The point of light in the darkness ahead of them flashed. Korzenowski felt a tremor in the clavicle. That tremor seemed to growl throughout the Thistledown; warning picts appeared in front of him, telling of disturbances in the sixth chamber.
Korzenowski made sure the link had been correctly established. It had.
Something was trying to pass through the link from the other side.
Korzenowski focused all his attention once again on the clavicle. A force had inserted itself into the link, intent on keeping it open; a force stronger and more sophisticated than Korzenowski had imagined possible.
“Trouble,” he picted quickly at Farren Siliom.
He tried to sever the link. The point of light remained, even grew in size. He could not reduce the link; all he could do was expand it, and he did not think that was wise. Whatever was on the opposite side apparently desired a complete re-opening, a reconnection with Thistledown.
Returning to the clavicle’s simulation of the weave between universes, Korzenowski examined the link from a wide variety of “angles,” searching for a weakness, something that in theory had to exist. He could exploit that weakness to destabilize the link, clamp it down on whatever was trying to pass through.
Before he found that weakness, a hideous flare of energy shot from the point and pierced the traction field blister over the end of the bore hole. The blister sparkled and vanished and everything spun in an instant wind, other traction fields flickering desperately as air rushed out of the bore hole.
Farren Siliom grabbed Korzenowski’s robe. The flare of energy whipped this way and that, searing the walls of asteroid rock and metal, arcing over the witnesses to touch the lead flawship and blast its nose into shards. The flawship swung out of its traction dock and smashed against Korzenowski’s spherical personal quarters, squashing it against the smoking wall.
Korzenowski could not breathe, but that didn’t matter. He closed his eyes and in the expanded instants of implant-augmented time, searched for the defect he knew must be there.
Farren Siliom lost his grip and shot past Korzenowski. An emergency traction field net expanded across the gap, lines glowing fiercely as it tried to stop the outrush of air and debris and people. The president struck this net and spread out against it, arms and legs held fast.
Olmy had fetched up against a pylon and now clung desperately, watching people fly past. Judith Hoffman, wrapped in a flickering emergency environment field, rolled by, and he reached out to grab at her. His hand was burned by the malfunctioning field, but he caught her and held, and the field extended around both of them.
Korzenowski, body spinning like a pennant cut loose in a storm, held in place only by the traction field connecting the clavicle and the console, felt his natural consciousness fade. He immediately switched all thought to his implant processors…And saw a glimmer of inequity, a hint of instability, from a certain “angle” on the link. The implant was wildly interpreting the flow of data from the clavicle; the defect “smelled” like something burnt, and left a sharp resinous taste in his mind.
The rush of wind slowed, the bore hole pressure having dropped almost to the level of the outer vacuum, but the blaze of energy pouring through the tiny link with the Way was narrowing, seeming to grow more specific in its targets. It had not yet, as far as Olmy had been able to see, hit any people, concentrating instead on large chunks of machinery, but now in its curls and convolutions it was coming dangerously close to the Engineer.
Korzenowski felt the heat but with eyes tightly closed, did not see the edge of his robe glow and disintegrate. More traction fields fought to regain the bore hole’s integrity, and emergency fields quickly formed spheres around the remaining people, but they were still being disrupted by the energy pouring out of the link.
The bore hole filled with spinning debris, stunned and unconscious people, agonized whorls and streamers of smoke; the loose flawship rolled and bounced slowly against the wall, threatening to crush the confused remotes that had gathered at the sides, awaiting instructions and an end to the chaos.
Korzenowski directed all the energies of the sixth chamber through the clavicle, at the defect in the link, seeking to open a gate there, a premature and disruptive gate that would force the link to close or create a violent crimp in the Way itself.
He wondered for a dark instant if they were facing the power of the Final Mind, as Mirsky had threatened; his intuition said otherwise.
The link blossomed into redness, like an expanding rose, and the petals lashed and abraded the cap of the open seventh chamber. He saw all of this briefly through the clavicle, and then felt an implant overload. If he did not disconnect, the implant—and part of his natural mind, as well—would probably be erased.
He removed his hands from the clavicle, but the work was already done.
The rose shrank against the blackness and stars. The blaze of energy vanished. The point of light, dimming rapidly, winked out.
Air stopped its painful rush past the Engineer. The traction fields held, and somewhere in the bore hole far behind, huge pumps began to replace the air lost in the past few…
How long had it been? Korzenowski queried his implant.
Twenty seconds. Only twenty seconds.
Olmy made sure the unconscious Hoffman was not seriously injured, then picted instructions for the environment field to separate. He tracted alone toward the console and Korzenowski. The Engineer steadied himself against his own emergency field, sucking in the thin air with painful gasps.
“What happened?” Olmy asked.
The Jart within him supplied the answer: Automatic defenses.
“I was about to ask you that,” Korzenowski said. “Your signal…” He stopped and looked around. “How many people lost? Where’s the president?”
Olmy looked through the transparent field now sealing the northern end of the bore hole. He could see a few twinkling bright objects flying outward on trajectories away from the seventh chamber and Thistledown. The traction field holding Farren Siliom had failed. Remotes were already speeding out to capture them.
“He’s out there,” Olmy said.
Korzenowski curled up in exhaustion and misery, collapsing like a pricked balloon.
“I think,” Olmy said, “that most of the dead are neo-Geshels…they all have implants.”
“Disaster,” Korzenowski said, shaking his head forlornly. “Was it what Mirsky warned us about?”
“I don’t think so,” Olmy said.
“Jarts, then.”
Olmy took hold of Korzenowski’s arm and gently urged him away from the clavicle. “Most likely,” he said softly. “Come with me.” The Jart did not attempt to control his actions; Korzenowski was as important to it as to Olmy.
The Engineer was almost babbling. “They tried to force the link to open completely. They want to get at us. They want to destroy us.”
Olmy asked the Jart if that was what they wanted.
Unless and until they receive the signal, that is almost certainly their goal.
The screams and groans within the bore hole subsided as medical remotes began to issue from the staging areas in the walls. Olmy guided his mentor toward a hatch. “We’re going to have to talk,” he said. “I have some things to explain.”
He did not know whether he had spoken the words voluntarily, or at the Jart’s command. Did it matter?
The message had been sent. Something had happened that could have destroyed the seventh chamber, perhaps the asteroid. The connection was not irrefutable, but it was strong…
Olmy’s failure was bearing its first fruit.
59
Thistledown City
In the Nexus chambers, the Engineer stood before the armillary sphere of testimony. Presiding Minister Dris Sandys occupied his Nexus seat, to one side of the president’s empty seat. The P.M. had escaped any serious injury.
Judith Hoffman, bruised and exhausted from the ordeal in the bore hole, sat in a special witness seat, along with the others who had e
scaped major harm. The rest of the Nexus chamber was empty; this was a matter for the presiding minister alone, as acting president, under the Emergency rules.
Olmy sat beside Judith Hoffman. The Jart was quiet within him; alert, but not interfering.
The P.M. requested that status reports on the dead and injured be projected before the chamber.
“The president,” he said dryly, “is being reincarnated now. There are a total of seven dead and nine seriously injured, including the two official historians, two corpreps, one senator, and the director of Thistledown. We haven’t suffered such losses since the Sundering. Fortunately, all are equipped with implants, and are expected to survive. Can you tell us what happened, Ser Korzenowski?”
The Engineer glanced at Olmy. There had been no time for the conversation Olmy had promised; both had been taken away by medical remotes for examination upon slipping into the staging area. They had not been alone since.
“I opened a test link with the Way. Something tried to pass through the link, and interfered with my attempt to close it.”
“Do you have any idea what the something was?”
“A Jart weapon, I presume,” Korzenowski said.
The presiding minister stared at him. “Is this merely a guess?”
“Vigilant Jarts, waiting for just such an opportunity,” Korzenowski said. “I don’t know what else it could be.”
The presiding minister asked if the representatives of the Thistledown Defense Forces agreed. They did; there was certainly no evidence to the contrary.
“Will it be possible to open another test link and learn for certain?”
“Yes,” Korzenowski said. “I can open an off-center link, in effect open a gate one hundred kilometers or so beyond the closed end of the Way. With proper shields and safeguards, we can make a reconnaissance and close the gate with little chance of detection.”
“How little?” the presiding minister asked.
“Little enough,” Korzenowski said. “But I recommend Thistledown be evacuated, all but for essential personnel and defense forces.”
The presiding minister stared grimly at him. “That would be a horrendous task.”
“It is essential,” the head of the defense forces said. “If we are going to reclaim the Way territories and establish a beachhead, there must be a buffer between the battle and our civilians.”
“What sort of buffer do you contemplate?”
“All civilians must be sent to the orbiting precincts or Earth.”
“Do you advocate removing just corporeals?”
“No, sir,” the head replied. “We advocate removing all corporeals, all residents in city memory, and all important cultural materials and data stores. Thistledown must serve as a buffer. In the unlikely event of our defeat, we must be willing to shut down the Way by destroying Thistledown.”
Hoffman glanced at Olmy. The expression on her bruised face was grim. “This is becoming an extravagant indulgence, isn’t it, Ser Olmy?” she murmured. “Nothing worth doing ever comes easy.”
Olmy didn’t reply. Second thoughts were more than ridiculous now.
“Is there substantial damage to the sixth chamber?” Dris Sandys asked.
“No, Ser,” Korzenowski said. “We can proceed.”
“We can’t say this is unexpected,” the presiding minister said. The following pause was long and accusing; nobody in the chamber missed the unspoken criticism. The president and presiding minister had been given little choice, and now, those who had put them in such a position had to face the consequences. “As acting president, and under the authority of the Emergency Laws, I order that Thistledown be evacuated, and that Ser Korzenowski and the defense forces make joint plans for further reconnaissance into the Way.”
60
Earth, Christchurch
Karen sat in the waiting room of the Christchurch clinic, face pale and drawn from lack of sleep. It had been thirty hours since she discovered her husband’s body, and still there was no word from technicians about the implant.
Her chair was opposite a window. Outside, the streets of Christchurch were filled with people, many in Hexamon uniforms, many Terrestrial citizens, thronging around the hospital. News of the evacuation had arrived less than half an hour ago; she worried now that her husband’s condition would be of no importance whatsoever in the middle of this enormously greater crisis, that they would both be forgotten.
She glanced at her hands. Despite scrubbing in the hospital lavatory, she saw there was still an overlooked speck of dried blood under her index fingernail. She focused on that speck—her husband’s blood—and closed her-eyes. The memories would not go away: opening up his neck, digging for the implant, slipping it into a pocket and zipping the pocket shut, driving along the dark roads in a balky ATV with the body and the implant into Twizel, all taking hours. After the sky had cleared, a shuttle had flown her into Christchurch.
The body, useless, had stayed in Twizel.
The issues were far from clear to her.
They had spent so many years together, and so few years, in comparison, growing apart…Their time coming together again had been so brief.
Humans are made for sorrow. We are not made for answers or certainties.
A technician—not the same one she had given the implant to—came through the door of the waiting room, glanced around until he saw her, and set his jaw grimly, a professional expression that indicated trouble. She raised her eyebrows, lips forming an expectant O.
“Mrs. Lanier?”
She gave the slightest nod.
“Are you sure the implant came from your husband?”
Karen stared at him. “I’m sure. I…took it from him myself.”
The technician spread his hands and glanced at the window.
“He’s dead?” she asked suddenly.
“The implant doesn’t contain your husband, Mrs. Lanier. There’s a personality, but it’s female, not male. We have no record of this personality in our files…. We don’t know who she is. She’s complete, however—”
“What are you talking about?” Karen asked.
“If the implant is from your husband, I don’t see—”
She stood and almost screamed, “Tell me what has happened!”
The technician shook his head quickly, intensely embarrassed and uncomfortable. “There’s a young woman in the implant, about twenty-one years old. She seems to have been out of action—stored—for some time, maybe twenty years; she doesn’t have any memory of contemporary events. She certainly wasn’t downline loaded recently. Her coding—”
“That’s impossible,” Karen said. “Where’s my husband?”
“I don’t know. Are you acquainted with anyone named Andia?”
“What?”
“Andia. This woman’s ID lists that name.”
“She was our daughter,” Karen said, the blood draining from her face. She half-sat, and supported herself with one hand on the back of the chair. “What happened to my husband?”
“We haven’t done more than an initial query. The only personality in the implant claims that her name is Andia. I have no idea what happened to your husband.”
Karen sat heavily, shaking her head. “How? She’s been dead—missing—twenty years…”
The technician shrugged his shoulders slightly, helpless.
“Garry…they made him wear the implant.” She straightened in the chair. This was not reality; this was beyond anything she had ever dreamed, hope or nightmare: to regain her daughter at the expense of her husband, through some miracle or perverse trick. “He beat them at their own game.” But he couldn’t have done it alone. She looked up at the technician, determined not to shake herself apart. Her arms and lower legs felt as if they carried a mild electric current. She had to stand and move around or she would faint. She stood carefully, slowly, letting the blood flow back to where it was needed, willing herself to be calm and not get sick. Something had to be said; she had to react in some rational way.
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“May I speak to her?”
“I’m sorry. Not until we’re able to expand her storage. She won’t be lucid until then. Your daughter is a Terrestrial citizen?”
Karen followed the technician into the hospital records area and answered his questions. With some searching, the old inactive legal records were recovered. Personality maps taken during the installation of Andia’s implant were compared.
They matched perfectly.
“The only word I can think of is miracle,” the technician said. Obviously, he did not believe her story; he had not removed the implant himself. “I’ll have to arrange for a legal inquiry.”
She nodded, numb now from head to toe despite her determination to stay calm. She felt cast adrift, isolated between horror and sorrow and wonder and hope. I’ve lost Garry and found our daughter. There was only one way that could be explained.
She had never been raised to believe in forces higher than humankind. Her upbringing had been strictly Marxist; the solace of religion was not available to her. Yet now she could think only of Mirsky, and what he might represent.
If you have him, please take care of him, she thought, addressing her message to the Russian, and to the forces beyond the avatar. And thank you for my daughter.
She waited alone in a small side room for an hour while the doctors and technicians tried to make their way through the maze of procedure and law. For a few minutes, she dozed off into a blank void. When the technician returned and awoke her, she felt much stronger; her numbness had passed.
“We’ll arrange for a reincarnation—she’s entitled,” the technician said. “That may take time, though. We’re going to be extremely busy here for the next few weeks, maybe months. We’ve been told to prepare our clinic for an emergency. Every available shuttle is going to be tied up for the foreseeable future, and all vehicles, too. I think I can arrange to have a medical shuttle take you home, however, if you leave in the next hour or so…”
She waved her hand, dismissing his offer. She had nothing to do at home. “I’d rather stay here. If I can be of any help.”