Salvation

  “Jesus, why do we do it?”

  “War and profit, mainly.”

  Kohei shook his head, focusing on the job. “Okay, I need you to run an equipment audit.”

  Fitz’s eyebrows shot up. “You are kidding? Our teams burn through equipment faster than a solar flare. We’re lucky if we get half of it back from an operation.”

  “I’m not particularly bothered about the engineering junk. I want to know if all your portal doors are accounted for.”

  “Well, that’s easy enough: yes.”

  “No,” Kohei said firmly. “It’s not easy. We suspect someone with inside access has manipulated your network. I need you to check. Go down to the storage bays and physically confirm they’re all there if you have to.”

  Fitz blew out his cheeks. “Seriously?”

  “Yes. And I need to know quickly. This has priority over everything. We believe someone is currently using one of this department’s portal doors, and they really shouldn’t be.”

  “Okay. Well, actually, that can be checked quite simply.” He went over to his station, looking back at Kohei with a quizzical expression. “You sure it’s in use?”

  “Reasonably sure, yes.”

  Fitz started calling up data on his screens. “Do you know how portal doors are powered?”

  “Not got a clue,” Kohei said, amused by the way technical types always tried to establish some level of superiority over everyone else. My knowledge is bigger than yours.

  “Portals.”

  “What?”

  “Portals power portals.” Fitz smiled and tapped a ridiculously complex graphic on his central screen. “The solarwells send electricity back to Earth’s central grid via portal, and Connexion is the single biggest market for that power. Portals use up a hell of a lot of energy to maintain their entanglement. The greater the distance they bridge, the more power they consume. It’s not governed by an inverse square law, thankfully, but this department consumes a pretty hefty number of megawatt hours.”

  “Okay, I get it. You can monitor that power consumption.”

  “Yes. Every Connexion portal door has a one-centimeter portal built in, which supplies it with power direct from the central grid. And we…Oh, wait, that’s wrong.” He leaned forward, studying the screen.

  “What is?”

  “Our power usage monitor is offline, but its display function has frozen in a loop. How the hell did that happen?”

  “Can you restore it?”

  “Sure. Hang on.” Fitz typed quickly, muttering at his mInet. The graphics on the screen changed. Several red icons appeared. “Holy shit,” he exclaimed. “What is doing that? Not even our six-meter portals eat this much power.”

  * * *

  —

  Callum sat beside Savi’s cot all day long. She slid in and out of consciousness in front of him. Some of the times when she woke, she seemed puzzled by his presence.

  The doctor, a middle-aged South African man, ran through her injuries for him. Her clothes had protected most of her skin from the direct blast, he said, but her head and arms and hands had been exposed, and she was close to the bag when it detonated. Callum guessed her grains had been ruined by the explosion, or ripped away when the blast wave tore her flesh off; which was why Connexion Security didn’t know who she was when they dropped her through the portal. The surface wounds and burns were slowly turning septic, which if unchecked was going to produce severe blood poisoning. Connexion didn’t send metabiotics to Zagreus to counter that. And even if she somehow got through that, she would need modern medskin applied under controlled conditions to restore her natural skin. Her eye was damaged beyond repair, although the doctor thought the optic nerve was still intact, so an artificial retina implant might return her vision. His biggest worry was head trauma. Her responses were deteriorating at a rate the other injuries didn’t quite account for.

  “Just a few hours more,” Callum told her in one of her better lucid periods. “I have to wait for my crew. They exposed themselves to get me here.” Though he was beginning to wonder if he dared wait that long. The sight of her, so weak and damaged, was agony. Delaying her admission to hospital was a violation of every feeling he had for her. Time itself became intolerable.

  All day long he heard the voices outside, growing in volume. Not with anger, just the sheer number of people who were gathering outside the longhouse. Foluwakemi kept coming in to give him updates. Every human on Zagreus had arrived for the vigil. So far they were being patient, but expectation was growing. With that, tempers were shortening.

  “Could you just come out and talk to them?” she pleaded.

  “They wait,” he said forcefully, gripping Savi’s hand tighter so she moaned. “If Savi can do it, they bloody well can. When my friends arrive, then this is over. You have my word.”

  An hour before sunset, when the sheltered canyon was already reduced to a gloomy half-light, more than two hundred people marched down to the arrival lake. Foluwakemi said they were making very sure there were no screwups when Connexion dropped his friends in the geothermal vent.

  Solar-charged lamps were switched on around the sickbay as darkness finally fell, making it appear even more macabre. Callum didn’t know when he’d eaten last. Sleep was also a distant recollection, something he used to do in his previous existence. Apollo had to keep sending alert signals to his auditory grains as well as purple flashes to his screen lenses as he kept drifting off.

  His time display told him it was two and a half hours after sunset when the cheering started outside. He frowned, puzzled by the sound. Then Foluwakemi rushed in. “They’re here,” she shouted excitedly. Moisture was glinting in her eyes. “You’re telling the truth, aren’t you, detoxification man? You can take us home now?”

  “I can take you home,” he promised. Somehow his voice had become hoarse.

  Then they were there: Moshi, Alana, Colin, Raina, and Henry. All wearing thick Zagreus-survival coats, their skin flushed from immersion in the scalding water. Smiling, calling out wild greetings. Akkar and Dimon followed them in, looking dazed.

  Callum was pulled to his feet and hugged exuberantly.

  “We did it, we fucking did it,” Raina was shouting.

  “This really is Zagreus, isn’t it?” Moshi said, an astounded smile on his face. “We’ve gone interstellar?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “I had money on it being the Antarctic.”

  Nafor appeared, and the reunion damped down fast.

  “It is time,” he declared, his gaze never leaving Callum.

  “We’ll set up outside,” Callum told him.

  Colin and Dimon carried Savi out on her cot, using it like a stretcher. An area was cleared at the end of the stone longhouse, with one of the hot streams bubbling away along the side. People formed a broad circle around them; more perched on the walls of the longhouse. More than two hundred torch beams shone down.

  Callum took off his coat and unfastened his backpack. He pulled the half-meter portal out, and a massive cry went up behind the multifaceted wall of beams.

  Alana held it steady on the ground, while Moshi stood in front, ready.

  Callum studied the status display on his screen lens. The amount of power the portal was pulling out of the grid to maintain entanglement with its twin back on Earth was spiking close to its internal circuitry safety limits. But it was functional. They had a link. “Activate it,” Callum instructed Apollo.

  * * *

  —

  Yuri walked along the tarmac lane that ran the length of the Donnington paddock. He was intrigued by all the old vehicles parked there, surrounded by their enthusiastic crews as they prepped the sleek bikes for racing. The noise of the engines was primal, bringing fond smiles to the older faces among the crowds who ambled along, admiring the mechanical history on show.

 
He gazed at each of the big vans and trucks carefully, making sure his screen glasses got a clear view. Boris ran pattern recognition, throwing up the model and manufacturer of each one.

  The white Mercedes Sprinter van stood out anyway. A small canvas marquee had been erected at the rear end, its side panels zipped up. There was a Ducati bike standing beside it, but no crew or riders, as if the whole area had been abandoned. No genuine race team would leave their precious machine untended.

  Sloppy, he thought. It’s always the little things.

  He went into the marquee and banged hard on the rear doors of the van. There was no response.

  “Oh, come on,” he said in a voice tired with the chase. “It’s not as if I brought a tactical team. I’m by myself.”

  There was a clunk as the van’s handle turned. Then the rear door swung open.

  “Yuri,” Dokal Torres said nervously. “What can I do for you?”

  “You can stop being a lawyer for today.”

  “Really? Have you stopped being a security chief?”

  “Let’s just say I’m on my lunch break. Can I come in?”

  She let out a heavy sigh. “Sure. It’s a bit cramped.”

  “I’ll live.” He clambered into the Sprinter; Dokal checked the marquee was zipped up tight and shut the door behind him.

  The threader mechanism almost filled the inside of the van.

  “I genuinely wasn’t expecting you,” he admitted.

  Her lips squeezed into a small moue. “I think that was the point.”

  “Callum’s good. I should have him on my staff.”

  “So what now?”

  He regarded the intricate mechanics of the threader with interest. “I’ve never been this close to one of these before, and I’ve been with the company a long time. I think I’d like to see one in operation. So we’ll just wait, if that’s okay with you?”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Professional pride. Savi is one of my agents. I never leave one of mine behind.”

  “What does Poi Li think about that?”

  “I expect we’ll find out soon enough. When will they use it?”

  “I don’t know. Callum was going to wait until the crew arrived at wherever it is they’re renditioned to.”

  “Ah. Well, they were scheduled to go through ten minutes ago. Apparently, it has to be night at the other end.”

  They waited in awkward silence for another fifty minutes, then Dokal jumped. “Bloody hell. The core portal is activating. He did it!” She hurriedly opened both of the van’s rear doors. Yuri watched the half-meter portal in the middle of the threader turn a midnight black, then its surface twisted inward, falling away to leave a gap. Air started to gush through. “Threading now,” she told him.

  The rectangular solid-state slab in the first section of the threader split neatly along its narrow length, producing a set of entangled portals. Actuators separated the twinned segments and pushed one through the core portal Callum had opened. A different set of actuators flipped its remaining twin vertical. The airflow through it increased noticeably, making the marquee sides flap about excitedly.

  “Help me,” Dokal said, and jumped out of the van.

  Yuri joined her as the threader’s largest portal, a meter-wide circle, divided. One went through to Zagreus. Yuri helped Dokal as the threader turned its twin vertical. Air charged through the opening so fast Yuri had to brace himself to avoid being pulled in. He caught a glimpse of dull, rocky ground surrounded by a weird curving wall of torches. There was a lot of elated cheering going on.

  A surprisingly strong impulse gripped him. If I slip through, I’ll be standing on an exoplanet. It’s centimeters away, that’s all. An alien star! It was difficult to resist. Then the chance vanished.

  Callum was crawling through on all fours. He flinched badly when he saw Yuri, and glanced at Dokal, who shrugged.

  “Get on with it,” Yuri said impassively.

  Callum turned around and started pulling at something heavy on the other side. Yuri’s jaw tightened as he saw the state Savi was in.

  “Contact the emergency services,” Yuri told Boris as his lost agent was manhandled through the portal. “I need a paramedic team here immediately.”

  Moshi followed Savi, then Raina, who gave Yuri a savage scowl when she saw him standing above her.

  “Call Kohei,” Yuri told Boris.

  Henry came through the circular portal. Then it was Alana blocking the blaze of torchlight. Colin made up the rear.

  Yuri squatted down and looked through at Zagreus. Akkar was on his hands and knees, centimeters from the portal.

  “Kohei, kill the power,” Yuri ordered. “Now.”

  Akkar screamed in fury, flinging himself forward, his hand reaching toward Earth.

  The spatial entanglement between Earth and Zagreus ended. Akkar’s fist landed on the paddock tarmac, splattering blood as it rolled to a halt.

  “You bastard!” Raina shouted, staring at the severed hand in revulsion.

  “Why?” Yuri asked levelly. “Did you want two thousand terrorists living here again, and madder than ever before? Maybe some of them could move into the flat next to yours; I read in your file it’s available to rent. This you would welcome?”

  “I promised them,” Callum said, aghast. “I gave them my word they could come back.”

  “I didn’t,” Yuri said.

  “They’ll kill us if you send us back,” Alana said in a shaky voice.

  “So you need to behave then, don’t you? Because Poi Li is pissed with you at a level even I find scary.”

  “You can’t do this,” Callum said; he was still on his knees, holding Savi’s hand. He looked up at Yuri, beseeching. “They’re people. You can’t treat them like this; it’s inhuman!”

  “No,” Yuri said, suddenly angry. “What they do—what they have done—goes way beyond simple criminal acts. They seek to destroy anything they dislike, no matter that it is enacted legally, or how many people are dependent on it. They smash and ruin others’ endeavors freely, and feel nothing. That is what cannot stand, not anymore. For once I agree with Ainsley and his ultra-rich political collaborators. Your friend Akkar and his allies have been judged, and found guilty. Tough, that judgment didn’t come after million-wattdollar-fee lawyers defended them in public courts, followed by ten years of taxpayer-funded appeals; tough, that we don’t spend hundreds of thousands a year keeping them in prison. But judged they have been, and far more leniently than they judge you or I. And even now, we give them a second chance.”

  Raina’s hand shot out, pointing at the inert threader. “That planet is not a second chance. That is a death sentence.”

  “Because of what they are,” Yuri sneered. “They have been given an entire world of their own. We provide the means to survive, even to thrive if they learn the basic lessons of society and cooperate rather than fight each other like savages. So I’m really, really sorry if Zagreus isn’t a five-star hotel with room service, but we can’t afford the luxury of tolerating them anymore. This is the humane solution.”

  “Zagreus has one canyon where humans can breathe, a toxic shithole that’s poisoning them,” she shouted. “That’s not a world, it’s a freak site. Even if you send us back, we’ve got the recording of their conditions to blow this whole obscenity out of the water. It’s already downloaded into a cache vault. Right, Callum?”

  “That’s your threat?” Yuri said contemptuously. “Okay, send it. Go right ahead. Send it to every news service in the solar system, every political commentator, every justice department. What do you think is going to happen?”

  She glared at him, her facial muscles flexing.

  “There’ll be referendums in the democracies demanding we bring them back?” he asked in a pitying tone. “Is that it? There’ll be international campaigns, million-pers
on protest marches? Is that what you’re counting on? That. Will. Not. Happen. What court are you going to take this to? You think it’s just one country that exiles these people? One company? One continent? Some of those psychotic bastards are actually lucky they get sent there. Ten years ago, their own government would have simply executed them.”

  “That’s not an excuse,” she cried. “Escaping state-sponsored murder doesn’t make this right.”

  “By your standards. Sadly, the rest of us can’t afford them. Not anymore.”

  Raina looked down at Callum. “Chief? We have to go public. Please.”

  “This is only the beginning,” Yuri said to Callum. “You’re smart enough to get that, right? That one settlement is an experiment, to see if the most belligerent, dumb, ideological assholes the human race has ever misbegotten can survive on an alien world. And—hallelujah—it worked. They’ll go public with it eventually, the unknown, unaccountable people who made this happen, whether you force them to or not. And when they do, that’s when the real political pressure will kick in. A planet of no return, a wonderfully safe four light-years away, where every vicious criminal can be sent, and has to work all day long to grow their own food. We wipe our hands of them forever: public conscience clean, crime rates down. How do you think that vote will go, huh?”

  “You bastard,” Raina said.

  “Why aren’t we already on our way back there?” Callum asked. “What’s actually happening here?”

  “Ms. Keates was right. For all of you, Zagreus is now a death sentence. They’re not going to wait and listen while you explain nicely that I’m the bad guy. They’ll rip you to pieces the instant you drop through—probably eat you, too, given some of the ones we exiled there. I’ve seen the files.”

  “So what’s the deal?”

  “Very simple. You’re all through as far as Connexion is concerned—besides which, you’re officially dead, anyway. So you shut the fuck up and go away to live your lives wherever you want. I’m authorized to say that if you leave us alone, we leave you alone. Our screwup got Savi dumped on Zagreus; the explosion must have wrecked her grains so we couldn’t track her digitally. But that’s it. I got you this one concession, authorized by Ainsley Zangari himself, because of who the two of you are. And now you’re right out of credit. This is a onetime, take-it-or-leave-it offer.”