Expatria: The Box Set (27 page)
Read Expatria: The Box Set Online
Authors: Keith Brooke
And so they sang the company hymn.
As the final words drew out, the Philemonic pews reluctant, as ever, to finish, the avatar rose from its platform, swooping through the air, arms outstretched; for an instant it was within reach and then it was high, high above, skimming the ceiling, slicing through the great volume of air. And then there was Saint Stuardine, forming aerobatic figures as he swooped in unison with Riesling. As the other psylogues pushed out avatars from their sanctuary in the MetaPlex—Mother Tamsin, Saint Pasc and all the others—the air seemed crowded, seemed that it could take no more. Music roared, choirs synthesised vast columns of noise, light bubbles burned themselves temporarily into the massed retinas of the worshippers. Scent-crests of sulphur washed over the gentler aromas of rose and Nippon mint, to be superseded by fresh sappy smells that were laced with a complex matrix of pheromonal synthetics. The air turned grey and smoke appeared and thickened until all the eyes could see was a flawless screen of grey.
And as the air cleared, Katya saw that the avatars had disappeared.
Their task was complete. They had brought their children together, achieved a harmonious union; it was clear that this phase of the journey was almost complete, the next step would be out onto the surface of Expatria. The
Third Testament
must be close, indeed, to its goal.
Struggling to catch her breath, using all the implants and discipline at her command, Katya bowed her head and searched for that familiar island of calmness, that yogic transcendence that was one of the first things the company had taught her.
Now it was time to Max.
It came to her easily despite her recurring fear that the Gift might abandon her, punishment for some transient doubts. But she had the genetic disposition, she had the templar control, she had the nanomedical influence over her pleasure centres. She had the Glory Chip, implanted on the interior surface of her brain-stem. And so the MetaPlex boomed out its signal and her chip received joyously and her pleasure centres began to buzz with energy, lifting her up onto the crest of an ecstatic wave, letting it break over her shores only to be picked up, again and again. It lasted twelve seconds, as it always lasted twelve seconds, but to Katya it lasted far longer.
Although never for long enough.
The signal faded, the brain jive died away. Katya's breathing had locked itself into a regular, steady rhythm but she took control, overriding her chip, pumping more oxygen into her lungs, her blood. She raised her head, felt her skin hot and flushed. She looked around the hall, up to the high ceiling. The Philemonic choir was singing already, a lifting psalm, an echo of the Max. Close to, she looked at the relaxed faces of her fellow Romans. She smiled when Petra caught her eye, nodded to Leo and Sugratski and Sherpa, sat in her seat a while longer.
It wasn't usually this intense, but that didn't matter. She sat as a few of the worshippers rose and headed for the exits. She moved aside when those around her left their seats. There was no hurry. She spotted Turkut heading away from her but she didn't follow. He could wait. Now that she had Maxed she saw that maybe she should take it easy with him, she didn't want to make the same mistakes she bad made with Patrische.
She headed for a different exit, content with the perspective she had gained. The crowd soon thinned; she hated jostling with evangelicals, they should be making room, humbling themselves before her—but she knew that was impossible in such confines so she tried not to mind.
The corridor opened out onto the same wide avenue. This time Katya felt no urge to be out on the central strip, nothing but air and sun-tube above her; this time she walked on the paveway, in the shade of the balconies, and here the evangelicals made way for her, bowing their heads and touching their brows, humbling themselves in obeisance to the corporate hierarchy.
She had medic training on the third level of the Chicago Block, but that was not due to commence for another twelve minutes and, by her mind-map, she was only a three minute run distant. Unusually, she had time on her hands.
She stepped into a shoot and let it suck her up to level three. This was the biggest open space she had known since Earth. One hundred metres across and at least four hundred in its longest dimension, before it was interrupted by another two levels of London Block to one side and horticultural banks to the other. The sun-strip burned cool and unnaturally orange above her, the correct spectral balance for Expatria, she knew, but still uncomfortable on her eyes; she had decided long ago that such a sun could only seem natural if you were born under it.
The landscape was rough and scrubby, all that had been allowed time to generate after surviving the acceleration and deceleration of the voyage. In a few years there would be cork oaks and citrus groves, plants and birds that would be unable to cope with the cool Expatrian climate; by then the
Testament
would be an orbital refuge for the directors and their favourites, a corporate headquarters, a staging post for successive ships from Earth.
Over at an intersection of three running tracks, a small crowd had gathered. Katya smiled, pleased to see the spirit of the Maxing being continued by the evangelicals. Standing above the crowd on a metre-high rock was a bearded Roman; she studied his features, searched her eidetic memory, came up with the name: RoValentin. She had noticed him before, his preaching drew large crowds.
She approached the group, twelve evangelicals—equally split between Romans and Thessalonians—and a number of menials. The menials stood chest-high to Katya, their heads hairless, their shoulders rounded. Farmers, she decided, from the chemical staining on their arms. They stared intently at RoValentin, their tiny eyes unblinking.
Still under the empathic spell of the Maxing, Katya pitied these menials. They had no implants, they could not Max: all they could attain of the great gospel of Corporate Universalism was this, an evangelical sermon. They must lead such empty lives. But then, she corrected herself, that was their breeding, they would understand no more. The message was all.
The only active present, the listeners made way for her and so she stopped right before RoValentin, looking up at him, focusing, now, on his words.
'...and don't you know, there is a new Babylon, a new Eden? It lies there for us to take.' Catching Katya's eye, he didn't falter. 'Those who went before us may occupy these lands, those who went before us may resent our arrival, those who went before us may reject the gospel of the Corporation.' The crowd gasped, and Katya joined them, enjoying the theatre even as the spiritual peace of the Max began, finally, to subside. RoValentin's eyes were so
direct
, magnified by his eccentric taste in facial hair; he was using his inbred charm to great effect.
'But we are strong, we are GenGen. We have righteousness through faith.'
Katya joined the crowd in repeating the Maxim. 'Righteousness through faith.'
'Don't you know, they have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity?' He was moving into direct quotation and Katya could almost hear the words before he spoke them. 'They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are revellers and slanderers, they are insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. They are without the Lord, they know no Maxim. They are ignorant of the Saviour, the Company, the Law...'
Katya turned and began to walk away, she had little time left to get to her class. RoValentin's words continued behind her. 'Remember, siblings, the wages of sin are death—there is no alternative.'
It made Katya feel uncomfortable, suddenly. He was twisting the gospel of the Second Testament, applying it to their mission in a perverse fashion. His words stirred up memories of the heady, dangerous, last days in Prague, the rabble-rousers who had stirred up trouble in Marseilles and Aix... she stopped herself, clamped down on the unfair clarity of her memories. 'He's only an evangelical,' she told herself. 'He has no influence.' She broke into a run, felt her pulse slot into an up-tempo rhythm appropriate to the exertion.
~
Close to Chicago Block, seventy seconds to spare, she slowed, allowed her body to cool, and then Director Roux came to her.
The track was wide, swathes of moss cascading down the single-storey rises on either side, toads calling from small, shady pools. Other actives from her own familiar group of Romans were heading for their class, too, and Katya wondered how they had managed to retain the Maxing buzz this long. They looked so at peace. One evangelical sermon and her own calm had vanished completely.
And then he was there, ahead of her, translucent and hanging clear from the ground like a tiny trif avatar. But he was a director, he had no avatar. She stopped, recognising him to be an hallucination induced by a signal he was transmitting to the implants in each of her temples. Along the track, she saw that the other actives had stopped, too, receiving the same signal. Two evangelicals passed on, regardless, discussing the frequency of Max.
She closed her eyes, editing the distractions.
'Roman actives,' he said, above the whistling, popping calls of the toads. 'Update. We have made contact with Expatria—the first colony has survived.' Katya slowed her suddenly racing heart. 'A signal was received two minutes ago and has been dealt with by the MetaPlex. The colony is not on the planetary surface, it is in geostationary orbit. We will match trajectories with one of the colonial units in fifty-six hours.
'Children: our mission has begun. We are bringing the Third Testament of the Corporate Universe to the people of Expatria. Be proud. End of update.'
Katya opened her eyes and looked around at her fellow Roman actives.
Our mission has begun
. She nodded, flushed with an evangelical fervour, and began to run, entering medic class with four seconds to spare.
CHAPTER 3
Impatient, Stopp threw herself through the vegetation that packed Ark Red: swinging around gum trees that were over a hundred metres in diameter, all dimension lost in the tangle of zero-gee growth; hooking a foot or a hand around lianas that grew vigorously away from ground level, twisting into abstract designs without the limitations of gravity. Birds with atrophied wings glided through the air, side-slipping through gaps in the overgrowth whilst airborne puff-rats tried less successfully to intercept them.
She caught a guava branch and slowed herself; she had been losing her sense of direction. She dodged a floating puff-ball and bulleted down towards the Zagreb Complex.
Breaking her flight on a bed of moss, she rolled and caught a root to stop herself from springing away from the ground again. Hooking fingers and toes around twigs, she approached the door into the Complex, stretched to palm herself inside and floated into the console bay. She still had a couple of hours before the meeting of the Junior GenGen FanClub.
Stopp was part of the new generation, the generation that would have to live with the consequences of the renewed contact with Earth. They'd wanted to be prepared, so they had formed the FanClub.
She looped a restrainer around her waist and adjusted herself as her body heat snapped it into the right shape, fixing her in front of a Toshiba trifacsimile unit, with its two-dee screen settling itself at her eye-level.
'Console,' she said, and a control console materialised in front of her, just out of reach. Although fully grown she was little more than half the size of Zither or Mordecai or Waltz. Dwarfism—along with a whole host of other genetic malfunctions—was common in those born during the peak of the solar flare cycle but Stopp had been born during a lull, a freak amongst her own generation. Her parents had seen her as bad luck—Stopp had only narrowly escaped being exposed to the void... but then they had both been hit by cancers during the next peak and Stopp tried not to think of them any more.
'Closer,' she hissed, and the false-projected console edged within her range.
'Stopp-two-pees,' she said, giving her identifier to Red's branch of ArcNet. 'Anything from Expatria?'
ArcNet ran up a list of the channels available to Stopp. There was always this sort of mismatch: more Expatrians wanting an orbital link than there were ever orbitals available. It was inevitable, Stopp supposed. With the approaching GenGen ship becoming ever more of a distraction, the imbalance could only increase.
Stopp was one of the ones to persist with the communication. She wanted to actually
do
something. Maintaining contact with the surface wasn't much, but at least it was something. At least, this way, people knew she existed.
She scanned the list. As usual there was a lot of demand in Alabama City and the surrounding areas. That was where contact had first been made, that was where the Pageant had started its task of informing the world of the orbital presence and of the approaching GenGen ship. On a world that was so backward, the spreading of information was a laborious procedure. People didn't believe. But show them a moving trifax of someone in orbit—an
angel
, they called them—show them an angel and they know that it's the truth they're hearing.
She wanted to visit the island of Clermont—she'd heard so much about its port of Orlyons. But that was still a war zone, occupied by the Newest Delhi militia. The Pageant hadn't got far on Clermont as yet.
In Newest Delhi, itself, there was a lot of activity. The Pageant had only reached the north in the past two weeks, but there was a northern grouping already. They called themselves the Crusaders. Stopp searched the list, found Jeanna Lüngstrom, their leader. She had worked with her recently, so she stopped herself and looked at the list again. There were others in the Hanrahan region, spreading word in the inland valleys. That was where the work was hardest, that was where the angels were most needed.
Stopp spotted a familiar name on the list: Lucilla Ngota. This was unexpected—Ngota was close to the Primacy of Newest Delhi, she had been even closer to Greta Olfarssen-Hanrahan. Why had she chosen to stay away from the funeral?
Stopp spoke the name into ArcNet's mike, saw the red light of the camera flicker into life.
A picture slid up onto the expanding screen, a wide, wraparound view. In the background there was a steep, sloping cliff-face strewn with boulders. Amongst the rubble Stopp saw patches of white which she recognised as snow and ice. She took a deep breath and imagined that she could sense the chill of the mountain air.
A scene like this could have been anywhere. The listing had called it Glendower.
There was a stream in the foreground and Lucilla Ngota was crouching on its rocky bed, sluicing water over her dark back. The movements of her large limbs were smooth and fluid like the stream, like a solar flare. Her muscles rippled over one another in perfect synergy.
After a second or two, Stopp realised that she was watching a wild animal in its own environment, a mountain lion or a unicorn, something like that.
She cleared her throat and said, 'Miz Ngota. My name is Stopp. We worked together in Alabama City. Will you update me?' She pointed at the Transmit on the false-projected console and saw her own image appear amongst the rocks.
She felt awkward at disturbing the moment but Lucilla Ngota turned without surprise. 'Hi,' she said. 'I haven't had a trifax for days—I guess you have a lot on your hands out there.'
She talked to the camera and she refused to call the trifacsimile an 'angel'. She had been like this before. It made Stopp feel comfortable
Lucilla began to towel herself down with a shirt and Stopp adjusted the trifax with a few deft gestures at her console's roller and a few mumbled vocal commands that ArcNet deleted from the transmission.
The Toshiba would take her facial movements and physical template by camera, but the rest of the trifacsimile was a computer-construct. Working like that, the image appeared to walk as the projector moved it across the ground, it held itself at the correct angles, it didn't do anything too anomalous to a ground-based viewer.
Stopp moved her trifax around, let it paddle through the stream. She wondered what it must feel like to have water that clung to the ground. She knew what gravity was like, from the low accelerations of the colonial scuttles and riggers, but there was so much
more
of it on Expatria.
She knew this was the closest she would ever get to a planetary surface. All that gee would break her bones, it would stop her heart, it would tear the delicate membranes of her brain.
She stepped out of the stream and shook hologram water droplets from her feet, courtesy of ArcNet.
Lucilla was watching her, smiling.
'Do you have an update?' said Stopp quickly.
'Sure.' Lucilla pulled the shirt over her head and fumbled around in her bag for some leggings. A small pistol fell out and she slipped it into her shirt's pouch without hesitation. 'I've been touring the valleys out here in Glendower district. It's run by the MacFadyen clan. They're Black-Handers, but they've always made a show of following the line of Newest Delhi. I've told them about you people and I've told them about the ship from Earth, but they've always opposed the old technophilia—I don't know how much they've taken in: they didn't even seem
capable
of believing. I know most of the clan officials and they're a stubborn lot, but I think they might find it easiest to come round in the end—follow the Hanrahan line.'
'But—'
'But most of the people of Glendower have never left the valleys. Newest Delhi's on Dum and Dee to them. I don't think even a trifax would convince them.' As she spoke she had pulled a lime green robe around herself and now she tied it with a length of cord. 'That's over now though: they believe or they get a surprise.' She bowed to the camera and then bent and swung the trifax-projector up onto her back, settling its straps across her shoulders and chest. Stopp's image wavered a little in the split second it took ArcNet to adjust to the sudden movement.
'Have you got a better fix on the ship yet?' asked Lucilla.
'I'll check.' Stopp prompted ArcNet for the latest information. 'No,' she said, 'it's still pretty vague. Their broadcasts aren't regular. They're confusing ArcNet some way.'
She shrugged and the Toshiba picked up the gesture, transmitted it to Glendower. 'The best guess is for around fifty days. They're in the system now but we can only guess at the trajectories.'
~
Lucilla nodded. 'Let's walk,' she said.
She looked odd in her pageanteer's robe. Stopp didn't believe Lucilla could ever be a real Charity—she just didn't fit—but she was one of the Pageant's most active missionaries. Guiding her trifax's walk, Stopp felt comfortable imagining she was by Lucilla's side.
The path twisted alongside the stream and they walked for a time in silence.
'There's a village in about fifteen minutes,' said Lucilla, eventually. 'It's still MacFadyen clan but I haven't been there yet. We can try our stuff, but the probability is that they'll ignore us.'
She looked at the trifax. 'Shit, I'm beginning to sound like Kasimir.' She laughed.
'He has that effect,' said Stopp.
A few minutes later, two young men appeared ahead of them on the path. They stood and watched as Lucilla approached, their eyes fixed on the trifax. Stopp slid the roller so that her image rose up from the ground. She let her eyes begin to glow.
It had no effect on the two.
She had been told about this before: the trifax was so far outside the Expatrians' experience that they simply didn't register its fantastic nature. She wondered how they saw it, if somehow their minds were constructing some alternative that was more easy for them to take in.
'Cut the aerobatics,' said Lucilla into her shoulder mike. 'They're not here for the gospel.' She didn't alter her pace. 'Hi,' she said, louder now. 'I'm just passing through.'
'No,' said one of the men. Nothing more.
'I said, "I'm just passing through".' But Lucilla came to a halt.
Stopp remained silent, wondering whether or not her presence was a hindrance. Suddenly she was scared, although she knew she was safe.
'And Rubin said, "No."'
Lucilla turned and the view on the screen did a dizzying one-eighty. Stopp was glad that the view was being stabilised by ArcNet and that she, in turn, was held in place by her restrainer.
There were six more people blocking the track behind Lucilla.
'Counsel MacFadyen,' said Lucilla. 'I thought our business was complete.'
'You were alone,' said MacFadyen, a broad man, with a grey beard and a nose that appeared to have been ritually scarred. Looking around, Stopp saw similar markings on the faces of the other men and women. Two of them were swinging small books from chains attached to their wrists.
'Or you
said
you were alone.' He nodded at Stopp's trifax. 'Spies aren't popular, these parts. We're in bitter times.'
'The fighting is over,' said Lucilla. 'We have the Treaty of Accord.'
'Treaty, pah.' He spat in the stream. 'Paper's for the cities. Spies aren't liked.'
Suddenly Stopp realised what they were talking about. Until a few months ago there had been border disputes between Newest Delhi and Alabama City, fighting in the valleys and on Clermont. It had been ended by the signing of this Treaty of Accord.
'Miz Ngota has always been loyal to the Prime of Newest Delhi,' said Stopp. 'I can back her word.'
'Miz Ngota,' said MacFadyen with a sneer, 'was born in Beka'a. Since her
Treaty
that part of Massif Gris has been Andricci—Prime Hanrahan sold it all away.' He stared at the trifax—Stopp wished he would look at the camera, it was disorienting. 'Spies aren't liked,' he repeated.
Suddenly the screen-view swung sharply. Water splashed up and Stopp saw her image wavering awkwardly as ArcNet struggled to keep up with the changing positions. She breathed a sigh of relief as she realised what was happening: Lucilla was running, through the stream—deeper, more turbulent, here—and up the scree, scrambling over the boulders as if they weren't there.
In a dizzying glimpse back, Stopp saw that her trifax had run part way and then stopped as ArcNet awaited her guidance.
Lucilla's sudden move had caught the MacFadyens by surprise. For a moment they looked blankly at each other, then, with a roar, Counsel MacFadyen turned towards the trifax and charged.
Quickly, Stopp pawed at her false-projected roller, mumbling a stream of commands into her mike. She moved her figure up over the scree, leaping nimbly from rock to rock to rock, catching Lucilla easily. 'Come on,' she said. 'Stop looking back.'
The view turned forward again and Lucilla continued on her way. 'I've given you full power,' said Lucilla. 'Let's split up.'
Suddenly Stopp realised why Lucilla had turned the camera view back down the slope for so long: she had been letting Stopp see her own image so that she could do all in her power to keep up the illusion that she was actually there.
It wouldn't work, thought Stopp. As her trifax scrambled up the slope ahead of Lucilla, displacing hologram pebbles, she could see how insubstantial the image was. Surely they wouldn't be fooled. 'Good luck,' she said, and then she guided her figure away, along the face of the slope, guided by ArcNet's memory image of the slope and its projections of the Black-Handers' progress.
Lucilla turned full circle once more, giving Stopp a good overall view, and then she put everything she had into climbing the slope. Judging by the image on the screen, Lucilla was making good speed; from the occasional turnaround surveys of the scene she appeared to be well ahead of her pursuers.
Stopp allowed her image to slow. A backward glimpse from Lucilla showed the trifax heading up a narrow gully.
It was a dead-end.
Stopp made herself breathe heavily as the MacFadyens closed in on her, the leading climbers all choosing the easiest prey. The spy. She reached the end of the gully and came to a halt. Smoothly, she turned the figure, cut her acting, smiled.