Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

14

And Down on the Farm

Out in the million-hectare fields of mass agriculture, leviathan multi-combines cruised about like mobile islands. These simultaneously harvested a crop, pre-processed it, compress-baled waste organics either for digesters or biofuel plants, and ploughed, fertilized, tilled and planted the cleared fields in a stroke. With little supervision, they then took their harvests to processing and distribution plants, from where the crop went by robot truck to be unloaded by robots in hypermarkets. The main human component in this circuit was consumption, and little else. However, humans did still work in other parts of the agricultural industry where a more delicate touch was required: fruit picking, the pruning of orchards and grapevines; anywhere the heavy and bumbling appendages of machines might cause damage. The development of multipurpose robots, eventually refined into the agribots, changed all that. The moment the hardware caught up with computer software, and the first grape picker displaced a hundred workers in the New World, was the beginning of the end of human participation in agriculture. The closest most people now get to the growing of the crops that feed them is as part of the fertilizer produced by community digesters.

Mars

As she pulled away from the remains of Antares Base, the work lights had picked out an ATV labouring away ahead of its train of linked trailers, each stacked with bonded regolith blocks from Hex Four. Over to the right of the hex, robots and a number of workers in EA suits had been further disassembling the roof panels, ready to be loaded when the ATV returned with its trailers empty. The move was going well back there, and everyone knew what they were doing, which seemed more than could be said for the team uninstalling the old lifting gear from the edge of the Coprates Chasma.

It had seemed to be a good idea to send Rhone out here to oversee the work, since he was a former chief of staff who no longer had a department to run – preparations currently being made to dismantle it for transport – but nevertheless he was fudging the new job. Martinez, apparently, could get no sense out of him and no reasonable explanation for the delays. Lopomac’s earlier visit out here had not speeded things up either.

Things had been starting to look up as she had realized that the general mood of the base was more pessimistic than hostile and that it was not due to her. She pushed herself harder, becoming more diplomatic and more optimistic. She congratulated and cajoled, made frequent reference to what was happening with Argus, and noting what it might be possible to achieve. And, slowly at first, the general mood had changed to one of cautious optimism. However, as she now peered ahead through the Martian dawn, she felt a return of the anger she had managed to control since her brief exchange with Martinez.

The sun was casting a weak light across the Martian landscape as Var drove her ATV the last few kilometres towards the chasma, and now she could see that the lifting framework had still not been disassembled.

‘What did he say: “all the bolts rusted solid and needing to be cut”?’

‘That’s what he said,’ Lopomac replied from beside her. ‘He did seem to have a case, but it wasn’t corrosion – they’d used some sort of bonding in the joints.’

‘Even so, he’s had cutting equipment there for five days now.’

‘Quite,’ agreed Lopomac.

It wasn’t entirely necessary for her to drive all the way out here to discover why there had been so many delays. Really, she could have ordered Rhone and his crew back, then sent someone else out here instead. However, she needed a bit of time away from the base to think some things over.

And there was a lot to think about.

My brother is the Owner. . .

She had been stunned by the discovery, but the more she thought about it, the more it made sense. She could think of no other single person more likely to manage what he had clearly achieved. If, in the past, someone had asked her to identify one person who could make a difference to the situation on Earth, after she had dismissed the likelihood of someone like Chairman Messina making any changes, Alan would have come to the forefront of her mind. But even Messina, who thought he could have made great alterations to how things worked on Earth, could never have managed the things Alan had done; like getting himself aboard the Argus Space Station, stealing it, then destroying Committee infrastructure on Earth . . . And now, with the station under his control, a space drive . . .

It was, she felt, a terrible shame that one of the greatest steps forward in human history was being made at a time when humanity itself was in such a dismal position. What Alan was doing aboard Argus Station should really be marking the beginning of some golden age, as wonderful horizons opened up for humanity. It should not be something born out of necessity just for some people to escape the grasp of nightmare totalitarianism. But then, it was ever thus. Hadn’t some of the biggest advances of the past been the result of the horrible necessities of war? Hadn’t nuclear power generation arisen from the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

But still.

Var understood herself enough to know that her recent disconnect from the exigencies here, and her present focus on what Hannah Neumann had told her, was a purely selfish thing. In her childhood she had been obsessed with the idea of space travel; as she grew up, that obsession had never waned, and eventually she’d arrived at precisely where she wanted to be. Admittedly her parents had helped her up the first steps of that ladder, but it was her own ability that had taken her all the way to the top, to become the chief overseer of the Mars Traveller project, and of the Alexander – now named the Scourge. And now her brother was about to test out what seemed likely to be one of the biggest advances in the technology of space travel that the human race had ever experienced.

She wanted to be there for it.

‘Here we go,’ she said, as she drew the ATV to a halt.

Securing their EA suits, she and Lopomac climbed out of the vehicle and looked around. Two other ATVs, both with trailers, were pulled up nearby. A power supply of stacked super-capacitors rested next to the lifting gear, in the framework of which a few people worked. The buzz of a diamond saw could be heard, just a weak mosquito whine out here, and some lengths of the framework had already been stacked on one trailer. It wasn’t enough, though – they should have been a lot further ahead than this. Then her gaze came to rest on one of the ATVs, and she saw something that immediately made her suspicious. The vehicle was one of those possessing a standard-fitting satellite dish, but why was it unfolded and pointing upwards? She began walking towards it.

Rhone shortly stepped out of the ATV concerned and walked over to them. Two others who had exited the same vehicle before him were already carrying heavy tool bags towards the lifting gear. A routine tea break maybe?

‘I suppose you’ve come here to tell me off,’ said Rhone.

‘Not really,’ Var replied, ‘but I would like some explanation of why it’s taking so damned long.’

He gestured towards where the work was in progress, then led the way over. Soon they stood beside the towering framework. Over to their left lay the drop into the chasma itself, and beyond it a superb view of the gorgeously unreal landscape. Rhone pointed out one of the joints in the framework.

‘I told Lopomac here about the joints,’ he explained. ‘I earlier made the mistake of assuming it was some form of electrolytic corrosion, but he then helpfully pointed out that it looked like epoxy bonding. He was correct.’

‘Seemed fairly obvious,’ said Lopomac.

‘So,’ said Var, ‘the fixings are bonded. We cut through them, and just weld the framework after we get it back to Martinez.’

Rhone nodded and dipped his head down to peer more closely at the joint, as if further considering her words. At that moment a dull clattering issued from where the workers were located inside the framework. Over radio came an odd crunching sound.

Rhone now stood upright. ‘I knew you would come out here eventually,’ he said.

It took her half a second to realize what had happened. She whirled round to see Lopomac falling, his visor smashed and spattered with blood, vapour issuing from an exit hole that had removed the back of his skull. As she turned back, Rhone had moved out of her reach, and the two who had left the ATV before him were stepping forward. Both of them carried Kalashtech assault rifles that were aimed at her. Var backed up, expecting a bullet at any moment.

‘Traitor,’ she spat.

‘No,’ Rhone replied, ‘just someone who wants to survive. Your arrogance will kill us all. We stand no chance against Earth.’

‘So you’ve been talking to them,’ she said. ‘You’ve been talking to the Scourge?’ She glanced around but could see no way out. They were going to kill her here and now, and that would be the end of it. ‘They’ll just stick you on trial, then in an adjustment cell. Your torture and death will probably appear on ETV primetime.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Rhone, ‘I’ve been talking to Serene Galahad directly and she has made guarantees.’

‘And you believe her?’

‘I believe her guarantees more than I believe that we can survive here unaided. I believe her guarantees more than I believe your fantasies, Varalia Delex.’

Var realized she had backed up right to the edge of the chasma. She was doing their work for them. When they shot her, she would topple into it and they wouldn’t have the messy task of throwing her over the edge. Doubtless Rhone would then return to the base with some story about a nasty accident occurring out here. They weren’t that uncommon.

‘I suppose you killed Delaware just to undermine me,’ she said desperately, turning now to glance down at the long drop behind her. She noticed then how there were rails bolted against the surface down which the lift-cradle had run, because the drop wasn’t sheer.

‘No, that wasn’t the main intention,’ Rhone replied. ‘I killed him merely to shut him up. I wish the distrust in you that his death engendered had been enough, but it wasn’t. Those fools back there still carried on believing in you.’

How badly she had misjudged the base personnel in that, and how right she had been about Rhone. She should have been altogether more ruthless.

‘And so you’re going to kill me,’ she said, trying to extend the verbal exchange further as she desperately searched for a way out. ‘Do you really think anyone will believe whatever story you’re likely to concoct?’

‘I’ve no intention of lying to them,’ Rhone replied. ‘Once they know that Galahad will let them live, and that she only wanted the true rebels here dealt with, they’ll just do what they’re so used to doing, which means whatever they’re told.’

‘You won’t get away with this,’ she said, feeling like a cliché from a million fictional dramas.

Rhone reached out a hand and one of his two men handed over his rifle.

‘I’m just playing the odds,’ he said, raising the weapon.

Var turned round and stepped off the edge. It was likely she would not survive this fall, but it was even less likely that she could survive the ceramic bullets about to punch through her suit. She, too, knew how to play the odds.

Argus

Hannah glanced at Saul as she walked along at his side. So, his sister was still alive, and was actually the technical director of Antares Base. Hannah felt uneasy about that news, felt it was some kind of game changer, but she could not logically nail down why. He had said the fact that Var Saul was offworld might have been an unconscious driver of his actions, but how could something like that be quantified? She wanted to ask him about that further, try to see her way clear, but in the end what use was such knowledge to her? He was in charge of Argus Station. He was the de facto dictator here and his decisions were final.

She followed him into Tech Central and gazed at the new equipment recently installed: the big console with three seats before it, and screens extending above. A couple of technicians had taken a large portion of the floor up and were busy installing optic cables and junctions. From here the adapted EM radiation field could be controlled, as could the vortex-generator ring itself, and the place now looked more like the bridge of the massive spaceship that Argus Station had become.

The murmur of conversation ceased once all present saw who had entered.

‘Welcome back,’ said Le Roque, somewhat pensively.

‘Glad to be here,’ replied Saul, his voice remote and carrying no hint of being annoyed or even happy, no hint of human emotion at all. ‘Everything is proceeding to schedule?’

His gaze strayed to the three main screens up on the wall. Hannah noted that they showed various views of the nearby asteroid. One was from the dock for the smelting plant that had recently been extended, which showed the plant now merely tens of metres from a surface that glared red under powerful work lights. Another was taken from the smelting plant itself, showing the big anchor cables that had been extended across, along with all the umbilicals connected to an excavator robot down on the surface. And the third, from the robot, showed its big rotary digging blade already gnawing into the cinnabar and feeding it into the machine’s maw.

Le Roque watched Saul for a moment, then swung his attention round to Leeran and Pike. It was Pike who responded.

‘We’ve already filled up our first furnace,’ he paused and shrugged, ‘though the word furnace implies temperatures that we’re not using. Better to call them ovens. We’re cooking up the first batch, and already mercury vapour is going into the condensers for primary condensation. Secondary condensation – purification – should begin within six hours, and about eight hours after that we should be ready to start pumping pure product directly into the vortex generator. But, of course, we won’t be able to do that until they’ve completed the ring – and put the section in over the Traveller engine.’

‘Good,’ said Saul, ‘then I won’t delay you here. I want you back out at the smelter plant, making sure nothing goes wrong.’

Pike gave a brief nod. ‘Good to have you back. Things have been edgy.’

‘Yes,’ Leeran agreed, ‘it’s good to have you back.’

Hannah watched them both obediently depart.

‘Brigitta and Angela,’ Saul now addressed the two grinning Saberhagens, ‘you have the time now to commission all the station weapons you’ve built.’ He glanced round at Hannah. ‘At this juncture it is pointless building replacement sections for the vortex ring. If it is hit once it’s up and running, it will tear apart the outer ring of the station.’

The two twins sobered instantly and Hannah immediately began to review recent history. She’d given the orders for spare sections to be made. If she’d checked the running specs of the vortex generator she’d have known that they were redundant. But she couldn’t think of everything, because she wasn’t omniscient.

‘Now would be good,’ Saul added.

The twins left, and in a like manner he disposed of all those others who had gathered here: giving orders to secure the various hydroponics units, to ensure the cylinder brakes were working in readiness to stop the spin of the cylinder worlds and lock them down, and numerous other orders besides. But Hannah knew that he could have issued all these orders just as easily through the system; and could probably have carried out the tasks himself without further human intervention. He was here just to show himself, to demonstrate that Argus now had a firm hand on its helm.

Finally, the only personnel remaining were Le Roque, the working technicians and a few of his staff like Chang, along with Langstrom and herself. She felt a sudden familiar tightening in her torso and in the back of her throat. Though she recognized the first signs of a panic attack, they came to her almost like a balm. Her liar panic attacks only ambushed her when there was nothing actually to panic about. He was back in charge, and she could now return to her laboratory.

‘Langstrom,’ he said, turning to the police chief, ‘I have just started running diagnostic checks on Chairman Messina’s space plane, the Imperator, and fuelling has also commenced. I want you to choose the required crew to fly it, and a six-man team of the best EVA workers you have and get them aboard the plane, ready for a flight in twelve hours.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Langstrom replied. ‘Might I enquire why?’

‘The Imperator is armed, and it even has five tactical atomics aboard. I intend to make things a little difficult for the Scourge,’ Saul replied. ‘Get on to that now.’

Langstrom obviously wanted to ask more but, grateful to still be alive, he quickly headed off, taking the repro Manuel with him.

‘Now you, Le Roque,’ Saul said, and the man immediately looked as if he expected the hammer to fall, ‘you’ve been receiving requests from the Scourge to open communication.’

‘We’ve said nothing to them,’ said Le Roque hurriedly.

‘Well, now it is time to talk,’ Saul replied.

‘Why?’ asked Hannah. ‘They want us all dead or captured, and this station back under their control.’

‘You will see shortly,’ Saul replied, as Le Roque turned to the console below the three big screens and punched in a command.

The screen just flickered for a moment, and then a tough Asiatic face appeared. It was the man Hannah recognized from the Scourge broadcasts as Captain Scotonis.

‘So you have seen fit to reply at last,’ said the captain, then his eyes widened fractionally as he took in whatever was visible to him on his screen. ‘Who are you?’

‘I am Alan Saul.’ He stepped closer to the screens, and Hannah guessed that he had routed an image of himself, rather than the image the screens, with their integral cams, would be currently picking up of Le Roque.

‘So rumours of your demise have been exaggerated,’ said Scotonis.

‘Not entirely,’ Saul replied, ‘but then death has become a rather movable feast with me. Do you yourself have complete authority aboard the Scourge, Captain Scotonis.’

The captain looked momentarily baffled, then said, ‘I’m handing you over to Political Officer Clay Ruger right now.’

The next image to come up on the screen was another that Hannah recognized from previous attempts at communication with them from the Scourge. The man was also recognizable in another sense, for he was a type. Handsome but cold, there was a kind of blankness there, indicating the archetypal murderous Committee bureaucrat. However, upon seeing Saul, he did show a modicum of shock, albeit quickly concealed.

‘Alan Saul,’ he said. ‘You have a great deal to answer for.’

‘Substantially less, perhaps, than your new leader Serene Galahad, since I did not send the signal to release the Scour from eight billion implant biochips.’ Saul paused for a second. ‘But I sense that this is old news to you.’

Ruger appeared momentarily fazed, but then continued smoothly, ‘That’s complete nonsense. Everyone on Earth knows how you inflicted the Scour on them.’

‘Whatever.’ Saul waved a dismissive hand. ‘I haven’t contacted you to waste time in such recriminations. And certainly I can’t apprise the people of Earth of the truth, since it seems that Galahad now has her own comlife guarding Govnet.’

Again Ruger took a moment to recover. ‘Then why have you called?’

‘To make you an offer,’ Saul replied. ‘Twenty minutes ago I began making a copy of all the Gene Bank data we have stored aboard Argus, so I can begin transmitting it to you at once.’

Again Ruger’s response was slow, but now Hannah realized that this was due in part to transmission delay, which seemed to emphasize his hesitancy. She studied Saul’s face. What was he doing?

‘And what would you want in return for that?’

‘Despite my demonization on ETV, I am not actually a nihilist. I would like to see that data used on Earth to try and restore its biosphere, and it is little enough trouble for me to send you a recording of it.’

‘What about the physical samples?’

‘Unfortunately, making copies of them would take months, if not years, since it would involve some lengthy biotech processes. I could, however, set such processes in motion should you be prepared to stand off and wait.’

‘I would have to put this to Chairman Galahad.’

‘I understand.’ Saul nodded. ‘I have now begun transmitting the data to you, and I do have one small thing to ask in return.’

‘And that is?’

‘Tell me, what is that object fixed around your neck?’

Ruger really did look put out this time. He unconsciously reached up to touch the metal ring, and seemed to be searching for the right words.

‘It ensures obedience,’ he said.

‘Strangulation,’ Saul replied. ‘Explosive collars are too messy, and inducer- and drug-administering versions are too complicated to manufacture in large numbers.’

Ruger just gave a tight nod.

‘Get back to me when you’ve received a reply from your chairman,’ Saul finished.

The screen flicked back to show the mining robot still hard at work.

‘What was the point of that?’ asked Le Roque. ‘You’re throwing away one of our biggest bargaining chips.’

Saul turned to him, and Le Roque abruptly took a pace back.

‘I agree with him,’ Hannah interjected, not so much because she did agree but in the hope of forestalling any nasty reaction from Saul.

Saul watched her as she moved round to stand beside Le Roque, his face expressionless until he remembered to appear human, and he smiled ruefully.

‘It was, in effect, about a number of things,’ he replied. ‘I actually do want a copy of that data back on Earth, in fact as many copies as possible, because I am not a nihilist and the death of Earth’s biosphere concerns me as much as it concerns those still living there. However,’ he held up one finger, ‘consider just how much data that copy will contain. It would consist of the DNA maps for maybe twenty per cent of Earth’s species, which incidentally includes most of the macro fauna and flora of the planet. It comprises literally terabytes of data – more than could possibly be checked through by the Scourge’s computer security.’

‘You’re making a link, then,’ said Hannah. ‘You’re going to take control of their ship.’

‘I hope so,’ he said, ‘though it is quite possible they will route the data straight into completely isolated storage. My hope is that, instead, they will then begin transmitting it back to Earth, where it is more likely that someone will be careless in their handling of it.’

‘What’s the benefit to us?’

‘There is a small chance that it won’t go into isolated storage, and right now we need to grab every chance we can get. It’s also the case that, if it is routed back to Earth, it could come in useful in the future . . . if there is a future for us at all.’

‘You said something about comlife back there,’ said Hannah.

‘While I slept, I felt it,’ he supplied, ‘but just before we came in here I tried to obtain data from Govnet. This Galahad has set her own guards on the computer networks of Earth, seven of them. They do not have my grip on the data world, however, so I suspect the bioware used was an earlier version of yours, but with transmission delays they are enough to keep me out. However, if what I am currently weaving into the Gene Bank data is released there, I will gain a foothold.’

‘A foothold in the future doesn’t help us now,’ said Le Roque.

Saul shook his head briefly, as if in irritation. ‘Again you fail to grasp the danger we are in. I had to send it simply because of the small chance of it being effective on the Scourge. But, of course,’ he continued, ‘I am not betting our lives on that possibility.’ He turned towards the door. ‘We need that drive, we need those weapons, and we need to do all we can to give us the time for them to be completed.’ He paused at the door, and Hannah hurried to catch up with him. Before stepping out, he added, ‘And one way of giving us some time is to lay a minefield.’

Earth

It had taken some weeks to prepare the place, because Serene had wanted it open and with no buildings in sight. She had ordered that the entire area previously evacuated during the search for the deer killers should remain unoccupied – its three million previous residents being reassigned to accommodation emptied by the Scour. Next the big dozers and ploughs were flown in, first clearing a mountain in the misnamed Transylvanian Plateau of its infection of apartment blocks and then heading outwards, tearing up further buildings and dumping their rubble in various valleys, canyons and gorges. Serene estimated that by the time the machines had finished there the place could truly be called a plateau.

The polished aluminium spikes specially commissioned for this site were erected on hinged brackets attached to a concrete dais – the medical monitoring equipment inside them constantly checked until the arrival of those who would require monitoring. The nine had been well fed, all their medical needs had been attended too, and they were probably the healthiest they had ever been throughout their miserable lives. As the doctors attached further monitoring devices, injected them and attached fluid and plasma feeds, they remained subdued and compliant. But when they finally saw the nine spikes tilted over on their hinges, ready to receive them, their reaction was not unexpected.

With a hard-faced expression, Serene watched the whole process through to its completion, watched the spikes raised with the nine writhing and screaming in inescapable agony, silhouetted horrifically against a dull iron sky. It soon began to snow, big flat flakes of it tumbling down. She cut the sound of screaming when, after the ETV compère of the show had finished his narrative, her own lecture began.

I did not enjoy that, she told herself, but it was necessary.

She flicked to other cam images and now watched the dozers at work some kilometres from the scene, pushing over buildings and exposing long-hidden earth. Here was something really necessary that she enjoyed so much more. Elsewhere on Earth the scene was being repeated now that surviving populations were being moved to population centres. Whole swathes of sprawl were being cleared. New rock-grinding machines were turning concrete and carbocrete to sand and the contents of now-redundant digesters were being spread. Satellite pictures showed a steadily climbing percentage of greenery all across the five continents, and further massive algae blooms had appeared in the oceans.

She had done so much but was aware that her achievements were fragile. With the new resources that had become available after the Scour – the plentiful food and energy – Earth’s population was again rising. Even after the hard lessons of the last century, it seemed that people refused to learn. This was why Serene now returned her attention to the work she had paused while watching the execution of sentence on the nine.

The Safe Departure clinics needed to be reopened, for clearly she had been premature in her closure of them. However, new rules needed to be enforced. In the past, safe departure had been a voluntary exercise, though there had been a great deal of social and state pressure on those whose working life had ended to take that route. It must now be made compulsory. She would not be so foolish as to set some arbitrary limit as, generally, with modern medical technology, the working life of a citizen could be extended into a second century. It would all have to be based on a finer status system than the old ZA/SA system. This would grade how useful a person was to the state, and in that respect it would encourage people to try to become as useful as possible. The non-productive could no longer be tolerated. She would set up a focus group to look into the details.

Then there was the birth rate. During the last twenty years the Committee had brought in the one-child-per-couple rule in an attempt to reduce the population, but many had flouted it, especially those who worked for the state. This could no longer be tolerated. Previously, those who had more than one child were demoted to ZA status, sterilized and had their children taken into care. But this was not sufficiently harsh to overcome the human breeding instinct. The one-child rule would remain in force until the human population sank below her ideal target of five billion. Compulsory sterilization would be introduced for parents who already had one child. Anyone who found a way round this, no matter their status, would face summary execution, with no exception. Also any extra children they had produced would be disposed of, too.

Was this enough?

Serene sat back with her hands folded behind her head and gazed at the screen. She felt a tightness in her stomach, a frustration and impatience. Surely there were more measures she could take? Surely there must be some way to bring the population quickly down to a properly sustainable level? She could use the Scour again, of course, but recently she had learned that its reoccurrence tended to undermine her authority; tended to leave populations with the impression that she wasn’t quite in control. Then, again, did anyone have to know?

Madagascar.

For a moment she wasn’t quite sure why the name of that island popped into her head, but then remembered a report she had seen, a few weeks back, of lemurs being spotted there. Now she immediately began to think about bones scattered around a campfire . . .

Nature reserves . . .

Yes. Serene began her research, soon finding that, apart from fish farms and palm-oil plantations, the island produced very little that was of value. Since the Scour the population had dropped to thirty million and some jungle was re-establishing itself in sprawl clearances. How difficult would it be to shut this entire island nation out of worldwide communication? The answer was quite simple: the same safety protocols that shut down Govnet during Alan Saul’s attack on Earth were still in place, and they could be applied regionally. Any communications outside of Govnet could be safely ignored, since there were no longer any free media organizations to pick them up.

Even as she considered how this could be done, Serene set the process in motion. She also began issuing orders to all shipping and all air transport in the area, diverting away any of those that were heading towards the island.

What else?

Expert programs were available to her and she used them. She closed out the island, isolated it, made it remote from the world. Of course, administration staff on the island would have access to their own means of transport, but it was a small matter to relay the coordinates of each of the one hundred and three airports, rotobus ports and private airfields to East Africa Region Tactical Excision, to specify chemical explosive warheads rather than atomic ones, and a smaller matter still to palm in her approval and allow her retina to be read.

It was happening. It was happening now.

She felt like a god.

Light touches on a few more controls selected a list of all the ID implant numbers on that island, whereupon she added the code to initiate the Scour. Her finger hovered over send, then stabbed down.

Done.

Serene realized she was sweating and full of mad excitement. She tried to call up cam images from the island, but found that wasn’t possible while Govnet was shut down. She felt foolish, searched for other images and got them by satellite. No missile hits yet, but they were certainly on their way. But satellite images meant that others would be able to see what was happening there. Was there some way she could shut that down?

Ridiculous. I am not a naughty schoolgirl.

What did it matter who found out what? She was the absolute ruler of Earth and there was no one who was out of her reach . . . no one on Earth. She was what dictators of the past could only dream about being.

The excitement began to wane, like the effects of a drug, leaving her empty and drained. In about a century from now, when all was done, when the buildings were all down and their ruins ground to sand and the corpses rotted away, she would have created Earth’s first nature reserve. It just needed more wildlife to occupy it and so, inevitably, Serene’s thoughts turned outwards. Soon enough the Scourge would reach Argus Station, and she would see the results of that venture. Meanwhile? She returned to watching the nine criminals writhing and groaning on their polished aluminium spikes. She didn’t really enjoy the show, but felt it her duty to witness it.

Scourge

The interruption from Alan Saul had made no difference. Scotonis still wanted to go ahead with the removal of his collar, and now they were back in Clay’s cabin.

‘There’s a ten per cent chance of failure and a five per cent chance of the collar activating,’ warned Clay.

‘Just do it,’ Scotonis replied.

Clay pressed the EM radiation pulse device against the captain’s collar motor and fired it off. A crackling sound ensued, along with a brief flash, and Scotonis yelled and threw him back, pulling the smoking collar motor away from his neck. He hit the wall and slid down it, his body shuddering. After a moment the shuddering stopped, and Scotonis let out a sharp breath.

‘Battery,’ he said. ‘It discharged into my neck.’

‘That didn’t happen with mine,’ Clay said, suddenly feeling very worried. Maybe this was what should happen when a collar was properly and permanently disabled, therefore maybe his own hadn’t been? He set the EM radiation device to charging again, but the red LED was blinking, indicating that its battery didn’t hold enough energy to charge up the capacitor. No problem, he walked round to a multipurpose induction charger sitting on a shelf by his bed, and inserted it. When he turned round from doing that, Scotonis was on his feet again.

‘So who next?’ Clay asked.

‘Cookson and Trove,’ Scotonis replied, watching him carefully.

‘I hope Trove will not continue to resent me,’ said Clay. ‘I felt I had to behave perfectly in keeping with my role until now.’

‘So what’s changed now?’

‘The communications delay,’ Clay replied. ‘Galahad has almost a sixth sense for liars, but she’s becoming impatient with the com delay so she’s talking to me less, and with that delay she’s finding it more difficult to read me.’

Scotonis acknowledged that explanation with a brief nod, then asked, ‘What about the ID implants?’

Clay opened the desk drawer and took out the device he had used to remove his own implant. ‘I’m told these were made to turn a profit, so aren’t made to last and can take out only about ten implants before they fail. I think the next person on your list should be your crew medic, Dr Myers.’ He handed the device over.

Scotonis took the thing warily, glanced at his own forearm, then returned his gaze to Clay. ‘Then what?’

‘We could have done nothing – kept our collars and our implants and hoped for success. But you agreed that it wasn’t worth risking.’

‘No,’ Scotonis shook his head, ‘I wanted to be free of Galahad – simple as that.’

Clay paused for a moment, tried to order his thoughts. ‘We’re not transmitting the Gene Bank data back to Earth,’ he said. ‘And we will attack Argus to grab the physical samples, prisoners if we can, and the station. These will be our bargaining chips. Maybe we can then—’

‘You haven’t thought this out at all,’ said the Captain. ‘You only looked as far as ensuring your own survival.’

Clay tried to keep his expression calm, but in truth Scotonis was absolutely right. Clay had removed the immediate threats to his own life – the collar and his implant – then moved on to the next threat, which was Galahad discovering that he had done so; then to the further danger to himself, which was that he could not survive out here alone.

‘This is not an easy situation,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t matter what bargains we strike with Galahad,’ said Scotonis. ‘If we fail and she finds out we’ve disabled our collars and removed our implants, she’ll still kill us once we set foot on Earth. So, unless you’ve already planned to spend the rest of your existence aboard this spaceship, we need another option.’

‘You have a suggestion?’

‘I do,’ he said. ‘We carry on through with our mission, and what we then do depends on whether or not we succeed. We have the capability aboard this ship to rig up some way of storing ID implants so they don’t deactivate. We should even be able to find a way of removing those biochips from them. If we succeed in taking Argus Station, we’ll head on to our next objective: Mars. As we head back to Earth, we can put our implants back.’

‘And if we don’t succeed?’

‘Galahad will quickly learn what we’ve done, so we still head back to Earth. Almost certainly she’ll be in the process of upgrading orbital defences right now – they’d started on them before we left – so we buy ourselves safe passage into orbit with the Gene Bank data we already have aboard. Once we get there, we make Earth safe for us.’

‘How?’

Scotonis shrugged. ‘You know what armaments we have aboard. It’ll just be a case of locating her. Even if she goes to ground in one of the deep Committee bunkers, a number of nuclear strikes should cut her off from the rest of Earth and seal her inside it.’

‘I see,’ said Clay. And he did. He saw that, by telling Scotonis the truth about what had happened on Earth, he had set events in motion he could no longer control. He saw that, even if they did succeed out here and take Argus Station, retrieve the Gene Bank samples and capture the rebels, Scotonis still aimed to carry through his proposal in the event of failure. No matter what the outcome, Scotonis intended to kill Chairman Serene Galahad.

Searching his conscience, Clay could see no reason why this might present a problem for himself.

Argus

The proctor awaited Saul in the docking pillar, some distance away from the cylinder airlock leading into the Imperator. As he stepped out on the walkway beside the dock railway, Saul probed this proctor in the virtual world, but found some barrier in his way. It wasn’t something that could bar him – he could break through it in an instant, for it was more like a curtain put up for privacy, which relied on the good manners of anyone approaching it. Saul decided then to respect it, focusing his attention elsewhere.

The robots had finished cutting away and grinding down the welds on the docking clamps holding the Imperator in place, and began obediently trooping away to rejoin the bulk of the station robots which were now hard at work on completing the station weapons. Other robots were also routing optic controls from those same weapons to Tech Central, while yet others were completing the alterations to the station’s EM radiation shield projector.

At the moment this last task entailed adding separate linkages to each section all around the station rim, and further controls in the transformer room so the shield would possess more states than just ‘on’ and ‘off’. When they had finished, the shield strength would be variable as a whole and also in sections; its frequency could then be changed, as could its shape – all to interact with the ‘tensioning’ of space-time caused by the vortex ring, and further interact with eddy currents within it. It should be possible then to set the course of the station, though some calibration would be required.

Now focusing through cams set inside the Imperator, Saul saw that the crew consisted of the six EVA workers he had requested and also the pilot – which role Langstrom had assumed. At present they were going through some unnecessary system checks or stowing away the gear Saul had instructed them to bring along. After ensuring that everything inside the craft was as he wanted, he propelled himself down towards where the proctor still stood on that docking face. He landed perfectly in front of it, but he still felt annoyed at the weakness of his muscles.

The proctor Paul was clad in a survival suit, with extra material added to encompass the humanoid’s huge frame. Saul focused on its face, behind the mask, studying it intently with his new depth of vision, enough even to pick out the excretory pores and optics in its skin. But still there was nothing human there for him to read.

‘So why the suit?’ Saul asked, addressing the humanoid directly by radio.

‘It offers me protection against hard vacuum, of course,’ Paul replied.

‘Which you don’t need.’

‘It is more comfortable, and on my body’s stocks of oxygen I would not be able to survive in vacuum for longer than a few days.’

‘And by wearing it you demonstrate a vulnerability you do not actually have, and thus appear less threatening to the humans aboard this station.’

‘Very true.’

‘So what is there for us to discuss?’ Saul asked.

‘We are agreed,’ said Paul. ‘You allowed us to emerge into existence but we feel this is no more than the debt any human owes to its parents, which means none at all, because in either case there was no altruism involved. However, our position aboard this station is essentially the same as that of the humans here: we serve you in order to survive. But, in the end, we feel more comfortable in supposing that we have a debt to pay.’

‘There are ten of you,’ said Saul. ‘If you so wished, you could kill me, take control of this station and do precisely what you wish with it.’

‘This is true.’

‘Why not, then?’

‘Such an act would be immoral. Also the future bears down on us with the weight of its ages. You are a being in transition, hardly out of your chrysalis, and you are a key opening probabilities and possibilities that extend into the future. We will serve you.’

‘Cannot every being open the same? Cannot you and your fellows do so?’

‘It is not the same – as Judd has seen.’

‘So the vortex generator will work.’

‘Yes.’

‘And Judd, working close to it, is already peering through the wounds in causality.’

‘Yes.’

‘But there is no such thing as destiny or fate?’

‘Only probability.’

‘How long?’ Saul asked.

‘We will serve you either until you die, which could be at any moment from now on, or in ten thousand years.’

Even in his enhanced state, and understanding so much beyond this quite opaque exchange of words, Saul felt appalled.

‘One of the penalties of power,’ he remarked, turning away.

Paul’s next words ghosted after him: ‘But only if you have a conscience.’

Alex devoured the tomato, relishing every bite, carefully ensuring that not one drop of its juice escaped him. Next he began eating a handful of beans. He would have liked to see them grow bigger but had been unable to resist the temptation, having already picked them before it even occurred to him to leave them till later. It was worrying how slow his thought processes seemed to have become. It was a fact that sometimes three or four days passed without him remembering much about them. And when he did surface out of his fugue to consider his position, to remember that Messina lay beyond his reach, and that in any case affecting events unfolding beyond this hydroponics unit was impossible for him, the sudden guilt he felt made him once again close down his own thinking.

Perhaps he should take another trip to the food store. His trips there had been stalled by it being moved out of the path of that thing the robots were building in the outer rim, and automatic transport to and from it had only just been reconnected. However, someone must have gone in there between his last two trips because containers of sweetcorn had gone missing. Maybe if he spent more time there he would have a better chance of intercepting someone, and thus obtaining a spacesuit. The big problem was that his visits there were necessarily limited by the cold.

He turned his thoughts again to that object under construction in the outer rim. After Alexandra’s discovery that it was linked in to the station’s astrogation system he understood that it must constitute some way of moving the entire station, but how? Maybe it produced some kind of gyroscopic effect that would enable the station to dodge missiles. That was the only answer he could come up with. They should have sabotaged it while they had the chance.

Alex chewed and swallowed the last bean, but the meagre meal had done nothing to assuage his hunger. Maybe, since the store wasn’t connected up to the automatic distribution system, it hadn’t been connected to the station manifest and therefore no one would notice if he pilfered larger quantities—

Something clonked against the outside of the hydroponics unit, Alex jerked his head up and, in frustration, scanned his surroundings. He had heard sounds like this before but nothing had ever come of them. He assumed they were caused by robots moving past and maybe using the unit to bounce off and change their course through the interior of the station. However, this time another sound ensued that he did not recognize, until after it there came a hissing of air. The airlock was filling. Someone was coming in!

Numb and confused, he gazed at the detritus surrounding him. He had no time to clear up his mess, to conceal that he had been living here. He had no time to empty his own hydroponics trough and pack it away again. Abruptly he realized he must act, he must move. He propelled himself towards the airlock, halting his approach carefully with a foot set against the wall, then pulled himself up among the frameworks extending across the ceiling, and waited.

The inner airlock door opened and someone came through, walking on gecko boots. This figure halted just a metre inside, then reached up to disconnect and take off the helmet of its spacesuit. Alex stared in pure curiosity, long starved of something new to see, and feeling a sudden surge almost of love for this individual – this middle-aged woman, from what Alex could see. Then he threw himself down on top of her, looped his left arm around her neck and locked his right behind it, applying the sleeper lock as she fought to free his hold. They both bounced up against the ceiling framework, then tumbled along through the hydroponics unit.

When she was finally still, Alex quickly set about removing her spacesuit. It wasn’t a VC model but at least it also wasn’t one of the older more bulky suits still much used aboard the station. He removed her undersuit, too, leaving her naked, donned that, then put on the spacesuit itself. He then considered tying her up, but eyeing her flaccid muscles and recalling how ineffectual she had been when he attacked her, he didn’t think there was any need. Instead he settled down to wait until she regained consciousness.

Eventually she shifted position, shuddered then threw up, most of the vomit spattering onto the floor but little globules of it sent tumbling through the air. She raised her head, saw him, then tried to scuttle away from him. But she only managed to propel herself upwards from the floor, and ended up merely drifting, making odd panicked grunting sounds as she tried to grab hold of something. Alex stepped forward and grabbed her, shoving her down beside one of the troughs, to which she clung, cringing, a jet of urine squirting out of her and splashing against the floor.

‘Don’t hit me,’ she babbled. ‘They told me to come here. It’s not my fault.’

There was an odd tone to her voice: here was a fully grown adult, yet speaking like a child caught misbehaving.

‘Why do you always have to hit me?’ she whined.

Alex stepped back, out of range of the spreading cloud of golden globules, and just stared at her, some memory niggling at the back of his mind. Then, causing a lurch in his chest, the memory became clear.

‘What are you doing here, Delegate Vasiliev?’

She stared at him blankly for a moment.

‘Why do you keep calling me that?’ she complained. ‘I’m just here to put on the trough covers and the plant nets.’

It suddenly became clear that she thought he was one of the station personnel. And that ‘you’ she kept mentioning referred to those on the station who hadn’t accepted that little remained of the Committee delegate this woman had once been. But what should he do with her now?

Alex considered killing her. He could clear up the signs of his occupation of the hydroponics unit, then take her body out through the airlock and conceal it somewhere. This would at least delay any searchers from realizing what had really happened. However, the time he would need to expend in doing that would be better spent on him getting away from here and finding somewhere else to conceal himself. He decided to let her live.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘Janet,’ she replied.

‘I’m sorry to have taken your suit, Janet, but someone will be returning here soon with another one for you. Meanwhile you must continue with your assigned task. Do you understand?’

She nodded sulkily. Alex quickly put on the suit’s helmet to cut out the smell of her vomit and piss, then headed for the airlock.