by John Meaney
His emotional reaction to seeing Alisha – that was what Dr Keele had wanted to observe.
And I’ve failed it.
The faint rose-hip fragrance of Leeja was on his skin.
‘So what’s going on?’ he asked.
‘One moment.’ Dr Keele glanced into the air – a her-eyes-only display lased on to her retinas from the walls – then her lips moved, mouthing: ‘Go ahead. Protocol confirmed.’
Anti-sound prevented him hearing, but she had not bothered with optical distortion to prevent lip-reading.
‘You haven’t treated her?’ he asked.
‘The final phase just started. Can I assume that Meta Ed was part of your schooling?’
‘Er …’
‘I mean learning about learning.’
‘Of course.’
He could speak of Fulgidus education – as was – rather than what happened in Labyrinth; but that was good enough.
‘I thought so,’ said Dr Keele. ‘I understand you grew up on Fulgor.’
How could she know that?
From Alisha’s memories.
That was disturbing.
‘So,’ added Dr Keele, ‘you’ll know about potentiation, including long-term memory formation.’
‘Yes, I— Why?’
But after discussions about Dad’s induced amnesia, he had a premonition before Dr Keele confirmed the nature of Alisha’s treatment.
‘We’re using full cognitive rollback,’ she said. ‘The process was largely complete, which was why she looked so calm just now. I wanted confirmation that we could proceed to the optimum potentiation boundary. Taking out entire waking days is always best.’
He should not have gone with Leeja. He should not even have talked to her.
‘Could you explain that, please?’ he said.
‘The boundary is before her first meeting with someone called Helsen. From her neuroassociative mapping results, this Helsen was tied up causally with the Stargonier woman who carried out the neural assault.’
Dr Keele swallowed, no longer professionally calm.
‘Law enforcement officials have already scanned everything,’ she went on. ‘I’m sure you can appreciate why.’
Given what had happened on Fulgor, Roger would have been surprised if they had done anything else, regardless of privacy laws.
‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘The day Alisha met Helsen was my first day on—’
He remembered sitting on the circular balcony that overlooked the campus. Seeing Alisha for the first time – and, across the plaza, Helsen and the bearded man with her: both darkness-haunted.
Helsen, the bitch who had killed his world.
‘Exactly why I needed to gauge your degree of emotional attachment,’ said Dr Keele. ‘If you wish to get to know Alisha Spalding again, you will have to begin all over as a stranger.’
He forced his attention back to the moment. ‘You don’t sound like someone who’s negotiating, Doctor.’
‘The treatment is already complete, save for final integrity checks.’
Like a finishing glaze or varnish on archaic craftwork, the main creation complete.
‘So if I walk in now’ – he gestured to the blank wall – ‘she’ll not recognize me.’
Dr Keele just looked at him.
I get it. You already told me that much.
On holodramas, medics were good-looking and empathic. But this, now, was not the severest lesson in reality to have hit him lately.
‘You think I let her down,’ he added. ‘Is that it?’
Her nostrils flared, as if picking up the scent of recent sex.
‘Your moral standards are up to you.’
‘But I don’t know if she had any feelings for me at all. All I really know—’
Dr Keele’s head-shake was tiny, a micro-expression.
Shit.
But coming from someone adept at reading the stuff of thought from scans, it formed a clear and authoritative signal.
Alisha was in love with me.
Past tense, and now something further removed: Alisha’s emotions belonged to an alternate subjective reality cut off and discarded, just as old-time surgeons might have snipped out an appendix and tossed the organ aside.
And if he walked in to see Alisha now, what would he say?
Hi, I’m the guy who pulled you out of the brothel where you’d been servicing that fat old guy with the dripping dick. Remember him? No, I guess you don’t.
Arcs of tension bracketed his mouth.
‘I’m sure you think you’ve done the right thing,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we leave it at—’
Scarlet holo icons streamed at eye-level between them.
‘That’s a security alarm,’ said Dr Keele.
‘You get security emergencies in the med-halls? How often does—?’
Her face was stony.
‘I’ve never known it to happen.’
Dr Keele rushed out, Roger striding after. She ran to a large therapy room and stopped, breathing hard in the doorway. Inside, the room was largely empty. As a group of junior medics trotted up, Dr Keele turned on them.
‘Where the hell is my autodoc? My new autodoc!’
‘I can’t—’ The nearest medic had paled. ‘No one came past us.’
But scarlet alarm-icons continued to flare.
‘Look.’ Dr Keele opened a holovolume. ‘See?’
In the holo, a narrow-bodied woman with dirty-blond hair came into this room, tu-rings blazing on her fists, and commanded the autodoc to open. She stopped, stared into whatever area of wall had recorded this, and pulled a rictus expression, a corpse’s smile.
Bitch.
Her eyes were colder than a reptile’s. Or perhaps it was simply this: he knew what she had done, what she had caused with her manipulation.
You fucking bitch.
Inside the image, Helsen climbed into the autodoc, and crouched as it sealed up. Roger could not help his grasping gesture; but it was too late to catch her, at least like that.
I will kill you.
Beneath the autodoc, the quickglass floor began to spiral, creating a viscous vortex into which, seconds later, the autodoc sank. Then it was completely under. Movement showed as a rippling shadow, then nothing, as if a pond-fish had flicked its muscles to swim from sight.
‘She walked right in,’ said Dr Keele.
‘That’s not possible.’ Another medic was shaking his head. ‘Not without light-bending tech to create invisibility … but even so, we were right outside.’
‘Not light-bending,’ said Roger.
It was the darkness that was the enemy, not just a single, manipulative, psychotic woman.
‘Not—?’
‘Mind-bending,’ said Roger. ‘She’s very good at it.’
‘You know her?’ Dr Keele, unsympathetic before, used her voice like a flail. ‘What is this about, Pilot Blackstone?’
The other medics looked surprised. Roger was still wearing smartlenses.
Just as well.
Because energies were building inside his eyes: energies he wanted to let loose, coruscating and deadly; but there was no point because the bitch from hell was gone.
‘That was Dr Petra Helsen, formerly of Lucis Multiversity on Fulgor,’ he said. ‘And I’ve reason to believe she engineered the coming of the Anomaly.’
The medics stared.
You think I care about a piece of stolen med-kit?
Movement caused his attention to flick to a new location: a doorway where a scar-faced man was entering. His shoulders were thick, his limbs stocky and muscular; but that was not why the medics moved back. Authority came from his gait and gaze.
Law enforcement.
‘Pilot Blackstone,’ he said. ‘I think you and I might have a useful chat. My name’s Tannier.’
‘All right,’ said Roger.
But less than an hour and a half remained before Jed’s reinsertion into realspace, and Roger’s only chance of getting away from this place.
Dr Keele’s harsh face was a reminder that doing the right thing was a matter of seeing straight and planning: something Roger needed to do more of. He could start by clarifying what he wanted.
‘Catch Helsen,’ he said. ‘Just catch her.’
‘If we can,’ said Tannier. ‘She’s disappeared, and that’s quite a trick for an offworlder.’
‘Disappeared with an autodoc?’ Dr Keele sounded scathing. ‘How can that be?’
‘About as easy,’ said Tannier, ‘as stealing it from under your noses, Doctor.’
Roger felt his mouth twitch.
‘Take me in to headquarters, or whatever you do,’ he said. ‘And I’ll talk to you gladly.’
He looked at Helsen’s image as the video log replayed.
My enemy.
And Tannier’s reply was lost in the surf-sound of auditory exclusion, a facet of the adrenal stress response that Roger was becoming used to: his neuromuscular system reacting to the threat of lethal danger, the atavistic recognition of a nonhuman predator, because that was what Helsen had become: a conduit for the darkness, a vessel for a power that had created a mind-consuming planetary entity for unknowable purpose. Helsen was a thing that needed to be stamped out, crushed into particles that could never form a threat.
While the Anomaly and greater darkness remained hostile and aggressive, their magnitude and potential vast, their goals impossible to perceive, even in outline, their weaknesses boiled down to this: precisely none.
Was all of humanity at risk?
TWELVE
EARTH, 2147 AD
They met up at a travelling diner in New Phoenix, one of two hundred or so establishments slowly circling the city along Annular Beltway, some thirty kilometres away from DistribOne where they all theoretically worked. Rekka performed some hatha yoga breathing, needing the calmness. Beside her, Simon grinned, clearly anticipating a friendly meal and good conversation.
You’ve not been getting much from me, have you?
But Simon could not understand her grief over Sharp’s self sacrifice. A xeno behaved according to its species’ evolved behaviour patterns; that Sharp was her friend who had given up everything – in a slow, awful death – seemed not to register.
‘The girls are here already,’ said Simon. ‘Hiya!’
Rekka slid in to sit facing Amber – whose steel eye-sockets glittered with reflected faux candle-light – while Simon gave Mary a peck on the cheek before sitting opposite her.
‘I was going to wear shades,’ said Amber. ‘But Mary reckoned that would make me more conspicuous, not less.’
‘Probably right,’ said Simon. ‘People are used to seeing Pilots around here, after all.’
Amber was supposed to be far from DistribOne, on sabbatical in Australia.
‘Anyway, food.’ Simon growled at Mary: ‘Need. Food.’
‘Poor Rekka.’ Amber reached out to find Rekka’s hand, then patted it. ‘I don’t question your being straight, because I know you can’t help it. But your choice of men—’
Mary laughed.
‘Excuse me?’ Simon said to her. Then, to Amber: ‘Isn’t motherhood supposed to make you mellow?’
‘Exhausted, more to the point.’
Rekka said, ‘So how is the most beautiful baby boy in the universe?’
‘Two universes.’ Lines disappeared from Amber’s face as she smiled. ‘And Jared’s wonderful. This is the first time I’ve been out without him, and it’s actually tough.’
‘He’s with Jenna,’ said Mary. ‘Who’s being the adoring aunt, and loving it.’
They ordered the first course, took their time eating, their conversation lightly seasoned with friendly insults, then finished up. An actual human waitress took their plates away, while menus displayed on the tabletop, Amber’s with fast-audio enabled: she ran her fingertips along the icons, a high-speed gabble sounding.
Gabble to Rekka; comprehensible to Amber.
‘So the rumour mill is one hundred per cent operational,’ said Simon. ‘And looks to be correct. DistribOne’s capacity is being reduced by seventy per cent over the next two years. I’m not supposed to know, even in my exalted position, which is why I can’t possibly be telling you this right now.’
‘And the workload’s going where, exactly?’ asked Mary.
Rekka was blinking.
He didn’t say anything earlier.
Or maybe she had broadcast leave-me-alone signals by pure body language. Sharp had been on her mind – again – all afternoon.
‘Shaanxi Province, mainly. And some other centres in the region, like Singapore.’
‘They can’t do that,’ said Amber. ‘I mean, they’re UNSA and they can do what they like, but Pilots have personal lives too. And for most other personnel, it’s an even bigger change.’
Mary was staring at Simon.
‘It’s the Higashionna cousins, isn’t it? They seem to be behind every weird change at the moment.’
‘Good guess, sweetheart,’ said Simon. ‘Our charismatic senators are poking around everywhere. Especially at Pilot welfare.’
‘Welfare,’ said Amber. ‘Right.’
But Rekka remembered Sharp’s reaction at DistribOne on seeing the two Higashionnas – good-looking Japanese-Brazilians, appearing like brother and sister but actually cousins, both UN senators – and the questions he asked in private: Do you not taste their evil? and Can you not smell dark nothing?
Even the visiting Zajinets had acted perturbed at the Higashionnas’ presence.
The entrées arrived – ‘Shouldn’t it be the starters that you enter with?’ Simon asked – and Rekka, Amber and Mary tucked in. But Simon had not finished talking.
‘China’s the place to be, isn’t it? Vibrant, go-ahead. Good schooling.’
Amber paused.
‘We’re still talking about that,’ she said.
Rekka looked at Mary, who was frowning.
Is there an argument there?
‘Karyn McNamara’s school in Zürich is still supposed to be the best,’ said Rekka. ‘But sending your child away like that can’t compete with a good home life.’
What none of them was saying aloud was that Jared’s birth – although registered as a home birth in New Phoenix – had taken place aboard Luís Delgado’s ship in mu-space, an illicit act that had required Rekka’s and Simon’s complicity.
Which meant baby Jared, already nanovirally treated as an embryo, was a natural-born Pilot of the kind that Karyn McNamara specialized in rearing. Karyn’s daughter Ro, who had come as an adult to DistribOne six years earlier but was rarely seen these days, had been the first of the new kind of Pilot, with black-on-black eyes instead of the silver sockets that both Karyn and Amber wore, their natural (and newly useless) eyes removed during the nanoviral alterations they had undergone as Pilot Candidates.
‘UNSA has no right,’ said Mary, ‘to determine how a child is raised.’
Amber put down her cutlery.
‘You can’t drive me to tears,’ she said, ‘because they took out my tear ducts along with my eyes, remember?’
‘Shit, sweetheart,’ said Mary. ‘I know that, but—’
‘Which is why I’m a fucking invalid in this world, while you literally cannot imagine the beauty of mu-space, the entire universe that is Jared’s birthright. OK?’
Mary’s face clenched.
‘I’m sorry, everyone. Shouldn’t have brought up a touchy subject, right?’
‘If you can’t talk about it in front of your friends,’ said Rekka, ‘then where?’
Mary glanced at Simon, then looked down at her plate.
‘I am enjoying this, really. Why don’t we just eat?’
The meal lumbered on.
Rekka went to a meeting the next afternoon. Her infostrand had given her directions – McStuart’s office, 14:00 – but the meeting’s purpose was listed as Project composition, which could mean anything. Which project did it even refer to?
&nb
sp; Simon was so much better at this stuff than she was. His forward planning was meticulous always; he could visualize and rattle off the minutest details of last year’s work as easily as the next quarter’s plans; and he never entered a meeting without a clear objective in mind, and at least three possible strategies for achieving it. She, on the other hand, met deadlines only because she had to, while her idea of fun was to deeply immerse herself in the moment, and that applied to coding autofact software or modelling biospaces as much as to yoga or sex.
‘Sit down.’ McStuart smiled. ‘As you can see, Matt is helping us out today.’
Rekka nodded to Matt Kilborn, who as Chief Flight Controller had the final say on mission assignments. She was glad to see him, because McStuart was not as friendly as he was pretending to be.
‘I’m not in trouble, I hope,’ she said.
Kilborn smiled; McStuart’s façade slipped back to his normal serious expression.
‘You’re in our good books, Rekka,’ said Kilborn. ‘Otherwise we wouldn’t have a choice new assignment for you.’
Adrenaline washed through her arteries.
‘An offworld mission?’
‘Er, no.’ McStuart shifted. ‘Naturally, you’re shortlisted for the choicest of new pre-and first-contact missions’ – with a glance at Kilborn – ‘since your success with the Haxigoji.’
That was a change in sentiment since the shouting match that followed her arrival at DistribOne with Sharp aboard a Pilot’s vessel.
Kilborn said, ‘You have my deepest sympathy regarding Sharp. He was a remarkable individual.’
The words were standard but sounded genuine.
That’s more than Simon’s managed to say to me.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘He was brave for sure.’
‘Which is why,’ said Kilborn, ‘I believe you’re the best possible person we could send to Singapore to work with the Haxigoji.’
Singapore?
She used the yoga breathing as a pause for taking stock.
The Haxigoji?
So Sharp’s people had sent a replacement; but UNSA had chosen not to receive him here, in Arizona.
‘There are seven in the party,’ added Kilborn. ‘Exceptionally bright, all of them.’
McStuart eased back in his chair. If he thought that letting Kilborn take charge was the way to get Rekka to listen, then he was right – for once.