She hadn’t quite forgiven him for what he’d called her yesterday in front of everyone, even though it was heat of the moment, so she gave him a sisterly peck on the cheek. “How are you?”
“Good,” he said, and smiled as if it were a revelation. “Yes, good. Funny, isn’t it, remembering how I died is actually quite liberating. Normally it causes tremendous trouble for people who are re-lifed. I remember you telling me about Morton’s ex-wife.”
“I think she was a bit bonkers before,” Mellanie said.
Morton had been snappy at being excluded from the meeting. “Arrogant prick,” he’d muttered at Nelson, after the Dynasty security chief told him he wasn’t on the list.
“I’ll tell you everything, I promise,” Mellanie had said. In fact, she was quite relieved he wasn’t going to be there. He and Dudley in the same room would be awkward. She still didn’t have a clue what she was going to do about that—let Dudley down gently, she supposed. Of course, Morton didn’t have quite the appeal he used to; he was exciting, but then so was Nigel.
“Was it…” Mellanie didn’t quite know how to ask. “Your death, did you—”
“It was quick. I didn’t even know it was going to happen. MorningLightMountain just shot me. The only vile part is having some of its memories from when it dissected me to extract the memorycell; that’s really stomach churning.” He looked around and raised an eyebrow as Wilson and Anna came into the office. “Admiral, good to see you again.”
Wilson gave him an astounded glance before being drawn to the motile. “Dudley, glad you made it back in the end.”
“It was an interesting route,” the Bose motile said.
“Thanks for the warning,” Wilson said. “I owe you one for that. The Conway wouldn’t have made it back otherwise.”
“The Commonwealth had to be told,” Dudley said modestly. “What else could I do?”
Wilson’s gaze flicked back to the human, slightly unnerved by the double act. “Of course.”
Mellanie didn’t know what to make of Dudley, either. It bothered her; usually Dudley could barely fasten his clothes without her being there to reassure him he was doing it right. Now here he was, self-assured and calm as he talked to the one person he hated most of all. This wasn’t her Dudley, not anymore; he wasn’t even stealing lustful glances at her.
Nigel walked around the Bose motile, giving it a curious gaze before sitting behind his desk. It was quite something to have a creature in his office whose other segments regarded every other species in the galaxy as aberrations to be exterminated. His e-butler reassured him that the office’s security systems were scanning it constantly.
That didn’t seem to satisfy Nelson, who took an unusually close position beside Nigel’s desk. Campbell showed Justine to a long leather chesterfield sofa, and put out a courteous arm to help her sit down. He’d become quite protective, Nigel thought, even taking the room next to hers last night.
The study door shut behind Paula. Its e-seal came on, turning the windows slightly misty.
“Paula,” Nigel said. “Would you like to kick off?”
“Of course.” Paula stood up in front of a large portal. It came to life, showing Qatux. “Thank you for joining us,” she said.
“It is my pleasure. I recognize many of the humans with you. So many powerful figures. How emotions must be charged in that room.”
“We’re all stimulated by what is happening,” Paula said. “I should tell everyone here that Qatux joins us today because after Illuminatus—”
“Actually,” Dudley said, “I think I should be first. I have the most relevant information.”
Nigel didn’t say anything; in fact, he was rather intrigued by this new, composed Dudley, who had all the brash confidence of the old astronomer who’d lobbied so effectively for a place on the Second Chance, but without the immense irritation factor. He caught Mellanie sinking down into the cushions, her hand rubbing at her forehead, avoiding all eye contact with Dudley.
“All right, Dudley,” Nigel said with bogus civility. “Please go ahead.”
“I know what the Starflyer is,” the astronomer said.
“What?” Nigel asked.
“There is something I’d like in return for participating today.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve been through a lot, and I’m contributing more than anyone else. I believe that should receive some recognition, don’t you?”
“Dudley!” Mellanie said. “Don’t you understand what this is?”
“Perfectly, thank you, Mellanie. Are you sure you do?”
“What do you want?” Nigel asked.
“To continue as your chief advisor on MorningLightMountain should it be successful in destroying the Commonwealth.”
“Ah,” Nigel said. “I see. A berth on one of my lifeboats.” He saw Mellanie start to color, the girl’s shoulders lifted in anger.
“Hardly an extravagance for you,” Dudley said.
“No. Does this request extend to your new twin?”
Dudley shrugged. “If you wish.”
Nigel was tempted to wait long enough to hear what Mellanie was going to shout at her erstwhile lover, because she was clearly about to—unfortunately they didn’t need contention right now. “It will be done.”
“Thank you,” Dudley said. “Very well: while it was at the structure we named the Watchtower, the Second Chance transmitted a signal to the Dyson Alpha homeworld.”
“We know that,” Wilson told him. “Oscar found a record of the dish deployment in our log files. But the Starflyer got to them before we could tell anyone.”
“But do you know what it transmitted?” Dudley asked, keen to maintain his advantage.
“No.”
“It was a warning that the Second Chance was alien, and should be destroyed. The message was in the Primes’ communications pattern.”
“I don’t understand,” Wilson said.
“The Primes did leave Dyson Alpha before the barrier was erected,” Dudley said. “Their fusion drives were allowing them to colonize every other planet and large asteroid in their system. They could see that one day all their star system’s resources would be exhausted. Several of the immotile clusters sent ships out to their neighboring star, Dyson Beta, to establish colonies there. They are a very insular and arrogant species, the Primes; they assumed Dyson Beta would have material resources and nothing more. They were wrong. The immotile on board the first starship found another alien species. It followed its nature, and fought the new species into submission. After that, it absorbed their industrial and scientific base.
“That’s where the real problem started. The Primes on Dyson Alpha, the original Primes, have continuity built into their souls; it’s an integral part of their racial identity. They can remember their ancestors beginning to think, their own rise to consciousness. Those ancient thoughts lock them into what they are. A lone immotile three and a half years distant from its original immotile group cluster was a little more flexible in attitude. The native Dyson Beta species were developing genetics, the whole concept of which is verboten to the Primes. But the starship immotile started to use genetic science to modify itself physically, and God knows there are a lot of minor limitations and deficiencies in all creatures. The motiles were improved drastically, which led to a subsequent improvement in immotiles. For a start they regained their ability to move.”
Dudley gave his audience a mirthless smile. “The Dyson Alpha Primes were horrified. They called the Dyson Beta hybrids alienPrime, and regarded them as heretical abominations. A war started, then ended very abruptly when the barriers appeared around both stars. The next time MorningLightMountain saw the universe was when the barrier came down, and it received a signal from an immotile whose communications pattern identified it as MorningLightMountain17,735. That was a subsidiary group cluster MorningLightMountain had put on one of the early starships. That’s what the Starflyer is.”
“The Starflyer is MorningLightMountain?” Me
llanie asked.
“An alienPrime version of MorningLightMountain, yes. It was on a starship that must have been in space between Dyson Alpha and Beta when the barriers were established. When it couldn’t attack its target, or go home, it must have flown off into interstellar space, and finally crashed on Far Away.”
“I’m afraid not,” Wilson said. “I checked with the Institute director, James Timothy Halgarth, personally. The Marie Celeste couldn’t have come from Dyson Beta; it hadn’t been in space long enough to travel that far.”
“If you’re basing that assumption on information from the Institute, then it must be regarded as invalid,” Paula said. “The Director would have lied to you to cover up the Starflyer’s true nature.”
“We’ve been sucked into the worst kind of war,” Nelson muttered.
“In what way?” Campbell asked.
“This is a civil war. They’re always the most violent and hard fought. And we’re caught in the middle of it.”
“No, we’re fighting for the Starflyer,” Nigel said. “We’re its storm troopers, whether we like it or not. If what Dudley has told us about the original Primes is true, then the Starflyer knows they will never allow the alienPrimes to survive. It’s using us to fight them, and conveniently ourselves, into destruction. We’re the new class of motile, to be manipulated and sent out to die while it remains intact behind the battle lines.”
“That’s why MorningLightMountain had flare bombs,” Wilson said in a relieved tone. “The technology didn’t leak from us to Dyson Alpha; the Primes had it all along. The Starflyer fed the theory to us. Oh! Wait. When the barrier fell we detected an unusual quantum signature inside the Dark Fortress. It wasn’t there before.” He turned to Nigel. “Have you got secure access to navy records?”
“Yes.”
“Get your physicists to compare that signature to the flare bombs.”
“Good idea.” Nigel’s expanded mentality extracted the records and began running comparisons. He still found it amusing the way people always forgot what he was before everything else; all they ever saw today was the imperial Dynasty leader, never the old physicist pushing back the frontier of human knowledge.
“This still doesn’t make sense,” Anna said. “The Starflyer obviously has the ability to switch off the barrier. Why didn’t it just do that when it arrived at Dyson Alpha in the Marie Celeste and launch the flare bomb? Or go back to Dyson Beta and let its own kind out?”
“The barrier builders were still around, maybe?” Wilson said. “It needed a decent interval to elapse before it could risk any kind of rescue attempt. That’s probably why it fled so far in the first place.”
“Even so, it engineered the Second Chance mission; why not have us sent to Dyson Beta and release the alienPrimes? The original Primes would remain locked up.”
“It didn’t know what would happen any more than we did,” Paula said. “This way it wins whatever the outcome. If the barrier builders were still around and it had tried to switch off the barrier around Dyson Beta, they would have detected the attempt and stopped us. By making the attempt at Dyson Alpha, it gets to see if the barriers are still guarded. If not, it releases an ultra-hostile species directly into conflict with us, a race with a proven record of warfare and a technology base advanced enough to construct the kind of weapons necessary to fight an interstellar war. The two of us fight and weaken ourselves, leaving it free to unlock Dyson Beta so its own kind can emerge into a galaxy where the two nearest threats have blasted each other to the edge of extinction.” She pursed her lips ruefully. “Almost exactly what Bradley Johansson claimed all along.”
Results slipped into Nigel’s virtual vision. “The quantum signatures are similar,” he told the room. “Not identical, but they’re certainly based around the same principle. From what we could determine, the Prime flare bomb works by altering the properties of the surrounding mass, which in itself is a none too distant relation to our own quantumbuster. We can surmise that if you change the properties of enough components in the Dark Fortress, then they’ll simply be incapable of performing their intended function: the barrier will fail.”
“So we finally know what we’re facing,” Justine said. “I take it nobody minds if I tell Johansson.”
“As long as he keeps quiet about it until the Starflyer problem has been dealt with,” Nigel told her. “This still isn’t for public release.”
“Well, how much of a problem have we actually got left?” Justine asked. “We have a weapon which in all probability the Starflyer didn’t expect us to produce. Your nova bomb will give us a total victory over MorningLightMountain. Now we know it exists, we can effectively neutralize it.”
“Paula?” Nigel asked. “Can we neutralize it?”
“I’m not certain. Qatux, do you know how far its influence extends?”
The portal image showed the Raiel watching them patiently. “This is obviously exciting for all of you,” it said in its soft wind-chime voice. “I wish I could share the experience.”
“Qatux, please answer the question,” Paula said sternly.
“Isabella Halgarth came into contact with many people who suffered the same compulsion overlay. They are arranged in a three-person structure based on the old human spy cell system. The controller can put them in touch with each other for specific operations, but apart from that they operate in isolation.”
“So you understand the method which the Starflyer uses to control her and the others?”
“It is a sophisticated technique, indicating the controller has a great deal of experience in manipulating the thought routines of other creatures. A Prime-type entity would have an obvious advantage over singleton mentalities; its understanding of mental constitution operates at an instinctive level.”
“What did it do to Isabella?” Mellanie asked, her voice heavy with trepidation. She obviously feared what she was about to hear, but had to know anyway.
“Her thought routines, what you would term the personality, were infiltrated with alien behavioral modifiers. She performed as a normal human under everyday circumstances, but within that framework she acted solely in the interests of the Starflyer. Think of it as having your mind cored like an apple, and the hole being filled with the Starflyer’s desires.”
“How old was she when this happened?” Paula asked.
“Five or six. The memory is hazy. She was on Far Away with her parents. They took her into a room that resembled a hospital; she was scared. After that, her mind was no longer hers.”
“Urggh.” Mellanie wrinkled her nose up. “It did that to a six-year-old? That’s so shitty.”
“Ahh,” Qatux sighed. “Sentiment. I have experienced it often in human memories. It is one of your more exquisite feelings. Would you consider sharing yours with me, Mellanie?”
“Uh. Like: no!”
“So you don’t actually know what the Starflyer is thinking?” Paula said.
“No,” Qatux said. “However, there are residual traces of its presence within her mind which betray certain aspects of its character.”
“Such as?”
“Alterations made to the original directives. Isabella and other agents very abruptly received new instructions when the Commonwealth first announced it was building a starship. They were originally working on the assumption that a series of wormholes would be opened to Dyson Alpha. Its whole strategy had to be altered to incorporate the development of superluminal travel. Isabella was also unaware of your quantumbuster weapon, she was expecting the navy to use flare bombs against MorningLightMountain’s second invasion. That was the information which her kind were supplying to the Seattle team.”
“And we improved on it,” Wilson said tightly.
“Has Isabella got any memory of Alessandra Baron being a Starflyer agent?” Mellanie asked eagerly.
“Yes. Isabella was brought into the operation to hide the New York lawyers when Alessandra Baron learned you were investigating them.”
“Gotcha, you bi
tch!” Mellanie punched the air. “Yes!”
“Not relevant at this point,” Paula said dismissively. “Qatux, does Isabella know where the Starflyer is, or will be?”
“No. She only knows what she is supposed to do. She was on Illuminatus to join up with the lawyers after they had been given new identities. They would all receive their assignment then.”
“Johansson says it will now return to Far Away,” Justine said.
“It can’t,” Nigel told her. “Not unless it’s already on Boongate, in which case it might stand a chance. The wormhole from Wessex to Boongate will not be opened to transport again.”
“Then it is confined to the Commonwealth,” Paula said. “Qatux, if we take known Starflyer agents into custody can you read their memories for us? At some point, we should encounter one who knows where it is. It is important that we apprehend it as swiftly as possible. Will you come to the Commonwealth to assist me?”
“I would find such a venture most appealing. I would wish to be engaged through your own perception and interpretation facilities.”
Paula faced the Raiel’s image, her face devoid of any expression. “We have discussed this before. You may not leech my emotional state.”
“Is not your task an urgent one? Is this not how humans behave? Is not the price negotiated in advance?”
“Well, yes,” Paula said, flummoxed by the request. “But you will access the agent’s thoughts, you will experience their emotions. That is our standard payment.”
“Their emotional levels are much reduced, suppressed by the Starflyer’s behavioral modifiers. They mimic true feelings, they do not experience them for themselves, there is nothing there for me. You, though, Investigator, would feel a great deal as this case is wrapped up, the culmination of a hundred thirty years of work. I would know what that is like.”
“I…” Paula looked around the study for help.