The Night's Dawn Trilogy (440 page)

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As soon as the black shell of the zero-tau field had snapped up around Jacqueline Couteur, Pierce Gilmore headed back for
his office. He didn’t protest at Hewlett’s continuing restrictions in preventing them from leaving the secure laboratory complex.
In fact, he rather approved. He’d received a nasty shock when Couteur escaped, on top of the asteroid physically shaking in
the wake of the antimatter blast. Under the circumstances, such precautions were both logical and sensible.

The office door slid shut behind him, and some of the lighting came on. Current power rationing permitted him only four of
the ceiling panels, the kind of light provided by a cold winter afternoon. None of the holographic windows were active.

He walked over to the percolator jug, which was still bubbling away contentedly, and poured himself a cup. After a moment
of regret, he switched it off. There probably wouldn’t be enough space in his evacuation allocation to take it or any of the
bone china cups with him. Assuming there would be any allocation for personal effects. With over three hundred thousand people
to evacuate in a week, the amount of baggage they could take with them would be minimal to zero.

The small solaris tube running above his orchids was also off. Several of the rare pure-genotype plants were due to flower,
their fleshy buds had almost burst. They never would now. There would be no light and fresh air, and the heat would arrive
soon. The secure laboratory was closer to the surface than most of the asteroid’s habitable sections, it would receive the
worst of the inward seepage. Furniture, equipment, it would all be lost. The only thing to survive would be their files.

Pierce sat behind his desk. In fact, he really ought to be drawing up procedures to safeguard the information ready for when
they transferred to their secondary facility. He put his cup down on the leather surface, next to an empty cup. That hadn’t
been there before.

“Hello, Doctor,” Jacqueline Couteur said.

He did flinch, but at least he didn’t jump or yelp. She didn’t have the satisfaction of witnessing any disconcertion, which
in the game they played was a big points winner. His eyes locked on an empty section of wall directly ahead, refusing to turn
round and look for her. “Jacqueline. You have no feelings. Poor Lieutenant Hewlett really won’t enjoy being outsmarted in
this manner.”

“You can stop trying to datavise for help now, Doctor. I disabled the room’s net processors. Not with my energistic power,
either, there was no glitch to alert the AI. Kate Morley had some knowledge of electronics, a couple of old didactic courses.”

Pierce Gilmore datavised the comprehensive processor array installed in his desk. It reported that its link with Trafalgar’s
communication’s net had been removed.

Jacqueline chuckled softly as she walked round the desk into his line of sight. She was carrying a processor block, its small
screen alive with graphics that monitored his datavises. “Anything else you’d like to try?” she enquired lightly.

“The AI will notice the processors have gone off line. Even if it isn’t caused by a glitch, a marine squad will be sent to
investigate.”

“Really, Doctor? A lot of systems were damaged by the EM pulse. I’ve apparently been caught and shoved into zero-tau, and
the marines have already cleared this level. I think that gives us time enough.”

“For what?”

“Oh dear me. Is that finally a spike of fear I sense in your mind, Doctor? That has got to be the first arousal of any kind
you’ve had for many a year. Perhaps it’s even a hint of remorse? Remorse for what you put me through.”

“You put yourself through it, Jacqueline. We asked you to cooperate; you were the one who chose to refuse. Very bluntly, as
I recall.”

“Not guilty. You tortured me.”

“Kate Morley. Maynard Khanna. Should I go on?”

She stood directly in front of the desk, staring at him. “Ah. Two wrongs making a right? Is that what I’ve reduced you to,
Doctor? Fear does things to the most brilliant of minds. It makes them desperate. It makes them pitiful. Is there any other
excuse you’d like to offer?”

“If I was facing a jury, good and true, I could offer several justifications. Such arguments would be wasted on a bigot.”

“Petty, even for you.”

“Cooperate with us. It’s not too late.”

“Not even clichÉs change in five hundred years. That says quite a lot about the human race, don’t you think? Certainly everything
I need to know.”

“You’re transferring onto an abstract concept. Self-hatred is a common aspect of a diseased mind.”

“If I’m the one that’s ill and incapable, how come you’re the one in terminal trouble?”

“Then stop being the problem, and help us with a solution.”

“We are not
problems
.” Her hand slammed down on the front of the desk, making the two coffee cups jump. “We are people. If that simple fact could
ever register in that fascist bitek brain of yours then you might be able to look in a different direction, one that would
help bring an end to our suffering. But that is beyond you. To think along those lines you have to be human. And after all
these weeks of study, the one definite conclusion I have come to, is that you are not human. Nor can you ever become human.
You have nothing, no moral foundation from which to grow out of. Laton and Hitler were saints compared to you.”

“You’re taking your situation far too personally. Understandably, after all, you can hardly retreat from it. You lack the
courage for that.”

“No.” She straightened up. “But I can make my last noble stand. And depriving the Confederation Navy of your so called talent
will be a satisfactory achievement for me. Nothing personal, you understand.”

“I can put an end to this, Jacqueline. We’re so very close to an answer now.”

“Let’s see how your rationality endures the reality of the beyond. You will now experience every facet of it. Being possessed
by one of its inhabitants; living within it, and if you’re really fortunate, as a possessor, forever terrified that some lucky
living bastard is going to rip you out of your precious new prize and send you back screaming. What will your answer be then,
I wonder?”

“Unchanged.” He gave her a sad defeated smile. “It’s called resolution, the ability and determination to see things through
to the end. However unexpected or disappointing that end turns out to be. Not that anyone will ever know now. But I held true
to myself.”

Alarmed by his mind tone, Jacqueline started to point her right arm. Slivers of white fire licked up from her wrist.

In Gilmore’s mind the alternatives were stark. That she would torture him was inevitable. He would be possessed, or more likely
damaged so badly that his body died, banishing his soul to the beyond. That was where logic broke down. He believed, or thought
he did, that there was a way out of the beyond. Doubt undermined him, though. Factious, unclean human emotion, the type he
hated so. If a way through the beyond existed, why did the souls remain trapped? There was no certainty any more. Not for
him, not there. And he couldn’t stand that. Facts and rationality were more than the building blocks of his mind, they were
his existence. If the beyond was truly a place without logic, then Pierce Gilmore had no wish to exist there. And his own
sacrifice would advance human understanding by a fraction. Such knowledge was a fitting last thought.

He datavised the processor array for the latest version of the anti-memory. Jacqueline’s hand was already lining up desperately
on him when the desktop AV projection pillar silently pumped a blindingly pervasive red light across the office.

______

Sixty minutes later Murphy Hewlett and his squad blew the office door out with an EE charge, and rushed in to the rescue.
They found Gilmore slumped over his desk, and Kate Morley lying on the floor in front of it. Both of them were alive, but
completely unresponsive to any kind of stimulus the squad medic could apply. As Murphy said later during his debriefing, they
were nothing but a pair of wide awake corpses.

From the safety of the little plateau, a quarter of the way up the northern endcap, Tolton trained his telescope on the lobby
of the Djerba starscraper. Another swirl of darkness was pushing up through the dome of white archways. Pieces of the structure
tumbled across the crumpled lawn circling the forlorn building. He kept expecting to hear the sound of breaking glass reach
across the distance. The telescope provided a good, sharp image, as if he was just a few metres away. He shivered at that
errant thought, still able to feel the wave of coldness that had swept through him every time the flying monster passed overhead.

“This one’s a walker.” He moved aside and let Erentz use the telescope’s eyepiece.

She studied it for a minute. “You’re right. It’s picking up speed, too.” The visitor had shoved its way through the smouldering
ruins of the shanties, leaving a deep furrow in its wake. Now it was traversing the meadows beyond. The wispy pink grass stalks
around it turned black, as if they’d been singed. “Moving smoothly enough; fast, too. It should reach the southern endcap
in five or six hours at that rate.”

Just what we need,
the personality groused.
Another of the buggers leeching off us. We’ll just have to reduce nutrient fluid production to survival minimum, keep the
neural strata alive. That’ll play hell with our main mitosis layer. It’ll take us years to regenerate the damage.

Eight of the dire visitors had now emerged from the Djerba, three of them taking flight. Without fail, they had headed for
the southern endcap, just as the first and largest had done. Those that moved over the land had left a contrail of dead vegetation
behind them. When they reached the endcap, they bored their way through the polyp and into the arteries which fed the giant
organs, suckling the nutrient fluid.

“We should be able to burn them out soon,” she said. “The flame throwers and incendiary torpedoes are coming on fine. You’ll
be okay.”

The look Tolton gave her made his lack of affinity irrelevant. He bent over the telescope again. The visitor was crunching
its way through a small forest. Trees swayed and toppled, broken off at the base. It seemed incapable of going round anything.
“That thing is goddamn strong.”

“Yeah.” Her worry was pronounced.

“How’s the signal project coming?” He asked the question several times every day, frightened he might miss out on some amazing
breakthrough.

“Most of us are working on developing and producing our weapons right now.”

“You can’t give up on that. You can’t!” He said it loud for the benefit of the personality.

“Nobody’s giving up. The physics core team is still active.” She didn’t tell him it was down to five theorists who spent most
of their time arguing about how to proceed.

“Okay then.”

Two more are approaching,
the personality warned.

Erentz gave the street poet a swift glance. He was engrossed with the telescope again, tracking the movements of the visitors
still loose on the grass plains.
No need to panic the others.

Quite.

The creatures had been arriving at the rate of nearly one every half hour ever since Erentz’s disastrous foray into the Djerba.
The personality was now worried about its ability to maintain the habitat’s environmental integrity. Each new arrival invariably
smashed its way into a starscraper, then proceeded to hammer the tower’s internal structure. So far the emergency inter-floor
pressure seals had held. But if the invasion continued at this rate a breach was inevitable.

We believe some of the incumbents are now starting to move,
the personality said.
It’s slow, which makes it hard to tell, but they could start to emerge into the parkland within in the next day or so.

Do you think they’re multiplying like the first one did?

Impossible to tell. Our perception routines close to them are almost completely inviolable now. We suspect a great deal of
the polyp is dead. However, if one did, then it is logical to assume the others will follow that pattern.

Oh great. Oh shit. We’re going to have to tackle each one separately. I’m not even sure we can win. The numbers are starting
to stack up against us.

We will have to review our tactics after the first few encounters. If the expenditure is too great then we may adopt Tolton’s
wishes and deploy everyone on the signal project.

Right.
She let out a beaten sigh.
You know, I don’t even consider that defeatist. Anything which gets us out of this is fine by me.

A healthy attitude.

Tolton straightened up. “What next?”

“We’d better get back down to the others. The visitors aren’t immediately threatening.”

“That can change.”

“If it does, I’m sure we’ll know about it real soon.”

They walked into the small cave at the back of the plateau. It housed a tunnel which spiralled down through several chambers
to the caverns at the base of the endcap. Wave escalators and stairs were arranged in parallel down each level. Most of the
wave escalators had stopped, so the descent took them quite a while.

The caverns had taken on the aspect of a fort under siege. Tens of thousands of people lay ill on whatever scraps of bedding
were available. There was no order to the way they were arranged. Nursing the bedridden was left entirely to those slightly
less ill, and consisted mainly of taking care of their sanitary needs. Those qualified (or with basic how-to didactic memories)
to operate medical packages circulated constantly, perpetually exhausted.

Erentz’s relatives had formed an inner coterie in the deepest caverns, where the light manufacturing tools and research equipment
were concentrated. They’d also taken care to stockpile their own food supply, which could last them for well over a month.
Here at least, a semblance of normality remained. Electrophorescent strips shone brightly in the corridors. Mechanical doors
whirred open and shut. The clatter of industrial cybernetics vibrated along the polyp. Even Tolton’s processor block let out
a few modest bleeps as basic functions returned to life.