‘Uh oh,’ Oscar murmured. Naturally, when he tried to chase down the sensation the damn thing slithered about, dwindling from perception.
‘What now?’ Beckia was rising from the couch.
‘Get your suit on.’ Oscar’s u-shadow was relaying images from the stealth sensors. It looked like he wasn’t the only one in tune with the path. Several members of the Welcome Team were on the move, emerging from the tangle of whiplit fronds to slip past the dapol trunks. Through the lounge windows he saw a flock of caylars take flight, their ultramarine wings flapping urgently. She can’t be this stupid, he thought. The girl he’d seen in Bodant Park had been scared, yes, but everything she’d done spoke of a smart mind.
Oscar opened a secure channel to Tomansio, who was in their stolen capsule flying a random course over the city ‘Get over here, I think we’re going to need you.’
‘She’s coming?’
‘I don’t know, but something’s happening.’
‘On my way. Two minutes.’
Sensors showed several team members stepping out of their apartments in full armour. They began to sprint over the long gardens which led down to Francola Wood.
Beckia walked up beside him, her helmet sealing up. Oscar’s visor closed as his integral force field established itself. He ran a check on his heavy-calibre weapons. Accelerants flooded into his bloodstream as biononics complemented his muscles. ‘Here we go again,’ he said in complete dismay. A low-power disruptor pulse shattered the lounge’s big window wall, and they ran out onto the lawn.
*
Mellanie’s Redemption hung in transdimensional suspension a hundred thousand kilometres above Viotia. Passive sensors absorbed what information they could, revealing that space around the planet was empty apart from a single Dunbavend Line starship in a thousand-kilometre orbit. For a passenger ship it seemed to have an awful lot of weapons systems, several of which were active.
A secure TD link routed Troblum’s u-shadow to the planetary cybersphere, allowing him to monitor events. The u-shadow also kept watch for the SI. So far it hadn’t intercepted his connection, but Troblum was convinced it would be watching the data flowing along the link.
‘Why are we here?’ Catriona Saleeb asked. She was sitting on a simple stool beside the cabin wall, which had pushed out a small wooden bar. Appropriately, she was dressed for an evening out on the town, wearing a slinky blue snakeskin dress, her hair spiralled in an elaborate style and sparkling with small red gems.
‘It was the course I’d designated before the Swarm went active,’ Troblum said gruffly. ‘And we had to test the hyperdrive.’
Catriona glanced at the big image of Viotia which a portal was projecting into the middle of the cabin. ‘Are you going to call him?’
‘Who?’
‘Oscar Monroe.’
‘No.’ He brought some performance tables into his exovision and studied them, checking through the hyperdrive’s functions. Peripheral displays showed the violence playing out across the planet as residents took their revenge on Living Dream members.
‘If you help them, they’ll take care of the Cat,’ she said.
His u-shadow slid the performance tables to one side. He gave her an angry stare. ‘They’ll do that anyway. Paula knows she’s been taken out of suspension, and she won’t rest until the Cat is back where she belongs. It’s over. Do you understand that? Now I’m going to review the hyperdrive. Once I’m satisfied it’s working correctly, we’ll leave.’
‘I just want you to be safe, you know that.’ Catriona picked up a long-stemmed cocktail glass, and drained its sticky red liquid. She swirled the ice cubes round the bottom. ‘And I know you need closure on the Cat. If you run now, you’ll never know what happened. You won’t be able to live with that. You’ll spend the rest of your life seeing her everywhere, you’ll panic at every strange noise in the wind.’
‘I’m not that weak.’
‘If you’re not afraid, then call Oscar.’
‘That’s machine logic.’
Her lips pouted, their glossy scales darkening down to purple. ‘For someone who cares about no one, you can be a real bastard at times.’
‘Shut the fuck up. I mean it.’ He brought his exovision intensity up. On a street in Colwyn City a family of Living Dream followers was being chased by a mob armed with power tools and thick clubs. Their clothes, made from simple cloth in old styles, had betrayed them. Two adults dragged along three terrified crying children, the eldest no more than eleven. It was a residential street, houses and apartment blocks packed tight. The father found one he obviously recognized and dashed up to the front door, pounding away, yelling furiously. The mob slowed and surrounded them in an eerily quiet, efficient manoeuvre, some primeval hunter knowledge governing their movements. They closed in. The father kept hitting the door with his fist, while the weeping mother pleaded for her children to be let through. As if knowing how futile it was she put her arms round them, clutching them to her as she started screaming. The news show’s reporter was good, focusing perfectly on the makeshift clubs as they rose.
Troblum actually turned his head away as his u-shadow cancelled the news show. It was all too vivid.
‘Do you want to be human?’ Troblum asked. ‘Did you think I would grow you a clone body and transfer your personality in?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Is that what you were hoping for?’
‘No,’ Catriona said, sounding quite shocked.
‘I won’t do that. Not ever. The universe doesn’t need more humans. We have nothing to offer the universe. We need to leave our original form behind. It does nothing but generate misery and suffering. The External Worlds are full of animals. They can’t be classified as true humans: they don’t think, they just act. Animals, that’s all they are, animals.’
‘So how do you define real humans? People like yourself?’
‘A real person would want independence. If you were real you’d want a body. Did you talk about it with Trisha and Isabella and Howard?’
‘Troblum?’ She sounded troubled. ‘Don’t.’
‘Was Howard a part of it too? Were you going to put pressure on me to make it happen?’
‘No.’
‘Did you tell the Cat about me?’ he yelled.
‘Stop this!’
‘I don’t need you.’
‘But I need you. I love you.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
She climbed off the stool and knelt at his feet. ‘I only exist because of you. How could I not love you for that? I would not betray you. I cannot. You know this.’
Troblum flinched. His hand hovered above her thick tightly wound hair.
‘Please,’ she said – there were tears in her eyes as she looked up at him. ‘Please, Troblum. Don’t do this to yourself.’
He sighed, lowering his palm on to her head, feeling the springy strands of hair against his skin. Then her hand closed around his, letting him know her warmth, her light touch. She kissed his fingers one at a time. Troblum groaned, half ashamed, half delighted. She’s not real. She’s an I-sentient. Does that make her the perfect human for me? His whole mind was in chaos.
‘You’d change,’ he whispered. ‘If I gave you a meat body, you’d change. Your routines would be running in neural paths that are never fixed. I don’t want you to change.’
‘I don’t want a meat body. I just want you. Always. And I need you to be safe and happy for that to happen. Do you understand that, Troblum?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I get it.’
The starship’s sensors reported energy-weapon discharges above Colwyn City. Troblum frowned. ‘What’s that?’ he queried. His u-shadow started refining the scan.
*
It had been a while since Araminta had used the melange program. Nothing wrong with the program, it was the association with Likan she got all squirmy and uncomfortable about. Which was stupid. She certainly couldn’t afford that kind of weakness now.
As she walked
beside the little brook, she sent her perception seeping out ahead of her, experiencing it flow along the path. Far away she could feel the Silfen Motherholm, sympathetic and imposing. There was the human gaiafield, fizzing with agitation and excitement. Right away on the other side of her mind was the Skylord – she recoiled from that straight away. Her feet kept on walking. All around her the trees were growing higher, muddling those on the world she walked among with those of Francola Wood. She knew now where the path would take her into Francola Wood, smelling the scent of the wiplit fronds. Her mind found a host of people lurking in the undergrowth, so cleverly concealed by their gadgetry whilst their steely thoughts filled with expectation. They were waiting for her.
Yet even as it swept her along to its ending she knew the path was fluid, simply anchored in place by past wishes, directions sung to it by Silfen millennia ago. She tried to make her own wishes known. Somehow they weren’t clear enough, lacking precision. The path remained obdurately in place. So she summoned up the melange, and felt the calmness sinking through her body, centring her, enabling her to concentrate on every sensation she was receiving.
The tunes imprinted on the path’s structure were easier to trace, to comprehend. With that knowledge she began to form the new tunes which her thoughts spun out. Wishes amplified by a fond nostalgia, and the most fragile of hopes.
Onward her feet fell, pressing down on damp grass as the melody permeated her whole existence. She swayed in time to the gentle undulations she had set free, finally happy that the end of the path was moving with her, carrying her onward to the place she so urgently sought. Then there ahead of her the thoughts she knew so well radiated out from his home.
Araminta opened her eyes to look across the lawn towards the big old house. Her initial smile faded from her face. There had been a fire. Long black smoke marks contaminated the white walls above three of the big ground-floor arches. Two of the balconies were smashed. There was a hole in the roof, which looked melted.
‘Oh great Ozzie,’ she moaned. The dismay was kept in place by the melange, occupying a single stream in her mind, an emotion that neither coloured nor determined her behaviour. ‘Bovey!’ she called as she ran for the house. ‘Bovey!’
Two of hims were outside the swimming pool. They turned round at her voice. The gaiafield revealed his burst of astonishment.
‘You’re okay,’ she gasped as she came to a halt a few metres short of hims. One was the Bovey she’d been on their first date with, the body she truly identified as him; the other was the tall blond youngster. At their feet was another body, inert, covered in a beach towel.
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Not one of you.’
‘Hey,’ the older of hims said, and threw his arms around her. ‘It’s okay.’
Some small part of herself marvelled at how calm she was, channelling all the emotion away so she could remain perfectly rational and controlled. She knew what she should say, even if her voice lacked the appropriate intensity. ‘I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.’
‘No no,’ he soothed.
‘I should have told you. Warned you. I left because I didn’t want you to get involved, to get hurt.’
Neither of hims could avoid looking at the corpse. ‘It’s okay. You came back, that’s all that matters.’
‘It is not okay. They killed one of you.’ A pulse of regret and guilt in his mind alerted her. ‘No, it’s not just one, is it? How many?’
He took a step back from her, though his hands were still gripping her shoulders.
‘Tell me,’ she demanded.
‘Five,’ he said, as if ashamed.
‘Bastards!’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ His grin was rueful. ‘That’s the point of being mes, bodyloss is irrelevant. Some of mes are scattered all across this city, and nobody knows how many there are; certainly not those thugs. I’m safe. Safer than you.’
‘This is my fault. I shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t have come to you, not before it’s all over.’
‘I’m glad you did,’ he said earnestly. ‘Really I am. Just seeing you, knowing you’re okay makes this all worthwhile.’ Both of hims looked back across the empty garden towards the Cairns whose muddy waters flowed past the bank at the bottom of the lawn. ‘How did you get here? Everyone thinks you’re on Chobamba.’
‘Long story.’
A sound similar to faint thunder rolled across the house. Araminta turned to the source, seeing energy weapons flash just below the curving force-field dome. She didn’t need any kind of program to tell her it was the Francola district.
‘Not again,’ Bovey groaned. ‘Enough!’
‘It’s me,’ she said impassively. ‘They’re fighting because they think I’m there.’
‘Araminta.’ It came out of both of hims, a distraught desperate voice.
‘I can’t stay. They’ll find me eventually.’
‘Run then. I’ll come with you. We’ll just keep on running. The Navy can probably help.’
‘No. I can’t do that. ANA has gone. Nobody is going to help us, nobody can stop Living Dream and the Accelerators. It’s down to me now.’
‘You?’
‘I’m not running, not hiding. Not any more. I know I have no right to ask this, because I didn’t have the courage to tell you about myself before.’
‘I understand.’
‘You’re sweet, too sweet. After this is over, I want us to be together. I really do. That’s why I’m here, so you know that.’
He hugged her tight again. ‘It’ll happen,’ he whispered fiercely. ‘It will.’
‘There are things I have to do,’ she said. ‘Things I don’t want to, but I can’t see any other way. I have an idea, but I’m going to need your help to make it work.’
Inigo’s Twenty-Sixth Dream
In all the years Edeard lived in Makkathran he’d never bothered drawing up a proper map of the deep tunnels. He knew there were five large concentric circles forming the main routes, with curving links between them. He also instinctively knew their position in relation to the streets and districts above. Beyond the outermost circle were the longer branches driving out under the Iguru Plain apparently at random. One day he would fly along each of those brightly lit white tubes to find exactly where they emerged. One day when he had the time.
For now he was simply glad that the outermost circular tunnel carried him close to Grinal Street in Bellis district, where Marcol was having difficulty subduing an exceptionally strong psychic. Edeard hadn’t used a deep tunnel for months if not longer, such excursions were becoming a rare event. For several years now he’d had no reason to rush anywhere, especially on constable business. But now as he hurtled along somewhere deep underneath Lisieux Park the sheer exhilaration made him curse his middle-aged timidity. His cloak was almost tearing off his shoulders from the ferocity of the wind. He stretched his hands out ahead, as if he was diving. Then he rolled. It was a ridiculously pleasurable sensation, making the blood pump wildly along his veins. He yelled out for the sheer joy of living once more. And rolled again and again. A side tunnel flashed past, then another. He was almost at his destination in Bellis. There was an urge to simply go round again. Marcol and his squad can handle it, surely?
Something was suddenly hurtling round the tunnel’s shallow curve directly ahead. Edeard never bothered using his farsight in the intense white light of the tubes so he was taken completely by surprise. He only just had time to harden his third hand into a bodyshield as they flashed past. Two people clinging together. Teenagers, whooping madly. No clothes on as they coupled furiously in the buffeting wind. There was a quick glance of their startled, ecstatic faces, then they were gone, their joyful cries lost amid the churning slipstream. Edeard threw his farsight after them, but the tunnel had separated them too quickly, already they were lost round the curve behind.
His shocked thoughts managed to calm, and he asked the city to take him the other way. To chase the intruders and catch up. He slowed as always, skidding to a ha
lt on the tunnel floor. Then the force which carried him reversed, and he began flying back the way he’d just come.
This time he sent his farsight ranging out ahead. Perception through the tunnel walls was difficult, even for him. He could just sense the city a couple of hundred yards above him, but that was mainly due to the layout of the canals impinging on his perception. Actually sensing anything along the tunnel was extremely difficult.
For a moment he thought he’d caught a trace of them a few hundred yards ahead, but then lost them again. When he reached the spot, it was a side-tunnel branch, and he didn’t know which way to go. He skidded and stumbled to a halt in front of the fork; standing on the bright glowing floor looking first one way then another, as if hunting a trace. Then he tried delving into the tunnel-wall structure for its memory. The city always recalled decades of localized events.
That was the second surprise of the day. There wasn’t one memory. Not of the teenage couple. He could sense the tunnel’s recollection of himself flashing past barely a minute before, but of them there was nothing.
‘How in the Lady’s name did they . . .’ His voice echoed off down the tunnel as he frowned at the shining junction. For a moment he thought he might have heard laughter whispering along the main tunnel. But by then he knew he was grasping at phantoms. ‘Honious!’ he grunted, and asked the city to take him back to Bellis.
Grinal Street was a pleasant enough boulevard, winding its way across the south side of Bellis district from Emerald Canal to the top of Oak Canal. A mixture of buildings stood along it, from tympanum-gabled mansions to bloated hemispheres with narrow arches that made perfect boutiques; leading on to a line of houses with blended triple-cylinder walls whose overhanging roofs made them resemble knobbly stone mushrooms. Sergeant Marcol had been dealing with an incident in Five Fountain Plaza close to Oak Canal. The plaza was enclosed by a terrace with a concave outer wall, and an internal honeycomb configuration of small cell-rooms connected via short tubes without any apparent logic to the layout, as if the whole structure had been hollowed out by giant insects long ago. This hive-like topography made it ideal for merchants and traders dealing in small high-value items. Few people lived in it, but many thrived and bustled round inside.