Kysandra was worried that, when it was over, she’d be unable to say goodbye. But when they did tie up at a jetty on the west shore of Nilsson Sound, just below the railway station, she just cried a lot and wrapped her arms round him for a long hug. They both promised to write all the time and made elaborate plans and promises for her to visit next year.
It was a lovely fib to end it on. As she walked beside Nigel along the platform to the first-class carriages of the Varlan express, her eyes were still damp. She expected a lot of teasing from Nigel, but there was none. He was supportive and sympathetic, treating her like an equal. Like he always does, actually, she realized. Understanding that was probably the best conclusion the trip could possibly have.
It took the Skylady’s smartcore four days to read all the data from the assortment of damaged electronics they’d brought back. Then it spent another two days piecing together coherent sequences from dozens of broken files.
‘Are you ready for this?’ Nigel asked as he came back to the farmhouse carrying a module with the newly transcribed master file in a simple old-fashioned Total Sensory Immersion format, covering a time period lasting twenty-seven hours and forty-two minutes.
Kysandra was about to give him a boisterous: ‘’Course I am,’ but his pensive expression made her hesitate. ‘How bad is it?’
‘It explains what happened. And from a historical perspective, it’s fascinating. You’ll actually get to see Captain Cornelius. But I have to warn you, it’s not pretty.’
‘Worse than the Desert of Bone?’
‘The scale isn’t quite the same.’
‘I’d like to see it. No. Actually, I have to see it. You know that.’
‘Yes. I know.’
She settled back in the front room’s deep settee and told her u-shadow to access the file. Her nerves tingled, as if someone had stroked a feather over all of her skin at once. Exovision produced a blurred full-colour optical image. And she looked out of Laura Brandt’s eyes as the tank yank pulled her roughly back to consciousness.
7
Months of preparation, months of watching and the interminable waiting had finally paid off. They’d intercepted the eggs. Then along came the regiment squad and almost wrecked everything. Kysandra stood on the prow of the steam-powered cargo barge as it backed away from the wanno trees lining the riverbank. Directly ahead of her, clustered in a gap between the trees’ big weeping boughs, the idiot one-armed lieutenant and his troops watched as the pistons below deck chugged loudly, taking them away from the temporary mooring and out into the broad channel of fast-flowing water.
‘Wave. Smile. Be happy,’ Nigel said as he stood beside her. He raised his own arm solemnly.
Across the muddy water, Lieutenant Slvasta responded with a fast, precise gesture – half-wave, half-salute.
Kysandra held back from giving him a mildly obscene gesture and waved her hand without any enthusiasm. ‘Wow, I’m amazed we’ve not been completely overrun by Fallers if that’s what passes for officer material these days.’
‘I don’t think you’ll find a more devoted officer, frankly,’ Nigel said. ‘He’s certainly dedicated to exterminating Fallers. And he knows something’s not quite right about us.’
‘But lacks the courage to do anything about it.’
‘That’s not lack of courage. You’re talking about someone who escaped being eggsumed. I’ve never heard of anyone being saved before.’
‘Captain Xaxon’s granddaughter,’ she said automatically as they turned from the lieutenant and made their way back to the mid cabin.
‘Who?’
‘Big part of Mrs Brewster’s history lessons. I’ll tell you about it one day. But for anyone in the regiment to succumb to a lure is just pathetic.’
Nigel sighed. ‘You’re becoming very judgemental these days.’
‘Can’t think why.’
The barge reached the middle of the river and turned downstream. The pistons reversed amid a loud clattering and began to power the boat forwards. They soon rounded a curve, taking them out of sight of Lieutenant Slvasta and his troops.
‘You were getting very friendly with him,’ she accused. ‘I thought you were prepping him for domination.’
‘Just planting a few seeds of doubt, that’s all. The good lieutenant is seething with righteous indignation at the way things are. That’s always to be encouraged.’
Kysandra glanced at the thumb which Slvasta had cut, frowning in disapproval. ‘I’m going to get some antiseptic on this. We all should before we die of blood poisoning from your righteous friend’s paranoia.’
‘He’s a good man in a bad world. You never know when you might need someone like that.’
‘He’s a loser.’ She gave Nigel a jubilant grin. ‘Forget him. Come on, we actually did it!’
Nigel nodded thoughtfully before breaking into a wide smile. ‘We did, didn’t we?’
Two hours later they caught up with the third steam barge, the Mellanie. ‘Old girlfriend?’ Kysandra had baited when Nigel renamed the boat after it had undergone a fortnight’s refit in Adeone’s largest boatyard. Ma had been slowly squeezing the owner out over the past two years – a position Nigel had subsequently regularized to become a sleeping partner.
‘Someone I underestimated once,’ he said with a certain distant gaze. ‘Don’t worry; it doesn’t happen often.’
In the Mellanie’s wheelhouse, Fergus reduced speed so they could come alongside. Kysandra followed Nigel, hopping over the narrow gap while the two barges chugged along steadily. Russell and his team were quite content to stay on their barge, looking after the horses.
Ma Ulvon was waiting for them on deck, dressed in a tailored grey suit under a black longcoat that was still damp from the rain. A pump-action shotgun was slung across her chest on a polished leather strap. ‘Any problems?’ she asked.
‘He knew something was wrong,’ Nigel said. ‘But we didn’t give him a chance to work out what.’
‘So my boys behaved themselves?’ The men in her old organization, who were now under Nigel’s domination, respected and obeyed him eagerly, but they still feared Ma.
‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ she said in satisfaction.
Even now, over a year since Nigel had arrived, Kysandra couldn’t quite get used to Ma like this. Nigel or an ANAdroid refreshed the domination every few months, but even so there was a background worry that Ma would one day break free. Kysandra studiously avoided eye contact as she walked past.
Nigel climbed through the deck hatch to the forward hold. Kysandra went down the ladder after him. Mellanie’s refit had seen the big deck loading doors elevated until the forward hold was just over four metres high – easily large enough to install the two circular cast-iron cages it now contained.
Yalseed oil lamps fixed high up on the hull walls shone a bright yellow light across the hold. Demitri was waiting for them at the bottom of the ladder, creating a fuzz so strong it was like passing through a curtain of cold mist. Even standing on deck Kysandra hadn’t been able to perceive what the Mellanie was carrying.
Now, standing in the hold, she gazed in trepidation at the two dark Faller eggs in their cages. It had taken them nearly a day to drag those precious, deadly eggs through the violet bamboo on their stone sledges. Even after all that exposure, she still couldn’t get over her fear at being so close to the implacable threat to her whole world. The lure was drawing her in; she wanted to rush to the front of the boat where Jymoar was waiting for her as usual, to tremble in delight at her lover’s touch. When she breathed in, she could even smell him. So close.
‘Don’t,’ Nigel said sharply.
Kysandra opened her eyes to realize she had taken a couple of paces towards the first cage. There was no Jymoar, no promise of satisfaction. She was immediately furious with herself for allowing the egg lure to ensnare her, and glared at the dark malign shape. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, red faced.
‘It can get to you if you’re not careful,’ Demitri said
sympathetically. Of all the ANAdroids, he was the most sensitive and compassionate, almost as if he wasn’t really cut out for this kind of work.
‘So what have we got?’ Nigel asked, prowling round the cage as if he was studying a wild beast. ‘Is there a brain in there?’
‘It’s fuzzed itself effectively,’ Demitri said, ‘so there are obviously some kind of thought processes occurring inside. But here’s the interesting thing: the ultrasound can cut clean through it.’ He pointed at the small electronic sensors stuck to the egg. ‘There’s no solid cell structure inside. The cells are all suspended in the yolk fluid, and evenly distributed. Just as the institute’s papers claimed.’
They’d spent a couple of months scanning in all the research papers Coulan had sent them from the Varlan university library, where he’d established himself as just another unobtrusive student. For a century after the Vermillion landed, the scientists who’d been on board had studied the eggs, discovering very little as their equipment slowly failed around them. They didn’t understand the method of absorption/duplication, suspecting a mechanism whose principles were similar to human biononic organelles – but the Faller system worked while the human one failed miserably in the Void. They’d also been unable to establish communication with the controlling intelligence residing in the egg.
‘So it’s a homogenized distribution,’ Nigel said. ‘Interesting. That suggests an artificial construct to me.’
‘You mean the Fallers were made by someone?’ Kysandra asked.
‘Yes. But I’m more interested in why. I’m thinking some kind of weapon.’
‘Against who?’ Demitri challenged.
‘Any biological species. Think: Primes.’
‘Who are Primes?’ Kysandra asked.
‘Aliens who nearly wiped us out,’ Nigel replied. ‘We got lucky and defeated them. But it was a sharp lesson that not every sentient species in the galaxy shares our moral viewpoint.’
She glanced back at the ominous dark sphere, determined to try and lose her fear. The cage wasn’t there to keep the egg confined, that was ludicrous; the bars were to prevent anyone who succumbed to the lure from being eggsumed. ‘Does anything like the Fallers exist outside the Void?’
‘We haven’t come across them,’ Demitri said. ‘Yet. It’s a big galaxy.’
‘I wonder,’ Nigel mused. ‘If we prevented the egg from eggsuming for long enough, would it revert and form the species it was developed from?’
‘Nothing in the institute papers mentioned that,’ Demitri said. ‘I’m hoping my fusion will provide all the information we need.’
Kysandra shuddered. She’d always thought this plan to be insane, but Nigel insisted it was necessary. They had to understand the Fallers in order to work out what was happening up at the Forest. Only then could they start planning how to defeat them.
‘Fergus,’ Nigel ’pathed, ‘let’s get out of here fast before Lieutenant Slvasta figures it out and comes charging after us.’
As she climbed up out of the hold, Kysandra could hear the steam engine picking up speed. It had been modified to Nigel’s more efficient design during the refit, giving the Mellanie a surprising turn of speed. One of a great many preparations they’d been making.
In the long months since they’d returned from the Desert of Bone, Skylady’s sensors had been searching the sky above Bienvenido for Falling eggs. The resolution was nothing like it would have been in the real universe outside, and the radar often glitched, but nonetheless, even with the interruptions and degraded results, they’d spotted nearly a dozen Falls long before the Watcher Guild’s whitescreen telescopes. Nigel wanted the advance warning so the team could be in and out of the landing zone before the regiments even began their sweep. What they needed was a Fall in an area with an accessible river nearby; close enough to Adeone that they could reach it before the regiment arrived, yet not so close that people would recognize them.
The Fall south of Adice was the best chance they’d been offered in six weeks. As soon as the Skylady detected the eggs leaving the Forest and plotted their trajectory, they rode hard for Adeone and took the three barges out, powering along quickly until they reached the Colbal, then turned upstream. Now the Mellanie was retracing that route, but at a more sedate pace than the one used on the outbound leg. The last thing Nigel wanted was to attract attention. However, there were enough logs in the aft hold to keep the engine going for the whole time until they returned to Adeone; there were to be no stops en route.
They took three days of continuous sailing to reach Adeone. The Mellanie anchored three miles downstream for the afternoon, while the other two barges docked. Marek and Ma’s boys got everything ready for the Mellanie’s arrival.
When they did finally tie up at the town’s docks just after midnight, the whole riverside area was deserted apart from Nigel’s people. Three ge-eagles sculpted by Skylady flew high overhead, checking that nobody was venturing close, innocently or otherwise.
Nigel stood on the jetty, supervising the extraction operation. They didn’t bother with a crane. Their combined teekay lifted the eggs (in their cages) out of the hold and onto a pair of custom-built carts. The cages were locked in place and quickly covered with a canvas sheet. The ANAdroids maintained their competent fuzz as they drove the carts carefully along Adeone’s empty streets, escorted by the rest of the group on terrestrial horses.
Barn Seven had been built to hold the eggs. The outside walls were ordinary planks, but then behind that was a further wall of metre-thick cob, followed by an inner brick wall. The roof was held in place by a series of large anbor beams which held up sheets of beaten tin, followed by a half metre of soil, capped by ordinary shingle tiles. To any observer, the structure was no different to the other farm buildings in the compound, and if they followed that up with a quick ex-sight scan, their perception would never get through the solid walls. The inside had been divided into a pair of large pits, with broad metal basin floors, ready to catch any of the yolk fluid if/when the eggs were broken open.
At four o’clock in the morning Kysandra stood on the rim between the two, yawning heavily as she watched the eggs being lowered into place. Bright electric lights shone down, illuminating them in a stark monochrome which only served to emphasize how disturbing they were. The electric cables run into Barn Seven from Skylady also powered a variety of sensors. The ANAdroids set to work fixing them to the eggs. Kysandra yawned again.
‘Go to bed,’ Nigel said. ‘Don’t worry; this part is going to take a couple of days. We don’t get to the next stage until after we’ve learned everything we can from passive scans.’
She nodded agreement and went back to the farmhouse.
The results were pretty much as anticipated and added little to their database. Biononic infiltration filaments were unable to permeate the shell, probably due to their instability in the Void environment. Equally, though, a detailed nuclear analysis determined that the shell wasn’t organic. There was no cell structure, and the molecular bonds were too complex. It was an artificial construct.
Laura Brandt’s doomed science team was right; they were manufactured in the Forest trees.
Two days after the eggs arrived, Kysandra was back on the rim of the pit, along with Nigel and Fergus, looking down fearfully as Demitri walked across the metal floor towards the cage. He was naked, the harsh light giving his pale skin a bright sheen.
‘Do you really need to do this?’ she asked.
Demitri paused at the cage door, and turned round to look at her. ‘I’m not human. Please try and remember that. My eggsumption and conversion will provide a great deal of information.’
‘I suppose,’ she said reluctantly.
‘You don’t have to watch,’ Nigel said.
Kysandra didn’t even bother answering that. But she did let the scorn escape her shell.
Demitri smiled as he put the key into the Ysdom lock and opened the door. Kysandra took a deep breath as he stepped inside and shut the door behind him
. Nigel’s teekay turned the key, then the little brass cylinder was flashing through the air to land in Nigel’s hand.
‘Recording,’ Fergus said. ‘Sensors are at eighty per cent efficiency. That’s not too bad.’ The egg had thirty-five sensor pads stuck to it, their thin cables snaking away across the metal basin to three management modules. More sensors were clipped to the cage bars, focused on the shell.
‘Proceed,’ Nigel said.
Demitri shuffled round so he was side-on to the egg, next to a curving sensor band.
‘Good angle,’ Fergus assured him.
‘Deleting now,’ Demitri said.
‘Deleting?’ Kysandra asked.
‘The egg absorbs memories as well as the physical body,’ Nigel said. ‘The institute was quite clear on that. It’s like the memory read the Commonwealth Justice Department has. I don’t want the Faller to know everything I do. And it certainly can’t realize that we’re going to download a copy of its memories.’
‘It’s clear,’ Fergus said. ‘We’re down to basic autonomics.’
When she looked back at Demitri she saw him staring emptily into the distance, as if he was asleep with his eyes open. ANAdroids didn’t sleep.
Nigel took a sideways step. Demitri copied the movement exactly, his right arm and leg touched the egg, and stuck.
Kysandra drew in a gasp. ‘Uracus!’ But she clenched her jaw and stared ahead resolutely. Use your logic, not emotion, she told herself sternly. Observe this as a Commonwealth scientist would. It’s an experiment, that’s all. No humans will be hurt during this research.
Just yesterday she’d laughed and joked with Demitri, sharing the excitement of the egg capture mission. She liked him. Machine body or not, he was still a person.
Was a person, she corrected. Demitri’s shell was non-existent now, allowing her to perceive his thoughts. The patterns in his head were little more than an animal’s: basic routines that animated the body, but nothing else, no awareness or memories. That had all gone, downloaded into Skylady. Death of sorts.