Transmission: Ragnarok: Book Two

by John Meaney

  ‘I think I might have underestimated you, my young friend.’

  ‘No,’ said Roger. ‘You gave me motivation. And thank you.’

  Rhianna nodded, but her face was grim.

  It doesn’t matter.

  As if she could see the changes taking place inside him, and wished there were another way for him to grow as a person.

  Not your fault.

  Helsen, and the darkness she allowed to control her, had created whatever he was becoming.

  And they will regret it.

  That was a promise.

  Mum. Dad.

  A promise to the loved ones the darkness had killed.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  EARTH, 2147 AD

  ‘It’s not just the money,’ said Amber, her voice desperate, her expression of conflict and anguish clear, despite the metal eye-sockets that so often made her hard to read. ‘I mean, it’s not the economic need to work, or I’d find something on, on …’

  ‘Something on Earth,’ said Rekka. ‘In realspace.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  Beyond the restaurant window was the shopper’s paradise of Orchard Road, and the outdoor-sauna air. Rekka sat next to Amber, facing Angela and Randolf, whose voices were very careful, their conscious sympathy focused on Amber.

  I’m hurting too.

  But today was not about the betrayal as such. Rekka had been wrenched through her core, as if her whole body had sheared along a transverse plane to split her organs, when she learned that Simon had moved in with Mary. Amber’s reaction could only be worse, because of her situation: baby Jared, months old, natural-born Pilot unknown to UNSA; and Amber herself, a Pilot of the original kind, eyeless and blind in realspace, coming alive only in another universe, flying an UNSA ship configured precisely for her.

  They ate a meal of sorts as the discussion proceeded; afterwards, Rekka would not remember the dishes nor even who paid.

  ‘In mu-space,’ Randolf said at one point, ‘you’re in your element. Playing devil’s advocate against myself, what would it be like if you never saw mu-space again? I mean surely you could in fact cope.’

  Even with her eyes replaced with I/O sockets, Amber could project a feeling of emptiness without a word.

  ‘That’s the thing, isn’t it?’ she said after some moments. ‘Maybe I’m a junkie, and our lords and masters in UNSA are the only ones who can provide my fix. Maybe I can’t cope without it.’

  ‘You’re being too harsh on yourself,’ said Angela. ‘If we … if we were to raise Jared, you could visit us …’ She turned to Randolf. ‘Right?’

  ‘There would be visits,’ he said. ‘Of course there would. He’ll be glad to have, have …’

  ‘Two mothers.’ Rekka put her hand on Amber’s. ‘Two mothers to share the load, and twice the fun when you’re all out having a good time together.’

  Randolf’s voice went very soft.

  ‘Two mothers to love him,’ he said.

  With her hand still on Amber’s, Rekka could feel the change in muscle tone, in that moment when Randolf’s words persuaded her.

  The next day, Rekka went to work.

  She would have liked to oversee the whole thing, the handing over of baby Jared, the legal completion in a notary booth – online processing took seconds, but procedures like adoption required full DNA identification and diffractive quark brain-imaging along with blood analysis to verify the absence of coercion – but this was their day, Randolf and Angela’s, Jared’s, and in a different way, Amber’s.

  On the ground floor, strips of red carpet adorned the reception area, clear sign of bigwigs paying a visit. No doubt they would think the carpet a compliment, if they even noticed – if they had not seen such things so often they failed to register it – while Rekka thought the real intent was to signal everybody else to behave appropriately.

  Signals and communication were all she could think of these days, besides the emotional vortex that was her private life. Riding up in the lift, she used her hatha yoga breathing to induce a modicum of calm. In theory, human-to-Haxigoji communication consisted only of voice-translated-to-airborne molecules by the technology; in practice, she knew they could read her emotional state with a sniff. Only the rational words needed translation.

  Instead of Bittersweet, it was a male called Redolent Mint with whom she spent the morning conversing. Rekka suspected that Bittersweet had ordered the males to buck up and take an interest in the linguistics, but she did not share that analysis with anyone else. If Rekka was right in reading intentions and motives, then Bittersweet was trying to make the six males appear less like a bodyguard team and more like fellow ambassadors. And that meant the males were here for Bittersweet’s protection because they thought she needed it.

  Sharp was so different.

  He had possessed no defensiveness on Earth, had shown no negative reactions at all, apart from the day he had seen the UN senators, the Higashionna cousins. (Do you not taste their evil? he had asked. Can you not smell dark nothing?) Perhaps it was something to do with his masculinity; yet Bittersweet seemed, if anything, more confident than her male companions.

  At lunchtime, Rekka delayed long enough for her colleagues to finish eating – of course Randolf was not here today – before going down to the staff restaurant, intending to eat alone. But after two mouthfuls of noodles, here came Google Li, tray in hand, popping it down opposite Rekka, then taking a seat.

  ‘Lovely to see you, Rekka,’ she said. ‘I hear your work’s going wonderfully. Oh and, rumour-wise, that a certain missing Pilot has been back in touch, talking about getting back in harness. Wonderful news.’

  ‘Sure.’

  An absence of threats was no reason for Rekka to think of this as sudden friendship.

  ‘As for the VIPs,’ Google said, ‘I hear they’ll be dropping in unexpectedly at around four o’clock. Just so you know.’

  ‘Thanks for telling me.’

  The afternoon session was all about Bittersweet and Rekka exploring the boundaries of verb tenses. Rekka was aiming for the future pluperfect – ‘I will have had smelled him,’ she said into the translator – and getting replies back that did not quite match, hinting at some form of parallelism, some innate Haxigoji sense of multiple subjective time experiences considered at, well, the same time. Was this pushing the boundaries of their subjective compatibility? Or was it a constant factor, unrecognized before now, which called in question all their apparent understanding of Haxigoji language and psychology?

  Staring at Bittersweet, Rekka was aware of the moment that the Haxigoji stiffened. Among the males, ranged around the lab, there was a faint new scent that Rekka had never experienced. A translation unit with a visual display was reading: Unknown referent.

  Five slow seconds later, the facility’s doors whisked open, and the dignitaries came in: senior managers in their best suits, forming an approximate U around two visitors at the front.

  Bittersweet looked at Rekka and winked.

  What?

  No one had ever observed such a gesture from the Haxijogi.

  The female senator, Luisa Higashionna, approached. She was slender and glamorous, and Rekka felt unlovely as she listened to the question: ‘Is their pheromone-based language really as detailed as ours?’

  A faint, complex scent indicated that the technology had done its work, allowing Bittersweet to understand syntactical, semantic and tonal content: condescending sneers translated perfectly well, in full. But she did not react, though her six-strong bodyguard made minute adjustments of posture that Rekka could read. One of the other researchers, Diane Chiang, looked around the room: she had picked it up too.

  ‘Perhaps not quite as complex,’ Rekka lied, her tone implying simplicity.

  ‘Ah. Well, carry on.’

  There were other questions from the visitors, but senior management fielded them all, including the usual explanation of smell in humans: how the receptors in the nose did not respond to molecular shapes so much as energy
levels, a resonance effect. Finally the group left, and everyone but the six Haxigoji males relaxed.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Harry, junior member of the team.

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Diane. ‘Though he is pretty sexy, isn’t he?’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘Senator Roberto Higashionna. Sort of glows with charisma, don’t you think? He can analyse my lexical patterns any time. Every component.’

  Harry’s reply was a blush.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Rekka, turning back to Bittersweet.

  For putting down her species, she meant. For denying the richness of their communication.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Bittersweet reached out and squeezed Rekka’s hand with two gentle thumbs. The gesture made Rekka realize her own motivation for belittling the Haxigoji language to the senator: it is always good for an enemy to underestimate you.

  For the next thirty minutes they continued their work, until Rekka’s infostrand beeped with a priority personal call.

  ‘It’s Amber. We’re downstairs in reception, all four of us. I’ve got to go, catch a shuttle flight to Xi’an airport. My ship’s at ShaanxiTwo.’

  ‘Down in thirty seconds.’

  It took nearer two minutes for Rekka to descend, swirling with poignant elation, hoping her friends had created the framework for a good life, one to withstand the strains that would surely come in the future, with Amber disappearing into mu-space and then coming back into Jared’s life, or more precisely Angela’s and Randolf’s lives. Then the door slid open, and she almost ran out across the polished floor and the red carpet not intended for her, reaching the trio of smiling adults and baby Jared, shawl-wrapped in Amber’s arms.

  ‘So it’s all done,’ said Randolf.

  Rekka hugged Amber-and-Jared first, then Angela, then Randolf. Returning her attention to Jared – his eyelids, drooping with sleepiness, not concealing his glossily opaque, obsidian eyes – she kissed his forehead, then looked up at the parents, all three of them.

  ‘Congratulations, all of you. Except …’ – with a glance around the glass-dominated reception – ‘I didn’t expect to see Jared here.’

  Amber was in a rush to leave, either because of UNSA orders, now she was back in touch, or because she thought it best for Randolf and Angela to have time alone with Jared for bonding to commence. Rekka understood that much, but not their openness in this place.

  ‘We registered him officially,’ said Amber, cuddling Jared.

  ‘Yes, we did.’ Angela tickled Jared. ‘Didn’t we?’

  Randolf said: ‘We’ve nothing to hide, none of us. No one’s taking Jared to an UNSA boarding school. He’s ours, you see.’ Nodding to Amber. ‘All of ours. He’ll have the kind of home he deserves.’

  There were tears in Rekka’s eyes.

  ‘He’s very lucky to have you all.’

  That was when another lift opened, and a group of well-dressed men and women came out, and a familiar tone said: ‘Oh, look. A baby, and isn’t he sweet?’

  Luisa Higashionna, elegant and tall, swept across with the handsome Roberto beside her. Both senators kissed little Jared in turn, while Rekka stepped back, confused by the smiles on her friends’ faces, realizing after a second that the abhorrence was hers alone.

  Senior management looked on, their self-serving smiles benign, happy for the official visit to end with an emotional high note, a photo opportunity that could not have been bettered had it been choreographed. If Bittersweet had been here, she would have emitted a faint but deliberate smell of excrement.

  ‘A fine young Pilot.’ Roberto Higashionna tickled him under the chin. ‘And what’s the brave lad’s name?’

  ‘Jared,’ said Amber, then turned her blind eyes towards Angela, who completed the naming: ‘Jared Schenck.’

  Luisa Higashionna tucked her finger inside Jared’s tiny grasp.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Pilot Schenck.’

  When she looked at her cousin, perhaps it was only Rekka who processed that glance as reptilian. As the delegates left, the neurochemical tide of hatred began to sink inside her, to dissipate; but still she had little to say as Angela, Randolf and Amber exchanged more farewells and promises, until it was time for Jared to be taken into Angela’s arms.

  While the emptiness left by Rekka’s hatred filled up with fear, though she could not have delineated the reasons in a logical manner of the kind Simon would have demanded were he here.

  Fear for baby Jared.

  FIFTY-NINE

  LABYRINTH, 2603 AD (REALSPACE-EQUIVALENT)

  They floated side by side in a crimson nebula, Jed in his silverand-bronze ship, Max in his vessel of black and midnight blue with white-webbed wings. Hanging there, they conferred, getting to know each other, discussing the dangers of reappearing when Max was legally a fugitive.

  **I might be Labyrinth’s most-wanted criminal. Or they might have buried public knowledge of me.**

  Jed did not want to admit the extent to which Labyrinthine internal politics could turn rotten; but he knew what he had seen at the galactic core in realspace.

  **That space station was human-built.**

  **It was.**

  He thought about Davey Golwyn’s death, and the others’.

  **We should fly in side by side, Commodore. With me broadcasting the all-OK.**

  **Agreed.**

  They moved out of cover, into golden nothingness.

  In a wide café overlooking Borges Boulevard, a lean-faced Pilot jerked in his seat. A cup of daistral, freshly ordered, rose through the tabletop; but he ignored it. Instead he stared into space, then muttered: ‘I’ll be right there.’

  He got up from his seat, found a clear area, and summoned a fastpath rotation. It whirled into place, he stepped inside, and then he was gone.

  That was when three other diners, scattered around the café, looked up from their meals. They rose, walked carefully among the tables, and met as if by chance at the spot where the first Pilot had exited. Almost as one, they tapped their prepared turings, which began to glow.

  ‘All right,’ said one of them.

  Together, they brought a fastpath into existence. Had any of the innocent clientele possessed the means and ability to analyse the rotation’s geometric precision, they would have found it identical to the previous manifestation, set for the same destination, capable of transporting three Pilots at once.

  They stepped inside.

  After a moment, another diner, a young Pilot just off a long shift at the Med Centre, looked up from her omelette, trying to work out what was odd about the departure she had peripherally seen. She stared, then shook her head, and returned her attention to her food.

  Had she realized that a thousand similar events were taking place throughout Labyrinth, she might have taken notice.

  Into the vast docking space they floated. An immensity of distant wall lay in every direction, forming an approximate hollow sphere that was kilometres across in mean-geodesic units. Their progress was slow, the two ships; and they separated as they neared one of the great promenades, each docking sideways on, so a wingtip touched with kiss-like gentleness.

  Max, sleeves pushed up from his huge forearms as always, stepped on to a powerful wing of black, deepest blue and white. Off to one side, Jed was exiting in parallel; but the danger, if it came, would be focused on Max Gould, commodore, former senior intelligence officer, now enemy of Labyrinth.

  =Welcome back.=

  Enemy of those who claimed to represent Labyrinth, more precisely.

  On the promenade, walkers stopped, looking not at Max but at their surroundings, puzzled by what they were sensing. Some of them, more perceptive or survival-oriented, began to hurry away. A few tried to summon fastpath rotations, but the nascent activity made this difficult, as if spacetime were becoming turgid and viscous, impossible to handle.

  Here they come.

  Hundreds of Pilots rippled into existence, all along the promenade, and upon the various floa
ting platforms that serviced the docks, and other vantage points which had one thing in common: all provided a view of their common target, him. The full complement, once they rotated into place, numbered a thousand, give or take a handful.

  Ionization rendered the air heady, pleasant unless you realized it was due to so many weapons emitting spill-over radiation, their resonant energies desperate to spurt forth.

  In the centre of them all, a uniformed man rotated onto the promenade.

  ‘Garber,’ called out Max. ‘How loathsome to see you, Colonel.’

  Even from this distance, Garber’s cold smile sent a message: fuck off. Beside him, a larger rotation spun then dissipated, leaving five more figures, including one who wore ceremonial brocade, as if he had been interrupted in official duties, or considered the capture of one renegade commodore to be a state occasion in itself.

  ‘Admiral Schenck,’ said Max. ‘How unusual to see you down among the working Pilots.’

  Not that the innocent were here in numbers: they had cleared the promenade and most of the dock space, some to watch from what they hoped were safe positions, most to flee deeper inside Labyrinth. Only a handful tried to alert the authorities; the others already knew this was some kind of official action. Perhaps that was why they took it for granted that their ships were safe. It was not an assumption Max would have made.

  Schenck looked at Garber.

  ‘Commodore Maximilian Gould,’ Garber recited, ‘you are being detained on a charge of treasonous homicide, the victim being Admiral Adrienne Kaltberg, with additional counts of—’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Schenck. ‘Do the legal niceties once this bastard’s in a cell.’

  If this was being recorded, his performance would go down well. He pointed, and two Pilots made their way towards Max, careful with the spinning infinity-symbol-shaped brightness they caused to move ahead of them: a topology bracelet, unbreakable.