The medical chamber would infiltrate Proval’s brain, its active biononic filaments seeking out the neurones that contained his memory. Slowly and inexorably, with chemical manipulation, narcomeme subversion and direct physical neurone penetration, his memories would be exorcized. With that, his identity would evaporate. Proval, as a distinct entity, would cease to be. The process would leave nothing but a collection of organs and bones orchestrated by autonomic reflex. A living corpse.
*
One day later, the naked insensate body stood beside the Faller egg in Barn Seven, an eerie replay of Demitri’s disastrous attempt at being eggsumed. Indeed, it was Demitri who stood beside the body, his ’path feeding continual instructions into the empty brain, activating the correct muscles to allow the body to stand.
He opened the cage and mentally puppeted the body through the door. The brass key was turned in the Ysdom lock. Following ’pathed instructions, the body turned slowly to face the curving surface of the egg. Its feet shuffled apart, and it held its arms up to assume a spread-eagle pose. Demitri allowed the ankles to hinge forward, and it hit the surface of the egg – torso, arms, thighs immediately sticking fast.
Up on the walkway rim between the two pits, Kysandra shuddered exactly as she had last time. It took the egg forty minutes to fully absorb the body. Sensors followed as much of the process as they could, ultrasound and density scans tracking the body’s simultaneous disintegration and mimicked reassembly. Ex-sight gleaned a few extra facts – the way the yolk swirled and mutated, how the Faller’s thoughts coalesced out of the wisps of awareness which permeated the yolk.
Five hours after Proval’s body sank into the egg, the shell began to lose cohesion. It sagged and began to split. Yolk fluid poured out of the fissures as they tore open. A gooey wave sloshed out across the metal basin, and the final shreds of the flaccid shell split apart around the solid core that now stood upright in the centre.
A perfect replica of Proval’s body glistened in the fluid, and drew a deep loud breath. Its psychic shell was strong and resolute, concealing whatever thoughts were flowing within its duplicated brain. Eyes opened. A hand with two fingers wiped the thick fluid away from its face. The head turned slowly, following the probing fan of ex-sight it generated, sweeping round the pit. Then it focused on Nigel and Kysandra and the two ANAdroids standing above.
Nigel smiled thinly. ‘Welcome to hell,’ he said.
The Faller screeched – an incoherent blast of sound that was too loud for a genuine human throat to produce. It ran at the cage bars, slamming into them. Rebounding. Another screech, and it gripped the bars, tugging furiously.
Kysandra thought the iron might actually have bent slightly. But no way was she going in for a closer look to confirm that.
Demitri and Fergus jumped down into the pit. The Faller dropped to a half-crouch and watched them intently.
‘Interesting,’ Nigel mused. ‘That’s a very human defence posture. I guess we didn’t vacuum Proval’s subconscious as clean as I wanted.’
Kysandra was barely aware of breathing. She watched fearfully as Demitri unlocked the cage door and swung it open. The Faller walked through it, switching its attention from one ANAdroid to the other, ready for them to attack.
Fergus raised a fat metal tube, and shot it with a tangle net. The Faller tried to jump aside, its teekay lashing out to deflect the seething dark cloud of cables. Demitri’s teekay was instantly reaching for it, and the Faller hardened its shell defensively, teekay diverted long enough for the net cable to whip round it with a flurry of whistling air. It tumbled to the ground, thrashing against the cables which slowly and relentlessly tightened their grip. After a few seconds, it was reduced to an immobile bundle on the slippery floor. But still very conscious. A strong teekay began to assault the net cables, gnawing at their individual strands.
Demitri stepped up, and slapped a charge-patch on the back of the Faller’s neck. Fifty thousand volts slammed through him. His reaction was extremely human – muscles convulsing, teeth clenched, air forced from his lungs in a drawn-out groan of pain.
‘Well, that works,’ Nigel said in satisfaction.
Demitri zapped him again. The Faller’s body vibrated, juddering away inside the restrictions of the net, before he finally lost consciousness. His shell vanished. Demitri ’pathed a neuromeme variant to suppress the Faller’s primary thought routines – providing they were close to a human’s. The body relaxed further.
‘Is he dead?’ Kysandra asked anxiously.
Demitri’s ex-sight scanned through the Faller. ‘No.’
‘Uracus!’
‘We don’t have the time to analyse his biochemistry,’ Nigel said. ‘For a start, getting a blood sample would be hellishly difficult. Then we’d have to experiment to find an anaesthetic that worked, and what doses to use. It would be like torturing him. This way is quick and clean.’
‘I know, I know.’ Yeah, you’re right again. Well done.
Fergus quickly slipped a helmet over the Faller’s head.
If anything was torture, it was this, Kysandra thought. Nigel hadn’t wanted to put the Faller into Skylady’s medical module. Not after Demitri got rejected by the egg. He was concerned about the Faller’s nanobyte functionality; the sophisticated molecular clusters of its cells might be able to contaminate and corrupt Commonwealth technology, especially here. So, Skylady had synthesized this, a biononic infiltrator, with active filaments almost identical to the ones in the medical module which had invaded Proval’s brain. Except this was a cruder, stronger, quicker procedure. There was nothing subtle about the way these filament tips breached the skull and penetrated the brain.
The Faller’s body juddered again as the infiltration started, then stilled. His eyelids opened and the eyes rolled back until only the whites were visible.
Kysandra studied her exovision display, watching the infiltration’s progress. A multitude of filaments had made it through the exceptionally hard bone of the skull, to worm their way through the neurone structure. The brain was noticeably different to a human’s. Synaptic discharges were faster, more precise.
‘More like a bioprocessor matrix than our typically chaotic neural structure,’ Nigel commented. ‘I’m guessing that allows for operating a wider range of thought routines. The brain looks like one of ours, but it’s actually quite homogeneous. There are no regulatory centres, and certainly no hormonal triggers. Clever, given the Faller mind will have to acclimatize to whatever animal form they encounter and duplicate. Basic thought routines will be adaptable to manipulate however many limbs they have, as well as interpret the new sensorium.’
‘That’s a dynamic flexibility range,’ Fergus said.
‘They can’t be the primary form of the origin species, not any more. This is the expanded version.’
‘Just like us,’ Kysandra said. She gave Nigel a small smile. ‘You said I was an Advancer. Clue’s in the name. My genome has been changed from the one my ancestors carried. Improved, supposedly.’
‘I was talking about their mentality, but yes,’ Nigel said approvingly. ‘Nobody goes voyaging across the galaxy without modifying themselves to some degree. It’s a bit of a prerequisite among progressive sentient species.’
Demitri coughed. ‘The Ocisens.’
‘I did say: progressive,’ Nigel replied equably.
It took two hours to complete the first sequence of the infiltration procedure, deploying the filaments. Their positioning was guided directly by Skylady’s smartcore, which had to probe and examine the duplicated neural structure they were invading. Ultimately, the filaments were as evenly distributed as the brain’s regimented neural pathways. Unlike the procedure they’d used on Proval, chemical intervention was impossible. They had to rely on neuromemes and subversive thought routines. Over the next six hours, the smartcore began to decipher the Faller’s major thought patterns, distinguishing between active reasoning routines and the deeper incorporated memories that were infused within them, loos
ely equivalent to a human subconscious.
With the brain’s network profiled, the smartcore constructed a digital simulation, and began downloading the Faller’s thoughts into it.
*
The Faller didn’t have memories in the human sense – the recollection of sights, sounds and sensation with all their associated clutter of emotion; this was more an awareness of being, of purpose. It understood itself thanks to a history that had become the biological imperative of its species, in every branch.
They originated somewhere in the Milky Way. It didn’t know where the birth star lay, nor even when its species began to venture out across interstellar space, though there was an echo of immense distance and time within its identity.
In one form, the species became their own starships, carrying their essence across the gulf of space. Vast creatures that drew energy from spacetime itself, twisting gravitational fields to propel themselves along at a good fraction of lightspeed. Expansion was their destiny now, the very purpose of life.
When they arrived at the bright new stars they’d pursued, they found the biosphere of many planets to be incompatible with their original body chemistry. Rather than tackling the immense task of changing these inimical planets, they pushed fusion with their liberating nanotech further, their bodies becoming even more malleable, adapting easily to their new environments. Morphing into direct rivals to the existing lifeforms who struggled against their conquests.
Innumerable conflicts arose from their implacable colonization, instigating more change, more deviation from their original physical identity. The mimicry ability was born, the pinnacle of their nano-derived evolution, allowing a more aggressive and insidious incursion across fresh worlds. Starships orbited high above the newfound planets, dropping swarms of eggs, which would absorb the form of the natives and give birth to a generation of changelings. When they became dominant, eradicating their indigenous rivals, subsequent generations reverted as close to their true form as planetary conditions permitted and lived their lives as masters of their new domain.
Somewhere amid the expansion wave, a flock of starships was taken into the Void. Adaptation here was difficult, but continued anyway, driven by fear, for the Fallers soon understood the Void’s purpose. As they had merged with and eradicated countless species across the stars, so the Void would absorb them, and in doing so quicken their development to an elevated state suitable for subsumption into its Heart.
Some Fallers adapted as best their nature would allow. They sought out a niche in this new and strange meta-ecology, assuming a symbiotic role for the Heart, guiding worthy entities to fulfilment, assisting newcomers to compatible sections of the Void: these guides were the Skylords.
Others simply carried on as before, deluging the other luckless biological captives with their eggs, devouring lives and cultures until they could emerge as themselves once more. Living out their lives under the Void’s constant pressure to fulfil themselves and contribute their essence to its heart.
One faction of Faller starships struggled against their incarceration. They used their innate ability to warp local spacetime for flight to try and change the nature of the Void, to claw their way out by force. It didn’t seem to work.
‘The Forest,’ Kysandra said softly. She’d joined Nigel out on the veranda. It was close to dawn, and the silver haze of the Forest was visible above the horizon. Nigel was gazing up at it, a brandy in one hand. ‘The Forest is the Faller starships that tried to escape, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘So it is true,’ she said. ‘Nobody can get out. If they can’t do it with all their power . . .’
‘They messed up. That distortion they generated created some kind of loop in the local memory layer. They’re stuck in the past, or rather what the Forest remembers is the past.’
‘Is that what happened to Laura?’
‘Yes. As soon as Shuttle Fourteen entered the Forest, it got entangled in the loop. There’s a place in the memory layer, a subsection where she repeats that whole experience every twenty-seven hours and forty-two minutes. It creates her, and makes her and the science team relive the same section of their expedition every time. Sonofabitch, they started over every twenty-seven hours and forty-two minutes for the last three thousand years. That’s . . . just . . . damn!’
Kysandra frowned, trying not to be too overwhelmed by the horror of it. ‘But why are all the exopods and bodies in the Desert of Bone all the same age? She should be landing on Bienvenido every time she leaves the Forest.’
‘Paradox. You can’t actually travel back in time, so the Void outside the Forest’s distortion tries to normalize the event. As near as I can figure it, every time Laura’s mission loops, it does so in the Void’s memory of three thousand years ago that the Forest has screwed up. It’s like a shared solipsism for her, except the person she’s sharing it with is herself. And each time one of her dies inside that distorted memory segment, the creation layer manifests what happened as a piece of Bienvenido’s history.’
‘So it does happen?’ Kysandra asked. ‘It is real?’
‘To her, yes; but not to us. She doesn’t exist in this time, in our segment of the Void’s reality; what happens to her – to each one of her – is supposed to have occurred in the past. So when her life ends and the loop throws her latest corpse out here, it’s instantly transformed to a chunk of a past that never existed. That’s how the Void outside the loop attempts to balance the books and make the present correct, to neutralize the paradox.’ He grinned savagely. ‘It’s like the old Creationists claiming God laid down the dinosaur fossils a few thousand years ago. Crud, how they’d love this!’
‘Uracus! But she still lives through it?’
‘Yes. Somewhere, in some aspect of the memory layer, Laura, Ayanna, Ibu, Rojas and Joey, all of them have been through the same event over a million times now.’
Kysandra closed her eyes, recalling the hill of exopods and their horrifying crust of mummified bodies. ‘So right now, in this screwed-up section of the memory layer, there’s a Laura trying to escape the exopod landing point, to make it across the desert on a cart?’
‘That, or she’s waiting at the bottom of the exopod hill ready to kill the next Laura that comes floating down out of the sky; we saw she’s done that enough times. Then again, given the height of the hill now, I imagine a majority of her will either die or be badly maimed when their exopod lands on top and goes tumbling down the side. Either way – every time – she dies, and her personal segment of the loop ends.’
‘You have to stop it. You have to set her free.’
Nigel took a sip of the brandy. His gaze never left the Forest. ‘I know.’
8
Even though Kysandra considered herself so much more sophisticated and experienced nowadays, she was still excited to be visiting Varlan again. The rush and bustle of the city, its smells and psychic effervescence, was something poor old Adeone could never match. The size, too, was impressive; even the Shanties were larger here. Looking at it with new knowledge and understanding, she saw that size gave it power, economic and political. By design, it was the hub of the continent’s rail and river trade routes. Ports, train stations, factories, banks, the headquarters of the Marines and the Meor, the seat of the National Council, seat of the civil service – it had them all. Varlan was a true capital.
‘You can’t change Bienvenido without changing Varlan first,’ Kysandra announced. She was standing on the balcony in the Rasheeda Hotel suite, staring out across the lush green expanse of Bromwell Park. On the other side of the grass and trees, buildings and streets smothered the folds of the land in brick and stone. Rooftops stretched away to the riverbank, hard angular waves of blue slate and red clay. A forest of tall industrial chimney stacks populated the north-east of the city, looking like the pillars of some gigantic folly roof that a mad captain had never quite got round to building. They pumped out thick fountains of smoke that cast a palpable shade across that whole district.
‘That’s my girl,’ Nigel said from the lounge.
It wasn’t really a revelation. She’d always known. But it had taken this vista for her truly to comprehend the concept. ‘There’s so much inertia here,’ she murmured.
‘Start small, and keep pushing.’
Kysandra grinned and went back into the lounge, where it was slightly cooler. ‘I thought you were going to say it only takes one pebble to start an avalanche.’
He cocked an eyebrow at her. ‘Now who knows it all?’
She sat down on a chaise longue, stretching out her arms theatrically. ‘What difference would it make, giving the world true democracy? People will still have to pay taxes to fund the regiments, because the Fallers will never stop. They can’t. It’s what they are.’
‘I have to get back into space. That’s the first stage. Once Skylady is up there, I might be able to do something about the Forest.’
‘But you can’t get into space.’ She stopped, suddenly alarmed. ‘Unless you go back to before you landed here.’
‘If I could do that, I would, because then everything would change, even your destiny. But I can’t go that far back in time. There must be something missing, some part of Edeard’s technique I haven’t grasped. Or my mind simply isn’t strong enough. Then again, it could just be more difficult in this part of the Void.’
‘Because of what the Forest is doing to the memory layer?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s my best guess. It’s also my biggest hope, because that would make the Forest very important.’
‘Important how?’
‘It’s damaging the Void – something no one else has ever done.’
‘Does that help us?’
‘Oh, yes! We’re missing a lot of Laura Brandt’s data on the quantum distortion. If I can analyse the effect properly, my allies the Raiel may be able to use it. They have resources far greater than the Fallers.’