Provenance I - Flee The Bonds (27 page)

A faint hiss filled the cabin and ambient blue hardened into ice-white. The doors opened.

‘You may disembark.’

Before Steve could stand, a grey uniform blocked his view.

‘I’ll get your bag, sir.’ The Defender’s eyes locked on Gabby. ‘You stay there.’

Steve glanced left. Dread tugged at Gabby’s pale face. Her colleagues filed by, ignoring her.

Steve followed the Defender to the bulkhead and looked back over his shoulder. He had to flick his eyes twice before the spark of comprehension lit Gabby’s face. The Defender turned around, his head snapping in the direction of Gabby’s empty seat. ‘She’s gone.’

Steve shrugged. ‘Can’t trust anybody these days.’ He took hold of his ruckall, ‘You carry on here, I’ll find her.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

* * * *
 

The holding area was little more than an enormous hanger attached to the outer hull. Transfer to the reception hall in the revolving core meant passing through a labyrinth of autopaves and shifting doorways. Steve joined the queue and moved smoothly through the first doorway. Within two minutes, the bright reception hall burst into view, awash with people, and their vivid blue catchalls.

Several groups had already formed under the viewscreens that ran the length of the far wall. Steve set off through the bustling crowd in the direction of the CONSEC bureau.

He never reached it.

‘Mr Wilkinson?’

Masking his perplexity with a frown, Steve stared at an incomprehensibly familiar face. ‘Who are you?’

The man wore the golden brown uniform of a SCITECH officer, the number twelve glinted on his forest-green epaulette, as did the four silver bars on the similarly coloured mandarin collar. He looked young for a Level 12 Commander. About the age Matt would have been, had he lived.

An affable smile accompanied the extended arm. ‘I’m Alex.’

Steve shook the warm hand, ‘Hello, Alex, thanks for meeting me.’

‘You’re welcome.’ Alex gestured towards a pair of metal doors adjacent to the CONSEC bureau. ‘We can take the deck-car to the MEDLAB.’

As they approached, an armed Defender barred their way. He nodded at Steve’s ruckall. ‘Has that backpack been cleared through quarantine?’

Alex turned to Steve. ‘Are you carrying anything that should concern me?’

‘No.’

Alex removed an ID card from his top pocket and held it up, ‘I’ll vouch for the backpack.’

The Defender scrutinised the ID, stiffened and took a step back. ‘Yes, sir.’

Once inside the deck-car’s polished metal interior, Alex tapped the keypad; the doors enclosed them in silence.

‘That’s better.’

Steve tugged his ear.

Alex tapped his right trouser pocket, ‘Jammed.’

‘Have you seen Penny?’

‘She’s in MEDLAB fifteen central. We’ll take her down to depot thirty-three; she’ll be left alone there.’

A ping preceded the doors opening. They stepped into a wide corridor of charcoal fibre carpet, beige walls, and a white ceiling with illuminated coving. Alex set off right.

Followed the sweeping corridor for about one hundred metres brought them to the MEDLABs’ trapezoidal doorways. Three metres apart, the doorways lined both walls for as far as Steve could see. Each numbered doorway held a pair of white moulded doors and each door had an observation slot in the upper half.

Alex stopped outside number fifteen and looked Steve up and down. ‘You’ll need to decontaminate.’

The moulded doors glided back, releasing a waft of cool antiseptic. Ahead, frosted glass barred entry to the MEDLAB. Alex tapped the anteroom’s wall console, ‘You’ll feel a slight pressure from the vacuum.’

Steve didn’t mention this wasn’t his first time, he was sure Alex would have known that.

The frosted glass parted to reveal the surgical-white interior. In the centre, between cupboard-lined walls, lay Penny, all but her head covered in a light blue sheet. Beyond Penny, a length of mirrored glass divided the far wall and a pair of deck-car doors filled the left corner.

A C-shaped robotic doctor hovered a few centimetres above the glossy tiles, its corrugated arms looping up to their locking points like giant earrings. Two metres in height and fifty centimetres wide, an RMD replaced a hospital of equipment, and doctors. Something else he’d never discussed with Penny.

On the right, a bank of three monitors hung from the ceiling. Beneath them, a metal table, with neat rows of medical instruments glinted. The mirrored glass cleared and a round female face popped up from behind a console. Her Slavic accent filled the lab, ‘Patient is prepped and stable, sir.’

Alex nodded. ‘Thanks, Dobriana, you can go now.’

‘I have a call from Command, sir.’ Her tone carried an edge.

‘What did they say?’ Alex’s didn’t.

‘They want to know about patient, name, condition; they want to send someone from CONSEC.’

‘What did you say?’

‘What you told me, sir. SCITECH officer from plant genetics, contaminated with bionanos.’

‘And what did they say to that?’

She made eye contact with Steve. ‘They send someone.’

Steve stepped forward. ‘When was this?’

‘Five minutes ago.’

He spun to Alex, ‘We have to go.’

Alex turned back to the monitors. ‘Display the dyscrasia analysis.’

The right-hand screen flickered into a multi-coloured bar graph.

Alex studied for a moment and then pushed the monitors aside. ‘Good, less than one PPM. Disconnect and erase the record.’

Dobriana’s head bowed. ‘Done.’

‘Thanks, Dobriana, you’d better go.’

The green suited nurse rose, flashed a quizzical look at Steve and left.

Steve looked down at Penny. ‘What’s the prognosis?’

‘She might suffer some short-term memory loss.’

Steve reached across her and grabbed Alex’s arm. ‘How much?’

‘Not enough that you can’t fill in the gaps. We’ll put her in short-term stasis until it’s safe to bring her back for the operation.’

Steve released his grip. There was something irritatingly reassuring about Alex, and troublingly familiar.

Dobriana had dressed Penny in a medical cryo-suit. It resembled a short surf suit, except it was silver, veined with white cables, and spotted with red connector plugs. Pink blotches dappled Penny’s pale skin and lank auburn hair clung to her mauve tinged face. She looked like a corpse washed up on a winter’s beach.

Alex tapped the gurney’s control panel and they followed it to the deck-car.

03:13 FRI 03:11:2119

Cryostasis Depot 17-11-33, Provenance, LEO

The deck-car doors opened into the Erebus chill of cryostasis Depot 33, its dimmed yellow light barely touching the seventy cryotube racks facing Alex and Steve.

Depot 33 in Section 11 of Deck 17 held twelve thousand six hundred cryotubes and covered an area equivalent to four soccer pitches. Provenance had fifty such depots, designed to support the five hundred thousand of Continuity who’d be kept in long-term stasis. Designs that SIS were about to change.

Steve raised his hand to Alex and stepped out of the deck-car. His scrutiny traversed the polished metal deck, passing across the malachite glow of seventy consoles, each one indicating the start of a one-hundred metre long rack. Cryonics had advanced, but not so far as to eliminate risk. Without the precise clinical administration of cryoprotectants, you would split apart during vitrification.

To his left, in the distant gloom, a rotating red light indicated an occupied rack.

He followed Alex and the gurney in the direction of the red light. A four-metre aisle bounded the depot and separated each rack, providing access for the medical teams and the Scorpion.

Steve’s voice carried in the voluminous twilight, ‘Where is everybody?’

Alex shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

After several minutes, it became apparent that only the farthest rack had occupants.

Steve spoke to Alex’s back, ‘Are the nurseries on line yet?’

Alex slowed, allowing the gurney to overtake him. ‘I don’t have access to that information.’

‘If Continuity are loading, the nurseries should have been on line for at least a year. These racks should be half full.’ This proved beyond doubt; Provenance’s departure was not scheduled.

‘I’m aware of that, as are the Resistance.’

It was too dim for Steve to catch the nuances of Alex’s expression, but not the stress in his voice. ‘Meaning what?’

Alex stopped. ‘You know what. They will attack Provenance, and we will all die.’

The gurney slowed to a halt at the last rack. Waves of blood red splashed over Penny’s shrouded body.

Alex tapped the management console’s screen, his malachite hued face turned arctic-blue. ‘There are thirty-four in total, fifteen women and nineteen men. Pick a number.’

Steve’s consternation darted between the blue screen and Alex’s set face, ‘I don’t understand.’

‘We can’t hide a Drone on Provenance. As soon as Penny’s connected, they’ll decontaminate. We must swap her for someone else.’

Steve couldn’t decide which was worse, Alex’s suggestion or the manner of its delivery, ‘So we unplug someone and have Penny take their place?’

‘Yes.’

‘No.’

‘I thought you loved her?’

Steve ignored the fact that he’d never mentioned his relationship with Penny. Perhaps Jason had. ‘I do, but she wouldn’t want me to kill someone to save her.’

Alex’s lips compressed. ‘Let me explain.’ He tapped the screen several times. Steve turned his head, attracted by a mechanical clunking in the stygian aisle.

Each Egyptian-blue rack supported one hundred and eighty cryotubes in thirty stacks of six. A short distance along the rack, a stack glowed pale yellow. The second from bottom cryotube extended into the aisle, the one underneath rose to fill the vacant slot while the extended cryotube lowered to the floor.

Alex passed Steve, pulling the gurney, ‘Come on.’

By the time they reached the three-metre long translucent cryotube, its curved lid had retracted. On the dark blue pressure-relief mattress lay a white wrist clamp, its coiled cable running to the back of the tube’s monitoring unit. Alex knelt down and tapped the MU display. The mattress rose to the top of the cryotube and the cryotube rose level with the gurney. He stood up. ‘We need to lay Penny in to activate it, when the mattress descends, we’ll take her out.’

With Penny on the mattress, Alex attached the clamp to her left wrist. After cycling through a series of displays, the MU beeped and three amber bars and two white dials appeared. Penny descended.

Alex reached for Penny’s shoulders, ‘Now!’

The empty mattress sank to the bottom and the cryotube’s curved lid clicked shut, trapping the wrist clamp’s white cord.

Alex pulled the gurney clear. Steve followed, his disquiet focused on the cord stretched between Penny’s wrist and the cryotube.

A minute passed before he heard it, a whirring, like a slow drill. Steve turned; the whirring came from the direction of the rack’s management console.

Out of the darkness it crawled, its whirr accompanied by the patter of invisible traction. Two curved arms extended from the front and a tail looped forward over its black body. The Scorpion was a frequent visitor to cryostasis nightmares, nightmares from which you could not wake.

The Scorpion stopped, rotated, and extended its claws.

Steve thrust a glance at Alex.

Alex raised his hand. ‘Not yet.’

The Scorpion extracted the empty cryotube onto its flat body, the wrist clamp cord strained, Penny’s arm extended. The pronged tail lowered over the tube, its movement ceasing with a clunk. Alex stepped forward and clipped the cord. It slapped back against the side of the cryotube. The Scorpion paid no attention; it reversed, pivoted and pattered into the shadows.

The lesson wasn’t over. Alex nodded in the direction of the departing tube. ‘Watch.’

Against the distant blackness, a vertical strip of light widened, bleaching the Scorpion’s black body. Its prehensile tail uncurled, its arms twisted the tube upright and inserted it into the wall. The light vanished.

Steve touched Penny’s gravestone cold arm. He knew where the bodies went. There was no heaven, no hell, just the emptiness of space. He glanced up. ‘There must be an alternative.’

Alex rubbed his forehead. ‘There is. I can change Penny’s biofield — but UV11’s accumulative, I can only give her enough for a few days.’

Steve swallowed. He’d obviously skipped the part of the IMK instructions that mentioned UV11’s accumulative effects. ‘Do it.’

Alex removed the wrist clamp. ‘The remaining nanobytes
must
be extracted within three days.’

‘Or?’

‘Or it will be as if you’d never met.’

* * * *
 

Steve stepped onto the white carpet of Alex’s cabin and squinted.

‘You like white then?’ The only thing missing was an operating table.

Alex’s eyelids flickered. ‘It shows the dirt better.’

Steve could only nod, his bewilderment fixed on the spotless carpet. That was a phrase his mother had used.

Seniority bestowed on Alex a larger than average cabin. Ahead and to the right, a picture window replaced two walls. Snow-capped mountains mirrored in a lake of blue glass. At the outer edges of the window, the translucent voile swayed, adding a touch of realism to the virtual imagery.

The mountains provided a backdrop to two white settees separated by a low table, also in white. Steve stared at its hexagonal top and six spindly legs. From the fuzziness of his early childhood, a picture painted itself; a white hexagon with six legs held a chessboard. Matt sat on the floor, his cross-legged knees under the table, ‘I’m white.’
It can’t be.
Steve looked away and slammed the locker door.
No, it can’t.

The ubiquitous white colour scheme continued onto the double bed resting against the left-hand wall, and the door to the bathroom. There was no kitchen; everyone ate in a canteen or restaurant, depending on rank.

Alex nodded towards the bathroom. ‘I expect you could do with a shower.

‘Yes, thanks.’ Steve hoped it wasn’t too noticeable.