It took three deep breaths, and a deliberate command to himself to relax, but finally Carl got it.
‘You mean . . .’ Then he chuckled. ‘You mean, I’ve spilled things you’re not authorized to know, is that it?’
‘Fuck,’ said Clayton.
‘That’s just his way of saying yes,’ said Boyle. ‘He’s a sweetie, really.’
‘So now you two are going to get the amnesia treatment too?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘And you don’t think that’s funny?’
‘No, I—’
‘Come on.’ Boyle smiled. ‘Man’s got a point.’
‘It’s not funny.’
‘Yes, it is,’ said Boyle and Carl together.
They laughed, and after a moment, Clayton said: ‘Oh, fuck it,’ and joined in the laughter. Soon, all three of them were hysterical, the sound bouncing back off the walls; and just when it seemed to die away, Boyle made a sound like blowing a raspberry, and set them off again.
Finally, the humour sank away, leaving a kind of amused tiredness.
‘So what were you after?’ Carl asked finally.
‘Ah, well.’ Clayton wiped his eyes. ‘Bad news, actually. Just like—Shit, man. I’m sorry. With your wife . . .’
Boyle said: ‘We’re both sorry. We’ll keep our promise.’
‘Promise?’
‘Getting you to Med Centre within- You remember now.’
Carl’s world fell away.
‘Miranda.’
The truth-tell had messed with his mind so much. Now everything slammed into him.
‘Let’s get Carl on his way,’ said Clayton.
‘Yeah.’ Boyle summoned a fastpath. ‘Here we are.’
More to distract himself than because he wanted to know, Carl said: ‘So why were you questioning me?’
‘It’s about . . . Admiral Kaltberg’s dead.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry.’
‘She died in an explosion in Commodore Gould’s office.’
‘You mean Max—?’
‘We don’t know. He might have escaped.’
This was too much. Only Miranda mattered.
‘Maybe he’s all right.’
‘I hope not,’ muttered Clayton.
Boyle shook his head.
‘What do you mean?’ Carl asked.
‘Because if he slipped away unharmed, he’s the murderer, isn’t he?’
‘Murder?’
But the fastpath rotation was in place, and Med Centre was where he had to be.
‘Let’s go,’ said Boyle.
They stepped out into Med Centre, right beside the drone housing Miranda. Medics were immersed in holodisplays. The man who had talked to Carl before said: ‘It’s not the best of—’
Red icons flared as the drone screeched.
‘What’s happening?’ Carl felt as if something had clawed open his chest. ‘What does it mean?’
But the medic’s hands worked flickering control gestures, and panes of nothingness whirled.
‘I thought you said a fastpath was too dangerous to—’
‘It’s the only chance now.’
Medics and drone - with his beautiful Miranda inside - were gone.
‘You’ve got to be all right,’ he whispered. ‘You’ve got to.’
Somebody put a hand on his shoulder, either Clayton or Boyle, keeping him steady.
You have to pull through. For me, for Roger.
Had he told her enough that it was her he lived for? That everything was in the end for her?
You have to, my love—
Rotation again, and they were back.
Perhaps hours had passed on the other timeflow, wherever they had been. Maybe it had been days - Labyrinthine time could be that crazy.
The medic’s face was haggard.
‘I’m sorry, Pilot Blackstone. We did everything we—’
‘No . . .’
Carl pressed his hands against the drone’s carapace.
Please no.
The drone that was now Miranda’s coffin.
FORTY-TWO
FULGOR, 2603 AD
Amid grey-and-purple fog, Roger rode the hired slickbike up a jagged, stippled ascent and came into the open. Behind him, the top of the fog glistened in sunlight; in front of him, a steel monstrosity clanked and thumped its great piston-legs, following the ridgetop.
The Spalding residence would look squat from a distance, but up close it was a huge armoured presence, tangled with pipes and funnels, complex and ugly, ringed with piledriver legs that hissed and clanged and thumped, crunching the ground.
Alisha. You grew up in that?
Up here, he still needed his respmask. Xavier Spalding preferred to keep his peregrinating house inside the hypozone. How best to signal the man?
But steel maws clanged open, and a curled-up rampway unfurled, like an unrolled carpet constructed of clanking iron. Roger directed the slickbike upwards, and it slid up the metal on its flowbelly, and squelched to a halt inside an entrance hall.
Steel decking, copper-and-steel chandeliers encrusted with spikes, and a floating glass arrow that trembled when he looked at it: that was all he saw.
‘I understand.’ He dismounted from the slickbike. ‘Carry on.’
The arrow moved and he followed, along a metal corridor ending in a door that split into a thousand razor-edged leaves and drew apart. Beyond, a silver door shivered into a mass of interlocking penrose tiles that folded back, like a snowdrift in strong wind.
Inside, the massive lounge was black and grey, touched with metallic purple. A shaven-headed man - Xavier Spalding - sat on a silver couch. Three steel eagles watched from perches, their heads turning to track Roger’s advance. One of them clashed its metal feathers; another opened and closed its angular steel beak.
‘They won’t attack,’ said Xavier.
‘But they could.’
‘If it were necessary. Clearly, we’re on the same side, Roger.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘I may not be a Luculentus, but I have a measure of success, and many friends. You know how social networking follows an inverse-power relationship, I presume.’
‘There are many people with few acquaintances, and few people with many acquaintances, and it’s a straight-line relationship. ’ Roger decided this was a test. ‘Like the first internet, if you know your Terran history.’
The test was not to get annoyed at being asked what every child should know. If there are a million servers with a certain number of connections, then there might be half a million servers with double that number of connections, in a scale-free network. Or some similar inverse relationship.
‘A small number of nodes with a vast number of links,’ said Xavier. ‘Just so.’
‘Mathematically, you can’t define a meaningful average. Strategically, such networks are robust against random attacks, vulnerable to directed assaults. The original internet took twenty minutes to die, and it’s surprising it lasted that long.’
Xavier stared, picking up the implication: he was a vulnerable target.
‘I can see why my daughter likes you. Sit down, Mr Blackstone.’
‘Thank you. So you’re a primary node in a social network, are you, sir?’
‘Call me Xavier. So yes, Roger, I have a lot of friends.’
‘Or allies?’ The metal chair he selected was hard-looking, but felt comfortable. ‘Business acquaintances?’
‘Some of them are true friends. So I know, because of my acquaintances, that a mu-space ship burst into the open just above ground level, right in front of a house occupied by the Blackstone family. So where is it now?’
‘Where’s what?’
‘Your father’s ship. I’m assuming it’s your father’s, since he was clearly the major spy. Or have I got that wrong?’
This was not what Roger was here for.
‘It’s in another universe and they’re not coming back, that’s all, sir. Xavier.’