“You’re mad!” Lewis shouted recklessly. “You’re fucking mad!”
Laton became pitying. “Not mad, but very human. Even in this hiatus state I have emotions. And I have weaknesses. One of them
is the desire for revenge. But then you know all about that, don’t you, Lewis? Revenge is a prime motivator; glands or no
glands, chemical fury or otherwise. You burnt for it in the empty beyond, revenge on the living for the crime of living.
“Well, now I shall have my revenge for the agonies and degradations you so joyfully submitted my kind to. My kind being the
Edenists. For I am one. At the end. Flawed, but proud of them, their silly pride and honour. They are a basically peaceful
people, those of Pernik more than most, and you delighted in shattering their sanity. You also destroyed my children, and
you revelled in it, Lewis.”
“I still do! I hope it fucking hurt you watching! I hope the memory makes you scream at nights. I want you in pain, you shit,
I want you weeping. If I’m part of your memories then you won’t ever be able to forget, I won’t let you.”
“Oh, Lewis, haven’t you learnt anything yet?” Laton drew his own knife from a scabbard he brought into existence. Its wickedly
thrumming power-blade was half a metre long. “I’m going to free Syrinx and warn the Atlantean consensus as to the exact nature
of the threat they face. However, the remaining possessed do present a slight problem. So I need you to overcome them, Lewis.
I shall consume you, completely.”
“Never! I won’t help.”
Laton took a pace forwards. “It isn’t a question of choice. Not on your part.”
Lewis tried to run. Even though he knew it was impossible. The concrete closed in, shrinking the warehouse to the size of
a tennis court, a room, a cube five metres across.
“I require control of the energistic spillover, Lewis. The power which comes from colliding continua. For that I must have
the you which is you. I must complete my possession.”
“No!” Lewis raised his arms as the blade came whistling down. Once again there was the dreadful grinding sound as bone was
pierced and fragmented. A flash of intolerable pain followed by the devastating numbness. His blood spilled onto the floor
in great spurts from his elbow stump.
“Goodbye, Lewis. It may be some time before we encounter one another again. But none the less I wish you luck in your search
for me.”
Lewis had collapsed twitching into a corner, soles of his boots slipping on his own blood. “Bastard,” he spat through white
lips. “Just do it. Get it over with and laugh, you shithead prick sucker.”
“Sorry, Lewis. But like I told you, I shall consume you in your entirety. It’s almost a vampiric process, really—though I
expect that particular irony is sadly lost on you. And in order for the transfer to work you must remain conscious for the
entire feast.” Laton gave him a lopsided, half-apologetic smile.
The true meaning of what the Edenist was saying finally sank in. Lewis started to scream. He was still screaming when Laton
picked up his severed arm and bit into it.
Pernik’s illumination returned to normality with eye-jarring suddenness. The accommodation towers blazed with diamond-blue
light from every window, winding pathways through the park were set out by orange fairy lanterns, circular landing pads glowed
hotly around the entire rim, the floating quays were like fluorescent roots radiating out into the opaque glassy water.
Oxley thought it looked quite magnificent. So cruelly treacherous, that a creation of such beauty could play host to the most
heinous evil.
Land immediately please, Oxley,
Laton said.
I don’t have much time. They are resisting me.
Land?
Oxley felt his throat snarl up as outrage vied with a shaky form of laugh.
Show me where you are, and I’ll come to you, Laton. I’ll be doing around Mach twenty when we embrace. Show yourself!
Don’t be a fool. I am Pernik now.
Where’s Syrinx?
She lives.
Oenone
will confirm that. But you must pick her up now, she requires urgent medical attention.
Oenone
?
He sent the querying thought lancing upwards, while at the back of his mind he was aware of Laton delivering a vast quantity
of information to the Atlantean consensus.
The voidhawk registered as a subdued jumble of thoughts. It had stopped its crazed descent; now it was rising laboriously
up out of the mesosphere, its distortion effect generating barely a tenth of a gee.
Oenone
, is she alive? Yes.
The emotional discharge in the voidhawk’s thought brought tears to his eyes.
Oxley,
Ruben called,
if there’s any chance… please.
OK.
He studied the island. Pinpricks of light were blooming and dying right across it, stars with a lifetime measurable in fractions
of a second. It looked quite magical, though he didn’t like to dwell too hard upon what their cause would be.
Consensus, should I go in?
Yes. No other spaceplanes can reach Pernik in time. Trust Laton.
That was it, the universe had finally gone totally insane.
Oh, shit. OK, I’m taking the flyer down.
Fires had taken hold in the central park when Oxley piloted the flyer down onto one of the pads. He could see a spaceplane
further along the row, wings retracted, lying on its side with its undercarriage struts sticking up in the air and its fuselage
cracked open around the midsection. Bodies were sprawled on the polyp around the base of the nearest accommodation tower;
most of them looked as though they had been caught in a firestorm, skin blackened, faces unrecognizable, clothes still smoking.
An explosion sounded in the distance, and a ball of orange flame rolled out of a window on the other side of the park.
They are learning,
Laton said impassively.
Grouped together they can ward off my energistic assaults. It won’t do them any good in the long run, of course.
Oxley’s nerves were raw edged. He still thought this was some giant trap. The steel-clad jaws would snap shut any second;
conversation might just be the trigger.
Where’s Syrinx?
Coming. Open the flyer airlock.
He felt the consensus balance his insecurities with an injection of urbane courage. Somehow he was giving the order to cut
the ion field and open the airlock.
Faint shouts and the drawn out screeching of metal under tremendous stress penetrated the cabin. Oxley sniffed the air. Mingled
with the brine was a frowsty putrescence which furred the roof of his mouth. With his hand clamped firmly over his nose he
made his way aft.
Someone was walking towards the flyer. A giant, three metres tall, hairless, naked skin a frail cream colour, virtually devoid
of facial features. It was holding a figure in its outstretched arms.
“Syrinx,” he gasped. He could feel
Oenone
pushing behind his eyes, desperate to see.
Three-quarters of her body was engulfed by green medical nanonic packages. But even that thick covering couldn’t disguise
the terrible damage inflicted on her limbs and torso.
The nanonic packages do not function well in this environment,
Laton said as the giant mounted the flyer’s airstairs.
Once you are airborne their efficiency will recover.
Who did this?
I do not know their names. But I assure you the bodies they possessed have been rendered nonfunctional.
Oxley backed into the cabin, too shaken to offer further comment. Laton must have loaded an order into the flight-control
processors, because the front passenger seat hinged open to form a flat couch. It was the one designed for transporting casualty
cases. Basic medical monitor and support equipment slid out from recesses in the cabin wall above it.
The giant laid Syrinx down gently, then stood, its head touching the cabin ceiling. Oxley wanted to rush over to her, but
all he could do was stare dumbly at the hulking titan. Its blank face crawled as though the skin was boiling. Laton looked
down at him.
“Go to the Sol system,” the simulacrum said. “There are superior medical facilities available there in any case. But the Jovian
consensus must be informed of the true nature of the threat these returning souls pose to the Confederation; indeed to this
whole section of the galaxy. That is your priority now.”
Oxley managed to jerk a nod. “What about you?”
“I will hold the possessed off until you leave Pernik. Then I will begin the great journey.” The big lips pressed together
in compassion. “If it is of any comfort, you may tell our kind I am now truly sorry for Jantrit. I was utterly and completely
wrong.”
“Yes.”
“I do not ask forgiveness, for it would not be in Edenism’s power to grant. But tell them also that I came good in the end.”
The face managed a small, clumsy smile. “That ought to set the cat among the pigeons.”
The giant turned and clumped out of the cabin. When it reached the top of the airlock stairs it lost all cohesion. A huge
gout of milky white liquid sloshed down onto the metal grid of the landing pad, splattering the flyer’s landing gear struts.
The flyer was five hundred kilometres from Pernik and travelling at Mach fifteen up through the ionosphere when the end came.
Laton waited until the diminutive craft was beyond any conceivable blast range, then used his all-pervasive control to release
every erg of chemical energy stored in the island’s cells simultaneously. It produced an explosion to rival an antimatter
planetbuster strike. Several of the tsunami which raced out from the epicentre were powerful enough to traverse the world.
It was a quiet evening in Harkey’s Bar. Terrance Smith’s bold little fleet had departed the previous day, taking with it a
good many regulars. The band audibly lacked enthusiasm, and only five couples were dancing on the floor. Gideon Kavanagh sat
at one table; the medical nanonic package preparing his stump for a clone graft was deftly covered by a loose-fitting purple
jacket. His companion was a slim twenty-five-year-old girl in a red cocktail dress who giggled a lot. A group of bored waitresses
stood at one end of the bar, talking among themselves.
Meyer didn’t mind the apathetic atmosphere for once. There were some nights when he really didn’t feel like maintaining the
expected image of combination raconteur, bon viveur, ace pilot, and sex demon—the qualities that independent starship captains
were supposed to possess in abundance. He was too old to be keeping up that kind of nonsense.
Leave it to the young ones like Joshua, he thought. Although with Joshua it was hardly an act.
Nor was it always an artificial pose for you,
Udat
said. Meyer watched one of the young waitresses swish past the end of the booth, an oriental with blonde hair whose long
black skirt was split up to her hips. He didn’t even feel remotely randy, just appreciative of the view.
Those days seem to be long gone,
he told the blackhawk with an irony that wasn’t entirely insincere.
Cherri Barnes was sitting in the booth with him; the two of them sharing a chilled bottle of imported white Valencay wine.
Now there was a woman he felt perfectly comfortable with. Smart, attractive, someone who didn’t feel compelled to talk into
any silences, a good crew member too; and they’d been to bed on several occasions over the years. No incompatibility there.
Her company lightens you,
Udat
proclaimed.
That makes me happy.
Oh, well, as long as you’re happy…
We need a flight. You are growing restless. I am eager to leave.
We could have gone to Lalonde.
I think not. Such missions do not sit well with you any more.
You’re right. Though Christ knows I would have liked a crack at that bastard Laton. But I suppose that’s something else best
left to Joshua and his ilk. Though what he wanted to go for after the money he pulled in on the Norfolk run beats me.
Perhaps he feels he has something to prove.
No. Not Joshua. There’s something odd going on there. And knowing Joshua, money is at the root of it. But no doubt we’ll hear
about it in due course. In the meantime the Lalonde mission has left a pleasing shortage of starships docked here. Finding
a charter should be relatively easy.
There were those Time Universe charters available. Claudia Dohan specifically wanted blackhawks to deliver the fleks of Graeme
Nicholson’s sensevise. Time was of the essence, she said.
Those charters were all rush and effort.
It would have been a challenge.
If I’d wanted my mother as a permanent companion rather than a blackhawk I would never have left home.
I am sorry. I have upset you.
No. It’s this Laton business. It has me worried. Fancy him turning up again after all this time.
The navy will find him.
Yeah. Sure.
“What are you two talking about?” Cherri asked. “Huh? Oh, sorry,” he grinned sheepishly. “It’s Laton, if you must know. Just
thinking of him running round free again…”
“You and fifty billion others.” She picked up one of the menu sheets. “Come on, let’s order. I’m starving.”
They chose a chicken dish with side salad, along with a second bottle of wine.
“The trouble is, where can you travel to that’s guaranteed safe?” Meyer said after the waitress departed. “Until the Confederation
Navy finds him, the interstellar cargo market is going to be very jumpy. Our insurance rates are going to go through the roof.”