All Fall Down (35 page)

           
“Weeeeell. There's good news and bad news. The good news is, there'll be an Ortema tube so frictionless behind Fall, snaking around the gas giant, and going straight into the gullet of the wormhole, that you'll be able to travel faster than light down it. There'll be a balance in the system somewhere, probably between the two stars. It means you could be out of the system after leaving the atmosphere within ten minutes. But you wouldn't want to be there because of the solar flare leaking into it. But you might want to go to the outer edges of the solar system, because the bad news is that physics becomes pretty angry everywhere else, trying to conserve energy. Entropy becomes very pissed, Commander. Angular momentum takes the brunt, and torsional stresses and shear stresses.” The fairy was tracing lines through Fall, along its orbital path, from the gas giant to the stars, until the solar system was a mess of intersecting paths, equations, angles and symbols. “The, ah, net effect, is that Fall is ripped apart. Kaboom! And it seems it's happened once before,” the fairy flew into the dust cloud, “because I would guess that all this used to be a planet.”

           
The heartbeat in Win's chest competed with the music pumping through the room and the rush of blood through his ears.

           
“Oh shit.”

There was purpose to the door. Its design wasn't anything special, there were no embellishments, no patterning or reliefs. It was its difference from its surroundings that set it apart. Air ducts, sewage pipes, steam lines, bio-cabling and other features that allowed the Colony to provide a habitable environment were the dominant flora of the Colony's bowels. The security door stood out for its plainness. There were similar doors in the Colony and millions similar in Habitats, cities, towns, buildings, colonies across the Settled Quarters. Here though, amongst the forest of tangled pipes, it was out of place. Too flat, too simple, too smooth, too untouched by a bend, grease, drip, valve or warning sign.

           
Colonies like these had safe rooms, emergency command centres and retreat wings in case a section of the Colony became uninhabitable. For the occasional person who visited them, the door suggested no secrets. The difference for the MI team was that they'd tried to visit with the Colony AI's avatar, which had been blocked by a definite, deliberate barrier. Not a glitch, though it could be viewed as that, and certainly the AI did not realise anything was amiss; not a glitch, but a wall, a rotating door which spat the AI back out on the side it entered, none the wiser.

           
Kate held her wrist communicator to the door and played Masjid's voice recording. A light turned from red to green. She heard thumps, the sound of bolts being drawn back into rock and metal supports. Glancing up and down the corridor, she pursed her lips, grabbed the door handle and pulled.

           
She opened up a dark void. The dim light of the corridor crept around the door frame, dusting a pastel light on the two maglev cars, which looked like fossilised eggs in the dusky light, carved out of the dark mystery of the tunnel. Kate paused with one foot upon the raised door frame, a hand on the door. Maybe there were sensors, alarms. She wondered if she should close the door or leave it open; she had not given a copy of Masjid's voice recording to either Win or Djembe. Behind her lay the technology and pipes and fluids and dials and holes and familiarity of the corridor, of the Colony, of a mission profile, of safety. Somewhere beyond the two vehicles metres in front, one of which she must surely take, lay an unknown destination. Her future, society's future. Insecurity.

           
Kate knew that whatever she did at this door, her life would change. If she closed the door and turned back, she would never know what lay beyond. If she entered, who knew what would happen? She licked her lips. This was it. At the end of this fault, this tunnel, lay the twenty three. Hybrid alien life. Nothing would ever be the same. Although reinforcements were on their way, most probably in a
Dominator
-class cruiser, with an Admiral presence, she still felt nervous. She was the commanding force, now, here, at this door to darkness, to a rupture in the cultural and social fabric of humanity. She was nervous. What if there was nothing there? What if Doctor Currie had been delirious, crazed? She had already sent the coded message. She gazed, searched, squinted into the darkness, the deep black with its mysteries so close, so hidden. She stepped over the door frame.

           
Breathed out.

           
Committed.

           
In the car, travelling, there was only darkness, no sense of time or terrain passing outside, only her own sense of momentum. An impelling motion. Finally a dim light returned, carpeting the tunnel end. The car stopped. She went to a great door forced into the rock wall. She felt more than heard its massive security bolts thump into the rock when she played Masjid's voice again. Despite its size and weight, the door swung open easily. Kate peered into what appeared to be an airlock. There were streaks on the floor, which might have been anything. Dried ash, old blood, alien ichor. Grease. Inside the airlock was another security device connected to another door. This one had a key pad. Doctor Currie's voice had taken her this far. But what now? Was the code the final thing he'd tried to tell her before unconsciousness had taken him? She tried the door: locked, of course.

           
Something must be here, though. The two maglev cars weren't enough for a general evacuation. It could be a command bunker for emergencies, but again, there was only capacity for four people in the cars. No, this had to be where the specimens were kept. Under hundreds of metres of rock, far from the avatared crowd.

           
Was she missing something? She tried to think, but her poor sleep and the holo of Doctor Maki being killed by an alien clouded her. Had Doctor Currie said anything else which might help? She pressed a few keys, tapped out genetic codes, chemical formulae from Compound X.

           
Her frustration grew. She'd taken a considerable risk coming here. If Daoud needed her, she wouldn't show up on the Colony's tracking system or on any ship manifests. He would know. She wanted to make this trip as quick as possible, and find out as much as possible. To get so far, and fail at the final door! Kate punched a few more keys, trying coordinates, names. Nothing worked. The keypad's light remained an impassable red. The door, hermetically sealed, dull and metallic, as monolithic as the door behind her, gave no clues to what lay beyond, impassive and all too solid.

           
She pushed it just in case. Nothing.

           
She'd been out of the Colony's sensor net for just over twenty minutes. She banged her fist against the keypad in frustration. Deciding to go, to cut her losses and return to the Colony, she turned towards the other door at her back, to the dark tunnel.

           
Daoud stood in the doorway.

           
Kate started. Her jaw set. Always take a risk, she thought. Never the safe option. “I know what you
 
have here. The twenty three.”

           
Daoud seemed to be looking in both her eyes at once, “You really don't.”

           
“How long did you think you could keep this secret?”
           
“A lot longer than you imagine, General.”

           
It suddenly dawned on Kate that she was trapped. The only way out was back through the door, into the tunnel, and into the car. Past Daoud, who stood in her way.

           
“I'm invoking Article Two of the Colony Defence Code.”

           
“A coup, General?”

           
“I'm assuming military command of this facility in the interests of galactic security.”

           
Daoud stepped towards her.

           
“I'm recording all this. I suggest you stay where you are.”

           
Daoud shook his head, a small movement, a slow blink, like a father watching a child try and fail and try again to do something beyond its size, its ability, its years. He lunged at Kate. She dropped her hips, bent her knees, put her weight on her back foot, ready to fight, guard up. As she watched him approaching her, he seemed curiously singled out of the scene, as if reality had folded around his outline, so he floated like oil on water, the background. The dim tunnel beyond took on a curious flatness, two-dimensional. In jagged motion, not quite the slow motion she'd heard kicked-in during fights, but not quite at normal speed, she saw him feint to his right.

           
Kate fell back, cleared some space between them. Her heel touched the door behind her, as solid as her heartbeat in her chest. She felt it thump, thump, thump, a pounding that seemed to vibrate through her feet, to her head, into the air around her.

           
Daoud pulled back.

           
“Step away from the door, Kate. It opens away from you. Your foot is pushing it. You may fall.”

           
Kate kept her guard up. What was he saying? Blood crowded through her thoughts, black sparkles confused her vision.

           
“General Leland? I'm not attacking you. See,” he held out his hands, palms upward, “I only leaned past you to open the door.”

           
Kate pushed her foot backward, felt the door give slightly.

           
“Take a couple of deep breaths. Slowly in.” As he spoke, Daoud stepped backward, slowly, turning so he was edge on, his back resting against the wall. There was the door to the tunnel beyond, a clear passage. She breathed and slowly dropped her guard, pulled her feet in, stood upright, eyes fixed once more on Daoud. He dipped his head, motioned to her right with a hand, “May I? I'd like to introduce you to a world you've always dreamed about.”

           
Finally she found her voice, strained through a sieve of tension, “I meant what I said. I am assuming full military command of this facility.”

           
“Yes. Let me show you what you now command. If you'll allow me?” He walked slowly across her, once again blocking the passage to the outward door, moved around to her right, leaned carefully past and pushed open the mighty inner door at her back. Quietly, in a whisper that filled the airlock and reverberated all the way down the dark tunnel she'd travelled, “Welcome to your future.”

           
Kate turned around, her eyes wide, still accustomed to the dark, to the claustrophobic airlock, the lightless passage beyond, adrenalin coursing through her, and faced a bright, blinding light.

Lights hung in the air around Djembe's head. The holo room was bare of decoration, of projection. Grid lines divided his attention. He had Win's ship on permanent monitor. He still had no trace on the avatar that had visited Win. There was no trace of
 
hidden ships or AIs. He was getting desperate. And the biologicals were still elusive. It was time to use the cat program he'd selected earlier.

           
“Computer, let's try something different. Give me a grid on the floor, four cells by four cells, each cell with a separate environment. I want a viewing platform above, where I can see everything. Generate environments randomly, populate each with one of the Jonahs for consequence mapping purposes.

           
“Please take all of the mission data gathered and add it to this session, with full access to the Colony as per usual. Then ensure the data access point is a one-way funnel. If anything gets in here, make sure it stays in here, is isolated and cleaned and presented to me to see if it can go back into the Colony's datacloud.”

           
The floor fell away from Djembe. It flowered, a carpet of colour bursting in each cell; painted tiles, a mosaic of worlds. From where he sat on his viewing platform, he could see the walls between each cell. And on each inner wall, he could see the cell's environment stretch to its unique horizon line, to infinity in at least one. He was going to use an evolutionary approach, breed solutions, let the Jonahverse, as Jonah Kingsland called it, find its own solutions.