by Gary Gibson
The sick feeling intensified, and she swallowed sour phlegm. She recalled the time Arturo had – perhaps, in retrospect, a little too casually – mentioned Sifra’s name in connection with the sans de sezi trade on Avilon. She had badgered him for more information, and found out that Sifra had established himself as a major drugs importer for that tiny world’s rich and jaded inhabitants.
What hurt most, however, was that although Arturo Kazim had not precisely been a friend, she had at least allowed herself to trust him, even so far as to rely on his aid in finding a means of landing undetected on Avilon.
‘All this,’ she said, ‘just to lure me here? But why? For revenge?’
‘Frankly, that would be the preferred option,’ said Sifra. ‘But no.’
‘Then . . . what possible purpose is there to all this?’
‘That, Megan, is something you will find out before too long,’ he replied. ‘Instead, I’m going to give you a chance to repay your debts to the Three Star Alliance, to General Schelling and to Gregor Tarrant.’
Gregor Tarrant. Even the mention of the name made her skin crawl. ‘Where is he?’ she demanded. ‘Is he here?’
‘Never you mind where he is,’ he said. ‘First, I want you to answer some questions. Kazim informed me that you’ve been raising funds to acquire your own ship, and that you’ve been making enquiries about buying goods and equipment for a very long journey. Where were you planning to fly to, Megan? And what does Bash have to do with it?’
She stiffened. ‘Bash deserves to be cared for by anyone but the likes of you. And my own ship means I can be independent. There are plenty of colonies that desperately need machine-head pilots.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘To take the first point, I know you’re not so stupid as to think there’s anything you can possibly do for Bash. He’s been effectively brain-dead ever since our encounter with the Wanderer. He’ll never again be able to look after himself or feed himself. He can’t even walk without being guided. Even if you rescued him, there’s not enough left of his mind for him ever to be able to thank you.’
‘He’s my friend,’ she said. ‘I know this is a hard concept for you to understand, but that means he’s important to me. I couldn’t live with myself if I thought there was any chance he might know where he was, or who was in charge of him. And I still have enough money left to pay for his personal care – maybe even find a cure for him.’
‘And I might have believed you,’ said Sifra, ‘if it weren’t for the scale of what Kazim tells me you’ve been planning – which is far more than you could possibly need just to become a glorified cargo pilot in some backwater system. I think,’ he said, ‘that you’re intending to go back out to the Wanderer. That’s the real reason you’re here – because without Bash you can’t communicate with it.’
It was all true, of course, but she couldn’t possibly let him know that.
‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ she said. ‘What could I have to offer the Wanderer that would make it willing to talk to me, when the last time around it did its level best to kill us all?’
‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ said Sifra. ‘So why don’t you just tell me?’
‘In all sincerity,’ she said, ‘I think you’re fucking crazy. Going back out there would be suicide. I’d just get myself and Bash killed.’
Sifra shook his head. ‘There are so many things about you that don’t add up. You came to the Three Star Alliance along with Bash, but your records from before that were clearly faked. You supposedly come from Redstone, but you’ve never received a faith chip. And you’re as sure as hell not a Freeholder, because they all tattoo their children at birth.’
‘Maybe I had it removed,’ she suggested.
‘Don’t mock me,’ he said, his fingers tightening around the hand grip of his pistol. ‘The real mystery is why were you the only one who could ever communicate with the Wanderer, without the experience killing you?’
‘Just a minute. What do you mean “the only one”?’
‘We experimented with other machine-heads to see if they could communicate with the Wanderer, using Bash as a bridge.’
‘You mean you’ve already been back out to visit the Wanderer?’
He shook his head. ‘You don’t understand. We discovered Bash is still remotely linked to the Wanderer, regardless of distance – even across light years. He doesn’t have to be anywhere near the Wanderer to get in touch with it.’
Her mouth flopped open. ‘You’re fucking kidding me.’
‘Unfortunately,’ Sifra continued, ‘the experience ultimately proved fatal for all of our test subjects. All, that is, except you. So why is that?’
She stared at him mutely.
He kneeled until they were face to face, his pistol resting on one knee. ‘All you have to do is tell me the truth, Megan. Or else I’ll burn Bash.’
‘What?’
Sifra glanced over his shoulder at Luiz. ‘Are you ready?’
The Freeholder’s expression was uncertain. ‘But don’t we need him to—?’
‘For pity’s sake,’ Sifra shouted. ‘We talked about this already. Just do what you’re told!’
Luiz glared at him sullenly, then withdrew a torch gun from the pocket of his jacket – a handheld plasma-arc cutter of a kind typically used for slicing through pipes and bulkheads in emergency situations.
Megan heard a click, and a steady blue flame emerged from the tip of the cutter, hissing loudly. She watched in mounting horror as Luiz lowered it towards Bash’s face.
She started to push herself up and forward, but Sifra shoved her roughly back down.
‘Stay right there,’ he said harshly, standing up again and aiming the pistol at her head.
Luiz paused with the hissing flame just centimetres from Bash’s face.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Megan demanded. ‘I thought you needed him!’
‘We do,’ said Sifra. ‘But how badly, really, does he need a face?’
She stared at him, her bowels turning to liquid. ‘Anil, please, don’t do this . . .’
‘Simple choice,’ he said. ‘Luiz is an artist when it comes to this kind of thing. He’ll carve off the nose, ears, maybe the lips. And, let’s face it, Megan, given Bashir’s current lack of a functioning intellect, does he really need his eyes?’
‘Anil,’ she begged, ‘for the love of God . . .’
‘Five seconds,’ said Sifra. ‘Either Luiz burns his face off, or you tell me the truth.’
Megan hesitated just a moment too long. Sifra nodded to Luiz, and the Freeholder dipped the flame marginally closer to Bash’s cheek.
‘I’ll tell you!’ Megan yelled in panic. She could feel tears starting, but didn’t care. ‘Please . . . whatever you want, but just don’t . . .’
Just don’t hurt him.
Sifra snapped his fingers at Luiz, who switched the torch gun off and stepped away from the cot. His sullen glare had not faded, and it was clear there had been a serious argument between the two men.
‘So now you’ll tell me?’ declared Sifra.
‘Do you know,’ began Megan, ‘what a Maker Swarm is?’
He thought for a moment. ‘Something to do with the Maker caches? Like the one found in the Tierra system?’
She nodded. ‘The Swarms were created by the Makers, in order to construct the caches on their behalf.’
He frowned. ‘Go on.’
‘The point is, the Swarms are still out there, or at least one of them is – and it’s heading straight towards the Accord. Towards us.’
‘What is it, exactly? A swarm of what?’
‘Machines,’ she said. ‘Millions of them, interlinked and autonomous, comprising a single hive mind. And every last one of them is equipped with a nova drive. Try and imagine the damage an entity like that could do to us – to all of humanity. They’re on their way here, and we’ve got no more than a year or two at the most before the
y turn up in force.’
Sifra rubbed at his chin. ‘What does this have to do with the Wanderer?’
‘Back when I communicated with the Wanderer, I got a hint from it of something that could halt the Swarm before it reaches us.’
Sifra scowled at her. ‘How in hell could you know of such a thing? Surely if something like that was really coming our way, it’d be headline news everywhere?’
She struggled to think of an explanation that might convince him. The worst thing she could do, she decided, was to tell him the truth.
‘Look, sometimes I come into contact with other species – in particular the Atn,’ she said, improvising wildly. ‘And it’s general knowledge that the Atn have records going back longer than any other species in the Milky Way, including the Shoal.’
‘So you’re saying the Atn told you this Swarm was on its way here?’
‘There’s an Atn clade in the same system as Morgan’s World,’ she said, her mind racing. ‘It’s a long story, but I found out that one of their other clades had reported a Swarm passing through their region of space, and . . .’
She heard Luiz give a snicker from the far corner of the room, and felt her face grow hot.
‘Oh, man,’ said Luiz, ‘I was wrong. This is worth it just for the entertainment value alone.’
‘I think,’ Sifra said to her, his expression turned sour, ‘that if you wanted to make me even angrier than I already was, you couldn’t do better than all this bullshit about swarms and caches.’
‘For God’s sake,’ she snapped, ‘what do you want from me?’
‘You’re right about one thing, Megan,’ said Sifra. ‘Going out to the Wanderer on your own, with nothing to offer it, would be suicide. And you don’t strike me as the suicidal type. Nevertheless, I feel sure that’s just what you were intending to do.’
‘There are things you don’t know about me.’ She chose her words carefully. ‘You asked why I wanted to talk to the Wanderer – well, now you know.’
‘God damn it!’ he shouted, then turned to Luiz. ‘Go ahead. Carve him up. And, while you’re at it, let me think about whether he even needs his hands. Or his dick, for that matter.’ He glanced back at Megan and snapped his fingers. ‘Now I really should have thought of that first.’
‘No,’ said Megan, her voice calm despite her inner turmoil. ‘You’re not going to singe so much as one damn hair on Bash’s head.’
‘And why the hell not?’ Sifra demanded.
Luiz, meanwhile, regarded her with apparent interest.
‘Because I’ve had time to think,’ she said, catching the other man’s eye and speaking quickly. ‘Luiz, listen to me. If you burn Bash, you run a risk of permanently damaging his implants. And if what you’re telling me is true,’ she said, turning back to Sifra, ‘and he really can link to the Wanderer as you say he can, then you’re taking a chance of losing that link forever if you do any lasting damage. And if that happened, I’m guessing Schelling would personally burn your dick off.’
He stared at her. ‘And that story you just told me?’
‘Take it or leave it,’ she said. ‘I don’t care if you don’t believe any of it or not.’
‘She’s right,’ said Luiz. ‘It’s too much risk. You have her and Bashir both, and that’s all that matters.’
‘No,’ said Sifra, ‘I—’
Luiz sighed and shook his head, then pushed his torch gun back inside his jacket. ’No, Anil,’ he said firmly, ‘let’s just concentrate for now on our departure for Redstone. That’s the reason I’m here, not because you’ve got some personal vendetta against this woman.’
Megan watched as Sifra visibly struggled to control his temper. Then he exhaled noisily and stepped back over to the door. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me,’ he said, glaring back at her as Luiz swung the door open. ‘And even if I don’t find out what it is today, I will eventually.’
He nodded towards Bash. ‘In the meantime, you’d better get used to each other’s company, because you’re going to be spending a lot of time around each other.’
As he left, he slammed the door shut and locked it, his and Luiz’s footsteps rapidly receding down the passageway beyond.
Megan let her head tip back against the wall with a groan. Redstone? Of all the places.
She glanced over at Bash, lying unseeing and uncaring on his cot. In a life full of bad memories, the ones associated with that particular world were the worst for her.
The following morning, Luiz returned, accompanied by the two bead-zombies. One remained standing by the door, a sword clutched in one hand, while the other kept a cheaply fabricated plasma rifle trained on Megan’s head. Luiz meanwhile busied himself with cuffing her wrists behind her back. He then started to drag Bash out of his cot by the arm.
‘For pity’s sake,’ said Megan, ‘take it easy. You only need to coax him a little.’
Luiz gave her a brief, sour glance and kicked Bash hard as he lay on the floor, half tangled up in his sheets. Luiz then knelt down to twist Bash’s arms behind his back, before securing them with another pair of cuffs.
Megan eyed the two bead-zombies. She might not have access to the local data-net but, with those two headless abominations physically present in the room with her, she could see their electronic control systems as a shimmering matrix of data. Was it possible . . . ?
She let her breath out slowly, forcing herself to ignore the way Luiz was roughly pushing and shoving Bash towards the door. There wasn’t anything she could do about that right now, anyway.
The two of them exited the room, leaving her alone with the zombies. They were almost certainly controlled by an AI somewhere else on Sifra’s estate. But remote analysis with her implants rapidly made it clear that the encryption on their control beads was of a highly sophisticated nature. Were she to make a brute-force attempt at subverting them, Luiz and Sifra would soon know about it.
Then she felt a growing sense of excitement when her implants identified what appeared to be flaws – or possible points of entry – in the encryption. Could there be some way to subvert, or even take over, one or both of them?
Except, she realized belatedly, doing so would require her to be in the direct physical presence of these zombies for quite some period of time – more time than Sifra or Luiz were ever likely to allow her. Instead they would stick her on board some ship bound for Redstone, dump her in some other makeshift cell, and that would be that.
She felt her earlier sense of hopelessness return, grey and deadening, and she could hardly be bothered to fight it.
Luiz soon returned for her, leading her back upstairs and into brilliant simulated sunlight. The two zombies, she noted with interest, accompanied them.
A small flyer, with bulbous shaped-field generators on its lower fuselage and a translucent upper hull, sat waiting for them on a grassy lawn. Like the spider-truck, it was decorated with Avilon Security decals. Luiz guided her on board, where she found that Bash had already been strapped in.
She watched with deep interest as the two zombies followed them aboard, Luiz carefully strapping them one after the other into their own seats behind her and Bash. The thought of them sitting so close, yet out of sight, made her skin crawl. But it was still an unexpected opportunity to investigate the limits of their secured encryption more thoroughly. She wondered what would be used to run and control the zombies, once they were out of range of the estate’s AI systems.
Sifra himself was the last to board. He threw a single, uninterested glance at her before stepping on through into the cockpit, closely followed by Luiz. The craft rose immediately, so Megan had only a last brief glimpse of Cockaigne.
Just fifteen minutes later, they dropped to a landing at Avilon’s primary spaceport, where Luiz herded her and Bash towards a nearby dropship. A tannoy boomed indecipherably some way off in the distance, with the electronic chime of an automated cargo truck dopplering somewhere to her right.
There was, she realized, no one around
to wonder why two of the people now boarding the dropship had their hands cuffed behind their backs – and even if they had noticed, Luiz’s high-level security clearance would probably have given them the perfect cover.
They were led up the dropship’s broad ramp and inside its cockpit, where Luiz again strapped first Megan and then Bash and the two zombies into acceleration couches.
As the craft lifted up, the force of acceleration pushed her deep into the couch. Within minutes they were weightless, and well on their way to whatever destiny Sifra and Otto Schelling had planned for them. And, despite the circumstances of her departure from Avilon, there was a part of her that nonetheless felt safer in being far from the constant tug of gravity.
EIGHT
Megan
Half a day later, the dropship rendezvoused with the Liberia, an inter-system transport ferry. This consisted of little more than a framework of girders, modular docking ports and habitats arranged around powerful anti-matter engines. It followed a perpetually looping orbit that threaded together 82 Eridani’s scattered collection of planets. Avilon soon dwindled to aft as the Liberia boosted sunwards, carrying them and numerous other small craft towards Redstone and the inner system.
She watched as Luiz and Sifra unbuckled themselves, casually discussing as they did so the various entertainments and distractions to be found within the communal malls and restaurants of the Liberia’s bow as they made for the hatch.
‘Hey!’ she yelled from where she was still strapped tightly into her couch. ‘What about me and Bash?’
‘What about you?’ said Luiz, looking back at her with a smirk.
‘How long are you going to be?’ she demanded. ‘You can’t just leave us strapped into these couches! What if I need to pee? What about Bash?’
‘She’s got a point,’ Luiz said to Sifra.
‘Come back later and take care of all that,’ Sifra replied to him.
‘But what if I need to pee now?’ demanded Megan, hating the plaintive tone creeping into her voice.