Roboteer (8 page)

Hugo made this last point with one eyebrow crooked, as if to underline the mystery. Will had to admit that it sounded weird, and he was no energy specialist.

‘No refuelling?’ said Rachel. ‘That’s impossible. The energy has to be coming from somewhere.’

Hugo nodded eagerly. ‘Certainly it does. Thus far, we’ve come up with two possibilities. Firstly, that the source unit is disposable. It’s created with a certain amount of power and runs down over time.’

‘But in that case, what’s the map for?’ Rachel asked.

‘Exactly,’ said Hugo. ‘The second theory is that they have some way to pipe energy in from elsewhere, and the map acts as a frame of reference. Perhaps there’s another ship outside the system.’

Amy frowned. ‘But how would they do that? Some kind of particle beam?’

‘Nothing showed up on our scans,’ said Hugo. ‘Seems unlikely, doesn’t it? And their use of disrupters would appear to rule out curvon technology. So it’s a mystery. Something totally new.’

Will had never seen a man look so hungry for knowledge. Hugo was about to start up again, but Ira beat him to it.

‘And that’s exactly why we’re going, folks: to find out. I’d like to take this particular discussion offline. There’ll be plenty of time to puzzle over it on the flight out and I’m sure our guest will furnish you with any extra details you desire. Meanwhile, are there any other questions before we begin?’

Will could think of nothing to say. The prospect of waltzing straight into the enemy’s most secret base had temporarily robbed him of his curiosity.

The captain nodded, pleased. ‘Okay, good. In that case, take your places, people. We’re heading out.’

The crew floated back down to their bunks. Will dragged himself to the bottom-right couch and slid through the narrow gap between the muscle-tank and the bed above. The tank’s side was open so that he could slide in quickly, in the event of a firefight. As the only member of the crew lacking the mods to keep him alive during high-gee turns, only he needed one.

He clipped himself into the webbing and listened to the sounds of people adjusting themselves above him. The bunk’s ceiling and bulkhead wall both doubled as display screens and were currently showing him a view of a Galatean lichen field and a bottomless blue sky. No doubt it was supposed to look homey and familiar, to compensate for the pitiful space he was supposed to inhabit, but it was far from convincing. Will’s claustrophobia returned, stronger than ever. He fought the feeling down and connected the retractable fat-contact to his neck.

The
Ariel
’s systems appeared abruptly in his sensorium as new corridors leading off his central stone-walled home node. His anxiety eased a little. At least he was able to escape into software. The others couldn’t even do that.

‘Everybody ready?’ asked Ira.

Will reached out into the
Ariel
’s mental corridors, summoning his systems status. It appeared before him like a great field where a crop of green LEDs was growing, not one red in sight. Everything was in order.

The crew called out ‘check’ in turn, Will last of all.

‘In that case,’ said the captain, ‘let’s get to work.’

Will could just make out Ira’s voice in quiet conversation with station control. Then the order came direct to his sensorium.

‘Rachel, ready the torches, minimum power.’

‘Torches ready.’

As the
Ariel
slid out of dock, Will swapped his eyes for those of the ship’s external sensors and watched the vast mass of the Fleet station slowly pull away. The curve of Galatea was a soft, blotchy brown beneath them, dotted with thin scraps of white cloud.

Ira guided them away from the station and fired the torches up to cruise power. Will felt the tug on his body as the ship accelerated. It took the better part of an hour at a steady one-point-five gees for them to reach a safe exit distance, at which point Ira turned off the torches and spoke again.

‘Rachel, how’s the juice looking?’

‘Nice and hot, sir.’

‘Buffers engaged?’

‘Buffers running at cruise charge,’ she said.

‘Deploy the brollies.’

All over the ship, the gigantic inducers slowly spread their vanes. It took them several minutes to reach full extension.

‘Brollies deployed.’

‘Grease the rails,’ said the captain.

Rachel ignited the trigger field – a cloud of exotic heavy particles cooked up with help from the ship’s fusion cores.

‘Rails greased.’

Through the sensors, Will watched lightning course between the inducers, coating the ship with blue-white radiance. The inducer-vanes tilted, creating a long, tapered oval of flickering light that stretched away from the ship in front and behind.

‘Ready for warp, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Ira.

Will braced himself.

In the next instant he was slammed into his couch as the first matter/antimatter volley collided with the trigger field. Outside the ship, the local curvon flow was coaxed into giving up its spatial potential. The space ahead of the ship shrank suddenly while the space behind expanded and the
Ariel
leapt forward.

Two seconds later, the kick came again. And then again, quicker and fiercer. The further they travelled from Galatea’s delicate gravity well, the more juice they could safely use. The thuds of the engine blurred together into a growl that reverberated through the cabin walls. They were on their way.

4:
IN FLIGHT

4.1: GUSTAV

The captain of Gustav’s personal starship engaged warp two light-seconds out from Earth and set them cruising at a comfortable point-nine gees. With the manoeuvre concluded, Gustav retired gratefully to his cabin. He was on his way back to his private realm at last, away from the poverty and politics of Earth after one of the most tedious weeks of his life. Now, perhaps, he could finally get some peace.

He locked the cabin door, sat down in one of the inflatable armchairs and pulled out the tablet on which he kept the suntap schematics. For over a year now, Gustav had pondered them in his spare time. Though they remained as opaque as when he’d first examined them, he found that concentrating on the inscrutable design served to calm and focus his mind. He lived in hope that one day, if he stared at its workings for long enough, he’d actually solve the riddle of the alien device.

For what had to be the five-thousandth time, Gustav turned to the blueprint for the gravitic generator, the most tangled and tortuous component in the entire assembly. He traced energy pathways through the familiar design and waited for peace to come. It didn’t. His mind refused to settle on the details. Instead, he found himself dwelling on the events of the last few days.

Thinking about the suntap only reminded him that the Prophet had made it impossible for him to delay any longer. He would have to deliver to Tang the stockpile of finished units that he’d so long denied existed. Thus the Kingdom would go to war relying on a weapon they still didn’t understand, and whose behaviour they could not predict. What if all the devices they built stopped working in the middle of the invasion? No one would have the first idea how to fix them.

Tang had undoubtedly been responsible for that folly. The man didn’t appear to have any interest in the research-and-development process. He just wanted his ships. Gustav dearly wished he could have been given someone cautious and reasonable to work with, but political reality didn’t work that way. The Reconsiderists had few potential admirals, and handing responsibility for the new Fleet to a different subsect would have weakened their position immeasurably. Tang was the best bet at the time. Now Gustav wondered if he’d have been better off recruiting from the damned Medellins.

No doubt the good admiral would be delighted to learn that his project leader had been saddled with a High Church spy. Gustav muttered curses under his breath. He would have to do something about Rodriguez soon, though the thought repelled him. The right time to start was probably now, while Rodriguez was still forming his opinions. With a grunt of frustration, Gustav stabbed the intercom button on his tablet.

‘Sir,’ said the ship’s captain.

‘Send Rodriguez to my cabin. Immediately.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Gustav sank back into his chair and scowled at the wall until he heard a knock at the door. He took a deep breath and tried to will himself into a diplomatic frame of mind.

‘Come in,’ he called.

Rodriguez opened the hatch and stepped through. He was dressed in an all-white ship-suit. The changes in gravity they’d experienced since leaving Earth didn’t appear to have affected his slick hair at all.

Gustav nodded to him. ‘Father.’

Rodriguez returned the gesture with pious deliberation. ‘You asked to see me,’ he said, one eyebrow tilted in mild curiosity.

‘Yes, I’d like to talk.’ Gustav gestured at the empty chair opposite.

Rodriguez lowered himself into it like a large cat settling. ‘Certainly. What would you like to talk about?’

‘You, for the most part,’ said Gustav. ‘If you’re to function as my assistant, it will be necessary for us to know a little about each other.’

‘Of course,’ said Rodriguez. His tone suggested otherwise. ‘What would you like to know?’

Gustav steeled himself. There was no point wasting time. ‘To begin with, your opinion of the Relic.’

Rodriguez’s eyebrow tilted a little further. ‘In what context?’

‘Well …’ started Gustav. He struggled for a way to start. ‘The origin of the Relic is still very ambiguous. There’s nothing explicit in its structure or function that proves it’s the work of an alien species.’

This was one of the ideas Oswald had raised in the report he’d sent Gustav as ammunition for this very moment. Gustav felt slightly dirty repeating it – it wasn’t something he believed. However, drawing the disciple out had to be the best place to start.

‘I’m interested to know,’ he continued, ‘whether you believe it to be the work of an alien civilisation or a message from God, as I’ve heard some people suggest?’

Rodriguez gave him a small, plump-lipped smile. ‘Both,’ he said.

It wasn’t the reply Gustav had expected to hear. ‘How do you manage that?’

‘Science is how we know the mind of God, General,’ Rodriguez replied with amusement. ‘Your prayer attendance record may be poor, but surely you must have heard that? It’s one of the Primary Teachings.’

Gustav refused to be baited. ‘I’m not sure I follow.’

‘Truism is not a backward faith,’ said the disciple. He was clearly enjoying himself. ‘If evidence suggests that the Relic is of alien origin, then we of the Leading must work on that basis.’

Gustav’s brow furrowed. ‘But doesn’t the Prophet also say that mankind is unique? That we’re God’s greatest creation, unequalled in the universe?’

‘He does. But being unique and being alone are not the same thing.’ Rodriguez twisted a hand in the air to illustrate and smirked. ‘The fact that mankind has universal primacy does not preclude the existence of extraterrestrial life. We would be foolish to deny the existence of dogs, say, simply because we have never set eyes on one.’

‘I see,’ said Gustav. He’d assumed the man would refuse to acknowledge the origin of the Relic flat out on theological grounds. And from the expression on his soft face, Rodriguez clearly took delight in defying that expectation. Perhaps he was not so much of a fool as Gustav had first supposed.

‘Yet the builders of the Relic must have been highly advanced,’ he ventured. ‘By the Prophet’s own teachings, does that not imply they knew more of the mind of God than we do? How do you reconcile that with the idea of human greatness?’

‘Greatness requires more than scientific knowledge,’ replied the disciple smoothly. ‘It also requires faith. The Relic-makers did not have Truism, therefore greatness was never possible for them.’

In other words, ‘greatness’ meant whatever the Prophet wanted it to. It was typical High Church hypocrisy, but it was also perhaps something Gustav could use.

‘That’s very interesting,’ he said. ‘A subtle point. Tell me, how would you go about clarifying an idea like that to the Following?’

Rodriguez’s smile dropped a notch. ‘I wouldn’t. As a member of the Leading, it is our job to spare the Following from the doubt engendered by subtle thinking. As the Prophet says, simplicity is stability. That which you cannot tell a child, do not tell a mob.’

Gustav sat back nodding, quietly annoyed. This was not a point he could openly debate without sounding like a heretic. To believe that people should know as much as their leaders was to invite accusations of being a democrat and a capitalist. The greatest lesson of the last century had been that knowledge without responsibility was a recipe for disaster. That was how terrorists were made.

He tried a different tack. ‘But how can you possibly prevent the Following from finding out about the Relic? It’s not going away. And if the people must never know, doesn’t that leave the situation vulnerable to misinterpretation when they discover the truth? Worse still, what if they discover that the church has kept the truth from them?’

Rodriguez shrugged. ‘Nothing in God’s universe is free. This is the price that comes with the gift of the suntap. The Leading must exercise vigilance, and self-discipline.’ He regarded Gustav levelly with small, gleaming eyes. ‘Let us not play games here, General,’ he said. ‘I’m sure Lord Khan told you my real reason for joining this mission. I am here to determine the answer to exactly that question – how is the secret of the Relic best kept?’

Gustav folded his arms. ‘Your honesty is commendable, Father. Let me in turn tell you that, frankly, I do not see what question there is to answer. The Relic is a world-sized artefact. It cannot be hidden any better than it always has been. It cannot be guarded any more securely than it already is.’

Rodriguez smiled cryptically. ‘Surely that is a matter of conjecture.’

‘Is it?’ Gustav demanded. ‘We have used the best strategic models the Kingdom has created. Increase the defences and you increase the chances of it being discovered.’

Rodriguez waved a placatory hand. ‘I admit that the Reconsiderists have done an excellent job. I doubt any other subsect could have done better.’

‘Then why close the project?’

Rodriguez’s expression became guarded. ‘There are many reasons.’

‘Such as?’

‘For a start, a string of miracles coming from a single lab would eventually raise questions. And there are radical factions among the Leading that would use such a discovery to further their own political aims.’

‘What string of miracles?’ Gustav asked tersely. ‘So far we’ve extracted only one blueprint.’

The schematic for the suntap was still the most coherent piece of information they’d received from the Relic, and that was within the first week of contact. Since then, there had been a whole lot of nonsense and plenty of repeated data. Gustav, however, was still a long way from giving up.

‘If there are to be no more miracles, then why keep the project open?’ Rodriguez retorted.

‘To better protect the church, of course. If there’s one Relic, there could be thousands out there, waiting to be discovered. Surely it’s preferable to be better informed of the potential risks.’

Rodriguez shifted uncomfortably in his chair, his expression clouding. ‘If the protection of the church is really your primary goal, then you shouldn’t mind if the head of the church takes over.’

‘Except that the church has already put its best scientific men in charge. If the church wishes to understand the Relic, why replace them with people who know less? I’m forced to assume that the church intends something else.’ And it would be something stupid, without a doubt.

The disciple’s nostrils flared. He glared out from the depths of his armchair like a cornered boar. ‘Your talk of other Relics is meaningless,’ he said coldly. ‘A known threat is more significant than an infinity of hypothetical ones.’

Gustav’s brow crunched in confusion. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means you would protect the church by leaving it constantly open to the threat of destabilisation.’

Gustav laughed mirthlessly. ‘No more open than it would be under High Church control.’

Rodriguez shook his head. ‘There may be options that your blinkered research has not allowed you to consider.’

‘Like what?’ said Gustav, exasperated. ‘Whatever you do, that Relic is still going to be there.’

Rodriguez only glared at him, tight-lipped and sullen. It took Gustav a moment to work out what the expression meant. When he did, he was stunned.

‘You’re going to try to destroy it …’ he said breathlessly.

Rodriguez glowered at him, clearly furious that he’d been pushed into divulging more than he’d wanted to. ‘We’re appraising
all
the options.’

Gustav sank back into his seat and put his hand to his forehead. ‘That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.’

‘No stupider than risking the future of the church,’ snapped the disciple.

‘But it’s a
planet
,’ said Gustav. ‘I regret to inform you, but the Kingdom doesn’t yet have the power to destroy a planet.’

‘You underestimate us,’ Rodriguez muttered. ‘A dangerous mistake.’

‘Then enlighten me!’ Gustav exclaimed. ‘Impress me with the High Church’s secret powers.’

There was a long silence, during which Rodriguez stared at him hatefully.

‘I’m not going to discuss this further,’ he said at last. ‘I’m under oath on the subject. But think on this: we both wear the wrong clothes, you and I. You are a scientist who dresses like a soldier.’ He let his contempt for the idea drip from his voice. ‘But before I donned the robe for God, I
was
a soldier.’

If that was true, Gustav thought, it must have been a long time ago. Rodriguez had let all traces of hardness slide from his body.

‘I am not ignorant of military matters,’ the disciple added. ‘You’d be wise not to forget that.’

Gustav wasn’t impressed. ‘Did your keen military mind consider the idea that you might be declaring war on a vastly superior alien species?’

‘I think that’s unlikely.’

‘Really? Why? As far as we can tell, the Relic has survived for millions of years. Its surface is
smooth
. There are no craters on it. Not one! How did it manage that without defences?’ Gustav demanded. ‘We don’t even know how it communicates with the probes we put on its surface. Yet you assume—’

‘There will be no retaliation,’ Rodriguez snapped.

Gustav leaned forward again, fixing the man with his gaze. ‘What makes you so damned sure?’

Rodriguez stood abruptly. ‘Because God would not give us the sword to smite our enemies only to have it break our faith!’

Gustav squinted in incomprehension. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘You think it a coincidence that we are handed so powerful a weapon in our darkest hour?’ Rodriguez sneered. ‘That we are handed such a moral dilemma
now
, in this way, at this critical time? Your so-called rationalism makes you naïve, General. We are being tested.’

Gustav’s skin grew cold as he looked into Rodriguez’s burning eyes.

‘We should take what we need from God and no more,’ the disciple went on. ‘Any other course is intellectual avarice, pure and simple – a
sin
of the first order.’

It took Gustav a moment to find the words. ‘You can’t really believe that,’ he breathed.

Rodriguez pulled his shoulders back and looked at Gustav down the length of his pointed nose. ‘I cannot believe you don’t. Your lack of faith disgusts me, General.’