Sons of the Crystal Mind (Diamond Roads Book 1) (19 page)

“But you lost the Ruby War.”

“There was never meant to be a war,” says Harlan. “We would have just taken what we wanted and gone.”

“The kilo source.”

“Or its location. I don’t think it’s in Centria.”

“Are the NFE just thieves then?”

“Diamond City doesn’t have to be the way it is Charity.”

“You sound like your dad.”

Harlan laughs.

“You’re shaped before you’ve got any choice in the matter,” he says.

“How were you going to get access to Centria?” I ask.

Harlan smiles bitterly.

“Someone already inside was going to let us in,” he says.

26

I wake up with my cheek pressed against the soft, ridged cushion of the sofa. A faint play of warm air across my shoulders reminds me I’m naked. Through the dome I see a static view of distant curving walls, which border an empty plain beneath a huge concave ceiling. The Aer tells me I have slept for ten hours.

I stretch to ring out the last sleep and enjoy the slow spreading aches. With them come wonderful recent memories. Conscious of what happened at New Runcton, Harlan spent a long time gently kissing me better. I had expected to shut down; that trauma would have done for my explosive desire. However, the kissing went on, as did the stroking and the holding. Eventually, I was able to let go and blossomed again in his arms. I found I had more capacity than I thought and rewarded Harlan in every way I could think of. Afterwards he introduced me to more ways, then more again.

Dressed, he watches from a chair nearby. I stand and smile as if responding to him automatically. A cylinder grows around me and fills with hot soapy water. It goes to work like a million tiny hands that massage away the nice pain and the sweat. I duck under and enjoy the same feeling on my face and scalp. I surface and hang there in the lovely warmth, studiously ignoring Harlan as he watches me.

“So,” I say, “I was meant to be your next way in to Centria.”

“Yup,” he says happily.

I swish my hair in the water.

“Why me?” I say.

“Jaeger favoured Ursula actually.”

“Typical!”

“He thought she was less ambiguous. Jaeger doesn’t like ambiguity.”

“So I’m ambiguous?”

“Even you don’t know who you are!”

I look at him finally.

“Did you research me?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Your decisions made a readable pattern in-Aer.”

He points at the cylinder.

“Are you done in that?” he says.

“Yes.”

The water drains straight into the floor and the cylinder follows. My jumpsuit walks onto me. I pull my hair dry and push my face into the crook of my elbow to emerge fully made up. I favour a heavy layer today.

“Mmmmm…” Harlan says.

He gifs a chair beside him. I sit and he hands me a mug of Soupergaz. I start to sip but it’s like I haven’t eaten in weeks. I take bigger mouthfuls and feel the gratifying spread of nutrition from my centre out.

“So what did you ‘read’ about me?” I say as I put the empty mug down.

“You don’t make any sense.”

“I could have told you that!”

“I mean,” Harlan says, “that it was like a lot of different people making decisions rather than just one, which made you unpredictable.”

“Didn’t that make your job harder?”

“Not if your loyalties were less secure than you thought.”

“Why aren’t I angry about all this?”

“Think back eleven hours.”

I do, to when his thumbs stroked the front of my hips and his long fingers were splayed over my cheeks, holding me in place as I shook and howled while his tongue made soft electrical bolts between my legs that crackled to the tips of my fingers and toes and nipples and every hair on my head…

He clicks his fingers a few times and I’m reluctantly back in the present.

“Right,” I say. “So what did you think when you met me?”

“You were the right one.”

“To be a traitor?”

“No. You would never have found out.”

“Would you have stayed with me afterwards?”

“Does it honestly matter now?”

He takes my hands and looks into my eyes.

“What happened to you and Ursula was horrible but at least you called me. Know this, Charity Freestone: there is no way I will leave you, unless you want me to. Do you want me to leave you?”

“No,” I say.

He looks relieved.

“I’ll probably never really trust you though,” I say.

“I will do everything I can to earn your trust,” he says.

His eyes are so sad, so full of terrible experience, regret and longing it’s hard to meet his gaze. I look down. His hands tighten on mine as if he’s trying to get me to look at him again but I can’t. I smile nervously.

“I wonder how Ursula is,” I say.

I feel him stiffen.

“Ah,” he says, “my rival.”

I laugh, but it’s a bit forced.

“Come on then,” he says.

We get up. He keeps hold of my hand as we walk down the ramp. His grip comforts as we walk through the assembly, two lovers in their own clothes amid a clan of orange-clad warriors.

I’m jumpy with eagerness as we reach Ursula’s room. I remember then how I set my Aerac to reject all communication. What if she tried to call me? Well, she can talk to me now if she’s awake. The door rises, I rush in but Ursula… Ursula is gone.

I make a weird sound that’s half grunt, half shriek and slump against Harlan. He puts his arm around my waist, which keeps me upright. I set my Aerac to accept messages, see one from Ursula and open it. The message says:

Baby, I am so sorry. I let them shoot you before I did anything. It is my fault. You are better off without me. You always were. Forgive me. I love you but do not try and follow me. I will be all right.

Ursula xx

No! I try and call her. She doesn’t reply. I picture my sister as she stumbles into a gang of hungry subs…

I’m out of the room so fast I have to duck under the door. The corridors of the NFE assembly are a jolting blur as I run through them. Soon I pound down a ramp onto the diamond plain. I speed up, barely aware of the impact of my feet on the hard floor.

The plain is bigger than it looks and I don’t seem to get anywhere. The only point of reference is the long diamond tube of the NFE assembly, which is now half a kilometre behind me and hard to see in the strange blue light. Distant walls form a yawning oval and the dizzying concavity far above swallows all sound. Overwhelmed by scale and exhaustion I slow to a halt, panting.

“Ursula!” I shout, my tiny voice futile. “URSULAAAA!”

Squatting on the ground I pull at my hair and groan like I’m injured but feel nothing, nothing… The sound is close in the space between my head and the floor.

Running footsteps close in. I jump up and point the n-gun but the runner is Harlan, who stops as I let my arm fall. My eyes ache; I realise they are stretched wide. Harlan spreads his hands in a calming gesture but Ursula’s absence is like a physical pain and my breath comes in jerks.

“She’s gone Harlan,” I say finally. “She said I was better off without her. I’m not though. I don’t want her to go.”

“I know,” he says.

“She’s lost,” I say.

“She isn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

Harlan looks around the empty plain uneasily.

“You won’t find her like this. Come back inside. It’s not safe out here.”

“Harlan…”

“She giffed a flybike and headed for MidZone. I don’t think she’s even in the Outer Spheres. She’s got friends Charity. Let her go.”

“You saw her?”

“Our security recorded it. Look.”

He sends me a file. I access it, shut my eyes and see Ursula in a dark outfit walk through the NFE assembly. She looks gaunt and ill, with shiny skin and limp hair. Her movements are slow but controlled, as if they take an effort to coordinate. A flybike grows out of the floor; Ursula gets on stiffly, starts the flybike and cruises down the corridor. A door opens at the end and the view changes to one from outside the assembly. Ursula passes overhead and recedes into the distance. I stand with my eyes closed and look at the recording of the empty plain. After a moment I watch the whole thing again.

“Charity,” I hear Harlan say.

I shake my head. Again, Ursula flies into the distance. Again I watch the empty plain. I feel weak suddenly.

“Come inside,” Harlan says.

I open my eyes. The view is the same as the one at the end of the recording. I try to call Ursula once more but there is still no reply. I let Harlan lead me back to the ramp and into the assembly again. The door closes behind us like a diamond knife that cuts me off from my sister.

We make our way down a level to an area set off from the rest of the assembly. A door opens into a room that can only be Harlan’s. The décor is dark with more than a touch of chaos but it’s tasteful and relaxing. There is a very thick pile carpet in alternating rich orange and brown stripes, through which a series of rough bronze poles emerge to support a low-slung seating system. The ceiling is black with spots of amber luminescence that keep the darkness gentle at the edges of the room. Through a door to the right I glimpse the side of a large wooden four-poster bed and wonder abstractly how many other girls he has brought here. He sees me look.

“None,” he says.

I nod, only half-hearing. He leads me to a large chair. I sink into it and stare at nothing. I don’t know how long I sit for. Harlan is a quiet presence nearby.

“Charity,” Harlan says eventually.

I focus as if seeing him for the first time.

“Do you want to know how I dealt with it, when I was in your position?”

“Yes.”

“It’s in you,” he says. “You think you’re lost. You think you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“That’s right.”

“But you do know what you’re doing Charity.”

“There’s just… nothingness in my head.”

“No,” Harlan says. “The answer is there. Don’t go trying to solve it all at once. Just think about what you need to do next.”

An answer comes but it seems too trivial.

“Well?” Harlan says.

I feel silly and self-conscious, which seems extraordinary given the way we make love so…

“I could look at some messages,” I say.

“There you go.”

I access my Aerac. Although it’s only accepted messages for a short time I’ve already got hundreds. I filter out those from people I don’t know and look through the remaining twenty. One is from Keris Veitch.

“What-?” I hear myself say.

I open the message. It says:

Charity, there has been a terrible mistake.

Come back to Centria now.

I will tell you everything.

27

The flybike is a faster one than usual. It handles well so I fly hard and nobody gets in my way. I bank right and soar over the broad, light MidZone chamber. Its building layout is pleasingly complex. Angular blocks form whorls and lines to link circles, a pattern that is simultaneously mathematical and mystical.

The landscape starts to change. One company has taken over another and is altering the environment accordingly. A delta of people floods out at ground level as a building that stretches along the wall to my left calmly sinks out of existence. Meanwhile, the complex pattern of blocks descends into the floor. The movement is not uniform; blocks disappear at different times as their kilos flow to new owners.

The buildings disgorge more people who run panicked into the changing streets. They flee on foot or in fast-giffed roadsters, which speed away to bump over panels that were roofs a moment ago. From up here the rush of humanity on the ground looks almost orderly until gunfire lights the shifting walls. To my left an explosion shocks and blooms amid the graceful orchestration of moving structures. I pull the flybike higher and speed out of range.

A circular tower grows ahead, sides adorned with rich gothic patterns. As it reaches the ceiling it spreads a vein-like ornamental network that flows and darkens in all directions. The last of the blocks disappears and simple yellow buildings form to radiate across the floor from the tower like petals. The movement of people below becomes less frantic as weapon fire dies away. There is a sense of calm or perhaps resignation.

Anton Jelka calls. I smile when I see his name and slow down, hovering beside the chamber’s triangular exit to take the call. I know immediately that something is wrong. He looks terrified.

“Charity, please,” he says, “I’m sorry I couldn’t find you, I’ve been looking for you for weeks, I- oh no…”

“What is it?”

“The Sons of the Crystal Mind. They’ve got me like they got you… Look, if you can do something I’m at these coordinates. It’s not a trap, they won’t expect you, just-”

The call is cut off.

For a second I sit there, stunned and then I send Anton’s coordinates to the flybike. It tells me that at maximum speed I will reach Anton in fifteen minutes. I put in a direct route, cross-reference it with occupied buildings in MidZone and set a course to avoid them. The new route will take me seven minutes. I set the n-gun to level 3 and fly through the exit.

A large grey building spans the next chamber. I grip the joystick with my left hand and point the n-gun. I open fire from ten metres away and the structure’s outer wall shatters inwards. The debris seems to hang there.

I realise I’m too close and duck. Particles sting my head and hot fluid trickles down my scalp. I race through a long vacant room as blood drips off my brow towards my eyes. I shake my head, scattering red drops. As I approach the next boundary wall I shoot earlier so it’s completely destroyed by the time I reach it.

I fly through the gap and over an open space. Unexpectedly, it contains a circus. I glimpse bright lights, costumes, people in flight… After the circus I soar over a range of low-lying green buildings under a high crystal roof. With no obstacles I can put the flybike on autopilot and go in-Aer.

Predictably, the Sons of the Crystal Mind are broadcasting their latest atrocity. Again, people writhe on a glowing floor amidst black-clad figures, while Hobb repeats the same nonsense. I spot Anton. He stands near a pyre surrounded by Sons. Tied to the pyre is a little girl.

I’m six minutes away and the flybike won’t go any faster. Ahead is a large, free-floating dome assembly whose surface is a flowing pattern of orange and blue. As I approach it moves aside. Suddenly, there’s a flash-

I yank the joystick hard left as a thick energy beam grinds off one of the flybike’s runners. People on the assembly think I’m attacking them! I swerve right. Another beam hits a white conical building in front of me and shears through a quarter of it. I dive to avoid the assembly but the angle is too steep. I brace myself and haul back the joystick.

It’s not enough. A terrible screech tears at my ears and hundreds of burning points hit my left leg as the flybike’s other runner tears a plume of sparks off the diamond floor. Another energy beam blasts through the ground in front of me; I can’t get the flybike up in time and fall into the red-edged, dripping hole.

I do a slow somersault in the weird, hissing well. It glows with damage and starts to close in as it repairs itself. I shudder as the scorching cylindrical surface approaches but drop without contact into the chamber below.

As I corkscrew towards a park with a lake in the centre I gently shake the joystick between thumb and forefinger against the direction of the turn. The spinning whips up a blinding nausea and I hear myself groan. After more coaxing I stop the corkscrew but can’t change direction. Hobb drones over the Aer as I race towards the chamber floor.

The engine stutters. Both of its back-up systems are damaged. I scan the ground to see if I can gif some sort of cushion but someone else owns the park. All I can do is head for that lake and hope for the best.

The bike hits the surface and flips over. Blinding water smacks into my face, forcing its way down my throat. The flybike’s in-Aer controls flicker then vanish. Nothing works and the almost invisible restraints that secured me in flight now drag me down.

The flybike bumps against the bottom of the lake. I hang there, too stunned to move. My throat burns and my lungs feel heavy. I feel my mouth open; the water tastes flat and metallic. Hobb’s voice in my ears is strangely unaffected.

“Perfection will make us worthy,” he says.

I try to deposit the flybike. However, the lake floor is on closed protocol ownership so the dead vehicle stays obstinately put. I struggle weakly against my restraints and the flybike rocks against the bottom of the lake, then settles again. Darkness creeps in from the edge of my blurred vision.

In my last moment of calm I remember the n-gun. I point at the restraints but there seem to be too many. Meanwhile, my sense of direction is coming apart. I begin to forget what I’m doing and realise I’m out of oxygen, out of time…

I select level 3. I’ve got no idea what a hint of antimatter will do to my surroundings but can’t think what else to do; even the panic is weak now. Clear in the knowledge that if I don’t disintegrate I will drown I jam my finger against the flybike and fire.

Instantly there’s a terrific roiling and I’m heaved up amid enormous pressure that stabs my ears. Water spurts from my throat and nose as I glimpse a weird silent perspective. Bright globules stretch and shatter; buildings hang upside down; a gleaming yellow banner swings…

I’m in the air, bent over. The banner is my wet hair; the globules are the lake. I reach a height that has no context and turn almost lazily. I take half a breath and wonder how much water remains-

I slap into the lake again, the impact jarring my back. I go rigid to slow my descent but still hit the bottom hard enough to bounce off. I float briefly, too dazed from another battering to notice the pain. Soon however my lungs become insistent and I make myself flail against the water until I burst through the surface.

I’m not far from shore and the lake only comes up to my waist now. Gasping, I fight through the shallows to stumble onto dry land. Water vents from the jumpsuit and I spit bloody hair. As my feet steady I begin to run towards clear floor a hundred metres away.

The flybike is just metallic vapour; I won’t get those kilos back. Nonetheless, I gif a top range flybike that costs nearly all I’ve got. As it grows I pump more energy into my straining legs and sprint.

The flybike settles just as I leap onto it from behind. I send it Anton’s coordinates and the Aer tells me I’m four minutes away. I lift off, still spraying water.

Hobb reaches his crescendo but this time it ends differently.

“We know our cause is just because we have such support from Centria,” says Hobb. “The People’s Princess lent us her favour and as a result the Blanks tortured her into insanity. Rightly disgusted by this barbarism, the legendary Head of Centrian Security is with us today to bless our latest triumph.”

I glimpse Anton’s stricken face on the Aer feed. I have to concentrate on flying because there’s another building ahead. This one is occupied but I’m going through it anyway.

I call Anton.

“Nearly there,” I say. “Stall them.”

I switch to audio as the structure looms like a great diamond cliff. When I fire level 2 n-gun bolts at it I’m relieved to see people run out of the way. Moments later I spray the wall in with level 3 and duck under the jagged edges. Sound closes in as I speed through the building. Calm but almost dizzyingly focussed, I glimpse workspaces, discarded food and other fragments of people’s lives with perfect clarity.

“Anton Jelka,” Hobb says, his voice euphoric, “you guard the very heart of our society against evil and misrule. Like us, you must make difficult decisions in the name of the greater good. Do you agree that the creature before you should be burned before it can reach maturity and spread its vile influence throughout our realm?”

I hear Anton clear his throat.

“Well,” he says, “that is a great responsibility and I’m, er, honoured that you should consider me worthy of…”

“Yes or no, Anton Jelka,” Hobb drones over the booming chant of his followers.

One minute away. I jerk forward in the flybike seat in a vain attempt to make it go faster.

“In my capacity as Head of Security I often have to weigh up…”

“YES OR NO?” Hobb screams.

I will not get there in time. I call Anton.

“Anton?” I say.

The room is a blur. Ninety seconds.

“I love you Charity,” Anton says and cuts the call.

I still hear him over the Aer broadcast.

“NO!” he roars and my heart burns with pride. “Never! I will never agree to anything you say! Your religion is a joke and you are a fool! There is no Crystal Mind…”

I hear the shot as I blast through the final wall.