A weight pulled at Lewis’s belt. When he looked down he saw it was the power-blade knife hanging in its sheath. “No.” He shook his head feebly, quailing at the prospect. “No, I won’t. That’s what you want. Without me Pernik would be free again. I’m going to stop that, I’m going to beat you.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Lewis. I will never allow you to resume your barbaric act of sodomy. You think of yourself as strong, as purposeful. You are entirely incorrect. You and the other returners have a nebulous plan to re-establish yourselves permanently in this physical universe. You do so because of your own quite pathetic psychological weaknesses.”
Lewis snarled at his tall tormentor. “So fucking smart, aren’t you. Let’s see what you’re like after a hundred fucking years of nothing; no food, no breathing, no touch, just fucking nothing. You’ll be begging to join us, shithead.”
“Really?” Laton’s smile no longer contained even a vestige of humour.
“Think what you are, Lewis. Think what all the returners are. Then ask yourself, where is the rest of the human race? The hundreds of billions who have died since the day our ancestors first struck two flints together, from the time we watched the glaciers retreating as we battled with mammoths.”
“They’re with me, billions of them. They’re waiting for their chance. And when they get into this universe they’re gonna come gunning for you, shithead.”
“But they’re not with you in the beyond, Lewis, there are nothing like enough souls to account for everyone. You cannot lie to me, you are part of me. I know. They’re not there. Ask yourself who and why, Lewis.”
“Fuck you.” Lewis drew the knife from its scabbard. He thumbed the switch in a smooth motion and the silver blade emitted a dangerous buzz.
“Lewis, kindly behave yourself; this is my perceptual reality, after all.”
Lewis watched the solid blade curve round towards his fingers. He dropped the knife with a yell. It vanished before it reached the floor, making as little fuss as a snowflake landing on water. “What do you want with me?” He raised his clenched fists, knowing that it was all futile. He wanted to pound his knuckles into the concrete.
Laton took another few paces towards him. And Lewis came to realize just how imposing the big Edenist was. It was all he could do not to back away.
“I want to make amends,” Laton said. “At least part way. I doubt I will ever be fully forgiven in this universe, not for my crime. And it was a crime, I admit that now. You see, from you I have learnt how wrong I was before. Immortality is a notion we all grasp at because we can sense that there is continuity beyond death. It is an imperfect realization due to the weakness of the fusion between this continuum and the state of emptiness which follows. So much of our misunderstanding of life is rooted in this, so many wasted opportunities, so much religious claptrap born. I was wholly wrong to try and achieve a physical life extension, when corporeal life is but the start of existence. I was no better than a monkey trying to grasp a hologram banana.”
“You’re mad!” Lewis shouted recklessly. “You’re fucking mad!”
Laton became pitying. “Not mad, but very human. Even in this hiatus state I have emotions. And I have weaknesses. One of them is the desire for revenge. But then you know all about that, don’t you, Lewis? Revenge is a prime motivator; glands or no glands, chemical fury or otherwise. You burnt for it in the empty beyond, revenge on the living for the crime of living.
“Well, now I shall have my revenge for the agonies and degradations you so joyfully submitted my kind to. My kind being the Edenists. For I am one. At the end. Flawed, but proud of them, their silly pride and honour.
They are a basically peaceful people, those of Pernik more than most, and you delighted in shattering their sanity. You also destroyed my children, and you revelled in it, Lewis.”
“I still do! I hope it fucking hurt you watching! I hope the memory makes you scream at nights. I want you in pain, you shit, I want you weeping. If I’m part of your memories then you won’t ever be able to forget, I won’t let you.”
“Oh, Lewis, haven’t you learnt anything yet?” Laton drew his own knife from a scabbard he brought into existence. Its wickedly thrumming power-blade was half a metre long. “I’m going to free Syrinx and warn the Atlantean consensus as to the exact nature of the threat they face. However, the remaining possessed do present a slight problem. So I need you to overcome them, Lewis. I shall consume you, completely.”
“Never! I won’t help.”
Laton took a pace forwards. “It isn’t a question of choice. Not on your part.”
Lewis tried to run. Even though he knew it was impossible. The concrete closed in, shrinking the warehouse to the size of a tennis court, a room, a cube five metres across.
“I require control of the energistic spillover, Lewis. The power which comes from colliding continua. For that I must have the you which is you. I must complete my possession.”
“No!” Lewis raised his arms as the blade came whistling down. Once again there was the dreadful grinding sound as bone was pierced and fragmented.
A flash of intolerable pain followed by the devastating numbness. His blood spilled onto the floor in great spurts from his elbow stump.
“Goodbye, Lewis. It may be some time before we encounter one another again. But none the less I wish you luck in your search for me.”
Lewis had collapsed twitching into a corner, soles of his boots slipping on his own blood. “Bastard,” he spat through white lips. “Just do it. Get it over with and laugh, you shithead prick sucker.”
“Sorry, Lewis. But like I told you, I shall consume you in your entirety. It’s almost a vampiric process, really—though I expect that particular irony is sadly lost on you. And in order for the transfer to work you must remain conscious for the entire feast.” Laton gave him a lopsided, half-apologetic smile.
The true meaning of what the Edenist was saying finally sank in. Lewis started to scream. He was still screaming when Laton picked up his severed arm and bit into it.
Pernik’s illumination returned to normality with eye-jarring suddenness.
The accommodation towers blazed with diamond-blue light from every window, winding pathways through the park were set out by orange fairy lanterns, circular landing pads glowed hotly around the entire rim, the floating quays were like fluorescent roots radiating out into the opaque glassy water.
Oxley thought it looked quite magnificent. So cruelly treacherous, that a creation of such beauty could play host to the most heinous evil.
> Laton said. >
> Oxley felt his throat snarl up as outrage vied with a shaky form of laugh. >
>
>
>
> > He sent the querying thought lancing upwards, while at the back of his mind he was aware of Laton delivering a vast quantity of information to the Atlantean consensus.
The voidhawk registered as a subdued jumble of thoughts. It had stopped its crazed descent; now it was rising laboriously up out of the mesosphere, its distortion effect generating barely a tenth of a gee.
> >
>
The emotional discharge in the voidhawk’s thought brought tears to his eyes.
> Ruben called, >
> He studied the island. Pinpricks of light were blooming and dying right across it, stars with a lifetime measurable in fractions of a second. It looked quite magical, though he didn’t like to dwell too hard upon what their cause would be.
>
ach Pernik in time. Trust Laton.>>
That was it, the universe had finally gone totally insane. >
Fires had taken hold in the central park when Oxley piloted the flyer down onto one of the pads. He could see a spaceplane further along the row, wings retracted, lying on its side with its undercarriage struts sticking up in the air and its fuselage cracked open around the midsection. Bodies were sprawled on the polyp around the base of the nearest accommodation tower; most of them looked as though they had been caught in a firestorm, skin blackened, faces unrecognizable, clothes still smoking.
An explosion sounded in the distance, and a ball of orange flame rolled out of a window on the other side of the park.
> Laton said impassively. >
Oxley’s nerves were raw edged. He still thought this was some giant trap.
The steel-clad jaws would snap shut any second; conversation might just be the trigger. >
>
He felt the consensus balance his insecurities with an injection of urbane courage. Somehow he was giving the order to cut the ion field and open the airlock.
Faint shouts and the drawn out screeching of metal under tremendous stress penetrated the cabin. Oxley sniffed the air. Mingled with the brine was a frowsty putrescence which furred the roof of his mouth. With his hand clamped firmly over his nose he made his way aft.
Someone was walking towards the flyer. A giant, three metres tall, hairless, naked skin a frail cream colour, virtually devoid of facial features. It was holding a figure in its outstretched arms.
“Syrinx,” he gasped. He could feel Oenone pushing behind his eyes, desperate to see.
Three-quarters of her body was engulfed by green medical nanonic packages. But even that thick covering couldn’t disguise the terrible damage inflicted on her limbs and torso.
> Laton said as the giant mounted the flyer’s airstairs. >
>
>
Oxley backed into the cabin, too shaken to offer further comment. Laton must have loaded an order into the flight-control processors, because the front passenger seat hinged open to form a flat couch. It was the one designed for transporting casualty cases. Basic medical monitor and support equipment slid out from recesses in the cabin wall above it.
The giant laid Syrinx down gently, then stood, its head touching the cabin ceiling. Oxley wanted to rush over to her, but all he could do was stare dumbly at the hulking titan. Its blank face crawled as though the skin was boiling. Laton looked down at him.
“Go to the Sol system,” the simulacrum said. “There are superior medical facilities available there in any case. But the Jovian consensus must be informed of the true nature of the threat these returning souls pose to the Confederation; indeed to this whole section of the galaxy. That is your priority now.”
Oxley managed to jerk a nod. “What about you?”
“I will hold the possessed off until you leave Pernik. Then I will begin the great journey.” The big lips pressed together in compassion. “If it is of any comfort, you may tell our kind I am now truly sorry for Jantrit. I was utterly and completely wrong.”
“Yes.”
“I do not ask forgiveness, for it would not be in Edenism’s power to grant. But tell them also that I came good in the end.” The face managed a small, clumsy smile. “That ought to set the cat among the pigeons.”
The giant turned and clumped out of the cabin. When it reached the top of the airlock stairs it lost all cohesion. A huge gout of milky white liquid sloshed down onto the metal grid of the landing pad, splattering the flyer’s landing gear struts.
The flyer was five hundred kilometres from Pernik and travelling at Mach fifteen up through the ionosphere when the end came.
Laton waited until the diminutive craft was beyond any conceivable blast range, then used his all-pervasive control to release every erg of chemical energy stored in the island’s cells simultaneously. It produced an explosion to rival an antimatter planetbuster strike. Several of the tsunami which raced out from the epicentre were powerful enough to traverse the world.
Chapter 07
It was a quiet evening in Harkey’s Bar. Terrance Smith’s bold little fleet had departed the previous day, taking with it a good many regulars.
The band audibly lacked enthusiasm, and only five couples were dancing on the floor. Gideon Kavanagh sat at one table; the medical nanonic package preparing his stump for a clone graft was deftly covered by a loose-fitting purple jacket. His companion was a slim twenty-five-year-old girl in a red cocktail dress who giggled a lot. A group of bored waitresses stood at one end of the bar, talking among themselves.
Meyer didn’t mind the apathetic atmosphere for once. There were some nights when he really didn’t feel like maintaining the expected image of combination raconteur, bon viveur, ace pilot, and sex demon—the qualities that independent starship captains were supposed to possess in abundance.
He was too old to be keeping up that kind of nonsense.
Leave it to the young ones like Joshua, he thought. Although with Joshua it was hardly an act.
> Udat said.
Meyer watched one of the young waitresses swish past the end of the booth, an oriental with blonde hair whose long black skirt was split up to her hips. He didn’t even feel remotely randy, just appreciative of the view. > he told the blackhawk with an irony that wasn’t entirely insincere.
Cherri Barnes was sitting in the booth with him; the two of them sharing a chilled bottle of imported white Valencay wine. Now there was a woman he felt perfectly comfortable with. Smart, attractive, someone who didn’t feel compelled to talk into any silences, a good crew member too; and they’d been to bed on several occasions over the years. No incompatibility there.
> Udat proclaimed. >
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“What are you two talking about?” Cherri asked.
“Huh? Oh, sorry,” he grinned sheepishly. “It’s Laton, if you must know. Just thinking of him running round free again ...”
“You an
d fifty billion others.” She picked up one of the menu sheets.
“Come on, let’s order. I’m starving.”
They chose a chicken dish with side salad, along with a second bottle of wine.
“The trouble is, where can you travel to that’s guaranteed safe?” Meyer said after the waitress departed. “Until the Confederation Navy finds him, the interstellar cargo market is going to be very jumpy. Our insurance rates are going to go through the roof.”
“So shift to data-courier work. That way we don’t have to physically dock with any stations. Alternatively, we just fetch and carry cargo between Edenist habitats.”
He shifted his wineglass about on the table, uncomfortable with the idea.
“That’s too much like giving in, letting him win.”
“Well, make up your mind.”
He managed a desultory smile. “I dunno.”
“Captain Meyer?”
He glanced up. A smallish black woman was standing at the end of the booth’s table, dressed in a conservative grey suit; her skin was black enough to make Cherri seem white. He guessed she was in her early sixties. “That’s me.”
“You are the owner of the Udat?”
“Yes.” If it had been anywhere else but Tranquillity, Meyer would have pegged her as a tax inspector.
“I am Dr Alkad Mzu,” she said. “I wonder if I could sit with you for a moment? I would like to discuss some business.”
“Be my guest.”
He signalled to a waitress for another wineglass, and poured out the last of the bottle when it arrived.
“I require some transportation outsystem,” Alkad said.
“Just for yourself? No cargo?”
“That is correct. Is it a problem?”
“Not for me. But the Udat doesn’t come cheap. In fact, I don’t think we’ve ever carried just one passenger before.”
> Udat said.
Meyer quashed a childish grin. “Where do you want to travel? I can probably give you a quote straight away.”