Creation Machine

by Andrew Bannister

  ‘What did they do?’

  ‘Sold up. No choice. So the Heg’ stripped the planet, rare species, everything, and turned it over to intensive agriculture.’

  ‘Shit.’ She looked around. ‘How do I talk to it?’

  ‘Just talk. It’s listening. It doesn’t say much.’

  ‘Okay. Um, ship?’

  There was a pause, and then a slight click and a background hiss as if someone had switched on something old.

  ‘Hello.’ The voice sounded old too, a soft breathy growl that could have been male or female.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry about the planet.’

  ‘You weren’t responsible.’

  ‘No.’ For a moment she didn’t know what to say next. Then she asked, ‘Why do you collect all this?’ She waved round, assuming that the ship could see as well as hear.

  ‘The habitats are conservation. They are from the planet, before it was defiled.’

  ‘Did you save everything?’

  ‘No. Barely one per cent of species. I had to choose.’

  Choose. The word did something to Fleare. ‘How?’

  ‘Badly. But better than the alternative.’ There was another click, and the hiss stopped.

  Fleare looked at nothing for a moment, shaking her head gently.

  She was roused by Muz’s voice. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yeah. Just processing another reason we were right to fight the Heg’.’ And me, my father, she thought, and shook her head again. Then she pushed back her shoulders. ‘Right, what next?’

  ‘Head for that rock over there.’

  She peered through the dim light. ‘What, the hot damp jungly rock surrounded by hot jungly insects?’

  ‘It isn’t a jungle and that isn’t insects, thank you. It’s me. I’m waiting for you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  The rock marked the edge of the habitat. The boundary was some sort of air curtain that looked like falling steam. It felt cool after the humid forest. On the other side there was a pool fed by a hot spring. Fleare looked at Muz and grinned. ‘I like this habitat better,’ she said.

  Half an hour later she was bathed and dressed in some anonymous-looking clothes that had appeared while she was in the water – loose trousers and a smock in some sort of soft greeny-brown material that weighed almost nothing but felt warm – and best of all, she was eating finger-sized pieces of smokily roast meat from a tray full of skewers that had floated up to her and dropped to the flat rocks with a soft clang. She had forgotten that anything could taste like that. She chewed slowly and with a sense of astonished concentration, while Muz talked.

  ‘Society Otherwise was rolled up as a going concern the same day you were hauled off to the Monastery,’ he said. ‘It was the speed that got us, as much as anything. The Heg’ overwhelmed us. They never bothered talking about peace, or terms or shit. They just wrapped us up as if we had never existed.’

  ‘Were you . . .’ She searched for the right words, but couldn’t find them.

  ‘Was I still in my jar? Yeah, for a while. By the time they got up their courage to let me out the whole thing was over. Kelk and Jez were around long enough to say hi, then they were moved out as well. Spent six months in camps, then there was an amnesty and they got let out. Me too.’

  ‘Ameffy?’ Fleare pulled a face round her mouthful. She swallowed. ‘That was big of the Heg’. So where are they now?’

  ‘Jez is running some sort of transport business in the Outer Rotate. Kelk’s just bumming around, as far as I know. I’m in touch, once in a while.’

  ‘Hm.’ Fleare ate in silence for a while. Then she said quietly: ‘We were betrayed, weren’t we?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When do you think? I’ve had three years to talk myself out of it, and I can’t. When the stations were nuked. When Soc O was rolled up so easily. Come on, Muz.’

  The cloud had settled like a covering of soot on the rock next to Fleare. Now it lifted into the air. ‘I don’t know about betrayed,’ it said. ‘I’m not saying you’re wrong – someone certainly knew something – but that might just have been very efficient penetration. We were outclassed and outgunned, Fleare. It could have been as simple as the biggest smartest guy winning.’

  Fleare stared at the cloud for a long moment. Then she shrugged. ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Whatever. I’m not going to argue.’ She blew out a breath. ‘Okay. Moving on – so, if Soc O doesn’t exist and everyone is dispersed, who just rescued me? I don’t want to seem ungrateful or anything, I’d just like to know how much I owe someone and who they are.’

  ‘All in good time, my Captain. Eat, recover.’

  ‘I am recovered!’ She found herself waving the skewer at the cloud, and hurriedly pointed it somewhere else. ‘I am recovered,’ she repeated. ‘I’m fine. And I can eat and think at the same time, thank you. Females are good at multitasking.’

  ‘Okay. Well, the answer to who rescued you is me, so I suppose I’m the one in charge. It wasn’t Soc O. Like I said, that was rolled up; no organization left. Not that we were all that organized. We were a kind of collective, right? We never really defined it but that was how it worked.’

  ‘I guess.’ She reflected, then added, ‘We weren’t really into definitions, were we?’

  ‘No.’ The cloud settled on the rock again, this time in a swirly mathematical-looking pattern that Fleare thought faintly familiar. ‘That was then. Now is kind of different. The Heg’ runs the place, for a start.’

  ‘How much of the place?’

  ‘Quite a lot. The whole Outer, more or less. And about half the Rotate.’

  Fleare stared. ‘That’s more than quite a lot,’ she said eventually. ‘That’s most.’

  ‘Depends how you count. But most of the money and a lot of the people, yeah. They wrapped up a lot of treaties real fast when the war was over.’

  Fleare realized that the pattern picked out by the cloud particles was moving very slowly, rearranging itself as if it was playing out the result of some constantly evolving equation. The effect was almost hypnotic. She shook her head. ‘What about the bit in the middle? What was it? The Quarantine?’

  ‘Nearly. The Cordern. Although plenty of people would prefer your version.’ The pattern on the rock blurred as if someone had rubbed it out. ‘They’re still in charge of their own shitty affairs. So toxic there’s no point talking to them or taking them over. Look, have you finished eating?’

  Fleare looked down. The tray was empty. ‘It seems so,’ she said. Her fingers were greasy. She thought about wiping them on her clothes but then changed her mind. She looked up. ‘What’s next, Muz? What are we going to do?’

  ‘Depends. What do you want to do?’

  This time there was no need to think at all. She stood up. ‘I want to see Kelk and Jez,’ she said. ‘And then I want to stick one to the Heg’. And Muz?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Thanks for rescuing me.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Thanks for saying “we” just then.’

  ‘You’re welcome too.’ She reached out a hand and moved it towards the dust on the rock. It stopped moving, and then formed itself into a blurry circle with a dot at the centre. She extended a finger and gently brushed the dot. The dust felt soft and dry, and tickled a little.

  Thale Port

  IT CAME DOWN to equations, in the end. Fleare had never understood them. Muz tried to explain. It helped to pass the journey.

  At first sight the Spin was a model of logistical hell. As a big bunch of planets all with wildly different – not to say playful – orbits, nothing was ever the same distance apart so any idea of planning regular trade routes was out.

  Until you looked really carefully. Equations.

  There were four basic areas. The Cordern, in the middle, was not too far across so things stayed fairly close together. The nasty little empires that seemed endemic to the region could deal with that, if they didn’t try to climb out of their own little yard
into someone else’s.

  Next was the Inner Spin, which wrapped most of the way round the Cordern like a thick skin, leaving a little bit uncovered so that, from some angles, false-coloured holograms made the Cordern look like a partly peeled fruit. Nuzzling up to the peeled side of the Cordern was the Rotate, and surrounding the whole lot was the big diffuse volume of the Outer Spin. The Outer Spin and the Cordern both rotated relative to the Inner Spin and the Rotate and to each other.

  That was where the equations came in. If you tried hard enough, you could predict which bits would line up when. It turned out that some bits lined up amazingly well, amazingly often. In particular, six suns, two gas giants and a small, very dense neutron star regularly formed a dead straight line from one side of the Spin to the other, passing just outside the Cordern but close enough to allow for trade, if you felt like taking the risk and didn’t mind what you caught.

  People called it the Highway. They waited for it. Then they used it.

  ‘What the fuck was that?’

  Fleare ducked reflexively and tightened her grip on the sides of her couch as the shuttle swerved.

  ‘Don’t know. Could have been a packaged factory? Or maybe a really big musical instrument? Hard to tell, up here.’

  Fleare stared at the object as it receded. ‘Whatever it is, I’ve never seen one in orbit before. Shit. Why’s there so much stuff up here?’

  The near-space around Thale Port was lunatic with activity. The Orbiter, which apparently preferred to keep a good distance between itself and too much company, had been left in quieter space about twenty seconds out from the port boundary. Fleare assumed it would be doing some gardening, or something. She and Muz were in a small shuttle, picking their way through a lethally dense cloud of space bodies on the way to one of the big industrial-looking stations that formed the real business end of the port.

  Muz sounded distracted. ‘The Highway’s forming. Five, six days from now it’ll be Line-Up, and then these guys will have about a day to squirt this lot down it if they want to do it for free.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Fleare frowned. ‘I remember something: slingshots and gravity wells and stuff?’

  ‘That’s right. Get your aim right, maybe stick on a few thrusters to keep everything on course, and you can bounce a trillion tonnes of cargo straight down the Highway for nothing.’

  ‘Right.’ Fleare studied the crowd of floating objects, trying to see where it ended. She couldn’t; instead it stretched into the distance until the individual bodies coalesced into grey fog, side-lit in the distance by the light of Camfi, the first sun of the Highway. She shrugged. ‘So, this is what Jez does?’

  ‘That’s right. The cargo rights are mostly owned by cooperatives. Well, she owns one of the cooperatives.’

  Fleare shook her head. ‘That can’t be right,’ she said. ‘How can someone own a cooperative?’

  ‘Works for her. Look, Fleare, I gotta drive, otherwise we’ll get in the wrong lane and then we could end up anywhere.’

  ‘Okay.’ She took a breath. ‘Drive.’ She flicked on the screen and tried to concentrate on the rolling news. It helped take her mind off the lurching of the shuttle.

  The docking station, when they finally made it, was a huge, tenuous structure that looked rather like a fern, if every frond of the fern was a pontoon with a hundred vessels hanging off it.

  It was also rather testy.

  ‘What?’

  Fleare looked at Muz and shrugged. The dust briefly swept into the unmistakable shape of an anus, and then regrouped round the comms. ‘Orbiter shuttle, requesting approach to Thale Outward Dock. For the second time.’

  There was a pause. Then the voice said: ‘Heard you. Wait.’

  Fleare looked at Muz. ‘What now?’

  ‘What do you think? We wait. They’re probably run off their feet. And they might also be shit-heads.’

  They waited. After a while the comms hissed and spoke. ‘Orbiter shuttle. Stand by to be acquired.’

  ‘Acquired?’ Fleare looked at Muz accusingly.

  ‘Ah, yes. You’ve never been here before? You’d better sit down.’

  There was something in his voice that got her attention. There was an acceleration couch just behind her. She took a couple of backward steps and sat down on it. After a moment’s thought she reached her hands down and took hold of the frame. Just in case.

  There was a faint thump from outside, as if something had bumped up against the hull, followed by a scrabbling noise. Then she tightened her grip on the frame of the couch as the shuttle lurched violently. She glared at Muz. ‘Oi! Warn me next time!’

  ‘Not my fault. We’ve been acquired, remember? The Dock’s got us. Anyway, I did tell you to sit down.’

  ‘Yeah, but not to brace for fucking impact. Ow!’ They slammed violently to a stop, and the voice of the Dock said: ‘You may embark. If you can still stand up. Shit-heads.’

  ‘Ah.’ Muz sounded contrite. ‘It, ah, it may have heard me.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll take that bet. So what now?’ Fleare stood up and looked around. The shuttle seemed intact. Even the screen was still working. She frowned at it.

  ‘Well, we go and find Jez, of course. You coming? Fleare?’

  ‘Uh, Muz?’ She waved at the screen.

  ‘What? Oh.’

  The screen showed a picture of Fleare. She waved up the sound as the picture changed to a newsroom.

  ‘. . . substantial reward has been offered for any news leading to the recovery of Fleare Haas, daughter of wealthy industrialist and Hegemony political hopeful Viklun Haas. Ms Haas went missing from Obel earlier today. Mr Haas joins us now from his headquarters on Janksa’s Loop.’ The screen split to show Viklun Haas on one side and the newscaster on the other. ‘Sir, welcome; you must be very concerned.’

  ‘Incredibly worried, yes. We all just want to know that Fleare’s safe.’

  ‘Of course. Can you tell us how she went missing?’

  ‘Well, she was on a religious retreat. We don’t know all the details but the venue came under attack, there was a firefight and Fleare went missing. The assumption is that she was removed under cover of the firefight.’

  ‘And since then you’ve heard nothing?’ The presenter sounded faintly sceptical. ‘I mean, you are legendarily wealthy, Mr Haas. Has no one approached you with any kind of proposal?’

  ‘If you mean a ransom, then no, we’ve heard nothing.’

  ‘But you have offered a reward. A very large one.’

  ‘That’s right. A million standard for any information that leads to her recovery. We’ve set up a contact centre.’ An ID appeared on the screen below him.

  ‘Indeed.’ The announcer consulted something in front of her, then looked up. ‘There are rumours growing on Social that some kind of non-human entity was central to the kidnap, if that’s what it was. Maybe a modified. Can you comment on that?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘But you’re not denying it. That’s interesting, Mr Haas, because under your new rules modifieds are illegal, aren’t they?’

  Haas frowned. ‘They’re not my rules, Ms Pipil. The Government . . .’

  ‘Of course.’ Pipil looked straight at the camera for a moment. ‘But some people have suggested that your daughter might also fall under those rules.’

  ‘I really can’t comment on—’

  ‘You were estranged, weren’t you, before she went into what you call her retreat?’

  Haas leaned back in his seat and shook his head slowly. ‘Ms Pipil, any family can have disagreements. Ours, if we have had them, belong in the past. And I promise you, to have one’s only daughter kidnapped is enough to wipe out any history.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Haas.’ The image of Haas dissolved and Pipil turned to face the camera, one eyebrow slightly raised. ‘We’ll bring you more on that as it unfolds. Now, the situation in the Cordern seems to be brewing up again . . .’

  Fleare waved the screen off. ‘Fuck,’ she said quietly.

&
nbsp; ‘It was bound to happen.’

  ‘Yeah, but how are we going to get anywhere now? That picture will be all over everywhere.’

  Muz had formed a fuzzy globe in front of the screen; now he fountained up into a cloud at Fleare’s eye level. ‘That was a pretty old picture.’

  ‘Yeah, well, he hasn’t seen me for a while.’

  ‘I know. No one has. What I meant was, you don’t look so much like that now.’

  ‘I can’t have changed that much.’

  ‘You’d better see.’

  The cloud solidified into a rectangle. Its surface rippled and then mirrored. Fleare looked at herself, and then drew in a breath. The gaunt, unfamiliar face in the mirror did the same. At first she grinned. ‘Muz, are you pissing about?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’ The grin faded. She looked down, running her hands down her body. They stopped at her hips, on bones that protruded like shelves through the light shirt. She looked up at Muz. ‘Yeah, well. The Strecki Diet.’

  ‘So don’t worry about being recognized.’ The mirror melted into a single big droplet like mercury, which boiled back into dust. ‘We need to decide how I’m going to travel.’

  ‘Hm. What do you fancy?’

  ‘Something that keeps me in the open, I guess.’

  She looked down at her emaciated body again. It needed – something. ‘How about jewellery?’

  ‘I don’t remember you wearing jewellery.’

  ‘I didn’t, but I can always start.’

  ‘I suppose. It’d need to be pretty chunky. I can’t compress beyond a certain point. How about this? Excuse me.’

  The cloud rose to the level of her neck and formed itself into an elongated tube which thinned and bulged along its length.

  ‘There. What do you think?’