A Memory in the Black (The New Aeneid Cycle) (2 page)

On the other side of Northgate
, no less than an hour before Joseph Curwen collapsed on the pavement, Marc Triton plugged the wet-link into his mind and launched his perception elsewhere. Reality fell from his world like a discarded cloak.

He could still feel, of course.
The support of his chair remained beneath him and held his body in its cushions just as it had moments before. The rise and fall of his breathing remained a steady rhythm in his chest. Yet such sensations now retreated to a place somewhere behind his consciousness to make way for artificial mental images and the knowledge of the datastreams that became his mind's focus.

The virtual space seemed to form around him, though
more accurately it was he who made the entrance into it: a final destination after slipping through layer upon layer of encryption-stealth protocols that boggled even Marc's mind to think about. The Agents of Aeneas Council "sat" in the center, their seven avatars arranged in a circle at a virtual table. Around them "sat" the others, hidden in a shadow of data that was indistinct unless focused on. Marc formed within that shadow, one of many members of the secret society from across the globe, and turned his attention toward the center.

The session was already underway, though only barely.
Feeling too preoccupied that morning for any pre-session mingling with his fellow agents, he had connected late on purpose. Besides, today Marc anticipated a need to leave early, and wished to observe quietly on his own.

"
. . . already running a dangerous risk of exposure." Councilor Knapp was in mid-speech as Marc began to listen. The oldest member of the Council at sixty-two, Marla Knapp had always seemed a matriarchal figure in the AoA despite having never served as Arbiter. Her British accent echoed in the chamber's virtual space. "Knowledge of the crater site continues to filter through the European Space Agency at an alarming rate. Precisely how long do we let this knowledge spread?"

"Councilor, t
he 'alarming' rate you refer to is negligible for our purposes." The genial reply came from Councilor May Lin, half Knapp's age but no less confident.

"Secrecy is paramount. If what we have found
—what
we
led ESA to—were to become common knowledge, then the Exodus Project is compromised and all of our effort is for naught!"

"
A necessary risk." Lin continued to speak, as gently as Knapp was stern. "We do not have the resources to carry on the research ourselves from its current state. We should continue to work behind the scenes, as we've always done."

Arbiter Nicholai Szendroi,
the head of the Council, cleared his throat. "I feel it necessary to remind the group that our detachment scenario remains viable—but only if sufficient progress is made to allow autonomy at the site. To move too soon would leave us unready to capitalize on whatever security we may create."

"And if we don't move soon enough, there won't be a thing to capitalize
on!" Knapp declared. "Working behind the scenes is not at issue here. We're talking about a critical security problem! Or have we forgotten the ESA mole?"

"Ah, the mole is being closely watched."
Another councilor had broken his silence—a rapidly-speaking American named Samuel Ramis with whom Marc had worked personally. "He's made no attempt to initiate any new deals since his Northgate failure six months ago."

"Watched is n
ot good enough. I've said so before. We've seen already that our surveillance is imperfect. What if he should slip through the cracks again?"

T
he arbiter turned to face Knapp. "That matter has been discussed previously, Councilor. I stand by the decision of this council that he would pose a greater risk if cut loose from ESA. We could not watch him so easily. I see no cause to reopen the issue."

"No cause?
Arbiter, Joseph Curwen's attempt to sell ESA's secrets—"

"An attempt that occurred six months ago
—," Lin tried.

"
—is an attempt to sell our own! He is a clear and present threat to the entire project and must be neutralized, one way or another!"

Chaos erupted as three others tried to speak at once, and t
he arbiter cut the audio to keep order. "Councilor Knapp," he began cautiously when the others had settled, "Are you implying lethal force?"

Knapp remained silent a moment,
as if choosing her words. Her virtual face became a mask of resolve and regret. "Perhaps I am. But only as a last resort. Certainly you—"

Again the
Council erupted in shouts, and again the arbiter invoked silence. "I should not have to remind the councilor that such a thing has not been done since the days of the Illuminati." His voice, though measured, carried a trace of warning.

Knapp's response was just as measured.
"We have never been so close to one of our objectives, Arbiter."

For a time, no one spoke.
Glances were traded across the table as the multitude of others in attendance watched with interest, no doubt considering their own votes on such a matter. Marc was sure it was a mistake. It would be a start down a path that would make them no better than those who had already set humanity on the self-destructive course they were sworn to fight.

Councilor Ramis br
oke the silence first. "If I may offer a suggestion, as it were?"

All attention turned toward him and he contin
ued, speaking as if fearing his words might explode on his tongue if not said fast enough. "If you'll pardon the melodrama, the very thing that we're afraid of may in fact be something we can use to our advantage. Consider: the more word spreads, the more difficult it becomes to control. Things get chaotic. But what if we harness this chaos—to the best of our ability direct it—assuming it does actually occur? We create a haze of action and reaction around those who know too much, and in that haze our own movements will be concealed."

"What exactly do you propose?"

"Sleight of hand and misdirection. Use the mole against ESA. Give them an adversary to focus on and direct them away from our own actions. We orchestrate everything into a moment of chaos, and in that moment make our move."

"Takeover of the site, you mean," Knapp stated.

"Yes."

"It may be
viable," observed another councilor. "Given the success of the Denver situation, such chaos could certainly create the opportunity we need."

As the C
ouncil debated, Marc heard the distant tone of an alert from where his body waited in the real world. It was the one he was waiting for. While he'd been observing the forum of the Agents of Aeneas, some of their designs had come to fruition. He left the forum in a subtle blink and opened his eyes to the reality of his apartment.

Expecting he already knew the answer, Marc asked the question anyway. "What have you got for me, Holes?" Holes's matrix was still developing
, and still at a point where additional stimulation would help it mature.

"You have two new messages, Mr. Triton,"
Holes remarked. "As per your instruction, I have alerted you for a message from the European Space Agency, and assigned it first priority."

Barely a few weeks old,
the artificial intelligence Marc named "Holes" still retained the original, unremarkable, and just barely male voice and tone Marc had programmed into him. As it matured, it might yet choose another—a common side effect of an emergently-designed A.I., and Marc himself looked forward to the prospect as the parents of a human child might look forward to the child's first words. Of course, a human child could not be reset to an embryo if it started cursing too much.

"Any video or audio with that ESA message?"

"No, Mr. Triton. The message is text only."

"Display on the main monitor if you could, please."

"I am fully capable of doing so, Mr. Triton." An email appeared, emblazoned at the bottom with ESA's circular logo. Marc stepped over to the monitor to see if it said what he expected.

It did.

The smile on his face was a satisfied one. "What's the second message, Holes?"

"Voice message only, identified as from a Mr. Felix Hiatt."

Marc winced in memory and checked the time. He'd completely forgotten about meeting his friend for lunch.

"Play it?"

Felix's voice came over the speaker against a background of mingled voices and dish clatter. "
Penguins!
" he cried. "
There's penguins everywhere! They're storming the café and holding the wait staff at beak-point! They're demanding to know where you are! So, um, hey, where are you?
"

Marc laughed and shook his head.
At least Felix could be counted on to be reasonably good-natured about having to wait for him. "Call Felix for me, would you, Holes?"

"
Placing the call, Mr. Triton." Marc waited as it rang. "I find it highly improbable that hostile penguins have captured a restaurant of any sort."

Felix picked up before Marc could respond to
Holes. "Holding the wait staff at beak-point, eh?"

"
Yeah. Plus now they've gotten into the espresso and it's not pretty. You ever see a flightless bird on a caffeine buzz? They're flapping like crazy and getting nowhere. Waitresses' skirts blowing up left and right, some guy's toupee shot right across the room—
"

"You ate a whole bag of coffee beans again, didn't you?"

"
Hey, if I'd done that I'd be running around flapping, myself. You know what that much does to me.
"

"True."

"
So listen,
" Felix put pleasantly, "
did you forget about us, or what? I mean, I'm okay with it, but, you know, Caitlin'll kill ya.
"

"Ah, she made it, then?" The two had been dating for nearly six months, but Felix said earlier that she might not be joining them for lunch.

"
Yeah, she's— Ow! Hey! I'm getting elbow jabbings for that 'killing you' comment, too.
"

Marc grinned.
"You can tell her I was pretty sure you were kidding."

"
I'm trying, but I can't get a word in between the jabs! Hey! No tickling!
"

"Um, listen, Felix," Marc broke in, "I'm sorry but it doesn't look like I'll be able to make it."

"
Something up?
"

"A job I was waiting on just came through.
I need to pack."

"
Pack?
" He could hear the interest in Felix's voice. "
Where're you off to?
"

"I can't tell you," he answered, a
s if that answer would work. Felix knew full well that he worked only for the Agents of Aeneas. His friend was a former member himself—one of the few former members of the secret society that existed.

"
Yeah, I know. So where're you off to?
"

"
Antarctica," he joked. "Why do you think all those penguins are looking for me?"

"
Ah, yes. Should have known.
"

"I'll make sure to give you a call when I get back in town
. Say 'hi' to Caitlin for me."

"
Will do. And, hey. Be careful, whatever it is.
"

"Hey, I sit behind a keyboard for a living.
The most I've got to worry about's carpal-tunnel syndrome."

"
And bad posture.
"

"That, too.
"

"
Eye strain.
"

"Yes."

"
Keyboard gnomes.
"

"
I'll talk to you later, Felix."

"
Have fun!
"

Marc said goodbye
and sat thinking. He had never been in space before, to say nothing of going to the Moon.

Hell, he didn't even like to fly.

Marc paused a moment to collect himself and study out of habit the various readouts on the heads-up display of the sunglasses-like data visor he habitually wore over his eyes. The time read one seventeen p.m. Four wireless networks in the area. Room temperature was seventy point-five degrees.

Space travel wouldn't be so bad, he supposed. Might even be fun.

"Holes?" he said finally.

"Yes, Mr. T
riton?"

"I'm going to need to make some travel arrangements."
After a moment, he added, "And probably some motion-sickness meds."

Two days later
, Marc jerked awake as the passenger shuttle fell into orbit about the Moon. Remembering where he was, he stirred in his seat, stretching cramped muscles and yawning wide. He'd left his data visor on while sleeping, and its clock told him that he'd slept just under seven hours. Marc grunted, surprised. The seat wasn't as uncomfortable as he'd first expected.

Then again, he was in space.
A wooden plank might have been just as comfortable in an environment that involved constant weightlessness.

He had felt that sensation for the first time on the first shuttle from Earth.
Once he'd gotten used to it with the help of a friendly plastic bag designed for just such a purpose, he found the sensation surprisingly marvelous. He once went snorkeling in Hawaii and had spent hours just drifting in the water. Actual weightlessness was even more liberating. He had just begun to enjoy it when the first shuttle had docked at Sunrise Station in Earth orbit. Designed to spin constantly to create artificial gravity, the station robbed him of his new fix.

Once he had boarded the lunar bound shuttle and felt that weightlessness again, he
'd found himself wondering if there was such a thing as an anti-grav junkie. He also wondered if anyone would mind if he slipped out of his seat and did a few somersaults in the passenger cabin. Unfortunately, his stomach had done a few somersaults of its own at the thought and forced him to abandon the idea. He'd likely have made a fool of himself anyway.

O
utside his window, the broad, grey landscape of the Moon had replaced the endless starlight, though he couldn't tell if their orbit was stable or if they'd begun their descent toward Alpha Station on the lunar surface.

Millions of years
of cosmic bombardment rolled by below. Craters upon craters dotted the landscape in crowded formation amid mountains untouched by erosion. The shuttle continued in its orbit, and soon darker, flatter expanses of lava fields long since cooled replaced the mountains.

Marc watched it all beneath and, wishing for a spot of color, set an orange packet of
peanuts spinning in mid-air above his lap. It drifted out over his thigh and hit the seat in front of him before he decided to stop it.

He glanced out at the M
oon again, and as he watched it float he began to hear "The Blue Danube." It sounded in a patient tempo, drifted in flow with the grey outside, and then repeated.

It didn't take terribly long to get on his nerves.

Marc released his seatbelt and allowed himself the indulgence of floating upward and turning around in a slightly dizzying spin. "Um, I don't suppose I could persuade you to stop whistling that?"

The young man behind him laughed.
"Heh, yeah. Sorry, didn't even know I was doing it. Just kinda popped in there, you know? Yeah. You want another game while we wait to land?"

"N
o thanks. I'm still seeing lasers and plasma bombs when I close my eyes."

Playing
Darkstalker
on the seat consoles was his only real contact with the man thus far. Their last session ate up over three hours, during which time Marc learned that the younger man's name was Nick, that he was also going to the Moon for ESA, and that he spent considerably more time playing first-person shooter games than Marc did.

"Yeah, you're just tired of losing, I think," Nick
teased.

Marc laughed.
"If I was tired of losing, I'd have stopped after the first hour."

"Hey, you managed to do okay after a while, though, yeah. I can't help it if I'm good. 'Sides, I bet you got a job that keeps you from playing all day like me."

"I tend to stay busy." Marc continued to float, steadying himself with a hand and enjoying the freedom. "So, um, how'd you get involved with ESA on this if you're unemployed? You don't even seem like you're from Europe."

Nick chortled.
"Yeah, neither do you."

"No, they got me out of
Portland," he lied. "But I have a resume."

"Yeah?
Portland? I'm from Denver. And I didn't say I don't have a resume. Ask ESA. Hacked right into their satellite control center in Germany and gave it to them."

Marc blinked. "Gutsy.
You're what, twenty?"

"
Twenty-one. I didn't get too deep or break anything. Just enough to show 'em I got the skills, yeah?"

"What if they came after you
?"

"Ah, why would they?
I told 'em crystal how I got in, left a log of the whole hack, even said how to plug the hole. 'Sides, I didn't do it from my own rig."

"Oh?" Was
Nick foolish or just a risk-taker?

"
Snuck into one of the U of Colorado comp-sci labs and 'borrowed' an account. If they ever did try to ice me, one Leland T. Whitman would have had a
lot
of explaining to do." He grinned.

"So you hacked them, told them how to contact you
. Anonymous email, I'm sure."

"Natch,
" Nick agreed. "Took 'em a few months, but yeah."

"How'd you know it wasn't a trick to find out who you were?"

"Nah, no chance. I wasn't worried." Nick leaned closer. "So part of me was scared shitless it might be. But if it was, why wait so long? No pain no gain, right?"

"So they say."

"Still good to know they tapped someone else for this job. I mean, you didn't hack 'em, too, right?"

"Me?" Marc chuckled.
"No, never hacked them myself." Picked for the job via the machinations of a secret international society with ways to manipulate ESA from the inside? Sure. But he never actually hacked ESA himself.

"Yeah, see?
'Sides, I doubt they'd spend the cash to fly me all the way up here just to bust me." Marc considered telling him that it would be easier to hide a body that way, but opted to bite his tongue on the joke. Nick looked out the window. "Yeah, so now I'm up here spinning around the Moon and waiting to test some sort of new base computer or something."

T
he Moon turned dark beneath them as they crossed the terminator onto the far side.

"They give you any details?" Nick asked.
"Like just what we're supposed to be testing?"

"ESA's not told me anything like that."

"Yeah, everything's some big secret nowadays. Like back in Denver, you hear about that? They evacuated part of the city around some office building and said it was a gas leak. Word on the 'Net got out that it was really some secret lab where a grey goo experiment got out of hand."

Marc feigned ignorance.
"Grey goo?"

"Yeah, s
elf-replicating nanobot stuff. They break down all the stuff they can find and build more of themselves. Spreads exponentially. They get out of control and pretty soon the whole city'd be a grey goo."

"Ah, I think I read a sci-fi story or seven about that.
They can't really make that kind of thing."

"Maybe,
maybe not. But that's what they say really happened. They had a breakthrough and nearly couldn't contain it. Got the government and corps pretty worried."

"Or so you heard on the
'Net," Marc said. He'd have to mention this in his AoA report; they'd be eager to know that rumors had spread. Marc made a mental note to encourage Nick to spread it around further while he was on the Moon.

"Like I said, everything's a cover-up."
Nick sat back in his seat. "So you don't know what they want us to test up here, huh?"

Marc turned to watch the window
and shook his head. "Not a clue," he lied.

Marette Clarion's brisk stride down the corridors of Alpha Station took her from her temporary quarters to the primary landing concourse. The exercise also served as a reminder that the Moon's gravity was making her soft.

She had been lunar
-bound for over seven months now in her duty to the European Space Agency. Though that duty did allow her some precious little free time to keep in shape with the available—and recommended—increased-resistance exercise machines, she was often loath to do so. She possessed the capacity to focus on rising to her position in ESA and enough determination to remain undiscovered as an operative for the Agents of Aeneas, yet somehow she could not find the discipline to stick to an exercise regimen that involved any stationary machine.

S
itting in place and spinning her wheels felt too much like waiting.

Alpha Station's racquetball courts were t
he only real place she could get any satisfying exercise. There she could play using wrist, ankle, and hip weights. Yet her work at the excavation site made such indulgences few and far between. Her shortest time between games was eight days.

She rounded a corner and caught sight of
the shuttle's final approach. She would be slightly early. More waiting. Ironic that she'd spent so much of her time in the past year waiting. Perhaps, she mused, it added to her reluctance to use the machines.

Though
they had made a great deal of progress, such progress came in surges. First, the AoA found evidence of something in the Aristarchus crater, led ESA to that evidence, and then waited for them to react. Six months ago, ESA sent a commercial mining crew to the crater, and then waited for them to discover the craft. ESA cleared the immediate area within the ship of the lethal security drones that had slaughtered the first team sent inside, and then the AoA waited while ESA constructed an on-site base of operations. They learned that the strange black liquid "skin" coating the ship inside was some sort of computer, determined a way to access it at the simplest level to open a few doors, and then had to wait again for some deeper means to interface with it in order to go any further.

Now they had found
such a means, and still found cause to wait. While there was always work to be done, and caution was a prime concern in order to safeguard lives, Marette was always aware of the waiting.

It took about five minutes for the shuttle passengers to disembark once she arrived at the terminal.
The majority were workers for any of the various mining companies that the Space Agency allowed lunar contracts. A few might have been tourists. Mixed among them all were the three she came to meet, one of whom would be another AoA operative.

Mar
ette first greeted the woman: an Asian with a cropped hair dyed red and an English accent whom Marette knew to be an encryption expert who sometimes contracted with ESA. One of the first out of the tunnel, she spotted Marette's uniform and made a beeline toward her to introduce herself as Suzanne Namura.

Marette shook
her hand but detected nothing.

The other
s arrived together. She guessed by the data visor over his eyes that the older of the two with the darker hair was Marc Triton, a network specialist and artificial intelligence programmer from Portland in America. The other, who would therefore be Nicholas Boyd, looked much too young to be there at all.

"Good day, gentlemen," she offered.
"Mr. Boyd and Mr. Triton, I presume?"

They both nodded, offering their hands, and Marette shook Nick's first.
Again, nothing.

"I am ESA
Field Chief Marette Clarion."

S
he shook Triton's hand. The small hum against her palm confirmed her supposition: he was the one. A knowing look passed between them and Marette tried to hide from the others the extra welcome she felt for a kindred spirit after being on her own for so long.

"It would seem you two have already met," she continued. "This is
Ms. Namura, one of the others with whom you will be working on this project."

She waited as the three said hello.

"Yeah, so are we it?" Nicholas asked with a glance behind him.

"You are the last to arriv
e. The others are housed in the habitat wing where you will be boarded for the duration of the project. There will be time to meet them tonight if you wish, though I recommend you spend the evening resting and adjusting to the lunar clock. We depart for the project site tomorrow morning at oh eight-hundred hours. If you come with me, I will show you to your quarters."

Marette led them out of the main concourse
down corridors lined with narrow windows that allowed a view of the vacuum outside. Beneath the windows, tiny ferns bordered a thin stream built into a shelf along the walls. The ferns grew in soil brought from Earth, took their water from the stream, and took the light they needed from the full spectrum lights that illuminated the corridors. It was designed to help visitors from Earth feel more at ease, and after having walked such corridors for over half a year, Marette barely noticed them herself anymore unless escorting visitors.

Namura increased her pace to walk beside her.
"Can you give us a rundown of the project? I'd like to get a jump on things if I could."

Marette shook her head.
"For security reasons, ESA wishes to hold any briefing at the project site."