Evening's Empires (Quiet War 3) (6 page)

Hari had little interest in or understanding of the ideas that were being tested, but he discovered that he liked solving the challenges of assembling and deploying the experimental apparatus.
Using the ship’s big maker to fabricate some components, sourcing the rest from the ship’s stores, he constructed probes and detectors designed by one of Dr Gagarian’s
collaborators, the partner of the Pilot family’s broker at Tannhauser Gate, and spent hours in vacuum and freefall, setting up experimental rigs on the hull or at the ends of tow lines
kilometres long. It was difficult and sometimes dangerous work, but Dr Gagarian was sparing with his praise and, although he spent many hours discussing his theories and results with Aakash, he had
no time for Hari’s naive questions.

‘There’s no point trying to explain my work to someone who knows so little that he doesn’t even know what he doesn’t know,’ he once said.

According to Aakash, Dr Gagarian was attempting to solve two important problems. First, why the signal that had triggered the Bright Moment had affected everyone, awake or asleep, baseline or
posthuman, in the same way. And second, why it had shown no measurable attenuation. The gravitational force between two bodies was inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
The intensity of sunlight falling on a planet was inversely proportional to the square of the planet’s distance from the sun: Venus, twice as far from the sun as Mercury, received a quarter
of Mercury’s insolation. The density of the flux of any energetic or physical force was necessarily diluted as it radiated outward and the area of its wavefront expanded. But the wavefront of
the Bright Moment, originating from a point source twenty-five light years distant, had maintained the same intensity as it crossed the Solar System. If light had possessed the same property, the
sky would have been white-hot with the radiation of every star in the Milky Way, and of all the galaxies inside the light-horizon. For that reason, Aakash said, the Bright Moment could not continue
to maintain the same intensity as it continued to expand into the infinite universe, because it would require infinite energy to do so. At some point it would attenuate, or perhaps pop like an
over-inflated balloon. But over relatively short distances, its wavefront seemed to be able to expand while maintaining its flux density at a constant value.

Dr Gagarian believed that the Bright Moment had propagated as a jitter or wave in the ocean of the Higgs field, a relic of the Big Bang that permeated the entire universe and offered resistance
to particles when they accelerated or decelerated. The masses of the various kinds of fundamental sub-atomic particles were defined by the way they interacted with the Higgs field; particles which
moved through vacuum at a constant speed, like photons, were massless because the Higgs field didn’t affect them. It was possible to manipulate the value of the Higgs field in a volume of
space, Aakash told Hari, but only at temperatures equivalent to those of the universe immediately after the Big Bang.

‘Such temperatures, a trillion degrees or so, can be created in high-energy particle colliders, but only change the value of the Higgs field on a microscopic scale, and only for a very
short time. Also, it would oscillate as wildly as in the first instant of creation, before the universe cooled below the critical temperature at which those oscillations condensed into a non-zero
value. It would not be possible to impose a signal on it. However, the contemporary Higgs field is not completely frozen,’ Aakash said. ‘It fluctuates about its non-zero value.
I’m sure you know why.’

Hari thought hard, then said, ‘Because the universe hasn’t yet cooled down to absolute zero.’

‘Exactly. The fluctuations are usually minuscule, random, and universal. But Dr Gagarian’s long-baseline experiments have acquired evidence for traces left by local, non-random
changes. He believes that the carrier wave for the Bright Moment may have been hidden somewhere in that microscopic jitter. Created by manipulating the spin-0 particles that make up the Higgs
field, perhaps. Encoded in dimensions folded into loops smaller than any fundamental particle . . . It appears to conflict with special relativity, which requires the Higgs field to be everywhere
uniform, but if that can be resolved –
once
it is resolved – it will change everything.’

It was a grand vision, but seemed impossibly distant. There was always more work to be done. Measurements to be refined, ideas to be tested and retested. We must be patient, Aakash told his
family. We must take the long view.

A year passed, Dr Gagarian’s second aboard
Pabuji’s Gift.
They put in at Porto Jeffre to purchase consumables, and elements required for fabrication of components of Dr
Gagarian’s probes, and resumed their cruise above the plane of the ecliptic. But the family’s credit lines were almost exhausted, and Nabhomani and Nabhoj were growing mutinous. At
last, Aakash and Dr Gagarian agreed to suspend their work for a short while, and
Pabuji’s Gift
headed out to search for salvage in a distant and long-abandoned garden,
Jackson’s Reef.

Hari had retreated to a hiding place high up in the hollow spire, braced in the angle where three spars met in absolute shadow beside the exit hole and its zipline. He was
draped in camo fabric that absorbed his p-suit’s infrared and electromagnetic signatures, and had set up decoys at various levels – man-shaped balloons kept inflated and heated by
simple resistor circuits. They wouldn’t fool anyone for more than a couple of seconds, but he hoped that be enough time to spring his traps. The nets and the darts, the deadfall and all the
rest.

He wished for what must have been the hundredth time that the hermit’s maker had possessed templates for firearms or energy rifles. He had managed to persuade it to extrude simple weapons
– darts, throwing knives, shuriken – but right now he would have traded all of them for a basic kinetic handgun.

Feeds from cameras on top of various spires gave him overlapping views of the crater. The gleam of friction tracks laid across dun ground, running between wiry tangles of vacuum organisms.
Bootprints everywhere. The rock field of the cairn. The grave of Kinson Ib Kana. The small crater blasted by the drone’s descent. It was close to sunset, and the cluster of spires threw long
shadows towards the rim wall.

Let his enemies come. Let them step into his trap. Let them come now. Let this be over. Let this be over.

Then the camera feeds vanished all at once and a patch of wall at the base of the spire glowed red and white and blew out in a transient caul of vapour and dust. The last reserves of
Hari’s confidence vanished. He’d set most of his traps around the entrance to the spire, hadn’t thought of this obvious move. Two pressure-suited figures stepped through the
circular gap. At once, the murals and picts sprang into life and Hari’s traps fired. Spring-loaded tubes shot ceramic darts at the entrance; nets woven from fullerene thread spun towards the
floor, propelled by tiny canisters of carbon dioxide; the lower part of the hollow space was filled with a storm of metallic flakes designed to confuse radar and other imaging systems. A moment
later, squibs of reaction mass ignited and the deadfall, a tall narrow box fabricated from fullerene sheets and packed with rock dust, guillotined down.

The nets and darts missed the intruders. One waved the broad beam of an infrared laser through the floating flakes, shrivelling them; the other released a crowd of tiny drones that rose up in
spiralling search patterns. A moment later, the murals and picts went out.

Someone was trying to talk to Hari on the common channel. A woman’s voice, calling to him, telling him to surrender. The balloon decoys began to pop one by one as the drones discovered
them.

‘It’s over,’ the woman said. ‘Come out now.’

Less than a minute had passed since the intruders had stepped into the spire, and Hari was down to his last trick. He activated the first of the command strings he’d written into the
lifepod’s control system, and set off strings of flashbang explosives. As they filled the hollow spire with sharp stutters of lightning and blew open bladders containing his special mix of
chemicals, he shrugged off the camo fabric and grabbed the grips of the zipline pulley and kicked off as hard as he could.

He flew out of the spire into an expanding dust storm. Above, he could just make out the spark of the lifepod’s motor, powering away into the sky.

The wall of the neighbouring spire loomed out of the dust. A moment later Hari shot through the hole he’d cut in it, crashed into layers of expanded foam that killed most of his momentum,
and struck the far wall with a solid thump. As he drifted backwards through collapsing sheets of foam, he let go of the zipline pulley and ripped a ceramic throwing knife from the velcro patch on
his left hip. Caught the edge of the hole, severed the zipline, and hung there, listening to the harsh engine of his breath.

A fierce light flared high overhead, glowing through the fog of falling dust. The shadows of the spires slanted through it, fading as the flare-light dimmed.

The eidolon appeared beside Hari. Saying, ‘You blew up the lifepod.’

‘Something like that.’

‘Your distraction.’

‘To cover my escape from the spire. And if they think I tried and failed to flee Themba, they may not come looking for me.’

‘They may not have noticed it,’ the eidolon said, and showed him an infrared image. It was the spire, glowing with the ghost heat of chemical reaction. At the base, two small figures
shone brightly, caught in awkward attitudes, unmoving.

Hari floated down through falling dust into the absolute darkness around the bases of the spires and found his way to the far side of the hollow spire. His helmet light showed
that the hole the two intruders had blown in the wall was filled with a grotesque bulge of black stuff, like an organ spilling from a wound. A small portion of the foam generated when the two
chemicals had been explosively mixed, expanding to fill the spire from top to bottom and hardening almost at once.

He pulled up the infrared view again. The intruders were still caught in the same positions. One crouching, the other sprawled face-down. When Hari called to them on the common channel, a woman
answered, saying she’d kill him when she got free.

‘What’s your name?’

‘I am the arm and hand.’

‘Whose arm and hand?’

‘My own, now. You killed my sister. The foam damaged her lifepack. Did something to her rebreather. Have you ever heard someone dying of anoxia? Listened to their breathing get faster and
faster? Listened to it stop? We would have saved you, boy. Those were our instructions. Find you. If you were dead, bring back your body. If you were alive, bring you back safe and sound. But you
killed my sister, and I’m going to strike you down by my own arm, my own hand.’

‘You should keep still,’ Hari said. Nabhomani had taught him how to control his voice; he sounded a lot calmer than he felt. ‘Don’t struggle. The foam is an excellent
insulator, so your suit won’t be able to exhaust your waste heat. If you struggle, you’ll die of heatstroke.’

The woman cursed him and his ancestors, cursed all the children he would never have after she had finished with him. She was very imaginative, but her breathing soon became laboured and she fell
silent.

Hari asked her again who she worked for.

‘I don’t have to tell you anything.’

‘Deel Fertita and the others were friends of yours, weren’t they?’

The woman didn’t reply.

Hari said, ‘Who paid them? Who paid you?’

Silence.

‘Your employer has my ship and my family. I have Dr Gagarian’s head. That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Dr Gagarian’s head, and the files it contains.
That’s why you were looking for me. Well, you found me, and I’m ready to make a deal. I want to negotiate with your employer. If you tell me how I can contact them, I’ll free
you.’

‘That’s the best you can do?’

‘It’s a good deal. If things work out, everyone will get what they want. You, me, your boss, my family.’

Another silence. Hari let it stretch. Let her think about the way out she’d been offered.

At last, the woman said, ‘You aren’t in a position to help your family. All you can do is decide whether or not you want to save yourself. And the only way you can do that is by
cutting me free and giving me the tick-tock’s head. Do that, do it right now, and I’ll let you live.’

She would be able to free herself when the foam cooled and began to lose its integrity, but Hari wasn’t about to tell her that. He said, ‘It seems to me that you aren’t in a
position to threaten me.’

‘Do you really think we were the only ones looking for you? As soon as we found you, boy, we called our sisters. They’re on their way, and you aren’t going anywhere. We came
down on a broomstick that went into orbit as soon as we hopped off, and it won’t return unless I call it. And your lifepod blew up when you tried to put it out of harm’s way.’

‘Is that what you think you saw?’ Hari said.

‘You don’t have any way of getting off this rock,’ the woman said. ‘We’ll wait here, you and I, until my sisters arrive. And when they do, you’ll spend the
last hours of your life wishing you’d surrendered the head when I asked you to.’

‘I’ll only give it up when your boss agrees to free my family.’

The infrared image showed that the woman was gripping a laser wand in her right hand. It was jammed against the breastplate of her p-suit, and she was trying to twist back and forth in the
coffining foam, trying to open a space so that she could use the wand to cut herself free.

She said, ‘What if I told you that you can’t help your family because they’re dead? As dead as my sister.’

Blood beat in Hari’s head. The monster stirred in the shadows.

‘Prove it,’ he said.

‘There it is,’ the woman said. ‘There’s the problem with the way you’re trying to play this. You won’t believe anything I say, and I don’t care if you
cut me free or not. If you don’t do it, my sisters will. But I’ll give you one more chance to do things my way. Cut me free, and then fetch the tick-tock’s head from its hiding
place and lay it at my feet. That’s the best deal I can offer. The only deal you’re going to get.’