Donner’s holo dissolved into sparkling white granules that gently wafted onto the desert sands. The music faded. LeaMarsa heard sobbing, realized it was Faye. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” June whispered.
“Does anyone wish to add anything?” the captain asked.
No one spoke. Ericho went to the control panel and deactivated the holo. The desert vanished, leaving the seven of them in a room stripped of hallucinatory eloquence.
Faye, crying uncontrollably, dashed out the door.
“All right, we all have our duties,” Ericho said. “We’re still on emergency status but that’s mainly precautionary. With the exception of the containment and some related subsystems, the ship is functioning well. We’ve come through a serious incident in pretty good shape.”
LeaMarsa noted the grim faces. The captain’s upbeat assessment wasn’t registering.
“Have you considered my requests?” Hardy asked Ericho.
The science rep not only wanted to preserve the organism’s remains but wanted the ship to return to Sycamore for fresh samples of the bacteria to replace those lost in the melt.
“Going back to the planet is a bad idea,” Rigel said.
“It’s the captain’s decision, not yours,” Hardy argued.
“Very bad idea,” Rigel snapped.
“We’re still considering what to do about the remains,” Ericho said. “But Rigel’s right. We’ve had a serious accident and the ship is damaged. Besides that, returning to Sycamore would put us close to the edge of our fuel reserves.”
Hardy protested. “The Sycom strain provided the initial focus for this expedition. Our entire voyage has already turned into a scientific disaster. Be that as it may, it would be doubly foolish to return to Earth with nothing to show for our efforts.”
“Hardy, I concur with the captain,” June said. “There are forces at work here that may have caused Donner’s suicide. Those forces could ultimately affect us all.”
“What forces? What are you talking about?”
June lowered her voice. But LeaMarsa could still make out her words.
“I believe a psionic chain of events, at least partly having to do with the presence of that creature, led to the lieutenant’s death.”
“She means me,” LeaMarsa said, stepping forward.
“No one’s blaming you for what happened,” June said. “I’m talking about forces beyond anyone’s control.”
“Even if you’re right,” Hardy argued, “whatever effects you’re referring to perished with the organism.”
“Not necessarily. We could still be in danger.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Bouncy Blue is dead. But we can’t say the same for Baby Blue.”
“What are you talking about?” Rigel demanded. “The damn thing was charbroiled.”
“Bouncy Blue may have shielded Baby Blue from the harsher effects of the melt. If that’s the case, the organism might still be a strong projector of superluminals.”
“The robot’s sensors read no signs of life,” Hardy said.
“There are other ways to gauge whether it survived.”
“Such as?”
June glanced at Ericho as she continued. “I’ve been having a recurring nightmare. And it came to me again less than an hour ago when I laid down for a nap, well after the melt occurred. In this nightmare, something we brought aboard this ship returns to Earth with us and begins to carry out rampant destruction. Our cities come under attack in ways that we have no defense against, brought down by some powerful invisible force.”
She shook her head, as if unable to describe it better. “This force appears out of thin air and devastates the world. It shatters everything our civilization has built, sends our mightiest skyscrapers crumbling to the ground. I’m with my family and friends, everyone on Earth I know and love. We’re standing in a field outside a city, watching the destruction. And then the force comes for us.”
June’s voice fell to a whisper. She struggled to continue. “This terrible feeling of simultaneously freezing and burning comes over me, comes over all of us. We’re slowly consumed by this icy fire, but not just in a physical sense. Our minds, our emotions, everything that’s unique about us is also stripped away.” She paused. “It’s the most horrifying thing I’ve ever experienced.”
Hardy seemed oblivious to the shudder passing through the crewdoc.
“Yes, June, that sounds quite appalling. But it provides no evidence that the fetal organism survived.”
Alexei chimed in. “I’ve been having nightmares like that too.”
“Coincidental,” Hardy said, increasingly annoyed. “As professionals, you should be aware of the irrationality of what you’re saying. Nightmares are just nightmares. They do not foretell real-world events.”
He’s wrong, LeaMarsa thought. Our fears can showcase the future.
“The organism is dead,” the science rep insisted. “If there was even the slightest sign of life, we would know.”
“Not necessarily,” June said. “According to Jonomy, EPS registers a ninety-nine percent likelihood of fatal injuries to the organism. However, the one percent uncertainty is based on the notion that Baby Blue may have survived but that its vital signs are too low to register.”
Ericho tabbed his mike. “Jonomy, are you following this discussion?”
“Yes, captain.”
“Is there any way to increase the sensitivity of the robot’s sensors?”
“I could attempt downloading an enhancement package. However, given the robot’s highly contaminated environment and the amount of time it has been in there, there is a strong possibility the package would not properly install. I am already experiencing problems with the robot’s telemetry.”
“Give the enhancement a try.”
“Affirmative.”
The captain headed away and the rest of them followed. At a transverse corridor, the group dispersed, each person off to resume individual duties. Everyone looked even grimmer. LeaMarsa knew they were all dealing with troubling thoughts provoked by June and Alexei’s revelations about their nightmares.
But the true nightmare is just beginning.
FROM THE FILES OF LIEUTENANT TOMER DONNER, PANNIS CORP BRIDGE OFFICER
Seven years, eight months, fourteen days. That’s how long it’s been since Renfro Zoobondi killed my beloved Karl and my obsession took root. I know it’s not healthy but my rage over the incident hasn’t relented. I’m as angry today as I was then.
Yesterday, two days before Christmas, I found myself in the same room with the murderer. It was the first time I’d seen him since that confrontation shortly after Karl’s death.
Zoobondi was part of a group of high-ranking Pannis execs giving an instructional presentation in a large Boston auditorium. Considering that I was seated at the rear of the balcony and within a crowd of more than a thousand starship officers and midlevel execs, I assumed Zoobondi would be unaware of my presence. I took the opportunity to glare with such intensity that had my eyes been weapons, his flesh would have been incinerated.
His time at the podium began with a projection of Corporeal trends featuring a technohistorical grid of the next thousand e-years. Graphically enhanced by data-dripping HODs floating over the audience, the presentation was being simulcast to multiple venues.
Zoobondi, passionately animated, paced the stage like a master showman as he quoted the latest Pannis profitability update. He related the figures to the continued growth of the interstellar population, which was expected to undergo a spectacular geometric escalation that would peak eight hundred e-years from now. During that time, the Corporeal would experience a twentyfold increase, reaching a pinnacle of nearly half a trillion souls scattered across a thousand-plus settled worlds.
The formidable human explosion was partly due to recent discoveries of numerous planets in the stellar neighborhood suitable for terraforming and on the development of ever-faster exploratory probes for anchoring new Quiets in more d
istant systems. Also contributing to the population increase was the multiplying birthrate, with centenarians becoming parents even as their own great-great-grandchildren and all generations in between continued making babies.
Those facts taken together would produce a scenario that, to quote Zoobondi, “will offer wealth-harvesting opportunities beyond the wildest fantasies of our Helio Age ancestors.”
After warming the crowd with a few more gems of rapacious mega wisdom, Zoobondi segued into the heart of his presentation by outlining the latest advances to thwart chronojackers. The temporal pirates were becoming a major problem, and Pannis and the other megas that funded Quiets were understandably up in arms. A part of me not consumed by fantasies of vengeance listened with interest as Zoobondi outlined the physics and methodology of the crime.
How far forward a chronojacked vessel would be sent couldn’t be accurately determined, although the ships generally reconstituted from a few centuries to a few millennia in the future. Spatial displacement also occurred, with chronojacked vessels often emerging lightyears from their initial locales.
Chronojacking was no longer limited to pure fanatics. Severing all Corporeal ties, abandoning friends and family to leap ahead into an unknown destiny, once had attracted only devil-may-care adventurers and certifiable crazies. But for many, it had now become a kind of holy grail.
The new breed of chronojackers included gamblers who put all their creds into the underground banking system, hoping to return to future riches through the tried-and-true method of long-term compound interest. Others were anti-corporate revolutionaries seeking an age when the megas were no longer dominant. But most came from the needful majority, whose stagnant wages and decreasing opportunities provoked desperate measures, prompting them to risk all in order to cross a temporal border into a hoped-for better life.
Starship owners naturally disliked having their vessels hijacked into such unreachable future realms, a situation made worse by the insurance megas refusing to write policies to cover such losses. And despite intense lobbying, the Corporeal Congress thus far had resisted extending the statute of limitations beyond its current seventy-seven years, which made criminal prosecution of most chronojackers unlikely.
Zoobondi brightened as he explained the unpleasant surprises being introduced to dissuade chronojackers.
“New ships are being equipped and older vessels retrofitted with warrior pups. Upon an attempt to fire the spatiotemporal coagulators outside of Quiets space, the Sentinel will activate these robots. The warrior pups will regard chronojackers as malfunctioning units and take lethal action. Even if a ship is successfully chronojacked, those responsible will face the prospect of being hunted down and terminated.”
Zoobondi couldn’t hold back a grin at the idea of robots murdering transgressors. He concluded his presentation at that point by wishing everyone happy holidays.
Later, as I filed toward the exit with the rest of the crowd, I was surprised when he caught up to me.
“You’ve been doing some investigating,” the VP said, flashing that superior smile of his. “Digging into my finances, my personal life.”
I stood there in a cold rage and denied knowing what he was talking about.
“I understand your desire for vengeance, Lieutenant Donner. Really, I do. But I believe it’s time for you to move on.”
There was no misreading the threat in his tone and in those cold eyes. Zoobondi would have liked to murder me with his bare hands, or maybe hire some lowlife member of the needful majority to carry out the task for him.
But through my efforts, I’d gathered plenty of evidence against him, and he would know that I’d made arrangements for that evidence to go public should anything suspicious happen to me. I knew he had ambitions to reach even higher in the Pannis hierarchy, become the next CEO. Such rarefied air was incompatible with public scandal, so even if he took pains to make it look like an accident, there was always the chance that killing me could backfire and harm his career.
A young woman who’d been lingering in the background approached. Her hourglass figure and long black hair trimmed into bangs not only put her high on the Danbury Lustre Scale but marked her as a Pager, one of the thousands of genejobs crafted to emulate Helio Age sex personality Bettie Page.
The Pager wore sidearms – she was one of Zoobondi’s personal bodyguards. Cradled in her arms was a dwarf tiger, a gaudy thing with phosphorescent red and green stripes, probably engineered with a genetic kill switch for expiration after the holiday season. She placed the Christmas-themed cat on Zoobondi’s shoulder and backed away, her killer eyes never straying from my face.
The VP stroked the tiger’s back as he leaned close and whispered in my ear.
“Accept what happened and continue your Pannis career without impediment. If not…”
Zoobondi pinched the tiger’s flank. It reacted by snarling and scratching my cheek. I winced in pain and pulled away, glaring in fury at the VP. It took all my willpower not to smash his face in.
“Sorry about that,” he said with a smile. “But I hope our little talk clarifies that it’s a mistake to declare war on me. My defenses are more potent than you can imagine.”
He turned and walked away. I dabbed at my bloody cheek and tried to convince myself that his threat didn’t scare me. But of course, it did.
Nevertheless, if it is the last act of my life in this universe, I will see that this man suffers justice.
CHAPTER 14
The diner was located just off the bridge, a small ovoid room flanked by cabinets, stoves and thermal and microwave cookers. Three tables with attached seats mushroomed from the floor. A server pup with lifelike human arms hung from the ceiling, awaiting orders.
Ericho usually preferred making his own meals. This evening he was tired, however, and had permitted the pup to handle the cooking. The faux chicken in bean sauce with lemon-curry rice was good, though if he’d been the chef he’d have been more creative with the spices.
June and Rigel sat with him. The diner was a dopa, as good a place as any for a private conversation.
“I say we give LeaMarsa a high dose of loopy,” Rigel proposed as he chomped into a codburger leaking tomato sauce. “Keep her neurons scrambled for the rest of the voyage.”
“We can’t do that,” June said.
“Why not?”
“I think you know why.”
Ericho did too. Still, Rigel’s idea was appealing.
The drug Loopaline B4, aka loopy, was as necessary for safe Quiets travel by humans as the proper functioning of the Big Three systems. Early Quiets voyages had ended in disaster when crewmembers came out the other side suffering various psychological ailments, the worst being psychotic autosarcophagy. Those cases of self-cannibalism ranged from the mild, such as gnawing bits of skin off one’s own arms and legs, to the more severe, where sufferers chewed and swallowed their own tongues, fingers or worse.
Although numerous theories had been put forth to explain the bizarre syndrome, neurological researchers had never pinpointed a cause. However, a cure had been found. Loopaline B4, a unique blend of soporifics that acted upon the most evolutionarily ancient regions of the human tripartite brain, had tamed the urge to consume oneself.
But having crews take a small hit of the drug prior to engaging the Quiets engines was one thing. What Rigel was suggesting would render LeaMarsa comatose.
June shook her head. “I can’t declare a crewmember a menace and prescribe drugs to vegetate her without clear proof the individual is causing serious harm.”
“Bullshit. We all know what’s happening here.”
“Maybe, but there’s no way of proving it. We have only circumstantial evidence putting LeaMarsa at the root of some psionic-based malady. And even if I vegetated her, there’s no guarantee it would hinder her abilities. Some of the psychic literature indicates that superluminals can become even more potent when the psionic is unconscious.”
“Yeah, but I’ll bet we’d all fee
l better if she was in cold storage. Want to spend the rest of this trip having those freakish nightmares of yours?”
“Of course not.”
“Me neither, goddammit.”
“So, you’re having bad dreams too.”
“Just don’t ask me to talk about them. Not going to happen.”
June laid a soothing hand on the tech officer’s arm. “Believe me, Rigel, I understand how you feel. But your idea is unrealistic.”
“You call saving our asses unrealistic?”
Ericho had a thought. “You mentioned that a nutriment bath might reduce her psionic impact.”
“I’ve scheduled her for one about an hour from now. I’m going to drag her there myself.”
Rigel looked incredulous. “She’s making us crazy and you’re gonna give her a fucking bath?”
June sighed and turned to Ericho. “How close are we to vacuuming the containment?”
“Jonomy’s finalizing a plan using the other link robot. It’ll give us the best chance of capturing and preserving Bouncy Blue’s remains.”
“I’ve changed my mind about that,” Rigel said. “I say we eject that thing along with the rest of the debris.”
“I agree,” June said. “And I don’t care what Jonomy’s sensor-enhancement package revealed, that there’s no measurable signs of life. My gut tells me otherwise. My nightmares tell me otherwise. That fetal creature is still alive. We need to get it off the ship, get it as far away from us as possible.”
“Amen,” Rigel said.
The fact that the two people aboard who Ericho trusted the most were lobbying for the plan, carried weight. He thought about it for a moment and came to a decision.
“All right, we’ll do it. Eject everything.”
He wasn’t looking forward to breaking the news to Hardy. The science rep would go ballistic.
Jonomy’s urgent voice came over the speakers. “Captain, report to the bridge.”
Starship Alchemon Page 12