He saw a couple more suspicious people drinking in solitude, then another three crammed around a table with sullen sly expressions.
I’m getting too paranoid.
“We have to concentrate on our mission,” he said. “If Kilifi isn’t enforcing its screening procedures properly, that’s their
problem. We can’t risk any sort of confrontation. Besides, if the possessed are wandering around this freely it must mean
their infiltration is quite advanced.”
Dahybi hunched his shoulders and played with his drink, trying not to look anxious. “There are navy ships docked here, and
most of the independent traders are combat-capable. If the asteroid falls, the possessed will get them.”
“I know.” Joshua met the node specialist’s stare, refusing to show weakness. “We cannot cause waves.”
“Sure, you said: Don’t draw attention to yourself, don’t talk to the natives, don’t fart loudly. What the hell are we doing
here, Joshua? Why are you so anxious to trace Meyer?”
“I need to talk to him.”
“Don’t you trust us?”
“Of course I do. And don’t try such cheap shots. You know I’ll tell all of you as soon as I can. For now, it’s best you don’t
know. You trust me, don’t you?”
Dahybi put his lips together in a tired grin. “Cheap shot.”
“Yeah.”
The waitress brought another round of drinks to their alcove. Joshua watched her legs as she wriggled away through the crowd.
A bit young for him, mid-teens. Louise’s age. The thought warmed him briefly. Then he saw she was wearing a red handkerchief
around her ankle. Jesus, I don’t know which is worse, the horrors of possession or the pathetic dreams of the Deadnights.
He’d received one hell of a shock the first time he accessed the recording from Valisk. Marie Skibbow possessed and luring
naive kids to their doom. She’d been a lovely girl, beautiful and smart, with thoughts as hard as carbotanium composite. If
she could be caught, anyone could. Lalonde strummed out far too many resonances.
“Captain,” Beaulieu warned.
Joshua saw Bunal approaching their alcove. He sat down and smiled. There wasn’t the slightest sign of nerves. But then as
Joshua had discovered while asking around his fellow captains, Bunal was overfamiliar with this kind of transaction.
“Good afternoon, Captain,” Bunal said pleasantly. “Have you managed to acquire your cargo yet?”
“Some of it,” Joshua said. “I’m hoping you were successful with the rest.”
“Indeed I was. Most of the information was quite simple to obtain. However, I am nothing if not assiduous in any freelance
work I undertake. I discovered that, sadly, what you actually need falls outside our original agreement.”
Dahybi gave the man a hateful glare. He always despised bent civil servants.
“And will cost… ?” Joshua inquired, unperturbed.
“An additional twenty thousand fuseodollars.” Bunal sounded sincerely regretful. “I apologize for the cost, but times are
hard at the moment. I have little work and a large family.”
“Of course.” Joshua held up his Jovian Bank credit disk.
Bunal was surprised by the young captain’s swift concession. It took him a moment to produce his own credit disk. Joshua shunted
the money over.
“You were right,” Bunal said. “The
Udat
did come to this star system. It docked at the Nyiru asteroid. Apparently its captain was hurt when they arrived, he spent
almost four days in hospital undergoing neural trauma treatment. When it was complete, they filed a flight plan for the Sol
system, and left.”
“Sol?” Joshua asked. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. However—and this is where the twenty thousand comes in—their passenger, Dr Alkad Mzu, didn’t go with them. She
hired an independent trader called the
Samaku
, and departed an hour later.”
“Flight plan?”
“Filed for a Dorado asteroid, Ayacucho. I even checked traffic control’s sensor data for the flight. They were definitely
aligned for Tunja when they jumped.”
Joshua resisted the impulse to swear. Ione was right, Mzu was running to the last remnants of her nation. She must be going
for the Alchemist. He flicked another glance at the girl in the red shirt, her head tipped back elegantly as she drank her
cocktail. Jesus, as if we don’t have enough problems right now. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure. You should also know, for no extra charge, that I’m not the only one to be asking these questions. There are
three access requests logged on the Civil Spaceflight Department computer for the same files. One request was made only twenty
minutes before mine.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“Bad news?”
“Interesting news,” Joshua grunted. He rose to his feet.
“If there is anything else I can obtain for you, Captain, please call.”
“Sure thing.” Joshua was already walking for the door, Dahybi and Beaulieu a couple of steps behind.
Before he reached the exit, people watching the AV pillar behind the bar were gasping in shock; agitated murmurs of conversation
rippled down the length of the room. Perfect strangers asking each other:
Did you access that?
the way they always did with momentous news.
Joshua focused on the AV pillar’s projection, allowing the hazy laserlight sparkle to form its picture behind his eyes. A
planet floated below him, its geography instantly familiar. No real continents or oceans, just winding seas and thousands
of medium-sized islands. Patches of glowing red cloud squatted over half of the islands, concentrated mainly in the tropic
zones—though on this world tropic was a relative term.
“… Confederation Navy frigate
LevÊque
confirmed that all inhabited islands on Norfolk have now been covered by the reality dysfunction cloud,” the news commentator
said. “All contact with the surface has been lost, and it must be assumed that the majority, if not all, of the population
has been possessed. Norfolk is a pastoral planet with few spaceplanes available to the local government; because of this no
attempt was made to evacuate any inhabitants to the navy squadron before the capital Norwich fell. A statement from Confederation
Navy headquarters at Trafalgar said that the
LevÊque
would remain in orbit to observe the situation, but no offensive action was being considered at this time. This brings to
seven the number of planets known to have been taken over by the possessed.”
“Oh, Jesus, Louise is down there.” The AV image broke up as he turned his head away from the pillar, seeing Louise running
over the grassy wolds in one of those ridiculous dresses, laughing over her shoulder at him. And Genevieve, too, that irritating
child who was either laughing or sulking. Marjorie, Grant (it would go worse for him, he would resist as long as possible),
Kenneth, and even that receptionist at Drayton’s Import. “Goddamnit. No!” I should have been there. I could have got her away.
“Joshua?” Dahybi asked in concern. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Did you catch that piece about Norfolk?”
“Yes.”
“She’s down there, Dahybi. I left her there.”
“Who?”
“Louise.”
“You didn’t leave her there, Joshua. It’s her home, it’s where she belongs.”
“Right.” Joshua’s neural nanonics were plotting a course from Narok to Norfolk. He didn’t remember requesting it.
“Come on, Captain,” Dahybi said. “We’ve got what we came for. Let’s go.”
Joshua looked at the woman in the red shirt again. She was staring at the AV pillar, abstract pastel streaks from the projection
glinting dully on her ebony cheeks. A delighted smile flourished on her lips.
Joshua hated her, her invincibility, the cool arrogance sitting among her enemies. Queen of the bitch demons come to taunt
him. Dahybi’s hand tightened around his arm.
“Okay, we’re gone.”
• • •
“Here we are, home at last,” Loren Skibbow said with a histrionic sigh. “Not that we can stay for long. They’ll tear Guyana
apart to find us now.”
The apartment was on the highest level of the biosphere’s habitation complex, where gravity was only eighty per cent standard.
The penthouse of some Kingdom aristocrat, presumably, furnished with dark active-contour furniture and large hand-painted
silk screens; every table and alcove shelf were littered with antiques.
Gerald felt it was a somewhat bizarre setting to wind up in considering the day’s events. “Are you creating this?” When they
lived in the arcology, Loren had always badgered him for what she termed a “grander” apartment.
She looked around with a rueful smile and shook her head. “No. My imagination isn’t up to anything so gaudy. This is Pou Mok’s
place.”
“The woman you’re possessing? The redhead?”
“That’s right.” Loren smiled and took a step towards him.
Gerald stiffened. Not that she needed any physical signs; his mind was foaming with fear and confusion. “Okay, Gerald, I won’t
touch you. Sit down, we have a lot to talk about. And this time I mean talk, not just you telling me what you’ve decided is
best for us.”
He flinched. Everything she did and said triggered memories. The unedited past seemed to have become his curse in life.
“How did you get here?” he asked. “What happened, Loren?”
“You saw the homestead, what that bastard Dexter and his Ivets did to us.” Her face paled. “To Paula.”
“I saw.”
“I tried, Gerald. Honestly, I tried to fight back. But it all happened so fast. They were crazy brutes; Dexter killed one
of his own just because the boy would slow them down. I wasn’t strong enough to stop it.”
“And I wasn’t there.”
“They’d have killed you, too.”
“At least…”
“No, Gerald. You would have died for nothing. I’m glad you escaped. This way you can help Marie.”
“How?”
“The possessed can be beaten. Individually, in any case. I’m not so sure about overall. But that’s for others to fight over,
planetary governments and the Confederation. You and I have to rescue our daughter, allow her to have her own life. No one
else will.”
“How?” This time it was a shout.
“The same way you were freed: zero-tau. We have to put her in zero-tau. The possessed can’t endure it.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re conscious the whole time. Zero-tau suspends normal energy wave functions, but our souls are still connected
to the beyond somehow, that makes us aware of time passing. But only time, nothing else. It is the ultimate sensory deprivation,
actually worse than the beyond. At least in the beyond souls have the memories of other souls to feed on, and some perception
of the real universe.”
“That’s why,” Gerald murmured. “I knew Kingsford Garrigan was scared.”
“Some can hold out longer than others, it depends on how strong their personality is. But in the end, everyone retreats from
the body they possess.”
“There is hope, then.”
“For Marie, yes. We can save her.”
“So that she can die.”
“Everybody dies, Gerald.”
“And goes on to suffer in the beyond.”
“I’m not sure. If it hadn’t been for you and Marie, I don’t think I would have remained with all the other souls.”
“I don’t understand.”
Loren gave him a hapless smile. “I was worried about the two of you, Gerald, I wanted to make sure you were all right. That’s
why I stayed.”
“Yes but… where else could you go?”
“I’m not certain that question applies. The beyond is strange, there are no separate places within it, not like this universe.”
“So how could you leave?”
“I wouldn’t leave it…” She fluttered her hands in exasperation as she struggled with the concept. “I just wouldn’t be in the
same part of it as the rest of them.”
“You said there were no different parts.”
“There aren’t.”
“So how—”
“I don’t pretend to understand, Gerald. But you can leave the others behind. The beyond isn’t necessarily the torment everyone
is making it out to be.”
Gerald studied the pale salmon carpet, shamed at being unable to look at his own wife. “And you came back for me.”
“No, Gerald.” Her voice hardened. “We might be husband and wife, but my love isn’t that blind. I came back principally for
Marie’s sake. If it had just been you, I don’t think I would have had the courage. I endured the other souls devouring my
memories for her sake. Did you know you can see out of the beyond? Just. I watched Marie, and that made the horror tolerable.
I hadn’t seen her since that day she walked out on us. I wanted to know she was alive and safe. It wasn’t easy; I almost abandoned
my vigil, then she was possessed. So I stayed, waiting for an opportunity to help, for someone close to you to be possessed.
And here I am.”
“Yes. Here you are. Who is Pou Mok? I thought the Principality had defeated the possessed, confined them all to Mortonridge.”
“They have, according to the news reports. But the three who arrived here on the
Ekwan
with you got to Pou Mok before they left the asteroid. They were smart choosing her; she supplies illegal stimulant programs
to the personnel up here, among other things. That’s why she can afford this place. It also means she’s not included on any
file of Guyana’s inhabitants, so she never got hauled in to be tested like everyone else. The idea was that even if the three
from the
Ekwan
got caught on the planet, Pou Mok’s possessor would be safe to begin the process all over again. In theory, she was the perfect
provocateur to leave behind. Unfortunately for the three of them, I was the one who came forwards from the beyond. I don’t
care about their goals, I’m only interested in Marie.”
“Was I wrong taking her to Lalonde?” Gerald asked remotely. “I thought I was doing the best possible thing for her, for all
of you.”
“You were. Earth’s dying; the arcologies are old, worn out. There’s nothing there for people like us; if we’d stayed, Marie
and Paula would have had lives no different from us, or our parents, or any of our ancestors for the last ten generations.
You broke the cycle for us, Gerald. We had the chance to take pride in what our grandchildren would become.”
“What grandchildren?” He knew he was going to start crying any minute. “Paula’s dead; Marie hated our home so much she ran
away at the first opportunity.”