Pandora's Star cs-2

by Peter F. Hamilton

  …

  It started raining an hour before dawn, cold drops splattering down on the cobbles to form grubby rivulets racing down the gutters. Tired, miserable, and hungry, Mellanie stood in a doorway three down from Paula Myo’s Paris apartment as the sun rose, exposing the narrow street to a gray shading that belonged to the Middle Ages. The time-bowed wooden lintel above her was dripping steadily on her head, wrecking her expensive hairstyle. There had been no time for her to prepare properly; she knew Alessandra wouldn’t allow her a second longer than the two days unless she got a real story. So her jacket collar was turned up in a grim attempt to keep some of the cold out, because the 1950s party dress she wore under it was certainly no good for that. Both feet were soaking inside her handstitched Italian leather shoes, which were now ruined.

  The early-morning monotony was occasionally broken by a civic GPbot rolling past her. By six o’clock people had started using the street. She received a few curious glances. Their eyes soon slid away, deciding she was some hooker waiting for her pimp or pusher after a bad night.

  Close, she told their backs as they hurried away.

  At half past seven Paula Myo walked out onto the street. She wore a long raincoat, unbuttoned to show her usual business suit; her feet were protected by calf-high booshide boots, and she switched on a plyplastic umbrella stick that flowed out into a wide black mushroom shape.

  Mellanie waited until the woman had almost reached the end of the street, and left the scant cover of the doorway. Her virtual vision displayed a simple map of the area. As she’d expected, Myo was walking to the nearest Metro station. She kept twenty meters or so behind her, trying not to be too obvious. The wider streets had some traffic and pedestrians, making cover easier. Headlights cast bright reflection ribbons on the black tarmac, while their tires produced a thin dirty spray. The smell of fresh-baked bread emerged from patisseries that were opening their doors. Mellanie’s stomach growled from the temptation.

  Ahead of her Myo turned a corner. Mellanie hurried forward. When she turned the corner, the Metro station sign gleamed brightly fifty meters ahead. Myo had vanished.

  “Where…” Mellanie scanned around. The woman hadn’t crossed to the other side of the road. None of the shops were open, so she couldn’t have hidden inside anywhere. “Damnit.” In her mind the plan had been perfect: follow Myo to wherever she was working. That would give a clue what she was working on for the Burnellis, or even if it was the Burnellis. Whatever, it would give her enough interesting questions for Alessandra to keep her on Myo.

  “You would make a dreadful field operative.”

  “Huh.” Mellanie spun around.

  Myo was standing there, umbrella held straight, giving her a quizzical look. “It is illegal to run search programs through restricted city listings. Paul Cramley, the hacker you used to gain access, is old enough to know that.”

  “What are you going to do, arrest us?”

  “No. He will have a formal charge filed against him. It will probably result in a fine and confiscation of his equipment.”

  “Bitch!”

  “He broke the law. So have you. Being a reporter does not place you above the law, Ms. Rescorai. You have to obey the rules like every other citizen, however inconvenient that is to your so-called profession.”

  “I’ve never heard of this Paul Cramley. You can’t prove anything.”

  Myo’s stare hardened. “I don’t have to. You are interfering with a government official, which is also an offense.”

  “You’re not, you got fi—” Mellanie drew a deep breath. “I’m sorry, I was desperate for an interview with you.”

  “I don’t give interviews. Everyone in your profession knows that.”

  “But you must be able to tell me if there are any suspects in the Burnelli murder.”

  “Ask the navy intelligence media office for an update.”

  “They’re not as good as you. If they do catch anyone it’ll be on the foundation you laid. I want the whole story.”

  “I don’t respond to flattery, either.”

  “I’m not flattering you. I despise you. But I’m also a realist.”

  A dark gray limousine drew up to the curb beside them. Its rear door opened. “You’re wasting your time following me,” Myo said. Her plyplastic umbrella flowed back into a simple fat stick. “Even if you were any good, you wouldn’t find anything of interest where I’m going.”

  “Where would I find something interesting?”

  “In truth, I’m not sure. You might try space, deep space.” She got into the back of the limousine, and its door closed.

  Mellanie stood shivering in the rain, watching the plush vehicle’s scarlet taillights merge into the Parisian traffic. “Is it true she never lies?” she asked the SI.

  “It is true she never tells a direct lie; though she is capable of modifying the truth if it will forward her investigation.”

  Hell. Deep space? Who knows about deep space?

  There had been quite a celebration on High Angel last night. StAsaph had returned from another flight, scouting eleven stars. Captain McClain Gilbert had reported that they hadn’t encountered any Prime wormhole activity. Then along with Admiral Kime and Captain Oscar Monroe he’d gone to watch the Dauntless disengage from her assembly platform. The warship was a distinct design change from the Second Chance and the earlier scouts. She’d been built inside a single three-hundred-meter-long hull, shaped like a stretched teardrop, with eight blunt thermal radiator fins at the rear to complete the aerodynamic illusion. A crew of thirty were in command of a marque 4 hyperdrive, with a top speed of one light-year per hour; a seven-tier force field complemented with a locked molecule hull field; fifty missiles containing fifteen independent twenty-gee sub-warheads carrying hundred-megaton charges capable of diverted energy functions; and thirty directed energy beam weapons. To supply power for the hyperdrive and the combat systems, fifteen high-capacity niling d-sinks had been installed. Charging them up to flight readiness was now beyond the generator capacity of Kerensk, which was already supplying power for the entire scoutship fleet. CST was laying in superconductor power lines from other planets to supply the anticipated fleet. The construction of new generators was providing a bull market for power bonds right across the Commonwealth as entrepreneurs and existing utility companies bid to supply the navy with gigawatts.

  Dauntless had disengaged right on time, small blue ion flames around her base pushing her slowly away from the open assembly platform. She’d curved around the High Angel, giving the people in the crystal domes a good view of her size and shape as she traversed Icalanise, before switching on her hyperdrive and vanishing in a burst of violet light.

  “Three completed, another ten authorized,” Wilson had said as the big ship slipped over Babuyan Atoll. “Defenderis next out. She’s yours if you want her,” he told Oscar.

  “Oh, I do. Yes, indeed, I truly do.”

  Mac had laughed delightedly and congratulated his old friend. Then the pair of them had gone out and hit the town, such as it was in Babuyan Atoll, to toast the new command and the successful return.

  Oscar groaned miserably as the express shot into strong lemon-yellow sunlight, which shone through the first-class carriage windows. He reached for his sunglasses.

  “So where did you two finish up last night?” Antonia Clarke asked from the seat opposite.

  “I have no goddamn idea,” Oscar grunted. “There was a band there. I think. Maybe jazz?” He picked up the cup of black coffee that the steward had just poured, looked at it, felt strange fluids start to churn in his stomach, and hurriedly put it down again.

  Antonia laughed. She’d already had to baby-sit him through the freefall commuter flight from High Angel to the Kerensk wormhole station. Keeping his uniform clean under those circumstances had been tricky; then there had been the complaints from their fellow passengers.

  “Have you got your speech ready?” she asked.

  “Fuck off.”

&nb
sp; “You want another tifi hit?”

  “Look! Just shut—Oh, God, yes please.”

  Grinning, she took out the packet of tubes and pressed one to his neck. There was a capacitor whine as the membrane pad on the end fast-tracked the drug into his bloodstream. “That’s your limit. No more for another six hours.”

  He touched his fingertips delicately to his sweating forehead, testing to see if the pain was abating. “They only print that to keep the lawyers quiet. You can take at least twice the dosage before anything bad happens.”

  “Ever the optimist. How do you feel?”

  “I think that one might actually be working.”

  “Good.”

  The express went through another wormhole gateway, and the light became even brighter, a sharp blue-white. Antonia looked out of the window. “We’re here. New Costa Junction. Let’s go.” She stood up.

  Oscar gave the cup of coffee a last longing glance, and decided against.

  A senior manager from the clinic was on the platform to greet them. He had a car for them, which slid smoothly onto highway 37.

  “Ten-minute trip from here,” the manager promised. “We’re between shifts, so the traffic is light.”

  The Nadsis Hotel was set back off the freeway, a twenty-story X-shape, with five separate conference facilities. Over a thousand media reporters were packed into the Bytham auditorium where the welcome-back ceremony was to be performed. Both of the honored guests and all the VIPs walked en masse onto the stage, to considerable applause. Dudley Bose, a lanky adolescent with a stock of ginger-blond hair that refused styling, broke his sulk to grin around before eventually giving the thumbs-up that had been his interview trademark. Emmanuelle Verbeke was a surprise to those who had accessed her file for background information. On the Second Chance she’d been sober and professional to the point of dullness, a woman with rather bland features who didn’t care about appearances. Today she was almost indistinguishable from a genuine first-life eighteen-year-old. She’d chosen a strap-top purple dress with a short skirt to show off long legs that had been toned to perfection by the clinic’s physiotherapists. Her dark hair, still shortish despite the accelerated growth phase of cloning, was arranged in neat curls that emphasized her youth. Her perpetual gleeful smile and very girlish giggles illustrated a rare case of someone being highly suited to the whole re-life procedure.

  It was Oscar who was scheduled to make the initial speech. He said hello to everybody. Then he had to perform the introductions—a stupid thing to do. After that was his own quick “personal” welcome to his former crewmates. He told a happy anecdote from the Second Chance to show what great friends they all were; while what he wanted to do was blurt out the story of how Bose had managed to screw up the shower filtration unit for his deck.

  After five minutes of torture he sat down to polite applause and Antonia’s mocking smile. Vice President Bicklu was next, making the formal welcome back speech. A tall man whose features were sequenced and profiled to produce a bland handsomeness, along with Nordic white skin to contrast with Doi’s African ethnicity. Oscar had to sit with a fixed smile as the VP made a very good speech, with plenty of easy jokes that had the media laughing and the other guests smiling appreciatively. He made Oscar look like the amateur warm-up act.

  When it was her turn, Emmanuelle got up and gave the VP a sweet kiss on the cheek. She smiled at the big audience, said how nice it was to be back, how she was impressed by the progress the navy had made, how she wanted to join up again as soon as she was old enough—applause and a few whistles—and a big hello to all her friends and thanks for all the support they’d shown while she was in re-life.

  She gave Dudley Bose an encouraging wink as he went to the podium. “I’ve heard a lot this afternoon about how dedicated and friendly everyone was on the Second Chance,” Dudley said. A hand came up automatically to play with his ear. “What a great ship, what a good job it did flying that mission. I’m puzzled by that. Because I haven’t got a fucking clue which Second Chance they’re talking about. It certainly isn’t the one I flew on. The bastards I was crewing with LEFT ME THERE. ALONE! Our great so-called captain didn’t even check to see if we were still alive, he was so desperate to save his own arse.” His arm shot up, a rigid finger pointing at the ceiling. “I’m still out there, you know. Somehow. Some alien has kept me alive, or bits of me. So why am I here as well? What are you doing to me, you shits?” He stomped off the stage, leaving all the VIPs staring at each other in embarrassment.

  “Do something,” Antonia said out of the corner of her mouth.

  “Why me?” Oscar mumbled back. Every reporter in the audience was looking at them expectantly, relaying the image through the unisphere. Many of them were smiling. It wasn’t in sympathy.

  “You’re the MC.”

  “Ohshit.” Oscar walked slowly over to the center of the stage, where the main lights were focused. He cleared his throat. “Kids today, huh?” He’d never known a silence so deep, so unbroken. “Look. Okay. I’m sorry Dr. Bose feels the way he does. Had we stayed at the Watchtower, we would have died. It’s that simple. The Primes were firing nuclear missiles at us. You can’t hang around philosophizing in circumstances like that.”

  At the front of the audience, Alessandra Baron stood up. “Captain Monroe, the Second Chance had FTL capacity. The Primes did not. So why didn’t you circle back and make a final pass to see what had happened to your crewmates?”

  “Our primary mission was to report our findings back to the Commonwealth. Everybody on board knew that, Dr. Bose included. We all accepted the risks.”

  “But didn’t your actions increase the risk factor in this case? One check wouldn’t have endangered anybody on board. Didn’t you care about your crewmates?”

  “They screwed up,” Oscar snapped back, angry at the allegation. He remembered only too well what it had been like on board at the time. Now this moron prima diva was questioning their decisions from the safety of time and distance. “Or at least Bose did. He wasn’t properly trained to join the exploratory team. Nobody wanted the old idiot on board in the first place.”

  This time the silence that opened up was even deeper. Then a thousand questions were shouted at once.

  Antonia’s arm came protectively around Oscar’s shoulder. “Thank you for your time, ladies and gentlemen,” she bawled through the PA at full volume. “Drinks and canapés are now served in the lounge. Enjoy.” She physically hauled Oscar off the stage in something approaching a wrestling lock. He got one glimpse of Baron’s diabolically victorious smile before they reached the wings.

  Vice President Bicklu’s white skin had turned puce. “Why didn’t anyone brief me this was hostile?” he was shouting at his aides. He caught sight of Oscar. “You! What the hell was that?”

  “Later,” Antonia sang out cheerfully, still pushing Oscar along. They reached one of the hotel’s service corridors and came to a halt.

  Oscar put a hand on his forehead. It was hot and sweating. His headache was back again, big time. When he pulled his hand away, he half expected the dampness he’d felt to be blood. “OhmyGod, did I really say that?”

  “Yep,” Antonia said, she sounded inordinately pleased. “And it was about time somebody did.”

  “Oh, God. I think I just blew the Defender captaincy.”

  “Don’t be so stupid. Come on. This is a hotel; there’s got to be a bar somewhere. I’ll buy you a hair of the dog, you need it.”

  Dudley ignored everyone: the government officials, hotel staff, even the nurse from the clinic. As soon as he left the stage he ran, blundering through the maze of corridors until he came to a big deserted kitchen. Only then did he stop and draw a very shaky breath. He pressed his head on the side of a big refrigeration cabinet, enjoying the feel of the cool stainless-steel surface against his skin. His heart was pounding and his hands shaking. It wasn’t entirely due to running.

  “I did it,” he whispered, and smiled to himself. Told them what he thought in fro
nt of every reporter who counted in the Commonwealth—and the Vice President. Just the thought sent another tremble along his limbs.

  Somebody started clapping in a slow almost derisory fashion.

  Dudley straightened up. He almost expected it to be the Vice President’s bodyguards coming at him with ion pistols blazing.

  Instead it was a beautiful young girl with wavy golden hair that came down over her shoulders. She was wearing a scoop-necked top of some rust-pink gauze with a silver leaf pattern, and a pair of clinging faded blue jeans that had a small silver M on one of the belt loops. There was a lopsided approving grin on her lips as she approached. She had very white teeth, Dudley noticed—that and the top was translucent. His face began to redden.

  “That took a lot of courage to say what you did,” she said. “I respect that.”

  “Thank you.” It didn’t quite come out as a stutter. He knew he was staring, and just couldn’t help himself. She was more than attractive, her body had this healthiness about it that was intoxicating. His own body was getting uncontrollably hot. He hadn’t managed to have sex yet, not in this body. Just a whole load of lonely nights spent masturbating since he’d been physically able, which wasn’t long. Memories of women he’d been with kept flashing up through his mind, as well as all the ones he’d never had the guts to ask. His old self would never ask a girl like this for a date, he knew.

  “It must have been awful for you to realize what they did,” she said. “Coming to terms with how they betrayed you.”

  “Yes. Yes, it was.”

  “Without you none of this would be possible, none of the starships they’ve built. The important new positions your ex-shipmates have carved for themselves.”

  “I can’t believe they did it. They left us there to die.” Even now, after all the months thinking about it, trying to come to terms with the flight, his bitterness and shock were as strong now as the day he’d found out. “They didn’t care about me, not one of them.”