The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle (116 page)

Oscar smiled passively at the industrial megalopolis, overwhelmed as always by its sheer size and energy. The El Iopi wind was strong tonight, sending warm dry air to scour the highways and avenues. He took a sip on the beer. Somewhere out there in the jeweled grid of lights were the factories where CST built its hyperdrives. There had been rumors around Base One of the latest variants, faster than the marque 4s, a lot faster. Now that would be some starship.

“That was quite a performance this afternoon.”

Oscar jumped at the voice. The beer bottle slipped out of his fingers, falling soundlessly toward the dark parking lot fifteen stories below. “Shit!” When he lurched back into the room there was a man sitting on the sofa. Oscar had never seen him when he came in.

“Some people never change,” the man said. “You were always a little too fond of the old booze.”

“Who? What?”

There was a chuckle, and the man turned a table light on. Oscar peered at the intruder. He was quite old, probably early sixties—not rejuvenated. His face was comfortably round with reddish cheeks, a skin with a slightly rugged texture, the trait of someone who used too much cellular reprofiling. His body was larger than average, but not unfit, not for someone his age.

“I’m sorry, do I know you?”

“Oh, yes, Oscar, you know me.”

Oscar walked over to the sofa and looked closely, trying to fit the face he saw into his own past. “I don’t …”

“Don’t try and place me from memory. There’s nothing left of what I used to look like. I’ve been reprofiled a hundred times over the decades, staying a couple of steps ahead of the law all this time.”

“Oh, holy fuck.” The strength went out of Oscar’s legs. He sat heavily at the other end of the sofa. “Adam? Adam, is that you?”

“None other.”

“Oh, God. It’s been forty years.”

“Thirty-nine.”

Oscar looked with real dread at the man who had once been his friend and comrade. “What do you want?”

“Is that any way to greet an old comrade?”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” Adam spat. “Don’t remind you what you once were? Don’t remind you that you used to have ideals? Principles? Don’t remind you what you did for the cause?”

“I never fucking forgot!” Oscar shouted. “Dear Christ. Nobody could forget. Not that. Not what we did.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Here I was thinking you’d gone to work for the biggest corporation the human race has ever known, helping them spread their oppression and corruption to new worlds.”

“Forty years and you still haven’t come up with a new goddamn speech. Do you have any idea how tired that crap is? And don’t forget to use the word ‘plutocrat,’ big words like that always impress the poor ignorant saps you con into giving up their lives for your cause. It makes them think you’re an intellectual, someone they can trust, someone who knows what they’re doing.”

“It used to be your cause, Oscar. Have you given up on social justice? Is that the price of rejuvenation these days? Is that what the new young Oscar Monroe uses for currency?”

“Oh, spare me. I was only young once, and I was a fucking hothead buffoon, an easy target for bastards like Professor Grayva to exploit. Damnit, we were just fucking kids. Just kids, we didn’t know anything. You talk about being corrupted, you haven’t got to look far to see where it really happens.”

“The Party is right, and you know it. This society is not a just one.”

“Go on, say it!” Oscar leaned forward, his fingers contracting into fists. “Go on, you miserable bastard. Say it! Say it for fuck’s sake. Say: The Ends Justify The Means. That’s what you came here for, isn’t it? That’s what you wanted one last time.”

Adam turned away from the fury in his eyes. “Nothing justifies what we did,” he said so quietly Oscar could barely hear it. “We both know that.”

They sat at opposite ends of the sofa, not looking at each other. After a minute, Adam grunted dismissively. “How about this. We’re like an old married couple, always arguing.”

“What are you here for, Adam? Come to bring me down in a blaze of glory?”

“Oh, no, you don’t get off that lightly.”

“Then what do you want?” His eyes narrowed as he took in his old friend. “Money? You must need rejuvenation pretty soon.”

“I’m not sure I care to carry on living in this universe.”

“Not even you are that stupid. You can’t die. That means you’ve wasted your whole life.”

“It’s a life lived true to myself and my principles. Can you say that?”

“Yes. I’ve helped find dozens of new worlds. I’ve given our species a whole load of fresh starts. Phase three space isn’t the same as one and two. There’s no revolution, not one with Molotovs and people beating the shit out of each other on the street, but there’s a difference.”

“Humm.” Adam nodded, as if some question had been answered correctly. “Same cause, different angle of attack, huh?”

“Whatever. I’m not here to re-live old battles with you. They’ve all been fought and lost, by both of us. What the hell do you want, Adam?”

“I was sent to ask you something you won’t like.”

It was the way he said it that finally alarmed Oscar; it was almost as if he was ashamed. Except Adam Elvin was never ashamed of what he did. Not ever. That was his whole problem. The reason for them turning their backs on each other all those decades ago. A truly venomous parting. “I doubt this day could get any worse.”

“Don’t be so sure. I want you to review the
Second Chance
flight data.”

“Review the …” Oscar almost started choking. “Wait. You said sent. Who sent you? What do you mean, sent?”

“The man I work with on occasion believes there was an alien influence on board the
Second Chance
when you flew to the Dyson Pair. If the flight logs are given a professional analysis, they may show the evidence he needs to prove this.”

Oscar stared at the old man from his terrible past, his thoughts examining what had been said one word at a time. “Bradley Johansson,” he said at last. “You work with Bradley Johansson? You joined the Guardians of Selfhood? That bunch of nutters? Jesus fucking wept, Adam. Tell me you’re joking. This is a sick joke. It has to be. It fucking has to be.”

“I have not joined the Guardians. I do know Johansson. We have a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

“You.” Oscar pointed at him with a trembling finger. “OhmyGod, you attacked the
Second Chance
. It was you.”

Adam smiled with faint pride. “None other.”

“You crazy fucked-up psychopath!” Oscar bunched up his fist, ready to pound, smash … “That
terrorist attack
nearly killed half of my friends. You ruined millions of dollars’ worth of equipment and facilities and delayed our launch date by months.”

“I know. I think I’m slipping. In the old days I would have got the lot of you, and blown up the starship.”

“You are crazy. People
died
, Adam.”

“They were all re-lifed. Just like your friend Dr. Bose.”

“I’m calling navy intelligence.”

“Ah, the universe’s greatest oxymoron. How long do you think they’ll give you in life suspension?”

“I don’t care about myself. Not anymore. You have to be stopped.” Oscar almost did it, almost told his e-butler to make the call. He was going to do it. He was really going to do it. Any second now.

“No, Oscar. It’s you and your navy who are in the wrong now, you who are the danger to humanity. Look where your precious
Second Chance
flight led us.”

“What is wrong with you? You don’t believe that Guardians crap: President Doi is an alien agent. Come on! Not you.” He studied the old man’s round face, hunting for some sign of guilt.

“What I believe doesn’t matter, does it?” Adam said. “It’s what I want from you which is important. We want the log data reviewed, and you’re the perfect choice. You have unrestricted access, and it’s your field of expertise.”

“Oh, now I get it. If I study the data and don’t
find
your evidence, then someone makes a call to Rafael Columbia. Right?”

“No, Oscar, this is on the level. I want you to run a genuine, thorough search.”

It was only the alcohol flowing sweetly through his head that prevented Oscar from laughing outright. “Dear God, I never thought you’d be reduced to this. I mean, I always had this image of you carrying on the Party’s agenda. Every time one of those seccession movements hit the unisphere I would think: I bet Adam’s there, working away behind the scenes, urging the troops on, giving their leaders advice whether they want it or not. Then you’d slip back into the Commonwealth before CSI closed the gateway, and build up underground cell networks on every world; you’d have thousands of loyal activists ready for the day your word would come and the whole Commonwealth would be plunged into civil war and revolution. That you’d be some kind of Gandhi, or Mandela, or maybe just Napoleon. But certainly you’d be
somebody
. Not this though, God, look at you. Just another fat aging rebel who lost sight of his cause decades ago. So desperate you joined up with the saddest bunch of losers this universe has to offer.

“It’s not real, Adam, there is no alien. I was on board that starship for over a year, I never bumped into it in the showers, never caught it stealing a late-night snack from the canteen, there was no ghost on deck thirteen. This is where your conspiracy theory runs slap bang into the solid wall of reality. You and Johansson can sit at home pulling every rumor you want from the unisphere and build them into a tower of your Fact. It’s all bullshit. There is no evidence to be found. So before you go just leave the little crystal memory on the table, and I’ll politely ignore it, then when you’re gone and I’m even more drunk I’ll access the file your friends have forged and decide if I’m going to splice it into the official log for you so that I can save myself from life suspension because I’m too much of a pitiful coward to take responsibility for what I did once.”

“You need to get a shrink to take a good look at that self-loathing. It’s not healthy.”

“Fuck you,” Oscar said. The pain he felt was close to physical now. “Just leave the memory crystal and go.”

Adam struck him across the cheek. The blow was almost powerful enough to knock him off the couch.

“Shit.” Oscar dabbed at his mouth, blinking back tears from the stinging pain. A trickle of blood was oozing out from the corner of his lips. He gave Adam a wild look. “What the fuck is wrong with you? I said I’d do it. What more do you want?”

“There is no forged file, you motherfucker. This is as real as it gets. And I said there was an influence on board, not a bug-eyed monster. The Starflyer works through humans. Somebody on board the
Second Chance
turned the barrier off—don’t even try telling me that was coincidence. The same somebody who fixed it for Bose and Verbeke to be left behind. You don’t think it was remotely suspicious that of all the supertechnological, multiple-redundant, fail-soft gadgets you had on board that a simple communicator failed at exactly that critical time? Because I fucking do.”

“Somebody?” Oscar asked cynically. “A crew member?”

“Yes. One of your precious crew. One of your friends. Or maybe more than one. Who knows? But that’s what you’ve got to find out.”

“That’s even worse than an alien stowaway. Do you know how much training and back-history investigation we went through to get on board? Nobody remotely suspect ever got close to the ship.”

“You mean like you and Dudley Bose?”

Oscar stared at him for a long, chilling moment. “Look, Adam, what you’re asking, it can’t happen. Physically, it’s not possible for me to do it. Do you realize how much raw data is in those logs?”

“I know. That’s why we could never steal it and analyze it ourselves. You don’t have to go through every byte yourself. You know the critical segments of the flight; that’s where you look. Not at the main events, what happened on the bridge or in engineering, they’ll be clean. It’s what went on in the background that’s important. Who was haunting deck thirteen when the barrier came down?
Find them,
not just for us, for yourself, for everyone. We need to know what really happened out there.”

“This is … I can’t …”

“The alien is becoming more active now. You have to admit, there’s some weird shit going down these days. That explosion on Venice Coast which took out our arms supplier; the murdered Senator.”

“Bullshit. That was some covert operative from the government, or an Intersolar Dynasty. Everybody knows that.”

Adam smiled maliciously. “Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me.”

“You are so wrong. Why can you never admit that?”

“Then prove it. Exactly who are you betraying by looking at the data? If we’re wrong you lose nothing. If God forbid, we’re right, we need to know. And you’ll be a hero. That’s big enough to absolve all your past sins.”

“I don’t need absolution.”

Adam stood. “You know I’m right. And I know you can never admit that to my face. So we’ll stop macho posturing now, and I’ll contact you every fortnight or so to check on your progress.”

“I won’t do it.”

“Yeah, I said that very same thing when Johansson told me to get in touch with you. But it’s not like either of us have a choice, is it? Not after Abadan station. Take care, Oscar, there’s a lot of people depending on you.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Carys Panther took the metallic gray MG metrosport into New Costa Junction, then drove it straight onto the car-carry train to Elan. The carriage was completely enclosed, a tube of aluminum with a bright polyphoto strip along the ceiling and a couple of narrow windows along each side. Her MG was so low-slung they were above her eye level. The car’s drive array edged her right up to a big BMW 6089 four-by-four before engaging the full brake lock; a Ford Yicon saloon pulled up behind her.

She ordered the seat to recline and settled back for the trip. Her e-butler brought up a whole raft of story ideas and plot sequences into her virtual vision, which she started to fill in, joining them together in complicated loops. At the moment there was a big demand for the long slightly fantastical sagas that were her preferred genre. Ant, her agent, was keen to exploit the market. He said that it was the uncertainty of the Prime situation that was putting people off gritty realism at the moment; they wanted escapism. He should know; Ant was actually older than Nigel Sheldon, and he’d been doing the same job for century after century, he’d seen every creative fad there was, living through the fashion cycle as it spun the genres around and around.

It was twenty minutes before the train started to move forward, pulled by an electric Fantom T5460 engine. Augusta led straight to New York; from there the trans-Earth link took them to Tallahassee, Edmonton, Seattle, LA Galactic, Mexico City, Rio, and Buenos Aires, before finally crossing the Pacific to Sydney, which routed the train out to Wessex. Earth took about an hour; they stopped at five of the stations so more vehicles could roll onto the car-carry. Once they reached Wessex, there was a longer stop as six extra carriages were added, then it took five minutes to cross the planetary station’s yard to the Elan gateway. A minute later and they were pulling up alongside the long road-platform at Runwich, the planet’s capital.

The MG’s drive array connected itself to the city’s road routing manager, paid the local car tax, and drove through the outskirts to the airport. For once the connection timing worked out in practice the way it was listed on the timetable. A Siddley-Lockheed CP-505 was waiting for her on the apron, a big six-duct fan plane. She drove up the rear ramp into the gaping cargo hold, where electromuscle clamps gripped the car’s tires. There were another fifteen cars in there, along with two coaches. The plane could carry sixty-five tons of cargo in total, in addition to a hundred twenty passengers on the upper deck.

Carys spent the next three hours sitting in a comfy first-class seat being served champagne by a nice first-life steward as they cruised across the equator at point nine five Mach. Ant called twice for script conferences and permission to crank up her contract negotiations. It was sort of flattering that he dealt with her personally; his client list had been closed for over a century now. If all went well her latest saga should hit the unisphere in another six months.

They landed at Kingsclere airport on Ryceel and she climbed back into the MG. As she drove out of the southern continent’s capital she could see the Dau’sings rising out of the horizon.

The toll booth at the start of the Randtown highway had a big new sign across the front, reading: No Military Vehicles Permitted. Someone had spray-painted
DEATH TO ANTIHUMAN FUCKHEAD TRAITORS
over the top of it in glowing orange.

“This should be fun,” she muttered as she drew up outside the booth and put her thumb credit tattoo on the pad. The reinforced barrier slid up, and she drove onto the start of the highway. The broad strip of enzyme-bonded concrete seemed completely deserted as it stretched out ahead. Carys thought it looked like the start grid of some giant racetrack, which was an interesting challenge. She brought the full range of drive array program tools up into her virtual vision, and supervised its integration with the highway’s simple traffic management system. The speed regulator was a small old program that was easily susceptible to the fix that came as standard in the MG’s modern aggressor routines. She removed the offending software’s inconvenient monitoring of the car, and pressed her foot down hard on the manual accelerator.

There was a surge of power into the axle engines that pushed her deep into the seat. She locked the speed, tied the radar and navigation functions into the steering program, and assigned full control to the drive array. Electromuscle bands in the tire walls responded to the buildup of speed by changing their profile, expanding the tread width to provide an even greater degree of traction. There was a wicked smile on her face as the car charged up the first slope into the foothills at three hundred kph.

“I stayed loyal,” Dudley Bose said. “I was stupid. Did you hear what I said? Did you ever see the recording? I warned them, I told them to flee. Then my voice ended. The aliens must have silenced me, punished me for spoiling their plans. And all the while it was Wilson Fucking Kime I was risking my neck for. The bastard who left me there to rot, to die under an alien sun. Who sacrificed me so he could be safe.”

“You are very much alive, my love,” Mellanie told him. They were lying together on the double bed in what the hotel, with a sharp eye for satire, called its bridal suite. The curtains were open, allowing Dudley to see his precious stars. It was an effort for Mellanie not to yawn, she desperately wanted to go to sleep. Something this new Dudley Bose apparently never did without the help of strong drugs. She wondered if she should slip another of the pills into his drink; it was nearly three o’clock in the morning. But the champagne they’d so eagerly guzzled down earlier was flat now, and not even the Pine Heart Gardens, Randtown’s finest, would offer room service at such a time.
Damn this wretched backward place.

There had been few choices other than returning to Randtown to file her follow-up report on the blockade. Alessandra wanted to know if the residents had renounced their antihuman stance now the wormhole detector station had been forcibly installed in the Regent mountains above the town. The angle they were going for was a remorseful population who were turning their backs on redneck buffoons like Mark Vernon. Finding appropriate interviews would be easy enough for Mellanie, the more colorful the better.

She didn’t want to do it, not just because she despised Randtown and its smug small-town mentality. The Myo case was far more important to her: if she could crack that she wouldn’t even need Alessandra as a patron anymore. But it was proving difficult. After the glorious fiasco of the navy’s welcome-back ceremony, she’d spent a day and a half locked in her hotel room with Dudley Bose, providing him with the kind of sexual marathon that most men knew of only from pornoTSIs or their own midlife-crisis dreams. He’d told her nothing. He’d talked continuously, between the physical feats she performed for him, but it was the same topic every time: himself and whether he was still alive out there at Dyson Alpha. The occasional respite came in the form of diatribes against Wilson Kime, his ex-wife, and the navy in general. His memories were still too chaotic to provide her with anything useful.

She’d almost left him in the hotel on Augusta when it came time for her to catch the train to Elan. Almost. Some nagging doubt, which she hoped was her burgeoning reporter’s intuition, told her to persevere. She was sure he knew something that could help; though she had started to wonder if she was being too clever in her interpretation of Myo’s remark.

So she’d finally called Alessandra to admit to making no progress on Myo, and had to endure her mentor’s stinging superiority. Mellanie promptly told Dudley they were going to spend a weekend at a secluded resort town she knew of where she was going to make his hottest, dirtiest Silent World fantasies come alive. It would be her last chance to try to sort out what he knew that Myo wasn’t telling her. He’d followed like a docile child.

“But am I alive back there?” Dudley pointed weakly to the bridal suite’s open window.

“No. There’s only you. You are unique. You must learn that, and to stop worrying about your old life. It ended. This is a fresh start for you. And I’m here to make it as pleasurable as I can.”

“Goodness, that’s the Zemplar cross formation.” Dudley rolled off the bed and padded over to the window. He pushed it open and stuck his head out. The fresh breeze coming in off the Trine’ba made Mellanie shiver on top of the bed.

“You never told me we were here,” Dudley said.

“Where? Randtown? Yes I did.”

“No, Elan. This has to be Elan. I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Yes, my love, this is Elan.” She was impressed; the memory transfer had obviously worked flawlessly, it was just his personality that hadn’t survived the procedure intact. “Now please close the window. It’s freezing.”

“This is about as close as you can get to Dyson Alpha, apart from Far Away.” His head was still outside, muffling his voice.

“Yes.”

“That’s where the Guardians come from, you know.”

“I know.” She searched around for the quilt, then stopped. “Do you know about the Guardians?”

“A bit. It was only the once.”

“What was?”

He turned from the window and looked down bashfully. “We were burgled. Eventually, we found out it could have been the Guardians. The Chief Investigator reckoned the whore I was married to had met Bradley Johansson himself.”

“Which Chief Investigator?” Mellanie asked, trying to suppress her trepidation.

“The strange one from the Hive, Paula Myo.”

Mellanie flopped down onto her back, and raised both fists triumphantly in the air. “Yes!”

“What is it?” he asked nervously.

“Come here.”

She fucked him. As always he was supremely easy for her to control. If she let him he would climax in seconds, so she was strict, drawing him out, provoking and denying in equal amounts so that it would last as long as she wanted. This time it was different for one thing, this time she allowed herself to come as well. There was no faking it, no sound effects. It became her selfish celebration, he was there for her pleasure.

He must have known something had altered, sensed some change in her. His gaze as he lay there on the bed afterward was worshipful. “Don’t leave me,” he pleaded. “Please, don’t ever leave me. I couldn’t take that. I couldn’t.”

“Don’t worry, my love,” she told him. “I haven’t finished with you yet. Now be good, and take one of your sleeping pills.”

He nodded, anxious to please, and washed one down with the remnants of the champagne. Mellanie plumped up the pillows and sank back, smiling at the ceiling. For the first time in four days she fell into a deep contented sleep.

Mark was out in the vineyard with one of the autopickers that was stalled; Barry and Sandy were with him, keen to help the repair operation. Their assistance came in the form of charging up and down the rows, with the dog barking excitedly as it dodged between them. The big gangling machine had come to a halt halfway down its third row when its control software realized that the grencham berries weren’t sliding through the central hopper. Its octopuslike picking arms had frozen in various stages of removing clusters from the vines.

This was only the third day of picking the crop. Already he’d had two breakdowns in his own vineyard. Calls from neighbors to help out with mechanical problems were coming in with increasing frequency and desperation. He slithered into the gap between the leafy vines and the side of the machine, unclipping the loader mechanism inspection panel. Just like before, lengths of the vine had gone down the hopper to wind themselves around various cogs and rollers. It was the clippers on the end of the picker arms that were hauling them in. Same as everything in life when you got down to it: a software problem. He’d have to write a discrimination fix in time for next year. In the meantime, it was a simple pair of secateurs that had to chop at the stringy vines, then human hands that pulled them out. Mashed grencham berries made the whole process slow and gooey.

“Look at that, Dad,” Barry called.

Mark pulled the last few shreds of vine from the feeder mechanism, and looked up. Someone was driving along the valley’s packed stone road at a ridiculous speed, a low gray vehicle producing a long swirling contrail of dust behind it.

“Idiot,” he grunted. The inspection panel clipped back into place; he gave the locking pins a few thumps with the top of his medium pliers to secure them. His e-butler gave the autopicker array a resume operations order, and the arms slowly stretched out again. Clippers
snicked
at the top of clusters. The movements began to speed up. Mark nodded in satisfaction, and pulled his sunglasses out of his overalls pocket.

“They’re coming here, Dada,” Sandy yelled out.

The car had slowed to turn up the drive into the Vernons’ vineyard. It didn’t look like anything a Randtown inhabitant would own.

“Come on then,” he told his kids. “Let’s go meet them.”

They ducked between vines as they ran toward the drive, calling for Panda who was off chasing wobes, the local fieldmice-equivalents. Mark reached the end of the row, where he got a good look at the fancy car as it neared the house. Its sleek shape clued him in on who was visiting.

The MG came to a halt beside the Ables pickup; and the suspension lowered itself back down from the extended rough-ride position so that the wheels fitted back into the chassis again. A gull-wing door opened in the side, and Carys Panther got out. She was wearing a chic paneled suede skirt and expensive hand-tooled cowboy boots, with a simple white blouse. Her dove-gray Stetson was carried in one hand.

Barry gave a welcoming whoop and rushed forward. Sandy was smiling happily, it was always exciting when Aunty Carys visited.

“Nice metalware,” Mark said sardonically.

“Oh, that?” Carys gave a dismissive wave toward the MG. “It’s my boyfriend’s wife’s car.”

Mark made an exaggerated appeal to the heavens. She always had to make an
entrance
.

Neither of the two housemaids who brought breakfast to the room at eleven o’clock would meet Mellanie’s gaze. They put the big trays down on the table and walked out.