Seeds of Earth (62 page)

'Okay,' he said. 'I'll go.'

She hugged his arm, delighted. 'It's going to be exciting, Daddy, an exciting adventure!'

JULIA

Aboard the
Deucalion,
the
Heracles's
pinnace, now en route to Baramu Freeport, Julia Bryce rose from the data station, thanked the systems op - who doubled as the small ship's comms officer - and left the tiny console bay, heading forward. The'passage was narrow and twice she had to squeeze past crew members going the other way, an unpleasant experience, but she was getting used to it, or at least enough not to shudder visibly.

Back in their cramped stateroom, Irenya, Thorold and Arkady were playing two-board switch-chess while Konstantin lounged in one of the middle bunks, making notes as he watched the game from above. Eyes glanced her way and she met each one.

'Find any?' she said.

Arkady, still studying the spread of pieces, held up his thumb.

'Obvious one in the light fitting ...' A finger came out. 'Not so obvious one in the wall clock. Both . ..' He snapped his fingers.

Irenya looked up. She was a tall, willowy blonde who always asked the first questions. 'What did you discover?'

'The same as before,' Julia said, sitting at the small table. The game was abandoned as all attention focused on her. 'The pinnace's tiernet connection confirms what that cut-down Imisil one told us - no one knows how to create dark antimatter, except us.'

'Can we really be sure? Tiernets cannot contain the sum total of knowledge.' - Thorold, doubter, sceptic and necessary irritant, as well as being a superb particle physicist.

'There are no successful theories or experimental data, nor any papers referring to the same,' she said. 'Nor is there any sign of T-triadic radiation being detected anywhere.'

'Unless some megalomaniac scientist is hiding a darkmatter lab in another deepzone somewhere,' Thorold said.

'The question is, what do we say when we get interrogated by Earthsphere Intelligence?' Julia said. 'Sundstrom was desperate to keep us out of the hands of the Hegemony, but look where we ended up.'

'If we tell Earthsphere, the Hegemony will know about it in hours,' said Konstantin, still sprawled on his bunk. 'Their AIs talk to each other.'

'There are several Al-implanted people on board this vessel,' said Irenya. 'They unsettle me.'

'Earthsphere Intelligence is going to want an explanation,' said Arkady. 'We should feed them some alternative theories - God knows we were involved in enough lunatic military projects down the years.'

Heads nodded.

'Good idea,' said Julia. 'We should all think about that.' She regarded them for a moment. 'Something else we should consider are our long-term options, whether we eventually want to return to Darien or go somewhere else.'

Irenya looked surprised. 'I'd always assumed that we would be going home.'

Thorold snorted. 'Home! Why should we give any extra consideration to that place - what did they ever do for us? After all, we know what they did to us . . .'

'There are a lot of other Human colonies within the boundaries of Earthsphere, as well as the Vox Humana League,' said Arkady. 'Assuming that we find a way to go where we want, perhaps we could travel out to one of them and start new lives there.'

'Or we could start our own colony somewhere,' said Konstantin.

Apart from Julia, no one looked at him, a measure of their disregard for the notion.

'One thing you should remember,' Julia said. 'Elsewhere we will be seen as oddities or even cripples on Darien we have status.'

'Back there, we were despised,' Thorold said. 'Guilt and fear defined our existence in that place.'

Irenya shook her head. 'I'm sorry, Thorold, but there is more to it than that - a lot of the norms feel shame and want to reach out to us.'

'Sentimental imagination,' Thorold said. 'Perhaps you're the one feeling ashamed ...'

Julia leaned forward before the bickering could get going.

'Reflect on all these aspects - if and when the chance arises for us to pursue our own course, we need to have a consensus.'

There was a murmur of agreement and Julia moved her chair away from the table, took out the notes she had made in the console bay and began reading. But her thoughts continued to circle the issues she had steered the rest past.

We are poorly socialised,
she thought.
Ask us to debate topics that have nothing to do with theoretical or technical matters and we retreat into superficial group platitudes.

And Irenya was more than half right. For months now, Julia had had a number of suspicions about the relationship between the Enhanced and the 'norms', the normal colonists, which were crystallised by what Major Karlsson's sister, Solvjeg, had said to her back at the Akesson farmhouse. At first she had asked about Ulrike, whom Julia remembered very well - she had been a genius at everything, including relating to people, yet there was something in her that could not bear to be alive and which eventually won.

Then, as Pyatkov had begun ushering everyone back on the bus, Solvjeg had said something stunning - 'You are all unique, Julia. You might be our society's mistake but you still come from us; our society is your parent so that makes you everyone's children. You need us, just as we need you, and not just because we want to be forgiven.'

The words had transfixed her, rocked her to the core. Then it had been time to go, so, not knowing what to say, she had solemnly shaken the older woman's hand and got on the bus. Since then the words had gone through her head time and time again, making her wish that she had said something.

And then there are the things I wish I had not said,
she thought, remembering her encounter with Catriona on Nivyesta just a few days ago.
Perhaps that's why we should go home, so that we can say the right things.

LEGION

On Yndyesi Tetro, below the murkiest, chilly depths of its great western ocean, at the foot of a lightless fissure, a pain-weary mind considered the facts of failure. One of his treasured scions was dead, its purpose unfulfilled. The information had been relayed to him by the other two, who assured him that they were working tirelessly towards the goal, the prize, although taking separate paths.

Grief assailed him, sorrow at a loss both strategic and physical. He was weakened, lessened, yet he clung resolutely to his purpose and to the doctrines of convergence that gave him strength to endure and to plan. It was possible to regenerate neural substrate, but only certain orders of Legion knights had that capability. Until the survivors of the Forerunners' punishment were released from the crushing, hellish depths of hyperspace, he would have to make do without succour in this black and silent existence, entombed in his watery abyss.

Despite his other two scions' assurances, doubt gnawed at him - what if the despised machine-minds of the Hegemony found out how to break the Sentinel's control over the warpwell? Or worse, if that windup toy, the Construct, devised a way of closing the well altogether?

The conclusion was inevitable - he could not remain here. As difficult and dangerous as it would be, he would have to rise from his millennia-long refuge and make the long hyperspace crossing to the Human colonyworld, Darien. Carapace plates would have to be patched, suspensor modules recharged, biofeeds repaired, sensors rerouted, perhaps even remounted, and nourisher tanks replenished in full. It would mean taking chances, scavenging the ocean bed and nearby shoreline for raw materials, not to mention looking further afield for fresh, undamaged resources. There would be exertion, risk and pain.

That night, a desalination plant on a sparsely inhabited stretch of the western coast was broken into and its storeroom pillaged. The next day, 30-odd miles to the south, a chemicals plant was found to have been likewise raided when the owners arrived to open up. The day after that, about 50 miles to the north, a bridge crossing a wide rivermouth failed and a freight train full of freshly milled steel crashed down into the waters.

Thirty hours later, a ferocious, sky-blackening storm tore in from the western ocean, battering the coastline with high waves, sending gusts of rain screaming inland. At the height of the gale, three ships went down in the heaving seas, a 300-foot, double-hulled cargo-hauler with a forty-strong crew, mostly Henkayan and Gomedrans, a half-empty timber barge ripped from its moorings, and a vehicle ferry caught in the fury as it tried to make for port on one of the larger offshore islands. A few messages appealing for help were received by coastal rescue units, after which there was only silence. Many knew that vessels sinking in such unfathomable depths were usually considered unrecoverable.

When calmer weather returned, recovery craft diligently searched the area but found very few ejecta, the shattered remains of wooden fittings and no bodies. Over the next few days the search was scaled back, news reports became scarcer, shoreline clearup operations were finished, and only a handful of small ships and boats hired by grieving relatives continued to sweep the waters. Until the fourth night after the storm, when a Bargalil mariner on board a lugger noticed something glowing with a bright blue radiance down in the depths. She raised the alarm and the rest of the crew rushed up on deck in time to see a long, irregular shape erupt from the sea on a pillar of plasma energies. From a blasted crater in the waters, superheated steam flew up and swirled outwards in pale shells of vapour while webs and curtains of water were drawn up after the ascending craft. Some on board the lugger had been scalded by the steam and all had flattened themselves on the deck, craning their heads to stare fearfully as the strange thing roared up into the night sky and was gone.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As most writers would surely know, a true and comprehensive page of acknowledgements would require tips of the hat going out to manifold persons far and wide. But in the interests of brevity, clarity, maybe even hilarity, I'll have to leave out half the human race (y'all know who you are) and direct thankees to those whose own works have inspired me to launch myself full-bodied upon the mighty task of space opera, them being Eric Brown, Bill King, David Brin, Dave Wingrove, Iain Banks, Ken Macleod, Gary Gibson, Ian Mcdonald, Vernor Vinge, Dan Simmons, the Big Three - Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke - Ian Watson, Neal Asher, Jack Vance, Andre Norton, and, undoubtedly, a host of others that my feebletastic brain has failed to bring to mind. Checksum failed, assuredly.

In addition, mention must be made of those stalwart pioneers of Scottish spec-fic, the Glasgow SF Writers Circle, as well as our Edinburgh counterparts, and the redoubtable Andrew J Wilson. Munificent thanks should also be extended to John Parker at MBA Literary Agency, and by no means least to my editor, Darren Nash, whose critical eagle-eye (some kind of editorial special perception) and amiable, enthusiastic persistence kept me and the book on track. Encouragement and rethink-jogging came from other quarters at various points along the book's timeline, from the likes of John Jarrold, Joshua Bilmes, Stewart Robinson, John Marks, Eddie Black and the copy editors at Orbit.

Musical accompaniment was provided by the likes of Pallas, Fish, Eisbrecher, Colony5, Robert Schroeder, Klaus Schulze, Racer X, Ozric Tentacles, Opeth, the amazing Mustasch, as well as such doomlords as Penance, Novembre, Candlemass, Paradise Lost, and Krux, as well as Paisley's preacher of prog, Graeme Fleming, and Sheffield's missionary of metal, Ian Sales. KDI!

About the author

Michael Cobley was born in Leicester, England, and has lived in Glasgow, Scotland, for most of his life. He has studied engineering, been a DJ and has an abiding interest in democratic politics. His previous books include the Shadowkings dark fantasy trilogy, and
Iron Mosaic,
a short story collection.
Seeds of Earth,
book one of the Humanity's Fire sequence, is his first fulllength foray into space opera.

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Table of Contents

PROLOGUE

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

PART FOUR

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