Revelations

by Nigel Foster

  When she turned back they were still wrapped in each other’s arms. Anson beckoned to her. “Please?”

  Tatia wasn’t sure how her relationship with either would end up. But standing in a warm group hug she was pretty sure there’d be one. And it would be good.

  * * *

  They sat outside the Mercedes drinking coffee from bowls, the French way, the milk from a neighbouring farm. Kara sat next to Anson, two of them holding hands as he told his story from Scotland to the time a little while ago he’d heard the Thrown had been identified, would soon be landing. But where? Scotland? And were Kara and Tatia both alive? It was a question he’d managed to answer positively before. Of course they will be. Tse said as much. Different matter when they were only hours, then minutes away, when all the illogical fears surfaced and he could only watch, hidden, until he saw the airlock open.

  “An elemental killed them?” Tatia asked when he’d done.

  “The surviving one,” he said. “Top assassin called Bel Drago.” He felt Kara’s hand tighten. “Friend of yours?”

  “We knew each other,” she said. Maybe later, perhaps in bed, she’d tell him the truth. Maybe he already knew it. “The same elemental we saw...”

  “Ten days ago,” he finished for her. “I guess. It came from the river. Blew Bel to hell. Incredible flash of heat. Then it went away.”

  “I said it liked you.”

  “When I was a kid,” Anson said, “there was a tree deep in the Wild, about two hundred klicks from Seattle. It was a sort of pilgrim place. Teenagers would go sleep there overnight. And if you were lucky, these lights would suddenly show up. Colours floating through the air. And they’d come real close, almost touching. We knew not to touch them, though. That could hurt. And we knew they were, oh, sensing us. Maybe marking us somehow. Didn’t always happen. I was one of the lucky ones.” He thought a bit and then, “I heard there are places like that all over the Wild. And we’ve no way of knowing, but maybe that’s why no Wild ship ever gets attacked in netherspace. We’ve been marked. Some damn entity has pissed on us!”

  Kara laughed then said that he might have explained all that before – even though he had no reason to do so – because then she wouldn’t have worried about him. Except she would, because he plainly was out of practice looking after himself. He should have said after they’d seen the light on the Severn, though. Except maybe he was distracted, and blushed as Anson looked smug and Tatia rolled her eyes.

  “Twist came back.” Anson changed the subject. “Said it was bored. It’s changed, all the AIs have. Says it’s independent now, happy to work as a consultant. It’s busy resurrecting GalDiv. I think it got lonely.”

  “This is relevant how?” Tatia asked.

  “That business with Salome popped into my mind. Not sure how autonomous, free-thinking AIs will work out.”

  < Just fine! Tell him, Kara.

  “They’ll be okay,” she said.

  “Personal ones for sure,” Anson said hastily, like a man chastised.

  Then Tatia announced she’d be sleeping in the house and would like some privacy, in fact she was tired and going for a lie down right now, would see them in a few hours, and expected something special for dinner.

  “Tatia and Marc, hey?” Anson said as he followed Kara into the SUV.

  “Yes and no,” Kara said and kicked off her shoes. “We are safe here?”

  “Fighting’s all died down. We got sentry bots in case. Contract’s over. Safe.”

  * * *

  It was like before but different, so much past worry to be soothed... a little resentment for all that worry, perhaps, a little concern for feeling resentful, all to be blown away: we are one, together, forever.

  “You made me love you,” Kara sang quietly, in a smoky blues voice, as they lay naked and for the moment replete. “I didn’t wanna do it...”

  Anson wondered if the smile would ever leave his face. Even if it did, always ready to appear whenever he looked at her. Thought about her.

  She suddenly stopped singing. “Bastard!”

  “What!”

  “Not you, that bloody Ishmael. Well, you’re involved...” her voice trailed away. How to tell him? “Congratulations,” Kara said. “I’m pregnant.”

  Anson gaped at her, open mouthed.

  “Doesn’t help when the father reacts like a congenital idiot.”

  He put his arms around her. “Father?”

  Kara surprised them both. “I want to keep it.” And explained how Ishmael usually took care of business, as she’d only recently discovered, but this time had decided to wait. “I’m sick of killing things,” she finished. “Maybe Ishmael knew.”

  “I’m so glad,” Anson said. “This mean we’re going steady?”

  Kara sniggered then asked where he’d heard the expression.

  From her vid collection. He’d seen it as key to understanding her.

  “Anything grab you?” she asked.

  Anson confessed a fascination with musicals, asked if she wanted a drink then went to get one.

  > You’d talked to Anson’s AI.

  < We get on well.

  > You had no right!

  < I got an independent mind now. Didn’t ask for it. Don’t understand where it goes. I made a decision, Kara. What I thought was maybe best for you. If I’m wrong, say the word and the foetus is gone

  > What you do is keep it safe. There going to be more independence?

  < Count on it.

  Kara smiled as Anson returned with two glasses and a bottle of champagne. “Talking of AIs,” she said, as the cork was eased out with a sigh. “What was put in Tatia’s head?”

  “Nothing. She didn’t want one.” He handed her a glass. “To the three of us.”

  She smiled, touched his face and sipped.

  > Should I be doing alcohol?

  < Your friendly neighbourhood AI will ensure no harm done. Don’t overdo it.

  “Are you sure?” Kara said. “Because she had one. Or something like it.” She told him the story of how Tatia was kept sane on the Originator ship.

  “Nothing like that in GalDiv. You say it’s gone?”

  “Ishmael says so.”

  “Better leave it there. One more mystery.”

  “Sipping champagne with me,” Kara said. “Ever get the idea there’s a third player in all this? Like your little round floating alien? Because the coincidences are too great.”

  “Tse used to say he sometimes sensed... look, if there is, it’s way beyond us. Got more important things to worry about. I’ve quit GalDiv.”

  It would be a time of rebuilding. Maybe he’d go back when the dust had settled. Meanwhile there was a house in the Wild Forest of Dean, some fifty klicks away, on the banks of the River Wye. If Kara would like...

  “Kara would love to live here,” she interrupted.

  “Without seeing it?”

  “If it’s crap we build a new one.”

  “So no more assassin? What am I saying? You’re fired from the Bureau. Good redundancy package, though. What will you do?”

  “I want to be an historian,” she said, surprising both of them.

  “Interpreter not chronicler?”

  She nodded. “It only just occurred.” And why not? Kara understood better than most how complex, how many-stranded and obscure was the truth about the past. She would love to learn and then explain how Earth really changed after the aliens came. And the long fight of human pre-cogs against their alien kin.

  * * *

  They took a refreshed Tatia to a restaurant in Gloucester, where over dessert she announced that she’d be staying in Marc’s house, and the AI was fine with it.

  Adding that she had no intention of sacrificing her life to his memory, so not to worry, she had plans... which included getting to know her father and learning about her mother, so they could expect to see a great deal of her.

  Then cried just a little when told Kara was pregnant, asked why she was drinking wine, looked severe
when told Ishmael was overseeing the pregnancy, and then became thoughtful.

  * * *

  Six months after Kara and Anson moved to the Forest of Dean... and when Tatia’s own bulge established why she’d been so keen to stay in Marc’s house, Originator ships began arriving at Earth-colonised planets.

  With all manner of high tech goodies to trade, even the latest star drives with no question of a human price. They were effectively given away.

  It was as if the Originators were using the colony planets as a depository for all the tech they’d found or stolen over the past millennia. Inevitably they arrived on Earth with the same generous attitude. More and more people left the cities for the Up, helped by a GalDiv that now welcomed rather than warned.

  The Wild wasn’t so sanguine, knowing there’d be a price to pay.

  There always is.

  15

  Earth. Ten years later.

  The vid stopped. The woman in black sat for a moment, thinking, then rose easily to her feet. “I’m done,” she called.

  “Pretty damn good, right?” the vid’s owner said, bustling into the small study, empty shelves a reminder of the days when books were real.

  “Entertaining,” she said. “As well as illegal.”

  “Well, you’re not going to say anything.”

  “I was wondering,” she said carefully, “if it’s worth the risk.”

  The man nodded. “Most popular bootleg vid in the world. They say that some people in Rio were shot for watching it.”

  She thought that nervous people say a lot of things, most of them untrue. “Well, thanks.” She handed him a wad of virtscrip. “As agreed.”

  He wished she wasn’t wearing mirror contact lenses. It made her a little threatening. “It’s based on true events.”

  She thought of the vid’s story, and how the characters had coped or died. “They got some of it right.”

  His ordinary face lit up with excitement. “You know about this?”

  “I’m a historian.” Nowadays a dubious occupation, but she doubted the man would be upset. “Kara Jones wasn’t so sympathetic in real life. Tatia was an airhead. Marc a failed artist. They just got very, very lucky. Any idea who made it?”

  He looked nervously around, as if there was an Originator lurking in a corner. “They say it was an AI. Not a personal one, but one of those that used to run things, back when...”

  Back when humans voyaged to the stars, she thought. They still could, but city staters could only use Originator ships to planets considered safe. Everything so damn safe. “Any idea which one?”

  “Someone said – Twist?” he said hesitantly. “Make sense?” “Never heard of it.” So Twist was looking to cause mischief. But why? “I must go. Thanks.”

  He saw her to the front door of the apartment in a rundown building on the outskirts of Bristol. “That Greenaway character fascinates me.”

  She was silent for a moment. “He was a ruthless bastard.”

  “But brave. The shoot-out by the Severn! Love it. Too bad he had to die.”

  “You’re not happy with your life?”

  He looked worried. A bootleg vid was one thing. Expressing dissatisfaction another. “The Originators provide everything we could possibly want...”

  “Except freedom,” she cut in.

  “Freedom to starve, to kill, to be unhappy is a curse,” he quoted.

  “You believe that?”

  He took a deep breath. “No. But we’re a minority.”

  Which was true. Since the Originators began giving away high tech, three things had happened. The old world order vanished. The new world was run by pre-cogs – dedicated to the greater good – who could somehow communicate with the Originators. And most people were happy to eat lotus for the rest of their lives.

  “Is it... do you think... I mean, one day...” he tailed off, unable to articulate the secret hope that never left him.

  She half smiled, the mirror lenses vanished and for less than a second all the colours of hell reached into his mind. The lenses reappeared.

  “Anything’s possible,” Kara said.

  The jitney was waiting for her in the street. She got in and reached to kiss the driver on the cheek. “Missed you.”

  “How was it? Who made it?”

  “Twist, apparently.”

  The jitney rose up and headed for the M6 Airway. “I’ll be damned,” Anson Greenaway said. “The kids okay?”

  She nodded. “Being spoilt by Tatia.”

  “And the vid?”

  “Mostly accurate. You’re dead by the way. Angry nature entity by the Severn.”

  He remembered the scene. “Angry’s an understatement.”

  “Sex scenes were good,” she said and touched his thigh.

  < Can’t you wait until we get home?

  > Shut up. Anyway, you don’t exist.

  < Me and several million others.

  The jitney slotted into the queue waiting to join the M6. The queue moved forward every minute as a jitney was fed into the main traffic.

  “So what do you think, Kara? Do we go live in Seattle? Or stay in the Forest of Dean?”

  “How was your trip?”

  “I visited all the Wilder planets. They’re in favour of breaking away. On Earth it’s around seventy–thirty. You and Tatia and Marc bought us the time we needed. Thing is, though, break away from what? Not as if the pre-cogs have formed any kind of government. Would they even notice – or care?”

  Anson was right, she thought. Government at local level – garbage collection, police, everything necessary for day-to-day life. Above that, nothing. Except the occasional edict which often made no sense, but was still obeyed unless you planned to die. Aside from the Wild, the majority on Earth were happy and wanted the status to be quo for ever. They might not understand the edicts – oh, those aliens, such rascals – but would make sure everyone obeyed them.

  “What about our pre-cogs?” she asked.

  “Not happy. Overwhelmed.”

  Kara sighed. “We never understood the sheer size of Originator space. How many there are. Their scientific and industrial abilities. We killed the wrong race.”

  “We were always meant to,” he said flatly.

  Kara glanced sharply at him. “You too?”

  “It’s possible the Originators wanted rid of the jellyfish creatures. They got us to do it for them. That’s why they came past when you were in orbit. The Originator version of paying their respects.”

  Kara nodded. “Don’t know about the last, but otherwise, I think you’re wrong. If we were manipulated it was by someone, something we don’t know. Maybe whoever put that AI in Tatia’s head. I love her dearly, but no human is capabable of blasting an alien race by thought alone. Not without help. Any other happy news?”

  “The Gliese are dying out. Like that planet you found.”

  She knew a moment’s sadness. Bred to be the Originators’ links with other races, discarded when they no longer matched the pre-cog plan. “Maybe it’ll happen to humans one day.”

  “Could be. The Originators lack creativity, need to steal science and tech. As long as we’re part of their plan, fine. If that changes, we no longer matter. Or might even be in the way.”

  “You weren’t really asking where I wanted to live,” Kara said. “But if I wanted to continue. Well, I do.”

  The queue moved forward then suddenly stopped. At its head a jitney hung half in and half out of the slow aerial lane. Suddenly the local info net was jammed with people asking what the hell, protesting that this never happened before.

  Kara and Anson glanced at each other. “End of an empire?” Kara joked.

  “Funnily enough things are fucking up all over. The great pre-cog, all must be cosy and safe society isn’t working as well as it did.”

  “I wonder what Marc would say.”

  “Something cutting. Still miss him?”

  Kara nodded. “Not as much as Tatia. She has her lovers but Marc is still the onl
y one.”

  “And so we carry on. A revolution has been announced.”

  “It’s what we do, darling. We don’t have a choice.”

  “Several people think the best way to defeat the Originators is to use the things that live in netherspace,” Anson said. “Marc would be invaluable.” He thought back to the night on the Severn Estuary, when the world had exploded in light and anger, leaving him face down in the mud five hundred metres away. He’d limped back to the house, on the way discovering five bodies turned inside out. One of them had to be Bel Drago. Even in horrific death she’d still clutched what must be an inside-out assault rifle. It was then that Anson had really appreciated the power of the entities – and how they were even more alien than the Gliese.

  “He’ll show up,” Kara said. “He promised. And it’s time he met his son.”

  Unspoken between them, the mystery of who or what had saved humanity. The spherical alien who’d first given Anson Greenaway the box that had helped destroy the pre-cog empire. Whoever, whatever had implanted in Tatia’s brain a chip... unknown to human and Originator science... that had magnified her emotions to an extent that destroyed an alien race.

  Thirty kilometres away there was a shimmering above the computer that controlled air traffic on the M6. A human arm appeared, so blazingly multi-coloured any human would need to look away. There were no humans present, only an Originator that the hand seized and smacked against the computer a few times before hurling three battered globes hard against the wall.

  A man’s laughter and the portal closed.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  So the end of the trilogy. It has been exciting, frustrating and sometimes insane.

  As always, thanks to my family for their support. At least one of them has read all three books! Thanks to friends, especially Helen and Paul Stickland of Black Shed flower farm fame for conversation and wine. Hugh Foster (no relation) for movie chat and crosswords. To everyone at Winstone’s, always the best independent bookstore in the world. Seriously good coffee, too. Thanks to everyone at Titan, especially George Sandison, Lydia Gittins, Steve Gove and my editor Craig Leyenaar who came late to the project. One of the most creativ e and professional people in the business. Thanks to Andy Lane who began this project with me. We will talk movies, television and English gramma and drink beer again. To Robert Kirby for his patience and calming influence.