The Destructives (40 page)

She tasered him in the seven chakras; the telemetry on his wetsuit erupted in mandalas, and then he was on the floor twitching with enlightenment.

Patricia leapt back onto her feet, turned her blank faceplate toward her husband. Looked right at Theodore. He gave her a little wave, which she returned with a flutter of her armoured fingertips.

Other pods surfaced throughout the dock, bringing in Magnusson, flanked by the tall strong figure of Security and her detail of armoured guards, and some tech guys with boxes of hardware.

Patricia slid back her faceplate. White lipstick, dusted cheekbones, not so thick as to conceal the flush of exertion. They kissed so that she could take the words right out of his mouth.

“Good news and bad news,” he said.

“Give me the bad news first,” she said.

“We’re finished. You and I,” he replied.

She touched his cheek with the back of her gauntlet.

“No,” she said. “Don’t say it.”

“The good news is that the client is going to be happy.”

He gestured at the tech boys bringing up their gear.

“But you can’t do this.”

Patricia closed her eyes and massaged her forehead. She directed Security to collect Hamman Kiki’s twitching body, then ordered the med-team to begin prepping the boy for
interface
. She turned back to Theodore, calculating if there was time to address this unexpected item of personal business.

“We aren’t finished,” she said. “We’ve barely started.”

He was going to tell her the bald fact of his infidelity, but then he wondered if that really was the cause or merely a symptom. He hesitated, and they were interrupted by Magnusson, who unclipped his helmet and ostentatiously sampled the air of his rival. He gestured expansively; in his armour, he looked like a bear wearing its own trap. He let out a motivational bellow, the rest of the team responded with hoo-rahs.

“What happened to you?” asked Patricia.

“I remembered,” said Theodore.

The memory blocks were considered necessary by Security. From Death Ray’s files, they knew that the colony was based on some form of communal thought. “The blocks will put doubt in their minds,” Security had explained, “If you achieve mission objectives, the blocks will degrade, and you will remember just enough to call us in.” Security swiped through his file. He signed away his right to legal compensation. “You’ll need an alibi,” she said. “One that even you will believe.” He signed the various pieces of paperwork that Procurement put in front of him. Once he completed the waiver, Security said they would now begin preparing his alibi. She shoved him off the chair and kicked him in the midriff three times, enunciating contractual disclaimers with each kick, then she turned to her team and said, “Throw him overboard.”

Patricia unclipped the torso of her armour. Translucent streaks of perspiration on her vest, her chest heaving under the constricting weight of emotion, a shiver across her narrow shoulders.

In this moment of casual intimacy, he said, “What kind of woman marries a man whose emotional centres are burnt out?”

She wouldn’t admit fault.

“You weren’t burnt out. You were just low key.”

“I’m different now. I’m healed.”

Yes, he was. She heard it in the timbre of his voice.

“Good,” she said. “Who healed you?”

“A scientist. She helped me.”

There – he placed the fact of his adultery within the meta-meeting. Patricia saw it, did not want to believe it.

“Is she part of the bad news too?”

“You killed Kakkar,” he said. “And the others.”

“What happened on the moon was an accident.” She was distracted by the approach of her anger.

“An accident you knew would happen.”

“You married me. Was that an accident too?”

“I married you out of calculation and ambition because that was all I was capable of. I feel differently now.”

“You
feel
?”

Patricia clutched at his shirt.

“This is the damage talking,” she said.

“No. This is me.”

“Because you’ve discovered a moral code,” she said. “Via the surprising route of sleeping with another woman. Did she have a particularly moral vagina?”

This wasn’t the conversation she wanted at all. She waved her own sour joke away, and then, as he went to tell her about the pregnancy, his confession was curtailed by a heavy backhand from Patricia’s gauntlet; it was like being hit with an iron bar. He collapsed in physical crisis, weak with the shock and pain of it, more than he had known. She backed away from what she had done. The strong light of the quarantine room glinted off her retinas. She tried to slow her breathing, and bring herself under control; she turned away from him, did not want to risk being near to him.

Patricia took up a disinfectant hose and sluiced his blood off her gauntlet, not looking at him, as if he had ceased to exist.

Staying conscious was the trick, he thought. I might have a better chance of staying awake if I’m on my feet. He tried to stand but the soles of his feet could get no purchase on the tiled floor.

“I shouldn’t have told you,” he mumbled through the blood. “That was selfish of me.”

She put the hose back in its socket, pulled out a dryer nozzle, and wafted the hot air over her armoured sleeve. Her profile: small nose, set pale lips, platinum hair flattened and angular with sweat.

“I should have found another way,” he spat out a clot, “to convince you to stop.”

She put the dryer nozzle back.

“We’ve come half a billion miles. We can’t stop now.”

“The brain in a jar. They call it Doxa. I touched it. It helped me understand goodness.”

She glanced at his bloody face. “I could forgive you, you know, for the adultery. Memory blocks are a good excuse for forgetting your wedding vows.”

He rolled over on his side, got up onto his hands and knees. But his strength had gone, and he would soon lose consciousness.

She said, “You’re trying to save your soul at the eleventh hour. I’m tired of pretending that’s possible for you.” And then she left.

The Destructives made their way through the base. The fishers slipped back into the shadows. Reckon felt their anger cool and harden into resolve: they would loot what they needed, load up the submarines, and retreat deeper into Europa, travelling through the chasm into the unexplored reaches of Oceanus. Doxa would help the fishers to establish a fall-back position, providing an oxygenised environment, emotional resilience, and a knowledge base.

There was to be no fallback position for Reckon. She was in the welcoming committee. Platters of food and drink were laid out for the Destructives: pemmican, dried and spiced sea greens, sour, chalky hydroponic fruits. Goblets of creamy, citrus-tinged alcoholic foam. Ballurian had a bottle of vintage single malt. Something saved for a special occasion. He poured himself two fingers and added a little water to loosen the flavour, savoured each stage of its salty complexity, then turned to Reckon.

“You should go with the fishers,” he said.

“I will protect Doxa,” she replied.

“That’s a battle we might have to lose.”

Did she trust his leadership? The Destructives had Ballurian’s son. What would he give up to save Hamman? He was compromised.

The Destructives entered the room. A man and woman in executive armour followed by a tall powerful black woman with the trained posture of a security agent, and the rest of her detail. The tall broad armoured man was Magnusson, and the slight woman beside him was Theodore’s wife, Patricia. But no Theodore. Why had he not come? Reckon reached into Doxa for his whereabouts – glimpsed an argument between Theodore and Patricia, an argument curtailed by a blow.

Ballurian and Magnusson embraced awkwardly; two giant men, enhanced to the limit, who had outgrown bonhomie. Magnusson’s smile was like an unzipped sports bag; leathery at the edges, and crooked along the seam. Patricia gave Ballurian a quick respectful nod but did not offer up a hand to be shaken or a cheek to be kissed; her gaze, tight and penetrating, fixed upon Reckon. How much did she know about Reckon and Theodore? Too early to say.

“What an achievement!” Magnusson walked around the meeting room with arms raised, taking in all that the colony had created.

Ballurian accepted the compliment, “We have exceeded our own expectations.”

“We’ve all come a long way from Silicon Valley,” laughed Magnusson. They met as equals, even though Magnusson’s barrel-chested armour gave him the physical advantage. She was reminded of the armour of Henry VIII in the Tower of London, broad across the middle and with an absurd cod-piece. Ballurian, in his layered pastel robes, looked out of sorts in this ritual of aggression. He winced at having to run through the repertoire of antiquated corporate moves: a handshake like a wrestling hold, suppressive hugs, every touch an act of possession rather than compassion. Magnusson smelt like a butcher’s shop, of steel and meat.

Ballurian played the host, walking around the table of food and drink, explaining the origin of the various indigenous delicacies, how they were cultivated in the life-resistant environment of Europa. Patricia discretely waved her palm over the platters – scanning for toxins – before taking a small plate and placing small portions upon it. She tasted the food with trepidation, and her response withheld approval. Reckon was hungry, and it was almost possible – as she gathered dried kelp between the tongs and placed it upon a plate – to believe that everything was going to be OK, and that they would work out their differences through civilised negotiation.

Patricia introduced herself to Reckon, and apologised for the way the Destructives had gone about establishing contact. I hope you understand, she explained, our reasoning. They had been unable to find a way to communicate remotely with the colony so one of their team had to go ahead as an advance scout. If the Europans had proven hostile, then they would have captured Theodore and tortured him for information. Theodore’s memory blocks precluded hostile parties from gaining any advantage through interrogation. It had not been an ideal solution, but it seemed good enough. Patricia’s explanation reminded Reckon of why she had left Earth. Lies had become its native tongue. No one even noticed they were lying anymore. The culture could not admit to what had happened in the Seizure. What the Seizure meant for the dominant way of life. And so the culture stumbled on, propped up with more and more elaborate deceptions. Any resistance was accelerated into unreason, so that it could be rejected. All meaningful discourse took place in the tiers of insinuation and suggestion that comprised the meta-meeting. Real work, true work, became impossible.

Ballurian watched their guests eat. He confined himself to the whisky. He’d saved it for a special occasion – now it occurred to Reckon that the occasion might not be a celebration. He played the host but they had his son. There was only so long a parent could stifle that fear; through Doxa, she shared his unbearable suspense.

Time to move on from the pleasantries. Reckon approached Patricia.

“So Theodore’s your husband?”

Patricia assented with a tense white smile.

Reckon said, “Our community has found that looser sexual ties within a culture of total honesty and transparency to be a more advanced way of life than pair bonding. It’s better for the community, particularly if you take reproduction out of the equation.”

Patricia took a small bite of her cracker, then put her plate back on the table.

“I’m old-fashioned,” she said.

“We made progress curing your husband’s condition. Why hadn’t you tried to rectify his damage yourself?”

“I love him just the way he is,” said Patricia.

“That’s the risk with marriage. Stasis. Stagnation.”

“Marriage is a solid base upon which to build,” said Patricia. “A safe haven.”

Reckon nodded, seemingly accepting the wisdom of this, and then when she was sure that Patricia had stepped back from the argument, she redoubled her attack.

“But if marriage is your safe haven, what happens when your partner breaks your trust? Doesn’t that make you
entirely
vulnerable?”

She put it right out there in the meta-meeting for Patricia’s consideration: I have enjoyed sex with your husband. The old time marriage taboos really mattered to this woman, which would be comic, if she wasn’t so violent.

Magnusson was explaining to the party that – thanks to Theodore’s work on the Claim – their colony was grounds for their legal ownership of Europa. Earth’s moon was, like Antarctica, protected from corporate or national claims. But new rules had been written for the rest of the solar system. The Europans were the first owners of extraterrestrial real estate. Magnusson coerced them all into raising a glass. Any future revenues generated by the colony, he explained, would flow to the families who had settled Europa; it was up to Ballurian and Reckon and the others to decide how this ownership would be divided.

“We stand at the beginning of a dynasty,” said Magnusson. “Four generations – from your children to your great-great-grandchildren – will profit from what you have made here.”

Ballurian listened with a pained smile to Magnusson’s rhetoric. At the mention of his children, he could stand it no longer, and set down his glass.

“My son,” said Ballurian. “You captured him, in the skirmish.”

“Did we?” asked Magnusson, with ostentatious surprise.

“I can feel his pain,” said Ballurian. “He’s drugged but he’s struggling. You have put him in a machine.”

“That boy is your son?” Magnusson was surprised. He considered pointing out the lack of physical resemblance between Ballurian and the pale fisher, but then thought better of it. This phase of the meta-meeting, in which both parties displayed their skill at performing friendship, was at an end.

“Your son attacked Patricia with a harpoon.”

“He was defending his people. He would not have killed her.”

“I didn’t harm him significantly,” said Patricia. “He will wake with a headache, that’s all.”

“What is the machine for?” asked Ballurian. He summoned a holographic representation of the docks. The flickering coloured outlines of the Destructives’ tech team, monitoring a pyramidal device, and there – sleeping upright in one of its five chambers – the figure of Hamman Kiki. “What are you doing to him?”