Housechimps scampered about, yammering frantically at each other. Their control routines had been wiped clean by Lewis’s relentless
purge of the multiplicity and all its subsidiaries, and long-suppressed simian tribal traits were surfacing. Fast, violent
fights broke out among them as they instinctively fled into the thicker spinneys growing in the park.
The remaining sub-sentient servitor creatures, all eighteen separate species necessary to complement the island’s static organs,
either froze motionless or performed their last assigned task over and over again.
Unnoticed amid the bedlam and horror, Laton’s corpse was quietly dissolving into protoplasmic soup. Edenist biotechnicians
examining the wreckage of Jantrit had called the process Laton used to doctor the habitat’s neural strata a proteanic virus.
In fact, it was far more complex than that. Affinity-programmable organic molecules was a term one researcher used.
Deeply disturbed by the technology and its implications, the Jovian consensus released little further information. Research
continued, a classified high-priority project, which concentrated on developing methods to warn existing habitats of the sub-nanonic
weapon being deployed against them, and a means of making future habitats (and people) immune. Progress over the intervening
forty years was slow but satisfactory.
Of course, unknown to the Edenists, at the same time Laton was equally busy on Lalonde refining his process, and meeting with
considerable success.
In its passive state, the updated proteanic virus masqueraded as inert organelles within his body cells—no matter what their
nature, from liver to blood corpuscles, muscles to hair. When his last affinity command activated them, each organelle released
a batch of plasmids (small, artificially synthesized DNA loops) and a considerable quantity of transcription factors, proteins
capable of switching genes on or off. Once the plasmids had been inserted into the cell’s DNA, mitosis began, forcing the
cells to reproduce by division. Transcription factors switched off the human DNA completely, as well as an entire series of
the new plasmids, leaving them to be carried passively while just one type of plasmid was activated to designate the function
of the new cell. It was a drastic mutation. Hundreds of thousands of Laton’s cells were already dying, millions more were
killed by the induced mitosis; but over half fissioned successfully, turning into specialist diploid gametes.
They spilled out of the arms, legs, and collar of his onepiece ship-suit in a magenta sludge, draining away from stubborn
clusters of dead cells that retained their original pattern—kernels of lumpy organs, slender ribs, a rubbery dendritic knot
of veins. As they spread across the polyp they started to permeate the surface, slipping through microscopic gaps in the grainy
texture, seeping down towards the neural stratum four metres below. Pernik’s nutrient capillaries and axon conduits speeded
their passage.
Four hours later, when dawn was breaking over the condemned island, the majority of the gametes had reached the neural stratum.
Stage two of the proteanic virus was different. A gamete would penetrate a neural cell’s membrane and release the mission-specific
plasmid Laton had selected (he had four hundred to choose from). The plasmid was accompanied by a transcription factor which
would activate it.
Mitosis produced a neuron cell almost identical to the original it replaced. Once begun, the reproduction cycle was unstoppable;
new cells started to supplant old at an ever-increasing rate. A chain reaction of subtle modification began to ripple out
from the rim of the island. It went on for a considerable time.
Admiral Kolhammer was almost correct about Time Universe beating the Edenists to inform the Confederation about Laton. Several
dozen star systems heard the news from the company first. Governments were put in an embarrassing position of knowing less
than Time Universe until the voidhawks carrying diplomatic fleks from Admiral Aleksandrovich and the Confederation Assembly
President arrived, clarifying the situation.
Naturally enough, public perception was focused almost exclusively on Laton: the threat from the past risen like the devil’s
own phoenix. They wanted to know what was being done to track him down and exterminate him. They were quite vociferous about
it.
Presidents, kings, and dictators alike had to release statements assuring their anxious citizens that every resource was being
deployed to locate him.
Considerably less attention was drawn to the apparent persona sequestration of Lalonde’s population. Graeme Nicholson hadn’t
placed much emphasis on the effect, keeping it at the rumour level. It wasn’t until much later that news company science editors
began to puzzle about the cost-effectiveness of sequestrating an entire backward colony world, and question exactly what had
happened in the Quallheim Counties. Laton’s presence blinded them much as it did everyone else. He was on Lalonde, therefore
Lalonde’s uprising problem was instigated by him. QED.
Privately, governments were extremely worried by the possibility of an undetectable energy virus that could strike at people
without warning. Dr Gilmore’s brief preliminary report on Jacqueline Couteur was not released for general public access.
Naval reserve officers were called in, warships were placed on combat alert and brought up to full flight-readiness status.
Laton gave governments the excuse to instigate rigorous screening procedures for visiting starships. Customs and Immigration
officers were told to be especially vigilant for any electronic warfare nanonics.
There was also an unprecedented degree of cooperation between star systems’ national groupings to ensure that the warning
reached everybody and was taken seriously. Within a day of a flek courier voidhawk arriving, even the smallest, most distant
asteroid settlement was informed and urged to take precautions.
Within five days of Admiral Lalwani dispatching the voidhawks, the entire Confederation had been told, with just a few notable
exceptions. Most prominent of these were starships in transit.
Oenone
raced in towards Atlantis at three gees. There were only sixty cases of Norfolk Tears left clamped into its lower hull cargo
bay. Since leaving Norfolk, Syrinx had flown to Auckland, a four-hundred-light-year trip. Norfolk Tears increased in price
in direct proportion to the distance from Norfolk, and Auckland was one of the richer planets in its sector of the Confederation.
She had sold sixty per cent of her cargo to a planetary retailer, and another thirty percent to a family merchant enterprise
in one of the system’s Edenist habitats. It was the first shipment the Auckland system had seen for fifteen months, and the
price it raised had been appropriately phenomenal. They had already paid off the Jovian Bank loan and made a respectable profit.
Now she was back to honour her deal with Eysk’s family.
She looked through Oenone’s sensor blisters at the planet as they descended into equatorial orbit. Cool blues and sharp whites
jumbled together in random splash patterns. Memories played below her surface thoughts, kindled by the sight of the infinite
ocean. Mosul’s smiling face.
We’re not going to stay very long, are we?
Oenone
asked plaintively.
Why?
she teased.
Don’t you like talking to the islands? They make a change from habitats.
You know why.
You stayed in Norfolk orbit for over a week.
I had lots of voidhawks to talk to. There are only fifteen here.
Don’t worry. We won’t stay long. Just enough time to unload the Norfolk Tears, and for me to see Mosul.
I like him.
Thank you for the vote of confidence. While we’re here, would you ask the islands to see if anyone has a cargo they need shipping
outsystem.
I’ll start now.
Can you give me a link through to Mosul first, please.
It is midnight on Pernik. The personality says Mosul is unobtainable at the moment.
Oh dear. I wonder what her name is?
Syrinx.
Yes?
Pernik is wrong.
What do you mean? Mosul is available?
No, I mean the personality is different, altered. There is no joy in its thoughts.
Syrinx opened her eyes and stared round the contoured walls of her cabin. Familiar trinkets she had picked up on her voyages
were lined up in glass-fronted alcoves. Her eyes found the fifteen-centimetre chunk of whalebone carved into a squatting Eskimo
which Mosul had given her. But
Oenone
’s unease was too unsettling for the crude statue to register the way it usually did, bringing forth a warm recollection intrinsic
to both of them.
Perhaps there has been an accident on one of the fishing boats,
she suggested.
Then the grief should be shared, as is proper.
Yes.
Pernik hides behind a facade of correctness.
Is Eysk available?
One moment.
Syrinx felt the voidhawk’s mind reach out, then Eysk was merging his thoughts with her. Still the same old kindhearted family
elder, with that deeper layer of toughness that made him such a shrewd businessman.
Syrinx,
he exclaimed happily,
we were wondering where you had got to.
Did you think I’d skipped out on you?
Me?
He projected mock horror.
Not at all. The arrest warrant we had drawn up was a mere precaution.
She laughed.
I’ve brought your cases of Norfolk Tears.
How many?
Sixty.
Ah well, my family will be through that lot before the week’s out. Are you coming down tonight?
Yes, if it’s not too late.
Not at all. I’ll have some servitors lined up to unload your flyer by the time you get down.
Fine. Is everything all right on the island?
There was a moment’s hesitation, a thought-flash of bemused incomprehension.
Yes. Thank you for asking. Is Mosul there?
Sex, that’s all you young people think of. We learn by example. Is he there?
Yes. But I don’t think Clio will welcome an interruption right now.
Is she very pretty?
Yes.
He generated an image of a girl’s grinning face, half hidden by long dark hair.
She’s bright, too. They are on the point of formalizing the arrangement.
I’m happy for him, for both of them.
Thank you. Don’t tell Mosul I said so, but she’ll make a splendid addition to the family.
That’s nice. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.
I’ll look forward to it. Just remember, Mosul learnt everything he knows from me.
As if I could forget.
She broke the contact.
Well?
Oenone
asked.
I don’t know. Nothing I could put my finger on, but he was definitely stilted.
Shall I ask the other islands?
Goodness, no. I’ll find out what’s troubling them once I’m down. Mosul will tell me, he owes me that much.
Hooked into the flyer’s sensors, Syrinx couldn’t be sure, but Pernik appeared aged somehow. Admittedly it was darkest night,
but the towers had a shabby look, almost mouldered. They put her in mind of Earth’s Empire State Building, now carefully preserved
in its own dome at the centre of the New York arcology. Structurally sound, but unable to throw off the greying weight of
centuries.
Thirty-two years old, and you see everything in such jaded terms, she told herself wearily. Pity that Mosul had formed a permanent
attachment, though. He would have made a good father.
She clucked her tongue in self-admonition. But then her mother had conceived two children by the time she was thirty.
There’s always Ruben,
Oenone
suggested.
It wouldn’t be fair to him, not even to ask. He’d feel obligated to say yes. I would like you to have a child. You are feeling
incomplete. It upsets you. I don’t like that.
I am not feeling incomplete!
You haven’t even prepared any zygotes for my children yet. You should think about these things.
Oh goodness. You’re starting to sound like Mother.
I don’t know how to lie.
Rubbish!
Not to you. And it was you who was thinking of Mosul in that light.
Yes.
Syrinx stopped trying to argue, it was stupidly blinkered.
What would I do without you?
Oenone
wrapped her thoughts with a loving embrace, and for a moment Syrinx imagined the flyer’s ion field had leaked inside the
cabin, filling it with golden haze.
They landed on one of the pads in the commercial section. The electrophorescent-cell ridge around the metal grid shone with
a strong pink radiance. Few of the accommodation tower windows were lit.
It looks like they’re in mourning,
Syrinx said to Oxley in singular engagement mode as she walked down the aluminium stair. They had flown down alone so that
the little flyer could carry more cargo, but it was still going to take three trips to bring all sixty cases down.
Yes.
He glanced about, frowning.
There aren’t many fishing boats in dock, either.
Eysk and Mosul walked out of the shadows beyond the ridge.