“You know it, man, that’s why you come to me. You might talk like you the King of Kulu’s brother, but here it’s me who’s got
the juice. And stink this, I don’t trust you, rat runner.”
“With this much firepower behind me, think how much I care. Start fixing things.”
“Fuck you. A strike like this is gonna take a few days to set up, man.”
“You have forty-eight hours; then I want a docking bay number flashing in front of me. If not, I will smite you from the face
of the world.”
“Will you cut that freaky crap—”
Quinn cancelled the circuit and threw his head back laughing.
• • •
It had only taken a few hours for the screen of red cloud to engulf the sky above Exnall. The tenuous beginnings of the early
morning had been supplanted by billowing masses of solid vapour sweeping up from the south. Thunder arrived in accompaniment,
bass grumbles which seemed to circle and swoop around the town like jittery birds. There was no telling where the sun was
now, but its light still seemed to slip through the covering to illuminate the streets in natural tones.
Moyo marched down Maingreen on his mission to find some kind of transport for Stephanie’s children. The more he thought about
the prospect, the happier it made him. She was right, as always, it did give him something positive to do. And no, he didn’t
want to spend eternity in Exnall.
He passed the doughnut cafÉ and the baseball game in the park, oblivious to either. If he searched with his mind, he could
perceive the buildings around him like foggy shadows; all space was dark, while matter was amended to a translucent white
gauze. Individual objects were hard to distinguish, and small ones almost impossible; but he thought he stood a good chance
of recognizing something like a bus.
The street sweeper was busy again. A man in a grey jacket and cloth cap, pushing his broom in front of him as he made his
way slowly along the pavement. Every day he had appeared. He never did anything else but sweep the pavements, never talked
to anybody, never responded to any attempts at conversation.
Moyo was slowly coming to learn that not all of Exnall’s possessed were adapting readily to their new circumstances. Some,
like the sports nuts and cafÉ owners were obsessively filling every moment of their day with activity no matter how spurious,
while others would amble around in a listless mockery of their earlier existence. That assessment put his own labours perilously
close to the apathetic ones.
A dense collection of shadows at the rear of one of the larger stores caught his attention. When he walked around the building
there was a long van parked in the loading bay. It had suffered some damage in the riot; struck by white fire the front two
tyres had melted into puddles of sticky plastic, the navy-blue bodywork was blackened, and in some places cracked open, the
windshield was smashed. But it was certainly big enough.
He stared at the first tyre, visualizing it whole and functional. Not an illusion, but how the solid matter should actually
be structured. The hardened plastic puddle started to flow, amoebic buds swelling up to engulf the naked hub.
“Yo there, man. Having some fun?”
Moyo had been so involved with the tyre he hadn’t noticed the man approaching. At first sight the man looked as if he’d grown
a dark brown mane; his beard came down to his waist as did the corkscrew locks of his luxuriant hair. A pair of tiny amber
hexagonal glasses which were almost curtained by tresses seemed perversely prominent. The flares of his purple velvet trousers
were embellished with tiny silver bells which chimed with each step, not in tune, but certainly in keeping.
“Not exactly. Is this your van?”
“Hey, property is theft, man.”
“Property is what?”
“Theft. You’re like stealing from what rightfully belongs to all people. That van is an inanimate object. Unless you’re into
a metallic version of Gaia—which personally I’m not. However, just because it’s inert that doesn’t mean we can abuse its intrinsic
value which is the ability to carry cats where they want to go.”
“Cats? I just want it to ferry some children out of here.”
“Yeah well okay that’s cool, too. But what I like mean is that it’s like community property. It was built by people, so all
people should share it equally.”
“It was built by cybersystems.”
“Oh, no, that’s real heavy-duty corporate shit. Man, they’ve got into your skull big-time. Here, take a toot, Mr Suit, take
yourself out of yourself.” He held out a fat reefer which was already alight and sending out a pungent sweetness.
“No thanks.”
“Takes your mind to other realms.”
“I’ve just got back from one, thank you. I have no intention of returning.”
“Yeah, right, dig your point. The baddest trip of them all.”
Moyo couldn’t quite make out what he was confronting. The man didn’t seem like one of the apathetic ones. On the other hand,
he obviously hadn’t managed to adapt very well. Perhaps he came from a pre-technology age, where education was minimal and
superstition ruled everyone’s life.
“What era do you come from?”
“Ho! The greatest one there ever was. I dug the era of peace, when we were busy fighting the establishment for all the freedom
you cats just take for granted. Heck, I was at Woodstock, man. Can you dig that?”
“Um, I’m very happy for you. So you don’t mind if I rebuild the van, then?”
“Rebuild? What are you, some kind of anti-anarchist?”
“I’m someone who’s got children to look after. Unless you’d rather they were tortured by Ekelund’s people.”
The man’s body bucked as if he’d been struck a physical blow; his arms wove in strange jerky motions in front of him. Moyo
didn’t think it was a dance.
“I hate your hostility groove, but I dig your motivation. That’s cool. A square cat like you is probably having a lot of trouble
adjusting to this situation.”
Moyo’s jaw dropped open.
“I’m
having trouble?”
“Thought so. So like what kind of magical mystery tour are you planning here?”
“We’re taking the children out of Exnall. Stephanie wants to drive up to the border.”
“Oh, man!” A wide smile prised apart layers of hair. “That is so beautiful. The border again. We’re gonna roll this old bus
out and set the draft dodgers free in the land of Mounties and maple leaves. What a trip! Thank you, man, thank you.” He walked
over to the battered van and stroked its front wing lovingly. A small wavy rainbow appeared on the bodywork where his hand
had touched it.
“What do you mean, we?”
“Come on, man, lighten up. You don’t think you can handle that kind of scene alone, do you? The military mind is full of low
cunning; you wouldn’t get a mile out of town without them throwing up roadblocks across the freeway. Maybe a few of us would
fall down some stairs while we’re being arrested, too. It happens, man, all of the frigging time. The federal pigs don’t give
a shit about our rights. But I’ve been here before, I know how to go sneaky on them.”
“You think she’d try and stop us?”
“Who, man?”
“Ekelund.”
“Hell, who knows. Chicks like that have got it real hard up their asses. Between you and me, I think they’re maybe like aliens.
You know, UFO people from Venus. But I can see you’re sceptical right now, I won’t press it. So how many kids are you planning
on squirrelling away in here?”
“About seven or eight, so far.”
Without quite understanding how it happened, Moyo found a friendly arm around his shoulder, guiding him to the van’s cab.
“That’s worthy. I can dig that. Now you just ease yourself up in the driver’s seat, or whatever the hell they call it these
days, and dream up some controls we can all handle. Once you’ve done that and I’ve given us a cool disguise we can hit the
road.”
Twinkles of light were shooting all over the van’s bodywork, sketching glowing lines of colour in the damaged composite. It
was as if a flock of acidhead fairies had been let loose with spray cans. Moyo wanted to complain at this ideological hijack,
but couldn’t manage to think up the correct words. He took the easy option, and sat in the driver’s seat like he’d been told.
• • •
There was a gap between the deuterium tank’s cryostat ducts and the power feed sub-module which routed superconductor cables
to nearby patterning nodes, a narrow crevice amid the boxy, nultherm foam-coated machinery. In the schematics which the flight
computer provided, it was listed as a crawlway.
For pigmy acrobats, maybe, Erick thought irascibly. He certainly couldn’t wear any protective gear over the SII suit. Sharp
corners and bloated tubes jabbed and squeezed against him every time he moved. It couldn’t be doing the medical nanonic packages
around his arm and torso any good. Thankfully the black silicon covering his skin was an effective insulator, otherwise he
would have been either roasted, frozen, or electrocuted long ago.
Along with Madeleine he’d been burrowing through the innards of the
Villeneuve’s Revenge
for nine hours now. It was nasty, tiring, stressful work. With his body in the state it was he had to keep a constant check
on his physiological status. He was also running a mild relaxant program in primary mode; claustrophobia was a problem prowling
wolfishly around the fringes of conscious thought.
The crawlway ended a metre short of the hull, opening out into a hexagonal metallic cave bordered with stress structure girders,
themselves spiralled by cables. Erick squirmed out into this cramped space and drew a sharp breath of relief, more psychological
than practical given he was breathing through a respirator tube. He switched his collar sensors to scan around, seeing the
fuselage plate behind his head. It appeared perfectly normal, a smooth, slightly curving silicon surface, dark grey with red
code strips printed around the edges.
With his legs still jammed in the crawlway, Erick pulled the sensor block from the straps securing it to his side. It contained
six separate scanner pads which he slipped out and started fixing to the hull plate and girders.
“Plate 3-25-D is clean,” he datavised to AndrÉ eight minutes later. “No electromagnetic activity; and it’s solid, too, no
density anomalies.”
“Very good, Erick. 5-12-D is next.”
“How is Madeleine doing?”
“She is methodical. Between you, eighteen per cent of the possible locations have now been eliminated.”
Erick cursed. The four of them had carefully gone over the starship’s schematics, working out every possible section of the
hull were the device could have been hidden by Monterey’s maintenance crews. With Pryor on board observing the bridge, they
were limited to two crew searching at any one time, the two supposed to be asleep. It was going to take a long time to cover
all the possible areas.
“I still say it’s probably a combat wasp. That would be the easiest method.”
“
Oui
, but we won’t know for sure until you have eliminated all the other options. Who can tell with such treacherous bastards?”
“Great. How long to Arnstadt?”
“We have another five jumps to go. Two of the other escort ships are manoeuvring sluggishly, which gives us additional time.
They are probably searching as we are. You have perhaps another fifteen hours, twenty at the outside.”
Not enough, Erick knew, not nearly enough. They were going to have to go to Arnstadt. After that he didn’t like to think what
the Organization would require from them. Nothing as simple as escort duties, that was for certain.
“All right, Captain, I’m on my way to 5-12-D.”
• • •
The chamber which the Saldanas used for their Privy Council meetings was called the Fountain Room, a white marble octagon
with a gold and opal mosaic ceiling. Imposing three-metre statues stood around the walls, sculpted from a dark rock which
had been cut out of Nova Kong, depicting a toga-clad orator in various inspirational poses. The Fountain Room wasn’t as grandiose
as some of the state function rooms added to the Apollo Palace in later centuries, but it had been built by Gerald Saldana
soon after his coronation for use as his cabinet room. The continuity of power was unbroken since then; the Saldanas were
nothing if not respectful for the traditions of their own history.
There were forty-five members of the current Privy Council, including the Princes and Princesses who ruled the Principalities;
which meant a full meeting was held only every eighteen months. Normally the King summoned twenty to twenty-five people to
advise him, over half of which were nearly always family. Today there were just six sitting around the Fountain Room’s triangular
mahogany table with its inlaid crowned phoenix. It was the war cabinet, chaired by Alastair II himself, with the Duke of Salion
on his left, followed by Lord Kelman Mountjoy, the Foreign Office Minister; on the King’s right-hand side was the Prime Minister,
Lady Phillipa Oshin; Admiral Lavaquar, the defence chief; and Prince Howard, president of Kulu Corporation. No aides or equerries
were present.
Alastair II picked up a small gavel and tapped the much-battered silver bell on the table in front of him. “The fifth meeting
of this cabinet committee is now in order. I trust everyone has accessed the latest reports concerning Arnstadt?”
There was a subdued round of acknowledgement from the cabinet.
“Very well. Admiral, your assessment?”
“Bloody worrying, Your Majesty. As you know interstellar conquest has always been regarded as completely impractical. Today’s
navies exist to protect civil starships from piracy and deter potential aggressors from committing random or sneak assaults.
If anyone strikes at us for political or economic reasons they damn well know we will strike back harder. But actually subduing
an entire system’s population was not a concept any of our strategy groups even considered until today. Ethnically streamed
populations are too diverse, you simply cannot impose a different culture on a defeated indigenous people, it will never be
accepted, and you lose the peace trying to enforce it. QED, conquests are impractical. Possession has changed that. All Confederation
worlds are vulnerable to it, even Kulu. Though had the Capone Organization fleet jumped into orbit here, they would have lost.”