Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

5

Slice ’n’ Dice

In the beginning, military unmanned surveillance drones were bulky things that had to fly high, away from enemy fire. New materials gradually reduced their size, and better motors and computer control brought them closer to their targets. As materials technology progressed and high-density power storage became available, the machines were made smaller and new methods of locomotion were devised. The next generation of drones looked like birds: flocks of geese, swans, hawks, eagles and often, where appropriate, vultures. But one strand of their development diverged when special forces found additional uses for them. The troops realized that the hard high-tensile ceramics, graphine and glass that their birds were constructed from could be sharpened, and that additional software could be written to act on recognition software. These were especially effective at night, and the troops soon found they could gut an enemy without even drawing a commando knife. Thus the razorbird was born – never quite as effective as a missile or a gun, but always inspiring more terror.

Mars

Var felt exhausted as she stepped into Hex Four to gaze up at the new triple-skinned geodesic dome, then around at the completed walls. She considered the work they had finished over the last three months, and regretted how eight of those who had survived Ricard would never see this. That was a crying shame because now, really, she felt all of them had a good chance of survival here. She even wished Delaware had lived to see this, and not just because of the huge headache his death had caused.

The investigation, meanwhile, dragged on. Da Vinci had confirmed that Delaware’s broken neck was not accidental, since someone had obviously tried to twist his head off like a bottle lid. There were also traces of powder from surgical gloves, but no traces capable of nailing the murderer. Two people had been exercising in the gym just before Delaware, but had left before the spinner was turned on. Martinez and his chief investigator had decided to break out some of Ricard’s supplies and used a brain-function monitor while questioning those two, merely confirming their story. According to all systems in the base, no one else had entered the gym within the time frame of Delaware’s death. Whoever had done this had somehow managed to alter system records without leaving a trace.

Martinez now wanted to work his way through every other person on the base, questioning them under brain-function monitor, too. Var had even submitted herself – with witnesses – but it seemed that few believed her results, having lived too long under the Committee to believe any claims made by authority. Now Var was considering stopping the investigation, since the atmosphere in the base had become poisonous, with resentments arising and already leading to a couple of fights. And it seemed pointless to waste resources in catching a killer and then having no one believe that the one caught was guilty.

While she gazed at the tall seedlings transported from Gunther’s erstwhile laboratory, Var was feeling a growing disappointment with all those around her, when the call came.

‘Var, you need to get to Mars Science One, asap,’ Rhone urged her.

‘What’s up, Rhone?’ she said lightly, but immediately suspicious.

After being told of their perfidy, Rhone’s dressing-down of Delaware and Christen in front of her had seemed real enough, but some instinct told her he wasn’t as sincere as he appeared. She had always experienced this feeling about him – that he was on the edge of betrayal – then was always surprised when he next supported her. It was irrational, with no basis in the logical world she always tried to inhabit, but she still could not dismiss her suspicions.

‘It’s complicated. Do you know about the tangle box?’

‘I know a little about it – the instantaneous communicator that cost the budget of a major urban sprawl but never worked?’

‘That’s the thing. Well, it’s working now.’

Var felt something creeping up her spine. She knew more about the tangle box than she cared to admit; knew it was cutting-edge science, almost fantasy science; that it should be actually working probably promised more for the human race than anything invented in the last couple of centuries. The possibilities Rhone had just opened up with those few words were . . . numinous.

‘I’m coming right now,’ she said, turning to the bulkhead door.

Only when she was through the door did she pause and consider. Rhone probably knew that news like this would bring her running – that she might come running without taking any precautions. So she took them now.

‘Lopomac?’ She queried through her fone.

‘I’m on my way – I take it you just got the news?’ he replied.

So it wasn’t just herself being summoned into some sort of trap. ‘Who else has been informed?’

‘All the chiefs of staff, and I’m also bringing a few of Martinez’s guys . . .’

That was shorthand for those personnel – generally from Construction and Maintenance – who were now the de facto police force here. They would be armed, of course. Perhaps this should have comforted her but, the way things had been since Delaware’s murder, she had become increasingly doubtful about those she had considered loyal.

‘Good, I’ll see you there.’

Maybe it was true. Maybe the communicator, containing carbon nanotubes whose atoms were quantum-entangled with those of similar atoms in a twinned box in some zero-point energy-research establishment on Earth, was really working. Maybe instant communication was now a reality, and causality had just received a terminal wound.

Quite a crowd had gathered in Mars Science Lab One, and Var allowed herself to relax a little. The atmosphere was almost party-like with its excited chatter and speculation. But, as soon as she entered the room the chatter subsided and the party atmosphere dissolved. She paused, a sudden resentment welling up inside her as she gazed at those present. Given the option now, she would have been happy to just leave, let them make their own way in future, but there was nowhere for her to go. She briefly considered stepping down and letting someone else take over, but realized, in that instant, that she would then become the object of a witch hunt. These people now felt the need to blame someone for their problems, and she was much closer to them than the Committee, if it even existed now at all.

Var stepped forward and the crowd parted to let her straight through to where Rhone sat at a console, with Christen beside him, the oval screen above them not entirely necessary but lending the whole set-up a futuristic air. Rhone turned to her, grinning wildly. Why did she doubt him, for his expression seemed sincere? Christen spared Var a blank glance, then concentrated again on her instruments, her back turning suddenly rigid.

‘What have we got?’ Var asked.

‘Data,’ Rhone replied enthusiastically. ‘Real fucking data. We’re establishing parameters at the moment, have received a text message and are preparing to go to full video and sound in a few minutes.’

‘Show me the text,’ she demanded.

Christen hit a button on her keyboard and some words appeared on the screen: PREPARE FOR COM AT 1.05 GMT – RHINE.

‘Why do I know that name?’ Var asked.

‘I’m surprised you do, because Messina has been sitting on him for years,’ said Rhone. ‘I only learned about him because of the usual Committee screw-up, when some bureaucrat confused us with each other.’

‘Who is he?’ asked Martinez, from just behind Var’s shoulder, where he was clearly watching her back.

‘Messina’s pet zero-point energy researcher,’ Rhone explained.

Martinez grunted dismissively.

‘So this is Earth calling to deliver instructions from whoever is now in charge of that mess back there?’ Var suggested.

Rhone shook his head. ‘No, Rhine’s laboratory was aboard Argus. And this is Argus calling.’

‘After all this time,’ Var noted.

‘They couldn’t call before because of the solar storm, which is still interfering badly with radio communications.’

‘It doesn’t interfere with this?’

‘Theoretically, no.’ Rhone shrugged, then glanced back at the oval screen, eyeing a counter there. He stood up and gestured to his chair. ‘I think this one is for you, Base Director Var.’

Var studied the faces surrounding her, then decisively took the vacated seat. She glanced at Christen. ‘Make sure you’re recording all of this.’

The woman nodded. ‘Of course . . . background too, any data we can get.’ Her voice was utterly controlled and utterly cold. As well as being her co-conspirator, Delaware had been her lover. Martinez had ensured that Christen was being watched, which Var didn’t like much because that seemed too much like something the Inspectorate would do.

Now a face appeared on the screen; slightly distorted for a second, then adjusting. For a moment Var thought the adjustment was still a bit off, for the man’s face was thin and seemed etched with too many wrinkles and the white lines of scars.

‘That’s him,’ said Rhone from behind her.

Jasper Rhine smiled delightedly. ‘It works!’ he exclaimed, then turned aside to adjust something, his arm apparently spearing out on one side of the screen.

Var jerked back.

‘3D,’ said Christen, her tone superior.

Var leaned forward. ‘I’m speaking to Jasper Rhine?’

He focused on her as if surprised. ‘Who are you?’

‘I am Varalia Delex, Director of Antares Base on Mars. I am also anxious to know what the hell is going on with Argus Station.’ She ran out of words. She wanted to know so much – such as who was responsible for trashing a large part of the Committee infrastructure on Earth by dropping the Argus satellite network on it – small things like that.

‘We’re independent now,’ said Rhine, waving a dismissive hand while still concentrating on something out of view.

‘What do you mean “independent”?’

He focused on her again. ‘The Owner runs the show here, but we’re free.’ He paused, momentarily puzzled, then shrugged. ‘Free as can be.’

‘First com in a month, and we get a direct line to the asylum,’ Martinez muttered.

‘So many thought I was crazy,’ Rhine snapped back, obviously having overheard. ‘He doesn’t, though. We’ll be constructing the generator directly after enclosure, then they’ll see.’ He nodded to someone out of view, the screen flickered and now a woman gazed out directly at Var.

‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘Jasper is a bit twitchy at the best of times. My name is Hannah Neumann.’

Var noted the sharp intake of breath from both Rhone and Christen. They knew – or knew of – this woman. Could this be the person who controlled Argus? No, Rhine had referred to an ‘Owner’ who was male?

‘Understandably the state of Jasper Rhine’s mind interests me rather less than the Argus network dropping on Earth, and the Argus Station now being on a non-conjunction route towards us,’ said Var. ‘Perhaps you can tell us something about that.’

‘In good time,’ said Neumann. ‘First I need to know who is fully in charge there. We have only just learned that Antares Base has undergone a . . . change in overall leadership. You’ll have to excuse our tardiness, but the solar storm is only waning now and we’re just starting to pick up data from Earth.’

‘We no longer have a political director,’ Var declared.

‘Why?’

‘Because I shot him.’

Neumann just stared at her for a long moment, before bowing her head in acknowledgement. ‘So you are now as independent as we are?’

‘I don’t actually know how independent you are. I am in charge merely because that was easiest, and because leadership contests aren’t a good idea when you’re fighting for survival.’ She glanced at Christen, who flinched. ‘But certainly we don’t have an “Owner” here.’

Neumann said, ‘He styles himself the Owner because it’s a title not completely degraded by its misuse on Earth. He now owns this station because its computers are part of his mind, and all its robots and cams are just extensions of his hands and eyes.’

‘Biochips, comlife,’ interjected Rhone. Var glanced round at him and he stabbed a finger at the screen. ‘Her . . . that’s the sort of stuff she was talking about – human minds interfaced with computers.’

Var absorbed that information, not entirely sure of the detail but pretty sure of the results. She turned back to the screen.

‘It still sounds arrogant,’ she said to Neumann, trying to keep her voice level.

Neumann shrugged. ‘He dropped the Argus satellite network on Inspectorate HQs all across Earth, and turned all the robots of Earth against the Committee. He wiped out something like two-thirds of the upper Committee administration and military and most of the Committee itself, including Messina, who is now . . . our prisoner. So I think I’ll allow him his arrogance.’ She paused for a second, then went on, ‘But you’ve got more immediate problems. Have you had deaths there, within the last three months, from something you may have identified as Ebola?’

Var nodded numbly. How did this woman know that?

Neumann continued, ‘Right, the signal must have got through despite the solar storm. The deaths we had here only happened after we turned off the EM shield.’ She paused for a second, contemplatively, then continued, ‘They were caused by a cybernetic virus emitted by biochips integral to your ID implants. That means you need to get all your implants removed, and fast. The woman who now styles herself the ruler of Earth, one Serene Galahad, seems to have the power to activate that virus in any implant she chooses, and she might just decide that independents on Mars are not something she wants.’

‘Jesus, that was it!’ exclaimed chief medical officer Da Vinci.

‘Galahad has no scruples in this area,’ Neumann added. ‘You’ve seen recent images from Earth?’

‘Some sort of plague,’ said Var. ‘We’re not getting much.’

‘It’s the same thing, and it killed just about every zero asset on Earth within one day – eight billion of them. It then went on to kill the remaining twenty-four delegates on Earth, except Galahad herself. And it tends to affect anyone who in any way questions Galahad’s authority.’

‘Eight billion,’ Martinez repeated numbly, others behind him echoing his words.

Var suddenly found a reason for hope. Maybe this news would be enough to dispel some of the bitterness in the atmosphere of the base. Then she pulled back from the thought, suddenly feeling very selfish as the true import of this woman’s words impacted. Eight billion.

‘You need to get on with removing your implants now,’ Neumann insisted. ‘We’ll talk again in twenty hours precisely. There’s no hurry, as we’ve got plenty of talk time before we meet face to face.’

The screen darkened. Var whirled around to Da Vinci, her stomach feeling like a knot of lead. ‘That’s true?’

He was distracted for a moment, still mulling over the horrifying news, then after another moment her words impinged. ‘Almost certainly.’ He nodded. ‘In every case the infection was concentrated in the arm, around the implant. And I thought that maybe, due to sloppy aseptic procedures . . .’

‘Move fast, then, to get all remaining implants removed.’ Her own was gone, so she had no worries for herself, but she could ill afford to lose any more personnel. ‘Come on, let’s get moving.’ She stood up. Best to keep people busy and distracted, and not let them think about this revelation too much.

‘Wait,’ said Rhone, nodding towards the screen.

There was an image there again, highly distorted and really creepy because the face there seemed to possess pink eyes.

‘Why . . . do I know you?’ whispered a voice that sent chills down her spine.

‘Who is this?’ she asked.

‘I am . . . I am the Owner.’ He faded away, and the screen turned white.

The voice sounded almost as if it hadn’t issued from a human being, so why, oh why did it seem so familiar to her?

Earth

Kelly Shimbaum nervously proffered a squat little ten-terabyte memory stick. Serene eyed it for a moment, then took it and set it down with an emphatic click on the desk beside her palmtop.

‘I asked you to tell me about the Alexander,’ she said quietly. ‘So tell me.’

Shimbaum gestured at the stick. ‘The Chairman . . .’ he began, then realized his danger and changed that. ‘Messina liked me to make a video presentation of the latest status update.’

Serene glanced towards one wall of the office, which presently looked just like a huge window offering a view across the extensive and lush gardens surrounding the house. The entire wall was in fact a high-resolution screen on which she could view the presentation Shimbaum had handed her. She contemplated the screen for a long moment then shifted her gaze along the adjacent wall to a short column on which perched a sculpture looking something like the by-blow of a hawk and a praying mantis rendered in heat-coloured iron.

‘That’s all very well, Kelly . . . I can call you Kelly?’ The nervous little man gave a stiff nod as Serene swung her gaze back to him. She supposed she could call him anything she liked and he would have to grin and like it. ‘Good. Now, what you have to understand, Kelly, is that until about twenty hours ago I wasn’t even aware of this project, so updating me on something I know nothing about might result in some confusion, you understand?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘So I repeat: tell me about the Alexander.’

‘Messina started the project twenty years ago,’ he began, his face now sheened with sweat, some of which had already soaked into his collar. ‘He wanted a big stick to wield out there because of the danger of the stations or Mars slipping out of his control.’

That made perfect sense. The problem with off-Earth environments was that only intelligent and highly trained personnel could work satisfactorily in them, and such people were not as easy to control as the average zero asset. Antares Base on Mars seemed a case in point that needed to be investigated: despite Serene ordering communications with the base to be opened once again, there had been no reply from its political staff. This could be due to solar interference, which was still high, but it had also been mooted that they, along with everyone else there, were now dead – which had been the intention. However, Hubble images showed the base still powered up and some signs of activity about it. Perhaps the radio transmitter had been destroyed during Political Officer Ricard’s thinning-out of the population? Serene shook her head in irritation and got back to the point.

‘How come so few in the Committee knew about this project?’ She did not know who had known about it, only that she hadn’t.

‘I didn’t question his instructions.’

Serene repressed her irritation at that response and continued, ‘So, after twenty years . . . how far along are you? What are the Alexander’s capabilities, and how big is it?’

‘The Alexander is the first ever space battleship. It was built around the engine taken from Mars Traveller IV.’ He paused, then added, ‘Documentation detailing the smelting of that engine on Argus was falsified.’

‘Do go on.’

‘The ship is two kilometres long, and four hundred metres in diameter at its widest point. Eight further fusion engines fixed in rings of four at two points along its body enable it to turn very quickly. It’s carrying seven hundred tactical atomic cruise missiles, with yields ranging from one kiloton to one megaton. These can be launched by its railgun or can launch under their own power from its ports. That same railgun is also supplied with case-hardened iron slugs that can be accelerated beyond scramjet missile speeds to deliver a cold yield of nearly half a kiloton. Additionally it possesses twelve antimissile lasers and a not-yet functional long-range maser. The crew complement is one hundred, with quarters for two thousand vacuum-penetration troops, and below the main bridge turret are Messina’s extensive quarters – currently being fitted out.’

‘Of course,’ said Serene, feeling as if her guts were trying to crawl out through her throat. Such power. ‘So it is ready to fly?’

He shook his head. ‘Unfortunately not, ma’am. Messina wanted to take it to Argus Station with him, after that place was seized, but its construction scaffolds are still in place and all internal systems have yet to be connected up and tested.’

Serene just stared at him. His tone had turned slightly patronizing for a moment – the superior technical director of the Alexander Project having to apprise a mere politician of physical engineering realities. She picked up the memory stick, touched a control on her chair arm, and a panel in the desk’s surface slid aside to reveal various ports and controls. She inserted the stick and routed its contents to her screen wall.

‘It seems odd to me that construction scaffolds remain in place when all that remains to be done is internal systems work.’ She gestured to two bamboo seats on either side of an occasional table set against one wall of the room. ‘You can now take a seat while I watch your status report.’

He walked over woodenly, slightly more afraid than when he had first entered the room. Perhaps he was remembering that she was a physicist by training, who had then branched out into nanotechnology, long before her distaste of the political inefficiencies all around her had driven her into a new career. What he didn’t know was that she had already obtained information over and above what he was currently presenting her with, because she had her own source on the Alexander itself.

The presentation was as glossy and as slick as she expected. The video of the Alexander in its station seemed grainier, less impressive, less real than a science-fiction CGI. However, noticing someone space-walking on the station gave her more of a sense of its scale and she began to know this was for real.

The narrative wasn’t delivered by the technical director, but by someone obviously recruited for his assured verbal delivery, but the words had certainly been carefully drafted by Shimbaum himself. Serene easily read the subtext and quickly confirmed much of what her source had told her. There was absolutely no reason for the construction scaffold still to be in place; it was in fact a hindrance to systems testing and the impending engine and weapons testing. She opened her palmtop and rescanned various reports she had read during the scramjet flight here to Italy. So long as the ship remained confined within that station, Shimbaum retained his power-base. Meanwhile, the highly trained crewmen and Captain Scotonis were obliged to sit on their hands or repeat virtual weapons drills and emergency procedures.

The presentation ended, with various credits – listing names she would be sure to have investigated. She gestured to the space immediately before her desk and Shimbaum headed back over to stand like a naughty pupil before his headmistress.

‘The rather extreme reduction in Earth’s population,’ she said, ‘has freed up many resources, Kelly. Yet still our population is too high, and the one resource we have in excess is people.’ She gazed down at the controls exposed in the desk before her. Among them lay a miniature screen which, when tapped with her forefinger, displayed a simple menu selection.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said, jerking his head slightly so that a droplet of sweat fell from his nose onto the floor.

Serene gazed down at the spot where it had fallen. The white carpet was one of those that rotated its fibres into combs in the underlay, cleaning out all dust, dirt and spillages, which were then conveyed away through a network of microtubules. She returned her gaze to his face.

‘Earth requires vengeance,’ she said, ‘and it requires the genetic database and samples currently aboard Argus Station. What it doesn’t require is little empire builders like you undermining the efficiency of its projects so as to retain personal power and status.’

‘I’ve done the best I can. The Chairman has been more than pleased with my—’

‘Not good enough,’ she interrupted, touching her finger to one menu selection and sitting back.

Atop its short pillar, the sculpture opened out its two scythe-like wings and fantail before it launched, the wings blurring into motion with a sound like a clapped-out petrol engine starting. It rose to a hover even as Shimbaum turned towards it, his mouth dropping open. The razorbird unfolded two chicken limbs below, each terminating in a long glass hook. Then, the sound of it turning to a high, ear-piercing whine, it shot towards the terrified man.

‘I—’ he managed, then the thing was on him with a noise like a hatchet chopping into a watermelon. He staggered as it clattered away from him and then turned smoothly to head back to its perch. Blood gouted from his neck, from his nose, and from the widening line dividing his head from forehead to chin. His skull fell in half as he collapsed, pumping blood across the self-cleaning carpet.

‘Sack,’ instructed Serene through her fone, ‘in here now.’

Her personal bodyguard was through the door in a moment, gazing down at the corpse on the floor with something approaching disappointment. She eyed him for a second, suddenly attracted by the sheer physical presence of the big man, but then, knowing the ultimate reason behind the sexual frisson she was feeling, she dismissed it – at least for now.

‘Take that mess away,’ she said. Eyeing the spatters of blood on her desk and the long spray of red up one wall, she added, ‘Oh, and get some of the cleaning staff in here, too.’

A team of four house staff arrived to wipe down her desk and clean the spray off the wall, then bag up and cart off Shimbaum’s remains, by which time the pool of blood had been reduced to a pinkish stain by the self-cleaning carpet. Meanwhile Serene manipulated further controls on the desk, opening a communications link through the screen wall and, just as the staff were about to depart, the person she wanted to speak to was gazing at her from the screen.

‘Captain Scotonis,’ she said, smiling. ‘You are now in charge of the entire Alexander Project. I want that ship commissioned within . . .’ she paused to recheck some statistics, ‘. . . within four mouths. Don’t let me down.’

Scotonis, a heavy-set Asian with narrow moustache and tuft of hair just below his bottom lip, lowered his gaze for a second, doubtless studying the bloodstain on the carpet. He had been in com long enough to have witnessed Shimbaum going into the body bag.

‘Certainly, ma’am. We’ll be ready for you.’

The bloodstain was completely gone by the time Serene began studying a report concerning effluent pollution of the American Great Lakes, gathering statistics on the remaining population surrounding them – in what had once been the state of Michigan – and considering what degree of thinning-out there might be required.

Argus

Hannah’s surgery seemed just another place in his head, it being easy, if he allowed it, for his focus to become unstuck from time. If he allowed the waves of weariness assailing him to triumph, if he released his rigid control for just a second, he could just as easily be talking to Rhine in his laboratory, or walking towards the ruination caused by the nuclear blast at Inspectorate HQ London, or even lying again in that crate that had conveyed him to the Calais incinerator. Only a firm intellectual knowledge of his position in time allowed him to keep hold of things. Only sheer strength of will kept him together. But this was just part of his malaise, for his sense of self had no location, and the physically real was no more immediate than some processing space either in his damaged skull, that brain tissue in a container in the clean-room adjoining Hannah’s laboratory, or some silicon within the station itself.

Saul opened his eyes but, because of the bullet damage to his visual cortex, his body was blind. Closing his eyes did not shut down vision; only stopping the program he was running through surrounding cams could do that. His perception of this body of his was no more than that possessed by the spidergun presently waiting in a corridor outside. Yet, he did feel weary, and sleep – which he had forgone for so long – beckoned to him.

‘Shall I sleep?’ he asked himself, not sure if he had spoken the words out loud, and as if his physical being was making an appeal to some other.

The coldly functional part of him opined that sleep might be a good idea, since it would help with the healing of this physical body and the brain it contained. So he began flicking over mental switches, allowing that purely human function to take over; parts of his mind comfortably sinking into a place where he could release control, relinquishing . . . everything. Then, on the border of oblivion, he felt a sudden panic, because the whole process seemed to be going into cascade. This was coma, so how could he wake up again? He was allowing himself to slide into normal human sleep without a chemical timer, without the neural safeguards to bring him out again, and he now seemed unable to stop the process.

He fought to stay conscious, but found the only way to retain some grip on the conscious world was by driving down mental partitions; separating away parts of his mind both here and in the container in Hannah’s clean-room. He fought to retain control and realized, very quickly, that his complete self could not do so. Only a part of him could do that – just one of those partitions. But to what end? What was the best course to follow?

Seemingly without volition, he found himself gazing through a single cam into Jasper Rhine’s laboratory. The man was working on a schematic of some massive engine, something Saul seemed to recognize almost at once. Here it was, a design loosely based on the theorized Alcubierre warp drive. Saul instantly copied the schematic to his mind, lost himself in its possibilities, nearly dismissed it because of its physical simplicity, but then knew that it was right.

Approved.

It went into the system queue, but there was something missing, something else needed. He visualized Argus Station’s present non-conjunction class route towards Mars. He felt himself fading as he encompassed it, the effort to stay conscious a Sisyphean labour. He riffled through astronomical maps and surveys and at last found what he wanted, then sent his instruction to the station’s steering thrusters and to the Traveller VI engine. The core of Argus Station would be, albeit briefly in astronomical terms, returning to its original home.

Must see this through . . .

Who could he trust?

Hannah . . . He managed to utter, just that one word through her fone.

But she was powerless without him, unless . . . His instruction spread virally, leaping from robotic mind to robotic mind within the station. Further panic then as that viral spread also included odd semi-organic minds in HUD. But the panic faded, as did Saul.

Then he was gone, mostly.

As she headed back towards her laboratory, Hannah tried to dismiss her growing feeling of panic while recognizing that it was the real thing, the certainty that things were getting out of control and not just one of her panic attacks. She should have stayed with Saul; she should have monitored him more closely. But events seemed to be conspiring against her. First that damned implant virus, then Rhine’s demand for attention. Then that call from him – just her name – and now no coherent response from him.

‘Saul?’ she tried again, through her fone, and again got a strange muttering response. Had his physical body died and sent his secondary neural tissue into shock? It seemed highly likely. The monitor in her laboratory showed a general lack of coherence of the synaptic firings in that secondary tissue. It seemed to have descended into a fugue, a dream state.

She reached the corridor leading to her laboratory and noted the spidergun dutifully on station, turning one sensor limb to observe her. It then abruptly pointed two limbs at her – behaviour she hadn’t seen before, unless the robot was assessing a threat. She halted. Was Saul looking at her through those sensors? That seemed unlikely to her now. Instead, the thing was just continuing to run on his programming: a new kind of life set in motion by him before . . . no, she must not think like that.

‘Hannah,’ called Brigitta from the other end of the corridor, as she and her sister came hurrying in response to Hannah’s earlier summons.

The spidergun now turned towards them, and they halted. Then, after a moment, it decided none of them was a threat and it dropped its two raised limbs back to the floor and slowly closed itself up into a big steel fist. Still eyeing the weapon, the three women advanced cautiously to converge at the laboratory door.

‘Hey, it’s good they survived,’ said Brigitta, still eyeing the spidergun. She was talking about Mars.

Hannah paused, then decided to run with this, felt she needed a breathing space before entering her laboratory, then the surgery, and thus finding whatever it was she would find there. ‘There are some good minds out there,’ she replied, referring to Mars. ‘They would have known at once that they’d been abandoned and known that they couldn’t afford any political staff.’ Even as she spoke, she tried to accept the cold realism that must have been involved. Varalia Delex had stated quite simply that she had shot the political director. She had not appeared defensive or challenging – it was the same kind of unemotional murderousness Hannah had witnessed from Saul.

‘And that tangle communicator,’ Brigitta was obviously awed by the new technology, knowing that they stood in a moment of history. ‘We all know how that changes things.’

‘Something of an understatement, certainly,’ Hannah replied. ‘Rhine has proved again that he’s not the lunatic everyone supposed.’

‘There’s the other stuff he’s working on, too,’ interjected Angela, obviously impressed enough to break her usual silence.

‘Yes, there is,’ said Hannah, but her interest was now waning. She needed to go through that door. She didn’t want to talk about hypothetical space drives right now. The tangle communicator was one thing, mostly covered by quantum physics, but actually screwing with relativity on anything larger than the quantum scale seemed like fantasy. With some trepidation she reached out and palmed the reader beside the door, then ducked to accommodate the flash of a retinal scan. She entered, the twins following her, then headed straight for the clean lock leading into her surgery.

‘That communication with Mars was not why I got you here,’ she announced. ‘We may have trouble.’

Providence appeared to back her up right at that moment, as hollow booms echoed throughout the station. Brigitta stepped over to a console and called up station data.

‘The smelter plants just retracted,’ she said. ‘What the hell is he doing?’

Hannah held off on replying that his pulling in of those plants was probably no more than a nerve reaction, impulses from a severely disrupted or dying brain. But she still clung on to hope, and said nothing at all.

It seemed to take forever to strip off, shower and pull on some disposeralls, but finally she was inside the surgery gazing down at Saul. He still lay tubed and wired to the machines, and all the displays indicated that he was still alive. However, she walked over to him, held the back of her hand over his mouth, and felt the soft whisper of breath through her surgical gloves. She felt some relief, of course, but realized it could be false. He had run some sort of mental program in the hardware within his skull to control that autonomic function. The program would continue running even if the rest of his organic brain was dead. Checking pupil response was useless, since most of his visual cortex lay in a kidney dish in her laboratory fridge. Pinching him was pointless too, since it seemed he had shut down his sensitivity to pain just to enable himself to function.

‘What’s going on, Hannah?’ asked Brigitta, through the surgery intercom.

‘I’m getting nothing from him,’ Hannah replied. ‘No response.’ She took hold of his shoulder and shook him. ‘Saul?’ No reaction: in fact his body was locked rigid. She turned on her fone and spoke his name again: ‘Saul?’ All that came through was that odd muttering sound, as if from a distant spectre in some haunted house.

‘This is the trouble you were talking about?’ Brigitta asked.

‘It is.’

Saul had been shot and was now in a coma – she dared not think any other way – so who was now in charge? Obviously he wasn’t capable of making decisions. The debates and the demands for proof of Saul’s competence would soon begin, and Hannah reckoned the division into power bases and the infighting would surely ensue. Doubtless there would be those who wanted the station turned round and heading back to Earth immediately . . . and then there would be blood in the air supply.

‘Is he dead?’ asked Brigitta.

Hannah gazed down at the figure on the bed, then abruptly staggered and had to reach out to steady herself against the bed. A moment of disorientation ensued and she wondered if she had been pushing herself too hard, then she saw that the two sisters had also been put off balance, Angela righting herself with a hand pressed against the partition glass.

‘Steering thrusters,’ said Brigitta, looking puzzled. ‘So he’s not dead, is he?’

‘No,’ said Hannah. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Can he die?’ asked Angela. She rarely spoke, this Saberhagen twin – but when she did it was directly to the point.

Earth

The monorail journey to Rome had been fast and comfortable, and Serene had hated it. Despite the line being bordered by a no-man’s-land packed with readerguns and genetically modified mastiffs, despite the escort of aero gunships and the elevated security all down the length of Italy, it just didn’t feel safe. When the train ran at ground level, it could not help but be overlooked by sprawl arcologies or government tower blocks, many of which were empty of life, admittedly, but contained just too much ground for her security teams to cover, and too much space in which a sniper could hide. And when the train track ran above these, on pillars a kilometre high, she felt even more exposed. Just one missile and it would all be over for her.

‘I’ll be taking an aero back,’ she told Clay huffily. ‘And I’ll be flying it myself.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he replied obediently.

The Centre for Advanced Medicine – established sixty years ago in the Vatican City by Pope Michael the Last, as Govnet media had dubbed him – had grown until it occupied the City entire. Of course, it had been necessary to move out a lot of art treasures to accommodate it, whereupon they had ended up spread across the world, decorating the homes of those delegates who had been overseeing the slow dismantling of the Roman Catholic Church. Serene stepped through a door held open for her by Sack, and into a corridor whose modern appearance gave no hint of the ancient stonework surrounding it. Her entourage, excepting Clay, remained in the reception room as instructed.

‘So bring me up to speed,’ she instructed as she strode ahead. She was, of course, already completely up to speed, but she had found that pretending ignorance tended to reveal any underlying agenda on the part of whoever was answering her enquiry.

‘We had to recruit more “volunteers”,’ he told her. ‘Two of the original seven died under surgery, and another three died a few hours after they woke up. They just shut themselves down and there was nothing we could do about it.’

‘Why did they do that?’

‘Apparently, in their elevated state, they saw no purpose in continuing to exist.’

‘But now you have replaced them and have seven ready for me who do see a purpose in continuing to exist?’

‘Apparently – though we do have safeguards,’ Clay told her, as they finally reached the door at the end of the long corridor. ‘We’ve surgically denied them control over their own nervous systems, immobilized them, and have them working under inducer. If they disobey, or try to take control of more than we allow them, like trying to access readerguns or robots, we can shut them down in a second.’

The door opened into what had been, until a few weeks previously, an amphitheatre in which modern surgical techniques could be demonstrated to an audience of students. Much of the seating had now been torn out to make way for computer equipment, and power cables and optics were routed all around the area like lianas growing on the wreck of an ancient civilization. A circle of seven couches occupied the centre of the amphitheatre – all facing inwards. At the centre of these stood a column, scaled with screens and surmounted by an inducer array. Various technicians were working in the immediate area, one of whom, Serene noted, was giving a couched figure a sponge bath.

‘But how will they perform, should Alan Saul launch another attack against us?’ Serene asked, as she made her way down towards them. ‘They might choose that moment to self-destruct.’

‘Conditioning,’ Clay replied. ‘The biological interfaces in their skulls are highly advanced, and when they melded with their comlife elements they were completely distanced from the real world. However, disconnected as they are from any influence over their nervous systems, they can’t shut anything down, and agony has a way of bringing them back down to earth. It will take maybe a further three or four weeks, but by the end of that time they’ll be utterly unable to disobey.’

Finally reaching the floor of the amphitheatre, Serene walked over to stand beside the pillar and looked around at the seven lying on the couches. All of them were naked, five of them men and two women. They had been electro-depilated for reasons of hygiene, and the scars on their skulls had healed into a cross-hatching of white lines, but the scars on other parts of their bodies were new. Optical plugs in their skulls trailed cables linked to free-standing servers. Other optics ran from their torsos to various machines attached to the sides of their individual couches. As Serene understood it, only the cables leading from their heads were required for them to access Govnet – any radio option being denied them – while the other optics extending from their bodies were for control over their nervous systems. They could not now shut down their own hearts, nor could they suppress their pain response.

‘So Alan Saul has hardware in his head just like these.’ She gestured at them dismissively.

‘Unfortunately not,’ said Clay.

‘Explain,’ she instructed.

‘The biological interfaces and internal computers we are using here are the product of Hannah Neumann’s research undertaken two years ago. The database of her recent research was trashed, we think by Saul himself, and all physical results of it were either destroyed when IHQ London was nuked, or were stolen by Salem Smith when he worked there, before taking on the directorship of Argus Station.’

‘So how much more advanced than this is the stuff in Saul’s head?’

Clay gazed at her expressionlessly. ‘As far as I can gather, by having access to Messina’s private files you would know that better than me, ma’am.’

He knew what she knew, so she wouldn’t catch him out in any half-truths or outright lies. She nodded soberly to herself, then turned abruptly as a woman lying on one of the couches began to shriek repetitively. Serene had heard that sound before, knew the rhythm of the agony an inducer supplied. She glanced back to Clay, who had his fingers up against his fone.

‘She recognized you,’ he explained after a moment, ‘and tried to gain access to the readerguns outside, for when we leave here.’

‘An assassination attempt?’ Serene swung back to look at the woman as her screams dropped in register to a steady groaning. ‘Have her killed and replaced.’

‘No, ma’am,’ said Clay. ‘She was completely aware that she had no chance of success, but was hoping for precisely the reaction you have given. It was a suicide attempt.’

Serene grunted in contempt and turned back towards the stairs. ‘Okay, ensure she stays alive, then. Now show me the rest.’

Serene did not like having to use these ‘comlifers’, as they had been dubbed, but they were a precaution she needed to take. Clay was correct: she did know more about ‘the stuff in Saul’s head’. One year and four months ago, the erstwhile Chairman decided that the bio-interfaces Neumann had developed were sufficiently advanced for installation in himself and in his core delegates, so had them transported to Argus Station. Those interfaces were much in advance of what was being used here now. However, Neumann had continued working towards producing something of an order of magnitude yet more advanced; something Messina had decided he wanted just for himself. But he wasn’t quick enough. Inspectorate HQ London was destroyed and Argus taken over before he could get his hands on the new interface.

It had taken Serene a while to piece things together from various reports. The forensic investigation of the slaughter at IHQ London, before the nuke was detonated, detailed how an exec called Avram Coran had removed a crate of physical objects from Hannah Neumann’s laboratory. Yet that same Avram Coran had apparently died in an aero accident over the English Channel some thirty-six hours earlier, just after he had visited a gene bank whose computer systems were trashed shortly after his visit. A stolen All Health trailer bus had been seized, and a forensic investigation revealed evidence that Hannah Neumann had been inside it and had used the sophisticated surgery therein. Someone else had been there too – someone whose genetic fingerprint just could not be identified.

Serene very much suspected that the genetic fingerprint was Alan Saul’s, and that right now he had some of the most advanced bioware ever developed sitting inside his head.