Against Gravity

by Gary Gibson

  Audrey looked appalled. “The Omega is real. I’ve seen it, felt it.”

  “The Omega Point theory is only a theory. And, like any theory, it depends on certain preconditions – it only works if a certain set of circumstances is presumed to come about. You know what I mean?”

  “Believe me, I’m entirely acquainted with the details.”

  “Are you, though? None of you know for sure that any of what you’ve witnessed is objectively real. All you’ve seen are pictures in your head. So, having that degree of faith, it’s more like believing in a religion than anything else.”

  Audrey shook her head, smiling the knowing smile of a true believer. Kendrick felt a burst of irrational anger. She was eyeing Kendrick as if he were some errant child refusing to see the error of his ways.

  The problem was that something was happening, something enormous, unprecedented. Somewhere up there a wormhole was forming, an impossible spatial anomaly that was giving every physicist on the planet sleepless night after sleepless night. Maybe it just wasn’t something he wanted to face up to, to deal with. Who could blame him?

  Kendrick wondered what Audrey’s reaction would be if she knew he’d rather see the station destroyed than risk it falling into the hands of Draeger – or anyone else.

  “Well, I’ve got some news for you,” Audrey told him. “It may just seem a theory to you, but there are people out there who believe we’re monsters – things are only going to get worse for us. One of these days they’ll either intern us all or just kill us, and that’ll be the end of it. But this way some of us get to take control. This way we choose our own destiny.”

  27 October 2096

  Los Angeles

  Kendrick woke deep in the night and found that he had stopped breathing again. He lurched upright, panic blighting his thoughts. This is what it’s like to be dead, he thought: no heartbeat, no breath of life. A terrible silence filled the cavity of his chest, like a void.

  He had been asleep for several hours on a cot in one corner of the house. Crickets chirruped outside a window nearby. It was hard to believe, listening to the sounds of nature, that he’d see nothing but desolation if he raised his head to look outside.

  No heartbeat, no breath of life. Am I even alive?

  Slowly, deliberately, he once again sucked air into his lungs. It heaved his chest out and he felt a nitrate-like rush, expanding like a bubble through his brain. He exhaled again.

  In, then out – after several seconds Kendrick didn’t have to think about it any more. He could feel his hands shaking, his thoughts clear and adrenalin-tinged.

  Kendrick looked down again at the fine threads coating his skin. All of them were gold now, and the filaments appeared to be dissolving into his flesh. Slowly, his appearance was returning to normal.

  He brushed one cheek with a fingertip and felt that it was smoother than several hours before. A huge wave of relief swept through him.

  So far, Audrey and Buddy were the only ones there who had made any effort to speak with him, although his relations with Audrey were still distinctly on the edgy side. He’d even seen some of them huddled together, watching him from a distance and speaking in low whispers once they were sure that they were out of range of his augmented hearing.

  Yet Kendrick could have listened to what they were saying if he’d really wanted to, and he was sure that many others in this place shared the same ability. But a house full of Labrats was a house with no privacy whatsoever and, in accord with the special etiquette that had evolved to suit such circumstances, he avoided listening to their conversation, despite overwhelming temptation.

  It was clear by now that he wasn’t going to get any more sleep for a while, so he pulled himself out of the cot and started to get dressed.

  He felt slow, turgid, his body silent like a mausoleum, yet blood still moved through his arteries by some unfathomable means. He found his way to the kitchen and dribbled some tepid tank-water into his dry mouth. Then he turned to see Buddy watching him from the doorway.

  “There were a lot more people around this place earlier,” Kendrick observed. “Where have they all gone?”

  “Remember when we talked to Veliz? They’ve gone on ahead. I was surprised to find anyone here at all when we arrived, but we’re a little ahead of our own schedule.”

  “So why didn’t we just go with them?”

  “We have our own transport, remember? Besides, doing it this way makes more sense than all heading off together. That’s why there’s flights heading out from several different locations. Safer that way.”

  Kendrick stepped past Buddy, heading out through the main entrance and into a cool Californian night. He stared upwards at the sky, and after a moment heard Buddy step up behind him.

  “I have my reasons for going up there,” Kendrick said over his shoulder. “But don’t forget that they’re not the same as yours. When I went back down into the Maze I learned some things. I don’t think it’s as clear-cut as you seem to think.”

  He turned and stared at Buddy. “I think you’re putting yourselves in great danger.”

  Buddy glared back. “You’d better explain that.”

  “Robert is part of the Bright, yes, but it’s a parasitical – not a symbiotic – relationship.”

  “Just a minute, listen—”

  Kendrick pressed on. “No, you listen to me. Peter was down there, Buddy. Robert was, too. You could feel it, couldn’t you?”

  “What?”

  “What’s so hard to believe? That Robert was the only one to achieve some kind of life after death due to his augments? Or wouldn’t it seem more likely there might have been others? Peter is still alive, somehow, in the same way that Robert is. He tried to get through to all of you, but Robert managed to prevent that happening with anyone but me. That’s because of the treatments Hardenbrooke gave me. But here’s the real kicker. If Robert Vincenzo found some way of blocking Peter McCowan’s attempts at communication with all of us, what is it that Robert so badly didn’t want McCowan to tell you? Something, maybe, that you really ought to know?”

  Buddy struggled visibly to absorb this new information. “Hey, first you tell me we’re wrong, even though we’ve all been seeing the same things, and now you want us all to stop because of something – someone – that only you have seen. Maybe you ought to think about that.”

  “Look, Draeger told me there was a way to reverse the growth of our augmentations – and I actually believe him. If he can find a way, so can other people.”

  Buddy shook his head. “I’ve heard all this before.”

  “Look—”

  “We don’t know how long something like that could take to be properly tested, and that would be an even better excuse to lock us up in the meantime. You’ve seen Audrey, you saw Caroline. The Archimedes is our only chance.”

  “If you believe in the reality of the Omega Singularity,” Kendrick said carefully, “then you know it holds out for the actual resurrection, at the end of time, of everyone who ever lived. Even if we do all die, we still all get to live again someday.”

  Buddy threw his hands up in despair. “Christ, I know it’s only a theory. I also know that what’s happening up there proves at least part of it. So, no, maybe the whole human race doesn’t wake up at the end of time in a far-future Heaven created by minds so advanced that they’d be indistinguishable from God. Maybe most of us just stay here and rot for all eternity, since there’s no reason why any such entity should even bother.

  “But now we have a chance, one that nobody else has, to give something back to ourselves when the rest of the world would rather see us conveniently dead. We’d never have to feel pain again – we can be anyone or anything we want to be, for ever. And maybe we’ll even be the only human beings lucky enough to experience that.”

  “Hallelujah,” Kendrick observed sourly.

  Buddy gave him a sharp look, then headed over to his helicopter. Kendrick gazed after him for several minutes, wondering which of them was c
razier.

  The next time Kendrick woke, dawn was just beginning to break.

  He’d dreamt that he’d been deep in conversation with Marlin Smeby, lost in some primeval tunnel full of twisted, hallucinatory carvings. He couldn’t remember anything they’d spoken about.

  Hearing something clatter outside, he sat up and looked around the darkened room. Empty sleeping bags were scattered across the floor and, since almost all the rest had gone on ahead, he was alone there. He felt racked by a thousand aches and pains.

  Buddy planned to fly to the offshore launch site within the next few hours. Meanwhile, Kendrick had needed all the rest he could get.

  He got up and stepped outside again, looking over to where the ’copter still sat. Beyond it stood a tall wooden gate leading onto the broken tarmac of a nearby street. Part of the tarpaulin had been flipped back, and a shadowy figure was kneeling next to the machine, surrounded by tools and equipment.

  “Hey, how you doing?” Audrey greeted him with a grin as he approached the craft.

  “I didn’t know that you knew how to handle one of these things.”

  “Commercial rather than military, though,” she explained. The black streaks of her augment-growth were vivid under the dim red light of the dawn that was creeping over LA’s broken rooftops. “Buddy’s catching some zees, so I’m doing a little maintenance. Couldn’t sleep, then?”

  “Not any longer.” Kendrick glanced around. “Is it just us left?”

  Audrey shrugged. “You, me, Bud – rest are all gone.” She squinted at him. “You feeling okay?”

  “Fine – just got up.”

  She shrugged again. “Don’t wander off and get lost, now. Remember, not much in the way of law around here, so stick to the compound, okay?”

  Kendrick nodded. “Got it.”

  Audrey smiled uncertainly, then turned her attention back to the ’copter’s exposed innards. Soon Kendrick heard the sound of a bolt being unscrewed followed by a muttered expletive. He stepped back inside the hut, aware of the woman’s eyes constantly glancing after him.

  Had someone called his name? He tensed and peered out of a window through which he could see nothing unusual. Maybe it had been Buddy he’d heard.

  No: he came across Buddy in another room, curled up in a cot and fast asleep. Of course, he could have muttered something in his sleep . . .

  There it was again: the faintest whisper, barely the suggestion of his name. Kendrick wondered if it was McCowan. Without really thinking about it, he slipped quietly through the ramshackle building until he found another door at the rear, which opened without a sound. The high fence surrounding the compound made it impossible for casual passers-by – had there been any – to spy on them.

  He noticed another gate in the fence, presumably leading out onto a different street.

  “Kendrick,” whispered a voice somewhere nearby. He stopped, motionless. Nobody was visible.

  He stepped out onto the street, moving as quietly as he could. Not McCowan: someone else? In either direction he could see rows of broken buildings, barren and lifeless.

  Perhaps this was a bad idea. He should go back inside the fence.

  Then Kendrick noticed the car, deep in the shadows of one building that had survived the atomic blast largely intact. His augmented senses picked the vehicle out in vivid detail, and he could see that its windows were silvered. It stood several blocks away from the compound where Audrey was still working on the ’copter.

  The car looked shiny and new, incongruous amid so much devastation. Beside it stood Smeby.

  Kendrick glanced over his shoulder and caught a strange movement, as if a distorting lens had passed in front of some scrubby bushes growing out of the cracked pavement. He realized with a start that it was someone wearing camouflage like that built into the skin of Buddy’s helicopter. The hazy motion halted, resolving itself into a figure holding a rifle pointed at Kendrick’s head.

  Kendrick glanced towards Smeby again, catching a glint of light on a lens from a glassless window in the building looming up behind the car. Another soldier was undoubtedly positioned there, his gun trained on Kendrick.

  The compound was surrounded – and only three of them were left to defend it.

  Perhaps they’d traced him by some arcane means that didn’t require tracking his wand; perhaps they could still trace him through the lingering Trojan nanites that Hardenbrooke had inserted in his augmentations. In which case, it was conceivable that they knew nothing about Buddy, Audrey, or any of the recently departed Labrats.

  Somehow, though, Kendrick suspected otherwise. As he turned to retreat towards the gate, a bullet slammed into the ground and noiselessly kicked up a puff of dust in front of him.

  Realizing that he was cornered, he stepped back onto the road and moved slowly towards the vehicle.

  When he reached it, Smeby was leaning against the hood with his arms folded. “I don’t know what you want,” Kendrick snarled, “but I’m not interested.”

  “I haven’t even said anything yet.” Smeby smiled. “But Mr Draeger has a fresh proposition for you.”

  “I already told you—”

  “Just hear me out, okay?” Smeby snapped. “We’ve decided to forget about what happened last time – Mr Draeger feels there’s too much at stake.”

  Kendrick sensed a movement around the corner of the nearby building. He stepped away from the car, Smeby’s gaze following him. At least a dozen more men were standing in a loose group beside a truck parked in the adjacent street. Although dressed in civilian clothes, they certainly looked like soldiers.

  A cigarette butt glowed in the dim dawn light like a firefly as one of them drew smoke into his lungs. Their keen eyes studied Kendrick emotionlessly.

  “Doesn’t look like much of a welcoming committee to me,” muttered Kendrick, returning his gaze to Smeby. “Who are those guys, anyway? Los Muertos?”

  “Of course not,” Smeby said impatiently. “If we wanted to cause you that much trouble, you’d have known about it long before now. Don’t you even want to know what we want – or would you rather go through all this blind?”

  Kendrick glanced back towards the fenced-off compound. Then he spat on the ground in front of Smeby’s feet.

  “Fine,” he said. “Tell me what you want.”

  Smeby swung the car door open and gestured for Kendrick to get in. Kendrick stared back at him, his expression wary.

  “Mr Draeger is in the fucking car, Gallmon. I’m not trying anything.”

  Kendrick bent down and looked inside. Draeger was indeed in the car, sitting back on a long couch that took up a large amount of space within the vehicle. With considerable misgivings, Kendrick climbed in.

  Smeby slid in after Kendrick and took a seat beside him, both of them facing towards Draeger. The car had no manual control and therefore lacked a driver’s seat, which allowed them extra room.

  Draeger leaned forward. “Mr Gallmon, I’m a fair-minded man. I’m as fascinated as you are by what’s happening far above our heads.”

  “You should have become a Labrat yourself, then,” said Kendrick. “But maybe you wouldn’t have liked it so much.”

  “Oh no, I would have,” Draeger replied. “I have a disease of the nervous system. Neurological damage in the womb that affected millions of unborn children, a by-product of the environmental excesses of previous generations. The nanotechnology that created your augmentations would kill me within hours. It’s an irony that I therefore can’t get to see the Promised Land that it seems so many of you have already glimpsed.”

  “The experiment that Sieracki carried out on me and three others,” Kendrick replied. “That’s why you’re so interested in me, isn’t it?”

  “I already warned you that the Archimedes is a privately owned vessel,” Draeger continued, ignoring him. “Any attempt to land there constitutes trespassing. The offshore launch facility you’re using is extremely vulnerable to attack. You should remember that.”

  “Fu
ck you. Just don’t you threaten me—”

  “The danger isn’t from me, Mr Gallmon. It’s from Los Muertos. They are as aware of your plans as I am. I’m offering your friends my protection.”

  “Your protection?” Kendrick laughed. “They need someone to protect them from you.”

  “It’s a sincere offer. It would be very stupid of you not to take it seriously.”

  Kendrick gazed soberly at Draeger. He didn’t doubt his sincerity at all. Rather, it was what the man didn’t say that worried him.

  “Taking an offer like that seriously is one thing. It’s not the same as agreeing to it.”

  “I can help Caroline Vincenzo.”

  Kendrick was thunderstruck. “She doesn’t need your help,” he said numbly. How did Draeger know?

  “You might be interested to learn that she visited a Labrat-friendly clinic in Glasgow. Friendly enough not to contact the police and inform them of her visit. Nonetheless, we managed to obtain certain records, which show that the rogue growths in her body are accelerating rapidly. She may not live long enough to survive the trip to the Archimedes. But I can help her.”

  “In return for my cooperation?”

  Draeger smiled gently. It wasn’t the smile of a winner, of someone who believed they held the upper hand. Rather, it was the smile of someone who believed completely in the rightness of what they were saying and doing. Someone who was waiting for the rest of the world to recognize the logic of their actions. It was the smile of a madman.

  “Is that why all those men are out there? In case I don’t agree to cooperate?”

  “I don’t need to coerce you, Mr Gallmon. Once you reach the launch facility you’ll have no choice but to cooperate. Without my help, you won’t get even a hundred feet into the air.”

  “That’s a threat?”

  “It’s an observation.”

  “Why me, Draeger? Why not try and persuade Buddy or any of the others?”

  “None of them are as important as you. Surely you understand that now? The growths within your body have the greatest affinity with the nanite intelligences on board the Archimedes. And now you have been blessed with gifts from the intelligences still residing within the Maze, which will grant you access to the space habitat concerned.”