Resolution (93 page)

The Life and Times of Kian McNamara
was one of thirteen extensive biographies, and the only one to which Maria gave approval. She even had hardcopies on a shelf in her office, mounted between two antique long-barrelled Colt .45s she somehow hung on to after firearm ownership became punishable by hypnotrauma.

No-one has seen Kian McNamara, the second Admiral,
read the final paragraph,
since that fateful July night in 2207. No-one on Terra. But who can tell what mysteries await in the fractal universe that is mu-space?

‘The whole thing is fifty per cent cowshit,’ she told the young author. ‘But that’s forty per cent better than the rest of the field. Those bastard newsNet articles rate ninety-eight per cent crap on my turdometer.’

Her only answer was a sickly smile.

She got that a lot.

‘Your genes have died out, Dad,’ she told Kian’s portrait once, when she was pregnant with her second child, ‘but so fuckin’ what?’

Every natural-born Pilot inherited fractolons from Ro McNamara, or rather the femto-engineered self-replicating molecule called FZA that coded for those organelles, just as they inherited mitochondrial DNA from their genetic mothers. So perhaps some paragenetic echo of her father remained.

The father of both David and Deirdre (named after her nominal aunt) was Rorion Delgasso. Rorion’s father Carlos had been a pain to the McNamaras, back when Kian and Dirk were young - at school, Carlos had hero-worshipped the twins. But after Kian’s disappearance it was Carlos Delgasso who became the third Admiral.

Like every other Pilot’s mother, Maria gave birth aboard ship in mu-space, her mind in delta-coma to save her sanity, while machines induced labour and stood ready to perform a caesarian should it be necessary. For Maria, the need did not arise on either occasion.

‘Just popped out,’ she would tell her friends. ‘Go to sleep with a bump in your belly, wake up with a mewling jet-eyed kid. Nothing to it.’

Rorion was a good father when he was on Terra. Living with Maria was never part of the arrangement.

Once the kids had graduated, Maria made several mu-space voyages of her own, including some that were deliberately planned to take advantage of relativistic effects, so that she would return from a six-month (subjective) research trip a full decade after leaving.

It suited her, or so she told herself.

It meant that Maria observed geopolitics through a series of unfocused snapshots. She realized that UNSA was feeling the strain, that the third United Nations was finally pulling apart under its own momentum. That, and the growth of sociopolitical clades that crossed geographical boundaries while maintaining all of the bad features that had plagued nation states since they were invented in the nineteenth (or maybe eighteenth) century.

On returning from her final voyage, Maria learned that UNSA existed only as the skeletal remains of that once-powerful organization. The Pilots, self-sufficient and with new vessels that came from who-knew-where, were dealing directly with trade consortia.

Maria sat on the grey wooden dock behind the old family cottage.
She
was not old - did not feel old - but on Terra ninety-four years had elapsed since Kat died and Kian abandoned realspace. (It was also one hundred and thirty-five years since Kian’s brother Dirk spectacularly stole a ship and disappeared, but she did not remember that.) Maria’s two children were somewhere among the stars.

‘Cowshit,’ she told the bottle of Laphroaig in her left hand. ‘One hundred per cent cowshit.’

With her right hand, Maria placed the muzzle of a very old and valuable Colt .45 against her temple. Because of the weight and the long barrel, she found it easier to hold the weapon in reverse, with all four fingers curled around the butt, her thumb inside the trigger.

‘Hundred per cent…’

And squeezed.

The next day, 12 July 2301, the item that galvanized certain closed newsNets had nothing to do with an obscure academic’s suicide, however interesting her antecedents might be. It was more immediate, and yet more historical: many of the item’s recipients found themselves rereading histories of the twenty-second century in order to make sense of it.

Dirk McNamara has been found.

The message came from mu-space. No newsNet in realspace made mention of Labyrinth: Pilots were masters at keeping secrets.

And he still lives!

<>

~ * ~

55

NULAPEIRON AD 3426

Tom was flying. He had come loose from his seat, and now he was spinning through the air inside the arachnargos cabin. Three clone-warriors were flailing in zero-g.

‘Sorry,’ said Ankestion, secure in his pilot’s seat. ‘No choice.’

As the view-window whirled past him, Tom caught a glimpse of the other three arachnargoi outside, their tendrils splayed, holding them against the big cargo hold’s deck. The shuttle in which all four arachnargoi crouched, including this one, was arcing high above the world. A small holodisplay showed the cloud cover below, before Tom rotated away and bumped gently into the cabin’s ceiling.

‘Transmission from one of the other arachnargoi,’ said Likardion. ‘For you, Warlord. From Lord Avernon.’

‘Open it up.’ Tom pushed off with his feet, steering down towards the deck. As he neared an empty chair, he reached out and grabbed hold. Hanging in place upside down, he added: ‘Are you all right, Avernon?’

‘Um, sure ... There’s something wrong with the comms, Tom. Your image is the wrong way up.’

‘That’s because I ... Never mind. Why are you breaking comms blackout?’

‘We’re inside the shuttle’s cargo hold. Can it matter?’

‘I don’t know. Hang on.’ Tom pulled himself down, turned the right way up, and hooked his legs under the chair. ‘What did you want to talk about?’

‘Oh, I see ... Microgravity is fun, isn’t it? I was wondering if you could ask the shuttle pilot to rotate the vessel along its major axis.’

Tom looked at Ankestion, then back at the display.

‘Probably,’ he said. ‘How would that help?’

‘Are you kidding? I only know the coriolis effect as theory. If you throw an object across a rotating cabin in zero-g, it should—’

‘Destiny, Avernon. I know what it should do. Calm down, and we’ll talk when we reach Axolon Array, all right? End trans—’

‘No! I mean ... Look, Tom. I’ve got some shield generators ready to test. We can deploy some now, while we’re in orbit.’

‘What?’

‘That’s what you want to do, isn’t it? Deploy a shield around the entire globe, so the Anomaly can’t reach through the Calabi-Yau dimensions?’

‘Um, right...’

‘So if I could deploy just a few, it might be possible to—’

‘Stay where you are,’ said Tom. ‘I’m coming over to see you.’