by Alex Lamb
‘Okay,’ said Clath. ‘I’ve signalled the feeler-loops to anticipate a faster return rate. This won’t exactly be robust, but it’s doable.’
‘Okay,’ Mark gasped. ‘Ramping now.’
He doubled their burst rate and kept it climbing. Ann’s vectors, however, barely increased in frequency.
‘Ann!’ Mark shouted. ‘More vectors, please.’
‘I will not risk the success of this mission,’ she retorted. ‘I am sending vectors as fast as I can safely process them.’
‘Then please process them unsafely!’
‘No,’ she said. ‘That is always your solution, Mark, and it is broken. Our primary objective is to act as an effective lure and draw fire. That is what Galatea needs of us. We can’t do that if we disappear into the Zone or irretrievably compromise our combat position.’
‘Jesus, Ann,’ said Mark. ‘We’re trying to stay alive here!’
‘Exactly!’ said Ann. ‘And that is not the point. I will not disobey a Fleet mission dictate and am therefore requesting SAO intervention. I recommend that we kill engines and make a stand.’
‘Denied,’ said Palla.
With deepening dread, Mark saw how things were headed. Ann had no intention of helping and they couldn’t make her. She hadn’t wanted to go any further than this from the moment she’d come aboard. She’d never believed in his mission, and now she was going to take it away from him and make their entire effort pointless.
‘Clath,’ said Mark, struggling for a level tone, ‘I’m reaching the end of Ann’s vector stack.’ The loss of data had already forced him to slow again. ‘Can you automate her reduction process for me?’
‘Of course not!’ she blurted. ‘Otherwise we wouldn’t need her. Plotting a Flaw course is hard. Like NP-hard. Just flying down it causes a ripple effect. The Flaw’s so narrow that warping on it changes its dynamics. It’s an algorithmic nightmare!’
‘Give me something,’ he said. ‘I need help here.’
‘Okay,’ she squeaked. ‘I’m building you an heuristic reduction of the feeler data. Get ready.’
A new version of the vector map bloomed in Mark’s sensorium. Instead of being stuck in dozens of dimensions, he now had just six to worry about. But Clath had used dense symbolic tags to squeeze in the extra data. Every multicoloured drone icon had an ever-scrolling feed of sensor history wrapped around it. Mark had to use half his submind bandwidth just to tease the convoluted display apart.
How could reading space be as hard as managing an entire starship, for crying out loud? Mark suddenly had a very clear sense of why nobody had actually made it through the Zone. However, the more he watched, the more he understood. Mark smiled as he started to get the hang of the display. He pushed their velocity back up to twenty lights, then thirty. It was all about reading the data bursts from the passing loops at the right time.
‘I do not recommend this course of action,’ said Ann. ‘Mark, slow down. I do not want to have to intervene.’
‘Then fucking don’t!’ Mark shouted.
‘Mark, you are not compensating for edge-effects. This display is only giving you first- and second-order—’
‘Ann, in God’s name, please stop distracting me. Either help—’
The shriek of warning klaxons filled helm-space as the engines abruptly died.
‘Warp engines inactive,’ the Dantes’ emergency-management SAP informed him. ‘Activating passive stealth systems. Emitters retracting.’
The klaxons stopped. Emergency protocols dumped Mark back into his avatar in helm-space.
Ann stood before him with eyes full of fury.
‘And now what?’ she said. ‘How are we supposed to fight from here?’
Mark shook his head. He had no appetite for being dressed down by an uptight goddess. He felt too sick with disgust and defeat.
‘Maybe you should have done your job,’ he said quietly.
Ann glowered at him. She reached over and grabbed his avatar by its ship-suit. Her hands slid off him. She blinked at them in surprise.
‘My security is backed by Will Monet’s old hackpack,’ Mark pointed out. ‘It has been for years. Did you honestly imagine I wouldn’t have my virt settings protected, the way you’ve been behaving?’
‘Once again we’re inhabiting a clusterfuck created by your attitude problem!’ she shouted. ‘Again! Every time we have to work together!’
‘My attitude?’ said Mark. ‘Take a look in the fucking mirror, Ann! You had a job. But you chose to interpret it just the way you wanted. Like you did at Earth.’
Ann held up a hand and started poking the air before him. The virtual environment wobbled. The star projection blurred and suddenly Mark started to feel hot. The neck of his ship-suit became awfully tight. She grimaced at him. Mark diverted submind focus to his hackpack controls. Helm-space warped further. The glass beneath them buckled and foamed.
‘Children, please!’ Palla shouted.
Abruptly, helm-space evaporated, trapping them back on the bridge of the yacht. Palla had used her Autocratic override to close the helm down entirely. Use of the override was the ship’s last-ditch security setting. Normally, an SAO would only take such measures prior to a self-destruct order. She was making a point.
‘Intervention time!’ said Palla. ‘You two are confined to quarters until you can get your shit together.’
She clapped her hands and Mark was abruptly back in his stateroom, seated in one of the awful chairs.
‘Emergency virt truncation has occurred,’ said the walls. ‘Restabilisation is under way. Please move slowly or nerve damage may occur.’
He put his head in his hands and groaned.
4.5: NADA
With all haste, Nada pursued the Abomination. To have that goal so close to achievement tantalised her. It chafed at her mind so much that she started to have dreams. Not flush-patterns – actual dreams, like a human.
Those dreams were all the same. In them, she was killing the Abomination – strangling the life out of her – and it was beautiful. As her hands squeezed down on that windpipe, she felt it crumple wonderfully. She heard the wheezing rattle of those last desperate breaths. She saw the panic in Ludik’s evil eyes and knew that she was bringing joy and glory to the whole human race. Then, each time, as the Abomination finally died, Nada found herself flying up through the hierarchy of the mind-temple in ecstatic release.
She ascended past the level of caverns that represented cell clusters and organs, up through individuals, through small social group function, to emergent colony awareness and beyond. With each level she passed, she heard the song of the Photurian Protocol singing out – the magical incantation that made them all so beautifully the same from cells up to entire planets. The song became more subtle and laden with subtext as she rose, bringing her closer to the light of the Founder Entity shining down from above.
At last she reached General Collective Function, the level that was tragically blocked because they couldn’t access their own homeworld. Without that last link in the command chain, the will of the Founder Entity always lay excruciatingly out of reach. Yet, hovering there, she heard the Founder Entity address her. It spoke with the voice of the Yunus. It rang in her mind like a bell the size of a world.
‘You have done well, Nada Rien,’ it said. ‘It is time for you to experience True Peace.’
‘But we haven’t killed Monet,’ said Nada. ‘We haven’t retaken the homeworld.’
‘Haven’t we?’ it replied. ‘Are you sure?’
And then it pulled her impossibly through that uppermost hole, into the mind of the homeworld, and Nada realised that she’d been wrong, and that everything was now right with the universe. As she rose, the Founder’s destroying light bathed her, filling her with its beauty. Tearing her apart. Embracing her. Consuming her. Smashing her into happiness. Rewriting her utterly in joy.
‘Yes!’ she screamed. ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’
She woke with her face covered in tears. She hung in t
he wall of the cramped, gloomy vesicle and smelled the acrid tang of the wall-mucus. The lice tickled her face. Mundane reality had invaded once again, this time in the form of an entry request from Leng.
[I wish to enter the leadership vesicle to report,] he sent.
Leng had become very attentive of late. Obsequious, even. He’d developed the habit of repeatedly revisiting his concerns about the mission and asking if any of them required that she make further modifications to him. She felt no such urge and resented him for suggesting it. She was motivated to update him specifically to ensure worship of the Yunus, but not to simplify her own life. That would have been in contravention to the principle of enforced individuality.
That same principle, however, required that she listen to his interminable verbal reports. She reluctantly let him in.
‘Report,’ she said as he squeezed inside.
‘Word has arrived,’ he said. ‘A message was left for us at our last intercept point. We have found the ship. Our disrupter trap successfully delayed it.’
Nada wept with relief.
‘We are not more than a day away,’ said Leng.
A whole day? She slapped his face.
‘Why so long?’ she said, her voice trembling.
‘The ship was screening its trajectory,’ said Leng. ‘Our projections assumed that it would head towards a usable star system. Instead, it headed directly for the Alpha Flaw in the Depleted Zone. An attack squad was dispatched via carrier but arrived too late to prevent the ship from releasing message drones and continuing at full warp.’
‘Drones with what message?’ said Nada.
‘A request to change rendezvous coordinates. But it was almost certainly a ploy. In any case, the enemy ship may have already been captured or destroyed. The attack squad was in hot pursuit at the time of messaging.’
‘Inform all ships,’ said Nada. ‘We will chase down the enemy ship.’
Leng broke slowly into an oily smile. He squinted at her. One of his eyes twitched.
‘I thought you might request that,’ he said. ‘Even though direct pursuit is now at odds with the orders of the Yunus.’
Nada stared at him. Her heart fluttered with impatience.
‘I do not see how,’ she said.
‘We were instructed to find the population of Earth. Instead we are chasing one ship which we know cannot be carrying it.’
She thought about hitting him again, regardless of how bad an idea that was. She needed to keep herself together.
‘Our assumption has been that the ship would rendezvous with the missing arks,’ she said. ‘It sent a message drone to that effect, supporting that hypothesis. Nothing has changed.’
‘Except that now we have enough information to disregard that scenario,’ said Leng. ‘A lone ship headed to the Zone cannot be useful to a hidden population.’
‘Did you consider the possibility that they hid the population within the surface layers of the Zone?’ she said.
She stared at his cheek where a large purple mark was forming against the blue tint of his skin. She wondered if his neck would be as delicate as the one in her dream.
‘Of course,’ said Leng. ‘While not impossible, it is highly unlikely. What is there to do in the Zone except die? There is no warp. There are no suntaps. There are no habitable worlds. There is no—’
She cut him off. ‘Unlikely scenarios are exactly the ones the Galateans like to exploit.’
‘True but circular. Circular logic may justify any act. We now know that leaving Galatea prematurely was a mistake.’
‘Incorrect!’ said Nada. ‘We were instructed to act swiftly and independently, so we did. Now one target lies within our grasp and the other does not. It only makes sense for us to pursue our selected course of action to completion, otherwise we risk failing to reach either target.’
‘Instead we risk failing in our main objective.’
‘Destroying the Abomination is not failure. It cannot be!’ she shouted. ‘How can you explain the Yunus rewriting me to hunger so much for the death of the Abomination?’
At the same time, she saw the awful truth behind Leng’s words. This choice would be irrevocable. The dissonance between the Yunus’s verbal orders and how he’d made her feel was like a splinter in her mind.
‘I cannot,’ Leng admitted. His eyes shuttled from side to side. His smile grew tighter. ‘However, it is conceivable that the Yunus made the reasonable assumption that the two goals would remain congruent.’
‘Do you honestly believe that the Yunus could make a mistake of that magnitude?’
He must have known. Adhering to verbal orders was one thing, but her edits made her what she was. Were he here, instead of light-years away, he’d approve, surely? His edits had come with a solemn promise. Why had he even bothered with such words if he hadn’t understood exactly what she’d need to do?
Leng’s voice came out as a strangled croak. ‘No. I cannot doubt the Yunus. And yet this course of action is … is … paining me. I am struggling and I am not alone. The crew is already tired from monitoring Galatea. I have received multiple reports of units exhibiting individuality strain on other ships. Two units in our own crew have sounded self-integrity warnings.’
Nada knew her management of their identities had been less effective of late. She’d been too distracted. However, she also knew that she couldn’t give up. If she tried, her mind would surely break.
‘My pain is … reducing my joy in being Photurian,’ said Leng. His eyes snapped to her face. ‘Is there nothing you can do about that? Our flight has been so long and so hard.’ His lip trembled.
Nada regarded him with disgust. He was practically begging for another rewrite. She resisted the urge to fix that sickness by rewriting him. That would be counterproductive.
‘I hear you,’ she said. ‘I will prioritise restful communion as soon as the Abomination is destroyed. And I will amend my plan according to your counsel. I will split the fleet. Two ships will send word to the Yunus informing him of our choice. The rest will maintain pursuit.’
Leng regarded her with desperate eyes. ‘Is that all?’ he said.
Nada flapped at the air, trying to release all the joyful energy she felt without actually punching his face.
‘Yes. Resist all urge to delay. We must make directly for the location of the last enemy ship sighting. No other behaviour can be tolerated.’
Some emotion that was not obedient delight crawled over Leng’s features.
‘Yes,’ he said as he turned to go. ‘Of course. You are my superior. I will act in accordance with your desires and be happy about it. Yes.’
He left her alone and in silence, with the wonder of her dream all gone. She clutched at her stomach. She could not doubt the Yunus. She was proud of what he had done to her. The death of the Abomination would be enough for him and all would be well. There’d be no more false homes or human-farms or wasted units, just as he’d promised. She clung to that vision and rocked gently in the wall’s moist embrace.
5: REFLECTION
5.1: WILL
Will spent a restless night in a cramped hotel built into the bulge of a habitat-tube. He lay awake on an old mattress for hours and listened to the sound of his copies making love to each other through the thin wooden walls. In the end, he resorted to clapping the clammy pillow over his head. Snakepit had become something oppressive beyond words. He had to get out.
More than anything, he craved the company of real people. He missed Rachel, of course, but he’d felt that ache for years. He missed Mark, too, grumpy bastard that he was, but in that moment he’d have talked to anyone who wasn’t a butchered parody of himself. Yet there was nobody – just the animated echoes of his own mind. A person could go insane here, he decided. Perhaps that was why his clones all seemed so weird – they were already irretrievably nuts.
Dawn took for ever to arrive – Snakepit’s rotation was slower than Earth’s – and the light that finally appeared was a watery grey, joyless
and drab. Will rose and ate an early breakfast in a dark coffee shop on Campari Street obviously geared towards copies much hipper than himself but with less discerning appetites. Leaving half a scorched croissant on the plate, he returned to the Old Slam Bar and knocked on the door.
After several minutes of attempted access, the Ira-lookalike appeared frowning in a crack of entranceway.
‘The park, one hour from now,’ he said.
‘Where’s the park?’ said Will.
Ira pointed up the street. ‘That way. Buy a fucking map, Jason.’ The door closed.
Will seethed. Had all his clones decided to have their politeness excised, or were they just as sick of seeing his face as he was?
At the top of the next road over, near the brow of Radical Hill, a sequence of tiered platforms rose over the backs of the tubes. Dents in the tunnel-matrix, either cut or grown, had been encouraged to sprout wild bursts of multicoloured ferns. The result was a sloping boardwalk garden with paths meandering between explosions of bright vegetation, use-worn staircases and long views over the helical towers to an ocean of dusky mauve. A cold breeze carried a faint sea tang and a curious vegetal musk. Will found a bench to wait.
After a cold, lonely hour, he finally spotted someone familiar who wasn’t obviously himself. A man with John Forrester’s handsome action-hero face and a long black coat was walking towards him. Will stared. John was the man who’d sold him out and left him for dead on New Angeles during the Interstellar War.
The sight of those chiselled features on a clone brought a conflicted twisting to his stomach. He’d never forgiven John for what he’d done, though the man had died in a military prison long ago. At the same time, he felt a profound relief in simply looking at somebody else.
‘Cuthbert?’ said John as he approached.
Will nodded and rose. It was the first time anyone had referred to him by the nick Elsa had picked. It felt vaguely dishonest.