A Quantum Mythology (7 page)

‘From her? She’s about as sophisticated as some corp kid’s pet, those things you feed to the Scorpion. I don’t think she even has neunonics.’ Absurdly, Vic found himself feeling guilty again.

‘She doesn’t have neunonics,’ Scab said. ‘I need some insight.’

‘Into what?’

‘I don’t know what her S-tech does.’ Scab turned and started walking away.

Vic followed the much smaller, wiry human. ‘I thought it’s connected to bridge tech. That’s why everyone wants her. That was the whole fucking point, right? I mean, that’s why we’re going to spend the rest of what feels like eternity in some Church torture immersion, right?’

‘But how’s it connected?’

‘What, are you a bridge-drive engineer now?’ Vic said. ‘Who gives a fuck? And frankly, if we knew anything about her, that’d just make us more of a target in the highly unlikely event that your cockamamie scheme works.’

‘Don’t worry about it – you’ll almost certainly be dead before it comes to that.’

‘That’s comforting.’

‘Cockamamie?’ Scab asked, glancing up at the big ’sect.

‘I heard it in an immersion.’

The pair of them went quiet as one of the red-clad monks walked by, accompanied by the AG-powered cylinder in its wood and brass housing. Vic’s shiver was a human affectation; the disapproving spray of pheromones brought on by the sight of the animated viscous black liquid in the tank was not.

‘When can we get out of here?’ Vic asked. Scab ignored the question. ‘I mean, do you trust these guys?’ Again, the human said nothing. They reached the docking arm. Scab ’faced the entry codes to the
St Brendan’s Fire
. ‘Are we going to clear out the dead?’ Vic asked, almost desperately, as he followed Scab into the dark metal corridors of the frigate.

‘As and when we need the space.’

Vic couldn’t shake the feeling that Scab liked the idea of captaining a ship of the dead.

‘Why are we trusting them?’ Vic tried again, meaning the monks.

‘We’re not and I don’t. Certain arrangements that aren’t your concern have been made. Either they’ll work or they won’t, same as anything else.’ It was clear they were heading towards Command and Control.

‘Were you like them? The monks, I mean, when you were a sect leader?’ Vic asked, largely for something to say.

Scab glanced up at him but kept walking. ‘Back on Cyst? No, I wanted to build a temple to myself out of bone. It was about apotheosis, or self-aggrandising, I’m not sure which. I was young.’

‘It’s nice to see you’ve grown as a person since then,’ Vic said wryly. They reached C&C and the armoured door slid open. Scab’s P-sat rose into the air, scanning them both as they entered. Vic noticed that it was in a heavy combat chassis. He tried not to look at the dolphin in the tank in the corner of C&C. The brass-skinned S-tech terror that was the Scorpion had wrapped itself around the tortured creature.

‘Remind you of anyone?’ Scab asked.

Vic looked over at the pathetic cetacean, and then back to Scab. ‘The Alchemist? Only in as much as they’re both dolphins. Clearly I haven’t got to know our …’ Scab looked over at the ’sect. ‘I mean
your
victims,’ Vic corrected hastily.

‘I’ve been thinking about him recently.’

Vic was struggling to keep up with Scab’s train of thought. ‘What can you do? He was sent to Suburbia, wasn’t he?’

Scab didn’t bother answering. He was concentrating on something else. Vic checked and found that the ship was ’facing info to Scab. Vic requested and Scab granted access to the ’face. Vic saw an animatic of a worm-like dragon battling a knight wearing a white surcoat with a red cross on it, over mail. Vic amused himself by superimposing Scab’s face on the dragon in his own neunonic interpretation of the animatic. He knew that the knight was the
St Brendan’s Fire
’s AI. The worm was a sophisticated Pythian virus that Scab had unleashed on the AI in an attempt to make it more pliable, and thereby gain full control of the frigate.

‘Still giving you trouble?’ Vic asked. Scab ignored him again. The AI had lost the fight for almost all of the frigate’s systems including the bridge drive, but it had gone to ground in certain core processes, including the one Scab was most eager to use. He was after the process that would enable the ship to shift from planetary Real Space into planetary Red Space. It was the very capability the Church were desperately trying to conceal from everyone else. This was probably why the AI was being so difficult about it, Vic thought.

‘What’s the plan, Scab?’ Vic asked. ‘What are we doing here?’

‘Waiting.’

‘What are you going to do with her?’

Scab turned to look at Vic. ‘You didn’t take this well the last time.’

‘But I’m guessing I have to know at some point.’

‘An auction.’

‘That sounds just about psychotic enough for you. How’s that going to work?’

‘Pythia has agreed to host. The invitations have been sent. The price for tickets alone will put me into credit – you, too, if you want.’

Vic found he didn’t care because he couldn’t believe it would work. Though Pythia did make sense – most of the negotiations could be handled remotely. Pythia, despite being theoretically in Consortium space, would be impartial. It was one of the few entities in Known Space that was not interested in bridge tech. It could use its impressive orbital system and bridge-point defences to keep everyone in line. If those didn’t work, Pythia wielded the more serious threat of an information embargo.

‘Who?’ Vic asked, but Scab ignored him. The ’sect knew the answer – the great and good of the Consortium and Monarchist systems, and of course the Church.

‘I’ve never told you this, but I’ve always enjoyed your rudimentary attempts at human seduction,’ Scab said. Vic stared at his partner/captor. He would have been less surprised if Scab had offered to orally pleasure him. ‘They are’ – Scab gave his next words some serious consideration – ‘amusing to me.’ The human looked as if his own words had surprised him. Vic knew it was an affectation but he was still staring at Scab, his mandibles agape.

‘Wh … what?’ he managed.

‘I’m missing something, with the girl. You want to have sex with her. Talk to her. Give me some insight.’

‘What are you looking for?’

‘I don’t know … insight, something strange in her life.’

‘She was melded to a Seeder vessel. How strange do you want? She was a moon-fucking giant centipede?’

‘I thought you’d enjoy this,’ Scab said, and even he sounded a little confused.

‘Why don’t you speak to her?’

‘I might kill her.’

‘Of course you might. Fine.’ Though Vic had to admit it was one of the less unpleasant tasks Scab had given him over the years.

Scab had made his presence known in the back of Vic’s mind. He was watching Vic’s efforts with Talia through the ’sect’s own senses. Vic found he couldn’t even get angry at the violation any more.

‘Where are we going?’ Talia asked as they climbed the helical stairway cut out of the asteroid’s rock.

‘It’s a surprise,’ Vic told her. He had spent a lot of time researching how to do this in various immersions. Not the colonial or humanoporn immersions he favoured, but the more gentle romantic immersions preferred by housewives and husbands of the more decadent upper-mid-corporates who could afford such luxuries. He’d even found some pre-Loss examples but they weren’t immersions. There was no interaction. You were just supposed to watch them. They hadn’t been very satisfying.

‘Is it some sort of observation place?’ the human asked.

Not that much of a surprise, then
, Vic thought.

‘Am I going to see space?’

Still, she sounded excited, he thought. The drugs appeared to have taken the edge off her fear a little, and she’d been allowed to use the assembler to make some narcotics and cigarettes, though she maintained that Scab’s cigarettes were better. Her eyes were glassy at the moment. Vic hoped her narcotic haze wasn’t the only reason she’d agreed to come with him.

The steps brought them out in a circular stone chamber with a transparent smart-matter domed roof. Vic realised his mistake as soon as he reached the observation chamber. He remembered approaching the asteroid habitat in the
Basilisk
the first time. He hadn’t liked the look of space in the system then, either. It was inky, impenetrable.

‘Where are the stars?’ Talia asked. There was disappointment in her voice.

Vic was still staring through the dome. It was claustrophobic, somehow, closing in on him. The databanks in his neunonics provided him with the word ‘malevolent’. Perhaps he was going too far to the human-side, he thought, if he had started investing natural phenomena with meanings they couldn’t possibly have.

‘You can see a better night sky out on the moors,’ she said, and she sounded miserable.

Vic showed her the bottle he was carrying. She glanced at it, and then at him. She looked like she was about to start crying. Again.

‘It’s all gone, isn’t it?’

Vic’s studies into human culture aside, he wasn’t really equipped for this sort of thing. Instead he nodded, deciding the tears were inevitable, and just stood and watched her. He spent a moment neunonically ’facing a command to the habitat’s decidedly odd systems to grow something they could both sit on from the rock. The habitat was doing so but the item of stone furniture it was creating didn’t look terribly comfortable.

‘All my friends, my dad, even my fucking sister – all gone!’ she wailed.

‘Do you want some of this?’ Vic asked, feeling a little helpless.

‘What is it?’ Talia asked, wiping away tears and mucous and then searching through the purse she’d assembled for a cigarette.

‘Oh, right, we call this alcohol, we have this now.’

Talia stopped searching for a cigarette and stared at the big ’sect. Vic didn’t need the image-analysis software in his neunonics to tell him she was looking at him as if he was a moron. She eventually found a cigarette and lit it.

‘Don’t you have time travel, or something useful like that?’ she asked as she inhaled smoke from the cigarette.

Vic couldn’t stop the laughter quickly enough. She glared at him. He decided to change the subject.

‘Without soft-machine augments to scrub harmful substances from the smoke, won’t those cause harmful and potentially life-threatening mutations?’ he asked, pointing at the cigarette. Talia continued glaring at him. He decided this wasn’t going well.

‘Give me the “alcohol”,’ she demanded, and snatched the bottle of spirits, which had apparently been made here in the habitat using methods other than the aging assembler. The top of the bottle unsealed itself. Talia stared at it in wonder for a moment and then took a swig.

‘Jesus, that tastes like shit.’ She coughed, gagged a little and then took another swig.

‘Jesus?’

‘What are we doing here, Vic?’

‘I want to have sex with you,’ he blurted out, then took the bottle from her and let its sour ethanol taste flood his system as he neunonically turned off various toxin filters. She was staring at him.

‘This is like a horrible trip,’ Talia muttered. It was clear she was talking to herself. Vic wasn’t sure what ‘trip’ meant in this context, but he was certain that the inclusion of the word ‘horrible’ didn’t bode well for his chances.

‘I just thought you might like something a bit different,’ he tried. This sometimes worked with experimental types. The hard-core insectophile human women he favoured tended to be a bit more jaded. This was unfortunate, as insects weren’t renowned for their imagination.

‘You know that you’re a big, armoured insect, right?’

‘I can be careful.’

‘I’m less worried about the armour, more the insect.’

‘I’m an insect?’ Vic asked, trying levity. ‘Who’s been talking? My cock won’t fall off inside you.’ Then he laughed to make sure she knew it was a joke. Talia stared at him. He felt exasperated confusion in the back of his mind. Talia continued staring at him. Then she reached for the bottle, took it from him, swigged and carried on staring.

‘It’s a joke, see – some insects, not uplifted ones, when they procreate, their—’

‘Like a fly, I get it.’

‘We’re not having sex, are we?’

‘No,’ Talia confirmed. ‘Don’t take it the wrong way, you’re by far the nicest insect I’ve ever spent time with, but first contact is one thing. I’m not sure my reputation can take sleeping with the first alien I meet.’

‘I’m just an uplift. You were joined with a real alien. Its tech runs in your blood. There’s an argument you’re more alien than I am.’

Vic saw her face crumple again and wondered if she would ever run out of tears. Talia sat down hard on the seats the habitat had extruded and took another long pull from the bottle before grimacing.

‘She was so beautiful. We sailed through the Red. There were things out there, you know? Not cold like the black. And now she’s gone, too.’ Then she turned on Vic, her face a mask of fury. ‘And your fucking friend murdered her!’ Vic thought she was going to throw the bottle of cleaning fluid, but she decided against it and took another swig.

‘He’s not my friend,’ Vic said, holding all four hands up in contrition.

‘He’s a cunt,’ Talia grizzled.

‘Believe me, I hate him more than you do.’

Talia looked up at him. ‘He killed part of me, the greater part of me, the best part of me. Sleeping, her in my mind, mine in hers … it was just the best thing that ever … better than any drug or fuck.’ She looked up at him. ‘Even with an insect.’

Vic was about to ask her if she’d ever had sex with any other insects before he realised she was teasing him. He was coming to the conclusion that he didn’t understand pre-Loss humans. He certainly couldn’t keep up with them.

He sat down next to her and awkwardly put his two right arms around her. He’d seen this move in the pre-Loss media he’d
assimilated. Though, as he understood it, it required some sort of communal room projecting two-dimensional moving images to be truly effective. He was gratified when she moved closer to him, leaning against his armoured thorax.

‘You’re really uncomfortable,’ she told him, but she didn’t move away.