 gazes up at me solemnly. I give her a little wave. She gives me a little wave back. I turn to go.
“Charity,” Ashel 5 says.
I look back over my shoulder.
“Forgive me,” she says.
“Yes,” I say.
I walk out of the ship. There are no crowds to push through because everyone at the busy train station avoids Wrath Umbilica. I hear the warship lift off behind me and keep going until I leave the station behind.
I head along the road to Centria and stop in front of the familiar sphere, bisected by its wide road. The place seems less like home now.
It suddenly looks like giant closed eye. I imagine the great lid slowly opening and the bright inhuman pupil turning to focus on me, malevolent and vast.
30
The door to Centria slides up and I walk in, every sense alert. I expect Bal or some other obvious enemy but there isn’t even a security guard. The door closes behind me.
Ahead is the beautiful Centrian vista, which today favours slim graceful buildings that angle off the spherical outer wall and point at the middle. The centrepiece is a huge assembly formed by three hoops that slowly rotate through each other. They surround the void at Centria’s heart, where a luminous cloud emits dazzling coloured light.
I expected to find the view a relief after the crowded lunacy of MidZone and the haunted vaults of the Outer Spheres. Instead, Centria seems smaller than I remember. The glamorous architecture seems a touch overdone and those sleek buildings glitter like knives in the fake daylight.
A small ship lands beside me. It’s a slender dart with a transparent front, curved delta wings and a tail that rises to a point. The hatch opens. I step inside and sit on the plush seat, which moulds to the contours of my body. As the ship rises towards the middle of Centria I set the n-gun to level 3.
Presently I see my destination is a great pink disc, glowing softly as it drifts above a park. A port opens and the ship enters to settle without a bump. I breathe deeply a few times and then climb out. As I step down, the floor begins to move.
It carries me through the assembly amid soft shapes that pulse and bloom in violet. I quickly reach the centre, which is a huge chamber like the heart of some great organism. Keris waits there, her beauty perfectly lit.
The floor takes me to her and stops. Keris has her hair down; like mine it is unadorned. She wears a simple white dress that leaves her arms and legs bare. White should wash out her colouring but the pink light prevents it. Instead, she looks wholesome, delicious even.
Slowly, Keris extends her hands which are warm and slightly damp when I take them. She pulls me close and I feel her unnatural strength as she puts her arms around me. We fit together very well and I inhale her natural scent, which is sweet like biscuits. Wait…
She pulls away and looks at me.
“I’m sorry about what happened,” she says.
“Which part?” I say.
“You’re angry.”
“Yes!”
“You were never meant to be an ex Charity. That was a mistake.”
“A mistake? In this place?”
“Anton went to find you…”
“Anton is dead. The only reason I’m alive is because of him. Now tell me what’s going on.”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know? You’re in charge!”
“I’m not in charge Charity,” Keris says. “I’m just a very good politician.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means…”
Her face registers a strange kind of grief. Unexpectedly, I feel terrific sadness for the Guidance; stunted individuals whose incredible gifts are not quite enough. I relax my unblinking stare and look down.
Keris takes a deep breath.
“It means I’m like a filter through which everything flows,” she says. “From time to time I decide what is filtered out and what isn’t. If I make enough right choices then I get to carry on.
“But most of the time I don’t instigate anything. I need others for that and I am only as good and as powerful as those others. If they have an agenda of their own there actually isn’t much I can do about it.”
“Really,” I say, unconvinced.
“Power is like learning Charity. The more you get the more you realise how little you have.”
“Is that what all this is about?” I ask her. “More power?”
“Not for me,” Keris says.
The pink glow changes intensity as it reacts to our emotions. Keris’s eyes are huge and mournful. I could let my mind drown in that gaze of hers.
“Are Security listening?” I say.
“No,” Keris says.
“What do you want Keris?”
“To tell you about the Guidance.”
“I know about the Guidance.”
“How?”
“Jaeger told me.”
Her eyes widen.
“Hah!” she says and then regains her composure. “You met him. How is he?”
“Fine, as far as I can tell. He told me that you and he… er… were lovers.”
“Oh he did did he?” she laughs.
I watch her, slightly unnerved.
“Jaeger is strange,” I say, “like you.”
She laughs again.
“We are strange,” she says. “You haven’t even met all of us yet. Do you want me to tell you about them?”
“No.”
“I think you do.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re changing. You’re no longer just Charity Freestone are you?”
“I… don’t know. Who am I?”
“You’re mine.”
“No! I’m not. Jaeger told me the Guidance are sterile.”
Keris blinks.
“Yes,” she says softly, “and all the surgery in Diamond City can’t change that. But there are other ways.”
“What do you mean?”
“Our time must come to an end Charity. We have been alive for so long and we were meant for a different world to this one. We don’t understand Diamond City. We do our best but it always slips away from us… and now we have slipped away from each other.”
She sighs and gazes above my head.
“What did Jaeger tell you about the Ruby War?” she says.
“That he stopped it because he saw you on the battlefield,” I say.
“He probably thinks that’s true but it isn’t really. He lost the Ruby War because he just ran out of ideas.”
“I can’t believe that,” I say.
“We’re old Charity. Two hundred and thirty years. We need someone to take over, someone who is the best of us. A different paradigm.”
She’s looking at me again. I feel very strange, as if I know what she is going to say.
“Keris?”
“It’s you Charity.”
I try and process that absurd statement. How can it be me? I’m nobody. I shake my head.
“Yes Charity,” Keris says. “Sol Bassa, the scientist, used elements of all twelve of the Guidance to create a new person, a new kind of person, formed in a matrix that would give her all our advantages in one.”
“But how? Is Mum my … er… my birth mum?”
“Not birth,” Keris says.
Her whole being seems very still, as if she is the silent centre of the universe.
“We couldn’t have a surrogate for someone as complex as you,” she say
s. “The only, ah… facility that could handle it was the Basis.”
“No…”
“Yes.”
The world spins around me. Its burned and empty corpse is a shell around Diamond City and Diamond City is a shell around me, suffocating…
“You’re a Blank, Charity,” Keris says.
All I can do is open the jumpsuit, grab Keris’s hand and press it against my belly button. She smiles sadly and shakes her head.
“Cosmetic,” she says. “The Sons of the Crystal Mind haven’t always owned the patents for false navel surgery.”
The great chamber sways and I have to kneel on the floor. I touch my face, chest and legs to prove I’m real but my hands shake so much I can’t feel anything. Keris kneels beside me.
“Don’t be afraid,” she says. “You are beautiful. You are a wonder.”
She strokes my hair and runs her hands over my body. It feels strange to be touched by her, but also right.
“Only Sol, Ellery and I know,” she says. “Anyone else might see you as leverage or a threat. I couldn’t risk it.
“Besides, I wanted you to have a normal family life. I wanted you to be able to understand people’s hopes and fears; appreciate things in their lives that are ordinary and sweet. I never really knew any of that and… It’s a void in me Charity, a void in the Guidance. We were an emergency measure that lasted too long.”
As I sit frozen before Keris I become aware of a transit at my very core. The movement is like madness, a storm of fragmented impressions; it feels like a conjunction of past, present, future and dream. Voices and sensations I once imagined would take place exist now beside me, as if experienced by someone else. Physical stimuli have no reference and I don’t know whether to come or throw up.
Everything multiplies, like mirrors reflecting each other only instead of images I sense dimensions unknown yet familiar. Infinity zooms in both directions at once, down to the atomic essence and out to the distant reaches of space.
Scale and comprehension give way.
Sons of the Crystal Mind (Diamond Roads Book 1) Page 20