Point Apocalypse (2 page)

I reached behind my back and scratched a hollow under my shoulder blade where a somatic module used to sit. Those thingies could affect the work of the endocrine glands ejecting hormones like adrenaline. I propped my elbows on my knees, my hands hanging down, and looked up at the ceiling. Almost immediately, I glimpsed the black button of a camera between two of the lamps.

It looked as if the Chinese had had his implant installed right before being shipped here. But how? This wasn't as easy as inserting a night-vision lens! This was proper surgery affecting the whole body. All right, imagine they'd done it somehow, but how on earth had they expected the implanted Asian to pass the three-level safety system? The Fort was notorious for its multiple checks. Every room on the base had infrared cameras in it; the airlock was jam-packed with sensors, plus the ultrasound scanner in the portal. I reached again and scratched my back. It itched like hell. They must have put the scanner on full.

I heard voices in the mind check block. The door slid sideways into its frame. I stood up, clasped my hands behind my back and turned to the wall.

"Center," a voice said behind my back, "There's a convict in the portal."

"As if I can't see," the speaker answered overhead. "Put him through."

"Isn't it better he cleans up in the airlock first? Saves us the troub-"

"Put him through," the controller snapped.

I chuckled. So much for me mopping it up for them.

They yanked my shoulder to make me face the door.

"Quit sneering, you piece of-!" the guard snar
led pointing his pulse rifle at my chest.

He was in full gear. A composite vest hugged his torso above his protection suit, its square plates concealing his shoulders. Elbow guards and gloves protected his arms. High carbon fiber boots and a tactical helmet with a mirrored anti-laser visor completed the look.

"Move it!"

The condenser on the end of its barrel swayed pointing at the doorway into the block
. It breathed with cold.

I walked through.

"Attention all," the controller said. "Clearance emergency situation. Penetration attempt."

Electric drives buzzed behind my back. The door closed, clanging its magnetic locks. The voice in the loudspeakers distanced, barely heard now, and then stopped altogether.

The mind check block looked a bit like an upended tumbler with its black matt walls of unknown mineral. I stepped into the middle and said out loud,

"Mark Posner. Convicted of the murder of a Federal Security agent. Proven guilty."

Mind checks are quick and absolutely painless. You don't feel a thing apart from the cold coming from the walls: the procedure calls for low temperatures of about -20F.

I'd done it a hundred times. In the Army school, then every time I'd moved to a new station, and the last time, before the Tribunal. In other words, every time the situation called for a quick identity check. Never had problems. But today... everything seemed to be going ass
backwards.

They didn't let me out. They didn't open the door. What the hell's going on here? An equipment malfunction? Couldn't be. They'd already restored the power in the corridor. The airlock detectors had caught the implanted Chinese. The communications between the guards and the loudspeakers were working. The doors seemed to be in order. Two of the convicts -the old man and the miner - had already cleared the mind check.

I shuffled my feet and huddled wishing to be back with those still in the warm disinfection corridor. What took the controller so long? Had he found something fishy with my mind map? But what if-

Then I realized. I could see the face of the base commander as the controller reported my identity...

The FSA - Russia's Federal Security Agency - didn't forgive those who murdered their agents. But before, they hadn't had a chance to get to me: I'd been kept in the Army detention center and tried by a military tribunal. The military and the FSA come from different planets as far as their structures and objectives are concerned. And now the Feds had their chance. The jumpgate base was under their jurisdiction. I wouldn't have been surprised if the commander had received special instructions regarding my arrival.

"Repeat check," resounded overhead. "State your name."

"Mark Posner."

"Sentence?'"

I repeated it fast and clear, like a parade report.

Another pause. The FSA men were overdoing it. Why repeat a scan if you're about to kill a convict? Why pile up evidence? I wouldn't. The control systems now had two scan results filed in their computers. Someone would have to delete them now.

My teeth chattered. My shoulders shuddered with the cold.

"Hello? Center?" I ventured, knowing that the controller wouldn't break instructions by speaking to a convict. "Stop fucking around! I'll freeze to death in here!"

I was shaking. Clouds of cold mist poured out of my mouth. The FSA men had to be dragging it out on purpose. They had to be trying to freeze me to death by lowering the temperature to -95F, the lowest possible in the block. No messy reports: they'd write me off as a mind check equipment malfunction. One convict frozen to death, no big deal.

"Hello!" I exhaled.

My nose stung, my eyes watered. I couldn't control my shaking any more.

"Hello!" I stepped forward and raised a fist to slam the door. It slid aside. I tumbled out, nearly tripping over myself
, and started doing vigorous squats. The miner and the tall old man stared at me, uncomprehending. Both stood by the gate at the end of a long dark concrete corridor waiting to be issued their fatigues and shipped to the Continent.

After a dozen
squats, I hugged my shoulders rubbing the chapped skin.

"I say," the miner started, "What the hell happened in there?"

I didn't answer. I had no wish to speak to him. The miner and the old man exchanged glances. Both had already put on their pale synthetic clothes and light plastic shoes.

The rags were disposable crap, you had to give them that. Instant-made as you waited, they lasted no longer than condoms. While a convict cleared the airlock, the scanners took his m
easurements and sent them to a thermoplastic machine next door. As the convict left the mind check, he received a perfectly useless set of fatigues: in less than a week, the fabric would crack and shred under Pangea's scorching sun, and the shoes would fall apart.

The miner turned his stare to me. "How long are they going to keep us in here, d'you know?"

I didn't bother to answer. A plastic bag containing my clothes slid out of the wall into a tray underneath. I tore it open and unfolded a pair of pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt. The shoes fell onto the floor. I stuffed the packaging into a bin under the machine and got dressed as quickly as I could, then pulled the shoes on and tore out the tongues. Now they could pass for a pair of sandals. I Velcroed them, crossed the corridor and sat in the far corner with my eyes half-shut.

" Are you mute, man? D'you understand
what I'm saying?"

"Fuck off," I barked back glancing at him out of the corner of my eye.

The miner stuck out a square jaw and headed for me, muscles bulging under his clothes. The man was strong but stupid, going for a stranger like a dumbass cyber trooper.

I unglued my back from the wall and spread my shoulders preparing to spring up and knock him down with a good kneeing.
The old man tried to call him back. When the miner didn't stop, the old boy hurried after him, grabbed the man's hand and pulled him back to the gate. I could hear him whisper that I was trouble, that he'd seen the implant scars on my back which was a sure sign I was an FSA man and my body language betrayed FSA training, too, so the miner should leave me well alone. Even better, he whispered, wait for the other inmates to arrive and tell them about me.

The old man turned to look at me. Our eyes met. He shut up and I leaned back against the wall. The old guy had an eye for that sort of thing. He'd been right about my modules and training. But he'd got the crux
of the matter wrong as I had nothing to do with the FSA whatsoever. But who was I to explain that my implants had been of the Army type? Only an experienced neurotech could tell the difference.

Now I had to keep my eyes open. If the miner and the old guy shared their suspicions with the rest, I'd never make it to the Continent. The moment I stepped onto the ferry, I'd be dead meat. They could even try and take me out while still on the pier. That way, I'd never even have a chance to become a local. A Pangean deportee.

They started whispering again, softly this time, so I couldn't hear a word.

The mind check door opened letting out the second Asian. Wonder if he knew about his predecessor's implant? They could be accomplices. Not that the base commander cared. His job was shipping, not investigating: sending convoys both ways, from the Kola Peninsula to Pangea and back. No, that was
n’t all: the commander wasn't supposed to allow new technologies to leak onto the Continent. And he had a well-equipped garrison and weaponry to help him do just that.

A clothes bag slid into the tray by the door. The Chinese took it, cool as a cucumber, tore the shrink film and started dressing. Before he could pull up his pants, another inmate cleared the lock. In half a minute, yet another one came out. The transfer was under way. In just over an hour, the two-hundred-strong gang would be ready for shipping.

The Chinese got dressed and crouched by the exit staring at the floor. I looked up. The ceiling sported the Fort's colors: two bolts of lightning crossed under a two-headed eagle.

Then I heard a quiet pop. My ears started hurting as if the air pressure in the room had dropped. Startled, I looked around. Neither the Chinese nor the others showed any signs of discomfort - in fact, they didn't appear to have noticed anything at all. My head, however, started hissing and crackling. What the hell was going on?

The back of my head ached in the recently healed hole which had once housed the memory chip. A quiet hiss again, then a woman's indifferent voice sounded inside my head,

Pangea: a continent lying along the equator. Is bounded by the ocean. The length of coastline, over thirty thousand kilometers. Status: an inland prison. No natural resources discovered. The climate
...

My ears popped. The voice distanced itself but didn't disappear completely, reciting information on the Continent's climate, mountain ranges, rivers, plains, plateaus and settlements. I remembered a lot of the data from my army school days.

When the voice abated, I opened my eyes, confused. The lock corridor was now filled with people. Most had dressed and sat by the walls; some talked. Foreigners stuck together closer to the mind check exit. A few men by the gate surrounded the miner and the old man. They argued casting occasional glances in my direction.

I rubbed my forehead and winced. My head was booming. I had to concentrate. I was Mark Posner - Private Posner, sentenced to life in exile for murdering a Federal Security agent. I'd been tried and sentenced by the military tribunal, then undergone an agonizing surgery as they'd removed
my combat implants. They'd transferred me with the rest to the Kola Peninsula jumpgate - and there I was at the Pangean base, a.k.a. the Fort, that occupied a rocky island not far from the mainland, a.k.a. Pangea Anomalis - the only body of land amid the ocean that covers this world's entire surface.

That was all fine and
dandy, but what was the information software doing in my head in the first place? This wasn't an implant - this was a basic program that someone had bothered to neuron-zip and which had now unzipped in my brain all by itself. You would think I'd know, wouldn't you? How could you install a piece of software into a man's head without him knowing, anyway? After the tribunal, they hadn't had the opportunity: it required sedation, and I... wait a second... when those military surgeons...

A voice put an end to my rationalizing. The old boy, the miner and a couple of bystanders stopped arguing.

'Hey there, buddy," the miner headed for me.

I stood up and, keeping an eye on him, walked towa
rd the foreigners clustering nearby. Another man joined the miner: middle-aged with sunken cheeks and a sallow, unhealthy complexion.

"Wait up," he said in a low voice and rubbed his pointy chin. "We need to talk."

I backed off and cast a glance around. No one seemed to sneak up on me from behind. The sallow-faced man fixed his calm gaze on me while the miner stuck out his chin, menace in his glare. Behind them stood the old man and three more guys, fit and tall, all three younger than myself, square-shouldered like new recruits on parade. And their faces... but of course! They had to be clones! A custom-hatched brood: apparently, the mining foreman had donated his sample to sequester and force-grow apprentice triplets for himself. Force-grown clones looked at a lifespan of thirty years at best; wonder what the foreman and his brood had done to justify a Pangean exile? They must have protested by demanding better wages and working conditions. Dangerous thing to do in Russia these days. Ever since the new president had come to power after the Civil War, he'd been hunting down rioters and separatists. With Army support, he'd created the Federal Security Agency, banned trade unions and dissolved rival political parties. Any kind of protest could be qualified under the new Threat To The State law and the protester himself sentenced to life in exile, all thanks to Pangea whose discovery had solved the prison overcrowding problem.