"Not one fail-safe cuts in when the electronics crash. Sir, not even Thallspring technology is that shoddy. Then it veers off the road to hit a door square in the center."
"Sergeant!"
"And after that it demolishes a wall while one of our men is standing directly behind it. One of the few things that can damage a Skin suit. I don't buy it, sir. That's not one coincidence, that's about a thousand falling into line."
"Enough, Sergeant. It was an accident for exactly those reasons. Nobody could organize anything like this, nobody knew when Foran was about to walk down this alley. That is, nobody else knew. Of course, I was supervising this morning's deployment. Are you saying I was at fault in some way?"
"No, sir."
"I'm glad to hear that. The matter is closed." The command link went dead. Lawrence shook his head. A fairly pointless gesture in Skin. The trouble was, he could understand why Bryant was reacting in this way. The captain was too weak to acknowledge an opponent who could organize such a beautifully elaborate trap. Accepting the fact that someone did have the knowledge and skill to bring it off was massively unnerving.
* * *
"If the Wilfrien were alive today, you'd think you were looking at an angel. They were the golden ones; to be in their presence was to adore them. At its height, the kingdom of the Wilfrien was among the most powerful members of the Ring Empire. Indeed it was one of the founders. Its people helped to explore the thick wreath of stars around the galactic core. They made contact with hundreds of different races, and brought them together. Their technology was among the best in existence. Wilfrien scientists developed fast stardrives that everyone else copied; they worked out how to create patternform sequencers that could reshape raw matter into machines or buildings or even living organisms. And they gave all this knowledge freely to the peoples they encountered, helping them to incorporate it into their societies, extinguishing poverty and the conflict that such disparity always brings with it. They were a wise and gentle race that were admired and respected by everyone else in the Ring Empire. They set a standard of civilization to which most aspired and that few ever really achieved. Every story of the Ring Empire includes them, for they were the shining example of what it's possible for sentient life to become. Whenever we say Ring Empire, more often than not we're thinking of the Wilfrien society." Denise smiled round at the children. They were out in the school's garden, relaxing on the lawn with glasses of cool orange juice and lemonade. Big white canvas parasols had been opened, throwing wide shadows across the grass. The children all sat in the shade, out of the burning morning sun. As always, they watched Denise with worshipful eyes as she invoked their sense of wonder.
"The Wilfrien inhabited over three hundred star systems. With their patternform sequencers they had constructed fabulous cities and orbital stations. They grew themselves castles in the depths of space; they had metropolises that soared among the storm bands of gas giants, more delicate and intricate in appearance than the twirls of the clouds through which they meandered; they even encased starburst towers inside lenticular force fields and sailed them across the furious surface of their suns as if they were nothing more than coracles on a woodland lake. Oh, they were impressive, the Wilfrien. They lived in such bizarre places almost for fun, to laugh and enjoy everything the universe had to offer, for they could be as wild and exuberant as they were thoughtful and dignified."
Her narrative never faltered as Prime monitored the progress of the Z-B platoons going about their morning patrols. Information gathered from the platoons' own communication links was insinuated into her mind by d-written neurons. She regarded their busy little icons and whirring scripts with mild contempt. So crude, when simply knowing the raw data was easy. Several Skins were approaching the alley. "Given their nature, not to mention their reputation, Mozark knew he would be visiting the Wilfrien even before he took off on his quest. Strangely, the closer he got to the kingdom of the Wilfrien, the less impressed the local people were by the magnificent race adjoining them. Eventually, when he arrived at their home planet, he found out why."
Simple time velocity equations provided a list of three possible trucks. Prime programs installed themselves in their electronics, erasing their own datapool traces as they went.
"The Wilfrien were old as a species; even as individuals their lives extended for hundreds of millennia. They had traveled further and faster than anyone else in the Ring Empire. Their peerless technology had plateaued. Every race around them was content and wealthy thanks to their largesse. There was nowhere outward left for them to go, neither physically nor mentally. If they could be said to have a flaw, it was their impetuosity and interest in all that surrounded them. Yet now, there was no strangeness in their universe, no mystery. In olden times, men would write Here be Dragons around the edge of their maps, when what it really meant was: we don't know what's there. None of the Wilfrien starcharts had dragons; they were sharp and detailed all the way out to the end of the galaxy. The only journey left to them now was the journey back to where they came from. They turned inward.
"Mozark landed on the edge of a city whose towers put those of The City to shame. Some of them had tops that pierced the atmosphere; several were alive, like reefs of coral that had thrust up out of the ground; others were composed entirely from planes of energy fields. He even saw one that was made up of blobs of translucent sapphire, as if they were cells ten meters wide; they all slithered and slipped around each other at random, though they always maintained the same overall shape. But they were all empty, those dizzying spires and paradise palaces. The Wilfrien had abandoned them to live on the ground below, leaving them open for wild animals and creeping plants to claim them back."
One of the Skins was entering the alley. Mounds of rubbish that the cell members had carefully dumped over the last week forced him to walk close to the wall. Denise gave her final orders to the Prime that had taken complete control of the truck. It cut its link to the traffic regulator AS with a last emergency declaration call—broken as it hit the safety barrier. The empty warehouse doors were dead ahead. Inertia took over as the Prime erased itself, propelling thirty tons of truck through the door and onward toward the rear wall at fifty kilometers an hour. "Of course it would take thousands of centuries for any kind of decay to assault the fabulously strong materials that the Wilfrien buildings were made out of. For now they stood as tall and proud as always. But the signs of their inevitable future were already beginning to show. Leaves and twigs were accumulating around the base, mulching into a rich compost from which ever more vigorous plants grew; colors were losing their sheen below spores and grime. Hundreds of years of winds had blown soil and sand in through the lower floors, allowing the rot to begin around all the artifacts that were fabricated from simpler compounds.
"Hardly believing what he was witnessing, Mozark walked across fields of food crops that had been plowed into what had once been majestic parkland. The Wilfrien, who were tending them, left their labor beasts to greet him warmly. Bowing and stuttering in confusion, for they still inspired awe among those in their presence, he asked what had happened to their civilization, which had embraced over a thousand light-years. They smiled kindly at his lack of comprehension and told him they were done with it. Their battle for knowledge, they said, was won; they knew everything worth knowing. What they were, therefore, had no further purpose in the context of their achievement. They were now embarked on a completely different path of development, one last final application of their glorious heritage. Life itself would become pleasant and simple. Their bodies were modifying and adapting, melding to fit perfectly with a natural planetary environment. But unlike a primitive, pretechnology society, they would never starve or become ill, for this was a designed simplicity, taking advantage of everything their planet could provide. Their minds would quiet over the generations until the joy of a single sunset provided as much satisfaction as breaking down the barriers of space and time with the mental tools of mathematics and physic
s. They would raise their crops and their children and dance naked as raindrops fell from a wild sky. As the relics of their past crumbled and sank silently back into the earth, so they would become one with their world and be at peace with themselves.
"Mozark raged against such deliberate decay, forgetting both his manners and his earlier awe. He asked—begged— them to reconsider, to find new challenges. To become once more the golden Wilfrien he had worshiped from afar. They laughed sadly at what they saw as his simplicity in believing that progress could only ever be found in one direction, onward and upward. Their nature, they said, had led them to this point. This was what they were. This was what they wanted. Life without complexity. In this new-dawning milieu they would be happy without even trying. Isn't that what all life should be? they wondered. Did he not want to reach such a destination himself? they asked. When he told them of the quest he was on—for himself, for his own kingdom, and for Endoliyn—they laughed once again, but with even greater sadness. Travel far enough, they told him, and like us you will arrive at the place you started from. The universe is not big enough to hide what you seek.
"Mozark went back to his ship and took off immediately. He pushed his starship's engines hard, racing away from the Wilfrien homeworld as if it were filled with monsters. As it shrank away in the viewscreens, he cursed them for betraying their ancestors' monumental struggle. Everything every Wilfrien in history had achieved, they had thrown away like spoiled decadent children. He thought it to be a calamity of the highest order, made worse by the fact that only someone from outside could really appreciate its true magnitude. The Wilfrien couldn't see what they were doing was so wrong. Their rush into decline went against every belief he treasured. He hurt just thinking what Endoliyn would say if he returned home to tell her that true happiness could only be found in ignorance. For that was what he considered the Wilfrien were doing, closing themselves away from reality like a flower at the end of the day. Perhaps, he thought, they had been beaten by the universe after all, that its wonder was just too great for them. He knew that for all their splendor, his nature was stronger: he would never admit such defeat for himself or his people. In that alone, he had risen above his old heroes, although he was sure he would regret their passing for the rest of his life. A little of the magic had disappeared from the galaxy; the golden were tarnished now, never to regain their luster. But still he flew on, as determined as ever."
A bulky black helicopter thundered low overhead, the sound washing out Denise's voice. The children leaped to their feet and charged out from under the parasols to watch the alien warcraft pollute their sky. It streaked away toward the Dawe District, heavy, menacing guns sliding out of its nose cavities with smooth urgency that was almost a sexual motion.
Denise followed them out into the sunlight, watching hot fumes spilling from the invader's gill-like turbine baffles as it filled the air with its battle cry. She took hold of Wallace's and Melanie's hands as the children looked uncertainly from the racing machine back to her. "They won't sell many ice creams at that speed, will they?" She chuckled. The children broke into ebullient giggles, laughing and pulling faces at the retreating horror. "Come along then." She swung the hands high, allowing Melanie to twirl below her arm. "I've a tale to finish. We're almost done for today, and the nasties aren't going to spoil our fun, are they?"
"No," they all yelled. Getting back under the parasols became a race, with lots of jostling to be at the front. Denise let go of Melanie and Wallace, allowing them to sit at her feet with exaggerated self-importance.
"Miss, did the Ring Empire have people like Zantiu-Braun?" Jedzella asked.
Denise glanced around at the worried faces. "No," she assured them. "There were people who were bad, sometimes evil. But the laws of the Ring Empire were strong, and the police clever and vigilant. Nothing like Zantiu-Braun and this invasion could ever happen there."
Edmund turned round to his classmates and went Phew, wiping his hand across his brow. The children smiled again, content that the Ring Empire remained sacrosanct.
Denise hopped off the tram at its third stop along Corgan Street, several hundred meters behind the Skin platoon. She knew where they were without having to apply her d-written systems to the datapool. The noise of ragged voices keyed her in.
KillBoy's in the driving seat
Crash hit! Crash hit!
KillBoy's seen the meat
Crash hit! Crash hit!
Skins are in the bodybag
Crash hit! Crash hit!
She smiled behind her sunglasses. KillBoy wasn't something she could take credit for: some nameless poolpoet had invented him on landing day after the sniper shot. But he was rapidly becoming one of the cause's biggest assets.
It was youths who were doing most of the chanting. Respectable, responsible adults who would normally call for the police the moment two teenagers started drinking beer on the street were nodding silent encouragement as they walked along the pavement.
This was why she was here, to gauge the mood of the average Memu Bay inhabitant. It wasn't something she could determine from editorials and reports out of the datapool. Judging by this response, her fellow citizens had a vicious streak she wouldn't have necessarily assigned to the descendants of right-on liberals. Mocking people whose friend and colleague had just suffered a horrifying accident was a taboo she hadn't expected to be broken. It left her feeling just a little uncomfortable.
She caught up with the platoon, hanging around on the edge of the crowd that was following them, curious about their reaction. Her d-written neural cells intercepted their communication link, giving her full sound and vision intimacy. They were largely ignoring the chants and abuse hurled at them, busy making private unheard jokes about members of the crowd. Boyishly obscene observations about the girls (including her) were followed up by zooming in on the appropriate section of anatomy with their helmet sensors; sexual derision about the males and their imagined deformities concealed by strange folds in their trouser fabric. Quite the little counterpoint and morale booster.
The platoon crossed into a wide concreted area around the base of a big apartment block, which the local kids used for their games. A dozen or so skinny boys just into their teens were kicking a soccer ball about. Their game trickled to a desultory halt as they turned to stare at the invaders.
Most of the crowd began to turn back, heading for the shops and bars and haunts along the street, probably intimidated by the open space. Denise slouched on the corner by a shop, watching the platoon march away. Following them here would make her too visible; besides, she'd learned what she needed.
Suddenly the soccer ball was powering through the air. It almost hit one of the Skins, the sergeant himself no less, but he dodged back. Denise blinked as his foot shot out, stopping the ball in midflight. His toe nudged it about; then it was arching up. His knee came up underneath and bounced it twice; then he kicked it gently to another Skin. They started passing it to each other.
The boys who'd been playing were now all standing sneering, striking a variety of stubborn hands-on-hips poses designed to show how tough and unintimidated they were.
"Give us the ball back!" one shouted. He was the tallest, all gangly limbs and a thick beret of curly black hair.
"Sure," the sergeant said.
The kid took a half pace back in surprise at hearing the modestly amplified voice. Then the Skin was walking toward him, nudging the ball along in front. He got right up to the kid, who made the mistake of going for the ball. The sergeant neatly flicked it round him, and kept on going to the next youth. Another attempted tackle, another failure. The sergeant was picking up speed, and the other kids flocked toward him for their own moment of victory. He got around another three, then kicked the ball over their heads. It was a perfect arc that placed the ball at the feet of another Skin. He kicked it firmly, and it smacked against the wall between the two fading white lines that marked out the goal.
The sergeant held his arms high. "Easy."
"Yeah?" the tallest kid scoffed. "You're in Skin, asshole. Come out and try that against us."
There was a moment's pause, and the sergeant's Skin split open down his neck. The tall kid took a startled half pace backward as the head wriggled free of the split. His face and hair were shiny with a pale-blue gel, but he was still smiling.
Denise's hand flew to her mouth, smothering her gasp of surprise. The shock had overridden all her cause-dedicated calm. It was him. Him!
"Skin suits give us strength," Lawrence said cheerfully, "not skill. Still, not to worry. Some of you have a smattering of talent. Twenty years' time, you might come up to our level."
"Fuck off!" the kid cried. "You bastards would just shoot us if we didn't let you win."
"You think so? Over a soccer game?"
"Yeah!"
"Then I feel sorry for you. You're the ones shooting us, remember?"
The kid shrugged awkwardly.
Lawrence gave him a friendly nod. "If you ever fancy your chances on a level field, come and give us a game. Ask for me, Lawrence Newton. We'll take you on. Buy you a beer if you win, too."
"You're shitting me."
"So call my bluff." Lawrence winked and began pulling himself back into the Skin. "Be seeing you."
Clever, Denise thought as the platoon marched away, leaving the kids standing limply behind in a communal bewilderment. The platoon's communication link was roaring with a dozen variations on what the fuck were you doing?
But then, she told herself, you shouldn't have expected anything different from him. He was clever, and a bleeding-heart humanist. Someone like that would always try to build bridges with the enemy.
Thank goodness, a tiny traitor part of her mind whispered.
Denise's jaw hardened with determination. It didn't matter. He could not be treated any different from the others. The cause could not allow that.
She walked back down Corgan Street, planning how to turn the soccer match to her advantage. In war, which this was, his kindness was a weakness she could exploit.