Debatable Space (42 page)

“I’m getting a signal,” says Jamie. He hacks into the Kornbluth Beacon’s communications system.

I clamber to my feet, spitting blood, then look at the vid screen. A frightened-looking Commander is speaking to camera. He
tells his masters on Earth: “SOS, SOS! We… have an infection. The ship is infested with…” Fear contorts his face.
“. . . with Bugs. Request immediate… sanitising… measures.”

There’s a devastating silence for two and a half seconds. Then Jamie and Brandon roar with laughter.

“Nice one, Cap’n.”

“Pathetic, but nice.”

“I
mean
, they may be dumb, but they’ll never fall for the same trick twice,” Brandon adds, tauntingly.

On our vidscreen, we see that the Commander of the Beacon Ship is visibly sweating. He scratches his stomach. He blows out
his cheeks, like a trumpeter. His eyes goggle.

Then, as we watch him on the vidscreen, he explodes. A billion black swarming insects come flying out of his eyes and nose
and ears and explode also from his belly button, and burst too out of his anus and down his urethra, until eventually Bugs
are bursting through individual pores in the Commander’s skin.

There is another stunned silence on our bridge, but this one lasts longer. Jamie flips a switch and we change cameras to see
the Beacon from a distance.

“What the hell is happening?” asks Brandon.

“Thissss is very very bad,” Alby says.

“Oh fuck,” says Jamie.

“Wait. Watch,” I tell them. We wait. We watch.

Nothing happens.

Nothing happens, a bit more.

Then suddenly, a shoal of missiles appears on our vidscreen. They head towards the Beacon. The Earth Humans have ordered the
destruction of their own Beacon.

The Beacon’s lights go out. Its defence are shut off. The missiles soar in unopposed, and explode in a series of sequential
holocausts.

The Beacon is totally destroyed, in a glorious blaze of light. My heart leaps with joy and fear.

“Get me Illyria,” I say.

Jamie hacks into the communication system of the Illyrian Beacon. The Commander is a raven-haired woman staring straight at
camera. “Request immediate assistance!” she yells.

And then she opens her mouth and a black swarming tongue emerges.

Alby screams, a long howling sibilant scream. Kalen hisses with horror, and I am close enough to see the skin on the back
of her neck standing up.

Brandon sticks his tongue out, and sneaks a look, in case it is infested and black and he is about to die. Lena is looking
at me, with a strange look in her eyes.

“The Bugs can travel along the Quantum Beacons,” says Jamie, marvelling.

“It makes sense,” adds Brandon.

“They’re Quantum Bugs!” Jamie says.

“They can go anywhere. Everywhere!”

“Shit.”

“Fuck.”

“Bad news for the bad guys.”

“Bad news for us too. ’Cause we’re, ah,” says Jamie,

“Doomed!” says Brandon.

“Every single one of us. Every human being. All doomed!”

“Doomed!”

“D—”

“Shut up,” hisses Kalen.

“Give me a live map,” I say.

The screen changes to a map of all human-occupied space, with stars represented by brightly shining lights which are exactly
calibrated to the magnitude of the star.

The Quantum Beacons are represented by small silver spheres. The Kornbluth Beacon however is a black shell, no longer functional.

And as we watch, the silver sphere representing Illyria suddenly…

. . . flashes wildly, like a star that has gone supernova. Then fades to black.

“They’ve auto-destructed the Beacon,” says Jamie.

“Can they do that?” asks Brandon.

“Previously, they couldn’t,” says Jamie snidely. “Now, it seems, they can.”

“Quick learners. Oops, there goes another.”

I recognise the coordinates. The backup Beacon at Cambria has just been blown up. Once more, my people are free.

The live map flares and flashes and fizzes. One by one, then in swarms of flashing lights, all the Beacons in occupied space
are auto-destroyed. All of them. Five thousand or more. Because the Earth Humans and their computers know that the only way
to safeguard Earth is to quarantine it from all possible infection by Bugs travelling along the Quantum pathways. By destroying
all the Quantum Beacons, the Earth Humans have made themselves safe – and have isolated themselves from the rest of the Universe.

Another flash. Another Beacon explodes.

Eventually, not a single Beacon light on the map is lit.

“Okay,” says Kalen. “Now what do we do?”

“Nothing,” says Brandon. “Bugs occupy all human space. Game over.”

“I really like Bugs,” says Jamie. “I’d like Bugs to be my friends. Please? Be nice to me, Bugs?”

Harry emits a strange sound, half groan, half whimper. It is the first time he has ever shown fear. Kalen’s downy fur is standing
up, her eyes seem to glitter. Brandon slumps down in his chair. Jamie is looking down, unable to meet anyone’s eye. Alby lights
the room with a warm flickering glow, a chiaroscuro that matches the mood of sombre dread.

But Lena is looking at me. She knows what has really happened.

“Come with me,” Lena says.

I nod, slowly. I feel a surge of lust, and I know she feels it too.

We leave the bridge, we abandon our ashen-faced friends, who are all convinced they will die in the next few minutes from
Bug infestation.

Lena and I enter my cabin and the lights dim and we strip swiftly.

We screw like devils. And as I start to come, my spirits soar. I have done it! I have won!

“Aaah!” says Lena, and explodes beneath me.

“Now explain,” Lena says, after our passionate burst of sexual energy that has left me shuddering and glowing in equal measure.

So I do.

It began with a game of chess. I met a Grand Master in a bar on the planet Slayer in the binary star system called Hell Dimension.
He taught me how to play the game, how to hold interlocking strategies in my head. And how to sacrifice pawns, in order to
check the king.

Then I studied military philosophy and absorbed one key principle: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

And then…

His name was Martin. He was a collector of antique toys. He carried in his luggage a virtual model of the solar system complete
with orbiting spaceships, which he used to show to anyone who would stay to watch. He was also a world authority on words
beginning with “w”, a unique speciality. He loved prime numbers, and could count in them up to well beyond the million mark.
He was a sad, lonely, emotionally dysfunctional man.

And he was also a nano-scientist. One of the greatest and most gifted men in his field. Though he was, tragically, unemployable,
because people found him so damned annoying.

I met him on a holiday. We struck up a conversation on the tour bus. I was in a chatty mood. He started talking about toy
spaceships, which initially I found rather interesting. He told me how he once built a replica Sputnik, and sent it into orbit
with a bioengineered monkey the size of a wristwatch. Then he told me about all the other toy spaceships he had built in his
miniature laboratory. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, each of which he had named. And as his accounts continued, interminably,
I realised I had settled into a state of ennui and despair which prevented me from ending the conversation, or even ignoring
it. Occasionally I tried to interrupt, but to little avail. I made a vow: never again talk to strangers.

I soon shook him off, and enjoyed my holiday, a three-month stop on a subtropical planet called Bask. I went scuba-diving.
Hang-gliding. I was alone, between partners, I was drinking too much. I used to spend a lot of time at the bar. After my second
bottle or so, Martin used to sidle up to me and talk as if we were friends. The first few times, I told him to fuck off, but
that made no difference. Whatever I said, he waited there patiently, with a hangdog look. “Kick me”, “Abuse me”, his expression
said. “Prove what a man you are.” My heart wasn’t really in it.

So every night, we sat and he talked to me, and I thought about other things. I was in a strange state at this time. I was
haunted by morbid memories of my dead family. I had a crippling case of musician’s block – I couldn’t play, or sing, sometimes
I even forgot entire melodies. I was more than a little psychotic, to be honest. Part of me enjoyed his company, which shows
how far gone I was.

One night I went to a different bar in a different hotel, and got drunk there. After several hours, Martin sidled up to me.
I blurrily deduced he had been to every hotel bar in town looking for me. I made my excuses and tried to leave but he followed
me. We ended up in another bar. I really was very drunk indeed at that point. Or maybe just mad. I forget. Strange times.

I wasn’t sure if Martin actually liked me. Or if he was in love with me. Or if he hated me. But he saw in me a kindred spirit.
He saw the faraway look in my eyes, he recognised the spacer tattoos. He found me exotic.

One day he started telling me about his work, with infinitesimally tiny nanoware. He was, he avowed, a world authority on
this, too (as well, of course, as the letter “w”). But he couldn’t get work in his field of expertise. He didn’t know why
not. It made no sense! He was a world authority after all! Some people are… etc. etc. You get the idea. It went on and
on like that. On and on. But after a while, something clicked in my head.

That’s when I had the idea.

And the idea grew and grew in my mind, until it possessed my very being. I made my resolve. A binding vow. This was to be
it. My life’s work. My only purpose.

And so Martin became my friend. I extended my holiday. I plied him with drinks. I became his best pal. And when his own holiday
came to an end, I offered to pay for him to stay. So that the two of us, we two buddies, could spend some time together. He
had nowhere else to go, so of course he said yes. And we stayed, trapped in that exotic dungeon.

When he started getting restless, I provided him with beautiful women to keep him company in his room. He rarely had sex,
he just talked to them. It seared inches off their souls, but they were plucky girls and they did all I asked of them.

And so, for six months, then another six months, then for another whole year, I spent every evening sitting and talking with
Martin and listening to his appalling stories and his ghastly views on life. He despised other species, other races, women,
gays, tall men, muscular men, any man with a larger penis than his, which was most men, stupid people, clever people, and
people who read books.

He hated his mother who, he claimed, was a sour and begrudging bitch because of bungled fertility treatments that had led
to her having eleven psychologically mutated and retarded children – before, that is,
he
came along. And he hated his father who was weak and immature and who used to say things like “Life is for living!”, and
“Let’s have some fun!” instead of wallowing in despair, as any sensible sentient being should do.

He berated his eleven feeble-minded brothers and sisters, and argued vociferously that they should have been drowned at birth.
He was cruel to the prostitutes I bought for him. He belittled them and sapped their confidence, but he could rarely sustain
an erection for more than a few seconds (as the girls graphically used to explain to me). And, most of all, he hated his five
wives, who he had married specifically and exclusively with the intention of wrecking them as human beings. And in this, he
had succeeded magnificently: three wives committed suicide, one (the fourth wife, Jenny) died of anorexia, and one (the fifth
wife) died in a car crash after taking a massive overdose of antidepressants washed down with whisky.

For two appalling years I spent every single day and every single night with this monster of a man, boosting his ego and agreeing
with his dumb opinions. It was, I can honestly say, a living hell. But it was worth it. Because, in return for my company,
and as payback for the fabulous wealth I lavished upon him, he built me a self-replicating robot microbe.

The microbe’s nanochip brain was, at my specific instructions, attuned to my cerebral cortex wave patterns. I could control
its movements by my thoughts; I could make it move and act and react. I could also instruct it to reproduce. Drawing its energies
from curled dimensional space, and sucking up micro-particles from seemingly empty air, it could generate a hundred versions
of itself, then a thousand, then a million.

I told no one of my plan, or my intentions. But – after finally shaking off Martin, changing planets eleven times and changing
my identity twice – I trained by myself on a deserted barren planet for six months, until I could control the microbes’ tiniest
movement with my thoughts. I could make the microbes swarm and form shapes. And I could program them to eat through metal
and plastic, and even flesh.

I had built my own Doppelganger Bug – a robot replica of the real organic Bug. If I’d had real Bugs, maybe I’d have used them;
luckily, that wasn’t an option. Because, of course,
all the Bugs in the Universe are still trapped in one crowded sector of space
. The containing shells of Debatable Space actually do work.

But now, thanks to Martin, I had the perfect secret weapon. The pseudo-Bug.

However, I did have one major problem. I possessed a weapon so terrifying I was afraid to use it. What if my robot Bugs got
out of control? What if they became as big a danger as the real thing? So I decided to keep them as a last resort. We would
endeavour, first of all, to win the hard way.

So I embarked upon Plan A: an attempt to destroy the Corporation’s dictatorial rule through force of arms and raw courage.
It was a magnificent venture, and I honestly thought it might succeed. If there were two entire planets in inhabited space
free of the Cheo’s tyranny, then a resistance army might slowly build. And in a hundred years, others would follow me to continue
my work. I did not, of course, expect to live myself. I merely wanted to inspire, to chip away at a single portion of the
Cheo’s empire, so that future generations might have a chance to do what I could not.