Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2) (38 page)

‘Lead on,’ said Serene happily, flicking another glance back towards the coast, and considering the disasters that occurred there before she was born.

The first oil-quake, which dropped the Burj Al Arab hotel and its population of four hundred and eighty billionaires into the ocean and left the Burj Khalifa tower tilted at twenty degrees, was
also the first nail in the lid of the coffin constructed by Middle Eastern fundamentalism. Other nails were soon to follow. No one knew who had fired the missile at Tel Aviv from Iraq, but the
warhead the ancient SCUD carried could only have come from Iran’s shiny new collection. Mossad was blamed for the detonation of a similar device in a Baghdad cellar, and was also held
responsible for the air-burst biological weapon detonated over Mecca during the Hajj, but that was only after the month-long incubation period of the virus, when it started killing returning
pilgrims, as well as their families and friends around them.

After her close-protection team had checked what lay ahead, then signalled an all-clear, Serene followed Palgrave into the new building and gazed round in wonder. Along a row of tanks a group of
human workers clad in hazmat suits – which were actually not protection for them but for what they were handling – were netting fish from tanks and gently squeezing milt and eggs from
them into containers strapped to their waists. To her right a long, low aquarium swarmed with shrimp, while in others she spied prawns, crabs and various other crustaceans.

As she gazed at these, Serene considered the final chapters in the disaster that occurred inland of here. Resources – it was always about resources. As it was finally recognized that the
human race had passed over the Hubbert Peak – that Peak Oil had passed – and as new technologies were finally taken out of the laboratory and applied across the world, Middle Eastern
fortunes began to wane as oil magnates tried to cash in by overpricing a failing resource. The result of this was that the fundamentalists hereabouts soon learned that religious tolerance began and
ended at the petrol pump, and no one felt any inclination to build the new fusion reactors in lands which, in public perception, had constantly supplied the world with bearded lunatics with
strap-on bombs or home-brewed biological weapons.

When the Golden Decade came to an end in an overpopulated world where food and fresh water were running out and financial systems imploding, barren desert countries were the first to suffer, no
matter how fat the bank accounts of their rulers. Then, as the nascent Committee gleefully began applying confiscatory taxes, Middle Eastern fortunes plummeted further. Here in Dubai the money
eventually ran out and the island project failed, the island groups dissolving into a saltwater swamp that swallowed all the millionaire condos and tower blocks. But it was a failure Palgrave was
now making use of.

‘The fiddler crab population here shot up just after the Scour,’ explained Palgrave, breaking into her thoughts as he pointed at a tank containing some examples of that species,
‘then it crashed with the spread of a very specific fungal infection. That’s our problem, you see. Monocultures are susceptible to that sort of thing, so we need more
variety.’

‘I am aware of that,’ Serene replied, frowning, a little of the sunshine going out of her day, ‘which is why, as you must be aware, the
Scourge
has gone after Argus
Station. Once we have recovered the Gene Bank data and samples, we can introduce more variety.’

‘Though admittedly,’ Palgrave hurriedly added, ‘every day we’re rediscovering species long thought to be extinct. All it takes is one or two surviving eggs or spores on
the seabed . . .’

There had been some cheering news over the last few months. Some old varieties of bees had been discovered building colonies in defunct agricultural plants – bees thought to have been
wiped out in the twenty-first century by mite infections. Serene often found herself now wondering if Earth’s biosphere could recover without all that stuff from the Gene Bank. However, every
time her hopes were raised, something else came along and dashed them. The Mediterranean octopus was one example. Amazingly it still existed, yet the proof of that was only washed up on the shore
after
big infrastructure crashes in the Peloponnese had led to a case-hardening plant dumping a few billion gallons of toxic waste into the sea.

From the panoquaria they headed down below decks to the nursery tanks, all swarming with fish fry, crustaceans, mollusc larvae and seaweed spores. This place gratifyingly smelt of life, of
renewal, of new beginnings.

‘It’s begun,’ said Palgrave, pointing out one tank as it began to drain, its tonnes of fish fry draining out through metre-diameter pipes to outlets all along the sides of this
erstwhile supertanker. She followed him along two kilometres of aisles, never feeling any of the inclination to boredom she felt in scramjet or space-plane construction plants. At one point, noting
their lack of enthusiasm, she dismissed her PAs back up to the deck, retaining only Sack and her close protection team. By the time, four hours later, she reached an elevator leading back up to the
deck, many of the nursery tanks had emptied and were now refilling with filtered and purified seawater.

It had begun; the renewal of Earth had really begun.

As they came back up onto the deck, Palgrave put his fingers up to his fone, then stumbled. He suddenly looked even paler than before, as he turned to stare at her with terrified eyes.

‘A problem?’ she enquired, immediately recognizing his reaction.

He glanced to one side, towards the distant deck rail. ‘There was always the possibility—’

She held up a hand to silence him. ‘What is the problem?’

‘I have to check something.’ Palgrave started to back away.

‘Bring him,’ she said, turning and heading towards the rail.

Palgrave let out a yelp of surprise and she glanced back to see two of her team grab him and begin dragging him after her. Heat haze shimmered over the deck ahead and the sunlight seemed
suddenly too bright. Sweat immediately plastered her blouse to her back and she began to feel extremely irritated. She groped in her top pocket for her sunglasses, put them on, then quickly took
them off again to wipe off the smeary fingerprints with a tissue. It was so difficult ever to obtain answers that weren’t utterly distorted by the self-interest of her employees. Putting her
sunglasses back on as she reached the edge of the ship, she rested her hands on the hot graphene rail and gazed first in puzzlement, then in growing horror at the scene before her.

‘The pumps,’ Palgrave said miserably, ‘they’ve stirred up something from the ocean bed.’

Hectares of ocean were now covered with a scum of dead and dying fish. Nurtured inside this ship, raised healthy and ready to begin their task of renewal, they’d been pumped straight out
into poison. Serene reached up to raise her sunglasses, scrubbed away tears, then slipping the glasses back into place she turned her gaze on Palgrave.

Of course, the man hung dejectedly between the two enforcers, and fully expected to die. She also noted that every one of her protection team, and Sack too, expected her to give the order, and
were only waiting to learn how she wanted Palgrave killed.

‘Release him,’ she said.

The two enforcers did so, and Palgrave subsided heavily on his knees.

‘In your effort to please me,’ she said, ‘you did not take sufficient precautions. You did not adequately survey this release area.’

He looked up at her, still waiting for the axe to fall.

She continued, ‘Do not make the same mistake again.’ She then turned and began walking back along the hot deck to the aero landing platform, gesturing Sack and her team after her.
Always, she decided, there came a time to put away childish things, and killing out of spite was one of them.

Rest in Peace

Towards the end of the twenty-first century, with land at a premium and with old traditions dying and religions crumbling, human burial became increasingly unfeasible.
In some places that old method of human burial whereby a grave was effectively rented, and the bones were later transferred to an ossuary, did gain a brief foothold but it was soon swept away.
Public safety and the recycling meme of preceding decades were used by governments to enforce change. Burial was taxed and legislated into extinction, and graveyards soon cleared for either
agriculture or building purposes. Cremations of the singular kind were killed off in the same way – pollution taxes and health and safety ‘issues’ soon making them prohibitively
expensive. Communal incinerations quickly became the norm, with the bereaved storing their dead until there were enough for a single burn inside some combined trash-incineration and
power-generating plant. Later changes, first in the biotech and macerating technology, then in the laws governing what could go into community digesters which provided methane gas supplies and
compost for agriculture enabled a return to individual disposal, since there were no constraints on when a corpse could go into a digester. People could even bring flowers, too – to cast
down, after their loved one, into the hopper and the macerating drums.

Argus

As Alex stood over a transport cylinder he was making ready, he felt an overpowering reluctance to follow through with his plan, then turned and gazed at his personal
hydroponics trough. He simply did not want to leave his plants alone; nor did he want to leave his little refuge. However, his programming proved stronger, and he returned to the task in hand.

The lock on the cylinder lid had been first. He had removed a plate from the interior, which covered the mechanism, and now, with a pair of pliers from a simple toolkit, he could open the
cylinder from inside. This he would only be able to do once it reached its destination – which would be one of the cold stores scattered throughout the station. If he tried opening it while
it was being air-blasted along its transport tube, he’d probably emerge out the other end in bits.

The problem he now faced was a computer, one that Alexandra could probably have solved in an instant. He needed the cylinder to inform the hydroponics unit that it was full and therefore ready
to be sent on its way. Five hours of working with the computer in the cylinder and in the unit itself got him nowhere. Then he traced some wiring and found the solution so simple it made him laugh
hysterically. The cylinder broadcast its readiness to be filled after it arrived and its lid was opened. It then broadcast its readiness to be transported away again simply when the lid was
closed.

Alex now collected all the items he could think of that might be of use when he reached the cold store, starting with his rifle. He then ate everything his plants had recently produced, followed
by a portion stolen from the unit itself, drank his fill of the water yet to be laced with plant nutrient, then lay down inside the cylinder. As he reached up to close the lid, some strange memory
niggled at him and he paused in puzzlement to try and nail it down. After a moment it became clear.

‘Like a coffin,’ he said out loud.

The comparison carried no emotional baggage. Coffins were something he knew about through watching some of the few politically approved films he had been allowed, and so possessed no macabre
associations. Putting dead people in boxes in order to bury them was a waste of resources the Earth had been unable to afford for nearly a century. And a funeral was these days a short goodbye next
to the hopper of a community digester or waste incinerator.

He closed the lid.

Oddly, lights immediately came on inside, but lights of a deep purplish blue. He realized he was being bathed in ultraviolet, which was regularly used to wipe out free bacteria and viruses. The
cylinder began to move, and he felt the clonk as it entered the transport tube. He was on his way; this was going to work!

Then a sulphurous vapour began to fill the cylinder and he realized that ultraviolet was not all they used to prevent the spread of diseases. Immediately he was gasping for breath and then
clawing at the lid above him, even as he felt the cylinder accelerate down its tube. He realized that opening the cylinder now might kill him, but the gas most certainly would. But where were the
pliers? He groped about, just as the cylinder abruptly decelerated. He held his breath, was relieved to feel another clonk just as he found the pliers down beside his chest. Then, even as he
scrabbled at the locking mechanism, the lid suddenly opened.

His eyes were watering and he just could not stop coughing. Something was opening and closing above him, and he reached up and shoved at it and, with a whine of hydraulics, a jointed arm
withdrew its four-fingered claw – the computer controlling it obviously confused over what it had found. He grabbed the same claw and used it to heave himself out, and propel himself away.
Then, as his vision cleared, he studied his surroundings.

The cylinder had arrived in a hexagonal aisle, surrounded on all sides by translucent boxes packed with produce. Immediately he started shivering but, as he gasped, he realized it was lucky he
was still able to breathe. This store had been made for human access so had been kept oxygenated. It was also for preserving food, so it was very cold. He propelled himself along the aisle to the
end, out into a metre-wide space between the entrances to six other aisles and the end wall. The store seemed to be arranged like the ammunition cylinder of a six-gun.

In the centre of the near wall sat an airlock, which he immediately went over to and opened, pulling himself inside. Ensuring that the inner door remained open by jamming the pliers into the
hole where the hinge curved into the wall, he moved over to the outer door and rubbed at a veneer of ice that was frosting a single porthole. Eventually he obtained a view he could understand.
Outside, a cageway extended for ten metres then curved to the right, and visible through the cageway to the left was that thing the robots had been building in the outer rim. He felt like crying.
The only improvement in his situation here was access to more food and this additional view. Without a spacesuit, he could go no further than this, and he could not stay here either. The cold in
the store behind him, though not sufficient to freeze the produce and thus ruin it, would still eventually kill him. He turned, retrieved his pliers and headed back to see if he could get the
cylinder to transport him back home.