Event Horizon (Hellgate) (37 page)

“In the real deal, in transspace itself, the AIs seem to try to calculate eight or ten dimensions in nearly infinite space-time, and they go buggo while you count to ten. Even the modern Resalq don’t have the math to properly wrangle ten dimensions plus temporal flux, much less do it in realtime. The Ancestrals did – the
Ebrezjim
flew the course about a thousand years ago! But the science was lost, and you can thank the Zunshu for that one. Our own AI guidance cores can’t sort out what to ignore and what’s critical – and I’m not saying a human pilot can work it out, either.

“But a human pilot can stop the positive-feedback, deliberately ignore the morass and just get on with the job. Right now, the Sherratts and Barb are trying to design an AI pilot that can selectively tune out its own sensor data. But it takes instinct, intuition. Those are qualities you can’t program.”

“And Lai’a?” Travers wondered.

“According to what we’re seeing, Lai’a
can
handle it,” Vidal admitted, “and I’ll be glad to let it fly. As long as it can.”

And if or when it failed he would be standing by to pick up the pieces. Marin frowned at him, watching him closely. During the two-day crossing from Omaru he had gotten a grip on the scruff of his own neck, shaken himself, but he was not sleeping and nor would he take drugs to knock him out.

As if he felt Marin’s eyes on him, Vidal angled a sidelong glance in Curtis’s direction. “Sorry,” Marin said bluffly. “I worry about you.”

“We both do,” Travers added. “What is it, the dreams?”

“Dreams. Memories. I wish I believed they were just dreams.” For a moment Vidal popped the bug out of his ear and rubbed his eyes. “I’ve done some reading. Research. Turns out, we store memories of memories – did you know that? Every time you remember something, you store the memory of the memory, and the brain keeps old memories in random locations. Eventually some ugly kind of crap you can’t stop thinking about is stored all over your brain, hundreds or thousands of copies of the same nightmare, till you can’t get away from it. It’s there, everywhere you turn.” He glared at the steel spars in the ceiling right overhead. “I was a prisoner. You know this much.

“I was shot down over Hydralis, a nasty cell of the Omaru militia had me for weeks. Maybe months. You lose track of time when you’re living in a hole in the ground, never see daylight, or any light at all, till they open up the hole and pull you out for another session. Naked and cold; filthy – they’d hose me down. Guess I reeked like a hog. And then
bang
! It’d be another shot of something … maybe chimera, but a big dose, close to the edge of what a guy of my weight can tolerate. Makes you … imagine things. But it’d wear off and I’d find my fingers broken. Or missing. A bunch of times, somebody was on me, using me, when I was half-conscious. I never knew who. Several guys, I think; some were rougher than others.”

He wound down into silence and Marin drew a deep, raw breath. It was Travers who said, “Damnit, Mick, you’ve
got
to forget this stuff. If you don’t stop thinking about it, it’s going to drive you right out of your gourd.”

“Oh, I know.” Vidal visibly grasped hold of himself again, gave himself the visible shaking Marin had observed several times. The blue eyes opened wide, glittering in the worklights. “Soon as we get back to Alshie’nya, I got a date with Mark Sherratt.” He hugged himself. “And I am not looking forward to it. Like getting teeth pulled.”

“Not
quite
,” Marin mused. “If you’re worried about offending Mark with the things you’ve done, said, seen – don’t. Mark’s so old, there’s nothing you ever did or saw that’d even surprise him. And remind yourself, he’s not human either. One of his pastimes is observing human behaviour, the way our zoologists observe primates. The few taboos we have left are curiosities to any Resalq, much less one as old as Mark.”

“Well, now,” Vidal said softly, “that does change the color of the issue.” He gestured vaguely toward the upper decks, where the lights were bright and the music upbeat. “I suppose I’ve been starting to feel like the little twerp.”

“You mean Tonio Teniko?” Travers sounded surprised.

“He went through hell for real.” Vidal’s mouth compressed. “I
remember
hell, but Teniko lived in it. He came out of there a little nuts. Sound familiar?”

“Not the same,” Travers said emphatically. “Mark made him the offer of forgetting. He also offered to teach him Aramshem, the martial art. I know a little of it myself – let me tell you, Tonio could use it to toss
me
all over this hangar, if I made a pass at him he didn’t like! He threw the deal back in Mark’s face. He’d rather live with the nightmares, dope himself to the gills and reengineer his entire body – and for what? In the fond hope he can get on top of Richard Vaurien? He might not be able to see it, but he’s creeping Richard out.”

“It’s so … weird,” Vidal said darkly, “watching him turn into something else, day by day, and be totally skulled while he does it.”

“Besides which,” Marin added, “Tonio never went through one tenth of what you did ... or at least, what you
remember
. I know it never actually happened in our history stream, but you remember every minute of it, as if it did. Sure, Tonio was an unwilling crewdeck boytoy. Nasty, but it happens. It’s not legal, in or out of Fleet, and a bunch of officers should have been up on charges.”

“There’s twenty years in Jackson waiting for anybody convicted of that crapola,” Travers added darkly, “except it almost never comes to trial.”

“And it should.” Marin physically shut out the memories of the
Intrepid
– Roy Neville and Holdfast,
Malteppe
and Hellgate itself. “There’s always been bottom-deck predators. There probably always will be. Remember, Robert Chandra Liang hired Dendra Shemiji – me! – to get a shred of justice for his kid.” He shook his head slowly. “People like Tonio … they have to find a way to get past it, get over it. If they don’t –”

“It’ll bury you,” Vidal finished. “I know. I live with this.” Deliberately, he slid the combug back into his ear to monitor the simulation. “Tell me something I don’t know, Curtis … I’m trying, every bloody day. Bill has a whole suite of my organs cloning
in vitro
– me? I just want to be rid of this frigging nano. Makes you feverish, dizzy,
off,
all the damn’ time. Bill’s setting up to transfer my organs and Roark’s legs over to Lai’a. Who knows how long we’ll be in transspace? Five months, and Roark can get his new legs under him. Real,
living
legs. And I can tell you, he’s as sick of those rubbish prostheses as I am of the nano that’s holding me together. Now, either shush or get lost, I gotta listen to this.”

The simulation was displaying in realtime in the monitor, and Marin watched as the virtual ship connected with the Pleiades Drift and began to ride it. The beacon, Taurus 894, was still so distant, it showed only as a locator tag while Hubler jockeyed the temporo-gravity tide with something like the skill Marin had expected.

And just as Marin had held control for a time and then lost it, so it escaped from Hubler. Rodman switched from long-to short-range sensors to assist, exactly as Travers had, but it was already too late. The ship was beyond the boundaries of control. Hubler was overrunning every system he had to hang on and the AI began to whisper too-familiar cautions –

Warning: engine temperature critical. Shutdown in thirty seconds.

“Not bad,” Vidal said quietly. “They made 24 minutes.” He looked up at Travers. “Not as good as you guys. Told you.”

And they were about to crash the simulator. Hubler was still fighting with every trick he knew, but it was no use. The gravity well had them, and both he and Rodman would be punchy, disoriented, queasy with middle ears in revolt.

Even now Roark Hubler would not quit until the engines actually scrammed before they melted down. He was still fighting with every trick in the unwritten book when a chime cut across the comm and Etienne’s voice said,

“Colonel Travers, Colonel Marin, to Hangar 4.”

“We’re on.” Travers dropped a hand on Vidal’s shoulder. “You’re sure you don’t want to come on down? The ride’s waiting for you.”

They were on call to fly Shapiro and Kim to the surface, and their scheduled destination was as good as a secure facility: Chesterfield House, the former residence of the Colonial Governor in the city of Westminster. There, they would liaise with the President’s own security detail and elements of the Jagreth Secret Service. As of 3:30am, Westminster time, it was the residence of the President of the new federal republic, though the official proclamation of sovereignty had not yet been made.

According to Shapiro’s information, the handover was so subtle, even the flags had not yet been changed. Personnel rosters had been adjusted so that a handful of Confederate loyalists would be in custody this afternoon. Ten hours had passed since the handover, and by midnight all of Jagreth would know about it. The proclamation of sovereignty was a mere formality and the excuse for a party which would span the globe as the Commonwealth flags were raised for the first time.

The details were labyrinthine, but they had been hammered out over the space of months. It was not in Shapiro’s nature to leave any element to chance. He would settle into private conference with Rob Prendergast and his assembly, meetings consuming most of a day, which left Travers and Marin with a little precious time on their hands.

But the planet and the layover were not Vidal’s concern. Chesterfield House was the residence of the President and First Lady. Elaine Osman would certainly be there, and his mouth had compressed. “I’m sure. I’m in enough trouble as it is, Neil – you think I want to be arrested for matricide? I imagine they have laws about things like that, even this far out in the sticks … and especially when it’s the President’s new wife who’d be on ice, waiting for the state funeral.”

“Out in the sticks?” Marin echoed.

“Hey, it’s your call,” Travers said cynically as he and Marin headed out of the hangar. “But damnit, she’s your mother. Last chance to change your mind.”

“Thanks, but no thanks.” Vidal was intent on the combug, the sim, and gave them a wave. “Catch you later, guys. I’m busy here.”

Hangar 4 was on the same deck level, fifty meters aft. As Marin and Travers stepped out of the pocket-sized compartment Vidal had commandeered for the work, they saw Shapiro and Kim in the passage, still making their way to the Capricorn. Over the loop, Gillian Perlman was talking to Ops, reporting the plane as flight ready, and Westminster ATC had just sent the flightpath.

“The local airspace is so congested,” Marin warned, “they actually tell you where to fly, and when, and how fast. It’s worse than Velcastra.”

“Why?” Travers wanted to know. “Westminster’s nowhere near as big as Elstrom.”

“But like Mick said, it’s a
little
way out in the sticks.” Marin greeted Jon Kim with a soft word while Shapiro was intent on his combug. “The surface to orbit shuttle service is lousy – too small, too infrequent, and unless they’ve improved their game lately, way too prone to delays and accidents. Most people prefer to fly themselves, so there’s a lot of commuter traffic, commercial as well as private.”

“Sanmarco,” Travers observed. “The orbital city.”

“It’s the other half of Westminster. Population of almost two million, last time I checked.” Marin paused as Perlman appeared from the hangar.

She slapped palms in passing. “You’re good to go. Your
flightpath’s
already logged and you got a military escort coming over from the Commonwealth docks ... was the Fleet dock yesterday. Damn, they just changed the signs tacked up beside the doors! It was quick, like Velcastra.”

“A military escort?” Marin shot a frown at Travers. “Well, now. This means they expect trouble. You thinking what I’m thinking?”

Travers’s mouth tightened. “Same as Velcastra – they’ve got a problem with Confederate agents. Unlike Velcastra they know about it, so we’re not going to get jumped halfway down. You know anything about this, Gill?”

But she was making negative noises as she left them. “Don’t know nuthin’ about the deal. All they told me was, you’re assigned an armed escort. And if it was me, I’d be bloody glad to have it. You don’t want a replay of last time!”

“Because we,” Marin muttered as she walked back toward the lifts, “are starting to stretch our luck.”