Implied Spaces (26 page)

“We know who’s working for Vindex on his worlds,” Daljit said. “All his top people. We can make a guess as to the directions of their operations. So we’ll try to duplicate them, and produce countermeasures.”

“I wish you every success,” Aristide said. He sipped his own wine. “All the more so as I may be deploying your countermeasures in the field.”

Outside the insulated universe of Topaz, Vindex had broadened his attack. More antimatter beams were hitting more of the Loyal Ten. The only defensive measures the Ten could take were to shift their attitude within their orbit, so that they faced Courtland edge-on and presented a narrower target to the bombardment, but this altered their attitude to the sun and made solar collection, and hence themselves, less efficient.

Within Topaz and the other pockets, life remained strangely placid, except for the violent speeches of politicians and a comical series of public service announcements: what to do in the event of Biological Attack; what to do in the event of Invasion; how to avoid Radiation; what to do if there are Zombies. The fact that the threats were real did not make them any less detached from the lives of ordinary people.

Vast numbers—tens of millions—had volunteered to join the fight against Vindex. As yet, there was little for most of them to do but cooperate with restrictions on travel, the better to avoid biological attack. Enormous numbers of people wanted to fight, but could do nothing more important than to stay home. Normal life, given no choice, continued.

Daljit uncoiled, rose from the floor, and joined Aristide on the couch. She laid Aristide’s head on her lap and bent over him. Her lips browsed his. Her warm hair brushed his cheek. He reached for her.

“Perhaps,” she said, “we could seek a bit more privacy.”

“I’m not looking,” said Bitsy, from under the cabinet.

“But still.”

“Do you know,” Bitsy said, “how many acts of sexual intercourse Endora observes in any given day? Observes without trying, just because they take place within range of one camera or another? Do you know how uninterested I am in these matters?”

“You’re not helping,” Aristide said, and rose from the couch.

The cat sighed, loudly. Aristide and Daljit stepped into his bedroom and closed the door.

“Do you think,” she asked, as they embraced, “we might escape from everything for a few days, before our schedules grow too crowded? We’ve never had a proper honeymoon—Vindex keeps interrupting.”

“Where would you like to go”

She looked thoughtful. “Do you think we can rent
Fathom Deep
for the weekend?”

“I’ll check.”

She kissed him. “And please,” she said, “may the ship’s cat stay ashore?”

Fathom Deep
proved available—the emergency had cut severely into vacation rentals. Aristide provisioned the boat for five days, and he and Daljit cast off for Tremaine Island, where Aristide had his primary residence, the small cabin he had built himself, but had never actually managed to visit since his return from Midgarth.

Bitsy, left behind in Myriad City, submerged herself in the data stream and planned a lengthy hibernation.

The first night under sail was cool, brisk, and clear. Aristide and Daljit sat in the cockpit, sharing a blanket and sipping hot buttered rum as they watched the darkened sun’s corona limned against the night.

Aristide woke early, before the sun’s destabilization. Daljit was curled in a little self-contained bundle on the far side of the mattress, so Aristide slipped quietly out of bed and put on a pair of elastic-waisted trousers and a pullover. He drew some coffee from the kitchen, where it had been kept hot since the previous evening, and took his drink on deck.

Fathom Deep
heeled over on a broad reach, the hissing sea just lapping at the lee rail with its foaming tongue. Mother-of-pearl clouds sped overhead, driven like snowdrifts before the wind. No land was visible, and there was no sea traffic on the horizon. The boat was no longer a machine striving to master its element, but it and the sea and the wind had merged into a single great unity, a perfection in which the boat’s natural artifice, and the surrounding artificial nature, had become one. Everything from horizon to horizon had been created by humanity for its own purposes and pleasure.

Aristide stood for a moment on the canted deck, enjoying the moment’s sheer perfection, and then ducked into his pullover and took shelter from the wind.

He sipped his coffee and considered Vindex, the great disturber, the enemy of everything he and the boat and the sea represented. What objective, he wondered, had Vindex now set for himself?

The Venger’s attempt to infiltrate the worlds with reconstructed humans had failed. The zombie plague had failed, and along with it the attempted coup.

The antimatter bombardment from Courtland continued to expand, and more of the Loyal Ten were being riddled by highly accurate fire. But the Venger’s advantage on this front was temporary: eventually the United Powers would duplicate, equal, and then exceed the Venger’s fury, and Courtland itself would be in danger of being shot to bits.

So Vindex had been presented with a deadline—whatever his next operation, it was best undertaken before Courtland was too debilitated.

And so far all the Venger’s schemes had a certain consistency. They were aimed at throwing his enemies off-balance and making it difficult for them to respond effectively. The other element the Venger’s plans had in common was their lack of success: though they’d thrown off his enemies’ equilibrium, they hadn’t yet caused collapse.

Vindex lacked the sheer strength to attempt a direct invasion or conquest—or so Aristide hoped. So Aristide suspected that the next attack would be another destabilizing strike.

But what?

Aristide sipped coffee and contemplated this while he watched the carbon-fiber masts bend like whips before the wind.

Aristide wondered whether another plague was in the works, and if so, how it would be spread. Surely most of the Venger’s agents had been rounded up, and whoever remained driven far underground. Their ability to spread a new plague, let alone to construct one, must now be severely restricted.

Daljit’s committee, he recalled, would be trying to anticipate and duplicate the Venger’s work. Presumably they had anticipated Aristide’s questions: perhaps they had even answered a few.

And, he thought, he knew next to nothing about them.

He called up the boat’s AI and asked for a search on Kagame. A lengthy list of publications appeared, dozens of opaque titles which no doubt would be comprehensible to a geneticist. News items about postings and awards were also listed, as was a list of victims on which Kagame’s name appeared.

Despite her ferocious, scaly appearance, it seemed that Kagame had been killed by a zombie on the day of the plague.

Idly, Aristide looked at Huang, then Osbert. More lists of incomprehensible publications, more awards, more promotions. And two more deaths: Huang had been killed by a zombie, and Osbert had
been
a zombie until, waving a chair leg, he had made the mistake of pursuing a desperate motorist onto the street, and been run over.

Aristide was amused. Daljit and her committee had a very personal stake in defeating the enemy. Vindex had killed them all, and they wanted to get even. They were avengers, perhaps more so even than the creature who called himself Vindex.

So were a very large percentage of the volunteers for the army, Aristide knew. There was nothing like corporeal extinction to make a conflict personal.

Out of curiosity Aristide checked the vitae of the three newer members of the committee, those who had joined after the original four. They also were victims of zombie plague.

Well,
he thought as he blanked the screen,
now it is getting morbid
.

He drank coffee and watched the somber night ocean and thought about Vindex, who so far had been several moves ahead of any of his enemies. Whatever his next strike was going to be, he would have worked it out long ago.

Lin’s words echoed in his thoughts.
The zombie plague accomplished all that was intended
… It had distracted the authorities, it had provided cover for his seizure of Courtland and the attempts on civil government elsewhere. It had made Vindex a byword for terror among the general population.

But on the other hand it had completely mobilized public opinion against Vindex and his works. Volunteers were flooding in, as the army recruits and Daljit’s committee showed.

But suppose, Aristide thought suddenly, that was the
point?

He looked at his hand and saw his coffee cup shaking to a sudden charge of adrenaline. He fought the surge as he tried to work logically through the reasoning that had just led to his thunderclap conclusion.

Suppose, in addition to the confusion and terror, the zombie plague had been intended to create
dead bodies
.

Because those bodies would then be rebuilt and resurrected. And if you could control
that
procedure, such that a few minor tweaks could be made to the brain…

You would have an army. An army that could quietly organize, as Daljit and her committee had organized. That could join the military so as to gain access to weapons. That could form a committee like Daljit’s that would gain access to secret government bioweapons labs, in order to produce a plague that would produce even more bodies.

As he sat silently in the cockpit he strove to brake his runaway imagination. How likely
was
this? he thought. You couldn’t make any obvious changes to the minds of the victims; the alterations would have to be more subtle than those made on the first generation of the Venger’s clients. And somehow you’d have to slip the change past all the safeguards that warded the pools of life against tampering…

Pillars of light flashed on the horizon, reaching down from the heavens like the fingers of God. Aristide blinked against the sudden dazzle. Rainbows flashed from the wave-peaks.

Daylight flooded the world as the sun destabilized. Overhead, the sails were curves of brilliant color against the azure sky.

He gave a start as there was a thump from the hatch, and Daljit stepped into the light, wearing a cheerful blue windbreaker with gold stripes. He stared at her wildly. She returned his gaze from beneath her level brows.

“You know,” she said.

She took another step and swung the piece of pipe she’d held concealed behind her body. Aristide was awkwardly placed in the cockpit and he didn’t drop his cup and get his arm up in time. His head rocked to the blow. Darkness filled his vision.

He knew that he didn’t dare let her strike again. He lurched toward her, caught her in blind, outstretched arms, and drove her against the side of the cabin. She swung the pipe again, but he was inside the range of the weapon and it only thumped against his back. Arms around her, he swung her around but lost his balance. Both fell heavily against the cockpit coaming.

Aristide could feel his strength and his consciousness fading. Daljit was cursing him, hitting him in the face with her fists. He reached for her throat, clamped a hand on the collar of her windbreaker. Pain rocketed through his skull. Acid flooded his tongue. In an exercise of pure strength Daljit managed to stand, bracing one knee on the coaming. His legs wouldn’t support him and he let her drag him upright. Her spittle peppered his face. With slow deliberation he reached his other hand to her collar: he now had his hands crossed under her chin, palms down, a fistful of collar in each hand.

He leaned toward her and rotated his palms right-side up, the curved insides of his wrists slicing into her neck to cut her air supply and the flood of blood to her brain. She choked and he felt her sway. Desperate hands clawed at his wrists.

The boat lurched and both fell. The shock of the cold water was stunning but he kept his hold.

They bobbed in
Fathom Deep’
s wake as the boat hissed onward.

His last thought was of the necessity of hanging on.

14

He rose through the blood-warm liquid and opened his eyes. The light was dim and welcoming; the air was warm; in the shadowy light he saw three silhouettes.

He turned on one side and efficiently expelled fluid from his lungs. The fluid cooperated and flowed out in one long stream. He drew in a welcome breath. Alveoli crackled in his chest as they expanded with air.

His eyes adjusted. There was a woman technician, an unknown man with pale skin, and he recognized the third.

“Commissar,” he said.

“Doctor.”

He passed a hand over his damp hair.

“Was it zombies?” he asked.

“Probably not,” said Lin. “Apparently you fell off a boat and drowned.”

Aristide was genuinely surprised. He looked down at the silvery fluid that was draining from his coffin-shaped pool of life. “How long have I lost?”

“You last backed yourself up eight days ago.”

“Did anything happen in that time?” he asked. “Other than committee meetings?”

“We’re reconstructing the time as best we can. So far we’ve found nothing very exciting.”

“And as for the meetings,” said Bitsy, as she jumped onto the edge of the pool of life, “I can give you access to the minutes.”

He closed his eyes. “I’ll look forward.”

Lin’s walleyes were narrowed. “We haven’t recovered the bodies yet, but when we do, we’ll have a clearer idea of what occurred.”

Aristide looked at him. “Bodies? More than one?”

“Two people went missing from the boat.”

Aristide thought about that. “Was there a third party aboard?”

“According to the sailboat, no. When the boat sensed the combined weight of its passengers disappear, it launched lifesavers, began circling the area, and called for help. But apparently you went under quickly.”

“Who was the other passenger?”

Lin’s eyes opened fully. “Daljit,” he said.

He absorbed this, and then the realization came to him of what must have happened; and sudden bliss descended, a warm tingling knowledge that filled him to his fingertips. She had
done this
for him, he thought. Out of love she had given him this gift.