‘Right. Who else knew about me?’
‘Well, I did. And it looks like the stealthed ultradrive starship in orbit does. So along with Valean and her team, that makes three of us. I daresay more are on their way.’
‘Oh Ozzie.’ Laril’s shoulders sagged from the pressure of dismay. ‘My software isn’t as good as I thought, is it?’
‘In my experience, I’ve never seen worse. And trust me, that’s a lot of experience. But then I don’t think you realize exactly what you’re dealing with.’
‘Okay, so who are you? What’s your interest?’
‘You should be about to find out. I’m guessing that an old acquaintance is going to call any minute now. And when you’re as old as me your guesses are certainties.’
‘If you’re old and you’re not in ANA, you’re probably not a Faction agent.’
‘Glad to see you have some grey matter after all. Ah, here we go.’
A portal projected an image of a woman into the lounge. Laril groaned. He didn’t need any identification program to recognize Paula Myo.
‘Paula,’ Paul said in a happy voice. ‘Long time.’
‘This crisis seems to be bringing the golden oldies out to play in droves.’
‘Is that resentment I hear?’
‘Just an observation. Laril, are you all right?’
He shrugged. ‘I suppose, yeah.’
‘Don’t ever do anything as stupid as that again.’
Laril scowled at the Investigator’s image.
‘Thanks for exiting him,’ Paula said. ‘My own people would have been noisy.’
‘Not a problem.’
‘It won’t take Valean long to determine your location. She’ll visit.’
‘She’s not as stupid as Laril, surely?’
‘No,’ Paula agreed, as Laril bridled silently. ‘But she has a mission, and Ilanthe won’t give her a choice.’
‘Poor her.’
‘Quite. Give me its access code, please.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Paul. We don’t have the time.’
Paul gave the projected image a martyred look. ‘Connecting you directly.’
Paula’s image winked off.
‘Who’s she talking to?’ Laril asked.
‘Next best thing now ANA’s unavailable,’ Paul said, sounding indifferent.
‘So . . . I’m sorry, I still don’t get who you are.’
‘Just a bloke who has been around for a long while. That gives me a certain perspective on life. I know my own mind, and I don’t like what the Accelerators are doing. Which is why I helped you out.’
One of the silver globes floated over to Laril, who sat down gingerly. Once the surface had bowed around him, it was actually rather comfortable. ‘So how old are you?’
‘Put it this way, when I grew up no one had travelled further than the moon. And half the planet thought that was a hoax. Dickheads.’
‘The moon? Earth’s moon?’
‘Yeah. There’s only one: the moon.’
‘Great Ozzie, that makes you over a thousand.’
‘Thousand and a half.’
‘So why haven’t you migrated inwards?’
‘You speak like that’s inevitable. Not everyone accepts that biononics and downloading into ANA is the path forward. There are still a few of us independents left. Admittedly, we do tend to be quite old. And stubborn.’
‘So what are you trying to achieve?’
‘Self-sufficiency. Liberty. Individualism. Neutrality. That kind of thing.’
‘But doesn’t Higher culture give . . .’ Laril trailed off as Paul raised his eyebrow again.
‘And you were acting on which committee’s authority this morning?’ Paul asked mildly.
‘Okay. I’m having trouble accepting Higher life. I just don’t see what else there is.’
‘Get your biononics. Work out how to use them properly – I mean that in your case. Get yourself a stash of EMAs, and strike out for whatever you want.’
‘You make it sound so easy.’
‘Actually it’s a bitch. And I still haven’t got a clue how I’m going to finish up. Post-physical, presumably. But when I do it’ll be on my terms, not something imposed on me.’
‘You know that’s the way I like to think.’
‘I’m flattered. Ah, looks like Valean has found us.’
Laril gave the windows an anxious look. There was the unmistakable high-pitched whistling of a capsule descending fast outside. When he squinted through the windows looking out across the long garden he saw two chrome-yellow ovoids come to a halt above the freshly mown grass. The skeletal woman stepped out of the first. Laril’s heart started to speed up at the sight of her. Those strange carmine streamers swam along behind her as she advanced on the bungalow. Six weapons-enriched agents followed her, various hardware units emerging from their skin to poke aggressive nozzles at the bungalow.
‘Do we need to, uh, maybe get to safety?’ Laril stammered. His biononics reported a sophisticated field scan was sweeping through the bungalow. He brought his integral force field up to full strength.
Paul sat even further back in his silver chair, putting his hands behind his head to regard the approaching Accelerator team nonchalantly. ‘You can’t get anywhere safer in the Commonwealth.’
‘Oh shit,’ Laril moaned. He desperately wanted to ask: How safe, really? If Paul had really good defences why hadn’t he shot the capsules out of the sky, or teleported out or called up his own team of enriched bodyguards? Just . . . Do something!
Valean walked up to a window. She reached out and touched it with her index finger. The window turned to liquid, and splashed down into the lounge, running across the floorboards.
Laril sat up straight, his back rigid as fear locked his muscles. Valean stepped through the open archway, gently pushing the gauzy curtains apart. Her glowing pink eyes searched round the room.
‘Paul Cramley, I believe?’ she said with a half-smile.
‘Correct,’ Paul said. ‘I’m afraid I have to ask you to leave now. Laril is my guest.’
‘He must come with me.’
‘No.’
Laril’s exovision showed him those weird quantum spikes again. A pale-green phosphorescent glow enveloped Valean and her team.
‘I’m afraid your T-sphere won’t work,’ she said. ‘We’re counter-programmed.’
Paul cocked his head to one side, long hair flopping down his cheek. ‘Really? How about I use irony instead?’
Valean opened her mouth to speak. Then she frowned. Her arms moved. Fast. They became a blur. Her emerald aurora brightened in the wake of the motion, leaving a broad photonic contrail through the air. Then she turned, which was also incredibly fast. Laril had to close his eyes as the haze around her grew dazzling. His biononics threw up retinal filters, allowing him to glance at the Accelerator team again. They’d turned into cocoons of brilliant lime-green. He could just discern outlines of their bodies, thrashing about inside each tiny illuminated prison, moving hundreds of times faster than normal. Fists were raised to hammer at the border, striking it at incredible speed and frequency. It was as if they’d turned to solid smudges of light. Valean’s red streamers swirled about in agitation as the colour drained out of them. They turned black, then stiffened and began to crumble into small flakes which drifted down like a drizzle of ash.
Inside the green prisons the team members had now stopped moving, making it easier to see them. He watched Valean as her legs gave way. A fast smear of green light followed her to the ground. For a second her body remained there on hands and knees before another flash of light chased her to a prone position. The green glow faded to an almost invisible coating. Laril watched her odd skin darken; then its shimmer died to reveal a leather-like hide. It began to constrict even further around her skeleton. Cracks split open and thick juices oozed out, solidifying into stain puddles on the floorboards.
‘Oh Ozzie!’ Laril covered his m
outh as he started to gag, and looked away quickly. Each of the Accelerator team had suffered the same fate. ‘What happened?’
‘Age,’ Paul said. ‘Gets us all in the end – unless you’re careful, of course.’ He climbed down off the chair and walked over to Valean’s desiccated corpse. The green hue finally vanished, replaced by a glimmering force field. ‘I accelerated her inside an exotic effect zone, like a miniature wormhole. Normally it’s used to suspend temporal flow, but the opposite effect is just as easy to engineer, it simply requires a larger energy input. Sort of like the Void, really.’
Laril almost didn’t want to ask. He couldn’t help thinking what it must have been like for Valean and her agents, imprisoned inside a tiny envelope of exotic force, enduring utter solitude for days on end as the outside world stood still. ‘How long?’
‘About two years. She had very powerful biononics, but even they couldn’t sustain her indefinitely. Ordinarily the biononic organelles feed off cellular protein and all the other gunk floating round inside the membrane, which is constantly resupplied by the body. But in the temporal field she wasn’t getting any fresh nutrients. Her biononics ran out of cellular molecules eventually. In the end they were like a super-cancer eating her from the inside, enhancing the starvation and dehydration.’
Laril shuddered. ‘But her force field is still working.’
‘No, my defence systems are generating that. No telling what booby traps she programmed into herself at the end. Just because she’s dead, doesn’t mean she’s harmless.’
Once again the T-sphere established itself; the corpses were teleported out of the lounge. Laril didn’t want to know where they’d gone. ‘What now?’ he asked.
Paul gave him a brisk smile. ‘You’re my houseguest until Araminta calls you, or doesn’t, and this is all over.’
‘Oh.’
‘Cheer up. Here is actually quite dimensionally interesting. After all, you don’t really think I’ve spent the last thousand years cooped up in the same bungalow, do you?’
‘Ah . . . No, put like that I suppose not.’
‘Jolly good. So, have you had breakfast yet?’
As soon as Paul Cramley transferred her call, Paula’s cabin portal projected a quaint image of tangerine and turquoise sine waves undulating backwards into a vanishing point. ‘I might have known you’d be taking an interest,’ she said.
‘I always take an interest in human affairs,’ the SI said. ‘First question, can you get through the Sol barrier?’
‘Sorry, no. If ANA can’t, what hope does an antiquity like me have?’
‘Are you trying to engage my sympathy ?’
‘You have some?’
‘That was uncalled for. But as it happens, I do. For my own species.’
‘Paula, are you cross with me?’
‘I shared ANA’s opinion. Your interference in our affairs was unacceptable.’
‘I hardly ever interfered.’
‘We unmasked eighteen thousand of your agents. Your network was larger than the Starflyer’s.’
‘I’m hurt by that comparison.’
‘Oh shut up. Why did you order Paul to save Laril?’
‘I didn’t order Paul to do anything. Nobody orders Paul around these days. You know he’s well on his way to becoming post-physical?’
‘Well I didn’t think he was fully human any more.’
‘That old body you saw with Laril is only a tiny aspect of him now. If you want to worry about non-human interference, you should keep a closer eye on him and the others like him.’
‘There are others?’
‘Not many. You and Kazimir are the oddities. Everyone else of your vintage either downloaded or moved off in their own direction like Paul.’
‘So you and he are colleagues? Equals?’
‘That’s a very humancentric viewpoint: rate everyone according to their strength.’
‘More an Ocisen one, I feel; perhaps we can include the Prime, too.’
‘Okay, all right. Paul and I have a special relationship. You know, he actually wrote part of the original me. Back in the day he was a CST corporate drone in their advanced software department working on AI development.’
‘Very cosy. So how big an interest have you been taking in the Pilgrimage?’
‘Big. That idiot Ethan really could trigger the end of the galaxy. I’d have to move.’
‘How terrible.’
‘Have you ever tried moving a planet?’
Paula gave the sine waves a shrewd stare. ‘No, but I know a man who probably can. How about you?’
‘Yeah. Troblum is actually trying to get in touch with you.’
‘Sholapur wasn’t exactly invisible. Tell me something I don’t know.’
‘No, I mean he was really trying. He knew about the Swarm, he was going to make a deal.’
‘Irrelevant now.’
‘Paula, I’ve been in touch with him since Sholapur.’
‘Where is he?’
‘On his starship, somewhere. Last time we spoke he was still in range of the unisphere, I have no idea of the location. His smartcore is well protected. I urged him to get in touch with you.’
‘Why?’
‘He helped build the Swarm. He might be able to get through the barrier.’
‘Did he say that?’
‘He was reluctant to help. He claimed there is a code which can switch it off.’
‘Even if there is, it’ll be Ilanthe who holds it,’ Paula said. ‘Damn it, do you think he will contact me?’
‘Troblum is a very paranoid man. A condition exacerbated by Sholapur. He is afraid of breaking cover. His true fear is that the Cat will find him. However, he was considering getting in touch with Oscar Monroe.’
‘Oscar? Why?’
‘I suspect he regards Oscar as the last trustworthy man in the galaxy.’
‘I suppose that’s true. I’ll warn Oscar to look out for him.’
‘Good. What are your intentions, Paula?’
‘I’m not quite as liberal as ANA. I believe the Pilgrimage and Ilanthe must be stopped from entering the Void. That means getting hold of Araminta.’
‘Difficult. She’s walking the Silfen paths.’
‘They won’t grant her sanctuary. Somewhere, sometime, she will have to come out.’
‘You know the safest place she could choose? Earth. How would that be for irony. If Ilanthe wanted her, the barrier would have to be switched off.’
Paula gave the knot of sine waves an approving look. She had known Silfen paths reached through the Dyson Alpha barrier: Ozzie himself had told her. The idiot had actually visited MorningLightMountain’s world after the Starflyer War was over. She supposed it was inevitable that the SI would know: it had a long history with Ozzie. ‘Clever,’ she said. ‘I wonder if we could get a message to her. Are you in contact with the Silfen Motherholm?’
‘No. It doesn’t associate with the likes of me. I’m just a mechanical-based intelligence. I don’t have a living soul.’
‘So we’d need a Silfen Friend.’
‘There aren’t many, and they tend to be elusive.’
‘Cressida, she’s related to Araminta. They both have Mellanie as their ancestor.’
‘That connection is tenuous even for desperate times.’
‘Yes. And Cressida has dropped from sight. But I’d forgotten Silfen paths can reach through this kind of barrier. Earth’s is supposed to start outside Oxford somewhere. I wonder if ANA can use it to get some kind of message out.’
‘If it can, it will.’
‘Yeah, and in the meantime . . . Do you have any weapons stashed away that can tackle the inversion core?’
‘I don’t have any weapons, stashed or otherwise.’
‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘Of course you do. You forget I am information, I operate within what could be classed as a physical network, but that does not govern me.’
‘There are a lot of human personalities downloaded int
o you. That must influence your standpoint.’
‘There are a lot of human memories stored inside me, there’s a difference.’
‘Okay, so do you at least know what the inversion core is?’
‘I managed to access sensors in the Sol system for a very short period between it emerging and the barrier going up. ANA still regards such actions as extreme trespass. I can’t tell you much other than it has an exotic nature. The quantum structure was effectively unreadable it was so unusual.’
‘So we don’t know what would kill it?’
‘The Deterrence Fleet or the warrior Raiel might be able to. I can’t conceive anything else working. But Paula, that ship it left in was extremely powerful, and fast.’
‘I know. If Araminta calls Laril . . .’
‘Paul and I will include you in the conversation.’
‘Thank you. And let me have a code for you, please.’
‘As you wish.’
Paula watched the sine waves shrink to nothing as a new communication icon appeared in her exovision. A quick check with the smartcore showed the SI hadn’t attempted to infiltrate any of the ship’s systems. She didn’t expect it to, but . . .
Her u-shadow opened a secure link to the High Angel.
‘Paula,’ said Qatux. ‘Our situation is not improving.’
‘I understand the President has asked you to attempt to get through the Sol barrier.’
‘He did. I don’t believe it is possible. However, I shall oblige his request. To do nothing for you at this point would be morally irresponsible. We will fly to Sol shortly.’
‘The Raiel taking part in galactic events again? I thought that went completely against your ethos.’
‘This is a very specific event, the one we have dreaded for aeons. Our involvement is mandatory.’
‘I believe the Sol barrier is based on the force field around the Dyson Pair. The Accelerators have been studying the Dark Fortress for a long time.’
‘We suspected that was so. If true, the High Angel will be unable to breach the barrier.’
‘What about a warrior Raiel ship?’
‘I don’t believe it would fare any better. Though there may have been new developments I am unaware of. The generator you call the Dark Fortress represents the pinnacle of our race’s ingenuity.’