Kullervo stared at him, the dazed astonishment on his face slowly replaced by something more recognizable, and yet equally strange. “Ilmarinen—” he murmured.
“No,” Gundhalinu said, shaking Kullervo slightly, unnerved. “It’s me.… Reede?”
Reede blinked at him, shaking his head independently now. “I know,” he snapped, brushing off the contact of Gundhalinu’s hand.
“Why did you call me Ilmarinen?” Gundhalinu asked softly, curiosity forcing the question out of him against his better judgment.
Kullervo shrugged, “Some of my … associates have been known to call me ‘the new Vanamoinen.’ I guess that makes you Ilmarinen.… Bad joke.” His gaze broke, and he shook his head, still looking away as the cylindrical servo appeared out of the depths, bringing the now-obedient, quiescent milligram of stardrive with it.
Gundhalinu watched it come, breathless with anticipation. Kullervo hung motionless beside him. And then, with slow, almost deliberate grace, Kullervo turned a somersault in the air.…
“Ananke!” Kullervo’s voice in realtime pulled Gundhalinu back into the present.
“Yes, Dr. Kullervo.” The voice of the Ondinean student who was his lab assistant materialized out of the air.
“Find Niburu for me. Tell him I want to see him. We have our clearance.”
“That’s great, Doctor! Right away—”
Kullervo turned back to face Gundhalinu. “When can we leave for Fire Lake?”
“Tomorrow,” Gundhalinu said, hardly believing the answer himself. “I requisitioned everything we’ll need weeks ago.” They had perfected the viral program that effectively stabilized the stardrive plasma; they had tested it successfully. The obvious next step was to make the journey to Fire Lake itself, where a vast semisentient sea of stardrive material waited for them to answer its need, to make order out of its chaos.… Gundhalinu looked toward the doorway, remembering the touch of its tormented mind, remembering the hot breath of madness, and the chill of winter snow.
“About goddamn time,” Kullervo muttered, oblivious. “You’d think somebody around here besides us would want to see this thing work!”
Gundhalinu glanced back at him. “There are plenty who have been aching for this moment as long as I have, believe me,” he said. But not aching like I have.… “You met some of them back in Foursgate, at the Survey Hall.” He had taken Kullervo to a special meeting of his local cabal a few weeks back, when he had known that the breakthrough in their research was imminent. Kullervo had been quiet, oddly subdued, during the meeting; even though it had been clear from his responses that he must be at a fairly high level within the inner circles of Survey. “Unfortunately the ones with any vision are all still back in Foursgate. And we are here—out where the bureaucracy is its own reason for existence. The greatest scientific breakthrough in a thousand years becomes nothing but a glitch in the program, to them. They’re expecting us in the departure screening area this afternoon for the final certification of our itinerary and proposed goals.”
Reede made a rude noise. “Pearls before swine,” he muttered. He shut down his terminal with an abrupt gesture, turning back to face Gundhalinu. “Let’s get it over with, then.” He peered through the doorway into the larger lab space. “Where’s Niburu?” he snapped.
Looking past him, Gundhalinu saw Ananke glance up from whatever he had been studying. “Coming up, Doctor.” He nodded. “He’ll meet you at the usual place out front.”
“You’re coming too,” Kullervo said. “We all have to go.” The boy stood up, looking vaguely surprised, or maybe apprehensive. He was not wearing his pet slung at his chest, for once. Gundhalinu glanced around the room, until he found the quoll sitting placidly in a box underneath the desk. He shook his head, imagining the kind of stares that pair must have attracted on Kharemough. He looked back at Kullervo again.
Kullervo swung around, almost as if he could feel himself being stared at. Gundhalinu glanced down, turning away toward the door as Kullervo came back across the room, followed by Ananke. They went out together through the muted hive of research cubicles and labs, through the symmetrical green-lit levels of security, like swimmers rising through the water. They arrived at last in the sudden brightness and noise, the heat and humidity and rank vegetation smell of World’s End, which were always there waiting, just outside the Project’s doors.
Kedalion Niburu, Kullervo’s other assistant, was waiting for them as promised outside the compound, in the noise and heat. He was comfortably insulated from the environment, sitting behind the controls of the triphibian rover Kullervo had requisitioned as soon as he had learned that it was what they used for travel into the wilderness. Since then, Niburu had been learning to handle one in preparation; Kullervo insisted that Niburu could pilot anything, and was the only one he would trust to take them in. Gundhalinu had acquiesced, knowing that he himself was not capable of piloting a rover, and that at least Kullervo trusted this man with his life. It reduced one factor of randomness to have a pilot he at least knew somewhat, and not a stranger assigned by Security. His own gut feeling about Kullervo’s other assistant, once he had gotten past the startling visual interference of meeting a man so much shorter than himself, was that Niburu was competent and dependable, and a good deal more stable than Kullervo. And stability was something he valued over anything else, when he went into World’s End.
Gundhalinu climbed into the rover, grateful for its shelter after walking even a few meters through the steaming heat of the day. Kullervo and Ananke got in behind him and the door hissed shut, sealing them into its climate-controlled womb. Gundhalinu wiped sweat from his face. The uniform he was expected to appear in during most of his waking hours had been designed for wear in climatized offices, not for practical use in a place like this … something he would have to take up with the Hegemony’s establishment when he got back to Kharemough. He glanced at Kullervo, who had settled into the copilot’s seat next to Niburu. Kullervo’s face was flushed; Gundhalinu had never seen him wear anything but a long-sleeved tunic or shirt, even though there was nothing that required him to dress formally. Gundhalinu wondered absently why he didn’t use sunblock for protection instead.
Niburu took them up with what seemed to be effortless skill, rising above the nervous dance of ground traffic even though the distance they had to travel was short. Niburu seemed to know his employer’s temperament well; Gundhalinu supposed that it was an occupational requirement when working with Kullervo.
Gundhalinu stared out at the crazy-quilt of old and new structures down below. It reminded him of a three-dimensional data model, showing the town’s uncontrolled spread like some aberrant lifeform, a runaway virus, the stardrive plasma itself.… He forced his mind away from the image, focusing on the concrete fact of the town’s explosive growth, for which he was largely responsible. When he had first arrived here to search for his missing brothers, this town had barely existed. It had been the only legitimate access to World’s End for prospectors and other riffraff foolhardy enough to dare the wilderness. At that time it was run by Universal Processing Consolidated, the multinational that had controlled World’s End mineral rights, and it was more a surreal bureaucratic nightmare than a genuine geographic place existing on real-world maps. It had not even had a name, then. Out here they called Universal Processing Consolidated “the Company,” and this was the Company’s town.
But he had gone into World’s End, and come out of it with news that was still sending shockwaves through the Hegemony. The shock had been felt, the changes had begun first, here, at the epicenter on Number Four. He watched the town pass below, the sullen core of squat, heavyset colonial structures overwhelmed by the gleam of the prefabricated highrise hives the government of Four had dropped here to house the influx of technicians, researchers, and workers who were responsible for the Project and its physical plant.
Down in the warren of its streets, it seemed to be a place completely transformed, reborn, like the future itself. But from u
p here he could see beyond its perimeter, see the rank frenzy of the jungle that surrounded it on all sides, stretching to the horizon. The jungle was constantly trying to reclaim the earth from this infestation of alien sentience, giving ground slowly, but never willingly.… Chaos against order. A microcosm of life, of progress, of the human soul.
He shut his eyes for a moment, against the vision, against the resonance it started in his memory. Tomorrow he would be going to Fire Lake with knowledge that, gods willing, would begin to bring the Lake back from the heart of madness, as he had barely brought his brothers back … as he had barely brought himself back to sanity, to civilization, the first time. He shifted in his seat, relieved to see that they were already descending again, falling back into the illusion that progress and order were winning.
Not that order and progress had any claim to moral superiority, he thought wearily, as Niburu set them down on the designated spot in the security area of the departure center. Ugliness and banality were all that he could see, rising up on every side, as they got out of the hovercraft and stood on the cercreted landing field. Looking down, he saw the fleshy excrescence of some nameless fungal growth oozing up out of a crack in the inadequately laid ceramic pavement beside his boot, chaos seeping in through civilization’s pores. Nothing here had been built to last. It’s frightening, the sibyl Hahn had said to him once, how precariously we float on the surface of life.
He tugged habitually at the hem of his uniform jacket, as the uniformed guard came toward them across the field, bristling with an array of weapons: more a symbol than a threat, a reminder that was easy for the average human mind to grasp of the far more subtle and effective forms of weaponry that now defended the Perimeter, barring the uninvited from access to World’s End.
When the Company alone had controlled access to World’s End, getting in uninvited had been difficult enough. Now Gundhalinu was certain that it was all but impossible. After word of his discovery had become public, Four’s powerful World Enclave had forcibly nationalized them, with the backing of the Hegemonic Police. Universal Processing Consolidated had been one of the major economic forces on the planet; for the world government to take them over under any other circumstances would have been unthinkable. Without the full support of the Hegemony, it would probably have been impossible. But Universal Processing Consolidated owned World’s End, where Fire Lake lay. He had found the impossible there, and so the unthinkable had suddenly become the inevitable.…
As the security guard approached them, Gundhalinu saw how big the other man really was; not simply tall but massive, moving toward them with the inexorability of a landslide. Something about the guard’s broad, bronze face seemed familiar; Gundhalinu wondered if they had crossed paths before. Nothing in the man’s sullen expression—or lack of it—suggested anything more than a general resentment of foreigners, which they all plainly were. He wore the uniform of the Enclave’s military, but Gundhalinu was sure he had worn the Company’s uniform before, like most of the workers here. Their masters had changed, but nothing else had—except that now the totalitarian bureaucracy that had run the lives of virtually everyone on this particular continent for a century had even better tools of oppression, and even less fear of government intervention controlling their excesses; because now they were the government.
Gundhalinu watched the guard raise a callused hand to make him a grudging salute. He returned it, keeping his equal reluctance to himself. Waves of heat reflected up from the pitiless, glassy pavement beneath his feet. He remembered how once he had watched hands like those casually break all the fingers of a would-be prospector, in a bar called C’uarr’s.
“Commander Gundhalinu,” he said, too brusquely, “to see Agent Ahron.”
“And them?” the guard asked, intentionally insulting, as his black, hooded eyes darted at the three other men.
Gundhalinu felt Kullervo frown beside him. “Them too,” he said gently. He took a step forward, forcing the guard to take one step back; the guard turned and started away without another word. Kullervo glanced over at him, a brief, measuring glance; but he said nothing as the guard led them toward the administrative complex where Agent Ahron waited.
Inside they were loaded into a secured tram and sent like human baggage through the characterless repetitions of the complex to their destination. The distance was short, but Gundhalinu was still grateful that they did not have to walk, under guard, like criminals. Ananke sat beside him, staring at the identical doorways as if they were a revelation. Gundhalinu looked across at Kullervo, who sat frowning and pulling at his ear, at the crystal-beaded ear cuff that was one of the more obvious manifestations of his unpredictable personal style.
Niburu sat beside Kullervo; his short legs jutted from the seat like a child’s. Gundhalinu imagined that Niburu felt more relieved even than he did not to have to walk this distance, since Niburu was always pressed to keep pace, in a body that was constantly inconvenienced by the conventions of others. He had dared to mention the matter to Niburu one day, as he had watched him standing on a chair to access a simple data run that Kullervo had left for him to confirm. Niburu had only shrugged in apparent resignation, and murmured that on board his ship the proportions were to his specs, and not anyone else’s.
Gundhalinu stole another glance at Niburu and Ananke. They watched the color-washed walls pass, sitting in an unlikely symmetry of pose. He had wondered to himself whether Kullervo had chosen his staff simply for their shock value. He suspected it was possible. And yet he was almost certain that it was not because of their appearance, but rather in spite of it, that Reede had hired them.
The tram spat them out directly into the mouth of a doorway that was more like an airlock leading into an isolation chamber. The security was hardly this elaborate at the Project itself.
“Overkill,” he heard Kullervo mutter to Niburu, behind him. “What do these shitheads think this is saving them from?”
Gundhalinu glanced back at them, his mouth curving slightly. “Spontaneity,” he murmured. Kullervo said something unintelligible, as the inner doorscreen dematerialized before them.
A thickset middle-aged woman with golden skin and iron-colored hair looked up at them from across the barren expanse of room. Gundhalinu recognized her as Agent Ahron, who had approved his departure permits and itinerary on several previous journeys to Fire Lake. She wore a variant of the same uniform they had seen on almost everyone they passed, and an expression that was as familiar to him as her face: alert without being at all interested in what she saw. There were three men with her; he knew without having to be told why they were here. “Commander Gundhalinu,” Ahron said, managing to give his name a slight querulous lilt, as if she wasn’t certain she remembered his face.
“Yes,” he said, as ingratiatingly as he could, “back for one more try. For the last time, I hope, thanks to my colleague here.” He gestured at Kullervo, who stood stiffly beside him, eyeing the room and its inhabitants.
She said nothing, still gazing at him without the slightest trace of curiosity. The three men stood silently behind her, like afterthoughts.
“We believe we’ve found a way to control the stardrive. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what that means—”
“Yes, Commander, I’ve reviewed your documents. Also your permits and supply lists,” she said, glancing away at the display surface of the dust-colored desk/terminal beside her. “Everything seems to be in order here, for once. There’s no reason that I can see why you shouldn’t be able to depart as planned.”
He realized with a prick of irritation that the “for once” referred to his input and not Security’s response to it. “I’m very glad to hear it,” he said, with excruciating politeness. He felt Kullervo begin to relax, infinitesimally, beside him.
“How much time do you expect this expedition to take?”
“It’s hard to say. If the tests are successful—”
“I need a precise length of stay.” She tapped impatiently at the displa
y.
“Yes, of course. One week.” They should know whether Reede’s restructuring program worked or not almost immediately. Even with the question of systems setup and the vagaries of time around Fire Lake, that should give them enough slack.
“That’s all? You realize that you will have to return in one week, whether your work is finished or not—”
“Two weeks, then,” he said, with faint impatience, “make it two weeks.”
“All right. But in that case, should you finish your study in less time, you will have to notify us that you are returning ahead of schedule.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Would you please input your security clearance code, then, to indicate your personal testimony that the data is accurate to the best of your knowledge.”
He nodded, touching the remote on his belt, silently transferring the code numbers to the waiting document. After a moment he heard the piercing tone that indicated the security databank had accepted his verification.
“These will be your crew,” Ahron said, gesturing toward the three men waiting like stones behind her—her first acknowledgment that there was anyone else in the room.
Gundhalinu nodded, stepping forward as the three government troopers came reluctantly to life. But Kullervo’s hand closed over his arm, pulling him back.
“What is this—?” Kullervo whispered, suddenly angry. “You didn’t say anything about anyone else coming with us!”