Chaos Cipher (10 page)

‘
Recent
calculations show our yield will only last another fifteen years
and the miners say the machines are going slowly. If the Atominii
realise this…’

‘
Then we’re
fucked!’ Daryl came in.

‘
No need to
be salacious,’ said Enaya, ‘but yes, fucked would be a way of
putting it. That gives us fifteen years of keeping the Atominii
nations and Titan cyber-soldiers off our backs.’

‘
So if they
find out about this,’ said Daryl pointing at the life pod. ‘If they
find out we’re providing political asylum to a Gene-freak they’ll
show no restraint,’ and Daryl shook his head slowly and repeated,
‘no restraint.’

‘
How will
they see him if they’re never here,’ Sonja argued, ‘it’s not like
they have people from the Atominii come visit our city. They see us
as impoverished scum.’

‘
Also,’ Dak
added, ‘don’t we have them electro-magnetic defences based in the
surrounding elevator towers for the mines? The moment those Titan
nanomes come hovering around here they’re fried almost right away.
And we’ve got drone-hunters on the peripheries in the Novus. They
can’t spy on us, right?’

‘
It’s not a
guarantee, and you know it,’ Enaya countered. ‘But listen, like I
said, let the collective will of East B’One decide.’

‘
I intend to
make an appeal,’ Sonja said decisively, stepping forward to
retrieve the life pod. ‘I’ll make the appeal and end it to the
Federation for you to publish on the Q-net for
consensus.’

‘
No,’ said
Enaya shaking her head.

‘
Why not?’
said Sonja, growing hostile.

‘
Because the
integration should be natural if there is to be one.’

‘
What do you
mean natural?’ Boris asked.

‘
How many
times must we publish an appeal to welcome a new member to our
city?’

There was a
pause and Dak answered for them.

‘
Never.’

‘
Never,’
Enaya repeated. ‘The child is an Olympian and I admit this is a
strange situation, but if you start treating him like this
situation is any different from the start then you’re going to draw
unintended negativity. And there is nothing in our constitution
about fostering an Olympian Genetic into the city.’

‘
So what?’
asked Boris, ‘we just pretend like he’s normal?’

‘
If you want
him to survive and fit in quickly,’ said Enaya, ‘then yes. There
are hundreds of thousands of people here; got to bet not all of us
are open-minded.’

‘
What if he
doesn’t fit in?’ Dak asked.

‘
Cross the
bridge when you come to it, the democratic decision should not come
down to whether or not we should bring the child in. It should come
when discussing what to do about difficult situations as they
occur, like getting rid of a menace to our society. Until
then…let’s not presume him to be a menace.’

‘
But he’s an
Olympian specimen.’ Boris tried.

‘
No,’ Enaya
disagreed, ‘he’s a baby, and if we abandon him we also abandon our
own humanity. I don’t think there will be many who disagree with
that statement here. I don’t believe people are born with original
sin, I certainly see no evidence of people born to be evil, if we
don’t do this we’re denying him a chance.’

Sonja stepped
in and put her arms around Enaya, hugging her firmly she thanked
her for her advice.

‘
It’s what
I’m here for,’ she smiled softly.

*

Once the
message was out, Dak had overheard various people asking about the
child. He’d even been approached by familiar faces he’d seen around
the city’s vibrant cultural hubs, smiles he’d seen in the Minerva
Meadows.

‘
It’s true,’
he’d tell them in droves. ‘Yes we found a kid in the abandoned
areas, can you believe it?’

‘
Move it guys
c’mon let them get home.’ Boris was shouting as he pushed forward
and cleared a path for Sonja and Dak.

‘
No
Gene-freaks!’ A voice hollered. ‘I’ve seen what those bastards can
do!’

‘
Hey pipe
down!’ Another called, ‘we welcomed you and yours, Cerise Timbers
is an open door society! If you come in peace, you’re welcome to
stay.’

‘
No root, no
fruit!’ Another called, starting an optimistic chant that brought a
warming smile to Sonja.

‘
Hands that
can build and plan,’ said another.

‘
Come on move
out the way guys,’ Boris kept yelling.

The few who
had heard about the baby, those most curious, were recent migrants
from the Atominii. Many still had their implants showing, their
heads freckled with optical contacts and one or two metallic
data-points. Some had cybernetic eyes, cruelly deactivated by the
Atominii once they were abandoned and left to Cerise Timbers to
reactivate, a job many of the hospitals struggled with since the
painful deactivation burned out neural paths. As for those who had
been in Cerise Timbers much longer, their interest was minimal,
their curiosity passive, their need for sensation already satisfied
by their own experience and modest comforts. They did their part to
dispel the rabble.

Dak and Sonja
slipped out of the daylight, down into the subway where trains and
auto-vehicles circulated freely throughout the city. Dak was
already calling the nearest unoccupied car from the nearest parking
lot and it swerved racing onto the curving subways and broached
swiftly into the parking bay, slipping between one of two other
vehicles. Vehicles were not common in the city and only about two
hundred were in circulation, since the trains and gondolas were
most efficient.

Dak took
Sonja by the wrist and guided her through the crowd clinging
protectively to the baby in the life-pod. A few people already
leaving one of the cars stared in confusion at the small crowd
bustling by them, and intervened to protect Dak and Sonja when one
or two became hostile.

‘
You
shouldn’t be bringing Olympians here!’ One of the old Titans had
yowled.

‘
Back off!’
Boris shouted, his big arms pushing out aggressively. ‘Just back
off. You don’t like it? Take a fucking hike back to the boarders,
Titan!’ Boris hissed the last word to stress the irony. But it had
flown over the man’s head, a wit lost on his vehement prejudice for
the so called Olympians. ‘See if they’ll take you back,
yeah?’

‘
Its fine,’
Dak assured Sonja, as Boris stepped into the vehicle with
them.

‘
There are
always one or two idiots no matter where you go,’ Boris smiled
nervously as he settled in.

The vehicle
took off as Dak voiced their address, and Sonja watched from the
window as one or two of the old Atominii gatherers were left
shuffling around the parking bay.

‘
I don’t get
it,’ she sighed. ‘Those people come here looking for something
better. An alternative life. Still they can’t imagine it without
their old prejudices. It’s like they don’t realise how their last
civilisation shaped their views.’

‘
Took me a
while to see through the fog Sonja,’ Boris reasoned, biting his
nails as he watched the Titans vanish into the reaching sub-roads
beyond the windows of their vehicle. ‘For some people it’s
pointless to see pastures when you don’t understand their purpose.
They have to learn, y’know. I guess for some it takes
lon
ger than others.’

‘
And you?’
Sonja said.

Boris smiled
faintly.

‘
I can come
around to living a different lifestyle. I was a rich man once.
Poverty taught me to be dynamic.’ Boris turned his head dryly and
said, ‘I just hope you’re right about the Gene-freaks. Because if
you’re not it’ll be on all our heads.’

*

It took only
a few minutes to drive back. Their habitation complex was a
multi-storey building amassed with sweet smelling flowers and
overgrown with viands and ivy. The interior corridors were clear of
plant life, and not a drop of litter lay on the floors since
communal spirit had been developed to respect the space they had
worked for. The air was cool inside and carried with it the various
smells of boiling vegetables, herbs and rice. They heard the voices
and laughter of other inhabitants echo through the hallways; they
heard foreign languages, the zip and grind of a remote control car.
One of the delivery drones buzzed above them on its way to deliver
something. The laughter of kids roared and squealed in the
distance, the muted sonic beats crackling from a nearby ghetto
blaster.

Strips of
electric light panels vertically lit every corner and doorway, and
as Dak and Sonja reached home the door’s proximity sensor detected
their quantics and opened automatically.

The main room
was rounded with the shape of the building. A panoramic window
strip opening the view of the outside habitats allowed daylight to
slant in, catching silvery motes in the air. They had a busy place,
filled with a jumble of hand crafted gifts from the Minerva
Meadows, delicately cut shapes carved of different kinds of wood,
dream catchers dangling from the ceiling, canvases with colourful
fine arts and crafts. They even had a collection of old books
stacked in towers all around. They had circulated through the city
from person to person, many of which detailed anatomy and some of
which involved cooking. The books were tagged for their open source
library; others were just spare unwanted papers. Mostly, the city’s
Q-net catered for their contextual information when more was
needed, but physical books were a treasure in Cerise Timbers. Dak
was as happy as the next person to pass books on and receive new
titles as and when they circulated. Sometimes a book collector
would call by, keen to seek out new titles designated to his
address and offer him alternative titles in exchange.

A doorway led
outside to a communal garden that was half way up the building, and
a stairway leading further up the garden head at the very top. Even
now he could hear the faint trawling and voices of gardeners
collecting legumes and potatoes and preparing the soil for another
seeding. Their home had several chairs and stools, an open worktop
for knives and cutting tools and a mat that could be unrolled into
a graphene stove that heated on contact with pans. He’d left a
stack of washing which still needed taking out to the
spin-basins.

‘
Home at
last,’ Sonja breathed, setting the electronic lock on the
door.

They set the
baby onto a living room sofa and Dak opened the casket and peered
at the child again.

‘
I don’t know
why we found you little man.’ Sonja said softly. ‘Some secrets do
bind people closer.’

-6-

13 Years Later

W
ith steady articulation, the Erebus
drifted into earth’s shaded penumbra; a lambent shuttle falling in
towards the cylindrical spike of the
Orandoré
orbital station. The Solar
Navy Alliance had been expecting the return now for close to a
decade, back when the ship was first detected returning home.
Coherent communication transmissions traversed the network,
operators coordinated correct docking procedures with the
International Orbital station
Orandoré
, taking over the ship’s
auto-pilot. Guidance AI from the station needed to hack the ship
and guide it around to follow the geostationary rotation and chase
down the docking hatch, probably the most cumbersome part of the
job, but no station operator here would disrepute their own part as
insubstantial to the station’s AI, as synergy was all
inclusive.

‘
Trajectory
agreed. Mandating new vector regulations.’

‘
Stand-by
boosters.’

‘
Vector
regulations set. Meridian compellers locked.’

‘
Periapsis
set, tethers engaged.’

‘
Docking
clamps are a go, ready to receive.’

‘
Copy HQ.
Manual trajectory disengaged. Auto-pilot functional. Scanning
azimuth alignments. Alignments agreed.’

‘
Data-coherent calibrating. Stand-by ten seconds.’

‘
Window
confirmed.’

The Erebus
rolled until the Earth hung directly above it and its nose pitched
into one of the twelve lit docking station arms of the
Orandoré
station,
pushing forth on the stable docking clamps. Huge solar panels
tilted to orient the roll engines backwards and an umbilical
walkway extended to the shuttle, a magnetic mouth connecting to its
side.

A great rush
of pressure blasted into the Erebus’ airlock port, equalising
apparently a damaged conduit that had depressurised inside the
ship, an expected occurrence from the station, which had raised the
atmospheric pressure in the umbilical in readiness for the event.
Thick films of cosmic ice and grit shed from its fuselage and door,
which wheeled back into the Erebus shell for the first time in
two-hundred comparative Earth years, (in relative space-time, it
had only been shy of a year for the Erebus and her crew.) Jets of
spray fired out to wash away radioactive particles charged in the
cosmic exposure. There should have been a rapture of applause
awaiting the returning Chrononauts’ historical adventure, but
instead there was an investigation team, preparing themselves for
the worst.