Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

  Finally, after long tedious minutes, Clay replied, ‘Since I disciplined Pilot Officer Trove, there has been no further trouble with the crew. However, the troops were getting bored and this resulted in some fighting amongst them, and necessitated the disciplinary measures I detailed earlier. The one that Commander Liang had executed was no loss. According to the army medic, he was developing a mental condition that would have required treatments unavailable aboard this ship, and he could no longer be trusted with lethal weaponry.’ He grimaced and glanced at something to one side – probably at his own notes. ‘We regularly ask for a response from Argus, but there has been nothing. On their current course, it seems likely they have slowed down to prevent heavy damage to the station, which presents such a large profile to the belt, much larger than that of the Scourge. However, Trove informs me that had they not changed course or, if they had chosen another course, they would not have had to slow so much. It seems they are aiming directly for some destination in an area of the Belt where debris is heavily concentrated. Still, as you say, if they had been intending to accede to your demands, they would surely have told us so by now.’ He paused again, before going on to disagree diplomatically with her last point, ‘The station does not seem to be under the control of someone brain damaged, since subsequent minor alterations in its course have taken it around some of the worse concentrations of asteroidal debris. Okay, I’m done now.’

  ‘Very well, it seems we’re not going to get an answer to this any time soon, unless those aboard Argus reply to you,’ said Serene. ‘How long until you intercept the station, and is there anything else you’d like to tell me? Over to you again.’

  Serene tried the news again, was quickly bored again, and began reading a selection of reports sent her way by her staff. She became deeply engrossed in a report on the discovery of the bones of a deer around a campfire in the Eastern European Region, and the subsequent hunt for the zero assets that had killed it. These people were outside the system, of course, for they did not possess ID implants. They had yet to be found.

  ‘As things stand at the moment, that’ll be fifty-two days,’ Clay replied.

  Serene jerked out of her reverie, surprised that the transmission delay time had already passed. Then she struggled to remember what she had last said to the man.

  ‘If they slow further to intercept some particular target, then we’ll get to them all the quicker,’ he finished.

  Ah yes . . . the time it would take for the Scourge to catch up with Argus.

  Clay now looked briefly uncomfortable – even guilty, Serene thought. ‘I have a query,’ he said, ‘from Scotonis. We understand there has been a resurgence of the Scour on Earth, across the Asian regions, and also a number of police actions. ETV news is a little unclear on that. Perhaps you can . . . tell me something?’

  ‘Yes, there was another outbreak of the Scour, which caused over a hundred million deaths, whereupon subversive elements in the regional administration took the opportunity to seize control of a ballistic-missile launch site and threaten the European regions. I necessarily replied to this with TEB. The damage that caused and the subsequent infrastructure crashes caused many, many more deaths. Back to you.’

  Serene returned to the deer report, then issued instructions. The perpetrators of this crime were to be taken alive and held until she decided what to do with them. Admittedly she no longer countenanced petty vengeance, but an example would have to be made, on ETV. Humans needed to understand their relative value in the ecosystem of Earth.

  ‘How many in total?’ Clay asked her.

  Again the time had sped by, and Serene sat back, completely focusing on him. There was something she had wanted to say about that whole farrago on ETV, something she had wanted to shout from the rooftops but knew she couldn’t. The Asian extermination had been necessary because, despite everything that had happened, despite the fact that Earth might still die from the wounds inflicted on it by having had to support a population of eighteen billion, and despite the population strictures she had imposed, the birth rate in those regions had suddenly shot up. Her enquiries into this painted an unhappy picture of incompetence, mainly due to the lack of a sufficiently well-trained and ruthless administration – the blame for which she could lay squarely at Alan Saul’s feet – also an abrupt increase in food supplies, and misplaced hope for the future in a highly family-oriented culture. She had selected the most inefficient regions and released the Scour on them, then taken out their administration centres with tactical nukes. Even now the dozers and macerating machines were moving in.

  But none of this was what she wanted to shout from the rooftops.

  Eight point nine eight billion . . .

  A watershed had been reached. Earth’s population was finally down to a sustainable level and, though the diversity of fauna and flora was still limited, the planet was starting to bloom again.

  ‘Two hundred and sixty million is the initial estimate, though with the infrastructure problems it’s difficult to be sure.’ He just gazed at her, not reacting because he had not yet heard her words, so she continued, ‘Despite this tragic loss, one must take the long view and realize that the Scour, as terrible as it is, has quite possibly saved us from an extinction event. Earth’s human population is now down below nine billion.’ There, she’d said it at last.

  Now she sat back to await his reply, no longer able to concentrate on the reports in front of her. It seemed to take so much longer for him to come back and, when she checked the time, she saw that it had actually taken six minutes over and above the signal delay.

  ‘Surely the Scour, in itself, is an extinction event, ma’am?’

  She didn’t like the tone of his voice, and she didn’t like that hint of something she was noticing in his expression. Did he know more than he was letting on? He had been close to her during those first days, after all . . . She suddenly felt very uncomfortable and considered sending on its way the signal that would close up that collar around his neck.

  ‘But I understand what you mean, ma’am,’ he continued. ‘We can never again allow the population of Earth to rise as high as it was, and must ruthlessly enforce population strictures. It is just worrying that this disease keeps recurring as it does, because it could as easily kill someone we cannot afford to lose, like yourself. I simply hope our scientists will find some cure for it soon.’

  ‘Very true,’ she said. ‘But meanwhile I must soldier on, as must you, Clay. As before: keep your reports coming and get in contact at once should there be anything further I need to know. That’s all for now.’ She shut down com.

  His return to normal deference had been plausible and it seemed likely he knew nothing about the Scour’s true source. He hadn’t been that close, and she doubted that his erstwhile senior had let him in on the secret. Even so, Serene felt that his attitude added weight to her earlier decision to place him aboard the Scourge as a disposable asset – as someone high status she could kill as an object lesson to the rest of the crew, should that be required. She now switched to images taken from various aeros and hovering razorbirds, which she had just lately found very soothing.

  The huge sprawls in the territory that had once been called Pakistan now lay before her. Even as she watched, a giant two-hundred-storey arcology gouted smoke from its base and collapsed as if it was being sucked into the ground, dust clouds spreading like pyroclastic flows through the surrounding streets. As it went down, birds launched from its roof, but these were birds of metal, graphene and numerous sharp edges. To the left of this, Serene spotted a group of shepherds striding through the sprawl like herons hunting frogs, eliminating any survivors of the Scour, for such survivors had to be subversives who had removed their ID implants. To the right of the collapse, ten robot bulldozers and five excavators, all on caterpillar treads of which each link was bigger than the average hydrovane car, were carving a lane through the lower-elevation sprawl beyond.

  Behind them came the even larger bulks of two macerati
ng machines, their giant, toothed front rollers clawing up the rubble so as to pass it inside themselves – big industrial magnets and computer-controlled sorters inside extracting metals and other useful materials, which were regularly spewed out again into the backs of awaiting all-terrain trucks.

  The first machine tore up and macerated the surface rubble, spewing out behind it a massive cloud of fragments of carbocrete, concrete, brick and other building materials, doubtless slightly dampened by the numerous human corpses it had just rendered to sludge. At its rear end were deep plough attachments that were busy hooking up foundations, sewers and other underground infrastructure to a depth of ten metres, which the ensuing macerator then chewed up, too. By the time the second macerator passed, its ploughs probing deep into the ground, there were patches of soil now visible amidst the thick layers of ground-up rubble. And these were patches that Serene knew would, given time, turn green.

  She had seen that steady spread of green already; seen Earth healing its wounds. She never tired of seeing it, and intended to see a lot, lot more.

  Argus

  His suit had been leaking, both from the oxygen pack and the gunshot in his leg – the repair patch and breach foam not having proved sufficient to seal the damage. Running out of air, he took great risks in getting himself back to the hydroponics unit – the drugs his VC suit automatically injected into his system conspiring to make him less cautious. Nevertheless, he made it back there without being caught and, because of those drugs, managed to strip off his suit without screaming in pain. Once he had done so, he soon realized he would not be putting it back on. It had used up all its breach foam, the patch he had used was the largest available and it now fell away, and though the leak from his oxygen pack was slow, it was still losing air faster than the recharging pump could replace it.

  Where the bullet had struck his shin, splintered bone protruded from his leg. He knew that if he wasn’t to die, he needed to work quickly, for now, with the breach foam peeled off the wound, it was bleeding heavily. He opened his medical kit and first used a spray of artificial skin with an integral coagulant, then he dragged himself around the hydroponics unit in search of materials for a splint – finally detaching the legs of a mantis-like agribot for that purpose. He cut the right boot from his discarded VC suit and put it back on, attached the splints to it, then hung a roll of duct tape from the top of one of them, above his knee, in readiness. After injecting himself with a powerful painkiller, he lodged his boot in a framework and, looping his arm around a nearby strut, he pulled.

  Splintered bone retracted into his leg and, maintaining the tension, he used his free hand to wrap the duct tape round several times above his knee. He then laved on an antivibact salve, followed that with another layer of skin spray, then wound the rest of the tape round his leg, down to his ankle.

  I should surrender, he thought, at last. Then he considered how that thought had not occurred to him until now. What would happen if he did surrender? It was possible that the rebels would hospitalize him first, and then lock him in the cell block. However, Alan Saul had said right from the start that there could be no freeloaders, no people on this station who did not contribute to the overall running of the place and to the survival of its residents. They might just kill him out of hand. Then a further thought occurred to him – one that had not occurred while he was lecturing Alexandra about the benefits of surrender. They might simply do to him what they had done to the delegates here, and to Messina. They might erase his mind, and how then would he rescue the Chairman? He wouldn’t even be able to remember that service to Messina was the sum purpose of his life.

  No surrender, he thought, feeling a deep regret for everything he had said earlier to his companion.

  The painkillers lasted him only for five days, the medical kit having been made for short-term use to keep a soldier alive until he could be taken to a hospital. The pain then returned, along with fever and hallucinations. He ate sparingly from the ration packs or from the produce grown inside the unit, gazing enviously at a crop of root vegetables being packed into a transport cylinder by the agribots, and wondering if he could get away with stealing more. On the twentieth day, his long rambling conversation with Alexandra and Alex Two, who regularly returned to the unit in ghostly form to check his progress, was interrupted by sounds penetrating from outside. Abruptly recalled to lucidity, he awaited his moment of capture. He then saw the first of the waiting transport cylinders sliding into the conveyor airlock at the end of the unit, and realized that the hydroponics unit had just been properly reconnected to the rest of the station.

  Further time passed, and he lost track of it. His moments of lucidity increased for a short time – though interspersed with long periods of black depression, during which he just wanted to die – but they then rapidly began to decrease. In one of those moments, he recognized a smell in the unit over and above the smell of bagged-up excrement. It was decay – the stench of his leg going bad. He managed to pull things together enough to take an overdose of the last of the antivibacts, and then the real world went away again. The soldier’s rations ran out, and he began to forget how much food he was stealing from the unit and, in fear of discovery, starved himself. Later, in one of his better moments, he started using his VC suit palmtop to record his thefts from the unit, and began to eat more.

  When not crippled by depression, he towed himself around the unit, constantly searching for some means of escape. During one of these searches he rediscovered an entire hydroponics trough assembly that he and Alexandra had found previously and decided would be of no use to them. He assembled it and, little by little, tapped nutrient fluid into it. He also took the risk of breaking open vacuum-sealed cylinders of seed stock – a theft that would not be reported to system until the next planting took place here – and began growing GM beans, mustard cress and peppers. These seemed to sprout with incremental slowness, but still grew faster than any unmodified plant. Their growth and the departure of the transport cylinders seemed the only marking of time until, in another moment, while salivating over a handful of mustard cress, he remembered where he was and that he was alone, and checked the time display in the visor of his VC suit. An entire month had passed. He sank into blackness, could see nothing beyond the walls enclosing him in the unit, and the darkness in his own mind.

  Lucidity returned again with a deep feeling of horror when he realized there was movement underneath the tape around his leg. He carefully stripped it off, the stink unbearable and maggots spilling out. There were flies aboard the station, but he hadn’t noticed them here in the unit laying their eggs on his leg. He understood enough about such matters to realize that, though part of the wound there had gone bad, these creatures, in combination with the overdose he had taken, had actually saved him. They were eating away the dead matter. He cut a piece of material from his VC suit and wrapped up his leg again, leaving the maggots in place, and continued his enforced hermitic lifestyle.

  Later, as the maggots turned to chrysalises, he washed them in plant nutrient and then ate them. Later still he removed the splints from his leg and cleaned all the disgusting detritus away to reveal raw but healthy flesh. The last of his skin spray went onto that, while he yelled in pain, then he wrapped it in further strips torn from what remained of his VC suit.

  Another month passed, then another. It vaguely occurred to Alex that those searching for him had probably assumed he was dead by now, but he no longer thought much about anything outside the parameters of his small world. Small victories were all he knew: forcing himself out of depression, eating the top shoots of his bean plants and then eating the first raw pods; managing to plant small cuttings snapped off tomato plants; using composted excrement in his own hydroponics trough and seeing healthier growth resulting; watching the scar tissue form over his leg wound. Then the station suddenly moved, and that returned to him the perception that something lay beyond his own microcosm.

  ‘I have to get out of here,’ he told Alexandra,
thoroughly aware that she was dead, but comforted nevertheless by the hallucinatory power of his own mind.

  ‘Yes, you must,’ she replied, noncommittal.

  Again he began prowling around the hydroponics unit. He picked up the remains of his VC suit, considered what he might use to repair it, then discarded it again. The movements of the station continued intermittently, and out of his fugue he realized that it must now have reached the Asteroid Belt and was manoeuvring itself around space debris. Understanding this raised him to a new level of consciousness and, when he again examined a transport cylinder and wondered what of the packed produce there he might steal, he finally saw his way out.

  Saul gazed at an asteroid of a deep red, and saw there all the blood he had shed coagulated into one massive lump. No, it was actually red because it was mostly made of cinnabar, with an outer dusting of vermilion. Closer inspection also revealed silvery veins of pure frozen mercury.

  I brought you here . . .

  The station continued to decelerate, which was enough, and some pragmatic partition of his mind went, protesting, into abrupt abeyance. He dreamed now of wondrous technology, formed in a perfect ring, and strange tall beings striding through a realm of metal. He descended into a nightmare in which fire blasted through the corridors of the Political Office and rendered the survival suits of five individuals molten on their very bodies, then was sucked away again and drew them out, through a hole with red-hot lips, to a place where the fluid in their charred skins boiled and bubbled them into grotesque parodies of human beings. They did not even get a chance to scream, but the single female survivor – safely clad in a VC suit – screamed for them.

  Saul fled that terrible place and dreamed of a man and woman stepping back from the ranked globular shapes of ceramic furnaces, both standing with their arms akimbo as they studied with satisfaction the plumbing now put in place. Robots retreated past them, folding away tools as they headed for an airlock, before departing one after another into the station enclosure. There they fell in a stream, on a tower of electromagnets and began to take apart a section punched through with a hole whose interior gleamed bright copper. No rest for them, no sleeping, no dreaming.