The Night's Dawn Trilogy

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Kelly started. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “Use an elevator?”

  “Datavise.”

  “We have some command of technology.”

  “Oh. Yes. It’s just . . . skip it.” Her reporter’s training began to assert itself. A private visit from a Kiint was unheard of. “Is this confidential?”

  Lieria’s breathing vents whistled heavily. “You decide, Kelly Tirrel. Do you wish your public to know what has become of you?”

  Kelly stiffened her facial muscles, whether to combat tears or shame she wasn’t sure. “No.”

  “I understand. Knowledge of the beyond can be disturbing.”

  “How did you beat it? Tell me, please. For pity’s sake. I can’t be trapped there. I couldn’t stand it!”

  “I am sorry. I cannot discuss this with you.”

  Kelly’s cough had come back. She used the back of her hand to wipe her eyes dry. “What do you want, then?”

  “I wish to purchase information. Your sensevises of Lalonde.”

  “My . . . why?”

  “They are of interest to us.”

  “Sure. I’ll sell them. The price is knowing how to avoid the beyond.”

  “Kelly Tirrel, you cannot buy that, the answer is inside you.”

  “Stop being so fucking obtuse!” she shouted, fury surmounting her consternation of the big xenoc.

  “It is the profound wish of my race that one day you will understand. I had intended that by purchasing the data directly from you the money would bring or buy you some peace of mind. If I go directly to the Collins corporation, it will become lost in their accounts. You see, we do not mean you harm. It is not our way.”

  Kelly stared at the xenoc, depressed by her own incomprehension. Okay, girl, she thought, let’s try and work this one out logically. She put her medical monitor program into primary mode, and used the results to bring appropriate suppressor and stimulant programs on-line to try to stabilize body and brain. There wasn’t a great deal they could do, but at least she felt calmer and her breathing steadied. “Why do you want to buy them?”

  “We have little data on humans who are possessed by returned souls. We are interested. Your visit to Lalonde is an excellent firsthand account.”

  Kelly felt the first stirrings of excitement; reporter’s instinct inciting her interest. “Bullshit. That’s not what I meant. If all you wanted was information on possessed humans, you could have recorded my reports directly from Collins as soon as they were released. God knows, they’ve been repeated often enough.”

  “They are not complete. Collins has edited them to provide a series of highlights. We understand their commercial reasons for doing so, but this is of no use to us. I require access to the entire recording.”

  “Right,” she said with apparent gravity, as if she was giving the proposition appropriately weighty thought. An analysis program had gone primary, refining possible questions in an attempt to narrow the focus. “I can give you full access to the times I came up against the possessed, and my observations of Shaun Wallace. That’s no problem at all.”

  “We require a full record from the time you arrived in the Lalonde star system until you departed. All details are of interest to us.”

  “All details? I mean, this is a human sensevise, I kept the flek recording the whole time. Standard company procedure. Unfortunately, that includes time when I was visiting the little girls’ room, if you catch on.”

  “Human excretion functions do not embarrass us.”

  “Shall I cut the time in Lady Macbeth for you?”

  “Observations and crew impressions of the reality dysfunction from orbit are an integral part of the record.”

  “So, how much were you thinking of offering me for this?”

  “Please name your price, Kelly Tirrel.”

  “One million fuseodollars.”

  “That is expensive.”

  “It’s a lot of hours you’re asking for. But the offer to edit it down still stands.”

  “I will pay you the required amount for a complete recording only.”

  Kelly pressed her teeth together in annoyance; it wasn’t going to work, the Kiint was far too smart for verbal traps. Don’t push, she told herself, get what you can and work out the why later on. “Fair enough. Agreed.”

  Lieria’s tractamorphic flesh extended out into an arm, a Jovian Bank credit disk held between white pincers.

  Kelly gave it an interested glance, and rose stiffly from the recliner. Her own credit disk was somewhere on her desk. She walked over to it, all three paces, then plonked herself down in the grey office chair a little too quickly.

  “I would suggest you eat something and rest properly before you return to your sensenviron,” Lieria datavised.

  “Good idea. I was going to.” She froze in the act of shoving the fleks and their empty storage cases around. How the hell had the Kiint known what she’d been running? We have some command of technology. She gripped the blanket harder with one hand as the other fished her disk from under a recorder block. “Found it,” she said with forced lightness.

  Lieria shunted the full amount across. The soft flesh of the pincers engulfed the Jovian Bank disk, then parted again to reveal a small dark blue processor block. It was like a conjuring trick which Kelly was in no state to unravel.

  “Please insert your fleks in the block,” Lieria datavised. “It will copy the recordings.”

  Kelly did as she was told.

  “I thank you, Kelly Tirrel. You have contributed valuable information to our race’s store of knowledge.”

  “Make the most of it,” she said grumpily. “The way you’re treating us we probably won’t be around to contribute for much longer.”

  The living-room door slid open, scattering a startled crowd of StClément residents. Lieria backed out with surprising ease. When the door closed again Kelly was left by herself with the disconcerting impression that it could all very easily have been a dream. She picked up her credit disk, looking at it in wonder. One million fuseodollars.

  It was the key to permanent zero-tau. Her lawyer had been negotiating with Collins to transfer her pension fund into an Edenist trust account, just like Ashly Hanson. Except she wouldn’t be coming out to take a look around every few centuries. Collins’s accountants had been reluctant.

  Another problem which had sent her into the sham escape of PTR. Now all she needed to do was get to an Edenist habitat. Only their culture had a chance of holding her safe through eternity.

  Although . . . that stubborn old part of her mind was asking a thousand questions. What the hell did the Kiint really want?

  “Think,” she ordered herself fiercely. “Come on, damn it. Think!” Something happened on Lalonde. Something so important that a Kiint walks into my apartment and pays me a million fuseodollars for a record of it. Something we didn’t think was important or interesting, because it wasn’t released by Collins. So if it wasn’t released, how the hell did the Kiint know about it?

  Logically, someone must have told them—presumably today or very recently. Someone who has reviewed the whole recording themselves, or at least more of it than Collins released.

  Kelly smiled happily, an unfamiliar expression of late. And someone who must have a lot of contact with the Kiint.

  * * *

  Review every single conversation which the Kiint were involved in over the last week, Ione said. Anything that anyone mentioned about Lalonde, anything at all, however trivial. And if you can’t find it, start going through your earlier memories.

  I am already reviewing the relevant scenes. There may be a problem with going back further than four days. My short-term memory capacity is only a hundred hours; after that the details are discarded so I may retain salient information. Without this procedure even my memory would be unable to cope with events inside me.

  I know that! But it has to be recent for Lieria to go visiting in the middle of the night. I don’t suppose the Kiint said anythin
g among themselves? Grandfather’s non-intrusion agreement can hardly apply in this case.

  I concur that it cannot be considered. However, I have never been able to intercept detailed affinity conversations between the adult Kiint. At best I can sometimes distinguish what I would define as a murmur.

  Damn! If you can’t remember, we’ll have to haul all the Laymil project staff in and question them individually.

  Not necessary. I have found it.

  “Brilliant!” Show me.

  The memory burst open around her. Bright light was shining down on the beach while glassy ripples lapped quietly against the shoreline. A huge sand castle stood directly in front of her. Oh, bloody hell.

  * * *

  Jay was woken by a hand shaking her shoulder with gentle insistence. “Mummy,” she cried fearfully. Wherever she was, it was dark, and even darker shadows loomed over her.

  “Sorry, poppet,” Kelly stage-whispered. “It’s not your mum, it’s only me.”

  Horror fled from the little girl’s face, and she hitched herself up in the bed, wrapping her arms around her legs. “Kelly?”

  “Yep. And I am really sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you like that.”

  Jay sniffed the air, highly curious now. “What’s that smell? And what time is it?”

  “It’s very late. Nurse Andrews is going to kill me if I stay for more than a couple of minutes. She only let me in because she knows you and I spent all that time together on Lady Mac.”

  “You haven’t visited for ages.”

  “I know.” Kelly was almost crushed by the surge of emotion the girl triggered, the accusation in her tone. “I haven’t been terribly well lately. I didn’t want you to see me the way I was.”

  “Are you all right now?”

  “Sure. I’m on the way back.”

  “Good. You promised you’d show me around the studios you work in.”

  “And I’ll keep it, too. Listen, Jay, I’ve got some really important questions. They’re about you and Haile.”

  “What?” she asked suspiciously.

  “I need to know if you told Haile anything about Lalonde, especially in the last couple of days. It’s vital, Jay, honest. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t.”

  “I know.” She screwed up her lips, thinking hard. “There was some stuff about religion this morning. Haile doesn’t understand it very well, and I’m not very good at explaining it.”

  “What about religion, exactly?”

  “It was how many gods there are. I’d told her about the Tyrathca’s Sleeping God temple, you know, the one you showed me, and she wanted to know if that was the same thing as Jesus.”

  “Of course,” Kelly hissed. “It wasn’t human possession, it was the Tyrathca section, we never released any of that.” She leaned over and kissed Jay. “Thank you, poppet. You’ve just performed a miracle.”

  “Was that all?”

  “Yeah. That was all.”

  “Oh.”

  “You snuggle down and get some sleep now. I’ll come visit tomorrow.” She helped pull Jay’s duvet back up and gave the girl another kiss. Jay sniffed inquisitively again, but didn’t comment.

  “So?” Kelly asked softly as she walked away from the bed. “You’ve been watching, you know this must be serious. I want to talk to the Lord of Ruin.”

  The pediatric ward’s net processor opened a channel to Kelly’s neural nanonics. “Ione Saldana will see you now,” Tranquillity datavised. “Please bring the relevant recordings.”

  * * *

  Despite being on what he considered excellent terms with the Lord of Ruin, Parker Higgens could still be chilled to the marrow when she gave him one of her expectant looks.

  “But I don’t know anything about the Tyrathca, ma’am,” he complained. Being dragged out of bed straight into a highly irregular crisis conference was playing havoc with his thought processes. Accessing the sensevise recording of Coastuc-RT and seeing the strange silvery structure which the builder-caste Tyrathca had constructed in the middle of the village didn’t contribute much to his composure, either.

  When he glanced at Kempster Getchell for support he saw the astronomer’s eyes were closed as he accessed the recording a second time.

  “You’re the only xenoc specialists I’ve got, Parker.”

  “Laymil specialists.”

  “Don’t quibble. I need advice, and I need it fast. How important is this?”

  “Well . . . I don’t think we knew the Tyrathca had a religion before this,” he ventured.

  “We didn’t,” Kelly said. “I ran a full search program through the Collins office encyclopedia. It’s as good as any university library. There’s no reference to this Sleeping God at all.”

  “And neither did the Kiint, so it would seem,” Parker said. “They actually came and woke you to ask for the recording?”

  “That’s right.”

  Parker was somewhat put out by the reporter’s dishevelled appearance. She sat wedged into one corner of the sofa in Ione’s private study, a thick cardigan tugged around her shoulders as if it were midwinter. For the last five minutes she had been snatching up salmon sandwiches from a large plate balanced on the sofa’s arm, pushing them forcefully into her mouth.

  “Well I have to say, ma’am, that it’s a relief to find out they don’t know everything.” A housechimp silently handed him a cup of coffee.

  “But is it relevant?” Ione asked. “Were they just so surprised they didn’t know about the Sleeping God myth that Lieria simply rushed over to Kelly to confirm it? Or does it have some bearing on our current situation?”

  “It’s not a myth,” Kelly said around another sandwich. “That’s exactly what I said to Waboto-YAU; and it nearly set the soldiers on me for that remark. The Tyrathca believe absolutely in their Sleeping God. Crazy race.”

  Parker stirred his coffee mechanically. “I’ve never known the Kiint to be excited about anything. But then I’ve never known them to be in a rush either, which they obviously were tonight. I think we should examine this Sleeping God in context. You are aware, ma’am, that the Tyrathca do not have fiction? They simply do not lie, and they have a great deal of trouble understanding human falsehoods. The nearest they ever come to lying is withholding information.”

  “You mean there really is a Sleeping God?” Kelly asked. “There has to be a core of truth behind the story,” Parker said. “They are a highly formalized clan species. Individual families maintain professions and responsibilities for generations. Sireth-AFL’s family was obviously entrusted with the knowledge of the Sleeping God. At a guess, I’d say that Sireth-AFL is a descendant of the family which used to deal with electronics while they were on their arkship.”

  “Then why not just store the memory electronically?” Kelly asked.

  “It probably is stored, somewhere. But Coastuc-RT is a very primitive settlement, and the Tyrathca only ever use appropriate technology. There will be Tyrathca families in that village who know exactly how to build fusion generators and computers, but they don’t actually need them yet, therefore the information isn’t used. They employ water wheels and mental arithmetic instead.”

  “Weird,” Kelly said.

  “No,” Parker corrected. “Merely logical. The product of a mind that is intelligent without being particularly imaginative.”

  “Yet they were praying,” Ione said. “They believe in a God. That requires a leap of imagination, or at least faith.”

  “I don’t think so,” Kempster Getchell said. He grinned around, clearly enjoying himself. “We’re messing about with semantics here, and an electronic translator, which is never terribly helpful, it’s too literal. Consider when this God appeared in their history. Human gods are derived from our pre-science era. There are no new religions, there haven’t been for thousands of years. Modern society is far too sceptical to allow for prophets who have personal conversations with God. We have the answer for everything these days, and if it isn’t recorded on a flek it’s a lie.
<
br />   “Yet here we have the Tyrathca, who not only don’t lie, but encounter a God while they’re in a starship. They have the same intellectual analytical tools as we do, and they still call it a God. And they found it. That’s what excites me, that’s what is so important to this story. It isn’t indegenous to their planet, it isn’t ancient. One of their arkships encountered something so fearfully powerful that a race with the technology to travel between the stars calls it a God.”

  “That would also mean it isn’t exclusive to them,” Parker said.

  “Yes. Although, whatever it is, it was benign, or even helpful to the arkship in question. They wouldn’t consider it to be their Sleeping God otherwise.”

  “Powerful enough to defend the Tyrathca from possessed humans,” Ione said. “That’s what they claimed.”

  “Yes indeed. A defence mounted from several hundred light-years distant, at least.”

  “What the fuck could do that?” Kelly asked.

  “Kempster?” Ione prompted as the old astronomer stared away at the ceiling.

  “I have absolutely no idea. Although ‘sleeping’ does imply an inert status, which can be reversed.”

  “By prayer?” Parker said sceptically.

  “They thought it would be able to hear them,” Kempster said. “Stronger than all living things was what that breeder said. Interesting. And that mirror-spire shape was supposed to be what it looked like. I’d like to say some kind of celestial event or object, that would fit in finding it in deep space. Unfortunately, there is no natural astronomical object which resembles that.”

  “Take a guess,” Ione said icily.

  “Powerful, and in space.” The astronomer’s face wrinkled up with effort. “Humm. Trouble is, we have no idea of the scale. Some kind of small nebula around a binary neutron star; or a white hole emission jet—which might account for the shape. But none of those are exactly inert.”

  “Nor would they be much use against the possessed,” Parker said.

  “But its existence is enough to fluster the Kiint,” Ione said. “And they can manufacture moons, plural.”