Creation Machine (3 page)

He was a good story-teller. Fleare liked that in a man. She listened.

The story he told her began two thousand years earlier. In those days Nipple had the more prosaic name of Salamis 1. Salamis was a smallish yellowish star in the third shell of the Spin, a long way from anything useful or interesting. The total population of its only planet peaked, so it was said, at five hundred stinking hermits in five hundred stinking huts. Total exports equalled total imports, at zero. Limited plant life allowed the dedicated to grow food, as long as your definition of food began and ended at a primitive maize and a couple of tough starchy roots.

The small wars that were endemic to the sector at the time somehow swirled round the little planet without touching it; as well as lacking every other useful attribute, Salamis didn’t even offer a strategically valuable position.

Which made it all but impossible to understand why anyone should try to destroy it.

Fleare wrinkled her forehead. ‘Destroy?’

Muz waggled a hand in front of him. ‘Well, that’s what it looked like, although it was probably an accident.’ He drained his glass and put it down with a look of relief. ‘Ever heard of a race called the Zeft?’

She frowned. ‘Maybe. Remind me. Can’t remember.’

‘I’m not surprised. It wasn’t exactly their finest hour. More like their last, actually.’ He shrugged. ‘Bit players. Or so everyone thought.’

Fleare nodded. Her own memory began to supplement the story Muz was telling, as fragments of the expensive education she had done her best to ignore began to assemble themselves.
Shit
, she thought to herself.
I wasn’t wasting Daddy’s money as badly as I thought. Must try harder.

The Zeft had been humanoid, and aggressive in a limited, pointless sort of way. They had assembled a small but nasty five-system, ten-planet empire based mainly on crude technological theft, a rigid caste system and a bit of slave trading, and had hung on to it for several hundred years by keeping out of the way of the real grown-ups in the sector. At any one time the Spin contained two or three Zefts, and the best way to deal with them was to hold your nose and move on.

Then, without any warning, a battle fleet that no one knew the Zeft possessed had turned up in one of the last battles of the Second Machine Wars, announced their intention of joining what everyone could already see was the winning side, issued a garbled warning to the inhabitants of Salamis 1 – and fired something.

They probably intended it to be a surprise, and the effect had presumably surprised the Zeft very much indeed, although not for long. Whatever it was produced a hundred-thousand-kilometre ball of plasma, centred on their fleet. When it had cleared, the Zeft were simply gone.

Fleare stared at him. ‘Just gone? Nothing left?’

‘Nothing. Not even dust. Just a heap of hot atoms.’

‘Shit.’ She thought for a moment. ‘So what the hell was it?’

‘The weapon? No one knows. People are still studying the area, of course. Best guess is that the Zeft somehow managed to pinch an artefact left over either from the First Machine Wars or, more likely, from the original Construction Phase. Decided it offered a path to immortality and proved themselves right in the worst way.’

Fleare nodded. Artefacts popped up occasionally. These days they were supposed to be handed in to the Hegemony, on pain of alarming sanctions. Mostly they were either useless or incomprehensible, but there was always the risk that something seriously potent would turn up.

She turned to the obs screen. ‘So what did that have to do with this?’ She waved at the reddish-brown aureole and frowned. It really did look like a nipple.

‘Ah. That.’ Muz leaned low over the obs rail as if he was studying the little planet. ‘I said there was nothing left after the fireball. Not quite accurate. Something shot out of it. Something small and very fast and very hot, piece of Zeft debris most likely. Whatever it was, it was going at a hell of a clip. It drilled a hole straight through the crust. Connected a lot of hot magmatic water to the outside world, and created, well, that.’ His hands described a rough circle in front of him. ‘A whole new ecosystem, five thousand klicks across, based on warm water. Pump Trees, hot springs, Rain Sharks. There’s a pub in the middle of it. It’s pretty cool. I’ll show you when we get there. If you like?’

She looked at the planet and then at Muz. ‘I like,’ she said.

And now, eight days later, they were in the middle of the nipple itself. The rain became heavier, and the ground shook continually as hundreds of geysers sent steaming, mineral-rich water shooting up. The spouting water splashed against the underside of the platform, and little jets found their way through the gaps between the planks. The warm moist air smelled of minerals and leaf mould and damp timber.

Fleare felt Muz nudge her. He was pointing upwards. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘That one’s ready to blow. See?’

She squinted through the mist towards the Pump Tree he was pointing at, and nodded. The spray buds that crowned the tree were trembling. A pod of Bud Chimps, invisible in their camouflage until they moved, screeched all at once as if they were one animal and threw themselves away from the tree.

The distended buds swelled visibly. Then they burst.

The concussion shook the platform. Around Fleare and Muz, dozens of people were knocked off their feet and lay sprawled on the rough planks. Most of them stayed there, holding on to railings or each other as the sheets of sweet, sap-tainted water fell around them.

It was like a chain reaction. One tree set off another, until it seemed that the whole spinney was roaring water into the air.

Fleare kept her feet somehow. She screwed up her eyes against the hammering curtains of water. With blurred vision she watched as shoals of Optimist Fish began their desperate climb up the falling rain. Not one in a thousand would get high enough to plant their fertilized eggs in the depleting buds. For those that did, it would take a whole year for the eggs to sink through the Pump Trees’ draining systems to ground level, and another nine for the fish to grow to maturity in time for the next Spray Season.

She turned to Muz, and laughed. He had his hands braced on the railing and his head tipped back, eyes closed and mouth open. Rivulets of sap and water ran over his lips, and his throat rippled as he swallowed.

She nudged him. ‘Hey!’

His eyes snapped open, and he turned to her, licking his lips. ‘What?’

‘What are you doing?’

‘What does it look like? Taking a drink.’ He grinned at her. ‘You’re going to ask why.’

She considered. ‘I might slap you instead. Smug bastard.’

He shook his head. ‘Nah, you won’t do that. Nice girls don’t hit drunks. Anyway, you want to know the answer.’

She studied her fingernails.

‘Okay!’ Muz was still shaking his head. ‘Three reasons. First, I’m thirsty. Second, it’s supposed to be good for you. Full of natural thingies and stuff. And third,’ and he lowered his voice, ‘it’s a guaranteed aphrodisiac.’

‘The hell you say.’ She kept her own voice level.

‘Nah, I made that bit up.’

‘Good.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’ She turned back to the obs rail. ‘I’d have walked off if I thought you were really that tacky.’

‘Oh.’

Much later, she let a lazy finger trail down the short, damp hairs on his chest. He stirred, but didn’t wake from his sated sleep. She frowned, and pressed harder. As his eyes fluttered open she swung herself astride him. He groaned. ‘Oh, no.
Again?
’

She put a finger to his lips. ‘Oh, yes,’ she told him. ‘Remember, I could have walked off.’

‘Ah. That’s true.
Ahh . . .
’

Fleare woke slowly, and lay as still as possible while she grew into her hangover. It was an impressive one. She seemed to remember earning it.

After a few minutes she trusted herself to move. She rolled over and found herself pushing against something warm. She pushed harder and it moaned. She pulled back the cover and saw Muz, face slack. Fleare grinned to herself and rolled over to the other side of the bed.

She achieved upright on the second attempt and stood, swaying, until her stomach and her inner ears settled down. Then she took stock. She was not in her own quarters. The room was cadet standard, just big enough for a bed, a table and a wash cabinet, and it smelled of last night’s alcohol and slightly more recent bodies. She stood as still as possible and concentrated on breathing through her mouth.

When she was fairly sure she was not going to be sick she walked over to the wash cabinet, shrugged off a T-shirt she didn’t remember either owning or putting on and stepped into the shower. The water was cold. You’re a Soc O soldier, she told herself. You can do this.

Society Otherwise was what happened when an idea became a movement and then, somehow, got organized without destroying itself. It had begun with groups of students unpicking the encryption of commercial news conduits and watching with their mouths hanging open as they realized just how mendacious their parents’ generation could be. It had gained weight from the remnants of left-wing groups, washed up and marginalized by the swelling oligarchical tide of the Hegemony as it rolled through minor societies across the Inner Spin, leaving them sweating and indebted in its wake. It liaised with a couple of private militias and found itself suddenly able to project real power – and therefore suddenly of close interest to the Hegemony. From there on, Society Otherwise had run out of choices. It had to fight.

Fleare let herself turn under the spray for a few minutes, feeling her body beginning to forgive her. Then she shut off the water, stepped out of the cabinet and collided with a naked Muz.

‘Hi, baby.’ He tried to wrap his arms around her but she pulled back. ‘I’m wet,’ she told him.

He grinned. ‘I have that effect.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Pervert. Besides,’ and she wrinkled her nose, ‘your breath smells like, like
breath
, and not in a good way.’ She placed a hand on his chest and pushed. He took a surprised step backwards, met the edge of the only chair in the little room and dropped into it.

‘Hey,’ he protested. ‘That’s no way to treat a superior officer.’

She looked down at him, a hand on her hip. ‘Superior officers,’ she said, ‘are probably not supposed to spend so much of their time underneath.’

‘What? Oh . . .’ He stared at the floor for a moment then looked up innocently. ‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘there’s always leading from behind.’

Fleare shook her head. ‘Life in the army . . . speaking of which, wasn’t there something we were meant to be doing?’

Muz nodded. ‘Brigade briefing,’ he said, ‘but that doesn’t start until— Oh, shit.’ His eyes followed her pointing finger to the time display on the wall. ‘Oh shit, ohshitohshit!’

‘Precisely.’ Fleare nodded. ‘We have six minutes. Of course, I’m already washed.’

She stood aside as he charged into the cabinet, and then laughed out loud at his scream of protest. She had forgotten to mention the cold water.

They made the briefing with ten seconds to spare.

‘. . . modifications, including Enhancements, for anything other than therapeutic purposes were banned in all Spin jurisdictions following the collapse of the Dimililer class action in 734. Please refer to your notes for that. De jure, this remains the case, but accumulating precedent allows a degree of interpretation . . .’

Fleare fought back a yawn. The elderly Technical Sergeant who was briefing them was bone-thin, and her voice had a droning quality. As well, the briefing room was stuffily underground, in a partitioned-off corner of what had been a hardened missile silo. It was also still faintly radioactive; to come in here you had to wear a monitoring tag. The tag was clipped to one of the pocket flaps on her fatigues. It felt a little irritating, but it hadn’t pinged yet.

Something brushed against her shoulder. She glanced to the side, and suppressed a grin. Muz was standing with his eyes half closed, swaying. She dug an elbow sideways; his head snapped up.

‘. . . decided to offer certain recruits the opportunity to Enhance, with the focus being on strength, speed and stamina. Those with complementary outcomes will be formed into squads of five for training as intervention squads, for duties which will be disclosed only at that time . . .’

There were about fifty of them, all casualties of the Dog’s Dick the night before. Fleare guessed she was one of the lucky ones. Muz was obviously struggling, and to her other side Kelk looked like a black and white picture of himself. His fatigues were rumpled, and Fleare guessed he had slept in them. She sniffed a little, and wrinkled her nose. Definitely slept-in, and possibly something-else’d-in as well.

‘. . . concludes the disclosure. There will be a short period for questions and then you will have free time until sundown, after which all those who volunteer will be required to enter their consent with Legals.’ The woman put down her notepad and gave a frosty smile. ‘So, questions? Yes – at the back?’

‘Uh, what does “complementary outcomes” mean?’

Fleare looked round. The questioner was a tall, hard-looking male with blue-black skin. They’d met the night before, in the sense of drunkenly bumping into one another and exchanging ID tabs. Zepf. That was the name. Exclusively homosexual, Fleare remembered. She shrugged and faced forward.

‘What it says.’ The woman looked impatient. ‘Different bodies experience different levels of outcome from the same intervention.’

Zepf persisted. ‘And different levels of success?’

‘Self-evidently.’ The Technical Sergeant gathered her papers. ‘I recommend you read the notes, if you have not yet had the opportunity; everything is fully covered.’ She made to walk away from her lectern.

Fleare raised a hand. ‘Sorry. One more question?’

Heads turned towards Fleare. The woman stopped, tutting audibly. ‘One question only. Go on.’

Fleare took a breath. ‘What’s the rush?’ she asked.

There was silence for a moment. Then the woman placed her papers back on the lectern and raised her eyebrows. ‘What rush?’ she asked mildly.