She listens to me patiently; they all listen to me patiently. But there is that strained look in her eyes. It’s the look I myself assume when someone I can’t risk offending is telling me in detail the plot of a long and boring film. Honestly, what’s wrong with these people! Don’t they realise how much they can learn from me?
Brandon’s okay, I guess. He’s so laidback. If I were a widget, he might marry me. As things stand, I am just a useful wall to bounce his facts against. I persevere wildly with Brandon, but he bores me rigid. I once slept for two and a half minutes during one of his sentences, though of course, I masked it well and he never knew.
Harry just smiles at me and says nothing. He has his own pheromones; and I sense, very vividly, that he is aroused at the thought of eating me alive. He knows that I know this; he enjoys watching me squirm as he slavers. I wake up some days with pains in my leg and stomach, which feel scarily like bite marks. They are psychosomatic; the bastard is mentally eating me alive.
I should thrust a metal rod up his arse and roast him on a spit. But though I can conjure that image up mentally, I cannot project images into his mind, as he does to me. He has a rarer skill than I. I really think he is more beast than man.
And Kalen – Kalen doesn’t love me after all. I dream of her soft downy skin with its faint tint of orange. I dream of her body hairs, her sharp cutting teeth, her flickering tongue. But she is immune to my charms. My pheromones do not work on her. Instead, I have intoxicated and aroused myself. I have made myself obsessively in love with a fucking cat. How stupid is that? Very.
Shut up. Sorry.
And then there’s Flanagan.
Oh Flanagan.
Flanagan
When we reach Illyria we float the merchant Captain off in a lifepod. It seems a harmless enough act of charity. Then we carry on, for three more subjective years, until we reach Debatable Space. Our sanctuary.
No Corporation warships ever penetrate in here. They are too afraid, their spirit is sapped by the myth of the Bugs.
Lena is visibly nervous.
“You’re superstitious, aren’t you?” I say mockingly to her.
“I’m not.”
“Black cats. What do they symbolise to you?”
“Evil.”
“Would you stroke one?”
“Never.”
“Double stars. Would you live on a planet that circles a double star?”
“There are radiation issues.”
“Would you?”
“Double stars can split a personality. They can sunder your id from your ego, your psyche from your soul. No human born under a double star can ever be sexually faithful.”
“Rubbish.”
“It’s true.”
“Are you sexually faithful?”
“I was, once. But I’ve never lived under a double star.”
“You’re a baby. You’re spooked by Debatable Space. You don’t trust your son’s own scientists.”
“You fucking infant. You weren’t even alive when we found the Bugs.”
“They’re trapped. They’re encased in walls surrounded by walls surrounded by walls. But you’re scared, in case the bogeyman might creep out.”
“Walls can have holes. Some Bugs might escape.”
“Then they would escape all the way through Inhabited Space. You believe in auras, don’t you? You’re afraid the Bug Aura can reach out and touch your mind?”
“I do, in fact, believe in auras.”
“Tosh. There are no auras. Auras are bogus science, pure superstition. “
“If I am within ten feet of a person, that person’s soul can touch mine. It’s a documented fact.”
“It’s a discredited documented fact.”
“It’s a fact I believed in before it was discredited. Old opinions die hard!”
“You’re a victim of your stupid, ingrained, indelible fucking prejudices, aren’t you?”
“This place spooks me.”
“It’s where we live.”
Lena
I was in retirement on Earth, living in my son’s palace, and basking in my sixth century of life, when we first found the Bugs. I passed my days reading Dickens and Hammerfast and the collected works of Bjorn Ishil. Then a new Quantum Beacon was installed in the region of Epsilon Omega 5, and we were able to witness at first hand the experience of the colonists when Human first met Bug.
At first, we all thought it was a plague. All two thousand settlers developed fevers. Then they stopped speaking English. Then they cut holes in their spacecraft and floated through space stark naked, with no visible side effects.
By this time we were running the colony ship with the ten Doppelganger Robots we had in storage. Peter asked me to advise the Major Incident Team on how to manage the plague crisis. I watched as DRs attempted to subdue and incarcerate one of the human beings. The human waved a hand and the DR fell into two pieces.
Then the human looked at the vid camera. We watched on our screens as his eyes bulged. His cheeks inflated. Then he exploded. Every part of him shattered into the tiniest pieces. Until nothing was left. He was possessed by invisibility, and destroyed by nothing at all.
Soon after the ship melted. Every particle of it was transmuted into raw energy. Our nanoprobes were able to follow some of what happened next. The DRs now floated in space with the humans, as part of one vast colony. Out of seemingly nothing they constructed a vast net in space. And there, like spiders in a web, the humans and the DRs coexisted.
Then a new spaceship appeared out of nowhere. It was similar to the one that had melted, but bigger, and sleeker.
We had three more colony ships in the area. We gave them their instructions. They formed a triangular pattern around the galactic core. They activated their Quantum Beacons.
And we sealed off the whole region. A Quantumarity was created, a quantum-effect singularity which has no substance or energy but which allows nothing to penetrate its boundary. And thus, we contained the plague. And then we watched as the crew of the two colony ships – who were, of course, trapped inside the Quantumarity – died appalling deaths.
The second death we witnessed on camera was even more shocking. It was the ship’s doctor, a blonde woman, whose fevered eyes suddenly clouded black. A million tiny insects crawled out of her eyes her nose her eardrums her nostrils and every pore and bodily orifice. They swirled around her like flies. Then the insects ate her alive, until all that was left was a pillar of floating insect that formed the shadowy shimmering shape of a human being. Which then moved.
The insects swirled and vanished then reappeared. This time the human-shaped swarm was more fully developed. It had a nose, breasts, fully shaped limbs. The skin was still black and suppurating but this impersonation of a human being was uncannily accurate.
Then the insects swarmed again. And a letter appeared in the air. Followed by another, and another. And we read the chilling words, written by a swirling swarm and suspended in air:
By now, our scientists had fathomed that these insects could not be insects. They were much much smaller, the size of a microbe, or conceivably smaller still. But they were microbes that could swarm and form insect shapes that acted with a collective intelligence and purpose. And the insect shapes could swarm and form larger shapes. And could communicate with us by forming letters in the air…
It was, after all, a plague. A plague of intelligent Bugs that could possess and annihilate a human being in instants. These were Bugs that could learn the English language in a matter of days. They could eat a spaceship. They could build a new spaceship out of particles so small the human eye could not perceive them. They were tiny, they were evil, and we were their prey.
Someone leaked the story. And the world erupted into panic.
That panic has never subsided. All human history was changed irrevocably by the discovery of the Bugs. All the work I had done to create a better and a fairer and a well regulated Universe was abandoned. The military-industrial complex took co
ntrol. A thousand warships were outfitted on a yearly basis, each equipped with a Quantum Beacon. It took the first of them ninety years to reach the Epsilon Omega region. And once there, they used their Quantum Beacons to create a second impenetrable shell around the first impenetrable shell. The warships, of course, were by now trapped in place, on the wrong side of the impermeable wall. And so the trapped soldiers bred and raised children to be soldiers in turn.
These became our Sentinels; human beings whose only function and reason for being was to guard against the possibility of a Bug invasion. If that event ever happened, of course, the soldiers would die instantly, since there was and is no defence whatsoever against attack by sub-microscopic Bugs. They can go anywhere, penetrate any hull, crawl into any weapon.
But since they were trapped anyway, the Sentinels were led to believe they fulfilled a vital function. They lived, and still live, a life of pointless folly; sustained only by purpose-built religions which allow them to exist in a state of Messianic zeal. Their futility is known to everyone, but not to them…
A thousand impenetrable shells have now been constructed around the Bugs’ planetary system. All of mankind’s resources have been poured into making humankind safe from Bug. But to generate that wealth, and sustain that endless war drive, other considerations have slipped down the order of priorities. Democracy was lost centuries ago. Liberalism is a distant dream. Humankind exists on a permanent war economy, and government by diktat is now the only way.
The region outside the thousandth shell has come to be known as Debatable Space. In Debatable Space, half the sky is warped and twisted, because of the bizarre effects of the Quantumarity. And all humans who live there exist in a state of foreboding and dread because of the twisted sky above them, which serves as visible token of the Bug Threat at the heart of the Thousand Shells.
There is no law in Debatable Space. It is a wild place. It is the place of final escape for pirates and outlaws.
And I loathe the place, beyond all measure.
Flanagan
I am with Alliea. The mood is informal. I have showered, and trimmed and combed my grey beard, and carefully brushed my hair. We are having drinks in the ship’s bar. I look, I know, like a wolf who is being compelled to use a knife and fork.
“Don’t let her get to you,” I say, comfortingly.
“I don’t.”
“She doesn’t mean to be patronising.”
“She’s so fucking patronising!”
“She has a right to our respect. She’s lived, after all, an amazing life.”
“She slept her way to the top. That’s what I heard.”
“Not true.”
“She was a dictator. She destroyed democracy.”
“Not true either.”
“She committed murder.”
“And confessed her crime, and took her punishment. Besides, we murder people all the time.”
“We’re soldiers.”
“We’re killers.”
“It’s war.”
We pause.
“Can I say something?” I ask.
“What?”
“It’s hard.”
“Say it. You look strange.”
“I want to touch you.”
“No!”
“I know you loved him but…”
“There’s no ‘but’.”
“We could be something together.”
“Why not pair off with Kalen? She’ll do it with anyone, she doesn’t mind.”
“I have done.”
“Good?”
“Oh yes. I made her purr.”
Alliea laughs.
“This is not,” I tell her, “about sex. It’s about love. I’ve always loved you. I was jealous as hell of Rob, even though he was my friend. Now he’s dead. Please tell me I have a chance.”
“I find this really creepy.”
“I wake up every morning afraid. I want someone to share my bed. Be with me. Share my fears, and my joys.”
“I’ve sworn a vow. I’ll never take another partner. Even if I live to be a thousand.”
“What a stupid fucking vow.”
“It keeps me sane.”
“I’m desperate for you.”
“Try a handjob.”
“I don’t expect you to love me,” I say desperately. “I’d be happy with… less. Just friendship. With sex. Sex without love. You could go through the motions, but not feel anything in your heart for me.”
“Wow, what an offer.”
“I feel a black, black despair. I’ve lived too long.”
“I get that too.”
“The ten years on that merchant ship were a crucifixion of my soul.”
“It was ten subjective years. In Earth Time, it was twenty years.”
“I’m another half-century older.”
“We both are.”
“Kiss me Alliea.”
“No.”
“Then let me see you naked.”
“No’.
“Then at least, let me think about you sexually.”
She pauses, for a long long time.
“Okay,” she says, eventually. “Just this once.”
I ravish her with my eyes. I glory in the softness of her skin, the bulge of her breasts, her moist slightly parted lips, her dark hair framing the perfect oval of her face.
“Enough.”
I stop.
“Never again,” she tells me, and I nod.
I look at her now with cool, professional, dispassionate eyes. I am her Captain, she is my crew member. I have been indulged, my lust has been sated, now I have to forget I ever loved her. A promise is a promise.
So I cut my passion for Alliea out of my heart. It’s a tricky psychological manipulation, but I manage it. I now no longer love her.
“Done?”
“Done.”
There is a trickle of moisture in the inner corners of her eyes. I pretend not to notice.
Brandon
I love my watch. It’s the best gadget I’ve ever had.
When I was a boy, I had a mobile phone that was also my personal computer and my imaginary friend. I programmed the computer to speak to me, to conduct entire conversations. “Brandon,” my phone would say, “let’s mitch off school today!”
I would tell stories about far-off lands to my phone and in return, my phone would tell me facts about the Universe. People at school saw me talking into my phone – and they thought I had friends! Far from it. I was talking to my phone.
Well? What’s wrong with that?
I was brilliant at school, because I never forgot a fact. But during exams, I used to have spasms of rage because I wasn’t allowed to have my mobile phone with me. I understand that they had to guard against cheating – but this wasn’t just my phone/camera/computer/TV/IPod music player! This was my best friend!
My phone was called Xil. That’s pronounced, Kzil. And I imagined that Xil was only disguised as a phone and that Xil was, in reality, an alien, born on a planet at the far end of the Universe.
Xil (the alien) can of course travel through time and space. And he has been visiting the Earth system since it was a molten ball of rock orbiting a newborn sun. Xil (or so I then believed, but I still do believe it) has witnessed at first hand most of the great events of Earth history. When Genghis Khan’s Mongol hordes conquered Europe, Xil was there, perched on the Khan’s shoulder. When Byzantium fell, Xil was there. When Hitler killed the Jews, Xil floated above the death camps and watched. He was powerless to alter human history, and condemned to witness the very worst of human nature. But he also saw the best. Xil has smeared his name in the wet paint of the Sistine Chapel ceiling; if you examine the Adam and God fresco with a fine microscope, you will see the word “Xil” in tiny tiny letters above the touching fingers.
Xil watched the first performance of Hamlet, floating in the wings as Will Shakespeare read the prompts to his largely drunken cast. Xil sat with Mozart as he died his lonely death. Xil is a being of suc
h incredible magic, and yet he still has the joy and zest of a child.
Xil was my dearest friend for three years, until I was thirteen, and then my parents found out and impounded my mobile phone. For six months I was bereft, without computer, without phone, without my best friend. My parents put me through an intensive course of psychotherapy. Eventually, realising I was liable to be trapped for two hours a week with this pompous imbecile for the rest of my childhood, I managed to persuade the psychiatrist that Xil was just a harmless delusional fantasy. All went back to normal. I was introverted, withdrawn, bookish, but at least I didn’t talk to my phone any more.
Then, when I was fifteen, my father bought me this watch. It is as accurate as an atomic clock. And it also functions as an alarm, a stopwatch, a calculator, and can even be used as a DVD player if you unfold the perspex screen. But since I’ve had my brain chip and phone and retinal implants, I no longer use the watch for computing and movies. I can just blink, and see a movie projected on my retina; I can just tense my throat, and receive a mobile phone call from anywhere in the Universe with access to a Quantum Beacon.
The value of my watch is its other great feature: It keeps a record of the time and date on every inhabited planet in the Universe .
This isn’t as simple as it sounds. Hope, for instance, one of the oldest colonies, is populated by colonists who travelled for 100 subjective years, which is equivalent to 400 Earth-elapsed years, thanks to Einsteinian time-dilation effects. (Time, of course, passes slower, the faster you move.) In the Hope Calendar, on the basis of actual elapsed time, it is now AD 3320. In the Earth Calendar, it is AD 3380. (And, by the by, on Hope at the moment it is 22.22 hours, on Earth it is 07.20 hours, and on board ship it is 11.15. But that has nothing to do with my main point, which is to do with years, not hours, so ignore this digression.)
Most people don’t care about variations in time between planets (though I do!). This is because all colony planets use Earth Time, regardless of what time distortions have occurred during the voyage. The minute the Quantum Beacon is turned on, the colonists abandon their subjective calendar and revert to Earth Time, which therefore has the status of “Real Time”.
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